Karen's Daily DIVA Dish

2009-02-25T09:01:00.003-05:00

After years of reading about Twitter and FB. This year in 2009 I finally joined both. Twitter takes some getting used too....

Let me know if you are on Twitter as well.

2009-02-02T10:06:00.002-05:00

Congratulations to Michael Steele. Yes! I am a proud voter of Barack Obama! I wept like a baby the night he won the election. Many of my Republican friends don't understand my feelings about President Obama or why I so vocally supported him during the election. I was a proud member of Republicans for Obama!

I am truly happy today to see that my party - the GOP has finally acknowledged it has a problem with being a 'white male only' party and has elected a wonderful man to its leadership, Michael Steele.

Chairman Steele is the reason why I became a Republican. I think he has great ideas and will bring the party forward. It needs to be a bigger tent and attract more moderate views.

I am hopeful that the party will move in a new direction. Now its time for Chairman Steele to roll up his sleeves and make some tough decisions!

2009-01-11T23:38:00.002-05:00

Feeling Blessed

Some days, when life is beating me up it is easy to forget how blessed I am and how thankful I am for life

Today is such a day. I just finished viewing a very personal video essay Target : Company : Dream in Color that features my brother.

I am so fortunate to have a great family and two amazing siblings. As I get older I realize how important family is and how grateful I am to have such kind, warm, caring and beautiful people as siblings.

I know life is hard sometimes, full of stress, and drama. However, it is great to take a moment and reflect on the gifts that life offers each of us: music, sunsets, architecture, art, dance, smiles, children, love and family.

I am blessed to have so much in my life. I may not be rich in wealth but I am rich with life.

I look forward to the life 2009 brings!

2008-12-27T22:26:00.001-05:00

Back from the dead!

I have been so busy the past two years. Life seems to have taken several turns. I miss the net, I miss blogs, I miss my internet friends.

One of my new years resolutions is to get back and get involved on the net again. I miss it! Right now, I am reading about things to do in NYC, I plan to visit very soon and want to have a "cultural" NYC trip.

Miss you!

2008-09-09T07:57:00.003-05:00

I know I have not posted in a while. I have been busy trying to grow my business and focusing on clients. I miss posting and I miss having my blog. I will try to post more often. This article in the NY Times by David Frum is EXCELLENT and focuses on many of my thoughts about the current state of the Republican party. Enjoy!

September 7, 2008
The Vanishing Republican Voter
By DAVID FRUM
I LIVE IN WASHINGTON, in a neighborhood that is home to lawyers, political consultants, television personalities and the chief executive of the TIAA-CREF pension fund. Not exactly an abode of the superrich, but the kind of neighborhood where almost nobody does her own yardwork or vacuums his own floor. Children’s birthday parties feature rented moon bounces or hired magicians. The local grocery stores offer elegant precooked dinners of salmon, duck and artichoke ravioli.
Four miles to the southeast there stretches a different Washington. More than one-third of the people live in poverty. Close to half the young children are overweight. Fewer than half the adults work. The rate of violent crime is more than 10 times that of the leafy streets of my neighborhood.
Measured by money income, Washington qualifies as one the most unequal cities in the United States. Yet these two very different halves of a single city do share at least one thing. They vote the same way: Democratic. And in this, we are not alone. As a general rule, the more unequal a place is, the more Democratic; the more equal, the more Republican. The gap between rich and poor in Washington is nearly twice as great as in strongly Republican Charlotte, N.C.; and more than twice as great as in Republican-leaning Phoenix, Fort Worth, Indianapolis and Anaheim.
My fellow conservatives and Republicans have tended not to worry very much about the widening of income inequalities. As long as there exists equality of opportunity — as long as everybody’s income is rising — who cares if some people get rich faster than others? Societies that try too hard to enforce equality deny important freedoms and inhibit wealth-creating enterprise. Individuals who worry overmuch about inequality can succumb to life-distorting envy and resentment.
All true! But something else is true, too: As America becomes more unequal, it also becomes less Republican. The trends we have dismissed are ending by devouring us.
THE TREND TO INEQUALITY is not new, and it is not confined to the United States. It has manifested itself just about everywhere in the developed world since the late 1970s, and for the same two reasons.
The first reason is the revolution in family life. Not so long ago, most households were home to two adults, one who worked and one who did not. Today fewer than half of America’s households are headed by married couples, and married women usually work. So America and other advanced countries have become increasingly divided between families earning two incomes and those getting by on one at most.
The family revolution coincided with another: a great shift from a national to a planetary division of labor. Inequality within nations is rising in large part because inequality is declining among nations. A generation ago, even a poor American was still better off than most people in China. Today the lifestyles of middle-class Chinese increasingly approximate those of middle-class Americans, while the lifestyles of upper and lower America increasingly diverge. Less-skilled Americans now face hundreds of millions of new wage competitors, while highly skilled Americans can sell their services in a worldwide market.
As long as all Americans were becoming better off, few cared that some Americans were becoming better off than others. But since 2000, something has changed. Incomes at the middle have ceased to rise. The mood of the country has soured. Conservatives who disregard the mood of unease may forfeit their power to defend the more open and productive American economy they did so much to build.
STEP ACROSS THE COUNTY line between Washington and suburban Fairfax County, Va., and you see the forfeiting process at work.
A third of a century ago, Fairfax had only recently evolved from farm country to bedroom community. Some rich families clustered in the village of McLean, where Robert Kennedy had his Hickory Hill estate. Otherwise, Fairfax housed middle-class families looking for inexpensive housing and excellent schools. These middle-class families voted Republican, leading the Old Dominion’s political transition away from its reactionary segregationist past to a modern business-oriented conservatism.
Under its Republican leadership, Fairfax boomed. Giant shopping malls and futuristic office blocks beanstalked over tract homes. The population surged past the one-million mark. Today Fairfax boasts an economy bigger than Vietnam’s. Fairfax households earn among the highest average incomes of any American county, more than $100,000, but that high average conceals wide variations between the highly educated and new arrivals speaking in 40 different tongues. With wealth comes diversity — and what is inequality but diversity in monetary form?
The county’s new wealth and diversity have created important new social problems. The schools are stressed. The roads are choked. Land use is more contentious. As Fairfax has evolved toward greater inequality, it has steadily shifted into the Democratic column. The Democrats Tim Kaine and Jim Webb won almost 60 percent of Fairfax’s votes in, respectively, the 2005 governor’s race and the 2006 U.S. Senate election. Democrats dominate Fairfax’s local government. In 2004, Fairfax voted for John Kerry over George Bush, 53 percent to 45 — the first Democratic presidential victory in the county since the Johnson landslide of 1964. Don’t imagine that this is a case of the shanties voting against the mansions. Kerry won some of his handsomest majorities in the fanciest of Fairfax’s 99 precincts.
In fact, Fairfax’s Democratic preference is typical of upper America. In 2000, Al Gore beat George Bush, 56-39, among the 4 percent of voters who identified themselves as “upper class.” America’s wealthiest ZIP codes are a roll call of Democratic strongholds: Sagaponack, N.Y.; Aspen, Colo.; Marin County, Calif.; the near North Side of Chicago; Beacon Hill in Boston. (Palm Beach, at least, remains securely Republican.) There is a long list of reasons for this anti-Republican tilt among the affluent: social issues, the environment, an ever more internationalist elite’s distaste for the Republican Party’s assertive nationalism. Maybe the most important reason, however, can be reduced to the two words: “Robert Rubin.” By returning to the center on economic matters in the 1990s, the Democrats emancipated higher-income and socially moderate voters to vote with their values rather than with their pocketbooks.
Republicans still claim the support of the upper-middle, but by dwindling margins. Democrats increased their share of the vote among those earning more than $100,000 by 9 percentage points between 1994 and 1998. Between 1998 and 2006, Democrats increased their share of this upper-middle-class vote by 3 more points.
Till now, conservative strength in the vast American middle more than compensated for any losses at the top and for the immigration-driven expansion of the bottom. Indeed, the Democratic tilt of the very richest Americans could be exploited as a powerful conservative recruiting tool. Resentment of “elites” is a major theme of conservative talk radio. “Who’s looking out for you?” demands Bill O’Reilly, as he excoriates “media elites” who vacation in the Hamptons, Aspen and the Virginia horse country.
But O’Reilly’s question has recoiled upon its onetime beneficiaries. Who is looking out for the Fox-viewing public? For most of the Bush administration, G.D.P. grew strongly, the stock market boomed, new jobs were created. But the ordinary person experienced little benefit. The median household income, which rose in the ’90s, had only just caught up to its 2000 level when the expansion ended in 2007.
You’ll hear a lot of partisan roostering from Democrats about the superiority of the Clinton over the Bush economy. But the difference owes little to the policies of either president. Between 2001 and 2008, the amount that employers paid for labor rose impressively, at least 25 percent. Yet almost all of that money was absorbed by the costs of health insurance, which doubled over the Bush years. In the 1990s, thanks to the advent of H.M.O.’s, health-care costs rose more slowly, so more of the money paid by employers could flow to employees.
Out of their flat-lining incomes, middle-class Americans have had to pay more for food, fuel, tuition and out-of-pocket health-care costs. In the past few months, they have suffered sharp tumbles in the value of their most important asset, their homes. Their mood has turned bleak. Almost 70 percent disapprove of the policies of George W. Bush. At intervals over the past two decades, Gallup has asked Americans whether the United States is a society divided into “haves” and “have-nots.” Back in 1988, more than 70 percent of Americans rejected this description. This year, the country split evenly: 49-49. When asked, “Are you better off than you were five years ago?” only 41 percent of middle-class Americans say yes, the worst result since pollsters started asking the question half a century ago.
It’s this pervasive economic unease that is capsizing the Republican Party, even as Americans have arrived in recent months at a somewhat more optimistic assessment of the progress of the Iraq war.
TO WITNESS THE SLOW-MOTION withering of the G.O.P., drive a little farther west into the Washington metropolitan area, to Prince William County. Here is exurban America in all its fresh paint: vast tracts of inexpensive homes, schools built to the latest design, roads still black in their virgin asphalt.
Whether in Virginia, Missouri or Illinois, there are no more egalitarian and no more Republican places in the United States than these exurbs. The rich shun them, and the poor can find no easy foothold, but the middle-income, middle-educated, white married parents who form the backbone of the G.O.P. are drawn to them as if to a refuge. It’s a modest-enough utopia, and comfortable equality has had its usual pro-Republican consequences: Republicans hold six of the eight seats on Prince William County’s Board of Supervisors and all three of the federal Congressional seats that include parts of the county.
Yet in the past couple of cycles, the once-tight Republican hold upon the county has loosened. Prince William voted (very narrowly) for Gov. Tim Kaine in 2005 and then (slightly less narrowly) for Senator Jim Webb in 2006. A big vote for the 2008 Democratic senatorial candidate Mark Warner seems almost certain, and a victory for Barack Obama seems very possible.
To echo an old Republican question: Who lost Prince William County?
Republican economic management since 2001 has not yielded many benefits for middle-income America. Adjusting for inflation, the incomes of college graduates actually dropped by 5 percent between 2000 and 2004 — and 44 percent of the people of Prince William are college graduates. Prince William is also ground zero for the middle-class revolt against the Bush administration’s easy immigration policies. An estimated 10 million migrants have entered the United States since 2000, at least half of them illegally, and few places in the United States have reacted more angrily than Prince William County. Last year, the Prince William Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to require the local police to check the immigration status of all arrested persons.
It’s widely understood that abundant low-skilled immigration hurts lower America by reducing wages. As the National Research Council noted in its comprehensive 1997 report: “If the wage of domestic unskilled workers did not fall, no domestic worker (unskilled or skilled) would gain or lose, and there would be no net domestic gain from immigration.” In other words, immigration is good for America as a whole only because — and only to the extent that — it is bad for the poorest Americans. Conversely, low-skilled immigration enriches upper America, lowering the price of personal services like landscaping and restaurant meals. And by holding down wages, immigration makes the business investments of upper America more profitable.
Middle-class Americans surely share in the cost-lowering benefits of immigration. But the middle class also pays the higher local tax bills that can result from immigration. Immigrants do not qualify for many federal benefits, but they do use the roads, schools, hospitals and prisons supported by state and local property taxes — the taxes that fall most disproportionately on the middle class.
It is also clear that immigration thickens the ranks of the American poor. The poverty rate for post-1970 immigrants and their native-born children is almost 50 percent higher than for the native born. (In 1970, established immigrants were much less likely to be poor than the native born.) No mystery why this should be so: one-third of adult new immigrants have not finished high school. And there is reason to fear that this poverty will become entrenched: barely half of Latino students complete high school on time; 48 percent of births to Latino women occur outside marriage.
IN SHORT, the trend to inequality is real, it is large and it is transforming American society and the American electoral map. Yet the conservative response to this trend verges somewhere between the obsolete and the irrelevant.
Conservatives need to stop denying reality. The stagnation of the incomes of middle-class Americans is a fact. And only by acknowledging facts can we respond effectively to the genuine difficulties of voters in the middle. We keep offering them cuts in their federal personal income taxes — even though two-thirds of Americans pay more in payroll taxes than in income taxes, and even though a majority of Americans now describe their federal income tax burden as reasonable.
What the middle class needs most is not lower income taxes but a slowdown in the soaring inflation of health-care costs. If health-insurance costs had risen 50 percent rather than 100 percent over the Bush years, middle-income voters would have enjoyed a pay raise instead of enduring wage stagnation. John McCain’s health plan, which emphasizes tax changes to encourage employees to buy their own insurance rather than rely on employers, is a start — but only the very beginning of a start. Some Republicans have brought great energy to this problem. In the Senate, Robert Bennett of Utah has written a bill with the Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden that would require employers to “cash out” employer-provided health care — and then midwife a national insurance marketplace in which employees would join plans that offered more price control and price transparency. Mitt Romney in Massachusetts put an end to the tax disadvantage that hammers consumers who buy health care directly rather than through their employers. Rudy Giuliani proposed a federal law to enable low-cost insurers in states like Kentucky to sell their products across state lines in high-cost states like New Jersey. But it remains unfortunately true that the Republican Party as a whole regards health care as “not our issue” — and certainly less exciting than another round of tax reductions.
Unlike liberals, conservatives are not bothered by the accumulation of wealth as such. We should be more troubled that the poor remain so poor. With all due respect to the needs of employers, Republicans need to recognize that the large-scale import of unskilled labor is part of the problem.
Meanwhile, the argument over same-sex marriage has become worse than a distraction from the challenge of developing policies to ensure that as many children as possible grow up with both a father and a mother in the home. Over the past 30 years, governments have effectively worked to change attitudes about smoking, seat-belt use and teenage pregnancy. Changing attitudes about unmarried childbirth may prove more difficult. Yet it is a fact that the only way to escape poverty is to work consistently — and that even after welfare reform, low-skilled single parents work less consistently than the main breadwinner in a low-skilled dual-parent household.
At the same time, conservatives need to ask ourselves some hard questions about the trend toward the Democrats among America’s affluent and well educated. Leaving aside the District of Columbia, 7 of America’s 10 best-educated states are strongly “blue” in national politics, and the others (Colorado, New Hampshire and Virginia) have been trending blue. Of the 10 least-educated, only one (Nevada) is not reliably Republican. And so we arrive at a weird situation in which the party that identifies itself with markets, with business and with technology cannot win the votes of those who have prospered most from markets, from business and from technology. Republicans have been badly hurt in upper America by the collapse of their onetime reputation for integrity and competence. Upper Americans live in a world in which things work. The packages arrive overnight. The car doors clink seamlessly shut. The prevailing Republican view — “of course government always fails, what do you expect it to do?” — is not what this slice of America expects to hear from the people asking to be entrusted with the government.
It is probable that the trend to inequality will grow even stronger in the years ahead, if new genetic techniques offer those with sufficient resources the possibility of enhancing the intelligence, health, beauty and strength of children in the womb. How should conservatives respond to such new technologies? The anti-abortion instincts of many conservatives naturally incline them to look at such techniques with suspicion — and indeed it is certainly easy to imagine how they might be abused. Yet in an important address delivered as long ago as 1983, Pope John Paul II argued that genetic enhancement was permissible — indeed, laudable — even from a Catholic point of view, as long as it met certain basic moral rules. Among those rules: that these therapies be available to all. Ensuring equality of care may become inseparable from ensuring equality of opportunity.
Equality in itself never can be or should be a conservative goal. But inequality taken to extremes can overwhelm conservative ideals of self-reliance, limited government and national unity. It can delegitimize commerce and business and invite destructive protectionism and overregulation. Inequality, in short, is a conservative issue too. We must develop a positive agenda that integrates the right kind of egalitarianism with our conservative principles of liberty. If we neglect this task and this opportunity, we won’t lose just the northern Virginia suburbs. We will lose America.
David Frum, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of “Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again.”

2008-03-26T21:16:00.002-05:00

This is really sad to hear. As a small business owner, I know how difficult it is to get a small business loan. It is truly hard! This is unfair!!!!

March 25, 2008
Small Firms Find Credit Is Tightening
By ELIZABETH OLSON
Lenders’ credit woes are starting to take a toll on small businesses.
Though it may be too early to determine how hard small businesses will be hit, some national surveys show that the businesses are encountering more restrictions at lending institutions, making it harder to get the credit necessary to expand or, in some cases, stay afloat.
Last month, a Federal Reserve report found that a third of banks in the United States had tightened their lending standards for small-business loans.
Soundings of business owners themselves are mixed because credit availability is not uniform across the country. More than half of those responding to the National Small Business Association’s online poll two weeks ago replied “yes” when asked whether their business had “been impacted by the credit crunch in recent months.” But another group, the National Federation of Independent Business, said that more than a third of the members responding to its February survey said they were borrowing normally, and only 4 percent said there was a problem getting a loan.
The Small Business Administration has not said publicly that it is worried about a credit squeeze even though the number of business loans made through its main program, called 7 (a), has declined so far this fiscal year by more than 15 percent compared with the period last year. And the dollar value of the loans declined by more than 7 percent. The agency guaranteed some $20.6 billion in such loans in the last fiscal year.
This month, Steven C. Preston, the agency’s administrator, held a closed meeting with major bank executives at the White House to talk about small-business credit. The list of those attending was not made public, but Mr. Preston said afterward, “We know affordable credit is the lifeline of any business, and we also know banks have been tightening their credit standards.”
Mr. Preston has been meeting with banks around the country to remind them of federally guaranteed loan offerings, an agency spokeswoman, Christine Mangi, said.
But Congressional Democrats have argued that this is far from enough to help small businesses ride out a tumultuous economy.
“The S.B.A. should be a major instrument to help small business,” Senator John Kerry, the Massachusetts Democrat who is chairman of the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, said in an interview. Instead, he said, the agency has raised fees on loans and cut back on debt counseling for small businesses in economic trouble.
According to S.B.A. data, more than $1 billion in 7 (a) loans — the most basic and most used loan type — were delinquent on Dec. 31, 2007, compared with about $673 million a year earlier.
The administration “has been ignoring data on small-business economic conditions since at least October,” Mr. Kerry added.
Advocates for small business argue that it is a mainstay of employment, even in economic downturns.
“What’s significant here is that microenterprises continued to create new jobs even during the 2001 recession,” said Amy McKenna Luz, president of the Association for Enterprise Opportunity, a national organization for small businesses. When the auto, telecommunications and other major industries were laying off people, she said microenterprises (businesses with five or fewer employees) continued to add jobs — some 4.5 million from 2000 to 2005.
One small-business owner who has been running into problems obtaining new credit is Tate M. Linden, who opened his marketing consulting business three years ago. Last May, he said, he had no trouble obtaining a $35,000 line of credit for Stokefire, his branding consulting business in Alexandria, Va.
But when he went back several weeks ago to the same institution to add another $15,000 to his credit line, the answer was no.
“We just thought it would be as simple as making a check mark in the box because we have revenues coming in,” said Mr. Linden, 36.
When the economy slides, he said, businesses like his do well as companies clamor for expertise to refresh or turn around their image. So he had planned to double his three-employee staff now and then add another four to five people later this year in sales, project management and graphic design. But he halted his hiring plans when he got a formal rejection on grounds he already had “sufficient credit.”
Kathy D. Wheeler, chief executive of Community Business Partnership, a nonprofit organization in Springfield, Va., that trains entrepreneurs to start and expand businesses, said Mr. Linden’s tale “shows me there is a lending problem.”
Sirena C. Moore of Bristol, Pa., said she also had difficulty when she tried to get a line of credit for her company, Elohim Cleaning Contractors, which, she said, took in nearly $2 million last year from asbestos removal and cleanup of construction sites in the Philadelphia area.
“The bank said it wanted more credit history,” said Ms. Moore, 26, whose company started with $3,000 in revenue in 2002. “But I’ve never taken out a loan before and I don’t own a house. My car is paid because I bought it used.”
She applied for a $250,000 credit line, she said, so the “company would have a cushion, and I can actually take a real salary, which I’ve never done because I always have to make sure the crew is paid first.”
She added, “The banks are happy to give us a lollipop, but nothing when it comes to credit.”
The trade association for lenders has urged Congress to step in, noting that there is more demand for federally guaranteed loans when credit standards tighten.
“Loan volume is declining at an alarming rate,” Anthony R. Wilkinson, president of the National Association of Government Guaranteed Lenders, told a House of Representatives hearing on lending this month. “With each passing week of this fiscal year, the problem is getting worse.”
Commercial banks like Bank of America insist there has been no change in their lending programs. Even so, a bank spokeswoman, Tara Burke, said, “Obviously we are being prudent and ensuring that we take the right risks and get paid appropriately for the risks we take.”
Entrepreneurs who are being squeezed are trying to get smaller loans or looking for alternative financing. Ms. Wheeler of the Community Business Partnership says her group is processing more than twice as many weekly requests for microloans for start-ups as it did a year ago.
That program has been a target of Bush administration budget-cutting for several years, but Congress has always stepped in to save it.
While home equity lines of credit are dicier because of the drop in home valuations, many small-business owners are still using them as well as credit cards, even though they generally have higher interest rates than credit lines or loans.
Mr. Linden said he planned to explore a smaller federally guaranteed loan to shore up his credit line.
“There’s a big disconnect between what the big banks are saying on their television and radio ads about meeting small-business needs,” Mr. Linden said. “It really comes down to numbers, not relationships.”

