For Native Americans, Mental Health Budget Cuts Hit Hard : Code Switch : NPR: Native American tribes gave up millions of acres to the federal government in the 19th century in exchange for promises of funded health care, education and housing. But time and again, those funds have been cut.
The recent across-the-board federal budget cuts, known as the sequestration, are no exception. They came with a 5 percent reduction in funding for mental health services, including suicide prevention. That's especially troubling for Native Americans, whose suicide rate are four times the national average.
Because of the reduction, the Oglala Sioux Tribe in Pine Ridge, S.D., will not be able to hire two additional mental health service providers, says Cathy Abramson, chairwoman of the National Indian Health Board. And that could have devastating effects.
"Since the beginning of the year, there have been 100 suicide attempts in 110 days on Pine Ridge," Abramson said at a Senate committee hearing in Washington last spring. "We can't take any more cuts. We just can't."
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Brennan: It's time I stopped calling team 'Redskins'
Why then? Why not last year? Or five years ago? Or when I covered the team? I think it was the cumulative effect of all the reporting on the issue in the past year or so, solid journalism that continually brings to the surface just how racist the term is to many in the Native American community. And even if only some Native Americans think it's RACIST, here's news for the rest of us, whether we want to hear it and deal with it or not: it's racist.
So, now that the 2013 NFL season has begun, it makes sense to me to stop using the word.
This is a personal decision, as it was for some of my colleagues in the sports media, led by Sports Illustrated's Peter King. I'm guessing others will eventually make this call. Why? It's the right thing to do. If that's not reason enough, try explaining and defending the nickname to a child. It's impossible.
Wednesday, September 11, 2013
German court rules Muslim girls must join swim classes - World News
The decision by Germany's top court for public and administrative disputes signals that the state's constitutional obligation to educate children can take precedence over customs and practices linked to an individual's religious beliefs.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her center-right government have sought dialogue with the country's roughly four-millions Muslims, but have also said they must make an effort to integrate and learn German.
The court said Muslim schoolgirls could not be exempted from swimming lessons, provided they were allowed to wear so-called "burkinis," full-body swimsuits worn by many Muslim women which leave only the face, hands and feet exposed.
The plaintiff was a Muslim girl, originally from Morocco, who goes to school in the western state of Hesse. Her parents have tried for several years to stop her from joining swimming lessons with boys. She was 11 years old when the case started.
"The plaintiff has not made sufficiently clear that ... taking part in co-educational swimming lessons with a burkini breaches Muslim rules on clothing," said the Federal Administrative Court in Leipzig, rejecting her appeal.
Two courts in Hesse had already rejected her bid to be exempted from swimming lessons.
Longtime Ala. lawmaker, civil rights leader dies
Rep. John Rogers of Birmingham, a longtime friend of Newton, says he was notified by the lawmaker's family that Newton died Wednesday morning after a long illness.
Gov. Robert Bentley served for eight years with Newton in the Alabama House.
"He was a fine gentleman, and we had a strong mutual respect for each other. He will be greatly missed, not only by his own constituents - but also by the entire state of Alabama," Bentley, a Republican, said.
Newton was former city attorney for Birmingham and had served in the Legislature since 1986. He was speaker pro tem from 1998 until 2010.
He was a polite man who often had a kind word for legislators and lobbyists when he passed them in the Statehouse hallways. The normally noisy House chamber would often grow quiet when Newton rose to speak.
Hate crime suspected after Iowa biracial couple’s home is set ablaze and N-word painted on walls | The Raw Story
Shelly Owens told KETV that firefighters were called to her Council Bluffs home at around 2:30 p.m. on Tuesday.
“I’m very angry,” she said. “I’m just fortunate that my kids were in school and that we weren’t home.”
Owens, who is white, and her African-American fiance were both at work when they found out their house was on fire. The couple’s biracial children were also in school at the time.
The perpetrators vandalized her home and even spray-painted the walls.
“They wrote the ‘N-word’ all over my walls,” Owens explained. “This is against me, I guess, and it’s a hate crime.”
Council Bluffs police Sgt. David Dawson said that investigators were looking into the incident as a possible hate crime.
“We very rarely have anything that I can remember for quite a while that I would say is related to a hate crime over here,” Dawson told KETV.
Florida man accused of ‘walking on wrong side of the road’ | The Raw Story
First Coast News reported on Monday that Bobby Wingate was cited by an officer for “walking down the wrong side of the road” during the stop, then punched in the face. When the officer pulled out his Tazer, Wingate called 911 to protect himself.
