Denver's Black Culture Lost To Progress
Editor:

The "P" word has fangs.

The June 24 Denver Post article, "Juneteenth festival canceled", just might be notification that Denver's Black cultural events, are a thing of the past, and a final nail in the coffin. In the past 18 years, the Five Points area, which is the cornerstone of Denver's historical Black cultural events, experienced a tripling of property taxes, which caused economically challenged Blacks (with a consistent 15 percent unemployment rate) to flee this area, and for affluent whites and their developers to flock to this area. This is commonly called historical "progress" in the national Black community.

My first experience with inner-city development and "progress" occurred in my hometown, Asheville, NC, when I returned home in 1969, from my third deployment to Vietnam. Houses in my old neighborhood, our schools and our churches were razed and vaporized. My family was evicted from their cozy shanty and herded into a public housing project. Long gone were all the memories of the other physical places that helped to shape me into a man and productive person. My biggest shock came when I asked where the old high school's mementos were (athletic trophies, class pictures, etc.), and I got no response.

Affluent whites and their developers continue to make Blacks creations of their own culture, a "work-in-progress." Despite all of the atrocities done by vile dictators like Hitler, America's Blacks are the only people on the planet that have been stripped of their native language, religion and culture. For our "free" slave labor, we were further rewarded by our women-folk being raped and bred like cattle for plantation masters' pursuits of Herculean slaves.

Arabs and Muslims are now experiencing threats to their own global religion and culture.

Beware of wrecking-balls and "progress."

James J. Tenant
Centennial, CO

Return To To

Owl Club Thanks DUS
To Publisher Rosalind Harris:

On behalf of the Owl Club, I'd like to thank you and the Denver Urban Spectrum for your wonderful coverage of our 56th annual debutante presentation. As usual, your piece put a beautiful exclamation point to another very successful event.

As you know, the Owl Club’s debutante presentation is the oldest in the state of Colorado, a point which we're extremely proud of.  However, what we're most proud of is the opportunity to showcase some of Denver’s most outstanding young African-American women in a way that befits their achievements. Your article helped us accomplish that goal.

We've received some tremendous feedback about your piece, and I thought that you should know that the professionalism and skill of you and your staff are greatly appreciated.

Thanks again for your continued support, and keep up the good work!

Captain Eric Mosley
Owl Club Publicity
Denver, CO

Return To Top

The Poor Will Always Be With Us
Editor:

Not all are safe from exposure to heat or cold. Matter of fact, a few will die. Who are the homeless? If you can see their eyes, they’re empty. Without a place of their own, beaten by the streets from who can say… but perhaps mistakes or neglect from one or from all, the poor will always be with us.

I have met with many, myself being a chronic victim of homelessness. The majority of street people are out to share what they do have with others, to offer any help or guidance.

Godly men and women and only reason for living out on the sidewalks is social or political, mental or aged. Simply people who have difficulty managing money or have a dependence to any one of a number of addictions, results in the most cruel and desperate form of poverty.

Lost, unable to cope, cast their fate to the wind because of life’s problems. To rehabilitate takes monumental patience and commitment, faith in God, stubborn perseverance. First, hand outs, then a lending hand to lift up to stability.

Meet the challenge, face the fear, move forward.

Bob Christine
Denver, CO

Return To Top

MLK Memorial Useless
Editor:

Editor’s Note: This letter was sent to The Mayor of Denver and The Denver Foundation by the author, as well as the Denver Urban Spectrum.

I was shocked and saddened to learn that a donation was made to the Martin Luther King Jr. national memorial (from the City of Denver). That organization is trying to raise $100 million dollars to (in my opinion) build a useless monument. As a Black woman I feel that most of our people will never see this monument, and as it stands, most of our young men will see the inside of a prison or jail before they think about visiting this monument. It serves no purpose to most of the Black community.

When people are struggling and lacking in education, income or homeownership, and when our youth do not have anything to do, I am not sure why a $100 million dollar monument is being built at this time. 

Think about how many community centers we could build around the country in honor of MLK with this kind of money?  If we have to honor MLK what a better way then to have communities centers to help our youth.

In the lobby of each of these centers we could have a tribute to MLK, and then in the back or upstairs we could have so many things going on such as computer centers, reading centers, tutor centers, golf, tennis, science, and basketball. This would be a better way to use this money and help our youth.

With the Black community screaming that we need the government to "do something to help our children," as soon as we get money we want to build a monument, just so we can say we have the first monument built for a Black man, "bragging rights,” and “keeping up with the Jones,” except in this case the "Jones" do not have their youth at record numbers dropping out of school, joining gangs, or doing drugs.

How sad that the Black community feels sending money to this monument is more important then building a community center to help with our youth problems. We talk about how the government wastes money and will not give to our community, but then we are doing the same. We need to start helping ourselves before we "throw rocks.” Maybe I am the only one that sees something wrong with this picture, maybe I am the only one to think that our money could have been spent in a better way.

MLK was about self-help. He was about helping – a "hand up, not a hand out."

I really feel that MLK would want to be honored across this nation helping our community, rather than in one place where most of our community will never get to see it.

