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The Curry Report
March 31, 2009
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In This Issue
The Hope of John Hope Franklin
State of Black America' Report Asks Obama to Address Black Disparities
Oakland has been Defined by Violence, but its True Identity is More Complicated
Article has Cop Dissing Blacks
Obama Brings Flush Times for Black News Media
Haiti's Woes Are Top Test for Aid Effort
The Hope of John Hope Franklin
Curry Headshot

By George E. Curry 

NNPA Columnist

 
 

When I first heard last week that historian John Hope Franklin had died, I reached for a copy of And Still We Rise, a collection of 50 interviews with Black role models by Barbara Reynolds. There are two stories Franklin recounted that I have never forgotten - and probably never will.

The historian told the first one when Reynolds asked him to describe his first encounter with racism. "When I was 7 years old, we took a train trip," the Oklahoma-born Franklin recalled. "The train was loaded with people, so we just sat down in the white-only section. The conductor told us to move. My mother refused because we were going only six miles. The conductor stopped the train and put us out in the woods. That was a searing experience a 7-year-old lad would never, never forget."

Nor would he forget what happened to him when he was 30 years old.

"I was traveling from Greensboro, N.C. by train during the closing months of the war," he told Reynolds, then editor of USA Today's inquiry page. "The blacks aboard were crowded in a half coach while about five whites rode in a full coach. I suggested to the conductor that we exchange with them so we could all sit down. He told us those whites were German prisoners of war and they could not be moved. Those prisoners were watching us, laughing as we stood and stumbled because we didn't have anywhere to sit."

John Hope Franklin would never forget that experience, either. But two years later, in 1947, he could claim a small victory over America's version of apartheid. He told the Washington Post that he had traveled to Richmond, Va. to donate blood to his sick brother. When he boarded a bus afterward, he sat in the front of the bus reserved for Whites because he was too tired to walk to the back. The driver ordered him to the back and threatened to have him arrested. "The blacks were yelling at me: 'Stand your ground!' And you know what? That bus driver drove off with me sitting right there."

That was the first of many victories for Franklin. Like W.E.B.DuBois, another noted historian, John Hope Franklin graduated from Fisk University in Nashville before earning a master's and doctorate from Harvard. He taught at three historically Black colleges: St. Augustine's College, what is now North Carolina Central College and Howard University. He then began a long list of firsts: at Brooklyn College, he was named chairman of the history department, the first time an African-American chaired a department at a predominantly White college; the first Black chair of the history department at the University of Chicago; the first African-American to hold an endowed chair at Duke and the first Black president of the American Historical Association.

His books include From Slavery to Freedom, an American classic first published in 1947 and still in print; Reconstruction After the Civil War; The Emancipation Proclamation, The Free Negro in North Carolina, The Militant South 1800-1861 and The Color Line: Legacy for the 21st Century. His pioneering research was used in the Supreme Court case of Brown v. Board Education.

A serious and respected scholar, Franklin never let America forget its ugly past. He wrote in the Atlantic magazine two years ago, "If the American idea was to fight every war from the beginning of colonization to the middle of the 20the century with Jim Crow armed forces, in the belief that this would promoted the American idea of justice and equality, then the American idea was an unmitigated disaster and a denial of the very principles that this country claimed as its rightful heritage."

Franklin said his father experienced inequality in the early 1900s.

He told Barbara Reynolds, "My father, for example, became so frustrated trying to make it in the white world where judges refused to let him represent his clients and ordered him out of the courtroom, that he took his family to an all-black village. They would not let him practice. He simply said, 'This is not a world I want to have anything to do with.'" So he moved his family to Rentiesville, Oklahoma, where John Hope Franklin was born.

The younger Franklin has suffered similar insults. On the evening before he was to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1995, a woman mistook him for an attendant and asked him to get her coat. And a man at his hotel handed him a set of keys and told him to get his car.

