Anderson@Large

Smiling Faces

Back in the day, The O’Jays sang:

(What they do)
They smile in your face
All the time they want to take your place
The back stabbers (back stabbers)
They smile in your face
All the time they want to take your place
The back stabbers (back stabbers)

Fast forward to today and life imitates art.

The Washington Post reports:

Liberal activists and academics displeased with the Obama administration’s handling of several issues popular with progressives say they are seeking candidates willing to mount a primary challenge against President Obama next year.

The group, led by consumer advocate Ralph Nader and scholar Cornel West, said it faults Obama for the escalation of military campaigns in Afghanistan and Pakistan, for extending tax cuts first enacted by George W. Bush and for his actions during the recent debt ceiling negotiations.

The group said Saturday it is seeking six “recognizable, articulate” candidates who would not mount serious challenges to Obama, but “rigorously debate his policy stands” on issues related to labor, poverty, foreign policy, civil rights and consumer protections.

Recognizable and articulate? Hmmm. Sounds like Prof. Cornel West.

What About Urban America?

It’s Day Two of President Obama’s economic bus tour.

President Obama and members of the White House Rural Council will attend a rural economic forum at Northeast Iowa Community College in Peosta, Iowa, where Obama will deliver remarks.

The president will unveil a new jobs initiative for rural America. In a statement, Obama said:

These are tough times for a lot of Americans – including those who live in our rural communities. That’s why my administration has put a special focus on helping rural families find jobs, grow their businesses, and regain a sense of economic security.

But what about those who live in urban communities? Where is the special focus on helping urban families?

The lack of administration attention to the jobless crisis in black urban America is fueling a black family feud.

Longtime journalist William Reed writes:

“Cornel West and Tavis Smiley are doing a so-called poverty bus tour under the guise of highlighting that issue … check their records [and] you will see that they have done a lot of poverty-pimping through book sales, TV appearances, speaking fees and promoting the ‘woe is me mindset’… this has been their hustle for a long time.’’ That’s Steve Harvey’s rant in the most recent round of Black American disc jockeys and broadcasters’ battle to brook no criticism of Barack Hussein Obama.

Conscientious Black Americans would do well to compare Harvey’s rhetoric to Obama’s results as president before arbitrarily choosing sides in this public spat. Tavis Smiley and Cornel West are being pilloried and made out to be “pariahs” by Black jocks because they’ve made negative comments about Obama’s presidential performance. But Black American DJs seem to be dodging the fact that America’s economy is in free-fall; the country’s deficits, debt and government spending are at a record high, and our credit rating has been downgraded for the first time in history. In spite of these obvious presidential shortcomings, Urban Contemporary broadcasters continue “praising Caesar” and pummeling his critics. As other American groups lament America’s economic plight, Black Americans, whose lifestyles and conditions are the worst of all, still defend Obama’s lackluster job performance.

Similarly, Newsweek reports:

Never mind the slings and arrows of Tea Partiers. The most politically problematic criticism of Obama these days is coming from his base. And there’s no question that there is a deep reservoir of frustration, confusion, and even rage among many in the African-American community for [Cornel] West to tap into. With unemployment hovering near 17 percent for African-Americans (the national average rate is 9 percent) and 11 percent of black homeowners facing imminent foreclosure, African-Americans have ample reason for anxiety about the coming budget cuts that Obama reluctantly signed into law this month. The Congressional Black Caucus chairman called the recent debt deal “a sugar-coated satan sandwich” that will do little to help communities already struggling.

West and his longtime friend, radio host Tavis Smiley, have taken their criticism of Obama to the streets, launching a two-week, 15-city “poverty tour,” aimed at forcing the powers that be to once again focus on the “least among us” and getting the president to “wake up.” Their efforts are increasingly stoking fears among some African-American leaders that West and Smiley could discourage black voters from turning out when the nation’s first African-American president stands for reelection in 2012.

Read more: The Black War Over Obama

UPDATE: At a breakfast with small business owners, President Obama announced his new jobs initiatives for rural America.

Bus Stops

President Obama’s harshest critics, Tavis Smiley and Cornel West, are on a 15-city poverty tour.

During an appearance on CNN, Smiley said the debt ceiling deal “was really a declaration of war on the poor. The Congress, the President, respectfully, declared war on the poor.”

In Detroit, Obama supporters declared war on the, um, dynamic duo.

David Stephen told the local ABC TV affiliate:

We will not stand silent as Smiley and West criticize the man who brought us health care reform, one of the greatest accomplishments for the poor in our nation’s history. This event has nothing to do with the poor and everything to do with enriching Tavis Smiley. Detroit must send a strong message to Washington that although some elected officials may support this anti-Obama rally on government property, the people do not.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports:

More than a year ago Smiley and West went rogue on Obama, fomenting bitter, public fights with allies of the president that have resulted in name-calling and shouting matches. The two men, who are best friends and have long been concerned with the state of blacks in America, described the tour — which is not solely focused on blacks — as an attempt to force the White House and Congress to pay more attention the poor.

For more info, visit The Poverty Tour: A Call to Conscience.

Black Family Feud

The dismal June unemployment report is a reminder that when white America catches a cold, black America catches pneumonia. Truth be told, race is the subtext to the jobless recovery.

The Associated Press reports that black economic gains have been wiped out by the recession:

Millions of Americans endured similar financial calamities in the recession. But for Goldring and many others in the black community, where unemployment is still rising, job loss has knocked them out of the middle class and back into poverty. Some even see a historic reversal of hard-won economic gains that took black people decades to achieve.

