My encounter with anti-Latino racism - CNN.com

My encounter with anti-Latino racism - CNN.com: "Go home!" she yelled at me. "Why don't you go back home to Mexico before you ruin this country like you ruined your own!"

I was standing in a crowd at the Music Midtown festival in Atlanta, where I live. A few minutes earlier I'd met a group of five people who'd been standing in front of me -- here from Mexico City -- and I had begun speaking Spanish with them.

Atlanta has a growing Latino community, and I am actively involved. Whenever I get the chance to speak to someone in Spanish here, I introduce myself. My new acquaintances and I were talking about what a great time we were having and how remarkable the city of Atlanta was for bringing back the festival to Piedmont Park.

And that's when I heard the yelling woman next to me. As if "go home" wasn't clear enough, the woman -- a 20-something Caucasian -- repeated the words in Spanish.

"Vete!"

I froze. I didn't quite know what to say, and I didn't want to believe she was talking to me or the group of people I had just met.

Hispanic Children in Poverty Exceed Whites, Study Finds - NYTimes.com

Hispanic Children in Poverty Exceed Whites, Study Finds - NYTimes.com: Hispanic children living in poverty in the United States outnumber poor white children for the first time, a demographic shift that was hastened by the recession, according to a report released Wednesday by the Pew Hispanic Center.

The number of Hispanic children in poverty jumped by 36 percent from 2007 to 2010, to a total of 6.1 million, compared with 5 million non-Hispanic white children who are poor, said the report, which analyzed recent data from the Census Bureau.

The recession drove the rise, the report found. But demographics also contributed. The Hispanic population has grown by more than 40 percent over the past decade.

Hispanics make up 16 percent of the overall American population, but they are a quarter of the country’s children.

More people claim black-white heritage – USATODAY.com

More people claim black-white heritage – USATODAY.com: The number of people who say they are black and white has more than doubled in the past decade, a trend demographers say reflects a growing acceptance of a diverse society.

Black people who reported more than one race grew at a much faster rate from 2000 to 2010 than those who listed themselves as black-only.

The black-white multiracial population showed the highest increase of any multirace combination, jumping more than 133% to 1.8 million from 2000 to 2010, the Census Bureau reported Thursday. People who say they are black and white make up 59% of the USA's 3.1million multiracial blacks, up from 45% in 2000. The nation's black population stands at 42 million.

UC-Berkeley Republicans Hold ‘Diversity Bake Sale’

UC-Berkeley Republicans Hold ‘Diversity Bake Sale’: BERKELEY, Calif. - A satirical bake sale at the University of California-Berkeley that was designed to protest affirmative action drew several dozen sweet-toothed supporters along with hundreds of critics on Tuesday.

The Berkeley College Republicans held the “Increase Diversity Bake Sale” to speak out against legislation that would allow California public universities to consider race and other factors in student admissions.

The sale set different prices for cookies and cakes based on the buyer's race, gender and ethnicity, ranging from $2 for White people to 25 cents for Native Americans. Women were offered a 25-cent discount.

Critics called the bake sale event racist.

Commentary: The Research-Practice Gap – Diversity Predicts Performance

Commentary: The Research-Practice Gap – Diversity Predicts Performance: Stories about generation differences are ubiquitous in the diversity domain, with executives and managers being warned that they must change their organizational cultures, policies and practices if they hope to attract and retain younger workers. In today’s column, we discuss two recent studies that address these questions and offer some surprising answers.

Kali Trzesniewski (University of Western Ontario) and her colleague Brent Donnellan (Michigan State University) analyzed data obtained from high school seniors annually from 1976 through 2006. Participants were randomly sampled; therefore, we can assume that the sample (almost half a million students) is representative of American high school seniors.

Workshop Showcases Latino Student Success Programs

Workshop Showcases Latino Student Success Programs: WASHINGTON, D.C. - Not long after Dr. Elsa Nunez assumed her role as president of Eastern Connecticut State University in 2006, she saw a need to enroll more Latino students who were unlikely to go to college but still had the potential to succeed.

Her quest led to the creation of the school’s Dual Enrollment program, whereby guidance counselors from nearby Hartford High School helped identify the students that Nunez had in mind.

Although their fellow students at Eastern didn’t know, the students were then enrolled in developmental courses at Quinebaug Valley Community College and took at least one course at Eastern, with the hopes that eventually they would enroll at Eastern on a full-time basis.

Complete College America Report Examines Low Higher Ed Graduation Rates

Complete College America Report Examines Low Higher Ed Graduation Rates: A new, comprehensive report on college graduation rates released Tuesday revealed why college completion rates, including analyses of Black, Hispanic, Pell Grant and part-time students, are low among American students.

One of the key findings in “Time is the Enemy: The Surprising Truth About Why Today’s College Students Aren’t Graduating … AND WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE” is that “students who are poor, older or of color struggle the most to graduate,” according to Complete College America, the nonprofit that produced the report.

“I think college is not structured in a way to have these students be successful,” said Stan Jones, president of Complete College America and a former Indiana education commissioner.

Latino College Student Success Programs Honored

Latino College Student Success Programs Honored: ...Those visits proved critical in encouraging Torres to enroll in STEP 2—a program at Texas Tech’s College of Education that helps students at South Plains College make the transition from the two-year institution to its four-year college.

The STEP 2 program (STEP is an acronym for Successful Transition to Educator Preparation) is one of three programs honored Tuesday by Excelencia in Education for their success in helping Latino students get to and through college. The ceremony, which was held at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, took place during Excelencia’s sixth annual “Celebracion de Excelencia.” Diverse was a co-sponsor of the event, which included attendance by Dr. Martha Kanter, the undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Education, and Jon Whitmore, the CEO of ACT.

Leaders Sound Alarm for High School Class of 2012

Leaders Sound Alarm for High School Class of 2012: If today’s high school seniors aren’t better positioned to pursue a college degree, they won’t be able to fully enjoy the gains made during the Civil Rights Movement.

That was one of the key points made Friday at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s 41s Annual Legislative Conference during a panel discussion titled “The Class of 2012.”

Hosted by freshman U.S. Representative Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., and moderated by the Rev. Al Sharpton, the panelists hit on a variety of issues, from what they described as the inordinate emphasis placed on college entrance exams and standardized tests to the antiquated agrarian school calendar.

In Arizona, Complaints That an Accent Can Hinder a Teacher’s Career - NYTimes.com

In Arizona, Complaints That an Accent Can Hinder a Teacher’s Career - NYTimes.com: Ms. Aguayo is a veteran teacher in the Creighton Elementary School District in central Phoenix as well an immigrant from northern Mexico who learned English as an adult and taught it as a second language. Confronted about her accent by her school principal several years ago, Ms. Aguayo took a college acting class, saw a speech pathologist and consulted with an accent reduction specialist, none of which transformed her speech.

As Ms. Aguayo has struggled, though, something else has changed. Arizona, after almost a decade of sending monitors to classrooms across the state to check on teachers’ articulation, recently made a sharp about-face on the issue. A federal investigation of possible civil rights violations prompted the state to call off its accent police.

“To my knowledge, we have not seen policies like this in other states,” Russlynn H. Ali, the assistant federal secretary of education for civil rights, said in an interview. She called it “good news” that Arizona had altered its policy.

Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness? — By Toure — Book Review - NYTimes.com

Who’s Afraid of Post-Blackness? — By Toure — Book Review - NYTimes.com: Much has been written on the benefits that accrued to the generation of African-Americans reaping the rewards of the civil rights revolution. But we have heard surprisingly little from those in the post-civil-rights age about what these benefits have meant to them, and especially how they view themselves as black people in an America now led by a black president. In his new book, Toure’s aim is to provide an account of this “post-black” condition, one that emerged only in the 1980s but by the ’90s had become the “new black.”

