After an intense week of public reproval for making racist remarks.  1962 Nobel Prize winner, James D. Watson was suspended from his position as Chancellor and board member of the prestigious Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory as a censure for his remarks.  The 79 year old Nobel winning scientist resigned today in ignominy.

The NYT contains this story with the separate statements made by Cold Springs Harbor and Watson.  The NYT reports that: "He also referred to his Scots and Irish forebears, saying their lives were guided by faith in reason and social justice, 'especially the need for those on top to help care for the less fortunate.' ”

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 Today's NYT contains a story about the bargains that opportunity-seeking small investors are finding at the auction of foreclosed homes.  For those of us who specialize in the banking and commercial transactions field, the auction is a standard fixture of bad debt resolution procedures.  For me, however, as I described below in an earlier post, Race and the Subprime Mortgage Crisis, there is racial a disparity in foreclosures,  The four major conclusions of the ACORN study were as follows:

"For refinance loans, our findings show that in 2006:

1. High-cost loans made up a significant proportion of the home refinance loans made to

minorities.

2. Minority homeowners were more likely than white homeowners to receive a high-cost loan when

refinancing.

3. Racial disparities persisted even among homeowners of the same income level.

4. Minorities received a greater proportion of high-cost loans than they received of prime loans.

5. Lower-income homeowners of all races were more likely to receive a high-cost loan than upperincome

borrowers

" In 2006, 52.0% or one out of two, home refinance loans made to African-Americans were
high-cost loans and, 38.7%, or more than one out of every three, home refinance loans made to Latinos
were high-cost loans. In contrast, only 26.7%, or one out of four, home refinance loans made to whites
were high-cost loans."

The racial disparity in the distribution of these bad loans will lead to a racial disparity in the ownership of foreclosed properties .  I encourage Blackprof readers to watch the headlines as the foreclosures accelerate.  This will be a silent wealth crisis, that has the potential to further exacerbate the preexisting wealth disparities between blacks, latinos and whites.  

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Dr. James Watson, who received the Nobel Prize, in 1962, for being the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, has become embroiled in a nasty racial controversy because of remarks he made.  The British Broadcasting Network, BBC, reports that Watson told the London Sunday Times  that  "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours - whereas all the testing says not really".  He went on to say he hoped everyone was equal but that "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true".

The British Science Museum has cancelled a speech that Watson was scheduled to deliver there on Friday, October, 19th.  The Museum spokesperson explained the cancellation by noting that "It is a shame that a man with a record of scientific distinction should see his work overshadowed by his own irrational prejudices...We know that eminent scientists can sometimes say things that cause controversy and the Science Museum does not shy away from debating controversial topics. However, we feel Dr Watson has gone beyond the point of acceptable debate and we are, as a result, cancelling his talk."

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“I’m part Native American.” 

“My grandmother...”

“Cherokee Indian…”

"Princess…”

It is quite interesting to hear declarations of Indian blood without any indication of identity or affiliation. Like my late colleague Vine Deloria, Jr., I wonder too, why is the indigenous forbear always female (safe choice), Cherokee (quite popular) and royal (not a commoner)?  And why must people share this with me as if we are Native Blood Brothers?   Most of the people who divulge with information are about as Indian as Heidi.

Many states retained laws that allowed persons to claim remote amounts of Indian blood, but still classify themselves as white.  Similar amounts of black blood would render a person’s claim to whiteness as moot.  In Virginia, a statute existed that defined “white” as “one-sixteenth or less of the blood of the American Indian and hav[ing] no other non-Caucasic blood.”  This allowance permitted Indian blood to override the doctrine of hypodescent — its presence alongside European ancestry did not automatically prevent one from being white.

In its accommodation of one-sixteenth Indian blood, the 1924 Racial Integrity Act venerated the “Pocahontas Exception.” Acknowledging the interracial marriage of Pocahontas, the famous “Indian Princess” and the Englishman John Rolfe, the Pocahontas Exception ensured that their descendants could be legally white. The “First Families of Virginia ” who demanded this accommodation wanted to celebrate their ancestral and historic ties to colonial America.  For elite Virginians to demand this accommodation demonstrates a shifting concept of racial purity. Instead of tainting one’s civic and legal liberty as a white person, strains of Indian blood assume a different, more exotic and arguably desirable meaning.

Virginia’s statutory conception of “white” codifies what I call miscegenistic exceptionalism, where the intent of white racial purity exempts and protects certain nonwhite ancestries from the threat of taint.  In this case, the exception is Indian blood, and this is codified by law.  Racial groups normally considered nonwhite may receive honorary status as “white,” underscoring the argument of race as a social construct rather than a biological truth.

Why is there an exception for Pocahontas, or other Indian Princesses? What prevents a similar loophole for Irish Nell , George Washington’s Venus or Sally Hemings ? What enduring legacy of American collective memory categorically resists the embracement of a “Slave Grandmother Complex?” With increasing numbers of Americans freely and lately claiming Native ancestry, we may ask why such affirmations do not meet the triumvirate of resistance, shame, and secrecy that regularly accompanies findings of partial African ancestry. In other words, what is the exceptional legal and social status of the Indian Grandmother that allows her to escape the reach of antimiscegenation law?

For a longer answer to this question, see, Kevin Noble Maillard, The Pocahontas Exception: American Indians and Exceptionalism in Antimiscegenation Law

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Brown gets all the attention.  Loving v. Virginia does not.  In fact, most Americans do not even know the legal history of interracial marriage.  But everyone certainly has seen or heard of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner.

This year marks the 40^th anniversary of Loving.  In this decision, the court rendered all laws forbidding marriage between persons of different races unconstitutional.  This ruling allowed Mildred Loving, a woman of mixed African, European, and Native descent, to marry Richard Loving, a white race car driver, and live peacefully in their home state of Virginia. 

In the lower court, the state judge opined that “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents…he did not intend for the races to mix.”  In the appeal, the court decided that such separation infringed upon a fundamental right to marry.  Prohibiting interracial marriage became illegal.

How far have we come in 40 years?  Have we moved on up since Helen and Tom Willis?  One may even read interracial intimacy as fashionable.  While Asian children still claim the highest numbers in international adoption, sub-Saharan African children have become “the new black.” Novelist Danzy Senna (who is black, white, and Jewish) proclaims that “America loves us in all our half-caste glory.”  And, of course, the interracial Messiah, that “skinny kid with a funny name” sends us all into paroxysms of miscegenous glee.

And statistics may support a claim of racial freedom in marriage.  In a recent Gallup poll, white approval of interracial marriage increased from 4% in 1958 to 75% in 2007. Without a doubt, the total number of interracial marriages increased (depending on your source) as a result of Loving, from approximately 150,000 in 1960 to 1.46 million in 2000.

Yet, interracial sex is always the trump card for social offence.  Black male athletes dating or marrying white women continues to generate ire and criticism.  Political mud-slinging harps on the interracial dating record of Representative Harold Ford, Jr.  And in 1999, Sen. Bob Bennett predicted no presidential nomination problems for George Bush unless he “step[ped] in front of a bus” or “some black woman comes forward with an illegitimate child.”

Interracial sex, when posed as a threat, when completely illegal, testifies to its enduring taboo. Despite progressive posturing and harmonic celebration, mixed marriages only account for about 4% of all marriages in the United States.  Of this percentage, the of these marriages occurred between Asians and whites.

The largest growth in interracial intimacy occurs in our minds and in art. Undeniably, multiracial families, persons, and partnerships exist, yet the explosion of beige has yet to infiltrate all sectors of American society and culture. Until then, we are all guests at Hepburn and Poiter’s very, very long, long dinner.

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In 1991, when Anita Hill testified in Justice Clarence Thomas's confirmation hearings, the country had never seen a high stakes confrontation between a black man and a black woman over illegal workplace sexual misconduct.  Now, sixteen years later, its fair to ask whether anything has changed in the climate for women of color in the workplace. 

Now, in the Knicks lawsuit we have a different set of allegations from a poised, well-educated black woman, Anucha Browne Sanders, a Princeton graduate and former Northwestern basketball star who told a Manhattan jury that Isiah Thomas, the coach for the Knicks basketball team, called her a "bitch" and a "ho" and other  profanities.  Browne Sanders, the Senior Vice President for Marketing for the Knicks, also charged that she was fired in retaliation for her complaints to management.  She testified that Thomas's  abusive language then turned to ardor, including unwanted "kissing" and invitations to "go off-site" with him.

Both women were greeted with character attacks and retaliation.  Browne Sanders was fired. Anita Hill was vilified first by Senators on the Judiciary Committee and then by conservative writer, David Brock in his book "The Real Anita Hill", filled with personal attacks, that he later recanted. 

 Some things have changed and some have not. One thing that has surely changed is that ordinary citizens, members of a Manhattan jury are prepared to sort through the "he said", "she said", the smiles, the dimples, or the righteous indignation about high-tech lynching, to award, not just compensatory damages, but a jaw-dropping amount of punitive damages. 

The trial testimony and verdict for punitive damages against the Knicks shows that some powerful black men still choose to concoct a toxic brew of sexually degrading images of black women in the workplace. Anita Hill testified about Thomas's references to a series of the pornographic movies featuring black women with oversized breasts. 

 Browne Sanders testified that she was called a "bitch" and a "ho" and hugged without her consent.  One witness, himself an employment discrimination lawyer, told the jury that he saw Thomas drape his arm over Browne Sander shoulder and say that it was distracting to work next to someone "so easy on the eyes", but that when she recoiled from him Thomas said,  "can't I get any love today" . It took Anita Hill almost ten years to come forth, reluctantly, to tell about her experiences.  Browne Sanders filed, well within the statute of limitations. 

 As Professor Tanya Hernandez has written here on Blackprof and in law review articles, her empirical research shows that black women are "overrepresented" among those who file sexual harassment claims with the EEOC.  Does this mean that black women are more often the target of sexual harassment, or are they just less willing to rely on internal company procedures to protect their rights?

In the lawsuit against the Knicks we see that some white men can also foster a hostile workplace for black women. Selena Roberts opinion piece for the NYT today identifies James L. Dolan, the owner of the Knicks, as a person who cultivated an atmosphere of sexual hostility and male power trips. The Garden Needs a Warning Label .

Is there a cultural defense to sexual harassment by black men against black women?  In 1991, immediately after the hearings ended, Distinguished Harvard Sociologist, Orlando Patterson argued in a NYT op-ed that even if Thomas had said what he was accused of saying, it would have been harmless "down home style of courting" that southern black men used to woo black women, and that Hill would have been very well acquainted with this style.  To be fair, Patterson retreated from this untenable position in a book of essays that Professor Hill and I co-edited: Race, Gender and Power in America, and in his book Rituals of Blood. 

 The Knicks trial featured an embarrassing video deposition in which Isiah Thomas says that it would violate his code of conduct for a white male Knicks executive to call a black woman a "bitch", but that it would be o.k. for a black man to use the same word in talking to a black woman.

Trashing the accuser's professional competence continues to be a favored defense.  Although ironically, both Thomases initially praised their accusers.  Thomas told the Senate Judiciary committee under oath:  "Senator, ...she repeatedly received promotions, as scheduled...In fact she may have been promoted on an accelerated basis.  Her assignments, for her age and experience at that time, I think were fairly aggressive".   Yet, sixteen years later in his new book, My Grandfather's Son and in a Sixty Minutes interview last Sunday, he referred to Professor Hill as a "mediocre employee".

