Symbols are necessary but not enough. Our country needs corporate America to fully participate in the movement transforming society. Unfortunately most corporations aren’t ready for the new normal. While many are busy cleaning up past mistakes, like Aunt Jemimah and Uncle Ben, others do not have any Black people in positions to lead and guide the companies. American businesses must work hard to hire the talent and allow those people to make real changes.
But companies can’t exploit the movement.
Some companies have a recent history of workplace toxicity for African Americans. Yet these companies are still pushing full steam ahead to make money. Capitalists see dollars in all this new Black is good thing happening. And they are rolling out new products and programming.
Media giant was hostile to African Americans
A quick history check is in order. iHeart Media recently launched the Black Information Network. They say the network of stations is dedicated to African American points of view. Yet there are nearly $200,000,000 in current claims, settled suits and judgements against the company. iHeart has claims for gender or racial discrimination, hostile work environment, intentional infliction of emotional harm, and breach of contract in nearly every market across the country. These payouts predate the company’s bankruptcy filing.
Far worse than even horrendous Aunt Jemima symbols, the company is now attempting to come back from bankruptcy on the backs of the very people whom they harmed. Compare them to the works of Gayle Benson, who has paid hundreds of millions to African Americans. The Pelicans have had African Americans in high profile top jobs – Swim Cash, Dell Demps and Alvin Gentry to name a few. Ms. Benson is better suited to rebrand her beer company than iHeart.
Famous Actor Speaks Up
WBOK 1230 am partner, Wendell Pierce, notes the actions of iHeart in his tweet, where he states, “IHeart Media is a company proven to discriminate against its Black employees as it lost lawsuits across the nation. And now attempting to profit from the #BlackLivesMatter movement, we must be reminded of IHeart Media’s practices. This is a moment of national reckoning.
During this transformation, we must remain resolute. We cannot become modern day Aunt Jemima’s and Uncle Ben’s. We must hold these companies accountable for their current and past actions. Groups exploiting the times for their own benefit must be called out. Especially if those companies have a proven history of hostility and workplace discrimination against African Americans, we must call them out.
Bryan E. Robinson Ph.D.
The secret to broadening your mindscape.
You have the ability to widen your perspective and amplify your happiness.Source: Photo by Nadine Shaabana on Unsplash
Suppose your boss walks by your desk. You hook eye contact with her, smile, and nod. She looks straight at you, but doesn’t acknowledge your presence. She might as well be staring at the wall. “Oh no,” you say to yourself. “I must be in hot water.” You shrink inside, ruminating over what you might have done to deserve this. Your heart races, and you feel shaky. It’s just a few days before your performance evaluation. Sleepless nights stalk you. You toss and turn as your mind spins with worry over job security.
The day of your evaluation arrives. Your boss calls you into her office, and your stomach flip-flops. You tremble the way you did in sixth grade when you were summoned into the principal’s office. But, to your shock, she greets you with a smile and gives you a glowing performance evaluation. Not only are you not in hot water, she calls you a highly valued team member.
All that worry and rumination for nothing. Had you thought about it, you might have realized there are a number of benign reasons your boss didn’t acknowledge you when she walked by your desk. Perhaps she was distracted by her own worries, deep in thought over an upcoming meeting, or simply just didn’t see you. But your hard-wired mind-reading jumped into action, focused only on the disastrous possibilities. It blew your thoughts out of proportion, sending you into spirals of rumination. And you fell for it hook, line, and sinker.
Think of all the other times you brooded for countless hours over one negative aspect of a situation when, in retrospect, there was nothing to worry about. Perhaps you even overlooked many positive elements. Your colleagues gave you rave reviews on your presentation, but you couldn’t get that one frowning face in the front row off your mind. The majority of your friends attended your dinner party, but that one no-show couple continued to flash in your brain like a neon Failure sign. And what about all those times you wigged out about an upcoming speech, convinced you would fall flat on your face when, in fact, not only did you not fail, you were a huge success—the exact opposite of what your narrow view (scientists call it the negativity bias) predicted.
Some neuroscientists suggest that ninety percent of our worries are false alarms that never manifest. Still, your survival brain is hardwired to prioritize and remember the negative experiences in an attempt to prevent life’s unexpected curve balls from ambushing you.
