By Hollis Wormsby, Jr.
Two Things President Obama Got Right
President Obama made two announcements this past week that could have a major impact on unemployment rates in the African American community. On Tuesday he announced the creation of manufacturing hubs in Detroit and Chicago that would focus on a partnership between the federal government and corporate partners to use cutting edge technology to generate manufacturing jobs in urban communities.
One partnership will take place in Detroit and be led by the manufacturing giant EWI, and this partnership will focus on technology related to heavy metal manufacturing. Another partnership will take place in Chicago where the focus will be developing digital software and digital capabilities to enhance manufacturing capacity. A total of over $280 million has been committed to the initiatives with half coming from the federal government and half coming from the private sector. The key thing is these investments are taking place in two urban areas with high concentrations of unemployed African American youth.
In addition to these manufacturing initiatives the President also announced a new partnership to invest in improving educational opportunities for young men of color facing tough odds to stay on track and reach full potential. The program is called I Am My Brother’s Keeper and its goal is to partner with foundations, businesses and faith and community leaders to make sure that every young man of color who is willing to work hard and lift himself up has the opportunity to do so.
Taken together these two initiatives represent a tremendous step forward in our approach to poverty programming. The approach is the difference between giving a man a fish and teaching a man to fish. You give a man a fish and he will be back the next day looking for more free fish, you teach a man to fish, and he may be in business tomorrow.
While these are certainly good steps and ones that should be emulated locally they do not go near far enough. At some point we also need to take the money from the current broken system and reinvest it in systems that actually help teach people to provide for themselves. We have contracts with countries in South America that guarantee them certain markets in the country. Under our drug reduction efforts we gave the country of Ecuador a major slice of the fresh flower market in this country in an effort to curb heroin production. Farmers there are assured a fixed market for the flowers they grow that are sold by florists all over America. Why can’t we do the same thing in Chicago, Detroit, Atlanta, or even Birmingham?
Why not put a uniform plant in North Birmingham and guarantee that every uniform they can produce will be bought by the Army? Why not put a vegetable plant in West End and guarantee that the school system will buy all they produce for their lunch program. And it won’t necessarily take new money or at least not all new money, because we spend so much and so inefficiently providing free fish, if we redirected this money we already have the money to shift to teaching people to fish and to ensuring a market for what they produce. Or at least that’s the way I see it.
