Equality, a True Soul Food - NYTimes.com

Equality, a True Soul Food - NYTimes.com: John Steinbeck observed that “a sad soul can kill you quicker, far quicker, than a germ.”

That insight, now confirmed by epidemiological studies, is worth bearing in mind at a time of such polarizing inequality that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans possess a greater collective net worth than the bottom 90 percent.

There’s growing evidence that the toll of our stunning inequality is not just economic but also is a melancholy of the soul. The upshot appears to be high rates of violent crime, high narcotics use, high teenage birthrates and even high rates of heart disease.

That’s the argument of an important book by two distinguished British epidemiologists, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. They argue that gross inequality tears at the human psyche, creating anxiety, distrust and an array of mental and physical ailments — and they cite mountains of data to support their argument.

Slavery paintings coming down from Atlanta office

Slavery paintings coming down from Atlanta office: Murals of slaves harvesting sugar cane on a Georgia plantation and picking and ginning cotton are coming off the walls of a state building on the order of a new agriculture commissioner.

The murals are part of a collection of eight works painted by George Beattie in 1956 depicting an idealized version of Georgia farming, from the corn grown by prehistoric American Indians to a 20th-century veterinary lab. In the Deep South, the history in between includes the forced use of slave labor.

'I don't like those pictures,' said Republican Gary Black, the newly elected agriculture commissioner. 'There are a lot of other people who don't like them.'

Slavery was indisputably part of 19th-century farming in Georgia. By 1840, more than 280,000 slaves were living in the state, many as field hands. Just before the Civil War, slaves made up about 40 percent of the state's population.

Va. judges revisit noncitizens' convictions, sentences to prevent deportation

Va. judges revisit noncitizens' convictions, sentences to prevent deportation: A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that noncitizens in criminal cases must be advised of the possible consequences of a conviction has sparked a flurry of appeals by defendants who claim that they didn't know that conviction would lead to deportation.

But in Virginia, a similar battle has emerged over whether judges can revisit and reopen old cases or even summarily revise the sentences to avoid a convict's removal from the country.

A Loudoun County General District Court judge recently reopened four cases involving defendants who say they would not have pleaded guilty if they had known that they would be deported. In one instance this month, Loudoun prosecutors sought a court order to stop the judge from reopening such cases, but a Circuit Court judge refused.

Miss. Gov. Haley Barbour to free sisters sentenced to life in prison for robbery

Miss. Gov. Haley Barbour to free sisters sentenced to life in prison for robbery: Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R) announced late Wednesday that he will grant an early release from prison to two sisters serving unusually long sentences for armed robbery.

Gladys and Jamie Scott have each served 16 years of a life sentence. Their case had become a cause celebre among civil rights groups, including the NAACP, which mounted a national campaign to free the women.

The Scotts were convicted in 1994 for an armed robbery in which they led two men into an ambush. The men were robbed of $11, and their supporters contend that the Scotts, who are black, received extraordinary punishment for the crime.

Puerto Rico baffled by high asthma rate

Puerto Rico baffled by high asthma rate: ...Puerto Rico is a U.S. Caribbean territory where children are nearly 300 percent more likely to have the respiratory ailment than white non-Hispanic children in the continental United States. And this year, Puerto Rico has seen a jump in asthma cases, which health officials suspect might be linked to the heavy rains that have unleashed millions of spores.

The island, with a population of 4 million, already has 2.5 times the death rate stemming from asthma as the mainland, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Puerto Ricans in the U.S. also have been hit hard by asthma, with an asthma attack rate 2.5 times higher than for whites.

Adding to the problem is that Puerto Rican children do not respond as well as those from other ethnic groups to the number one medication prescribed to asthmatics: Albuterol, which comes in an inhaler used to relieve sudden attacks. As a result, several major pharmaceutical companies are working to create another medication, but they are still years away from doing so.

Hispanics Leaving Connecticut Town, Citing Racial Abuse By Police

Hispanics Leaving Connecticut Town, Citing Racial Abuse By Police: Santiago Malave has worked law enforcement jobs in Connecticut for more than four decades, but as a Puerto Rican, he says he cannot drive through his own town without worrying about police harassing him.

Malave, a probation officer who works in New Haven, says the racial abuse is so bad that he only crosses the town line into East Haven to go home. He and his wife are now preparing to sell their house and move, joining an exodus of Hispanics who say police have hassled them with traffic stops, false arrests and even jailhouse beatings.

The Justice Department has started a civil rights investigation, and the FBI recently opened a criminal probe. But that has not changed things on Main Street, where restaurants and stores that cater to Hispanics are going out of business.

Cherokee, Apple partner to put language on iPhones

Cherokee, Apple partner to put language on iPhones: Nearly two centuries after a blacksmith named Sequoyah converted Cherokee into its own unique written form, the tribe has worked with Apple to develop Cherokee language software for the iPhone, iPod and - soon - the iPad. Computers used by students - including Lauren - at the tribe's language immersion school already allow them to type using Cherokee characters.

The goal, Cherokee Chief Chad Smith said, is to spread the use of the language among tech-savvy children in the digital age. Smith has been known to text students at the school using Cherokee, and teachers do the same, allowing students to continue using the language after school hours.

