Let Me Tell You...: Romney Blinders on Single Motherhood

Let Me Tell You...: Romney Blinders on Single Motherhood: Not a nanosecond spent on equal rights and equal pay for women doing same jobs as men. Who among you awaited some kind of encouragement fr...

Romney Blinders on Single Motherhood

Not a nanosecond spent on equal rights and equal pay for women doing same jobs as men. Who among you awaited some kind of encouragement from Mitt Romney during Tuesday’s debate?

He spent his time gloating about “binders full of women” he sought to fill top-level Massachusetts government posts. And get this, he assured women schedule changes so they could pick up their children from day care and to go home and play good homemakers. (I’ve read that he didn’t tell the whole truth even if it is, we’re not impressed)

Imagine that! The presidential hopeful brags about his meager assistance on the part of women but failed to add a scintilla to address women issues with the exception of saying they wouldn’t want a man picking their contraceptives.  

Yikes. He committed another faux pas when he verbally slapped single motherhood. If you didn’t know better you’d hear a blame-game about disproportionate numbers of single mothers who made their own rock-filled beds, excluding husbands or “baby daddies.” I’m sick to death of this scenario from conservative  politicians. Other family specialists, social engineers, and black leaders discuss the needs without demeaning women who do herculean jobs of double parenting.

But Romney, a rich white guy who wants to run this country, uses the same old tired rhetoric. It takes a mother and a father – a two-parent household – to raise children and keep them off the streets and to prevent uncivil acts and violence.  Romney isn’t just out of touch, he’s out of order because he’s clueless why so many women are single mothers.

It’s appalling that he so eloquently excluded a family/women’s issue on national TV while President Obama correctly embraced our issues.  Let me enlighten you, Mr. Romney:

1.      African-American men are sitting behind bars – mostly in prisons, not jails. Don’t take my word. Go on line or call The Sentencing Project in Washington, DC.

2.      African-American men have troubles that people like Romney ignored or didn’t figure the importance of  health on physical and mental fronts along with good paying jobs. He excludes sensibilities of women who choose what’s best for themselves and their children.

3.      African-Americans or any other women cannot force a man to marry or remain with the women. Oh, by the way, more African-American men are in prison than in college, and those college-educated women want college-educated men.

4.      Back in slavery and Reconstruction, African-American men ran away from slave masters and later left slave territories for survival. Some sent money home, and some were never seen again. Single mothers didn't just break out in the twentieth century as conservatives seem to believe.

5.      African-American men are dying in such unimaginable numbers that it isn’t hard to fathom why there are so many single black women raising children alone.  The life expectancy for black men is at least a decade shorter than white men’s.

(Anything I’ve written about African-Americans is relevant to Latinos and other groups with similar histories of imprisonment and violent deaths)

If you don’t know the other side of single motherhood, Mr. Romney, check out Maury or any  afternoon talk show that discloses relationships between single white women and their baby daddies.
Your comments are code for “Welfare is a black thing.” You don’t care “diddley” about debating the human costs for innocent children because they should be on their own after birth.

Romney had a golden moment to give lip-service or geniune support for women pay equity, but his  missteps brought on a major blunder. Women doing equal work as men deserve equal pay as legalized by Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act 2009 (signed into law by President Barack Obama) Some women fear for its security because this inequity survived at least a hundred years without a whimper, and a disinterested president may cause harm. 

He stripped again because of self-help: Single mothers who earn equal pay as male counterparts can enroll sons and daughters in camp or educational programs in summers, place them in after-school programs or early childhood education programs that a Republican administration might cut or push off on financially beleaguered states. Teenagers could go to foreign countries for summer vacation. These children would have plenty of nutritious food to fill hungry stomachs for better learning; they’d get tutoring if needed, and they’d wear presentable clothes and shoes. Instead he preaches about two-parent families as though he has the power to unite them.

The Romneys of the political world need to include women into their inner sanctum; or better yet, respect their contributions and hire them in positions where  they're qualified. Unfortunately, Romney doesn’t share women’s dreams, their experiences, and he didn’t fake his way through such high-profile litany of women’s rights and issues left to address.  An apology won’t cover it up. 

