White Class Advantage

From: Sociological Images

Yesterday I posted the news that the percent of Americans in poverty reached nearly 15% in 2009.  Philip Cohen, at Family Inequality, used the same Census data to give us an idea of how both wealth and poverty are distributed across U.S. racial groups.  We know that Blacks, Latinos, American Indians and some, but not all, Asian sub-groups are poorer, on average, than Whites.  Cohen offers us a different way of looking at this, however, by plotting the income-to-needs ratio for Whites, Blacks, and Latinos over the last 8 years.

That income-need ratio is, by definition, 1.0 at the poverty line, and numbers above that are multiples of needs, so 3.0 is income of 3-times the poverty line.

That ratio sits along the vertical axis, with time at the horizontal:

This, Cohen explains, “…allows us to see the size of the White advantage…”  He continues:

So, for example, the richest 5th of Whites are above 11-times the poverty line, while the poorest 5th of Whites are (on average) just above the poverty line. In contrast, the richest 5th of Blacks and Latinos are around 7-times the poverty line, and 40% of both groups are below 1.5-times the poverty line.

It’s not simply, then, that Blacks and Latinos are disproportionately poor.  Their poor are also poorer than the poor Whites and their rich are less rich than rich Whites.

Was Gabourey Sidibe's skin lightened for the cover of ELLE?

Shine from Yahoo!


In the world of American fashion magazines, women of color have notoriously been underrepresented, pretty much since the birth of print. Ditto the plus-size population, who go almost entirely absent from the pages of big-name publications, as if they don't exist. So it was a boon for both groups this summer when ELLE magazine announced that full-figured African-American actress Gabourey Sidibe would grace the cover of its 25th anniversary issue.

For its special October edition, ELLE produced four separate covers, each one meant to celebrate a different mid-20's female star--in addition to Sidibe, 27, it included actresses Amanda Seyfried and Megan Fox and reality star/fashion entrepreneur Lauren Conrad. But here's where things got tricky:   


While each of the other three (all oft-used, not to mention skinny and Caucasian) cover girls are shown off in full-body glamour shots wearing stylish clothes, Sidibe is cropped at the mid-chest, with a swath of ruched green fabric hiding her curvy frame. Plus, her skin appears to be lighter than in most photos of the actress we've seen, which has stirred reactions on the Web.

Gabourey hits on Gerard Butler at Oscars

This is the first big fashion magazine cover for Sidibe, who became famous last year after an Oscar-nominated turn as an abused teen in the Oprah-backed film "Precious." Since then, she's received raves for her appearance on "Saturday Night Live" and a new role in the Showtime drama "The Big C." Similar claims about skin lightening were made in 2008 about the possible whitening of Beyonce's face for a L'Oréal Paris ad and in 2009 for an ad with Indian actress Freida Pinto.

Magazine explains retouched Kelly Clarkson cover

For their part, the folks at ELLE deny any dramatic lightening or retouching of their cover girl. They sent us the following statement via email: "Nothing out of the ordinary was done. We have four separate covers this month and Gabby's cover was not retouched any more or less than the others. We had 25 cover-worthy subjects in our portfolio and we chose Gabby because of who she is. We shot this as a story of exuberant young women changing the world. If you take a look at the portfolio, each of the women were shot in different ways and for different reasons."

UPDATE: On September 16 the actor's representative responded to the Elle controversy by saying, "Gabourey is absolutely thrilled to be on the cover of the magazine's 25th anniversary issue."

http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/beauty/was-gabourey-sidibes-skin-lightened-for-the-cover-of-elle-2391180/print/;_ylt=AvY9gQCNJebvAb6KbFJ8UmdpbqU5

Hmmm. The images are above. You be the judge.

Nazareth denies racism in disciplining police officer

The Morning Call

A disgruntled Nazareth cop doesn't have a leg to stand on in discrimination claim, borough says.

By Andrew McGill, OF THE MORNING CALL

10:52 PM EDT, September 16, 2010

Hearing a few disparaging remarks about women and "wetbacks" on the job isn't enough to net you a win in court, according to Nazareth borough.