Teresa K. McCaskill
Aurora

Return To Top

Obuntu Criticism “A Selective Critique”
Editor:

I take issue with Mr. Cyrus Ptolemon’s letter to the editor in response to Ms. Darvi Brook’s article in your July issue, which, in part, featured my commentary on the subject of “Obuntu” in relation to the people of African descent.

The author engaged in a “selective critique” of the article in order to support his slanted and misconstrued point of view.  This led him to commit, among others, the fallacy of reductio ad-absurdum—a zealous over-generalization of issues.  Mr. Ptolemon failed to appreciate the main theme of the article—the empowerment of the people of African descent by utilizing values from the African past such as Obuntu.

Mr. Ptolemon claimed with regard to my commentary that it was untimely: “seems to be talking as if we were living in the heyday of colonialism.”  Well, I have some bad news for you Mr. Ptolemon.  Colonialism has not ceased; it is still alive and well.  It only changed clothes.  Simply because a leopard puts on a sheep skin, it does not become a sheep but rather it remains a leopard in a sheep skin!  Western Imperialism and Globalization in the world today are a form of colonialism/neo-colonialism—a naked fact which does not take a rocket scientist to recognize. 

The author took issue with my concept of “divide and conquer” as a classic method of the oppressors and dominant groups, to subjugate their subjects.  This, Mr. Ptolemon needs to be reminded, is a reality whether you are talking about it from an historical point of view or whether you are speaking about a contemporary situation unless of course, one wants to be a-historical! The art of pitting one group against another in order to gain total control is a reality that is exemplified by both historical as well as contemporary evidence.

Mr. Ptolemon presents us with a lengthy list of the humanitarian, economic and ecological catastrophes that afflict “the post-colonial world” but is oblivious to the fact that the problems of the so called “Third World” are to a very large extent a product of the policies and practices of the so-called the “Developed World” which, include but are not limited to the policies of globalization and the exploitation wrought by this phenomenon.  Mr. Ptolemon needs no reminding that economic exploitation in the “post colonial context” by the West is at the heart of the many of the catastrophes in the Third World regions:  Liberia, Darfur, Congo, many parts of the Middle East and South East Asia. This does not exculpate the Third World from its share of responsibility in the mess. But, the first culprit is the Developed world a fact that needs to be clearly understood. 

Mr. Ptolemon’s argument is another classical example of “throwing away the baby with the bath water.”  Just because there are problems in the Third World, the author seems to suggest, we should not consider their values/knowledge systems!  The argument that Mr. Ptolemon advances here betrays a colonized mind crying out for de-colonization! 

I am not apologetic to my suggestion that people of African descent ought to go to the elders in their communities as a source of knowledge.  This is because of the respect the elders hold in African and African-American communities.  They are the reservoirs and custodians/keepers of the knowledge and values of their communities. 

Because history (and knowledge systems as we have them today) have always been constructed from the vantage point of the ruling class (Euro-Westerners with a Euro-Western epistemological lens), it is essential that people of African descent (like any other indigenous groups the world over) be accorded a chance to read books and literature written by people from those communities (in addition of course to reading the Euro-Western literature) in order to have an all-inclusive perspective. It is in the end an effort to enhance our interconnectedness, the “Obuntu” of humankind. 

Mr. Ptolemon needs to desist from “selective critique” of literature otherwise he runs the risk, as he does here, of placing his argument out of context and rendering it fallacious:  lacking in logical coherence and substance.

Dr. Lucas Nandih Shamala, Assistant Professor
African and African-American Studies
Metropolitan State College of Denver

Return To Top

Racial Profiling On Light Rail
Editor:

Scott lives near the 30th and Downing light rail station, and I live near the Arapahoe station. We commute frequently on the opposite side of town visiting relatives. Scott and I have ridden the light rail since its inception, and we have many concerns about the fare inspector’s patterns of behavior.

We’ve noticed some relentless racial profiling on the perceived minority side of town. Usually this outrageous racial profiling begins at the 30th and Downing Station with the fare inspector’s checking for fares and ceasing to do their duties at the Federal Courthouse in Downtown Denver. At the Federal Courthouse, the fare inspectors seem reluctant to check for fares as the majority of passengers are Caucasians. On a daily basis, we have observed fare inspectors not checking for tickets and/or not issuing citations for non-paying Caucasian passengers.

We have a few questions:

• These RTD Fare Inspectors are funded by taxpayers. Why aren’t they being supervised by RTD?
• Why aren’t there minority fare inspectors?
• Why are the fare inspectors seemingly allowed to pursue their jobs with vigor in the minority community, but suddenly their job description changes once the demographics (skin complexion) of the passengers change in downtown or the southern corridor?
• While there might be a shortage of fare inspectors, why is there a disproportionate amount of inspectors in the minority section of town compared to Park Meadows, Arapahoe, Hampden, and stations in the southern corridor?

We currently have video footage of these light rail fare inspectors’ racial profiling passengers in the minority community. Our intent is to go to the local media outlets with our footage. I would hope this serious issue is addressed promptly before the media publicizes this train wreck!

