Treat Elena Kagan Like You Would a White Man

She has impeccable collegiate credentials. She clerked for a U. S. Supreme Court justice -- Thurgood Marshall. She is the current Solicitor General, the top lawyer representing the government's side before the U. S. Supreme Court. But the Republicans in the Senate have suddenly discovered that she is a woman and that she clerked for Justice Marshall and she was dean at Harvard and she has been nominated by President Obama. And so they don't think she is qualified. She is no left wing nut. No uber feminist. She is exactly what some of these senators wish they were. But, in their eyes, all she has accomplished is a baaaad thing for the future of the universe.

Phyl Garland

For those of you who knew Phyllis (Phyl) Garland – friend to many of us, mentor to many of us, comforter to many of us – a letter begging for money to endow a scholarship in her name at the Columbia University School of Journalism should be an embarrassing reminder of how we have not done what needed to have been done years ago.

We need a minimum of $100,000. But, as you know from the jazz record hoarder and gourmand that she was, Phyl was no minimalist. While the $25 check written at an NABJ gathering here and there is very much appreciated, that level of giving won’t get us to even a minimum anytime soon. The current recipients of the Black Alumni Network Phyllis T. Garland Scholarship are honoring her memory but actually being subsidized to the tune of $5,000 each by the J School, not from the endowed fund that we owe Phyl. Since 1998, we have raised only $78,228. What does that say about us, about our commitment to the future of people of color in journalism, about our love for Phyl?

Earning a master’s at the J School these days costs $60,000 (tuition, room, board). Journalists often brag about not being mathematicians, but even a math-challenged person can see that we have work to do.

In a news industry that we know is in turmoil in 2010 as it tries to figure out its future, Asian Americans and Latinos are doing far better than Blacks. News outlets in whichever medium need people like Phyl who could cover any type of story. In her days at Ebony that spanned from the dangerous days of the civil rights movement to the discovery of Wynton Marsalis.

The first five Garland Scholars are just the beginning of what we should be supporting.

Dani McClain [2005-06]: After graduation McClain was a reporter at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. She is now a writer with the Color of Change in Oakland, Calif.

Sabrina Ford [2006-07] of California is a reporter with the New York Post.

Lylah Holmes [2007-08] produced a documentary on the 2008 presidential campaign and she talked about her work on “Charlie Rose” [PBS] with leading political reporters.

Jessica Hopper [2008-09] produced the award-winning documentary “Behind Closed Doors” with classmate Pracheta Sharma on exploitation of women domestic workers and labor trafficking in New York City.

Micki Steele [2009-10] left an advertising agency in order to go to graduate school. She is now reporting at the Detroit News.

Let's do Phyl proud, not with contributions -- which we can do in our communities and our networks in so many ways -- but in recompense. Send money, $$$$, to Columbia University GSJ for the Phyllis T. Garland Fund, 2950 Broadway, 704-C Journalism, New York, NY 10027. If you have questions after all this, contact Sharon Meiri Fox at 212-854-5263.

Happy Flag Day!

Wear your colors proudly -- whatever they are!

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

That's what Bill T. Jones said, channeling Fela, as he accepted a Tony award Sunday night.

Fences as a play and Denzel and Viola as actors done us proud.

So did Memphis.

Blacks and Broadway

The Tony Awards will be presented tonight, honoring the best of the Broadway theater season. A number of blackfolks have been nominated. Please read what I recently wrote for The Root:

June 6

I was born on June 6 in the colored side of the hospital in Conyers, Ga., the first of the six children of Minnie Ola and Johnnie Shipp. I call my mother on June 6 to sing “Happy Birthday” since, after all she did all the work that day.

That was 11 years after D-Day, a time well documented with a major exception: What about the black men who were part of that invasion of France and ultimately the liberation of Europe from Hitler’s Nazis? A column I wrote for the New York Daily News amid the 50^th anniversary hoopla in 1994 dealt with that, caught the attention of Rep. Charles Rangel and ultimately led to President Clinton belatedly recognizing black vets during at a White House ceremony. Later, with all the rave about the movie “Private Ryan,” starring Tom Hanks. I wrote in a column about the need to treat WWII veterans better, starting with health care: This is part of that column: “In 1944, blacks were usually treated as uniformed laborers, barred from combat units. One of them was my Daddy, a farm boy and shoe repairman from Conyers, Ga., whose company arrived in France on June 12, 1944, the day before "Private Ryan" ends.

We need to be angry and vigilant about an even younger generation of veterans, those of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Can you imagine what it must be like to be in your 20s without adequate mental and physicial health care or even job opportunities?

Super Bowl 48: Bring It On!

Even if you are not a football fan, join with me in this moment. The Super Bowl in 2014 -- God willing and the creek don't rise -- will be in the new Meadowlands stadium, with shared hosting by New York and New Jersey. Granting this locale the game represents a return to some kind of reality: A game in late January or early February does not have to be played in Florida or some other sunny clime. If it snows during Super Bowl 48 in our outdoor stadium, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow! These big guys can play real football in all climates. They don't need coddling in guaranteed sunny weather. As NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg said, "This isn't beach volley ball. It's football, for god's sake!"

I'm sure other bidders on the game were looking at dollar signs. But we are, too. This region should make billions on the game. And players and thousands of fans and tourists alike will benefit from all that we have to offer -- the vices and the virtues, the wild side and the tamer side, our multiculturalism and, of course, the culinary variety that will take their breath away (but hopefully not too much of their waist sizes!).