Monroe Anderson

Wright's soundtrack, Nina Simone's and Sam Cooke's songs

    No doubt about it, Barack Obama was forced to kick his former pastor under the bus. I understand. You can't run for Cheerleader-in-Chief of America while your spiritual mentor is out front and center badmouthing the nation.
     Then there's this reality: the world of American politics, where bumper sticker wisdom and sound bite dialog reign supreme, is not a comfortable place for the truth to reside.
    And make no mistake about it: there was a bunch of truth telling in what Rev. Jeremiah Wright has been saying. I saw it and heard it during his speech and Q and A Monday. But the vast majority of Americans and my fellow journalists saw a train wreck.  I didn't. I saw a Soul Train of a lecture and sermon with a payload of truth, intelligence and common sense.       
    I ended up into a back and forth e-mail debate about Wright's performance at the National Press Club with CNN's Roland Martin on the NABJForum. In the middle of our e-mail discussion, I noted that it was generational; Roland is about 20 years younger than I am. He insisted it was not.
    Later in the day, I heard from Daniel St. Albin Greene. Dan took me under his wings when I was a cub reporter at the National Observer back in the early '70s. I hadn't talked to him in more than 25 years. He happened to see one of my commentaries on line about Rev. Wright and tracked me down.
    After a bit of catching up, we took up the Wright controversy. Dan admitted to being thoroughly confused about Barack Obama's former minister until he saw the Bill Moyer's interview.
    Then he got mad.
    Back in the late '60s, Dan, who is an exotic mixture of Native and Euro-American, spent much of his time covering riots and racial protests for the Observer. He developed an in-depth understanding and an abiding appreciation for what was going on in the black liberation struggle.
    When he got his first beyond the looped snippets look at Rev. Wright, he understood the man instantly. Wright, Dan surmised, was an old-fashioned black nationalist who had disappeared into the faith but still holds the liberation movement close to his heart and deep in his soul.
    Dan's anger was sparked by the realization that there is an entire generation of journalists; editors and reporters that have no connection or understanding of the black liberation movements of the 1960s. Nor do they understand that while there are the Oprahs, Bob Johnsons and Bill Cosbys, blacks with plenty of wealth and influence, far too many African Americans are no better off, no more embedded in the American dream than their parents were a generation ago.
    In watching yesterday's news and the response of regular black Americans, then Obama's angry divorce from his former pastor, I began to wonder if Roland hadn't gotten it completely right and if I had missed the boat.
    I called Rev. Frank Watkins for a reality check. Frank was an idealistic young white man when he joined the civil rights movement back in the '60s. For the longest time, he was the Rev. Jesse Jackson's right-hand man. He later went on to work as Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr.'s press secretary and was the campaign manager when the Rev. Al Sharpton ran for president four years ago.
    Frank viewed Rev. Wright Press Club performance much like I did. As we talked and analyzed our response versus the vast majority, we concluded that it WAS generational for sure.  We were looking at Wright's performance through the lens of the '60s.  We were listening to his words to the tune of a time when Nina Simone's protest song, "Mississippi Goddamn," summed it all up.
    Rev. Wright's God damns America echoed that sentiment. 
    As Frank and I talked, he pointed out that Rev. Wright was an analyst and that as an analyst he had been brilliant. Unfortunately, Wright's politics are as bad as his comprehension of this nation's problems is good.  Beyond that, times have changed. It's no longer good enough to understand America's failures and to strongly express your frustrations with them.
    The time has come to seriously seek out solutions. That's what Obama's candidacy symbolizes: a chance to put somebody in command that understands the shortcomings and will vigorously act to correct them.
    This is why Obama's campaign themes of hope and change resonate so well with young people. With all respect to Rev. Wright and the late Nina Simone, a new day is on the horizon and Sam Cooke's "A Change is Gonna Come" tells that tale.

