“Brighter days are ahead.” “The check is being put in the mail.”

That is what the Republicans seem to be saying after they released their “Growth and Opportunity Project” report in March 2013. Six months after Republicans took a drubbing in the 2012 elections, GOP National Committee Chair Reince Priebus announced a $10 million outreach program to seek more minorities as members.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) provides national leadership for the party. It is responsible for developing and promoting the Republican political platform, coordinating fundraising and election strategy. The problem for Priebus and the party is that the RNC is often viewed as “an old white guy’s club” that is unsympathetic to the needs of blacks and minorities.

So in March, Priebus decided that it was time for the party to “call Tyrone.” In past months, the Republicans set new goals for “outreach” and their spring meeting was to “focus on putting the party on a path to fulfill” their goals. The agenda for the RNC’s spring conference called for strategy sessions and workshops on voter outreach and party coordination.

The “Growth and Opportunity Project” chided the Republicans for not dealing with “shifting” voter demographics. Just after the “Growth and Opportunity Project” was announced, the RNC tapped Raffi Williams, son of TV newscaster, Juan, to be an African-American press contact with a focus on youth outlets. During the spring meeting in Hollywood, California, the RNC announced hiring Asian and Pacific

Island field and communications directors and election of a state party director “to support and empower the work of grassroots activists and volunteers.” There are reports that “some RNC members discussed working with minority media” in their quest.

In past months, the Republicans haven’t actually called Tyrone, and have stepped back from the heady days of the “Growth and Opportunity Project” announcement. Short of sending checks in the mail to black voters, the Republicans face long odds connecting with them. Unless, the Grand Ole Party expands its level of electoral support, it could slide into complete irrelevance.

Bottom line is the Republicans will need minority media to develop meaningful relationships and channels of communication to change black Americans attitudes. The way Republicans make inroads among African Americans is to help them gain weight in their wallets. Priebus and company need to take public policy positions that have potential to advance blacks’ interests. As they make their way through the “hood,” Republicans can make much of the fact that black population, uptown and in suburbia, have always done well economically under their governance. Under Republicans, blacks could again know political reciprocity like they did the last time they supported a Republican presidential ticket in any sizeable numbers, and gave Richard Nixon more than 30 percent of their vote. Nixon, in turn, generated millions of dollars through black-oriented programs and projects.

In 2012, just five percent of African Americans considered themselves Republicans. Republicans need to do more than shout slogans to gain higher numbers of African American registrants. It’s time greater numbers of blacks and Republicans align in projects that generate mutual benefits. Such alliances can repair and bring new successes to black communities. In the past, Republican practices have helped empower blacks— from President Lincoln’s Emancipation to Booker T. Washington’s post-slavery practices of commerce to Richard Nixon’s endorsements for “minority enterprise.”

Even a slight GOP inroad among blacks could swing a state or two in close 2014 elections and the 2016 presidential contest. The promotion of the Republican brand among black Americans requires messages that connect with the realities of black life in America. As opposed to tepid trials of the past, the GOP’s chiefs and corps have to move quickly to have a meaningful presence among blacks and at their community events and cultural ceremonies.

The RNC should have no reservations in chronicling that they’ve “made progress” in mending relationships with African Americans; but for the party to be viable on the national stage so much more needs to be done.

William Reed is head of the Business Exchange Network and is available for speaking and seminar projects through the Bailey Group.org.

I was on “Washington Watch with Roland Martin” last week. This is a weekly TV show that deals with black political issues, among other things. The roundtable discussion was very lively, but I was amazed at my fellow panelists’ response to something I said.

Americans somehow have this strange notion that all discrimination is bad. But it isn’t. We discriminate every day. You choose one restaurant over another; you watch one TV show versus another; you date skinny girls and not heavy girls.

As a matter of fact, some discrimination is quite healthy. If you know drug dealers sell their drugs in certain neighborhoods, why would you go there if you have no interest in buying drugs? If, you are allergic to smoke why would you go to a bar where smoking is allowed? If, certain countries are more likely to kidnap an American tourist, why would you go there, if you are an American?

