Opinion
Black Americans’ Never-Ending Challenge
“Challenging People to Shape
a Better Future Now”
B ERNIE F OSTER
Founder/Publisher
B OBBIE D ORE F OSTER
Executive Editor
T ED B ANKS
Advertising Manager
J ERRY F OSTER
Account Executive
L ISA L OVING
News Editor
H ELEN S ILVIS
Multimedia Editor
B RUCE P OINSETTE
Reporter
D AVID K IDD
Graphic Designer
M ONICA J. F OSTER
Seattle Office Coordinator
J ULIE K EEFE
S USAN F RIED
Photographers
The Skanner Newspaper, established
in October 1975, is a weekly publica-
tion, published each Wednesday by
IMM Publications Inc.,
415 N. Killingsworth St.,
P.O. Box 5455, Portland, OR 97228.
Telephone (503) 285-5555.
E-mail: info@theskanner.com
W
ithin a matter of days
late last month, four
controversies erupted
that acutely underscore the crux of
Black Americans continuing chal-
lenge in this land.
In one, Emory University Presi-
dent James W. Wagner seemed to
suggest that the bargaining among
the delegates at the Constitutional
Convention that produced the
infamous three-fifths clause of the
Constitution was a model of the
value of compromise.
In the second, the February 21st
Bloomberg Businessweek maga-
zine cover had a drawing, above
the title, “The Great American
Housing Rebound,” consisting of
caricatures of grinning Black and
Hispanic Americans cavorting in a
house stuffed with dollar bills –
suggesting that minority home-
owners were gaming the mortgage
system. Five years ago, conserva-
tives made similar charges in try-
ing to pin most of the blame for
the collapse of the nation’s hous-
ing bubble on Black and Hispanic
borrowers.
The third controversy involved
Dov Hikind, a prominent politi-
cian in Brooklyn, N.Y. who
“corked up” in blackface, sun-
glasses and a wild Afro wig, as “a
Black basketball player,” to cele-
brate the Jewish festival of Purim.
Before the volume of rebukes
forced him to make an insincere
apology, Hikind claimed that any
criticism of his behavior was
“political correctness to the
absurd.”
Finally, and most importantly,
on February 27t the U.S. Supreme
Court heard oral arguments in a
challenge to the most important
provision of the 1965 Voting
Rights Act, the foundation of
Blacks’ political advancement
NNPA C OLUMNIST
Lee A. Daniels
since the 1960s. The case was
brought by officials of Shelby
County, Alabama.
There they are: One controversy
that recalled the bargain the
Founders made to insure the cre-
ation of the United States – which
also insured that their own for-
tunes and the economic power of
the fledgling nation would be built
by continuing to exploit Africans
and African Americans as slave
labor. Two others which show that
profoundly racist views of Blacks
and other people of color still grip
those in the South with long histo-
ries of concerted efforts to deny
their Black residents access to the
ballot in the Jim Crow decades,
were still using such tactics as
denying petitions for early voting,
or reducing the hours for early vot-
ing, or moving polling stations to
locations likely to reduce Blacks’
turnout, and so on.
For another, just four years ago,
the Supreme Court turned back a
challenge to the Act in a case from
Texas.
But in that case the justices side-
stepped ruling whether the Act’s
key provision – its Section 5
clause – was constitutional. That
clause requires jurisdictions cov-
ered by the Act to get permission
Many analysts think the court’s
conservative majority will strike it down
some individual Whites who
should know better. And, last –
the, apparently, never-ending
effort of some individuals and
entities in America to deny Black
Americans democracy’s funda-
mental marker of citizenship: the
right to vote.
Of the four, the voting rights
case — Shelby County v. Holder –
is the most laden with a bitter
irony. For one thing, Congress in
2006 re-authorized the Act by a
vote of 98-0 in the Senate and 390-
33 in the House of Representatives
after extensive testimony made it
clear that many of the jurisdictions
covered by the Act, especially
from the Justice Department or a
special federal court before chang-
ing voting procedures.
Now, many analysts think the
court’s conservative majority will
strike it down.
Certainly, Justice Antonin Scalia
made it clear that is his intent.
During the oral arguments, he
called the Act a “racial entitle-
ment” program and dismissed the
overwhelming 2006 Congression-
al vote to renew it as racial pan-
dering. It’s a point of view that a
century and a half ago formed the
foundation of the racist attack to
destroy Reconstruction.
