National News

On The Town – Whitney Houston

by Jocelyne Hudson-Brown

NEWARK, NJ - On February 6, 2012 funeral services were held for Whitney Houston at the New Hope Baptist Church. The “event” was an invitation only affair where a single camera was allowed in for a worldwide broadcast.

This was not a made for TV affair. The Houston family allowed us to witness the laying to rest of one of their family.

Done in the traditional customs of the Baptist church, it resembled memorial services we have all attended and are familiar with. Nothing about the nearly four-hour ceremony it was over the top. This was a church service not a sideshow for the likes of those who would seek to bask in the limelight that was not theirs. There was no red carpet. It was Whitney’s day.

After much speculation ex-husband Bobby Brown attended but left abruptly after a seating dispute. His invite was for three he arrived with nine people, some of whom were his children, Bobbi Kristina’s brothers and sisters. In this instance Brown rose to the occasion and did not cause a stir. He paid his respects and left.

Many people lay blame to Brown for Whitney’s struggles. No matter what the public may think Whitney and Bobby loved each other. Weird love, crazy love but love none the less. I don’t think she ever got over him. No matter what you think about Bobby he is Bobbi Kristina’s father, he like Whitney can ever be replaced; she is going to need him.

In a career that spanned almost 30 years Whitney Houston leaves a musical legacy they may never be rivaled. A total of 562 nominations and winner of 415 awards, to include 6 Grammys, 22 American Music Awards, 30 Billboard Music Awards and 99 Recording Industry Association of America Awards.

She did this without ever having to show her body or shake her a**. This should serve as an example to women who aspire to be in the entertainment industry. You can make it on talent alone. R.I.P. Nippy!

 Top Supplier Diversity Professional, Affiliate Council and Minority Businesses Also Honored

ATLANTA, GEORGIA – (Inquiring News Staff Report - November 4, 2011) - The National Minority Supplier Development Council, Inc.®, (NMSDC®) presented Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America, Inc. (TEMA) with the prestigious “Corporation of the Year” award at a black-tie awards banquet to cap its four-day conference and business opportunity fair in Atlanta, Georgia.

 Photo: NMSDC President Joset Wright (center) presents the Corporation of the Year award to Shigeki Terashi, president and chief operating officer of Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America, Inc.

NMSDC’s Corporation of the Year award is the most sought-after honor for major corporations that are dedicated to improving the overall participation of Asian, Black, Hispanic and Native American suppliers in the global corporate supply chain.

“This recognition is reserved for corporations that fully embrace the value that minority suppliers bring to the corporate supply chain,” said NMSDC President Joset Wright. “Toyota’s commitment to supplier diversity and minority supplier development is firmly embedded in the corporate culture. Its comprehensive, world-class supplier diversity process is worthy of replication.”

In winning the award, TEMA demonstrated a strong commitment to building capacity and capability of minority businesses within their corporation and in partnership with NMSDC. The company led two modules of NMSDC’s Centers of Excellence program – a network of regional business modules comprised of corporate supplier diversity/purchasing executives and minority business enterprise (MBE) owners. The program uses NMSDC “best practices” for minority supplier development to enhance corporate supplier diversity processes and build capacity for MBEs. To date, seven participating MBEs companies were awarded business directly with Toyota. The automaker also sponsored two companies in NMSDC’s Corporate Plus® program, a special classification for minority businesses with proven success in executing national contracts and the capacity to handle more.

TEMA showed its commitment to the growth of minority suppliers by spending $1.5 billion with MBEs in 2010 – a 36% increase over its 2009 spend. The increase earned TEMA entry into the Billion Dollar Roundtable, and was realized during a challenging time for the company. During this down time, the company also deployed resources to its supply base that saved 40,000 jobs and ensured readiness for return to normal production. Additionally, the automaker facilitated the creation of four new minority joint ventures that will provide more than $250M in new MBE spend annually. TEMA also increased spend with professional service MBEs by adding spend in areas such as marketing, accounting and legal services.

