Barack Obama: A Mandatory Case Study for Black Males
By Mary Alice Miller
One statement says it all: Barack Obama is not a descendant of chattel slaves.
Poll results have found that Americans have received too much information about Democratic Presidential nominee Obama. His father was born in Africa. His former minister. Black enough? Too Black?
In pockets of Brooklyn’s Black community, many Black males don’t even know this much. These males see Obama as obviously Black; one of their own. But he is regarded with some suspicion. Why do so many whites support him?
Even some knowledgeable Black males, while wholeheartedly supporting Obama, deride him. Obama threw Rev. Wright “under the bus”. He does not address “Black issues” enough. After becoming the presumptive nominee, the first special interest organization Obama gave extended time to was not a Black group, but the AIPAC Convention of Jewish leaders, assuredly supporting their causes and concerns. There is fear Obama will make it hard to justify civil rights and affirmative action policies.
It is time for BMW’s (Black Males Whining) to silence themselves. Stop. Breathe. Quietly listen to the genetic memory of the ancestors. They are sending a message to Black males in the form of Barack Obama. BMW’s are so busy over-thinking they risk missing the message.
The truth is, Barack Obama is a gift to Black males. He should be studied, modeled, emulated. His life story should be dissected like a scientific experiment. Dreams From My Father, Obama’s best-selling autobiography, should be required reading for each and every African-American male. Weekly study groups should be conducted in barbershops, pool halls, and after-hour spots. Wherever Black males are, Obama’s memoir should be read and discussed, chapter by chapter.
Why? Barack Obama is unencumbered by the history of colonial slavery. The irrational, and quite frankly, immoral justification for dehumanizing kidnapped Africans purely for capitalistic gain is not Obama’s legacy. In Kenya, the Obama ancestral home on his father’s side, ownership of family land was a buffer against imperialism. Barack Obama is mentally, physically and emotionally free. Free from not knowing his family name, family language, family religion and family homeland. Free from the history of Black males used as farm tools and studs. Free from the imposed inability to marry a wife and raise children. Free from being denied an education upon pain of death. Free from repudiation of doing for self. Free from being forcibly detached from all that makes a man. Free.
BMW’s, educated and ignorant alike, should self-impose a moratorium on complaints masquerading as “political analysis”. Complaining is what BMW’s do. It was a tool utilized to recognize the injustice of slavery. It was used to throw off 2½ centuries of slave shackles and 100 years of Jim Crow. It is the moral tool of civil rights.
The essence of Obama, and all that he is, finds complaining unnecessary. For Obama, complaining is a crutch, just as it has become for millions of African-American males. In every corpuscle, synapse, and neuron of his body Obama knows the power of freedom and uses it.
BMW’s should step back and watch. Observe the slowly dawning realization among whites, racist and nonracist alike of the opportunities they lost when Black men were denied freedom of thought and deed. Consider all that Obama offers this country and the world. If Obama is this, what could millions of enslaved African males, and their descendants, have contributed above and beyond what has already been given despite slavery and its aftermath?
Obama, of course, is not a perfect man. But he knows he is a man. And Black women are watching. Black women recognize the manhood in Obama, and want it. Not from Obama himself, but from the Black males in their lives. Over the next 8 years, a significant transformation will take place in the Black community. Black women will demand men who do what Obama has done for himself. Increasingly, Black women will demand male introspection and development despite not having a father; demand the acquisition of education via academic scholarships; demand marriage before siring children; demand socially conscious behavior, instead of crime. And Black women will know that they are worth it. The process has already begun.
Barack Obama is what a Black man could be if 244 years of chattel slavery never occurred.
admin @ September 1, 2008
A New Differential for African-Americans
By Mary Alice Miller
In NYC, 50% of Black males drop out of high school. In this same beloved city, 50% of Black males are unemployed or unemployable. Hmmmm. What do these two statistics have in common? Both groups position themselves as human widgets, useful solely for feeding the machinery of upstate’s Prison Industrial Complex. The behaviors are so predictable, this year’s state budget included $31 million to keep 4 largely empty prisons open.
In marketing terms, these males have established a differential for themselves. A differential, usually referring to consumer products, is a set of characteristics that set an item apart from others in the mind of potential customers. Differentials are usually associated with a brand, a product name that conjures up a set of characteristics, positioned as desirable to consumers. How different is a product brand from the subset of uneducated, unemployable African-American males who commit crimes against other Blacks, positioning themselves as desirable only for correctional personnel to benefit from financially?
What if the Black community organized itself differently, with some intelligence and a plan?
