STATE NEWS BRIEFS FOR 01-23-20
GOP CANDIDATE FOREST SAYS PLANNED PARENTHOOD “CREATED TO DESTROY BLACK RACE”
[FAYETTEVILLE] The Republican candidate for governor says that Planned Parenthood “was created to destroy the entire black race.” That’s what Lt. Gov. Dan Forest told a group of black ministers Monday during a prayer breakfast speech for the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. The organization was started by Margaret Sanger, who is known for being a pioneer in birth control. But research shows Sanger was also supported by Mrs. Coretta Scott King, W.E. B. DuBois and Mary McLeod Bethune.
SEN. LOWE ENDORSES JOE BIDEN FOR PRESIDENT
[RALEIGH] The chairman of the 39-member NC Legislative Black Caucus has officially endorsed former Vice Pres. Joe Biden for president. State Sen. Paul Lowe (D - Forsyth) is the second North Carolina black elected official to come out in support of Biden. Congressman G. K. Butterfield did do several months ago. In a statement, Sen. Lowe says the country is deeply divided, and he believes that Biden can bring it back together. The North Carolina primary is March 3rd.
JUDGE SIGNS CONSENT ORDER ON LEANDRO CASE
[RALEIGH] A Superior Court judge signed a consent order Tuesday in the long-running Leandro school equity case, laying out an agreed to course of action to ensure that every North Carolina child gets a constitutionally mandated “sound, basic education. The consent order is based on the WestEd report, which called on the state legislature to spend upwards of $1 billion to improve public schools across North Carolina, especially in poorer counties.
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CAN BLACKS REACH ECONOMIC
PARITY AFTER THE 2020 ELECTION?
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
As the Democratic race for president heats up, billionaire candidate Mike Bloomberg has proposed a $70 billion five-year investment strategy covering one hundred disadvantaged communities of color across the country, if elected. The former mayor of New York would also create a Neighborhood Equity and Opportunity Office in the White House to monitor progress.
“The crimes against black Americans still echo across the centuries, and no law can wipe that slate clean,” Bloomberg told those gathered in Tulsa, Oklahoma’s former “Black Wall Street” Sunday, site of the 1921 race riots. “Not here in Tulsa, or anywhere else. But I believe that this is a country where anything is possible. And I believe that we have the power to build a future where color and capital are no longer related.”
How African-Americans are responding to Bloomberg’s proposal is too early to tell. As NY mayor, he was a strong proponent of racist “stop an frisk” police policies, which he has publicly apologized for recently.
But one thing is clear - here in North Carolina, African-Americans, like elsewhere across the nation, are struggling to maintain economic parity with their white counterparts
To start, even though this information was first released in August 2018, there’s little reason to believe that much has changed since then, let alone the past two years.
According to the American community Survey, black households in North Carolina bring home almost $20,000 less than comparable white households annually ($34,000 to $53,000), even in urban areas where economic growth has been strong.
With 91 out of 100 North Carolina counties surveyed, only three counties (Watauga, Haywood an Yancey) had black households earning as much or more than whites; in 46 counties, black families earned 60 cents or less for every white dollar earned; and in the 12 counties where the black population exceeded 40 percent, none of them had median household incomes that reached 75% of whites.
In prosperous Wake County, the average white family earns $33,000 more annually than a comparable black household. In Mecklenburg County, black families bring home approximately $32,455, only 44.3 percent of comparable white median income there.
Nationally, according to a 2017 report by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, “In 2016, white families had the highest level of both median and mean family wealth at $171,000 and $933,700 respectively. Black families’ median and mean net worth is less than 15% that of white families, at $17,600 and $138, 200 respectively.”
Ironically, other ethic groups of color, including Hispanics and Native Americans, have higher median incomes and mean family wealth that blacks.
“For hundreds of years, America systematically stole black lives, black freedom and black labor,” Bloomberg said in his prepared remarks. “And the impact of that theft over a period of centuries has meant an enormous loss of wealth for individuals and families, across generations — a kind of compound interest in reverse. Well, it’s past time to say, ‘Enough’ — and to damn well do something about it.”
