Krugman Nails It!

...then walks away and turns to mush. In his latest column, Paul Krugman unleashes the following bold insight: "Race is the biggest reason the United States, uniquely among advanced countries, is ruled by a political movement that is hostile to the idea of helping citizens in need." And what does he do with this bit of truth? He goes on to some ordinary, run-of-the-mill Bush bashing, with a gentle swipe at Reagan thrown in for good measure. But just as Your Lying Eyes noted several months ago, he also points out ...Read morethat our lack of universal health care is due to our racial divide, but provides no further insights other than to say "it isn't yet a crisis among middle-class, white Americans (although it's getting there). Instead, the worst effects are falling on the poor and black, who have third-world levels of infant mortality and life expectancy." See, he understands that there's a connection between our reluctance to have free health care and the fact that blacks have poorer health, but he can't seem to connect the dots. Has Krugman ever noticed that whites and blacks almost never live together in the same neighborhoods? In advanced, mono-ethnic nations such as France, Germany, and Japan the middle class does not view the poor as being a separate under-class. But here in the U.S., where 1/4 of the population can so clearly be identified by their appearance or language as not carrying their own economic weight, there is little inclination for the income earners to be generous with the public funds - particularly when there is such a poor track record of public generosity making things any better. When child assistance turns into an epidemic of illegitimacy, when housing subsidies turn into wrecked neighborhoods and failing schools, and when constantly increasing education expenditures show little improvement in scholastic achievement - well, you can't expect a lot of enthusiasm for introducing universal health care.
Now you can go on about racism all you want, but people aren't going to just ignore their Lying Eyes and pretend that all the things they see day in and day out are just figments of their own bigoted minds - not anymore they're not. They're not going to start believing that if only we'd just spend more money these problems will go away.
It's hard to believe it sometimes but federal judges used to actually forcibly integrate schools by ordering students from one school district be bused to another. Any nitwit could have predicted what would happen next - in fact plenty of nitwits did predict exactly what happened next - that eventually all the whites would either send their kids to private schools or would move away, leaving the "integrated" public schools behind and in shambles.
Yes, Dr. Krugman, race plays a very important role in our nation and explains alot. But by smugly laying the blame on "racism," you are turning your back on the issue. It's easy to do, if you're a New York Times columnist or a President of the United States, to blame problems on racism and then turn away satisfied with your own moral superiority. But that doesn't do anyone any good. When trying to understand problems, being realistic is a good start.