Knoxville drivers greeted by banners warning that diversity is anti-white genocide | The Raw Story

Knoxville drivers greeted by banners warning that diversity is anti-white genocide | The Raw Story: Police in Knoxville have removed two vinyl banners bearing a white supremacist message from an Interstate 640 overpass.

Banners bearing the message “’diversity’ is a code word for white genocide” in red ink were reported Monday morning by a 911 caller.

Officers took down the banners, which were about 30 inches tall and 123 feet long, from a Norfolk Southern Railroad bridge that spans the interstate.

Police aren’t sure who printed the banners or tied them to the overpass, but they’ve offered to return them if the owner calls to claim them.

Banners or signs carrying similar messages have been displayed in recent months in Arkansas and Oregon, and flyers with the slogan were passed out at Eastern Kentucky University.

The messages are based on a phrase frequently seen in white nationalist circles and alleges that those who claim an anti-racist position actually have a bigoted, anti-white agenda.

A Year to Remember - Higher Education

A Year to Remember - Higher Education: When advocates of higher education opportunities for racial minorities reflect on the 2013 academic landscape, their observations are more akin to describing a ride on a road with many bumps, surprising turns, only a few smooth straightaways and signs raising as many questions as providing clear answers about reaching the destination.

Congress and the White House, long considered reliable supporters and advocates, showed more signs of hostility and estrangement when it came to funding and policy. The federal courts issued decrees that ranged from neutral to positive on issues regarding equity and opportunity for minorities in higher education.

On the ground, more than a handful of institutions, particularly HBCUs, engaged in another head-spinning year of leadership changes, further weakening their abilities to carry out their missions.

Ohio teacher suspended indefinitely for racist comment

Ohio teacher suspended indefinitely for racist comment: A suburban Cincinnati teacher, suspended indefinitely without pay a week ago after making racially insensitive remarks, has not yet requested a hearing to contest the matter, and the head of the Cincinnati NAACP said Monday that he's very interested in the outcome.

In early December an African-American student told his science teacher, Gil Voigt of Fairfield Freshman School, that he would like to become president. Voigt, who is white, is accused of telling him, "We do not need another black president."

The incident occurred Dec. 3, and other students present corroborated the student's version of events, according to a report from Assistant Superintendent Roger Martin of the Fairfield City School District north of Cincinnati, who conducted a disciplinary inquiry on the matter.

"We have not received any (response) as of today," said Gina Gentry-Fletcher, spokeswoman for the 9,500-student district where almost 1 of every 6 students is black. Voigt, who has taught in the district for 14 years, was notified by mail Dec. 26 of his right to a hearing to appeal his suspension if he responds to Fairfield district officials within 10 days of notification.

Bleeding Trayvon Martin nativity scene sparks controversy | MSNBC

Bleeding Trayvon Martin nativity scene sparks controversy | MSNBC: A church nativity scene featuring a bleeding Trayvon Martin is stirring up controversy in southern California.

The outdoor display at the Claremont United Methodist Church spotlights a black-hooded dummy—in place of where baby Jesus would typically be – slumped over and with blood spilling from his chest into a red pool that reads “A Child is Born, a Son is Given.”

The artist and congregant John Zachary told msnbc that he wanted to spark a conversation about gun violence. So, he chose to center his controversial piece on Martin, the slain Florida teen who was shot and killed by volunteer neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman in February 2012 (Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter). Zachary first presented his idea to a church committee, which gave the thumbs up to the project.

“My feeling about it is that we have so many guns in our country and there are so many killings and it’s unique to our children. And I think that people still need to talk about it in a reasonable manner until there’s something done about it,” Zachary said, insisting he was not trying to replace Jesus with Martin.

2013 Signoffs: Short Stories About A Few Remarkable Lives : Code Switch : NPR

2013 Signoffs: Short Stories About A Few Remarkable Lives : Code Switch : NPR: Albert Murray

Looks can indeed be deceiving. If you saw cultural critic and novelist Albert Murray walking down the street, you might think you were looking at an upper-middle-class, African-American stick-in-the-mud. And you'd be two-thirds right.

Albert Lee Murray was indeed well-educated, well-heeled (and exceedingly well-dressed), and he was certainly, in today's parlance, African-American. (Emphasis on the American.) But despite the professorial tweed jackets, highly polished oxfords and his wool Trilby placed just so, Murray was no stick-in-the-mud. In fact, no less an authority than Duke Ellington once proclaimed him "the unsquarest man I know."

Murray, who died in August at 97 after a long decline, was what some people would consider an oxymoron: He was a race man, through and through, and an integrationist. In the late 1960s and early '70s, when the Black Arts movement celebrating a separate black aesthetic was powerfully influential, Murray would have none of it. Black art, he declared, is American art.

Crazy Horse Program Jumpstarts College Careers - Higher Education

Crazy Horse Program Jumpstarts College Careers - Higher Education: SIOUX FALLS, S.D. ― An annual summer education program at the Crazy Horse Memorial aimed at Native American high school graduates is giving participants a jumpstart on their college careers.

About 68 percent of the students who have attended Indian University of North America summer sessions in the backdrop of the mammoth mountain carving in South Dakota’s Black Hills have continued to pursue degrees at private public or tribal colleges and universities, says Ruth Ziolkowski, Crazy Horse’s chief executive officer. The retention rate for Native American college students is typically less than 20 percent, she says.

The Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation covers students’ costs and runs the school in partnership with the University of South Dakota.

“It gives them a leg up,” says USD provost Chuck Staben. “It gives them a great summer experience.”

The 32 participants in the 9 1/2-week program take courses in algebra, English and Native American Studies and are eligible to earn up to 12 college credits toward their degree at any university or college. Students receive a scholarship for tuition, books and supplies and a portion of food and lodging costs.

An Open Letter to an Anti-Affirmative Action Scholar - Higher Education

An Open Letter to an Anti-Affirmative Action Scholar - Higher Education: In 2004, you set off a firestorm, UCLA law professor Richard Sander. In the Stanford Law Review, you presented your “mismatch theory,” stating Black students are actually harmed by affirmative action admissions policies.

“Most black law applicants end up at schools where they will struggle academically and fail at higher rates than they would in the absence of preferences,” you wrote. “The net trade-off of higher prestige but weaker academic performance substantially harms black performance on bar exams and harms most new black lawyers on the job market.”

You did not stop there. You claimed a “race-blind system” would actually produce more Black lawyers each year. I have yet to see proof there is a “race-blind system,” as I said before. But I am not writing you about that. I am writing you about the recent court case you won.

Critics of your mismatch theory have claimed, among other things, that you based your conclusions on inadequate statistics. In reaction, in the intervening years, you have waged a legal fight to access data from the California bar association. The association has prohibited you from accessing bar exam pass rates.

History Motivates SEC Inclusion Program Boss to Keep Door Open - Higher Education

History Motivates SEC Inclusion Program Boss to Keep Door Open - Higher Education: For Pamela Gibbs, the need to create paths to diversity and equality within the workplace is rooted in a history of personal and academic triumphs during the civil rights movement.

“I always had this fantasy of doing civil rights and equal employment opportunity law,” says Gibbs, director of the office of Minority and Women Inclusion at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Gibbs — who grew up in Fauquier County, Va., at a time when segregation was still prevalent and in a town where many public establishments still closed their doors to African-Americans — credits her parents, who were strong advocates of education, for being the force behind their children’s paths to becoming first-generation college graduates.

