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4A EDITORIAL AND OPINION/tCtt C^tUne $o(t Thursday, December 1, 2005 MMliiilliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii ®|)c Cljarlotte IPofit The Voice of the Black Community 1531 Catruien Hood Charlotte. NC. 2H203 Gerald (). Johnson CTX)/PUBLISHER Robert L Johnson capUBi.iSHER/CRNERAL manager Herbert I. White editor in chief MATTTERS OF OPINION lOWolId AIDS Days later A windfall profits tax would deter oil companies from exploring for new sources By Phili Wilson NATIONAL NtXVSLAFHK PUBUSHHRS ASSOCIATION " There's only us. 'There's only tks, No other road, no other way, ru) day hut today. ” Jonathan Larson February 4, 1960-January 25. 1996 ONWAKU' V ■ ANOIHEI? fb NOWHERE True American education reform This country likes to cele brate anniversaries. Last year, we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the 1954 Brown v Board of Education Supreme George E. Curry’ I just saw “Rent,” the much anticipated movie adaptation of Jonathan Larson’s 1996 Tbny and Pulitzer Prize-winning rock opera about a year - “525,600 minutes” - in the life of a group of mostly HIV-positive friends living on the lower east side of New York six years — 3,153,600 minutes — before the arrival of the life-extending triple combination AIDS regimens used today I first saw “Rent” on Broadway with the original cast in 1996, the year protease inhibitors came on the market. It was a time in my life when my own mortality clock was ticking very fast. I had nearly died a few months earlier, and no one expected me to live beyond the end of the year. So much has happened since the play opened that I expected the movie to be dated. After all, Worid AIDS Day has rolled around 10 times since Rent debuted. Many of us with AIDS are living longer I have been living with HIV for more than 25 years and full blown AIDS for 15 years. But, more than that, the unimaginable has happened; We are making HIV/AIDS thera pies available in the worst hit peirts of Sub-Sahara Afiica, Eastern Europe and Asia. So I was surprised when, aftei* the opening verse of the first real AIDS song, I found myself in tears. The scene was of an AIDS support group, A few of my tears were a response to the memories that came flooding back. The faces of Chris, Rory, Craig, Rc^er, Lynn, Stephen. Byiinda, LeRoy and all my fiiends who are now dead suddenly filled my head. The grief and the fear that we all felt back then thrust me back into those support groups, those hospital rooms, those memorial services. But even with all of that, most of the tears were not about my yestaxiays. As I fought my way back fi*om the memories, I realized the inuuense sadness and terror I was feeling was about what is going on with regard to black America and AIDS today You see, even with the new drugs, we are still dying in droves and most of us don’t seem to care What makes me so sad and so terrified is that I just don’t know what else to do to get black folks to make ending the AIDS epidemic a top priority The sta tistics don’t seem to do the job - AIDS continues to be the lead ing cause of death for black women between the ages of 24 and 34. black youth represent more than 56 percent of the new HTV/AIDS cases among youth in America, and nearly 50 percent of black gay men in the US. may already be infected. Knowing someone who is living with HIV/AIDS does not appear to be the answer, either. I estimate roughly 90 percent of black people in America know someone who either, is living with HIV/AIDS or has died fixnu the disease. Yet, we are still complacent. Sure, there have been some successes. The CDC recently reported a 5 percent annual decline in the rate of diagnosis over the past five years. The Hack media has responded in tremen dous ways. Despite cmly lip service on the part of moat, some black groups and churches have made real ccmuuitments towards stopping AIDS in the black community But these attempts are diddling around the edges of a massive health cat- astrc^ahe, a viral Katrina. According to the CDC, ‘Despite the decline, the rate of HIV diagnosis among blacks remained 8.4 times hi^er than the rage among whites ” More than half of all HIV diagnoses in America are among blacks. Nothing less than a full community-wide mobilization will do, but, tragically, there has never been a mass Black response to the AIDS epidemic in America. Tb help try to ignite one, actors and humanitarians Danny Glover and Sheryl Lee Ralph, have recently launched a national celebrity spokesperson campaign to stop AIDS in black America. Astonishingly, AIDS in black America has never benefited fiom the power df celebrity in the way other ccmimunities have recruited celebrities to help raise awareness and resources for their community, there have not been any star-studded telethons or concerts to fight AIDS in black America. Armies of black leaders have not participated in AIDS walks to benefit