From: HF.GTD@forsythe.stanford.edu (Gabrielle Daniels)
Subject: Re: Apportioning blame
Organization: Stanford University, California, USA
Distribution: usa
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 00:28:58 GMT

You know, when I hear this claptrap about weve got to learn our
limitations kind of stuff, it automatically makes me think of code
words white people use in order not to face certain real life
realities.

For one thing, count me out of this we stuff.  I couldnt vote until
I was 18...in 1972, and my man lost anyway.  Most black folks with
sense were or became anti-war.  There wasnt a Colin Powell in the
Joint Chiefs until much, much later, so...no black folks pressing
any buttons or in the drivers seat.  I understand this mess about
Johnson lying about the real cost of the war in Vietnam.  Martin
Luther King,Jr., before he was assassinated, spoke of the war taking
focus, black and other men of color and money away from Great
Society programs, and how that was going to come home to roost in
all folks barns pretty soon...he was certainly correct.

The programs Johnson instigated nevertheless helped a lot of people,
myself included.  Without loans, work-study, and other grants, a lot
of students during the 1970s would have never gone to school.  In
other words, the programs worked.  No lie that some people took too
many advantages of certain programs.  But that was a drop in the
bucket.  To think that this and other programs Kennedy, Johnson or
Roosevelt instigated siphoned off our economic strength is bogus.
It was our military build-up and adventurism along with other big
lies about the fragile Paper Boom of the Eighties which accelerated
the downhill process.  Its cheaper to take care of business at home,
no matter what folks think while they are waving flags and watching
aircraft on CNN take off on airstrikes at a million dollars per
takeoff.  And you wonder why there are so many potholes and rotting
bridges all over the U.S.?  You wonder why the government is helping
businesses to leave the U.S.  for places like Honduras and El
Salvador.  Why the government is encouraging business to downsize
wages here and make everything...food and housing...too high?  Its
going to take forever for black Republicans to get up enough capital
to put those black Bethelehem Steel workers into jobs.  Talk is
cheap for them.

If the Canadians and the Europeans can put together  national health
plans in their own countries, so can we.  Health care, like
public schools, is not a privilege, its a basic human right.  If
people have to get divorced into order to get free medical care
for hemophiliac sons or daughters, as I saw on 60 Minutes then there
is something wrong here.  Wrong.

Here in California, nobody, but nobody likes the new budget that
Governor Wilson kicked and screamed to get his way on.  The hue and
cry is about services, especially schools.  Children have no books,
or playground equipment, or school nurses any more.  When I compare
these days to the education I received in California elementary and
high schools, it is like night and day.  They talk about getting
vouchers and putting up more private schools.  This is bullshit!  We
all knew, by junior high school, where these idiots were putting
most of the money for public schools...in white, middle-class
communities.  Nobodys got that kind of money to put their children
into a private school without going through years, centuries of
economic hurt.  I feel sorry for how the future has been taken away
from children...especially children of color...right now!

Reform is long over due.  But do yourself a favor and quit soaking
your head in the watermelon of U.S. News and World Report.
After 3 months of reading that crap in college, I asked them to
cancel my subscription.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american