July 09, 2015
By Lekan Oguntoyinbo
NNPA Columnist
Over a picture of two bearded tuxedo-clad men kissing, a Nigerian-born acquaintance of mine posted the following on Facebook: “May I, my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren never be part of this abominable act.”
A short piece that’s been particularly popular among English-speaking Africans on social media for months, reads:
“(Whites), you asked us to wear (suits) under the hot sun and we did. You said we should speak your language and we obediently dumped ours. You said our ladies should wear dead people’s hair instead of the natural ones the Lord gave to them and they obeyed. You said our decent gals should wear catapults instead of conventional pants and they obeyed. Now you want our men to sleep with fellow men and our women with fellow women…We will not agree with you this time. If you like keep your (foreign) aid.”
Yes, same-sex relationships get significantly less buy-in from Blacks around the world, including here in the United States.
In the wake of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling effectively legalizing same-sex marriages, there’s been a lot of talk about the possibility of a ripple effect, possibility extending to some of the world’s most conservative regions, including Africa and the Middle East. Twenty countries, including Canada, the United Kingdom, Norway, Denmark, Argentina, Spain and South Africa already had laws on the books sanctioning gay marriages before America’s high court ruled.
But none of these countries carry the global clout of the United States.
Still, it’s hard to see how that clout will influence the African continent and the Muslim world, where negative attitudes toward homosexuality are the most conservative in the world.
According to a 2013 Pew Research Center survey, Africa is less accepting of same-sex relationships than any other continent. In Sub-Saharan Africa, nine in 10 people believe homosexuality should not be accepted by society. In Nigeria, 98 percent frown on it.
The numbers are 96 percent in Ghana, 96 percent in Uganda and 90 percent in Kenya. In South Africa, which is reputed to have the most progressive constitution in the world, 61 percent say it should not be accepted. And that figure is relatively low only because acceptance is significantly higher among Whites and Asians in the rainbow nation.
Over the years, leaders of many African countries have publicly blasted gays. Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe once described gays as “worse than dogs or pigs and worse than organized addicts or even those given to bestiality.”
In a 2013 address before the United Nations General Assembly, Gambian President Yahya Jammeh called homosexuality “very evil, anti-human and against Allah.”
More than two-thirds of African countries have laws on the books criminalizing homosexual acts or same sex relationships. Six years ago, Uganda’s parliament proposed a bill calling for the death penalty for anyone who engaged in acts of “aggravated homosexuality.”
In 2013 Nigeria’s legislature passed a bill banning same sex marriage and the formation of gay rights organizations. In 2010 a court in Malawi sentenced two men to 14 years in prison for sodomy. The men were pardoned a couple of weeks later during the visit of United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.
Here in the United States, Blacks are less likely than Whites and Hispanics to support gay marriage and are typically less accepting of homosexuality. A recent poll showed that 59 percent of Whites support same-sex marriage compared to 41 percent of Blacks.
Many academics have come up with an assortment of reasons to explain these racial differences in attitude, including religion and disparities in income and lower levels of educational attainment. But such explanations are simplistic. The majority of the most vociferous opponents of gay relationships in Black communities around the world are highly educated, well heeled and driven by a desire to strengthen families. Besides, such arguments fail to take into account other factors – custom, tradition and deeply held conservative views among Blacks about family and procreation – views that were once widely held in western culture and are still deeply entrenched among certain groups in this country, including evangelicals, Latter Day Saints and ultra orthodox Jews.
The United States, which for years has leaned on many African countries to show more tolerance toward gays, would be wise to tread carefully as it continues to expand its influence on the continent.
In the economic sphere, many African countries are finally starting to come into their own. Six of the 10 fastest growing economies in the world are in Africa. Several African countries, including Nigeria, are strategic allies of the United States in the war against terrorism.
Successfully fostering relationships will require understanding and, most important, respect of the culture and traditions of people of African descent.
Cultural Imperialism does not make for good partnerships.
Lekan Oguntoyinbo is an independent journalist. Contact him at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow him on Twitter @oguntoyinbo.
July 02, 2015
BY JESSE JACKSON
“It is time to move the flag from the capitol grounds.” With those words, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley captured the new understanding that came after the brutal murders of nine church members in the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston.
Over the weekend, I attended the emotionally draining funerals held for the slain. The governor attended each, receiving thanks for her commitment.
