11 Things Obama Can Do To Heal American Race Relations

"Light-skinned" appearance and speaking patterns "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one." Sen. Harry Reid, 2008



In this post I'll get right to the point.

Sen. Harry Reid's remarks sounded Racist even if in his heart he isn't actually Racist.

Yes he apologized but its going to take more than an Apology for this situation to blow over.

As former Virginia Governor Doug Wilder said recently on CNN's "State of the Union" with John King, "its time for America to have that Conversation about race once and for all".

You know the conversation that Obama has until this day refused to hold.

He seems to think that we want to hear another race speech like the one he delivered in 2008 while on the campaign trail.

Another speech wouldn't hurt but Obama needs to do much more than just give a good speech.

No offense but Voters have heard enough speeches.

Its time for some real action!

During a recent interview with April Ryan of American Urban Radio Networks, Pres. Obama claimed the law will not allow him to do things just for Minorities.

He's not being totally honest on that issue.

If that's the case than how was he allowed to sign the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law so soon after his Inauguration?

Doesn't the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act Protect Women, another group of people protected by Federal Law?

Since he has a myriad of tools at his disposal, it appears as if Pres. Obama hasn't helped Blacks & Hispanics more simply because he doesn't want to NOT because he can't!

Why is this so?

Why does it seem as if Pres. Obama is intentionally trying to keep Minority citizens down?

Aren't those the same people who voted him into office? (Millions of Black Voters)

The only thing Pres. Obama has done for Minorities since his Inauguration other than sign the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, is give out more Food Stamps and Extend Unemployment Benefits.

In case Pres. Obama hasn't realized it yet, Black & Hispanics don't want Welfare!

We want hand-ups NOT hand-outs!

We want Jobs too!

Incidentally I also don't believe White Voters will be offended if Pres. Obama levels the playing field for Minorities as long as he stops catering to America's Wealthiest constituents first.

For example:

a) Stop giving Wall Street Taxpayer, Bail Out Money.

b) Stop allowing Wall Street Execs and Banks to hand out big Bonuses in a Recession.

c) Stop giving Banks and Big Businesses huge, unfair Tax Breaks.

Those actions give the appearance of "Bribes" or buying votes for Pres. Obama's next election.

d) Establish Infrastructure Job Creation Programs akin to the WPA.

Thus far the ONLY Job programs Obama's Admin. has created are for College-Educated individuals.

What about millions of White and Minority citizens who don't currently possess College degrees or don't have time to return to school for 4 years?

Its sad but its reality, nevertheless these people need jobs too.

How can this be accomplished? INFRASTRUCTURE JOBS!



Now here are 11 actions Federal Law/ Federal Courts (U.S. Constitution) will allow Pres. Obama to do to level the playing field for Minorities in this country:


1) Ensure Racial Equality Laws are being properly enforced in each state. i.e., Education, Housing, Foreclosures, Disabilities, Crime, Employment, etc., Especially in Southern states.

2) Ensuring that Black & Hispanic children are NOT being forced to attend or remain in Failing Public Schools such as students who reside in Charlotte, NC

3) Ensuring that laws are in place to prevent Racial Profiling and to perhaps strengthen those laws.

4) Ensure that State and Private Colleges/Universities are NOT practicing Discrimination against Minority Students when it comes to distributing Student Federal Financial Aid Funds like some Colleges in Virginia are currently being allowed to do.

If a College/ University be it Private or State, doesn't want to accept Minority Students especially Black Males, than those Institutions of Higher Learning should NOT be allowed to receive Federal Funding in the form of Financial Aid for White Students either!

5) Ensure Governors are NOT cutting programs from State budgets established to help Minorities, Poor Senior Citizens and Disabled Children just for the purpose of giving Wealthy citizens Tax Breaks.

Many states are cutting programs which help Disabled Children learn Rehabilitation skills. This is NOT right! Those children didn't ask to be birthed and should not be punished by Bureaucracy.

Also Ensure Governors are NOT cutting Medicaid and Medicare programs established to provide Proper Medical care for Children and Senior Citizens just so they can fill in Budget gaps.

6) Ensure Illegal Immigrants are NOT being deported for Minor Criminal Offenses like Speeding Tickets.

In Charlotte, NC thus far more than 1,000 Illegal Immigrants have been deported for committing Minor, Non-Illegal Drug related Offenses.

7) To investigate why so many Black & Hispanic Men are continuing to fill up America's prisons with long sentences for Non-Homicidal, Non-Illegal Drug related crimes versus White men who commit the same offenses.

To piggyback on this suggestion, Pres. Obama needs to also have his Administration (Dept of HHS) investigate why Black & Hispanic Children are kept in Foster Care so long and abused (sexually & physically) while in the Foster Care system.

