By itself, it is not the cause of everything, but it does set in motion a set of ripples and falling dominoes. Communities which are in financial and cultural distress or otherwise neglected or marginalized tend to become dysfunctional. Family and financial institutions break down, the schools and businesses decay, the will of the people to improve themselves succumbs to despair. It doesn't matter if they are blacks in the ghetto; it also happens to Native Americans on the reservations, Latinos in the barrios, Algerians in the exurbs of Paris, Turks in Berlin or even rural white "redneck" communities ravaged by unemployment and crystal meth. It even happens to sturdy ethnic immigrant whites in the Rust Belt when the mills shut down and the Union jobs go overseas. I lived in Pittsburgh, I saw it with my own eyes.

When I was growing up in 1950s Tampa, it was the Hispanics who had achieved solid working- and middle-class status in the city, and the "Crackers" out in the country who were involved in crime, truancy, violence, unemployment and all the other plagues we tend to lump together in the catch-all term "racism". Its not because white Anglo-Saxons are genetically inferior, its because they hadn't moved into the area as skilled blue collar workers like we Cubans had half a century earlier. We had the sense of community, the solid neighborhoods, even the schools and churches, the social clubs, businesses and other civic institutions that made us a people.

I was brought up taught that the "Crackers" were "no damn good", that they were lazy, stupid, unhygienic, and that they beat their wives and didn't care about their kids. (And the way they treated their colored folks was a disgrace!).

Yeah, my experiences have probably been different than yours, but I was lucky enough to be bicultural, I could see that a lot of my family stereotypes were as wrong as Cracker opinions were of our community, because I went to school with white kids and knew their Moms and Dads and I knew they weren't all lowlifes. Yes, some of my best friends are Crackers.

Damn, I've been waiting my whole life to use that line! 8) .