I could be a hopeless optimist, but it seems that more people are thinking deeply about the kinds of lives they want to lead as life has become harder in our country.

Recently I was invited to speak to students in a Nonprofit Leadership graduate program on “How to Build a Career Based on Social Justice Principles.” It gave me a chance to think about what has worked for me, and these are the guidelines I shared that evening:

• Do the work you think needs to be done — whether you get paid for it or not. Our life “careers” are made up of the work we do for pay as well as what we choose to do in our personal time. Instead of dreaming of getting paid to do the work you truly believe in, go ahead and do it now as a volunteer. All the important justice movements of our times – civil rights, women’s liberation, gay rights, environmental protection — were started and driven by volunteers whose lives were transformed by their participation.

• Live a modest life. Don’t let your desire for “stuff” determine your life choices. Too many people get stuck in work they don’t respect only because they have to support a lifestyle that is too expensive to sustain while also doing justice work. Our lifestyles can control our lives rather than the other way around.

• Choose carefully the influences in your life. The people you hang out with, the images you’re exposed to, even the homes of your friends all influence your decisions. Gravitate towards people whose lives you respect and who are hopeful and engaged in making change. And protect yourself from commercial bombardments that tell you to buy more.

• Look for inspiration. Make a point of reading or hearing the messages of people who inspire you to seek justice. We all need inspiration to be the people we want to be.

• Look for humane environments in which to work or volunteer. Some organizations truly value their staff or volunteers; others don’t. Look for situations where your talents are valued, where you have an opportunity to develop new skills, and where you have opportunities to be a leader.

• Periodically assess whether you’re living the life you want to live. Reflect on whether you’re feeling proud of your contributions or discouraged. You may need to make a change to maintain your commitment to justice principles. This is a good issue to reflect on with a trusted friend or potential mentor – one of those people whose life choices you respect.

• Be willing to take risks that can help keep you honest and committed. This could include participating in a civil disobedience action or traveling on a peace delegation to a country in turmoil. Or finally quitting a job that is not meaningful. But of course it’s important to be realistic about financial consequences especially in these difficult economic times.

• Live a balanced life. Justice movements cannot fulfill all our needs for love, companionship, support and meaning in our lives. Expecting them to be all and do all will only lead to disappointment and leave you bitter. The happier and more stable your life is, the bigger a contribution you will be able to make.

Do these practices make life choices easy? No. But hopefully you’ll find some of them helpful in keeping your life on track.  As my grown son once asked, “Why didn’t you tell us that being an adult is so hard?”

Vivian Rothstein
The Frying Pan 

Scene from the second Khymer Rouge trial.

Hope and Change: The Arab Spring Dominated the Headlines, But 2011 Saw Other Landmark Human Rights Victories

There’s little doubt that 2011 will be remembered as the year of the Arab Spring, and rightly so. While it’s too early to predict the ultimate fate of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and other Middle Eastern countries, the popular uprisings in these nations represented nothing less than an epic battle for basic human rights.

The world saw a number of other significant human rights victories this past year. These advances, though understandably overshadowed by state-sponsored persecution in far too many places across the globe, have far-reaching implications for the rule of law.

So, as the international community prepares to mark the 61^st annual Human Rights Day on December 10, here is a short list of some of the best human rights developments of 2011 outside the Middle East.

California Passes First-Ever State Bill on Congo Conflict Minerals

What if one of the world’s largest economies took a stand against the lethal use of mineral wealth to fund egregious human rights violations? That’s what happened in September when the California Assembly approved legislation that bars state agencies from doing business with companies that violate federal rules designed to shut off commerce to military groups in eastern Congo. The bill was signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, making California the first state to pass such a law.

Resolution to Support Torture Victims

The Golden State’s Legislature also distinguished itself by passing a resolution declaring June 26, 2011 to be a Day in Support of Victims of Torture in California. The resolution also seeks to buttress the Torture Victims Relief Act of 1998 to ensure adequate funding for torture survivor programs.

Recognition of Pinochet Victims

Adding yet another coda to the ugly story of former Chilean strongman Augusto Pinochet, a commission identified 9,800 additional victims of political imprisonment and torture during  Pinochet’s rule. The recognition, which brings the total to more than 40,000, is not merely a validation of past suffering — each of the victims will receive a lifetime pension.

Arrest of Former Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo

Marking a momentous first, the International Criminal Court arrested the former president of Ivory Coast on charges of murder, rape, persecution and inhuman acts. No former head of state had ever been taken into custody by the ICC, lending Gbagbo a dubious distinction in the annals of international justice.

