Speaking of hardly, my opinion hardly matters.  There is rich discussion among African American women about the movie, the book, and the reality.  I just want to remind my sisters that in 1940 seventy percent of us were maids, or private household workers.  I want to remind us that even those of us who had advanced degrees worked some time as a maid.  I want folks to remember the scene in The Color Purple where the Oprah character was incarcerated because she had the dignity to decline private household work.  Many black women did “days work” because they needed to make a living.  Many were humiliated into doing days work to keep the peace in their household or community.  In other words, no matter who you were, you should still serve.

My opinions about days work are rooted in my past, both as a daughter and as a researcher.  My mom, Proteone Malveaux, is a retired social worker.  She worked with organizations that organized private household workers.  As a kid, I stuffed envelopes for a woman named Helen Little, who led the National Welfare Rights Association in San Francisco.  Women like Mrs. Little and my mom were dedicated to ensuring that private household workers got fair pay, vacations, and dignity of work conditions.  Too many folk, back in the day, thought that used clothes or leftover food were a substitute for a living wage.

When I moved to Boston, I somehow connected with a woman who was doing work on training private household workers. There was an irony.  The federal government had actually funded her organization to train maids, and I thought the best way to train them was to move them out of household work.  Somehow, in graduate school, my mentor Dr. Phyllis Wallace, encouraged me to write about my experiences, and about the data that undergirded them.  It was interesting to explore the facts, the fiction, and the many ways black women have been pushed into the role of nurturing others and the stereotypes this has engendered.  So help me, somebody, if I haven’t rushed to see The Help.

I’d rather see a movie about the National Domestic Workers Union, founded by Dorothy Lee Bolden in 1968.  Or I’d rather see Mrs. Little featured in a film about the National Welfare Rights Organization.   Instead, I’m clapping for 
Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer who garnered Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress accolades from the Screen Actors Guild.  Davis is a contender for an Oscar, and in many ways, that’s a good thing.

Also a bad thing.  Whenever black folks win Oscars it’s because they hark back to stereotypes, letting white folks wish they were in the land of cotton.  A sister is not going to win an Oscar (never mind even being casted in a role) as a scientist, leader, dreamer, or thinker.  Where is the Coretta Scott King film, which ought to be most compelling?  Or, in reality TV world, where is the Michelle Obama film?  In order to win recognition we have to be subservient.  We have to serve.  Help me somebody.

When I made critical comments about the book, The Help I was flooded with email comments from Bennett alums who said that I should not be critical of a film that “lifted up” black women.  For a moment I was stunned, and even a bit chastened.  Then I realized that this work, this private household work, is private, personal, and even sad.  I remember my grandmother, the Tuskegee graduate, taking me to see “her white folks” in Sausalito, California, and proudly bragging to them that I was a smart girl who was going to college.  And while time may have tinted the memory, I remember the smirking white woman who gave me a twenty dollar bill for my studies.  I was about 13, a fiery revolutionary, and I wanted to crumple the bill and throw it back in the woman’s face.  My grandmother kicked me under the table and I mumbled a thank you.  Now, with folk that help me manage my life, I try to never replicate that moment for anyone else.  When work is fairly paid for, it can be good an honorable work.  But we have to work at it, at the relationship, at the ties that bind.

Julianne Malveaux is President of Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Part of me fusses.  Gender needs always to be threaded through conversations about the African American experience.  When we think of history, men’s names drip off our lips – Frederick Douglass, martin Luther king.  Much less frequently do we think of women like Ida B. Wells, Dr. Sadie Alexander, Mary Ellen Pleasants, Fannie Lou Hamer, so many others.  Yet these women are the marrow of the bone of our history.  These women are the beacons of our world.

Why do we so ignore women’s contributions?  History belongs to she who holds the pen.  Too often women want to lift our men up.  What about lifting ourselves up?  I speak to this from the vantage point of being president of Bennett College for Women in Greensboro North Carolina.  I cheer whenever I hear of the four phenomenal black men who sat at a Woolworth’s counter on February 1, 1960, protesting segregation.  I chafe when Bennett College women are left out of the story.  The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is that Bennett women were much a part of the protest.  The patriarchy of the 1960s would not allow women to sit at the counter.  Our brothers, always chivalrous, would not expose women to the lighted matches, drizzled catsup, or other harassment that angry whites directed on them.  Still, if we tell the whole story, we have to tell the women’s story.  Too often, the stories are buried by expedient headlines.

