It seems the Democratic presidential contest is getting more contentious as the race continues. In the past few weeks, presidential politics have been replaced by racial and identity politics, with everyone entering the fray–from Geraldine Ferraro to Barack Obama’s pastor Jeremiah Wright.
Even before the recent campaign surrogate skirmishes, everyone from political pundits to mainstream media outlets were dissecting the Democratic race, grouping supporters into categories based exclusively on race and gender.
Will white men vote for Obama? Does Hillary have a lock on white female voters? Will Latino voters go for the black candidate instead of the white female candidate? How much of the black vote will ensure Obama victories in Southern states?
Michelle Obama has drawn criticism for saying the success of her husband’s presidential campaign has made her proud of America for the first time.
During a campaign rally in Milwaukee before the Wisconsin primary last week, Michelle Obama said : ““Hope is making a comeback and, let me tell you, for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country. Not just because Barack is doing well, but I think people are hungry for change.”
Michelle Malkin, a blogger for Townhall.com, said Mrs. Obama comments are an affront to the many accomplishments America has achieved:
“Every naturalization ceremony I’ve attended, where hundreds of new Americans raised their hands to swear an oath of allegiance to this land of liberty, has been a moment of pride for me. So have the awesome displays of American compassion at home and around the world. When millions of Americans rallied to help victims of the 2004 tsunami in Southeast Asia — including members of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln Carrier Strike Group that sped from Hong Kong to assist survivors — my heart filled with pride. It did again when the citizens of Houston opened their arms to Hurricane Katrina victims and folks across the country rushed to their churches, and Salvation Army and Red Cross offices to volunteer. “
Even Cindy McCain, the wife of Senator John McCain, felt it necessary to respond to Obama’s comments, saying during a campaign rally that she’s always been very proud of her country. But not everyone agrees with McCain and Malkin’s response to Michelle Obama’s statements.
“Michelle Obama is an African American female, and based on that alone her relationship to her country is a more complex one. Without a doubt, the roots of Michelle’s comment went far beyond the government’s treatment of African Americans, but that alone would be grounds for righteous indignation. Should she be incessantly and automatically proud of a government that only in the last 40 years has begun to move towards the self-evident truth that all men are created equal?”
7 Questions with Leroy Hughes, National Organization of Concerned Black Men (Audio Interview)
7 QUESTIONS WITH LEROY HUGHES, NATIONAL ORGANIZATION OF CONCERNED BLACK MEN
Since its inception in 1975, the National Organization of Concern Black Men has been dealing with issues of concern to black youth. Leroy Hughes, director of operations for Concerned Black Men, talked to me about the issues that should concern all black men in America.
1.What are the issues Concerned Black Men is currently working on and what issues should be of concern to black men in this country?
LH: We primarily focus on youth related issues as well as issues affecting men. That involves a focus on male reproductive health, mentoring, tutoring. We concentrate on abstinence projects, teen pregnancy prevention, AIDS prevention, adult literacy and fatherhood initiatives. We work with young men to improve their parenting skills, job readiness. We try to develop best practice programs to strengthen the community and we try to create best practice programs that target youth in our community so that they can become productive citizens to society and develop the skill sets to become the foundation for their community now and in the future. We try to promote and develop programs for parents so that they can employ skills to help those very same kids to be the best that they can be and to try to encourage and maintain the family unit.
2.What are some of the issues, locally and nationally, that are particular to black youth?
We are extremely concerned about the achievement gap, especially among young boys; the fact that African-American boys are really lagging behind their peers. We are concerned about truancy; we are concerned about high school dropouts. One of our primary goals is to increase the academic performance of youth and try to develop programs that’ll keep them in school. Right now we are heading up a project called “The Boys of Color: 2025 Initiative.” As part of our young males of color achievement initiative, we try to identify best practice programs across the country that assist young boys and try to close the achievement gap and keep them in school. [We] try to figure out how we can infuse those best practices into local school systems and get dollars from foundations and maybe the federal government to help support programs to deal with this achievement gap issue. We all know about the dilemma affecting African-American youth, boys in particular.
