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Still asking our 3 jobs questions? Posted 6-6-07:
(1) 4-20-05: What can be done to reverse "Blacks need not apply" for the coming $5 billion construction boom?
(2) 7-13-05: "where is the plan for Black's share of jobs, development?"
(3) 6-7-06: Why "the terrifying scream of silence from our so-called Black leaders" re this public works boom? (e.g., 3 stadiums, casinos, Mall of America, destination developments, light rail to St. Cloud, and their ancillary projects and infrastructure ?
(4) May 9, 2007: Why are Blacks shunned from UM stadium building project and other big-money projects?
06-20-07, Blog Recap: #s 13-18
#18: "41 years." Again. City Council answers the famous question of "how long" with 41 years, renewable every 41 years
#17: Answering the question: why is the PCRC involved in civil rights and justice issues?
#16: U of Mn, a public institution continues to act in secret. What are they hiding?
#15: Rule 423 extended, with sunsetting postponed to Dec 31, 2008, while a study is doneon hiring compliance.
#14: Sports Authority to review questions about inclusion.
#13: Collapse of police case re murder of Howard Porter.
06-20-07, Blog #18: "41 years." Again. City Council answers our famous question of "how long" with 41 years, renewable every 41 years.
In his "A Testament of Hope," Martin Luther King, in writing about eventually achieving, as a nation, "a society at peace with itself," when we are not Black men and white men but just men, said, "I know you are asking today, 'how long will it take?" His answer to "how long? was "not long."
At the City Council meeting this week, as we discussed matters of concern to the community, especially the concern of being excluded from jobs on major construction projects, such as the new Gophers and Twins stadiums, I marveled at the same 'ol same 'ol. We were really getting nowhere. Lots of fine rhetoric about getting it right this time but no instances of actual corrective action to ensure that. Same song. Same verse. Recycling. Finally I said,
It was 41 years ago this month that I stood here, in City Hall, as a young man, addressing the council, listening to the same rhetoric. Those were days of confrontation. The National Guard was in the streets below as Minneapolis was under martial law. The Council told us that they knew mistakes had been made but they would get it right this time. And here we are, 41 years later being told the same thing: we'll get it right this time. Men at the time who were then the age that I am now told me that they had heard the same thing 41 years before that, that they would get it right this time.
Has Minneapolis spoken? 41 years is the magic number? In 41 years they'll trot out the same song and verse again? So I stand there, listenting to what I had heard promised 41 years before when older men then said they had been promised the same 41 years before that. 82 years. And North Minneapolis, in terms of education and jobs, is still waiting.
Being deaf and repeating old rhetoric won't help. As Martin Luther King said in that famous teastament of hope speech, it won't be long "because no lie can live forever,...because you reap what you sow,...because the arm of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice."
41 years ago a council reaped what it sowed: the National Guard in the streets. How does this council want the moral arm of the universe to do about them? What will this council reap for Minneapolis tomorrow because what it sows today?
Posted June 20, 2007, 11:59 a.m.
06-20-07, Blog #17: Answering the question: why is the PCRC involved in civil rights, justice/fairness, and social/government accountability issues?
The blog entries today provide another snapshot of areas in which we are active. Some have asked why. The PCRC was established to deal with public safety issues. We are interested not only in how crime and violence is handled, which is primarily a police issue, but also in how it is prevented, which is a greater community issue. The number one prevention measure is jobs. And the number one requisite for a job is an education. The posts today, as always, reflect this awareness and understanding. Some have asked, aren't these issues for the NAACP and Urban League? No, they are community issues, which the NAACP and Urban League should be addressing. Community is our middle name at the PCRC.
A sister's post yesterday on Salon casts light on this problem, as she writes about, "The NAACP's sad decline."
She opens with this question:
"Is the NAACP, the civil rights group that rocked the entire planet so hard that even the students in Tiananmen Square invoked it, really on the verge of collapsing with a willfully self- destructive whimper?"
This is what we have chronicled in our book and columns. She further notes that:
"The nation's oldest civil rights organization is on the brink of extinction, defeated by its inability to evolve, a fact that no amount of rhetoric will be able to conceal at its 98th annual convention next month."
