For Minorities, A New ‘Digital Divide’

For Minorities, A New ‘Digital Divide’: When the personal computer revolution began decades ago, Latinos and Blacks were much less likely to use one of the marvelous new machines. Then, when the Internet began to change life as we know it, these groups had less access to the Web and slower online connections placing them on the wrong side of the “digital divide.”

Today, as mobile technology puts computers in our pockets, Latinos and Blacks are more likely than the general population to access the Web by cellular phones, and they use their phones more often to do more things.

But now some see a new “digital divide” emerging with Latinos and Blacks being challenged by more, not less, access to technology. It's tough to fill out a job application on a cell phone, for example. Researchers have noticed signs of segregation online that perpetuate divisions in the physical world. And Blacks and Latinos may be using their increased Web access more for entertainment than empowerment.

Fifty-one percent of Hispanics and 46 percent of Blacks use their phones to access the Internet, compared with 33 percent of Whites, according to a July 2010 Pew poll. Forty-seven percent of Latinos and 41 percent of Blacks use their phones for e-mail, compared with 30 percent of Whites. The figures for using social media like Facebook via phone were 36 percent for Latinos, 33 percent for Blacks and 19 percent for Whites.

Building a Festival Network for Black-Theme Films - NYTimes.com

Building a Festival Network for Black-Theme Films - NYTimes.com: Ava DuVernay, the filmmaker and publicist, imagines a time when black-theme pictures will flourish in places where African-American film festivals have already found eager viewers.

Fifty such cities would be an ideal black-film circuit, Ms. DuVernay said. In March she will start with five.

“I Will Follow,” which was written and directed by Ms. DuVernay and stars Salli Richardson-Whitfield (“I Am Legend,” “Black Dynamite”) as a woman sorting through memories of a dead aunt, is set to become the first film from the newly formed African-American Film Festival Releasing Movement.

The plan is to put black-theme movies in commercial theaters, initially from the independent film program recently begun by the AMC theater chain, for a two-week run supported by social networks, mailing lists and other buzz-building services at the disposal of allied ethnic film festivals.

Misery With Plenty of Company - NYTimes.com

Misery With Plenty of Company - NYTimes.com: Consider the extremes. President Obama is redesigning his administration to make it even friendlier toward big business and the megabanks, which is to say the rich, who flourish no matter what is going on with the economy in this country. (They flourish even when they’re hard at work destroying the economy.) Meanwhile, we hear not a word — not so much as a peep — about the poor, whose ranks are spreading like a wildfire in a drought.

The politicians and the media behave as if the poor don’t exist. But with jobs still absurdly scarce and the bottom falling out of the middle class, the poor are becoming an ever more significant and increasingly desperate segment of the population.

How do you imagine a family of four would live if its annual income was $11,000 or less?

Arizona Orders Tucson to End Mexican-American Studies Program - NYTimes.com

Arizona Orders Tucson to End Mexican-American Studies Program - NYTimes.com: TUCSON — The class began with a Mayan-inspired chant and a vigorous round of coordinated hand clapping. The classroom walls featured protest signs, including one that said “United Together in La Lucha!” — the struggle. Although open to any student at Tucson High Magnet School, nearly all of those attending Curtis Acosta’s Latino literature class on a recent morning were Mexican-American.

For all of that and more, Mr. Acosta’s class and others in the Tucson Unified School District’s Mexican-American program have been declared illegal by the State of Arizona — even while similar programs for black, Asian and American Indian students have been left untouched.

In Black America, The Depression Rolls On

In Black America, The Depression Rolls On: ...Among white people, the unemployment rate dropped in December to 8.5 percent -- hardly acceptable, but manageable were the government spending more to expand a fraying social safety net and generate jobs. For black Americans, the unemployment rate was 15.8 percent.

Professional economists will not pause for an instant at those figures. It is a truism that the black unemployment rate generally runs double the white one, and yet when did that become acceptable? How can there be so little discussion about a full-blown epidemic of joblessness in the African-American community, as if the commonplace incidence of despair -- and, more recently, reversed progress -- somehow amounts to old news?

'Can you imagine any other group at that level of unemployment and the media dismissing it as not important?' the Rev. Jesse Jackson asked during an interview this week.

NewsHour Extra: Arizona Bans Ethnic Studies for K-12 Students | December 28, 2010 | PBS

NewsHour Extra: Arizona Bans Ethnic Studies for K-12 Students | December 28, 2010 | PBS: In May, Gov. Jan Brewer signed a law banning the state’s schools from teaching ethnic studies classes, defined as history, anthropology and literature courses designed to teach the stories, histories, struggles and triumphs of people of color through their own unique perspectives.

