Below is the OCR text representation for this newspapers page.

(ommentary BLACKONOMICS By James Clingman : : Financing our own oppression Have you kept up with the progress of the reparations movement as it pertains to getting firms that benefited from slavery, such as insur ance companies and banks, to pay reparations to the descen dants of slaves? The argument is that since those businesses gained much of their wealth from financing and insuring the ships and other instru ments of oppression utilized during the most heinous treatment of a people in histo ry, they should also pay repa rations. From what I understand there are several well docu mented cases, put together by top-notch legal experts, that will make significant progress toward reparations when they come to court. Some are also calling for boycotts against the companies involved if they do not voluntarily admit their involvement and compensate black people for obtaining their wealth on the backs of our ancestors. That’s not bad idea as far as I am concerned. I spent a lit tle time with Conrad Worrill on two occasions during the GUEST COMMENTARY By Bill Fletcher, Jr. £ jaeer w 1 2oyl o] | R Rl % T Throudgh the eyes of whites I think that what struck me was her smile. You must receive these flyers and postcards all the time. On one side is an advertise ment. On the other side is a picture of one or two peo ple who have been missing. The other night I hap pened to look down at the mail and saw the picture of a very pleasant smile. I stopped and decided to read the information. It appears that this woman, and I assume her son, have been missing for nearly one year. I cannot remember ever hearing anything about them in the national or local media. No surprise to GUEST COMMENTARY By Ron Walters 2 College presidents should take a stand When I was considering coming to the University of Maryland seven years ago, one of the major factors was that it had a president, Brit Kirwan, who was passionate about affirmative action. When the university’s Ben jamin Banneker Scholarship Program for African-Ameri can students was declared unconstitutional by the Fourth District Circuit Court, many questioned his decision to fight on, by appealing to the Supreme Court. A decision by a Right wing majority of the Supreme Court upheld the Fourth Circuit in 1995, but President Kirwan's courage stands as a model to other college presidents in the face of the current withering attack on the opportunity of blacks to attend college. past six months, and I am thoroughly impressed with his knowledge of the repara tions movement and his focus on bringing it to fruition. He is doing righteous work and we should support hing and all of those, including our dear elder, Robert Brock, who have fought and continue to fight for what is right. As I was reading an article in Cincinnati Magazine, tiled, The Baptist Economy, which noted the “wild-eyed glee” with which city officials and the virtually all-White Cincinnati Convention and Visitors' Bureau looked at the National Baptist Convention U.S.A,, it occurred to me that black people, and in this case, black churches, are financing the oppression of black people as well. You may have read my col umn, The Rest of the Story, where I discussed the Baptist Convention deciding to come to Cincinnati despite being asked to stay away because of the Cincinnati boycott agairist travel and tourism to this city. When I read the piece in Cincinnati Magazine, I was you, the reader, they are both black. I have written about this before, back during the dis appearance and national coverage of Chandra Levy, but once again we witness the stark contrast in the manner in which black life is viewed by this society compared to white life. A few weeks ago a white col lege student’s disappearance and recovery became, for several days, a national news story. Let’s leave aside that it appears that the entire disappearance was a charade. Think about the events unfolding on this planet: the Middle East is In his statement appealing the decision, Kirwan point ed out that the University of Maryland had resisted racial integration far into the 19705, even though the Supreme Court had declared segregation unconstitutional at the undergraduate college of university in 1950. This meant that, as in other Southern states, although blacks paid state and federal taxes, African- Americans had to attend predominantly black - and underfunded - colleges. This amounted to a massive transfer of resources, since those taxes paid by blacks were used to build and maintain universities that blacks couldn’t attend. But as in other states, blacks had also been slaves in Maryland, and one of its most famous slaves, Freder even more assured that my assessment was absolutely cor rect: It's always about the money; and we are financing our own oppression. Done under the tired mantra of “racial healing” the Baptist convention will bring s2l million dollars to a city in which oppression continues to run rampant. The only healing will be financial, and that will be for the oppressors. Vanessa Williams, the new spokesperson for the National Underground Railroad “Free dom” Center, came to town and said it was good that the Freedom Center was “built by black hands” and was a sym bol of healing, which are more statements that not only are incorrect but also would make the ignorant person think all is well in Cincinn-apathy. I wonder how much her com pensation is. Black leaders and black folks in general should stop financing the oppression of their own people. But since it seems they are not ready to stop this kind of madness, I think we should implement the same tactics against them in flames; ethnic cleansing is taking place in the west ern part of the Sudan; the U.S. economy remains sluggish with the bizarre contrast of some job cre ation along with increased unemployment. Yet the media has time to focus on the disappearance and recovery of a white college student from Madison, Wis. but cannot find the time to call our attention to the disappearance of Marcia and Nicholas Candela. It is not only that there is a different value put on white life compared to black life and that the media insists that we see the ick Douglass, details in his autobiography the painful story of how basic education was kept from him and other slaves. Now the schol arship program established at the flagship institution to correct this historical prob lem is called Banneker-Key (for Francis Scott Key) and is now open to other stu dents who ancestors had not been slaves, some whose family may have been slave owners, and others who are already more than propor tionally represented. In the past few years, Right wing legal organiza