ARTICLE: Where slavery thrived, inequality rules today

-->By Gloria Dulan-Wilson
The tragedy of the article I'm sharing with you below is that this is not new news to us - we who were/are the victims of slavery, know all too well the seriousness of post traumatic slave syndrome in it's physical, mental, spiritual, and emotional incarnations.  We see it all around us, and, unfortunately, when we look in the mirror, or at many of our friends, loved ones, neighbors, enemies (?), we see it in them as well.

Try as we might, when we think we've defeated it in one arena, it rears its ugly head in another.  Of course there are also those of us who are in denial as to whether or not we are affected by this uber massive affliction.  And I applaud them for wanting to put it behind them and move forward.  Would that we could on a mass mentality level.  But the sad state of affairs is that it's like a gaping wound that has been systematically covered over with a series of inadequate bandaids, and exacerbated by the salt that is continually being rubbed in them by the perpetrators who continue to poke at it, while at the same time either telling us to "get over it" or that "it's no big deal" or that "this is a different age or time," while continuing to commit the same crimes in a different, more sophisticated way.

We are fortunate that we can cover our pain in a panache of false smiles, proper english, beautiful clothes, bleached blonde hair or wigs, mis-education with higher level degrees up the ying/yang, and all manners of camouflage.  

But those of our brothers and sisters who were not so fortunate, who got stuck in the muck of the southern sado/masochistic symbiotic relationships, are still living as if they had just stepped off the plantation; as if they had just received their manumission papers and didn't know what to do with their "freedom."  

Now this, folks, is my commentary without having read the article - because we know this story all too well - we've got relatives still going through it.  I find it interesting that this article has been written at this point in time, and I'm curious to see what, if any, impact or change it will make on the meanstream majority. 

W.E.B. DuBois wrote "The Philadelphia Negro" in 1899, where gave sociological and statistical data on the lives of Black people during the post-slavery era, as well,    Some of the same issues identified in the following article exist and continue to linger into modern times, even though Philadelphia was not part of a slave state, but a Northern industrialized community, with superior educational systems in place.  The entire text of DuBois' study can be found online for those interested in reading this classic. 

The fact remains that regardless of who did the study, or when it was conducted, there is much to be resolved if it is not to continue as a canker sore on the butt of America.  We definitely should not be waiting to see whether the meanstream, is going to save us, or if we are going to save ourselves.  Or whether this will be a cooperative effort.

I still maintain, "if no one else will save you, save yourself!"

Stay Blessed & 
ECLECTICALLY BLACK 

Gloria Dulan-Wilson

The text of the article follows: 

 

Where slavery thrived, inequality rules today

More than a century later, some experts say, a terrible institution is still exacting its price

By Stephen Mihm

  | GLOBE CORRESPONDENT   AUGUST 24, 2014

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Fluker, La., and other municipalities with ties to slavery often lack social mobility.

EARLIER THIS MONTH, Standard and Poor’s Rating Services, a credit rating firm that rarely weighs in on social issues, published a scathing report on income inequality and social mobility in the United States. The firm warned that current levels of inequality were “dampening” growth, and predicted that “inequalities will extend into the next generation, with diminished opportunities for upward social mobility.”

This unusual report on inequality, like Thomas Piketty’s best-selling book on the same subject, addresses unequal fortunes, declining mobility, and stagnating economic growth as national or even global problems, which demand similarly large-scale solutions. But scholars are also well aware that these problems vary greatly from place to place. Consider a recent, much-publicized study of social mobility by economist Raj Chetty and his colleagues at Harvard and Berkeley. As the illuminating map generated by that study shows, children born in some regions—Salt Lake City and San Jose, Calif., for example—have a reasonable shot of moving up the social ladder. By contrast, many parts of the former Confederacy, it seems, are now the places where the American dream goes to die.

