If by "groups" you mean those gangs committing drive bys, I would agree with you. If you'd said that those individuals who commit drive bys are of low education, than I would agree with you.

but when you make blatantly false and hyperbolic statements suggesting that either more minorities are engaged in drive by shootings than are engaged in furthering themselves by pursuing a greater degree of education, you're only discrediting your own level of education.

Well in that I think we can both agree. Hopefully more minorities in this country will be able to better themselves over time. I don't believe that this negates many of the serious racial issues that this country does still actually have.

Now, I'm not being hyperbolic about this. In my experience there is nothing to tell me that the majority of white people are out to get the majority of non-whites. However, my cousin in Pennsylvania does also live across the street from the local head of the KKK. I have encountered neo-nazi thugs. There are a lot of systemic problems which lend themselves more to ignorance of racist actions rather than overt and intentional racism.

These need to be addressed if we're to get over the race problems that do exist in America completely. That said, there are just as many racist perceptions among minorities which need to be addressed. Until we come to an honest and open discussion on the matter though, the "race card" is hardly a non-point.

So you're implying that the American drive by rate is in fact higher than the homicide rate on the whole?

It's a fable... meant to serve as a guide for how we are to live our lives... what do you think?

Well... we can't blame Attorney General Eric Holder for trying to even the odds

Something I'm thankful for.

So you are implying that the hundred or so drive by shootings that might happen every year exceeds the millions of minorities currently enrolled in college?

except that your comments suggesting that "Yo homie, you got your boy up there in the white house so don't be giving me any of that crap!" is a valid argument in any debate, let alone given the circumstances under which you claim that you would employ such an argument does imply that you are at least a little racist.

Moreover, there are plenty of African American's (such as myself) who do not find such comments amusing.

That said, I'm not going to kill you for saying them. just stay off of my lawn.

That might be a good argument if it weren't for the fact that the number of minorities enrolled in colleges across the US far outstrips the number of minorities who have been involved in a drive by shooting.

When there is historical evidence within recent history of such statistics being due to systemic social problems I think over-generalizations such as the pure social responsibility arguments are a bit excessive.

Minority responsibility says nothing to the fact that law enforcers are more likely to suspect African Americans of drug possensions when the stats show that whites are ten times more likely, if pulled over to be in possession of illegal substances. It says nothing to the fact that border security spending along the US' southern border far exceeds that along the US' Northern border when stats show there is quite a bit of undocumented crossing in both. It says nothing to the fact that as previously stated, blacks with higher degree of education are less likely to get hired than white high school drop outs.

Do I believe that this is due to overt racism among white Americans? No. I do think, however, that centuries of culturally inherited perceptions of race in America cannot be automatically overturned or changed in the century and a half that these perceptions in which these perceptions have been gradually challenged.

I like Thomas Friedman's explanation from The Lexus and the Olive Tree, It turns out that in the earliest 9th century Hebrew copies of the Torah, the book of Genesis says "Cain said to his brother Abel; and when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him. Then the Lord said to Cain, 'Where is your brother Abel?' And he said, 'I do not know. Am I my brother's keeper?' And the Lord said, 'What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground.'" The Torah never says why. Friedman says that Rabbi Tzvi Marx suggests that in Genesis Rabbah, one of the fundamental rabbinic commentaries on the Tanakh (the Jewish bible) three explanations are given for what Cain said to Abel before they went out into the field and he killed his brother.

1) They were arguing over which of the two of them would have reproductive rights over Eve, their mother and the world's only woman after Adam died. They were arguing over sex.

2) They had divided the world up between themselves in such a manner as Cain had all of the real estate and Abel had all of the goods and livestock (or as the Bible says, "Cain became a tiller of the soil" & "Abel became a keeper of sheep.") They were arguing over economic rights and trade issues between the two of them. After all, they both needed access to each others possessions in order to survive.

3) They had already divided everything up neatly between them except where the temple would be located and which one would be in charge of their religious and cultural identity.

These explanations generally sum up a wide range of the roots of human conflict throughout history and provide a more meaningful explanation of why Cain might have killed Abel than suggesting that it was a matter of simple jealousy.

The election of an African American president by no means signs the death knell to racism in America. If anything, the fact that anyone could ask such a question as to whether or not we have arrived at a post-racial America only goes to illustrate the very ignorance which remains in this country of just how much further we have to grow when it comes to race relations in America, despite how far we may have come. If you think that insinuating race into political and economic arguments in America is merely the playing of some special interest card which somehow invalidated due to the fact that the 44th president of the United States is less European than his 43 predecessors, take a look at the following facts:

- A typical black household makes just 62 percent of the income of a typical white household - a gap that has changed little in 30 years. In 2007, the median household income was $33,900 for black households and $54,900 for white households.

- Blacks, Latinos, and Indigenous peoples are nearly three times as likely as whites to live in poverty. In 2007, 24.4 percent of blacks had incomes below the poverty line, compared to 8.2 percent of whites.

- Life expectancy among blacks is, on average, about five years shorter than it is for whites. In 2005, life expectancy at birth was 76.5 years for black women and 80.8 years for white women. Life expectancy was 69.5 years for black men and 75.7 years for white men.

- Whites are more likely to have college degrees than blacks. In 2007, 31.8 percent of whites 25 and older had college degrees, compared to 18.5 percent of blacks.

- Blacks are more likely than whites to be sentenced to prison, though incarceration rates for blacks have dropped in recent years even as they increased for whites. In 2006, black men had an incarceration rate of 3,042 per 100,000 residents, compared to a rate of 487 for white men.

- Blacks are less likely to have health insurance than whites. In 2007, 19.2 percent of blacks did not have health insurance, compared to 10.4 percent of whites.

- Blacks, are three times as likely as whites to be poor and twice as likely to be unemployed.

- Black men with college degrees were still earning 30% less than their white counterparts.

- Black men with high school diplomas were still more likely to be out of work than white male dropouts.

- Businesses owned by white men were still receiving about 91% of all government contracts.

When these facts are no longer the case, continued discussion of race relations and racial perceptions in the United States will become less important. Barrack Obama's presidency has not created a post-racial America, it's only made a marginally interesting talking point.