As I ride through the streets of Racine, I hear Black voices of anger. I go out there and see these houses all boarded up. I see some gutted. I see vacant lots and weeds. I see young men standing around doing nothing. I feel so helpless, so hopeless. I wonder what they feel.
These are the thoughts that are shared by many community activists and myself. We all agreed that we are passing from one generation to another, a group of people who are hopelessly locked into a permanent underclass.
Ed Irons, a black Professor of Banking and Finance at Atlanta University says, “Even when the economy is going strong they (Black men) don't get hired. You can't attribute this to anything but institutional racism. America does not want to face this. Racine does not want to face it. At some point it is going to explode.
In the decade of the 1970s, blacks gained on whites in only one broad area: education. As of 1978, the median for blacks had reached 11.9 years of schooling; it was 12.5 for whites. Yet, even these statistics are misleading in one important sense: the quality of public schooling that the blacks are getting in most major U.S. cities has sharply declined. Says Bernard C. Watson, a black Vice President of Temple University in Philadelphia; "The education too many children receive in these classrooms is nothing short of a national scandal, an absolute disgrace."
To make matters worse, women now head 30% of all black households, a fact stemming partly from the rate of illegitimate births; it is six times as high among black women as white. One startling example: 42% of Chicago's births in 2000 were out of wedlock; 80% of the mothers were black. The welfare rate of black women heading families is a devastating more than 50%.
Politically, the blacks have made substantial strides in the past ten years. There are black mayors in Los Angeles, Washington, Detroit, Atlanta and New Orleans, and black councilmen and black judges in respectable and growing numbers across the nation—some 4,600 black elected officials in all. Racine has its own six African Americans, holding seven elected positions. We can even boast that we have an African-American President.
The president recently stressed personal responsibility in his speech at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's 100th Anniversary convention, saying that black parents must tell their children that their disadvantages in an unequal society are not an excuse for personal failures. "No one has written your destiny for you," he said. "Your destiny is in your hands – you cannot forget that. That's what we have to teach all of our children: no excuses. No excuses."
But, what happens when doors are closed in the face of those that we have told that they have no excuses. What do we tell those that are being locked up and out of the American dream?
We must asked ourselves is the election of a Black or mixed president a signal that everything is all right now. I think not. Let me ask you, have you noted any suffice change in the City of Racine since Obama’s election? Has crime gone down and employment gone up in the Black community? Are the Black leaders and Black elected officials being invited to the table more to help carve out the destiny of Racine? Again I would say, “I think not.”
What is very notable is that others are saying what is best for the African American community, rather than getting constructive comments from those that it is impacting.
Would it be great if our senior Alderman Q. A. Shakoor II, President of the City Council would convene a listening session in the council chambers where the minority community could speak out on their concerns? Something that I again doubt will happen.
It is becoming more and more apparent that Racine’s minority community is lacking of tangible leadership. The organizations that Blacks have traditionally turned to for answers are vastly becoming irrelevant in helping find solutions to the urban problems we face in Racine each day.
Today, Black elected officials should express what they are doing to shape the future of our community. It shouldn't rest in just the hands of those who shaped the past.
The two major challenges we face are that our today’s leadership is able to illustrate they're still relevant at this point in time and illustrating what it is that they do.
What do you think? Your comments are welcome.
