The DISH

Unbossed and unbought news and information you can use

Vol. 14 No. 25…Dedicated to the Dialogue on Race…June 20, 2011

Venue for an Artist

Changes

By Tupac Amaru Shakur (1971 - 1996)

Come on...come on

I see no changes.

Wake up in the morning and I ask myself,

"Is life worth living? Should I blast myself?"

I'm tired of being poor and even worse I'm black.

My stomach hurts,

So I'm looking for a purse to snatch.

Cops give a damn about a Negro?

Pull the trigger, kill a nigga, he's a hero

Give the crack to the kids… who the hell cares?

One less hungry mouth on the welfare.

First ship them dope and let them deal to brothers.

Give them guns, step back, and watch them kill each other.

"It's time to fight back", that's what Huey said.

Two shots in the dark now Huey's dead.

I got love for my brother, but we can never go nowhere

Unless we share with each other.

We got to start making changes.

Learn to see me as a brother

Instead of two distant strangers.

And that's how it's supposed to be.

How can the Devil take a brother, if he's close to me?

I'd love to go back to when we played as kids

But things changed, and that's the way it is

I see no changes. All I see is racist faces.

Misplaced hate makes disgrace for races.

I wonder what it takes to make this one better place...

Take the evil out the people, they'll be acting right.

'Cause more black than white is smoking crack tonight.

And only time we chill is when we kill each other.

It takes skill to be real, time to heal each other.

And although it seems heaven sent,

We ain't ready to see a black President

It ain't a secret don't conceal the fact...

The penitentiary is packed, and it's filled with blacks.

But some things will never change.

Try to show another way

But they’re staying in the dope game.

Now tell me what's a mother to do?

Being real doesn't appeal to the brother in you.

You got to operate the easy way.

"I made a G today." But you made it in a sleazy way.

Selling crack to the kids. "I got to get paid,"

Well hey, well that's the way it is.

We got to make a change...

It's time for us as a people to start making some changes.

Let's change the way we eat, let's change the way we live
and let's change the way we treat each other.

You see the old way wasn't working so it's on us to do what we got to do, to survive.

And still I see no changes.

Can't a brother get a little peace?

There's war on the streets and the war in the Middle East.

Instead of war on poverty,

They got a war on drugs so the police can bother me.

And I ain't never did a crime I ain't have to do.

But now I'm back with the facts giving them back to you.

Don't let them jack you up, back you up, crack you up and pimp smack you up.

You got to learn to hold your own.

They get jealous when they see you with your mobile phone.

But tell the cops they can't touch this.

I don't trust this, when they try to rush I bust this.

That's the sound of my tune.

You say it ain't cool, but mama didn't raise no fool.

And as long as I stay black,

I got to stay strapped and I never get to lay back.

'Cause I always got to worry 'bout the pay backs.

Some buck that I roughed up way back... coming back after all these years.

Rat-a-tat-tat-tat-tat. That's the way it is.

About Me: Named the 86th Greatest Artist of All Time by Rolling Stone Magazine, Shakur's global album sales exceeded 75 million as of 2007, making him one of the best-selling music artists in the world. Rap artist and actor, his music reflects themes common to black American life, including violence, racism and other socioeconomic and political problems.

News You Use

"Post-Racial" Myth

"Don't Call Them "Post-Racial:" Millennials' Attitudes on Race, Racism, and Key Systems in Our Society" is a landmark study released by the Applied Research Center, the nation's leading think tank on racial justice. The 40-page study and accompanying video show that for young people, whom many pollsters and commentators have prematurely labeled as "post-racial," race still matters and racism continues to impact society.

While the "Millennial Generation" (ages 18-30) is the largest, most racially and ethnically diverse generation the US has ever known, race continues to play a role in their lives. According to ARC President Rinku Sen, "Contrary to widespread labeling of the millennial generation as 'post-racial,' young people actually see a lot of racial problems. Many are concerned that race continues to impact outcomes in society, and they want to talk about it. What's more, the gap in perception between how white millennials and millennials of color see race points to continued racial conflict, demonstrating how important these conversations are."

