Dr. Cornel West To The Grio.com(Interview): "The Poor Communities Of Color Need A Bail Out Just Like Wall Street. The BLACK Community Is Too Big To Fail."
"Pres. Obama has an Economics team that's composed of people with No history whatsoever of being concerned about Poor People.
Obama made it clear that when he moved into the White House and it was a Beautiful thing to see he & Michelle and the two precious girls...that he was going to reassure the Establishment.
And that's exactly what he's been doing. Reassuring the Establishment.
Well there are many of us who believe the Establishment is on Our Necks! And on the Necks of Brother Jamal & Sister Latisha!
Now Brother Jamal & Sister Latisha need to get their Acts together But... they can get their Act together all they want.
If the Gov't also does not come through with the kind of Opportunities that a Determined Jamal & Latisha can take Advantage of, they still run up against a Wall.
I think Obama formed certain habits when he Campaigned.
One of the habits he formed was to Neutralize WHITE Fears & Anxieties as he Capitalized on BLACK Solidarity.
So he could have One Size Fitting All When He Campaigned.
To Govern is something else. But he's still got that Same habit.
So when he talks about the Disproportionate Amount of Social Misery in Poor Communities, One Size Fits All Doesn't Work For The BLACK Community.
When Governing One Size Fits All Does NOT Fit The BLACK Community.
When it comes to the BLACK Community We have to Pull Ourselves Up By Our Bootstraps.
But Wall Street did NOT have to Pull itself up by its bootstraps or have Personal Responsibility! Wall Street received a $787 Billion Bail Out!
Can you imagine giving $787 Billion Dollars to Poor People? It Only takes $50 Billion to wipe out Poverty in this Country.
Afghanistan? Its going to take Billions of Dollars!
Its about Priorities!
Its definitely Economics but its also about Priorities in your Economics Policies.
That doesn't downplay Individual Initiative & Personal Responsibility because people Still Need To Get Their Act Together but....
Its just Not enough to have Individual Initiative!
You can have all the Individual Initiative in the World but if you live in the Hood where Bullets are flying, and families are collapsing , where Jobs are Disappearing, then its going to be 1 out of 10,000 to do what the Michael Jordan & Oprah did.
Without the Government's help & a Serious Comprehensive Jobs Policy, things will get Worse.
A Serious Jobs Policy like the New Deal, what the Manufacturing Sector used to do.
The Same way we had an Investment Bank Policy when they were in Trouble.
Communities with People of Color are Too Big To Fail, just like Wall Street was too big to fail.
What Do I Think Of Dr. Cornel West & Tavis Smiley's Fake "Poverty Tour"? Can Someone Please Tell Me Why Dr. West & Tavis Aren't Giving Out Food & School Supplies On Their Tour? If You Really Care About The Poor Than Show It Versus Just Talking About It!
Steve Harvey Recently Called Out Both Tavis Smiley & Dr. Cornel West On His Radio Program, By Exposing Their "Poverty Tour" Is Nothing More Than A Scheme To Make THEM Money & To Deter Pres. Obama's Black Supporters. Why? They're Angry Because He Did NOT Personally Invite Them To The White House. Grow Up! No Wonder Today's Black Youth Are So Misguided.
Its Because Of Fake "Black Leaders" Like These Two Clowns. I Used To Admire Them, Especially West But Now I Don't!
Can You Say "Personal Vendettas?"
Can You Say A "Plan To Deter Obama's Black Supporters?"
These Two So-Called "Black Leaders" Need To Grow Up!
Become A Part Of The Solution NOT Part Of The Problem!
The funny thing about the much ballyhooed and ridiculed Tavis Smiley/Cornel West joint production poverty tour is how the tables are turned. In the tag team summer wrestling rift between Smiley/West and Sharpton/Joyner - which seemed more like salty long-nailed high school girls scratching it up over the basketball team captain that is President Obama - there were some very distinct class conflicts playing itself out.
