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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Dec. 25, 1996)
P age A2 D ecember 25, 1996 • T he P orti and O bserver J, . U . [ __ ' j K . ■ - — J ' i -• I • \ Editorial Articles Do Not Necessarily Reflect Or Represent The Views O f ! K&l .O / 7 / Attention Readers! Please take a minute to send us your comments. We’re always trying to give you a better paper and we can’t do it without your help. Tell us what you like and what needs improvement... any suggestions are welcomed and appreciated. We take criticism well! Get your powerful pens out NOW and address your letters to: Editor, Reader Response. 97’0^(. (Elje ^lortlanò (©bseruer (U S P S 959-68(1) E sta b lis h e d in 197(1 Charles Washington Publisher & Editor Mark Washington Distribution Manager Gary Ann Taylor Business M anager Sean Cruz Consultant & Editor Portland Observador Danny Bell Advertising Sales M anager Paul Neufeldt Production & Design Gary Washington Public Relations Rovonne Black Business Assistant Contributing Writers: Professor McKinley Burt, Lee Perlman, Fred Hembry, Eugene Rashad 4747 NE Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd., Portland, Oregon 97211 503-288-0033 • Fax 503-288-0015 Email: Pdxobserv@aol.com Deadline for all submitted materials: Articles:Friday, 5 :0 0 pm Ads: Monday, 12:00pm POS I MASTE.R: Send Address Changes To: Portland Observer, P.O. Box 3137, Portland. OR 97208. Second Class postage paid at Portland. Oregon. Subscriptions: $30.00 per year The Portland Observer welcomes freelance submissions. Manu scripts and photographs should be clearly labeled and will be returned if accompanied by a self addressed envelope. All created design display ads become the sole property of the newspaper and cannot be used in other publications or personal usage without the written consent of the general manager, unless the client has purchased the composition of such ad. © 1996 THE PORTLAND OBSERVER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, REPRODUCTION IN WHOLE OR IN PART W ITH OUT PERM ISSION IS PROHIBITED The Portland O bserver—O regon’s Oldest Multicultural Publica tion—is a member of the National Newspaper Association—Founded in 1885, and The National Advertising Representative Amalgamated Publishers, Inc, New York, NY, and The West Coast Black Publishers Association • Serving Portland and Vancouver. S ubscribe to r~ " y srijc ^Jnrthm b (O bserurr The Portland Observer can be sent directly to your home tor only $3().(X) per year. Please t ill out. enclose check or money order, and mail to. S ubscriptions T he P ortland O bserver ; P O B ox 3 1 3 7 P ortland , O regon 9 7 2 0 8 Name: Address: City, State: Zip-Code: T hank Y ou F or R eading T he P ortland O bserver better '~Cd ''die (3L<)it0r Send your letters to the Editor to: Editor, PO Box 3137, Portland, OR 97208 Miracle Theater speaks out To the editor: On beh alf o f Miracle Theatre we would like to congratulate you on the Portland Observador. The Observador represents a new model fo r community expression. Its fo rm a t encourages youth to voice their concerns and opinions. By prom oting youth to express themselves, the Observador is helping to m odel the fu tu re o f the la tin o - American community. The Portland Observer is also enriching the community at large by offering a Hispanic perspective to a large and diverse readership. M iracle Theatre's mission is to provide Hispanic theatre, arts and culture experiences to North w est’s audiences. We fe e l that the Observa dor is a great asset to the promotion o f this culture. Sincerely, Jose Eduardo Gonzalez Executi ve/A rtistic Director Enie Vaisburd Marketing Director Miracle Theatre p e ( E l|c I J o r t i a n b ( O h s e r u r r i r s p e c t i v e s Who told you that you were naked? conclusion by P rof , M c K inley B urt “ ou won’t know the play- T f I ers unless you buy a pro- C o gram, folks", shout the vendors at the sporting events. And some readers still express amazement that I am able to relate to so many people of differ ent ages, races and walks of life, particularly the youth. Whatever the nature o f this modus operandi, I frequently find myself trying to translate it into some kind of universal paradigm useful to any of us who would successfully interact with our communities. But as you can well imagine, it is quite difficult to tell most people, “Hey, your not naked’, you’ve got everything you need to work with--all the tools, all the know how, Just Do It!” What I usually get in reply is, "that’s easy for you to say because you know everybody’ — you can design and implement projects across the spectrum of education, economic or societal; you've been in the com munity 50 years, so you’ve automat ically got credibility! "Not true", I answer with vigor; there is a little more to it than that. Now that I am working with youths again, as I did in my U S Forest Service Outreach Programs during the 1970s and early 80s, it is very important for them to understand that successful community interaction is neither automatic nor easy. First off, I explain the “inter-gen eration advantage", using some con tem porary activity for a model: "alright crew, w e’re going out to Beaverton tomorrow. The electron ics company is sending two vans to pick us up. You know, this reminds me that twenty years ago some of your parents were part of my "Tech nology O utreach P ro g ram ” for innercity youth, and were just about your age at the time.” The difference is that, then, I was leasing Grey Hound buses for field trips which included both youth and parents; "Your grandparents," I em phasize. We went to such sites as the U S. Forest Service Tree Nursery at Wind River W ashington, where the black role model was the chief horti culturist Oscar Halh a product of famed Tuskeegee University “Some of your parents were on those trips and, in fact, are still employees of the agency. And twenty years from now you may have a key position with one of the corporations we will be visit ing this month Hundreds gained employment before.” And again, I make it clear to these young people just as I do at meetings w ith adults in the community, there is no such thing as "automatic credibil ity" I’ve had them