8) Ensure Governors & Mayors are granting Minorities the same opportunities to start Small Businesses and be awarded Gov't Contracts as White Entrepreneurs.

For example how are Caucasian Loan/Grant applicants who don't have perfect Credit being approved or awarded Gov't Contracts but Black & Hispanic applicants are required to have PERFECT credit to be approved in a Recession?

9) Ensure Governors establish Fair Tax Laws or reform Tax Laws so that Middle Class and Lower Income citizens are NOT paying more Taxes than Wealthy Citizens such as in North Carolina.

10) Stop Businesses from firing Black & Hispanic employees first during company lay-offs and demand that ALL Businesses obey the WARN Act before laying off employees. (Mass Lay-offs)

11) Ensure that Energy companies are not cutting off Utilities of Minority Customers in Winter.

Why do I say Minority Customers versus ALL Customers?

Because in most states Energy & Utility cut off a disproportionate number of Minority Customers versus White Customers seemingly during Winter Months to force Low Income or Unemployed customers to pay extremely large heating bills.

This is especially so in North Carolina.

Such an act is extremely cruel and greedy because most of those households have children living in them.

Pres. Obama has the authority or he can request that Congress enact Legislation for Moratoriums which prevent Utility companies from cutting off Heat and Gas service during Winter months (Dec. through April 1st) just like they do in Illinois.


As I mentioned in another post if Pres. Obama will stop listening to Mayor Richard Daley, Valerie Jarrett, David Axelrod, Tim Geithner, Larry Summers and Rahm Emanuel than perhaps Blacks & Hispanics will be treated Fairly in this country.

For the record I am aware of the ethnicity of each person listed above.

I also know how poorly many of Chicago's Black citizens are treated on a regular basis.
(I have friends who have moved to North Carolina from Chicago, one being a School Teacher).

Just because someone is Black doesn't mean they care about the well being of other Black people.

Pres. Obama ball is in your court.

We'll still waiting for you to have a conversation about Race and to enforce Laws that prevent Racial Discrimination.

One more thing....

I hope Barack Obama will NOT intentionally choose to overlook Discrimination practiced by Governors or Mayors just because they are Democrats who supported his run for President back in 2008.







Charlotte's Poor students May Not Get Best Teachers


Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools celebrated a surge in teachers who have earned National Board Certification, even as they acknowledged that many of the students who most need those teachers are least likely to have them.

The district added 221 board-certified teachers last month, bringing the total to 1,281. CMS is a national leader in the voluntary credentialing program, which requires teachers to spend hundreds of hours writing essays and proving they can help kids learn.

Superintendent Peter Gorman says CMS students who have certified teachers fare better on all elementary and middle school exams and most high school ones.

But those teachers are more likely to be working in relatively affluent, high-performing schools than working with struggling students in impoverished neighborhoods, an Observer analysis shows.

The gap is most pronounced in middle schools, where certified teachers are scarcest and the contrast between successful and failing schools is starkest.

For instance, Jay M. Robinson Middle, a south suburban school with little poverty and top scores, has 22 certified teachers, covering language arts, math, science, art and special education.

Bishop Spaugh, a center city school where most kids are poor and failed state exams, has one, a sixth-grade social studies teacher.

"We know that we need our best teachers in our highest-need schools," said Barbara Ann Temple, a board-certified teacher who heads CMS' efforts to improve teaching.

Gorman agrees, and says he's trying to entice them with financial rewards and good working conditions, including the best principals. It's an approach the certified teachers recommended a couple of years ago, when they met to talk about improving weak schools without resorting to forced teacher transfers.

"We're going for pull, rather than push," Gorman said. "We really need them everywhere."

Where are they?

Teachers must have three years of experience to apply for the certification. Earning it usually takes two more. They must write about how they teach, tape and analyze classroom activities, and convince judges they have the classroom skills to reach their students.

North Carolina was among the first to plunge in when the certifications began in 1995. The state has almost 15,700 certified teachers, leading the nation. Only four districts nationwide, including Wake County, have more than CMS.

CMS has 1,248 certified teachers assigned to elementary, middle and high schools, one for every 107 students. But that varies dramatically from school to school.

For instance, Hawk Ridge Elementary in the south suburbs has 23 certified teachers and 830 students, a ratio of 36 students per teacher. Only 12 percent of Hawk Ridge students come from low-income homes.

Five elementary schools, with a total of 3,740 students and poverty levels ranging from 56 percent to 94 percent, have no certified teachers.

Another 18 elementary, middle and high schools have at least 300 students per certified teacher. Most of those pull three-quarters or more of their kids from low-income homes.

But the link between poverty, academic performance and board-certified faculty in CMS is far from absolute. Eastover Elementary, a low-poverty, high-scoring school, has only one certified teacher for 589 students. Popular, successful magnets such as Collinswood Elementary and Randolph Middle also rank low.

