In an entry at News One, Dr. Boyce Watkins says that with Washington seemingly having given up in the fight against poverty, Tavis Smiley and Cornel West have picked up the torch. That is why it is important for blacks to listen to their message.
West is a long-time political partner in crime with Smiley, and in spite of any criticism they might have received for their challenges to the Obama Administration, you must give them both credit for being lone voices in the woods on the important issue of poverty. With 40 percent of Black children living below the poverty line, African Americans cannot allow the political elite of Washington to fool us into forgetting about those who are suffering the most …
… One of the challenges that Tavis and Cornel are set to face in their fight against poverty is that America is not a country that is wired to take care of the poor. Capitalist societies are structured to focus almost exclusively on maximizing shareholder wealth, even if it is at the expense of workers, customers, and the environment. Also, the distorted values of our society have led us to a place where we seem to believe that greed is good and that there’s no reason to care about our fellow man.
Washington has given up on its fight against poverty, and I’m not optimistic that they will ever escape the grasp of corporate greed. Now that the Supreme Court has told political leaders that corporations can feed their coffers in excess, we’re going to see our society crippled by economic inequality unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. Income inequality could ultimately come to destroy America as we know it, and no one in Washington seems to care.
Read Dr. Boyce Watkins' entire blog entry at News One.