Why 'A Raisin in the Sun' is Still Relevant

Sean " P-Diddy" Combs is no Sidney Poitier. Nevertheless in 2004 his casting was central to the success of the revival of "A Raisin in the Sun," Lorraine Hansberry’s award winning play about a struggling Black family.

Poitier made the character Walter Lee famous in the original 1959 Broadway production and Combs’ rap credentials gave the role a sense of modernity. Walter Lee, like the protagonists of many rap songs, irrationally believes that his worth as a man is measured in dollars and consequentially he makes a decision that is both selfish and foolish. As Walter Lee learns that "money don’t make the man," the audience sees how poverty can crush the human spirit. Last Monday ABC broadcast the film adaptation of "A Raisin in the Sun," starring Combs, Phylicia Rashad and Audra McDonald.

"A Raisin in the Sun" takes its title from the Langston Hughes' poem, "A Dream Deferred," which describes how unfulfilled hopes wither and die. The play tells the story of the Youngers, Mama, her children Beneatha and Walter Lee and his wife and their son. The working class family is living in a cramp apartment on Chicago’s South side in 1950s. When Mama gets a $10,000 check from her husband's life insurance, she decides to move the family to a house in a White suburb. Through its characters, Beneatha an aspiring doctor and Walter Lee a frustrated chauffeur, the play foreshadows the social and political changes that the civil rights movement would usher in. "A Raisin in the Sun," is a quintessential America story—the principled underdogs prevail over the bad guys. Unfortunately, in real life it takes more than self-respect to get out of the ghetto.

Many young Black people in poor communities around the country simply don’t live long enough to fulfill their dreams. In 2007 between September and July, 34 public school children in Chicago had been killed. Among the slain was a girl killed on the playground, a student shot on a city bus and another teenager shot walking home from the library. Nationally homicides are the leading killer of young Black men between the ages of 14 and 34. In Washington, DC, although Black men make up only 25 percent of the population they represent 80 percent of the homicide victims in 2007. The young people lucky enough to survive their violent neighborhoods however are frequently unprepared to get more than a dead-end a job.

Poor children often enter kindergarten academically behind and the public schools that they attend are often ill equipped to help them to catch up. After years of frustration many poor teenagers simply drop out of school. Although a college degree is now the minimum requirement for sustainable employment, nationally almost 50 percent of Black students are dropping out of high school. According to the Children’s Defense Fund report, Cradle to Prison Pipeline, when teenagers drop out of school, they are more likely to be poor, probably for the rest of their lives and to end up incarcerated. Without early intervention, the drop-outs’ children will continue the cycle of poverty and low-academic achievement.

The unemployment rate is generally higher for Blacks than for other groups. Some Blacks cannot get jobs because they have been in jail. Others lack the requisite skills or education, while some willing workers literally can’t get to where the jobs are located. There are very few jobs in poor communities--- even fast food restaurants are reducing their staffs through automation. Nationally job creation is occurring most rapidly in the suburbs, not the cities. Beyond getting a job, low income workers have to find ways to get to work, particularly in areas where public transportation is scarce or non-existent. To stay employed these workers have to stretch their meager wages beyond food and rent to include car payments, car insurance and gasoline. Something so mundane as getting to work is a nearly impossible feat for a worker earning the minimum wage of $5.85 per hour.

"A Raisin in the Sun" still matters because despite the success of Black Americans such as Oprah Winfrey, Sen. Barack Obama and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice in 2008 ghettos still exist in the United States. For ghettos to become obsolete, our elected officials have to again focus on urban policy. In the aftermath of the 1960s riots, the Kerner Commission in 1968 suggested ways to eliminate ghettos which included job creation, new housing construction and the end of de facto segregation. In the last 40 years there have been a variety of piecemeal efforts to improve low-income communities, but few attempts at the federal or state levels to implement comprehensive long-term strategies. Real urban policy would require both a great deal of money as well as committment. Regretably the public seems more willing to warehouse people in prisons than invest in better schools, employment training centers and supporting community-based businesses. Local businesses would not only employee people, and bring in needed services, they would also help to revitalize ailing low-income neighborhoods.

Individuals must be held accountable for the consequences of their choices. Society should not coddle criminals or people who repeatedly exercise poor judgment. But the ability to choose may be illusory for young people who are trapped in dangerous neighborhoods, attending subpar public schools and are unable to find work. We will know that ghettos have been eliminated when it seems absurd that the Youngers would have to move to a White suburb to have a better life.

Who's Campaigning for Self-Employed Americans?

One thing that the presidential contenders are not discussing on the campaign trail is the changing nature of work. There was a time when you got a job, put in your 40 years and then retired with a gold watch and a pension. Those days are long gone.

Today, companies are under too much pressure to be profitable and competitive abroad, which has resulted in layoffs, downsizing, outsourcing and in the increased use of temporary employees.

Having watched the experiences of their parents and older siblings many of our country’s 70 million Gen Y employees, born between 1979 and 1994, don’t even consider tying their careers to one employer. Consequently these younger workers change jobs about every two years and are not afraid to freelance.

