North Carolina Newspapers

4A EDITORIAL AND OPINION/Charlotte Thursday, June 8, 2006 tKI)e Cljarlotte The Voice of the Black Community 1531 Camden Road Charlotte, N.C. 28203 Gerald O. Johnson ceo/publisher , Robert L Johnson co-publisher/general manager ] Herbert L White editor in chief OPINION Republicans andcasefbr an equal oppominiiy Black candidates aren’t ready to parrot GOP affirmative action line By Kenneth J. Cooper NATIONAL NEmPAPER PU6L/SHERS ASSOC/AT/ON Republicans are raising millions to run two African-Americans for frie U.S. Senate and two others for governor. Kai Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee, is jetting around the country teUing anyone black who will listen that his , Jewish grandfather was a member of the local NAACP in Baltimore \ All this money and energy is being expended in a declared Xofibrt to attract more African-Americans to the party of Lincobi- IT^publicans are serious about that goal, here is an idea for a mueh cheaper and surer way to do it: Give up the party's oppo sition to affirmative action. Every Republican platform since 1972 has taken that stance, and it is now expressed in three-dozen words adopted at the 2004 conv^tion in New York. A section entitled ‘Ensuring Equal Opportunities” concludes, ‘Tinally, because we are opposed to discrimination, we reject preferences, quotas, and set-asides based on skin color, ethnicity or gender, which perpetuate divisions and can lead people to question the accomplishments of successful minorities and women.” That statement ignores this nation’s entire history and sets the Repubhcan Party against minority students’ ability to go to col lege and get a good job. During the administration of the first President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, then an adviser on the National Security Coimcdl, spoke one Saturday morning to a group of minority high school students at Howard University, where they were participatii^ in a workshop for aspirii^ journalists. The stu dents were finm Washington and the sunuunding suburbs in Marjiand and Virginia, and undoubtedly fi^Dm Democratic households. Still, these teenagers were open to hearing what this black Republican woman firom the White House had to say until, in response to a question about affirmative action, she repeated the party-line about ‘’quotas.” She lost them. They finwned and shook their heads. Most of the students were finm middle-class families, and one criticism of affirmative action maintains that only those Afiican- Americans benefit. That’s not the case: Affirmative action has raised the aspirations of black individuals fium every class back- groimd. You don’t have to search any college or professional workplace of any size too hard to find an Afiican-American who grew up poor and made it, once affirmative action opened the ., doors. It is fair to say most benefidari^ have bear fium the middle- dass, which affirmative action has imdoubtedly expanded and solidified. This is a criticism? All over the world, building up the middle-dass is seen as the way to stabilize a sodety What it means to be blade and middle-dass has also changed Children fium families who were middle-class because parents had jobs as postal workers, bus drivers or government clerks have gone on to become doctors, lawyers and business execu tives. Their upward mobility has left room for working-class and poor blacks to move into well-paying government jobs. The four black Republicans running for statewide office seem , to have the sense to know they are not going to attract black vot ers by trashing one of their routes to opportunity Senate candi- , dates Michael Steele in Maryland and Keith Butler in Mdiigan, and gubernatorial candidates Kenneth Blackwell in Ohio and Lynn Swann in Pennsjivania have not embraced their party's blanket opposition to affirmative action, although at least Steele and Butler talk about "quotas” as if they really exist somewhere besides Republican imaginations. 'The last black Republican in the Senate, Edward Brooke, did not play these kinds of games when he represented Massachusetts from 1967 to 1979. Partisan Democrats in the Congressional Black Caucus like William L. Clay of Missouri respected Brooke because of his stror^ support for civil rights. '■ Even though Steele and Butler don’t completely go along with * their party’s line against affirmative action, why should Black J voters put them in Senate seats now occupied by White J Democrats and enable President Bush to get confirmed more • cons«:vative judges opposed to black interests? ' The "preferences, quotas and set-asides” plank in the \ Republican platform needs to go. But it won’t be rewritten before ; 2008, long after elections this November determine whether Steele and Butler go to the S^iate and whether Blackwell and r Swann get to govern. 