Well, with the 60th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's breaking of the "color barrier" in baseball, I'd just like to relate aome observations that Michael Wilbon of the "Wsahington Post" made this week in a column which is somewhat related to this discussion...

He observed that there are fewer and fewer black kids makin' into the professional baseball these days and theorized that it is because in primarially black neighborhoods recreation budgets have been cut and baseball is one of your more expensive sports with eqipement and field upkeep... Okay, yeah I can see his point... He points out that is a lot less expensive to maintain basketball courts, especially in inner cities...

(But, Bobert, then who did the Jacki Robinsons and Willie Mays and Hank Aarons' of the past make it to the big leagues, one might ask???)

Well, the demographics have been increasingly changing with a greater percentage of balck people living in urban areas... When The Mays, Aarons and Robinsons were coming up baseball was played in more rural settings where a greater percenage of black folks lived than today...

(Okay, Bobert. but why are you harping on blacks folks as the only folks that are poor???)

Well, yeah, in actual numbers, there are more white people so I don't mean to dismiss this part of the discussion... It's just when you look at percentages you find upwards of 3 times the number of balck folks living in poverty than white folks...

Just some food for thought here...

Also, I was up early this mornin' and turned on the TV and there was the kinda discussion discussion that should be aired when less folks is still asleep...It was about DC schools, particularially in NE and east of the Anacostia River where, and I missed the "Washington Post" article but will try to find it, the commentator said that the drop out rates in these areas was 2 out of every 3 at the high school level...

These are the neighborhoods where the $475 a month apartment are located. BTW...

I was thinkin, "Hmmmmmm, wonder what the drop out rate is in McLean, Virginia where the popultaion is almost exclusively wealthy and white???"

Mg has made some fine points about education but if the nyumbers are even close then what we are seeing is that urban blacks aren't gettin' educated... One reason that Dr. Janey, who heads up the DC school system and noted in the show this morning, is that black kids don't see any incentive to go to school... The jobs aren't there waiting, he said, so why would a kid go thru it with little ***hope*** (his word) that doing so would benefit him...

Okay, yeah, I can see where the man is coming from here...

I'm not trying to over-generalize this discusssion... One can't really do that... As we have seen, this is a discussion that does have some meandering room... I think that is part of the beast we are dealing with...

I will, howver, stick to my guns that regardless of which facit of poverty we are looking at, it will take an effort (funded rograms) to deal with it... And I will stick to my guns that our nation has allowed the Boss Hog's to divert both resourses and attention away from this very dispictable situation...

Bobert