Indulging Our Fiction Persistently

The conditions on the slave ships--in which thousands died crossing the seas--the treatment slaves often received, and, in a special way, slavery based on skin color, cannot just be passed over. For complex reasons still debated by historians, Englishmen, continental Europeans, and Americans indulged in the fiction that the black [hu]man was not a person and could therefore be treated as a thing. This fiction covered their hypocrisy. Actually they harked back to Aristotle's definition of a slave as a living tool. . . .

--Francis A. Schaeffer, How Should We Then Live, page 114, 1976

Record numbers of blacks and Hispanics are earning diplomas, but the disparity between their salaries and those for Anglos in the workplace is bigger than it has been in almost a decade, according to census data [in the USA] released Monday. "The lesson of most economic downturns is minorities are the last hired, first fired," said Roderick Harrison of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

--Hope Yen, "Census: Racial disparities in higher-paying jobs persist," Fort Worth Star-Telegram, page 1, Tuesday, April 28, 2009