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The Augusta News-Review December 3,1983
Mallory K. MillenderEditor-Publisher
Paul Walker Assistant to the Publisher
Wanda Johnson General Manager/Advertising Dir.
Diane CarswellCirculation Manager
Yvonne Dayßeporter
Rev. R.E. Donaldsonßeligion Editor
Mrs. Geneva Y. Gibson Church Coordinator
Charles Beale Jenkins County Correspondent
Mrs. Fannie Johnson Aiken County Correspondent
Mrs. Clara WestMcDuffie County Correspondent
Mrs. Ileen Buchanan Fashion & Beauty Editor
Wilbert Allen Columnist
Roosevelt Green Columnist
Al IrbyColumnist
Philip Waring Columnist
Marva Stewart Columnist
George Bailey. Sports Writer
Carl McCoyEditorial Cartoonist
Olando HamlettPhotographer
Roscoe Williams Photographer
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Capital Comment
250 Black mayors
by John W. Lewis Jr.
The nation’s Black mayors, who
govern a smorgasbord of diverse
cities and towns, ranging from
America’s great cities like
Chicago, Detroit and Los Angeles,
to small, rural towns such as
Bolton, Miss, and Eatonville,
Fla., have begun to use their
collective strength to obtain
benefits for their cities and for the
Black community.
Johnny Ford, 40, the president
of the National Conference of
Black Mayors, the organization
representing the Black city heads,
believes that the “number one
issue for mayors is money,” and
therefore concentrates his group’s
growing political muscle on
securing federal and corporate
grants. Ford, a three-year mayor
of Tuskegee, Ala., has
brought greater visibility to the
Atlanta-based organization, and is
regarded as a sophisticated
political strategist who has not
only domestic and international
economic projects for Tuskegee,
but has been responsible for an
escalating number of grants being
awarded to NCBM cities.
Aiding Ford in the nation’s
capital is Sam Tucker, an astute
former public relations executive
who is transforming the NCBM
office here into a major influence
on the Washington scene. Tucker
hit the ground running three mon
ths ago when he took over the
Washington reins for NCBM. Per
petually in motion, often juggling
a dozen projects at once, the Hun
ter College graduate has jam
packed days, crammed with seeing
officials in the city to explain the
organization’s agenda and to seek
out federal funds for the diver
sified group of cities represented
by his office.
Consider a recent Tuesday.
Early in the morning, he picked up
Ford and SCLC President Joseph
Lowery from National Airport and
the three went directly to U.S. ,
District Court to oppose a suit by
North Carolina Senator Jessee
Helms asking the court to unseal
FBI papers on Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr.
After brief interviews there with
television and newspaper repor
ters, Ford and Tucker, joined by
NCBM Executive Director
Michelle Kourouma, went to the
U.S. Department of Education for
a 10 a.m. meeting with Secretary
Terrel Bell. Later, they went to
another meeting with Secretary of
Labor Raymond Donovan, and af
terwards held a press conference
with reporters in the lobby of the
Labor Department.
At noon, Tucker accompanied
Ford over to the National Press
Club where Ford was the guest at a
Civil Rights Journal
Reagan overruled on Civil Rights Commission
by Charles E. Cobb
President Reagan has lost in his
attempt to reverse the nation’s civil
rights policies.
The president’s
dismissal of gf|
three Demo- *1
cratic members sMlllßy
of the U.S.
Commission on
Civil Rights WP
has been sum-
manly rebus-
fed by U.S. District Court Judge
Page 4
luncheon honoring Vanessa
Williams, the stunningly-beautiful
and talented Syracuse University
student who this year became the
first Black Miss America. Later
that evening, NCBM honored Miss
Williams with a gala reception at
the Capital Hilton Hotel attended
by a who’s who list of influential
Washingtonians.
It’s a breathless pace for Tucker
who served as a media relations
consultant for two successful
Presidential campaigns, President
Carter’s 1976 campaign and
President Reagan’s 1980 cam
paign. Since becoming NCBM’s
Washington director this past
Fall, Tucker and Ford have met
with Vice President George Bush,
James Baker, the White House
chief of staff and seven cabinet
secretaries. Other meetings with
the leadership of the House and
Senate are scheduled for later this
month.
Traditionally, it has been the
Urban League and the NAACP
that have taken the leading ad
vocacy role in pushing for civil
rights and other Black-interest
issues in Washington. But the
growth in numbers and influence
of the Black mayors is changing
the political mix.
With combined city budgets of
over S2O billion and a constituency
of about 20 million people, the
Black mayors have tremendous
clout on the national scene.
