CRIPS’ KING
KILLED/CONFUSING MESSAGE FROM SOME BLACK LEADERS
You gotta wonder
what makes Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton, Louis Farrakhan and so many other
people treat the execution of Stanley “Tookie” Williams as the start of the
next Civil Rights Movement. After all,
it seems clear that he killed four innocent people in cold blood, showed little
remorse about it up to the time of his execution and left the founding of the
absolutely destructive Crips street gang as his primary legacy. Yes, he showed some rehabilitative progress
through writing books that warned young kids against gangs. But he also refused to cooperate with
authorities in bringing down those same gangs.
What’s the message for young Black people who have joined gangs and are
committing acts of violence: that they should learn to write? While general opposition to the death
penalty is understandable, making a hero saint out of Tookie Williams is not.
HERE WE GO
AGAIN!
A study by Dana
Farber Cancer Institute found that doctors were substantially less likely to
provide life saving tests and surgery to Black patients. The study showed that of 21,000 lung cancer
patients, 14,224 underwent tests to determine if they could benefit from a
life-saving operation. Black patients
were 25% less likely to receive the tests.
The patients who took the tests and went on to have surgery to remove
the cancer included only 36% of the Black patients while 50% of the White
patients did so. The physician in
charge of the study was quoted as saying, “There’s something happening in the
physician and patient communication process—when a (Black) patient goes in and
closes the door.” Boston Herald,
January 5, 2006. Here we go again!
JIM RICE
DESERVES BETTER
The Baseball
Writers Association of America rejected Red Sox baseball great, Jim Rice, for
baseball hall of fame honors for the 12th time. Throughout his career, Rice remained cool
toward the press and many of us wonder if that explains his repeated
rejection. I would like to know the
racial makeup of the group. Among
certain members of the press it is a cardinal sin to shun their attention and
if you are a Black player like Rice or Barry Bonds, I would not be surprised if
the sin was compounded.
SOMETHING’S
WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE!
The war on terror
is new and mistakes can be expected in waging it but the war on poverty is at
least as old as Lyndon Johnson and probably as old as Franklin Delano
Roosevelt. So there is no excuse for a
Republican- supported budget that lowers taxes for the wealthy and cuts food
stamps to the poor, Medicaid, child support enforcement, foster care and
student loans, while promoting oil drilling in Alaska. All of this after a massive tax cut for the
rich and a failed effort to tinker with Social Security to the detriment of the
safety net for millions of older Americans.
Something is wrong with this picture!
LET’S KEEP
WATCH!
I wonder how much
sympathy former Red Sox pitcher, Jeff Reardon, would have received after
robbing a bank if he were Black. The
mainstream press has stumbled over itself to remind us that Reardon was famous
and earned a lot of money and lived in a house on a golf course and did not
need the money he stole. Their
theory: Despair over the loss of his
20-year old son two years ago distorted his judgment and made him rob a bank
for money that he did not need. Well,
I’d like to see his bankbook. But more
to the point, I’ll be watching the news to see how the mainstream press handles
the next former Black sports hero who happens to commit armed robbery.
RED CROSS
SEEKS TO ADD DIVERSITY?!
What took so
long! Ever since Hurricane Katrina, the
American Red Cross has faced criticism for its lack of diversity and, in
particular, for its insensitivity to the Black and Hispanic victims it was
assisting. Now, the Red Cross is
reaching out. It has begun various
initiatives to increase the diversity of the staff at its headquarters and 800
chapters and to attract more minority volunteers. It recently signed an agreement with the Helping Hands Coalition,
a Houston nonprofit organization representing 100 predominantly Black churches and
community groups. It’s about time but
we need to look into the efforts of the other 799 chapters, including the
Pioneer Valley chapter.
ILLEGAL…? OR IRREPLACEABLE?
Illegal immigrants
hold about 12 million to 15 million jobs in the United States or about 8
percent of the total. And many of the
jobs are under the table, meaning that the government is losing about 35
billion a year in taxes. Illegal
immigrants account for $970 billion of the goods and services produced by the
economy. They work cheap, don’t
complain and the business community loves them! It’s fair to say that illegal immigrants—like them or not—allow
businesses to keep their costs down and compete internationally and are the
most effective union busting mechanism ever.
RACE-BASED
HATE CRIMES RISE
The FBI reported
that race-based hate crimes increased by 5% in 2004 and accounted for more than
half of the 7,649 hate crimes reported for that year.
MAINSTREAM
MEDIA RETREAT / COSBY WASN’T CAREFUL
In an article
picked up by the Sunday Republican (November 13, 2005), Washington Post
columnist Michelle Singletary made the point that many of us have been
criticized for making. Bill Cosby was
not careful when commenting on poor Black families and made many incorrect
comments that left much of what he said open to racist interpretation. Most of us knew what he was trying to say
but too much of what he said and too much about the way he said it were
counterproductive and wrong. Some White
people embraced his words because they understood what he was trying to say but
just as many embraced them simply because they echoed their own negative
stereotype of Black people. And that
was and is Bill Cosby’s careless mistake.
Singletary’s comments were made in the context of a review of, Is
Bill Cosby Right? Or Has the Black Middle Class Lost Its Mind, a book by
Michael Eric Dyson. Whether or not you
are one of those whose judgment is clouded by Cosby’s fame, you will benefit
from reading the book and, maybe, be less judgmental of those of us who think
Bill Cosby should just shut up.
STRANGE TO
SOME BUT TRUE!
Minority
enrollment at the University of Michigan has bounced back since the Supreme
Court struck down its affirmative action enrollment program. The University enrolled 443 Black students
in the fall of 2005, the same number as in 2002, the year before the court
ruling. The Black enrollment numbers
are up 27% from last year. Although it
may seem strange to some, Black students can thrive with or without affirmative
action.
CAL THOMAS
WOULD MAKE A BAD GOD
As I harkened back
to a column by that arch conservative, Cal Thomas titled, “Blacks Must Look to
Morals (October 19, 2005 Republican), I wondered what he thought about
the Vice President of the United States attending a fundraiser for Tom Delay,
who had been admonished by the House Ethics Commission, indicted by a Texas
Grand Jury and living with the sword of Damocles hanging over his head in the
form of Jack Abramoff, who has just pleaded guilty to multiple felony charges
involving, among other things, bribing members of the United States Congress,
all of whom it appears, happen to be White.
I wonder if Cal Thomas thinks this is the behavior Black folks should
emulate.
TUPAC:
RESURRECTION AND SHELBY STEELE
I watched the
“Tupac: Resurrection” television documentary for about the third time during
the time I was reading Shelby Steele’s A Dream Deferred and saw so many
similarities between the philosophy of the two. And each, coming from such radically different backgrounds and
followings, would probably think I’m crazy to say so. But essentially, each believed that Black folks should gain
control of their own destinies and each had good ideas as to how to go about
it. In their honest zeal to promote
Black interests, each overstated a good case but left a valuable message. But isn’t that art? (Also see Book Review on
page 22).
NOT IN THE
U. S. A!
Dozens of descendants of White European slave owners marched through the streets of Barbados’ capital in chains in a gesture of apology for the slavery practiced by their ancestors who shipped nearly 400,000 slaves to Barbados before slavery was abolished in 1834. Can you imagine that happening in the good old U. S. A.? I can’t. n