Smiley and West were characterized as part of the "Ivory Tower" elite, that Black "Bougie" Jack-and-Jill-like crowd of pretentious and highly educated "middle-class" African Americans that had much to say about the struggle but had never really struggled; in the case of these two, they were bohemian intelligentsia accused of fighting the fight from the comfort of marbled institutions and never really being "on the street."
Sharpton - with Joyner and then others like Steve Harvey now joining in for fun and ad revenue - represented that "street cred" that Smiley and West never had, highly stylized, sophisticated and very loud "ghetto" activism that spoke to the everyday worries and hardships of the "working class." If something goes down or pops off "in the community" in any location that is Black USA, you'd find Sharpton replete with entourage, banner signs, megaphone and trademark perm.
For the most part, the distinctions are stylistic (and somewhat demeaning) more than philosophical. Lecture halls versus talk show radio, essentially. Soft versus hard. One "N.I.C." versus the other "N.I.C." Mainstream versus fringe. You see where this is headed.
Now, with the Smiley/West co-produced poverty tour, we find an unusual and somewhat silly reversal of roles. The reasons for both men embarking on this multi-city tour are varied and complex. Both need a way to reconnect and remain relevant as they are sensing a loss of audience share; a quarter of the professional, middle-class black population has evaporated with recession, therefore cutting into their earnings of everything from book sales to speaking engagements.
Hence, it's time to find new audience and, possibly, reach out to the old now relegated to poverty and unemployment benefits (or just ran out). Hit the streets, so to speak. In the process, both might discover the "street cred" they either lost or just didn't know.
CNN's Carol Costello had a rather testy exchange with PBS host Tavis Smiley and Prof. Cornel West about their fierce criticism of President Obama.
Smiley and West have been two of President Obama's most high-profile African American critics. They are currently on a nationwide "Poverty Tour" to highlight what they say is the lack of attention given to poor people in America. Smiley and West appeared on "American Morning" Monday to discuss the tour. Smiley was blunt about what he saw as the damage done by Obama in the recent debt deal.
"I think this debt ceiling deal, Carol, was really a declaration of war on the poor," he said. "The Congress, the president, respectfully, have declared war on the poor...no unemployment extensions for poor people. No closing of a single corporate loophole, not one new tax, not one cent of new tax on the rich and the lucky."
Costello didn't seem to be buying this line of thinking. In response, she cited a Heritage Foundation study which, she said, claimed that poor Americans lived relatively comfortably.
"What are they complaining about?" she asked, and, citing the study again, continued, "[rich] people pay the taxes in America and the poor don't pay any." West called this a "lie," saying that "most of the taxes are paid by middle class. One out of four corporations don't pay a penny of taxes."
After Smiley ran through some of the things he would like President Obama to do to tackle poverty--including discussing the issue more and having a national conference on poverty--Costello asked another skeptical question.
"The president represents everybody in America," she said. "[He's] dealing with a lot of stuff right now so why concentrate on one segment of the population?"
"When the banks had a national emergency, they bailed out and found $700 billion," West shot back. "When we go to war, we find $1.3 trillion."
Growing up black in the segregated 1960s, Deborah Goldring slept two to a bed, got evicted from apartment after apartment, and watched her stepfather climb utility poles to turn their disconnected lights back on. Yet Goldring pulled herself out of poverty and earned a middle-class life — until the Great Recession.
First, Goldring's husband fell ill, and they drained savings to pay for nursing homes before he died. Then Goldring lost her executive assistant job in the Baltimore hospital where she had worked for 17 years. The cruelest blow was a letter from the bank, intending to foreclose on her home of almost three decades.
Millions of Americans endured similar financial calamities in the recession. But for Goldring and many others in the black community, where unemployment is still rising, job loss has knocked them out of the middle class and back into poverty. Some even see a historic reversal of hard-won economic gains that took black people decades to achieve.
Goldring remembers her mother taping the blinds to the wall so no one could see them stealing electricity. She remembers each time she sat on the curb with her three brothers, surrounded by her family's belongings, waiting for a new place to live. Sitting on those curbs, she promised to always pay her bills on time.
Now, after finding herself poor again, "the only word I can say is devastated," says Goldring, 58.
