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Vol. 12 Issue
31…Dedicated to the Dialogue on
Race…August 2, 2009
Venue for an Artist
We Wear the Mask
By Paul Laurence
Dunbar
We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,-
This debt we pay to human guile;
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad
subtleties.
Why should the world be over-wise,
In counting all our tears and sighs?
Nay, let them only see us,
While we wear the
mask.
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask...
About
Me: Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872- 1906) was one of the first black writers
to gain national prominence.
By John Burl Smith
Wisdom and knowledge are God's
greatest gifts. These blessings eluded many great men in their search for
power. Still others received their benefits in the prime of life, only to
squander them after obtaining fame and fortune. Vanity, arrogance, greed and
lust have been the undoing of many mighty men, who came to see themselves as
the source of their own power - Uzziah was just such a man. (II Chronicles
Chapter 26)
Today is the computer age, a time of high-tech gadgets, international finance
and multi-national corporations that control the world. Present day media would
have us believe such power and control have never been attained, but each age
in its own way has had a dominant power.
Once he was strong and his power was unchallenged, Uzziah became arrogant. He saw himself as the source of his power and usurped God's commandment that only the sons of Aaron could burn incense to the Lord. For his transgression, Uzziah became a leper and was driven from power. God-given knowledge alone is not sufficient. He also gives wisdom in order to use that knowledge wisely. When one becomes puffed up and full of self, he or she loses both wisdom and knowledge. This happens during every age, no matter the leader or his ethnicity.
Since 2000, the world has witnessed
the meteoric rise from community organizer to president of Barack Obama. A
bombshell at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Obama displayed the
verbal virtuosity of a John Chrysostom, Frederick Douglass or Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr., maybe even John F. Kennedy. Immediately, the winds of politics began
to blow presidential speculation in Obama's direction, as he breezed to the US
Senate from
He was marvelously helped by his
God given ethnicity. Along the way, some viewed his ethnicity as a liability.
So, he threw his long time mentor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright under the bus to
appease outraged whites. Rev. Wright's only sin was speaking the truth about slave
descendants, a reality with which Obama does not identify. Never claiming to
represent the interest of blacks, Obama skirted black issues, catching just
enough wind to soar above the Democratic field. Marvelously helped as blacks
and people of color embraced him wholeheartedly, Obama became the first black
president of the
Once in office, like Uzziah and burning incense, Obama has behaved as though he
is his own source of power. It seems, he believes that because he is convinced
of something, he can convince others to believe it too. Thus far, he has shown
no obligation toward slave descendants for their marvelous support, while he
chastises blacks for demanding compensation for slavery. This is borne out by
his views on education -- that simply obtaining a degree will eliminate four
hundred years of barriers whites have erected to keep slave descendants in a
second class status.
If just being educated eliminated discrimination, segregation would not have lasted until the 1970s. Slaves and their descendants lost limbs and lives attempting to learn to read. The greatest bar to education for blacks was hanging at the end of a rope, while whites built "family legacy" attending tax-supported universities, which blacks were barred from entering. Blacks' efforts to receive equal access to education were frustrated by busing, which whites used as an excuse to dismantle public education, while they built a private system of church schools.
Obama's support of charter
schools may well be a killing blow to public schools. After decades of cutting
funds, assigning incompetent teachers - white and black - to schools in black
and poor communities, blame for the sorry state of public education is being
laid on children and parents. Mr. Obama refuses to recognize that his
educational policies do not eliminate the barriers created by the 3/5
Compromise, which legalized slavery, entrenched segregation and
institutionalized racism. Consequently, leaving the present system intact is a
betrayal, like Uzziah burning incense.
The erosion of decades of wealth built by blacks has exposed this education
fallacy. Discriminatory hiring and financial practices have effectively reduced
the standard of living of blacks back to the 1940s. Unemployment among those
with college degrees was 3.1% in 2008 but it was 7.2% for blacks, nearly twice
as high as whites and significantly higher than among Hispanics and Asians,
according to U.S. Labor Department. The National Association of Colleges and
Employers says only 20% of 2009 graduates have found jobs, compared to 26% in
2008, and 51% in 2007. Even with degrees, blacks will never close the wealth
gap. Already behind - the last hired and first fired - black college graduates
are at the back of the employment line. And, Obama's policies, which leave the
3/5 Compromise intact, are sure to guarantee the vast majority remain mired in
a second class status.
Although marvelously helped by blacks and people of color, Obama has used his
power to entrench and enrich those who have benefited from discriminating
against blacks.
