Afro-Netizen

Embracing Precious: The nuances and truths in the individual and collective stories we tell

By Imani Perry

Guest Contributor

These are strange days indeed. We are firmly into the 21st century, and yet the 80s are haunting us. For African Americans it is yet again a decade of dream and deferral.

Back in the ‘80s, for the young Black and college educated, the doors of corporate America and other professions opened up and broadened the spectrum of the Black middle class like never before. But also, back in the ‘80s, crack cocaine and the aftermath of deindustrialization crippled areas of concentrated blackness in major urban centers.

Now in the 21st century, a new Black elite floods the popular imagination as Capitol Hill, the president and his administration become more and more colorful. But also now, in the 21st century, the recession hits Black communities hardest, and at the intersection of devastating rates of imprisonment, joblessness, and inadequate education lie a critical, hurting, mass of Black Americans.

Then came Precious.

The film, released in the Fall of 2009 elicited a flurry of responses. The debates over the film were complex, nuanced, impassioned. In fact, among the Black intelligentsia there seemed to be more discussion about Precious than there was about President Obama’s education agenda, the stimulus package, or rising unemployment and imprisonment. That was troubling. But then again, it is easier to fire off a blog post or provide a commentary about a movie than it is to write a concise response to a complicated web of policy, law, and economics. However, I believe the film elicited so much engaged response precisely because it highlighted the challenge of this moment when it comes to race in America.

The film tells an individual story, a poignant one, about an abused young woman in Harlem in the 1980s. If we attend to the individual story, fictional though it may be, our hearts go out to Precious. We see in her story personal resilience, possibility, healing. Those are good things.

The film tells a collective story. The story it tells is about the devastation that the 80s wrought on Black communities, and the failure of the public school system to provide a path out for “the underclass.”

In both the collective story and the individual story, there is truth. There is a real Precious out there. The story is fictional, but it is human. The problem is that fictional stories, especially ones on film, don’t just stand as individual stories, but they do “representative work.” They become part of the way we make sense of the world in which we live. The story of one novelist or filmmaker’s imagination becomes the story of entire groups of people or “types” of people. This is especially true when the kind of social location depicted in the story is remote from the experience of the majority of the viewers.

We . . . yearn for the stories of those who sustain humanity and decency in the face of devastating poverty and marginalization . . . for those stories . . . are, after all, far more representative of Black life than the wreck that is Precious’ life.

On the one hand, many of us who are familiar with the way the story of Black America in the 80s was told, and the way the story of the rise of imprisonment in contemporary Black America is being told, are frustrated with the spectacle of Black violence, deviance, and dysfunction that appears over and over again. We are tired of this story of pathology that we see yet again in Precious. Instead we want a story that reveals the laws and policies and economic conditions that produce concentrated poverty and its violence. We also yearn for the stories of those who sustain humanity and decency in the face of devastating poverty and marginalization. We would prefer for those stories to be told because they are, after all, far more representative of Black life than the wreck that is Precious’ life.

And so, we balk at a film like Precious, rhetorically asking: Doesn’t it just recycle those old images of Black pathology? And isn’t it reviving those stories just when we are beginning to suffer so much again, just when we don’t need a convenient explanation of “they are pathological” to facilitate the nation turning its back on the responsibility to provide conditions for all citizens to lead productive lives as participants in the democracy and economy? 

[S]ome of us want to embrace a film like Precious because it highlights a kind of suffering that our society fails to respond to.

On the other hand, some of us want to embrace a film like Precious because it highlights a kind of suffering that our society fails to respond to. Children who are poor and of color, are inadequately protected in our society. They are more vulnerable to predators, more likely to be victimized on the street and in school, and less likely to have families that are able to marshal resources to deal with trauma, mental illness, and addiction. At the same time, poor, emotionally scarred parents who become abusers have virtually no resources to repair themselves.  So when we see a movie like Precious, we applaud it for encouraging sympathy and investment in young women like Precious. We think “yes, the reality of her life deserves to be depicted, maybe it will inspire action.”

The film does both kinds of work on the audience at once. Strange indeed.