Let's have all Wright all the time

    After being caricatured into a racist, hate-filled, anti-American nut job, Rev. Jeremiah Wright is emerging from his self-imposed public exile.
    Barack Obama’s former pastor appeared on Bill Moyer’s Journal on Friday, was the keynote speaker at the Detroit Branch NAACP's 53rd annual Fight for Freedom Fund Dinner on Sunday and  continued his message that different is not divisive in a speech and Q and A  at the National Press Club in D.C. this morning.
    Great. In this 24/7 news cycle world, we need all Wright all the time.
    I know this is counterintuitive, but I think it will serve the Democratic Party’s presidential frontrunner well if we see more Wright—much, much more Wright. 
    The conventional wisdom is that Wright’s return to the national scene is not doing Obama any favors. You hear that the Protestant pastor should have remained MIA until shortly before Thanksgiving—if not for eternity. You read that any time Wright speaks he only serves to stoke the passions of righteous Americans who have taken to heart the hard knock words they’ve heard out of context. You know that the running rap has Rev. Wright as a big-time blight hampering the Obama campaign from closing the deal.
    I say it ain’t necessarily so.   
    Since the manufactured controversy erupted last month, Wright gives certain American voters, as Chris Matthews describes it, a “permission slip” to not vote for Obama. The former Trinity United Church of Christ pastor gives them cover to continue voting whites only.
    Wright, however, doesn’t have to remain the blunt instrument the rightwing clinches to beat Obama down from here to November. With the exception of the conservative whites that aren’t going to vote for what could be America’s first black president for any reason at any time, a Wright P.R. blitz can shrink the mountain back to a molehill.
     Let’s begin with the obvious: Rev. Wright disappeared after misleading snippets began endlessly looping because a fair amount of his life’s work has been dedicated to social justice. Witnessing the very real possibility that this great nation may finally break its bad habit of electing one white man after the next to its highest office has to be as exhilarating to him as it is to me and millions of other Americans.
    But then, the situation got way out of hand. Rev. Wright’s four-decade legacy went to hell.  He had to flesh out the cartoon villain the viral videos have transformed him into. He needed to explain and defend his church’s black liberation theology, which has been so unfairly misrepresented. He’ll have to do it some more and then some more again.
    “I’m distressed by white people, out of a very different religious, cultural, racial, theological/ecclesiastical experience, presuming to judge African American faith practices and religious expression and preaching,” Rev. John Buchanan, who is white, said last month to his congregation.
    I found no evidence that Rev. Buchanan is related to that other Buchanan, Pat, a member of Sons of Confederate Veterans and rightwing agent provocateur who plays a political analyst on TV.  John Buchanan is the pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church on Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. His Gothic-architecture church was the setting where Carmen Diaz got married in “My Best Friend’s Wedding.” In real-life, Fourth’s flock is just like in the movie. Its congregation is largely white and rich and powerful.
     “Senator Obama’s critics wonder how the senator could have remained in Wright’s congregation and under his leadership for twenty years,” Rev. Buchanan said in his week-after-Easter sermon. “The answer is that Wright didn’t say ‘God damn America’ every Sunday. In fact, Wright’s sermons were biblically based, relevant, literate, and eloquent, week after week. When the preachers of the land decide whose sermons and lectures or preaching they want to hear, Jeremiah Wright’s are near the top of the list.”
    Of course, you’d never imagine that by watching Fox Cable News or from any of the other ongoing outlets for the rightwing propaganda machine. Last week, the North Carolina Republican Party unveiled an ad using Rev. Wright to attack Obama as “too extreme.”
    Without question, that’s just an early cheap shot the rightwing is preparing to sling. The Republicans believes Wright will be their WMD. And that’s why he should saturate the media with his intelligence, conviction and reason. He should religiously make the media rounds from “Meet the Press” to “This Week” to “20/20” to “Countdown” to “The O’Reilly Factor” to “The Colbert Report” to “Nightline” to “Saturday Night Live.” He should go on Oprah, Ellen and "The View," too.
    Should he make those rounds, before long, the fickle American media with its attention-deficit audience will decide that what was once “shocking and stunning” is really basic and boring. Old news is no news.
    And for Wright, Obama and the nation at large, no news will be good news.

(You can also see this post on ebonyjet.com. It ran on Tuesday under the headline, "Wright Here, Wright Now."  Check it out to see the comments. There are a lot more there than here. Also there are many other interesting posts on the website.)