As an undergraduate student at the University of Virginia during a time of racial transition, Gibbs was one of only 5 percent of African-Americans who attended the university. While there, she was active in the movement to advocate for increased diversity among faculty members.

Ben Jealous Marylander of the Year - baltimoresun.com

Ben Jealous Marylander of the Year - baltimoresun.com: In the spring of 2008, as the prospect that America would elect its first black president became more and more likely, the organization that did as much as any to make that watershed possible had fallen on hard times. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, America's oldest and best known civil rights group, was in disarray. It's last president and CEO had abruptly quit, and it had laid off half of its staff to balance the books. Its membership and relevance in what many were heralding as a post-racial America seemed destined to wane, and one of the defining institutions of the 20th century had no sure place in the 21st.

The answer to that challenge was an unlikely one: Benjamin Todd Jealous, a 35-year-old, bi-racial foundation president from California who was born a decade after the civil rights movement's greatest triumphs. To call his selection controversial would be an understatement. Some saw it not just as risky but as a repudiation of a century of sacrifice by the NAACP's members.

Closing The 'Word Gap' Between Rich And Poor : NPR

Closing The 'Word Gap' Between Rich And Poor : NPR: In the early 1990s, a team of researchers decided to follow about 40 volunteer families — some poor, some middle class, some rich — during the first three years of their new children's lives. Every month, the researchers recorded an hour of sound from the families' homes. Later in the lab, the team listened back and painstakingly tallied up the total number of words spoken in each household.

came to be known as the "word gap."

It turned out, by the age of 3, children born into low-income families heard roughly 30 million fewer words than their more affluent peers.

Research since then has revealed that the "word gap" factors into a compounding achievement gap between the poor and the better-off in school and life. The "word gap" remains as wide today, and from Stanford University found an intellectual processing gap appearing as early as 18 months.

Thousands of black and Latino kids lost their schools in 2013 | MSNBC

Thousands of black and Latino kids lost their schools in 2013 | MSNBC: In Philadelphia, hundreds of children left home a little earlier as they headed back to school this year. A slew of school closures over the summer meant a longer, and often less safe, journey to other elementary and middle schools further away.

In the St. Louis suburbs, thousands of students transferred this Fall from failing school districts when a court order opened up new opportunities. But the exodus put an even greater financial strain on the districts they left behind. Now the students who chose to stay closer to home could soon find themselves displaced as the state mulls shutting down or taking over their schools. And in Chicago, the closure of nearly 50 schools has created “school deserts” in some neighborhoods, while the district starves other schools to the point of closure.

All across the country, from the old industrial Northeast to the West Coast, through the Midwest and to major cities in the South, mass school closings—the product of deep budget cuts and flawed policy planning—have forced tens of thousands of children further from home. But not all children. Interviews in major cities and a review of census and other data make clear that the vast majority of those affected are African-American and poor.

More Diversity in New York City’s Police Dept., but Blacks Lag - NYTimes.com

More Diversity in New York City’s Police Dept., but Blacks Lag - NYTimes.com: It is among Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly’s prouder legacies: A majority of the police officers in New York City are now members of minorities, and have been since roughly 2006.

But as the Police Department has attracted an increasingly kaleidoscopic range of nationalities to its ranks in recent years — officers hail from Albania to Yemen — department statistics reveal a decline in new recruits among black New Yorkers. 

The decline comes despite aggressive recruitment efforts in places like central Harlem and the Bronx, where the department regularly assigns friendly recruitment officers to visit. 

In 2003, 18 percent of the Police Academy’s 2,108 graduates were black. Of the 1,247 recruits who started the academy this summer and will graduate on Friday, blacks make up about 10 percent, according to the department. By contrast, the percentage of Hispanic recruits has remained around 25 percent from 2003 till now, and the percentage of white non-Hispanic recruits has actually risen in recent years, to 57 percent from 52 percent in 2003.

High School Newspaper Defends Its Ban On The Word 'Redskins' Over The Objections Of School Officials | ThinkProgress

High School Newspaper Defends Its Ban On The Word 'Redskins' Over The Objections Of School Officials | ThinkProgress: Washington D.C.’s NFL team may be the most well-known defender of the word “Redskins,” but they are far from the only one: across the country, dozens of high schools cheer on their own “Redskins” on football fields and basketball courts.

Among them is Neshaminy High School in Langhorne, PA, just outside of Philadelphia.

Their sports teams are known as the “Redskins” (or just “Skins” for short), and the football team in particular attracts the kind of feverish following that Pennsylvania is known for. But with heightened scrutiny surrounding the term “Redskins,” the school’s newspaper has decided that it will no longer permit the word to be printed in its pages.

The ban, announced by the paper’s editorial board last week, has already been overturned once by school principal Rob McGee. Back in October, the editors of the Playwickian first informed the school community of their intention to stop using the offensive word, only to be told via a November “directive” from McGee that the paper “[didn't] have the right to not use the word Redskins.”

Dr. James W. Loewen Changing the Way America Views its History - Higher Education

Dr. James W. Loewen Changing the Way America Views its History - Higher Education: The year was 1969 and Dr. James W. Loewen was teaching a freshman social science seminar at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Miss.

On the first day of the semester, the Harvard-trained sociologist posed a basic history question to his students at the HBCU: define the period in U.S. history known as Reconstruction.

While the students’ answers ran the gamut, the overall response boiled down to something like this — Reconstruction was the period after the Civil War when Blacks, newly freed from slavery, assumed leadership positions in government, screwed up and Whites were subsequently called in to save the day.

“I was stunned,” confesses Loewen, recalling that day as he sits comfortably in the living room of his Washington, D.C., home, just a few blocks from Catholic University of America.

“How hurtful this could be [that] the one time African-Americans have taken center stage in American history, and [they] believe that [they] screwed up? What does that do to your psyche?”

Macy's has a black Santa, by special request - CNN.com

Macy's has a black Santa, by special request - CNN.com: Twas two nights before Christmas, and I headed down to find Santa in Macy's flagship store in Herald Square, New York City -- the one famously known to be on 34th Street.

The blog Animal New York had reported that this store has a separate, "special" Santa who is black.

It's unclear how long this tradition has lasted, but one woman told CNN affiliate WCBS she's been taking her kids to see this special Santa for 10 years.

This year, however, there's special significance. Santa's race became the focal point of a debate sparked by Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly's comments that "Santa just is white."

So CNN wanted to see this "special" Santa for ourselves.

After seeking assistance from a helpful employee, I rode the escalators to the 8th floor and quickly found crowds of people and merry elves at the entrance to the North Pole.

There were no signs indicating any special, separate line or suggesting that you could have your picture taken with an African-American Santa.

The Truth Behind The Lies Of The Original 'Welfare Queen' : Code Switch : NPR

The Truth Behind The Lies Of The Original 'Welfare Queen' : Code Switch : NPR: If you haven't read — the woman upon whom the term "welfare queen" was originally bestowed — you're missing out on a fascinating and disturbing profile of an unlikely political figure. Linda Taylor was never mentioned by name, but she was the subject of many of Ronald Reagan's 1976 presidential campaign speech anecdotes about a Chicago woman who'd defrauded the government of hundreds of thousands of dollars. And while Reagan's critics on the left argued that the woman was a fabrication, Levin reminds us at length that she wasn't.

