community consciousness: individual vs collective empowerment in the fin d'siecle

theroot | Although inelegantly expressed, Jay Z's position that his presence, along with that of President Obama, provides resources for the black community deserves closer examination. Insofar as Obama's watershed presence in American culture promoted a renaissance of interest in race and African-American history in politics, cable news, publishing and universities throughout the nation, Jay Z's point is well-made. Similarly, Shawn Carter's own burgeoning iconography has helped make hip-hop into a global phenomenon and inspired countless black entrepreneurs and artists to follow his example. In many respects, Michael Jordan innovated the model of the apolitical black superstar that subsequent generations in sports and entertainment have adopted. Belafonte has every right, of course, to criticize such a perspective, especially since it flies in the face of the ethos of collective and group empowerment upon which the civil rights and Black Power eras were built.

Jay Z's acknowledgement that he spent two sleepless nights in the aftermath of the George Zimmerman verdict included an admission that America still has residues of past racial discrimination. Beyond this fleeting recognition, however, racism appears as ghosts from the nation's dark past, shadowy apparitions that are not easily recognizable and almost impossible to fight.

This narrative views racism as more of an antiquated series of individual prejudices, pernicious stereotypes and ancient wrongs committed lifetimes ago than a systematic and institutional phenomenon that persists in every facet of American life. When Jay Z points to hip-hop's multicultural audience as providing not just a balm for past racial discrimination but, in fact, a cure, he means it. The shared experiences of a multicultural hip-hop generation represent the culmination of the civil rights movement's search for transcendent racial justice. Although this ignores the most important aspect of contemporary racism -- unequal outcomes -- it's a comforting myth that has been propagated by our "postracial" moment.

Jay Z sees his own wealth and status, along with the election of Barack Obama, as examples of racism's decline. In other words, he mistakes individual achievement for collective advancement. While Jay Z's individual entrepreneurial spirit, musical genius and discipline facilitated his escape from Brooklyn, N.Y.'s Marcy Projects, he doesn't see the value in committing his time, resources and talent in political causes that might help those left behind in America's countless urban and rural ghettoes.

Belafonte's generation grew up believing that the ascendance of black faces in higher places carried less weight and meaning if the entire community could not be uplifted as well.

lawsy, what's goin'on by the woodpile out behind the big house?!?!?!?

people |  U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona and his wife Cindy shared in a happy occasion Saturday night – the wedding of their son Jack McCain to Renee Swift, the senator's rep confirms.

The younger McCain, 27, serves as a lieutenant in the Navy, stationed in Guam where he is a helicopter pilot. Swift, 29, a Bay area native, is a captain in the USAF reserve. The couple met in Guam.

The wedding ceremony was held at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral, with a reception following at the California Academy of Sciences, said the rep.

The festivities were attended by all of the McCain children, reports The Washington Post. Also attending the couple's rehearsal dinner Friday night at the Tonga Room of the Fairmont Hotel, said the newspaper: former presidential candidate and Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

The groom's sister, Meghan McCain, 28, shared the joyous occasion through live Tweets throughout the weekend.

The couple planned to honeymoon in Africa, after which Jack McCain is slated for another deployment.

you know of course that the first black speaker of the house's orange daughter married a rasta?

dontgetherhairwet | The Root and other media outlets are reporting that Lindsay Boehner, daughter of Speaker of the House John Boehner recently married Dominic Lakhan,  ”a Jamaican-born construction worker” , who in the words of Root author Keli Goff  ”happens to be black.”  She goes on to say ” he also happens to have been previously arrested for marijuana possession.”

Umm ok. . . weird wording and perhaps unnecessary information, but nevertheless, good for everybody involved.  As opposed to some websites that see this as a gleeful excuse to write headlines like “NO JOKE: John Boehner’s Daughter to Marry Jamaican Pothead Construction Worker With Criminal Record”  I see this as an awesome thing. Who cares! They are happy, they want to be together. Let’s all love one another! . . . Republicans. . . I tell you, just when I start to paint you all with the same sweeping stereotyping, generalizing brush, you go ahead and surprise me.

Here are two extremely fuzzy aerial shots of the wedding obtained by the Daily Mail UK. I think the second pic is supposed to be of John Boehner, enjoying himself at the wedding. Or at the very least attending the wedding.

"my presence is charity...,"

counterpunch | Veteran civil rights activist and world-renowned entertainer Harry Belafonte hit a raw nerve last year when he suggested Black artists be more outspoken about their besieged communities.

“I think one of the great abuses of this modern time,” he observed, “is that we have such high-profile artists and powerful celebrities, but they have turned their back on social responsibility. That goes for Jay Z and Beyoncé, for example.”

