Black Lawmakers in Congress, DeKalb County and Training Day: The Ethics Behind Black People in Power

The 2000 film Training Day shows the viewer the guiding philosophy

Alonzo Harris is a character who utilizes a philosophy that has been mimicked and consumed by virtually every elected Black official in Congress and by Black officials who run major cities throughout the United States.

The fictional antagonist in the 2000 film Training Day, Harris is a police detective in Los Angeles who believes he owns and runs the city he is sworn to protect. Denzel Washington portrays Harris and interestingly, he is the same actor that plays Frank Lucas in the 2007 film American Gangster.

It is with these two fictional characters in mind that we consider the implosion of the Black Congressional Caucus and the ethics violation that threaten to bring down many long-standing Black Congressman, whose hubris cemented their downfall:

The House ethics committee is currently investigating seven African-American lawmakers — more than 15 percent of the total in the House. And an eighth black member, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), would be under investigation if the Justice Department hadn’t asked the committee to stand down.

Not a single white lawmaker is currently the subject of a full-scale ethics committee probe.

The ethics committee declined to respond to questions about the racial disparity, and members of the Congressional Black Caucus are wary of talking about it on the record. But privately, some black members are outraged — and see in the numbers a worrisome trend in the actions of ethics watchdogs on and off Capitol Hill.

“Is there concern whether someone is trying to set up [Congressional Black Caucus] members? Yeah, there is,” a black House Democrat said. “It looks as if there is somebody out there who understands what the rules [are] and sends names to the ethics committee with the goal of going after the [CBC].”

African-American politicians have long complained that they’re treated unfairly when ethical issues arise. Members of the Congressional Black Caucus are still fuming over Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to oust then-Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) from the House Ways and Means Committee in 2006, and some have argued that race plays a role in the ongoing efforts to remove Rep. Charles Rangel (D-N.Y.) from his chairmanship of that committee.

Undeniably, the fate that awaits Rangel and Waters – who have both been long-serving representatives of their community – is extraordinarily politically charged:

The politically charged decisions by veteran Democratic Reps. Charles Rangel of New York and Maxine Waters of California to force public trials by the House ethics committee are raising questions about race and whether black lawmakers face more scrutiny over allegations of ethical or criminal wrongdoing than their white colleagues.

The controversy over the cases and the prospect of the first simultaneous ethics trials for multiple members in more than 30 years mark the biggest challenge for the ethics committee’s and the House’s ability to police its own members since the mid-1990s, when then-Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and leaders from both parties found themselves hauled before the secretive panel.

The question of whether black lawmakers are now being singled out for scrutiny has been simmering throughout the 111th Congress, with the Office of Congressional Ethics a focal point of the concerns. At one point earlier this year, all eight lawmakers under formal investigation by the House ethics committee, including Rangel and Waters, were black Democrats. All those investigations originated with the OCE, which can make recommendations — but takes no final actions — on such cases.

There’s a “dual standard, one for most members and one for African-Americans,” said one member of the Congressional Black Caucus, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

Corruption is a common theme that plagues the major cities of the United States, many of which coincidentally are run by Black people. Atlanta, Birmingham, Baltimore, Washington DC, Memphis, Newark, Detroit… the list is long and distinguished, regrettably for reasons that usually deal with one cities attempt to out-corrupt the others.

Once labeled the Black Mecca for enterprising young Black people, DeKalb County has lost the entire luster from its shine as of late. USA Today ran a story promoting DeKalb County as a place to raise close-knit Cosby-like Black families, though marriage is an institution for white people.

However, DeKalb County is a virtual mirror-image of Clayton County in Georgia, steeped in corruption both morally and economically bankrupt. Black people love DeKalb County so much, they have bestowed the government, school system and prison facilities there with the same enthusiasm and results that every other city in America with a large Black population can observe. The only problem is that DeKalb County is supposed to be the county with the most educated concentration of Black people in America.

In DeKalb County, those Black people in power enrich themselves, while the lower-level public employees are soaked in a combustible mix of low morale and anger.

DeKalb County shows us what diversity endgame is, with the elimination of white city employee’s positions and the replacement of them with Black people (unlike in Clayton County, no Black snipers were positioned on the roof as fired white cops were escorted out of the building).

Some of the worst performing schools in America are filled with the sons of daughters of the Black elite of DeKalb and Atlanta, who flocked to the county when Oprah said it was a great place to raise Black families.

DeKalb County was to be the subject of a study by a University of Georgia professor, who was awarded $500,000 for a four-year research project on Black adolescent development in the county (though results of the search started in 2005 have not been found as of yet):

A University of Georgia education researcher hopes a new, four-year study of the experiences of African-American adolescents in a predominantly Black Atlanta suburb will help explain the reasons behind a persistent achievement gap between African-American and White students.

