[mushbino]

If you take a historical map of the US slave population and overlay that with the concentration of the black population in the Southern US today and then overlay that with a map of median income, avg life expectancy, education, etc. you'll see a very clear connection.

I agree that a more level playing field along income lines would create a more fair and just society, but you're talking about a problem that the free market cannot solve and would lead to an argument for a very different type of economic model. I'm all for it, but it's a tough sell in the US.

[AmericanChopper]

And none of that makes anybody any more or any less entitled to help from society, or equal protection under law, based upon their ethnicity. Non-hispanic whites make up the largest population of people living in poverty in the US by a very significant margin. Those people are equally as entitled to assistance from society as any other ethnic group, and they are not at all deserving of facing the racial discrimination they face at all levels of society. These policies are definitively racist, which I guess you're welcome to offer your support for, but it doesn't change the fact that racial discrimination is racist.

The free market also has nothing to do with this conversation at all. All possible programs you could conceive for addressing problems like this fall under the umbrella of market intervention.