July 23 - 29, 2010

Minority communities toxic for many children, study says

By Marian Wright Edelman
Guest Columnist

“Improving the places where our boys and young men of color live, learn, work and play is no easy undertaking. But it is doable. And that makes it the right thing to do.” – Healthy Communities Report

A new report was released in June that sheds a sobering light on how many Black and Latino boys grow up in communities that are, in various ways, a danger to their health.

Called “Healthy Communities Matter: The Importance of Place to the Health of Boys of Color,” the report contained contributions from scholars and researchers at the RAND Corporation, PolicyLink, the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at Harvard Law School, and the Center for Nonviolence and Social Justice and the Department of Emergency Medicine at Drexel University.

The researchers found that boys and young men overall experience worse health outcomes than girls, that these health disparities are even more profound for Black and Latino boys, and that many of these disparities can be connected to community patterns.

“Negative health outcomes for African-American and Latino boys and young men are a result of growing up in neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage, places that are more likely to put boys and young men directly in harm’s way and reinforce harmful behavior,” the report states.

“In other words, if you grow up in a neighborhood with a good school, where it’s safe, where you can walk and play outside, where you have a regular doctor and where you have access to good food, you are more likely to live a long and healthy life,” the report continues.

“On the other hand, if you grow up in a neighborhood where you’re not safe, where your school is failing you and where you do not have a place to go when you are sick or a basic grocery store, then you are far more likely to live a shorter life, to earn less money, to be party to or victim of violence and to be far less healthy emotionally and physically.

“If you are African American or Latino, you are likely to face not just one of those challenges,” the report says, “but many or all of them at once.”

Researchers found disparities for Black and Latino boys and young men in a number of areas, including infant mortality, childhood asthma hospitalizations, childhood obesity, post-traumatic stress disorder, rates of HIV and AIDS, and lack of health insurance and access to health care.

They also found safety disparities, including higher rates of exposure to domestic and community violence, child abuse and neglect, lifetime likelihood of going to prison, and gun violence and homicide death rates.
The researchers also were able to track how social inequalities and negative neighborhood conditions work together to shape the life course of boys and young men in schools and communities of “concentrated disadvantage.” They note that these schools’ and neighborhoods’ common characteristics, including concentrated poverty, community violence, high rates of incarceration, overexposure to unhealthy foods, and lack of recreation often work together to lead to disruptive behavior and psychological conditions for boys and young men of color.

For the Children’s Defense Fund and others concerned about dismantling the pipeline to prison for children of color, their descriptions of accumulated risks and negative outcomes are sadly familiar.

But there are solutions, the report says. “To recalibrate the life trajectory of African-American and Latino boys and young men, policymakers, community activists and government officials must view the health of a community not in individual parts, but as an unbroken whole, made up of individual but virtually inseparable parts.”

The report profiles several California organizations and public/private partnerships that are doing just that, including:

The California Endowment’s Healthy Returns Initiative, which is designed to address the growing number of youths with untreated health and mental health needs in the state’s juvenile justice system
Youth UpRising, a successful Oakland youth organization and community center that includes health and mental health care, a healthy café, and job training among its offerings

Safe Community Partnership, which is using a public health approach to help stop gun violence.

The researchers summarize their findings this way: “If we have a clearer understanding of [the problems facing Black and Latino boys and young men], then we are all more obligated to do something about it. And once we know that the trauma these children experience is a product of many different factors in their homes, schools and neighborhoods, then it becomes incumbent on health, education, criminal justice and civic leaders to all work together to improve conditions.”

“As a society, we place great emphasis on the personal responsibility of the individual, and our families and institutions should do everything they can to instill in all of our boys and young men a strong sense of self-worth, hope and accountability. But if we expect our children to climb over poverty’s great barriers without help from the rest of us, then we are the ones who are being irresponsible.

“Improving the places where our boys and young men of color live, learn, work and play is no easy undertaking. But it is doable. And that makes it the right thing to do.”

Marian Wright Edelman is President of the Children’s Defense Fund whose Leave No Child Behind® mission is to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start in life. For more information, go to www.childrensdefense.org.

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July 16 - 22, 2010

Attack on schools chief misses mark

By Rodney G. Moore
Guest Columnist

The public has a legitimate interest in assuring that public expenditures are made in a responsible manner. The article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution attacking the security personnel assigned to School Superintendent Dr. Beverly L. Hall, however, misses the mark.

I had the pleasure of serving as the Atlanta Public Schools Chief Legal Officer from 2000-2005. Working with a forward-thinking school board, Dr. Hall set forth an agenda focused on improving student achievement. She understood that in order to increase student achievement, the system needed highly qualified and motivated educators, engaged parents and a supportive community.