"For me to live that life we were so comfortable in, we never had to worry about finances, we always had money where I can help my kids and my grandchildren — to go to calling my daughter to borrow $100 because I can't pay a bill ..." Goldring's voice trails off as she struggles to hold back tears.
Economists say the Great Recession lasted from 2007 to 2009. In 2004, the median net worth of white households was $134,280, compared with $13,450 for black households, according to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by the Economic Policy Institute. By 2009, the median net worth for white households had fallen 24 percent to $97,860; the median black net worth had fallen 83 percent to $2,170, according to the EPI.
Algernon Austin, director of the EPI's Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy, described the current wealth gap this way: "In 2009, for every dollar of wealth the average white household had, black households only had two cents."
Since the end of the recession, the overall unemployment rate has fallen from 9.4 to 9.1 percent, while the black unemployment rate has risen from 14.7 to 16.2 percent, according to the Department of Labor.
"I would say the recession is not over for black folks," Austin says. He believes more black people than ever before could fall out of the middle class, because the unemployment rate for college-educated blacks recently peaked and blacks are overrepresented in state and local government jobs that are being eliminated due to massive budget shortfalls.
Maya Wiley, director of the Center for Social Inclusion, says the anti-discrimination laws passed in the 1960s took decades to translate into an increase in black economic security — and that was before the recession.
"History is going to say that the black middle class was decimated" over the past few years, Wiley says. "But we're not done writing history."
Cleaning hotel rooms
Goldring was born and raised in Baltimore, and her mother was single for much of Goldring's childhood. At 16, she dropped out of school and went to work cleaning hotel rooms.
"That's when I first met white people. Some of them would stay a month at the hotel. They would have all their children with them," she remembers. "I thought, one day I'd like to hang out at a hotel."
She didn't know any middle-class people in her all-black neighborhood. "Where we lived, everyone struggled. We just struggled a little harder," she says. "If the lights stayed on for a whole year, if we didn't get put out, I thought we were doing really, really well."
At 21, pregnant with her second child, Goldring decided to get her GED. Then she went to community college, got a degree in secretarial work, and began a career.
She met her husband in 1983. He had a steady job as a heating and air-conditioning installer, and owned a brick two-bedroom home in Morgan Park, a leafy, integrated neighborhood.
With two incomes, money was not a problem. He liked to travel. She had never been out of Maryland.
"I thought, 'Is this how rich people live?'" Goldring remembers. "From where I was to where I ended up, it was way different."
Her husband had been married before. As a condition of the divorce, his daughter's name was added to the deed of the house. After Goldring's husband died in 2007, Goldring took out a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, with a 6.5 percent interest rate, to purchase the house outright.
Everything was fine until her hospital "restructured" in 2009. Her boss, a senior vice president, was transferred to the corporate office. Executives were now sharing secretaries. A few months later, they let Goldring go.
No more family vacations. No more trips to the mall. No more filling the grocery cart.
But what Goldring misses the most is her checkbook. Her unemployment payments arrive on a debit card.
"Just being able to pull out my checkbook and pay a bill, even though there might not be much left in there," she says. "I really miss that checkbook with my name on it."
Spike in unemployment
Last April, black male unemployment hit the highest rate since the government began keeping track in 1972. Only 56.9 percent of black men over age 20 were working, compared with 68.1 percent of white men.
Chris Wilder, a Philadelphia journalist, lost his job in 2008 as the media industry suffered huge losses. Unemployment benefits amounted to about one-third of his salary. Ever since they ran out, his income has been near zero, other than sporadic freelance work.
If not for a policy in his apartment co-op to assist people who lose their jobs, "I might be living with my mother," he says.
He has felt depression and anxiety. He's gone from a six-figure salary to having to check his balance before using his bank card. "I miss being able to go into a store and go off budget," he says. "Now, when I go to shop for something, I have to stick to exactly what I came to get. I never have money to buy anything else."