With a focus on Tier 2, the automaker added more stringent measures to hold their direct suppliers more accountable for utilizing minority suppliers. The result was an increase of more than 30% in Tier 2 spend. In support of Tier 2, TEMA hosts an annual diverse business exchange to help their suppliers connect with potential certified minority businesses. A “best practice” for second tier minority business development, last year’s event resulted in more than $60 million in new contracts for minority businesses.

Active engagement with the NMSDC network also contributed to TEMA’s selection as Corporation of the Year. The company participates with NMSDC and its affiliate councils, holding corporate membership with 10 councils and executive leadership roles with four. TEMA’s senior executives lead the company’s commitment to minority businesses and shared internal best practices with their peers by speaking at eight events last year. At its banquet, NMSDC also presented awards for individual leadership in Minority Supplier Development, Suppliers of the Year and Regional Council of the Year.

Marianne Strobel, assistant vice president of global supplier diversity at AT&T, received the Minority Supplier Development Leader of the Year award in recognition of exemplary development programs for minority business owners, as well as exceptional leadership and impact throughout corporate America. AT&T is a member of the Billion Dollar Roundtable, and also spent $1.3 billion with its Tier 2 suppliers in 2010.

Four top minority businesses were recognized as National Suppliers of the Year in recognition of their business acumen and excellence in community service. They are: Circle One, Inc., of Atlanta, Georgia, in the category for businesses with sales less than $1 million; Way To Be Designs, LLC of Hayward, California, among firms with $1 million to $10 million in sales; Homestead Packaging Solutions, Inc., of Roswell, Georgia, in the category for businesses with sales between $10 million and $50 million; and Group O, Inc., in Milan, Illionis, for firms with sales greater than $50 million.

Twelve minority businesses were honored as Regional Suppliers of the Year. They are BridgeWork Partners, Lewisville, Texas; C.D. Moody Construction Company, Inc., Lithonia, Georgia; D.W. Morgan Company, Pleasanton, California; Gonzalez Saggio & Harlan, LLP, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Multicultural Entrepreneurial Institute, Inc. (MEI), Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Red Brown Klé, Inc., Milwaukee, Wisconsin; República, LLC, Miami, Florida; SHI International Corp., Somerset, New Jersey; SearchPros Staffing, LLC, Citrus Heights, California; Superior Maintenance Company (SMC), Elizabethtown, Kentucky; TKT & Associates, Inc., Louisville, Kentucky; and Translation Plus, Inc., Hackensack, New Jersey.

The Dallas/Fort Worth Minority Supplier Development Council earned Regional Council of the Year honors for providing outstanding service to hundreds of corporations and minority businesses in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metropolitan area.
About NMSDC: Providing a direct link between corporate America and minority-owned businesses is the primary objective of the National Minority Supplier Development Council, one of the country’s leading business membership organizations. It was chartered in 1972 to provide increased procurement and business opportunities for minority businesses of all sizes. The NMSDC Network includes a national office in New York and 37 Regional Councils across the country. There are 3,500 corporate members throughout the network, including America’s top publicly-owned, privately-owned and foreign-owned companies as well as universities, hospitals and other buying institutions. The Regional Councils certify and match more than 16,000 minority-owned businesses with member corporations that want to purchase their goods and services. For more information about NMSDC, call (212) 944-2430 or visit the Web site at www.nmsdc.org.

Asian and Black Teens Have Lowest Rates Of Drug Use: Study

By Steve Elliot

Asian and black teenagers in the United States are less likely to use drugs or alcohol than adolescents of other races, a new study has found.

The survey of 72,561 teens found that American Indian (Native American) youth had the highest rates of drug or alcohol use, with 48 percent reporting they had used the substances in the past year. That was followed by 39 percent of whites, 37 percent of Hispanics, 36 percent of mixed-race teens, 32 percent of blacks and just 24 percent of Asians, according to the research published on Monday in Archives of General Psychiatry, reports Nicole Ostrow at Bloomberg.