Isiah Thomas and the Knicks, reading from the same playbook, gave Browne Sanders bonuses that totaled $217,500 between 2002 and 2005, before she accused them of sexual harassment and retaliatory firing.  Once the law suit was filed, they told a Manhattan jury that she was fired for flagging competence.

This morning I chatted with Michel McQueen Martin, on her terrific new show on NPR, Tell Me More about what had changed and what remained the same in the sixteen years since Charles Ogletree, and I were on the legal team that represented Professor Hill during her testimony in the Thomas confirmation hearings.

I want to hear from BlackProf readers. What has changed in sixteen years, and what has not?  Is the Isiah Thomas verdict a wake up call?  Or, can all women, but especially black women, expect more of the same sexual harassment and hostility in the workplace from some of the powerful men and organizations for whom they work?

What do you think?

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The Immigration law professors blog will post an interview with Senator Obama on Tuesday at 11am eastern time zone. They prepared a list of questions for him on a range of difficult immigration issues, including immigration reform, undocumented immigration, family immigration, deportation and immigration raids, local (anti-)immigration ordinances, integration of immigrants into U.S. society, the deaths along the U.S./Mexico border, and his vote in favor of the Secure Fence Act.  They are actively seeking other 2008 Presidential candidates to answer the same immigration questions that were posed to Senator Obama.

Check it out at

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Michael Vick plead guilty to three different conspiracy counts today.  I must say that I've  found the entire episode to be a comedy of the absurd.  And without an available neutral principle to explain the vehemence of the reaction against Vick, I cannot comprehend the Vick experience in terms that are not inextricably linked to race.

Let's start from the beginning: Vick was charged with three counts of conspiracy: 1) conspiring to gamble on dogfights -- an illegal activity -- and using violence to further that illegal activity -- apparently the killing of several of the dogs;  2) conspiring to engage in dogfighting; and 3) buying and transporting a dog in interstate commerce for use in a dogfight.  The first charge permits the imprisonment for up to five years; the second and third charges each permit only a maximum sentence of one year.

The first is a charge under the Travel Act, a statute enacted in response to burgeoning organized crime and racketeering.  While the statute was plainly geared toward mob activity, the language of the statute encompasses a wide range of conspiracies, largely due to definitional challenges in isolating those conspiracies specifically linked to traditional organized crime.   I doubt seriously that Congress contemplated that the killing of dogs would suffice as the kind of "crime of violence" that would justify prosecution under the Travel Act.  And for good reason.  Dog-killing does not pose the same sort of social, cultural, and economic harms that violence against human beings poses in the context of organized crime.  That doesn't mean that dogfighting doesn't pose cognizable social harm; it simply means it isn't the sort contemplated by the Travel Act.  Charging Vick under the Travel Act, in my view, is an unjustifiably expansive application of the statute, and is representative of the broader over-reaction to this episode.

The last two charges were brought under the Animal Fighting Venture Prohibition statute, which deals directly with organized animal fights and related activity.  These charges trigger much more reasonable misdemeanor punishments, permitting imprisonment for less than one year and a fine of no more than $15,000.  I say much more reasonable because, again, I cannot imagine Congress imagined applying the Travel Act to acts of violence involving animals, and in any case I believe the law does and should value violence against humans at a higher level than violence against animals.

The fighting-venture statute also highlights some of the hypocrisy behind the Vick prosecution, as the statute specifically exempts fighting ventures involving "live birds" in those states that specifically legalize such ventures.  This illuminates hypocrisy because I see no principle distinguishing the social or moral harm of indiscriminately killing dogs from that of indiscriminately killing "live birds."

Ultimately, I find the entire Vick episode to be a comedy of the absurd.  At the end of the day, he bet on dogfights, and subsidized an enterprise that sometimes wantonly killed dogs who weren't top fighters.  As a consequence, he's already lost millions in endorsements and has suffered incalculable damage to his reputation.  The federal court is now considering a term of up to five years; and the NFL apparently a ban of an additional year on top of his prison sentence.  In my view, anything beyond six months imprisonment would be outrageous; and any suspension by the NFL beyond the several games players routinely get for violence against women or drug abuse would be equally unjustifiable.  If Vick had bet on bird fights, he apparently couldn't be prosecuted at all in many states.  Severe harms are perpetrated against human beings on a daily basis with nothing remotely resembling the witch-burning Michael Vick is experiencing. 

I love dogs, too, but I love humans more.  Michael Vick should pay a price, but the price should be proportionate to the harm and should not cause more harm than necessary.  Destroying the life of a 27-year-old because of his poor decisions concerning dogfighting would be unconscionable in a nation that prided mercy as much as this nation says it does.  I don't like invoking the race card, but because I cannot explain the hysterical reaction to Vick's conduct on the basis of a neutral principle, I fall back to an unshakable perception: It wouldn't have went down like this is Mike Vick were white.

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 11:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (95) | TrackBacks (1)

As I review my 6 year-old niece’s school supply list and syllabus for the semester, I’m reminded that it has been five years since President George W. Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act  into law. The Act sparked numerous debates concerning the use of standardized testing as an accurate gauge of student success. However, long before NCLB there were voices questioning our reliance on standardized testing and whether our schools adequately prepare students for success in the classroom and beyond. Dr. Asa G. Hilliard, III was one such voice. In a 1991 article Hilliard wrote:

 The risk for our children in school is not a risk associated with their intelligence. Our failures have nothing to do with poverty, nothing to do with race, nothing to do with language, nothing to do with style, nothing to do with the need to discover new pedagogy, nothing to do with the development of unique and differentiated special pedagogues, nothing to do with the children's families. All of these are red herrings. The study of them may ultimately lead to some greater insight into the instructional process; but at present they serve to distract attention from the fundamental problem facing us today. We have one and only one problem: Do we truly will to see each and every child in this nation develop to the peak of his or her capacities? If our destination is excellence on a massive scale, not only must we change from the slow lane into the fast lane; we literally must change highways. Perhaps we need to abandon the highways altogether and take flight, because the highest goals that we can imagine are well within reach for those who have the will to excellence.

 Hilliard, who served as the Fuller E. Calloway Professor of Urban Education at Georgia State University, dedicated his professional career to promoting the academic success of disadvantaged students with a particular emphasis on poor children and students of color. He promoted the concept of cultural pluralism as a means of helping each child realize his full potential. As author of over 200 articles and books on education and child development Hilliard encouraged parents and educators to reject mediocrity and promote a more demanding learning environment that encouraged a positive self-identity. As a founding member of the Association for the Study of Classical African Civilizations, Professor Hilliard believed that an awareness and appreciation of African history was a meaningful way of promoting student achievement. Hilliard died in Egypt on Sunday, August 12, just two days before the start of classes at Georgia State.

Hilliard’s views were controversial and often elicited criticism from his contemporaries who blamed the achievement gap on student apathy and poor parental guidance. Yet Hilliard believed that even the most “at-risk” students could succeed if presented with the right school conditions. Hilliard defended his position by stating, “children, no matter what their racial or ethnic background, should be presented with pictures of the real world. That is how we can support accurate perception. In addition, this is how we assure that children from every group will find themselves at the center of materials that they study. Motivation and self-esteem are deeply affected by the topics that we choose to present and by the coverage we choose to give those topics from a pluralistic perspective. As it is true that there are many models of teaching that result in excellence in student achievement, there are also many models of excellence in pluralistic curriculum. However, as with pedagogical success, curricular success tends to be out of the awareness of the majority of our educators.”

Here’s to student success this school year and beyond.

Posted by Khalilah Brown-Dean at 03:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (149) | TrackBacks (0)

We've made several posts previously on Cory Booker (see, e.g., this ), the Mayor of my home-city, Newark, New Jersey, who's been a media phenomenon over the last few years.  He received substantial media attention back in 2002, after engaging in a heated campaign with former Newark Mayor Sharpe James.  During that campaign, chronicled in a Oscar-nominated documentary, Booker castigated James as corrupt and self-serving, while James critiqued Booker as a tool of White, elite interests who was not authentically connected to the values of the Black community.  The media imbibed this narrative, caricaturing James as a race-baiting, uneducated bully and Booker as a race-transcendent, Ivy League-trained reformer.

As always, the truth tends to lie in between the archetypes anchoring mainstream media.  But, after coming across this report, Booker seems to have given fodder to his critics.  Booker, apparently, spoke recently at a ritzy fundraiser, attended principally by Whites, in which he described a recently deceased Black, female Newark activist as "portly," toothless, and profane.  This, in an apparent attempt to recognize the depth of her contributions to the city.  Several members of the Newark City Council sharply criticized Booker's remarks as racially insensitive and inflammatory, suggesting his rhetoric evoked the the image of a Black "mammy" -- precisely the sort of image, claimed the City Council members, that many Whites are disposed to identify with Black women.

Unfortunately for Booker, this episode reinforces the concerns of many Newarkers that he seeks to exploit some of the worst stereotypes about Black folks for political gain.  He seems often to play up the most negative images of Black folk and Black communities to White audiences, in ways that feel uncomfortably like those late-night infomercials about Sudanese children who can be fed for $1 a day.  His appearance last year on Oprah is another conspicuous example.  Maybe this sort of messaging is the best way to engage a White majority largely disinterested in the plight of poor folk of color.  But the ends don't justify the means.  This approach reinforces the very racial stereotypes that Booker's politics purportedly transcends. 

Maybe Sharpe James had a point.

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Black folks love a good fight. Ali versus Foreman. The fight for divestment. The fight against genocide in Darfur. And perhaps the greatest battle of all time: the fight to force America to live up to her promise of equality and justice. And now, it seems that some of us are fighting to keep Ron Isley out of prison.

Seems like a pretty cut and dry case, right? Not quite. According to his fans the 64-year-old Isley is in very poor health and is battling numerous illnesses including cancer and diabetes.  As a result, fans have circulated an online petition demanding that President Bush grant Isley a pardon to keep him out of prison. Uhh, good luck with that. Maybe if Isley had a more endearing nickname like “Scooter,” President Bush would consider a pardon. In spite of the odds over 6,000 fans have signed the petition with significant support from “the voice of Black America”: the Tom Joyner Morning Show.

Certainly I take Isley’s health concerns seriously and I definitely don’t view him as a threat or menace to society. My academic work reflects my critique of this country’s flawed criminal justice system (I’ll definitely blog about some of these critiques later this month). However, in light of the numerous cases of wrongful convictions, absurd applications of mandatory-minimum sentences, etc, I’m having a difficult time choosing Ron Isley’s plight as the latest cause I’m willing to fight for.

Every time I think about contacting the Congressional Black Caucus or the White House on Isley’s behalf I end up writing about Genarlow Wilson’s appeal instead. Ron Isley is definitely a legendary musician who has created an influential catalog of hits. However, I’m more moved by the plight of a young man who went from being a heavily recruited high school athlete to Georgia Inmate #1187055 because of a consensual sexual act with another teenager. More about Wilson in another entry.

I’m glad that Isley’s fans are willing to “fight the power” and more importantly that they’re willing to fight a fractured system that has produced one of this country’s greatest arenas of racial imbalance. As the latest figures from The Sentencing Project suggest, there are 2 million people behind bars in this country of which nearly 60% are people of color. We certainly don’t need to add Isley to that figure but we also need to remove Wilson and others from it.

Just as naysayers criticize Obama’s presidential bid as an illusive quest, I’m sure I’m not the only one saying the same about Isley’s quest for a presidential pardon. So don't expect to see my name on any Isley petitions and the White House phone bank won't be receiving a call from me on Isley's behalf. But hey, who am I to judge. Anything’s possible in America, right?

