As you have probably heard the smearing of Barack Obama is in full swing. There was the Hussein flap. His middle name is Hussein. Clearly he hates America. Yes, that's right, we've taken to pointing out the obvious. Nice.
Then there was the madrassa allegation. When he was a boy he lived in Indonesia and attended an Islamic school for two years and a Catholic school for two years. Clearly he is a Muslim Manchurian Candidate, and we must be vigilent for a Muslim invasion, perhaps a law making Islam the national religion should Osama take office. Never mind it wasn't a Wahhabi school (the ones that Bush's dear friends the Saudi's have been funding and have been responsible for the spread of radical violent Islam throughout Central Asia--The Saudi Connection, U.S. Ties to Saudi Elite May Be Hurting War on Terrorism, Bush Advisers Cashed in on Saudi Gravy Train) or that he WAS SEVEN YEARS OLD. Clearly the radical right is justified to worry that a seven year old was brainwashed trained, in two years to become the first black editor of the Harvard Law Review, a brilliant and progressive politician and orator, and a professor of constitutional law, you know that document that the Bush Administration keeps forgetting about.
Read this
Smearing Barack Obama
and this
Obama Smeared As Former ‘Madrassa’ Student, Possible Covert Muslim Extremist
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
"What is the cause of the crisis in black education?" Part II: I-Pods and Kicks???
Brangelina, Madonna, Bono, and now Oprah, apparently Africa is the cause de jure of American noblesse oblige.
In case you didn't know, Oprah recently opened a $40 million girls school forty miles outside of Johannesburg, South Africa. It is supposedly set on 22 "lush" acres and includes over 28 buildings. "The complex features oversize rooms done in tasteful beiges and browns with splashes of color, 200-thread-count sheets, a yoga studio, a beauty salon, indoor and outdoor theaters, hundreds of pieces of original tribal art and sidewalks speckled with colorful tiles" (Oprah Goes to School). There has been wide spread criticism of this decision by many who call for Oprah to make those kinds of investments in a US public school, or maybe give out scholarships instead of Pontiacs. In defense of her decision, Oprah oppinned the cultural priorities of inner-city youth:
I'm not here to criticize Oprah's decision to fund a school in South Africa, I could. I don't know where I would begin though, perhaps with the insinuation that all students value things over knowledge. I don't buy that. I teach high school in the "inner city" (actually it's more like the outer city, Chicago's hella big), but I know that Oprah could have found a couple hundred kids in my school alone that might have been "worthy". Or, maybe I could start with the hypocrisy of criticizing kids for caring about material possessions...has she ever watched her own show? Givin' away cars and shit like that, it's not like Oprah contributes to the embrace of conspicious consumption or mass marketed lies. No, not Oprah, those make-over shows are about self-esteem, not wardrobe enlargement or retail therapy or advertisment based notions of the 'good life'. Or, how 'bout the fact that if you google "Oprah" and "Ipod" you are directed to Oprah.com and a page entitled "Oprah's favorite things"? Who is she to criticize poor kids for fetishizing material goods when it is something every American does. It's just that when a rich white kid fetishizes a pair of kicks, he just buys 'em and takes 'em for granted, part of that great American tradition of entitlement. Her statement insinuates that this is some kind of abnormal "mentality" found among urban youth, and we all know what "urban youth" is code for. Worst of all it reinforces a racist perspective that white people love to use to justify continued inequality, namely that it's a matter of behavior, culture, and upbringing that results in the American "underclass".
I could say all that, but that's not what I'm here to do. First, I think it's great that Oprah is using her money in a way that could help some young women in South Africa (she could build like 15 of those schools and not notice it, but let's leave that alone). Second, while she is demonstrating charity and not solidarity I think that charity shouldn't be criticized, I think it should be the start of a long conversation about how for charity to exist there must be continued and substantial economic, social, and political injustice, and what is more helpful is a deeper analysis of the roots of that injustice, a richer and fuller expansion of one's own consciousness. And finally, Oprah is a victim of the all-to-common fundamental attribution fallacy.
You may be asking yourself, if he's not going to criticize Oprah what is he writing about? Well, the truth is, while I don't agree with Oprah, I think her statement is the beginning of understanding part of the truth behind the "crisis in black education".
I was talking to a friend and he pointed out that he felt that Brown v. Board may have actually damaged black education and black entrepreneurialism. This is not a new argument. Brown "integrated" black students into schools that stripped them of the cultural capital that allowed black people to survive in the face of oppression and violence for hundreds of years. In the face of such hatred the black community turned to itself for sustenance. Sure, poverty and violence ravaged that community, but that community took care of itself and it survived. The fact a black culture even exists in America is a testament to the tenacious will and passion that this community possesses. And, integration began to rob that community of the capital that segregation created. The white dominator culture had institutions that did not transmit that cultural capital, and it was and is an inheritance lost. This is not to say that my friend or I blame Brown for anything at all, it is only to say that a cost of integration may have been the loss of a central pillar of the black community and the black culture, namely the black school. And that cultural pillar was replaced by one that, he believed (as do I), robbed black folks of a certain amount of their cultural capital. A similar argument is made about Latinos in the amazing book, Substractive Schooling by Angela Valenzuela.
However, while I think that narrative is true, it only goes so far. The schools are not truly to blame. I think that the material-obsessed, consumer culture of late American capitalism holds most of the blame. Marx proposed a base/superstructure analysis of culture and ideology. The 'superstructure' that constructs ideology, culture, and consciousness is built upon the 'base' of capitalism. This capitalist superstructure creates a 'false consciousness' of commodity fetishizing, or in other words, it leads to the 'thingification' of everything. Blacks were denied full access to this superstructure, the white dominator culture, so they constructed folk cultures, sub-cultures, and counter-cultures to survive (they also internalized much of the dominator culture, which will be the subject of a later post). So, when the 1960s came these various black cultural traditions came under attack not only by the integration of black folks into schools, but by their integration into the newly created mass marketing bonanza coupled with a period of economic prosperity, the result of technological innovation, militaristic Keyensianism, and an empire-like control of global politics and economics. This prosperity created the a black middle class and some say the civil rights movement, but it was still unavailable to most blacks. The great American boom also created the great American unquenchable thirst for stuff, a thirst that influenced the black community as much as it did the white community, the only difference is that the white community belonged and the black did not, economically, socially, politically, and culturally. The cultural and psychological impact of the American thirst for material possessions on an entire group of people denied access to the means to pursue that thirst is unknowable.
Mass marketing makes all Americans feel like they are missing something, that they are not full without whatever it is that is being sold to them, but blacks cannot even have full access to the commodity market because of their inheritance of oppression. And blacks cannot simply buy their way into the American identity; even after the most conspicious consumption they are still told that they are missing something, the correct pigment. Something that the market has noticed.
In speaking about the reason for the growing despair and nihilism in the black community, Dr. Cornel West, wrote,
West suggests that the psychological damage of American-style material thirst and denial of access to material sustenance is self-contempt and self-hatred. The love of material success and hate of self within the black community is so pervasive. Look toward hip hop, a lifestyle built upon hundreds of years of black culture but obsessed with black-on-black violence and hyper-consumption. The anger endemic to hip hop seems to come from that all-too-obvious truth that "they have been betrayed by those who came before them. That they are at best tolerated in schools, feared on the streets, and almost inevitably destined for the hell holes of prison (Homeland and Hip Hop by Immortal Technique and Mumia Abu Jamal).
So, when Oprah speaks of I-pods and kicks crowding out chemistry and physics, I'm not all that sure she isn't absolutely correct. However, to lay the cause there and stop, to declare frustration at those who have been victimized, is at both times honest and dishonest. But, mostly it's just sad. She too is a victim of the dominator culture of consumption and market morality, I mean she just recently topped Forbes list of the world's richest female entertainers, and we all know that Oprah is more than an entertainer, she's a walking, talking transnational corporation. She's a brand more than a person. Talk about a victim of market morality, she is, in the eyes of the world, less person than thing.
While Oprah may be right and she may also be wrong, she is, at least, understood. And that, that is something.
Be Brave. Be Tenacious. Be Understanding.
