Slavery was good. Yeah, right.

Every so often one reads something that makes one want to go out and smack white racists with a two-by-four. This is one example of the genre. (With thanks to Jesus' General, who spotted it).

The pony hidden in slavery is the fact that it was the ticket to America for black people. I have long urged blacks to consider their presence here as the work of God, who wanted to bring them to this raw, new country and used slavery to achieve it. A harsh life, to be sure, but many immigrants suffered hardships and indignations as indentured servants. Their descendants rose above it. You don’t hear them bemoaning their forebears’ life the way some blacks can’t rise above the fact theirs were slaves.

Besides freedom, a job and a roof over their heads, they all sought respect. But even after all these years, too many have yet to realize that to get respect, you have to give it.

The treatment given President Bush at Coretta King’s funeral was shameful. And these weren’t poor, uneducated black people who “dissed” him. They were among the country’s top-drawer blacks, there to bury black royalty. While Bush got the cold shoulder, former President Clinton was welcomed as if he still held the office.

It mystifies me why the black population remains in thrall to the Democratic party. Black parents want a good education for their children yet they are consistently denied two opportunities that have proven enormously helpful in the few places where they are allowed because the D’s oppose them. School vouchers and charter schools.

Now, there's a case of someone who is missing not just one, but a whole set of marbles. If the middle passage was the work of god, then god is the enemy of all that is good and humane.