Specifically, the law targets Mexican-American studies programs taught in Tucson schools, where 60 percent of the students are of Mexican descent. The bill (HB2281) passed by the Legislature states that schools will lose state funding if they offer any courses that “promote the overthrow of the U.S. government, promote resentment of a particular race or class of people, are designed primarily for students of a particular ethnic group or advocate ethnic solidarity instead of the treatment of pupils as individuals.” This law will cut the Tucson school district’s budget by $36 million a year if they continue to teach ethnic studies courses.

Accounting Giant Ernst & Young Seeks To Attract More Minority Hires

Accounting Giant Ernst & Young Seeks To Attract More Minority Hires: A partner from Ernst & Young’s Chicago office was in a unique position Thursday as she pitched the perks of working for an accounting behemoth to a room full of minority college students.

While touting the virtues of the accounting life, Dorothy Proux animatedly told her success story to more than 100 sophomores and juniors from 58 colleges and took questions from the crowd at the Discover Tax conference. Hoping to lure more minority and women graduates into accounting, specifically tax work, Ernst & Young has created the all-expenses-paid event five years ago. This year, it took place Jan. 5-7 at the Hilton Hotel in New York City.

“There really is a limited number of highly qualified underrepresented minorities that are majoring in accounting,” says Megan Goeltz, a recruiting leader for the company.

Perspectives: Inadequate Counseling for Those Who Need It

Perspectives: Inadequate Counseling for Those Who Need It: In their well-researched book, No Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal: Race and Class in Elite College Admission and Campus Life, Drs. Thomas Espenshade and Alexandria Walton Radford note that it will take significant investments of both resources and time to close the racial and socioeconomic academic achievement gaps. However, an immediate, affordable opportunity exists to improve the quality of academic preparation and postsecondary planning for all students, especially poor students and many students of color.

Auburn Is First In One Ranking, 85th in Another - NYTimes.com

Auburn Is First In One Ranking, 85th in Another - NYTimes.com: ...Among all the bowl teams this season, Auburn has the highest disparity in the graduation rates between white players (100 percent) and black players (49 percent), according to a study at the Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida.

Jim Gundlach, the Auburn sociology professor who uncovered the academic abuse, saw the decline in the team’s ranking as progress. “A genuine consequence to this has been that the people who want to do things right have gotten a bit more grasp over what the university is trying to do,” he said.

Auburn’s athletic director, Jay Jacobs, declined to comment. The Tigers’ second-year football coach, Gene Chizik, said of his team’s academic performance and support, “We do a great job, so we’re not concerned with that.” When pressed on the issue of graduating black players, Chizik said, “Those are circumstances; there’s all kinds of different things.”

Study: Blacks less likely to have living wills, medical directives - USATODAY.com

Study: Blacks less likely to have living wills, medical directives - USATODAY.com: Nearly two-thirds of nursing home patients have advance directives, documents allowing people to make end of life decisions when they might not be able to speak for themselves, a government study shows.

But the study, out today, reveals a significant gap between black and white patients with the documents.

The National Center for Health Statistics looked at three groups of long-term care patients and found that 65% of those in nursing homes had advance directives such as living wills and do-not-resuscitate orders, as did 88% in hospice settings and 28% in home health care.

Literary Struggle Continues Over Mark Twain’s ‘Offensive’ Words

Literary Struggle Continues Over Mark Twain’s ‘Offensive’ Words: Mark Twain wrote that “the difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter.” A new edition of “Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” and “Tom Sawyer” will try to find out if that holds true by replacing the N-word with “slave” in an effort not to offend readers.

Twain scholar Alan Gribben, who is working with NewSouth Books in Alabama to publish a combined volume of the books, said the N-word appears 219 times in “Huck Finn” and four times in “Tom Sawyer.” He said the word puts the books in danger of joining the list of literary classics that Twain once humorously defined as those “which people praise and don't read.”

Black Colleges Step Up Pursuit of Sponsored Research

Black Colleges Step Up Pursuit of Sponsored Research: When Claflin University President Henry Tisdale challenged his faculty to pursue an aggressive research agenda, he knew the university needed to be dogged in going after lucrative federal research and development contracts to support that research.

“From the beginning, our game plan was to set the bar very high for our faculty and students in terms of research,” says Tisdale, referring to the resources he put into the school’s Office of Sponsored Programs. “I don’t believe in putting in that kind of mandate without a support mechanism.”

Carole Simpson's Network Battle Scars: An Anchor's Fight Against Racism - The Daily Beast

Carole Simpson's Network Battle Scars: An Anchor's Fight Against Racism - The Daily Beast: Carole Simpson got her first big break from Martin Luther King.

She was a rookie radio reporter in 1966 when she conducted an all-night stakeout of the visiting civil-rights leader, blurted out that “I’m the only Negro female reporter in Chicago” and got him to tell her why he was there (to challenge Mayor Daley—the original Mayor Daley—on segregated housing).

Race has always loomed large for the scrappy South Side native—larger than we knew, in fact, according to her new memoir News Lady. Simpson reveals a slew of race-related battles with ABC News, including her account that she was pushed out the door after a 25-year career.