They are also less likely than their predecessors to receive health or retirement benefits. In our knowledge-based economy more Americans can expect to work for themselves or in partnerships.

So shouldn’t the Presidential candidates be talking about developing a safety net for the Free Agent Nation?

Ten years ago writer Daniel H. Pink introduced the concept of "Free Agent Nation" in Fast Company magazine. According to Pink, free agents a.k.a. consultants, freelancers, temps, independent consultants and solopreneurs were abandoning corporate America for self-employment.

In December 2004 the Small Business Association released the report, Self- Employed Business Rates in the United States: 1979-2003, which indicated that women, Black Americans and Latinos had the highest increases in self-employment rates.

Women often choose self-employment as a way to better balance work and family responsibilities. Other workers strike out on their own when they realize that they are not going to advance any farther in their company. Some folks make the leap simply because they want more autonomy over lives and their livelihoods.

In a good economy people willfully jump off the corporate ship while in a bad one they are frequently shoved.

Increasingly involuntary free agents are indistinguishable from traditional employees: they go to physical sites and work for a set number of hours each week.

However whether the worker is an administrative assistant, personal trainer, adjunct professor or software engineer her employer is designating her as an "independent contractor," rather than as an employee. Just like most low-wage employees, skilled free agents now have jobs that provide salaries, but no sick days, holiday pay or health insurance.

With 47 million Americans without health insurance, health care reform is a hot topic for the 2008 Presidential election. 80 percent of uninsured Americans are employed and the largest portion of them earn between $25,000 and $75,000 annually. But are any of the candidates talking about health care for citizens of the Free Agent Nation?

Since employer-based health benefits remain predominate, free agents frequently are unable to obtain health coverage—it’s either too expensive or they can’t find an insurer willing to cover them.

Democratic Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama is specific in his health care reform proposal about providing self-employed workers with insurance and the "portability" of his plan as people move from job to job.

In comparison, Sen. Clinton’s health care plan seems to be based more on the existing employer-based health care system. She talks about small businesses but not specifically about the self-employed.

In his health care plan, Republican Sen. John McCain moves away from employer-based health care by giving all citizens greater flexibility to form groups to obtain health insurance. Rather than assessing the merits of the candidates’ health care plans, these examples merely illustrate the extent that the candidates are addressing a practical issue associated with our evolving economy.

It goes without saying that states should crack down on employers who try to save money by intentionally mis-categorizing their workers as independent contractors. However closing that loophole will not bring back the millions of so-called "middle class" jobs with benefits that were lost to outsourcing, technology and obsolescence.

In the near future, a leaner and perhaps meaner United States will require that more Americans not only be responsible for obtaining their own health insurance, but also for saving for their own retirements—pensions and social security are on their last legs.

With more free agents in the workplace, politicians should be re-thinking an array of issues, including eligibility for unemployment insurance and how work histories are evaluated to determine creditworthiness. However for now it is most important that Presidential candidates articulate their ideas for a new social contract.

In this brave new world, how do they plan to protect our most vulnerable citizens--- the working poor, the sick and the elderly who may have neither the financial means nor the education to successfully navigate this rugged and more individualist terrain?

[First published on NewsOne.com]

Race and Gender in Presidential Politics

Sen. Obama routed Hillary Clinton yesterday in the Potomac Primaries winning in Maryland, Virginia and The District of Columbia. Clintonites continue to moan that the press is using kid gloves with Obama, instead of the steel toed shoes that they supposedly are using on Hillary. Some feminists are now reviving stale diatribes about sexism being more pernicious than racism. Unlike the past, when Black women---too busy doing other things basically ignored these uninformed statements, a battle is brewing between 2nd Wave feminists and 3rd Wave Black feminists who understand the complex ways that race and gender intersect and impact Black women's lives.

Last month feminist icon Gloria Steinem wrote an Op-Ed in the New York Times titled, Women are Never Front-Runners that suggests that Sen. Barack Obama is getting a pass because he's Black, while Sen. Hillary Clinton is getting slammed because she's a woman. The reason why so many Black woman shy away from the feminist label is because there is still a reluctance among many White feminists to acknowledge that gender discrimination is no more or no less oppressive than racism. Oppression is oppression. If Clinton is losing, it's not because she's a woman---it's because she's a woman who lugging about major luggage---White Water, her Tammy Wynette impression when Monica Lewinsky surfaced and her failed health care initiative. She's a woman who should tell her husband to chill and get a hobby---but she needs him to lean on. Unlike other talented women who have created their own professional identities separate from their husbands, Clinton's 35 years of experience is little more than her appropriating time that she was the "first lady" of Arkansas and the United States. So like so many White women before her, her power came from being the wife of a power White man. That not changes, it's more of the same.


On a recent edition of Democracy Now, Princeton Professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell goes toe to toe with Steinem. Harris-Lacewell in a bang up performance takes Steinmen to task for promoting the same ol' "sexism is worst than racism" dichotomy and tells it like it is about Clinton's run for the Presidency.