Study: Stroke deaths higher where fried fish aplenty - USATODAY.com

Study: Stroke deaths higher where fried fish aplenty - USATODAY.com: The steep rate of death from stroke in a swath of Southern states often referred to as America's 'stroke belt' may be linked to a higher consumption of fried fish in that region, new research suggests.

A study published in today's Neurology shows people living in the stroke belt — which comprises North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas and Louisiana — eat more fried fish and less non-fried fish than people living in the rest of the country, and African-Americans eat more fried fish than Caucasians.

'Differences in dietary fish consumption, specifically in cooking methods, may be contributing to higher rates of stroke in the stroke belt and also among African Americans,' says study author Fadi Nahab, medical director for the Stroke Program at Emory University Hospital in Atlanta.

‘Freedom Riders’: The Fight To End Segregation

‘Freedom Riders’: The Fight To End Segregation: Filmmaker Stanley Nelson says his new documentary about the courageous activists who defiantly opposed the 1960s segregation of the South may help inspire a new generation of youth.

The film, “Freedom Riders,” recounts the 1961 crusade by daring young activists intent on ending segregated travel on interstate buses in the Deep South. The American Experience film, set to air May 16 on PBS, has been generating buzz on the film festival circuit ever since its showing at Sundance in January.

Most of the riders were college students coached in the art of nonviolent protest by veteran activists, including the Rev. James M. Lawson Jr. The students, both Black and White, knew they were risking their lives by traveling on Greyhound and Trailways buses into the rigidly and violently segregated South.

Kaplan Higher Education Sued Over Alleged Job Discrimination

Kaplan Higher Education Sued Over Alleged Job Discrimination: Federal officials on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against Kaplan Higher Education Corp., a nationwide provider of postsecondary education, for allegedly discriminating against Black job applicants by screening the credit history of potential employees.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) says the practice of rejecting job seekers based on their credit history has a discriminatory impact on some racial and ethnic groups. The lawsuit alleges that Kaplan's practice is not job-related or justified by business necessity.

As a result of this practice dating back to 2008, the company has violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, according to the lawsuit filed by the EEOC’s Cleveland field office in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. It is a violation of Title VII to use hiring practices that have a discriminatory impact because of race and that are not job-related and justified by business necessity.

Texas Curriculum Changes Prompt Civil Rights Groups To Seek Review Of Public Schools In Lone Star State

Texas Curriculum Changes Prompt Civil Rights Groups To Seek Review Of Public Schools In Lone Star State: Two civil rights organizations are seeking a federal review of public school education in Texas, accusing state school administrators of violating federal civil rights laws after curriculum changes approved earlier this year by the Texas Board of Education.

The request to the U.S. Department of Education made by the Texas NAACP and Texas League of United Latin American Citizens on Monday contended that the curriculum changes passed in May 'were made with the intention to discriminate' and would have a 'stigmatizing impact' on African-American and Latino students.

'The State of Texas is failing to provide many of its minority students with equal educational opportunities,' documents sent to the federal department said.

Reinvented New Jersey College Embraces Minority Identity

Reinvented New Jersey College Embraces Minority Identity: Bloomfield College, started in the mid-1800s by the Presbyterian Church as a school for German ministers immigrating to the United States, today proudly stands among the nation’s predominantly Black colleges. It’s a status the small private college did not seek and only fully embraced after a painful evolution marked by racial demographic changes in its target commuter population, race riots in its largest nearby city, a court fight with tenured professors and a conscientious decision to embrace diversity—the welfare of the school requiring it.

“I helped the college understand what it had become and that was kind of a sea change,” says Dr. John Noonan, a veteran educator recruited by Bloomfield as president in 1987. “I knew which way the country was moving. Colleges that didn’t aggressively recruit non-White students were going to become anachronistic. It was not that I came and brought something new. All I did was to help people understand why that was occurring.”

It was important to embrace diversity, says Noonan, who retired from his post in 2003, “because that’s who we were by the time I got there. African-American students saved the school,” he says, pointing to the steady enrollment of Black and other minorities that helped offset the loss of White students who began leaving Bloomfield en masse in the early 1970s.

Curriculum Reform at UT-Galveston Medical School Yields Improved Minority Student Board Results

Curriculum Reform at UT-Galveston Medical School Yields Improved Minority Student Board Results: In the past several years, there have been many efforts to reform medical education and improve the rate of passage of the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE), in particular, Step 1, which is the most difficult part of the USMLE. According to a recent report published in Medical Education by Steven A. Lieberman, M.D., and other professors in the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB), the Step 1 examination has the lowest pass rate of all of the licensure sequence examinations, especially among under-represented minorities and women. UTMB has developed an approach that Lieberman and his colleagues report have had a remarkable effect on its students’ performance on the medical board exam.

Lieberman said that the overall rate of failure on the Step 1 exam has dropped from 7.5 percent to 2.3 percent, compared to a national rate in the 5 to 7 percent range. The change for minority students, which he described as “huge and surprising,” dropped from 16.9 to 3.9 percent, which is lower than the national failure rate for all students.