I think most reasonable people would agree that this type of discrimination is good and healthy. Similarly, our immigration policy should have a certain level of discrimination built into the policy. I was totally surprised that my fellow panelists disagreed. They seemed to be in favor of an open borders approach to immigration. The open borders crowd basically believes that anyone who wants to come to America has a right to come here if they follow the rules.

I find this view very idiotic. If you are not an American citizen, then you have absolutely no basis for the assertion of any right. Post 9/11, at a minimum, our immigration policy should discriminate based on country of origin. We know that certain countries are hotbeds for producing terrorists: Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Somalia, Chechnya, etc. So, why would our immigration policy even allow people from those countries to come to the U.S. for any reason, let alone to get a green card or citizenship?

Is this discrimination? You betcha! It’s the good kind of discrimination. Just as you can have good and bad cholesterol, the same applies to discrimination. What we call affirmative action is called “positive discrimination” in France.

You don’t see terrorists being trained in Australia, the Seychelles, or Trinidad & Tobago so therefore there should be less concern about immigrants from these countries. Is this not reasonable?

American visas, green cards and citizenship are not enshrined rights; they are privileges. No one has a right to enter into our country and we don’t need to justify our requirements for admittance into the U.S.

I am sure my fellow panelists would agree that an 80-year-old woman should not have to go through secondary screening at the airport before she gets on an airplane. Why? Because she is very unlikely to have a bomb or other weapon on her body. Is this not profiling? How many 80-year-old female terrorists have you read about? Exactly my point!

However, these same panelists took issue with me for saying that America should deny entry and student visas to people from certain countries. Is it discriminatory? Yes. Is it appropriate and reasonable? Yes.

Does that mean that every person from a country that is known to produce terrorists is a terrorist? Of course not, but that is not the overriding issue in my decision to deny them entry into the U.S. I am sure there are many good people from countries that are known for producing terrorists; but I am not willing to take a chance, just for the sake of making Americans feel good.

If, you are the parent of a young boy would you leave him alone with a Catholic priest? I wouldn’t and most of you wouldn’t, either. I would venture to think that most Catholic priests are good people, but I am not willing to sacrifice my son’s safety to prove a point.

The two brothers from Chechnya who committed the bombings in Boston should have never been allowed in the U.S. Is this an indictment of all people from Chechnya? No. It simply means that the U.S. is exercising its sovereignty to determine who is admitted to its shores. This is a very reasonable and smart approach to our immigration policy. To do anything else is a reckless disregard for the future and safety of our country.

Raynard Jackson is president & CEO of Raynard Jackson & Associates, LLC., a Washington, D.C.-based public relations/government affairs firm. He can be reached through his website: www.raynardjackson.com.

You could say “42,” the film about the life of Brooklyn Dodgers great Jackie Robinson, is a gripping baseball tale, and your assessment would be correct— but woefully incomplete.

“42” is not just a baseball story. It’s a compelling history lesson as well. It tells the story of not just baseball, but of a central facet of 20th century American life— the suffocating reach of racism— in the decades before the 1960s.

It conveys the grievous wrong black Americans endured and signals what it cost them, and America as a whole and it indicates how the barrier of racism was cracked by blacks and whites who worked— many over the course of decades— to destroy it.

“42” reminds us, as the Major League’s season gets underway, that, given its mythic status in American life, baseball’s s most important milestone had nothing to do with the mechanics of playing the game or a particular game that was played, but with cleansing the moral center of American democracy itself. It recounts once again in popular form, the story of a man whose life proved that history sometimes acts through individuals and how individuals can act to influence history.

“42” tells a story that never gets old; for it’s rooted in the saga of an America that once was, and then began to change sharply— a change which has yielded enormous benefits but which also remains both incomplete and resisted.

Jack Roosevelt Robinson, born in 1919, grew up in an America where the words “Too bad he’s the wrong color” were often the kindest remarks white Americans would say about black Americans.

A Boston Red Sox scout said those words in April 1945 during the now-infamous sham tryout at which that storied team passed on signing the future Hall of Famer despite his impressing Sox officials with his hitting and fielding. A few years later, the Sox would also pass on signing Willie Mays. They would be the last team in baseball to add— in 1959— a black player to their roster.

