Filmmaker Byron Hurt explores the health advantages and disadvantages of Soul Food, a quintessential American cuisine. Soul food will also be used as the lens to investigate the dark side of the food industry and the growing food justice movement that has been born in its wake.
Showing posts with label African Americans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label African Americans. Show all posts
Monday, April 25, 2011
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Foreclosure Crisis Intensified Among Blacks: Study
from The Huffington Post
Foreclosure Crisis Intensified Among Blacks: Study
by William Alden
African Americans have suffered disproportionately from foreclosures due to racially discriminatory lending practices, a new study shows.
The study, authored by Douglas Massey and Jacob Rugh of Princeton, looks at racially segregated neighborhoods, where the percentage of minorities (particularly blacks, Hispanics and Asians) is higher than in the country as a whole. Using a black "dissimilarity index" to measure how a region's African-American makeup differs from the national percentage, the authors found that one standard deviation increase in this index -- when a community is slightly blacker than the nation as a whole -- increases the number of foreclosures by 15,028 and the foreclosure rate by 1.68 percentage points. As Salmon points out, that's quite high, given that the nation's foreclosure rate is 4.14 percent.
Before the housing bubble burst, blacks were more likely than their white counterparts to be given "subprime" loans, with high (or increasing) interest rates and hidden fees. It's a practice often referred to as "predatory lending." As Reuters notes, blacks with similar credit scores to whites were given worse deals on their loans, suggesting that race played a role in the way some lenders structured these deals.
Among lenders that went bankrupt in 2007, blacks were three times more likely than whites to receive subprime loans, according to a previous study that the authors cite in their report. Among lenders that did not go bankrupt, blacks were equally as likely as whites to receive "predatory" treatment.
The structures of these subprime mortgages made default especially likely, contributing in large part to the housing market meltdown that led to the financial crisis. But lenders didn't have to worry about the risk of default: With the rise of mortgage securitization in the 1980s, lenders could originate loans and sell them off to banks, which repackaged them and sold them to investors. The popularity of mortgage-backed derivatives, especially collateralized debt obligations, in the years leading up to the crisis created a huge demand for subprime, high-yield bonds -- which in turn encouraged some lenders to engage in ever riskier practices.
Racial segregation concentrated and intensified the fallout from racially motivated lending practices, the study says. It also facilitated the lending in the first place, since lenders could target communities that they knew to be disproportionately black or Hispanic.
"Hispanic and black home owners, not to mention entire Hispanic and black neighborhoods, bore the brunt of the foreclosure crisis," the study says. The authors say the nation's civil rights legislation must be amended to include more effective mechanisms for enforcement.
Read Study Here
Foreclosure Crisis Intensified Among Blacks: Study
by William Alden
African Americans have suffered disproportionately from foreclosures due to racially discriminatory lending practices, a new study shows.
The study, authored by Douglas Massey and Jacob Rugh of Princeton, looks at racially segregated neighborhoods, where the percentage of minorities (particularly blacks, Hispanics and Asians) is higher than in the country as a whole. Using a black "dissimilarity index" to measure how a region's African-American makeup differs from the national percentage, the authors found that one standard deviation increase in this index -- when a community is slightly blacker than the nation as a whole -- increases the number of foreclosures by 15,028 and the foreclosure rate by 1.68 percentage points. As Salmon points out, that's quite high, given that the nation's foreclosure rate is 4.14 percent.
Before the housing bubble burst, blacks were more likely than their white counterparts to be given "subprime" loans, with high (or increasing) interest rates and hidden fees. It's a practice often referred to as "predatory lending." As Reuters notes, blacks with similar credit scores to whites were given worse deals on their loans, suggesting that race played a role in the way some lenders structured these deals.
Among lenders that went bankrupt in 2007, blacks were three times more likely than whites to receive subprime loans, according to a previous study that the authors cite in their report. Among lenders that did not go bankrupt, blacks were equally as likely as whites to receive "predatory" treatment.
