Headline Aug 25, 2015 / ''' WHILE YOU ALL SLEPT '''

''' WHILE YOU ALL SLEPT '''

TUNE IN CNN OR BBC  -and hear the screams and the misery of the migrants at the Greece-Macedonia border.

See the Italian Navy round up thousands by thousands of migrants -afloat at sea -all sea sick, malnourished, and without hope.

THE MASS EXODUS from civil war in Syria, Libya, Iraq,  where the largest numbers of migrants hail from, is one of the driving factors behind the stream of boats. 

In 2014,  219,000  migrants from Africa and the Middle East boarded boats to Europe. Over five thousand of them have perished.

While economic migrants from countries like Senegal and Ivory Coast also cram into rickety boats, the majority are refugees. Eritrea, Afghanistan, Somalia, Nigeria are among the countries of origin  

*In Life,   -it is not what you are running away, from but what you are running to. More people drowned in the Mediterranean last year than on the Titanic.* But for now............

"' ONE DAY  -I believe, we'll be able to send full rich thoughts to each other directly using technology."' That's Mark Zuckerberg for you all:

Hinting that Facebook could enter the  telepathy  space in the very distant future : "You'll think of something," he added "and your friends will immediately be able to experience it."

MasterCard is testing technology that will allow customers to   verify their identity with a  selfie.

A new app called   Who Deleted Me  allows Facebook users to track who unfriends them.

And Student Malia Obama is reportedly interning on the set of HBO's Girls. And Malia see you on !WOW!   -the World Students Society.

THINKING of  yourself as colour-blind can make it harder to see that the world is riddled with systematic racial and other inequalities and that many are becoming more pronounced, not less.

In America White households are now  13 times as wealthy as black ones, the largest gap since 1989.

Blacks are  2 and half times as likely as whites to be arrested for drug possession, even though about the same percentage of blacks and whites use drugs. And.....

Despite the promise of equal education enshrined  60 years ago by:

Brown vs. Board of Education, more than a third of  black students in the South now attend schools that are almost fully minority and doubly segregated by poverty.

The challenge these kids/students face are virtually invisible to their white peers.

No one believes that it's enough to remove the Confederate  flag from the statehouses or to assume that    change will come   when the next generation of more-open minds rises to power.

According to the surveys conducted by  NORC   at the University of Chicago from 2010  to  2014 ,  31% of white millennials rated blacks lazier than whites, just 1% point less than  Gen-X -ers  and 4 points less than baby boomers.

Twenty-three percent of white millennials rated blacks less intelligent than whites,  compared with  19%  of Gen-X-ers.

At the same time, the litany of racist incidents at college campuses shows that outright racial cruelty is still far too common.

These aren't problems that any generation of students can afford to ignore.

As of 2014, the majority of children under 5  in the  U.S. are non-white. By 2043, writes one distinguished researcher, majority of Americans will be.

There are obvious financial and political dangers for people who deny these demographic shifts      -just ask  Donald Trump. who stands to lose millions after calling Mexican immigrants  ''rapists''  But there's a collective cost as well.

A world where minorities lack the opportunities and protections that white people have will be a world of even higher incarceration rates, health care expenses and education inequality than the ones we live in today.

These economic penalties, in addition to the more obvious moral ones, will ultimately burden all and sundry, colour-blind.or not.

Because we have been taught to believe in happy endings, it's easy for young people/students to view problems/racism as a problem that will inevitably be solved or perhaps already has been.

In the history books, racial progress for African Americans occur on a comforting positive slope, evolving from Jim Crow discrimination to the post-civil-rights era equality under the law.

And in the present world's life time, Americans reached a new racial milestone when Barrack Obama became the U.S.'s first black President, thanks in large part to the groundswell of support-

From young voters/students of all races   

And what the history books miss is that change rarely happens in an orderly fashion. There are fits and starts. There are retrenchments. There are debates. Change has to occur not only on the macro level-

In soaring proclamations of Presidents and civic leaders, but also on the micro level, through shift in the thinking of everyday people/students.

And big changes of any kind, like big racial progress is always met with a measure of resistance   -some of it passive, some of it active, some of it horrifically violent.

That is what happened in Charleston, S.C.. And it isn't to stop just because an older generation passes away.

Student Dylan Roof, the racist accused of murdering nine black people in a Church, was only 21.

While he reflect the attitude of most young people/students, it's only our collective responsibility to address the societal issues that allow such hate to flourish.

With respectful dedication to !WOW! and the Students of the world. See Ya all on !WOW!  -the World Students Society Computers-Internet-Wireless:

''' Scope '''

Good Night and God bless

SAM Daily Times - the Voice of the Voiceless