When Barack Obama was closing in on becoming the nation's first Black president, Franklin told Walter Dellinger, a fellow professor at Duke University, that it could be more important "to have that family as the first family than to have Obama as president." History will probably prove him right.

 

George E. Curry, former editor-in-chief of Emerge magazine and the NNPA News Service, is a keynote speaker, moderator, and media coach. He can be reached through his Web site, www.georgecurry.com.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


State of Black America' Report Asks Obama to Address Black Disparities
 

State of Black America

 

 

By Jesse Washington

AP National Writer

March 25, 2009

 

NEW YORK (AP) - President Barack Obama should specifically address disparities in black unemployment, foreclosures, education and health care, the National Urban League says in its annual "State of Black America" report.

Despite the progress represented by the election of the first black president, blacks are twice as likely to be unemployed, three times as likely to live in poverty and more than six times as likely to be incarcerated, says the report, which was being released Wednesday.

Obama has said that the way for government to help minorities is by improving things like education, employment and health care for all Americans.

But "we have to be more specific," said Marc Morial, president and CEO of the 99-year-old Urban League.

"The issue is not only (blacks) doing better, but in closing these persistent gaps in statistics in this country," Morial told The Associated Press. "Our index shows that the gap in African-American status is about 71 percent that of white Americans. We will not rest until that number is at 100, and there is no gap."

The 288-page report includes policy discussions and essays from academics, elected officials and average citizens. Among its 31 specific recommendations:

- Ensure that the stimulus package's green job creation includes poor urban communities.

- Increase funding for job training and placement for disadvantaged workers.

- Guarantee full-day schooling for all 3 and 4 year olds.

- Expand the school day to account for working parents and families without nearby relatives to help with after-school care.

- Fund mortgage counseling and education programs for minorities.

- Implement universal health care and a "comprehensive" system to provide blacks with health education, prevention and intervention.

Morial acknowledged the role self-responsibility must play in improving the lives of blacks.

"We have some things in our own community where we have to step up, when it comes to focusing and emphasizing the basic value of achievement and accomplishment in our children, and doing it in a very young age," he said. "We have to not be afraid to say, 'Turn off the TV, shut down the Internet. SpongeBob, Dora, all these folks need to take a little break.'"

But public policy is a crucial ingredient, he said.

"It matters if your high school biology class has a biology lab. It matters if your second-grade classroom is air conditioned if it's in South Carolina or Florida or Alabama.

"Public policy matters, and we have to recognize too that it does require additional and extraordinary investments when it comes to children, to lift up children that are disadvantaged," Morial said.

He pointed out that since today's minority population will soon be a majority of Americans, "these kind of things will make us better off and advance the cause of the nation."

As a presidential candidate, Obama sidestepped the minefield of race and politics whenever possible, instead focusing on a message of American unity. And in his two months as president, the financial meltdown has left Obama little time or political capital to spend on anything besides rescuing the economy.

But in 2007, as the junior senator from Illinois, Obama wrote the foreword to the "State of Black America" report, which focused on the problems facing black men.

"This sad story is a stark reminder that the long march toward true and meaningful equality in America isn't over," Obama wrote. "We have a long way to go."

 

 

 
Oakland has been Defined by Violence, but its True Identity is More Complicated
 
 Oakland map
 

The slaying of four police officers last week has reinforced the area's negative reputation.

 

By Maura Dolan
(c) Los Angeles Times
March 29, 2009

OAKLAND - In the neighborhood where four Oakland police officers were killed last weekend, a large makeshift memorial still adorns a sidewalk with flowers, notes and photographs of the slain police. Across the street lies another, smaller sidewalk memorial -- this one for the parolee who killed the officers.

A cluster of African American women in front of the police memorial argued last week about a candlelight vigil planned for the felon, whom police had just linked by DNA to the rape of a 12-year-old.

One incensed woman said it would send the wrong message to children.

