OPINION
NEW PITTSBURGH COURIER
Guest Editorial
George H.W. Bush’s mixed legacy on race Should former President George H.W. Bush be remembered as an ally of Black Americans and an advocate for civil rights? Let’s review the record of Bush, who died last week at the age of 94 and had a political career that spanned decades. Bush was a “vastly under-appreciated friend” of historically Black colleges and universities, longtime Hampton University President William Harvey said in an interview with Philadelphia Tribune staff writer John N. Mitchell. HBCUs received $776 million in federal funds in 1989 and $894 million in 1990, an increase of $118 million in just two years, said Harvey, who served on the President’s Advisory Panel on HBCUs. He said Bush encouraged the development of the 15-member HBCU consortium, which had been awarded $4.3 million to increase the number of African-Americans scientists, engineers and other professionals in the growing fields of environmental restoration and waste management. As president, Bush appointed Blacks to high-ranking positions. He appointed Gen. Colin Powell as the first Black chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Dr. Louis Sullivan, founding president of the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, as secretary of health and human services. However, as Associated Press reporter Errin Haines Whack pointed out in an article last week, the nation’s 41st president has a conflicted legacy on race issues. “Lionized upon his death as a man of decency and civility, Bush has a mixed and complicated legacy which it comes to race,” said Whack. “Intellectually and emotionally, he was somebody who was civil-rights minded,” said Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley in the report by Whack. “Bush wanted to see himself as being a man devoid of racism. But the reality is that Bush often had to do dog whistles and appeal to less enlightened Americans on race.” Bush got elected president after a campaign marked by the infamous Willie Horton ad, about a Black murderer who raped a White woman while on a weekend furlough from prison. The TV spot about the Massachusetts inmate was produced by Bush supporters during his 1988 presidential campaign against Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis. It was widely condemned as racist and is regarded three decades later as one of the most extreme attack ads in modern political history. The Bush campaign disavowed the ad at the time, but Bush’s chief strategist, Lee Atwater, successfully exploited its message to paint Dukakis as soft on crime. Bush replaced civil rights hero Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court with Clarence Thomas, a Black conservative whose views are at odds with those of much of Black America. Thomas has ruled against affirmative action and voted to end key protections in the Voting Rights Act. Throughout his long political career, Bush was inconsistent on civil rights issues. His father, Prescott Bush, however, showed remarkable political courage and consistency. Prescott Bush was a moderate Republican senator from Connecticut who championed desegregation of schools and expanding civil rights. As a student at Yale University, George H.W. Bush started a chapter of the United Negro College Fund and helped to raise money for the scholarship program benefiting African-American students. Yet during his first, losing bid for Congress in Texas in 1964, he criticized his opponent’s support for the Civil Rights Act, legislation many in his home state opposed. “The new Civil Rights Act was passed to protect 14 percent of the people. I’m also worried about the other 86 percent,” Bush said after the measure became law. He won election to Congress two years later and went on to support the Fair Housing Act of 1968, signed into law by President Lyndon Johnson a week after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. In 1990, Bush vetoed a civil rights bill. Advocates of the measure argued it would help combat employment discrimination. The White House contended it would have incentivized “hiring and promotion quotas.” The following year, Bush signed a scaled-back version of the legislation. Harvard University historian Leah Wright Rigueur is right in saying said that, ultimately, Bush is hard to pin down on race. “Bush helped pave the way for the modern Republican Party we see now,” she said. “He gives us Clarence Thomas, but he also gives us Colin Powell. That’s his signature, that he plays both sides of the game.” (Reprinted from the Philadelphia Tribune)
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Incoming house majority’s agenda must include the Main Street Marshall Plan (TriceEdneyWire.com)—“America is already a great country: our challenge is to make its greatness apply fairly and equitably to all of its people. As the only Member of elected Leadership from a red state and largely rural district, I will work tirelessly to be a voice for the millions of Americans who feel left out and communities that are too often left behind.”—Newly-elected House Majority Whip Rep. James Clyburn The pending Democratic takeover of the U.S. House of Representatives marks a major turning point, perhaps far more significant than most Americans realize. For the last two years, the current Administration has careened, unchecked, through a series of misguided policy mishaps, from family separations at the border to emboldening White nationalists and neo-Nazis, and mangling the response to Hurricane Maria. The Administration’s signature achievement, a massive tax shift to benefit corporations and the wealthiest Americans, serves only to worsen income inequality and explode the federal deficit. The clear mission of the incoming Congress is not only to put a halt to the Administration’s misguided agenda but to advance an agenda aimed at reducing inequality, expanding opportunity and enforcing civil rights and racial justice. An encouraging sign that the Democratic majority does intend to advance such an agenda was the unveiling of a legislative package—known as H.B. 1, to emphasize its importance—reforming the nation’s political processes.