Even though Belafonte continuously emphasizes his remarks were not intended to be personal and that he earnestly desires a private, fraternal conversation not a public dispute, Jay Z clearly took it all very personal, criticizing Belafonte in the media and on the title track of his new album, “Magna Carta…Holy Grail.”

Jay Z also responded by elaborating his own alternative version of “social responsibility.”

He told the press that “I’m offended…and this is going to sound arrogant, but my presence is charity. Just who I am. Just like Obama. Obama provides hope. Whether he does anything, the hope that he provides for a nation and outside of America is enough.”

On this point, I beg to differ. Preaching hope is not enough to solve our problems, not by a long shot. Neither do charitable donations even comes close to fulfilling basic social needs.

Leaving aside self-serving tax benefits, mostly accruing to the wealthiest donors who itemize a myriad of exemptions, individual handouts, no matter how well-intentioned and admirable, cannot solve deeply rooted problems of our day.

Plus, with a July 28, 2013 AP wire service report indicating four out of five U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives, there is absolutely no justification for government to abandon its social contract with the people.

It would be yet another bad example of outsourcing state duties to the profit sector. Fist tap DD.

jay-z: objectivist exemplar...,

nydailynews | Thanks to Keli Goff of The Root for writing the definitive word on the war of words between singer and civil rights activist Harry Belafonte and Jay Z, the budding sports agent, Atlantic Yards cheerleader and former owner of a tiny sliver of the Nets.

“These men are not equals in any way,” Goff writes. “Jay Z will never be in Belafonte's league, no matter how many CDs he sells or millions he earns (or how many presidents he pays to hang out with through political fundraisers). The only thing making this fake ‘feud’ marginally interesting is that Jay Z seems oblivious to this fact, as do some of his fans, a few of whom are so intellectually lacking that they are unaware of how much greater Belafonte's legacy is and will always be than that of ‘Hova.’

Goff follows up with five reasons why Belafonte is “more relevant and more of a man than Jay Z will ever be.”

She notes that Belafonte provided financial support to Martin Luther King Jr. and his family when the civil rights icon was a struggling pastor and even helped bail King out of jail following his arrest in Alabama. She also points out that Belafonte helped fund the freedom rides.

Jay Z, meanwhile, donated just $6,431 of the $63 million he earned in 2010 – and that money went to his own charity.

Meanwhile, over at Atlantic Yards Report, Norman Oder examines Jay Z’s claim that his very presence is charity and that his rise from crack dealer to hip-hop star is inspiring.

“Jay Z has a point: many, many people (like NPR's Frannie Kelley) found the presence of Jay Z opening the Barclays Center trumping any controversy: ‘The Barclays Center is fraught, but watching Jay open it was touching, and that night, I did not feel complicated about him.’

“And Jay-Z neutralized/deflected a lot of criticism of the arena and Atlantic Yards project.

“But ‘my presence is charity?’ Puh-leeze. He's a business, man.”

the hon.bro.preznit's minister of negroe affairs indeed...,

townhall | If we put ourselves into the shoes of racists who seek to sabotage black upward mobility, we couldn't develop a more effective agenda than that followed by civil rights organizations, black politicians, academics, liberals and the news media. Let's look at it.

First, weaken the black family, but don't blame it on individual choices. You have to preach that today's weak black family is a legacy of slavery, Jim Crow and racism. The truth is that black female-headed households were just 18 percent of households in 1950, as opposed to about 68 percent today. In fact, from 1890 to 1940, the black marriage rate was slightly higher than that of whites. Even during slavery, when marriage was forbidden for blacks, most black children lived in biological two-parent families. In New York City, in 1925, 85 percent of black households were two-parent households. A study of 1880 family structure in Philadelphia shows that three-quarters of black families were two-parent households.

During the 1960s, devastating nonsense emerged, exemplified by a Johns Hopkins University sociology professor who argued, "It has yet to be shown that the absence of a father was directly responsible for any of the supposed deficiencies of broken homes." The real issue, he went on to say, "is not the lack of male presence but the lack of male income." That suggests marriage and fatherhood can be replaced by a welfare check.

The poverty rate among blacks is 36 percent. Most black poverty is found in female-headed households. The poverty rate among black married couples has been in single digits since 1994 and is about 8 percent today. The black illegitimacy rate is 75 percent, and in some cities, it's 90 percent. But if that's a legacy of slavery, it must have skipped several generations, because in the 1940s, unwed births hovered around 14 percent.

Along with the decline of the black family comes anti-social behavior, manifested by high crime rates. Each year, roughly 7,000 blacks are murdered. Ninety-four percent of the time, the murderer is another black person. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1976 and 2011, there were 279,384 black murder victims. Using the 94 percent figure means that 262,621 were murdered by other blacks. Though blacks are 13 percent of the nation's population, they account for more than 50 percent of homicide victims. Nationally, the black homicide victimization rate is six times that of whites, and in some cities, it's 22 times that of whites. I'd like for the president, the civil rights establishment, white liberals and the news media, who spent massive resources protesting the George Zimmerman trial's verdict, to tell the nation whether they believe that the major murder problem blacks face is murder by whites. There are no such protests against the thousands of black murders.

