Yes, somehow the boot-licking always gets in the way.
More seriously, I don't think that Washington's capitulation to racism and racial self-deprecation in the face of the white establishment is my issue here. Like most, I find this unpalatable at the least. But there is an idea of economic development that, at this point, is hard to disagree with.
We may debate what Washington was actually doing in terms of the curriculum at Tuskegee but he was also the founder of the National Negro Business League for the precise purpose of promoting an economic agenda among African Americans.
This was a point that, as you probably recall, even the socialist Du Bois came to see as valuable in the 1930s as he argued that Negroes should use segregation as a basis for internal development.
One other critique that you don't raise but that I've heard elsewhere is that my post seems to argue that capitalism can be amended and black people saved through proper entrepreneurial training -- and therefore our problems are not systemic. I believe that there is absolutely a systemic element to the sad indexes the NUL report highlights. I also believe that the present system is not going anywhere any time soon and we will require a full toolbox of approaches to minimize the extent to which black people are victimized by it.
Thus, I revisit Washington and take him for what is of use and leave the boot-licking to itself.
Thanks for reading my piece.
Facebook User
· 8 months ago
What? Like I don't read the rest? lol.
Here's the logic I see at work. Obama's elected and we can view this as a victory for black politics, or at the very least for black political enfranchisement. But this election occurs in the wake of black economic subjugation. The Washington/Dubois argument becomes a convenient vehicle with which to discuss this contradiction. Dubois becomes right but wrong. Washington becomes wrong but right.
I understand this logic. I've probably used it before, and most of our contemporaries and predecessors have at some time used it.
I agree that we should organize around the issue of economic rights. The question though is what do you use to convey this position? The development of the NBLD notwithstanding, Washington's behavior on this issue rails against his statements. Is he really the best historical figure to use here? The entire X black leader vs. Y black leader (jackson vs. obama, jackson vs. farrakhan, king vs. x, garvey vs. dubois, dubois vs. washington, kobe vs. shaq, nas vs. jayz, etc.) is problematic as well. Is this what you want use to convey the point?
jelani c.
· 8 months ago
One final point. In no way do I believe that Washington's economic agenda would have led to political rights -- I believe that the political struggles I mention were utterly necessary. Washington was naive in the sense that he believed blacks could become an economically privilege minority that would gain political rights. Obviously the example of Nazi Germany gives us the insight that a prosperous hated minority can find itself in deep trouble almost as easily as a poor hated one can. (Hence the need for political power as well.)
Facebook User
· 8 months ago
I took this for granted, but other readers may not have. Thanks.
Michael David Cobb Bowen
· 8 months ago
It's hard to suggest that DuBois had anything other than dependency in mind when he went over to the Soviet Union to hear tales of great social experimentation in labor markets. At least he had the sense to know that either he was misled or he was a Bolshevik. Obviously he was misled. But did he ever come chastened to deal with the class of American merchants or even small independent farmers as an economic avenue forward for black Americans?
It has been my interpretation that the most economically focused institution was and is the Urban League, and yet what have they done to get beyond the rhetoric of disparate impacts and the various 'fractions of white' statistics - stock in trade of the civil rights movement? Even today the message is so stultified that people have to say 'silver rights' instead of economic development, instead of entrepreneurship, instead of heaven forbid, capitalism. The entire dialog of rights is wrong and it has never in the history of the world created wealth and it won't for black Americans.
I agree that the historical rearview mirror is not the way to navigate forward. Putting words in the mouths of the same 20 black historical figures we all learned about in high school won't do jack. It can't even get you into a good history program at a decent university, much less raise a race. And quite frankly, I tend to believe that there are severe limits to the utility of academic training with regard to the assistance it will provide in the game of political rhetoric we play in talking about the state of Black America. Wouldn't it be nice, even academically speaking, if we paid more attention to the actual economists of African decent? And I don't mean Manning Marable. Earl Graves has been rich as long as I've been alive, but who really listens to him? Who really listens to black businessmen at all anywhere?
