WEEK IN REVIEW, MAY 18th 2007

Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post once again proves why he is one of best progressive editorialist A Question Of Race Vs. Class. Affirmative Action For the Obama Girls?

Barack Obama doesn't think anyone should cut his two daughters any slack when they apply to college -- not because of their race, at least. In the unlikely event that the Obama family goes broke, then maybe.

In an interview broadcast Sunday on ABC's "This Week," Obama waded into the central issue of the affirmative action debate: race vs. class. Perhaps typically, Obama's remarks were more Socratic than declarative. He didn't really answer the question, he rephrased it. Maybe the way he posed it, though, will lead to a discussion that's long overdue.

He seemed to side with those who think class predominates when he said, "I think that we should take into account white kids who have been disadvantaged and have grown up in poverty and shown themselves to have what it takes to succeed."

It's hard to disagree with that proposition, especially as economic inequality worsens in this country. Harvard University (where Obama went to law school) has taken the lead in guaranteeing that money will not be an obstacle for qualified low-income students.

But Obama seemed to agree with those who point to the lingering effects of racism when he noted that "there are a lot of African American kids who are still struggling, that even those who are in the middle class may be first-generation as opposed to fifth- or sixth-generation college attendees, and that we all have an interest in bringing as many people together to help build this country."

That observation points to circumstances that have to be taken into account. Diversity, in my view, is very much in the national interest. But diversity is a process, not a destination. We have to keep working at it. And since a college degree has become the great divider between those who make it in this society and those who don't, affirmative action in college admissions is one of the most powerful tools we have to increase diversity.

This is my personal oppinion. I am very much a believer in the fact that Class matter more then race. But hat doesn't mean race isn't important. I think part of learning is having to live and learn next to people who are different then you.

As for Obama's assessment of his daughters' privileged status, that's just a statement of the obvious. With such Type A, high-wattage parents, those girls probably will have the grades and test scores to get into any college. And if they don't, they will benefit from a different affirmative action program -- one that for many generations has ushered the academically undistinguished scions of prominent families into the nation's most selective colleges and universities.

Let's not pretend that college admissions has ever been a level playing field. Obama graduated from Columbia; his wife, Michelle, from Princeton. This means that at those two Ivy League schools, their daughters will be "legacy" applicants, just like George W. Bush was at Yale and legions of Kennedys have been at Harvard. Given the Obamas' power and fame, admissions officers at the schools they attended -- and probably at other elite schools, too -- are going to find a way to let the Obama girls in.

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POLITICS
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When to play ethnic politics? Tread carefully when competing for the late Juanita Millender-McDonald's seat.

AS CANDIDATES LINE UP to run for the congressional seat of the late Juanita Millender-McDonald, it is tempting — inevitable, perhaps — to identify them by ethnic group. The Long Beach/South Los Angeles district is the stand-in for much of a region that once was characterized by an African American voting majority and political establishment but has become increasingly Latino. Every vacant seat raises the question: Is Latino power beginning to eclipse the black political structure?

So there is Latina state Sen. Jenny Oropeza, African American Assemblywoman Laura Richardson and other candidates who, like it or not, will be depicted as champions of their respective ethnic communities. The election may presage other district transitions. Will county Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke be succeeded by another African American or by a Latino? What about Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jan Perry? If growth or shrinkage in the roster of black elected officials is the only indicator of political power, it is easy to understand the fervor with which African Americans try to retain a seat.

Ignoring the ethnic factor verges on dishonesty. Racial and ethnic identity among historically marginalized minorities has a long and obvious history in the democratic process. Elected officials naturally group together to promote common interests. Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) was being naive or disingenuous when he wrote Millender-McDonald earlier this year asking to abolish her Congressional Black Caucus and similar groups, such as the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, on grounds that race has no place in politics. We don't live in that ideal world just yet.

But that doesn't mean those caucuses are doing right by focusing on power consolidation at the expense of constituent service. Millender-McDonald's multiracial district remains plagued by large pockets of poverty and gang violence that affects all of its people. Any good candidate should be embraced by any ethnic caucus.

Also see Gay Leaders Continue to Label Black Politicians Homophobic Until Proven Friendly
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Sunday Shutout: The Lack of Gender & Ethnic Diversity on the Sunday Morning Talk Shows. Guest lists that are overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male.

Not only are the Sunday morning talk shows on the broadcast networks dominated by conservative opinion and commentary, the four programs -- NBC's Meet the Press, ABC's This Week, CBS' Face the Nation, and Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday -- feature guest lists that are overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male.

And the top-rated Sunday show -- Meet the Press -- shows the least diversity of all. The NBC program is the most male and nearly the most white (Face the Nation beats it out by 1 percentage point), and it has the highest proportion of white males to all other guests.