The Second Khmer Rouge Trial

The bloody reign of Pol Pot took center stage again this year with the second Khmer Rouge trial in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh. Three of the regime’s top leaders are being prosecuted for genocide, crimes against humanity and other charges. While the old adage “justice delayed is justice denied” generally holds true, these historic trials are an essential step in Cambodia’s long journey back from the abyss.

U.N. Investigator on Iran

Responding to Iran’s miserable record of human rights violation, a special body of the United Nations approved the appointment of an investigator to document the regime’s abuses. The investigator’s report, issued this fall, cited practices such as torture, cruel or degrading treatment of detainees, and the imposition of the death penalty without proper safeguards, among others. Not surprisingly, the Iranian regime blasted the report, alleging Western bias.

Obama Sends U.S. Troops to Combat LRA in Uganda

The Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), led by Joseph Kony, has ravaged the regions of Uganda, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and South Sudan for over two decades, killing thousands of people, brutally turning children into soldiers and slaves and displacing thousands of people from their homes. But in a groundbreaking development after repeated demands for action from human rights groups, the Obama administration approved the deployment of 100 U.S troops to Uganda to help capture Kony and senior leaders of the LRA.

Indigenous People’s Recognition in Peru

In a part of the world where the rights of indigenous people have often been trampled in the name of progress, it was big news when the Peruvian government signed a binding agreement giving those populations some say over how their land and resources are used. The devil will be in the details, of course, but this was seen as a breakthrough that could influence relations between indigenous peoples and governments across the region.

Julie Gutman

Julie Gutman is executive director of the Program for Torture Victims, a Los Angeles-based human rights organization that has helped thousands of torture survivors rebuild their lives.

People forget that the Civil Rights Movement was actually a counter-movement to the 10-year-long “Massive Resistance” that took place from 1954 to 1964. Called Massive Resistance, it was an organized movement to reject and resist the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in the Brown vs. Board of Education case, outlawing “Separate But Equal” or de jure segregation (racial separation by law).

The movement wasn’t just a grassroots reaction. The resistance was from Congress to statehouses to local government, which defended the culture and the norms of Jim Crow. One hundred and one Southern Congresspersons (82 House members and 19 Senators) signed “The Southern Manifesto” in 1956 stating that the Supreme Court had overstepped its bound and had infringed upon “States Rights.” It also called for the impeachment of Chief Justice Earl Warren.

The Massive Resistance movement spread across a third of the nation and was the second greatest populist protest movement, outside of the Civil War, in this nation’s history, but lasted more than twice as long as the Civil War. More than 300 books have been written about the Civil War. Less than a dozen have been written about Massive Resistance, largely because many of the “resisters” are still living and are trying to erase that bitter and volatile history. It is a history that can never be erased and never be escaped because of the counter-resistance movement King led and the ugly way this period ended. Martin Luther King, Jr. will always be a scar on our nation’s conscience.

Why? Because King sought to exert love, peace and non-violence to an extremely hostile and violent nation, that was resisting the change of the day. King exhausted every peaceful remedy over a 13-year period to change the mentality of a racially deranged nation – some suggest to much avail while others suggest to no avail. The reality is that America never seriously took up a civil rights bill until King was on the scene and pulled back the cover on Southern racial hostilities with the Birmingham marches in 1963. This compelled John F. Kennedy to introduce civil rights legislation and many suggest it was only passed in memoriam to the late President as implored by his successor, Lyndon Johnson – the first Southern President since Andrew Johnson after Lincoln was assassinated.

By the way, the 13th Amendment was also signed in memoriam to Lincoln who was killed by a Confederate sympathizer. Guilt ended slavery, and guilt put an end to emotional segregation. The Civil Rights Act was signed in 1964, a full 10 years after Brown and that’s when the racist signs came down, but it only intensified the country’s distain for King, who was ultimately killed in the midst of an anti-poverty movement while giving support to striking sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1968. America knew things had gone too far, but the “King of Love” was dead.

Killing King almost assured America would burn in hell as over 200 cities rioted, but three days later came the Fair Housing Act and a watered down anti-lynching act (America has never passed a standalone anti-lynching law in its history) as this post-mortem politic continued. The “after the fact” legislation was passed in memoriam to King, but the scars over King’s death run deep. In the 20th Century, they gave him a federal holiday and have co-opted “the dream.” King meant different things to different people, but one thing is for sure…America, black and white, had not gotten over King’s death – not if you have any sort of a conscience. With the monument, the post mortem “In Memoriam” for Martin Luther King, Jr. continues almost a half a century after his death. Celebrating him in death more than in life but this is significant.