In case you didn't know, Oprah recently opened a $40 million girls school forty miles outside of Johannesburg, South Africa. It is supposedly set on 22 "lush" acres and includes over 28 buildings. "The complex features oversize rooms done in tasteful beiges and browns with splashes of color, 200-thread-count sheets, a yoga studio, a beauty salon, indoor and outdoor theaters, hundreds of pieces of original tribal art and sidewalks speckled with colorful tiles" (Oprah Goes to School). There has been wide spread criticism of this decision by many who call for Oprah to make those kinds of investments in a US public school, or maybe give out scholarships instead of Pontiacs. In defense of her decision, Oprah oppinned the cultural priorities of inner-city youth:
"I became so frustrated with visiting inner-city schools that I just stopped going. The sense that you need to learn just isn’t there," she says. "If you ask the kids what they want or need, they will say an iPod or some sneakers. In South Africa, they don’t ask for money or toys. They ask for uniforms so they can go to school" (Oprah Goes to School).
I'm not here to criticize Oprah's decision to fund a school in South Africa, I could. I don't know where I would begin though, perhaps with the insinuation that all students value things over knowledge. I don't buy that. I teach high school in the "inner city" (actually it's more like the outer city, Chicago's hella big), but I know that Oprah could have found a couple hundred kids in my school alone that might have been "worthy". Or, maybe I could start with the hypocrisy of criticizing kids for caring about material possessions...has she ever watched her own show? Givin' away cars and shit like that, it's not like Oprah contributes to the embrace of conspicious consumption or mass marketed lies. No, not Oprah, those make-over shows are about self-esteem, not wardrobe enlargement or retail therapy or advertisment based notions of the 'good life'. Or, how 'bout the fact that if you google "Oprah" and "Ipod" you are directed to Oprah.com and a page entitled "Oprah's favorite things"? Who is she to criticize poor kids for fetishizing material goods when it is something every American does. It's just that when a rich white kid fetishizes a pair of kicks, he just buys 'em and takes 'em for granted, part of that great American tradition of entitlement. Her statement insinuates that this is some kind of abnormal "mentality" found among urban youth, and we all know what "urban youth" is code for. Worst of all it reinforces a racist perspective that white people love to use to justify continued inequality, namely that it's a matter of behavior, culture, and upbringing that results in the American "underclass".
I could say all that, but that's not what I'm here to do. First, I think it's great that Oprah is using her money in a way that could help some young women in South Africa (she could build like 15 of those schools and not notice it, but let's leave that alone). Second, while she is demonstrating charity and not solidarity I think that charity shouldn't be criticized, I think it should be the start of a long conversation about how for charity to exist there must be continued and substantial economic, social, and political injustice, and what is more helpful is a deeper analysis of the roots of that injustice, a richer and fuller expansion of one's own consciousness. And finally, Oprah is a victim of the all-to-common fundamental attribution fallacy.
You may be asking yourself, if he's not going to criticize Oprah what is he writing about? Well, the truth is, while I don't agree with Oprah, I think her statement is the beginning of understanding part of the truth behind the "crisis in black education".
I was talking to a friend and he pointed out that he felt that Brown v. Board may have actually damaged black education and black entrepreneurialism. This is not a new argument. Brown "integrated" black students into schools that stripped them of the cultural capital that allowed black people to survive in the face of oppression and violence for hundreds of years. In the face of such hatred the black community turned to itself for sustenance. Sure, poverty and violence ravaged that community, but that community took care of itself and it survived. The fact a black culture even exists in America is a testament to the tenacious will and passion that this community possesses. And, integration began to rob that community of the capital that segregation created. The white dominator culture had institutions that did not transmit that cultural capital, and it was and is an inheritance lost. This is not to say that my friend or I blame Brown for anything at all, it is only to say that a cost of integration may have been the loss of a central pillar of the black community and the black culture, namely the black school. And that cultural pillar was replaced by one that, he believed (as do I), robbed black folks of a certain amount of their cultural capital. A similar argument is made about Latinos in the amazing book, Substractive Schooling by Angela Valenzuela.
However, while I think that narrative is true, it only goes so far. The schools are not truly to blame. I think that the material-obsessed, consumer culture of late American capitalism holds most of the blame. Marx proposed a base/superstructure analysis of culture and ideology. The 'superstructure' that constructs ideology, culture, and consciousness is built upon the 'base' of capitalism. This capitalist superstructure creates a 'false consciousness' of commodity fetishizing, or in other words, it leads to the 'thingification' of everything. Blacks were denied full access to this superstructure, the white dominator culture, so they constructed folk cultures, sub-cultures, and counter-cultures to survive (they also internalized much of the dominator culture, which will be the subject of a later post). So, when the 1960s came these various black cultural traditions came under attack not only by the integration of black folks into schools, but by their integration into the newly created mass marketing bonanza coupled with a period of economic prosperity, the result of technological innovation, militaristic Keyensianism, and an empire-like control of global politics and economics. This prosperity created the a black middle class and some say the civil rights movement, but it was still unavailable to most blacks. The great American boom also created the great American unquenchable thirst for stuff, a thirst that influenced the black community as much as it did the white community, the only difference is that the white community belonged and the black did not, economically, socially, politically, and culturally. The cultural and psychological impact of the American thirst for material possessions on an entire group of people denied access to the means to pursue that thirst is unknowable.
Mass marketing makes all Americans feel like they are missing something, that they are not full without whatever it is that is being sold to them, but blacks cannot even have full access to the commodity market because of their inheritance of oppression. And blacks cannot simply buy their way into the American identity; even after the most conspicious consumption they are still told that they are missing something, the correct pigment. Something that the market has noticed.
In speaking about the reason for the growing despair and nihilism in the black community, Dr. Cornel West, wrote,
What has changed? What went wrong? The bitter irony of integration? The cumulative effects of a genocidal conspiracy? The virtual collapse of rising expectations after the optimistic sixties? None of this fully understands why teh cultural structures that once sustained black life in American are no longer able to fend off the nihilistic threat. I believe that two significant reasons why the threat is more powerful now than ever before are the saturation of market forces and market moralities in black life and the present crisis in black leadership. The recent market-driven sharttering of black civil societies--black families, neighborhoods, schools, churches, mosques--leaves more and more black people vulnerable to daily lives endured with little sense of self and fragile existential moorings.
Black people have always been in America's wilderness in search of a promised land. Yet many black folk now reside in a jungle ruled by a cutthroat market morality devoid of any faith in deliverance or hope for freedom. Contrary to the superficial claims of conservative behaviorists, these jungles are not primarily the result of pathological behavior. Rather, this behavior is the tragic response of a people bereft of resources in confronting the workings of U.S. capitalist society. Saying this is is not the same as asserting that individual black people are not responsible for their actions--black murderers and rapists should go to jail. But it must be recognized that the nihilistic threat contributes to criminal behavior. It is a threat that feeds on poverty and shattered cultural institutions and grows more powerful as the armors to ward against it are weakened.
But why is this shattering of black civil society occuring? What has led to the weakening of black cultural institutions in asphalt jungles? Corporate market insitutions have contributed greatly to their collapse. By corporate market institutions I mean that complex set of interlocking enterprises that have a disproportionate influence on how are society is run and how our culture is shaped. Needless to say, the primary motivation of these institutions is to make profits, and their basic strategy is to convince the public to consume. These institutions have helped create a seductive way of life, a culture of consumption that capitalizes on every opportunity to make money. Market calculations and cost-benefit analyses hold sway in almost every sphere of U.S. society.
The common denominator of these calculations and analyses is usually the provision, expansion, and intensification of pleasure. Pleasure is a multivalent term; it means different things to many people. In the American way of life pleasure involves comfort, convenience, and sexual stimulation. Pleasure, so defined, has little to do with the past and views the future as no more than repetition of a hedonistically driven present. This market morality stigmatizes others as objects for personal pleasure or bodily stimulation. Conservative behaviorists have alleged that traditional morality has been undermined by radical feminists and the cultural radicals of the sixties. But it is clear that corporate market institutions have greatly contributed to undermining traditional morality in order to stay in business and make a profit. The reduction of individuals to objects of pleasure is especially evident in teh culture industries--television, radio, video, music--in which gestures of sexual foreplay and orgiastic pleasure flood the marketplace.
