-------------------------------------------------------------------------- | Add your name to the CLEAN GOA INITIATIVE | | | | by visiting this link and following the instructions therein | | | | http://shire.symonds.net/pipermail/goanet/2005-October/033926.html | -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mario Goveia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I am well aware from co-existing with American blacks of > their struggle before I got here. What does that have anything > to do with the amazing progress that 76% of them have made since > then, which puts only 24% of them at about the economic level > of many middle-income Europeans. The United States of America that Mario Goveia lives in must be another country, and not the United States of America that I know from having lived here since 1956. For one of those decades, I taught in East Harlem and also in the Bedford-Stuyvesant district of Brooklyn. My students ranged from teenagers to men and women in their fifties, and through their families I came to know black poverty and disillusionment at first hand. For Mario to claim that the poorest section of blacks---which he puts at 24 percent of the total black population---has about the same economic level of "many middle-income Europeans" is preposterous. His blanket statements about social conditions in the country we live in have gone unchallenged for far too long. Perhaps he can produce some verifiable figures to substantiate his claim? Best regards, Victor Rangel-Ribeiro