[…]

Since the end of the recession, the overall unemployment rate has fallen from 9.4 to 9.1 percent, while the black unemployment rate has risen from 14.7 to 16.2 percent, according to the Department of Labor.

But the disappearing black middle class is not on policymakers’ agenda. Instead, the White House is convening a Hispanic Policy Conference:

On Monday July 11th and Tuesday July 12th, the White House will host a Hispanic Policy Conference, bringing community leaders from across the country together with a broad range of White House and Cabinet officials for an in-depth series of interactive workshops and substantive conversations on the Administration’s efforts as they relate to the Hispanic community.

Participants, including community leaders and local elected officials, will have the opportunity to interact with federal policy makers on the issues that matter most to Hispanics and all Americans, including creating jobs and strengthening the economy, expanding access to affordable and quality health care, reforming our nation’s education system, protecting civil rights, and fixing the broken immigration system so that it meets our nation’s 21st century economic and security needs.

Meanwhile, black leaders are engaged in a “family feud.” Philadelphia Tribune columnist Linn Washington Jr. recently wrote:

So, some black folks are bashing Princeton Professor Cornel West for his sharply phrased critiques of President Barack Obama’s failure to specifically address crisis-proportion problems in a long-suffering segment of American society: the black community.

Black supporters of the first African-American president echo the rationale advanced by Obama himself that he is the president of all Americans so addressing issues specific to African-American would be inappropriate.

The Hispanic Policy Conference is merely the latest outreach event to address issues important to a specific group.

Obama has twice hosted the White House Tribal Nations Conference.

In January, more than 800 Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders attended the kickoff event of the White House Initiative on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, the White House Initiative Summit on Entrepreneurship and Small Business Growth in Silicon Valley.

The goal of the Initiative is “to highlight both the tremendous unmet needs in the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities as well as the dynamic community assets that can be leveraged to meet many of those needs.”

Will the White House’s cold shoulder to the unmet needs of African Americans erode black support for President Obama?

The Gallup survey says Obama’s job approval among African Americans is 85 percent.

State of Black America

On Sunday, MSNBC aired a live panel discussion, “A Stronger America: The Black Agenda,” co-hosted by Ed Schultz and Al Sharpton.

The, um, highlight of the two-hour talkfest was a heated exchange between Sharpton and Princeton Prof. Cornel West.

This photo was taken a few minutes after their shouting match (h/t Rachel Noerdlinger).

Oh, if walls could talk.

Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee Film Festival

The films of legendary actors and activists Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee will be showcased at a two-day film festival that kicks off today in Harlem.

The First Annual Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee Film Festival is presented by Howard University’s John H. Johnson School of Communications and Woodie King Jr.’s New Federal Theater.

Dean Jannette L. Dates said:

Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee are exemplars for us all. Their dedication to the communities in which they lived was the driving force in their professional lives as well as their private lives. They felt the need to give back to those who respected them for their activism and loved them for their work.

In September 2001, I was working on a documentary about the Florida election debacle. In the wake of 9/11, people who had made pledges to support the film were suddenly nowhere to be found. People like Barbra Streisand who removed anti-George W. Bush rants from her website.

But Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee kept the faith. As lifelong voting rights activists, they understood the importance of telling the untold story of the 2000 election. So they narrated the film without compensation.

In addition to screening classics such as “Cotton Comes to Harlem” and “Jungle Fever,” there will be the world premiere of “Slap the Donkey.” Narrated by Danny Glover, the documentary tracks Al Sharpton’s 2004 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

The screening will be followed by a panel discussion on black politics in the 21st century. The panelists will include Cornel West, Ron Daniels, and my friend, Herb Boyd, who recently interviewed President Obama on Air Force One.

The film festival will be held at the AMC Magic Johnson Theater in Harlem. For more info, go here.

Black in America

I tuned out CNN’s “Black in America 2.” From jump-street, I questioned why CNN was “investigating” black folks.

Then as now, I think CNN should probe wrongdoing rather than citizens whose only “crime” is being black in America.

CNN should investigate miscreants like Wells Fargo, Wall Street banksters and subprime loan modification sharks.

If CNN wants to “look at the most challenging issues facing African Americans,” then investigate the impact of President Barack Obama’s stimulus package on reducing black unemployment and expanding opportunities for black-owned businesses.

We know what it means to be black in America. As my friend Bill Reed recently wrote:

The people talking that smack of America entering into “a post-racial society” are engaged in much more fantasy than fact. The facts are: In June 2009 unemployment rates reported were: adult men (10%), adult women (7.6%), teenagers (24.0%), whites (8.7%), Asians (8.2%), Hispanics (12.2%), and Blacks (14.7%).

In an interview with his daughter, Elizabeth, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. observed:

The only people who live in a post-black world are four people who live in a little white house on Pennsylvania Avenue. [laughter] The idea that America is post-racial or post-black because a man I admire, Barack Obama, is president of the United States, is a joke. And I hope no one will even wonder about this crazy fiction again. I am proud of the American people for electing the best candidate who happened to be a black man and that’s a great historical precedent in the United States, but America is just as classist and just as racist as it was the day before the election—and we all, to quote my friend Cornel West, “are recovering racists,” and we all have to fight those tendencies. In America there is institutional racism that we all inherit and participate in, like breathing the air in this room—and we have to become sensitive to it.