Posts Tagged African Americans
Wealth Gap Has Widened Due To Economic Recession: Danger For America’s Future!
Posted by Ronald in News and Politics on April 30, 2013
While almost everyone, except the very wealthy, suffered from the Great Recession and its aftermath during the past five years, what is most distressing and dangerous for the future of America is the widening wealth gap among the races.
The average white family earns TWICE what the average African American or Hispanic family makes, and has SIX times the total wealth of the average minority family..
White families lost eleven percent of their wealth due to the recession, as compared to 44 percent for Hispanic families and 31 percent of black families.
Unless “Baby Bonds”, an investment in a child’s future, are given to all poor families, the future of minority youth to overcome their poverty and deprivation will be impossible, and the wealth gap will be impossible to narrow over future decades!
Momentous Turning Point In Gay Rights Movement: Jason Collins The New “Jackie Robinson”!
Posted by Ronald in News and Politics on April 29, 2013
With the revelation today that Jason Collins, a black basketball player with the Washington Wizards and the Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association, has come out as gay, is a major turning point in the gay rights movement in America!
Organized sports has always been seen as the last place we would see any such revelations, but with young people, by massive margins as high as 74 percent, having no problem with gays and lesbians, and believing they should be treated equally with straight people, this will be the beginning of other athletes showing the courage and principles of Jason Collins.
Jackie Robinson was a transformational figure, and this issue of sexuality is even more difficult to deal with, but Jason Collins has become a pioneer for his race and for athletes, and no matter what attacks he must bear, and the prejudice and hatred he will have to deal with, particularly from so called “religious” people, he will triumph and hold his head high, and will give young people struggling with sexuality better able to deal with it, and to accept what they are, rather than fight their natural feelings.
There is nothing worse than living a lie, and allowing so called “religious” people to make one feel guilt about his or her feelings, but the gay rights movement will continue to move toward total triumph and acceptance by all but the hate mongers!
Republican National Committee Report: “Too Old, Too White, Too Insular”, But Is Change Of Tone Enough?
Posted by Ronald in News and Politics on March 18, 2013
The Republican National Committee has come up with a 100 page report, making clear that the party is in deep trouble because it is seen by the general population as “too old, too white, too insular”, and that a change of “tone” is needed!
Actually, the report does not go far enough, as the party is also seen as a party that is against women, against Hispanics and Latinos, against African Americans, against Asian Americans, against the younger generation, against gays and lesbians, against the poor, against the working class, against the middle class, against the environment, against labor unions, against science, against the environment—while being pro the top two percent, pro corporation, pro foreign policy interventions overseas, pro extreme right wing evangelical Christianity, pro gun rights, and condemning of the news media, the universities, and the entertainment industry!
The GOP has a need to change a great deal, but based on the Conservative Political Action Conference display of its motivations and statements, and the embarrassment of many of the speakers, including Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann among many others, their road back to majority status is a very long one, and possibly will never occur!
Commemoration Of The Selma To Montgomery March 48 Years Ago: Bloody Sunday Cannot Be Forgotten
Posted by Ronald in News and Politics on March 3, 2013
On March 7, 1965, a civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, for voting rights for African Americans, was the location of brutal police action at the Edmund Pettus Bridge against the peaceful civil rights demonstrators.
John Lewis, now a long term Congressman from Georgia, incurred a cracked skull that day, and today, he and Al Sharpton and many other people of all races converged on the site to commemorate the horrible events of that day 48 years ago, which had the effect of galvanizing action by Congress and President Lyndon B. Johnson within four months, with the passage of the Voting Rights Act.
Joining them today was Vice President Joe Biden, giving his usual inspiring speech, and making clear that the Voting Rights Act is now, now under potential threat of having the crucial Section 5 declared unconstitutional by a conservative Republican majority chosen by Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. The Court may be ready to show they have either forgotten history, or choose to ignore the history of that day, and trust that the Southern states, which have worked to make voting more difficult in 2012 and earlier, can be trusted to avoid undermining the basic right to vote for all citizens, which is supposedly guaranteed by the 15th, 19th, and 26th Amendments,
This is a day to recall and to commit to prayer and statesmanship, hoping that the Supreme Court will do the right thing, and retain Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, since Congress has constantly renewed it, and ignore the call of states rights, which has been constantly tied to bigotry and discrimination!
Supreme Court Bitterly Divided Over Possible Curbing Of Voting Rights Act: A Repeat Of The Compromise Of 1877 Abandonment Of African Americans!
Posted by Ronald in News and Politics on March 2, 2013
It is clear that the Supreme Court is bitterly divided over the Voting Rights Act, which is hanging in the balance after the oral arguments this week, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan strongly challenging Justice Antonin Scalia, who said the act was a “racial entitlement”, which demonstrates that Scalia has no understanding of the history of the denial of voting rights, and the need to continue to monitor what those states that have discriminated are now doing.
The Republican Party abandoned African Americans on this day in 1877, when they agreed to the Compromise of 1877, making their candidate for President, Rutherford B. Hayes President, despite the clear cut lead of Democrat Samuel Tilden in popular votes. Part of the deal was for the GOP to stop being the party that had advanced civil rights through two laws during Reconstruction, the creation of the Freedmen’s Bureau, and the passage of three amendments to the Constitution.
The southern states went ahead and continued a policy of discrimination for the next ninety years on voting, and imposing Jim Crow segregation, and the GOP, the majority party until 1932, did nothing about it, due to the deal set up in the Compromise of 1877.
After ninety years, finally, voting rights, supposedly guaranteed under the 15th Amendment, but not enforced, were restored under the Voting Rights Act, but not before civil rights marchers were beaten up, such as Congressman John Lewis of Georgia, and others slaughtered in the name of promoting civil rights in the South.
But along comes Antonin Scalia, who conveniently forgets that even Jews, and also Italians such as himself, were lynched in the South in the near century in which African Americans were denied their basic rights, including voting.
And he wants the Court to become “activist”, when that is precisely what conservatives claim they hate about the Supreme Court. And so therefore, to hell with the overwhelming vote of the Congress to extend the Voting Rights act in 2006, and let’s wipe out all progress and return us to the states “deciding” if any group can vote, instead of “guaranteeing” the right to vote, the basic element of democracy!
So just as the Compromise of 1877 brought us a President who had NOT won the popular vote, and followed through on taking the GOP out of its civil rights activism, so now, two appointments of another President, George W. Bush, not elected by popular vote, and instead put in by a partisan Republican Court including Scalia, shall repeat history and deny Africans Americans the guarantee of the right to vote granted in the 15th Amendment in 1870!