tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23749004419336837072024-03-08T03:57:03.746-08:00the black issueThe Black Issue blog contains commentary about economic, political and media-related factors that impact conditions and perceptions regarding African and African-American people. The blog's mission is to inspire dialogue that will accelerate the rate of economic and political progress for black people.the black issuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13909212892157771943noreply@blogger.comBlogger130125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2374900441933683707.post-76844291683150705302015-05-07T07:43:00.000-07:002015-05-07T10:41:52.135-07:00Jumpstarting the Jersey Economy through Greater Black Business and Professional Inclusion<div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; font-family: UICTFontTextStyleBody; font-size: 17px;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(Keynote presentation made to the African American Chamber of Commerce of New Jersey, The State of Black New Jersey Conference, April 16, 2015) </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When most of you learned that your keynote speaker was a Philadelphia businessperson, I suspect that you may have been curious… and, maybe, a little disappointed.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It was probably fair to be curious as to how a person born in North Central Philadelphia and educated at a Catholic grade school and a Jesuit Prep School, in Philadelphia, could possibly shed any light on today’s broad topic – The “State of Black New Jersey.” It was also probably difficult to comprehend how this would all work when you were informed that that same person then went on to graduate from St. Joseph’s University, and Temple University, to work at the old First Pennsylvania Bank and, then, to launch his own branding and marketing firm – all in Philadelphia.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Because I understand that a few of you may still be harboring such feelings, I thought it might make sense, at the outset, to share with you just a few of my personal “New Jersey connections.” You’ve heard the term “street cred?” Well, I thought you should know a bit about my “New Jersey State Cred,” before I begin my few remarks on this afternoon’s critically important topic.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Let me begin by sharing with you that I come from a very close family whose members, in the main, lived in two places---Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Harlem, New York...my Aunt Marie lived at 135th and Lennox Avenue and my grandmother's sisters, Aunt Ruth and Aunt Edith, lived at 157th and St. Nicholas.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My grandmother was an employee of what eventually became known as Amtrak. It was called the Pennsylvania Railroad, back then, of course. My grandmother didn’t have a great deal of formal education, nor any university degree, at all. In fact, she was very much a blue collar worker, at <a href="x-apple-data-detectors://2" x-apple-data-detectors-result="2" x-apple-data-detectors-type="address" x-apple-data-detectors="true">30th Street</a> Station, in West Philadelphia, where she ran the elevators, and swept and mopped that huge terminal floor, every day.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">As part of her compensation for that inglorious occupation, she was given a “pass,” by the train company, which entitled her to travel free, and to take her young grandson, along, for the same price, to destinations relatively close to Philadelphia.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hence, as a very young boy, I spent a lot of time on those old trains, gazing out the windows as the locomotives whizzed through the state of New Jersey. I still remember most of the station stops – Trenton, Elizabeth, Perth Amboy, Princeton Junction, New Brunswick, and Newark.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I remember being especially interested in the Trenton Station and having the opportunity to see, each way, during the trip, the huge lighted sign on the side of the “Lower Free Bridge,” as the train approached the city. That was the sign that informed us that “Trenton Makes and the World Takes.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">That was absolutely my first indication that there was a manufacturing economy in the state of New Jersey, or anywhere else.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I hate to admit it, but it always made me wonder exactly what it was that Trenton was making. My grandmother couldn’t answer the question, but, even as a seven-year-old, I got the impression that there were people in that City of Trenton who were working SOMEWHERE, making SOMETHING, that the rest of the world wanted to buy. I was impressed by Trenton.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Who knew, back when I was reading the sign about Trenton making stuff, that, between 1990 and 2014, N.J. would lose nearly 284,000 manufacturing jobs. As you know, the hope for replacement of those jobs is in the area of technology-based, “advanced manufacturing,” which employs 120,000 and has contributed $17 billion to the NJ economy in 2010, alone. But I digress…</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Once I received my bachelor’s degree, I wound up, again, in New Jersey. This time, I wasn’t sight-seeing and reading signs from train windows. This time, I volunteered to defend the lives of every citizen of this state when, I joined the New Jersey National Guard’s 112th Headquarters Artillery Battery, in Cherry Hill. I protected you and your families in that role for six years, serving as a fire direction computer for heavy artillery. It was challenging. I hope you appreciated the hard work I did in that capacity for the residents of the Garden State, even though I was, and still am, a lifelong Philadelphian.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Several years later, I was back in New Jersey. This time, I had been recruited to serve as a member of the board of the Claridge Casino Hotel, from 1995-2000, right before its acquisition by Bally’s. During that period, I learned a great deal about the casino industry and about the people of Atlantic City. At the same time, the state’s Casino Control Commission also learned a great deal about ME because, as a potential board member, I had to submit to a thorough, personal investigation, as a prelude to licensing. It was one of the longest, most arduous processes I’ve ever experienced. Let me say this about the NJ Casino Commission vetting process: Once you emerge successfully from that, being approved to serve as a member of the U.S. Supreme Court should be a breeze.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Still on the subject of New Jersey credentials, did I mention that I have a brother named Morris, who moved to Paterson NJ, years ago, to serve as school psychologist at East Side High School?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Did I also mention that I currently live on Penns Landing, on the PA side of the Delaware River, and that from my front window, I look across the river and keep an eye on the “activities” in Camden, every single day? Did I mention that? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I hope that you’re now feeling a great deal more comfortable with my role, this afternoon.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">With all of that as background, let’s move to today’s theme: “The State of Black New Jersey” and a discussion of how we can collectively foster relations among the private and public sectors and black businesses, to enhance New Jersey’s economic effectiveness.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What struck me as I thought about the business case for including African Americans more effectively in the New Jersey economy was this: The State of New Jersey seems to have significant untapped economic power available in the 1.3 million black residents who comprise about 14.7 percent of its statewide population.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Within that population, there are 60,300 black-owned businesses. While we’re digesting that information, we should know that, over the period of the last published Economic Census, ending in 2007, employment at black-owned firms increased by 22 percent, and black businesses across the U.S. employed 921,000 people, with an aggregate payroll of $23.9 billion.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">This potential job-creation asset clearly should not be ignored within the state of New Jersey, wherein the unemployment rate, as of February 2015, was 90 basis points worse than the overall U.S. jobless rate, and represented the 19th worst state unemployment rate in the country. That kind of potential also shouldn't be overlooked in a state with just the 36th-best home ownership rate. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Although the Garden State's numbers are aggregated to describe a single, statewide economy, there really are two very distinct economies within the state, itself--one, whose participants tend to be predominantly white, suburban, highly educated and exceptionally well-compensated; the other, comprised of residents of the state’s largest cities, who tend to be overwhelmingly black and Hispanic, who have relatively low economic achievement and whose high poverty and crime rates are nationally significant.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For example, while New Jersey's population, as a whole, is 14.7 percent black, the black population in the 10 largest cities is much higher, at 34 percent. While 17.7 percent of all New Jersey residents are Hispanic, the Latino population in those same 10 largest cities is 45.4 percent. On the other hand, while Asians are 8.3 percent of the state's residents, they’re just 5 percent of the population in the 10 largest cities; and while whites are 59.3 percent of the overall state population, they’re just 16.1 percent of the population in the 10 largest urban communities.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It’s clear that, in New Jersey, either whites and Asians are precluded from living in the large municipalities, or that blacks and Hispanics are excluded from living in the surrounding suburbs. Somehow, in the main, blacks and whites, simply don’t live near one another. In fact, 34.3 percent of the state’s 1.3 million blacks live in just 10 of the state’s 565 municipalities. That, I would offer, makes it relatively more difficult to do business together.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On its face, those circumstances take on the appearance of economically driven residential segregation. It's painfully clear that, in order to jumpstart their economy through more effective and inclusionary policies, Jerseyites will have to begin to talk more to each other, to develop a greater understanding of one another and, finally, to take meaningful steps toward doing business together. The simple lack of proximity, however, will be an issue.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">While we’re discussing the upside to economic inclusion, those who might be concerned about public safety and crime in black and diverse communities, should give some thought to Blake Taylor’s 2006 study on Poverty and Crime. Among the report’s findings were evidence that a one percent increase in poverty leads to a 2.16 percent increase in total crime; that homicides are disproportionately concentrated in areas of poverty, and, finally, that: “The offer to relocate families from high to very-low poverty neighborhoods, i.e., census tracts with poverty rates below 10 percent, reduces juvenile arrests for violent offenses on the order of 30 to 50 percent of the arrest rate.”</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In that regard, it should be of great interest to us, today, that nine of New Jersey's 10 largest cities have poverty rates that are substantially, embarrassingly, higher than that 10 percent threshold. Most notable are cities such as Camden, Passaic, Paterson and Newark, where the poverty rates are 39.8, 30.3, 29.1 and 29.1, respectively.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, it would seem that the mandate to improve the economy in New Jersey's urban areas goes far beyond any outdated concepts of affirmative action or equal opportunity. This is not some charitable, morally "right thing to do" exercise. No, this is "enlightened self-interest" for an economy whose population, statewide, is now, about 44 percent comprised of people of color. Beyond the obvious economic benefits that would accrue to the State, this is also a strategy for reducing crime, creating aspirations, saving lives and improving the quality of life.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The recommended approach is much the same as how European immigrants were eventually absorbed into the mainstream economy, 70 years ago, leading to better jobs, improved business opportunities, reductions in crime rates in their neighborhoods and, eventually, access to improved housing, in leafy suburban communities.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">However, to get to where we should all want to wind up in this regard, we'll have to recognize that current patterns of race-based exclusion are still doing significant damage to the American people and that they extend well beyond residential issues and deep into the very fabric of the U.S. economy, and the New Jersey economy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's interesting to note, for example, that the state of New Jersey and the U.S., as a whole, have virtually the same percentages of persons in their populations who are under the age of 5, who are under 18, and who are 65 and over.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In addition, and more to the point, both have about 14 percent black populations, both have Hispanic populations in the 17 and 18 percent range, and both report single-digit Asian populations. Also of great interest is the fact that, while 7.1 percent of all U.S. businesses are black-owned, 7.7 percent of New Jersey firms have black ownership.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">New Jersey also slightly surpasses national averages for Hispanic-owned and Asian-owned firms, and has virtually the same percentage of woman-owned firms as the country, as a whole, at 27.3 percent. These strikingly similar data make New Jersey an ideal place for conducting the definitive case study for how the U.S. can take steps to include persons and businesses of color into its own mainstream economy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">New Jersey can, if it chooses to, take the national lead in this area, as the federal government has seemed reluctant to do so, for far too long.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 16.5pt;">Let's get back now to a discussion of the "other New Jersey economy," the one with the high incomes, fine homes and nation-leading household income levels. With its proximity to New York City and Philadelphia metros, New Jersey is much more prosperous, on a per-capita basis, than the U.S., as a whole.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Those with bachelor’s degrees or higher, for example, constitute 26 percent of the national population. For New Jersey, those degree holders are 35.8 percent of all residents. Median household income for the U.S. is $53,046, but for New Jersey, despite its poverty-stricken big cities, median household income is $72,629, the second-highest in the entire nation.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, now that we see where the opportunity lies, and what has already been achieved in the New Jersey mainstream, let's benchmark the challenges faced by black businesses, both nationally and, here, in the State.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We'd have to begin by recognizing the black economy's importance to New Jersey, even in its current, less-than-widely-supported condition. For example, given its current spending power of roughly $1 trillion, Black America would rank 22nd in the world among 182 national economies. Its spending power is greater than that of the Netherlands, Colombia, Venezuela, the UAE, Belgium, Iraq, Sweden, Singapore, Portugal, or Ireland, among others.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How can U.S.-based firms, including those in N.J., rationally ignore such economic potential, sitting virtually under their profit-driven noses?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 16.5pt;">Curiously, Nielsen Research reported in November 2013, that even though 14 percent of Americans are black, only 3 percent of major media advertising spending is focused on them. National advertisers seem to have missed the boat, entirely, with regard to the profit potential in black consumer markets, even at currently depressed levels. Let's hope New Jersey-based businesses "wake up and smell the coffee." There’s opportunity to be gained, competitive advantage to be won, profits to be realized.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Not only has the U.S. business community seemingly lost interest in selling goods and services into the black community, those same companies continue to underutilize the professional services available from black-owned firms.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Despite the fact that the number of black-owned New Jersey firms increased by 72 percent, versus the 13 percent national average, over the period of the most recently published economic census, those black firms, on average, grossed just $72,000 on an annual basis. That compares to the $179,000 generated by Jersey-based Asian and Hispanic firms, and the $490,000 in average gross receipts realized by the state's mainstream firms.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's difficult to argue against the point that business growth generally fuels job creation. In 2013, while it underutilized black and other diverse businesses, the State saw its private sector employment increase by just 1.4%, well below the 2.1% national average.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So, clearly, there’s work to do:</span></div>
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">First of all, elected leadership in New Jersey should encourage the private sector to do more to extend its annual volume of procurements of goods and services with black-owned, and other minority, businesses. It should be, both, an economic and political agenda item.</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">On the business-to-business side, no small business can survive without contracts from large private-sector procurement decision-makers. The greatest business plan, the most highly educated business owner, the most well-designed services or well-packaged products don’t matter, unless the small, minority business can generate cash flow. As Peter Drucker once famously said, “Nothing happens in business until someone sells something.”</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet, in a 2010 study of diversity practices at Fortune 500 Companies, researchers found that: </span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Black/Africa-American firms represented only 2.58 percent of total procurement, that </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Hispanic/Latino firms represented 2.69 percent, and that </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Asian firms were 3.2 percent of contract revenues.</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Even worse, 118 out of 219, or 53.8 percent, of the Fortune 500 respondents chose to not even answer the survey's questions about supplier diversity, or said they do not track such data, at all. As we all know, those things that don't get measured or monitored don't really matter in politics or in the business community.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If that kind of mean-spirited, self-defeating approach to the growth of minority businesses exists in large New Jersey corporations, it must stop, and stop soon.</span><br />
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In addition, Corporate New Jersey, like all of Corporate America, needs to do a significantly better job in recruiting African-American board members and executive managers. In 2010, according to the same Fortune 500 survey, blacks, nationwide, comprised just 4.23 percent of the members of executive management teams. </span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Executive management. Isn't that where the ultimate hiring and procurement decisions get made in the business environment? That’s clearly an area for development.</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There's also work to do within the black community, itself, beginning with the black religious community. If it's true that charity begins at home, so does support for small businesses. Regrettably, the perverse cultural history of this country has taught black consumers that they, too, ought to ignore the goods and services of black businesses, no matter how superior or convenient they may be, as compared to their mainstream competitors. There’s a regrettable, but true, old saying in the black community, one which black folks have been taught to believe, that says: "the white man’s ice is colder and his sugar is sweeter."</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">How does the black community move toward eliminating it's own, self-destructive economic behaviors?</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A good place to start is the 2008 Pew Religious Landscape Study, which disclosed that, as compared to other religious traditions, 85 percent of congregants of historically black churches believe “religion is important in one’s life.” That feeling about religious guidance exceeded all but Jehovah’s Witnesses (86%), and it compares to national religious dependency levels of 56% for Catholics, 31 percent for Jews, 72 percent for Muslims and 35 percent for Buddhists. </span></li>
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<li><span style="line-height: 16.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Given these data, there's a role for the highly influential black church pastors to </span></span><span style="line-height: 16.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">play in </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 16.5pt;">creating respect and promoting patronage for black businesses, in New </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 16.5pt;">Jersey, and across </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 16.5pt;">the country. In addition to stressing the importance of this </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 16.5pt;">effort from their pulpits, black </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 16.5pt;">ministers can establish protocols for tracking </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 16.5pt;">purchases from businesses within their own </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 16.5pt;">congregations, and throughout their </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 16.5pt;">local communities. </span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The nation’s African-American businesses generated $137 billion in annual revenue, including small amounts from mainstream purchases, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Yet, African-American spending power is estimated at about $1 trillion. Where are black consumers spending that additional $863 billion, each year, if not with black-owned businesses? According to recent census data, African Americans spend just 7 cents out of every dollar at a black-owned business. While that's a much higher level than the expenditure rates by large, mainstream, corporations, it's still embarrassingly low, and has to change, too, if black businesses are to achieve full potential and have significant beneficial impact on the mainstream New Jersey economy. The Black Church should be joined in this effort to impact black purchasing patterns, by black media outlets.</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Next, universities must play a heightened role, through partnerships with public sector leaders, to produce branded training programs for those seeking employment. They should also review their economics and political curricula to ensure that the “inclusion business case” is appropriately reflected. Statewide media must accept the “improved relationship” theme as part of an imperative for editorial agendas, assuming they want the strengthened New Jersey economy and improved quality of life that would result. </span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Additionally, the African American Chamber, working together with public and private-sector leaders should take steps to update and enhance a central African-American business owners database. Such information would be utilized by both consumers, and businesses seeking vendors. This all-inclusive, online portal, which would have implications for use as a mobile application, would gather, update and disseminate information about black businesses, across all industry sectors. </span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For example, the website <a href="http://www.blackownedbiz.com/">www.blackownedbiz.com</a>, claims to have more than 10,000</span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> businesses listed on its site, including firms from 58 New Jersey cities and townships. </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">challenge for sites such as this one, and others like it, is their inability to provide </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">timely updates </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">of business listings, and the fact that they don’t proactively forward </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">potential black business </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">leads to interested parties. </span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">An expanded database, managed and promoted by the Chamber, would bring </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">additional </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">credibility and effectiveness to such sites and would remove, once and for </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">all, the time-worn </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">excuses, by businesses and consumers, that they WOULD have </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">used a black architect, plumber, </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">or chef, but they just couldn’t find one.</span></li>
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<li><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Finally, leaders at large publicly traded, New Jersey-based corporations must expand their views beyond the short-term focus on margin and begin to think, also, about the long-term benefit that would accrue to their businesses and communities through providing increased levels of contract opportunities to black and minority businesses, and management-level career positions to Jersey-based black executive talent. A good place to start would be the completion of community-wide, geo-coded, procurement audits, designed to uncover where and with whom corporations are choosing to spend their budget dollars, and how those decisions are impacting the broader New Jersey economy.</span></li>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Such an initiative would constitute a long-overdue transition from “fiscal-only” imperatives for procurement budgets, to a greater recognition for the need to have those expenditures also reflect the opportunity to have expanded economic impact, into the State's dramatically marginalized black and Hispanic communities. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Clearly, the greatest beneficiary of providing access to full economic inclusion to ALL New Jersey residents will be the Garden State, itself.</span></div>