Earlier, I referred to how the film reveals the challenge of this moment. The  challenge is this:  When it comes to race: critically thinking members of this society have to consider the implications of symbolism (like the Black president, or the Oscar worthy dysfunctional sexual abusing welfare mother played by Mo'nique) at the same time as we consider the messy, complicated, content of our society, without assuming that these things have a clear or consistent relationship to each other.

Additionally, the film demands that we bring more to the table than just an analysis of its as a piece of art. If the film stands alone, it gets deployed and interpreted every which way. But if we use the film to open the door to conversations about society, ones that are filled with knowledge, data, and careful analysis, rather than mere anecdote and fiction, then it can do some useful work in our social and political lives. Perhaps it can inspire solutions to problems of representation and policy challenges.

President Obama is on our televisions, and a young Black man is selling drugs on a corner near my home in Philadelphia. Precious is on our movie screen, and my classes are filled with brilliant young Black women pursuing degrees at a world class university. These are realities. But what relationships do these individuals have to each other and to the society at large, and how do those relationships reveal the resilience of inequality or the promise of democracy?

Asking and answering these sorts of questions is key for understanding race in the 21st century United States.

Imani Perry is a professor at Princeton University and regular contributor to Afro-Netizen. She is an interdisciplinary scholar who studies race and African American culture using the tools provided by various disciplines including: law, literary and cultural studies, music, and the social sciences.

WATCH: Afro-Netizen founder Chris Rabb hosts LinkTV show, ColorLines: Race & Economic Recovery (VIDEO)

President Obama says the stimulus saved or created two million jobs in 2009. But is the recovery really working? The American dream of good jobs and strong communities is still just a dream for too many. The unfair economy hurts certain groups more, and that ends up hurting everyone. From the bottom line to the unemployment line to the color line, watch a new in-depth program from Link TV and Applied Research Center (ARC) for a closer look: ColorLines: Race and Economic Recovery.

ColorLines: Race and Economic Recovery follows communities making ends meet in the Great Recession. The program narrates the moving story of Tisha, mother of three in Connecticut, facing a social safety net shredded further by the crisis. Then the program goes to Los Angeles where community-based organization SCOPE has mobilized to win green jobs for communities of color. Learn more on ARC's ColorLines page.

So, tune in to Link TV Friday, February 12, for ColorLines: Race and Economic Recovery on DIRECTV Channel 375 or DISH Network Channel 9410 at 9:30 PM Eastern/6:30 PM Pacific.

The entire 28-minute show is also available online here:

Afterwards, please join the roundtable discussion about what you've seen on Twitter @racialjustice.

Major Funding for this program provided by the Akonadi Foundation.

Tiger Woods' choice of paramours: "Catch a tiger by the . . ."

By Imani Perry

Guest Contributor

It's the elephant in the room.

Almost all of Tiger Wood’s rumored infidelities are with white women. No one is saying it, but everyone is showing it, by repeatedly displaying the multiple images of the multiple women. “Tiger likes white women”  can be “said” without being “said.” Journalists don’t want to say it because we aren’t supposed to care what color a person’s partners are anymore. But of course we sill care and the journalists know that!

Tiger Woods is an interesting personality when it comes to race. He was lauded by some and treated with skepticism by others for his insistent refusal to identify as “just black.” He vigorously claimed his multiracial heritage. He famously told Oprah the name he had given himself “Cablinasian” a designation so individual so as to make it not a reference to a group, but just to himself. Tiger was "post-racial" before post-racial was cool.

So, what are we to make of this racial performance? It is a show so old that even thinking about it is exhausting.  Americans fear of and fascination with the idea of Black men having sexual desire for white women has a long and miserable history in the United States. It is tied to lynching. It is tied to sexism and racism at the same time. It is tied to stereotypes of black hyper-sexuality and  animalistic lust. It is tied to the fall from grace of more than one public figure.

One way of interpreting this media spectacle is to consider how Tiger’s infidelities might be seen in certain quarters as evidence that no matter how assimilated and clean cut a black man might seem, there is always the danger that underneath it all he is little more than a walking stereotype. That is what the always incendiary Rush Limbaugh has said about the Tiger Woods affair(s). This is a particularly dramatic moment for such an image to come to the fore of American culture, right as the  country’s collective love affair with President Obama is increasingly strained over the war, the recession, and health reform.