America’s guilt seems to always arrive a minute too late after someone takes it a little too far. In the case of Martin Luther King, Jr., it was 43 years late…but not too late to remind us what King truly meant to the social evolution of the nation. Maybe the nation had not gone far enough in acknowledging what it had or in what King had done. America builds monuments to its heroes, a constant reminder of the contributions such heroes have made to society. The National Mall is reserved for presidents and war heroes…mostly presidents though. The greatness of America is in the men who built it and the men (and one day women) who defended its truest creed, liberty.

The monument suggests that Martin Luther King, Jr. is now a certified and documented “National Hero,” in perpetuity, for everyone who ever visits the National Mall from here on out. He probably is the only one (Lincoln included) who demanded liberty AND justice for all people. King took the “White Only” sign down off the nation’s most hallowed ground – its National Mall. I mean, we could go there but only to look at other people’s heroes – who we were TOLD were ours too – but we only have suspect evidence of that. Still, we couldn’t put up any statues of our own…until this past weekend. King is the first non-President, non-war hero, non-WHITE MAN on the Mall. He’s also the first (mostly) privately funded monument (but that’s another article). If the people didn’t make it happen, it would’ve happened. It meant that much to us. Hopefully, it means that much to the nation. They only put these up every 40 or 50 years.

anthony samad

Martin Luther King, Jr. is now more than a scar on the nation’s conscience, which we artificially celebrate once a year. He is now in his rightful place as a national hero who changed the course, and the culture, of this nation. He now has a physical space in this nation’s capitol…Like all the other MAJOR heroes we honor, on the National Mall.

A true “American Hero,” with a monument to match his accomplishment…and his sacrifice…for the good of the nation. Let the record now reflect it.

Anthony Samad
The BlackCommentator 

Prospective buyers of Abercrombie & Fitch clothes should boycott the chain until it decides to market its clothing to everyone, no matter what their color, creed or lifestyle.

The retailer’s offer to pay cast members of the popular hit “Jersey Shore” TV series not to wear A&F brand clothing is discriminatory as the series is centered on the lives of Italian-Americans living in New Jersey.

A&F’s public relations gurus said the TV series is “contrary to the aspirational (sic) nature of the brand.” We all know that it’s okay to bash Italian-Americans…because we see it in the media everyday, except that it isn’t okay because bias is bias…even against good-natured, tan young people with vowels at the ends of their names.

Just imagine if the cast members were African- or Asian-American, or if A&F said something like “Your hallal lifestyle is contrary to the aspirational (sic) nature of the brand.”

A&F reportedly offered actor Michael “The Situation” Sorrentino “a substantial payment” not to wear its clothes as doing so “could cause significant damage” to the brand.

“Jersey Shore” host MTV dismissed A&F’s offer as “a clever PR stunt” and it has been noted the retailer in the past has sold T-shirts reading “G.T.L.”, said to refer to “Jersey Shore’s” pre-party routine of “gym, tan, laundry.”

The “Jersey Shore” flap is not the first involving A&F’s publicity practices. In 2003 it was accused by Citizens Against Pornography, a St. Louis, Mo., group, of selling “soft porn” catalogues in its stores marked “for adults only.” “They (the models) have no clothes at all—their genitals are covered but they are nude,” one of the complainants said. “We don’t feel retail stores should use that form of advertising.”

Andrea Defusco-Sullivan

Andrea Defusco-Sullivan is a professor of writing at the new American College of History and Legal Studies in Salem, New Hampshire, the first college in the United States devoted to history. Visit ACHLS; on Twitter or on Facebook.

The newly minted presidential candidate was on the campaign trail in Rock Hill, South Carolina. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the historic Rock Hill lunch counter sit-in, when students from Friendship Junior College vowed to engage in civil disobedience and go to jail in the process. A reporter mentioned to Perry, “This year we celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Friendship Nine sit-in.”

“Listen, America’s gone a long way from the standpoint of civil rights and thank God we have,” the governor responded.

“We’ve gone from a country that made great strides in issues of civil rights, I think we all can be proud of that. And as we go forward, America needs to be about freedom,” Perry added. “It needs to be about freedom from overtaxation, freedom from over-litigation, freedom from over-regulation. And Americans, regardless of what their cultural or ethnic background is, they need to know that they can come to America and you got a chance to have any dream come true because the economic climate is gonna be improved.”