A Name Game

 

 

    There are 38 of me. When I was much younger, I thought there were only two: my father and me. He thought so too. Although my birth certificate reads Monroe Anderson, III, my father, Monroe Anderson, Jr., was orphaned when he was one, so we knew of no other living Monroe Anderson.
    Back in the middle of the last century, it wasn’t easy discovering how many of you there were. Of course, with the Internet, it’s a cinch. I’ve long known that the Texas cancer center, M.D. Anderson, was named after the late businessman, Monroe Anderson, whose middle name was Dunaway. And a couple of years back, a fictional teenager in the novel, Maybe a Miracle, started showing up on Google’s search engine.
    But, it wasn’t until a couple of weeks ago that I discovered how many Monroe Andersons there actually are in the United States—38.  I also discovered that Anderson is no longer the 8th most common name in America as it was when I was a child, now it’s 10th. Out of the 303,944,807 people in the U.S there are 945,268 Andersons and 12,158 Monroes.
    But enough about me. Let’s see, there are 431 Americans named Joyce Owens but only one who is a nationally known artist and is married to me. Anyway, Shakespeare comes to mind here. His immortal rose by any name line.

    But I digress. There are 449 John McCains. There are 510 people named George Bush, including his daddy, president number 41 and 261 who share William Clinton’s name. There’s only one Hillary Clinton.
    Here’s the puzzler. According to the website, HowManyofMe.com, that does the U.S. Census search and provides the numbers, there are zero Oprah Winfreys. Ditto for Barack Obamas.
    You may want to wait for the 2.0 version, after they've worked out the glitches. If you want to check it out right now, go to the left column of this blog where you’ll find HowManyOfMe listed under Research In. One click and you too can discover if there are many of you—or none at all.

Our presidential race race

    What's just now being reported should have been reported beginning with the Mississippi primary: the racism of routine white Americans. Back then, race was discussed only along the lines of blacks voting in high percentages for Barack Obama--as if there was something unusual in an American ethnic group voting for one of its own. But race is different. It continues one of America's nastiest habits. It's a reflect that's against something rather than for something. It's the only reason Obama's "electability" is in question.
    It's time for the United States to set up its own Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

    Here's my ebonyjet.com commentary, posted Thursday morning.

Pennsylvania
the state of "virtue, liberty and independence" showed us the issue behind the issues
04/24/2008
By Monroe Anderson

It’s race, stupid. Not the economy, although even 90 percent of those who voted in the Pennsylvania primary said we’re in a recession. Not the war in Iraq, although 60 percent of America knows it was a mistake.  Not the national healthcare, although there are 45 million Americans without any insurance coverage at all.

It’s a matter of race: Hillary Clinton and John McCain are white. Barack Obama is not.

An exit poll conducted by Edison/Mitofsky during Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary found race mattered for 16 percent of those who cast their ballot and that just 54 percent of those Democratic voters said they would support Obama in a general election. Twenty-seven percent said they’d vote for McCain if the first black to become a competitive presidential contender was the Democratic Party’s standard-bearer; 16 percent said they would not vote at all.

These disheartening confessions came from the white voters who were speaking candidly.

When it comes to the members of this special interest group, who in the past have been called the Silent Majority and then later, the Reagan Democrats, it’s whites only for the exalted position of leader of the free world. They’re not going to vote for a black man, period—no matter how well educated, well-spoken and well-meaning he may be.

He can’t confuse them with the facts on how qualified and competent he is. He can’t overcome the recalcitrant racism, no matter how he approaches them, if even on bended knees. He can’t convince them to vote their economic interests, no matter how economically threatened they are.  He can’t be the president of their America.

More than two months ago in a fleeting moment of public candor, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a Clinton supporter, said as much: "You've got conservative whites here, and I think there are some whites who are probably not ready to vote for an African-American candidate.”

Unfortunately for Obama, conservative whites are here, there and anywhere in America.  They’re the ones that moved away to segregated suburbs, opposed busing and are against affirmative action. They’re particularly Republican but unfortunately too many of them are Democratic as well. They’re in Mississippi, where Obama’s inability to garner the white male vote was reported as if good old fashioned racism was his fault. They’re in Ohio where Obama failed to draw a substantial number of the working class vote wherever it happened to be white. And, trust me, I’m from Indiana—they’re definitely there.

But rather than calling a snowflake a snowflake, the ingrained racism in the American electorate is now spoken in tongues and reported in code.  Rather than examining the glass ceiling Obama is being introduced to, manufactured controversies run rampant in the presidential news coverage and, in the last presidential debate on ABC, the first 45 minutes of moderator questioning.

Obama is judged guilty by association for his truth-telling minister, his radically-left neighbor or his documentable statement that bitter lunch bucket whites cling to their religion and their guns rather than boldly confront the politicians that are engineering their economic decline.

"Considering his financial advantage, the question ought to be, why can't he close the deal?" Clinton said  on the day of her barely double-digit win, outside a polling place in a northern suburb of Philadelphia. "Why can't he win in a state like this?"