Why is that true? At first blush, you might guess race could explain the variation. When the study’s authors crunched the data, they found that the larger the black population in any given county, the lower the overall social mobility. But there was more to the story than blacks unable to break the cycle of poverty. In a passing comment, Chetty and his co-authors observed that “both blacks and whites living in areas with large African-American populations have lower rates of upward income mobility.” Far from being divergent, the fates of poor blacks and poor whites in these regions are curiously, inextricably, intertwined.

Instead of chalking it up to race, recent research points toward a more startling and somewhat controversial explanation: When we see broad areas of inequality in America today, what we are actually seeing is the lingering stain of slavery. Since 2002, with increasing refinement in the years since, economic historians have argued that the “peculiar institution,” as it was once called, is dead but not gone. Today, in the 21st century, it still casts an economic shadow over both blacks and whites: “Slavery,” writes Harvard economist Nathan Nunn, “had a long-term effect on inequality as well as income.”

His work is representative of a new, more historical direction within economics. Its proponents believe that institutions devised centuries ago tend to persist, structuring economic reality in the 21st century in ways that are largely invisible. Their hope is that, by tracing these connections between past and present, they may be able to point the way toward more effective solutions to today’s seemingly intractable economic problems.

***

IN 2002, two economic historians, Stanley Engerman and Kenneth Sokoloff, published an influential paper that tried to answer a vexing question: why are some countries in the Americas defined by far more extreme and enduring levels of inequality—and by extension, limited social mobility and economic underdevelopment—than others?

The answer, they argued, lay in the earliest history of each country’s settlement. The political and social institutions put in place then tended to perpetuate the status quo. They concluded that societies that began “with extreme inequality tended to adopt institutions that served to advantage members of the elite and hamper social mobility.” This, they asserted, resulted in economic underdevelopment over the long run.

More specifically, they observed that regions where sugar could be profitably grown invariably gave rise to societies defined by extreme inequality. The reason, they speculated, had to do with the fact that large-scale sugar plantations made intensive use of slave labor, generating institutions that privileged a small elite of white planters over a majority of black slaves. These institutions, their later work suggested, could encompass everything from property rights regimes to tax structures to public schools.

Harvard economist Nathan Nunn offered a more detailed statistical analysis of this “Engerman-Sokoloff hypothesis” in a paper first published in 2008. His research confirmed that early slave use in the Americas was correlated with poor long-term growth. More specifically, he examined county-level data on slavery and inequality in the United States, and found a robust correlation between past reliance on slave labor and both economic underdevelopment and contemporary inequality. He disagreed with Engerman and Sokoloff’s claim that it was only large-scale plantation slavery that generated these effects; rather, he found, any kind of slavery seemed to have begotten long-term economic woes.

Nunn also offered a more precise explanation for present-day troubles. In Engerman and Sokoloff’s narrative, slavery led to inequality, which led to economic underdevelopment. But when Nunn examined levels of inequality in 1860—as measured by holdings of land—these proved a poor predictor of future problems. Only the presence of slavery was a harbinger of problems. “It is not economic inequality that caused the subsequent development of poor institutions,” wrote Nunn. “Rather, it was slavery itself.”

This finding was echoed in a study by Brazilian economists Rodrigo Soares, Juliano Assunção, and Tomás Goulart published in the Journal of Comparative Economics in 2012. Soares and his colleagues examined the connection between historical slavery and contemporary inequality in a number of countries, largely in Latin America. The authors found a consistent correlation between the existence—and intensity—of slavery in the past and contemporary inequality. Moreover, this relationship was independent of the number of people of African descent living there today. As Soares said in an interview, “Societies that used more slavery are not more unequal simply because they have relatively more black people.”

The question, then, is how exactly did slavery have this effect on contemporary inequality? Soares and his colleagues speculated that limited political rights for slaves and their descendants played a role, as did negligible access to credit and capital. Racial discrimination, too, would have played a part, though this would not explain why whites born in former slaveholding regions might find themselves subject to higher levels of inequality. Nunn, though, advanced an additional explanation, pointing to an idea advanced by Stanford economic historian Gavin Wright in 2006.

