Raised by an irresponsible mother during the Great Depression in the Jim Crow south, my father was on his own from the age of 13.

To bring a child into the world that you cannot feed, clothe, house, and educate is the moral equivalent, in my opinion, of a drive-by shooting.

Because Fox News is allegedly biased in favor of conservatives, critics whine like children whose lunch money got snatched. Conservatives have been pummeled for decades. Now that Fox News and conservative talk radio give people alternatives, critics squeal as if being sodomized.

Doing what you want to do is easy. Doing what you have to do is hard.

Good motives aside, white condescension does more damage than good. White condescension says to a black child, 'The rules used by other ethnic groups don't apply to you. Forget about work hard, get an education, posses good values. No, for you, we'll alter the rules by lowering the standards and expecting less.' Expect less, get less.

The No. 1 cause of preventable death for young black men is not auto accidents or accidental drowning, but homicide.

America traditionally represents the greatest possibility of someone's going from nothing to something. Why? In theory, if not practice, the government stays out of the way and lets individuals take risks and reap rewards or accept the consequences of failure. We call this capitalism - or, at least, we used to.