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JULY 31,1997 AUGUSTA FOCUS:
CIVIL RIGHTS JOURNAL By Bernice Powell Jackson
Domestic violence
must be addressed
t must have been 16 or 17 years ago,
but I remember it like it was last
month. I was sitting in a woman’s
prison in New York State, listening
to women testify to the Governor’s
Commission on Domestic Violence. The
women, all sentenced to long prison terms
of 15 years to life, told their stories and
how domestic violence had been a part of
their lives.
Some had only known lives filled with
violence from their childhood; others had
experienced it only asadults. One woman
recalled her experience as a child riding
in the ambulance witk her battered
mother, only to be ignored in the waiting
room by alland not knowingifher mother
would live or die. Another told of think
ing that domestic violence was a part of
marriage —that was what she had grown
up with and what she had come to expect
as an adult. All of these women had been
convicted of murdering their spouses
when they could nolonger take the abuse
themselves or when they watched their
children being abused.
I remember driving that same evening
to my mother’s in Washington, D.C.
through a hurricane which threatened
the east coast and saying the words, with
a new understanding, there but for the
grace of God, go I. None of us chooses the
family we are born into and some of us
are born into families where domestic
violence is a part of life.
Domestic violence is a term which is
too often unspoken in the African Ameri
can community. That may be true in
other communities of color as well, but I
know it is true in my own. To talk about
it, some believe, only widens the gap
between black men and black women. To
talk about it, some believe, means telling
of the horrors done by fathers, brothers,
uncles and husbands and destroys fami
lies.
But thereality isthat not talking about
domestic violence in our community does
all those negative things as well. Not
talking about domestic violence ensures
that the gap between men and women
widens even more as women are forced to
believe that they are less valuable than
our men. Not talking about domestic
violence undermines our community’s
unity even more because a superficial
and flawed unity is no unity at all. Not
talking about domestic violence guaran
tees the destruction of a family, not just
for one generation, but for generationsto
come.
Unfortunately, the black church too
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Not talking about
domestic violence ensures
that the gap between men
and women widens even
meore as women are
forced to believe that they
are less valuable than our
men. Not talking about
domestic violence under
mines our community’s
unity even more because
a superficial and flawed
unity is no unity at all.
often has also participated in the silence
around domestic violence. However, a
new national project, The Black Church
and Domestic Violence Task Force, lo
cated in Seattle, is ending the silence and
beginning the dialogue and action. The
African American Initiative of Men Stop
ping Violence, based in Atlanta, works
with African American men who have
been batterers.
Locally, black churches, mosques, and
community organizations are taking ac
tion. Forinstance, the Open Arms Minis
try, a holistic approach to dealing with
domestic violence, was begun two years
ago by the Zion Hill Missionary Baptist
Church in Rochester, N.Y. In Chicago a
Domestic Violence Advocacy/Care Min
istry trains church leaders on domestic
violence and Trinity United Church of
Christ has a special ministry for battered
women and children. Several years agoin
Washington, D.C., Rev. Imagene Stewart
began the House of Imagene to shelter
and minister to battered and homeless
women and children.
We must end the silence about the sin
and the crime of domestic violence in the
African American community. We must
reach out to help those women and those
men who are caught up in this horrible
and terrifying cycle of violence. We can
not afford for future generations to be
torn apart because we have tolerated it.
For more information, write the Black
Church and Domestic Violence Task
Force, Center for the Prevention of Sexual
and Domestic Violence, 936 N. 34th St.,
Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98103 or call them
at (206)634-1903 or e-mail them at
cpsdv@cpsdv.seanet.com.
Charles W. Walker
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Editorial
TO BE EQUAL By Hugh B. Price
Preparing students for academic success
t’s the middle of summer, the air is
thick with heat, and most of us are
thinking more about beaches than
schools.
But I've just read a new book
which has brought the educational fu
ture of our children — particularly those
in public schools that are predominantly
black and Hispanic — back to the center
of my consciousness.
This book, The Right to Learn: A
Blueprint for Creating Schools That
Work, is, with well-documented evidence
and clear, forceful prose, urgently sound
ing an alarm America must heed.
Its author, Professor Linda Darling-
Hammond, of Columbia University’s
Teachers College, says that we must act
now to fix the future of millions of poor
and minority school children.
That is, we must act now in order to
ensure that they get the kind of school
ing which enables them to build their
own future as productive members of
society.
That kind of schooling is critical for
them and us all in this new era when, as
Darling-Hammond puts it, “Perhaps
even the survival of nations and people
[is] so tightly tied to their ability to
learn. Consequently, our future depends
now, as never before, on our ability to
teach.”
The importance of the blueprint that
Darling-Hammond presents for doing
that seems to be reinforced with every
fresh news story about the tight connec
tion now between the quality of school
ingour children receive and their chances
of finding decent jobs.
For example, arecent study found that
today’s high school graduates aren’t as
prepared to enter the workforce as they
think.
