A middle-aged former business owner, Le Roy Marshall of Culver City responds “activist for the black community,” when asked to identify himself.
That is why he was invited to U.S. Rep. Karen Bass’s end-of-the-year Town Hall meeting yesterday afternoon, as Ms. Bass (D-Culver City) recited her accomplishments and frustrations.
“I want to see what she has to say that benefits our community and our country at-large,” Mr. Marshall said.
He labors on behalf of blacks in every neighborhood and community within Los Angeles.
One of the primary motivations for Mr. Marshall’s presence among the large turnout at the Doubletree Hotel was to hear what Ms. Bass is doing about desperately needed job creation for black men, women and teens across Los Angeles.
However, the closest he came was to hear a passive, oft-repeated, ambiguous vow from Ms. Bass. She made a pit stop at a piece of distant legislation called the Local Hires Act. It languishes in legislative limbo, however, and Ms. Bass did not indicate more than a generic interest in it.
“The Congressional Black Caucus, including Karen, need to focus on job creation,” Mr. Marshall said. “Kids are suffering the most. But the black community at-large is suffering. I was at the first Black Workers Conference put on by the Black Workers Assn. last summer.”
He zinged a shocking statistic.
“At that conference, we discovered that 31 percent of educated blacks are underemployed,” Mr. Marshall reported, adding a crucial caveat:
“I don’t think discrimination has as much to do with it as people think it has. I think people have become discouraged, and they are not trying.
“It is difficult for African Americans to start up their own business,” said the former entrepreneur. “I believe that chiefly, that is where a lot of African American employment is going to come from,”
If discrimination is not a dominant reason for the huge black underemployment, why is it higher than for other cultures?
“Inability to gain capital, lack of influence,” Mr. Marshall said. “Banks are not willing. Having been in (a service) business many years myself, I saw the writing on the wall. There was no money, opportunities were drying up. If you don’t have influence with someone…in business, you need influence. If you don’t have it, you don’t have the capital behind it.
“This has not changed over the (recent) years. There was some movement in the late ‘60s and the ‘70s to improve the situation.”
What was different then?
“There was a movement, particularly by President Nixon, to develop African American businesses, to develop an economic base in the African American community.”
Why did that embryonic start wither?
“From what little I know,” Mr. Marshall said, “corruption, internal and external. The African American community has suffered from a victory disease. Too full of itself. Overconfident.”
Why?
“Things seemed to be going our way,” he said. “In the ‘60s and ’70s, things were going well. People were making good money. More recently, there has been an inability to adapt to changing times.”
(To be continued)
