Last fall I put out a post with the subject line “Trashed by freshmen” which evoked a storm of reaction. My post recounted my experience addressing freshmen at Rich East High School in Park Forest IL, where I was graduated more than four decades earlier. For the next month, this space was devoted to the brilliant, heartfelt and astonishingly varied responses from you all.

I had my own reaction to your reaction. I formulated a modest proposal for a “National Time of Acknowledgment and Atonement,” in which America — and individual Americans, black and white — would acknowledge the malign after-effects of slavery, seek to put themselves in the shoes of the other, and work toward reconciliation (Nov. 17, 2006, “A Modest Proposal,” http://tolovemercy.com/frank_joseph_blog/page/2/). I offered this proposal twice in public — at Chicago Sinai Congregation and at the Washington Ethical Society — and will offer it again Friday, Feb. 23, in a Black History Month-related event (details below).

My proposal evoked a counter-proposal from Maria Markham Thompson. Maria is married to Michael Thompson, my nephew, so that makes her my relative somehow — daughter-in-law-in-law? She is a banker in Baltimore, a former vice president of research for a stock brokerage in Baltimore, and the former Maryland state official in charge of financing public water projects.

She is also black. Her family comes from the Islands, though, so her family tradition — while also one of past enslavement — is not the same as that of blacks enslaved out of Africa and brought to the U.S. Add to this Maria’s family tradition of immigration: Her people immigrated voluntarily to the U.S. Yet I think it’s safe to say she feels herself to be at least a sharer in American black culture, for whatever that means.

Maria is a strong feminist; a mother; and a Jew — again voluntarily, as a convert, but surely one of the more passionate Jews I know. I think all these elements are at play in the counter-proposal she offers. It is so well thought out, so principled, and in such contrast to my approach, that I am compelled herewith to share it with you. Here it is, unedited except for style.

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From my bi-lingual and almost dual life, I am well aware of how much whites and blacks hear the same information and process it very differently.  White people have the luxury of thinking of not trying to filter everything through “did this just happen to me because I’m black or is there substance to what is being said?”  So I’m going to be very direct and honest.

Again we are speaking past each other. Slavery is not the issue. I speak as someone who would not accept reparations from the U.S. for anything happening before 1917, when my family arrived in the U.S. The British at least gave us the provisioning grounds when slavery ended in 1833. (My family kept the land for a long time, sold  some of it to Rockefeller in the 1960s for resorts, and continue to fight over the rest.)

That being said, the vestiges of overt and lawful racism from 1863 (Emancipation Proclamation) through 1965 (Civil Rights Act) are still major problems and barriers for blacks in America. Lack of access to decent education has kept the community down for six consecutive generations. Denial of equal access to mortgages and insurance, or being overcharged for what we got, meant that we did not participate in much of the post-World War II home building boom and rising property values that have given a great deal of wealth to working and middle class whites. The result is that in this generation, we do not have the same level of assets for starting businesses or educating our children.

I am personally a terrible example of black American progress. My family came here way ahead of the native black population. First, they had their psychological well-being and self-esteem intact since they were not at the mercy of Jim Crow laws, the Ku Klux Klan and America’s institutional racism. They had educations that were at least equivalent to a high school diploma. They also arrive at least at the journeyman level in their trades. (My grandfather was actually a master carpenter; my father was a merchant seaman when he arrived just in time to fight World War II — not his Plan A, but wrong ship, wrong port [San Francisco] wrong day [December 7, 1941].) We had a history of being entrepreneurs and a community that banded together to build capital for the whole. We knew about and used banks and brokerage firms when most blacks did not, and many could not, because of the segregated societies in which they lived and the unwillingness of the institutions to provide any services at all.

The result is that in my generation, all four of my father’s daughters have masters degrees; heck, my mom and her sister have masters, and my father’s two sons have each attended college, although I don’t think either finished their degrees. We are the exception, not the rule, because of advantages that make us — and many other West Indian families in America — exceptions, but not the rule for blacks as a group. Colin Powell and [the late Rep.] Shirley Chisolm [are] similar bad examples.

If you want serious change in America, then we need to fix the broken-down schools in predominantly black areas by putting in the additional classroom supports needed to make a difference for children who are not coming to school from preschool programs that prepared them for school. Create a Book-of-the-Month Club for them from infancy that sends two books per child per month into these homes, so that there is material there for cash- and time-strapped parents to read to them.