Wilder, 43, grew up solidly middle class, the son of a newspaper editor and a college administrator. Now the single parent of a 15-year-old, he has managed to keep his son in cleats and baseball camps, but thoughts of dying poor have crept into his mind. All of his savings are gone.
"It's definitely harder for black people to get jobs," Wilder says. "With the economy as bad as it is, people are hiring nephews and family friends and friends of friends. It's hard for black people to break that cycle. We don't own or even run the big companies."
"It's hard to keep jobs as well, because they're gonna 'last hired/first fired' you," he adds.
Wilder isn't giving up on finding a job in his field, "but I should."
"I call everyone. I send resumes. It is extremely rare that I get a call back," he says. "When I was growing up, I never imagined there would be a time when I was out of work for three years."
College-educated blacks fared worse than their white counterparts in the recession. In 2007, unemployment for college-educated whites was 1.8 percent; for college-educated blacks it was 2.7 percent. Now, the college-educated unemployment rate is 3.9 percent for whites and 7 percent for blacks.
"I've definitely played by the rules," Wilder says.
He's not desperate enough to break the law, but "I see why people become drug dealers."
Becoming a drug dealer
Horace Davis did become a drug dealer. He illustrates another dimension of the recession's impact on blacks: While law-abiding folks are falling out of the middle class, those who got in trouble with the law are further than ever from a second chance.
After serving four years for drug trafficking, Davis walked out of prison into the middle of the recession in 2008. "I thought to myself, I'm older, I need to get a job, move on. The dope game was dead to me," Davis says, sitting on a concrete porch in an Asheville, N.C., housing project.
In the past few decades of the "War on Drugs," harsh drug sentencing laws have sent a disproportionate number of black people to prison, even though blacks are not more likely than whites to sell or use drugs, according to a 2008 report by the Sentencing Project. Today, about 280,000 African-Americans exit prison each year. They are often the last of the last to be hired.
After Davis got out, he spent months applying for dozens of jobs mopping floors or flipping burgers. He carried a letter from the state offering a $2,500 tax credit for hiring ex-offenders. He got one call back, from a chicken restaurant. "We'll be in touch," Davis remembers them saying. They weren't.
"Nobody wants black felons in their businesses," says Davis, 26.
A 2003 University of Chicago study by Devah Pager sent young white and black "testers" to apply for real low-wage jobs. Some of the testers were randomly assigned felony convictions. The study found that whites with felonies were slightly more likely to get callbacks than black applicants without criminal records.
"The penalty of a criminal record is more disabling for black job seekers than whites," Pager and other researchers wrote in a follow-up study in 2009.
Davis says he learned skills in prison: "How to cook, clean, horticulture, janitorial. I can do it. I've been trained. Tile, carpentry, mortar, edging and trimming, all that. I can operate a backhoe, a roller. Any opportunity to do something that would show my talents, I'd do it. It would be my ticket out the streets.
"I just need someone to give me that chance. A nice construction job, anything. I would hold onto that until I die."
Some economists say the real black unemployment rate is as high as 25 or 30 percent, because government figures don't count "discouraged" workers who have stopped looking for jobs and dropped out of the labor force.
Davis now falls into that category — partly due to societal forces and partly, he knows, because of his own bad decisions.
Recently, police said they caught Davis with a half-ounce of marijuana. His trial date is approaching. As a habitual felon, he could get a 10-year sentence.
Bitter irony
Some see a bitter irony in soaring black unemployment and the decline of the black middle class on the watch of the first black president.
"I thought Barack Obama could have provided some way out. But he lacks backbone," Princeton professor Cornel West told truthdig.com recently.
He said Obama had sold out the poor and become "a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats ... I don't think in good conscience I could tell anybody to vote for Obama."
Yet many jobless blacks do not blame their plight on the president.
"I have no problem with Obama when I look at what the alternatives are," Wilder says.
Goldring doesn't think Obama is doing a bad job either. "The unemployment situation is not the best, but I don't think it has a lot to do with him," she says. "Fixing this economy, it's going to take time.
Wiley, the Center for Social Inclusion director, says Obama should be applauded for several initiatives that have helped the black middle class, such as programs to modify certain mortgages and forestall foreclosure due to job loss.