"This man killed the police," Janice James, 52, said in exasperation. "It looks like you are condoning what he did."

The neighborhood where this sidewalk debate occurred is a world away from other parts of Oakland, a 56-square-mile city of about 400,000 people of many races and extremely diverse incomes in the shadow of San Francisco.

Yet it is this neighborhood and other crime-plagued pockets that have come to define Oakland, creating an image of a city that many of its own residents do not recognize and that others know painfully well.

The killings of the officers, among the deadliest such incidents in state history, drew national headlines last week and reinforced Oakland's bloody image. It came nearly three months after a videotaped shooting of a black man by a white transit police officer prompted sporadic rioting downtown and heightened tensions in East Oakland between African Americans and police.

None of the four officers killed last week was African American. The man who shot them was.
Sam Romano, 56, a white contractor who lives in a racially diverse, middle-class neighborhood just up the hill from where the police were killed, said he was largely untouched by the violence below.

He blamed the troubles on "people without jobs, without training programs and without hope."

"Mix that together with a minority of the people who are of the criminal element and add the ease of getting guns, and violence erupts, and it creates chaos," said Romano, who moved to Oakland 25 years ago because it was more affordable than San Francisco, has a better climate and is filled with people "who don't want to live in a suburb of one color or one type of person."

East Oakland's flatlands, with wide boulevards of tattered storefronts, check-cashing stores and barbershops, are a constant reminder to their largely poor residents that they have not benefited from the large-scale redevelopment projects that have helped transform other troubled Oakland neighborhoods, such as the once-decaying downtown.

Yet just miles from where the police were gunned down, the middle-class and affluent shop at organic grocery stores, visit galleries, eat at upscale restaurants and hike and jog on tree-lined trails.

The last decade has seen an exodus of African Americans from Oakland and an influx of other races, gay people and young families who no longer can afford San Francisco. An Urban Institute study of 2000 census data found that Oakland has more lesbian couples per capita than any other major U.S. city.

In 2000, African-Americans were the plurality. By 2007, a survey estimated that whites made up 35% of the population; blacks, 30.8%; Latinos, 25%; and Asians, 15%.

Night life is returning downtown. Restaurants and clubs have followed large-scale residential development. A historic movie palace, the Fox Theater, an ornate Art Deco building shuttered for decades, reopened last month and is booking well-known performers.

West Oakland, another historically troubled neighborhood with graceful Victorian homes, also has experienced a small revival, although the entire city has been hurt by the recession.

But little change has come to the East Oakland flatlands, whose predominantly black residents refer to their home as Beirut and "the killing zone." The city had an estimated 124 homicides last year, most in the flatlands.

Troubled area

In the neighborhood where the police were killed, residents live in modest bungalows with bars on the windows and locked gates around tiny patches of lawn. Many homes are boarded up, victims of foreclosure. Cooperating with police is seen by some as dangerous, an invitation to retaliation.

Industrial jobs that drew both blacks and whites in large numbers from the South during World War II have largely disappeared, and drug dealing and other economic crimes have filled the void. Residents are arrested and sent to prison, then return as parolees and probationers.

Melva Fonteno, 47, a retired African American nurse, stood in front of the sidewalk memorial last week to pay respects to Officer Daniel Sakai, 35, one of the slain officers. She said Sakai had investigated the nonfatal shooting of her teenage son, who was struck by 13 bullets at a bus stop two years ago.

"It was a jealousy thing," his mother said of the shooting. "He had on expensive shoes."

The police recently made arrests in the case, she said.

"Officer Sakai would call me personally," Fonteno said, smiling at the memory. "I always appreciated him and the rest of the officers because they always came by and told me how the case was going. That young man has always been there for me and my family."

Fonteno grimaced, though, as she recalled once watching other officers slam three teenage boys to the ground with unnecessary brutality. "But I want more cops," she said. "There are robberies, stealing. You can't even go to the check-cashing places without getting robbed."