If Taylor was a character in a movie, people would dismiss her as an implausibility. She really did bilk various government programs of hundreds of thousands of dollars. She also burned through husbands, sometimes more than one at a time. She was a master of disguise, armed with dozens of wigs. She flipped through assumed and fake identities and employed 33 known aliases; Levin said that he refers to her as "Linda Taylor" because that was the name she was known by at the time of her high-profile trial for fraud. She enchanted and charmed some of her marks, while others were deathly afraid of her.
But Levin's story isn't merely fascinating. It also deepens our understanding of the narratives and reality around welfare.

Life Expectancy of New Yorkers Rises With Influx of Immigrants, Study Finds - NYTimes.com

Life Expectancy of New Yorkers Rises With Influx of Immigrants, Study Finds - NYTimes.com: A stunning increase in the life expectancy of New Yorkers over the past 20 years, compared with the rest of the country, has been driven by sharp declines in deaths from AIDS, homicide, smoking-related illnesses and, in a surprising twist, an increase in the numbers of immigrants, a new study has found.

For years, the life expectancy in New York City was lower than that in the rest of the country. But since 1990, it has risen by 6.3 years for women and 10.5 years for men, according to the study, by the University of Pennsylvania’s Population Studies Center.
In 2010, the most recent year for which there is complete data, life expectancy in New York City for women was 83 and for men it was 78.

The magnitude of the gains recalls those that followed major public health improvements, like the advent of sewage systems at the end of the 19th century.
By the early 2000s, New Yorkers were living as long as Americans generally, but by 2010 New Yorkers were living 1.9 years longer, according to the study.
The study’s authors, Samuel Preston, a professor of demography and sociology, and Irma Elo, a professor of sociology, used federal health and mortality data to measure what drove the faster increases in the city.

Hawaii Dean Works at Preserving Hawaiian Culture - Higher Education

Hawaii Dean Works at Preserving Hawaiian Culture - Higher Education: The word kuleana is a Hawaiian word for responsibility, which Native Hawaiians feel toward their culture, the environment and each other. For Maenette K.P. Ah Nee-Benham, inaugural dean of the Hawai‘inuiākea School of Hawaiian Knowledge at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (UHM), a strong sense of responsibility is what is driving her and her team as they work to not only preserve Hawaiian culture in the 21st century, but to also establish the Hawaiian nation as a pillar in higher education.

One of the great tragedies of Hawaiian colonization was the intentional undermining of indigenous education. Prior to colonization, natives communicated through oral traditions, but they were quick to embrace the written word when Christian missionaries introduced it in the 1820s. The first public education system was established by King Kamehameha III in 1840 and, at its apex, Hawaiian literacy was as high as 75 percent. But as the movement toward American annexation grew, occupiers viewed this as a threat. So, in 1896, an English-only law was imposed, banning the Hawaiian language from being taught in all schools. Native Hawaiians have struggled to recover ever since.

Mississippi State House Just 1st Stop for Student Jeramey Anderson - Higher Education

Mississippi State House Just 1st Stop for Student Jeramey Anderson - Higher Education: Jeramey Anderson isn’t the least bit shy when he’s asked about his political aspirations.

“My ultimate goal is to run for president of the United States,” says the 22-year-old Tulane University senior, who was sworn in recently as the youngest person ever elected to the Mississippi state legislature. “In the short term, I eventually plan to get elected to Congress and use that as a stepping stone to get to the White House.”

Ambitious? Perhaps, but it’s that kind of self-confidence that helped the Gross Point, Miss. native defeat seasoned politician Aneice Lidell in a Democratic run-off last November for state representative.

Now, with a new legislative session scheduled to begin in just a few weeks, Anderson — who is majoring in homeland security and public relations at Tulane’s Gulf Coast campus in Biloxi — says that he will take just two online courses this semester so that he can focus on the issues that impact his constituents.

Reporter's Notebook: 'What Part Of Sacred Don't You Understand?' : Code Switch : NPR

Reporter's Notebook: 'What Part Of Sacred Don't You Understand?' : Code Switch : NPR: The Paris auction of 27 sacred American-Indian items earlier this month marks just the latest in a series of conflicts between what tribes consider sacred and what western cultures think is fair game in the marketplace.

Earlier this year, Leigh Kuwanwisiwma, director of the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office, said "To see the art market driving this kind of behavior, it's not just distressful to the Hopi people, it's a hurt that I don't believe people can really understand."

The auction wasn't the first such sale and probably won't be the last. The Hopi Tribe with the help of a Survival International attorney have tried to stop the last two Paris auctions. But so far they haven"t been successful.

For one, France doesn't have laws protecting ceremonial items like the U.S. But also worldwide — the U.S. included — there is a difference in understanding of what counts as sacred.

Lawsuit alleges pervasive racism at Eureka City Schools: ACLU files federal suit, asks for probe of Loleta Union School District - Times-Standard Online

Lawsuit alleges pervasive racism at Eureka City Schools: ACLU files federal suit, asks for probe of Loleta Union School District - Times-Standard Online: The American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against Eureka City Schools, alleging pervasive and systemic racism and sexism in the district.

The suit, which the ACLU filed in conjunction with the National Center for Youth Law, is being brought on behalf of four local teenagers against the district, Superintendent Fred Van Vleck, Eureka City School Board members and a host of other district administrators. The ACLU and the center also filed a complaint Wednesday with the United States Department of Education requesting it launch an investigation into the Loleta Union School District based on a host of allegations, including rampant racism toward Native American students and that Superintendent and Principal Sally Hadden has made racially insensitive statements to students, physically hit students and failed in her duties as a mandated reporter.

Stress, Test-Avoidance, and Unmet Needs: Lessons Learned from Eldo Kim and the Model Minority Stereotype - Higher Education

Stress, Test-Avoidance, and Unmet Needs: Lessons Learned from Eldo Kim and the Model Minority Stereotype - Higher Education: This week, Eldo Kim, a 20-year-old sophomore at Harvard University, falsely emailed university administrators that there were shrapnel bombs in four campus buildings because he was under incredible amounts of pressure to do well in his “GOV 1368: The Politics of American Education” final examination according to media reports. If Kim is convicted of the hoax, he faces up to five years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a $250,000 fine.

Kim’s misstep is surely an act that should not go unexcused, but I feel obligated to ask why few see Kim as a possible victim in this tragic event. While I do not condone his criminal actions, I am curious to understand what forces exerted enough pressure for Kim to feel that the benefits of a canceled or delayed exam outweighed the costs of possible prison time. For instance, Kim clearly did not want to get caught for the hoax. He created a fake email account and used a temporary IP address before sending the false email message. It is quite possible Kim did not know the consequences he would incur if he were caught, but I believe that is beside the point.

HBCUs Still Waiting for Solution to Parent PLUS Loan Crisis - Higher Education

HBCUs Still Waiting for Solution to Parent PLUS Loan Crisis - Higher Education: Higher education institutions across the nation began closing this week for the winter break with no news from the U.S. Department of Education on whether it will resolve disputes over the popular Parent PLUS Loan (PPL) program in time to avoid another blow to the fall 2014 recruiting season, now in high gear.

Last-minute efforts earlier this month to alleviate differences between college presidents and the DOE collapsed at the last minute when a planned meeting in Washington, organized by the Congressional Black Caucus, was canceled with no future date set. Some 15 presidents of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) were scheduled to participate with several members of Congress and DOE Secretary Arne Duncan.

One president, when asked if he knew why the meeting was canceled, said he was told to “blame it on the weather.”

The PPL program, which an increasing number of families utilized in the last decade for federal loans to help send their child or children to college, was popular despite having an interest rate slightly higher than other college loans. It made choosing a higher priced institution ostensibly more appealing because, until 2012, there was no cap on the loan amount.