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the black issuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13909212892157771943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2374900441933683707.post-27823625670730139862011-07-11T05:03:00.000-07:002011-07-11T05:29:49.863-07:00Rahm Is The Mayor. What Did We Learn?<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal;mso-outline-level:1"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><b><br /></b></span></p><table class="MsoNormalTable" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" style="mso-cellspacing:0in;margin-left:9.0pt;mso-yfti-tbllook:1184;mso-padding-alt: 0in 0in 0in 0in"><tbody><tr style="mso-yfti-irow:0;mso-yfti-firstrow:yes;mso-yfti-lastrow:yes"><td width="612" valign="top" style="width:459.0pt;padding:0in 0in 0in 0in"><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" > (Written February 25, 2011)</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">If you’re one of those people who has been patiently waiting to see whether the "post-racial society" – in the third year of the Obama administration – has finally begun to kick in for black Americans, this was a good week for you.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> Is the whole "rising tide lifting all boats" thing finally working for us? Are we moving up or falling further behind?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Let's start in Chicago, to see what we might have learned from the Windy City's mayor’s race, last Tuesday. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">By now, it’s not news anymore that Rahm Emanuel, who just a few months ago was supposed to be in the political “fight of his life” with Chicago’s black leadership, actually won that election – by a landslide.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">If you recall, black leaders in Chicago, including Rev. Jesse Jackson, in early January, had encouraged two of Emanuel’s leading black opponents to get out of the race, clearing the way for a single, black “consensus” candidate. That candidate, of course, was none other than Carol Moseley Braun, attorney, entrepreneur, first African-American female U.S. Senator, former U.S. Ambassador to New Zealand and former candidate for U.S. President of the United States, in the 2004 Democratic Primary Election.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">On paper, it looked like “a plan.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">If all had gone according to that plan, Emanuel, even with a bold, politically risky endorsement from the country’s “first black president,” Bill Clinton, in hand, would have gotten his back kicked out by a unified black vote and there would have been an African-American mayor in Chicago, again, for the first time since Harold Washington’s untimely death in 1987.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">That was the plan, anyway, right up until January 30, the day that Moseley Braun, during a Sunday political debate at Trinity United Church, out of the clear blue sky, called a political opponent a “crack head.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Apparently, the opponent, another black woman, named Patricia Van-Pelt Watkins (who commanded a whopping one percent of the vote in the polls, at the time) angered Moseley Braun when she remarked that the former U.S. Senator had been largely invisible in local Chicago politics, in recent years.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">When it was her turn to speak, Braun, the former U.S. presidential candidate, said: “Patricia, the reason you don’t know where I was for the last 20 years is because you were strung out on crack.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">While Watkins had openly admitted to drug use as a teen, there is absolutely no evidence that she ever experimented with or abused crack, at any point in her life.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">As they say in the sport of tennis, that statement, coming from a person who wanted to be elected mayor of the second largest city in the U.S., was “game, set and match" for the Carol Moseley Braun election campaign. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">At the time she made the comment, Moseley Braun had been running in second place, behind Emanuel with 21 percent of the vote. Just one month after the “crack head comment,” however, her support among likely voters had dropped to 10 percent and, on election day, she finished even lower, at 9 percent of the vote, behind two Hispanic candidates, former Chicago school board president Gery Chico and City Clerk Miguel del Valle and, of course, Emanuel.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Chicago, with more black residents than any other U.S. city (1,019,000) and 600,000 registered black voters, as compared to 500,000 registered white voters and 300,000 registered Hispanic voters, just saw, last week, an opportunity to elect its second African-American mayor “go up in smoke," so to speak.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Emanuel won the election with 317,000 votes, the lowest number of winning mayoral votes in Chicago history. Moseley Braun received a little more than 50,000 votes, and came in fourth, behind Chico with 138,000 votes and Del Valle, who attracted 53,000 voters. Turnout, in an historic Mayor's race, was 40 percent.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Some in Chicago seemed to leap to conclusions about Barack Obama’s impact on the outcome, despite his reluctance to take any side, at all, during the campaign. Straining to make that point, black Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell wrote: “Obama didn’t have to say anything. He just had to be. And from that point on race became a bad word in elections.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">She went on to officially declare that “Carol Moseley Braun's stunning defeat signals the end of the black political empowerment movement in Chicago.” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Really, Ms. Mitchell?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">How about the absolute lack of a responsible and credible black candidate? Was that a factor? And, how about the effect of the notorious crack comment? Didn’t any of that matter?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Why, in 2011, when the virtually all-white Tea Party is setting the political agenda in a disproportionately large number of states, including in Wisconsin, where the new governor, Scott Walker, was elected with Tea Party support, are black pundits in such a rush to discredit the value of having a viable, black voting bloc? Have Hispanics stopped voting for their candidates or for their issues, as a collective? And, wasn’t it also just last week when we saw a stunning announcement from the Obama administration that proved that the gay voting bloc was still intact, and operating at full force? <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Aside from Chicago, there was also the poll released, this past week, by the Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard University that informed us that, despite having the most significant economic barriers to their success, 85 percent of African Americans remain “optimistic” about the U.S. economy – for themselves and for their children.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">“The Recession was worse for (blacks), than the previous business cycle … “ said Christian Welle, Professor at The University of Massachusetts and “since then," he said, "things have not gotten any better.” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">The Washington Post poll informed us, for example, that in the event of job loss, 16.4 percent of white households wouldn’t have enough net worth to live for three months at the poverty level.” For black households, the poll reported, a stunning 41.7 percent wouldn’t have enough.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">In the face of all of that, blacks informed the pollsters that what keeps them optimistic are two things – their “faith in God” and their belief that Barack Obama, as President of the United States, will eventually take steps that will improve economic conditions for them and for their children.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">What we have learned from that, I imagine, is that there isn’t very much anyone can do to turn black voters into political pragmatists, the kind of people who hold elected officials accountable, by 2012. The more they suffer during the term of a favored elected official, the more, it seems, they become “optimistic.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">At the same time, I guarantee you the Obama 2012 campaign advisors have learned that it is virtually impossible for the “second black president" to lose African-American support. Therefore, it probably doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for them to squander valuable political campaign funds to reach out to black voters or to make campaign promises to them. They obviously have no intention of going anywhere else.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Maybe what we need is more of the approach taken by the chaplain in the old WWII song, who said to U.S. troops in the middle of battle:" Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition." The other, more passive approach, relying only on faith, is "killing" us.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Then, there's the growing chorus of “Negro leaders” and political commentators who (get paid to) tell us that voting in a bloc is bad politics for blacks, no matter what whites, other ethnic groups and special interest groups do. That's a recipe for even further black political disaster.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Looks like the 2012 Presidential Election will be another one wherein we believe in the candidate way more than the candidate believes in us, and when not much will have changed for us once it’s over.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">That certainly looks like the lesson we should have learned from the Chicago election. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" >Were we paying attention?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" > ###########</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><br /></span></p><table class="MsoNormalTable" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" style="mso-cellspacing:0in;mso-yfti-tbllook:1184;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 0in 0in"><tbody><tr style="mso-yfti-irow:0;mso-yfti-firstrow:yes;mso-yfti-lastrow:yes"><td valign="top" style="padding:0in 0in 0in 0in"><table class="MsoNormalTable" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" style="mso-cellspacing:0in;mso-yfti-tbllook:1184;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 0in 0in"><tbody><tr style="mso-yfti-irow:0;mso-yfti-firstrow:yes;mso-yfti-lastrow:yes"><td valign="top" style="padding:0in 0in 0in 0in"> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:5.0pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p> </o:p></span></p> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> </td> </tr></tbody></table>the black issuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13909212892157771943noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2374900441933683707.post-85804204626176249902011-07-11T04:45:00.000-07:002011-07-11T05:03:04.857-07:00Americans May Soon Walk Like Egyptians<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal;mso-outline-level:1"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><b><u><br /></u></b></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" >(Written February 19, 2011)</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Have you had about enough news about Egypt? Is your head starting to spin as you try to figure out whether the next, biggest “unrest” story is coming from Egypt itself, or from the “protest of the day” In Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan, Libya or Sudan?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Even now, after three consecutive weeks of 24/7 media focus on "Middle East unrest", can you find any of those places, other than Egypt, of course, on a map without a great deal of assistance?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Was it as strange for you as it was for me to see the president of the United States flip-flopping back and forth in his support for Hosni Mubarak, the 30-year U.S. ally? Was it stranger still to see Mubarak quit abruptly and leave Cairo by helicopter, just one day after saying emphatically that he wasn’t going anywhere,, and after he had vowed to “punish” the demonstrators? <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Even before events in Egypt came to a head, there had been unrest in Tunisia, and in Jordan, a major recipient of U.S. foreign aid. Also hit with demonstrations has been Sudan, which receives about $300 million annually in U.S. aid. Bahrain, home to a huge U.S. naval base, has also been the target of protestors.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Curiously, even though the U.S. provides $1.75 billion per year in foreign aid to Egypt (second in the region, only behind the $2.75 billion given annually to Israel), a recent poll by Zogby International has made it clear that the unrest in Egypt was probably just as much an anti-U.S. phenomenon, as it was an anti-Mubarak event.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">According to the poll, 85 percent of Egyptians had an unfavorable attitude toward the U.S., 87 percent had "no confidence" in the U.S. and 92 percent named the U.S. as one of two nations that are the greatest threat to their country.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Those poll results and these recent events have been clear indicators that the U.S. is going to have to conduct itself much differently in the next few months, and over the coming years, if it ever hopes to regain the respect of people in the Middle East and elsewhere.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Notwithstanding the importance and value of oil, for example, the U.S. is going to have to learn to pursue it without having a total disregard for the lives of those in the countries where it is produced.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">I hope it’s become increasingly clear to the president of the United States, and to Congress, that people around the world no longer seem to be impressed by how powerful, rich and influential the United States used to be in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">It’s apparent that when they look this way, both friends and foes of the U.S. see a country that hasn’t won a major war since 1945, and a nation with a chronic and growing unemployment problem that has seriously diminished its ability to function as a leading global economic power.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">They’re also seeing, more and more, a country that has to be increasingly concerned about the potential for addressing its own domestic challenges and protests.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">In that regard, it was especially interesting to hear, early during the Egyptian protests, that the people in that country were demonstrating because they had an unemployment rate of 9.75 percent, that the cost of food had grown unacceptably high and because there was a far-too-great economic disparity between rich and poor in the country.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">When I heard that, I was struck by the similarities between what was happening in Egypt and what we’re beginning to see here in the “good ole U.S.A.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">If you thought the people in Egypt, Bahrain and Tunisia were angry and frustrated, maybe you should take a closer look at the faces of the 30,0000 people who marched on the Wisconsin legislature last week, protesting a bill that would diminish the power of labor unions over all, and substantially reduce pensions and benefits for members of teachers’ unions.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">That protest grew so ugly so quickly that 14 Democratic legislators actually left the State capitol to avoid participating in the vote and to prevent the government from having the quorum needed to pass the legislation.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">State troopers were called in and the governor threatened to call in the National Guard.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">But it’s not just Wisconsin.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">It’s been reported that 40 states across the country are trying to address budget shortfalls that may climb to $140 billion. The resultant budget cuts will have disastrous impacts, among other things, on the country’s 14,000 school districts for at least the next five years. Most states are targeting areas such as health care, public school education, university funding and services to senior citizens and to low- income youths to close their budget gaps.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">In November of last year, 500 students converged on Baton Rouge, La. to protest cuts in state education. One student, from the University of New Orleans, was quoted as saying, “The cleaning staff in the Liberal Arts building has been laid off. The classrooms are filthy. It’s not uncommon to see trash all over the room.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">In addition, in March of last year, thousands protested education budget reductions in California, and in May, an estimated 35,000 people, the largest group of protestors ever assembled in the state of New Jersey, gathered in Trenton, the state capital, to protest Governor Christie’s education budget cuts.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Two things bother me about all of this: One, our mainstream media outlets are diligently covering stories about government unrest in the Middle East, and occasionally, in Europe, but seem not to be interested in similar stories right here.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Secondly, our elected officials, especially those who claim to be fiscal conservatives, or who profess affiliation with the so-called Tea Party, seem to be taking an all-too-theoretical and dogmatic approach to the pain their trendy new “deficit reduction-or-bust” ideology is inflicting on the American people. They seem to be really impressed with hearing themselves repeat for Fox Cable Channel and the Wall Street Journal that the only way to improve the economy is to reduce taxes for the extremely rich and to cut services — across the board — for the American people as a whole, especially for those who are most economically vulnerable, including most African Americans.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">The idea that they might be able to improve city, state or federal economies solely by reducing the size of governmental budgets is absolutely ludicrous. It’s like trying to convince an already-destitute family that the best way for them to improve their wealth is to stop spending.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Global economic supremacy has shifted over the past decade, from the West to the East. Consequently, the U.S. is suffering through a significant economic crisis. It doesn’t help that our politicians seem not to understand how to stop spewing empty rhetoric about budget cuts and deficit reductions, or how to start changing our national business and economic models so the country and its businesses can go back to generating revenues and creating jobs.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">If they can’t learn to do these things, it seems to me, our elected officials, much like those who are being toppled across the Middle East, will simply have to be removed from office as soon as humanly possible.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Too many Americans are already seriously at risk, largely due to conditions they had absolutely no role in creating. We can’t afford to endure indecision, incompetence or empty ideologies very much longer, or to continue to have our elected officials cater irresponsibly to those in our society who absolutely did create these circumstances and who, even at this late date, are still committed to maintaining the status quo.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Pretty soon, the people in Egypt may very well be watching us on their flat-screen TV sets as we’re having our own anti-government demonstrations, here in the U.S.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> ####################</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>the black issuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13909212892157771943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2374900441933683707.post-35148849865625800622011-07-11T04:32:00.000-07:002011-07-11T04:45:02.454-07:00Outrage in Ohio Leads To Effective Response<h1><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 36px;"><br /></span></span></h1> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;line-height: normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <table class="MsoNormalTable" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" style="mso-cellspacing:0in;mso-yfti-tbllook:1184;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 0in 0in"> <tbody><tr style="mso-yfti-irow:0;mso-yfti-firstrow:yes;mso-yfti-lastrow:yes"> <td valign="top" style="padding:0in 0in 0in 0in"> <table class="MsoNormalTable" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" style="mso-cellspacing:0in;mso-yfti-tbllook:1184;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 0in 0in"><tbody><tr style="mso-yfti-irow:0;mso-yfti-firstrow:yes;mso-yfti-lastrow:yes"><td valign="top" style="padding:0in 0in 0in 0in"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p> (Written February 11, 2011)</o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" align="center" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;text-align:center;line-height:normal"><b><span style="font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Outrage in Ohio Leads To Effective Response</span></b><span style="font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">An anonymous African-American man once said, in describing the attraction that black folks have for “the blues," as a musical form, that “we've been down so long, getting up don’t even cross our mind.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">I had begun to accept, reluctantly, the fundamental truth in that statement, given the lack of focus and energy I’ve seen, recently, in our local and national community about things that should engage us.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">I’ve been disappointed that we seem not to care as much anymore about demonstrating our ability to mobilize around an issue. Sadly, we seem to have lost our interest in confronting those who insult, demean and marginalize us. Not only do we no longer accept the old, established, black leadership organizations, but we publicly denounce the concept that black people need any leadership, at all, to move from “Point A” to "Point B,” as if the laws of management and nature, themselves, no longer apply to us and we’ve, somehow, outgrown the need for them.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Hell, we’ve even lost interest in being “black,” lately, and we seem to join in enthusiastically in every idle discussion about why black self-identity no longer matters.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">We’ve stopped defending what has always belonged to us and we have no collective thought about what should be ours in the future.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">In the main, black people I see – across all income and educational levels – just seem to be satisfied that they are “here.” <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">It’s … getting ….really …. depressing.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""><br /> <!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br /> <!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">That being the case, when I see a sign, any sign at all, that we’re beginning to stir, or that we’re ready to fight again for what’s right, to do what needs to be done to preserve our families and our community, I do get a little encouraged. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">This past week was one of those times.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">I went back to look at a story that had shocked and angered me when it first circulated in late January. It was the one, of course, about a young African-American woman named Kelly Williams-Bolar who, you may recall, seemed, at first glance, to be one of the most admirable models for “bootstrap self-improvement” that our community has seen in a long time.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Not only had she taken steps, back in 2006, to move her two daughters into a much better-quality public school system than the dramatically under-performing one to which her children had been assigned, she also was gainfully employed as a teachers' aide in one of her local high schools. In addition, she was just a few credit hours short of earning her degree in education at the University of Akron.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Do you know what Ms. Williams-Bolar's reward was for doing all of that? She was sentenced by Common Pleas Court in Summit County, Ohio, in late January, to five years in prison- - all but ten days of which were suspended – two years of probation and 80 hours of community service.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Her crime? When she transferred her children out of the Akron Public School system and into the suburban Copley-Fairlawn School District, where the average household income ranges up to $88,000 per year, where more than 90 percent of the residents are white and an astounding 41 percent of the population in one of the District’s townships have at least a bachelor's degree, she told school officials that her daughters lived with her father, Edward Williams, who actually lives within the District’s boundaries. In actuality, however, the primary residence for the young mother and her two daughters was a public housing project in Akron in Ohio.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Uh-oh!<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Once that was discovered by the School District, the officials decided to bring criminal charges against Ms. Williams-Bolar. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">There is no doubt that what happened in that Summit County court room last month was designed to “send a message” to other poor, non-white families that such behavior is not only unacceptable, but that it would also lead to a conviction for having committed a felony.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">That being the case, the Summit County prosecutor, a woman named Sherri Bevan Walsh, who has had a highly controversial career in her own right, also brought charges against Kelly’s father, Edward Williams. The first charge, amazingly, was “grand larceny,” for misappropriating what the prosecutor estimated as $30,000 in tuition for the two girls, over a two-year period; the second was “tampering with records, in connection with a related fraud claim.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">The first time I heard about Ms. Williams-Bolar, her father, her two children and the criminal charges, I thought the whole thing was an ill-conceived joke. But, it was absolutely real.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Gradually, however, I began to recognize, as horrendous as all of this has been, that for at least a brief moment, some black people and several whites "of good conscience," actually did wake up and become engaged in pushing back against an abusive legal system in Ohio.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">All of a sudden, there was the ubiquitous Rev. Al Sharpton, getting personally involved in raising cash to help defray Ms. Williams-Bolar's legal expenses, through his National Action Network.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">There was the equally ubiquitous Rev. Jesse Jackson, threatening to push for a piece of national legislation that would ensure equal access to quality education, regardless of family income.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">The Atlanta Journal and Constitution and the recently chastised and more-sensitive-to-black-folks National Public Radio (see “Juan Williams”), even weighed in, calling Ms. Williams-Bolar “the Rosa Parks of education reform.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Two online advocacy organizations, </span><a href="http://change.org/" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";color:blue">Change.Org</span></a><span style="font-size: 12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> and Color of Change, asked visitors to their web sites to sign petitions requesting Ohio’s Governor John Kasich, who, by the way, until very recently, had been widely criticized, himself, for not having any people of color in his cabinet, to drop the charges against the young mother and her father. It was very good to see more than 165,000 petitions from those two web sites signed in just a very brief period of time.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Hey, even "big-time" P. Diddy took a few minutes off from selling Ciroc and generally “living large” to send out a tweet, asking his 3.2 million followers on Twitter to send messages to the governor. His tweet was very direct and “on time:” “I want all 3m of yall 2 hit up @ johnkasich and tell him Moms shouldn't go to jail for protecting their kids.”<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">That’s what I’m talking ‘bout!<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">That’s the kind of coordinated activity, the kind of passion and focus we’ve been missing on our issues, now, for far too long.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">And, you know what? It seems to be working.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">The Ohio Justice and Policy Center has announced that it is providing a new legal defense team to appeal Ms. Williams-Bolar's’s two felony convictions and to seek a pardon on her behalf so she can return to the pursuit of a teaching career, which had been precluded by her felony conviction.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Last Tuesday, Governor Kasich ordered the Ohio State Parole Board to investigate the validity of the felony conviction. At the end of the day, the only person of note who should have, but who hasn’t, weighed in on this subject is, of course, your President of the United States. It was an appropriate issue and it might have helped.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">At the end of the day, what this case has shown us is that there still is great value in activism and in raising the public profile of racial and social injustice. Clearly, it has also shown us that there is an important role that social media can and must play in our efforts going forward.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">It’s been a rough couple of weeks, I’m sure, for the Williams family, but maybe we all learned something in the process.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">I hope so. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">And, by the way, don’t forget to send out your own tweet to Governor Kasich.<br /> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt; line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:5.0pt;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman""> #######<o:p></o:p></span></p> </td> </tr> </tbody></table> </td> </tr></tbody></table>the black issuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13909212892157771943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2374900441933683707.post-89651937556057264922011-07-11T04:09:00.000-07:002011-07-11T04:30:30.401-07:00Pew's Philadelphia City Council Report: Research or Agenda-Setting?<p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-top-alt:auto;mso-margin-bottom-alt:auto; text-align:justify;line-height:normal;mso-outline-level:1"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 27px;"><b><u><br /></u></b></span></span></p><br />(Written on February 3, 2011) <table class="MsoNormalTable" border="0" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" style="mso-cellspacing:0in;mso-yfti-tbllook:1184;mso-padding-alt:0in 0in 0in 0in"><tbody><tr style="mso-yfti-irow:0;mso-yfti-firstrow:yes;mso-yfti-lastrow:yes"><td valign="top" style="padding:0in 0in 0in 0in"><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px; "><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><b> </b>I</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 16px; "> can't help myself.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Every time I see one of those Pew Charitable Trust Philadelphia Research I<span style="background:yellow">nitiative </span>announcements, such as the one last week called "City Councils in Philadelphia and Other Major Cities," I get flashbacks to the old Peter Paul "Mounds/Almond Joy" commercials. Sometimes I feel like I should believe what they're telling me... and, sometimes, I just don't.