“He said do I really want to fight him?” Wingate can be heard telling the emergency dispatcher. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
Wingate was arrested, charged with resisting arrest without violence and walking down the wrong side of the road and brought to trial. But in court, the officer testified he was not sure what side of the road Wingate was on, prompting the judge to dismiss the case. Wingate has since filed a civil suit against the department.
“The conduct that is outlined in the transcript and the 911 call is not only breathtaking, it’s outrageous, it’s disgraceful,” Wingate’s attorney, Andrew Bonderud, told FCN.
Abercrombie's 'look policy' gets slammed by judge over hijab - TODAY.com
But four months into her job, in February 2010, a district manager spotted her at the store where she worked in San Mateo County, just south of San Francisco, and asked her to remove her hijab.
Khan, a 19-year-old who worked part-time in the stockroom, refused, citing her Muslim faith. Within two weeks, the district manager and the head of corporate human relations at Abercrombie & Fitch, Hollister’s parent company, agreed Khan should be fired for violating the company’s “Look Policy,” which bans headwear.
Now a federal judge says that Abercrombie & Fitch owes Khan damages. U.S. District Court Judge Yvonne Gonzalez-Rogers wrote that “reasonable jurors could determine that by offering Khan one option – to remove her hijab despite her religious beliefs – Abercrombie acted with malice, reckless indifference…”
Analysis: 2012 Higher Education Enrollment Rate of Latino High School Graduates Surpassed That of Whites - Higher Education
Using just-released U.S. Census data, the Pew Hispanic Trends Project reported that the higher education enrollment rate of 18- to 24-year-old Latino high school graduates reached 49 percent in 2012 compared to 47 percent of non-Hispanic White high school graduates. With Latinos having a higher high school dropout rate than Whites, the proportion of all Latinos from 18 to 24 in college is below that of Whites—37.5 percent among Latinos compared to 42.1 percent among Whites, according to the Pew Hispanic Trends Project analysis.
“Probably the most important finding of this new Census [data] release is that not only are more Hispanics going to college, but, among those that finish high school, a larger share of them are enrolled,” said Dr. Richard Fry, the senior research associate at the Pew Hispanic Trends Project.
Teacher Prep Report Raises Questions About Diversity - Higher Education
“We know that kids of color can perform better in the classroom when they have teachers that match their race,” says Kate Walsh, president of NCTQ, citing research that has shown that Black students do better when assigned a Black teacher.
Despite the purported benefits of having a teacher of the same race, minority teachers remain woefully underrepresented in relation to the proportion of America’s minority students.
To encourage national recruitment efforts for minority teachers, NCTQ decided to acknowledge teacher prep programs that had what the organization considers noticeably higher proportions of candidates of color.
Children suffer from growing economic inequality among families since recession - The Washington Post
The report, “Divergent Paths of American Families,” found a widening gap in recent years between families that are white, educated or economically secure and minority families, those headed by someone with a high school degree or less, and poor families.
The concern, report authors say, is not that American families are becoming diverse. Advances in civil rights and women’s economic independence have opened up individual choice and transformed the American family in the past 50 years. The concern, they wrote, is that the divisions fall along race, class and educational lines and that they are accelerating.
“I was struck by how strong the divide has become in terms of education,” said report author Zhenchao Qian, a sociologist at Ohio State University. “The gap between the haves and the have-nots, and the children who excel and who lag behind, grew larger than ever in the 2000s.”
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Will County's first Latino judge was recently appointed to the bench. - chicagotribune.com
Judge David Garcia's recent appointment to the bench is being heralded by some Latino leaders as a mark of progress in diverse representation.
"It opens the doors," said Marge Franchini, who organized the parade and serves on the Spanish Community Center board of directors. "People are so impressed that we finally have someone who has opened the doors for the rest of us in that sense
In a county where Latinos make up 16.1 percent of the population, representation on area boards is minimal. For example, there are no Latinos on the Will County Board.
And in Joliet, where Latinos make up 27.8 percent of the population, there are no Latinos on the City Council or the Joliet Township High School District 204 school board and only one Latina on the Joliet Grade School District 86 school board. While Latinos make up 22 percent of the student population in Plainfield Consolidated Community School District 202, there are no Latinos on the school board.