The findings that black teens are less likely to drink or use drugs than whites may help defeat stereotypes and help programs "focus on the subgroups of adolescents who are at greater risk," according to study author Dan Blazer (cool last name there, Dan), a professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, North Caroalina.

Overall, 37 percent of the teens in the study -- 27,705 of them -- said they had used alcohol or drugs in the past year, researchers said.

"This is a very real public health problem and all of us need to be concerned about it," Blazer said last week. "We need to be looking for it and we need to be trying to jump in to do what we can to get these kids into treatment and turn them around while they're still adolescents."

About 90 percent of adults with alcohol and drug problems started using before the age of 18, and half started before the age of 15, according to the Partnership at Drugfree.org, a nonprofit that gives parents anti-drug information on prevention, intervention, treatment and recovery for teens.

Researchers used information from the annual National Survey on Drug Use and Health from 2005 to 2008, the only American survey designed to provide yearly estimates of substance use in the United Stastes. The survey asks about alcohol and nine classes of drugs, including marijuana, inhalants, heroin and prescription painkillers. The study includes youth ages 12 to 17.

About 37 percent of American Indian teens reported using alcohol in the past year, compared with 35 percent of whites and 32 percent of Hispanics, 31 percent of mixed race, 25 percent of blacks and 19 percent of Asians.

For drug use, about 31 percent of American Indians used in the past year, followed by 23 percent of those who consider themselves mixed race and 20 percent of whites, according to the study. About 19 percent of black teens, 18 percent of Hispanic teens and 12 percent of Asian teens admitted they had used drugs in the past year.

Use isn't equal across all Native American tribes, according to Blazer, but he said it's impossible to tell which American Indian teens by tribe were using drugs and alcohol.

"What surprised us most was the relatively lower rate of use among African Americans," Blazer said. "The public perception is that that's not the case."

Prescription opioid painkillers such as OxyContin and Vicodin have replaced inhalants as the second most commonly used drugs among teens behind marijuana, according to the study.

Teens who used heroin were the most likely to develop addiction or abuse, the research found.

Marijuana use, which was used at twice the rate of most other drugs in the study, also supposedly resulted in "addiction or abuse" by the definition of the study, based on escalation of use, legal problems or interference with other activities.

But who knows -- all that could mean is, they smoked more pot at the end of the year than at the beginning, which would qualify as "escalation of use" without having any particular consequences except being high more often, not that horrible an outcome if it's marijuana we're talking about.

Blazer said more studies are needed to determine which "treatments" work best for kids who have drug and alcohol problems.

The study was funded by grants from -- guess who? -- the infamous National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), which refuses to fund any studies which might show positive attributes of cannabis. It is NIDA's stated and official policy to only fund studies which look for bad things about marijuana.

NIDA, which oversees 85 percent of the world's research on controlled substances, reaffirmed its longstanding policy to The New York Times.

"As the National Institute on Drug Abuse, our focus is primarily on the negative consequences of marijuana use," a spokesperson told the Times in 2010. "We generally do not fund research focused on the potential beneficial medical effects of marijuana."

In the federal government's mindset, any use of marijuana is "abuse" which requires "treatment" -- in, of course, expensive "drug rehab" facilities which treat marijuana use as if it's an "addiction" right up there with heroin, methamphetamine or crack cocaine.

BREAKING NEWS: Michael Jackson's Doctor Conrad Murray Sentenced

Calf. - Michael Jackson's doctor was sentenced today to 4 years in county jail, for involuntary manslaughter for ending the life and career of the music mogul. Murray this morning in Calf. He was sentenced to 4 years imprisonment in an L.A. County jail on Tuesday, capping a more than two-year legal journey investigating the King of Pop's death. 

Conrad Murray, 58, stood stone-faced as Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor declared him an unfit candidate for probation and pronounced the sentence for involuntary manslaughter in Jackson's 2009 death, citing Murray's involvement in what the judge called a "cycle of horrible medicine."

