Cord Jefferson Gets it Wrong on Immigration and Black America
Let’s just say up front I am not sure when Cord Jefferson’s writing is tongue-in-cheek or trying to be serious. Recently, he blogged ‘In Defense of John Edwards’ and talks about why progressives do not have the right to be as upset with Edward’s actions as conservatives, which I am sure was written with tongue firmly planted in cheek. His latest blog in The Root, ‘How Illegal Immigration Hurts Black America’ Jefferson liberally mixes fact and fiction to weave his tale.
Jefferson brilliantly ignores his own sources or twists them like pretzels to craft his fictional piece so that it has the feel of legitimacy.
1. He conveniently ignores an entire paragraph in the referenced Washington Post article which explains why there is higher unemployment by young Blacks such as Dlonta Spriggs. “Traditionally the last hired and first fired, workers in Spriggs’s age group have taken the brunt of the difficult economy, with cost-conscious employers wiping out the very apprenticeship, internship and on-the-job-training programs that for generations gave young people a leg up in the work world or a second chance when they made mistakes. Moreover, this generation is being elbowed out of entry-level positions by older, more experienced job seekers on the unemployment rolls who willingly trade down just to put food on the table.” Read more
Communities of Color Under Full Economic Depression (Attack)
The housing market crash constitutes the largest loss of wealth to Black Americans in modern history. When I heard this last year it blew me away. I’m still trying to wrap my arms around the enormity of that fact. I think I even dropped it into a blog post hoping to receive alarmed exclamations from readers. This seemed to me a dire and largely unrecognized injustice – akin to watching poor residents of New Orleans abandoned during, and exploited after, Katrina.
I was reminded of this once more when I heard author Beryl Satter on the Tavis Smiley show yesterday. She was explaining how post-WWII Blacks in Chicago were discriminated against by racist Federal Housing Authority practices (among other things) and systematically denied home loans regardless of their economic status. African Americans were forced to take loans from predatory lenders, often paying double or quadruple what the property was worth, and on terms that made it almost impossible to keep the property. Satter went on to say that what occurred then is almost identical to our current housing crisis. Except this time the affected include not just African Americans, but also Latinos and whites as well. However, while the general population has been in a recession, people of color have been in a full-blown depression. Read more
Hey Mr. Sanford, About That Can of Worms…
As mentioned in my last post, South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford seemed perplexed as to why a big deal was being made of his trip to Argentina to see his mistress. The trip where he was not hiking the Appalachian Trail as he had informed his staff.
I called it a “can opened, worms everywhere” type of situation and as predicted the more the can opens the more worms come out.
Not only has he admitted to an ongoing affair with his mistress but confessed to “crossing the lines” with a handful of other women throughout his 20 years of marriage. Read more
“A Hungry Man is an Angry Man”
I received a frantic call from Sarajevo yesterday. My mother informed me that my sister’s already dismal pay was cut by almost half. Prior to this, she was told to work seven days a week for 11 hour shifts. This, mind you, in a job without health care or even paid lunch breaks. She tried, or rather begged for at least one day off each week, so that she could spend it with her daughter. Instead, she found the official reduction in pay attached to her file.
This would not be an insurmountable issue if she lived in a country with a strong economy, where jobs were not scarce and labor laws against gender and age discrimination were in place. But in a place where the unemployment rate is around 40% and food prices are on a precipitous rise, that severe pay cut is equivalent to a death sentence to a family of four with one income earner.
Read more
The American Economy and the Greedy People
The federal government has now bailed out three major US financial institutions: Freddie Mac, Fannie Mae, and the American International Group. Some folks disagree with this decision. You hear people shout, “No More Big Government.”
The people who support the popular catch phrase, “Big Government,” believe that the free market can fix itself. Free market die-hards, like libertarians – Ron Paul’s Revolutionaries – believe that human beings are rational enough to fix the mortgage crisis and inflation (the rise of food and gas). Libertarians believe that a person’s financial interests will always supercede a person’s emotional desires, like greed.
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