In a response filed in court last week, the borough outlined its objections to police officer Vanessa Cruz-Smith's federal lawsuit, which contends she was fired from her job and nearly denied benefits because of her gender and Puerto Rican ancestry.

Still employed with the borough, Cruz-Smith says fellow officers conspired to keep her in the dark about court dates and disciplined her on trumped-up charges.

The borough's answer? Show us some facts to back that up.

"She doesn't have a valid claim," Nazareth solicitor Al Pierce said. "You come back to where to the answer takes you. There's not a valid claim."

Hired in 2005, Cruz-Smith says former Nazareth Police Chief Michael Sinclair told her not to "advertise" her ethnicity, as "wetbacks" were not common in the area. At another time, she says the chief told her women had no place in his department.

She says she was subjected to numerous slights and dubious disciplinary actions, culminating in her firing after missing a court hearing. She also says police supervisors tried to deny her disability benefits from an injury sustained while apprehending a suspect.

She was subsequently rehired after arbitration.

But the borough contends that the two isolated comments Cruz-Smith highlights are far from proof of a systemic pattern of racism. What's more, since Puerto Rico is in United State territory, borough lawyers say she can't sue based on national origin.

On top of that, "wetback" doesn't even refer to Puerto Ricans, the response explains: It's a slur against Mexicans.

Cruz-Smith's lawyer, Don Bailey, did not return calls for comment. Cruz-Smith could not be reached for comment.

In her suit, she called out Sinclair, current Chief Thomas Trachta and fellow officer Fred Lahovski as her principal tormentors. But the borough says her suit attributes racist and sexist comments only to Sinclair, giving no evidence no evidence against the other defendants.

Nazareth also claims Cruz-Smith never made a convincing case that racism was commonplace and accepted in town government, invalidating her case against the borough at large. As for a First Amendment claim — the officer says she was punished for seeking redress against the government — borough lawyers said she only filed her grievance after she was already fired.

Pierce said Cruz-Smith is still employed with the borough as she works through her disability claim.

andrew.mcgill@mcall.com

Conservatism does not equal racism. So why do many liberals assume it does?

The Washington Post


By Gerard Alexander
Sunday, September 12, 2010

From an immigration law in Arizona to a planned mosque near Ground Zero to Glenn Beck emoting at the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech, the controversies roiling American politics in recent weeks and months have featured an ugly undertone, suggesting meanness, prejudice and, in the eyes of some, outright racism. And it is conservatives -- whether Republican politicians, Fox News commentators or members of the "tea party" movement -- who are invariably painted with that brush.


There is power in the accusation of racism against conservatives, one that liberals understand well. In an April 2008 post on Journolist, a private online community for liberal journalists, academics and activists, one writer proposed a way to distract conservatives from the campaign controversy surrounding the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama's pastor. "If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they've put upon us," Spencer Ackerman wrote. "Instead, take one of them -- Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares -- and call them racists."


No doubt, such accusations stick to conservatives more than to liberals. It was then-Sen. Joe Biden, a Delaware Democrat, after all, who described presidential candidate Obama as "the first mainstream African American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." If a conservative politician had offered such an opinion, his or her career might have ended; Biden was rewarded with a spot on Obama's ticket. Liberal missteps on race and ethnicity are explained away, forgiven and often forgotten; conservative ones are cast as part of a sinister, decades-long story of intolerance and political calculation, in which conservative ideology and strategy are conflated with bigotry.

That larger story is well-known and oft-repeated -- and, I would argue, vastly oversimplified and simply wrong in its key underlying assumptions. But its endurance explains why the party of Lincoln is so easily dubbed the party of Strom Thurmond or Jefferson Davis, and why many critics believe that an identity politics of white America now tilts conservatives against not just blacks but also Hispanics, Muslims and anyone else outside a nostalgic and monochromatic description of the American way of life.


he narrative usually begins with Barry Goldwater opposing provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and with Richard Nixon scheming to win the presidency through a "Southern strategy" -- appealing to the racial prejudice of working-class whites in the South to pry them away from the Democratic coalition assembled by Franklin Roosevelt. In this telling, bigoted Southerners were the electoral mountain to which the Republican Moses had to come, the key to the GOP winning the White House. Wooing them entailed much more than shifting the party slightly away from Democrats on racial issues; in return for political power, Republicans had to move their politics and policies to where bigots wanted them to be. This alliance supposedly laid the foundation for a new American politics.

