Dr. Jason Johnson appeared on The War Room on Current TV to discuss President Barack Obama’s commencement address at Morehouse College.
HBCU
Obama Gives Morehouse Commencement Missed by Too Many Students: And He’s Responsible
President Barack Obama is probably the hardest working president in the history of presidents of the United States. He won the presidency when America was in the midst of the worst financial and foreign policy crisis in about 50 years and he battles a level of racism and obstructionism in Congress that would make Lincoln blink. It is for these reasons and many more that many African Americans not only support Obama and his policies but fiercely defend him as well. Unfortunately that well intended desire to see Obama succeed sometimes overshadows legitimate concerns being expressed about his policies and actions, especially in regards to African Americans. In other words, Obama gets a free ride, from the very group that is most responsible for electing then re-electing him to office. How else could you explain the tin eared speech he gave to Morehouse College graduates on Sunday May 19th?
Obama is already in legacy mode as a president since he’s secured a second term. Consequently when he decides to speak at the commencement at one of the nation’s proudest Historically Black Colleges and Universities expectations and tensions are running high. Reverend Kevin Johnson, a 1996 Morehouse Alum was disinvited, then re-invited to give the baccalaureate speech at Morehouse after he wrote an op-ed in the Philadelphia Tribune criticizing Obama for his failure to appoint more African Americans to his cabinet and ambivalence about speaking up for black voters, his strongest base. More importantly, simmering in the background was the administration’s horrific failures regarding the Plus One – Loan debacle which has devastated Historically Black Colleges and Universities over the last 6 months. Education Secretary Arnie Duncan quietly changed the criteria for which PLUS Loans could be granted, making credit checks more stringent for parents which resulted in thousands of students from HBCU’s being denied loans and having to leave halfway through the year or not being able to attend college at all. When HBCU presidents and members of the Congressional Black Caucus brought this to the administration’s attention late last summer the White House told everyone to “be cool” and to not make a fuss since it was an election year. After promises from the White House to fix the issue, and tapping into that inner desire to protect our first black president, the HBCU leadership and CBC agreed to keep quiet. Yet, there Obama was, standing proudly in front of Morehouse graduates, having not done a thing almost 5 months into his second term and almost a year after the problem was brought to his attention.
A commencement address is not the time to hash out complicated policy issues, but it is an opportunity for a president, especially this president, to speak to a specific community that has doggedly supported him through thick and then. But Obama dodged all that; he slipped in and slipped out of the Morehouse commencement with platitudes and personal stories. And while he was certainly inspiring in some areas his main theme, that the time for excuses is over, was particularly problematic in the face of what the men in that audience are facing today.
But one of the things you’ve learned over the last four years is that there’s no longer any room for excuses. I understand that there’s a common fraternity creed here at Morehouse: “excuses are tools of the incompetent, used to build bridges to nowhere and monuments of nothingness.” We’ve got no time for excuses – not because the bitter legacies of slavery and segregation have vanished entirely; they haven’t. Not because racism and discrimination no longer exist; that’s still out there. It’s just that in today’s hyperconnected, hypercompetitive world, with a billion young people from China and India and Brazil entering the global workforce alongside you, nobody is going to give you anything you haven’t earned.
Obama’s penchant for diving face first into “Culture of Poverty” rhetoric dismissing institutional racism and discrimination as still being “out there” somewhere but placing the onus of success on the shoulders of Black men is problematic. If there is anyone who knows how institutions often work against the noble efforts of individuals it should be a president who ran on a slogan of “Change” in Washington.
I personally like President Obama, and I find myself defending his policy attempts and goals more often than criticizing them. He often gets a raw deal from the press, his own party and definitely Republicans. However that does not give him a free pass sashay into any African American environment he wants, drop some empty bromides and scoot back to the Whitehouse without having to address anything he’s said or done to the black community. Obama spoke passionately about how there are no excuses for Black men in America and we have to be compassionate towards those who aren’t as fortunate as those in the audience. But I wonder how that sounds to the hundreds of African American men who weren’t at that graduation last Sunday because their loans were snatched out from under them by his administration? I wonder how many African American men will never be able to walk the hallowed halls of Morehouse College because their loans were denied due to a policy quirk that Obama could solve with the flick of his pen? The time for excuses is over, not just for those Morehouse grads heading into the real world, but this president as well. With record turnout in 2012 African Americans deserve better from Obama than a pat on a back and a boot-strap lecture. The question is when will we as a people start holding President Obama to the standards that he clearly is comfortable holding African American to?
This article originally appeared online at Politic365.com.
FAMU Marching Band Scandal: Hazing is a Lazy Excuse For Robert Champion’s Death
There is nothing wrong with having to earn your stripes. There’s nothing wrong with going through a rite of passage. And yes, there’s nothing wrong with hazing.