DREAM Act Blocked in Senate

DREAM Act Blocked in Senate: Senate Republicans on Saturday doomed an effort that would have given hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants a path to legal status if they enrolled in college or joined the military.

Sponsors of the Dream Act fell five votes short of the 60 they needed to break through largely GOP opposition and win its enactment before Republicans take over the House and narrow Democrats' majority in the Senate next month.

President Barack Obama called the vote “incredibly disappointing.”

“A minority of senators prevented the Senate from doing what most Americans understand is best for the country,” Obama said. “There was simply no reason not to pass this important legislation.”

Reaching Out to Diverse Students with Mental Health Services

Reaching Out to Diverse Students with Mental Health Services: A few weeks ago, a student of color who never sought professional help came to my walk-in support hours and concluded that the pain she held in from a childhood trauma caused anxiety and affected her relationships. She did not feel comfortable going to the counseling center—seeking therapy was not common in her community. She didn’t trust people—many systems had already failed her. I was the first person she told. She later said it was liberating to talk to someone and not repress her suffering and shame anymore.

Sadly, this student’s story is not unusual. According to a supplemental report from the U.S. Surgeon General, “striking disparities in mental health care are found for racial and ethnic minorities.”

Young supporters vow to keep fighting for DREAM Act | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Breaking News for Dallas-Fort Worth | Dallas Morning News

Young supporters vow to keep fighting for DREAM Act | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Breaking News for Dallas-Fort Worth | Dallas Morning News: After the U.S. Senate killed the DREAM Act on Saturday, its young supporters vowed to continue the fight.

'It's a heartbreaking loss, but we're going to keep fighting for it,' said Him Ranjit, a University of Texas at Austin student who was in Washington, D.C., on Saturday to support the legislation.

'I've never seen the Senate chambers that full,' he said of students who were present to witness the vote. 'We were holding hands and praying and hoping for the best.'

Ranjit, who came to Texas from Nepal, said he would struggle to continue his biomedical engineering studies without the financial support that students who are citizens typically receive.

Whatever Happened To ... the Baltimore high school debater?

Whatever Happened To ... the Baltimore high school debater?: Ignacio Evans was 18 and had just been awarded a full debate scholarship to Towson University when his story appeared in The Washington Post Magazine in August 2007.

Iggy was a kid who had a lot of strikes against him. He never knew his biological dad. His mom struggled with drug addiction, and he landed in foster care. He attended Baltimore's Frederick Douglass High School, one of four failing Baltimore schools slated for takeover under the No Child Left Behind Act. His odds of success were poor: Only 56 percent of Frederick Douglass students had graduated in 2006.

But Iggy, an argumentative kid, found a way to channel his contrariness through the wildly popular Baltimore Urban Debate League, a program that teaches the fundamentals of democracy -- as well as critical thinking, basic literacy and research skills -- to underprivileged students. Weekly debate tournaments in the city continue to draw more than 1,000 students on any given weekend.

Dream Act Scheduled for Senate Vote - NYTimes.com

Dream Act Scheduled for Senate Vote - NYTimes.com: The Obama administration joined with Latino leaders and immigrant advocates on Friday in a full-court press on behalf of a bill to grant legal status to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrant students, which faces a decisive vote on Saturday in the Senate.

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, scheduled the vote on the student measure, which is known as the Dream Act, late on Thursday. The Senate will vote on a version of the bill that passed the House of Representatives on Dec. 8.

The bill gained some momentum after passing the House by 20 votes, including 8 Republicans, a wider margin than its supporters had expected. But on Friday the Senate count appeared to be short of the 60 votes Democrats need to bring the bill to the floor for debate. Its sponsors, including Senator Reid and Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the second highest Democratic leader, acknowledged they faced an uphill climb.

The Root: When Biracial Means Black : NPR

The Root: When Biracial Means Black : NPR: Ever heard of Barack Obama? You know, the first black president? The one who won an election and near-deity status in the African-American community while openly discussing his white mother in books, interviews and stump speeches?

Yeah, me, too. This is just one of the reasons I'm scratching my head at the findings of a new study that people with one white and one black parent 'downplay their white ancestry,' in part to gain the acceptance of other black people. The authors dub this phenomenon 'reverse passing' and call it 'a striking phenomenon.' I'm beyond stumped. In a summary of the results, the sociologists behind 'Passing as Black: Racial Identity Work Among Biracial Americans' report that this occurs especially in 'certain social situations' — ostensibly, around other black people — where having a white parent 'can carry its own negative biases.

College President Tackles Student Persistence, Campus Expansion

College President Tackles Student Persistence, Campus Expansion: Dr. Carlos Hernandez has spent his entire career in higher education at New Jersey City University.

And that doesn’t bother him one bit.

Hernandez joined the faculty at NJCU—then Jersey City State College—as a professor of psychology in 1972. Over the last 17 years as president, he has shepherded the largely commuter school of about 10,000 students through some monumental changes, including the achievement of university status and an increase in the number of minority students—specifically Latinos by 52.2 percent—on the urban campus.