Republicans should also be more open to programs like that of the educator and poet Haki Madhubuti, a founder of the Betty Shabazz International Charter School in Chicago. He focuses on African-American literature — not just books about black dysfunction, readily available in the marketplace, but a variety of texts that give students alternative role models to those provided by the media, who are too often seen toting semiautomatic weapons.Not gonna happen, as Republicans are too crazy and/or too unwilling to sacrifice their base for a smaller one (and Reed doesn't seem to notice that his ideas are Programs for Special Interest Groups). It'd be an interesting inroad for Green politicians to try though. If another party is ever gonna have a shot it has to have a local base, and a good and very visible base might be found in urban municipal politics. The Dems have left a gap that the Republicans won't fill...why not someone else?
And Republicans should oppose discrimination against blacks by banks and mortgage companies, which frequently deny blacks access to loans with which to begin businesses and purchase homes so that they can develop the equity toward a nest egg. And since the Republican ideal is a colorblind America, how about promoting a colorblind criminal justice system?
Rather than running on bizarre suggestions that Mr. Obama was influenced by his father’s anticolonialism, wouldn’t the billionaires in the Republican Party get more for their money by embracing proven solutions that address the real problems of black America?
After all, if the president and the Democrats won’t do it, someone has to.
Opportunity Knocked
Ishmael Reed writes an interesting column:
