Blacks in our county are more likely to lose years of their lives to homicide, cancer, heart disease, infant death and AIDS than other people in Ingham County.

In our state, white students are nearly five times more likely than black students to qualify for $2,500 college scholarships through the Michigan Education Assessment Program and High School test that high school seniors must pass to qualify.

Eighty percent of the defendants who have faced the death penalty federally since 1995 have been minorities.

The statistics ticker on and on.

As a citizen and a journalist, I do not accept the quality-of-life tiers that people are separated into by socioeconomics and, often, race. I wonder, “Why?”

Are blacks more likely to be afflicted by cancer, heart disease and infant death because they are naturally predisposed? Of course not. Those kinds of conditions mostly have roots in the quality of a person’s life and environment and their level of education.

Maybe black students just don’t really care enough about their education to pass the MEAPs? This shallow theory about standardized testing is advocated by our embarrassing president. This disrespectful analysis charges teachers and students in failing, vastly underfunded schools that just don’t care.

They’re apparently blind to the incentives for education, Shrub says. (Shrub is the nickname for George W. Bush coined by political columnist Molly Ivins, in reference to the oil company Bush founded called Arbusto. Bush thought the company’s name was Spanish for bush, but arbusto also means shrub.)

Poke and prod with tests and threats, our boy Bush boasts, and we’ll force their faith into our educational system.

Yeah, and Jennifer Lopez’s love don’t cost a thing.

California, a state that is first in prison spending in our nation and 41st in education spending, disproportionately imprisons people of color. An American without skepticism, when confronted with the staggering rates of blacks imprisoned nationally and the slanted death penalty system, often assumes blacks have a bad and nasty streak in them that makes many of them turn to crime. Some assume blacks do not have the virtue or work ethic to legitimately obtain the American dream.

An American armed with skepticism knows better. The racism that has clung to our system since its inception is still present and will continue to leach out justice until we start moving to eradicate it. Any system that spends more on locking up its children than cradling them with education and support is not worthy of its people and should be ashamed for blaming its faults on its downtrodden.

Conservatives, who tagged “compassionate” onto their brand last election for obviously deceptive reasons, do not extend that faith.

It makes them angrier than a 700 Club special about Marilyn Manson.

Why spend money on social programs when we can bloat our defense budget or dole out corporate welfare? Slavery is over, the right snorts, so why are so many blacks acting like they are still wards of whites? Why do we have to extend any more government analysis and spending to lazy poor people?

Because now is the time for the blame to rest on the big boy’s shoulders - Uncle Sam. It’s easy to shirk responsibility for the often Third-World-like quality of life of the poor, and often black, by branding them apathetic and unworthy. It’s easy to advocate downsizing government spending for the villianized poor while pumping $6.6 billion into developing a national missile defense system, which threatens to be as humiliating as our good ol’ boy attorney general.

The “underclass” is forced into being a hated liability because of neglectful and contemptuous attitudes and policies. It is a mechanism of our racist system to punish and shame the struggling, instead of sympathizing with the strain to swallow life’s rougher edges. It is human to grapple.

To the people suffering both the effects and the blame of our very uncompassionate system, I encourage pride and the will to demand better. There are more people than you think ready to stand up with you in solidarity when you amplify your justified cries.

Erica Saelens, State News wire editor, can be reached at saelense@msu.edu.