Tackling a Racial Gap in Breast Cancer Survival - NYTimes.com

Tackling a Racial Gap in Breast Cancer Survival - NYTimes.com: ...Despite 20 years of pink ribbon awareness campaigns and numerous advances in medical treatment that have sharply improved survival rates for women with breast cancer in the United States, the vast majority of those gains have largely bypassed black women.

The cancer divide between black women and white women in the United States is as entrenched as it is startling. In the 1980s, breast cancer survival rates for the two were nearly identical. But since 1991, as improvements in screening and treatment came into use, the gap has widened, with no signs of abating. Although breast cancer is diagnosed in far more white women, black women are far more likely to die of the disease.

 And Memphis is the deadliest major American city for African-American women with breast cancer. Black women with the disease here are more than twice as likely to die of it than white women.

 “The big change in the 1990s was advances in care that were widely available in early detection and treatment,” said Steven Whitman, director of the Sinai Urban Health Institute in Chicago. “White women gained access to those advances, and black women didn’t.”

Over all, black women with a breast cancer diagnosis will die three years sooner than their white counterparts. While nearly 70 percent of white women live at least five years after diagnosis, only 56 percent of black women do. And some research suggests that institutions providing mammograms mainly to black patients miss as many as half of breast cancers compared with the expected detection rates at academic hospitals.

School Teaches First Graders 'Jesus Was White'

School Teaches First Graders 'Jesus Was White': First graders at DeBary Elementary School in Volusia County, Fla., have been learning about the holidays from a highly questionable source -- and some local parents are not pleased.

According to Florida station WESH-TV, parent Horace Hymes was outraged when he learned that his 7-year-old daughter’s class had been reading a book that compared Jesus with candy canes and said Christianity's central figure was white.

Hymes said that when he asked his daughter what she learned in school Monday, she answered, "I learned that the white on the candy cane stands for Jesus, because he was white. And the red on the candy cane was for the blood that he shed, and if you flip it upside down, the 'J' stands for Jesus," he added to TV station News 13.

Hymes, who is African American, was upset about the racially charged content in the book and that the public school was bringing religion into the classroom, according to WESH-TV.

City programs pitch African-Americans on the benefits of hospice care - baltimoresun.com

City programs pitch African-Americans on the benefits of hospice care - baltimoresun.com: Although hospice care has dramatically increased in popularity over the past few decades, of the 1.6 million Americans who used such services last year, about 82 percent were Caucasian and fewer than 9 percent African-American. And in Maryland, predominantly white localities finish near the top in terms of hospice use.

"In the black community, you rarely hear people even talk about hospice, and when you do, people tend to be wary about it," says G.I. Johnson of the Office of Aging and Care Services, a division of Baltimore's health department.

Now local health officials are trying to do get more African-Americans interested in hospice care by enlisting a group — ministers —with unique access to the discussion of end-of-life issues.

Last month, the city rolled out an outreach program by sponsoring a conference at Morgan State University. About a dozen hospice care professionals, most of them African-American, extolled the benefits of end-of-life care to an audience that included about 200 black ministers.

Defining Moments and Crystal Stairs - NYTimes.com

Defining Moments and Crystal Stairs - NYTimes.com: In June of 1998 in Jasper, Tex., just about three hours southeast of where I was raised, where the Lone Star State pushes itself into the back of the boot shape of Louisiana, a black man named James Byrd Jr. was subjected to what folks called a “lynching-by-dragging.”

Three white men had given Byrd a ride, but instead of taking him home they took him to the woods, where they beat him, urinated on him, tied his ankles to the back of their truck and dragged his body for three excruciating miles.

He was believed to be still alive while the asphalt ate away at his flesh. Reportedly, he died only when he was decapitated by a culvert. 

That was just 15 years ago. I was in my 20s. Yet the memory of that story remains fresh and wet in my mind like blood seeping through a bandage. It was a story that changed me, that revealed how my country’s violent past was linked to its present vestige. 

For no matter how much progress had been made, or will be made, there will always linger, in the dark corners of cruel minds, something sinister: an assumption that not all men are created equal, or, perhaps, that some men aren’t even men at all.

Immigrants Are Sending More Money Back To Less Poor Countries : Code Switch : NPR

Immigrants Are Sending More Money Back To Less Poor Countries : Code Switch : NPR: More and more people are sending money from places like the United States to places like the Dominican Republic, according to from the Pew Research Center.

Last month, my blog mate Kat Chow wrote about who sent a staggering $57 million of his winnings back to the Dominican Republic, where his family lives. Let's ignore the sheer dollar amount for a second to look at the larger global trend that Quezada represents: the growing amount of money flowing from high-income nations to what the World Bank classifies as "middle-income" nations.

Seventy percent of all "remittances" — the money that migrants send back to their countries of origin — goes to middle-income nations like the Dominican Republic, India and Mexico, according to a newly released Pew study that crunched numbers from the World Bank. ( if their per capita annual incomes fall between $1,036 and $12,615.)

Freedoms for Saudi Girls Only Allowed on Campus Grounds - Higher Education

Freedoms for Saudi Girls Only Allowed on Campus Grounds - Higher Education: RIYADH, Saudi Arabia—Within their female-only campuses, women at Saudi Arabia’s universities let loose. Trendy sneakers, colorful tops, a myriad of hairstyles. Some experiment with bleach blonde or even dip-dyed blue hair. The more adventurous ones have cropped their hair into short buzzes.

In their bags, the textbooks vary, but one item is mandatory: a floor-length black abaya robe that each must cover herself with when she steps through the university gates back to the outside world of the kingdom.

Saudi Arabia has spent billions of dollars to improve women’s education, part of a broader drive to empower young Saudis for the marketplace. That has meant improved campuses, better facilities and research programs and a slight expansion in the curriculum for women. For years, Saudi King Abdullah has been making startling, if incremental, moves to ease restrictions on women in the kingdom, where the word of strict ultraconservative Wahhabi clerics is virtually law.

But a look inside the women’s universities that have sprung up over the past decade illustrates how change only goes so far.

Seeking Wonderful Young Adult Novels That Deal With Race : Code Switch : NPR

Seeking Wonderful Young Adult Novels That Deal With Race : Code Switch : NPR: At Code Switch, we receive a whole bunch of emails and messages from readers and listeners. And many times, folks ask questions that get us buzzing during our editorial discussions.

One Code Switch reader sent us a note seeking book recommendations for a multiracial teen. The emailer described the teen as not very "bookish" but still a good reader.

What books do you recommend that feature race in a way that a teen would find compelling? Nothing preachy or earnest or heavy. Shout us out in the comments, or holler at us on Twitter at @NPRCodeSwitchusing #codeswitchbooks.

We turned to NPR's books team and contributors to the Backseat Book Club series for suggestions.

Why Black College Football Players Fall Behind In Education : NPR

Why Black College Football Players Fall Behind In Education : NPR: New research raises concerns about low graduations rates for black college football players. Host Michel Martin finds out more from education reporter Emily Richmond, and professor Shaun Harper of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
This is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. I'm Michel Martin. We're going to spend some time today talking about some important issues in the world of sports and entertainment. We'll talk about how and why it's becoming clearer that head injuries are not just a problem in football.

But first, we want to talk about college football. There are three new reports out now, which raise troubling new evidence about a wide achievement gap between white college football players and their African-American counterparts. We wanted to talk more about this so we've called on Emily Richmond. She wrote about these studies in a recent piece for The Atlantic. Welcome back, Emily Richmond. Thanks for joining us once again.