3.Do you think the government is doing enough to address these things?
We can appreciate some of the initiatives the government is trying to promote to boost the achievement gap, but more really needs to be done. We’re talking about more funds to support afterschool projects, mentoring and tutoring projects. We encourage and try to work with other community-based organizations to create awareness for the need for the federal government to intervene. In concert with the federal government, it’s the responsibility of every community-based organization to develop programs and plans locally to address whatever dilemmas their communities are going through. Each community really needs to identify on what is the pressing issue of the day that they should focus on, and then form partnerships to deal with that. Then community-based organizations are in the best position to deal with the federal government and make their demands.
4.With the Jena 6 and Genarlow Wilson cases, is your organization talking more about criminal justice issues or are the young people you mentor more concerned about those issues?
We’ve been focusing on those issues for quite some time, since our inception in 1975. What we’re trying to do more so than ever before is really focus on the issue of parent education. We really feel that if parents are educated about their rights and responsibility as citizens– and what they can do and what they are empowered to do–they really could have been in a better position to deal with this issue before it got to this point. We really believe that education is the key. Educating kids and parents about their rights is really the key and best solution for dealing with racism and hate crimes. If we can apply that type of approach, then we’re really in the best possible to position to change policy.
5.The organization was started in 1975 to fill the void in positive male black role models. Do you think that void still exists to the extent it did in 1975?
It still exists. We all know about the significant number of African-American youth who are either incarcerated or did not complete high school. We know that our work is not done. In fact, we have a great deal more to do. We would like to think that we have made an impact because the organization has grown. We started in Philadelphia with about five police officers. Now we have 31 chapters across the country. But even since the organization has grown, the issues still persist. Even though we’re in the 21st century, too many of our young men are in jail; too many of them are dropping out of high school; too many of them are engaged in truancy. That tells us that we are still in a state of emergency and there’s still much work to be done. Yes, to that extent the void stills exists. We’ve still got work to do and as long as there’s work to be done the organization will be here to try to meet that need.
6.Do you think another organized civil rights movement is necessary? Do you think it needs to be a massive effort?
It needs to only be a massive effort in the sense the each person has the responsibility to do their part. Back in the day, in the 1960’s because the country was galvanized because of so many issues that great leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King carried on their shoulders. Today, we have made gains as a race. More of us, more so than ever before in history, are empowered to do things individually whereby collectively we can make a difference. We all have an individual responsibility to take on the role of leadership. The one obstacle we have within our race is that we’re still looking for that one person, when really it should be each individual doing their part.
It’s important, given our stature economically, intellectually, that we can do it. By doing that, you almost engage in another civil rights effort.
7.Nooses have been reappearing all over the country, something that was common during the civil rights movement and before then. How do you as a concerned black man explain the reappearance of nooses in 2007 to your children and the kids you mentor?
When I speak to my own children, I have to remind them that we as human beings, even though we have great qualities, we also have idiosyncrasies. They’re still a lot of people who don’t understand, or perhaps don’t want to understand, the difference we have as individuals as opposed to embracing diversity. Because we’ll always have those types of individuals who have a problem with embracing diversity and celebrating differences, you have to be prepared to deal with that.
An Examination of the Black Community Online (Part 3)
There are many places online and offline that members of this socially and politically conscious group can meet. Online gathering places include discussion boards on AOL Black Voices, the BV Caucus blog, BlackPlanet (a social networking site),Club Black Web, ThinkTank, African America and the list goes on. The group 1,000,000 Black Students links to the Assata Shakur Forum, which discusses issues concerning people throughout the Diaspora, not just blacks in America. A blog, 1,000,000 Black Updates, is also affiliated with this Facebook group.
Offline activities include conferences and events held by organizations like the NAACP and National Urban League. Many universities also have black student unions and other organizations that hold multicultural events and conferences. Dr. Ausetkmt also said her group has organized events to raise awareness about the crisis in Darfur, showing a movie about the genocide at a local theater in Michigan.