Why can’t he close the deal? Is there something wrong with his electability? Why can’t this black man deliver the knockout punch?

These are the questions the superdelegates are going to have to ask themselves, before deciding if they’re willing to throw the black man, with the most dedicated delegates, state victories and popular vote, under the bus and give the white woman a ride. To do that would guarantee the party’s trip to nowhere.

Monroe Anderson is an award-winning journalist who penned op-ed columns for both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times. He is a regular contributor to Ebonyjet.com.

Michael Moore previews something better than bitter in Pennsylvania

    Filmmaker Michael Moore lives in Michigan, so he didn't get an opportunity to vote for the candidate of his choice in the primary there. But just like in his documentaries, Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11 and Sicko, in an open letter to Pennsylvania voters, Moore cuts right to the chase: Hillary Clinton has blown a lifetime of good deeds with her bad behavior in her bid to become the nation's first woman president.

    "...the actions and words of Hillary Clinton have gone from being merely disappointing to downright disgusting. I guess the debate last week was the final straw. I've watched Senator Clinton and her husband play this game of appealing to the worst side of white people, but last Wednesday, when she hurled the name 'Farrakhan' out of nowhere, well that's when the silly season came to an early end for me. She said the 'F' word to scare white people, pure and simple. Of course, Obama has no connection to Farrakhan. But, according to Senator Clinton, Obama's pastor does -- AND the 'church bulletin' once included a Los Angeles Times op-ed from some guy with Hamas! No, not the church bulletin!

"This sleazy attempt to smear Obama was brilliantly explained the following night by Stephen Colbert. He pointed out that if Obama is supported by Ted Kennedy, who is Catholic, and the Catholic Church is led by a Pope who was in the Hitler Youth, that can mean only one thing: OBAMA LOVES HITLER!

"Yes, Senator Clinton, that's how you sounded. Like you were nuts. Like you were a bigot stoking the fires of stupidity. How sad that I would ever have to write those words about you. You have devoted your life to good causes and good deeds. And now to throw it all away for an office you can't win unless you smear the black man so much that the superdelegates cry 'Uncle (Tom)' and give it all to you."

    I hate to spoil the ending for you, but Moore goes on to encourage Pennsylvania Democrats to vote for Obama since he could not.

    Starting with the South Carolina primary, I have heard one Democrat after the next say that they have become disenchanted with the Clintons because of their campaign tactics. Who knew? The whining Republicans were whining for good cause.

    To read all of Moore's open letter, go to MichaelMoore.com

AIDS epidemic still chalking up young black men

    For young black men, the AIDS epidemic hasn't gone anywhere. In fact, it's coming on strong. The cover story of this week's Gay City News reports that for black gays 24 and under, there has been a 60 percent rise in the disease in a four-year period.

    Here's the beginning of the Gay City News article:

An Epidemic Unabated

By: DUNCAN OSBORNE

04/17/2008

 

For Black Gays 24 and Under, 60 Percent Rise in Four Years

Leaning back in a chair, his arms crossed above his head, Justin D. Walker spoke easily about his life. The 24-year-old paused to sip some water and occasionally stood to look at a computer screen displaying slides from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Using data from 33 states, one slide showed that new HIV or AIDS diagnoses among African-American gay and bisexual men aged 13 to 24 went from just under 1,000 cases in 2001 to more than 1,600 in 2005. Walker is one of those statistics. He learned he was positive at 20.

"I know that my future is altered," he said toward the end of a 90-minute interview. "One of the things that I've always wanted to do was have a family. I know that is not impossible, but it will be hard to do."

New HIV or AIDS diagnoses among white or Latino men who have sex with men in that age group also increased over that time, but the cases among whites hit roughly 600 in 2005 and there were about 500 cases among Latinos in that year.

During that same period, new diagnoses among gay and bisexual men aged 35 to 44 went from over 6,000 to roughly 6,500, cases among 25- to 34-year-olds went from 5,000 to 5,500, and cases among 45- to 54-year-olds went from roughly 2,500 to more than 3,000.

The 13- to 24-year-olds account for just four percent of all male AIDS cases, according to one CDC estimate, but that anyone in that age group is getting infected is shocking.

"It's a very serious problem when the very young are becoming infected and it's increasingly so," said Dr. M. Monica Sweeney, assistant commissioner for the Bureau of HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control in the New York City health department.