We have to tell the stories for our mothers, to honor them, and for our daughters, to inspire them.  There should never, ever be the sense that women are at the periphery of history.  We need to tell the stories of the living – like bold Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and stories of those who have made their transition – like the revolutionary Fannie Lou Hamer.  We have to tell stories that reflect the diversity of our styles.  All of us are not bold and bodacious.  Some achieve demurely and quietly, like the 10^th President of Bennett, Dr. Willa B. Player, who is said to have never spoken louder than a whisper.

Yet this demure woman was the only person in Greensboro, North Carolina who had the courage to invite Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to the city.  No rabbi, no Baptist minister, no other college President would welcome Dr. King in 1958.  The NAACP invited him, but they struggled to find a place for King to speak.  Dr. Player famously said, “We teach our students how to think not what to think,” and she proffered the invitation, braving disapproval.  I cannot imagine the courage it took, in the South, when she depended on white philanthropists, to invite the then-controversial Dr. King.  She didn’t mind.  She did it anyway.  That’s women’s history, something for our young women to savor; the notion that right is not always popular.

She is not the first, though, and she won’t be the last to disrespect President Obama and the First Family.  Indeed, from the time President Obama was nominated the disrespect has been replete, and it has had a racial component that only an ostrich would deny.  Brewer played the race card, with body language that screamed “boy”.  Then she said President Obama was “disrespectful” when he walked away from her mid-conversation.  She is lucky that President Obama has such amazing self-restraint.  I can imagine quite a few folks, failing to relish the experience of a leader so undisciplined as to resort to finger wagging, who might have responded very differently than President Obama did.  Later, Governor Brewer said she felt “threatened” by President Obama.  Give me a break!  This is classic Birth of A Nation, with the fragile white woman so threatened by brutish black man that she runs off a cliff.  If anyone should have felt threatened by the conversation, it was President Obama, which is perhaps why he walked away.  Look at the picture.  Who looks contained, and who looks out of control?  Brewer’s invocation of racial stereotypes sent her pathetic book rising to the charts, just like Limbaugh’s racial attacks on President Obama keep his ratings up.

The insults to the Obamas have been too numerous to detail, but I was appalled when Congressman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) dared discuss the First’ Lady’s posterior, and even more appalled when legions of people did not rise and call him on it.  Similarly, South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson shouted “You Lie” when the President was speaking and went on to raise money in the wake of his disrespect.  Kansas House Speaker Mike O’Neal, a Republican, circulated an email describing our First Lady Mrs. Yo-Mama, then clumsily apologized that he didn’t read the whole email.   While most decent people consider children hands off – that was the case for Amy Carter and Chelsea Clinton – the Obama girls have also been the subjects of sickly racist jokes.  The Obamas have been stoic in the face of crazy racism, but Brewer says our President is thin-skinned.  He didn’t write a book replete with whining complaints about the response to her racist SB 1070 that not only attempted to close borders, but also charged law enforcement officials with stopping people who “look” like illegal residents of our country.  If you can’t take the heat, Mrs. Brewer, then stay out of the legislation.  And keep your finger out of people’s faces.

Rudeness, however, seems to be a marketing ploy these days, and disrespecting the President seems to be even a better ploy still for the Republicans who implicitly play the race card.   And it does not cut both ways.  When the Dixie Chicks were critical of President Bush, their sales plummeted and they were disinvited to a number of concert opportunities.  Jan Brewer is disrespectful to President Bush, her book sales rise and she becomes a conservative heroine.  She attempted to do what so many conservatives have also attempted to do – put President Obama in his place.  But here’s the deal.  He is in his place.  His place is in the White House!

Julianne Malveaux is President of Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, North Carolina.

The true food stamp story goes something like this.  In 2006 just 26.5 million Americans received food stamps.  By 2011 the number had spiked to more than 45 million people.  This has been the result of the Great Recession that has left at least 13 million people officially unemployed for an average of 40 weeks.  Those are the official numbers, but they may be twice as high when we consider the people who have part time work and want full time work and those who have dropped out of the labor market because it costs too much to look for work.  President Obama is not a food stamps president; he is a president who inherited an economic crisis.  Newt is being extremely disingenuous and extraordinarily racist in his food stamps rap.

