opinions/editorials
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By Julianne Malveaux
A Slave to Slavery Comparisons The brilliant surgeon Dr. Benjamin Carson is out of order and out of control when he compares the Affordable Care Act to slavery. As a physician, he must know how many people lack health care, and how much work this administration had done to right that wrong. As a health advocate, he must have seen those men and women who decide to forego pain medication
in favor of something to eat for their children. As a distinguished medical leader, he must have read the Institute of Medicine (IOM) reports that talk about the differential ways in which health care is delivered in emergency rooms, with Black and Brown men less likely than others to receive medication for their pain, even when it involves a broken bone. So when Carson says that the Affordable Care Act is “worse than slavery,” I truly wonder what he knows about slavery. Does he know about being
dragged from one country and placed on an auction block in another? Does he know about enduring backbreaking work, day after day, hour after hour, where the most human desires like love and companionship are snuffed out by the needs of greedy masters? Has he had a limb – a leg, an arm, a tongue – severed to make serve as an example for others? Has he felt a shackle on his neck, across his Adam’s apple, so tight that he could not breathe? Has he tried to run, and been captured
ASKIA-AT-LARGE
to read were fined as much as a year’s wages. Slaves who taught each other to read risked 39 lashes. I don’t know what the amazing Dr. Ben Carson is thinking when he compares anything in our current space to slavery. He has not known a slave’s life, and, blessedly, neither have most of us. But we know that affordable health care is not the same thing as slavery. I am tired of people making false slave comparison, effective-
and beaten? Or beaten even if he did not run? Does his back show the signs of White rage? Has he seen his own child sold at auction? Has he slid besides his woman, his love, knowing that she had no say if the master decided to have sex with her? Has he been literally emasculated, his body a victim to a master’s rage? Has he learned to read? According to an old North Carolina law, “to teach a slave to read is to excite dissatisfaction in the general population.” Whites who taught slaves
See malveaux on Page 46
By Askia Muhammad
Watch Out for a “Post Racial” Backlash Newark, N.J. Mayor Corey Booker has been elected to the U.S. Senate. He’s only the fourth Black person ever to do so. The other three are: Edward Brooke (D-Mass.), Carole Moseley-Braun (D-Ill.), and Barack Obama (D-Ill.). A few other Black folks have served in the chamber, going back to Reconstruction, but barely enough to even “shake a stick at.” And that’s a good thing that there’s a new Black senator …
right? Right. Proof that we’re now in “post racial America” where the content of your character is more important than the color of your skin … Right? Well, I wouldn’t go that far. But we’ve got a Black president, right? Right. A president who is mocked and scorned in more ways than you can imagine. Such that I wonder if any future president can ever again be respected by the American people. A president whose most scandalous behavior is the enactment and ratification by the Supreme
Court, of health reform legislation that defied presidential achievement for seven decades. And yet when the Johnny Reb Tea Party Caucus of the House of Representatives forced the shutdown of the U.S. government and almost caused a catastrophic default on the U.S. debt (which might still happen in three or four months), knuckle-dragging White visitors, some with Confederate flags in hand, visited closed Washington monuments during the shutdown, then stormed the White House
Guest Columnist
and not the Capitol demanding relief. But there’s more good news. A Black woman – Kamala Harris, attorney general of the State of California – may soon be elected governor of the most populous state in the Union. We’ve had other Black governors. Doug Wilder, elected in Virginia; Deval Patrick, elected in Massachusetts; and David Patterson, who succeeded disgraced Elliot Spitzer in New York, the third most populous state. Of course we have 43 Black
members of the House of Representatives, nearly 10 percent of the total, and almost at parity with the 13 percent U.S. Black population. There’s a Black justice sitting on the Supreme Court, countless other judges and state supreme court justices and even some state supreme court chief justices. Black mayors and sheriffs and county executives abound. It’s like full-employment season for Black politicians these days. And
See muhammad on Page 46
By James Clingman
Public and Public Officials are Stuck on Stupid “It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.” – Thomas Sowell Why do we keep electing the same people to the same office year after year, putting them in charge of our lives, despite having the absolute proof that they
have not, are not, and will not work in our best interests? The debt ceiling Kabuki Theater is yet another in a long line of what we have seen before – just a few months ago – in our so-called “government of, by, and for the people” We, the electorate, are just stuck on stupid. We have elected what has literally become an aristocracy to rule over us. They play games with our lives by trying to trump one another with their pompous speeches and protestations. All the while they are
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becoming millionaires and, to add insult to injury, they are not subject to the rules they make to govern us. As the opening quote suggests, they pay no price and feel no pain from their ridiculous wrangling, debating, and decision-making. They stroll out every now and then to give us their “insights” on what is going on in the “hallowed” halls of Congress, but then return to do nothing for us. For them, however, they continue to draw their pay checks, play golf, laugh and joke, and live off The Washington Informer
the public coffers by working for a government many of them say is the problem. What does that scenario say about those of us in the proletariat class? Thomas Jefferson said, “When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.” So what do we have, folks? Fear or tyranny? I know one thing we do have is anger. In some cases we have hopelessness, despair, and desperation as well. People are out of work,
children are out of food, and families are out of time, while the men and women on Capitol Hill make decisions affecting our lives but exempting themselves and their children from the consequences of those decisions. Have we come to the point where the inmates are running the asylum? Many U.S. citizens are in fear for their very survival now, and our Washington elites are conducting political business as usual, which means
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