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Episode #2311
Black Economic Impact Part II
Brown: Natalie Bullock Brown; Host
Lewis: Mitchell Lewis: Host
Johnson: Dr. James H. Johnson, Director of the Urban Investment Strategy Center at the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise
Harris: Andrea Harris, President of the North Carolina Institute of Minority Economic Development
Barber: Reverend Dr. William Barber, President of the State Conference NAACP
Chambers: Julius Chambers, former Chancellor of North Carolina Central University and current Director of the Center for Civil Rights at the UNC School of Law
Malveaux: Dr. Julianne Malveaux, President of Bennett College for Women
Caravano [ph]Tony Caravano
Anderson: Franklin AndersonDickens: Derek Dickens
Brown: Tonight the continuation of our panel discussion with leading African American thinkers about the implications of a new study on the economic impact of African Americans on the state of North Carolina. We will also hear our panel’s responses to audience questions next on Black Issues Forum.
VO: This program is a production of UNC-TV in association with the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise. This program is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting UNC-TV.
Brown: Hello, everyone and welcome to Black Issues Forum. I am Natalie Bullock Brown. Last week we brought you some of the findings from a 2007 study conducted by the Franks Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise that examined the economic impact of African Americans on the state of North Carolina. Tonight we conclude our coverage by bringing you more highlights form that discussion held in Chapel Hill. Let’s meet the panel of guests once again. We’ll be hearing from Dr. James H. Johnson, Director of the Urban Investment Strategy Center at the Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise and co-author of the Economic Impact Study. We will also hear from Andrea Harris, President of the North Carolina Institute of Minority Economic Development which is the organization that commissioned and funded the study. We’ll also hear from Reverend Dr. William Barber, President of the State Conference NAACP. And Julius Chambers, former Chancellor of North Carolina Central University and current Director of the Center for Civil Rights at the UNC School of Law. And Dr. Julianne Malveaux, President of Bennett College for Women. This discussion in its entirety will be available on UNC-Ed, UNC-NC, UNC-HD, and via podcast on the Black Issues Forum website. Right now we take you to our panelists along with Mitchell Lewis at the George Watts Hill Alumni Center on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill.
Malveaux: I think one of the most exciting facets of the report that Dr. Johnson produced was the recommendation around entrepreneurship regarding the prison population because I think that this is an issue again that reverberates around the nation. You identified the population at about 14,000 people. And when you begin to just look at median incomes and talk about what the drain is because I see all of this as brain drain. If you don’t engage people in productive economic activity they will be involved in other activities. If you believe that incarceration has productive outcomes, in other words, not simply punitive outcomes but also productive outcomes then you do something to embrace this population and say, “Okay, you served your time, you know, you paid your time and so now what can you do next?” Instead what we have seen both nationally and in this state is that people are punished beyond the time that they have already paid. This is a labor market that has become unfriendly not only to ex-convicts or to African American people but quite frankly unfriendly to Americans who have not had the benefit of higher education. So if we talk about a state that would embrace the people and that’s really the conversation, as a place where we embrace the people they would have to talk about whatever crime, punishment, challenge, drama you have, you transform. One of the ways you do that is through higher education and of course our private colleges, Reverend Barber, would like to be candidates for ways that we can build and develop opportunities for women who will support our families which will basically make it better for our community.
Lewis: Yes, Dr. Barber.