Given how frequently Americans have fallen out of love with a black hero, and how often it has been through the association of said heroes with stereotypes, we have to wonder if Barack Obama, a politician who was called “The Tiger Woods” of politics by some, is suffering from some questions about whether his “true colors” are going to show. After all, gossip rags have been running stories claiming that Obama has a secret white female or male lover. It Is hard to imagine such stories having truth, given the eager mudslinging in Washington, it would have been quite a feat to prevent evidence of such affairs from leaking. I think the rumors say more about our latent fears than any reality.

But with respect to the Tiger Woods fiasco on the other hand, there is very good evidence supporting the claim that he was not only a cheater, but a sloppy one. His indiscretion reveals either naivete, stupidity or a delusional sense of his power over the women with whom he was involved. And  I think, without getting into the mind and heart of Tiger Woods, the parade of women, the parade of white women, if nothing else says, we are far from post racial.

A man who identifies as a member of three non-white racial groups, but appears to have little to no sexual desire (and who appears to act on his every sexual desire) for women of any of those non-white racial groups is a product of history whether he likes it or not. From the 18th through mid 20th century, standards of idealized white beauty were promulgated around the world, and those standards of beauty reflected the ideology of white supremacy that was used to justify the domination and exploitation of non-white people.

We live with the residue of that history in our ongoing beauty cultures and ideals, not just in the United States but in many places around the world.  Even though individual women of color have become beauty icons, the normative ideal remains white and blonde and blue-eyed. I am sure some readers will respond, “Tiger just has a type, it isn’t racial.” Well, with the exception of two who look like his wife, all of the women actually look very different. What unifies them is their race. That’s his type: white.

(There is the one counter example of Jaimee Grubbs, a  half Native American woman who claims to have had an affair with Woods. Grubbs grew up on a Colville Indian Reservation, and reportedly has given interviews in which she has shared her racist stereotypes about, and disaffection for Native Americans. But I digress.)

That said, I would never suggest that Tiger Woods has any obligation to display any racial loyalty to any of the racial groups to which he belongs.  I think those politics are not useful. Performing loyalty when it isn’t felt, is both sad and lacks meaning. Nor do I think loyalty is necessarily displayed through sexual partnerships. There are many people who have been of service to their communities while partnering interracially and many who have partnered with people of their group and been a destructive force within that group.

Tiger Woods has and should continue to be with women he finds attractive (although ideally without the lying and cheating). But our collective fascination with that collective of women, and his own fascination with them, is yet another sign that our racial past continues to impact our racial present.

Imani Perry, PhD, JD is an author and professor at Princeton University's Center for African American Studies (CAAS).

