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4A EDITORIAL AND OPINION/Charlotte $ost Thursday, October 12, 2006 tlTIje Cljarlotte The Voice of the Black Community 1531 Camden Road Chariotte, N.C. 28203 Gerald O. Johnson ceo/publisher Robert L Johnson co-publisher/general manager Herbert L White editor in chief OPINION Balancing the scales of opportunity What a perfect response to a naive question. Recently, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin held a press con ference to formally announce his 35 percent Disadvantaged Business Enterprise procuranent goal for all dty projects and contracts. He made the announcement at Baker Ready Mix, a concrete plant owned by National Black Chamber of Commerce Board member Arnold Baker. A Fox News reporter approached Arnold and asked' the question “Why is the mayor doing this? Can’t black business owners network their own way into busi- iKss development without such affirmative action?” Without raising his voice or showing his anger, Arnold simply said, “Here’s the deal - your grandfather did not and woxild not play golf with my grandfather. In essence, this is why we are here today” It is concise but is also so profbimd. It reminds me of my per sonal story, which isn’t much different than ^ yours, depending on which generation you fall in. My grandfather was bom and lived as a sharecropper. He did not network with whites, business wise or personal. In fact, in Louisiana it was against the law and downright vmhealthy if one would attempt. He never spent a day in school. His 10 children were obligated to work with him nine months a year. In the winter months of December, January and February (no crops to work) they were allowed to attend school. Three months a year and schooling stopped at the eighth grade. The nearest high school was 40 miles away in Shreveport and the tuition and boarding was totally prohibitive. Such was the plight of my grandfather. The reporter’s grand father certainly played by different rules as the sky was the limit. Schools were public and access was certain. His grandfa ther lived the American dream and everythir^ his father had was passed onto him and his siblings. He had inheritance, land, networking infrastructures and other advantages that were very valuable to ensuring that the future would be bright. My grandfather’s father was bom a slave and, like his son, was illiterate and boxed in by a society and nation that treated him as a bona fide third-class citizen. The contrasts are very enor mous and the fact tliat the times have changed is a testament to the courage of the generation that came after my grandfa ther. That next generation, my father, decided to make a differ ence. He took his 8th grade (3 months a year) education and moved to California during World War IT and worked the docks of Ventura County then bustling fiom the war effort. He later became a local tmck driver while my mother was a domestic for Whites whose fathers and grandfathers made big bucks owning gigantic farms and ranches in the Golden State. He was resolved to make a good living, buy land and demand pub lic access at all levels for his children especially when it came to education. For this, there were multitudes of death threats. We woke up one morning at 4 a.m. and there was a 10-foot burning cross in our fiont yard. He would often say “They have us up against the Pacific Ocean, all we can do now is fight.” One of his proud est achievements was a lifetime membership in the NAACP. He was never really intimidated. I guess the fact that his father would have been lynched for the positions my father fiercely stood up for and remained alive was true pmgress. My grandfather didn’t know what golf was and my father never dreamed of playing it. If they had, it would not have been a networking event and no Whites or business brokers would be anywhere around to cut deals and make profitable plans. No, it was my generation that finally got to the golf course and that was very late in life. As we att^npt to enter this capitalis tic society for the first time in the history of this nation, it is obvious that we are playing a very big game of “catch up.