Goals for black America not met - USATODAY.com

Goals for black America not met - USATODAY.com: The USA has made great strides in the past four decades toward expanding a black middle class and producing black political leaders, including the first viable candidate for president. Yet blacks still lag behind whites significantly in income, education and other measures of well-being, a study out today concludes.

Forty years after the Kerner Commission warned of a country heading toward 'two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal,' the Eisenhower Foundation, a private urban-policy institute, finds the country has failed to meet the goals laid out by the presidential commission.

Whites tricked blacks into consuming urine, university says - CNN.com

Whites tricked blacks into consuming urine, university says - CNN.com: JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (CNN) -- White students at a South African university tricked black residence hall workers into eating stew containing urine, prompting a march Wednesday in which five people were arrested, university officials said.

The white students made a video of the incident, which they staged in reaction to the university's efforts to integrate its residences, according to a statement from the University of the Free State.

The protesters on Wednesday included black and white students who later marched to the residence where the video was made and demanded that it be shut down, witnesses said.

The video surfaced on Tuesday but was made in September, the university said.

In the video, white male students at Reitz Residence are seen encouraging at least three black female housekeepers to participate in what the students call the "Reitz Fear Factor," an apparent reference to the television show in which contestants eat live worms or compete in other feats.

Civil Rights Icon Johnnie Carr Dies - TIME

Civil Rights Icon Johnnie Carr Dies - TIME: (Montgomery, Ala.) — Johnnie Carr, who joined childhood friend Rosa Parks in the historic Montgomery bus boycott and kept a busy schedule of civil rights activism up to her final days, has died. She was 97.

Carr died Friday night, said Baptist Health hospital spokeswoman Melody Ragland. She had been hospitalized after a stroke Feb. 11.

Carr succeeded the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. as president of the Montgomery Improvement Association in 1967, a post she held at her death. It was the newly formed association that led the boycott of city buses in the Alabama capital in 1955 after Parks, a black seamstress, was arrested for refusing to give up her seat to whites on a crowded bus.

A year later the U.S. Supreme Court struck down racial segregation on public transportation.

For Muslim Students, a Debate on Inclusion - New York Times

For Muslim Students, a Debate on Inclusion - New York Times: ... The intense debate over whether organizations for Muslim students should be inclusive or strict is playing out on college campuses across the United States, where there are now more than 200 Muslim Students Association chapters.

Gender issues, specifically the extent to which men and women should mingle, are the most fraught topic as Muslim students wrestle with the yawning gap between American college traditions and those of Islam.

“There is this constant tension between becoming a mainstream student organization versus appealing to students who have a more conservative or stricter interpretation of Islam,” said Hadia Mubarak, the first woman to serve as president of the national association, from 2004 to 2005.

Hate Mail Sent to Blacks at Prep School Is Investigated - New York Times

Hate Mail Sent to Blacks at Prep School Is Investigated - New York Times: CONCORD, N.H. — A police investigation is under way at an elite prep school here after many black students received anonymous letters that the head of the school described as “threatening hate mail.”

A spokeswoman for the school, St. Paul’s, said the letters had arrived in the students’ mailboxes on Tuesday. The spokeswoman, Jana Brown, would not disclose the contents of the letters or how many students received them, but said, “Students of color do appear to be the target.”

According to several people associated with St. Paul’s, each student received a copy of his own photo from the school’s internal face book with the words “bang bang get out of here” written below. They said the letters, sent through the Postal Service, were postmarked from nearby Manchester, N.H.

Students to Study University of Maryland’s Ties To Slavery

Students to Study University of Maryland’s Ties To Slavery: The University of Maryland, College Park is the latest institution of higher education to announce plans to examine its ties to slavery, this time doing so with the help of students in a research course.

Next fall, Dr. Ira Berlin, Distinguished University Professor of U.S. history, African-American history and slavery, will lead a group of students in a two-semester research course, “Knowing Our History: African-American slavery in the University of Maryland.”

The first semester will focus on the history of slavery and training about 30 students to be “good historians of slavery,” says Berlin, adding that the second semester will “focus our skills and knowledge on our own backyard” by delving into UMD’s role in the slave trade.

The founder of UMD, Charles B. Calvert, was a slave owner and the university’s grounds were a part of his estate. The goal of the course is to find out what happened on UMD’s campus in relation to American slavery.

Suffering the Borrowing Blues

Suffering the Borrowing Blues: Low-income students and students of color may have a harder time getting some college loans because of an ongoing credit crunch and tighter underwriting rules in the industry.

While the trend may not affect federally guaranteed loans, usually the first line of credit for college students, it likely will have an impact on the fast-growing private loan market that serves low-income students once they reach federal lending limits, analysts say.