But there is something wrong with homophobia, violence masquerading as tradition and automatically turning criminal acts into federal charges. Yesterday, 13 Florida A&M University students were charged with hazing Robert Champion to death. While justice needs to be served there is also a chance that this case will obscure the real causes of this tragedy and never lead to real solutions.
Robert Champion was a 26-year old drum major in Florida A&M’s world famous Marching 100 band. One night last November after a loss, Robert was savagely beaten in the back of a university bus – he was found hours later, sick, vomiting and barely conscious. He died later in a hospital due to complications from his beating.
The ‘beat-down’ he received was believed to be part of a notoriously violent hazing process for the Marching 100, although there are questions as to whether or not Champion’s hazing was worse due to the fact that he was a homosexual. The FAMU band has been suspended and Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL), nicknamed the HAZE BUSTER, was planning to introduce what she calls a federal “anti-hazing” bill in January. However, the timeline on that was changed.
“The Congresswoman still plans on introducing her bill, but the timetable has changed since … December,” her spokesperson Eric Parker tells Politic365. “She is still in discussions with college presidents and Greek-letter organizations to fine tune the bill.”
The press will cover this impending case as a big expose’ on hazing. But it’s important that the issues behind Champion’s death be de-coupled … rather than simply chalking it up to a bad day at HBCU band camp. What we really have here is a hazing issue, a bigotry issue and ultimately a legislation issue.
Most hazing involves being woken up at 4 a.m., having to run until you puke and doing embarrassing crap before you go to class in the morning. It’s not fun but it won’t kill you. The Florida legislature passed the Chad Meredith Act in 2005 chocked full of definitions between good and bad hazing and legal punishments specifically to protect students like Robert Champion. The law was named after Florida State student Chad Meredith, who in 2001 was ordered to swim across Lake Osceola drunk during his pledge process and drowned 34 feet off shore. The law clearly defines hazing as:
Pressuring or coercing the student into violating state or federal law;
Any brutality of a physical nature, such as whipping, beating, branding, forced calisthenics, exposure to the elements, forced consumption of any food, liquor, drug, or other substance, or other forced physical activity that which could adversely affect the physical health or safety of the student;
Any activity that which would subject the student to extreme mental stress, such as sleep deprivation, forced exclusion from social contact, forced conduct that which could result in extreme embarrassment;
Other forced activity that which could adversely affect the mental health or dignity of the student.
Making folks uncomfortable is a pretty normal part of pledging, but the rest of the rules are clear and make a lot of sense.
Honestly, though, hazing is a lazy explanation for this Robert Champion’s murder. Alfred University’s definitive survey on college hazing shows that over 250,000 students experience some form of hazing to join a college athletic team every year. Yet, only 89 hazing deaths have been recorded from 1970 to 2011. So as a hazing death Champion was an anomaly. But on another level his death was all too common.
Hazing processes, especially for men, are notoriously homophobic. A good friend of mine told me that his Black frat had a “No Faggots” rule where they put pledges through ‘tests’ to make sure they weren’t gay. One such test required the pledges to sit naked and blindfolded in a circle and pass a boiled egg from person to person using only your mouth. If your penis stirred you were deemed a ‘faggot’ and got the tar beaten out of you.
This kind of ‘testing’ isn’t uncommon in ‘hazing’ rituals throughout colleges across the country. Is it that hard to imagine a scenario where Champion was actually attacked due to his sexual orientation? The National Black Justice Coalition released a statement suggesting the whole ‘hazing’ element of these attacks might just be a justification for anti-gay violence, which has been on the rise in recent years.
With that in mind, Congresswoman Wilson’s federal anti-hazing legislation is also a bad idea. In light of the FAMU case, HBCUs and Black Greek organizations are going to be unfairly associated with hazing despite the practice being fairly universal. It is highly likely that HBCU students are going to be disproportionately prosecuted. It’s the hazing equivalent of the powdered vs. crack cocaine sentences where a seemingly neutral law is going to disproportionately harm Black folks. There are already state laws against hazing, hate crimes and assault. Why get the feds involved in what can already be fixed on the state level?
Robert Champion’s death is a tragedy but his death is more the result of violent homophobic band mates who used ‘hazing’ as a shield to gay-bash than ‘hazing’ itself. Their actions shouldn’t tarnish the other members of the FAMU band, or the thousands of other pledges and sans across the nation who aren’t out to kill or harm anyone. The solution is to prosecute the offenders and enforce the laws that exist, not to over-legislate and lose site of the real causes of this tragedy – violence, stupidity and bigotry.
This article originally appeared online at Politic365.com.
