Black models charge fashion industry with ‘racism’ as Paris designers defend selections | The Raw Story

Black models charge fashion industry with ‘racism’ as Paris designers defend selections | The Raw Story: Paris fashion this week tiptoed around the scarcity of black models on the catwalk with reaction reflecting the growing controversy surrounding the issue highlighted by models Naomi Campbell and Iman.

Designers told AFP their only concern was to find models who embodied the spirit of their creations irrespective of skin colour.

And one industry professional put the lack of black faces down to a minimalist trend that has sparked a demand for Asian models.

“I don’t only do shows for white girls, but I don’t do quotas (either). I choose girls that please me,” said Belgian designer Anthony Vaccarello, whose show included Asian and mixed race models.

Another designer, Damir Doma, told AFP: “I never judge anyone by skin… I’m looking for the right personality.”
Doma’s show featured one black and two Asian models but the number could me “be more or less”, he said.

“It depends on the season and the girl that comes to the casting. If she’s right for the clothes I would definitely take her,” he said.

Student Loan Changes Squeeze Historically Black Colleges : Code Switch : NPR

Student Loan Changes Squeeze Historically Black Colleges : Code Switch : NPR: Stricter lending guidelines for federal school loans have made it harder to borrow money for college. Changes made in 2011 to the PLUS loan program especially have hurt historically black colleges and universities, or HBCUs, over the past few years.

An increase in Parent PLUS Loan denials contributed to a recent drop in student enrollment at many HBCUs, including Howard University in Washington, D.C. Moody's Investors Service recently downgraded the school's credit rating, citing a dip in full-time-student enrollment by about 6 percent in fall 2012 as one of a number of financial challenges facing the school.

This semester, enrollment numbers have begun to recover at Howard, but many schools, like , are still reeling from recruiting fewer students.

University Heritage Language Programs on the Rise - Higher Education

University Heritage Language Programs on the Rise - Higher Education: ...To help them fill in the gaps, universities are adapting their foreign language curriculum, in part to better prepare graduates for a globalized world where it pays to be professionally fluent in more than one language.

Children in multi-lingual homes grow up a step ahead of other would-be language learners. They can easily engage in small talk or follow the latest soap opera in their families’ native language. Yet when it comes to meatier topics, or reading and writing, they are stuck.

The linguistic gaps become apparent in high school, where these students can snooze through basic language classes but often drown in more advanced ones if their heritage language is even offered. After all, how many American high schools offer Arabic or Korean?

With 37 million Spanish-speakers in America, most heritage classes are in Spanish, and courses have bloomed across campuses in California, Florida and several Southwestern states. They have also begun to take hold in schools like Harvard University, which added a course this year.

Education Secretary Issues Apology to HBCU Leaders - Higher Education

Education Secretary Issues Apology to HBCU Leaders - Higher Education: WASHINGTON, D.C. — U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan issued a public apology to the leaders of the nation’s historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) for the Obama administration’s decision to change the criteria of the popular Parent PLUS Loan program without consulting with them first.“I have talked with many of the people in this room about the PLUS Loan challenges, and I know it’s been hard, it’s been frustrating, and some of you are angry,” Duncan told the HBCU college presidents, administrators and faculty who gathered at the Hilton in Washington, D.C. for the kickoff of the National HBCU Week Conference. “I am not satisfied with the way we handled the updating of PLUS Loans, and I apologize for that.”

The apology comes after a year of heightened tensions between HBCU college presidents and the administration following a dramatic decrease in student enrollment at many of the 106 HBCUs after thousands of parents were deemed ineligible for the popular loan program due to the new credit criteria imposed by the Department of Education.

Census data mask poverty suffered by some Asian American groups - latimes.com

Census data mask poverty suffered by some Asian American groups - latimes.com: Sixteen-year-old Mary Sem worries about her family. She has overheard her mother crying over memories of loved ones she lost to the Khmer Rouge. Her father and older sisters struggle to cover rent and the perpetual bills.

Her college dreams are hitched to helping them. If Mary got a degree and a good job, "my family would be able to pay the bills on time," the teen said one day after school in Long Beach. "They wouldn't need to worry about anything."

The Sems, who trace their roots to Cambodia, have little in common with the stereotype of Asian Americans as a "model minority" that is faring well economically. Poverty is less common, on average, among Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders than the Los Angeles County average, data from the U.S. Census Bureau show. But those overall statistics mask deep financial woes among some Asian Americans, a report released Wednesday shows.

A. Knighton Stanley, influential pastor and civil rights activist, dies at 76 | The Journal Gazette

A. Knighton Stanley, influential pastor and civil rights activist, dies at 76 | The Journal Gazette: A. Knighton Stanley, a civil rights leader who helped bring Jesse Jackson to prominence as an activist in the 1960s and who became a political force in Washington as pastor of Peoples Congregational United Church of Christ for nearly 40 years, died Sept. 21 at a hospital in Atlanta. He was 76.

The cause was a heart attack, said his daughter Kathryn Stanley.

The son of a congregationalist minister, A. Knighton Stanley graduated from Yale Divinity School in 1962 and then returned with urgency to his home town of Greensboro, N.C., amid growing tensions over civil rights protests. “Here I am in the nice beautiful North, and my people are fighting this revolution,” Stanley later recalled.

The city had drawn national attention in 1960 when students at the city’s historically black colleges led sit-ins at Woolworth’s because they had been denied service on the basis of their race. But when the community did nothing more to integrate many of its theaters, emporiums and other public accommodations, the pickets and protests continued afresh.

What Parents Tell Their Kids About Race : Code Switch : NPR

What Parents Tell Their Kids About Race : Code Switch : NPR: Like so much of the advice that parents give their children, conversations about race often say a great deal about the values parents hold most dear. And like so much other parental advice, kids are often keen to reject it outright — or remix it for themselves. (In July, when news broke that George Zimmerman was acquitted of manslaughter, we asked parents to share what they told their kids after the verdict was announced.)

When we asked people to share their stories about how their parents and family discussed race, we were overwhelmed with the responses. Unlike lots of conversations about race, folks eschewed self-congratulation and preachiness in favor of candor and uncertainty. A lot of people felt their parents meant well, but had left them ill-prepared to deal with race as adults. Others pointedly criticized their parents' attitudes.

How Bank Of America Neglects Minority Neighborhoods (And Why They Might Get Away With It)

How Bank Of America Neglects Minority Neighborhoods (And Why They Might Get Away With It): Bank of America (BOA) is falling short of its obligations around foreclosed properties in predominantly black and hispanic neighborhoods, according to a complaint filed with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on Wednesday. It is the second such well-documented allegation of discrimination by BOA from the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) in the past year, but the evidence NFHA has now mustered twice in support of the charge could be rendered legally moot by a Supreme Court case that threatens to gut housing discrimination law.

When a bank forecloses on a home it has a legal duty to maintain the property to some basic standard so as not to depress property values for neighboring homeowners. NFHA inspectors went to foreclosed homes either owned or managed by BOA in various cities and evaluated the upkeep of foreclosed properties in both predominantly white and predominantly minority neighborhoods, and found that more than half of the bank-owned properties in minority areas showed multiple signs of neglect. None of the bank-owned homes in white neighborhoods that NFHA inspectors went to showed similar levels of neglect. Wednesday’s complaint adds to an already large pile of evidence from NFHA inspectors, who first started reporting data on discriminatory patterns of neglect from foreclosing banks in 2009.

