Election Buzz Kill
By: Jeffrey Kass
Tags: Election 2020, Biden, Kamala Harris, Race, United States

Election Buzz Kill

Now TIme to Get Radical on Race

By Radical Jeffrey Kass

As you wake up from your celebratory weeklong hangover and sigh of relief from pressing the national reset button, don’t get too comfy yet if you care about race issues.

The choice insult word of the right-wing this past year has been “radical,” but I’m not sure anyone can still with a straight face claim that policies coming from the Republican or Democrats are really going to change anything for Black and Brown Americans.

Non-radical, bipartisan, and don’t rock the boat policies got us nowhere. Maybe even made things worse. Sorry, Joe, but the one thing Trump’s ads had right was that in almost fifty years in public office, you never proposed tackling race issues in any significant way.

Radical, in case you’re wondering, just means affecting the fundamental nature of something, far-reaching or thorough. Something Republicans and Democrats alike have been unwilling to embrace when it comes to our fellow Black Americans.

So fasten your seatbelts because we’re about to get radical. To fundamentally affect real change. Hey President-elect Biden, I read your daily text messages to me before the election, so now it’s your turn to read my message.

You have too many Black and Brown children growing up in numerous American cities surrounded by violence. Failing schools. Boarded up homes. Pothole infested streets. Drugs. Bars on windows. Police in riot gear. Sometimes a parent behind bars. Gang life.

Places like Chicago. Detroit. Los Angeles. Oakland.

As of 2019, over three million Black kids were living in poverty in the U.S. Almost the same number of white kids, except Blacks make up only a fraction of the white population. Black males are 34% of the male prison population, yet only 12% of the general population.

Black males in the age group 25 to 39 suffer from even higher incarceration rates. Black youth make up 15% of U.S. children but 35% of juvenile arrests. Nearly one in three Black males can expect to go to prison at some point in their life at current rates. The victims are also disproportionately Black.

Over half of the murders in this country are of Black men and women. Six hundred already in Chicago with under three months of 2020 to go.

Some of these statistics were this bad fifty years ago when the Kerner Commission concluded that massive and sustained investment in good-paying jobs and real education would be the only way to turn the tide. To deliver on America’s promise not just to white folks, but Black Americans too.

These “radical” ideas of 1968 fell on deaf ears, as right-wing and moderate politicians called for law and order. More police. More jails. Harsher punishment for these criminals.

The left didn’t do much better. They called for more food stamps. More public housing. More welfare. More handouts. Basically social Tylenol, which temporarily helps, but nothing to attack the causes.

Nobody was solving the underlying problems. Nobody was working to eradicate the inequality virus caused by hundreds of years of abuse plaguing so many Black and Brown people. The right essentially advocated quarantining the virus with police and jails. The left advocated nothing more than short term expired painkillers.

Democrats and Republicans converged to create the perfect storm of generational crime and poverty for too many.

To the self-described left who outwardly contends that they care about fixing these issues, it’s time to acknowledge that nothing short of a new Marshall plan will tip the scales of justice. The days of moderation and compromise on this catastrophic issue didn’t work and never will. Your programs may feed someone today but they don’t give people the way out to feed themselves. Your social Band-Aids will never have enough adhesive to stick. It’s time to get radical if you truly care about fixing these problems.

For those of you who behind closed doors don’t give a shit about fixing problems facing these communities, try this on for size. If you don’t once and for all step up to the plate, the unrest and anger in this country will only grow and grow each year, eventually reaching a point of no return. Why would people continue to buy into the social contract of order if America is set on breaching its opportunity and fairness side of the contract?

Hear me out. Even if you’re selfish or simply don’t acknowledge pervasive issues pertaining to race, you too should support a radical Marshall plan to preserve your shopping malls, serene parks, along with your Chicago (Michigan Avenue) and Beverley Hills (Rodeo Drive) shopping experiences. To preserve the America you call the greatest country on earth. Otherwise, these problems are coming to a Nordstrom infested suburb near you.

Beverly Hills in Los Angeles

I’ve seen your reactions on social media so I know you haven’t enjoyed the anger following George Floyd or Breonna Taylor, have you? Incessantly talking about how Portland, Philly, and Minneapolis are being burned to the ground by radicals. Do you think our cities of unrest are just going to fix themselves with some more jail time and federal troops? How has that worked out?

