Blacksmythe

I guess “the new poor” is better than “the underclass”. But just as no one who is considered a member of “the underclass” would actually claim the moniker, I’m not sure how many people would claim being part of “the new poor” either. Unfortunately though, unlike “the underclass”–whose defining traits slip and slide from scholar to scholar–the makeup of the new poor is remarkably clear. Last week I wrote about the bank robber who got off light?

He’s part of the new poor.

Note in the article how stable Detroit’s needs are through the ongoing crisis. It’s because they hit the ceiling long ago. The numbers in the surrounding suburbs are going to rise, the demand for services are going to skyrocket. And given that the state can’t provide these services because their coffers are low as well, what we’re looking at are the components for a significant shift in ideas about government. In some ways it is unfortunate that whites have to suffer for people to begin to think maybe poverty isn’t solely the consequence of individual failures.

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Fourteen years ago today I married Shawn Mason.

Five kids two states two degrees and two schools later, here we are.

Before I got to the yard this morning I checked out Ebony Mom, because I saw she peeped her head in (myblog.com is the bomb!), and noticed that one of the things she was concerned about was going public. I went public sometime ago, but I’ve largely kept the family stuff private.

Today is different. My wife has had her own joint for a while now. And has been doing work on an award winning parenting site as well. I was asked to fill in for her, and I wrote a little thing for Mother’s Day.

Check it out, check my wife’s other stuff out to find out the other side…and leave a comment if you could. To go old old OLD school, she’s the bees knees. We’re thinking about creating a black family internet radio show. We’ll keep you updated.

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When voters in the state of Michigan passed a referendum that would render affirmative action based on race (and gender i think) illegal in contracting and in college admission, I knew that this would happen. Take a look around college campuses–not just historically black colleges and universities–and the gender gap is real. This entire year I’ve taught around 80 kids I think. Of the 80, I believe that only 15 have been men. Now to be fair my classes are self-selected at this point–I don’t teach any introductory classes, and probably because of a belief that my class may be biased against them I might not have a lot of white male students wanting to take my class anyway.

Yet and still I believe that what I am dealing with will soon be the norm.

Here is Amber Arellano’s take.

Although the headline of the article is subtly misleading (hence my change above), she hits all the marks. This is another case of black and latino communities serving as the Miner’s Canary. I wonder how long it’ll be before the referendum gets repealed, or slightly modified?

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At least according to this article. Now something like this is usually leaked to the press by someone. Here I’m thinking that someone from Mayor Kilpatrick’s cabinet leaked this story to the journalist. It gets at some of the difficulties that my (helpful) critics have brought up in the wake of my last two posts on Obama. Is it possible that Obama’s race actually precludes him from making the type of aggressive moves against poverty and inequality–at least in public–that Edwards (and from what this article says, Clinton too) can make?

The concept of “deracialization” was developed by black political scientists to account for the modern wave of black elected officials. Unlike their predecessors who often ran explicitly on racial claims, they were much more likely to shy away from racial issues, and likely to shy away from policies designed explicitly to deal with racial and class based inequality. Mayor Dennis Archer of Detroit, Mayor Sharon Pratt Kelly of DC, Governor L. Douglas Wilder, Representative Harold Ford, Harvey Gantt (who ran for Senate against Jesse Helms), all fit this model.

I’ve been wondering whether Obama is the newest version. He’s different than his predecessors in his background–he’s spent a significant amount of time organizing in Chicago. And he doesn’t shy away from his race at all–even though he probably could if he wanted to. He’s also different in that in at least some rhetorical contexts he does seem interested in dealing with structural issues. So those two things by themselves are enough to get his support from me in any other electoral context. And again, after the primary I would much rather work to get him elected than Clinton.

But while I think that the conversation he had with Detroit’s mayor was likely held in jest, I think Mayor Kilpatrick is right to withhold his support for Obama until he’s very clear where Obama stands. We might not have a better electoral context to deal with these issues aggressively. And if even DLC spawned Clinton is addressing these issues (where the hell the writer got this idea from isn’t clear…I’ve tripped on Obama, but can you find any issues of substance here?) then Kilpatrick’s choice shouldn’t be all that hard should it?

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I became aware of Bronze Trinity through Myblog. She’s put into play something that I said would be an excellent idea–a  single place where I can quickly see what other black bloggers were writing about.

Check out her pageflake. In fact, bookmark it. There are literally hundreds of black bloggers, but she’s created a page that seemingly combines a set of topic centered news widgets, with the feeds of almost every black blogger connected to the Afrospear. I know at least one other blogger who has tried to create something like this. Dope dope DOPE.

If you have done something similar, please let me know. We don’t need to all get on the same page necessarily. We just need to do what it is we do, and then have some way to centralize INFORMATION about what we do.

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