While about 14 percent of all of us – one in seven – gets food stamps, in some states the number is as high as one in five.  In South Carolina, for example, poverty is greater than it is in the nation and 18.2 percent of South Carolinians get food stamps.  The number in Maine is 18.6 percent, in Louisiana 19.2 percent, in Michigan 19.7 percent, in Oregon 20.1 percent, and in Mississippi 20.7 percent.  Given the racial dynamics in South Carolina, did Newt decide to show out in a state where there is more poverty than elsewhere, and when the racial resentments (remember I said Confederate flag waving) don’t need much fuel to turn to fire.  He got a standing O by pandering to racial stereotypes.  And that pandering may well have propelled him into victory.

Newt has managed to paint food stamps as a black program, partly by describing our president as a “food stamps” president, and partly by putting food stamps in context with the NAACP.  But Mr. Gingrich, often touted for his intelligence, must be bright enough to know that most food stamp recipients are not African American.  Indeed, according to the Associated Press, 49 percent of food stamp recipients are white, 26 percent are African American, and 20 percent are Hispanic.  Indeed, some of the folks who gave Newt a standing O are food stamp recipients, but they chose to bond with Newt’s racially coded messages instead of their own economic reality.

Poverty has a different face than it has ever had before.  People who used to have big jobs and fancy cars are now struggling to make ends meet.  People who always struggled are now strangling.  More than 2 million families have doubled up in the past year because they needed a family lifeline to save their lives and their worlds. More than 40 percent of African American children live in poverty.  Newt Gingrich would blame the poor for their situation, but the economy that President Obama inherited is an economy that has thrust people into despair.   Food stamps are a lifeline for many.  How dare candidate Gringrich attack President Obama for providing relief to 45 million Americans!

Most food stamp recipients are people who used to work, and they would, frankly, rather be working than receiving assistance.   But they have downsized their lifestyles, their dreams, and their expectations.  They are waiting for the job market to roar back.  Half of the 45 million are white, and some of them stood to applaud Gingrich.  Do they really think that a man who disdains the poor will provide them with a lifeline?  Do they really believe that a man who is selling wolf tickets to the NAACP is really concerned with the well being of the least and the left out.  The poverty that too many Americans experience is repugnant.  The extent to which politicians trivialize such poverty is character revealing.  Who will put American back to work?  Who will alleviate poverty?

Julianne Malveaux is President of Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina

I am surprised, however, at the very tepid language that the Employment Situation report uses to describe the increase in African American unemployment.  A rise of .3 percent among African Americans, the second rise in as many months, is described as having “changed little”.  It has changed enough so that while some are celebrating gains, African Americans are losing.  Indeed, the African American unemployment rate increased from 15.5 to 15.8 percent.

Black women, it turns out, are losing more than most.  While the unemployment rate for adult African American women, at 13.9 percent, is still lower than the male rate of 15.7 percent, African American men gained jobs this year, while African American women lost them.  Why?  Nearly one in four (23%) African American women works for government, and federal, state, and local governments are releasing workers, not hiring them.  And while some governments will attempt to get the economy moving by creating construction and redevelopment opportunities for men, teachers, nurses and social workers, mostly women, are walking on eggshells in fear of job losses.  Even when we know that smaller classroom size gives a better yield in terms of educational results, school districts are being forced to shoehorn another student or two into already-crowded classrooms because of cost issues.

The data that comes from the Employment Situation report is, probably much lower than the reality of African American unemployment.  When we include those marginally attached to the labor force (stopped looking, etc.), as well as those part time workers that want full time work, the unemployment rate for the total population is not 8.5 percent, but 15.2 percent.  And the estimate of the African American unemployment rate would be not 15.8 percent, but a whopping 28.3 percent.  More facts – though the number of officially unemployed people is dropping, it is still high enough with 13.1 million actively looking for word and not finding it.  And the average person has been out of work for 40.8 weeks, six weeks longer than a year ago.  The headlines blaze optimism, the reality is different.

Add to this a recent report that says that the wealth gap between Congress and their constituents is growing.  In 1984, the average member of Congress had wealth of $280,000, excluding home equity.  In the twenty years since 1984, Congressional wealth grew by two and a half times, to $725,000.  Again, this doesn’t include home equity.  In contrast, the median wealth of an American family actually dropped slightly to around $20,500, again, not including home equity.  It is very likely that when home equity is added, the gap is even larger.