Book News: North Carolina County Reverses 'Invisible Man' Ban : The Two-Way : NPR

Book News: North Carolina County Reverses 'Invisible Man' Ban : The Two-Way : NPR: On Wednesday evening, the Randolph County school board in North Carolina 6 to 1 to retract its ban on Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man at school libraries. In the days after the board took the classic novel about race and identity off library shelves in response to a parent complaint, the decision has drawn fierce criticism and national scrutiny. Vintage, the book's publisher, donated copies to a nearby bookstore to be given away for free to students, and waiting lists for the book grew at local libraries and bookstores. Board member Gary Cook told the Los Angeles Times, "We may have been hammered on this and we may have made a mistake, but at least we're big enough to admit it."

Schools criticized for bans on dreadlocks, afros

Schools criticized for bans on dreadlocks, afros: "Why are you so sad?" a TV reporter asked the little girl with a bright pink bow in her hair.

"Because they didn't like my dreads," she sobbed, wiping her tears. "I think that they should let me have my dreads."

With those words, second-grader Tiana Parker of Tulsa, Oklahoma, found herself, at age 7, at the center of decades of debate over standards of black beauty, cultural pride and freedom of expression.

It was no isolated incident at the predominantly black Deborah Brown Community School, which in the face of outrage in late August apologized and rescinded language banning dreadlocks, Afros, mohawks and other "faddish" hairstyles it had called unacceptable and potential health hazards.

A few weeks earlier, another charter school, the Horizon Science Academy in Lorain, Ohio, sent a draft policy home to parents that proposed a ban on "Afro-puffs and small twisted braids." It, too, quickly apologized and withdrew the wording.

Study: More Minority Students Taking SAT, Still Unprepared for College - Higher Education

Study: More Minority Students Taking SAT, Still Unprepared for College - Higher Education: The Class of 2013 had the largest percentage of minority students ever to take the SAT, but well over half of all students who took the college entrance exam failed to meet its “college and career readiness benchmark,” reveals a new report released Thursday by the College Board.

“There are those who tend to wave away the results because more diverse students are taking (the SAT),” said David Coleman, president and CEO at the College Board.

But in order for the nation to prosper, Coleman said, educators must “dramatically increase the number of students in K-12 who are prepared for college and careers.”

“We at the College Board consider this a call to action,” Coleman said of the lackluster results contained in the “2013 SAT Report on College & Career Readiness.”

“We cannot wave away the results by saying different kids are taking this exam,” he added.

The report shows that the percentage of students who scored at least 1550—a score the College Board says is associated with a B-minus or higher in college and a “high likelihood of college success”—is at 43 percent.

The figure is the same as it was for the previous two years and one percentage point lower than in 2009 and 2010 when it stood at 44 percent.

Proposed Power Lines Tangle With Native American History : NPR

Proposed Power Lines Tangle With Native American History : NPR: Imagine running power lines through a cathedral. That's how archaeologists describe what the Bonneville Power Administration proposes doing in the Columbia River Gorge in Washington state. The federal electricity provider is trying to string near a cave that contains ancient paintings, a site considered sacred by Native Americans.

The paintings are inside a tall cave on a rocky hillside in Wishram, Wash. Four humanlike figures were painted in red hundreds or even thousands of years ago. And that's not all.

"There's actually a very complex picture on this wall. You can see little elements of it over here in a different color," says Mike Taylor, an amateur archaeologist who helped write a book on Columbia River rock art. He says for generations, Northwest tribes have used this place for vision quests and other spiritual ceremonies. They still do. In fact, it's so sensitive, the nearby Yakama Nation declined to speak on tape about this cave. Taylor says it's rare to find one still intact.

"In the rest of the world, a lot of people know about the painted caves in France and Spain, which were painted 15,000 to 30,000 years ago. To us here, this is about as close as we get from an archaeological perspective to anything like that," he says.

Gates Criticized for Securing $15 Million Gift from Wealthy Alumnus - Higher Education

Gates Criticized for Securing $15 Million Gift from Wealthy Alumnus - Higher Education: Colleges and universities across the nation have long held a tradition of naming their buildings, centers and professorships after wealthy donors.

But when Harvard University announced last week that Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. had secured a $15 million gift from alumnus Glenn H. Hutchins to build a research center for African and African American Studies, the news was hardly met with unanimous enthusiasm in some quarters of Black studies.

While Gates—who is frequently referred to by his nickname “Skip”—hailed the creation of the Hutchins Center as “one of the greatest days in the history of African American Studies at Harvard or anywhere in the academy,” others were downright dismissive.

“I refer to Skip Gates as the Booker T. Washington of Black studies,” said Dr. Raymond A. Winbush, who directs the Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University. “He commands most of his respect from White benefactors.”

Dubbed as one of the nation’s most recognized Black scholars, Gates has done what so many others have been unable to do: aggressively court wealthy donors like Hutchins and convince them to give generously to his growing academic empire, enabling him to operate at Harvard with an unparalleled degree of self-sufficiency.

‘An Education in Equality’ - NYTimes.com

‘An Education in Equality’ - NYTimes.com: When our son Idris was 4 years old, he was accepted to the Dalton School, a prestigious private school in Manhattan. Idris would become one of only a few black boys in a kindergarten class of about 90 students, where tuition rivaled that of private colleges. We decided to document this new world, following Idris over 13 years through graduation. (The story of Idris and one of his close friends became our feature-length documentary “American Promise,” from which this Op-Doc video is adapted.) What began as an exploration of diversity in New York’s elite private-school world grew into a story that touches on larger themes of identity, race and class in American society.

In this Op-Doc video, we have tried to encapsulate the journey of our son — a boy who comes of age with many privileges and many challenges — as well as our own. We sought to protect Idris from the African-American male achievement gap in education, where boys like him, regardless of their socioeconomic status, are confronted with experiences that affect their academic performance, as compared to their white counterparts. Among these are negative perceptions (which some researchers call “implicit bias”) about black boys’ capabilities in the classroom. There are also more direct threats, like the fear of being “stopped and frisked” by the police, or being stared at on the streets of the Upper East Side of Manhattan. 

Cherokee Nation Mourns as Veronica Is Returned to Adoptive Family - ICTMN.com

Cherokee Nation Mourns as Veronica Is Returned to Adoptive Family - ICTMN.com: In the end, it came down to one simple strategy: Waiting. As Dusten Brown faced the Damocles Sword of jail time and a felony warrant, Matt and Melanie Capobianco only had to wait.

Last week, as the clock was running down on the stay that the Oklahoma Supreme Court had granted him, Dusten Brown had tried to negotiate even a bare minimum of visitation with his daughter. At the beginning of the week, there was a hopeful offer that included three weeks in the summer, one weekend every other month in South Carolina, and with alternating Christmases, which seemed like a solid deal. But as the parties returned to court on Wednesday morning, the Capobiancos again reneged and the negotiations started all over again.

By Friday afternoon, they made one last half-hearted offer in which Brown would get to see his daughter roughly 10 hours a month in South Carolina, with supervision. But even that, according to insiders, was not written to include any kind of enforcement.

Even before they were virtually forced into mediation in a courthouse in Tulsa last week, Dusten Brown had tried to negotiate a settlement with the Capobiancos for months, which they outright rejected.

Report: Undocumented population in U.S. may be rising - First Read

Report: Undocumented population in U.S. may be rising - First Read: After declining during the economic downturn, the population of undocumented immigrants in the United States has leveled off and may even be increasing again, according to a new report.

