Page 5 - Florida Sentinel 5-31-16 Online Edition

Editorials
Guest Column:
‘Where Do We Go From Here: America After President Obama’
rom time to time, a news story will cross our desk that
reminds us of just how far America must grow before it and we can say that we have truly overcome racial ha- tred.
For instance, recent news events reminded us that the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s annual Hate Crimes Statistics Report shows 5,479 hate crimes incidents in- volving 6,418 offenses in 2015.
Indeed, Donald Trump’s bigotry and intolerance demonstrated during his candidacy for Presidency of the United States is not an isolated incident. Recent news re- ports include the recent clothes hanger rape of a mentally challenged high school student by three of his classmates at a high school in Idaho.
Furthermore, members of a sorority (Alpha Delta Pi) at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama were sanctioned recently by the university for ordering and wearing a sorority shirt containing a picture of the state of Alabama with scenes of a Black man eating watermelon and a slave picking cotton, even after the university ad- vised them the shirts had not been approved.
And, former Giants baseball star Barry Bonds brought media attention to a video posted by students from his daughter’s private school, which showed them using the “N” word and other epithets while gleefully singing, “Dump Dump,” which in and of itself is highly offensive.
Sadly, we wonder if today’s world will have to undergo a catastrophic cultural change before America gives birth to a generation free of hate.
T he lines in her face tell it all. At times, she bears a cold resemblance to a younger woman who posed for big- close-up pix 13 years ago on the cover of her best-selling autobiography. But now, 13 years later, another big- close-up photo accompanies an older woman along with a newspaper article regarding an issue of emails that threatens to destroy Hillary Clinton’s dream if not her
mind.
But guess what? We’re reminded, “It’s nothing per-
sonal.” It’s just politics.
The late Lyndon Johnson supposedly said, “Politics
isn’t like war, it is war.” Hillary knows President Johnson told the truth simply by her observation of sitting Presi- dent Barack Obama and more directly by living as First Lady with her husband and former, President Bill Clin- ton. But what she didn’t know was the lengths that Con- servative, xenophobic, sexist politicians would go to keep a woman outside of the Oval Office.
Is it by accident the State Department decides to move heaven and either to strain a gnat through the eye-of-a needle, especially where Hillary is concerned?
But what do you think would happen if out of nowhere, Camille Cosby walked up on stage, grasped Hillary’s hand, pledged her support, then silently and proudly exited the stage? Do you think women around the globe would understand the shot heard around the world?
When his wife told him to give up and die, why did the Biblical Job choose to retain his integrity? Do you think Hillary Clinton is made of that same stuff? Is that what unsettles her opponents when they look into her eyes?
Let’s say one thing: When Hillary Clinton wins (as win, she must!) may all the women of the world turn to all the chauvinists of the world and say with one voice, “It’s nothing personal.”
By JOY-ANN REID Journalist And Author; National Correspondent, MSNBC
For African Americans, the election of Barack Obama was part triumph, part mira- cle.
The triumph was the cul- mination of more than a half- century of struggle to gain access to the ballot and create political space within the once-hostile Democratic Party for a mobilized Black electorate. The miracle was that the son of an African fa- ther and white American mother, virtually unknown just four years before and car- rying a name primed to trig- ger the Islamophobia and xenophobia of fellow Ameri- cans like none in our history, actually became the 44th president of the United States. The end of that tri- umphant, miraculous era means several things to Black Americans.
It means that Black Ameri- cans will no longer be able to take for granted that a young and elegant, sophisticated and unapologetically Black family resides, presides and represents this country from the secular sanctuary of the White House; though never again can it be denied that they can and did. For many Black Americans, the mourn- ing has already begun.
But it also means that any opportunity to draw from this most historic president con- crete concessions to the still plaintive cries of injustice and lack from the body of African Americans has passed into history. As we prepare to draw the curtain on the Obama era, African Ameri- cans remain well behind their white counterparts on nearly every measure of health, wealth, education and even physical longevity.