 

 

 

 

No Post-racial Era

Forget what you've read or heard when President Barack Obama was elected in 2008: It's a post-racial era, they said.
Bull....Race still matters in 2012. You can believe it.
Don't let anyone fool you about what most African-Americans never acknowledged or surmised. They whispered behind closed doors, in small gatherings, in phone conversations, and anywhere we have privacy from people who'd dismiss our so-called paranoid perspective.
I guess you have to be among the 13% African-Americans or other groups to understand what their experiences are.
We're still dealing with reverse discrimination when colored folk turn black and then African-Americans couldn't possible overturn neglected racial issues, derogatory stereotyping,,
more black males in prison xxx

Let Me Tell You...: Mister Rogers to Romney: Oh No, You Don't

Let Me Tell You...: Mister Rogers to Romney: Oh No, You Don't: What's Mitt Romney smoking? Nothing? Then why the low five to Big Bird? His comment about Big Bird and PBS is not only cavalier, it's as t...

Seriously, Research, Read History

Our main priority is to make sure President Obama does not get a second term. -- Mitch M


My dad used to say, "There'll only be two class- rich and poor." (He should know since his Southern town never had factories and unemployment for black men was unimaginable. He never had a full-time job after relocating to the south from Newark, N.J.)

He died poor and left children most of whom never left poverty. Pockets of poverty in urban areas across this country didn't have jobs before the economic crisis. Romney can blame it on Obama, but he needs a history lesson. Milwaukee's factories have been closing

African-American men are unemployed and long before this political staging of blaming President Obama for unemployment in his four-year tenure. Long before Obama was born these men struggled without jobs to care for their children.

Mister Rogers to Romney: Oh No, You Don't

What's Mitt Romney smoking? Nothing? Then why the low five to Big Bird?

His comment about Big Bird and PBS is not only cavalier, it's as thoughtless as that unbelievable middle class flip flop. He put them in the 47% now he's apologized and started courting them for votes. During the debates, he pitched a proud doom day for PBS:

"I'm sorry Jim. I'm going to stop the subsidy to PBS. I'm going to stop other things. I like PBS. I love Big Bird. ...I'm not going to keep on spending money on things to borrow money from China to pay for it."

What's he going to do -- outsource Big Bird to China or the highest bidding country, or to businesses creating12 million jobs he promised? He just doesn't get it.

(Instead of targeting PBS and Big Bird, here are more expensive chopping block subsidies -- corporate welfare, Big Oil, tax cuts for the rich, and.. . Oh, I forgot, it's okay because entitlements are for the wealthy. I must add that some wealthy citizens want their beloved country to survive) 

Big Bird isn't just a subsidized PBS phenomenon; he's an educational staple for children and adults without Internet, cable, or other paid networks providing political and special programs.

He owns Sesame Street, but he isn't eating up all those government cookies without carrying his weight. Children need Big Bird to bring them along with their peers in kindergarten and first grade. Fortunate children have day care linked to early childhood education, which single mothers and jobless parents cannot afford.

I'm a Big Bird learner's mother, and I thank him for all that reading, writing, and math in North Carolina though she attended four-year-old kingergarten. 

Mr. Rogers is livid. Twitter fans and the Big Bird family from years ago are twisting with anger. So Romney wants to drown PBS that provides programming for that 47% he said, "I don't have to worry about them."
He doesn't have to worry about freedom, convenience, and anything else he needs or desires. ...maybe a trip to heaven with a U-haul hitched to his bank.

Consider this: You apologized for the 47% but where I grew up and live now, your comments are unforgettable and unforgiveable. For those who believe your apology, hear this:

I have some white, sandy beachfront property "smack dab" in Florida's Port Everglades, and I'll sell it for whatever a buyer is willing to pay.




 

Moving Forward Festival

Willie T Atkinson invites you to Greenville, NC   "Hello Joyce, It's good to know that u support President Obama for 4 more years. Please let it be known that the African-American Caucus of Pitt County Democratic Party is hosting a Moving Forward Festival, Oct. 6, 2012 at Tom Foreman Park, 400 Nash Street from 12 PM - 5PM. Free food & live music by Back Together Again plus a step show performance by Caution Steps. CU there !"