Before I go further with my political writings, I need to clear up a few things. After more than five years on these here blogs (mainly Politicker, Daily Gotham and Room Eight New York Politics); after numerous local radio and television appearances; after some of my political columns have been published in a few newspapers, and after some others have appeared in various other media outlets (particularly of the fifth estate variety); I need to openly reflect and/or retrospect.
You see, over the years, I have been attacked many times -both publicly and privately- by various people: including black electeds and their lackeys. The claim is that I criticize them too much. They claim that I tend to ridicule them in my columns. They say I trivialize them. They say I make them look bad and/or inept. They say lots of other things (mostly things I didn't say), most of which I won't repeat here since this is a certified holy blogging-site/LOL.
It is said that I will never get support from any black-elected if I ever run for office (again): not that I got much support from them before/LOL. Look, there is no certainty that I will ever run for office again, so that doesn't bother me (never did). It has been further said that the unions connected to these elected democrats will not support me either; so I am bleeped.
Fine: so payback is a bitch/LOL. So why am I laughing?
As I have said many times over: my life didn't begin with, nor does it end by, me running for public office. I ran because I know we can do better. All those who scoffed at my runs (assembly and city council) need to answer this: are you satisfied with the collective bodies you have voted into office over the past quarter-century? If so, why all the grumbling and complaining then? If so, why are the approval ratings for Congress, plus state and city legislatures at such an all-time low? You see, attacking this writer for trying to change the status-quo is one thing: making sense or being logical is another. Stupid says as stupid says and does.
A district leader once told me that there is a viewpoint out there, whereby many blacks feel that I arrogantly believe that I am more intelligent than most of these black-electeds in the city. Let me state unequivocally that this is not true. There are many black elected-officials in this state and city, who happen to be quite articulate, loaded with political experience, very cerebral, exquisitely educated, highly intelligent and much more knowledgeable and qualified than I am. I am not comparing myself to any of them nor am I competing with any of them.
There are many blacks in City Hall, Albany and Congress, who are ivy-league educated as I am: many of whom -and others- have demonstrated a fine grasp of contemporary black-issues, and have offered up many solid and good ideas for solving and/or resolving some of said issues. There are those who are quite serious about public policy-formation and capable of offering solid contributions to the public debate. I don't even rank when all things are considered and that's fine with me. If I want to express myself on particular issues, I do have outlets: and I am fortunate in this regard. There are times when I do seize these outlets and do my thing (good, bad or indifferent). I want to believe I do contribute to the public discourse in general. And I do acknowledge that there have been times when I was a bit controversial: no big thing.
I once had a piece I wrote published in the Caribbean Life weekly newspaper -and also on the blogs- that was about elections in my homeland (Trinidad). One reader was so incensed that he/she came up to curse me out (Trini-style). The words were “haul your mother's cunt”. Back in the island these are fighting words: no one refers to another's mother's private parts. All I could do was laugh since it told me that my piece had touched a raw nerve and that couldn't have been such a bad thing -journalistically speaking. Over the years I have come to accept the same from local critics.
What I have tried to convey over time is this: we presently have more black-electeds holding office than ever before in history, and yet the black community is metastasizing at an alarming rate; with very very few specifically targeted governmental responses in sight. I also feel that comprehensive measures to address quality of life issues like crime, political-marginalization, ostracism, blatant racial- discrimination, police-brutality, injustice, depression, HIV-AIDS, homelessness, joblessness, unemployment, under-employment, economic development, youth development, health, education, the housing needs of the black community, and so on, and so on, are practically non-existent given the dire situation(s). I get the sense that when taken collectively, the response(s) from black electeds in New York leave a whole lot to be desired. It isn't much different nationwide, although some black-communities do much better than others: varying from state to state, city to city, and town to town.
Now, if I were incorrect in my assertions, then I want to believe the onus would be on defensive-minded black-electeds (and their staffers/supporters) to respond right here on these said blogs where I troll: but they don't. At least -in general- hardly ever above and beyond the personal attacks on me.
Like many other elected officials (mainly white and Hispanic), black-electeds can come up on the blogs and write columns defending themselves, their positions, policies, votes and vision (if any). Instead, they and their minions come up and personally attack me via the “anonymous” labels they use in the comment sections. They also spread all sorts of vicious and malicious lies on the sly, and cast aspersions through the grapevine. And this is why I am constantly fielding calls about all sorts of erroneous accusations (and innuendos) within communities of color in NYC: all of which is being done to discredit what I write on these here blogs.