She would have liked Obama to aggressively counter the suggestion that first black president would be showing favoritism if he specifically helped black people.
"It's the right thing to do for the nation," she says. "Black people are a huge segment of the population, they're especially hard-hit, and the country cannot recover if the black community — as well as the white community and others — does not recover."
Homeownership hits record
Black homeownership hit an all-time high in 2004, with 50 percent of African-Americans owning their homes, according to census data.
Today, the black homeownership rate is 45 percent, compared with 74 percent for whites. Nearly 8 percent of African-Americans who bought homes from 2005-2008 have lost them to foreclosure, compared with 4.5 percent of whites, according to an estimate by the Center for Responsible Lending.
Goldring remembers that when she got a foreclosure notice from the bank, "I bawled."
Her son, Chris Fredericks, says she was "vulnerable, more than I have ever seen her, but she still kept moving."
He was incredulous that his mother was in such a position. "At any point, you can slip back. It's just the way the economy is going," he says. "Once you get into a spiral, there's no telling how far down you could go."
One day, at a counseling session on how to prevent foreclosure, Goldring learned about a new Maryland program that offered help to people who were behind on their mortgages due to layoffs or medical bills.
She thought it was too good to be true. It wasn't.
The Emergency Mortgage Assistance program, financed by federal money, offered a zero-interest loan of up to $50,000. The money would pay off up to a year of back mortgage payments, plus up to two years of regular payments. All Goldring had to do was pay 31 percent of her current gross income, or the full mortgage payment if she got a new job close to her original salary.
And so on a sweltering June day, Goldring stood before a podium in her freshly mulched back yard, flanked by a congressman, the mayor, the lieutenant governor, and other officials. The sound of chirping birds filled the air. Cameras rolled as the dignitaries told Goldring's story, using her as an example to spread word of the Emergency Mortgage Program to other struggling homeowners.
"I want to thank you for your courage," said the lieutenant governor, Anthony Brown.
"I know you did everything right," Brown said. "You worked hard, you saved diligently, but challenges never overtaking our will sometimes overtake our wallets."
Goldring stood in front of the microphone and exhaled.
"After this," she said, "the only good thing would be to be employed, once again."
Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, is not very pleased with President Barack Obama two and a half years into his administration. Farrakhan has called the president "a murderer in the White House," according to The Root.
Farrakhan, like a lot of other Obama supporters, has been unhappy with the president for some time for his persistence in fighting the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. What seems to have set Farrakhan off and caused him to slime the president is the intervention in Libya. For Farrakhan, this has made it personal. He has been a friend and ally of Col. Muammar Gadhafi since at least 1996, soon after the Million Man March.
The alliance was made, it was said at the time, to increase African American political influence. An article published by the Anti-Defamation League at the time suggested a more sinister motive.
"On January 23, Minister Farrakhan and Colonel Qaddafi reached an agreement to launch a campaign to exert black and Muslim influence in the upcoming U.S. elections can only be viewed as a cynical covenant between two haters. With the Nation of Islam leading the effort, Colonel Qaddafi said that blacks, Arabs, Muslims and native Americans will exercise their political muscle 'and enter the election period as a card stronger than the Jewish card in the elections campaign.' Colonel Qaddafi had already agreed to bankroll the effort: in September he promised to spend up to $1 billion to launch a Muslim lobby in America."
An alliance between an American religious leader, albeit of a fringe cult that can best be described as a heretical offshoot of Islam, and a dictator who has supported terrorism and is responsible for the mass murder of hundreds of Americans in the Lockerbie airliner bombing, should give one pause.
The financial relationship between Gadhafi and Farrakhan predated the 1996 meeting. In 1985, Gadhafi granted the Nation of Islam an interest-free loan of $5 million, it is said to create a personal products line. Gadhafi and some of his lieutenants later visited Libya to thank Gadhafi personally, in defiance of a travel ban imposed by President Reagan at the time. It was the first of many trips to Libya.
