IT IS, Munko. I'll give you an example: I live in a very expensive neighborhood....gated community with homes upward of almost $3 million. We have 2 Muslim families, and 3 black families. They are treated just like everyone else.....welcomed and accepted at all the parties and get-togethers, etc. They are just as educated.....just as "rich"....and just as accepted as everyone else here. I think differences are not so much in race, but in socio-economic status. That's where the real difference come into play. It only stand to reason that people who are of the same socio-economic status have more in common. That's my opinion anyway.

Contrast that with how things were when I was a teenager back in the "stone ages".....my first job was at a theater selling tickets. There was a separate entrance for blacks and they had their own stairway that led upstairs to a balcony where they were required to sit. They had their own bathrooms and were not allowed in the movie lobby. When they wanted candy or poporn, they had to come down the stairs, knock on a little sliding door where I was located, tell me what they wanted, and I went to the lobby and bought it for them and brought it back to them. I was 16 years old....it was 1961 BEFORE the Civil Rights Act. When I tell my son about my first job and how it was then, he can hardly believe it. That's how much things have changed in my lifetime. And for the good!! I personally want for blacks and hispanics all good things in life.....just like I wanted for myself. I am heartened by the changes I've witnessed in my lifetime.

I look forward to the time when Martin Luther King's "dream speech" is a full reality: where "people are not judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." That's how I try to live my life. And that's why I don't think that separate groups like....the NAACP, the Black Caucus, and any group that continues to separate is a very good idea.