My inbox was filled to overflowing the other day with comments from folks outraged over the fact that Cleveland Browns legend Jim Brown met with President-elect Trump to “discuss ways to support minorities.” Now the fact that Brown had to go through that faker Pastor Darryl Scott — whom I detest — to get to Trump is distasteful to me. But I’m not at all upset with the fact that Brown met with Trump if it leads to good outcomes for African-American youth.
Jim Brown started the Amer-I-Can program with his money out of his own pocket back in 1988 in Los Angeles as a vehicle to curb gang violence. Indeed, he was the first (and for a long time only) black athlete to take up the cause of disadvantaged youth of color. Virtually all other blacks who had gotten wealthy off the support of everyday black folk (be they in sports, music or another form of entertainment) were too busy flaunting their wealth to give anything back, something that is still all too common today. That’s why I’ve tended to give Brown a pass on the alleged transgressions in his personal life. When all is said and done he really does care about the condition of young black males.
He thought that his celebrity would attract support from both public officials and private sources since his program deals with empowerment, entrepreneurship, crime reduction, ending gang violence, getting drugs off the streets, improving educational outcomes and advocating for prison reforms. Brown was way ahead of everyone else on these issues and had tremendous street creds. The gangbangers listen to him.
Yes, his programs have stumbled more than once, usually because Brown overly trusted those he brought on board to help him carry out his mission. James Box and Reggie Rucker were two individuals that let him down, but he never let the failures of others stop him.
While he managed to attract a modicum of support when he first launched the Amer-I-Can program, and despite his early successes, funding has always been a problem. The folks who control the purse strings for such programs often only allocate just enough money to fail (enough to salve their consciences) and then go “Tsk, tsk, what a pity.”
And the next thing out of their mouths is, “Hey, we really tried. But you know how hard it is to help those people.” Another line of thought is, “How long are we supposed to keep trying?” To which I answer, “Until you fix the problem that you created via systemic and institutionalized racism, no matter how many decades it takes. After all, these problems were centuries in the making, and as much as you whites like to try to posit, we blacks did not do this to ourselves. There’s nothing wrong with us, something was done to us.”
This then is the game so-called progressives have been playing on blacks since the days of the Great Society programs. A smattering of help for X number of years, but as soon as conservatives raise their voices against efforts to assist those who have been left out of the prosperity, liberals and so-called progressives back away. They’ve never really fought all that hard for black folk or for what’s right and fair, but they like to constantly tell themselves they have, which is total, unadulterated bullshit.
What should have happened was this: Foundations should have given grants to Brown’s Amer-I-Can program (and other grassroots efforts that could prove effective), but with the stipulation that some of the funds be used to hire young African-American professionals to help administer the programs — the area of greatest weakness. If problems were spotted, in this way they could be corrected, rather than just abandoning the program all together. It’s called “course correction,” and all too often it doesn’t happen with programs that supposedly are designed to uplift minorities.
By way of example, we’re currently faced with an opioid addiction crisis in the country that is killing young people, and Ohio is at the epicenter. Solving it is going to be a tough nut to crack, but since it primarily affects whites, our local and national resolve to find solutions will remain rock-solid strong. We need that same kind of dedication and commitment when it comes to solving the problems of disadvantaged, inner city blacks.
So if Trump is willing to put some real dollars into programs like Brown’s Amer-I-Can, I’m not going to try to look into his heart to see if he’s being sincere. In fact, I know that he’s not since sincerity isn’t one of his strong suits. But if he comes up with real dollars, real dedication and real solutions that helps to bring about an end to the poverty and violence that plagues too many urban areas of America, then I’m all for Jim Brown attempting to get the funding for his program that has proven to work the past … and can — with proper oversight — prove to work again in the future, and on a much larger scale.
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 at http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com