"He has absolutely no sense of remorse," the judge said. "[Murray] is and remains dangerous. ... I think Dr. Murray is so reckless that I believe he is a danger to the community." Family can’t believe how easy Murray gets off. “Katherine feels a 4-year sentence is "insufficient."

For the Sake of Our Children

By Ann Hanson Minister for Sexuality Education & Justice

As I watched and listened to the unfolding story of the Penn State scandal last week, my feelings of intense anger were focused on the accused pedophile and a system of power and privilege that apparently was engaged in protecting its honor and status at the expense of vulnerable boys who were cleverly groomed and seduced by one of their coaches.
One of the brief interviews I watched involved a young adult who said that he, too, had been involved with the Second Mile Foundation and had been with the accused pedophile, Jerry Sandusky. The young man went on to say that on a couple occasions, Mr. Sandusky had placed his hand on his thigh and caressed it. He knew then, as a child, that deep down this was not right and it gave him the “creeps” so he stayed away from the perpetrator and did not become another victim of even more horrible abuse. Did he tell anyone in authority about the creepiness of his experience? No.

This story prompted me to reflect on my own experience. When I was a 16, my driver’s training instructor (a young, charming, handsome and charismatic man) put his hand on my thigh during one of our classes. By some miracle, I knew on many levels this was very wrong. I shot him a look that made him know that this was not right. He never bothered me again. Did I tell anyone in authority about the creepiness of my experience? No. Were others hurt because of my silence? Yes. I wonder what might have been different if my parents, my school, my church had taught a 5-year old me that my body was sacred and that if anyone touched me inappropriately, I was to tell?

Hopefully, this Penn State scandal will start a conversation all over the world – a conversation that involves the court system, institutions that care for children, our churches and schools, and yes, our own homes. Every child, starting at a young age, needs to know that their body is precious and that no one has the right to touch any part of their bodies without permission. Parents and guardians are often uncomfortable with conversations that might involve sexuality; however, our silence allows our children, nieces, nephews and grandchildren to be vulnerable to a predator’s grooming process and abuse. We also need to tell children that they must trust their instincts and if someone makes them feel “yucky” or “creepy,” or if they are touched inappropriately, they have a safe place to come and talk about it.

The term ‘good touch/bad touch’ is oftentimes not helpful – a predator’s grooming process may consist of touch that feels good, especially if a child is in need of loving touch. ‘Stranger danger’ is another term that is misleading – most predators are known to the child. If your child attends a program (whether it be in church or the community,) make sure a ‘safe child’ policy is in place: no child is ever left alone with an adult.

Mandatory reporting of suspected child abuse varies from state to state. Teachers, social workers, clergy, physicians, etc., are not mandatory reporters in all 50 states. If you ever see or suspect child abuse of any kind, contact your local child protective services office or law enforcement agency so professionals can assess the situation. Do this for the Sake of Our Children.

By Lisa de Moraes

New York, N.Y. - CBS News’s new, as-yet-unnamed morning program will debut Jan. 9 and will star PBS interviewer Charlie Rose at 7 a.m. and Oprah BFF Gayle King at 8, the network officially announced Tuesday.
“The Early Show” holdover Erica Hill will join Charlie in the first hour, when the program focuses more on hard news for the full hour.

Before Tuesday’s announcement — when the show was just the worst-kept secret in the network news business — word on the street was that CBS News would try, again, to get out from under NBC’s “Today” show and ABC’s “Good Morning America.” But this time, CBS would have a more serious, news-driven show than those competitors, which have become increasingly fluffy.

You’ll know right away that this program’s not cut from the same cloth, CBS News suits said Tuesday afternoon at a news conference, because of its shocking lack of a jolly weatherman working the crowd outdoors, petting-zoo style. Chris Licht, the former “Morning Joe” producer at MSNBC who joined CBS News in June as vice president for programming, will retain that role while exec-producing the morning program — in much the same way that Jeff Fager is chairman of CBS News and exec producer of “60 Minutes.”