Of course, the scout was wrong. As would become evident two years later, beginning on April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson was the right color, and of the right character, after all, to help ratchet up the pressure that had been building for decades among black Americans in the North and South to confront the country’s great sin. To repeat, that wrong wasn’t merely blacks’ 50-year exclusion from the playing fields of Major League Baseball.

Even as white America was boasting that its victory over Germany and Japan in World War II had made the world “safe” for democracy, black Americans could see in every sector of American society— higher education, the movie industry, the civil service, residential housing, the military, large corporations and small businesses alike, the labor unions, collegiate and professional sports, and so on— that bigotry, not democracy, was triumphant.

The South’s apartheid system had its explicit “Whites Only” and “No Colored Allowed” signs. Although the signs were absent, the same noxious sentiments existed almost everywhere in the North and West, from Boston to Pasadena, California where the Georgia-born Robinson grew up.

In the immediate postwar environment, Robinson’s signing by the Branch Rickey-led Dodgers was the thunderclap that heralded the massing of new forces in the domestic fight to make America itself safe for democracy.

By then, black Americans had the diverse organizational strength at the national and local levels to field multiple challenges to racism and a still very small but growing number of white organizations— and individuals like Branch Rickey— were actively looking for ways to break the numerous “color barriers” that characterized American society. Also by then, America’s position of global leadership was beginning to exert pressure on it to live up to its boasts about loving freedom by extending it to black Americans.

It was no accident of history that within a year of Robinson’s breaking baseball’s color barrier, President Truman ordered the desegregation of America’s other signal mythic institution— the military.

Jackie Robinson’s story was but one facet of the diamond of black determination in the 20 years after World War II that would dismantle the legalized structure of racism.

However, he— an extraordinarily gifted, fiercely competitive athlete who possessed a deeply spiritual, disciplined character— was superbly suited for the challenge he, and America, confronted.

The wrong color? Not on your life!

Lee A. Daniels is a longtime journalist based in New York City. Daniels collaborated with Rachel Robinson on her 1998 book, Jackie Robinson: An Intimate Portrait.  

During my research on street gangs, one thing became clear: They are the primary source for drug distribution. The crimes conducted by these street gangs on a daily basis also include murder, bribery, extortion, robbery, carjacking, prostitution, human trafficking and money laundering. Some gangs concentrate on some of these crimes but all of them have drug trafficking as their number one activity. This makes them truly a menace to our society.

Yet, we ignore them for the most part. We tend to be blind to their destruction and terror. There are 1.4 million street gang members (2011) and we act like they don’t exist.

There are more than 2.1 million men and women incarcerated and the majority are there for drug related-crimes.

Approximately 650,000 people are released from our prisons each year and at least 52 percent will return within three years for parole violation or some other criminal act.

The cost of housing a state prisoner can be as high as $45,000 per year. Wait, it gets worse! It is so disappointing that when we persuade a company to hire some of our youngsters for on the job training they are unable to pass a drug test. 

During the Katrina rebuilding, we warned potential job applicants that they would be tested for drugs and urged them to become clean. For many it was too late because they were hooked and couldn’t shake it.

Dealing is a very big “business” for many drug dealers and unlike many other sectors in the United States, business is booming.

The gang leaders don’t have a recruiting program; they “draft” top prospects.  One day, my aunt in Los Angeles asked her grandson if he was in the Crips. His reply was, “Grandma, I have no choice; it is Crips or die.”

These young members have quotas to fill. They must push dope and get as many hooked as possible. The Peoria, Illinois Chamber of Commerce once did a job study for black youth ages 18 to 30. The number one employer was the city government; number two was the local utility company and number three was the illegal drug activity. Peoria has a population of approximately 100,000 people. No place of any size is immune from drug trafficking. I could not find credible estimates of how large the illegal drug business is in America but it is at least $250 billion per year. I bet we would be surprised where some of it ends up.

My brothers and sisters, we have an extreme problem that needs urgent fixing. I would like to see black elected officials become more active about addressing this problem. It is my firm belief that withdrawal programs are not the end solution. We need to come

together to do something radically progressive. Nothing that has been tried in the past has improved this “illness.”