‘” Our college degrees are fiesh and our skills are newly learned. We enter Board Rooms as a groimdbreaking event. Althox:gh we have been paying taxes since the Emancipation Proclamation, access to this economy has been extremely limited So now we go into the great system of capitalism. We are neo phytes to programs that ®dst throx^i oui’ oppression and unfair advantage benefiting those who really didn’t deserve such. Don’t think the field is level and nothing ever happened to make you on top. Affirmative action is here to right the pre sent wrongs that were built through exploitation and unfair rigging. The flaying field is far fiom level. HARRY C. AIJ^ORD is the president/CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce. Website: wmvjtalionalbcc.org; e-mail: presi- denl@nationalbcc£>rg A hiP5T BAU..OT Loci: in ■m wm- Het^oe&... BUClcoNei/. Haiti represents more than poverty MILOT, Haiti - When Ron Daniels invited me to accom pany his Haiti Support Project’s pilgrimage to the cities of Milot, Cap-Haitien and Port-au-Prince last week, I had mixed feelings. I have traveled around the world,, but my trips to the Pyramids in Egypt and the Door of No Return on Goree Island in Senegal were the most memorable - and emo tional. I had no doubt that a trip to Haiti would also strike a special chord. Since child hood, my step father had told me how Toussaint L’ouverture led a successful slave uprising against the French, paving the way in 1804 for Haiti to become the first independent black nation in the Western hemi sphere. The invitation to visit an island where Afiicans were dropped offbefore slave ships continued the journey north was irresistible. We all Afiicans, whether living in Haiti or the U.S. But that’s not how we’re labeled. Usually when public officials or leaders mention Haiti, they invariably describe it as “the poorest nation in the Western hemi sphere.”'With most Haitians earning only $2 a day I didn’t know how I would react to seeing such massive poverty In talking with Joseph Leonard, executive director of the National Black Leadership Forum, I learned that he, too, was experiencing the same kind of conflicting emotions. We wanted to see Haiti, but we really didn’t want to see the poverty After a four-hour flight from New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport aboard American Airlines Fh^t 837 to Toussaint L’Overture International Airport in Port- au-Prince, we transferred to small puddle jumper for the 30-minute trip north to Cap- Haitien. We attended a recep tion that night hosted by Nfinister of Tbiirism Patrick Delatour, a graduate of Howard University The next morning, we were bussed 30 miles to Nffiot (pronoimced IVfi-lo) and that’s when we really got a look at abject poverty Althou^ the poverty may be more concentrated in Haiti, it is not noticeably dif ferent fium the poverty I had observed in Senegal, Nigeria, Egypt or the backroads of Cuba. But seeir^ so many people - children in particu lar - beir^ so poor prompted two immediate reactions. First, I realized that poor people back home, even those hvir^ in the South Bronx and the Mississippi Delta, the two poorest regions in the United States, seem wealthy when measured against the typical Haitian. Second, as I looked into the innocent eyes of children, I couldn’t help but think; Suppose I had been bom here? What could I realisti cally expect from life? After reflecting, you thank God for your blessings. In general, children are the same regardless of where they live. Here, they are curi ous, they wave eagerly at the sight of tourists and, mcae than in the U.S., they run around in their bare birthday suits. Also surprising was the age at which some kids are expected to carryout chores. I saw several girls who appeared to be no older than 5 years old, carrying buckets of water. I saw some, appear ing to be 7 or 8, balancing large items finm the market on their head. Much has been written about the dire poverty in Haiti, but rarely are articles written about the creativity or ingenuity of the people. There are talented artists liv ing in every region of the coimtry and they are eager to negotiate an acceptable price for their works. The arts and crafts are impressive. And if I were to cotmt people in Haiti who tried to sell me some thing rather than seek a handout, the entrepreneurs would lead at least by a 4-to- 1 margin. Carvings. Fruits. Paintings. Beads. Jewelry boxes. Knives. Canes. You name it, they had it. Daniels, black America’s unofficial at-large ambas sador to Haiti, had a two-fold goal for this mission. One, was take 50 people with him to see for themselves what Haiti is like in hopes of mak ing therd ambassadors and to annoimce a “model city” pro gram in which the Haiti Support Project would adopt hfilot and actively aid in its economic and educational development. Because of the consistent work of the Haiti Support Project, led by Ron Danids and his wife, Mary, the tour ing Afiican-American guests were given access to the hip est levels of government Legislative leaders and cabi net ministers attended recep tions in the group’s honor; Janet Sanderson, tiie U.S. Ambassador to Haiti, hosted a reception at her residence and President Rene