Nov. 15, 2015

Blackonomics

Beyond T-Shirts and Hoodies    
By James Clingman

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Recollections of my 1995 article on the business of college athletics danced in my head when I heard the news about the University of Missouri football team’s refusal to play until the President of that University, Tim Wolfe, resigns or is dismissed.  The players said, “due to his negligence toward marginalized students' experience” and his lax attitude regarding racial issues on campus, they would no longer participate in football activities.  (Prior to the publishing date for this article, Tim Wolfe resigned.)

As I noted in 1995, and in several articles on college athletics and the billions of dollars they generate, money is the name of the game.  When coaches of college teams earn several million dollars per year and half-billion dollar stadiums are being built, the actual laborers, the players, get lost in the shuffle.

Well, the players on the University of Missouri football team are far from being invisible as they are making a statement that has divulged an economic vulnerability.  By the time you read this the situation may have been resolved, but even if it is there are lessons to be learned and actions to be replicated from this case.

According to an article on CBS Sports, “Canceling game with BYU would cost Mizzou $1,000,000.”  Everything boils down to dollars, if you look deeply enough, and the young men on Missouri’s team are illuminating that reality by their actions.  The same thing could be done in professional athletics as well, in an effort to change the business as usual approach to racial inequities and mistreatment in the general society.  It would be much more effective than t-shirts and hoodies.

Instead of wearing shirts with a nice-sounding slogan on them, or hoodies that connote illegal killings of Black folks, black armbands, or writing something on their shoes, Missouri football players chose the “nuclear option,” as some in Congress would call it.  They put their prospective livelihoods on the line, and they put their scholarships on the line by actually doing something substantive rather than symbolic in response to their legitimate concerns about the conditions on their campus.

The sacrifice these young people are making cannot be overstated, and I commend them for being strong and committed enough to put core values before fame.  I also hope the issue is resolved before this article goes to press; while they deserve our support and accolades, they should not have to suffer a loss of individual scholarships and their chances to make it to the professional ranks simply because they took a principled stand against racism.  Other athletes have already fought that battle and some are still paying the price decades later.

Tommie Smith, John Carlos, Muhammad Ali, Curt Flood, and Craig Hodges, just to name a few, took their stands against the system and took the blows that their peers were unwilling to take.  They paid a hefty price for having the temerity to stand up and speak out. The Missouri football players now find themselves in a crucible of consciousness, and we should stand with them and assure that they do not suffer the same fate as their forerunners.  If they are “blacklisted” by the NFL, Black people—and other sympathizers should boycott NFL games.

I pray that someone other than the usual suspects, who are simply looking for the nearest camera, microphone, and a big check to boot, will come to the students’ aide and help them work out their situation in the long term.  They have done their part by exposing the underbelly of racial mistreatment at the University, and they have also exposed the school to a financial liability that more than likely does not end with Brigham Young University.  How many more games are on Missouri’s schedule?

The economic lesson from the players’ threatened “work stoppage,” juxtaposed against Jonathan Butler’s life-threatening hunger strike, is quite revealing.  Butler’s life was virtually ignored, but when the dollars came into play things changed right away.  The message: A Black life does not matter, but Black dollars do matter.  Considering all the critical issues facing Black people in this country, we would do well to use economic power instead of relying on political influence to make appropriate changes to our overall condition.

We should celebrate the Missouri players for taking the “road less traveled” as they fight for their rights on their campus; they chose substance over symbolism, action over passivity.  Rather than merely wearing their complaints on their chests or their shoes, they chose to wear their concerns on their hearts by letting the world know they are quite serious; they took their protest to the only level that gets results—the economic level.  Much respect to those young men and their supporters at Missouri University.

James Clingman is the nation’s most prolific writer on economic empowerment for Black people.  His latest book, Black Dollars Matter! Teach your dollars how to make more sense, is available on his website, Blackonomics.com

Nov. 14, 2015

Republicans Ignore People
By Julianne Malveaux

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - As I watched the Republican debate on October 10, I thought about Kanye West and the comments he made after Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans.  He said, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people”.  Later he tiptoed away from the comment by saying he “regretted” it, but he never apologized.

