MANSFIELD: Lies That Will Keep Democrats From Winning

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In a recent article for the New York Daily News, Metro columnist Shaun King laments the “soft bigotry” on the part of Democrats in the U.S. Senate. Senate staffers of color provided King with shocking statistics that proved so-called liberals and progressives are just talking the talk, but not walking the walk when it comes to diversity.

They pointed King to a recent study from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies that stated, “Although people of color make up over 36 percent of the U.S. population and over 28 percent of the citizen voting-age population, they represent only 7.1 percent of top Senate staffers. Of the 336 top Senate staffers, our analysis finds evidence of only 24 staffers of color (12 Asian-Americans, 7 Latinos, 3 African-Americans, and 2 Native-Americans). African-Americans make up 13 percent of the U.S. population but only 0.9 percent of top Senate staffers, and Latinos make up over 16 percent of the U.S. population but only 2.1 percent of top Senate staffers.”

The one senator that has a black chief of staff is Republican Tim Scott of South Carolina, whose office may be the most diverse in the entire Senate. Go figure.

But the Senate isn’t the only place that suffers from a lack of diversity among supposedly liberal and progressive organizations. A cursory glance at the staffs of many organizations tasked with improving the lot of all Americans via philanthropy would reveal a shocking lack of diversity, creating a reality that plays out in many ways that are harmful to the very people they are supposed to be helping.

Here’s an example: In cities across the country, where there’s a focus on improving urban cores, oftentimes the vast majority of the funding goes to the whitest areas, where the need is the least. That’s overwhelmingly true here in Cleveland. One of the primary reasons this occurs has to do with who is making the decisions in regards to where the dollars go. A fact of American life is that people give money to people who look like themselves and this simply must change.

A more specific example is that of Majora Carter, an urban revitalization specialist who cut her teeth as an environmental activist in the Bronx, NY. Upon returning home after college she looked at her Hunts Point neighborhood with new eyes. The Bronx River had been turned into a virtual sewer. Through mad skills and sheer persistence she managed to turn a weed-choked and debris loaded section of the riverfront into a beautiful park. Lauded for this and other efforts Carter was made a MacArthur Fellow and was awarded a “genius grant.”

Although she is a recognized pioneer in her field, now that funds are being made available to reinvigorate struggling New York neighborhoods, Carter is being effectively shut out of the funding. The funds are going to white organizations from outside the community who have little cultural competency; what they do have is white skin. And this is being replicated throughout the United States.

I’ve witnessed it up close and personal here in Cleveland as I watched quality projects — including my own — go begging simply because they are being run by minorities. It’s indeed shameful.

But more importantly, such behavior — overlooking persons of color to promote someone white simply because they are white, and funneling funding primarily to organizations that are run by whites — cripples the progressive movement, making it into one big lie.

For years I’d heard older black folks that were born and raised in the South say that they preferred living below the Cotton Curtain than up North. I recall thinking at the time they must be insane, to want to live in such a racist part of the country, but their logic was solid and their reasoning well thought out.

“I’d rather live around white folks who are honest about how they feel about me,” an old uncle of mine once told me, “than to be around white folks that constantly lie to my face as they continually stab me in the back.” Indeed.

By and large white progressive institutions really are full of shit and have a long way to go in this country before they can shake off the bad karma that’s been kicking them in the ass. Do I know any fair-minded whites? Lots of  ’em. But they too often stand mute in the face of blatant favoritism and not-so-subtle bigotry. Much the pity.

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From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com

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