Julian Castro to be first Latino keynote speaker at Democratic National Convention

Julian Castro to be first Latino keynote speaker at Democratic National Convention: San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro will be the first Latino to give a keynote speech at a Democratic National Convention. Castro will speak at the opening night of the 2012 convention on Tuesday, September 4th, in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Castro, who is 37, is the youngest mayor of a Top 50 American city. Castro and his twin brother Joaquin were raised by a single mother, Rosie Castro, a longtime community activist. Julian Castro has been active in the Obama campaign, and was named national co-chairman for the re-election campaign a few months ago.

More Latinos are becoming foster parents or adopting, but need is still great

More Latinos are becoming foster parents or adopting, but need is still great: A college lecture inspired Ray and Connie Gallego to consider what most Latinos still haven’t completely opened up to: adoption.

“My wife and I were working diligently into our successful careers and decided to start a family. We continued trying for years and weren’t successful,” recalls Ray. “I told myself that I needed to act now and start researching adoption agencies.” The desire to raise a child outweighed all the odds against them. After one year into the adoption process, the Gallegos finally brought home their first child, Cristina. The Gallegos described it as “love at first sight.” A couple of years later, the family adopted a sibling pair, Ruby and Anthony.

The system is already short of foster parents. The amount of Latino foster parents is even smaller. There’s a crucial need and hope to raise awareness about the situation.

But like the Gallegos, more Latinos are gradually coming forward to adopt and foster children, as they get increasingly informed of the process and feel welcomed by agencies whose mission is to meet this need. The U.S. Children’s Bureau Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) reports that the percent of public agency adoptions by parents of Hispanic ethnicity has increased every year between 2002 and 2010 to 15.5%.

Community rallies in support of black couple blocked by church - U.S. News

Community rallies in support of black couple blocked by church - U.S. News: Hundreds of people turned out in Crystal Springs, Miss., to support an African-American couple who says a predominantly white Baptist church where they planned to wed turned them away because of race.

The city of Crystal Springs organized the rally to send a message of unity, NBC affiliate WLBT of Jackson, Miss., reported. People held hands in prayer while First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs pastor Rev. Stan Weatherford and New Zion United Methodist Church pastor Rev. Fitzgerald Lovett embraced.

"I pray that God will take a very difficult situation and that he will turn it into good and that we will move beyond tolerating each other," Weatherford told WLBT.
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Charles and Te'Andrea Wilson told WLBT last week they got the news from Weatherford the day before their long-planned nuptials.

Report: Oakland police had ‘racist’ photos of mayor and federal judge | The Raw Story

Report: Oakland police had ‘racist’ photos of mayor and federal judge | The Raw Story: A new report by a federal monitor says Oakland police had pictures altered “in a manner … found to be racist” of two officials, including the judge who placed the department under supervision.

According to The Oakland Tribune, the report by the department’s federally ordered monitor, Robert Warshaw, said the drawings, compounded by the department’s treatment of Occupy Oakland protesters last year, raise serious questions about how seriously it is taking the opportunity to clean up its act.

Warshaw’s report does not name the officials whose faces were defamed, but The Tribune is reporting that they are Oakland mayor Jean Quan, who is Asian-American and U.S. District Court Judge Thelton Henderson, an African-American. In January, Henderson ordered police chief Howard Jordan to “consult” with Warshaw on policy and tactics changes, among other areas, saying the department was “woefully behind its peers around the state and the nation.”

Echoes of Faith: Church Roots Run Deep Among HBCUs

Echoes of Faith: Church Roots Run Deep Among HBCUs: In the years after the Civil War, there were millions of newly-freed Black children and adults who emerged from slavery worn but eager and determined to get something they never had—a chance to learn how to read the Bible, write their names and words on a page, and be educated. Even before the Civil War, some Blacks in the North were pressing their way forward into church-basement-turned schools and rough-hewn wood frame rooms established just for them mostly by benevolent White Christians.

In 1837, the largess of a Quaker philanthropist established Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, which began as the African Institute, a school for Black children. But years later, religious leaders, local churches, missionaries, and denominations were descending across the South in the 19th century, believing that it was worth it to spend their time and money and do the right thing when they decided to establish seminaries, classrooms, colleges, and even medical schools for Blacks.

Disney’s ‘Doc McStuffins’ Adds Animated Racial Diversity - NYTimes.com

Disney’s ‘Doc McStuffins’ Adds Animated Racial Diversity - NYTimes.com: For decades many African-Americans have voiced conflicted feelings about Disney, to put it mildly.

Many fault this entertainment colossus for being slow to introduce a black princess as a peer to Cinderella and Snow White. (There is one now: Tiana, from “The Princess and the Frog.”) The racial stereotyping in early animated movies like “Dumbo” lives on through DVD rereleases. African-Americans can also bring up “Song of the South,” a 1946 film that Disney has labored to keep hidden because of its idyllic depiction of slavery. 

Disney has worked overtime in recent years to leave that past behind, and a surprising groundswell of support from black viewers for a new TV cartoon called “Doc McStuffins” is the latest indication that its efforts may be paying off. 

Aimed at preschoolers, “Doc McStuffins” centers on its title character, a 6-year-old African-American girl. Her mother is a doctor (Dad stays home and tends the garden), and the girl emulates her by opening a clinic for dolls and stuffed animals. “I haven’t lost a toy yet,” she says sweetly to a sick dinosaur in one episode.

Girls' Math Skills May Fall Short Of Boys' Because Of Male Impulsiveness

Girls' Math Skills May Fall Short Of Boys' Because Of Male Impulsiveness: From an early age, boys tend to take a more impulsive approach to math problems in the classroom, which might help them get ahead of girls in the long-run, suggests the latest study to touch on the gender gap in math.

The research claims girls may tend to favor a slow and accurate approach — often computing an answer by counting — while boys may take a faster, but more error-prone tack, calling out an answer from memory. The difference in strategies seems to benefit girls early in elementary school but swings in favor of boys by middle school.

"In our study, we found that boys were more likely to call out answers than girls, even though they were less accurate early in school," Drew Bailey, who led the study, said in a statement. "Over time, though, this practice at remembering answers may have allowed boys to surpass girls in accuracy."

Is a charter school chain called Rocketship ready to soar across America? - The Washington Post

Is a charter school chain called Rocketship ready to soar across America? - The Washington Post: In SAN JOSE, Calif. — Inside a prefabricated beige building hard by the freight tracks, John Danner thinks he has solved one of the nation’s most vexing problems.

This is Rocketship Discovery Prep, one of five charter elementary schools founded by Danner that are bridging the achievement gap — the staggering difference in academic performance between poor and privileged children.

The gap — which has persisted for decades despite heavy investments of time, energy and money — can cement the path a young life takes. Poor children are likely to enter school already behind, never catch up and then drop out, joining an underclass that threatens the country’s economic future.

Policymakers, foundations and business leaders are ravenous for schools that can educate all children, regardless of income. And they don’t want just a handful of successes. They want a big idea, on a grand scale.

White Baptist church in Mississippi bans black wedding | The Raw Story

White Baptist church in Mississippi bans black wedding | The Raw Story: A black couple in Crystal Springs, Mississippi says that a predominantly white Baptist church refused to let them get married because of their race.

Charles and Te’Andrea Wilson told WLBT that the day before they were to be married, the pastor of First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs informed them the ceremony would have to be moved due to the reaction of some white church members — even though the couple had attended the church regularly.

“The church congregation had decided no black could be married at that church, and that if [the pastor] went on to marry her, then they would vote him out the church,” Charles Wilson explained.