Posted by Khalilah Brown-Dean at 02:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (28) | TrackBacks (0)

   Remember, back in the days of variety shows, when the host would come out at the end, sing a song, perform some trademark gesture and say goodnight? You know: Donny and Marie, Flip Wilson, Carol Burnett. Anybody? Am I showing my age?
   At any rate, it’s time for me to go. I’ve had a wonderful time blogging here on blackprof.com and I want to thank all the readers, responders, other contributors, and especially Shavar Jeffries. In closing, I’d like to leave you with two, interrelated ideas I’ve spent some time thinking about. The first is the critical distinction between individual and structural racism, a distinction that fewer and fewer folks in our society seem able, or perhaps willing, to make. To break it down one way: doing the work that some of us feel called to do is not about getting the white guy in your office to smile at you, or getting the white folks in your town to want to seat their children next to yours in school, or even about getting Don Imus to not consider me a ‘ho. To think it is about these things is a major misunderstanding, and a sad one. But really this is a huge and important issue, one I don’t have the time to properly discuss here and now.  Instead I’ll leave you with the work of john a. powell, an internationally recognized authority in issues relating to race, ethnicity, poverty and the law. And a lawyer, to boot. One does not always have to reinvent the wheel. 

   Secondly, I leave you with this very compelling article by Judith Shapiro on an idea she calls sociological illiteracy. It was while doing research on sociology for a character I was creating that I stumbled upon Shapiro and her article. I now use it with my students, along with writings based on the work of sociologist C. Wright Mills . As Shapiro says, most Americans are sociologically illiterate. Worse, they cling to that illiteracy, and often proudly so. A society whose members refuse to examine critically the interconnectedness between individuals and societal forces is a society deluding itself.
   Well, okay. Time for me to run. Again, I thank you. It’s been a great show. Blessings, peace and goodnight (tug on ear).

Posted by Kim McLarin at 01:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

 Read this story about Congressman Chris Shays’s confrontation with a Capitol police officer.  Will the media dog Shays the way it did former Rep. Cynthia McKinney, which helped to drive the outspoken black congresswoman from office?

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Last year my siblings and I shepherded our mother through a serious health care situation. Every step of the way, I wondered this.  

 Do not miss the line about the small number of black physicians in the study.  

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Julian Bond opened the NAACP convention yesterday with a speech as banal as it was irrelevant.  Once again, he focused his fire on the Bush Administration, unloading invective after tired invective on the failures of the White House to address the material needs of the Black community.  He compared the federal government's inert response to Katrina to lynching ("Katrina, like lynching, not only destroyed the work of generations in a single day, but is resulting in a deliberate effort to dispossess black landholders."); he declared that the rejection of immigration reform further repudiates the Bush Presidency ("The extent of the [people's] repudiation, it was evident late last month when the immigration reform bill . . . died in the Senate."); and the coup de grace: he charged that the voluntary-integration decision alienated Black children from the law ("The Bush Court removed black children from the law's protection.") (I'm going to deal with that specific charge in a separate post).  In the process, he also reminded us that his NAACP is a social-justice organization concerned with racial discrimination, not a social-services organization concerned with meeting the practical needs of Black people: "[W]e are dedicated to an aggressive campaign of social justice, fighting racial discrimination. We've done this in the past and will continue to do it in the future."

Bond seems incapable of appreciating the yawning gulf between his vision for the NAACP and the concrete needs of the masses of Black families, who struggle mightily to raise children in communities ravaged by joblessness, bad schools, gang violence, single motherhood, and perhaps most pernicious, hopelessness.  He offers nothing in the sort of a strategy to pragmatically address these challenges.  Instead, he offers stale bromides about the twin obsessions of Bond's NAACP: government and White folk.  As Bond would have it, Black folk's capacity to generate solutions to their challenges is apparently limited to petitioning either of these external powers.  And because the Bond NAACP's approach is so preoccupied with outside forces, he's left with little but the ad hominem when those forces don't share his concern for the Black community.

Sadly, the NAACP -- the grand organization founded by W.E.B. DuBois and which was indispensable to the dismantling of Jim Crow -- is now a relic.  We badly need a re-imagined, reinvigorated NAACP.  As long as Julian Bond is at the helm, that new reality is implausible.  Bond must go.

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (86) | TrackBacks (2)

We have become accustomed in recent times to conservatives using the rhetoric of the civil-rights movement against itself.  Invariably, this is the result of taking isolated statements out of context, and unblinkingly applying them to entirely different situations.  Martin King's yearning for the day when his children would "not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" has, as we well know, been the rallying cry for the conservative assault on so-called reverse discrimination.  We've heard repeatedly that the very race-conscious remedies espoused by the successors of the civil-rights generation are inconsistent with the principles motivating that generation.  Such intellectual dishonesty is rather easy to perpetrate on a public that is fundamentally ignorant about the principles actually motivating the movement.  And this is especially so because Americans are oriented toward the racial status quo and thus disposed to believing that racism, if meaningfully extant at all, is at most a minor nuisance in the lives of people of color that does not justify a substantial re-working of American society.  Most Americans are thus predisposed to believing the misinformation that drives the conservative hijacking of the animating principles of the civil-rights era.

Last week's school-integration decision is one of the most conspicuous -- though no less frivolous -- manifestations of this effort.  The Court plurality argued forcefully that its rejection of the voluntary-integration plans at issue was compelled by none other than Brown itself.  Asserting, melodramatically, that "history will be heard," the plurality concluded that Brown bars racially-informed student assignment irrespective of social context.  Specifically, said the Court,

it was not the inequality of the facilities but the fact of legally separating children on the basis of race on which the Court relied to find a constitutional violation in 1954.  See Brown, 347 U.S. at 494 ("The impact [of segregation] is greater when it has the sanction of the law.").  Slip Opinion at 39.

I quote not only the plurality's substantive quote but also the cite and parenthetical because this may be one of the most breathtaking perversions and misrepresentations of a precedent I've ever seen in a Supreme Court opinion.  And, though some of you may not believe it, I'm not one for overblown rhetoric, but this use of this portion of Brown is unbefitting the Chief Justice of the United States.  Let me show you why.

The parenthetical quotation, first, is actually from a lower court analysis in one of the Brown cases, so of course the Court should have noted that in its cite.  But, more to the point, the full block quote in Brown to the lower-court case is as follows:

Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law; for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system.  Brown, 347 U.S. at 494.

The plurality plucks from the block quote the first clause of the second sentence -- "[t]he impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law" -- and cites it for the broad proposition that Brown formalistically prohibits race-based school assignment regardless of context.  But of course the entire quote is about the impact of segregation on the self-conception of Black children.  The Court could not be more clear: "Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children."  Even concerning the half-sentence relied upon by the Chief Justice, the clause is explicitly modified -- "for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group."  The block quote ended on the same note, emphasizing that segregation tends to retard the educational development of Black children, precisely because of the racial stigma associated with it.

The block quote, moreover, is introduced by the following two sentences:

To separate [Black children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone. The effect of this separation on their educational opportunities was well stated by a finding in the Kansas case . . . .  Brown, 347 U.S. at 494.

The classic "generates a feeling of inferiority" finding relies on the well-chronicled social-science work of Kenneth Clark, cited in Brown's famous Footnote 11, which immediately follows the block quote from the Kansas case.  The Clark research of course relies, among other things, on the doll-selection study, which revealed the extent to which segregation had corrupted the self-regard of Black children.

It could not be more clear that this portion of the Brown opinion, which articulates the harms driving the Court's decision to strike down segregated schools, is unambiguously predicated on the harms caused Black children by the stigmatic messages associated with school segregation.  The Court plainly does not articulate a broad rule that race-conscious student assignment, in a vacuum, invariably triggers constitutionally actionable harm.  Rather, the Court, relying on specific empirical work on the actual social implications of segregation, held that segregation implied a desire by Whites to disassociate themselves from Black folk, and that this signal "generate[d] a feeling of inferiority" that encumbered the educational achievement of Black children.

So Brown simply recognizes the undeniable truth of American history: Jim Crow was designed to stigmatize and subordinate Black people, and it was quite effective in accomplishing that design.  Brown simply held that segregation, because it so stigmatized Black children and thus undermined their education, could not be squared with equal protection.  The very portion of the case relied upon by the Chief Justice is unambiguously explicit on this point.  By taking a half-sentence completely out of context, and ignoring the rest of the sentence, the rest of the block quote, and the rest of the pargrapraph in which the half-sentence was contained -- let alone the rest of the opinion -- the plurality manufactured an intepretation of Brown that is irreconcilable with the original. 

I understand the politics of this tactic.  But I would have hoped that the Supreme Court would not have contorted beyond recognition a cherished precedent in the process.

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (164) | TrackBacks (0)

    Anyone who has worked or participated in the American justice system can’t help but to feel utter bewilderment at the announcement of Mike Nifong’s disbarment.  Defense Attorneys are constantly combating the manipulative actions of prosecutors and police officials in cases involving non-white accused.  One can collect a seemingly incessant stream of narratives from defense attorneys describing the deliberate use of planted evidence or false testimonies by prosecutors against poor defendants of color.  Where is the massive, rich conglomerate that will stand up against those manipulating forces and disbar those prosecutors?  If we follow the equation to its logical end, the lives of three accused privilege white males will always, unapologetically, be viewed as more valuable than the lives of thousands of wrongfully prosecuted non-whites.  In this whole fiasco, no one is addressing the elephant in the room; that Nifong’s fatal error was that he believed the words of a black woman over that of three privileged white men.

    The Duke Rape allegations are instrumental in analyzing the role that race and gender play in the handling of rape cases.  It is a great case study because it shows how catalysts like rape allegations can cause dormant racial/gender wounds to erupt to the surface in an already polarized community. The racial dichotomy and rivalry existing between North Carolina Central University (NCCU) and Duke University became apparent in the types of comments made, at the time of the investigation, by students from North Carolina Central University as compared to comments made by Duke University students.  For example, during the investigation, a student from NCCU was quoted as saying: “If it was a Duke Student and it was Central’s football’s team, the situation would have been handled totally differently (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/05/national/main1476021.shtml) while a Duke University Student stated, in the same spirit, “that the allegations … put a new strain on the already delicate relationship between the school and the community in Durham” (http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/04/05/national/main1476021.shtml) Almost immediately after the rape allegations were made, it became evident from student comments submitted to the media, that for the Durham community, the rape allegations represented not just one isolated incident, but a culmination of slights and abuses of privilege that the community hoped would finally be punished.  The very fact that a team of 43 young Lacrosse players considered the hiring of two African American strippers as an acceptable form of sexual entertainment corroborated this feeling of exasperation.  It is also interesting that, in the midst of the mass obsession with the culpability or non-culpability of the three players, no one took the time to ask the obvious question: Why did the Duke administration offer no remonstrance against the Duke Lacrosse team for hiring black strippers at a team’s party?

Posted by Michele Alexandre at 06:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (93) | TrackBacks (1)

After my Father's Day post, here's another event -- a BLACK AND MALE IN AMERICA conference -- this weekend that might be of interest to men and women.

Why do both black men and women harbor such a low regard for black men? Even when black fathers are not in our lives, they deserve our honor and respect. Why? Because it could be said that the only job of a parent is to give life. Everything else is icing or an extra. Tell a parent you turned out alright, with or without them, and that their job is complete. Tell them they ruined your life, and you not only kill them, but you also kill off the love for yourself and create trouble for your future children and partners. So my dad gave me everything I needed to live the miraculous life I have. Even if we hadn't met, I have everything I needed to be fulfilled--my life.

