The executive action President Obama was pressured into last fall was nothing short of a third amnesty for illegal immigrants. Ordinarily, it wouldn’t be a sound policy, but it was politically savvy for advocates to compare the unjust treatment against black Americans to help elevate public interest.

I am not real keen on these groups manipulating African-Americans into carrying their banners until they generate enough sympathy to be tolerated by mainstream America. Then we are dropped and the superior attitudes emerge that are generally thought necessary for acceptance.

The persistent discrimination aimed toward black people is simply because of who we are, and not what we do. But if laws are broken and we become separated from family, equal empathy is not there.

The 1857 U.S. Supreme Court ruled that slaves were not citizens, therefore not entitled to rights and privileges. It eventually took the Civil War and the assassination of President Lincoln to liberate black Americans.

These atrocities are a violation of the human spirit and have left deep psychological scars in the black community.

Africans did not voluntarily cross the Atlantic Ocean in chains looking for the American dream, so please forgive me for not seeing the similarities.

BARNEY LOMAX

Charles City County