July 25, 2011

The Current Political Landscape, Ideology vs. Reality

By: Dr. Wilmer J. Leon III

News Analysis

President Obama discusses the urgency of Democrats and Republicans coming together to take a balanced approach to cutting the deficit. White House Photo.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - In describing the recent budget debate impasse between the Obama administration and the Republican-led Congress, House Majority Leader Boehner (R-Ohio) stated, "The gulf between the two parties now is about policy. It's not about process, it's not about personalities." Boehner is wrong; it's not about policy. It's about ideology, and has everything to do with personality.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) clearly made it about personality when he stated in 2010 that, "the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." From that point forward, it became much easier to understand why the relationship between the White House and Congress has been so contentious. Instead of demonstrating to the country how Republican-supported policy would make the country stronger and safer, create jobs and provide much needed health care coverage for all Americans, Republicans turned their focus to ensuring that the president serves only one term. It's not about policy; it's about personality.

As Boehner continues to try to negotiate with President Obama, he is hamstrung by the members of the Tea Party Caucus and their uncompromising ideological stance for a constitutionally limited government. They are championing the position of "cut, cap and balance." According to the South Florida Tea Party, this plan calls for substantial spending cuts in fiscal year 2012, a statutory spending cap and Congressional passage of a Balanced Budget Amendment to the Constitution. Their inflexible position will not allow them to support any measure that includes an increase in taxes.

Most fiscal experts are stating that any serious balanced budget reduction plan must include an increase in tax revenues. Alice Rivlin from Brookings states, .".. any balanced budget plan has to include both spending cuts and tax increases - unpleasant medicine." Tea Party Caucus spokeswoman Rep. Michelle Bachmann has refused to sign on to any bipartisan deal stating, "It's time for tough love ... Don't let them scare you by telling you that the country's going to fall apart." When negotiating positions are grounded in ideology and not focused on the best long-term interest of all Americans, facts don't matter; reality does not matter.

Boehner has stated, "Most Americans would say a balanced approach is a simple one: The administration gets its debt-limit increase and the American people get their spending cut ..." Once again, his rhetoric is not consistent with the facts. According to the most recent USA Today/Gallup survey by a 2-1 margin, Americans want lawmakers in Congress to seek compromise (and not the compromise Boehner touts) to avoid a government shutdown. The most recent Quinnipiac University survey on this issue finds that 67 to 25 percent that an agreement to raise the debt ceiling should include tax hikes for the wealthy and corporations, not just spending cuts. The survey's overall sampling error is a very good plus or minus two percentage points.

The budget debate is not the only area where adherence to ideology matters more than the facts. Recently, Republican presidential candidates Bachmann and Rick Santorum signed the "The Marriage Vow - A Declaration of Dependence Upon Marriage and Family." Of the many problematic elements of "the pledge" is the following: "Slavery had a disastrous impact on African-American families, yet sadly a child born into slavery in 1860 was more likely to be raised by his mother and father in a two-parent household than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA's first African-American President." In spite of the factual inaccuracy in this statement and its irrelevance to current circumstances, Christian ideologues find it necessary to promote this baseless and insulting statement in a feeble attempt to promote traditional marriage..

The problem with ideologies is that, when left to their own merit, they do not hold up to rational, fact-based scrutiny. They tend to focus on and confuse the imagery of the "should be" and "ought to be" with the practical "is." Without people who are able to inject pragmatism and tie logic and reason to an ideology, it can take an institution, group or country down some very perilous roads. This is why ideologues (people who profess ideologies) make terrible politicians and ideology can make for very bad public policy. Ideologues are so focused on the "should be" that they fail to take into account the practical applications of the "how." At their worst, they alter facts to fit their ideology, as was the case when Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Florida) falsely claimed on the Senate floor that, "If you want an abortion, you go to Planned Parenthood and that's well over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does." Planned Parenthood has been prevented by federal law from using federal dollars for abortion services.

After several years of ideological babble such as "compassionate conservatism," "American internationalism," "ownership society" and "war on terror," Americans are finally beginning to focus on real issues such as home foreclosures, affordable health care, outsourcing American jobs, global warming and skyrocketing energy costs. Ironically, much of the blame for these problems can be traced back to some of the same ideologues that now threaten to shut down the government.