Keep a Wide-Angle Lens
A negative mindset constricts possibilities and keeps you self-centered. When your focus is narrow (like the zoom lens of a camera), you build up blind spots of negativity without realizing it. The key to widening your mental scope is to replace your “zoom lens” with a “wide-angle lens” and think about the big picture. Known as broaden-and-build, research by Barbara Frederickson at the University of North Carolina shows that a enlarged perspective allows you to see more possibilities that your zoom lens clouds out and to have more positive emotions and gratitude for the many joys in life.article continues after advertisement
After a novice realtor friend of mine sold millions of dollars of commercial real estate in the first twelve months, her realty company named her salesperson of the year. But she told herself it was a fluke, that the next year would probably be a dud. I was floored. It’s amazing how we can unwittingly sabotage our happiness, simply by the perspectives we create–the brain’s tendency to predict negative outcomes despite positive circumstances. A narrow mindscape without big-picture proof doesn’t make it true. It simply makes us miserable.
If you’re like the average person, your survival brain overestimates threats of the unknown, forecasts a negative outcome, collects evidence to support it then waits for the ax to fall. My friend’s negative predictions discounted, minimized, and ignored the positive events that contradicted how she thought of herself. Despite everything coming up roses, she suffered the misery of her negativity bias—even though they never came true.
Jumping to conclusions without evidence gives a distorted view of your predicament, leaves little room for clarity, and leads to bad decision-making. You can save yourself a lot of unnecessary misery by questioning automatic thoughts and waiting to see if the hard evidence supports them.
Truth be told, most things you worry about never happen or at least not in the way you imagine. Sometimes you have to wait for an outcome to convince yourself of an exaggerated perspective. Other times you can get a reality check from friends or coworkers. But the best solution is to suspend narrow, negative conclusions until you have convincing evidence. Staying open to the future and broadening your perspective about how they might happen without trying to make them happen to suit you can alleviate stress and magnify your happiness. When you wait to connect the dots after, instead of before, the hard evidence is in, you’ll discover that your narrow lens is usually an unreliable source of information. Finding the hard evidence first before jumping to conclusions saves you a lot of self-loathing, unnecessary worry, relationship problems, and time.
Pulling Down Statues is Just Step One
By Jeff Thomas
Living now sure feels like history in the making. COVID, video recordings of police violence, and people protesting in the streets across the world. But while these changes feel monumental, they are really just the easy part of what needs to happen if real change is gonna come. Is real change even possible?
For example, NFL and NBA owner, Gayle Benson, is changing the name of her beer company. Across the country, statues that celebrated racists and their divisive ideology are being toppled either by government action or modern-day nooses. Names are being removed from college campuses. And companies are issuing ambitious statements about unity and support. These are all necessary but only symbolic changes. These achievements could signal a radical transformation in race relations in America. But if a second more complicated and challenging shift is not immediately next, then historians could look back and see something else.
Will the protests in the streets bring about the elimination of systemic oppression of African Americans or instead be just a case study in how pandemics spread? Many African Americans largely see this as an opportunity for reckoning – a true chance at systemic change and boosting the quality of life for blacks in America.
STEP ONE – SYMBOLS
Let’s break it down. This is a really a two-step process. Step one is what we are witnessing. Changing the deep-rooted false beliefs of the American narrative of white superiority. You scoff and say, “this is the easy part?” But removing symbols as an attempt to beat back the notion of white supremacy and black subservience forces everybody to think about the proper place for those monuments.
These statues were intentional and constant public reminders of a complete disrespect of African Americans then and now. Statues and names matter. Really this is an essential educational thinking shift. Take ‘em down baby!
And if we do not complete step one, then step two cannot happen now. Consider that the symbols are more about how we view African Americans. The narrative is more about black subservience. Removing these symbols elevates the public respect given to African Americans.
STEP TWO – FINANCIALLY STRONG BLACK FAMILIES
Step two is more complicated. Create strong African American families. For centuries, business discrimination, government actions and old school nooses have been the norm. A short list of long chronicled disparities includes income, health, housing, police interactions, etc etc. These can never be fully addressed if we still adhere to the notion of black subservience. Removing statues and criminalizing bad police are simple steps we must now take to ready us for step two.
In step two, what must happen is that current black families must be made whole. Elimination of symbols does nothing to help America grow and evolve. Taking down statues does not stop police violence upon black men across the country. Removing the names of devout racists from college campuses does nothing to help African Americans earn degrees from those institutions. Renaming hospital wings does not mean doctors will stop seeing African Americans as highly pain tolerant.
Instead, institutions, businesses, government, and people must be redesigned to uplift the African American community.
Using the Gayle Benson example, step one – rename the beer. Step two – hire and empower an African American VP whose sole job is to make sure 35% of all beer business is done with African American businesses in New Orleans.
Told you step two is more complicated. But it can not happen without step one. America is growing before our eyes. Only we can shape, guide and manage that growth.
