Nov. 6, 2016

Obama Steadied Our Nation in 'Interesting Times'
By Rev. Jesse Jackson

Nov. 6, 2016

Race, Gender and Healing

By Julianne Malveaux

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Just a few days before the corrosive 2016 election, it occurs to me that no matter what the outcome, our social fabric has been shredded by the ugliness of this campaign.  Sure, there have been ugly campaigns before, but this one has revealed the extent to which racism and sexism are acceptable features of life in these United States.  

Women, including Hillary Clinton, have been routinely disparaged, not only in politics, but also in their roles as television talking heads and anchors.  While I’m not weeping for Megyn Kelley (she’s a big girl, and she can take care of herself), her on-air collision with Newt Gingrich was classic, with a jowly male bully loudly talking over a television host and accusing her of being “obsessed” with sex.  

And the disparagement of women flowed down the ticket – in Illinois, Senator Mark Kirk had the nerve to disparage challenger Tammy Duckworth because of her Thai heritage.  Her dad traces his family’s military service back to the eighteenth century, while her Mom is from Thailand.  When she cited her military background, Kirk nastily said he was unaware that her family had come all the way from Thailand to fight for the US.  Shame on Kirk for demonstrating his ignorance by criticizing the military service of a woman who lost both her legs in the Iraq war.

All’s fair, they say, in love and war, and many see politics as a special kind of war.  And certainly, those women who play the politics game have to have thick skins and broad shoulders because men are not likely to treat women with kid gloves because of their gender.  However, gendered criticism (she lacks stamina, look at that face) is woven into the fabric of our nation’s racist patriarchy, and the “other” (women, people of color) is often put down using gendered or racialized code words.  In some cases, as with Tammy Duckworth, people don’t even bother to use code words.

The backlash from eight years of the Obama Presidency means that plenty of racists have come out to play.  I thought we’d seen the last of David Duke, the reported KKK member who is again running for the Senate from Louisiana.  Instead, he seems to have slithered from under some rock, just in time to endorse Donald Trump, throw shade on Evan McMullin (the Utah native and former CIA operative who is running a long-shot campaign for President), and attack Jewish people.  Most listeners recoiled from Duke’s hateful words, and the Trump campaign quickly distanced itself from the Duke endorsement.   Shocking, though, that this level of racist hate is so openly articulated.  And Mr. Trump’s racial rhetoric suggests that the Duke endorsement, if unwelcome, was at least somewhat consistent with that which Mr. Trump has been preaching.

The use of terms like “law and order” or “stop and frisk” ignores the issues the Black Lives Matter Movement has raised, not the least of which is the police killings of young black people.  And the Black Lives Matter Movement has been routinely been disparaged during this 2016 campaign.   The disparagement of the Black Lives Matter Movement really disparages all Black people and reminds us that, despite progress, race still matters.

If racism and sexism are woven into the fabric of our nation, how do we pull those threads out without ruining the fabric?  Or has the fabric already been so fully shredded that we have the opportunity to “start over”.  Actually, there will be no starting over.  Our economic structure and the credo of predatory capitalism depend on the ability of capitalists to extract surplus value from the work of those that are “other”. 

Capitalists maximize profits by minimizing expenses.  Thus enslavement, though an inhumane institution, was also an efficient one for those who were able to use free labor.  We’ve come a long way from enslavement, but the exploitation of workers continues, which is why the “Fight for $15”, which will disproportionately benefit women and people of color, is so important.

This 2016 election has put many of our national wounds, and much of our fractured history, on display.  Is there healing after all of this divisiveness?  Washington gridlock isn’t likely to stop just because the election is over.  Still, there must be leaders who are willing to talk solutions.   When does our nation finally confront race and talk about reparatory justice?  When do we, culturally, talk about sexism and the pay gap that remains, despite women’s progress?  Or will we continue to limp along, wounds exposed, the fabric so frayed that it can’t be stitched back together?

Julianne Malveaux is an author and economist. Her latest book “Are We Better Off? Race, Obama and Public Policy” is available via www.amazon.com for booking, wholesale inquiries or for more info visitwww.juliannemalveaux.com

Reality Check

Sound advice from Dr. Frances Cress Welsing
By A. Peter Bailey

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Recently when browsing through a July 1974 issue of Ebony magazine, I came across an opinion piece by the late Frances Cress Welsing. In the article, “On Black Genetic Inferiority,” the brilliant psychiatrist made observations that are as relevant in 2016 as they were when she wrote them 42 years ago.

In the opening paragraph, she noted, “It is absolutely imperative that we as Black people get very quiet and calm and begin to think critically and analytically in a very broad perspective and cease doing push-button reactions to social events that happen around us and that relate negatively to us.”

She cites as an example of what she considered our knee-jerk reaction to statements by white supremacist Dr. William Shockley who said Black folks are genetically inferior to Whites. Wrote Frances, whom I was fortunate to know as a colleague, “In recent months, in response to Dr. Shockley’s appearance, we as Black people have been behaving as though we are shocked by Dr. Shockley (no pun intended) and as though he has some message we have never heard before. If we begin to relate to our past and present history as a people we immediately become aware that the effective majority of white people have always believed or spoken and acted as though they believed that people of color were genetically inferior to whites. Don’t we understand that the white concept of Black genetic inferiority is the basic underlying reason and logic behind the whole of our experience since leaving Africa in slave ships and our subsequent mass confrontation with Europeans (whites)?”

