TheLoop21.com

By: Devona Walker (Add to your loop)
Sat, 02/28/2009 - 15:17

Panelists at the State of the Black Union took on a number of issues.

(Read more of our coverage of the State of the Black Union.)

The 10th annual State of the Black Union really began in earnest Saturday morning with a panel discussion. It was moderated by trial attorney Raymond Brown and featured some of the nation's most astute minds.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson took on accountability and politics. Author and Georgetown University Professor Michael Eric Dyson took on post-race versus post-racist. Brown University Professor and author Tricia Rose took on the youth dilemma, while former New Jersey Attorney General Peter Harvey took on the issue of gangs.

Les Brown, of Les Brown Industries, Inc.; Marc Morial, president of the National Urban League; California Rep. Maxine Waters; personal finance guru Michelle Singletary; author and founder of the Inner Visions Institute Iyanla Vazant; and president and CEO of The Jamestown Project, Stephanie Robinson, were also featured panelists.

“This began 10 years ago, and it started here in Los Angeles, back when gas was under $2 a gallon. Ten years ago, when Kobe and Shaq were still together,” said radio and television moderator Tom Joyner, one of the day’s moderators. “No matter what happens and how low we go. Someone. Something comes along and reminds us, we can always go a little further.”

One of the primary reasons for holding the annual event is taking inventory of where we are as a people and culture. This year, the theme was accountability.

“We stand tall and we look forward. We come here to hold ourselves accountable for the state we are in. And tell ourselves and the rest of American we can do better,” Joyner said.

Post-Race

The first speaker, Dyson, took on the post-race concept that has transfixed mainstream media — a concept that has gained steam and critic in the last week, after Attorney General Eric Holder referred to Americans as cowards for the way we approach and talk about race. (Read more about Holder's comments.)

“Erica Holder was right,” Dyson said, referring specifically to a column by Maureen Dowd that said Holder and the Rev. Jesse Jackson have been living in a country other than their own for the last 20 years. Dyson was especially critical of those who believe that since Barack Obama has been elected president, we should never again have to talk about the issue of race, and that racism has been magically obliterated.

“Those who invest in that kind of amnesia about race will pay the highest price,” Dyson said. “You see America wants to punish the messenger of the racial malaise that we confront instead of fighting the racial malaise.”

Dyson also took on the distinction of post-race and post-racism, emphasizing that we, as a people, do not want to live in a society that does not celebrate the uniqueness of its cultures.

“We don’t want to live in a post-racial society. It’s a mythology. It’s an illusion. I don’t want to live in a post-racial world. I do want to live in a post-racist world,” Dyson said. “Race is to racism what gender is to sexism. I don’t want to be post-gender believe me. The problem is not gender it’s sexism.” (Read our Post-Race? blog.)

“I don’t to have to stop being black to start being human,” Dyson said.

With the election of Obama, Dyson pointed out the nation has tried to wipe its hands clean of the past. He stressed how delusional and dangerous that type of thinking is.

“Barack Obama represents a move forward. But while Barack Obama is president, Oscar Grant is being murdered in Oakland,” he said. 

TARP

U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., took on the Troubled Asset Relief Program, with detail and clarity, making a point to dispel the myth that the entire financial crisis lies at the foot of poor minorities who aren’t paying their mortgages.

“This began with subprime lending. In many cases, they lent to African Americans, who in many cases, should have been in the prime market. But they were thrown into the subprime market, because they could make more money,” she said.

The majority of foreclosures, however, are middle-class and wealthier whites. Waters said conservatives have portrayed a very different image as it relates to the housing crisis and financial crisis.

“That’s not the profile that many of us have come to understand,” Waters said. “What we know is we have many, many Americans. Many are African Americans. Many are poor whites and Latinos. and they all got sucked into adjustable rate mortgages through subprime loans. And when these mortgages reset, they are facing mortgage payments that are twice and sometimes three times as much as the interest rate they were initially paying.”

She talked about the fragmented nature of the industry, which often made it very difficult for homeowners to renegotiate their loans. She explained how those loans were packaged and securitized and how they were rated safe by lax regulators. And ultimately how they made it into the hands of investors and on the books of banks.

