(To Be Equal#25) “Our job is to do everything we can to ensure that businesses can take root and folks can find good jobs and America is leading the global competition that will determine our success in the 21st century.” President Barack Obama Last week, in Raleigh-Durham, the heart of North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park, […]
Marc Morial
Proposed Mortgage Qualification Rule May End Homeownership As We Know It
Marc H. Morial (To Be Equal#23) – Homeownership, as we know it, could be a thing of the past if a proposed Qualified Residential Mortgage Rule (QRM) takes effect. In a letter I sent last week to the heads of the six federal agencies charged with developing risk retention regulations under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street […]
BEEP Prepares African American College Students for Jobs in Corporate America
By Marc H. Morial (To Be Equal #24) – Last week, June 8-11, more than 450 attendees, including 132 HBCU students, came together in Orlando, Florida for the National Urban League’s 42nd annual Black Executive Exchange Program (BEEP) Leadership Conference. BEEP, the National Urban League’s longest running direct service program, is a partnership involving the […]
New England “99ers” Need Unemployment Help and Jobs
Marc H. Morial (To Be Equal#21) – “It’s been tough. Very tough. I’m figuring I’m not getting any job. I have no experience, and I can’t get any experience without getting any jobs.” 23-year-old Darrell Davis of Springfield, MA Darrell Davis is just one of hundreds of discouraged, long-term unemployed people we met during last […]
Urban Jobs Act – A Powerful Weapon in the War on Unemployment
By Marc H. Morial (To Be Equal #19) – Last week, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York enlisted in the war on urban unemployment with the introduction of the Urban Jobs Act. Gillibrand’s Urban Jobs Act is the Senate version of House bill, H.R. 683, which was introduced earlier this year by New York […]
Housing Counseling Budget Cut – An Assault on the Middle Class
Marc H. Morial (To Be Equal#18) – If there was any doubt that middle and working class Americans are paying more than their fair share in the deficit reduction battles, the budget cuts recently enacted to prevent a government shutdown make it absolutely clear. Everything from Pell grants for college tuition to heating assistance for […]
Trump Employing “Birther” Issue as a Weapon of Mass Distraction
By Marc H. Morial (To Be Equal#17) – A recent CBS/New York Times poll found that 25 percent of Americans and 45 percent of registered Republican voters believe that President Obama was not born in the United States. Another 22 percent of Republican voters say they don’t know. For the record, President Obama was born […]
National Urban League Trains African Americans for Corporate Boards
Marc H. Morial (To Be Equal#15) – What do American Express, Merck, Xerox, Darden Restaurants, and Citibank have in common? All are Fortune 500 companies headed by African Americans: Ken Chenault, Chairman and CEO of American Express; Ken Frazier, President and CEO of Merck; Ursula Burns, Chairwoman and CEO of Xerox – the first African […]
The State of Black America: Washington Are you Listening?
By Marc H. Morial (To Be Equal #14) – “Welcome to America in the second decade of the 21st century. An army of long-term unemployed workers is spread across the land, the human fallout from the Great Recession and long years of misguided economic policies.” From Bob Herbert’s final column for the New York Times […]