Like all Americans, African-Americans are influenced greatly by the images of comfort, convenience, machismo, femininity, violence, and sexual stimulation that bombard consumers. These seductive images contribute to the predominance of the market-inspired way of life over all others and thereby edge out nonmarket values--love, care, service to others--handed down by preceding generations. The predominance of this way of life among those living in poverty-ridden conditions, with a limited capacity to ward off self-contempt and self-hatred, results in the possible triumph of the nihilistic threat in black America (Race Matters).
West suggests that the psychological damage of American-style material thirst and denial of access to material sustenance is self-contempt and self-hatred. The love of material success and hate of self within the black community is so pervasive. Look toward hip hop, a lifestyle built upon hundreds of years of black culture but obsessed with black-on-black violence and hyper-consumption. The anger endemic to hip hop seems to come from that all-too-obvious truth that "they have been betrayed by those who came before them. That they are at best tolerated in schools, feared on the streets, and almost inevitably destined for the hell holes of prison (Homeland and Hip Hop by Immortal Technique and Mumia Abu Jamal).
So, when Oprah speaks of I-pods and kicks crowding out chemistry and physics, I'm not all that sure she isn't absolutely correct. However, to lay the cause there and stop, to declare frustration at those who have been victimized, is at both times honest and dishonest. But, mostly it's just sad. She too is a victim of the dominator culture of consumption and market morality, I mean she just recently topped Forbes list of the world's richest female entertainers, and we all know that Oprah is more than an entertainer, she's a walking, talking transnational corporation. She's a brand more than a person. Talk about a victim of market morality, she is, in the eyes of the world, less person than thing.
While Oprah may be right and she may also be wrong, she is, at least, understood. And that, that is something.
Be Brave. Be Tenacious. Be Understanding.
Distraction or Destruction???
Yeah so the title is a little annoying, but whatever. As I wrote a few days ago the Bushies seem to be escalating not just in Iraq but toward Iran. Now, Sec. Gates confirms that the aircraft carrier and the PATRIOT missiles are, in fact, aimed at intimidating Iran (Iran Target of US Gulf Military Moves, Gate Says). NSA Hadley is quoted as saying "the US was 'going to need to deal with what Iran is doing inside Iraq'." The Dark-Lord Veep Baldy McBalderson evidently "accused Iran of 'fishing in troubled waters inside Iraq'". Sally Hemmings, I mean Condoleeza Rice said, "I think there is plenty of evidence that there is Iranian involvement with these networks that are making high-explosive IEDs [improvised explosive devices] and that are endangering our troops, and that's going to be dealt with" (Bush's New Iran Policy-No Evidence of IED Charge). She has yet to provide any evidence, but that's not really her style, so nothing too surprising there.
The real question seems to be is this for real or is this a slight-of-hand? "Look at Iran, they are the reason Iraq is a failed state..." Truth is the end of that sentence is the key, they can either say, "...it's not our fault but there is nothing we can do because the American public (losers and francophile cowards that they are) won't let us win so we have no choice but to leave" or it can end with "...that's exactly why we need to bomb them." Is it wait and see? Well, there is a march on Washington the weekend of January 27, maybe a large energetic and mobilized anti-war movement can make the former more likely than the latter.
Be Brave. Be Kind. Be Loving.
The real question seems to be is this for real or is this a slight-of-hand? "Look at Iran, they are the reason Iraq is a failed state..." Truth is the end of that sentence is the key, they can either say, "...it's not our fault but there is nothing we can do because the American public (losers and francophile cowards that they are) won't let us win so we have no choice but to leave" or it can end with "...that's exactly why we need to bomb them." Is it wait and see? Well, there is a march on Washington the weekend of January 27, maybe a large energetic and mobilized anti-war movement can make the former more likely than the latter.
Be Brave. Be Kind. Be Loving.
Monday, January 15, 2007
What Dr. King Means to Me
Few people know this but Dr. King's holiday was long in coming. Four days after Dr. King's death John Conyers, that esteemed representative of Detroit, took to the floor of the US House of Representatives and demanded America to pay tribute to one of its true heroes. We had days dedicated to colonizers and conquerors, to slave owners and middling political talents, but here was the opportunity to create a day for a true hero. A man with the courage to point out to America its unfinished journey, its unfulfilled promise, not with anger or revenge, but loving kindness. Now anger and revenge would have made sense. But Dr. King was not that kind of person. He believed that to use the tactics of violence and revenge would lessen his own humanity and therefore make any victory hollow. That was not a popular position. At the time of his death, Dr. King was easily the most hated man in America.
Now, Representative Conyers demanded a holiday for Dr. King in 1968, but Dr. King's birthday was not declared an official holiday of the United States for another 15 years. Fifteen years. That's not to say that it went unnoticed during that time. In fact, Dr. King's birthday is the only national holiday to be born out of a grassroots struggle--a grassroots union struggle.
Dr. King was no stranger to the struggles of working people, in fact he understood that the oppression of blacks and the oppression of the working class were two faces of the same monster. After Dr. King and the "Civil Rights Movement" claimed victory through the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act he moved into a small apartment in a housing development in the Greater Lawndale neighborhood of Chicago to begin his Poor People's Movement. The intersection of race and class was never so obvious in the North, and in July of 1965 Dr. King joined AlRaby and the CCCO's Chicago Project. Dr. King once spoke of racism in Chicago as some of the most overtly violent that he had ever encountered. Dr. King had high hopes for his Poor People's Movement but it did not capture the imagination of the Corporate Media and therefore the American public like the Civil Rights Movement had. Dr. King continued to fight for working people and on the eve of his death visited Memphis to join in a sanitation workers strike. There he delivered his final address just a day before his assassination (I've Been to the Mountain Top).
Dr. King's dedication to working class struggles was very well known if not by bourgeious America, then at least by the working class themselves. And it did not go unrecognized. On the first anniversary of his birth managers in a GM plant in New York threatened to disciplined a small group of workers who refused to work. They backed down when a much larger group walked off the job in protest a few days later. Again in New York, thousands of hospital workers walked off the job demanding better pay, better benefits, and a paid holiday on Dr. King's birthday. 25,000 more hospital workers and 80,000 dressmakers won similar demands in that first year after Dr. King's assassination.
And they didn't. While the bill languished in Congress, working people stepped up and refused to work on Dr. King's birthday. Working class people, especially working class blacks, but also allies in the white and Latino communities made Dr. King's birthday a national holiday regardless of what the US Congress had to say.
Fifteen years passed, a President's endorsement came and went, and the King Center had to struggle to assemble the largest petition drive in US history, six million signitures in all, before Dr. King was honored with an official day commemorating his legacy.
Fifteen years. What was it that Dr. King represented that could organize people for fifteen years to jeopardize their jobs to ensure that he was honored? What was it that he represented that forced people like Jesse Helms well into the 1980s to call him unpatriotic, a traitor, a communist on the floor of the Senate? What is it that Dr. King means to us?
The champion of the better angels of our nature. There are few days when right and wrong are so clearly obvious. Dr. King represents courage most fundamentally to state what is right and what is wrong plainly and then to throw our bodies upon the wheels and gears of the machine of the wrong and to bring it to a halt. He reminds me of the Buddha's comment on work, "Your work is to discover your work and then with all your hear to give yourself to it." Dr. King represents the courage of compassion, nonviolence, and loving kindness in the face of violent oppression and the darkest urges toward violent vengance and bitter despair.
Dr. King was a human being, he was flawed, he was unfaithful to his wife, a victim of human weakness. This, I believe, only serves to make his legacy more important, he was a person. As complicated and as basic as that, he was a person. He struggled in the spotlight and in his heart and no figure has ever been more interrogated while he did so than Dr. King. Twenty-four hour surveillance courtesy of that same US government that refused for 15 years to honor him with a day off of work. That same US government that recently colonized his wife's funeral, demanding that Harry Belafonte, a man who had paid for Dr. King's bail from the Birmingham City jail (as he did with many other civil rights activists), who funded the march on Washington in 1963, who financed the freedom rides, who was blacklisted because of it all, and who paid for Dr. King's funeral, be disinvited.
Talking about Dr. King is interesting today. All day I looked for memoriums, the History Channel had one half hour on Dr. King as a holiday. They had four hours of "Consipracy?" and four hours of UFOs, but only one half hour for Dr. King. It was cable access that came through finally with a day of videos of lectures and discussions about black America.