pec^e with AIDS in our ccmmunity There is not a *^6 are the Worid” ch* even ‘That's What Friends Are For" to raise awareness about AIDS and Uack people in America. I, for one, anxiously wait to see what kind of response Danny and Sheiyd Lee will get fitau their call to acticai. We won’t be aide to execute the kind of respcaise we need to sU^ AIDS in our ccmimunity unless and until each caie of us does two things: 1) Decide we deserve to live, a decisicai I fear not enou^ of us have made. 2) Ccanmit to jcaning or starting a oaumunity respcmse in each of our neighborhoods PHIU. WILSON w founder and Exet-idive Director of the Black AIDS Instmae m l/>s Anf^s. He has panicipaied in numerous international conferences on AIDS and mut selected by the Ford Foundation m 2001 as one of 'Twenty Ijeaders for a CViangmg World." Court deci sion, This weekend will mark the 50th anniver sary of Rosa Parks’ deci sion not to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Ala. What many people don't realize is that there were two m^or Brown decisions in the mid-1950s, The landmark ruling outlawing "separate but equal" schools was hand ed down in 1954. A compan ion ruling was issued in 1955 calling for schools to be deseg regated "with all deliberate speed,” which essentially meant no speed at all. Perhaps it is fitting, given this propensity for celebrat ing the past, that this week ft 50 years after the second Brown ruling — that - the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education at New York University has issued a report titled, “With All Deliberate Speed; Achievement, Citizenship and Diversity in American Education.” The 44-page report, available online, does more than revisit the 1950s; it outlines a series of steps to improve public education. After pointing out that the U S. is undergoing one of the most profound demographic transitions in history, the report observes; “Unfortunately, the United States continues to have an unequal and two-tiered sys tem of public education. Even as the United States becomes increasingly diverse, our nation's K-12 education sys tem remains unequal and increasingly segregated by race and income.” The report says the country has a mixed record on eradi cating the last vestiges of its Jim Crow public education system. “We are a nation ambiva lent,” it observes. "We are both for integration and against it. We are for equality, but we are imwilling to create and sustain policies that ensure equal opportunity We are for academic success for all children, but we allow mil lions of them to remain iso lated in inferior schools.” We have traditionally shift ed too much of the burden to the schools. “Desegregation failed in some communities because almost the entire burden of integrating our society was placed on our public schools,! 'the study says. "That was a mistake we cannot afford to repeat.” “We, therefore, recommend a fundamental change in the relationship between schools and the community, where both are seen as having a shared responsibility in the education of all children.” Tb do its part, the communi ty should take over responsi bility for providing the schools" support services, fi'eeing teachers to concen trate on what they do best — teach. The schools must also change. “Even today too many of our schools still are being used as sorting machines -sorting children into those who are college bound, those who will use basic skUls and those who will be left behind,” the report said. In order to do better, the report argues, diversity must be part of the equation long before students enter the first grade, ‘Tf we expect all of our chil dren to go on to college and have diverse learning experi- mces and then go on to work with people fiom diverse eth nic, racial, social and econom ic backgroimds, surely it makes sense to prepare our children for these new experi ences as early as possible,” the study says. “We are losing ground and jobs to other countries — for example, China and India,” the report states*. “Our nation's ability to sustain our long-term economic success ' increasingly depends on the very children we are not edu cating now.” Put another way; Each year, 1.2 million children do not graduate from high school. Of those, 348,427 are African-American and 296,555 are Latino. At the college level, almost a quarter of first-year stu dents do not stay around for their second year. Figures show that only 31 percent of Latinos compete some college and 48 percent of Afiican-Americans, com pared to 62 percent of Whites and 80 percent of Asian Americans. “According to the National Center on Education and the Economy by the year 2020, the U.S. will need 14 million more college-trained workers than it wlQ produce,” the report states. “Nowhere is college participation lower than among Africeui- American and Hispanic youth; no where is the poten tial to meet our nation's need for college graduates greater.” Among the