Facts matter, especially when part of your ideology claims to make you more American than those who disagree with you and is supposed to be based on an understanding of history and the Constitution. No, Mrs. Bachmann, the shot heard around the world was not fired in Concord, New Hampshire; it was Concord, Massachusetts. John Quincy Adams was not a founding father; he was only nine years old when the Declaration of Independence was signed. Finally, the founding fathers did not work "tirelessly to end slavery." Twelve owned slaves during their lifetime; eight owned slaves while in the White House; and of the first five presidents, four owned slaves.

When seeking clarity on American values and ideals, Americans should look to the document upon which the ideological basis of the country was founded. In the Declaration of Independence, ideology was combined with pragmatic application. The true ideological basis of the country is articulated as follows: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." The pragmatic manner to implement the ideology is stated as, "That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed ..."

We can also look to the Preamble of the Constitution of the United States, "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity and to accomplish this the Framer's practically ordained and established the Constitution for the United States of America." The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States are where the real traditional ideals of America are articulated.

The current political landscape is being polluted with ideological babble by politicians trying to facilitate the transference of wealth from the working and middle class to the wealthy, and impose a narrow self-serving social agenda on the country as a whole.

July 24, 2011

Do Dark-skinned Black Women Receive Harsher Sentences?

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Louisiana Weekly

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Colin Powell said it, Sen. Harry Reid hinted at it about President Barack Obama, and Black folks have known it for hundreds of years. There are advantages to being a light-skinned Black person in the United States.

Research on those advantages isn’t new, but with the release of a recent study by Villanova University, the breadth of quantitative studies that examine colorism, or discrimination based on skin tone, continues to increase, reports The Root, an Online news magazine. From housing opportunities to employment chances to which women have a good shot at getting married, the lighter-is-better dynamic is at play, research shows.

The study took into account the type of crimes the women committed and each woman’s

criminal history to generate apples-to-apples comparisons. The work builds on previous studies by Stanford Univ¬ersity, the University of Colorado at Boulder and other institutions, which have examined how “black-looking” features and skin tone can impact Black men in the criminal-justice arena.

But researchers say this is the first study to look at how colorism affects Black women and how long they may spend in jail. Part of the reason may simply come down to how pretty jurors consider a defendant to be, and that being light-skinned and thin (also a factor stud ied in the research) are seen as more attractive, says Lance Hannon, co-author of the Villanova study.

Racism gets all the headlines, but colorism is just as real and impacting, Hannon explains. How “white” someone is perceived matters. “Colorism is clearly not taken as seriously or is not publicly discussed as much as racism, and yet these effects are pretty strong and the evidence is pretty strong,” he says. “It’s a very real problem, and people need to pay attention to it more.”

Christina Swarns, director of the Criminal Justice Practice for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, says the study’s findings are part of a larger problem in how the justice system deals with African Americans. “It is obviously part and parcel of the problem of overincarceration of the African-American community in this country,” she says. “There is unquestionably … an association between race and criminality, and I think this study emphasizes how skin color plays an important role in that perception of a link between race and criminality.”

William Darity, professor of African-American studies and economics at Duke University and director of the Research Network on Racial & Ethnic Inequality, has studied the impact of skin shade on marriage rates for women and employment for men.

Darity says the Villanova study expands previous research and underscores a known truth. “This has been a long-standing issue and problem that all Blacks don’t face the same type or degree of discrimination,” he says.

Treating people differently because of the lightness or darkness of their skin isn’t exclusive to whites. As an example, Darity cites his research, which found that there are “real” disadvantages for darker-skinned black women when it comes to their chances of getting married.

“And one would have to say that’s to a large degree the consequence of preferences on the part of black men,” he says. That same preference for lighter-skinned black women over darker-skinned black women is true for white men, Darity adds.