As a white man, explaining what Dr. King means to me must be understood through my efforts at honestly interrogating my privilege and the truth of history, the gifts of black folk and the costs of white supremacy. This is one journey that remains unfinished and if you read this will be one that I continuously return.
Be Brave. Be Kind. Be Loving.
Now, Representative Conyers demanded a holiday for Dr. King in 1968, but Dr. King's birthday was not declared an official holiday of the United States for another 15 years. Fifteen years. That's not to say that it went unnoticed during that time. In fact, Dr. King's birthday is the only national holiday to be born out of a grassroots struggle--a grassroots union struggle.
Dr. King was no stranger to the struggles of working people, in fact he understood that the oppression of blacks and the oppression of the working class were two faces of the same monster. After Dr. King and the "Civil Rights Movement" claimed victory through the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act he moved into a small apartment in a housing development in the Greater Lawndale neighborhood of Chicago to begin his Poor People's Movement. The intersection of race and class was never so obvious in the North, and in July of 1965 Dr. King joined AlRaby and the CCCO's Chicago Project. Dr. King once spoke of racism in Chicago as some of the most overtly violent that he had ever encountered. Dr. King had high hopes for his Poor People's Movement but it did not capture the imagination of the Corporate Media and therefore the American public like the Civil Rights Movement had. Dr. King continued to fight for working people and on the eve of his death visited Memphis to join in a sanitation workers strike. There he delivered his final address just a day before his assassination (I've Been to the Mountain Top).
Dr. King's dedication to working class struggles was very well known if not by bourgeious America, then at least by the working class themselves. And it did not go unrecognized. On the first anniversary of his birth managers in a GM plant in New York threatened to disciplined a small group of workers who refused to work. They backed down when a much larger group walked off the job in protest a few days later. Again in New York, thousands of hospital workers walked off the job demanding better pay, better benefits, and a paid holiday on Dr. King's birthday. 25,000 more hospital workers and 80,000 dressmakers won similar demands in that first year after Dr. King's assassination.
Unions provided the financial and social capital to extend the movement nationwide. That support was coordinated by DWA leader Robinson, a close friend of the King family. King's widow, Coretta Scott King, invited Robinson and Conyers to kick off the campaign for a national holiday at a 1969 birthday rally at the new King center in Atlanta. At the rally, Conyers recounted his bill's defeat in Congress and expressed hope for more support the following year. Robinson called for direct action, declaring, "We don't want anyone to believe we hope Congress will do this. We're just sayin', Us black people in America just ain't gonna work on that day anymore." (Working Class Hero)
And they didn't. While the bill languished in Congress, working people stepped up and refused to work on Dr. King's birthday. Working class people, especially working class blacks, but also allies in the white and Latino communities made Dr. King's birthday a national holiday regardless of what the US Congress had to say.
Fifteen years passed, a President's endorsement came and went, and the King Center had to struggle to assemble the largest petition drive in US history, six million signitures in all, before Dr. King was honored with an official day commemorating his legacy.
Fifteen years. What was it that Dr. King represented that could organize people for fifteen years to jeopardize their jobs to ensure that he was honored? What was it that he represented that forced people like Jesse Helms well into the 1980s to call him unpatriotic, a traitor, a communist on the floor of the Senate? What is it that Dr. King means to us?
The champion of the better angels of our nature. There are few days when right and wrong are so clearly obvious. Dr. King represents courage most fundamentally to state what is right and what is wrong plainly and then to throw our bodies upon the wheels and gears of the machine of the wrong and to bring it to a halt. He reminds me of the Buddha's comment on work, "Your work is to discover your work and then with all your hear to give yourself to it." Dr. King represents the courage of compassion, nonviolence, and loving kindness in the face of violent oppression and the darkest urges toward violent vengance and bitter despair.
Dr. King was a human being, he was flawed, he was unfaithful to his wife, a victim of human weakness. This, I believe, only serves to make his legacy more important, he was a person. As complicated and as basic as that, he was a person. He struggled in the spotlight and in his heart and no figure has ever been more interrogated while he did so than Dr. King. Twenty-four hour surveillance courtesy of that same US government that refused for 15 years to honor him with a day off of work. That same US government that recently colonized his wife's funeral, demanding that Harry Belafonte, a man who had paid for Dr. King's bail from the Birmingham City jail (as he did with many other civil rights activists), who funded the march on Washington in 1963, who financed the freedom rides, who was blacklisted because of it all, and who paid for Dr. King's funeral, be disinvited.
Talking about Dr. King is interesting today. All day I looked for memoriums, the History Channel had one half hour on Dr. King as a holiday. They had four hours of "Consipracy?" and four hours of UFOs, but only one half hour for Dr. King. It was cable access that came through finally with a day of videos of lectures and discussions about black America.
As a white man, explaining what Dr. King means to me must be understood through my efforts at honestly interrogating my privilege and the truth of history, the gifts of black folk and the costs of white supremacy. This is one journey that remains unfinished and if you read this will be one that I continuously return.
Be Brave. Be Kind. Be Loving.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Surge...Escalation...You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet
The "surge" will not work. It's truly amazing how quickly escalation has overshadowed the Iraq Study Group Report which calls for diplomatic engagement with Iran. That's not in keeping with Bush & Co.'s plans for Iran. They are going to attack Iran.
Just a few days ago the US raided an Iranian consulate in Kurdistan and arrested six Iranians (US Attack Draws Iranian Anger). Juan Cole hypothesizes that Iran may have been funneling weapons to the Kurdish military with the agreement that they share with the Badr Corps with whom they have long-standing ties--a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" thing (Did the US Just Provoke Iran?).
Then there is the appointment of Vice Admiral John Michael "Mike" McConnell. McConnell replaces Negroponte because of what appears to be a two-year fight between the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Office of the Vice-President over a forth coming National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. McConnell has been said to have a "Rummyesque" relationship with the Vice President and will probably go along with whatever the Veep says (Bush's New Intel Chief Could Overhype Danger of Iran).
In 2005 an incomplete National Intelligence Estimate on Iran was leaked and it stated that Iran was at least 10 years away from getting a nuclear weapon (Iran is Judged 10 Years from Nuclear Bomb). This was in direct contradiction to White House assertions on the progress of the Iranian nuclear program. Negroponte defended the published findings, however, the Department of Defense--on orders from the Vice President's office--created an Iranian Directorate, an action which reminded many of the "Office of Special Plans" which manipulated intelligence and strong-armed justabout everyone into a war with Iraq (Pentagon Confirms Iranian Directorate as Officials Raise New Concerns About War).
Then there is the appointment of Admiral William Fallon to head up the US Central Command, which means he is the new number one in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fallon has little experience with ground wars, and instead is an expert in naval aviation (Official Bio of Admiral William Fallon).
Oh, and he sent an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf and deployed Patriot antimissile batteries as well.
And, he said this during his surge speech, "We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We'll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."
I smell a Spanish American War/US Mexican War/Vietnam War style fake-attack-creates-real-war-justification situation beginning to materialize. If not that, perhaps Cambodia style bombing runs into Iran to destroy "support networks." Israel recently warned aloud that it will attack Iran if it does not abandon its nuclear weapons program (Focus: Mission Iran).
I know that you might be saying, ok, but the public would never go along with another war. Maybe. You might also be saying, a war with Iran will take a lot more than some Patriot missiles, an aircraft carrier, and an Israeli bombing run. Maybe. But think how the public debate has shifted so completely from the Iraq Study Group's recommendation of engagement to one of how and when Iran will be attacked. The Washington Posts' Blog "The Note" wondered aloud if President Bush had issued an executive order to attack Iran (Did the President Declare "Secret War" Against Syria and Iran?).
The public doesn't need to go along with another war for one to begin. Just think of all that "who cares that the war was wrong, we're there now, so we gotta do it right" kind of rhetoric, if war begins, the fight is on whether we want it or not. But, your points are well taken, sabre rattling to change the subject might be all we are seeing, but sabre rattling is not innocent it does more to destroy any chance of victory in Iraq and to harden the us vs. them mentality of what the President calls an increasingly inappropriately titled "War on Terror."
Just a few days ago the US raided an Iranian consulate in Kurdistan and arrested six Iranians (US Attack Draws Iranian Anger). Juan Cole hypothesizes that Iran may have been funneling weapons to the Kurdish military with the agreement that they share with the Badr Corps with whom they have long-standing ties--a "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" thing (Did the US Just Provoke Iran?).