By Jeff Thomas
A Simple Guide to the Next Steps in the Movement
2020 is a year of disruption. Covid19 and public protests have transfixed and transformed the country. COVID continues to kill or sicken people in shocking numbers across the country. So much for that hot weather theory, as numbers continue to climb daily across the country. But the 2020 movement needs some structure.
And despite the dangers of close gatherings, people have jammed the streets of cities nationwide to protest police brutality. We all witnessed the merciless murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Horrified citizens realized the pervasiveness and savagery of police interactions with black men. Athletes, celebrities and everyday citizens marched daily and continue to march weeks later.
MARCHING FATIGUE
But unlike the civil rights movement of the 1960’s there is neither a galvanizing leader nor a clearly defined ask. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was able to meet directly with the President and layout the demands of African Americans. The resulting Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination in American life. People will soon tire. Marching in a pandemic will become more risky.
But clearly 60 years later we need an update to the Civil Rights Act. There were a number of improvements in American life for African Americans. But there was a resulting white backlash that has in some cases exacerbated the problems.
In the new 2020 reboot, we all need to learn from this experience. Some of the new updates should include:
Police reform – redirecting funds and forces. Police are needed for crime not human issues like mental health, homelessness, or drug use. Forces need to protect and serve us all.
Counseling – the mental struggles of everyday racism are so exhausting that people under perform in more simple tasks.
Health care – African Americans are seen as more pain tolerant, physically stronger than normal and more able to endure bad health outcomes. Doctors need specialized training.
Economic Opportunity – Bank discrimination is rampant. Loans must be provided at low interest rates to African American business owners
Voting – Voter suppression is the real voter fraud. People who would, could and should vote have been denied the opportunity to exercise their right. People must contribute to political campaigns
Political Representation – Elected leaders must be beholden to the people they represent and not only the donors who fund their campaigns
Education – Inner city schools need proper funding
New Ideas – We need input from everyday people who want and need change
By C.C. Campbell-Rock
Two weeks ago, LeBron James stepped up to launch the biggest civil rights campaign launched by athletes since Colin Kaepernick took a knee in 2016 to protest police brutality. James’ campaign, More Than A Vote, is designed to fight the insidious voter suppression that has been going on since the 15th Amendment to the Constitution in 1870 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were instituted to give African-Americans the right to vote.
“Yes, we want you to go out and vote, but we’re also going to give you the tutorial,” James told the NYT on June 11, when announcing the campaign. “We’re going to give you the background of how to vote and what they’re trying to do, the other side, to stop you from voting.”
The campaign is right on time. The debacle in Kentucky, where this week 600,000 predominately black voters were packed into one polling site and Wisconsin and Georgia elections, where voters waited for hours to vote, is proof positive that Republicans, led by Donald Trump, are pulling in-your-face voter suppression tactics to get him and themselves reelected.
In Louisiana, African-American voters have to know that the state has built-in voter suppression tricks. For example, there are three elections coming up.
A cursory look at the Secretary of State’s website sends a viewer all over the site to gather information on the first two elections which have been postponed and reset. Early voting, unlike election day voting has different hours than Election Day voting, and if you are registering to vote for the first time, you must register 30 days in advance before the election you want to vote in. That means, if you haven’t registered by now, you won’t be voting in the July 11 Presidential and Municipal Primaries.
Also, even though the state put an emergency absentee ballot in place for those who have the coronavirus or has been exposed, you have to file an application to get an absentee ballot. And although your application is due in three to four days before the election, there is nothing on the website that indicates how much time the state has to send you the absentee ballot. Technically, you can file an application but not receive a ballot in time to have your vote counted.
In Louisiana, the Presidential Preference Primary and Municipal Primary and State Representative, 54th Representative District Special Election are set for July 11, 2020; the Municipal General Election is set for August 15, 2020, and the Presidential Election is set for November 3, 2020. July 11, 2020
Early voting for the Saturday, July 11, election takes place from June 20, 2020 – July 3, 2020 (excluding Sunday, June 21, 2020 and Sunday, June 28, 2020) 8:30 am-6:00 pm, and early voting for the Saturday, August 15, 2020 election will be held July 25, 2020 – August 8, 2020 (excluding Sunday, July 26, 2020 and Sunday, August 2, 2020), 8:30 am-6:00 pm. https://www.sos.la.gov/ElectionsAndVoting/Vote/VoteEarly
On the days of the Elections, polling sites will be opened from 7:00 am – 8 pm.
In Orleans Parish, the presidential candidates, and candidates for the Democratic Parish Executive Committees (DPEC); the Democratic State Central Committee (DSCC), and the Republican Parish Executive Committee (RPEC), and Judge, 1st City Court, Section B. races are on the July 11 ballot.
