May 13, 2018

Let's Stop Kidding Ourselves!
By Dr. E. Faye Williams, Esq.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Every day we get alarming news about #45 and the damage he’s causing our country. I’m sure the average person has grown weary of waiting for this chaos to end. The 1/3 of those still supporting #45 must be called out as traitors to our nation. They’re actually promoting the fact that truth no longer matters, that confusion is the order of the day, that ordinary people don’t matter and that hate is what’s happening!

Speaking of hate, one of the people #45 was speaking of as having two sides to a story was found guilty for firing a gun at that Charlottesville rally near a school. He was the leader of the Ku Klux Klan—the imperial wizard no less! I guess the judge didn’t think so highly of one of those sides because KKK leader, Richard W. Preston was found guilty recently. Preston had planned to go to trail on the possible thought that he could convince a jury he did nothing wrong. At the last minute, he changed his tune and pleaded no contest.

#45’s claim that there was blame on both sides didn’t seem to work in this case. Judge Richard E. Moore immediately pronounced Preston guilty after Preston’ plea. The judge didn’t seem to buy the President’s proclamation that there was hatred and violence on both sides—just on Mr. Preston’s when it came to firing a gun in the crowd near a school. We don’t get to find out what his punishment is until August but isn’t it good to know a klansman can be convicted! It wasn’t always that way.

Senator John McCain said. "There's no moral equivalency between racists and Americans standing up to defy hate and bigotry," "The President of the United States should say so."

It’s easy to see why Senator McCain informed us that he does not want #45 to attend his funeral whenever it happens.

Well, let’s check in on another act of hate in #45’s administration. During the past few days, HUD Secretary Ben Carson suspended a President Obama era fair-housing rule. The rule required communities to examine and address barriers to racial integration. It stated that over 1200 communities receiving billions of federal housing dollars had to draw up plans to desegregate their communities or be subject to losing federal funds. Carson basically said to local and state governments they can ignore that Obama era rule because Carson’s mission statement does not require anti-discrimination language. Will somebody tell Kanye that this administration has no concern for the needs of poor and marginalized people?

Moving on through the week, #45 kept on proving that the Storm is coming for him as Stormy Daniels promised on Saturday Night Live. His relationship with Michael Cohen keeps on getting hotter. Rudy Giuliani’s antics sure haven’t helped #45’s case.

There was damage on the world stage, too. #45 pulled the U.S. out of the nuclear weapons deal with Iran as he attempts to talk with North Korea’s leader about making deals. If you were the North Korean leader, would you trust #45 for honoring any deal they might make at their upcoming summit? I’m not suggesting the North Korean leader can be trusted either, but I’m sure all Americans are praying that something good will come out of the proposed summit.

Our wanting our country to succeed at something good is a far cry from what we’ve been getting from #45 and his followers. We must stop kidding ourselves that #45 is doing anything for the good of our country. He does it for his own glory. Let us pray that he doesn’t do further damage to our nation.

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

May 14, 2018

Black Panther Star Chadwick Boseman Encourage Howard Graduates: Achieve Your Purpose

Howard University Commencement Speaker Chadwick Boseman takes it all in during the 2018 Commencement Ceremony on Saturday, May 12, 2018 in Washington, D.C. PHOTO: Courtesy

The graduates celebrate during Howard University’s 150th Commencement Ceremony on Saturday, May 12, 2018 in Washington, D.C. PHOTO: Courtesy

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Howard University

(TriceEdneyWire.com) – Howard University alumnus and award-winning actor Chadwick Boseman spoke to graduates about the significance of making it to the top of the Hilltop during the Howard University 2018 Commencement Convocation May 12. 

 

In front of an audience of more than 8,000 family and friends, Boseman encouraged the graduates to not only exceed in their next steps, but also strive to achieve their life’s purpose.

 

“When you have reached the Hilltop and you are deciding on next steps, you would rather find purpose than a career. Purpose is an essential element of you that crosses disciplines,” said Boseman. 

He applauded the members of the class of 2018 for climbing up their academic slopes and making it up the Hilltop.