Check out the conference this weekend! 

Kevin Powell, Hill Harper, Michael Eric Dyson Headline Black Male Conference 

A FREE Conference geared toward
redefining and empowering Black males

Conference Producer: The Sharland Norris Group

More details are forthcoming, as is our official website:
www.blackandmaleinamerica.org
and
www.myspace.com/blackandmaleinamerica

Media inquiries only should be directed to AKILA WORKSONGS Public Relations 718.756.8501
BAMIApr@akilaworksongs.com

Posted by Kyra Gaunt at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (67) | TrackBacks (0)

Kyra Gaunt here. As you may have read, I am one of the guest contributors this June -- Black Music Month. Perfect for me as an ethnomusicologist (an anthropologist of music and a professor of hip-hop, race and gender in music). I have a few thoughts to share with you this month about 1) the impact of Don Imus controversy on hip-hop as music, 2) perhaps a bit about my research on African Americans and Francophone musicians in Harlem, and more if time permits me. I ain't a lawyer but I sure wanted to be one as a kid and it's an honor to be part of BlackProf.com.  

My first post is in honor of the upcoming Father's day. I could easily honor my mother, who was like my father most of my life as a single parent. But this is about my birth father. And I'd like to say thanks to all the dads, stepdads, and father figures who've graced my life and I have been fortunate to have many.

I've written a short essay that inspires ME! I hope you find it inspiring to for it is out of my commitment that African American women connect with their estranged daddies. If you check out my website at http://kyraocity.com you can read about other pairs I've brought together and hear the music that came from my reuniting with my dad. I hope you'll share it with your family and friends.

Here's the piece entitled:
"A Father's Day Testimony: Daddies, Daughters and a Ressurection of Family (and Life)"

Serendipity ain’t a common term in the black community but it is one way to explain the miracles that have happened since I met my birth father, Norman Lee Evans, Sr., four years ago when I was 40. All my life I pretended that my dad’s absence didn’t matter even if it hampered my romantic relationships with boys and now men. A male friend who’d been burned by too many women like me, incomplete with their fathers, told me I needed to be bigger than my dad and reach out to him first. So I did in 2002.

Serendipity struck, as it has many times before for me, on June 9th in Indianapolis, my dad’s hometown, just about a week before my first father’s day…without my dad. When we met, I went from being abandoned to being grateful that he’d had a roll in the hay with my mom because I wouldn’t have the extraordinary life I live if it weren’t for him.

On February 6th I lost him to prostate cancer like so many other black families lose their men. (Prostate cancer has a 90% cure rate and that made me so angry with him.) Other than me, he left behind his immediate family (a wife, son and stepdaughter) and eleven brothers and sisters whom I thought I’d meet at the funeral. Even into death, folks carry the past. My dad was bitter over something and made sure they were not invited.

Within a week of the funeral, I serendipitously got a speaking engagement in Indianapolis. They wanted me to speak about my book The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-hop (NYU Press, 2006) at the Martin Luther King Center’s Annual Brunch.

After a troubled period of mourning, I got inspired. I called the number for Sharon Evans and left a message with my name and connection and I waited. No one called me back so I gave up for a few weeks and then, a week before my talk, I got inspired.

Determined to find them, I asked the MLK Center to use the oral grapevine. “Someone there must know my people, the Evans, there were 13 of them,” I said in an email. Then I called the number I had again and my Aunt Sharon in Connersville Indiana answered. Her first words were “We been looking for you, dear, and praying we’d find you!” They had the wrong number for me. In that moment I felt so complete and at home.

Last Saturday after my talk the family threw me a barbeque and I met a handful of cousins and 6 of what were 14 aunts and uncles in all, several of them now deceased. It was my own personal Antwone Fisher . My father may have died without knowing how much they loved him, but I do and I was able to bring him back to them through me. Serendipity.
 

There was a great article March 12, 2007 in the Washington Post about new findings concerning prostate health care and black men.

"New findings, to be published in the April 15 issue of Cancer, reveal that black American men are, in fact, well-educated when it comes to prostate cancer risk."

"Instead, the authors find that, compared with white Americans, black men too often lack health insurance or a regular relationship with a primary care doctor. In those cases, the diagnosis and treatment of prostate trouble falls behind."

Ladies, ask your dad if he's been tested. And find out about a new detector that is not as invasive as biopsies.

An elder I met with shared that he realized he might look like a coward in my eyes for not dealing with what's important. This left me thinking we daughters have more of a say in the matter and we should say it! Ask your dad, and other men over 50, when he was tested and let him know you care that he wins the game.

My dad was 64 when he passed. My father's older brother, Clayton better known as Maurice (how I love black families and their names!) got the point and survived his prostate cancer and is living life to the fullest. 

 Take a listen to the song I wrote for my dad, too.  "Black Can Be Me" with Gregoire Maret on harmonica that I co-wrote with Tomas Doncker. 

Posted by Kyra Gaunt at 05:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (141) | TrackBacks (0)

The Supreme Court decided this week to consider the legality of distinctions in federal law concerning the punishment for drug offenses involving the possession or distribution of powder cocaine and those involving crack.  Federal law punishes the possession of 5 grams of crack cocaine at the same level as it does the distribution of 500 grams of powder cocaine.  So not only does the law codify a 100:1 distinction concerning the amount of drugs at issue, it punishes the possession of crack at the same level as the distribution of powder.  Distribution of course is generally a much more serious crime than possession.  To the extent socially cognizable harms are associated with drug use, those harms are multiplied in the context of distributive drug offenses.  As such, federal and state law consistently penalize distribution offenses more severely than possession offenses.

The disparity in federal punishment between crack and powder cocaine is thus breathtaking both in quantity and quality.  Even assuming that crack is more addictive -- and thus more harmful -- than powder, there isn't an empirical justification for a 100:1 differential.  And the disparity is even more faulty given that it equates crack possession with powder distribution.  Taken together, the disparity suggests that the sale of large quantities of powder to untold numbers of buyers cause equivalent social harms as the possession, by one person, of crack.  This discrimination cannot be justified -- even if one cannot definitively establish a racial motivation for it -- and it should therefore be found unconstitutional.

That said, I wouldn't hold my breath for a favorable decision from this Supreme Court.

UPDATE:  As Big Man on Campus pointed out in a comment, I mis-stated the issue before the Supreme Court.  It is not, as I initially thought after seeing the docket entry on SCOTUS blog, whether the disparity violates equal protection.  The issue is whether a federal judge may depart from the sentencing guidelines based on a policy disagreement with the disparity.  That issue implicates the justifiability of the disparity so my thoughts remain relevant in that regard.  But the precise issue before the court is not a direct consideration of the disparity's legality.  And it seems, in this context, even more doubtful the Supreme Court will issue a ruling that undermines the disparity.  It would subvert one of the principal purposes of the Guidelines -- uniformity in sentencing -- if judges could depart from the sentencing standards simply on the basis of a policy disagreement. 

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 05:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (64) | TrackBacks (0)

Growing up in a post-colonial and post-slavery world has made most people of color keenly aware that colorism and skin politics are unfortunate by-products of our tortured past. Black children become precociously conscious of the omni-presence of skin politics by witnessing society’s favoritism of specific types of skin tones and hair textures.

I recently had the opportunity to discuss the role played by skin/hair politics in the mass exodus of African American male tourists to Brazil in search of the idealized Brazilian woman described by their friends and depicted in rap videos. Jelani Cobb documented these tourists’ predilection for Brazilian women over African American woman in an article published by Essence Magazine. The African American tourists interviewed in the article constantly described Brazilian woman as malleable, gentle, helpful and non-confrontational compared to African American women who they described as belligerent, confrontational, demanding, etc. These descriptions are consistent with the portrayal of black women all over the media. From Grey’s Anatomy’s “Dr. Bailey” to any run-of–the-mill cameo by a black actress, the no-nonsense black woman is a Hollywood favorite. While the idealization of Brazilian woman at the expense of black woman trigger an array of issues worth discussing, I would like focus on a question posed by an audience member after my presentation. Referring to the African American male tourists’ unflattering juxtaposition of African American woman with Brazilian woman, the audience member asked: “why aren’t African American women more mad about this? Why aren’t they doing more things to voice their anger?” My instinctive answer to the question was that, in the great scheme of challenges faced by black woman (food, shelter, job, racism, sexism, constant sexualization of their bodies, etc), this would probably not be their first item to tackle. My second thought, one often discussed with my best friend, was that, as many of the male tourists are often married or in a relationship when they go to Brazil, many black women, most likely, were aware of their partners’ exodus to Brazil even before the publication of the Essence article.

While I was in Brazil, I interviewed a Brazilian woman who told me that she receives $400 twice a month from an African American male tourist that she met during his visit to Bahia. In addition, Jelani Cobb’s article contains a number of anecdotes of tourists who, after their visit, send money regularly, to the Brazilian women whom they still see as their girlfriends. These types of transactions would be hard to hide from a partner. Women all over the world have always known how to negotiate and how to get what they need out of an imperfect situation. Whether or not the product of the negotiation is ever satisfactory enough in the long run is a question that is eventually answered by each woman for herself in due time.

As to my audience member’s question, “why aren’t black women doing anything about this?” I am not sure this particular phenomenon falls under the responsibility of black women to solve. Short of getting out of relationships with these tourists, it seems almost impossible to regulate something as deeply ingrained as the colorism/sexism-based preference for certain types of women. The work to eliminate these biases would have to be conducted on a number of fronts, among which will have to be community men’ groups working to help reverse the negative image of black women created by a racist and sexist society and media.

Michèle Alexandre

Posted by Michele Alexandre at 12:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (437) | TrackBacks (6)

The executive directorships of two of the most significant advocacy organizations in the Black community -- the NAACP and the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund -- are now occupied by interim directors.  These organizations have a proud history; their work has been simply indispensable to advancing the political, social, and legal status of African-Americans in the Twentieth Century.  The Black community could never thank them, or their outgoing directors, enough for their work to make real the rhetoric of American freedom.

But while acknowledging the successes of the past, we must confront the challenges of the present.  The problems Black folk face today are different, in kind and degree, than those we faced even 25 years ago.  We therefore need to reinvent our leadership class in response to the complexity of the problems we now confront.  I fear, however, that our leadership too often pursues goals and strategies that are ill-suited to the contemporary challenges the masses of Black folk face.  I'm reminded of the old adage that everything looks like a nail when all one has is a hammer.  We thus need to aggressively re-imagine the kind of leadership the Black community requires in light of the current challenges we face.  And while the specific content of that leadership, certainly, will vary depending on context, I think a reinvented Black leadership rests irreducibly on the following principles:

A Firm Commitment to Economic Empowerment. DuBois and Booker T were right.  We've made substantial progress on the political side, but we need to renew a sustained commitment on the economic side.

A Strong Commitment to Strengthening Black Owned and Operated Institutions.  Desegregation was necessary.  The abandonment of Black institutions wasn't.  We should marry a firm public commitment to equal access with a comparable private commitment to Black-owned and operated cultural, social, and economic institutions.

Effective Public Education and Elite Private Academies.  There is no progress without education.   Public education must be reformed so that it is as responsive to the educational needs of minority children as humanly possible.  But government-run services rarely produce sustained excellence.  The Black community thus shouldn't rely exclusively on government to provide our children with the kind of elite educational and leadership opportunities they deserve.

