'I HAVE money' in a racial context.

All of us have at some point in time made the comment "I HAVE (the) money," for some purpose or other. Even those among us who approach destitution will make the observation from time to time, without necessarily alluding to pride.

As "the great melting pot," America has its share of rich and poor. My observation has been that one ethnic group lags behind all others in the race to financial success. It is a logical requirment that if all poeples are divided into ethnic groups and measured, there will be exactly one that is farthest behind. My guess is that in America it is not Chinese, Jewish, German, Itallian, French, other Asian or Russian. I estimate that the black ethnic group is the ethnic group that is best comprehended in the term "poor," as it applies to ethnic groups. This should not cause us to lose sight of others. Tennessee has a large contingent of poor whites who truly do approach destitution.

In this unjust reality, I am in the position of noting an old Russian proverb "It could be worse, Ivan!" Consider with me if you will the historical plan for Liberia. Back in the days following the emancipation proclamation, there was a politically influencial goup of people who theorized that the best course of action was to ship all the slaves back home to Africa. [This was before the Jim Crow era, which in turn preceded integration.] At the time Africa was open territory, and provisions were made for a new country named "Liberia," for Liberty, and they started shipping slaves back home. In a geological blink of an eye, they found out that it was expensive shipping them back, and that new generations were being born too fast to keep up. The process of importation had been assisted by the financial contributions of slave owners and those who marketed them, and this was not at work in the reverse application. I don't know when the last shipment was, but exportation petered off.

Contrast the possible result with reality. American Blacks are poor in America, but compared to the bulk of the African population, America's nubian demographic is wildly prosperous.

I guess it's true what my friend once said: "There IS justice in the world! The rich gets their ice in the summer, and the poor gets their ice in the winter." At the moment we are enjoying a political succes of the same ethnic goup; A Black President. Obama has not been the first African American to be asked to run. He has been preceded by Jesse Jackson among other possibles. I recall the comment of one of our better Secretaries of State when he considered the same proposition. When asked if he would run for President, Colin Powell replied in honesty, "I do not think America is ready for a black President." Machiavelli observed that, when a choice is required, "...it is better to be loved than to be feared." Historically it has been the case that our most beloved and successful Presidents have been subject to assassination attempts, while the least revered have been exempted from this superlative hatred. When we contemplate that first efforts are reliably unremarkable, we might regard Obama as the first effort of an ethnic group to succeed in putting an otherwise politically savvy Machiavellian ingenue in the Whitehouse.
As the author of precedent, I hope Obama does not fail to excel.