Marc H. Morial
To Be Equal The bill includes new donor disclosure requirements for political organizations, public financing for political campaigns, a mandatory Supreme Court ethical code, expansion of access to the polls and a reduction of partisan gerrymandering. We believe H.B. 1 is a good start. Among the other issues the incoming House majority must address on Day 1 are: increasing the federal minimum wage and indexing it to inflation, strengthening and restoring the Affordable Care Act, a comprehensive and targeted infrastructure bill and protection for “Dreamers” – young immigrants covered by Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). The most significant and impactful initiatives the new House majority could adopt, which includes much of the above, can be found in the National Urban League’s Main Street Marshall Plan, a comprehensive blueprint addressing lack of opportunity and economic inequality in America’s urban communities. Elements of the Main Street Marshall Plan were introduced as part of a major legislative proposal introduced by members of the Congressional Black Caucus earlier this year.
The Congressional Black Caucus’ Jobs and Justice Act includes Main Street Marshall Plan proposals addressing investment in public schools and infrastructure, a living wage for all Americans, restorative justice for ex-offenders, and tax incentives for hiring young people, veterans, and the unemployed. It’s significant that the incoming Congress is the most racially and culturally diverse in history, including first Native American congresswomen and the first Muslim congresswomen. The practical effect of such diversity is that Congress can more truly represent the interests of all its citizens—not just the wealthy, White men who still make up its largest contingent. In an open letter to her colleagues, incoming Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi wrote, “It is my hope that as we deliver on our For The People agenda—lower health costs, higher wages by rebuilding America and restoring integrity in government—we do so in a way that will address economic disparity in this Country. This Freshman Class has also made integrity in government its priority, supporting H.R. 1, in our Better Deal for Our Democracy. As Justice Brandeis said, ‘We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can’t have both.’” We look forward to working with Rep. Pelosi and her colleagues on both sides of the aisle to restore integrity to government and create economic, educational and social opportunity for all Americans.
Countdown to hope and change again! (TriceEdneyWire.com)—Do you remember how much we looked forward to hope and change when President Barack Obama was running for office? As I talk with people daily, they long for those days and wish Barack Obama and Michelle Obama could return to the White House. Some even wish they could return with Michelle being President! I must confess that I’m among the dreamers! Let’s be real because I doubt that the Obamas would want to return after all they had to endure. They’ve given us as much hope and change as we should expect of them. We loved what they did and we’re most grateful for their service. Now, we must find our hope and change some place else. In an email conversation with my good friend Frank Watkins, he was clear in showing us where we might find a bit of hope and change, but it won’t be in the White House soon. That’s not before January when the Democratic Party takes over the House and will be able to stop some of the craziness we’re having to endure. Some of the things Frank said are: “Republicans want policies and programs that they argue will stimulate the economy from the top down—supply side economics—and by spending lavishly on the military to provide national security. They want to give tax cuts to the rich and corporations. 82 percent of their… tax cuts in the 115th Congress went to the top 1 percent and 63 percent went to the top .01 percent—with
ocrats (should) want investment in the present and the future based on everyone and all businesses and financial institutions paying their fair share of taxes so the nation can make investments in jobs and job training, education, infrastructure, health care, housing, inner city public transportation, modernization of all forms of rail transportation, modernization of airports the idea that jobs and income will and air travel, a significant raise in trickle down to the middle class, the minimum wage ($15 per hour working Americans and the poor. and indexed to future inflation), Republicans want to reduce spend- voting rights, voter education and ing (except for the military, which voter participation, investments they always want to be high) and in the environment in the form of government (except when it comes clean ups and renewable energy, to controlling a woman’s body and investments in science, technology, choice) at all levels, and/or