Over the years I have seen very few black electeds engage the blog-sphere. The former assembly member from the Bronx -Michael Benjamin- is probably the most prolific here. Of course we know that he wants to run for Congress soon (and there is nothing wrong with that) so his motivation is ostensible. My question is this: why aren't other black electeds engaging this medium? Don't they have anything to say: especially when the black communities in this city cry out for help?
Only recently I found out that one elected has spread the nasty rumor -in very high academic circles- that I am nothing but a militant Caribbean-American nationalist, who appears to have issues with African-American politicians. A statement so mendacious that it hurts on a very personal level. All my life (and tracing back to my USA-born matriarch Bashana Jackson in 1812) my relatives and I have been fighting for equality and justice for all people: the Negro in particular given racialism's ugly and continuously sordid history.
Look, facing the list of maladies which have accumulatively ailed blacks here, can we say that the collective response from black-electeds has been inspirational? I don't think so.
This is a national issue: the quality of the black representation in the legislative branches on all three levels of government. It is obvious that black-electeds have failed to make the case for us in the corridors of power. It is clear that they have failed to recruit whites, Latinos, Asians and elected-officials of other races, nationalities, ethnicities, religions and such, to the pressing cause. It is clear that they have failed to impress upon their colleagues the crisis within the black community. Have you ever looked at televised broadcasts of black-electeds functioning on legislative committees? Too often, too many of them are unprepared to even ask a decent pertinent question, far less ascertain facts important to proposing good legislation, or towards formulating good public policy initiatives.
Here are just a a few of the many troubling statistics out there. Nationwide (2008), almost 25% of all blacks lived in poverty; nearly doubling the national average. In NYC it is even slightly higher in some areas. Almost twenty percent of all black males in this country have had at least one prison experience; amongst white males it's 2.6%. Black females abort slightly over one of every two fetuses: and this number has doubled in the last twenty years. They abort babies at a rate almost four times higher than white females. Nearly seven in ten black babies born are to unmarried black women. Close to half of the adult black females in this country never ever get married (legally). And we know that studies have generally shown, those who grow up in relatively secure environments where both mother and father (and extended family members too) are involved in their upbringing, fare so much better in life, than those who don't.
In education, at least two of every three black males now fail to graduate from high school. The graduation rate for black college students is angling to drop below that even of Hispanics whose first language isn't English. Relative to gun-violence, more than half of all the nation's murder victims are black. On any given day about 5% of all black males are imprisoned. Blacks are far more likely to be crime victims than any other racial, ethnic or nationalistic group in the country: and it's not even close in some cities. There are almost 1.5 million black men and women incarcerated on any given day in this country: nowhere in the world can you find this anomaly. Add another set who are on parole -or on some type of court-ordered sentencing- and you can bump the number up even further.
When we get to economics, we can see that blacks face the highest unemployment rate all over the nation (except for some Indian reservations). With demographic comparisons, blacks face the highest foreclosure rates, comparatively high bankruptcies, and have the lowest rates for business and economic opportunities nationwide.
Black men also die earlier than any other racial group and have arguably been losing money to the social security system since its inception. Plus, the wealth gap between blacks and whites keeps widening. Some estimates say that the average white male is anywhere between 25 to 100 times wealthier than the average black male. This brings me to something Randall Robinson wrote in the book, The Debt: “no nation can enslave a race of people for hundreds of years, set them free bedraggled and penniless, pitting them -without assistance- in a hostile environment, against privileged victimizers, and then reasonably expect the gap between the heirs of the two groups to narrow.” It's almost two hundred years since Britain's initial Emancipation Proclamation, and the evidence of Robinson's solid analysis in this regard is glaring.
There are so many statistics that I can pull out from my sleeves to highlight what's going on in communities of color that it isn't even funny. I am sure many of you know them as I do, and others know even more than I do. The bottom line is this: in too many black areas, things are horrid.
Look, I don't even want to discuss the “missing-father” syndrome, that mentally afflicts blacks (males more so than females in my estimation). Neither do I want to delve deeply into the teenage pregnancy issue, nor drug, alcohol and substance-abuse, nor the recidivism problem facing blacks who have been incarcerated, nor the physical and mental abuse issues faced everyday -especially by black kids and black women. I also don't want to get into the other psychological places and spaces where both male and female blacks hurt like crazy. My main point is this: where are the comprehensive plans from black electeds to remedy or rectify all this? Pray tell!!