EC Hopkins said something brilliant last week. It went to the effect that a lot of intelligent folks who say they don't want to be rich aren't telling the truth. If you gave them 10 million dollars, if they were honest they'd give it all away. But you know they wouldn't do that. The truth is that such people really don't want to have to compete with all the other clever intelligent people who really want 10 million dollars.
Likewise, I think we live in a society leveraged on the work of a few who strive genuinely to figure out the formula for getting the millions to the many who don't. Sooner or later those few are going to figure out they're doing all the work.
submariner
· 8 months ago
I don't know the context in which E.C. delivered his view but if it was in the spirit which you attribute to him then I find it lamentable that a brother as deeply immersed in the classics as he is would miss the most important rule for living which the ancients espoused, moderation. That is the lesson of King Midas. After all, where is the discipline and sacrifice in accepting 10 million dollars? And in traversing Classical to Western civilization this principle of sacrifice is taken to its extreme in the form of Christianity.
A cadre of persons who are skilled at accumulating resources and intelligent in directing their productive use is a good and necessary thing for human progress. Even Jesus had his disciples. But when mere acquisition becomes the goal and productive applications are replaced by the hoarding of luxuries and privileges then the entire structure suffers. So Christianity, for example, doesn't decay because the mass of adherents are sinful but because of the hedonistic individualism of its elders.
To quote C. V. Wedgwood, "Few men are so disinterested as to prefer to live in discomfort under a government which they hold to be right, rather than in comfort under one which they hold to be wrong". The task for the "few who strive" is to discover the happiness of Sisyphus.
—
realtalk
· 8 months ago
It would certainly help if Marc Morial hadn't personally appropriated millions contributed by the Kauffman Foundation for the Urban Entrepreneur Partnership and stuck it in his own pocket.
It would help even more if perfidy such as that came to light and an institution like the National Urban League was aired out at its rotten top.
Irami Osei-Frimpong
· 8 months ago
"As time passed Dubois supported the idea of economic cooperatives, and of using black economic capital to help make black people self-sufficient. "
Du Bois states clearly in the third, fourth and sixth chapters of "Souls" that the idea of economic sufficiency without the attending political rights would be ineffectual, both practically and spiritually. Practically, the class of economic leaders wouldn't have the knowledge base to protect themselves against the political majority without secure political rights. In a way, this prefigured the ease with which the California Japanese businessmen were disenfranchised during WWII in America and the Jews in Europe.
Spiritually, Du Bois was looking for black America to disclose our gift and to teach the world about dignity in life. Washington would have been happy if we just became one of the obnoxious parvenu classes of American immigrants on their way to rote assimilation, blithely reproducing or countenancing any political atrocities the nation had embedded in American democratic practice. He'd probably consider Bob Johnson, Barry Gordy and Clarence Thomas successes, whereas, I'd like to think, Du Bois would look past their wealth and even bizarre esteem and see them for the opportunistic jackasses they are. Yes, blacks could have their Bernie Madoffs and Tim Geithners, and maybe we'd have more economic capital in the neighborhood if we studied tricknology, but I'd rather not so quickly give up our potential dignity as moral leaders of the new world.
Cobb
· 8 months ago
In that regard, one wonders if any matters of racial equality were worth studying. I mean if blacks are denied X that whites have, does the possession of X make blacks better or is it only the struggle to get blacks X that makes them better? If it's the latter then that lends itself to all of the excruciating injustices of permanent revolution, not to mention the perversity of the incentives to deny black attainment of X.
makheru bradley
· 8 months ago
I don’t have a problem with Dr. Jelani Cobb’s approach of applying the thoughts of historical figures to current conditions. Indeed Dr. Martin L. King’s speech “Why I Am Opposed To The War In Vietnam” is very much relevant to the Iraq War and to the coming escalation of war in Af-Pak.