 

“The Hilltop represents the culmination of the intellectual and spiritual journey you have undergone while you were here,” said Boseman. “Each of you have had your own difficulties with The Hill, but it’s okay because you made it on top. Sometimes, you need to feel the pain and sting of defeat to activate the real passion and purpose that God predestined inside of you.”

 

Boseman also declared Alma Mater, “a magical place - where the dynamics of positive and negative seems to exist in extremes.” He referenced an inspirational moment he experienced when meeting the iconic Muhammad Ali on the University yard; highlighting how at Howard, magical moments can happen to give students powerful encouragement on their toughest days.

 

“I remember walking across this yard, when Muhammad Ali was walking towards me with his hands raised in a quintessential guard. I was game to play along with him,” said Boseman. “What an honor to be challenged by the G.O.A.T. I walked away floating like a butterfly…walked away light and ready to take on the world. That is the magic of this place. Almost anything can happen here.”

 

A native of South Carolina, Boseman graduated from Howard University and attended the British American Dramatic Academy at Oxford University. Thereafter, Boseman began his career as an actor, director and writer. He starred as T'Challa/Black Panther in the worldwide phenomena Marvel Studios’ “Black Panther” and “Avengers: Infinity War.”

 

Boseman's breakout performance came in 2013 when he received rave reviews for his portrayal of the legendary Jackie Robinson in Warner Bros’ “42.” He previously starred in the title role of Open Road Films’ “Marshall” alongside Josh Gad. The film tells the story of Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American Supreme Court Justice, who graduated as valedictorian from Howard University School of Law in 1933.

 

This year’s Commencement Convocation marks the commemoration of Howard University’s 150^th graduating class. Howard University President Dr. Wayne A. I. Frederick said the University’s establishment represents one of the most noteworthy accomplishments in the history of American colleges and universities.

 

During his remarks, Dr. Frederick discussed how Boseman and his classmates advocated and participated in a three-day protest against the University to dismiss an initiative to transition the College of Fine Arts into the Department of Fine Arts. The protest was unsuccessful in stopping the transition. However, today Frederick, alongside Boseman, announced a campaign to re-establish the College of Fine Arts and launch an Endowed College of Fine Arts Award.

To the Class of 2018, Dr. Frederick encouraged the graduates to be bold as they embark into their chosen careers.

“Don’t stand safely on the sidelines; take risks, learn how to be wrong. It is the best way to learn and grow,” said Dr. Frederick. “Build a culture of generous listening so that others may be emboldened to take risks, too.”

Howard University awarded 2,217 degrees, including 343 master’s degrees, and 90 Ph.Ds. More than 382 students received professional degrees in law, medicine, pharmacy and dentistry. Howard University has the only dental and pharmacy colleges in the District of Columbia. The 2018 graduates represent 39 states and 32 countries; 117 graduates are from the District of Columbia.

In addition to Boseman, who received the honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, the 2018 Howard University honorary degree recipients included:

Vivian W. Pinn, honorary Doctor of Science. Pinn was the first full-time director of the Office of Research on Women’s Health at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and was associate director for research on women’s health at NIH. She held these positions from 1991 until her retirement in 2011. During that time, she established and co-chaired the NIH Committee on Women in Biomedical Careers with the NIH Director. Since her retirement, she has been named as a senior scientist emerita at the NIH Fogarty International Center. Pinn came to the NIH from the Howard University College of Medicine where she had been professor and chair of the Department of Pathology since 1982, the third woman in the United States to hold such an appointment. She was honored by the College of Medicine as one of its “Magnificent Professors” in 2014.

Colbert I. King, honorary Doctor of Humane Letters. King writes a weekly column that runs in The Washington Post. In 2003, King won the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for “his against-the-grain columns that speak to people in power with ferocity and wisdom.” King joined the Post’s editorial board in 1990 and served for several years as deputy editorial page editor. Earlier in his career, he was an executive vice president of Riggs National Bank, U.S. executive director of the World Bank, a deputy assistant secretary at the Treasury Department, minority staff director of the U.S. Senate’s District of Columbia Committee, a State Department diplomat stationed at the U.S. embassy in Bonn, Germany, and a commissioned officer in the U.S. Army Adjutant General’s Corps. King grew up in Washington. He is married to Gwendolyn King, whom he met at Howard University while they were both undergraduates.