Candidates for President, U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, Criminal, Constable, Associate Justice, Louisiana Supreme Court, District 7, Juvenile, Traffic, Municipal, Civil District Court and Fourth Circuit Court of Appeal, Public Service Commission, and Orleans Parish School Board are on the November 3, ballot. The Open General and Congressional Election is December 5.
All elections are important but the President, U.S. Senators, U.S. Representatives, and the District Attorney can directly impact our lives. U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy and Representatives Steve Scalise and Cedric Richmond’s seats are on the ballot.
The District Attorney’s office can help reform Louisiana’s disgraceful criminal justice system. The United States incarcerates more people than any other country, and Louisiana has the second-highest number of prisoners in America.
Voters must choose an Associate Justice for the Louisiana Supreme Court-District 7. Chief Justice Bernette J. Johnson, the first African-American and first African-American woman to hold the highest position on court, who represents District 7, is retiring in December 2020.
Of equal importance, voters should check the to see if their polling place has been moved. In 2018, the State of Louisiana eliminated 100 polling sites.
In Orleans Parish, the following polling sites have been moved: Mater Dolorosa Church Basement Ward 17 Pct. 2-7, Woldenberg Village Ward 15, Pct.14G, Nazareth Inn Ward 09 Pct. 44A, Guste High Rise, Ward 02, Pct.04. Voters who voted at those polling places are supposed to be notified about the new polling places.
Voting is a sacred right; for which many African-Americans died. Given the political climate facing African-Americans today, if they want to see justice served, the path is this: 1. Make demands 2. Vote for the candidate that has an agenda that includes your demands and vote out those who don’t 3. Hold all elected officials accountable.
Vinita Mehta Ph.D., Ed.M.
Recent research sheds light on what racial justice activists are up against.
THE BASICS
America’s social justice movement for racial equality appears to be full steam ahead. However, being a changemaker is not for the faint of heart— and activist burnout can undercut a movement.
What causes activist burnout, and how can it be avoided? This question was the focus of a recent paper by Paul Gorski of George Mason University. He began by recruiting participants who met three criteria: (1) racial justice activism was the focus of their work; (2) they conducted their activism in the United States; and (3) they had experienced activist burnout.
Gorski then conducted semi-structured interviews in which participants were asked about their activism. He also explored their symptoms of and recovery from burnout. His analysis yielded four causes of burnout:
1. Emotional-dispositional causes. Participants grappled with feeling profound personal responsibility for eradicating racism, a deep relationship to racial justice, and isolation. One participant, Alejandro (Latino man, forties) said his burnout was due to “human isolation, having to be the one naming things … carrying a lot of everybody’s stuff.”
2. Backlash causes. Backlash involved putting one’s employment or body in harm’s way. Activists felt that they couldn’t talk about their activism at work, or they would be professionally and/or economically vulnerable. Participants also reported being physically vulnerable, citing “threats” and “warnings” to abandon their activism. Kevin (African-American and Native-American, thirties) explained: “It doesn’t matter whether you’re unarmed with your hands up. It doesn’t matter if your back’s turned. It doesn’t matter if you just plain didn’t hear somebody. It’s their policy to execute you. So there is always that pressure … At this next rally, at this next protest, is someone going to kill you?”
3. Structural causes. This factor refers to the Sisyphean challenge of creating change in the face of unyielding white supremacy. In addition, and apart from their activism, participants’ everyday experiences of racism contributed to their burnout. In particular, the pervasive denial of racism was particularly exhausting. Consider the experience of Andrew (African-American, forties): “Those are … the areas that … provide the most fatigue. Having these conversations [about Black Lives Matter] over and over again where you’re justifying your perspective, and the knee-jerk resistance.”
4. In-movement causes. All participants said that their burnout had to do with how activists treat each other. Activists found infighting and “ego clashes” within activist communities exhausting. They expected to find like-minded people, but found that competition often overrode cooperation. Consider the perspective of Deborah (African American), who felt undermined by white activists who refused to accept direction from activists of color. She remarked, “Clearly there’s tons of freaking white people who don’t get it.”
Activist burnout can dampen — and even extinguish — movements. But it has less of an opportunity to do so when we know what the risk factors are. And while self-care is a helpful antidote to burnout, Gorski highlights research that urges a shift from self-care to community care. That is, instead of individuals attending to their own needs outside of their activism, a collective approach would respond to the activist community’s needs at large. Thus, burnout wouldn’t be an individual plight, but an issue dealt with collectively. This shift in culture, the thinking goes, would help ensure that a movement has both the strength and longevity to achieve change.