Blacks Continue To Lose Ground as Talk of Turning the AIDS Tide Wages

Blacks Continue To Lose Ground as Talk of Turning the AIDS Tide Wages: At a time when the promising practices and the potential of new drugs to arrest the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the U.S. are greater than at any other time in the past three decades, recent data released at the International AIDS Conference, July 22-27, show that the most vulnerable people at the epicenter of the disease—African-Americans, especially gay men—are steadily losing ground and their lives in the war against AIDS.

The AIDS crisis among Black men who have sex with men, or MSM, is far from over and not even close to being under control, according to a new report released this week by the Los Angeles-based think tank The Black AIDS Institute. Black MSM account for 1 in 500 Americans, but represent nearly 1 in 4 new HIV infections, according to the report “Back of the Line: The State of AIDS Among Black Gay Men in America.”

“Black men who have sex with men are engulfed in a raging generalized epidemic,” said Phil Wilson, president of the Institute and an openly gay Black man who has been living with HIV for 32 years. In fact, the report found that the odds of a Black man who has sex with men becoming infected increase from a 1-in-4 chance of infection at 25 years old to a 59.3 percent chance by the time he reaches 400 years old.

Head Start Fears Impact of Automatic Federal Budget Cut - NYTimes.com

Head Start Fears Impact of Automatic Federal Budget Cut - NYTimes.com: Tens of thousands of young children from low-income families could be dropped from Head Start programs if Congress cannot find a way to prevent automatic cuts to the federal budget in 2013.

Supporters of Head Start fear the cuts would put more children at a disadvantage even before they reach kindergarten. Critics, including Congressional Republicans who tried to slash the Head Start budget in 2011, say the cuts would help rein in an overpriced program whose benefits have not been proven.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated last year that the automatic cuts would slice $590 million from federal spending on Head Start, which will be more than $7.9 billion in 2012. The National Education Association said the cuts would eliminate 80,000 of the 962,000 slots for children and more than 30,000 jobs of teachers, aides and administrators in the program. It began in 1965 to provide summer school for children about to start kindergarten and later expanded to include year-round preschool classes.

Neanderthal-type species once roamed Africa, DNA shows - The Washington Post

Neanderthal-type species once roamed Africa, DNA shows - The Washington Post: The human family tree just got another — mysterious — branch, an African “sister species” to the heavy-browed Neanderthals that once roamed Europe.

While no fossilized bones have been found from these enigmatic people, they did leave a calling card in present-day Africans: snippets of foreign DNA.

There’s only one way that genetic material could have made it into modern human populations.

“Geneticists like euphemisms, but we’re talking about sex,” said Joshua Akey of the University of Washington in Seattle, whose lab identified the mystery DNA in three groups of modern Africans.

These genetic leftovers do not resemble DNA from any modern-day humans. The foreign DNA also does not resemble Neanderthal DNA, which shows up in the DNA of some modern-day Europeans, Akey said. That means the newly identified DNA came from an unknown group.

“We’re calling this a Neanderthal sibling species in Africa,” Akey said.

African-American Education Office: Obama Announces White House Initiative On Educational Excellence

African-American Education Office: Obama Announces White House Initiative On Educational Excellence: President Barack Obama is creating a new office to bolster education of African-American students.

The White House says the office will coordinate the work of communities and federal agencies to ensure that African-American youngsters are better prepared for high school, college and career.

Obama is announcing his election-year initiative Wednesday night in a speech to the civil rights group the National Urban League as he seeks to rally black voters. Aides say his executive order, to be signed Thursday, will set a goal of producing "a more effective continuum" of programs for African-American students.

The president announced his election-year initiative, the first-ever White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for African Americans, in remarks to the civil rights group National Urban League Convention Wednesday as he sought to rally black voters.

Alabama State Professor, Civil Rights Pioneer Dies at 96

Alabama State Professor, Civil Rights Pioneer Dies at 96: MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Thelma McWilliams Glass, a longtime professor and civil rights pioneer who helped launch the Montgomery Bus Boycott, has died. She was 96.

A statement from Alabama State University, where Glass was a professor of geography, said Glass died Wednesday.

"The ASU family lost one of its crown jewels today," said President William H. Harris. "Mrs. Glass was the consummate educator, whose life was a shining example of service, courage and commitment. She will be truly missed."

Glass was one of a group of women who helped launch the bus boycott in Montgomery and bring an end to segregation of public transportation in the South. She also was secretary of the Women's Political Council, a group that spread the word through the Black community in Montgomery about the boycott.

Commentary: Making Progress amid Growing Enrollment Disparities at Selective Colleges

Commentary: Making Progress amid Growing Enrollment Disparities at Selective Colleges: The percentage of Black students doubled during the Black Campus Movement to diversify higher education in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Since 1976, the Black enrollment has more than doubled once again, from 943,000 to 2,269,000 in 2008. The Black share of the overall enrollment in American higher education increased from about 5 percent in 1965 to 10 percent in 1976 to 14 percent in 2008.

Without question, more Black and Latino students are in college in 2012 than 40 years ago. In terms of the total pie, non-Whites have a larger piece than ever before. They are walking into historically White colleges and universities (HWCUs) in unprecedented numbers.

This is progress.

Commemorating the Frank Hale Legacy

Commemorating the Frank Hale Legacy: When Ohio State University named its standout Black cultural center after the civil rights activist, professor and vice provost who championed such a place, it was commemorating what Dr. Frank W. Hale Jr. stood for. He promoted academic rigor, those who knew him say. He was a lover of art and oratory. He spotlighted the hallmark differences among people, but also their common humanity. He believed every person specialized in something and that such specialties should never be ignored.

A Call to Focus on Finding Jobs for Those with Disabilities | PBS NewsHour

A Call to Focus on Finding Jobs for Those with Disabilities | PBS NewsHour: As the United States prepares to observe the anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act Thursday, it's tempting to say, "hold the celebration." That's because for those with disabilities, the employment picture has, sadly, not improved since the ADA was signed into law 22 years ago.

In fact, during the recent recession, it deteriorated five times as badly as did employment for the rest of American workers. While the non-disability workforce shrank by about 2 percent, for people with disabilities, the number working fell by over 10 percent. And according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the picture has remained grim as the economy has begun its recovery: While 3 million new jobs were added to the able-bodied work force, workers with disabilities have seen their ranks shrink further.

The chief voice spreading the word about this depressing situation is Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, the chairman of the health, education, labor and pensions committee, and a long-time passionate advocate for those with disabilities.

'Kids Count' Report: Child Poverty On The Rise

'Kids Count' Report: Child Poverty On The Rise: The "Kids Count" report, one of the most widely cited surveys of how children are faring in the United States, hasn't offered much good news in recent years, and this year's edition, released on Wednesday, offered few surprises.

Drawing mostly on U.S. Census data, the report noted that the percentage of children living in poverty increased by nearly a third between 2000 and 2010, and that it rose 16 percent between 2005 and 2010. The rate of children whose parents lack secure employment rose by 22 percent in the period roughly coinciding with the first two years of the global recession, beginning in 2008, the report said.

The annual report is published by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, one of the largest private charitable organizations in the U.S. devoted to improving the lives of children.

Athlete booted from Games for tweet – USATODAY.com

Athlete booted from Games for tweet – USATODAY.com: LONDON – The Twitter Olympics has begun, and Greek triple jumper Voula Papachristo is the first casualty.

Papachristo has been expelled from the London Games by Greece for her Twitter comments on African immigrants and expressing support for a far-right party.

Papachristou was to compete in her first Games. The 23-year-old is from Athens.

