Take from the Poor, Give to the Rich

The Great Debate

Algernon Austin, Thora Institute and Demos
John McWhorter, Manhattan Institute
Orlando Patterson, Harvard University
Moderator: Felicia Lee, New York Times

The Future of Black America: The Burden of History or the Audacity of Hope?
Does the twenty-first century require a new black politics? For many, the success of Barack Obama, Tiger Woods, Oprah and Richard Parsons signals the emergence of a post-race America where anyone with the right values and skills can succeed. For others, the persistence of segregated schools and the increasing numbers of blacks in America's prisons indicate that we are still living in the shadow of Jim Crow. What are the major obstacles to a prosperous future for black America? What are the best policies for moving forward - an effort to change values, an anti-discrimination offensive, or something else? Is it useful to continue to think about politics through the lens of race?

June 13, 2007, 6:30 PM
Donnell Library, Manhattan, NYC
20 West 53rd between 5th and 6th
Register here or call (212) 633-1405 x533

Sponsored by Demos and the Donald and Paula Smith Family Foundation

[Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals
Are Failing Black America by Algernon Austin
Barnes & Noble.com Amazon.com]

[Find out The Truth about "Acting White".]
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“Innovative and zealous firms have lured unsophisticated shoppers by the hundreds of thousands into a thicket of debt from which many never emerge,” states the coverstory of Businessweek. (Brian Grow and Keith Epstein, “The Poverty Business: Inside U.S. Companies’ Audacious Drive to Extract More Profits from the Nation’s Working Poor,” Businessweek, May 21, 2007.)

American companies have discovered a new gold mine: the working poor. They are finding ever new ways to lend to the working poor for higher and higher interest rates. Businessweek reports that in 1989 poor households paid 16.8 percent more on their interest rate for their auto loans. In 2004, poor households were paying 56.1 percent more. In mortgage loans, the poor paid 6.4 percent more than the rich in 1989. In 2004, they were paying 25.5 percent more. For a wide range of products, from college loans to car loans, the poor are paying more.

Some auto dealers serving poor clients no longer post the prices of the cars they sell, but use software to mine customers’ financial records to find out the maximum the person can afford to pay. Tax-preparation companies give advances on poor people’s Earned-Income Tax Credit and they can then skim 10 percent off of the tax returns of the working poor. A 10 percent rate is a bargain compared to the interest rates exceeding 100 percent charged by other types of lenders who target the poor.

Now would be a good time to bring back usury laws that limit the amount of interest a company can charge. Businessweek also suggests bringing more mainstream banking to poor communities and educating customers.

How the New Loan Sharks Divide Up $250 Billion

[click on image for a better view]

--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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Turning Tides in the War on the Poor?

The Great Debate

Algernon Austin, Thora Institute and Demos
John McWhorter, Manhattan Institute
Orlando Patterson, Harvard University
Moderator: Felicia Lee, New York Times

The Future of Black America: The Burden of History or the Audacity of Hope?
Does the twenty-first century require a new black politics? For many, the success of Barack Obama, Tiger Woods, Oprah and Richard Parsons signals the emergence of a post-race America where anyone with the right values and skills can succeed. For others, the persistence of segregated schools and the increasing numbers of blacks in America's prisons indicate that we are still living in the shadow of Jim Crow. What are the major obstacles to a prosperous future for black America? What are the best policies for moving forward - an effort to change values, an anti-discrimination offensive, or something else? Is it useful to continue to think about politics through the lens of race?

June 13, 2007, 6:30 PM
Donnell Library, Manhattan, NYC
20 West 53rd between 5th and 6th

[Find out The Truth about "Acting White".]
________________________________________________________________________


The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press reports big increases in Americans’ concern for the poor. Between 1994 and 2007, Americans’ desire to have the government provide a social safety net increased by at least 10 percentage points across three measures.

This increasing concern for the poor spans all of America’s major social and political divides. “Some of the biggest increases in concern for the needy,” the Pew Center observes, “have come from unexpected sources: political conservatives, Southern whites and older Americans.” In response to the idea that “the government should help more needy people even if it means going deeper into debt,” the percentage of self-described conservatives agreeing increased 20 percentage points to 48 percent between 1993 and 2007. Forty-nine percent of whites, today, agree that the poor “have it hard”; in 1994, only 35 percent agreed.

We can examine the changes by race, political affiliation and income in the percent of people who agreed to all three of the safety net questions. The questions are (1) “The government should help more needy people even if it means going deeper into debt”; (2) “The government should guarantee every citizen enough to eat and a place to sleep”; (3) “It is the responsibility of the government to take care of people who can’t take care of themselves.”