She closes with:
"Those of us who were not required to find out what we were made of then are required now to find the courage to speak truth to a venerated black power that has lost its way. Sadly, the NAACP seems to have outlived its usefulness."
Speaking truth to the NAACP is what we have done. Our reward was to be expelled. Now the NAACP seems to be expelling itself.
As the sister points out, the glory days of confrontation are over. She advocates, and we concur, that the job today is not to be marching outside to little effect but to walking inside the institutional halls "to extend black influence throughout the nation's institutions," and "to evolve into a problem-solving organization for black America." Which is why we do what we do and why we propose solutions for consideration.
It is also a reason for publishing our book in 2002 and writing our columns since as well as broadcasting weekly on MTN-TV, and why we participate in the community through the PCRC. We have offered a process as well as specifics for what to do in our book. We especially urge you to read Interlude 16 , Calculating a Better Future For All ; Chapter 17 , The Positive Future Possibilities for Minneapolis " that should be applied nationwide; and the Concluding chapter, " Not Losing Sight of the Prize of Equality's Freedom ," which provides uplift for everyone. It is also why we have presented our set of solution papers, especially # 22. Aug. 31, 2003: Seven Themes, Seven Problems, Seven Solutions , # 23. Dec. 2, 2003: The Blocks to Construct a Minneapolis Table for All to Sit At Together All of these will help with our number one problem related to a lack of jobs, the state of emergency for black youth in our community.
Posted June 20, 2007, 11:59 a.m.
06-20-07, Blog #16: Why does the University of Minnesota, a public institution continues to act in secret? What was it hiding from the Urban League in the Urban League's basement today?
Urban League today, June 20. Basement, while PCRC is meeting upstairs. C. Craig Taylo, Director of Diversity and Economic Development for the University of Minnesota, is holding a meeting featuring 6 brothers and sisters before an all white audience of the philanthropic prime funders of the Twin Cities, as they attempted to get them to offer their largesse by getting back on board to fund the $35 million they say is needed for the their research center slated for North Minneapolis.
Please note: this is in the basement of the Urban League, being led by Mr. Taylor, who sits on the Urban League Board. So what happens with the Exectuv AdministrativeSecretary for Clarence Hightower walks in? She is told it is a closed meeting and that she can't be there. And NOT ONE person in the road said other wise, waiting quietly for her to leave the room. Makes you wonder, doesn't it? And if they are this secretive against the Black community in a Black community basement, what are they saying, doing, and cooking up when they are in their own white enclaves?
Posted June 20, 2007, 11:59 a.m.
06-20-07, Blog #15: Rule 423 extended, with sunsetting postponed to Dec 31, 2008 while a study is doneon hiring compliance.
In our column of June 6, 2007, we discussed the fact that the City was going to "sunset" or end the Minneapolis Code of Ordinances Regarding the Small and Underutilized Business Enterprise Program, despite the fact that the city is and has been in non-compliance with its own ordinances. We brought this before the appropriate folks attention. At City Council meetingthis week, Rule 423 was extended to December 31, 2008, to enable a study of the issue. At the City Council meeting, the good folks at the Roy Wilkins center testified that there was indeed a failure in hiring compliance. They will now do a complete study. All we ask for is compliance with the ordinances.
Posted June 20, 2007, 11:59 a.m.
06-20-07, Blog #14: Sports Authority to review questions about inclusion.
We delivered a letter to the Sports Authority calling on them for hiring compliance on the stadium projects and any construction work of theirs. They will respond in July. Again, all we seek is compliance with the law. A copy of the letter is here .
Posted June 20, 2007, 11:59 a.m.
06-20-07, Blog #13: Collapse of police case re murder of Howard Porter.
"Showboating" has been a recent theme of ours. It has its place. But not to deceive or to hide ineptness. Recently the Twin Cities applauded itself, even as it misrepresented the facts, and was rewarded with being applauded on CNN & ESPN regarding having two arrests in the Kevin Porter murder. Showboating is tolerable only if there is substance. This case collapsed. The judgethrough it out. No one is in custody. No suspects. Let's get it right next time.