study models I've designed with specific experiences in mind; from ’creating’ classes at the university for the specific pur pose of bringing into the mix with students such people from industry and public agencies as personnel managers, department heads and even a CEO or two, to simulating technol ogy in the classroom. I tell the youth I meet with that an extension of this paradigm led to further interaction with an ‘expand ed ’ community that included other cultures-very fruitful in the economic sense. In past years I had discovered while working with some of the par ents that they had a ‘bad altitude' toward certain 'hard' components of the learning process; "White folks stuff," they called it It requires def inite w eli-planned procedures to overcome this disability. One of the things I do is a tech mque readers of the Portland Ob server would immediately recognize. I tirelessly point out the extraordi nary number of mechanical and elec trical devices around that were in vented and patented by African Americans -bui which most A m eri cans think were developed by white men like Thomas Edison orthe famed W estinghouse of “airbrake fame.' "It is institutional racism.” It works and you can see young sters swell with pride - but then they ask, “why weren't we told this in school, this is real education and motivation." I have no hesitation in telling them the how and the why or about my 22 year fight to make a backwards school system aware of this -in a lime of accelerating technology, yet. And it certainly helps in a session out there in Beaverton, when a white CEO verifies it then introduces a black engineer who reinforces the point. We will reprise my university course. "You really aren't naked, are you Mr. Burt, said one kid. My father says you can get more done in the community with part of your social security than some programs.” Restating the problem: race and inequality by I) r . M anning M arable he poet L a n g s to n Hughes once suggested years ago th a t the black American's search for democra cy in the United States was “a dream deferred.” Perhaps we should now add that this dream has been so long delayed, corrupted and com prom ised that many black folk now question the viability o f the entire political project called American democracy. Any understanding of American society and history must begin with the study o f the black American ex perience in this county. This is be cause the status and existence of black people, the quality o f our lives and the range o f possibilities which we can realistically achieve through our own endeavors, is the essential lit mus test for the viability of American democracy. It is the distance between A m erica’s rhetoric vs. its reality, between what America says about itself vs. what it actually is. African Americans are at the cen ter of the definition about what it has meant to be” an American.” The re ality of "blackness” has all to often been the criteria for determining a series of questions about the rela tionship between the people, the state and civil society: who rides in the Jim Crow section of the bus, and who does not? Who lives in the ghetto, and who does not? Who is the first person to get a job, and who is the last? The basic paradox one must con front in any consideration o f the role of race in American life, is the ten sion between "marginalizaiton" and “inclusion.” Historically, African- American culture has been central to the construction of the cultural and the aesthetic contours of America. Politically, the issue of race has been absolutely central to the major con flicts in the American experience, from the civil war to the civil rights movement. Economically, black labor was es sential in the construction of this na tion, from the unpaid exploitation of slavery to the underpaid labor of Afri can Americans in central cities in the 1990’s. Nevertheless, despite our cen trality, we continue to be marginalized by the mainstream of the dominant social order. We are continually un equal members of the household, but never members of the national family. In the language of “hip-hop” culture, we are “dissed" in the very house we have helped to construct. From the vantagepoint of Afri can-A m erican history, from the depths of our sorrow and anger, we ask ourselves, why do we continued to be marginalized? Who benefits from this marginalization? Who is responsible for maintaining the struc ture of power and privilege which makes this marginalization and en during fact o f American life? African Americans understand that race is not a valid biological concept, that it has no genetic validity. Stripped of the rhetoric superiority and inferi ority, the science of race is nothing but a fraud, grounded in power, priv ilege and violence against those who are oppressed. Yet our lives are de fined and circumscribed by the bru tal reality of racism, a system that denies the humanity of millions of people, lim iting their education, employment, health, housing and future. This is why all the recent talk about “reverse racism" is sheer non sense. When African Americans con trol all of the banks and financial institutions in our neighborhoods, all of the real estate and commercial enterprises, we might begin to talk about discrimination against whites When our government truly reflects the real percentages of African Amer icans, Latinos and other racial mi norities within the general popula tion; when the corporations that ex ploit black, brown and poorconsum- er markets are actually controlled democratically by those who pro duce the wealth, then we might seri ously discuss the possibility ol “re verse racism.” Whiteness in a racist, corporate-controlled society is like having the image of a American Ex press Card or Diners Club Card stamped on one's face: immediately you are “universally accepted." Let’s restate the problem of black liberation in a white, conservative and capitalist society; to end racism, we must end inequality. Our goal cannot be simply the as similation or integration of black elites into the white cultural and corporate mainstream. Nor can we combat ine quality by going it alone, divorced from real and potential allies from a broad spectrum of brown, poor and working class women and