Sharecropping was essentially institutionalised slavery, and I'm pretty sure that practice was working well into the 40s (of course this applies to poor white families in the south, too, but the vast majority, and the group with the least rights, were blacks).

I was pretty amazed by how racist and segregated the USA still was when I visited about 5 years ago. Mind you, I was MOSTLY in the south. It's the most racist country I've been to with a large ethnic minority population (though I suspect Australia is worse in some respects). The only places I've been that are as racist, I think, are probably Switzerland and Japan, and they don't have large ethnic underclass groups that live in segregated communities (mainly due to their very strong stance against immigration that makes mass migration pretty impossible). I'm not really sure it's getting any better, from a political and media standpoint.

There's only a couple of other places I've been to (parts of London in the UK and Paris in France) where there are such segregated ethnic areas where you'd be a bit concerned to walk as a white person (and probably not to the same extent as bits of South Central LA, Western Chicago or some of the towns in the south that I've been to).

I'm sure it's a very complex issue and there's a lot of reasons for it, though.

The US takes in many refugees that are not highly educated. Immigration laws were changed a few decades ago to the make the country easier to enter for those without much education.

To deny that cultural differences are responsible for any of the disparity is ignoring the root o the problem.

The tuskegee exp started before there was a cure for syphalis. the researchers had a population with a god number of cases that couldnt afford basic health services, so the health services were traded for study participation. The real crime happened was penicillin beame widely used to treat the disease. For some reason the study continued but it is hard to say that it was purely racists because many blacks were working on the study.

The participants were put before science for some reason, whether from a eugenics mindset or just arrogance.

On Social mobility,

I think much of the reason the US sucks here because there was a great increase in wages post WW2 as the US had a healthy and intact industrial base and strong unions and a robust economy once the depression was ended. But once international competition picked up in th
e 70s wages started to stagnate.




Black men have continued to close the gap though.


I am not saying that there is no racism in America. There definitely is. I am just tired of the continued focus on the negative.

I heard Obama reading some of his book on the radio yesterday and some of what he went through was pretty shocking and made me understand a bit more why he chose to identify himself as black even though he was raised by whites.

But I also have a friend that grew up in Englewood, CA that is white but grew up in a mostly black neighborhood. Some of his stories are pretty depressing too.

I may write more on what I was trying to say about growing up poor in America later, but I may not.


Equus, I liked your post.