The structures of these subprime mortgages made default especially likely, contributing in large part to the housing market meltdown that led to the financial crisis. But lenders didn't have to worry about the risk of default: With the rise of mortgage securitization in the 1980s, lenders could originate loans and sell them off to banks, which repackaged them and sold them to investors. The popularity of mortgage-backed derivatives, especially collateralized debt obligations, in the years leading up to the crisis created a huge demand for subprime, high-yield bonds -- which in turn encouraged some lenders to engage in ever riskier practices.
Racial segregation concentrated and intensified the fallout from racially motivated lending practices, the study says. It also facilitated the lending in the first place, since lenders could target communities that they knew to be disproportionately black or Hispanic.
"Hispanic and black home owners, not to mention entire Hispanic and black neighborhoods, bore the brunt of the foreclosure crisis," the study says. The authors say the nation's civil rights legislation must be amended to include more effective mechanisms for enforcement.
Read Study Here
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
The Religion (and Race) of the President:Obama as National Scapegoat
from the Huffington Post
The Religion (and Race) of the President:
Obama as National Scapegoat
by Eddie Glaude, Jr.
"There is much in religion, when misused, that does lead to a fascist state....And it is the corruptors of religion who are a major menace to the world today, in giving the profound patterns of religious thought a crude and sinister distortion." -- Kenneth Burke
I have not been able, until now, to understand fully the debate about President Obama's religious commitments. How some Americans move seamlessly from questioning Obama's association with Jeremiah Wright to accusations that he is Muslim genuinely baffles me. The fact that he is our first black president offers a bit of an explanation. But something deeper is going on here -- and something quite familiar.
President Obama has become our national scapegoat. He leads the nation in a moment in which economic and political upheavals threaten our social order -- where the very myth of American progress has fallen on bad times. Many Americans have selected him to represent all that is wrong and irresolvable about our current malaise and to transfer their iniquities onto his body and into his policies. In doing so, Obama as scapegoat becomes the occasion to give voice to an alternative vision of social life. Glenn Beck happily offered his version. Other Republicans will do so as we approach November.
Of course, Obama isn't alone in this regard. As Linton Weeks noted "hating on the president is a great American pastime." We need only recall the Bush and Clinton years. But the response to Obama is different. The fact of his blackness, whether we acknowledge it or not, links this ritual to the complex histories of race that shadow our democratic form of life. And the rites of renunciation that have characterized so much of our politics today -- by the "Republican party of no" and by the Tea Party, an ironic iteration of the mask of American beginnings (after all, they did dress up as "Indians" in Boston) -- make possible a new sense of unity, a new social order among some "white folks."
Threats, real or imagined, to the social order in the US have occasioned historically ritual acts to consolidate "white identity" and the idea of community that gives it life. For example, during the era of Jim Crow, lynchings became an important tool not only to defend segregation but, through the ritual act itself, enabled a collective disavowal of the obvious ways segregation contradicted our professed democratic commitments. Christianity often played a key role.
In June of 1903, a mob gathered in Wilmington, Delaware, determined to sacrifice George White, a black man accused of rape and murder. Speaking to the angry crowd was Reverend Robert Elwood of Olivet Presbyterian Church. He took his text from Corinthians 5:13, "to expel the wicked man from among you," and he urged the courts to determine White's guilt immediately so that justice could be administered. Here the language of religion sacralized the violence that would offer the community an exit from their guilt.
George White was transfigured into that symbol which contained all of the anxieties of a group. Like most black victims of lynching, he was the rapist and murderer. The realities of their lives, lives haunted by violence, were emptied as they were transformed into a dangerous threat to the social order. And the endless repetition of the stereotype came to stand in for the actual human beings; black folk would become the anti-social deviants who threatened the social order and were in need of vigilant policing.
African-American participation in the public domain would require, and still does, constant negotiation of the stereotype. Either we have to become Bigger Thomas or Biggie Smalls, or we have to become, as James Baldwin noted, blank -- raceless.
