September 7, 2014

Reality Check

Part 2: The Numerous Ways That Black Folks Sustain White Supremacy
By A. Peter Bailey

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The first column about the harsh reality of the numerous ways that a sizable number of Black folks help to sustain the psychological toxin of White supremacy focused on the general nature of the infection. This column focuses on specific comments made by notable Black people who contribute to and advance the interest of proponents of White supremacy. A third column will present ways to successfully combat the deadly toxin.

The first comment was attributed to now Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas by the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

“If I ever went to work for the EEOC [Equal Employment Opportunity Commission], or did anything directly connected to blacks, my career would be ruined. The monkey would be on my back because I’m black. People meeting me for the first time would immediately dismiss my thinking as second rate.”

Next are entertainers Whoopi Goldberg and Morgan Freeman. Declared Whoopi in her book, Book:

“Call me an asshole, call me a blowhard, but don’t call me an African American. Please. It divides us as a nation and as a people and it kinda pisses me off. It diminishes everything I’ve accomplished. …”

Freeman, when asked by Don Lemon of CNN whether race plays a role in wealth distribution in America, answered:

“Today? No. You and I, we’re proof. Why would race have anything to do with it? Put your mind to what you want to do and go for that. …”

Then there’s educator and columnist Thomas Sowell who, according to Professor Calvin Miller in the Journal & Guide of Norfolk, said:

“Black students with SAT scores of 1000 should not consider going to any black college because they will be educationally mismatched.”

Equally revealing is Dr. Ben Carson’s insistence that the Affordable Care Act “is the worst thing to happen in this nation since slavery.”

To me, the most pathetic of such commentary was made by the late prima ballerina Janet Collins as quoted in the book, I Dream A World. She lamented:

“When you get to be an exceptional black, you don’t belong to the whites and you don’t belong to the blacks. You are too good for the blacks and you will always be black to the whites.”

The basic attitudes and beliefs expressed by the above, and which are probably shared by a significant number of Black folks, is most bluntly put forth in an observation by George Schuyler in his 1966 book, Black and Conservative. Insisted Schuyler:

“A black person learns very early that his color is a disadvantage in a world of white folks. This being an unalterable circumstance, one also learns very early to make the best of it. So the lifetime endeavor of the intelligent Negro is how to be reasonably happy though colored.”

That says it all about the deadly effects of the toxin known as White supremacy.

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Sept. 1, 2014

Holder’s Inaction in Trayvon Civil Rights Case Called ‘Disappointing’
With Michael Brown Case Now Before Him, Has Holder Dropped the Ball on Trayvon Martin?

Trayvon Martin

 

Group assembled in front of the White House Monday holding boxes containing more than 900,000 petition
pushing for Civil Rights violation charges against police officer who shot Michael Brown. PHOTO: Roy Lewis/Trice Edney News Wire

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – The NAACP delivered 1.7 million signatures to the U. S. Department of Justice a year ago, requesting a federal civil rights investigation into the shooting death of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman in Sanford, Fla.

Despite the outrage and demands for justice after Zimmerman was acquitted of second degree murder, Attorney General Eric Holder has yet to announce a clear answer on his findings in the shooting of the unarmed 17-year-old who quickly became a household name across America. Ben Jealous, the NAACP President who collected many of the names and electronically delivered the signatures says he’s disappointed at the delay, but is still awaiting Holder’s answer.

“Attorney General Holder was very responsive when we initially reached out to ask for answers around Trayvon Martin,” says Jealous, now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “It is disappointing that the investigation has gone on for so long without a conclusion when the injustice is so evident. However, I am keeping the faith. I'm encouraged by the swift response Holder's Justice Department has had so far in Ferguson.”

Trayvon Martin was shot dead by Zimmerman on Feb. 26, 2012. Despite national outcries, a jury found  Zimmerman not guilty of second degree murder on July 13, 2013. The case largely centered on a  debate over whether Zimmerman was defending himself although he was the one who confronted and pursued Martin against the advice of a 911 operator.

Using expletives, Zimmerman said on the 911 tape, "They always get away." For civil rights leaders and others, this statement was clear evidence that Martin, wearing a hoodie, was racially profiled by Zimmerman, a neighborhood watchman. The unarmed teenager was actually only walking home from a store with a bag of Skittles and an iced tea.