The study, sponsored by Amway and
THIS WAY FOR BLACK EMPOWERMENT By Dr. Lenora Fulani
If you’re against slavery, you don’t
give the slaves back to the slavers
coalition of non-profit and reli
gious groups in New York City
recently protested Mayor
Giuliani’s workfare program —
the program in which welfare
recipients are required to work to be
eligible for their checks. While everyone
agreesthat the welfare system is a failure
and that we have to find ways to move
people from welfare to work, the Giuliani
program is no solution. However, I’m
also concerned about the protest by those
groups, who have refused to accept
workfare workers that the city wants to
place in their agencies.
If these non-profit groups want to pro
test the workfare program, which makes
perfect sense since the program is seri
ously, seriously flawed, why refuse to
take these workers into jobs at the agen
cies? These non-profit and religious
groups are the ones who liken the
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Nearly six of 10 employers
say that the high school
graduates they see lack such
fundamental skills as the
ability to write adequately.
Junior Achievement, whose programs
seek to acquaint young people with the
business world, determined that 90 per
cent of graduating high school seniors
feel they’re prepared to enter the
workforce directly. However, only 51
percent of employers — those doing the
hiring — feel that way. Nearly six out of
10 employers say that the high school
graduates they see lack such fundamen
tal skills as the ability to write adequately.
Onecontribution of The Right to Learn
is that it describes where such a mis
match begins and how its effect intensi
fiesover time. It stems from the inequal
ity which is “deeply embedded in the
American schooling system” — an in
equality that first shows itself in school
districts’ sharply unequal access to ad
equate revenues.
These great disparities in revenues
disproportionately harm poor and mi
nority pupils because they’re concen
trated in the rural and urban school
districts with the smallest taxbase. These
school districts — with some striking
exceptions — overwhelmingly contain
the schools with the most outdated equip
ment, least challenging curricula, and
thelargest numbers of unprepared teach
ers, Darling-Hammond says.
Fortunately, she does not leave the
matter there. Instead, she shows us that
the pathway to improving poor-quality
schooling is clear because it has already
beentraversed in schoolsacross the coun
try.
workfare program to slavery. Now, if
you're against slavery and the
slavemaster says, “I want to give you my
slaves so they can work for you,” you
don’t turn him down and turn them
away. If you're against slavery, you take
the slaves from the slave owner and then
you figure out how to liberate them!
The non-profits and religious groups
that oppose the workfare programs
shouldn’t turn these workers away. They
should accept them and then call for
support from the community at large to
upgrade the terms, the conditions and
the wages of their workers. They should
gotothe private sector and say, “We need
your help to train these workers and
develop long-term, productive, decent
paying jobs for people. Let’s create a
partnership between the non-profit and
the private sector to do what government
won’t do and can’t do.”
She presents the conclusive evidence
that poor and minority pupils can meet |
high academic standards — if certain
conditions prevail. |
Those conditions are the same that
exist as a matter of course for the over
whelming majority of schoolchildren
from affluent families and from white
families. |
That is to say, if the schools these |
children attend have teachers well pre
pared in the subjects they teach and in
effective methods of teaching. ‘
If the schools they attend offer courses |
which stimulate their curiosity, and am- '
bition and self-confidence. !
And if the schools they attend are '
properly outfitted for teaching — well- |
supplied with up-to-date textbooks and |
computers and other teaching materi- '
als, with small-ish enrollments that pro- J
duce the right kind of student-teacher
ratios. |
While it is true that the solutions to '
the problems of school failure and in- |
equality will require a major revamping |
of the nation’s system of schooling, Linda |
Darling-Hammond would be the first to |
say that those of us at the local-school |
level cannot merely wait for that to oc- |
cur. ‘
We know what works. We must exer- '
cise the will and the determination to |
bringit about. We — educators, parents,
elected officials, community leadersand
taxpayers — must commit ourselves to |
improving the schools neighborhood by
neighborhood if necessary. |
Becauseitistruethat all children have
arighttolearn, and deserve the opportu
nity to achieve it. 3
And because it is true that, as the |
Urban League slogan declares: “Our '
Children = Our Destiny.” !
If these organizations want to protest
the program and put some real heat on
Mayor Giuliani — who deserves the heat
because the program is horrendous as it
now stands — they mustn’t refuse the
workers. They’vegot tograbthem. They
should say to Mayor Giuliani: Give us
everyone! Give us everyone — all 36,000
people who are on the workfare program.
We’'ll create a partnership with the people |
of this city and make it work. |
Lenora B. Fulani twice ran for Presi
dent of the U.S. as an independent, mak
ing history in 1988 when she became the
first woman and African American to get
on the ballot in all fifty states. Dr. Fulani
is currently a leading activist in the Re
form Party and chairs the Committee for |
a Unified Independent Party. She can be
reached at 800-288-3201 or
www.Fulani.org. 5