School that sent home 7-year-old girl for ‘dreadlocks’ is reversing policy | The Raw Story
The previous policy banned “faddish” hairstyles, listing afros and dreadlocks as unacceptable. Now the school has broadened guidelines, but still says hairstyles that violate “hygiene” standards will still be considered inappropriate for school. The policy now reads:
“Each student and the parents/guardians of the student are responsible for the personal hygiene of the student. The Administration reserves the right to contact the parents/guardians regarding any personal hygiene issues that it believes causes a risk to the health, safety and welfare of the student, his or her classmates, and faculty or staff or detracts from the educational environment.”
Are You Ready For Some Controversy? The History Of 'Redskin' : Code Switch : NPR
On Thursday, the Oneida Indian Nation in upstate New York announced the launch of a radio ad campaign urging the team to change its moniker. The ad begins with an Oneida leader commending NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell for condemning the behavior of Eagles player Riley Cooper, after Cooper was recorded using the N-word at a concert this summer. While the narrator applauds the NFL for taking swift action in the Cooper case, he then draws a parallel between that slur and the word "redskin." "We do not deserve to be called redskins," he says in the ad. "We deserve to be treated as what we are — Americans." The spots began airing in the D.C. market on Sunday.
The Oneida campaign is just the latest protest this year against the Redskins' name. The online magazine Slate made headlines last month when it declared the site will no longer use "Redskins" to refer to the franchise, choosing instead to refer to "the Washington NFL team" from now on. Slate isn't alone: The New Republic and Mother Jones quickly followed suit. Major news sources like The Washington Post, The New York Times and The Associated Press, however, will continue to refer to the team as the "Redskins" this season.
Congress Honors Victims Of Infamous Alabama Church Bombing : Code Switch : NPR
The Congressional Gold Medals for Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley come 50 years after the black girls were killed by a Ku Klux Klan bomb.
Just as the federal recognition is long in coming, so was justice.
The plot to bomb 16th Street Baptist Church can be traced to a once-remote spot along Alabama's scenic Cahaba River. Suburban traffic now rumbles above a deserted, gravelly spot under the Cahaba River Bridge.
"But in the day it was apparently a hot spot for some of the more violent members of the Klan to sit down here and talk and do their dirty work," says former U.S. attorney Doug Jones.
Jones was the federal prosecutor who tried and convicted klansmen Thomas Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry in 2001 and 2002, for the murder of the four black girls killed in one of the most notorious racially-motivated crimes in U.S. history.
Blanton and Cherry were part of a small group of disgruntled white supremacists who didn't think the Klan was doing enough to stop the rising tide of the Civil Rights Movement in 1963.
"They just were the self-proclaimed Cahaba River Bridge Boys," he says. "It was almost like they were trying to be the outlaws of the Old West."
NAACP Preparing Committee to Search for New CEO - Higher Education
Chairwoman Roslyn Brock said during a conference call that she expects the change in leadership to be an orderly transition. Outgoing NAACP President Benjamin Jealous also used the call to elaborate on his desire to spend time with his children, a reason he cited in his announcement the previous day. His departure is effective Dec. 31.
Brock says the board is disappointed Jealous is leaving after five years during which he was credited with boosting the organization’s finances and increasing stability. Still, she said staff members left energized after a meeting with Jealous on Monday.
“The NAACP is alive, and it’s well,” Brock said. “We have a strategic plan in place that will guide our work for the next 50 years.”
Famed Psychiatrist Continues to Push for Education Reform - Higher Education
Famed Psychiatrist Continues to Push for Education Reform - Higher Education: Forty-five years after Dr. James P. Comer launched the School Development Program at the Yale University School of Medicine Child Study Center, the famed psychiatrist continues to speak authoritatively about the nation’s schools and K-12 education reform. At an age when many of his peers have retired to the sidelines, the 78-year-old remains a towering figure who is widely sought for his ideas and insights.
Known principally for the School Development Program (SDP), Comer continues to push for education reform that puts children’s social and emotional development at the center of practices and philosophy for improving schools. With SDP taking root initially in the New Haven, Conn., city schools, the program grew to train thousands of teachers and administrators from around the nation by the 1990s. The SDP training efforts reached a peak in the late 1990s when “whole” or comprehensive school reform movement programs enjoyed notable support from foundations and the federal government.
However, with the advent of the No Child Left Behind federal legislation and its emphasis on high-stakes testing in the early 2000s, school districts retreated from the whole school reform programs and focused their energies on prepping students for standardized tests that measure yearly progress in reading, writing and math.
Known principally for the School Development Program (SDP), Comer continues to push for education reform that puts children’s social and emotional development at the center of practices and philosophy for improving schools. With SDP taking root initially in the New Haven, Conn., city schools, the program grew to train thousands of teachers and administrators from around the nation by the 1990s. The SDP training efforts reached a peak in the late 1990s when “whole” or comprehensive school reform movement programs enjoyed notable support from foundations and the federal government.