African-American Woman To Run Humorous 'Harvard Lampoon' Magazine : NPR

African-American Woman To Run Humorous 'Harvard Lampoon' Magazine : NPR: The humor magazine The Harvard Lampoon was founded in 1876, but for the first time, an African-American woman will run things. Host Michel Martin talks with President-elect Alexis Wilkinson and Vice President-elect Eleanor Parker about their plans for the magazine.

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
We're going to switch gears now and talk about comedy, which is, perhaps surprisingly, not all fun and games. Take, for instance, "Saturday Night Live" - that program was criticized this year for having no black women as part of the regular cast, in fact, there has not been one since 2007. But we've caught up with two women who are about to make history. Alexis Wilkinson will be the first African-American to serve as president of The Harvard Lampoon - the venerable, undergraduate humor magazine founded in 1876, whose writers have often been on a pipeline to many of the major comedy shows. She's also the first African-American female, needless to say, to lead that institution.

And she's with us today with her partner in comedic crime Ellie Parker, who will serve as vice president - and this is also the first time two women will lead that organization - and they are both with us now. Welcome, congratulations to you both.

Fewer Deportations Big Issue For Asians, Hispanics : NPR

Fewer Deportations Big Issue For Asians, Hispanics : NPR: With immigration legislation stalled in Congress, Hispanics and Asian-Americans say getting relief from deportations is more important for many of the 11 million immigrants here illegally than creating a pathway to U.S. citizenship, a new study finds.

Two polls released Thursday by the Pew Research Center expose a potential conflict for two minority groups that voted overwhelmingly last year for President Barack Obama, a Democrat. Obama is under pressure from immigration supporters to use his executive power to stop deportations.

Strong majorities of both Hispanics and Asian-Americans continue to back a pathway to citizenship, 89 percent and 72 percent, respectively. Still, by 55 percent to 35 percent, Hispanics said being able to live and work in the U.S. legally without the threat of deportation was more important. Among Asian-Americans, the ratio was 49 to 44 percent.

Despite D.C. public school gains, system trails behind large-city average - The Washington Post

Despite D.C. public school gains, system trails behind large-city average - The Washington Post: D.C. Public Schools posted larger gains on 2013 national math and reading tests than any other major urban school system, but the District’s performance continues to trail the large-city average, according to a federal study released Wednesday.

The D.C. Public Schools (DCPS) system also continues to have the nation’s widest achievement gaps between white and black students and white and Hispanic students, according to the study, which shows that poor black children in the District continue to score lower, on average, than their counterparts in other cities.

The study is based on the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress, math and reading tests that are administered every other year to a representative sample of fourth- and eighth-graders across the country.

The District’s gains — which reflect only the performance of traditional schools, excluding charter schools — come amid a period of rapid change that has made the city a nationally watched experiment in improving urban schools. Public preschool is now available to all children; the city has adopted new academic standards; demographics have shifted; and the traditional school system has gotten rid of teacher tenure, instituting evaluations that tie job security and pay to student test scores.

It’s difficult to say exactly how those different factors have contributed to the city’s gains, but Chancellor Kaya Henderson said the growth is evidence that the school system’s key policies are the right ones.

Generations flock to visit Mondawmin's 'color blind' Santa Luke - baltimoresun.com

Generations flock to visit Mondawmin's 'color blind' Santa Luke - baltimoresun.com: ..."Santa Luke," as he's known, has been Kriss Kringle at Mondawmin Mall for 29 years running. For many, dropping in for his hugs and ho-ho-hos is an intergenerational ritual, and not just because he, like the Duboses, is African-American.

"I do think it's important for my kids to see someone of their own culture — not that I wouldn't take a picture with him if he were white," Dubose says. "He's a kind man, and that's what we care about."

This season has been an acrimonious one when it comes to Santa Claus, especially concerning a question that has rarely been asked as openly as it has this year: Why is the familiar Christmas icon nearly always portrayed as a Caucasian?

Last week, a blogger at Slate, Aisha Harris, raised the question by writing that the practice of presenting Santa as "an old white male" can shame black children and should be changed. The column rankled Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, who called the idea "ridiculous" and sniffed on the air that "Santa just is white."

When Minority Students Attend Elite Private Schools - Atlantic Mobile

When Minority Students Attend Elite Private Schools - Atlantic Mobile: Dalton is a prestigious, decades-old, K-12 prep school on New York City’s Upper East Side that filters its students into the best universities in the country. In 2010, Forbes reported that 31 percent of its students matriculated into MIT, Stanford, or an Ivy League institution. Former students include Anderson Cooper, Claire Danes, and Ralph Lauren’s daughter Dylan. Even imaginary people make sure their families are present for parent-teacher conferences. For years, however, Dalton was largely inaccessible to minority and lower-income students. Maintaining its reputation as a top-tier place of learning did not require administrators to extend invitations to those groups.

When Idris Brewster and his friend Seun Summers entered kindergarten at Dalton in the late 1990s, they were one of the few students of color in their class. Idris and Seun’s parents believed that getting into Dalton was the first step to a life filled with accomplishments.

"Students that came out of independent schools were well-prepared on the level of networking, internships, job and school opportunities—you name it—and we were offered great financial-aid incentives," Michèle Stephenson, Idris's mother, told me. "We thought this intensive, intellectually stimulating institution would open doors for Idris and take him anywhere he wanted to go."

Report says Virginia’s black male students are twice as likely as white males to be suspended - The Washington Post

Report says Virginia’s black male students are twice as likely as white males to be suspended - The Washington Post: Black male students in Virginia are twice as likely to be suspended from public schools as white male students, according to a report released Wednesday that says punishment is often doled out for such minor offenses as talking loudly and disrupting class.

The report, based on data from more than 600 Virginia schools, found that suspension rates were lower in secondary schools that used threat assessment guidelines, which provide a procedure for examining the intent and risk associated with student misbehavior.

The report, titled “Prevention v. Punishment: Threat Assessment, School Suspensions and Racial Disparities,” was jointly done by Dewey Cornell, an education professor with the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education, and JustChildren, a child advocacy program of the Legal Aid Justice Center.

We Teach Who We Are |Find Teaching Jobs, School Jobs, & Cultural Diversity at TeachersOfColor.com

We Teach Who We Are |Find Teaching Jobs, School Jobs, & Cultural Diversity at TeachersOfColor.com: Teaching is a most personal and political act, not simply a job, career, or vehicle for sharing one’s subject. I think that it is impossible to separate the act of teaching from who we really are and the self that enters the classroom. As Parker Palmer inquires in The Courage to Teach, “Who is the self that teaches? How does the quality of my selfhood form—or deform—the way I relate to my students, my subject, my colleagues, my world?” Too many students are learning in classrooms where their educational experience is “deformed” by educators who have not explored the relationship between who they are and how and why they teach. For teachers, students, and school communities, we must explore, “who the self that teaches” is.

When we engage in self-reflection, we must acknowledge the multiple identities that compose the self. I enter this work as an African-American woman as my primary identity. However, I must acknowledge that there are other aspects of identity influencing my work and the way students see me.

School named after KKK grand wizard to be renamed — finally

School named after KKK grand wizard to be renamed — finally: Following a petition drive that garnered more than 160,000 signatures, a Florida school district will rename a high school whose current name commemorates a Confederate general and the first “grand wizard” of the Ku Klux Klan.

