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Publisher-Emeritus 1909-1989 Page A-6


Parents must reject the whitewashing of history


By Tonyaa Weathersbee I didn’t want to write about Glenn Beck’s


rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. I didn’t want to give this gold-shilling huckster – abetted by Fox News and the angst of White folks who will never, ever get over the fact that the man in the White House is Black – any more attention than he’d already gotten from YouTube and CNN.


But I got to thinking about something that


a friend told me some time ago that made me change my mind.


This friend, a teacher, told me about how


some Black students at the mostly White high school she taught at would balk at honoring Black history and Black traditions.


Seems that their White classmates had


duped them into buying into the ludicrous idea that to acknowledge their history amounted to them being racist – and that they somehow owed it to their white classmates, many of whom celebrate their Irish and Italian and Eu- ropean roots, to embrace invisibility.


That story made me think about how impor-


tant it is for Black parents – and Black com- munities – to rear Black children whose sense of history and pride is too strong for them to be that gullible, to be that lightly armed intellectu- ally.


And unless we do that, our children will be


especially vulnerable to this whitewashing of history that right-wingers like Beck have em- barked on since Barack Obama was elected president.


For his part, Beck claims that it was divine


providence, and not cynicism, that led him to pick the Lincoln Memorial – the site where Martin Luther King Jr. gave his “I Have A Dream” speech 47 years ago – for his “Restor- ing Honor,” rally on Saturday.


I don’t believe that. And the fact that he said that he and his


mostly White minions – some of whom have carried signs depicting Obama as everything from an ape to a bone-in-the-nose witch doctor – were going to “reclaim the civil rights move- ment,” tells me that in spite of all the God-talk and all the troop honoring, Beck intended to conflate their cause with King’s.


No doubt, the tens of thousands who came


to see Beck believe they are as oppressed as the Black people who marched in 1963. There’s


just one big difference: The protesters who gath- ered at the Lincoln Memorial nearly 50 years ago were marching to get access to rights guar- anteed by the Constitution, while the people at the Beck rally were, in essence, protesting having to share those rights with people in a nation that is becoming blacker and browner.


Yet they want to use the symbolism of 1963


to remake history; people who now want to say that the 14th Amendment doesn’t mean what it says and that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was flawed. And Beck’s rally isn’t the first attempt at this.


Just this past spring, the Texas Board of


Education voted to revise its history textbooks to remove what some of its members deemed as left-leaning, anti-American views.


Among other things, it wanted to portray


W.E.B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells as people who preached negative views about America – even though during their time, lynchings and segre- gation made life pretty negative, if not outright unbearable, for most Black people.


Also this past spring, Arizona came up with a


law that barred most ethnic studies from being taught. Its lawmakers, it seems, have no prob- lem seeing Latinos when it comes to scrutiniz- ing whether they are in the country illegally, but don’t want to see their struggles and their contributions to this country in classroom les- sons.


In a way, it’s almost flattering that Beck, a


racist who found his moment when America elected a Black president, would look to use the symbolism of the civil rights movement to push his delusions.


But what’s dangerous about it is the fact


that his rally, as well as things like the Texas history textbook changes, the Arizona ethnic studies ban, and even the attempts last year by some school districts to not show Obama’s back-to-school speech, amount to attempts to distort and minimize Black history.


And while none of us can stop Beck or


anyone else from having a rally at the Lincoln Memorial – it’s his right to do so – what we can do is make sure that when he starts popping off nonsense about reclaiming the Civil Rights Movement, at least our children will know he’s popping off nonsense.


And be bold enough to say so to their class- mates. The situation in Flint


By James Boyce It began on December 30, 1936, at Fisher


Body No. 1 in Flint, Michigan: workers occupied General Motors factories, launching one of the key struggles in U.S. labor history. AWomen’s Emergency Brigade brought them food; when the police tried to drive out the strikers with tear gas, the women broke the windows to give them fresh air. After 44 bitter winter days, the sit-down strike forced GM to recognize their union, the United Auto Workers.


It was no accident that Flint was the scene


of this historic battle. One hundred years ago, when the city boasted the largest factory in the world – a Buick plant – the people of Flint elect- ed a socialist mayor. But GM founding partner Charles S. Mott won two years later, campaign- ing on a platform whose first point was “Only men who are successful at business should


run city affairs.” The U.S. auto industry pioneered not only


mass production but also mass consumption. “The American citizen’s first importance to his country is no longer that of citizen but that of consumer,” the pro-business Flint Journal edi- torialized in 1924.


By the early 1950s, when I was a baby


and my parents moved there, Flint’s workers were earning the highest industrial wages in the nation. In an exhibit called “Flint and the American Dream,” the city’s Sloan Museum displays the household belongings of a typical auto worker of the era: the kitchen appliances, formica countertops, and chrome-and-vinyl furniture, the lawn mower and charcoal grill of my childhood.


