Millions more what?

Making headlines recently is the Millions More Movement, a march on Washington healdined by Louis Farrakhan, and sequel to the Million Man March a decade earlier.

Notice how Farrakhan's focus, which centered on black male responsibility the first time around, has now largely shifted to bashing the government over not doing enough to help black people.

Not that this is wrong - the government's response to Katrina, racially motivated or not, was terrible - but to me, and the the Washington Post's Colbert King, it seems like a step backward. Plenty of groups and individuals already call for the government to do more to help black people; few call for black people to bootstrap themselves out of poverty, and even fewer try to implement practical programs to make that happen.

I sometimes make an analogy between poor people and poor nations. Plenty of developing countries have received a lot of development aid from richer nations, but only some of those countries - China, for instance - have taken the necessary political steps to use that aid (and their own efforts) to actually pull themselves out of poverty.

In order to get rich - and to eliminate the social problems that come from poverty - poor minorities have to work hard and use whatever help they get to make tomorrow better than today. I see no reason why black America can't be like China - starting from a low base, but efficiently using the help they get, working hard, working together, growing fast, and eventually getting rich.