How to talk about race in the year 2008

Wow, you don't see something this blunt -- and spot-on -- very often, esp. from a civil rights leader:

So many blacks are poor and underemployed because they are not effectively educated and do not stay in school or have graduate degrees in the growth fields of science, math and technology. This is a chicken-and-egg dilemma for many because the public schools are so bad. But the public schools are also free.

The sad truth is this: Inner-city public schools are "broken" because many teachers -- including minorities -- don't know their craft and aren't being held to high standards. The mostly minority school boards in  mostly minority districts don't seem to care. Moreover, the inequality of these schools has next to nothing to do with "inadequate" funding and everything to do with the stranglehold teachers unions have on our public officials. A countervailing parents "union" is long overdue -- but no national civil rights group dares to organize one for fear of the trade unions.

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How to talk about race in the year 2008
By Michael Meyers
NY Daily News, Sunday, December, 2007
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2007/12/02/2007-12-02_how_to_talk_about_race_in_the_year_2008.html?print=1&page=all

Weeks before the first primaries, race activists like the Rev. Jesse Jackson are complaining that black voters are being taken for granted by most presidential candidates. According to Jackson in a Chicago Sun-Times Op-Ed piece last week, issues of the supposedly suppressed black vote "in key states," the income gap between blacks and whites and entrenched "segregative" patterns of blacks' underemployment, illiteracy and "over-incarceration" are being ignored.