“This was pure and simple greed that was created by the major banking interest of this country,” Waters said. “And now the devil has come due.”

She also stressed that the nation cannot turn its back on the banks, because it will lead the country into a depression. But she said that in the end, all of our efforts to re-capitalize the banks and jump start our economy are just efforts.
 
“All of this speculation about how to get this economy going is just that — speculation,” Waters said. “But you must be aware that this is a serious crisis. This is a wing and a prayer. And that’s what the TARP is all about." 

Accountability

Jackson took on the issue of holding our political leaders and structure accountable for doing the right thing as it looks to rebuild the economy. He spoke about the fundamental inequities that exist between the deals the government makes with the banks and the deals the banks broker with taxpayers. He spoke of Obama’s many attempts at bipartisanship in leading and the ideological wall he faced with Republicans.

“For true bipartisanship to exist, there must be civility,” Jackson said. “He should be given credit for reaching out. But their blind ideology has not been civil.”

Jackson also spoke about the governors who have claimed they will turn down the stimulus payments. He said that is a bunch of bunk.

“I think those Southern Governors are faking that they don’t want the money. They are posturing,” Jackson said. "The South is the biggest region,the poorest region. ... How can those millionaire, educated governors say ‘no’ to their people across the South?” 

Black Youth

Professor Tricia Rose took on the desperate conditions of so many of the nation’s urban youth — from the full-scale packaging of gangster rap to violence to economics — as well as this pervasive perception that all black youth are thugs.

Rose is a professor of Africana Studies at Brown University and wrote Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America. She also wrote Microphone Fiends: Youth Music and Youth Culture, and The Hip Hop Wars.

“The question of hip-hop can not be answered without understanding perception and economics,” Rose said.

But she also explained that hip-hop did not begin that way. In its infancy, it was political. It represented many of the varying issues facing African American culture. Women were more adequately represented. It was not as one-dimensional as what it has recently been packaged into and sold across the country to an audience that is predominantly white. About 70 percent of hip-hop record buyers are, in fact, white teens.
                                                                                    
“What has happened over time is hip-hop has become a product. And now it begins to represent the prime stereotypes of African American culture,” she said.

She outlined something she calls the hip-hop trinity: gangsters, pimps and “hos.”

Those three icons, she said, have become definitive of black culture. They exist only because of economics. And not only do they not represent black culture, but they don’t even represent what Hip-Hop as a musical form once was.

“Now we have a market economy for the self destructive perception of who were are,” Rose said. “Thug life should not be a product. It should be a crisis that we try to change.”

Gangs

Former New Jersey Attorney General Peter Harvey took on the subject of gangs, high incarceration rates and possible solutions for addressing the many issues facing the youth.

“It’s a mistake to think there is some panacea, some magic pill that will eradicate and erase it,” he said, speaking specifically to race. “On the law enforcement side, you have to realize that you cannot arrest and convict your way out of it. ... You have to have two wings of a movement. You have to have aggressive prosecution, because people have to feel comfortable in their homes. But we have to address the issue of violence in our communities.”

The violent youth who turn to gangs, Harvey said, are often the product of violent homes. The young women who turn to gangs are often the product of sexual abuse. Harvey pointed out there are few people in the world who do not make decisions daily based upon their own perception about violence.

“We can talk to the end of time, talking about how tough we are on crime. But we need to be talking about after school programs. There is no more dangerous time period than between between 2:30 p.m. and 8 at night,” he said. “The kids are out of school. Sometimes, their parents have to work late. And they are wandering around getting into mischief.

"And let’s be serious, all of us got into mischief. Most of us who are successful today are successful because we had someone who looked after us. ... Why do we think it is different for the young people of today? Why do people write them off as a lost generation?"

Devona Walker is The Loop's senior reporter/blogger. She writes the Post-Race? blog.

Is Obama compromising too much in the health care bill?

Yes, we need public option

No, he's keeping the peace

Republicans will block it anyway

Let's wait until the health care summit

I don't know