A breakdown of the guests who appeared on the Sunday shows in 2005 and 2006 shows that men dominate these shows. In fact, men outnumber women by a 4-to-1 ratio on average.

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In Philadelphia, Michael Nutter, a reformist candidate given no shot has captured the Democratic mayoral nomination.

"Philadelphia's next mayor must run this city differently than John Street has," Nutter's first campaign commercial intoned. "Michael Nutter will."

There is, of course, much more to the man than his history with Street.

He is a former financial adviser and disco deejay, a husband and father. He is a Baptist who was born a Catholic, an African American politician without much of an African American political base. He is a political reformer who has been a ward leader since 1990, a charisma-challenged policy wonk whose dry wit has been the prime source of humor in this year's mayoral forums.

"No candidate is more informed," said supporter Leslie Anne Miller, the former general counsel to Gov. Rendell. "No one has better articulated positions on a variety of issues, because he's actually taken the time to think about the issues."

Before resigning his Council seat last summer to run for mayor, Nutter had solidified his reputation as the body's most independent and arguably its most accomplished member.

He played a key role on such issues as banning smoking in public places, writing new ethics rules to address the pay-to-play system, enacting campaign finance reform, keeping the wage- and business-tax cuts in place, and hiring 100 more police.

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CULTURE
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The growing divide between poor and middle-class blacks

The May Essence magazine examines the growing divisiveness between poor blacks and the black middle class today. Of course there is a divide: Those of us who've "made it" have been taught to despise those who didn't. However, we've also been taught that if we turn our backs on poor blacks, we're no better than racist whites.

The article begs for discussion and debate. As an educated black woman, am I my brother's keeper? Do I have a responsibility to my community?

It always amazed me how whites were fearless about drawing distinctions between their middle and poorer classes. White college friends and later co-workers didn't flinch in mixed company when describing someone as "trailer trash or poor white trash."

But for us, referring to someone as "ghetto" to describe another black person to a white person was the ultimate betrayal.

Not anymore. Over the past 10 or 15 years, the mythic unity among blacks has crumbled.

In a scorching and highly acclaimed standup routine in the late '90s, Chris Rock wielded the "n" word like a burning cross. To paraphrase, he said he loves black people. "But I hate n------!"

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: A survey exploring life, love, work, motherhood, money, sex, religion and relationships has found life differs for black and white U.S. wome

More than 90 percent of African-American and white women reported that racism remains a prevalent force in U.S. society, according to the survey for Women in Black & White.

Fifty-six percent of African-American women reported feeling marginalized due to their race, compared to 5 percent of white women; however, white women feel that gender is the more defining factor.

Fourteen percent of black mothers worry -- compared with 1.5 percent of white women -- that their daughters will be viewed as sexually available due to their race.

Although white women live in households with higher annual incomes, black women are more financially independent, with a higher percentage having checking accounts solely in their own name -- 95 percent compared to 83 percent of white women. Ninety percent of African-American women had a savings account, compared with 80 percent of white women.

Ninety percent of black women worked outside the home, compared with 78 percent of white women.

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It's open season on hip hop's thug

Geoffrey Canada smacked the problem right in the face.

As a Harlem community worker with 20 years of experience dealing with and nurturing young people, Canada said that the message coming out of hip hop was deadly and irresponsible. The lyrics imply that cooperating with the police is being an Uncle Tom. Canada found this reprehensible and said that it amounted to saying to criminals that the community was theirs to have.

Prof. Douglas Thompkins began the discussion by pointing out that, no matter what the history of police community relations had been, he saw that the black community needed to change its attitudes because losing the rule of law means that black people live in subhuman conditions in their own communities and those inhuman conditions were created by violent criminals.

There were many of the usual explanations for crime, such as slavery, poverty and police harassment that came from the audience of students and from some John Jay professors, but the panelists - with one exception - did not give in to the regular line of excuses. Almost everyone rejected the idea that black or Latino criminals were helpless victims buffeted around by external influences. They made choices; they had to be accountable.

Thompkins has credibility. He served 18 years in prison and was the leader of a Chicago street gang. He understands that police overreaction or excessive force is something that must be factored in and protested against. Thompkins said that when refusing to cooperate with police became synonymous with minority identity, that attitude brought a kind of hell to the black and Latino lower-class communities. In summarizing, John Jay Prof. David Kennedy felt that we are on the verge of a new kind of civil rights movement in which the people oppressed by crime move to liberate themselves by reprimanding the police whenever they resort to excessive force.

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bringing baseball back to African-Americans. Seaford grad, former major leaguer on tour to renew interest in sport

DeShields, 38, describes his role in the venture as that of a "businessman." Unlike Boyd, a 47-year-old right-hander who fancies himself a reincarnation of ageless pitcher Satchel Paige, DeShields harbors no illusions of making a comeback as a player. He's perfectly content to watch his 14-year-old son play on a traveling team. He just wishes more young African-Americans were as interested.