Post-blackness entails a different perspective from earlier generations’, one that takes for granted what they fought for: equal rights, integration, middle-class status, affirmative action and political power. While rooted in blackness, it is not restricted by it, as Michael Eric Dyson says in the book’s foreword; it is an enormously complex and malleable state, Touré says, “a completely liquid shape-shifter that can take any form.”

Controversy erupts over Campus Republicans bake sale plans - CNN.com

Controversy erupts over Campus Republicans bake sale plans - CNN.com: Campus Republicans at the University of California Berkeley have cooked up a storm of controversy with their plans for a bake sale.

But it's not your everyday collegiate fundraiser they've got in mind. They've developed a sliding scale where the price of the cookie or brownie depends on your gender and the color of your skin.

During the sale, scheduled for Tuesday, baked goods will be sold to white men for $2.00, Asian men for $1.50, Latino men for $1.00, black men for $0.75 and Native American men for $0.25. All women will get $0.25 off those prices.

"The pricing structure is there to bring attention, to cause people to get a little upset," Campus Republican President Shawn Lewis, who planned the event, told CNN-affiliate KGO. "But it's really there to cause people to think more critically about what this kind of policy would do in university admissions."

Lewis says it's a way to make a statement about pending legislation that would let the California universities consider race or national origin during the admission process.

But the young Republicans have been on the receiving end of a fierce backlash. Reaction has been so negative they've been forced to cancel their customary lunchtime tabling duties, according to KGO.

Girl Effect: Helping Poor Girls Makes Economic Sense | The Rundown News Blog | PBS NewsHour | PBS

Girl Effect: Helping Poor Girls Makes Economic Sense | The Rundown News Blog | PBS NewsHour | PBS: Each teenage mother in India can lose up to $100,000 in potential income over her lifetime. Multiply that by the number of teenage mothers in India and you have a total of $383 billion, which happens to equal the total amount of money spent on global development in 2009.

There are some very sobering stories behind these numbers, given that there are more than 600 million girls in developing countries who are not able to fully function in society. Girl Effect is an initiative of the Nike Foundation, that focuses on intercepting girls in poverty at a crucial inflection and development point -- age 12 -- and providing them with the resources to break the cycle of poverty and lift the standards of living of their entire families.

Nike Foundation President Maria Eitel stopped by the PBS NewsHour studios for a chat on the project.

African-American Trailblazers Visit Schools to Energize, Inspire Students | The Rundown News Blog | PBS NewsHour | PBS

African-American Trailblazers Visit Schools to Energize, Inspire Students | The Rundown News Blog | PBS NewsHour | PBS: The HistoryMakers organization has sent 450 African-American trailblazers and leaders into high schools around the country this week to encourage students to get their diplomas and aim for college.

One such event took place on Friday at Dunbar Senior High School in Washington, D.C.

Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, former Ambassador Andrew Young, poet Nikki Giovanni, signer Musiq Soulchild and White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett all participated in the project, which is part of a larger African- American video oral history archive.

Since its incarnation in 1999, The HistoryMakers has gathered 2,000 personal stories. At 113 years of age, Louisiana Hines of Detroit is the oldest person interviewed by the project, while the youngest is 33-year-old ballerina Ayisha McMillan, from North Carolina.

"Our HistoryMakers embody our commitment to education and are a wonderful example of true service--service that can literally change the course of the lives of thousands of young people," said The HistoryMakers Founder and Executive Director Julieanna Richardson. This year, with a theme of "commit," the program visited 250 schools in 115 cities in 35 states.

"This is just the beginning, as we are making our digital collection of more than 8,000 hours of video testimony available, free of charge, to all participating schools," Richardson added.

Dennisha Frazier, a 17-year-old senior at Dunbar, remarked after the presentation: "They let me know that I can do anything I want. Just believe in yourself, set your goals, try to accomplish them and you can do anything you want in life."

Frazier aspires to be a journalist and hopes to attend college in Virginia, New York or California.

Black Jesus, Oakhurst Presbyterian, Turns 90

Black Jesus, Oakhurst Presbyterian, Turns 90: Oakhurst Presbyterian, perhaps the most studied church in Georgia, celebrates its 90th birthday this weekend.

Numerous national publications -– including Time magazine, The New York Times and The Christian Science Monitor –- have reported on the church’s dedication to racial diversity. Graduate and theological students have written scholarly papers about Oakhurst Presbyterian and the husband-wife team that leads it, Nibs Stroupe and Caroline Leach.

Martin Luther King Estate Sues TV Anchor To Get Documents

Martin Luther King Estate Sues TV Anchor To Get Documents: The estate of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. has filed a federal lawsuit against a television news anchor in Mississippi claiming that he has documents taken from the slain civil rights leader by a former employee, the anchor's mother.

The lawsuit, which seeks possession of the papers, was filed Wednesday against Howard Nelson Ballou in U.S. District Court in Jackson. It says Ballou's mother worked for King as a secretary from 1955 to 1960 and kept documents during the time King led the Montgomery Improvement Association and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

King's estate is a Georgia corporation and is operated as a private company by his children. They've fought others for control of the King brand, including suing media companies that used his "I Have a Dream" speech.

Wayne Simmonds Taunted With Banana By Fan At Flyers-Red Wings Preseason Game

Wayne Simmonds Taunted With Banana By Fan At Flyers-Red Wings Preseason Game: Just before Philadelphia's Wayne Simmonds, one of the few African-American players in the NHL, scored on a shootout attempt in Thursday's preseason game against the Detroit Red Wings at the Labatt Centre in Ontario, a fan taunted him by throwing a banana peel that landed directly in his path to the net.

"I caught it from the side of my eye. It was a banana. Hopefully, that wasn't directed towards me being black," he said after the Flyers lost 4-3. "Because if it was, that's just somebody being ignorant."

Simmonds also acknowledged to the Associated Press that the banana rattled him, but "you learn to deal with it."

"When you're a black man playing in a predominantly white man's sport, you've got to come to expect things like that," he said.

Aboriginal genome rewrites history of human migration - Telegraph

Aboriginal genome rewrites history of human migration - Telegraph: Genetic information extracted from the lock of hair, which was donated by a young Aboriginal man to a British anthropologist in the 1920s, suggests that instead of leaving Africa in one single migratory movement, humans departed in two separate waves.

An international team of scientists used DNA within the hair to sequence the Aboriginal genome for the first time.

Their results revealed that the man was directly descended from a migration out of Africa into Asia that took place about 70,000 years ago.

The researchers believe this proves that Aborigines were the first group to separate from other modern humans.

Their remarkable findings, published in the journal Science, suggest that modern Aborigines moved out of Africa 24,000 years earlier than the humans who went on to form the populations of Asia and Europe, challenging current theories of a single phase of dispersal from Africa.

Column: In helping minorities, Bloomberg gets it – USATODAY.com

Column: In helping minorities, Bloomberg gets it – USATODAY.com: ...In August, Bloomberg announced his Young Men's Initiative, which targets 315,000 black and Latino men disproportionately hurt by incarceration and unemployment. Of the $127 million in public and private funding for the three-year program, $30 million will come from Bloomberg's own pocket. But instead of just throwing money at these issues, the mayor is advocating innovative policies to break down barriers impeding these young men.

The program, which will involve multiple city agencies, aims at four areas — education and the achievement gap; employment opportunities; reforming the juvenile and criminal justice systems; and providing easier access to city health care services.

Nationally, the statistics on black and Latino young men have been nothing short of alarming:

•In 2008, of high school graduates younger than 25, 52% of Hispanic males and 44% of black males were either incarcerated or unemployed.

•In the same group, 34% of black males and 47% of Latino males were not enrolled in college or working.

•In the 25- to 34-year-old demographic, only 28% of black men and 16% of Latino men had earned a college degree, compared with 70% of Asian men and 44% white men.