1 Abandoning its opposition to affirmative action would give \ many more Afiican Americans reasonable grotmds to consider ! joining the Republican Party and making Democrats compete for black votes. Republicans have a chance to give a little, and get a lot more, if only they were bold enou^. ..KElJNETH J. COOPER is a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who lives iffBoston. NEW YORK - When a strange disease, lat^ known as AIDS, was first detected at UCLA 25 years ago, it was . difficult to get increasin^y largely a ‘black disease” that afflicts both gays . and strai^ts, males and females "Tbday more than half of aU people living with HIV/AIDS and newly-infected with HIV each year in the United States are black,” Phill Wlson, executive director of the Black AIDS Institute, said at a news conference here Monday ‘’Among women, blacks account for two-thirds of aU new infec tions. And recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention studies estimate nearly half of all Black gay and bisexual men in some of America’s urban centers are already infected. These facts represent an unpi'ecedented crisis for Black America.” Wilson and Pemessa Seele, fovmder of the Balm in Gilead and a major organizer of black church efforts in the U.S. and Afiica, have had a major impact on helping Afirican-AmericanS realize that HIV and AIDS are rav- aging blacks in tiie U.S. and around the world, especially in Afiica. The hei^tened awareness was evident at the news con ference called by Wilson. Among those present to lend support were actor 'Danny Glover, U.S. Reps. Charles Rangel and Donna M. Christenson, NAACP President Bruce Gordon, Reverends Gregory Smith of Mother AME Zion Church and Edwin Sanders of Metropolitan Interdenominational Church; National Urban League Senior Vice President for Programs Donald Bowen; Rachel • Guglielmo of the Open Society Institute, and news media representatives from the • National Newspaper Pubhshers Association, American Urban Radio Networks and Black Entertainment 'Ifelevision. All have signed on to PhiU. Wilson’s call to '’win'’ the AIDS fi^t over the next five years. His organization issued a new report titled, “’AIDS in Black Face; 25 Years of an Epidemic.” WQson said the report, which chronicles Black America’s AIDS epidemic, “’make it clear that a quarter century into America’s saga with AIDS, the epidemic is more black than ever.” The 25 years of AIDS is not an anniversary one hkes to celebrate. And it’s important not to get cai^ht up in the past, WUson saj^. ‘’While this reports looks back at the first 25 years of the AIDS epidemic, it’s not a report about our yesterdays,” he said. ‘’It is a proclamation about our tomorrows with recommendations for individ uals, communities, and elect ed officials on how to end the AIDS epidemic in Black America.” 'One can no longer dismiss AIDS as a “’white disease.” Some of the most notable deaths of African-Americans include tennis great Arthur Ashe, journalist Max Robinson, Rev. James Cleveland, dance choreogra pher Alvin Alley and rapper Eric “Easy E” Wright The "AIDS in Blackface” report observes: "The epidem ic’s fiuntiine is quickly shift ing from larger, northern cities to the more dispersed communities of the South. Tbday seven of the 10 states with the highest per capita AIDS rates are in the South, and 41 percent of people hv- ing with HIV are in the Southeast. It is particularly a black epidemic. Eight of the 10 blackest state epidemics aie in the South.” ■ A chart in the report breaks it down on a state-by-state basis. For example, African- Americans are 26 percent of the population in Alabama, but 63 percent of the ADDS cases; blacks are 15 percent of the population in Florida yet account for 15 percent of the AIDS cases; in Georgia, blacks represent 70 percent of all AIDS cases while con stituting 29 percent of the population; Mississippi is 37 percent black but African- Americans are 73 percent of the AIDS cases; the Tfennessee black population is 16 percent, with African- Americans accounting for just more than half — 52 per cent — of those with AIDS; blacks represent 11 p^cent of the Tfexas population and 35 percent of the AIDS cases there and \Tiginia, with a 19 percent black population, has a 59 percent share. Blacks also represent more than half of all AIDs cases in Delaware COS percent), the District of Columbia (82 per cent), Dlinois (52 percent), Louisiana (66 percent), Maryland (80 percent). Michigan (58 percent), New Jersey (55 percent). North