The new assessment by the Pew Research Center’s Hispanic Trends Project estimates that 11.7 undocumented immigrants resided in the United States in March 2012, up from an estimated 11.3 million in 2009.

The country’s undocumented population peaked in 2007, when about 12.2 million unauthorized immigrants were living in the United States, according to the center’s estimates.

But after the economic recession, that population fell abruptly by about half a million.

Authors say that, while it is evident that the sharp decline in the undocumented immigrant population has leveled off, it’s unclear yet whether the population is definitively on the rise.

“Although it appears that the unauthorized Immigrant total has begun to grow again, the data are insufficient to say so definitively,” the authors write in their new report. “The difference in the size of the unauthorized population from 2010 (11.4 million) to 2012 (11.7 million), or from 2011 (11.5 million) to 2012 is not statistically significant.”

Slightly more than half of all unauthorized immigrants in the United States are from Mexico, according to the study.

Diverse Conversations: The Spirit of a Trailblazer - Higher Education

Diverse Conversations: The Spirit of a Trailblazer - Higher Education: Blazing a trail is no easy feat, especially as a minority female breaking into the presidential club in higher education, a traditionally male-dominated arena. Just ask Dr. Pamela Gunter-Smith, who, this summer, became the fourth president of York College of Pennsylvania and stands as the first female and first African-American president of the college.

Recently, I sat down with Gunter-Smith to talk about her newest challenge in leading York College and the past trailblazing efforts that brought her there.

Q: What thoughts were running through your mind when you got the offer from York College of Pennsylvania to serve as its president?

A: I was in an airport when I got the call from the board chair. I thought things had gone well, but I had expected the “nice to meet you, but we decided to go with a different candidate” call. I was thrilled when I was asked, “How would you like to be President G-S?” I believe that committees seek to generate a diverse pool of qualified candidates, but then they find that the “fit” isn’t right. York College is a wonderful institution, and I was, and am still, very honored to have been selected.

Pa. Accused of Short-changing Cheyney University - Higher Education

Pa. Accused of Short-changing Cheyney University - Higher Education: PHILADELPHIA—A group of concerned Cheyney University supporters alleged Monday that the state is discriminating against the historically Black institution, imperiling its ability to attract new students and stay afloat economically.

Pennsylvania officials denied any racial bias against Cheyney, one of 14 public universities overseen by the State System of Higher Education.

But a coalition called Heeding Cheyney’s Call sent a letter to Gov. Tom Corbett demanding equitable funding for the struggling school, and warned of a possible lawsuit.

The group’s attorney, university alumnus Michael Coard, said the current fiscal formula has led to inferior facilities, plummeting enrollment and a $14 million deficit at Cheyney.

That puts the school on unequal footing with the other 13 mainstream universities, making it harder to attract badly needed tuition dollars, he said.

HBCU Fundraising: No Longer Business as Usual - Higher Education

HBCU Fundraising: No Longer Business as Usual - Higher Education: For James A. Anderson, fundraising requires big risks to yield big gains. The Fayetteville State University Chancellor sets large goals, and he expects to obtain large returns on investment.

Recently, the oldest public institution in North Carolina kicked off the first phase of its $25 million, five-year capital campaign, the largest fundraiser in the school’s 147-year history. To date, the school has raised $7.1 million in cash and pledges during the first year, far exceeding the school’s one-year campaign high of $1.4 million. The second phase will kick off on Sept. 26.

“You have to set a target that sends a message that you have the ability to do significant fundraising,” said Anderson, who is in his fifth year at FSU. “As tough as it is fiscally for HBCUs, I don’t understand how they are not doing campaigns. This isn’t some arm-chair effort.”

BofA ordered to pay $2.2 million to black job seekers - chicagotribune.com

BofA ordered to pay $2.2 million to black job seekers - chicagotribune.com: Bank of America Corp was ordered to pay $2.18 million to 1,147 black job applicants over racial discrimination in hiring that kept qualified candidates from getting jobs, the U.S. Department of Labor said on Monday.

The decision by Linda Chapman, an administrative law judge at the Labor Department, awards back pay and interest to former candidates for teller and entry-level administrative and clerical positions in the bank's hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina.

Chapman concluded that Bank of America's "unfair and inconsistent selection criteria" led to the rejection of qualified black job candidates, the Labor Department said.

About $1.22 million would go to 113 people who were rejected for jobs between 2002 and 2005, and another $964,000 to 1,034 people who were rejected in 1993.

"Judge Chapman's decision upholds the legal principle of making victims of discrimination whole, and these workers deserve to get the full measure of what is owed to them," said Patricia Shiu, director of the Labor Department's Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFFCP), in a statement.

Germany gets its 1st black member of parliament | theGrio

Germany gets its 1st black member of parliament | theGrio: BERLIN (AP) — A Senegal-born chemist has become Germany’s first black federal lawmaker, and a woman of Turkish origin has become the first Muslim elected to Parliament from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative party, officials said Monday.

Although nearly one in five of Germany’s 80 million people are immigrants or the children or grandchildren of immigrants, relatively few have made it into the federal legislature. Until now there were no black lawmakers in Parliament, despite more than 500,000 people of recent African origin believed to be living in Germany.

“My election into the German Parliament is of historical importance,” said Karamba Diaby, 51, who moved to the city of Halle in 1986 after receiving a scholarship to study in communist East Germany.

Diaby, who gained German citizenship in 2001, said his priority would be to promote equal opportunities in education. “Every child born in Germany should have the chance to be successful in school regardless of their social background or the income of their parents,” he said.

More than a dozen first- or second-generation immigrants were elected to the 630-member lower house in Sunday’s vote. Most were with the Social Democratic Party, which Diaby represents, the environmentalist Green Party or the Left Party.

Top Pennsylvania school officials accused of racist texts: All blacks’ ‘last name is N*GGER!’ | The Raw Story

Top Pennsylvania school officials accused of racist texts: All blacks’ ‘last name is N*GGER!’ | The Raw Story: Two former high-ranking officials in one Pennsylvania school district are facing a criminal investigation over shocking racist and sexists text messages that were found on their work cell phones, authorities confirmed on Sunday.

In a statement to the Philadelphia Inquirer, Chester County District Attorney Thomas Hogan said that his office launched the probe after it received a transcript of the texts from district personnel.

An investigation by the Daily Local News found that the cell phone accounts were linked to former Coatesville Area School Superintendent Richard Como and former Director of Athletics and Activities Jim Donato. Both men had unexpectedly resigned during the first week of school in late August.

A timeline of events from the Daily Local News showed that the text messages were sent in June and a copy was provided to the school board in August after being discovered by the district’s IT department.
According to the paper, “the school board was made aware of the text messages and was prepared to allow Como and Donato to remain in their positions until the transcripts were leaked to the Chester County District Attorney’s Office, prompting a criminal investigation.”

In a transcript of the text messages obtained by Daily Local News, one of the men suggests that all African-Americans should have the N-word for their last name.

“All should have whatever first names they want… then last name is N*GGER!” he wrote. “Leroy N*gger, Preacher N*gger, Night train n*gger, clarence n*gger, Latoya n*gger, Thelma n*gger and so on.”

Is It Racist To 'Call A Spade A Spade'? : Code Switch : NPR

Is It Racist To 'Call A Spade A Spade'? : Code Switch : NPR: What happens when a perfectly innocuous phrase takes on a more sinister meaning over time?

