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Sorry.. flame me if you must, but the first time I was mugged was on a Chicago street at age 9 with my little brother by a group of black thugs. There were multiple run-ins throughout High School, with occasional hospital visits compliments of a certain demographic. I'm now 37 and just last night a black thug noticed the painful wince on my face as he cruised past with his 1 billion bubba-watt bass boomer car, he jumped out and incoherently babbled something about doing something terrible to me and my 10 year old son at my side.

It's just the way it is and it is not my fault.

I won't sit here and say that "Some of my best friends are black..." because they aren't. Having said that I will say that *one* and only one of my very best friends of more than 15 years, is in fact a black man. We talk about these issues sometimes. There is little disagreement.

I do try and follow the civil-rights mantra of judging a man by the content of his character. But one can only be burned so many times before one develops an aversion to fire. And I will not deliberately put myself or my family in harms way just to 'prove' that we aren't racist.

Having grown up in the ultra-tolerant, liberal 70's I now find my tolerance at an all time historical low.

Go ahead... you can blast the newbie now.

Sorry you feel that way.

I suggest to you that, when thinking about race, you might think about people like Justice Clarence Thomas, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, former Secretary of State and General Colin Powell, economist Walter Williams, columnist Armstrong Williams, not to mention millions more less famous but equally honorable black folks.

I live in a racially mixed neighborhood, including a black Baptist preacher and his extended family, with zero problems.

In fact, the only time anybody in the neighborhood was mugged, it was by a couple of young Asian men. I kid you not.

In response to a private message I received, I'll post this to you.

Let's compare -- when I was 19, a black man stole my purse, when I was 21, a black man attacked me with a knife and tried to rape me, when I was 23 a black man attacked me with a knife and stole my purse, and when I was 25 a black man just swung at me with a knife.

Do I win in the "I was attacked by a black man" contest?

If I can get look at a black man and judge him by what's under the skin, you can, too.

Slavery was such a colossal error for Colonial America and for the early United States. Not just as an absolute moral failure, but for all the difficulty it generates 200 years later, even with de jure equality. Although southern economic development wouldn't have been what it was - just try to imagine the continent today with a small or negligible black population.

Here in Georgia - the state suffers from the reputation of being 49th or 50th, depending on the year, in the SAT performance of its students. That South Carolina is either 49th to GA's 50th or 50th to GA's 49th is the subject of a lot of humor - but it looks past the truth that each state has a nearly 30% black population. When you look at white (non-Hispanic) SAT scores, compared on an equal basis with other states - you see that there is very little difference (a small standard deviation) among states. Yet politicians rage about the poor performance of the schools here. It's not the poor performance of the schools - it's the poor performance of one very large segment of the school population. But that's the elephant in the living room that no one can talk about. Event he State Department of Education releases annual SAT information - but conspicuously not broken down by race. Late they quietly release the race segmented results and the results are...well, you know.

"But one can only be burned so many times before one develops an aversion to fire. "

I agree and understand your position. I'm well aware that there are good decent black people but most of what I've dealt with over the years weren't. It's too bad we can't express honest opinions regarding race without told we're somehow wrong to feel that way.

Your logic is twisted.If I judged a group of people by my childhood and teenage experiences I would hate and distrust white people since they are the ones who brought me such torment and misery growing up.
When I became an ADULT,i saw that these white thugs didn't represent all whites just as the black gangsta types are but a small minority of black folks.
We get into shaky ground when we base feelings toward a group on unfortunate events of our younger days.