The very same society that arrested Michael Jackson, Mike Tyson and Kobe Bryant, first made them kazillionaires.

It’s the same society that has made icons of Oprah Winfrey, Bill Cosby, Michael Jordan, Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Tiger Woods, Quincy Jones, Alice Walker, Beyonce Knowles, Toni Morrison, Barry Bonds, Shaquille O’Neal, Colin Powell, Will Smith, Condoleezza Rice and, most recently, Barack Obama.

If this were a racist society, believe me, we would not know any of those names. Those people would be working in the fields or doing time in the gulags or they’d be dead. That’s the way it works in racist societies.

I do not happen to believe that most white Americans in 2007 are bigots. I think, by and large, we judge blacks exactly the way that Dr. King suggested -- by their character and their intelligence and their ability. It’s the same way we judge each other.

However, we don’t have a lot of sympathy for those who claim to be victims of racial oppression. We can’t stomach those who wallow in self-pity, demanding everything from reparations to college degrees as birthrights.

We have no patience with those who blame their lack of ambition in school or the work place on people they don’t even know. And we certainly have no use for the creeps who spawn all those millions of children, condemning them to be raised in fatherless homes, simultaneously condemning the rest of us to live with the violent, illiterate thugs so many of them will inevitably grow up to be. And who then, for good measure, blame white society when these punks eventually wind up in jail.

Needless to say, the lady on the radio took strong exception to my words.

I simply couldn’t get through to her. It must be a white thing.