Cultural Affirmation.  Harold Cruse told us a few decades ago about the foundational role of culture to the economic, social, and political advancement of Black folk.  Black culture, as communicated through mass media, too often indoctrinates our children into self-destructive behaviors that render moot formal commitments to economic, social, and political opportunity.  We need a culture that facilitates rather than impedes Black progress. 

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 11:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (67) | TrackBacks (0)

The Harvard Law Review has elected its first Latino President—Andrew Manual Crespo. I can’t but wonder whether Crespo  thinks of this moment as an historical one—and, more particularly, in relation to Obama’s career trajectory and presidential candidacy. Recall that Obama was the first (and I think only?) black president of the law review.  Now he is a viable black candidate for the presidency. Of course, his presidency of the law review is not the reason for this. But his leadership of the law review is an important part of the overall story we tell about him (and helps to explain why some people perceive him as a racial exception). We will have to wait to see how Crespo’s law review presidency will figure in how we imagine him—assuming that, after this moment, we will be imagining him at all.

Posted by Devon Carbado at 04:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (79) | TrackBacks (1)

I just returned from a conference in New Orleans, and was saddened to see up-close the continuing disgrace that is this nation's response to Katrina and its aftermath.  The day I arrived was the same day as a mid-sized storm -- not a tropical storm or even an especially severe storm, but simply a moderately sized, typical summer storm.  The city's infrastructure simply wasn't up to the task.  Streets and homes were flooded, as insufficient care has been paid to the operation of even basic water pumps.  And that's probably the best of it.  Roughly half of the population remains displaced, and varied government agencies -- from the perpetually inept FEMA to the formalistically by-the-book SBA -- apparently find reasons to deny claims for redevelopment grants and low-interest loans, rather than to respond meaningfully (let alone competently) to the palpable human needs of the Gulf Coast's forgotten poor.

Yet, ultimately, this should be no surprise.  The Black poor of New Orleans -- like the Black underclass more generally -- were neglected by our government (and, frankly, the Black Middle Class too) before and, most evidently, during the disaster that was Katrina.  Why should we expect anything different now?

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 11:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (553) | TrackBacks (0)

Over the past few years, there has been a fair amount of discussion about race and Hollywood . Some of that discussion has occurred on this blog. Once again the topic is hitting the press. This time the specific issue is about the racial diversity of writers and the focus is on a report written by Darnell Hunt, director of the Ralphe J. Bunche Center for African American Studies and Professor of Sociology at UCLA.  The executive summary of Hunt’s report notes that while “more than 30% of the American population is non-white, writers of color continue to account for less than 10% of employed television writers." The report goes on to conclude that "these numbers will likely get worse before they get better because of the recent merger of UPN and the WB into the new CW Network, which resulted in the cancellation of several minority-themed situation comedies that employed a disproportionate share of minority television writers.”  Hunt observes that the situation is even worse in the context of film writing where "where the minority share of employment has been stuck at 6% for years."  The issue raises a question about the relationship among black writers, black roles and black images. For example, does more black writers necessarily mean better black images (and I recognize that there is not likely to be consensus on the question of what constitutes “better” images)?  To put the question slightly differently, why do we want more black writers? Maybe it’s not that we want more black writers but that we think that the fact that there are so few suggests that there is a discrimination problem.  Under this view, what we want is non-discrimination. But maybe we want more black writers because we think it will lead to more black roles and better black images.  I am not convinced about the better black images point, in part because of my sense that Black and non-black writers are going to subject to market pressures.  But I am certainly open to being persuaded otherwise and so look forward to your views. The Hollowood Reporter’s discussion of the matter can be found at: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/news/e3i77c5a9f8c684e013b66d42b22005f6ca

Posted by Devon Carbado at 07:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (38) | TrackBacks (0)

The Berkeley Journal of African-American Law and Policy recently issued the following Call for Papers:

Setting the Agenda: Examining the Critical Legal Issues Facing African-Americans and Minority Communities in the 2008 Election

As the 2008 election draws near, what are the critical legal issues facing minority communities across the United States? How will the lives and needs of these communities influence and be influenced by electoral politics, the 2008 presidential election, and the next administration? What are the key problems and how can we effectively address them as we move towards the next phase in the nation’s political life?

On November 9, 2007, the Berkeley Journal of African-American Law and Policy (BJALP) will host a symposium focusing on critical legal issues facing minority communities in light of the upcoming 2008 election. Those wishing to participate in the symposium are invited to submit proposals for papers exploring a critical legal issue facing African-Americans and minority communities in the upcoming election. We are interested in papers in a diverse array of fields including, but not limited to, voting rights, health care, fair housing, environmental justice, family law, education, and the criminal justice system. Similarly, we are interested in fielding multiple perspectives on these issues and would welcome proposals from academics, policymakers, practitioners, activists, and community members. Papers selected for the symposium will be published in the Spring 2008 edition of the Berkeley Journal of African- American Law and Policy.

Continue reading "Berkeley Call for Papers" »

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 09:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Sherrilyn Ifill at 01:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (32) | TrackBacks (0)

Thanks for the introduction. I am gratified by the opportunity to post on BlackProf, certainly one of the successful blogs on the Internet.

I want to start off by posting about Iraq and black involvement (or the lack thereof). The military has had a tough time meeting there recruiting goals to meet the twin demands of Iraq and Afghanistan, even though the military has lowered standards and increased spending sharply to recruit. Still, as reported today in a newspaper article, all the major Democratic candidates for this year want to increase the size of ground forces. (http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/08-hopefuls-would-grow-the-military-2007-05-02.html). Part of the recruiting problem has to be African Americans, which the military has had a particularly tough time recruiting. According to National Public Radio (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4561618&sc=emaf), African Americans recruits to the Army are down 41% since 2000.

The sharp drop in African American recruits is surprising, considering that there is long history (or trope?) of African Americans being over-represented in uniform. The decline in African American enlistees is even more surprising, given that military service has never had so many benefits from combat pay to enlistment bonuses to tuition assistance. In some sense, Latinos may be picking up the slack. Over the same period of the decline in African American enlistment, the number of Latinos enlistees is rising fast. One reporter has noted the prevalence of bumper stickers in Florida that read: “Yo Soy Army.” What’s going on? Why the change of heart among African Americans?  Whether a hawk or a dove, the military does offer significant benefits for those that enlist, like those mentioned, but also a marketable skill set, exposure to a diverse group of individuals and other cultures, and discipline, among others. Thus, is it a good thing that African Americans are increasingly disinclined to enlist?

Posted by Lee Harris at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (117) | TrackBacks (1)

[Although I believe the "fair use" doctrine would allow us to post full news articles -- here's a quote and a link]

Obama Reaches Out With Tough Love
Candidate Says Criticism of Black America Reflects Its Private Concerns

By Perry Bacon Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 3, 2007; A01

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) is delivering pointed critiques of the African American community as he campaigns for its votes, lamenting that many of his generation are "disenfranchising" themselves because they don't vote, taking rappers to task for their language, and decrying "anti-intellectualism" in the black community, including black children telling peers who get good grades that they are "acting white."

As he travels around the country in his effort to become the nation's first black president, Obama has engaged in an intense competition for black voters -- a crucial Democratic Party constituency that accounts for as much as half the electorate in some key primary states such as South Carolina. But the first-term senator, who has sought to present himself as an agent of change eager to challenge political convention, has taken the unusual route of publicly criticizing his own community.

In a brief interview, Obama said he is simply giving broader exposure to the problems that African Americans discuss with great frankness in private. "It's what we talk about in the barbershops in the South Side of Chicago," Obama said, adding that he talks about these problems more in the black community because they are more pronounced there. "There's an old saying that if America has a cold, we have pneumonia," he said.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/02/AR2007050202813_pf.html

Posted by Darren Hutchinson at 08:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (53) | TrackBacks (0)

It is prom season again.  In 1967, the United States Supreme Court held in Loving v. Virginia that the state of Virginia’s anti-miscegenation statutes violated the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Constitution.  Forty years later in 2007, high school students at Turner County High School in Ashburn, Georgia attended their very first integrated prom.

Prior to this spring, Turner County High students had a tradition of hosting two, separate private proms—a black one and a white one, each with its own prom queen.  Mindy Bryan, who attended the segregated white prom in 2001, described the tradition as follows:  “There was not anybody that I can remember that was black.  The white people have theirs, and the black people have theirs.  It’s nothing racial at all.”

This year’s Senior Class President, James Hall—a black student, led the charge to have just one official prom for the school.  Still, white students held their own prom just one week before this year’s official, integrated prom, claiming that the separate prom occurred because they “had already booked it.” According to one student, black students could have come to this segregated white prom, but she “guess[es] they fe[lt] like they’re not welcome.” 

I have a full range of emotions about this story.  Hope, because of the students’ actions in envisioning and making this change.  Shock at the very idea of a first integrated prom in 2007, even in southern Georgia.  Sadness and agreement with Valerie McKellar, who proclaimed that more needs to be done.  Even “open-minded” white students have made statements that make me cringe.  For example, in expressing her reaction to her white peers’ parents, who would not let her friends come to the integrated program, one white student asserted:  “I’ve asked, ‘Why can’t you come? And they’re like, ‘My mommy and daddy—they don’t agree with being with the colored people,’ which I think is crazy.”  The school’s white principal, Chad Stone, certainly needs to do more and perhaps should take some notes from his own students in effecting change.  In response to parents’ actions in throwing a separate white prom for their children, he said, “That’s going to be up to the parents.  That’s part of being in America.  If they want to do that for the kids, then that’s fine.”  Funny, Principal Stone’s statement gives so little and yet explains so much at the same time.  

Posted by Angela Onwuachi at 12:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (62) | TrackBacks (1)

Salon columnist Jeff Yang did this column recently which referenced the Iowa massacres as well. 

Posted by Adrien Wing at 09:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (51) | TrackBacks (0)

Racial hatred against African-Americans is global and, in the eyes of some people, even useful to training military soldiers.  Reporters recently exposed a videotape of a German army instructor, who “trained” a young soldier by encouraging him to envision African-Americans as target practice.  Such antics follow controversy that arose after photos of German soldiers posing with skulls in Afghanistan were released.

