Let's Take a Day Off

Spend time with your family. Call an old friend from college. Hit the gym.

Enjoy the holiday.

We'll be back tomorrow.

It's Easter weekend.

Do me a favor though: if you have made a donation to SBPDL in the past and have not received your book(s), send an email to SBPDL1@gmail.com so we can make sure your signed copy goes out this upcoming week. 

Happy Easter.

Resorting to Prayer to Stop the Black Violence in Indianapolis...

Sandy Hook or the Aurora, Colorado “Dark Knight Rises” mass shootings were perpetrated by white males, who obviously suffered from mental illness.

They were tragedies, but neither city suffered property depreciation from these incidents.

In H.G. Wells novel War of the Worlds, Gods wisdom (and natural selection) helped save humans from the martian invaders. No such divine intervention is coming to save Indianapolis, despite prayers to the contrary

They were abnormal, atypical reminders that crazy people live among us; and that we should bring back state-supported institutions for the mentally ill, to protect society from those delusional individuals.

But what do you say of the typical, normal black-on-black violence (fatal or nonfatal shootings) in major cities, the kind you see ubiquitously discussed on the local news broadcasts in cities like Baltimore, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Birmingham, New Orleans, Memphis, Chicago, etc.?

Every night a similar story is told: “police are responding to the scene of a gun crime. Black male suspect…”

The fear of living in cities with large black populations, where the frequency of these types of shootings represents a legitimate fear for private citizens and business owners, is a realistic reminder of just what an anomaly a whiter mass-shooter is in our country.

From the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) comes the “Firearm Violence, 1993-2011” study produced by BJS Statisticians Michael Planty, Ph.D., and Jennifer L. Truman, Ph.D., we learn:

In 2010, the rate of firearm homicide for blacks was 14.6 per 100,000, compared to 1.9 for whites, 2.7 for American Indians and Alaska Natives, and 1.0 for Asians and Pacific Islanders (figure 5). From 1993 to 2010, the rate of firearm homicides for blacks declined by 51%, down from 30.1 per 100,000 blacks, compared to a 48% decline for whites and a 43% decline for American Indians and Alaska Natives. Asian and Pacific Islanders declined 79% over the same period, from 4.6 to 1.0 per 100,000. Although blacks experienced a decline similar to whites and American Indians and Alaska Natives, the rate of firearm homicide for blacks was 5 to
6 times higher than every other racial group in 2010. As with other demographic groups, the majority of the decline occurred in the first part of the period and slowed from 2001 to 2010.

So, blacks have a firearm homicide rate of. 14.6 per 100,000 versus 1.9 for whites; white mass shooters are so infrequent to warrant incredible, wall-to-wall media coverage against the reality that constant, consistent black gun violence adds up to a topic most people would rather avoid.

Or pray it goes away.

Back in 2008, in 73 percent black Birmingham, Alabama, the black mayor called a prayer session where they donned burlap sacks and appeared humbled before God, praying for an end to black-on-black crime and violence.

In 2012 Montgomery, Alabama, black churches launched “Operation Good Shepherd” (sending black clergy to crime scenes courtesy of the black suspects) and also prayed for an ending of black-on-black violence.

Prayer doesn’t interrupt black violence or help those calling out for divine intervention when they are the victims of said violence.

Unlike Jack Frost in the winter, prayer doesn’t deter black-in-origin gun crime. It hasn’t worked in Montgomery, it hasn’t worked in Birmingham, and it won’t work in majority-white Indianapolis, where the minority black population works overtime to monopolize violent crime in the city.

Now, a city where the “Your Life Matters” campaign was started by the white Republican mayor to specifically target high rates of black crime [Mayor Greg Ballard outlines initiative to curb black-on-black violence in Indianapolis, Indy Star, 3-14-14], prayer is seen as a more viable deterrent to crime than the silly black-helmed Ten Point Coalition.[Praying for peace in Indianapolis, WTHR.com, 4-17-14]:

As we approach the Easter weekend, some local churches are using this time to stand in unity praying for peace. 