Posted June 20, 2007, 11:59 a.m.
06-16-07, Blog #12: Cooperation and solid police work get results, not showboating.
Congratulations to both the community and the police department for cooperation resulting in the arrest of the three young men involved in the killing of 14 year old Charez Jones June 9th. The MPD and PCRC asked for help in the slaying. The community responded.
We need more cooperation like this. What we don't need is the grandstanding of self-appoinited community and ecumenical leaders claiming they have solved the case and will deliver the suspects when this was their wish, not their capability.
The case was solved under the investigative leadership of Sgt. Adams and Sgt. Zimmerman, leading to finding and arresting the three involved with killing this truly innocent young girl. When well-meaning (some have questioned me for calling them well-meaning) community and ecumenical leaders misrepresent their involvement and misrepresent what they can do (as opposed to what they wished they could do), it harms the community's efforts for the future that could hurt investigations such that perpetrators will get away with murder. Showboating helps no one.
The funeral for Charez Jones today has had to have its location changed for security reasons, and, for more security reasons, there will be guards posted at the funeral, following a security plan worked out by community leaders and the police. What a sad commentary when guards have to be posted at a funeral.
Between those who claim what is not true and those who prematurely reveal the names of witnesses, the future of the community is again rendered precarious, when the goal should be a community cooperating together to restore peace and order when peace and order are shattered by whatever kind of incident. The seriousness of this is seen in the fact that security has to be posted at Charez Jones' funeral.
Posted June 16, 2007, 5:30 a.m.
6-8-07, Blog #11: NAACP's Show Boat Runs Aground: Regionals closed; 40% of staff laid off. We are not surprised.
The Washington Post this morning, Friday, June 8, bears witness to the NAACP running aground with its headline, NAACP Will Cut Staffing, Close Offices.
We haven't discussed the NAACP much this year, as there has been little to discuss. There are not many ways to talk about a self mummified body. It grieves me that what I have written to sound the alarm has fallen on deaf Black ears as well as applauding white ears. Seduced by the applause and enjoying being on the delusional pedestal of moral civil rights high mindedness, Black leaders have remained silent, content with their bi-annual standing ovations for voting for Democrats.
In chapter 14 of my 2002 book, The Minneapolis Story , my message was simple: "Black organizations: now part of the problem rather than the solution." The didn't listen. Instead, they ran their showboat aground.
The local branch is discussed in Chapters 6, 8, 12, and 14 of my 2002 book. They didn't listen. Instead, they ran their showboat aground, but before they did they engineered my being expelled from the NAACP, an act that must be approved by national. And they did. The first one in 50 years.
We addressed the NAACP in a dozen columns and over a dozen blog entries. No one listened. Instead, they ran their showboat aground.
We addressed the problem of the NAACP in our July 21, 2003 paper, NAACP Takes Eye off Prize. No one listened. They ran their showboat aground.
They never once stated that I said anything false, only that I shouldn't have published, a sign of an organization that has become what it hated. It once fought for an end to their being censored to fight for the freedom to publish their calls for redress, for which 600,000 perished in a Civil War so that they could, only to wind up in the sorry state of trying to censor the freedom to publish truth about them as they jim crowed my efforts to speak the truth.
Unfortunately I have been proven right by this once great organization. With the closing of the regional offices and reduction of the staff, it will be impossible for many branches to address regional and local issues. Many will have to close, including, quite possibly, the Minneapolis branch of the NAACP.
The NAACP was formed to help "colored people" at the local level. At its formation as a result of the Niagara Movement, Dr. DuBois never expected to see such decline in contact with local affiliates. The NAACP national board conflict was over Chairman Jullian Bond and his 60+ Board that collectively held the view that the NAACP should focus on social justice. The President who resigned after 19 months could not get the national board to shift to social service. This is what I too advocated. I was correct when I stated in 2002, that if the NAACP did not plan to act to regain efficacy, the NAACP would be marginalized and become virtually an insignificant organization.
Sadly, that is what has happened.