The blood of martyrs often changes the way we see. That was true after Emmett Till’s mutilated 14-year-old body was displayed in an open casket in 1955. It was true in 1963, after the four little girls were blown up in the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. It was true after Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis. In South Carolina, the “amazing grace” of the relatives of the victims, directly offering the murderer forgiveness opened the way. The governor’s declaration on the flag took the first step. Now states and companies across the South are taking down the Confederate flags and putting them — so long a symbol of hate — into the museums where it belongs.
Removing the flag is long overdue. But for the crucifixion to turn into a resurrection will require removing the flag agenda, not just the flag, addressing the substance, not just the symbol. South Carolina — like many states of the old Confederacy — has refused to accept federal money to expand Medicaid. This deprives at least 160,000 lower-income workers of affordable health care, and costs an estimated 200 lives a year. It deprives the state of $12 billion in federal money from 2014 to 2020. That costs the state’s hospitals and medical facilities dearly. South Carolina could use this moment to accept the money and aid its workers, disproportionately people of color.
South Carolina is one of the states — aligning once more with many in the old Confederacy — to pass measures restricting the right to vote, particularly an onerous voter ID law, challenged by the NAACP and others as racially discriminatory. The state could express the consciousness by repealing this law.
South Carolina State University, the historically black college in Orangeburg, is imperiled. It remains open, still accredited but on probation due to its financial difficulties. The state has changed its leadership. Now is the time for the state to act boldly to rescue the only historically black college in the state.
As President Obama stated in his memorial address, we’ve had enough talk about race. Now is time for action. Action that will turn this act of terror into an era of new hope, this expression of the Old South into a reaffirmation of the New South, this crucifixion into a resurrection.
Action now is essential for the old forces of hate and division still exist. The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that five predominantly black churches have caught fire over the past week, four in the South and one in Ohio, apparent targets of arsonists. Only continued action to bring us together can insure that we overcome those who would use terror and fear to drive us apart.
Gov. Haley has shown the way. She didn’t wait for opinion polls. She didn’t put her finger into the wind to see which way it was blowing. She worried about her state, asking “How are we ever going to pull this back together.” And so she acted on the flag, starting a movement that is sweeping the South. Now the governor might show the way once more. Moving to pull the state together by acting on the substance of divisions as well as the symbols. The blood of the martyrs has once more forced us to look anew. Now is the time to act boldly to express this new consciousness.
Jesse L. Jackson is founder and president of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition.
June 18, 2015
By Bill Fletcher, Jr.
NNPA Columnist
If you want to see up-close what the political right wants to do to public education, take a look at Wisconsin. Recent legislation, aimed ostensibly at the city of Milwaukee, is attempting to remove local control of the schools and systematically expand the charter school system. And here is the punch line: they want to remove the requirement for teachers to be certified in order to teach. That’s right. You heard it first. These throwbacks suggest that teacher certification is both unnecessary and a hindrance to the hiring of teachers. Thus, there would be no requirements to teach.
There are several things to understand about the political right’s approach to education. Many people thought that they were simply interested in charter schools. Nope. Many thought that they were simply interested in vouchers. Nope. They are interested in the end of public education and its replacement with a system of publicly subsidized private education.
Now, let’s take a moment and look at this. One of the favorite arguments of the right is that everyone should have a voucher to go to a school of their choice. Well, if we were all born equal – and I don’t mean equal in front of the law but I mean equal in front of the dollar – that might be one thing. Yet, the reality is that if there is private education, it will always be to the advantage of those who have money. Vouchers simply mean that there is a pool of funds available allegedly for each student. But wait: will those vouchers guarantee that your child gets into the school of your choice? No. Why? Because, among other things, the tuition in that school may be more – quite possibly substantially more – than the value of your voucher. Vouchers will not guarantee that a poor student will get into a good private school. There is no guarantee that they will even be considered.
Privatization of education also raises some troubling issues about the content of education. This is a matter that has been arising a lot over the years. Will there be any standards? Obviously, if the right-wing in Wisconsin gets its way, there will be no standards for teaching. But what about the content of the curriculum? Every school teaching based on its own ideology? There is a name for this and it is “chaos.”
