Saturday, March 08, 2003

Churches target Cincinnati in campaign to help blacks
We get to be the whipping boy for a political campaign. This is not about civil rights, this is about politics. This about extreme-capitalists vs. socialists (or even some communists).
Church leaders called for a national campaign to promote social justice and economic programs to help black people.
This is about reducing poverty in the "black community." That is a good thing to want to do, it would be nice to try and do that in all communities, instead of creating false sense of discrimination. Hold on before you jump to the wrong conclusion, I agree discrimination exists, but not on a macro or conspiratorial level, and mostly not based on race, but on culture. There are more poor white people, than black people. That is a fact. As a percentage of each race in this county, blacks have a much higher percentage in poverty than whites. That is a fact. There is not one answer to why that is the case. They are countless answers because most of the reasons are subjective to each individual person or family. To say it is all about race or racism is wrong, self-defeating, and unproductive. You don't get more unproductive and down right offensive when you refuse to let a City Councilman into your meeting.
Councilman David Pepper called it unfair to target Cincinnati-based corporations such as Procter & Gamble and Federated Department Stores Inc., that have "gone out of their way" to contribute to job and educational initiatives designed to improve the lives of African-Americans. Pepper tried to get into the meeting to explain to national leaders what actions city officials are taking toward progress, but boycott organizers turned him away at the door.
This particular group of boycotters also have revised the "demands" to end the boycott, but beyond the general description of the changes from the article, I can't find the new demands online. When Nate Livngston gets out of jail, I am not sure if he will be more vocal on the internal boycott split or jump on the bandwagon of this now apparent leading voice of the boycott movement. The new leadership has apparently deleted some of the prior demands, like the demand that the police chief be fired, but have add some, like a "community bank." How can you hold a city hostage until it creates a private business, especially a bank? Do they know how long it takes to start a bank? You can't just start a bank over night; the regulation process will take quite a lot of time. Additionally, it sounds like they just want free money. Why don't they try setting up a credit union? That might be faster to create, and it can be run on a collective basis. The oddest thing, and frankly the nuttiest thing, is that a new demand included an investigation of "outside forces" that are claimed to be responsible for the drug ring problems. I love this one most. I guess the CIA is responsible? If you can't accept the reality that the people who are the drug dealers in the black neighborhoods are black, then you will never be able to rid those neighborhoods of those criminals. If you shield criminals, you will just breed more criminals. The cycle of racial grandstanding will be a never ending story in this town until the boycotters get what I think is their unmentioned wish: a majority “black” city.

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