Frances, if she was still here physically, would pose that same question to Black folks today who are “shocked” at statements made by some of Donald Trump’s supporters or at attempts to suppress the Black vote. It is to be extremely naïve or willfully ignorant to be shocked about expressions of white supremacy/racism when that has been a dominant and fundamental concept in this country for nearly 400 years. We need to follow Frances’ advice to think critically and analytically and cease having push-button reactions to those who want to harm us physically and psychologically.

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A. Peter Bailey, whose latest book is Witnessing Brother Malcolm X, the Master Teacher, can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Oct. 30, 2016

Racial Gaps in Student Loan Debts Grow as For-profit College Enrollment Climbs
Borrowers face over $125 million in unnecessary interest charges
By Charlene Crowell 

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - With 44 million consumers owing about $1.4 trillion in student loans, a new report by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finds that student loan servicing and debt collection together will boost borrower costs even higher over the next two years.  

The Bureau’s recently-released Student Loan Ombudsman Report termed the nation’s current system as “flawed” and further calls for an “overhaul” to improve conditions for an approximate 8 million distressed and defaulted borrowers. Its findings and conclusions are based on 5,500 private student loan complaints and approximately 2,300 debt collection complaints filed between October 1, 2015 and May 31, 2016.  

• Since February 2016, 3,900 student loan complaints made concerned loan servicing.  “This report offers further evidence that industry practices and needless red tape can turn a student loan into an unbearable burden,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. “Policymakers should work to reform the programs that are failing those borrowers that need help most.”   Complaints filed with CFPB during this reporting period cite: Delays and dead ends when applying for income-driven plans that include interest subsidies and loan forgiveness;  
• Problems with debt collectors verifying incomes and in turn assigning incorrect monthly payment amounts;  
• Loan servicers billing borrowers hundreds of dollars more per month than was arranged with the debt collector; and  
• Conflicting information as to where loan payments should be sent and how those payments would be applied to loan balances.  A few days later, a Brookings’ Economic Studies report found severe racial debt disparities for both Black undergrads and those completing graduate college studies.         

“The moment they earn their bachelor’s degrees, Black college graduates owe $7,400 more on average than their White peers ($23,400 versus $16,000, including non-borrowers),” wrote Judith Scott-Clayton and Jing Li for Brookings.  As an increasing number of Black students enroll at for-profit colleges for either undergraduate or graduate studies, those who borrow loans are also the most likely to incur heavier debt, carry it longer, and default more often.  Not a favorable scenario when time and studies were meant to bring financial security and a higher quality of life. “While previous work has documented racial disparities in student borrowing, delinquencies and defaults, in this report we provide new evidence that racial gaps in total debt are far larger than even recent reports have recognized,” the authors continued, “far larger now than in the past, and correlated with troubling trends in the economy and in the for-profit sector.”   

Between 2004 and 2008, Brookings noted that Black enrollment at for-profit institutions increased dramatically. During much of these same years, for-profit colleges have faced regulatory scrutiny and quality of education challenges that led to large institutional closings such as Corinthian Colleges and more recently, ITT Technical College that also lost its accreditation.  “[T]he for-profit sector is by far the fastest-growing sector and the only sector that has seen enrollments grow differentially by race,” states the Brookings report. Further, both undergrad and graduate students enrolled at for-profits are more likely to suffer from loan interest accumulating faster than loan payments received, also known as negative amortization.  Earlier this year the Center for Responsible Lending joined with the National Consumer Law Center in calling for the Department of Justice to take actions to ensure racial justice in student loan lending."

The report continues. “For nearly a decade, the Department of Education has known that student debt impacts borrowers of color differently from White borrowers. Yet in that decade, the Department has failed to take sufficient steps to ameliorate the disproportionately negative impact on borrowers of color, or even to conduct further research to discover the causes or the extent of disparities,” wrote the advocates...We call on the Department to collect and release the data necessary to learn the true extent of the impact of student debt on communities of color,” the coalition continued, “and to work with borrower and consumer advocates to ensure that student loans are a tool for economic advancement and not economic devastation for borrowers of color.” Four years after graduating, nearly half of Black graduates – 48 percent – owe more on their federal undergraduate loans than they did at graduation, says Brookings.

By comparison, only 17 percent of White undergrads owed more debt.  Federal law, however, provides some recourse. Borrowers who have defaulted on their student loans are federally guaranteed the right to be given a chance to get out of default and back on track. The process, includes making a series of income-based payments that take into account income and family size.  Secondly, student loan borrowers who have encountered problems with their servicers or related debt collectors can and should bring their concerns to the attention of the CFPB. Complaints may be mailed, faxed or filed online, including all supporting documentation. An advantage to the online filing is that a complaint number will be assigned that enables consumers to check on the status of their complaint at any time.  

Beyond the portal to file a student loan complaint, CFPB accepts consumers’ questions weekdays from 8am until 8pm Eastern Time at its toll-free number: (855) 411-CFPB | (855) 411-2372.  “Federal financial aid policy alone cannot solve these problems,” concludes the Brookings report, “but neither can it ignore the challenges facing students of color who disproportionately bear the burden of student debt.”

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..