The key to Mike Bloomberg’s $70 billion proposal is investing in black businesses and homeownership. Could the Bloomberg plan help black North Carolinians? In the months ahead, black Democratic primary voters will decide.
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REV. DR. WILLIAM BARBER
IS HIGH POVERTY REAL?
REV. BARBER INSISTS “YES!”
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
During this week of commemorating the life and legacy of slain civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a man of God many say is today’s embodiment of all Dr. King stood for maintains that poverty in America is the number one issue facing the nation.
“Bro. William Barber is the closest thing we have to Martin Luther King, Jr. in American culture,” Harvard University African-American scholar Dr. Cornel West, once said.
“There are 140 million poor and low wealth people in this country,” Rev. Dr. Barber, cochair of the “Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for a Moral Revival,” says, based on a recent poverty audit done by the Institute of Policy Studies, a Washington, D.C. progressive think tank, titled, “The Souls of Black Folk.” “66 million [are] white, 26 million are black. One-third of all live in the South; four million in North Carolina [alone].”
The former head of the NC NAACP adds one more startling U.S. poverty statistic - 39 million are children. Rev. Barber faults U. S. government policy for massive poverty.
But John Hood, conservative syndicated columnist and chairman of the Raleigh-based conservative think tank, the John Locke Foundation, isn’t buying it.
In a recent column titled “Child poverty falls dramatically,” published in the online conservative publication Carolina Journal, Hood states, “ …our political conversation about poverty is based on a fact that most political actors think is true but really isn’t: that a persistently high share of the population lives in poverty.”
Hood goes on to allege that both progressives and conservatives maintain that poverty is high in the United States, albeit for different reasons, but both are “mistaken.”
While noting that “There are, of course, desperately poor people in North Carolina and the rest of America,” Hood maintains that “…no good policy ideas can come from believing there are massive numbers of people who….continue to live below the poverty line.”
Hood cites all of the “free health care, free housing, free food and other public assistance other than cash” that families in poverty can take advantage of, but “the official poverty measure leaves out.” Hood charges that the poor take advantage of “significant off the books income” not reported in their income tax returns. He also alleges that “for poverty rates over time, government statisticians significantly oversee the effects of inflation.”
Citing a recent study, Hood alleges that “a more realistic inflation adjustment” shows the poverty rate dropping dramatically from 19.5% in the early 1960s, to just 3.3% in 2018. A child poverty?
Hood cites another recent study showing it at just 3.7%, adding, “…America children are doing better than ever.”
But in his eagerness to disprove the pervasiveness of poverty nationally, Rev. Barber counters, he overlooks the consistent forces and conditions that not only cause economic inequality, but perpetuate it.
“My brother Hood is once again proving Dr. King’s point that too often people in this nation want to give,’ Rev. Barber says.
Barber notes that John Hood says nothing about how government policy allows corporate greed to go virtually unpunished, or spends trillions on warfare and militarization, while cities and rural areas crumble under the weight of neglect and lack of ample investment.
He points to how huge corporations like Amazon don’t pay a penny in taxes thanks to big tax breaks and cuts, thus depleting the social safety net for the needy through the scaling back of anti-poverty programs.
“Over 60 million people work every day for less than a living wage,”Rev. Barber adds. “This is a result of policy.”
For instance, the cost of housing has skyrocketed across the country beyond the ability of many families to afford, given how wage growth continues to stagnate. Black families are steadily falling victim to gentrification, where they can no longer afford to live in their own neighborhoods.
Rev. Barber has also lamented the fact that helping the poor has not been an issue in the 2020 presidential campaign, especially during the Democratic debates.
Barber and the Poor People’s Campaign are in the midst of a 25-state tour protesting poverty in the nation, that will culminate with a Washington, D.C. mass march and rally in June calling for an end to poverty and racism; and greater access to affordable health care, education and housing.
Rev. Barber concludes that John Hood is essentially using some of the same “falsehoods” against the poor that dr. King had to contend with over 50 years ago - that the poor are responsible for they own plight, and that mass poverty and low wealth are not real.
“All of these are not true,” Barber says.
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