Black History Month at SNC Some panelists say 21st century is no better than 20th By Anna Krejci News-Chronicle The heritage and future challenges for African Americans in the United States meant different things to the five panelists who addressed St. Norbert College students Thursday night as part of the school's celebration of Black History Month at the Fort Howard Theater of the F.K. Bemis International Center. Ronald C. Dunlap, the principal of an Appleton school who for two years played professional basketball in Tel-Aviv, Israel, compared heritage to a track relay race where the baton passed from runner to runner carried the wisdom and history of one generation to the next. Passed on were a series of events, including African Americans fighting in both world wars, creating the Harlem Renaissance, and Rosa Parks-led Montgomery, Ala. bus boycott that jolted society into the contemporary civil rights movement. One panelist, Justin Willis, assistant director of cultural diversity and involvement at the college, asked the group of students what a man named Carter G. Woodson was known for. Not one student answered. He was the founder of dedicating a week in February to African American history in 1926, Willis said, the precursor to Black History Month. Challenges that persist in the 21st century have not changed since the last century, according to Sabrina Robins, a Kimberly-Clark Corporation employee who chairs the company's African American Employee Network. From a June 2003 Gallup Poll, she presented survey results that revealed 60 percent of African Americans are dissatisfied with how they are treated in society, and 81 percent of those surveyed said they do not have access to equal job opportunities. Robins earned a doctorate from Wayne State University in Detroit and specialized in applied social science statistics, research methodology and design said she was not surprised by the findings. "I work in corporate America and I see it," she said. While she said corporations like Kimberly-Clark and Procter and Gamble are trying to establish diverse workforce because they know it creates larger profits, as an employee recruiter, she said it is very hard to find the right people. Not many African American graduates with chemical engineering or math-based majors who meet a certain grade point average requirement set by Kimberly-Clark and want to live in Wisconsin exist, Robins said. The rate of black men going to prison almost surpasses the rate of those going to college, she said. Christopher Swan, founder and chair of the UW-Green Bay Chancellor's Community Council on Diversity and president and CEO of Swan Corp 1, said the incarceration rate of African American males is four times greater than the rate of incarceration of black men in South Africa. The data came from a July 1998 publication of American Psychologist. While panelists addressed hurdles in the movement for racial equality, they included education as a solution, but one panelist sought a solution beyond the textbook. "Education alone is not going to take us over the rainbow," said Dr. G. Manns, pastor of Appleton Sanctuary outreach Ministries, Inc. She cited data that tracked the 2003 unemployment rate for white and black college graduates. During a favorable economic period the unemployment rate for white graduates was 1.5 percent, while the unemployment rate for black college graduates was 2.4 percent. When the unemployment rates rose, white graduates were unemployed at a rate of 3.2 percent and black graduates unemployed at a rate of 4.6 percent, she said. When unemployment rates went down for whites, they remained almost the same for blacks, she said. Her advice to the students about how to face the challenges set before them was rooted in establishing one's own identity. Manns, who several times addressed African Americans in two ways, as African Americans and Americans of African descent, said affirming diversity among African Americans is a contemporary challenge to meet. "We cannot buy into the media's stereotypes," she said. "There's not a single voice for this diverse people," Manns said.