The IOC has strict guidelines on what athletes can say in social media. This is the first case of an athlete being expelled from an Olympics for social media use.

The Tweet that got Papachristou in trouble was posted July 22: "So many Africans in Greece at least West Nile mosquitoes will eat homemade food"

Fifty-four people marked it as a "favorite" on Twitter.

She apologized on Twitter and Facebook, saying that her comment was a joke. "I would like to express my heartfelt apologies for the unfortunate and tasteless joke I published on my personal Twitter account. I am very sorry and ashamed for the negative responses I triggered, since I never wanted to offend anyone, or to encroach human rights.

24 arrested at police protests in Anaheim, Calif. – USATODAY.com

24 arrested at police protests in Anaheim, Calif. – USATODAY.com: ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) – Police in Anaheim, Calif., have restored order after violent protests over weekend police shootings caused injuries and two dozen arrests.

...Family members of a man who died in a weekend police shooting have poured their anger into a civil rights lawsuit against this Southern California city, as public outrage spilled onto the streets.

Manuel Diaz's family filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the city of Anaheim and its police department, claiming that he was shot and killed Saturday while running away, lawyer James Rumm said. The family, which is seeking $50 million in damages, planned to speak about the case on Wednesday.

.... As California's Hispanic population has grown, so has the Anaheim's, hitting nearly 53 percent in 2010, census figures show.

Residents' concerns about the use of police force in the city aren't new. Last month, Anaheim decided to look into hiring an independent investigator to review police shootings amid protests by relatives of those killed in officers' gunfire.

Latino activists say that isn't enough and want federal officials to investigate the Saturday shooting.

Tait, who has called for state and federal investigations, said: "If the Latino community is saying there is a rift, then there is rift, and we need to address that."

Fairfax County faces two complaints about racial bias at TJ high school - The Washington Post

Fairfax County faces two complaints about racial bias at TJ high school - The Washington Post: Nine years ago, law professor Lloyd Cohen filed a federal civil rights complaint alleging racial discrimination in admissions to Fairfax County’s prestigious Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.

But he didn’t argue that the system was biased against black and Latino students, as the Fairfax chapter of the NAACP and a local advocacy group alleged in a similar complaint filed Monday with the Department of Education. African American and Latino students are 4 percent of the rising freshmen at Thomas Jefferson, or TJ, but make up 32 percent of the county’s entire student body.

Instead, Cohen contended that it was white students who were losing out, the deck stacked against them as the school system sought to boost black enrollment at the high-flying school.

Baltimore puts out welcome mat for immigrants, hoping to stop population decline - The Washington Post

Baltimore puts out welcome mat for immigrants, hoping to stop population decline - The Washington Post: The fate of Baltimore may rest with immigrants like Alexandra Gonzalez.

A native of Puebla, Mexico, Gonzalez feels more at home in Baltimore with every passing year. She attends city-run nutrition and exercise classes in Spanish and takes her two young children to a Spanish-language storytelling hour at her neighborhood library. She plans to earn a GED and become a teacher.

“I like living here,” said Gonzalez, 24, as she pushed a stroller holding her sleeping 1-year-old daughter and bags of purchases from a dollar store in the blue-collar Highlandtown neighborhood. “They don’t look at you weird because you don’t speak English.”

The degree to which Gonzalez feels welcome is no accident.
After decades of seeing the city’s population slide with every census count, Baltimore officials are trying to turn things around. One key strategy is embracing immigrants, in the hope they will encourage friends and family to join them.

Black Teens Are Getting The Message On HIV, But Risks Are Still There : Shots - Health Blog : NPR

Black Teens Are Getting The Message On HIV, But Risks Are Still There : Shots - Health Blog : NPR: The HIV epidemic among African-Americans is getting deserved new attention at the 19th International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C. And the news isn't all bad.

New data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that black high school students are engaging in risky sexual behavior far less often than they were 20 years ago.

Since black teens are the future of the epidemic for the hardest-hit ethnic group, this is encouraging.


Here are the main results:

The percentage of black high-schoolers who've ever had sex has declined since 1991, from 82 percent to 60 percent.

There's been a big drop in black teens who've had multiple sex partners. In 1991, 43 percent had. Now it's 25 percent, or about half.

The risky-sex gap between white and black high schoolers has been narrowed. (Hispanic teens are between the two in riskiness, and their risk hasn't changed.)

Maryland education board gives preliminary approval to student-discipline reforms - The Washington Post

Maryland education board gives preliminary approval to student-discipline reforms - The Washington Post: Maryland education leaders voted to overhaul student-discipline practices Tuesday, approving regulations that they hope will cut back on suspensions, keep students in class and create a less-punitive culture in the state’s public schools.

The changes place Maryland among states and school systems at the forefront of a national movement to rethink how students in trouble are punished and whether too many are suspended and expelled for offenses that could be handled in other ways.

But the action by the Maryland State Board of Education goes a step further than most, requiring that its 24 school systems track racial disparities in discipline and come up with plans to resolve them. Problems must be reduced within a year and eliminated in three years under the changes.

After a 10 to 0 vote, with two members absent, Board President James H. DeGraffenreidt Jr. said the main accomplishment was redirecting the conversation around student discipline. Students need to be in class to learn he said.

Sherman Hemsley Dead: 'The Jeffersons' Actor Dies At 74

Sherman Hemsley Dead: 'The Jeffersons' Actor Dies At 74: Sherman Hemsley, known for his starring role on "The Jeffersons," has died at age 74.

Although the cause of Hemsley's death is unclear, TMZ reports that the actor passed away at his El Paso, Texas, home.

Hemsley made a name for himself as George Jefferson, carrying the iconic sitcom for a decade and earning a 1984 Emmy nomination for his work as lead actor in a comedy series. The actor went on to appear on a handful of other classic television shows including "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" and "The Hughleys." He also starred as Deacon Ernest Frye on the NBC series "Amen" for several years.

The Philadelphia born and raised sitcom actor was also an accomplished singer, recording the 1989 single "Ain't That a Kick in the Head" and releasing his R&B album, "Dance," in 1992.

Before becoming a household name, Hemsley served in the Air Force for four years -- dropping out of high school to do so -- before going on to work for the post office for eight years.

Hemsley had no wife or kids.

Expert: Stratification Undermines American Higher Education’s Capacity for Enabling Social Mobility

Expert: Stratification Undermines American Higher Education’s Capacity for Enabling Social Mobility: Although a college education has increasingly become the sole path into the shrunken middle class, social stratification within the world of higher education threatens to undermine the American Dream.

That was one of the major points that economist Anthony Carnevale made during a presentation Monday at the annual at the 2012 NCCEP/GEAR UP Conference.

“Our post-secondary system has become highly segregated by class, by race and by ethnicity,” Carnevale, director of the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce, said during a workshop titled, “The Growing Importance of Higher Education, Attaining Middle Class Earnings, and the Increasing Stratification of Access.”

“It is more and more the case that the four-year college system is whiter and more affluent, [while] the two-year system is browner and blacker and more working class and some poor,” Carnevale said, noting that, for the most part, four-year degrees trump two-year degrees in terms of the salaries they command.

With Penn State’s Loss, Grambling’s Eddie Robinson Regains Coaching Title

With Penn State’s Loss, Grambling’s Eddie Robinson Regains Coaching Title: Reaching milestones in college athletics is usually a time for jubilant celebration. Monday’s major college sports news was an exception.

Grambling University learned Monday its legendary football coach, Eddie G. Robinson, had regained his rank as the winningest coach in college football history.

