I see where you're coming from Denny, but isn't that the same way a lot of the housing projects (that turned into ghettos) got started? Giving low-income minorities preferential access to a neighborhood or group of buildings, and at reduced prices? I mean, if instead of the South Side of Chicago or the like, you had the State of Booker T. Washington...would there be a great difference?
I'm not talking about projects and subsistence payments via welfare. I'm talking about a full blown state with a large sum of money to invest in its improvement and to build enterprises that would feed people and help them thrive for generations. People suckered into living in the projects didn't have much representation in government - certainly not two senators. And so on.
I see it much like Israel. It exists as a safe haven for Jewish people, yet there are more Jews in NYC than in Israel and there are certainly Jewish people in most every state, and in other nations as well. Utah might be another good example - the Mormons were persecuted when they lived among non-Mormons, they settled outside the states, ended up with their own state, yet I run into Mormon people everywhere I go.
The idea isn't segregation, it's ownership. It's reward and recognition for the slave laborers' contributions to building this nation, and making things right and safe for the people.
You bring up the South Side of Chicago. The city is constantly dealing with cops outright torturing black men - see
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=7466044. Maybe things would be different if the cops were black? These incidents, along with high infant mortality rates, lower life expectancy, 80% of the pay for the same work, broken families and the like - these things make me furious.
I look at black people as people who've contributed at horrible expense to build this nation and I highly value their contributions to music, food, the arts, and our culture in general. I look at people who aren't black claim to know what's best for black people and the result. I don't claim to know what's best for them, but I can only suggest that they figure it out for themselves without having their enterprises burned to the ground.
In response to barfo's post... In the 1800s, those who cared about the good of black people shipped them back to Africa to have their own country - Liberia. Blacks were also shipped back to Nigeria as well. While those abolitionists felt US society could never accept and fully integrate black people (and we're still struggling with that today), my suggestion recognizes those people as Americans and rewards them for their tremendous contributions to the nation.