Hi Linda

I enjoyed reading your comments about the increasing deterioration of the American family among blacks, hispanics and whites. However, along with Obama this core insight must lead to a much wider vision. Our public schools are in a shambles, our low income housing solutions have proven to exacerabate divison, employment opportunites for poorly educated Americans are almost nil, etc. All these factors go into the making of an increasingly more powerful whirlpool that is becoming more and more difficult to get out of. While Obama comes closest, in my mind, to having the Will to attempt to solve these larger "metabolic" problems, I think people ought to start shifting their focus away from what party is in power and who the president is. I think we have to accept Tip O'Neill's wisdom that "All Politics is Local." and start back with the basics where the people who are in need and the people who have power, walk on the same streets.

It is a shame, of course, that Obama did not make the comments that Ms. Chavez wanted him to make. However, it is a grater shame -- close to tragedy -- that Ms. Chavez, like so many American, chose not hear the comments that Obama did make. The notion that core of black/white problems in this country is the illegitmacy rate among blacks is too fantastic to be discussed. The quickesty demonstrtation: what had that issue to do with the circumstances that prompted the outcry against Obama and necessitated his speech?

Ms. Chavez attempts to identify the breakdown the the black family as the primary issue leading to problems for African Americans stating:

"Nearly seven in 10 black babies are born to single mothers today. These children will fail in school at higher rates than those born to two parents. They are more likely to become involved in criminal activity. Their poverty rates will be higher. And they are far more likely to repeat this pattern by giving birth to or fathering a child out of wedlock themselves."

Note the full comparison as reported at http://www.sdi.gov/lc_birth.htm that shows between 1970 and 1997, births to single white women increased by 355% resulting in 25.8% of all white births in 1997 being to single women. During the same period, births to single black women increased by 93%, resulting in 69.1% of black births being to single women. Most of this increase occurred during the 1980s. More recently, between 1994 and 1997, births to single white and black women have stabilized, increasing very little. These long-term trends are linked to delays in marriage, declines in birth rates for married women, and increases in birth rates for unmarried women.

With white births representing more than 60% of the total population, we're looking at 15% of the total US births were born to single mothers who are white women, while approximately 11% of U.S. births were to single mothers who are to black women. The total of 26% does not include births to Hispanics and others, which pushes the total to 32%.

That America is faced with nearly a third of all births to single mothers, with the majority of those mothers being white, is another way to look at the issue and one worth evaluating. It should come as no surprise that the demographic most affected by racism and poverty in this country would be overrepresented in a statistic that so plagues the larger society.

Explanation on your oversight Ms. Chavez?

Yes, let's PROJECT onto Obama, from a single speech, each of the following sad facts: men can't keep it in their pants very long; women and men don't use widely available contraception techniques to prevent unwanted births from occurring in the first place; that the religious right would provide more protection to the fetus than to the two-year old who is already here; that those awful liberals occasionally try to help a confused mother in distress; that opining well-paid women often hire other undocumented women to raise their own children and clean their toilets because they have "important contributions" to make to society; that the current administration has squandered the future finances of every American household: that financial institutions and their employees want to privatize enormous profit and socialize the risk on the back of the taxpayers--but then, just like Ms. Chavez's insipid column, that would be off topic, now wouldn't it. Spare us.