The ranking, which Robinson lost just last year, came after the NCAA stripped Joe Paterno, another college football legend who had coached for decades at Penn State University, of all his victories from 1998 to 2011.

The harsh move by the NCAA was part of a sweeping penalty against Paterno, now deceased, and the university for failing to report their knowledge of alleged child alleged sex crimes committed by a former Paterno assistant coach.

Sally Ride dies at 61; was first American woman sent into space - The Washington Post

Sally Ride dies at 61; was first American woman sent into space - The Washington Post: Sally Ride, an astronaut and physicist who in 1983 became the first American woman sent into space and reluctantly served as an idol of feminist strength and a hero of women’s progress, died Monday at her home in La Jolla, Calif. She was 61.

She had pancreatic cancer, said Terry McEntee, her assistant.

Ms. Ride made history on June 18, 1983, when she orbited the Earth aboard the space shuttle Challenger. At 32 years and 23 days old, she was the youngest American to go into space.

In a statement, President Obama said that Ms. Ride “inspired generations of young girls to reach for the stars.”
He continued, “Sally’s life showed us that there are no limits to what we can achieve and I have no doubt that her legacy will endure for years to come.”

Young gay black men at high risk of HIV - The Washington Post

Young gay black men at high risk of HIV - The Washington Post: Unless improvements are made, more than half of all young black men who are gay or bisexual will be infected with HIV within the next decade, according to findings presented Monday at the 19th International AIDS Conference.

The 2009-10 study of 1,553 American black men who have sex with men found that among those who are age 30 or younger, the infection rate was nearly 6 percent a year.

The overall rate of new HIV infection among all black gay and bisexual men in the study was 2.8 percent a year — nearly 50 percent higher than among white gay and bisexual men. The study was conducted in six cities, including Washington.

If those infection rates are projected over a decade, one-third of all gay and bisexual black men will have HIV infections, as will more than 50 percent of young men in that group, said Kenneth H. Mayer, one of the lead researchers. Mayer is an AIDS specialist and medical research director of the Fenway Institute in Boston.

Chart of the Day: Voter ID and Racial Resentment | Mother Jones

Chart of the Day: Voter ID and Racial Resentment | Mother Jones: Who supports voter ID laws? Obviously, Republicans support them more than Democrats. Since voter ID laws are mostly aimed at suppressing the Democratic-leaning vote, that makes sense.

But there are differences even among voters who identify as either Republican or Democratic. According to a new survey from the Center for Political Communication at the University of Delaware, 53% of Democrats with low levels of racial resentment oppose voter ID laws. Among Democrats with high levels of racial resentment, that plummets to 23%.

Ditto for Republicans. Among those with low racial resentment scores, 13% oppose voter ID laws. Among Republicans with high racial resentment scores, that's cut in half, to 7%.

Racial resentment is measured by responses to only three questions, which makes it a little less robust than we might like. On the other hand, the questions are admirably straightforward. The first one, for example, is this: "I resent any special considerations that Africans Americans receive because it’s unfair to other Americans." That's pretty clear.

Jefferson H.S., Fairfax schools shut out blacks and Latinos, complaint alleges - The Washington Post

Jefferson H.S., Fairfax schools shut out blacks and Latinos, complaint alleges - The Washington Post: The disproportionately low number of black and Latino students admitted to Fairfax County’s prestigious Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology — long a subject of debate — has triggered a federal civil rights complaint.

The 17-page complaint was filed with the U.S. Department of Education on Monday by the Coalition of The Silence, an advocacy group led by former county School Board member Tina Hone, and the Fairfax chapter of the NAACP.

The complaint alleges that black and Latino students, as well as students with disabilities, are being shut out of Thomas Jefferson, or TJ, long before they apply in eighth grade because of Fairfax County Public Schools’ systematic failure to identify them for gifted-education programs that begin in elementary school.

Fairfax school officials could not comment because they had not had a chance to review the complaint, said spokesman John Torre.

Blacks more likely to have surgery for breast cancer, throat cancer - chicagotribune.com

Blacks more likely to have surgery for breast cancer, throat cancer - chicagotribune.com: Blacks in the U.S. with throat cancer are more likely than whites to have surgery that leaves them unable to speak than to get gentler voice-preserving treatments, a new study finds.

Previous research has found a similar racial disparity in breast cancer treatment, with blacks more often having the entire breast removed instead of just the cancerous lumps.

It's unclear why the gap exists. But Dr. Allen Chen, who led the new study, said poverty, less education and deep-rooted historical biases could all be at work.

"There could be an underlying distrust among African Americans where they feel anything less than surgery might be considered quote-unquote experimental," Chen, a radiation oncologist at University of California, Davis, told Reuters Health.

Virginia State University Hosts College Prep Program for Latino Students

Virginia State University Hosts College Prep Program for Latino Students: Among the 80 Virginia high school students that participated in the Hispanic College Institute at Virginia State University (VSU), Monica Negron found plenty of encouragement during the institute for the college plans she nurtures as a rising high school senior.

“I have to go to college and make something of myself. I have to show [my siblings] that people are going to tell you 'no', but that doesn't have to keep you down,” Negron said.

For Negron and the others, faculty and administrators at Virginia State, a historically Black university in Petersburg, Va., along with volunteers and Latino professionals, sought to make college life appear to be a natural and inevitable destination for these ambitious students.

Afro-American newspaper honors paperboys and girls in anniversary celebration - baltimoresun.com

Afro-American newspaper honors paperboys and girls in anniversary celebration - baltimoresun.com: For Marian Anderson Bell, selling copies of the Afro-American newspaper on Baltimore streets as a 12-year-old papergirl in 1945 felt like freedom.

Now 79 years old, Bell reminisced Saturday about stashing away the pennies she earned to buy school supplies and bobby socks. She was one of dozens of one-time paperboys and girls who gathered for breakfast at theReginald F. Lewis Museumof Maryland African American History and Culture as part of the paper's 120th anniversary.

Bell said earning her own money meant she didn't have to go to her mother for a handout. The job also taught her an important life lesson, Bell said.

"It encouraged us to economize and to learn to save our money," she said.

The paper, founded in 1892, was once sold from New York to Florida and throughout the South, and for six decades the newspaper boys and girls were its "legs," said publisher John J. "Jake" Oliver Jr. The paper is the longest-running African-American family-owned newspaper in the country, according to the media company.

U.S. Poverty On Track To Rise To Highest Since 1960s

U.S. Poverty On Track To Rise To Highest Since 1960s: The ranks of America's poor are on track to climb to levels unseen in nearly half a century, erasing gains from the war on poverty in the 1960s amid a weak economy and fraying government safety net.

Census figures for 2011 will be released this fall in the critical weeks ahead of the November elections.

The Associated Press surveyed more than a dozen economists, think tanks and academics, both nonpartisan and those with known liberal or conservative leanings, and found a broad consensus: The official poverty rate will rise from 15.1 percent in 2010, climbing as high as 15.7 percent. Several predicted a more modest gain, but even a 0.1 percentage point increase would put poverty at the highest since 1965.

Poverty is spreading at record levels across many groups, from underemployed workers and suburban families to the poorest poor. More discouraged workers are giving up on the job market, leaving them vulnerable as unemployment aid begins to run out. Suburbs are seeing increases in poverty, including in such political battlegrounds as Colorado, Florida and Nevada, where voters are coping with a new norm of living hand to mouth.

