Letter To Sen. Obama RE: Race In USA

COPY
ORIGINAL SENT BY US MAIL


2321 South 82 Street
West Allis, WI 53219
(414) 545-1884


10 August 2008

Senator Barack Obama
P.O. Box 8102
Chicago, IL 60680

Dear Senator Obama:

You have said we need to tale about race in America.

Fair enough. But this time, it has to be a two-way conversation. White America needs to be heard from, not just lectured to.

This time real Americans need to have their convictions, grievances and demands heard. And among them are these:

First, America has been the best country on earth for black folks. It was here that 600,000 black people, brought from Africa in slave ships, grew into a community of 40 million, were introduced to Christian salvation, and reached the greatest levels of freedom and prosperity blacks have ever known. [You might compare the state of Blacks in this country with the political-economic disaster area which is Black Africa after White rule.]

MR. Wright ought to go down on his knees and thank God he is an American.

Second, no people anywhere has done more to lift up Blacks than White Americans. Untold millions have been spent since the '60s on welfare, food stamps, rent supplements, Section 8 housing, Pell grants, student loans, legal services, Medicaid, Earned Income Tax Credits and poverty programs designed to bring the African-American community into the mainstream.

Governments, businesses and colleges have engaged in discrimination against White folks - with affirmative action, contract set-asides and quotas -- to advance Black applicants over White applicants.

Churches, foundations, civic groups, schools and individuals all over America have donated time and money to support soup kitchens, adult education, day care, retirement and nursing homes for Blacks.

It was, for the most part, White men who gave up their blood, limbs and lives to insure the slavery supporting South did not leave the Union and to enact those changes in our Constitution as gave Blacks the right to work for full equality.

We hear the grievances. Where is the gratitude??


You have spoken about new 'ladders of opportunity' for blacks. Go to Altoona And East Lancing And Atlanta And Milwaukee and ask the white kids in Catholic schools how many were visited lately by Ivy League recruiters handing out scholarships for 'deserving' white kids?

Is white America really responsible for the fact that the crime and incarceration rates for African-Americans are seven times those of white America ? Is it really white America 's fault that illegitimacy in the African-American community has hit 70 percent and the black dropout rate from high schools in some cities has reached 50 percent?

Is that the fault of white America or, first and foremost, a failure of the black community itself?

As for racism, its ugliest manifestation is in interracial crime, and especially interracial crimes of violence. Are you aware that while white criminals choose black victims 3 percent of the time, black criminals choose white victims 45 percent of the time?

Are you aware that black-on-white rapes are 100 times more common than the reverse, that black-on-white robberies were 139 times as common in the first three years of this decade as the reverse?

We have all heard ad nauseam from the Rev. Al about Tawana Brawley, the Duke rape case and Jena . And all turned out to be hoaxes. But about the epidemic of black assaults on whites that are real, we hear nothing.


We must now insist that the word “discrimination” be returned to its use to define the making of choices between what is good and what is bad.

Sorry, Barack, some of us have heard it all before, about 40 years and 40 trillion tax dollars ago.


Hopefully yours,
James Pawlak

cc DNC---via US Mail
Senator Herb Kohl---via US Mail
Mr. F. James Sensenbrenner---via US Mail