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About Portland observer. (Portland, Or.) 1970-current | View Entire Issue (Sept. 2, 1998)
SEPT. 2, 1998 Page A4 (Tljr Jînrtlanô (Observer Editorial Articles Do Not Necessarily Reflect Or Represent The Views Of (Tlic fJ n rtlan b © bsertier Attention Readers! Please take a m inute to send us your comments. W e 're always try ing to give you W irf CouMße, Atone /«terestiy Elan "A ffistoiy oft Readity, " if/ a better paper and we ca n 't do it w ithout your help. T ell us w hat you like and w hat needs im provem ent... any suggestions are welcomed and appreciated. W e take criticism well! G et your pow erful pens out N O W and address your letters to: E d ito r. R eader Respo nse. P.O- Bo* JUL-Portlmd, OR 972Q&, (Tltc ^ o rtía n h (©becrucr (U S P S 9 5 9 -6 8 0 ) Established in 1970 Charles Washington Publisher & Editor Mark Washington Distsribution Manager Gary Ann Taylor Business Manager Larry J. Jackson, Sr. Director o f Operation Iesha Williams Graphic Design Laphael Knight Graphic Design Contributing Writers: Professor McKinley Burt, Lee Perlman, Joy Ramos 4747 NE M artin L u th er King, J r . Blvd., P o rtlan d , O regon 97211 503-288-0033 • Fax 503-288-0015 Em ail: Pdxobserv@ aol.com Deadline fo r all submined materials: A rticles:F riday, 5 :0 0 p m A ds: M onday, 12:00pm PO STM A STER: Send A ddress C hanges To: P ortland O bserver, P.O. Box 3137, P o rtlan d, O R 97208. Periodicals postage paid at Portland. Oregon. Subscriptions: $60.00 per year The Portland Observer welcomes freelance submissions. Manu scripts and photographs should be clearly labeled and will be returned ifaccompanied by a self addressed envelope. All created design display ads become the sole property o f the newspaper and cannot be used in other publications or personal usage without the written consent o f 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 PERMISSION IS PROHIBITED. The Portland O bserver-O regon’s Oldest Multicultural Publica- tio n -is a member o f the National Newspaper A ssociation-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 $ o r tia « i» (© b se ru er The Portland Observer can be sent directly to your home for only $30.00 per year. Please fill out, enclose check or money order, and mail to: T he S ubscriptions P ortland O bserver ; P O B ox 3137 P ortland , O regon 97208 N am e:_______________________________________ — ------------------- Address:________________ ____________________________________ City, State:__________ ________________________________________ - Zip-Code: _______________________ _______ _____________________ T hank Y ou F or R eaping T he P ortland O bserver Budgeting M arian W right E delman When you make up your household budget there are a lot o f necessities to consider like shelter, food, clothing, transportation, and medical expenses. Sometimes there’s room for a few luxuries. If you have children, they usually take up a large part o f every category, and you probably make sure they have shoes and school clothes that fit before you look at the state of your own closet, and their nutritional needs come before your extra cup of coffee in the morning or the slice of pizza at lunch. Well, our countiy has children, and some people don’t think they should take up much room in the budget. They’re at it again, those folks who supposedly represent us in Congress. The Budget Resolution passed by the U.S. House o f Representatives calls for cutting national spending. We all know what it’s like to cut spending when we need to, but in most families children are the last to feel the cuts. If this Budget Resolution becomes law, children will be the first to feel it. We cheered last year when Con gress passed and the President signed into law the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), provid ing $48 billion over the next 10 years to ensure health coverage for 5 o f the 11 million uninsured children in this country. Now the House proposes to slash $12 billion form this program. It also proposes to jeopardize the health o f the nearly 20 million low-income children who depend upon Medicaid. “Unspecified cuts” in income secu rity programs— $10 billion worth— will jeopardize assistance and services for some o f our most vulnerable popu lations. If they go through, we can expect to see deep cuts in programs targeted for children with disabilities under the Supplemental Security In come Program (SSI), children in the by federal Foster Care and Adoption As sistance Program, and children in single-parent families whose parental support (usually from absent