Case in point, the expression "to call a spade a spade." For almost half a millennium, the phrase has served as a demand to "tell it like it is." It is only in the past century that the phrase began to acquire a negative, racial overtone.

Historians trace the origins of the expression to the Greek phrase "to call a fig a fig and a trough a trough." Exactly who was the first author of "to call a trough a trough" is lost to history. Some attribute it to Aristophanes, while others attribute it to the playwright Menander. The Greek historian Plutarch (who died in A.D. 120) used it in Moralia. The blogger Matt Colvin, who has a Ph.D. in Greek literature, recently pointed out that the original Greek expression and that the "figs" and "troughs" in question were double entendres.

Erasmus, the renowned humanist and classical scholar, translated the phrase "to call a fig a fig and a trough a trough" from Greek to Latin. And in so doing he dramatically changed the phrase to "call a spade a spade." (This may have been an incorrect translation but seems more likely to have been a creative interpretation and a deliberate choice.) "Spade" stuck because of Erasmus' considerable influence in European intellectual circles, writes the University of Vermont's Wolfgang Mieder in his 2002 case study Call a Spade a Spade: From Classical Phrase to Racial Slur.

Nation Leaders Highlight Critical Needs for the Future of American Universities - Higher Education

Nation Leaders Highlight Critical Needs for the Future of American Universities - Higher Education: New York – During a two-day conference that drew dozens of university heads, thought leaders and more, Dr. Norman Francis, president of Xavier University of Louisiana, stressed that American research universities must do a better job of engaging minority students in scientific research as well as provide internships and other career-building opportunities, in order for schools to maintain their global preeminence.

Francis made his remarks as an attendant of a discussion group at the TIME Summit on Higher Education, which brought together a cohort of leaders to discuss ways to garner more esteem and public dollars for basic research. Francis’ discussion group was charged with tackling the issue of preparing the next generation of faculty researchers and teachers.

As one of the few Black university leaders to attend the summit, Francis, who noted that large numbers of the next generation of college students will be African-American and Hispanic, said it is crucial that those students be educated in the sciences.

“If we don’t educate them in the sciences, to say nothing about all American youngsters, we’re not going to have the kind of legacy that we’ve had in this country for a long time,” Francis said.

As Affirmative Action Continues to be Threatened, Schools Weigh Diversity Options - Higher Education

As Affirmative Action Continues to be Threatened, Schools Weigh Diversity Options - Higher Education: As the Supreme Court continues its review of affirmative action policies in higher education, institutions are bracing themselves for the seemingly inevitable toppling of their programs.

The Supreme Court is set to begin reviewing Michigan’s affirmative action ban this fall, which was struck down last November in the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals when the court ruled it violated the Equal Protection clause of the 14th amendment.

“No more will race be … an important factor,” said Ohio State University law professor Dr. Philip T.K. Daniel. “What [the ruling in] Fisher [v. the University of Texas] does is introduce it as a diminished factor, and a highly diminished factor.”

“Even though not everyone wants to be able to consider race and affirmative action, everyone really likes the idea of racial diversity,” says Dr. Julie Park, a professor in the College of Education at the University of Maryland.

With policies like the University of Texas’ 10 percent rule coming under increased scrutiny, it is becoming more difficult for schools to reach the “critical mass” of minority students that they have agreed will facilitate the best possible educational environment.

University of Delaware Honors Civil Rights Lawyer for Inspiring Integration - Higher Education

University of Delaware Honors Civil Rights Lawyer for Inspiring Integration - Higher Education: The majority of first-year students who recently settled into the newly-built residence hall at the University of Delaware probably had never heard of Louis Lorenzo Redding, the pioneering civil rights lawyer whose name is emblazoned across their brick dormitory building.

But, in 1950, Redding singlehandedly changed the course of the university when he successfully filed a lawsuit on behalf of 10 African-American applicants who had been denied admittance to the university because they were Black. As a result of the lawsuit, UD became the first state-funded undergraduate institution in the nation to desegregate by court order.

Founded in 1743, because the University of Delaware had to be forced to admit Black students, it has long been a source of public embarrassment—a black eye across its storied history.
But in recent years—partly due to efforts made by UD president Dr. Patrick Harker—the university has been engaged in an ongoing campaign to confront its discriminatory past and right historical wrongs.

“In no small measure, Louis Redding made us the university we are today,” said Harker in a speech announcing the decision to name a dorm after Redding. “He showed us the path to diversity, equity, and inclusion—to justice and fairness for all.

Lewis Museum struggles with attendance, fundraising - baltimoresun.com

Lewis Museum struggles with attendance, fundraising - baltimoresun.com: The Reginald F. Lewis Museum of Maryland African American History & Culture, which opened in Baltimore with great fanfare in 2005, has fallen short of attendance and fundraising goals — forcing the state to shore up its finances.

During the past five years, annual attendance has averaged 38,000, well short of the 150,000 projected when the Lewis Museum opened, according to data supplied by the museum. Meanwhile, museum officials acknowledge, it has failed to met a state requirement that it generate $2 million, half of its annual budget, in privately raised revenue.

That financial shortfall is being made up by Maryland taxpayers.

For the past two years, the state — which already contributes $2 million annually to the museum — has kicked in extra funds to make up the budget gaps: $430,000 this year and $450,000 last year.

South African Embassy Unveils Statue of Nelson Mandela | NBC4 Washington

South African Embassy Unveils Statue of Nelson Mandela | NBC4 Washington: A 10-foot tall statue of Nelson Mandela, his fist raised in a power salute, has been installed outside the South African Embassy in Northwest D.C. -- where activists in the 1980s staged sit-ins and protests that helped spur the U.S. to impose economic sanctions against apartheid.

Randall Robinson, founder of TransAfrica; Mary Frances Berry, former chair of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission; former D.C. delegate, Rev. Walter Fauntroy; and current delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton attended the unveiling Saturday.

Those four staged their protest on the day before Thanksgiving in 1984, when they arrived for a meeting with the South African ambassador and never left.

"We knew that once they announced they weren't going to leave, the press wouldn't be there too long. So we asked about 50 people to show," Sylvia Hill, a professor of criminal justice at the University of the District of Columbia, told WAMU. "We had a picket line chanting 'Free South Africa and Free Nelson Mandela!'"

Former Slavery Strongholds Harbor Majority Of Nation's Racists, Study Shows (INFOGRAPHIC)

Former Slavery Strongholds Harbor Majority Of Nation's Racists, Study Shows (INFOGRAPHIC): 150 years has done little to shift anti-black attitudes in the some parts of the country, new analysis of census data and opinion polls shows.

In what is believed to be the first report to quantitatively demonstrate the lasting effects of slavery on contemporary political attitudes in the American South, a team of political scientists from the University of Rochester examined party affiliations and views on race-related policies such as affirmative action of more than 39,000 southern whites.

What they found: That a "slavery effect" persists among white Southerners who currently live in the Cotton Belt where slavery and the plantation economy thrived from the late 18th century into the 20th century. Residents of those counties are much more likely today to express more negative attitudes toward blacks than their fellow Southerners who live in nearby areas that had few slaves; are more likely to identify as Republican; and are more likely to express opposition to policies like affirmative action, the study authors concluded.