There's an organization called NeighborhoodScout. Using 2011 population data from the U.S. Census Bureau, 2011 crime statistics from the FBI and information from 17,000 local law enforcement agencies in the country, it came up with a report titled "Top 25 Most Dangerous Neighborhoods in America." They include neighborhoods in Detroit, Chicago, Houston, St. Louis and other major cities. What's common to all 25 neighborhoods is that their makeup is described as "Black" or "Mostly Black." The high crime rates have several outcomes that are not in the best interests of the overwhelmingly law-abiding people in these neighborhoods. There can't be much economic development. Property has a lower value, but worst of all, people can't live with the kind of personal security that most Americans enjoy.

Disgustingly, black politicians, civil rights leaders, liberals and the president are talking nonsense about "having a conversation about race." That's beyond useless. Tell me how a conversation with white people is going to stop black predators from preying on blacks. How is such a conversation going to eliminate the 75 percent illegitimacy rate? What will such a conversation do about the breakdown of the black family (though "breakdown" is not the correct word, as the family doesn't form in the first place)? Only black people can solve our problems.

about Double-0's minister of negroe affairs and the other establishment negroes on msnbc...,

democracynow | Cenk, welcome to Democracy Now! What happened?

CENK UYGUR: Well, it’s exactly as I explained on The Young Turks. You know, I was going along doing a program. You know, they did have, early on, some stylistic comments. I was trying to listen to them, you know, in terms of body language—don’t wave your arms, act like a senator. I don’t know why you would want a talk show host to act like a senator, but fine, it’s the medium that you’re working in. If I’m working on the internet, you know, it’s different than working on television. And, you know, taking those points is no problem at all.

But in April, when they pulled me in, Phil Griffin gave me this big speech about how we’re the establishment, and it would be cool to be like outsiders, but we’re not, we’re insiders, and we have to act like it. And I remember thinking at the time, well, there’s no way I’m going to do that. So I’m going to give them what I got. And then, if they like it, they like it. If they don’t, they don’t.

And honestly, I didn’t know which way they were going to go with it, because I know how much they care about ratings. So I figured if I delivered good ratings, that that would probably do the job. Well, it didn’t, because I delivered really good ratings, beating CNN significantly, handily, and also improving upon the numbers from last year. So there’s no question about the ratings. And then they pulled me in and said, "Well, you know, we’re going to go in a different direction at 6:00 anyway." And when I asked them about it, they didn’t really have a good answer as to why, leading me to believe that that giant conversation we had three months ago might have been part of the reason.

AMY GOODMAN: In December of last year, Phil Donahue joined Eliot Spitzer and Kathleen Parker on their show to discuss his ouster from MSNBC during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. Donahue was the lone journalist daring to publicly oppose the war at its onset.

PHIL DONAHUE: I opposed the war.

ELIOT SPITZER: And was that one of the reasons they pushed you off?

PHIL DONAHUE: Oh, read the memo—

ELIOT SPITZER: Right, right.

PHIL DONAHUE: —published by the New York Times.

ELIOT SPITZER: So, your—

PHIL DONAHUE: "Donahue’s antiwar voice is not going to work against the flag waving on the other station." Donahue and any antiwar voice in 2002—

ELIOT SPITZER: Right, right.

PHIL DONAHUE: Remember, they’re all doing what I did then now.

ELIOT SPITZER: Right.

PHIL DONAHUE: I mean, the whole channel is now.

KATHLEEN PARKER: But listen—

PHIL DONAHUE: You could not criticize this war four months before the invasion.

ELIOT SPITZER: Right.

PHIL DONAHUE: It was not good for business. You had—General Electric had no interest in featuring an old talk show host who was against the president’s war. It was—it was unpopular. You weren’t American. This is what you get with corporate media. It’s going to happen again.

AMY GOODMAN: Cenk Uygur, does your situation compare to that of Phil Donahue’s? Do you think Al Sharpton would take a very different political line than you would?

CENK UYGUR: So, there’s a couple of different things here. First of all, it’s not just Phil Donahue. I had Jesse Ventura on The Young Turks a little while ago, maybe over a year ago. And what people don’t remember is that he also had a big contract from MSNBC at the time to do a show, and they told him, "You know what? It’s OK. Take the money. You don’t even have to do the show." Why? He said they found out that he was against the Iraq War and said, "That’s OK. We don’t want you on air then." OK?

And Ashleigh Banfield, when she gave a great speech in Kansas about how the war didn’t make any sense, she went from their star reporter to literally being moved into a closet. And they wouldn’t even let her out of her contract so she can go on another network and talk. It was unbelievable.

