The Black Liberal Boomer Blog

This morning the President spoke at the University of Michigan, which is why it made sense for him to hammer as hard as he did on the critical issue of student loan debt which, as he pointed out, is now surpassing credit card debt as the number one debt burden faced by middle class families. But another thing Obama said in the speech caught my attention just as much, namely that he and his wife, First Lady Michelle Obama, would never have accomplished all that they have without the assistance of a first-rate education. Never would have happened.

This is supremely important for struggling families of color, because the Obamas, similar to most African American families, hardly came from privilege. They are well-acquainted with struggle. Matter of fact, you might even say they are on a first-name basis with financial strain and struggle. But despite their challenges, Obama was able to attend Harvard, where he excelled. His wife - and her brother Craig - both attended Princeton where they excelled as well. Obviously this education made a massive difference in all their lives, just as a college education makes a significant difference in the lives of most who are able to attend. Matter of fact, as the President pointed out in his speech, the unemployment rate of college graduates is half the national average, so that tells you something right there.

But what also tells you something is that college tuition is swiftly escalating far beyond the affordability range of many families, and that's not just Harvard or Princeton but many state institutions as well. Matter of fact, according to Obama, 40 states cut their education budgets last year, forcing state institutions to make up the difference by significantly raising tuitions, thereby putting college out of reach for many. Others are now forced to choose whether it is worth it to get a college degree if it means paying back that loan for practically the rest of their lives.

If something is not done to address this issue, this country will become even more divided along race and class lines than it is already. So many of our children are already receiving grossly inferior education in public schools that have been practically abandoned by all except the poor non-white kids who have no choice but to attend. To slam yet another door in their faces is unacceptable. But the rates of college tuition are now so high that it is not just these kids who cannot attend, but kids from slightly better off middle class families who may have even attended private schools.

If you want a better idea of what we're looking at if we continue down this road, consider what this excellent article in The Nation had to say about discrimination in education:

How Educational Redlining Works

The racial and economic segregation that sets the stage for redlining is now firmly in place. One in four American children lives in poverty, nearly 60 percent more than in 1974, and the number of people living in severe poverty has reached a record high. A national study released in 2009 found that one in fifty children in America is homeless and living in a shelter, motel, car, shared housing, abandoned building, park or orphanage. The proportions in some school districts exceed one in ten, and the number is growing rapidly.

Furthermore, this poverty is concentrated in increasingly resegregated communities and schools. More than 70 percent of black and Latino students attend predominantly minority schools, and nearly 40 percent attend intensely segregated schools, where more than 90 percent of students are minority and most are poor.

Poverty rates make a huge difference in student achievement. Few people are aware, for example, that in 2009 US schools with fewer than 10 percent of students in poverty ranked first among all nations on the Programme for International Student Achievement tests in reading, while those serving more than 75 percent of students in poverty scored alongside nations like Serbia, ranking about fiftieth.

The schools identified as low-performing not only serve a growing underclass of impoverished families; they also typically do so with fewer state and local dollars per pupil than wealthier districts around them. Unlike high-achieving nations that fund their schools centrally and equally, most American states spend three times more on their wealthiest schools than they do on their poorest.

To take a page from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., this is why we can't wait.

Image via Wikipedia

January 18

1949: Congresman William Dawson is elected Chairman of the House Expentiture Committe, becoming the first African-American to head a standing committee of Congress.

1966: Robert Weaver takes the oath of office as Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson and becoming the first African-American to serve in the official Cabinet of a U.S. President.

1990: Washington, D.C. Mayor Marion Berry is arrested in a hotel room on a charge of purchasing and using cocaine; he was tried and convicted on the highly contested misdemeanor charge.

I'm sure most of us have heard much of this before, but during the week of the Dr. Martin Luther King Holiday, and as we ease on down the road of the 2012 campaign season, the bitter subject of mass black incarceration needs to be raised at full volume once again. Many props to one of my favorite shows, Democracy Now!, for airing this recent episode focusing on this topic, featuring longtime activist Randall Robinson and Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow.