Five years later, in 2010, Bush gave the Today Show’s Matt Lauer an interview.  Bush stated that the West remarks were an “all time low” in his Presidency.  He went on to say, “I didn’t appreciate it then, and I don’t appreciate it now. . .I resent it”. He then said that West’s comments were “one of the most disgusting moments” of his Presidency.

Let’s see.  Former President Bush took us into Iran, and we’re still there.  His actions were partly the cause of the Great Recession.  He was widely described as less than intelligent and, in fact, a doofus.  But remarks from Kanye West were  “one of the most disgusting moments” of his presidency?  These remarks suggest that George W. Bush has as little judgment as he was often accused of.  Consider Iraq— New Orleans— and a tax code that favored the wealthy.  Yet Kanye West’s remarks were an “all time low”?

Why does this Kanye West kerfuffle remind me of the last Republican debate?  Ben Carson is the only person on stage that used the work “black”, and he said it in connection to increasing the minimum wage, which he opposes.  None of the others uttered a peep about African American people, not in terms of entrepreneurship, the wealth gap, nor discrimination in the workplace. It’s fair to say that none of the moderators asked about race and the economy.  But just as the candidates jumped into the conversation when they wanted to, none jumped in after Carson’s remark (a perfect opening).

Kanye West said, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people”.  One might say the same thing for the eight major Republican candidates who stood on stage and ignored black people.  Republicans keep saying they want to reach out to people of color, but ignoring black people suggests that they are thinking about us as much as George Bush did in 2005.

They did talk about immigration, or the Latino population (Trump isn’t trying to build a wall between the United Stated and Canada, but between the United States and Mexico).   That part of the conversation was, in my opinion, impractical and disparaging.  How is the United States going to expel millions of people and then allow them to come back?  Each of the candidates talked about shrinking the size of government, but building a wall and deporting people would increase the federal payroll.

I’ve had about enough of Marco Rubio’s immigrant parents story.  He could score a couple of point by adding comments about involuntary immigrants.  Such a comment might suggest to African Americans that they at least slightly get some of the race issues that plague our country, but those candidates ignore African Americans on one hand, and offer rhetoric about including African Americans on the other.

The moderators of this debate—Fox Business Staff Neil Cavuto and Maria Bartiromo, along with the Wall Street Journal’s Gerard Baker did a great job in keeping things moving forward and imposing time limits (although many ignore the bell that Cavuto said would ring when time was up.) And then there’s the to-be-expected interrupting and crosstalk.  There were far fewer personal attacks. The debate showed that none of the candidates had developed comprehensive policy positions.  All that was missing for me was a question about race and the economy.

Race is a low priority for all of the candidates, Democratic and Republican, in the 2016 election.  The Democrats will say some of the appropriate things because they have no choice but to recognize that African Americans are part of their base.  The Republicans talk diversity, but they don’t practice it, and haven’t figured out how to weave a narrative about race into their conversations.

Julianne Malveaux is an author and economist based in Washington, DC. Her latest book “Are We Better Off? Race, Obama and Public Policy” will be released in November 2015 and is available for preorder at www.juliannemalveaux.com

Nov. 15, 2015

To Be Equal  
The Higher Education Act: 50 Years of Making College Achievable
By Marc H. Morial

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “This act means the path of knowledge is open to all that have the determination to walk it. It means a way to deeper personal fulfillment, greater personal productivity, and increased personal reward…It means that a high school senior anywhere in this great land of ours can apply to any college or any university in any of the 50 States and not be turned away because his family is poor…So to thousands of young people education will be available. And it is a truism that education is no longer a luxury. Education in this day and age is a necessity.” – President Lyndon B. Johnson, Remarks on Signing the Higher Education Act of 1965, November 8, 1965

There is good news coming from the halls and classrooms of our nation’s high schools.

High school graduation rates are on the rise, which means the dropout rate has fallen and continues to fall. For the first time since states began uniformly calculating graduation rates in 2008, the nation’s overall graduation rate reached a high of 81 percent for the 2012-2013 school year. While deep achievement gaps remain the norm, preliminary data from the Department of Education for the 2013-2014 school year also reveals a narrowing of the graduation gap between white students and students from low-income families, students of color, students with disabilities and English language learners. As we usher greater numbers of high school graduates into the workforce, are we prepared to ensure that—for those who want it, but cannot afford it—their journey in education does not end on a high school graduation stage?