But there has been recent movement by the government to take colorism more seriously, Hannon says. He pointed to a 2008 initiative by the U.S. Equal Employ¬ment Opportunity Commis¬sion that explicitly considers colorism. Hannon also notes that because the Civil Rights Act refers to “color” and not simply race, the door is open for litigation around colorism, which could also push the policy dial.

Darity believes that the benefits of light skin have to be addressed to cause change. “There are clear social and pecuniary benefits to being lighter-skinned in America,” Darity says. “Unless we eliminate those benefits, this will go on, because the advantages are real.”

July 24, 2011

NAACP Chair Warns Against “Forces of Regression” in America

By Hazel Trice Edney

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – In Los Angeles for the 102^nd Annual Conference of the NAACP, Chairman Roslyn Brock warned thousands of delegates that historic “forces of regression” are still fighting vigorously to damage civil rights gains.

“The mission of the NAACP is to ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate race-based discrimination. Our vision is to ensure a society in which all individuals have equal rights without discrimination based on race,” Brock reminded in prepared remarks Sunday evening. “For more than a century we've been on a journey to fulfill this mission; not because we want to ‘stay in business.’ We're on this journey because forces of regression in our nation are doing everything in their power to erode civil rights successes.”

At the age of 44 two years ago, Brock succeeded civil rights icon Julian Bond by becoming the NAACP’s youngest chairman. Though of a new generation, she once again debunked the myth that America is in a ‘post racial’ state. Responding to a scene in the movie, “The Help”, which will debut August 10, she repeatedly urged the audience, ‘Courage must not skip this generation!’”

She continued, “The social and economic challenges we face today are real - not figments of our imaginations. The NAACP is committed to maintain in the fight for justice and equality by protecting the victories our forefathers and mothers died to secure.”

Among the evidence that the struggle for Black progress is still a dire necessity, Brock ticked off a list of key issues, illustrating the courage of which she spoke:

• About new voting laws that activists have decried as racially restrictive: “After decades of progress to open up access and make it easier for all Americans to vote, state legislatures in Wisconsin, Ohio, Kansas, and Florida are putting into place a web of suppressive and restrictive laws to make it harder if not impossible for many to vote: longer residency requirements, photo Ids and shorter voting periods. Fourteen of the 29 states with ID requirements are trying to make them more stringent. Are these updated versions of the poll tax? Or as President Clinton suggests, Is this a return to Jim Crow? We must re-double our efforts to reverse this pernicious trend.”
• About the disproportionate impact of the economic crisis on African-Americans: “The meltdown of America's economic system in 2008 was a tremendous shock and sent a body blow to the entire country. We bailed out those who had gambled with our money in order to stabilize the economy for everyone. But while Wall Street is booming again, those of us on Main Street and the rest of us on the side street can get no relief or support. Across the country, black, brown and poor communities are suffering from disproportionately high unemployment, foreclosure, and dislocation,” she said. “If we do nothing, The Center for Responsible Lending calculates that an estimated 1.1 million Black families will lose their homes by 2012.”
• About the fight against Charter Schools in New York City: “When you read that the NAACP is suing New York City over the issue of charter schools, it is not because we are opposed to charter schools. It is because we have come too far and struggled too long to let resources be distributed in a way that amply funds charter schools while starving traditional public schools, which are sometimes located in the very same building. Our priorities are misaligned when we invest more in developing smart phones and smart technologies then investing in developing smart children.”
• About CNN’s new prime time anchors line up that is devoid of people of color: “The NAACP paid attention and called them into question. How can we understand the American story without embracing her rich diversity? How can we tell America's story on the small screen and the big screen unless the people doing the researching, writing, directing and acting reflect the breath of this nation's diversity. The demand for inclusion and representation is not yesterday's news.”

Issues of economic, political and educational equality are bedrock for the NAACP. Brock also hit issues of health disparities including childhood obesity, the HIV/AIDS crisis and substandard health care, which has also been a long-time concern of the 102-year-old civil rights organization.

“America's health insurance system is keeping far too many people from accessing our advanced health care system. President Obama and his administration made significant progress last year with the passage of the Affordable Care Act but even these advances are now under attack.”

NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous, now 38, was to address the crowd on Monday. Jealous also made history in 2008 as the youngest president elected to serve the organization. To roaring applause, Brock closed with a poetic reframe, promising that the new generation leadership has not and will not lapse in its courage:

“This generation who sits in the board room when our parents sat in the mailroom; This generation who sleeps in hotel suites when our parents merely swept the streets! This generation who drives Bentleys, Porsches, Mercedes and Jags, when their parents had nothing but filthy rags. Courage will not skip this generation! If you remember nothing else, remember this - The future is calling - And with courage, the NAACP will answer!”

Minority Youth Media Consumption May Be Hampering Academic Achievement

By Nadra Kareem Nittle

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from America’s Wire

LOS ANGELES (TriceEdneyWire.com) - Krystal Murphy received her first cellphone at age 13 and she used it solely to keep her parents in the loop about her activities. Four years later, her use of the phone has changed dramatically. Now 17, she relies on it to text friends, surf the Internet and send messages on Twitter.

“I’m on my cell all day, every day, as soon as I wake up and until I go to bed,” says the African-American teen from South Los Angeles.

According to a Northwestern University study of youth media consumption, Krystal’s habits are widespread among young people of color. Released in June, “Children, Media and Race: Media Use Among White, Black, Hispanic, and Asian American Children” found that those between ages 8 and 18 use cellphones, television, computers and other electronic devices to consume an average of 13 hours of media content daily. That’s 4-1/2 hours more than their white counterparts.

The study has renewed debate about whether minority youths spend too much time on media consumption and not enough on reading and studying. While some people insist that the disparity in media consumption contributes to the education gap between minority and white youths, others cite it as a positive that can aid a child’s educational growth.

“I think that the results of this study coupled with the other factors that we know influence student performance,” says Sharon Lewis, research director for the Council of the Great City Schools, an advocate for urban public schools and students. “When you combine all of this together, it’s another indication that we need to take extra steps to reach [minority] youth.

“Factors such as health, such as preschool experience, such as a sibling that may not have graduated, such as coming from a single-parent household and then you add this [media consumption] to it—it’s another indication.”

Past reports have shown a correlation between television viewing and low academic performance. A 20-year study of 678 families released in 2007 by the New York State Psychiatric Institute found that teens who watched three or more hours of television daily had an 82 percent greater chance of not graduating from high school when compared with those who watched less than an hour. However, critics of that study say students who struggle academically may be more inclined to watch TV to avoid the rigors of schoolwork.

The Northwestern study is said to be the first in the United States to examine children’s media use by race. Nearly 1,900 youths participated. The study re-analyzed data from previous Kaiser Family Foundation studies on media consumption, finding that racial differences in children’s media use remained static when accounting for socioeconomic status or whether youths came from single- or two-parent homes.

The results, which appeared to counter concerns about a possible digital divide and may give parents and educators new strategies to meet needs of minority youths, surprised Ellen Wartella, head of Northwestern’s Center on Media and Human Development. She co-authored the study.

“Recreational media use is an enormous part of young people’s lives, more than we ever thought,” she says. “It’s quite clear we have a group of young people who are tethered to their technology.”

The report finds that Black and Latino youths spend one to two more hours daily watching TV and videos, an hour more listening to music, up to 90 minutes more on computers and 90 minutes on cellphones, and 30 to 40 minutes more playing video games than white youths. During the past decade, black youths have doubled their daily media use, and Latino youths have quadrupled theirs, according to Wartella.

Asian-American youths also consume more media than their White peers. Asians lead all groups in use of mobile devices at 3 hours and 7 minutes daily, compared with 2 hours and 53 minutes for Latinos, 2 hours and 52 minutes for Blacks and just 80 minutes for Whites. Asians also spend 14 more minutes daily watching traditional TV than do White youths and more than an hour daily than Whites watching TV online, via TiVo or on DVD. Nevertheless, Asian-American youths remain high academic achievers, challenging the contention that media consumption hurts student performance.

Kerry Riley, an affiliated scholar at the Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, says media can help students of color in the classroom.

“For me, the issue isn’t having more media,” says the professor of ethnic studies. “It’s access to higher standards of media.” He adds that teachers and mentors of minority youths increasingly expose them to social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook to help them learn about many issues.

