April 27, 2014

States’ Refusal to Expand Medicaid: Deadly Attack on the Poor 
By Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - We pledge allegiance to “One nation, under God.” When terrorists attack us, we unite as one to defend our nation and our countrymen and women. Yet, we allow the doctrine of the Confederacy — states’ rights — to divide us, even to the point of costing Americans their lives. Charlene Dill, a resident of Florida, was a 32-year-old mother of three.

She worked three jobs to try to support those children, despite having a serious heart condition. She earned too much — $11,000 a year — to be eligible for Medicaid under Florida law. She would have been able to get expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But the conservative justices on the Supreme Court ruled that states have the right to refuse to expand Medicaid, even though the federal government will pay 100 percent of the costs for the first three years, and 90 percent thereafter.

This states’ rights decision would cost Charlene Dill her life. Every member of the Florida state legislature has health insurance. Yet, as zealous opponents of Obamacare, they voted not to expand Medicaid, turning their noses up on billions in federal support. That decision cost Charlene Dill her life. According to a Harvard study, an estimated 8 million Americans will remain uninsured because of the decision of 25 states to refuse to expand Medicaid. They estimate that will result in about 7,000 deaths per year, or 19 a day.

The victims are working people, who earn too much to get Medicaid and too little to afford health insurance. Conservatives, one would think, would want to help those who get the early bus, who clean our streets, take care of our children, work the midnight shift. But they hate Obama far more than they care for low-wage workers. They choose partisan politics over the common good.

Not surprisingly, the states that have refused to expand Medicaid include almost the entire South, the states of the former Confederacy, as well as the Republican bastions in the Midwest and West (from Kansas to Idaho). These are among the poorest states in the union, with the most residents who have no health insurance, and the worst health care indices.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz spent 20 hours in a fake filibuster against Obamacare, while his state ranks among the worst in the country with more than one in five of its residents without health insurance. Georgia State Insurance Commissioner Ralph Hudgens brags that the state is doing “everything in its power to be an obstructionist,” while 18.4 percent of Georgians go without health insurance.

Mississippi residents, not surprisingly, are most likely to lack access to basic necessities. One fourth report that they didn’t have money for food at some point in the last 12 months. Mississippi residents have the lowest life expectancy, the highest obesity rates (over 35 percent), the lowest household income, and nearly one in four reports they lack the money to purchase health care. Yet the governor of Mississippi refuses millions in federal aid to expand Medicaid.

People of color — primarily African Americans in Mississippi and the former confederate states, Latinos in Texas and elsewhere — are disproportionately the victims of this cruelty. That should not surprise. From John C. Calhoun’s South Carolina Ordinance of Nullification to secession, the Civil War to segregation, states’ rights has always been a doctrine wielded to oppress minorities, even at the cost of depriving poor working people of all races. These governors and legislators assume that poor people do not register and do not vote (and they are passing laws to make it harder for them to do so).

They assume that most Americans won’t care if thousands die needlessly. They assume that states’ rights can allow America to move from one nation to two nations, separate and unequal. Charlene Dill is neither the first nor the last to be lost to this callous calculation. But I believe we are a better country than that. Working and poor people have an insult level that is being violated. People of conscience will not turn their eyes forever. This is a moral disgrace that cannot be simply ignored. 

April 27, 2014

Slamming the Door, Again
By Julianne Malveaux

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - The Roberts Supreme Court decided, this week, that the state of Michigan had the right to vote against affirmative action policies in college admissions.   Michigan State is one of many - where mediocre White students challenge the fact that African-American students, far more qualified than they are, have been admitted to college.  This has happened in Texas and California, among other states.  These challenges to affirmative action have roots in the 1976 Bakke care, where the 38-year-old Alan Bakke sued because his application to medical school was rejected and he felt that he was displaced in favor of a minority student.  The Supreme Court ordered Bakke admitted to the University of California at Davis, and also ruled that affirmative action was permissible but not mandatory.

What bothers me most about these anti-affirmative action cases is the implicit White skin privilege that compels them.  College admissions are an art, not a science.  Students whose parents contribute generously to a college get an edge.  In the name of diversity, a student from California, regardless of race, may get a bit of an edge at Dartmouth or Columbia.  A violist, newspaper editor, or budding sports star, might also get a break.  Meanwhile obdurate and privileged whites don’t go after these people.  Their ire is directed toward African-Americans and other people of color.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor got it completely right when she said that race still matters.  When the Supreme Court upholds these anti affirmative laws they deny history.  Make it plain.  The Civil Rights Act was passed in 1964, a scant sixty years ago.  Affirmative action policies were developed shortly after that so that the formerly closed doors of academic could be opened.  Affirmative action had a short shelf life before it was challenged in 1978, just 14 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act.  The opponents of affirmative action say that the color blindness that the Civil Rights Act mandated prevents remediation from past discrimination.  What about contemporary discrimination?

