April 29, 2024

A large percentage of homeless people are Black men.

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from BlackMansStreet.Today

(TriceEdneyWire.com/BlackMansStreet.Today) - The U.S. Supreme Court is taking on the issue of homelessness, which affects large numbers of Black people nationwide because, as a group, we comprise the nation’s largest homeless population. 

On Monday, the court argued whether local officials could ban homeless men and women from sleeping in the city’s public parks by charging them a fee. The city of Grants Pass, Oregon, charges its homeless residents $295 per night for sleeping outside.

But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is based in San Francisco, enjoined Grants Pass from barring the town's officials from charging men and women who sleep in the parks.

A brief, filed on April 3, argues that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment does not allow cities to issue fines or to arrest people for sleeping outside in public when they lack adequate shelter and the means to obtain it. 

The center of the storm is Grants Pass, Oregon, a town of nearly 40,000 with an estimated homeless population of almost 600. A footnote is that Grants Pass is or was a sundown town where Blacks were prohibited from living like most Oregon cities in the past.

Today, Grants Pass is 0.8% African American, which is 0.3% of Oregon's Black population, according to the Oregon Remembrance Project.

Hundreds of people were outside the Supreme Court Building holding signs that said, “Homelessness is Not a Crime.”

The case is titled “Grants Pass v. Johnson.”   If the Supreme Court reverses the lower court's decision, it is expected to have far-reaching consequences for the United States' homelessness policy.

Homelessness is a growing problem, especially among Black men who have been largely excluded from any economic recovery.

More than 650,000 Americans were homeless during the 2023 Point-in-Time count, which counts the number of homeless people in the U.S.

The Point-in-Time (PIT) count is an annual assessment of sheltered and unsheltered people experiencing homelessness at a given moment. Each year, data compiled during the PIT count are analyzed to help inform areas of need and allocate resources for housing and services.

Among Black men and women, it’s hard to turn your back on the homeless. You see them everywhere. My wife keeps money in her pocket to give to the homeless on a daily basis.

Nearly 4 in 10 people experiencing homelessness identified as Black, African American, or African, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development recently Point-Time-Count.

People who identify as Black make up just 13 percent of the total U.S. population but comprise 37 percent of all people experiencing homelessness. 

In Chicago, where I live, unemployed Black men are sleeping in Chicago Transit Authority railcars because they have nowhere to live. Unhoused men also sleep under viaducts. 

I live across from a Whole Foods store. A man younger than me asked if I would buy him a meal. I did, but it was a point of pride for him to claim he wasn’t homeless. The cashier, familiar with the man, thanked me for buying him food.

In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass is dedicated to reducing homelessness. 

Bass, when she was campaigning for mayor, said that more than 40,000 Los Angeles residents go to sleep every night without a roof over their heads, and nearly four unhoused Angelenos die every day. Mayor Bass recently declared a state of emergency over the homeless crisis.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor asked what would happen if Grants Pass’s ban were allowed to stand and other cities adopted similar laws.

 Sotomayor asked, “Where do we put them if every city, every village, every town lacks compassion and passes a law identical to this? Where are they supposed to sleep? Are they supposed to kill themselves, not sleep?”

To Be Equal 
April 28, 2024


(TriceEdneyWire.com) - “When the Columbine High School shooting happened twenty-five years ago, it was an unimaginable tragedy. Now, as gun violence continues to traumatize students and devastate our schools, families, and communities, we cannot afford to become numb to this crisis. We’ll keep fighting to honor the victims and survivors of Columbine with the common-sense solutions that we know work.” – Angela Ferrell-Zabala, Moms Demand Action Executive Director

Even before the slaughter of students and a teacher at Columbine High School stunned the nation, mayors like myself were taking action against the unchecked greed of gun manufacturers.

New Orleans, where I served as mayor, was the first to sue. In the months to follow, 30 more cities followed our lead. 

That summer, the U.S. Conference of Mayors met in New Orleans and called on Congress to enact common-sense gun safety measures including raising the minimum age for purchasing and possessing a handgun from 18 to 21, requiring background checks at guns shows and limiting gun purchases to one a Whmonth per individual.

The same day we announced our demands, in a show of defiance against the gun industry, Louisiana Gov. Mike Foster made a show of his cowardice and sighed a law banning cities from suing gun companies.

Even though a small fraction of the hundreds of thousands of lives lost since Columbine were lost in school shootings, such incidents underscore the shame of our nation's inaction on gun violence. The gun industries main lobbying arm for decades, the National Rifle Association, was well aware of the "horrible juxtaposition" of “kids fondling firearms” at its upcoming convention even as the teenage victims of Columbine were laid to rest.

They held the convention anyway, turning the event into a massive slap in the face to the grieving survivors.

Over the years, as mass shootings grew more frequent and ever more deadly, the N.R.A.'s defiance and contempt grew as well. After each tragedy, the gun industry seized on baseless fears of a total gun ban to weaken gun regulations and push more and more powerful guns on the public.

But the same greed that built the gun lobby may have destroyed it.

After a lawsuit filed by New York Attorney General Letitia James exposed top executives' rampant financial misconduct, NRA members lost faith in the organization dropping out by more than a million and leaving its coppers depleted by more than 40 percent. 

It remains to be seen whether the NRA's waning influence will allow the nation to enact the measures we need to prevent future columbines. Despite its opposition, Congress was able to pass the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act in 2022, the first major piece of federal gun reform legislation in nearly 30 years.