City data show that 3,596 13- to 24-year-olds first received an HIV diagnosis from 2001 to 2006. Sixty-six percent, or 2,388 cases, of those diagnoses were in men and, among the men, 68 percent, or 1,633 cases, were gay or bisexual men. Fifty-two percent of all the young men were African-American and 34 percent were Latino.

    To read the rest of the Gay City News article click here.

    One reason for AIDS not abating among young Africa Americans may be that while the face of AIDS is now black, the funding to fight disease still goes to white organizations. Here's the op-ed page Chicago Sun-Times column I wrote about it nearly two years ago.

Those most affected by AIDS don't control research dollars

Chicago Sun-Times
By Monroe Anderson
June 11, 2006

When AIDS was first diagnosed 25 years ago, it wore a gay, white male face. Today that face is black and poor. Africa, which has slightly more than one-tenth of the world's population, accounts for nearly two-thirds of those living with HIV/AIDS worldwide.

In the United States, the numbers for African Americans are devastating just the same. Blacks make up slightly more than 12 percent of the population, but account for more than 70 percent of all new HIV infections and more than half of all AIDS diagnoses.

In Illinois, African Americans are affected by HIV/AIDS more than any other group. Though African Americans make up 15 percent of the state's population, in 2004 they accounted for more than half of the reported HIV cases. Among all women who reported HIV infection last year, 70 percent were African American, and between both sexes, 46 percent were African American. Chicago's South and West Sides are home to most of the state's blacks who are living with the virus.

This being the case, logic might dictate that the money follow the numbers. But life isn't logical or fair, and that's not how the funding fared. Those who command the lion's share of the money, and dictate how the disease will be treated, prevented and fought, are reflecting the old face of AIDS -- not the new.

Over the years, AIDS has become big business. Treatment costs $1,200 to $3,600 a month per person. The old heads fight for funds so they can continue to do what they do and maybe more. Take Howard Brown Health Center. Boasting an annual budget of $12,420,000, the Midwest's largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender organization is so flush with funding that it has set up an HIV testing program in China. Across town, the Let's Talk, Let's Test Foundation, a black AIDS awareness organization on the South Side, scrapes by on an annual budget that is exactly $12 million less.

"Funding doesn't traditionally go to black organizations in the same amount it does to other communities," asserts Lloyd M. Kelly, executive director of the foundation. "We have got to be included in the decision-making process."

With the potent combination of a voice and a multimillion-dollar budget at stake, do-gooding is a habit that's hard to kick. But no matter how good-willed, white organizations don't do as well on Chicago's South or West sides as they do on the North because they aren't as familiar with the black community. A while back, the Howard Brown center considered coming to the South Side before meeting resistance from black organizations suspicious that it was setting up stakes not as missionaries but as mercenaries.

The health center's services might have been useful because many African Americans still won't face the facts about the AIDS epidemic. "The black community is socially conservative," explains Rae Lewis-Thornton, who says AIDS still has a negative connotation among African Americans that "leaves us paralyzed."

You get AIDS "because of your behavior," she said. And, that behavior -- intravenous drug use, gay sex, unprotected sex -- is not acceptable to middle-class, morally right African Americans. "The stigma that's attached to the disease is killing us."

For the past 13 years, Lewis-Thornton, who was diagnosed with AIDS in 1986, has been speaking out against that stigma. At the peak in 1993, she was speaking three to five times a week. Those engagements are now three to five a month. But after years of basically ignoring the problem, the mainstream black organizations are now beginning to make an about-face. Next month she keynotes at the NAACP's 97th Annual Convention.

This latter-day move by the venerable civil rights organization just might be the saving grace. An in-your-face approach will address the AIDS epidemic in the black community much more effectively than playing peek-a-boo.

Old coot Imus belching same old shticks

                           

                                                                                                                                                           Don Imus is back to his same old name game. This time, at least, he's picking on somebody his size, his sex and who is tough enough to brush it off: Barack Obama.
    Media Matters reported that:

    During the April 17 edition of Imus in the Morning, host Don Imus asserted that Sen. Barack Obama is "almost a bigger pussy than" Sen. Hillary Clinton. While discussing the April 16 Democratic debate, Imus said he thought that co-moderator George Stephanopoulos was "great" and that the debate was "fine," adding: "I thought Senator Obama was on the defensive most of the night. But they're both sissy boys or sissy girls, or whatever. Because they talk big when they're out on the campaign trail, wolfing on each other." News anchor Charles McCord interjected, "But then," and Imus continued: "And then when they show up at the debate, they fold up like a couple of cheap lawn chairs. I mean, I don't understand that. And he's almost a bigger pussy than she is."

