Barack Obama was forced to cut ties with his former Reverend, Jeremiah Wright, after internet videos surfaced of him making anti-American comments. He said the world was, “run by rich white people.” Is he wrong?Obama was forced by the media to cut ties with his minister.Who runs the media? Here’s a hint: they’re rich and white. Rich, white people have ruled this country since the start. Washington was, and I’m willing to bet the most powerful person before him was, a rich, white man too.Who owns all the banks? Who writes all the laws? Who is in charge of the military?The laws in this country during slavery and Jim Crow used to be incredibly, explicitly racist. That has since changed but the system itself hasn’t changed.According to the U.S. Department of Justice, black people are about 13 percent of the U.S. population – yet they make up about 90 percent of the people behind bars. Seems sort of fishy.Society moves on its own and it would be nice to think that it’s only a small matter of time before America “gets it” and stops operating in a way that systematically dishes out benefits to people just on the basis of their place in society. I’m talking about you, rich actor that got off for drug possession.Since banking on the system to fix itself probably won’t work, lets turn to the powerful folks, the politicians.Historically, blacks haven’t had much participation in voting. I don’t blame them, though, because I can’t think of any reason why they should. Come to think of it I can’t think of any reason why I should vote either.Let’s consider some of the worse-off, poor and oppressed black people in America today.They probably live in an inner city housing project surrounded by others as poor as them. They are surrounded by drugs, crime and handguns.Their children go to under funded public education systems meant to keep them ignorant and poor so it is hard to make it out of the projects.According to the statistics, there’s a good chance many people they know are behind bars.Do any of our major political parties (I’m looking at you republicans and democrats) have a proposal to fix this? No.All we talk about is, “saving the middle-class.” Why do we need to save the middle-class, is the lower-class not worth saving? God forbid people from the middle-class fall and end up in the lower-class.That would be disastrous because the government doesn’t spend money on people like that. Neither party has any plans to either.So why should a poor and oppressed inner-city black person vote? Are they Republicans or Democrats? Of course not and for good reason; no one from these parties ever seriously talks about helping them. That’s a major disaster of American politics, and the media allows it by not shining light on it.I wish we could only consider equality and group people either as oppressed or not oppressed. However, America’s racist past won’t allow us to do so. For far too long the laws made it all about race and that just hasn’tworn off yet.On a recent episode of “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” Stewart pointed out that in the democratic primary of Mississippi, 70 percent of whites voted for Clinton, and 92 percent of blacks voted for Obama.Stewart asked himself what should we conclude from this and decided that, “slavery leaves a mark.” No kidding. Ignoring that mark is not sound policy. Let’s hope for a politician, a political party, another civil rights leader, something, anything to fix this. The current system isn’t working.