The time has come for bold, American style action. The first thing we should do is to legalize drugs. Treat it like liquor and cigarettes by taxing it to the limit and regulate it wisely. The demand for illegally transported drugs will soon dry up and the use of street gangs will be a public danger. We could close many prisons and reduce enforcement officers along with parole and probation officers.

The next thing we need to do is to write new legislation. Organized street gangs are already being broadly prosecuted as racketeering enterprises. The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization Act (RICO) should be amended to explicitly include street gangs with certain, severe prosecution of their leadership. Everyone knows who the leaders are and where they live. A good example of this is how authorities are currently going after the street gang MS – 13.

According to the Associated Press, “The Obama administration declared the ultra-violent street gang MS – 13 to be an international criminal group ….The aim is to freeze it out of the U.S. financial system and seize what are estimated to be millions of dollars in criminal profits from drug… and other crimes committed in this country”.

Let’s form a taskforce like the old

“Untouchables.” Make them forfeit their assets, bust up their leadership and strongly police our banking system that plays along with some of the vast money laundering that is taking place. If we follow the money and clean up the inside corruption, we will begin to turn the tide. Imagine our nation becoming a populous of people living productive lives once again.

Right now we are just seeing our cultures and neighborhoods slide into oblivion. It is not something so great that we cannot manage. Some common sense, a lot of courage and a taste of vision could change it around. God bless us!

Harry C. Alford is the co-founder, President/CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce. To reach Harry C. Alford, email: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Households earning $160,000 would probably identify themselves as middle class, yet a quick breakdown of U.S. incomes shows just how far from the middle they are.

How much should you earn to be considered middle class? To be considered rich? Pinning down clear numbers is more complicated than you might think. During his presidential campaign, Mitt Romney stirred controversy when he grouped households earning $250,000 with the middle class. Rich and poor are relative terms, and our judgment of these categories is often informed by feeling, not fact.

For example, households earning $160,000 would probably identify themselves as middle class, yet a quick breakdown of U.S. incomes shows just how far from the middle they are. The bottom 20 percent, a large portion of which falls below the poverty threshold, earns $0–$17,500. The second lowest quintile makes $17,500–$33,400. If your household takes in $60,000 a year, you’re making more than 60 percent of the country does. Overall, the median household income in the U.S. as of 2011 is roughly $50,054, according to the U.S. Census.

So where would a household with an income of $160,000 fit in all this? It would rank in the top 10 percent, tripling the median household income and earning more than 90 percent of all households. And if you’re earning $250,000, you’re even better off — you’re among the top 4 percent of all earners in the U.S. Which begs the question: if you’re doing better than the vast majority of your peers, aren’t you rich, not middle class? 

These terms are also influenced by a multitude of other factors such as geography and lifestyle — money doesn’t go as far in expensive coastal areas such as New York City or San Francisco. And if you live in an affluent neighborhood of multimillionaires where you feel pressured to spend more to fit in, $250,000 might not feel like enough. But even accounting for such adjustments, it’s clear that these six-figure incomes represent an elite minority — not the broad-based majority.

 Defining the middle class is a crucial step toward creating a fair tax system that evens the playing field for struggling American families. As of 2011, the income gap between the rich and poor is the widest it’s been in four decades, and the poverty rate has remained at a near 20-year high. Median household incomes among the bottom 80 percent fell 1.7 percent last year while the top 1 percent saw their earnings rise by 5.5 percent. Incredibly, the top 1 percent of the country (earning $506,553 or more) captured 93 percent of the country’s income growth in 2010.

 We shouldn’t lose sight of our fight to stem the growing concentration of wealth at the very top. But we must also understand that no matter what our income, spending more than we make will always ensure that we’re poor. Unsustainable spending, ballooning debts, and lack of savings always leave you one paycheck away from financial disaster. That’s why developing a sound financial budget should be a part of everyone’s plan, whether you’re part of the top or bottom five percent.

True wealth isn’t defined by fancy cars or designer clothes — it comes from living within your means and creating a savings plan that leaves you in a position of financial strength and security for years to come.   