2006-11-26T19:38:00.001-05:00

This article is from today's NY Times magazine. It is an excellent article! I wonder when our African American leaders will start to discuss the issue of "our" parenting skills and how it affects our children. WHEN WILL OUR LEADERS BEGIN TO DISCUSS PUBLICLY THIS ISSUE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!November 26, 2006
What It Takes to Make a Student
By PAUL TOUGH
On the morning of Oct. 5, President Bush and his education secretary, Margaret Spellings, paid a visit, along with camera crews from CNN and Fox News, to Friendship-Woodridge Elementary and Middle Campus, a charter public school in Washington. The president dropped in on two classrooms, where he asked the students, almost all of whom were African-American and poor, if they were planning to go to college. Every hand went up. “See, that’s a good sign,” the president told the students when they assembled later in the gym. “Going to college is an important goal for the future of the United States of America.” He singled out one student, a black eighth grader named Asia Goode, who came to Woodridge four years earlier reading “well below grade level.” But things had changed for Asia, according to the president. “Her teachers stayed after school to tutor her, and she caught up,” he said. “Asia is now an honors student. She loves reading, and she sings in the school choir.”
Bush’s Woodridge trip came in the middle of a tough midterm election campaign, and there was certainly some short-term political calculation in being photographed among smiling black faces. But this was more than a photo opportunity. The president had come to Woodridge to talk about the most ambitious piece of domestic legislation his administration had enacted after almost six years in office: No Child Left Behind. The controversial education law, which established a series of standards for schools and states to meet and a variety of penalties for falling short, is up for reauthorization next year in front of a potentially hostile Congress, and for the law to win approval again, the White House will have to convince Americans that it is working — and also convince them of exactly what, in this case, “working” really means.
When the law took effect, at the beginning of 2002, official Washington was preoccupied with foreign affairs, and many people in government, and many outside it too, including the educators most affected by the legislation, seemed slow to take notice of its most revolutionary provision: a pledge to eliminate, in just 12 years, the achievement gap between black and white students, and the one between poor and middle-class students. By 2014, the president vowed, African-American, Hispanic and poor children, all of whom were at the time scoring well below their white counterparts and those in the middle class on standardized tests, would not only catch up with the rest of the nation; they would also reach 100 percent proficiency in both math and reading. It was a startling commitment, and it made the promise in the law’s title a literal one: the federal government would not allow a single American child to be educated to less than that high standard.
It was this element of the law that the president had come to Woodridge to talk about. “There’s an achievement gap in America that’s not good for the future of this country,” he told the crowd. “Some kids can read at grade level, and some can’t. And that’s unsatisfactory.”
But there was good news, the president concluded: “I’m proud to report the achievement gap between white kids and minority students is closing, for the good of the United States.”
This contention — that the achievement gap is on its way to the dustbin of history — is one that Bush and Spellings have expressed frequently in the past year. And the gap better be closing: the law is coming up on its fifth anniversary. In just seven more years, if the promise of No Child Left Behind is going to be kept, the performances of white and black students have to be indistinguishable.
But despite the glowing reports from the White House and the Education Department, the most recent iteration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the test of fourth- and eighth-grade students commonly referred to as the nation’s report card, is not reassuring. In 2002, when No Child Left Behind went into effect, 13 percent of the nation’s black eighth-grade students were “proficient” in reading, the assessment’s standard measure of grade-level competence. By 2005 (the latest data), that number had dropped to 12 percent. (Reading proficiency among white eighth-grade students dropped to 39 percent, from 41 percent.) The gap between economic classes isn’t disappearing, either: in 2002, 17 percent of poor eighth-grade students (measured by eligibility for free or reduced-price school lunches) were proficient in reading; in 2005, that number fell to 15 percent.
The most promising indications in the national test could be found in the fourth-grade math results, in which the percentage of poor students at the proficient level jumped to 19 percent in 2005, from 8 percent in 2000; for black students, the number jumped to 13 percent, from 5 percent. This was a significant increase, but it was still far short of the proficiency figure for white students, which rose to 47 percent in 2005, and it was a long way from 100 percent.
In the first few years of this decade, two parallel debates about the achievement gap have emerged. The first is about causes; the second is about cures. The first has been taking place in academia, among economists and anthropologists and sociologists who are trying to figure out exactly where the gap comes from, why it exists and why it persists. The second is happening among and around a loose coalition of schools, all of them quite new, all established with the goal of wiping out the achievement gap altogether.
The two debates seem barely to overlap — the principals don’t pay much attention to the research papers being published in scholarly journals, and the academics have yet to study closely what is going on in these schools. Examined together, though, they provide a complete and nuanced picture, sometimes disheartening, sometimes hopeful, of what the president and his education officials are up against as they strive to keep the promise they have made. The academics have demonstrated just how deeply pervasive and ingrained are the intellectual and academic disadvantages that poor and minority students must overcome to compete with their white and middle-class peers. The divisions between black and white and rich and poor begin almost at birth, and they are reinforced every day of a child’s life. And yet the schools provide evidence that the president is, in his most basic understanding of the problem, entirely right: the achievement gap can be overcome, in a convincing way, for large numbers of poor and minority students, not in generations but in years. What he and others seem not to have apprehended quite yet is the magnitude of the effort that will be required for that change to take place.
But the evidence is becoming difficult to ignore: when educators do succeed at educating poor minority students up to national standards of proficiency, they invariably use methods that are radically different and more intensive than those employed in most American public schools. So as the No Child Left Behind law comes up for reauthorization next year, Americans are facing an increasingly stark choice: is the nation really committed to guaranteeing that all of the country’s students will succeed to the same high level? And if so, how hard are we willing to work, and what resources are we willing to commit, to achieve that goal?
In the years after World War II, and especially after the civil rights reforms of the 1960s, black Americans’ standardized-test scores improved steadily and significantly, compared with those of whites. But at some point in the late 1980s, after decades of progress, the narrowing of the gap stalled, and between 1988 and 1994 black reading scores actually fell by a sizable amount on the national assessment. What had appeared to be an inexorable advance toward equality had run out of steam, and African-American schoolchildren seemed to be stuck well behind their white peers.
The issue was complicated by the fact that there are really two overlapping test-score gaps: the one between black children and white children, and the one between poor children and better-off children. Given that those categories tend to overlap — black children are three times as likely to grow up in poverty as white children — many people wondered whether focusing on race was in fact a useful approach. Why not just concentrate on correcting the academic disadvantages of poor people? Solve those, and the black-white gap will solve itself.
There had, in fact, been evidence for a long time that poor children fell behind rich and middle-class children early, and stayed behind. But researchers had been unable to isolate the reasons for the divergence. Did rich parents have better genes? Did they value education more? Was it that rich parents bought more books and educational toys for their children? Was it because they were more likely to stay married than poor parents? Or was it that rich children ate more nutritious food? Moved less often? Watched less TV? Got more sleep? Without being able to identify the important factors and eliminate the irrelevant ones, there was no way even to begin to find a strategy to shrink the gap.
Researchers began peering deep into American homes, studying up close the interactions between parents and children. The first scholars to emerge with a specific culprit in hand were Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley, child psychologists at the University of Kansas, who in 1995 published the results of an intensive research project on language acquisition. Ten years earlier, they recruited 42 families with newborn children in Kansas City, and for the following three years they visited each family once a month, recording absolutely everything that occurred between the child and the parent or parents. The researchers then transcribed each encounter and analyzed each child’s language development and each parent’s communication style. They found, first, that vocabulary growth differed sharply by class and that the gap between the classes opened early. By age 3, children whose parents were professionals had vocabularies of about 1,100 words, and children whose parents were on welfare had vocabularies of about 525 words. The children’s I.Q.’s correlated closely to their vocabularies. The average I.Q. among the professional children was 117, and the welfare children had an average I.Q. of 79.
When Hart and Risley then addressed the question of just what caused those variations, the answer they arrived at was startling. By comparing the vocabulary scores with their observations of each child’s home life, they were able to conclude that the size of each child’s vocabulary correlated most closely to one simple factor: the number of words the parents spoke to the child. That varied greatly across the homes they visited, and again, it varied by class. In the professional homes, parents directed an average of 487 “utterances” — anything from a one-word command to a full soliloquy — to their children each hour. In welfare homes, the children heard 178 utterances per hour.
What’s more, the kinds of words and statements that children heard varied by class. The most basic difference was in the number of “discouragements” a child heard — prohibitions and words of disapproval — compared with the number of encouragements, or words of praise and approval. By age 3, the average child of a professional heard about 500,000 encouragements and 80,000 discouragements. For the welfare children, the situation was reversed: they heard, on average, about 75,000 encouragements and 200,000 discouragements. Hart and Risley found that as the number of words a child heard increased, the complexity of that language increased as well. As conversation moved beyond simple instructions, it blossomed into discussions of the past and future, of feelings, of abstractions, of the way one thing causes another — all of which stimulated intellectual development.
Hart and Risley showed that language exposure in early childhood correlated strongly with I.Q. and academic success later on in a child’s life. Hearing fewer words, and a lot of prohibitions and discouragements, had a negative effect on I.Q.; hearing lots of words, and more affirmations and complex sentences, had a positive effect on I.Q. The professional parents were giving their children an advantage with every word they spoke, and the advantage just kept building up.
In the years since Hart and Risley published their findings, social scientists have examined other elements of the parent-child relationship, and while their methods have varied, their conclusions all point to big class differences in children’s intellectual growth. Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, a professor at Teachers College, has overseen hundreds of interviews of parents and collected thousands of hours of videotape of parents and children, and she and her research team have graded each one on a variety of scales. Their conclusion: Children from more well-off homes tend to experience parental attitudes that are more sensitive, more encouraging, less intrusive and less detached — all of which, they found, serves to increase I.Q. and school-readiness. They analyzed the data to see if there was something else going on in middle-class homes that could account for the advantage but found that while wealth does matter, child-rearing style matters more.
Martha Farah, a researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, has built on Brooks-Gunn’s work, using the tools of neuroscience to calculate exactly which skills poorer children lack and which parental behaviors affect the development of those skills. She has found, for instance, that the “parental nurturance” that middle-class parents, on average, are more likely to provide stimulates the brain’s medial temporal lobe, which in turn aids the development of memory skills.
Another researcher, an anthropologist named Annette Lareau, has investigated the same question from a cultural perspective. Over the course of several years, Lareau and her research assistants observed a variety of families from different class backgrounds, basically moving in to each home for three weeks of intensive scrutiny. Lareau found that the middle-class families she studied all followed a similar strategy, which she labeled concerted cultivation. The parents in these families engaged their children in conversations as equals, treating them like apprentice adults and encouraging them to ask questions, challenge assumptions and negotiate rules. They planned and scheduled countless activities to enhance their children’s development — piano lessons, soccer games, trips to the museum.
The working-class and poor families Lareau studied did things differently. In fact, they raised their children the way most parents, even middle-class parents, did a generation or two ago. They allowed their children much more freedom to fill in their afternoons and weekends as they chose — playing outside with cousins, inventing games, riding bikes with friends — but much less freedom to talk back, question authority or haggle over rules and consequences. Children were instructed to defer to adults and treat them with respect. This strategy Lareau named accomplishment of natural growth.
In her book “Unequal Childhoods,” published in 2003, Lareau described the costs and benefits of each approach and concluded that the natural-growth method had many advantages. Concerted cultivation, she wrote, “places intense labor demands on busy parents. ... Middle-class children argue with their parents, complain about their parents’ incompetence and disparage parents’ decisions.” Working-class and poor children, by contrast, “learn how to be members of informal peer groups. They learn how to manage their own time. They learn how to strategize.” But outside the family unit, Lareau wrote, the advantages of “natural growth” disappear. In public life, the qualities that middle-class children develop are consistently valued over the ones that poor and working-class children develop. Middle-class children become used to adults taking their concerns seriously, and so they grow up with a sense of entitlement, which gives them a confidence, in the classroom and elsewhere, that less-wealthy children lack. The cultural differences translate into a distinct advantage for middle-class children in school, on standardized achievement tests and, later in life, in the workplace.
Taken together, the conclusions of these researchers can be a little unsettling. Their work seems to reduce a child’s upbringing, which to a parent can feel something like magic, to a simple algorithm: give a child X, and you get Y. Their work also suggests that the disadvantages that poverty imposes on children aren’t primarily about material goods. True, every poor child would benefit from having more books in his home and more nutritious food to eat (and money certainly makes it easier to carry out a program of concerted cultivation). But the real advantages that middle-class children gain come from more elusive processes: the language that their parents use, the attitudes toward life that they convey. However you measure child-rearing, middle-class parents tend to do it differently than poor parents — and the path they follow in turn tends to give their children an array of advantages. As Lareau points out, kids from poor families might be nicer, they might be happier, they might be more polite — but in countless ways, the manner in which they are raised puts them at a disadvantage in the measures that count in contemporary American society.
What would it take to overcome these disadvantages? Does poverty itself need to be eradicated, or can its effects on children somehow be counteracted? Can the culture of child-rearing be changed in poor neighborhoods, and if so, is that a project that government or community organizations have the ability, or the right, to take on? Is it enough simply to educate poor children in the same way that middle-class children are educated? And can any school, on its own, really provide an education to poor minority students that would allow them to achieve the same results as middle-class students?
There is, in fact, evidence emerging that some schools are succeeding at the difficult task of educating poor minority students to high levels of achievement. But there is still great disagreement about just how many schools are pulling this off and what those successful schools mean for the rest of the American education system. One well-publicized evaluation of those questions has come from the Education Trust, a policy group in Washington that has issued a series of reports making the case that there are plenty of what they call “high flying” schools, which they define as high-poverty or high-minority schools whose students score in the top third of all schools in their state. The group’s landmark report, published in December 2001, identified 1,320 “high flying” schools nationwide that were both high-poverty and high minority. This was a big number, and it had a powerful effect on the debate over the achievement gap. The pessimists — those who believed that the disadvantages of poverty were all but impossible to overcome in public schools — were dealt a serious blow. If the report’s figures held up, it meant that high achievement for poor minority kids was not some one-in-a-million occurrence; it was happening all the time, all around us.
But in the years since the report’s release, its conclusions have been challenged by scholars and analysts who have argued that the Education Trust made it too easy to be included on their list. To be counted as a high-flier, a school needed to receive a high score in only one subject in one grade in one year. If your school had a good fourth-grade reading score, it was on the list, even if all its other scores were mediocre. To many researchers, that was an unconvincing standard of academic success. Douglas Harris, a professor of education and economics at Florida State University, pored over Education Trust’s data, trying to ascertain how many of the high-flying schools were able to register consistently good numbers. When he tightened the definition of success to include only schools that had high scores in two subjects in two different grades over two different years, Harris could find only 23 high-poverty, high-minority schools in the Education Trust’s database, a long way down from 1,320.
That number isn’t exhaustive; Harris says he has no doubt that there are some great schools that slipped through his data sieve. But his results still point to a very different story than the one the original report told. Education Trust officials intended their data to refute the idea that family background is the leading cause of student performance. But on closer examination, their data largely confirm that idea, demonstrating clearly that the best predictors of a school’s achievement scores are the race and wealth of its student body. A public school that enrolls mostly well-off white kids has a 1 in 4 chance of earning consistently high test scores, Harris found; a school with mostly poor minority kids has a 1 in 300 chance.
Despite those long odds, the last decade — and especially the last few years — have seen the creation of dozens, even hundreds, of schools across the country dedicated to precisely that mission: delivering consistently high results with a population that generally achieves consistently low results. The schools that have taken on this mission most aggressively tend to be charter schools — the publicly financed, privately run institutions that make up one of the most controversial educational experiments of our time. Because charters exist outside the control of public-school boards and are generally not required to adhere to union contracts with their teachers, they have attracted significant opposition, and their opponents are able to point to plenty of evidence that the charter project has failed. Early charter advocates claimed the schools would raise test scores across the board, and that hasn’t happened; nationally, scores for charter-school students are the same as or lower than scores for public-school students. But by another measure, charter schools have succeeded: by allowing educators to experiment in ways that they generally can’t inside public-school systems, they have led to the creation of a small but growing corps of schools with new and ambitious methods for educating students facing real academic challenges.
In the early years of the charter-school movement, every school was an island, trying out its own mad or brilliant educational theory. But as charter-school proponents have studied the successes and learned from the mistakes of their predecessors, patterns, even a consensus, have begun to emerge. The schools that are achieving the most impressive results with poor and minority students tend to follow three practices. First, they require many more hours of class time than a typical public school. The school day starts early, at 8 a.m. or before, and often continues until after 4 p.m. These schools offer additional tutoring after school as well as classes on Saturday mornings, and summer vacation usually lasts only about a month. The schools try to leaven those long hours with music classes, foreign languages, trips and sports, but they spend a whole lot of time going over the basics: reading and math.
Second, they treat classroom instruction and lesson planning as much as a science as an art. Explicit goals are set for each year, month and day of each class, and principals have considerable authority to redirect and even remove teachers who aren’t meeting those goals. The schools’ leaders believe in frequent testing, which, they say, lets them measure what is working and what isn’t, and they use test results to make adjustments to the curriculum as they go. Teachers are trained and retrained, frequently observed and assessed by their principals and superintendents. There is an emphasis on results but also on “team building” and cooperation and creativity, and the schools seem, to an outsider at least, like genuinely rewarding places to work, despite the long hours. They tend to attract young, enthusiastic teachers, including many alumni of Teach for America, the program that recruits graduates from top universities to work for two years in inner-city public schools.
Third, they make a conscious effort to guide the behavior, and even the values, of their students by teaching what they call character. Using slogans, motivational posters, incentives, encouragements and punishments, the schools direct students in everything from the principles of teamwork and the importance of an optimistic outlook to the nuts and bolts of how to sit in class, where to direct their eyes when a teacher is talking and even how to nod appropriately.
The schools are, in the end, a counterintuitive combination of touchy-feely idealism and intense discipline. Their guiding philosophy is in many ways a reflection of the findings of scholars like Lareau and Hart and Risley — like those academics, these school leaders see childhood as a series of inputs and outputs. When students enroll in one of these schools (usually in fifth or sixth grade), they are often two or more grade levels behind. Usually they have missed out on many of the millions of everyday intellectual and emotional stimuli that their better-off peers have been exposed to since birth. They are, educationally speaking, in deep trouble. The schools reject the notion that all that these struggling students need are high expectations; they do need those, of course, but they also need specific types and amounts of instruction, both in academics and attitude, to compensate for everything they did not receive in their first decade of life.
It is still too early in the history of this nascent movement to say which schools are going to turn out to be the most successful with this new approach to the education of poor children. But so far, the most influential schools are the ones run by KIPP, or the Knowledge Is Power Program. KIPP’s founders, David Levin and Michael Feinberg, met in 1992, when they were young college graduates enrolled in Teach for America, working in inner-city public schools in Houston. They struggled at first as teachers but were determined to figure out how to motivate and educate their students. Each night they would compare notes on what worked in the classroom — songs, games, chants, rewards — and, before long, both of them became expert classroom instructors.
In the fall of 1994, Levin and Feinberg started a middle school in Houston, teaching just 50 students, and they named it KIPP. A year later, Levin moved to New York and started the second KIPP school, in the South Bronx. As the KIPP schools grew, Levin and Feinberg adhered to a few basic principles: their mission was to educate low-income and minority students. They would emphasize measurable results. And they would promise to do whatever it took to help their students succeed. They offered an extended day and an extended year that provided KIPP students with about 60 percent more time in school than most public-school students. They set clear and strict rules of conduct: their two principles of behavior were “Work Hard” and “Be Nice,” and all the other rules flowed out of those. At the beginning of each year, parents and students signed a pledge — unenforceable but generally taken seriously — committing to certain standards of hard work and behavior. Teachers gave students their cellphone numbers so students could call them at night for homework help.
The methods raised students’ test scores, and the schools began to attract the attention of the media and of philanthropists. A “60 Minutes” report on the schools in 1999 led to a $15 million grant from Doris and Donald Fisher, the founders of the Gap, and Feinberg and Levin began gradually to expand KIPP into a national network. Two years ago, they received $8 million from the Gates Foundation to create up to eight KIPP high schools. There are now 52 KIPP schools across the country, almost all middle schools, and together they are educating 12,000 children. The network is run on a franchise model; each school’s principal has considerable autonomy, while quality control is exercised from the home office in San Francisco. Feinberg is the superintendent of KIPP’s eight schools in Houston, and Levin is the superintendent of the four New York City schools.
KIPP is part of a loose coalition with two other networks of charter schools based in and around New York City. One is Achievement First, which grew out of the success of Amistad Academy, a charter school in New Haven that was founded in 1999. Achievement First now runs six schools in New Haven and Brooklyn. The other network is Uncommon Schools, which was started by a founder of North Star Academy in Newark along with principals from three acclaimed charter schools in Massachusetts; it now includes seven schools in Rochester, Newark and Brooklyn. The connections among the three networks are mostly informal, based on the friendships that bind Levin to Norman Atkins, the former journalist who founded North Star, and to Dacia Toll, the Rhodes scholar and Yale Law graduate who started Amistad with Doug McCurry, a former teacher. Toll and Atkins visited Levin at the Bronx KIPP Academy when they were setting up their original schools and studied the methods he was using; they later sent their principals to the leadership academy that Levin and Feinberg opened in 2000, and they have continued to model many of their practices on KIPP’s. Now the schools are beginning to formalize their ties. As they each expand their charters to include high schools, Levin, Toll and Atkins are working on a plan to bring students from all three networks together under one roof.
Students at both KIPP and Achievement First schools follow a system for classroom behavior invented by Levin and Feinberg called Slant, which instructs them to sit up, listen, ask questions, nod and track the speaker with their eyes. When I visited KIPP Academy last month, I was standing with Levin at the front of a music class of about 60 students, listening to him talk, when he suddenly interrupted himself and pointed at me. “Do you notice what he’s doing right now?” he asked the class.
They all called out at once, “Nodding!”
Levin’s contention is that Americans of a certain background learn these methods for taking in information early on and employ them instinctively. KIPP students, he says, need to be taught the methods explicitly. And so it is a little unnerving to stand at the front of a KIPP class; every eye is on you. When a student speaks, every head swivels to watch her. To anyone raised in the principles of progressive education, the uniformity and discipline in KIPP classrooms can be off-putting. But the kids I spoke to said they use the Slant method not because they fear they will be punished otherwise but because it works: it helps them to learn. (They may also like the feeling of having their classmates’ undivided attention when they ask or answer a question.) When Levin asked the music class to demonstrate the opposite of Slanting — “Give us the normal school look,” he said — the students, in unison, all started goofing off, staring into space and slouching. Middle-class Americans know intuitively that “good behavior” is mostly a game with established rules; the KIPP students seemed to be experiencing the pleasure of being let in on a joke.
Still, Levin says that the innovations a visitor to a KIPP school might notice first — the Slanting and the walls festooned with slogans and mottos (“Team Always Beats Individual,” “All of Us Will Learn”) and the orderly rows of students walking in the hallways — are not the only things contributing to the schools’ success. Equally important, he says, are less visible practices: clear and coherent goals for each class; teachers who work 15 to 16 hours a day; careful lesson planning; and a decade’s worth of techniques, tricks, games and chants designed to help vast amounts of information penetrate poorly educated brains very quickly.
Toll and Levin are influenced by the writings of a psychology professor from the University of Pennsylvania named Martin Seligman, the author of a series of books about positive psychology. Seligman, one of the first modern psychologists to study happiness, promotes a technique he calls learned optimism, and Toll and Levin consider it an essential part of the attitude they are trying to instill in their students. Last year, a graduate student of Seligman’s named Angela Duckworth published with Seligman a research paper that demonstrated a guiding principle of these charter schools: in many situations, attitude is just as important as ability. Duckworth studied 164 eighth-grade students in Philadelphia, tracking each child’s I.Q. as well as his or her score on a test that measured self-discipline and then correlating those two numbers with the student’s G.P.A. Surprisingly, she found that the self-discipline scores were a more accurate predictor of G.P.A. than the I.Q. scores by a factor of two. Duckworth’s paper connects with a new wave of research being done around the country showing that “noncognitive” abilities like self-control, adaptability, patience and openness — the kinds of qualities that middle-class parents pass on to their children every day, in all kinds of subtle and indirect ways — have a huge and measurable impact on a child’s future success.
Levin considers Duckworth’s work an indication of the practical side of the “character” education he and Toll and Atkins are engaged in: they want their students to be well behaved and hard-working and respectful because it’s a good way to live but also because the evidence is clear that people who act that way get higher marks in school and better jobs after school. To Toll, a solid character is a basic building block of her students’ education. “I think we have to teach work ethic in the same way we have to teach adding fractions with unlike denominators,” she told me. “But once children have got the work ethic and the commitment to others and to education down, it’s actually pretty easy to teach them. ”
The schools that Toll, Atkins, Levin and Feinberg run are not racially integrated. Most of the 70 or so schools that make up their three networks have only one or two white children enrolled, or none at all. Although as charter schools, their admission is open through a lottery to any student in the cities they serve, their clear purpose is to educate poor black and Hispanic children. The guiding principle for the four school leaders, all of whom are white, is an unexpected twist on the “separate but equal” standard: they assert that for these students, an “equal” education is not good enough. Students who enter middle school significantly behind grade level don’t need the same good education that most American middle-class students receive; they need a better education, because they need to catch up. Toll, especially, is preoccupied with the achievement gap: her schools’ stated mission is to close the gap entirely. “The promise in America is that if you work hard, if you make good decisions, that you’ll be able to be successful,” Toll explained to me. “And given the current state of public education in a lot of our communities, that promise is just not true. There’s not a level playing field.” In Toll’s own career, in fact, the goal of achieving equality came first, and the tool of education came later. When she was at Yale Law School, her plan was to become a civil rights lawyer, but she concluded that she could have more of an impact on the nation’s inequities by founding a charter school.
The methods these educators use seem to work: students at their schools consistently score well on statewide standardized tests. At North Star this year, 93 percent of eighth-grade students were proficient in language arts, compared with 83 percent of students in New Jersey as a whole; in math, 77 percent were proficient, compared with 71 percent of students in the state as a whole. At Amistad, proficiency scores for the sixth grade over the last few years range between the mid-30s and mid-40s, only a bit better than the averages for New Haven; by the eighth grade, they are in the 60s, 70s and 80s — in every case exceeding Connecticut’s average (itself one of the highest in the country). At KIPP’s Bronx academy, the sixth, seventh and eighth grades had proficiency rates at least 12 percentage points above the state average on this year’s statewide tests. And when the scores are compared with the scores of the specific high-poverty cities or neighborhoods where the schools are located — in Newark, New Haven or the Bronx — it isn’t even close: 86 percent of eighth-grade students at KIPP Academy scored at grade level in math this year, compared with 16 percent of students in the South Bronx.
The leaders of this informal network are now wrestling with an unintended consequence of their schools’ positive results and high profiles: their incoming students are sometimes too good. At some schools, students arrive scoring better than typical children in their neighborhoods, presumably because the school’s reputation is attracting more-engaged parents with better-prepared kids to its admission lottery. Even though almost every student at the KIPP Academy in the Bronx, for example, is from a low-income family, and all but a few are either black or Hispanic, and most enter below grade level, they are still a step above other kids in the neighborhood; on their math tests in the fourth grade (the year before they arrived at KIPP), KIPP students in the Bronx scored well above the average for the district, and on their fourth-grade reading tests they often scored above the average for the entire city.
At most schools, well-prepared incoming students would be seen as good news. But at these charter schools, they can be a mixed blessing. Although the schools have demonstrated an impressive and consistent ability to turn below-average poor minority students into above-average students, another part of their mission is to show that even the most academically challenged students can succeed using their methods. But if not enough of those students are attending their schools, it’s hard to make that point. North Star’s leaders say this problem doesn’t apply to them: the school’s fifth-grade students come in with scores that are no higher than the Newark average. At KIPP, Levin and other officials I talked to say that their schools do what they can to recruit applicants who are representative of the neighborhoods they serve, but they also say that once a class is chosen (and at all the charter schools, it is chosen by random lottery), their job is to educate those children to the best of their ability. Dacia Toll is more focused on the issue; she says that she and her principals make a special effort to recruit students from particularly blighted neighborhoods and housing projects in New Haven and Brooklyn and told me that it would “absolutely be a cause for concern” if Amistad seemed to be attracting students who were better-prepared than average.
The most persistent critic of KIPP’s record has been Richard Rothstein, a former education columnist for The New York Times who is now a lecturer at Teachers College. He has asserted that KIPP’s model cannot be replicated on a wide scale and argues that the elevated incoming scores at the Bronx school make it mostly irrelevant to the national debate over the achievement gap. Although Rothstein acknowledges that KIPP’s students are chosen by lottery, he contends in his book “Class and Schools” that they are “not typical lower-class students.” The very fact that their parents would bother to enroll them in the lottery sets them apart from other inner-city children, he says, adding that there is “no evidence” that KIPP’s strategy “would be as successful for students whose parents are not motivated to choose such a school.”
In some ways, the debate seems a trivial one — KIPP is clearly doing a great job of educating its students; do the incoming scores at a single school really matter? But in fact, KIPP, along with Uncommon Schools and Achievement First, is now at the center of a heated political debate over just how much schools can accomplish, and that has brought with it a new level of public scrutiny. Beginning in the late 1990s, KIPP, Amistad and North Star were embraced by advocates from the right who believed in the whole menu of conservative positions on education: school choice, vouchers, merit pay for teachers. In 2001, the Heritage Foundation profiled the KIPP schools in a book called “No Excuses: Lessons From 21 High-Performing, High-Poverty Schools,” which set out to disprove “the perennial claims of the education establishment that poor children are uneducable.” Two years later, Abigail and Stephan Thernstrom, the well-known conservative writers about race, borrowed the Heritage Foundation’s title (which was itself borrowed from a slogan popular at KIPP and other schools) for their own book on education, “No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning”; the book used the success of Amistad, North Star and, especially, KIPP to highlight the failings of the public-school system in serving poor children. If KIPP can successfully educate these kids, the Thernstroms asked, why can’t every school?
The Thernstroms argue that if we can just fix the schools where poor children are educated, it will become much easier to solve all the other problems of poverty. The opposing argument, which Rothstein and others have made, is that the problems of poor minority kids are simply too great to be overcome by any school, no matter how effective. He points to the work of Hart and Risley and Lareau and argues that the achievement gap can be significantly diminished only by correcting, or at least addressing, the deep inequities that divide the races and the classes.
Levin and Toll sometimes seem surprised by the political company they are now keeping — and by the opponents they have attracted. “I’m a total liberal!” Toll said, a little defensively, when I asked her recently about this political divide. Many charter advocates claim that the views of Democratic politicians on charter schools are clouded by the fact that they depend for both money and votes on the nation’s teachers’ unions, which are skeptical of charter schools and in some states have taken steps to block them from expanding. In Connecticut, the state teachers’ union this year lobbied against a legislative change to allow for the expansion of Amistad Academy (it later passed), and the union’s lawyers filed a Freedom of Information Act request that required Amistad to turn over all of its employment and pay records. The union’s chief lobbyist told reporters in April that the state’s charter law was intended only “to create incubators of innovation. It was never to create a charter-school system.” Amistad was acceptable as a small experiment, in other words, but there was no reason to let it grow.
Even if schools like KIPP are allowed to expand to meet the demand in the educational marketplace — all of them have long waiting lists — it is hard to imagine that, alone, they will be able to make much of a dent in the problem of the achievement gap; there are, after all, millions of poor and minority public-school students who aren’t getting the education they need either at home or in the classroom. What these charter schools demonstrate, though, is the effort that would be required to provide those students with that education.
Toll put it this way: “We want to change the conversation from ‘You can’t educate these kids’ to ‘You can only educate these kids if. ...’ ” And to a great extent, she and the other principals have done so. The message inherent in the success of their schools is that if poor students are going to catch up, they will require not the same education that middle-class children receive but one that is considerably better; they need more time in class than middle-class students, better-trained teachers and a curriculum that prepares them psychologically and emotionally, as well as intellectually, for the challenges ahead of them.
Right now, of course, they are not getting more than middle-class students; they are getting less. For instance, nationwide, the best and most experienced teachers are allowed to choose where they teach. And since most state contracts offer teachers no bonus or incentive for teaching in a school with a high population of needy children, the best teachers tend to go where they are needed the least. A study that the Education Trust issued in June used data from Illinois to demonstrate the point. Illinois measures the quality of its teachers and divides their scores into four quartiles, and those numbers show glaring racial inequities. In majority-white schools, bad teachers are rare: just 11 percent of the teachers are in the lowest quartile. But in schools with practically no white students, 88 percent of the teachers are in the worst quartile. The same disturbing pattern holds true in terms of poverty. At schools where more than 90 percent of the students are poor — where excellent teachers are needed the most — just 1 percent of teachers are in the highest quartile.
Government spending on education does not tend to compensate for these inequities; in fact, it often makes them worse. Goodwin Liu, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, has compiled persuasive evidence for what he calls the country’s “education apartheid.” In states with more poor children, spending per pupil is lower. In Mississippi, for instance, it is $5,391 a year; in Connecticut, it is $9,588. Most education financing comes from state and local governments, but the federal supplement for poor children, Title 1, is “regressive,” Liu points out, because it is tied to the amount each state spends. So the federal government gives Arkansas $964 to help educate each poor child in the state, and it gives Massachusetts $2,048 for each poor child there.
Without making a much more serious commitment to the education of poor and minority students, it is hard to see how the federal government will be able to deliver on the promise contained in No Child Left Behind. The law made states responsible for turning their poorest children into accomplished scholars in a little more than a decade — a national undertaking on the order of a moon landing — but provided them with little assistance or even direction as to how they might accomplish that goal. And recently, many advocates have begun to argue that the Education Department has quietly given up on No Child Left Behind.
The most malignant element of the original law was that it required all states to achieve proficiency but then allowed each state to define proficiency for itself. It took state governments a couple of years to realize just what that meant, but now they have caught on — and many of them are engaged in an ignoble competition to see which state can demand the least of its students. At the head of this pack right now is Mississippi, which has declared 89 percent of its fourth-grade students to be proficient readers, the highest percentage in the nation, while in fact, the National Assessment of Educational Progress shows that only 18 percent of Mississippi fourth graders know how to read at an appropriate level — the second-lowest score of any state. In the past year, Arizona, Maryland, Ohio, North Dakota and Idaho all followed Mississippi’s lead and slashed their standards in order to allow themselves to label uneducated students educated. The federal government has permitted these maneuvers, and after several years of tough talk about enforcing the law’s standards, the Education Department has in the past year begun cutting one deal after another with states that want to redefine “success” for their schools. (When I spoke to Spellings this month, she said she would “appeal to the better angels of governors and state policy makers” to keep their standards in line with national benchmarks.)
The absence of any robust federal effort to improve high-poverty schools undercuts and distorts the debate over the responsibility for their problems. It is true, as the Thernstroms write in their book, that “dysfunctional families and poverty are no excuse for widespread, chronic educational failure.” But while those factors are not an excuse, they’re certainly an explanation; as researchers like Lareau and Brooks-Gunn have made clear, poverty and dysfunction are enormous disadvantages for any child to overcome. When Levin and Feinberg began using the slogan “No Excuses” in the mid-1990s, they intended it to motivate their students and teachers, to remind them that within the context of a KIPP school, there would always be a way to achieve success. But when the conservative education movement adopted “No Excuses” as a slogan, the phrase was used much more broadly: if that rural Arkansas public school isn’t achieving the success of a KIPP school, those responsible for its underachievement must simply be making excuses. The slogan came to suggest that what is going wrong in the schools is simply some sort of failure of will — that teachers don’t want to work hard, or don’t believe in their students, or are succumbing to what the president calls “the soft bigotry of low expectations” — while the reality is that even the best, most motivated educator, given just six hours a day and 10 months a year and nothing more than the typical resources provided to a public-school teacher, would find it near impossible to educate an average classroom of poor minority students up to the level of their middle-class peers.
The evidence is now overwhelming that if you take an average low-income child and put him into an average American public school, he will almost certainly come out poorly educated. What the small but growing number of successful schools demonstrate is that the public-school system accomplishes that result because we have built it that way. We could also decide to create a different system, one that educates most (if not all) poor minority students to high levels of achievement. It is not yet entirely clear what that system might look like — it might include not only KIPP-like structures and practices but also high-quality early-childhood education, as well as incentives to bring the best teachers to the worst schools — but what is clear is that it is within reach.
Although the failure of No Child Left Behind now seems more likely than not, it is not too late for it to succeed. We know now, in a way that we did not when the law was passed, what it would take to make it work. And if the law does, in the end, fail — if in 2014 only 20 or 30 or 40 percent of the country’s poor and minority students are proficient, then we will need to accept that its failure was not an accident and was not inevitable, but was the outcome we chose.
Paul Tough is an editor at the magazine. He is writing a book about the Harlem Children’s Zone, a community organization

2006-11-15T15:00:00.000-05:00

Democratic Control - It is amazing to me, as I talk to Democrats around the country. All are excited about the new era of Democratic control For some reason, the former years of Democratic control have strangely been erased from the minds of millions of voters. Many anticipate reversal's of all Republican policies of the past twelve years in a nano second. When the new Congress takes office in 2007. The DOW will be high. Homelessness will be wiped out from the planet. Our dollar will be strong against all other currencies. The world will be at peace and the Democrats will make things RIGHT again. Well, we all hope for a better world and a better place for our families and ourselves. I hope the Democrats do a good job and not allow the scandals, bribery, and immoral behavior to haunt their reign of power as the Republicans. Many in the Republican party blame G W Bush for our ouster. However, I believe that the party of Lincoln will find its voice again.