NCBM’s 250 Black mayors now
have sufficient numbers and
political strength in major cities to
affect national as well as local and
state public policy.
Additionally, there is no sign
that the trend will not continue.
For at least the next decade, it is
believed that the number of Black
mayors will increase not only in
majority Black cities, but also in
cities without a substantial number
of Black voters.
Black mayors, many believe,
now outrank the 21-member
Congressional Black Caucus as the
leading national Black leader
ship group and wield greater power
over national politics. Black
mayors have a growing capability
to take collective action through
NCBM and affect critical issues
before the U.S. Congress.
The National Conference of
Black Mayors is beginning to
utilize this awesome potential
power in Washington to influence
a range of urban and rural issues
on NCBM’s national agenda.
Although that agenda embraces
major public policy issues,
however, Tucker emphasizes that
the meat and potatoes of NCBM’s
Washington office will continue to
be the securing of federal resources
to help solve the pressing economic
needs of American cities.
Nonna Johnson.
In granting a preliminary injun
ction barring the dismissal of Mary
Francis Berry, Blandina C.
Ramirez, and Rabbi Murray Salt
zman the court stated, “The work
of the commission is vital to the
countinued protection and advan
cement of civil rights in this coun
try.” The nation will not be
dragged back into an era that we
all regret.
The U.S. Civil Rights Com
mission should not be composed of
I’M A
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To Be Equal
How many are poor?
by John E. Jacob
There’s nothing like good news,
even if it’s not true. The good news
now coming ■khmemmmh
out of Tjjg||
Washington is
that poverty is W
not as serious a ' I
problem as K 1
most people *
seem to think it
is. ! * » 4
The bearer of good news is
David Stockman, director of the
Office of Management and
Budget. Thirty-five million poor
people? Not according to Stock
man. He says the real figure is only
20 million, as if such a huge num
ber of deprived people can be
described with the word “only.”
It seems OMB has made 15
million people—the difference
between Census Bureau estimates
of the poor and OMB’s rosier
estimates—disappear from the
ranks of the poor.
OMB does it by statistical
juggling. It says that if you add in
kind government benefits to the
incomes of the poor, many are no
longer poor. That sounds fairly
reasonable until you examine it.
Here’s how OMB’s fiddling with
the numbers goes.
First, there is federally sub
sidized housing. If you take the
market rental value of a subsidized
housing unit, subtract the actual
rent a poor person pays and at
tribute the difference to his or her
income, many of the poor would
now have incomes above the
poverty line.
Here’s another exam-
what he has termed “team
players” any more than should the
U.S. Supreme Court. The com
mission was established as an in
dependent monitoring agency un
fettered by partisan politics and
presidential tampering. Although
motivated by political interest even
the Senate Republican leadership
saw the foolhardiness of the
president’s actions.
By a vote of 78-3, the Senate
voted to give the imperiled agency
a new lease on life, however, the
senate action followed the court’s
ple—Medicaid. If you add the
value of federally-paid medical
care, the same thing happens. The
imputed income plus actual dollar
income of the poor person lifts him
or her out of poverty.
But wait a minute. Let’s assume
a poor person has no earnings for
the year. Let’s also assume that
person has major surgery and a
long nursing home stay, all paid
for by the government, and costing
$50,000.
Mr. Stockman and his statistics
crunchers at OMB would say that
person has an income of $50,000
for the year and is no longer
poor—in fact, that person should
now be counted among the more
affluent of our citizens.
That may make sense in
Washington, but common sense
tells us that person is still poor. He
still doesn’t have a dime to call his
own, still has no cash income, and
still is poor by any reasonable way
of looking at his situation.
So OMB’s little exercise has no
validity in the real world, where 35
million are still deprived despite
the efforts of officials to define
them out of poverty. So there goes
the good news—gone with the first
fresh breeze of realism.
But the Stockman report is
troubling for several reasons. Fir
st, it indicates our national policy
makers are more interested in
playing a numbers game than they
are with' really dealing with the
problems of growing poverty.
Second, it reveals a mind-set
that is quick to point out the sub
sidies given the poor while never
mentioning those given the better-
decision.
In Judge Johnson’s opinion in
referring to the enabling legislation
which created the U.S. Civil Rights
Commission, she noted that the
Congress intended for the com
mission to be “free from any con
trol or coercive influence by the
president or the congress.”
The president’s self imposed
mandate to destroy the civil
rights movement and the con
comitant legislation should signal
the country that there is a need for
change in 1984. Mr. Reagan has
off. After all, if we should impute
public housing subsidies to poor
people receiving them why not also
impute federal mortgage interest
subsidies to homeowners. Such
subsidies are many times the
housing subsidies to the poor.
