By Preston Love Jr.
For years North Omaha has been in the national ranking as one of the top five in poverty. We also rank high in many other unfortunate categories, teen employment, teen poverty, teen STDs and on and on. While the national unemployment rate is approx. 7.85 and locally reported as 3.7% , unemployment in North Omaha is in the double digits.
Poverty. The key solution to poverty is Jobs. Jobs, jobs, jobs. With the increase of jobs come decreases in crime and other many residuals with our families and small businesses, including the list mentioned above. Gang violence and lawlessness all get affected when we get jobs and jobs affect poverty. Simply stated we need jobs.
North Omaha Black contractors need jobs. Providing these contractors with work is critical to this poverty formula and their survival. Black contractors in north Omaha awake daily with the prospect of moving around north Omaha and giving eye witness to public, private, and non-profit projects in their own community, with very little if any participation.
With few exceptions such as the city’s emerging and small business ordinance and a recent relatively large public works contract, (which was challenged by many) all parties public, private and non-profit are guilty of not contracting with black contractors anywhere in Omaha but more dramatically not in their own poverty stricken community. It is an affront to our community and affront to the contractors.
We have Black contractors who are capable. Capable of building houses, commercial building, laying concrete, electrical, renovation, roofing and participating in the nearly $2 Billion CSO project happening mostly in north Omaha. They do have problems raising capital, getting bonding, and obtaining credit. These problems complicate their world but the real bottom line is they are not getting the opportunities.
Black contractors challenge representatives from the public, private and non-profit sectors to come forward and initiate some serious attempts to employ these Black contractors. The spring approaches, when work abounds. Black contractors cannot continue to sit idly by while contracting opportunities abound. Contact can be made via Preston Love jr or directly with known contractors.
Why oh why are we so focused on the ethnicity of jobless contractors?
Mead Was Right
Margaret Mead said that although the mom’s role in child rearing has many biological components, the dad’s role is largely social. And if we break that mold, it will be hard to reconstruct.
We took young pregnant girls out of their neighborhoods, where blacks following WWII were born 75% into two parent families, and put them in high rises to raise their sons and daughters without any dads nearby. They grew up with no gramps, no uncles, and not knowing how to parent as a male. It’s little wonder their resulting behavior resulted in being 35 times more likely to commit violent crime and 75% of black babies born to single moms and sperm donors.
I only quote black numbers because they are the most glaring. I know it’s not just a minority problem.
Another glaring menace is the danger to babies of live in boyfriends who are not their biological father. As the new lion kills existing cubs in the pride, human males seem dangerous, too.
Most nations had a more humane ‘dole’ for families down on their luck. For us, if the dad was out of work and mom secured a place in the Omaha projects in the 1960′s, social workers and police during midnight raids chased the cheaters, AKA Dads, out. At the time it seemed the right thing to do.
We are living with the results now.
Dads parent differently. For years I traveled in my job and watched the parents stepping off planes and picking up toddlers after several days away. The Dads tossed the babies in the air but I don’t recall ever seeing a mom do that. The Moms trust the dad and he can toss the baby but were that any male, she might take the child back.
Dads start pillow fights at bedtime and get the kids so riled up they can’t settle down. They can’t settle down the first time, or the second, or the third but these are training sessions in pulling back from that edge of excitement and a boy who reaches puberty without it, standing on a street corner, lacks the training and tools of walking away with his dignity in tact. Their lives can be ruined even as they cause harm to others.
Its not a question of role models or big brothers although I greatly admire those who become involved. If we don’t teach boys how to control their natural aggressiveness by age five its like not hearing language until they are five. They will never be master orators. Mother lionesses put themselves between the danger and the cubs. The cubs jump on the king so many times and finally learn what a swat of the paw can do.. its training.
I lived in a Chicago suburb in the early 70′s and Cabrini Green was being touted. Google it. Eventually they had to dynamite the place as it became a river of crime.
Preston, As for black contractors, how far are they going to market themselves? People use Craiglist and the internet. Others change their names. Advertising helps too. Create a service company called Three Black Men, who provide basic home repairs such as plumbing and electrical work. There are ideas out there. It is just a matter of finding what works.
In fact, one local employer makes a point of hiring minorities.
http://www.marriott.com/diversity/supplier-evaluation.mi
I have no problem using a PERSON who is registered with workforce Development, and is insured to work in my home or business. The problem is, there are few in North Omaha who are fully insured and Licensed! This is a cost of doing business that they either ignore or are unaware that such things are needed and wanted by prospective customer’s!v I was a licensed and Insured Contractor, I know many who weren’t. These guy’s are able to work cheaper because of it, but in the long run, the homeowner pays for it! I am not saying all are like this, but the vast majority I knew were! This has nothing to do with Race, as far as I am concerned. When you see a truck with Iowa plates, chances are good that he isn’t legal to do business in Nebraska, and the other way around. Most guy’s won’t register in both States. DEMAND copies of Registration ( Nebraska issues certificates)and proof of insurance ( AND CALL THE INSURANCE COMPANY)If they mess up something in your home, you own it and you have little recourse!
What we really need to do is stop supporting black poverty. If it wasn’t possible for single mother black families to easily exist in poverty, there would be less of it to start with. A black male between the age of 15 and 30 is 8 times more likely to commit murder than any other demographic of the same age. The black welfare society has failed and all it had produced is more poverty, more violence and more young black male murderers and victims.
And that ProgressiveOasis who posted at January 28, 2013 at 2:54pm with no pic, is not me.
Its really sad what is going on in North Omaha. What do we do to fix it? Angela asks why are we so focused on the ethnicity? Here’s a better question? Why are the impoverished more likely to be of specific ethnicities or races? Nebraska did a horrible thing when it took away Affirmative Action. It is very much needed in Nebraska.