The other most important black people in America
Ursula M. Burns (via The New York Times)
I know the honeymoon period over President Barack Obama seems to have passed in the eyes of most Americans (his approval rating is now 44 percent). But in the black community you’re still likely to hear talk about how much Obama’s election has meant to African Americans–particularly, young African Americans.
The notion is that now that Obama has become the most important person in the land, black children all across the United States finally have been shown that they can do anything. To me, that thinking is still too small.
Let’s look at some examples of other black folks who have achieved legitimate HNIC status. Despite how you might feel about the economy or executive compensation, we can look no further than the five black CEOs (yes, these are the only ones) who are running Fortune 500 companies:
- Clarence Otis Jr., CEO of Darden Restaurants, which runs Olive Garden and Red Lobster
- Kenneth I. Chenault, CEO of American Express
- Rodney O’Neal, CEO of Delphi Corp., one of the world’s largest automotive parts manufacturers
- Ronald A. Williams, CEO of health insurance giant Aetna
- Ursula M. Burns, CEO of Xerox
So does this mean President Obama’s election should not hold any historical, racial or emotional significance to the black community? Never. What this does mean is that when we now tell our kids that they can become anything they want, let’s expand the horizons of their occupational dreams by showing them there are plenty of tangible opportunities for black people in America. Just a thought I wanted to share.
More black men in jail or college? An old “fact” revisited
We always hear about the disproportionate number of blacks in prison, but I’ve always wondered: how many are incarcerated and what does that really mean? What I didn’t realize is how difficult it is to pin down a precise number. I mean, true, it doesn’t take too much to find out that black men are incarcerated at a rate six and a half times higher than white men. That’s easily available through the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. But ever since the Justice Policy Institute released a report in 2002 stating that there were more black men in jail than college, people have just ran with the numbers. Even President Obama did it. That study, however, quoted figures from 10 years ago and, surprisingly, the number of blacks in prison has actually declined. And I haven’t been able to find anything recent that concretely dispels the myth, only skeptics that point to the fact that the saying is a myth. So I decided to do my own update to see if the old saying is still true.
There you have it.