The trend became clearer in mid-January when loan giant Sallie Mae announced plans to cut back on private loans to students attending postsecondary institutions with low rates of student success.

“We’re not going to lend at schools with poor graduation rates,” Tom Joyce, a Sallie Mae spokesman, tells Diverse. “We will do less private lending at these schools.”

Joyce says this move is most likely to affect proprietary schools and not institutions like historically Black and Hispanic-serving institutions that enroll a large number of low-income students.

Higher Education Gap May Slow Economic Mobility - New York Times

Higher Education Gap May Slow Economic Mobility - New York Times: Economic mobility, the chance that children of the poor or middle class will climb up the income ladder, has not changed significantly over the last three decades, a study being released on Wednesday says.

The authors of the study, by scholars at the Brookings Institution in Washington and sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts, warned that widening gaps in higher education between rich and poor, whites and minorities, could soon lead to a downturn in opportunities for the poorest families.

The researchers found that Hispanic and black Americans were falling behind whites and Asians in earning college degrees, making it harder for them to enter the middle class or higher.

“A growing difference in education levels between income and racial groups, especially in college degrees, implies that mobility will be lower in the future than it is today,” said Ron Haskins, a former Republican official and welfare expert who wrote the education section of the report.

Affirmative Action Bans Hurt Male Student Enrollment

Affirmative Action Bans Hurt Male Student Enrollment: According to a new study, released by the University of California, Los Angeles, (UCLA), college admission rates of Asian American students at select public universities have thrived in the absence of affirmative action, whereas the admission rates of Black, Hispanic and White students have declined.

In a review of enrollment statistics from three states where affirmative action bans are in effect — California, Florida and Texas — the report also revealed that across all races, the male population drops in schools with blind admissions processes. Researchers examined admissions at five select institutions — the University of California, Berkeley; UCLA, the University of California, San Diego; the University of Florida; and the University of Texas at Austin.

James Orange, civil rights activist, dies at 65 - CNN.com

James Orange, civil rights activist, dies at 65 - CNN.com: ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- The Rev. James Orange, a civil rights activist whose 1965 jailing sparked a fatal protest that ultimately led to the famed Selma-to-Montgomery march and the Voting Rights Act, died Saturday at Atlanta's Crawford Long Hospital, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference said in a statement. He was 65.

Orange was a native of Birmingham, Alabama, 'who resided in southwest Atlanta for four decades while fighting the good fight for equality and social justice for all mankind,' said the SCLC, a civil rights organization.

Orange was arrested and jailed in Perry County, Alabama, in 1965 on charges of disorderly conduct and contributing to the delinquency of minors for enlisting students to aid in voting rights drives.

Transition to digital hits Hispanics hardest - HDTV- msnbc.com

Transition to digital hits Hispanics hardest - HDTV- msnbc.com: WASHINGTON - Hispanics are nearly twice as likely as whites to be left without television service following the nationwide transition to digital broadcasting next year, according to a new survey.

Beginning in February 2009, full-power broadcast stations will transmit digital-only signals, meaning people who get their television programming over an antenna and do not have a digital set won't get a picture without a special converter box.

The Nielsen Co. survey released Friday estimates that more than 13 million households in the U.S. receive television programming over the air on non-digital sets, meaning they will need converter boxes. Another 6 million households contain at least one television that fits that description.

Nielsen researchers found that 10.1 percent of all households would have no access to television signals if the transition occurred today. Broken down by race, 8.8 percent of whites would be unready; 11.7 percent of Asians; 12.4 percent of blacks; and 17.3 percent of Hispanics.

By age, of those 35 and younger, 12.3 percent rely solely on over-the-air broadcasts. Of those age 55 and older, 9.4 percent fall into that category.

The survey noted that 16.8 percent of all households have at least one analog television set that would not work after the switch.

In Some States AP Course Access and Scores Improve for Hispanics, But Not Blacks

In Some States AP Course Access and Scores Improve for Hispanics, But Not Blacks: Despite the strides made by educators and school districts to provide underrepresented students access to Advanced Placement courses, known predictors of college success, African-Americans lag behind their White counterparts in AP course enrollment and success, the College Board reveals in its annual AP Report to the Nation.

While there are more minority students entering AP classrooms, significant gaps in equity and excellence remain, the College Board reports.

“An analysis of the students sitting in the AP classrooms compared to students sitting in non-AP classrooms reveals a true and startling lack of equity,” says Trevor Packer, vice president of the AP program at the College Board. “We can see that African-American students, in particular, are not receiving the encouragement and support to enroll in AP classes.”

According to the report, Black students comprise just 7.4 percent of students who participate in taking AP tests, even though they account for 14 percent of all students at their high schools. There was little discrepancy between AP exam enrollment rates and overall enrollment rates for Hispanic and White students, while Asian American students represented a disproportionately higher number of AP exam enrollees.