2006-11-11T10:58:00.000-05:00

Michael, Please, Michael, Please - TAKE OVER THE RNC First of all for full disclosure. Michael Steel is someone I admire and support. I am hopefull that he takes the job at the RNC. Michael! Please take the job! For many moderate African American republicans he is our sign that our party is not full of a bunch of crazy black republicans. Many of us are caring, decent people trying to find a way to appeal to African Americans and to promote the idea of a two party system to persons of color around the country. I think it would be a great idea -- and good for the party. So Michael ---please take the job! See below Michael Steele for Republican National Chairman?
Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael Steele (R), who came up just short yesterday in his Senate race against Rep. Ben Cardin (D), is mulling a bid for the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee, according to an informed GOP source.
Steele would not challenge current RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman, but chatter among Republican insiders is that Mehlman has made clear for months that he might not return to his current post.
"Chairman Mehlman will be making an announcement regarding his future at the RNC in the coming weeks," said RNC communication director Brian Jones.
Mehlman has made outreach to the African American community a priority during his time as head of the party, and Steele would be seen as a logical successor to that effort.

2006-09-24T12:54:00.000-05:00

I wanted to share this great article. It speaks volumes as to the state of the party. Myself and fellow Republicans are facing harsh criticism as the country becomes more and more angry with George W. Bush and the party. I have always treasured Ken Mehlmann and his aggressive move toward minorities and especially African Americans. I will support him and his efforts. Let me know your thoughts on this NY Times magazine article.

September 24, 2006
Lost Horizons
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
It should have been an easy morning for Ken Mehlman, chairman of the Republican National Committee. He had settled in for a radio interview with a friendly questioner, Frank Beckmann, broadcasting live on WJR from the first floor of the Renaissance Center, home to General Motors in Detroit. As the traffic report hummed over the studio monitors, Mehlman and Beckmann bantered about the liberal media and the war on terrorism and all the problems with the Democrats. But something changed when the microphone went live. Beckmann did not turn hostile, but he was nothing like the cheerleader-interviewer Mehlman tends to find on the other side of the table. Why has Bush been so slow to make a case — “He waited too long, didn’t he?” — for Iraq? Was Bush’s unpopularity dragging Republicans down in places like Michigan, one of the few states where Republicans actually had a chance to topple a Democratic governor and senator? And why was Bush, sounding just like a Democrat, pressing an immigration plan that could help illegal immigrants become citizens? “Why should anybody support what the president puts out there on this, Ken?” Beckmann asked.
It is hard to fathom how much Mehlman’s life has changed since he took the chairman’s desk at the Republican National Committee headquarters on Capitol Hill in January 2005, the reward for managing, together with Karl Rove at the White House, what was widely praised as one of the most sophisticated and groundbreaking presidential campaigns in a generation. “It was an election where they knew more than we did,” Joe Lockhart, a senior strategist for John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate, told me. For the next year, Chairman Mehlman talked big and thought big about the Republican Party: about how he and his allies could fundamentally redraw the political architecture of America, change the way Americans conceptualize the two parties and establish Republicans as the dominant party in America long after George Bush returned to Texas. That meant putting a lock on the White House and Congress, and it meant winning statehouses and governorships, which draw the redistricting maps that are the cement of long-term political realignments. This was nothing short of a campaign to marginalize the Democratic Party and everything that Mehlman, reflecting Bush and Rove, said it stood for: big government, high taxes, liberal judges, a timorous foreign policy.
In meticulous detail and with a cool mastery of his subject, he preached about the revolution in marketing and data technologies and the new world of advertising and communications that had transformed politics since he first arrived at the George Bush for President campaign in Austin seven years earlier. It is a political paradigm that Republicans — particularly Rove, Mehlman and the Bush campaign’s senior strategist, Matthew Dowd — grasped before Democrats did, and nearly as much as anything else, it accounted for Republican successes in 2002 and 2004. After he was named chairman, Mehlman began filling his days with appearances before African-American audiences across the country, where he apologized for past Republican slights to black Americans, portrayed Republicans as the “party of Lincoln” and pledged to challenge Democrats for black, as well as Hispanic, support. Quixotic? Perhaps. But it reflected just how bullish the second-term Bush Republican Party, with its eye to history and legacy and lasting power, had become.
There was time for such indulgences in the days before a hurricane roared through New Orleans and the country turned against the war Bush had launched in Iraq. These days, of course, talk of a Republican realignment has given way to talk of simple survival this November. Now the lofty ideals and bold ambitions of Mehlman and Rove often seem in direct conflict with the short-term survival instincts of Republicans who want nothing more than to get past the next election. House Republicans sabotaged Bush’s immigration plan, ignoring Mehlman’s warnings about the damage that an enforcement-only immigration bill could do to the party’s long-term growth among Hispanic voters, a critical part of the party realignment that the White House had envisioned. He spent much of July trying to manage the fallout among black leaders after House conservatives delayed a routine extension of the Voting Rights Act. Earlier this year, at the American Jewish Committee’s 100th annual meeting, Mehlman, the second Jewish chairman in the history of the Republican National Committee, heard scattered boos as he defended the Iraq war to a room fearful that the White House’s Iraq policy had empowered Iran, whose new president had expressed a desire to destroy Israel. It was dispiriting for Mehlman, especially since Jewish voters are another group that Republicans are trying to peel off the Democratic base.
Mehlman finds himself this fall atop a Republican Party as divided as at any time since George W. Bush came to Washington. He is confronted, day after day, with Republican candidates who criticize the president and his policies or who execute a high-profile skedaddle when Bush comes to town — both of which Mehlman reacts to with a peculiar combination of empathy and disapproval. “My goal for them is to win elections,” he said last month, sitting in a wing chair in his office, under a photo that showed him and Rove talking as they walked out of the West Wing behind Bush. “But if you don’t want this election to be a referendum on Bush, don’t make it a referendum on Bush. If they run against Bush — rather than running as an independent Republican — it can’t help them; it can only hurt them.”
While Mehlman blames Iraq for most of the administration’s problems — a conflict that he argues was noble and one that, he says, will in the end make the world safer — he acknowledges the damage his party suffered because of Katrina. Mehlman is renowned in Washington for his organizational skills, for assembling lean and efficient operations filled with loyal and largely happy people who rarely make mistakes, so it is understandably vexing for him that many Americans have come to see the administration as managerially incompetent and politically inept. Late this past spring, Mehlman began warning Republicans that the party could lose the House, something that seemed unthinkable a year earlier. Over dinner this summer, he told me he was fairly certain that Republicans would hold on in November, yet the bouncy confidence he once displayed seemed gone. When asked if he worried that Republican voters, demoralized by this tough year for the Bush White House, would stay home in November, Mehlman responded with a one-word answer — “Yes” — that was striking to anyone who has spent time with this always-on-message chairman.
Mehlman still travels tirelessly on behalf of his party (270,000 miles to 43 states and Puerto Rico since becoming chairman) and is still raising money at a breakneck pace ($184 million from the beginning of 2005 through the end of August). He is still fast to the draw in an argument on any subject, no matter how technical or arcane, and never without a defense for an administration that certainly seems to need one these days. “The president is dealing with big and hard things,” Mehlman patiently told a Republican volunteer in a Detroit suburb who could not understand why Bill Clinton — Bill Clinton! — was more popular than George Bush. But there are dark bags under Mehlman’s eyes now, and the wear of this past year was etched on his face when he turned 40 in August. A man who never seemed to take pleasure in the kind of sledgehammer attack that Rove so clearly savors — who seemed much happier talking about the legacy of Ronald Reagan or microtargeting as a tool for turning out voters — could be heard in recent weeks issuing searing partisan attacks, reverting to the familiar stance of a party leader who does not like what he sees on the horizon.
“I’m not flipping out,” he told me recently, looking straight ahead. “There are absolutely days when you are — you know — when this is very challenging. Absolutely.”
Ken Mehlman jumped into the front seat of the S.U.V. squiring him through a three-day rush of fund-raisers and pep talks to Republican activists, his spirits lifted on this wet June day by what he had just seen in a squat and messy sprawl of an office in the battleground suburbs of Detroit. It was the Macomb County “victory center,” a jumble of tables and folding chairs and boxes of cold pizza where dozens of volunteers clutched Republican Party-issued cellphones against their ears — the days of banks of telephones plugged into a wall are over — and read from scripts. At the end of each interview, they blackened a circle on a bubble sheet (think No. 2 pencils and the SAT test), signifying whether this was a voter the party would circle back to — once, twice or more — to make certain he or she would be at the polls on Nov. 7. It was still nearly five months before Election Day, but the 72-hour plan, the Republicans’ voter-turnout program that ambushed the Democrats in 2002 and 2004, was already humming along. Mehlman was delighted as he watched what he said was his party’s latest technological adaptation. The bubble sheets could be scanned by a computer, he said proudly, saving time and money as the results are incorporated into the Republicans’ formidable database. “It is a relatively nice day at the end of June, and in the building we just left, they just made 10,000 ID calls,” Mehlman said. “That is really good for the party.”
If there is a defining characteristic to Mehlman and his tenure as Republican national chairman, it is his fascination with the communications and technological revolution that is sweeping American politics. This has produced once-unimaginable new ways to track down potential voters, by predicting voting habits based on where Americans live and the cars they drive and the magazines they read, and delivering tailored messages to different segments of an overly saturated electorate. Mehlman’s chairmanship has become an argument for the notion that the garrulous and instinctual political boss may be all but obsolete in this age of supersophisticated polling, data mining, niche marketing and microtargeting. In an arena that seems to value instinct, bravado, gall and undisciplined excess, Mehlman is empirical and deliberative. Why should a campaign manager direct resources based on a hunch when there is consumer data that can flush out Republicans living deep in Democratic enclaves? Why guess when you can measure what words will be most persuasive to the middle-class exurbanite voter marching on the StairMaster (watching, no doubt, the Republican ad that the Bush campaign placed on the closed-circuit gym channel after realizing that its voters were no longer at home watching the network news)?
When Mehlman talks about politics, he doesn’t talk about Machiavelli; he talks about “Moneyball,” Michael Lewis’s book about how the Oakland A’s employed statistical modeling to assemble a powerhouse baseball team, sending to pasture the old-line scouts with their years of calling it from their guts. “We are the party of ‘Moneyball!”’ Mehlman proclaimed, practically shouting and bouncing on the balls of his feet, talking to a room of slightly bewildered Republicans in California last year. “They measured everything. We are doing the same thing in politics.”
Mehlman, the son of a certified public account, seems as happy talking about the latest employee-relations techniques as he is talking about the inspiration he said he found watching Reagan stand up to the Soviet Union. “Gut alone is crazy,” Mehlman told me. “Why do gut when you can go with objective information? Hope is not a strategy. And gut instincts are always less effective than objective analysis.” Mehlman’s endless talk of metrics and management techniques is viewed as a quirky if fundamental part of his chemistry. His White House colleagues and friends poke fun at his obsession with order and measurement, at his daily spreadsheet of to-do lists. “He’s anal-retentive, man!” Karl Rove says.
Back when Mehlman took the job of party chairman, Republican command of the technologies of winning elections seemed the icing on the cake. Now it seems more like the cake itself. If there is one defining question in this campaign, it is whether the two big Republican Party weapons in this age of Bush — voter turnout and national security in the post-9/11 era — can be wheeled out again to overcome a political environment that has curdled for the Republican Party. As in 2002 and 2004, the White House has been hitting Democrats on national security and terror in a choreographed way, with a rollout that began, predictably, around Labor Day. But Democrats are pushing back this time, arguing that Bush’s policies have if anything made the world a less safe place, an argument reinforced by the continued images of turmoil from Iraq. Polls show that the Republican advantage on the issue is not what it once was, and even some Republicans worry about how many times the White House can credibly go back to this same well.
By contrast, the intricate political machine that Mehlman has built to identify and turn out Republicans is growing, and if the election in November is close, it could provide the Republican Party with the fire wall it needs. Democrats have, if belatedly, learned lessons from what the Republican Party has done and are adopting many of the same techniques. Still, no one thinks the Democrats have caught up on get-out-the-vote, or even can catch up before Election Day. Harold Ickes, a long-term national Democratic leader and one of the smartest strategists in either party, didn’t hesitate when asked if he thought the Republican Party had lapped the Democrats in the area of targeting and turnout. “Yes — there’s no question about it,” he said. Ickes’s response was revealing because he has embarked on a private effort to build a national database of registered voters, an implicit rebuke of the slower pace of Howard Dean, the Democratic Party leader, in this area. And Ickes was warm in his appraisal of Mehlman. “The general view is, he’s very good,” Ickes said. “They have good systems and he’s a good system person.”
Mehlman has for this election taken what the Republican Party assembled in Ohio in 2004 — a database of every voting-age resident that includes voting history, party registration, demographic data and consumer history — and expanded it, he said, to include every voting-age American in the country. “In Ohio, in ’04, we got the tip of the iceberg,” Mehlman said. “What we did over the last two years is we got the entire iceberg.” With that kind of data, Republican campaign workers in every state in the country can identify potential Republicans who may never have voted before and bring them to the polls. To help neighborhood organizers plot their door-to-door visits — and to make what might be a dreary exercise at least interesting — the Republican Party uses satellite pictures from Google Earth to chart the routes for house-to-house canvassing.
There have been two early tests of this machine already in this election cycle, and both were encouraging for Mehlman. The most recent was in Rhode Island earlier this month, where Republicans dispatched 72-hour teams to help Senator Lincoln Chafee beat back what had seemed to be a very threatening conservative challenge by Steve Laffey, the mayor of Cranston. (Mehlman and other top Republicans concluded that they had no chance of keeping the seat in this Democratic state if Laffey won.) Turnout shattered the Republican primary record for the state, set in 1994: 62,099 people voted, a 38 percent increase. Republicans said their 86 get-out-the-vote volunteers made 198,921 contacts with prospective voters in the final 11 days of the campaign. As Chafee declared victory, Democrats could not help taking note of these numbers. And earlier, on June 6 in California’s 50th Congressional District, in San Diego, in a special election to replace Duke Cunningham, the Republican congressman from San Diego who quit in scandal, the Republican Party put the full press of a 72-hour plan to work. The Republican, Brian Bilbray, squeaked out a victory with 49 percent of the vote over the Democrat, Francine Busby. That was a race, Mehlman said, in which turnout was able to overcome a very challenging environment.
Still, this is a district where Republicans should not be crowing about a 49 percent victory. For one thing, it has a substantial Republican edge; Cunningham beat Busby 58 percent to 36 percent in 2004. Bilbray campaigned for tough immigration controls in this district snug on the Mexican border, and Busby threw him a lifeline in the final weekend of the campaign when she appeared to be encouraging illegal aliens to vote for her. The 72-hour plan helped pull the Republicans through that Tuesday. But will it be able to manage such extensive operations nationwide if, say, 50 districts are really in contention come Election Day? And what if the White House’s campaign-season drumbeat on terrorism doesn’t work this time? As Mehlman himself says, turnout operations help — but only so much. “Historically, turnout matters at the margin,” he said. “If you are losing an election because of an issue or the environment or the candidate, you are not going to win it on turnout.”
"Just left the Urban League,” Mehlman wrote in a BlackBerry message to Donna Brazile, reporting on his attendance at a reception with black leaders. “Got nice acknowledgment and applause.” This was in the spring of last year. Back then, Mehlman kept up a regular e-mail correspondence with Brazile, a prominent African-American Democratic leader who was, in 2000, the manager of Al Gore’s presidential campaign. (She later shared the e-mail messages with me.) Mehlman made a habit of letting Brazile know about each of his appearances before black audiences, where he invariably described Republicans as “the party of Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.” He told her of his efforts to recruit black candidates for statewide offices around the country, a roster that today includes candidates for governor in Ohio and Pennsylvania and for Senate in Maryland (in the person of Michael Steele, whom Mehlman warmly describes as a “good friend”). “Am always going to try to bring candidate or local elected official with me to African-American newspaper ed boards so they build relationships that will go beyond my leadership,” Mehlman wrote Brazile in another e-mail message. Mehlman gave a speech to the N.A.A.C.P. saying that some Republicans had been “trying to benefit politically from racial polarization” and that “we were wrong.” Brazile was impressed. She told me at the time that she was accustomed to Republicans making high-flying but short-lived appeals to blacks but said she thought that Mehlman seemed to be on a different kind of mission.
A year later, a small group of Washington reporters attended a luncheon in a private dining room at Charlie Palmer, a glistening modern steakhouse within walking distance of the Capitol. In attendance was a Republican running for the United States Senate. The rules of the lunch stipulated that the candidate could be quoted but identified only as a Republican candidate for Senate. The “Republican candidate for Senate” spent a good part of the lunch offering harsh criticism of the White House; indeed, at times he sounded like a Democrat. Dana Milbank, a Washington Post columnist who was there, wrote it all up — precisely following the rules of the lunch, identifying the speaker only as a Republican Senate candidate — to devastating effect. Mehlman was highly distressed upon reading the Post article, one associate said, and flabbergasted after learning that the candidate was his friend Michael Steele. This was four days after Bush finally spoke before the N.A.A.C.P., after refusing its invitations for the first five years of his presidency. (His aides had cited harsh attacks on him by the organization’s leaders.) Bush went, in part, in response to pleadings by Mehlman, and he went a few weeks after the Voting Rights Act was tabled in the House by conservatives. The reception Bush got was tepid.
Democrats like Brazile no longer view this Republican appeal for African-Americans with much concern, or even interest, and she did not need the platform of a not-for-attribution lunch with reporters to make that view known. Mehlman, Brazile said, was on a roll in 2005. “But Katrina washed away any illusions that Republicans had something to offer African-Americans,” she told me. “I know he’s out there every day. I just don’t know if his sales pitch has any potency at the moment.”
The problems that Mehlman has encountered in his effort to make the Republican Party the party of Lincoln suggest a recurring frustration of his chairmanship. Mehlman argues that the “opportunity” initiatives that Bush has put forward, albeit with limited legislative success — giving Americans more control over their health-care insurance, setting up private accounts for retirement, school choice — are the core of the Republican appeal for black support. Mehlman wants Republicans to compete with Democrats for black votes not on so-called racial issues, like affirmative action, but on basic issues of economics and the role of government. He talks about the high-level black appointments Bush has made to his cabinet. He points to the three black statewide Republican candidates running under his watch. He suggests that Democrats have taken the black vote for granted all these years. Less obviously, the White House push on such issues as a ban on gay marriage is aimed in part at socially conservative blacks.
But is that enough?
Bruce S. Gordon, president of the N.A.A.C.P., says that Mehlman called him after the Voting Rights Act faltered. “He didn’t seem too satisfied with the behavior of some members of his party,” Gordon told me, recounting their conversation. “He said he doesn’t have much control over them. But he’s the chairperson of the Republican Party: he’s got some clout.” And it’s not just the Voting Rights Act. Or Katrina. The war in Iraq is also highly unpopular among blacks. So are the cuts in social programs; and the nomination of judges who oppose affirmative action; and the problems with financing No Child Left Behind, the education-reform bill that Mehlman often cites as the kind of measure African-American parents should embrace.
There is certainly a degree of calculation to Mehlman’s outreach campaign: it is designed, at least in part, to make the party more appealing to moderate white voters who might be scared off from supporting a party identified with racial intolerance. As demonstrated in Ohio in 2004, it takes only a few percentage points to affect the outcome of an election: with such a polarized electorate, small shifts can produce large gains. But the political calculations go only so far in trying to account for Mehlman’s dedication — “his maniacal focus,” as Brazile put it, admiringly — to attract African-American votes.
The black leaders and elected officials I spoke with said they had no doubt about the sincerity of Mehlman’s motivations — that he really was uncomfortable heading a party that is so white and is considered with suspicion by so many black Americans. “I think Ken is sincere in wanting to see greater diversity in the Republican Party, in the same way that George Bush wants to see greater diversity in the Republican Party and in his cabinet,” says Senator Barack Obama, the Illinois Democrat, who attended Harvard Law School with Mehlman. “But what they are not willing to do is fundamentally change a set of priorities, or reorient their party, in a way that is actually going to help the African-American community get ahead.”
J.C. Watts, a Republican former congressman from Oklahoma, who has been critical of the White House in its handling of racial issues, says that Mehlman’s efforts as chairman “are probably unprecedented in the time I’ve been a Republican. This is his passion; I think it’s in his DNA to do what he is doing.”
Mehlman was raised in a Jewish family in Baltimore, his mother a Democrat who voted for Jerry Brown (yes, that Jerry Brown) for president. Mehlman counts the civil rights movement as one of the seminal political events in American history and lists two Democrats (and no Bushes) among his three most influential presidents of the past century: Reagan, F.D.R. and Johnson. “What he did on civil rights makes him one of the great presidents of the 20th century,” Mehlman says of Johnson. Mehlman, according to his office, has appeared before 50 black audiences since becoming party leader. When members of the Republican National Committee gathered in Pittsburgh in August 2005 for their annual summer meeting, the banner across the stage read: “Give us a chance, We’ll give you a choice — Strengthening Lincoln’s legacy.”
Three weeks later, Katrina ripped through New Orleans. Mehlman was on the Greek island of Mykonos that week, attending the wedding of Nicolle Devenish, who was then the White House communications director, and Mark Wallace, a deputy director of Bush’s 2004 campaign. Mehlman said he followed what was happening, a little helplessly, from his hotel in Greece. “I certainly recognized watching CNN that it was not good,” he said. “And it required a large infusion of ouzo. Which I had every night. My answer to Hurricane Katrina was Hurricane Ouzo.”
When Bush ran for re-election in 2004, he drew 11 percent of the African-American vote. That counted as progress; in 2000, Bush drew the support of 8 percent of the black electorate. But in a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted last month, just 6 percent of black respondents said they approved of the job the president was doing. And in a separate New York Times/CBS News poll in July, only 9 percent of blacks said they had a favorable opinion of the Republican Party, a year and a half into Mehlman’s outreach campaign.
Earlier this month, Mehlman and I had dinner at a restaurant he goes to frequently — Georgia Brown’s, a spot not far from the White House that has a large African-American clientele. Mehlman was upset with an article of mine The Times published that described his effort with black voters as faltering, and as he dived into a salad with knife and fork, he argued vigorously that it was wrong to use public-opinion polling as the measure of progress for what he had always said would be a long climb. “If you had told me in the beginning of 2005 that 100 days before the election we would have African-Americans all in striking distance for governor of Ohio, governor of Pennsylvania and senator in Maryland, I would have told you that is incredible,” he said.
Ken Mehlman and Karl Rove started every day of the 2004 presidential campaign with a 7 a.m. telephone call, during which they discussed what happened over the past 24 hours and what they wanted to happen over the next 24. It would be the first of what would be — by the account of both men — dozens of daily telephone calls and e-mail messages between the two, going into the night, over the course of nearly two years. Mehlman, who was the White House political director for the first two years of the Bush administration, was officially the campaign manager, and Rove was Bush’s chief White House adviser, but Mehlman was the subordinate in this relationship. “Karl was far and away the senior leader,” says Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, talking about the campaign. Bush famously called Rove the “architect” of his victory. Mehlman lifted an eyebrow when I asked him about that. “I don’t know — I think a bunch of us were architects,” he told me.
The relationship between Mehlman and Rove — two men of similar fascinations, skills and ideologies — has long been at once cooperative and competitive; Mehlman’s friends voice private frustration at just how much credit Rove drew for the campaign of 2004, though Mehlman is far too disciplined and corporate to concede any such resentment. But Rove’s star has dimmed because of the troubles of the second-term Bush White House and his own legal battles, and heading into the fall the two men appear to be equals in calling the shots on this midterm campaign. And it is Mehlman who is out front — along with the White House’s political director, Sara Taylor — immersed in dealing with candidates, contributors and consultants, riding campaign managers, overseeing the latest voter-turnout innovation, determining where money and resources will be spent. Mehlman is the public face of this campaign, giving speeches at events, appearing on television, talking to reporters; Rove has largely kept out of public view. And it is Mehlman, rather than Rove, who seems positioned to take much of the blame if November delivers the first big defeat of the Bush political machine since it took the White House six years ago.
Mehlman’s friends say they doubt that he will seek another term as party chairman at the end of the year, no matter the outcome of the election, and that he is interested in entering the private sector, perhaps as a consultant. If anything, this has made him even more intent on maintaining Republican control of Congress; he does not want to be identified with a Republican loss. Still, there is a good argument to be made that the problems darkening the Republican Party this fall have much more to do with what has happened in the building where Rove works than with what has taken place at the headquarters of the Republican National Committee. A Democratic victory in November would add another paragraph to the rather glum second term of the Bush presidency. But it may not say much about the new Republican Party. The G.O.P. under Mehlman has changed the way elections are run and won in this country. That is what Mehlman understood when he told Republican workers in the victory center in Michigan to soldier on, ignore the bad news, flip open their cellphones and call another Republican voter.
Adam Nagourney is the national political correspondent for The Times.

2006-09-08T10:18:00.000-05:00

The new face of the black republican woman. I am encouraged and excited to learn some amazing news about moderate real black women. Apparently, the media has finally awaken to find out that not every republican is an uncle Tom sell out! Black Republican women are strong, capable, caring, and real people. We live in neighborhoods. We support causes. We are as loyal to our people as any other person. Yet, we are demeaned and railed as "sell outs". Folks are very surpised to find out that I am republican. They always assume I am a Democrat. I live in the "hood' and am active in neighborhood organizations. I have friends of all stripes and colors. Yet, it never ceases to amaze me -- how surprised they are to find out I am a republican. Since it is an election year here in Washington, DC. Here is why I am so excited. The media especially the black media is finally starting to ask the opinion of black republican women. Please ask us for our opinion. Lets us share our thoughts and join in the dialogue.