Haunting movie "Precious" portrays the Black matriarch as villain

The Black Matriarch as Villain

By Juell Stewart

Republished courtesy of ColorLines.com

"Precious" is a haunting film that stays silent on how the political realities of 1980s Harlem shaped women. Clareece ‘Precious’ Jones (Gabourey Sidibe) is the shining star of her own imagination in the new movie Precious, which hits theaters nationwide on November 6.  Surrounded by bright lights and flashing cameras, she’s a magazine cover model with dreams of being in music videos and having a light-skinned love interest. The only thing she has to overcome are her circumstances—and boy, are there plenty of hurdles ahead of her.   The recipe is familiar: Start with an unfailingly tragic character, pile on the hardships, throw a few famous names on the credits, then sit back and watch the Oscar nominations roll in.  [B]eneath the film was something that I found to be problematic:  a reliance on the villainization of Black matriarch —rather than a mention of systemic race issues— to make the larger message of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” more palatable. Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire could have been just another one film championing the underdog, but the powerful performances and unabashedly raw storytelling saves it from falling through the cracks. Precious is pregnant, illiterate, unloved and unwanted. Her mother, Mary, (played to chilling, cruel perfection by Mo’Nique) works harder at destroying her daughter’s self-esteem than she does anything else. Precious silently endures unbridled physical and sexual abuse at home, only to experience the ridicule of her peers at school and around Harlem.   It’s a wonder that anyone could survive the sort of utter despair that Precious lives in every day, but despite being illiterate in the ninth grade, she excels in math and is encouraged by a concerned teacher to pursue an alternative education during her pregnancy—a suggestion that her mother meets with a better one: to start collecting welfare and not to worry about education. Luckily, Precious escapes academic purgatory and enrolls in an alternative school for pregnant students, where she meets a series of nurturing figures who instill in her the sense of love and self-worth that was absent from her household for 16 years.  In addition to her teacher and mentor Ms. Rain (played by Paula Patton), there’s her classroom of tough-yet-supportive peers, and Lenny Kravitz as a nurse who shows her what is likely the most positive male role model that she has seen in her young life.   There has already been considerable Oscar buzz surrounding both Mo’Nique and Sidibe, and the film has received numerous accolades, including the Grand Jury Prize for the Dramatic category at Sundance and the People’s Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. The actors and director Lee Daniels deserve the praise they’ve received for making such a powerful movie.   But beneath the film was something that I found to be problematic: a reliance on the villainization of Black matriarch—rather than a mention of systemic race issues—to make the larger message of “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” more palatable.   This is a problematic image to see in white media, but it’s even more disheartening to see in examples of Black media. What’s so problematic about Mary is that the woman is made into a monster with no redeemable qualities—a decision that isn’t only lazy on behalf of the filmmakers, but also wholly irresponsible to the African-American community. But director Lee Daniels makes the critical mistake of ignoring the social and political reality that his characters inhabit.  Besides a title card in the beginning of the film and some outdated hairstyles, we as the audience see little of the forces that compel Mary’s actions. To ignore 1987 Harlem as the foundation for the permanent Black underclass created by the Reagan Administration through its abhorrent social reform policies—including the War on Drugs and welfare reform—is to ignore a crucial aspect of his characters’ lives.   The political forces at work during the period operated in a much larger scope than the familial level portrayed in the film.  And that’s why it was a grievous error for Daniels to paint a portrait of Mary as a one-dimensional demon, seemingly devoid of any ounce of compassion toward even her own offspring.

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Teacher's candid Washington Post column casts more heat than light on the plight of Black students

By Ronald Chennault

Guest Contributor

Patrick Welsh’s op/ed column in The Washington Post earlier this month gets off to a bad start—a very bad one.  

For starters, the piece’s very title ("Making the Grade Isn't About Race. It's About Parents.") signals where Welsh is headed, as it confidently points out that the much-discussed racial achievement gap isn’t really about race at all, but can be addressed by good parenting.  As if such a big problem could be solved so simply.  Then comes the first sentence of the essay, as Welsh recalls a question he had posed to his class of predominantly Black 12^th-graders: “Why don’t you guys study like the kids from Africa?”  

“ 'Why don’t you guys study like the kids from Africa?' ”

I assume Welsh would defend his query borne out of “exasperation” by arguing that he knew his students well enough to believe that they would not be offended by it, but they—and all of us—should be insulted on many levels by such an action by a veteran teacher.  And this, according to the Post’s education columnist Jay Mathews, is what passes for “provocative” and “brilliant.”

But does the title of the piece really tell us what’s inside?  

Well, the essay does open with a discussion of parenting and its role in his students’ performance in school.  Welsh’s students lament the absence of fathers in their households or in their lives at all.  Those students have every right to cite that as a factor that influences their academic performance, and it’s a reasonable explanation.  Welsh goes one step further, however: he stops quoting his students momentarily and instead begins revealing his mind-reading ability, claiming that the students “knew intuitively” that their failure to excel academically “had nothing to do with race.”  So the kids didn’t actually say that race doesn’t matter, but Welsh expects the reader to trust that this is what they meant.

". . . [T]he kids didn’t actually say that race doesn’t matter, but Welsh expects the reader to trust that this is what they meant."

From there, the piece turns into a series of criticisms aimed at school administrators, a group Welch is obviously not very fond of.  Yet, in the middle of this tangent, Welsh actually arrives at some important points: that the gap that exists between students who are served best by schools and those who are served the least by them cannot just be attributed to race; that familial support and involvement matter, but so does income inequality; and that academic achievement is affected by factors that school leaders have little control over (but which doesn’t keep Welsh from blaming them anyway).  

So, given Welsh’s acknowledgement that multiple factors are at work, why does he insist on reducing all of that to the simple point of "it's about parents"? Why Welsh’s piece offers such a somewhat incoherent and ultimately unconvincing argument is not clear to me.  