Congressional Black Caucus Forum Highlights Achievement Gap Strategies

Congressional Black Caucus Forum Highlights Achievement Gap Strategies: In order to eliminate the oft-cited “achievement gap” between Black and White students, the federal government should invest more heavily in HBCU teacher preparation programs instead of programs, such as Teach for America that only require short-term commitments to teach, according to Dr. Leslie Fenwick, dean of the Howard University School of Education.

That was one of most critical yet widely applauded recommendations made Thursday at one of several education workshops at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s 2011 Annual Legislative Conference, which continues through Saturday.

The session, “Closing the Achievement Gap,” took place Thursday and featured a panel that included Fenwick.

When asked how HBCUs can be engaged to reduce the achievement gap, Fenwick stated that larger investments should be made in HBCUs because of their proven track record of producing more than their share of the nation’s Black teachers.

Anthony Morgan, McGill Student, Files Complaint About Blackface

Anthony Morgan, McGill Student, Files Complaint About Blackface: A university student who filmed white business students in blackface and chanting in mock Jamaican accents said Tuesday he is filing a complaint with the Quebec Human Rights Commission about the incident.

Anthony Morgan, a McGill University student of Jamaican decent, filmed HEC Montreal business school students dressed in the colors of the Jamaican flag, many with their faces, arms, hands and legs painted black. He said some of the students were also chanting, "Smoke more weed."

The business school said the students were participating in a back-to-school "stunt" organized by a student sports committee. They claimed to be portraying Jamaican sprinter and three-time Olympic gold medalist Usain Bolt.

Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute program

MCBRE: The Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute program is an ongoing effort to tap student emerging leaders to become active proponents and advocates on public policy issues of interest to them.

Fifty emerging student leaders are selected each year to participate in the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute's annual Public Policy Conference in Washington DC.

The students attend plenaries and issue forums covering numerous topics of importance to the Hispanic community, and spend a day in the 'Ready to Lead' program, which focuses on issues of importance to Latino youth, and how to mobilize Latino youth to become and remain engaged in crafting solutions to public policy challenges.

Proven Leader Takes the Helm at Emerson College

Proven Leader Takes the Helm at Emerson College: Faced with a public controversy over its limited faculty diversity, Emerson College has responded with a spate of hirings and promotions of minorities, capped by the installation in July of its first African-American president, Dr. M. Lee Pelton.

Though many other higher education institutions have struggled to effect real change in response to institutional bias allegations, Emerson, a private liberal arts college in Boston, broke from that pattern, first by naming an expert panel to conduct an external review and make a public report on its findings.

Miss. Teen Indicted For Capital Murder, Hate Crime

Miss. Teen Indicted For Capital Murder, Hate Crime: A white Mississippi teenager has been indicted for capital murder and a hate crime on charges he intentionally ran over a middle-age black man with a pickup truck.

Deryl Dedmon, 19, was indicted Monday in the June 26 death of James Craig Anderson, a 49-year-old car plant worker from Jackson.

Capital murder in Mississippi is defined as murder committed along with another felony. It carries the sentences of death or life in prison without parole. The underlying offense in this case is robbery. Dedmon also was charged under Mississippi's hate crime law, which provides for enhanced sentences. This is the first announced indictment in the case.

Lawrence Brewer Executed: White Supremacist Executed For Texas Dragging Murder

Lawrence Brewer Executed: White Supremacist Executed For Texas Dragging Murder: HUNTSVILLE, Texas — White supremacist gang member Lawrence Russell Brewer was executed Wednesday evening for the infamous dragging death slaying of James Byrd Jr., a black man from East Texas.

Byrd, 49, was chained to the back of a pickup truck and pulled whip-like to his death along a bumpy asphalt road in one of the most grisly hate crime murders in recent Texas history.

Brewer, 44, was asked if he had any final words, to which he replied: "No. I have no final statement."

Bass Pro Sued By Feds For Discriminating Against Non-White Job Seekers

Bass Pro Sued By Feds For Discriminating Against Non-White Job Seekers: Bass Pro Shops, one of the leading retailers of outdoor gear, is being sued by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission for allegedly discriminating against African American and Hispanic applicants in several of its stores, according to a suit filed Tuesday in Texas federal court.

Describing the lawsuit as both "major" and "nationwide," the EEOC alleges that the retailer discriminated against minority applicants, retaliated against employees who spoke out about what they considered unfair hiring practices, and destroyed internal records related to hiring. Certain non-white applicants, the agency claims, were not given jobs because they did not fit the Bass Pro brand.

"Bass Pro has been discriminating in its hiring since at least November 2005," the EEOC said in a release.

Risks Seen for Children of Illegal Immigrants - NYTimes.com

Risks Seen for Children of Illegal Immigrants - NYTimes.com: Children whose parents are illegal immigrants or who lack legal status themselves face “uniformly negative” effects on their social development from early childhood until they become adults, according to a study by four researchers published Wednesday in the Harvard Educational Review.

The study concluded that more than five million children in the United States are “at risk of lower educational performance, economic stagnation, blocked mobility and ambiguous belonging” because they are growing up in immigrant families affected by illegal status.

The study is the first to pull together field research by social scientists nationwide to track the effects of a family’s illegal immigration status on children from birth until they graduate from college and start to navigate the job market. It covers immigrants from a variety of origins, including Latinos and Asians.

Historically Black Colleges Challenged To Boost Their Competitiveness

Historically Black Colleges Challenged To Boost Their Competitiveness: As Congress works to trim $1.2 trillion from the federal deficit over the next decade, HBCUs must step up efforts to share their stories of success, compete with other universities, and be prepared to present hardcore data on their progress.

Those were just a few of the suggestions made during an HBCU Week 2011 breakout session titled “Title III: Are Educational Discretionary Programs at Risk?”

“We are truly in a budget battleground,” said Edith L. Bartley, director of governmental affairs at the Fairfax, Va.-based United Negro College Fund Inc. (UNCF).

The girl effect – Global Public Square - CNN.com Blogs

The girl effect – Global Public Square - CNN.com Blogs: Investing in a girl stops poverty before it starts. That's the simple premise of the powerful force we call "The Girl Effect." This week, The Girl Effect is on the global stage at the Clinton Global Initiative and the World Bank Annual Meeting. Take it from World Bank President Robert Zoellick or former U.S. President Bill Clinton: Investing in girls is smart economics.

Girls are the invisible infrastructure of poverty. While her brothers go to school, ask 13-24 year girls in the developing world why they're not in education and 33 percent say it's because of household chores. Pregnancy is the leading cause of death among girls aged 15 to 19. There are slated to be 100 million child brides by 2020. Seventy-five percent of 15-24 year olds in sub-Saharan Africa living with HIV are girls.

When we get to girls in early adolescence - before they are married, pregnant, and HIV-positive - we invest in a solution for poverty, not a cure for its symptoms.

What Everyone Can Do To Diversify the Teaching Force

What Everyone Can Do To Diversify the Teaching Force: Among all the talks, efforts and research directed at increasing the numbers of Black and Brown teachers in the United States, it has long struck me as odd that the first and most fundamental step to doing so is simultaneously the most overlooked step.

Here’s a hint: “You may open your test booklets … now.” In most states, one must pass an initial battery of “basic skills” teacher licensure tests before one can be admitted into a teacher education program. The Praxis Series, created by the Educational Testing Service, is the most widely used test for this purpose. This is the initial entry point to the profession, the first of many important gatekeepers that young adults will experience on their ways to becoming professionals.

Math Prize for Girls Thrives at MIT

Math Prize for Girls Thrives at MIT: Math competitions are nothing new. They’ve taken place for years, but participants have been predominantly boys.