On the other hand, Rama Road and Montclaire elementaries have among the highest levels of certified faculty, even though more than three-fourths of students are poor.

Still, the odds of having certified teachers are better at low-poverty schools.

The Observer's analysis shows almost 34,000 students attend schools with poverty levels below 25 percent; those schools average one certified teacher for every 82 students.

About 33,500 students go to schools where poverty tops 75 percent; they average one certified teacher per 146 students.

Who's effective?

Identifying good teachers is one of the biggest challenges facing Gorman and education leaders nationwide. North Carolina's pay scale rewards teachers for experience and credentials, and CMS kicks in local money to compete with other districts.

In CMS, a teacher earning $43,708 for 10 years' experience would see a 10.5percent bump for earning a master's degree or a 12percent bump for earning board certification. With both, that teacher gets $54,094.

Gorman says he'll soon present Harvard University research on CMS teachers showing that graduate degrees don't correspond with higher student performance. But board certification does, he says, a finding he expects to see reinforced in the updated study.

Still, the credential is not the only gauge of good teaching. Some top teachers are unable or unwilling to tackle the estimated 400 hours of work. Others may be talented but too inexperienced to apply - and high-poverty schools are more likely than others to rely on teachers who have just started their careers.

Many board-certified teachers believe they can help fix failing schools. When they talked in 2007 about making that happen, they agreed that money helps - but working for a great principal as part of a strong team was more important.

Gorman is using that approach with his "strategic staffing" effort, bringing in new principals for 14 schools and giving them money and freedom to bring in proven teachers. Many of those schools, which have high poverty and a history of weak performance, have average or above-average levels of certified faculty now.

At others, certified teachers remain scarce. Steve Hall, brought in to lead Bruns Avenue Elementary, has two for his 500-plus students, who mostly come from impoverished homes. Three more teachers are working on their credential, he says.

Hall agrees that board certification, which demands on-the-job skill, is more valuable than a graduate degree, which can rest on theoretical knowledge. But it's not the first thing he looks for.

"I'm really much more interested in how their skill set and heart relate to the population they'll be working with."




NC Sheriffs Help Feds Deport Illegal Immigrants


Sheriff Terry Johnson's new jail has all the amenities: electronic locks, thick steel doors and a high-tech surveillance system.

Soon, he hopes, it will be full of illegal immigrants on their way to deportation.

The Alamance County Sheriff's Department, which Johnson has run since 2002, recently became one of only a dozen local law enforcement agencies nationwide to sign up for a program that allows them to enforce federal immigration laws.

Three of the 12 are in North Carolina. Sheriff's departments in Mecklenburg, Gaston and Alamance counties are now checking the immigration status of every foreign person they arrest -- whether for running a stop sign or selling drugs -- and starting deportation of those in the United States illegally.

In Mecklenburg County, which has been using the program for less than a year, nearly 1,000 people have been deported.

Once a little-used program, local immigration enforcement is gaining popularity. Wake County Sheriff Donnie Harrison said he is considering it.

Johnson said the program has dual benefits for Alamance County. It brings in money, because the federal government pays about $66 a night for every immigration detainee who stays in the jail. And it rids the county of illegal immigrants, who he contends sponge public resources and are more prone to commit crimes than legal residents.

"Their values are a lot different -- their morals -- than what we have here," Johnson said. "In Mexico, there's nothing wrong with having sex with a 12-, 13-year-old girl ... They do a lot of drinking down in Mexico."

Marco Zarate, a Mexican native who is president of the N.C. Society of Hispanic Professionals, challenged the sheriff's assessment of Mexicans. He acknowledged some cultural differences -- for instance, people in Mexico's rural areas often marry as teenagers -- but said that adults having sex with children is not considered ethical in Mexico. Nor is heavy drinking.

"We're human," said Zarate, 53, who lives in Raleigh. "I'm not saying there are not people who do bad things, but it's not right to generalize. We have good people and bad people everywhere in the world."

Court statistics do not show a significantly disproportionate level of Hispanic crime in Alamance County. Between 2002 and 2006, Hispanics accounted for 12 percent of Alamance County's criminal cases, according to the Administrative Office of the Courts. In 2005, they made up 10 percent of the county's population.

Running against aliens

Alamance County, just west of Chapel Hill, has one of the fastest-growing Hispanic populations in the state. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county had 736 Hispanic residents in 1990. By 2005, it had nearly 14,000.

As in many places around the country, the increasing presence of immigrants has fueled tensions.

Johnson, 57, a retired agent with the State Bureau of Investigation, was elected to his second term in 2006 by a wide margin. A Republican, he has made his political name by railing against illegal immigration.