He does make one thing clear, however: getting rid of out-of-touch school administrators and recruiting involved parents would solve a lot of our problems.  

If only it were that easy.   

Prof. Ronald Chennault, Ph.D. is a professor of education at DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. Prof. Chennault's research interests include cultural studies, educational theory and policy, media analysis and race and cultural pluralism.

Important genealogical lessons can be learned from the story of Michelle Obama's ancestral roots

By Tony Burroughs

Guest Contributor

Last week a New York Times article reported that Michelle Obama's great-great-great grandparents were a white man and a slave whom he impregnated. This story highlights the growing importance of genealogy in America.

Some of the comments posted online were from people skeptical that the full story of Michelle Obama's ancestry will ever be known.

One said, "The concept that records simply don't exist beyond the mid-1800s for so much of her family is so telling about the legacy of slavery we'll never shed."

Another said, "Where in Africa did Michelle Obama's ancestors come from? What was their tribe? When were they enslaved, and what were their experiences as individuals? What happened to these human beings after they were brought in chains to America? These things will very likely never be known."

While these may be the common perceptions of the public, they are not the views of sophisticated genealogists.

Most people don't have a clue about all the documents that exist, and that the paper trail never ends. The amount of paper that exists in libraries, archives and historical societies is mind-boggling. Much of it isn't catalogued, so the owners don't even know what they have.

"Most people don't have a clue about all the documents that exist, and that the paper trail never ends."

After recently re-inventorying records, one South Carolina repository discovered plantation records in their collection it did not know existed.

The National Archives has 4 billion pieces of paper and a backlog of 400-500 million pages of records that need to be processed. It took an act of Congress in 2000 to microfilm records from the Freedmen's Bureau, but nine years later they are still being digitized, and indexes need to be created.

Another bill to establish a national database of records of servitude, emancipation, and post-Civil War reconstruction records at the National Archives passed the House in 2007 but failed in the Senate and died.

There are also records in French, Spanish, Portuguese, German and Italian in the United States, Europe and Africa that contain details of our ancestors that need to be digitized, transcribed and published to solve some of our challenges.

Fortunately, through technological advances and the efforts of volunteers and private companies, much of this hidden paper is beginning to see the light of day. These resources will enable genealogists to solve current problems in the future.

Ancestry.com has digitized and put online over 4 billion records over the past 12 years and will be digitizing at least 5 million documents a year at the National Archives. Footnote.com has uploaded 60 million images online and is adding more than 1 million new records per month. The Mormon Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, is digitizing its entire collection of 2.5 million reels of microfilm.

The Atlantic Slave Trade Database contained 27,000 voyages from Africa to the New World when it debuted on a CD-ROM in 1999. Ten years later the database has almost 35,000 voyages online. There are many other institutions around the world that are doing digital projects.

But access to billions of records will not guarantee genealogical success any more than walking into a library will make people smart. Genealogists will still need genealogical and analytical skills to solve complex problems. Success in genealogy is based on available records, access to resources, knowledge of history, analytical ability, technical skills, genealogical skills and persistence. If any one of these ingredients is lacking, or is not of a high enough skill level, difficult genealogical challenges will go unsolved, often for years.

African-American genealogy is still in its infancy, and methodology is still being developed. Advanced research, particularly in the slavery period, can become very complicated. Progress is often contingent on genealogy skills, painstaking research in multiple locations and using records that have not been transcribed, indexed or placed on the Internet.

For 18 years, I had been trying to identify a slave owner for one of my ancestors six generations before mine. Before I finally solved it, I worked on the problem 12 hours a day for six straight days at the Family History Library in Salt Lake City. It took all my genealogical skills, historical knowledge, experience, patience and fortitude to.

In some situations, the problem of mixed-race parentage is difficult to solve, in others it is not as challenging as it may appear. Once a person is listed as a "mulatto," you have evidence of white blood in the family tree. Then you have to determine the person and the generation.

In some cases it is a simple matter of elimination, or other evidence will point to the person in question. Most research involves searching for evidence, analyzing records and sometimes amassing enough circumstantial evidence to draw conclusions.