From the Louisiana Weekly
Dr. Norman C. Francis lived here. Confederate President Jefferson Davis merely died here.
In the discussion to rename the picturesque, bicycle-pathed parkway stretching from Bayou St. John to Washington Avenue, that distinction alone should be enough to decide a street’s name.
Yet, the termed “lived” hardly grants enough credit to Dr. Norman C. Francis. Over his 50-year presidency, he breathed new life to the college founded by St. Katharine Drexel, transforming Xavier University into one of the most renowned centers for biomedical and pharmaceutical education in the nation. More importantly, Dr. Francis brought alive her dream to create a Center of African-American Catholic Higher Education venerated throughout the world.
No medieval cathedral builder could have constructed an altar more worthy for a saint. Should we not honor that architect on the very avenue that runs alongside the collegiate halls he inaugurated?
Most notably, while Xavier University statuesquely stands in the shadow of the Parkway, Jefferson Davis no longer sits upon his pedestal. He neither looks out from his monument on the neutral ground, nor holds much affection in the city of his demise. It’s easy to remember that Jefferson Davis Parkway received that moniker neither in the two years that New Orleans was bound to the Confederacy, nor in the months after the former secessionist president’s death amidst a visit to a home on First Street in the Garden District.
Jeff Davis Statue Removed
The Jefferson Davis statue (and the parkway named in its honor) were created years after his passing as monuments to segregation. Neither the granite edifice nor pathways around had the principal purpose of honoring the man. Newspaper accounts at the time record how they were literally pounded into the ground as “eternal” symbols of white supremacy. The “Whites Only” dedication of the statue and street on February 22, 1911 stands as testament to the real political purpose behind their construction. Hardly surprising then that the New Orleans City Council decided to vote 6-0 to remove Jefferson Davis’ name from the street signs last Thursday.
“Norman Francis” will take his place on the Parkway – a tribute to a man who truly “lived” the mission of uniting and uplifting the people of New Orleans. Not enough newsprint on this page exists to chronicle the number of civic organizations he led or the unpaid public work that the university president undertook to bring all ethnicities of this city together. In contrast, both in life and death, Jefferson Davis ripped our country and our races apart.
This article originally published in the June 22, 2020 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
Racism in America is institutional. The nation’s legal, business, civic and social constructs and the policies, practices, programs that give them teeth were designed to disenfranchise, marginalize, and undermine Black Americans and other communities of color.
The world’s latest crisis, COVID-19, has laid bare just how deep these disparities are and the ways they impact our communities. African Americans across the nation are overrepresented in COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths. They are hit harder by the economic impact of the pandemic as well.
Here in Louisiana, where Black folk are roughly 33 percent of the population, they are about 60 percent of the COVID-19 related deaths.
We already knew that when White America catches a cold, we get the pneumonia. Now we know that when the rest of America battles COVID-19, we battle COVID-19 . . . on steroids—with the disease hitting and hurting us much harder.
We’re not sure how many times this needs to be repeated for it to resonate and propel action. But we are tired of talking about it. We want solutions. Here at The New Orleans Tribune, we are always looking for the silver lining. And in the case of COVID-19’s disastrous impact, the silver lining is the lesson that can be learned from the manner in which inequity has shown itself amid this pandemic and how those lessons can be used to reshape the institutions, policies and practices that shape our lives.
To that end, there are three key areas that we say government and business interests along with healthcare systems must give immediate attention and action. This is not an exhaustive list of inequities as there are many others, but these are a start—three of the most pressing issues that require critical attention:
Address healthcare disparities that result in negative outcomes for Black Americans
Address economic disparities, wage disparities, living wages, and sick leave
Strengthen small and Black-owned businesses, by providing targeted assistance, contract opportunities and capacity building programs
Healthcare Disparities
As the Centers for Disease Control notes in a report on COVID-19 and race, “The conditions in which people live, learn, work, and play contribute to their health. These conditions, over time, lead to different levels of health risks, needs, and outcomes among some people in certain racial and ethnic minority groups.”
In response to COVID-19, The CDC offers guidance on addressing healthcare disparities that impact outcomes for minority communities. That guidance must become a mandate and it ought to apply generally, not just to COVID-19 response, we say.
Healthcare systems and healthcare providers must implement protocols and quality improvement initiatives, especially in facilities that serve large minority populations, that identify and address the implicit biases that hinder patient-provider interactions and communication.