You put more and more people in jail, while you sit on the sidelines as our schools fail, all while riots have only increased over the years. The anger continues to rise. And all you do is complain about the results. Your Labradoodle learns quicker than you do with all of these law and order failures.

Our choices are quite clear. Let our country spiral into the abyss of chaos, or once and for all address our deep-rooted racial inequities.

I talk about some of these issues in my latest book, The Rona Diaries: One World. Two Pandemics, but here’s what we need to do at a minimum.

Education: We need a brand new early childhood, Pre-K, elementary, middle school, and high school system along with an entirely new school paradigm for these communities. New facilities. New computers. New books. New teachers. Smaller classrooms. Healthy food. Extra help for kids with emotional or trauma issues. After school programs and tutoring. Vocational opportunities. Apprenticeships. Financial literacy and life skills courses.

Training: For people already out of school, we need free vocational and career training. Free community college. Affordable state college vouchers. Plus stipends while people train so they can still make ends meet as they prepare for the next step. And financial literacy and life skills training, too.

Drugs and Gangs: We obviously are not going to just convince gangs and drug dealers to immediately halt their activities. So we need to devise a more complex plan to give the people running those enterprises a way out. Partnerships to create real businesses. Setting up comprehensive entrepreneur centers that invest in a way out along with the seed money to make it happen. Give people the opportunity to choose amnesty and opportunity. Then add in community policing. Drug treatment facilities and programs for users. You might be shocked but a lot of these gang members know how to run a business and would be highly productive citizens, too.

Homelessness: Build indoor homeless facilities and end encampments. Add in a staff of mental health professionals and counselors who can provide people with mental illnesses and drug problems the help they need. And for those who are just financially struggling, get them a path back to housing and jobs. This will help people of all races.

Food: Build real grocery stories, owned and run by people in the community offering healthy, fresh food options. The days of rat-infested adulterated meat and Cheetos must come to an end. Offer free courses in nutrition and cooking.

Partnerships with America’s Companies: Establish government partnerships with some of America’s top corporations to begin a flow of good-paying jobs to the people who exit the programs above. Provide incentives. Tax credits. Preferential government purchasing. Trade deals that focus on companies that promote and practice fairness and equity in jobs.

Prisoners: Release all non-violent drug offenders in prison into treatment and counseling facilities that include stipends and job training and education.

Housing: End crowded public housing and instead create government-assisted paths to homeownership. Down payment assistance. Mortgage assistance. Payment assistance. Also, create affordable housing zones in our nation’s largest cities.

Health: National single-payer system with government option so we can just stop talking about this. Period. Let’s join Canada, Germany, Israel, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Norway, Australia, New Zealand, and the like and put this issue to rest.

I know I know. These programs are going to cost trillions of dollars. The cost for a similar fix was estimated in the millions fifty years ago. Hundreds of millions thirty years ago. Billions twenty years ago.

Recall, we had no problem coming up with this kind of cash in the form of billionaire tax cuts, mass overspending on the military, and other corporate programs over the past four years. Or the trillions spent fighting a bullshit war in Iraq. Seems like we didn’t skip a beat when Dick Cheney and the defense industry needed a boost.

Plus, think of how much we won’t be spending on the rapidly increasing prison and law enforcement budgets over the long run. Chicago’s current police budget alone is $1.8 billion. The Illinois Department of Corrections annual budget is $1.5 billion. That’s just one city and one state! Yes, we still need police and prisons, but when we attack the causes, those needs won’t be quite as dramatic long term. Let’s not be so shortsighted anymore.

Think about how much we won’t be spending on handouts in the long run. How much we won’t be spending on all of the societal and health problems that naturally flow from communities in peril.

We know it works, too, because Black and Brown men and women with opportunities have knocked it out of the park in virtually every field of endeavor. I see it every day.

Let’s pretend the problems of inequity are worse than COVID ($2.6 trillion spent and counting) and that they threaten the very future of our nation. Then will we have enough money to address it?

Ask yourself a more important question. Can we afford not to address these issues once and for all?

It’s time to get radical (i.e. affect fundamental change).

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Jeffrey’s new book “The Rona Diaries: One World, Two Pandemics” is now available on Amazon. It journals through the Corona and Racism viruses with humor, deep dives, challenges, and reflection. Harvard professor and racial justice activist Dr. Cornel West calls the book “Wise and Witty.”

For more information, go to Jeffreykassglobal.com