Native American Communities Affected by Climate Change Plan for the Future | PBS NewsHour | July 19, 2012 | PBS

Native American Communities Affected by Climate Change Plan for the Future | PBS NewsHour | July 19, 2012 | PBS: ... HARI SREENIVASAN: Our series on Coping With Climate Change has included multiple examples of how Native American populations are feeling the impacts and adapting.

We took you to coastal Louisiana, where tribal people are experiencing relative sea level rise in a very personal way. Their islands are shrinking and their burial grounds will soon be underwater.

The Quileute Tribe in Washington State, whose reservation was down to its last square mile, until they recently won rights to move to higher ground in the nearby national park.

Last night, we showed you how the Swinomish Tribe is trying to plan ahead and adapt to faster glacial snowmelts, higher stream temperatures, and changes in fishing grounds.

Changes are being felt by Native peoples throughout the country, and it was the reason for the First Stewards conference at the Smithsonian Museum.

We sat down with a few representatives.

Joining me here at the National Museum of the American Indian to tell us how their communities are coping with climate change are Micah McCarty from the Makah Tribe in Washington, Kitty Simonds from Hawaii, Mike Williams from the Akiak Native Community in Alaska, and Jeff Mears from the Oneida Tribe in Wisconsin.

Soul Food Fans Say Goodbye To 'Queen' Sylvia : The Salt : NPR

Soul Food Fans Say Goodbye To 'Queen' Sylvia : The Salt : NPR: Sylvia Woods, known as the Queen of Soul Food, died yesterday at age 86. She opened the legendary Sylvia's restaurant in Harlem 50 years ago, around the corner from the Apollo Theater, and it soon became a gathering place for prominent African Americans, politicians, and foodies of all ages and races.

Woods' secret, she told a TV reporter back in 2003, was "a little of this and a little of that and you mix it all together. But a whole lotta love has to go in it. If you don't have that, you have nothing at all." (Hear our colleague Joel Rose's remembrance above and on All Things Considered tonight.)

She made chicken and waffles cool long before today's current crop of retro-comfort food seeking hipsters ever thought about installing a deep fryer.

Former Bank Of America, Cantor Fitzgerald Employees Sue Over Alleged Racial Discrimination

Former Bank Of America, Cantor Fitzgerald Employees Sue Over Alleged Racial Discrimination: Two separate lawsuits alleging racial discrimination were filed in federal court in New York on Friday, against Bank of America and investment bank Cantor Fitzgerald.

Jack Mitchell, who is black and worked as a manager at Bank of America from February 2007 to July 2008, alleges the bank maintained an "apartheid" system of business allocation, believing white clients would not want to be served by African American employees.

Under this system, Mitchell alleges, employees such as himself were routinely assigned to branches in low-income black communities, negatively affecting his compensation. Mitchell claims he was fired in retaliation for complaining about "the bank's racist practices."

Bank of America spokesman Bill Halldin declined to comment on the suit but said that "diversity and inclusion are part of Bank of America's culture and core values."

Voter ID Law Support Linked To Attitudes About African Americans, Study Finds

Voter ID Law Support Linked To Attitudes About African Americans, Study Finds: A new study has found that support for voter ID laws, especially among those who lean Democratic, is linked to one's feelings toward African Americans.

In the study, conducted by the University of Delaware's Center for Political Communication, respondents were asked several questions, and their answers were used to create a spectrum of "racial resentment." The more resentment a person conveyed, the more likely they were to support voter ID laws.

Voter ID laws require people to show some form of government identification before they can cast a ballot. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 32 states have some form of voter ID law, with varying degrees of strictness. Since Republicans won control of 20 state governments in the 2010 midterms, at least 11 states have pushed through voter ID laws. Supporters of the laws say that they help prevent voter fraud, in spite of the fact that studies have shown electoral fraud to be exceedingly rare.

South Africa celebrates Mandela’s birthday | The Raw Story

South Africa celebrates Mandela’s birthday | The Raw Story: Anti-apartheid hero Nelson Mandela celebrated his 94th birthday in “good” spirits on Wednesday as millions of South Africans joined in the global praise for the much-loved statesman.

Mandela, whose 1990 release from an apartheid prison put South Africa on the path to democracy and reconciliation, spent a quiet day with his close family in his home village of Qunu, where he has retired from public life.

“He is in good spirits and looking very well,” granddaughter Ndileka Mandela told AFP by phone from Qunu.

The Forgotten Orphans, From D.C. to Zimbabwe | PBS NewsHour | July 18, 2012 | PBS

The Forgotten Orphans, From D.C. to Zimbabwe | PBS NewsHour | July 18, 2012 | PBS: Zimbabwe and the District of Columbia. They’re 8,000 miles apart and nearly as distant economically. But the two share at least two things in common: Both have some of the highest HIV/AIDS rates in the world. And in both places, ordinary people are living remarkably similar lives. As Washington prepares to host the International AIDS Conference July 22-27, the PBS NewsHour will profile some of the parallel stories unfolding around the epidemic on opposite ends of the globe. We begin with AIDS orphans.

Judy's Notebook: Civil Rights for the Next Generation | PBS NewsHour

Judy's Notebook: Civil Rights for the Next Generation | PBS NewsHour: ...Wednesday as I spent time with one of the many groups of young people who flock to Washington during our hot summers. This was a special group: 51 Free Spirit Journalism Scholars, high school students from all over the country who had come to the nation's capital for a week to learn and to be inspired. The young people are carefully selected from all 50 states plus the District of Columbia to attend an annual conference run by the Freedom Forum, a nonpartisan foundation dedicated to free press and free speech. The competitive process, named in honor of Forum founder Al Neuharth, saw applications from 600 rising high school seniors.

They're treated to talks by prominent politicians and journalists and encouraged to ask questions, which they eagerly do. I was fortunate to sit in on a session with three heroes of the Civil Rights movement. I came away impressed with the students, but blown away by the three much older men who played a central role in the Freedom Riders movement, the campaign by civil rights activists in 1961 to ride interstate buses into the South to confront state laws and customs enforcing segregation.

What If George Zimmerman Were Black? - The Daily Beast

What If George Zimmerman Were Black? - The Daily Beast: Making his first television network appearance last night on Fox News, a perfectly coifed George Zimmerman apologized for killing 17-year-old Trayvon Martin—while in the same breath admitted he’d do nothing different if he had the chance. As Zimmerman, who appeared dazed during parts of the interview, discussed the events that led to the death of an unarmed high-school student simply walking home from the 7-Eleven, it was difficult to imagine a similar chain of events occurring if the tables were turned.

Just prior to yesterday’s interview, Zimmerman’s lawyer Mark O’Mara released a statement boldly admitting that part of the reason for the appearance on Fox was to raise money for his client’s defense. Zimmerman has already received a pretty staggering amount of donations since his arrest this past April. So much so that in June, his bail was revoked due to the fact he failed to report at least $150,000 in an online account donated from his many supporters. What if every criminal was allowed a prime time interview in order to raise money for his or her defense? 

Gay, bisexual black men at high risk for HIV – - CNN.com Blogs

Gay, bisexual black men at high risk for HIV – - CNN.com Blogs: Only one in 500 Americans is a black gay or bisexual male, but black men who have sex with men (MSM) account for one in four new HIV infections in the United States, according to a new report by the Black AIDS Institute (BAI).

Just days away from the first International AIDS Conference to be held on U.S. soil in 22 years, the BAI, a national think tank focused on African-Americans, released a somber account detailing how the virus continues to disproportionately infect and kill young black men who have sex with other men.