Although these activities exist offline, some of the people I spoke to, like Horace Coleman, said there needs to be more conferences and meetings on black-oriented topics and issues. Jason Green echoed these sentiments, saying blacks need to be engaged in more discussion, especially on the Web.
“Marketing of the information they’re[ black websites] providing is not as efficient as the mainstream, like CNN, MSNBC,” Green said. “A lot of black people aren’t even aware of BlackNews.com.”
“When it comes to discussion and not just reading, that’s where the problem is,” Green said.
Ausetkmt said her group is able to spread information more efficiently than even some large media organizations. They frequently communicate with each other via text message.
“We use cell phones,” Ausetkmt said. “You get about 140 characters in cell phone message. Any major news story can be condensed to 140 characters and blasted out to the globe. I sent a news blast to someone in Canada, someone in Jamaica, someone in England and someone in France. Within two hours it came back to me from Switzerland, Belgium and Holland, all from black people. “
Ausetkmt referred to this network as the electronic village, a termed coined by Minister Louis Farrakhan in 1995. She said groups like Club Black Web wouldn’t exist without the Internet.
“Praise the Lord for bloggers and cell phones,” Ausetkmt said. “Yes I am a new disciple of the Church of the Internet.”
An Examination of the Black Community Online (Part 2)
The people in this community rely on the mainstream media and a multitude of other news sources to get their information. Some examples include the New York Times, USA Today and the Washington Post. While targeted news sources like Essence magazine and its website, Black America Web, BlackNews.com and AOL Black voices all provide relevant news to African-Americans. The members of my online community are interested in topics such as politics, race relations, criminal and social justice.
Jason Green, creator of the Facebook group 1,000,000 black students, said he started the group after taking a class called “Racism in America” and reading about certain incidents he felt weren’t being publicized by the mainstream media.
“While I was taking that course, I was getting really emotional about things that I wasn’t aware of,” Green said. “At the time, I [also] read a story about a [black] man in Texas who was the victim of a racial beating. He had Down syndrome and he got beat up and it bothered me that nobody knew about that at the time.”
Though Green said he watches CNN, he believes the mainstream media doesn’t do a thorough job of covering issues concerning the black community. He relies on news sources like BET.com, BlackNews.com and Black Enterprise magazine and its website to get news.The creation of 1,000,000 black students was a way to remedy this lack of targeted information.
“Facebook is the perfect way to just network with people and to spread news amongst a large group of people,” Green said. “I thought if you can allow people to see what’s going on in society, they’ll be more aware and more equipped to prevent it from happening again.”
1,000,000 Black Students does not yet have that many members. Almost 118,000 students have joined since Green started the group in March of 2006. Recent postings have addressed the topic of supporting African-American-owned businesses, what they referred to as keeping wealth within the black community. Members have posted videos from YouTube that address this topic. Members have posted over 22,000 discussion topics, some of which include the prevalence of single-parent households in the black community and poverty in urban areas. As can be expected, some people have posted topics that don’t concern a wider audience. One person gave a birthday greeting to a friend and others have used the discussion board to post profanity. Many of the posts do a lot of linking to the original sources of information, so the discussion board serves as means to channel information.
Horace Coleman, moderator for ThinkTank and member of Club Black Web, said both groups are responsible for channeling information that may be ignored otherwise. ThinkTank, which has 129 members and has a mailing list, focuses on general news, politics and health information. Recent postings have focused the Jena 6 case, high mortality rates for cancer, and Barack Obama’s campaign.
Coleman said he tries to examine popular culture issues from a different perspective. One notable example is a posting he wrote about the film American Gangster, starring Denzel Washington. He said the mainstream media glorified the movie about a successful African-American drug dealer without examining how these illicit activities affected the black community.
“I like to find the back story to things, not just things that are in the mainstream media,” Coleman said.” That kind of thing is beyond what they do.”