2006-08-21T11:28:00.000-05:00

Spike Lee Documentary Tonight - All I am excited about Spike Lee's new documentary tonight. More so than Fantasia Barrino's documentary on Saturday night on Lifetime. I like the singer and all, but she is not the best actress. Below is the Washington Post's review of tonight's documentary. Breach of FaithSpike Lee Channels a Storm Surge Of Anger in 'When the Levees Broke'
By Lynne DukeWashington Post Staff WriterMonday, August 21, 2006; C01
It is the anger that cuts deepest -- a righteous, laser-focused anger born of betrayal, laced with sadness, a rumbling anger that pumps like blood through the veins of Spike Lee's masterly Katrina documentary, "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts."
Many Hurricane Katrina survivors are angry people, as well they should be, like Cheryl Livaudais, one of the many voices that narrate Lee's epic film, which airs in two parts tonight and tomorrow on HBO.
Beer in hand, Livaudais stands next to her tent on the concrete slab of what used to be her home in St. Bernard Parish and sarcastically muses that she might have to perform a sex act to finally get the FEMA trailer she's been awaiting so long.
And there's Phyllis Montana LeBlanc, a displaced New Orleanian filled with outrage at Barbara Bush's comment during the Katrina evacuations that "so many of the people in the arenas were underprivileged anyway, this is working very well for them." Montana stares straight into Lee's camera and bitterly challenges the former first lady:
"My phone number is 504-919-8699. Tell her to call me and say that [expletive]. Who's better off? Why? How?"
Even when Lee's subjects are calm and composed, their words cut to the bone. It hurts to listen when Herbert Freeman Jr. describes leaving his dead mother behind at the Convention Center. And most of us know her, or at least know of her, for hers was the body in the wheelchair, covered with the blanket her son had laid over her, along with the note he wrote with her name, his name and his cellphone number.
Four days after her death, the evacuation began. The National Guard prodded the evacuees aboard buses, even a man whose mother was lying dead a short distance away.
"I wanted to go and be with her," says Freeman, his voice a monotone. "The National Guard told me I had to get on the bus. And they all had AK-47s. He told me he was doing his job. I said, 'Let me just go back there just to see her before I leave.' He said, 'No, you're not going to do anything. You're just going to get on this bus.' So I had to make a decision. . . . So I prayed to myself and the voice within me told me just to get on the bus, don't do anything, just stand still and watch my salvation." His mother was left behind.
Along with visuals that capture all aspects of the disaster, these bitter, wounded, poignant, thoughtful, expert and often foul-mouthed voices are knitted together in a tightly edited film that manages to sustain four hours without a central narrator.
Yes, it is long. Lee has a penchant for overlong films, and small cuts in his "Requiem" would not have been a bad thing. There are too many lingering shots of decomposed bodies. He is also a filmmaker that many love to hate or debate, a filmmaker with the kind of audacity, idiosyncrasy and racial sensibility that some find overwrought.
And yet those qualities make Lee that rare director who could absorb the Katrina disaster in all its human, racial and political dimensions and make it his solemn mission to create the authoritative historical documentary. It is a lament for the dead. It is a salve for the wounded of body and soul. It is scored sparely at times, with violins just shy of the maudlin. At other times, we feel that melancholic tug, as when Louis Armstrong sings, "Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?"
Lee's "Requiem" shows much of what many viewers will already be familiar with from the TV news coverage as the crisis unfolded.
The documentary deploys that familiarity, along with the interviews, as relentlessly as a prosecutor in a court of law. Lee is clearly out to make an overwhelming case about government ineptitude, carelessness and racism, but the film is polemical in essence without being heavy-handed.
The usual suspects are allowed to simply hang themselves. And so we hear from President Bush, Michael "You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie!" Brown, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and Col. Lewis Setliff of the Army Corps of Engineers. And talking heads have their say, ranging from historian Douglas Brinkley to activist Al Sharpton and a few journalists.
But ordinary people carry the narrative as Lee re-creates the earliest moments of the crisis. It is chilling to hear one of the survivors describe the arrival of the water on the New Orleans streets:
"I walked over to the sewer drain, storm drains, on the side of the street and I could hear this low rumbling gurgle coming at me. It sounded like just bubbling boil and it just spit out all over, spit out all over my shoes. Then I started hearing clang, clang, clang down the street, and it was the manhole covers popping off and the water was just blowing out the manhole covers and it was coming out of the storm drains and it was filling up. You could see it coming down the streets."
And so it was that hundreds of thousands of folks were left wading through filthy, chest-high water, left to fend for themselves and left, ultimately, destitute during months that have yet to end.
Katrina: The word conjures horrors. It conjures a collective psychic wound for many Americans, especially black Americans and, of course, most especially for the victims.
You think you know how deep it hurt, and then Gina Montanna takes it to another level, all the way down to that place in the soul where cultural memories are stored.
She's talking about the Katrina diaspora, with relatives separated, cast from city to city, state to state, from Utah to Florida. She's talking about 2005. But she's also talking about the distant past, about the ancestors, the slaves.
"With the evacuation scattering my family all over the United States," Montanna says quietly, "I felt like it was an ancient memory, as if we had been up on the auction block."
Families torn apart, still torn by pain.
Even the brief interlude in which victims tell of the sound of explosions they heard during the flooding, which gave rise to speculation that the levees were actually blown up -- even that moment is a measure of how deep the hurt runs, informed as it is by history. After all, back in the flood of 1927, levees were exploded to divert water from the city.
The list of indignities is long. The levees were poorly constructed. When they broke, there was no rescue, not even air drops of food and water as in the Asian tsunami, when foreigners got help from the United States within a day. Evacuees were dumped in new cities with few resources and no clear path of return to their homes. Returnees sometimes stumbled upon the remains of dead relatives inside homes that had allegedly already been searched. The trailers people were promised materialized ever so slowly. And hurricane season 2006 arrived with the levees still not sufficient to protect New Orleans.
But who pays the price? Cheryl Livaudais has something to say on that.
"They cost the people -- not just New Orleans and the Ninth Ward -- but the whole freakin' Southeast Louisiana. It cost the people their homes and their lives. I hope the politicians, or whoever did this, the Corps of Engineers, whoever -- I hope that they can sleep at night knowing they're the ones responsible."
She holds up her bottle of beer, saying, "And that's not this talking, that's the freakin' truth."
When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts (four hours): Acts I and II debut tonight at 9; Acts III and IV debut tomorrow night at 9 on HBO.

2006-07-12T07:38:00.000-05:00

I read the below article in today's Washington Post - July 12, 2006. At first blush, I don't understand what all the fuss is about? I think it is a good practice if it helps the plebe's feel comfortable and limits any "racial" issues. I would be curious to see what you think. Read the article from the Post. Karen Naval Academy's Questions About Race, Religion Stir Discord
By Daniel de ViseWashington Post Staff WriterTuesday, July 11, 2006; A10
Chris Ledoux thought he might sponsor a midshipman at the United States Naval Academy. Opening one's home as a safe haven to a plebe, or academy freshman, is an Annapolis tradition and a point of pride to many Annapolitans.
But Ledoux got no farther than page four on the application -- and a pair of questions that required him to state whether he would prefer a plebe of a particular religion or race.
He called local politicians last week to complain about the questions, which struck him as inappropriate for a service academy to ask. Word spread to local civil rights leaders, who were incensed. A controversy was born.
"This is not a dating service," said Ledoux, an Annapolis resident. "This is the federal government. And when the federal government is asking questions like, 'What race do you prefer?' they need to be careful."
The dispute is new, but the questions are not. They have been part of the Naval Academy sponsor application for at least 10 years, according to academy officials. The six-page application also requires prospective sponsors to state preferences about gender, smoking habits and the favored sport of their ideal midshipman. Elsewhere on the form, sponsors are asked to rank their top six preferences from a list of seven that includes both race and religion.
Although prospective sponsors must answer questions about racial and religious preference, they may do so by stating that they have no preference. And that is exactly what the vast majority of prospective sponsors do, said Deborah Goode, an academy spokeswoman.
The academy said in a prepared statement that the questions "are in the best interests of the midshipmen to help them feel comfortable with their sponsor family."
The sponsor program has existed for about 30 years, matching first-year students with families in the community for a semblance of home away from the rigors of the academy. Nearly 700 sponsors are hosting 1,200 students in the Class of 2010. Hispanics make up about 9 percent of academy students and African Americans about 6 percent, according to data for last year's freshmen.
Penny Vahsen of Annapolis sponsors a dozen midshipmen, three from each class. They visit her whenever they can. A 12-hour window on Saturday is the only time plebes are allowed off campus. Midshipmen gain freedom incrementally as they approach graduation.
"They watch a lot of TV. They swim in the pool. They just relax, is the main thing," Vahsen said.
She said she does not state a racial or religious preference when she renews her sponsorship each year. But she knows some people do. "There are a lot of blacks, for example, who will only sponsor blacks," she said. "There are a lot of whites who will only sponsor those. There are Asians who will only sponsor Asians."
She sees no harm in asking the questions.
"It's not a preference against. It's a preference for," she said.
Reaction has been more skeptical among some in the Annapolis black community.
Carl Snowden, an aide to the county executive and prominent civil rights leader, said in a statement that to ask for racial preferences "creates an apartheid system in their sponsor program that is both repugnant and unacceptable for a publicly funded agency."
Keith Gross, a black Annapolitan from the Clay Street projects who graduated from the academy in 1981, said he, too, considers the questions inappropriate. He said the academy's response -- that its goal was to make midshipmen feel comfortable -- invokes anachronistic attitudes about race.
He said of the question on race, "There's no practical reason why that should be in there."
Academy officials said only 1 percent of sponsor families had stated racial or religious preferences in the past two years.
The application "is used to evaluate and match sponsor families with incoming midshipmen of similar interests" or with specific midshipmen requested by the sponsors, the academy said in its statement. Midshipmen may state preferences, as well. Whenever possible, matches are based on those preferences.
Ledoux, the prospective sponsor, contacted Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) and Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.) to complain about the application. Cardin "has asked for more information about the program from the academy," said Susan Sullam, a spokeswoman for Cardin.

2006-05-16T16:20:00.000-05:00

Feature on KDDD - Fellow bloggers and fans of KDDD. I can't believe it! Some good news - today I am being interviewed by Swedish television on the power of bloggers. I am curious? How powerful are bloggers? Do we shape society? Culture? Do we make a difference? Some of my favorite topics to dPscuss are immigration, racial and cultural issues, politics and foreign issues. Please give me some feedback. I will write more later.

2006-03-30T23:06:00.000-05:00

The below article is taken from the NY Times - Op Ed section. I am so happy that society is talking about this issue. It is important for African Americans to discuss and debate. Enjoy the article and please discuss your thoughts. Op-Ed Contributor
A Poverty of the Mind
By ORLANDO PATTERSON
Cambridge, Mass.
SEVERAL recent studies have garnered wide attention for reconfirming the tragic disconnection of millions of black youths from the American mainstream. But they also highlighted another crisis: the failure of social scientists to adequately explain the problem, and their inability to come up with any effective strategy to deal with it.
The main cause for this shortcoming is a deep-seated dogma that has prevailed in social science and policy circles since the mid-1960's: the rejection of any explanation that invokes a group's cultural attributes — its distinctive attitudes, values and predispositions, and the resulting behavior of its members — and the relentless preference for relying on structural factors like low incomes, joblessness, poor schools and bad housing.
Harry Holzer, an economist at Georgetown University and a co-author of one of the recent studies, typifies this attitude. Joblessness, he feels, is due to largely weak schooling, a lack of reading and math skills at a time when such skills are increasingly required even for blue-collar jobs, and the poverty of black neighborhoods. Unable to find jobs, he claims, black males turn to illegal activities, especially the drug trade and chronic drug use, and often end up in prison. He also criticizes the practice of withholding child-support payments from the wages of absentee fathers who do find jobs, telling The Times that to these men, such levies "amount to a tax on earnings."
His conclusions are shared by scholars like Ronald B. Mincy of Columbia, the author of a study called "Black Males Left Behind," and Gary Orfield of Harvard, who asserts that America is "pumping out boys with no honest alternative."
This is all standard explanatory fare. And, as usual, it fails to answer the important questions. Why are young black men doing so poorly in school that they lack basic literacy and math skills? These scholars must know that countless studies by educational experts, going all the way back to the landmark report by James Coleman of Johns Hopkins University in 1966, have found that poor schools, per se, do not explain why after 10 years of education a young man remains illiterate.
Nor have studies explained why, if someone cannot get a job, he turns to crime and drug abuse. One does not imply the other. Joblessness is rampant in Latin America and India, but the mass of the populations does not turn to crime.
And why do so many young unemployed black men have children — several of them — which they have no resources or intention to support? And why, finally, do they murder each other at nine times the rate of white youths?
What's most interesting about the recent spate of studies is that analysts seem at last to be recognizing what has long been obvious to anyone who takes culture seriously: socioeconomic factors are of limited explanatory power. Thus it's doubly depressing that the conclusions they draw and the prescriptions they recommend remain mired in traditional socioeconomic thinking.
What has happened, I think, is that the economic boom years of the 90's and one of the most successful policy initiatives in memory — welfare reform — have made it impossible to ignore the effects of culture. The Clinton administration achieved exactly what policy analysts had long said would pull black men out of their torpor: the economy grew at a rapid pace, providing millions of new jobs at all levels. Yet the jobless black youths simply did not turn up to take them. Instead, the opportunity was seized in large part by immigrants — including many blacks — mainly from Latin America and the Caribbean.
One oft-repeated excuse for the failure of black Americans to take these jobs — that they did not offer a living wage — turned out to be irrelevant. The sociologist Roger Waldinger of the University of California at Los Angeles, for example, has shown that in New York such jobs offered an opportunity to the chronically unemployed to join the market and to acquire basic work skills that they later transferred to better jobs, but that the takers were predominantly immigrants.
Why have academics been so allergic to cultural explanations? Until the recent rise of behavioral economics, most economists have simply not taken non-market forces seriously. But what about the sociologists and other social scientists who ought to have known better? Three gross misconceptions about culture explain the neglect.
First is the pervasive idea that cultural explanations inherently blame the victim; that they focus on internal behavioral factors and, as such, hold people responsible for their poverty, rather than putting the onus on their deprived environment. (It hasn't helped that many conservatives do actually put forth this view.)
But this argument is utterly bogus. To hold someone responsible for his behavior is not to exclude any recognition of the environmental factors that may have induced the problematic behavior in the first place. Many victims of child abuse end up behaving in self-destructive ways; to point out the link between their behavior and the destructive acts is in no way to deny the causal role of their earlier victimization and the need to address it.
Likewise, a cultural explanation of black male self-destructiveness addresses not simply the immediate connection between their attitudes and behavior and the undesired outcomes, but explores the origins and changing nature of these attitudes, perhaps over generations, in their brutalized past. It is impossible to understand the predatory sexuality and irresponsible fathering behavior of young black men without going back deep into their collective past.
Second, it is often assumed that cultural explanations are wholly deterministic, leaving no room for human agency. This, too, is nonsense. Modern students of culture have long shown that while it partly determines behavior, it also enables people to change behavior. People use their culture as a frame for understanding their world, and as a resource to do much of what they want. The same cultural patterns can frame different kinds of behavior, and by failing to explore culture at any depth, analysts miss a great opportunity to re-frame attitudes in a way that encourages desirable behavior and outcomes.
Third, it is often assumed that cultural patterns cannot change — the old "cake of custom" saw. This too is nonsense. Indeed, cultural patterns are often easier to change than the economic factors favored by policy analysts, and American history offers numerous examples.
My favorite is Jim Crow, that deeply entrenched set of cultural and institutional practices built up over four centuries of racist domination and exclusion of blacks by whites in the South. Nothing could have been more cultural than that. And yet America was able to dismantle the entire system within a single generation, so much so that today blacks are now making a historic migratory shift back to the South, which they find more congenial than the North. (At the same time, economic inequality, which the policy analysts love to discuss, has hardened in the South, like the rest of America.)
So what are some of the cultural factors that explain the sorry state of young black men? They aren't always obvious. Sociological investigation has found, in fact, that one popular explanation — that black children who do well are derided by fellow blacks for "acting white" — turns out to be largely false, except for those attending a minority of mixed-race schools.
An anecdote helps explain why: Several years ago, one of my students went back to her high school to find out why it was that almost all the black girls graduated and went to college whereas nearly all the black boys either failed to graduate or did not go on to college. Distressingly, she found that all the black boys knew the consequences of not graduating and going on to college ("We're not stupid!" they told her indignantly).
SO why were they flunking out? Their candid answer was that what sociologists call the "cool-pose culture" of young black men was simply too gratifying to give up. For these young men, it was almost like a drug, hanging out on the street after school, shopping and dressing sharply, sexual conquests, party drugs, hip-hop music and culture, the fact that almost all the superstar athletes and a great many of the nation's best entertainers were black.
Not only was living this subculture immensely fulfilling, the boys said, it also brought them a great deal of respect from white youths. This also explains the otherwise puzzling finding by social psychologists that young black men and women tend to have the highest levels of self-esteem of all ethnic groups, and that their self-image is independent of how badly they were doing in school.
I call this the Dionysian trap for young black men. The important thing to note about the subculture that ensnares them is that it is not disconnected from the mainstream culture. To the contrary, it has powerful support from some of America's largest corporations. Hip-hop, professional basketball and homeboy fashions are as American as cherry pie. Young white Americans are very much into these things, but selectively; they know when it is time to turn off Fifty Cent and get out the SAT prep book.
For young black men, however, that culture is all there is — or so they think. Sadly, their complete engagement in this part of the American cultural mainstream, which they created and which feeds their pride and self-respect, is a major factor in their disconnection from the socioeconomic mainstream.
Of course, such attitudes explain only a part of the problem. In academia, we need a new, multidisciplinary approach toward understanding what makes young black men behave so self-destructively. Collecting transcripts of their views and rationalizations is a useful first step, but won't help nearly as much as the recent rash of scholars with tape-recorders seem to think. Getting the facts straight is important, but for decades we have been overwhelmed with statistics on black youths, and running more statistical regressions is beginning to approach the point of diminishing returns to knowledge.
The tragedy unfolding in our inner cities is a time-slice of a deep historical process that runs far back through the cataracts and deluge of our racist past. Most black Americans have by now, miraculously, escaped its consequences. The disconnected fifth languishing in the ghettos is the remains. Too much is at stake for us to fail to understand the plight of these young men. For them, and for the rest of us.
Orlando Patterson, a professor of sociology at Harvard, is the author of "Rituals of Blood: Consequences of Slavery in Two American Centuries."

2006-03-26T11:33:00.000-05:00

The following article is one that many African American women including myself talk about in hair salons, over coffee at trendy urban coffee shops, in nail salons and other places where women gather? I know dozens of wonderful, smart, sexy, financially stable African American women. All single, with no kids. In their 30's and 40's searching for a good man. Not willing to settle for the "baby momma dram, the no job, bad credit, no asset's, womanizing, good sex is all I have to offer - man! They want more! They want a man to be a man! This may sound harsh. I love African American men! Love them! Let me be clear. I want to marry a African American man. I turn down dates and offers from white men all of the time. Yet, the years and the numbers are taking a toll on me. Perhaps, it is time to say "yes" to a few of the multiculutral date offers, I receive. 'Marriage Is for White People'
By Joy JonesSunday, March 26, 2006; B01
I grew up in a time when two-parent families were still the norm, in both black and white America. Then, as an adult, I saw divorce become more commonplace, then almost a rite of passage. Today it would appear that many -- particularly in the black community -- have dispensed with marriage altogether.
But as a black woman, I have witnessed the outrage of girlfriends when the ex failed to show up for his weekend with the kids, and I've seen the disappointment of children who missed having a dad around. Having enjoyed a close relationship with my own father, I made a conscious decision that I wanted a husband, not a live-in boyfriend and not a "baby's daddy," when it came my time to mate and marry.
My time never came.
For years, I wondered why not. And then some 12-year-olds enlightened me.
"Marriage is for white people."
That's what one of my students told me some years back when I taught a career exploration class for sixth-graders at an elementary school in Southeast Washington. I was pleasantly surprised when the boys in the class stated that being a good father was a very important goal to them, more meaningful than making money or having a fancy title.
"That's wonderful!" I told my class. "I think I'll invite some couples in to talk about being married and rearing children."
"Oh, no," objected one student. "We're not interested in the part about marriage. Only about how to be good fathers."
And that's when the other boy chimed in, speaking as if the words left a nasty taste in his mouth: "Marriage is for white people."
He's right. At least statistically. The marriage rate for African Americans has been dropping since the 1960s, and today, we have the lowest marriage rate of any racial group in the United States. In 2001, according to the U.S. Census, 43.3 percent of black men and 41.9 percent of black women in America had never been married, in contrast to 27.4 percent and 20.7 percent respectively for whites. African American women are the least likely in our society to marry. In the period between 1970 and 2001, the overall marriage rate in the United States declined by 17 percent; but for blacks, it fell by 34 percent. Such statistics have caused Howard University relationship therapist Audrey Chapman to point out that African Americans are the most uncoupled people in the country.
How have we gotten here? What has shifted in African American customs, in our community, in our consciousness, that has made marriage seem unnecessary or unattainable?
Although slavery was an atrocious social system, men and women back then nonetheless often succeeded in establishing working families. In his account of slave life and culture, "Roll, Jordan, Roll," historian Eugene D. Genovese wrote: "A slave in Georgia prevailed on his master to sell him to Jamaica so that he could find his wife, despite warnings that his chances of finding her on so large an island were remote. . . . Another slave in Virginia chopped his left hand off with a hatchet to prevent being sold away from his son." I was stunned to learn that a black child was more likely to grow up living with both parents during slavery days than he or she is today, according to sociologist Andrew J. Cherlin.
Traditional notions of family, especially the extended family network, endure. But working mothers, unmarried couples living together, out-of-wedlock births, birth control, divorce and remarriage have transformed the social landscape. And no one seems to feel this more than African American women. One told me that with today's changing mores, it's hard to know "what normal looks like" when it comes to courtship, marriage and parenthood. Sex, love and childbearing have become a la carte choices rather than a package deal that comes with marriage. Moreover, in an era of brothers on the "down low," the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and the decline of the stable blue-collar jobs that black men used to hold, linking one's fate to a man makes marriage a risky business for a black woman.
"A woman who takes that step is bold and brave," one young single mother told me. "Women don't want to marry because they don't want to lose their freedom."
Among African Americans, the desire for marriage seems to have a different trajectory for women and men. My observation is that black women in their twenties and early thirties want to marry and commit at a time when black men their age are more likely to enjoy playing the field. As the woman realizes that a good marriage may not be as possible or sustainable as she would like, her focus turns to having a baby, or possibly improving her job status, perhaps by returning to school or investing more energy in her career.
As men mature, and begin to recognize the benefits of having a roost and roots (and to feel the consequences of their risky bachelor behavior), they are more willing to marry and settle down. By this time, however, many of their female peers are satisfied with the lives they have constructed and are less likely to settle for marriage to a man who doesn't bring much to the table. Indeed, he may bring too much to the table: children and their mothers from previous relationships, limited earning power, and the fallout from years of drug use, poor health care, sexual promiscuity. In other words, for the circumspect black woman, marriage may not be a business deal that offers sufficient return on investment.
In the past, marriage was primarily just such a business deal. Among wealthy families, it solidified political alliances or expanded land holdings. For poorer people, it was a means of managing the farm or operating a household. Today, people have become economically self-sufficient as individuals, no longer requiring a spouse for survival. African American women have always had a high rate of labor-force participation. "Why should well-salaried women marry?" asked black feminist and author Alice Dunbar-Nelson as early as 1895. But now instead of access only to low-paying jobs, we can earn a breadwinner's wage, which has changed what we want in a husband. "Women's expectations have changed dramatically while men's have not changed much at all," said one well-paid working wife and mother. "Women now say, 'Providing is not enough. I need more partnership.' "
The turning point in my own thinking about marriage came when a longtime friend proposed about five years ago. He and I had attended college together, dated briefly, then kept in touch through the years. We built a solid friendship, which I believe is a good foundation for a successful marriage.
But -- if we had married, I would have had to relocate to the Midwest. Been there, done that, didn't like it. I would have had to become a stepmother and, although I felt an easy camaraderie with his son, stepmotherhood is usually a bumpy ride. I wanted a house and couldn't afford one alone. But I knew that if I was willing to make some changes, I eventually could.
As I reviewed the situation, I realized that all the things I expected marriage to confer -- male companionship, close family ties, a house -- I already had, or were within reach, and with exponentially less drama. I can do bad by myself, I used to say as I exited a relationship. But the truth is, I can do pretty good by myself, too.
Most single black women over the age of 30 whom I know would not mind getting married, but acknowledge that the kind of man and the quality of marriage they would like to have may not be likely, and they are not desperate enough to simply accept any situation just to have a man. A number of my married friends complain that taking care of their husbands feels like having an additional child to raise. Then there's the fact that marriage apparently can be hazardous to the health of black women. A recent study by the Institute for American Values, a nonpartisan think tank in New York City, indicates that married African American women are less healthy than their single sisters.
By design or by default, black women cultivate those skills that allow them to maintain themselves (or sometimes even to prosper) without a mate.
"If Jesus Christ bought me an engagement ring, I wouldn't take it," a separated thirty-something friend told me. "I'd tell Jesus we could date, but we couldn't marry."
And here's the new twist. African American women aren't the only ones deciding that they can make do alone. Often what happens in black America is a sign of what the rest of America can eventually expect. In his 2003 book, "Mismatch: The Growing Gulf between Women and Men," Andrew Hacker noted that the structure of white families is evolving in the direction of that of black families of the 1960s. In 1960, 67 percent of black families were headed by a husband and wife, compared to 90.9 percent for whites. By 2000, the figure for white families had dropped to 79.8 percent. Births to unwed white mothers were 22.5 percent in 2001, compared to 2.3 percent in 1960. So my student who thought marriage is for white people may have to rethink that in the future.
Still, does this mean that marriage is going the way of the phonograph and the typewriter ribbon?
"I hope it isn't," said one friend who's been married for seven years. "The divorce rate is 50 percent, but people remarry. People want to be married. I don't think it's going out of style."
A black male acquaintance had a different prediction. "I don't believe marriage is going to be extinct, but I think you'll see fewer people married," he said. "It's a bad thing. I believe it takes the traditional family -- a man and a woman -- to raise kids." He has worked with troubled adolescents, and has observed that "the girls who are in the most trouble and who are abused the most -- the father is absent. And the same is true for the boys, too." He believes that his presence and example in the home is why both his sons decided to marry when their girlfriends became pregnant.
But human nature being what it is, if marriage is to flourish -- in black or white America -- it will have to offer an individual woman something more than a business alliance, a panacea for what ails the community, or an incubator for rearing children. As one woman said, "If it weren't for the intangibles, the allure of the lovey-dovey stuff, I wouldn't have gotten married. The benefits of marriage are his character and his caring. If not for that, why bother?"
joythink@aol.com
Joy Jones, a Washington writer, is the author of "Between Black Women: Listening With the Third Ear" (African American Images).

2006-03-17T10:55:00.000-05:00

Chuck D - I love you! First of all, I am an old skool hip hop person. I love old rap music. 80's, 90's and a few songs in the 00. However, I can not listen to the stuff that is played on most urban "pop" music stations. It is HORRIBLE! It is sickening. What happened to rap music? Why did we lose control? Below is an article from Chuck D. I don't normally agree with everything that he says, however, I agree 100% with this article. The music is POISON and it is sad what is happening to our youth. Read and enjoy.....The Bitch Slapping of Blackfolk Using The Hand of Hip Hop.by Chuck DThe news at the time was on blast about Busta Rhymes' bodyguard being murdered while protecting his jewels for his star-studded video and current hit song, Touch It. The 'stop-snitching stench' aroma, on a viral pass-around, had everyone who saw 'what, who, when, and why' acting suddenly like dumbass living mutes. @#%$ so bad that Busta flew 3000 miles to supposedly finish the video, via Jimmy Iodine's poisoned, deep pockets. This was typical of the madness surfing atop the platform of hip hop in 2006, enough to make one of the chief creators scream stop. Uptown in Harlem at the 126th Street's Black Slave Theater, a massive town hall meeting was called by Afrika Bambaataa's ZULU NATION, about the climate of the radiation of a radio, TV, movie nation; and how to stop and fight the control-towers that be. The severe lack of balance coming via the frequencies of the air, was akin to toxins pouring into the 9th ward after the levee expl- ur um, break. Anything but a building full of bitter old hip hop headz, folks were motivated to finally answer to the responsibility and accountability of being grown. Those that claim they can't see the poison are duped by the same reasons it's effective. Usually poison is hidden in something deemed good for you. Poison has to be clearly identified with danger signs, death, skulls, bones etc. to keep the not knowing, unreading, and naive (usually children) from ingesting it. Speakers like Ernie Pannicioli, Rosa Clemente, Shaka and others from the Zulus, Grandmixer DXT and yours truly spoke to the room, of the clearly converted, about really forcing the balance from rap/hip hop being the millennium COINTELPRO. Yes, the new counterintelligence program steering the masses toward the two booming industries of jail and death. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure that out. But then again the continued bitch slapping of blackfolk using the hand of hip hop takes place as the masses, who are considered asses, are too blind, deaf, and dumbed down to see or hear it. Or too numb to feel it. Testing a sane one's sanity, I say. And when I know something I say something. But do a 360 degree turn of your head.... In Selma, Alabama it was the 41st anniversary of the civil rights march across the Edmund Pettis bridge while many of the acts involved had 'mafia', 'gangsta' and 'nigger' running rampant in their names, lyrics, and imagery; as well as it being blastcasted across the Alabama urban airwaves. Tables of CDs, DVDs and T-shirts of slain rapcats, seem to parallel the ones of Garvey, King, X, and Harriet. Bootleg CDs from the 60's-70's sang about love and happiness as the 90's-06 CDs and DVDs centralized on drug-pimp-thug lifestyle. Have we gone forward or back? I wondered as I stared at the Edmund Pettus bridge hearing "It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp" in the background. Two weeks prior I approached BET's topdog Stephen Hill during the Grammy rehearsal about the imbalance of their programming since Teen Summit and Tavis Smiley. All he answered was he didn't want another FRANK'S PLACE ...you know bad number ratings, only conscious folk watching it, ( i.e. too smart = no paper). Wondered what women thought about pimpin not being easy in '06. Then again if the president of MTV, BET, and Radio One are all black women, then why are the images of black women at its lowest?? Yeah, don't let me tell yall, do some work and google Debra, Christina, and Cathy....Death Any Child? Then again the ultimate pimp flask got one from white America, on the heels of Halle getting the bitch - ho treatment and Denzel doing Superthug. Saw Kimora Lee Simmons has a book out called Fabulosity, caught it on CNN as they search for more streetcred...cannot even take the news when they feed the drug of America - celebrity to them asses. I did a career day lecture booth at my youngest one's school as the 7th-8th graders asked who really won Flavor Of Love? Repeatedly asked did I have any money or was I rich... Instead I pointed to my head and said with my college degree in 1984 I'd always be rich (as in enriched) and knowing it would pale in these 'white written for black consumption hustle and flow and get rich and die tryin times'. Russell and all the superstars on the radio-TV-movie stage increasingly find it easier to avoid the masses and broadcast to them asses. Get that money from those who barely have it, and stack and brag about them chips and chicks in the back. Dig this - it's really hard out there to defend against the wave of ignorant acceptance. Forget about them town halls being called ineffective. If anything they need to be held weekly, even daily in fact. A reminder of waiting for something to acknowledge and reward you, beyond recognizing self is like smiling at a bag of purchased cotton you just picked on a field. I'm not a pessimist about hip hop, I love the platform and its value to the world, history, etc. The historical fact on the surface says Triple 6 Mafia from Memphis winning the first Rap Academy Award for an original song is thirty-five years after Sir Isaac Hayes won the first. Two different times in Memphis, mind you. Dwelled on the negative as usual, you might say. But I know when my head and heart feels bitch-slapped without having a chance to raise up, breathe, swallow a positive thought and get my back straightened after manning the burden. And so It's Hard Out Here For A Pimp... but damn in anybody's right mind and soul why shouldn't it be? Mrchuck@rapstation.com

2006-03-11T16:46:00.000-05:00

Claude Allen - My comments are as follows. Claude Allen is a decent, honorable man. I will not and don't believe the comments that are being written about him. I know him as a man of impeccable character and moral fortitude. I believe this is a case of racial profiling. I won't believe any other explanation. This is a sad day for the Allen family. I am deeply saddened by the news and the media coverage.