A few things to note in the following excerpt of the interview, which should really be heard in full,  and the number one thing to note is that half of all young black men in America (or at least half in major urban areas which is where most of them are) have been incarcerated or are on parole. As Robinson points out, this not only affects their ability to vote, it has the potential to wreck the rest of their lives. If we still cherish the oft-stated belief that our children are our future then we're either looking forward to a swirling storm or a blank canvas, depending on how your glasses operate.

From Democracy Now!

AMY GOODMAN: And let’s talk about what happens when you have a person going to prison, how that affects the rest of their life. First of all, just the astounding figures. It’s something like half the young black men in this country have been incarcerated or on parole, probation. Half?

MICHELLE ALEXANDER: Yes. Well, you know, in large urban areas, half or more than half of working-age African-American men now have criminal records and are the subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives. In some cities like Chicago, it’s been estimated that nearly 80 percent of working-age African-American men have criminal records and are now part of this undercaste, a group of people, defined largely by race, that are relegated to a permanent second-class status by law.

Discrimination is bad enough, but when it becomes legalized then it borders on government-sanctioned terrorism.

Actually, we probably do.

No, I'm not talking about the corporate raider part. And Romney, although he is likely to be his party's 2012 Republican nominee to challenge President Barack Obama, will never be the Thrilla in Vanilla. Romney has about as much charisma as a piece of wet cardboard.

But Romney is rich, pal. Maybe not as rich as Warren Buffett or Bill Gates, but once you pass the $100 million mark, does it really even matter? The man's personal life - at least the part of it we get to see on TV - is the embodiment of the American Dream. A good-looking guy with a good-looking wife and good-looking kids who is successful in business (whether you like his business or not) and who is filthy rich. So say what you want about Mittens - and there is plenty to say - but one of those things is that he definitely has what a lot of us want. Because I know a whole lot more people who would much prefer to have rich white folk problems than the problems endured by the rest of us.

So yeah, Mitt. As politically incorrect as your statement was that we criticize you because we envy you- and as incredibly stupid and poorly timed - there is, nevertheless, some truth in there. We might as well admit it. Here most of us are struggling from paycheck to paycheck, and that's if we're even lucky enough to have a damned paycheck, and then we look up and see someone like you who even in the imagination of your imagination couldn't begin to conceive of what it's like down here on the ground. Hell most of us wish we didn't know, right?

But here's where Mitt made a bit of a miscalculation, OK? Because even though it's true that most of us would greatly prefer to experience the trials and tribulations of being fabulously wealthy to what we're dealing with instead, the fact is that there are a hell of  a lot more of us in that condition than there are those with a quarter billion dollars trying to figure out how to make their mansions even bigger just for the hell of it. And although we do envy those like Mitt whose lives float in celestial bliss out of hearing distance from normal folk, it's not just envy that's got us pissed off. Because if we actually believed the lie so often told that if we just worked hard and put our noses to the grindstone that we could be Just Like Mitt then it wouldn't be so bad. But, see, we're not stupid. Because being broke and poor and being stupid are not synonymous.

Just as an example? We see things like the Countrywide scandal where a huge corporation ripped off thousands of African American and Hispanic homeowners (my guess is none of them were multi-millionaires), charging them more for mortgages than similarly qualified white folks, just because they could. Sure they got dinged $335 million as a penalty, and congrats to US Attorney Eric Holder for at least getting something out of the bastards, even it wasn't near enough. But what about all those families whose lives are now ruined because of Countrywide? Who is going to put them back together and make them whole?

These are the kind of things that happen when the deck is stacked, which are the kind of things that gave rise to the Occupy movement and many more similar movements around the world that explode when people get fed up with inequity and injustice. But God knows if we could all just live the Life of Mitt?

All would be right with the world, wouldn't it kids?