Flint’s American dream is now a distant


memory. Starting in the 1970s, one auto plant after another shut down, a downward slide viv- idly portrayed in Michael Moore’s film Roger & Me. In the 1981 recession, Flint had the high- est unemployment rate in the country. Today, despite the fact that Flint’s population has fallen to less than 60% of what it was in 1960, the city’s unemployment rate still ranks in the top 20 among the country’s 372 metropolitan


areas. In the neighborhood of company-built bungalows where I lived as a toddler, the pave- ments are cracked, the median strips over- grown with weeds, and abandoned, burnt-out houses decay amongst the surviving homes.


How did this reversal of fortunes happen?


The reasons behind Flint’s collapse are not only the greed and sheer ineptitude of General Motors’ management, memorably depicted in Roger & Me, but also monumental public policy failures. These include:


• Massive foreign borrowing, an overvalued dollar and unprecedented trade deficits, begin- ning in the Reagan era, the fatal macroeconom- ic nexus that decimated American manufactur- ing;


• The failure to grow Medicare into a nation- wide single-payer health care system, leaving U.S. firms – alone among those of advanced in- dustrialized countries – saddled with employer- provided health insurance costs that further eroded their competitiveness; and


• Racial divisions, "White flight" to the sub- urbs, and ill-conceived expressways that tore apart the social capital that was needed to mount an effective local response to these crises.


The grim result is that the American auto


industry, which already had pioneered planned obsolescence in consumer goods, went a step further: Flint became a disposable city.


What can we learn today from Flint’s histo-


ry? In hindsight, the consumption-based social contract espoused by the Flint Journal was not sustainable. It turns out that being a consumer is not a substitute for being a citizen. Caring about things is not more important than caring about each other. Private goodies are not a worthy substitute for public goods. Govern- ment cannot be entrusted safely to captains of industry. Our ability to consume cannot be detached from our responsibility to govern our- selves.


So Flint’s American nightmare teaches us


this: When we elevate consumption above citi- zenship, we imperil not only our democracy, but in the end our economy, too.


How To Write Us:


The Michigan Chronicle encourages letters from read- ers. Expressed opinions must bear the writer’s signa- ture, address and phone number (only the names will published with the letters). Write: Reader’s Speak, Michigan Chronicle, 479 Ledyard, Detroit, MI 48201 or email the editor at chronicle4@aol.com


How to solve the jobs problem


By Fran Korten As the midterm political season heats up,


one word on every politician’s lips is “jobs.” And for good reason. People are hurting—they can’t pay their mortgages, send their kids to college, pay their dental bills. Young people are wondering if they have a place in the work world.


So the economic pundits cheer when car


sales go up, housing starts rise, consumer con- fidence strengthens. But as the oily ooze in the Gulf tars yet another beach, we all sense some- thing is terribly wrong. We can’t keep tearing up the planet to keep ourselves employed. There must be another way.


So imagine a no-holds-barred “summit” that


comes up with ideas to solve both our job and envi- ronmental problems. What might it come up with? Here is my starter list. You can add your own ideas in the comments to this article on the YES! website.


1. More farms, less agribusiness. Agribusi-


ness substitutes chemicals and machinery for labor and employs remarkably few people. Small organic farms are far more productive per acre and bring the people back.


2. More repair, fewer products. Instead of


tossing those shoes, that toaster, that comput- er, let’s fix them—and employ repair people in the process.


3. More recycling, less mining. Ray Ander-


son of the Interface flooring company says we already have enough nylon to meet the world’s carpet needs forever. The same may be true for aluminum, steel, copper, and other easily recy- clable materials. We just need good systems for recovering them.


4. More renovations, less construction. Our


nation has 129 million housing units. We build new ones and let old ones deteriorate. How about renovating what we have and in-filling our cities to use existing sidewalks, gas pipes, water mains, and roads?


5. More restoration, less destruction. Wheth-


er it’s forests, Superfund sites, or oil-laced wet- lands, it’s time to restore. Some restoration can even pay for itself, as in restoration forestry where folks make products from the fire-prone, small-diameter trees normally considered too small to market.


6. More bike paths, fewer highways. They


both cost money, but one is good for our health and good for the planet. What’s not to like?


7. More local businesses, fewer megastores.


Locally owned stores employ more people per goods sold and you can often talk to a decision- maker about your purchase.


8. More dishwashing, fewer throw-aways.


What if we got rid of all the disposable contain- ers in fast food restaurants? At my friend Ron Sher’s Crossroads Shopping Center near Se- attle, the food court vendors share a common crockery supply. No trees needed. It works.


9. More education, less advertising. Let’s


face it. Advertising is about making us feel in- adequate for something we don’t yet have. What if we stopped subsidizing advertising with tax breaks and focused on educating people to lead satisfying lives?