Some key findings include: (1) a large majority of young people assert that race is still a significant factor within various systems, such as criminal justice, education, employment, and immigration; (2) there are differences in how young people of different races and ethnicities view the extent and continued significance of racism in various systems of society and (3) racism is often defined in interpersonal terms - though most young people of color have little problem labeling an entire system as racist.

The study's results are based on a series of in-depth discussions on race and racism in society with millennials of diverse racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, educational, and ideological backgrounds. Video of some of the focus group participants expressing their perspectives, as well as excerpts from the discussions are available at http://arc.org/millennials/.

Intuit's Vibe

In Age of Obama, Blacks Suffering Most

By Gary Younge

When Barack Obama was pondering a run for the presidency Michelle asked him what he thought he could accomplish. He replied, "The day I take the oath of office, the world will look at us differently. And millions of kids across this country will look at themselves differently. That alone is something." His victory was indeed something. The world certainly looked at America differently, though this had as much to do with who he wasn't -- George W. Bush -- as what he was, black, among other things.

Polls show that African-Americans indeed look at themselves differently. A January 2010 Pew survey revealed huge optimism. The percentage of black Americans who thought blacks were better off than they were five years before had almost doubled since 2007. There were also significant increases in the percentages who believed the standard-of-living gap between whites and blacks was decreasing.

But for all the ways black America has felt better about itself and looked better to others, it has not actually fared better. In fact, it has been doing worse. The economic gap between black and white has grown since Obama took power. Under his tenure black unemployment, poverty and foreclosures are at their highest levels for at least a decade.

Millions of black kids may well aspire to the presidency now that a black man is in the White House. But such a trajectory is less likely for them now than it was under Bush. Herein lies what is at best a paradox and at worst a contradiction within Obama's core base of support. The very group most likely to support him -- black Americans -- is the same group that is doing worse under him.

This condition was best exemplified by Velma Hart, the black chief financial officer for a Maryland veterans organization, who backed Obama in 2008. She told Obama at a town hall meeting in September, "I'm exhausted of defending you…. My husband and I have joked for years that we thought we were well beyond the hot-dogs-and-beans era of our lives. But, quite frankly, it is starting to knock on our door and ring true that that might be where we are headed again." In November Velma Hart was laid off.

If it were white Americans who remained this loyal to a Republican president under whom they were doing this badly, the left would be claiming false consciousness. If a Republican president were behind statistics like these, few liberals would be offering that president the benefit of the doubt.

So, how do we explain this apparent inconsistency? There would appear to be three main reasons. The first is white people. Not all of them. But enough. Half of white Americans in a Pew survey shared the birthers' doubt that Obama was born in this country. After the president produced his long-form birth certificate, Donald Trump demanded his college transcripts (claiming he was not smart enough to get into the Ivy League), and Newt Gingrich branded him the "food stamp president." In the face of such brazenly racist attacks, defending Obama's right to the office becomes easily blurred with defending his record.

Second, the post-civil rights era concept of corporate diversity, which many blacks have embraced, is central to his symbolism. Racial advancement is increasingly understood not as a process of social change but of individual promotion -- the elevation of black faces to high places. Instead of equal opportunities, we have photo opportunities. "We have more black people in more visible and powerful positions," Angela Davis told me before Obama's nomination. "But then we have far more black people who have been pushed down to the bottom of the ladder….There's a model of diversity as the difference that makes no difference, the change that brings about no change."

Third and perhaps most important, the discrepancy reflects a mixture of realism and low expectations. That black Americans are doing worse than everyone else, and that the man they elected to turn that around has not done so, does not fundamentally change their view of how American politics works; almost every other Democratic president has failed in a similar way. Conversely the fact that a black man might be elected president, that enough white people might vote for him, that nobody has shot him, really has changed their assumptions.

In the black commentariat, opinion is divided over whether African-Americans should demand a more overt commitment to racial justice from a black president or refrain from doing so because it would weaken his appeal to others. The Rev. Al Sharpton insists that calling on Obama to be a "black exponent of black views" is "just stupid," since it will embolden conservative attacks on projects black people need. Princeton professor Cornel West insists that Obama has "a certain fear of free black men" and "feels most comfortable with upper-middle-class white and Jewish men."