Ray Ausetkmt, who reads 7,000 RSS Feeds a day, including feeds from papers like the New York Times and USA Today, said she has come to rely on non-traditional news sources–particularly information provided by fellow members of online communities like Club Black Web and ThinkTank. She said recent issues, like violence and Mogadishu, Somalia and almost 500 deaths in Darfur last week, have not been covered extensively by traditional news outlets.
“That’s why groups like Club Black Web and ThinkTank exist,” Ausetkmt said. “We pull in people who can pick up a pen and a piece of paper and say what needs to be said and syndicate it to sources that need to hear it. We don’t care about Reuters and AP.”
“Reuters and AP doesn’t have our type of syndication.”
An Examination of the Black Community Online (Part 1)
According to a November report conducted by e-Marketer, a group that conducts market research and trend analysis on the Internet, African-Americans comprise almost 11 percent of Internet users. That figure is expected to increase to almost 12 percent by 2011, making the number of African-Americans online total almost 26 million users. Though the number of whites online more than quadruples the number of black Web users, the latter audience is growing and that means more news and information outlets on the Web need to cater to the black community.
My blog, “Other America,” focuses on issues concerning the black community. Topics include finance, education, politics, and race relations, among others. In recent weeks, I’ve written about the disparities in crack cocaine sentencing, Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, and high breast cancer mortality rates for black women. My goal was to write about issues that extend beyond popular culture. There are many entertainment sites, such as BET and MTV, which younger African-Americans visit on a regular basis, but sites are scarce that focus on the politically and socially conscious members of this demographic. Dr. Ray Ausetkmt, who is a member of the Yahoo Group Club Black Web and a number of other black online communities, referred to these people as the “black intelligentsia.” Ausetkmt said these people are academic scholars, professors, legislators, college students and others who have been able to share their ideas and mobilize online.
“The Internet changed the reality for black people, globally,” Ausetkmt said. “People are connected together that have never previously known much about each other. There’s an active live connection, a sharing of information, a development of resources, and in some cases, an enlightenment that takes place from one group to another one simply because there is that open sharing permitted by the Internet.”
The term “black intelligentsia” may have certain class implications, but I’m using it in this framework as an expedient way to describe people who use the Internet to gather and organize with others who share a similar consciousness.
Though the black community online and offline is not a monolithic one, it has certain uses for the Internet that are not typical of other online communities. The 2000 Pew Internet and American Life Project found the online behavior of blacks very different from that of whites. Sixty-five percent of blacks use the Internet for school research compared to 54 percent of whites. Thirty-eight percent of blacks use the Internet to chat online versus 23 percent of whites. Sixty percent of blacks have used the Net to play an audio or video clip.
The African-American online community is broad. The people I intended to target range in age from 21 to 40, but anyone above this age range who has similar interests could be a member of this community. I interviewed Dr. Ray Ausetkmt, a 52-year old researcher and Ph.d holder in African religion; Jason B. Green, a 21-year old college senior at Nova Southeastern University and creator of the Facebook group 1,000,000 Black students; and Horace Coleman, a 65-year old Vietnam veteran and moderator of Thinktank, an African-American discussion forum.
Previously, someone arrested in possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine would get the same sentence as someone arrested with 500 grams of powder. Crack is a cheaper form of the drug and is predominantly used by blacks—more than 80 percent of people imprisoned on crack charges are African-American. Powder cocaine, on the other hand, is predominantly used by whites and Latinos. Many people in the law enforcement community, social activists and others have long thought the laws governing cocaine sentencing are racially and socioeconomically biased.
New guidelines for shorter sentences went into effect on Nov 1st. The Sentencing Commission, the authority that establishes the guidelines, will vote Tuesday about whether to apply the new rules retroactively, a ruling that could mean freedom for almost 20,000 people now imprisoned on crack cocaine charges.
As part of a three-state campaigning blitz, Winfrey will also campaign in New Hampshire and South Carolina, two key states in the Democratic primaries that will help decide whether Obama becomes the party’s presidential candidate.
