A look at the Covenant With Black America

by: Pam Spaulding

Thu Jun 28, 2007 at 17:00:00 PM EDT

I'm liveblogging the event, but I wanted to give you a preview of the issues at hand.

* Heath and Well Being: there are health care inequities, both in preventative and acute care access in low-wealth minority communities. How will this gap be closed? Dr. David M. Satcher, who served as Surgeon General, shares grim information:

For example, if we had eliminated disparities in health in the last century, there would have been 85,000 fewer black deaths overall in 2000. Among others, these include: 24,000 fewer black deaths from cardiovascular disease; 4,700 fewer black infant deaths in the first year of life; 22,000 fewer deaths from diabetes; and almost 2,000 fewer black women would have died from breast cancer.

Without question, education is the key to progress and prosperity in the United States today. Whether fair or not, educational opportunity and academic achievement are directly tied to the social divisions associated with race, ethnicity, gender, first language, and social class. The level and quality of educational attainment either open the doors to opportunity or close them.

Education starts at home, in neighborhoods, and in communities. Reading to children, creating time and space for homework, and demonstrating-- through words and deeds -- that education is important are the key first building blocks for high educational achievement. While schools are responsible for what children are taught, reinforcement at home is essential.

* Criminal Justice: Our justice system has a long history of failing its black citizens, due to the imperfect nature of a system that is often corrupted by the biases of those in charge of administering justice. James Bell, Executive Director of the W. Haywood Burns Institute:

Since before this country's inception, black people have struggled against deeply ingrained race-based expressions of power, privilege, and exclusion...This Covenant with Black America represents a realization that there is a multi-headed, multi-tentacled monster out there devouring blacks who live in certain neighborhoods. Incarceration is just one aspect of this menace, but it is an overwhelmingly damaging aspect. Our job, in working to achieve fairness and equity, is to sound the alarm about the unjust criminal justice system and demand that our leaders and those in power act now to halt this destructive, unfair treatment of our brothers and sisters, especially of our children.

Having lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant Brooklyn in the 80s, it wasn't uncommon for police to completely avoid known crack houses, and if you were a young black man anywhere near an altercation, you never knew if you were going to be helped or hurt when the flashing lights of a police car turned the corner. That hasn't changed in many urban areas.

Maya Harris, Associate Director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California:

Racial bias in our criminal justice system has many causes -- historical, political, and economic -- but we know that any solution to the growing crisis of mass black incarceration must begin with focusing on how our communities, especially our youth, are policed. Police are the entry point, the gatekeepers, of the criminal justice system.

Fortunately, there is a lot we already know about the type of change that needs to happen in policing and there?s a lot happening across the country that we can draw on -- policies that encourage respectful, accountable policing in our communities.

Your address dictates whether you will have access to good schools and jobs, grocery stores, parks, and other important amenities. The availability of affordable housing in neighborhoods of rich opportunity, therefore, has become the next battleground in the fight for black people to fully participate and thrive. Many opportunity-rich neighborhoods are not accessible to African Americans because of policies and practices that are exclusionary. For example, despite laws against housing discrimination, it is still quite prevalent and most likely to be practiced against black people. Too many neighborhoods with good schools and desirable amenities are too expensive and do not allow renters. Some communities present so much hostility toward blacks who do move there that black people are discouraged from attempting to even move into those neighborhoods.

A current case in point is the nomination by Bush of Hans von Spakovsky for a seat on the Federal Election Commission (FEC). Von Spakovsky has a long history of suppressing the vote of minorities, most recently under Alberto Gonzales at the Department of Justice (DOJ). Read more at Color of Change. Executive Director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR), Wade Henderson, puts it into context:

African American registration and turnout rates have risen dramatically since 1965, when there were only five black representatives in Congress. Today, there are 43 members of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Despite this progress, African Americans have yet to achieve full equality in our democracy. We will reach our goal of equal opportunity when every voter has an equal opportunity to determine the distribution of political power. We can see that America, but we are not there yet.

America's rural South is a reservoir of African and black American cultural roots and history. African influences passed on through centuries can be found in everyday rituals and routines, from preparing natural remedies and family recipes to more renowned "American" traditions, including community-based education, sustainable agriculture, folk art, regional cuisines, family reunions, fabric and fashion trends, the blues, gospel, spirituals, regional dialects, agricultural cooperatives, credit unions, sororities, fraternities, and the list goes on.

We must realize that our rural ancestors represent the strength of our race. It was in the rural South where movements for social and economic justice have their roots. Blacks who remained in the rural South stayed, fought, and experienced victories that influenced the rest of the country. Rural Black America has been the frontline of the fight against injustice and inequity. Leaders of social movements around the world continue to be influenced by what has happened in these rural communities.

Opportunity Agenda believes that true opportunity requires a commitment to a core set of values. These values are integrally related to the principle of human rights. Equal treatment, a voice in societal decisions, a chance to start over, and the tools to meet our own basic needs are not just good policy ideas. They are the right of every human being simply by virtue of his or her humanity. Their 6 Core Values are Mobility, Equality, Voice, Redemption, Community, and Security.

* Environmental Justice: Again, we only need to look back at Katrina to see what environmental racism looks like. Largely white neighborhoods and historic districts were located on higher ground and spared, the poorest areas were in the low-lying deadly areas consumed by the hurricane's wrath that poured over the levees. You can see it where landfills are located, where bypasses are constructed. Robert D. Bullard, Ware Professor of Sociology and Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center (EJRC) at Clark Atlanta University:

Environmental racism combines with public policies and industry practices to provide benefits for whites while shifting costs to people of color. Katrina presented in living color clear links among race, poverty, land use, environmental risk, and unequal protection.

Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath are just the tip of the environmental racism iceberg; the bright side is that they are instructive and inform what we must do. To assure environmental justice for all, we must address all of the inequities that result from human settlement, industrial facility siting, and industrial development.

* Digital Divide: the lack of opportunity in low-wealth communities to participate in the economic and technological success of the first wave of personal computing -- and the initial explosion of the Internet formed a gap that remains. The critical skills needed to succeed in an information- and technology-based economy must be acquired for minorities to close that gap. Tyrone D. Taborn, Editor-in-Chief, Publisher, and Chief Executive Officer of Career Communications Group:

Global forces in technology, research, science, and telecommunications make it clear that the future will not hold much promise for generations of blacks if the trends that limit African American participation in the global digital technology economy are not reversed. Young blacks entering an information-based, technology-driven marketplace without the necessary technological skill sets will not only be unemployable, they will be irrelevant.