This Tiny Town Is Trying To Stop Neo-Nazis From Taking Over : Code Switch : NPR

This Tiny Town Is Trying To Stop Neo-Nazis From Taking Over : Code Switch : NPR: A white supremacist has plans to take over a tiny town in North Dakota and turn it into one for whites only. This weekend, members of one of the nation's largest neo-Nazi organizations will descend upon the town in a step toward making that vision a reality — and several residents are trying to stop them.

Leith, N.D., which sits 3 miles off the nearest paved road, has been in decline for decades. The railroad, schools and most of the town's businesses and residents are gone. Many buildings are held together by rotting boards and slabs of concrete. At the urging of residents, the county health department has condemned several of the structures.

It's part of an effort to stop Craig Cobb, a white supremacist, from easily moving in others like him to take over the town and its small local government.

Bobby Harper, who lives right across an alleyway from Cobb, is the only black resident in the town of 24 people. He says he was prepared to tolerate Cobb as long as he kept to himself, but he's angry now that Cobb has invited other white separatists to join him.

Obama Nominates Native American Woman to Federal Court - ICTMN.com

Obama Nominates Native American Woman to Federal Court - ICTMN.com: Responding to widespread requests from tribal leaders and Indian legal advocates, President Barack Obama has nominated a Native American to serve on the federal bench.

The president announced September 19 that Diane J. Humetewa is a nominee for the U.S. District Court for Arizona. She is a Hopi citizen, and from 2002 to 2007 she served as an appellate court judge for the Hopi Tribe Appellate Court.

Obama has previously nominated one tribal citizen to serve on the federal bench, Arvo Mikkanen, of the Kiowa Tribe, but Republican senators successfully blocked that nomination during the president’s first term. Oklahoma’s senators in particular expressed frustration that the administration did not consult with them on the nomination, but they would not say specifically what their problem with Mikkanen was at the time. The administration pushed back, with White House officials laying full blame with Senate Republicans, saying it was part of their overall plan to thwart the president.

Black students invited to pledge Alabama sororities

Black students invited to pledge Alabama sororities: After a tumultuous several days in which a highly publicized campus news article alleged widespread race discrimination in the University of Alabama pledging process, school president Judy Bonner on Friday night issued a video statement in which she said diversity is increasing in the school's Panhellenic world.

Seventy-two bids – offers to allow a person to pledge – have been offered by the mostly white sororities on the Tuscaloosa campus in the last week, Bonner said. Of those, 11 went to black women and three to women representing other minority groups, Bonner said. Four black women accepted and two women representing other minority groups accepted.

"This campus will be a place of inclusion and opportunity for all," Bonner said in the statement. "We will do the right thing, for the right reason, the right way."

The several-minute video was the second released this week by the president since The Crimson White, the campus news organization, published a piece detailing how the daughter of a state senator and granddaughter of a trustee – a young woman with high grades – was denied a chance to pledge 16 of the primarily white sororities on campus. The piece painted a picture of a staunchly segregated Panhellenic system on campus controlled, in some cases and in part, by alumni.

North Carolina school board bans Ralph Ellison’s ‘Invisible Man’ | The Raw Story

North Carolina school board bans Ralph Ellison’s ‘Invisible Man’ | The Raw Story: A North Carolina school board has banned Ralph Ellison’s 1952 novel Invisible Man from its reading list on Monday, citing a lack of “literary value.”

The Asheboro Courier-Tribune reported that the Randolph County Board of Education voted 5-2 to remove the book following a complaint by a parent, Kimiyutta Parson.

“This novel is not so innocent; instead, this book is filthier, too much for teenagers,” Parson wrote in a 12-page statement to the board. “You must respect all religions and point of views when it comes to the parents and what they feel is age appropriate for their young children to read, without their knowledge. This book is freely in your library for them to read.”

In his acceptance speech after winning the National Book Award for Fiction in 1953, Ellison described the book as his attempt to bring back “the mood of personal moral responsibility for democracy” common in 19th-century fiction.

“When I examined the rather rigid concepts of reality which informed a number of the works which impressed me and to which I owed a great deal, I was forced to conclude that for me and for so many hundreds of thousands of Americans, reality was simply far more mysterious and uncertain, and at the same time more exciting, and still, despite its raw violence and capriciousness, more promising,” Ellison said at the time.

Cartagena Says Access to Higher Ed Remains Major Focus of Civil Rights Struggle - Higher Education

Cartagena Says Access to Higher Ed Remains Major Focus of Civil Rights Struggle - Higher Education: Juan Cartagena, president and general counsel of LatinoJustice PRLDEF, said Thursday that “access to education today is as important to Latinos as it was to the Black community in the struggle with Medgar Evers.”

Cartagena was discussing civil rights issues that impact the Latino community and how higher education is part of the discussion during an hour-long Twitter chat. His organization (www.latinojustice.org) was founded in 1972 by three Puerto Rican attorneys from New York with the goal of changing discriminatory practices toward Latino communities.

“We fight for equal access housing & healthcare, public services in Spanish, #workersrights, immigrant/migrant rights & education,” tweeted Cartagena, a constitutional and civil rights attorney with extensive experience overseeing litigation on behalf of Latino and African-American communities.

At Alabama, a Renewed Stand for Integration - NYTimes.com

At Alabama, a Renewed Stand for Integration - NYTimes.com: TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — For this rendition of Stand in the Schoolhouse Door, there were no National Guard troops or presidential edicts.

But on Wednesday, several hundred University of Alabama students and faculty members invoked Gov. George Wallace’s 1963 attempt to block the enrollment of black students here as they demanded an end to segregation in the university’s fraternities and sororities. Together, the mostly white group marched within sight of the President’s Mansion, one of the only structures on the campus dating to before the Civil War. 

Tracey Gholston, a black woman who is pursuing a doctorate in American literature at Alabama, said Mr. Wallace’s legacy continued to permeate the university, which has nearly 35,000 students, about 12 percent of them black, and 45 percent from out of state. 

“It shows a thread. It’s not just something that was resolved 50 years ago,” said Ms. Gholston, who has a master’s degree from the university. “You can’t say, ‘We’re integrated. We’re fine.’ We’re not fine.”

Meet Armando, Sesame Street's Newest Neighbor : Code Switch : NPR

Meet Armando, Sesame Street's Newest Neighbor : Code Switch : NPR: Sesame Street kicked off its new season this week, and it's putting a special focus on Hispanic heritage. There's also a new character on the block: Armando (also known as Mando). He's played by actor Ismael Cruz Cordova, who was born and raised in Puerto Rico. He earned a bachelor's in fine arts from New York University and has appeared in several films and the CBS drama The Good Wife. He's currently performing off-Broadway.

Cordova spoke with Tell Me More host Michel Martin about his new role on Sesame Street and what he's doing for Hispanic Heritage Month.

University Of Alabama Moves To Integrate Greek System : Code Switch : NPR

University Of Alabama Moves To Integrate Greek System : Code Switch : NPR: Students at the University of Alabama and community leaders are reacting to allegations that white sororities denied access to black women because of their race.

The student newspaper in Tuscaloosa, the Crimson White, ran a story that quotes sorority members who say they wanted to recruit at least two black candidates but the students' names were removed before members could vote on them.

One of the black women who sorority members say was pulled from consideration seemed the perfect recruit. She had a 4.3 grade point average. And she's from an influential family — the step granddaughter of Alabama Judge John England who is a University Trustee.

"Race may have played a factor or may even been the reason why, though not necessarily from the young people but from some alumni," says Judge England.