Preval gave a farewell reception Monday in the group’s honor at the Presidential Palace. But neither of those was the highlight of the trip. That honor came when Daniels was imveiling the architectural plan for an empowerment and visitors center in Milot. Hundreds of children had gathered for tiie presentation and when the drawing was imvdled, they cheered loudly, excited that descendants of Afiicans in America had not forgotten about the descendants of Afiicans in Haiti. GEORGE E. CURRY is editor- in-chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Asssocialion News Service and BlackPressUSAeom. Although the poverty may be more concentrated in Haiti, it is not notice ably difterent from the poverty I had observed in Senegal, Nigeria, Egypt or the backroads of Cuba. Chavez’s challenge to U.S. hegemony By Saeed Shabazz THE FINAL CALL UNITED NATIONS In his openirg remarks before the United Nations General Assembly, President Hugo Chavez Frias of Venezuela decried the “hegemony” of the United States, describing President George Bush’s address the day before as a recipe for ruling the world. He said the democracy pro moted by the American presi dent was a false one of elites, for no democracy could be imposed with bombs. 'While holding the Noam Chomsky book, “Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance,” in his hand, the Venezuelan presi dent commenced to refer to Pres. Bush as “el Diablo,” the devil, according to the "UN interpreter. ‘Yesterday the devil came here, ri^t here. And it smells of sulfur still today this table that I am now standing in fiont of,” he stressed. He added that Mr. Bush was intent on the “exploitation and pillage of all peoples of the world.” Those remarks were imme diately posted on the Internet, television and every New York City daily paper. However, one high-level Chinese official, who was not in the General Assembly Great HaU at the time of the speech, told The New York Sim that he wondered if the Venezuelan leader’s remarks had been “mistranslated finm the Spanish.” Jeffrey Laurenti of the Century Foundation, speak ing on National Public Radio, called Pres. Chavez’s “devil” i-emarks “a breach of every element of diplomatic proto col.” Greg Grandin, professor of Latin American History at New York University, told Pacifica Radio’s Amy Goodman. that the Venezuelan president was speaking on many levels. “He was trying to change the script that was being set up by the press as a confionta- tion between Iran and the United States. And what I think Chavez did was he diversified the strug^e, and this speaks to what he is, I think, trying to do on a larger global scale,” Mr. Grandin opined. The NYU professor said that the speech of Pres. Chavez woiild go down in his tory of the UN, along with the Soviet Premier Nikita Khruschev banging his shoe on the podium in 1960, in response to a statement that had been made by the head of the Philippine delegation, according to his granddau^- ter Nina Khushcheva in an article that appeared in the New Statesman in 2000. The pundits also resurrect ed the 1974 appearance of the former head of the Palestinian Liberation Organization Yasser Arafat, when he stood before the world body with a gun holster around his waist and an olive branch in hb hand. “Tbday I have come, bearing an olive branch and a fieedom filt er’s gun. Do not let the olive branch fall fixim my hand. I repeat, do not let the olive branch fall finm my hand,” Mr. Arafat said, according to LeMonde Diplomatique. An article in Middle East News Report Online, claimed that the speech “raised the world awareness of the Palestinian cause.” Observers also said that Bolivian President Evo Morales had obviously taken note of Mr. Arafat’s use of props, when he appeared before the General Assembly on Sept. 20 with a green coca leaf in his hand, which is a majob crop for Bolivian farm ers. He said the U.S. was using the war on drugs in South America as a “pretect for neocolonialism.” The Bush administration report edly wants the Bolivian farm ers to stop growir^ the ccx:a leaf “Bolivia cannot be pres sured to change its pdicdes. We don’t need blackmail and threats,” Pres. Morales said. “The Non-Aligned Movement threw down the gauntlet to U.S. global power this week,” noted Nile Gardiner, a foreign policy analyst at the Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation, in a Sept. 22 story in the Los Angeles Times. “This is a huge diplo macy challenge and also a strate^c threat.” SAEED SHABAZZ is a reporter 01 The Final Call.
The Charlotte Post (Charlotte, N.C.)
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Oct. 12, 2006, edition 1
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