As a synthesizer of ideas I’ve always attempted to avoid the “either or” argument similar to the way Taylor Branch described Dr. Vernon Johns: “Like Booker T. Washington, he espoused hard, humbling work in basic trades, as opposed to W.E.B. Bu Bois’s ‘talented tent’ strategy… Like Du Bois and Frederick Douglass, Johns advocated a simultaneous campaign for full political rights. He rejected as demeaning and foolhardy Washington’s accommodationist strategy of offering to trade political rights for economic ones. Like Dubois, he believed fiercely in the highest standards of scholarship… But like Washington, he believed that the dignity and security of a people derived from it masses, and that without stability and character in the masses an elite could live above them only in fantasy.”
“Quite simply black America has waged a more effective civil rights movement than economic rights movement.” – Jelani Cobb
I totally agree with that assessment. There are four major elements of power: economics, education, culture and politics. Over the past 40 years Afrikan Americans have taken an unbalanced approach to power—overwhelmingly focusing on electoral politics at the expense of the other three areas. The problems highlighted in the 2009 NUL report are primarily the result of this unbalanced approach to power.
The real irony to me is that we have depression-like unemployment and a shrinking percentage of wealth amongst Afrikan Americans at a time when we have an Afrikan American president of the United States.
For example:
[According to a comprehensive report from the nonprofit group, United for a Fair Economy, over the past eight years the total loss of wealth for people of color is between $164 billion and $213 billion, for subprime loans which is the greatest loss of wealth for people of color in mod¬ern history:
"According to federal data, people of color are three times more likely to have subprime loans: high-cost loans account for 55 per cent of loans to blacks, but only 17 per cent of loans to whites".
If there had been equitable distribution of subprime loans, losses for white people would be 44.5 per cent higher and losses for people of color would be about 24 per cent lower. "This is evidence of systemic prejudice and institutional racism."
Before the current crisis, based on improvements in median household net worth, it would take 594 more years for blacks to achieve parity with whites. The current crisis is likely to stretch this even further.]—Pam Martens
It’s granted that President Obama inherited these conditions. The real question is will his policies remediate the problems or will they facilitate the deterioration of the conditions outlined by the NUL?
There are some disturbing trends. The Washington Post noted that:
“The Obama administration is engineering its new bailout initiatives in a way that it believes will allow firms benefiting from the programs to avoid restrictions imposed by Congress, including limits on lavish executive pay, according to government officials.
This strategy has so far attracted little scrutiny on Capitol Hill, and even some senior congressional aides dealing with the financial crisis said they were unaware of the administration's efforts. Just two weeks ago, Congress erupted in outrage over bonuses being paid at American International Group, with some lawmakers faulting the administration for failing to do more to safeguard taxpayers' interests.
In another program, which seeks to restart consumer lending, a special entity was created largely for the separate purpose of getting around legal limits on the Federal Reserve, which is helping fund this initiative. The Fed does not ordinarily provide support for the markets that finance credit cards, auto loans and student loans but could channel the funds through a middleman.
At first, when the initiative was being developed last year, the Bush administration decided to apply executive-pay limits to firms participating in this program. But Obama officials reversed that decision days before it was unveiled on March 3 and lifted the curbs, according to sources who spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions were private.”
Add to this the comments of William Black to Bill Moyers:
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Geithner is charging, is covering up. Just like Paulson did before him. Geithner is publicly saying that it's going to take $2 trillion — a trillion is a thousand billion — $2 trillion taxpayer dollars to deal with this problem. But they're allowing all the banks to report that they're not only solvent, but fully capitalized. Both statements can't be true. It can't be that they need $2 trillion, because they have masses losses, and that they're fine.
These are all people who have failed. Paulson failed, Geithner failed. They were all promoted because they failed, not because...
BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, Geithner has, was one of our nation's top regulators, during the entire subprime scandal, that I just described. He took absolutely no effective action. He gave no warning. He did nothing in response to the FBI warning that there was an epidemic of fraud. All this pig in the poke stuff happened under him. So, in his phrase about legacy assets. Well he's a failed legacy regulator.