According to the report, "Back of the Line: The State of AIDS Among Gay Black Men in America 2012" a black gay man has a one in eight chance of becoming infected by the time he's 20 years old. By the age of 40, the likelihood is 60%.  It also says black men having sex with men are more affected by the disease than any other group in the developed world.
"Black MSM continue to be first in line when it comes to need, but remain at the back of the line when it comes to assistance," said Phill Wilson, founder and executive director of the Black AIDS Institute. "This report not only highlights the gaps and why they still exist after 30 years, but it also provides a blueprint for how to close the gaps and move those most at risk up to the front."

Black Education Statistics: Separating Fact From Fiction

Black Education Statistics: Separating Fact From Fiction: U.S. census data show that when you look at Americans ages 15 to 25, there are 3.9 million fewer white males now than there were in 1970, and 2.5 million more black males. So why do we so often hear phrases like, "The reality is ... African-American males are a dying breed"? (And have you ever noticed that "breed," "extinct" and "endangered" are terms reserved for animals and black males?)

Questioning such notions, which are not based on fact but are repeated so often that they have been treated as gospel truth, is the mission of Show Me the Numbers. This new monthly series, published in association with Howard University's Journal of Negro Education, of which I am editor-in-chief, will provide a big-picture analysis of some of the most pressing educational and social issues facing African Americans. The series will also break down national data to dispel common myths and challenge conventional wisdom about education in black America.

Why we need to relentlessly pursue diversity in schools - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post

Why we need to relentlessly pursue diversity in schools - The Answer Sheet - The Washington Post: “In education, the road worth traveling.”

The promise of integrated schools began with Mendez et al v. Westminster School District et al, a 1946 federal court case that challenged racial segregation in Orange County, Calif. schools. It was followed by Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 landmark case in which the U.S. Supreme Court declared state laws establishing separate public schools for black and white students unconstitutional.

After a period of school desegregation, poorer public schools have become increasingly re-segregated. At least 70 percent of white students attend schools where at least 75 percent of the student body is white, and more than half of all black students attend poor urban schools where 90 percent are members of “minority” groups, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

After Decades, Academic Careers Still Elusive for Many Black, Latino Scholars

After Decades, Academic Careers Still Elusive for Many Black, Latino Scholars: Despite decades of research and recommendations, a revolving door continues to cycle Black and Hispanic faculty into and out of predominantly White higher education institutions.

Interviews with the scholars and researchers who have examined this issue in recent years suggest that, although some institutions have ramped up their recruitment and retention efforts, more proactive measures need to be taken. In addition, numerous racial incidents on university campuses have focused attention on the composition of faculty at many top universities.

A lawsuit filed this year by a surgeon at UCLA, the only tenured African-American faculty member in his department, raised the specter of racism to a new level. Dr. Christian Head sued the board of regents in April for a series of discriminatory actions including a slideshow in 2006 depicting him as a gorilla being sodomized by his White supervisor; it was shown at a UCLA School of Medicine graduation roast.

BBC News - India school faces inquiry for 'humiliating' poor children

BBC News - India school faces inquiry for 'humiliating' poor children: Officials in India are investigating claims that staff at a private school deliberately humiliated poorer children it was legally obliged to take in.

Parents of four children at the school in Bangalore complained that staff cut off tufts of their hair and denied them the same uniform as other students.

The children are reportedly from low-caste Hindu communities, enrolled under a recent anti-discrimination law.

There has been no response so far from the school itself.

A senior official in the Karnataka state department of education, Kumar Nayak, told the BBC that an inquiry was under way.

"Necessary action will be taken if the charge is proved," he said.

Indian schools are supposed to reserve up to a quarter of their places for children from poorer backgrounds.

Public service marks Mandela's birthday - CNN.com

Public service marks Mandela's birthday - CNN.com: South Africans celebrated Nelson Mandela's 94th birthday Wednesday by participating in good deeds nationwide to honor the legacy of the famous statesman.

The frail icon has not appeared in public for years, but he is celebrated worldwide on his birthday for his role in reconciling a country torn apart by apartheid.

In South Africa, citizens performed at least 67 minutes of public service on his birthday, a reference to the number of years he devoted to helping others.

In Mandela's childhood village of Qunu, relatives, including children and grandchildren, gathered to mark his birthday and perform community service at the local health centers.

The family will get together for a meal that will include a champagne toast -- which the ailing Mandela cannot partake in -- and his favorite dish of tripe, a meat delicacy.

Children With Disabilities Are Victimized More Often - NYTimes.com

Children With Disabilities Are Victimized More Often - NYTimes.com: Children with disabilities are almost four times more likely to be victims of violence than other children, according to a new report commissioned by the World Health Organization.

The report, published in The Lancet on Thursday, found that disabled children were 3.6 times more likely to be physically assaulted and 2.9 times more likely to be sexually assaulted.

The most common victims of sexual assault were those with mental illness or retardation, and institutionalized children were attacked more often than those living at home.

Last week’s report was a meta-analysis of 17 other studies that collectively gathered evidence on 18,374 children, all of them living in wealthy countries, from the United States to Europe to Israel. About 3 percent of children in rich countries and up to 6 percent in poor ones have disabilities.

Rediscovered Black Travel Guide Series adds to U.S. Segregation Era History

Rediscovered Black Travel Guide Series adds to U.S. Segregation Era History: A travel guide series for African-Americans dating back to 1936 has resurfaced in recent years, attracting considerable attention in the news media and in popular culture. The guide, The Negro Motorist Green Book (also called The Negro Travelers' Green Book) was published by Harlem postal worker and civic leader Victor H. Green and it listed Black-friendly destinations based on accounts from travelers, who had to navigate across a nation that had severely curtailed motorist amenities for Blacks.

Reporting in the TheRoot.com, writer Dr. Nsenga K. Burton mentions how Green’s travel series inspired Atlanta playwright Calvin Alexander Ramsey to write a play entitled The Green Book. The play spins a tale in which a Black military officer and his wife stay in a "tourist home" (private homes identified as safe places for travel) with a Holocaust survivor on the eve of a speech being given by W.E.B. Du Bois in Jefferson City, Mo.

Piecing Together Stories Of Families 'Lost In Slavery' : NPR

Piecing Together Stories Of Families 'Lost In Slavery' : NPR: For decades, slavery tore apart African-American families. Children were sold off from their mothers, and husbands were taken from their wives. Many desperately tried to keep track of each other, even running away to find loved ones. After the Civil War and emancipation, these efforts intensified. Freed slaves posted ads in newspapers and wrote letters — seeking any clue to a family member's whereabouts.

In Help Me to Find My People, author Heather Andrea Williams examines the emotional toll of separation during slavery and of the arduous journey many slaves took to reunite their families.

Williams uses letters, public records, slave narratives and other historical documents to re-create the wrenching scenes of separation that happened on plantations and farms, in marketplaces and on auction blocks.

Md. student achievement growth is tops in the nation, report finds - Maryland Schools Insider - The Washington Post

Md. student achievement growth is tops in the nation, report finds - Maryland Schools Insider - The Washington Post: Maryland students led the nation in growth in reading, science and math performance on a national test, according to a report released this week.

The analysis by a Stanford economist and Harvard education policy expert surveyed student performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress between 1995 and 2009 to see whether reforms, such as the introduction of school accountability programs or increased spending on education, were making a difference in a yawning international achievement gap.

American students gained the equivalent of one additional year of learning over that time, they estimated. And in top-performing states, including Maryland, students acquired an additional two years of learning in the same period.

William Raspberry dies at 76: Washington Post columnist wrote about social issues including race, poverty - The Washington Post

William Raspberry dies at 76: Washington Post columnist wrote about social issues including race, poverty - The Washington Post: William Raspberry, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post whose fiercely independent views illuminated conflicts concerning education, poverty, crime and race, and who was one of the first black journalists to gain a wide following in the mainstream press, died July 17 at his home in Washington. He was 76.