destroy space exploration and more. The (e.g., Steve Bannon) the “Adresult would be economic stimuministrative Accounts (MSA) for lation and more balanced growth health care; vouchers for private that created good paying jobs both and parochial schools; gradually now and in the future and would eliminating all public and subsiresult in added tax revenues so dized housing and privatizing it, we can increase investments in beginning with Section 8 housing; popular government programs privatizing retirement accounts (e.g., Social Security and Medicare) through Wall Street investments; and services , all of which would contractors—i.e., there were more reduce dependency on many govprivate contractors in Iraq and ernment “welfare” programs (e.g., Afghanistan than U.S. military unemployment compensation, Food personnel. These priorities have Stamps) and a faster reduction in always resulted in increased budthe nation’s budget deficits and get deficits and an expansion of the national debt.” national debt.” If the Democrats do the above, On the other hand, we look forwith the help of a few others, we’ll ward to the hope and change the get back a measure of the hope and Democrats can and should bring change we knew before November 6, to us. “That should include policies 2016. and programs that stimulate the (Dr. E. Faye Williams, national president economy from the bottom up. Dem- of the National Congress of Black Women.)
Dr. E. Faye Williams, Esq.
Commentary
Don’t let police keep secrets in their shooting of a Black man at Alabama mall (TriceEdneyWire.com)—This week, I attended the funeral service for a 21-year-old young man, Emantic “EJ” Bradford, Jr. He was shot three times in the back by police in a Birmingham, Alabama, shopping mall on Thanksgiving night. The police were responding to a fight and shots that injured two people. Witnesses have said EJ was trying to help people escape from danger. The police claimed he was brandishing a gun (for which he had a permit) and shot him without warning. “That boy didn’t shoot at nobody,” said an onlooker as the police crowded over Bradford bleeding to death in the mall. “They just killed that Black boy for no reason.” Bradford, the youngest son of a military family—his father was a Marine—was working full-time, helping to support his family. The family has asked for the release of any information on the shooting, including video from body cameras. The police department has refused, saying that the shooting is under investigation. Once more, there is justifiable fear that the police are closing ranks, using secrecy and false statements to subvert justice and protect their own. EJ Bradford’s death is an unspeakable horror, yet one that we witness far too often. He is one of more than 850 people who have been shot and killed by the police in the United
Jesse Jackson Sr.
Commentary States this year, and the most recent victim of racial violence at the hands of the police. The NRA keeps saying that a “good man with a gun” can help prevent mass shootings. Clearly, not if that good man is an African American. Even with a permit to carry and an intent to help the innocent get away, young African American men become, without warning, the targets and the victims of police. We have been here before, too many times. Trayvon Martin was shot and killed walking home in Florida. Michael Brown was shot, and his body left to rot in the middle of a Ferguson, Missouri street. In Chicago, there were “16 shots and a 400-day cover-up” of the murder of Laquan McDonald. The list of victims of what, sadly, is a violence fueled by racism and protected by political indifference is much too long. Who will force accountability and reform? In one of
his first and last efforts in office, former Attorney General Jeff Beauregard Sessions III gutted the Justice Department initiative, ramped up under the Obama administration, to use court-ordered consent decrees to force reform of police practices. Who will police the police? The current Justice Department has chosen to perversely shirk its responsibility. EJ Bradford deserves justice. His family deserves a full and thorough and public investigation. They deserve to see what information is known about the killing of their child. The officer involved should be investigated and prosecuted under the law. I share the pain and anger about the violent death of EJ. If the Justice Department will not act, and the police investigation is secreted away, the people must act to ensure that justice is done. I say to those who would protest, please do so in a non-violent and disciplined way. His mother, overcome with grief, said: “My son was a loving, very loving young man. He would give any of you the shirt off his back. And that’s true. He loved people, period. He was not a killer.” We should honor his spirit, even as we demand justice. We ask of the police only that you do your job. Serve and protect. And release the tapes.