Dr. Martin Luther King's famous "I have a dream" speech pleaded for the day when people would be "judged by the content of their character and not the color of their skin."

The reparations suits are re-fueling the fires of skin color and bringing up, for the ninety-umpteenth time, the cruelty of whites to blacks during an entirely different period of America's history, one to which we can neither return nor give due recompense to those directly affected. Bluntly, it is a slap in the face to Dr. King and his dream.

Frankly, in a sense, many people in America today are slaves.

They're slaves to their lusts, to greed, to hatred and vindictiveness, to evil thoughts, and yes, to racism. Racism runs both ways. Slavery knows absolutely no skin color. It is the common lot of all mankind to be a slave to each one's own base lusts, and to justify them with some cause or another when confronted with the evidence.

If this nation were to allow all the frivolous suits based upon the nobsensical idea of paybacks for past wrongs, then I have a few corporations I could sue for discrimination against me as a female systems analyst during my 15-year carreer from 1957 to 1972. My salary was always half what they paid the males, and I did twice the work to prove that I, as a woman, could compete in a man's world. By the time women were receiving anything like rqual pay, that career had been gobbled up by the programmers, for which i could possibly put together a suit of some kind for putting me out of my established career. Nonsense? Certainly it is. Times have changed. I got into field that was reserved for males and did a good job. I was not fairly compensated. But I hardly think I should sue to recover for "danages." Our culture was different during the time in which I worked in the career field of systems analysis.

Another little fact is always forgotten in the reparations debacle. It's the nation of Liberia. In the early 1800s, those who deplored slavery purchased a section of land in Africa known as Liberia, and offered it as a homeland to any blacks, born free or freed slaves, who wished to return to Africa. Their passage was to be prepaid, and they were to be given an initial sum of money to get started in a new life on their home continent. How many went? Apparently very few, and even fewer would like to lay claim to ownership of Liberia today, with its violent civil wars. It's just so much easier to file suit in a U.S. federal court for "reparations" against the evils of a culture long dead, along with those who participated in it one way or the other.

Speaking of Africa, since blacks in America often like to refer to themselves as "Afro-Americans," or "African Americans," why in the world do they ignore what's going on in Africa? Slavery is still rife over there, along with civil wars that have killed millions of people.

To be known by the content of one's character (for better, rather than worse) is to establish the value of that character in contributing to the betterment of one's fellow man. Africa is a place where there is a great deal of suffering, violence in the leadership, and volatility in national identity. Why isn't there an outpouring of rage from the American black community over Africa? Don't they care that the Sudan is a country of sand turned red from the blood of the slaughter of people of the Negroid (black) race? What about Robert Mugabe's wanton slaughters in Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia? Wars are fought over territory, religion, politics, and just old tribal hatreds. Africa needs help?

This isn't some yesterday that cannot be brought back and redone. This is today and something can be done about it. Where's the outrage? Where's the sympathy? Where are the African Action committees? What is Jesse Jackson doing about Africa, rather than nosing into Middle East affairs and engaging in the monkey business that has resulted in his public disgraces and marital problems? He uses his high profile status as a political "reverend" to line his own pockets, instead of caring for his own people here in America--never mind his distant cousins in Africa. Content of character? Oh don't get me started on Jesse Jackson!

Black American columnists Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell are men who have good content to their character, and they are both Conservative writers as well as professional men. They have no victim complex, and they abhor the idea of racism being used once again as a ripoff for what cannot be undone in the past, but has been greatly mitigated in the present. We could present many more examples of all that blacks have been able to accomplish since Rosa Parker's bus-seat protest in 1955. Even before that, we had sterling examples of blacks who chose to rise above past grievances and make names for themselves. It's true that the road was much harder than it is now, but they were equal to the task, which means that the opportunity was there for the making and the taking. Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, of the Jack Benny program, was a millionaire when my dad was making from $50 to $60 a week during World War II. Boxer Joe Louis was also making excellent money and garnering fame, keeping his character intact, rather than disgracing it like Mike Tyson does.

If the secret to success is to find a need and fill it, then Africa, the traditional home of the blacks, has some great needs to stop the suffering and the misery. One who isn't interested in Africa can find great needs individually here in the U.S.A. among people of all races, colors, and stripes.

It's so much easier to be negative than positive, to be a victim than a success, to sue rather than work toward a positive goal in life.

The reparations suit filed in federal court is a slap in the face to Dr. King;s dream, a threat to America's ability to continue as a self-sustaining nation (which is the real agenda behind those using the blacks as "victims") and another reason to fuel the fires of racism so that we just cannot get along. Enron was largely a white greed scheme. Reparations is a black greed scheme. Not to leave anyone out, have we got any Asian greed schemes around? Well we had the Los Alamos thing, but that was more a white greed scheme on the part of Clinton and friends. But greed knows no racial preferences.

Maybe what we need is a common dream.

That dream would be to save America from further tensions and internal strife, and put our country back together as a constitutional republic.

Maybe then we could stop hyphenating Americans and bring the nation together for a change.

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