Fager said he asked Charlie to do the show because, he said, Charlie is the closest thing there is these days to “60 Minutes” great Mike Wallace. And because Fager said he misses working with Mike, and Mike was one of Charlie’s biggest fans — but as big as Charlie is. Charlie wanted attendees to know that Scott Pelley, now anchor of the CBS evening newscast, likes to say he knew Charlie Rose before he was Charlie Rose.

Charlie is keeping his PBS gig and so will “be able to paint on two canvases,” he said. Without breaking a sweat, Charlie worked in the name of late Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs, by way of explaining the similarities between creating this new program and Jobs thinking up the iPad and iPhone. Charlie also dropped the name of Facebook CEO and co-creator Mark Zuckerberg — seems Charlie recently had lunch with him at a conference, and Gayle was there, too. Gayle jumped in as Charlie was talking to Zuckerberg. Charlie later told CBS News brass: “She’s a very impressive young woman.”

Charlie also wanted attendees to know that he has found Erica to be a “surprisingly funny and interesting person.”
Gayle confided that she got goose bumps walking into the same building that housed all those newscasting greats such as Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow. And she wanted to wear a pretty dress as befitted the occasion, because she likes color — only the dress was too tight, so she went back and “put on another Spanx” and now “I can’t breathe but I’m in the dress.” Gayle also let it be known that she’s friends with all the folks on “Morning Joe” and “Good Morning America” and “Today” and that “to be part of that club is very special to me.”

Gayle’s dropping her satellite radio show — which means her telecast of that radio show that runs on the Oprah Winfrey Network is also going away — in order, she said, to focus on the CBS News program “150 percent” — except for whatever percent she’s set aside to continue to devote to Oprah’s O magazine, on which Gayle is editor at large.

CMMNewswire; NY… Hot on the heels of announcing their innaugural 5K Run, Team Jamaica Bickle and Awesome Power Track Club (TJB/AP) have gotten a major boost from the Reggae Marathon, held in Negril Jamaica.

The established annual calendar event, will be providing the grand prize for the top male and female 5K winner—automatic entry to the Reggae Marathon, Half-Marathon and 5K. The 5K has also garnered support from The Jamaica Tourist Board and Air Jamaica, who are securing hotel accommodations and air fares for the two top runners.

The annual Reggae Marathon will be held on December 3, 2011 in Negril, Jamaica W.I. And is a premier event on the marathon Calendar having grown tremendously since its inception, attracting sports enthusiasts worldwide. The Team Jamaica Bickle-Awesome Power 5K will be held on Saturday, October 15, 2011 at Baisley Pond Park, Queens NY and is a USATF Sanctioned event. The first event will kick off at 10am with the award ceremony scheduled for noon. Race-day registration is at 8am. Pre-registration is now open through Tuesday October 11, at www.baisleypark5k.com.

“The meet has attracted the top runners from various clubs across the state,” says Sean Phillips of Awesome Power T.C., “because our ‘grand prize’ is very attractive. We have been getting a lot of positive feedback from the community and various groups familiar with the work that Team Jamaica Bickle and Awesome Power Track Club does.”
The meet seeks to encourage healthy lifestyles, and is a fundraiser for the organizations’ numerous programs throughout the year, which range from hosting approximately 750 athletes and coaches at the annual Penn Relays to providing scholarship disbursements to educational institutions and athletes. Participants can register for a 5K Run, a 5K Walk and a 1 Mile Run, open to varying age categories ranging from 8 to 100. There will be prizes for the top 3 in each age division. Generous support is also being provided by Nutrilite, sports drink & supplements, Jamaica National Money Transfers, Optimum Dental, Sam’s Caribbean Marketplace, Footprints Café, The Door Restaurant, Hibiscus Day Spa, Images Newsletter, Zync TV and www.fevereyes.com. Persons interested in registering or seeking information may call 347.676.1969 or 718.523.2861.