This should not discourage people from seeking their roots. On the contrary, it should encourage people to search. Genealogy is easy, fun and inexpensive to start. After you make progress, you'll worry about the challenges later.

We need to demand more records be preserved and made available. But on the other hand, we need to take responsibility to preserve our own history, learn the craft of genealogy and pass the history and the craft on to our kids and grandkids.

"We need to demand more records be preserved and made available. But . . . we [also] need to take responsibility to preserve our own history."

People need to tape record their stories and record the stories of their elders. Baby boomers are beginning to die in record numbers and once they leave they take generations of oral family history with them.

People need to label family photos and preserve family bibles, obituaries, funeral programs, letters and other paper with ancestor's names on them in their house and their relatives' houses.

But most of all, people need to learn how to do genealogy, and stop thinking they can just jump on the Internet and trace their family history back to Africa before they log off the computer and finish their cup of coffee. If they understand the genealogical process, they'll avoid a lot of frustration.

Books on genealogy and conferences like the International Black Genealogy Summit at the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana, October 29-31 can be helpful.

Genealogical problems that we cannot solve today will be solved by our young people tomorrow. So I believe Michelle Obama's genealogy will advance by her children's -- or her grandchildren's generation.

Tony Burroughs is a professional genealogist and author of "Black Roots: A Beginners Guide to Tracing the African American Family Tree." He taught genealogy at Chicago State University for 15 years.

The Destruction of the Black Middle Class

By Dedrick Muhammad and Barbara Ehrenreich
Guest Contributors

To judge from most of the commentary on the Gates-Crowley affair, you would think that a "black elite" has gotten dangerously out of hand. First Gates (Cambridge, Yale, Harvard) showed insufficient deference to Crowley, then Obama (Occidental, Harvard) piled on to accuse the police of having acted "stupidly." Was this "the end of white America" which The Atlantic had warned of in its January/February cover story? Or had the injuries of class - working class in Crowley's case - finally trumped the grievances of race?

Left out of the ensuing tangle of commentary on race and class has been the increasing impoverishment-or, we should say, re-impoverishment--of African Americans as a group. In fact, the most salient and lasting effect of the current recession may turn out to be the decimation of the black middle class. According to a study by Demos and the Institute for Assets and Social Policy, 33 percent of the black middle class was already in danger of falling out of the middle class at the start of the recession. Gates and Obama, along with Oprah and Cosby, will no doubt remain in place, but millions of the black equivalents of Officer Crowley - from factory workers to bank tellers and white collar managers - are sliding down toward destitution.

For African Americans - and to a large extent, Latinos - the recession is over. It occurred between 2000 and 2007, as black employment decreased by 2.4 percent and incomes declined by 2.9 percent. During the seven-year long black recession, one third of black children lived in poverty and black unemployment-even among college graduates-- consistently ran at about twice the level of white unemployment. That was the black recession. What's happening now is a depression.

Black unemployment is now at 14.7  percent, compared to 8.7 for whites. In New York City, black unemployment has been rising four times as fast as that of whites. Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, estimates that 40 percent of African Americans will have experienced unemployment or underemployment by 2010, and this will increase child poverty from one-third of African-American children to slightly over half. No one can entirely explain the extraordinary rate of job loss among African Americans, though factors may include the relative concentration of blacks in the hard-hit retail and manufacturing sectors, as well as the lesser seniority of blacks in better-paying, white collar, positions.

But one thing is certain: The longstanding racial "wealth gap"  makes African Americans particularly vulnerable to poverty when job loss strikes. In 1998, the net worth of white households on average was $100,700 higher than that of African-Americans. By 2007, this gap had increased to $142,600. The Survey of Consumer Finances, which is supported by the Federal Reserve Board, collects this data every three years -- and every time it has been collected, the racial wealth gap has widened. To put it another way: in 2004, for every dollar of wealth held by the typical white family, the African American family had only one 12 cents. In 2007, it had exactly a dime. So when an African American breadwinner loses a job, there are usually no savings to fall back on, no well-heeled parents to hit up, no retirement accounts to raid.