For months, Indianapolis Metro Police Chief Rick Hite and Public Safety Director Troy Riggs have been calling on the churches in the city to get more involved in the communities to help target crime at its root. 

At noon, there was a strong showing of unity by church leaders from many churches of all faiths that they are rising up and joining as one to pray for peace. They gathered at the Indiana War Memorial to pray. 

In 2013, Indianapolis recorded its highest murder rate in seven years and based on early estimates, the city is on pace for even more this year. 

Most recently, Indianapolis Metro Police recorded ten shootings in a three-day period earlier this month. 

Rev. David Hampton with Light of the World Christian Church says he believes it's the church's responsibility to go beyond the four walls and help to improve the community the churches serve. That's what he and many other local pastors hope to accomplish today. 

"Jesus in John 13:34 said to love one another as I have loved you. So we want to use that as a way to unify our city and to also demonstrate there is unity among our leadership. If there is no model of unity among our leadership, how can we expect young people and those committing violence to see a need for unity?" said Reverend David Hampton, Pastor of Light of the World Christian Church. 

"We feel like the church's mandate to minister must go beyond the four walls. If we're going to be a church of the community then we need to be a church that's for the community, not just preaching to the choir. We see our mandate as going out and helping to improve the community that we serve," said Hampton.

Prayer.

For peace.

Because the frequency of black-in-origin violence/gun crime is so great (despite financial resources and more police dedicated to stop the problem), divine intervention is the only solution to a persistent problem plaguing cities across the country.

Prayer.

For peace.

This isn’t H.G. Wells War of the Worlds, where the microorganisms strategically placed by God on earth, to which man was immune, defeat the Martian invaders:

“From the moment the invaders arrived, breathed our air, ate and drank, they were doomed. They were undone, destroyed, after all of man's weapons and devices had failed, by the tiniest creatures that God in his wisdom put upon this earth. By the toll of a billion deaths, man had earned his immunity, his right to survive among this planet's infinite organisms. And that right is ours against all challenges. For neither do men live nor die in vain.”

No, every geographic region of America that succumbs to the black undertow regresses to the black mean; violence is endemic, the sound of errant gun shots a nightly reminder of true climate change courtesy of black people.

The powerful ending to Wells’ masterpiece of alien invasion fiction can’t be replicated in real life. All cities that go majority black endure a natural electro-magnetic pulse, reverting the civilization that attracted them (think Detroit in 1920 -1950, replete with high paying jobs created by white ingenuity… the same real estate is now occupied by a population that is 83 percent black, completely incapable of possessing the entrepreneurial zeal to open a salvage company) to nothingness.

Black-in-origin gun crime in Indianapolis will not be stopped by prayer; just ask the pious Nathan Trapuzzano, the 24-year-old devout Catholic who was murdered by black 16-year-old career criminal Simeon Adams.

Rev. Harrison, leader of the Ten Point Coalition in Indianapolis (created to weed out black violence in the city) has no victories to show for his dedication to peace. He failed to stop Nathan Trapuzzano's murderer.

No, not murdered. Executed. [The case of Simeon Adams: 'Gun crazy' youths concern authorities, Indy Star, 4-15-14]:

Simeon Adams was supposed to be home when veteran probation officer Tracy McDonald knocked on the front door March 4. 

But for the ninth time in less than a month, the 16-year-old, who was under house arrest for auto theft and resisting arrest, wasn't there. 

The next known contact anyone in law enforcement had with Adams was nearly a month later. That was when police found him bleeding from the neck after a furious gunbattle four blocks from his house. 

In between, authorities suspect Adams launched a bloody crime spree through Indianapolis' Westside, including the shooting death of 24-year-old Nathan Trapuzzano, an expectant father out for a morning stroll April 1. 

It could be argued that their paths never should have crossed. 

Adams was known to carry a gun and could have, perhaps should have, been locked up in Juvenile Detention that morning. Yet Adams was considered a moderate risk. 

Even after more than a dozen probation violations, McDonald, Adams' probation officer, chose not to send the teen to detention. Instead, Adams was on the street pending an April 7 hearing in Juvenile Court. McDonald resigned Thursday, the same day Juvenile Court Judge Marilyn Moores complained about his hands-off handling of the youth. 