WATCH ‘HARDBALL’ COVERAGE OF RICK PERRY’S CIVIL RIGHTS GAFFE:

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Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Freedom from taxes and regulation? This is the lesson that Rick Perry has learned from the civil rights movement? My first reaction was that the more that Texas Governor Rick Perry opens his mouth, the more he reveals that George W. Bush is the intellectually superior of the two Texans. Now that’s quite an indictment, given that no one ever accused the former president of resembling a brain trust. And Perry has been flexing his secessionist and Tea Party bona fides of late, proving he is meaner and more of an extremist than his former boss.

Perry might not be “the brightest guy around,” as a former classmate related, but I would argue the man knew that of which he spoke when he made his insensitive civil rights comment.

These days, for the hard-right-off-the-deep-end Republican faithful, most roads lead to tax cuts, especially for the wealthiest Americans. And race is the often used but rarely discussed vehicle that they ride to get there. Let me explain: the mantra of smaller government and lower taxes is a proxy for black people.

As the late political attack dog Lee Atwater noted in his Southern Strategy playbook of sorts, “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘Ni**er, ni**er, ni**er. By 1968, you can’t say ‘ni**er’– that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff. You’re getting so abstract now [that] you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things, and a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.”

To compare the noble goals of the civil rights movement to the nefarious political strategies of GOP hacks and dirty tricksters who fight against civil rights is the ultimate cynical move. Those who struggled for equality in the 50s, 60s and early 70s sought a greater government role in guaranteeing that all people receive justice and freedom, including voting rights, the right to an education and full access to public accommodations.

Police attend to man injured man during rioting in Crown Heights. Riots erupted after two black 7-year-olds, Gavin and Angela Cato, were hit by a car driven by a member of the Hasidic Jewish community. (Photo by John Roca/NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)

Crown Heights riots 20 years later: A referendum on race

August 19 marks the twentieth anniversary of the infamous Crown Heights riots. In 1991, the Brooklyn, New York neighborhood was rocked by three days of unrest and racial discord that became a flashpoint in black-Jewish relations and altered New York City’s political landscape.

For those who are in need of a recap, this is what happened: On the evening of August 19, 1991, one of three vehicles — part of a motorcade of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, leader of the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidic sect — veered onto the sidewalk and killed Gavin Cato, 7, the son of immigrants from Guyana. Gavin’s cousin, Angela Cato, 7, was seriously injured, and lay on the ground for 20 minutes or more as a Jewish ambulance took the driver away. Three hours later, Yankel Rosenbaum, a Hassidic Jewish Australian doctoral student, was murdered after a crowd of African-American teens reportedly shouted “Kill the Jew!”

Lemrick Nelson, Jr., who was 16 at the time, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2003 for fatally stabbing Rosenbaum. Meanwhile, a grand jury refused to indict Yosef Lifish, the driver of the car that killed Cato, who subsequently moved to Israel.

For good or for bad, perhaps more of the latter, the riots and the damage they created became a referendum on race relations. And they were perceived as a defining moment in black-Jewish relations in New York and elsewhere in the nation.

It was a time when the legendary clashes between black community activists and Jewish defense groups received widespread attention, as charges of black anti-Semitism came from the Jewish community, as well as calls to repudiate black leaders. Figures such as Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan, Rev. Jesse Jackson and City College professor Leonard Jeffries had faced scrutiny for comments that had offended members of the Jewish community.

Further, during this time the Anti-Defamation League had accused Rev. Al Sharpton of fanning the flames of anti-Semitism during the period following the riots, which he denied, as black-owned radio station WLIB was targeted by a Jewish activist group for on-air comments made during the riots. Segments of the Jewish community placed blame for Crown Heights at the doorstep of black leadership.

Twenty years later, Ari L. Goldman, a former New York Times reporter, has accused the newspaper of framing the riots as a racial conflict and ignoring what he characterized as “inherent” anti-Semitism. However, other observers have rejected this stereotyped, monolithic view of the black community as haters, and attributed the tensions more to very real “tribal rivalries” over power and real estate.

Two competing narratives have been employed to explain what transpired in this Brooklyn neighborhood in 1991. In the process, these narratives shed light on the history of black and Jewish Americans. A black narrative decries the unequal treatment that the justice system meted out in the two Crown Heights deaths.