The division in the neighborhood is reflected at a nearby barbershop, where a customer expressed bitterness about the wide attention the police killings have captured.

"Black people are marginalized by the city and hounded by the police," said the African American man, 37, who gave his name only as D. because he said he feared getting "jumped on" by the police.

"Cops are so arrogant," he said. "They kill black men and for the most part they are getting away with it."

On weekend nights, young men and women take over major intersections in the neighborhood, driving doughnuts around circles of dancing people, disrupting traffic, destroying property and playing loud music in what are called sideshows.

Drive a short distance from East Oakland's flatlands and the city is transformed into vibrant neighborhoods, some Latino, others Asian, others multiracial.

At Lake Merritt, in the heart of Oakland, residents jog trails, rent boats and picnic on the lawns. Ringed with lights at night, the lake is described by the city as the largest of its kind in an urban setting.

On a typical sunny afternoon, three white-haired couples enjoyed lawn bowling. Mothers escorted children to Fairyland, where they could pet llamas. An old man in a beret fed the sea gulls, and geese strutted past couples lounging on the lawn.

Shontay Newell, 34, an African American hot-dog vendor, was staring out at the lake when the conversation turned to East Oakland -- a place Newell said she tries to avoid. She said she went to a bar there a few months ago, and a man pointed a rusty .22 at her after she told him she had no money.

"I was so scared," she said. She did not report the incident to the police because "they are not going to do anything about it."

In the Fruitvale District, a street that was once East 14th has been aptly renamed International Boulevard. Latin music pours from cars, people chat in Spanish on the sidewalks, the storefronts have Spanish names, and taco and fruit carts dot the corners.

"I like the town, the climate, no problems," said Rogelio Ruiz, 48, enjoying the sunshine outside the sporting goods store where he worked. "Crime? It's OK. People walk here every day, the families, the babies. No problem."

Heading downtown on International Boulevard, the store names become Asian and the neighborhoods brim with people of Southeast Asian descent.

Different opinions

In northern Oakland, residents sip coffee at outdoor tables in the trendy and pricey Rockridge District, which borders Berkeley. Marla Leech, 47, a white college instructor at one of the outdoor tables, complained that the media have given Oakland a horrible image and said there is little conflict between the city's races. "People mix together here."

As Oakland prepared last week to bury the dead, many were united in their support of the police, showering the stations with flowers, bringing food and writing notes.

But residents in East Oakland braced for trouble on the evening of the march for Lovelle Mixon, a high school dropout who had taken occasional jobs since his release from prison and missed appointments with a parole officer in the weeks before he killed the police officers.

The news media descended in droves for the march, although it attracted only a few dozen people.

Local newspapers had reported that Mixon also was a suspect in another murder and may have been linked to several rapes in the neighborhood in addition to the attack on the young girl.

"He didn't rape nobody," a woman in the crowd hissed. "That's a lie. They just got to pin that on somebody."

"George Washington was a rapist! Thomas Jefferson was a rapist!" shouted a man.

An African American woman pushing her granddaughter in a stroller and keeping her eye on a grandson said she came because Mixon was her daughter's cousin.

But what he did, she said, was not right.

"Nooooo," said the woman, Ella, 47, shaking her head sadly.

The demonstration ended in front of an empty building that used to house the neighborhood police. The officers have since moved into a building across the parking lot, and through its glass doors the motorcycles of two of the slain officers could be seen surrounded by flowers and a lighted candle.

Tmes researchers Scott Wilson and Vicki Gallay contributed to this report. 


 


 

Article has Cop Dissing Blacks
Philly Cop Badge

 

A college class assignment may have gotten a Philadelphia police officer into some hot water.

 

By DAFNEY TALES
� Philadelphia Daily News

March 31, 2009

 

William Thrasher, a white cop in the 22nd District, at 17th and Montgomery, has been put on desk duty after an article written by a Temple University student quoted him describing his disgust for black people in the district where he works, likening them to animals and calling their problems "typical n---- s---," or "TNS," during a ride-along with the student Jan. 30.