Two years ago Advantage Testing Foundation, the public service arm of Advantage Testing, a private tutorial service dedicated to the highest academic excellence, launched Math Prize for Girls. The competition is designed to inspire girls, create a network of girls with a passion for math and encourage those girls to become mentors for others — particularly girls in underserved communities.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities Week Opens in Washington

Historically Black Colleges and Universities Week Opens in Washington: The role that HBCUs will be expected to play in the Obama administration’s “2020 Goal” is on the map — a new Google map, to be precise.

As the 2011 HBCU Week kicked off Monday, Dr. John S. Wilson, Jr., executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities, introduced one of the latest Internet-based tools from Google, one of the conference’s sponsors.

Similar to how other Google Maps features work, this one not only enables users to see precisely where all HBCUs are, but how many degrees each institution produces each year, as well as how many more degrees each institution will need to produce each year in order to help reach the Obama administration’s goal of restoring the United States to its former spot as the nation with the highest percentage of college degree-holders in the world.

Black-white marriages on the rise – USATODAY.com

Black-white marriages on the rise – USATODAY.com: Black-white marriages are on the rise, a sign that those racial barriers are slowly eroding, but they still lag far behind the rate of mixed-race marriages between whites and other minorities.

"It does suggest that the social distance between the two groups has narrowed," says Zhenchao Qian, a sociology professor at Ohio State University and lead author of a new study on interracial marriages. "The racial boundary is blurred, but it is still there."

The study also found that the share of Hispanic newlyweds who married non-Hispanic whites grew slightly since 1980, but at a slower rate this decade than in previous years.

DOJ: Rick Perry's Texas Congressional Redistricting Map Violates Voting Rights Act | TPMMuckraker

DOJ: Rick Perry's Texas Congressional Redistricting Map Violates Voting Rights Act | TPMMuckraker: The Justice Department said Monday that Texas' state House and congressional redistricting plans didn't comply with Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA), indicating they thought the maps approved by Gov. Rick Perry (R) gave too little voting power to the growing Latino population in the state.

Officials with DOJ's Civil Rights Division said the proposed redistricting plan for the State Board of Education (SBOE) and the state Senate complied with the Voting Rights Act, but indicated they had concerns with the state House plan and the plan for congressional redistricting.

University of Tennessee Martin's First Black Student Remembers Challenges

University of Tennessee Martin's First Black Student Remembers Challenges: Jessie Pryor remembers the isolation of being the first Black student to enroll at the University of Tennessee Martin.

In a ceremony on Thursday marking 50 years of integration, Pryor recalled her first day of class in 1961, when she was just 16 years old.

“It wasn't welcoming,” Pryor said. “I sat in the second row to the front and when the other students walked in, they didn't sit. They stood against the wall around the perimeter. When the professor walked in, he said ‘I've been hired to teach, and I don't care if I teach one student or 100 students.’ ”

After that, the other students sat down, but they left the desks around Pryor empty, according to The Jackson Sun.

John Jay College of Criminal Justice Names Its First Woman as Executive Director

John Jay College of Criminal Justice Names Its First Woman as Executive Director: On the first day of this fall’s English 101 class at Otisville Correctional Facility, as visiting college administrator Ann Jacobs began asking 12 prisoners about their dreams and expectations, their level of engagement wholly, suddenly shifted.

“There’s something hard about a prison door locking behind you — the consciousness you have about not breaking the rules — that creates an intensity,” Jacobs said. “Then, you’re in a classroom that looks kind of like every other classroom, but it’s not co-ed, and the students are multi-aged, and half of them are looking at me real intently and the other half are doing the things that people do when they choose to sit at the back of the room. Not talking, not asking a lot.”

Cherokee Nation, Federal Government Fight Over Rights Of Freed Slave Descendants

Cherokee Nation, Federal Government Fight Over Rights Of Freed Slave Descendants: The Cherokee Nation's election commission voted Wednesday to allow descendants of slaves once owned by tribal members to cast ballots for principal chief, but they'll only count in the event of a court order.

Federal officials objected to a ruling last month by the tribe's highest court that found only people of direct Cherokee ancestry could be members of the tribe and vote in the upcoming election, essentially denying ballots to some 2,800 freedmen descendants.

While the election commission's vote doesn't directly overturn the ruling by the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court, it does allow for freedmen to cast provisional ballots in an effort to make the election results stand, regardless of how the courts ultimately rule.

Unraveling the legal threads entangling race in America / UCLA Today

Unraveling the legal threads entangling race in America / UCLA Today: In law schools and ethnic studies centers across the nation, Renee Rodgers is a familiar name. She’s the one-time African American employee of American Airlines whose hair had a classic all-American look — except it fell to her shoulders in tight braids instead of single strands.

Rodgers has become a national symbol of gender- and race-based employment discrimination ever since a federal district court upheld the right of American Airlines in 1981 to prohibit her from wearing her hair in braids to conform to the company’s grooming standards for employees. In one of its many sweeping opinions, the court claimed that Rodgers’ fashionable hairdo was not the product of natural hair growth but an artifice unrelated to her cultural heritage.

Arkansas Desegregation Plans Go Back To Courts : NPR

Arkansas Desegregation Plans Go Back To Courts : NPR: More than a half-century after federal troops escorted nine black students into an all-white school, efforts to desegregate the classrooms of the southern city of Little Rock, Ark., are at another turning point.

The state wants to end its long-running payments for desegregation programs, which date back to the era when schools were segregated by law in the south. But three school districts that receive the money say they need it to continue key programs. And a federal judge has accused the schools of delaying desegregation so they can keep receiving an annual infusion of $70 million.

A federal appeals court will hear arguments Monday from both sides. The judges are expected to decide eventually whether Arkansas still has to make the payments and whether two of the districts should remain under court supervision.

Unknown No Longer - Virginia Historical Society

Unknown No Longer - Virginia Historical Society: This database is the latest step by the Virginia Historical Society to increase access to its varied collections relating to Virginians of African descent. Since its founding in 1831, the VHS has collected unpublished manuscripts, a collection that now numbers more than 8 million processed items.

Within these documents are numerous accounts that collectively help tell the stories of African Americans who have lived in the state over the centuries. Our first effort to improve access to these stories came in 1995 with publication of our Guide to African American Manuscripts. A second edition appeared in 2002, and the online version is continually updated as new sources enter our catalog (http://www.vahistorical.org/aamcvhs/guide_intro.htm).

The next step we envisioned would be to create a database of the names of all the enslaved Virginians that appear in our unpublished documents. Thanks to a generous grant from Dominion Resources and the Dominion Foundation in January 2011, we launched the project that has resulted in this online resource.

Slave Name Database Unveiled - Local News - Washington, DC - Washington D.C. - msnbc.com

Slave Name Database Unveiled - Local News - Washington, DC - Washington D.C. - msnbc.com: The Virginia Historical Society has launched a database of slave names drawn from its vast collection of information.

The site, Unknown No Longer, has 1,500 names and uses searchable keywords such as name, gender, location, occupation and plantation. The database also includes more than 250 digital images of original source documents. It includes those slaves had been taken out of Virginia by their owners.

"This database is the latest step by the Virginia Historical Society to increase access to its varied collections relating to Virginians of African descent," the website says. "Since its founding in 1831, the [Society] has collected unpublished manuscripts, a collection that now numbers more than eight million processed items."

It's free to use the database, which is funded with a $100,000 grant from Dominion Resources and The Dominion Foundation.

Note To Arizona State — Students Should Not Wear Black Face | News One

Note To Arizona State — Students Should Not Wear Black Face | News One: Arizona, a state that is regularly accused of having a serious issue with people of color, received another stain to its reputation. Last week, four white female students at Arizona State University showed up to a football game wearing Black face. The school asked students to wear all-Black attire to celebrate the new uniforms in their game against the Missouri Tigers. This is when a few students took it too far.