At the same time, Adams' criminal history was far from unique; Marion County's juvenile courts deal with about 200 handgun cases each year. Teens take guns to school, wave them at strangers, shoot them at random. 

Kill innocent strangers. 

The block where Adams was shot teems with idle teens, many of them with guns, neighbors said. "All these kids got guns," said Charlotte Watt, 70, who hid on the floor in fear the night Adams was shot. "Out there, they got guns; down there, they got guns. They gun crazy."

It’s not ‘gun crazy youths’ terrorizing Indianapolis, necessitating the creation of the “Your Life Matters” program and keeping Rev. Harrison of the embarrassingly inept Ten Point Coalition in the spotlight; it’s crazy black youths using guns as a means – a as a tool – in ending disputes over the most trivial of matters.

Charlotte Watt, when she states, "they gun crazy," 

Where God gave man a biological weapon to repel the Martian invaders in Wells’ novel, those hoping civilization can survive in Indianapolis are left with Rev. Charles Harrison of the Ten Point Coalition to try and put a stop to the almost exclusively black violence threatening the stability of the city. [Rev. Charles Harrison's Crime-Fighting Coalition Is in the Line of Fire: The Ten Point Coalition aims to reduce gun violence and black-on-black crime in the city's urban core, yet it is the group and its leader, Rev. Charles Harrison, who find themselves coming under attack., Indianapolis Monthly, 3-14-14]:

Several nights a week, three middle-aged men keep vigil in portions of Indianapolis that largely exist in the past tense, discarded wrappers that once contained something of value. This boarded red-brick building, they remember, used to be a grocery store. The empty, snow-covered lot on the corner was the site of a home, a nice one. The van in which the men are traveling tonight—one of this harsh winter’s coldest—groans as it skids to a stop in front of a house on the near-northwest side. 

The porch lamp, a single exposed bulb, is one of the few sources of light on the block. A man lived there, they say. He was duct-taped to a chair and shot dead. 

The man was Terry Day, one of Indianapolis’s 125 homicide victims in 2013, the highest number recorded here in seven years. 

From the Department of Justice (DOJ)... gun crime is virtually a one-race problem in America, certainly in Indianapolis. 

On streets to the east and west of this one, in neighborhoods like Riverside, Crown Hill, and United Northwest, the stories told by Eddie Owens, Darryl Jones, and Anthony Neal ring the same: abandoned, razed, dead. The men will measure the success of this three-hour shift as they do the others: A good night is a quiet one. 

Owens is one of the few paid employees of the Ten Point Coalition, a faith-based group whose members—90 percent of whom have criminal records themselves—want to prevent violence, specifically gun violence, among young African-American males in the city’s urban core. Jones and Neal are volunteers. They call themselves O.G.s—Original Gangsters. 

These nightly sweeps, bare-bones affairs that require street smarts and shoe leather, owe their meager existence to an unsteady stream of taxpayer dollars, grants, and donations. And yet, according to at least one city official, Ten Point is an “integral” part of fighting crime in Indianapolis. Jones, one of the volunteers from the van, is more blunt: “We go where the police can’t.” 

Ten Point crews are often alerted to potential flashpoints by the IMPD’s staff chaplain and sometimes even the department’s higher-ups. Their bright vests serve as a kind of human yellow crime tape; the 25 volunteers and four full-timers routinely act as buffers separating the police, grieving friends and family, or warring factions. They broker deals between rivals. They share street-level intelligence with law enforcement and watch over potential hotspots. They offer curbside counseling, referring scores of people to social programs and job leads. They play basketball with those who are open to changing their ways and, for those who stay headstrong, eventually pray at their funerals. 

Ten Point and its vocal president, 53-year-old Rev. Charles Harrison, have a knack for finding trouble even when they’re not looking for it

African Americans were victims in 108 of the city’s 125 homicides last year. Frustrated by what he sees as indifference on the part of some city leaders, specifically black Democrats, Harrison is not shy about sharing his opinions on TV (he’s frequently interviewed by reporters at crime scenes) and in the newspaper. He often turns to Twitter to draw attention to crimes involving guns and isn’t above calling out politicians. 

