Better to bring Latinos into TV's mainstream – USATODAY.com

Better to bring Latinos into TV's mainstream – USATODAY.com: Just as the latest red carpet awards season is fading, Comcast announced what film director Robert Rodriguez called "an important moment for the Latino community." It is launching two new channels expressly for Latinos.

At first look, the news is cause for celebration. After all, the underrepresentation of Latinos in American movies and on mainstream TV networks has been astonishing. While Latinos make up 16% of the U.S. population and number 50 million strong, only three Latinos star in the top 10 prime-time television network shows: Jennifer Lopez on American Idol, Christina Aguilera on Voice and Cote de Pablo on NCIS. And while Mexican actor Démian Bichir did earn an Oscar nomination for best actor, of the nine movies nominated for best picture, none starred a Latino or told a Latino story.

So, yes, Comcast's plans are encouraging. That's especially true because both new channels will be aimed at English-speaking Latinos — who, contrary to all the talk about undocumented Hispanics, are the ones driving population growth, with 25% of kids being born in the U.S. of Hispanic descent.

Three plead guilty to hate crime in fatal Miss. rundown case – USATODAY.com

Three plead guilty to hate crime in fatal Miss. rundown case – USATODAY.com: Just days after the Justice Department launched an investigation into the fatal shooting of an unarmed Florida teenager, three white men pleaded guilty Thursday to federal hate crime charges stemming from the horrific June 2011 murder of a 47-year-old black Mississippi man who was beaten and then run over by a pickup truck.

Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez said Deryl Dedmon, 19; John Rice, 19; and Dylan Butler, 20, made "a sport of attacking African Americans" in the Jackson, Miss., area before they were linked to the fatal assault on auto worker James Craig Anderson.

Dedmon also pleaded guilty in state court Wednesday in connection with the murder and was given two life sentences. Rice has been charged by state authorities with assault. Butler has not been charged in state court. A state investigation continues.

Howard University students protest Trayvon Martin’s shooting - The Washington Post

Howard University students protest Trayvon Martin’s shooting - The Washington Post: The students stood silently on the Howard University quad Thursday night and grasped red bags of Skittles high over their heads in memory of Trayvon Martin.

Martin, a 17 year-old African American teen, was fatally shot in Sanford, Fla., last month by George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch volunteer who said he suspected Martin of mischief. Martin was unarmed, carrying a bag of Skittles and a bottle of iced tea.

Martin’s shooting has sparked nationwide furor, a federal civil rights investigation and calls for the arrest of Zimmerman, who claimed the shooting was in self-defense.
Daniel Cokes, organizer of the Howard University protest, said squeezing those treats was proof of life for the 150 or so students who gathered. Cokes, a senior legal communications major, called on his peers and others to fight for improvements in the legal system and to draw attention to what he said was the injustice of Martin’s death.

Protesters joined around the flagpole at the center of campus, prayed and sang “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” They also began organizing for other marches and demonstrations.

Commentary: Community College Campuses Provide an Accurate Reflection of Diversity

Commentary: Community College Campuses Provide an Accurate Reflection of Diversity: Last fall, Diverse ran an article that expressed my concern about the current lack of diversity, the lack of historical support for diversity and the lack of positive outcomes for diverse students in higher education. The column was written after attending conferences wherein neither those in attendance nor those being discussed reflected what should be the diverse landscape of higher education. Today, I write to you after the Association of Community College Trustees, or ACCT, annual congress that was held in Dallas in October. As disheartening as I found last year’s conferences, today I am filled with hope for those young people who attend some of our nation’s finest community colleges.

Kidney disease awareness within the African American community - The Washington Post

Kidney disease awareness within the African American community - The Washington Post: African Americans constitute 32 percent patients in the United States receiving dialysis for kidney failure, although they are only 11 percent of the population. They are 3 1/2 times more likely to have kidney disease than whites.

“The diseases that lead to kidney disease, such as high blood pressure or hypertension and diabetes, are much more concentrated in African American populations,” said J. Keith Melancon, former director of the kidney and pancreas transplantation at the Georgetown Transplant Institute. “There’s also a genetic factor.”

The National Kidney Foundation has designated March kidney awareness month.
Far more African Americans need a kidney transplant than there are available kidneys. One reason is that most donors are white and often are not a match for African American patients. The District, Melancon said, has the highest rate of end-stage renal disease in the country. The waiting list for a black person in need of a kidney, he said, is five to six years.

