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September 2, 2010 By Julianne Malveaux NNPA Columnist (NNPA) — I was in a meeting recently when a man referenced “two marches” and I nearly melted down. I was appalled that anyone could manage to refer to equivalence between those who came to uphold Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream 47 years later, and those who came to repudiate it. Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and their colleagues need to be ashamed at their feeble attempt to “restore honor.” Restore. Reclaim. Give me a break. The fact is that Beck threw down when he described President Obama as a racist. Once he uttered that despicable sentiment, he had no business in the “coincidence” of having a rally on Aug. 28. For the record, Beck, here are some other dates you can’t claim: Jan. 15, King’s birthday; April 4, the date of King’s death. Beck’s amazing coincidences are repugnant, but somehow the national media gives him a pass, celebrating his turnout without excoriating him for his hubris. After Beck and company left the Lincoln Memorial on the capital, the Rev. Al Sharpton and many others arrived. Their crowd was smaller, but more passionate and more focused. I hope that we will all throng to the capital on Aug. 28, 2013, 50 after King brought us all together. And I hope that by then we will have emerged from this nightmare of a Civil Rights Moment and back into a dream. Nightmare. Beck has made his mark by calling our president a racist. Recently he has backed up and said he wishes that he didn’t say it. But he did. Because it is OK for folks to take this president on in the most obnoxious ways, to hold him to standards that many cannot manage. Nightmare. Because Beck and Palin and their ilk want to take our nation backward in the guise of moving forward. Dream. Sharpton was true to his heritage, gathering folks to celebrate the 47 years since King had a dream. Kudos to him, and kudos also to the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who managed to gather thousands in Detroit, including congressional representatives John Conyers and Maxine Waters. “You should have been there,” Bill Cosby told me, referencing the Thursday back to school rally that was part of Jackson’s weeklong tour of “ground zero” Michigan. (Cosby joined us at Bennett College for Women on Tuesday, challenging students to do their best this academic year.) Are we in a nightmare, dream, or in between? The economic data remain scary, and the racial climate is challenging. Would people be better behaved if health care reform had happened under a president who was not of African descent? Would our nation prefer a blonde first lady modeling excellence, behaving as first mom? What has race got to do with it? Is it the nightmare, dream or in between? When Labor Day arrives next week, we will all review the data on work and wring our hands because so many Americans are out of work. Some politicians will say we can’t do anything about this because we are already in too much debt. Others will say we can help the unemployment situation by creating jobs even though they cost. Some are living a nightmare, others are hoping for a dream. What is the in between? It is disturbing to consider the many ways our perspectives on employment, life and civil rights diverge. I was repulsed by a man who saw “two marches” because I assumed that he invoked a moral equivalence. He may have been annoyed by my strong reaction to remarks he offered as innocent. Still, there is something immutable about the sentiments King offered on Aug. 28, 1963. The attempt to parse these sentiments is disturbing. Let’s not allow King’s dream to turn into a nightmare. Here is the real deal. A man who viciously described Obama as a racist, and who has dined on his viciousness for more than a year, has absolutely no right to claim any dream. His very popularity is a nightmare for those of us who have the audacity to believe, as King did, “that people everywhere have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, peace and freedom for their spirits.” Nightmare, dream, or in between? The choice is only ours. Julianne Malveaux is president of Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, N.C. She is also an economist and author. |
 September 2, 2010 By Marian Wright Edelman NNPA Columnist (NNPA) — I have a dream that I can go back to my home, that I can go back to New Orleans. I have a dream, a dream filled with hopes. I hope my daddy is safe. I hope we can have a clean New Orleans again, that New Orleans can go back to the way it was. I hope that all the people will be safe and protected. I Have A Dream. This was the dream shared by the 2005-06 kindergarten class at New Orleans West KIPP Academy in Houston — children who had just fled everything familiar in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Five years later, for many of Katrina’s children and families, home is still not back to the way it was. New roadblocks keep appearing on the road to recovery. As the recent report “The New Orleans Index at Five” puts it, “It has been often said that New Orleanians are resilient. They have to be after being dealt three crises in five years — Hurricane Katrina and the levee breaches, the Great Recession, and now the (BP) oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico … New Orleans is in the throes of post-disasters recovery.” The city’s resilience is still strong, but challenges remain. The Children’s Defense Fund has been on the ground in New Orleans since immediately after the storm, operating CDF Freedom Schools programs, which we first opened as an emergency response to the health and mental health risk encounters many children were facing. The freedom schools program continues to provide summer and after-school enrichment for children in New Orleans, and more than 30 freedom schools sites are serving children across the Gulf region. Education is one of the sectors where there has been some progress since the storm. After more than 100 of the city’s 128 public schools were damaged or destroyed by Katrina, new public school choices have emerged that include more public charter schools than any other school system in the country. So far, these charters are achieving better results than the largely failing system that existed before the storm. But many of Katrina’s children are still suffering from effects of the original displacement, and their families, neighborhoods, and support networks will likely never be put back into place exactly the way they were. Studies show the region still may not be prepared to protect children in another disaster. Despite the fact that more than 5,000 children were separated from their families and listed as missing or displaced after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, a new report issued by Save the Children found that many Louisiana child care centers and public schools still don’t have adequate plans in place for evacuating students, notifying parents about their children’s location, caring for children with special needs, or taking other precautions during an emergency. In this, Louisiana isn’t alone: Only 12 states met Save the Children’s standards. We must do better in taking lessons learned and planning for the future to protect all children. Dr. Cathy Grace, the Children’s Defense Fund’s director of Early Childhood Development Policy, recently co-authored two new resources that focus on what we can do to help young children cope after a traumatic event and how we can plan now to protect them in the future. “Preparing for Disaster” walks early childhood program administrators through the basic plans they should make to safely care for children in an emergency, including plans for sheltering in place, relocating off-site, and keeping emergency contact information available and accessible at all times. “After the Crisis” contains book suggestions, discussion starters, and other activities for teachers to help young children who have been through many kinds of trauma, including natural disasters, epidemics, or the death of a loved one, begin to heal. These companion books, based on hard-learned lessons from the Katrina disaster, are valuable resources for everyone entrusted with the physical and emotional well-being of our youngest and most vulnerable children. Tools like these can help adults prepare for the next time and help children who have already lived through trauma continue healing now — including Katrina’s children, whom we must not forget. |
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 September 2, 2010 By Marc Morial NNPA Columnist (NNPA) — Here we go again. One more time, a clueless commentator with a microphone and an audience of millions, has brazenly insulted Black America and reacted as if we were the perpetrators. The latest incident involves Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the host of the Dr. Laura radio show. On Aug. 10, Dr. Laura made racially insensitive statements and repeatedly used the “N-word” in responding to Jade, a black woman caller, who complained that her white husband’s friends and relatives use racial slurs and make racially demeaning comments in front of her. Instead of offering helpful advice, Dr. Laura scoffed, “some people are hypersensitive.” She noted that “black guys” use the N-word “all the time,” and repeated the word 11 times during the call for emphasis. But her most revealing comment was, “I don’t get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it’s a horrible thing, but when black people say it, it’s affectionate. It’s very confusing.” As she admitted, Dr. Schlessinger most emphatically doesn’t get it and she is very confused about what constitutes racism. It is beyond comprehension that she would consider Jade “hypersensitive” for being offended by the N-word. Schlessinger’s comments, which can be heard in their entirety at http://mediamatters.org/blog/201008120045, created a national uproar. Millions of people of all races were offended by her insensitive and highly offensive on-air rant. Her resignation on Aug. 18 came just five days after the National Urban League urged the Talk Radio Network to drop the Dr. Laura Show from syndication; and it demonstrates the impact people of good conscience can have when they speak out against intolerance. After the incident, Schlessinger did issue a written apology, which said in part, “I was attempting to make a philosophical point, and I articulated the ‘N-word’ all the way out — more than one time. And that was wrong. I’ll say it again — that was wrong.” That is an understatement. We cannot help but wonder, as did Nita Hanson (Jade’s real