While Rosenbaum’s death resulted in a conviction, the death of Gavin Cato led to a man escaping justice and fleeing the country, so the narrative goes. Meanwhile, some black voices have accused the Hasidic community of receiving special treatment, and of treating their black neighbors not unlike the manner in which Israeli settlers treat Palestinians in the West Bank.

One Jewish narrative (and it is only one) characterizes the conflict in Crown Heights as a pogrom against the Jewish community — like the violent mob-led massacres their ancestors faced in Europe, which seem somewhat analogous to the lynchings and race riots waged by segregationist whites against African-Americans under Jim Crow.

Under this narrative, Jewish- and African-Americans worked together during the civil rights movement, with the latter benefiting from strong material support and participation from the former. However, under this narrative, black folks, ungrateful and spiteful, turned their back on their Jewish brothers and sisters under the banner of “Black Power.”

Emerging tensions between black and Jewish communities during the Civil Rights movement came to a head in the 1968 Ocean Hill-Brownsville dispute, when black parents in the Brooklyn neighborhood — seeking greater local control over public schools — came into conflict with a predominantly white, Jewish teachers union. Later, disagreements over issues such as affirmative action and the occupation of the Palestinian people only made things worse.

The Crown Heights aftermath made its way into New York City electoral politics in dramatic fashion. David Dinkins, the city’s first and only black mayor, and his police department were accused of failing to act during the riots. Dinkins paid the ultimate price with a failed reelection bid and white backlash, resulting in the rise of Rudolph Giuliani and a Republican Party stranglehold on this predominantly liberal city. And New York, which is also majority-black-and-brown city, has not elected a mayor of color since Dinkins.

Although his supporters praised his “Broken Windows,” crime-fighter approach to cleaning up the streets, Mayor Giuliani was known in black and Latino neighborhoods for his severe and brutal police tactics. Allegations of police brutality, abuse and torture soared under his watch, with nearly 70,000 lawsuits, particularly involving victims of color.

Between 1994 and 1996, police brutality complaints increased 45 percent, according to official city records, and the city paid $70 million in settlements and judgments in police misconduct cases. The following year, New York City paid over $27.5 million. Perhaps this is the most enduring legacy of Crown Heights.

Since the watershed riots, attention on the state of black-Jewish relations has faded. Despite occasional flare ups, the hotbed tensions in Crown Heights have subsided from two decades ago. Although hostilities still exist, bridge-building efforts emerged after the riots, with mixed results and varying degrees of continuity. But the focus is now on issues such as black-on-black violence.

In addition, the community that was once 83 percent African- and Caribbean-American and less than 10 percent white, mostly Hasidic, is now 72 percent black, with increasing numbers of Jews and new immigrant groups. The Jewish community stayed in Brownsville, unlike other cases across the nation where Jewish Americans and other ethnic whites fled for suburbia when the neighborhood began to undergo a blackening — or a browning as it were.

Despite the changing times, it is apparent that it is difficult for old wounds to heal, or for people to move beyond the events of the past, however tragic. A West Hampton, Long Island synagogue postponed a panel discussion on Crown Heights that was to include Rev. Sharpton and other black and Jewish community leaders, after Rosenbaum’s family called Sharpton’s participation an insult, and the panel an attempt at revisionist history.

Typically, discussions of the Crown Heights riots encourage the tendency to romanticize about the Civil Rights era, if not encourage a sense of yearning and grief. In reality, the black and Jewish communities continue to work together — particularly in liberal and progressive circles. And in any case, they never really stopped working in interfaith and interracial alliances, and collaborating on social justice matters, whether in New York, Philadelphia or other cities.

To that extent, Crown Heights received far too much attention and we extrapolated far too much. This, as the media sensationalized a conflict in one Brooklyn community and blew our perceptions of black-Jewish tensions in America out of proportion.

Simultaneously, Crown Heights was imminently important from a political perspective, as it altered the course of New York’s political history and ended the brief stint that was Black Power in the Big Apple. The Big Apple’s African-American and Latino power base has not recovered since.

David Love
The Grio

Before we get ahead of ourselves in championing the Mayor of Philadelphia Michael Nutter for saying “what needed to be said,” let’s take a real good look at his alleged target audience. I say this because after listening to his comments to the “youth” of his city involved in the roving “flash mobs,” I truly believe his comments are going to be about as effective as if Reverend Jesse Jackson Sr. were to tell me to do something.