Posted by Angela Onwuachi at 09:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (98) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Darren Hutchinson at 07:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (58) | TrackBacks (1)

This has been the primary argument advanced by defenders of Imus -- how dare Sharpton condemn Imus but not hip hop for its misgony and other offenses.  Pat Buchanan is the latest person to make such arguments, in an argument which argues that Imus was "lynched."  Of course, this is a "reverse discrimination" argument in disguise.  It goes like this: black people get to do things that white people cannot do; blacks can call black women ho's but not white men; this is unfair and is akin to an antiwhite lynching.  Whites are the victims of discrimination; criticizing racism harms whites.  Sounds familiar, right?  I see one major factual problem with this argument in this setting: SHARPTON HAS IN FACT CRITICIZED HIP HOP! And often.  When I was a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania several years ago, Sharpton gave a speech during which he criticized hip hop lyrics and mentioned that he has met with artists and done the same.  So, in the interest of advancing knowledge, I offer the following links (one of these links involves a black artist OUTSIDE of hip hop).  Question: Why are the defenders of Imus/critics of Sharpton in the dark on his history as a hip hop critic?  Are they only concerned when he criticizes whites, rather than blacks? What do you think?

http://www.koat.com/entertainment/11495572/detail.html?rss=alb&psp=nationalnews (condemning violence among hip hop artists)

http://dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2006/01/26/rev-sharpton-criticizes-boondocks-for-showing-king-saying-the-n-word/ (condemning use of n-word by Boondocks creater)

 http://www.allhiphop.com/hiphopnews/?ID=6892 Quote: "I'm not here to take sides, I'm here to say that all sides are letting us down and need to come down to the table again and create a level of decency and respect for the communities that has been the basis of your wealth," Sharpton said. "We put the 'I.N.G.' in your bling bling [and] have no choice but then to try and [take] 'the' "I.N.G." out your bling bling by withdrawing our support commercially of your records and your use of airwaves.”

http://www.nobodysmiling.com/hiphop/news/86613.php (condemning "gangsterism" in hip hop)

http://media.www.thehilltoponline.com/media/storage/paper590/news/2005/03/28/Campus/Sharpton.Calls.For.Ban.On.Violent.Rap.Music-904105.shtml (calling for ban of violence in music and citing hip hop as a catalyst for his views)

http://www.rawkus.com/content/?p=466 (organized march to protest violence among hip hop artists; Russell Simmons and the Hip Hop Summit organizers originally agreed to participate but pulled out, leaving Sharpton the lone sponsor)

 http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1355/is_26_98/ai_68018839 Quote: "Don't let some record executive tell you that cursing out your mama is in style. Anytime you perpetuate a slave mentality that desecrates women and that desecrates our race in the name of a record.... I consider you a well-paid slave."

http://www.bet.com/Music/Archives/BET.com+-+Al+Sharpton+Disses+Rap+Against+Women+1081.htm  Quote: " I had a discussion with a few rappers a while back, and I asked them why they use so much profanity and are so misogynistic in their music. 'Rev, we're like a mirror to society,' one of the rappers said. 'We are merely reflecting what we see, he wrote of his encounter. "'Well, I don't know about you, but I use a mirror to correct what's wrong with me,'" I told them. 'I don't look in the mirror to see my hair messed up and my teeth need brushing and just walk out of the house that way. I use the mirror to fix me.'"

 PS: There are many other examples on the web.  Education is a powerful tool....

Posted by Darren Hutchinson at 03:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (186) | TrackBacks (4)

Full version:http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20070413/cm_thenation/20070423press

The New Suburban Poverty

Posted by Darren Hutchinson at 01:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (35) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Spencer Overton at 05:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (46) | TrackBacks (0)

For centuries, conservative theologians and secular liberals have presented the Gospel as a message entirely about personal redemption, one in which the distribution of power and its effects on individuals is immaterial.    This interpretation of Jesus's life and message, in this country at least, is dominant.  Framing the Gospel as principally, if not exclusively, concerned with personal morality is an exegetical precondition for the ideology of church-and-state separation -- that is, a theory of church-and-state separation is unsustainable without a corresponding belief in Jesus-and-state separation.  And, not only does such a cramped construction of the New Testament generally suggest disconnecting WWJD from public commitments, it also constrains the public significance of Jesus to the personal.  So I find it unsurprising that, to the extent conservatives seek to vindicate Christian values through public means, their focus is limited to the personal -- to restricting the choices available to individuals in their private lives to those finding biblical sanction.  Yet, given their ideology of Jesus-and-state separation, they assert -- expressly or tacitly -- that the Gospel has nothing to say to government. 

At the same time, White liberals, already committed to using government broadly for social purposes, tend to be emphatically secular in their political sensibilities.  This secular disposition, though for different reasons, pushes them toward the same conclusion -- that government and spirituality should largely occupy different domains.

Black Christians, generally, find no home in either camp.  The experience of Black folk in America is irreducibly one of deliverance from oppression, and the Gospel -- not to mention the exodus narrative that forms the heart of the Old Testament -- is foundationally concerned with deliverance from oppression. Building on the liberation theology of scholars like James Cone, Obery Hendricks asserts in his classic text, The Politics of Jesus, that the Gospel is fundamentally about delivering marginalized people -- "the least of these" -- from the forces of subordination, whether those forces derive from public, private, or religious sources.  This understanding of the Bible -- articulated long ago by Black religious thinkers like Richard Allen -- constitutes the ethical soul of the Black struggle for freedom in this country.  In fact, I'd submit it is impossible to understand the Black freedom struggle without accounting for the indelible role of Christian faith in that struggle.

In this regard, Black Christian spirituality is incompatible with both the cramped exegesis of evangelical conservatives and the secular liberalism of political progressives.  As a Christian thinking through the implications of Easter, I find it impossible to separate the cross from what Hendricks calls Jesus's politics: Jesus's unwavering concern for the ways in which power conditions the potential of ordinary folk.  And while progressives tend purposefully to frame their claims for a more responsible politics in the language of secularism, perhaps the perspective of Black Christianity suggests that approach should be re-considered.  I'm not sure we need less Christianity in our public life.  Perhaps we need more. 

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 12:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (111) | TrackBacks (0)

As America focuses on the Imus scandal, I am reminded that we have just commemorated the 150th anniversary of the heinous Dred Scott decision. In my head, I can hear those infamous lines from that decision. The US Supreme Court viewed blacks as "beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations, and so far inferior that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect."  The Harvard Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice, headed by Professor Charles Ogletree, just held a fabulous conference relating to this event. There were nine circuit court judges on a panel with Justice Breyer.  Also in attendance were the descendants of the plaintiffs, including Lynne Jackson, great, great granddaughter of Dred Scott. 

To see the conference, visit

http://www.charleshamiltonhouston.org/Events/Event.aspx?id=100027

Do comments like those of Imus indicate that far too many Americans  today still view African Americans  as Justice Taney and his peers did back then?? 

Posted by Adrien Wing at 08:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (23) | TrackBacks (0)

Yesterday, Matt Lauer challenged Rev. Al Sharpton’s call for the dismissal of Don Imus by suggesting “you are a minister and one of the lessons of the Bible is forgiveness.”  Many reporters have also asked me about forgiveness and personal redemption for Imus. At first I was both confused and angry about this line of reasoning. Rev. Sharpton is not empowered to forgive white racism on the behalf of all black people. And even if, in some secret racial meeting, we had conferred this authority on him, how does Imus’ narrative of personal redemption affect the fundamental need for punishment and justice in this case.

It occurs to me that this line of reasoning emerges from the very bad history that we collectively accept as the narrative of the Civil Rights Movement. I think the story goes something like this:

Evil white Southerners used to oppress black people by calling them ugly names.  Then the great Martin Luther King came and taught us how to all love each other.  Black people transformed white people with love and forgiveness, and now, as long as no one uses bad and hurtful racial language we can all get along.

When Imus continues to assert that “I am a good person.”  He is suggesting that vile misogyny and vicious racism (of which he is guilty) cannot coexist with charitable, philanthropic actions (in which he engages). But this idea reflects our misunderstanding of racism.  Racism is not limited to racial invectives. Racial slurs are personally painful and socially destructive. We should always respond to and condemn their use, but they are not the most enduring and powerful aspects of American racism.  If we wipe out the public use of all racial slurs we still have a society that reproduces racial inequality in every important area of civic life.  And racism is not necessarily incompatible with civic leadership, personal commitment to family, or the general position of being a “good guy.”  White racism in America is, in fact, completely compatible with these personal characteristics. It is woven into the very fabric of our nation, such that every white President, civic leader, b usinessman, journalist and “good guy” throughout most of our nation’s history was a vicious racist. It was good citizens, church deacons, store owners and devoted fathers who castrated, burned and hung black citizens for 100 years.

It is a fundamental mis-remembering of the Civil Rights Movement to cast it as primarily a mission for the forgiveness of white sin.  Within that understanding,  black Americans are cast as the messianic figures having a specific role in helping America meet the moral duty to which she has been called; the inequities faced by African Americans constantly forcing the country into the difficult task of introspection.  Black people are the subject of our own struggle. Our struggle against inequality is primarily for the sake of our own humanity and citizenship, not for the redemption of white America.  The Civil Rights Movement was and is a struggle for justice.  King did envision a beloved community as a way to move the nation toward this justice, but Imus has already broken the rules of beloved community. He has already degraded and disrespected young students. Black people owe him nothing. His quest for personal redemption is entirely irrelevant.

The Imus incident is simple in a number of important aspects.  Clearly he is a racist who should be fired. In other ways the Imus incident is complex, because it continues reveal our national incapacity to cope with the legacy, presence, reproduction and meaning of American racism.

Posted by Melissa Harris-Lacewell at 03:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (44) | TrackBacks (0)

Like Essence Carson, the captain of the Rutgers women’s basketball team, I find it a close call whether to just ignore Don Imus’s comments.  Unlike the students I referred to in my post about “ghetto fabulous” parties on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, I have no hope that Don Imus will ever learn from his “mistakes” or change for the better.  He is just pitiful, and no amount of education can change that fact.

I also appreciate Professor Darren Hutchinson’s wonderful point about how “we” construct racism.  I understand how focusing on racist and sexist comments from idiots like Don Imus can be viewed as moving structural racism beyond remediation.

But then, my mind takes me back to those “ghetto fabulous” students at Tarleton State University, the University of Texas, the University of Connecticut, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Arizona, Villanova University, and the many other colleges identified by readers of blackprof.com in their comments.  I consider the question posed during a news conference by Rutgers women’s basketball coach, Vivian Stringer:  “Who amongst you could have heard these comments and not be upset?”  I am saddened when I ponder two points.  First, the answer to Stringer’s question for much of the American public is not clearly “Not I.”  One poll indicated that only 25% of its subjects believed that Imus should be fired.  According to one New York Times article, Rudy Giuliani, a presidential candidate, supports Imus; likewise, Senator and presidential candidate John McCain has backed Imus, noting that he, McCain, is “a great believer in redemption.”  Second, the fact that so few Americans believe that Imus should be fired and that presidential candidates, who must certainly be concerned about public opinion, would support Imus indicates to me that the “Imus incident” is about more than just attitudinal racism.  It is, in a way, structural.  It is a symbol of the systemic practice of neighborhoods, the media, schools, and many other institutions in disregarding and downplaying insults about people of color and viewing us as “too sensitive” when we dare to complain.  It is a sign of a society filled with institutions that will “accept” the apologies of “ghetto fabulous” students without taking full advantage of using the opportunity to really educate them before they become Don Imus, who again is far beyond saving.  It is a view into a world in which public citizens wonder why Blacks cannot just accept Imus’s apology, even with his history of referring to journalist Gwen Ifill as a “cleaning lady” and journalist William Rhoden as a “quota hire.” These global practices systematically disadvantage people of color by allowing society to disregard the reality of racism in our lives; permitting far too many Whites to ignore their own racial privilege (including the way in which their white skin allows many of them not to think about race at all or see or feel its scars); and leaving us, people of color, to question all too often, “Are we crazy?  Are we too sensitive?  Should we just let it slide?”  The fact is that Imus and his bosses who fail to fire him are part of the entire structure that support and encourage racial inequalities.

Gregory Lee, President of the National Association of Black Journalists, asserted the following about the “Imus incident”:  “You can apologize, but what does that mean when you have a history of making disparaging comments.  This kind of behavior must be punished.  I hope the company and sponsors he has take some sort of action . . . to educate him.”  I agree, and I disagree.  I agree that Imus’s apology means nothing given his history.  I am also happy to see that Cal Ripken, Jr. canceled his appearance on the Imus Show and that some sponsors such as Staples, Procter & Gamble, and Bigelow Tea have take action by pulling their advertising from Imus’s show in response to his comments.  But, it is not the education of Imus that I am concerned with. Watch Imus.  He apologizes, deflects attention from his own comments by raising concerns about rappers’ use of misogynistic lyrics, and then claims that such actions by rappers do not excuse his behavior—all in one breath.  He clearly has learned nothing.

