Once Again America Is Faced With The Fierce Urgency of Now: Why We MUST March on October 2

August 28th 2010 marked the 47th anniversary of the historic 1963 “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.” It was during that momentous event that Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous “I Have A Dream” speech in which he made a provocative appeal to America’s collective conscience to create a society in which people were judged on “the content of their character and not on the color of their skin.” Unfortunately, people often get caught up in the mesmerizing delivery of King’s “call to conscience” and fail to respond to his call to action. Many people often ignore the first part of Dr. King’s speech where he criticized America for defaulting on the promissory note “to which every American was heir…a promise that all men would be guaranteed the ‘unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.’” Dr. King admonished:
“America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds but we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.”
Fast forward to 2010 and the promissory note Dr. King referenced still has not been honored and once again we are in a critical moment in history faced with the fierce urgency of now. Although some argue that the election of our country’s first Black president is evidence that we are now living in a post-racial society, a close examination of several major indicators of social and economic progress reveals otherwise. Some individuals are indeed living the American dream, however far too many Americans, especially Blacks and the poor of all race and ethnic groups, are living social nightmares struggling to survive.
According to 2009 US Census data, the poverty rate climbed from 13.2 percent, or 39.8 million people, in 2008 to 14.3 percent, or 43.6 million people in 2009. Among the working-age population (ages 18 to 65), poverty rose from 11.7 percent to 12.9 percent, which is at the highest since the 1960s, when the government launched a war on poverty that expanded the federal role in social welfare programs from education to health care. Poverty rose among all race and ethnic groups, but was particularly higher for blacks and Hispanics. The number of Hispanics in poverty increased from 23.2 percent to 25.3 percent; for blacks it increased from 24.7 percent to 25.8 percent. The number of whites in poverty rose from 8.6 percent to 9.4 percent and child poverty rose from 19 percent to 20.7 percent.
The unemployment rate for the last 12 months (August 2009 to August 2010) has been between 9.5 and 10% for the general US population, the unemployment rate for the same period for Blacks has been between 15.2% (August 2009) to 16.3% (August 2010). Although poverty rates among Blacks declined during the 1990s it is now on an upward turn. While 4.5 percent of white mortgage borrowers lost their homes to foreclosure between 2007 and 2009, Black and Latino borrowers had 7.9 and 7.7 percent foreclosure rates, respectively and high-income black borrowers were 80 percent more likely to lose their homes to foreclosure than their white counterparts, while Latino borrowers were 90 percent more likely (Center for Responsible Lending). Gentrification is eroding historically black neighborhoods and black owned land tracts and residential segregation--a primary mechanism for reproducing race and class-based social inequality is becoming more widespread. The American criminal justice system and prison industrial complex are ensnaring people of color especially Black males into legally sanctioned systems of oppression, social control and exclusion that are tantamount to the Jim Crow era as pointed out by Dr. Michelle Alexander.
The gains in upward social mobility that many people made before the Bush years (e.g. moving into the middle class) are being demolished by the effects of a worsening recession caused by years of outrageous and uncontrolled greed on Wall Street, senseless spending on wars that we should have never engaged, and a government gone wild—tending more the interests of the extremely wealthy and corporations than to meeting the needs of the workers, middle class and poor families and children in our country.
And, yet the voices of outrage over the direction that our country is heading that are the loudest are the ones representing the most outrageous and vitriolic minority including Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, to mention a few.

It appears however that the masses are awakening a new civil rights movement. On October 2, 2010 the national NAACP, the AFL-CIO, National Council of La Raza, United for Peace and Justice and many other organizations from around the country will assemble in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC to show the real face of the American majority. Unlike the Tea Party movement’s factions e.g. Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin’s followers, the “One Nation Working Together” movement on 10.2.10 will galvanize people from diverse race/ethnic, socioeconomic, and religious backgrounds into a united front representing “one nation, indivisible” fighting for “liberty and justice for all.” On that day Americans will stand together and demand that Congress refocus its priorities to put unemployed Americans back to work, stimulate the economy in our local communities, ensure the protection and civil rights and liberties of ALL people, and invest in a sound high-quality education for ALL youth.

Like faith without works—words without action are dead—inconsequential or of no effect. Romanticizing Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech without fighting to turn its core principles in reality diminishes its worth. Dr. King’s warning is just as significant and relevant today as it was back in 1963. We are yet again faced with the “fierce urgency of now” and “this is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism; now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.”

For more information on how you can sign up to participate the One Nation Working Together 10.2.10 visit the national website at www.onenationworkingtogether.org.

Fighting Back Against the Reproduction Social Inequality in Our Public Schools

The well-being and life outcomes of children are immutably tied to the social status of their family. The social status of families are strongly correlated to levels of educational attainment of parents or adults.  North Carolina State Representative Alma Adams once said during a press conference on poverty that “children are poor because they are connected to poor families.” I would like to add to Representative Adams’ astute observation that most poor families are headed by poor women.  Women, who for example, can’t afford to attend a school board meeting at 3:00 in the afternoon on a weekday to fight for equity and fair treatment of their children in school. Or, women who are often mischaracterized as being apathetic about their child’s education but who, to the contrary, are limited in the flexibility they have over their work schedules or the type of work they must do to provide the basic necessities for their children. 

It is with these women in mind that I—along with 18 other courageous social justice fighters representing a mosaic of race/ethnicity, age, profession, and socioeconomic statuses—elected to take a stand against the regressive practices and policies of the Wake County School Board on July 20, 2010.   For the record, I, like the others who make up the group I  refer to as “The Courageous 19,”  did not go to the Wake County school board meeting looking to get arrested but to participate in a democratic process called an open public meeting.  However, by the heavy presence of police—some on foot others on horses and the two prisoner-transport buses that were parked outside upon our arrival—it became apparent that our presence as peaceful and concerned citizens was not welcomed by some board members but instead met with trepidation and hostility.

