(Akiit.com) Find jobs for the 650,000 ex-cons who come home every year, as several really good programs are already doing.

In an ideal America, our president would have told us Tuesday night about his plan not only for fixing the jobs crisis but also for making it so that the crisis wasn’t twice as bad for black people (15.8 percent unemployment versus 8.5 percent for whites).

But this isn’t an ideal America, and he didn’t. But then, who thought he would? The good news is that there is a way to make serious headway with the black unemployment problem, and it’s getting more attention by the year.

The problem is that it doesn’t sound very sexy in terms of name. “Prisoner re-entry programs” sounds pretty dull compared with “black agenda” and such. But much of the disproportion in black unemployment is because of how hard it is for ex-cons to get or keep work — when, as we all know, a grievous disproportion of ex-cons are black.

Newark, N.J., is an example of what feeds into the kind of statistic that we dream of Obama addressing in a speech. Each year about 1,500 unmarried, semiliterate drug addicts with no job skills come home from prison to Newark.

Am I stereotyping them? Well, OK, there is a certain diversity among them. Ten percent are not men. A smaller percentage are not black. There are those among them who read above the sixth-grade level. About one in five does not have a drug-addiction problem, and about one in 20 had some vocational training behind bars.

Three years after they get home, one in three will not have been arrested again, and two out of three will not be back behind bars. Now, extend this picture to all of America’s big cities. About 650,000 ex-cons in total return home yearly.

Yet, thankfully, it is a myth that nobody will hire one. The ex-con needs people who know where to send him — say, an organization like Newark’s Offender Aid and Restoration of Essex County (OAR), specializing in connecting ex-offenders with work. Get this: Finding people work is the least of their challenges. The White Rose Linen Supply Co. has been especially open to hiring ex-cons, while others get work as handymen, janitors, warehouse workers and truck drivers and in sanitation and customer service.

The immediate task at hand for an ex-offender is becoming able to work. Ex-cons often don’t have a Social Security number — and forget about a birth certificate. As soon as an ex-offender comes in, OAR gets him those documents, plus a driver’s license, if he qualifies. Nine in 10 clients need detoxification or rehabilitation.

The job part is then easy. Each week, OAR holds employment-counseling meetings, during which it drills clients on making eye contact, sitting up straight and asking questions, and then sends them off with three job leads.

So does Newark’s Prisoners Resource Center (PRC), where every week, head case manager Omar Shabazz pulls no punches in his introductory talk to about 15 clients. ” ‘That’s embarrassing for somebody to come into Burger King and see me flippin’ burgers,’ ” he quotes someone as saying, and then answers: “What’s embarrassing is that you dropped out of school in seventh grade!”
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(Akiit.com) In 2004, rappers M-1 and stic.man, together known as the politically-charged rap group Dead Prez, released the lead single to their sophomore album (Revolutionary But Gangsta), “Hell Yeah (Pimp the System).” The song and accompanying video detail various money-making schemes, all of the illegal variety, from the long-con of defrauding major credit card companies, down to the immediate ordering pizza and robbing the delivery man at gunpoint.

From the point-of-view of the storyteller in each verse, these types of capers are necessary in order to survive, to provide their families with “money and thangs,” as the chorus suggests, because their opportunities for economic sustenance are otherwise non-existent. When M-1 provides instructions on how to go down to the welfare office and make a false claim for government assistance, he justifies his actions by exclaiming “f*** welfare, we say reparations.”

The song purposefully utilizes extreme imagery in order to convey to the listener the sense of desperation that fuels the actions described therein. In real life, that desperation manifests itself in much more subtle ways, such as in the case of Kelley Williams-Bolar. Williams-Bolar is the 40 year-old single mother of two daughters living in Akron, Ohio who has been sentenced to 10 days in jail, 80 hours of community service, and three years on probation for falsifying records in order to send her children to a better school district.

On official documents, she reported that her daughters resided with their grandfather, Edward Williams, in order that they would be eligible to attend school in suburban district of Copley-Fairlawn, when in actuality they lived at home with their mother in a public housing project in Akron. As a result of now having a felony on her record, Williams-Bolar is no longer eligible to complete the teaching license she was a mere 12 credits shy of receiving from Akron University.

Undoubtedly Williams-Bolar broke the law, but a case such as this raises a litany of questions: is the punishment too harsh? How many other parents are doing the same and are getting away with it? Do the ends justify the means?