All this comes on top of the highly racially skewed subprime mortgage calamity. After decades of being denied mortgages on racial grounds, African Americans made a tempting market for bubble-crazed lenders like Countrywide, with the result that high income blacks were almost twice as likely as low income white to receive high interest subprime loans. According to the Center for Responsible Lending, Latinos will end up losing between $75 billion and $98 billion in home-value wealth from subprime loans, while blacks will lose between $71 billion and $92 billion. United for a Fair Economy has called this family net-worth catastrophe the "greatest loss of wealth for people of color in modern U.S. history."

Yet in the depths of this African American depression, some commentators, black as well as white, are still obsessing about the supposed cultural deficiencies of the black community. In a December op-ed in the Washington Post, Kay Hymowitz blamed black economic woes on the fact that 70 percent of black children are born to single mothers, not noticing that the white two-parent family has actually declined at a faster rate than the black two-parent family. The share of black children living in a single parent home increased by 155 percent between 1960 to 2006, while the share of white children living in single parent homes increased by a staggering 229 percent.

Just last month on NPR, commentator Juan Williams dismissed the NAACP by saying that more up-to-date and relevant groups focus on "people who have taken advantage of integration and opportunities for education, employment, versus those who seem caught in generational cycles of poverty," which he went on to characterize by drug use and crime. The fact that there is an ongoing recession disproportionately affecting the African American middle class - and brought on by Wall Street greed rather than "ghetto" values - seems to have eluded him.

We don't need any more moralizing or glib analyses of class and race that could have just as well been made in the 70s. The recession is changing everything. It's redrawing the class contours of America in ways that will leave us more polarized than ever, and, yes, profoundly hurting the erstwhile white middle and working classes. But the depression being experienced by people of color threatens to do something on an entirely different scale, and that is to eliminate the black middle class.

Barbara Ehrenreich is the president of United Professionals and  author, most recently, of "This Land Is Their Land: Reports From a Divided Nation."

Dedrick Muhammad is a Senior Organizer and Research Associate of the Institute for Policy Studies.

Obama administration selects fathers' rights attorney Jeffery Leving to head first White House Roundtable on Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families

Afro-Netizen received the following press release from the law office of Jeffery Leving.

If this new presidential roundtable takes on the tone of Obama's infamous 2008 Father's Day speech, it may wind up causing more trouble than traction among parents who supported Obama in hopes that his administration would reform and create policies that encourage parental involvement in lieu of those that all but destroy already challenged families.

The White House Selects Fathers’ Rights Attorney Jeffery Leving as Resource:
First Annual White House Roundtable on Responsible Fatherhood
 
(Chicago, IL) On Wednesday, August 5, 2009, Fathers’ Rights Attorney Jeffery Leving will join senior White House staff to discuss strategies to promote responsible fatherhood and healthy families.  This is the first White House Roundtable on Responsible Fatherhood and Healthy Families in Chicago. This is the beginning of President Barack Obama’s national conversation on responsible fatherhood and community involvement.  Michael Strautmanis, Chief of Staff to the Assistant to the President for Intergovernmental Relations and Public Liaison (Valerie Jarrett) will be in attendance at the private Roundtable event with Jeffery Leving.

This private Roundtable will focus on strengthening fathers and families and address the challenge of father absence in America and will be held at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) Forum located at 725 W. Roosevelt Road. The private Roundtable is scheduled from 3:00 – 5:00pm and will be followed by a Town Hall Meeting at 6:30pm.  President Barack Obama will participate through a video conferencing link.

This event is co-sponsored by the White House Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Center for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships and the Administration for Children and Families.

For more information call Media Coordinator - Jennifer Whiteside at (312) 296-3666.

A warrior woman: fighting for life against breast cancer, brother Troy Anthony Davis’ death sentence

By Margaret Summers
Guest Contributor
Courtesy of National Coalition for the Abolition of the Death Penalty (NCADP)
 
Martina Correia, a 42-year-old African American from Savannah, Georgia, is a “warrior woman,” inspiring death penalty abolitionists as well as women like her struggling with breast cancer.

Correia’s brother is Troy Anthony Davis, convicted in 1991 for the shooting death of white police officer Mark MacPhail. There is no physical evidence linking Davis to the crime.  No murder weapon was produced. Seven of nine witnesses who initially implicated Davis have since recanted, stating in sworn affidavits that they were pressured or coerced by police into naming him.   Davis’ attorneys are appealing his case before the U.S. Supreme Court.  The Court will determine whether or not to review Davis’ habeas petition on June 25, and make its decision public on June 26 or June 29. If the appeal is rejected, Davis will be executed.