tions, wrongly named the Center for Equal Opportu nity and the Center for Indi vidual Rights, have threat ened universities in many states with law suits if they maintain racially idcntifia\ble programs. They have sent AUGUSTA FOCUS that have been brought against the insurance firms and the banks. They financed the oppression of black peo ple, and now black organiza tions are financing the oppres sion of black people. Why should we have a double-stan dard? Don't you think that because everything is about money, especially for many of our so-called black leaders, we should seek reparations from our own organizations as well? Crazy, you say? I don't think so. How can we ask for rec ompense from white-owned companies and not seek it from black organizations that continue to finance our oppression by committing black dollars to cities where black people are oppressed? Turnabout is fair play, and in the case of hundreds of mil lions of black tourism dollars being looked upon with “wild-eyed glee” by white dominated convention cen ters that get much of their funding from black tax dol lars, our acquiescence to calls from our organizations (and local black politicians) to go against boycotts is uncon world through the eyes of white people. To put it another way, if something is not seen by white people or through the eyes of white people, for all intents and purposes, it is not seen. Thus, the regular disap pearance of black women and children, in some cases apparent runaways, in other cases, kidnappings, enslave ment and murder, is simply not relevant as far as the media is concerned. It is happening to a population that seems to be viewed as only relevant when it is rioting or entertaining, not when it is suffering. See Whites page 10A letters either directly to the universities or to the U. §. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, now also run by conservatives, complaining that such pro grams violate the law. As a result the colleges are caving in and closing them.. In 2003, Carnegie Mellon decided to open its summer enrichment program for blacks to whites and Asians. Both Harvard and Yale caved in after receiving let ters from these legal organi zations and Princeton and MIT followed suit. With these precedents the ripple effect has caused many uni versities to “rearrange” such programs and others are still under review to see if they comply with the latest Supreme Court decision. Sec Collegepage 10A scionable. Despite the horrendous treatment of our people, both economically and otherwise, all over this country, we con tinue to mimic the overseers and the crumb snatchers of the past, selling out for a few dollars, hotel suites, and ban quets. Yes, we must seek repara tions from anyone and any company that benefited from the misery of black folks. We must support Brother Worrill in any way we can, and we must never give up. During a retrospective on Harold Washington’s mayoral tenure earlier this year in Chicago, 1 heard Worrill say, “Yes, our initial lawsuit was denied, but that’s just the beginning.” He went on to ask, “Do you know how long it took for black people to gain the victories of the past? Do you know how many law suits had to be filed to remedy other wrongs against us? This is just the start and we will continue to fight no matter how long it takes.” The same attitude must be applied to these sell-outs black gy e Jaskaon Earth Day ' and Vieques Vieques is a beautiful little island off the coast of Puerto Rico. It is also a place which has experi enced environmental devastation due to the test bombing that the U.S. Navy conducted there for 60 years. Now, since the withdrawal of the Navy a year ago, little has been done towards cleaning up our mess. So, as we celebrate Earth Day on April 22 and re-com mit ourselves to saving the Earth and our own communities, maybe we should also focus on Vieques. For more than a decade environmentalists, labor unions and peace activists in Vieques joined togeth er with civil rights groups and Puerto Rican politi cal leaders to protest the Navy’s presence in Vieques. They protested the Navy’s annexation of two-thirds of the island, which sandwiched the people between the Navy base and the target prac tice range which the Navy not only used itself, but even rented out to other nations. They also protested what was happening to the land and waters of Vieques, a place where farms once provided much of the beef for the Caribbean and where the waters hold one of the world’s few phosphores cent bays. They protested the decimation of the April 22, 2004 organizations that do nothing but help hold us down. Their leaders are interested in two things: Money in their pock ets and not offending those who give it to them. They will continue to finance our oppression, just like the finan ciers during slavery, if we don't hold them accountable for the dollars we give them. Repara tions for oppression? Let’s also demand that from black groups that are obviously guilty of complicity. James E. Clingman, an adjunct professor at the Univer sity of Cincinnatis African American Studies department, is former editor of the Cincin nati Herald Newspaper and founder of the Greater Cincin nati African American Cham ber of Commerce. He hosts the radio program, ‘Blackonom ics,” and has written several books, including: Ecomomic Empowerment or Economic Enslavement - We have a Choice; Blackonomics; and his soon-to-be-released book, Black o-Knowledge, Stuff we need to know. Contact him at www. blackonomics.com or (513) 4894132, tiny native frogs known as the coqui and the high rates of cancer, miscar riages and other diseases of the human beings liv ing there. Finally, after a thou sand days of protests by activists not only from Puerto Rico, but from across the U.S. and around the world and after the accidental death of a civilian employee on the bombing range, the Navy agreed to withdraw from Vieques. They were also supposed to clean up the millions of rounds of unexploded ordinance and the radioactive con tamination left by years of test bombing. Today that has not yet happened and the hundreds of com plaints filed on behalf of Vieques’ residents have not yet been acted upon. As far as the people there know, there is not yet even a plan to clean up this environmental mess. Twenty members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and Congressman Charles Rangel of NY have called upon the Sec retary of the Navy to get personally involved in ensuring the immediate clean-up of Vieques. Last fall Congressman Rangel wrote that the residents of Vieques still experi ence “dangerous living conditions,” including the high probability that the heavy metals and See Earth Day page 10A 9A