This wealth gap perhaps explains why Congressional representatives are more interested in tax cuts than in creating jobs.  It explains, perhaps, why Republicans so resisted President Obama’s plan to extend the Social Security tax cut and also to extend unemployment rate insurance.  Congress is operating in their own self-interest, they aren’t thinking about their jobless and economically challenged constituents.

If these members of Congress got calls from bill collectors, lived with less money than month, had to deny their children a new pair of shoes or an after-school trip because of dollars, or actually had to visit a grocery store on a budget, they might have not so hesitated before they eventually capitulated to President Obama’s determination.  Still the growing wealth gap perhaps explains why so few are alarmed at some of the unemployment rate data.

To be sure, it is exciting to see unemployment rates drop, even slightly.  It suggests that some of the Obama policies are working.  But someone has to explain why these policies aren’t working for African Americans, especially for African American women.  If this trend continues, the Obama Administration will have to consider targeting some relief to those who aren’t benefitting from the unemployment downturn.  Some analysts, myself included, have been advocating programs targeted toward the inner city, toward service employment, toward unemployed youth, for quite some time.  The unemployment rate gap, the fact that there are clear winners, and also clear losers in the current changes, make targeted employment programs far more imperative.

Julianne Malveaux is President of Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, NC.

That’s why each year, I am excited to receive the State of the Dream report from United for a Fair Economy.  This organization does great work in talking about the wealth gap, and their annual foray into exploring the dream has looked at joblessness, homelessness, and austerity.  Last year their report shared facts on the relative pay that people of color earn in the public and the private sector and concluded that austerity programs that cut government jobs disproportionately affect people of color.

This year’s report focuses on the Emerging Majority, and concludes that unless policy shifts are made, the wealth gap will grow even wider than it is today.  Additionally, they project that by 2042, just 30 years from now when people of color are a majority in our society, nearly 5 percent of the African American population and 2 percent of the Latino population will be in prison if current incarceration trends continue.   The report’s set of policy recommendation’s includes a recommendation to end the war on drugs.  Indeed, more than half of those currently incarcerated are casualties of the drug war, some with very minor offenses, and others with conditions that warrant drug treatment, not incarceration.

“Economic inequality between whites and people of color will persist unless bold and intentional steps aer taken to make meaningful progress towards racial equity, to sever the connection between race and poverty, and ultimately to eliminate the racial economic divide altogether,” the report says in its Executive Summary.  But such bold words are belied by the growing gap, increasing poverty, the unemployment rate differential, and continuing barriers to educational access in communities of color and among those who are low income.  While our international competitors are investing in education, we are simply divesting.  It is almost as if we have made a decision to devolve into a developing country.

What would Dr. King say about all this?  I think he’d be outside with the folks from Occupy Wall Street, and I think he’d be directing them to a 21^st century version of the Poor People’s Campaign.  I think he’d be standing outside some of the banks, asking why they deserve the bailouts that ordinary people can’t get.  Just as he occupied a housing project in Chicago, I bet he’d camp out with a family experiencing foreclosure.  I know he’d be challenging us all.

There have been significant changes since Dr. King was assassinated in 1968, and the signs don’t say white or colored any more.  The signs don’t have to say it – in some instances outcomes do.  In other words, there are no signs on dollars that say white or colored, but African American people have pennies to the dollars of wealth that whites hold.  There are no signs that say white or colored on executive employment, but you can count the African American CEOs in Fortune five hundred companies on one, or on a good day, maybe two hands.  The signs don’t say segregation, but too many still experience it, and while few in polite company use racist expletives to describe people of African descent in this country, when a talk show host and a Congressman have the utter temerity to describe the First Lady’s body in disparaging terms, it takes me back two centuries, to echoes of the Hottentot Venus, Sarah Bartjee.

Julianne Malveaux is President of Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Now that Kwanzaa and New Year’s Day have past, the games will begin again.  The House of Representatives is back January 17, and the Senate returns on January 23.  House Republicans will be hell-bent on finding ways to pay for the legislation passed on December 22, and Boehner, whose humiliating concession to President Obama had to irk him, will probably be ready to rumble when he returns to Washington.