Today’s technology-fueled, fast-paced, global economy was not our nation’s reality when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Higher Education Act of 1965 into law half a century ago, but even then, Johnson had the foresight to recognize the value of a post-secondary education, understanding that our nation would ultimately, “reap the rewards of their wiser citizenship and their greater productivity for decades to come.” In its 50 years of existence, the HEA has offered financial aid, grants, federally guaranteed loans and work opportunities to millions of high school graduates. It has opened the once closed doors to higher education to low-income families, making college affordable for millions of families who could not afford the necessity.

Like it’s legislative companion, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965—created to close the education achievement gap between lower- and higher-income children in our nation’s public schools—the HEA was a powerful cornerstone in the president’s “War on Poverty” initiative. He understood, as we understand, that education continues to play an integral role in future opportunities and success. Our recognition of Johnson’s foresight must move beyond appreciation and accolades. We must, and can, continue to build on the success of the HEA. This current generation has both the opportunity and the obligation to be the architect of the next great advance in higher education. We must ensure that colleges are held accountable for skyrocketing tuition hikes. Any reauthorization of the act must address the growing problem of students saddled with outsized student loan debt after graduation. Funding for Pell grants should not be compromised and there are still improvements to the student loan process that need to be made to ensure access to affordable quality education.

Education has always proven to be a wise investment—and an economic imperative. Better educated citizens and a highly skilled workforce will always strengthen our country and our economy and our global economic standing. We know that today there are fewer and fewer viable career options for individuals who only have a high school diploma. To deny our rising numbers of high school graduates the opportunity to climb the ladder of success because of financial disadvantage is unfortunate, unnecessary and unwise. When we ensure equal opportunity to education—regardless of your background—we ensure a stronger America committed to growing its middle-class, and we remain committed to the heart and purpose of the Higher Education Act.

Nov. 13, 2015

World Scrabble Title Scooped by Nigerian in First for Africa

W. Jigher (center)and team

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Global Information Network

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – No one disputes the enormous gifts that Africans bring to the global table. But scrabble?

In fact, a Nigerian college graduate is just the latest African winner of the brainiac’s board game apparently loved around the world.

Wellington Jigher joins Elisee Poka from Ivory Coast who won the French-language Scrabble World Championship in 2008 and Schelick Ilagou Rekawe from Gabon who this year reached the final stage of that competition.

This week, Wellington bested the competition at the World English-language Scrabble Players’ Association Championship, playing 129 competitors in 32 rounds of matches in four days.

He beat Lewis MacKay from England 4-0 in a best of seven final played in Perth, Australia.

Writing on his Facebook page, Jigher, 32, said he felt the whole continent behind him as he played. Still, it was baffling, he confessed, that he managed to win given that he had not been sleeping well.

“Thanks all, for the prayers and the support,” he wrote on FB. “Just like our Oga, Sammy Okosagah, alluded to earlier on, it was a battle between one man and a whole continent. It was like I was borrowing the "pickability" of all the glorious pickers in the house.

“I'll be releasing a more appropriate statement later,” he wrote. “I really must endeavor to rest now. I've not slept well in about a week. The fact that I was able to perform in spite of the sleeplessness still baffles me. It only goes to prove that God was deeply involved in this matter. To him alone be all the glory!”

They had arrived in Australia the day prior to the contest which left little chance to get over the 20-hour flight or the seven-hour time difference.

Among Jigher’s winning word combinations were ‘dacoit,’ ‘Aah,’ and ‘ungifted.’ He also came up with “fahlores” “avouched” and “mentored” for high scores.

President of Nigeria's Scrabble federation, Sulaiman Gora, described the dapper Wellington, who seemed to have a limitless assortment of hats, as a quiet person whose "greatest strength is humility".

Mr Gora, who also heads the Pan-African Scrabble federation, said that the "whole country and the whole of Africa is celebrating this success".

The champion will be coming home with a $10,000 prize but now has to find a job.