Under Dr. Hall’s leadership, many great educators who had served the system with honor for years felt comfortable retiring because a strong instructional leader was in place. There were others, however, who left unwillingly and with ill will towards a superintendent and board they believed ruined a good thing. 
While anger does not always translate into violence, the tenure-denial killings at the University of Alabama remind us that violence can happen. And for every 100 parents who appreciated a return to discipline in some of the more challenged schools, there were some who felt outrage that their child may have been held accountable for disruptive behavior.

Added to the mix was the reality that unlike Gwinnett, Cobb and other Georgia counties, Atlanta is a big American city with big city problems. The safety issues associated with downtown Atlanta are well documented. And of course, 9/11 was also a game changer.

As the systems legal counsel, I was aware of the constant threats associated with serving as an urban superintendent – especially one associated with school reform. While the world remembers Patty Hearst, we forget that on November 6, 1973, in Oakland, California, two members of the Symbionese Liberation Army killed school superintendent Marcus Foster and badly wounded his deputy, Robert Blackburn, as the two men left an Oakland school board meeting. The hollow-point bullets used to kill Dr Foster had been packed with cyanide. The SLA had condemned Foster for his plan to introduce identification cards into Oakland schools.

As a result of these and other concerns, APS intelligently adopted several safety protocols, including assigning a security person to its chief executive – the person the public often associates with every decision made in the school system. APS also moved its operations from a potentially environmentally sick building to a modern building that allowed its employees to work in a healthy and safe environment.

While it would be inappropriate to discuss safety issues in any detail, it is worth noting that the Student Tribunal, the Civil Service Commission and the Certificated Tribunal (all of which hear disciplinary matters) all now function in a safe and secure environment. The same was not true for the faculty committee that heard the biology professor Amy Bishop tenure denial appeal at the University of Alabama.

During my time at APS, Dr. Hall was a role model for hard work. She set the standard by which all others followed. In was not uncommon for her to start the day with an early morning meeting with a stakeholder, work throughout the day and attend several other stakeholder meetings throughout the evening. I cannot count the occasions that I left the building at 10 p.m. with Dr. Hall and other members of her team continuing to work. Dr Hall’s staff – including Detective Barbara Duncan – understood that that was part of their job.
The school board expected the superintendent and staff to work overtime to improve education in Atlanta; they also understood that it was their responsibility to make sure that Dr. Hall returned home to her husband and son, each night, safe and unharmed.

Rodney G. Moore, Immediate Past President of the National Bar Association, served as General Counsel and Chief Legal Officer for the Atlanta Public Schools from 2000 to 2005. From 2003-2005, he served as Chair of the Urban Law Committee, of the National School board Association (NSBA) Council of School Attorneys.

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July 9 - 15, 2010

Why Obama will not seek re-election

By A. Peter Bailey

The conflict between the Obama Administration and General Stanley McChrystal re-enforces my belief that President Obama’s chance of being re-elected president of the United States in 2012, is probably slimmer than those of his being elected to the office in 2008.

In fact, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that President Obama, after the 2010 elections, will announce that he will not seek a second term.

My position is based on a belief that the biggest cause of the harsh economic dislocation that has gripped this country for the past three or four years is not that working class and middle income people couldn’t or wouldn’t pay their mortgages; it is the humongous cost of the wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is very revealing how most members of the press and politicians who regularly write or speak about adverse economic conditions rarely, if ever, comment on the cost of those wars – despite the fact that no economy in the world can deal with the burden caused by fighting two wars for nearly 10 years. In the beginning , those wars may have helped segments of the U.S. economy. But as they drag on and on, they’ve become very damaging.

The Big Boys who run this country, no matter which political party controls the White House and Congress, have now decided that the debilitating wars in Iraq and Afghanistan must be brought to an end. They are acutely aware that the only way the U.S. can achieve a military victory in Afghanistan is either to bomb the country into oblivion or flood it with 300,000 soldiers on the ground for the foreseeable future.
Neither option is economically feasible so they will do exactly what they did in the cases of Korea and Vietnam – get out while the getting is good.

Of course, if those super-patriots who bellow that the wars are vital to U.S. national security would either enlist to fight them or send their children off to fight, that would easily sustain such a military occupation.

The Big Boys know that there is absolutely no way Obama can halt the wars without inciting the real possibility of dire consequences launched by those Whites who already believe that his being in the White House is a violation of the natural order of things racial. It would be difficult for even a White civilian president to stop the wars without being branded as a traitor by frenzied sources. President Harry Truman was unable to bring the troops home from Korea; former General Dwight Eisenhower had to do it.