Several Hundred March Against Greek Segregation at University of Alabama - Higher Education

Several Hundred March Against Greek Segregation at University of Alabama - Higher Education: TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — Several hundred people marched Wednesday at the University of Alabama to oppose racial segregation among the school’s Greek-letter social organizations.

The marchers headed from the university library to the administration building, where the president’s office is located. The group was gathered on the steps of the administration building, standing behind a large banner that said “Last stand in the schoolhouse door.”

Faculty Senate President Steve Miller had announced the demonstration at a Faculty Senate meeting, where professors spoke out against long-standing racial segregation in fraternities and sororities.

School President Judy Bonner issued a video statement acknowledging the system is segregated by race. She is requiring that sororities belonging to a campus association composed of White sororities begin using a new recruitment process aimed at diversifying the groups.

The allegations that some groups had denied entry to Black students were first detailed by the student newspaper, The Crimson White.

College Students Aim to Deal with Bottom Line at Congressional Black Caucus Conference - Higher Education

College Students Aim to Deal with Bottom Line at Congressional Black Caucus Conference - Higher Education: WASHINGTON, D.C. — Voting Rights and the investment in STEM education was among the many topics discussed at the annual Congressional Black Caucus Foundation legislative conference that kicked off at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center yesterday.

The four-day program also trained a national spotlight on Stand Your Ground laws and racial profiling, which drew protests among the public in the aftermath of the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman.

“The time has come when we have to address these equity issues front and center,” said Jackie Williams, an adjunct college professor who traveled from New York City to attend the conference. “I’m here looking for real solutions to real problems. I want to engage with political leaders about the problems that confront our people. I’m tired of the talking.”

Financier’s $15 Million Gift to Expand Black Studies Research at Harvard - Higher Education

Financier’s $15 Million Gift to Expand Black Studies Research at Harvard - Higher Education: Harvard University announced Wednesday that it is launching the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research with a $15 million gift from a family foundation endowed by financier and Harvard alum Glenn Hutchins. The Hutchins Center will supersede the W.E.B. Du Bois Research Institute for African and African American Research, which houses the institutes, archives, publications and libraries associated with Harvard’s well-known Department of African and African-American Studies.

The new center will encompass the Du Bois Research Institute, the Hiphop Archive and Research Institute, the Image of the Black Archive and Library, the Du Bois Review, Transition Magazine, the Neil L. and Angelica Zander Rudenstine Gallery, and the Hutchins Family Library.

In addition, four new research entities will come under the purview of the Hutchins Center. They are the Afro-Latin American Research Institute; the History Design Studio; the Program for the Study of Race and Gender in Science and Medicine; and the Ethelbert Cooper Gallery of African and African American Art, according to the university.

About | Latino Americans | PBS

About | Latino Americans | PBS: LATINO AMERICANS is a landmark three-part, six-hour documentary series that is set to air nationally on PBS in the fall of 2013.

It is the first major documentary series for television to chronicle the rich and varied history and experiences of Latinos, who have helped shape the United States over the last 500-plus years and have become, with more than 50 million people, the largest minority group in the U.S.

Immigration is at the heart of the American experience, and a central part of the long-running democratic experiment that is the United States. So it is that our series intersects much that is central to the history of the United States. The story includes expansionism, Manifest Destiny, the Wild West, multiple wars (Mexican-American, Spanish-American, World War II), the rise of organized labor, the Great Depression, the post WWII boom, the Cold War, the Civil Rights movement, globalization, and the effects of multiple kinds of technologies – from the railroad and barbed wire to the internet and satellite television.

Parents outraged after 12-year-old girl called racial slurs as part of slavery reenactment | The Raw Story

Parents outraged after 12-year-old girl called racial slurs as part of slavery reenactment | The Raw Story: A Connecticut couple is still seeking answers from their daughter’s school nearly a year after the girl said she’d been chased through the woods and called racial slurs as part of a slavery reenactment during a field trip.

James and Sandra Baker said their 12-year-old daughter came home from a four-day trip to Nature’s Classroom in Charlton, Mass., and told them about the activity, WFSB-TV reported.

The girl said students were led into a dark room, lined up and asked to imagine watching as their fathers were killed by slave masters before they were loaded onto slave ships.

The instructor ordered them to sit closely together and warned students that they would relieve themselves on one another and likely get sick, the girl said. She also told her parents that the instructor told her she may have to dance to entertain the others.

The students were then taken to some woods, where the girl said they pretended to pick cotton, and she told her parents the instructors called them animals who had no rights.

The instructors also threatened to whip her, cut her Achilles tendon or hang her if she tried to run away, Al Jazeera America reported.

A War Of Tweets Erupts Over Latest Miss America : Code Switch : NPR

A War Of Tweets Erupts Over Latest Miss America : Code Switch : NPR: Thirty years ago, African-Americans Vanessa Williams and Suzette Charles were the last two finalists at the 1983 Miss America pageant. It was an electric moment; for the first time in the event's history, the next Miss America was guaranteed to be a black woman. In the three decades since, seven other African-Americans have won the "scholarship pageant," which originally required that "contestants must be of good health and of the white race."

Last night, the 2013 pageant echoed 1983 when the last two contestants onstage were both Asian American . While there has already been one Asian-American Miss America — 2001's Angela Perez Baraquio, who is of Filipino descent — Sunday's pageant was a striking reminder of how diverse our nation has become. Five Asian-Americans were competing for the crown — the highest number in pageant history — and three of them made it to the top five: Miss Minnesota, Rebecca Yeh; Miss California, Crystal Lee; and Miss New York, Nina Davuluri.

To see two Asian-American women onstage, clutching hands, reveling in a ceiling-shattering moment, was stunning; to hear co-host Lara Spencer agree with Davuluri's comment that "We are making history right here as Asian-Americans" underscored the significance.

New College Options for Students with Disabilities - Higher Education

New College Options for Students with Disabilities - Higher Education: ALLEN PARK, Mich. — As he sits in class at Eastern Michigan University, a flood of images streams from Tony Saylor’s vibrant, creative mind down through his pen and onto paper.

Often, his doodling features the 9-year-old character, Viper Girl, who battles monsters with her pet fox Logan. Saylor, 22, has even self-published three books of their adventures.

Saylor’s professors didn’t exactly welcome his constant drawing, but once he explained it was the only way he could hope to process their lectures and even to stay awake, most let him continue.

For college students with autism and other learning disabilities, this is the kind of balancing act that takes place every day, accommodating a disability while also pushing beyond it toward normalcy and a degree, which is increasingly essential for finding a meaningful career.

University Hospital Recalls its Civil Rights Journey on 50th Anniversary of Birmingham Bombing - Higher Education

University Hospital Recalls its Civil Rights Journey on 50th Anniversary of Birmingham Bombing - Higher Education: If they had lived beyond the morning of September 15, 1963, four girls — Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley — who had just attended Sunday school at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. would now be in their sixties.

Instead, on that fateful Sunday 50 years ago, white sheets shrouded four small, Black corpses being wheeled through the Colored Only entrance of the emergency room at the University of Alabama, Birmingham’s (UAB) University Hospital. Before the carefree girls had a chance to bound up the basement stairs to the sanctuary for worship, a bomb planted in their church by the KKK killed them where they stood at 10:22 a.m. The blast injured other parishioners and ripped through sacred walls. When the ambulance carrying their mangled bodies pulled up to the hospital on the way to the morgue, an injured church member standing at the door recognized one of the girls by her shoe, she recounted decades later in an oral history.

