Ken and Jim: Asians are relative newcomers, many taking refuge during and after the Americans lost 55,000 men and women protecting colonialism in Vietnam. US blacks were the white man's beasts of burden, segregated without the vote, for more than 200 years.

It's a curse the country will bear, just as Vietnam's scar remains. Black lives improved at the point of federal bayonets enforcing their constitutional rights. Nothing was given to blacks willingly. Remember Washington, Detroit and Los Angeles burning? Were they terrorists or freedom fighters?

The US is the better for it.