It is therefore not a wonder that Farrakhan is upset with President Obama for facilitating a military intervention into what amounts to a popular uprising against Gadhafi in Libya. If Gadhafi were to wind up on the end of a rope, a source of funding and political support that Farrakhan depends on would be cut off.
It is interesting that while President Obama has increasingly become unpopular among the people he was elected to govern, the vilest rhetoric directed against him does not come from the Tea Party or some conservative activists, but from Louis Farrakhan. The motive appears to be as much about money as it is ideology.
President Obama, back home in Chicago for the Memorial Day weekend, started his Sunday with an 80 minute workout at a gym, after he and his family spent Saturday night at a barbecue with friends. While Obama was at the BBQ, there was an unusual encounter across the street between the Secret Service and guards outside the home of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, where the press pool van was parked.
Obama did his Sunday workout inside the Naturally Fit personal training facility owned by Cornell McClellan, a trainer whose clients include Obama and First Lady Michelle.
The First Family -- Obama, Mrs. Obama, Malia, 11, Sasha, 8, Marian Robinson and Bo, the dog -- had flown to Chicago on Thursday, the first time the entire family was home since Valentine's Day, 2009. Joining them in Chicago were Mrs. Obama's brother, Craig Robinson, the men's basketball coach at Oregon State University; his wife Kelly Robinson, daughter Leslie and newborn Austin.
Obama started Saturday playing basketball at the University of Chicago Lab School -- which his daughters attended before the move to the White House -- while Mrs. Obama was observed back home in their yard, wearing yellow gloves.
On Saturday night, the family went to a backyard barbecue at the home of pal Marty Nesbitt, who lives just around the corner.
While waiting outside, the press pool witnessed a standoff of sorts between the Secret Service and security force of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan's security force. Farrakhan lives across the street from Nesbitt.
As Abdon M. Pallasch in the Chicago Sun-Times reported, "for the past two years, when Obama has brought his family over to Nesbitt's home, the press pool bus parks near Farrakhan's house. This usually does not cause a problem, but Saturday night -- as most of the city was indoors watching the Chicago Blackhawks beat the Philadelphia Flyers in the Stanley Cup finals -- a bit of tension emerged on Woodlawn Avenue."
New York Times reporter Jackie Calmes, the pool reporter on the scene, recorded the back and forth that got going when a Fruit of Islam guard asked the Secret Service agent minding the press standing on the sidewalk in front of Farrakhan's home to move the press pool van -- which is in control of the Secret Service -- after someone stepped on the grass on the city-owned strip fronting the curb.
Calmes described the guard as a polite man in jeans and a T-shirt. "How is this a security breach?" the agent asked.
"It's 8:45 and nearly dark; your pool has retreated back inside the van," Calmes reported. "We're outnumbered now by roughly a dozen Fruit of Islam agents for the Nation of Islam. As each casually dressed man arrives, he exchanges elaborate handshake/hug/double air-kisses with others. Two walked by your pooler chanting 'Islam.' Several have filmed and photographed your poolers, the van and its license plates with their cell phones."
At 9:20 p.m. Chicago time, Calmes passed along, "our agent got reinforcements from three Secret Service agents. One shook hands with one of the 22 Fruit members we now can count from the van. After a short discussion the three Secret Service agents walked away again."
The standoff ended at about 10:15 p.m. from a man who reads the pool reports -- Calmes identified him as Rev. Gary Hunter in Detroit-- called Calmes to tell her "said he had called Minister Farrakhan and his son and asked them to have the Fruit stand down."
None of the activity surrounding the Obama family return to their home should have been a mystery to anyone in the neighborhood. The street where Obama lives --at 5046 S. Greenwood- - was blockaded as soon as he became the Democratic presidential nominee in 2008 at the Democratic Convention in Denver. The neighbors by now should not have been surprised about the commotion surrounding an Obama visit since Obama stayed at his Chicago home during most of the presidential transition with motorcades zipping in and out.
Obama on Friday had made a daytrip from Chicago to the Louisiana gulf to see firsthand the impact of the BP oil spill catastrophe. On Monday, Obama observes Memorial Day at the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, Ill, about 50 miles south of Chicago.