Now, the distinction there is Donahue, Ventura, Banfield were all under different management at MSNBC. So you have to be clear on that, and you can’t put that on them. But the similarity is that it is corporate media, right? And whether it’s the pressure to go right, the pressure to go left, pressure to appease the Bush administration, or pressure to appease the Obama administration, it exists. And it’s not just MSNBC. You think that the CNN hosts can aggressively challenge government officials? I don’t think so. It doesn’t look that way at all. And of course, when you get to Fox News, they’re a whole different animal: they’re purely propaganda. So, to me, this is not an issue of just MSNBC management now, no.

poetic justice moralizes, it excuses hedonic uselessness, it eschews excellence...,

theroot | Buried beneath the ever-growing pile of rubble that is the negative reaction to CNN anchor Don Lemon's "tough love" comments about the black community was the excellent rebuttal by Global Grind's editor-in-chief, Michael Skolnik.

"It's a reflection, it's a mirror," said Skolnik when asked by Lemon if rap and hip-hop "glorify prison culture," specifically the apparently cutting-edge trend of wearing baggy pants.

"Don't break the mirror," continued Skolnik, visibly upset. "Look at yourself."

"Well, that's, it's that, well, isn't that what --" stuttered Lemon after the briefest moment of dead air. He seemed taken aback and most of all confused by Skolnik's call to self-reflection.

"Isn't that what I'm trying to do here by telling people, 'Hey listen, I love you, but these are things you need to work on'?" asked Lemon, still not getting it. "I'm just being honest here.'"

Pointing the finger and peering into a mirror are two very distinct actions. One requires little save griping, and the other forces you to do more than simply judge. Forgive me for quoting two of Oprah's favorite gurus, Dr. Phil and Iyanla Vanzant: A mirror compels you to "get real with yourself" and "do the work." A pointed finger is nothing but a cocked gun aimed at the dreaded and scary other. But like my great grandmother (and probably yours, too) always said, "When you point a finger at someone else, three more are pointing right back at you."

folks gotta get that eudaimonic groove back...,

sciencedaily | Human bodies recognize at the molecular level that not all happiness is created equal, responding in ways that can help or hinder physical health, according to new research led by Barbara L. Fredrickson, Kenan Distinguished Professor of psychology in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The sense of well-being derived from "a noble purpose" may provide cellular health benefits, whereas "simple self-gratification" may have negative effects, despite an overall perceived sense of happiness, researchers found. "A functional genomic perspective on human well-being" was published July 29 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Philosophers have long distinguished two basic forms of well-being: a 'hedonic' [hee-DON-ic] form representing an individual's pleasurable experiences, and a deeper 'eudaimonic,' [u-DY-moh-nick] form that results from striving toward meaning and a noble purpose beyond simple self-gratification," wrote Fredrickson and her colleagues.

It's the difference, for example, between enjoying a good meal and feeling connected to a larger community through a service project, she said. Both give us a sense of happiness, but each is experienced very differently in the body's cells.

"We know from many studies that both forms of well-being are associated with improved physical and mental health, beyond the effects of reduced stress and depression," Fredrickson said. "But we have had less information on the biological bases for these relationships."

first class...,

npr | Cornish: You take us back into the 1860s ... and in those days in Washington, D.C., what makes this place a fertile ground, actually, for the education of blacks?

"It's so interesting to think that — not interesting — it's so stunning to think that in the South, before the Civil War, you could have a finger cut off if you were caught trying to learn to read if you were a slave. But Washington, D.C., while there weren't any schools for blacks, they weren't going to stand in the way of blacks getting an education.

"So as early as 1807, these small schools started popping up in churches and homes. A lot of Quakers came down from the North to Washington. They understood that this was a place where there was an opportunity to lay the groundwork for what turned into a pretty spectacular education system for black Americans."

And it helps that there's this large population of free blacks already living there.

"Exactly. And they were fighting so hard to continue the progress of education. For a long time, there were grammar schools only and elementary schools, and a few free blacks got together and they saw their moment. Because after the Civil War, the U.S. government said, 'OK, we've got all these free black children, we have to give them schools.' So a group of free blacks got together and said, 'We're going go make a high school. We see this moment in time. We're just going to do it.' And it started in 1870 with four students in the basement of a church."

Now talk a little bit about what the goals are for this school in particular. From its very beginning, academic standards are just so incredibly high.

"What ended up happening is the first African-Americans to go to competitive colleges — Oberlin, Amherst, Brown, Harvard — they would graduate from school and have nowhere to go. Many of them came back to teach at this high school. My mom and dad went to this high school in the 1940s; they had a very different experience. My mother was born and raised in Washington, D.C. My dad was born and raised in Harlem, and my grandmother picked him up at 14 and took him to D.C. just to go to Dunbar, which many people did. People moved to D.C. just to send their kids to this high school.

