Editorial: Blacks more at risk in mortgage crisis

Last update: May 3, 2008 - 5:18 PM

Declining home values and mounting foreclosures are likely to widen the already cavernous wealth gap between black and white Americans, the nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute reported last week. America's median black families have only about one-tenth the wealth of median white households -- $11,800 for blacks compared with $118,300 for whites in 2004, the report noted.

Those numbers include home equity. Take it out, and the gap grows much worse: $36,100 in white non-home wealth, compared with $300 for blacks. The bottom line: African-Americans are at much greater risk in the current housing crisis. And communities with high African-American populations are likely to need help in dealing with the bad economy's human fallout.

Groundskeeper sculpts a new Smoky Mountain

Somewhere on the Winona State University campus recently, a littered cigarette butt proved to be the last straw for part-time maintenance worker Bryce Fogelson. After picking thousands of littered butts out of sidewalk cracks, garden mulch and, more frustratingly, off the ground near cigarette receptacles, Fogelson decided something had to be done. So he stashed away enough butts to build a big, ugly, nicotine-stained pile to make a point about littering and laziness. It went on display for a short time recently in the university's Kryzsko Commons.

"I'm kind of sick of picking up other people's garbage, and the school shouldn't have to pay me to do it," Fogelson told the Winona Daily News.

It wouldn't hurt to make Fogelson's Mount Marlboro a traveling public-service exhibit around Minnesota. Spring's arrival inevitably reveals the dingy dregs of winter -- flattened paper cups, mildewed junk mail, faded plastic grocery bags, and lots and lots of soggy butts. Anyone who drives can see how litter has turned the state's roadsides and other areas into eyesores.

The 1970s had its potent anti-littering symbol -- Iron Eyes Cody, an actor dressed as an Indian who cried a single tear in a TV commercial. Decades later, a frustrated Winona State groundskeeper/student has erected a timely reminder of that long-ago public-service ad to "Keep America Beautiful.'' It's still good advice. (To see the famous 1971 ad, go to www.startribune.com/a4317.)

Sami al-Haj goes free

The old joke says that what you're feeling isn't paranoia if they really are out to get you. Sami al-Haj, the Al-Jazeera cameraman released from Guantanamo Bay Thursday night, is entitled to the bouts of paranoia he's reportedly suffering as he recovers in a Sudanese hospital. Held without charge since his arrest in late 2001, Al-Haj won vocal support from human-rights and journalism groups, as well as from Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn. It's hard to say how much any of that helped Al-Haj's cause, however, because the Pentagon isn't commenting on his release. Even so, Al-Haj is out; good. Just a couple of hundred more to go.

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