How Tougaloo College Fought the Mississippi Personhood Amendment
In all of the cheering and dancing that the national Democratic Party did last week over major issue victories, people on the ground were occasionally ignored. Yes, MSNBC had plenty of labor folks showing up during their nightly coverage of Issue 2. But, the second largest victory for Democrats that night didn’t get nearly as much local attention.
The “Personhood Amendment” on the Mississippi ballot would have made someone a ‘person’ at conception, essentially making abortion and various types of contraceptive pills illegal. Despite being on the ballot in one of the most conservative states in America the measure failed by a wide margin, but the story of the men and women who made that happen is not often shared.
Ms. Magazine has a great story about how the Feminist Majority Foundation conducted organizing in the state and the role that HBCU’s played in keeping abortion legal for men and women in Mississippi. The article speaks glowingly of schools like Jackson and Alcorn Atate and particularly Tougaloo College for holding teach-ins and forums on the impending bill’s impact. Seeing as how the only other time Tougaloo College got any national press recently was David Banner and Lil’ Flip talking about strippers, it’s always good to shout out some HBCU love for all the right reasons.
This article originally appeared online at Politic365.com.
Bobby Jindal’s Failed War on HBCUs
I am finally convinced that the Republican Party has been taken over by secret Democratic operatives. A team of highly trained well placed Obama/Saul Alinsky operatives have been working their way into the Republican Party for years now with one single goal: To ensure Republicans lose the presidential election of 2012. With a bad economy and general discontent in their favor how else can you explain the apocalyptic incompetence of Republican governors since the 2010 election? In mere months they’ve blown more political capital than Deborah Palfrey.
Scott Walker in Wisconsin has managed to do what Democrats haven’t been able to in 30 years, galvanize the labor movement in a non-election year. John Kasich in Ohio has managed to get teachers, college professors and cops all united in a mutual hatred of his new anti-labor policies. Now Bobby Jindal is galvanizing the almost 30 percent Black vote in Louisiana against him with moves that are such political kryptonite that you’d think they must’ve come right out of a Democratic playbook.
I’m not saying that Jindal is getting absolutely horrible political advice but I will say this: If you can’t find a way to convince the public to close a college that is only graduating 8 percent of it’s students then you ought to be looking for a job outside of politics.
Jindal has pushed through the merger of Southern University of New Orleans, a Historically Black Colleges and Universities institution, and The University of New Orleans, a majority white institution. With the skills of a blind lumberjack, last December he replaced all African American members from the 16 member state board of regents and set about a plan to study the feasibility of combining the two colleges. Needless to say, the African American community in Louisiana wasn’t too pleased with his white-washing of the board of regents, let alone his goal of closing or merging an HBCU – a trend that has become very popular among southern governors of late.
Louisiana state Senator Cleo Fields filed a lawsuit seeking to block the study on combining the schools and the local community was up in arms. Jindal could obviously see the writing on the wall, but not fast enough to avoid running into it. He pushed out one old white guy who’d been on the board for 14 years and appointed a Black man, surgeon Albert Sam, to be the lone Black member of the board of regents. That would have been great if it weren’t for the fact that Sam openly admitted that with his busy surgery schedule he didn’t plan on attending many meetings about the SUNO/UNO merger.
Now the merger proposal has all but passed but the political fallout in the state will be felt for years to come. Students at SUNO are protesting, the state Black caucus is crying bloody racism and the 30 percent African American population is giving Jindal the side eye just as he’s about to run for re-election.
You can’t entirely blame Jindal for his gross incompetence. He’s never seemed to be a guy who got a good measure of his own political prowess. He incorrectly viewed his 2008 election as an endorsement of GOP policies instead of a rejection of Katrina incompetence by Democrats. He bought the hype of Republican spinmeisters that he was the second coming to Ronald Reagan only to die a death of a thousand clicking remotes as he botched his Republican response to Obama’s State of the Union in 2009.
However, his tin ear in the face of both a racial and educational hot potato will likely spell doom for the 15 minute face of the Republican Party. What’s worse, his proposal isn’t entirely wrong. SUNO has an 8 percent graduation rate, the lowest of any HBCU in the United States.
UNO has seen its attendance numbers dwindle as a result of Hurricane Katrina and poor recruiting efforts. Schools performing that poorly, in a budget strapped state, need to be re-organized. Jindal’s inability to make a cogent argument about this issues, which many others have been able to do, let alone the ham fisted way that he’s handled the entire controversy, has turned key constituents in the state against him just like Scott Walker and John Kasich have.
But I guess those arguments were too tough to make. Those Demcoratic operatives are certainly doing their job – three 2012 potentials down, one to go. I’m thinking governor Chris Christie might be next.