There is always a moment when you can feel the ground shifting under your feet, when you know that things are not going to stay the way they are and change is on the horizon. That is the way that I see the change the Martin Luther King County recently made on the youth jail after young protesters disrupted meetings.
Their complaint was simple: Resources should be put into solving the problem and not in locking up more youths. What is amazing is that they had to even bring this issue up in a county named after Martin Luther King Jr.
We changed the name of the county from a plantation owner to a man who led and died for the civil rights of American Africans. That name change should have included a shift in our thinking, our planning and the way we see our county. Instead, it was just a new name, and we continued to do all of the things we had been doing before.
Not one time did our Metropolitan King County Council hold up the decisions they were making next to the philosophy of Martin Luther King Jr. and say, “What would Martin Luther King Jr. say about this?”
Instead, another generation of youths had to remind our county that there are still issues facing the black community that have not been addressed. All of the statistics say that when a community has businesspeople who look like them, it impacts how it sees itself and the world around it. In a capitalistic society, that is crucial because it sends a clear message that you are either part of the society around you or you are not. Too often our youths have come to the conclusion that they are on the outside anyway, so why abide by the rules of the insiders?
A community full of incompetent businesspeople did not dig this hole. It was dug by six generations of the most brutal repression of any group of people in America. Six generations of business communities burned down, and the owners were killed or ran out of town. Six generations of being denied by banks, shut down by made-up rules, eminent domain being used to run freeways right through their business districts, and you wonder why?
Only temporary solutions
On the corner of 14th Avenue and Yesler Way sits an elementary school. That entire area was once a thriving black business community that had been eliminated by eminent domain. You will find this in every black community of any size in the nation.
We have always been seen as a consumer group to feed the needs of the larger, white business community. The laws of Jim Crow were designed to keep us in that position, and our entire economic structure was built around this reality.
Now we have another generation of unemployed and disillusioned youths because they don’t see a world where their elders are playing a major role. The obvious conclusion is that opportunity will not be available for them, as well. Every choice they make from that point on is bad or worse.
Jails, youth prevention programs and showing black youths how to tie ties are useful tools, but they just put a temporary and inadequate bandage over an open wound.
Our federal, state, county and local governments have sanctioned everything that has happened to black people in America. It’s time for those same forces to work with the banking community in Martin Luther King County and demonstrate that the name of this county means something.
I was a part of the battle to stop red-lining, so I know how that policy of deliberately denying loans to black communities decimated their business development and home stock. It’s now time for a “green line,” where banks target black communities for special loans to rebuild our infrastructures.
Martin Luther King County is the obvious place to start, or it’s just a name change and another game is being played on American Africans and Martin Luther King Jr.
CHARLIE JAMES has been an African-American-community activist for more than 35 years. He is co-founder of the Martin Luther King Jr. County Institute (mlkci.org). To comment on this column, write to MPTimes@nwlink.com.