“Reclaim our Heritage”

An awareness campaign starting with TORN the play/movie. This works is a heartfelt comparison of 1712 and 2012 African American Culture. Scheduled  to open:

February 29th through March 11, 2012
At the Los Angeles Theater Center

To purchase tickets: www.thewillielynchletter.com

 See you at the show.

A book by Jermaine Harris

CLICK HERE TO REVIEW THE BOOK. CLICK HERE TO PURCHASE THE BOOK
A GREAT GIFT FOR FAMILY LEARNING DISCUSSIONS ON THE AFRICAN AMERICAN CULTURE

So how about colleges not charging tuition upfront, but charge a “payforward”, which is a percentage of lifetime earnings (LTEP) collected through the IRS tax process; but the money is routed directly to individules alma mater.  For example, if the two colleges were free, which would you prefer:

USC or CalStateFresno?  But USC said that they would collect 5% of your gross income annually for the rest of your life, and Fresno said they would collect 3% of your lifetime earnings?  Do the calculations by figuring what your average annual income would be with a degree from USC, multiplying that by 40 years of income, and dividing that number by .05 to get your entire tuition.  Then calculate what your expected average annual income would be with a degree from Fresno and multiply that by 40 years of income, and divide that number by .03.

Example:
USC average annual income would be 130,000 x 40 = $5,200,000 x .05 = $260,000 total tuition
Fresnoaverage annual income would be 100,000 x 40 = $4,000,000 x .03 = $120,000 total tuition

But if you studied to be a teacher and your schooling did not affect your income throughout your career the calculations would look like this:
USC average annual income would be 60,000 x 40 = $2,400,000 x .05 = $120,000 total tuition
Fresnoaverage annual income would be 60,000 x 40 = $2,400,000 x .03 = $72,000 total tuition

But if you never really amount to much in life, the calculations would look like this:
USC average annual income would be 20,000 x 30 = $600,000 x .05 = $30,000 total tuition
Fresno average annual income would be 20,000 x 30 = $600,000 x .03 = $18,000 total tuition

This system would allow institutions to be compensated by their ability to actually produce productive members of society.  As well, it will allow students to get an education regardless of their parent’s ability to pay for tuition.  Additionally, all of your tax dollars that go to higher education, would be for YOUR tuition.  If you didn’t go to college, you would not have to pay anyones tuition.   The average college grad earns an average of $1,000,000 more in lifetime earnings relative to a high school grad, so is it fair that a gas station attendent pay tuition of college students in addition to already paying for k-12 education?

The next question would remain, how to determine admission requirements.   I feel there should be a matrix that calculates a scale such as the following:

GPA                Admitted students
3.7 to 4.0         50%
3.2 to 3.7         30%
3.0 to 3.2         15%
2.5 to 3.0         5%

Each “level” (2%, 3%, 5% LTEP) of college would have a Government approved admittance percentage requirement.  In addition, they would have to include a diversity chart for each Fall freshmen class, which included a list of students according to zip code.  This test would encourage universities to reach out to high schools to assist with academic resources as opposed to neglect suffering school districts (zip codes). 

With this system we could privatize all college and universities given the fact that universities could take loans from private investors and trustees to maintain schools financially until graduated students are in the work force with strong incomes to “payforward” their education.

Lastly, colleges would still have the flexibility to screen with essay review.

This would leave Government tax dollars to fund city colleges only.  The reduction of direct tax burden would free the Government funds to provide community college to all students 100% tuition free.  There would be restrictions on student drop class rate and g.p.a.’s below 2.0 according to student demand.  Overwhelming demand would mean tighter restrictions.   Community college would be a catchall for the students whose g.p.a. or college prep were not up to par and would give them another chance to prepare for a college degree.  4 year universities would have an incentive to enroll community college transfers because of them only being on campus for 2 years, yet still required to pay the schools  lifetime earnings percentage (LTEP). 

College debt hurts 30% of all Americans credit score.  By spreading the cost over a life time and not reporting to credit agencies, problem solved.