"Adolescence is a period of time when young people are attempting to gain an integrated sense of self," said Jerome Morris, an associate professor of social foundations of education in the College of Education and a research fellow at UGA's Institute for Behavioral Research (IBR). "For African-American youth, this process can be further complicated by race, gender and class status."

Morris has received a $505,000 grant from the Spencer Foundation to investigate issues of identity formation and negotiation in a project beginning in January 2006 called, "African-American Adolescents in a Black Suburb in the U.S. South: A Social Study of Schooling, Identity, and Achievement."

Based in DeKalb County — considered "the heart of Black Mecca" because of its burgeoning predominantly Black population — Morris' study will employ sociological and anthropological research methods to follow adolescents over a four-year span as well as evaluate the school district and county.

"By studying the school district, it will help us to understand how district policies and practices shape African-American schooling and will allow us to see the factors that surround academic engagement and promote students' success, shape identity formation and inform teachers' perceptions of African-American students," said Morris.

DeKalb County is 80 percent Black, and has a predominately African-American school board as well as an African-American superintendent. The county is at the center of the largest growth spurt of any Black community in the United States and has outpaced other Georgia counties in "Black buying power."

Incredulous as what is about to be written may seem, a Black parent filed a Civil Rights complaint against the DeKalb County school system for alleged racial discrimination against BLACK CHILDREN, though Black children comprise 85 percent of the students enrolled in the school system (the dropout rate in DeKalb County is shockingly high, one of the highest in the nation for Black students in the purported Black Mecca):

A parent has filed a federal civil rights complaint against the DeKalb County School System, alleging discrimination against black students.

The parent and In My Shoes-The National Parent Education Center filed the complaint Friday with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

“The complaint is under evaluation to determine if the allegations are appropriate for OCR investigation and resolution,” said Jim Bradshaw, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Education.

The complaint alleges DeKalb’s International Baccalaureate program for middle school students, which is for high-achievers, is geared toward white children, Bradshaw told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Wednesday.

“Specifically, the complaint alleges that during the 2009-2010 school year, only one middle school, located in the northern section of the DeKalb County School System, has an IB program,” Bradshaw said, “and, that the predominantly non-African-American students who live in that school's attendance area were given first priority to the IB program.”

Even in a county like DeKalb - that professes to be home to so-called Black Mecca – do the sons of daughters of those who work in big corporations in Atlanta and pull down large salaries under-perform academically as compared to the sons and daughters of white parents unable to move out a county that is now dominated by Black people.

Schools are closing there, because of large budget cuts (the children of the people who made the Black Mecca obviously couldn’t expand the tax brackets there), though crime is an area of constant expansion:

“In the ’80s and ’90s, you said you lived in DeKalb and it was beloved,” the 25-year resident said. “Now when you hear DeKalb, you say ‘Oh Lord, what happened now?’ ”

Ann Brown, president of the Belvedere Civic Club, rarely sees officers and feels crime has spiked.

“In my immediate community, we had three people murdered right here; it was the most heinous thing — an infant was killed,” said Brown, a resident for 28 years. “My neighbors, the majority of whom are seniors, are afraid to be out at a certain time after dark because of the one-on-one crime. They’re locked in.”

Why compare the Black United States Congressman’s ethical violations to DeKalb County?

Even in Black Run America (BRA), the levels of abuse and unethical activity by those in power cannot go unhidden. Every municipality – save the heroic Newark where any drop in the Black murder rate is cause for applause – that is run by Black people is awash in corruption and dishonesty.

Though Black government officials do not have a monopoly on fraud in office, it seems to accompany them in droves.

And though the belief in Black infallibility is strong, this hubris is grounds for a cataclysmic earthquake to wipe away the very foundations that BRA was built upon. “My nigga,” as Harris affectionately said in the film Training Day, will quickly become “King Kong ain’t got shit on me,” as Black people turn their backs on each other.

It is imperative that people understand the lessons that Detroit, Baltimore, Atlanta, Birmingham and Clayton County – let alone DeKalb County – provide, for we inch closer and closer to the film The Second Civil War daily.

A cursory glance at The Drudge Report will provide ample evidence as to why the conversation about race should never begin: making white people think honestly and openly about the racial implications of their displacement through massive immigration and Federally-mandated diversity in every corporation, government agency, ivory towers of Wall Street and major university (both staff and enrollment) in the nation means the gradually cohesion of this long-splintered group will occur.

They might live in Whitopia’s, but they don’t think and act in those Whitopia’s best interests. This is changing at a rate that should alarm those in power, for like the pivotal scene in the film Edge of Darkness, we at SBDPL do believe that the people in this country deserve better.

All of those in power in Black Run America believe like the characters of Alonzo Harris and the real-life Frank Lucas that they can’t lose. In areas where the ideas that are omnipresent in BRA are replaced with actual Black dominated local governments, the belief that "we are in power and we will do what we want" is pervasive.

In the end, King Kong does have shit on you, Mr. Rangel, DeKalb County and BRA.