Political insiders aren’t sure what kind of impact Winfrey will have on the campaign trail, but the American public has already seen the O effect on books, television, publishing and movies. Oprah’s show is viewed by 9 million people every day, most of these people are women and about half are older than 50, a demographic that is very similar to the average Iowa Caucus voter.
People have been abuzz with news of the double O factor. Katharine Q. Seelye of the New York Times asked at the end of November:
“Can the Oprah magic that converts books into best-sellers translate to politics? Will the viewers, mostly women, who follow her advice on daytime television follow it into the voting booth?[Or] Will she alienate her viewers by overtly taking sides in the increasingly intense debate between the man who could become the first black president and the woman who could become the first woman president?”
Robin N. Hamilton of the Huffington Post said Oprah’s presence on the campaign trail could encourage more civic participation from previously uninvolved voters, even if those people don’t end up pulling the lever for Obama.
“What is significant about Oprah is that at the very least, her participation may encourage a sector of the population to engage in political debate, a debate they may otherwise have avoided,” Hamilton said.
“As for Oprah and the rest, I don’t think endorsements have much weight,” Joe said. ”I’m sure the crowds will come out to see Oprah and a few will be converted. If you take past campaigns, all the union, press and other endorsements didn’t really change things. It’s the American voter that decides.”
In the Midst of Mortgage Crisis, Government Bails Out Homeowners
President Bush announced Thursday a two-year hold on mortgage interest rates to help people in danger of losing their homes.
Many of the people who would be helped by the President’s plan used subprime loans to buy homes. Subprime borrowers are typically people with poor credit who otherwise couldn’t afford a home. Those same people may now lose their homes because the rates for subprime loans fluctuate, making mortgage payments substantially increase every month.
However, the plan would only include borrowers who are not late on their current mortgage payments. These people would continue to pay the original interest rate on their loan and not be subject to increased payments when that rate expires.
The current mortgage crisis disproportionately affects minorities, particularly African-Americans. The Federal Reserve released a study in September that showed how the the crisis is affecting this group. According to the study, nearly 53 percent of blacks got a high-rate loan when they refinanced their homes. In comparison, 38 percent of Latinos and about 26 percent of whites received these loans.
The reason blacks get more subprime loans than other groups may be purely economic. Many of them are concentrated in the lower income brackets, which makes it more difficult to get a loan with a cheaper interest rate.
Wright Andrews, an attorney who represents the Coalition for Fair and Affordable Lending, a group of subprime lenders, told U.S Today reporters it isn’t startling that minorities take out subprime loans.
“It’s not at all surprising that, at least in many metropolitan areas, you would have high concentrations of African-Americans and Hispanics getting subprime loans. … African-Americans and Hispanics as a group are more economically disadvantaged.”
The political change reflects the transformation of the city in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Previously New Orleans, a predominantly black city, had an overwhelmingly black city council.
But many people who evacuated the city relocated elsewhere and many of the victims of Katrina were African-American, two factors that have had an impact on the political and racial makeup of the city after the hurricane.
John Nichols of the Nation writes there is a new political landscape in New Orleans:
“…The pattern of white contenders defeating and replacing African-American candidates in New Orleans is unmistakable. In contest after contest, whites politicians defeated their African-American competitors…There is no mystery about what has happened. For the first time in decades, it appears that whites may be casting more ballots in New Orleans than African Americans. Officially, the voter rolls still show a black majority. But the rolls have not yet been purged of the names of Katrina’s victims. The names that will eventually be removed are, for the most part, expected to be those of African Americans.
These patterns have dramatically altered the electoral politics of a city that had been in the forefront of African-American political strength and advancement since the 1960s. The change was rapid and radical, but it is only now coming into something akin to full perspective. An initial mayoral race following the storm saw a significant amount of absentee voting, but Saturday’s run-off voting was more reflective of the new political reality of New Orleans.”