BILL MOYERS: To hear you say this is unusual because you supported Barack Obama, during the campaign. But you're seeming disillusioned now.
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, certainly in the financial sphere, I am. I think, first, the policies are substantively bad. Second, I think they completely lack integrity. Third, they violate the rule of law. This is being done just like Secretary Paulson did it. In violation of the law. We adopted a law after the Savings and Loan crisis, called the Prompt Corrective Action Law. And it requires them to close these institutions. And they're refusing to obey the law.
I hear Dr. Ron Daniels when he says, “That's why Marc Morial's action in demanding that President Obama do something about the gross disparities between Blacks and Whites in education, health, income and wealth was courageous and exemplary.”
Surely Daniels and everyone else concerned know that it’s going to require massive social action to move the President in that direction.
Facebook User
· 8 months ago
Synthesizing ideas is all good, given that there are few really new ideas to go around. But reread my post again...the problem isn't so much that we do it, it's how we go about doing it. Booker T. Washington's ideas were bankrupt. There's really no way around it. There's nothing there to synthesize, unless we want to call for black men to go back to early 20th century industrial labor conditions.
Here's another way to think about it. Undoubtedly Obama is going to make a number of African Americans independently wealthy. Who these African Americans are is not necessarily important. But it is important to consider the occupations of these African Americans. Where do they work? What do they do? Taking Washington at what he was rather than fitting him into some type of black leader dichotomy that some of us want to fit him in, it isn't clear that he'd be all that dissatisfied with the results. Because he wasn't all that supportive of the masses in the first place.
makheru bradley
· 8 months ago
Facebook User, if you want to totally disregard the ideas of BTW that is your prerogative. I would say that conceiving of an idea, developing it, and sustaining an institution which has educated thousands of Afrikan Americans secures Washington’s place in history. After all how many Afrikan Americans have done that?
Facebook User
· 8 months ago
That's right, you don't know what I look like. "Facebook user" is me. Lester Spence.
We can point to the NAACP, the Urban League, CORE, any number of institutions that people built with their sweat equity. Are you suggesting that we give the ideas of Booker T. Washington as HE, not his successors, put into practice a pass because he created a school that still exists today? Is that what you're suggesting?
BET isn't "black owned" anymore. But it isn't clear to me that it would be any different if its ownership hadn't changed hands. Should we celebrate it because it's generated income for African Americans and provided an outlet for black media talent? Should we similarly celebrate Johnson Publications?
makheru bradley
· 8 months ago
I thought that was you Dr. Spence, but I was not positive. The previous comment was in response to this statement: “Booker T. Washington's ideas were bankrupt.” I read that as a blanket condemnation of the man’s total ideas. Certainly the idea to found and develop a great institution was not bankrupt. That’s just one of the pitfalls of blanket condemnations.
“Are you suggesting that we give the ideas of Booker T. Washington as HE, not his successors, put into practice a pass because he created a school that still exists today? Is that what you're suggesting?”
Not at all, I advocate and practice critical thinking, constructive criticism, self-criticism, creative contention, and making judicious selection of the best historical models to emulate.
Given the massive Black youth unemployment rate, I think the idea of pursuing skilled trades for those who don’t have an “academic” orientation is just as valuable today as when BTW suggested it.
I couldn’t understand why TU was being singled out when every HBCU prepares grist for the capitalist mill.
I think that every institution has to be judged based on the total scope of its positives and negatives, and generating income is only one factor. The Frank Lucas organization generated a lot of income for his family and his employees. When we compare the income generated to the damage done to our community, clearly the negative impact outweighs the positive. Some pundits would hold that the same is true for BET.
The comments on BTW notwithstanding, my main point was:
The real irony to me is that we have depression-like unemployment and a shrinking percentage of wealth amongst Afrikan Americans at a time when we have an Afrikan American president of the United States.
It’s granted that President Obama inherited these conditions. The real question is will his policies remediate the problems or will they facilitate the deterioration of the conditions outlined by the NUL?