Percent of White and Black Support for a Social Safety Net
Whites increased their support for a social safety net 13 percentage points. However, even with an increase more than twice the size of the black increase, whites are still less likely to support the government helping the poor than blacks. [Click on images for a better view.]

Percent of Support for a Social Safety Net by Political Affiliation
Democrats and Independents had similar strong increases in support for a social safety net. Republicans had weaker gains and continue to be the least supportive of the three political groups. Democrats are the most supportive.

Percent of Support for a Social Safety Net by Household Income
Perhaps not surprisingly, the poorest Americans showed the biggest increase in support for government help for the poor among income groups. All other income quartiles had increases about half as big as the poorest quartile. The lower middle quartile increased 12 percent to a level of 43 percent in favor, the upper middle quartile increased 10 percent to 40 percent support, and the highest quartile increased 13 percent to 29 percent agreeing. In 1994 and 2007, the lower ones income the more likely one is to support government aid for the poor.
Source: Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 2007.

Americans are more interested in having government help the poor, but are our elected officials concerned about helping the poor? The current crop of presidential candidates is made up mainly of multimillionaires. Imagine what our political system might be like if non-millionaires had a fair shot at getting elected. Nonetheless, non-rich Americans should not further diminish their political power by not voting. Register and vote.

--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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[Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals
Are Failing Black America by Algernon Austin]

One-Third of Black Diabetics Unaware

One of the 10 Best Black Books of 2006! --Kam Williams, African American Literary Book Club

I taught Getting It Wrong to my undergrad black politics class. The book is a real tonic. --Adolph Reed, University of Pennsylvania

Purchase Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals
Are Failing Black America by Algernon Austin
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Information from Ed Stephens,
Co-founder of Type Free, LLC
A web community for diabetes care and nutrition
www.ImTypeFree.com

The Diabetes Epidemic in the Black Community
Blacks have the second highest incidence of Type 2 diabetes in the U.S. Unfortunately, one out of every three black diabetics is unaware that they have the disease.

This is due to:

• Poor public health policy


• Insufficient health care insurance benefits


• The lack of screening for diabetes


• Poor access to helpful information


• Poor lifestyle choices.

What Is Diabetes?
The normal digestive process is as follows: After eating, glucose and other nutrients circulate in the bloodstream. The pancreas then produces and releases insulin into the blood to help transport glucose into the cells. Insulin is created by beta cells located in the pancreas. Insulin works like a unique key that contacts each cell, unlocking a doorway for glucose to enter. Glucose feeds virtually all cells in the body, especially the brain and muscle.

• Type 1 diabetes (T-1) occurs when most or all of the beta cells inside the pancreas have been destroyed by a person’s immune system. Consequently, these patients need insulin from outside sources.


• Type 2 diabetes (T-2) occurs when some of the body’s cells cannot recognize the insulin molecules. Consequently, these cells do not allow insulin to unlock the doorway for glucose to enter. This allows the glucose to accumulate in the blood and continue to circulate, damaging the body.


• Gestational diabetes is diagnosed as elevated blood glucose levels during the 24th and the 28th weeks of pregnancy. However, blood glucose levels return to normal after delivery. These women have a much higher chance of developing diabetes in later years.

Do You Have Diabetes But Don’t Know It?
Early symptoms of Type 2 diabetes include the following:

• Increased urination – The kidneys are trying to reduce the amount of glucose in the bloodstream.


• Increased thirst – The body is trying to replace the water loss due to increased urination.


• Increased appetite – The cells of the body are starving.


• Fatigue – Reduced amount of absorbed glucose equals reduced energy.


• Weight loss – Cellular starvation forces the body to use up its stored fat.


• Blurred vision – Small capillaries in the eyes begin to multiply and/or rupture.


• Slow-healing wounds and infections – Poor circulation inhibits the healing process.

Type 2 diabetes can be prevented through early screening, good nutrition and ongoing physical activity.

• Early screening helps. The simplest means for early detection is a blood sugar test, measured after a person has fasted for at least eight hours. About 54 million Americans are “pre-diabetic.”


• Good nutrition means eating balanced meals at all times. This involves eating a combination of high fiber carbohydrates, low fat protein, polyunsaturated fats, and flat water. For more information on nutrition go to www.ImTypeFree.com.


• Increased daily activity means more than walking and strength training. It means playing with the kids in the park, running with the dog, parking your car a little farther from the store, taking the stairs instead of the elevator, etc.