Trayvon Martin and dangerous times for black men - The Washington Post

Trayvon Martin and dangerous times for black men - The Washington Post: For every black man in America, from the millionaire in the corner office to the mechanic in the local garage, the Trayvon Martin tragedy is personal. It could have been me or one of my sons. It could have been any of us.

How many George Zimmermans are out there cruising the streets? How many guys with chips on their shoulders and itchy fingers on the triggers of loaded handguns? How many self-imagined guardians of the peace who say the words “black male” with a sneer?

We don’t yet know every detail of the encounter between Martin and Zimmerman in Sanford, Fla., that ended with an unarmed 17-year-old high school student being shot dead. But we know enough to conclude that this is an old, familiar story.

We know from tapes of Zimmerman’s 911 call that he initiated the encounter, having decided that Martin’s presence in the neighborhood was suspicious. We know that when Zimmerman told the 911 operator that he was following Martin, the operator responded, “Okay, we don’t need you to do that.” We know that Zimmerman kept following Martin anyway.

Don Thompson Named CEO of McDonald's - Black Enterprise

Don Thompson Named CEO of McDonald's - Black Enterprise: Donald Thompson has been named CEO of McDonald’s Corp., taking the helm of the world’s largest fast food restaurant chain. He will assume his new role on July 1, succeeding retiring chief executive Jim Skinner. The move places Thompson, one of BLACK ENTERPRISE’s 100 Most Powerful Executives in Corporate America, among a few African Americans to run a major publicly-traded corporation – an exclusive club that includes Kenneth I. Chenault of American Express and Ursula Burns of Xerox Corp.

“I’m humbled to take the baton as CEO of McDonald’s,” Thompson said in a statement. “Our management team is strong and will remain focused on the Plan To Win and our three global priorities—optimizing the menu, modernizing the customer experience and broadening our accessibility to even more customers.”

White People, You Will Never Look Suspicious Like Trayvon Martin by Michael Skolnik | Global Grind

White People, You Will Never Look Suspicious Like Trayvon Martin by Michael Skolnik | Global Grind: I will never look suspicious to you. Even if I have a black hoodie, a pair of jeans and white sneakers on...in fact, that is what I wore yesterday...I still will never look suspicious. No matter how much the hoodie covers my face or how baggie my jeans are, I will never look out of place to you. I will never watch a taxi cab pass me by to pick someone else up. I will never witness someone clutch their purse tightly against their body as they walk by me. I won't have to worry about a police car following me for two miles, so they can "run my plates." I will never have to pay before I eat. And I certainly will never get "stopped and frisked." I will never look suspicious to you, because of one thing and one thing only. The color of my skin. I am white.

I was born white. It was the card I was dealt. No choice in the matter. Just the card handed out by the dealer. I have lived my whole life privileged.

Fairfax teacher placed on leave - Virginia Schools Insider - The Washington Post

Fairfax teacher placed on leave - Virginia Schools Insider - The Washington Post: A Fairfax County teacher accused of racially insensitive behavior has been placed on paid administrative leave, her lawyer said Tuesday, while the school system’s Office of Equity and Compliance investigates.

Marilyn Bart, an English teacher at George C. Marshall High School, allegedly singled out African American student Jordan Shumate more than once because of his race — including by telling him to read a Langston Hughes poem “blacker.”

Schools spokesman John Torre said an equity-office inquiry is standard procedure in case of such allegations.

Bill Reichhardt, a lawyer representing Bart, said she requested the scrutiny and intends to fully cooperate. “We’re anxious to examine the facts in an orderly and thorough manner, as quickly as possible,” Reichhardt said. He declined to elaborate on the case.

Commentary: Women’s Colleges, HBCUs Have Nurtured the Best and the Brightest

Commentary: Women’s Colleges, HBCUs Have Nurtured the Best and the Brightest: Women of color, particularly African-American women and Latinas, have long been the mainstay of their communities. Researchers have empirically demonstrated that children’s health outcomes, social standing and educational achievement can all be traced to the mother’s successes and aspirations.

My own family is a case in point.