Barber: There are several things I think that we have to really engage the state. We got to—with this report, what it says about wages, we got to get serious about labor, labor movement in this state. We still have a state that prohibits unionization within state government. So you know what that does in the private sector, there is right to work capacity. We have got to do some serious—have a serious dialogue and some serious action around when we recruit businesses and we give them hundreds of millions of dollars to come to this state, but what kind of commitment do they have to make to the African American community to get our tax dollars. That’s a serious issue. We got to document this 200 years of discrimination with the best history so we can have the right not ___ but aspirational goals as Andrea often reminds me of the right kind of aspirational goals based on the data that will withstand any kind of court challenge. I saw a gem in your report, you talked about K-12 education. We pushed what seven or eight other organizations that $100 million be pushed into these 19 failing high schools that we know some facts about. Number one, 100% of them are 80% resegregated, 100% underfunded, 100% high teacher turnover. We know that. Those are facts. We wanted $100 million—it did not even get out of committee. And we know if there were 19 failing high schools in suburbia North Carolina we would have fixed them, as my grandma say, yesterday a long time ago. And, yet, because they are poor, black and mostly black, we have not jumped on that issue. We say we don’t have the money, it’s too much money. But the other question is what is it costing us to leave those schools like that? And then the half, 50% of our African American males dropping out. Those are some of the issues that we have to just—we have to address the issue of providing the kind of money for HBCUs that they can become community centers to help develop minority businesses and make sure they are prepared in the world of contracts and those kinds of issues. So there are some very practical things that we already have on the table but we as activist and we as public policy people and I dare say the members of our legislative black caucus and others, there are going to be some things, we are going to have to say, we are not playing ball on your bills until you do right on our bills. Right—we have to be careful. We have a challenge right now for instance to legislative seats, minority legislative seats, one in the Wilmington area. This study says we have paid our right to be at the table, that if we are 15-20% of all the dollars in this state, we must demand that we have at least that kind of representation at all of the public decision levels of government. Finally, we have—you know in 1898 what happened, we have to look at this historically, the disenfranchisement economically, the richest folk in this state were African Americans in 1898, the richest black man in the state was an African American, black people talking about globally controlled the closest port to Africa and Europe. We controlled it in 1898. That was taken away. The commission has said, has given 15 reports. One of those recommendations by the state commission is reparations and an infusing of dollars into all of those counties, economic dollars, economic development dollars into all those counties that were disenfranchised in 1898 and it has not even come to the floor of the General Assembly. Instead, people keep bringing an apology. That’s what I am talking about is insulting, is intellectually insulating and socially insulting, it is morally insulting and we as activists and educators and economists are going to have to challenge that and challenge our leadership because much of our electoral leadership is not allowing the kind of dialogue and debate and decision-making that must be had to address this kind of reform. We have got to make sure that happens.
Malveaux: You know, Mitch, if I could—Reverend Barber and I have bonded since I have been in the state, which hasn’t been very long, and we see the world the same way. But I have a challenge in terms of how we go about talking about reparations in a post-Civil Rights era. And what I suggest is that we don’t necessarily look at reparations but look at gaps and how we close gaps. I mean, the goal is not necessarily to deal although morally, philosophically—there are so many ways. And I can prove to you how much reparations we can compound the interest and do all that. But from a practical perspective here is the issue. If you have a college access gap that says that low income people are a third less likely to send their children to college, if you have a funding gap that says the average college grad now has $20,00 worth of debt, the average the black college grad has $26,000, the average HBCU grad, $28,000, then it seems to me that a short term goal, Reverend Barber, if you would will be to close those gaps, the medium and long term goals might be to get people to have good sense which, whatever. But the short term gap is to say if these are real polls how can we close these gaps? We want to make sure that we have all of our children having access to college because we know, the education transforms lives. That a child will go to college will earn a million dollars more in his or her lifetime than one who does not.
Lewis: At this time let’s take a break. And we will get back to reparations because I see that this is an interesting subject among you and we thank you for your comments right now but if there are any folks in the audience with questions to our panelists, you can come forward now and while they are coming to the microphone, Dr. Chambers, as someone who has been involved on the legal aspect and the educational aspect, we’ll go back to reparations just for a moment here. What are your thoughts as it relates to reparations for what has happened to African Americans?
Chambers: To reparations? Well, I think you introduced more of a problem than you solve. I would agree with Dr. Malveaux about addressing some of the issues that are addressable at this stage. While focusing on the ____. Let me—what I was thinking about as they were talking, if we look at our HBCUs in North Carolina and although the situation is changing, they still have a major problem in getting the monies they need in order to provide a competitive education. And I don’t care what anybody says, if I have an English professor at Carolina making $45-60,000 a year and an English professor at Central making $30,000 that produces a different kind of educational problem. And we can ___ as we did in the past with what our people do when they come into these situations but I don’t know that I can attract the best English professor with that kind of salary. When that professor can go eight miles away and get twice as much. And we aren’t really addressing that problem. Then, you know, I like to look at real issues. I came over here today and I passed the football field, a baseball field, and I was asking are we building a new stadium at Chapel Hill? Baseball stadium—I guess we are. And I know that we over at Central are begging for a field. Not a stadium. And I know the kids were begging for a soccer field. How do you tell a kid at Central he or she can’t get that kind of a facility? And if I go to Winston-Salem State I got the same problem, or ____ the short is we should be putting monies into these schools to ensure that they are offering a competitive educational experience. We aren’t doing it. And those kids coming out of those schools are coming out with a disadvantage. What do I think about reparation? I think that if you take 50 cents from me you ought to have to pay me back. And I know that you have taken 50 cents. And you know it. In fact you know you have taken more than 50 cents. And I don’t care what you call it, reparations or just payback. I don’t care.