As Dan Carter, George Wallace's biographer, put it, "The Wallace music played on" in "Barry Goldwater's vote against the Civil Rights Bill of 1964, in Richard Nixon's subtle manipulation of the busing issue, in Ronald Reagan's genial demolition of affirmative action, in George Bush's use of the Willie Horton ads, and in Newt Gingrich's demonization of welfare mothers." More recently, it continues through inflammatory campaign ads ("Harold, call me!"), offensive tea party signs, Rand Paul's unusual-because-explicit skepticism about the Civil Rights Act -- all the way to calls to end birthright citizenship for the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants and to keep Muslim worship well away from the nation's hallowed ground in Lower Manhattan. In this interpretation, core conservative principles -- limited government, tax cuts, welfare reform and toughness on crime -- actually have race at their heart.


This reading of the conservative movement presents problems of logic and history, relying on assumptions that fall apart on close examination. First, it assumes that Republicans depended on white Southerners to become politically competitive in the 1960s. Second, it assumes that Republican presidents from Nixon forward swayed these voters by giving them the policies they wanted. Third, it assumes that the modern conservative policy agenda is best seen as racially motivated. Finally, it assumes that conservative positions on recent controversies are just new forms of that same white-heartland bigotry.

These assumptions are badly flawed.

First, Republicans did not decisively depend on white Southerners to create their modern presidential majorities when the race issue was at its most polarizing. The conventional wisdom is that the GOP had little choice in the 1960s but to seek out Southern white voters and tacked hard to the right on civil rights to do it. But Republican presidential candidates pried apart the New Deal coalition in the 1950s, with the performance of Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 and Nixon in 1960. This chronology has big implications. From 1952 through the 1980s, GOP presidential candidates consistently beat or nearly matched their Democratic opponents, with the clear exceptions only of 1964 and 1976. Republicans did this mostly by crafting majority coalitions in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountain states, in the industrial Midwest and mid-Atlantic, and ultimately in California -- and only partially by realigning several Southern states. Moreover, these were the least "Southern" states, such as Florida, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.


his means that the GOP presidential majority and much of the party's modern policy agenda were forged not in the racial heat of the 1960s South, but first in the 1950s and across the country.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) recently argued that race did not play a central role in the partisan shift in the South, saying the transformation was led by a younger generation of Southerners in the post-segregation 1970s. But the best evidence that things other than race mattered most in the shift was that it was an even older generation that moved to the GOP in the peripheral South. By the time Lyndon Johnson reportedly remarked that the Civil Rights Act would deliver the South to the Republicans for a generation, the GOP had already won nearly half the region's Electoral College votes three times in a row.

The remainder of the region -- the race-obsessed Deep South -- repeatedly tried to be a presidential kingmaker in the 1960s but failed. Instead of reforming the GOP in its image, the Deep South's white electorate was among the last to join an already-winning Republican presidential coalition in the early 1970s. Wallace voters ended up supporting Nixon, Reagan and other Republicans, but much more on the national GOP's terms than their own. The Republican Party proved to be the mountain to which the Deep South had to come, not the other way around.


This explains why the second assumption is also wrong. Nixon made more symbolic than substantive accommodations to white Southerners. He enforced the Civil Rights Act and extended the Voting Rights Act. On school desegregation, he had to be prodded by the courts in some ways but went further than them in others: He supervised a desegregation of Deep South schools that had eluded his predecessors and then denied tax-exempt status to many private "desegregation academies" to which white Southerners tried to flee. Nixon also institutionalized affirmative action and set-asides for minorities in federal contracting.



