Facilitating involvement by minorities and women in government
Clement explains that it is important to have women and minorities involved in government administrations because they are aware of different issues and concerns. Her role, she says, has been to keep key concerns related to education, family life and childcare before the county commissioners.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Josephine Clement, July 13 and August 3, 1989. Interview C-0074. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
Again, in the senses of has the Board been a good
vehicle for your interests?
- JOSEPHINE CLEMENT:
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Right. Education, minorities--and that means in
this area mostly blacks, we don't have a lot of other
minorities--and women. Those are my primary
concerns. But I think also there's another large area and that is one of
what you might call the humane approach to ordinary problems that I
think you find more coming from women than men. Most boards that we've
had in the past have been comprised of white males, men from the
business community, who are very oriented toward business and the
business ledger. Do the books balance and the revenue and this sort of
thing. In the last fifteen to twenty years we've a slow trickle of women
and people who are not entirely oriented that way. I certainly don't
mean to imply that we don't need business people. We do, because running
any governmental agency is big business, and you must make it function.
But I think there is a humane approach also. You're dealing with people
and when you're dealing with people it's a little more than numbers in a
book that balance. Now we have done some things. For instance, we have a
homeless shelter which is rather new among counties. It's not generally
considered a function of a county. We have part ownership in this,
although we've taken the lead, but with the city and with the religious
community. We bought a building which was available because we had
monies from our bond issue, and they are repaying us from this. The
religious community is raising money also for that, and the city is
paying. We were able to buy the building and get started with the
program. I'm also, have just been appointed to the Board of Social
Services as representative from the Commissioners and this is another
area, I think, in which we need a humane point of
view. Not that they don't have it. I don't mean to imply that at all,
but I'm saying it is one of the areas that is not as cut and dried as
how much money you going to put in this building and how much is this
contract going to be. I mean, these are human beings. We deal with
dysfunctional families, we deal with children in trouble, children
without homes, who for whatever reason no longer live at home, either
they left voluntarily or the parents put them out or whatever. They say
twelve, thirteen, and fourteen, that age group in there. It's hard to
find foster homes for them because people who are foster parents want
young children who they can train and manage, and you can understand
this. They don't want incorrigible teenagers who might run off in the
middle of the night. And so those are problems that you have, problems
of our society. We have the problem of the jail. We're being sued
currently for overcrowding. I think in making decisions there perhaps
we--just listening to some of the comments that
some of the men make, they seem to be less than sympathetic to the
plight of the inmates. At least I see them as poor. Maybe I'm a bleeding
heart, I don't know, and maybe I need them to balance me off, but I see
them as poor, disadvantaged people who never had a chance. Maybe like
the little boy in the stroller whose mother pushed him down and who has
been brutalized over the years and has grown up without any loving hand
or loving family to support him and restrain him. These are really
pathetic people in our society today. I don't know what's going to
become of them. I think having a point of view to
balance off some of the others is also important.
- KATHRYN NASSTROM:
-
And it seems then that you certainly consider that your role.
- JOSEPHINE CLEMENT:
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[Laughter]
- KATHRYN NASSTROM:
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On the County Commissioners, keeping those issues before the Board.
- JOSEPHINE CLEMENT:
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I do. And I'm not trying to say that I'm the only one, but you asked me
about my role, and this is the way I perceive myself.