About Team Jamaica Bickle
Team Jamaica Bickle (TJB) is a 501 © (3 ) not-for-profit, based in New York, formed in 1994 under the leadership of Irwine G. Clare Sr., to provide much needed support for Jamaican athletes who compete at the annual Penn Relays Carnival, held at the University of Pennsylvania. Currently, TJB services extend to a delegation of approximately 750 Athletes, coaches from Jamaica and a handful of other Caribbean countries, which include Trinidad and Tobago and St. Vincent & The Grenadines. Team Jamaica Bickle has for the past 17 years supported athletes and athletic programs in the Diaspora and Jamaica.

About Awesome Power Track Club
Awesome Power Track Club was formed in 2003 by Coach Sean Phillips. His goal was to provide a safe haven for athletes after school where scholarship and character building would be priority. The athletes are taught time management skills as practices are regularly scheduled and club participation is contingent upon satisfactory academic performance. Awesome Power Track Club provides an important service to the community through enrichment programs for the athletes and utilizes all resources in the hopes of obtaining collegiate scholarships for each athlete.

About The Reggae Marathon
The Reggae Marathon & Half Marathon is Jamaica's premier International Marathon Event. Marathoners, sports enthusiasts as well as beginners, converge in Negril, Jamaica's capital of casual, for a fun event characterized by good vibes and lots of Reggae music.

About USATF
USA Track & Field (USATF) is the National Governing Body for track and field, long-distance running and race walking in the United States. USATF encompasses the world's oldest organized sports, the most-watched events of Olympic broadcasts, the #1 high school and junior high school participatory sport and more than 30 million adult runners in the United States. Led by President Stephanie Hightower and interim CEO Michael McNees, USATF is a volunteer-driven, not-for-profit organization with a staff of professional program administrators at the National Office in Indianapolis.

By Billy Johnson, Jr. Beverly Hills, Calf. - Family, friends, and fans of hip-hop star Heavy D are still in shock over his untimely death Tuesday in front of his Beverly Hills home. As a private funeral and public memorial are being planned in New York next week, more details about his struggles with his weight are coming to light.

While the cause of death has not yet been determined, it is believed to be related to a respiratory issue.  According to TMZ, Heavy D, who was 44-years-old and weighed 344 pounds at the time of death had recently resumed a workout regimen. He was also an established actor, appearing on "Law & Order: SVU," "Boston Public," and the new comedy blockbuster "Tower Heist."

One of Heavy's trainers discussed a fitness program with him three months ago at the Ultra Body Fitness gym in West Hollywood, TMZ reports. In 2008, this same trainer, named Tony, helped Heavy D lose 150 pounds.  Heavy D was reportedly frequenting a number of local gyms, and doing a variety of exercises including running, hiking, and boxing. Tony described Hev as a hard worker, recalling times when he worked out nearly every day.  Heavy also experienced another significant weight loss in 2002. Then, he lost 135 pounds, an accomplishment motivated by his desire to secure more acting work. In a 2003 interview with the Television Critics Association, Heavy recalled advice from a director.

"I went on a couple auditions, and one director was kind enough to say, 'Look, you would've had this part but you're not fitting, you're stifling yourself," Heavy told TCA. "He was right. I kind of always knew it in the back of my mind, and I just woke up on a Tuesday and I just kept going." Heavy D will indeed be missed. Ironically, he released his last album, 'Love Opus," in September, and left the simple yet poignant message "BE INSPIRED!" on his Twitter page the day before he died.

By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Enough of the ghoulish, sordid facts are known about the Penn State University child sex scandal to say this. The alleged child rapes were known by some athletic department members, up to and including the football program boss, JoePa, Joe Paterno. The rumors, or worse, knowledge of the rapes may have been known by or at least heard of by others still unnamed that could eventually be a winding tangle through university staff, faculty, administrators, trustees, and corporate donors, and politicians.