When growing up my mother always intoned the words “when you go to college,” never “if you go,” although she herself had not attended. My grandmother, an immigrant from Trinidad, had not completed high school, but education was so highly regarded that she (in embarrassment) typically withheld that information from her friends.

Attending an all-girls high school taught me that girls can be athletes and scholars; matriculating at historically Black Howard University showed me that African-Americans could be poets, politicians and physical chemists.

Raising Multilingual Children (or Not) - NYTimes.com

Raising Multilingual Children (or Not) - NYTimes.com: Marcus Mabry, editor at large at The International Herald Tribune, is raising his twins to be trilingual, an act of parental aggression that I’m having a hard time not taking personally. It’s not even that either he, or his partner, speaks another language as a native. It’s just that he’s trying to do what’s best for them, and so he speaks to them only in French, while their nanny speaks to them in Mandarin, and his partner speaks English.

Those twins are going to be well prepared for their international life, and, if Yudhijit Bhattacharjee, writing in the Sunday Review, is right, smarter than the average single-language speaking child (mine). Actually, despite my sarcasm, I’m appreciative of his efforts — any American who has traveled overseas knows that if more of us spoke a second language, we’d have, if nothing else, a better international reputation.

Latino Population Growth Rate Decreased After 2007, Report Finds

Latino Population Growth Rate Decreased After 2007, Report Finds: Nearly a year after the U.S. Census Bureau announced a surge in the Hispanic population, making it the largest minority group, a new analysis holds that the growth rate of the Latino population has actually seen a decrease in the later part of the decade.

The population growth analysis out of The Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program finds that the proportion of Latino growth has slowed significantly from 2007 on, as compared to the earlier half of the decade. The trend is seen in both metropolitan and suburban areas.

"It's kind of stopped on a dime," Senior Fellow William H. Frey, author of the report, told The Los Angeles Times. "The big turndown in growth is pervasive."

According to the report, which was released Tuesday, annual Hispanic growth rates in suburban areas "hovered between 4.5 and 5 percent during 2006-2007, then dropped steadily to 3.3 percent during 2009-2010." Likewise, in major cities, there was healthy growth in 2004-2005 and 2006-2007, but the percentage of growth dropped in the last three years.

Life sentence in Mississippi hate-crime case - CNN.com

Life sentence in Mississippi hate-crime case - CNN.com: A white Mississippi man has been sentenced to life in prison for the 2011 murder of an African-American man, with the judge calling it an inexcusable, "despicable" crime.

Deryl Dedmon pleaded guilty to murder and a hate-crime charge before a judge in Jackson on Wednesday afternoon, admitting to the June killing of James Craig Anderson. Hinds County Circuit Judge Jeff Weill sentenced him to two concurrent life terms, saying, "This craven act isn't who we are."

"Whatever excuse you offer, forget that. There is no excuse," Weill said. He added, "The state of Mississippi condemns this despicable crime."

Dedmon, 19, told the judge that he was a "changed man" who had found religion since his arrest.

"I wish I could take it all back," he said, adding, "I was young and dumb, ignorant and full of hatred. I chose to go down the wrong path."

DOJ: Florida Voting Restrictions May Discriminate Intentionally | TPMMuckraker

DOJ: Florida Voting Restrictions May Discriminate Intentionally | TPMMuckraker: New Florida laws that place harsh restrictions on third-party voter registration groups and limit the early voting period may have been passed with a discriminatory intent, lawyers with the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division suggested in a court filing on Tuesday.

DOJ told the court that the federal government’s position was that Florida “has not met its burden of proof” in demonstrating that “the proposed voting changes neither have the purpose nor will have the effect of denying or abridging the right to vote on the basis of race, color, or membership in a language minority group.” It singled out the provisions of Florida’s new voting law that place restrictions on third-party voter registration groups, shorten the early voting period and make voters who move to a different county cast provisional ballots.

Several counties in Florida are covered by Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires states with a history of racial discrimination to have changes to their election laws precleared by the Justice Department or a panel of judges in D.C. The feds objected to provisions of the law in a court filing earlier this month.

The Benefits of Bilingualism - NYTimes.com

The Benefits of Bilingualism - NYTimes.com: SPEAKING two languages rather than just one has obvious practical benefits in an increasingly globalized world. But in recent years, scientists have begun to show that the advantages of bilingualism are even more fundamental than being able to converse with a wider range of people. Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age.