Gwendolyn Stewart King, honorary Doctor of Humane Letters. She is president of Podium Prose, a speaker’s bureau and speechwriting service in Washington, D.C. Prior to the launch of the company, King was the senior vice president of corporate and public affairs for PECO Energy Company (now known as Exelon) until her retirement in 1998. From 1989 to 1992, she served as the eleventh Commissioner of Social Security. She held high-level U.S. government appointments in Inter-Governmental Affairs, Women’s Business Enterprise and Social Security from President Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush Administrations. King graduated cum laude from Howard University and has received the Alumni Award for Postgraduate Achievement. In 2008, she and her husband established the Gwendolyn S. and Colbert I. King Endowed Chair in Public Policy at Howard University.

Said Dr. Frederick. “Our 2018 honorary degree recipients are individuals who have reached great success in their respective professional fields. Each honoree embodies the spirit and aspiration that guides Howard’s mission of excellence in truth and service."

 

May 14, 2018

Black Millennials Say Student Loan Debt Crippling Their Chances to Advance to Higher Education
By Jasmine Hardy

Danielle Douglas received a pay raise and a promotion after receiving hermaster's degree, but she also is spending $290 a month to pay off a $28,000student loan, which has hampered her mobility. Courtesy Photo

According to a report by the Young Invincibles, young adults now have considerably lower net wealth than young adults 25 years ago. Young adults with college debt, specifically, are doing the worst out of all millennials today, being the only category with a negative net wealth according to the chart.  PHOTO: Courtesy/Young Invincibles

 Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Howard University News Service

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - When Danielle Douglas began her career after graduating with a bachelor’s degree from Howard University, things were tough.

“I was living paycheck to paycheck, just breaking even,” said Douglas, 27, who began working immediately after graduation at Meridian Charter Public School in Washington. “At first, I was in the ‘hood’ for three years, because I couldn’t afford to live anywhere else. Then, I finished my masters and moved to a better neighborhood.”

After receiving her master’s degree in 2016, however, Douglas, was promoted to sports director at Meridian.  Her new income, which was “abundantly better,” she said, allowed her to move from Southeast Washington, to Silver Springs, Md.

Her new degree also came with a price tag, $28,000 in student loan debt. Now, she must pay a minimum of $290 every month on her student loan, she said, so she has had to cut back on some of her favorite activities, such as traveling.
She said often she pays even more than required in order to retire her debt earlier. 

“I try to pay more than the minimum per month because I’d be paying for 10 years, which I’m not trying to do. It has definitely put a strain on me. There’s no extra money.”

Douglas’ plight is a familiar one for millennials, according to a recent report by Young Invincibles, a non-profit organization in Washington.   Millennials, according to the report, are struggling more than their parent’s generation financially, in large part because of student debt, the study said.  Even as the economy has been improving in terms of wages, home ownership, and jobs, millennials are not keeping up with the trend in terms of net wealth and home ownership, the study said. 

For the first time ever, the study said, young adults with student debt have a negative net wealth, meaning they have more debt than they have financial assets. Their median net wealth today is a negative $1,900 compared to a plus $9,000 in 2013.

Tom Allison, author of the report, as well as deputy policy and research director at Young Invincibles, explained the disparity.

“If [it is] five years after graduation and you’re trying to build assets and save money, it’s so much harder to do that if you have to write a check of $500 every month for college loans,” Allison said. “Your assets are going to stay low and your debt is going to stay high. This gives us an idea of the financial decline.”

In addition to net wealth, home ownership among young adults with college debt has also declined, the study showed. Between 2013 and 2016, homeownership dropped 3 percent. Veronika Williams, 32, says she accumulated $150,000 in loan debt while at Howard University Law School, an amount so large she said she’ll probably spend much of her life paying it off.

She currently works as an attorney in Washington where she rents an apartment. For now, she said, owning a home is largely outside of her grasp because of her student debt. 

