In what California city does violence rob African American men of more years of life than any other cause of death? San Francisco! This is the finding in a new report by the San Francisco Department of Public Health. Please don’t ask about Oakland, which with all the media hype is expected to be worse. The flagship journal of sociology, the American Sociological Review, features a study of why Blacks are so disadvantaged in the areas of jobs, income and housing. Uniquely, the plight of African Americans makes it the most studied ethnic group in the world.

In another study by Professor Phillip Mazzocco of Ohio State University, white Americans were asked how much they would have to be paid to live the rest of their lives as a Black person. Most requested a meager amount of less than $10,000. But, when the white study participants were asked what they would have to be paid to give up television for the rest of their lives, they demanded a million dollars.

The results indicate that white Americans don’t really comprehend the persisting racial disparities due to discrimination and lack of access for Black Americans in our country, where overall total wealth for white families is about five times greater than that of Black families. Northeastern University sociologist Mathew Hunt’s study reveals that whites increasingly blame hindered access to quality education and /or lack of motivation among blacks as root causes for socioeconomic inequality.

At a San Francisco reception given by California PUC Commissioner Timothy Simon for visiting Black former Congressman J. C. Watts (R. Oklahoma), who single-handedly blocked the termination of affirmative action at the Federal level by former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America, Watts made a revealing statement. Known as a conservative Republican, he stated, “When it comes to Black people, experience and quality of work will almost never trump access and relationships.”

Perhaps Lynette Sweet, Black president of the BART Board, well understood the issues of access and relationship when she objected to Dorothy Dugger, BART white Deputy General Manager, being selected as the transit agency’s new general manager over 16 highly qualified African Americans submitted by the BART search firm. “I don’t feel that this is a level playing field and unless we make a concerted effort to make it level, we won’t get there,” stated Sweet.

But former Black University of California Regent Ward Connerly is paid a salary of over a million dollars to make sure that the playing field will remain tilted against Blacks and other minorities. His legal firm, Pacific Legal Foundation, has now filed anti-affirmative action lawsuits for violation of Prop. 209 against the Oakland Airport concessions program and the San Francisco M/WBE program. With his distortion of civil rights language that has duped the public to ban affirmative action in California, Washington and Michigan, he now has anti-affirmative action measures, Prop 209 style, on the ballot in Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Missouri. In Michigan, the KKK came out in support of him – and he didn’t decline it. But when the New Republic reporter asked the question, “Ward, do you ever worry you are siding with people who would have denied you a vote – or would hang you by a rope from a tree?” To this interesting question…no answer!

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