The article enraged The Guardian Civic League, an organization of black Philadelphia police officers, which is calling for his dismissal.

"[Thrasher] took an oath to protect all people," said Rochelle Bilal, who heads the group. "If that's the way he feels about black people, then he needs to be off our streets."

The police Internal Affairs department is investigating. Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said that that kind of inflammatory rhetoric will not be tolerated within the department.

"I'm not happy with this at all," he said. "I take this very, very seriously. It's not supposed to happen. You can't serve people you don't respect."

Thrasher, 24, of Marsden Street near Tyson Avenue, in Tacony, joined the force in February 2007, and was assigned to the 22nd District, a mostly black area of North Philadelphia.

The rookie cop made the incendiary remarks as he escorted Shannon McDonald, a senior journalism student, around the district, said Chris Harper, an associate journalism professor who edited the article.

The district is bordered by Montgomery and Lehigh avenues, 10th and 33rd streets.

At one point during the three-hour ride, Thrasher was quoted as saying that people in the neighborhood "don't care about each other. . . . They'll shoot each other for drugs, for money, for bull----. All they care about is their reputation. They want to look tough."

Thrasher was quoted recounting a homicide that occurred in the area: "These people are f------ disgusting," he told McDonald. "It's like they're animals."

Later in the article he defended his statements by claiming he isn't racist.

"I'm not racist," McDonald quoted him as saying in the article, which appeared on a Web site for Temple's Multimedia Urban Reporting Lab. "I work with black people every day. They have jobs, they support their families, they're good people. Most of the people who live in this area are bad people. And they happen to be black."

Numerous calls to Thrasher's home went unanswered.

Bilal, a 23-year veteran with the force, said that Thrasher's comments suggest that he resents the people he is supposed to serve, and Bilal regrets that some officers bring that prejudice to the job.

"It's the mindset of some of us [police officers] who haven't been brought up in the city, or around people of color," she said, referring to her dual identity of being a cop and an African-American.

Police spokesman Lt. Frank Vanore cautioned not to immediately judge the officer.

"We don't know the validity of this article," he said. "This is a student journalist. We don't know how much of what she wrote is true, or who was there. There are a lot of variables."

Harper said that he reviewed McDonald's notes and stands by her story.

"I think Shannon and I were both amazed by the statements that were made by the police officer," Harper said. "They're clearly racist, they're disturbing.

"The language [Thrasher used] is disturbing if it comes from anyone, in particular, a police officer," he added.

Bilal, who grew up in North Philadelphia, near Marshall Street and Cecil B. Moore Avenue, said: "I was sick when I read that. I've lived in the city for 52 years and they've never disgusted me. My family is in North Philadelphia. Not everybody is a criminal."

Race relations in the city have long been strained, and an incident like the one in which Thrasher is accused doesn't help, said Chad Lassiter, an adjunct lecturer at the Graduate School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania.

"We want our police officers to have a moral imperative," he said. "We don't want them to display bigotry, discrimination and other forms of prejudice."

Lassiter said that racism would impede an officer from objectively serving in the community.

"He can arrest and brutalize someone given he's in the position of authority," he said. "It's not true justice."

He said that if the allegations are true, Thrasher should undergo sensitivity and diversity training.

Meanwhile, Bilal and the civic league will meet tomorrow to decide how to proceed, she said.

"As a police officer, I was ashamed that I have a colleague who describes a group of people the way he did. Disciplinary action is a slap on the hand," she said.

"They need to tell him to find a new career." *

 

 





 
Obama Brings Flush Times for Black News Media
 
NNPA
    

By Rachel L. Swarns

� New York Times

March 28, 2009


WASHINGTON - For the nation's black magazines, newspapers, and television and radio stations, the arrival of the Obama administration has ushered in an era of unprecedented access to the White House.