Diverse Docket: TSU Wins Race, Gender Bias Suit; Will Head to Court for Retaliation Claim - Higher Education

Diverse Docket: TSU Wins Race, Gender Bias Suit; Will Head to Court for Retaliation Claim - Higher Education: Tennessee State University has won part of a race and gender bias suit filed by a female African-American financial aid counselor who was passed over for promotion, but it still faces a Nov. 12 jury trial in federal court on her retaliation claim.

The case was brought by Zakia Smith, who was hired in 2008 and applied unsuccessfully for promotion to a position as coordinator of state and private funds. A selection committee ranked her first and recommended that she be hired, court documents say. However, TSU’s financial aid director selected a White man whom the committee had ranked second, saying he was better-suited for the job.

Smith’s lawyer, Brian Winfrey of Nashville, said the judge missed “our real argument that she had superior qualifications across the board,” including superior education and extensive financial aid experience.

The suit also claims Smith was later demoted to a lower-paying, less prestigious call center job and harassed in retaliation for filing an internal grievance and an EEOC discrimination complaint.

California approves drivers’ licenses for undocumented immigrants | The Raw Story

California approves drivers’ licenses for undocumented immigrants | The Raw Story: California is expected to offer drivers’ and law licenses to undocumented immigrants following a vote by state lawmakers late Thursday night.

The Los Angeles Times reported that AB60 will introduce special drivers’ licenses bearing the marking “DP,” for “driver’s privilege.” The state Department of Motor Vehicles will set the guidelines on what documentation applicants must provide while applying for the license. The state Assembly passed the measure by a 55-19 vote, hours after it was approved in the state Senate in a 28-8 vote.

Gov. Jerry Brown (D) indicated in a statement Thursday night that he would sign the bill into law, arguing that it would both help keep safe drivers on the road and send a message to federal lawmakers about the need for immigration reform.

Police shoot, kill unarmed black man seeking assistance after ‘serious’ car accident | The Raw Story

Police shoot, kill unarmed black man seeking assistance after ‘serious’ car accident | The Raw Story: On Saturday, police in Charlotte, North Carolina shot and killed a 24-year-old man they now believe was seeking help after a being involved in a serious car accident.

Police Chief Rodney Monroe described the events of the evening, which ended in one of his officers, Randall Kerrick, turning himself in on charges of voluntary manslaughter.

At approximately 2:30 a.m., a man knocked at the door of a home in northeast Charlotte. The woman inside thought it was her husband and answered it, but was surprised to find “it was a person she did not know or recognize. She immediately closed the door, hit her panic alarm and called 911,” Monroe said.

The man allegedly continued to try to get the woman’s attention after she’d called 911.

Police arrived at the scene minutes later, at which point the deceased, former Florida A&M football player Jonathan Ferrell, “immediately charged towards the three officers, one in particular. That officer fired his weapon several times, striking individual multiple times.”

Ferrell died at the scene.

The Changing Face of America

The Changing Face of America: What is it about the faces on these pages that we find so intriguing? Is it simply that their features disrupt our expectations, that we’re not used to seeing those eyes with that hair, that nose above those lips? Our responses can range from the armchair anthropologist’s benign desire to unravel ancestries and find common ground to active revulsion at group boundaries being violated or, in the language of racist days past, “watered down.”

Out in the world, the more curious (or less polite) among us might approach, asking, “Where are you from?” or “What are you?” We look and wonder because what we see—and our curiosity—speaks volumes about our country’s past, its present, and the promise and peril of its future.

The U.S. Census Bureau has collected detailed data on multiracial people only since 2000, when it first allowed respondents to check off more than one race, and 6.8 million people chose to do so. Ten years later that number jumped by 32 percent, making it one of the fastest growing categories.

Civil Rights Justice on the Cheap - NYTimes.com

Civil Rights Justice on the Cheap - NYTimes.com: CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — VICTIMS often absorb the shame that should belong to the perpetrators. For most of her 62 years, Sarah Collins Rudolph has confronted that misplaced emotion every time she looks in the mirror at a glass substitute for the eye she lost 50 years ago today, when members of the Ku Klux Klan bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala. The same ambulance (colored) that took young Sarah to the hospital subsequently transported the corpse of her 14-year-old sister, Addie Mae Collins, who perished along with three other girls. The morning’s Sunday school lesson was on “The Love That Forgives.”

This anniversary year could have been an opportunity for Birmingham to practice some rigorous truth and painful reconciliation. It has ended up being a balkanized, largely ceremonial affair. The city’s Empowerment Week, an underpublicized festival of imported panelists and celebrities concluding today, exemplified the crux of the mission’s flaw: why is it so difficult to extend the notion of empowerment to include the powerless? We are more comfortable devoting civic resources to media events and monuments, like the life-size sculpture of the girls unveiled in Birmingham this week, than addressing the persistent casualties of the history being commemorated. 

At Fashion Week, Color Pops And Models Call For Diversity : Code Switch : NPR

At Fashion Week, Color Pops And Models Call For Diversity : Code Switch : NPR: Color continued to be a big deal on the New York runways during Fashion Week this week, but almost all the color was represented by the clothes being showcased in the new collections and not the models wearing them.

That lack of diversity has been a perennial problem in the fashion industry — at home and abroad — for at least the past 15 years. And while there may be an Asian or Hispanic girl from time to time (in this industry, everyone is a "girl"), discernibly black girls get token representation if they get it at all.

Twenty-two-year-old Chanel Iman Robinson was named in homage to two of her mother's fashion idols (she doesn't use her last name). She's one of the few in-demand black girls, but even she loses jobs when designers have filled their "black quota."

Chanel Iman told The Sunday Times Magazine that sometimes when she goes for casting calls for runway shows, she doesn't get to stay.

50 Years After The Bombing, Birmingham Still Subtly Divided : Code Switch : NPR

50 Years After The Bombing, Birmingham Still Subtly Divided : Code Switch : NPR: Fifty years ago Sunday, a Ku Klux Klan bomb at a Baptist church in Birmingham, Ala., killed four black girls and sent shock waves throughout the country.

In Birmingham, the tragedy laid bare a deep rift.

Carolyn McKinstry, standing on the sidewalk outside 16th Street Baptist Church, remembers arriving for worship 50 years ago.

"It was Youth Day," she says. "We were excited because that meant we got to do everything. We sang, we ushered, we did everything."

Some of her Sunday school classmates had gone to the ladies' room to freshen up.

"They were combing hair. No doubt they were excited about the fact it was Youth Sunday. Girls just like to talk and primp, you know."

McKinstry says it was 10:15 when the bomb went off.

"People screamed," she remembers. "Glass was crashing in. And I heard someone say, 'Hit the floor!' "

Later she learned that her classmates in the restroom — Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley and Addie Mae Collins — were killed, and Addie Mae's sister, Sarah, was seriously wounded.

Toddler, Dad Targeted In Brutal, Racist Attack In Sweden, Police Say

Toddler, Dad Targeted In Brutal, Racist Attack In Sweden, Police Say: After a man and his 18-month-old son were brutally attacked in what has been called a racially driven assault in Malmö, Sweden, anti-racism activists are taking to both the Internet and the streets to call for justice.

According to The Local, 32-year-old Yusupha Sallah and his son Yunus were out walking on a Malmö bridge Sunday, when a group of four people reportedly approached the duo. One of them is said to have "kicked a toy" out of the toddler's hand.

