Julianne Malveaux
Shackled by Debt
May 1, 2012President Barack Obama hit a home run when he traveled to three colleges last week, including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Colorado at Boulder, and the University of Iowa. While Republicans called it a campaign trip to swing states, the fact is that, at the cusp of graduation season, President Obama did the right thing to share his feelings on legislation that would either increase the interest rate on subsidized Stafford student loans or take money from essential women’s health programs to maintain the 3.4 percent interest rate. In rallying students, President Obama is reminding them that their fate is in his hands. An increase in the Stafford loan program would affect 7.4 million students. Cutting $5.6 billion from women’s health programs would affect millions of women. Pitting women’s health against lower student loan rates makes no sense. We could make headway if we …
Black Women and the Mommy Wars
April 23, 2012When Democratic commentator Hilary Rosen said that Ann Romney had “never worked a day in her life”, Ann Romney behaved as if she had just hit the lottery. She smugly made the media rounds talking about how hard it was for her to raise her five sons. And she’s right. Stay at home moms work extremely hard to cook, clean, run a shuttle for their children and their various activities, participate in school activities like “Room Mom” and “Cookie Mom”. How do I know, having never had chick or child? A very dear friend, a Harvard-educated lawyer, has been mostly home with her children, one of whom is my godson, for the past decade or so, and it shows.
I digress. Hilary Rosen misspoke when she said Ann Romney had never worked. What she, perhaps, might have said is that Ann Romney never needed to work in the paid labor …
Lets Get Down To Business
April 17, 2012Now that former Senator Rick Santorum has withdrawn from the Republican race for nomination, it is a foregone conclusion that former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney will be the Republican nominee. To be sure, he still has to deal with the nuisance factor of Newt Gingrich, whose lack of money has not only torpedoed his campaign, but also one of his “think” tanks. Maybe Gingrich can find work, as he suggested that inner city youth do, by taking on some janitorial tasks. So it’s down to Romney and President Obama as opponents in November. The entertainment is over. Let’s get down to business.
Those who are undecided about the political path they’d like to take ought to look at several areas of contrast, and consider what either candidate might do in three areas.
JOBS. The unemployment rate ticked down just a tiny bit last month, from 8.3 to 8.2 percent, but …
Murder by Austerity
April 9, 2012Dimitris Christoulas was a retired pharmacist whose neighbors said had enormous dignity. At 77 years old, he looked forward to a comfortable old age. He had saved during his 35-year career and did not expect government to, at all, be involved in his pension. But the austerity budget that Greece has imposed on its citizens reduced Christoulas’ pension. So he killed himself, writing in a suicide note that he would rather have “a decent end” than forage thorough garbage to find enough “rubbage to feed myself.” Neighbors say he wanted to send a political message. They say the law-abiding man was a committed leftist, so meticulous that he paid his condo fees ahead before he took his life.
The Christoulas suicide has mobilized many in Greece, some of whom describe his act as one of fortitude, not simply despair. Some describe it as a “political act” because it took place …
We are all Trayvon Martin
April 2, 2012
I have two nephews that I love with an amazing passion. Anyi, 28, is a Los Angeles based comedian, who kinda looks like me and acts like me. He is my absolute escort of choice when I am in Southern California. Armand, 25, is an Oakland-based aspiring writer, and a 2008 graduate of University of California, Santa Cruz. Both of these young men are well over 6’3″, but neither carries any extra weight. Both of them wear hoodies. And both of them have had unfortunate run-ins with so-called law enforcement officers that have tainted the way that they see law and order. Whenever they share their stories with me I am sickened by their experiences and our nation’s myopia about the way young black men are treated because of a series of sick stereotypes gone amuck.
A few years ago Anyi, then working for Berkeley-based Youth Radio, parked his …
What Happened to Audacity?