fathers) is ensured by the Child Support En forcement program. Also cut out of our national budget by this proposal is $2.7 billion for the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) for working fami lies and $2.4 billion in funding for the Social Services Block Grant. In these time o f budget surpluses, we should not be taking funds away from our children and most vulnerable citizens. We should be providing health care coverage for every unin sured child, ensuring high-quality, af fordable child care for working fami lies, increasing training and employ ment opportunities for parents who want and need to work, and increasing support for children with disabilities and those at risk o f or already in foster care. The Senate and the House will be appointing a committee to look at their budget proposals and vote on a final budget that will be sent to the Presi dent for signature. It’s not too late to stop their unfair treatment o f children and working families. Write or call your Representative and Senators and tell them that you don’t balance your budget by cutting out things your children need, land you don’t want them to do that either. Remind them that an election is com ing up in November, and that you vote for people who put children first. Contact them at the U.S. Senate, Wash ington, DC 20510, and the U.S. House o f Representatives, Washington DC 20515, or call 202-224-3121 and ask for the office o f your Representative or Senators. Make them listen and make them understand that you Stand for Chil dren. P rof . M c K inley B uri Since 1 closed last w eek’s article with a ‘page-image’ from Herman M elville’s classic, "M oby Dick” (“like a painted ship, upon a painted sea”), I thought, why not draw again from the poetic prose he used to describe the pursuit o f ‘The Great White W hale?’ Melville engraves a permanent place in the readers mind and in the ‘history o f reading’-when he brings one’s ear to interact with his visual description o f the port city from which Captain Ahab launched his ill-fated adventure. Had this gifted writer so very early on developed a ‘literary virtual real ity?’ “ ...the salty lick and lap o f the sea, at the foot o f every cross-town street?” Can you not hear, see, and smell the reality o f this New England town. The word-artist has left an indelible imprint on a receptive mind; a master craftsman has painted a word-pic ture that the reader may recall and enjoy forever. This is why there are by . .. . . . thoseofus who indict today’s educa tion system for failure to equip so many childr en with adequate reading skills; intellectually starved. O f course, we have it on good authority that ‘Homer,’ the famed Greek bard was illiterate, though, as Alberta Manguel tells us in his “His tory of Reading” (Viking, 1996), his admiring listeners transcribed poems like the “ Illiad” onto parchment scrolls-24 intheparticularcase. They were distributed throughout all known lands. A “scroll” is an interesting device for conveying a written message; in the third grade we wrote horizontal messages on long strips o f paper, such that they could be wound be tween two sticks-gradually reveal ing the entire message by winding or unwinding the sticks. We, like the Greeks, called this “scrolling,” and interestingly, the technique o f retrieving stoned infor mation in your computer is still called “scrolling.” O f course, that is a ver tical process as opposed to horizon . tal; . but _ as _ early __ i . . _i o i I ho.! as m 1979 had o a handheld Texas Instrument calcula tor on which one could horizontally scroll an almost infinite number of decimal places. I was never sure of the accuracy. Manguel goes on to recite an in formative and fascinating story of the development ofbooks as we know them. Clay tablets o f legal codes became “codexes” which could be hand-held. Papyrus was too brittle to be folded into booklets, but parch ment orvellum (animal skins) could be cut or folded into all sorts of shapes and sizes. Our author provides us with much o f the history o f ‘books’ in the an cient world o f Greece, Rome, and Mesoptamia(Middle East-Iran, Iraq). The Egyptian development centers around the fairly ‘late’ developments at the famous library at Alexandria. Manguel skirts the seminal contri butions o f the Africans and obvi ously, begins his story with the con ventional European treatment. Thus, you will not find commentary on the famed “Rnsptta “Rosetta Stone” wh whose paral lel inscriptions in three languages permitted modem man to learn o f the wonders and grandeur o f ancient Egypt: Hierogliphic, Demotic and Greek texts. But