In the time between now and January 17, people ought to be writing, calling, and visiting members of Congress in their home offices, urging them to minimize cuts to things like education.  If we need to make budget cuts, perhaps those cuts can be concentrated on our defense budget.  Indeed, as the Occupy Movement is reorganizing itself (I hear they plan to Occupy the Rose Bowl), perhaps they could target key offices, including Boehner’s, for a demonstration.  While I’ve been critical about what I call “Occupy outcomes”, I salute the organization for reminding us of the income inequality that riddles our nation and has gotten worse, not better, in recent years.  To begin the occupation on Wall Street, and to spread out to hundreds of cities all over the world, was a brilliant, headline-grabbing move.  Now, perhaps, our friends can get more practical and Occupy some congressional home office to remind some of these tone-deaf folk what many of their constituents are thinking and feeling.

Congress will have less than six weeks to decide if the two-month tax cut will be extended through the rest of the year.   Given their penchant for taking deadlines to the last minute, and refusing to compromise with President Obama, we are likely to find ourselves in the same position on February 20 as we were on December 20, at an impasse.  The brinkmanship is getting old, yet we can expect nothing else unless a few House Republicans change their minds about the way this matter will be handled when Congress reconvenes.  Otherwise, and most likely, let the games begin.

The games may have new rules this time around.  President Obama is rising in approval polls, while Congress is falling.  The public is fed up by the obstructionism that seems to dictate almost every interaction between the White House and Capitol Hill.  Congress seems to exist in a Washington bubble, disconnected from the rest of the world.  Recent data about the number of Congressional millionaires – many are part of the one percent – suggest that our legislators don’t share our concerns about the cost of groceries, gasoline, or health insurance.  It is virtually impossible for an ordinary person to be elected to Congress, because ordinary people don’t usually have the finances to fund a campaign.  The Obama campaign proved to be an exception, with frequent Internet requests for small amounts of money — $5 or even $3.  Wealthy legislators need not employ those tactics.  Their campaigns are either self or lobby financed.

Occupy’s momentum suggests, perhaps, that the Occupy movement, if organized, can be a significant political force.  Could there be an Occupy candidate, or two, in key 2012 political races?  ‘Could the street heat turn into the kind of Congressional heat that would give another perspective to these frequent impasses?  WE expect to see all kinds of games in the first six weeks of this legislative session.  But the games desperately need new players.

Julianne Malveaux is President of Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Fifty years ago this month, the Freedom Rides began.   While the Supreme Court ruled that segregation in interstate commerce, including bus terminals, was illegal, the laws were not being enforced. Because the law failed to act, people of conscience, courage and determination acted instead.
  
Resistance to desegregation was such that those who got on busses risked their lives.  The Freedom Riders, who were both African American and white, were arrested and attacked on
the bus route. Anniston, Alabama was an especially violent site of attack, where the local Klan
and other residents, some still dressed in their church‐going finest, were allowed to beat
Freedom Fighters without police interference.  The plan seemed to be that there would be an
initial attack in Anniston, and a second attack in Birmingham.  Someone attempted to burn or
bomb the bus that transported Freedom Riders.
  
As Freedom Riders became injured or delayed, often being denied hospitalization for extreme
injuries, others kept coming, kept coming, kept coming.  If they could get past Alabama and
make it to Mississippi, they were often jailed in Jackson.  Some were sent to the notoriously
brutal Parchman prison, where they were treated with notable inhumanity.  But they kept
riding until the walls of segregation came tumbling down.
  
Some of their names are household words.  Congressman John Lewis (D‐GA), Dianne Nash, James Farmer, Ruby Doris Smith, Hank Thomas, Stokely Carmichael.  Others are less well known, but no less impactful.  Their sheer determination, and willingness to sacrifice, literally changed history.
            
This month, there are many celebrations of the Freedom Riders, including a celebration at the new Freedom Riders Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, and at a Freedom Riders Reunion and Conference in Jackson, Mississippi.  There will be time for reminiscing, reflecting, and reconnecting.  From honors bestowed on Congressman John Lewis at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies Dinner in Washington, DC earlier this month, to an Oprah show featuring the Freedom Riders, to these celebrations and reunions, the contribution of the Freedom Riders will be recognized, honored, celebrated.
            