name), how Schlessinger, who grew up during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, and who once was a practicing marriage and family counselor, could not understand how hurtful the N-word is to most Americans. It is also disturbing that former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin would publicly say to Schlessinger, “Don’t retreat … reload.” That kind of pandering to the basest element of the American electorate is highly offensive, inflammatory and counterproductive. Schlessinger claims she resigned to “regain her constitutional right to free speech.” That is ludicrous on its face. Nobody has prevented her or her supporters from speaking their minds. But nobody is also preventing the public from reacting. It should be noted that following her remarks, several of her affiliates and major sponsors dropped her show. That was their constitutional right. As the nation works toward racial reconciliation and a celebration of diversity, we find it necessary to make it clear once again that this kind of divisiveness and casual use of racial slurs have no place among the public discourse. Marc Morial is president and CEO of the National Urban League. |
 September 2, 2010 By Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. NNPA Columnist (NNPA) — The Civil Rights Movement is alive and well in 2010. There is no such thing as the “post-Civil Rights era,” unless you are one of those rare individuals who assume that African-Americans and others have already “overcome” racial discrimination and economic exploitation. There is no such thing as a “post-racial” America, unless you are also one of those brothers or sisters who think that you are a “post-Black” colorless person who lives in a colorblind society of true equality and equity. I remember well, back in the 1960s and ’70s, there were some who misguidedly believed that we should stop marching, organizing, struggling, singing and praying for a better day. Yes, we have made tremendous progress during the last 50 years toward racial justice and equality. But our progress did not happen by osmosis. We had to stand up, speak out, protest and, for many, we had to shed blood, tears, jail time and suffering to get where we are today. We cannot afford now to acquire contemporary amnesia about our civil rights and human rights continuing struggles. That is why today, we are sounding a national alarm about what is happening and not happening in education for African-American children in particular. It is way past time for the vast majority of African Americans and others who consider themselves to be progressive to speak out and take direct action to ensure that our children get the best possible quality education. A people who will not put the highest priority on the education of their children are a people who are doomed to social and economic hardship and subjugation. Black parents have to exercise their parental rights and responsibilities to demand better educational options for our children across the United States. We say “our children” because every child in our community deserves the fundamental right to have equal access to a high-quality, not low-quality, education. Why are we so patient and silent about the failures of school systems that are failing to provide the education “our” children deserve? Yes, we need a national movement for equal quality education today with no less of a collective sense of urgency than we exhibited five decades ago. Our children are being miseducated, harmed and racially discriminated against. This is a civil rights issue. This is a human rights issue. This is a parental responsibility issue. In some cities like New York; Detroit; Washington, D.C.; Baltimore; Philadelphia; Chicago; Houston; Cleveland; St. Louis; Atlanta; Birmingham, Ala.; Charlotte, N.C.; and Jackson, Miss.; the high school dropout rates are unacceptably high and directly proportioned to the issues of denying parental choice, systemic institutional failures, poverty and the refusal to develop and support alternative, more effective educational models that put the educational needs and rights of our children as the priority focus. Disproportionately high dropout rates of African-American students from high schools throughout America directly lead to the disproportionate high incarceration rates of African Americans in prisons and jails. The continued miseducation of our children will consign future generations to abject poverty and a neo-slave existence. The 21st century offers so many new global opportunities for all people to improve their quality of life, but this requires a high quality education to meet these new opportunities. African-American children should not be denied this moment in history. We cannot and should not any longer allow this situation to go unchallenged. We believe in movement building. If you agree with us, come join us. Let’s build this movement together for change in education. Add your voice and energy to this important cause. It’s time for us to stand up and speak out again. The education and the future of our children are at stake. Benjamin F. Chavis Jr. is a national civil rights leader, senior advisor to the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO) and president of Education Online Services Corp. |
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