Just a thought,

Jermaine ”For President” Harris

The next generation was being called to duty in World War II. This pulled us out of the depression as a shrinking Gross Domestic Product (National Income) turned into a rapidly increasing one. Government spending on the war fueled the rising GDP. Women replaced men in the work force. After the war, women’s unwillingness to return home from the work force began the popularity of the two income household. This continued the high pace of GDP growth. The 1950’s was a great time for the U.S. economically, due to the increased income as well as the lowest inflationary pressure of any decade of that century. It was the only decade of no double digit inflation (or deflation as the 1930’s).

So the country now was comprised of two generations, the first of which were the mis-trusters, and the second were the veterans who were busy creating the third generation of this era, the baby-boomers. The massive increase in income and family manifested a sense of financial responsibility and stability. This generation was the first consumers of many new innovations and electronic household modernizations. Yet they were still conservative because they were raised by the mistrusters. In the sixties and seventies this generation of mature adults began the popular mortgage burning parties. Many families were completely paying off their mortgage loans and held their homes free and clear. Their was a sense of pride in actually holding the free and clear deed to the American dream.

The baby-boomer generation was the worst of the three generations in their narcissistic erratic persona. Their rebellion in the 60’s and 70’s began the deterioration of American Family value system. In 1970 7% of U.S. children were raised in a single parent home. In 2008, 40% of children live in single parent homes. After the free love of the 70’s, many of those who did get married begin to divorce frequently in the 1980’s.

The Hippy/yuppies of the 80’s had no mistrust of the banking system because they were too far removed from listening to elders. They had rebelled against the Government as young adults in the 70’s, broke their families apart in the 80’s and only had the American Corporation to call “daddy” by the 90’s. So when banks advertised, refinance that house that you bought with the proceeds of your parent’s free-and-clear home, they not only refinanced, but they opened a second line of credit.

See, Corporations knew that as long as the average American homeowner held 50% to 100% of paid-off equity in their home, that is the equivalent of sharing the wealth with the common folk. They viewed this high equity holding as untapped revenue. So by encouraging refinancing they could convince Americans to give up their “actual” wealth for the sake of spending to impress their narcissistic complexities.

The greater debt a society holds, the harder the work-force works. Opposed to the better the savings and investing habits a society has, the higher potential for competition for the current businesses. A corporation would rather have their key employees in debt and enslaved to the steady income, as opposed to being well capitalized to leave and start a competing firm. This is why corporations continue to grow larger and more powerful.
This is how we turned away from being a saving nation to a consumer nation as our middle class disappears. Now we are so individualistic. We don’t trust our Government; religious institutions; banking system; our corporate employers; not even our families (spouse, parents or children) to not become a burden on our pursuit of material superficial justification and false sense of self-worth.
Now we are in the middle of an economic crisis that has unemployment in double digits and people out of work for years. The Republicans fell asleep at the wheel as President Bush allowed our domestic policy steer itself into a ditch as he kept his eye on world oil conquest. So much so, that the Democrats were able to get a Black man in the office of a racist, classist, self serving country. As the Republicans and Independents woke up, they formed groups such as the Tea Party to take back the power from a perceived left wing ideology that would force rich people to pay their fair share of the benefits of the American Dream.

Yet the only thing that will create economic improvement is consumer spending. This spending is what oils our American economic machine. So instead of spending 70% of our income, as we should, we are encouraged by businesses and the government to spend 100% of our income to stimulate the economy. We are reluctant because we are not sure if our own jobs are secure. The irony is that this 100% spend mentality is what created the mess in the first place. The long term solution to not only an improved economy, but also a health household finance philosophy of living within your means and saving for the inevitable rainy day is to allow a higher natural rate (average) of unemployment while keeping unemployment insurance at an extended duration. This is the model of the mature democracy within England. The problem with this solution is the constant bleeding of jobs to foreign countries as well as the downward bidding of wages due to immigration. If we had a superior product in the U.S. produced by employees that earned a decent salary to feed their families with products made in the U.S., we could sustain.

