AFAM Newsbits

February 1, 2012 issue

SEAFOOD FRAUD An investigation by The Boston Globe (January 1, 2012) revealed, through DNA analysis, that 48% of 187 seafood restaurants in Massachusetts routinely serve fish that is not what the menu says it is. As a result, customers pay for one variety and are served less expensive ones. Not surprisingly, the State Legislature‘s Joint Committee on Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure has scheduled a public hearing to address fish mislabeling in Massachusetts. How sad! OIL, OIL AND MORE OIL! For the first time ever, the top export of the United States is oil and for the first time in more than 60 years it is exporting (sending out of the country) more oil than it is importing (bringing into the country), making some wonder why we don’t just keep some of that oil we are sending to other countries and lower our own gas and heating oil prices. You can bet the answer is “profit.” HARLEM’S HISTORIC SHIFT According to The Wall Street Journal, Harlem may soon lose its African American seat now that there are more Hispanics than African Americans in Harlem, which is in a Congressional district that has been represented by Adam Clayton Powell and Charlie Rangel for seven decades. SO SAD! After Juliet Steer, an African American, was buried in a Jewish church cemetery in Colchester, Connecticut, a seventy-two year- old White Jewish member of the church filed a lawsuit to have her remains exhumed and removed from the cemetery under the pretext that Steer was not Jewish even though the church had voted to set aside a section of the cemetery for non-Jewish people who were not members of the congregation. The seventy- two year old voted for the new section even though her lawsuit claimed that the burial was against church rules and even though two White non-Jewish people had purchased plots in the section who were not included in her lawsuit. The complainant, who had been overheard making derogatory racial remarks about Steer, protested vigorously when the lawyer representing the church filed a court document alleging that she filed the suit only because Speer was Black. (Sunday Republican, January 12, 2012) SO SAD! No less a behemoth than the Bank of America charged with race discrimination! To be fair, its Countrywide Bank unit, which it purchased in 2008 during the financial crises, made housing loans to 20,000 African American and Hispanic customers before the purchase at higher interest and fee rates than it charged to White customers with similar income and credit histories. Bank of America settled a complaint with the U.S. Department of Justice for $335 million. (U.S.A. Today, December 21, 2011) SO SAD! The Greater Springfield NAACP called for the resignation of an Easthampton City Councilor who said, “Where’s a Puerto Rican when you need one,” after he and his White colleague were accidentally locked out of a meeting room. I COULDN’T HELP BUT NOTICE I couldn’t help but notice the contrast between the recent closing of Springfield’s Sitar Indian restaurant on Main Street in downtown that followed the closing of several others in the area with the burgeoning and bustling restaurant industry in downtown Bridgeport that I wrote about in last month’s front page article. LEGALIZATION! At a regional conference in Mexico, leaders of 11 Latin American and Caribbean countries concluded that “the authorities in consumer countries should explore all possible alternatives to eliminating exorbitant profits of criminals, including regulatory or market options (decriminalization). Former presidents of Brazil, Mexico and Colombia called for “the legalization of marijuana and an overhaul of U.S. thinking on the 40-year drug war, which has cost a trillion dollars by some estimates but has done little to reduce supply and demand.” Presidents from Bolivia to Mexico say that the U.S. government is “failing to control the nation’s hunger for narcotics, even as the U.S. politicians lecture Latin America on how to confront its problems…” And Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega said, “All the money, regardless how much it is multiplied, and all the blood, no matter how much is spilled, will not stop the drug trade as long as the north continues consuming.” (Houston Chronicle, December 25, 2011) IT OFTEN STARTS WITH AN AURA OF LEGITIMACY In a December editorial, The Wall Street Journal (December 30, 2011) accused U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder of playing racial politics for invoking the section of the Voter Rights Act against South Carolina that requires Justice Department approval (“pre- clearance”) before certain states with a history of interfering with the right of minorities to vote are allowed to change their election laws. South Carolina’s new law, requiring voters to show a particular type of state I.D., is similar to laws recently passed in many other states, such as Indiana and Georgia, and detractors say the laws reflect Republicans’ efforts to reduce the minority vote. The Wall Street Journal claims that Holder’s action against South Carolina is “…the grossest kind of racial politics.” Because we know our history, we African Americans know better than to sit back and wait before questionable behavior that has an aura of legitimacy morphs into full blown racism. Go Holder! GHANA SOARS! “In 2011, Ghana’s economy is forecast to grow 13.5%, a clip that exceeds every other country in the world except Qatar according to the International Monetary Fund…. Ghana’s growth has made the (African) nation of 24 million Africa’s newest middle-income country, joining Namibia, Botswana and South Africa. Nigeria will soon join them, economists forecast.” IT’S NOT THE BLACK; IT’S THE GREEN Maryland’s historically Black colleges – Morgan State University, Coppin State University, Bowie State University and the University of Maryland Eastern Shore – are suing the state of Maryland claiming its higher education commission devoted millions of dollars over the decades to “traditionally White institutions” and failed to live up to a promise to provide comparable funds to the Black universities, thus depriving them of the opportunity to recruit and retain the best faculty and students who preferred the better kept White universities. The “promise” was in settlement of a 2006 court action in which the Commission’s own study supported the Black Universities’ claims. ■