In 2000, Congress passed and Senator Clinton signed the American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act. Demand for highly skilled workers increased the annual quota of foreign H 1-B visas for temporary technical employees to work in American companies from a numerical “cap” of 65,000 in 1991 to a current limit of 195,000. (An additional 100,000 H 1-B visa holders are exempt from the cap.) Although most H 1-B visa holders come from India (40% in FY 2005), China (9.16%) and Canada (3.6%), 6,800 visas are set aside for the H-1B1 program under the terms of the U.S.-Chile and U.S.-Singapore Free Trade Agreements. (An H-1B1 is a national of Chile or Singapore coming to the Unites States to work temporarily in a specialty occupation. The law defines an H-1B1 specialty occupation as a position that requires theoretical and practical application of a body of specialized knowledge. The beneficiary must have a bachelor’s degree or higher in the specific specialty.)
H 1-B visas are available, but not guaranteed, to foreign nationals whom American companies recruit to temporarily work in the United States. H 1-B visas have 3-year terms, renewable for another 3, and with the option of extensions after the 6 years have lapsed. Technically, Consulates in the home country can issue H 1-B visas only to employees who do not plan to immigrate. However, the 107th Congress enacted provisions that allow H1-B workers to remain in the U.S. if their employers petitioned for them to become legal permanent residents.
The H1-B visa program is used by some U.S. employers to employ foreign workers in specialty occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise in a specialized field and a bachelor’s degree or its equivalent. Typical H1-B occupations include architects, engineers, computer programmers, accountants, doctors and college professors. The H1-B visa program also includes certain fashion models of distinguished merit and ability and up to 100 persons who can perform services of an exceptional nature in connection with Department of Defense (DOD) research and development projects or coproduction projects. (In FY 2005, 45.3% of H1-B new arrivals were employed in computer-related fields. Educators follow with 11.2% of the newly approved H1-B petitions. Other occupations are architects, engineers and surveyors (11.1%), administrative specializations (9.5%) and those working in medicine and health (6.2%) and life sciences (3.3%). The most common degree attained by most H1-B new arrivals is a bachelor’s degree or it’s equivalent (42.5%). More than one-third (39.3%) has earned master’s degrees.
(Another 17.1% have either professional degrees or doctorates.)
The H2-B visa category, under the Save Our Small and Seasonal Businesses Act of 2005 (SOS Act), allows U.S. employers in industries with peak load, seasonal or intermittent needs to augment their existing labor force with temporary workers. The H2-B visa category also allows U.S. employers to augment their existing labor force when necessary due to a one-time occurrence which necessitates a temporary increase in workers. Typically, H2-B workers fill labor needs in occupational areas such as construction, health care, landscaping, lumber, manufacturing, food service/processing and resort/hospitality services. The H2-B numerical limit set by Congress per fiscal year is 66,000.
H1-C classification applies to foreign nurses coming to perform nursing services in medically underserved areas for a temporary period up to three years.
Not all applicants for H-B visas are eligible to work in the United States. According to U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services in the Dept. of Homeland Security, the issuance of visas is prohibited to certain applicants in order to protect the health, welfare and security of the U.S. Examples of applicants who must be refused visas are those who: have a communicable disease or have a dangerous physical or mental disorder; have committed serious criminal acts; are terrorists, subversives, members of a totalitarian party or former Nazi war criminals; have used illegal means to enter the U.S.; or are ineligible for citizenship. Physicians who intend to practice medicine must pass a qualifying exam before receiving immigrant visas.
(Data for H 1-B, H 1-B1 and H 2-B visas is from the U.S. Immigration and Citizenship Services and “Immigration: Legislative Issues on Nonimmigrant Professional Specialty (H1-B) Workers” from the Congressional Research Service.)
No one is saying immigrants, particularly those who are highly skilled, should not be welcome in the U.S. All of us, except Native Americans, are immigrants or descendants of immigrants. Skilled immigrants add to the global competitiveness and security of the U.S. Exposure to innovative ideas and various cultures enhances life for all of us.
But what if Blacks, as a group, decided to compete for these highly skilled positions? It is as simple as making the collective decision to crack a book and absorbing all the education offered to a classroom seat prior to and in lieu of, to getting caught in the criminal justice system. (Why do dropouts clamor for education once incarcerated? Prison education can’t be any better than public school education.) The National Science Foundation offers a wide variety of incentives for math, science and technical education. There are numerous statistical reports on minorities in science published by the government.
Large numbers of African-American males (and females) with technical skills would be much too valuable to spend their most productive years in lockdown. Middle-class employment options would trump selling drugs and committing idiotic crimes against other Blacks. Technical education would permeate critical thinking skills throughout our culture, displacing skin-deep “analysis” to current conditions. We would have other things to complain about. BET and the “thug life” would die a natural death.
What a difference it would make if Blacks became stereotypically known for being geeks. It is possible. After all, geek is the new cool.
admin @ September 1, 2008