“So please ask yourself: What would I do if I weren’t afraid? And then go do it.” Sheryl Sandberg

In a stroke of marketing genius befitting the Chief Operating Officer of the social media phenomenon, Facebook, Sheryl Sandberg chose Women’s History Month to launch her new book, Lean In, and begin a national dialogue about “Women, Work and the Will to Lead.” Ruth Standish Baldwin was a co-founder of the National Urban League more than a century ago and the inclusion and empowerment of women has been one of our most important priorities. Today, Former Labor Secretary Alexis Herman serves as Senior Vice Chair on our Board, and almost half of our 95 local Affiliate CEOs are women. For that reason, we applaud Sandberg for her new book and are proud to join in the conversation.

We all know that historic barriers of gender discrimination, as well as the responsibilities of bearing and caring for children have made it more difficult for women to balance work and family. But Sandberg contends that women too often “hold ourselves back in ways big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in.” Lean In appears to be written by and for women for whom the path to executive leadership has always been a realistic, if somewhat difficult, journey. But the book has sparked another conversation in Black America about how women of color have always had to “lean in” to overcome the dual hurdles of racial and gender bias.

Consider how Harriet Tubman leaned into the face of death to lead a thousand slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad. Or how Sojourner Truth stood up and boldly asked “Ain’t I a woman?” at the 1851 Ohio Women’s Rights Convention. Consider how Fannie Lou Hamer who was “sick and tired of being sick and tired,” fought for African American voting rights as an organizer of the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer and Vice Chair of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Or how a quiet seamstress named Rosa Parks, leaned in, sat down on a bus and lit the fuse of the civil rights movement.

Decrying the lack of women at the top of corporate America, Sandberg does admit that, “The gap is even worse for women of color, who hold just 4 percent of top corporate jobs, 3 percent of board seats and 5 percent of congressional seats.” But, with rising numbers of Black women in college, preparing themselves for successful careers, clearly a lack of drive or ambition is not the problem.

Lean In urges women to “Sit at the Table,” “Seek and Speak Your Truth,” “Don’t Leave Before You Leave,” and “Make Your Partner a Real Partner.” These recommendations present a road map of success that has obviously worked for Sheryl Sandberg. But, it is largely the lack of support, the pressures of single parenthood, and systemic racial and gender discrimination that continue to keep women of color from getting a foot in the corporate door. The empowerment of all women depends on closing the wage gap, protecting women’s reproductive rights, providing greater workplace flexibility, having more women in non-traditional professions like science and engineering, and supporting common sense measures such as the Violence Against Women Act which was recently reauthorized and signed into law by President Obama.

If men and women lean in together, we can foster gender equity and a better America.

Marc H. Morial, former mayor of New Orleans, is president and CEO of the National Urban League.

It’s time to man up – I was wrong about Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.

First, some background. I wrote a column in 2008 under the title, “Winners and Losers from Election ’08” in which I listed Jesse Jackson, Sr. as one of the biggest losers of that year. 

Here is what I said: “His past contributions to America are undeniable, but his future place is uncertain. Every time he opened his mouth in the past year, he said something negative about Obama. First, Jackson criticized Obama for ‘acting white’ because he was not as forceful as Jesse wanted regarding the Jena 6 case in Louisiana. Then there was the infamous Fox News open mic incident where Jackson is heard saying, ‘See, Barack has been talking down to black people…telling niggers how to behave…I wanna cut his nuts out.’ Finally, in October Jackson was speaking at the first World Policy Forum in Evian, France. Published reports have him saying if Obama is elected as president, ‘fundamental changes in U.S. foreign policy’ will occur. He said the most important change would occur in the Middle East, where ‘decades of putting Israel’s interests first’ would end.

Jackson’s reputation has been forever tarnished.” Jackson accused Obama of “acting white” in response to Obama’s tepid response to the Jena Six, the case of six black high school students in Jena, La. arrested and charged with attempted second-degree murder for the beating of a white student. The charges were later reduced to aggravated second-degree battery and conspiracy. Many believed the prosecutor filed the more serious charges because the accused juveniles were black. As we all know, Obama has no history of taking strong positions on anything when it involves blacks.

As much as I hate to admit it, Jackson got it right when he accused Obama of “talking down to black people.” Everyone, including myself, eviscerated him for making the comment and accused him of being jealous of Obama. How can we forget when Obama spoke at the Congressional Black Caucus dinner a couple years ago and told blacks to “stop complaining?” Obviously, Jackson saw something in Obama early that the rest of us missed. Now, we are paying the price for it, especially blacks. Jackson was also right on point with his prediction about the changing U.S. relations with the Middle East. Our relationship with Israel has never been more volatile than it is now.

