Health, consciousness and music downtown
By Kenya Vaughn
For the St. Louis American
“Every year this event seems to grow and draw more and more people, and I am happy for that,” Fox 2 News reporter Bonita Cornute said of the Missouri Black Expo, which went down this weekend at America’s Center.
“Because we won’t go forward until we know where we are and where we have been and start working together to understanding what our issues are.”
With all the vendors, fashion shows, boxing and concerts (including a sexy set on Sunday from Eric Benet), it could be easy to lose sight of the Black Expo’s true purpose. With substantial health and consciousness components, Tom Bailey and company are trying to bring black people to their senses and return them to strive mode.
Cornute’s remarks referred specifically to the Black America Today panel. She served as moderator for the event, which for the past several years has grouped local and national leaders from various disciplines to address concerns affecting the African-American community. This year’s panel included 12 notable speakers and was led by Dr. Jocelyn Elders, former U.S. Surgeon General. Discussion topics included health care, politics, education, racial disparities and the prison system.
“We’ve got the best sick care system in the world, but we don’t have health care,” Elders said.
“America has the best doctors, nurses and hospitals in the world, but how sick do you have to be to get it?”
After discussing the alarming health care disparities that plague blacks, Elders worked in her controversial views regarding sex education in the school system.
“We’ve gotten to where we can’t teach health education to children in our schools, because if we do somebody might tell them something about sex. “Heaven forbid!” Elders said.
“But with the highest teen-pregnancy rate in the world and 19 million with STDs, somebody needs to say something. They are afraid if they talk about it, then the children will do it, but they are already doing it.”
Elders broke it down even further and spoke very plainly about safe sex.
“We have an administration that is anti-condom,” Elders said.
“They want you to know that condoms will break – and that’s right, they will break. But I can assure you that the vows of abstinence are broken far more easily than a latex condom.”
In his remarks, famed local educator Dr. Lynn Beckwith quoted Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s Miseducation of the Negro. “If you can control a man’s thinking, you don’t have to concern yourself with his actions,” said Beckwith.
“If you can make him feel inferior, you don’t have to compel him to accept inferior status, for he will willingly seek it.”
Beckwith referred to young African-American males as “endangered species” and disclosed alarming statistics regarding their failures within the education system. “Only 44 percent of black males graduate from high school,” said Beckwith.
“Parents, don’t let your black males fall victims of what I call the self-fulfilling prophecy – your daddy wasn’t anything, your grandfather wasn’t anything and therefore you aren’t going to be anything.”
Dr. Vetta Sanders-Thompson said the disparities that affect the African-American community all “began with a history of oppression.”
“All of our resources were affected through slavery, Jim Crow and segregation,” Thompson said. “But we have to create a system that allows people to succeed.”
“We have to use multiple strategies to take charge of what’s going on out there,” said Elders. “We must have continued progress.”
“We have to do more than preach on Sunday, pray on Wednesday and go home and suffer,” said the Reverend Sammie Jones, pastor of Mt. Zion M.B. Church.
“We have to learn to turn a dollar over and make it work for ourselves. We are spending money everywhere but in our community. The money is going out and not coming back.”