They must work with communities and healthcare professional organizations to reduce cultural barriers to care. They must connect patients with community resources that can help older adults and people with underlying conditions adhere to care plans, such as assistance getting extra supplies and medications they need and reminders for them to take their medicines. Poor Americans should not have to choose between this month’s allocation of some needed medicine and this month’s food bill or electric bill. More importantly, the healthcare system is obligated to promote a trusting relationship by encouraging patients to call and ask questions and by teaching healthcare providers to listen to their patients’ concerns, to understand them and to address them professionally and compassionately.
Access to healthcare must be also increased. Cost cannot be a barrier. According to the CDC, compared to Whites, Hispanics are almost three times as likely to be uninsured, and African Americans are almost twice as likely to be uninsured. In all age groups, Blacks were more likely than Whites to report not being able to see a doctor in the past year because of cost. Universal healthcare must be a top priority as the 2020 presidential election nears.
Moreover, the nation’s education system from pre-K to college, in conjunction with the entire healthcare system must do more to address the lack of Black doctors. Today, only four percent of the nation’s practicing physicians are African-American. Barriers such as the cost of medical school must be mitigated. And improving educational opportunities at both secondary education and in all institutions of higher learning to prepare African American students for success in medical school must be accomplished. That means that K-12 schools which serve the nation’s most disenfranchised communities must get more support and more resources. According to one study, only 57 percent of Black students have access to the full range of math and science courses necessary for college readiness, compared to 81 percent of Asian American students and 71 percent of white students.
Additionally, HBCUs must also be strengthened and supported because while they make up only three percent of the country’s colleges and universities, they enroll 10 percent of all African American students and produce almost 20 percent of all African American graduates, according to the United Negro College Fund. These institutions have been and still are major players in the success of Black college students in America. The resources they receive must reflect their importance to our communities.
Addressing Economic Inequity
While essential workers are being lauded for their dedication amid the pandemic, their pay rarely reflects their true value to society. In additions to medical workers, grocery store workers, delivery drivers, fast food and other restaurant employees have remained on the frontlines.
Economic and wage inequity did not begin with COVID-19. The numbers are staggering and longstanding. For example, African Americans are 2.5 times as likely to be in poverty as Whites. In 2017 the Black unemployment rate was 7.5 percent, up from 6.7 percent in 1968, but it is still roughly twice the White unemployment rate. In 2016, the median African American family had only 10.2 percent of the wealth of the median White family ($17,409 versus $171,000).
And the racial wealth gap is only fueled by wage inequity, with the biggest pay gap existing for Black women, who account for 30 percent of all female-headed families in the U.S. They have a median income of $18,244 annually, while families headed by white males (no wife present) have a median income of $39,240. And the data indicates that education is no cure-all when it comes to addressing wage gaps. Among full-time, year-round workers, Black women with bachelors’ degrees make only $1,545 more per year than white males who have only completed high school.
In other words, this issue is systemic, but the answer is simple. Across industries and job classifications, all American workers regardless of race and gender must be paid equitably—the same money for the same job without exception.
COVID-19 has exacerbated already inequitable wage conditions. Nearly a quarter of employed Hispanic and Black or African American workers are employed in service industry jobs compared to 16 percent of non-Hispanic whites.
Hispanic workers account for 17 percent of total employment but constitute 53 percent of agricultural workers; African Americans make up 12 percent of all employed workers, but account for 30 percent of licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses.
All American workers need a paid sick leave. The CDC notes that workers without paid sick leave might be more likely to continue to work even when they are sick for any reason, increasing the chances that they can be exposed to or expose others to COVID-19 or the next pandemic disease.
As businesses struggle, much is also being made of the soaring unemployment numbers. In the best of circumstance, Black America is disparately impacted by unemployment.
But a new twist to the unemployment issue has emerged because of COVID. There is now concern that businesses may struggle to rehire workers as they reopen because they just will not be able to compete with the enhanced unemployment benefits, bolstered by the $600 per week pandemic unemployment compensation. Businesses lament that they just will not be able to compete with the current unemployment benefits. And state and federal governments have threatened that if businesses report that an employee refuses to return to work, those benefits will be discontinued.
To that we say that leaders should worry far less about whether employees will return to work while enhanced benefits are being paid and concentrate on why some Americans may be faring better on unemployment.
In Louisiana, the full unemployment compensation is $247 a week. Without the $600 weekly boost, that is less than $1000 a month. No one can support a family, pay rent, utilities, buy groceries or meet other financial obligations with $988 a month. It’s nearly impossible to do so with even double that amount. Yet many hard working, low-wage earning families across our city, state and nation are expected to do that every day of the year. Note to Congress, if folk cannot survive off $1000 a month during a pandemic, then what makes you think they can survive off meager wages any other time.