The blacks in America – along with a good number of whites – wanted so badly to show the world that in 2008 our country could be held up as the model for true democracy and equality. America wanted to prove that anyone, regardless of background, who played by the rules and had a vision, could finally be president of the United States. 

To his credit, Jesse Jackson saw beyond the rhetoric and somehow had the ability to see deep inside of Obama’s soul and tried to warn us, however clumsy, of what we were getting. So, Rev. Jackson, again I was wrong and you were right. You saw a level of arrogance and detachment from the black community that most of us were blinded to – or didn’t want to see.

You knew he would not pay attention to the high unemployment rate in the black community. You knew he would not spend much political capital on the high murder rate in Chicago. You knew he would continue to talk down to black people. You were rightly ostracized for the way you expressed yourself back in 2008. But on the issue of Obama’s disdain for blacks; you must be embraced and brought back into the fold. 

We wanted Obama to win on many levels. But Jesse Jackson, you have taught us that we should never allow emotions to cloud our judgment. I’m not always right, but I am rarely wrong – and this time, I was definitely wrong.

“I am not anxious to be the loudest voice or the most popular. But I would like to think that at a crucial moment, I was an effective voice of the voiceless, an effective hope of the hopeless.” —Whitney M. Young, Jr.

Most students of civil rights history know that 2013 marks the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 50th anniversary of the historic 1963 March on Washington. But this year also marks the 50th anniversary of the signature newspaper column of the National Urban League. This very column, “To Be Equal,” was started in 1963 as “the Voice of Black America” by one of the civil rights movement’s most effective, if lesser-known champions, former National Urban League President, Whitney M. Young, Jr.

At the height of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, Whitney Young took the fight for equal opportunity from the pulpits and street corners to the boardrooms and corner offices of corporate America. Forging allies from Wall Street to the Oval Office, Whitney Young’s battle for economic justice and inclusion laid the foundation for an upwardly mobile Black middle class that is still rising today.

While those of us in the Urban League family have always celebrated the unique role Whitney Young played in the movement, his story has rarely been told to a national audience— until now. On February 18, 2013, America got a rare in-depth look at the extraordinary life of Whitney Young in an hour-long documentary, “The Powerbroker: Whitney Young’s Fight for Civil Rights” on PBS (check your local listing for repeat showings). Years in the making, the film, made possible by Emmy Award executive producer, and Whitney Young’s niece, Bonnie Boswell Hamilton, traces Young’s journey from his segregated childhood in 1920’s rural Kentucky to his national prominence as president of the National Urban League from 1961-71. The film features rare archival footage and interviews with such luminaries as Vernon Jordan; Henry Louis Gates; Dorothy Height; John Hope Franklin; and Ossie Davis.

Although recognized as a major civil rights leader and one of the organizers of the 1963 March on Washington, Whitney Young’s strategy of engaging political and corporate leaders as partners in the struggle for economic justice was met with opposition by many whites and skepticism by more militant blacks.

 Despite these challenges, Whitney Young turned the rhetoric of the Civil Rights Movement into jobs and economic opportunity for African Americans. In addition to sitting down with corporate titans, he was a trusted advisor to three presidents— John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon. Johnson used Young’s “Domestic Marshall Plan” as the basis for his “War on Poverty.” And Nixon delivered the eulogy at Young’s 1971 funeral.

Noted Princeton historian and Whitney Young biographer, Nancy Weiss Malkiel once called Young, “the inside man of the black revolution.” In her 1989 book, Whitney M. Young Jr. and the Struggle for Civil Rights, Malkiel wrote that Young “spent most of his adult life in the white world, transcending barriers of race, wealth and social standing to advance the welfare of black Americans. His goal was to gain access for blacks to good jobs, education, housing, health care and social services. His tactics were reason, persuasion and negotiation.” Whitney Young’s story deserves the national exposure PBS is giving it.

Marc H. Morial, former mayor of New Orleans, is president and CEO of the National Urban League.