But I am concerned with educating of the rest of us about the societal practices that enable the Don Imuses of the world to thrive and may work to turn “well-intentioned” ghetto-fabulous party throwers into Don Imuses—that is, if we choose not to educate them.  Overall, I am hoping that the rest of us agree with team captain Essence Carson, who said, “At first we thought to let it slide, but . . . we decided it was unacceptable.”

Posted by Angela Onwuachi at 11:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (32) | TrackBacks (0)

Imus is a loony.  Imus is a racist; he is sexist.  He is intersectionally racist and sexist.  His comments show “us” what “they” think when we “really apply ourselves and take advantage of all the country has to offer” (and other fictions).  If only they had combed their hair….

Anyway, I am entering this dialogue to raise one point that I think many have overlooked: how do persons concerned with racial justice convince people to examine structural racism with the same level of intensity as they devote to incidents such as Nappy-Gate? When idiots like Imus (and Lott and all the other racists du jour) have moments of Freudian slippage, Sharpton, Jackson and others respond; the idiots apologize; and the racist “moments” pass.  Victory!  But what about the next day? Racism in its structural and individualized forms persists.  Is it possible to capitalize on moments like these to bring attention to issues far more dangerous and pervasive than Imus (like conjoined poverty and racism)?  Does intense focus on idiot du jour racism, rather than structural racism, make the latter even more obscure and beyond remediation?  I ask these questions not to condemn any of the eloquent and necessary replies to Imus – but to consider how antiracists construct an atomistic view of racism in our challenges to the Imuses of the world.  

As we struggle to educate people about the institutionalized nature of racism, a focus on racism as an individualized pathology (correctable by a mere apology and two-week suspension) seems to contradict or at least complicate this mission.  Can focusing on moments like these, on the other hand, help to maintain a framework about race and racism that permits discussions of more pernicious racial hierarchy?

I hope to invite discussion of these issues.  Here are some possible angles for talking about subtle racism in this particular setting. Could we use this moment to discuss white domination of the media itself and how this supports negative images of persons of color on a daily basis? Some commentators have already made connections between Imus’ “ho” reference and hip hop lyrics (inescapable, I imagine).  How do we situate Imus in this context, if at all?  And I am not talking about black men singing about black "ho's" and "bitches" – but about a corporate media that makes billions by paying them to do so.  Why does Imus survive with a two-week suspension, but Janet Jackson is banished from television after a .001 second exposure of a covered black nipple apparently traumatized the country and presented grave issues of national security?

Of course, we could make broader observations as well.  Imus and millions of others have racist views but do not express them openly.  Doesn’t this explain patterns of racism in criminal law enforcement, employment, housing, etc?  We know that racism exists before and after people like Imus “cross the line.”  Perhaps moments like these could help us to cross the line and engage in a deeper, public exploration of the continued relevance of race.

Darren Lenard Hutchinson

Posted by Darren Hutchinson at 09:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (429) | TrackBacks (2)

I have a six year old grand daughter who is quite a soccer player already.  She is very tall and her dad was a college football player and her mom was a track team member. We know that basketball could clearly be a sport in her future.  One day I would like her to be able to read this response from the Women’s Sports Foundation about Imus. Unfortunately, there are still likely to be people who think just like him by the time she would be playing in high school or college.

Women's Sports Foundation President Aimee Mullins:

"The Women's Sports Foundation congratulates the talented and skilled members of the Rutgers Women's Basketball Team and their achievement at this year's NCAA Tournament.   We are saddened that there are still those who continue to judge people on appearance rather than talent.   Racial and gender bigotry are inexcusable in any circumstance, but when that bigotry has a public broadcast forum, and is aimed at student athletes, it represents the worst kind of abuse of media power.  Apologies from Don Imus and others involved, including broadcast partners, is not the simple solution.   We can no longer allow a 'mea culpa' to erase inexcusable behavior.   We insist that all members of the Don Imus Show be educated about the importance of diversity in our society and treating people as equals regardless of race or gender. “

Women’s Sports Foundation CEO Donna Lopiano:

"Don Imus has shown a continuous pattern of making racist and sexist statements on his show and then apologizing for them later.  Members of the media must be held to high standards  of conduct because they have been given the opportunity to influence millions of people with their words.  It is time that we as a society insist on the firm application of such standards.   The comments of Mr. Imus were intolerable and despicable.  He should be removed from the airwaves.   Those who feel similarly should join the Women's Sports Foundation in asking that the executives of WFAN, Westwood One and MSNBC do the right thing and drop his program ."

For those who feel similarly outraged and want to express their thoughts on his comments, listed below is the contact information for the media outlets involved:

Les Hollander, SVP       
CBS RADIO                      
1515 Broadway             
New York, NY 10036       
212-846-3939                                    

Dan Abrams, Gen. Mgr.

MSNBC-TV

One MSNBC Plaza

Posted by Adrien Wing at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (48) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Adrien Wing at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (74) | TrackBacks (0)

Showing a streak of independence, if not boldness, Governor Charlie Crist of Florida, a Republican, has proposed a limited re-enfranchisement of disenfranchised felons. Because ex-felons deprived of their voting rights under the Florida constitution are disproportionately of color and poor, many Republicans fear that even a modest step towards re-enfranchisement will benefit Democrats. They therefore oppose Crist’s plan. Read about the unfolding politics around this proposal here.

Posted by Terry Smith at 03:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (40) | TrackBacks (0)

Forget about the deaths and destruction.  And never mind the bleaching of one of the blackest states in the Union.  This is what retiring Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco learned from Hurricane Katrina: 

“When I look back at the storms, if I had had the knowledge that I would be treated as a pariah by the national Republicans in office, I would have joined the Republican Party to save my state . . . .  Then I would have been hugged and kissed and lifted, and I would have been declared the best governor in this whole country . . . .  I wish I had realized that earlier. I think that was the fatal error.”

Read the full article here. 

And look for Louisiana, which had been a competitive two-party state prior to Katrina, to lurch right, with scarcely any distinction between its Democrats and Republicans.

Posted by Terry Smith at 02:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (39) | TrackBacks (0)

The Walt Disney Company, the producer of several of the greatest child-friendly animated films of all time, announced that its new film -- called "The Frog Princess" -- will feature the first Black princess to appear in a Disney film.  The film will be set in New Orleans and, according to Disney officials, will also feature "voodoo spells," "Cajun charm," and "a soulful singing alligator."  

Doesn't sound like the sort of thing I'll want my daughter (or son, for that matter) to see.  I'm not excited about the fact that Disney's first Black princess is a frog apparently metamorphosed into a princess.  Perhaps I'm reading too much into this, but this seems a not-so-subtle invocation of the stigmatized notions of Blackness and Black womanhood that constitute precisely the sort of dishonoring that we need images of princesses to counteract.  The novelty of a Black princess in mainstream media is of course the converse to the widespread imaging of Black womanhood as the very antithesis of royalty.  So while I applaud the idea of a Black princess in a major studio film, I fear the execution: Mass media's efforts to undermine racial stereotypes too often reinforce them.  

A Black frog princess with voodoo powers and a sidekick alligator singing soul music?  We've been there before.

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 09:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (128) | TrackBacks (1)

About a week ago, members of the Cherokee Nation voted 77% to 23% to expel descendants of black slaves they once owned who represented just under 10% of the tribe’s population.   

In the 1800s, the Cherokee owned slaves and fought with the Confederate States of America.  When the Union won the Civil War, the Cherokee entered into an 1866 treaty that freed and granted full tribal membership to their former slaves.   

Advocates of last week's expulsion didn’t want to share the $350 million from casino and federal funds with the freedmen:  "Don’t get taken advantage of by these people. They will suck you dry," wrote Darren Buzzard in an e-mail. "Don’t let black freedmen back you into a corner. Protect Cherokee culture for our children."   

The tribe’s principal chief Chad Smith also claims the Cherokee’s right to self-determination:  "Their voice is clear as to who should be citizens of the Cherokee Nation. No one else has the right to make that determination."   

What if the United States as a whole exercised its “right” to self-determination, amended its constitution (which would require more than a popular vote), and expelled former slaves? 

I was reminded of Derrick Bell’s “Space Traders” story from the book Faces at the Bottom of the Well, which was eventually made into an HBO movie.  Here is Professor Bell’s description of the story:   “In summary, on New Year’s Day in the year 2000, great waves of huge vessels descend on the United States and their extraterrestrial leaders announce they are here to make a trade offer: Give up all African-Americans and in return they will leave for America the contents of their ships—enough gold to retire the national debt, a magic chemical that will cleanse America’s polluted skies and waters, and a limitless source of safe energy to replace our dwindling reserves. Following roughly two weeks to consider the offer, heated public debate leads to a referendum that when approved, consigns all blacks to the traders.” 

Apparently, the Seminole Nation tried to expel freedmen in 2000. But the Bureau of Indian Affairs and federal courts responded by refusing to recognize the sovereign nature of the Seminoles, and the tribe reversed their decision. 

More details on the Cherokee vote are here and here.  An interesting academic read on a related topic is Madhavi Sunder's Cultural Dissent.

Please encourage the Congressional Black Caucus to focus on this issue by calling:

You can also contact the following members of Congress who oversee Indian issues: 

Donna M. Christensen (D-Virgin Islands) at 202-225-1790 (non-voting, but the only Congressional Black Caucus member on House Resources Committee)

Nick Rahall (D-WV), U.S. House Resources Committee Chair at (202) 225-6065

Byron Dorgan (D-ND), U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Chair at (202) 224-2251

Posted by Spencer Overton at 07:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (70) | TrackBacks (0)

Listening to conservative commentator Ann Coulter’s performance at this month’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC ) reminded me of a poor man’s Joan Rivers–a wannabe comedienne who makes a sensible audience shake their heads rather than laugh. But the audience at CPAC, intoxicated with racial and political bile, was anything but sensible. The mainstream media has reported ad nauseam on Coulter’s reference to Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards as a faggot. Far less accessible and controversial have been her anti-black and anti-Latino remarks at the conference. For the full video of her remarks, go to http://www.c-span.org/. The lack of outrage over these comments says much about the media and the American public whose attitudes the media often reflect.

In describing Bill Clinton as "the first black president," Coulter remarked that he was "half white, half trash." What does Coulter think of black Republicans? She patronizingly opines, "Our blacks are so much more impressive than their blacks. . . . Who do they [Democrats] have–Maxine Waters?" Surprisingly, she doesn’t care much for the Republican National Committee because "the RNC . . . they criticize the catch an illegal alien game, so I don’t have a lot of respect for them." Her advice to college Republicans who want to engage in political activism? Play the catch an illegal alien game and "another great idea, the affirmative action bake sale." The affirmative action bake sale is a conservative spoof on affirmative action in which cookies are sold to different customers at different prices depending on their race and gender. One could argue that the bake sale isn’t racist if he adopts the position that opposition to affirmative action is not racially motivated. Any such conclusion, however, would require an amnesia of history and suspension of common sense views about human motive–affirmative action requires whites to internalize some of the cost of historical discrimination and to forego some ill-gotten generational advantage.