    I'm not even going to touch on how  that statement must strike women.    

    Unfortunately, Obama is too much the gentleman to ask an old fart like Imus to step outside where they settle this once and for all. Barack's also too smart to risk getting busted on involuntary grampsslaughter.

    I don't think that the O-Man should give the tough-talking I-Man a pass. He should  challenge the cowboy to a game of one-on-one b-ball.  Talk about a slam dunk in discovering who's the baddest.

    Here's a YouTube clip of what the shock jock needs to apologize for this time.

The sludge report: feds use poor black children as guinea pigs

    This just in for all those who have labeled Rev. Jeremiah Wright a crackpot for reportedly preaching in one of his sermons that  "the government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. The government lied."

    I didn't hear the sermon. I haven't heard a snippet of the sermon. I've only heard the accusations repeated and repeated and repeated some more. But...whether Wright's facts were right or wrong, his suspicions were well rooted in reality.

    On Sunday, the Associated Press reported that the U.S. government had used poor black children in Baltimore and East St. Louis as guinea pigs by testing sludge as a means of saving them from lead poisoning. The HUD-funded study, which began in 2000,  resulted in a paper in 2005 that sort of released the results of putting human waste and industrial waste in soil that young black children might put in their mouths.
    With a hat tip to Richard Prince of Journal-isms, here's how reporter John Heilprin's story began:

Scientists using federal grants spread fertilizer made from human and industrial wastes on yards in poor, black neighborhoods to test whether it might protect children from lead poisoning in the soil. Families were assured the sludge was safe and were never told about any harmful ingredients.

Nine low-income families in Baltimore row houses agreed to let researchers till the sewage sludge into their yards and plant new grass. In exchange, they were given food coupons as well as the free lawns as part of a study published in 2005 and funded by the Housing and Urban Development Department.

The Associated Press reviewed grant documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and interviewed researchers. No one involved with the $446,231 grant for the two-year study would identify the participants, citing privacy concerns. There is no evidence there was ever any medical follow-up.

Comparable research was conducted by the Agriculture Department and Environmental Protection Agency in a similarly poor, black neighborhood in East St. Louis, Ill.

The sludge, researchers said, put the children at less risk of brain or nerve damage from lead. A highly toxic element once widely used in gasoline and paint, lead has been shown to cause brain damage among children who ate lead-based paint that had flaked off their homes.

The researchers said the phosphate and iron in the sludge can bind to lead and other hazardous metals in the soil, allowing the combination to pass safely through a child's body if eaten.

The idea that sludge — the leftover semisolid wastes filtered from water pollution at 16,500 treatment plants — can be turned into something harmless, even if swallowed, has been a tenet of federal policy for three decades.

In a 1978 memo, the EPA said sludge "contains nutrients and organic matter which have considerable benefit for land and crops" despite the presence of "low levels of toxic substances."

But in the late 1990s the government began underwriting studies such as those in Baltimore and East St. Louis using poor neighborhoods as laboratories to make a case that sludge may also directly benefit human health.

Meanwhile, there has been a paucity of research into the possible harmful effects of heavy metals, pharmaceuticals, other chemicals and disease-causing microorganisms often found in sludge.

A series of reports by the EPA's inspector general and the National Academy of Sciences between 1996 and 2002 faulted the adequacy of the science behind the EPA's 1993 regulations on sludge.

The chairman of the 2002 academy panel, Thomas Burke, a professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, says epidemiological studies have never been done to show whether spreading sludge on land is safe.

"There are potential pathogens and chemicals that are not in the realm of safe," Burke told the AP. "What's needed are more studies on what's going on with the pathogens in sludge — are we actually removing them? The commitment to connecting the dots hasn't been there."

That's not what the subjects of the Baltimore and East St. Louis research were told.

    A Senate committee led by California Sen. Barbara Boxer plans to look into government funding of study.
    Meanwhile, the Tuskegee Experiment, which began in the 1930s and continued for 40 years, during which time researchers allowed syphilis in black men in Alabama to go untreated, comes to mind. And anybody who doesn't at least give serious consideration to Rev. Wright's alleged AIDS charge may be the crazy one.