Facebook User
· 8 months ago
We agree on the fundamental point, which is why I didn't refer to it. Obama is not different than any other previous President. To move them in a progressive direction, it requires sustained organizing...something we don't have at the moment.
But this is related to my central challenge.
You're suggesting along with Dr. Cobb that Washington's ideas were worthy of emulation and discussion. I believe that the ideas Washington promoted that you (and many others) laud were bankrupt to the extent that the way he put them into practice suggests that he used them as political devices to further pacify black populations. Tuskegee and Hampton are the two HBCU's most connected to drudgery model of black southern education. Hampton STILL has problems--note their recent move to sanction black dreadlock-wearing business students.
Note what I'm saying. I am NOT knocking the equivalent of apprenticeship training--training that prepares men and women for the craft industries, that prepares them to have their own small business shops in so doing. There were other institutions and individuals operating in the Deep South, during the time of Booker T. that promoted these ideas in word AND in deed.
I am knocking the use of Booker T. Washington exclusively to promote this idea, and then to generate contemporary support for black economic development. Booker T. Washington is NOT someone we should emulate, he is not someone we should think about rehabilitating the same way Bush attempted to rehabilitate Nixon. If we're looking for historical models....Tuskegee isn't the one we should be looking for.
makheru bradley
· 8 months ago
Well Doc, this is just something that we’ll have to agree to disagree on. I once heard Dr. John H. Clarke say something about BTW that was interesting. As I remember it, I was in Selma for the 30th Anniversary of the Bridge Crossing when I heard that Dr. Clarke was speaking in ATL. Things were winding down in Selma, so I hauled azz across the plains into the metropolis and arrived at the place before Dr. Clarke started speaking. JHC said that while BTW was publicly criticizing WEB et al; he was secretly funding efforts to end Jim Crow. JHC was basically saying that BTW was running a game on his white philanthropist supporters.
I never bothered to research this, but since I heard it straight from the mouth of a historian I have the deepest respect for, I believe that it’s more than likely true.
It just goes to show that BTW, like all historical figures was a very complex person.
Hotep!
Facebook User
· 8 months ago
I feel you. If you ever have time, one of the best books I read over the last ten years was James Anderson's The Education of Blacks in the South. More than any other book it changed my thinking about Washington and about industrial education.
All Comments
More seriously, I don't think that Washington's capitulation to racism and racial self-deprecation in the face of the white establishment is my issue here. Like most, I find this unpalatable at the least. But there is an idea of economic development that, at this point, is hard to disagree with.
We may debate what Washington was actually doing in terms of the curriculum at Tuskegee but he was also the founder of the National Negro Business League for the precise purpose of promoting an economic agenda among African Americans.
This was a point that, as you probably recall, even the socialist Du Bois came to see as valuable in the 1930s as he argued that Negroes should use segregation as a basis for internal development.
One other critique that you don't raise but that I've heard elsewhere is that my post seems to argue that capitalism can be amended and black people saved through proper entrepreneurial training -- and therefore our problems are not systemic. I believe that there is absolutely a systemic element to the sad indexes the NUL report highlights. I also believe that the present system is not going anywhere any time soon and we will require a full toolbox of approaches to minimize the extent to which black people are victimized by it.
Thus, I revisit Washington and take him for what is of use and leave the boot-licking to itself.
Thanks for reading my piece.
Here's the logic I see at work. Obama's elected and we can view this as a victory for black politics, or at the very least for black political enfranchisement. But this election occurs in the wake of black economic subjugation. The Washington/Dubois argument becomes a convenient vehicle with which to discuss this contradiction. Dubois becomes right but wrong. Washington becomes wrong but right.
I understand this logic. I've probably used it before, and most of our contemporaries and predecessors have at some time used it.
I agree that we should organize around the issue of economic rights. The question though is what do you use to convey this position? The development of the NBLD notwithstanding, Washington's behavior on this issue rails against his statements. Is he really the best historical figure to use here? The entire X black leader vs. Y black leader (jackson vs. obama, jackson vs. farrakhan, king vs. x, garvey vs. dubois, dubois vs. washington, kobe vs. shaq, nas vs. jayz, etc.) is problematic as well. Is this what you want use to convey the point?