men. The problem of the twenty-first century is the challenge of multicul tural democracy - whether Ameri- , can political institutions and society can and will be restructured to incor porate the genius and energy, the labor power and social struggles of millions of people who have been denied full equality - Latinos, Asian Americans, American Indians, Arab Americans African Americans, wom en, working people, the unemployed, the poor and many others A modern-day Christmas story by B ernice P owell J ackson n the midst of the vlo- 'jJ lence, in the midst of the O" drugs, in the midst of the recall of affirmative action, in the midst of the cuts in welfare and housing subsidies for the poor, in the midst of civil wars in Africa and not-quite peace in the Mid dle East, Bosnia and Ireland, it is easy to lose heart. But, every now and then one hears stories which show that G od’s light still shines in the midst o f the dark ness. Every now and then one hears a story of hope. Here is one of them, which I heard about on a recent Na tional Public Radio news broadcast. The M anchester C ra ftsm e n ’s Guild is located in the heart of a poor community in Pittsburgh. Once home to w e a lth y in d u stria lists, the Manchester section of the city was left out of the 1980's re b irth of Pitts burgh. But, because of the vision of one man, Bill Strickland, that communi ty has not been forgotten completely Thirty years ago Strickland, a Uni versity of Pittsburgh history student and pottery maker, began a ceramics program for children in this neigh borhood. Today it has blossomed into an art program which impacts thousands of Pittsburgh children and into a training center for hundreds of poor adults in that neighborhood Strickland, combining his pottery - making expertise with his experi ence in the 1960’scivil rights move ment, realized that the arts and a caring teacher had saved his own life and could do the same for others. Using the apprenticeship model un der which he flourished, he estab lished a program which today in cludes 5(M) students who learn ce ramics, photography, painting, draw ing and computer imaging. Another 4,(XM) students attend workshops run by the guild in the city’s 12 public high schools. In addition, guild stu dents attend summer arts residency programs at nearby universities. Through exposure to the arts, these students come to realize their own creativity and imagination and de velop a new sense of self-worth. From this new view of themselves, stu dents have new reasons to go to school and new reasons to stay alive. “You can't teach a kid algebra if they’re no interested in being a liv e," said Strickland. Remarkably. 80 percent of the Manchester Guild students go on to college. And for the future? Strickland's plans include a greenhouse which will grow flowers and hydroponic food on a nearby vacant lot. His dream is to build an office tower and women’s health care facility to make the Manchester Guild and Bidwcll Center self-supporting. Strickland says, "I think that we could solve the p ro b le m s o f the c itie s in our lifetime... But in order to achieve that, w e're going to have to gel a lot more aggressive and a lot activist in terms of our orientation and our orientation and our thinking, and the m eter's running.” Signs of hope. Signs of light in the darkness. It takes only one man or one woman with a vision to be the light ..And the m eter's running. A blessed Christmas to us all. Texaco, Avis, Shell, Circuit City et al exaco is off the front pages of the newspaper and not on the television screens, but a closer reading or watching will tell other stories of corporate racism which have surfaced in the past few w eeks. These stories show how institution al racism is still very much a part of corporate life in America as we near the 21st century. Indeed, only days after Texaco went *1 r off the media radar screens, we learned that Avis car rental agencies in North and South Carolina discriminated against African American customers and that the national Avis corporation probably knew about these racist prac tices Now a federal jury has found that Circuit City has systematically dis criminated against its African Ameri can employees. Corporate racism, then, is a coat of many colors. These include the corpo ration's employment practices, its ser vice to its customers, its use of people of color vendors and franchisers, and its corporate social responsibility per formance, not only in the United States, but around the world While recent headlines have fo cused on discrimination and racial hos tility in the work place, it is important not to underestimate the importance of social responsibility accountability. For example, there is Shell Oil, which has been criticized for its support of the South African apartheid regime dur- ingthe 1970’sand 80’sand its current support of the Nigeria dictatorship, which is responsible for the repression of the Ogonl people, whose land sup plies the oil Texaco itself has been criticized for its role in developing oil and gas reserves in Burma, which is run by a repressive and illegitimate military dictatorshipalso notorious for human rights violations The attitude an actions of multinational corpora tions toward so-called Third World nations, thus, must be considered a part of their track record. While the media world seems to have put corporate racism on the me dia back burner, it is not ofl the agenda of the religious community, which has been challenging corporations like Texaco for 25 years. The Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility (ICCR), a coalition of 275 Protestant, Catholic and Jewish institutional in vestors with combined portfolios of over $50 billion, is closely watching the follow up to the Texaco settle ment. ICCR-member agencies, form stance, are sponsoring sharchiilder res olutions on a variety of Texaco prob lem They will call on Texaco to diver sify its board of directors, to break down so-called “glass ceiling" barri ers to the advancement of women and people of color and to make a detailed report on Texaco’s diversity efforts." (For more information about the Inter faith Center on Corporate Rcsponsi bilily, writc475 Riverside Drive. Rix>m 566. New York. NY 10115.)