Black scapegoats then trade in stereotypes, and Obama has not been able to escape their scandalous work. It began with the unsettling idea that Obama was not who he claimed to be -- that he was of foreign birth, that lurking beneath his cool exterior was an angry black man waiting, as Thomas Jefferson had predicted, to exact revenge. Subsequently, Obama has been transposed as a militant black Christian, as a sympathizer with the New Black Panther Party, or believed to be a Muslim, the latest standard representation of threat to social order.
His ritual sacrifice enables those who have robbed the national coffers in the name of security and who have lined the pockets of the rich at the expense of everyone else to collectively disavow the contradiction of their practices with our stated democratic ideals.
I want to be clear. I am not referring here to intentional acts of racism or expressions of racial hatred. That's too easy. Moreover, such accusations too often downplay the real and deeply-felt sense among many Americans that they are losing ground. What I am noting is a ritual practice that reproduces certain meanings about race, undermine our democratic commitments, and block the path to a new imagining of the nation. Americans are really good at exorcising demons, especially our racial ones, in order to affirm our inherent goodness, but we find it terribly difficult to look directly at ourselves in the mirror.
Obama's role in this scapegoat ritual only deepens our evasion of the reality of American life. Many refuse to see him. They rather deal with endlessly repeated lies of who he is; and religious talk like Beck's that shade too easily into troublesome patriotic calls can sanctify these ideas. But Obama also engages in what can be called self-scapegoating. In his evasion of the issues of race, in his insistence on occupying a version of the stereotype (a "blank man" of sorts), he has enabled the ritual to tighten its grip on our national psyches. What other options does he have?
Much more is required of us all. But, first, and it is a necessity upon which our destiny depends, we must look ourselves squarely in the face and confront who we truly are if we are to be release into a new future.
***
Eddie Glaude is a founding member and Senior Fellow of the Jamestown Project. Dr. Glaude is the William S. Tod Professor of Religion and African-American Studies at Princeton University. Hes is the author of Exodus! Religion, Race, and Nation in Early 19th Century Black America (University of Chicago Press, 2000) and the editor of Is it Nation Time?: Contemporary Essays on Black Power and Black Nationalism (University of Chicago Press, 2002) and, with Cornel West, of African American Religious Studies: An Anthology (Westminster/John Knox Press, 2003). Follow Eddie Glaude, Jr., Ph.D. on Twitter.
Obama as National Scapegoat
by Eddie Glaude, Jr.
"There is much in religion, when misused, that does lead to a fascist state....And it is the corruptors of religion who are a major menace to the world today, in giving the profound patterns of religious thought a crude and sinister distortion." -- Kenneth Burke
I have not been able, until now, to understand fully the debate about President Obama's religious commitments. How some Americans move seamlessly from questioning Obama's association with Jeremiah Wright to accusations that he is Muslim genuinely baffles me. The fact that he is our first black president offers a bit of an explanation. But something deeper is going on here -- and something quite familiar.
President Obama has become our national scapegoat. He leads the nation in a moment in which economic and political upheavals threaten our social order -- where the very myth of American progress has fallen on bad times. Many Americans have selected him to represent all that is wrong and irresolvable about our current malaise and to transfer their iniquities onto his body and into his policies. In doing so, Obama as scapegoat becomes the occasion to give voice to an alternative vision of social life. Glenn Beck happily offered his version. Other Republicans will do so as we approach November.
Of course, Obama isn't alone in this regard. As Linton Weeks noted "hating on the president is a great American pastime." We need only recall the Bush and Clinton years. But the response to Obama is different. The fact of his blackness, whether we acknowledge it or not, links this ritual to the complex histories of race that shadow our democratic form of life. And the rites of renunciation that have characterized so much of our politics today -- by the "Republican party of no" and by the Tea Party, an ironic iteration of the mask of American beginnings (after all, they did dress up as "Indians" in Boston) -- make possible a new sense of unity, a new social order among some "white folks."
Threats, real or imagined, to the social order in the US have occasioned historically ritual acts to consolidate "white identity" and the idea of community that gives it life. For example, during the era of Jim Crow, lynchings became an important tool not only to defend segregation but, through the ritual act itself, enabled a collective disavowal of the obvious ways segregation contradicted our professed democratic commitments. Christianity often played a key role.