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">I must admit, it's hard for me to forget that the Pew Charitable Trust was established by the same family that founded the Sun Oil Company (Sunoco, today) and that the company and its patriarch, Joseph Pew, made no secret of their genuine distaste for Franklin D. Roosevelt, for his Depression-busting New Deal program or for organized labor, of any kind.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Somehow, I also can't seem to forget that Mr. Pew was known during his heyday as a source of millions of dollars of political funding and that he consequently became recognized as the "political boss" of Pennsylvania, influencing the outcomes of both statewide and national elections.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">I remember each time I see a communication from Pew that it was known as a funder, primarily, of extremely conservative issues and organizations, including the John Birch Society, and I wonder how much the organization has really changed, today. More recently and, perhaps, this is my most troublesome Pew association, it was also the Charitable Trust that led the effort to manipulate the transfer of the $25 billion Barnes Art Collection away from historically black Lincoln University's control, as Dr. Barnes, himself, had stipulated in his will, and into the control of Pew, and other major, mainstream non-profits.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">To further complicate all of this, I'm also aware that Pew Research Center has been called the third-most-powerful think tank in Washington, D.C., and that there is a related entity called the Pew Center for Civic Journalism, which, over the last 17 years or so, has ingratiated itself with( Dare we say "compromised?") an impressive list of print and broadcast media outlets by funding their local community outreach projects. As a result, Pew probably has many more friends, if they need them, in the mainstream media than most of the others of us have, all put together.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">So, given all of that, whenever I see an announcement about Pew having sponsored a political project, I tend to hold it up to the light, and shake it, to make sure I haven't missed the "real story."<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">After the second reading of last week's "Philadelphia City Council Report," I began to feel that, perhaps, the people at Pew weren't so much interested in just sharing comparative data about Councilmanic bodies nationwide. Rather, I got the distinct impression that they were more interested in getting Philadelphians "fired up" and anxious to "throw out the scoundrels" in City Council, who had clearly, from the way the data were reported, "stayed too long at the party." And, I couldn't help wondering...if the people at Pew are so adamant about getting rid of the Councilpeople we have now, just who would they like to see elected in their places? It's hard to imagine, knowing the organization's history, that they don't have some idea, and that someone over there isn't working to have that done, even as we speak. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">That's not good.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">In the opening statement of the report, Pew noted, "The 17 current members of City Council have served longer (an average of 15.5 years), than their peers in 14 other cities," and they comprise "Philadelphia's longest-tenured Council in at least the past six decades."<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">The report moved quickly thereafter to a discussion of the benefits of term limits for City Council elections. Looks as though the people at Pew's Philadelphia Research Initiative are just as anxious to make a case for throwing out the City's incumbent Council members as their former colleagues at the Inquirer and Daily News seem to be.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Also troubling was the dramatic flourish, in the report, of dividing the Council's annual budget by the number of Council persons and coming up with the meaningless "roughly $1.1 million per seat" figure that taxpayers expend every year for each Councilperson. Using that same logic, are we then expected to divide the 100 U.S. Senators into the $3.8 trillion federal budget and call each of their offices a "$38 billion seat?" Ridiculous, huh?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Especially during the ongoing Great Recession, Pew's mention of the $121,107 salary of the average Philadelphia Councilperson was probably expected to raise eyebrows and drop jaws all over the City. I do believe, however, that our friends at Pew lost a bit of intended impact when they also noted that Philadelphia City Council salaries are the fourth-largest out of fifteen City Councils that were reviewed nationwide. Most Philadelphians, I'm sure, recognizing that their city is the nation's sixth-largest, don't have very much of a problem seeing that their Council representatives are fourth-best compensated.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">I was ready to get incensed by the section of the report that said our Council people have access to city-owned cars, until I got to the part that explained that only seven out of 17 Council members actually take a car from the City, at all. <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Despite the generally lackluster quality of the overall "findings," there was one section of the Pew report that did get my attention. That was the section of the document that raised the issue of "redistricting," and how it will almost certainly create more difficulty for residents who are interested in doing political organizing and make it easier for incumbents to hold onto their seats. If done in the old, politically self-serving way in which it is usually handled, that process could produce absolutely disastrous results for Philadelphia's 625,000 black residents.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Pew was very careful to pinpoint the dual responsibility of the Mayor and City Council, itself, for ensuring that "redistricting" is done on a fair and equitable basis. The report writers also pointed out that neither the Mayor, nor the Council, has given any indication, as of yet, as to how they plan to ensure the sanctity of that process. We should all pay attention to that and follow up with the mayor and our district councilpeople to make sure they pay proper attention to this issue.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Then, Pew, surprisingly, brought up the issue of assuring that the "underserved" continue to be fairly represented on City Councils, nationwide. In most cities, they reported, the percentage of blacks in City Council is about the same as in the city's general population. As proof, they offered that blacks make up 43 percent of Philadelphia's population and they comprise 41 percent of the City Council's members. What they chose not to mention, however, is that while whites represent 45 percent of the City's population, the nine members of City Council who happen to be white, comprise 53 percent of all Council seats. Similarly, in Boston, a city which is now 51.6 percent comprised of Black, Hispanic, Asian and mixed-race persons, whites continue to be overrepresented in that City Council, holding 75% of the twelve filled seats.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">I know, I know.. the race or ethnicity of a Councilperson really shouldn't matter, but since Pew brought it up...let's tell the whole truth, and find out if it really does make a difference --politically-- and if so, why it does, in the first place.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Sounds like a good topic for Pew to include in one of its civic journalism programs. Have we come far enough as a society that the race of our elected officials, the race and ethnicity of our journalists and the race and ethnicity of the leaders of our think tanks and foundations no longer matter in political decision-making?<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"">Now, that's a report I would read right away.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;text-align: justify;line-height:normal"><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> <o:p></o:p></span></p> <h1><span style="font-size:12.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman""> #########</span><span style="font-size:24.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; color:windowtext;mso-font-kerning:18.0pt"> <o:p></o:p></span></h1> <h1><span style="font-size:24.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:windowtext;mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></h1> <h1><span style="font-size:24.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:windowtext;mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></h1> <h1><span style="font-size:24.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";color:windowtext;mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt"><o:p> </o:p></span></h1></td></tr></tbody></table>the black issuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13909212892157771943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2374900441933683707.post-41741081559199873302011-01-11T08:18:00.000-08:002011-01-11T09:12:31.132-08:00Keep an Eye on the Glib and Dangerous Haley Barbour.It’s starting to appear that, over the next year or so, we in the black community may have to start paying a great deal more attention to what’s taking place in Yazoo City, and especially to the words of one of its most famous native sons, a glib, repackaged white-supremacist sympathizer named Haley Barbour.<br /><br />Don’t pretend you never heard of Yazoo City … it’s only about an hour and a half’s drive from Philadelphia. No, not Philadelphia, Pennsylvania – Philadelphia, Mississippi.<br />For those who think Philadelphia, Pennsylvania could stand improvement, let me remind you that Philadelphia, Mississippi is a place where just 19.8 percent of the population has a high school diploma, where the per-capita income is $25,807, where there is just one commercial bank and where the population is 46.2 percent black and 48.1 percent white.<br /><br />The town became forever infamous when three "Freedom Riders" – two, white and Jewish, and the other black, were murdered at the height of the Civil Rights era, right before their bodies were set on fire.<br /><br />That happened just down the road from where Haley Barbour was born and raised. It was the case wherein FBI investigators, while looking for the hidden remains of the three murdered young men, uncovered the bodies of seven other black lynching victims, whose deaths hadn’t even been reported. That was the same case wherein officials in Mississippi refused to even prosecute the killers.<br /><br />Just two years before that, a black Air Force veteran named James Meredith put his own life at risk and had to be escorted to class by federal marshals after winning a lawsuit to desegregate the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss), a school whose history includes having its entire student body and many faculty members walk off the campus and enlist in the Confederate Army, during the Civil War.<br /><br />“Ole Miss” is located in Oxford Mississippi, only about 116 miles from Haley Barbour's Yazoo City. At the time of the desegregation effort, Barbour, future Mississippi Governor, future chair of the Republican National Committee and, now, an extremely likely and loquacious candidate for President of the United States, in 2012, was 15 years old. At the time of the murder of the Civil Rights workers, Mr. Barbour was 17 years of age– certainly old enough to have a full comprehension of what was going on around him, certainly old enough to understand that much of the most violent and unrelenting resistance to Civil Rights and equal opportunity for blacks in the South had come from the Ku Klux Klan and from Mississippi’s own White Citizens' Council.<br /><br />Barbour, until last month, seemed to have successfully re-made himself as a racially sensitive,"new Southerner." In an interview, in December, however, in The Weekly Standard, Mr. Barbour, whose company Barbour Griffin, and Rogers, was described by Fortune Magazine, in 2001, as the most powerful lobbying firm in America, mentioned that he “just (didn’t) remember (the Civil Rights struggle in Yahoo City) as being that bad." He then went on to say that, as he recalled it, rather than being protectors for “European-American heritage,” as was the Council’s expressed mission, the White Citizens' Council was simply “an organization of town leaders.”<br /><br />What Barbour glossed over, or conveniently forgot, during his interview, is that, during those years, the White Citizens' Council functioned very much like the Ku Klux Klan, in his town and across his state, except that its members, many of whom were also Klan members, refrained from wearing hoods and robes in public. Even without hoods, they somehow, managed to aggressively resist integration, to create white-only private schools to blunt the impact of Brown vs. Board of Education, and to run, successfully, for numerous public offices.<br /><br />Barbour also was a staunch supporter of Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell’s declaration of Confederate History Month, last April, when McDonnell got all sentimental about the wonderfulness of the Confederacy without feeling the need to offer a single mention of the institution of slavery, whatsoever.<br /><br />Bringing up slavery in a discussion about the Confederacy, presidential-hopeful Barbour said, at the time, was very much like trying to "make a big deal out of something that doesn’t amount to diddly."<br /><br />"Diddly," Governor Barbour?<br /><br />A conservatively estimated 11 million Africans shipped from their own continent to the West, resulting in loss of language, culture and their own economic resources, and contributing directly to the deaths of an also-conservatively-estimated 2.5 million of them, in the process--is that what you call “diddly?"<br /><br />Barbour's comments have made it very clear that gross, racial insensitivity is not dead, yet, in America, even at the highest levels of government. His words and actions also constitute evidence that we need to step up our activities directed at supporting politicians who are actually committed to assisting us in achieving our reasonable political and economic objectives. His very existence on the political landscape is a sign that we really do need to elect and support politicians who reject, as we do, the long-held assumption that it is normal, in America, for blacks to have substantially higher unemployment levels, for us to suffer significant negative disparities with regard to health care, for us to be satisfied to have low, single-digit participation in the national economy, and for us to have substantially lower median household incomes and net worth levels.<br /><br />These conditions used to make us angry – today, somehow, they no longer do. These conditions used to cause us to make demands of the private sector and of elected officials. In 2011, we seem strangely contented and satisfied to be “marginal” Americans” and, even, ashamed to bring such topics up, in public. As a consequence , other folks are "eating our lunches," taking jobs we formerly held, and winning the contracts in which we deserve to participate.<br /><br />Despite the fact that Americans of European descent have routinely received more than 95 percent of contract dollars from local, state and federal governments, we don’t get upset when “Judas Goat” black elected officials chide us for not "making it on our own" as they inaccurately say white businesses do.<br /><br />Hey, if we somehow,"flipped the script" and black-owned businesses began to win 95 percent of the contracts that comprise the country’s $3.8 trillion annual budget, and if our most successful business leaders and our largest corporations routinely got away with paying little or no taxes, with the full support of the government, as we've recently seen in the mainstream business community, then we, too, would be just fine, socially and economically.<br /><br />It is an absolute fact that when local, state and federal governments, or the private sector buy paper clips, computers, vehicles, new construction or even agricultural products, they rarely, if ever, buy them from black suppliers, putting our community well behind the economic "eight ball." It's easy to understand why black businesses participate in less than one half of one percent of gross receipts in this country.<br /><br />Here we are, faced with another two-year cycle of intensive campaigning for presidential office and, so far, neither party and none of the candidates, seem to be thinking, at all, about the things that could, and should, be done to finally make blacks in this country “full-fledged Americans,” with all the power, privilege, economic resources and authority related thereto. They do, however, want us to vote for them, anyway.<br /><br />We’ve got our "friends" in the Democratic Party, on the one side, wanting us, for their own political advantage, to say nothing, at all, about what we need to bring about the inclusion we so sorely need.<br /><br />And, on the other side, we’ve got an early Republican challenger, in an increasingly "Red" America, who has said, among other dubious things, that the White Citizens' Council's actions and the Civil Rights struggles “weren’t that bad,” and that slavery, as he recalls, wasn’t “diddly.”<br /><br />Looks like, even in the midst of holding both major parties accountable, leading up to 2012, we're going to have to watch this guy, Haley Barbour, very closely. He seems dangerous.<br /><br /> He also may very well be...the next President of the United States.<br /> #########the black issuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13909212892157771943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2374900441933683707.post-5405598595869071662011-01-09T05:46:00.000-08:002011-01-09T06:03:35.743-08:00Short-Sighted Harrisburg Democrats "Cut Off Their Own Noses."By one definition, “Cutting off your nose to spite your face” is “...a needlessly self-destructive over-reaction to a problem...or pursuing revenge in a way that would damage oneself more than the source of one’s anger.”<br /><br />How else would you describe a situation wherein State Representative Dwight Evans' re-election bid for chairman of the House Appropriations Committee was rejected by 50 out of 89 Democratic members of the Pennsylvania House, including what has been described, by people who were there, as a “surprisingly large number” of Philadelphia-based representatives.<br /><br />They joined in stripping Evans of the seat he had held for 20 years, even though he had demonstrated, throughout his tenure, great sensitivity and support for Philadelphia and southeastern Pennsylvania issues. They also ensured that the power in that seat, held by a Philadelphian for so long that most Philadelphia-area observers had taken that invaluable resource for granted, would be shifted to Rep. Joseph Markosek of Allegheny County. Good "looking out," huh?<br /><br />Sadly, I got the impression that there had been far too little focus by Philadelphia’s legislators or, even, by their constituents in the private sector and civic leadership community, on crafting a strategy that would preserve meaningful leadership representation in the House for our part of the State.<br /><br />The local media were certainly not innocent bystanders in southeastern Pennsylvania's "meltdown," focusing as they did,on the titillating prospect of the powerful Evans being deposed, and spelling out why such a thing might be feasible or understandable. That created an environment, in my opinion, that emboldened the anti-Evans/anti-Philadelphia co-conspirators.<br /><br />There were stories that indicated that Evans had been perceived as “arrogant” by his peers, and rumors about his reluctance to support the convening of the legislature's “lame duck” session (that which is scheduled after the actual election in early November, but before the newly elected members of the House and Senate take office).It was said that Evans wanted to avoid the "lame duck" session because of his concern that a Fiscal Oversight Office would be approved, limiting the power of Appropriations chairs. It was offered as “common knowledge” that the “lame duck thing" had really “ticked off” Evans' Democratic colleagues and sealed his fate.<br /><br />Evans was not entirely without blame in contributing to some of these negative perceptions and, as the anti-Evans “feeding frenzy” grew, his colleagues – most “off-the-record,” but some few, on-the-record” – even protested the former chairman’s handling of "WAM money" (those off-the-budget allocations to rank-and-file legislators for their own Districts' projects). "WAM's" are not inconsequential, having been estimated for just the last six months of 2008, alone, at $110 million, in a June 2009 article by the Associated Press. That amount, according to the AP, was equivalent to “$438,000, on average, for each of Pennsylvania’s lawmakers.” Tied to that was the implication that Evans funneled a disproportionately large number of such dollars back to his own district and didn’t share enough of those funds with his fellow-House members.<br /><br />Then, there was the “Bill DeWeese issue,” wherein the “smart people” said that Evans had seriously miscalculated by supporting a challenger to former House Speaker and long-time Greene County Rep. Bill DeWeese, during the last elections. DeWeese won anyway. A wily, verbose, ex-Marine, a student of warfare, military leadership styles and political strategies, with an earned “eye-for-an-eye” reputation, DeWeese, it was said, took Evans’ lack of support very personally, and committed himself to doing everything reasonably or unreasonably possible to ensure Dwight’s defeat in the leadership elections.<br /><br />Ironically, even during this era of Tea Party/Republican resurgence, it's clear that these leadership election outcomes had virtually nothing to do with partisanship and almost everything to do with geography. This was a political strategy that the"West" had clearly prepared for, while the "East," unfortunately, seemed to be absolutely unprepared and defenseless.<br /><br />As a result, not only is Pennsylvania’s Governor-elect an Allegheny County resident, by vote of the statewide electorate, but so are, both, the Democratic and Republican floor leaders in the Pennsylvania House (for the first time in 40 years), the minority leader in the Senate and the newly elected Caucus Chair in the House. In addition, Sen. Scarnati, nominated by the Republican Caucus to serve as President Pro Tempore, hails from Jefferson County, in the West, and the House Whip Michael Hanna Sr. and Rep. Ron Buxton, the Caucus Administrator, are from Central Pennsylvania. And , then, of course, there is Markosek, as we said, also from Allegheny County.<br /><br />In fact, in 2011, there will be no Philadelphia members serving in the Pennsylvania House leadership – none.<br /><br />There is little doubt that the votes of the Democratic Caucus members were also influenced by the long-standing perception of a strong southeastern bias by Governor Edward G.Rendell, a man some had come to call the “Governor of Philadelphia,” and who had gone so far as to hold down a "part-time job" as a broadcaster for Eagles' games, in a state blessed with, both, eastern and western Pennsylvania NFL franchises.<br /><br />No one should have been surprised by the western Pennsylvania move. What was surprising, however, is that the Philadelphia-based legislators came to the table without an apparent strategy of their own. Even if they, themselves, had, somehow, developed a distaste for Dwight Evans' leadership style, the shame is that they seemed not to have a cohesive "Plan B."<br /><br />This is where the “cutting off your nose …” part comes into play.<br /><br />In media interviews, both, Philadelphia legislators Mike O’Brien and Angel Cruz made it clear that they voted against Evans and, in so doing, opted to diminish Philadelphia and southeastern Pennsylvania influence in the General Assembly and in discretionary aspects of the State's $28 billion budget. While they weren't the only two, they seemed to gloat the most about having played such an important role in unseating a Philadelphia-based decision-maker.<br />My question to O’Brien and Cruz, and to the other Philadelphia co-conspirators, is this: Now what?<br /><br />With no Philadelphia-sensitive voice now in the House leadership and with a Governor-elect who will, as an Allegheny County resident, understandably be very much attuned to Western Pennsylvania issues and projects, where do Philadelphians go, in the House, when "juice" is needed? My hunch is that the members of the Philadelphia delegation and most politically savvy southeast Pennsylvanians will start missing Dwight Evans' chairmanship role in about two weeks. By that time, of course, it will be too late.<br /><br />When Philadelphians went to the polls on November 2, we didn't intend to come away with less support from our state government. But that’s exactly what just happened, as result of the brilliant and ruthless geographic strategy by Western elected officials, and the all-too-spiteful, disjointed and passive reaction by Philadelphia's own legislators.<br /><br />Next time you go up to Harrisburg, take a peek into the House chambers and get a good look at the legislators who voted to reduce Philadelphia’s influence in the House. You’ll be able to recognize them; they’ll be the ones without the noses.<br /><br />Oh, and by the way, while you’re out at the State Capitol building, also make a point of stopping into the Senate chambers to say hello to the Hon. Vincent Hughes, the newly elected minority chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee and the Hon. Anthony Hardy Williams, the new Minority Caucus Chair, in the Senate.<br /><br />Senators Hughes and Williams are the only African-American legislators who will be holding leadership positions in either the House or the Senate, in the coming year, and two of only three Philadelphians with such a role in the Senate. Looks like, at least, a couple of people were wide awake.<br /><br />Congratulations, Senators Hughes and Williams, but, as you do your jobs in the State Capitol Building, this year, please make sure that you take the time, every now and then, to “count all the noses” in the room.<br />###########the black issuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13909212892157771943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2374900441933683707.post-2439677565866552492011-01-08T06:57:00.000-08:002011-01-08T07:28:31.115-08:00"Flying While Black" is also Becoming an Issue.If you thought DWB (Driving While Black) was an issue for African Americans, get ready for FWB (Flying While Black) and maybe, even, BMYOBWB (Breathing and Minding Your Own Business While Black).<br /><br />Why do I say that?<br /><br />Let’s just start with the fact that, recently, U.S. mainstream media reports have been obsessed, in the main, with three stories – the ongoing military tension between North and South Korea, the impending “Royal Wedding” of Prince William and the overwhelming headline-grabber: the continuing, Transportation Security Administration(TSA) "scanner" and "pat down" saga.<br /><br />Despite the fact that the North Korea issue may very well be the precursor to World War III, most news reports have not provided the detail and sense of urgency the issue truly deserves, allowing the Obama administration to get away with empty statements about having a "unified" response from "world leaders."<br /><br />Most astute observers know that the attack by North Korea had very little to do with "the world" and almost everything to do with that country testing U.S. resolve to defend one of its most visible allies in Asia. There will definitely be more to talk about on that issue, but, so far, our news coverage has been consistently skimpy, with no real difference between that offered by left-leaning or right-leaning media outlets. This is one to watch.<br /><br />Frankly speaking, the "royal wedding" story is absolutely irrelevant – not just to African Americans, but to virtually everyone else in this country. Let’s face it, the U.S. hasn’t been a British Colony for more than 200 years, now, and the ongoing obsession, by American media, with all things British – especially the country's “royal family,” seems more than a bit odd. <br /> <br />So, let’s move on to the "Big Kahuna" – the "pat down" story. Everywhere you looked, over the past few months, there were people being scanned and people complaining about being scanned. There was the guy who coined the now-viral and ubiquitous “Don’t touch my junk” phrase, who threatened to sue the TSA for sexual harassment. Making things things even livelier were the TSA’s own threats to cause travelers to miss their flights, or to be fined, if they didn’t submit to potentially dangerous "x-ray" scans, or intrusive “pat-downs.” <br /><br />Regrettably, in the midst of all of this frenzy, what was being missed was the ominous and growing discussion about “racial profiling” as the alternative form of airline security, if people continue to insist on being, neither, scanned, nor patted.<br /><br />A syndicated columnist named Delaney Murdock wrote recently: “The current threat to passengers and airlines comes almost exclusively from one source, and we all know what it is, young males , between 18 and 35… from the Middle East, as well as largely Muslim nations in Africa and south Asia.” Indeed, according to CBS News, in November, a growing number of people across the country are wondering whether "the time has come to consider using racial and other profiling as a security measure." <br /><br />In the wake of the constant barrage of “Don’t Touch My Junk” stories, including video of toddlers being aggressively and intrusively searched in airports, we're beginning to see a shift in attitudes toward a greater public acceptance of racial profiling at those checkpoints. In fact, in a recent CBS News poll, 37 percent of Americans reported that they now believe that “it would be justified for people of certain racial or ethnic groups to be subjected to additional security checks at airport checkpoints.” <br /><br />Even scarier were the results of a Washington Post-ABC News poll, wherein 70 percent of respondents agreed with selecting certain passengers for extra security screening at airports. Perhaps the most surprising part of that survey was that 32 percent said a person’s sex should be a factor in deciding whether they should be screened; 39 percent said a person’s religion should be a factor and 40 percent said a person’s race should be a factor, when profiling is actually done. Are Americans more nervous about flying with any type of black person than they are about flying with any type of Muslim? Looks that way. <br /><br />Perhaps someone should pass that bit of information along to our friend, the African-American journalist Juan Williams, who disclosed in his now-infamous interview on Fox Cable Network that seeing people in Muslim garb on a plane made him nervous. As a result, of course, Mr. Williams was fired from his job as a news analyst at NPR, but received a new, lucrative contract from the conservative-leaning Fox Network.