Nathan B. Forrest High School in Jacksonville will soon be known as something else after the community made clear to the Duval County Public School Board that they wanted the school changed. The board voted unanimously Monday night to remove the Forrest name.

How did the school get that name? When it opened in 1959, an organization called the Daughters of the Confederacy pushed for the Forrest name despite a number of other noncontroversial names that were under discussion, including the student favorite, Valhalla High School. In 2007 the School Advisory Council asked the school board to change the name but it refused by a 5-2 vote. Since then, membership on the panel has changed.

This Bizarre Racial Profiling Lawsuit Will Do Nothing To Restore Your Faith In Mississippi | ThinkProgress

This Bizarre Racial Profiling Lawsuit Will Do Nothing To Restore Your Faith In Mississippi | ThinkProgress: Cathryn Stout is a doctoral student at Saint Louis University researching a paper on how residents of Mississippi are working to combat negative stereotypes about their state. She may want to reconsider that paper topic, however, after her alleged encounter with three Mississippi police officers.

According to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on Friday, Stout was traveling through Mississippi with a man named Raymond Montgomery to conduct interviews for her academic research when they were stopped by a highway patrol officer. Both Stout and Montgomery are African American.

The trooper allegedly told them they were stopped because Stout’s license plate was framed by an Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority tag holder that obscured part of her plate. He issued no ticket for this supposed violation, however, and her attorney claims that her tag holder broke no Mississippi law. Alpha Kappa Alpha is an historically black sorority.

Breaking the school-to-prison pipeline: examining arrests among black male students in OUSD - Local: In Oakland

Breaking the school-to-prison pipeline: examining arrests among black male students in OUSD - Local: In Oakland: Oakland’s black youth are arrested in school at a rate that is more than double their proportion of the school population, a community nonprofit said. Almost three-fourths of arrestees are black, although they comprise less than a third of the student body. These arrest records, even if thrown out, may shadow them all their lives, sending them down what critics call the “school-to-prison pipeline.”

Disproportionate rates of disciplinary action are sparking deep debate by education, law enforcement, legal and community groups struggling to provide safe, nurturing schools for students troubled by poverty and turbulence that stops short of criminalizing youthful misbehavior.

In August 2013, the non-profit Black Organizing Project (BOP) released a study, ‘From Report Card to Criminal Record: The Impact of Policing Oakland Youth’, in conjunction with American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Northern California. To better understand the presence of the police force in Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) schools, BOP investigated the rate of punishments among African American males in comparison to those of other races.

In Minnesota, race drives school labels, discipline | Star Tribune

In Minnesota, race drives school labels, discipline | Star Tribune: ...Discrimination in the way students are labeled and disciplined has plagued special education across the country for decades, but a Star Tribune review of state and federal enrollment records shows that the problem is especially acute in Minnesota.

More than 4 percent of all black students in Minnesota are identified as having emotional or behavioral disorders, a subjective, catchall label for thousands of children considered disruptive. That rate is more than three times the national average for black students and higher than any other state in the country, according to the most recent federal data available.

Melody Musgrove, director of the federal Office of Special Education Programs, which monitors state compliance with federal law, said the Star Tribune’s findings concern her. “It certainly brings into question the civil rights of those students,” Musgrove said.

Hispanic Heritage Foundation Honors 15 DC Area High School Seniors

Hispanic Heritage Foundation Honors 15 DC Area High School Seniors: The Hispanic Heritage Foundation (HHF) today announced the recipients of the Washington, DC Regional Hispanic Heritage Youth Awards. 15 local high school seniors will be honored for their leadership in the classroom and community, and promoted as role models during a ceremony on Capitol Hill. In commemoration of the 15th Anniversary of the Youth Awards, the ceremony will spotlight past Youth Awardees and special guests in attendance.

The Youth Awardees will receive grants for either their education, or to fund an idea or community project to encourage "actionable leadership," which is HHF's call to action. Recipients will then be mentored by past Youth Awardees as they prepare and attend college and into their careers through HHF's award-winning Latinos On Fast Track (LOFT) workforce development program. The Youth Awards are taking place in 10 regions across the country with 150 Youth Awardees being selected from thousands of applicants. The average GPA for the students is nearly a 4.0.

Bridging Arizona's Hispanic student-achievement chasm

Bridging Arizona's Hispanic student-achievement chasm: For Arizona to shed its reputation as an educational laggard, it must face an unpleasant truth:

Our state’s low test scores are largely attributable to an achievement chasm between White and Latino students.

4 steps to bridge the gap

The percentage of Latino students who meet or exceed standards on Arizona’s Instrument to Measure Standards tests averages 21.2 points lower than for White students, from third-grade math through high-school science. Performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress is equally dismal. Only one in 10 Latino adults have a college degree, compared with more than a third of Whites.

This isn’t unique to Arizona, or to minority groups. Black and American Indian students post similar scores, as do children from low-income households. None of this is acceptable.

Black graduation rates: Michigan colleges aim to reverse poor academic history | MLive.com

Black graduation rates: Michigan colleges aim to reverse poor academic history | MLive.com: GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- Micah Rupert had butterflies in his stomach.

It was his first day of class at Grand Rapids Community College, and Rupert, 20, was excited to be starting school, a path he hopes will lead to a career in computer networking.

But Rupert, who is black, also remembers feeling nervous on that August morning.
He knew that statistics painted a less than flattering picture of his chance of succeeding in college, and Rupert wondered whether he had what it takes to thrive where others have traditionally failed.

“I was excited,” recalled Rupert, who graduated in June from Grand River Preparatory High School in Kentwood. “But I also knew there was going to be hard work in the process. I was like, ‘I’m going to do my best and fight hard and keep my grades up because I don’t want to do bad.’”

It's an issue black students are battling across the nation as they have among the lowest graduation rates of any demographic group.

U of M crime alerts spark backlash

U of M crime alerts spark backlash: MINNEAPOLIS--Black students at the University of Minnesota say racial descriptions in crime alerts does not help catch suspects. Instead, it's hurting black male students.

There have been more than two dozen crimes on or near the U this year.

Crime alert after crime alert describes many of the suspects as young black males.

"There are a plethora of young black men on campus who fit that description," Abdel-Kader Toovi, a college senior and vice president of the Black Men's Forum on campus, said.

Ian Taylor, a junior and president of the Black Men's Forum, said many of their members have expressed concern over how other students treat them.

"You might walk a certain side of the street and someone might walk the other way or the other direction…just this feeling that people feel unsafe around you," Taylor said.

Many Young Immigrants Have Yet To Seek 'Deferred Action' : Code Switch : NPR

Many Young Immigrants Have Yet To Seek 'Deferred Action' : Code Switch : NPR: As we near the end of 2013, NPR is taking a look at the numbers that tell the story of this year. Numbers that, if you really understand them, give insight into the world we're living in, right now. Over the next two weeks, you'll hear the stories behind these numbers, which range from zero to 1 trillion.

Today's figure: Half a million. That's how many people there are who likely qualify but have yet to apply for the Obama administration's program known as DACA — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. DACA allows young people brought to the U.S. illegally as children to avoid deportation and to get a work permit for two years.

The DACA program was announced in 2012. For months after, undocumented young people — most of whom were Latino — applied by the hundreds of thousands. It wasn't the DREAM Act they were pushing Congress for, but it was a temporary substitute. That flood has now slowed to a trickle. Eligible young people are no longer coming forward in large numbers on their own

It's Called 'Africa.' Of Course It's About Race, Right? : Code Switch : NPR

It's Called 'Africa.' Of Course It's About Race, Right? : Code Switch : NPR: The email arrived with the kind of snarky tone reserved for a moment when the author is sure he — and it's usually a he — thinks he's hoisted you with your own petard.