In lands turned over to slavery, Wright had observed, there was little incentive to provide so-called public goods—schools, libraries, and other institutions—that attract migrants. In the North, by contrast, the need to attract and retain free labor in areas resulted in a far greater investment in public goods—institutions that would, over the succeeding decades, offer far greater opportunities for social mobility and lay the foundation for sustained, superior economic growth.

As it happens, a contemporary critic of slavery took it upon himself to measure some of these differences between North and South. In 1857, a Southerner named Hinton Rowan Helper published an incendiary book titled “The Impending Crisis.” Though a virulent racist, Helper was no friend of slavery, and he quantified in excruciating detail the relative number of schools, libraries, and other institutions in both free and slaveholding states, finding time and again that his region failed to measure up to the North.

In Pennsylvania he found 393 public libraries, but in South Carolina, a mere 26. In the South, he observed, “the common school-house, the poor man’s college, is hardly known, showing how little interest is felt in the chief treasures of the State, the immortal minds of the multitude who are not born to wealth.”

***

WHAT SOMEONE like Helper may not have foreseen is that the abolition of slavery would not cure these ills. The destruction of slavery did not destroy all the political institutions, social mores, and cultural traditions that sustained it. Nor did it make public institutions, of the kind that the north had been building for decades, suddenly come into being.

This notion about the “persistence” of economic institutions is part of a larger dialogue within economics. Economists ranging from MIT’s Daron Acemoglu to Harvard’s Melissa Fisher have examined how institutions and practices adopted centuries ago can shape economic reality. But not everyone buys the idea that the past can structure the present in such an enduring, predictable fashion. Wright is among the critics of this approach; he is skeptical of Engerman and Sokoloff’s hypothesis. “The persistence of inequality per se is a myth,” he says, pointing to research that highlights the degree to which inequality has ebbed and flowed in Latin America.

Wright counts himself “unconvinced” regarding comparable claims about the United States. “No doubt slavery has played some kind of background role,” he concedes. But he sees the relationship between historical slavery and contemporary inequality as an interesting correlation, not a directly causal one. Correlating one variable with another across the centuries “isn’t the same as writing history,” he notes. “If you don’t connect the dots, you’re just groping.”

Another criticism of the “persistence” school is that it may justify passivity. If counties or countries have always been poor or unequal because of something that happened so long ago, what chance do contemporary policy makers have at deflecting the dead hand of the past?

But there is room for hope, as Wright’s own research would suggest. In “Sharing the Prize,” an economic history of the civil rights movement published in 2013, Wright found that efforts to end discrimination paid substantial, enduring benefits to black Southerners. Perhaps more surprisingly, he found that the movement benefited whites, too. Many poorer whites found that that the destruction of the old order—the end of poll taxes, for example—ushered in increased levels of public funding for schools, newfound political power, and a host of other economic, political, and educational benefits, particularly in the years immediately following the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

That revolution, of course, is still a work in progress. As we’ve been reminded over the last two weeks by the clashes in Ferguson, Mo., between mostly black protesters and a mostly white police force, there’s a long way to go before the vestiges of slavery are fully and finally made a thing of the past. But this new body of research may help us grasp that solutions to persistent inequality will require more focused policies. Increasing the level of food stamps, as economist Paul Krugman has suggested, might help, but it is perhaps too diffuse and indiscriminate a solution.

Instead, the best way to deal with the lingering effects of dead institutions like slavery may be to create regional institutions aimed to promoting social mobility and economic growth. Georgia, for example, has tried to level the field with the “HOPE Scholarship,” which enables high schoolers with a “B” average or higher to attend in-state public colleges and universities for free and private in-state schools at a heavy discount.

Such programs, with some modifications, could go a long way toward promoting social mobility in the former slaveholding regions of the United States. That’s not to say that the problems will be easy to solve. But the progress we’ve already made, both politically and economically, would suggest that while we may live in slavery’s shadow, we are not prisoners of the past, either.

Stephen Mihm is an associate professor of history at the University of Georgia, and co-author, with Nouriel Roubini, of “Crisis Economics: A Crash Course in the Future of Finance” (2010).