<br /><br />Do you think it would be a surprise to Juan to learn that his co-workers at Fox are probably more afraid to fly with other Williamses than they are to fly with people with Arabic names and burnooses?<br /> <br />Unlike our good brother Juan, seeing Muslims on planes doesn"t make me especially nervous. What does make me nervous, however, is the prospect of greater levels of racial profiling on airlines in the wake of a growing pattern of black, African terrorists being splashed across our newspaper covers, on broadcast outlets and on the Internet. Have you noticed, or is it just me?<br /><br />About 11 months ago, there was young Umar Farouk Adbulmutallab, the Nigerian who boarded a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit and allegedly tried to activate an explosive device inside his own underwear. The face of terrorism, I thought, right then and there, was starting to be changed. No more stereotypical, Semitic, Middle Eastern-looking people; now the "bad guys" were people who looked just like people in my own family. That made me nervous. <br /><br />In that same vein, recently, there was the widely circulated story of the Tanzanian-born, Guantanamo Bay detainee Ahmed Ghailani, who we’re told, was instrumental in attacks in 1998 on the U.S. embassies in both Kenya and in his native country. <br /><br />The larger issue for African Americans is that the media focus on Ghailani stands as further, visible affirmation that black folks on planes shouldn’t be trusted quite as much as they used to be and, in fact, that they probably need to be treated as significant security risks.<br /><br />As I implied earlier, that's becoming more and more uncomfortable every day for me and for anyone who looks like me. Things are becoming as unfair for us in the air as they have been, for so long, on the ground. This is all unfolding, and the "racial-profiling mob" is being formed, even as the country is fully aware of the fundamental unfairness of such policies, and that they simply don’t work.<br /><br />In 2006, for example, the NYC Police Department stopped a half-million pedestrians for suspected criminal involvement; 89 percent of the stops involved non-whites. And right here, in Philadelphia , in 2010, the ACLU recently filed a lawsuit against the City’s "Stop and Frisk" policy of random "pat downs" of “suspicious” individuals, because it’s been found that 72 percent of pedestrians that were stopped were African Americans.<br /><br />Drug-related and weapons-related crimes are far and away the leading causes for arrests and convictions in this country. This move to racial profiling is happening, however, despite clear evidence that young blacks are significantly less inclined to be drug abusers than whites (3% vs. 10%) and despite the fact that Opinion Research Center has informed us that U.S.gun owners are predominantly “white, Protestant, rural and of middle and upper middle class.”<br /><br />None of those facts, apparently, prevented black male incarceration rates, in 2007, from standing at 4,618 per 100,000 persons vs. 773 per 100,000 persons, for white males.<br /><br />Thanks to the growing movement toward legitimization of airline-based racial profiling, we, in the black community, should probably get prepared to experience even more onerous treatment right here on the ground than we've seen in the past.<br /><br />For black folks, it seems, it’s going to be more and more difficult to find “the friendly skies” ...or the friendly streets.<br /> ####### ,the black issuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13909212892157771943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2374900441933683707.post-16359533757220203802011-01-03T14:07:00.000-08:002011-01-03T14:23:25.966-08:00Blacks Are “Happier." Says Who?<b><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";"> </span></b> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";">Sometimes, what passes for serious academic research is so insulting to your intelligence that you just want to track down the report writers and snatch them by their rumpled, Ivy League collars. <span class="apple-style-span">The purpose, of course, would not be to inflict bodily harm of any kind on the good researchers, but rather to ask them, face-to-face, if their entire report hadn’t really been some huge, overly-long, bad joke, like that recent movie, Jackass 3D.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";">I felt just like that after reading a recent report by two University of Pennsylvania economists – Betsy Stevenson and Justin Wolfers. Their study “proved,” they said, that much of (the) “racial gap in happiness” between blacks and whites “has closed over the past 35 years." They went on to say that most of the black gains in "happiness" had actually been “concentrated among women and those living in the South.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";">As if that hadn't already been enough, Professor Wolfers was then quoted in a national periodical as saying that the study was “…the largest and most important change in happiness for any population I have ever seen.” </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";">Can you spell “hype,” Professor Wolfers? </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";">The Penn Professor had the courage to say all of that, even though the unemployment gap between blacks and whites continues to grow – to the detriment of black folks, even though the earnings gap between black and white households stands at about 40 cents out of each dollar, and even though huge healthcare disparities between blacks and whites have been well documented.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";">The first time I read about the survey results, I was dumbfounded. The third, fifth, ninth and tenth times I read it, I felt exactly the same way.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";">Black "happiness?" Images of minstrels, banjoes and watermelon came immediately to mind. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";">According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, "happiness" is defined as “good fortune, prosperity or a state of well-being and contentment.” <span class="apple-style-span">Having read that, and realizing that most <span style=""> </span>African Americans were experiencing very few of those things, I wondered, more than ever, what was happening across Black America (Can we still say "Black America" without offending the current president?) that was causing black people to be so damned happy.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";">The second thing I wondered was what, aside from having too much funding and too much time on their hands, had led two Wharton School economists, of decidedly European descent, to express their “expert” opinions on the “happiness of black people in America?” On what grounds do they claim a knowledge of what constitutes "happiness" for African Americans? Sounds like a case wherein they could have used the services of a good, black psychologist, as part of their team.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";">In any event, journalists at the New York Times deduced, in that paper’s coverage of the story, that the whole report was probably explainable by the direct correlation between "black happiness" and the decrease in “day-to-day racism” in America. <span class="apple-style-span">In trying to make that case, however, it’s clear that the Times and the two Penn professors haven't kept abreast of situations currently being played out all across the country, such as the throw-back, race-based tensions that have been experienced recently in Macon, Georgia, and that have been especially evident in the town’s City Council meetings.</span></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";">It’s also fair to say, I would guess, that if they had known about that situation, the researchers would have begun to understand that, outside of the walls of the Wharton School, where this study was done, black folks in this country still don’t seem to have a whole lot to be "happy" about. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";">Essentially, what happened in Macon, was this: There was an acrimonious political debate being waged between a white City Councilman named John Williams and a black City Councilman named Daron Lee. <span class="apple-style-span">At one point in the discussion, Lee, protesting what he thought had been unfair and racist treatment by Williams and other City Council colleagues at earlier meetings, told Williams that he was tired of being treated disrespectfully. He, then, reminded Williams that he (Lee) did not work in a “cotton field.” Williams paused just a second before looking Lee straight in the eye and responding, “You should be.”</span> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";">Do you think that statement contributed to Councilman Lee’s “happiness?" Do you think it made black citizens throughout Macon, Georgia any "happier" than they usually are at this time of year?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";">In that same regard, I would want to know if <span style=""> </span>the U.of P. researchers had looked up from their computer terminals long enough to take note of radio psychologist Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s insult to a black female caller to her show, recently? That was the time when Dr. Laura essentially told the caller, right in the middle of this wonderful “post-racial” era that we’re all living through, that if the caller wanted to avoid racial insults, she probably shouldn’t have married a white man.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";">I wonder if that little piece of friendly advice made the black caller “happy?” How about the millions of black folks who saw the story repeated over and over on cable news shows over that following week? Were they also “happy?”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";">And, how about all the African Americans who had to hear, immediately thereafter, the news about Sarah Palin’s “tweet” to Dr. Laura, supporting her racist commentary? It went like this: “Don’t retreat, reload.”</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";">Many more millions of black Americans were also subjected to that exchange and I’m pretty confident that none of them were made much “happier,” as a result. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";">But maybe the two good professors at Penn didn’t include the opinions of any of these kinds of black Americans in their survey.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";">From virtually all of the data I’ve seen about current economic, social, housing and health conditions, “happy” would be one of the last words I would use to describe how black people are feeling, right about now.. With the country turning more and more every day toward right-wing conservatism, with the cries for “smaller government” constituting a virtual guarantee that predominantly poor blacks will be even further shut out of much-needed government services, what in the world do Negroes have to be “happy” about?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";">I don’t know about you, but when I want to know what credible research has been done on the subject of “happiness,” I tend to rely more on the 2006 report on the topic by the PEW Research Center. For a number of reasons, it seems a great deal more in keeping with the reality I see every day across America.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";">In summary, here’s what PEW found: Rich people (50 percent) are happier than poor people (23 percent); Republicans (45 percent), who, not coincidentally, tend to be richer, are happier than Democrats (30 percent); married people (43 percent) are happier than unmarried people (24 percent); and people who worship frequently (43 percent) are happier than those who don’t (26 percent).</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";">More specifically, the people at PEW also found that both whites and Hispanics are happier than blacks, which would seem to make sense, given the strong correlation between income and happiness, and the fact that the poverty rate for black children, which stands at about 34 percent, is greater than that of Hispanic, Asian or white children.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";">But, if the PEW findings are accurate, and it’s very difficult to disagree with them, if you’re wide awake and are familiar at all with the black community, then where did the Wharton School professors come up with their stunning conclusion that blacks are becoming more “happy” every day?</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";">To nobody’s great surprise, the University of Pennsylvania’s “Black Happiness Report” hit with a loud, incredulous thud across the country, and was quickly dismissed, much in the same way that the recent report that informed us that the Great Recession in the United States had actually come to an end, in 2009. </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";">We didn’t believe that one either, for equally good reasons.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";"> <br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style=""><span style="font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";"> XXXXXXXXXXXXX<br /></span></p> <span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Arial Narrow","sans-serif";"></span>the black issuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13909212892157771943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2374900441933683707.post-17390662194716692492010-10-01T07:54:00.000-07:002010-10-01T08:33:32.483-07:00Women’s Wage Disparities? How About Ours?<div align="left"><br />As I was surfing through the cable news channels the other night, I saw a video by the Women’s Law Center, whose fundamental message would do wonders for bringing greater economic equity to black Americans.<br /><br />It's called “Women Are Not Worth Less.” It's on YouTube.<br /><br />It's actually a very slick and effective presentation. In it, a young woman of European descent looks directly into the camera and makes the point that “Women are not worth less” (Please note, she doesn’t say “worthless,” but “worth less”). Her issue, of course, and that of the Law Center, is that, according to the most recent U.S. Census data, as of 2009, women earned 77 percent of what men earned. White women’s median annual income, according to that Census report, was cited at $36,276.<br /><br />During the fast-paced presentation, you see the spokeswoman and other female actors holding large, bright-red signs in front of themselves that read: “23% less.” In one scene, the spokeswoman is shown standing back-to-back with a young white man and she says to him, sarcastically, over her shoulder: “You’re taller, maybe that’s why I make 23 percent less than you.” In another, she’s seen haggling with a fruit vendor on the sidewalk, trying to get a 23 percent discount on the purchase of an apple, because she earns less money. During morning rush hour, in another scene, she shouts out to female passers-by that she knows “It’s hard coming to work, when you make 23 percent less than a man does.”<br /><br />At the close, the video encourages the U.S. Senate to move quickly to pass the “Paycheck Fairness Act,” which is designed to eliminate gender-based pay inequality and make it easier for women to file class-action suits against employers accused of sex-based pay discrimination. The bill was passed in the U.S. House of Representatives in 2008, but is still awaiting a positive vote in the Senate. President Obama, with much fanfare, called it a “common sense bill,” in July of this year.<br /><br />Wow!<br /><br />Hold up signs with “23 % less” splashed across them…get supportive statements from the President of the United States… do slick video/YouTube campaigns, putting pressure on the U.S. Senate…why can’t we do that?<br /><br />I raise the question because there’s another piece of income inequality data in the most recent Census report, i.e.,that the median black household earned 59.8 percent as much as the median white household earned in 2009. That compares to 1975, when the median black household earned 59.6 cents for every dollar earned by the median white household.<br /><br />That’s a two-tenths of one cent improvement over 35 years. Is that the great economic progress that so many of our national leaders--black and white--have said we should be so grateful for, in all of their public pronouncements about "black conditions" in America?</div><div align="left"> </div><div align="left">At that rate, it will take us 175 years to make up a whole penny in the black-white wage gap. At that rate, it will take us more than 7000 years to make up the 40.2 percent gap between black and white income levels, assuming that whites don’t continue to expand their absolute income, at all, over the period.<br /><br />I don’t know about you, but I don’t have 7,000 years to wait for income equity for black folks.<br /><br />If white females feel justified in going to the House, the Senate, the President and, potentially, to the highest courts in the land to eliminate their wage gap, where’s our campaign? Where are our “40 % less” signs? Where is the Congressional vote in favor of wiping out the black-white pay disparity in this country, which has existed, at least, since the Constitution was signed in 1787?<br /><br />We need to wake up and get off our backsides.<br /><br />Even black people who have consistently been opposed to the concept of reparations “because none of the contemporary, mainstream institutions are currently engaged in, or were responsible for, slavery,” should understand that the concern about the black-white earnings disparity is not based on correcting some 150-year-old historical injustice. Rather, it's based on a current, daily and ongoing unfairness, traceable to the fact that some of us happen to be black.<br /><br />And don’t fall for the tired old rhetoric that “if black people would simply get an education, their income disparity would disappear." That’s simply not true.<br /><br />According to a recent report, “Educational Attainment in the United States: 2005,” black high school grads earned $23,498, as compared to $30,197 for white high school grads. Blacks with bachelors degrees earned $42,342, as compared to $53,411 for white bachelors degree holders, and blacks with doctoral degrees earned $82,615, as compared to $94,426 for white doctoral degree holders. So much for the education argument; that's clearly not the whole answer.<br /><br />Isn’t this an issue, then, for the Black Caucus, the guys who just had that great, upscale party in D.C. in September?<br /><br />Over a single, four-day period, in late September, mainstream media carried two very conflicting stories – one said that the U.S poverty rate had risen to 14.3 percent in 2009, the highest rate since 1994, and that the 43.6 million Americans living in poverty is the highest level in the 51 years since such records have been kept. The other story, which I’m sure you all saw, informed us that the “Great Recession” has officially ended.<br /><br />As deeply unsettling as the overall poverty rate news was, if you dug a little deeper, you learned that the poverty rate for black Americans is nearly twice the white rate, at 25.8 percent. That has a great deal to do with the fact that our families earn, on average, only 59 percent of white household income.<br /><br />I don’t know about you, but, as I’ve mentioned previously, I’m really beginning to get a little nervous about the integrity and credibility of the economic information that we get fed every day. It’s starting to smell.<br /><br />I know, I know….technically, a recession ends after a declining economy hits its low point and starts to head back up in a positive direction. The economists usually determine all of that by looking at factors that comprise the nation's Gross Domestic Product, including private consumption levels, business investment rates, government spending and the national trade balance.<br /><br />The U.S. economy still seems to be "sucking wind" by every one of those measures, with the lone exception of government spending. I’ll go out on a limb and predict that, with the rising influence of the Tea Party, fiscal and social conservativism and the Republican Party, in general, there will be a budget reduction mania sweeping the country that will sharply reduce government spending as a contributor to GDP, in the months to come, bringing back our friend, the Great Recession, for a second "dip." The housing market is dead in the water, businesses are reluctant to expand or hire, large corporations continue to send investments and jobs overseas, unemployment is at historically high levels – especially in black communities – and banks are only lending money to people who are so well off that they don’t need any loans.<br /><br />The recession is over? They can't honestly expect us--especially us-- to believe that.<br /><br />We've got eyes don’t we?<br /><br />When will our government leaders realize that until we significantly modify our business model, until we reduce the incentive for businesses to cut costs by sending jobs overseas, and until we reduce the incentive to generate unending streams of quarterly profits--no matter what-- there is scant probability that there will be a credible economic recovery here in the U.S., in the foreseeable future?<br /><br />And, finally, with other demographic groups, whose economic issues are nowhere near as desperate or as urgent as ours, already in the streets, in the Halls of Congress and on the Internet fighting for a larger share of the "American economic pie," what in God’s name are we waiting for?<br /><br />Let’s start flashing our “40 % less" signs, on a regular basis, whenever we choose to gather to make a political point, and let’s put our own black-white wage disparity video on YouTube.<br /><br />It’s way past time that we did so.<br /></div><div align="center"><br /><br />#######<br /><br /><br /></div>the black issuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13909212892157771943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2374900441933683707.post-19578269637540462642010-09-20T12:53:00.000-07:002010-09-20T14:06:57.308-07:00It's Hard Out Here For An “Assimilator.”The current, distressed U.S. economy is making it very difficult for people in our community who count residential assimilation among their top-priority life’s goals.<br /><br />What happens in our individual households and neighborhoods--black or white-- is often driven by larger, even global, forces that we’ve been taught to take pretty much for granted.<br /><br />In a perverse way, as an example, we’ve grown almost “comfortable” with hearing every month that the overall unemployment rate in this country continues to be just below 10 percent. When unemployment rates have come close to that range in other "developed"nations, people have, literally, “taken to the streets.”<br /><br />In fact, over the 2008-2010 period, the comparably calculated unemployment rate in Greece was 9.5 percent; in France, 9.1 percent, in the UK, 7.7 percent, and Italy reported 7.9 percent as its unemployment rate. Each of these countries has had to deal with angry mobs of their own citizens staging violent, and sometimes lethal, demonstrations in opposition to their country's economic policies.<br /><br />Last week, the U.S. Labor Department disclosed that, as of August, there were 14.9 million unemployed persons in the United States and that the country's unemployment rate had increased from 9.5 percent to 9.6 percent, that white male unemployment now stood at 8.9 percent and that black male unemployment was almost twice that level, at 17.3 percent.<br /><br />Virtually no one in the country seemed to bat an eye – certainly not many in the economically depressed black community.<br /><br />A large part of the national “sleep walk” on what should be dramatically unsettling numbers for all of us, has to be attributed to the “spin” with which we get immediately bombarded as soon as sensitive economic data such as the unemployment rates are released.<br /><br />In July, it was "U.S. News and World Report" that informed us that “...a rising unemployment rate is actually one of the best signs yet that the economy is bouncing back.”<br /><br />Huh?<br /><br />Last week, when the increased August unemployment rate was announced, President Obama said the report represented “positive news,” somehow. At the same time, a new, hotshot Wall Street economist, who coincidentally admits to being a member of the Democratic Party, was rolled out to say, right on cue, that the latest unemployment rate increase “solidifies that economic recovery is going to remain intact.”<br /><br />Wow!<br /><br />What will they say if the unemployment numbers actually ever do go down? Will that be a BAD sign for the economy?<br /><br />At least in Europe, they seem to be willing to “call a spade a spade,” as it were. Here, so far, we’ve apparently decided, at the very highest levels of our government, to lie our way through our economic challenges, to just "make it up."<br /><br />For far too many of us, however, it should be growing more and more difficult to swallow the “party line.” We see, now, that the state of the economy is having a more and more immediate impact on our own families, on whether we'll have healthcare, and whether we'll have a choice of where we want to live. We've got to start paying more attention and letting our voices be heard.<br /><br />In that regard, a recent study by United for a Fair Economy has disclosed that the subprime lending crisis has resulted in the “greatest loss of wealth to blacks and Latinos in modern history,” with black borrowers, alone, having lost between $72 and $93 billion.<br /><br />While we’re on the subject of wealth, according to the New York Times, white families saw dramatic growth in their financial assets – from a $22,000 median value in 1983 to $100,000 in median value in 2007, just before the onset of the “Great Recession.” By comparison, high-income black families reported median assets of just $18,000 in the same year. During that period, the Times continued, at least 25 percent of black families had absolutely no assets whatsoever to rely upon in the event of an economic crisis, such as a job loss or business failure.<br /><br />All of this explains very clearly why African Americans have consistently had less money to invest in colleges for their children, in business opportunities, or in real estate. It also goes a long way to explain why, even today, blacks represent 13 percent of the U.S. population, but constitute 46 percent of public housing residents, nationwide.<br /><br />On that subject, with all of the recent news about the reduction of public housing residential density over the past 20 years or so, it is clear that there has been a nationally directed and funded plan in place to reclaim what had been red-lined, significantly undervalued, predominantly black central city neighborhoods: "We'll rebuild, and we'll do it with nicer homes, but we'll end up with far fewer than ever existed before," clearly seemed to be the plan. As part of that process, upper-income whites began to sell their suburban homesteads and rush back into what had been called the inner city, in places such as Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington, DC and New York City.<br /><br />In the process, they drove up home prices and tax levels and made affordable properties so scarce that African Americans, in far too many cases, could no longer afford to live in the neighborhoods in which they were born and raised. Many of them were forced, by these gentrification/”neighborhood improvement" plans, to move out to the more-affordable edges of their cities and, even, into the suburbs. If you think I'm kidding, take a look at how the demographics of Philadelphia's own "Great Northeast" and the neighborhood around Temple University have changed over the past 20 years, or so.<br /><br />At the same time, many newly upwardly mobile African Americans, eyes steadily fixed on achieving the “American Dream” of a fine suburban home (and, I guess, a daily 90-minute commute) also headed to the “burbs,” certainly not to the same sections of the suburbs as their lower-income, former black neighbors, but into the suburbs, nonetheless.<br /><br />So there you had it: Blacks forced, or otherwise motivated, to move out of the cities, and whites, no less motivated to move back in. Their moving vans probably passed each other on many an evening, going in opposite directions, to their new homes. As an example of that very phenomenon, over the past decade, the city of Atlanta experienced the greatest growth of its white resident base of any major city in the country –- blacks moving out, whites moving in.<br /><br />On that subject, did you happen to notice how close that last mayor’s race was in Maynard Jackson's old hometown? The next one, I'll go way out on a limb and predict, will be even closer.<br /><br />Apparently, the upwardly mobile African Americans who were breaking their necks to move out to the "fine homes" in the suburbs across the country didn’t get the email. Most arrived just in time, over the past decade, to pay the very highest prices for the homes they purchased, just in time to pay $3.50 and $4.00 per gallon for the gas they needed for their new, daily commute, and just in time to pay exorbitant, infrastructure-related tax increases for the maintenance now required for their recently over-populated suburban communities.<br /><br />What a cruel hoax!<br /><br />With their mortgage balances now higher than their property values, many won’t be able to move back into the new, trendy urban centers they just left, for quite awhile. The collapse of the mortgage market and the resulting financial crisis has put an unexpected crimp in any plans they might have had in that regard.<br /><br />Economies like the one we’re experiencing make it very, very difficult for African Americans who haven't been paying close attention to the fundamental shifts in our national economy and whose primary goal has been to be residentially assimilated into the mainstream.