Clarence Hightower in the news again! I am not talking about the man on this picture. Read the article to understand the complexity of this story. Black people may be scared of Clarence, but it looks like the white legislators are questioning. Clarence Hightower as a black man and a token, we have seen how he used the white dominant system through Community Action Partnership of Ramsey & Washington Counties (CAPRW) to bully, intimidate and push out a small grassroots organization of color such as CrossingBarriers, and how all his white managers continued to discriminate against CrossingBarriers our organization as they were the landlord and fiscal agent. CrossingBarriers filed so many complaints of fraud, harassment, copyright violation, racism, and bullying against CAPRW and no one paid attention because we were low-income community advocacy organization run by a Somali woman, and they are a white dominant, large non profit with a huge role in the poverty industrial complex with over 20 million dollars yearly budget from federal government. Their board and all the local politicians ignored the oppression we were facing and refused to investigate. Its double standard. Now that the white leaders are questioning Clarences tactics as MNSCU chairman, he is all over the news, but it was ignored when CrossingBarriers filed complaints. Still CAPRW board is not investigating the intimidation, retaliation and bullying CrossingBarriers faced because we are community of color that is insignificant and we are not seen as having power. The complaints reached MN Dept of Human Rights, Attorney General, CAP agency in Washington D.C, Congressman Betty McCollums, the three black legislators at MN House and Senate, and everyone ignored it. No one did anything. It went to a point where he hired a very expensive lawyer on tax dollars to evict Crossing.Barriers after we filed a complaints. We stopped CAPRW from taking our curriculum as they used our photos of immigrant students to market as their own program which was false, and get funding for it. So the doubled standard, white dominance is clear in MN. As we speak out of our oppression, we are ignored even if it is through tokenism, but yet when white people raise few questions it is all over the news. This is a clear example of how community based organizations of color are marginalized and pushed out in MN, if they cant be used by white dominant system.
Posted on: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 04:45:34 +0000
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