In the musical Showboat, we all know the famous song, "Old Man River," sung by the slave, Joe. The NAACP must rise again and stop being what it has become, just an 'ol man river that does nothing else but just keep on rollin:
Ol' Man River, that Ol' Man River
He must know somepin', but he don't say nothin'
He just keeps rollin', he keeps on rollin' along.
So what next for the NAACP? Roll on into irrelevance or rise up to again act with relevance and signinficance? We offer these 10 suggestions for the NAACP Board to consider for its next annual convention:
1st, stop showboating the notion of social justice as you go from liberal dinner and conference to liberal dinner and confernece to whine and sing victimology songs. It will take more than an addiction to klieglights, rubber chickens, and endless self praising press conferences to bring the NAACP back to relevance. We don't live in an either justice or service world. We live in a BOTH social justice AND social service world.
2nd, adopt the mantra of Nellie Stone Johnson: "No education, no jobs, no housing," which leads on to no health care, no family stability, and no public safety. The laws for justice in education, jobs, housing, etc., are on the books. Cities are voluntarily in non-compliance, especially in terms of education, jobs/hiring, and housing, as you stand by and lay it all to racism. Does this mean that as the Democrates are in charage, they are thereby racist? The injustice is the stance taken by the NAACP that winds up supporting injustice.
3rd, Stop shilling for the Democratic party which in turn shills for the Teachers Union and instead demand that education be given by those who would educate. The democrats control the cities and they control education. Stop being silent on the majority of Black parents in Washington, D.C., Milwaukee, Chicago, etc., who want charter schools that will teach rather that the current public school system which creates a 50% drop out rate among our young people, especially young males, as the Democratic Party and the teachers union remain the main battalians in the war against young Black men.
Blacks are the most loyal segment of the Democratic party, and yet, in the Democratic Party Presidential debates so far, we are not brought up. This is a clear indication of our demise and being utterly taken for granted.
And yes, we know that the war is important and that for some it is seen as tearing the country apart. It certainly has defined the Democrats (pull out and come home and spend the war money on government programs) and the Republics (stay and fight the war on terror there instead of here). Again: not either/or but both/and. There is truth in both views.
Even though slavery was world wide before the Civil War, and still exists, we act too often as if the US is the bad guy. Why don't we hear about the many times more slaves that went to Latin America and the Carribbean than to the U.S.?
Why don't we hear that twice the number of slaves that came to America were taken from Europe to the Islamic North Africa by the Barbary Pirates. Because of these Islamic pirates, George Washington, who said don't get involved in foreign entanglements, orderd a Navy to be built.
And why don't we hear that Thomas Jefferson, who said we needed small government and concentrate on local levels, happily ordered the new Navy to the Barbary Coast to knock out (kill) the Islamic Barbary Pirates that preyed on our ships? Americans knocked them out, ending their slavery of Europeans, and Americans fought a Civil War to end slavery in this country.
A kind of slavery exists still in Northern Africa and the Middle East, not to mention in Darfur. Should we help end slavery elsewhere or was that just for us? These are hard questions. And we appreciate the difference within both parties about this as well as between both parties on this.
What we don't appreciate is that despite those debates, there is little or no discussion about the tremendous gaps between Blacks and whites in the cities in education, jobs, housing, income, heath care, family stability, and public safety. But we are still here. Our inner cities are still here. And some parts of some of our cities look like war zones.
Our inner cities are also being pulled apart. In real time. Now. And the democrats that control them allow it to continue (and the Republicans stand and let them do so, as it is a joint party perspective). As the Republicans don't control the cities, they avoid accountability. Which is why we need the parties to fight over us, not write us off, each for their own reasons. If neither "owned" us or dismissed us, they would have to fight over us.
The Democratic Party has replaced us with Hispanics in their affection, because they represent votes they believe are "naturally" theirs, as Hispanics are minorities and "people of color". According to the census, there are 35.3 million Hispanics in the U.S., representing 12.5% of the population. That is close to our numbers (36.4 million, 12.9%).