So this all went down last Sunday at Mount Carmel Baptist Church in Philadelphia. The Mayor delivered a stirring speech to the congregation there in response to the “havoc” being created by the “young people” in Philadelphia. A speech which took particular aim at a certain group of young Black men and their parents—but yet didn’t include any of those same people in the audience it was delivered to.

It was another case of yet another Black leader passionately voicing the frustration of his generation with younger generations of Blacks by preaching to the choir.

Chances are most of the young men involved in the “flash mobs” don’t vote—let alone even know who the mayor is. And even if they know who Mayor Nutter is, if they don’t have enough respect for themselves to not “act like “sperm donors” and “human ATMs” what real credence do you think they’re going to give to the mayor’s plea anyway?

And on the issue of the parents—didn’t we go down this road with President Obama and absent fathers? If the ever so popular President couldn’t make absent fathers magically re-appear what makes the mayor of Philadelphia think that Black parents who aren’t checking for their own children’s whereabouts are somehow checking for them now that they’ve heard what he had to say?

And on the parents, you and I both know the parents or parent in question.

The “not my baby” mommas who don’t read the newspaper and aren’t card-carrying members of the NAACP. They don’t watch the evening news, and they typically don’t vote. They’re not the ones online engaged in any sort of meaningful conversation about the plight of Black folks. Many of them just do the bare minimum to keep their kids out of the foster care system — and sometimes they can’t even manage to do that.

It is what it is. And no—this isn’t a criticism of all Black parents—not even the ones in question. The breakdown of the Black family structure started when the first ship landed and we stepped off in chains and shackles and were only given a helping hand with the introduction of heroin and crack cocaine. I’m just trying to paint a real picture for you of who the mayor is trying to reach with his speech.

As Black people, we all know the people I am talking about. The parents who probably shouldn’t have had kids to begin with, let alone planned to, and are now just glad that their kid is old enough to take the bus to school on their own and worry when the same kid ages out of the “system” and they can no longer collect money for them. All I’m saying is let’s not act like they don’t exist.

When it comes to the mothers the reality is that with most, the only way to reach them is to interrupt their favorite television reality series with a public service announcement, or send them a text message.

As for the absent fathers, if President Obama couldn’t get them to return home and play daddy…that’s all I’m saying.

Speaking about young Black men, the mayor said, “if you walk into somebody’s office with your hair uncombed and a pick in the back, and your shoes untied and your pants half-down, tattoos up and down your arms and on your neck, and you wonder why somebody won’t hire you—they don’t hire you ’cause you look like you’re crazy. You have damaged your own race.”

Whether or not you agree with his comments is on you. All I’m saying is that if you stop Amening for a moment and really think about it, his comments are just another example of something that sounds good but makes no sense and shows that the mayor and his cohorts obviously don’t have much interaction with the young men in question.

The young men the mayor is targeting aren’t walking into offices looking for jobs. If they haven’t graduated or dropped out, they’re barely going to school. Most don’t even have resumes let alone the desire to pound the pavement and look for a job. They hang out. They wake up, get dressed, and take the title of parking lot king for day.

I haven’t read the book even though it was recommended to me by several acquaintances. I haven’t read it for a couple of reasons; first, I generally don’t enjoy fiction – there are exceptions of course, James Baldwin comes to mind — but generally speaking, I prefer non-fiction. The second reason is because of who recommended it and who didn’t.

I am a black woman. I travel in richly diverse circles but I attend a predominantly white church. It was there that I’d heard about the book. Several women at church – mostly middle-aged, middle to upper middle-class white women told me they thought I’d enjoy this book. While they raved about “The Help,” it wasn’t on the radar of people in other parts of my world. That was a sign I’d seen before.

In a culture where “whiteness” is rarely mentioned and hardly ever critically examined, it is not surprising that the women in my church saw the story as heartwarming and uplifting and thought I’d share their view.

My husband and I have an inside joke – well, actually it’s my joke. To understand this, it would help for you to know that my husband is white. We have an active social life – sometimes going to two or three events in a week. When we’re in a social setting where I am the only or one of the few blacks, I have to insert myself into conversations. Otherwise, I’m ignored unless the topic turns to race then all eyes look to me as if I’m the expert on this topic. To be fair to my many non-black friends and family, this only happens when we’re with people we don’t know. But it happens frequently enough that I’ve dubbed myself “the race one”. My husband, on the other hand, is never looked to when the topic turns to race. “So”, I tell him partly tongue-in-cheek, “I guess this means you don’t belong to a race? Does that make you the race-less one?” There are lots of stories I could tell, most of which are pretty funny, that illustrate this point. But the reason I mention it here is because the lack of white awareness or whiteness on the part of my church acquaintances perhaps led to their assumption that I’d be uplifted by reading “The Help.”

