Dr. Lester K. Spence

Located 31 miles from Detroit in Oakland County, Michigan, Pontiac’s unemployment rate is high at 17.6%. Wealth levels within the city are low, as per capita income is 45% of the county, 65% of the state, and 63% of the national averages. GM concentration is significant, representing one-third of the city’s tax base. GM currently employs approximately 6,000 workers in Pontiac. In November 2006, GM announced plans to relocate 3,600 engineering and related employees from its Centerpoint campus in the city. The Pontiac Assembly center, which manufactures the Chevrolet Silverado and the GMC Sierra full-size pick-up trucks, accounts for a significant amount of remaining GM employment in the city. Last month GM announced it would reduce staff levels by several hundred at this plant.

Nathaniel Abraham received national attention when he was sentenced to prison for murder as an 11 year old. Michigan had enacted a draconian law that allowed prosecutors to charge juveniles of any age with serious felonies. He was released at 21.

He was arrested for drug dealing this week. Police caught him in the middle of a transaction and he had approximately 250 ecstasy pills in his possession. Here’s the money quote:

Nicole Edwards, sister of the murder victim, also expressed disappointment in Abraham’s drug arrest.

“I thought he would rehabilitate himself,” she said. “This is like a slap in the face.”

You don’t see the economic context of Pontiac that I provide above, anywhere in the story. Abraham is a convict. Pontiac’s unemployment rate is 17%. Once you add in the people who have stopped looking that figure is probably around 22% at best. People rarely rehabilitate themselves, particularly in a context where poverty is rampant and jobs are scarce.

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And I’m pretty sure that the DJ is ?uestlove. The MC at the end talks about how Nutter is what Philadelphia needs. He provides a “breath of fresh air.” Once Nutter got going, I was feeling him. The only thing I can think that compares is the time I saw Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick get down with Biz Markie. But the rhetorical flim flam here can be spotted with ease….

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Exhibit A.

Now there are all types of reasonable arguments TNR could have gotten some black non-Obama supporter to make. He’s a neoliberal (oh…wait, that doesn’t work because TNR is a neoliberal publication). He’s too moderate compared to Edwards (oh…wait, that doesn’t work because TNR didn’t support Edwards). Clinton’s health care policy is significantly better (oh…wait, the policies aren’t as dissimilar as folks are making them out to be). 

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Nearly 3 percent of homes that were once occupied by their owners in the country were vacant in March. That is up from less than 2 percent three years ago and is the highest since the Census bureau began publishing the number in 1956. 

More here. 

Combine that with this.

“At one point, bankruptcy seemed beyond the pale, but it’s something that one hears about a lot more now,” said John Quigley, a professor of economics at University of California, Berkeley. “And in California, you hear about a lot of cities being pushed to this sort of thinking by the housing crisis.”

More here.

Putting the pieces of this puzzle together it becoming easier and easier. If individuals don’t have the capacity to pay taxes, (taking for granted that the will is there), where will the taxes come from? Not the taxes needed to rebuild infrastructure, or to redesign our cities, the taxes necessary to keep water sources clean?

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I’ve been thinking about King because I’m writing an academic paper about media representations of him…and have been thinking about Malcolm X because his birthday coincides with that of my middle son. Next week I will be as old as Martin Luther King jr. was when he was brutally assassinated, leaving behind two sons and two daughters. In one year I’ll be as old as Malcolm X was when he was murdered, leaving behind six daughters.

I am where I am because of the dual legacies they represent.

Although Malcolm X never engaged in the organizing work that Martin Luther King did, for a number of reasons, it is very difficult to talk not only about black nationalism but about the development of Black Studies without talking about Malcolm X. And of course Martin Luther King Jr. led the desegregation movement.

But both families were financially and mentally broken after their assassinations, signaling that neither King nor X thought much about what would happen to their families afterwards. The reason why the King family held on to King’s legacy and fought to be compensated for it was not because they were selfish, but rather because they needed the income. Neither Coretta nor Betty was ever able to really get over the deaths of their spouses because of who their spouses were and neither remarried.