“Where are our black elected officials?” he asks. “If the Klan killed as many blacks as blacks have killed blacks, they’d all be screaming from the mountaintop. But they’re not. They’re quiet. I feel like we are doing this by ourselves and fighting a losing battle. And there’s no outrage over this epidemic.” 

Harrison fears Ten Point has become a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound. In his 16-year tenure, he’s seen violence on the street reach an epidemic level. The homicides Ten Point works often begin as simple arguments. Many are drug related. Disputes occur over territory, robberies, and retaliation. “Kids are no longer resolving fights and disagreements with their fists,” he says. “They’re turning to guns, killing one another without a thought.” The flood of illegal firearms—the acquisition of which is the quickest way to earn respect, Harrison says—is only part of the problem and isn’t necessarily a new development (though IMPD did seize 51 more guns in 2013 than in the previous year). A poor economy and high unemployment, coupled with a recent surge in heroin use, he argues, have exacerbated a dangerous situation, making it toxic.

No, it's just black people. Not some externality, just black people. 

Indianapolis is only 28 percent black, yet 86 percent of the homicide victims were black (as is the case in every city, nearly 100 percent of the suspects in black homicides are black).

Prayer will not save the city of Indianapolis. Those who prayed for divine intervention to save Rochester, Camden, Trenton, or Newark were only greeted with depreciating home values and the fond memories they can recall of a city once safe for civilization.

Prayer did not save Detroit, where the decaying housing stock, built by a long-departed people, is a tangible reminder God didn’t intervene.

The Ten Point Coalition and prayer won’t save Indianapolis.

It didn’t save Nathan Trapuzzano.

As tragic as any shooting is, a city can survive the psychos and mental cases who engage in mass shootings like the ones in Aurora and Sandy Hook; they can grow stronger. A city can not survive continuous, unrelenting gun violence (fatal or nonfatal) that is entirely black-in-origin. 13 WTHR Indianapolis

Too Black to Fail, Part II: 83 Percent Black Detroit Getting $100 Million from Federal Government to Fight Blight

Detroit is 83 percent black.

Since 1974, blacks have been in control of the executive branch of government in the city, working to rewrite rules on contracting to ensure connected black-owned firms get preferential treatment (racial cronyism); with white flight from a city that was more than 80 percent white in 1950, Detroit has been regressed to the black mean.

The city in 2014 has been remade in a black image, the collective achievement of not liberals, progressives, Democrats, or unions, but black individuals.

The Renaissance Center, built to shelter white suburban workers, looms in the background of the ruins of Detroit

Dreams far different than the one Martin Luther King talked about in 1963 built Detroit; the implementation of his dream tore the civilization whites built in Detroit apart. With more than 80,000 abandoned buildings a reminder a much different people built the city than currently occupy it, with the housing stock that once sheltered white families rotting and crumbling under black rule. 

Never forget America abandoned our mission to investigate the heavens, instead embarking on a costly adventure to perpetually engage in Waiting for Superman to close the racial gap in learning/achievement. 

He's never coming.

But Detroit is too black to fail. Though the failure of the city under black rule is a critical blow to the crucial mission of uplifting blacks, it must continue unabated. [Detroit, feds talk up to $100M for blight funding, Detroit News, 4-16-14]:

The White House and city of Detroit are in talks in recent days to free up to $100 million in federal blight funding that could indirectly soften the blow of pension fund cuts and other financial issues for the Motor City. 

No deal has been reached and the Obama administration has been eager to emphasize it will not provide a bailout for Detroit. But as mediators, the city and its pension funds have worked to reach a deal to help speed the city’s exit from its record-setting Chapter 9 bankruptcy, the federal government’s additional blight funding could allow the city’s emergency manager, Kevyn Orr, to redirect some of his planned blight spending toward pensions and other priorities. 

The Obama administration would potentially allow the state of Michigan to redirect “Hardest Hit” funds that are earmarked to prevent foreclosure to blight removal — as it did in August — but officials emphasize that none of the funds would be spent directly to fund retiree pensions or be used by the state or city general fund. 