2006-02-19T11:44:00.000-05:00

February 19, 2006
When Rappers Keep Their Mouths Shut Tight
By ANDREW JACOBS
A fight erupts among acquaintances, words give way to violence and a bystander is fatally shot amid a crowd of onlookers.
For investigators, solving the crime would seem simple enough: question witnesses, identify the gunman and make an arrest. But in this particular case, the killing of a security guard two weeks ago outside a recording studio in Brooklyn, detectives have run into a stubborn wall of silence. Among scores of witnesses, including the rap artist Busta Rhymes and a half-dozen hip-hop celebrities who were present at the filming of a video at the studio, the lack of cooperation has been stunning, the authorities say.
"We believe there were between 30 and 50 people on the sidewalk at the scene of a homicide, and no one has come forward to volunteer information," said Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly. "It's challenging for investigators, and I find it disturbing."
Unless detectives can persuade someone to talk — multiple requests have been rebuffed — the killing of Israel Ramirez, an unarmed security guard who worked for Busta Rhymes, will join a string of unsolved slayings in the hip-hop world, including those of Notorious B.I.G., Tupac Shakur and Jam Master Jay, the hip-hop pioneer gunned down in his recording studio in Jamaica, Queens, in 2002. In every case, investigators have been thwarted by a widespread disdain for law enforcement popularized by hip-hop.
"It's the code of the streets: You just don't talk to the cops," said Bakari Kitwana, the author of "The Hip-Hop Generation." "That mistrust has a long history among people of color, but it's really taken on a life of its own."
From the streets of South Central Los Angeles to the housing projects of South Jamaica, Queens, the notion that those who cooperate with the police are traitors to their community has gained increasing currency.
Hip-hop songs vilify those rumored to have cooperated with authorities, and the rapper Lil' Kim is celebrated for lying about her friends' involvement in a shooting, even if her act of perjury led to a year in jail. A widely circulated underground video featuring men, guns in their waistbands, warns against talking to the police, and "Stop Snitchin' " T-shirts have become the latest fashion statement among hip-hop fans.
"Everyone is jumping on the stop-snitching bandwagon," said Minya Oh, better known as Miss Info, who has a show on hip-hop radio station Hot 97. "It's all the rage. Even if you have a conversation with police, you'll be called a snitch."
Busta Rhymes, 33, whose given name is Trevor Smith, faces a dilemma that is has a particular resonance to the hip-hop world. By remaining silent, he is angering the family of Mr. Ramirez and a good number of his fans. But if he speaks to the authorities, he risks harming his so-called street credibility, which is cultivated by many rap artists and demanded by millions of their fans. Yet even on some urban radio talk shows and Internet chat rooms, a growing number of fans have called his silence cowardly and amoral, and in New York, a group of ministers and anti-violence advocates have called for a boycott of his music.
Then there is the real possibility that his cooperation could lead to retribution. "In the hip-hop world, there's nothing worse than being called a snitch," said Greg Watkins, co-founder of the Web site allhiphop.com. "It can be detrimental to your career, and to your health."
But some rap producers and performers say that the notion of street credibility and its companion trait, an image as an outlaw, is wildly exaggerated by many hip-hop stars and a marketing ploy designed to bolster the image and appeal of artists, some of whose origins are not particularly rough and tumble.
Lordikim Allah, a rapper known as Boogie Banga, laments that many artists have become hostages to their tough-guy personas, fearful that if they stray from the role, they will fall out of favor. "Busta Rhymes is not his real name; it's a character he created," Mr. Allah said. "He's advertised himself as a hard-core guy, so the assumption out there is that if you're a gangster and a street dude, you shouldn't call the cops when there's trouble."
Of course, the culture of violence in hip-hop is not entirely fabricated. Rappers travel with a posse of armed guards for a reason, and the killing of Jam Master Jay, who was thought to be above the fray, was especially disturbing to the rap world, where jealousies and rivalries sometimes escalate into bloodshed. The killing of Mr. Ramirez, whose death investigators believe was the unintended result of a petty squabble, has struck a nerve for similar reasons.
Such seemingly pointless bloodshed has provoked considerable soul searching. Ethan Brown, who frequently writes about hip-hop, said the industry stoked widespread anger over the police harassment of minority youths and the perceived imbalance of a criminal justice system that metes out harsh sentences to low-level drug dealers. But the problem, Mr. Brown and others say, is that hip-hop fails to differentiate between those who help the authorities prosecute drug crimes from those who seek law enforcement's hand in combating violence.
"There's a real sense that the federal system is out of whack and that people are being put away for the rest of their lives based on informants," said Mr. Brown, whose latest book, "Queens Reigns Supreme," details the rise of hip-hop in Queens in the 1980's and 90's. "But I think the industry has perverted a legitimate complaint about the legal system and applied it to all kinds of crime."
Or as Ms. Oh of Hot 97 sees it, hip-hop has created a monster that no one is willing or able to control. "What we're seeing is a head-on crash of art and reality," she said. "The concepts of snitching and justice have become open to interpretation, and the problem is that no one has a handbook on how to proceed."
Law enforcement officials say they have little patience for the quandaries faced by rap figures like Mr. Smith. In an interview, Commissioner Kelly said he would ask the Brooklyn district attorney to convene a grand jury. If that occurred, Mr. Smith could be compelled to tell what he knows or face possible charges and jail time.
"A lot of this stonewalling is posturing they do to sell records," Mr. Kelly said. "But these hip-hop artists are making a lot of money. You'd like to think that there's some sort of civil responsibility that goes along with that. But apparently there isn't."

2006-02-16T17:40:00.000-05:00

Venture Capitalists Are Investing in Educational Reform
By JAMES FLANIGAN
Venture capitalists of Silicon Valley, who have backed hundreds of high-technology entrepreneurs, are eagerly financing a new group these days: schoolmasters.
"We give education entrepreneurs money to start or to speed up building their companies," said L. John Doerr, who over 26 years has helped start dozens of ventures, including Sun Microsystems, Amazon.com and Google. He help found the New Schools Venture Fund in San Francisco six years ago for a new breed of entrepreneur — the kind who doesn't have to produce a profit.
Unlike Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the venture capital firm where Mr. Doerr is a partner, New Schools does not earn the standard three to five times its investment in five years. It earns nothing, because it is "a philanthropy held accountable by the rigors of venture capital financing," as Mr. Doerr describes it. The financial professionals of the fund oversee the business operations of the schools it backs.
Recipients of the fund's investments are not whiz kids eager to become the next Bill Gates. Mainly, they are public school teachers with a passion to improve the ways poor children are taught. The companies they form are nonprofit charter school management organizations, capable of running publicly financed elementary and secondary schools that are freed from some rules and regulations in exchange for producing educational results better than those of the large urban school district. Almost all their students are eligible for free or reduced-price breakfasts and lunches.
Financing from New Schools and charitable foundations helps them to build or buy school properties and to get elementary, middle and high schools up and running. But their operations are expected to quickly become self-sustaining on the stipends paid from local, state and federal taxes for educating each student.
New Schools Venture Fund is still investing its first $80 million, contributed by individuals like Mr. Doerr and organizations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which gave $22 million. New Schools has begun raising another $125 million to expand the reach of charter schools as models of reform for traditional public school systems.
For example, New Schools has contributed $3.3 million to help Michael Piscal and his Inner City Education Foundation start View Park elementary, middle and high school in the poor neighborhood of South Los Angeles. Mr. Piscal, 39, was a teacher at one of Los Angeles's highest-rated private schools until 1994, when he decided to try teaching children in what is considered an underserved neighborhood.
Today, with three schools open and growing, Mr. Piscal plans to start 20 more schools in the same South Los Angeles area. "We have a waiting list of parents wanting to send kids to View Park," Mr. Piscal said.
The View Park schools have 47 teachers who are not members of a union but earn salaries similar to the $42,000- to $54,000-a-year range of the Los Angeles Unified School District. View Park teachers can earn bonuses based on the performance of their students.
Mr. Piscal says the middle school — grades six to eight — "has the highest test scores in math for African-American students in all of California," according to a foundation that supports education.
Brian Taylor, principal of the middle school, explained that such performance was achieved by concentration on the students.
"If kids are struggling, we pull them out of physical ed one day or two a week and give them assistance," Mr. Taylor said. "In a school of 375 students, we know all of these kids. You couldn't do that in a typical high school with 4,000 to 5,000 students."
The return to smaller schools — fewer than 400 students for elementary and middle schools and 500 for a high school — is a refrain among the education entrepreneurs in the charter school movement.
Judy Ivie Burton was a teacher, principal and superintendent for 37 years in the Los Angeles Unified District but is now chief executive of the Alliance for College-Ready Public Schools, a charter organization that since 2004 has opened three high schools and a middle school. It has ambitions to open 16 more in the next six years.
Ms. Burton is seeking $11 million more from New Schools Venture Fund and other donors to achieve the alliance's 20-school goal, in a collaboration with the Los Angeles Unified District to help meet huge classroom needs for the area's expanding population.
But Ms. Burton says she has chosen the charter school path because it gives her flexibility to employ her own ideas about improving student performance. Those ideas include increased instructional time, she says.
"We do 190 days in the school year, compared to 163 days for L.A. Unified," Ms. Burton said. "And we do three two-hour periods, plus study hall, per day compared to six, one-hour periods."
The charter school movement began to grow rapidly in California in 1997, when teachers and those in the business community persuaded the Legislature to remove limits on how many such schools could open.
Donald Shalvey, a longtime teacher and principal, was instrumental in winning that legislative victory and today runs Aspire Public Schools, a 15-school chain that was one of the first recipients of New Schools Venture Fund investment.
Not all charter experiments have been successful. A four-school network named California Charter Academy was forced to close two years ago because of financial difficulties and is under investigation by the state Department of Education.
And teachers' unions are understandably skeptical of the largely nonunion charter movement.
"We are neutral on charter schools," said Joe Nunez, associate director of government relations for the California Teachers Association. "They're good when they respond to local needs of families and teachers," Mr. Nunez said. "But some of them are trying to grow statewide and move beyond their original mission."
With 3,000 charter schools operating nationwide, and other reforms changing traditional public school structures, large issues clearly are revolving around the American classroom.
And New Schools Venture Fund is thinking big. Last year the organization hired a new chief executive, Theodore Mitchell, a former president of Occidental College and dean of the School of Education at the University of California, Los Angeles, now the education adviser to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Mr. Mitchell's first goal is to raise an additional $125 million to finance charter school expansions, as well as to help their performance by financing teacher training, information processing centers and other ancillary services.
At a recent session in Silicon Valley, Mr. Mitchell grilled charter school organizers from Chicago who were seeking $4.5 million to expand from one high school to seven. The New Schools board approved the investment in Chicago because the organizers "stressed the basics of improving educational performance," Mr. Mitchell said.
Then he added a quotation from a speech by William Butler Yeats: " 'Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.' We provide the fuel for that fire," Mr. Mitchell said.
Asked to contrast the high-tech entrepreneurs he has backed over the years with the educators he is financing today, Mr. Doerr responded without hesitation:
"The education entrepreneurs have it harder. They must overcome massive institutional resistance," he said. "And if the high-tech entrepreneurs succeed, they get rich. The educators' rewards will be more important in life, but they're not going to get rich."
This column about small-business trends in California and the West appears on the third Thursday of every month. E-mail: jamesflanigan@nytimes.com.

2006-02-12T13:33:00.000-05:00

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes - the ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing that you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things."- Apple Computer ad, 1997

2006-02-10T08:57:00.000-05:00

I was talking to a good friend last night that told me that he was very upset that BET did not show the Corretta Scott King funeral. Also, neither did upstart African American focused TV One.

Now, one could argue that BET is now owned by Viacom and the "suits" at Viacom would not want to show the funeral due to losing so much "advertising revenue" etc.

However, one has to ask the question why didn't any of "our" focused channels not air the entire funeral of the 'first lady' of our people.

Makes me wonder??

2006-02-03T20:50:00.000-05:00

I had to share this story written in this week's Washington City Paper on "mayor for life" Marion Barry. I think this story is tragic but a great example of the effect that drugs and denial have done on a large community of his supporters. Sad. Sad. Sad. Sad. He’s Still Marion Barry”
by Jason Cherkis and James Jones
One year into his latest political comeback, Ward 8 Councilmember Marion Barry has found that drug use is his most reliable way back into the headlines.
The Washington View apartment complex begins at the corner of Stanton and Douglass Roads SE and ends at the top of a steep hill overlooking downtown’s vast white-marble horizon. It is a majestic vista, one that nevertheless didn’t inspire the complex’s developer to build much more than a chain of humble three-story brick dwellings. Everything at the View—the buildings, the fields, the sidewalks—is ringed by a protective stubble of iron fence.
The kids who live at the View soften the complex’s forbidding architecture. They stream up from the 94 bus and the Anacostia Metro in the afternoon and don’t seem to stop walking once they’re in the familiar concrete grid. They go to and from the corner store nearby, escorting younger siblings from school or just cruising around for a scene to watch.
Stairwells seem prized as their private spaces. Late at night, one boy fiddles with a deck of cards alone on one concrete landing, making it his own card table. A young couple turns its stairs into a private bedroom for pillow talk. One Saturday afternoon, a trio of teenage girls circles the complex at least twice before finally settling into the entrance of 2671 Douglass Road to stare at some old heads tossing neon-green dice.
The skyline seems hardly worth contemplating except when it is streaky with exploding blasts of red and blue on the Fourth of July. Kids call their neighborhood “Drama Hill.” As one teenage girl explains one night, the name came about in response to the outsiders from Wellington Park and Barry Farm who are always coming up to create drama.
When Marion Barry first moved to Washington View after the 2002 Buzzard Point incident (involving a woman, marijuana, and a $5 rock of cocaine) and subsequent separation from his fourth wife, the kids saw him as good drama, the celebrity next door. Barry played the View’s benevolent grandfather, offering advice and still working his standard line from four mayoral terms: Do you need a job?
Kids took turns carrying Barry’s groceries and dry cleaning up to his third-floor apartment. In 2005, Barry became the kids’ councilmember, and ceremonial occasions brought them together. The kids packed Barry’s pool parties last summer and flocked to the Douglass Junior High building in December, when he opened it up as an afternoon rec center. The community had waited eight years for it to reopen. Around Christmas, the councilmember upstaged Santa Claus by giving children stuffed animals and $25 Safeway gift cards.
Herbert Douglas, 22, remembers attending one of Barry’s parties at the View’s swimming pool. While Barry waited his turn at the food tables, Douglas says he approached the former mayor to ask him about the difficulties of college life. He had dropped out of UDC because he needed to work. Barry told him that once he was back at school, he should “ ‘stick to it. And don’t get any real distractions.’ ”
In between the pool parties and gift-giving and advice-offering, kids saw Barry involved in a much less public drama set in the View’s darker corners. Aisha Fullard, 18, says the scene would begin after the councilmember parked his Jaguar at the top of the hill on Douglass Place.
“Sometimes I see him in the afternoon just walking back and forth to his car,” Fullard says. “He’d walk to his car and then walk down the street.”
Fullard says she’d see him walk to where Douglass Place dead-ends, a spot overlooking Suitland Parkway and marked by Jersey barriers sprayed with a tag memorializing another neighborhood. There, Barry would turn left and disappear into the Sayles Place town homes’ parking lot.
Sometimes Barry, 69, would reappear five to 10 minutes later, Fullard says. Only this time he seemed like a different man. She describes the transformed Barry this way: “Like he could barely stand up. His eyes were half-closed.”
The routine would repeat itself when Barry would come back to Douglass Place at night, says Jasmine Johnson, 16. If Barry didn’t go back to the end of the dead-end street, turn left, and vanish, Johnson explains, “he’d go to where the old heads be at—like, the gangsters.”
The councilmember didn’t linger too long among the regulars: “I just know they’d hold conversations,” recalls Johnson. “Short. Hand to hand.”
As Johnson tells this story one night out on Douglass Place, she is matter-of-fact, bored even. This is everyday drama. When asked if seeing Barry this way was a shock, Johnson appears to regard the question as more nonsense from an outsider on Drama Hill. “Normal,” she says. “He’s still Marion Barry.”
Barry’s overwhelming 2004 election victory was fueled by the familiar lofty rhetoric that keeps the faithful believing, even when the candidate made few appearances on the campaign trail. In trouncing incumbent Ward 8 Councilmember Sandy Allen, Barry promised to be a fighter for the community and a constant irritant to Mayor Anthony A. Williams on issues like gentrification, job creation, and the proposed baseball stadium.
He dusted off the old speeches, demanding that every child in the city have a summer job and reminding the grown-ups that, as mayor, he’d done the same for them.
The celebration that spilled into Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE on Sept. 14, 2004, after his primary victory was an explosion of pent-up frustration felt by residents of the city’s poorest ward. Barry was called a savior who promised a new day in Ward 8.
When Barry arrived at the council in 2005, many of his colleagues say they made a special effort to reach out to him. They publicly portrayed him as a valuable asset with great knowledge of how government works. Some made hopeful statements that the frail-looking Barry was really a wily old fox who would be a valuable ally in John A. Wilson Building dustups.
Barry had a familiar way of responding to overtures from colleagues welcoming him onboard. Two councilmembers recall lunch appointments for which Barry arrived more than an hour late.
His lack of interest in council business is explained away by more man-of-the-people rhetoric. Barry claims his most important work takes place in the community, not behind a desk at his Wilson Building office.
It’s one governing strategy that Barry has adhered to.
Since Barry was sworn in, the council has passed 248 pieces of emergency and permanent legislation that are now law. None of them were authored by Barry. He did co-introduce five bills that passed, but those bills were written by other councilmembers.
Barry constituents stand a 1-in-3 chance of being represented on any given piece of council business. He’s missed 35 percent of the recorded council votes during this session, either because of illness or other undisclosed reasons. Ward 6 Councilmember Sharon Ambrose, who has had a series of health problems and will retire at the end of the year, has missed just 7 percent of the votes during the same period.
But for a brief moment in December, Barry once again appeared to be at the center of big-city politics.
The Washington Post reported on Dec. 21 that Barry was leading the council troops opposed to the baseball-stadium lease. The story suggested that he was pulling strings and twisting the arms of his colleagues just as he did in the old days.
At the time, a majority of the council was firmly against a proposed lease agreement for a Washington Nationals stadium in Southeast. The prospect of the legislature sending baseball packing seemed very real. Stadium supporters like the mayor and Council Chairman Linda Cropp were struggling to craft a deal that would attract the seven votes needed to pass the lease.
But behind the scenes, according to the Post, Barry had hatched a solution to the deadlock with a possible breakthrough agreement
Barry reportedly told baseball officials that the proposed stadium lease would be blocked by eight councilmembers unless D.C. businessman Jonathan Ledecky was awarded ownership of the Nationals. Barry said Ledecky had met with him and agreed to pay for stadium cost overruns—a key demand of stadium opponents. “To some on the council, Barry seemed to be exhibiting more leadership than Williams or Council Chairman Linda Cropp,” the Post story stated.
And in a written statement, Barry cast himself as a spokesperson for the council majority. “I am standing strong to say whether the vote is tomorrow or whether it is later, there are at least seven of us on the Council who remain strong and will still block this horrible…agreement,” he wrote.
The Post image of a wheeling-and-dealing Barry elicits only chuckles from several of his council colleagues. “It’s just not the way it happened,” says Ward 1 Councilmember Jim Graham. “He hadn’t spoken to me [about the stadium] prior to that.”
Other colleagues were surprised that Barry would publicly claim to speak for them on the most explosive political issue facing the council. “I wasn’t following Barry,” says At-Large Councilmember Kwame Brown. “Marion Barry has no hold over Kwame Brown. He didn’t come talk to me and say, ‘Hey man, you need to vote against baseball.’ ”
At-Large Councilmember Carol Schwartz was so angry that the Post had lumped her into the Barry group that she fired off a letter to the editor. “That is a lie,” Schwartz wrote to the paper. “Mr. Barry called me several times to find out how I was going to vote on the deal. Each time I refused to tell him, and I certainly did not participate with him or anyone else in negotiations with one or any other potential ownership group,” the letter stated.
The Barry plan quickly faded as a news story. He has seldom been mentioned as a key player in the stadium-lease deal since the Post reported on Jan. 11 that Barry had tested positive for cocaine in a court-administered drug test. Barry submitted to the test as part of his plea agreement in a federal tax case; his sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 8.
Graham, a recovering alcoholic and the go-to guy for follow-up stories on the addiction struggle that has followed Barry since his 1990 episode at the Vista Hotel, admits he hasn’t sat down for a heart-to-heart with his colleague. “I’ve talked about it with him only in passing,” he says.
When Barry needs a show of force, the bodies come from his council staff. Two of his senior aides stood at his side, their arms firmly against his back, literally propping him up, when the councilmember met with reporters after his Jan. 15 release from Howard University Hospital following treatment for diabetes and hypertension. It was his first public appearance after the Post reported that he tested positive for cocaine.
Barry and his medical team wouldn’t discuss his positive drug test or whether he was seeking treatment for drug addiction. Barry repeatedly refused to comment on any aspect of his life for this story. When Barry was asked to comment for this story at a Jan. 21 Ward 8 mayoral candidates forum, he replied, “You bug me.”
On three occasions Barry or his staff called the police to prevent Washington City Paper reporters from tailing the councilmember to his daily outings.
When reporters attempted to attend a Jan. 23 meeting at Barry’s constituent-services office on Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue SE, a security guard and a Barry staffer barred their entry. The guard, taking directions from the Barry staffer, said the building had closed at 4:45 p.m., even though the meeting started at 6 p.m. When reporters refused to leave, D.C. Protective Services officers were called in and backed up Barry’s order.
“The building is closed,” the head officer kept repeating.
When Barry disappeared at the end of Douglass Place, where the spray-painted Jersey barriers shield the overgrown woods and the beer-bottle graveyard, people in the View knew where he was headed. He would take that left turn toward a tiny parking lot, and then he’d walk up a hill past three or four doors until he reached the stubby white town house at 2806 Douglass Place SE.
That’s the sometime home of Hermione Geniece “Niecey” Lyons and her brother, David Lyons. A lot of people knew about Barry and 2806.
The row of town homes that includes 2806 is the last and smallest piece of development in the Washington View neighborhood. It faces more woods, abandoned picnic furniture, and the remnants of a terraced garden that faces the whoosh of Suitland Parkway. It is a secluded place where visitors are quick to receive a reprimand if they decide to take one of the residents’ parking spaces.
P. Scott, a neighbor, often noticed Barry in his Jaguar, idling out front or parked in the lot. “All last summer, I saw him come around daily,” she recalls. “I would see him in my parking lot daily. Or on the corner around the bend in front of the fire hydrant. He got tickets. His car would stay there for hours, sometimes overnight, sometimes for a week straight.”
In October, Scott, 30, says she decided to avail herself of Barry’s community outreach. She and her husband had started a business called Top Secret Movers in August. She wanted to see if Barry would help her find down-and-out people to fill her rolls.
Scott approached Barry in her parking lot and told him about her business and all the job openings she had. He then promptly changed the subject. “ ‘Let me take you out?’ ” Barry asked Scott, she recalls.
When Scott replied that she was married, she says, “He just walked away.”
Scott says that Barry told her to call his office. When she followed up on the councilmember’s offer, she says that she got the runaround and that none of his staffers ever returned her call.
But Scott knew what Barry had his mind set on: the Lyons’ home. “I always knew where he was going,” she explains. “I’d see him get out of [his] car and go up the hill.”
On a recent weekday afternoon, Niecey’s mother confirmed that her daughter was a friend of Barry’s but said that she hardly ever comes home. During a second visit, Niecey’s son answered to say that Barry once offered to get him a job.
The Lyons’ next-door neighbor, Geraldine Jackson, 43, who also serves as vice president of the neighborhood cooperative, says Barry would stop by on weekends to see Niecey and David. “Sometimes he’d beep the horn and she’d come out,” she recalls. “Sometimes he’d knock on the door. Sometimes they’ll tell Barry she’s not in there.”
Jackson says she knew Barry would sometimes go on outings with Niecey, taking trips to the grocery store. Other times, the two would “just walk up and down the street,” recalls Jasmine Johnson.
Niecey Lyons is 41 years old and has several children. According to police documents, there are currently two warrants for her arrest. In June 2003, Niecey was charged with criminal violations of the Compulsory School Attendance Act. The charges stem from her alleged failure to get two of her children to school. After 15 unexcused absences, schools refer cases to the D.C. Office of the Attorney General. Niecey’s two warrants were issued after she failed to show up for court proceedings.
Niecey’s neighbors say she sticks close to home. Scott’s husband, Tim Scott, says he sometimes sees Niecey in their parking lot bumming for small bills. He estimates she’s asked him 10 times for money since the summer: “ ‘Do you have two dollars? Do you have five?’ ”
David Lyons, 46, claims his sister Niecey is a crack addict, an assessment shared by many of her neighbors and her advisory neighborhood commissioner, Marita Michael. David says he has smoked crack with Niecey two or three times. “It felt funny,” he explains, because he is her older brother. David recalls confronting Niecey about crack use; she replied that she could control it, he says.
Since the early ’80s, David has racked up well over a dozen charges: armed robbery, cocaine and heroin possession and distribution, five stolen autos, domestic violence. He is currently locked up at the D.C. Jail, where he is serving time on a domestic-violence charge and a urine test that came back positive for cocaine. He expects to be out in the spring.
All of his troubles with the law, David says, stem from his coke habit. He has spent most of the last 20 years living the life of an addict, complete with numerous court appearances and occasional confinement.
In between fighting his personal demons, David insists he had only fleeting encounters with Barry. He says he once carried the councilmember’s groceries up to his apartment and occasionally saw him “out on the street.” He recalls one time when Barry “knocked on the door” and asked for Niecey; David told him she wasn’t home.
Scott offers an amplified version of the interactions between David Lyons and Barry. She says that she has seen the two together multiple times, including riding in Barry’s Jaguar and walking around the neighborhood.
Speaking from the third-floor visiting room at the jail, David says that Barry and Niecey were friends and met through one of Barry’s neighbors in his complex last May. What they did together, he didn’t know. “I’m in my room,” he says.
“I know she told me she go to the store with him to buy groceries,” David says during one interview. In another, he says his sister told him that she had been up in Barry’s apartment drinking liquor. Whether Niecey ever smoked crack with Barry, he says, “I don’t know.”
JázMyn Alston, 14, says Niecey was a frequent visitor at Barry’s apartment. “That’s all I see,” she said in an interview on Jan. 28. “I always see her go into his house when it gets dark.”
“I saw [Barry] three weeks ago with Ms. Niecey,” Alston adds.
After several attempts to reach Niecey, Washington City Paper reporter Jason Cherkis left a letter at 2806 last Friday afternoon. Within minutes, Niecey called the City Paper offices and began ranting at the receptionist, Sean McArdle. After McArdle said that the “best thing to do” would be to speak with an editor, Niecey responded, according to McArdle, “ ‘The best thing to do would be to shoot Jason Cherkis.’ ”
Hours before publication, Niecey called again, this time to deny being a crack addict. When asked whether she’d ever used crack, she paused and then threatened legal action against Washington City Paper.
On two occasions in the summer of 2003, Barry needed money fast. So he called up an unlikely patron—one-time enemy and tireless community activist Sandra Seegars. The Ward 8 bomb-thrower and former taxicab commissioner had led a petition drive to recall Barry in 1997, during his last mayoral term. And unlike that of Barry’s former inner circle, Seegars’ power lies not in her financial might but in her flair for delivering colorful rants at community meetings.
“I thought he was joking about the money,” Seegars says. But when she met Barry on the first occasion at a breakfast event, the former mayor-for-life was all business, plucking out a crisp $50 from her wad of bills. “He told me not to tell anybody, which I didn’t,” she recalls. “Then he paid it back.”
Barry attached more urgency to the next $50 loan. This time, Barry rang up Seegars while she was in Baltimore visiting a taxicab company. It was around 1 p.m.
Seegars was surprised to hear from him. But Barry got right down to it, Seegars recalls: “Like I did before, I need to borrow some more money,” said Barry.
Seegars tried to dodge Barry’s request. “I don’t have any money on me,” she told him.
But Barry had the perfect comeback ready: “You have a bank, don’t you?”
Seegars started laughing.
“When you coming back?” Barry asked.
Seegars told Barry that she’d be back home around 3 p.m. “He wanted to meet me at the bank,” she says. “He sounded more desperate.”
Seegars relented and agreed to the plan. As the minutes ticked closer to 3 p.m., Barry called again, wondering where his friend was. “He said, ‘Come by Popeyes at Malcolm X [Avenue],’ ” Seegars explains.
When Seegars pulled up outside the Popeyes, Barry met her at her car. “He sounded like he needed the money at that point,” Seegars says. “I didn’t mind loaning it to him.”
Barry told her that whatever company he was with lost a big contract. “He said his check didn’t come,” Seegars says. “He said he’d give me interest. He didn’t lie.” She adds that Barry paid her back shortly after the rendezvous.
Barry’s tapping a community activist for cash signaled a low point for the man who could once count on big-name power brokers to come to his rescue. When he placed his first call to Seegars, Barry had already followed a well-documented pattern: sincere and sometimes tearful promises that the bad old days are over, followed by an inevitable betrayal.
Last month, Barry’s stint as a very public user-in-recovery entered its 17th year, a stretch marked by a steady winnowing of his once-famous inner circle. Every time Barry stumbles from grace, another layer of people sucked in by his latest redemption story peels off.
The Rev. Willie Wilson, for example, led a caravan that picked Barry up from prison in 1992; in 2004, he endorsed Barry’s main primary opponent. Flamboyant boxing promoter Rock Newman once busied himself with Barry’s road to recovery; now he has little contact with the councilmember. In 2003, longtime Barry confidant developer H.R. Crawford held a get-together to raise money to pay some of Barry’s bills. But Crawford counseled Barry against his 2004 council run.
One big name was primed to head up a new Barry crew in 2004. Just as Barry was plotting a political comeback, local radio phenom Joe Madison moved into Ward 8, bagging his comfortable suburban digs. The “Black Eagle,” a star on WOL-AM and XM Satellite Radio, was ready to lend his cred to a Barry campaign.
At an informal Barry outreach event at Madison’s place in early 2004, the talk-show host told the soon-to-be candidate that he was ready to support a comeback bid. All Madison needed was a promise. “The man sat in my living room. I’m looking at all the candidates, and I’ve got this new home over here,” says Madison. “I said ‘Marion, I’m giving you $250 for the first installment. If everything is OK, you’re clean, there is no controversy, and you assure me that all the stuff in the past is behind you, I’ll max out,’ ” says Madison. “[Barry] told me, ‘You can rest assured that is the case, Joe,’ and he gave me his word.”
Kwame Brown, who was then running for his council position, recalls that the room went quiet when Madison pressed his query. “It was classic Marion,” says Brown. “He was very emphatic when he said, ‘I’m through. I’m done.’ ”
With the promise in hand, Madison lent his money to Barry’s comeback bid and even his considerable presence to the hopeful’s 2004 campaign kickoff. After Madison learned that Barry had tested positive for cocaine during a court-ordered drug test, he says, “It felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach.”
Madison’s tale explains in large part why Barry’s world has collapsed. Says a former Barry staffer: “I think [the inner circle] has completely whittled away like a carver would whittle away the stick. People grow up. People really do have other kinds of serious business matters at hand, and they cannot necessarily be dragged down every six months or so with an association [with Barry]. I think people are preserving their self-interest here.”
Into the void has stepped Chenille Spencer, Barry’s 34-year-old girlfriend. In recent weeks, Spencer has accompanied Barry to a Ward 8 forum for mayoral candidates as well as other events around town. “I usually get introduced to everyone,” says Spencer.
Before last June’s Mike Tyson fight at the MCI Center, former Barry confidant Newman ran into the councilmember and Spencer. “He was strutting,” Newman says of Barry. “ ‘I want you to meet my friend,’ ” Barry told him, Newman recalls. “He had that Marion gleam in his eye,” Newman says.
A more routine outing for the couple is sharing a booth at Player’s, the famous Southeast favorite of political junkies and District employees. Spencer sits quietly over her meal while Barry enjoys his favorite, liver and onions. According to bartender Gerald Smith, Barry’s drink of choice on his dates with Spencer was once Hennessy cognac; last week, he had a Sprite, Smith says.
One Player’s regular remembers Spencer sporting a short mink coat, a short denim skirt, and boots. Not the typical work clothes found among the usuals. “She was bunned up,” the regular says of Spencer. “I would say clingy. She never left his side.”
Her toughest assignment as councilmember arm candy, regulars say, was when she would join Barry onstage while he croaked and mumbled his way through karaoke versions of Lou Rawls and Teddy Pendergrass hits. She would just stand at his side, mike in hand, refusing his pleas to get her to join him for a chorus or two. She says she’s sometimes a little shy.
One recent afternoon, Spencer answers Barry’s phone at his Washington View apartment. When asked about her connection to the councilmember, she echoes the words of his four former wives and dozens of former associates: “I’m very supportive of him, and there are people that are supportive of him,” she says. “I’m loyal to him.”
On Jan. 25 at around 5:30 p.m., Barry stopped in at Seton House, a Northeast drug-treatment facility affiliated with Providence Hospital. He arrived in time for Seton House’s thrice-weekly intensive outpatient treatment program. At around 8:30 p.m., Spencer drove Barry back to her apartment in Washington Highlands.
Spencer says she doesn’t “recall” driving Barry back from Seton House and insists that his visits are something Barry does “on his own.” When asked about other aspects of her relationship with Barry, Spencer replies, “If it’s positive, it’s true.”
James Smith lives next door to Barry on the third floor of his Washington View building at 2654 Douglass Road SE. Sometimes, he says, Barry will call and want him to come over and just sit with him. It amounts to a sort of friendship: Smith watching Barry make dinner, Smith admiring the pictures of Barry on the walls, Smith eating Barry’s candy, Smith catching half a movie on HBO with Barry before cutting out.
Last summer, before a public event, Barry asked Smith to come over. He had a problem. He didn’t know what to wear but eventually settled on borrowing a shirt of Smith’s.
Smith helped out in other ways. When Barry’s old Mercedes wouldn’t run right, he got Smith to take a look under the hood. On one occasion, the Mercedes’ engine wouldn’t start. Smith figured out that his friend had left the dome light on overnight and killed the battery.
Smith usually knew when Barry was arriving home. “You ought to hear him climb the three flights of stairs,” he says. The two would talk a lot about pain management and various medicines. Smith’s wife would stop by Barry’s apartment and make sure he was taking his meds on time—that was her job.
When the two men got together, Barry would complain about the meds and say that they weren’t working. “I think the things he was struggling with the most was his medical conditions,” Smith says. Barry wanted to alleviate the pain.
On a recent empty weekday afternoon, Barry rang up Smith’s cell phone. “He just wanted someone to keep him company because of his situation,” Smith explains. “In his hour of loneliness, he needs some relief. I carried that baggage around with me—Vietnam. I carried that baggage around for a long time. I don’t even tell my wife.”
Smith is feeling guilty about not sitting with Barry that afternoon. He had shared with Barry his own crack-addiction story, including how much clean time he had (five years). “I know when I got locked up, nobody gave a damn,” he says. He had pled his case with a court-appointed lawyer and an empty courtroom behind him. He knew what it was like to go through real pain without family.
When asked if Barry had ever shared his thoughts about drug use, Smith declined to respond in detail, saying that he wanted to “stress [Barry’s] anonymity intact about certain things.”
On the afternoon of Jan. 19, movers carted Barry’s belongings out of his apartment at the View. Smith says he never got a chance to say goodbye.
A source close to Barry says the councilmember needed to make a break. “We thought it would be better for him to be in a different environment. We thought it wasn’t a good place for him for a lot of reasons for a long time,” says the source. “He finally caved to the pressure. It didn’t look right, feel right for him to be there.” CP
Additional reporting by Mike DeBonis, Sarah Godfrey, Ryan Grim, Huan Hsu, and Chris Peterson

