I'm not really expecting a good response to this one.

But it's how I feel.

If you don't want to be treated badly because you are black, then don't tell us your black. Some of us, many of us, don't care because we really are looking at you, not your pigment. Perhaps this is easy for me to say because I am what you would call white, but if you think I have never encountered discrimination or been treated badly because of my looks, then you have another thing coming.

I know that it is difficult to crawl out of poverty. but don't blame the government for keeping you there because there are plenty of successful people out there who started with nothing and made something of themselves. But that means that they had to have the intelligence to look around them and then see the rest of the world and know that staying in a neighborhood where your neighbors call you upity for wanting a college education will not help you to be successful.

I feel for you. I want you to do well with your life. But you have to make the choices that will better your life. There are programs. There are opportunities abounding in this great nation of ours. If they aren't available where you are, then leave and find them. And then come back and develop new chances for the people you left behind. No one can or will make these choices for you. So if you choose to remain in poverty because you aren't willing to try to make your life better, or because you don't know how else to be, then don't ask me to give you special treatment. It's not about Black. It's about pride. and true pride has nothing to do with pigment. But you have to have the drive to make it better for you. To take the opportunity to better yourself.

Katrina washed away everything you owned? Then take the $2000 the government just handed you and buy yourself a new suit at Ross. Go get an entry level position in a company that is feeling open minded towards thier fellow American instead of waiting for the government to tell you it's ok to return to your one bedroom shack. If, when it's ok, you want to return, great. How wonderful that you are returning with some work experience so that you can work a better job in a city that will be abounding with new opportunities. You should still have $1950 of the government's hand out on top of what you made while you worked so it seems to me, that even though you lost everything you had, you're still better off than you were before the hurricane. Because you made the best of a bad experience. Because you can be proud of yourself. And that pride will take you everywhere. notice that none of that had anything to do with color? or gender? Yeah. it IS all about you. you making something of yourself. so do it. no one's going to do it for you.