March 29, 2012Forty years ago this month, ten thousand African Americans thronged to Gary, Indiana for the first National Black Political Convention. They gathered to develop a black agenda, and to influence 1972 presidential politics. One of the things on the agenda was the development of an independent black political party and to explore the notion of independent black politics. To commemorate this anniversary, Dr. Ron Daniels convened a group of people on Capitol Hill to see the movie, Nation Time, and to listen to a group of people, some of whom had been at Gary, talk about what Gary means today.
One of the things that was exciting about the film was the energy and audacity of the black folk who were gathered at Gary. There is a young Jesse Jackson leading the chant, “What time is it? It’s nation time”. There is a forceful Richard Hatcher, then mayor of Gary, …
Made Visible: Women, Children, and Poverty
March 19, 2012Tavis Smiley and Dr. Cornel West deserve high props for their summer poverty tour. They started on an Indian reservation, hit the inner city, and looked at poverty, in all of its manifestations. While many dismissed their high-profile tour as a political ploy, I am absolutely convinced of their sincerity. In addition, these two men are among the few who have dared utter the “p” word in public.
Think about it – Vice President has a Middle Class Task Force, but there has been no focus on the poor or the extremely poor (those who have less than half of the poverty line in income). The Heritage Foundation posits that if you have a cellphone, television, or microwave oven then you really aren’t that poor. Newt Gingrich derisively called President Obama the “food stamps President, even though, thanks to the Great Recession, 15.2 percent of all Americans are poor, and…
Why I left My College
March 12, 2012 When I went to Bennett College for Women in 2007, I declared that I was “on fire” for the institution. I still am. And I also yield to the biblical verse that says for everything there is a season, a time for everything unto heaven. I had a season to build four buildings in four years, to increase enrollment, to influence curriculum shifts, and to assemble an awesome senior team, to engage with most of my students, and to influence young lives. I also managed the development of a new strategic plan, and I’ve been privileged to be a national Bennett brand advocate. I’ve maintained a speaking schedule partly because it enhances Bennett’s visibility, and wherever I go, I meet potential students, parents, and others, that want to engage me in Bennett matters.
I most value the ways we have looked at our campus foci – entrepreneurship, leadership, global studies …
HELP ME SOMEBODY
February 21, 2012I still have not gone to see the movie, The Help. I read the book and that was enough for me. I read a book where a white women fully engaged herself in cultural appropriation, putting 21st century voices into 1960s throats. Which black women, in 1960, would have said that black men left their families like trash by the side of the road? Maybe a 21st century feminist would have voiced such sentiments, but a sixties sister? Hardly.
Speaking of hardly, my opinion hardly matters. There is rich discussion among African American women about the movie, the book, and the reality. I just want to remind my sisters that in 1940 seventy percent of us were maids, or private household workers. I want to remind us that even those of us who had advanced degrees worked some time as a maid. I want folks to remember the …
The Women in Black History
February 16, 2012I am grateful and appreciative of Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the man who claimed Negro History Week, which later changed to Black History Month. From a week to a month, but we need to rock the year, every year, because there are so many opportunities to celebrate Black History. The organization that Dr. Woodson founded, the Association for the Study of African American Life and Heritage (ASAALH) organizes a theme each year, and this year the theme is women.
Part of me fusses. Gender needs always to be threaded through conversations about the African American experience. When we think of history, men’s names drip off our lips – Frederick Douglass, martin Luther king. Much less frequently do we think of women like Ida B. Wells, Dr. Sadie Alexander, Mary Ellen Pleasants, Fannie Lou Hamer, so many others. Yet these women are the marrow of the bone of our history. These …
- Shackled by Debt
May 1, 2012 - Black Women and the Mommy Wars
April 23, 2012 - Lets Get Down To Business
April 17, 2012 - Murder by Austerity
April 9, 2012 - We are all Trayvon Martin
April 2, 2012 - What Happened to Audacity?
March 29, 2012 - Made Visible: Women, Children, and Poverty
March 19, 2012 - Why I left My College
March 12, 2012 - HELP ME SOMEBODY
February 21, 2012 - The Women in Black History
February 16, 2012
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