Sylvia Watts McKinney
Executive Director

Philadelphia

Temple University – ECEC
1509 Cecil B. Moore Avenue, Second Floor, Suite 222, Philadelphia, PA 19121
t 215 204 5989  m 215 341 7272  f 215 204 7439  e sylvia.mckinney@nfte.com

www.nfte.com

 

NEW YORK STATE GOVERNOR DAVID PATERSON AND THE BRAINWASHING POST TRAUMATIC SLAVERY BACK IN EFFECT EFFORTS OF THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA

YELLOW JOURNALISM IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN NEW YORK CITY

By Gloria Dulan-Wilson

About 10 years ago, Sistah Souljah wrote a book called "Slavery's Back in Effect." About 5 years ago, Dr. Joy DeGruy (Leary) wrote a book entitled "Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome"; and just a scant 2 weeks ago, Tom Burrell wrote "Brainwashed", adding to yet another long, valiant list of efforts to wake Black people up to the fact that we are among the walking wounded -- zombies; remnants of a system that has made a considerable livelihood off of our misery for fun and profit.

You would think that by now we would have realized that we are part of a heinous experiment to see how low and far one race will go in its victimization of another, while simultaneously pretending not to be doing any such thing? And how long can the subjected (read, targeted) group contininue to pretend that they (read, we) are really surviving and doing well, in spite of and because of the psycho/phyiscal/spiritual/econo/material/horrors visited upon us 24/7 and twice on Sunday.

Either way, you are in this machiavellian social quagmire, it's damned if you do and damned if you don't. It's pretty much as the song says: "TRY TO MAKE IT REAL COMPARED TO WHAT?"

We make up a group of people who have tried to live, love, survive, succeed, raise families, earn a living, worship God, under a system that constantly and continuously undermines our ability to do so. While at the same time trying to say that this is no longer happening.

New Yorkers, who pride themselves on sophistication and avante garde societal trends, are as guilty as any southern racist town ever was. Perhaps even more so, because of the illusion of being multicultural and multiracial, multiethnic.

Case in point, among many, is the vilification of Governor David Paterson. The focus of a media hatchet job, with the sharks nipping at his heels, Paterson has been subjected to invectives leveled at him from the likes of the New York Post, which most Blacks acknowledge is blatantly racist and right wing, to the New York Times, who has recently shown itself to be as racist as the Post.

In fact, given the tenor of the NY Times most recent reporting style, it would make little sense to continue paying $2.00 per edition, when you can save $1.50 and just by the Post; it's the same negative. Many African Americans stopped buying the Times after the attempted character assassination of Rev. Jeremiah Wright -- I know I did. Their latest attack against Paterson and Congressman Charles Rangel confirms that I did the right thing.

While it is obvious that there have been some missteps on the part of Governor Paterson in reference to minor personal issues; it in no way warrants the hatefilled headlines of the Post, Daily News and the New York Times, which have called for his resignation over issues that are immaterial to the State vis a vis larger issues, such as the budget, and retention of essential services throughout the State.

Indeed, in July 2008, Paterson actually presaged the problems long before the actual economic collapse, and made considerable effort to reign in many of the budgetary issues New York faced, long before the s--t hit the proverbial fan. He has, in large measure, been instrumental in saving New York from a great deal of the pain other states are currently experiencing.

In contrast, check out former Gov. Pataki, who for 13 years, managed to eviscerate practically every viable program for mainstream New York, including affordable housing, educational programs, childcare programs. Stacking his record of sweetheart construction deals to his cronies against Paterson trying to level the playing field, David comes out way ahead in the short term. Of course, his reversing some of the programs Pataki undermined, establishing a viable Minority Business Division, trying to reinstate affordable housing after so many programs were removed at the State level -- may have rankled the nerves of the private interest cronies that were counting on the palm-greasing to continue under Paterson.