“The issue is a down payment for purchasing a house,” she said. “They want 20 percent. I don’t have the excess income, so I can’t give them $20,000. There are some programs that will pay the down payment, but my income is too high, so I don’t qualify. I’m just stuck between a rock and a hard place.”

Williams said she can see the impact of student loan debt when compared to some of the other well-paid attorneys she works with at her law firm. Some of her black and white co-workers do not share the same financial concerns she does because they don’t carry the stress of loan debt, she said.

“I make a decent salary, but I feel like I can’t compete with people who don’t have student loan debt, because I have to consider a $1,300 loan payment per month,” she said. “It limits me financially to what I can and cannot do. I don’t have the luxuries of vacationing and some stuff compared to other attorneys who had doctors and judges as parents [and consequently] don’t have student debt.”

May 13, 2018

The Reasons Why the United States Has Never Achieved Greatness 
By A. Peter Bailey

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - A recent column by a black Republican activist in the Washington Informer included the following: “But to my liberal friends who constantly ask ‘When was America great?’ I simply say that America was great when Lincoln freed the slaves. America was great when we passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. America was great when we passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965. America was great when we passed the Fair Housing Act of 1968. America was great when we elected the first Black president in 2008.”

It takes a willful denial of American history to make such a statement in 2018. The historical truth is that the federal government of the United States has never in its entire history voluntarily promoted or protected the civil and human rights of black people. It has done so only when forced by compelling, strategic circumstances. The real deal is that the false history he so ardently and inaccurately declares is exactly what is being taught in most elementary schools, high schools and colleges in this country. And those teaching it are well aware of what they are teaching.

The columnist, who insisted that Lincoln freed our enslaved ancestors, should read Lerone Bennett, Jr.’s must-read book, “Forced into Glory: Abraham Lincoln’s White Dream!” The late brilliant journalist/historian includes the following Lincoln quote in his book: “I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the White and Black races. That I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with White people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the White and Black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the White race.”

As for the Emancipation Proclamation, Bennett noted that “Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation was a tactical move designed not to emancipate the slaves but to keep as many slaves as possible in slavery until Lincoln could mobilize support for his conservative plan to free Blacks gradually and to ship them out of the country…” Bennett add that “What Lincoln did…was to ‘free’ slaves in the Confederate held territory where he couldn’t free them and leave them in slavery in Union-held territory where he could have freed them.”

Just as Lincoln was forced into glory regarding the enslavement of African people, the U.S. federal government was forced into glory to pass the civil rights legislation of the 1960s. It was forced by the courageness of the warriors against White supremacy and by the country’s propaganda needs of the so-called Cold War with the Soviet Union. The white Russians are just as much white supremacist as their American counterparts. However, they took advantage of racism in the United States for their own propaganda purposes.

Between 1955 and 1968 numerous Black warriors, including Medgar Evers, James Chaney, George Lee, Samuel Younge, Jr., Louis Allen, Samuel Hammond, Delano Middleton, Henry Smith, Phillip L. Gibbs, James Green, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were killed by White supremacist terrorists. Many Black people lost jobs, had their homes firebombed, and were otherwise brutalized by the racist terrorists. Very few of whom were punished for those crimes by local, state and federal governments.

I strongly believe that if it wasn’t for those propaganda needs, the federal government would have sat by and allowed the terrorists to crush the civil and human rights movements. That’s exactly what Washington did when Black folks were regularly lynched by White, racist terrorists in the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries.

As for America being great “when we elected the first black president,” my position is one of total skepticism about how that came about. I still want to know how a man who was barely known to most of us before 2004 could be elected president of the United States in 2008. It took big boys to pull that off. I agree with the great Rev. Jeremiah Wright who has been quoted as saying that President Barack Obama “was selected before he was elected.”

The columnist should know that the United States has never been great as far as Black people are concerned. And it will never achieve greatness until it pays in full the debt owed to the descendants of the Africans whom it enslaved for over 300 years. The U.S. loves to brag about being the wealthiest country in the world. It should be since it is the only country in the world to have enjoyed 300 years of free, enslaved labor.