It is notable that so many of these Freedom Riders were quite young when they got on busses
to risk their lives.  What will young people risk their lives for these days?  Many of the Freedom Riders were middle‐aged, making the Freedom Rides a testimony to intergenerational activism andadvocacy.  Are there many such examples today?  What will it take to galvanize people of conscience in this country?  Many suggest that the mass incarceration of African Americans
(see Michelle Alexander’s book, The New Jim Crow) might galvanize people to act, but the unfortunate fact is that too many people are simply indifferent to the plight of the incarcerated.  Some suggest that budget cuts and economic despair might galvanize people,but too many are celebrating economic recovery, no matter how spotty or uneven, for there to be mass action around economic issues.   Fifty years ago, Freedom Riders were determined to challenge the status quo.  Now the status quo includes unequal education, unequal treatment in the labor market, and unequal treatment in the criminal just‐us system, a rancid economy, a crumbling infrastructure, a challenged environment, and many other issues.  Who will challenge this status quo?

What are the fruits of the Freedom Rides?  Thanks to Freedom Riders, legal segregation crumbled.  In November 1961, months after the beatings in Anniston, Alabama, the federal government began to enforce a 1955 Interstate Commerce Commission Ruling, and a 1960 Supreme Court ruling.  One might argue that the sit‐in movement and the Freedom Rides led to the March on Washington, the Voting Rights Act, and other revolutionary changes in our society.

Why did we stop there?  And where are today’s Freedom Riders?  Today’s young people face as many internal as external challenges.  Too many first generation college students do not enjoy the parental or community support that first generation college students enjoyed in the days of Freedom Rides.  Then, college students were considered the proud fruit of their communities.  Now, many are indifferent, even hostile, to their achievement.  We can’t expect young people to be Freedom Riders unless we raise them as Freedom Riders.  But we can’t raise them up as Freedom Riders unless we are willing to challenge the status quo for freedom ourselves.

Our society changed because of the Freedom Riders, and those Freedom Rides represent the possibility of social change. When will we pick the fruit from the trees that our beloved Freedom Riders planted?

A recent Gallup poll found that 47 percent of all Americans oppose raising the debt ceiling.  Only 19 percent support raising the ceiling past its current $12.1 trillion dollar limit.  The remainder of us say we don’t know enough about the debt ceiling to have an opinion.

That’s part of our problem.  More of us know about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s baby mama drama than about our nation’s finances.  And more of us are actually interested in the sordid drama than in a decision that may ultimately affect our nation’s financial health.  Of course, most of us have no dog in the Schwarzenegger mess, and all of us are impacted by these budget decisions.  We have no choice but raise the debt ceiling, and House Speaker John Boehner (R‐OH) is insisting on draconian budget cuts as the price for Republican acquiescence to increase the debt ceiling.  He wants cuts that hurt education, senior citizens, and the needy, and he may well have the political clout to impose such cuts.

If we fail to raise the debt ceiling we will not have the dollars to pay on our obligations.  We owe $12.09 trillion dollars and must pay interest on that debt.  If we default on our borrowing, our credit rating will tank, affecting our position in the global economic market.  So, we have no choice but raise the debt ceiling. At the same time, the price that Boehner and his gang would extract is high.  Will we sacrifice the poor, seniors, and public services to preserve our credit rating?  Many argue that we make some of the same choices in our personal lives when we have more month than money.  Either a creditor goes unpaid, or we go without something we need.  We have seen senior citizens making the choice between medication and food, school systems sacrificing bright and promising new teachers for those who are tenured, colleges and universities eliminating classes and majors because their budgets have been cut.  If all of us have to make these cuts, some argue, so should the United States.

But some approach this debt ceiling with a hidden agenda. They would simply like to cut the size of government.  Congressman Ron Paul (R‐TX) would virtually eviscerate the Medicare program in the name of fiscal efficiency.  He wouldn’t tweak it, or impose cost savings; he’d simply get rid of it.  His proposal is so draconian that even former Congressman and potential presidential candidate Newt Gringrich criticized it.  And the Tea Party holds such sway on Republican opinion that Gingrich had to quickly backtrack and apologize for his remarks.  The apology was not enough ‐ Gingrich was excoriated by fellow Republicans for his position.  He had a great week, actually, with the revelation of his big‐spending ways (he ran up a six‐figure bill at Tiffany’s), and with the indignity of a glitter shower in Minneapolis.           
 
