The Future is in the Opportunity We Provide for All

Hawaii is quite an experience and quite different, especially from the Northern California area we call home.

If you think the Bay Area and L.A., are heterogeneous areas, try Maui on for size.  Asian American, Native Hawaiians, Swedes, Germans, you name it, they are all here.

There is a tension of course.  On the way to Hana, which is where the ancient kingdoms of Hawaii started, you definitely get the idea that native Hawaiians are not happy  that the United States basically stole the islands in the 1890s.  Signs abound about native rights lost, and several active (and unsuccessful) legal attempts have been going on for years to get native lands back.

That is not going to happen.  If you spend two seconds in Oahu or Maui, there is no way the billions in dollars invested in the islands will be turned over.

Besides, pure blood Hawaiian natives are now practically extinct.  Hawaii is the most heterogeneous state in the union.  There is simply no going back.

What you see is a blend of white, brown, black, Asian, you name it.  And, you also see some of the most beautiful people on the planet.

But, there is poverty.  The native peoples of the islands have not shared in the enormous wealth that exists here.  There are no casinos, there are health centers for the Hawaiians, and I know aid for education; etc., Hawaii is a very progressive state.

But there still is poverty.  There still is the potential for disaster.  Bring poverty rates down takes years and cost a lot of money.  There are no easy ways, to overcome years of racism.

We all got fooled by that when the War on Poverty Programs of the 60s and 70s were implemented.  Most of these programs lasted for only a few years, with limited success.

Programs to reduce poverty rates must be in place for decades!

I just read an excellent article, "Forging a Future" in the Associated Press.  It listed the following depressing statistics:  children of color (African  Americans, Latinos, Native Americans (including Hawaiians), suffer with a 30 to 40 percent poverty rate.

Whites and Asian Americans are less that 25 percent.

In California this year, people of color (a rather broad category) now make up a majority of our citizens.  In Hawaii there is no doubt that people of color (counting Asian Americans) make up a majority.

"Forging Our Future" points this out.  The article also points out that the white middle class of the United States will soon be depending for its care in old age, on the social security and medicare/medicaid, contributions of the younger generation, who by 2030 will be made up of a majority of people of color.

In short,  Hawaii is already there, California just got there, and the rest of the 48 will soon be there.

The cold hard statistics are there the demographic studies are solid.  Caucasians, whoever they are, will very soon be depending on young workers of mixed and colored race to keep the economy going and provide the health care services, retirement income; etc., that retiring baby boomers count on.  Racist white elders will need the very people they now seek to repress; ironic isn't it?

Unfortunately, right now, the children who we will be depending upon are living in a 40 percent poverty rate.

That means 4 out of every 10 future workers are  living in conditions that lead to under education, crime, sickness, and underachievement.  Reducing those numbers to rates that will not kill the future economy will be a massive undertaking, will cost a lot of money, for better education, better health care, and better opportunity for all.

Republicans especially don't get this.  The 2012 elections should have been a wake up call, that white only attitudes just don't get it anymore, and the anti-immigration lunacy that many Conservatives cannot seem to get out of their systems, means even less chances to bring in skilled workers to staff the future economy.

In short, we are cutting our nose off to save our racist face.

It is madness to continue a system that impoverishes the very human resources that simply must be able to work in the economy of tomorrow.

Caucasians  have practiced birth control too well.  White upper class couples have 1.8 children, richer couples even fewer children.

And, the baby boom, who could have contributed more white children are long since done with child bearing age.  In short, whites can't create enough babies to make up a worker class to save them.

The dye is cast as they say.    The United States either educates and helps advance the lot of poor children of color, or our economy is simply doomed to shrink and retreat, leaving millions of baby boomers stranded without an old age future.

And, the cost of a 40% poverty rate on the economy for forging a future are staggering.  The cost of doing nothing about it, is game over!  The United States will cease to be a world power economically.

The key is a new investment in education, in pre-school, in food stamps, in everything we can think of to drive down that poverty rate as fast as we can.  The President was not fooling when he asked for a new dedication to education, especially to pre-school education for children in poverty.  As a bi-racial example, he know exactly what he is talking about.  His personal story of achievement must be replicated a million plus times, for our country to survive!

And that is what Republicans do not get.  They are working overtime to kill programs that attack poverty in children of color, while limiting voting rights, hoping that  a white supremest approach, that has always failed to render a successful social fabric or a successful economy, will somehow make things better.  IT DOES NOT WORK!

It didn't in the era of Jim Crowe, the south suffered a repressed economy, because human capital was under utilized.  It was only after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that the southern economy began to grow and prosper.  It was the embracing of  diversity and tapping all human potential that led to the growth of the southern economy.  The person who got that, and pushed hard for the Civil Rights Bill, was a southerner named Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Sadly, in Texas today, Lyndon Johnson could not get elected.  The man who got it, who helped grow Texan's economy probably more than anyone else, could not represent Texas today over the Tea Party racist party apparatus.

And the irony is demographic studies and computer analysis of data is far advanced from the Jim Crowe era, showing the real danger to the American way of life if a poverty rate is allowed to exist that cannot possibly provide the human capital our future needs.  We are not guessing here.  The statistics are spot on.  We know how to fix this!  The data is there.  Education is one of the key elements.

This is what I see in Hawaii today.  I see that they get it.  I see opportunity growing for all children.  I see a progressive state, working to reduce the waste of human capital.  They have a long way to go, but they have begun.

I do not see that in the mainland.  And that may  be our downfall!