The two prime offenders charged with the crimes were not some causal locker room jocks and hangers on, but long term, respected, and highly positioned athletic department mainstays. The Second Mile Foundation that served as a cover for the alleged rapes by its founder, the disgraced and accused child rapist Jerry Sandusky was not some fly-by-night, drive by, fast buck operation, but a well-established foundation that had been in business for more than three decades. Sandusky was with the Foundation from the start in 1977 until just last year. Even as the scandal unfolds, it is still in business. It has a big, impressive, full bodied website that boasts of its accomplishments, has three offices, and is actively soliciting donations. The reporters that have tried to get a comment from foundation officials have been summarily hung up on.

There will be more sordid facts and cases to emerge in the coming days and almost certainly more alleged victims will come forth and tell their stories. This poses the question that’s bantered about, agonized over, and reams of opinion written, and that’s why those who knew didn’t blow the whistle on and insure that the cuffs were slapped on the offenders years ago? The stock answer is that it was a case of fear, protectiveness, ego (Paterno’s), football deification and prestige, decades of institutional sports cronyism and the bushels of money that Penn State and other big time Division 1 schools haul in every year from their flagship football programs. This is all true.

But with the strong hints and now the public finger point by a parent of one of the victims that the victims were in her words “ Blacks about 10-12 and had a tall slim muscular build.” The Second Mile Foundation’s founder and accused Jerry Sandusky openly bragged that it was in the business of helping “underprivileged” youth, always the polite code word for poor, at risk, young blacks and Hispanics, it’s hardly a stretch to connect the dots to race.

Put bluntly, if Penn State officials kept their yaps shut for years in the face of open knowledge of and strong suspicions of the child rapes and the victims were young black males, than the last dot connected is the charge that black lives are routinely devalued when it comes to officials taking action to protect them. This charge has repeatedly been leveled in serial murders, inner city gang carnage, and against child service agencies that ignore or downplay repeated reports of abuse when the victims and the abused are black. That’s only part of the problem. Race can’t be separated from poverty or “underprivileged” in the parlance of Sandusky’s The Second Mile Foundation. A study in the March issue of the Journal Pediatrics, “Racial Bias in Child Protection? A Comparison of Competing Explanations Using National Data,” found that poverty was a huge determinant not only of levels of abuse. The study predictably found that a disproportionate number of the reported child abuse cases in 2009 which spanned the gamut from neglect to child rape were African-American children. The study directly linked the abuse to poverty. Parents and caregivers that are desperate to provide their children with a pathway out of harm’s way from any and every type of abuse that comes with poverty latch on to organizations that promise to provide resources, mentoring, nurturing, and a protective environment for at risk black children.

The Second Mile Foundation that so persuasively and passionately marketed itself under its accused founder Jerry Sandu, and with the resources, clout and national name recognition of Penn State University’s premier football majordomo Joe Paterno to boot, as just such an organization would be hungrily grabbed at as the ticket out of the ghetto for the kids. Given the name and the prestige of those behind this Foundation, why would anyone in their wildest nightmares ever think or suspect that colossal evil lurked underneath the faccedilade of its alleged unadulterated philanthropic and do good aims?

In the days to come as more details unfold about how the Foundation under Sandusky used its good name to commit alleged serial heinous crimes, all with the tacit blessing of Paterno and university officials, the hard suspicions and hints that the target of the crimes were young black males may well be confirmed. If that’s the case, then the deep soul search that university and others everywhere that turn a blind eye to child abuse must undergo will be rudely forced to confront one more horrifying possibility. And that’s that race was one more reason for that blind eye.

 Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the author of How Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
 Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

The U.S. District Court’s approval of the settlement between the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and plaintiffs in the Pigford II class action lawsuit is another important step forward in addressing an unfortunate chapter in USDA’s civil rights history. This agreement will provide overdue relief and justice to African American farmers, and bring us closer to the ideals of freedom and equality that this country was founded on. I especially want to recognize the efforts of Secretary Vilsack and Attorney General Holder, without whom this settlement would not have been reached.