Too many Americans were not earning the money they needed to support themselves and their families before the crisis. In short, the time for a boost to the federal minimum wage and the need to implement a living wage for all Americans is long overdue.
Strengthening Black Businesses
According to a report from the McKinsey Institute that was released in April, Black-owned businesses are disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. Some 40 percent of revenues from Black-owned businesses are in the top five most vulnerable sectors, including retail, leisure, and hospitality. Compared to other businesses nationwide, just 25 percent of revenues are affected, the report says.
To know that many small, Black-owned businesses have been shut out of the PPP program because they don’t have “relationships” with banks is disturbing. Such a scenario should have never been allowed to happen. Too much discretion was left in the hands of banks and bankers, when the program should have specifically targeted the businesses that were most in need of assistance. Since the initial round of PPP was released, a second round has been made available. And while funding targeted to these institutions have increased in the second round of PPP loan, they still pale in comparison to the total PPP dollars loaned to businesses across the country.
By mid-May, more than 5500 financial institutions have made nearly 4.4 million loans for a total of more than $512 billion in PPP loans, with the average loan size of $166,604. But when the data for Community Development Financial Institutions and Minority Depository Institutions are examined, the inequity is evident. CDFIs and MDSs exist to economically empower America’s underserved and distressed communities—ostensibly the very communities hardest hit by COVID-19. Yet, as of mid-May barely 400 CDFIs and MDIs have dispersed 173,627 PPP loans for a total of about $15.5 billion. In other words, CDFIs and MDIs are only 7.2 percent of institutions making PPP loans. The $15.5 billion in PPP loans represents only three percent of all loans made
Our leaders are elected to protect us, work for us, fight for us. Moreover, financial institutions must do more to encourage and build these relationships now and in ongoing efforts if they will use them as a requirement to disburse federal dollars meant to shore of these businesses. Without that effort, small Black-owned businesses will never be able to compete with multi-billion dollar corporations and other big businesses.
As New York-based journalist J. Cunningham noted in a recent column, Black business are concerned that they will be decimated without targeted assistance.
“They need grants and loans on a hyper-local level that will help Black business owners with their immediate bills and keep them from having to furlough, fire, or cut the pay of employees.
They also need access to local, state and federal government contracts – and specifically, a “master contract” where the government awards money to a nonprofit, community-based partner, and that entity, in turn, identifies Black businesses to fulfill the contract, according to a white paper from the Black Business Empowerment Committee, a group of business owners, houses of worship and community groups committed to growing and sustaining Black-owned businesses.
And again, these solutions must extend beyond COVID-19. It must become standard policy of government agencies and financial institutions to ensure that Black owned businesses receive targeted attention in programs designed to aid, low-interest loans, and contract opportunities. Government must be committed to administering programs that focus on helping Black-owned business build capacity and competing on a leveled playing field.
by Iskra Fileva Ph.D.
Some supremacists believe they deserve credit for others’ accomplishments.
Neo-nazi skinhead with a patch in German that reads “Skinheads – White and proud”Source: Marek Peters/Wikimedia Commons
White supremacists like to say that most of the achievements of Western Civilization were achievements of white men. It is common to respond to such claims by drawing attention to the contributions of non-white, non-male people, or to the cultural conditions (for instance, lack of access to educational opportunities) which, through most of history, made it extremely difficult for non-white, non-male persons to make a significant cultural contribution.
These are important points, but there is something else that is generally missed: When white supremacists make claims of the sort under discussion, they appear to be suggesting that they somehow get to claim credit for the achievements of some great person with whom they share a superficial characteristic such as skin color. Otherwise, why draw attention to that characteristic at all? What difference does it make? That is not the reason the person deserves praise and recognition.
The problem here is that we simply don’t get to claim credit for the accomplishments of other people unless, perhaps, they are our children or trainees (and even there, we must be careful). If you didn’t do any of the work, you don’t get any of the rewards either.
The temptation to attempt to proceed on a different assumption is understandable. Actual achievement is hard. It requires years of work, focus, and dedication. It is so much easier to take a shortcut to a flattering self-image, bathing in the reflected glory of others. Unfortunately for those tempted, it simply doesn’t matter what group characteristic you share or don’t share with Newton, Leonardo Da Vinci, or Beethoven. If you want to be like them, you must make significant contributions to science or art. Attending supremacist rallies won’t make anyone else’s successes rub off on you. To suppose otherwise is simply magical thinking.