then again this book is not about the particular technical or cul tural contributions o f mankind over a long-time line o f ‘recorded’ history. But, instead, is about the devices and techniques that various peoples and organizations used to record and pass on information about the world as they knew it; religious, secular, sci entific and philosophical. You will be inspired to read fur ther, inspired to follow up the many little gems o f knowledge that have been revealed. But I think that most important of all, you will be highly motivated to join the current drive to raise the reading levelsofour schoolchildren. “Phonics” is ‘where its at’ and where it has always been. They must not be deprived o f the great gift o f literacy. MidnightTrain to Georgia ___~ ii ... M ike N C -8: Dem t challenger term ine the w inner and the direc T here are a little m ore than T aylor faces a GOP incum bent in tion o f the next C ongress. nine w eeks rem aining until the a district that is m ore than 25% A L -3 : D em c h a lle n g e r Joe congressional m idterm elections- a little more than nine weeks until we can send N ew t G ingrich on a m idnight train to G eorgia as ju st another congressm an. T he D em o cratic P arty only needs a net gain o f eleven seats in the H ouse to regain the m ajority. I f we look past the traum a in the A frican A m erican. Turnham faces a GOP incum bent W hite H ouse and focus on the N V -1: Dem challenger Shelley who won less than 51% o f the needs o f the other 100 m illion B erkley or C lay Baty w ill face a votes in his ’96 election victory. households in this country, we GOP incumbent who won less than The district is nearly 25% A fri can do it. 51% o f the votes in his '9 6 elec can A m erican. U n p re c e d e n te d O p p o rtu n ity tion victory. A R -4: Dem challenger Judy fo r A fric a n A m e ric a n s O H -1 : D em c h a lle n g e r Sm ith faces a GOP incum bent If D em ocrats regain control o f Roxanne Q ualls faces a GOP *n " w hose cam paign is being m an the C ongress, three o f the m ost cum bent in a district that is nearly aged by form er C hristian C oali pow erful H ouse com m ittee chair 28% black. tion Exec. Dir. Ralph Reed. The persons w ill be A frican A m eri TX-14: Dem challenger Loy d istric t is nearly 25% A frican cans: Sneary faces a GOP incum bent in A m erican. ♦Rep. C harles Rangel (D -N Y )- a district that is more than 20% C A -27: Dem challenger Barry W ays and M eans. A frican A m erican and m ore than G ordon faces a GOP incum bent ♦Rep. John C onyers (D -M I)- 20% H ispanic. who won less than 51% o f the Judiciary. D e m o c ra ts M u st N ot T a k e votes in his ’96 election victory. ♦Rep. W illiam C lay (D -M O )- B lack V o te rs F o r G ra n te d IL-17: Rep. Lane Evans (D) E ducation and W orkforce. A num ber o f new spaper col faces a tough challenge. T his opportunity out to m oti umns have been w ritten in recent IN-10: Rep. Julia C arson (D) vate A frican A m ericans to turn w eeks suggesting that there is faces a tough challenge in a d is our to vote in record num bers. about to be a shift in black po liti trict that is m ore than 27% A fri Key R aces N eeded to Take cal loyalty aw ay from the D em o can A m erican. Back the House: cratic Party. KY-3: Dem challenger C hris T he fo llo w in g list in clu d es Since the 1960’s, D em ocrats G orm an faces a GOP incum bent som e o f the m ost im portant races have consistently won about 80- who won less than 51% o f the this year in w hich A frican A m eri 90% or more o f black votes. How votes in her ’96 election victory. can voters have the pow er to de- RAJNBOWPW&A C O A T I T IO N o f o e f gradual erosion ever, evidence o f support has surfaced in recent years. A frican A m erican voters are not a m onolith that w ill blindly su p p o rt D em o crats re g a rd le ss their m essage. If Democrats are to earn African American votes, they must address fundamental issues like choosing to improve our public schools rather than acquiescing to GOP plans for private school vouchers for only a few students. P ray fo r C o n g re ssm a n and S a n d i Ja c k so n As you may have heard, last w eek Mrs. Jackson w as h o sp ita l ized due to com plications form her pregnancy. Saturday evening, the Jackson’s pre-term baby boy was delivered and died a short tim e later. Rev. Jackson, sons Jonathan and Y usef, and Cong. Ja c k so n ’s pastor Rev. Jam es M eeks o f Sa lem B aptist C hurch in C hicago flew to U tah to be w ith Jesse Jr. and Sandi who had been in U tah attending a conference on youth leadership. T h e R a in b o w /P u s h fa m