Then there is the appointment of Vice Admiral John Michael "Mike" McConnell. McConnell replaces Negroponte because of what appears to be a two-year fight between the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Office of the Vice-President over a forth coming National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. McConnell has been said to have a "Rummyesque" relationship with the Vice President and will probably go along with whatever the Veep says (Bush's New Intel Chief Could Overhype Danger of Iran).
In 2005 an incomplete National Intelligence Estimate on Iran was leaked and it stated that Iran was at least 10 years away from getting a nuclear weapon (Iran is Judged 10 Years from Nuclear Bomb). This was in direct contradiction to White House assertions on the progress of the Iranian nuclear program. Negroponte defended the published findings, however, the Department of Defense--on orders from the Vice President's office--created an Iranian Directorate, an action which reminded many of the "Office of Special Plans" which manipulated intelligence and strong-armed justabout everyone into a war with Iraq (Pentagon Confirms Iranian Directorate as Officials Raise New Concerns About War).
Then there is the appointment of Admiral William Fallon to head up the US Central Command, which means he is the new number one in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fallon has little experience with ground wars, and instead is an expert in naval aviation (Official Bio of Admiral William Fallon).
Oh, and he sent an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf and deployed Patriot antimissile batteries as well.
And, he said this during his surge speech, "We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We'll interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."
I smell a Spanish American War/US Mexican War/Vietnam War style fake-attack-creates-real-war-justification situation beginning to materialize. If not that, perhaps Cambodia style bombing runs into Iran to destroy "support networks." Israel recently warned aloud that it will attack Iran if it does not abandon its nuclear weapons program (Focus: Mission Iran).
I know that you might be saying, ok, but the public would never go along with another war. Maybe. You might also be saying, a war with Iran will take a lot more than some Patriot missiles, an aircraft carrier, and an Israeli bombing run. Maybe. But think how the public debate has shifted so completely from the Iraq Study Group's recommendation of engagement to one of how and when Iran will be attacked. The Washington Posts' Blog "The Note" wondered aloud if President Bush had issued an executive order to attack Iran (Did the President Declare "Secret War" Against Syria and Iran?).
The public doesn't need to go along with another war for one to begin. Just think of all that "who cares that the war was wrong, we're there now, so we gotta do it right" kind of rhetoric, if war begins, the fight is on whether we want it or not. But, your points are well taken, sabre rattling to change the subject might be all we are seeing, but sabre rattling is not innocent it does more to destroy any chance of victory in Iraq and to harden the us vs. them mentality of what the President calls an increasingly inappropriately titled "War on Terror."
Thursday, January 11, 2007
"What is the cause of the crisis in black education?" Part I: Interrogating our Pernicious Racial Mythologies
I was in class last night and my prof. asked us pointedly "what is the cause of the crisis in black education?"
The writing is on the wall he said, HBCUs are seeing declining enrollment, they're having to turn to Whites and Asians to fill classes. There are statistics that show that Black and Latino boys have a 50-50 chance of graduating from high school. Universities across the nation are seeing lower enrollment numbers from Blacks and Latinos. My professor said he could keep on listing "facts". The "crisis" of the black family, surging single mother households, studies showing that "pairing up" is a biological imperative for a reason. His course description even includes the following phrase, "Today, nearly fifty years after his [WEBDuBois ] death, we face a national crisis in American education, with African Americans and Latinos dropping out of school at alarming rates."
This is a familiar narrative--Single Black Mothers (SBMs) raisin' their kids without "baby daddies," 50% of Black and Latinos not graduating from high school, the Young Black Angry "Super-Predators" and Black-on-Black crime. The interesting thing about an accepted narrative is it's rarely interrogated. For example, the 50-50 odds of graduating high school is from the Department of Education and is almost never questioned in the Corporate Media (or the Alternative Press for that matter). However, this "fact" differs substantially from tons of other "facts," including the highly respected National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) which gives far different numbers. The NELS is more accurate because it is a longitudinal study, i.e. it follows the same kids. The other stats look at the how many freshman graduate in 4 years, not taking into account the "freshman bulge". The "freshman bulge" does not refer to weight gain, but instead refers to the fact that many freshman are held back because of the pernicious phenomenon of social promotion throughout US elementary schools. The NELS shows that about 75% of blacks and Latinos graduate from high school. Of those blacks that do dropout, about 1/4 receive their GED, and about 10% of Latino dropouts get their GED (Rethinking High School Graduation Rates and Trends). Don't read me wrong, this isn't "ok," but it's also not the 50-50 you hear about. The Corporate Media seems to have a reverse "talented tenth" philosophy of racial representations. Middle Class blacks are nearly invisible in most of the Corporate Media ether. Blacks are dropouts, welfare queens, and super-predators.
How about that welfare queens pernicious fallacy? Black women are baby making machines, and have many "baby daddies," right? Wrong. Fertility rates among black women are almost the same as that of white women:
What about teenage ne'r-do-wells and their babies? Well, "six-tenths of one percent of black babies are born to women under the age of fifteen, and the birthrate for black teens 15-19 has dropped by a third since 1991. Overall, more than eight in ten black babies are born to mothers in their twenties or older, and the teen birthrate has fallen faster among black youth than any other racial group over the last decade" (Race, Sex and Work: Examining White Lies About Black Americans by Tim Wise).
Well, surely the "sky-rocketing" out-of-wedlock births is proof of the "crisis" that we all know is plaguing "Black America," right? 0 for 4 so far...
Then you have the "super-predator" mythology. This story holds that violent crime in America is the result of a generation of Angry Young Black Super-predators. The narrative began with the "crack epidemic" of the 1980s. From 1985 to 1990 the corporate Media was in an orgiastic feeding frenzy over the idea of a "crack epidemic." Dan Rather crawled through a "crack house." Hell, "crack house" became part of our national lexicon. So did "crack babies," and no wonder, with this hellish prediction from columnist Charles Krauthammer , “a cohort of babies is now being born whose future is closed to them from day one. Theirs will be a life of certain suffering, of probable deviance, of permanent inferiority. At best, a menial life of severe deprivation. And all of this is being biologically determined from birth." Of course that's not true, but the "crack epidemic" was a Corporate Media wet dream and just three years after crack hit the streets in 1984 (courtesy of the CIA) the Corporate Media had written over 1000 stories on a surging "crack epidemic" (Crack Babies Talk Back).
The crack-epidemic "accompanied" a steep rise in homicide rates in the black community. "Between 1984 and 1994, the homicide rate for black males aged 14 to 17 more than doubled, and the homicide rate for black males aged 18 to 24 increased nearly as much. During this period, the black community also experienced an increase in fetal death rates, low birth-weight babies, weapons arrests, and the number of children in foster care" (How Bad was Crack Cocaine?). University of Chicago economists Steven Levitt and Kevin Murphy have attempted to study the impact of crack cocaine on American communities during and after this "epidemic," and what they have found is truly food for thought. "Rather than the drug use itself, the greatest social costs of crack are associated with prohibition-related violence" (How Bad was Crack Cocaine?). This means that the true costs of the crack epidemic come not from the drug but from the Drug War. This "war" has led to the massive incarceration of non-violent drug offenders (many black and brown) and countless acts of police brutality and human rights violations within urban neighborhoods. According to the Department of Justice's Household Survey "'most current illicit drug users are white. There were an estimated 9.9 million whites (72 percent of all users), 2.0 million blacks (15 percent), and 1.4 million Hispanics (10 percent) who were current illicit drug users in 1998.' And yet, blacks constitute 36.8% of those arrested for drug violations, over 42% of those in federal prisons for drug violations. African-Americans comprise almost 58% of those in state prisons for drug felonies; Hispanics account for 20.7%" (Drug War Facts).
Well, the crack epidemic that invaded Black America actually claimed more white users in 1998, "an estimated 971 thousand Americans used crack cocaine in 1998. Of those, 462 thousand were White, 324 thousand were Black, and 157 thousand were Hispanic" (Drug War Facts). The chief thing the crack epidemic did was reinforce an already existing myth that black men are violent and should be behind bars even as they represented a significantly smaller number of drug users, even within the crack market.