Riley says he has directed students to use cellphones in class to access music videos and shown them cartoons such as “South Park” and “Family Guy.” Incorporating media in class to showcase popular culture, he says, has helped blacks and Latinos understand how music forms and television shows can function as parodies of Western society.

“We helped them to understand these weren’t just elements of popular culture,” Riley says. “They were existential forms of social critique that related directly to their lives. So I, as an African-American professor, was able to use popular culture via Google, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook as a pedagogical tool to help educate African-American and Latino youth and increase their academic performance.”

Northwestern’s Wartella agrees that greater media consumption isn’t necessarily a drawback for youths but might put them at risk for obesity.

“One concern is exposure to food marketing, specifically television advertising for foods high in calories and lower in nutrients,” she says. “We’re saying maybe we should take a look at the negative consequences if they’re watching television. Our hope is to start a national conversation about youth and media.”

Her study’s finding that, among children, 84 percent of Blacks, 77 percent of Hispanics and 64 percent of whites and Asian-Americans have TV sets in their rooms is telling. Blacks not only lead youths in TV ownership but also are also more likely to be obese or overweight. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 22.4 percent of black children are obese and 44.4 percent are overweight, compared with 17.4 percent and 36.9 percent for white children, respectively.

Félix Gutiérrez, a University of Southern California journalism and communication professor who has written extensively about race and media, doesn’t necessarily recommend advising youths of color to watch less television. It depends on whether they’re intellectually engaged, he says.

The New York State Psychiatric Institute study found that students who passively absorb entertainment on television find classroom lessons boring. Gutiérrez advises parents that rather than leaving children alone to watch favorite shows, they should join them and initiate meaningful discussion about what’s on the screen.

“Studies in the past have shown that when children saw a stereotypical portrayal of an Indian or black or Mexican, it helped to have parents there to challenge the message,” he says. “There weren’t many Latinos on TV, so if a Ricky Ricardo type came on, the child could hear the parent saying, ‘People think we’re all like that.’ ”

Such critical feedback from parents helps children of color not to internalize racially demeaning messages, according to Gutiérrez.

Of course, not all minority youths spend much time watching television. Melissa Reed, 15, of the San Fernando Valley in California, says she rarely tunes in. Instead, the black teen exercises regularly and spends “maybe like up to five hours listening to music on my iPod.” Melissa also spends about an hour daily on her computer but not necessarily for homework.

The Northwestern study found this trend among youths of all races. White, Black and Hispanic juveniles spend on average of 16 minutes daily on computers for studies, with Asian-Americans using computers for that purpose a mere four minutes more.

That the Northwestern report showed little difference in numbers of computers in homes of White, Black and Latino children surprised Gutiérrez. Homes of each of these groups have about two computers, while Asian-American homes average three.

“This runs counter to the digital divide talk of the late ’90s and early part of the millennium when they said that black and Latino youth would be left behind technologically,” Gutiérrez says.

Now that minority youths rely daily on new and traditional media, parents and educators should engage them by using these tools, says Lewis of the Council of the Great City Schools. “Educators need to be more familiar with this new media, so we can use this to our advantage, so young people can have an educational experience with it that’s meaningful.”

Krystal and Melissa say teachers routinely assign them homework requiring Internet use and that taking shortcuts that way is all too easy. According to Melissa, students must be motivated to use technology to develop better thinking skills.

“I think the Internet can easily give you answers if you use it just to look up answers for homework, but it doesn’t really help,” she says. “That’s the easy way out. If you actually want to learn, that’s not going to help at all.”

Parents can help by monitoring how children use different forms of media and for what length of time, Lewis says. The worst thing parents can do is allow children to shut themselves in their rooms while using media because that offers no way to gauge whether critical thinking skills are being used, she says.

Wartella agrees. She says media shouldn’t function as baby sitters but should entertain and inform youngsters, and connect them with parents.

“Parents should start talking to young people about what media they’re using and why they’re using it and try to figure out what’s going on,” she says. “It’s the way we communicate with our children.”