Now I'm not saying that David Paterson was the perfect Governor. What I am saying is that he is not deserving the invectives he's receiving at the hands of the press, and the backstabbers in his midst who are trying to see how far they can push him. Those are the kinds of people who, as kids, used to pull wings off flies to see what would happen. They have a prurient interest in seeing how much pain they can inflict through their lies and inuendos.

My word to David Paterson --" Stay Strong my Brother. You will not be the first person to make a mistake in Albany. You will not be the first Governor to screw things up. We know that the racist media, practicing yellow journalists that they are, have a double standard. They are trying to make and shape the news to their own ends, rather than report the news OBJECTIVELY. Of course, as a Black journalist myself, I can attest to the fact that objectivity in journalism is a myth, a lie and has never been practiced in reference to Black people where the white media is involved."

Which is also why I am standing for Governor David Paterson. Once again a Black man gets caught up in trying to be equitable in an inequitable situation. The David Paterson I know, the David Paterson I interviewed, who back in the day warned us to "stay out of the Bushes" (i.e. Bush I & II); who took on inequities in Harlem and tried to lessen the blow of Pataki's rapacious poliies; who stood for the African Burial Ground when the bulldozers would have just as soon buried the bones of our ancestors even deeper; who helped Black street vendors and merchants; who has one of the best sense of humors ever (and could be one of the best political satirists on the planet). The David Paterson that was thrust into the position of Governor because of an unscrupulous persecuting/prosecutor who was elected Governor through intimidation (and had it blow up in his face); the David Paterson, who as Governor, has been deliberately isolated from his resource base, has continued to maintain his composure under the slings of outrageous fortune. This David Paterson is now being the subject of a hostile media campaign which is unscrupulous, ignorant and an insult to our intelligence as Black people.

When I as a kid in Oklahoma in an all Black school, our teachers taught us a rule that I have never forgotten: When white people spend time, energy, money, and news vilifying a Black man, he must be doing something right, or he is in the way of something they want; so they try to build up as negative a persona as possible, making that person out to be a larger than life monstrousity. No one is ever as bad as they make them out to be. And when they spend that amount of time trying to make them look that bad, you know that it's racist over, under, around and through. As the late Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Toure) used to say: "WE OVER UNDERSTAND THE SITUATION!"

The lack of respect shown to Governor Paterson is reprehensible. Trial by headlines is a desparate attempt on the part of these papers to make themselves appear relevant in an era of dwindling sales and their inability to compete with online news. -- which if we Black people have anything to do with, should dwindle even further, because their obvious racism calls for a massive boycott.

By the way, there are even more merits in reading your own press. New York has one (1) daily and at least nine (9) weekly Black publications that give more information, perspective, truth about what's going on in the Black community, with no "white wash" (Daily Challenge News, Amsterdam News, NY Beacon, Our Time Press, Carib News, African Sun Times, Black Star News - among others). They consistently provide information is often more in depth, more relevant, and more timely. It's time the Black community began getting their news from publications that reflect them (there are also several Black online commentaries and publications, as well). It's time to stop paying for insults, ignorance and insensitive reports that pass as news, but is little more than slander.

Tom Burrell, author of Brainwashed, spoke of the "marketing" (read brainwashing and propaganda) job this country has done on Blacks for at least 400 years, in trying to convince them they were inferior, less than whites; ignorant and not worthy of respect. It continues unabated, some times in much more subtle forms. But much more often as of late, we have been bombarded with the blatant, garrish head-lies (yes I said head-lies) of these papers are the modern day form of brainwashing. They look for negatives and splay it out as if it is the sum total of the individual and what he stands for. There is a considerable amount of difference between the facts and the truth -- and they are definitely not one and the same, though the mainstream media would have you believe they were.

If a populartiy poll was the real measure of a politician, there would be nothing but miscreants in office -- that's how we got Ronald "the actor" Reagan for President -- such is the schizoid nature of the voting populace -- it would range from soup to nuts.

