Feb. 10, 2019

Bennett College Meets Fundraising Goal, Accreditation Hearing Expected Feb. 5

Bennett College President Phyllis Worthy Dawkins

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from the Richmond Free Press

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Bennett College, a historically Black all-women’s college in North Carolina that was facing loss of accreditation and possible closure because of financial problems, has exceeded its $5 million fundraising goal.

Bennett President Phyllis Worthy Dawkins announced Monday that the college raised $8.2 million thanks to the help of 11,000 donors, including alumnae, faith-based and community organizations, corporate donors and supporters from across the country.

Officials have been working since early December to raise by a Feb. 1 deadline $5 million, the minimum needed to maintain the college’s accreditation by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools’ Commission on Colleges. Bennett’s only sanction by the accrediting body was because of finances. It had to show that it could reach sound financial footing.

Calls to aid the college founded in 1873 went out from Bennett officials, its network of alumnae and others, including graduates of Spelman College in Atlanta, the only other black all-women’s college in the nation, and Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole, who formerly served as president of both Bennett and Spelman. Dr. Cole met last week in Richmond with alumnae of both colleges and produced a video seeking donations that was circulated on social media.

Donors responded.

At Monday’s news conference, High Point University President Nido Qubein handed over a slew of high-bill donations adding up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, from various bodies he and the university are associated with before finally presenting a $1 million check from the university.

Papa John’s, the pizza chain, donated $500,000, along with the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation.

Bennett officials also credited many African-American organizations and churches for stepping up with gifts. Among the top donations from Greek-letter organizations and faith-based groups were $100,000 from Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority; $50,000 from Delta Sigma Theta Sorority; $31,000 from Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity; $50,000 from Alfred Street Baptist Church in Northern Virginia; and $40,000 from Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Greensboro, N.C.

Bennett College also received one its largest single gifts in the institution’s history as a result of the quick campaign — $1 million from businesswoman Kwanza Jones and her husband, José E. Feliciano of California.

Ms. Jones is founder and chief executive officer of SUPERCHARGED by Kwanza Jones, a global lifestyle and personal development company, while Mr. Feliciano is co-founder and managing partner of Clearlake Capital Group, a private investment firm.

Ms. Jones’ mother, Dorothy Wilkerson Jones, graduated from Bennett in 1965, while her aunt, Brenda Wilkerson Hoover, graduated in 1963.

Patricia Woodard, executive assistant to Dr. Dawkins, said Bennett’s next step is appearing before the accrediting agency’s appeals committee on Feb. 18. She said an accreditation ruling is expected by Feb. 25.

Feb. 10, 2019

In a Perfect World
By Dr. E. Faye Williams

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – In a perfect world, for a State of the Union address (SOTU), we likely would’ve heard a president who actually made sense and who likely would’ve been truthful even if we disagreed with the content of what he said.

We’ve learned to set a low bar for #45; he goes beneath it consistently! About 500 years ago Michelangelo said, “It’s not that our aim is too high, and we miss it; but that it’s too low and we reach it.” He must’ve had someone like #45 in mind when he said that because at this year’s SOTU, some of us expected him to try to be civil, and tell few truths. Didn’t he know the fact checkers were working that night? He could’ve avoided some of the untrue statements by speaking a lot less time. The longer he talked, the more lies he told.

#45 doesn’t even bring us close to a perfect world, but immediately following his rambling remarks, a shining star did what we would’ve expected a president to do. She delivered a powerful response to #45’s SOTU message. She was inclusive. She even said she didn’t want #45 to fail. Some might have disagreed with her on that point, but she was right on point on everything else she said. She was being overly kind to #45, and refused to stoop to what Senate Majority Leader said about President Barack Obama when he said he wanted to make President Obama a one-term President determining that it was the single most important thing for his Party to do. In other words, McConnell wanted President Obama to fail! Stacey Abrams was better than that with #45.

Stacey, who ran for governor of Georgia, captured our imagination in that race and won the hearts of people all across the nation, was better than that for a man who didn’t deserve to be spoken of kindly. She was forceful and truthful without expressing meanness or hatred as did #45. Not even the fact checkers found grounds upon which to disagree with Stacey.

