From: johnson@whitewater.chem.wisc.edu (Art Johnson)
Subject: Re: Clinton's In, Bushie's OUT!
Organization: Physical Sciences Lab, UW-Madison
Date: Sun, 8 Nov 92 20:07:51 GMT

In article <1d9rv6INNluc@morrow.stanford.edu> HF.GTD@forsythe.stanford.edu  
(Gabrielle Daniels) writes:

> Let's give President Clinton a chance to show his stuff.

     No question that Clinton is preferable to Bush. However, I think in  
the end he will turn out to be a mixed bag wrt issues of importance to  
black Americans. The race-baiting by government officials will end, or at  
least be greatly toned down, thankfully. Several of the senior members of  
the civil rights leadership will probably get appointed to influential  
government positions, either in the judiciary, the bureaucracy, or in the  
Clinton Cabinet. Gen. Powell, being basically a liberal Republican, will  
probably get bounced from his post as head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,  
though. 

     Clinton ran as the champion of the middle and the upper middle class;  
consequently, it is middle and upper middle class blacks who stand to  
benefit from his Administration. On education, his National Trust Fund  
will bring financial peace of mind to black parents with kids who are  
going to college. But Clinton has no plans to do anything about the severe  
funding disparity (due to public schools being funded by property taxes)  
between wealthy and poor school districts, which is a _significant_ part  
of the reason that the education of poor black children is so substandard.  
Clinton's belief that this problem can be solved simply by "fully funding  
Head Start" is naive. One or two years of pre-school Head Start will end  
up being swamped by twelve years of "education" in schools that are  
physically falling apart, severely overcrowded, have damaged, outdated, or  
non-existent textbooks, and contain inadequate, inappropriate, or  
non-existent supplies and equipment for the study of physics, chemistry,  
biology, industrial arts, home economics, art and music. 

     Clinton's health care reforms and family leave policies will help  
blacks who are working for firms that have more than 50 employees (I  
wonder just how many black folks--or even white folks, for that matter--  
can really afford to take ten weeks of *unpaid* maternity/paternity  
leave?). But it's not going to help the black poor very much. Single  
mothers won't benefit from the family leave policy, and the fund that  
medium and large business are supposed to pay into to provide private  
insurance for the poor at best only deals with the issue of payment. It  
assumes that one has access to medical services that are within a  
reasonable distance. Many blacks in rural areas and even in a lot of  
cities don't. Few physicians want to spend their lives practicing medicine  
that far from the "cutting edge". 

     Clinton's urban agenda...well, I really haven't seen much of one.  
What little I've heard (something about providing "seed capital" to small  
business start-ups in the inner city) sounds like that usual suspect, the  
"demonstration project", i.e. a few hundred or a few thousand poor blacks  
are targeted for participation in a project, lasting from three to five  
years, involving housing, education, or economic development. Data is  
gathered over the set time period, chosen so that the data will be  
statistically significant when analyzed by sociology graduate students.  
The money for the project and the project's time period expire at the same  
time (funny how that works), and which point the project ends and everyone  
is supposed to go their separate ways. America's urban areas and the black  
urban poor will not be saved by demonstration projects, IMO. Clinton, up  
to now, has not really said anything about relieving the often crushing  
burden of restrictive licensing laws, financial regulations, *insurance*  
regulations, zoning laws, paperwork, and taxes that often seriously impede  
business formation in the inner city, and which would both strengthen the  
black business community and provide gainful employment for blacks who are  
not going to college.

     I think you get the idea. Clinton will do OK by middle and  
upper-middle class blacks, but I don't think much will change for poor  
blacks. A mixed bag, but still better than Bush. I guess that's something.
         
> BTW, Arthur, I thought you wore Birkies...8).

      Birkies and tuxedos? Who me? What would I do with them? I don't  
hobnob with the jet set, Gabrielle. :-)


Arthur Johnson
johnson@whitewater.chem.wisc.edu 
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african.american