Although I didn’t read the book, I did see the movie. What I saw was an attempt to convey the black experience through a white lens. I found it entertaining but not a movie I’d recommend to my son, daughter, or any young person seeking to learn more about the lives of “the help” without explaining that the film attempts to display white unawareness and insensitivity to the plight of blacks but does it in a way that perpetuates unawareness and insensitivity.

Here is an example of a “feel good, heartwarming” moment in the movie that was anything but:

One of the maids, who was expecting to be fired for some infraction she didn’t commit, is told by her employer that not only is she not fired but she can stay on for a long as she lives. You could tell this scene was set up to be one of those “feel good” moments when the sentimental music begins to play softly in the background as the camera closes in on the maid’s smiling face when she hears this news.

Personally, I wasn’t feeling all warm and fuzzy. As I watched the scene, my thoughts went to the maid’s not-so-distant ancestors who labored to develop the land and grow the crops that produced the wealth that was inherited by the society that systematically precludes her from reaping any of the benefits of her ancestors’ blood, sweat, and tears, yet entitles others to continue to live on and build upon the fruits of her and her ancestors’ labor.

So the maid, who is systematically relegated to a position of subjugation, must involuntarily continue to work in a hostile environment for wages that barely keep a roof over her head or give proper care to her own children while she cares for the children of others. And yet, she smiles as she learns she gets to do this for a lifetime.

I won’t give the story away, but one critic said, “Despite Hollywood’s best intentions and well-meaning saccharine storytelling, it gets race wrong, repeatedly.”

I don’t disagree and I would add that Hollywood consistently gets the black experience wrong. Again, it frequently tells stories of blackness through a white lens.

The women who recommended the book did so perhaps because they felt the writer successfully grappled with a difficult topic and arrived at a place of racial redemption. But they were unable to see the story through my lens. And they were unaware that they were seeing it through a white lens. From my perspective, rather than being a story of racial redemption, it is a story about white redemption.

The “Tarzan Syndrome” or white savior myth depicted in this film through Skeeter — the young white woman who carries the story — and by extension through the writer, Kathryn Stockett, is not uncommon in American cinema. Frequently, films have whites coming to the aid of oppressed minorities in ways that don’t align with reality. My life experience as a black woman who is the daughter of a black woman and descendent of a long line of more black women informs me of an entirely different reality. My sense is that this myth serves to reinforce stereotypical images that linger in the public consciousness and contribute to the gap in understanding of race and racism in this country.

Addressing this gap, author Tim Wise, a white anti-racist, wrote of white people,

“When asked if we believe racism to be a significant problem: the vast majority, in poll after poll answer that it is not, irrespective of the evidence to the contrary. And we have long believed that, so even in the early 1960s, at a time when in retrospect all would agree the nation was profoundly unequal in its treatment of people of color, whites told pollsters in overwhelming numbers (anywhere from sixty-five to nearly ninety percent) that blacks had equal opportunities in employment and education. White denial has been a hallmark of the nation’s racial history.”

The white denial that persists today is buttressed by subtle and not so subtle messages in film and in the media that dismiss or minimize the continued trauma inflicted on people of color in the nation because of racism. For example, although a fictional account, “The Help” is supposed to be the story of African-American maids living in Jackson, Mississippi, in the midst of the Civil Rights era yet the high drama of the film centers around their young friend Skeeter, the white journalist who showed courage and determination in writing the book about the help. The murder of Medgar Evers, which occurs in Jackson at the time the story is told, is treated as little more than a plot device.

They say art imitates life. It happens that at the same time as this movie is getting rave reviews , this month in Jackson, Mississippi, the media is barely covering a story about an alleged hate crime and murder that took place there just a few weeks ago. James Anderson, a 49-year-old African-American was allegedly assaulted and repeatedly run over with a pick up truck by two white men said to be looking for a black man to assault.

This crime was captured on video tape. I read about it when I saw an excerpt from a post on Facebook. The excerpt was taken from a piece entitled “Prove Me Wrong, Mississippi,” by blogger Susan Wilson. Speaking of the killing, Susan wrote “what I really want to say isn’t about the crime itself. It’s about Mississippi’s response to the crime. What response? Well, that’s the problem.”

According to Susan, when she heard that Anderson had been killed by being run over repeatedly, she tried to find local media coverage of the incident but couldn’t.