A bit of back story: Last week, I wondering why under a montage of photos from Nelson Mandela's funeral. The tweet went viral, sparking stories on several websites and agreement from a co-founder of the band.

Responding to that outpouring, a reader emailed, in part: "Isn't it wrong to put a black/white label on choice of song, especially when its [sic] linked to Mandela? I thought he was fighting exactly against this stereotypical behavior. Your pathetic observation really cheapens the spirit of the day."

Ohio University Helps Miami Tribe Preserve its History - Higher Education

Ohio University Helps Miami Tribe Preserve its History - Higher Education: CINCINNATI – A southwestern Ohio university is working to preserve 19th century land grant documents recently recovered by the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma that mark the tribe’s transition from collectively-held land to individual ownership as it tried—and mostly failed—to avoid government relocation.

Miami University’s preservation work on the eight land grants—one signed in 1823 by President James Monroe and seven signed in 1843 by President John Tyler—stems from a long collaborative relationship between the tribe and university. That relationship led to the creation several years ago of the university’s Myaamia Center, which helps the tribe with research needs.

Tribe member George Ironstrack, the center’s assistant director, says the grants found in storage at a Catholic diocese in Indiana are historically important because they show tribe members trying to secure a land base for their families. He says the grants were promised in treaties that increasingly required the tribe to give up large amounts of land sought by the government and others.

‘S.N.L.’ to Add Black Female Performer - NYTimes.com

‘S.N.L.’ to Add Black Female Performer - NYTimes.com: How seriously did “Saturday Night Live” take the furor around its lack of a black female performer?

Seriously enough to hold a special audition Monday night on the “S.N.L.” stage for seven or eight candidates, one of whom will be hired and will join the cast for shows beginning in January. 

The show’s creator and executive producer, Lorne Michaels, said in an interview on Thursday that he had committed to that timetable to add the show’s first black woman since Maya Rudolph left the series in 2007. Several casting sessions were held over the last few weeks leading to this week’s audition. 

“All told we’ve seen about 25 people,” Mr. Michaels said. “A lot of the people we saw are really good. Hopefully we’ll come out of the process well.”

State Colleges, Universities Advised to Embrace Change - Higher Education

State Colleges, Universities Advised to Embrace Change - Higher Education: SAN FRANCISCO – With the theme of Higher Education Forging a State Agenda, the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) kicked off its annual conference Wednesday with an emphasis on adaptation and innovation.

For example, Gavin Newsom, lieutenant governor of California, noted in the opening session of the Higher Education Government Relations Conference that school presidents, chancellors, administrators and policy makers need to move away from the old “business models of the 1960s and get with it.” He cited the success of MOOCs (massive online open courses) as a signal to institutions that “the way they are operating is obsolete.”

Newsom, who refers to himself as a “digital immigrant,” said he would like to see “teachers as mentors and coaches rather than transmitters of textbook information” and deal with the fact that 76 percent of incoming kindergarten children in California are non-White.”

UCLA Study Funded by Actress Puts Focus on Latinas - Higher Education

UCLA Study Funded by Actress Puts Focus on Latinas - Higher Education: A study released last week by University of California at Los Angeles researchers with support from actress Eva Longoria has put a high profile focus on the potential of U.S. Latinas for educational attainment and success.

Among the findings in “Making Education Work for Latinas in the U.S.,” a research report produced by the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, young Latinas who have Latina and male Latino teachers and counselors as role models and who are active in high school extracurricular activities have a much better chance of educational success. In addition to the study, the researchers produced a companion video that features Longoria and young Latinas whose life stories are documented in the study.

Longoria, who commissioned and financed the study through the Eva Longoria Foundation, said the findings will enable her organization to “fine-tune” its education work and advocacy. In addition, “We hope others will use this research to support Latina achievement,” she said in a statement. The foundation was founded “to empower Latinas to reach their potential through education and entrepreneurship,” according to the organization.

Houston school board to vote on Native American mascots, 'Redskins' - chicagotribune.com

Houston school board to vote on Native American mascots, 'Redskins' - chicagotribune.com: HOUSTON (Reuters) - The Houston school board will vote on Thursday whether to stop using mascot names such as "Redskins" that reference Native American culture and have been called offensive by advocacy groups.

The Houston Independent School District (HISD) is one of the largest in the United States and its decision could influence other school systems that are reconsidering mascot names which may be inappropriate.

The use of ethnic team names and mascots came under new scrutiny this year with a campaign to pressure the National Football League's Washington Redskins to change their name.

Native Americans and others have long derided the Redskins moniker as racist.

Miami-Area Police Chief Resigns Amid Charges Of Racial Profiling : The Two-Way : NPR

Miami-Area Police Chief Resigns Amid Charges Of Racial Profiling : The Two-Way : NPR: The police chief of Miami Gardens is resigning, weeks after allegations arose that his officers stopped and searched customers of a convenience store as a matter of routine. Charges of racial profiling and civil rights abuses were bolstered by videos that showed police frisking and arresting people.

Miami Gardens Police Chief Matthew Boyd, who is black, had planned to resign in January. He stepped down today, according to , which published an expansive report on the allegations two weeks ago.

Here's some background from NPR's Greg Allen, whose report will air on Thursday's :

"The town just north of Miami has struggled with a string of deadly shootings in recent months.
"In response, the city began what it calls 'Zero Tolerance' operations — increasing police stops and arrests, even for misdemeanors.

"The police chief's resignation comes after a store owner and some residents filed a lawsuit against the city in federal court."

The resignation also comes one day after to open a civil rights inquiry into what it said "may be the most pervasive, most invasive, and most unjustified pattern of police harassment in the nation."

White People Are Much More Likely To Have Access To Retirement Savings Plans

White People Are Much More Likely To Have Access To Retirement Savings Plans: Most black and latino workers have nothing saved for retirement and few have access to an employer-sponsored retirement plan, according to a new report that underscores how racial disparities in the U.S. economy haunt working people through all stages of life.

Just 54 percent of black and asian workers have the option to save for retirement through employer-sponsored plans. For latino workers, the number falls to 38 percent. By contrast, more than six in ten white workers have workplace retirement accounts, the National Institute on Retirement Security (NIRS) reports.

That access gap produces a corresponding disparity in how financially prepared different races are to retire. Sixty-two percent of black working-age households and 69 percent of latino ones hold no retirement account assets whatsoever. The corresponding figure for whites is just 37 percent. When the NIRS analysts looked at simple savings accounts rather than specific retirement funds like 401(k)s or IRAs, the same stark contrasts appeared.

Despite More College Degrees, Young Women Still Make Less Than Men | ThinkProgress

Despite More College Degrees, Young Women Still Make Less Than Men | ThinkProgress: The good news: a new report from the Pew Research Center finds that the gender wage gap for young women between the ages of 25 and 34 has narrowed considerably since 1980. The bad news: despite the fact that they are significantly more likely to have a bachelor’s degree — 38 percent compared to 31 percent — they still make less than their male peers. Last year, women ages 25 to 34 made 93 percent of men’s hourly earnings — a narrow gap, but a gap nonetheless.