Deadly school drop-out rates are triggered by violence

Big cities with biggest school failures rack up most murders

April 15, 2008

By Monroe Anderson

    Coleman Young, yet another colorful Detroit mayor, but from an earlier era, was asked back in the late 1970s, if he supported gun control.
    “Why should I disarm the good citizens of Detroit,” asked Mayor Young, whose wardrobe included a holster complete with a loaded gun as accessory, “when they are surrounded by hostile suburbs?”
    The late mayor got it half right. His city was and still is surrounded by what might be considered hostile suburbs, but its citizens—both good and bad—should have been unconditionally disarmed.
    Three decades after Mayor Young’s refusal to establish gun control, Detroit maintains the dubious distinction of being one of America’s murder capitols. It’s also the nation’s high school drop out capitol—only one in four public school students actually are handed a diploma right after the valedictorian speech.
The Motor City is not alone when it comes to leaving its children behind.
      “Our analysis finds that graduating from high school in America’s largest cities amounts, essentially, to a coin toss. Only about one-half (52 percent) of students in the principal school systems of the 50 largest cities complete high school with a diploma,” according to a study, Cities in Crisis: A Special Analytical Report on High School Graduation, released earlier this month by the America's Promise Alliance. “That rate is well below the national graduation rate of 70 percent, and even falls short of the average for urban districts across the country (60 percent).”
    Every 26 seconds, according to America’s Promise Alliance, one student drops out of high school.
    To translate that information from percentages and time to other numbers adds up to this: each year a million students fail to leave our nation’s high schools in urban areas with a diploma in hand.

    "While Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton trade rounds in the state of Killadelphia on who is bitter and who is not, the more important issues that should be discussed and debated remain a mere dismal backdrop."

     The vast majority who exit are students of color. Nearly half of all African American and Native American students won’t graduate with their class. Hispanics, with a 60 percent graduation rate, fare only slightly better. Almost all these former high schools will pay dearly by ending up in prison or on the welfare rolls.

    The dropout rate of more than a million students each year "is not just a crisis; this is a catastrophe," said former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, the founding chairman of America's Promise Alliance, the organization that presented the research, examining graduation statistics from the 2003-04 school year.  The study also found a 17-point graduation gap between urban and suburban students in those metropolitan areas of the 50 largest cities. I’ll let you guess which students were more likely to end up in college.
    Which brings me back to the Motor City where, I believe, one catastrophe drives the other:  A high murder rate, fuels a low graduation rate. 

    The two have a perverse and tragic symbiotic connection. The top five cities with the lowest graduation rates all have murder rates well above the national average.    

    Detroit’s is more than five times greater. Indianapolis, with a graduation rate that’s not quite one in three, has a murder rate that’s twice the national average. Ohio’s two city’s Cleveland, which graduates a mere 34 percent of its high schoolers, and Columbus, which graduates just over four out of ten, have nearly twice the national murder rate.  Baltimore’s homicide rate is even greater than Detroit’s, and graduates about 35 percent of its high school students.

    While Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton trade rounds in the state of Killadelphia on who is bitter and who is not, the more important issues that should be discussed and debated remain a mere dismal backdrop. 
    Violence, of course, isn’t the only factor that’s jacking up the dropout rates, but it is a major culprit. And it doesn’t take a doctorate of philosophy degree to understand why big cities with high murder rates bear low graduation rolls. Kids are afraid to go to school. They fear for their lives. So even the good kids who want an education drop out because they don't want to get caught up in the violence—or get murdered.

    The choice between dropping out and death equals a lose-lose sum total. They may be skipping the possibility of real death only to suffer a virtual one. Without at least a high school diploma, theirs lives are all but over even before they begin.

Racism: Creationism or Evolution?

   

    Contrary to what many black Americans believe, not every white American is a racist.  After half a century of desegregation, Bill Cosby, Oprah Winfrey and soul music, there has been a seismic shift in racial perceptions.
    But there’s still a ways to go. That’s why I find Tim Wise so refreshing. Not only is he an enlightened white man; he’s making it his mission to enlighten others. The aptly named Mr. Wise correctly bills himself as among the most prominent anti-racist writers and activists in the U.S. He explains white privilege in a way that only the most calcitrant can’t or won’t understand it.
    Here’s his condensed explanation of how white racism evolved and stubbornly endures in America. It’s a touch of true American history. Check it out.