April 23, 2015

City News Service 

A black former warehouse worker for a newsstand chain is suing his ex-employer, claiming he was forced to quit after enduring months of racially related jokes and comments from co-workers and his supervisor. Ahmad Benson filed the lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court against Hudson News, which sells magazines, snacks and drinks at such places as Los Angeles International Airport, which the plaintiff serviced while working at a warehouse in Carson from May 20l4 until February. The suit filed Monday April 20, alleges harassment, retaliation, failure to prevent discrimination and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Benson is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

A Hudson News representative did not immediately reply to a request for comment. According to the lawsuit, Benson’s supervisor did nothing to stop two co- workers from making racial taunts against him and even uttered some offensive remarks herself.

“It was common for plaintiff's supervisor to address him as (N---a,)” the suit alleges.

Shortly after Benson was hired, he says he was questioned about his ownership of a 2009 Mercedes-Benz C300. According to his lawsuit, his supervisor asked him, “Are you selling drugs? There is no way a black man can have a car like that if he is not selling drugs.”

The alleged harassment escalated from comments about his car to Benson’s African ethnicity and the fact that he lived for many years in Ghana, his suit alleges. The supervisor asked Benson, “When you were in Africa, would you fight over food with the lions because there isn't any food?,” according to his lawsuit. He alleges the supervisor also told the other employees, “Be careful, Ahmad came from Africa and he might give you Ebola.”

With his boss present, other Hudson News employees frequently referred to blacks as “N---as” and said they “like eating chicken, cornbread, greens and watermelon,” the suit states. Benson's supervisor would laugh and mock Benson instead of becoming upset at the racial remarks, the suit alleges. The boss also chuckled when another Hudson employee called the plaintiff a “black Somali pirate,” the suit states.

A co-worker asked Benson if he “ran around bull-naked and lived up a tree like a monkey,” and yet another said Africans “eat their own and practice cannibalism when there was no food,” according to his complaint. When Benson asked his supervisor to put a stop to the taunts, she replied, “Everyone is a little racist,” according to the lawsuit, which alleges some of the co-workers also made sexually oriented remarks toward Benson.

April 16, 2015

By James Clingman 

NNPA Columnist 

Black folks have the ability to create our own conscious millionaires. We have certainly done it for others for a long time now. Conscious Black millionaires, by definition, would most assuredly use some of their money to assist the Black collective; conscious Black millionaires would not hesitate to use their resources to help empower our people; conscious Black millionaires would not be afraid to espouse the principles of economic empowerment and then use their money to support it.

This is not a pipedream, folks. It can, should, and must be done. To make real progress, we must move beyond rallies, speeches, protests, philosophy, pontification, intellectual rhetoric without commensurate action, and mere symbolism without real substance.

Every rational person knows that at some point, everything we do to challenge injustice and to obtain the economic and political reciprocity we seek and deserve, will require money. Look at the amount of money spent on travel and accommodations to attend all the marches and demonstrations of the recent past. It would have been better spent on legal battles in the courts and placing initiatives on local ballots across the nation.

Who should fund the initiatives we take on to deal with inequities and unfairness against Blacks? Who should benefit from the dollars we spend to accomplish our goals? As Ken Bridges would say, “That be us, y’all.”

The revolution will not be televised, but it must be financed, and we should benefit economically from our expenditures and activities associated with our fight for freedom. Currently, our dollars are benefiting everyone else as we run for freedom, as we protest, as we demonstrate, and as we conduct our conventions and other meetings around the country. I recall how proud I was when I attended the Bring Back Black meeting, in 2007 at the Black-owned and operated Dudley convention complex in Kernersville, N.C.; a Black caterer prepared our food, and everything else that could be done with Black vendors was done. It was the same at our MATAH conferences from1998-2002.

Every convention cannot do that, but if we create conscious Black millionaires, some of them would do what the Founder of Compro Tax, Jackie Mayfield, did in Beaumont, Texas. He and Brother Yusef Muhammad built their own convention center. They are, indeed, conscious Black millionaires and, like others that I know, they are not only taking care of their families, they are also doing a great deal to help others, via business opportunities and philanthropy. Many are unaware that they helped Maggie and John Anderson in their efforts to get the Empowerment Experiment off the ground. No fanfare, just quietly and humbly paying it forward, the way conscious Black people do. Is Compro Tax preparing your return this year, or is your money going to one of those companies that do nothing for Black folks in return?

Imagine the progress we would make by creating millionaires like Jackie and Yusef. The good news is that we can do it merely by putting our financial support behind the efforts of a conscious brother or sister who have demonstrated a willingness to sacrifice and walk the walk when it comes to the overall empowerment of Black people.

Creating conscious Black millionaires is one of the objectives of the One Million Conscious Black Voters and Contributors Campaign. We know that simply by issuing a call for our members to purchase one pint of Ice Supreme from Ashiki Taylor’s company we would have a conscious millionaire. The same by buying one T-shirt from a Black company, one book from Rosie Milligan, one pound of Nefertiti Coffee from Roger Madison’s Izania marketplace, one product from Keidi Awadu or Bob Law’s Namaskar Health Foods, or even a couple of rolls of toilet tissue from Freedom Paper Company. C’mon y’all; this is not difficult.