Yet everyone is the complainant as well as the defendant. They don’t earn enough, save enough and they don’t buy U.S. enough. All the while, CEO’s union bust, employ illegal immigrants and ship jobs out to the benefit of their bonus and their shareholders who happen to be the American people.

Wow, what will the next generation be like? So far we are not educating them properly in school, and we are not instilling drive, motivation and innovation at home.
Mistrusters
Veterans
Boomer Hippy
Yuppy
Generation “X”
Generation “Hu, What?”

Chapter two, “The small lows pale in comparison to the high heights of our good times” as you explain challenges may attempt to interfere but nothing can come between our love and life long commitment to be supportive in our victories and comforting in our defeats. We understood that when God gets busy, the devil gets anxious.

Chapter three, “As I lay here on my death bed” with the enormous love from our great-great grand children surrounding me in this year 2084 I tell them this story of the greatest love ever. I reminisce about how I always joked with her that I’d outlive her. She died a short while ago. But when she did I had a sky window placed above our bed so that she can look down upon me with protection while I rest. Sometimes in the middle of the night when the moonlight is just right I can see her perched on a cloud as if it were the hand of God, looking down from the heavens with arms stretched out for me. I comfort her with “Soon baby, soon we will be together again”. From our prior lives, to this life, and on to the next one, we will be together forever, this is what soulmates do.

My Wedding Vows

Whosoever recognizes and honors the gifts of God, recognizes and honors God himself.  Brandy I honor God as I honor you, my true gift.  This world is abound with disingenuous and ungiving people.  God has blessed me with you, a precious gift of genuine and giving divine sustenance.

I ask God how do I remain worthy of such a gift.  Through prayer, I find the answer is to devote my being to maintaining and remaining  steadfast to being your answer, being your encourager, being your strong and solid rock of love and support from this day forward.

Today I get to look into the eyes of my best friend and make the total commitment of mind, body and soul.

Today I get to look into the eyes of my soul mate and finally make my life complete.

In the past we’ve tried to remain just best friends, but we could not fight Gods plan, what was meant to be.

I could no longer fight the fact that there is no one else on Earth that I trust with my heart, with my children and with my dreams.

I could no longer fight the fact that there is no one else on Earth that I want by my side throughout all time.

I could no longer fight the fact that there is no one else on Earth that will always love me for the most simple of me, and the most complex of me.

On this momentous day, I give you my name, I give you my heart and I give my word that I do, and I will until God says there is no more, I will love you forever more.  Thank you Brandy Harris for being my wife, I love you.

The freshman contract- As we begin to live for our new hormones our parents voices quickly fade as we replace them with voices of peers who accept us and give us a new sense of belonging and understanding. We sign a freshman contract that may tell us that purple hair, tattoos and Young Jeezy are cool. Talking about the blind leading the blind. This is the process of finding one’s self. A lot is riding on what contract we sign. We stand at the gates of our high school and we look in and try to “get in where we fit in”. Our parents can try to make us strong independent leaders, but God steps in and changes the game with pubescent changes.

We eventually learn a little about a few groups at school and we decide which contract to sign. Jocks, Nerds, Prepies, Cool Brainiacs… Each contract has a list of what is cool, what is not so cool and what is never cool. Ideally we’d fall into the “Farris Bueller Effect” and command respect by all groups while not being heavily influenced by any one group.  Parents should to try to prepare kids for what is to come, and be very careful while attempting to correct their childrens initial bad decisions. If asserted incorrectly, rebellion will ensue.  Parents should try to get to know their adolescents friends and their parents, and have discussions with children to help guide them without the preaching.                         

Given our self esteem, propensity to follow, the addictiveness of our personalities and biochemical responses to differing stimulus, we come out of high school more or less affected by those trial and tribulations. By the time we are in our early twenties we should hope that we are done with that phase and can now see the forest for the trees. We shall graduate from seeing the persona of social contracts to being able to view and understand the social order.

Social order is what determines the hierarchy of all of the social contracts. Now we may begin to see the potential outcomes available to each social contract. We look around at our friend and evaluate our new goals as adults and the path that we’ve taken thus far. If we are lucky, we don’t have to take a detour because we were on the right road all along. Yet this is very rare. Many have a tough time changing roads and they feel trapped by the baggage or mindset that they have formed over the past journey.

Again, parents play a vital roll when their adult children begin to open their eyes and seek the knowledge that they may have once shunned in irritated disunderstanding(unwillingness to respect). Do you remember the first time you sat at your mothers kitchen table while visiting from your first apartment and talking about life from one adult to another? This is the moment when your ears open and your relationship changes.  I looked at my mother shaking my head, and before I could get it out she said “it’s tough out there isn’t it?”

From this place you sign your second (or third) social contract. You hopefully will make a better decision on what is cool for you and your future. Hopefully you can see value in education, and see that hard swagger in a person as mostly a fake façade that covers a persons feelings of inadequacy.  You understand that a subtle swagger comes from confidence, not shame or insecurity.  You begin to live by that wisdom.

We are now becoming better equipped to choose a life mate to bare our children. We are better equipped to discern friend from foe. We are better equipped to pursue daily goals that are in perfect alignment to our long term goals. But be leery and tread carefully, you are still stupid. You still have much to learn, I’m pushing 40 and the one thing that I definitely know is that I definitely don’t know.

Continually grow. Make sure you grow strong and wise, and not grow weak and futile.

Parents have a responsibility of time and resources to their offspring. If you live together as a cohesive unit, there will be more time and resources going towards common goals. Apart, there are two households to support, two dating lifestyles to support. Both of which create a sacrifice on behalf of the children. Junior has to compete with Uncle Ray for mom’s attention. Little Jennifer has to go without if mom spent an extra $200 on lingerie for Ray’s satisfaction. Lord help us if Uncle Ray thinks Jennifer is pretty.

We all will agree that relationships are hard, yet we are quick to think the unknown that lies beyond the front door is so much better than the crap dealt with inside the house. So we have a revolving door to display to our children because we are unwilling to be a better person for the sake of our partner, the sake of ourselves and the sake of our witnessing children. To allow them to see struggles come between two people who are committed to working through those problems and stay together with a relentless hold on love and respect, is a profoundly invaluable lesson of character.

Hey, we all know that shit happens and not all things work for the better. We roll with the punches and make lemonade when we have to. But the question is, have we given up on the nuclear family? Is it totally acceptable for me to be a step dad to a woman’s child, while my children have a step parent at their mother’s house? Okay, 10%, 15% or 20% I understand, things happen. But 70% of African-American children, 27% of white children and 36% of Hispanic-American children do not have both parents in the home.   Maybe it doesn’t really matter, children are resilient and they’ll adjust! No they won’t. Children are fragile, and are affected by every experience. To prove this, broken homes beget more broken homes.

Not polygamy, not monogamy, but we are entrenched in a culture that embraces serial monogamy. This is where we subconsciously enter into a relationship for an intermediate period of time. 1 to 5 years, maybe 7. Just long enough to bang out 1 or 2 children and then the thrill is gone and your body no longer gets the level of emotional satisfaction that it craves. So instead of drowning in boredom, or strangling each other due to discontent, we just go our separate ways. Then the baby mama drama begins.

We should put thought to this and find some answer to why we are totally over the priority of having the nuclear family. Is anyone else disgusted with how we grown ass adults have acted like school children who “go together” for a week and break-up for the hell of it? Just because [I am] you are a product or source of a problem doesn’t mean [I] you have to close your eyes to the problem and not face it with objection.

I object!

Nita

I agreed with your comment on the radio show that girls need their fathers.  My father took great care of me, but my mother was the stronghold.  My mother was the aggressor of the two. She maintained the control in every aspect of our family.  As the baby girl, born 10 years after my youngest sibling, I often felt like an only child with the exception of the occasional interaction of my nieces, nephews and cousins who were closely the same age as I.  My perception of “men” was greatly influenced by my mother and sisters, in their post-divorce state of mind. 