By concentrating so heavily on race, both sides detract from his responsibilities. Obama should do more for black people -- not because he is black but because black people are the citizens suffering most. Black people have every right to make demands on Obama -- not because he's black but because they gave him a greater percentage of their votes than any other group, and he owes his presidency to them. Like any president, he should be constantly pressured to put the issue of racial injustice front and center.

The day he took office, the world may have looked at black America differently, but black America has taken some time to look at Obama differently. When he went from being an aspiration to a fact of political life, the posters that bore his likeness in socialist realist style over single-word commands like Hope, Believe and Change should have been replaced with posters bearing the single-word statement: Power. As Frederick Douglass said: "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." (Source: www.thenation.com)

DISHing It Up Hot!

On Chasm Update!

By Dot

The national unemployment rate has declined and, according to President Barack Obama, the economy is moving, albeit slowly, in the right direction toward recovery. Unfortunately, the official unemployment rate for blacks (16.2 percent in May, up from April's 16.1 percent) is moving in the wrong direction. It is generally conceded that the US Bureau of Labor Statistics unemployment figure is a low-ball estimate of the number of people out of work. Far more than is reflected in the official unemployment rate have either stopped looking or have been forced to accept part-time work.

Whether unemployed, underemployed or discouraged, black America is in the throes of an economic depression. Given that assessment of the black employment situation, coupled with the negative housing market, which is disproportionately impacting blacks, and a high rate of incarceration, we can only describe the situation in the black community as one of desperation. Normatively, such a dire predicament calls for federal, state and local programs targeted specifically at improving economic conditions in the black community. Alas, this is not happening! And, based on contemporary political rhetoric, no prospect of positive change lies just over the horizon, even with a black man occupying the Oval Office.

The current economic condition of black America is by no means novel. It has historically been mired in a relative state of depression. We call its relative depressed state the chasm of inequality, which we periodically update to illustrate how little, relatively speaking, changes in black America.

The absence of relative change is due primarily to the fact that America has not altered its view or value of black human capital. Sure, it is possible to point to a black face in the White House, a few more in the boardrooms of corporate America, but these black faces in high places represent superficial change, much like removing the black and white signs that were prominently displayed during Jim Crow segregation across the Deep South. Fundamentally, the socioeconomic and political status of black America remains consistent with the Three-Fifths Compromise.

The Three-Fifths or Great Compromise of Article 1 Section 2 of the US Constitution assigned to "others," a reference to black slaves in America, the value of 3/5 of a whole person. According to my research, this value has remained consistent, fluctuating over the narrow interval of .5 to .65 since the Founding Fathers struck the grand bargain to legalize slavery.

Because this places a less than moral or positive spin on the nation's founding, some people will argue against it and attempt to dismiss the assertion that slavery - even the economic variety codified in the Constitution - still exists in our "post-racial" society.

For our chasm analysis, we use income and employment data provided by the US Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. While the latter tends to understate the employment situation, its data aptly illustrate the black/white American relationship.

The vast majority of Americans depends on gainful employment as their chief source of income and economic welfare. And, because most Americans reside in families, median family income is an excellent indicator of how well or poorly Americans are faring.

Historically, since the federal government began collecting employment data, the black unemployment rate has tended to be twice the rate of whites over the peaks and valleys of the US business cycle. In the most recent monthly situation report released by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the white unemployment rate was 8 percent, lower than the national average, while the black unemployment rate was 16.2 percent or 2.025 times higher than the rate for whites.

And, just as blacks have borne higher unemployment rates, whatever the national economic climate, they have suffered the greater loss in income. Page 13 of the September 2010 US Census Bureau's report on Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2009 (www.census.gov/prod/2010pubs/p60-238.pdf) provides demographic median family income data, which show that real incomes for all households fell .07 percent from $50,112 in 2008 to $49,777 in 2009. For non-Hispanic whites, real incomes declined 1.6 percent from $55,319 in 2008 to $54,461 in 2009. As expected the biggest income loser was the black family; the real black family median income declined 4.4 percent from $34,088 in 2008 to $32,584 in 2009. The black to white median family income ratio in 2008 was .616 and in 2009 it was .598, falling well within the historic .5 to .65 range consistent with the Three-Fifths Compromise.

The data show that all the gains, in terms of closing the economic welfare gap, achieved by blacks during the Clinton administration have been rolled back under George W. Bush and now Barack Obama. Obviously, putting a black face on this depressing situation has not changed the harm being inflicted on the current and future generations of black Americans.