10. More clean energy, less fossil fuel. Here


we do need new stuff—wind turbines, solar panels, insulation, passenger trains. Politicians are providing some—though not enough—fund- ing for these sources of “green jobs.” It’s the other items on this list they’re not even talking about—but need to.


You may be thinking that my list isn’t realis-


tic because these options cost more or depend on government funding. But that’s partly be- cause governments subsidize oil, agribusiness, nuclear plants, ports, highways, advertising, and other unhealthy choices.


So the next time you hear a politician talk


about jobs, try comparing the solutions offered to this list. By breaking out of the narrow range of options that keeps policy discussions stuck, we can create jobs that not only sustain fami- lies, but also build community and restore the living systems of our planet.


Letter to the Editor: What Robert Ficano is not telling us The Detroit News edito-


rial, (“Choose Your Poison,” August 20, 2010) contributes to the reckless fear-monger- ing surrounding the Wayne County retiree’s so-called 13th check. It irresponsibly suggests that the county has a choice of paying that annual check or furloughing up to 500 employees. Noth- ing could be further from the truth.


check is a product of the Ficano


The issue of the 13th administration’s


effort to reduce personnel by offering early retirement buyout packages at deep discounts through collec- tive bargaining agreements. While well-intentioned, these buyouts more than doubled the amount of money Wayne County is required to con- tribute in order to make up for the under-funding of the


retirement system – from about $15 million to over $40 million annually.


The County Commission


overwhelmingly and correct- ly rejected the executive’s proposal to end the “inflation equity check” for over 5,000 retirees. Over 60 percent of them receive less than $15,000 per year in pension income. This was the respon- sible thing to do for several reasons: The retirees did not create the shortfall; the check is based on investment earn- ings of over nine percent; it was a “one-time” fix; it may not be legal, and ending it was not the administration’s only option.


The commission is cur-


rently considering balanced budget proposals that con- tinue the 13th check without one employee layoff. It does, however, put on hold some


By Deborah Mathis Once upon a time, there was a Yazoo, Mis-


sissippi native named Haley Barbour, who grew up in one of the most racially turbulent times in the racially turbulent state’s history.


When he was in elementary school, the


United States Supreme Court ordered an end to segregated schools. But, Mississippi’s school officials refused to come up with a plan that would put little black boys and girls in the same classrooms with little white boys and girls. So little Haley did not learn his ABC’s or go to recess with children who looked like Emmett Till, the 14-year-old from Chicago who was kid- napped from his grandfather’s home, beaten, shot and dumped into the Tallahatchie River, which flows into the river that runs through Haley’s hometown.


When little Haley was in junior high school,


a black man named Clyde Kennard was charged with possessing liquor and speeding. Later, Kennard was sent to prison for seven years for burglary.


White Mississippians wanted to teach Ken-


nard a lesson for trying to enroll in an all-white college. The Sovereignty Commission, which had been formed to fight integration, had con- sidered putting dynamite in Kennard’s car.


During those formative years for Haley,


Freedom Riders were pouring into the South, trying to integrate lunch counters and public transportation and registering black voters. A


of the administration’s non- mandated pet projects that produce no revenue to the county and no tangible ben- efit to the taxpayer. They in- clude not funding the Land Bank and other over-optimis- tic development projects.


My commission col-


leagues are addressing the FY 2010-11 budget crisis in a manner that responsibly re- stores and preserves services and programs residents and retirees need and deserve. We will entertain any reason- able ideas from the executive that does not include irre- sponsible pronouncements of massive layoffs that only heighten fear and distrust.


Edward A. Boike, Jr. Chairman Wayne County Commission


What reality is Haley Barbour living in?


black farmer in a town ironically called Liberty was shot to death, and a black witness to that shooting was killed.


Around the time Haley started high school,


the civil rights movement was at fever pitch. His governor, Ross Barnett, swore he would keep a black man out of the state’s proudest institu- tion of higher learning, the University of Mis- sissippi. James Meredith’s arrival at Ole Miss was met with riots. It took the National Guard and the Army to restore order.


When Haley was 16, black students from


Tougaloo College started sit-ins at whites-only lunch counters in downtown Jackson, Missis- sippi’s capital city. Several were beaten and otherwise assaulted. Many were arrested.


One month later, Byron de la Beckwith


gunned down the state’s NAACP field secretary, Medgar Evers, just as Evers was arriving home to his wife and young children.


The next year was bound to have been one


that 17-year-old Haley would never forget. In May, Mississippi Ku Klux Klansmen killed Henry Dee and Charles Moore and dumped them in the Mississippi River.


In June, thousands of civil rights workers


flooded the Magnolia State on a massive voter registration mission that was greeted with fierce resistance and violence.


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