report'9 recom mendations; • Push state legislatures to provide essential and quality educational opportmiities, regardless of where the child attends public school; • Make sure all stud^ts have acce^ to a high-quality education and the opportuni ty for diverse learning expori- ences; • Provide additional oppor tunities, including after school prc^ams, for students to improve academic skills; • Create greater regional equity and • Support and stabilize integrated residential com munities Whether we accomplish those goals will impact our national security our ability to compote globally and field an able military the report says. That alone shoiald be incentive to take on these tou^ issues. GEORGE E. CURRY is editor- in-chief of the NNPA News Service. He appears on National Public Radio's “News and Notes with Ed Gordon." America’s widening blind spot for Egypt The Egyptian regime of President Hosni Mubarak presents a Box Fletcher problem for Bush admin istration for eign policy Mubarak, a long time ally fl if not vassal — for the United States, refus es to pormit actual political democracy in his country. Given the administratioms vitriolic rhetoric against various worid leaders who actually or suppxoedly fiustrate democ racy, whether Iraq’s former dictator Saddam Hussein or Zimbabwe’s President Robot Mugabe, one must ask, why does the administration seem to look away when it comes to Egypt? Though Mubarak periodi cally squawks about pjarticu- lar actions of the United States, he has generally been hi^ily suppertive and in some cases influential in advancing U.S. foreign pxJicy olgectives While there have been periodic tensions with Israel since the commence ment of the decades old E^yp>tian-Israeli p)eace treaty E^yp>t has done p^redous little to stroigthen Arab support for the Palestinian national movement. While Mubarak uttered words of cq^piosition to the US invasion of Iraq, he displayed a lack of leadership in the Arab World in response to the outri^t aggression. Thus, while his words may pjeriodically sp)eak of Arab unity and in defense of vari ous causes, there is actually little to show for it. At home, Mubarak, one of the longest sitting rulers in Afiica, has taken few signifi cant step)s at democratiza tion While the Bush admin istration has Sencouragedf the expansion of democracy in Egypt, their words have been pjarticularly mild; par ticularly that is, when con sidering that a very broad sp)ectrum of Egyptian opinion is calling for fiee and fair elections and a climate of tol erance of differences of opin ion Mubarak has been very shrewd in dealing with oppx)- sition. When oppx)sition emeiges on the political Left, Mubarak finds a way of unit ing with Islamic right wingers, forces that are often suppwrtive or at least tolerant of extremism, in order to crush the political Left. WTien the Islamic righW wingers become too strong, he then finds a way of crack- -, ing down coi them. Yet, there is nothing in this behavior that the Bush administration seems to find p>articulariy objectionable. As long as Mubarak toes the Bush administration line it appjears that he can have a * very long leash, a leash origi nating in Washington, D.C., of course. Contrast this with the situation in Zimbabwe. As any reader of my columns knows, that public pwlicy organization that I direct, TVansAfiica Forum, has been very critical of President Mugabe for his undermining px)litical democracy and for his economic policies, that have, more often than not, served the interests of inter national financial institu tions rather than the p)eople of Zimbabwe. That said, what is Mugabe doing that should raise the wrath of the Bush adminis tration, while when it comes 'to Mubarak there is cautious "diplomacy, cajoling and, at best, mild criticisms? The hypxxritical behavior of the Bush administration ^)eaks, onre again, to a large part of the reason that the U.S. has so little moral authority when it comes to international affairs. The cynicism in the administra tion’s behavior makes it impx)ssible for any country to ever know what ground it stands on, but it is equally impx)ssible for any supporters of democracy, human rights and national self-determina tion to believe an iota of the Bush rhetoric. What, then, makes it so dif ficult fw so many p)eople in the USA to fail to see the repeated evidence of this hypxxrisy? BIIJ. FIJTCHERr. is president of TransAfrica Forum, a Washington, D.C.-based non profit educational and organizing center formed to raise awareness in the United States about issues facing the nations and peoples of Africa, the Caribbean and iMtin America. He also is co-chair of the anti-war coalition. United for Peace and. Justice (wwwunited- forpeaceorg). E-mail: bfletch- er^ transafricafonmijorg.
The Charlotte Post (Charlotte, N.C.)
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Dec. 1, 2005, edition 1
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