WHAT’S NEXT IN THE REP.
CECIL BROCKMAN CASE?
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
Guilford County State Rep. Cecil Brockman is next expected in Superior Court on November 13th to face charges of indecent liberties with a minor under the age of 16 (two counts) and two counts of statutory rape.
The six-term High Point Democrat, who has served in the NC House since 2015, was arrested last week by agents with the State Bureau of Investigation after it was determined that he allegedly had been having sexual relations with a 15-year-old teenager he met last May.
Brockman, 41, was arraigned in a Greensboro courtroom last Friday afternoon by virtual remote transmission from a nearby hospital after reportedly falling ill with a “medical emergency” Thursday.
Bail was set at $1,050,000. Brockman faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole if convicted.
If released on bond, Brockman will not be allowed to leave the state, or have any contact with his alleged juvenile victim. In fact, according to court records, Rep. Brockman has already tried to use his legislative status “…to contact the victim in this case and …[attempted] to locate the juvenile in the hospital.”
According to electronic evidence presented in court by Guilford County District Attorney Avery Crump , Rep. Brockman met the alleged juvenile victim by dating app online last May, right before the alleged minor victim turned 15 the following month in June.
Brockman allegedly went to Atlanta to live with the minor, and both then moved to High Point in August.
The alleged relationship was unknown until, on October 5th, Brockman reportedly called 911 saying that the teenager had gone missing, and he was trying to track the child via a tracking app known as Life360. The Davidson County Sheriff’s Dept. initially responded, but eventually contacted the High Point Police, which ultimately got the SBI involved because Brockman was a state representative.
It was after the alleged juvenile victim was finally located, and the teen’s cellphone was recovered and examined, that 14 sexually explicit videos of “certain acts” allegedly involving Rep. Brockman, were discovered.
The alleged acts were reportedly from August 15th, according to arrest warrants.
The High Point Democrat was arrested on October 8th, three days later. The investigation is ongoing, with additional charges possible, according to D.A. Crump.
Though represented by appointed council at the arraignment, Rep. Brockman said he would ultimately hire his own defense attorney.
He has also claimed to have mental health problems, causing him to miss several days at the NC. General Assembly.
Legislatively, Rep. Brockman is also known to vote with the Republican majority in the state House on several issues, sending his votes by saying he’s looking out for his community.
But doing so hasn’t made him popular with his fellow Democrats, who are now, in light of the serious criminal allegations against him, are uniformly calling for him to step down from office even before he gets a fair trial.
“While the legal process has yet to play out, it’s clear he cannot effectively serve his constituents and should resign immediately,” Gov. Josh Stein said in a statement last week.
The state House’s Democratic leader, Minority Leader Rep. Robert Reives, agreed.
“[I]t has become clear that he is unable to continue serving in the House of Representatives,” said Reives in a statement Thursday. “Rep. Brockman must resign immediately.”
Those calls for Brockman to step down were also echoed NC Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton and Republican House Speaker Destin Hall.
If Brockman refuses to relinquish his seat in the NC House, the body can vote to have him ejected, a rare occurrence since New Hanover County Rep. Thomas Wright was elected several years ago in a financial scandal.
In Brockman’s case, the Guilford County Democratic Party would select a replacement for the remainder of his term, and Gov. Stein would endorse it.
Given that Rep, Brockman cross state lines to allegedly sexually engage with a minor, might he face federal charges? That remains to be seen, based on the evidence, but normally, a person who crosses state lines for the purpose of sexually engaging with a minor is considered to be breaking federal law.
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BLACK UNEMPLOYMENT IS UP,
THANKS TO TRUMP ANTI-DEI
POLICIES
By Cash Michaels
Contributing writer
Remember a year ago, when then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was running for re-election, he dismissively touted how undocumented immigrants were allegedly endangering “black jobs?”
Turns out now that Trump was re-elected, it’s not undocumented immigrants that are the root cause of black unemployment now, but he is.
According to a story this week in The NY Times, “Joblessness for Black workers is rising again, two years after reaching a record low.”
And what does The Times story attribute the rise in black unemployment to? “…the Trump administration’s assault on diversity programs and cuts to the federal work force could make it even more difficult for Black workers to recover when conditions improve.”
President Trump has been back in office since January 20th, over eight months. But, according to The NY Times, “African American unemployment rate has surged over the past four months, from 6 to 7.5 percent, while the rate for white people ticked down slightly to 3.7 percent. On top of a slowing economy, the White House’s actions have disproportionately harmed black workers, economists said.”
Because Trump enjoyed a strong economy during his first term starting in 2017, African-American unemployment was low. But in 2019, the Covid-19 pandemic hit, and many black workers lost their in-person jobs.
It wasn’t until “generous public subsidies …cushioned the blow” later on that black employment surge, The Times story notes. Thus by 2023, in the midst of the Biden Administration, black unemployment was as low as 4.8 percent, with waging wages rising at their fastest rate since the 1990s, and, The Times story adds, :the Black median household death reached the highest level on record.”
But once the pandemic-era subsidies ended in 2024, hiring slowed. Inflation began to hit black low-wage earners hard. In fact, per The Times, “Black households were the only racial group last year in which median income fell and the poverty rate rose…,” according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
A close look at the numbers shows a significant loss of job losses “concentrated among black women working in professional services such as human resources, the Times story reported. Plus, a hiring freeze and mass layoffs in the federal work force, which have continued during the government shutdown and now exceed 200,000 have also fallen disproportionately on Black workers.”
That federal hiring freeze effectively closed the door to entry-level positions for young people.
And now the Trump Administration’s war against DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), and forcing private industry and the public sector to reverse its DEI policies as well, has made it more difficult for African-Americans to get employment in both areas. Before Trump, and since the tragic police murder of George Floyd, private and public sector made sure that job candidates of color were among the first to be interviewed. But that effort has now been stopped.
With thousands of federal workers, many of whom are black, having been fired from various federal agencies, in addition to what’s happening now during the federal government shutdown, black unemployment has been steadily rising
in the recent weeks.
The Dept. of Labor has also proposed a rollback of minimum-wage and overtime protections for domestic workers, who are usually black or Hispanic.
Here in North Carolina, according to the NC Dept. of Commerce Labor and Economic Analysis numbers, the current unemployment rate for blacks is 6.8%, compared to Hispanics at 3.0%, and white at 2.8%..
In 2022, the black unemployment rate was more than double that of whites and Hispanics.
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