He had prostate cancer, said his wife, Sondra Raspberry.

Mr. Raspberry wrote an opinion column for The Post for nearly 40 years before retiring in 2005. More than 200 newspapers carried his syndicated columns, which were filtered through the prism of his experience growing up in the segregated South.

His writings were often provocative but seldom predictable. Although he considered himself a liberal, Mr. Raspberry often bucked many of the prevailing pieties of liberal orthodoxy. He favored integration but opposed busing children to achieve racial balance. He supported gun control but — during a time when the District seemed to be a free-fire zone for drug sellers — he could understand the impulse to shoot back.

Economic Mobility For African Americans May Be A Myth, Pew Report Shows

Economic Mobility For African Americans May Be A Myth, Pew Report Shows: The fine line between the American Dream and the African-American Dream is becoming more distinct, according to a recent report by the Pew Charitable Trusts, a nonprofit research organization.

The survey of economic mobility across generations compared the income and wealth of Americans with that of their parents at the same age, and it offered a promising outlook for most Americans -- 84 percent to be exact -- who were shown to have higher incomes than their parents, when adjusted for inflation.

African Americans, however, haven't had the same success, with just 23 percent of blacks raised in the middle class surpassing their parents’ family wealth, compared to 56 percent of whites.

The study's project manager, Erin Currier, said the results aren't far off from what a simliar 2008 survey found. "With this newest update to the data, we can see that not much has changed with a few more years of data added in," Currier told The Huffington Post. "Specifically, African Americans are much more likely than whites to be stuck at the bottom of the income ladder over a generation, and also at the bottom of the wealth ladder," she said. They're also more likely to fall from the middle.

Pride and Prejudice | Mother Jones

Pride and Prejudice | Mother Jones: "Unbranded" is a series of images taken from magazine advertisements targeting a black audience or featuring black subjects, which I digitally manipulated and appropriated. In this work-in-progress project that will ultimately span from 1969 through the present, I have removed all aspects of advertising information, e.g., text, logos, in order to reveal what is being sold. Nothing more has been altered. I believe that in part, advertising's success rests on its ability to reinforce generalizations around race, gender, and ethnicity that can be entertaining, sometimes true, and sometimes horrifying, but which at a core level are a reflection of the way a culture views itself or aspirations. By "Unbranding" advertisements I can literally expose what Roland Barthes refers to as "what-goes-without-saying" in ads, and hopefully encourage viewers to look harder and think deeper about the empire of signs that have become second nature to our experience of life in the modern world.

‘The Voice’ silenced: Britain’s largest black newspaper barred from Olympic Stadium | theGrio

‘The Voice’ silenced: Britain’s largest black newspaper barred from Olympic Stadium | theGrio: Black Britons have expressed outrage that Britain’s longest serving and biggest black newspaper, The Voice, has been denied accreditation to the Olympic Stadium.

In an interview with theGrio, Sports Editor Rodney Hinds says staff at the paper “are stunned by the decision” and the “outpouring of support from our community has been overwhelming.”

The paper’s managing director George Ruddock said “he was extremely disappointed The Voice will not be inside the stadium,” despite the high number of black British athletes on the national team.

Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio faces civil racial profiling suit | The Raw Story

Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio faces civil racial profiling suit | The Raw Story: The self-proclaimed “toughest sheriff in America”, Joe Arpaio, will be called to account in a courtroom this week over long-standing accusations that he is waging an unlawful campaign of discrimination and harassment against Latinos.

Arpaio, the sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, will be questioned before a federal judge in Phoenix in a class action lawsuit over allegations that his so-called “crime suppression” sweeps racially profile Latinos and those who look like them rather than target any evidence of criminal activity.

The sheriff, who has endorsed Mitt Romney for president and was in the audience at the televised Republican debate in Arizona, is already the subject of a civil lawsuit brought by the justice department, in a similar but broader case accusing him of widespread civil rights abuses.

UNCF/Merck Grants Awarded To Address Minority STEM Underrepresentation

UNCF/Merck Grants Awarded To Address Minority STEM Underrepresentation: The UNCF/MERCK Science Initiative (UMSI) announced on Monday that it is awarding 37 scholarships and fellowships to African-American students in biological science and engineering disciplines.

Since 1995, the United Negro College Fund (UNCF) and Merck, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, have partnered to award scholarships and fellowships to 627 undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral students, as a means to address a national problem of the underrepresentation of African-Americans in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math).

According to the National Science Board's report “Science and Engineering Indicators 2012,” U.S. undergraduates are pursuing degrees in the STEM disciplines at a significantly lower rate than in other countries. Only 16 percent of U.S. undergraduates graduate with a natural science and engineering degree, compared to 24 percent in the EU and 44 percent in China.

Report: California Schools Serving Socially Disadvantaged Students Send Too Few to College

Report: California Schools Serving Socially Disadvantaged Students Send Too Few to College: The vast majority of California high schools that serve high numbers of low-income students and students of color do a poor job of sending their students on to college, a new report has found.

“The implications are pretty bad,” said Orville Jackson, senior research analyst at The Education Trust – West and lead author of the report, titled “Repairing the Pipeline: A Look at Gaps in California’s High School to College Transition.”

A major finding of the report is that college-going rates for African-American and Latino ninth-grade students lag behind the rates of White and Asian students by 20 to more than 30 percentage points. Fewer than half of such ninth-graders go to college upon graduation from high school or shortly thereafter, and the college-going rates for low-income students were just as low, the report found

“This is our population. It’s a growing population,” Jackson said of students of color in California. “We’re actually underserving the majority of our population in this state.”

African Union chooses first female leader | The Raw Story

African Union chooses first female leader | The Raw Story: A South African politician has become the first female leader of the African Union (AU), ending months of bitter deadlock at the continental body.

Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma, South Africa’s home affairs minister, was elected chair of the African Union Commission on Sunday at a summit of heads of state and government in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Cheering broke out at the AU’s headquarters as supporters of Dlamini-Zuma, 63, celebrated her victory over the incumbent Jean Ping of Gabon.

“We made it!” a grinning Zimbabwean delegate shouted, reflecting the strong support Dlamini-Zuma’s candidacy received from fellow members of the Southern African Development Community.
The South African president, Jacob Zuma, former husband of the winning candidate, emerged from the conference hall where the voting had taken place to announce that “Africa is happy!” Her victory would empower women, he added.

Gordon Parks's Alternative Civil Rights Photographs - NYTimes.com

Gordon Parks's Alternative Civil Rights Photographs - NYTimes.com: Gordon Parks’s portrait of Mr. and Mrs. Albert Thornton Sr., an older black couple in their Mobile, Ala., home in 1956, appears to have little in common with the images we have come to associate with civil rights photography.

It is in color, unlike most photographs of the movement. Its subject matter was neither newsworthy nor historic, unlike more widely published journalistic images of the racial murders, police brutality, demonstrations and boycotts that characterized the epic battle for racial justice and equality.

... Throughout a century of oppression, photography served as a ray of light for black Americans, illuminating the humanity, beauty and achievements long hidden in the culture at large. By allowing a people to record and celebrate the affirmative aspects of their lives, the camera helped to countermand the toxic effects of stereotypes on their self-esteem.

Morgan State Hosts White House Meeting on African-American Affairs

Morgan State Hosts White House Meeting on African-American Affairs: About 150 people gathered at Morgan State University Friday to pose questions, concerns and complaints at a contingent of Obama administration officials promoting the president’s “An America Built to Last” platform.