Orr has proposed spending $500 million over 10 years to combat the city’s tens of thousands of abandoned buildings and blighted structures. Detroit has an estimated 78,000 blighted and abandoned properties and the federal government has helped fund a comprehensive survey of the entire city to better track the blight problems. 

Officials involved in the talks emphasize that tentative deals reached with the pensions that would include a 4.5 percent cut in retiree benefits from non-public safety pension recipients are not contingent on the Obama administration putting money into the blight program.

Too black to fail.

But why the blight?

Why couldn't black people, who inherited a city with all the infrastructure already completed, be unable to sustain it?

Could it be because the 95 percent black Detroit Public School system produced the "lowest scores ever recorded in the 21-year history of the national math proficiency test?"[Detroit's public schools post worst scores on record in national assessment, Crain's Detroit, 12-8-2009]:

The Detroit Public Schools posted the worst scores on record in the most recent test of students in large central U.S. cities.  

The scores came on the Trial Urban District Assessment, a national test developed by theGoverning Board, the National Center for Education Statistics of the U.S. Department of Education and the Council of the Great City Schools.  

The test for urban districts is part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress test given to school districts nationwide.  

“There is no jurisdiction of any kind, at any level, at any time in the 30-year history of NAEP that has ever registered such low numbers,” said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council on Great City Schools, a Washington, D.C.-based coalition of urban school districts.  

“They are barely above what one would expect simply by chance, as if the kids simply guessed at the answers,” he said. 

Civilizations aren't built by guessing. That's how they are destroyed.

Back in 1969, on the day the Apollo 11 crew would be launched into space, the agenda for the United States of America was set by black people utilizing a horse and buggy to make their point.... all in the shadow of the greatest vessel for exploration and true progress ever pieced together by man. 

Kenneth Lipartito and Orville R. Butler book, A History of the Kennedy Space Center, makes clear that on the day mankind would watch three white men rocket into space on a mission to the moon, black people would use horse-drawn carriages to protest the launch.

A misallocation of funds, with the teeming black masses a more appropriate expenditure than a foolish lunar mission.

Lipartito and Butler write:

The entire earth was experiencing its own moonshot madness. A man in Tokyo was going to mark the occasion in a hotel room wearing a space suit and eating “astronaut food” for the duration of the mission. Buddhists worshipped at shrines resembling the Apollo ship. And a few miles south of the launch site at the town of Cocoa, another gathering was taking place.

Five hundred marchers from the Poor People’s Campaign led by civil rights activists Hosea Williams and Ralph Abernathy had converged on the Cape. With America spending some $24 billion to send a handful of men to the moon, they asked, how could the nation not afford to tackle poverty at home? Edward Kennedy, brother of he president who had started it all, called for putting earth needs such as “poverty, hunger, pollution and housing” ahead of space.” 

Protestors from the Poor People’s Campaign held an all-night vigil as the countdown proceeded. The next day, they marched behind two mule-drawn wagons, a reminder that poverty lingered among many African Americans. Abernathy and forty of his contingent received VIP badges and seats in the viewing stands at KSC. The remaining protestors started a slow trek toward the Center. “We do not oppose the moon shot,” declared Hosea Williams. “Our purpose is to protest America’s inability to choose human priorities.” “We’re wishing the astronauts all good luck,” 

Abernathy added. “But we think attention should be given to poor people too.” [p. 15-16]

We chose those “human priorities” Williams touted, abandoned the moon, Mars, and space exploration.

We got Detroit instead.

July 16, 1969: More than 500 blacks marched to Cape Canaveral to protest the launching of Apollo 11. They used a horse-drawn cart as an imagery of poverty. We funded the mission to poverty, instead of the mission to travel the stars. We got Detroit 2014 as a result. 

Though so many black and white leaders, in the age of Sputnik, thought the way to propel America forward was utilizing black intelligence to create prosperity and innovation. 