Not surprisingly, white Southern leaders such as Strom Thurmond grew bitterly frustrated with Nixon. This explains what Gallup polls detected in 1971-72: A large number of white Southern voters preferred Wallace to Nixon. Only when the Alabaman was shot in May 1972 did Nixon inherit Wallace's voters -- not because of Nixon's policies on race but despite them.


After the mid-1970s, school desegregation and enforcement of the Civil Rights Act faded as the most decisive -- or divisive -- racial issues in the country. In the decades that followed, the conservative policy platform became the new focus of liberal cries of racism. Critics such as Thomas and Mary Edsall interpreted the Reagan agenda's major elements as indirect attempts to maintain white privilege: Tax cuts denied resources to a government that could be an agent of social change and lift up the underprivileged. Calls to limit government, especially federal power, stood to do the same. Reagan's attacks on "welfare queens" emphasized negative images of minorities and ultimately helped end an entitlement for the neediest. Campaigns against crime refreshed stereotypes of threatening African Americans and imprisoned millions along the way. Criticism of affirmative action assaulted a major mechanism of workplace advancement for minorities and women.


elieve help minority groups. But at least one expansive policy area defies this expectation: education. Most conservatives, even as they turned against busing and welfare, continued to support large public education budgets. Many conservatives may support issuing school vouchers and shutting down the federal Education Department, but those positions concern which level of government should control schools -- not whether government should pay for education for all. Overwhelming majorities of Republicans joined Democrats in 2007 to reauthorize Head Start, the early-education program in which well over half the students are from minority groups. And substantial majorities of whites (conservatives as well as liberals) have voiced support for what sociologist William Julius Wilson calls "opportunity-enhancing affirmative action," policies that would unofficially but inevitably direct disproportionate benefits to minorities.

All these programs aim to give beneficiaries not guaranteed incomes but better chances to succeed by boosting their skills. (It was George W. Bush, after all, who insisted that academic achievement by minority students had to factor into measures of school performance.)

Finally, there is reason to be skeptical of the latest assumptions of conservative prejudice. Conservatives have taken the lead in two major recent controversies: opposition to a planned Islamic center near Ground Zero and support for Arizona's law requiring immigrants to carry their papers and requiring police to question those they suspect of being here illegally. Liberal critics swiftly labeled both positions bigotry: Islamophobia and prejudice against immigrants from Latin America. To these critics, the racial resentment of past decades has simply been expanded into a more generalized prejudice against racial and religious minorities.

Of course, conservatives don't see it that way. A long-held conservative belief holds that a minimal amount of shared cultural content is required for a healthy American society. This content includes an understanding of the nation's history and virtues, including the opportunity and social mobility it has offered so many. This helps explain, for instance, why conservatives were long skeptical of bilingual education, suspecting that it slowed assimilation. They have logically been concerned about large numbers of immigrants whose presence in the United States is often transitory and whose relationship with the country is purely economic. And they have been cautious about high levels of even legal immigration when it involves people who arrive in large enough numbers and in a concentrated enough time and place to create zones in which pressures to assimilate are mitigated.

Most conservatives do not understand how Arizona's move to enforce federal immigration laws can be deemed bigoted -- especially considering that they have long supported crackdowns on lawbreakers of all types. The planned Islamic center near Ground Zero raises alarms, in part, because the insensitivity of its architects to 9/11's emotional legacy suggests their deeper distance from American sensibilities. Lest that position seem anti-Muslim, conservatives of every stripe, including those who have led the charge against the center, roundly condemned the planned burning of the Koran by a Florida pastor. They did so on the same grounds: Just because someone has a legal right to do something (build a center, burn a book) does not mean it is a wise, desirable or respectful thing to do.

There is no doubt that the contemporary Republican electorate contains some out-and-out bigots, just as the Democratic electorate contains people who hate others on the basis of class. These very real prejudices occasionally erupt into public expression, whether in remarks about Jews over the years by Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton or in shocking signs at tea party rallies.

