North Carolina Newspapers

5A OPINIONS/The Charlotte Post April 3, 1997 Welfare turns people into government dependents By Sylvia Perry JACKSONVILLE FREE PRESS When President Franklin Roosevelt created the welfare program as part of his New Deal, it was meant to be a tem porary measure to allow American citizens the opportu nity to still look for employment while keeping their family from starving to death. Instead, for many it has turned into a irreversible hered itary crutch that trains depen dence and ignorance at an early age. Welfare was not meant to be a vehicle for black people to get ahead or even survive. Despite the overwhelming stereotype that the majority of the welfare system is composed of African Americans, only a small percentage is received by blacks, instead the majority of welfare goes to whites. The problem is that considering the minute percentage of blacks that make up the U.S. popula tion, 13 percent, a disproportion ate percentage are dependent on welfare (around 5 percent). “Affordable” housing was once a sound way for working fami lies to have a safe, up-to stan dard, neighborhood in which to raise their children. As times changed and requirements for living in these areas became more stringent, working class people had to find somewhere else to five to provide for those with a smaller or no income base. The result eventually grouped thousands of poorly educated, non-working, idle peo ple in a congested, confined area. These areas in the past few decades have become a breeding ground for crime, teenage pregnancy and drug trafficking. Some people have used their childhood experience in these ‘government projects’ to plant a seed of desire for a bet ter future and have gone on to prosper. Others have chosen to join their environment as yet anoth er negative statistic. Unfortunately, neither usually does anything to improve the “hood’. What are we to do with these places? Suggestions have included tearing down old tene ments, replacing them with more modem facilities, relocat ing into various locations (scat tered-site housing). All of these options are met with debate and criticism. Conservatives feel welfare recipients are undeserv ing of new housing with the rationale that if they really wanted it, they would get out and work for it. Scattered-site housing is an idea everyone approves of, as long as it is not in their neighborhood. The residents of our nation’s projects are a lost tribe of peo ple. No one wants them and they have nowhere to go. We look upon their residences as eyesores and make extra efforts to avoid them. Next time you drive by one of these places, don’t turn your head. live in the reahty that we have created for our environ ment. Look at the residents and wonder about what they do aU day. 'Then go home and look in the mirror, be thankful for what you have, and realize it could have been you. SYLVIA PERRY is editor of The Jacksonville Free Press in Florida. Lower the top, raise bottom of wage scale We live in an increasingly polarized society, where some Americans hve in wealth and comfort, while mil lions more are trapped in low wage jobs. Last year’s stock market increased in total value by over twenty-two per cent. Billions of dollars in profits were generated. Meanwhile, the highest number of bankruptcies was recorded in the U.S since the Great Depression. MiUions of working poor people were laid off, forced into part-time employment, or were pressured to accept wage reduc tions. ,A major indicator of this national problem of increasing inequality is the ratio between the salaries of the highest paid individuals in executive, professional and manageri al positions vs. the average wages of most workers. In coimtries like Japan and in Western Europe, the chief executives of huge corporations usually earn no more than 25 times the average salary and compensation of their company’s lowest paid, full-time worker. In the United States, in 1995, by contrast, the chief executive officers at the largest 500 companies each received $4.06 million on average. That is 197 times the salary of a worker paid at the minimum wage! What’s the solution? More than a half century ago dur ing World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt pro posed that the country adopt a maximum wage: no one could earn more than $25,000 in 1942, and the govern ment would tax any income above that amount at 100 percent. FDR’s basic concept here was correct. There is indeed an important relationship between the “top” and the “bottom” of a productive economy. Let us suppose that there was a legal ceiling of how much any American could earn. For the sake of argu ment, let’s say that the maximum wage would be set at 50 times the minimum wage. 'That would mean that as of 1996, the maximum income would be $425,000. Anything above that amormt would be taxed at 100 per cent. The advantage to this approach would be that the wealthiest Americans would have a direct interest in raising the incomes of fast food employees and other low- wage workers. As wages are lifted from the bottom, they could also rise at the top. There’s another approach that could foster greater income equality. Suppose trade unions fought for and won contracts that linked the salaries and overall com pensation of top executives to the wage levels of the low est, full-time employees. An executive who wanted a financial package of salary, stock options, interest and other compensation of $2 million, for example, could ordy obtain that figure if the corporation’s lowest paid, full time employee earned at least $40,000 annually. Many progressive poUticians and civil rights advocates have already endorsed these types of income fairness propos als. Mirmesota Democratic congressman Martin Sabo, for instance, has proposed a bill that would forbid corpo rations from deducting any part of an executive’s total compensation that exceeded 25 times that of the lowest paid worker in the company. Last year, 30 members of Congress endorsed Sabo’s propos Undoubtedly, there will be a few black apologists