Mark Thompson’s master thesis SPACE RACE: AFRICAN AMERICAN NEWSPAPERS RESPOND TO SPUTNIK AND APOLLO 11 is a must read. Though it was never his intentions, he shows that white and black leaders alike considered the black mind America’s greatest untapped resource, and the way to not only “win” the Cold War, but unleash brilliance no sunglasses could shield:

In the same issue were excerpts from NAACP Executive Secretary Roy Wilkins, speaking before the Commonwealth Club of California, November 1. Wilkins reiterated what others writers have said; namely, that “this is a new and dangerous world.” Describing the Cold War as “a test of survival for the West,” Wilkins believed that the Sputnik satellite literally and figuratively “casts a shadow not lightly to be brushed aside.” What, then was the answer to remove the United States from the ominous shadow of Soviet expansion and scientific domination? Wilkins believed in the great “untapped resource” of African Americans segregated by Jim Crow Laws. 

“Can we meet,” he asked, “the challenge of Moscow in the sciences and in war with a country divided upon race and color? Can we afford to deny to any boy or girl the maximum of education, that education which may mean the difference between democratic life and totalitarian death?" The tone of Wilkins’ speech and selection of words does not strike historians who work in this Cold War period as surprising. Yet, he seemed eager to throw black youths’ talents and skills into the effort for the “campaign for survival.”

An article’s headline in the Baltimore Afro-American ran: “‘Mississippiitis’” Blamed for U. S. Lag in Science.” Referring to recent accusations by NAACP Field Secretary Medgar Evers that Mississippi and other southern states were to blame for America’s “present-day scientific dilemma,” the article quoted Evers as saying, “There isn’t a single state supported school in Mississippi where a colored person is permitted to take engineering or study in the advance sciences.” As a result of this inequity, “many potential colored scientists are never allowed to develop their capabilities.”  (p. 26-27)

We met the challenge of Soviet Moscow, though our major American cities could not meet the challenge of black individuals' collective destruction.

An ICBM fired from Soviet Russia would have had far less destructive capabilities than what was unleashed via the Great Migration of blacks from the South on cities like Newark, Baltimore, Camden, Philadelphia, Gary, Milwaukee, Chicago, Rochester, Buffalo, and Detroit.

The entire purpose of the United States Federal Government, through the Department of Education, HUD, the Department of Justice, etc., is to uplift black people. The state completely supports (subsidized by white tax-dollars) colored people in any and every endeavor they wish to engage, especially those few who qualify for studying engineering or the advanced sciences.

But Detroit, that seemingly enigmatic failure, remains eternally propped up by the state.

It's too black to fail.

We could have been Mars, but we had to fund Detroit, an 83 percent black city reverting to the black mean.

Were the city left alone, with no missionaries or outside help allowed inside, within 10 years the people would have reverted to a level of civilization beneath that of the horse-drawn cart the Poor People's Campaign used in July of 1969 to mark their protest.

And the skyscrapers of the white man would still stand, as foreign in technology to those hypothetical black Detroit citizens as the Apollo 11 spacecraft was to Williams and Abernathy in 1969.

NASA, Collapse, & Income Inequality: A Simple Thought for Tax Day

On this April 15, 2014, when your Income Taxes are due to the Federal Government, let's pause for a second and remember how NASA said society would fall. [Here's How NASA Thinks Society Will Collapse: Too much inequality and too few natural resources could leave the West vulnerable to a Roman Empire-style fall., National Journal, 3-18-2014]:

Few think Western civilization is on the brink of collapse—but it's also doubtful the Romans and Mesopotamians saw their own demise coming either.

A road filled with pot holes, surrounded by abandoned strip malls and decaying houses leads to Detroit... that's not OUR future.

If we're to avoid their fate, we'll need policies to reduce economic inequality and preserve natural resources, according to a NASA-funded study that looked at the collapses of previous societies.

"Two important features seem to appear across societies that have collapsed," reads the study. "The stretching of resources due to the strain placed on the ecological carrying capacity and the economic stratification of society into Elites and Masses."

 

In unequal societies, researchers said, "collapse is difficult to avoid.... Elites grow and consume too much, resulting in a famine among Commoners that eventually causes the collapse of society."

As limited resources plague the working class, the wealthy, insulated from the problem, "continue consuming unequally" and exacerbate the issue, the study said.

