America's racial problem will not change by the words of the President, any president, nor any laws passed by Congress, or any speeches, protests, or marches. In fact, by no political means can America restrain racism. This is because racism is not a political problem; it is a social problem, so who cares what the President has to say (or did not say).

Who cares if the President decides to appoint some assumed racist judge to the bench, or if he cuts taxes for the already wealthy, these have no direct effect on the issue of racism in this country.

Racism is enforced in America by other extremes that nobody seems to have the aptitude to perceive or the dignity and back-bone to confront; institutes of higher learning and their research studies on Blacks and whites, Hollywood and their tight-casting of racial stereotypes, and the ever-present television and radio news media who do nothing more than subtlety instigate racial tension.

These mediums are the ones who implant racism into the subconscious minds of America, which in turn brings forth attitudes, ideas, and actions. Racism is a moral problem not a political, legislative problem. When will people realize that laws cannot cure the ills of racism? No matter who is in office and to what party they belong, neither Clinton nor Bush could ever do anything about the beliefs of the people; it is the people's natural right that God himself will not allow to be regulated.

So why blame and make decisions and choose sides about who has done what or could be doing anything about racism in America? As stated earlier, this is a problem that touches each and everyone of us daily through mediums we come in contact with daily, and the President and members of Congress are people we rarely or never see.

Open the morning paper and turn to the Op-ed section, flick the channel to one of the cable news shows, read a scholarly magazine or simply watch your favorite television show and you will become conscious of the people who influence race relations tremendously. Acknowledge Hollywood and the University of such-and-such study on race, and the Post or the Press, it is they who are the perpetrators here. It is their cryptic words and hidden images that speak the language of racism. Protest them. March on them. Go to Congress and the President about them.

Academic institutions publish newsletters and journals that are only available to paying subscribers, therefore, the general public cannot read their words and know their secrets. Their secrets are for the elitist of their clique, who sit around lounges and discuss the rich and the poor and which are the cause of poverty and how come poor people cannot get it together.

They discuss the differences between Blacks and whites and then decide to leap from their chairs and run to their labs and conjure up some plan to study these phenomena of racial difference in the area of intelligence, personality, cognitive ability, music choice, health effects, heredity, height, weight, and the secretly perverted question of size and stamina.

It is they who then gather together a group of social misfits to practice their theories on and to come to their hypotheses and then to jot down their observations and then to write long, drawn out theses about some damn difference. While the child of one of their own, who can look at a Black person and a white person and see that there is a difference, and who sits at home alone a statistic of the latch-key study from the University across the courtyard.

These people publish theirs works and pass it along to the people who can afford their criticisms of the social make up of race. They then send these "reports" to friends who know somebody who know somebody who know somebody who works down on the Hill, and when this…study, makes it to the desk of one of these…people, they look at it and conclude, "There is a difference between Blacks and whites."

And they then realize that the study says that Blacks are "more susceptible to, more likely to, more at risk than, are below, are less than, unequal to, outside of," anything contrary to the supremacy of whites, which always come out on top, unless it is negative.

The study floats around in the mind of these people and they carry it with them allowing it to alter their thought patterns and every time they look at a Black person, they think - "more likely to, more at risk than, are below, are less than, unequal to" - and they assume automatic superiority when they think of the stats of their own. This is institutional racism and if they do not let another Black into their school it is probably better for the Black.

What can the President do about this person who walks around thinking racism, and what can he do about the people who sit and study racism? What can we say to the President that would make him pass a law that would infringe on the God-given right for someone to think what they want, even if they are all lies fed to them by liars.

Honestly, what can we say about an entire corporation that capitalizes off of mental laziness? Hollywood. Fed from the millions of empty minds that sit for hours entrenched in simulated images of stereotypes like middle-class white families, small towns, businesspeople, career women, the glorious lawyer, the Black neighbor, the one Black person and the one Asian person and the one Hispanic person among the small majority of whites in every television commercial.

The Black guy and his white friend, the white guy and his Black friend, the Black female doctor and the all white staff; the Black shows and the babies mamas, and the rap fiends, and the tramp girls, and the teen idol sluts. These images are all stereotypes and these images creep deeply into the minds of millions of people controlling and driving their belief systems, thought patterns, opinions, morals, and even the next words that come our of their mouths.

Talk of television violence and its effect on children and the promiscuous sexual lifestyles of primetime and their effects on young women. Talk about "dare TV" and its effects on adventurous kids; advertise promos about safe sex, not smoking, no to drugs; then advertise the orgasm effect of shampoo, the coolness of the Tekken smack down, the sleekness of the debt-promising Mercedes. Then show the gay sitcom, the fornicating cohabitants of the friends' sitcom, and the all sex, no life in the city and the organized crime ring of lower Manhattan dramas, and you got yourself a teenager with a limited and disturbing (but real) view of society.

Do all these things and complain about them and how this crap is destroying our children but say nothing about the racial stereotypes. The Blacks in prison scenes, the Blacks selling drugs scene, the Blacks in the project scenes, the Blacks in poverty scene, the Blacks as tokens scenes; not to mention the sad attempts at racial equality in television and film.

The President cannot change this and no one should expect him to. Congress has no real control over this and the Constitution does not make them responsible to take control. Again, this, racism is not a political problem but a social problem; therefore, no one can base their political beliefs and agenda on whether the President did or did not say about this issue; it is not his department. Do not march on Washington because of the mental images television and the media has placed into the minds of America.

Do not protest the economic agenda of the Administration because a recent study has determined that more Blacks are below the poverty line than the year before. Do not lobby Congress for new laws and more government support for the poor because the news media ignores the voices of Blacks in poverty and promote the Blacks in the elite who tells America what is good for Blacks, which is what America wants to hear. No, go sit in front of your local news station.

The news stations that reported on the story of a Black man who was caught doing something no one thought a Black man was capable of doing, like sniping people, an age-old agenda of crazed white boys. The news station that profiles a Black person and what they have to say and then come behind him and profile a white expert in the field who undermines what the Black person had to say. Do not protest Congress about this matter, no. Go down to your local television station and speak to the manager (as if they would listen. Maybe they would like the expert in his field would).

The news station that owns itself and can say whatever they want about whatever they want to the people who will believe what they say and live by what they say. The station that will not give the same kind of media exposure to a Black person to say whatever they wanted about whatever they wanted to whomever they wanted. Do not dismiss the President and chose your political party based on the news station and their impact on racism.

When the news stations want the Black opinion they will go to the Black people they have chosen to speak the words they have taught them to speak. They will go to the Black Negro leaders and the Black leftist extremist who promote the same things as prime time television. They will go to the uniformed Black and the community college Black and the Black who has accomplished what they said Blacks could accomplish if they did it the white way.

They will profile the racially profiled and exposed the scandalously exposed; they will front the fool, flash the fiend, and make light of the evil. They will not give way to the reasonable, the opposing, or the informed. Is this reason to confront the government? Even after the news stations report what the scholar has studied and what Hollywood has exploited, this is no reason to blame the President.

The solution to racism is not in the President's briefcase or in his speech, or in the halls of Congress, the solution is in what we see everyday. The mind is a powerful thing and whatever goes into it dictates what a person will believe, and say. Some of the bad may be thrown out and some of the good kept, but when the bad comes constantly in the form of presumed innocence and empathy, it gets difficult to discern the good from the bad.

After so long a time, the bad seems not so bad and the good seems otherwise. Moral development begins with an individual's surroundings. Like a child that watches television all day, to what do we owe his life; and the student of a persuasive liar, what will be his end, so is the moral development of America. As long as race is a factor, it will always be a factor.

© 2004 by Afro Staff