In June of 1903, a mob gathered in Wilmington, Delaware, determined to sacrifice George White, a black man accused of rape and murder. Speaking to the angry crowd was Reverend Robert Elwood of Olivet Presbyterian Church. He took his text from Corinthians 5:13, "to expel the wicked man from among you," and he urged the courts to determine White's guilt immediately so that justice could be administered. Here the language of religion sacralized the violence that would offer the community an exit from their guilt.
George White was transfigured into that symbol which contained all of the anxieties of a group. Like most black victims of lynching, he was the rapist and murderer. The realities of their lives, lives haunted by violence, were emptied as they were transformed into a dangerous threat to the social order. And the endless repetition of the stereotype came to stand in for the actual human beings; black folk would become the anti-social deviants who threatened the social order and were in need of vigilant policing.
African-American participation in the public domain would require, and still does, constant negotiation of the stereotype. Either we have to become Bigger Thomas or Biggie Smalls, or we have to become, as James Baldwin noted, blank -- raceless.
Black scapegoats then trade in stereotypes, and Obama has not been able to escape their scandalous work. It began with the unsettling idea that Obama was not who he claimed to be -- that he was of foreign birth, that lurking beneath his cool exterior was an angry black man waiting, as Thomas Jefferson had predicted, to exact revenge. Subsequently, Obama has been transposed as a militant black Christian, as a sympathizer with the New Black Panther Party, or believed to be a Muslim, the latest standard representation of threat to social order.
His ritual sacrifice enables those who have robbed the national coffers in the name of security and who have lined the pockets of the rich at the expense of everyone else to collectively disavow the contradiction of their practices with our stated democratic ideals.
I want to be clear. I am not referring here to intentional acts of racism or expressions of racial hatred. That's too easy. Moreover, such accusations too often downplay the real and deeply-felt sense among many Americans that they are losing ground. What I am noting is a ritual practice that reproduces certain meanings about race, undermine our democratic commitments, and block the path to a new imagining of the nation. Americans are really good at exorcising demons, especially our racial ones, in order to affirm our inherent goodness, but we find it terribly difficult to look directly at ourselves in the mirror.
Obama's role in this scapegoat ritual only deepens our evasion of the reality of American life. Many refuse to see him. They rather deal with endlessly repeated lies of who he is; and religious talk like Beck's that shade too easily into troublesome patriotic calls can sanctify these ideas. But Obama also engages in what can be called self-scapegoating. In his evasion of the issues of race, in his insistence on occupying a version of the stereotype (a "blank man" of sorts), he has enabled the ritual to tighten its grip on our national psyches. What other options does he have?
Much more is required of us all. But, first, and it is a necessity upon which our destiny depends, we must look ourselves squarely in the face and confront who we truly are if we are to be release into a new future.
***
Eddie Glaude is a founding member and Senior Fellow of the Jamestown Project. Dr. Glaude is the William S. Tod Professor of Religion and African-American Studies at Princeton University. Hes is the author of Exodus! Religion, Race, and Nation in Early 19th Century Black America (University of Chicago Press, 2000) and the editor of Is it Nation Time?: Contemporary Essays on Black Power and Black Nationalism (University of Chicago Press, 2002) and, with Cornel West, of African American Religious Studies: An Anthology (Westminster/John Knox Press, 2003). Follow Eddie Glaude, Jr., Ph.D. on Twitter.
Monday, June 28, 2010
The Peculiar Case of African-American World Cup Watching
The Peculiar Case of African-American World Cup Watching
by R. L’Heureux Lewis
Every four years, I suffer from a condition. I feel confused, disconnected from friends and co-workers, yet strangely compelled to engage foreign matters. These feelings are brought on by the arrival of the World Cup. Through conversations with a number of my black American friends I’ve learned that I am not alone in this sentiment. While the World Cup represents one of the most important events to take place around the globe, it remains far from sacred to Americans; even less so to many black Americans.