It has been my interpretation that the most economically focused institution was and is the Urban League, and yet what have they done to get beyond the rhetoric of disparate impacts and the various 'fractions of white' statistics - stock in trade of the civil rights movement? Even today the message is so stultified that people have to say 'silver rights' instead of economic development, instead of entrepreneurship, instead of heaven forbid, capitalism. The entire dialog of rights is wrong and it has never in the history of the world created wealth and it won't for black Americans.
I agree that the historical rearview mirror is not the way to navigate forward. Putting words in the mouths of the same 20 black historical figures we all learned about in high school won't do jack. It can't even get you into a good history program at a decent university, much less raise a race. And quite frankly, I tend to believe that there are severe limits to the utility of academic training with regard to the assistance it will provide in the game of political rhetoric we play in talking about the state of Black America. Wouldn't it be nice, even academically speaking, if we paid more attention to the actual economists of African decent? And I don't mean Manning Marable. Earl Graves has been rich as long as I've been alive, but who really listens to him? Who really listens to black businessmen at all anywhere?
EC Hopkins said something brilliant last week. It went to the effect that a lot of intelligent folks who say they don't want to be rich aren't telling the truth. If you gave them 10 million dollars, if they were honest they'd give it all away. But you know they wouldn't do that. The truth is that such people really don't want to have to compete with all the other clever intelligent people who really want 10 million dollars.
Likewise, I think we live in a society leveraged on the work of a few who strive genuinely to figure out the formula for getting the millions to the many who don't. Sooner or later those few are going to figure out they're doing all the work.
A cadre of persons who are skilled at accumulating resources and intelligent in directing their productive use is a good and necessary thing for human progress. Even Jesus had his disciples. But when mere acquisition becomes the goal and productive applications are replaced by the hoarding of luxuries and privileges then the entire structure suffers. So Christianity, for example, doesn't decay because the mass of adherents are sinful but because of the hedonistic individualism of its elders.
To quote C. V. Wedgwood, "Few men are so disinterested as to prefer to live in discomfort under a government which they hold to be right, rather than in comfort under one which they hold to be wrong". The task for the "few who strive" is to discover the happiness of Sisyphus.
—
It would help even more if perfidy such as that came to light and an institution like the National Urban League was aired out at its rotten top.
Du Bois states clearly in the third, fourth and sixth chapters of "Souls" that the idea of economic sufficiency without the attending political rights would be ineffectual, both practically and spiritually. Practically, the class of economic leaders wouldn't have the knowledge base to protect themselves against the political majority without secure political rights. In a way, this prefigured the ease with which the California Japanese businessmen were disenfranchised during WWII in America and the Jews in Europe.
Spiritually, Du Bois was looking for black America to disclose our gift and to teach the world about dignity in life. Washington would have been happy if we just became one of the obnoxious parvenu classes of American immigrants on their way to rote assimilation, blithely reproducing or countenancing any political atrocities the nation had embedded in American democratic practice. He'd probably consider Bob Johnson, Barry Gordy and Clarence Thomas successes, whereas, I'd like to think, Du Bois would look past their wealth and even bizarre esteem and see them for the opportunistic jackasses they are. Yes, blacks could have their Bernie Madoffs and Tim Geithners, and maybe we'd have more economic capital in the neighborhood if we studied tricknology, but I'd rather not so quickly give up our potential dignity as moral leaders of the new world.
As a synthesizer of ideas I’ve always attempted to avoid the “either or” argument similar to the way Taylor Branch described Dr. Vernon Johns: “Like Booker T. Washington, he espoused hard, humbling work in basic trades, as opposed to W.E.B. Bu Bois’s ‘talented tent’ strategy… Like Du Bois and Frederick Douglass, Johns advocated a simultaneous campaign for full political rights. He rejected as demeaning and foolhardy Washington’s accommodationist strategy of offering to trade political rights for economic ones. Like Dubois, he believed fiercely in the highest standards of scholarship… But like Washington, he believed that the dignity and security of a people derived from it masses, and that without stability and character in the masses an elite could live above them only in fantasy.”
