It was 50 years ago....

that a much needed organization was founded...the NAACP. Fifty years ago, segregation and racial discrimination were reality! There were black only seats on the bus and lunch counters and schools...separate but equal was the catch phrase of the day!

Today however, much has changed. Blacks and whites work side by side in industry, in schools and in every aspect of American life...and yet there is still a great divide in incomes and social status. Why is that, one may ask. One thought (as put forth in this NY Sun piece) is thinking. Precisely "victim like thinking".

"Fighting racial discrimination" is what black America needed most in the days of official segregation and open bigotry. The race issues that are important today do not lend themselves to charismatic indignation: the Earned Income Tax Credit will never inspire sonorous oratory. But if charismatic indignation is the only way you feel like you matter, then your efforts will gradually part ways with activism and devolve into performance. Today, it would appear that "fighting racial discrimination" is less what black America needs than what Julian Bond needs. Or, as the NAACP's president, Bruce Gordon, reportedly said in his own speech to the convention, it's time to end "victim-like thinking."

Unless we get rid of the mentality that thinks someone is "owed" a house and a living and medical care and a car and and and....we are never going to be rid of root causes of todays resentment toward minorities.