for multinational capitalism, such as conservative economist 'Thomas Sowell or journalist Tony Brown, who would take the side of those in the corporate suites. But the overwhelming majority of African American households would directly benefit from these proposals. Most black families earn less than $50,000 a year, and fewer than 1 percent earn above $150,000 annually. For every Michael Jordan earning $30 mOlion a year, there are millions who are barely making it from paycheck to pay- check. With federal government reductions in social pro grams, job training and investment in our urban centers, we must explore innovative proposals that create greater fairness and income equality. The only way to direct investment into our cities, to improve the quality of pub lic schools, and to guarantee quafity public health care, we must restrict those at the top, to increase social jus tice and. opportunity for the rest of us. MANNING MARABLE is Professor of History and the Director of the Institute for Research in African-American Studies, Columbia University, New York City. “Along the Color Line” appears in over 300 publications throughout the U.S. and internationally. Meeting the state’s redistricting deadline They did it. The General Assembly beat a deadline. That is big news in itself. We are not used to the legislature getting its work done on time. With respect to a court- imposed April 1 deadline to pass a new congressional redistrict ing plan, few thought our legis lature would come close. You remember that the U.S. Supreme Court decided that the state’s congressional districts could not pass muster constitu tionally. Following the Supreme Court’s directions, a lower feder al court ordered the state to re draw the lines. 'The lower coiut said that if the lines were not redrawn properly by April 1, it would do the job itself. The General Assembly’s on- time completion of this assign ment stirs up a hundred good political topics - each good enough for a column. But since my editors will not let me spend the rest of the year writing about congressional redistrict ing, I am going to tiy to crowd several of those possible columns into just one - this one. Here goes. 1. Why the surprise? Why did so many people think that get ting agreement on the new boundaries would be so diffi cult? It is always hard to change political boundaries. If a pro posed change hurts the current ofiBce holder’s chances for reelec tion, he is going to be angry - and encourage all his friends in the legislature to get stop the plan. With so much politics involved, any completion dead line would be hard to beat. 2. What about “political cleansing”? This year there was a special complication. One house of the legislature is controlled by the Republicans and one by the Democrats. In the past, for as far back as anyone can remem ber, one party has been in charge of both houses. When the same party is in charge of both houses, its legis lators do everything they can to give their party the advantage in as many districts as possible. The basic technique is to shift all the other party’s loyal voters into a few districts. Skillfully done, these shifts can reduce the number of seats the opposite party has a chance to win. (It is not unlike the “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia. You round up all the people who “are not like you” and you move them out of your district and concen trate them with their “hke kind” in another district. We don’t actually make people pack up their belongings and move; we just draw a line around them. You could it “pohtical cleansing” if you wanted, but we just call it “gerrymandering.”) This year, with each party looking over the other’s shoul ders, the gerrymandering plot ting was much less a factor. So the “comphcation” of having two different political parties may have speeded the project along. 3. Who should get credit for the timely completion? Democratic Senator Roy Cooper and Repubhcan Representative Ed McMahan deserve much praise. But neither will insist on getting a lot of credit. Both of them are hard workers who don’t need to get all the glory. They worked with each other well. Their low-key approach helped them gain the trust of each other and their colleagues. AU that set the stage for agree ment before the deadline. It also helped that the top leaders of the senate and the house get along with each other pretty weU - even though they belong to different political par ties. (They get along with each other better than they do with opposition members in their own branch of the legislature. In fact, these leaders get along bet ter than they do with members of their own party who serve in the other branch of the legisla ture.) Back to the point. It helped that the leaders of the house and senate were in basic agree ment to finish up the project— and get any differences worked out quietly. 4. Who did better - Democrats or the Republicans? It is proba bly a draw — at least for now. Each party has a good chance to win the six districts it now con trols. As for the future, the Repubhcans probably have the edge. The redistricting plan shows that the Democrats are stiU in retreat - fighting a “rear guard” action against forces of political realignment. The new plan confirms that the Democrats have given up hope of winning any congres sional district in the west— including three districts that have had Democratic represen tation fairly recently (and one more where they came very close to wiiming). Just remember though, the game is not over. If the courts don’t accept the legislature’s plan, they could draw a com pletely new one. D. G. MARTIN is vice presi dent of public affairs for the University of North Carolina system. He can be reached via e- mail at:dgmartin@ga.unc.edu Parents need a TV rating system that makes sense Marian ^ Wright ^ ^ Edelman 'L. J What kind of TV shows do your children look at? Do you worry if their favorite shows contain violence, sex, or inap propriate language? If your chU- dren are like most children, they spend an average of four hours