“Slavery still stalks the American consciousness, its wounds yet festering in many hearts.”
I have a problem with that line. There isn’t a person alive in this country who participated in slavery, either as owner or slave (excepting of course some third world immigrants who still practice it). Therefore, slavery’s “wounds” were not inflicted upon them by slavery or someone else. Any “wounds” have been self-inflicted because of the way people choose to think about the matter, not because of something they personally suffered.
Some blacks claim a legacy of slavery has led to social pathologies common in the black community. Thomas Sowell has disputed that notion, pointing out that blacks in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had healthy marriages, ambitious kids, and a path to the middle class and upper class quicker than any other immigrant or racial group. The culture didn’t start disintegrating until The Great Society War on Poverty made jobs and fathers disposable, affirmative action made education disposable, the women’s movement made marriage disposable, and abortion made babies disposable. It was exacerbated as race pimps found riches in creating and then exploiting “white guilt”, and in fostering continual resentment in blacks in order to buttress the white guilt.
you missed the irony. As the son of an Arab-African, it's impossible!