​The famous Fox News commentator, Bill O’Reilly, recently offered his views on our troubled African American community, and basically, he placed the full share of blame on said community for all of its current troubles.

Yes, it is true that the African American Community has to work hard to engage in the troubles that lead to so much despair among so many in its community. But Mr. O’Reilly left out, in his critique, another important reason for the troubles overwhelming the African American community. He left out the factor of our long term history of American racism fathered by white Americans, a racism which led to 300 years of slavery, 100 years of segregation and decades up to the present of refusing to sit down, examine the problem and come up with solutions that might eventually repair the African American community. Yes, a solution will probably cost America a significant amount of funding, but our America owes its black community this effort, and Mr. O’Reilly would do well to recognize the greater complexity of the problem he sought to solve with an easy pointing of the finger at the very victims of our American policies that led to today’s challenges.

​I continue to be amazed at how blind too many Americans are when it comes to judging the quality of our current's president's leadership during the last seven plus years.

When I was growing up during the 1940s and 1950s, blacks in America were living under conditions that were totally alien to white America. As an example, my dad worked for a shoe company that would only employ blacks to run elevators or shine shoes. When my dad took over the management of that company, he hired the first black shoe salesmen. This was in 1955. But four years later in 1959, when his company was sold to a shoe manufacturer in St. Louis, the black shoe salesmen were all fired. At that point, my dad left the company.
 
Yes, we have made progress since then. But it will take several generations more before the negative traits of life given to our black communities through 300 years of slavery and 100 years of segregation can be fully cured.
 
As for our current president, I have a view which is quite different from too many Americans on how he has done, and so be it. From my perspective, President Obama took office in the midst of a rising great recession which included a loss of millions of jobs and a major downturn in our stock markets. He also inherited two continuing wars in the Middle East. And he became our president at a time when forty or fifty million, and perhaps more of our American citizens, had no health care at their beck and call while all of the citizens of every other western democracy were given health care.
 
Despite the declaration by Republican Mitch McConnell on the first day of President Obama's office that he and his party would make sure that President Obama would have no success whatsoever during his four years in office, we have in fact seen our job numbers increase by millions, our health care coverage given to an additional 20 million Americans, our stock market value doubled and Osama bin Laden killed by our American troops under the authority granted by President Obama. Do we have more to do to make us better? Absolutely yes. But I am convinced that a racist attitude among too many Americans including Republican politicians and American white supremacists, have turned our nation into one that has found it difficult for all sides to come together to compromise and make progress in the same way that we were able to do so during the second world war and in the same way that Republican President Eisenhower was able to do so in order to allow America to rebuild and expand our national roads and bridges and to grow the lower and middle classes even as the rich and wealthy remained rich and wealthy.  
 
Now here's my hope. I want my America to begin to see our citizens on all sides of issues willing to sit down at the table in order to discuss the issues that currently threaten our nation. I want us to begin to focus on civility as the way to carry on discussions. I want us to accept the concept of compromise as a tool to achieve progress. If and when this begins to happen, I want to be able to be hopeful that in the end, no matter who or which side wins in future contests, my America will benefit from no matter who carries the torch of the winner.