There’s another bitter irony to
the Shelby case. The debate in the
court comes amid a continuing
blizzard of laws and regulations in
at least 38 states since President
Obama’s 2008 election to try to
suppress the vote of Blacks and
other Democratic-leaning voting
blocs. Those efforts, widely publi-
cized and attacked by civil rights
and other groups, had just the
opposite effect on Election Day
2012. They produced record-
breaking turnouts of Black, His-
panic and Asian-American voters
that signaled a deeper maturation
of these groups’ electoral power –
and the growing peril shadowing
the Republican Party’s ability to
contest future presidential elec-
tions.
That’s the broader framework
encompassing the Shelby County
case. It continues the historical
pattern of America’s struggle over
race and the meaning of democra-
cy. Every “proof” Black Ameri-
cans forge that shows they, too,
can claim the “unalienable rights”
the Constitution declared belong
to all human beings has always
provoked a fierce reaction from
those Whites who’ve staked their
status and identity on excluding
them.
Yes, the United States is a long
way from the evil bargain James
W. Wagner foolishly cited as an
example of a “good” compromise.
But we’re also a long way from
the racial Promised Land some
people foolishly think is just
around the corner.
Lee A. Daniels is a longtime
journalist based in New York City.
His most recent book is Last
Chance: The Political Threat to
Black America.
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Car-Title Loans Drive to Financial Disaster
I
n today’s still-struggling econ-
omy, many consumers find
themselves short on cash.
When consumers seek a credit
remedy, one particular lender is
likely to bring more problems than
solutions: companies that make
car title loans.
According to new joint research
report by the Consumer Federa-
tion of America (CFA) and the
Center for Responsible Lending
(CRL), the average car-title loan
of $951 winds up costing the typi-
cal borrower $2,142 in interest.
Nationwide, 7,730 car-title lenders
in 21 states reap $3.6 billion in
interest on loans valued at only
$1.6 billion.
The car-title loan uses a borrow-
er’s personal vehicle as collateral
and additionally charges triple-
digit interest rates, like those of
payday loans. And similar to pay-
day loans, the typical car-title loan
requires full repayment in just one
month. When borrowers cannot
afford to pay in full, they are
forced to renew their loan by pay-
ing additional interest and fees.
The report found that a typical
customer renews their loan eight
times.
The report also found anecdotal
instances in which car-title lender
marketing practices have lured
Page 4 The Portland Skanner March 6, 2013
R ESPONSIBLE
L ENDING
Charlene
Crowell
consumers by advertising 25 per-
cent interest per month for a two-
week loan. The actual rate of
interest, however, equates to 300
percent annual percentage rate
(APR). And it’s not as though 300
$400 or about half of the borrow-
er’s remaining loan balance. The
report found that one in six con-
sumers was charged expensive
repossession fees.
It’s easy to sum up the central
problems with car-title loans. As
the authors write in the report,
these loans “carry inherently
unsuitable terms that cause
already vulnerable borrowers to
pay more in fees than they receive
in credit while putting one of their
most important assets at risk.”
If you’re thinking that there
$3.6 billion in interest paid on $1.6
billion in loans
percent APR is an offsetting risk to
the lender: Car-title loans are usu-
ally made for only a fraction of the
vehicle’s market value - approxi-
mately 26 percent.
When borrowers can no longer
keep up with interest payments,
cars are repossessed and yet anoth-
er fee is added to the borrower’s
debt. On average, these reposses-
sion fees run in the range of $350-
ought to be a law against this obvi-
ously predatory product, be sure to
tell your state legislators. Most
states with car-title loan laws
either have no interest rate caps, or
authorize triple digit interest.
Tracking how these loans affect
consumers is one thing; financial
reforms are quite another. In this
regard, the CFA -CRL report calls
for public policy actions at the
state and federal levels.
For example, the federal Con-
sumer Financial Protection Bureau
could enact protections addressing
loan terms and underwriting.
States, on the other hand, could
adopt rate caps of 36 percent on
these loans.
Other policy recommendations
include:
— Changing loan terms to equal
monthly payments that would
enable borrowers to gradually pay
down their debt;
— Require written notice prior
to borrowers and the right to
redeem the vehicle before lenders
repossess or sell the car; and
— In the event of a vehicle sale,
return to the borrower any surplus
between a new sales price and the
remaining amount of money owed
In 2006, similar consumer pro-
tections were enacted to protect
the military and their families. If
President George W. Bush and
Congress could agree to cap small
loans at 36 percent annually for
this consumer sector, it seems rea-
sonable that the rest of us should
be given the same protections.
Charlene Crowell is a communi-
cations manager with the Center
for Responsible Lending.