To hear or see the exchange on the program Race and Gender in Presidential Politics

Hillary's Scarlett O'Hara Act: Why some of us aren't falling for it.
By Melissa Harris-Lacewell

TheRoot.com

Feb. 8, 2008--There's been a lot of talk about women and their choices since Super Tuesday, when African American women overwhelmingly voted for Sen. Barack Obama, while white women picked Sen. Hillary Clinton. Some pundits automatically concluded that "race trumped gender" among black women. I hate this analysis because it relegates black women to junior-partner status in political struggles. It is not that simple. A lot of people have tried to gently explain the divide, so I'm just going to put this out there: Sister voters have a beef with white women like Clinton that is both racial and gendered. It is not about choosing race; it is about rejecting Hillary's Scarlett O'Hara act.

Black women voters are rejecting Hillary Clinton because her ascendance is not a liberating symbol. Her tears are not moving. Her voice does not resonate. Throughout history, privileged white women, attached at the hip to their husband's power and influence, have been complicit in black women's oppression. Many African American women are simply refusing to play Mammy to Hillary.

Read the rest of the article at Hillary's Scarlett O' Hara Act

Melissa Harris-Lacewell is is associate professor of politics and African American studies at Princeton University.

The Cost of Campaign 2008

I stumbled upon a brief commentary that Naomi Klein, author of No Logo and The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, published in the " A Million Ways to Save the World" section of O magazine (August 2007 issue). She makes some points that should be seriously considered in terms of the ability of candidates to be responsive to average joe and jane citizens.

"Almost two years ago before the elections, Hillary Clinton's campaign had already raised $26 million dollars. Barack Obama had $25 million. With the 2008 president race set to cost $1 billion, the likely result is a government that protects the interests of the wealthy but leaves the pressing issues faced by working families unaddressed. If it cost less to run for office, Americas could have leaders who first debt was to the people who gave them their votes, not those who slipped them the funds to buy TV ads. To change the we world, we need politicians who are free to respond to the public will. That means we must demand a discount on elections."

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, overall about $718 million dollars was spent by all Presidential candidates in 2004. However as of December 2007 (almost a year before the election), Presidential candidates had already spent about $481 million dollars. For the sake of comparison, in 1976 the total campaign spending for the Presidency was about $70 million dollars.

Yes We Can!

I watched a documentary about Bayard Rustin the other day. I teared up as I watched the determination of Black Americans to fight to be treated as humans, as equals. They walked a year in Mississippi, endured lynchings, beatings, hoses and dogs and they gathered on the mall in Washington to be heard and to be counted.

The ability of Obama to stand strong and dignified...in the face of naysayers and race baiters is a testament to the ability of Black Americans to not only survive but to thrive....Yes We Can! No Excuses.

Adoption and Who's On Top-

I am in the midst of editing an anthology on motherhood. It suffices to say that I was tired of reading motherhood books that while interesting, did not touch on the issues that that were of concern to my peers and friends such as raising intellect and conscious children of color; negotiating the privilege that our educations and incomes afford us; or dealing with the notion that we are among the invisible working poor; and trying to balance nurturing ourselves, our marriages/relationships while also trying to raise healthy and happy children.

One of the topics that has come to light in the process is adoption. While it's fairly well accepted that White babies are the most desireable and older, Black boys the least...I was somewhat taken aback at how parents are also categorized. Young, married affluent couples are at the top of the "wanted" list while older and working class are near the bottom. Gay women fair better than gay men, but not by much if they are out lesbians. The willingness of a family to open their home to a child seems to get factored somewhere way down the list...even being overweight can be a liability to getting a child. No wonder so many people continue to hightail it abroad to adopt.

From a practical matter I can understand that there would be a hesitancy to place children with a family that is destitute. It also makes sense that placement organizations want parents to have a reasonable chance of seeing the child through adulthood. However under the best circumstances fortunes go bust and people can die suddenly.

Personally I would prefer that adoptive parents be subject to psychological testing than means testing. There are indeed wealthy nuts---so maybe the reason why someone wants to adopt should be scrutinized more than the applicant's finances. I am also a little bothered by the issue of age. Given that people are living longer and healthier lives maybe it's time to raise the bar a lit. Someone who I know has been turned down as an adoptive parent because at 45 is deemed too old. This is someone who very well educated, married, has a geniune love for children, has been a community activist for years and has a strong faith. Although doctors will help a 50 year old woman have a child through medical technology, a 45 year old woman is considered too old to care for baby? She and her husband can go through private adoption, but the likelihood that a Black baby is coming from that path is a little slim.

For centuries, Black folks have taken in the children of friends, relatives and neighbors and cared for them as their own. However while this informal adoption has its merits, it also has its limitations--namely since the person is not the child's legal guardian the caretaker--whether is aunt, uncle, grandmother or neighbor is not eligible for a range of social services to support them and the child.

I am not an expert on adoption---it's an area that I intend to do some research on. However given the large number of children, particularly Black children who are languishing in foster care, perhaps it is time to look at ways to not only expand the criteria for eligible parents but also make the adoption process easier and emotionally draining.