I recognize that the World Cup is very significant to many of my brothers and sisters throughout the African diaspora, but I wonder if it will ever hold deep meaning for most of us. While it may just seem like a sporting event, mending our disconnection from the World Cup holds great promise for African-Americans; learning to appreciate it could usher in a new period of global citizenship.
As I recently sat watching the United States v. England match someone asked, “Who are you rooting for?” “Neither! I don’t like colonizers or oppressors,” I responded. Off the cuff, I quickly realized that my comment spoke to a dilemma the sport presents to many black people in this country. My disengagement with the World Cup wasn’t just about politics, it was also about how I was socialized.
In the United States soccer is an overwhelmingly middle class, suburban and predominantly white activity. Images of plush green fields, orange slices and minivans rush to my mind when I hear the word soccer.
By contrast, around the world, children mired in poverty find football, as the majority of the world calls it, an ideal athletic outlet. Whether it is played on the plush fields of London or the dusty expanses of Dakar, soccer is a language for communication and competition. Sadly, it is an international language from which many black Americans have been barred.
Read the Full Essay @ the Atlanta Post
by R. L’Heureux Lewis
Every four years, I suffer from a condition. I feel confused, disconnected from friends and co-workers, yet strangely compelled to engage foreign matters. These feelings are brought on by the arrival of the World Cup. Through conversations with a number of my black American friends I’ve learned that I am not alone in this sentiment. While the World Cup represents one of the most important events to take place around the globe, it remains far from sacred to Americans; even less so to many black Americans.
I recognize that the World Cup is very significant to many of my brothers and sisters throughout the African diaspora, but I wonder if it will ever hold deep meaning for most of us. While it may just seem like a sporting event, mending our disconnection from the World Cup holds great promise for African-Americans; learning to appreciate it could usher in a new period of global citizenship.
As I recently sat watching the United States v. England match someone asked, “Who are you rooting for?” “Neither! I don’t like colonizers or oppressors,” I responded. Off the cuff, I quickly realized that my comment spoke to a dilemma the sport presents to many black people in this country. My disengagement with the World Cup wasn’t just about politics, it was also about how I was socialized.
In the United States soccer is an overwhelmingly middle class, suburban and predominantly white activity. Images of plush green fields, orange slices and minivans rush to my mind when I hear the word soccer.
By contrast, around the world, children mired in poverty find football, as the majority of the world calls it, an ideal athletic outlet. Whether it is played on the plush fields of London or the dusty expanses of Dakar, soccer is a language for communication and competition. Sadly, it is an international language from which many black Americans have been barred.
Read the Full Essay @ the Atlanta Post
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
Now On YouTube--William "Sandy" Darity Chats Up the African-American Economy
Duke University Professor William "Sandy" Darity discusses the state of the African-American economy.
Also
NPR's Tell Me More with Michael Martin
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Economists who follow the economic outlook for African-Americans began warning more than a year ago that a recession would hit blacks particularly hard, which has proven to be true. Unemployment among African-Americans stands at 15 percent, while the national jobless rate is just below 10 percent. Some of the nation's leading black economists are gathering this week at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University to address the disparity. William Darity, an organizer of the summit, explains the economic climate for African-Americans and ways it can be strengthened.
Listen Here
Also
NPR's Tell Me More with Michael Martin
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Economists who follow the economic outlook for African-Americans began warning more than a year ago that a recession would hit blacks particularly hard, which has proven to be true. Unemployment among African-Americans stands at 15 percent, while the national jobless rate is just below 10 percent. Some of the nation's leading black economists are gathering this week at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University to address the disparity. William Darity, an organizer of the summit, explains the economic climate for African-Americans and ways it can be strengthened.
Listen Here
Friday, October 2, 2009
Office Hours with William 'Sandy' Darity
Discussion on the state of the African-American Economy
William 'Sandy' Darity is a professor of public policy, African and African-American studies and economics. His research focuses on inequality by race, class and ethnicity, stratification economics, the education achievement gap, skin shade and employment and reparations among other topics. Most recently, he has studied how recessions disproportionately affect blacks and Latinos and refutes the idea of a “post-racial America” with the election of a black president.
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