"And my mom used to talk about having teachers who were Ph.Ds. You had the first three black women to get Ph.Ds; two of them went to Dunbar, and two of them taught at Dunbar.

"So what ended up happening was that these next two and three generations were these hypereducated African-Americans."

So the school was basically in a way benefiting ... from the glass ceiling of segregation. That these high-achieving African-Americans, they don't have anywhere to go once they get out of these schools and broken these barriers. And they come back into the community.

"It's a perversity of it, right? And it's funny because I stayed up at night, worried that someone would think I was actually writing a book that talked about 'segregation is a good thing' because it of course isn't, it of course was horrible. And that was the other part that I found so fascinating about this story. You had all these people who were so educated, speaking two and three languages, going to a school and getting an education on par with white student in Washington, D.C., but had these other restrictions on their lives."

don lemon backs o'lielly over the hon.bro.preznit's minister of negroe affairs....,

rawstory | CNN anchor Don Lemon came to the defense of Fox News host Bill O’Reilly on Saturday regarding O’Reilly’s heavily-criticized take regarding crime in the African-American community.

“In my estimation, he doesn’t go far enough,” Lemon said in a commentary, before going on to list five tips for Black Americans to improve their living situation, starting with an entreaty to young African-American men to stop letting their pants sag as a fashion choice.

“Walking around with your a*s and your underwear showing is not okay,” Lemon said. “In fact, it comes from prison. When they take away belts from prisoners so they can’t make a weapon. And then it evolved into which role each prisoner would have during male-on-male prison sex.”

Lemon also advised Black viewers to stop saying “the N-word,” to encourage young members of the community to finish their education and to “respect where you live.”

“I’ve lived in several predominantly white communities in my life,” Lemon said. “I rarely, if ever, witnessed people littering. I live in Harlem now. It’s a historically Black neighborhood. Every single day, I see adults and children dropping their trash on the ground when the garbage can is just feet away. Just being honest here.”

Additionally, Lemon cited an oft-mentioned statistic saying 72 percent of African-American children were born out of wedlock. But that figure has been in dispute since as far back as 2009, when columnist Ta-Nehisi Coates pointed out in The Atlantic that the birth rate among Black women was actually declining at the time, and that the birth rate for married Black women was lower than among married white women.

“There is no data to show that the black ‘illegitimacy’ figure of 70 percent has been caused by unmarried black women having more kids than they did in the past,” Coates wrote at the time. 

Lemon’s remarks were also ripped in a subsequent panel discussion by Global Grind editor-in-chief Michael Skolnick.

“I think your remarks sound like a conserative preacher on a Sunday,” Skolnick told Lemon. “Certainly Bill O’Reilly should welcome you on his show. I’m disappointed in you. You’re talking about sagging pants? I’ve heard this rap for years, talking about sagging pants. Let’s talk about why we incarcerate 2.2 million people in this country, and why young kids look up to guys who come out of jail.”

“Michael, not every Black kid is in jail,” Lemon countered. “And there are rules. People should know where that style comes from. Whether it’s a Black kid, a white kid, a Black kid, whether it’s Justin Bieber. That is glorifying prison culture. Who wants to see someone’s butt-crack?”

When Lemon asked Skolnick whether hip-hop culture glorified that aethetic, Skolnick shot back that the music is a reflection of society.

“Don’t break the mirror, look at yourself,” Skolnick told Lemon.

o'lielly doubled down on the minister of negroe affairs...,

O'Reilly called on "civil rights folks to stop maligning the country and face up to a huge problem that is directly harming millions, primarily, in the African American community." He continued to blame these problems mainly on the collapse of the traditional black family unit, saying that the civil rights industry ignores it, along with an entertainment industry that embraces "gangster culture."

O'Reilly then turned to Sharpton, who he said "attacked the messenger, implying that I am a racist." In response to Sharpton playing O'Reilly's infamous "motherfucking iced tea" moment, O'Reilly accused him of taking it out of context, declaring that Sharpton and other TV pundits are "attacking me because I am a threat to them."

O'Reilly declared, "The day of the race hustlers is coming to an end." He said people like Sharpton aren't interested in solving the real problems of the black community,

the hon.bro.preznit's minister of negroe affairs responds to o'lielly

MSNBC's Al Sharpton took Bill O'Reilly's recent comments about race head-on Friday evening, after the Fox anchor singled him out last night for being "in business with people who put out entertainment harmful to children." Sharpton called it "ridiculous" that O'Reilly is somehow the "expert on what the vast majority of African-Americans want."