Carolina (69 percent), Pennsylvania (53 percent) and South Carolina (73 per cent). Recommendations include; • Rejecting the idea that HIV and AIDS is inevitable; • Demanding that proven weapons such as needle exchanges and arming youth with more than abstinence only information be expand ed; • Expanding access to treatment; Ending the stig ma associated with HIV and AIDS. The report stated, "In the final analysis, this epidemic isn’t terribly complicated: When we allow pcJitics, sub jective notions of morality and profit-driven health eco nomics to reign over public health, the most vulnerable in our society aie left for HIV to prey upon.” GEORGE E. CURRY is editor- in-chief of the . National Newspaper Publishers Association News Service and BlackPressUSAeom. Israel’s Wall of Death for Palestinians Some call it the ‘Apartheid Wall,” remindir^ us of the criminal regime that domi nated South Afiica until 1994 and oppressed its black majority I simply call it the Wall of Death because, for aU the rhetoric, Israel’s wall sep arating itself from the Occupied Territories more than anything else is about ensuring the death of the Palestinian people. When the idea was first broached of Israel creating a wall sepa rating itself from the Occupied Territories, most people viewed it as a craclqrot notion that would never come to fiuition. Yet, in an atmosphere in which Israel has continued to vio late United Nations’ resolu tions calling for its withdraw al from the Occupied Tbnitories and when it lives in fear of terror attacks by individuals and organiza tions from within the Palestinian resistance, the idea of a wall gained steam. It needs to be clear that this wall is opposed by virtually every cormtry on planet Earth. It is a unilateral deda- ration of the borders that Israel wishes to establish - for now. Thus, the niegal set tlements created by Israel in the Occupied Tfeiritories, wiU, for the most paid, become a permanent feature and the Palestinian territories will look more and more like a col lection of chicken pox on someone’s back rather than anything approaching a nation-state. In this context, it was astounding for President Bush to once again step for ward and put his foot in his mouth, virtually endorsing the unilateralism of the Israeh government. Israeli Prime hfinister Ohnert has insisted that if there is no agreement with the Palestinians on borders, then Israel wall declare the borders on their own! Yet, such a dec- laraticai will be a flagrant vio lation of United Nations’ res olutions. When it has come to violating United Nations’ res olutions, other countries have been threatened with sanc tions and/or military opera tions. Why is Israel exempt from this and not even sub ject to criticism by the Bush administration? The Israeh Wall of Death is not aimed at simply segregat ing the Palestinians on a hon- viable piece of territory after the Israelis have gobbled up the most useful land and seized East Jerusalem. This is where the analogy with South African apartheid ends. It is not a stretch to conclude that the aim of the Israeh government is to drive the Palestinians off of the Occupied Tbrritories entirely and make way for their vision of a Greater Israel. The Israeh government knows full well that the borders that it is preparing to declare will make an independent Palestinian state virtually impossible. It will be the equivalent of Native American reservations in the United States that are barely able to sustain themselves. The reservations for the Palestinians wfll be a tempo rary space until they are forced onto their own 21st century version of the trail of tears.’ The time has ccone to stop making special exceptions for Israel. The fact that Jews were nearly exterminated by the Nazis in the Holocaust can simply not be used as a reason to turn a bhnd eye toward the efforts by the Israeh government to ethni cally cleanse Palestine of the Palestinian people. Israel’s Wall of Death; its repeated failure to heed United Nations’ resolutions; and its accumulation of nuclear weaponry (along with a failure to sign the Nuclear Non-Prohferation TVeaty) demonstrate nothing approaching any sort of democratic morahty Rather it represents what will lilti- mately be a self-destructive, and potentially catastrophic, road by those who have decid ed that might makes ri^t, ■ and that it’s their way or no way at all, legahties and morahty notwithstanding. BILL FLETCHER is a long time labor and international activist and writer. The immediate past president of TransAfrica Forum, he can be readied at papaq543.‘hotmailrom. It needs to be clear that this wall is opposed by virtually every country on planet Earth.