For a Black president to bring the troops home would be met with vicious, shrill invective from propagandists in the press and in Congress, most of whom are talk-the-talk but won’t walk-the-walk chicken hawks. Bill Kristol, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Rich Lowery, Ann Coulter, Laurie Ingraham and their cohorts are classic examples of the despicable genre.

For this reason, it is fairly certain that the next president of the U.S., the one who will close down the economically draining wars, will either be a retired military man or a politician who is very, very tight with the military.

This probably won’t be the reason given publicly for Obama’s not seeking re-election. What will probably be put forth is that he’s doing so for the sake of his two daughters who must be at least somewhat aware of the bitter, intense, often race-driven hostility directed toward their father. If they were younger, they wouldn’t understand what is going on; if they were older, it could be explained to them. But they are at those very impressionable ages where they may be aware of what’s happening but not old enough to understand it.

The elegant and intelligent Michelle Obama strikes me as a loving and caring mother for whom being First Lady is not worth the torment that may be inflicted on the psyche of her daughters. The Obamas’s place in history is already assured no matter what their rabid detractors do or say.

Journalist/Lecturer A. Peter Bailey, a former associate editor of Ebony, is currently editor of Vital Issues: The Journal of African American Speeches. He can be reached at apeterb@verizon.net .

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July 2 - 8, 2010

Republican Radicals Reject
Unemployment Fund Extension

By Ron Walters

(NNPA) - As part of the current unemployment crisis, at last look there were 453,000 claims for insurance, a number that is likely to surge when part-time government workers employed on the Census end their term this summer. 

Yet, there probably is no greater indication of the radical extreme to which the Republican party has become than to witness their rejection of legislation to extend unemployment benefits in the Senate.  In the past, some Republicans supported such legislation to keep benefits flowing, but this time, their unanimous rejection for a second time killed it.  They were joined by Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska who I wish would change parties to clarify who he really represents.

A look at a few states where funds will run out soon turns up a frightening picture: 87,000 people in Michigan which has the second largest unemployment rate; 67,000 in Colorado face the same fate; 7,00 people in Georgia; 184,000 in Florida. The legislation would have created $16 billion to reimburse state Medicaid expenses, and without it, New Hampshire would loose $79 million in State funds and it would cost Michigan over $500 million creating a gaping hole that could lead to bankruptcy.   

In the recent primary elections radical Tea Party politicians gained serious inroads into the Republican party.  For example, Sharron Angle, Harry Reid’s opponent for U. S. Senator from Nevada. not only believes that Social Security is “welfare” but that unemployment  benefits have “spoiled” people to the point that “you don’t want the jobs that are available.” 

Then, Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah has proposed that everyone who qualified for unemployment compensation should undergo a drug test, testimony to the class and race perspective some Republicans have toward people who need such assistance. The fact that Republicans don’t appear to be concerned about the impact of their rejection of funds on ordinary people in their states continues to confirm a heartless and immoral side of the Republican governing ideology.  It is a growing radicalism that is justified by their elevation of the deficit, much of which was created by former Republican George Bush, over their constituent’s pain.  

Beyond an immorality linked to a lack of concern for the less fortunate, Republican intransigence possibly constitutes a political strategy for the fall elections.  How?  A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that Congress registered the lowest favorable ratings in modern history at six percent, while Gallup found the preferences of those polled to win control of Congress split between Republicans (45 percent) and Democrats (43 percent).  

This means that either the public has not blamed the Republican party, the element in Congress most responsible for the perceived lack of production, or it blames the Democrats for what has been produced.  Either way, it seems that Republicans are free to run against Democratic control of Congress, even though they have attempted wreck many humanitarian initiatives.  

 Such a strategy is partly possible because of the lack of strength and specificity in the Democratic narrative about governance that shields the Republican party from its negative role.  President Obama began this weak narrative by campaigning on “changing the way things work in Washington.”  But you can’t change that by being vague about what elements are responsible and what party to which they are attached.  

His fixation on bipartisan government also enhanced this cover-up.  So, there was an incomplete analysis of change.  Change from what? Despite the fact that there is an occasional reference to what the President inherited when he came in office, the change from what narrative has not comprehensively been explained.   How can Americans then understand how and why their government has not functioned for them: why the banks and financial houses collapsed and had to be bailed out, how and why mortgages were deliberately sold to people who couldn’t afford them, and why there is a monumental oil spill in the Gulf that is also tied to lax governmental regulation in the Republican era? 

Word is that the Democratic party is laying out $50 million for the fall elections, and a great deal of it should be spent to build a message factory to help explain to the American people why the President has done what he has had to do the past two years, and what feeds the perception that the Congress is dysfunctional.  If Democrats can’t get unemployment insurance, other important goals are in jeopardy both now and after the elections.

Ron Walters is a political analyst and Professor Emeritus of Government and Politics at the University of Maryland College Park.

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