"In the time since George Zimmerman's acquittal," Sharpton declared, "some right-wingers have gone into overdrive to push the most negative stereotypes of the African-American community for their own gain." He lumped O'Reilly in with Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity as the "unholy triumvirate of right-wing reaction" that has "been desperate not to have a real conversation about the injustices of the justice system."

Sharpton mocked O'Reilly and others for their sudden concern about gang violence in Chicago, something he said "many of us in African-American community" have been talking about for months. "Better late than never, I guess." On O'Reilly's focus on the breakdown of the African-American family, Sharpton asked, "Is Bill O'Reilly saying George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin because Trayvon was born out of wedlock, even though he wasn't? That's ridiculous, right?"

"All of this is an effort to avoid addressing the urgent topic that something is fundamentally flawed with our justice system if laws like Stand Your Ground allow a kid to be gunned down," Sharpton continued. "But Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly don't want to talk about that."

Sarcastically calling O'Reilly the "expert on the vast majority of what African-Americans want," Sharpton said, "we need a real conversation about justice in this country, not the same old right-wing divide and conquer garbage. Bill O'Reilly, the Willie Horton stuff has got to go."

bill o'lielly went in on the brouhaha...,

 "The sad truth is that from the president on down, our leadership has no clue, no clue at all about how to solve problems within the black community," O'Reilly said. "And many are frightened to even broach the issue. That's because race hustlers and the grievance industry have intimidated the so-called 'conversation,' turning any valid criticism of African-American culture into charges of racial bias." He said it's these attitudes that have forced African-Americans to "fend for themselves in violent neighborhoods."

Coming back to Trayvon Martin specifically, O'Reilly said there is only evidence that George Zimmerman "profiled" the 17-year-old because he was "dressed in clothing sometimes used by street criminals"--not his skin color. "It was wrong for Zimmerman to confront Martin based on his appearance," he said. "But the culture that we have in this country does lead to criminal profiling because young black American men are so often involved in crime."

This led O'Reilly to pinpoint the primary cause of these statistics: "The disintegration of the African-American family." More than anything else, he chalked up black crime to the fact that "73% of all black babies are born out of wedlock," a problem that he said Obama and other civil rights leaders refuse to address. He also pointed fingers at the entertainment industry, and particularly "gangsta culture," for "encouraging irresponsibility" and "glorifying bad behavior."

O'Reilly outright rejected the notion, put forward by "race hustlers and limousine liberals" that "unfair" incarceration rates for "non-violent" drug offenses contribute to the problem, calling out Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Obama for refusing to condemn drug dealers. Getting more and more heated as he progressed, O'Reilly argued that blacks' disadvantages "has nothing to do with slavery. It has everything to do with you Hollywood people and you derelict parents."

In conclusion, O'Reilly said, "it's now time for the African-American leadership, including President Obama, to stop the nonsense. Walk away from the world of victimization and grievance and lead the way out of this mess."

stranded by sprawl...,

NYTimes | Detroit is a symbol of the old economy’s decline. It’s not just the derelict center; the metropolitan area as a whole lost population between 2000 and 2010, the worst performance among major cities. 

Atlanta, by contrast, epitomizes the rise of the Sun Belt; it gained more than a million people over the same period, roughly matching the performance of Dallas and Houston without the extra boost from oil.

Yet in one important respect booming Atlanta looks just like Detroit gone bust: both are places where the American dream seems to be dying, where the children of the poor have great difficulty climbing the economic ladder. In fact, upward social mobility — the extent to which children manage to achieve a higher socioeconomic status than their parents — is even lower in Atlanta than it is in Detroit. And it’s far lower in both cities than it is in, say, Boston or San Francisco, even though these cities have much slower growth than Atlanta. 

So what’s the matter with Atlanta? A new study suggests that the city may just be too spread out, so that job opportunities are literally out of reach for people stranded in the wrong neighborhoods. Sprawl may be killing Horatio Alger. 

The new study comes from the Equality of Opportunity Project, which is led by economists at Harvard and Berkeley. There have been many comparisons of social mobility across countries; all such studies find that these days America, which still thinks of itself as the land of opportunity, actually has more of an inherited class system than other advanced nations. The new project asks how social mobility varies across U.S. cities, and finds that it varies a lot. In San Francisco a child born into the bottom fifth of the income distribution has an 11 percent chance of making it into the top fifth, but in Atlanta the corresponding number is only 4 percent. 

When the researchers looked for factors that correlate with low or high social mobility, they found, perhaps surprisingly, little direct role for race, one obvious candidate. They did find a significant correlation with the existing level of inequality: “areas with a smaller middle class had lower rates of upward mobility.” This matches what we find in international comparisons, where relatively equal societies like Sweden have much higher mobility than highly unequal America. But they also found a significant negative correlation between residential segregation — different social classes living far apart — and the ability of the poor to rise. 