Public education has been weakened in large part because the resources that are needed are not being made available. Beginning with the tax revolts of the 1970s, right-wing movements have sought to starve the public sector generally and public education in particular because they simply do not believe in the need for or the right to have a public sector and public education. To them, whatever is “private” is automatically superior to anything “public,” despite repeated evidence to the contrary.
So, the next time you hear someone talking about more charter schools, more vouchers, etc., understand that this is a code for a dangerous agenda. They want your tax dollars and your family’s money in order to enrich the privateers. And none of this help’s your child’s education.
Bill Fletcher, Jr. is the host of The Global African for Telesur-English. He is a racial justice, labor and global justice write and activist. Follow him on Twitter, Facebook and at www.billfletcherjr.com.
June 25, 2015
By Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr.
NNPA Columnist
While social change for some may appear to be inevitable, it does not happen by osmosis, and it does not occur without a focused effort led by those who are not restrained by the fears of social transformation. An effective reform of the system of laws, courts, policies and institutions defined as the criminal justice system in the United States of America requires more than a principled public debate.
What is needed today with a renewed sense of urgency, beyond the all-too-frequent expressions of justifiable outrage and protest in response to videotaped incidents of police brutality, is a committed, bipartisan, well-resourced nationwide criminal justice reform movement. Black lives do matter. In fact, all lives matter.
As President and CEO of the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), the nation’s oldest and largest trade association of African American-owned newspapers, we reach more than 20 million readers per week through 205 affiliated local and regional print and digital media companies.
The issues of mass incarceration, overcriminalization, prosecutorial and police misconduct, equal justice, alternative sentencing, recidivism and judicial dysfunction are all serious problems that are having a severe negative impact, in particular, on the quality of life of African Americans. What is required today, however, is a multiracial coalition to ensure that a successful reform movement is representative of the interests of all Americans.
I know something about the movement-building process, dating back to my early days in the 1960s as a youth coordinator in my home state of North Carolina for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. (SCLC). Dr. King said it best when he affirmed, “An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
Dr. King, Jr. was a master movement builder. I learned firsthand from witnessing how Dr. King fused together a diverse coalition of intergenerational leaders to bring about change at the local, state and federal levels toward equal justice for all. Fifty years later, we need to rebuild and expand the movement to reform criminal justice.
I also know what it is like to be unjustly sentenced and incarcerated in a prison system that dehumanizes both the imprisoned and those in charge of vastly deteriorating overcrowded penal institutions.
As a member of the Wilmington Ten civil rights activists who were unjustly imprisoned for a combined sentenced of 282 years for standing up for the rights of equal education for African American students in Wilmington, N.C. in the 1970s, I have experienced the systematic degradation. Today, there are millions of people who not only want to see changes in the criminal justice system, but also are willing to join and support the emergence of a national “Criminal Justice Reform Movement” (CJRM).
My columns for the NNPA have always been about speaking truth to power in the vain of Frederick Douglass and W.E.B. DuBois, two pioneering editors who knew the power of words. Yet today, we must also dare to speak the truth to ourselves. We must participate in helping to build this important reform movement. We cannot afford to be silent or stand idle on the sidelines while others in earnest strive to make changes to a system that will ultimately determine the quality of life in our communities for generations to come.
Thus, it is why without any hesitation that I am hereby publicly stating my endorsement of the coalition building efforts of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL), Charles Koch Institute and Koch Industries, Coalition for Public Safety, Center for American Progress, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and other national and regional organizations that have committed to support various criminal justice reform efforts. I believe it is now a propitious time to work together to establish a national bipartisan reform movement.
I was very interested and encouraged to learn that the controversial Koch Industries has been involved in the issues of overcriminalization and criminal justice reform for years. Yet, many of my colleagues in the Civil Rights Movement were unaware of this fact. Reforming the criminal justice system is not a concern to be constrained to the left or to the right on the political spectrum.
The respect for the moral dignity and wellbeing of every person, without the filter of race, class, religion or any other discriminating factor, is a paramount principle that has to be maintained in a society that strives to strengthen the inclusiveness of its democracy. The current social and political polarization over criminal justice reform is not healthy for our nation.
What is healthy is the budding bipartisan reform movement that is now emerging. Now is the right time. Now is the right moment to raise our voices and join forces together to build and sustain the criminal justice reform movement.
Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr. is president of Education Online Services Corporation and the Hip-Hop Summit Action Network and can be reached at: http://drbenjaminfchavisjr.wix.com/drbfc
June 11, 2015
By Julianne Malveaux
NNPA Columnist
I only recently embraced my status as an “elder.” Actually, I describe myself as an “episodic elder,” eager enough to take one of those lovely “senior” discounts when it serves my purpose, yet reluctant to turn in my party card. Elder status hit me upside the head, though, when a young woman told me she was “tired” of my generation preaching to hers.
I’m willing to stop preaching when young leaders step up. I applaud the Black Lives Matter movement, and am excited when those who are of not African descent join this movement. Still, I am waiting for the same young leaders to demand that their peers stop killing one another. I’m not embracing the right-wing hype about Black-on-Black crime, because they don’t address White-on-White crime. I’m not suggesting that the movement for police reform take a back seat to anything else (after all, we can have more than one movement at a time). I am suggesting, however, that young African Americans confront their peers and say “enough.” When “elders” say it, we are accused of preaching, but someone needs to say it.
What if the young people who abhor the killing of their friends and neighbors took shooters and their associates to task? What if they got up in their faces (in safe spaces, of course) and demanded to know why some of the young people who could contribute much to our community have now been massacred in the streets?
Some of those who lost their life were victims of mistaken identity, or trapped in the wrong place at the wrong time – some were little girls playing on their porches or sitting on Grandma’s lap. Some of them were simply walking home from school. Some of them were in the middle of simple misunderstandings and lost their lives because of an errant glare, a careless word. Some, like Charnice Milton, survived childhood only to go to her grave at 27.
Charnice was a talented, ambitious young reporter determined to tell the story of Southeast Washington, the part of the nation’s capital with the highest concentration of African Americans, the highest poverty rate and, more recently, the primary target of gentrification that pushes poor Black residents out of the homes in favor of young, affluent, White “urban pioneers.”
Her death was more than a faceless statistic – it was personal. Charnice was in my office fact-checking my most recent book for a few weeks, and she literally shimmered when she spoke of the stories she hoped to tell. She didn’t want to be the story, she wanted to tell the story of the least and the left out and of the people and organizations making a difference.
Charnice’s dreams of telling untold stories, along with her body, were tragically shattered when a depraved young man used her body as a human shield to protect him from a drive-by gunman.
Tears have been shed, hands have been wrung, and teddy bears and flowers have been left at the place where Charnice was slaughtered. A few days from now, someone else will be shot and the crying and handwringing will begin again. So far this year, 18 people have been killed in Ward 8 – almost one each week. The tears shed for Charnice are special tears for this amazing young woman, and yet they are the all-too-regular tears for lost life, for names that don’t quite make the news.
Some young leaders are quick to blame heartless police or and the right-wing obsession with crime – even while it is declining in some cities – but how many in Washington, D.C., in Baltimore (where 43 people were killed so far this year), in Harlem, in Third Ward or Fifth Ward Houston, in St. Louis, were killed not by cops, but people who look like us? At some point, we ought also be able to say, simply: Stop the killings!
According to the Pew Research Center, “While blacks are significantly more likely than whites to be gun homicide victims, blacks are only about half as likely as whites to have a firearm in their home (41% vs. 19%).”
Thanks to the National Rifle Association, there has been a proliferation of guns in our nation. According to federal figures, there were 310 million nonmilitary firearms in the United States as of 2009. That’s an average of nearly a gun per person in our nation of 318.9 million people, making us the most heavily armed country in the world. There are more gun sellers in the U.S. than McDonald’s or grocery stores.
Even so, the NRA opposes any legislation to reduce easy access to guns, and offer clichés such as “guns don’t kill, people do.” But guns don’t fire themselves. Meanwhile, young African Americans are mowed down like bowling pins, and except for the occasional reporting of an exceptional life, those who are killed are also ignored.
It is time for young leaders to take their peers on, to step up and demand that the violence stop. It is time for these leaders to demand that media outlets cover the cumulative loss of life and the individuals who have been killed, without tediously parroting the mindless and non-contextual conversation about Black-on-Black crime. I write this not as an episodic elder preaching, but as a seasoned warrior asking her esteemed young leaders to take this baton and run with it.
Julianne Malveaux is a Washington, D.C.-based author and economist. She can be reached at www.juliannemalveaux.com