This is being cross-posted at Black Liberal Boomer

I know y'all jonesin' over the Mitt Romney victory in New Hampshire this evening, and who could blame you? Even he said during his victory speech that this was an historic occasion. I'm certain that the inevitable ascendency of Mitt as the Republican candidate for President is the reason why we are experiencing such an unusually warm and practically snow-free winter season (so far) here in Mitten's home state of Michigan. This ain't global warming at all. This is just God's way of saying that Mittens is The Chosen One.

Meanwhile, in other news that some might say actually matters, Anita Hill (yep, that Anita Hill) wrote an excellent piece for Time magazine recently essentially providing a detailed update on what is going on with the housing foreclosure crisis that is still wreaking havoc across this country. More specifically, the article focuses on the disproportionate effect of that crisis on African Americans, the equally disproportionate part that Countrywide played in that disproportionate effect and how they are - and are not - being called to task for purposely setting up so many families to fail.

From Time Magazine online:

Soon a federal judge in California is likely to approve the “largest residential fair-lending settlement in history” ever reached by the Department of Justice in a bias case. The agreement requires Countrywide Financial Corporation to pay $335 million to African American and Latino borrowers who DOJ found to be the victims of Countrywide’s racially motivated fraud and deceit. Attorney General Eric Holder’s pursuit of the mortgage giant’s practices as conduct that “undercuts the notion of a level playing field for all consumers” is laudable. But without Countrywide’s admission of fault for overcharging and steering minorities into high cost loans when they qualified for conventional loans, it’s uncertain whether the agreement will stave off future unlawful behavior. Moreover, it certainly won’t be enough to repair the damage that has been done to those individuals and the communities in which they reside.

Put this in the category of stories deserving more attention for 2012.

Like most smart people, President Obama learns quick. Sometimes it may not be as quickly as some of us would prefer, but once he catches sight of what he's really looking at, what he's really dealing with, then you can pretty much count on him to take it from there.

Doesn't seem like it was even that long ago when Obama was practically begging the Republicans to join him 'round the campfire and sing a rousing chorus of "We Are the World". He had made a pledge to change the way business was done in Washington, and part of that pledge involved finding a way to break partisan gridlock. He was going to bend over backwards, contorting himself like a pretzel if necessary, to reach across the aisle and make nice with the Republicans. POTUS did damned near everything except tap dance, grin and shine to lure the Repubs into a cooperative truce. And each time the Repubs polished their middle fingers before politely extending them in the president's general direction by way of response.

Are you getting the feeling that 2012 is shaping up to be a little different? Today the president held a press conference to announce he was appointing Richard Cordray to be the new head of the Consumer Protection Bureau. Obama has been trying to get the man in place for the past six months, but the Republicans, true to form, have thrown up every roadblock they could locate to make sure it wouldn't happen. But now, as a CBS news piece reports, Obama pulled a bit of a fast one and appointed Cordray as a recess appointment - except that the not-quite-as-slick-as-they'd-like-everyone-to-think-they-is Republicans have been 'strategically' calling brief scattershot meetings throughout the recess where the purpose was to not get anything done. But why hold a meeting to not get anything done you ask? So that the Republicans could claim that they weren't actually in recess, thereby preventing Obama from making a recess appointment. Because recess appointments are nothing new. Republican and Democrat presidents both have utilized that maneuver to ease in their desired but more controversial appointments.

Isn't that slick? I mean damn you got to get up earrrrrrly in de moanin' to pull off that kinda slickness, huh?

'Cept...well..de president? Well, he kin be kinda slick-like too when he wanna be. An' he don' mine callin' no bluffs...

Which, of course, is exactly what he did today.

So now the Republicans, who are just now catching on to the fact that this is campaign mode Obama, not the Obama 2010 model, are jumping up and down, stomping and wailing like Rumpelstiltskin swearing that they will take this to court because Obama he...he...he didn't play fair!

Obama, meanwhile, is calmly polishing both his middle fingers...

This is being cross-posted at Black Liberal Boomer