And in Atlanta poor and rich neighborhoods are far apart because, basically, everything is far apart; Atlanta is the Sultan of Sprawl, even more spread out than other major Sun Belt cities. This would make an effective public transportation system nearly impossible to operate even if politicians were willing to pay for it, which they aren’t. As a result, disadvantaged workers often find themselves stranded; there may be jobs available somewhere, but they literally can’t get there. 

The apparent inverse relationship between sprawl and social mobility obviously reinforces the case for “smart growth” urban strategies, which try to promote compact centers with access to public transit. But it also bears on a larger debate about what is happening to American society. I know I’m not the only person who read the Times article on the new study and immediately thought, “William Julius Wilson.” 

A quarter-century ago Mr. Wilson, a distinguished sociologist, famously argued that the postwar movement of employment out of city centers to the suburbs dealt African-American families, concentrated in those city centers, a heavy blow, removing economic opportunity just as the civil rights movement was finally ending explicit discrimination. And he further argued that social phenomena such as the prevalence of single mothers, often cited as causes of lagging black performance, were actually effects — that is, the family was being undermined by the absence of good jobs.

city vs. suburbs

bloomberg | Walking to meet friends for a drink at Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse and Wine Bar in bustling downtown Birmingham, Michigan, Cindy Boudreau said she never goes into Detroit except for an occasional Red Wings hockey game. She doesn’t see the point, especially now that the city is bankrupt. 

“We would rather stay in the suburbs,” Boudreau, a 66-year-old retired real-estate manager, said in an interview about a block from a park where children played on an Astroturf-covered mound. “We’ve got all we want here.” 

Boudreau’s view exemplifies a generations-long divide between Detroit, where the per-capita income is $15,261, and suburbs such as Birmingham, where it’s $67,580. Detroit’s record $18 billion bankruptcy case raises questions about how affluence can co-exist with poverty, and whether urban areas with hollow cores can thrive. 

Cities in Oakland County, which abuts Detroit, constitute what amounts to a parallel community that is whiter, richer and more Republican. L. Brooks Patterson, the county executive for 20 years, argues that Oakland can function apart from a failed Detroit -- that Michigan’s prosperity no longer depends on its largest city. Republican Governor Rick Snyder says the entire state’s future is bound together.

Urban Island

“That’s the debate that we really need,” said Lou Glazer, president of Michigan Future, an Ann Arbor nonprofit working to improve the economy. “What’s Detroit going to be? Is it going to be connected to the region or not? Is it going to be vibrant, and if it is, what’s the role of the suburbs?” 

Detroit became the fourth-largest U.S. city by 1950 with the growth of the auto industry, as what are now General Motors Co. (GM), Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Group LLC churned out cars. Since then, 1 million have left for places such as Oakland County, whose population more than tripled to 1.2 million. 

The county is the state’s wealthiest, according to U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis statistics. Cities such Birmingham and Bloomfield Hills, where auto executives and former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney lived, are only a few miles from Detroit’s vast tracts of decay.

what difference did the lack of private higher-ed make in the etiology of detroit's failure?

theatlantic |  Private non-profit institutions enroll fewer than 15 percent of U.S. undergraduates, but they account for 27 of the 60 U.S. members of the Association of American Universities, the leading group of elite research institutions, whose members employ on average 11,400 people each. In 1950, about the time Detroit's population began falling, private institutions were 18 of the 32 AAU members.

Today, the top 20 universities in the latest U.S. News & World Report rankings are all private institutions, as are 15 of the 20 largest university endowments. That dominance is regretted by many, but it's no coincidence. Top private institutions are more varied in their missions, and more malleable and flexible to respond to new opportunities and change direction. The best of them are more entrepreneurial and less bureaucratic. Those and other reasons have simply made them, historically, more appealing places for very rich people to give enormous amounts of money (and unlike any public university I know of, at a certain price they'll even name the place after you).

Of course, Detroit isn't the only major American city without a prominent private research university (Portland, Minneapolis-St. Paul and San Diego are all vibrant -- though the last two have large public research institutions). But it is arguably the most surprising. Detroit was once America's fourth-largest city, and not lacking in rich philanthropists. More to the point, a century ago, it was the Silicon Valley of its day, bustling with engineering talent, entrepreneurs, and venture capital. Imagine visiting Detroit in 1920 then journeying to the farmland of Palo Alto, CA, and finally the tobacco warehouses of Durham, NC. Which place would you have bet on to become a global research and education powerhouse? Yet among those three, only Detroit failed to do so. Frederick Rudolph's still-landmark history of American higher education, The American College & University was published in 1962, when Detroit still had over 1.5 million people. The city's name does not appear in this book, nor in Thelin's 2004 successor volume A History of American Higher Education.

