Black Rednecks and White Liberals (by Thomas Sowell)

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Buying rims when you're dirt poor instead of paying your bills and taking care of business is just stupid, to put it as bluntly as I can. Obviously, not everyone that owns rims is poor. Its not about the rims, its about how a mentality that compels people to make a bad choice.

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Well, ok, but what does this have to do with race?I can show you many, many all-white towns in West Virginia where you can see the fancy, new satelite dishes on most of the run down, old double-wide trailers, sitting in knee-high grass, a couple of rusted cars up on blocks in the trash-littered yards. Poor choice, nothing to do with race.I can show you affluent neighborhoods in almost every state where people spend lots of money on lots of expensive crap, yet allow the homeless to die in the street. Poor choice, nothing to do with race.I had a friend from school who became a very devout, conservative Christian in college. Once she married and her religion told her that her responsibility to God was to pump out as many babies as she could, she did. She quit her good-paying job, and her nice, but uneducated husband made a quarter of what she could have. They received public money in the form of WIC benefits. So, the taxpayers were partially footing the bill simply because her religion told her that she must have lots of babies and stay home to raise them, even though SHE was the one with greater earning power. Poor choice, nothing to do with race.

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The mountain people, while still just as dirt poor, considered themselves as different from the other inhabitants--you could call them the upper class of mountain society. Calling them a redneck or hillbilly would be considered an insult, and for good reason. they weren't.

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So, would this be the group the family portrayed in The Waltons was?

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Its not a matter of how underfunded the American public school system is. I already know that its deplorable.

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The point is, juggs, that your claim that everybody, including poor blacks, are on an equal educational footing because the public school system facilitates it is completely false.I mean, seriously, how far does your head have to be stuck up your backside to think that inner city, predominantly minority schools that are grossly underfunded can provide the same education as rich white suburban schools?

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Secondly, and more importantly, FOX news isn't named "Conservative television," one, because it isn't geared towards that demographic, and secondly, it isn't exclusive to anyone.

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A few years ago, I was in Tokyo to attend the wedding of a lifelong friend of my husband's.At the time, this friend taught at a branch of the University of Maryland in Tokyo that was funded by the US military, so technically, he was a civilian employee of the military. Through his employment status, he was able to reserve some rooms for us at a military hotel in the middle of the city.There were only a couple of US channels on the televisions in the rooms; CNN and FOX.Before CNN News came on, there was a message on the screen that warned the person watching the TV in the hotel room (most likely to be a memeber of the US military) that some of the views expressed or news presented on the program might not be entirely supportive of the war in Iraq.You know what was shown at the start of every FOX News broadcast?No warning about any "unsupportive" views or news, of course.As the music came up and the announcer came on, you heard him say, and you read the words as they appeared on the screen superimposed over an American flag, "FOX News; Part of the Team!"Now, just what do you think they meant by calling themselves, "Part of the Team"?Does that sound like they aren't "geared towards any demographic"?

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In fact, it was a white man, a Republican white man, no less, that freed the slaves to begin with. So, where is this white privilege?

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The republicans used to be the abolitionists, and the democrats used to be the pro-slavery people.Somewhere in the 1950's, the switch happened. After that, the Republicans became the pro-segregationist, pro-KKK, pro-racism party, and the Democrats became the Civil Rights party.