As the decade of crack ended a new spectre emerged to reinforce and justify absurdly high incarceration rates and gestapo-inspired, police-state policies like the CRASH units ofLos Angeles and the unrestricted violence of prison guards. In 1996, Rep. Bill McCollum warned the House of Representatives to "brace yourself for the coming generation of `super-predators'" (No Minor Matter). These super-predators were predicted by conservative pop-criminologists throughout the late 1990s. For example, James Q. Wilson, one of the hippest pop-criminologists of the late 1990s wrote in 1995 that "the first decade of the next century will see 30,000 more young muggers, killers, and thieves than we have now. Get ready'" (No Minor Matter). And former-White House head of the Office of Faith Based Initiatives and inventor of the 'super-predator' moniker warned ominously that "By the year 2010, there will be approximately 270,000 more juvenile super-predators on the streets than there were in 1990" (No Minor Matter). Well, they were all wrong. Violent crime decreased dramatically from 1995 to 2005. The National Crime Victimization Survey and Uniform Crime Reports records that serious violent crime has decreased from a twenty year high in 1993 to a thirty year low in 2004 (Bureau of Justice Statistics Four Measures of Serious Violent Crime).
Finally, there is the myth that blacks are lazy welfare junkies who do not wanna work but would rather "hang" on the "corners".
What is especially interesting about this is that the accepted narrative is not only wrong but that it is wrong in a really predictable way. Blacks are portrayed in ways that reinforce the idea that their behaviorally or culturally abnormal and that that is the reason for any lasting racial inequality. Of course, that's if you believe there is lasting racial inequality, which it turns out, the majority of whites do not believe.
In 2001 the Washington Post, the Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University conducted a national survey that found that "whether out of hostility, indifference or simple lack of knowledge, large numbers of white Americans incorrectly believe that blacks are as well off as whites in terms of their jobs, incomes, schooling and health care" (Misperceptions Cloud Whites' Views of Blacks).
How does this happen??? Blacks are at the same time welfare-queens, super-predators, crack-baby-raising, ghetto-dwelling, high school dropouts, AND they are "as well off as well off as whites in terms of their jobs, incomes, schooling and health care." You gotta respect racism for its tenaciousness in the face of common sense. What's funny is that none of these things are true.
Not only are blacks not the ugly stereotype that is often seen in the Corporate Media, they also have not made the gains that whites claim.
"Blacks are far more likely to be without health insurance than whites. In 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey found that blacks were nearly twice as likely as whites to be without health insurance" (Misperceptions Cloud Whites' Views of Blacks).
"About one in six blacks -- 17 percent -- have completed college, compared with 28 percent of all whites. And 88 percent of all whites are high school graduates, compared with 79 percent of all blacks 25 years old or older" (Misperceptions Cloud Whites' Views of Blacks).
"Blacks are about twice as likely as whites -- 23 versus 12 percent -- to hold lower-paying, less prestigious service jobs. Blacks also are more than twice as likely to be unemployed; in May, the jobless rate for blacks stood at 8 percent, compared with 3.8 percent among whites" (Misperceptions Cloud Whites' Views of Blacks).
"A 1997 report found that the median income of young two-parent black families had fallen by nearly half since 1973. What’s more, even black women who 'played by the rules,' and had no kids out-of-wedlock, saw their incomes fall 32% from 1972-1989, and have been unable to regain the lost ground since" (Race, Sex and Work: Examining White Lies About Black Americans by Tim Wise).
"Substantial differences persist between black and white earnings. The median household income for whites was $44,366 in 1999, compared with $27,910 for blacks. Fewer than three in 10 whites earn less than $25,000; nearly half of all blacks in 1999 earned less than that. And the poverty rate for African Americans is more than double the white rate" (Misperceptions Cloud Whites' Views of Blacks).
"Blacks were twice as likely to have reported having difficulties recently paying their rent or mortgage and about half as likely as whites to have money invested in stocks, bonds or mutual funds" (Misperceptions Cloud Whites' Views of Blacks).
As I wrote at the beginning of this post, my professor asked us pointedly, "what is the cause of the crisis in black education?" A classmate, a teacher in an urban school that is predominantly poor and working class (as well as black and Latino--what a shocking coincidence!) responded that it was "their mentality." Pushed on whose mentality she was referring to, she paused and sheepishlyresponded, "black people...not that I am a racist..."
"Not that I am a racist." That's when my hand shot up, cause let's face it, when you say something that needs to be followed with "not that I am a racist," odds are, you probably are. "Nothing personal, and I don't mean to attack you at all, but you are a racist. It's important that we admit it. I am too. I'm no member of the Klan, but I am a product of an American society that divides access to power, privilege, and opportunity along the line of race, always has, and always will. And no matter your good intentions, just living here means you breath in the smog of racism and it does affect you. So, I know you think you're being honest and I agree with you that you are. It took guts to say what you said, to admit that you think black people have some anti-educational mentality. But, that does make you a racist, and if we are here to grow and we are here be honest then let's start now by admitting that whether we like it or not we white people are almost surely racists, it's just some of us are in recovery. It's like AA, the first thing you have to do is admitt you have a problem, that's the first step."
That's what I should have said.
Stay tuned for the next installment of our ongoing docu-blog-drama "what is the cause of the crisis in black education?"
The writing is on the wall he said, HBCUs are seeing declining enrollment, they're having to turn to Whites and Asians to fill classes. There are statistics that show that Black and Latino boys have a 50-50 chance of graduating from high school. Universities across the nation are seeing lower enrollment numbers from Blacks and Latinos. My professor said he could keep on listing "facts". The "crisis" of the black family, surging single mother households, studies showing that "pairing up" is a biological imperative for a reason. His course description even includes the following phrase, "Today, nearly fifty years after his [WEBDuBois ] death, we face a national crisis in American education, with African Americans and Latinos dropping out of school at alarming rates."
This is a familiar narrative--Single Black Mothers (SBMs) raisin' their kids without "baby daddies," 50% of Black and Latinos not graduating from high school, the Young Black Angry "Super-Predators" and Black-on-Black crime. The interesting thing about an accepted narrative is it's rarely interrogated. For example, the 50-50 odds of graduating high school is from the Department of Education and is almost never questioned in the Corporate Media (or the Alternative Press for that matter). However, this "fact" differs substantially from tons of other "facts," including the highly respected National Education Longitudinal Study (NELS) which gives far different numbers. The NELS is more accurate because it is a longitudinal study, i.e. it follows the same kids. The other stats look at the how many freshman graduate in 4 years, not taking into account the "freshman bulge". The "freshman bulge" does not refer to weight gain, but instead refers to the fact that many freshman are held back because of the pernicious phenomenon of social promotion throughout US elementary schools. The NELS shows that about 75% of blacks and Latinos graduate from high school. Of those blacks that do dropout, about 1/4 receive their GED, and about 10% of Latino dropouts get their GED (Rethinking High School Graduation Rates and Trends). Don't read me wrong, this isn't "ok," but it's also not the 50-50 you hear about. The Corporate Media seems to have a reverse "talented tenth" philosophy of racial representations. Middle Class blacks are nearly invisible in most of the Corporate Media ether. Blacks are dropouts, welfare queens, and super-predators.
How about that welfare queens pernicious fallacy? Black women are baby making machines, and have many "baby daddies," right? Wrong. Fertility rates among black women are almost the same as that of white women:
"For every 1000 white women 15-44 there are 66.5 live births, while for every 1000 black women that age there are 71.7.
"Indeed, the fertility rate for black women has fallen by more than half in the last forty years, such that the gap between black and white fertility has been slashed by nearly 80%, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The birthrate for unmarried black women--especially vilified by racist rhetoric--is at a forty-year low and the rate of babies born to black teenshasn ’t gone up one iota since 1920" (Race, Sex and Work: Examining White Lies About Black Americans by Tim Wise).
What about teenage ne'r-do-wells and their babies? Well, "six-tenths of one percent of black babies are born to women under the age of fifteen, and the birthrate for black teens 15-19 has dropped by a third since 1991. Overall, more than eight in ten black babies are born to mothers in their twenties or older, and the teen birthrate has fallen faster among black youth than any other racial group over the last decade" (Race, Sex and Work: Examining White Lies About Black Americans by Tim Wise).
Well, surely the "sky-rocketing" out-of-wedlock births is proof of the "crisis" that we all know is plaguing "Black America," right? 0 for 4 so far...