The University of Michigan, in its admissions policies, has evaluated students by a point system.  Students get extra points if they have participated in Advanced Placement (AP) or International Baccalaureate (IB) courses.  How many high schools in troubled Detroit, have access to these classes.  Yet the people of Detroit pay taxes to support a college that discriminates against them.  When the anti affirmative action crown talk about fairness do they take this into consideration.  When University of Michigan admits do not reflect the demographic of Detroit, aren’t the whites who attempt to dominate the welfare recipients of the state? The attempt for fairness is misplaced when anti affirmative action proponents want people of color to pay for a university system that gives white people preferential treatment.

In a few weeks we will commemorate the 60^th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.  While it took some time for Brown to be implemented, it was a Supreme Court decision that opened doors to equal education for those who have been discriminated against.  With the most recent affirmative action case, the Supreme Court has chosen to slam doors in the face of those who have experienced historical discrimination.

This Supreme Court, collectively, has behaved no better than Southern night riders who would stop at nothing too exclude African Americans from participation in education, voting, or owning property.  This court is no better than the administrators at the University of Georgia who denied Charlayne Hunter Gault and Hamilton Harris admission, despite their qualifications.  This court has legalized educational segregation, and Sonia Soyomayor’s blistering attack on her colleagues reflects the sentiments of millions of people who are tired of this Court trampling on their rights and history.

Justice John Roberts is 59 years old.  He attended college when people of color were admitted because of race conscious policies.  What are his resentments toward his classmates who, equally qualified, may have “displaced” some of his friends?  Does everyone who has been “displaced” have grounds for a lawsuit?  What impact will Roberts have on race matters in the future?  While Justice Sptpmayer is on the court to check him, and while her opinions will have some weight, she and her colleagues will not be able to outvote the historically myopic coalition.

Roberts led the cabal that slammed the door in the faces of people of color.   His justice is a “just us” attempt to reinforce white privilege.

April 27, 2014

Plessy Redux
By Dr. E. Faye Williams

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Often the most insignificant, simple statements ring the truest in our lives.  Appropriately, that well-worn admonition, "It's the little things that will kill you," rings true as I survey my world this week.  I should, however, re-state that while the things that may kill us are not insignificant or simple, the attention or significance that many of us give or place upon them is frequently minimal.

A clear example of this is the aftermath of an event that occurred on May 18, 1896.  On that day, the Supreme Court of the United States rendered a decision in the case of Homer Adolf Plessy v. Ferguson.  This single decision affirmed the concept of "Separate But Equal", codified institutional discrimination and gave legitimacy to the practice of personal race-based discrimination.

Since that date, this country has been wrestling with, attempting to escape or trying to ignore the legacy of this 7-1 decision which has infected and plagued its social development.  Nearly sixty years passed before a succeeding Supreme Court took action with the Brown v. Board decision of 1954 that had the effect of beginning to reverse the travesty of Plessy.

From 1954 to the present, individuals of honorable and truthful character have acknowledged the broad and detrimental impact of Plessy upon the circumstance of the African American community.  Most contemporary observers will also acknowledge that the institutional discrimination spawned by that decision is still in existence, to greater or lesser extent, in institutional pockets remediated only by access.

In his own way, each U.S. President from FDR to Barack Obama has undertaken efforts to shift the scales of this inequity.  All of these men expressed a measure of understanding that a meritorious race could not be run with one competitor starting running under the burden of the weight of discrimination.  Even Richard Nixon, who is not known as a champion or friend of civil rights and social justice, is credited with giving the concept of affirmative action functional "teeth."  It was Nixon who in the 70's, established requirements for mandatory reporting of the achievement of targeted milestones and goals.

Jump now over time and circumstance to Tuesday, April 22, 2014, when the U.S. Supreme Court rendered a decision on a Michigan case, Schuette  v. BAMN. This decision, as asserted by the e-Washington Times, "upheld a state electorate’s right to ban the use of race in public university admissions, a decision that rekindles the debate over affirmative action in an election year and could clear the way for ballot initiatives across America."