A significant step forward, the Act requires background checks on gun purchases for young adults, increased mental health funding, expanded prohibitions on gun ownership for domestic abusers and created incentives for states to pass “red flag” laws. But it does not address more significant gun safety measures such as universal background checks, a ban on the sale of assault weapons, and longer waiting periods for gun purchases.

As President Biden noted in his statement on the 25th anniversary of the Columbine massacre, the families who have lost loved ones to gun violence have only one message: Do something.
 

April 22, 2024

Reality Check

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - An admittedly way too small number of Black people in the USA strongly believe that we put ourselves in ongoing cultural, economic and political danger by not being more unified. Those who don't believe in the urgent need for strong Black unity should understand that their position bears responsibility for some of the negative and hostile actions taking place today. Three recent columns in The Washington Informer newspaper will help to explain this position.
 
The first one, written by Marc H. Morial, is entitled “Discriminatory Laws Have Driven Black Voters From The Polls.” In it he states that “…. since 2020, at least twenty-nine states have passed nearly one hundred laws making it harder for eligible citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote.”
 
Another column, attributed to the National Association of Black Women in Construction (NABWIC) noted the following: “As of last week GSA Administrator (Robin) Camahan has ignored the March 18, 2024, request for the meeting to discuss accelerated deliverables to remedy the continuous discrimination against Black American contractors in federal contracting…”
 
Equally notable is a column entitled, “The Battle Over Social Security” by David W. Marshall. It includes his belief that “Social security is especially important to people of color because they are less likely than white Americans to have pensions or retirement savings. As a result social security is the sole source of retirement income for 33% of Blacks compared to 18% whites based on a National Association of Insurance study….”
 
In each of the conditions above and numerous others, a unified Black people would be in a much better position to protect ourselves from the actions of hostile or paternalistic white folks. Because our refusal to become more unified, we share at least some of the responsibility for what is happening to most of us in this country today. Black unity is not an option; it is an absolute necessity if we want to be in a strong position to protect and promote our health, economic, cultural, political, educational, and technological interests. 

April 7, 2024

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - Each spring, many aspiring students and their families begin receiving college acceptance letters and offers of financial aid packages. This year’s college decisions will add yet another consideration: the effects of a 2023 Supreme Court, 6-3 ruling that ended the use of affirmative action. No longer can race be considered as one of many other factors to reach college admissions decisions.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts said in part, “In these cases we consider whether the admissions systems used by Harvard College and the University of North Carolina, two of the oldest institutions of higher learning in the United States, are lawful under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. These cases involve whether a university may make admissions decisions that turn on an applicant’s race.”

“[T]he Harvard and UNC admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause,” continued the Chief Justice. “Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points. We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today.”

A strongly-worded dissenting opinion by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, challenged the majority, asserting that affirmative action remains both viable and necessary.  

“This limited use of race has helped equalize educational opportunities for all students of every race and background and has improved racial diversity on college campuses,” wrote Justice Sotomayor. “Although progress has been slow and imperfect, race-conscious college admissions policies have advanced the Constitution’s guarantee of equality and have promoted Brown’s vision of a Nation with more inclusive schools.”

“The Court subverts the constitutional guarantee of equal protection by further entrenching racial inequality in education, the very foundation of our democratic government and pluralistic society. Because the Court’s opinion is not grounded in law or fact and contravenes the vision of equality embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment, I dissent,” concluded Sotomayor.

In the aftermath of this consequential decision, as many as 30 states have now either filed or enacted new laws against teaching Black history or ‘other divisive concepts’, as well as defunding or outright ending diversity, equity and inclusion initiative. Counted among these states are Alabama, Florida, and Texas where multi-million Black residents are directly affected.

While many might presume widespread unity in Black America over the Supreme Court ruling, a survey analysis by Gallup’s Center on Black Voices published earlier this year shows a distinct and disturbing generational divide on affirmative action. Survey respondents were asked about the effect the affirmative decision may have in four specific areas:

1.       Higher education in general; 

2.      Educational opportunities for Blacks;

3.      The ability of people of one’s own race/ethnicity to attend college; and

4.      Diversity of college campuses.

Numerically, 56 percent of Black adults aged 40 and older mostly view the decision negatively.   But among younger Black adults, aged 18 to 39, the affirmative action reversal is viewed positively by 62 percent. Moreover, many younger Blacks anticipated the decision will have no impact at all on their educations and futures.

Another new and related survey reflects a growing political divide.

Jointly released by the Associated Press and the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center (NORC), the survey asked the question, “Do you think each of the following is doing a good job or a bad job or neither upholding democratic values in the United States?”

Respondents were asked to share their views on government – including the Supreme Court, as well as Congress, and presidential candidates. Overall, 45 percent said the nation’s highest court was doing a poor job. But when responses were screened by party affiliation, 68 percent of Democrats said the court was doing a poor job, compared to 21 percent of Republicans agreeing.

A coalition of 12 national civil rights advocates including the National Urban League, National Action Network, NAACP, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, and the National Council of Negro Women, also said  the nation’s highest court is the problem when it comes to affirmative action, saying its decision,   “serves as a distressing reminder of the uphill battle we continue to face in dismantling systemic racism and the potential implications this decision can have on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the workplace.”

Whatever solution(s) are needed, one thing remains clear: America’s constitution may have promised that all are created equal; but in education, the fulfillment of that promise has yet to become real.

Charlene Crowell is a senior fellow with the Center for Responsible Lending. She can be reached at CharleneThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..