There may, of course, be cases in which we are responsible for what a collective agent whose member we are does or doesn’t do, as when a person from country A goes along with country A’s invasion of another country. But the question of collective responsibility is a separate one. It involves actions that can be attributed, intelligibly, to groups of people. That cannot be done with the achievements of Newton or Leonardo, which is why no one is in fact suggesting that theirs are collective achievements in the relevant sense.
One can argue also that society as a whole contributes to great accomplishments indirectly, by creating the right social conditions for talented people to realize their talents. There are three things to note here: First, society does not always create favorable conditions, actually. For instance, Giordano Bruno – mathematician, poet, and philosopher, and one of the finest minds of his era – was burned at the stake for heresy. Galileo was ordered by the Inquisition (whose members were white men, incidentally, though white supremacists conveniently focus on people like Galileo rather than on the inquisitors) to abstain from teaching and defending his doctrine; namely, that the Earth is not the center of the universe. Some people succeed despite social conditions, not thanks to them.article continues after advertisement
Second, to the extent that society does create favorable conditions, it is not only people of a particular group who deserve credit. Society, after all, has a wide mix of people.
Finally, note that most of the successes of Western civilization are due to people now long dead. Barring the possibility of a time machine, none of us – regardless of race, gender, or any other characteristic one cares to name – could have possibly contributed, however indirectly, to the discovery of the laws of motion, the painting of Mona Lisa, or the composing of Beethoven’s 5th.
By Kenneth Cooper
I had a dream I punched turbine 4 in the face. It was a wonderful moment. Light rain was falling. People were kayaking up Carrollton as I waded through the 3 feet of water that had already accumulated in the streets. I approached the S&WB plant on Claiborne, snorkeled pass the main gate, tiptoed by a sleeping pump operator, and before I knew it, there it was in front of me, the infamous turbine, the recent source of the city’s drainage problems.
I walked up to it, and without hesitation, wham, clocked it right in the face. Alarms instantly went off. Lights began to flicker. There was smoke. There was steam, a clear sign the turbine had fallen off-line, again. Just as it was about to explode, I woke up. Well actually, I was awakened by a neighbor, ringing my doorbell, a river of water gushing in the street behind her. “You might want to move your car,” she said. It was Wednesday, June 10th. People were stranded in their homes because parts of the city were flooding — you know, just another rainy day in New Orleans.
It’s always something, some excuse for the flooding — the new normal, global warming, a pump operator falling asleep, a pump not doing its job, the unpredicted intensity of a storm. Lately though, it’s been mostly turbine 4’s fault.
In December, turbine 4’s compressor failed. And when it did, operators tried to switch to turbine 5. Apparently, turbine 5 didn’t like being awakened at such an hour, (it was 2:30pm) because it promptly blew up, like not figuratively, but literally blew up. The blast radius permeated Hollygrove, shattering nerves, windows, and confidence. Two people were brought to the hospital as a result. Citizens were advised to stay away. Inspectors arrived. Turbine 5 was pronounced dead at the scene, no resuscitation, just a $20 million price tag to pay for its burial and replacement. The S&WB’s response of course was “We can’t afford that.”
On June 10th, turbine 4 was at it again. This time its governor failed and caused the safety system to trip. According to the S&WB’s After-Action Report, this happened because the temperature of the water used to cool the turbine was too high. In other words, it over-heated and fell off-line due to over-exertion, even though the turbine was running under max capacity. Of course, parts of the city flooded. The S&WB denies that losing turbine 4 caused the flooding but admitted that if it hadn’t failed the water could’ve been pumped out sooner.
Since then, turbine 4 has been downgraded. No longer the young, vibrant, energy supplier it once was, its output capacity has been downgraded from 18 megawatts to 17. That’s a loss of 1 million watts of power, and who knows how many hundreds of gallons of pumped water. Also due to its failure, turbine 4’s governor has basically been put on probation, to be monitored under the watchful eye of a non-sleeping operator.
Why does this keep happening? Questions abound. But there’s one simple answer. The system is old, old enough to where the S&WB can be considered a manager of antiques and rare artifacts. The drainage pipes, most of them at least, date back to the early 1900s.
Think about that. People who went through slavery were still alive back then. The car hadn’t fully replaced the horse and buggy. Yet, a city that was destroyed by flooding from Katrina 15 years ago is still relying on outdated turbines and pumps to push water through old, inefficient pipes. If something doesn’t change, one estimate has the city dealing with $8 billion worth of damage due to flooding over the next 50 years.
So, what do you say, anybody want to join me in my next dream? We can jump a turbine, bum-rush a pump, maybe tunnel underground and put our foot up a few pipes. Suggestions are encouraged. Who knows, they might even be taken up at the next City Council meeting.