While it wasn’t a pleasant place to stand, it was through moral conviction that we knew standing on the sides of justice and equity for ALL is always the right place to stand. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his famous “Letter From A Birmingham Jail:”

“An unjust law is no law at all…one who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.”

Our act of civil disobedience was not novel but modeled after the examples of great Civil and Human Rights advocates who helped to make democracy a lived experience and not merely words on paper—including Henry David Thoreau, the Boston Tea Partiers, Gandhi, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the students in the People’s Republic of China during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protest, to name a few.  History reminds us that democracy comes with a heavy price.  We have come too far to turn back the hands of time by instituting policies that will deepen racial and class divides instead of uniting us as “one nation, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.” 

The decision of the Wake County School Board to eliminate the district’s diversity policy takes us to a place that reminds us of a frightening and not too distant past. It is reminiscent of a time when Americans, in particular southerners, were forced to live the lie that separate was also equal and when seemingly innocuous terms like “neighborhood schools” or “choice” were codes for the preservation of white privilege and the sociopolitical disenfranchisement of Blacks.

Contrary to the assumption that after electing our nation’s first black president, that we have been catapulted into a post-racial society, empirical evidence suggests that racism  in the 21^st Century is just as real and pernicious as it was in the 19^th and 20^th century. Instead of manifesting in conspicuous ways like de jure segregation, implementing poll taxes at voting sites, or terrorizing neighborhoods by extremist hate groups like the KKK, the new racist practices are manifested in things that are all too easy to take for granted or that are disguised as harmless, necessary, or conventional e.g. racially polarized neighborhoods or residential segregation, gross inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the  academic achievement gap, or racial disparities that plaque our prison system. 

Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, renowned race scholar at Duke University, argues that racism today is very much a part of the American social and political fabric and extends beyond the realms of how people feel or what they think; it is a structure or network of social relations at social, political, economic and ideological levels that shapes the life chances of the various races.  I argue that we can not relent on our fight for equity and justice in education because it is through education as an institution that these networks of social, political, and ideological relations are shaped, reinforced, and reproduced. 

Dr. Ron Haskins, with the Brookings Institution wrote in the introduction of his report on Education and Economic Mobility (Economic Mobility Project:  An Initiative of the Per Charitable Trusts, 2009), “most Americans believe that the road to achieving the American Dream passes through the schoolhouse door.”  Unfortunately, for many children the road to the schoolhouse is similar to the yellow brick road that Dorothy had to travel on her way to OZ—filled with unleveled terrain, blocked paths, and threats, while for other children, the road is paved with golden opportunities and enriching excitement.

Make no mistake about it—the process of schooling is far more than just teaching children to read, write and do arithmetic in order to become productive adult members of society.  Education systems are the seed beds whereby cultural capital and social capital—two essential mechanisms that are used create and reproduce social inequality--are planted and nurtured.  Douglas Massey (2007) defines cultural capital as manners, behaviors, speech, and knowledge that enable individuals to be effective as actors within a particular social context i.e. elite settings (which are often homopholous e.g. same race/ethnicity, class, gender).  Massey contends that the possession of cultural capital makes an individual more productive not because he or she can perform a given operation better or faster (e.g. high scores on a standardized test), but because he or she can navigate structures of power with greater ease, feeling relaxed and comfortable in certain social settings and thus interacting with persons of influence and power to get things done.  Massey (2007) further submits that cultural capital represents a symbolic resource that privileged groups can manipulate through opportunity hoarding and social closure  to perpetuate stratification and increase inequality.  For example, teachers who attend the same social functions or routinely interact  with the same groups as the children they serve are particularly vulnerable to acting in ways that place these children and parents at a greater advantage than the children and parents they only see or relate to within the class room setting.  I argue that the same applies to children if they are not redirected as is the case with the tendency of children to self segregate in educational settings, i.e. sitting in segregated groups in the cafeteria (see Tatum 1997).    

The bottom line is that our children learn from us—the adults.  Unfortunately, integration and equality doesn’t happen naturally but requires adults acting for the greater good and not our own self interests to create a humane and socially just society. Today’s political climate doesn’t afford persons the luxury of a free ride in our Democracy but it demands protest (when warranted) and civic engagement at all times.   Dr. King warned that civil disobedience is a type of “constructive, nonviolent tension that is necessary for growth.”  If we are to grow into a “more perfect union,” we can’t be afraid to stand up and push back against ultraconservative factions or segregationist who seek to promote racial discord and division and white supremacy or elitism as natural laws. For our children and the preservation of our democracy we all must stand up and declare “forwards ever, backwards never.”

African Americans and the Fourth of July

I know I am taking the lazy way out by not writing my own perspective about what it means to celebrate the Fourth of July from an African American perspective. I did write a piece several years ago and promise to post it when I return home from my mini vacation with family in Virginia (of all places)--the place where, earlier this year (2010) the state's Governor Bob McDonnel refused to recognize the significant contribution of slavery as part of the Confederate history in his proclamation designating April as "Confederate History" Month.  In the mean time here are two really interesting perspectives about African Americans and the Fourth of July that you may find a worthy read. 

Curious to hear your thoughts after reading, which you can post below.

Enjoy both the holiday and the reading!


http://www.theroot.com/views/meaning-fourth-july-21st-century-negro

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/opinion/04rich.html