2006-02-01T06:16:00.000-05:00

State of the Union Last night I was invited to attend a special screening of the State of the Union at the Old Executive Office building.

This was the president’s finest speech. I was very proud of him. Tell me, what did you think of the speech? There were two special screening rooms last night in the OEOB. I did not see anyone that I knew in my room. I was one of only three African Americans in the room. However, I saw many more African Americans in the building and in the line to get in last night. I can only assume they were in a different room.

2006-01-30T22:04:00.000-05:00

I forgot to post photos from the recent White House holiday party. Here are my mom and I at the White House party. Enjoy!

2006-01-30T09:45:00.000-05:00

A great day in history. Take a look at the below article in today's Washington Post.

Grounds For Serious ReflectionAs African American Museum Site Is Weighed, The Mall Looms Large
By Jacqueline TrescottWashington Post Staff WriterMonday, January 30, 2006; C01

In 1863, Philip Reid, a slave, finished supervising the bronze casting of the statue "Freedom" for the U.S. Capitol. When it was hoisted atop the dome, a 35-gun salute rattled across Capitol Hill.

A hundred years later on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. declared that black citizens should be judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Hundreds of thousands cheered.

The vast ribbon of grass between the majestic Lincoln and the marble Capitol has been a public stage for all Americans, but African American history especially has played out on and around the Mall in scenes that are symbolic, salutary and shameful.

Everywhere on the Mall are echoes of marching feet, slaves' cries, market peddlers' calls, children's laughter and the singing of black men at the Million Man March.

But there never has been a place there to commemorate the African American story. Today, more than 42 years after King's triumphant moment, that history is expected to find a home. The Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution is scheduled to meet this morning to select a site for the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Of the four spots under consideration, two are on the Mall and two are nearby.

Some groups argue that the Mall is too crowded. But others -- including President Bush and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) -- argue that the museum needs to be on the Mall because the place is so central to African American history and because it is impossible to understand American history without understanding the African American experience.

"In the 20th century, the Mall became a magnet for political expression not only for its accommodating space but also the symbolic -- and in the television age -- photogenic backdrop of the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial," says Lonnie G. Bunch, director of the African American museum. "Almost every story you want to tell crosses the Mall, all protests from the right to the left. For African Americans, there's no greater symbol than being in view of the Capitol, the Lincoln Memorial and the White House. It reminds people of America's promise. Not only am I protesting, but I am using your symbols of power as a way to mirror and remind us of what America doesn't do."A Cloaked Past

Some of this history is burned into public consciousness, such as the grand Marian Anderson singing "My country, 'tis of thee" on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1939 after the Daughters of the American Revolution shut their doors to her at Constitution Hall. But much of it is hidden.

Few tourists hear of the pens where slaves were kept on the Capitol grounds or learn about Benjamin Banneker, a self-taught astronomer and mathematician working with Pierre L'Enfant, who designed the city of Washington in 1791.

"The country has always been reluctant to come to grips with the slave part of its history. Washington, more than any other city, has that contradiction," says journalist Charles Cobb, who is writing a tour guide to national civil rights landmarks. "People look at the South with the cotton plantations and sugar plantations and say, yes, slavery.

"But the idea of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison as slaveholders is a much more difficult idea. You don't sit in Lafayette Square and think about the slave auction block."

The slave trade was legal in the District until 1850. According to the late historian Frederic Bancroft, Washington merchants conducted a brisk slave trade that, "although far from being the largest, was the most notorious." The city provided slave buyers and purchasers a good location, between two slaveholding states, Maryland and Virginia, and on a major waterway.
Slave labor helped build the city, including the White House. Records show dozens of slaves worked on the Capitol, and slaves worked at the Aquia Creek quarry in Stafford County, Va., cutting sandstone that was used in the Capitol and the Treasury Building. One account says these slaves generally were given a blanket and some clothing. In most cases, the master retained the money earned through these labors, but some slaves were paid under the table.

To house the slaves, the federal government let owners keep them in local jails for 34 cents a day. Slave owners also used a system of privately owned jails called "Georgia pens."
Along Seventh Street, which cut through the heart of the Mall, the slave trade flourished. Slaves frequently were sold in front of Lloyd's Tavern on the southeast corner of Seventh Street and Pennsylvania Avenue NW, and at the nearby Isaac Beer's Tavern on Seventh. The pen and tavern of Washington Robey stood at Seventh Street SW, between B Street and Maryland Avenue. The private jail of William H. Williams stood across the street in a yellow brick house.
"The slaves didn't stay at the Willard Hotel. They were locked up in these jails at night," says John Whittington Franklin, a program manager at the African American museum office. (His father is the noted historian John Hope Franklin.)

From 1802 to 1931, the huge Center Market at the corner of Seventh Street and Constitution Avenue NW -- where the National Archives now stands -- was where slaves and freed blacks could sell products outside the building. Some beat the odds: Alethia Browning Tanner, a vegetable vendor near the Capitol, saved enough money to buy her own freedom and that of several family members, part of the beginnings of a black middle class.

Tensions between the races were very evident, especially when the immigrant white population and freed blacks vied for jobs.

In 1835 a race riot occurred, beginning at the Epicurean Eating Grill on the north side of Pennsylvania Avenue at Sixth Street NW. Beverly Snow, the owner of the restaurant and a free black, allegedly made remarks about the wives and daughters of men working at the Navy Yard. Whites trashed the restaurant, but Snow escaped. The rioters also destroyed black churches, schools and houses.Giving the Mall Meaning

In his 1791 plan, L'Enfant established the positions of the Capitol and the White House and showed an expanse that generally went from Third Street to 14th Street. He envisioned a 400-foot-wide savanna, lined with trees and important buildings, but the Mall initially evolved into a disorganized range.

Work sheds and shacks stood behind the Smithsonian Castle, which was completed in 1855. During the Civil War, the Mall was used for military drilling and to hold grazing pens for bison. The stench of sewage and slaughtered animals from the Washington Canal (covered today by Constitution Avenue) was so bad that President Abraham Lincoln established a summer retreat up North Capitol Street to get fresher air.

Railroad tracks were set down across the south side of the Mall in the 1870s, connected to a depot where the National Gallery of Art now stands. An African American neighborhood sprang up on land where the National Museum of the American Indian stands. Blacks lived in houses facing the Mall and along nearby alleys. All of the structures on that land were razed in the 1930s.

Things began to change in 1901 when Sen. James McMillan of Michigan formed a commission of distinguished planners to bring order to the Mall. The group extended its boundaries over existing waterways to the edge of the Potomac River and filled in the swampy land that would support the Lincoln and Jefferson memorials.

The grand buildings of today's vista started to arrive at the turn of the 20th century. By the 1930s, much of the land had been cleared of trees and leveled. When temporary office buildings built during World War II were finally removed in the early 1970s, the area looked much like it does today.

Most chronicles of black Washington detail the night life on U Street, the intellectual oasis of Howard University and the sports events at old Griffith Stadium. What is often overlooked is that black life did exist beyond segregated areas, and the Mall was often a respite from those restrictions.

"The Mall was a green space where you could go and have picnics and just sit out and enjoy the weather. Black residents, even in the context of segregation, were claiming the city," says Marya Annette McQuirter, a historian who has written about leisure and the development of black communities.

But even recreation wasn't always pleasant. Instead of opening the Tidal Basin to all swimmers, Congress closed the beach in the 1920s.
There were other troubling moments.

In 1922 the Lincoln Memorial, later a symbol of unity, was dedicated. The tribute to the man who had issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves, was given one of the most prominent locations on the Mall. But the celebration was marred when black participants were roped off in a separate section. Even Robert R. Moton, the president of Tuskegee University, one of the guest speakers, was kept separate from the white crowd.
"He was relegated, along with other distinguished colored people, to an all-Negro section separated by a road from the rest of the audience; and the language of the ill-tempered Marine who herded the 'niggers' into their seats caused well-bred colored people as much indignation as the segregated seating itself," wrote Constance McLaughlin Green in her landmark book, "The Secret City: A History of Race Relations in the Nation's Capital."
Three years later, on Aug. 8, 1925, blacks stood at the corner of Seventh and Pennsylvania NW to watch a Ku Klux Klan march.

But the notion of the Mall as a special place for blacks took root. The following year, on Aug. 6, members of the A.M.E. Zion Church -- 2,000 strong -- stood at the west end of the Mall, holding what many describe as the first civil rights rally. From that time, the Mall and marches became intertwined.

By the next decade, the uses of the Mall became more defined for organizers. "With the building of the Lincoln Memorial, blacks and everyone else began to be focused on the Mall. In the 1930s, when the Mall was cleared, it became more of a national space," says Lucy Barber, a historian at the National Archives. Veterans of World War I, including blacks, camped out on the Capitol grounds and marched down Pennsylvania Avenue demanding back pay during the Bonus Army March in 1932. Their shantytowns were burned by the U.S. Army.

At Anderson's concert in 1939, 75,000 people -- black and white -- showed up dressed in their Sunday best to hear the African American singer. "This was a concert, but it was an early interracial protest against discrimination, and that discrimination was symbolized by the DAR," says Bunch, the museum director.

A. Philip Randolph, the founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, was one of the first black leaders to understand that the Mall's location and a powerful message could help break down segregation. His union was a powerful organizing force in the black community, and in 1941 he planned a march to demand the government stop employment discrimination.

"The organizers were savvy about how they imagined they could use the Capitol and assemble at the Lincoln Memorial," Barber said. "In a way, African Americans played a crucial role in seeing the Mall's potential and taking a space in the center of the city and making it a place for protest. The 1941 plan was an act of political imagination."

The Randolph march was canceled in June 1941 after President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered an end to discrimination in federal agencies and at defense plants, but the blueprint for a mass rally on the Mall was set. In 1947, a prayer session, as part of an NAACP convention, was held at the Lincoln Memorial, with President Harry S. Truman participating. Ten years later, Randolph organized a prayer pilgrimage, attended by 20,000 people and featuring an address by King.

The 1963 march, capped by King's "I Have a Dream" speech, sealed the Mall's identity as a nexus of political protest.

In the aftermath of King's death, his followers tried to carry on one of his goals -- to mount a Poor People's Campaign on 15 acres in West Potomac Park, southeast of the Lincoln Memorial. In May and June 1968, thousands erected a "Resurrection City" of temporary houses, struggling through the mud and rain to proclaim the need for economic equality. The "city" was dismantled after six weeks, its leaders taking credit for some minor concessions.

The Mall became a destination for other rallies and protests, including the Vietnam War Moratoriums in 1969 and 1971, annual gatherings of advocates for and against legalized abortion, and the 1987 display of the massive quilt made in memory of those who had died from AIDS.

From 1971 to 1975, a musical event called Human Kindness Day was organized to mark racial solidarity. Held near the Washington Monument, Kindness Day attracted 200,000 in 1975, but violence on that day led to its cancellation.

On the 20th anniversary of the 1963 march, about 750,000 people came to the Mall to mark that event and complain that a King holiday was long overdue. Legislation creating the holiday was signed into law by President Ronald Reagan later that year. Now, carved into the steps of the Lincoln Memorial where King stood in 1963 are words commemorating that first March on Washington. Also, a parcel of land near the Mall has been promised for an official King memorial.
And in 1995, a huge television audience saw hundreds of thousands participate in the Million Man March.

The Mall continues to be a place of festivals, concerts and Fourth of July fireworks. But today, in large part because of the civil rights movement, it has become a symbol of free debate, serving as a national megaphone.

"Even people who are critical of America chose the Mall to say we are Americans, too," Bunch
says.

The question now is whether the Smithsonian will make room on the 21st-century Mall for a museum that would unavoidably have to tell the history, hidden and celebrated, of the Mall's 19th and 20th centuries.

2006-01-29T21:56:00.000-05:00

Great article!

Help Find the Super High Schools
By Jay MathewsWashington Post Staff WriterTuesday, January 24, 2006; 12:00 PM

During the eight years I have been identifying the most challenging public high schools for The Washington Post and Newsweek magazine, readers have asked one question far more than any other. Why, they say, isn't my school, one of the most selective public magnet high schools in the country, on the list?

My answer has been that although public schools that admit only students with the best grades and test scores, such as Thomas Jefferson in Fairfax County, Virginia, or Stuyvesant in New York City or the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora, Ill., or Lowell in San Francisco, are terrific, they are too good for my list.

I designed the Challenge Index, which ranks schools by student participation in college level tests, to show which schools had learned the lesson taught me by some of the nation's best Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate teachers. They let me watch their classes in action and persuaded me that even average kids can handle college-level courses and tests and should be encouraged to do so.

If your school has no, or very few, average students, then there is no way for it to demonstrate how open it would be to letting them take AP or IB courses and tests. Those three- to five-hour exams written and graded by outside experts, if done well, correlate with higher college graduation rates, no matter if you were an A student in high school or not. But most American high schools discourage average students from even attempting to take these courses and tests, and it is that reluctance to challenge students that I wished to explore with the list.

Few of the students, teachers or parents associated with the most selective public high schools seem very satisfied with my answer. They often say something like: But doesn't our school deserve some attention too, since you admit it is so good?

They are, of course, right about that. So with your help I am going to attempt to give them the attention they deserve, and at the same time improve the way I have been deciding which magnet schools should be kept off the Challenge Index list.

The Washington Post has set up a new e-mail address, challenge@washpost.com, for me to receive data and insights you have on this issue. It took me weeks to get through the overload of e-mails after the most recent Newsweek and Washington Post Challenge Index lists, so I thought a separate mailbox was in order. I welcome your input, particularly if you have first-hand information to impart.

I am putting in this column my list of the most selective public high schools in the country. I discussed many of them in my 1998 book, "Class Struggle," which introduced the Challenge Index, but I suspect some new ones have opened since, and I would like to hear about them too.

In each case, I am in search of, from school officials or anyone who knows these schools well: the school's address, fax number, total enrollment, admissions criteria, average SAT and ACT scores for the class of 2005, number of AP or IB grades reported in 2005, number of June graduates in 2005, Equity and Excellence percentage for the class of 2005, percentage of students qualifying for free and reduced-price lunch and, most importantly, what you consider the school's strengths and weaknesses. I want to know what you most like about the school, and what you think it adds to public education in your area, and in the country.

So far I cannot think of any sensible way to rank such schools, but I will check the information you send me and try to produce a guide to these schools. I will try to contact magnet schools that do not respond to this appeal and offer them a chance to tell me about themselves.

Here is my current list of selective magnets. The asterisks denote the ones that have NOT been excluded from the Challenge Index list:

Academic Magnet, North Charleston, S.C.
Baltimore Polytechnic Institute
Banneker Academic, Washington, D.C. *
Benjamin Franklin, New Orleans
Boston Latin, Boston
Bronx High School of Science, New York
Brooklyn Technical, New York
City College, Baltimore*
City Honors, Buffalo
Center for Advanced Technologies, St. Petersburg, Fla.
Maggie L. Walker Governor's School for Government and International Studies, Richmond
Hume-Fogg Academic, Nashville
Hunter College, New York
Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, Aurora, Ill.
Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics and Humanities, Muncie, Ind.
Jefferson County International Baccalaureate, Irondale, Ala.*
Lincoln Park, Chicago*
Louisiana School for Math, Science and the Arts, Natchitoches, La.
Lowell, San Francisco
Martin Luther King Jr. Magnet, Nashville
McNair Academic, Jersey City, N.J.*
Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science, Columbus, Miss.
North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, Durham, N.C.
Oklahoma School of Science and Math, Oklahoma City, Okla.
Pine View, Osprey, Fla.
Science and Engineering Magnet, Dallas*
South Carolina Governor's School for Science and Math, Hartsville. S.C.
Staten Island Technical, New York
Stuyvesant, New York
Suncoast Community, Riviera Beach, Fla.
Talented and Gifted Magnet, Dallas
Texas Academy of Math and Science, Denton, Tex.
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, Fairfax County, Va.
Troy, Fullerton, Calif.*
University, Tucson
Walnut Hills, Cincinnati
Whitney, Cerritos, Calif.
Whitney M. Young Magnet, Chicago

The Newsweek editors and I decided to put some of these schools on the Challenge Index list because they did not appear to violate our rule of admitting no more than half of their students based on competitive grades and test scores. Yet this turned out to be, at least to my mind, a very subjective standard, and I have been looking for a clearer and fairer way to decide which schools have too few average students.

Here is my latest idea, for which I also need your help. I cringe at the idea of rating high schools by their average SAT and ACT scores. Those test results correlate closely with family income, and measure not how good the school is but how good the students are because they have affluent families that have exposed them to books and conversation and the arts and other academic advantages. But in deciding which magnet schools to allow on the Challenge Index list,

I think SAT and ACT averages might be useful.

Any public high school that has no more than half of its students selected by grades and test scores and has at least as many AP or IB tests as it has graduating seniors is placed the Newsweek list of the nation's most challenging schools. Those schools, I think, have enough average students to merit inclusion. But some of them, I have discovered, are in such affluent areas that their average SAT or ACT scores are higher than those of some of the magnet schools
I have kept off the list for being too selective.

Thomas Jefferson is the only public high school I have kept off The Washington Post's local Challenge Index list, and I don't think there is a school in the country, magnet or not, that matches its intimidating average SAT score of 1480. But another magnet school, Banneker in the District, I put on the list because its average SAT score was only 1076, lower than the SAT averages of several non-magnet schools in the Washington suburbs. Lowell in San Francisco, whose alumni have been among the most persistent in questioning its absence from the list, was reported to have an SAT average of 1236 in one Internet posting. That is very good, but below that of at least a few non-magnet schools on the list.

The new rule I am thinking of proposing to my editors at Newsweek is to add to the list any previously excluded magnet schools whose average SAT or ACT scores are no higher than the highest SAT or ACT average for any non-magnet public school in the country. The ACT said its highest average for a non-magnet school with significant numbers of ACT test takers is 26.8 out of 36 points, the rough equivalent of 1200 out of 1600 on the SAT in 2005, the last year before the SAT switched to its new three part test with a top score of 2400.
Getting the top non-magnet school average for the SAT, however, is not going to be so easy. The ACT people said they could honor their agreement not to share individual school data by not telling me which school had that 26.8 average. (I have since found a school, New Trier in Winnetka, Ill., which has that exact ACT average.) But the College Board, which owns the SAT, declined to tell me what their highest non-magnet school average was, much less name the school.

I have begun my own search for the highest regular school SAT in America. I invite you to join me. So far, the highest I have found is 1283, at Saratoga High School in Saratoga, Calif., Steven Spielberg's alma mater. I have visited this fine public school in the heart of Silicon Valley. It has many affluent and education-oriented families, and its high average is not entirely unexpected. The second highest average I have found so far is 1275 at Scarsdale High School in Westchester County, N.Y., where I once lived. It claims Aaron Sorkin, creator of "The West Wing" on NBC, among its famous graduates, and it is sort of like Saratoga, but with snow and lots of Yankee fans.

So far I haven't found many other normal enrollment high schools that come very close to those two. The highest non-magnet school average in the Washington area is 1267, at Whitman High School in Bethesda, part of the Montgomery County school system. Most of the other schools I have looked at around the country are in the low 1200s. (The ranks of the schools just mentioned on the national Challenge Index list are Whitman 108, Saratoga 204, Scarsdale 210 and New Trier 295.)

If you are a school guidance head with the numbers at your finger tips, or find an SAT or ACT report on your local high school's Web site, send any average scores for the class of 2005 that are at least 1250 on the SAT or 28 on the ACT to challenge@washpost.com. I will check out what you send me, and try to sort out the status of our nation's most selective public schools, and our highest SAT or ACT scorers, in a future column.

2006-01-27T08:38:00.000-05:00

Upcoming event at AEI. Anyone that knows me or has spoken to me understands my commitment and passion for urban issues. The challenge of our nation's public schools is foremost in my heart and political activism. Check out this upcoming event!

BOOK FORUM
Tough Love for Schools:
Essays on Competition, Accountability, and Excellence

Tuesday, January 31, 2006, 9:30–11:00 a.m.
Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI
1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036

In K-12 education, it’s difficult to find stakeholders who will declare that poor schools should be closed and ineffective teachers should be fired; that teaching experience is not essential to being a school principal; that schools should be more cost-efficient; or that profit-driven competition might be good for public education. These are the kinds of unconventional ideas that Frederick M. Hess puts forth in his new book, Tough Love for Schools: Essays on Competition, Accountability, and Excellence (AEI Press, January 2006). This volume rejects the notion that loving schools means apologizing for them and argues that “tough love” requires demanding more, not less, of the people and institutions we cherish.

Please join author Frederick Hess as he explores the practical and political challenges of accountability, competition, excellence, and the public good. Joining him in the discussion will be panelists James Donnelly, winner of the 2004 National Principal of the Year award; Jason Kamras, winner of the 2005–2006 National Teacher of the Year award; and Joe Williams, author of Cheating Our Kids: How Politics and Greed Ruin Education (Palgrave MacMillan, 2005).