According to the Census Bureau, as of 2014, African Americans earn 59 cents on the dollar compared to white Americans (Hispanics earn 70 cents on the dollar), a dispar- ity that hasn’t changed much since the 1970s.
According to the Brookings Institute, Black children born into the bottom fifth of house- hold income distribution will still be there at age 40; and even Blacks born into the middle class have a seven in 10 chance of falling into the bottom two quintiles by the time they are adults.
The Great Recession stripped Black households of
their already meager wealth, dropping the median from $19,200 in 2007 to $11,000 by 2013, a figure that’s one- thirteenth that of white households.
In education, Black stu- dents face lower high school graduation rates (71 percent versus 86.6 percent for white students and 76 percent for Hispanics) and dropout rates that are five times that of white teenagers.
Even before high school, Black students are more likely to attend segregated schools than at any time since the 1950s. Black students make up just 16 percent of the pub- lic school population, but the average Black student attends a public school that is 50 per- cent Black and that falls in the 37th percentile for test score results. Meanwhile, the aver- age white student attends a school in the 60th test score percentile.
On these and other meas- ures, including life ex- pectancy, contraction of fatal illness, arrest and incarcera- tion, rates of high blood pres- sure and other stress-induced illnesses, Black Americans re- main behind.
And of course, the criminal justice system continues to target African Americans at an alarming rate, leaving Black Americans more likely to be jailed and more likely to be arrested for drug posses- sion than white Americans who use marijuana at the same rates; and according to a 2015 Guardian study, Black teens and men ages 15-34 were five times more likely to be shot and killed by police as their white male counterparts in 2015.
Of course, the news isn’t all bleak.
The Affordable Care Act improved healthcare access for all Americans, but has had a disproportionate affect on African Americans, dropping the rate of uninsured from 17.2 percent in 2013 to 12.7 percent at the end of 2014. Also, the Black unemploy- ment rate has been cut from a peak of 16.6 percent in April 2010 to a still high, but markedly improved 10.9 per- cent today.
Black political participa- tion has soared since the 2008 election, surpassing that of white Americans with Obama’s re-election in 2012, and Black voters have proven determined to persevere de- spite increasingly aggressive voter suppression efforts by states in the wake of the Supreme Court’s invalidation of Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act.
But with so many dispari- ties and ongoing gaps in at- taining the fruits of full equality, Black Americans face the prospect of pressing the next president for the kinds of targeted solutions that were rarely demanded of President Obama himself. Even when the demand did come, particularly from the Congressional Black Caucus, he declined to give way.
Besides My Brother’s Keeper, the president has largely rejected the notion of targeted programs to alleviate Black suffering. Black Amer- ica was by and large reticent to challenge him, whether out of fear that it would aid his most vociferous enemies or out of a desire to not add to his burden as the first Black president.
Going forward, and having secured two terms for Pres. Obama, in part on the strength of 72 percent turnout by Black women, that seems likely to change.
The next president is likely to face a much more “radical ask” from Black America on economic development, edu- cational progress and political opportunity. Questions like: where are the Black gover- nors, senators and other statewide officials in develop- ment by the Democratic Party and why there isn’t a more ro- bust Black leadership class among Republicans, not to mention the potential for one to three open seats on the Supreme Court, are likely to move to the front burner as the political season wears on and a new president is sworn in.
Whether the next president is a Democrat or Republican, Black leadership will likely be pressed as never before to de- liver on the “hope floor” laid by the election of the first Black president. Those de- mands will come not just from traditional civic and po- litical leaders, but also from an emerging class of more radical young voices, primed by Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter and deliv- ered to political organizing by the candidacy of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
If Hillary Clinton emerges as the next presi- dent, she and political leaders up and down the political line – from federal to state offices – will face a special burden to make good on the seeding of the soil for Black advance- ment during the Obama era.
In short, the Age of Hope is poised to give way to the Era of Radical Demands for Change.
Attacking Hillary: Nothing Personal?
TUESDAY, MAY 31, 2016 FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY PAGE 5
Racial Hatred Still Abounds
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