This lack of coverage of the real trauma that racism inflicts in the lives of people of color then and now is the thread that runs through this article and through “The Help.”

Sharon Kyle
Publisher, LA Progressive

Arthur J. Altmeyer, one of the architects of the Social Security Act in his definitive book, The Formative Years of Social Security (published by the University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Milwaukee and London, 1968 pp, 37-38.), records the desultory tactics Republicans used in 1935 to prevent the enactment of the Social Security Act.

Here is one example of how they operated: Republican Congressman John Taber on April 19, 1935 , assailing the Social Security Act, on the floor of Congress said, “Never in the history of the world has any measure been brought here so insidiously designed to prevent business recovery, to enslave workers and prevent any possibility of employers providing work for people.”

Another example was Congressman Daniel Reed, Republican of New York and a member of the House Ways and Means Committee opposing the Social Security Act in 1935 using this kind of calumny said, “The lash of the dictator will be felt and 25, 000,000 free Americans will for the first time submit themselves to a finger print test.”

Another Republican Congressman, James W. Wardsworth, also of New York and a member of the influential House Ways and Means Committee in 1935, registered his opposition to the Social Security Act by saying, “This bill opens the door and invites the entrance into the political field of a power so vast, so powerful, as to pull the pillars of the temple down upon the heads of our descendants.”

These comments directed at a bill to provide older Americans from being mired in poverty and despair in their old age exposes the callousness that Republicans demonstrated.

Sy Slavin

The slime spewed by the Republicans in 1935 has continued non-stop. Today, Republican presidential aspirants and Republican members of Congress repeat the same vicious slurs. Their tactics and smears today are reminiscent of 1935 when the Social Security Act was passed.

We defeated them in 1935 and we must and can defeat them today and in the future. Yes, the leopard never changes his spots.

Sy Slavin, Ph.D.

Director, Kentucky Labor Institute

Somaly Mam

One of the most significant ongoing scourges that befalls humanity worldwide is the ongoing exploitation and sexual abuse of over two million girls and boys through sex trafficking.

UNICEF estimates that two and a half million children, most of them girls, are tricked or forced into the multibillion dollar global sex industry.

The struggle to save, protect and defend the safety and well-being of children at risk for this type of travesty is and will remain an ongoing, sometimes uphill battle. Yet it is, obviously, a necessary fight.

Kamala Sarup

One of the individuals fighting this battle is Nepalese writer and journalist Kamala Sarup. In one of her articles, Lost Daughters-An Ongoing Tragedy In Nepal, Kamala describes the situation in Nepal as follows: “Nepal girls are cheaper to buy, much more cooperative and much easier to control and enslave. Girls from the rural regions are known to be much more obedient and considered more attractive for brothel owners who may want to resell them.” In relation to this problem, Kamala has organized activities addressing issues of HIV/AIDS and sex trafficking in Nepal.

Another recent media expose covering the issue of sex trafficking in Nepal, and India was CNN’s Nepal’s Stolen Children, which highlighted and exposed, particularly to U.S. viewers, the plight of South Asian victims of sex trafficking. Southeast Asia is another location where large numbers of girls are forced into the sex trafficking industry.

Indeed, there have been ongoing reports of girls in the north of Thailand being sold into prostitution by one or both parents. Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia also have many girl victims of the child sex trade. For example, one of Cambodia’s victims of sex trafficking named Somaly Mam was sold into prostitution at age twelve and, after more than ten years of ongoing abuse, escaped. Her story can be found in her unforgettable book, The Road of Lost Innocence, a must-read for everyone.

Trustlaw ranks the most dangerous countries for women and girls are Afghanistan, Congo and Pakistan, with India and Somalia ranking fourth and fifth.  HUMAN TRAFFICKING: THE FACTS website states that 56% of those trafficked are in Asia or the Pacific, 10% in Latin America and the Caribbean, 9.2% in the Middle East and North Africa, 5.2% in sub-Saharan countries, 10.8 % in industrialized countries and 8% are in countries undergoing major transitions.

The men and the occasional women who participate in the abuse and victimization of children are unconscionable people whether serving as their rapists, pimps or enablers. They must be stopped whenever and wherever it can be done!

Suggested reading: Half The Sky, by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, The Road Of Lost Innocence: The True Story Of A Cambodian Heroine, by Somaly Mam; Media For Freedom at mediaforfreedom.com – Kamala Sarup’s website.

Brian McAfee

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