Monica Young
Englewood, CO

Return To Top

A Letter Of Conscience
To Mayor John Hickenlooper:

As I was riding my bicycle from Aurora to Denver down 16th Street I could not help but notice the impressive disparity between the other side of the tracks and the white communities in the eastern region of Denver. There is a vast difference between the investment in the lives of the individuals who are poor and their neighborhoods and the color of their skins and ethnic origins. It is plain that there is great poverty and there is great violence in the metro region on the periphery of the city. One county commissioner from Jefferson County, Cathy Hartman, remarked that, "Denver pushes the poor up against the borders of the city and then they spill over into our counties."

Violence is bred by great disparities between wealth and poverty. It is spread by lack of employment as related to the cost of living and a safe place to live. The Koerner Commission Report told us as much as this and more in 1968. The inability of these families and neighborhoods to make it financially in America is what drives the persistent and pervasive loss of will to compete against gangs and violence that inevitably costs more in debilitated citizens and those who are incarcerated.

I was not in favor of expanding the city jail, nor was I in favor of taxes that ultimately would lead to increased road construction. I am in favor of schools for young children who cannot afford preschool, and I am in favor of spending money that is raised from taxes to divert ethnic minorities from winding up in corrections. "A child in fourth grade who does not read at a second grade level means that he or she is more likely to be in prison." Building corrections facilities, like building roads, must be supplanted by infrastructures that afford ethnic minorities an equal opportunity to grow up in America and have the same protections and opportunities as the part of our society, which has always experienced white privilege.

These differences must be eliminated in health care, personal wealth, protected enclaves, safe neighborhoods, places for people to have a mixed neighborhood economically, and a spiritual foundation that makes it possible for a person to thrive in a community of conscience. Fair housing must mean that economic mixed communities thrive, as opposed to upper income communities that segregate the poor and those who feel no burden to care for all our citizens. Every time we build a mixed income community, we ensure that those who are limited have a chance to an education, an income and a place to raise their families.

James Johnson, the professor of demographics from Chappell Hill, North Carolina, remarked that "white people are producing less children, and that in the future of our nation, there will be a majority of Hispanic people living here." The ethnic minorities are already more than half of the population of those who are in harm's way, almost half of those who are homeless and most of them families. It is a factor in the imprisonment of the people in poor neighborhoods, and a factor in the loss of opportunity that leads to increased mortality of young African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans.

We cannot stand to have and percent of those people in poverty and at risk for lack of health care, safe neighborhoods for their children, stable housing, a possible higher education, and a way to feed, house and cloth their families.

These conditions were not recently created, and they will not go away with 10-year plans to end homelessness. There must be a transformation of the fabric of American society for there to be social justice in this time.

Randle Loeb
Denver, CO

Return To Top

Can We Lower Rates Of Homeless Women And Children, Too?
Editor:

As President and CEO of The Gathering Place, Denver’s only daytime drop-in center for impoverished and homeless women and children, and also an active member of Denver’s Commission to End Homelessness, I am very pleased to see that we are making measurable progress in our efforts to end homelessness in Denver.

A recently released Point in Time study conducted by the Metropolitan Denver Homeless Initiative (MDHI) shows that the chronically homeless population in Denver has declined by 36 percent since 2005 and that overall homelessness in Denver has decreased by 11 percent during the same period. This extensive study has revealed some encouraging news and is a tangible indicator that our targeted efforts at reducing the chronically homeless population are bearing results.

While I am very happy to learn of the substantial decline in this segment of the homeless population, and as I applaud the efforts of those who have worked diligently in contributing to this achievement, I cannot help but feel a pressing concern that we are not doing enough to combat homelessness among women and children. Homelessness among families continues to be prevalent as shown by the following statistics, also revealed by the MDHI Point in Time Study:

Six in 10 homeless persons were part of a family with children.

One-third of those counted had been homeless less than a year, the majority of which were families with children (72.7 percent).

The total number of all homeless children and teens (ages 0-17) is 2408, almost one-third (31.7 percent) of all people who were homeless on January 29, 2007.

More than one-third (34.3 percent) of all homeless children and teens are infants, toddlers and preschoolers (ages 0-5) including 97 infants.

Homeless families with children made up 20 percent of those who were unsheltered throughout the night of January 29, 2007 when the temperature was well below freezing.

As a service provider to homeless women and children I find these statistics to be disheartening and sad. I believe that the homeless women and children in Denver are also deserving of the same diligence and strategic attention that those who are chronically homeless have received.

During the course of many years of working with homeless women and children, we have learned that a majority of homeless families have the propensity to become stabilized easier and much faster than the chronically homeless do. If we could make this great of an impact on the chronically homeless we can definitely make the same impact on decreasing the numbers of homeless families with children in Denver.

In closing, I implore our leaders to begin focusing more energy and resources toward our homeless women, children, and families. We may not see them everyday on the corner like we might see a chronically homeless person, but we know they are out there struggling every day not only to take care of their own needs, but also to care for and provide for their children’s needs as well.

Leslie Foster
President/CEO of The Gathering Place
Denver, CO

Return To Top