My last assignment before I retired from the Air Force was as commander of an engineering unit. One of my civil service engineers had entered the Air Force as an enlisted man and gone through electronics school. He was assigned to the unit. When his enlistment was up, he stayed on in civil service. He took night and weekend courses to complete a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. When I came on the scene, he was doing the same in graduate school, working on a masters in EE. He was one of my best workers, and I was pleased to have the opportunity to promote him to a supervisory position. The thing that impressed me most about him, though, was that he was a black guy. I think of him every time some black whines that he deserves something simply because of his skin color. I want to tell him, go out and earn it, like that guy did.
For most Americans though, skin color means a lot if not everything.