I am in my mid 70s, born to interracial parents, raised on the Island, now retired and living in Florida. I married inter-racially in my senior year at college where I minored in history, and successfully raised two wonderful sons and one daughter. And on this MLK Day weekend, I decided to spend the last few days reminiscing.

I will not state my opinions or my personal conclusions, but am hoping that everybody who reads this will open-mindedly, if possible, do the same and do some real research. I believe a great majority of my fellow citizens have not seriously done their homework and have been allowing themselves to be blindly led in the wrong direction. I also wonder what Martin Luther King would think of what is going on today in our country and if he would be happy or sad at how far his people have come. I was very interested to see who has helped and who has hurt the causes that still seem to be simmering and boiling between the two races in our country. I looked from the past to the present record and actions of the NAACP, along with the backgrounds of many of their past presidents and leaders.

In no particular order, I compared the differences between the white and black races, how things were and are, and how things have been handled by each of the well-known people whose names follow: Presidents Carter, Reagan, Obama, and Clinton; Dr. Howard Dean and Dr. Ben Carson; the black Reverends Sharpton and Jackson; Rev. James Manning, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Minister Louis Farrakhan; Roman Catholic priest and social activist Michael Louis Pfleger; U.S. Attorney Generals Robert Kennedy and Eric Holder.

I looked closely at several American television hosts, political commentators, news reports and news stations, including Ed Schultz, Kapel (Van) Jones, Bill O’Reilly, Bill Maher, Megyn Kelly, Chris Matthews, Rush Limbaugh, Al Sharpton, Glen Beck, Michael Moore, Sean Hannity, Alan Colmes, Laura Ingraham and others. I examined liberal mainstream media, including network news shows on CBS, ABC, and NBC, cable channels CNN, MSNBC and major newspapers, news wires, and radio outlets, especially CBS News, Newsweek, and The New York Times. The conservative Fox News, NewsMax and WorldNetDaily are generally seen as promoting a conservative agenda, and although quite outnumbered by others, have the highest viewing ratings. Those extremely high numbers could only be obtained if liberals are also viewing them.

I reviewed past and recent statistics concerning crimes committed by whites and blacks, their family units, data between the two as well as employment and those seeking government assistance. All these information sources gave me a shocking but very real picture of where our country stood, where it stands today, how far we have come, where we are probably headed and who exactly are the highly involved players today that are shaping our nation and what they are doing in the process.

It was very interesting to have found who the NAACP has aligned itself with and has had for speakers at several of their events over the years from the list above. It gave me much better insight into who they really are and what they really stand for.

During my long life of voting in our country, I have had the opportunity to have been aligned with the Democratic party and the Republican party, but then I skipped the independent party and am now and will remain in the unenrolled status for the rest of my days.

Sandy C.L. Burders
Panama City, Fla.