<br /><br />They're learning, much to their dismay, how difficult it can be, actually, to effect that assimilation when the people with whom they want to assimilate always seem to stay one step ahead of them in the age-old game of neighborhood "musical chairs."<br /><br />Somehow, it seems unfair.<br /><br />I almost feel sorry for them.<br /><br /><br /><br />##########the black issuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13909212892157771943noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2374900441933683707.post-60046665494780791772010-09-03T12:51:00.000-07:002010-09-03T13:50:15.229-07:00Buried In The Scandal, PHA’s Missed Opportunity For Meaningful Black Economic InclusionI'm sure it doesn't matter much to him, in the grand scheme of things, but the more I think about it, I must admit that I, too, have a serious issue with Carl Greene.<br /><br />Why?<br /><br />A mainstream contractor, last week, stepped forward to tell a Daily News reporter that, in Carl Greene’s Philadelphia Housing Authority, if a large contractor was having difficulty meeting the authority’s published, Power-Pointed and highly promoted minority participation guidelines, the contractor could simply contribute some cash to the “Carl Greene Scholarship Fund” and the PHA would make the mainstream contractor’s minority participation “hassle” go away.<br /><br />That piece of hypocrisy – that the PHA has simply “winked” at white contractors and dismissed minority inclusion requirements in exchange for a few bucks contributed to a questionably established not-for-profit organization--is absolutely outrageous.<br /><br />Where else are we in the African-American community supposed to turn to achieve fair levels of inclusion, finally, in the local construction industry, other than to entities that have substantial budgets, that do a great deal of work in our very own communities, whose majority clientele is African- American and that are headed by a black executive? If even those institutions and their leadership are “gaming us,” too, what’s left for us to believe?<br /><br />The initial reaction to the Inquirer's "mortgage foreclosure story," on August 13, probably went like this: “Wow, how ironic! A guy who makes more than $300,000 a year and who has already invested nearly $230,000 in his $615,000 property, has gotten into a "beef” with his bank about payments due on his …house."<br /><br />Many Philadelphians thought that Carl Greene was too big to lose a personal mortgage dispute, that he knew too much about the housing industry not to have done his homework on this issue and that it would only be a matter of time before he would mobilize his $300,000+ salary, his $44,000+ one-year bonus and his cadre of lawyers and high-ranking friends to bring the impudent Wells Fargo Bank to its knees<br /><br />That, of course, was before all the other shoes began to drop, before there was full recognition of the extent of the sexual harassment allegations, before we learned of the $50,000+ in IRS tax liens, before the stunning revelation of the $33 million in fees paid to outside legal counsel since 2007, before the disclosure that, even as we were reading about the mortgage foreclosure debacle, there was, yet, another personal sexual harassment case in the process of being settled.<br /><br />Right after that, the Inquirer carried an editorial page cartoon depicting Greene as the “Dirty Old Man who lived in a (Gucci) shoe.”<br /><br />The paper’s editorial went on record as saying that the “PHA board seems out of the loop,” and reminded us all, in that early Wednesday edition, that “Mayor Nutter has had nothing to say … ditto for City Controller Alan Butkovitz,” each of whom, by the way, have two appointments to the PHA’s five-person board.<br /><br />Finally, the Inquirer said it was time for the Mayor to “step up and exert his power.” Michael Nutter must have read it.<br /><br />Shortly thereafter, and right on schedule, the Mayor released copies of a letter in which he condemned his longtime nemesis and the incumbent chairman of the PHA board, John Street, by saying, “Sadly (PHA) may be suffering from a lack of appropriate oversight," and “I am baffled, like most Philadelphians, to learn of your contention that you, as board chairman, had no knowledge of the sexual harassment cases brought against Mr. Greene.”<br /><br />In the same letter, the Mayor suggested that Street and his fellow PHA board members should terminate Greene if the allegations of sexual harassment are "accurate" and if payments were made without the Board’s knowledge.<br /><br />And, knowing just how much Nutter and Street “love and respect" each other, I’m sure that Mayor Nutter enjoyed adding, as part of his letter, that it appears that “the very leadership of PHA is in doubt.”<br /><br />Responding to Nutter’s letter, Street was predictably dismissive. “He’s just talking,” he said.” He has to say something.”<br /><br />Ouch! If you were standing close enough, you, too, might have gotten hit with a pie.<br /><br />The Daily News editorial page also joined the fun, asserting that the PHA board “has been asleep at the switch” and that "it’s clear that no one has really been in control of PHA for a long time.”<br /><br />After saying all of that, the editors added: “Carl Greene should do the right thing, and resign.”<br /><br />Despite all of that, what has been uncovered about the PHA and its leadership is not the fault of the media, at all. It clearly is the fault of elected and appointed officials and the people who work with and for them, who grew entirely too comfortable in believing that there were no rules that couldn’t be ignored, bent or broken, no person who couldn’t be disrespected..<br /><br />Even worse, in my opinion, even though most of the agency’s work was done in historically black communities and involved a largely African-American tenant base, there was a curious belief, somehow, that the economic benefits – the jobs and the contracts – should be reserved for the same, privileged, non-minority segment of the population that controls economic benefits in every other part of the city.<br /><br />With the hundreds of millions of dollars in public funds he used to change the landscape of neighborhoods across the city, Greene also had a substantial opportunity, and a commensurate obligation, to impact the rules of economic engagement and to ensure, finally, that African Americans and other minorities would gain meaningful, legal access to the dollars that were spent over the 12 years of his tenure.<br /><br />He chose, instead, to play the same game that his predecessors played, but with noble-sounding, largely hollow, inclusion statements, and misleading Power Point presentations that raised hopes, but delivered well below the agency’s potential.<br /><br />According to a Tribune story at the time, by Larry Miller, Schenecqua Butts, a PHA tenant, and union carpenter, testified on June 27, 2008, at a public hearing on the Mayor’s Commission on Construction Industry Diversity that, “I went to school for four years and I’ve faced constant discrimination on job sites.”<br /><br />When she was laid off at one site after just one day of work, she said the safety inspector on the site told her “Well, you know how it is, we have to take care of our own first.”<br /><br />“If I had known how it really is," said a highly qualified but underutilized Ms. Butts, "I would never have gotten into this industry, in the first place.”<br /><br />At the same public hearing, Pierce Keating, whose firm, Daniel J. Keating Company, is a listed PHA contractor, told the Commission that he was aware that minorities didn’t get a lot of opportunities in the construction industry and that the reason why was that contractors like him preferred dealing with the “old guard” (meaning people of European descent, he later admitted) as workers and sub-contractors.<br /><br />I don’t know if Carl Greene can somehow survive the current media and political frenzy surrounding him and the PHA, but the sad fact is that if Mr. Greene finally does have to “get his hat,” it, sadly, won’t be seen as that great a loss to the African-American business community, to black construction workers or to black-owned construction companies.<br /><br />The work done by PHA, over all those years of Carl Greene's tenure, could have and should have been a launching pad for a new generation of emerging black and minority contractors, who could have grown their portfolios and expanded their size, their capacity and their work forces.<br /><br />Maybe the next PHA executive director will understand that.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />##########<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Attachments: Text version of this message. (7KB)the black issuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13909212892157771943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2374900441933683707.post-76131620056568663722010-08-27T09:02:00.000-07:002010-08-27T10:01:34.012-07:00Newsweek's "Best Countries" Ranking: A Poor Joke.I’ve seen dumb lists before, but the one recently published in Newsweek, ranking the “World's Best Countries,” certainly “takes the cake.”<br /><br /><br />In a way, you almost feel sorry for Newsweek. We all know that the magazine has been “up against it” lately. In fact, the owners of the venerable periodical announced, just three weeks ago, that it had reached an agreement to sell the magazine, effective next month, to Sidney Harman, who made his millions in the audio equipment business. (You remember Harmon-Kardon stereo sets? Same guy.)<br /><br /><br />This came about after the magazine dropped from 3.2 million to 1.5 million subscribers, and after it reported a $47.5 million operating loss in 2009.<br /><br /><br />It appears that, in one more effort at reviving its fading fortunes, Newsweek decided to “swing for the roof,” and create its first-time-ever “World’s Best Countries” ranking.<br /><br /><br />After all, the editors must have thought, “U.S. News and World Report” seems to be doing well with its strategy of publishing U.S. college, university and healthcare rankings. How can we lose if we develop our own ranking of the entire world?"<br /><br /><br />If Newsweek had taken its “World’s Best Countries” project a bit more seriously, if their editors had made just a modest effort to develop the new ranking without the highly political, substantially subjective, European-skewed criteria they obviously used, maybe the “world” would have taken their product seriously.<br /><br /><br />But, in my opinion, they didn’t do any of that and they clearly blew it.<br /><br /><br />I found Newsweek’s “Best Countries” ranking no more credible than the steady stream of other nonsensical, gimmicky lists that seem to be published at least once a week, by other desperate media outlets, in a vain attempt to attract “eyeballs.”<br /><br /><br />In recent years, for example, there have been published rankings of: “The Top 10 Dumbest Pet Products” list, the “Top 10 College Drop Outs,” (almost interesting because Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Apple’s Steve Jobs, Avatar director James Cameron, Harrison Ford and Tiger Woods all made the list), the “Top 10 Screen Vampires” and the “Top 10 Angry Comedians.”<br /><br /><br />Like David Letterman’s far-funnier trademark “Top 10 List” routine, these rankings hold our interest for only a minute or so. That happens because, very much like the Letterman “bit,” we see them as comic relief, a “mental health break” before we move back to the things we have to do every day to earn a living.<br /><br /><br />I felt that way about the Top 100 “Best Countries ranking,” by Newsweek.<br /><br /><br />Intentionally or unintentionally, it was clearly a joke.<br /><br /><br />The project’s advisory board included A Nobel laureate economist, the director of McGill University’s Institute of Health and Social Policy, the director of Columbia University’s Global Center for East Asia and, most importantly and revealingly, two high-ranking representatives of McKinsey and Co., the world’s largest management consulting firm.<br /><br /><br />On the surface, such a group would appear to be credible, until you realize that McKinsey, a $6 billion company, has a client list that includes 90 of the world’s leading, global corporations and more than 35 (nearly one in every six) of the world’s countries. Do you think the interests of their clients might have been factored into the final rankings and the discussions about who made the list in the first place? You think?<br /><br /><br />Why else would a ranking of the “World’s 100 Best Countries” include every single European Union nation, but exclude 67 percent of the countries in Africa, altogether?<br /><br /><br />How would 15 of the Top 25 Best Countries be drawn from the ranks of the European Union, including Greece, (#26), Spain (#21), Ireland (#17) and the United Kingdom (#14), each of which is in imminent danger of being declared financially insolvent? How did any of these countries make the list, in the first place?<br /><br /><br />Without a strong political “tweak” of the data, how would Israel wind up at #22, overall, and be listed as the “Best Country” among all of the 14 countries classified as “Middle East / North Africa”? Aside from purely political considerations, why else did Newsweek rate Israel as “better” than Kuwait (#40), oil-rich Saudi Arabia (#64), and Iran (#79), among others?<br /><br /><br />Why, other than lingering colonialist attitudes, does the report include Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and Egypt, four countries located squarely on the African continent, together with “Middle East” countries? Is it geographic proximity to Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria that has led political consultants such as McKinsey to continue to “lump” Northern Africa into the Middle East?<br /><br /><br />Can’t be.<br /><br /><br />If that were the case, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia, all located within 200 miles or less across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia and Yemen, would, logically, be considered Middle Eastern Countries, also. For the world’s sake, and all of our collective sanity, let’s hope that those countries being “relegated” to “African” rather than “Middle East” status had nothing to do with the darker complexion of their inhabitants.<br /><br /><br />By the way, Spain is less than 50 miles from African Morocco. At a certain point, should Spain, also, be considered a Middle Eastern country, or a part of Northern Africa?? Who decides these things, anyway?<br /><br /><br />Subjective….totally subjective…so much so, as to be humorous.<br /><br /><br />If Newsweek and its consultants at McKinsey weren’t trying to be funny, or to simply reinforce well-worn, negative global stereotypes, why were the 14 “sub-Saharan” African Nations all placed within the last 21 places in the rankings – from 80 to 100?<br /><br /><br />Wait, it gets better…in developing its rationale for the U.S. to be ranked as high as #11, even in the midst of one of its very deepest economic crises, Newsweek clearly used inflated, misleading data to improve the case for that ranking.<br /><br /><br />Even though a 2006 report commissioned by the U.S. Department of Education disclosed that 46 – 51 percent of U.S. adults read so poorly that they earn significantly below the poverty level, the U.S. literacy rate used in the “Best Countries” calculation was the highly inaccurate 99 percent, the one drawn from the CIA World Fact book.<br /><br /><br />There's more...even though the U.S. Census Bureau lists the average per-capita income in the U.S. at $33,070, Newsweek’s #11 ranking for the U.S. was arrived at by using a per-capita income level of $47,200. Why?<br /><br /><br />Finally, it was very interesting to see which of the world’s total of 194 countries were left off the Newsweek list entirely, in order to get down to the “100 Best.” That unranked group of 94 countries included, of course, a significant number of Central and South East Asian, Middle Eastern and Caribbean countries, and 36 African nations, such as Angola, Cote d’Ivoire, Libya, Rwanda, Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe.<br /><br /><br />Even more glaring, why was China, the world’s second-largest economy, ranked #59, Brazil ranked #58, India #78 and Russia #51? Aren’t those "BRIC Nations" the emerging global economic players? By whose strange logic at Newsweek do these clearly powerful G-20 players rank below Latvia, Costa Rica, Poland, Slovenia and Newsweek’s #1, Finland?<br /><br /><br />Was Newsweek’s entire “Best Countries” announcement all just one more dumb “David Letterman Top 10 List” joke, or were the magazine’s editors simply trying to re-affirm the outdated, Western, global management policy that “if we say so, it must be true?”<br /><br /><br />When are we in the U.S., and in the entire West, going to finally take our heads out of the sand?<br /><br /><br />When are we going to start to use accurate, comparable data sets to arrive at more honest analyses of our true, economic and military condition? When are we going to understand that if we don’t recognize the underlying reasons for the loss of our economic, quality-of-life and military advantages, then we won’t really be able to address them, or to retain the U.S.’s world leadership?<br /><br /><br />When I finally stopped laughing at Newsweek's "Best Countries" list, I began to worry that our country and its formerly all-powerful opinion - making apparatus has gotten so far off track that we may not recover in time to prevent the inevitable crash.<br /><br /><br />####the black issuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13909212892157771943noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2374900441933683707.post-75252328838534036602010-08-16T08:16:00.000-07:002010-08-16T10:09:04.248-07:00What Happens To Black Folks During A “Second American Revolution?”Over the past month or so, the genie has clearly been let out of the bottle with regard to the topic of race in America and, along with many other formerly taboo issues, overt racism appears to be firmly back in style. In fact, it’s a rare newscast that doesn’t prominently feature a new, recent, race-based controversy.<br /><br /><br />Immediately on the heels of the disgraceful treatment of Shirley Sherrod, for example, there was a lazer-like media focus on “ethics violations” by two black U.S. Congresspeople, Charles Rangel and Maxine Waters. Throw in the news about Kwame Kilpatrick’s mom, seven-term Michigan Congresswoman Carolyn Cheeks Kilpatrick, losing her recent re-election bid and you’ve got a negative, media “three-fer” for the Black Caucus.<br /><br /><br />Still focusing on black-related news out of D.C., we’ve seen the Senate vote against providing the $1.2 billion in government support that has been owed to black farmers since the 1990’s, even as the Obama administration has promised $1.5 billion in farm aid to Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln. (Go figure).<br /><br /><br />We also hear Democratic U.S. Senators and high-ranking Democratic Congresspeople making noises about eliminating all federally funded diversity programs, and a New York Times columnist charging that, perhaps, the Obama White House is “too white.”<br /><br /><br />As if all of this hasn’t been “black enough for you,” take the case of former Memphis Tennessee mayor and holder of a doctorate degree from Southern Illinois University, Willie Herenton. Dr. Herenton had been prominently mentioned in national news stories for including as part of his “Just One” campaign theme for the 9th Congressional District seat in Tennessee, the fact that, out of nine Congressional seats in that state, none are held by an African American, even though the state’s population is 16 percent black, even though the City of Memphis, which is included in the district, is 61.4 percent black, and even though the 9th Congressional District is the only African-American-majority district in the state of Tennessee.<br /><br /><br />Despite all of that, Dr. Herenton was presented in national mainstream media accounts as being somehow irrational and, even, racist, himself, for emphasizing these pieces of information as part of his campaign.<br /><br /><br />Was Herenton, who is also a former head of the Memphis School District, wrong when he said that the state’s 1,058,000 black residents seemed to lack representation?<br /><br /><br />By the way, the incumbent U.S. Congressman, Steve Cohen, who happens not to be African American, was endorsed by Barack Obama. Cohen won.<br /><br /><br />It really does appear that the issue of race relations is being moved back onto mainstream media’s “front burner” once again, right where we need to keep it, until the issue is finally resolved.<br /><br /><br />I’m all for that.<br /><br /><br />For far too long, even pre-dating the election of the first black president, it seemed that there had been some curious unwritten agreement between black folks and the national media that if we didn’t bring up our own issues, if we wanted to pretend that race-based inequities had disappeared, then they would function accordingly.<br /><br /><br />It went like this: A significant percentage of African Americans would all agree that, no matter how desperate the conditions for the mass of black people, no matter how unfair the incarceration and sentencing procedures were for African Americans, no matter how high our poverty and unemployment rates grew, as compared to the mainstream, and no matter how much we were disproportionately abused by financial services companies, we would simply look the other way, and pretend it wasn’t happening, at all.<br /><br /><br />It was almost as if we thought that, by remaining quiet in the midst of sweeping black adversity, some of us would be able to move more easily into the mainstream. You remember the old lines from the Stepin Fetchit movie era: “Sh-h-h, don’t say nothin’…ya’ll goin’ to get us in trouble.” Regrettably, it seemed a lot like that.<br /><br /><br />Unfortunately, that approach didn’t work for blacks in the 1930’s, and it hasn’t worked for us now, in the 21st century.<br /><br /><br />In any event, if you’ve been listening really closely you would have heard far too many trusting, hopeful and, regrettably, naive black folks saying that racism in America was an outdated, "60’s" phenomenon, that all those run-down black communities across the country looked that way simply because the “irresponsible black men and women” who lived there “really didn’t want to work,” and were “choosing to live that way.”<br /><br /><br />With blinders tightly affixed, and heads firmly planted in the ground, or elsewhere, some black intellectuals even began to publicly criticize African-American activists, offering that black protests were passé, and that demonstrating for economic access had gone out with the “Afro.” They even began to agree with media pundits that any claims of race-based injustice, no matter how valid, were simply cases of “playing the race card.”<br /><br /><br />Sadly, the “race card” terminology has been no more than a slick, verbal sleight-of-hand created to make African Americans feel guilty about discussing their own issues. Unfortunately, it has worked beyond all reasonable expectations, for the past 15 years or so.<br /><br /><br />With all of that as backdrop, our challenge, now, is to mount a political, economic and communications strategy that will allow us to deal effectively with the return of the harsh new, race-driven reality before it consumes all of us – blacks, white, red, brown and yellow. While still demanding the respect our ethnicity has always deserved, we need to work to finally eliminate the "artificial heirarchy of race," which has been concocted to keep whites at the top of the pyramid, Hispanics and Asians in the middle and blacks solidly at the bottom. Pretending that this is no longer an issue is not only non-productive, it's self-defeating.<br /><br /><br />As I see it, everything is “on the political table” in the months leading to the mid-term elections and in the two years leading to the presidential elections. There are even political factions that are ready to further amend or eliminate, entirely, the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment. In addition, the U.S. government is embroiled in an immigration-related lawsuit against the state of Arizona that has attracted a growing number of other states to join forces against a sitting U.S. president in a fashion that has not been seen since the Civil War.<br /><br /><br />Perhaps, as a direct result of all of this, the president’s approval rating dropped to 41 percent, recently, the lowest at any time since he took office.<br /><br /><br />Even worse, CNN pundit Jack Cafferty, two weeks ago, raised the question of whether “the time is ripe for the second American Revolution?” In making his case, Cafferty quoted an editorial in “Investor’s Business Daily” that offered that, perhaps, the government is, now, under Obama, doing “more harm than good.” The commentary went on to accuse him of conducting an “imperial presidency” and made the point that he is “diminishing America from within.”<br /><br /><br />Wow!<br /><br /><br />On top of all that, a number of states around the country, most notably Missouri, two weeks ago, are challenging the federal government’s right to impose the Healthcare Reform Bill that was, by all accounts, legally passed by both houses of the U.S. Legislature and signed by the president of the United States.<br /><br /><br />In my opinion, we’re living now through one of the most volatile political periods in this young nation’s history. Racial animosity and scape-goating are growing phenomena, people are broke, a significant number of them have lost their homes and jobs, along with their hopes for a better future…and thanks to the National Rifle Association, an overwhelming number of them – black and white – are heavily armed.<br /><br /><br />In the midst of all of this uncertainly, it is of the utmost importance that we in the black community remain vigilant and engaged. When overt racism has raised its ugly head, again, and there is a growing willingness among media pundits to “go negative” on racial topics, when there is talk about fundamental changes in the U.S. Constitution, discussions about the feasibility of a “Second American Revolution,” and outright, direct challenges to the power of the Presidency, we need to ensure that we remain focused and not be reluctant to speak forthrightly on behalf of our own issues.<br /><br /><br />Everyone else already seems to be doing so.<br /><br /><br />#####the black issuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13909212892157771943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2374900441933683707.post-56482746421119813182010-07-28T13:56:00.000-07:002010-07-28T15:32:31.524-07:00What Lessons Should the First Black President Take Away from the "Shirley Sherrod Incident?"Did this conversation take place?<br /><br />“Your mission, Mr. Jealous, if you choose to accept it, is to assist in solidifying now-much-needed black voter support for the president, by raising the issue of right-wing racism among groups such as the Tea Party, while at the same time, diverting attention from the ongoing lack of support of black issues by the government, itself.<br /><br />“By the way, while you’re doing all of this, you will earn, at least, our special appreciation if you can also prove that there are such things as ‘black racists,’ and if you can point them out for the entire country to see. We will, of course, be supporting you in these efforts, from behind the scenes...way behind the scenes.<br /><br />“As always, should you or any of your Impossible Mission Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions.<br /><br />“This tape will self-destruct in five seconds.”<br /><br />Sound familiar?<br /><br />It should. It was taken almost entirely, with just a few topical updates, from the opening scripts of the Mission Impossible TV series and movies.<br /><br />When you think about it for a minute, it may not seem so far-fetched, after all.<br /><br />Take what happened last week: The NAACP, claiming to be working alone, uncharacteristically accused the Tea Party of having some racist members and some racist ideologies (which, by the way, happens to be absolutely true).<br /><br />The next thing you know, a right-wing blogger named Breitbart shows up, wanting to defend the Tea Party and bring shame upon the NAACP by proving that the civil rights organization condones “black racism.”<br /><br />Breitbart’s very flawed plan was to release a maliciously edited four-month-old video of a hard-working, dignified black woman named Shirley Sherrod, who works for the Department of Agriculture. The video was taken as Mrs. Sherrod made a speech in which she reflected on an incident that took place nearly 25 years ago. As edited, the video gave the impression that Mrs. Sherrod discriminates against whites in providing government services.<br /><br />As, perhaps, my only old, non-cursing friend from the Richard Allen Projects, named Leonard Small, would have said, “That’s when all ‘heck’ broke lose; that’s when the ‘shunk’ hit the fan.”<br /><br />The Agriculture Department, fearing that it and the White House would be damaged by association with Mrs. Sherrod, quickly acted to remove her from the government’s payroll, so that they could say, I guess, “Sherrod? Sherrod? She doesn’t even work here."<br /><br />Indeed, the Agriculture Department was so anxious to move forward with that line of reasoning that the Undersecretary for Rural Development, a Mrs. Cheryl Cook, placed a series of increasingly curt and demanding phone calls to Ms. Sherrod as she drove her car along the highway, after a visit to a farm served by her agency.<br /><br />Finally, Ms. Cook exasperatedly explained that the White House was concerned that the story was going to “break” that night on Glenn Beck’s FOX TV show. She then insisted that Mrs. Sherrod pull over onto the side of the highway, immediately, and submit her resignation on her Blackberry, which she did.<br /><br />It didn’t stop there.<br /><br />That evening, Bill O’Reilly was the first anchor on the FOX News Channel to demand that Mrs. Sherrod resign or be fired.<br /><br />Shortly thereafter, CNN, not wanting to be accused again of missing a high-profile, FOX-originated story, also began to criticize Mrs. Sherrod. Notably, one of the network's African-American pundits, Roland Martin, was the most aggressive in that regard, implying that the videotape gave the impression that she might be, in fact, a black racist, or simply unsophisticated about the challenges of the modern news cycle. Martin further implied that, just as the racially offensive Tea Party Express leader Mark Williams had been removed from his job in recent days for racially insensitive commentary, so unfortunately, should Mrs. Sherrod.