A couple years ago, I did some research on the relationship between daughters and father’s who are absent from the home.  I learned that a daughter’s relationship with her father is her first male-female relationship. From a father, little girls gain their first reflection of themselves as a female. They develop a sense of acceptance or non-acceptance; they feel valued or discounted. Self-respect is initially based upon respect received from others. Their self-concept as a female person is largely shaped by this early relationship. In short, children regard themselves as they think others regard them… and the father is an important person in a girl’s life.

Father-daughter relationships are an important place to learn how to negotiate fairly and compromise appropriately. When fathers exercise absolute authority, and rigidly set rules, daughters quickly learn to rebel. If a father is overly-critical and all-powerful, men become the enemy. If a father is fair and listens to his daughter’s thoughts, she will gain self-confidence and pride in her own opinion. When daughters learn to communicate with their fathers, and trust that their opinion will count, they can develop self-assuredness which will allow them to be assertive and stand up for themselves. This is very different from aggressive reactions which stem from a sense of powerlessness and combativeness. It is important for dads to listen to their daughters and appreciate their views, even if they don’t agree.

You were sort of cut off in the middle of your comments on the radio, but it seems as though you have developed this great relationship with your daughter and you’re teaching her all the right things.  I hope she values you as a father.

Anyway, I feel that as daughters, we learn about marriage from watching our parents. If parents treat each other well, this becomes the expectation. If dad is a tyrant, then men are regarded as essentially bad. If dad is alcoholic or abusive, men are considered to be people who are allowed to get out of control and be hurtful. The unconscious conclusion is. If dad treats his daughter well, she feels like a worthwhile individual. If dad rejects his daughter or constantly criticizes her, she will feel worthless. The true irony for me is that I have absolutely no recollection of the daily interaction of my parents while they were married…remember I recently told you, my parents divorced when I was eight and my memories follows that.

But with my mom being the stronghold of my life, I was raised too damn independent to “need” a man.  As a child and teenager, I was kept busy in activities and events; always involved.  And in my own relationships, during and after college, (I didn’t date much in high school), I disregarded men including the man I ultimately married.  Ultimately, when I became ”submissive” enough to marry and have children of my own, the reality was I chose a man who was from divorced parents; a man who did not get along at all with his own mother; a man whose father had been married four times and had several children born out of wedlock because of his own infidelity. (This Father and Son were so unlike my own father) I had the opportunity to walk away early on, but didn’t (that’s another chapter), and found myself in this vicious cycle of divorce.

With every memory I had with my father, I couldn’t recall any specific conversations he and I had about relationships with men, but I could recall that I never witnessed my father disrespect my mother or my sisters…. I divorced my husband not solely because of the verbal and physical abuse, financial instability, disrespect, lack of compromise, lack of commitment and consideration of our relationship, but because I was influenced by my mother and sisters to be too independent to need a man like this. And because my spirit was lost in this chaos. I became a vindictive woman always defensive, always had my guard up. My decision to divorce was influenced by an increased awareness of self-worth, a pursuit of happiness; strong will to regain my sanity and peace of mind; to re-connect to my spiritual being and ultimately, to embrace the blessing of motherhood.

I’m glad I listened to the talk show tonight. I wanted to try and call in, but I just started typing this letter to your sight instead.  Your comment left me dazed, about how women yearn for unconditional love and effectively use unworthy men to get that unconditional love from a baby, then the women have little use for the man’s BS as the man is looking to the next women.  Ouch!

Hmmm, Can’t wait to hear next Sundaywhen you speak about how black woman are “perfect.”  I don’t know, you got Bishop Jones all worked up on that comment! Anyway, women aren’t perfect because men fall short on raising us because often time, their father’s fell short on raising them….I see it everyday. I live it!

Only GOD is perfect