After the controversial verdict in the criminal trial, justice seekers, largely led by the NAACP and ColorOfChange, then sought redress through the Justice Department, pushing for an indictment of Zimmerman on a civil rights violation. Holder promised a thorough investigation, but has yet to announce a conclusion.

On Friday, August 29, a group pushing for justice in the Aug. 9 Michael Brown killing by Ferguson, Mo. police officer, Darren Wilson, delivered more than 900,000 signatures on a petition, also in support of a civil rights charge. Holder, who visited the Ferguson amidst unrest over the killing of Brown, who was also unarmed, has again promised a thorough investigation into the case in which witnesses said Brown had raised his hands when shot. A grand jury will determine whether to bring criminal charges against the officer.

Meanwhile in the civil rights investigation against Zimmerman, some say the assumption that the Justice Department couldn't find anything is not good enough. Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., president of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, says Holder’s silence on the Martin case could engender a lack of confidence in the Brown and other cases.

“We want an answer,” says Jackson. “The wheels of justice must move quickly or it will erode people’s confidence,” he said, adding he hopes Holder’s response on Trayvon “will come soon.”

The Trice Edney News Wire has attempted several times to attain the Justice Department’s status on the civil rights investigation into the Trayvon Martin case. However, Press Secretary Kevin Lewis has still not responded to two phone calls and an email sent earlier this year. Lewis is former Black Press liaison at the White House under the Obama Administration.

On Nov. 4, 2013, Holder, questioned by reporters at an unrelated press conference, said the Justice Department had not yet decided whether to file charges against Zimmerman, but that the investigation was continuing.

Some civil rights leaders acknowledge that Holder has not given a clear answer, but they are also hoping that both criminal and civil rights charges in the death of Michael Brown will finally bring national change to cases of unarmed Blacks being shot by police.

“Holder is different on this one,” says Barbara Arnwine, executive director and CEO of the Lawyers’ Committee on Civil Rights Under Law, one of the groups that called for the civil rights investigation in the Martin case. “He’s not the same man he was at that time,” says Arnwine. She pointed out that since the death of Martin, Holder has “spent two years investigating racial disparities in the criminal justice system” and has begun to push policy changes.

Still there are those who say more should have been done on all fronts.

“The death of Michael Brown makes me angry and disappointed in the lack of progress since the death of Trayvon Martin,” says Harvard Law School professor Charles Ogletree, founder and executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice. He says the greatest sign of hope will be the arrest and prosecution of the police officer who killed Brown.

Benjamin Crump, the attorney for the families of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown, agrees with Ogletree, but indicates that he is currently eying the brown case given eye witness testimony that he was trying to give up when fatally shot.

“Every case is unique,” he said. “All I know about this case is that he was executed.” Crump said he believes the shootings will diminish when “the shooters are held accountable for the killing of our children.”

Sept. 1, 2014

A Level Playing Field
Rev. Jesse L. Jackson

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - All of Chicago turned out to celebrate the US Little League Champions, the 11 and 12 year olds of Jackie Robinson West.  The parade began at home plate at their field in Chicago’s south side and extended all the way Millennium Park in the city’s downtown.  People of all color, race and religion turned out to applaud the young men who did so much to left the spirits of a city too often scarred by violence.

How could an all Black team of kids from low-income families in South Chicago win a national championship?  First and foremost, everyone played by the same set of rules.  They competed on a level playing field.  They had good coaching, and family and community support.  It was their families that taught them to compete, win and lose with grace.  In that context, their natural talents were honed into championship caliber.

Their triumph stands in stark contrast with the reality that was so harshly exposed in Ferguson, Missouri, in the shooting of Michael Brown.  In America, we still do not have a level playing field.  African-Americans, once enslaved and unequal, are now free, but still unequal. And that pervasive inequality in fact undermines formal equality under law.

Most poor people are not Black, but African-Americans are disproportionately poor.  We suffer twice the unemployment rate as whites – in good times as well as bad.

Twenty percent of children in America -- one in five -- are raised in poverty.  Among African-Americans, nearly 40 percent are in poverty. The median family wealth for Whites in America is about $113,000 (2009 figures); for African-Americans, it is $5,677.  The gap has been growing over the last 30 years. Six decades after Brown v. Board of Education outlawed school segregation, our children go to schools that are increasingly segregated and unequal.