Shortly after he first won the office in 2002, he got national media attention for arresting Hispanics at the state Division of Motor Vehicles office. Deputies charged more than 100 people with obtaining property by false pretenses for using false documents to get licenses.

At the time, legal immigration status was not a factor in the state driver's license requirements. Some of the charges were later dropped.

Before the presidential election in 2004, he promised to go door-to-door to investigate Hispanic voters, saying he suspected many were illegal immigrants. To prove his point, he sent the names of 125 Hispanic voters to the Department of Homeland Security. He said the federal check showed that only about a quarter of them were legal.

Most recently, he lobbied for a new $12 million, 240-bed jail -- six times as large as what he needs for local inmates -- so he could have space to become a hub for immigration detainees. He said the fees he receives will help cover the costs of running the jail, which opens this month.

In a recent interview, Johnson said poverty and desperation draw many immigrants into the drug trade. And he said that as the Hispanic community grows, more Hispanic criminals are attracted to the area, because "they don't stand out."

Johnson says it's his job to go after every criminal he sees, and that includes those who break immigration laws.

"A lot of people say it's not politically correct," Johnson said. "Well, I'll tell you something. ... If I turn my back on that responsibility, I have placed my hand on the Holy Bible and didn't fulfill my duty."

Little-used program

Congress created the local immigration enforcement program in 1996. It went unused until 2002, when the Florida Department of Law Enforcement became the first to sign up with Immigration and Customs Enforce-ment, known as ICE.

In the past year, new departments have joined the program at a rapid clip. An ICE spokesman said that a dozen agencies are now enrolled and 40 more have expressed interest.

Officials with ICE must approve each agency that joins. Then designated officers get about a month of training from ICE, and the agency gets access to a federal database that includes information on wanted immigrants, as well as legal immigrants.

Officers can then check the immigration status of every foreign person they arrest and know immediately whether the suspect has been previously arrested or deported. They start deportation procedures for those here illegally, but an ICE agent and a federal judge take final action in each case.

Nolo Martinez, the state's former director of Hispanic affairs, said the program will create fear, fracture communities and discourage Hispanics from calling the police. He predicted that, as counties try to earn profits from immigration inmates, they will fill their jails with Hispanics who have committed misdemeanors and traffic violations.

"Kids are going to be left behind," Martinez said. "Families are going to be broken."

Martinez, who now works for the Center for New North Carolinians, a University of North Carolina program that helps immigrants, said deporting criminals in a handful of counties is an expensive and unfair tactic. Instead, he said, officials should find a legal way for needed foreign workers to immigrate.

Law enforcement officials say the program protects Hispanics, because Hispanic criminals often prey on their own communities. They say immigrants can avoid scrutiny by obeying the law.

Mecklenburg County Sheriff Jim Pendergraph said that, since the program started in May, his officers have found about 1,300 illegal immigrants with criminal records or orders to leave the country, and more than 100 who had been deported before. In the past, Pendergraph said, most of those people would have slipped through the system, because his agency lacked access to the immigration database.

"We're protecting people from illegal immigrants driving drunk and killing our families and selling drugs to our children," Pendergraph said.

Security -- or Racism?

In Alamance County, the program is just getting started. Sheriff's department statistics show that, since mid-February, 30 immigrants have been processed for deportation. One had been deported before and one was a felon.

Ebher O. Rossi Jr., an Alamance County defense lawyer and a native of Argentina, said allowing local agencies to enforce immigration laws gives license to those who want to profile and single out immigrants for persecution.

"This gives me an inkling as to what it must have been like for Jews in Germany as Hitler was coming to power," Rossi said. "All the problems are being blamed on one group of people."

Rossi said he has already gotten several calls from Hispanics being held for deportation. One was a 19-year-old with no criminal record who didn't stop for a police siren, Rossi said. Another was a man picked up for driving without a license and running a stop sign.

Rossi declined to give specific information about any of his cases. He said he doesn't argue with a program that would rid the United States of child molesters and murderers. But he said the program could easily be used to deport people who have committed minor offenses and to stoke fear in the Hispanic community.

"Is this a matter of security or is it a matter of racism?" Rossi asked.

Johnson said he has no plans to target illegal immigrants.

He said that he merely checks the status of those who have been arrested for other crimes, and that ICE makes the final decisions about who is prosecuted or deported.

Johnson said he is meeting with Hispanic leaders and making appearances on Spanish radio, trying to assure people that only criminals will be affected.

"We do not choose the race, financial status or color of those individuals who violate the law," Johnson said.



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Sources: CNN, NY Times, Politico, McClatchy Newspapers, Charlotte Observer, Newsobserver, Baltimore Sun, Whitehouse.gov, American Urban Radio Networks, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Google Maps