The game was televised on ESPN, so the entire world saw the action go down both on and off the field. Thousands of people have expressed their anger at the students for their insensitivity. But while many were outraged, some found no reason to be offended.

One has to laugh at the irony that a school with students showing up to a game in Black face also happens to be highly dependent upon African Americans to run and jump, thus bringing millions to the university in revenue each year. The idea of Black men working up a sweat for white folks in the stands wearing Black face is beyond disturbing.

We also can’t forget that Arizona received national attention for being the only state that would not support the Martin Luther King holiday; and also for some of the most Draconian immigration laws in the country.

Texas Hispanics Going Hungry At An Alarming Rate

Texas Hispanics Going Hungry At An Alarming Rate: Every Wednesday, Juana Cisneros, a native of Nombre de Dios in Durango, Mexico, pays a visit to God’s Food Pantry in Plano, a Dallas suburb.

“I lost my job a month ago and had to come for help because I have two kids,” she says in Spanish while waiting for her weekly provision of food.

Cisneros is part of a growing number of Texans in need of food assistance. About 9 million households in Texas are at risk of going hungry, according to a recent report by the Department of Agriculture, putting Texas's prevalence of food insecurity higher than every state besides Mississippi.

The situation is especially dire among Latinos and those who live closer to the Mexican border. The Texas Food Bank Network (TFBN), a coalition of 19 food banks serving more than 3 million families, reported that 44 percent of its food applicants in 2010 were Hispanic.

Latino Childhood Obesity: Seeking Solutions At Home And At School

Latino Childhood Obesity: Seeking Solutions At Home And At School: September is National Childhood Obesity Awareness Month, and organizations such as the National Council of La Raza, the Leadership for Healthy Communities and the Alliance for a Healthier Generation are taking a closer look at the challenges Latino children in particular face.

According to the National Council of La Raza, there are more than 16 million Latino children under the age of 18 living in the United States. The number of Latino children has increased by 30 percent since 2000 and doubled since 1990, making them one of the fastest growing segments of the U.S. population. And as of May 2010, 38.2 percent of Hispanic children ages 2 to 19 were overweight or obese, compared with 31.7 percent of all children, according to the Leadership for Healthy Communities.

Vistas: Hispanic Cultural Traits To Preserve For Future Generations

Vistas: Hispanic Cultural Traits To Preserve For Future Generations: In this week's Vistas, we join in the celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month by asking prominent Latino thinkers and doers for their perspective on a common theme:

As U.S Hispanics, we hold firmly to a sense of common roots with all Latinos across the world, even as we celebrate the diversity of, and breadth across, our shared heritage.

In recognition of Hispanic Heritage Month 2011, we ask:

Which is the one Latino cultural trait you most want to see preserved and handed down to future generations?

Recognizing that Latinos are not a homogeneous group, and yet share a broad range of experiences and legacies, Vistas simply aims to help illustrate different points of view, which in aggregate can present a truer reflection of what the larger community feels and thinks.

Suit Over Lead Dust Names Kennedy Krieger Institute - NYTimes.com

Suit Over Lead Dust Names Kennedy Krieger Institute - NYTimes.com: A class-action lawsuit was filed Thursday against a prominent Baltimore medical institute, accusing it of knowingly exposing black children as young as a year old to lead poisoning in the 1990s as part of a study exploring the hazards of lead paint.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs say that more than 100 children were endangered by high levels of lead dust in their homes despite assurances from the Kennedy Krieger Institute that the houses were “lead safe.”

The institute, a research and patient care facility for children that is affiliated with Johns Hopkins University, periodically tested the children’s blood to determine lead levels.

Civil Rights leaders respond to Jackie Kennedy - The Root DC Live - The Washington Post

Civil Rights leaders respond to Jackie Kennedy - The Root DC Live - The Washington Post: Civil Rights leaders and associates of the Rev. Martin Luther King had mixed reactions to the disparaging comments that former first lady Jacqueline Kennedy made about King.

Kennedy’s comments are published in a new book entitled “Jacqueline Kennedy; Historic Conversations on Life with John F. Kennedy.”

The book is based on interviews she had with former Kennedy aide Arthur M. Schesinger Jr. with specific instructions that they were not going to be made public until after her death.

She called King a “phony” after she heard that there were FBI tapes of King with women in his hotel. Kennedy also criticized King for mocking Cardinal Richard Cushing, who celebrated mass during her husband’s funeral at St. Mathews Cathedral.

The Limbaugh, Michael Moore, Bill Maher Convergence on Obama and Race | Mother Jones

The Limbaugh, Michael Moore, Bill Maher Convergence on Obama and Race | Mother Jones: On Wednesday, I noted that Rush Limbaugh's latest stereotypical race parody featured President Barack Obama as blaxploitation detective John Shaft, even though just about the only two things they have in common is that they're both black.

Ta-Nehisi Coates observes that Michael Moore and Bill Maher, in expressing their disappointment with Obama, embrace the same basic idea. Unable to limit their criticisms to Obama's politics, on The View, (in a clip flagged by Angry Black Lady) Moore repeated Maher's statement that "I went into the polls voting for the black guy, and what I got was the white guy." Coates writes:

I know Michael Moore and Bill Maher think this is a great line...But it really isn't. In fact, it's racist, and Michael Moore would do well to stop repeating it. It really is no better than the Kenyan anti-colonial bit, and in fact is good deal worse. I said this yesterday on twitter, but it would be as if my Jewish accountant messed up my taxes and I said, "Dude, you're Jewish, what the hell?!?!"

Kids From Bilingual Households More Flexible Thinkers, Research Shows

Kids From Bilingual Households More Flexible Thinkers, Research Shows: This piece comes to us courtesy of Education Nation's The Learning Curve blog. Patricia Kuhl, professor of early childhood learning and a co-director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington, writes.

Babies are whizzes at taking in new information, especially when it comes to languages. At the University of Washington's Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences, we're studying how infants' brain activity in response to language relates to their later speaking ability.

The research goes beyond learning languages though. We're interested in what makes young brains so capable of absorbing new information, which could reveal how to maintain learning throughout life.

Duane Buck Case: U.S. Supreme Court Stays Execution Of Texas Inmate

Duane Buck Case: U.S. Supreme Court Stays Execution Of Texas Inmate:
HUNTSVILLE, Texas — The U.S. Supreme Court halted the execution Thursday of a black man convicted of a double murder in Texas 16 years ago after his lawyers contended his sentence was unfair because of a question asked about race during his trial.

Duane Buck, 48, was spared from lethal injection when the justices, without extensive comment, said they would review an appeal in his case. Two appeals, both related to a psychologist's testimony that black people were more likely to commit violence, were before the court. One was granted; the other was denied.

Buck was sentenced to death for the fatal shootings of his ex-girlfriend and a man in her apartment in July 1995. Buck's guilt is not being questioned, but his lawyers say the jury was unfairly influenced and that he should receive a new sentencing hearing.

Feeling Like A Tourist: Being Black In New England : NPR

Feeling Like A Tourist: Being Black In New England : NPR: I am a New Englander, born and bred, with the accent to prove it. Originally from Massachusetts, I now live in northern New Hampshire, in an area popular with vacationers. However, as a black woman in an overwhelmingly white state, there are times when I feel like a tourist.

Many residents here have never known a person of color. Some want to; others do not. Problem is, when I leave my own small town, it's impossible to know which type I will encounter.

For example, I am an avid reader who supports independent bookstores when traveling. Bookshop employees are characteristically welcoming. Maybe voracious reading and open-mindedness go hand in hand.

Exposing Myths About African-American Women

Exposing Myths About African-American Women: Publicists often advise authors to be ready at a moment’s notice to give the “elevator speech” about their books to anybody and everybody who will listen.