Black Voters (Mainly Young Black Voters)Don't Need To See Black Leaders Fighting Against Black Leaders.
Especially Not With An Unemployment Rate In Black & Urban Communities Still Hovering Around 25%!
Its Time For SOLUTIONS NOT Divisive Debates Or Explosive Rhetoric.
Nothing Wrong With Privately Discussing Some Of Pres. Obama's Policies. Not To Agree On Some Issues Is Normal.
What Isn't Normal?
Black Leaders Publicly Slamming Our Nation's FIRST BLACK President A Year Before Another General Election!
And Why Is It BLACK People Are The ONLY Ethnic Group Who Kills Or Attempts To Kill Their Leaders? Then We Complain About Being At The Bottom!
Grow Up & Check Your Egos At The Door!
So With All Due Respect To Dr. Cornel West, A Man I've Always Admired, This Is NOT The Time For Black Leaders To Publicly Air Their "Dirty Laundry" About Pres. Obama.
This Is A Time For The Entire American Black Community To Unite & Stand Together!
Let Us Not Forget That President Barack Obama Was Elected As President/ Leader Of The ENTIRE United States Of America, NOT Just American Black Communities!
I Beseech You!
Please Don't Act The Fool In Front Of White People.
They Love Seeing Us NOT Stick Together & Expect Such Negative Behavior From Us.
I Repeat: Its Time For SOLUTIONS NOT Divisive Debates Or Explosive Rhetoric.
UNITED WE STAND; DIVIDED WE FALL!
Pray For The Obama Administration & VOTE OBAMA IN 2012!!
What is it about Barack Obama’s race that makes some people act crazy, if not downright vicious? The latest sign of unchecked insanity turned up in the recent anti-Obama diatribe of Princeton professor Cornel West. The president of the United States, said West, is “a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats.” Now isn’t that a tad bit nasty and delusional?
But such rantings are not limited to West. Nor do they start with him.
Diane Fedele, a California local Republican leader, displayed her own meanness in 2008 when she included in her party’s newsletter a picture that showed the face of Obama surrounded by watermelon, ribs and a bucket of fried chicken. The photo, which was shaped as a currency note, had the inscription “Obama Bucks” under his picture.
Associating black people with poverty programs is a shopworn tactic of bigots. The same year Fedele produced her pictorial, a joke circulated on the Internet that listed American presidents and the currency denominations that bore their faces. It read: “Washington, $1 dollar bill,” “Jefferson, $2 dollar bill,” “Lincoln, $5 dollar bill,” “Hamilton, $10 dollar bill,” “Jackson, $20 dollar bill.” Then it said, “Obama, Food Stamps.”
So it should have come as no surprise when Newt Gingrich, well known for his slurs, took to the podium before a Republican crowd in Georgia last week and described President Obama as “the food stamp president.” Gingrich was trumpeting an old, bigoted line.
Fedele said she produced her newsletter photo because she was offended that Obama had at one point during the campaign called attention to his race. He was coming across as black. Duh!
West, on the other hand, finds Obama’s blackness wanting. He charged that Obama is “most comfortable with upper middle-class white and Jewish men who consider themselves very smart . . . and very effective in getting what they want.” Not stopping there, West looked inside the president’s head and declared that Obama “has a certain fear of free black men.” Continuing his analysis, West opined that Obama grew up in “a white context” and “he’s always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white.”
Au contraire, say those on the other side. They look at that caramel-colored president and see the incarnation of all that they fear and loathe.
Hear Rush Limbaugh on Obama’s race:
l “If Obama weren’t black, he’d be a tour guide in Honolulu.”
l Obama wouldn’t have given the order to take out the Somali pirates if he had known they were “actually young black Muslim teenagers.”
l “Obama has disowned his white half . . . he’s decided to go all in on the black side.”
l In “Obama’s America, the white kids now get beat up with the black kids cheering.”
l Obama is “more African in his roots than he is American” and is “behaving like an African colonial despot.”
l “Obama’s entire economic program is reparations.”