And, if the democrats can get illegals to vote as soon as possible (the effect of Obama's attempted amendment yesterday), they'll attempt to get their hands on millions more, just like meeting the boats in the 19 th century and early 20 th century with cards for where to go for welfare along with Democratic Party registration cards. The Democrats take our votes for granted. And as they think the Hispanic vote should be theirs (as all people of color "should" be), they are pushing Hispanics, legal and illegal, ahead of us in line, as they thus also push us further to the back of the Democratic Party bus.
Some say this is because of what is called "The Roe Effect." Over the past 40 years, over 40 million abortions have been done. Assuming the majority of those were Democrats (as Republicans oppose abortion, at least publicly), these and their off spring could have been expected to vote Democratic. Hence the desperate need of the Democrats for the Hispanic vote to replace those "lost."
4th, Pass the baton to young leaders, leaders with a practical not ideological bent. Let's be frank: time and the movement have long passed Jullian Bond and his oversized and overly old 60+ member Board of Directors. They have rendered the NAACP irrelevant because they themselves are irrelevant. They act as if they are the keepers of the civil rights flame. They are sincere, but sincerely wrong. Instead, they are damping the civil rights flame. They have taken their eyes off the prize.
5th: address the key statistics of loss in membership and loss of donations. There are only 400,000 members nation-wide out of 36.4 million Blacks. 1% of Blacks.
Regional offices are being closed and staff laid off because of a $5 million shortfall.
The 2000 Census shows 36.4 million African Americans or Blacks. 12.9% of the population. Who, anymore, does the NAACP represent? By these numbers, only 1% of Blacks are members. And the $5 million shortfall? Here is the membership market at work. Blacks are sending their vote of no confidence with their feet (by walking out) and pocket books (by not contributing).
Even though there are 36.4 million potential members for the NAACP, they have only 400,000 members, some of whom are white limousine liberals. Just think, if each of those 400,000 gave a special $10 donation, the shortfall would go away. They don't think enough of the NAACP to give $10?
Put it another way: if half of America's Blacks gave only 27 cents each , the shortfall would go away. That shows the tremendous irrelevance of the today's NAACP among Blacks in America today. No longer railing against elite groups that excluded them, they have become one. The key is to shift from the hatred of George Bush and start hating the gaps in education, jobs, housing, and family policies resulting in Blacks being at the statistical bottom of these categories, especially in the inner city.
6th: return to a focus on where it counts: on those not able to escape the inner city enclaves, most due to either lack of education, lack of fathers, of "babies are having babies" (and stop getting excited by a drop in the numbers when there are still so many: whether you bleed to death quickly or slowly, you still bleed to death), and, of course the prevalence of drugs and choice of many young men for gangs. Squarely address the State of Emergency For Black Youth, and the potential for quarantines and roundups of which we have written.
7th: admit that the trillions of dollars spent on the war on poverty, education, and other social programs have been disastrous to African Americans (although a boon to government bureaucrats), and face the truth Daniel Patrick Moynihan tried to point out over 40 years ago: that these programs would hurt us. It is said that 90% of children living in poverty live in single parent families. We used to emphasize our families, and cried when the slavers split up our families. Now we sit by quietly as government programs again split up our families, as our leaders have swapped the security of middle class government programs bureaucratic jobs with retirement benefits over the security of the prize of freedom for everyone and helping our youth prepare for their lives. Lets stop ignoring the impact of prison, death, drugs, and absent fathers and have higher hopes for our youth than hip hop.
8th, read, from The Minneapolis Story, Through My Eyes. When it came out in 2000, the local Black leadership groups told people not to buy it, not to read it. The NAACP (national, regional, and local) needs to read The Minneapolis Story Through My Eyes.
Read especially Interlude 16, Calculating a Better Future For All; follow Chapter 17, The Positive Future Possibilities for Minneapolis ," and appy it nationwide; and be buoyed by the Concluding chapter, "Not Losing Sight of the Prize of Equality's Freedom."
9th, Follow our Solution Paper #22. Aug. 31, 2003: Seven Themes, Seven Problems, Seven Solutions
10th, Follow Solution Paper #23. Dec. 2, 2003: The Blocks to Construct a Minneapolis Table for All to Sit At Together . It will work in any city.