Supreme Court Chief Justice Roberts is famously known for his cavalier statement, "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."  As intellectually accurate as his statement may be, it is disingenuous as it discounts the lingering consequences of years of institutional (and personal) discrimination suffered by African Americans.  The Court's decision securely locks legal remedy at a point in time when, as a society, we are still grasping for remedies to the inequities that shape our collective lives.

The Times continued its reporting by saying, "The justices, in a 6-2 ruling, said they had no authority to strike down a Michigan law that allowed voters to decide in 2006 that race-based preferences should play no role in public education, hiring and contracting.  Reaction to the court's decision made it clear that decades-old battle lines over affirmative action are still in place and could influence decisions at the ballot box for years to come."

Like the Plessy Court of 1896, the current Court's decision appears to be another step down the slippery slope of intuitional discrimination.  As the Times states, we must allow The Court's actions to influence our decisions at the ballot box. True!

(Dr. E. Faye Williams is National Chair of the National Congress of Black Women, www.nationalcongressbw.org. 202/678-6788) 

April 21, 2014

Former SBA Leader: Blacks Must Use Leadership, Legacy for Economic Growth
By Jasmine Rennie

Marie Johns

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Former Deputy Administrator of the U. S. Small Businesses Administration (SBA) Marie Johns says people of color; especially African-Americans, must exercise leadership and attention to legacy in order to strengthen business ownership and personal economic prowess. 

“It’s about the legacy,” said Johns, now founder and president of L&L Consulting - a division of Leftwich & Ludaway, LLC. “Most African-Americans have not built a solid financial platform. This is what makes them unattractive to most banks…Sometimes things don’t change because we don’t require it.”

Johns shared her words of wisdom with a group of students at Howard University gathered to hear the results of a recent business plan completion. She covered a range of topics from unbanked households to the importance of the African American presence in the corporate world.

Consumerism, representation in corporations, and net worth - combined with business ownership and entrepreneurship - are all factors that African-Americans must tackle in order to attain success at the level of their White counterparts. It appears as though these topics have left a gap in overall success rates leaving African Americans struggling to catch up to other races.

“We have to do more to educate those around us about mindful consumerism,” said Johns.

According to a Nielsen Report, African-Americans have a current spending power of $1 trillion dollars and that number is set to increase by 2017. The Black community is noted for their excessive buying habits and are loved for their consumerism. They are seen as loyal and exhibit more aggressive consumption of certain items such as; media, hair care products and smartphones, according to the report.

Johns contends that giving the bulk of one’s salary to specific brands is not beneficial to the Black community: “If you know better you do better” she said.

In addition, she said, African-Americans are largely unbanked because of a number of reasons, an economic weakness that could be easily dealt with through education.

A 2011 FDIC survey concluded that there were approximately 10 million unbanked households within the United States. The African-American demographic represented 21.4 percent of the unbanked population, and served as the largest single group within the unbanked population. The unbanked population is described as a group of individuals who do not use banks or credit unions for their financial transactions. A number of consumers are unbanked for reasons that include: poor credit history, lack of knowledge about the United States banking system, and language barriers for immigrants.

On the other hand, a place for leadership in strength in the Black community could be in small business ownership, Johns said.

“Small businesses are the engine of the U.S. economy,” she said, noting that she believes firmly in entrepreneurship. “We can figure out how to commercialize our God given gifts so we can make money from them…We have a deep and rich history of Entrepreneurship [as] our ancestors created [it] in this country, so we have to exhibit leadership,” she said.

According to statistics on Repec.org (Research Papers in Economics), businesses owned by African-Americans tend to have lower sales, fewer employees, smaller payrolls, lower profits and higher closure rates. In addition, a new report conducted by Black Enterprise concludes that – despite the high level of spending by African-Americans - there are still 75 corporations out of America’s top 250 largest companies that lack Black representation among their board of directors.

The presence of Black people is so necessary. If we are not there, who is going to speak for us; How will our stories be told?” said Virginia Monet King, an associate of the Association of Public Health Laboratories. African-Americans must do more to “make sure we make our own decisions.”

The economic recession has also majorly impacted loans to Africans-Americans by the U. S. Small Business Administration. SBA is a crucial part of financing for entrepreneurs in starting, buying or expanding their businesses.

“Many Black business owners capitalize their businesses based on equity in their homes,” said Johns, According to an analysis by the Wall street journal, Black owned small businesses once received 8.2 percent of all loan money through SBA. That figure is now down to 2.3 percent while the Hispanic demographic remains steady at 4.7 percent.

Johns stressed that the key to overcoming is education and perseverance, with African- Americans maintaining in each arena. “We can’t let [anything] stop us. We must make a way out of no way.”