Diabetes is a leading cause of:

• Strokes


• Kidney failure


• Adult blindness


• Non-trauma lower limb amputation


• Nerve damage


• Pain in the feet and legs


• Loss of feeling in the feet


• Erectile dysfunction


• Lost control of bladder, bowels, stomach


• Cardiovascular disease.

Stroke and heart attacks are the leading cause of death in people with diabetes.

How to Avoid Type 2 Diabetes

• Good nutrition – snack on and eat more nutritious foods.


• Increased physical activity – at least 30 minutes a day of moderate exercise/activity.


• Visit your physician at least once per year.


• Take your prescribed medication.


• Get helpful information from websites, books, your medical team, etc.

For more information go to www.ImTypeFree.com, a web community for diabetes care and nutrition, and consult your physician.

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Another Reason to Worry about NCLB

Algernon Austin presents an excellent, concise, and wonderfully read scholarly examination of the complicated landscape of race, class and popular perception. Besides the prison industrial complex, black strides in education, poverty rates, crime and other indices contradict claims that blacks are “moving backward.”

--Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar, Director, Institute for African American Studies, University of Connecticut and author of Black Power: Radical Politics and African American Identity (The Johns Hopkins University Press), 2004 and Hip-Hop Revolution: The Culture and Politics of Rap (University Press of Kansas), 2007.

Purchase Getting It Wrong: How Black Public Intellectuals
Are Failing Black America by Algernon Austin
Barnes & Noble.com Amazon.com
________________________________________________________________________

The evidence that the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) is not working as intended continues to accumulate. Faced with extreme pressure to improve test scores quickly--without the benefit of educational reforms that have been proven to improve test scores quickly--states are finding ways to creatively interpret the requirements and fudge the results.

One particularly harmful way that school systems have “met” the requirements is by retaining low-performing students. If the low-performing students are held back in the third grade then they will not be tested in the fourth grade. A school system can make its average test scores appear to be improving by essentially deleting the lower scores from the average in this manner.

This practice is just what early critics of the Act feared. Holding students back greatly increases the likelihood that they will drop out of school.

The educational researcher Walt Haney is the one who has discovered this practice in Florida. The state was celebrated for producing a large increase in test scores. But it simply held back more black third-grade students. Below are excerpts from Haney's report, “Evidence on Education Under NCLB (and How Florida Boosted NAEP Scores and Reduced the Race Gap).”

When results of NAEP [National Assessment of Education Progress tests] for 2005 were released, the state of Florida seemed to have made remarkable progress. . . .

Florida’s fourth graders seemed to have moved slightly ahead of fourth graders nationwide on the NAEP 2005 math results. But even more startlingly, Florida seemed to have made dramatic progress in reducing the “race gap” in achievement.

But what had really happened in Florida? It turns out that the apparent dramatic gains in grade 4 NAEP math results are simply an indirect reflection of the fact that in 2003-04, Florida started flunking many more students, disproportionately minority students, to repeat grade 3.

. . . these were disproportionately more Black and Hispanic children (15-20% of whom were flunked) than White ones (about 4-6%% of whom were flunked in grade 3). Thus it is clear that the NAEP grade 4 results for 2005 reflected not any dramatic improvements in elementary education in the state. Rather they were an indirect reflection of Florida policy that resulted in two to three times larger percentages of minority than White children being flunked to repeat grade 3.

This is, regrettably, a tragedy in the making. Research now makes it abundantly clearly that flunking children to repeat grades in school is not only ineffective in boosting their achievement, but also dramatically increases the probability that they will leave school before high school graduation . . .

High stakes testing – by which I mean making important decisions based on test results alone – has been increasing in recent decades in the U.S. This trend by no means began with the NCLB Act of 2001, but it certainly has been fueled by the NCLB legislation. The mania to make test score averages appear to increase has resulted not just in fraud in Florida, but also to school administrators in at least three jurisdictions (in Texas, New York and Alabama) actually pushing
young people out of school in order to make high school test results look better. (The three cases are documented in our report The Education pipeline in the United States, 1970–2000, Haney et al., 2004).

If the black high school graduation rate declines in the near future, many people will see this as further “evidence” of a cultural crisis in black America, but at least some people will know that it is an effect of the terrible No Child Left Behind Act which is literally leaving black children behind. There are ways to increase black test scores and graduation rates, but with No Child Left Behind effective rhetoric won and effective educational policy lost.

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--Algernon Austin, Ph.D.

Copyright © 2005-2007 by Thora Institute, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Reprint this article in your newspaper or magazine. Contact the Thora Institute to purchase reprint rights.
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[Find out The Truth about "Acting White".]