Dr. Melissa V. Harris-Perry, the Tulane University professor, MSNBC commentator and pundit, is no stranger to media interviews. When she talked to Diverse just weeks before the book was due out, she was still working on that sound bite about her latest book: Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in America (Yale University Press, September 20, 2011, ISBN-10: 0300165412 ISBN-13: 978-0300165418, pp. 392).

Conservative Group Says UW-Madison Admissions Favor Minorities

Conservative Group Says UW-Madison Admissions Favor Minorities: MADISON, Wis. – Black and Hispanic applicants were more likely to be accepted to the University of Wisconsin-Madison even though they had lower average test scores than White and Asian applicants, according to an analysis by a conservative group.

The school's admissions data from 2007 to 2008 were analyzed by the Center for Equal Opportunity, based in Falls Church, Va. It found that the university admitted roughly seven out of 10 Black applicants and eight out of 10 Hispanic applicants, compared to about six out of 10 White and Asian applicants.

The group also found a disparity in ACT scores, the Wisconsin State Journal reported. Of students admitted in 2008, Black students had an average score of 25 and Hispanics had 26, while Whites averaged 29 and Asians 30, the study found.

Howard University Forum Urges Multicultural Marketing

Howard University Forum Urges Multicultural Marketing: In a panel organized earlier this week by Howard University, representatives from top media and marketing companies advised advertising executives to “adapt or die,” saying that, if they don’t learn how to engage and to market in a multicultural society, advertisers will reinforce stereotypes about minorities and miss opportunities to connect with ethnic consumers.

The discussion, “‘Minority’: Now Trending Majority, A Look at the 2010 U.S. Census Data and What It Means to Advertisers,” comes months after U.S. Census data released earlier this year revealed the growing “majority minority” in America, especially in southern and western regions of the nation.

Portion of Americans Living in Poverty Rises to Highest Level Since 1993 - NYTimes.com

Portion of Americans Living in Poverty Rises to Highest Level Since 1993 - NYTimes.com: The portion of Americans living in poverty last year rose to the highest level since 1993, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday, fresh evidence that the sluggish economic recovery has done nothing for the country’s poorest citizens.

An additional 2.6 million people slipped below the poverty line in 2010, census officials said, making 46.2 million people in poverty in the United States, the highest number in the 52 years the Census Bureau has been tracking it, said Trudi Renwick, chief of the Poverty Statistic Branch at the Census Bureau.

That figure represented 15.1 percent of the country.

The poverty line in 2010 was at $22,113 for a family of four.

“It was a surprising large increase in the overall poverty rate,” said Arloc Sherman, senior researcher at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “We see record numbers and percentages of Americans in deep poverty.”

And in new evidence of economic distress among the middle class, real median household incomes declined by 2.3 percent in 2010 from the previous year, to $49,400. That was 7 percent less than the peak in 1999 of $53,252.

Diversity Advocates Voice Caution on Community College Study

Diversity Advocates Voice Caution on Community College Study: Although a new study has found that underrepresented community college students fare better when placed in classrooms with an instructor of their ethnic background, diversity leaders warn that the study is too limited in scope to draw any solid conclusions.

“Interesting” was the furthest that two diversity experts would go in describing the study, titled “A Community College Instructor Like Me: Race and Ethnicity Interactions in the Classroom.” The study was conducted by three economics professors affiliated with the Cambridge, Mass.-based National Bureau of Economic Research.

Using administrative data described as “detailed demographic information on instructors as well as students from one of the largest and most ethnically diverse community colleges in the United States, this study is the first to test whether minority instructors have a positive effect on the academic achievement of minority students at the college level,” the study states.

Federal Appeals Court to Consider Michigan’s Affirmative Action Ban

Federal Appeals Court to Consider Michigan’s Affirmative Action Ban: A federal appeals court on Friday overturned the work of one of its three-judge panels and said it would decide the legality of Michigan's ban on affirmative action in college admissions and government hiring.

The decision by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals erases a July 1 ruling that found the ban to be unconstitutional. It means more than a dozen judges on the court likely will hear the case again, a rare occurrence.

Michigan voters in 2006 passed a law banning the consideration of race in college admissions and government hiring. The law forced the University of Michigan and other public schools to change admission policies.

In striking down the law in July, the three-judge panel said the law treats minorities unfairly and violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

AIDS Education Tour Hits Howard U. during Nation’s Football Classic Weekend

AIDS Education Tour Hits Howard U. during Nation’s Football Classic Weekend: As a panel of AIDS activists and educators drove home an impassioned and frank prevention message aimed at minority college-aged students—those who account for more than 55 percent of new AIDS cases—it wasn’t enough to get even two dozen Howard University students inside a small auditorium in the student Center on a rainy Friday afternoon to hear it.

The event was just one of many non-sports activities planned around the much-anticipated weekend football matchup between Morehouse College and Howard during the AT&T Nation’s Football Classic.

But that was okay with Jason Panda, CEO of bCondoms, a co-sponsor of the event. “The discussion,” he said, “was an opportunity to touch lives and educate students whether five or 500 showed up.”

Civil rights icon Robert Moses promotes middle school algebra - D.C. Schools Insider - The Washington Post

Civil rights icon Robert Moses promotes middle school algebra - D.C. Schools Insider - The Washington Post: There were more than three-dozen witnesses at this week’s D.C. Council roundtable on middle schools, but one appearance carried a special historic resonance. Robert Moses, the legendary SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) organizer, came to town for the cause that has taken up much of his last 30 years: algebra as a civil right for middle school kids.

Moses is founder of The Algebra Project, a non-profit that works with schools to make algebra more available to middle schoolers as a way of fostering careers in math, science and engineering. Algebra I and II are offered in high school in DCPS.
Moses, who risked his life organizing voter registration drives in Mississippi for SNCC in the early 1960s, became interested in math literacy as an engine for social change through his daughter Maisha.

Study: Minorities underrepresented in STEM jobs - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

Study: Minorities underrepresented in STEM jobs - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post: Hispanics and non-Hispanic blacks have over the past decade been underrepresented in U.S. jobs in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) in large part because of a lack of equality in educational opportunity, according to a new report being released today.

The Obama administration has made increasing and improving STEM education a priority, asserting that the country’s economic future depends on a strong workforce in these fields.

The report, issued by the Commerce Department’s Economics and Statistics Administration, says that regardless of race and Hispanic origin, higher college graduation rates are associated with higher shares of workers with STEM jobs.

But, it says, non-Hispanic whites and Asians are much more likely than other minority groups to have earned a bachelor’s degree, and, in part for this reason, have a larger share of STEM jobs.

The report, the third in a series on STEM by the administration, suggests that equality in educational attainment would virtually eliminate demographic disparities within the STEM workforce.

New date set for MLK memorial dedication – USATODAY.com

New date set for MLK memorial dedication – USATODAY.com: Organizers have set a new date in October to dedicate the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial after Hurricane Irene forced them to postpone the event in August, days before 250,000 people were expected to attend.

The memorial's executive architect Ed Jackson Jr. told The Associated Press on Sunday it will now be dedicated Oct. 16 on the National Mall. A formal announcement is expected this week.

The dedication had been planned as the culmination of a week's worth of events on Aug. 28, the 48th anniversary of King's "I Have a Dream" speech. But when Hurricane Irene swept through Washington with high winds and rain, organizers agreed to an indefinite postponement because of safety concerns.

Cherokees expel slaves’ descendants from tribe, cutting medical care, housing, other services - The Washington Post

Cherokees expel slaves’ descendants from tribe, cutting medical care, housing, other services - The Washington Post: TULSA, Okla. — One of the nation’s largest American Indian tribes has sent letters to about 2,800 descendants of slaves once owned by its members, revoking their citizenship and cutting their medical care, food stipends, low-income homeowners’ assistance and other services.

