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Monday, August 23rd, 2021

I have been reading what has and is happening to Rev. Dr. Bennett and his wife. I knew them well enough to say hello, but that is about all. What I saw of them and was most impressed by – they were always helping someone steady their lives and move on. It was not a big deal and never involved a lot of money, from what I could see. They used their friends, acquaintances and strangers to help another human being get their lives on a better track.

This article is my way of trying to help them. Sometimes helping others understand is the best you can give to one another.

I am a black journalist. Having worked in several places, including Boston, it struck me that what has been true of Massachusetts for generations is still true, only being done in a different way – and – the African Americans being negatively affected are different people. Shame has kept those I knew from fighting back, they just wanted to crawl into a hole someplace and be quiet. Rev. Bennett and his wife are putting everything happening to them out in public. Kudos! May it ever be so for everyone and so the system will buckle and break and racism will be a thing of the past.

My family was very negatively affected during their time living in the Greater Boston area. There was always something blocking them; something making their lives difficult. It wasn’t until they moved and were able to look back did they realize and understand who and what was attacking them – and they were being attacked.

As a young person I didn’t understand that. As I have grown older and seen much more of the world and learned of the history of that part of the country, understanding has helped me and has majorly helped my family.

Massachusetts – especially the Greater Boston area – was a part of the country that did not allow African Americans to migrate and live within its borders unless you came “in service”. In other words, unless you were of the ‘servant class.’ I do not say this to denigrate anyone, just to speak truth. That maintained in a very vicious way until my mother’s generation and then it changed. It did not go away, it just morphed to keep that part of institutional racism hidden and to keep up with the times.

One exception that began to be made over time was – if you were hired by Harvard University. The assumption was you would never reach the heights in that Massachusetts Society to threaten the need for New Englanders to feel their identity as part of a group which is greater than and above others.

Today, I am living in the south and it is a very different place. I used to turn my intellectual nose up at southerners, especially African Americans. My assumption was they were somehow intellectually inferior. That came from my New England upbringing.

Racism in Massachusetts is some of the vilest I have seen. Having lived many places, that is my experience.

If, as an African American, you achieve too much, the ‘powers that be’ begin to destroy your life. Either move out or be denigrated, destroyed, stripped of everything you have. It is a racism that is and has been very effective, especially since it is practiced by those pulling the strings and those who simply see someone being pulled down and decide to help because somehow that helps them – white, black, no matter – lots participate.

In my mother’s generation that began to change. There is one caveat. If you are African American and you are ambitious you have to have the traits that New England society deems necessary in its African American or you will be taken down.

I can see what has happened to Rev. Dr. Bennett and his wife. They were not “adopted by” the establishment. They are not willing participants in maintaining the status quo and being one of those willing to do their part of taking down and blocking the path of another African American.

I can hear the howls of protest as you read this. I thought long and hard before writing it, but someone has to stand up and speak truth. This is also much more difficult to write than I thought it would be. This is getting done painfully and pulling on my insides where some excruciating memories live.

My family moved out of the Boston area. They were not ready to adopt or adapt to White Male English Culture and so they didn’t fit and since they were quite intelligent, very well educated and entrepreneurial, they had to go or they would be destroyed. I saw what happened to them over a few years and there is a parallel to what is happening to the Bennett family.

My wish for the Bennett family is that they maintain their personal integrity and always continue to be who they are without making the decision to pick up the “yes ma’m and yes sir” style very prevalent among African Americans in the Greater Boston area. Those who have and are succeeding without blockages, if you notice, have a uniqueness about them. They will never accuse anyone of racism – even if true and needs to be said. They will never step out of a stereotype which makes whites comfortable. They will maintain as low key and invisible as they can and mostly they will polish their ability to make whites as comfortable around them as possible. Which translates to mean they will maintain on a level to make changes only when whites are ready for those changes and choose them to move ahead with the activity which creates those changes.

Even as a journalist, I don’t know how to end this. It has been extremely difficult to write because it is so personal and because I know how negatively it will be received. Sometimes you have to put lessons you have learned through your life out there without caring about how others react. Very rare in journalism, very rare for me.

A New Harvard President!

Friday, June 16th, 2017

by: Marceline Donaldson and Harold E. Doley, Jr.

Drew Gilpin Faust, the 28th president of Harvard University has resigned her position effective June 30, 2018.

A historian and former head of Radcliff Institute, Ms. Faust did an excellent job of continuing to move this private Ivy League institution, founded in 1636 in “New Town” – later to become Cambridge, MA.,  to educate Congregational Ministers to be able to better serve their churches.

Until Ms. Faust’s tenure, Harvard was led by white males and only white males.  She broke a ‘glass ceiling’ which held until 11 years ago.