Stacey’s remarks were forward looking. She represented the needs of all Americans. She reminded us of the big tent that should be represented in our country. She made us feel included without regard to race, creed, color, the poor, immigrants and others. She spoke to those who were impacted by #45’s shutdown of the government. She left no stone unturned and ran circles around #45.

She spoke against hateful acts and policies. She spoke of a Party expanding the electorate and preserving the right for all to vote, “We must reject the cynicism that says allowing every eligible vote to be cast and counted is a power grab.” She supports the right of all to healthcare, inclusiveness, fair pay and the right to basic human dignity.

Stacey made us proud as the first time a Black woman had the opportunity to deliver a SOTU response. Despite challenges, Black women continue to knock down barriers because all that we ever needed were opportunities. Stacey is an example of what former First Lady Michelle Obama meant when she said, “When they go low, we go high.” Her remarks were expressed firmly and with the right temperament. She provided that strong contrast with #45.

To the contrary, #45 spoke like a dictator with his attempt at being poetic. One of his most memorable remarks was, “If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation.” In 11 minutes, Stacey’s remarks were far more meaningful than #45’s nearly 1 and 1/2 half hour rambling. In a perfect world, he would do his job and allow Congress to do theirs.

(Dr. E. Faye Williams is President of the National Congress of Black Women. 202/678-6788. www.nationalcongressbw.org. She is also host of WPFW 89.3 FM’s “Wake Up and Stay Woke.”)

Feb. 10, 2019

Consumer Protection Agency Makes Historic Move to Support Payday Lenders 
By Charlene Crowell

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Each February, Black History Month commemorates the unique American experience of Blacks in America. This year marks the 400^th anniversary of the Jamestown, Virginia arrival of captured and shackled Africans.

In the ensuing years, as slavery grew, so did the wealth of those who claimed our forefathers as ‘property’. By April 12-13, 1861, the wealth built on slave labor was forcefully protected with the Battle of Fort Sumter, considered by historians to be the start of the Civil War that lasted until 1865 and the war’s end.

Slavery’s iron shackles that bound women, children and men may be gone. But in today’s America, the iron has been replaced by a different kind of shackle, just as debilitating as iron: predatory debt.

Abundant research has shown that payday and car-title lenders trap people in debilitating debt that can trigger a series of negative consequences: overdraft fees, the loss of a bank account, loss of personal vehicles and even bankruptcy. People struggling to repay these loans have been reported to forego daily living needs or needed medical treatments.

So it is indeed troubling that in 2019, that under the Trump Administration, the federal agency with a designated mission to provide consumer financial protection took an about-face to protect predatory lenders instead of consumers on February 6. Kathy Kraninger, the Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced the agency’s plan to repeal a rule aimed at stopping the payday lending debt trap.

Promulgated by CFPB’s first director during the Obama Administration, the rule requires payday and other small-dollar lenders to make loans only after determining borrowers’ ability-to-repay. That now-suspended rule followed years of public hearings, rulemaking sessions, and research that ultimately found that triple-digit interest rates on loans were virtual debt traps for borrowers. Further, the people targeted for these predatory loans are those who could least afford interest or fees that exceeded the principal borrowed: the poor, the elderly, communities of color, and military veterans.

The Bureau’s Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) announced by the CFPB offers a two-part plan. The first is to needlessly delay the effective date of a common-sense consumer protection rule. The second is to rewrite and likely gut the substance of the rule itself. The likely cumulative effect will allow payday and other predatory lenders to continue to ply their wares, and continue financially exploiting consumers of color.

Reactions to CFPB’s announcement were as strong as they were plentiful.

“With little accountability for their actions, payday lenders have long preyed upon communities of color and drained them of their hard-earned savings,” noted Hilary O. Shelton, NAACP’s Washington Bureau Director and Senior Vice President for Policy and Advocacy. “Stripping the key protections of this rule is a disservice to the public,” he added.

Similar comments came from other civil rights organizations.

“This decision will put already struggling families in a cycle of debt and leave them in an event worse financial position,” said Vanita Gupta, president and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. “This administration has moved the CFPB away from protecting consumers to protecting the very companies abusing them.”

When given the chance at the ballot box, Americans overwhelmingly vote to impose a 36 percent or less rate cap. Today, 16 states and the District of Columbia have these rate caps in place, providing strong protection from payday loan sharks. In remaining states – those without a rate cap – interest rates run as high as 460 percent in California, over 400 percent in Illinois and 662 percent in Texas.

