Mrs. maddow smugly brought up the 1.1 million blacks who served in ww2, to show pat buchanan's ignorance in his statement that close to 100% of the soldiers who died at normandy were white, implying black's didn't serve in ww2 in any significant way. What mrs. maddow fails to mention is that although there were indeed 1.1 million blacks in the armed services of that time only roughly 126,000 of them served overseas. The vast majority were not in combat units, rather support units, engineers, construction of rear operating bases clearing of roads, resupplying units sometimes at the front.. I was not able to check the numbers on the civil war as that information is harder to look up and find. Also, her assertion that the u.s surely would have fallen off of the world stage if it weren't for the slave labor that picked cotton, rice and tobacco is rather interesting. I wasn't aware the u.s built most of it's wealth on these items rather than manufactured goods which at one time made up 50% of the world's manufactured products.I haven't done research yet as to what percentage of the country's gdp was industrial compared to agricultural. I will find out and get back to you on that. Also, most of the manufacturing centers in this country that produced the goods that made us rich were inhabited by mostly whites and some blacks. Minorities did not dominate in those areas until well after those jobs had closed down or moved. I will do more research on this subject and get back to you when i have the results.