Like so many current and former black players, DeShields is passionate about the subject. He alleges that Major League Baseball, while spending time and resources promoting the game in Latin America, has neglected inner-city communities and alienated young blacks.

Most major league teams, including the Phillies, have created academies in the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. Foreign-born players aren't subject to the amateur draft, so teams have concentrated their scouting efforts outside the U.S. According to the Central Florida report, a record 29.4 percent of major leaguers last season were of Latino descent.

Sixty years after Robinson's debut, DeShields believes blacks are being left behind.

"It's sort of a mirror image of American business," he said. "Take jobs out of the country, outsource them, and Americans don't have jobs. That's what it comes down to. Major League Baseball has set up facilities in other countries. They're getting these kids for cheap because there's no world draft. It's really unfair to our kids.

"Major League Baseball isn't really interested in developing our kids, so we have to do it ourselves. That's basically what we're trying to do. Every day, all day, we have to put that same type of effort with our kids."

Boyd, the tour's ringleader, has roots in New England from his time with the Boston Red Sox and in the independent Can-Am League when he pitched for the Brockton Rox. DeShields said many of the initial stops will be in that region, with the barnstormers facing Can-Am League teams this week in Brockton, Nashua, N.H., New Haven, Conn., and Quebec City.

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LAW
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Patricia J. Williams writes that fifty-three years after Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court is poised to rule on two cases, in Seattle and St. Louis, which put the future of school integration at risk.

May 17 is the fifty-third anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education, the iconic case we celebrate for having ended the notion that racially separate education could be considered "equal." Yet the meaning of that case has always been the subject of dispute. I grew up in a household where we learned that segregation was bad because it was premised on the stigma of inferiority. Segregation licensed the isolation of African-Americans from the benefits of citizenship; it limited access to a full range of public spaces, not just schools. I took it for granted that such provincialism ultimately hobbled both whites and blacks as well as the anxious "in between" groups, such as recent immigrants and Asian-Americans. We cannot be full participants in a democracy if we have built impermeable walls around our various identity groups.

From the beginning, of course, there was an alternative narrative, voiced mostly by apologists for Jim Crow: that freedom of association should allow us to live in ghettos if we choose. The most interesting exposition of this view--interesting because it's from a refugee from Hitler's Germany--is probably Hannah Arendt's controversial 1959 essay "Reflections on Little Rock." "It has been said," she asserts, "that enforced integration is no better than enforced segregation, and this is perfectly true."

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Today, Reggie Henderson will vote. It's a right most Americans take for granted. Not him. Not if you're an ex-felon like Henderson. Not if you've been locked up.

Today, Reggie Henderson will vote. It's a right most Americans take for granted. Not him.
Not if you're an ex-felon like Henderson. Not if you've been locked up.

You see, in the United States, if you've committed a felony, voting is an iffy proposition. Henderson, 34, is lucky he lives in Pennsylvania, where ex-felons and those on parole and probation are eligible to vote. In New Jersey, ex-felons can vote, too. Not so simple in Delaware. There, ex-felons have to wait five years before they can have their voting rights reinstated.

And it's a good thing that Henderson, who rebuilt his life and now operates three barbershops, doesn't live in Florida. The Sunshine State, land of hanging chads, bans ex-felons from voting - for life.

Can you say disenfranchisement? Prohibitive voting laws in 35 states mean that at any given time, 5.3 million American citizens - a disproportionate number of them African American men like Henderson - get no political say in their lives. Not only have they been locked up, they are locked out of the democratic process.

Forty years after passage of the National Voting Rights

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HEALTH
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Hartford Courant: Autism And Race. Parents, Advocates Seek More Prompt Diagnoses Of Minority Children

When Ronnie Bonner Jr. was 21/2, his mother, Corendis Dawson-Bonner, was convinced that he had autism. While her pediatrician said not to worry, Dawson-Bonner was sure that his lack of language development, eye contact and social interests were symptoms of the disease.

"We would have a roomful of kids, and he would be off in his own little corner of the world," Dawson-Bonner remembers. "He didn't engage."

In the next few years, doctors and other professionals would pin a wide array of labels on Ronnie - including developmental delay, attention deficit disorder, hyperactivity and a social and emotional disorder. Even obsessive-compulsive disorder and oppositional defiant disorder were mentioned.

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INTERNATIONAL
Income inequality between races in Brazil has narrowed over the past decade but a black woman still earns only half what a white man makes, a United Nations report showed.

Income inequality between races in Brazil has narrowed over the past decade but a black woman still earns only half what a white man makes, a United Nations report showed on Thursday.

