MY TAKE/THE DRIFT

From the Editor and Publisher

For Mom at 99

This special issue of BAVUAL is inspired by my mother, Queenie Birkett, who turns 99 on May 20th. She embodies the 20th century black woman—a person who has struggled and sacrificed above and beyond to raise and protect her family and community.

Her friends know her as “Queen B” or “Gamma Sugar.” This remarkable woman, born in 1923, went from poverty in the Virginia countryside during Jim Crow to a split-level home on suburban Long Island and prosperity. Raised in a one room shack by her mother Mammy, a widow with 11 children, Queen Luana Taylor overcame immense adversity to become the mother of five children, the grandmother of three, the great-grandmother of eight and the great-great-grandmother of five. The wife of pioneering inventor and businessman Earl Birkett, who passed away in 2014, she was a well-known civic leader in our community of Lakeview, West Hempstead, responsible among many other things for the paving of the main thoroughfare (and our street) Pinebrook Avenue and serving as a hostess par excellence, a den mother in the Cub Scouts and a businesswoman in her own right, as owner of Queen B’s Fashion & Beauty Shop in Lakeview.

Truly a great lady. Hat’s off to you, Mom, and to all our great black women.

The Birkett family, c. 1973: Earl, Mother Queenie, Dad Earl, Sister Erlanda

THE DRIFT

The Rent Is Too Damn High

People tend to forget that middleclass wealth is a relatively new phenomenon in history, a byproduct of union organization beginning in the 1930s combined with the prosperity created by World War II and the economic boom of the 1950s through 1970s. Equally forgettable is how easily that wealth can be lost due to the twin evils of inflation and unfair government policies. It has been said euphemistically that when all Americans get an economic cold, black people get the flu. How true. The Reagan-era tax cuts of the 1980s produced a record number of mega-billionaires and hit hard people in the middleclass, who must work twice as hard for increasingly less money in a labor pool shrinking through foreign competition and automation.

Jimmy McMillan, a long-time gadfly in New York politics, got the public’s attention during the 2010 Democratic gubernatorial debate when he complained (repeatedly): “The rent [in New York City specifically] is too damn high.” He was right, and it has only gotten worse since. The median monthly rent for a 1-bedroom apartment in the United States is $1,100. Given the real estate rule of thumb for assessing affordability of rent, that one needs to earn 40 times the monthly rent, that means one needs an annual income of $44,000 to afford to pay that rent. The average annual household income in the U.S. is $64,530, or $51,330 for all other expenses. Not too bad, but get this: Black Americans’ average annual household income is $45,000, which leaves just $31,800, or under $612 per week before taxes, after you pay the landlord. And many households have much lower incomes than this. With inflation at a 40-year high, social cohesion is not sustainable.

The solution is obvious. Government must step in to do two things: 1) cap the rent, and 2) raise the minimum wage. Rent should never exceed 25 percent of annual household income; that should be written into law. Adjusted for inflation, the average hourly minimum wage should be $22 (average hourly wage overall is $27.06). The federal minimum wage is currently $7.25, although the de facto wage nationally and in many locales is closer to $15.

What can you, Mr. and Ms. Citizen, do to make it happen? To start with, vote for the politicians who promise to limit your rent and raise your wages. If you work, make sure you join a union, and make sure that union is working to provide you a living wage. Any union leader should be replaced if they aren’t currently doing so, and you should refuse your valuable time to cash-rich employers who make you work on the cheap. That is the whole point of the postpandemic Great Resignation, where 4.5 million workers have decided to do just that.

Jimmy McMillan

Photo credit: Maria Rocha-Busche