However, with the advent of the No Child Left Behind federal legislation and its emphasis on high-stakes testing in the early 2000s, school districts retreated from the whole school reform programs and focused their energies on prepping students for standardized tests that measure yearly progress in reading, writing and math.
Monday, September 09, 2013
The Political Legacy of American Slavery | Maya Sen
The Political Legacy of American Slavery | Maya Sen: We show that contemporary differences in political attitudes across counties in the American South trace their origins back to the influence of slavery's prevalence more than 150 years ago. Whites who currently live in Southern counties that had high shares of slaves population in 1860 are less likely to identify as Democrat, more likely to oppose to affirmative action policies, and more likely to express racial resentment toward blacks. These results are robust to accounting for a variety of attributes, including contemporary shares of black population, urban-rural differences, and Civil War destruction, and strengthen when instrumenting for the prevalence of slavery with agricultural cotton suitability. The results suggest that political attitudes were at least in part determined by the local prevalence of slavery and the political and economic incentives that emancipation created for Southern whites. In turn, these attitudes have been passed down from one generation to the next.
Judge: Abercrombie wrongly fired Muslim for hijab
U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers said the company violated anti-discrimination laws when it fired Hani Khan from its Hollister store in San Mateo, Calif., in 2010. Rogers issued the ruling on Tuesday.
The company claimed the head scarf violated its policy governing the look of its employees, which it said was part of its marketing strategy. The store argued that deviating from its look policy would affect sales.
But the judge said Abercrombie & Fitch offered no "credible evidence" that Khan's head scarf cost the company any sales.
"Abercrombie only offers unsubstantiated opinion testimony of its own employees to support its claim of undue hardship," Rogers said.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission filed a lawsuit on Khan's behalf in 2011.
"Abercrombie & Fitch does not discriminate based on religion and we grant religious accommodations when reasonable," spokesman Bruce MacKenzie said. "It is our policy not to comment on pending litigation."
Man, 69, Punched in Possible NYC "White Man" Bias Attack Dies | NBC New York
Man, 69, Punched in Possible NYC "White Man" Bias Attack Dies | NBC New York: A 69-year-old white man who was allegedly punched and knocked out last week by a black man who declared he would attack the first white person he came across has died, law enforcement sources said Monday.
The man was one of three people allegedly beaten Wednesday in Union Square by the suspect, LaShawn Marten, 31.
NYPD's Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating.
Police said the suspect punched the 69-year-old man in the face, and then punched a 48-year-old person and an 18-year-old person, both also white.
The 69-year-old slipped into a coma after the attack, and died Monday. The other victims were treated at hospitals and released.
The suspect "made statements to the effect that ‘I’m going to punch the first white man that I see,'" Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said last week.
The suspect's lawyer information was not immediately available.
The man was one of three people allegedly beaten Wednesday in Union Square by the suspect, LaShawn Marten, 31.
NYPD's Hate Crimes Task Force is investigating.
Police said the suspect punched the 69-year-old man in the face, and then punched a 48-year-old person and an 18-year-old person, both also white.
The 69-year-old slipped into a coma after the attack, and died Monday. The other victims were treated at hospitals and released.
The suspect "made statements to the effect that ‘I’m going to punch the first white man that I see,'" Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said last week.
The suspect's lawyer information was not immediately available.
Desegregation and the Public Schools - NYTimes.com
Desegregation and the Public Schools - NYTimes.com: In many northern cities, the 1974 United States Supreme Court decision Milliken v. Bradley killed any hopes of integrating the public schools. That ruling, involving Detroit and its suburbs, said that a mandatory plan to achieve integration by busing black children from Detroit across district lines to mainly white suburbs was unconstitutional. The result accelerated white flight to the suburbs, leaving the schools in urban centers even more segregated than they had been.
Most famously, this happened in Boston, where court-ordered integration resulted in a busing plan that wound up mainly moving children of color around the city.
But busing had greater success in some places, particularly those where the plans were carried out countywide, reducing the chances of white flight. They included Louisville/Jefferson County, Raleigh/Wake County and Charlotte/Mecklenberg County.
This week’s Retro Report video, “The Battle for Busing,” follows the story of the Charlotte/Mecklenberg district, which became a national model for racial integration for 30 years only to resegregate about a decade ago, after a court ruling lifted the mandatory integration plan.
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