<br /><br />That's when Mrs. Sherrod told Martin on the air that he was “dead wrong” and that he must live in a “different world” than the one that she inhabits.<br /><br />Here’s a question, while we're on that subject: Are some black journalists so fearful about losing their jobs in mainstream media that they seem to leap at every opportunity to show their white peers that they agree fully with mainstream journalistic perspectives, and that they have no special sensitivity or insight, whatsoever, with regard to black subjects or topics? Is that why people in the black community fought so hard to provide opportunities for those journalists in mainstream print and broadcast outlets, in the first place?<br /><br />Excuse me, I digress...<br /><br />While all this was going on, it didn’t take much time for NAACP President Ben Jealous to weigh in. He especially seemed intent on disproving recent charges by conservatives that his organization had been soft on the alleged “white voter intimidation” activities by the New Black Panther Party, and I guess, in his mind, Ms. Sherrod presented a perfect opportunity for him to do so.<br /><br />Unfortunately, however, for the Agriculture Department, for FOX, for CNN, and the NAACP, they really didn’t know who they were dealing with when they decided to move against Shirley Sherrod.<br /><br />Mrs. Sherrod, who served as the Agriculture Department’s Rural Development Director, in Georgia,<br />happens to be married to one of the founding members of the legendarily effective civil rights organization, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Her father happened to have been murdered in 1965 in an “unsolved” racially motivated attack, as he fought for the rights of black farmers.<br /><br />Following her father’s murder, Mrs. Sherrod made a vow to stay in the South and continue to fight for the rights of black farmers and the black community, in general.<br /><br />While she worked as an official in a non-profit that was committed to advancing the interests of black farmers – not the U.S. Agriculture Department – Sherrod was approached by two white farmers, Mr. and Mrs. Spooner, who asked if she could help save them from losing their farm. Even though such a request was outside the mission of her organization, Mrs. Sherrod wound up assisting the couple. In the words of Mrs. Spooner, last week, “If we hadn’t have found her, we would have lost everything.”<br /><br />Interestingly, once the kindly white couple vouched for her character, and the complete version of the previously-edited tape was reviewed by all concerned, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and the NAACP, both, publicly apologized. The Agriculture Department even offered Mrs. Sherrod a new, more impactful job at the agency.<br /><br />To her deep credit, she said she’d think about it and get back to them.<br /><br />In the wake of all of the "vouching" and "reviewing", it quickly became clear that Mrs. Sherrod is a very special person. Despite all that has happened in her life, she is someone who has amazingly been able to rise above all of the insanity and, even, to recommend and demonstrate close working relationships between blacks and whites.<br /><br />Here’s my take on all of this … the joke about Mission Impossible, notwithstanding, we really do need to know, now, how much of all of this has been a self-inflicted wound by the NAACP and the Obama Administration.<br /><br />How high up in the "Administration," for example, was the order given to have Mrs. Sherrod "resign?" Was the "Administration" also engaged in conversations with Mr. Jealous prior to his "Tea Party racism" resolution? And, while we're at it, where in the world is Cheryl Cook, the Agriculture Department manager who said she was only calling to obtain Mrs. Sherrod's "resignation because the "White House" ordered that she do so?<br /><br />No matter how all of this is eventually resolved, I’d feel a lot more comfortable, going forward, if I knew that the NAACP was planning to recommit itself to issues that will enhance their ability to serve black citizens of this country. I'd feel better if I knew that they were now prepared to challenge both liberals and conservatives, black and white, to do for us what we need.<br /><br />I’d be ecstatic if I knew that the first black President would no longer allow his own administration to over-react against good, hard-working black people, simply because he wants to continue to prove, to the few white voters who still support him, that he is not "President of Black America," whatever that means.<br /><br />It was a bit reassuring to see the president, late last week, finally get around to extending a long-overdue, personal apology to Mrs. Sherrod<br /><br />It was, clearly, the right thing to do.<br /><br />The next step, of course, is for the president to start sending two consistent messages: One, that black voters and their issues are no longer to be considered "toxic," no longer to be avoided and ignored, by him, or by his administration; the second, that the right-wing should no longer routinely expect that black people who happen to offend them, from time to time, will be immediately and callously "thrown overboard" by the "Good Ship Obama."<br /><br />Seems like we all might avoid a great deal of future embarrassment if those two simple concepts are adopted.<br /><br /> ########the black issuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13909212892157771943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2374900441933683707.post-52227567280260833492010-07-21T14:13:00.000-07:002010-07-21T14:48:26.774-07:00The News Hasn't Been Great for Black Americans.<div align="left">After months and months of immigration-focused, Arizona-focused, mid-term election-focused, Lindsay Lohan-focused, World Cup-focused and BP-focused news coverage, mainstream newspapers and the broadcast and cable networks, apparently, have rediscovered black people.</div><div align="left"><br />Seriously … it seems as though we really are "back." Not, necessarily, "back" in a positive way, yet, but, clearly, “back.”</div><div align="left"><br />A few weeks ago, the media were convinced that it was "impossible" for a largely unknown, reportedly incompetent, virtually homeless, 32 year-old black man named Alvin Greene to have actually won the Democratic U.S. Senate primary election, in South Carolina.</div><div align="left"><br />This past week, however, the same skeptical media outlets had to admit that Mr. Green actually had amassed a 13-year history of service in the U.S. military, including the South Carolina Air National Guard, the U.S. Air Force, the Army National Guard and the U.S. Army. Then they reluctantly had to report, much to their chagrin, that he actually holds a degree – in political science, no less – from the University of South Carolina. Probably most damaging to the convenient and irresponsibly biased case they had built, was the discovery that Alvin Greene really does have all the appropriate records to prove that the $10,400 Primary Election filing fee they believed he absolutely did not have, was paid for with his own money, from his own back account, from his own savings.</div><div align="left"><br />All of a sudden, the Alvin Greene story didn’t seem to have the same kind of appeal for our friends in mainstream media and the histrionics and “knee-jerk negativism” -- even, and especially, on the part of black reporters/pundits at mainstream cable outlets and on radio (you know who you are, Don Lemon, Roland Martin and Tom Joyner) --appeared, last week, to lose some of their steam.</div><div align="left"><br />Next came the round-the-clock showings of the New Black Panther Party (NBPP) videos and the charges that Eric Holder, the nation’s first black Attorney General, had been reluctant to prosecute the NBPP for “intimidation of white voters" at a polling place, at 1221 Fairmount Avenue, right here, in North Central Philadelphia. </div><div align="left"><br />I must admit that I don’t know the New Black Panther Party very well. In fact, I’m not entirely sure that I have always understood their motivation when they’ve shown up at rallies and demonstrations focused on jobs, economic development and housing issues for black people. At the same time, I'm finding it hard to believe that those two men, one of whom, it turns out, was an elected Democratic Party committeeman, went to a polling place in predominantly black North Central Philadelphia, situated on the first floor of an overwhelmingly black-populated senior center, to intimidate white voters.</div><div align="left"><br />It seems that if that was, in fact, their purpose, if they really wanted to find white voters to intimidate, the NBPP could have found a great number of such voters a lot more quickly and easily at predominantly white polling places in parts of South Philly, in the Greater North East, in Center City, in Manayunk, Chestnut Hill or in the River Wards.<br /></div><div align="left">I mean … if that’s what they really wanted to do…<br /></div><div align="left">Then there was the story that the NAACP, at its national convention, had passed a resolution condemning the fiscally and socially conservative "Tea Party" organization for condoning racist membership and activities. That move, by a national civil rights organization that, until recently, had been very reluctant to address black-specific issues and that has been even more reluctant to ask the President of the United States to do so, came out of left field.</div><div align="left"><br />So surprising was this announcement, in fact, that people wondered if the public condemnation was really a product of the NAACP’s own agenda or whether it was a project assigned to the organization by the “recently-interested-in-retaining-black-votes” Obama communications team. Didn't poor Mr. Jealous look as though he was reading someone else's words, that day? </div><div align="left"><br />Deep down inside, I’d like to believe that the NAACP’s own rank-and-file members finally grew tired of the black-issue ambivalence of their national leaders, and that they really were the ones who forced that “Tea Party move." But, then, I remembered that Mr. Jealous’ friend, Barack Obama, opted not to personally attend the NAACP’s national convention, this year, and received no public “push back” about that decision from the organization, or from Jealous, himself. </div><div align="left"><br />Hey, maybe Ben Jealous woke up last week and realized that there still needs to be a national advocacy organization for black-specific interests, after all – especially given the fact that all of the other “colored people,” or “people of color,” already have such a group of their own, and maybe he decided to make the NAACP relevant and productive, again, for African Americans.<br /></div><div align="left">We’ll see. </div><div align="left"><br />Finally, just when I was convinced that we couldn’t possibly see another, single national black-focused news story, for at least another six months – bam!--the Census Bureau issues its “Preliminary Estimates of Business Ownership by Gender, Ethnicity, Race and Veterans Status, 2007."</div><div align="left"><br />Predictably, they put the usual “significant minority growth rate” spin on the survey results. Consequently, most news coverage led with items such as the fact that the number of black businesses grew, from about 1.2 million to about 1.9 million (60.5%), over the five-year period.<br />If you'll recall, the same kind of upbeat news releases accompanied distribution of the 2002 data, the last time the survey was done. Just like the 2002 report, however, those headlines painted a grossly misleading, overly optimistic picture of black participation in the overall economy.<br />For example, even though black-owned firms constituted 7 percent of all U.S. businesses, only 5.5 percent of those businesses (106,779) have any employees, at all, and the 1,815,128 black firms without employees (94.5 % of them) generated average gross receipts, in 2007, of just $21,271.</div><div align="left"><br />In addition, even though the sales receipts by African-American-owned businesses did increase, from $89 billion to $137 billion over the five-year-period, that total still represents less than one-half of one percent (.45%) of the $30.2 trillion in sales generated by all publicly-and privately-held businesses in the U.S., in 2007. Also disturbing is the fact that, over the five-year period, the average annual sales receipts of black-owned firms actually decreased, from $74,000 in 2002, to $71,000 in 2007.</div><div align="left"><br />To make matters worse, many believe that, in far too many cases, the growth in black business start-ups isn't, necessarily, a reflection of people with a solid business plan and a burning desire to "run their own show." Rather, more and more, they are simply people who have been laid off, who can't find work and who have turned to printing their own business cards, as a last resort.<br />Also noteworthy is the fact that these most recent Census data were compiled during what appeared to be, at least, the most robust U.S. economy in modern history. Those conditions, absolutely, no longer exist.</div><div align="left"><br />In fact, David Hinson, director of the Commerce Department's Minority Business Development Agency, commenting to a Washington Post reporter, predicted an increase in bankruptcies and failures for minority firms, especially those run by African Americans, if special, preventive and corrective steps aren't taken, soon.</div><div align="left"><br />There is no question that whatever steps we decide to take, we should certainly include an effort to concentrate more of Black America's annual $900 billion in spending power within our own community, as the Asians and Hispanics already do so well. We currently do a lousy job of that, by the way, spending our money--food budgets, household construction, retail purchases, etc,-- with virtually any other business other than those that happen to be owned by African Americans. I guess we still believe that "our" ice still isn't as cold, "our" sugar still isn't as sweet...</div><div align="left"> </div><div align="left">Perhaps, that's why, with nearly 400,000 fewer firms than blacks, the Asian business community is able to generate nearly four times as much annual revenue ($513 billion vs. $137 billion).</div><div align="left"><br />Whew! If you believe what you see and hear in mainstream news about us, there's clearly a great deal of work to be done, if we're ever going to get this thing right.</div><div align="left"><br />Before I get started, again, however, I'm going to take a little break. </div><div align="left"><br />I'm learning that a man can only stand so much national, black-focused news during a single week--especially when it's not all good.<br /> </div><div align="center"><br />###########</div>the black issuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13909212892157771943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2374900441933683707.post-35602379076326644252010-07-13T12:47:00.000-07:002010-07-13T13:03:33.200-07:00Zombie Politics: What Has Happened After "Post-Racial."<em>“It was a Zombie Jamboree<br />Took place in a New York Cemetery...<br />Back-to-back, belly-to-belly<br />I don’t give a damn, I done dead already.”</em><br />-Zombie Jamboree, Harry Belafonte<br /><br />I finally figured it all out.<br /><br />Black voters really have moved to a new political approach, discarding a race-based, economic and issues-focused style for what I’m calling “zombie politics.”<br /><br />Stay with me for a minute…<br /><br />In Haiti, according to legend, a zombie is someone who has annoyed the members of his or her community and they respond by hiring a bokor (voodoo sorcerer) to turn the person into a zombie.<br /><br />According to those same legends, zombies are recognizable because they “would appear to die, insofar as their heart rate would slow to a near stop, their breathing patterns would be greatly subdued and their body temperature would significantly decrease … although their physicality remained intact, their memory would be erased and they would be transformed into mindless drones.”<br /><br />Hm-m-m, sounds like African-American voters...<br /><br />It’s becoming increasingly obvious to me that, like many legendarily unfortunate Haitian citizens, black voters in America really have lost their political “memories” and they have, indeed, begun to operate like "mindless drones."<br /><br />How else can any of this be explained, other than by political zombie-iism?<br /><br />I had been wondering how to explain the curious and blind devotion by African Americans to the country's "first black president." In those first 18 months since Barack Obama’s election, it has seemed that nothing that he would ever do or say, negatively, to his black base would actually discourage them.<br /><br />Negative, condescending comments to black males during that infamous 2009 Fathers’ Day speech? No problem.<br /><br />Overseeing, very dispassionately, an economy wherein black unemployment rates are nearly double the “white- only” unemployment rate? Watching as the rate of black home foreclosures soars above that of other ethnic groups? No problem.<br /><br />Watching the president-elect use every political "chip" available to him to move the $700 billion financial institution "bailout package" – even prior to his inauguration? Waiting as those same financial institutions and their "fat-cat" owners – who contributed significantly to the onset of the Great Recession – got paid, while our own pockets were turned inside out? No problem.<br /><br />Hearing the president repeatedly deny any “special responsibility” to address black-specific issues, on the grounds that he didn’t want to be confused with being the "President of Black America?” No problem.<br /><br />Watching patiently, on the other hand, as the president bent over backwards to reaffirm his personal – and the nation’s overall – commitment to the state of Israel? No problem.<br /><br />Waiting since the president's inauguration as he moved to address virtually every key, gay community-related issue before he could reasonably get around to discussing ours? No problem.<br /><br />Watching naively as the president pushed through a nearly $800 billion Stimulus Bill that has, by all accounts, stimulated virtually nothing within the national African-American economy? Still…somehow…no problem.<br /><br />Being eyewitnesses to the president’s frantic activities--including bringing a lawsuit against one of the 50 states – in an effort to retain support from millions of documented and undocumented Hispanic voters? Seeing those same Hispanic voters being treated like an absolute mid-term election and Presidential Re-election priority -- even though the president received just 66 percent of their vote in November, 2008, as compared to the 96 percent that was dutifully given to him by blacks? No problem …no problem…. no problem.<br /><br />We, as black people don’t seem to mind. We’ll respectfully, and mindlessly, wait our turn, thank you.<br /><br />Unfortunately, virtually no other race, no other ethnic group, no other religious group, no other age, income, or occupational demographic in this country has done the same. They all still clearly want precisely what they want, they want it all right now, and they are “d-double-daring” the president, under threat of losing their precious votes, to refuse their requests in any way.<br /><br />It seems to be working for them. Most of those groups are getting exactly what they’ve demanded. In spite of all that, they still seem grossly dissatisfied with everything the president says or does.<br /><br />If you think I’m kidding, check out the latest poll results.<br /><br />Despite the president’s habit of throwing blacks and their issues under the “political bus” at the expense of mainstream, left- and right-wing issues, it’s curious to see that, in a very recent Washington Post/ABC poll, Obama’s approval rating among white voters has dropped from more than 60 percent, to just above 40 percent. In addition, a recent ABC/Wall Street Journal poll disclosed that, among white voters, the president's approval rating is now strikingly similar to that enjoyed by the deeply discredited George W. Bush, about two years ago. (37% approval for Bush among white men in June 2008, as compared to an identical 37% white male approval rating for Obama, in 2010).<br /><br />There is even more recent bad ratings news for the president and his party: In a Gallup poll conducted June 28 to July 4, 2010, only 38 percent of Independents said they approve of the job the president is doing, the first time Independents have expressed less than a 40 percent level of support for Obama. This reflects a drop of 18 points from the 56 percent support level Obama enjoyed among Independents just a year ago. In addition, the president’s Democratic support stands at 81 percent, thanks largely to huge numbers of ever-loyal blacks who are registered in that Party, but down, nevertheless, from last year’s 90 percent support among Democratic voters.<br />Similarly, the president’s Republican support has fallen by eight percent, bringing him down from last year’s 20 percent support among GOP members.<br /><br />In summary, President Obama’s job approval is down to 46 percent, across the board, just one point above his previous lowest weekly average, and it hasn’t been above 50 percent in five months.<br /><br />Who would have thought this could happen, given all that has been done by this president to support the business, political and economic interests of white voters and white men, specifically, to date, in blatant disregard of his own base?<br /><br />At the same time, President Obama’s job approval rating among Hispanics is down this year, and it and has been--even before the late-April signing of the new anti-immigration law in Arizona. This drop was especially evident, according to pollsters, among Hispanics who insisted on being interviewed only in the Spanish language.<br /><br />While all of this has been going on, while the president has taken care of everyone’s issues but ours, and while his approval ratings are down among Republicans, Democrats, Independents, Hispanics and whites, black folks have remained loyal to him and have consistently given him job approval ratings in the low-to-mid 90’s, no matter what.<br /><br />With all of that being the case, can you still deny my premise that there must be millions of black political zombies in this country? How much more evidence do you need?<br /><br />Quick … call a Haitian voodoo practitioner … maybe it’s not too late. There must be something we can do to break this spell.<br /><br />As bad as “post-racial” used to seem, this “zombie politics” thing, including the prevalence of “zombie” national elected officials,” zombie national black leaders” and "zombie black political TV and cable pundits” is clearly a whole lot worse.<br /><br /><em>"A lot of world leaders talking bout war<br />And I’m afraid they’re going too far<br />So it’s up to us, you and me<br />To put an end to catastrophe...<br />Back to back, belly to belly<br />I don’t give a damn, I done dead already.<br />Back to back, belly to belly<br />At the Zombie Jamboree."<br /></em>-Harry Belafonte<br /><br /><br />#######the black issuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13909212892157771943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2374900441933683707.post-3408195709380743272010-07-09T13:40:00.000-07:002010-07-09T14:08:22.944-07:00Whites Are "Tanning," Blacks and Others Are Using Skin-Whiteners. What's Up?What is it with people?<br /><br />Why, please tell me, do we still suffer so much race-based antagonism, here in the U.S. and around the world, when, apparently, what many of us really want is to look exactly like our so-called “enemies” in those other races? Is confusion about, and lack of comfort with, our own skin color and racial identity “hard-wired” into our psychological makeup as human beings?<br /><br />The other day I read in the Wall Street Journal that the federal government, as part of the recently passed health care reform legislation, will now begin to tax tanning salons, at 10 percent per customer usage. The government estimates that, at that rate, the country’s 20,000 tanning salons will generate an additional $2.7 billion for the IRS, over the next ten years.<br /><br />This is clearly historical.<br /><br />We have long complained in our community about the subtle ways in which African Americans are subjected to the “black tax,” i.e., higher insurance rates, higher neighborhood food costs, higher interest rates for loans, lower wages, etc. But, as I see it, this is the first time in the 223-year history of our great country that any of its citizens ever had to bear an additional financial burden simply because they were pale-skinned or white.<br /><br />I have to admit that my first reaction was that the "tanning tax" was a clear case of things that “go around” finally “coming around.” But that was petty, and I stopped thinking like that, immediately.<br /><br />On a more serious note, however, this development did make me curious about why whites in America – given this nation’s longstanding discomfort with people of darker skin – ever wanted to be “tanned," themselves, in the first place. Why, indeed, do they expose themselves to dangerous ultra-violent lamps in tanning beds and booths, even though such behavior has been proved to contribute to a 74 percent greater incidence of skin cancer?<br /><br />A National Health Interview Survey, in 2005, disclosed that 20.4 percent of whites aged 18-29 and 13.6 percent of whites aged 30-49 were frequent users of indoor tanning facilities. The heaviest users were those who were younger, living in the Northeast or Midwest, who were female or Caucasian, and who had a higher level of education.<br /> <br />A more recent study by Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, found that, among tanning salon users, the average number of annual visits was 23.<br /><br /> According to the survey, there is more pressure for women and whites to tan for “appearance enhancement...while darker-skinned individuals do not perceive tanning as culturally appropriate.”<br /><br />It's not just American whites who are interested in darkening their complexions, from time to time. A survey by the German Federal Office of Radiation Protection found that more than one fourth (28 percent) of the German population had used tanning beds at least once, and that 11 percent of the population can be defined as high-frequency users of tanning services (more than 10 times a year).<br /><br />The German researchers found that, in their country, also, “tanned skin is considered socially desirable and attractive.” In fact, they discovered that survey respondents who felt that “tanning was attractive” were 75 percent more likely to use tanning beds.<br /><br />Hm-m-m-m.<br /><br />Back in the U.S., those who are concerned about the dangers of tanning salons have begun to explore other options for skin-darkening, including tanning sprays. According to one report, however, to be safe, tanning spray users are advised to prevent the “chemical mist from entering (their) blood stream, to wear goggles, to avoid getting any of the mist in (their) mouth and to be careful not to inhale the fumes.”<br /><br />Wow!<br /><br />Seems a lot of trouble to go through to look more like people you have long said were your cultural, intellectual and biological inferiors.<br /><br />Another study by Cynthia Frisby at University of Missouri – Columbia revealed that people perceive a light brown skin tone to be more physically attractive than a pale or dark skin tone. An associate professor of advertising at the University, Frisby found that “without regard to physical features, people prefer light brown skin over dark brown skin or pale skin.”<br /><br />Who knew?<br /><br />Certainly not the late, great Michael Jackson... and, clearly, no one ever mentioned any of this to Sammy Sosa, the Dominican baseball legend of African descent, who recently subjected himself to a highly embarrassing round of media coverage because of his use of a skin-whitening product. According to a Chicago dermatologist, the "whitening cream" that Sosa used resulted in changing his original skin color by “at least six shades."<br /><br />Surprisingly, at this late date, even in Africa, itself, people have been engaged in this curious behavior. Indeed, a study conducted in Pretoria, South Africa, found that 35.5 percent of the participants had used topical steroids to lighten their skin.<br /><br />In Asia, four out of ten women, in places such as Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea and Taiwan, are also now using skin- lighteners. In Thailand, that government’s Food and Drug Administration recently published a list of 70 dangerous skin-lightening creams sold illegally, there. Similarly, 50 such products are banned in Indonesia, but are still briskly sold.<br /><br />Most observers believe that the interest in skin-whitening on the part of Asians can be traced back to the long history of Asian countries being dominated and occupied by European and American invaders. Subjecting themselves to cancer-causing, skin-lightening chemicals is part of a lingering belief that the more they can look like those powerful invaders, the higher they will move up the social ladder in their own Asian countries, and the easier their lives will be.<br /><br />Regrettably, even in the 21st century, in Thailand, most celebrities and movie stars are white-skinned, and the average citizen strives to look as much like them as possible.<br /><br />In Japan, a country long known for its disdain of all things “foreign” and for foreigners, themselves, the international fashion coordinator at Vogue Nippon, the Japanese edition of the iconic American fashion magazine, has been quoted as saying:” Everybody (with few exceptions) basically wants white skin.”<br /><br />It’s going to be interesting to see, with so much of the desire to have lighter, whiter skin traceable directly back to the perception of American/European military and economic invincibility, how the sale of skin whiteners will hold up here and abroad, given the emergence of the Chinese, Indians, Brazilians and Middle Easterners as the new, world economic and military powers.<br /><br />Will Indonesians, Taiwanese, Thais, and South Koreans still want so readily to assimilate into the old power structure, if the new big kid on the international block is actually Chinese?<br /><br />Will black people here in our own country still be interested in being "less dark" when they begin to realize just how much potential, global economic clout Nigerians and Ghanaians now have?