The difference in income between blacks and whites in Brazil narrowed by 31 percent between 1995 and 2005, according to an International Labor Organization study of global workplace discrimination.

The income gap narrowed because of successive minimum wage hikes, lower inflation and declining real wages for white men, the report said.

Brazil also made progress in advancing policies to reduce race inequality, said Lais Abramo, ILO director for Brazil.

"There are many countries that don't even want to recognize race discrimination," she said.

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A young girl fast for peace in Jamaica,

"We have the power to be successful in anything as long as it's positive!"

Today and tomorrow, she will continue to spread this message during her 12-hour-a-day fasting and reading for peace and purity at the Kingston and St. Andrew Parish Library.

It all began at 6:00 a.m. yesterday and already, there has been an overwhelming response to what Choc'late calls her 100 per cent crime-free initiative.

"A lot of times as youths, what we may hear especially from adults are negative things - we don't have self respect, we don't have discipline we don't have a sense of direction - however my motive is to tell the youths what we have. We have the power of making the right choices! We have the power of accepting responsibility for our action! We have the power of doing anything!" she said.

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MONEY
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Black Expo heads to S. Africa

An Indiana Black Expo delegation is leaving Thursday for South Africa, the first of two trips to Africa aimed at humanitarian exchanges, economic development and forging an international presence for the organization.

Joyce Rogers, Expo's president and chief executive officer, and Alpha Garrett, communications director of the organization, will travel with state Rep. Vernon Smith, D-Gary, for the 11-day trip.
And next month, Rogers, Garrett and representatives of a local consulting firm will travel to the West African nation of Senegal.

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Black Men Can't Coach? While The Ncaa Considers Changing Its Game Plan, Many Black Football Head-Coaching Candidates Remain On The Bench

In early may, the University of Alabama had an opportunity to make history by hiring the first African American head football coach ever in the Southeastern Conference -- and fumbled the ball. After firing football head coach Mike Price over an incident involving a stripper, the university -- upon the urging of the Rev. Jesse Jackson -- began interviewing Sylvester Croom, an African American running backs coach for the NFL's Green Bay Packers. But in the end, Miami Dolphins assistant coach Mike Shula, a white man, got the job even though Croom was equally (and some say more) qualified.

This is but the latest incident in which qualified African Americans have been turned down for head-coaching jobs within Division 1-A football, collegiate sports' elite.

In fact, attend one of the 50 or so Division 1-A college football games played on any given Saturday this autumn and you'll see that nearly half the players battling it out on the field are African American. Also, a good portion of the officiating team is black. Many of the fans cheering and jeering are African American as well. But take a look at the sidelines to the fellows wearing the headsets and you'd be hard-pressed to find a coach who isn't white.

The stats paint a grim picture: of the 117 Division 1-A football teams, only 3.4% of them have black head coaches. They can literally be counted on one hand: Tyrone Willingham at Notre Dame, San Jose State's Fitzgerald Hill, Tony Samuel at New Mexico State, and Karl Dorrell at UCLA, who was hired following last season.

By comparison, more than 20% of the coaches in Division 1-A college basketball, the second most popular -- and profitable -- sport on many campuses, are black. It's difficult to find worse stats for black coaches even among the ranks of major professional sports. During the 2001—2002 season, the NBA boasted the highest percentage (48%) of African American head coaches, with 14 counted among its 29 franchises. Though the NFL's statistics are abysmal, NCAA football still lags behind its pro counterpart, which had two African American head coaches (6%) among its 32 franchises during the 2002 season (Marvin Lewis has since been hired by the Cincinnati Bengals, bringing that rate up to 9%). Even Hispanic-dominated Major League Baseball had eight African Americans (26%) calling the shots.

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Tavis Smiley will headline a two-day conference aimed at maximizing the economic power of the black community.

Renee Reed had a problem.

The Miami resident wanted to refinance her home, but felt that the bank wasn't giving her a good deal.

Her financial advisor suggested she work through her church, New Birth Cathedral of Faith, 2300 NW 135th St. in Opa-locka.

New Birth is part of the Collective Banking Group, a coalition of 60 African-American churches in South Broward and Miami-Dade whose mission is to maximize the combined financial power of church members and use it for their benefit.

It worked for Reed, who said she saved about $5,000 in interest and fees once she had the weight of CBG behind her. She was treated better, she said, and got a lower interest rate.

''I've never had such a good relationship with a bank before, and the difference is because of CBG,'' Reed said.

Starting Friday, CBG is sponsoring a two-day Empowerment Conference in Hallandale Beach, at which church members and others can learn about managing credit, home ownership and financial practices for faith-based organizations. One featured speaker will be Tavis Smiley, the African-American author, radio personality and motivational speaker.

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RIP
Yolanda King, Daughter of Civil Rights Leader, Dies at 51