Those folks will use their resources to assist us in our fight for empowerment. They will do it because their consciousness will allow them to do no less. Conscious brothers and sisters consider it their “reasonable” service to support one another, to contribute to one another’s causes, and to let their actions speak louder than their words.

We have created a lot White millionaires by buying their products. Don’t you think we should be able to look at their work and see a reciprocal benefit to Black folks? There should be some collective gain. Have they given us a return on our investment? Or, have they and their friends and families been the only ones to gain? Stop supporting shysters, hustlers, and hucksters.

Let’s use more of our money to create “conscious” Black millionaires. Imagine the possibilities. Go to www.iamoneofthemillion.com, sign up, and let’s get started.

Jim Clingman, founder of the Greater Cincinnati African American Chamber of Commerce, is the nation’s most prolific writer on economic empowerment for Black people. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Cincinnati and can be reached through his Web site, blackonomics.com.

April 09, 2015

By Jazelle Hunt 

NNPA Washington Correspondent 

Black women are the only group that has not recovered the jobs they lost in the recession. Five years into national recovery, the unemployment rate for Black women has even risen a little since December, from 8.2 percent to 9.2 percent.

On the flip side, employment brings its own unique difficulties for Black women, too.

According to a new report commissioned by Essence magazine, 80 percent of Black women surveyed believed that they could not advance in their careers without altering aspects of their identities. Additionally, 57 percent believed that they had to “look a certain way” to be promoted, compared to 39 percent of White women who thought similarly.

And while Black women are more optimistic, ambitious, and self-confident in their careers than their White counterparts, they are much more likely to say they are different at home than they are at work.

“…[T]he additional hurdle of real or perceived stereotypes complicates the work experience. The conversation around work/life balance for Black women also impacted by the reality of pay inequities and higher levels of unemployment in our communities which may necessitate working multiple jobs to make ends meet,” says Essence editor-in-chief Vanessa K. De Luca.

“We know that African-American women are three times as likely to be head of household in comparison to the general population, therefore success at work is both a personal and an economic priority.”

One thing that holds true for Black is the challenge of building wealth.

The median wealth, or net worth, among single Black women is just $100; and if they are raising minors they have no wealth at all, according to a recent analysis of data from the federal Survey of Consumer Finances. In fact, nearly half of all households headed by a single Black woman in 2007 had zero or negative wealth.

The median wealth among single White women is $41,500 and only climbs as they age. Meanwhile, 1 in 4 Black women over the age of 65 who receives Social Security benefits rely on it as their only source of income.

“Wealth is something like a security package,” says William Darity, economics professor at Duke University, speaking on a panel sponsored by the African American Policy Foundation (AAPF). “For those who lack wealth, they find themselves in precarious, vulnerable situations…and those faced by Black women are perhaps more severe.”

Recession job losses hit Black women especially hard, since most of the downsizing took place in the service and public sectors where Black women are overrepresented. Additionally, wages have stagnated as the cost of living continues to rise, from housing to childcare to education.

Even if wages had been growing, the wage gap persists – and not even education can bridge the chasm. Consider: Black women with master’s degrees earn slightly less than Black men with bachelor’s, and White men, Asians, and Latinos with associates or post-secondary degrees, according to data from the 2013 Census Current Population Survey.

And even without the gap, wages alone are not enough to build wealth.

“The major way in which people acquire significant wealth in this country is through inheritances or gifts,” Darity says. “When people say Black people are somehow inferior, or are doing something wrong as to why they don’t have wealth, that is completely wrong.”

Alternatively, wealth can be generated through strategic investments, such as land ownership, stock, appreciating valuables (such as wines and collectibles), and even creating or backing successful start-ups. Black people tend to have poor access to these avenues. Wage disparities do not leave much disposable income for these options, and traditional lenders are notoriously predatory and/or discriminatory to Black people seeking funding.

A high net worth offers cushion from unexpected emergencies, and allows families to rely less on individual paychecks for financial stability. Because of this, social safety net programs are often the only thing keeping middle- and lower-class Black families from sliding into destitution when living check-to-check fails.

“The cruelty is… in these same policies that purport to help,” says George Lipsitz, chair of the AAPF board and board member of the National Fair Housing Alliance, also speaking on the panel. “They prosecute Black women for their poverty…deprive them of their parental rights, and it’s all made possible by the litany that people who have problems are the problem.”

As justice movements bubble up around the country, issues affecting Black women are gaining more attention. With recent reports such as “Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced, and Underprotected”; “Black Women in the United States, 2015”; and “In Our Own Voice: Black Women on Abortion, Contraception and Reproductive Justice,” researchers are laying the tracks for change with conclusive, targeted data.

“We have to challenge the narrative that because we have historically overcome obstacles, there is no need to remove these obstacles,” says Janine Jackson, program director for Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting and moderator of the AAPF panel. “We have to figure out, what would a new economic agenda that addresses these obstacles look like?”