Study: Hispanic Freshman Want ‘Helicopter Parents’

The conventional wisdom has it that so-called helicopter parents are annoying their children by hovering over their every move as they apply to college. But it turns out most freshmen are happy with how involved mom and dad were during their college search.

In fact, new survey data suggest that the bigger problem may be the opposite — parents sometimes aren't as attentive as their children would like.

That's especially true for Hispanic students, who were much more likely than Whites to say their parents weren't involved enough in areas like helping them apply to college and helping them choose classes once they got there.

The figures, from a major survey of college freshman out from University of California-Los Angeles, are part of an emerging body of research on what has largely been an anecdotal trend: the idea that parents have become much more involved in the lives of their teenage children, perhaps unhealthily so.

Just the Stats:Older population to Grow Faster Than Total of Working-age Adults

Rapid growth in the nation's older population is likely to put huge pressure on the cost of government safety-net programs, even though the rise of immigrants is helping to increase the total of working-age people, a report from the Pew Hispanic Center said.

Most of the overall population growth, 82 percent, will be the result of immigrants arriving between 2005 and 2050, as well as their children and grandchildren.

Other findings include:

• The number of working-age adults, ages 18 to 64, will rise from 186 million three years ago to 255 million in 2050.
  
• Foreignborn adults will account for 23 percent of the population in 2050, while non-Hispanic Whites drop from 68 percent to 45 percent of the group.
  
• The nation's population of seniors, those 65 and over, will more than double in size to 81 million by 2050. The last of the baby-boom generation will reach 65 in 2029. That combination will add up to 32 seniors for every 100 working-age adults, up from 20 in 2005. For every 100 working-age adults in 2050, 72 people will be either seniors or young children, , up from 59 in 2005.
  
• Pew researchers project that by 2050, the nation's population will total about 438 million, as long as today's immigration, fertility and other population trends continue.

Hispanic Seniors Encouraged to Apply for Heritage Awards by March 14

High school seniors across the nation are being urged to apply for the Hispanic Heritage Foundation's (HHF) Youth Awards, which honor academically successful students. The deadline is March 14.

Young Latino leaders at a regional and national level can compete for the educational grants ranging from $1,000 to $8,000. HHF is a nonprofit organization that works to identify, inspire, promote and prepare Latino role models through national leadership, cultural, educational and workforce programs.


In 2007, more than $650,000 in Youth Awards was given to nearly 300 young leaders, according to HHF.

Application information is available at youthawards.hispanicheritage.org

Assessing Attitudes

Assessing Attitudes: Assessing Attitudes
Pew survey highlights Black perceptions of a deepening social split between poor and middle-class Blacks.

By Ronald Roach

Typically, the period between the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in mid-January and the end of Black History Month in February sees serious and sober public discussions about the state of Black America. Those discussions have heated up earlier than expected due to the November release of a national survey on Black social progress by the influential Washington-based Pew Research Center entitled “Blacks See Growing Values Gap Between Poor and Middle Class: Optimism About Black Progress Declines.” The survey highlights Black perceptions of a deepening social split between poor and middle-class African-Americans.

To many observers, the survey confirms unsurprisingly that Black optimism about racial progress in the United States is at the lowest level it’s been in more than two decades. It revealed that one in five African-Americans, or 20 percent, said Blacks fare better now than compared with five years ago; that is the lowest percentage since 1983, when the Pew Research Center found that only 20 percent also claimed improvement in their lives. In 1999, 32 percent of Black respondents reported they believed Blacks were better off compared to five years prior, according to the Pew Research Center.

Australia apologizes to Aborigines - USATODAY.com

Australia apologizes to Aborigines - USATODAY.com: CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia apologized Wednesday to its indigenous people for past treatment that 'inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss,' in a historic parliamentary vote that supporters said would open a new chapter in race relations in the country.

Lawmakers unanimously adopted Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's motion to say sorry of behalf of all Australians in an emotional session of the federal Parliament that was telecast across the country and watched by crowds gathered giant screens set up in cities, students in school halls, and people huddled around televisions in remote Outback communities.

U.S. Latino Population Projected To Soar - washingtonpost.com

U.S. Latino Population Projected To Soar - washingtonpost.com: The number of Hispanics in the United States will triple by 2050 and represent nearly 30 percent of the population if current trends continue, according to a report released yesterday.

The study by the nonpartisan, Washington-based Pew Research Center also found that nearly one in five Americans will be foreign-born in 2050, compared with about one in eight today. Asian Americans, representing 5 percent of the population today, are expected to boost their share to 9 percent.

