ShareThisThe National Urban League has just issued its annual State of Black America report. It provides a troubling statistical snapshot of where blacks stand today in our country.
Like Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League, I'm concerned. But after concern, we part company. We have very different ideas of what it is we should be concerned about.
Morial, I am sure, sees his organization as part of the solution. From what I see, it is a well-funded symptom of the problem.
Shouldn't it embarrass black Americans that one the nation's largest and most prestigious civil rights organizations offers a long list of proposals to improve black life in our country, and every single proposal is a government program?
Government funded jobs as the answer to unemployment, more government money in public schools, government health care, government business loans, government money for retirement accounts, government programs for counseling homebuyers, government worker training programs, government money for building construction, and on and on.
There's not a single proposal that I could find in a several hundred-page report about improving black life that does not start with government. The civil rights movement once was about freedom and liberation. Now it's about government dependency. We should be ashamed.
The report is crafted to disabuse any notion that since we now have a black president, our discrimination woes are "relics of the past." The proof: blacks are "twice as likely as whites to be unemployed, three times more likely to live in poverty and more than six times as likely to be incarcerated."
But with all the statistics reported, methodically ignored is that blacks are little more than 12 percent of the population, yet we account for 50 percent of new AIDS cases, almost 40 percent of abortions, and 70 percent of black babies are born to unwed mothers and grow up in single parent homes.
Please, hold the hate mail telling me that I only want to show the ugly side of black America. No, I want to show the side of black America for which we ourselves are responsible and which really point to where our problems lie.
The National Urban League report talks about black poverty. But it does not bother to point out that hand in hand with poverty are single-parent homes. That black households with two married parents are not living in poverty and their household incomes are on par with those of white households.
Breakdown in family and values is at the root of poor education, unemployment, and crime as well.
Blacks have the highest church attendance in the country. If we paid attention to the gospel heard on Sunday, we wouldn't think that extorting welfare from taxpayers was the answer to our problems the other six days of the week.
Regarding discrimination, you have to wonder what it will take to get off this convenient excuse. Some 40 million white Americans voted for Barack Obama for president. That is two million more white Americans than voted for John Kerry in 2004.
As the civil rights movement transformed into a government dependency movement, the original focus on law and the U.S. constitution as the vehicles to protect all citizens has been lost.
My friend Pastor Walter Hoye sits in jail in Oakland, California for violating a clearly unconstitutional city ordinance prohibiting him from peacefully standing in front of an abortion clinic offering life literature to the mostly black clientele.
A black pastor's civil rights have been violated as he tried to save black babies. It happened in the district of Congresswoman Barbara Lee, chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. Yet, she could care less and has done nothing. The National Urban League could care less. The NAACP could care less.
What's wrong in black America? You won't find the answer in the National Urban League's report.
(Star Parker is an author and president of CURE, Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education (www.urbancure.org). She can be reached at parker@urbancure.org.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)
COLUMN
State of Black America report
I have never been one to judge others by their skin color or level of wealth. I grew up in schools where we called each other” Nigger” and thought nothing about it. They called me “White Cracker” and “Honkie”. We were like a big happy family singing in the gospel choir together playing sports together etc.etc.
In 2005 when a Bobby P., a black friend and I went to Florida together to watch the space shuttle launch. I kept noticing how people treated him. I asked him about it. After some conversation he explained to me that blacks were not treated the same in America, I listened and kind of took it with a grain of salt, he did plant a worm in my head and I continue to look for evidence.
I became disabled in the same year and went form a successful business owner to food stamps, Medicare, and visits to urban ministry to get living assistance. I have heard story after story of inequity, and survival. Normally I am the only White male.
This past Saturday while leaving a restaurant I passed by a hot dog stand where I heard that I could locate a good friend of mine from high school in that his son was operating to earn money for college. I liked Ervin and looked forward to seeing him again. I remembered that he was going to Howard University to Major in Law.
I walked up to the stand and asked an older man with missing teeth If he Knew Ervin He said I am Ervin. I noticed his bowed legs, which I remembered as his special stance. I told him Thai I am Gil Maness. We immediately became inbreed in a deep hug of friendship. I asked what happened. I listened to his story of getting married after getting his girlfriend pregnant and had to go to work to support his family. I thought to my self what an ashamed. Ervin was one of the top students in our school.
On Wednesday I was arrested on Wednesday for failure to appear for child support strange I received the notice on Saturday after the court date.
After spending a couple of days in the Guilford County jail I realized that there is a serious problem going on in America. I am in jail in a City where I feel Blacks have as good a chance as anywhere to get ahead. After being in many different holding Cells, Processing Rooms and Finally my cell-block. I listened to the stories of others who shared this space with me. I saw Hundreds of blacks and only one other white.
I was released later in the week and began telling my story not about "me" but about the unfairness I became aware of during my short stay. I felt a fierce desire to do something.
Everyone deserves a chance.
I was watching TV this morning and saw your report.
"I now know what I am here for."
Did you even bother to read the report before you criticized it?
If you had, you would have realized that the National Urban League's recommendations were directed to the President and laid out what the government can do to help address the problems it documents. But the Urban League is one of the strongest and most viable self-help organizations in the country and is doing an incredible amount of work in communities across the nation to empower African Americans to achieve their full potential. The fact that the League says, "Mr. President, this is how government can help," does not mean they are saying that the only way these issues can be addressed is through a government program.
But if you had read the report or learned anything about the Urban League before jumping out to criticize them, you would have known that.
The Urban League consistently puts its money where its mouth is, helping millions of people each year find jobs, start businesses, educate their children, purchase affordable homes, etc.
What are YOU doing to advance the cause (besides trashing those who are out there doing the work)?