According to Rebecca Borne, a CRL Senior Policy Counsel, Kraninger’s announcement ignores five years’ worth of input from a broad group of stakeholders: faith leaders, veteran and military organizations, civil rights groups, consumer advocates and consumers across the country.

“But over the past year, payday lenders have spearheaded an in effort with Mick Mulvaney and now Kraninger’s help, to take consumer protections away from financially vulnerable Americans, “said Borne. “We urge Director Kraninger to reconsider, as her current plan will keep families trapped in predatory, unaffordable debt.”

Let us all hope and work for a different kind of emancipation: financial freedom.

Charlene Crowell is the Communications Deputy Director with the Center for Responsible Lending. She can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Feb. 10, 2019

To Be Equal 
Blackface is a Flaunting of White Privilege
By Marc H. Morial

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “Blackface isn’t just another costume. It’s a mask of privilege, the kind of unchallenged power that comes through denying the experience of others.” – Justin Ellis

As a black student in overwhelmingly white schools in Louisiana, I faced my share of racial insults and slights.  But one of the more memorable incidents was not even a deliberate slight directed at me. The offenders probably didn’t even think of me. But when a group of my classmates contemptuously affected exaggerated accents mocking Black people, as part of a school production, I walked out.

The Governor and Attorney General of Virginia are under fire for having worn blackface to parties in the 1980s, and the Senate Majority Leader there edited a college yearbook that featured blackface photos and racial slurs. NBC News anchor Megyn Kelly lost her job after defending blackface Halloween costumes. Fashion design house Gucci was forced to apologize for marketing a balaclava sweater that resembles blackface.

Not by accident, the rise of the minstrel show coincided with the rise of the abolitionist movement. The portrayals were intended to dehumanize Black people, to sabotage any nascent empathy for those held in bondage.  The stock character Zip Coon made a mockery of free Blacks, with all his attempts at dignity undermined by his foolish tastes and lack of education. The “coon” part of his name, which remains an all-too-common racist slur, referred to his preference for raccoon meat over more sophisticated fare.

Other stock characters included the overly-sexualized “Buck” and “Jezebel,” which simultaneously fueled a fear of Black men seducing white women and justified the rape of women slaves. The sympathetic minstrel characters, the “good ones,” were portrayed as content with their place in society.

For white people in much of the country, the demeaning stereotypes of the minstrel shows were their only exposure to Black life. The minstrel shows functioned to solidify the concept of white supremacy at a time when support was waning for the inhumane institution of slavery.  The stereotypes – lazy, hypersexual, violent, incapable of social grace – persist to this day and are at the root of the inherent bias that infects our institutions.

So prevalent were these characters, so powerful was their role in establishing racial hierarchy, that the name of one character, Jim Crow, became shorthand for the entire system of racist suppression and terrorism that followed the collapse of Reconstruction.

When white people darken their skin or otherwise distort their facial features to resemble Black people, it’s not an “homage” and many have tried to claim. It’s an act that is almost always performed for laughs. It is mockery. Blackface is a white person exclaiming with derisive glee, “Look at me, pretending to be Black! Isn’t that hilarious?”

Those who defend blackface aren’t simply ignoring history; they’re ignoring the very structure of contemporary American society. Whiteness, in 21st Century America, conveys status and privilege as much as it ever did. The status and privilege of whiteness are at the heart of blackface.  The cruel humor depends upon the chasm between privilege and disadvantage. It is a kind of flaunting of white privilege. It’s why you almost never see the reverse; Black people manage to get through costume parties dressed as white characters without lightening their skin or disguising their facial features. A Black child in with an S on his chest and a red cape is pretty clearly Superman, and almost no one would think his costume was incomplete without white makeup.

Even though we are once again having a national dialogue about this hurtful practice, there are those who will continue to defend it, who refuse to understand why it is offensive, who insist that is their own intentions that matter, and not the effect on others. But it is the very definition of white privilege to decide for oneself what is and isn’t – or what should and shouldn’t be – offensive to Black people. When you step on someone’s foot, even accidentally, you step off and apologize. You don’t stomp down harder and say, “But I didn’t do it on purpose, and I can’t feel it so it must not hurt.”

The fact that blackface gives offense, whether intended or not, is reason enough.