Harris: Let me add—when you look at the African American community and the Hispanic community and what is in the findings of both studies there should be enough to suggest that the state of North Carolina that it is time for us to act. It is in the state’s enlightened self-interest that we change how we have been doing business now. We cannot be globally competitive if we don’t engage all of our citizens and assure that everybody has a full opportunity to participate in the labor market whether as employees or employers. It is no longer time-out for us to just sit around and do nothing and pacify communities of color by throwing pieces of resources here or a little bit of resource over there. We have to engage all of our HBCUs. They are underutilized in our ability to compete as a state. We have to engage all of our communities whether they are urban or rural. We have to reinvest in the center cities of our urban centers. We have to recognize that that economic isolation of pockets of economic isolation we have created whether in rural North Carolina or in urban North Carolina will cost us more in the long run. We see those costs now whether it is in the incarceration or whether it is in other forms of crime. We can’t afford it.
Lewis: A lot of great comments. I guess we will go to our audience now. Could you please state your name and your affiliation and your question, please?Caravano [ph]]: Sure. Good afternoon. Thank you all for being here before us. Tony Caravano from UNC General Administration and I would like to thank Ms. Harris for providing a good segue for my questions. Considering the past and prevailing struggles of the black community in North Carolina and those which are often similar servicing for the Hispanic population in the state, is there a moral imperative and perhaps a benefit of self-interest and self-preservation for the black community to take the lead in working to solve some of the challenges that we both share alongside the Hispanic leaders in the state of North Carolina?
Harris: Yeah, I thought of saying one thing and that is that when you look at the disparity that the report points to with regard to wages on one hand, when you look at incarceration and you understand the impact that incarceration has on families and communities and earnings and wealth and the like. And then you look at what that means with regard to education and the point that Dr. Malveaux made in terms of the increasing debt that we are placing on young people just to engage in higher education, I would suggest that for many communities in North Carolina particularly African Americans communities and those communities of color, that we are weighting our communities down such that we will have a negative net worth. We have to as a state change our priorities such that we invest in education in K-12 and we also invest in higher education. The only thing we have as a nation today that can make us competitive is the intelligence that we have and our relationship between higher education, its research and our private sector.
Barber: The question raised the issue of morality and I think it’s something we have to talk about because in the Civil Rights community and in the tradition of folk like Martin Luther King and ____ and others, morality was never separated from economic enfranchisement. Morality was never separated from money. Somehow that you can talk to people about being moral but not talk about the economic situation that are destroying them, you know, is backwards. So I think he said, one of the things he said, should black leadership from a moral perspective take the leadership? Yes, but we need progressive white and progressive blacks to take the leadership and we need white elected officials, many who owe their elections and their positions to minorities, the African Americans, and many who represent a lot of these eastern counties we talk about to step up to the plate both from a moral perspective and I don’t really separate them. I guess I am a moral/economic perspective because I don’t know how you talk about as a person of faith righteousness and morality without talking about paying people what they deserve and empowering that community.
Malveaux: And from a survival perspective. I mean, if you think—if you look 50 years, 20 years down the pike and look at where the United States is going and look at the challenges that our nation faces because of our failure to invest in people, I didn’t say black people, didn’t say white—invest in people. That failure is a function of shifting demographics and we are making a suicidal compact, a suicidal compact when we decide that we will not invest in education. So it is not moral or economic, it is survival, rather. Lewis: And let me get to our next person there. I know we are really working here. [OVERLAPPING]
Lewis: Yes, sir?