An Untaught Moment: Give Him a Chance
By Pocketslam
Dot and John: Regretfully, I'll have to retort to say that it looks like the
Obama administration is going to follow in the footsteps of "politics as
usual". Maybe because his background didn't include the struggles of
trying to make for a better life as a Black family in the South, it has kept
him from not only envisioning our plight but feeling the pains of our plight as
we did even during our day. We all know it was worse during the days of our
parents and grandparents.
Of course, he was a little
"perturbed" at Prof. Gates being arrested in his own home by the
white police officer, but he let the media make him back down from his
emotional and heartfelt sentiment that the police acted stupidly. Of course you
know why. Obama didn't want to come across as a Jessie Jackson or Al Sharpton
thereby making it a possibility of him losing that white vote. That's the
bottom line. He's willing to acquiesce to satisfy the white voting constituents
rather than stick up for his own Blackness and manhood for the sake of his
family.
Please don't get me wrong, because I do admire the scholarly President. That's
why I went to the inauguration and stood out there in that 21 degree weather
for 9 hours as many of us endured. We were proud. We thought a real change was
coming. But, we have to be real. This racial thing in this country and maybe
the world will not be going away anytime soon. With the histories that we've
experienced, have been taught, and have shared, it will take something as
monstrous as a nuclear Holocaust to get us to start from scratch on the basis
of equality for everyone on the planet.
With white mentalities existing that think we'll never be of their equivalence or that we'll forever be subservient because we were slaves, discrimination will be forever running in the silent, dormant veins of a slow moving circulatory system of the social and political white American body. There is too much hate out there for us and even for Obama to think that 400 years of oppression will be sucked up and driven away just because he's President. Maintaining a "just get over it" attitude will not work. Those fire hoses turned on against us in Selma, the bombings of the 4 little girls in Birmingham, Emmitt Till, Schwerner, Goodman and Chaney, only being allowed to go to the zoo on Thursday in Memphis--(do I need to go further?) will not justify a "just get over it" attitude--especially by us that lived it. Appealing to whites, trying to maintain their votes is a farce and not even opaque or a good blur. Stevie Wonder can see through that.
Yet, I'm willing to give him a
chance to show us what he's got for all of us. I won't be too hard on him,
because his plate is full for trying to correct all of the tragedies the bush
administration left him and us. But our issues can't be put on the back burner.
We're important too--just like his kids and maybe one day his grandkids. Just
thought I'd vent.
John Adams Hyman (1840-1891)
Born a slave on July 23, 1840
near Warrenton in Warren County, North Carolina, John A. Hyman was believed to
be the son of Jesse Hyman, a slave. Like the vast majority of slaves of his
generation, Hyman received no formal education. Beginning in his early
twenties, Hyman worked as a janitor for a Warrenton jeweler named King, who
tried to teach him to read and write in violation of the law of the land. When
the violation became known, King and his family were forced to leave Warrenton
and Hyman was sold to the state of
Hyman later noted that he was treated like "chattel, bought and sold as a
brute." Over the twenty-five (25) years in which he was in bondage, Hyman
was sold eight times, angering his owners for his audacity in trying to gain an
education.
Following the Civil War (1865) and the emancipation of southern slaves, he
returned to
In 1866, Hyman attended the
state's black convention. He served as a delegate to the March 1867 Republican
State Convention and as the registrar for northern
In 1868, Hyman was elected to the
In 1874, he captured a seat in the forty-fourth Congress representing
Following an unsuccessful bid for reelection, Hyman returned to his farm in
Warrenton, where he ran a grocery and liquor store. He briefly served as a
special deputy internal revenue collector for the Rutherford B. Hayes
administration. Political pressure from the North Carolina Republican Party
kept him from fully assuming his post.
Hyman unsuccessfully ran for
Congress in 1878, losing the Republican nomination to James O'Hara. Hyman
served as a steward and Sunday school superintendent for the
In 1887, Hyman returned to Warrenton with renewed political ambitions. He
failed to secure the Republican congressional nomination in 1888, losing to
black candidate Henry Cheatham, who eventually reclaimed the "Black
Second" congressional seat. Hyman left the Republican Party, agreeing to
encourage blacks to vote for Democrats in exchange for minor political posts.
He moved back to
John Hyman died at home of a
stroke on September 14, 1891. Hyman, who left a wife and four children, is
buried in
Philly' Paperless Free Lunch
Unlike the vast majority of
school districts across the country,
Although federal officials recently threatened to kill this paperless model, other cities are looking to replicate it. According to Katie Wilson, president of the School Nutrition Association, "Universal meals mean better nutrition and a better educational experience for a greater percentage of low-income children. We have all the science that shows good nutrition helps kids succeed in the classroom. We need to look at it as part of the school day."
