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OPINION

To Be Equal / Marc Morial

Minding our Business

When we first meet him at the beginning of Charles Dickens' classic morality tale, “A Christmas Carol,” wealthy financier Ebenezer Scrooge has no charity for any human being, let alone a poor one.

He was, Dickens writes in an indelible portrait, "a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching ... covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever stuck out generous fire, secret and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. ... He carried his own low temperature always with him ... [and he edged] his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance ..."

Although Dickens' story was set in London nearly two centuries ago, when the poor who had jobs lived a miserable existence and those who didn't lived a brutal one, it's guiding principle — of the need for compassion and generosity toward those less fortunate — are important to adhere to today as then.

One may say that the poor are far better off today than ever before. That would be true.

It's also no doubt true that that fact is much easier to take comfort in for those who are not poor, who are not out of work, who are not on the verge of destitution.

But it cannot obscure the regret voiced by the ghost of Scrooge's partner, Jacob Marley, when he "visited" Scrooge Christmas Eve night: that in life he had failed to realize "The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were all my business."

One of those who's long recognized that we're all our brothers' and sisters' keepers is Alonzo Mourning, the great pro basketball center who recently retired from the sport after his doctors warned him he needed an immediate kidney transplant.

Fortunately, "Zo" found a donor among his family and underwent transplant surgery Dec. 19.

We at the National Urban League were thrilled to have had Alonzo Mourning as one of those we honored at our Equal Opportunity Day Awards Dinner in early November for their compassion and determination to do what they can to help others improve their lives.

Our other honorees were: Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's national security advisor, the Rev. Dr. Floyd H. Flake, president of Wilberforce University and pastor of the Greater Allen Cathedral of New York, Emmitt Smith, the National Football League's career rushing leader and running back for the Arizona Cardinals, and the United Parcel service, the world's largest package delivery company.

Zo's brief remarks that evening struck me as the essence of the spirit of compassion and sense of obligation to the human community that we celebrate most loudly during the holiday season — and need to celebrate loudly all year long.

Speaking more of all kindness and love he had received growing up as a foster child in Tidewater, Va., than of the many youth programs he now sponsors or participates in, he said simply, "Giving is the reason I'm here."

Certainly, the need for those of us who have to share our good fortune with the less fortunate is as great as at any time in recent memory.

The papers are now full of good news about the economy.

But it’s still true that more than nine million Americans are unemployed, and nearly two million have been out of work long past the six-month deadline for receiving unemployment benefits, and the Black unemployment rate is nearly twice that of Whites.

And the incidence of hunger and homelessness is rising across the country, according to a report issued last week by the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Its annual survey for this year found a sharp increase in hunger and homelessness in urban areas among low-income working families — and a sharp decrease in the ability of the majority of the nation’s 25 largest cities to meet the crisis.

Conference president James A. Garner, the mayor of Hempstead, N.Y., said the recent good news about the top of the economy would have little positive effect on the state and local budget shortfalls that have produced drastic cutbacks in social services during the past two years.

“We don’t expect it to get any better next year,” he said.

That ominous prediction underscores the words the Rev. James Forbes, Jr., senior minister of New York’s Riverside Church, uttered in a fascinating profile of him by the PBS program “NOW with Bill Moyers” that began airing on Dec. 26.

In it, Forbes, a son of the South and the first African American to lead the renowned church, warns of the “trends [in American society] away from parity, equality, and justice. “God’s heart aches,” he declares, “and it is a sin to be silent.”

That was the moral of Charles Dickens’ timeless tale as well: that one must act to relieve the suffering of the poor and the least able among us.

Those of us who are fortunate must recognize that it’s always the season for compassion.