Seattle Mentoring Movement
	Seattle Cares Mentoring Movement Is Looking For Volunteers To Mentor At-risk Youth
SEATTLE CARES MENTORING MOVEMENT IS CALLING ON EVERY CAPABLE AND WILLING ADULT AND ORGANIZATION TO RISE TO THE CHALLENGE OF CREATING A LASTING AND POSITIVE IMPACT ON THE LIVES OF MANY AT-RISK YOUTH IN THE SEATTLE AREA. For more information or to volunteer call The 4C Coalition at (206) 772-1434 or e-mail: the4ccoalition@qwest.net

Former editor reflects essence of social change
From magazines to mentoring black kids
By CECELIA GOODNOW
P-I REPORTER
With babe in arms and wolf at the door, Susan L. Taylor was just looking to make the rent when she began writing beauty articles in 1970 for Essence, a magazine geared toward African-American women.
COMING UP
SUSAN L. TAYLOR
WHAT: Keynote speech

at YWCA benefit luncheon

WHEN: Noon-1:30 p.m. today

WHERE: Washington State Convention and Trade Center,

Seventh Avenue and Pike Street

COST: A donation of $150

is requested to benefit

women and children served by YWCA of Seattle-King County-Snohomish County; walk-in registrations accepted



TO LEARN MORE



For mentoring information, contact the 4C Coalition, 206-354-4139, or e-mail the4ccoalition@qwest.net. The 4C Coalition is lead agency for the newly launched Seattle Cares Mentoring Movement, part of the National Cares Mentoring Movement.

Instead, she ended up a publishing icon who shaped Essence over a 37-year period -- as beauty and fashion editor, then editor in chief and, finally, editorial director.
Taylor's tenure saw the launch of the New Orleans-based Essence Music Festival, the nation's largest celebration of black music and culture. She's part of an influential circle that includes Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover, her co-chair at Shared Interest, a campaign to raise money for housing in rural South Africa.
Elegant and sleekly beautiful at 62, Taylor left Essence in December to develop the National Cares Mentoring Movement (formerly Essence Cares), which aims to be the largest mentoring effort in U.S. history. Its goal is to recruit a million adults to help nurture black youth.
Although Taylor no longer writes her inspirational In The Spirit column, she draws from it in her latest book, "All About Love: Favorite Selections From In the Spirit on Living Fearlessly" (Urban Books, $19.95). She is in Seattle Thursday to speak at a YWCA benefit luncheon.
Here are edited excerpts from a wide-ranging Q&A.
Seattle P-I: Your career originally focused on beauty, yet today you're known for your spiritual writings. What importance do you place on appearances?
Taylor: Under my leadership (at Essence), you saw every manifestation of black womanhood -- tall, short, women who were size 24 or 25, and women who were long and lean. Women who were light, women who were black as night. That's what really gave Essence its authority and the trust of the community we serve.
White women tell me, "Essence is the only magazine I look at that doesn't tell me my thighs are too big, that my waist is too fat and that I don't look like I'm supposed to look."
What are your goals for the National Cares Mentoring Movement and how is it going?
It's growing so beautifully. In fact, when I come to Seattle we're launching Seattle Cares. We realized this is something that really needed to be community-based.
To be a mentor, must you be African-American?
I don't say this with great pride, but when the call goes out for mentors -- and this is for the black community -- the first respondents have been white women and then white men, then black women and black men.
So white people are already mentoring our children and we need mentors in the reverse order. We need legions of black men to step up even though we're not turning away anybody.
Why do you think African-American men have been slow to join these efforts?
You know, I think that there's a disconnect very often between the mentoring organization and the effort to recruit in the community. I think we have to get our churches involved. You have to be reminded to do this.
And what's difficult is also that black people are under a unique kind of pressure. If I could just swing over to (the Rev.) Jeremiah Wright for a moment, that's what he was talking about that got him and Barack (Obama) in so much trouble. There's so much pain in black America because of poverty, primarily, and because of racism that we can hardly talk about it without being called racist ourselves.
Did Reverend Wright's comments strike you as too strident or not?
They were taken out of context. You'd have to hear the whole speech. I know Jeremiah Wright -- he's not crazy.
The average white person has never heard about the Tuskegee Experiment (in which the U.S. Public Health Service and Tuskegee Institute studied 399 black men with syphilis from 1932 to 1972 without informing them about their illness or offering treatment).
Or something my husband (author Khephra Burns) just wrote -- that 65,000 people of color were forcibly sterilized in the 20th century without their knowledge. So there's a suspicion in some quarters in the black community.
We don't see ourselves in each other. Affluent and middle-class black people are not taking the responsibility for poor and disenfranchised black people that we should be taking. (But) the majority of poor people in this country are not people of color, they are white, and there's nobody advocating for them.
What did you think of Barack Obama's speech on race?
Oh, I thought it was a wonderful speech. I think that what we need to do is build bridges. And I see myself as a bridge builder.
I'm a privileged black person, (but) so many of our people are still trying to catch up.
Where does education fit in?
Failing schools become the pipelines to prison. There are no white youngsters in suburban schools that are in any way mirroring what is lacking in inner-city, under-served schools. Textbooks -- not there. Computers -- not there. Well-trained teachers in under-served schools -- rare. Toilets that don't flush. No running water. No chalk. Broken blackboards. No libraries.
We have to make sure that we not only mentor youngsters, we have to fix public education. When we do that, you're going to see the crime rate evaporate, the over-incarceration of African-Americans evaporate.
So there's work, and I feel like it's all fixable. We don't have any social problems that we can't fix, but what we need is an understanding.
Do you feel torn, as an African-American woman, between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton?
I really don't. I know them both. I know her better than him, actually, and brought them both to the Essence Music Festival in July.
I think whoever sits in the Oval Office is not going to solve all the problems in this nation. My issue is really getting blacks and whites and Latinos and Asians and Native Americans involved in the civic and social lives of the people who are disenfranchised.
What I want is for all of us, of every race, to hold our politicians responsible for delivering what they promise when they're running for office.
You're known as an inspirational figure. Can you describe some of the challenges in your life and how you overcame them?
My first marriage bit the dust when my daughter was 6 weeks old. So I went from being a maybe upper-middle-class married mother to a poor single mother overnight. And I was so anxious, I was so fearful. I was making $500 a month and my rent was $368 and I was really struggling.
I was so anxious I thought I was having a heart attack. I was 24 years old. I found myself one Sunday morning in the emergency room of the hospital I was born in. And the doctor in the emergency room told me I wasn't having a heart attack but that it was an anxiety attack.
And that day I left the emergency room and I walked up Broadway here in New York City, and I looked up and here was a marquee that said, "Church service 3 p.m." A force that I didn't fully understand pulled me into the back of that church, and I heard a message that changed my life.
The Rev. Alfred Miller said that with your mind you rule your world. And he said something that I had never heard: He said that God is alive in you. Growing up Catholic, I always thought the nuns and the priests had the direct line to God, but I never knew there was anything sacred or special inside of me, and that was really the beginning of a major door opening.
I took quiet time and I started thinking about how I could earn more money. I let go of the anxiety and said, "Let me just use my mind."
It's the same principle that I attempt to practice every day of my life today -- that stuff is going to happen. Money, education, being well-known, no matter who you are -- whether you're Oprah Winfrey or Bill Clinton -- you're going to suffer and know challenges.
But for every challenge -- for every personal challenge or for every