President Obama gave Black Enterprise magazine his first print interview and gave a black talk show host one of his first radio interviews. This month, he invited 50 black newspaper publishers to meet with him at the White House. And at his news conference Tuesday, he skipped over several prominent newspapers and newsmagazines to call on Kevin Chappell, a senior editor at Ebony magazine.

It was the first time an Ebony reporter had been invited to question a president at a prime-time news conference.

"We have, at last, an equal seat at the table," said Bryan Monroe, the vice president and editorial director of Ebony and Jet magazines. "We're not going to get everything we need. But now we definitely can be heard."

Mr. Obama is cultivating a new cast of media insiders in the nation's capital, the correspondents and editors of the black media outlets that are devoting more staff members and resources to covering the first African-American president.

Outreach to these journalists allows Mr. Obama to get his message to black audiences through news organizations that typically celebrate rather than criticize this president. Officials say that the organizations reach people who are often missed by mainstream outlets and that their efforts reflect the president's commitment to reach out to all Americans.

"We want people to know what we are doing and how the administration's policies will impact their community," said Corey A. Ealons, the president's recently appointed director of African-American media.

In recent weeks, the administration has invited black media groups to listen in on conference calls with several senior Obama advisers, including Rahm Emanuel, his chief of staff; Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser; and Shaun Donovan, the housing secretary. Officials also organized a meeting with Melody C. Barnes, who leads the president's Domestic Policy Council. (The administration is also reaching to Spanish-language media and other minority media groups.)

In his meeting last week with the black publishers, Mr. Obama praised the role that black newspapers had played in supporting his candidacy and presidency.

"The reason that I've been able and Michelle has been able to do what we're doing is because of the extraordinary support and thoughtfulness with which you've covered our campaigns and our activities, and so I am very thankful to you," Mr. Obama told members of the National Newspaper Publishers Association, which represents more than 200 black newspapers.

But if the new access to the White House has brought new relevance and respect to outlets long relegated to the sidelines here, it has also stoked the debate about whether the black media should regard Mr. Obama with a more critical eye.

In an interview this month on National Public Radio, Tavis Smiley, a well-known black radio and television host, urged journalists - black and white - to assess Mr. Obama's performance critically.

"I think the ground is fertile for Barack Obama to be a great president," Mr. Smiley said. "I think he can be, but only if we help make him a great president. Great presidents have to be pushed into their greatness."

But Mr. Smiley warned that criticizing Mr. Obama was not for "the faint of heart."

Mr. Smiley resigned last year as a regular commentator on "The Tom Joyner Morning Show" after receiving a hail of angry e-mail and phone calls for questioning Mr. Obama's commitment to black issues.

Black media groups insist, however, that they will hold the president's feet to the fire, and they say they have added resources to provide more coverage.

Black Entertainment Television has added a second White House correspondent to its team here, and the network broadcast live coverage of Mr. Obama's first address to Congress and his two news conferences.

Essence, a magazine that is dedicated to black women, has hired its first Washington correspondent. Johnson Publishing Company, the media group based in Chicago that owns Ebony and Jet, has added a feature entitled "Inside Washington" to Jet, a weekly publication.

In addition to celebratory articles about the inauguration, Mr. Obama's marriage, his family and his management style, some publications have examined the president's economic plans and concerns that problems of blacks may be overlooked.

Black Enterprise recently ran an article in which several black economists dissected Mr. Obama's economic stimulus plan, with some questioning the effectiveness of tax cuts and raising concerns about whether the plan addresses high levels of unemployment among blacks.

Hazel Trice Edney, editor in chief of the National Newspaper Publishers Association's news service, notes that black reporters are still rarely called on in the daily White House briefings. And Ms. Edney noted that the administration refused to allow the black publishers who met with Mr. Obama to ask him any questions or to cover the event. (She defied the ban by recording the meeting and reporting on it.)