But most conservatives have been less concerned with the "hardware" of people's race or ethnicity and more concerned with the "software" of their values or culture. This is why the white Protestant core of the modern conservative movement has not merely integrated Catholic "ethnics" but also rallied behind the Irish American William F. Buckley and the Italian American Antonin Scalia. Jews, women and Hispanics have been similarly integrated into both its ranks and leadership; indeed, many white conservatives swoon when members of minority groups proudly share their values. This explains why, in the 2008 campaign, conservatives were at least as roused by Obama's ties to the white former radical William Ayers as the black Jeremiah Wright, both of whom seemed to make a living out of damning America.

Liberal interpretations that portray modern conservatism as standing athwart the "rights revolution" of the 1960s are hard pressed to explain the growing number of minority and female candidates favored by the conservative rank and file. Marco Rubio, Nikki Haley, Susana Martinez, Brian Sandoval, Tim Scott, Ryan Frazier, Raul Labrador and Jaime Herrera are GOP nominees for the Senate, governorships and the House because Republican voters preferred them over their white opponents. Allen West in Florida and Jon Barela in New Mexico were the consensus GOP choices to run for competitive House seats. Many of these candidates are well-positioned to win their races and help change the public face of modern conservatism.

The old conservatism-as-racism story has outlived all usefulness and accuracy. November might be a good time to start a rethink.

galexander16@gmail.com

Gerard Alexander is an associate professor of politics at the University of Virginia and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. His most recent Outlook article, on Feb. 7, was "Why are liberals so condescending?"

Genuine Institutionalized Racism

American Thinker

By Malcolm Hunter

Charges of Racism by America's so-called black leaders -- namely, the Reverends Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and the NAACP -- increase with nauseating frequency as the Obama Presidency founders. Comedian Bill Cosby leads the serious conversation about a segment of the black community's self-inflicted racism that encourages a culture of underachievement.

Middle-class and above black families are labeled "Uncle Toms," "Bougie," or "acting white" unless they pass the "genuine blackness" litmus test. Members of my family have been called these names. Many school-aged black children succumb by shedding non-black friendships, underperforming academically, speaking "Ebonics," or adopting prison-influenced dress codes.

There is also external institutionalized racism hindering blacks in America. Claims about how racism developed distract us from its true sources. The hot political issues of school vouchers and abortion reveal anomalies that warrant serious investigation.

The black community should ask why both the Democratic Party and black leaders oppose school vouchers and support abortion.  Both the Party and black leaders mysteriously and doggedly hold positions on the issues that work against the black community.   

For instance, school voucher programs, which have been implemented despite enormous hurdles, have freed many black inner-city children from their failed neighborhood public school systems. It is the Democratic Party, not the Republican Party, which erects these hurdles.  

Further, many Americans associate abortion and Roe v. Wade with the feminist movement, which is politically allied with the Democrats.  Why? The horrific reality is twofold. First, the push for legalized abortion is rooted in America's eugenics movement, which was founded by Margaret Sanger and targeted the black community. Second, the Democratic Party is somehow home both to Sanger's staunchest admirers and the overwhelming majority of America's black voters. 

The Democratic Party opposes school voucher programs allowing private school options. President Obama in 2009 let a successful school voucher program in Washington, DC, lapse at the behest of teachers unions and over the objections of black inner-city mothers. 

The "showdown at the school-voucher corral" was tailor-made for the Democratic Party and black leaders to ride in on their white donkeys and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat for a segment of its key voting bloc, DC's black community. America would have cheered had President Obama told the teachers unions they must face market competition like private sector employees, to improve the quality of public education. But that didn't happen. 

In this instance, the disadvantaged black population that typically votes for Democrats and looks to black leaders to fight for them was left hanging by their own party and leaders. It must have been a slap in the face to these black inner-city mothers when Obama chose a private DC school for his daughters. The president, who most black Americans voted to elect, helped end the very program that potentially allowed their disadvantaged children to choose the same private school that his daughters attend.