What’s most striking about the book is that some of the most cringe-inducing incidents occurred not just in the early phase of her career, when black women were a rarity in the senior ranks of television news, but years after you would assume that the fried-chicken jokes had stopped. Even if Simpson is enlarging these episodes through the mists of memory, her anger—and sometimes her tears—shows they left an indelible mark.

New law labels interns 'highly qualified teachers'

New law labels interns 'highly qualified teachers': Civil rights advocates are blasting new federal legislation that allows states to classify teaching interns as 'highly qualified' teachers and regularly assign them to schools with mostly poor, minority students.

The measure, which remains in effect until the end of the 2012-13 school year, was signed Dec. 22 by President Barack Obama as part of an unrelated federal spending bill.

The legislation nullifies a Sept. 27 decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that California illegally classified thousands of teachers in training as "highly qualified" in violation of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

Under that law, all students are supposed to be taught by "highly qualified" teachers who have earned state teaching credentials, but a 2004 Bush administration policy allowed states to give that status to interns working toward certification.

Universities Forced to Adapt as Demographics Shift

Universities Forced to Adapt as Demographics Shift: In August, 60 years after the University of Texas admitted its first Black student, the school welcomed the first freshman class in which White students were in the minority.

White students, who accounted for 51 percent of UT’s freshman class in 2009, made up 48 percent in 2010. Black and Hispanic students represented about 5 percent and 23 percent, respectively, with Asians and other races making up the rest.

The state’s flagship university passed the demographic milestone earlier than some had anticipated, reflecting a similar shift that is rapidly taking place at other top-level educational institutions across the country."

University of Arkansas-Little Rock Chancellor Establishing Racial Institute To Heal Old Wounds

University of Arkansas-Little Rock Chancellor Establishing Racial Institute To Heal Old Wounds: Joel Anderson spent his childhood watching buses barreling down U.S. 67, passing his hometown of Swifton on a 50-mile daily journey to schools that wouldn’t reject the Black children on board for the color of their skin.

In his segregated schools, Anderson, who is White, heard jokes and taunts about his Black peers, but he was largely unaware of situations he would later come to view as injustices.

He developed a passion for racial equality as a freshman at Harding University, where a mix of conversations with peers from integrated schools and teachings on biblical principles led him to examine his worldview.

Theory in Practice

Theory in Practice: ...Paradise is not the only one to be inspired by the international appeal and uniqueness of the 38-acre urban campus. For more than a decade, Rutgers-Newark has been ranked the nation’s most diverse university by U.S. News and World Report. Officials say the institution’s diversity is fueled, in part, by the area’s growing immigrant population. In fact, 37 percent of undergraduate students report that English is not their first language.

Now, the university’s unique composition is allowing it to test a theory that diversity advocates have long argued but have lacked rigorous scholarship to support: students of all backgrounds benefit from learning in a multicultural and multi-ethnic environment. University officials are refining existing policies and implementing new practices to measure the precise academic benefits of maintaining a diverse student population.

Historians Expose Error-Filled Virginia Textbooks

Historians Expose Error-Filled Virginia Textbooks: In the version of history being taught in some Virginia classrooms, New Orleans began the 1800s as a bustling U.S. harbor (instead of as a Spanish colonial one). The Confederacy included 12 states (instead of 11). And the United States entered World War I in 1916 (instead of 1917).

These are among the dozens of errors historians have found since Virginia officials ordered a review of textbooks by Five Ponds Press, the publisher responsible for a controversial claim that African-American soldiers fought for the Confederacy in large numbers during the Civil War.

South Carolina Program’s Success Highlights Minority Access Debate

South Carolina Program’s Success Highlights Minority Access Debate: The Centers for Economic Excellence Program has drawn cheers from higher education and political officials as a model for establishing South Carolina as a base for research that’s groundbreaking and creates jobs.

The program, paid for with lottery and private money, has brought in nearly 5,000 new jobs that pay an average of $63,000 per year, program supporters say. And the best-paying of those jobs are those held by endowed chairs, nationally recognized research experts hired by the state’s three research universities.

But, of the 34 endowed chairs hired so far, only three have been women and none has been African-American.

Daily Kos: Fascinating 1860 Map of the U.S. Slave Population

Daily Kos: Fascinating 1860 Map of the U.S. Slave Population: 2011 marks the sesquicentennial of the start of the American Civil War. On New Year's Day 150 years ago, South Carolina had already seceded from the United States and the next months would see ten more states secede from the Union, the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, the formation of the Confederate States of America, and the start of the war.

Historian Susan Schulten wrote about the 1860 Census and map showing American slavery in The New York Times last month. The United States Coast Survey used the 1860 Census data, the last time the federal government counted the slave population, to produce two maps illustrating slave population — one of Virginia and the other of the entire South.