<br /><br />Will people who are "mixed race" increasingly feel more comfortable in claiming the Latin American, Asian or black parts of their identities--not because society has forced them to do so as part of a Census count--but because, in this changing global environment, they believe it conveys increasing levels of cultural pride and a long-overdue recognition of their own self-worth?<br /><br />I hope this all works out.<br /><br />I hope whites in this country begin to feel more free to express a growing respect for darker skinned peoples, one that they can demonstrate by taking down the barriers to greater economic access for blacks and other people of color, throughout the society, at every level.<br /><br />After all, the research informs us that Europeans and Americans believe that being tanned makes people more attractive. Now it’s time to move beyond that superficiality and to start doing serious work together, building an economy that will include, finally, severely underutilized black Americans, and others.<br /><br /> Hey, maybe the "tanning tax" will be just enough of an irritant to get our collective attention and become the first step in the world moving beyond the lingering effects of the "artificial hierarchy of race."<br /><br />I can dream, can't I?<br /><br /><br /> ########<br /><br /><br /><br />#######the black issuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13909212892157771943noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2374900441933683707.post-70621171723374134432010-07-06T13:28:00.000-07:002010-07-06T14:54:03.433-07:00In The World Cup, Race-Based Rooting Patterns Go Out The Window.I know, I know …if I had a shred of dignity and sophistication, I would have written last week about the McChrystal "resignation," or the shocking realization across America that there really may be significantly more black voters in South Carolina than the Census Bureau has ever disclosed.<br /><br />How else could a black man named Alvin Greene have done so well in that state's recent primary election for the U.S. Senate?<br /><br />The presumption by most mainstream pundits is that Greene, somehow, must have “rigged” South Carolina’s entire electoral apparatus. It couldn’t simply be that he got the most votes from the state's surprisingly large, and recently more active, black voting base, could it?<br /><br />Hey, I could have even talked about the Iranian ship that had been headed with breakneck speed toward Gaza, brazenly inviting direct confrontation with, and testing the resolve of, the entire Israeli military machine.<br /><br />I could have speculated about who might be the 2012 mayoral hopefuls, here in Philly, now that one, little-known Republican committeeman, named John Featherman, has already announced his candidacy.<br /><br />Yeah, those could have been my topics but it turned out that they all took a clear, second priority to my new-found interest in World Cup Soccer.<br /><br />I found myself attracted to the World Cup for two reasons: One, I really do believe that national, athletic competition is routinely seen as a proxy for war, and, in my opinion, war, among the members of humankind, is inevitable. As Chairman Mao was fond of saying, “war is the continuation of politics, by other means.” Done right, then, victory in national team sports has been about as close as you could come to gaining “bragging rights” over another country or demonstrating your national superiority -- without having to fire a single shot, drop a single bomb or draw a single sword.<br /><br />The Greeks understood that very well when they introduced the first Olympic Games, back in 776 B.C. As strange as it may seem now, the original concept of the Olympics had very little to do with TV ratings points, advertising revenues, or athletes positioning themselves for multi-million dollar product endorsements.<br /><br />No, the idea was: Each invited country brought their strongest soldiers to compete in a series of military-related events, including running, boxing, wrestling, jumping and weapons accuracy. The objective was to determine which country would probably win if the various nations actually had to resort to war.<br /><br />Fast forward to 2010 and we see a great deal of that same approach evident in the World Cup athletes, in their sponsoring nations and, certainly on the eerie, nationalistically painted faces of their fans. This is all about as serious as it gets in athletic competition, during peace-time. From the very heads of the participating governments, down to the last player on each team, winning in these matches is of paramount importance and losing is absolutely unacceptable<br /><br /> This is not the artificial competition engaged in by professional sports teams in the U.S. This isn't the “Chargers” against the “Ravens,” the “Eagles” against the “Cardinals” or the “”Phillies” against the “Dodgers.” No, in the World Cup, it was Portugal and Brazil, in succession, against North Korea. The scary part was that the teams that actually won against the soccer-challenged North Koreans, and observers from other countries, began to read all kinds of things into their victories, wondering, for example, whether North Korea really is a serious, global, military power, after all. How tough can the North Koreans actually be, they led themselves to think, if the members of their soccer team are so defenseless, so inept and so uncoordinated?<br /><br />Notwithstanding the fact that North Korea reportedly has a one-million-man standing army, that’s what they were thinking. Some of the broadcast sports analysts even said as much, out loud, between the matches.<br /><br />The World Cup, unlike your average Major League Baseball game, pits the former colonial powers – England, France, Germany, Portugal and Italy – against their former colonies, Nigeria, Ghana, Brazil, Cameroon and the Ivory Coast, among others.<br /><br />Do you really think it was “just a game” when the South African team competed against the French team, recently?<br /><br />If you thought so, you would, of course, be dead wrong.<br /><br />Even though South Africa's host team was eliminated in the first-level “group stage,” a French media outlet accurately reported that “the manner of their victory over former champion France meant they could exit the tournament standing proud.”<br /><br />On the other hand, once the French team was also ignominiously bounced from the competition in that same, first stage and returned to Paris, Thierry Henry, one of the team leaders, was immediately summoned to a meeting with French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who demanded a “wholesale” review of French soccer, so as to prevent a re-occurence of the nation's embarrassment on the world stage, in the future.<br /><br />No, in countries around the world, this is way more than a game.<br /><br />Why have we in the U.S. been so late to figure that out?<br /><br />When he was very young, I taught my son to watch and listen intently to sports coverage so that he might gain a gut-level understanding of America’s cultural and racial dynamic. In that regard, the World Cup is filled with a number of interesting and contradictory subtexts.<br /><br />Like many African-Americans, I'm constantly on the lookout for situations, in all walks of life, in which I can see “our people” excel and further prove their worth. Accordingly, over the years, I frequently found myself, as a sports fan, rooting, first, for the pro football team with the most black players, then, for the team with the rare black quarterback, then, for the team with the even-more-rare black head coach.<br /><br /> That approach hasn't been based on a desire, necessarily, to see white-dominated teams do poorly, but rather, on a sincere interest in having yet another, far-too-infrequent, public demonstration that we, as black Americans, are a lot more capable, a lot smarter, than we are generally given credit for being.<br /><br />Despite the curious denials by this year's NBA Finals broadcasters – including by some former African-American players who absolutely do know better – black basketball fans, back during the Larry Bird era, did root, overwhelmingly, against the Boston Celtics. That was in direct reaction to NBA announcers, who found it necessary to repeat incessantly, during games, that, among all players in the entire league, Larry Bird, one of the Celtics' several Caucasian stars, was an especially “smart” player, an especially “intelligent” player, a remarkably “unselfish” player and one who “made all of his team members better” by his mere presence on the court. The implication, of course, was that Mr. Bird was, somehow, a superior athlete, even though he had obvious physical and skill-set disadvantages, as compared to the league's black players.<br /><br />Wanting desperately to add a differing perspective to those observations, but not having access to our own airwaves, we responded by rooting for any team other than the Celtics, throughout Larry Bird’s entire career. If the Celtics played the Pistons, we went right out and bought a Pistons hat. If the Celtics played the Lakers, we became instant L.A. fans, and when the Celtics played the Sixers, the Philly team received our unquestioned and absolute support.<br /><br />I’m finding, however, that such a simplistic approach is harder to apply in the World Cup.<br /><br />Just when all of us new, U.S.-based, black soccer fans wanted to root automatically for an African nation, we found that the U.S.’s opponent in one game, Algeria, had only one Negroid member, its goal keeper; while the U.S. team, itself, had eight black players. Consequently, many of us found ourselves rooting energetically against the African Algerians as the U.S. sent them to defeat, in overtime.<br /><br />And just when we wanted to root aggressively against the old “colonizers” in these televised, streaming videoed "virtual wars," we discovered that more than half of the 23 players on the French World Cup team and the same percentage of players on the English national team were also of Negroid African descent.<br /><br />Finally, thoroughly confused about these numbers and about which team we really "ought" to have rooted for, we decided to do the patriotic thing and support the surging, "never-say-die” U.S. team, the one with Tim Howard, the half-Hungarian/half African-American goal keeper, and seven other “brothers.”<br /><br /> Then, along came the schedule makers at FIFA, World Soccer’s coordinating organization, who announced that the next U.S. opponent in the World Cup was going to be Ghana, the last African nation still competing in the tournament, at the time.<br /><br />That was when confusion really set in.<br /><br />Maybe, just maybe, it's time for us, and the rest of the world, to move away from the lingering, race-based, and ethnic/nationalistic, proxy-for-war-based approaches to sports competition, if we can.<br /> <br />Maybe it’s finally safe to go back to rooting for the team that plays the hardest, or the team whose uniform colors we prefer.<br /><br />Can we learn that from the World Cup?<br /><br />Are we there, yet?<br /><br />####the black issuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13909212892157771943noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2374900441933683707.post-18975250479614737502010-06-25T07:55:00.000-07:002010-06-25T08:41:11.187-07:00BP's Pledges to the Gulf Coast: Can a Leopard Change its Spots?On Wednesday, President Obama sat down with the chairman and the CEO of BP and emerged from that meeting with a pledge that the company would establish a $20 billion fund to help pay for losses experienced by residents during the recent Gulf Coast oil spill.<br /><br />The president also announced that he had obtained a further commitment that BP would make an additional $100 million available to compensate unemployed oil-rig workers affected by the stoppage in deepwater drilling.<br /><br />Here’s where all of this starts to get interesting: Under U.S. Federal law, total corporate liability related to oil-spill losses is limited to $75 million.<br /><br />It seems to me that what the U.S. expects in the way of corporate responsibility from BP, a notorious, bottom-line-oriented, public-be-damned industrial bully, is very much akin to expecting a leopard to “change its spots.”<br /><br />In the year 2000, for example, British Petroleum, as part of an embarrassingly transparent, “lipstick-on-a-pig” image campaign, changed its official name to BP (Beyond Petroleum) to imply that it was going to be, in the future, no longer wedded to fossil fuel development and would work to become a leading participant in the development of clean, more ecologically friendly energy sources, including “solar.” The image campaign came complete with a spanking new green-and-yellow sunburst logo color scheme and an investment, from 2000 to 2002, of $600 million in new signage, stationery and a global multi-media advertising campaign.<br /><br />One of my old communications professors was fond of saying that “good PR is not what you say, it’s what you do."<br /><br />Someone should have mentioned that to BP. They probably could have saved themselves several hundreds of millions of dollars.<br /><br />It turns out, of course, that the company’s problem was not limited, at all, to the color of its signs or the appeal of its TV commercials. The real issue was that BP had amassed a long, uninterrupted history of being grossly insensitive to people, wherever it happened to do its business – all over the globe – and that it simply never has seemed to care very much about what the public thought about any of that.<br /><br />In fact, BP’s corporate style has been to say anything that might be expedient to move past an uncomfortable situation, or to temporarily divert responsibility. We’ve seen evidence of that dozens of times already, just since April. That’s probably why the company’s CEO, Tony Hayward, seems to contradict himself so much, to otherwise misspeak, and to have a problem looking straight into a camera.<br /><br />It’s clear, now, given what we’ve seen of its “half-stepping" reaction to the damage being done every second of every minute, every hour of every day, for the past two months, in the Gulf Coast, that the “new BP" is still very much the same organization that has acted so irresponsibly toward its neighbors and to the global ecology since the London-based company discovered its first oil reserves in Iran, in 1908, and began to operate, in 1909, as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company.<br /><br />Though most Americans had been only vaguely familiar with BP, other than through seeing its brightly lit gas stations along the highway, the company has $130 billion in assets, and happens to be the world’s third-largest energy company, behind only Exxon-Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell.<br /><br />Establishing its rapacious business model early on, the company, which drew absolutely all of its revenue from those early Iranian wells, returned only 16 percent of that money to the people of Iran. In 1935, after Persia changed its name to Iran, the company renamed itself, becoming the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, but still maintained total and absolute control over every drop of oil that flowed from Iran.<br /><br />In 1951, Iranian Prime Minister Mossadeq nationalized the country’s oil industry and forced BP out of his country’s oil-producing operations. Shortly thereafter, in 1953, perhaps not coincidentally, Mossadeq was overthrown in a coup and replaced by a man who happened to be exceptionally supportive of the U.S. and British, Shah Pahlavi, known to most Americans, simply, as the Shah of Iran.<br /><br />The next year, the company changed its name again, this time to "British Petroleum."<br /><br />Shortly after the Shah assumed power, the British began to share their oil revenues with the Americans, and BP began to expand its oil drilling operations beyond Iran and into Alaska and to the North Sea. It also assumed control of the old, U.S.-based, Atlantic Richfield (ARCO) Energy Company.<br /><br />The company eventually expanded its drilling operations into Colombia, where it has long been accused of human rights violations.<br /><br />In case you didn’t know, BP also maintained extensive business relationships with the apartheid South African government, prior to that country’s “democratization,” in 1994, which saw Nelson Mandela elected president. Because the company had continued to refine crude oil in pre-1994 South Africa, despite an international oil embargo, it was high on the global “anti-apartheid” movement’s list of “corporate enemies.”<br /><br />BP also ignored a U.N. oil embargo against pre-Mugabe Zimbabwe, then known as Rhodesia. In that capacity, the company supplied the oppressive, white-minority-controlled government with oil that was illegally shipped in through South Africa.<br /><br />Not surprisingly, the company's record of insensitivity has extended far beyond geo-political and human rights issues.<br /><br />As far back as 1991, nearly 20 years ago, the Washington DC-based Citizens Action organization named BP among the top ten environmental polluters in the United States. In Ohio, the Public Interest Campaign, in 1988, said the company’s two plants in Lima, Ohio, were far and away the “biggest polluters" in the state. The company’s chemical plant and refinery, the group found, “produced 60 million pounds of toxic pollution” in the year before the report was written, including 8.2 million pounds released into the air, 58.2 million pounds injected under ground, 380,000 pounds dumped into the Ottawa River and one million pounds disposed on the land.<br /><br />When you look at the company’s shameful record, it’s hard to imagine that it could have any, real, corporate-level concern for the residents of the Gulf Coast--what may become of the them, their families, their homes or their very way of life.<br /><br />In that regard, I'm especially concerned about the well-being of the region’s black fishermen. Up until two months ago, they had been able to earn a self-sufficient living in the Gulf, dating back, at least, to the early part of the 20th Century. Now that the spill has decimated their industry, will they and others really receive the support they need from BP to make themselves whole?<br /><br />It is clear, however, that such a principled response is entirely inconsistent with the company’s 101-year track record.<br /><br />While we wonder about that, we should also remember that the Gulf oil spill, as horrible as it continues to be, is not the largest such spill on record – not yet anyway. At an estimated 2.7 million barrels spilled to date, it still ranks behind the 3.3 million-barrel Ixtoc I spill in Mexico in 1979, the 5.5 million-barrel Gulf War oil spill in Iraq, in 1991, and the 9 million-barrel Lake View Gusher spill, in Kern County, California, in 1910. Give it time, though. With 40,000 gallons a day being pumped into the Gulf of Mexico, this one still may very well top them all.<br /><br />But while you’re waiting for BP and the U.S. Government to “plug the hole,” don’t hold your breath about the company actually stepping up to the plate and doing anything substantially more for Gulf residents and wildlife than the law absolutely requires it to do.<br /><br />As welcome as that kind of corporate cooperation would be, such behavior would be entirely out of character for the company which now calls itself BP. <br /><br /><br /> ############the black issuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13909212892157771943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2374900441933683707.post-86904913504413584392010-06-22T07:19:00.000-07:002010-06-22T08:22:54.047-07:00Being in Denial about Race Sometimes Extends to Religious Matters.Here they go, again!<br /><br />What must they be drinking or smoking in Arizona?<br /><br />That’s what people across the country and around the world surely must be thinking.<br /><br />All of a sudden, a state that was formerly known for having clean air, warm weather and the Phoenix Suns, is now better known for harsh anti-immigration laws, angry street demonstrations, the threat of racial profiling, “border wars,” and “white-only” curriculums in its public schools.<br /><br />As bad as all of that has been, two weeks ago, Arizona tried to shoot itself in its other foot.<br /><br />It happened in Prescott Arizona, a town of 42,000 people, of whom about 200 are black and 8.2 percent are Hispanic. A local elementary school wanted to teach its students about ecology and energy conservation and commissioned the painting of a huge mural on one of its exterior walls. The design of the artwork was approved by the students and the faculty, and it featured the faces of young people who actually attend the school, including some from ethnically and racially diverse backgrounds.<br /><br />For some reason, that didn’t sit well with a guy named Steve Blair, a resident of Prescott, who also happens to be a member of its City Council and the host of a Fox-affiliated daily radio show, there.<br /><br />How much didn’t Blair like the mural?<br /><br />Well, first, he called for its immediate removal, because it was an attempt, he said, to “indoctrinate” young children and to promote “a specific diversity agenda that was unnecessary in (his) city.”<br /><br />“I’m not a racist by any stretch of the imagination,” said Blair, “but whenever people start talking about diversity, it’s a word I can’t stand…What these people (in Prescott) don’t like is somebody forcing diversity down their throats.”<br /><br />Blair went on to say, “To depict the biggest picture on the building as a black person, I would have to ask the question: Why?”<br /><br />It turns out that like many racists, Mr. Blair began his assault by being largely uninformed about his topic. In fact, the “biggest picture” Blair was ranting about wasn’t actually a “black person,” at all, but a young Mexican-American student, named Mario, whom, I imagine, was still too “dark” for Blair’s tastes.<br /><br />No matter that Blair was dead wrong, he was also loud, and had access to an official audience in City Council and a broadcast audience through the radio station.<br /><br />The next thing you know, residents of Prescott, were driving past the still-developing mural project, honking their car horns and shouting racially insensitive comments. All of this led to the school’s “backbone-challenged” principal, a guy named Jeff Lane, deciding to advise the mural painters that the darker-skinned students depicted on the mural had to have their faces “lightened.”<br /><br />Seriously...lightened.<br /><br />With that input, the painters went back to that part of the wall that included young Mario's face to make it lighter, closer to white, and more acceptable to certain Prescott residents.<br /><br />I wonder how the students themselves felt about that.<br /><br />I wonder how I would have felt, back when I was in the fifth grade at Our Lady of the Blessed Sacrament School, at Broad and Parrish Street, in North Central Philadelphia, if some of my teachers had offered to post my face on the school’s wall–but only if they could paint me as a white person.<br /><br />What would that have done to my 11-year-old mind? It’s scary to imagine.<br /><br />At the same time, if we want to be absolutely honest with ourselves, we have to admit that this kind of behavior is not limited to Arizona. It’s still way too prevalent in our society, as a whole.<br /><br />If you’ll recall, a tremendous controversy erupted immediately after the “9/11 tragedy,” when the artist commissioned to create a sculpture as a memorial to three “Ground Zero” firefighters wanted to make one of the firefighters black, one Hispanic and one white.<br /><br />Shockingly, even though about 24 black and Hispanic firefighters lost their lives in the line of duty that day, the members of the New York Fire Department vehemently objected to having “firemen of color” in their memorial depiction and demanded that all three of the firefighters be “white.”<br /><br />Sounds a bit like “Arizona Syndrome” to me. What do you think?<br /><br />And, finally, let’s move to a substantially more sensitive area of artistic expression. Unfortunately, it seems, the need for some people to “lighten up” images, paintings, and statues also extends to religious representations.<br /><br />For example, even though they are virtually unknown here in the United States, some of the most venerated religious images in all of Christianity and Catholicism are the so-called “Black Madonnas,” found in Spain, Germany, Poland, France, Switzerland and other countries, some of which date back more than 1600 years.<br /><br />According to University of Detroit Mercy, Spain’s best-known Black Madonna, Our Lady of Montserrat, is thought to have been carved by St. Luke in Jerusalem and subsequently taken to Barcelona, where it was discovered in 880 A.D.<br /><br />There is also the Fedorovo Virgin, a Black Madonna of 18th Century Russia, Poland’s Black Madonna of Czestochowa and more than 300 various black Madonnas in France ―even today. All in all, according to one expert on the subject, there are countless numbers of Madonna sculptures and paintings that scholars suspect were once black, but are now white, “most likely from being lightened or repainted.”<br /><br />Very simplistically, there seems to be more than sufficient evidence that a direct connection can be made to Christian history and a heritage related to African people.<br /><br />This is known from the people and places described in much of the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, and, certainly, from Moses asking Pharaoh to “Let my people go.” (His “people” must have, obviously, been in Africa at the time); and from the Egyptian-based statuettes of Black Isis holding the black infant Horus on her lap, which were the precursor images of the Black Madonnas and, originally, all Madonnas.<br /><br />But, even with all of that information available to us, here, in the United States, it is still extremely rare to find an image of a Black Madonna and her black infant son, Jesus.<br /><br />Perhaps it’s possible, in scattered, progressive black churches, but certainly not in predominantly mainstream denominations or congregations.<br /><br />It’s as if the entire country has been in racial denial on this issue, too. What difference should it make to true believers, if the man-made image of their God is not Caucasian? Nevertheless, it does, somehow, seem to make a difference, here in North America.<br /><br />Clearly, this kind of thinking has, over the years, given encouragement to people such as the New York firefighters who insist on having only white images in their memorials to their fallen comrades and to people in Arizona who insist on having only white children depicted as part of their elementary school murals.<br /><br />As we try to sort all of this out, the only encouraging sign is that Steve Blair, the councilman and talk show host, who launched all of the insanity in Prescott, in the first place, has been fired by his radio station. In addition, the school’s principal and the school district superintendent have publicly admitted that asking the painters to “lighten” the faces of the students, in retrospect, was a “mistake”.<br /><br />Maybe there is hope for Arizona―and for all of us, after all.<br /><br />I guess there really is a God – regardless of the narrow racial boxes in which we in America want to confine him/her.<br /><br />###the black issuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13909212892157771943noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2374900441933683707.post-72050746460884615582010-06-21T13:19:00.000-07:002010-06-21T14:04:54.644-07:00Black Alabama Voters Wake Up and End a Post-Racial Political CareerMaybe you saw it: A black congressman from Alabama's 7th Congressional District named Artur Davis recently lost his bid to become Alabama’s first black governor.<br /><br />It wasn’t so bad that Davis lost; the problem was that his opponent in the state’s Democratic Primary, Ron Sparks, the incumbent Alabama Agricultural Commissioner, “kicked Davis’ back out,” crushing him among both black and white voters.<br /><br />Davis, as you may recall, was yet another in a long line of “new," black elected officials who have been persuaded by mainstream media that the fundamental laws of politics no longer apply to black candidates.<br /><br />Usually, a political candidate needs to establish a strong, mutually supportive relationship with his/her "base." If, for example, you are an Hispanic political candidate, your prospects for success are significantly enhanced if you start your campaign by being able to count on the members of your Hispanic "base," people who feel a fundamental kinship with you, through a shared language, culture, appearance, residence or, even, religion.<br /><br />Former Philadelphia Mayor Frank L. Rizzo, understood that. He always took great care of his South Philly, River Ward and Northeast Philadelphia base and, therefore, entered every election campaign with a built-in electoral "edge." Whether we, in the black community, or anybody else, liked it or not, he never turned on the members of his base and they never failed to vote for him, even switching parties, by the thousands, to ensure that they could still be there when he needed them.<br /><br />It’s not really “rocket science.”<br /><br /> Successful politicians – even if they don’t happen to have law degrees from prestigious universities – have pretty much figured that out. Consequently, they usually take great pains to reach out to the members of their most important voting base to find out what they need, and to promise them that, if elected, they’ll do their best to deliver precisely that.<br /><br />So, how do you explain Artur Davis?<br /><br />When you’re an ambitious black candidate or elected official, do the flattering words coming from the New York Times, Washington Post, Time and Newsweek actually drown out your common sense? Does all the talk about your unique qualifications to appeal to white voters actually make you ineffective at doing fundamental political appeals to your own base? When they praise you for not being "burdened" with having lived through the Civil Rights Era, does that make it easier to forget the struggles and the sacrifices that paved the way for your entrance onto previously segregated university campuses, in the first place, and that give you the “right," even now, to run for very recently segregated political offices?<br /><br />It certainly seems to be the case.<br /><br />Why else would Davis, who launched his political career by being elected to Congress in 2002, behave as he did during his disastrously unsuccessful gubernatorial campaign? Did he get caught up in the hype and forget that his 7th Congressional District’s boundaries had been specifically drawn in 1992 to provide an opportunity for greater African-American political representation, following the passage of the Voting Rights Act?