 Not to long ago, Michael Bay directed Armageddon, a movie which conclusively showed that only white people had produced the means to stave off... a meteorite collision with earth that would revert worldwide civilization to that of Detroit 2014.

Bay pays homage to the dream of John F. Kennedy, that of going to the Moon and having a vision of space exploration to guide our country into the future.

It's worth remembering America had a choice in the late 1960s, early 1970s: continue funding space exploration or fund the proliferation of the black underclass (and eventually the offspring of illegal immigrants and refugees brought to enrich America).

Dark Side of the Moon: The Magnificent Madness of the American Lunar Quest (by Gerard Degroot) is a book that provides a glimpse into the choice America had before it, even before white men stepped foot on the moon in 1969.

Would we fund space exploration or pour billions (trillions) into trying to trick trick nature and close the racial gap in achievement (save the ability for black individuals to dunk a basketball and run a 40-yard-dash a few tenths of a second faster than whites)?

Degroot writes: 

LBJ would have preferred to cut military expenditure – in particular, what he called “that bitch of war.” [Vietnam]

Civil Rights and the Great Society were his programs, more than they were Kennedy’s. Cutting them would be like drowning his baby. In any case, a wave of riots in America’s inner cities underlined the fact that the problem of America’s black population needed urgent attention, not to mention piles of money. That left the space program as the most logical target for cuts.

Enthusiasm for NASA was a manifestation of socioeconomic standing. Those in steady jobs were much more likely to support the space program than those on welfare. Blacks were less enthusiastic than whites, high school dropouts less than college graduates. In the early years, even though it was quite clear that rockets were very expensive, space did not have a direct impact upon the disposable income of employed Americans. The cost seemed affordable, since it had not led directly to tax rises. Fifty cents a week was a small price to pay for all that excitement. But for those in poverty, NASA seemed a cruel manifestation of national priorities.

Going to the Moon was, it appeared, more important than education, welfare, health, or housing. On the margins of society, a constant refrain was heard: “If we can send a man to the Moon, why can’t our children read?” “For the poor, the Moon shot seems just another stunt,” Whitney Young of the National Urban League, commented at the time. “A circus act. A marvelous trick that leaves their poverty untouched. It will cost thirty-five billion dollars [sic] to put two men on the Moon. It would take ten billion dollars to lift every poor person in this country above the official poverty standard this year. Something is wrong somewhere.”

The space program was a special boon to the South, with its various installations in Huntsville, New Orleans, Cape Canaveral, and Houston. Some people hoped that this would provide the economic regeneration that would inspire a social transformation – the South would leave behind its racist ways and soar into space. But this did not happen. The sophisticated nature of the work demanded a well-educated, highly trained workforce. As late as 1972, little more than 3 percent of the scientists and engineers working for NASA were black. Granted, there was some manual work for those lower down the social ladder, but, when the contraction began during the Johnson years, the effect was profound. Workers who had left the agrarian sector in order to participate in the lunar challenge found themselves thrown on the scrap heap. (p.199-202)

 Your taxes go to fulfill the hopes of Whitney Young, who believed ten billion dollars could lift every poor person, magically granting them access to the "American Dream."

The America that put men on the Moon was a great country; the America that decided to invest trillions (without any demonstrable return on investment) into uplifting black people is not a great country.

A rough road still leads to the stars.

The science fiction writers from Jules Verne to Robert Heinlein to Asimov believed mankind's future was that of exploring the heavens; little did they know the people capable of reaching the stars would spend considerable effort and resources moving from a dangerous, majority black city (or tipping that way) to another town that will inevitably, demographically tip the same way.

Underneath the stars, the universe was once ours.

Today, the Federal Government will use HUD to map your zip code/neighborhood/community to ensure it soon has sufficient amounts of black enrichment.

We could have been on Mars, but our government decided creating mini-Detroits as official policy from sea to shining sea was a more suitable, noble goal...

Some of us will live to see to the day when such priorities have changed, forever.

Then, and only then, will our noblest collective aspiration revert from uplifting black people, to once again watching rockets lift up to the heavens.