a day in front of the tube. One recent study found that children are bombarded with more than 2,000 television mes sages a day. And black children watch more TV than other chil dren. Two-thirds of black fourth-graders watch four or l| more hours of TV a day, com pared with one-third of white fourth-graders and a half of Hispanic fourth-graders. On average, a black household watches 72 hours of TV per week, 49 percent more than other households. With hun dreds of channels to choose from, I think parents need help to make good choices about what their children should and shouldn’t watch. And parents need to stop using TV as a baby sitter. Earlier this year, the Implementation Group for TV Ratings, headed by Motion Picture Association of America President Jack Valenti, intro duced a rating system based on age, just like the movie system, that consists of six broad rat ings. The ratings provide no information for parents about the content of television pro grams - no hints whether a show has a lot of violence, or sexual content, or both. Under the industry’s rating system, Y represents programs suitable for children two to six year old, Y7 programs are for children seven and older, G programs are suitable for all ages, PG sug gests parental guidance, 14 means unsuitable for children under 14, and M programs are for mature audiences only. I agree with the dozens of acade mic experts, child advocates, members of Congress, and parent, health, religious, and education groups across the country that parents would be better off with a rating system that describes content by using symbols such as “V" for violence, “L” for language, and “S” for sex. A similar system has been used by Home Box Office and other premium cable televi sion channels for the past decade, and we ought to have it on every chaimel. “It is important to know what exactly is in the shows children are planning to watch,” says psychologist Dale Kunkel, a leading researcher on the^ media’s effect on children. “Research has shown that chil dren learn behaviors by watch ing others, and TV presents a huge range of behaviors to learn from, including violence.” Violence in our communities and in our nation is caused by a combination of factors, includ ing easy availability of guns, poverty, and violence in the home. But TV violence increases children’s risk of becoming vio lent, overly fearful, or numb to victims. Parents say they want aU the help they can get. A recent poll sponsored by the PTA found that four out of five parents polled preferred a rating system based on content and using let ters to warn parents when vio lence, coarse language, and sex ual content appear in programs, rather than a rating system based only on age. MARIAN WRIGHT EDEL MAN is president of the Children’s Defense Fund, which coordinates the Black Community Crusade for Children. Letters to The Post Snubbing author of ‘An Original Man’ is an affront The book “An Original Man: The fife and Times of Elijah Muhammad,” is authored by my son, Claude “Andy” Clegg III, and was released to bookstores a few weeks ago. Andy, a former resident of Charlotte, attended Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and has family and friends residing in this area. In November, it was brought to my attention that articles regarding the book and the author were published in quite a few newspapers around the state and in some newspa pers in other states. Also, several television and radio stations in the Triad area (where Andy resides), as well as National Public Radio, have interviewed him or invited him to do talk shows. As a subscriber to 'The Charlotte Observer for years, I contacted The Observer early in December to determine if there was any interest in doing an article. I mentioned in my letter that Andy has ties to Charlotte, and I enclosed several articles which had appeared in other newspa pers. I did not receive a response from The Observer, and no informa tion appeared in their news paper until a poorly-written review of the book appeared in their March 9 issue. The Observer’s review was a negative, vague cri tique of the book. Frankly, their article did not not do justice to the book nor to the author. The New York 'Times carried an excellent review of “An Original Man” in its, Jan. 23 issue. Admittedly, 'The 'Times arti cle focuses more on the posi tive aspects of 'Elijah' Muhammad’s fife and lead ership, and it is fluently written and easy to under stand. Andy is neither pro- nor anti-Muslim. His book is a fact-based, unbiased account of a man who is lit tle known in history yet influenced and inspired many people, including such notable figures as Malcolm X. 'The inspiration for the book came while Andy was studying Afro- American history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The research on Muhammad and the Nation of Islam was submitted for his dissertation, a require ment for receiving his doc toral degree in history at the University of Michigan. Andy is an unassuming, low-key individual and he is esteemed in academia. An historian who happens to be black, he is as knowledge able of American history and world civilizations as he is of black histoiy. His arti cles and book have been reviewed in 'The Chronicle of Higher Education, as weU as in a number of major newspapers. He has been invited by a number of orga nizations and colleges to give lechmes, book reading, and interviews. His next television appearances will be on C-Span’s Booknotes program and America’s Black Forum on March 30. With the exception of The Charlotte Post, the media in Charlotte has been non- responsive in bringing “An Original Man” to the public. Notwithstanding the con troversial ideals to which the leader (Muhammad) espoused, the intent of the ’ author was not to offend. Elizabeth Burton Charlotte What’s on your mind? Send your comments to The Charlotte Post, P.O. Box 30144, Charlotte, N.C. 28230 or fax (704) 342-2160. You can also use E-mail - charpost@clt.mindspring.com All correspondence must include a daytime telephone number for veri fication.