The event—the fourth and final “White House African American Regional Policy Forum”— vacillated in tone between the Administration’s buoyant promotion and subdued skepticism from audience members.

On the one hand, administration officials touted a number of initiatives—from boosting Pell grants to enabling mortgage modifications—that they contend staved off worse economic woes than what they say would have otherwise befallen many African-Americans in the aftermath of the recession that commenced toward the tail end of the Bush administration.

Why isn’t the Cosby Show for a new generation on network TV? - The Washington Post

Why isn’t the Cosby Show for a new generation on network TV? - The Washington Post: Today, the only way some Americans get insight into what life is like for a black family is by watching snippets of the Obamas on the nightly news. No English-language network program centers around a black family — or an Asian or Hispanic family either — except Fox’s “The Cleveland Show.” And that’s animated.

I never thought that I’d have to search so hard on television to find a family that looks like the one I grew up in. My TV experience began in the age in which “The Cosby Show” was the king of television viewing among black and white families alike. Twenty years later, after the Huxtables went off the air, not one show on any of the major networks can even remotely challenge its place as the standard of black family life.

How Did Ex-Slave's Letter To Master Come To Be?

How Did Ex-Slave's Letter To Master Come To Be?: The photograph, scratched and undated, is captioned "Brother Jordan Anderson." He is a middle-aged black man with a long beard and a righteous stare, as if he were a preacher locking eyes with a sinner, or a judge about to dispatch a thief to the gallows.

Anderson was a former slave who was freed from a Tennessee plantation by Union troops in 1864 and spent his remaining 40 years in Ohio. He lived quietly and likely would have been forgotten, if not for a remarkable letter to his former master published in a Cincinnati newspaper shortly after the Civil War.

Treasured as a social document, praised as a masterpiece of satire, Anderson's letter has been anthologized and published all over the world. Historians teach it, and the letter turns up occasionally on a blog or on Facebook. Humorist Andy Borowitz read the letter recently and called it, in an email to The Associated Press, "something Twain would have been proud to have written."

Atty: Pa. beating case no race-bias bellwether | ajc.com

Atty: Pa. beating case no race-bias bellwether | ajc.com: ...But a federal trial that begins Monday in a police brutality lawsuit isn't the latest chapter on how Pittsburgh officers treat young black men — even though all three officers accused of wrongfully arresting and beating the 20-year-old black plaintiff, Jordan Miles, are white, his attorney said.

"I don't think this case is the kind of case that's a bellwether," said Miles' attorney J. Kerrington Lewis. "I think this is the kind of case that happens when you have policemen who are cutting corners and are actually rogue-type cops."

Jordan Miles was an 18-year-old violist at the city's performing arts high school when he was beaten and arrested walking to his grandmother's house in his crime-ridden neighborhood the night of Jan. 12, 2010. Officers Richard Ewing, Michael Saldutte and David Sisak contend Miles was acting suspiciously and they thought a bulge in his coat pocket was a gun. They later said they found only a soda bottle.

KKK Banner Found Outside Rockingham County Schools Administration Building (PHOTO)

KKK Banner Found Outside Rockingham County Schools Administration Building (PHOTO): A racially offensive banner referencing the Ku Klux Klan was found outside the Rockingham County Schools administration building in Eden, N.C., Wednesday morning, WFMY-TV reports.

Based on a picture of the banner obtained from the Rockingham County Sheriff's Office, the sign's text reads "We will get our monument back and no N----- loving City Council will stop us! The REAL KKK does not play!"

According to the Greensboro News & Record, the monument in question was knocked down by a driver last year. In May, the North Carolina United Daughters of the Confederacy got the green light to erect a new statue in the city-owned cemetery for Confederate soldiers. But the Historic Preservation Action Committee, however, wanted the statue fixed and moved to a downtown Reidsville location.

Wet Seal Looked For Workers With 'Blond Hair And Blue Eyes,' Ex-Employees Claim

Wet Seal Looked For Workers With 'Blond Hair And Blue Eyes,' Ex-Employees Claim: Wet Seal Inc has been sued by three former employees who accused it of discriminating against black store managers because they did not fit the image the U.S. retailer, which sells clothes for young women, wanted to convey.

According to a complaint filed Thursday in a federal court in Santa Ana, California, "the most senior executives" of Wet Seal adopted a "policy and practice" of discriminating against black store managers at Wet Seal and Arden B stores from at least 2008 because those workers did not fit its "brand image."

Wet Seal in a statement said it is an equal opportunity employer with a diverse workforce.

"We deny any and all allegations of race discrimination and will vigorously defend this matter," the company said.

The Wet Seal complaint quotes, among others, a senior vice president of store operations who allegedly emailed subordinates on March 3, 2009, after touring 20 stores in the Philadelphia area and Maryland, writing: "Store teams - need diversity/African American dominate - huge issue."

Trial of Soccer Star Terry Revolves Around Foul Language - NYTimes.com

Trial of Soccer Star Terry Revolves Around Foul Language - NYTimes.com: LONDON — When a soccer player named Anton Ferdinand took the stand in the trial of John Terry, an opposing player who is accused of racially abusing him in a game last year, he seemed embarrassed to tell the court what he himself had said first.

“Please do not worry about the language,” the prosecutor, Duncan Penny, told Mr. Ferdinand. “What did you call Mr. Terry?” 

There followed the first of many paint-peeling profanities, as Mr. Ferdinand, 27, and then Mr. Terry, 31, tried to lay out for the bemused spectators at London Magistrates’ Court what constitutes acceptable on-field chat in a typical professional soccer game. 

If it was an odd spectacle, hearing such language in a sober British courtroom full of sober British lawyers, so was this an odd case, one seemingly without precedent in British soccer history. Mr. Terry, captain of the Premier League team Chelsea, and captain of the England national team before his arrest, is charged with committing a racially aggravated public order offense — using a racial slur — against Mr. Ferdinand, a defender for Queens Park Rangers, in a game last October.

Wells Fargo To Pay Millions To Settle Accusations Of Racial Discrimination

Wells Fargo To Pay Millions To Settle Accusations Of Racial Discrimination: Wells Fargo Bank will pay at least $175 million to settle accusations that it discriminated against African-American and Hispanic borrowers in violation of fair-lending laws, the Justice Department announced Thursday.

Wells Fargo, the nation's largest residential home mortgage originator, allegedly engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination against qualified African-American and Hispanic borrowers from 2004 through 2009.

At a news conference, Deputy Attorney General James Cole said the bank's discriminatory lending practices resulted in more than 34,000 African-American and Hispanic borrowers in 36 states and the District of Columbia paying higher rates for loans solely because of the color of their skin.

Cole said that with the settlement, the second largest of its kind in history, the government will ensure that borrowers hit hard by the housing crisis will have an opportunity to access homeownership.

How Stereotypes Can Drive Women To Quit Science : NPR

How Stereotypes Can Drive Women To Quit Science : NPR: Walk into any tech company or university math department, and you'll likely see a gender disparity: Fewer women than men seem to go into fields involving science, engineering, technology and mathematics.

Over the years, educators, recruiters and government authorities have bemoaned the gender gap and warned that it can have dire consequences for American competitiveness and continued technological dominance.

It isn't just that fewer women choose to go into these fields. Even when they go into these fields and are successful, women are more likely than men to quit.

"They tend to drop out at higher rates than their male peers," said Toni Schmader, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia. "As women enter into careers, the levels of advancement aren't as steep for women as for men.