“Quite simply black America has waged a more effective civil rights movement than economic rights movement.” – Jelani Cobb
I totally agree with that assessment. There are four major elements of power: economics, education, culture and politics. Over the past 40 years Afrikan Americans have taken an unbalanced approach to power—overwhelmingly focusing on electoral politics at the expense of the other three areas. The problems highlighted in the 2009 NUL report are primarily the result of this unbalanced approach to power.
The real irony to me is that we have depression-like unemployment and a shrinking percentage of wealth amongst Afrikan Americans at a time when we have an Afrikan American president of the United States.
For example:
[According to a comprehensive report from the nonprofit group, United for a Fair Economy, over the past eight years the total loss of wealth for people of color is between $164 billion and $213 billion, for subprime loans which is the greatest loss of wealth for people of color in mod¬ern history:
"According to federal data, people of color are three times more likely to have subprime loans: high-cost loans account for 55 per cent of loans to blacks, but only 17 per cent of loans to whites".
If there had been equitable distribution of subprime loans, losses for white people would be 44.5 per cent higher and losses for people of color would be about 24 per cent lower. "This is evidence of systemic prejudice and institutional racism."
Before the current crisis, based on improvements in median household net worth, it would take 594 more years for blacks to achieve parity with whites. The current crisis is likely to stretch this even further.]—Pam Martens
It’s granted that President Obama inherited these conditions. The real question is will his policies remediate the problems or will they facilitate the deterioration of the conditions outlined by the NUL?
There are some disturbing trends. The Washington Post noted that:
“The Obama administration is engineering its new bailout initiatives in a way that it believes will allow firms benefiting from the programs to avoid restrictions imposed by Congress, including limits on lavish executive pay, according to government officials.
This strategy has so far attracted little scrutiny on Capitol Hill, and even some senior congressional aides dealing with the financial crisis said they were unaware of the administration's efforts. Just two weeks ago, Congress erupted in outrage over bonuses being paid at American International Group, with some lawmakers faulting the administration for failing to do more to safeguard taxpayers' interests.
In another program, which seeks to restart consumer lending, a special entity was created largely for the separate purpose of getting around legal limits on the Federal Reserve, which is helping fund this initiative. The Fed does not ordinarily provide support for the markets that finance credit cards, auto loans and student loans but could channel the funds through a middleman.
At first, when the initiative was being developed last year, the Bush administration decided to apply executive-pay limits to firms participating in this program. But Obama officials reversed that decision days before it was unveiled on March 3 and lifted the curbs, according to sources who spoke on condition of anonymity because the discussions were private.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/ar...
Add to this the comments of William Black to Bill Moyers:
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Geithner is charging, is covering up. Just like Paulson did before him. Geithner is publicly saying that it's going to take $2 trillion — a trillion is a thousand billion — $2 trillion taxpayer dollars to deal with this problem. But they're allowing all the banks to report that they're not only solvent, but fully capitalized. Both statements can't be true. It can't be that they need $2 trillion, because they have masses losses, and that they're fine.
These are all people who have failed. Paulson failed, Geithner failed. They were all promoted because they failed, not because...
BILL MOYERS: What do you mean?
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, Geithner has, was one of our nation's top regulators, during the entire subprime scandal, that I just described. He took absolutely no effective action. He gave no warning. He did nothing in response to the FBI warning that there was an epidemic of fraud. All this pig in the poke stuff happened under him. So, in his phrase about legacy assets. Well he's a failed legacy regulator.
BILL MOYERS: To hear you say this is unusual because you supported Barack Obama, during the campaign. But you're seeming disillusioned now.