Finally, we ought to face up to
the fact that the so-called “poverty
line” does not define poverty—it
defines the poorest of the poor; it
is a line that separates abject
poverty from simple poverty.
That poverty line is based on a
two-decade-old calculation of the
minimum food budget a family
needs to survive for a short period
of time. It was then blown into a
year-round figure and used as a
definition of poverty. From an
emergency budget it became a
permanent dividing line.
Defining poverty is better
achieved by using the Labor
Department’s budget for a “lower
living standard.” That’s a no-frills
estimate of what it takes to keep a
family going at absolutely minimal
living standards.
And that budget turns out to be
about 40 percent higher than the
so-called poverty line. That stan
dard also implies there are many
more poor people than the 35
million officially defined as poor.
So poverty is not only a national
problem, it is a national disaster
affecting far more people than we
realize—perhaps a fourth of the
population.
And it is a problem that can’t be
defined out of existence, for the
OMB is dealing with statistics, not
with people who are poor and who
are hurting
more than any of his predecessors
taken a personal position in the
dismantling of the nation’s social
and political progress.
We are not living in the 20’s and
we are not living in the antebellum
south. Civil and human rights are
integral parts of international
politics. We cannot allow this
misguided administration to con
tinually fray the Democracy and
embarrass the nation. It is a total
waste of the tax payers’ money and
the court’s time to continually
have to rebuff this racist advocacy.
Walking With Dignity
Impoverished
Black family
by Al Irby
A Black New York news repor
ter spent an afternoon talking with
B members of a
poor Black
family, then
returned to his
desk to dash
off the
“definitive” sto
ry of today’s
typical poor
Black household.
A researcher looking for data on
females heading Black-family
households selects a convenient
community, sends out some
questionnaires, and draws some
convenient conclusions. Unfor
tunately, these two imaginary
scenarios are representative of the
kind of attention being focused on
poor Black families today.
“Black families are getting a lot
of press, but good research is very
rare,” says Howard University
Pro. Harriette McAdoo.
Founder of the McAdoo Family
Profile Seale used by concerned
sociologists to measure the kinds
of support a family receives from
relatives and friends, Dr. McAdoo
is a pioneer in the relatively new
study of Black families. During the
past 10 years she has identified
some of the causes of upward
mobility in middle-class families,
and currently she is shaking up
stereotypes having to do with
single mothers.
“There has always been the
stereotype of the Black mother
who is single and who is probably
going to end up on welfare,” Dr.
McAdoo says. “But the women
we’ve been talking with have full
custody of their children and are
working at full-time jobs, doing
everything possible to remain in
dependent.”
Partly in response to the 1965
Moynihan Report, a Department
of Labor study that documented
the breakdown of ghetto Black
families, a number of scholars
have focused on identifying the
strengths that are unique to Black '.
families. There’s been no lack of
evidence, but funding for studies
has steadily dwindled.
“A lot of research in the past
has been problem-oriented,
because it was easier to get funding
if you were looking at specific
problems,” Dr. McAdoo ex
plained.
“But I think you have to get to
people before they’re involved in
the criminal justice system, before
they go on welfare, before they’re
at a crisis point.
“My orientation has always
been that you’re better able to
design programs to help families if
you’re able to understand how
normal families function.”
The learned-lady sociologist
thinks that studies of contem
porary Black families could in fact
help others who are struggling with
some of today’s unprecedented
social changes.
She points out, for example,
that white mothers who now are
returning to work when their
children are young are doing what
Black mothers have done for
decades. Dr. Michelene Maison, a
Black mother of two teenagers and
a project manager at Wellesley
College Center for Research on
Women, says: “Because I’ve
always been in the labor force, it’s
easy for me to forget how many
things have turned around in the
past five or 10 years for working
women.
In the past, when a white woman
was married, it was likely she
would stop working. But for Black
women, it has always been the
other way around. Dr. Maison has
been looking at the informal sup
port networks that traditionally
have helped working Black
mothers with child-rearing respon
sibilities. In their interviews, Dr.
Maison and her colleagues were
struck by how many of the women
had mothers who also had to
work.
Howard University has always
been blessed with a progressive and
innovative Sociology Department.
We old-timers can remember the
great Dr. E. Franklin Frazier, who
penned “Black Bourgeoisie,” and
made the upper-class Blacks con
scious of the fact that they were as
snobbish as whites toward their
lowly Black brothers.