Unless the NAACP at national, regional, and local levels address these ten issues, they will stay a showboat, and remain aground.
Posted 6-8-07, 5:30 a.m.
06-8-07, Blog #10: Road rage: officer shot on duty while being Black. Are Black officers becoming an endangered species?
The Strib reports this morning that yesterday afternoon, an undercover but on duty Robbinsdale cop was shot in Coon Rapids.
The Strib again comes up with a story from the "subliminal reflection" school of journalism. Although it doesn't question why the shooter is in Coon Rapids, it does question why the Robindale cop is there, not once, but twice. The difference? The cop was Black. Is this another "why don't they keep themselves in their place" group thing that is "just done," subliminally? They wouldn't ask that of a white guy. Even the local police mention the question.
They are more concerned about a Black man being in the neighbohood than they are about a white shooter shooting at a Black officer.
Hello? the Black cops lives near by.
The article also goes into a nonsense discussion of whether or not he should have reported that he was there. The Strib needs to check police protocols and processes. He only needs to notify if he is there to arrest someone. Yet there was never a mention in the papers about the recent illegal Hispanic roundup, when several different law enforcement groups, under the pretense of investigating a white slavery ring, had 8 different sites under surveillance.
Sadly, this reflects both the ridiculous and incompetent processes of the Strib editors with their reporters, as all engaged, each in his or her own way, with subliminal reflection about the matter, as it was about these negatives solely because he was a Black officer.
Posted 6-8-07, 6:08 a.m.
06-7-07, Blog #9: More trees of credibility falls in the MPD, Strib, and City Hall forests. Why won't Black leaders listen?
The police need the confidence and cooperation of law-abiding young people. Systematically demeaning them is hardly the way to achieve that.
--- Bob Herbert, 6-3-07
If Minneapolis Police Department officers use excessive force (choke holds, beating) on the son and nephew of two of their own, and the media, press and officials ignore it, does that mean it didn't happen? And what does that say of the safety of the rest of us, particularly those who have to venture forth in public while being Black, who have to walk, drive, grieve while being Black?
If a pizza driver at 14 th and Central is shot and wounded by a sniper, but it doesn't make the media and the press right away, did it really happen?
And if a drive by shooting on Cedar Avenue in the Somali Community that results in a death isn't reported in the media or press, does that mean that too didn't happen?
Does this silent press embolden some police to believe they can act without consequences? When the trees of police misconduct fall in the forest of justice, and the media and press are silent, the police get deniability.
This is the situation of Trey Adams, a find, upstanding young man of our community, who is the son of MPD Officer Tony Adams and nephew of MPD Sgt. Charles Adams. Last week Trey was coming out of a movie theater when some young women bumped his girl friend. Words between the young women exchanged and they wanted to fight. Trey kept them from doing so.
The police arrived. Trey identified himself as one of their own, son of Officer Tony Adams, nephew of Sgt. Charles Adams. They said "F... your dad and F... you." Knowing who he was they still proceded to use excessive force, using a choke old and beating him with batons, and this booking him, ensuring that a young man without a record now had one before he was released.
They did this not only because he was Black but also precisely because he was the son and nephew of two Black police officers. Some white police don't want Blacks on the force. So we have to ask, was this the chief's way of dealing with his anger at having to present award plaques to Black police officers at the recent PCRC (Police Community Relations Council) meeting, one to Trey's dad and the other to a Native American police officer? Did some mutterings of the chief get misunderstood, as with British King Henry II and his good friend, Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1170? Did the chief mutter bad feelings or say something like, "will no one take care of this for me?" As King Henry's men, did they misunderstand and take action that horrified the king?
What will happen to Trey depends on family friend, attorney Todd Jones. Todd works for the law firm of Kaplin and Robbins, a law firm that politically mentors RT. And Mayor TR Rybak is another out in the forest chopping trees while others either refuse to hear or turn a deaf ear. RT keeps chopping down the compliance policy trees in the City Hall forest, cutting down compliance regarding education, jobs, housing, and police behavior, while also trying to cut down trees serving as civil rights tools by prematurely swinging the sun setting ax.