These are all valid questions, and the dialogue that is sure to arise from this case there will be answers bandied about from every corner, but might I suggest that all of them are questions that only serve to address very surface issues. The question that must be posed and answered if we wish to unburden ourselves from such stories is this: when do we stop pretending?

When do we stop pretending that Williams-Bolar’s actions exist in some sort of vacuum, and are not the result of structural inequalities our social and economic systems? When do we stop pretending that the system is perfect and only fails when “a few bad apples” get caught disrupting it? When do we stop pretending that all it takes is hard work to achieve the “American dream,” even when our American version of capitalism continues to reward the richest among us and place unfair and unjust burdens on the rest? When do we stop pretending that Williams-Bolar is alone?
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(Akiit.com) This week, Steve Harvey, comedian extraordinaire and self-proclaimed expert on black love, saw his own personal life flung into the spotlight when his ex-wife posted a series of videos on YouTube airing her dirty laundry with the so-called “King of Comedy.”

Mary Shackelford was married to Harvey for ten years and has a child with him. The couple divorced back in 2005, but it looks like recent legal action taken by Harvey against Shackelford for allegedly ruining his chance to have a show on Oprah’s new television network has prompted her to take to the internet, where she has outlined in great and riveting detail the violations she feels she has suffered by his hands. The charges she makes in her videos range from petty to serious, including accusations that Harvey cheated on her repeatedly during their 10-year long marriage, had her evicted from her house, and turned her son against her.

Harvey’s current wife apparently found these accusations so insidious that she felt the need to retain an attorney, in particular to dispel the notion that she had been “the other woman” prior to marrying Harvey.

The plot is thickened because Harvey is, of course, author of Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy, and Commitment, a New York Times bestselling book aimed at “educating” black women on ways to find love by offering insights into the black male psyche. And though Harvey turned to his radio show Monday morning to deny his ex-wife’s allegations, many critics are already invariably billing this as a messy and unsavory public callout of a man who has made a career in part by selling advice on how to get and maintain black heterosexual love.

While it’s an understandable impulse to question whether a man who has been married three times, divorced twice, and publicly accused of mistreatment and infidelity can really offer much in the way of useful commentary on love and marriage, critics are wrong to do so.

Ms. Shackelford’s YouTube accusations and Harvey’s track record of divorce aren’t proof that Harvey isn’t fit to advise us on love; he was ill fit to begin with.

However damning these latest personal details prove to be, it’s the content of Harvey’s public philosophy on love that actually undermines and invalidates his authority. His views are ignorant, outdated, sexist, and woefully out of touch with modern black women, black men, and black love.

Steve (and a few others) could really benefit from an address on the State of our Black Unions:

Steve Harvey, members of the mainstream media, distinguished scientists, writers, and researchers, and fellow black Americans:

Today I want to begin by congratulating black women.

By all accounts, this generation of black women is one of the most well-educated, healthy, wealthy, and most successful ever. We’re representing from the boardroom to the Broadway stage. We’re starting our own television empires, we’re publishing bestselling novels, and we’re holding it down as athletes, activists, mothers, entrepreneurs, executives, housewives, and scientists. In short, we’re “doing big things”.

With these new levels of success have come new opportunities at self-improvement and happiness. We’re serving in the military at record numbers. We volunteer with our local churches. And though the gender gap persists, across nearly all income levels we’re more likely to donate to charity, and on average give more than our male counterparts when we do so.

But if were to believe you or some others in the mainstream media, it might be hard to notice some of our accomplishments, as black women and as a black community.
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(Akiit.com) Seems like summertime with the sun shining and all… I’m hungry at this time… Shall have papa johns pizza… Pepperoni that is while reading over this hotels on 5th ave article… Been a while since I been on a vacation… Would love the beach but it’s still winter… Maybe head north to NYC… Have a friends I could visit while there… Let me check out twitter… See if I have any pm message… Also need to change my profile picture…

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(Akiit.com) Just looking around and noticing the cabin furniture in this office… Beautiful oak wood which stands out… Must be nice to be able to afford such high quality wood… Well I do need to make a few calls… Also print out some articles that was forwarded my way earlier today… No football this weekend as the NFL season is over… Not really but the steelers and packers are getting ready for the super bowl… 2 week delay that is…

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