The Republican Party supports school vouchers, but that, along with Michael Steele as RNC head, isn't enough to win more black voters. Yes, the Democratic Party won over blacks in the 1960's with LBJ's "Great Society." Democrats successfully branded the Republican Party as racist because it became the home of former "Dixiecrat" Strom Thurmond and former Klansman David Duke (despite the fact that there were more Democrats known as racists).  The Republican Party's major barrier to inroads into the black community is that, to the Party's credit, it refuses to pander to blacks by encouraging the paternalistic, "government-solves-all" attitude of the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party also relies on black leaders' intimidation tactics to maintain a stranglehold on the black vote.  With the Democratic Party's blessing, black leaders engineered a vicious campaign during the 2000 presidential campaign to demonize George W. Bush, a decent man who is gracious to a fault to his political enemies. Though he prevailed by virtue of the Electoral College vote, Bush lost the popular vote and attracted only 9% of the black vote, far below the 30% he gained running for governor of Texas. If the Republicans had attracted a significant portion of the black vote, there would have been no need for the Florida recounts. But the NAACP's commercial tying Bush's opposition to hate-crimes legislation in Texas to James Byrd's racially motivated death helped make Bush radioactive.

After Bush became president, Democratic Party and black leaders demonized his black appointees. Among other things, the Democrats didn't acknowledge the historical significance of Bush's appointing Colin Powell and Condi Rice as the first African-American Secretaries of State of both genders. They said nothing when Harry Belafonte said Powell was Bush's "house slave," and Wisconsin radio personality John Sylvester called Condi Rice "Aunt Jemima." By their reticence, black leaders confirmed loudly and clearly what most of America assumes: you are free to move about the country only as a Democrat, or a Democrat appointee.

Regarding abortion, the black community should question why the Democratic Party and black leaders, as well as President Obama, shroud in secrecy the racist background of Planned Parenthood and its founder, the late Margaret Sanger.  The Radiance Foundation's website reveals how Sanger's "Negro Project" strategically placed Planned Parenthood clinics near black neighborhoods. Sanger shrewdly used the black church and black elite network to promote ersatz benefits of abortion in order to steer black mothers to her clinics where counselors would seek ways to persuade these women to abort their babies.

The Radiance Foundation's research clearly confirms that Sanger's legacy is the reason why a disproportionally high 40% of black pregnancies end in abortion.  Sanger's legacy also may explain why Planned Parenthood's internet commercial included black athletes Al Joyner and Sean James to respond to Focus on the Family's pro-life Super Bowl commercial featuring Tim Tebow.

The NAACP's mining the Tea Party and The Glenn Beck Program for racism is a distraction. The mother lode of racism appears to be in the leadership circles of the Democratic Party and the seemingly self-appointed black leaders who protect Planned Parenthood and Margaret Sanger, whose influence continues from her grave. Black America should view with suspicion many players who share their political party: NARAL, NOW, et al; Hillary Clinton's acceptance of the Sanger award in 2009; President Obama, Reverends Sharpton & Jackson, and the NAACP that accepts Planned Parenthood as a political ally. 

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/09/genuine_institutionalized_raci.html at September 15, 2010 - 04:19:07 PM CDT

New regulations hurt African Americans

By Willie E. Gary

Washington, D.C. - The US Department of Education recently proposed a series of rules aimed at tightening regulatory oversight of career colleges. But the new standards, if enacted, are a classic example of the federal government doing more harm than good. In this case, many African American youths and working adults will be the victims.

Under the proposed rules, students at career colleges would be ineligible for federal loans and grants if their chosen career school doesn’t meet certain guidelines pertaining to the institution’s default rate on student loans and the salary level of its graduates. The reasoning behind these rules is ridiculous: How can the value and worthiness of an educational establishment be gauged by how many students default on their loans?

On the surface, these rules may even appear to be a beneficial effort by the government to hold career schools more accountable after reviews have uncovered unsound recruiting practices at some of the schools. But in reality, the rules are unfair to the institutions and will punish youths and working adults who are striving to get the additional education and training they need for promotions or better jobs. The students at the career colleges across the country are disproportionately people of color, women and from low-income families. In fact, nearly half the students (43 percent) are minorities, as are 39 percent of career college graduates. In addition, career colleges are a leading source of associate degrees for minorities—23 percent of African Americans and 18 percent of Latinos with associate degrees attended career colleges.