The report notes that the overall gap in hourly earnings is 84 percent. And while it may be narrowing for younger women, there’s reason to believe it will still yawn as they progress in their careers. Women fresh out of college get paid less in their first job than men who graduate with the same grades, majors, and choice of occupation. The wage gap really starts to widen, though, around the time when many people decide to have children. Their wage growth starts to drop off right around age 30, when many women have children, and basically flattens out at age 39. Other evidence shows that working women with children make less than women without kids, while having children actually boosts men’s wages.

From D.C. to Johannesburg, a teacher confronts pasts of profound racial inequality - The Washington Post

From D.C. to Johannesburg, a teacher confronts pasts of profound racial inequality - The Washington Post: After teaching in D.C. public schools for five years, Waahida Tolbert-Mbatha moved to Johannesburg in 2011. Similarities between her new home and the one she left behind soon became strikingly apparent.

“You have this amazing black middle class, very strong, very visible, in both Johannesburg and D.C., and you also have a lot of black people living in poverty around them,” said Waahida, 33. “It messes with your mind in a lot of ways.”

Both cities have histories of profound racial inequality. But with large populations of well-to-do blacks, the economic divide could not be blamed solely on racism. Education — that’s what separates the blacks who have from those who have not.

So Waahida, who is from Louisville, and her South African-born husband, Thulani, who runs a tuberculosis research center in the city, began working on plans to open an independent school in Johannesburg by 2015. For guidance, they would draw on insights — about shortcomings as well as successes — from her teaching experience in the District.

Invisible Child: Dasani’s Homeless Life "Reasons to Dream," Part 5 - The New York Times

Invisible Child: Dasani’s Homeless Life - The New York Times: A mob of spectators presses in, trying to see the tiny girl. Rap stars circle. The cameras roll. The crowd chants her name. “Da-Sa-Neee!”  Her heart is racing. She looks up at the sky and extends her fingers, but cannot reach high enough to grasp the metal bar. A powerful man hoists her up by the waist.

In an instant, she is midair, pulling and twisting acrobatically as the audience gasps at the might of this 12-year-old girl.

“She’s a giantess,” the man had announced to the audience. “She’s tomorrow’s success, I’m telling you right now.”

Dasani blinks, looking out at the smiling faces. She cannot make sense of the serendipity that has brought her here to Harlem, on this sparkling July day, to make her debut as a member of an urban fitness group teamed up with Nike.

But there is her beaming mother, Chanel; her father, Supreme; and all seven siblings. They are cheering and clapping as well.

Invisible Child: Dasani’s Homeless Life "Finding Strength in Bonds of Family," Part 4 - The New York Times

Invisible Child: Dasani’s Homeless Life - The New York Times: Children are not the face of New York’s homeless. They rarely figure among the panhandlers and bag ladies, war vets and untreated schizophrenics who have long been stock characters in this city of contrasts.  Their homelessness is hidden. They spend their days in school, their nights in shelters. They are seen only in glimpses — pulling overstuffed suitcases in the shadow of a tired parent, passing for tourists rather than residents without a home.

Their numbers have risen above anything in the city’s modern history, to a staggering 22,091 this month. If all of the city’s homeless children were to file into Madison Square Garden for a hockey game, more than 4,800 would not have a seat.

Yet it is the adult population that drives debates on poverty and homelessness, with city officials and others citing “personal responsibility” as the central culprit. Children are bystanders in this discourse, no more to blame for their homelessness than for their existence.

Invisible Child: Dasani’s Homeless Life "A Neighborhood's Profound Divide," Part 3 - The New York Times

Invisible Child: Dasani’s Homeless Life - The New York Times: On the Brooklyn block that is Dasani’s dominion, shoppers can buy a $3 malt liquor in an airless deli where food stamps are traded for cigarettes. Or they can cross the street for a $740 bottle of chardonnay at an industrial wine shop accented with modern art.

It is a sign outside that locale, Gnarly Vines, that catches Dasani’s notice one spring afternoon: “Wine Tasting Tonight 5-8.”

Dasani is hardly conversant in the subject of libations, but this much she knows: A little drink will take off her mother’s edge. Without further ado, Chanel heads into the wine shop on Myrtle Avenue, trailed by four of her eight children. They are lugging two greasy boxes of pizza and a jumbo pack of diapers from Target.

The cashier pauses. The sommelier smiles.

“Wanna try a little rosé?” she asks brightly, pouring from a 2012 bottle of Mas de Gourgonnier. “I would describe it as definitely fruit forward at the beginning.”

Invisible Child: Dasani’s Homeless Life "A Future Rests on a Fragile Foundation," Part 2 - The New York Times

Invisible Child: Dasani’s Homeless Life - The New York Times: Gracie Mansion is something of an oddity. In a city with a 2 percent vacancy rate and a shortage of public housing, the mayoral residence sits uninhabited on 11 pristine acres of the Upper East Side. It has been more than a decade since Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg chose to remain in his opulent townhouse, consigning Gracie Mansion to the status of a museum and venue for civic events.

Dasani knows none of these particulars when she steps through Gracie’s doors on a school trip in February. She is looking for the mayor. She wants to see him up close, this mysterious “Wizard of Oz” figure who makes decisions about her life from behind a curtain of political power.

It never occurs to Dasani that the mayor does not live there. Who could have a mansion and not live in it?

“Look at that fireplace!” she marvels as her classmates step into the parlor where Mr. Bloomberg has given news conferences. The tour guide, a woman wearing gold-clasp earrings and tangerine lipstick, moves the children along, reminding them not to touch.

Invisible Child: Dasani’s Homeless Life "Girl in the Shadows," Part 1- The New York Times

Invisible Child: Dasani’s Homeless Life - The New York Times: She wakes to the sound of breathing. The smaller children lie tangled beside her, their chests rising and falling under winter coats and wool blankets. A few feet away, their mother and father sleep near the mop bucket they use as a toilet. Two other children share a mattress by the rotting wall where the mice live, opposite the baby, whose crib is warmed by a hair dryer perched on a milk crate.

Slipping out from her covers, the oldest girl sits at the window. On mornings like this, she can see all the way across Brooklyn to the Empire State Building, the first New York skyscraper to reach 100 floors. Her gaze always stops at that iconic temple of stone, its tip pointed celestially, its facade lit with promise.

“It makes me feel like there’s something going on out there,” says the 11-year-old girl, never one for patience. This child of New York is always running before she walks. She likes being first — the first to be born, the first to go to school, the first to make the honor roll.

World Leaders Extol Mandela Before a Crowd of Thousands - NYTimes.com

World Leaders Extol Mandela Before a Crowd of Thousands - NYTimes.com: SOWETO, South Africa — In an outpouring of praise, remembrance and celebration, scores of leaders from around the world, including President Obama, joined tens of thousands of South Africans in a vast rain-swept soccer stadium here on Tuesday to pay common tribute to Nelson Mandela, whose struggle against apartheid inspired his own country and many far beyond its borders.

Huge cheers greeted Mr. Obama as he rose to offer a eulogy that blended a deep personal message with a broader appeal for Mr. Mandela’s values to survive him. 

“To the people of South Africa — people of every race and every walk of life — the world thanks you for sharing Nelson Mandela with us,” the president said. “His struggle was your struggle. His triumph was your triumph. Your dignity and hope found expression in his life, and your freedom, your democracy is his cherished legacy.” 

“It is hard to eulogize any man — to capture in words not just the facts and the dates that make a life, but the essential truth of a person — their private joys and sorrows; the quiet moments and unique qualities that illuminate someone’s soul,” Mr. Obama said. “How much harder to do so for a giant of history, who moved a nation toward justice, and in the process moved billions around the world.”