"Kevin was wonderful, and we're glad he was called on," Ms. Edney said of Mr. Chappell. "But that's just one magazine."

At the same time, however, some black journalists at black media organizations promise to continue their historic role of cheering on black achievements - the president's included - because they say mainstream publications will not always do so.

Dorothy Leavell, the chairwoman of the National Newspaper Publishers Association Foundation, received warm applause last week when she told her fellow publishers that Mr. Obama's election made her "feel so proud that someone so exceptional, someone so vibrant, could lead this country."

During the meeting with Mr. Obama, Ms. Leavell presented the president with her organization's newsmaker of the year award. "We've got your back," she said.

 





Haiti's Woes Are Top Test for Aid Effort
 
Haiti Map 
 
 
 

By Neil MacFarquhar

� New York Times

March 31, 2009

 
 

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - Paul Collier, a leading poverty guru, spent a recent morning here waxing positive about how the world's economic freefall might prove the perfect moment for Haiti to sell more exports like T-shirts and mangoes to Americans.

 

His improbable enthusiasm coincided with appearances by a bevy of luminaries descending on Haiti this month, including Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, and the entire Security Council. All of them came to stress that this destitute nation stands at a crossroads between salvation and "the darkness," as Mr. Ban put it.

The spotlight was calculated. A landscape of deepening woe is emerging among the world's most destitute. About 46 million more people are expected to tumble into poverty this year amid the largest decline in global trade in 80 years, according to the World Bank. The results ripple through every index. An additional 200,000 to 400,000 infants, for example, may die every year for the next six years because of the crisis, the bank said.

Amid the turmoil, the United Nations is reminding the world's wealthy nations, however embattled their finances, not to forget the poorest. A panel commissioned by the United Nations General Assembly suggested on Thursday that one percent of any nation's stimulus package be set aside for poor countries, while Mr. Ban has vowed that when he joins the leaders of the Group of 20 at their economic summit meeting in London on Thursday, he will voice the concerns of the uninvited.

"There are many countries who cannot even dream of formulating their own fiscal stimulus packages," Mr. Ban said. Last week, he sent a letter to the Group of 20 members arguing that, domestic problems aside, they should give $1 trillion over the next two years to the world's most vulnerable nations.

Mr. Ban is trying to turn Haiti into something of an Exhibit A on the need to keep foreign aid flowing despite tighter budgets. Haiti's upheavals last year proved particularly intense, with the nation staggering beneath the double whammy of food riots that toppled the government and a series of hurricanes that killed hundreds and battered the economy.

Now the United Nations worries that while the groundwork has been laid to get past those threats, the moment will fade because of the global crisis. The organization has spent some $5 billion on peacekeeping operations here since 2004, when the government of the still popular President Jean-Bertrand Aristide was toppled - many say with a shove from the Bush administration.

The peacekeeping force declared war against the gangs that plague Haiti, with some success. Kidnappings dropped to 258 victims last year from 722 in 2006, according to United Nations figures.

With the issue of security improved, Mr. Ban commissioned Mr. Collier - an Oxford University don whose book on fixing failed states, "The Bottom Billion," turned him into a darling at United Nations headquarters - to whip up some solutions for rejuvenating Haiti.

Haiti needs jobs, a particular challenge in the current economic climate. Haitians often seek work in the United States, but that safety valve has been squeezed given the recession. With some 900,000 youths expected to come into the job market in the next five years, dismal prospects are the main threat to stability.

"There is nothing that is going to turn Haiti around until people have jobs," said the rap artist and native son Wyclef Jean, who came to the island with Mr. Ban and former President Bill Clinton. Mr. Jean's charity, Y�le Haiti, underwrites education for thousands of young Haitians.

In a downtown park, Idelson Fran�ois, 24, said he finished high school four years ago and had failed to find a job or money to continue his education. "When you have no self-esteem, sometimes you can't resist the desire to do something violent," he said.