Politics Y2K11

No WPA-Type Programs

By Melissa McEwan

David Dayen catches Jared Bernstein, former chief economist for Vice President Joe Biden, making an astonishing admission: "There will be no WPA-type programs in our near future. There was no appetite for them in the Obama administration in the midst of the worst recession since the Great Depression and there's a lot less now. The reasons for that are interesting and I'll speak to them another day. But it ain't happening."

It's astonishing not because it's a surprise that the Obama administration has no interest in, as Paul Krugman suggests, instituting "WPA-type programs putting the unemployed to work doing useful things like repairing roads, which would also, by raising incomes, make it easier for households to pay down debt"--nothing could be less surprising than Obama's disinterest in progressive economic policy--but because it's astonishing to see a former administration official confirm that lack of disinterest so bluntly.

On a WPA program, Bernstein explicitly says it was the White House, not Republicans, who had no appetite for direct, public job creation during the first term. Bernstein says he made the arguments about public works jobs inside the White House, but he was clearly outvoted. He doesn't give the arguments made in response, tantalizingly alluding to "interesting" reasons that he will "speak to another day." But he says very clearly that the reason we did all of this hoops-jumping and nudging in the stimulus package rather than just paying people to work at jobs that needed to be done was a philosophical decision inside the White House. In a sense we already knew this, but it's important that a former White House insider re-emphasized it.

If "there is no appetite" for the kind of economic policy that actually makes meaningful differences in the lives of USians (by which I mean actual people, not the corporations granted personhood by our contemptible Supreme Court) even in the White House of a Democrat (no less one who promised "hope" and "change"), we are in real trouble. (Source: www.alternet.org/newsandviews/602831/obama_administration_has_no_use_for_wpa-type_programs_that_would_help_poor_and_unemployed)

Hood Notes

Alabama Senate Vote to Remove Jim Crow Language

By Yolanda Young

Last week, a bill sponsored by Sen. Arthur Orr, R- Decatur, to remove discriminatory language regarding poll taxes and segregated schools from the state's 1901 constitution was passed without the approval of black legislators. The Alabama House of Representatives will now have their say on the bill called a "farce" by black members.

Defending his position, Orr said he believed the bill would send a message of intolerance for such language in the Constitution. Perhaps, more importantly, he believes the current constitution hurts the state's image.

The black legislators, however, don't want to limit constitutional amendments to racist "language." They want to change constitutional provisions that lead to inequities, such as in school funding. According to Sen. Bobby Singleton, "We need to reform the entire constitution."

Sen. Linda Coleman, D-Birmingham agrees. "This bill to me is a farce. It's a smokescreen. We know there are disparities."

Cam Ward, a Republican senator and supporter of the legislation said he believed that even though the racist words were nullified by federal laws, they remained a "black eye," on the state of Alabama.

I wonder too if black citizens of Alabama fear that if the language is removed from the state's constitution some might eventually try to deny the perverse and pervasive nature of Jim Crow laws during that era. Just as there are groups that deny the Holocaust happened, even as video and first person testimony confirms that it did, it is likely that some group interests might be served by denying Alabama's past. Even as the Nation commemorates the Sesquicentennial of the Civil War, there are those who argue that the war wasn't about slavery when it absolutely was.

It is understandable that Sen. Orr worries about the perception people have of Alabama; however, the state's image can't be changed by erasing a few words from its constitution. Indeed, Alabama's history is what it is.

Its legislators can only change things going forward. They do that by making the state a place of equity for all its citizens. Since the bill proposes a constitutional amendment, if approved by the Alabama House, voters would have to approve in a statewide referendum in November 2012. A similar measure was rejected by voters in 2004.