The Cherokee Nation acted this week after its Supreme Court upheld the results of a 2007 special vote to amend the Cherokee constitution and remove the slaves’ descendants and other non-Indians from tribal rolls. The 300,000-member tribe is the biggest in Oklahoma, although many of its members live elsewhere.

Movie Review - 'The Black Power Mixtape: 1967-1975' - A Black Power Chronicle, Seen From Afar : NPR

Movie Review - 'The Black Power Mixtape: 1967-1975' - A Black Power Chronicle, Seen From Afar : NPR: It probably never occurred to most students of the American black power movement that they should know more about the Swedish outlook on Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael and Angela Davis. But that's what The Black Power Mixtape: 1967-1975 provides — a view from abroad, from a country with a particular enthusiasm for the American dissidents of the day — and it's pretty interesting, if far from definitive.

Assembled from 16mm footage shot for Swedish television, most of it in black and white, the documentary takes a chronological approach to the civil rights movement, the Black Panthers and related phenomena. The years covered seem to coincide with Sweden's period of greatest disgust with the U.S., which is clearly linked to the Vietnam War. (Director Goran Hugo Olsson doesn't have much left to say after Saigon falls.)

Fox Sports Cancels College Athletics Show After Video Mocks Asians

Fox Sports Cancels College Athletics Show After Video Mocks Asians: Fox Sports said Wednesday it canceled a show that aired a segment that mocked Asian students who were filmed on the Southern California campus.

Fox Sports Network spokesman Lou D'Ermilio said in a statement that last week's segment was “clearly offensive and inconsistent with the standards FOX Sports believes in, and we sincerely regret that it appeared.” He said the show that aired the video, “The College Experiment” would be cancelled effective immediately.

The Daily Camera newspaper in Boulder, Colo. reported about the video and the network issued an apology. The video shows a comedian approaching Asian students at USC and asking them to welcome the universities of Colorado and Utah to the Pac-12 Conference. The comedian tells the students to give the new Pac-12 members an “all-American welcome” and then mocks students' accents.

Mall Counterterrorism Files ID Mostly Minorities : NPR

Mall Counterterrorism Files ID Mostly Minorities : NPR: Programs aimed at keeping a lookout for potential terrorists are not about profiling, government officials stress. But an analysis of suspicious activity reports of incidents at the Mall of America near Minneapolis, by NPR News Investigations and the Center for Investigative Reporting, suggests that the Mall of America may be questioning people based partly on their appearance.

From the more than 1,000 pages of suspicious activity reports examined, the documents suggest almost two-thirds of the "suspicious" people whom the Mall reported to local police were minorities. Compare that with the U.S. population, which is more than 70 percent white. And whites account for 85 percent of the population in Minnesota.

Black teenagers defy pop culture portrayals - CNN.com

Black teenagers defy pop culture portrayals - CNN.com: If you got your ideas about young black people just from the entertainment industry, you'd think they were all players and baby mamas -- and you'd be sorely mistaken.

In fact, the pregnancy rate of black teenage girls has dropped 44% over the last two decades, the teen birth rate 47%. Over that same period, both pregnancy and birth rates declined among all youth, but black youth had the largest declines.

And those black Casanovas? Also a stereotype. Young black men, as well as young black women, value relationships over sex.

These are some of the findings reported in Essence magazine. Essence, in partnership with The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, hired an independent research firm to survey 1,500 African-Americans ages 13 to 21 about their attitudes toward sex, relationships and media.

John Legend’s Help ensures all kids deserve great education | The Black Man Can

Positive Black Male News: John Legend’s Help ensures all kids deserve great education | The Black Man Can: Harlem, New York – Musically, John Legend has achieved what many artists strive for their whole career — Grammy awards, (he’s won six) platinum albums (he has two) and perhaps, most importantly, respect.

One area Legend will admit he hasn’t yet scratched the surface in has little to do with music.

Education reform has become the entertainer and activist’s number one priority when he’s not in the studio or on tour.

He started a non-profit organization to help him focus his efforts to improve America’s public schools.

“The ‘Show Me’ Campaign is all about fighting poverty,” Legend recently told theGrio’s Todd Johnson. “And we believe that education reform is necessary to achieve that and so we work with great schools around the country that are doing the right things to make sure that kids, no matter where they come from, can get a great education.”

Harpham Likely To Plead Guilty In MLK Bomb Case | TPMMuckraker

Harpham Likely To Plead Guilty In MLK Bomb Case | TPMMuckraker: Lawyers for Kevin Harpham, the man with ties to the white supremacist movement who is accused of planting a bomb at a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day parade in Washington state earlier this year, is scheduled for a plea change hearing on Wednesday morning.

Federal court records show that the change of plea hearing in Spokane, Washington was scheduled on Tuesday. Change of plea hearings are typically scheduled when a defendant reaches a plea agreement with prosecutors, and the Associated Press reports that such a deal was struck.

Harpham, 37, allegedly left a backpack bomb along the parade route during the MLK Day Parade last January. He was charged with one count of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction; one count of knowingly possessing an improvised explosive device; and a hate crime charge for allegedly targeting people based on their "actual or perceived race, color, and national origin."

Commentary: Historically Black Colleges and Universities Are Vital to a Diverse U.S. Workforce

Commentary: Historically Black Colleges and Universities Are Vital to a Diverse U.S. Workforce: Brown v. Board of Education, followed by 20 years of court decisions, federal legislation and regulatory enforcement that pushed open the door of opportunity for African-Americans to attend colleges that had once been inaccessible, has led to significant increases in minorities earning degrees.

These efforts led some to question the need for and the contemporary relevance of HBCUs — institutions that had previously been among the few higher education options for African-Americans.

Today, the questions linger.

An editorial last fall in the Wall Street Journal, for example, asserted that while HBCUs were a necessity at one point because of racism, “The reality today … is that there’s no shortage of traditional colleges willing to give Black students a chance.” Like many who question the relevance of HBCUs, the critique was long on supposition and inference, and short on data and evidence.

Black Children Are Twice As Likely To Have Food Sensitivities, Study Says

Black Children Are Twice As Likely To Have Food Sensitivities, Study Says: Pediatricians at Northwestern University have shed new light on why some children develop sensitivities to foods such as eggs, peanuts and milk. Their reason? Race and ancestry.

The study, published in the journal Pediatrics, used a multi-ethnic database of 1,104 children to measure antibodies to egg white, cow's milk, peanut, soy, shrimp, walnut, wheat and cod.

The overall findings reveal that black children are twice as likely to have an immune response to certain foods, especially peanuts, eggs and milk. About 38 percent of black children in the study had food sensitives compared to 22 percent for the white children who participated.

To determine race, the researchers used the children's mothers' self-report of race as well as the distribution of 150 genetic markers in the children's blood, which track ancestry.

Jailed Native American activist Leonard Peltier wins rights prize | The Raw Story

Jailed Native American activist Leonard Peltier wins rights prize | The Raw Story: Leonard Peltier, an indigenous rights activist jailed in the United States for decades, has received the first Mario Benedetti Foundation international human rights prize, the group said Monday.

The group called Peltier, a Native American activist convicted in 1977 for the murder of two US FBI agents, the longest serving political prisoner in the Americas. The case stemmed from a shootout at a reservation in the US state of South Dakota.

"Leonard Peltier, who on September 12, 2011 will turn 67, has spent more than half his life in prison. He is a symbol of resistance to repressive state policies by the United States, where there are people in jail for ethnic, racial, ideological and religious reasons," a foundation statement said.

Family Histories of ‘Passing’ from Black to White Documented in Book

Family Histories of ‘Passing’ from Black to White Documented in Book: n the summer of 1993, as American-born Daniel Sharfstein registered Blacks to cast their first ballot in race-riven South Africa, he volunteered alongside a South African woman, who professed to be as authentically African as any other Black. This, she told then college student Sharfstein, despite her family’s decades-old designation as Coloured, a mixed-race label that elevated her clan above Blacks in the old White-run government’s hierarchy of peoples.