The reason for the increase in the share of black children born out-of-wedlock in recent decades is that two-parent black couples are having fewer children than ever, meaning that a growing share of the children who are born in the black community will be out-of-wedlock, even though sexual behaviorhasn ’t changed, and fertility rates among single black women have been falling.
Indeed, eighty percent of the increase in out-of-wedlock childbirths in the black community is because of the falloff in children born to intact black families: a falloff that has been even steeper than the decline among single moms.
Additionally, the apparent “increase” in out-of-wedlock children in single mother homes within the black community, and generally, is the result of the Census Bureau changing the methods used for counting such families in the first place.
Whereas single moms with kids who lived in extended family settings (such as living with their own parents) were historically not counted as separate family units, since the early 1980’s they have been. So even though such families may have existed for many years prior to the accounting switch, they would not have appeared in statistical data until more recently.
Putting aside the issue of just how “harmful” single-parent homes are (and evidence indicates that with the exception of the smaller income base thereisn ’t much difference between such homes and “intact” families, and indeed children in intact families are often less confident and well-adjusted), clearly the problems for black folks in this country are not the result of childbirth patterns (Race, Sex and Work: Examining White Lies About Black Americans by Tim Wise).
Then you have the "super-predator" mythology. This story holds that violent crime in America is the result of a generation of Angry Young Black Super-predators. The narrative began with the "crack epidemic" of the 1980s. From 1985 to 1990 the corporate Media was in an orgiastic feeding frenzy over the idea of a "crack epidemic." Dan Rather crawled through a "crack house." Hell, "crack house" became part of our national lexicon. So did "crack babies," and no wonder, with this hellish prediction from columnist Charles Krauthammer , “a cohort of babies is now being born whose future is closed to them from day one. Theirs will be a life of certain suffering, of probable deviance, of permanent inferiority. At best, a menial life of severe deprivation. And all of this is being biologically determined from birth." Of course that's not true, but the "crack epidemic" was a Corporate Media wet dream and just three years after crack hit the streets in 1984 (courtesy of the CIA) the Corporate Media had written over 1000 stories on a surging "crack epidemic" (Crack Babies Talk Back).
The crack-epidemic "accompanied" a steep rise in homicide rates in the black community. "Between 1984 and 1994, the homicide rate for black males aged 14 to 17 more than doubled, and the homicide rate for black males aged 18 to 24 increased nearly as much. During this period, the black community also experienced an increase in fetal death rates, low birth-weight babies, weapons arrests, and the number of children in foster care" (How Bad was Crack Cocaine?). University of Chicago economists Steven Levitt and Kevin Murphy have attempted to study the impact of crack cocaine on American communities during and after this "epidemic," and what they have found is truly food for thought. "Rather than the drug use itself, the greatest social costs of crack are associated with prohibition-related violence" (How Bad was Crack Cocaine?). This means that the true costs of the crack epidemic come not from the drug but from the Drug War. This "war" has led to the massive incarceration of non-violent drug offenders (many black and brown) and countless acts of police brutality and human rights violations within urban neighborhoods. According to the Department of Justice's Household Survey "'most current illicit drug users are white. There were an estimated 9.9 million whites (72 percent of all users), 2.0 million blacks (15 percent), and 1.4 million Hispanics (10 percent) who were current illicit drug users in 1998.' And yet, blacks constitute 36.8% of those arrested for drug violations, over 42% of those in federal prisons for drug violations. African-Americans comprise almost 58% of those in state prisons for drug felonies; Hispanics account for 20.7%" (Drug War Facts).
Well, the crack epidemic that invaded Black America actually claimed more white users in 1998, "an estimated 971 thousand Americans used crack cocaine in 1998. Of those, 462 thousand were White, 324 thousand were Black, and 157 thousand were Hispanic" (Drug War Facts). The chief thing the crack epidemic did was reinforce an already existing myth that black men are violent and should be behind bars even as they represented a significantly smaller number of drug users, even within the crack market.
As the decade of crack ended a new spectre emerged to reinforce and justify absurdly high incarceration rates and gestapo-inspired, police-state policies like the CRASH units ofLos Angeles and the unrestricted violence of prison guards. In 1996, Rep. Bill McCollum warned the House of Representatives to "brace yourself for the coming generation of `super-predators'" (No Minor Matter). These super-predators were predicted by conservative pop-criminologists throughout the late 1990s. For example, James Q. Wilson, one of the hippest pop-criminologists of the late 1990s wrote in 1995 that "the first decade of the next century will see 30,000 more young muggers, killers, and thieves than we have now. Get ready'" (No Minor Matter). And former-White House head of the Office of Faith Based Initiatives and inventor of the 'super-predator' moniker warned ominously that "By the year 2010, there will be approximately 270,000 more juvenile super-predators on the streets than there were in 1990" (No Minor Matter). Well, they were all wrong. Violent crime decreased dramatically from 1995 to 2005. The National Crime Victimization Survey and Uniform Crime Reports records that serious violent crime has decreased from a twenty year high in 1993 to a thirty year low in 2004 (Bureau of Justice Statistics Four Measures of Serious Violent Crime).
Finally, there is the myth that blacks are lazy welfare junkies who do not wanna work but would rather "hang" on the "corners".
Yet the truth is that welfare dependence is hardly the norm--for black women or anyone else receiving public assistance. Even before the passage of punitive welfare reform, six in ten welfare families were leaving the rolls within two years, debunking the notion of long-term dependency as the norm for welfare recipients.
Indeed, two-thirds of women who receive welfare as children will never receive aid as adults and 81% whose mothers received AFDC for long periods never receive aid as adults. In other words, the notion ofintergenerational welfare dependence so commonly accepted is a false one.
Instead of welfare, the poor prefer work, yet often there are not enough jobs to go around that pay wages at or above the poverty line. In Central Harlem, one study found that there were fourteen applicants for every job opening in the area.
Nationally, in times of recession, there may be as many as seven to ten people out of work for every job opening above the poverty line. And since the Federal Reserve’s policy is to raise interest rates whenever unemployment drops below four percent--thereby freezing new hires--millions will be jobless, poor, and need welfare no matter their work ethic, solely because of this one monetary policy intended to keep wages and prices low.
Indeed, experience from around the country demonstrates that low-income people of color have work ethics that are no different from whites and those above the poverty line. In the early 1990’s, when a handful oflongshore jobs opened up in Los Angeles, 50,000 blacks and Latinos--mostly low income--showed up to apply.
In Cleveland, 15,000 unemployed welfare mothers and teenagers of color stood in the rain for four hours to get one of the minimum-wage temporary jobs cleaning up public parks.
In Chicago, 15,000 mostly low-income applicants of color applied for less than 4,000 temporary jobs.
In Baltimore, 75 openings at the Social Security Administration were met with 26,000 applications, mostly from blacks, and heavily from low-income citizens.
Far from relying on taxpayers for their livelihood, only one in ten blacks receive any form of cash welfare, and only about one in six receives food stamps. In fact, blacks who are eligible for the Food Stamp program are actually less likely than similar whites to apply for and receive such assistance.
As for black single moms, although they are twice as likely as white single moms to be in poverty, they are no more likely than white single moms to receive public assistance. What’s more, three out of four single black moms have jobs, further dispelling the notion that single mothers in the black community mostly choose to “live off welfare” (Race, Sex and Work: Examining White Lies About Black Americans by Tim Wise).
What is especially interesting about this is that the accepted narrative is not only wrong but that it is wrong in a really predictable way. Blacks are portrayed in ways that reinforce the idea that their behaviorally or culturally abnormal and that that is the reason for any lasting racial inequality. Of course, that's if you believe there is lasting racial inequality, which it turns out, the majority of whites do not believe.
In 2001 the Washington Post, the Henry J Kaiser Family Foundation, and Harvard University conducted a national survey that found that "whether out of hostility, indifference or simple lack of knowledge, large numbers of white Americans incorrectly believe that blacks are as well off as whites in terms of their jobs, incomes, schooling and health care" (Misperceptions Cloud Whites' Views of Blacks).
How does this happen??? Blacks are at the same time welfare-queens, super-predators, crack-baby-raising, ghetto-dwelling, high school dropouts, AND they are "as well off as well off as whites in terms of their jobs, incomes, schooling and health care." You gotta respect racism for its tenaciousness in the face of common sense. What's funny is that none of these things are true.