Note of interest: At 340,136 words, the Alabama Constitution is 12 times longer than the average state constitution, 40 times longer than the US Constitution, and is the longest still-operative constitution anywhere in the world. Maybe a full review and reform is in order as the black legislators want. (Source: http://politic365.com/2011/06/08/black-legislators-disapprove-alabama-senate-vote-to-remove-jim-crow-language-from-constitution/)

Disgruntled wants to know: Let us be frank! Social Security is not an entitlement program, even though it is frequently dumped into that pool of programs the GOP and other "fiscal" conservatives would like to cut, reform or eliminate, ostensibly to lower federal deficits and the national debt. Because the program is approaching a point at which fewer workers will be supporting recipients, it makes sense to increase the wages subject to the tax as part of any systemic reform. It did not make a lot of sense to grant workers a brief reprieve from the Social Security tax as part of the most recent stimulus package, since it was not very stimulative. Moreover, it may have weakened the long-run fiscal health of the system, making the gesture appear more of a ploy to strengthen the argument of those who would like to dismantle the New Deal Program. While President Obama appears not to be receptive to the idea of a WPA-type program to improve the employment situation for the poor and unemployed and the precarious situation facing Social Security, what makes him think cutting taxes, particularly employer payroll taxes, will lower the unemployment rate, since businesses are already sitting on more than a trillion dollars that they refuse to invest?

Disgruntled feels: Failed! The US free enterprise system has failed miserably to live up to a core principle of market capitalism. Companies are supposed to succeed and/or fail on their individual merit as part of the creative destruction process that makes growth possible. Inefficient businesses fail, entrepreneurs move into the vacuum left in their wake to create new business, employing idle capital and labor and providing products demanded by consumers. Or, so I thought this was how free enterprise worked. Only now it includes too big to fail. Government must bail out the big companies, making the environment ripe for more moral hazard. This is what we now have in the US. Government and business in bed together. Failed capitalism or fascism would be more accurate.

Disgruntled says: Lately, my email in-box has been inundated with bad economic news and news about natural disasters. The only reprieve has been jokes about former Rep. Anthony Weiner. Frankly, I feel sorry for the poor guy. Fact is, all politicians lie! And, as indiscretions go, his was definitely in the minor league, hardly worthy of a resignation, since his constituents seemed willing to stand by their man. Ironically, for someone who was willing to take off the table the impeachment of George W. Bush, whose lies caused thousands to die, Nancy Pelosi wasted no time roasting Weiner!

Mailbox: E-Mails, Faxes and Telephone Calls

Email www.hd.net/programs/danrather...Looking for Jobs in All the Wrong Places...By Dan Rather...Here's one for the White House suggestion box: President Obama -- Be careful about where you seek job creation advice. This week marked the second meeting of the President's Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, a 26-person panel of business and labor leaders appointed by President Obama to generate a national strategy for job creation. Whether or not the Jobs Council can truly help fix America's job crisis, it's too soon to know, but there's ample reason to be skeptical. "Good for Obama's jobs council, good for America?" was the question posed by The Washington Post, which went on to note that five of the companies with executives on the Council -- General Electric, Citigroup, Intel, Procter & Gamble and DuPont -- generate the bulk of their revenues overseas. President Obama praised Cree for "putting people back to work in a field that has the potential to create an untold number of new jobs and new businesses right here in America." But the Republican National Committee issued a release saying that Cree -- which received a $39 million tax credit in stimulus funds -- has more than half of its 5,000-person workforce in China. The GOP also points to industry press reports that during the grand opening celebration of the company's first Chinese plant in December, the CEO promised more expansion in China.

Email www.dailyreckoning.co.uk..."The real story is that we're in a Great Correction. But it is one that is having a hard time expressing itself. Every time it opens its mouth, the feds come along with duct tape. The Great Correction wants to tell the truth - that there's too much debt in the system; that most of today's 'growth' is phony, and that bad debt needs to be erased. The feds want to shut it up... they want to lend more money... and pretend the problem will go away. As a result, the 'news' we get is garbled... unclear. We have to listen hard to figure out what it really means."

Email 1bigtree@comcast.net..."As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression.....There is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such a twilight that we must be most aware of change in the air--however slight--lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness." Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

Email www.americanprogress.org...The United States is a low-tax country. That's true for individuals and for corporations, and it's true whether you compare us to other countries or the America of the past. No matter how you slice it the conclusion is the same. Conservatives like to claim that our budget deficits are purely a "spending problem." Said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY): "We don't have this problem because we tax too little. We have it because we spent too much." It's a popular talking point, but it simply isn't true. Deficits do not stem from spending levels alone. They are the product of a mismatch between spending and revenue. And when revenue is as low as ours is, you end up with big deficits.