The case has generated global attention. Former President Jimmy Carter, Pope Benedict XVI, South African Bishop Desmond Tutu, the NAACP, and human rights organization Amnesty International, have called for Georgia Governor Sonny Purdue to grant Davis clemency. Former U.S. Representative Bob Barr, former FBI Director William Sessions, and several former prosecutors and judges, have filed an amicus brief supporting Davis’ plea.

Long before her brother’s involvement in the criminal justice system, Correia opposed the death penalty. An Amnesty International member since age 13, she resigned her U.S. Army nurse position when told she couldn’t express “political opinions” against capital punishment. Since her brother’s conviction, “I speak at universities, high schools and before community groups.  I talk about the injustices that lead to arrests of innocent people, why so many people of color get the death penalty, and how and why prosecutors select people for death sentences. I don’t just talk about my brother on death row, but the system that put him there.”

She didn’t know what to expect when Davis was tried. “I anticipated that my brother would get his day in court,” she explains. “But our judicial system is fraught with biases.    Until my brother was accused of killing a white police officer, I didn’t realize just how black I was.”

Watching Davis’ trial, “I felt like people were angry that my brother had attorneys from out of town,” says Correia.  “I thought he would have more time in the courtroom to argue his case, but he only got 20 minutes, and then a bell rang when he ran out of time.” Alarmed, Correia stepped up her fight for Davis’ exoneration.

Then in 2001, Correia was diagnosed with breast cancer. When chemotherapy treatments resulted in hair loss, she shaved her head and wore hats or scarves. The prison initially barred Correia from wearing head coverings during visits with Davis for “security reasons”; weapons could be hidden in headgear. Davis intervened. Correia was made an exception, “but whenever I wore a scarf the prison guards made me take it off to search it.”

Determinedly working through exhaustion, Correia’s only concession to debilitating chemotherapy is to request airfare from sponsors of appearances located more than five hours from her home. Otherwise, she drives herself, although chemotherapy makes her sleepy. “I have to try to stay awake while driving. When a speaking engagement’s over, I go home and rest, ”she says.  

Correia serves on the boards of death penalty abolition organizations like Georgians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty and New Hope House.  She also participates in efforts to increase federal funding for breast cancer research. She is a lobby delegation team leader in the National Breast Cancer Coalition. She teaches health maintenance classes to women with cancer in Savannah’s St. Joseph’s/Candler Health System.

Somehow Correia balances her advocacy with raising her 14-year-old son Antone, an Honor Roll middle school student, whose winning social studies project in a state competition last year was entitled: “How Does the Troy Anthony Davis Death Penalty Case Impact Georgia?” Antone, who considers “Uncle Troy” a role model, wants to be a medical researcher when he grows up, and find the cure for breast cancer that has stricken his mother and thousands of women.

Correia says her brother’s confinement on death row and her illness are difficult for her and their family but “I trust God, I have faith. It’s like Troy said when he was minutes away from execution (before the current U.S. Supreme Court appeal), ‘God didn’t take me this far to leave me.’ I pray for Troy and for Mark MacPhail’s family. I ask God to let me live to see my brother freed and my son graduate from school.  My biggest prayer is that my mother doesn’t continue to suffer. If Troy is executed it will break her heart.

“I’m going to fight this system until somebody says, ‘We made a mistake,’ she adds. “I know that the name Troy Anthony Davis is a name known all over the world by people who believe in truth, justice and fairness. That’s all I’m asking for, fairness.”

The NAACP and Amnesty International U.S.A. are co-sponsoring a “Week of Witness” for Troy Anthony Davis, June 19-26 2009. Faith communities are asked to pray for the Davis and MacPhail families during that week, sign a petition, ask their religious leaders to sign a clergy letter, or discuss Davis’ case during regular weekend worship services.  Additional information, please visit the “Week of Witness”.

Fox News Commentator Juan Williams boldly defends right-wing extremist Bill O'Reilly

H/T to Media Matters for America for capturing this gem of televised Black self-hateration . . .