Our nation is more diverse, but our communities are still mostly separate.  A recent poll revealed that three-fourths of White Americans admit that they have no minority friends.

This inequality in fact undermines equality under the law.  That is why the horror of Michael Brown’s shooting haunts every African-American parent.  Our children – particularly our male children – are at risk.  African- Americans are more likely to be stopped on the street. If stopped, we are more likely to be detained.  If detained, we are more likely to be charged.  If charged, we are more likely to do time. That’s routine, and it leads to too frequent horrors, like the shooting of Michael Brown.

America has come a long way on racial divides. The election of Barack Obama as president is testament to that.  The young are much more comfortable with diversity than older generations. Overt racism is no longer acceptable in most of America. But our racial stereotypes, our preconceptions, our conscious and subconscious biases still do real damage to African-Americans, but also to our nation.

And we still do not provide a level playing field, where the rules are clear. For example, virtually every industrial nation provides more public resources to schools in low wage neighborhoods.

Everyone understands that poor children need more help, not less to overcome the shackles of their poverty.  But in America, the public schools of the affluent are lavishly funded and the schools of the poor impoverished, often lacking modern textbooks, decent schoolhouses, and full curricula.  They too often are left with the worst teachers.  Would this be true if the students in poor, urban schools were overwhelmingly White rather than people of color?

We have no plan to revive the poor neighborhoods of our cities. Public transportation is expensive, and often doesn’t link the people who need jobs with the suburbs where the jobs increasingly are. Poor neighborhoods suffer a shortage of hospitals, of good grocery stores, of public parks and gyms.  Our tax and trade policies favor moving jobs abroad to moving them into our own cities.

The triumph of Jackie Robinson West gives us all delight.  The horrors of Ferguson shock all of good conscience.  But rather than recoil, we should move in action.  Let’s provide a level playing field for all children from the start.  We’ll see many more champions develop and we’ll all benefit from it.

Aug. 31, 2014

African-American Man Killed in Syria Fighting for Islamic Militants
By Frederick H. Lowe

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the NorthStarNews.com

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Douglas McAuthur McCain, a Black man from the Minneapolis, Minn., area, was killed in Syria, fighting for ISIS, or the Islamic State of Iraq, the White House has confirmed.

Caitlin Hayden, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, has announced that McCain, who was born in Chicago and raised in the Minneapolis area, has died.

"We are aware of U.S. citizen Douglas McAuthur McCain's presence in Syria and can confirm his death," Hayden said in a statement Aug. 26. "We continue to use every tool we possess to disrupt and dissuade individuals from traveling abroad for violent jihad and to track and engage those who return.”

Kenyata McCain, a first cousin, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune that a U.S. State Department official called Douglas McCain's mother Sunday night to tell her that her son had been killed in Syria over the weekend. His mother lives in San Diego.

The Star Tribune reported that McCain was killed in Marea, Syria, during a gun battle with members of the Free Syrian Army. McCain converted from Christianity to the Muslim faith in 2004.

Family members had recently talked to Douglas McCain, and he said he was in Turkey, which is a common route to Syria. Kenyata McCain noted that on his Facebook page that her cousin supported ISIS or ISIL, which President Barack Obama has tapped as one of the United States' top security concerns. Government officials believe more than 100 Americans have joined ISIS.

The NorthStar News & Analysis sent a request for an interview to Kenyata McCain through Facebook, but she did not respond.

NorthStar also called the U.S. State Department about McCain, but officials did not respond to its request for information, including how they determined he was an American. Several news reports said an American passport and $800 were found on his body.

Douglas McCain’s death occurred shortly after the disclosure of the beheading of American photographer James Foley by ISIS. A video of Foley's execution was released August 19.

NBC News first reported Douglas Authur McCain's death. The network attributed their information to the Free Syrian Army.

The Star Tribune reported that the 33-year-old McCain graduated in 1999 from Robbinsdale Cooper High School in New Hope, Minn., a Minneapolis suburb. Although some reports said he did not graduate.

In recent years, he moved to San Diego, where he worked as a caregiver and assisted in raising his daughter, who is nearly a year old.

Some reports described McCain as Tunisian and Egyptian, but he said on his Facebook page that he was 10 percent African American. While in Chicago, he lived in the Robert Taylor Homes, a giant public housing project on the South Side. The complex has since been demolished.

His Facebook page has been taken down.