Though being Coloured insulated her from brutalities apartheid reserved for the so-called purely Black, she was, physically, hard to distinguish from the Black activists who had dominated the anti-apartheid movement, said Dr. Sharfstein, now 38 and a Vanderbilt University law professor. She was dark-skinned, and wore her hair Afrocentrically-braided.

Harry E. Johnson Sr.: The Man Behind The MLK Memorial (The Inspirationals)

Harry E. Johnson Sr.: The Man Behind The MLK Memorial (The Inspirationals): Inspiring leaders in America come in all shapes, sizes, colors and creeds, and in all walks of life and public endeavor.

Harry E. Johnson Sr. -- a big man (6'2") with a big, beaming smile -- is one of these leaders. He patrols the grounds of the new Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial along the Tidal Basin on the Washington Mall with the easy, proprietary air of a long-time, popular mayor.

In a sense that is exactly what he is, even though his "city" has yet to be founded, officially.

As much, if not more, than anyone, Johnson built the memorial. As its president and CEO since 2002, he took it from design to completion, raised more than $100 million in private funds and guided a small team of architects and accountants, many his college fraternity brothers.

Improving the Odds: Winning the Fight to Rebuild the Latino Middle Class

Improving the Odds: Winning the Fight to Rebuild the Latino Middle Class: America has always been a nation that prides itself on rising above adversity and beating the odds. But this Labor Day, more than two years since the end of the most punishing recession since the Great Depression, American families hoping to stay in the middle class are facing long odds.

With one job opening for every four unemployed people, chances are if you're out of work, you can't find a job. With nearly 13 million families in danger of foreclosure and banks often not playing by the rules, too few Americans will be able to keep their homes. With the price of health care rising, too many Americans have skipped a checkup or gone without a prescription because they couldn't afford it. If you're Latino and in the middle class, it's no secret that the odds that you will be able to remain there are tough. Latinos face an unemployment rate of 11% compared to 9% overall, a foreclosure rate of nearly 8% compared to White homeowners at 4.5%, and a poverty rate of 25% compared to 14% overall.

Dangerous White Stereotypes - NYTimes.com

Dangerous White Stereotypes - NYTimes.com: ONE of the most noteworthy movies of the summer is “The Help.” Set in Jackson, Miss., in the early 1960s, it focuses on the relationships between white upper-middle-class women and the black domestics who took care of them and their children. Although many reviews of the film were quite positive, numerous critics, including some African-American commentators, have lashed out against it, arguing that the film does not deserve the accolades it has received.

To some extent, they have been angry that the movie is based on a novel by a white woman, Kathryn Stockett, and they question whether she is capable of telling that particular story. Some have also complained that the movie reinforces stereotypes about black Southern households. The black heroines speak with a dialect that disturbs some viewers; the audience never sees an intact black household, and a black man’s abuse of his wife is all the more chilling because we never see him, only the pots he hurls and the scars he leaves.

A 'Showdown' That Changed Football's Racial History : NPR

A 'Showdown' That Changed Football's Racial History : NPR: Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier in 1947. But it wasn't until 1962 that the last NFL franchise integrated — the Washington Redskins.

As Thomas G. Smith writes in his new book, Showdown: JFK and the Integration of the Washington Redskins, Redskins owner George Preston Marshall was quite happy running the last segregated team. "He loved being a holdout because he loved the attention," Smith told weekends on All Things Considered guest host Laura Sullivan. "His excuse for being the only holdout [was] the Redskins are the South's team and the South is segregated. So is the nation's capital, and this is my primary audience."

But the Redskins' history of racism predates their time in Washington. They were created as the Boston Braves, just like the original Beantown baseball team back in the days when a town's sports franchises often had the same name. In 1933, the team moved into Fenway Park. Marshall also hired a new coach that year, a member of the Sioux nation named Lone Star Dietz, "and to honor Dietz, so he said, he renamed the team Redskins," recalled Smith.

Free schools must be open to all, says Nick Clegg | Education | guardian.co.uk

Free schools must be open to all, says Nick Clegg | Education | guardian.co.uk: The government's new free schools must be open to all children and not just a "privileged few", the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, has said.

In a speech delivered as the first wave of the new-style schools prepared to open for the academic year, Clegg said they would be acceptable only if they reduce social segregation rather than entrenching inequalities of opportunity.

He called on the education secretary, Michael Gove, to ensure that the second wave of the free schools, to be announced within the next few weeks, are in poorer neighbourhoods or areas with a shortage of school places.

Libya Rebels Focus Wrath on African Migrants - NYTimes.com

Libya Rebels Focus Wrath on African Migrants - NYTimes.com: TRIPOLI, Libya — As rebel leaders pleaded with their fighters to avoid taking revenge against “brother Libyans,” many rebels were turning their wrath against migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, imprisoning hundreds for the crime of fighting as “mercenaries” for Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi without any evidence except the color of their skin.

Many witnesses have said that when Colonel Qaddafi first lost control of Tripoli in the earliest days of the revolt, experienced units of dark-skinned fighters apparently from other African countries arrived in the city to help subdue it again. Since Western journalists began arriving in the city a few days later, however, they have found no evidence of such foreign mercenaries.

Still, in a country with a long history of racist violence, it has become an article of faith among supporters of the Libyan rebels that African mercenaries pervaded the loyalists’ ranks. And since Colonel Qaddafi’s fall from power, the hunting down of people suspected of being mercenaries has become a major preoccupation.

Tyler Thompson, Black California Teen, Has An Unusual Special Talent: Singing Chinese Opera

Tyler Thompson, Black California Teen, Has An Unusual Special Talent: Singing Chinese Opera: Tyler Thompson is an unlikely star in the world of Chinese opera.

The black teenager from Oakland has captivated audiences in the U.S. and China with his ability to sing pitch-perfect Mandarin and perform the ancient Chinese art form.

"As soon as he opens his mouth and sings in Chinese, the Chinese are very surprised and then feel very proud of him," said his music teacher Sherlyn Chew. "When he puts on the costume, and all the acting, you can see that he's pretty good."

Tyler, 15, is a standout student in Chew's Oakland-based Purple Silk Music Education program, which teaches children and youth – mostly from low-income immigrant families – how to sing and play traditional Chinese music. The program's Great Wall Youth Orchestra & Chorus has performed around the country.

America's glory in a civil rights painting - CNN.com

America's glory in a civil rights painting - CNN.com: This summer there hangs in the White House, in a hallway outside the Oval Office, one of the greatest American paintings by one of the greatest American artists.

Called "The Problem We All Live With," the painting, by Norman Rockwell, was based on the experience in 1960 of a 6-year-old New Orleans girl named Ruby Bridges who was trying to get to her elementary school. The courts had ordered that the school be integrated; certain elements of the community wished otherwise.

President Barack Obama personally approved the painting being displayed in the West Wing. Many reports about it have -- inaccurately -- stated that the painting first appeared on the cover of Look magazine in January of 1964.

Roxana Soto: Higher Rates Of Childhood Asthma In Latino Populations: What To Do As A Parent

Roxana Soto: Higher Rates Of Childhood Asthma In Latino Populations: What To Do As A Parent: Latino children are 60% more at risk for asthma than white non-Latino kids. Because I am Latina, I've become even more interested in the topic and what I can do to create awareness.

Even though my 5-year-old daughter was diagnosed with asthma two years ago and I've done my share of research on the topic, I don't consider myself an expert. Thanks to my involvement with the Moms Clean Air Force - a group of moms fighting for clean air, I've learned a lot about how this disease affects Latino children in particular.

We've been lucky that my daughter has never had a full-blown asthma attack and the majority of her problems now stem from colds that usually have to be treated a bit more aggressively so they don't become a more serious ailment.