What makes these new regulations so blatantly unfair is that the default rate on student loans at career colleges is similar to the default rate at the nation’s liberal arts colleges and universities among students with the same demographics as those at career colleges—minorities and individuals from low-income families. It is extremely disappointing that the Department of Education seeks to implement a policy that could cripple operations at many career schools without adequately considering the negative impact on students who need these institutions. The Education Department has proposed rules that will harm all the schools, and all the students who may want to attend these institutions. This is bad public policy.

Clearly, the Education Department’s approach is elitist, if not outright racist.

We have to ask why these restrictive regulations have not been proposed for the nation’s leading liberal arts colleges and universities or even at state colleges where students with the same socioeconomic backgrounds have similar default rates on their student loans.

Instead, the proposed regulations are aimed at institutions whose the graduates don’t often become CEOs, doctors and lawyers. Career schools produce nurses, auto mechanics, computer technicians and other skilled workers, whose services are often overlooked and devalued in our society. Career schools should be applauded for providing opportunities to people who may have had nowhere else to turn to better their lives. At career schools, 45 percent of the dependent students come from families in the lowest-income quartile, and nearly half of the parents of career school students have a high school diploma or less education.

Needless to say, students at career schools, the people who will be punished by this new policy, lack the clout of students at the liberal arts schools. Their voices are rarely heard; many have spent their lives as victims of structural racism that has impacted their education, healthcare, housing, environment and employment status.

Now, as they seek to enhance their quality of life, the government is diminishing their opportunities to succeed. Consider that 48 percent of career college students are employed full- time while enrolled, yet graduation rates at career schools are similar or better than those at public and private colleges and universities.

Most career school students are looking for a second chance, an opportunity to break the cycle of poverty that has engulfed them and their communities. The government should not trample on their hopes and dreams for a better life.

Willie E. Gary, Esq. is one of America’s preeminent trial lawyers, having won more than 150 multi-million dollar lawsuits. His firm, Gary, Williams, Parenti, Finney, Lewis, McManus, Watson & Sperando, P.L., is based in Stuart, Florida.

Venus and Serena Williams suffer racism

by Luther Campbell

Venus and Serena Williams represent black people and female athletes in a positive way, so I have a hard time believing they don't get more recognition and endorsement deals.

Tennis is a grueling and difficult sport. When you play professional tennis, you compete against the best in the world. The career of a tennis player is very short. To see these young ladies stay at the top for so long is truly amazing. Venus turned professional at age 14 and celebrated her 30th birthday in June. These sisters should be getting the kind of attention that has been given to Roger Federer, Tiger Woods, and Michael Jordan. Yet they don't.

In women's tennis, players such as Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic, Dinara Safina, and Svetlana Kuznetsova rise and fall from the top, but the Williams sisters have shown consistent greatness on clay and grass courts for more than a decade. Serena is the number one player in the world. Venus turned in a phenomenal performance at the U.S. Open despite a two-month layoff. The sisters have been racking up grand slam wins since the mid-'90s,and won Olympic gold medals in doubles in the 2000 and 2008 summer games. These girls whip ass. And they don't stop.

Their star power is undeniable. In 2001, 13 million viewers tuned to CBS to watch Venus and Serena battle each other for the U.S. Open trophy. Yet neither sister is the top-earning female tennis player in the game. That title goes to Maria Sharapova, who, according to Forbes, earned $23.5 million in endorsement deals and appearance fees last year. She has yet to recover from major shoulder surgery in 2008, but Sharapova (whose sponsors include Nike, Sony Ericsson, and Tiffany) is the world's highest-paid female athlete.

Serena and Venus (who was recently ranked fifth among pro female tennis players) made $20.2 million and $15.4 million, respectively, last year, but Tiffany sure isn't knocking on their door to hock its jewelry. They need to be treated like Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning. These women should be in his club. But being black female athletes isn't the look corporate America wants to pitch to the public.