In other districts, most parents must fill out applications to determine eligibility for free or reduced-cost meals. Experts believe many forms are never submitted due to language barriers, literacy issues, humiliation and other factors. Students who do return the paperwork can be embarrassed in cafeteria lines, where others can see how much, if anything, they pay for their meals.
The
While the pilot program has been
continually renewed, it was never expanded to other cities. Today, about 200 of
During the final months of the
Bush administration, the Agriculture Department decided to end
New Agriculture Secretary Tom
Vilsack has since pledged to continue the program until the expected
re-authorization of the Child Nutrition Act later this year. Its future beyond
that remains in doubt, though bills introduced in Congress by
Sex Education and
Teen Pregnancy
The Centers for Disease and Prevention report Preventing Teen Pregnancy: An Update in 2009 contained some startling statistics on teen pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). From 1991-2005, the birth rates for women aged 15 to 19 steadily declined. Between 2005 and 2006, the rate rose significantly, increasing 3% to 435,436 in 2006, compared to 414,593 in 2005--the largest increase in a single year since 1989-1990. Accompanying the rise in the number of teen pregnancies was an increase in the number of teen cases of STDs, including chlamydia, gonorrhea, syphilis and HIV/AIDS.
While the CDC report did not identify causes of the increase, it did note reasons for concern for teenage parents, their children and the community. According to the CDC, "Teen pregnancy and childbearing bring substantial social and economic costs through immediate and long-term impacts on teen parents and their children."
Concerns for these young parents include: pre-term birth, low birth weight for their offspring, and infant death. In addition, teenage mothers are more likely to drop out of high school, and remain single parents than women who delay childbirth. " The children of teens are more likely to score lower in math and reading into adolescence, repeat a school grade, be in poor health, be taken to emergency rooms for care as infants, be victims of abuse and neglect, be placed in foster care and spend more time in foster care, be incarcerated at some point during adolescence or their early 20s, and drop out of high school, give birth as a teenager, and be unemployed, or underemployed as a young adult. These effects remain for the teen mother and her child even after adjusting for those factors that increased the teenager's risk for pregnancy, such as, growing up in poverty, having parents with low levels of education, growing up in a single-parent family, and having low attachment to and performance in school."
The CDC estimates that preventing
teen pregnancy and childbearing could save the
Bush administration critics blame its evangelically-driven education policy for
the increase in teen pregnancies, as well as the accompanying increase in
sexually transmitted diseases. The Bush administration placed emphasis on
abstinence and marriage, instead of a comprehensive, age-appropriate sex
education program.
The CDC advocates a science-based
approach to teen pregnancy prevention. It works with state-based teen pregnancy
prevention organizations and schools. For more about the CDC science-based approach
to teen pregnancy and disease prevention, visit www.cdc.gov.
Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and
Phone Calls
Email bushcon4@yahoogroups.com ....One
inmate in 11 has received a sentence of life in US prisons, including about
one-third who have no chance of ever being paroled, according to "No Exit:
The Expanding Use of Life Sentences in America", a report by the
non-profit Sentencing Project. A record 140,610 individuals are serving life
sentences in state and federal prisons across
Email www.ap.com ...PA woman charged in
exchange-student scandal...by Michael Rubinkam....A Pennsylvania woman has been
charged with criminal neglect for allegedly placing foreign exchange students
in filthy homes strewn with animal waste, short on food and sheltering
ex-convicts. Edna Burgette, 69, of Scranton was charged with five felony counts
related to the placement of teenagers from Norway, Colombia, Nigeria, Tanzania
and Vietnam for Aspect Foundation, a San Francisco-based exchange agency that
paid Burgette $400 for each student she placed. Burgette's whereabouts were
unknown. Each count of child endangerment carries a maximum penalty of seven
years in prison.
Email www.ajc.com
…CRCT scores thrown out at 4 Georgia schools...Cheating threatens their
academic standing; may force them to return money...By Nancy Badertscher...The
State Board of Education voted to throw out some of last year's CRCT scores
because of cheating at four elementary schools. The decision means that all
four schools -- Atlanta's Deerwood Academy, DeKalb County's Atherton Elementary
School, Fulton County's Parklane Elementary School and Glynn County's
Burroughs-Molette Elementary School -- did not make AYP, or adequately yearly
progress, for the 2007-2008 school year. It also puts all three metro schools
in jeopardy, if they also don't make AYP this year, of being tagged "needs
improvement" and facing a variety of sanctions under the federal No Child
Left Behind Act. The