Anderson: I am Franklin Anderson. I am trustee at the Kenan Institute for Private Enterprise. My proposal is that you all find something to work on and here it is. An adjoining state, Georgia, when it passed a lottery also passed a codicil that said our proceeds from this lottery will be used for education. Any child who graduates from an accredited high school in Georgia, whether it is a private one or a public one, can go to a Georgia university free of tuition. All it has to have us bus fair and books. Why can’t you all do that or get the legislature and—you got enough activity here to get that done.
Barber: Mitch, I would like to say one thing to the question. I want you to go to HK__.com and know that we have already put together a 14 point agenda. Jim helped us on it. They also are helping us analyze the economic cost of not doing those things. What we must do now is push them through. Many of those agendas and items did not even come out of committee I think because some people didn’t think we were serious. But we are coming back again February 9th of 2008 again and getting stronger and stronger and as Dr. Malveaux often talks to me about, organizing our people around this agenda and being very serious about it that we are going to insert it into the very political veins of North Carolina to say to folks you can’t keep taking our votes, talking about what you are going to do, the issue is what have you done? And we have an agenda by which to measure people.
Harris: And let me also add, I think that we need to step back in North Carolina and maybe challenge our legislature with regard to re-thinking how the proceeds from the lottery is used. Because the ___ scholarships in Georgia have made a tremendous difference. So that any of those students can go to any university, public or private or even a community college in the state of Georgia. And when people know that they have access to opportunity then they will rise to that occasion. But the failure that we have is that we never take the time to try to connect the dots. We are so in some respects in the public sector, we are so afraid that somebody is going to get something that we think that they are not supposed to have and it’s always a different standard when we talking about the people at the bottom.Lewis: And we are sort of drawing nigh on time so I would like to get this last audience member in. Go ahead, sir.
Dickens: Derek Dickens from Raleigh, North Carolina. I am very pleased that the panel has met to discuss these issues but one glaring omission that I think that we feel in this state and I think we see it across the nation, is the disparity in the access to healthcare. As a person who actually lost a mother waiting on an organ transplant list, you begin to see that in this state, our economic viability and our national security are often tied to our healthcare, our ability to have access to healthcare. And if you can’t have access to healthcare often people are pushed to the side because they are now a liability. As a panel that is certainly in favor of economic arrangements that put African Americans on par in this state and certainly across the nation, how do you think that we should also, or should you think that we should also include this as a component of that and access to healthcare because it has a very deep integration into how people can get jobs, keep jobs and if we don’t do something like that are we also losing out on African American viability in the state at an even increasing rate because now you are no longer part of a community that people want to accept the risk of?
Lewis: Dr. Johnson, I will have you to answer that question especially based on your findings as far as the contributions to healthcare and what it seems that African Americans are getting in return.
Johnson: Well, I think this gentleman has put his finger on the pulse of the issue. And I think all of these issues if we are going to mobilize a political agenda around them have to be argued on the basis that they are competitiveness issues. They are social and moral issues but I am not convinced that anybody cares about social and moral issues anymore. I think if you can make the business case and I will give you one with the healthcare example. I had a CEO tell me recently that he was looking for a new place to open a facility. And he said that his number one site selection criteria was the incidence of obesity in the local community. That if you are too fat and obese, we are not going there. They use that as an indicator for healthcare costs. And if you look at the latest AARP magazine, they rank states in terms of the incidence of obesity and we rank number 17 in the country. And so if that is not a business imperative, I don’t know what is for us. So I think all of these issues are very, very important but we got to frame them that our competitiveness in the global marketplace hinges upon dealing with these seemingly intractable problems. The issue is not can we afford it? The issue is can we afford not to do it? And we have to frame it that way and until we do I think we are just going to be, you know, talking.
Brown: If you would like to get in touch with our guests or obtain a copy or transcript of this program, visit us inline at UNCTV.org/BIF. When you visit be sure to give us your comments and program suggestions. You can also call us on the BIFline at 919-549-7167. For Black Issues Forum, I am Natalie Bullock Brown reminding you to be encouraged no matter what. Have a good one. VO: Quality public television is made possible through the financial contributions of viewers like you who invite you to join them in supporting UNC-TV.
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