I do not believe that the gains made because of their activities outweigh the damage caused to their individual families. Every action that movement folks participated in carried immense risk. But while King and X chose to bore the risks they took, their children did NOT. Further those risks could have been minimized, with either a different strategic approach that emphasized life rather than martyrdom, or at least with some type of planning.

I’d be interested in knowing your thoughts, particularly if you have children.

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Over the last couple of days I’ve been in Washington D.C. at a conference for health disparities. One of the speakers we listened to was Aranthan Jones, former health policy advisor to Rep. Christensen and current House Majority Whip James Clyburn’s Director of Policy. What he focused on was the magic number of 35. There are approximately 55 competitive house races this year, and of those races, the Democrats look to win 35 of them (at least). Losses in places like Mississippi have severely weakened the GOP brand. But what does this mean for us?

The 35 seats that Jones predicts victory in break down like this:

Keep these numbers in mind. I’ll come back to them.

Check out this video featuring Donna Brazile and Paul Begala:

What Brazile and Begala are arguing about above is the future of the political strategy of focusing on the needs and desires of conservative white working class voters to the exclusion of blacks and liberal white voters–for Brazile this strategy has resulted in ignoring the core of the Democratic coalition, for Begala this strategy was what put Clinton over the top in 92 and 96.

(as an aside note that Begala ignores extra-DNC factors–the Perot vote in 92 and 96, the Supreme Court in 00).

For Brazile, Obama’s ability to attract racially moderate whites in places like Oregon, combined with increasing numbers of African Americans (and some Latinos), preclude the need to go after white voters in places like kentucky. Voters who appear to have a great deal of racial resentment. And for what it is worth I believe she is right. It will be difficult, but Obama can win without conservative white voters in the Appalachians, voters who don’t appear to understand their economic interests because of racism.

This isn’t just about the presidency though. Remember that magic number, and where the bulk of the new Democratic seats will come from. Inevitably the party will STILL be driven by the concerns of conservative whites. Which means that at some point we still have to work hard to convince white working class voters that their economic interests not only lie in voting for Democratic candidates, but in expanding the role of government to deal with their material needs. This is why I thought that Edwards was a better candidate than Obama or Clinton, and why I hope that Obama picks someone like Edwards to run as his VP candidate. But more importantly this is why people like Adolph Reed are right to argue that we need to organize a working IDEOLOGICAL majority that can lead to a working VOTING majority.

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Well, that’s not exactly true. But when the NAACP decided to appoint (why do I want to say “hire”?) 35-year old Benjamin Todd Jealous as its President (story here) they made the narrative here pretty predictable. Whereas when Bruce Gordon (Jealous’ predecessor) was appointed the narrative was that the NAACP was going corporate, the narrative now will be that the NAACP is attempting to rejuvenate itself by attracting youth (or at least “younger members”).

People have been making the argument that the old guard of black leaders have been less than interested in handing the reigns over to a younger generation for some time. We saw this when Newark Mayor Corey Booker took two tries to unseat Sharpe James. And the claims calling for a new “hip-hop politics” are often not so much about hip-hop as much as they are about youth. In fact I’d argue that much of what passes for substantive discussion of black politics lately has revolved around the discussion about the need for “new leaders” and “new approaches” and “new blood.” These arguments are at their base nothing more than beefs about folks getting their turn.

When Kweisi Mfume resigned I wrote this in response, noting three central flaws: the NAACP focuses on political rights rather than expanding economic rights, it is highly centralized with a bloated executive board, and it is largely an organization of middle and upper-income African Americans. How do any of these things change with the appointment of a leader like Jealous, as opposed to anyone else?

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Obama Faces Racism in West Virginia – The funniest videos are a click away

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Happy Mother’s Day!

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