Blacks are projected to maintain their current 13 percent share. Non-Hispanic whites will still be the nation's largest group, the report says, but would drop from 67 percent of U.S. residents to 47 percent.

Overall, by 2050 the U.S. population is projected to increase by 47 percent, from 296 million in 2005 to 438 million. Newly arriving immigrants would account for 47 percent of the rise, and their U.S.-born children and grandchildren would represent another 35 percent.

Catching Up to the Boys, in the Good and the Bad - washingtonpost.com

Catching Up to the Boys, in the Good and the Bad - washingtonpost.com: ... A generation of parents and educators have pushed to ensure that girls have the same opportunities as their male counterparts, with notable results. In 2007, for example, it was girls who dominated the national math and science competition sponsored by Siemens. But a growing number of reports show that the message of equality might have a downside.

Teenage girls now equal or outpace teenage boys in alcohol consumption, drug use and smoking, national surveys show. The number of girls entering the juvenile justice system has risen steadily over the past few years. A 2006 study that examined accident rates among young drivers noted that although boys get into more car accidents, girls are slowly beginning to close the gap.

Chinese New Year 2008: Kids' Activities, Crafts, and History for the Chinese Lunar Year of the Rat - Kaboose.com

Chinese New Year 2008: Kids' Activities, Crafts, and History for the Chinese Lunar Year of the Rat - Kaboose.com: February 7, 2008 marks the start of the Year of the Rat on the Chinese Lunar Calendar. Celebrate the Chinese New Year holiday with great kids' activites and crafts. Also learn about the history and meaning behind Chinese New Year symbols.

Black History Month 2008 :: University Communications Newsdesk, University of Maryland

Black History Month 2008 :: University Communications Newsdesk, University of Maryland: The University of Maryland has faculty experts who can talk about Black History Month issues that range from the African Diaspora to minority education issues, and make them relevant to your audiences.

A listing of experts by category are on the site- or you can see the Black History Month 'Hot Topic' list (in alphabetical order).

Please feel free to contact each expert directly.

High schoolers name women, black Americans 'most famous' - USATODAY.com

High schoolers name women, black Americans 'most famous' - USATODAY.com: Asked to name the most famous Americans in history, high school students put 20th-century black Americans in the top three slots. Here are the top 10, with the percentage who chose each:

1. Martin Luther King Jr.: 67%

2. Rosa Parks: 60%

3. Harriet Tubman: 44%

4. Susan B. Anthony: 34%

5.Benjamin Franklin: 29%

6. Amelia Earhart: 25%

7. Oprah Winfrey: 22%

8. Marilyn Monroe: 19%

9. Thomas Edison: 18%

10. Albert Einstein: 16%

Diversity Rule Goes to College - washingtonpost.com

Diversity Rule Goes to College - washingtonpost.com: A version of the minority-interviewing rule that was the catalyst for the NFL to diversify its head coaching ranks has been adopted by major college football.

A written policy stipulating that any division I-A football program with a head coaching vacancy will interview at least one minority candidate was sent just more than three weeks ago to athletic directors at the 120 schools. The two-page document details what it calls 'acceptable standards' regarding diversity in interviewing and hiring practices, and was distributed by the Division I-A Athletic Directors' Association.

Racial harassment cases rise sharply - USATODAY.com

Racial harassment cases rise sharply - USATODAY.com: Cases of racial harassment filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission increased 24% last year, a time of racial turmoil that included the Jena Six controversy and an outbreak of noose displays.

At the same time, state and city lawmakers have stepped up efforts to make it a crime to intimidate someone with a noose. And the Justice Department, which set up a network to link investigators reviewing noose incidents, has indicted a Louisiana teen on hate crime charges for dangling a noose from his pickup and driving past demonstrators after a protest in Jena, La., in September.

'Nooses are more prevalent,' says EEOC chair Naomi Earp. 'The noose has replaced the N-word … as the choice if you want to threaten or intimidate someone.'

NPR: The Woolworth Sit-In That Launched a Movement

NPR: The Woolworth Sit-In That Launched a Movement: On Feb. 1, 1960, four students from all-black North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College walked into a Woolworth five-and-dime with the intention of ordering lunch.

But the manager of the Greensboro Woolworth had intentions of his own — to maintain the lunch counter's strict whites-only policy.

Franklin McCain was one of the four young men who shoved history forward by refusing to budge.

McCain remembers the anxiety he felt when he went to the store that Monday afternoon, the plan he and his friends had devised to launch their protest and how he felt when he sat down on that stool.

'Fifteen seconds after … I had the most wonderful feeling. I had a feeling of liberation, restored manhood. I had a natural high. And I truly felt almost invincible. Mind you, [I was] just sitting on a dumb stool and not having asked for service yet,' McCain says.