Summit aims to engage black community - Organizers want to bring people together to address problems

Faced with lingering racial disparities in income, education and other measures, organizers hope to get at least 500 Charlotte-area residents to create an "African American agenda" next month.

A two-day gathering at the Charlotte Convention Center is expected to attract black church and civic groups, as well as residents and elected leaders of all races from the area.

"Our goal is basically to try to bring folks together," state Sen. Malcolm Graham said Tuesday. "What I'm encouraging people to do is look at the man in the mirror and critique what we see and have the fortitude to see our strengths and weaknesses."

Graham, a Charlotte Democrat, is organizing the conference with the help of corporate partnerships, a $100,000 state grant and Charlotte's Lee Institute, a nonprofit that supports projects that help build leadership.

The event, which is free and open to the public, starts Jan. 5. Scheduled speakers include NPR and Fox News analyst Juan Williams, rapper and author Sister Souljah, and columnist Julianne Malveaux.

With almost 200,000 African Americans living in Mecklenburg, the conference is designed to unite the minority community in addressing problems, Graham said. U.S. Census Bureau data released last month underscored how those problems have persisted, and even grown.

They showed that white households had 2005 incomes that were two-thirds higher than those of blacks and 40 percent higher than those of Hispanics.

Whites were more likely than blacks and Hispanics to own homes and college degrees, and they were less likely to live in poverty. The gap in homeownership has widened.

The Charlotte area mirrors the trends. In 2005, the median household income for whites was $50,253, compared with $29,764 for African Americans (and $34,552 for Hispanics). The poverty rate was 6.7 percent for whites and 21.6 percent for blacks (and 25 percent for Hispanics).

And the number of struggling, mostly minority schools in Charlotte-Mecklenburg has soared since the district stopped race-based assignments.

Nick Desai, an economics professor at Johnson C. Smith University, said low-income workers have been hardest hit by job losses in many industries. At the same time, minimum-wage earners have seen their wages remain static.

He said that for African Americans, the problems are compounded by a racism that makes it harder for many to advance.

Williams, who chronicled the civil rights era in "Eyes on the Prize," is expected to talk about his new book. It's called "Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America -- And What We Can Do About It."

According to his Random House publisher, Williams acknowledges racism but argues that "it is way past time for black Americans to open their eyes to the 'culture of failure' that exists within their community."

Graham said he hopes the conference addresses a variety of problems, such as education, the economy and crime. "These problems don't belong to the black community alone," he said. "They belong to the entire community."

Graham wants community leaders to coalesce around a concrete goal or goals. It could be as simple, he said, as adopting a challenged high school for a year.

Conference Steering Committee member Mike DeVaul said he hopes the gathering also addresses ways to engage the thousands of African Americans who have moved to the Charlotte area in recent years.

"They're nervous about whether Charlotte has embraced its African American community," said DeVaul, who believes it has. "We need to make sure everybody feels this way, not just some of us."

Said Graham: "Jan. 5 and 6 may be the easy part. What we do from Jan. 7 to Dec. 31 will be the hard part."