Change the school funding process so that it does not rely on property taxes. This is a national tragedy and continual problem for the development of good schools in predominantly black areas, where the value of the property is lower, so the taxes have to be higher (!) to get the same money. Augment teacher salaries for schools in “the ghetto.” In the rest of the world, we call this hazardous-duty or combat pay. Give Baltimore City and Washington, D.C., teachers a $20,000-a-year tax-free bonus for going into those schools; then you will have a good supply of teachers and can be a little more choosy about who is hired.

Right now if we walked into West Baltimore, I could show you why “sorry” won’t fix a damn thing. First, most people there who have jobs are taking a big cut in their earnings from cashing checks at liquor stores and buying money orders. There are no financial institutions, period.  And lack of experience in using the banks and checks we take for granted scares the hell out of folks who have heard all the bad about what can go wrong “if you let white people get a hand on your money.” Want to make a difference? Help the churches over there get some credit unions going. Better yet, use some of our economic clout to make the Community Reinvestment Act meaningful and tell [the big bank that Maria works for] it can’t have any new branches until they put some in places where there [are] none. Tell PNC and Mercantile [banks] the merger is off until there are branches in West Baltimore. Tell credit unions with community charters that they can either put branches in underserved areas, or pay taxes if they want to keep acting like banks.

There is no ready internet access in poor black communities. Most people do not have home computers, period, or ready access to one. They are cut off from getting information about opportunities to learn and earn. They are now a generation behind in learning to use computers, when and if they get one. You want to make a difference? Put “cyber cafes” in the basements of the churches, with broadband connections.

Fix the bus system so it gets people where they need to go — where the jobs are NOW, not where they were 50 years ago. Change the routes, add routes and direct more transit to get people to jobs in the suburbs. Run shuttle services in the suburbs to help people get the 2-to-3-mile distance from the last bus stop to the jobs.

Provide old cars to people who have none so that they can seek work wherever it is, not just where the buses go. (This has been done in great success in other places.) Equalize insurance rates across the state so that people in the inner city are not penalized for the fact that higher traffic volumes, and therefore more accidents, occur [with]in city boundaries than in suburbs.

Make more grant aid for colleges available to low-income students, regardless of race. These kids come out of school with debt up the wazoo, no cash to get an apartment, a car, or a working wardrobe, so we’re talking more debt and more debt and more debt. All of which kills their credit ratings and sets them 15-20 years behind their peers in building the wealth their families need for success.

Enforce the civil rights laws and ask companies like [the bank Maria works for] why Citibank, Chase and Wells Fargo can find “qualified” (how come we never need that adjective for white males?) minorities and women and [her bank] still claims that it can’t find anyone, therefore perpetuating patterns of discrimination in hiring and institutionalized discriminatory thinking. Make companies publish the hiring statistics for senior management, and refuse to do business with ones with poor hiring records.

For that matter, when it is time to vote a company’s proxy, look at who is on the board. If it’s still all 60+-year-old white men with the same token woman and token black who sits on every other board — vote NO to the entire slate, then send them a letter and tell them why.

Turn SCORE into SCORE PLUS — bring expertise and seed money so that businesses and jobs can be created by black people with good business ideas, but no homes to use as collateral or relatives with cash to invest.

Those are my modest proposals for undoing the cumulative effects of 400 years of slavery and 141 years of continued barriers to education and economic development. With more time to spend on it, I’m sure I can give you a few more.

I’m sorry, but we are way past needing an American Truth and Reconciliation Commission. That’s just more nice-sounding words to make liberals feel good about themselves and everyone else. When it comes to black advancement, I am not interested in sitting in a circle and singing Kum Ba Yah. Maybe you can get Jesse Jackson and the old guard to come to that party. For all of the above reasons, I do not have any intention of ever joining the NAACP, CORE or the Urban League. My generation wants to make it real: Show Us The MONEY!!

Maria

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Wow, huh? Any thoughts?

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. When I speak Friday, Feb. 23, I’ll be at least mindful — and possibly inclusive — of Maria’s counter-proposal. The event is at 12 noon at 2300 E St. NW, Washington DC, across street from the State Department. Copies of To Love Mercy will be available. I don’t have more details just yet, but I will soon. If you’d care to attend, send me an e-mail and I’ll get the details to you.

P.P.S. And if you’re near Iverson Mall, please come to Karibu Books next Saturday afternoon. I’m on a program called “Inde Pen” with other small-press and self-published authors. Date and details: Saturday, Feb. 17, 2-4 p.m., Karibu Books, Iverson Mall, 3817 Branch Ave., Hillcrest Heights MD.