9:15 a.m.
Registration and Breakfast

9:30
Presentation: FREDERICK M. HESS, AEI

Discussants: JAMES DONNELLY, 2004 National Principal of the Year
JASON KAMRAS, 2005–2006 National Teacher of the Year
JOE WILLIAMS, author of Cheating Our Kids

11:00
Adjournment

_______________________________________________

Please register online at www.aei.org/event1239.

Shortly after the event occurs, a video webcast will be available on the AEI website at www.aei.org/eventvideos.

For more information, please contact Morgan Goatley at 202.828.6031 or mgoatley@aei.org.
For media inquiries, please contact Veronique Rodman at vrodman@aei.org.

2006-01-26T12:52:00.000-05:00

Kids driven to kill by song?

Popular Song Being Blamed For Teen's Death
Experts: Song Incites Potentially Dangerous Actions
A popular song among teens is being blamed for the recent death of a high school football player.
The song is titled "Knuck If You Buck." It was recorded by a group of Atlanta high school kids who call themselves "Crime Mob."
Most kids just dance to the song, but some claim that others sometimes react to it.
Baron Braswell II was stabbed to death at a teen hotel party in Spotsylvania County. Witnesses said that when the song began playing, the trouble started.
Some young people said what happened at the hotel is not uncommon when the song "Knuck If You Buck" is played.
"Yeah, they get violent. Something breaks out and somebody gets stabbed, shot, something," said a teen who wanted to remain anonymous.
For many, "knuck if you buck" means punch or swing as hard as you can.
Lisa Fager is with a think tank called Industry Ears that follows the music industry.
"When you take that and put it on young people who don't have the skills sometimes of determining what is reality and what is not, you're going to get this type of reaction," said Fager. "It hypes you up, certain music, so this particular song that you're talking about, it gets you all excited. Even in the song lyrics it talks about swinging on people and people get overly excited. And, the song talks about beating and stomping people. So, what do you expect?"
The following is a sample of the lyrics:
"Yeah we knuckin' and buckin' and ready to fight..I betcha I'm a throw dem thangs...So haters best to think twiceSee me I ain't nothin' niceAnd crime mob, it ain't no stoppin'They be like Saddam, Hitler and Osama Bin Laden."
Experts said although, "Knuck If You Buck" is just another song, sometimes it's more than just music.

2006-01-16T20:38:00.000-05:00

Forgive me for being away for so long! I took some time off to try and start my business and get it off the ground. I have worked long hours, talked to thousands of people, and made lots of phone calls! Even though I have been working 14 hour days on average for the past eighteen months. I have to admit -- I love being a business owner!

2004-09-15T09:07:00.000-05:00

First Black Jurist to Head TX Supreme Court
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/state/9659133.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

First black jurist tapped to lead state's high courtWallace Jefferson won two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court By John Moritz Star-Telegram Austin Bureau
AUSTIN - Gov. Rick Perry today will name the great-great-great-grandson of a slave as chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, making the jurist the first black to preside over the state's highest civil court, sources said Monday.
Perry will name Wallace Jefferson, 41, to lead the court in a formal announcement in San Antonio, where Jefferson lived and practiced law before Perry appointed him to the court as an associate justice in 2001. Jefferson was elected to the court as a Republican in his own right in 2002.
Neither Perry's nor Jefferson's office would comment on the selection until today's announcement, but three sources influential in Texas Republican Party circles confirmed that Jefferson has been tapped to replace former Chief Justice Tom Phillips, who resigned this month to become a professor at the South Texas College of Law in Houston.
The sources requested anonymity because they did not want to upstage the governor's announcement.
The appointment is subject to confirmation by the Texas Senate, but Jefferson will be allowed to preside over the nine-member court until the Legislature reconvenes in January. He easily won confirmation when Perry first named him to the court 3 1/2 years ago.
"Wallace Jefferson is an excellent choice," one of the sources said. "He will be the only chief justice in the state's history who has argued and won two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. That's a high honor, because most lawyers never get even one chance to appear before the Supreme Court."
In a 1998 U.S. Supreme Court case, Jefferson successfully defended the Lago Vista school district in a sexual harassment suit over a teacher who had initiated a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old student. The high court was swayed by Jefferson's argument that because the Austin-area school district had not been notified of the relationship, it shouldn't be held liable for damages.
An article published in Texas Lawyer in 1998 said Jefferson "did the best job that day of arguing on his feet. He spoke confidently and without hesitation, rarely if ever running into trouble with questions."
Jefferson, who is also the first black to serve as a Texas Supreme Court associate justice, can trace his ancestry back to Waco in the 1860s, when his great-great-great-grandfather was owned as a slave by a judge in McLennan County.
Born in Tacoma, Wash., Jefferson earned a bachelor's degree from Michigan State University in 1985 and earned his law degree in 1988 from the University of Texas School of Law.
In San Antonio, Jefferson was once director of the city's Young Lawyers Association and also treasurer of the San Antonio Black Lawyers Association. Before joining the court he was a partner in the San Antonio firm of Crofts, Callaway & Jefferson and before that worked for Groce, Locke & Hebdon.
Louis Sturns, the state's first black criminal appeals court judge, said in a 2001 interview that Jefferson has an "outstanding reputation" and has done a lot of work for the state bar's continuing education programs.
"I think it's real important that we have a judiciary that reflects our population," Sturns said at the time. "I think Governor Perry recognized that. It should have been done some time ago."
John Moritz, (512) 476-4294 jmoritz@star-telegram.com

2004-09-07T11:01:00.000-05:00

What Bush means to African-Americans Star Parker
September 7, 2004
Republican and Democratic party national conventions are always a mix of content and choreography. The relative mix of both tells us the shape that a party is in. Quality content with fitting form is the sign of a healthy party. A party in bad shape will have mostly form (choreographers are easy to hire) to deflect attention from an absence of ideas and content.
A few short weeks have passed since the conclusion of the Democratic convention. Can anyone recall what he or she heard from John Kerry and John Edwards? Does anyone have a clue what specifically they have in mind for our nation? I'm trying to avoid being partisan here, but I would like anyone to tell me one creative new idea he or she heard during the four days that the Dems met in Boston.
This week's Republican convention was a refreshing contrast. Whether or not you agree with George W. Bush's take on the world, the week in New York left little doubt what this man is about.
I walked away from a week in New York with a clear sense that Bush is about a strong and unapologetic U.S. stance around the world and a society at home emphasizing an increasing role of American citizen in controlling all aspects of their lives.
The choreography of the Republican convention was also interesting to note. As unapologetic as the Republicans came off regarding what they believe, they were equally unflinching in having this message delivered uniformly by tough white men - John McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Rudolph Giuliani, Zell Miller.
Gone was the usual attempt to showcase the big tent. Where was the usual high-profile trotting out of the blacks, the Latinos and the women?
Recall that in 2000 Republicans were falling over themselves to show the nation that the Bush administration had given blacks lofty positions of unprecedented influence.
It was almost as if the Bush administration was saying this time around: "We've got important business to do here and not a lot of time to get it done. The focus needs to be on getting our message across as clearly and forcefully as possible. There isn't time here for the usual political affirmative action games."
As a black woman, am I offended by this?
Absolutely not. On the contrary, when I am looking for someone to give me tax advice, guidance on how to invest my money or ideas on how to manage my organization, I'm looking for content, not form. The marketplace is too unforgiving, and the rewards too attractive, to look for anyone other than those who will provide the best information and advice. Why should the criteria be any different in choosing those who will run my government?
Furthermore, I want blacks to be as in-your-face back to the Republican Party as Bush is to the nation and the world. Ownership and choice are far more critical for blacks than for rich white men.
I am thrilled that Bush is showing the imagination and leadership to put Social Security in play and open the door for personal accounts. But, back to the choreography and content trade-off, blacks need a minimum of the former and a maximum of the latter. I cannot think of one reason why any African-American earning $30,000 a year should be forced to continue putting one dime of hard-earned income into a retirement regime that does not involve ownership and market returns. Social Security provides neither and we want out, as soon as possible. We want returns on our hard-earned money, and we want to own and control what we work for.
No Child Left Behind and standards and testing sound great. But as long as our school system remains a government monopoly, where competition and alternatives cannot drive quality and excellence, there is only so much we can expect. And again, blacks have more at stake here than rich white folks who have the resources to buy alternatives. Even a miraculous revival of the black family in our nation's inner cities will not justify forcing the kids of these families to attend politically correct government schools.
Modest-income blacks need a market-driven health-care market. Health Savings Accounts and similar innovative ideas are crucial for poor people. Let's get employers out of the healt-care business for employees and open a real and dynamic market for personal health care that will force insurance companies to innovate and allow working men and woman of limited resources to buy health care that fits their needs and their pocketbooks.
I congratulate the president for bold and creative leadership and for emphasizing content over form. I want to encourage him to be even bolder.
It is not enough for government to allow African-Americans to put a toe into the pool of ownership and choice. We need government to get out of the way and let us dive in.
Star Parker is president of the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education and author of the newly released book 'Uncle Sam's Plantation.'
©2004 Star Parker

2004-09-05T07:53:00.000-05:00

Convention Diary!

Friends! Forgive me for not posting as often as I should, however, I am very busy trying to run a small business. Yes! I am one of the many small business owners in the US that are a vital part of our US economy. I wish there were more hours in a day! Unfortunately blogging falls to the back burner very often. (I need a few good interns!)

Now on to my convention report and activities. I think all of you will enjoy my trip to NYC.

Sunday August 29th 2004
I RSVPd to an event at Gracie Mansion to meet "Hizzonner" Mayor Michael Bloomberg from 12:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. on Sunday, however, I got to NYC late and decided to just hang out in the hotel and head up to Harlem later in the day for the CORE (Congress for Racial Equality) party.

2:00 p.m. - Ran over to the DC delegations meeting to receive credentials and important materials. All of us were given a lovely large bottle of catsup so we would not use Heinz ketchup during our visit to NYC. (Since all of the restaurants in NYC serve Heinz catsup.)

CORE Party - Museum of Harlem
What a great party. This party was my first introduction to Roy and Niger Innis. What an amazing organization! Great venue for the many black Republicans that were in NYC for the convention. I met Don King! I met several black Republicans from Harlem (yes, they do exist) and from other parts of the country. Several congressional members and Lt. Governor Michael Steele attended the event.

After the party, I went to dinner and back to my hotel.

Monday August 30th 2004
I began my day by attending a breakfast at the hotel of the DC delegation, with Democratic mayor Anthony Williams. A great breakfast in which DC Mayor Tony Williams applauded the works of the DC delegation.

I missed the W Stands for Women luncheon. I RSVPd late and the event was full. There was also a tea for Mrs. Pataki at The Plaza. I got there late as well. Walking around NYC is so much fun, you tend to take your time and enjoy the sites.

Monday early evening - BAMPAC party
Alvin Williams held a extremely successful party for his organization BAMPAC. The standing room only event was highlighted by a visit from Sen. George Allen, Michael Steele. Sec of Housing and Urban Development, Alphonso Jackson and many other dignitaries. I had a wonderful time! Also we were privileged to have a surprise visit from IL Senate candidate, Alan Keyes, who addressed the packed house about his vision for IL.

Americans for Tax Reform Party - After leaving the BAMPAC party where I hooked up with the wonderful and dynamic Star Parker. (I just love her!) I headed over to the NY Yacht Club for a party hosted by Americans for Tax Reform. The Manhattans were flowing, the feast was open and the bar was friendly to all. I met Senators, Congressman, and my first reporter of the convention. (Upon leaving NYC on Thursday a.m. I have completed 5 media interviews.)

Yes! Every reporter I met during convention asked the same question. "Are you really a black republican?"

Monday evening - I headed over to Madison Square Garden to listen to Sen. John McCain deliver his speech. I got lost in MSG and ended up in the press area. I was trying to find Radio One (black talk show network) in order to let them know that I was there and wanted to do press interviews if they needed to speak to Black Republicans. However, I could not find them.

Late Monday evening - GMAC Party (Travis Tritt)
After leaving, MSG I went accross the street to the GMAC party to listen to the sounds of Travis Tritt and enjoy the food, dance, and merriment. Some of the food was very foreign to me. The menu was Texan favorites. There was a strange tasting punch that was served. Too different for me. Also lots of salsa's, chili's, and three different cold soups. I grew up on the East Coast so some of the Texan food was a bit too different. However, the drinks and desserts were fine! They even had a sushi bar!

Finally around 1:00 a.m. I made it back to my hotel. When I arrived the Gaming Association was hosting a party. I decided I was partied out and went to bed!

Tuesday August 31st 2004
Early a.m. - I tried to wake up early to attend a breakfast. However, I slept in and did my first interview with a reporter from Harper's magazine. I was very honored the reporter told me that he was interviewing two people during convention, little old me, and Rev. Jerry Fallwell. Interesting mix don't you think?

To help further my business on Tuesday, I took a potential NY client to lunch in Times Square. At the restaurant I met a few extremely handsome Secret Service guys, and enjoyed the good food and life in NYC. My client would not let my pay for lunch so my trip to NYC was turning out to be extremely inexpensive. :)

Early p.m. - I started my evening at the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Federal Home Loan Bank party at Rockefeller Center. Great party, with an excellent band and theme. The party featured different billiard games and other fun things to do. I had a great time and met a few delegates from FL.

After leaving that party, I went over to the convention center to hear Michael Steele and Arnold's speeches! My seat on Tuesday was in the press box. So I was the only one standing, cheering, yelling "that's right brother" and generally having a good time. So you can imagine how popular I become in the press box. All of the sudden reporters from all over the country wanted to sit next to me and ask me questions. Of course, each interview began with the same question. "Are you really a black republican?"

As many of you have heard the protestors were very vocal and aggressive on Tuesday. The NYC police did not want convention goers to walk around the perimeter outside of MSG. So I decided to take the shuttle bus home. We were escorted by NYC's finest. It was very exciting. On the bus, I met a few folks from the Bush Cheney re-election team.

Decided to head home and not hit any late night parties.

Wednesday September 1st 2004
GOPAC Prayer Breakfast
JC Watts and the GOPAC team did an excellent job! An amazing prayer breakfast that saluted the LT. Governor's of the US. The attendees were privileged to have the Rev. Donnie McClurkin minister to us with his voice. GOD was in the room and my day began with prayer and peace.

Afternoon - Shopping!

Bush Cheney - African American meeting
The Bush Cheney re-election team held a meeting for black republicans at the Waldorf Astoria! The meeting was packed. Standing room only. I met candidates from all over the country. Several elected leaders. There are especially a lot of leaders in Iowa and places you would never expect to find black's, let alone black republicans.

JC Watts made a wonderful statement, that in a few years, we will so more black republicans in office. The grassroots efforts are moving forward and it is not a "strange site" to see or hear of black republicans running for office on the local level.

Evening - Stayed in the hotel and watched Zell Miller's speech!

Late Evening
Nextel Party - Diversity in Government
I started my evening at the Nextel party watching the convention. I sat with other black republicans watching the Vice President's speech. Great job! Several members of the FL delegation were in attendance. We spoke about the hurricane. Some of the members told me that they would be heading home soon to assist with the preparation for Hurricane Frances.

The Nextel party was amazing. Joe Sample and Lela Hathaway performed for the standing room only crowd!

Kid Rock - RIAA
After leaving the Nextel party, I went down to Chelsea to try to get into the Kid Rock party. When I got to the venue, the line was around the corner. There were a lot of girls there anxious to get in to see Kid Rock. (It was 1:00 a.m.) So I hung out in line for a few minutes and decided I did not want to wait an hour to get in to a party. I haven't done that since college and am too old to do it now.

Cipriani's - Rudy Guiliani event - Drove by in my cab. Seemed to be ending!

MD Party - Michael Steele event
Around 1:30 a.m. I hit the party for Lt. Governor Michael Steele at Jay Z's 40/40 club. Several 40/40 club regulars attended this party. They had no idea, that a bunch of republicans had taken over the venue. The DJ was playing hip hop and R& B and the diverse crowd enjoyed the sounds and hit the dance floor. The Lt. Governor gave me his card and told me to call his office regarding minority business. (Yes!)

Got home around 4:30 a.m and decided that I was going to head back home to DC the next morning.

Thursday September 2nd 2004

Woke up at 8:30 a.m. Ouch! My head really hurts!

Packed, check out of my hotel and caught the 10:30 train back to DC. The train was full and had very few seats on board.

I got home to my house around 2:00 p.m. and was fast asleep in my bed at 3:00 p.m.

Thursday night I sat on my couch in the tv room and watched George W. Bush give the speech of his life! What a great moment!

Well these were the highlights of my trip to NYC. I did not attend 1/3 of all the events I was supposed to attend. I missed the Log Cabin Republicans party on Sunday. Also several receptions and luncheons. Too much to do and too little time!

Next week - Congressional Black Caucus weekend! Breakfast at the Old Executive Office Building!

2004-08-24T07:40:00.000-05:00

Obama! Obama! Obama!

Many of my conservative friends are surprised to find out that I am supporting Obama! I do like and admire Alan Keyes. In my opinion the race is one of two men that I greatly admire.

However, Obama is the candidate I am supporting. Here is a snippet of an article from Africana.com

OBAMA'S POST-BLACK POLITICS: The Republican Party's selection of Maryland-native Alan Keyes to run for Illinois' open U.S. Senate seat is historic news, writes Africana.com's Siddhartha Mitter, but no media outlet has picked up on the real meat of the story: the generational change. If Illinois voters elect state Sen. Barack Obama, who enjoys an overwhelming lead in the polls, he will be the youngest U.S. Senator and one of the first from outside the Baby Boom. Keyes, 54, is of the old school. Growing up during the civil-rights movement, the conservative Republican's ideology -- "the bootstrappism that opposes affirmative action, the explicit religiosity that denies the separation of church and state" -- harks back to Booker T. Washington, Mitter argues. At 43, Obama came of age during the Reagan administration, developing his political beliefs during a time of deep economic inequalities and the abandonment of inner cities, Mitter says. The son of a black African father and a white Kansan mother, Obama represents "a new generation ascending to power, among whom racial mixing (black, white, other) is increasingly common; a generation of shades of brown." It's a sort of post-identity politics that takes more than race in consideration. The concept is a work in progress, but as Mitter writes, "Its emergence on the national scene is long overdue."

2004-08-20T11:45:00.000-05:00

New York Sun
August 17, 2003
A Look Inside CORE
ALICIA COLON acolon@nysun.com The headquarters of the Congress of Racial Equality, located on 12th Street and Broadway, looks like a typical nonprofit organization, or at least what one should look like. There is no fancy furniture in the waiting area or expensive artwork on the wall. Instead, simple bulletin boards list upcoming events and the office is a beehive of activity with workers walking in and out of the multiple offices, carrying faxes and other paperwork.The sound of phones ringing is muted but constant. Friday was a hot and humid day and I was caught in a rain shower before my scheduled meeting with the Roy Innis, the chairman of CORE, and Niger Innis, his son and CORE’s national spokesman. The low-rent, casual environment was a blessing for this bedraggled writer waiting to meet two of New York City’s most respected members of the black community. Last month the headlines in most of the mainstream press declared, “Bush snubs the NAACP convention.” The resultant ballyhoo was a delight to Senator Kerry’s campaign.Mr.Kerry admonished President Bush for his snub, saying,“When you are president, you need to talk to all the people.” One would almost think the NAACP was the only conduit to the black community. CORE has always had easy access to Mr. Bush, but its notable achievements do not get the recognition it deserves. CORE has a network of local affiliates and chapters across America,parts of Africa, Central America, and the Caribbean. Roy Innis has led delegations to monitor elections in Nigeria and was very involved in the 2000 peace talks between the Arab government leaders and the African rebels in the Sudan. Roy Innis, who recently met with Mr.Bush in Washington,said,“The president is very much engaged in what is happening in the Sudan.” CORE is essentially a nonpartisan organization. Roy Innis is a registered Democrat who ran against David Dinkins in the 1993 primary. Many of CORE’s programs center on assisting the neediest in communities regardless of race. Project Independence is a unique “welfare to work” job-training program. Its “Fear to Freedom “program offers an immigration crisis and counseling center. CORE also assists the victims and witnesses of violent crime and helps ex-offenders become productive citizens. Niger Innis said, “The majority of the black community supports school vouchers, opposes gay marriage, and has strong religious and family values. Those concerns are best being addressed at this moment by the Republicans.” In an essay for Afrocentric News, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, author of “ Crisis in Black and Black,” wrote: “The sad truth is that blacks have narrowed their political options down to essentially one: the Democratic Party.The result: many black leaders have cradled even more cozily into the Democratic Party and pared their demands down to more party appointments and political offices. Some black leaders have become even more mainstream and less responsive to the neediest, and most dispossessed in black communities.” I asked Niger Innis to explain the main difference between the NAACP and CORE. He answered, “Sadly, the NAACP leadership is serving the interests of its sponsors rather than the interests of black people, and that is a disservice to the country. I happen to be a registered Republican, but I would never let my partisan interests come before the interests of the black community.” Niger Innis also noted that many NAACP chapters he visits throughout the country surprisingly do not share the same views of the national organization. With the GOP convention coming to New York, CORE is making sure the black community has the eye and ear of the Republicans. It has invited the Republican convention delegates to a gala reception August 29 remembering historic Civil Rights milestones — the 1964 assassination of civil rights workers Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner; the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the Supreme Court’s 1954 decision in Brown v. Board of Education. It will be held at the Museum of the City Of New York. Two days later, CORE will co-sponsor a special function for Republican dignitaries at Gotham Hall, where Ronald Reagan’s son, Michael Reagan, will be the host. As the national spokesman for CORE, Niger Innis is a familiar face on the TV screen and is frequently asked to comment on current issues. He blames the hip-hop culture for promoting the worst manifestations of the black community as acceptable behavior. While debating rap mogul Russell Simmons on the “American Black Forum” program, he issued him a challenge to argue the merits, if any, of hiphop while also promoting a voter registration drive for youth. Mr. Simmons has declined the offer. Frequently, Hispanics and blacks who espouse conservative values are denigrated as puppets of the white man. We are called “oreos” or “coconuts” by those who believe those values are the exclusive property of whites. Niger Innis has had that insult hurled at him, but it’s the least of his worries. “What I fear…the trepidation I feel, is that we are returning to the segregated society of the ’40s. We are voluntarily separating ourselves into isolated little groups of race, religion and gender. ”

2004-08-16T11:31:00.000-05:00

Blogger Be Ware! Not too long ago, in the early spring I remember getting an email from a good friend who worked for an elected official. The email read:

Be careful what you blog on the net. People do read. Poor Sen Dewine. Some girl has been blogging all day at the office, talking about sex with men. It is going to be a long day at Sen. Dewine's office.

Now I do assume that people whom aren't friends or internet acquaintances read my blog? Of course not. Much like young unsuspecting Jessica Cutler. I blog for myself and a few friends. I don't suspect that everyone is reading my blog. Of course, I don't blog about my sex life. I most certainly would not be reporting on my exploits. I relate to Jessica. I can remember the college years, when discussing size, stamina, and other intimate details of your sex life with your girlfriends was cool. My girlfriends and I grew out of that quickly around senior year. As a woman I do feel for young Jessica. She was bragging to her friends. Receiving $400 per tryst from a wealthy Georgetown lawyer. She was young, sexy, hip and cool. What an exciting life she was living!!!! (I hope she has taken an AIDS test.) Of course she only made $20,000 per year. Who could live on so little money??? Well the #1 article on the Washington Post's most read articles is none other than little Jessica Cutler's article about her experiences. She has signed a six figure book deal and posed for Playboy. Not bad for a 20 something that was bored and blogged about her life to her friends. Since it was easier to tell all of them at the same time, as opposed to tellinhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54736-2004Aug10.html?nav=most_emailedg the same story over and over. I wonder if Jessica has heard about email, there is a great tool on email known simple as cc:?????? Enough fun for one day! Here is the link:

2004-08-10T10:27:00.000-05:00

Alan Keyes? Carpetbagger or Saviour of the IL Republican Party?

Alan, Alan, Alan, Alan.

Let me state for the record, that I am a supporter of Alan Keyes. That I approve of the many good things he has done in the name of African Americans.

Many of us listened to Alan when he accused Hillary Clinton of being a "carpet bagger". The democratic party is going to run sound bites of his bashing of Hillary on commercials.

Many African Americans around the country are supporting Obama and his run for the White House. Democrat, Independent and Republican. Obama represents many facets of the African American experience in the United States.

He has been embraced by the people as a hero to challenge the negative perceptions and myths that surround African American in the United States.

Now...I understand and empathize with Alan for what he is trying to do. However, I must voice my criticsm for decision to run in Senate race. However, I am proud to see two African American males running for US Senate. The symbolism of this historic race is to vast to measure.

2004-07-01T07:09:00.000-05:00

"Outing" of Republican Staffers

Living in a liberal cosmopolitan city, you meet diverse people, of different backgrounds, nationalities and sexual orientation. Some of course are liberal yellow dog democrats. Some are conservative Republicans. A few are homosexual.

The concept of Gay Republican staffers is not new. However, "outing" staffers for their sexual orientation is a new concept. That is exactly what Mike Rodgers, a gay Republican activist wants to do. Many of these staffers are true believers in several of the party's platform, limited government, states rights, etc.,

The strategy of course is to harm the congressional member, Senator, or the White House.

Now, there are several "out" gay staffers. I know of several that work for different Republican members and the White House.

"Outing" those whom are not running for political office or seeking a civic role/paid position.

Here is the news article....

Gay Secrets
Written by 9 News
Last Updated: 6/25/2004 12:05:51 PM

It may come as no secret that gay people are working in the White House and for Republican congressmen and Senators.

But many of them may still be closeted - and that's where gay activists feel they have their ammunition.

By "outing" the gay staffers - some say they feel they expose the hypocrisy of the lawmakers pushing for a ban on gay marriage.

USA TONIGHT recently spoke with one of the staffers who said he has been threatened. He asked that we not reveal his identity.

But that's not stopping the threats - already calls have been made to some Republican lawmakers who support the ammendment letting them know that someone on their staff is gay.

Joining us tonight is Mike Rodgers, who is a gay activist who has made calls to closeted gay aids of Republicans, and Christopher Barron, who is with the Log Cabin Republicans - a group that thinks exposing these people's private lives is unfair.

2004-06-29T08:08:00.000-05:00

RNC Convention Anyone?

I am planning on attending this year's Republican National Convention?

Are there any others out there planning on attending as well?

Now on to the news.......

The Associated Press is reporting that the US Government is planning to hand over Saddam Hussein and eleven (11) other top officials to the new Iraq government on Wednesday June 30th 2004.
http://breakingnews.nypost.com/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ_SADDAM?SITE=NYNYP&SECTION=HOME

Will the killing of American and foreign citizens stop as a result?

2004-06-28T08:28:00.000-05:00

Farenheit 9/11

Well bloggers I tried my best to see Michael Moore's film. Everyone I went I could not find a seat. Everything is sold out.

I couldn't find the bootleg version on the corner either!!! If anyone can tell me any corner in Washington, DC or the suburbs where I can support inner city economic revitalization. I will purchase a bootleg copy.

Until tomorrow bloggers.....

2004-06-25T11:23:00.001-05:00

Fareinheit 9/11

With all the hoopla and marketing blitz regarding Michael Moore's new film. I have decided to go see the movie this weekend. I am open minded, I enjoy all types of filsm, artsy ones, comedic ones, love story's, sciene fiction and a few other genre's of movies.

Normally, I don't like documentaries, but since I got the Sundance channel, I have learned to enjoy a few "artsy" films.

The Washington Post is reporting today that Farenheit 9/11 will change the election in November. (There goes that liberal media again.)

I plan to see the movie and comment about it on Monday. Also, to me it is just a movie. As much as I love The Godfather (trilogy) and Scarface, I don't believe that all Italians or Cubans are criminals.

Michael Moore's film is just that a film. All the hoopla and controversy and helping one thing. Ticket sales! The Weinstein brothers and Mr. Moore will profit from the controversy and walk away much richer than they were prior to the film's release.

I would urge conservative groups to ignore this movie and stop feeding the media frenzy.

Today I heard a report (Howard Stern Show) that Mr. Moore is receiving death threats. All of this marketing hoopla, fuels sales and money.

I have attached the POST's article on this issue.

I will expand and give my "unbiased" opinion on the movie on Monday.

Have a great weekend!

Buzz Around Moore's Movie May Be Able to Shake the Election

By Terry M. Neal
washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
Friday, June 25, 2004; 7:16 AM

The booze was flowing and the room was buzzing at the swanky new Leftbank restaurant in Washington's Adams Morgan neighborhood Wednesday night. The cause for celebration was the D.C. premiere of "Fahrenheit 9/11," and director Michael Moore's pals picked up the tab.

They could afford it. Harvey and Bob Weinstein, the brothers who donate big money to Democrats and who bought the rights to the controversial new film, are already rich. But their decision to distribute the movie after Disney, Moore's original distributor, refused, will make them that much richer -- and possibly influence a presidential election.