WILLIAM K. BLACK: Well, certainly in the financial sphere, I am. I think, first, the policies are substantively bad. Second, I think they completely lack integrity. Third, they violate the rule of law. This is being done just like Secretary Paulson did it. In violation of the law. We adopted a law after the Savings and Loan crisis, called the Prompt Corrective Action Law. And it requires them to close these institutions. And they're refusing to obey the law.
I hear Dr. Ron Daniels when he says, “That's why Marc Morial's action in demanding that President Obama do something about the gross disparities between Blacks and Whites in education, health, income and wealth was courageous and exemplary.”
Surely Daniels and everyone else concerned know that it’s going to require massive social action to move the President in that direction.
Here's another way to think about it. Undoubtedly Obama is going to make a number of African Americans independently wealthy. Who these African Americans are is not necessarily important. But it is important to consider the occupations of these African Americans. Where do they work? What do they do? Taking Washington at what he was rather than fitting him into some type of black leader dichotomy that some of us want to fit him in, it isn't clear that he'd be all that dissatisfied with the results. Because he wasn't all that supportive of the masses in the first place.
We can point to the NAACP, the Urban League, CORE, any number of institutions that people built with their sweat equity. Are you suggesting that we give the ideas of Booker T. Washington as HE, not his successors, put into practice a pass because he created a school that still exists today? Is that what you're suggesting?
BET isn't "black owned" anymore. But it isn't clear to me that it would be any different if its ownership hadn't changed hands. Should we celebrate it because it's generated income for African Americans and provided an outlet for black media talent? Should we similarly celebrate Johnson Publications?
“Are you suggesting that we give the ideas of Booker T. Washington as HE, not his successors, put into practice a pass because he created a school that still exists today? Is that what you're suggesting?”
Not at all, I advocate and practice critical thinking, constructive criticism, self-criticism, creative contention, and making judicious selection of the best historical models to emulate.
Given the massive Black youth unemployment rate, I think the idea of pursuing skilled trades for those who don’t have an “academic” orientation is just as valuable today as when BTW suggested it.
I couldn’t understand why TU was being singled out when every HBCU prepares grist for the capitalist mill.
I think that every institution has to be judged based on the total scope of its positives and negatives, and generating income is only one factor. The Frank Lucas organization generated a lot of income for his family and his employees. When we compare the income generated to the damage done to our community, clearly the negative impact outweighs the positive. Some pundits would hold that the same is true for BET.
The comments on BTW notwithstanding, my main point was:
The real irony to me is that we have depression-like unemployment and a shrinking percentage of wealth amongst Afrikan Americans at a time when we have an Afrikan American president of the United States.
It’s granted that President Obama inherited these conditions. The real question is will his policies remediate the problems or will they facilitate the deterioration of the conditions outlined by the NUL?
But this is related to my central challenge.
You're suggesting along with Dr. Cobb that Washington's ideas were worthy of emulation and discussion. I believe that the ideas Washington promoted that you (and many others) laud were bankrupt to the extent that the way he put them into practice suggests that he used them as political devices to further pacify black populations. Tuskegee and Hampton are the two HBCU's most connected to drudgery model of black southern education. Hampton STILL has problems--note their recent move to sanction black dreadlock-wearing business students.
Note what I'm saying. I am NOT knocking the equivalent of apprenticeship training--training that prepares men and women for the craft industries, that prepares them to have their own small business shops in so doing. There were other institutions and individuals operating in the Deep South, during the time of Booker T. that promoted these ideas in word AND in deed.
I am knocking the use of Booker T. Washington exclusively to promote this idea, and then to generate contemporary support for black economic development. Booker T. Washington is NOT someone we should emulate, he is not someone we should think about rehabilitating the same way Bush attempted to rehabilitate Nixon. If we're looking for historical models....Tuskegee isn't the one we should be looking for.
I never bothered to research this, but since I heard it straight from the mouth of a historian I have the deepest respect for, I believe that it’s more than likely true.
It just goes to show that BTW, like all historical figures was a very complex person.
Hotep!