In point of fact, if you take a look at the bigger picture, you realize something very interesting -- that should make you go "wait a minute!!" or at the very least "hmmmmmm": Have you noticed that it seems to be open season on Black leaders, and on Blacks in pivotal roles: President Obama, under fire for trying to bring much needed health care to a nation where the greedy would just as soon keep us hopped up on over the counter drugs, and lopping off parts of our body; the Congressional Black Caucus, for supposed improprieties; Rev. Flake, Congressman Meeks.

Congressman Charles Rangel, head of the powerful Ways and Means Committee (the last time a Black man held that role, Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., the white media and Congress whites went overboard in trying to point up every little minor infraction -- [all the while Strom Thurmond was banging a Black woman had fathered a Black child, and was promoting segregation and KKK in his district -- go figure!] -- Check it out folks -- this is what is known as a "white backlash" -- something we were warned about when we were part of the Civil Rights Movement. There is a supposed Ethics Committee in Congress, that has done nothing in reference to ethics for decades until it was found the Rangel allegedly had one more property than white people thought he should have. Interesting isn't it, that they can't seem to make those determinations when it comes to others actions. The concept of Rangel stepping down, during this inquisition, is likewise as ludicrous as their trying to force Governor Paterson out of office.

Whites just don't like to see that much power on the part of Blacks at any one time. So they are launching an all out offensive to try to destroy and denigrate our organizations, leaders, elected officials. In the words of a wise rapper: 'DON'T BELIEVE THE HYPE!'

It's clear that for the first time we are closer than we've ever been before to autonomy -- or as close to autonomy as we have ever been in the context of a racist society. We have actually got the reigns of leadership in our hands on so many level, and we are actually doing a good job.

Even with the few missteps David Paterson has made, he has done no worse than his predecessors. We all know there is a double standard with whites, and that we are called upon to be 10 times better to even be considered on an even keel with them -- Alas, David is only 9 times better --- and therein lies a glaring flaw. When they commit an error, it's a misdemeanor -- a character flaw; when we commit one it's a felony. Most of their claims are without merit or importance in the larger scheme of things, and points to the racist lens through which they view Black elected officials. Well guess what folks, for all the hue and cry, Paterson has not really done anything of such a heinous nature that he should be pilloried, drawn and quarted by the white press. Now is the time to say STOP THE MADNESS.

Tell the lynchminded press to report some real news for a change; or take your lynch mob and go home. Tell them to ask Bloomberg when he's going after his cronies for all the monies they bilked New Yorkers out of -- we have a budget deficit, remember? or ask the MTA to really show us the real books and at the same time, trot out those accountants who are so poor and amateurish they could actually overlook major budgetary items - twice!! Why are they still on the job, when others have been dismissed for less. Tell the main stream, right wing media, and their pseudo religious televangelical cronies, to get to something that you are really supposed to be good at -- and by the way, wasn't the witch hunt in Salem Massachusetts? And isn't Lynchburg in Virginia, instead of New York? Or is it that we are really up South, but pretending not to know it?

Remember: they don't have to wear hoods to be KKK; it's the action that defines who the detractors are. They can still wear button down suits, sit in front of a camera, look authentically authoritative, and be lying through their teeth, or be as racist as any grand dragon ever was.

But I guess the bottom line for me is this: We MUST adapt the same double standard with them that they use in reference to us. They protect their own, NO MATTER WHAT. In other words, folks, one good double standard deserves another. We talk about all the time. Now it's time to learn to do the same in reference to our own. We have to embrace David Paterson, stand for him, protect him, and give him our support without compunction in the same way whites have done for each other for centuries -- because David Paterson one of us and Black is Beautiful.

David Paterson deserves to be given the benefit of belief (and the doubt) and the benefit of all the power, love and support we can muster. We must develop our own BLACKBONE and have his back, and make the hounds of hell who are trying to bring him down over specious accusations BACK OFF!!!

PS: I wrote this a week ago, and am happy to learn that on Thursday, March 4, our elected officials, activists and leaders gathered for a summit conference at Sylvia's Queen of Soul Food Restaurant to declare their support for Gov. David Paterson. Kudos to them all!! GDW

Stay blessed &
ECLECTICALLY BLACK
Gloria Dulan-Wilson