The question that started every conversation at the party was, "What did you think?" To be certain, most of the crowd consisted of Democrats and left-leaning activists and journalists. So you know what they think. But a good number of moderate and conservative types attended the premiere too, if only out of curiosity. And many of them came out agreeing that the film is powerful and entertaining.

During the screening at the Uptown Theatre, I sat next to a newspaper reporter who was raised in an activist Republican party family, whose sister worked previously for the Bush White House and who considers herself moderate. She cried through the second half of the movie, which featured graphic images of injured and killed Iraqi civilians and U.S. soldiers and focused on the U.S. military's efforts to recruit minorities and poor whites.

She and others who don't hew to Moore's hardcore lefty vision of the world gave him credit for, if nothing else, presenting an incredibly cohesive and emotionally stirring piece of work.

"There's no way people are not going to come out of this hating Bush," she said. Which, of course, is exactly what the GOP fears. Conservative opposition is not based on the belief that this is just some commie-pinko rant that'll be ignored by the masses.

The White House, furious about the Bush-bashing, anti-war movie, has wisely decided to take a low-key approach, allowing surrogates to do most of the work – and they've done it with zeal. One California-based organization, Move America Forward, has orchestrated a letter-writing campaign to theaters around the country, demanding that they refuse to show Moore's movie. Conservative talk radio and television hosts have filled their segments with rants against it. And the president's father called Moore a "slimeball."

The conservative group Citizens United announced Thursday that its president, David N. Bossie, had filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, asserting that television ads for the movie are restricted under some of the new campaign finance rules created by the McCain-Feingold legislation.

The announcement was originally scheduled for Tuesday, and, at Wednesday night's party, Chris Lehane, the former spokesman for Al Gore's presidential campaign and new media strategist for Moore, seemed almost disappointed.

"We wanted to thank them for sending people to the movie," he said, flashing a broad smile at Moore.

I caught up with Moore at the party just after midnight as he was leaning on a booth, daintily picking at a small plate of sliced tenderloin. Lehane was nestled up to the ear of his new client -- no doubt planning their defense against the conservative assault on the movie that opens Friday in 900 theaters nationwide. That's nine times as many theaters than carried his last film, the anti-NRA "Bowling for Columbine."

Moore was animated when talking about his critics.

"That's the difference between our side and their side. Even when we disagree, we're respectful of freedom of speech," he said. "But when they disagree, they try to shut you down. Well, it's un-American. And it's wrong, and people are not going to stand for it. People in this country don't like to be told they can't watch something or see something."

Moore said his movie is "two hours of irrefutable facts."

The movie breaks little news. What it does, however, is string together old news in a way that fits Moore's ideological perspective.

Is it propaganda? Of course it is. Moore makes it no secret that he wants Bush out of the White House, and this is his case for why that should happen. Echoing the common view among liberals that the mainstream media has been soft on Bush and lazy in general, he said his movie is simply a bridge to span the void.

The only difference between Moore's movie and the opinions that conservatives such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News's Bill O'Reilly spout every day on radio and TV is that it comes from the left and it's condensed to two hours rather than spread over hundreds of hours on the airwaves.

Democrats and liberals are so excited about Moore because they believe he is one of the rare polemicists on the left who manages to balance preachiness with entertainment.

The attacks from the right have only seemed to embolden Moore. Clearly he relishes the fight, which not only allows him to play the role of David to the GOP's Goliath, but helps drum up publicity for his film. Typically efforts to suppress free speech have the opposite effect. Just ask former Broward County, Fla., sheriff Nick Navarro, who famously propelled the talentless "rappers" 2 Live Crew to fame in the early 1990s by trying to put them out of business.

Critics, academics and others are predicting that the movie will become a cultural phenomenon, somewhere on the order of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ."

The film has shattered records at two New York City theaters where it has already opened. But of course, New York is not the entire country. The film seems unlikely to change minds that are set in stone. But judging by the reaction of the crowd in Washington, it does have the potential to move people off the fence.

If this year's presidential election is as close as the one in 2000, it won't have to move many to make a difference in the outcome.

2004-06-23T09:00:00.000-05:00

Been So Long

Bloggers and supporters. Forgive me for staying away for a while. I needed a mental health break. I have been reading and watching all of the news, articles, emails, and discussions on other blog sites. I am back, I promise to post more often.

Karen

Now on to the new..........

Obama vs. Ryan

Getting ready for the November election's 12 round bout. Obama Barack (Dem) African American male vs. Jack Ryan (Republican) white male for the coveted US Senate Seat from IL.

The Washington Post today published the following article, detailing the news from the unsealed divorce case of Mr. Ryan and his ex wife.

The question I have for conservatives is simple? If the allegations are true, should we stand with Jack Ryan? Should our loyalty be to the African American Democrat Obama Barack?

Should we not weigh in on this issue?

I am curious as to how other "urban conservatives" feel on this issue.

I don't know enough about Obama's record to make a decision. However, there is a part of me, that would love to see more "diversity" in the US Senate.

Here is the post's article.

GOP Nominee Fights Calls to Exit Contest
Ex-Wife Alleges Coerced Sex in Public
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 23, 2004; Page A04

Republicans suffered a significant setback in their bid to hold on to the open Senate seat in Illinois as GOP nominee Jack Ryan yesterday tried to fight off calls to quit the race after allegations by his ex-wife that he had pressured her to perform sexually in front of other people.

The allegations were contained in documents from the couple's bitter custody battle four years ago were ordered unsealed by a California judge after the Chicago Tribune and WLS-TV sued to have them made public. Ryan, 44, denied the allegations and said he had no intention of dropping out of the race.

The GOP candidate, a millionaire former investment banker who left the business world to teach at a Roman Catholic school in the inner city of Chicago, already faced an uphill battle against Democratic state Sen. Barack Obama, with the most recent public poll showing Obama with a lead of about 20 percentage points.

The sensational allegations divided Republicans in Illinois and Washington. Rep. Ray LaHood (R-Ill.) called for Ryan to drop out of the race to help Republicans maintain their slim majority in the U.S. Senate. "I think it becomes very difficult for Jack to win," LaHood said in a phone interview.

Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), gave Ryan his support. "Senator Allen talked to Jack this morning," said Dan Allen, NRSC communications director. "They had another good conversation. We're fully behind and fully supportive of Jack."

Ryan was married to television actress Jeri Lynn Ryan. In the documents released yesterday, she alleges that in the late 1990s, her then-husband took her to "bizarre clubs" in New York, New Orleans and Paris, where he asked her to have sex "and he specifically asked other people to watch."

Jack Ryan, in the documents, charged that his wife was trying to ruin his reputation with "ridiculous" allegations. Saying he had been "faithful and loyal" to his wife throughout their marriage, he said in the documents that he had arranged "romantic getaways" with her. He said they had gone to "one avant-garde club in Paris, which was more than either one of us felt comfortable with. We left and vowed never to return."

Some top Republicans in Illinois, including former governor Jim Edgar and the state chairman, Judy Baar Topinka, made clear through friends or advisers that they felt they were misled by Ryan, who had assured them in separate conversations there was nothing embarrassing in the court documents.

Edgar and Topinka declined to comment further yesterday as they and other GOP officials waited to see the fallout. House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) also declined to comment. Spokesman John Feehery said the speaker had not spoken to Ryan since the candidate held a news conference on Monday evening to answer the allegations.

Mike Lawrence, interim director of the Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University and former press secretary to Edgar, said the allegations would make it difficult for Ryan to wage a credible campaign against Obama for the Senate vacancy created by the retirement of Sen. Peter Fitzgerald (R-Ill.). "People are going to react instinctively to this, and I believe most of the reaction will be negative," he said.

Ryan's campaign spokesman said that, with the allegations public after months of rumors about what the documents contained, the candidate could begin to refocus his campaign on other issues and move forward.

"He's got the monkey off his back," Bill Pascoe said. "For months, there's been a whispering campaign about what's in the documents from political opponents. Now that the documents have been released, everybody can see: a, those rumors weren't true, and b, there's not an allegation that there was any marital infidelity, there's not even an allegation that he broke one of the Ten Commandments, there's not even an allegation that he broke the law."

Ryan said he had fought release of the documents to protect their young son. The Ryan campaign also issued a statement from his ex-wife in which she said, "Jack is a good man, a loving father and he shares a strong bond with our son." She added that he would make "an excellent senator."

Obama kept his distance from the controversy. Asked whether he believes the allegations are relevant to the campaign, he said in a phone interview, "I just think our campaign's going to focus on matters that are important to the voters and if we do, we'll do fine."

2004-05-25T15:22:00.000-05:00

Back from the Islands!

I have been out of town the past few days. Lounging on a Royal Carribean cruise to the Bahamas. I was enjoying life. Watching CNN Worldwide news. Smiling at the stars! Laying out on the beach! Getting a great tan! Walking around beautiful islands.

Now back to R E A L I T Y!

I came home last night to a flurry of emails over Bill Cosby's remarks. So many liberal discussion groups. Shocked! Dismayed! Outraged! How could The Cos air our "dirty laundry" in public? We don't talk about these things amongst "those folks"!

For those of you that have not seen the latest - article about The Cos. Here is an excerpt.

The Washington Post reported that Cosby unleashed a diatribe against "the lower economic people" who, in his estimation, "are not holding up their end in this deal." He said their transgressions included incompetent parenting, poor financial management and failure to master the basics of English. According to Cos, "Everybody knows it's important to speak English except these knuckleheads. ... You can't be a doctor with that kind of crap coming out of your mouth!"

And, in comments sure to warm the hearts of lawful citizens everywhere, he also aimed his wit at petty criminals: "These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake and then we run out and we are outraged, (saying) 'The cops shouldn't have shot him.' What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?"

The Post described the audience's response as a mixture of "astonishment, laughter and applause," which was followed by appearances at the podium from NAACP President Kweisi Mfume, Howard University President H. Patrick Swygert and NAACP Legal Defense Fund head Theodore Shaw, none of whom seemed to be amused in the slightest.

Cosby's remarks later made me think of comedian Dick Gregory who, as it turns out, was on hand to present Cosby with his commemorative medal. Unlike his old friend, Gregory's comic style has long been associated with blistering social criticism.

I remember being in the audience when Gregory appeared on campus during my college days. My pals and I guffawed while he mercilessly lampooned the whites in attendance, who laughed good-naturedly in response. But we grew increasingly uncomfortable as Gregory gradually shifted his focus to blacks. He poked fun at African-Americans who constantly complained about white racism while smoking, eating harmful foods and engaging in other forms self-destructive behavior. Later my friends and I were more inclined to express our dismay at Gregory's willingness to "call us out" in front of white folks than to acknowledge an element of truth in his comments.

That same element can be found in Cosby's remarks. It is true that some blacks continue to engage in conduct that contradicts and undermines the aims of the civil rights movement. He has every right to take them to task. It is far less amusing that Cosby, a multimillionaire, chose to criticize "the lower economic people" when evidence of the habits he condemned -- misplaced priorities, negligent child-rearing, deteriorating morality -- can be found at every level of American society. Why single out poor people, who are least able to defend themselves?

I personally support Bill Cosby. What he said was brave, on target and 100% true. We sit back as persons of color and don't want to discuss the issues and problems that plague our people. It is too easy to just blame racism, the man, socio-economic disparities, etc., on lack of moral character.

I hope that the controversy fuels an open honest discussion on this issue. Perhaps we can have a discussion as people and Americans on how we deal with this issue.

Just my post vacation wishful thinking....

2004-05-18T11:08:00.000-05:00

Gay Marriage and Black Ministers

Recently at a conference in Washington, DC. a Minister from Louisiana confided in me the following statement. "Ten years ago, I would get a call every 6 - 9 months from a gay couple asking if I would marry them. I just hung up the phone and simply stated no at this church. Now, ten years later, I get on average 10 - 15 calls per week, asking if I marry gay couples."

Black ministers slam gay unions

They want lawmakers to back amendment

Tuesday, May 18, 2004

By Bruce Alpert

Washington bureau

WASHINGTON -- As Massachusetts began issuing marriage licenses to gay
and lesbian couples Monday, a group of African-American ministers called
on the Congressional Black Caucus to support a constitutional amendment
banning same-sex marriages.

The ministers, including Bishop Paul Morton Sr. of the Greater St.
Stephen Full Gospel Baptist Church, said they are deeply troubled by the
unions, which they consider a violation of God's will.

The issue could cause some discomfort for some Democrats who support
same-sex marriage while also depending on historically strong support
from African-Americans. That is especially true for black elected
officials.

"Election time, they (Black Caucus members) don't go to homosexual
churches, they go to black churches looking for votes, and we want them
to respect our views that we are totally against gay marriage and
totally against civil unions," Morton said.

Morton said he delivered a similar message during his sermon Sunday, and
noticed Rep. William Jefferson, D-New Orleans, a Black Caucus member, in
the congregation.

"We'll just have to meet and see what he has to say," Morton said.

Jefferson couldn't be reached for comment Monday. In the Louisiana
delegation, Jefferson is seen as the member most sympathetic to gay
rights issues, but he did vote for the so-called "Defense of Marriage
Act" in 1996 to prohibit federal recognition of same-sex marriages.

David Bositis of the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a
think tank that specializes in African-American political issues, said
opposition to gay marriage is probably stronger in the black community
than among white communities, reflecting the importance of the church in
African-American communities. But, he said, it won't be enough to swing
black voters against members of the Black Caucus or to the support of
Republicans like President Bush, who, unlike presumptive Democratic
nominee John Kerry, supports a constitutional amendment.

Black voters, Bositis said, may support Bush on gay marriage, but by and
large remain skeptical about the war in Iraq and the president's
economic policies. Bush got only 9 percent of the black vote in 2000.

Morton doesn't disagree, saying that black voters have "to choose
between the lesser of two evils," and that Kerry and Democrats generally
advocate more help for the poor than Republicans. "The issue of gay
marriage is one that we won't compromise on, but we have to weigh
everything when we vote," said Morton, who said he generally backs
Democratic candidates.

But Bishop Charles E. Brown, pastor of the Full Gospel Church of God in
New Orleans, said that for members of some denominations, including his
own, the issue of gay marriage may turn some traditional Democratic
voters to the GOP and Bush.

"I think they may well take the position that same-sex marriage is one
of moral turpitude and that it even outweighs the economy," Brown said
in a telephone interview from New Orleans.

At an emotional news conference Monday on Capitol Hill, Morton was
joined by more than 25 other ministers from black churches. He said it
is a sad irony that Massachusetts began issuing marriage licenses on the
same day "one of the most important civil rights cases in our country's
history," striking down segregated schools, was decided in Brown v.
Board of Education 50 years ago.

Morton said he is personally outraged that some gay leaders would liken
efforts to win equal rights, including the right to marry, to the civil
rights movement for African-Americans and other minorities."

"African-Americans have to be who we are," Morton said. "This is the way
we're going to heaven. They (gays and lesbians) don't have to go heaven
that way."

Asked how he responded to some scientists who say that sexual
orientation is decided by biology and not by personal choice, Morton
said: "Scientists have been wrong before, but God has never been wrong."

There are other views among African-American clergy on same-sex
marriage. During his run for the Democratic presidential nomination, the
Rev. Al Sharpton, a New York City African-American minister, said, "All
human beings should have equal access to civil rights and institutions,
including the right to marry."

. . . . . . .

Bruce Alpert can be reached at bruce.alpert@newhouse.com or (202)
383-7861.

2004-05-17T14:00:00.000-05:00

Fundraiser

Black Republican Women International - Fundraiser

Tuesday May 18th 2004

Ella's Fine Art Gallery
1506 North Capitol Street, N.W., Washington, DC
4:00 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.

Make checks payable to Bush-Cheney 2004 Campaign
Include your name, address and occupation to meet campaign requirements.

RSVP (202) 898-9621

2004 Strategies for Black Republican Women

o Assist with the re-election of President George W. Bush by working in our local campaigns and at the Re-election Committee.
o Anyone interested in working at the Re-election Committee should e-mail me their resume and a cover sheet indicating your areas of expertise.
o Ensure that Black Republican women and men running for office receive our support.
o Continue to be a resource to the Republican leadership and White House.
o Coordinate a nationwide effort to raise funds among state Black Republican organizations.

2004-05-13T13:09:00.000-05:00

Are African Americans Realizing Their Full Political Power by voting overwhelmingly 90% Democratic?

Many people are shocked, dismayed and surprised when they find out that I am a registered, card carrying Republican.

I proudly list my Bush/Cheney yard sign in my front yard. I am not ashamed to describe myself as a Republican.

My shock is with the many African Americans who vehemently oppose Republicans. Whom believe that Republicans are evil and only interested in moving African American's back to "Jim Crow" days.

As an African American Republican, I am saddened to see and hear the vilifying and negative comments geared towards us.

Many of us work diligently to affect change in the urban/inner city community.

Many notable DC Democrats speak to me privately and state that "the black community needs an effective two party system" in order to do more for African Americans.

I got the following letter this morning at a meeting. I am going to share it here for all of you to read and discuss. This letter is addressed to African Americans. (Note: I am not typing the entire letter, just passages.)

Do you believe that politicians and their political parties really care about you? We are writing to inform you of a well-kept secret. Politicians do the least for straight ticket voters. Your loyalty is not rewarded. Any why should it? If you don't hold your elected officials accountable by making them earn your vote, then they will take you for granted. So what can you do about this?

Isn't it time that your vote does more to benefit you the a politician or a political party? Isn't it time that the election is about you and your needs, and not the needs of a politician or a party?

Both republicans and democrats are fighting over the Hispanic vote, the Jewish vote, and the Catholic vote because these groups have show that they will vote for both republican and democratic candidates. You deserve no less.

2004-05-13T12:14:00.001-05:00

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2004-05-13T12:09:00.000-05:00

2004-05-13T12:08:00.003-05:00

2004-05-13T12:08:00.002-05:00

2004-05-13T12:08:00.001-05:00

2004-05-13T12:08:00.000-05:00

2004-05-13T11:43:00.000-05:00

2004-05-12T15:53:00.000-05:00

War! What is it good for? Absolutely Nothing

Warning - Angry Blogger Ahead!

For those of you that don't know those are the lyrics of a very famous 1970's song.

After hearing of the horrific death of a US contractor, by thugs, theives and murderers. I am forced to ask myself. How did we get here? Why are we here?

What will happen next?

I am horrified, saddened, angry and fearful that our nation, our world has spun out of control.

When taking life is sport? Where killing is rampant? Sex, drugs, violence and others are just the norm.

Why has our world turned into such a bad place? With so much hate?

This was an innocent man. Working to feed his family, provide a better life for himself, earn a living.

If I sound angry, forgive me, for I am angry.

There are articles on the internet today claiming that CBS killed this contractor.

I know many of us want to blame the media. However, that blame is not well placed. Our blame has to lay with the purpotrators and those that spew such hatred of innocent civilians. Those that kill in the name of God and feel vindication for their behavior.

2004-05-07T10:19:00.000-05:00

"Friends" is Over
Well some are saying, "it is the end of an era".
Others are saying, "Finally..It is about time"

No matter your opinion on Friends, it is over.

Personally, when it first came on, I never watched it because it was in the same time slot as Living Single and the Thursday night Fox line up in the early 90's. Remember NY Undercover???? I am still in love with Malik Yoba!

Then, when Fox switched to "mainstream" shows, I decided to start watching Friends a few times over the season. Yes, I loved the gang. Though I knew their reality did not match anyone I knew in NYC. I got caught up in the hype.

Just in case their are any network folks reading this blog. Now of course I only have a few channels in heavy rotation. Sorry NBC, ABC, CBS and FOX. I don't watch very much network television.

Law & Order (Best Show on TV)
The Apprentice
The Today Show

That sums up my network television.

I am a MTV, HGTV, HBO, Fox News and MSNBC junkie!

Well, I was sad to see Friends go. I will miss Joey and Chandler, Ross and Rachel. I was really hoping to Aisha Tyler again, but oh well!!

Friends was an advertisers dream. A mainstream cast of beautiful people, that did nothing but sit in a coffee house all day, have an endless supply of money, lived near each other, had some of the best apartments in all of NYC, and basically did nothing but entertain us for 10 years.

Goodbye Friends!

Let the era of "reality shows" commence?

Anyone want to pitch a blog Survivor???

2004-05-06T12:12:00.000-05:00

Counting Down to Brown
Taking a look at my friend La Shawn Barber's post today www.barbersview.com

I could not help but ponder the question. How far have African American's come as a race since Brown. V. Board of Education.

For a great majority of us the answer is very far. We have African American political leaders i.e. Colin Powell, Dr. Condaleeza Rice, Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and others.

In business, we are CEO's of Fortune 500 companies i.e Merrill Lynch, Time Warner, and others.

In entertainment, we are Oscar winners, top the chart recording artists, and so much more.

For many of us the door swung open and we stepped into the middle class, and upper class of the United States.

Yet, the for as many of us that have moved into the middle and upper class, there is an equal amount of us still at the poverty level.

We have a large amount of African American men, that are unemployed, incarcerated, mentally dead, and unattached from society.

We have too many unwed mothers, raising children on their own. Fathers that are out of touch with their children and view them as pawns in a game.

Too many news stories of crime, rape, drugs and murder.

A culture where Snoop Dog, Tupac, P. Diddy, .50 cent, are role models and surrogate fathers for our young men.

A culture that goes around the work, that teaches the world that black women are ho's, video chicks, and dying to sleep with men for money.

A culture that teaches other black children that to get good grades is acting "white" or elitist.

How far have we come?

2004-05-04T09:30:00.000-05:00

8 Year Old - African American Girl Dies in Gun Shoot Out in Washington, DC
Here is the story........

An 8-year-old girl was killed last night as she watched television in her aunt's living room in Northeast Washington when a gunshot tore through the front window and struck her in the head, police said. The aunt also was shot.

The shots apparently were fired during a chase about 9 p.m. in the 800 block of 52nd Street NE. Those involved in the chase were not identified, but police said they doubted that the girl or her aunt was an intended target.

The killing of the girl, whom a relative identified as Chelsea Cromartie, and the wounding of her aunt evoked condemnation from Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey, who went last night to the scene, a tree-lined block of single-family houses.

"It's absolutely incredible that this kind of violence takes place on our streets," Ramsey said. He described the shootings as "the kind of tragedy that no one should stand for."

The girl, he said, was on a couch in front of the TV when a bullet struck her in the back of the head. Neighbors said that the girl apparently was visiting her aunt. They said the aunt had moved to the block less than one year ago.

The killing and the wounding came less than half an hour after three other people were hit by gunshots about three miles away, in the 2200 block of H Street NE.

No arrest had been reported in the 8-year-old's killing as of early this morning.

Police said they believe the gunshots on 52nd Street were fired by at least one teenager at one or more people in the same age range. The reason for the chase was unclear.

Investigators said they were looking into the possibility that the shooting might have been prompted by a dispute at a Northeast Washington carryout. Other explanations also were being checked.

A bullet hit the aunt in the shoulder, Ramsey said. The 38-year-old woman was taken to a hospital, and police said her condition was not believed to be life-threatening. She was not identified because she is a witness.

Police said as many as seven or eight shots were fired, at least some of them breaking a front window.

One neighbor said he was dozing in front of his television set when he heard as many as four shots. But he said he did not look out. If you do, he said, you "see the wrong thing."

The girl was taken to Children's Hospital. A spokeswoman for the hospital said she was pronounced dead at 9:42 p.m.

Investigators said a vehicle had been observed driving from the scene and that it might have been a large, older model Buick or Crown Victoria. Police said the shots might have been fired from a car.

Let's start a discussion...

This child was sitting in her aunt's home. Probably laughing, watching television, doing homework. Having fun enjoying her life as an 8 year old.

She had committed no crime.

Her only issue, was that she was born African American, in the inner city, in a neighborhood plagued with drugs, hopelessness, lack of opportunity, and a hosts of other social issues.

As a community we have a serious problem. One that should be solved by our leaders. Issues that have to be addressed. How many young bright children do we have to lose, until we realize that we as African Americans need to solve this issue?

I know all the arguements, "the man" brings drugs into our communities. "The man" doesn't invest in our neighborhoods, etc., etc., etc., etc.

Well, with our without the man, we are using young people everyday. When will we as African Americans wake up and realize we must do something!

Today I am saddened to see another life shattered. Another mother who mourns. Another family that has to grieve and bury a child.

2004-04-30T10:20:00.000-05:00

Ralph Nader Say's He IS DISAPPOINTED IN THE CONGRESSIONAL BLACK CAUCUS

2004 Presidential Candidate Ralph Nader is going to receive a donation to his campaign from me. He stated this morning on a local radio show in Washington, DC, his "personal dissappointment with the congressional black caucus." Nader, described inner city neighborhoods, full of crime, predatory lenders, legalized loan sharks (rent to own companies) and a host of other issues that plague the inner city.

To Donate: www.votenader.org

He put a part of the blame on the shoulders of the CBC and it's leader Ellijah Cummings. Nader urged the CBC to stand up for its issues. To not be passive and speak out on issues that affect African Americans.

Listening to him, this a.m, I could not have agreed more wholeheartedly with his comments. The CBC has done some good things. Lord knows they throw a hell of a party.

When it comes to issues affecting African Americans, they tend to be extremely partisan and not challenging both political parties, i.e. Republican or Democrat to take stands regarding African Americans.

On another note....

American Idol - Finally John Stevens was voted off. However was anyone upset to see George Huff in the bottom? Doesn't bode well for George.

2004-04-29T16:06:00.000-05:00

Links

I wanted to post some of my favorite links so that others can view some of these great sites. These are sites I frequent and gain information from.

Just thought I would share some great sites!

2004-04-29T11:31:00.000-05:00

Great Day
Today my brother Kwaku (www.kwakualston.com) is in town visiting the family. Whenever Kwaku comes to town it is as if the prodigal son has come home to visit. Everything stops!

Well I am still floating on my high from the African American Leadership Summit, but I have to ask? Where was CNN? Fox News? C-Span?

Is there a liberal media conspiracy?

Just some updates on me:

I live in Washington, DC.
I am in my mid 30's (you know women don't reveal their age?)
I have my own marketing/urban economic development consulting business.
I am very active politically.
I am conservative in my view's however, liberal or moderate on several social and minority issues.

Feel free to ask any questions.

2004-04-28T16:57:00.000-05:00

African American Leadership Summit
Well today I attended the African American Leadership Summit! What a great event. The summit was sponsored by Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinston (TX) and Senator Rick Santorum (PA) and co-chaired by Honorable Rod Paige - Secretary of Education.

What a great day and event! I feel empowered and excited to do good work in the African American community. The event had panel participants and discussed the following sub topics:

Education
Health Care
Economic Development

Several distinguished and honorable guests spoke to the sell out crowd today, including Vice President Dick Cheney! What a day and what an event.

Some of the speakers included:

US Senator Lamar Alexander, Tennessee
Michael Steele, Lt. Governor, State of Maryland
Gerald Reynolds, Deputy Associate Attorney General, US Department of Justice
Renee Amoore - President, The Amoore Group (One of my personal idols)
Randall Maxey, M.D. President, National Medical Association
Franklin Raines, Chairman and CEO Fannie Mae
Tony Chase, Chairman and CEO - ChaseCom, LP., and Chase Radio Partners
Richard Knight, Jr., Founder and Chariman, KnightCo Oil Company

What an amazing day. I met African American leaders from all over the country and felt honored to be apart of such an esteemed group of African Americans.

2004-04-27T09:43:00.000-05:00

Day Two of Blogging
I got a great email last night that a fellow Project 21 member (www.project21.org) was a contestant on Showtime cable networks new show American candidate.

http://www.americancandidate.com/candidate_homepage?id=134

I am so impressed with candidate Tara Setmayer, from Marathon, FL. She is an African American female Republican candidate.

Her platform is made up of three key topics:

1. Steadfast leadership on the war on terror.
2. Quality Education for all of our children
3. Robust economy and job creation through tax relief.

She is extremely impressive and I plan help get the word out to help her on this new reality show.

On a personal note....today will be a busy day. I am headed to a function tonight being hosted by the South African Ambassador. I also was quoted yesterday in a press release regarding my comments in reference to Rev. Jesse Jackson and his call for the President to be tried by the United Nations for killing innocent civilians in the war in Iraq.

For those of you that want a quick background and bio of me, I promise tomorrow to post some background information.

Have a great blessed day!

Karen

2004-04-26T16:59:00.000-05:00

OK, end of the day! What a day it has been. My first day of blogging. I feel as if I have learned so much! Thanks to my good friends John, and La Shawn for showing me the ropes and teaching me how to blog.

Look for daily, upbeat commentary on pertinent events of the day!

Fashion! Politics! Urban Lifestyle! Women's Issues! Urban Issues! Inner City Issues! All will be discussed!

Have a great night

2004-04-26T13:08:00.000-05:00

Monday April 26, 2004
What a busy week and weekend. I drove to the office today listening to Sam Donaldson's show. Of course all of the uproar is over John Kerry and the "did he or didn't he" throw his medals or ribbons over the White House fence in 1971.

Of course John Kerry views, this as the modern "right wing conspiracy". I personally believe, that John Kerry needs to get his story straight and stick to it.

Other news, of course, is the Reverend Jesse Jackson's claims that the sitting President of the United States, George W. Bush be tried by the United Nations for going to war and killing Iraqi's and Americans on "faulty" information.