After reading the article ('Wong is wrong' by BBJonline.com founder Chido Nwangwu) regarding Houston councilwoman Martha Wong and her skewed statements about how her "down trodden" Asians were not the, shall I dare say, "preferred" over the number of African-Americans working in the Health and Human Services Department, I'll gladly leave snow-bound Indiana to be the first one to ask this woman, "Have you lost your power-trippin' mind?"

It seems like something else must be amiss for her to keep dodging around her sworn commitments to serve the entire community of Houstonians. In addition, she still must understand that all of us who are not indigenous North Americans are just garden-variety boat people. Hers were from the eastside, ours were from the west. And the ones from the East reap the benefits of a people who fail to support one another in entrepreneurial ventures.

Race-baiting historically has one aim, mind, and purpose for its use in politics. Somebody must have promised Wong some money. And come campaign time, she'll once again be the friend to shake one hand with Black folks, and stick out the other hand to some good o'l boy Texas redneck in a Hickey Freeman suit with a few thousand dollars to insure her continued comfort. Meanwhile, we vote, and she conveniently forgets which side her rice cake is buttered on.

Basically, I am of the opinion that Affirmative Action helped, and I do say "helped" countless people who happen to be of color--a precious opportunity to be recognized for their hidden talents. Now that everything has been reversed and twisted, it's time for the community to take back the community.

Washington Post columnist Courtland Milloy stated in a January 14, 1999, BET video commentary that Black Americans are voluntarily becoming the fastest growing, most technologically illiterate people on the planet who would rather spend $500 million of their poorly-invested consumer dollars on malt liquor, Asian-harvested weave hair, CDs with nasty language and sculptured nails instead of computers and legal self-employment. Is there a chance that Dr. Martin Luther King is turning over in his crypt?

Maybe our fragmented communities can become the strong villages and provinces of the people who are closer to us than Council person Wong if we stop playing games with affirmative action, and call it for what it is--a crutch for a crippled society that is not ever going to walk on its colorblind legs. I'm sure Wong cares not that in the last three decades, 50,000 young black men have died, not at the hands of Asians, not even at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, but at the hands of our own saggy-pants, "baby's daddy" on every corner, "niggas." (That is the preferred word of brotherhood among our "homies." Correct?

Those of us with the sense to vote need to redefine discrimination with the simple statement: "If you do it for any reason, be it personal or professional, the entire community will class action sue you, state boundaries exempt. No legalese needed for the almighty dollar. It is a language that Wong and others like her understand.

Let's get off that combustible AA terminology, and turn to the real enemy. Us against us. When we do that, we won't even care if Madame Wong exists.

Affirmative action has lost it's bounce. Time to play a new kind of ball game where the points don't add up to quotas.