It required five months to seat a new government after the April 2008 food riots, and United Nations officials say development is stymied by a corrupt judicial system, weak land tenure laws and wildly inefficient ports. The roads are such moonscapes that some 40 percent of the mango crop gets too bruised to be sold abroad, said Jean M. Buteau, a leading exporter.

Some diplomats worry that the government does not have the capacity to carry out even Mr. Collier's limited prescriptions for improving manufacturing, infrastructure, agriculture and the environment.

"What is lacking is the determination to put these good ideas into a coherent policy," said Yukio Takasu, the Japanese ambassador to the United Nations, on the Security Council tour here. "I don't think there is a focus."

Constant upheaval has long scared off investors. To counter that, last year the United States Congress granted Haitian textiles duty-free access to the American market for a decade, giving rise to Mr. Collier's optimism. The policy has added just 12,000 jobs thus far, but it is viewed as a possible boon in an era of rising protectionism.

Senior United Nations officials and other diplomats worry, however, that the tempo of new factory jobs is too slow, so they think money should be pumped into emergency programs like creating jobs to fix the environmental disaster by planting the denuded hills with forests.

There is also some criticism that Mr. Collier's basic recommendation involves turning Haiti into a sweatshop for American consumers, with workers paid $5 per day or less. He and others defend the approach, with Mr. Clinton noting after a visit to a Hanes T-shirt factory here that its workers earned some two or three times Haiti's minimum wage of $1.75 a day.

Haiti is so close to the United States that its problems tend to reverberate as illegal immigration, and the Marines have stormed ashore repeatedly since the first American occupation started in 1915.

Not every problem can be addressed with the military, and ignoring development has proved deadly, said Susan E. Rice, the American ambassador to the United Nations. "Where we have neglected it, it comes back to bite us." Haiti could receive more than $245 million in American development aid this year.

Haitian officials hope the world gives generously, though there is a certain recognition of donor fatigue, especially in the economic storm.

But young Haitians grumble that their government has yet to paint a vision of the country's future - complaints echoed by United Nations officials who say it is difficult to get President R�ne Pr�val or his ministers to commit to an action plan.

"Just providing rice and beans is not a long-term solution," said John Miller Beauvoir, 26, who founded a charity right out of college and wrote a book calling on other young Haitians to get involved in development. "If the captain does not know where you are going, no boat will take you in the right direction."

 


  

 


 


 


 

 

 



Speaking Engagements
Microphone
 
April 25, 2009
Barber-Scotia College National Alumni Association
Concord, N.C.
 
May 8, 2009
Alabama A&M Univ.
(Commencement)
Normal, Ala.
 
May 9, 2009
Knoxville College Board of Trustees
Knoxville, Tenn.
 
June 5, 2009
Urban Financial Services Coalition
Detroit, Mich.
 
June 10-14, 2009
100 Black Men of America
New York, N.Y.
 
June 21, 2009
Old Storm Branch Baptist Church
North Augusta, S.C.
 
June 23, 2009
Atlanta Chapter
Knoxville College
Alumni Association
Atlanta, Ga.
 
June 24-26, 2009
The PowerNetworking Conference
Atlanta, Ga.
 
June 26,2009
National Newspaper Publishers Association
Minneapolis, Minn.
 
June 28-30, 2009
Raindbow PUSH
Convention
Chicago, Ill.
 
July 18-21, 2009
National Speakers Association Convention
Phoenix, Ariz.
 
August 2-5, 2009
National Black Nurses Association
Toronto, Canada
 
August 6-9, 2009
National Association of Black Journalists
Tampa, Fla.
 
August 30-September 3, 2009
White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities
Washington, D.C.
 
 
 
 
 
 
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AAction
 
 
 The Affirmative Action Debate
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Gaither
 
 
 Jake Gaither: America's Most Famous Black Coach
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