Ideally we elect people to not only represent us in the legislature but also to lead us in solving pressing community issues/needs. The least they can do is get these issues highlighted on the public policy formation agenda of federal, state, city/local governments. The worst they can do is bury their heads in the sand and pretend these problems don't exist in communities of color.
Almost yearly now -and for the past few decades or so- some black media personalities (or celebrated black individuals) would hold events where other prominent blacks are invited to publicly debate the state of affairs in the black community as a whole. After 37 years of living in the USA (all in NYC), I have to ask this: what tangible results -beneficial to blacks en masse- have sprung from these many events and forums?
When I looked at the NY state-wide tickets for the major political parties in the recent election, I had to wonder why there were no blacks (male or female) in any of the prominent positions being sought. Is it strategic political-underdevelopment? Is it racism? Is it benign-neglect? Is it failed opportunities? Is it laziness on our part as blacks? Or what?
Have we stopped striving? Have we stopped fighting for all the good things many have been systematically (and sometimes legally) denied? Or have we been lulled into a false sense of complacency, since we have elected so many blacks to visibly high political places? Are they really looking out for all of us? Or are they mostly looking out for themselves?
When you get to two of the five embryonic political-party-initiatives on the New York ballot, you find two black men. One who is articulate and cerebral (NYC council-member Charles Barron/Freedom Party), and the other is more buffoonish than intellectual (Jim MacMillan/The Rent Is Too High Political Party). Much to his political detriment, the articulate one is stuck in rather anachronistic thinking-patterns because of a fealty to failed ideas around black-nationalism; while the other possesses a single-issue platform that is quite compelling. Both failed to attain a level of campaigning deserving of the vote-threshold required for party-status (50k voters). Thus when the election was over neither one had enough votes to secure ballot-status for the next four years -given the strange election laws under which we function in this state.
The dramatic feature of all this was that MacMillan (40k) got twice as many votes as Barron (20k). What does this tell you about the state of the black-nationalist movement in New York after all these years? That it has failed to bear political fruits? Sure there have been cultural gains; but which black (male or female) will be on the state-wide ticket of a major political party, in four years time? Pray tell!!!
By his words and actions, Charles Barron appears to be one of the very few black electeds in New York, intent on transforming the society: but his tactics are suspect. And after almost a decade in office he cannot say that his tenure has changed the way the city council does business. Black-owned firms still get less than 2.5 per cent of all city contracts -in a city where more than a 25 per cent of the residents are black. We have had only one black mayor in the city's history; one black police commissioner; and never had a black speaker for the council. Sure I know that Hispanics have never had one in any of these categories, but that just underscores my point: a higher quality of representation is needed in communities of color. Period.
The discrimination process used to scrutinize prospective electeds leaves a lot to be desired. It is as though those prospected for elected office -when recruited for support by electeds and their minions- are never critically evaluated. Why else has this paucity in quality been around for so long?
Black-electeds in New York never seem to recruit or develop youngsters with future office in mind. If you scour the list all the black-electeds in this state, you will be lucky to find that five percent are still under forty years of age. Politically speaking this is now a city for old black men: the results of which are easily seen by the lack of energy directed toward solving the many ills plaguing the black community overall.
It is time for black voters to make a statement. Year after year we are sent mailings from various black electeds requesting that we obediently vote for candidates they have endorsed for high office: from the presidency, down to federal senators, to congress members, to governors, state legislators, mayors, city council members, et al. And year in year out we do no evaluation of those we have voted for in the past. Congress stays adversarial; Albany stays dysfunctional; and City Hall is as arrogant as ever. Every election cycle brings another round of slick mailings with touched-up pictures of black faces endorsing primarily white faces for top positions in very high places. Meanwhile the lot of too many blacks remain the same: unhealthy, miserable, despicable, depressed, distressed, destitute, devoid of real economic opportunity and so on and so on.
To my detractors, let me say this: I may never run for public office again; and that's fine with me. I have experienced a lifetime of political activism and community-involvement: long before I first ran for office. I worked within many organizations and civic groups. I have contributed to many initiatives and campaigns. I have served on many boards, and worked in education, media, health, community- development, youth-development, with seniors, the homeless, those incarcerated, human services, and so on, and so on, and so on. For now I will continue to write. Occasionally I will highlight -and focus on- those nouveau-rich black electeds feeding at the public trough, while doing very little for those who are truly in need. It's a fucking shame and someone has to write about it from time to time.
Stay tuned-in folks.