I can't articulate a single, overarching theory for why this is so, but I can offer two ideas. The first involves a series of contingencies dating to the early 19^th century, whose effect was to lessen the chance of such an institution being in place to later grow and thrive in Detroit. The second dates to Detroit's golden days in the early 20^th century, and the economic culture from which its wealth emerged. Fist tap Big Don.

neofeudalism YES! new ideas - not gonna happen....,

NYTimes | I HAD spent much of my life writing music for commercials, film and television and knew little about the world of philanthropy as practiced by the very wealthy until what I call the big bang happened in 2006. That year, my father, Warren Buffett, made good on his commitment to give nearly all of his accumulated wealth back to society. In addition to making several large donations, he added generously to the three foundations that my parents had created years earlier, one for each of their children to run. 

Early on in our philanthropic journey, my wife and I became aware of something I started to call Philanthropic Colonialism. I noticed that a donor had the urge to “save the day” in some fashion. People (including me) who had very little knowledge of a particular place would think that they could solve a local problem. Whether it involved farming methods, education practices, job training or business development, over and over I would hear people discuss transplanting what worked in one setting directly into another with little regard for culture, geography or societal norms. 

Often the results of our decisions had unintended consequences; distributing condoms to stop the spread of AIDS in a brothel area ended up creating a higher price for unprotected sex. 

But now I think something even more damaging is going on. 

Because of who my father is, I’ve been able to occupy some seats I never expected to sit in. Inside any important philanthropy meeting, you witness heads of state meeting with investment managers and corporate leaders. All are searching for answers with their right hand to problems that others in the room have created with their left. There are plenty of statistics that tell us that inequality is continually rising. At the same time, according to the Urban Institute, the nonprofit sector has been steadily growing. Between 2001 and 2011, the number of nonprofits increased 25 percent. Their growth rate now exceeds that of both the business and government sectors. It’s a massive business, with approximately $316 billion given away in 2012 in the United States alone and more than 9.4 million employed.

uh.., colleges and healthcare complexes are little unsustainable artificial urban densities

npr | The debt-laden city of Detroit has been an incubator for new strategies in urban revitalization, including a downtown People Mover, casinos, urban farms, artist colonies and large scale down-sizing.

In the wake of the city's bankruptcy, many in the community are thinking small.

Just outside of downtown Detroit is a neighborhood called Midtown. Like many hip, urban neighborhoods, it's got hipsters on fixed geared bikes, yoga studios, boutiques for dogs.

And while urban neighborhoods in other cities have been redeveloping for a decade or more, things here are just now starting to take off.

Part of the reason is a woman who's often called the Mayor of Midtown.

Sue Mosey is president of , a non-profit planning and economic development agency that works to encourage new business and housing and preserve the history of the neighborhood about two miles north of downtown.

"It's been an area that's experienced a lot of disinvestment over the last 60 years," says Mosey. "But over the last 10 to 20 years there's been a lot of reinvestment coming back into the neighborhood."

The neighborhood has a large public university, an arts college. It has two major healthcare systems, the big cultural institutions. It's anchored by Wayne State University, the Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit Medical Center and the Henry Ford Hospital and the College of Creative Studies.

why detroit failed - peak capitalism/contraction/racism/corruption

boomerangbeat | Early 1950s

• Peak population at 1.8 million as the automobile industry boomed
• Automobile factories generated high-profile labor unions, which initiated strikes  in support of benefits, pensions, and increased wages

Mid 1950s

• Increased competition from foreign auto makers led to several U.S. auto manufacturing mergers
• Because Detroit had gone all in in the auto industry, the mergers proved problematic as jobs started to disappear (poor planning)

1960-70s

• Rapid growth from the auto industry boom resulted in social tension and racism as whites repeatedly refused to work with blacks
• Extensive freeway systems allowed for commuting, causing several to move to the suburbs
• People in the suburbs meant fewer jobs and a smaller tax base in the city
• Late 70s – Detroit continued to struggle with foreign auto competition

1980s

• On the verge of bankruptcy, rather than restructure they imposed a city income tax in addition to the state income tax (city/state takes a percentage of your paycheck – based on income – to pay the government)

1990s

• Mayor opted not to battle union concessions meaning public union workers were getting what they wanted with little push back
• Unions received higher wages and generous pension packages (payment during retirement) that caused the local government to pay millions to people who were no longer working
• Politicians would often give the unions what they wanted in return for votes (corruption)
• People will often vote for politicians to break up or weaken public sector unions in order to fix state budget problems

2000s

• Mayor (now a convicted felon) used the city’s credit card recklessly for more than $2 billion, including more than a billion against the city’s pension funds (union workers)

Current

• Mayor racked up 1/3 of a billion dollars against the city’s pension funds
• Detroit has had to rely on the state to help pay its government employees

Overarching problem = political corruption. Instead of using money to restore the city, Detroit raised taxes (2.5%, highest in the state) and gave the money to union workers in return for labor peace.