More is made of the outfits the Williamses wear than their play and the history they are making. This sport is 99 percent white. They are surpassing every tennis player before them while breaking records along the way. Venus and Serena need to be put on a pedestal because they are the queens of their sport.

I'm afraid the Williams sisters will get the attention they deserve only if they get caught up in a scandal. That's when they'll be offered their own reality show.

Follow Luke on Twitter: @unclelukereal1.

Why Obama and Kenya are being dragged in the mud of US racism

By ANTONY KARANJA

Since November 2008, almost every Republican, and especially those in the Tea Party, the fringe wing of the oldest political party in the US, knows that a country called Kenya exists.

All of a sudden the right wing is so knowledgeable about Kenya’s politics and geography than ever before. All this courtesy of US President Barack Obama.

The American right wing has relentlessly tried to push this misinformation to its followers and the shocking thing is, it is sticking.

In a country where the public will believe a lie to be true when it’s repeated over and over again despite obvious evidence to the contrary, the right has definitely exploited this weakness.

The freedom of expression has brought out the worst of these conspiracy theorists who somehow believe Obama fooled the entire world into believing he was born in Hawaii.

These Obama-haters will compete to display the most ignorant protest signs. In one of the Tea Party rallies, some of the attendees displayed protest signs reading: ‘‘A village somewhere in Kenya misses its idiot” and “Go back to Kenya”.

For a country that prides itself as the world’s largest democracy, these acts by a bunch of ill-informed people are regrettable. Mr Obama is not likely to get a break as long as he is president, and if comments by one Newt Gingrich last weekend are anything to go by, the worst is yet to come.

Gingrich, who wants to make a stab for the presidency in 2012, borrowed a line from the ‘‘Birthers’ ’’ playbook, and in doing so gave us an inkling of what will be coming.

He had this to say in an interview with the National Review Online: “What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan anti-colonial behaviour, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?” Gingrich asks. “That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behaviour.”

The article further quotes Gingrich as saying:“This is a person who is fundamentally out of touch with how the world works, who happened to have played a wonderful con, as a result of which he is now president.”

Gingrich, a former House Speaker, made these amazing comments in apparent agreement with an article that appeared in Forbes by a conservative writer, Dinesh D’Souza.

In his feeble attempt to explain “Obama’s thinking”, D’Souza, who was born in India, goes to great pains to convince Americans that he knows who shaped.

“Clearly the anti-colonial ideology of Barack Obama Sr. goes a long way to explain the actions and policies of his son in the Oval Office. And we can be doubly sure about his father’s influence because those who know Obama well testify to it.

He goes on to say: “Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realisation of his anti-colonial ambitions, is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son.

‘‘The son makes it happen, but he candidly admits he is only living out his father’s dream. The invisible father provides the inspiration, and the son dutifully gets the job done. America today is governed by a ghost.”

Clearly D’Souza’s intellectual laziness is evident as he does not bother to back up any of his charges. His piece is full of divisive rhetoric and he is definitely gunning to be quoted by conservatives in high positions.

Gingrich’s position on D’Souza’s piece is even more baffling considering that he is a former history lecturer who should have known D’Souza’s article was pure hot air.

But who is surprised really? Gingrich’s main intention is to push the narrative that the President is exotic, non-American, and not “one of us” as the November midterm elections approach. He is trying to appeal to voters’ fears.

He comes from the same party that instilled fear in senior citizens, lying to them that Obama is trying to kill them by way of passing health-care reforms.

It is unfortunate that now “Kenya” has become the buzz-word used to score political points. The conservatives would really love to replace the name “Kenya’’ with the word they want to use, “Black”, but for the sake of political correctness “Kenya” seems to be a good cover.

It is race-baiting at its best and Gingrich and D’Souza know it. In an effort to please their audience, these two men have displayed unapologetic racism and should be ashamed of themselves.

Mr Karanja is a blogger and also contributes articles to the Nation from Dallas USA.(tgkaranja@gmail.com)