Thus the debate among those who view everything through a racial prism: “Obama’s too black!” “He’s not black enough!”
It’s absurd. In truth, it reveals more about those who indulge in this pastime than about the president of the United States, who seems absolutely comfortable in his own skin.
The antagonists are the ones who are warped.
Short of renouncing his race, buck dancing on the White House lawn and singing the virtues of white supremacy, Obama will never please the likes of Limbaugh, Gingrich et al.
Likewise, authenticators of “blackness” like West will never give Obama a passing grade. Judging who’s black enough is their schtick.
If they heard Obama had a helping of pigs feet and collard greens in the White House last night, they would knock him for not going back for seconds.
Both sides fail to understand realities of the presidency.
There simply is no black or white way to wage war against terrorism, address global warming, compete with China, bring peace to the Middle East or reduce the national debt. Just as there is no black or white way to think about abortion, gay marriage or the nuclear threat.
There are progressive vs. conservative approaches to tackling unemployment, poor schools, income inequality, and a host of other domestic and foreign problems. But those competing approaches are grounded in experience, values, and economic and social policy perspectives, not skin color.
Ah, but looking at it that way isn’t as much fun as viewing issues and people through a racial lens.
In the words of Princeton Professor Cornel West, it was about "a black face in a high place.''
President Obama was the target of slings and arrows Saturday from some of the nation's most quoted African-American leaders -- but, they said repeatedly, it was all done "in love."
The rollicking "black agenda" debate at Chicago State University focused on African-American concerns, including jobs and education -- and whether Obama is doing enough. Organized by talk show host Tavis Smiley, it was part revival and all theater.
"I'm very proud," Minister Louis Farrakhan said with timing that drew laughter, "that a black man sits in the White" -- he paused -- "House."
But Obama received mass support from African-American voters, the Nation of Islam leader said, and "we have a right to expect something of the brother."
Georgetown Professor Michael Eric Dyson likened Obama to Jackie Robinson, who broke the color line in baseball. Robinson may not have been the most gifted black ballplayer of all time, Dyson said, but his temperament enabled him to withstand racist abuse. Then, superstar Willie Mays followed.
As for Obama, Dyson said: "I'm waiting for Willie Mays to come behind him."
At one point, Farrakhan, who has been accused of being anti-Semitic, said Obama is not loved in Israel because of his "chutzpah."
"That's a Jewish term that meant testicular fortitude," Farrakhan said.
Then Bennett College President Julianne Malveaux urged him not to "genderize."
So Dyson suggested the term "ovarian audacity" -- to laughter.
West, who jumped up often to hug the 11 other panelists, said Obama has surrounded himself with too many people from Wall Street.
"You can bail banks out," Malveaux said, "But you can't put people back to work."
"Too many of us are just happy to have a black president," said Michael Fauntroy, an assistant professor at George Mason University.
"The black agenda is the humane agenda," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson.
Several times, panelists said the Obama administration has been more active on Mideast politics and Latino and gay concerns than on issues that specifically affect African Americans.
But after the criticism and jokes, the participants seemed to scale back the rhetoric, saying they appreciate Obama's challenges.
Farrakhan said he was saddened by "demonizing" of Obama, including renderings of the president with a Hitler mustache, and of Michelle Obama, "the most beautiful black woman to be by his side," as a monkey. "Oh, man," he said, trailing off.
After discussing fears of an assassination attempt on Obama, Farrakhan said, "We need to pray for the brother and his family, and warn America: Leave that brother alone.''
"We love you," Dyson said, speaking of Obama. "We just want some love back."
Some black leaders have accused Smiley of Obama-bashing. He said Saturday's event was scheduled before anyone knew it would come on the eve of a key congressional vote on Obama's health-care reform bill.
"You can't lead the people, if you don't love the people."
"You can't save the people if you won't serve the people."Dr. Cornel West
Right On Brother!
Check out Dr. Cornel West's reprimand to the Obama Administration for failing to appreciate, recognize and help America's Middle Class, Low Income voters.
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