Not only are blacks not the ugly stereotype that is often seen in the Corporate Media, they also have not made the gains that whites claim.
"Blacks are far more likely to be without health insurance than whites. In 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey found that blacks were nearly twice as likely as whites to be without health insurance" (Misperceptions Cloud Whites' Views of Blacks).
"About one in six blacks -- 17 percent -- have completed college, compared with 28 percent of all whites. And 88 percent of all whites are high school graduates, compared with 79 percent of all blacks 25 years old or older" (Misperceptions Cloud Whites' Views of Blacks).
"Blacks are about twice as likely as whites -- 23 versus 12 percent -- to hold lower-paying, less prestigious service jobs. Blacks also are more than twice as likely to be unemployed; in May, the jobless rate for blacks stood at 8 percent, compared with 3.8 percent among whites" (Misperceptions Cloud Whites' Views of Blacks).
"A 1997 report found that the median income of young two-parent black families had fallen by nearly half since 1973. What’s more, even black women who 'played by the rules,' and had no kids out-of-wedlock, saw their incomes fall 32% from 1972-1989, and have been unable to regain the lost ground since" (Race, Sex and Work: Examining White Lies About Black Americans by Tim Wise).
"Substantial differences persist between black and white earnings. The median household income for whites was $44,366 in 1999, compared with $27,910 for blacks. Fewer than three in 10 whites earn less than $25,000; nearly half of all blacks in 1999 earned less than that. And the poverty rate for African Americans is more than double the white rate" (Misperceptions Cloud Whites' Views of Blacks).
"Blacks were twice as likely to have reported having difficulties recently paying their rent or mortgage and about half as likely as whites to have money invested in stocks, bonds or mutual funds" (Misperceptions Cloud Whites' Views of Blacks).
As I wrote at the beginning of this post, my professor asked us pointedly, "what is the cause of the crisis in black education?" A classmate, a teacher in an urban school that is predominantly poor and working class (as well as black and Latino--what a shocking coincidence!) responded that it was "their mentality." Pushed on whose mentality she was referring to, she paused and sheepishlyresponded, "black people...not that I am a racist..."
"Not that I am a racist." That's when my hand shot up, cause let's face it, when you say something that needs to be followed with "not that I am a racist," odds are, you probably are. "Nothing personal, and I don't mean to attack you at all, but you are a racist. It's important that we admit it. I am too. I'm no member of the Klan, but I am a product of an American society that divides access to power, privilege, and opportunity along the line of race, always has, and always will. And no matter your good intentions, just living here means you breath in the smog of racism and it does affect you. So, I know you think you're being honest and I agree with you that you are. It took guts to say what you said, to admit that you think black people have some anti-educational mentality. But, that does make you a racist, and if we are here to grow and we are here be honest then let's start now by admitting that whether we like it or not we white people are almost surely racists, it's just some of us are in recovery. It's like AA, the first thing you have to do is admitt you have a problem, that's the first step."
That's what I should have said.
Stay tuned for the next installment of our ongoing docu-blog-drama "what is the cause of the crisis in black education?"
Monday, January 8, 2007
You Gotta Be Kidding Me
November 2006, what a month it was. Well, Congress is going back to work and the Prez is going back to well whatever the hell he wants to. You might think that being decisively rebuked by an election would slow his roll, but you'd be wrong. Before recess Bush & Co. made known that just cause Republicans didn't control Congress they weren't going to change a damn thing. The Administration "refused to hand over two documents, including one in which Mr. Bush authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to establish secret prisons beyond the reach of American law or international treaties. The other set forth the interrogation methods authorized in these prisons - which we now know ranged from abuse to outright torture." (NYTIMES Editorial)
Then there is the mail-gate thing. I love adding "-gate" to the end of words, it sounds so...illegal. And in this case, fitting. So, Bush does these signing statements which basically "reinterpret" the law he is signing. By "reinterpret" I mean he exempts himself from the law he is signing. Most recently there was the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which, according the the NY Daily News "deals with mundane reform measures. But it also explicitly reinforced protections of first-class mail from searches without a court's approval (NY DAILY NEWS)." Not liking to be left out of anything, Bush read a signing statement that said the Executive could read any one's mail under "exigent circumstances", and left it at that. WTF???!!! You gotta be kidding me!!! What does exigent mean anyway???
"So what?" you might intelligently ask, who cares what he says, the law says something else. Good point, or at least it used to be. The new hot Constitutional phrase of the day is "unitary executive" which should read "imperial executive" as it assigns extra-constitutional (read: illegal) authority to the Executive as a co-equal branch of legislative government. The new "gets" on the Supreme Court are well-known advocates of such nonsense. So, basically what happens is Bush & Co. flaunt the law, and even if they lose keeping flaunting the law until it reaches the Supreme Court (which will take years) and hope one of the moderates dies and they can get their 5-4 majority of unitary exec scholars.
This plus signing statements on torture, the whole what-exactly-did-Jose-Padilla-do??? controversy, extra-Constitutional telephone surveillance, extraordinary rendition, Guantanamo Bay's "enemy combatants", and the terrorists-read-"how-to-be-a-terrorist"-library-books-so-we-gotta-know-what-every-American-is-doing-at-the-library-and-probably-at-Borders-too thing...all of this adds up to the most amazing lack of respect for this nation's values and principles from a sitting President, ever. Oh well, at least television doesn't disappoint, Jack Bauer will be back soon to kill and/or torture possible witnesses and/or innocent Americans. And, lest we forget, American cinema has taken its cue from the Prez and now torture/snuff flicks have become mainstream entertainment...Saw 1-3, Hostel, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, Turistas, Apocolypto, Casino Royale, See No Evil, Hitcher, If the Hills had Eyes 1 and 2, The Passion of the Christ, and many others. You know, GDub keeps talking about how "they" hate our freedoms, well, hell, if this is what freedom brings, I do too. Oh well, in the immortal words of the Three 6 Mafia, "roll wit it."
Then there is the mail-gate thing. I love adding "-gate" to the end of words, it sounds so...illegal. And in this case, fitting. So, Bush does these signing statements which basically "reinterpret" the law he is signing. By "reinterpret" I mean he exempts himself from the law he is signing. Most recently there was the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act, which, according the the NY Daily News "deals with mundane reform measures. But it also explicitly reinforced protections of first-class mail from searches without a court's approval (NY DAILY NEWS)." Not liking to be left out of anything, Bush read a signing statement that said the Executive could read any one's mail under "exigent circumstances", and left it at that. WTF???!!! You gotta be kidding me!!! What does exigent mean anyway???
"So what?" you might intelligently ask, who cares what he says, the law says something else. Good point, or at least it used to be. The new hot Constitutional phrase of the day is "unitary executive" which should read "imperial executive" as it assigns extra-constitutional (read: illegal) authority to the Executive as a co-equal branch of legislative government. The new "gets" on the Supreme Court are well-known advocates of such nonsense. So, basically what happens is Bush & Co. flaunt the law, and even if they lose keeping flaunting the law until it reaches the Supreme Court (which will take years) and hope one of the moderates dies and they can get their 5-4 majority of unitary exec scholars.
This plus signing statements on torture, the whole what-exactly-did-Jose-Padilla-do??? controversy, extra-Constitutional telephone surveillance, extraordinary rendition, Guantanamo Bay's "enemy combatants", and the terrorists-read-"how-to-be-a-terrorist"-library-books-so-we-gotta-know-what-every-American-is-doing-at-the-library-and-probably-at-Borders-too thing...all of this adds up to the most amazing lack of respect for this nation's values and principles from a sitting President, ever. Oh well, at least television doesn't disappoint, Jack Bauer will be back soon to kill and/or torture possible witnesses and/or innocent Americans. And, lest we forget, American cinema has taken its cue from the Prez and now torture/snuff flicks have become mainstream entertainment...Saw 1-3, Hostel, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning, Turistas, Apocolypto, Casino Royale, See No Evil, Hitcher, If the Hills had Eyes 1 and 2, The Passion of the Christ, and many others. You know, GDub keeps talking about how "they" hate our freedoms, well, hell, if this is what freedom brings, I do too. Oh well, in the immortal words of the Three 6 Mafia, "roll wit it."
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