Those who believe in the role that government should play in our lives need to lobby for a viable, strong, and fiscally responsible government.  We ought to be able to make the case for good government spending, that which alleviates pain, supports public well‐being, protects the least and the left out.  We need to be able to make the case for investment in people through education, health care, and job creation.  And we need to make the case that in challenging economic times; there are people who need help.  If we want to cut government spending, surely we might eliminate some of the corporate perks we keep handing out, like interest free loans or bank bailouts.  At the same time, we might well offer struggling citizens some of the benefits we so freely offer corporations.  Our foreclosure crisis might be much less severe, for example, if people could get help with their mortgages.  In the first 15 years of a 30 year mortgage, most of the payment is interest.  What if people got a break on those interest payments?

Here’s the bottom line, though.  We have no choice but raise the debt ceiling, but we do have choices on how we choose to spend government dollars.  Those who believe in government must advocate for it and reject the Tea Party arguments that the best government is a small one.  The debt ceiling has been raised 8 times in the past decade.  This time around, though, we are debating the role of government as well as the debt ceiling.  Those who believe in government are losing the debate if just 19 percent of those polled think the debt ceiling should be raised.

History belongs to she who holds the pen. When the lion is writing, he ate. When the prey is writing (but she didn’t survive) she was eaten but also offered a valiant fight. We celebrate our holidays and milestones through the lens of those who won the war, not through the lens of those who mattered, who fought, whose footprint on history is only neglected because we didn’t hold the pen.

So last week we celebrate Memorial Day, a day when we lift up our nation’s veterans. Our veterans are men and women who fought for the right to fight, but few want to tell that story. Mary Frances Berry and John Blassingame inspired a collection of essays that I edited on “The Paradox of Loyalty”, which speaks to the ways that a country that turns its back on black folk also expects us to be spot on in defense and defending. The Paradox of Loyalty provided us with pain around September 11, 2001, when too many were challenged to patriot up, to fly the flag of a country that had disrespected us, to mouth platitudes of loyalty even while being arrested for being too black, too present in the wrong place at the wrong time. We were called to be loyal, but loyal to what? To a nightmare, dream, or something in between.

Now, we have learned that our loyalty knows no bounds. African Americans were the first Americans to celebrate Memorial Day, according to Yale University professor David Blight, in an interview he gave to Black Voices at AOL. Bight says that African Americans celebrated Union soldiers improperly buried in a field that was once a racetrack. On May 1, 1865, African Americans, many recently emancipated people, righted the wrong by putting up a fence around the area and claiming those who fought for black freedom. Few record Memorial Day as something that started with black folk. Kudos to Dr. Blight for sharing his knowledge. Shame on the rest of us for attempting to embrace a holiday that is not a holiday, for forgetting the courage, dignity, and integrity of some unnamed black folks who lifted up fallen soldiers. We hold history hostage when we forget that a recounting of the past is always biased, that history belongs to she who holds the pen. Why she? Because those who wrote our nation’s history are mostly white, mostly male, mostly connected to power. Because the stories they tell are self-serving stories of heroism and exemplary service. Because these folks are not the folks who plowed and planted and nursed and uplifted. Because the stories of our history are stories that replicate themselves and have no room for connection.

What would happen if women wrote the stories of our history? Would we learn more about the many ways that invisible women, like Abigail Adams, had something to say about the voice of women and people of African descent, even as President John Adams made poor, but considered, choices. He wrote that in avoiding the matter of slavery, our nation’s founders left a legacy that others would have to deal with. His Massachusetts roots have borne strange fruit, even as race matters remain unresolved despite the election of an African American president.

What would happen if black folk wrote the stories of our history? Would we learn about the challenges that allowed some to lay stone on the ground to build our nation’s capital? Would we learn, from their own mouths, about those who served our plethora of flawed presidents, who managed their foibles? If black folk wrote our nation’s history, would we finally capture the fact that a ceremony on a South Carolina burial ground was the first recorded Memorial Day, according to Yale University history professor David Blight.

What would happen if Native Americans wrote the story, wrote about the land that was taken by greedy white people whose expansion plans collided with other people’s existence. Would we learn about the men and women who grabbed belongings in the dark and fled someplace? Would we learn about the reservations that were established, a fraction of the space that one once lived in? Would young people, sitting down to read history, learn about the pain that our imperialism cost?

History belongs to she who holds the pen, and history holds us hostage to interpretation. So write, sister, write, the story of Memorial Day, of the black folks who went to give dignity and honor to those who lost their lives. Write, sister, write, about the foundation of our nation’s capital. Write it, write it, write it, boldly and bodaciously, and because the story will not be told unless we claim the pen as our own.