When Sallah stepped in to protect his son, the young boy was allegedly thrown to the ground while his dad was assaulted. According to local newspaper Sydsvenskan, several men rushed to the scene to participate in the beating.

Sallah, a Gambian native who has been living in Sweden for the last eight months, says he was called a "black bastard" and that his attackers threatened to kill him and his child.

"They beat and kicked his father on the body and the head. When he fell they tried to throw him off the bridge," Thomas Bull, head of Malmö Police Department's hate crime unit, told Sydsvenskan, per The Local.

How Latino Americans Have Shaped the U.S. and Fought for Acceptance | PBS NewsHour | Sept. 13, 2013 | PBS

How Latino Americans Have Shaped the U.S. and Fought for Acceptance | PBS NewsHour | Sept. 13, 2013 | PBS: JUDY WOODRUFF: Now back to the U.S. for a significant, but often untold piece of our nation's history, how Latino Americans have shaped the country.

Our own Ray Suarez has written a book on the topic, and he sat down recently with Gwen Ifill.

Here's their conversation.

GWEN IFILL: From the first Spanish settlers who arrived in America decades before Plymouth rock or Jamestown, to the 53 million Hispanic Americans living here today, Latinos have helped form what is now the United States in ways we were often never taught in school.

From the Wild West to the civil rights movement to the current fight over comprehensive immigration reform, it has been a five-century journey, one that our own Ray Suarez chronicles in "Latino Americans: The 500-Year Legacy That Shaped a Nation."

Ray, it's funny to have you on the other side of the table.

RAY SUAREZ: It is strange, but I think we're going to get through it.

GWEN IFILL: I think it's worthwhile.
 You, as a Puerto Rican, Brooklyn-raised American, knew a lot about your heritage before you started doing this book, but you learned a lot more, didn't you?

RAY SUAREZ: And that's the thing that I think is really distilled by this book. Latinos who read it may go into it thinking, oh, you know, I know about the Alamo. I know about the war between the United States and Mexico. But you will constantly be saying, hey, I didn't know that, when learning about other national origins, like why and when the Dominicans started to come, details about the Cuban refugee crisis that accompanied the Mariel boatlift. There's going to be things you didn't know before, but also all other Americans will say, this meshes with the American history I already know in all kinds of unexpected ways.

Report: State-based Land Grant Funding Falls Short for HBCUs - Higher Education

Report: State-based Land Grant Funding Falls Short for HBCUs - Higher Education: A new analysis of public land grant universities indicates that 10 states failed to provide more than $56 million in mandated state appropriations to historically Black institutions federally designated as 1890 Land Grant universities from 2010 to 2012.

Released by the Washington-based Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), the policy brief, “Land-Grant But Unequal: State One-to-One Match Funding for 1890 Land-Grant Universities,” details how 10 of 18 1890 institutions in 17 states did not receive more than $56 million due to them in state matching funds. Between 2010 and 2012, the underfunded 1890 HBCUs received nearly $245 million from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for research and cooperative extension activities yet their respective states matched only $188 million.

In contrast, the analysis by the Washington-based Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) notes that, over the same period, the states either fully matched or exceeded the appropriations funding that went to predominantly White universities, known as 1862 Land Grant universities. Included in the APLU analysis, or policy brief, are policy recommendations aimed at correcting the inequity in funding for the historically Black land grant institutions.

Former South Carolina State President Named Executive Director of White House Initiative on HBCUs - Higher Education

Former South Carolina State President Named Executive Director of White House Initiative on HBCUs - Higher Education: President Obama has tapped a veteran educator who was pressured to step down as president of South Carolina State University in 2012 to be the new executive director of the White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU’s).

Dr. George Cooper will be the administration’s public face for HBCU’s, working with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and 32 other federal agencies that provide grants and financial assistance to the nation’s black colleges.

Dr. Ivory A. Toldson, a tenured associate professor of education at Howard University and a rising star in academia, has been selected by the White House to serve as Cooper’s deputy director.

Cooper fills the vacancy left behind by Dr. John Silvanus Wilson Jr., who left the post to become president of Morehouse College in Atlanta earlier this year.

Feminism And Race: Just Who Counts As A 'Woman Of Color'? : Code Switch : NPR

Feminism And Race: Just Who Counts As A 'Woman Of Color'? : Code Switch : NPR: For the next part of our roundtable on the tensions and challenges in feminism along issues of race, we picked the brain of Filthy Freedom's Lindsey Yoo. Yoo had been following the sprawling #solidarityisforwhitewomen conversation, and felt that Asian-American women were often sidelined or overlooked when people talk about issues affecting women of color.

"In my sophomore year in college, after I learned of Japanese-American activist 's role in the civil rights movement and asked a sociology professor why none of our classroom discussions included any mention of her role, she told me that 'bringing an Asian into the discussion on civil rights would just confuse people,' " . "When I pointed out to another sociology professor that the statistics we were studying that day, on the parenting styles of black and Hispanic parents versus white parents, did not take into account the unique perspective of Asians, she told me bluntly that 'the Asian perspective can be found in the stats on white people.' "

If you haven't read the previous entries in our series from , and , they're really worth your time. And if there are other people writing about these ideas with compelling takes, we'd love if you could share them with us in the comments. — G.D.

Report: U. of Ala. sororities barred blacks

Report: U. of Ala. sororities barred blacks: A sorority at the University of Alabama says it is investigating allegations in a student publication that it was among Panhellenic organizations on the campus that allegedly blocked two black women from pledging, and a judge who serves on the university's board says the number of those rejected is higher and is asking school leadership to investigate.

The piece in The Crimson White alleges that sororities on the Tuscaloosa, Ala., campus failed to invite two black women to pledge, and says that in some cases, alumni stepped in to bar them. The catalyst for the piece was the failure of all 16 of the school's Panhellenic organizations in extending a bid to pledge two black women, one who, by all measurements, appeared to fit the requirements for a competitive pledge. She has a 4.3 grade point average, was salutatorian in her high school graduating class and comes from a well-connected family that has ties to the school, The Crimson White reports.

Only one of the organizations mentioned in the piece, Pi Beta Phi out of Town & Country, Mo. could be reached late Wednesday. The head of the organization said the sorority "proudly" accepts all for membership.
"Pi Beta Phi leadership has begun investigation the allegations in The Crimson White article," wrote Pi Beta Phi grand president Paula Shepherd in an email. "If any of those allegations are found to be true, those members, alumna or collegiate, will be held accountable for their actions."

Harlem On Their Minds: Life In America's Black Capital : Code Switch : NPR

Harlem On Their Minds: Life In America's Black Capital : Code Switch : NPR: The poet Langston Hughes liked to wryly describe the Harlem Renaissance — the years from just after World War I until the Depression when black literature and art flourished, fed by an awakening racial pride — as "the period when the Negro was in vogue." Note the past tense. Two new books published Tuesday explore the blossoming of black cultural life in two different decades.

The names of Harlem's heyday are now part of the American literary canon: Hughes; his good friend Zora Neale Hurston; fellow writers Arna Bontemps and Jean Toomer; poet Countee Cullen; and novelists Nella Larsen, Wallace Thurman and Jessie Redmon Fauset. What is far less known are the white patronesses who made much of their work possible.

With her story Miss Anne in Harlem: The White Women of the Black Renaissance, historian Carla Kaplan, who teaches at Northeastern University, introduces readers more fully to those women.