Today, that mandate has changed and Harvard University has educated and continues to educate those who have been – who are – and who will be some of this country’s greatest leaders.  Its resources are an endowment of more than $34 billion and a world-wide academic reputation.  Coming to Harvard to study is a plum for most, no matter their country of origin.

Now, Harvard must look for a president who can continue its legacy and move it even higher   – and we just might have the solution.

Harvard, of course needs to be led by a Nobel Laureate.  And it would be great to have an alumnus of Harvard be that new president.  Someone known around the world – using his or her Harvard education, which is widely acknowledged as having been one of the tools used to create that person’s legacy to the world.  To also have that person with a beginning – at birth beginning – reflect the world in all of its diversity would be quite special.  America has traditionally divided itself into many separatist camps while claiming to be a “melting pot”.  Well, it is time for Harvard to help that image of America by selecting a president whose birth, upbringing and career choices reflect that “melting pot”.

Whose life better reflects what Harvard is about and what Harvard aspires for its students, researchers and others than President Barack Obama?

His mother was born on an Army base in Wichita, Kansas – the heartland of these United States.  She was born on an Army base because her father enlisted in the military and moved across Europe in General George Patton’s Army.  Obama’s grandfather studied using the G.I. Bill – owned a house using the Veterans Administration mortgage program – they helped raise Obama when his mother needed that help – and his grandmother worked on a bomber assembly line, moving herself up to Vice President of a bank.

From his parental legacy at birth even until today, Obama has been a product and symbol of the American Dream.

The other side of Barack Hussein Obama is his Kenyan father,  who was born in Nyanza Province.  Obama’s father grew up herding goats in Kenya and left there to accept a scholarship to study at the University of Hawaii.  There he met Ann Dunham, Obama’s mother, a woman of white middle-American ancestry.  They married and produced a son at a time during which such intermarriages were not looked upon proudly or even accepted as legal in some parts of the United States.

Obama’s father attended Harvard University working towards a Ph.D. So, a part of President Barack Obama’s Harvard application would have included his standing as a legacy matriculant. It is an understatement to say Barack made good use of his Harvard education and is an incredible example for others to follow.

Having lived in Jakarta, Indonesia after his parents divorce and his mother’s re-marriage, Obama learned to function in multi-cultural settings  from an early age.

He returned to the United States at age 10 to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents who sent him to Punahou Academy where he was forced to come to grips with himself as someone oppressed by the society in which he lived.

His educational experiences included Hawaii – Occidental College in Los Angeles – Columbia University in New York City and Harvard University School of Law where he ended his schooling  as editor of the Law Review.  He graduated Harvard Law magna cum laude.

To digress just a bit, I have a daughter who graduated Stanford School of Law as editor of the law review  (sorry, a mother has to brag).

He has since practiced civil rights law with Miner, Barnhill & Galland; was a community organizer; taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School; and more.

Barack is a best-selling author and Grammy Award winner.  If you have not read his book,  “Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance”, you should.  The book is literally poetry.  It has been printed in more than 25 languages.  The audio-book version is narrated by President Obama.

Obama ran for and won a seat in the Illinois State Senate and worked with both Democrats and Republicans on legislation which included health care services, ethics and early childhood education programs.

He moved from the Illinois Senate to the U. S. Senate and from there to the presidency of the United States.

As president, he showed himself quite skilled at management, having come into office at a time when he had to immediately deal with a global economic crisis and ongoing foreign wars.

He is one of the few American presidents who was not involved in a scandal of any kind and presented and continues to present an image of which all of us can be proud.  He is also one of the Americans who is greeted with accolades when he travels the world.  His reception parallels, if it does not, in fact,  exceed that of rock stars.

Harvard could not find a better president.  We only hope President Obama sees things the same way.

WE ARE:   Native New Orleanians.

Harold Doley is a former U. S Ambassador in the Reagan Administration,  a 1990 graduate of Harvard Business School’s OPM Executive Education Program, among many other accomplishments.

Marceline Donaldson is a 1971 graduate of the Harvard Business School’s PMD Executive Education Program;  former National Board Member of NOW, and of the Minneapolis Urban Coalition; founder of Bettina Network, inc.; author and contributor to books such as Elizabeth Fiorenza’s book (a Harvard Professor) as honoris causa, among many other accomplishments.

Proof reading this blog is the Rev. Dr. Robert A. Bennett, native to Baltimore, Maryland, who holds a PhD degree from Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in Oriental Languages and Literature with a concentration in Hebrew, Hebrew Scripture, Archaeology,  an ordained Episcopal priest who served his church as chair of its National Liturgical Commission, professor at Episcopal Divinity School for 35 years, chaired the National Council of Churches Inclusive Language Lectionary Committee, among many other accomplishments.

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