ily w ould like to than Sen. O rrin H atch for facilitating the Jackson fam ily ’s trip to U tah in this d iffi cult tim e. Please keep Jesse Jr. and Sandi in your prayers. Count Eveiy American by -H ugh B . P rice , P resident - N ational U rban L eague Those Americans who have viewed that Am erican in stitu tion, the census, as largely the quiet province o f statisticians, are about to discover how con tentious counting-and not count ing-number can be. This week a special three- judge panel o f the U.S. D istrict C ourt in Washington ruled that the federal Census bureau can’t use a proposed new method o f counting to conduct the decen n ial count o f the American popu la tion in the year 2000. The C linton Adm inistration wanted to use a method known as statistical sampling-an ap proach that combines the tradi tional house-to-house attempt to count every person in a neigh borhood w ith a simultaneous sample o f 10% o f households in that neighborhood. By comparing the two results, the Census Bureau claims it can estimate the characteristics and numbers o f people who are missed and provide a more ac curate tout count. But that proposed new ap proach generated bitter opposi tion from Congressional Repub licans. |ftte y argued that the Consti- tution requires “ an actual enu m eration,” or head count, o f ev ery U.S. resident. T heir opposi tion led to the lawsuit and the court decision. Congressional R epublicans had argued that the new approach was unconstitutional because the C onstitution calls fo r an “ actual e n u m e ra tio n ” -head c o u n t-o f American citizens. The three-judge panel side stepped the c o n s titu tio n a lity question, declaring instead that the Census Bureau had w rongly interpreted the federal law re garding taking the census. For its part, the C linton A d m inistration reacted to the court decision by im m ediately filin g notice to have the issue heard by the U.S. Supreme Court. No one should think the issues in this dispute are m inor or hard to fathom, this battle is about power and money-and race and ethnicity. In 1990, when the Census Bu reau used the traditional method o f trying to count every person in * neighborhood, some o f the co u n ts w ere s ig n ific a n tly skewed: Census counters missed 8.4 m illio n people. In addition, they counted another 4.4 m illio n ei ther tw ice o f in the wrong neigh borhood o f residence. Since the C ensus count is used to, am ong m any o th er th in g s, a p portion po litical districts and d is trib u te fe d e ra l m o n ies, u n d e r counting o r over-counting people in p a rtic u la r areas can have a sig n ific a n t im pact on p o litic a l p a rty fortunes in state le g isla tures and the C ongress itself. And it can also determ in e how m uch federal ail a lo c a lity does o r does not get. H ow ever, the issue o f w ho was “ u n d e r-c o u n te d ” and w ho was “ o v e r-c o u n te d ” w hen the tra d i tional h e a d -c o u n t m ethod was used for the 1990 census is even m ore sensitive. M ost o f the 8.4 m illio n people who were missed were A frican Americans in inner cities and H is panic Americans in C alifornia, Texas, and New M exico. M ost o f the 4.4 m illio n who were counted twice were college students and affluent whites who owned more than one home. Statistical sampling, in other words, w ould increase the num ber o f blacks and H ispanics counted, w hich w ould help the Democrats and could shift money and p o litic a l clout away from wealthier, m ostly white districts. T hat’ s part o f the p o litic a l cal culus at w ork in the debate. B ut th e re ’s a large issue here also , one w hich is the fo u n d a tio n o f our support fo r the u se o f th e s ta tis tic a l s a m p lin g a p proach: It is th a t e v e ry A m e ri can citiz e n o u ght to cou n t-an d th erefo re ought to be counted. T he C ensus p re d ic ts th at i f it u se s the tra d itio n a l w ay o f try ing to count every in d iv id u al head-and e stim a te d 275 m illio n in 2000- it w ill m iss ab o u t 5 m illio n people. I f th at com es to p ass, th e re ’s no reason to th in k b la c k s and H isp an ics and the p o o r w o n ’t m ake up the d isp ro p o rtio n a te sh are again. As I wrote in a recent co l umn, a ll Americans deserve to be counted in the Census. Their being made visible is the very foundation o f democracy. That point should especially resonate w ith A fric a n A m eri- cans-whom others sought fo r so long to make visible, as far as democracy was concerned. The concept o f “ actual enu m eration” cannot be used to g lib ly ratibnalize the current