More importantly is how this city (Mayor, City Council, Police Chief, Police) handle what Bob Herbert calls "No big deal. Certainly not newsworthy. Just another case of cops being cops." Is that what we want? Do we want in Minneapolis what Herbert sees, as his column title states: Small Incidents Are Creating a Big Problem With the N.Y.P.D. It is what we are seeing in Minneapolis.
As Herbert so accurately states it, clear and simple:
The two individuals most responsible for this sorry state of affairs are Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. All it would take is a directive from them to bring the ugly harassment under control.
They won't. In Minneapolis, will RT and the Chief?
Does anyone hear? Who is listening? How come so many of the Black leadership have cut down all the trees in the civil rights forests? And yet, in Herbert's sentence, "There is a huge percentage of cops on patrol whose knee-jerk approach to policing is to treat all young blacks and Hispanics as potential criminals." Suppose the percentage is small, say 10%. They have nearly 40,000. 10% would be 400 "stompers."
Why are so many white and Black leaders so silent? Herbert suggests and answer:
All high-ranking public officials in the city are aware of what is going on. I asked a black official, who asked not to be identified, why more minority officeholders aren't objecting publicly to the way minority youth are treated by the police. He said no one wants to be responsible for challenging the cops and then being blamed if crime statistics start to go back up.
Have they also chopped down time? In France's 1789 revolution, women could support the revolution and be venerated symbols of it, but not have real positions of action, a desire met with hatred from the men. They were not taken seriously. Indeed, women as free was an idea seen as so laughable that they were not seen as threatening. During the revolution they were idolized "symbols", but when they wanted to seen as "individuals rather than symbols, they were disdained, despised and sometimes...condemned to death." Veneration but not freedom.
Is that not how the Democrats view us: as not a threat as we don't vote Republican, as venerated symbols of civil rights high ground moral authority, as they worship us for our assumed vote, and yet, as the statistics on young Black men show, disdain and despise us, have no intention of helping to really set us free (slaves were prevented from learning to read so they couldn't read road signs and escape).
Thus we have the worst schools, run by Democrats, preventing our young from learning to read, graduate, and think differently, so as they might conclude to vote differently). Democrats are opening up our country to others newly arrived illegally while refusing to open it up to us whose ancestors were brough here legally, albeit as slaves. And our so-called Black leaders aid and abet, especially in the cities and particularly in the inner cities.
As Leonard Pitts Jr put it in his June 3, 2007 column, A Response To Knoxville's Loonies, whites, to make matters worse, act as if they are the victims (as seen the last weekend in May when white supremacists held "a rally against genocide" (genocide of whites) in Knoxville, TN. The problem is not Black on white crime. The crime is of white on Black in terms of criminal acts and in the criminal neglect of compliance laws about education, jobs, hiring, housing, etc., including Pitts points out that the 2002 report, "Off Balance: Youth, Race and Crime in the News," showed that Blacks and Latinos are underrepresented in news media as victims of crime and significantly overrepresented as perpetrators. As Pitts concludes, "interracial violent crime is more likely to be reported even though it is just about the rarest kind of violent crime."
One wonders if the underreporting combined with acts to "keep us in our place" is to create a favorable impression for the Republicans for their 2008 Presidential Nominating Convention to be held in St. Paul. But the bigger questions remains: what trees equal access and equal opportunity will be cut down next in order to remove even more of their protective shade?
Posted 6-7-07, 12:30 a.m.
Ron hosts “Black Focus” on Channel 17, MTN-TV, Sundays, 5-6 pm. Formerly head of the Minneapolis Civil Rights Commission and the Urban League, he continues his “watchdog” role for Minneapolis. Order his book, hear his voice, read his solution papers, and read his between columns “web log” at www.TheMinneapolisStory.com.
Permission is granted to reproduce The Minneapolis Story columns, blog entires and solution papers. Please cite the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder and www.TheMinneapolisStory.com for the columns. Please cite www.TheMinneapolisStory.com for blog entries and solution papers.
