Kerry's hopeful tone on black opportunity

By Derrick Z. Jackson | August 11, 2004

WASHINGTON
MALCOLM X would have cracked a smile at the words of John Kerry. Kerry was asked last week at a convention for journalists of color who was most responsible for the living conditions of low-income African-Americans. This was in reference to Bill Cosby's caustic accusations of parents buying $500 sneakers for mumbling, illiterate, n-word "knuckleheads." "I think all of us are responsible, all of us," said Kerry, the Democratic candidate for president. "I understand exactly where Bill is coming from in his comment. It may be excessively exclusive in the breadth of it, in the sense that it sort of targets just the responsibility side, but that's an important side."

But then Kerry talked about how the nation does not keep its end of the bargain. He said teachers at Boston's Jeremiah Burke High School once told him they spent up to $2,000 of their own money for learning materials. He talked about the lack of after-school programs. He talked about his Senate sponsorship of YouthBuild, where at-risk youth learn life skills building affordable housing. He talked about his frustration of being told there's never any money to increase funding for YouthBuild.

"If you have a school system that depends on the property tax and you have a community that doesn't have any property tax base, and it's dependent on the largess of either state or federal assistance, but the great ethic of the politics of our nation is no tax, no available resources because it's more important to give a tax cut to people earning more than $200,000 a year, we got a problem." Malcolm would have smiled because he said 40 years ago, "The schools in Harlem are not controlled by the people in Harlem, they're controlled by the man downtown. And the man downtown takes all of the tax dollars and spends them elsewhere, but he keeps the schools, the school facilities, the school teachers, and the school books, material, in Harlem at the very lowest level."

He would have also smiled because Kerry declined the cheap thrill of blaming the victim and answered with a nuanced duality that eluded many commentators and politicians when they rushed to either defend or condemn Cosby. The duality was ignored most notably by conservatives who suddenly adopted Cosby as a political pet, conservatives who oddly did not adopt Cosby when the family comedian endorsed Jesse Jackson in 1988 and Al Gore in 2000.

Barack Obama, who likely will become the only African-American in the Senate, declined the thrill in a recent interview on NBC's "Meet the Press." Obama said, "I think there are questions of individual responsibility, but I think that there are also questions of societal responsibility." He cited access to jobs and the economic security that black men need to build strong families. Continued...

1 2 Next

PRINTER FRIENDLY

SINGLE-PAGE FORMAT

E-MAIL TO A FRIEND