This view of bilingualism is remarkably different from the understanding of bilingualism through much of the 20th century. Researchers, educators and policy makers long considered a second language to be an interference, cognitively speaking, that hindered a child’s academic and intellectual development.

Quiet revolution in teaching science is earning UMBC extra credit - The Washington Post

Quiet revolution in teaching science is earning UMBC extra credit - The Washington Post: ...At UMBC, the overall 68 percent graduation rate seems modest. But black and Hispanic students tend to graduate at about the same rate as whites, a feat almost unknown in higher education. A National Science Foundation report reveals that 48 African Americans who earned bachelor’s degrees from UMBC went on to earn doctorates in science and engineering from 2005 to 2009, the largest number from any college without a black student majority. Sixteen percent of UMBC students are African American.

Lakeshore Schools Rescinds Disciplinary Action Against English Teacher Christine Schroeder For Perceived Racist Vocabulary Quiz

Lakeshore Schools Rescinds Disciplinary Action Against English Teacher Christine Schroeder For Perceived Racist Vocabulary Quiz: In a nod to the power of community and social media, Lakeshore Public Schools in Stevensville, Mich. has rescinded disciplinary action against an Advanced Placement English teacher for a controversial question she wrote on a vocabulary quiz.

Christine Schroeder, a teacher at Lakeshore High School, was suspended for four days, WSJM reports, and had agreed to attend a racial sensitivity workshop after giving students a quiz with a fill-in-the-blank question asking for a word that describes neighboring Benton Harbor -- a poor, mostly black town. The answer Schroeder was looking for was "sordid," which means dirty, filthy or squalid.

How to Get Away With Murder and Other Things the Killing of Unarmed Black Teen Trayvon Martin Teaches Us

How to Get Away With Murder and Other Things the Killing of Unarmed Black Teen Trayvon Martin Teaches Us: If you want to kill someone and get away with it, do it during half time of the NBA All-Star game.

Appoint yourself captain of the neighborhood watch. Don't set it up with the national program. The national program won't let you carry a gun or pursue suspects. Do it in a gated development where your black neighbors — 20 percent of the community — are targets of suspicion afraid of leaving their homes. Drive around in an SUV and keep an eye out for suspicious individuals. Look for young black men, the kind you've warned people about, the kind you think "always get away." Monitor the 7-11. Find someone who "looks like he's up to no good, or [is] on drugs, or something," someone "carrying something," someone "looking about."

Call 911.

Describe the suspicious person to the dispatcher, the way you always do, the way you've done at least nine times before. There have been a lot of break-ins in this neighborhood. You've probably spoken to this dispatcher before. You called the police 46 times last year. Say, "He's a black male... He's got a button on his shirt. Late teens." Tell the dispatcher that "something's wrong with him." The dispatcher will tell you that police are on their way. He'll tell you not to follow the kid.
Do it anyway. He's running. Find him. Wrestle with him. Shoot him, once.

Breast cancer toll among black women fed in part by fear, silence - The Washington Post

Breast cancer toll among black women fed in part by fear, silence - The Washington Post: ...Although they are less likely than white women to get breast cancer, black women are more likely to die from it. The difference in mortality began to emerge in the early 1980s. By 2007, according to the American Cancer Society, even though rates for both groups were going down, death rates were 41 percent higher among African American women than among white women.

Some health-care professionals and advocates contend that the disparate mortality rates argue for a more urgent effort to reach more black women. They are frustrated that, with all of the information available about the importance of early detection and treatment, the statistics remain so dire.

In a major survey focusing on African American women by The Washington Post and the Kaiser Family Foundation, 75 percent of black women rated their health as good or excellent, about the same percentage as white women, black men and white men.

Southern Miss band members lose scholarships over racist chant | The Raw Story

Southern Miss band members lose scholarships over racist chant | The Raw Story: Five members of the University of Southern Mississippi’s pep band will lose their scholarships after they chanted a racist question at a Latino player on the opposing team.

“The students have been forthcoming, cooperative, contrite and sincerely remorseful,” Vice President for Student Affairs Joe Paul said in a press advisory on Tuesday. “They acted rashly and inappropriately, and now see the gravity of their words and actions.”

A university investigation determined which five band member chanted “Where’s your green card?” at Kansas State point guard Angel Rodriguez on Friday as he prepared to shoot his free throws.