At least that was my takeaway from from??today's "Editorial Observer" column about Barack Obama's race speech.* Don't worry, the Times thinks I'm racist too, for I opposed the country's old-style welfare system. I may have thought that I disagreed with the way it created dependency among the very people it was designed to help. And I may have believed that I supported welfare reform because it rewarded work and empowered poor people (especially poor women) with a message of hope and responsibility. But no, the Times??paraphrases William Julius William asserting that:
whites rebelled against welfare because they saw it as using their hard-earned taxes to give blacks "medical and legal services that many of them could not afford for their own families."
Yup, I just hated seeing those medical and legal services going to undeserving minorities. Come on!
Then the Times goes on to say, "For all the appeal of America's melting pot, the country's diverse ethnic mix is one main reason for entrenched opposition to public spending on the public good."
Wait a minute. Our country spends over $500 billion per year on our increasingly diverse public education system--more per-pupil than almost any nation on earth. Over the last twenty years, more and more of these dollars have been targeted (along with major reforms like No Child Left Behind) at our most diverse, most needy schools.
Good grief, what kind of mean-spirited nation do the Times editors think they live in?
* A speech I actually liked, at least until the Times went and ruined it for me.