<br /><br />Having been born and raised in Montgomery Alabama, Davis certainly was fully aware that nine of the 12 counties in that 7th District make up Alabama’s infamous “Black Belt,” a desperately poor, still predominantly black section of the state that was the site of Alabama’s largest and most profitable cotton plantations. Many of the residents today are the descendants of the slaves who “worked” those plantations.<br /><br />As the 7th District’s congressman, Davis knew full well that the residents of the “Black Belt” endure exceptionally low levels of access to health care and a per capita income of $15,633, and that they are among those in the nation who are most seriously in need of sensitive support and assistance from their government.<br /><br />But with his Harvard law degree clutched tightly in hand and his "post-racial standard-bearer" designation from the New York Times ringing incessantly in his ears, Artur Davis decided, somehow, that he would try to be elected governor of Alabama without making a direct appeal, at all, to the State’s black voters. In fact, over the past year, as he prepared for his gubernatorial campaign, Davis’ congressional voting record began to lean more conservative, more mainstream and less black, from an issues perspective. <br /><br />Even though the people of the 7th comprised the only Congressional District in the entire state of Alabama to vote for Barack Obama in 2008, Davis, in a coldly calculated manner, thought it would, somehow, be politically expedient and decidedly "post-racial" to be the only member of the Congressional Black Caucus to vote against Barack Obama’s Health Care Reform Bill.<br /><br />In one of the most damaging responses to Davis’ vote, the old lion, Jesse Jackson, said late last year, “You can’t vote against health care and call yourself a black man.” That certainly seemed to resonate with African-American voters during the Alabama gubernatorial election.<br /><br />But that wasn’t all. In a misguided attempt to further appease white Alabama voters, Davis also went to great lengths to separate himself from established black political organizations across the state, such as The Alabama Democratic Conference and the Alabama New South Coalition.<br /><br />Davis, publicly and grandiosely, opted not even to participate in the regularly scheduled political candidate interviews that the groups invited him to attend. He was sending a message. But, they sent one right back, when they endorsed his white opponent, Ron Sparks.<br /><br /> Davis’ handlers always made it very clear that, in his race to become governor of Alabama, the candidate was emulating Barack Obama’s presidential campaign strategy. You remember that one, don’t you? That campaign focused exclusively on appeals to white voters. The goal was to win a significant white voting bloc (in Obama’s case, it was the Iowa Caucus) and then sit back and wait for black voters to get caught up in the candidate's "cross-over appeal" and flock to the campaign – even without a direct appeal to them.<br /><br />It certainly appears that, back then, black voters were a bit more trusting, a great deal “more hopeful” and significantly more willing to accept such cynical treatment.<br /><br />Thank God, on election day, black voters in Alabama gave Mr. Davis exactly what he deserved-- an embarrassingly lop-sided defeat.<br /><br />Despite leading by eight points over Sparks in a widely publicized poll a week prior to the election, Davis wound up losing to Sparks, 62 percent to 38 percent.<br /><br />According to the Tuscaloosa News, Sparks wound up winning in 61 of Alabama’s 67 counties. It wasn’t just that white voters, whom Davis loved so much, rejected him (and they did, overwhelmingly), the real reason for his defeat was that black voters, who had supported him with 98 percent of their vote as recently as 2008, appropriately decided to make him pay for turning his back on them.<br /><br />Consider this: Davis won just two out of twelve counties in his own Congressional District and was defeated by his white opponent in the nine “Black Belt” counties. In performing as he did, Davis became the first African-American candidate in a state-wide Alabama election to lose the black vote.<br /><br />In predominantly black Wilcox and Perry Counties, for example, Sparks received more than 70 percent of the vote. Davis even lost the vote in Jefferson County, his home county, and at his own polling place. Even his neighbors voted against him.<br /><br />As one Alabama political observer pointed out, “You can’t thumb your nose at your base; and that is what Artur did … it’s just staggering.”<br /><br />Fittingly, Davis, who passed up an opportunity to run again for his Congressional seat so that he could seek the Governor’s Office, announced, following his loss, that he had “no interest in running for political office again.”<br /><br />Good.<br /><br />I just hope that Davis’ close friend and fellow-Harvard Law School alumnus, Barack Obama, was paying attention.<br /><br />There’s a message in there somewhere.<br /><br />#######the black issuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13909212892157771943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2374900441933683707.post-51366859488293094072010-06-16T12:58:00.000-07:002010-06-16T13:40:42.722-07:00It's Time for the Black Community to Get John Stossel's Attention.Where are my post-racial friends when I need them?<br /><br />Recently, Rand Paul, the son of congressman and former presidential candidate Ron Paul, said that, while he supported the portion of the Civil Rights Act that banned discrimination in public places and institutions, he also thought that private businesses should be permitted to discriminate, by race.<br /><br />Even before most of us could fully digest Paul’s misguided, Tea Party-pandering comments, along came John Stossel. Stossel, the former ABC News correspondent and current Fox News Channel contributor, rushed to Paul’s defense and went a huge, racially backward step further when he said it was “time to repeal” that part of the Civil Rights Act that mandates that all citizens – regardless of race – should have access to public accommodations, even in privately owned businesses.<br /><br />Stossel’s outrageous position was that businesses should have “the right to be racist.” In fact, in a follow-up interview on his new network, he added that, “It’s time now to repeal the (Civil Rights Act's) Public Accommodations section because private businesses ought to get to discriminate."<br /><br />It’s not just unsettling that a person running for one of the very highest political offices in the United States(Paul), and a person who happens to work for the most-watched cable news channel(Stossel) have, in the same week, become comfortable with publicly espousing their racial insensitivity. No, the most unsettling part of all of this is that the issues have been dispassionately discussed on the nation’s broadcast media outlets, if at all, as if they were merely a topic in a high school debating class.<br /><br />This was two extraordinarily high-profile Americans talking casually about bringing back “Jim Crow,” and no one seemed to be very much concerned about it – especially not black people.<br /><br />Perhaps we shouldn’t have expected much better from Stossel. This, after all, is the same guy who wrote a column a year-and-a-half ago, in which he liberally quoted noted black apologist Shelby Steele in saying that white “preoccupation with guilt and compensation, such as Affirmative Action, is actually a subtle form of racism.” Indeed, Stossel latched right onto Steele’s premise that, in this country, there is such a thing as “black privilege” that facilitates even the meager levels of black political and economic success, far beyond the levels to which our talent and hard work entitle us.<br /><br />That’s the same John Stossel who just, two months ago, criticized black professional baseball players who took a public stand against the disproportionately low percentage of African Americans in major league baseball and their inability to receive contracts commensurate with those given to their white peers.<br /><br />Stossel, one of the world’s most visible non-athletes, went on to say about black professional ballplayers who were dumped from major league baseball rosters this year, “They’re unemployed because they asked for more money than their skills warrant.” He offered no opinion, curiously, on the dramatic and systematic decline in the percentage of African-American players in major league baseball over the past 30 years, money notwithstanding.<br /><br />The saddest part of all this is that because Stossel works in a highly competitive broadcast news industry, non-Fox television and cable news coverage of his negative, race-baiting message will be far more difficult to find than "Rand Paul" stories.<br /><br />Even though Stossel’s comments were much more harmful and mean-spirited than Paul’s, a Google search shows 206 million results for “Rand Paul, Civil Rights Act,” and just 31,500 for a search of the topic “John Stossel, Civil Rights Act."<br /><br />It has also been interesting to measure, online, what the response from our “national black Civil Rights” leaders has been. Ben Jealous, president of the NAACP, has moved right into the fray, launching an online campaign to invite Rand Paul to participate in a public debate with him on the history and significance of the Civil Rights Act. Google showed 504,000 results for “Rand Paul/NAACP” topics, but again, only 14,400 for “John Stossel/NAACP.” The National Urban League, by comparison, has been decidedly late out of the gate on this issue, with only 54,000 results for its interaction with Rand Paul, and only 3,920 for Urban League/Stossel-related news.<br /><br />I’d like to believe that Rand Paul will break down and agree to debate the NAACP President, but I’m getting the feeling that his “handlers” have already lost confidence in his ability to defend himself, publicly, on this and other issues. The first clue in that regard was hearing that, over the past week, Paul had cancelled a previously scheduled appearance on "Meet the Press," becoming only the third person to have cancelled a "Meet the Press" interview in the show’s 62-year history.<br /><br />Getting back to Stossel, there’s a movement to have FOX fire him for his remarks. Chances of that happening, in my opinion, are probably "slim" and "none." Stossel, who seemed to be floundering at FOX since his move from ABC has, for the first time, actually said something in his "anti-Civil Rights" statement that seems to resonate with the network’s primarily conservative, predominantly white, audience. It appears that the more he attacks the rights of blacks and other minorities, the more he says publicly what so many in the FOX audience wish they had the courage to say, the more job security he creates for himself.<br /><br />The most curious part in all of this is how Stossel, who was born into a prominent Jewish family in Illinois, could have arrived in such a contentious position with regard to the Civil Rights Act. Even if he has absolutely no respect for black history or sensitivity to contemporary black-white disparities, I would think that Stossel would be keenly aware of the role that the Jewish community played in the Civil Rights movement and the drafting of the Civil Rights Act, itself.<br /><br />Maybe Stossel, so caught up now in living the life of a high-profile, "mainstream," media personality, wants to forget that the Ku Klux Klan, historically, targeted not only blacks, but also Catholics and Jews.<br /><br />Maybe now that he’s at FOX and integrally involved in "Tea Party world," Mr. Stossel has also conveniently forgotten that of the three men murdered by the Klan, in Philadelphia, Mississippi, in 1964, one, James Chaney was black, and two, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, were Jewish.<br /><br />Stossel, no doubt, is trying really hard to forget that an estimated one-half of all white Freedom Riders were Jewish and that Jewish people were instrumental in drafting not only the 1964 Civil Rights Act but, also, the 1965 Voting Rights Act.<br /><br />To be honest, the last time I paid any serious attention to John Stossel was during his now-infamous and very brief interview with World Wrestling Federation personality “Dr. D” David Schultz. Like it was yesterday, I recall Stossel making yet another ill-advised comment, this time saying to Schultz that many people in America believed that “professional wrestling is fake.”<br /><br />Immediately after the words left Stossel’s mouth, Schultz hit him with an open-handed slap with his left, dropping the newsman to the ground. When Stossel popped back up, holding his head, and asked Schultz what he was trying to do, the wrestler popped him “upside the head” again, this time with a right-handed slap. Stossel dropped to the ground, once more, and, first, crawled, then ran, down the hallway, away from the wrestler. (If you don’t believe me, go on up to YouTube and view the video, yourself. It’s called “Wrestling is Fake”).<br /><br />Now, I’m not generally a person who supports physical confrontation, but have you noticed that John Stossel hasn’t had very much to say about professional wrestlers since that incident?<br /><br />Clearly, he needs at least a figurative slap from us on this Civil Rights issue--to get his attention, at least and, hopefully, to change his mind.<br /><br /><br /><br />##########the black issuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13909212892157771943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2374900441933683707.post-24674124010188766382010-06-04T13:38:00.000-07:002010-06-04T14:34:06.868-07:00For Both Williams and Specter the Black Vote Was Never Really EngagedMaybe the recent, Pennsylvania primary elections for governor and for the U.S. Senate, really had nothing at all to do with race.<br /><br />There must be at least an outside possibility that the race of the candidates was not a factor, at all, on Election Day. It really is possible, I'm sure, that the voters simply went to the polling places and cast their votes for the candidates they knew best, the ones with the most experience, and the ones with the best ideas for addressing their issues.<br /><br />It’s conceivable that politics in this city and in this state – unlike public school students’ demographics, residential housing patterns, access to mortgages and other bank loans, unemployment data and incarceration rates - is one of those rare things that is not impacted at all by the race or ethnicity of the participants.<br /><br />Na-a-a-a-h!<br /><br />I don’t believe it.<br /><br />After reviewing the Primary Election results, I’m beginning to get suspicious that, in this case, the time-honored tradition of southeastern Pennsylvania Democrats voting overwhelmingly for one of their own during a gubernatorial primary, was blatantly disregarded. Regrettably, in this election, the otherwise qualified, and certainly uncontroversial, Anthony Hardy Williams, was largely overlooked by too many southeast Pennsylvania and Philadelphia voters, simply because he happeneed to be the black candidate.<br /><br />The old adage --“all politics is local”-- had certainly been a guiding philosophy for electoral politics in this country, including Pennsylvania statewide elections, right up until May 18, Primary Election Day.<br /><br />After all, the thinking always went, why would any sane, southeast Pennsylvania Democrat ever want to take the chance of nominating a candidate from the other side of the state and risk having reduced access to a new governor, whose longest-standing relationships and highest political priorities were in Allegheny County, or some other godforesaken part of Central or Western Pennsylvania?<br /><br /> It was an unwritten, but widely understood rule, and most voters and political operatives functioned accordingly, campaign in and campaign out.<br /><br />If you think I’m kidding, check out what happened when Ed Rendell, the southeastern Pennsylvania/Philadelphia candidate, generally unknown outside of that part of the state, decided to run in the 2002 gubernatorial primary, against the best judgment of his own party.<br />What happened was that Rendell drew most of his victory margin in that primary over Robert Casey Jr. by winning just 10 out of 67 counties, in southeast Pennsylvania and in the Lehigh Valley area.<br /><br />Subsequently, with the solid backing of that same part of the state, Rendell went on to win the general election in 2002 and to be re-elected governor of Pennsylvania in 2006.<br /><br />Informed by that time-honored piece of political wisdom, the Williams camp didn’t expect political miracles from voters in the western part of the state, but they did assume they would receive the same levels of hometown and regional solidarity that the southeast always seemed to provide for one of their “favorite sons” in previous elections.<br /><br />It didn’t happen.<br /><br />In fact, when the polls closed on Tuesday, Allegheny County's Dan Onorato, a virtual unknown on this side of the state, who visited very infrequently here and whose campaign commercials failed to shed much light on what he actually stands for, had won the election very handily, with 45.1 percent of the statewide vote, far outdistancing second-place finisher Jack Wagner (also of Allegheny County), at 24.2 percent, Williams, at 18 percent, and Joe Hoeffel, at 12.7 percent.<br /><br />The key to a Williams victory, said his campaign “handlers,” was to have him come out of Philadelphia with 250,000 votes – enough to overcome an expected weaker showing out west.<br /><br />Williams did, in fact, win among Philadelphia voters, gaining 51.3 percent of the votes cast in the governor’s race, here in the city. But that represented only 79,968 votes, rather than 250,000. In addition, the entire Philadelphia Democratic turnout that day, at 18.8 percent, only amounted to a total of 155,678 votes being spread among all four Democratic candidates. By comparison, the rest of the state’s turnout has been estimated at about 25 percent--not good for Williams.<br /><br />Also disappointing for Williams was the fact that the two western-based gubernatorial candidates – Onorato and Wagner – together walked away with 35.2 percent of the Philadelphia vote, numbers that were uncharacteristically high for out-of-region gubernatorial candidates.<br /><br />In Tony Williams’ own southeast Pennsylvania "back yard," outside of Philadelphia, Onorato only lost one county, Montgomery, which gave 50 percent of its vote and a first-place finish to hometown favorite, Joe Hoeffel. It was the only county, statewide, that Hoeffel won.<br /><br />Onorato also managed to place first in Bucks, Delaware and Chester Counties. Williams, by the way, finished third in Bucks, Chester and Montgomery, and second behind Onorato in Delaware County.<br /><br />At that point, the case was clearly closed-- especially, when we realize that the Philadelphia vote, itself, seemed to break down largely along racial lines. In Philadelphia, wherein African Americans constitute about 60 percent of registered Democrats, Williams won 51.3 percent of the vote, and 44 out of 66 wards – most of those in predominantly black areas.<br /><br />At the same time, however, Onorato was able to come in and claim 40,009 votes, or 25.7 percent of all those cast and to win 20 out of 66 wards.<br /><br />Not entirely surprisingly, the 20 wards won by Onorato included those in the farthest reaches of the Great Northeast, those along the “river wards,” in Center City and in southeast Philadelphia. Whatever their reasons, they must have been strong enough – in those specific communities – to cause the residents to vote against their own regional interests, in a way that Philadelphians and southeast Pennsylvanians generally never do.<br /><br />By the way, in Onorato’s own home county, Allegheny, the voters didn't bother to return the favor. Williams finished third out of the four candidates, there, with just 6.7 percent of the vote, while Onorato rolled to first place, with 52.3 percent.<br /><br />At the end of the day, it will have to be said that Tony Williams started late, raised a good deal of money and ran what seemed to be a professionally managed, if not engaging, campaign.<br /><br />In a gubernatorial race that was notable, primarily, for its general lack of drama, or voter interest, Tony Williams absolutely had to mount a campaign that moved beyond routine and formulaic. He also had to say and do enough to engage and excite the black electorate, without which he absolutely could not win. With some street-level "buzz," a "crusade" undercurrent and a sense of urgency driven by his campaign, it could have happened.<br /> <br />It reminds me of the first mayoral campaign between John Street and Sam Katz, whom some suspect is actually planning to run, again, for mayor of Philadelphia--this time as a Democrat. In any event, it was 1999, Street was the Democratic candidate and Katz was the Republican candidate, in a city wherein Democrats held a 5-to-1 registration advantage.<br /><br />Black Philadelphians went to the polls and gave John Street 96 percent of their vote and, yet …. Street only beat Sam Katz by 9,000 votes. Since that time, I’ve heard John Street, curiously, say that he couldn’t have won that election without the support of the building trades unions. I say now what I said to Street then: Without a highly engaged black electorate, and an exceptionally high turnout by those voters, John Street would have lost that election. Period.<br /><br />At the end of the day, too many African-American voters in Philadelphia didn’t show up last Tuesday to ensure an Anthony Hardy Williams or an Arlen Specter win. Too many perfectly good votes were left on the table in a political environment wherein Senator Williams couldn’t even trust his long-time, Democratic colleagues in neighboring counties to support him on Election Day--even when it was clearly in their own best interest to do so.<br /><br />In retrospect, I’m sure he agrees.<br /><br />Hey, even John Street probably agrees with that.<br /><br /><br /><br />##########the black issuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13909212892157771943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2374900441933683707.post-411905571647419552010-06-01T09:50:00.000-07:002010-06-01T10:21:06.095-07:00Arizona Immigration: Just the Tip of the IcebergAbout a year-and-a-half ago, the first time I heard about Igor Panarin, I was absolutely convinced that the guy was crazy.<br /> <br />Now, as I watch what’s been going on in Arizona, I’m not so sure.<br /><br />Panarin, a former KGB official and dean of the Russian Foreign Ministry academy for future diplomats, according to a December 2008 Wall Street Journal article, has predicted that the U.S. will splinter into six, separate “Republics” and territories, during the year 2010.<br /><br />Panarin’s premise is that mass immigration, economic decline and moral degradation will be the cause of a civil war in this country, and lead to a collapse of the U.S. dollar in late June/early July, 2010. The Russian also predicted that “wealthier states will begin to withhold funds from the federal government and effectively secede from the Union," according to the Journal.<br /><br />Until very recently I had thought that Panarin was just “blowing smoke,” but the more I watch the right-wing political posturing and the increasing legislative "hard line" against all non-European Arizonans, I’m starting to wonder if Professor Panarin just might be right.<br /><br />Less than a month after the passage of the country’s most stringent anti-immigration law in her state, Jan Brewer, Arizona’s governor, signed, despite a strong opposing statement by six United Nations human rights experts, another anti-immigrant-focused piece of legislation. This one was designed to prohibit Arizona public schools from offering classes primarily for students of a “particular ethnic group.” In case you weren’t paying full attention, that not only would prohibit heritage-focused classes for Mexican Americans, it also would ban Native-American and African-American studies courses throughout the state, effective January 2011. In teaching ethnic solidarity, says Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne, the courses are also "teaching Latino students that they are oppressed by white people."<br /><br />By the way, there are more than 275,000 black residents of Arizona, and their families will also be affected by all of this, though you wouldn’t know that from mainstream news coverage.<br /><br />As if all of this hasn’t been enough, the state of Arizona and its public school system has also been working under a directive that requires that teachers whose spoken English is considered “heavily accented,” or ungrammatical, must be removed from classes for students who are still learning English. "Evaluators," believe it or not, have been dispatched across the state and have audited 1500 teachers, in 2008 and 2009, on things such as “comprehensible pronunciation.”<br /><br />I’m just wondering...what part of England are these Arizona evaluators from that they can discern when a person is speaking English without an “accent?” Would Jimmy Carter, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Strom Thurmond, Haley Barbour, Bill Clinton or John F. Kennedy have been evaluated by them as speaking “without an accent?"<br /><br />Are there really people in any part of this country who don't have some kind of regional accent? That, in my opinion, is just thinly disguised xenophobia and racism.<br /><br />Needless to say, none of this is going down without incident. The city of Los Angeles, for example, with an elected Hispanic mayor and a 46.5 percent Hispanic population, has called for a boycott of the entire state of Arizona. And at the recent summit of the Union of South American Nations, the participants issued a strong statement condemning the law. Signers of the statement, which said the law would lead to “legitimization of racist attitudes,” included the presidents of Brazil, Uruguay, Ecuador, Paraguay, chile, Bolivia, Venezuela and Argentina.<br /><br />The truth is that what’s apparently taking place in Arizona is a great deal more complex than our mainstream media and elected leaders have led us to believe.<br /><br />It reminds me of a trip I took to China in the mid-'80’s. On a tour bus through Macau, which, at the time, was still a neighboring Portuguese colony, the tour guide explained that, each day, tens of thousands of vendors from the Peoples' Republic of China would cross the border into Macau, sell their wares and return home to China each night. She was careful to point out, however, that on any given day, if the Chinese government wanted to do so, it could simply dispatch millions of Chinese citizens into Macau and encourage them to stay, and that Macau would be unable to do anything at all to make them leave. Macau, in 1999, by the way, was “handed over” by the Portuguese to the Peoples’ Republic.<br /><br />Until 1836, what the U.S. now calls the state of Texas was actually a part of Mexico and, in 1848, the major portions of seven other current U.S. states – California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Wyoming – were also annexed, from Mexico, by the United States.<br />There was, of course, great resistance by the Mexicans, there was war and many bloody battles related to all of this but, in the end, those territories became a part of the U.S. and the size of Mexico was reduced by 45 percent.<br /><br />Why else would all of those great U.S. cities in the southwest have Spanish, Mexican-derived names, such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Antonio, Mesa, Casa Grande, Santa Fe, Las Vegas, and El Paso?<br /><br />Right up to the present day, there are many in Mexico, who still believe that the greater part of what is now called the southwestern United States is, actually, their own ancestral homeland.<br />To further complicate all of this, the Arizona legislature also has voted to advance a bill that would require all future U.S. presidential candidates to present their birth certificates, prior to being placed on the ballot for national election in the state of Arizona. Not adhering to the law, experts say, would be sufficient grounds to have a presidential candidate, such as Barack Obama, removed from the ballot.<br /><br />All this brings us right back to our friend, Igor Panarin. According to his prediction, these kinds of controversies will lead, among other things, to Hawaii reverting to its former Asian control, Alaska reverting to its former Russian control and the rest of the continental United States being divided into four separate republics.<br /><br />The “California Republic” would include seven states, including California, Arizona, Nevada and Utah. The “Texas Republic” would include nine states under the influence of Mexico, whose people, as in the Chinese example, already seem to be simply moving across the U.S. border, unrestrained, every day, and not returning home.<br /><br />“Atlantic America,” according to Panarin, would include eighteen largely mid-Atlantic states, ranging from South Carolina to Maine, and the “Central North American Republic,” would include fourteen states in the North Central part of the country under the influence of Canada.<br /><br />If this sounds a little far-fetched to you, please note that more than ten other states are also considering Arizona-type pieces of legislation, including Colorado, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Idaho, Utah, Missouri, Texas, North Carolina, Maryland and Minnesota. And, right here in Pennsylvania, former Lt. Governor candidate and state representative Daryl Metcalfe is a leading supporter of H.B. 2479, which would, among other things, direct the state's police officers to "attempt to verify the immigration status of suspected illegal aliens."<br /><br />While I hope Panarin, the former KGB agent, was dead wrong in his predictions, I am starting to suspect that this is all so much bigger than "immigration" and it's just the "tip of the iceberg" of the deep political, scape-goating emotions that are spawned, routinely, by a depressed national economy.<br /><br />While we, in the black community, watch, distractedly, what is happening to people who speak with "heavy Spanish accents" in Arizona, we would be well-advised to remember the old quote: "If they come for me in the night, they'll be coming for you in the morning."<br /><br />I'm sure we'll be hearing more about all of this, in the not-too-distant future.<br /><br /><br /><br />###########the black issuehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13909212892157771943noreply@blogger.com0