Black and Hispanic Americans are the targets of a campaign by the Bush administration and large corporations to steal from the poor and give to the rich, author and activist Dr. Maya Rockeymoore said Saturday.
During her presentation as part of the Social Justice College Tour, Rockeymoore outlined how President Bush’s failed Social Security privatization plan would have hurt minorities.
The event, presented by the Oregon Students of Color Coalition and the Black Student Union, is part of a 10-school tour to help educate students about issues of social justice.
The government takes a portion of everybody’s paycheck. Much of this money goes to Social Security, a family insurance plan created in 1935 that sends monthly checks to retired people, people who are disabled, children whose parents have died, widows and widowers.
Sixty percent of black seniors would live in poverty if not for their monthly checks, and 40 percent rely on Social Security as their sole source of income, Rockeymoore said. Without Social Security, the poverty rate for elderly black people would jump from 22 percent to 57 percent, she said.
Bush argued last year that Social Security could not handle the retirement of the baby boomer generation, and that it would have to be managed in private accounts by private corporations.
Rockeymoore said the new plan called for individual accounts in which companies would invest the money from peoples’ paychecks in stocks and bonds. This would take advantage of people who have had less access to education, jobs and health care, namely, blacks and Hispanic Americans, Rockeymoore said.
“You have to look at who’s really going to benefit,” Rockeymoore said. “It’s crazy. It’s a massive wealth transfer from poor to rich.”
Rockeymoore said Social Security helps pay living expenses for black Americans living on disability to a much greater degree than white Americans. Because of historical inequality in access to education and jobs, blacks and Hispanics are more likely than whites to take dangerous jobs that often result in disabilities, she said.
Halfway through the presentation, Rockeymoore turned the microphone over to Stefanie Brown, the national outreach coordinator for Global Justice. Brown led a workshop on grassroots organizing, using the goal of making the campus more diverse.
University student Donnell Adair said one way to achieve this goal would be to retain and recruit more students and faculty of color.
Ty Schwoeffermann, the multicultural advocate for the ASUO and OSCC co-chair, suggested implementing the University’s five-year diversity plan.
Rockeymoore said some possible means to achieve these goals would be to lobby with state politicians and to educate the public.
“Don’t waste any time,” Rockeymoore said. “Just go out there and do it.”
Several students at the event expressed frustrations about the lack of minorities in the University’s faculty.
“We’ve lost four queer professors of color in the past two years,” said student Nate Gullee.
“This is a human rights issue. Why are these people being marginalized?” asked Schwoeffermann. “Students are not coming out of the school fully equipped by not being in a diverse environment.”