{"id":659,"date":"2008-05-03T08:03:17","date_gmt":"2008-05-03T12:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=659"},"modified":"2008-05-03T08:23:21","modified_gmt":"2008-05-03T12:23:21","slug":"life-isnt-fair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=659","title":{"rendered":"Life isn’t fair"},"content":{"rendered":"

Deep thinking on the issue of race, poverty and justice from a former CEO<\/a>.  Here is the quick and uncharitable summary<\/a>: life is unfair to people unjustly deprived of opportunities, but they don't have to go around complaining about it–that only makes it worse. <\/p>\n

\n

Life isn't fair for people of any skin color. And sadly, in America today, many blacks face barriers such as economic insecurity, scarce jobs and poor schools, which create even higher hurdles for them to overcome.<\/strong> There is no cure-all for this inequity. But the effect that Jeremiah Wright has on Barack Obama's presidential campaign is far less important than the effect of the terrible message that Wright and others like him send to their congregations<\/strong>. <\/p>\n

Positive thinking isn't going to solve America's race problems. But vitriol will only ensure that our nation's racial divide is sustained. We need to listen to the messages being sent in our communities and ask whether they encourage progress. A positive mind-set is at least a start toward success.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

This has an almost Daily Show-like quality to it.  The vitriol of Wright (and people like Wright–you know, those people) is so bad that it distracts us from the real problem their vitriol is pointing out–you know, the fact that:<\/p>\n

\n

Sadly, in America today, many blacks face barriers such as economic insecurity, scarce jobs and poor schools, which create even higher hurdles for them to overcome.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If only someone could point out that injustice in a rhetorically effective way–then people would notice that attempts to resolve it, such as the following, have failed to address the core problems:<\/p>\n

\n

This challenge has not gone unnoticed. Each year the federal government spends hundreds of billions of dollars — specifically, more than $10,000 per poor person for welfare, Medicaid<\/a>, the earned-income tax credit, job training and <\/strong>food stamps. Put another way, taxpayers are doing their share.  <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Where could we find such a person to draw attention to this injustice?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Deep thinking on the issue of race, poverty and justice from a former CEO.  Here is the quick and uncharitable summary: life is unfair to people unjustly deprived of opportunities, but they don't have to go around complaining about it–that only makes it worse.  Life isn't fair for people of any skin color. And sadly, … Continue reading Life isn’t fair<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,29],"tags":[158,159,160],"class_list":["post-659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-op-ed-writers","category-red-herring","tag-gary-macdougal","tag-jeremiah-wright","tag-poverty"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}