I agree, we have to invest in schools and neighborhoods if we want people to invest back in them. It's hard to ask someone to care about their education if we don't care enough to make it a quality one. I also agree that investment like that builds a common objective. We always talk about the hard truths we have to face and it's true for whites, blacks, rich, poor and every other grouping. There are also some realities that are really hard to face that muck up the whole situation. For instance, how do you help someone raised to be hateful? Or, a harder one, someone of such lower intelligence that they are highly suggestible? Or how do you help a kid whose parents are terrible and never should have reproduced? Or how do you help a kid who never really had parents at all? I'm not asking these to be a pain in the ass, but these issues bug me because we always talk about the most superficial problems and not the ones most painful to address. Maybe it's just my own work with so many families and kids with utterly hopeless lives that makes me cynical about so much of this, but human beings are not equal in our abilities, capacities, upbringing, or ability to cope with situations. That's hard to fix.