At another point in her presentation, Coulter exclaimed, "Democrats don’t even like blacks." (I suppose Coulter and her CPAC cult are our best friends.) In another contortion of reason, Coulter claimed that white liberalism was to blame for conservative college students offering whites-only scholarships. (Don’t even bother scratching your heads.)

I’m not certain if it’s truly news that Coulter is anti-black-and-Latino and anti-gay. This, after all, appears to be the way she makes her living. But why the media hasn’t dissected the racism of her statements as much as the statements’ homophobia is a story in itself.

Posted by Terry Smith at 02:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (110) | TrackBacks (0)

With the resignation of President Bruce Gordon, the NAACP, still recovering from the Ben Chavis scandal of ten years ago, and which forced out Kweisi Mfume two years ago, is once again in crisis.  I see principally two reasons for the NAACP's continuing problems: its absurdly ineffective governance structure and, correspondingly, the substantive irrelevance of much of its agenda.

Concerning governance, one wonders if the NAACP's organizational structure is designed intentionally to produce inertia.  The board is composed of 64 members.  It is virtually impossible for a non-profit to operate effectively with such a large and unwieldy Board.  According to BoardSource, the median size of a non-profit board is 15.  The NAACP's board is over four times larger.  Running the NAACP, apparently, is more like leading a legislature than leading a non-profit organization.  I doubt seriously that any non-profit has ever achieved sustainable success with such a large Board. 

Just as important, however, is the substantive irrelevance of too much of the NAACP's current work to the lives of everyday Black folk.  Commenting on the resignation, NAACP Chair Julian Bond explained that the NAACP is a social-justice organization, and Gordon wanted to remake it into a social-services organization.  Said Mr. Bond,

[W]e fight racial discrimination and social service groups fight the effects of racial discrimination. Service is wonderful and praiseworthy and fabulous, but many, many organizations do it. Only a couple do justice work, and we’re one of those few.

But one cannot so easily separate the fight against racial discrimination from the fight against its effects.  Often cause and effect work interdependently.  For example, poor schools, in one sense, are an effect of racism (as well as classism); but poorly educated students of color confirm racial stereotypes about insufficiencies in their capacity.  Racism and racial effects are inextricably linked.

Even more fundamentally, fighting racial discrimination means, irreducibly, an agenda focused primarily on the minds of White folk, not the lives of Black folk.  Most, if not all, everyday people are concerned overridingly with the latter.  Perhaps the sort of agenda professed by Chairman Bond made sense when the minds of Whites constituted express barriers to the advancement of Black folk  -- when the rigidity of Jim Crow meant that freedom and autonomy were preconditioned, in large part, by engagement with the hearts of the majority.  But white racism doesn't have the same provenance it once did.  The contemporary problems of Black folk tend to be more practical: too few strong families; too few good schools; too few marketable skills; too few nearby good jobs; too expensive daycare; too little healthcare coverage; and so on.  While these issues surely implicate racial concerns, race in many cases is secondary to issues of class, culture, and competence.  The miscellaneous causes of these problems probably don't mean much to ordinary folk; they simply need practical solutions that address these challenges.  But the NAACP simply isn't concerned with that effort.  If a specific racial cause is indiscernible, the NAACP, apparently, is disinterested.  And that, if nothing else, signals the organization's contemporary irrelevance.

For these reasons, the resignation of Bruce Gordon, who sought to adapt the NAACP to the current needs of Black folk, should be unsurprising.  In fact, the NAACP's structure and mission pre-ordained this result.  So what the NAACP needs now is not a new President; it needs a new NAACP.   

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 12:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (55) | TrackBacks (2)

Bruce Gordon recently announced his resignation as NAACP president after serving in the position for 19 months. 

Apparently, Gordon had a different vision from the board.  Gordon had a “post-civil rights” vision that focused on eliminating racial disparities in education, economics, and prison rolls.  Many on the board believe that the civil rights struggle continues, and that the NAACP needs to focus on present day discrimination.      

Here’s Bruce Gordon’s take:  "There has to be an acceptance, a willingness to change.  You can't do the same thing for 98 years and expect that you will succeed…. In business terminology we would argue that organizations that are no longer customer focused, who lose the heart of the customer, who lose the choice of the customer, will ultimately fail.” 

Here’s Board Chair Julian Bond's take:  "We want it to be a social justice organization; he wanted it to be more of a social service organization . . .  Put simply, we fight racial discrimination and social service groups fight the effects of racial discrimination. Service is wonderful and praiseworthy and fabulous, but many, many organizations do it. Only a couple do justice work, and we're one of those few." 

Who is right?

Posted by Spencer Overton at 12:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Man, let me make one query, what is the new civil rights battle currently and of the future? No, it is not gay rights, but if you do not have an answer, I will take the liberty to proffer that it is simply to get these fools back in line in the African American community.

See, I was raised in Memphis, and I recant vividly the presence of National Guards on my street telling me I could not go outside and play in my own front yard the night Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. My uncle along with his entire student body cut high school that day and the following day to go down town and wreck some feces. My momma worked at the hospital they took Dr. King to – pronounced dead on arrival. He was transported to the hospital in a bread truck she told me.

Now, unlike in the past, often the enemy is we and our penchant for self-destructive behavior. Now, we have momma’s stabbing and killing their kids, Momma’s giving their sons guns to go and kill other children and high school coaches being taking part in drive-by shootings. Last but not least, there is the presence of the new KKK – so called lyricist in the rap game that promote drug dealing, copulating with other men’s women, disrespect for family bonds and relationships, killing as if life is worthless and material in the form of diamond encrusted watches, teeth, and cars with spinning rims as being more valuable than thought or scholarship in the form of dialectical rumination. Ergo, I submit to you that this is the new battleground for civil rights in our community and that I find myself guilty too, if I cannot get these fools back in line.

Posted by Torrance Stephens at 01:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (104) | TrackBacks (1)

There's a movement afoot among Black folks to ban the "n-word." This crusade apparently is motivated by the concern that the word too often is used casually in a way that obscures -- or ignores -- its stigmatizing origin. Arguing that current idiomatic uses of the word cannot be disassociated from the term's racist etymology, the boycotters argue implicitly that all uses of the word, irrespective of context, are irreducibly racist and therefore deserving of censorship. Leaving aside, for the moment, my thoughts on the merits of the n-word debate, I thought I'd suggest an alternative linguistic ban -- a ban of a phrase that I think is far more destructive to the psychological, emotional, and aspirational lives of Black folk than the dreaded n-word. The phrase? White people.

I tend to believe that Black people use White folks as a benchmark entirely too much in our social, political, and cultural lives. Are Black kids learning? Do too many Black people have AIDS? Are too many Black men unemployed? Are Black features beautiful? Our answers to these and a host of other questions informing our quality of life too often turn, first, on an assessment of how we compare to White folks. That is debilitating to our sense of esteem, as it implies the inability to generate, and hold ourselves accountable against, self-directed standards of behavior and performance. I have two children, and I want them to do nothing less (and nothing more) than to achieve absolutely everything they're capable of achieving. Whether that means they out-perform White children is utterly irrelevant to me (indeed, it's less than irrelevant; it's simply not even a part of my thinking). I fear that too often folks of color seem on a permanent race to catch White folks -- irrespective of whether White folks, in any particular circumstance, are worth catching in the first place.

I therefore propose a friendly amendment to the pending petitions to ban the n-world: Let's ban the w-words instead.

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 11:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (106) | TrackBacks (0)

University of Arizona Professor  Gabriel “Jack” Chin has a new article that argues that past injustices resulted not from discrimination against an African American minority, but by democratic failure that allowed a Jim Crow minority to disenfranchise an African American majority.  The abstract is below, and you can download the full piece by clicking here.   

The Tyranny of the Minority: Jim Crow and the Counter-Majoritarian Difficulty

When analyzing the consequences of and remedies for discrimination against African Americans, courts and scholars characterize African Americans as a minority.  This Article shows that the traditional approach is wrong: When it mattered, when the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments were enacted and for decades after, African Americans were a majority or controlling plurality in the states where most lived.

African American-backed majoritarian governments controlled the South after the Civil War; while in power, they enacted strong civil rights laws and created a public education system. These policies were reversed, and segregation imposed, not because African Americans were a minority, destined to lose in the majoritarian political process, but rather through elimination of democratic politics and imposition of minority rule.  African Americans and their white allies were stripped of their electoral majority through fraud, violence and illegal disenfranchisement.

This Article argues that the most important harm African Americans suffered was something that the law has until now overlooked: Loss of the right to control the governments of several Southern states.  This injury means that current African Americans disadvantage likely rests on a constitutional violation; Jim Crow could not have happened had democracy functioned as provided in the Constitution.

Consideration of African American majority status also sheds new light on the counter-majoritarian difficulty.  In reviewing measures oppressing African Americans, the Court did not have to balance majority rule against minority rights; instead, majority rule and constitutional rights both militated toward invalidation of laws passed by a minority to oppress the majority.   

Posted by Spencer Overton at 10:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (52) | TrackBacks (0)

I find it befuddling that folks often cite the accomplishment of racial pioneers as evidence of substantial social progress on race matters.  Tony Dungy, the first African-American head coach to win a Super Bowl, now stands as purported evidence of race-neutrality in professional football.  Orlando Patterson told us in the New York Times that the election of Deval Patrick, the strong showing of Harold Ford, Jr., and the ascendancy of Barack Obama, portends the irrelevance of race to Black political empowerment.  And many commentators report that the towering achievements of giants from Ann Fudge and Richard Parsons to Oprah and Ruth Simmons further reveal the emasculation of race prejudice in the varied institutions constituting the vanguard of American cultural, social, and economic power.

But as significant as the accomplishments of racial pioneers might be, I suspect the continuing power of race prejudice is most evident in the experiences of the average and unremarkable.  That is, I’ll be convinced that race no longer matters when people of color can be as mediocre as White folk, and achieve, on a race-neutral basis, just what average White folk achieve.  I submit that the test of racial advancement isn’t measured by the breakthroughs of uniquely talented racial pioneers — folk whose supreme talent often can be denied only by the most conscious racists among us — but by the treatment of those ordinary folk who sometime require the benefit of the doubt or the understanding that a mistake isn’t always, or even often, a reflection of capacity.

I applaud the accomplishments of the racial pioneers.  Not too long ago, even the promise of the abnormally talented was handcuffed by the rigidity of race prejudice.  But we cannot lose the forest for the trees: how we treat the ordinary ultimately reveals more about our character than how we treat the exceptional.  And, by that score, we haven’t defanged racism until mediocre people of color have the same opportunity set as mediocre White folk.  Unfortunately, we’re not there yet.

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 06:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (93) | TrackBacks (1)

 

According to USA Today, Virginia is moving forward on something like--but not quite--an apology. "A proposal in the state Senate expressing 'profound contrition' won unanimous approval from a subcommittee Monday," the paper reports. A standard explanation for why an explicit apology is unlikely is that it would create legal liability.Another explanation is the sense among people who are not black (and among some blacks as well) that blacks need to "get over" slavery and that an apology would interfere with that (healing?) process. Of course, one could put forth other explanations--and I invite you to do so. For me, the foregoing two (which are reproduced in the attached USA Today article ) are unsatisfying.

Continue reading "Another Racial Apology (of Sorts)" »

Posted by Devon Carbado at 01:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (48) | TrackBacks (1)

I’m writing a book about generational change, and the tendencies of old ideologies to grow outdated and prevent growth.  The book is about generational change in political thought generally, but I often think about how the concepts apply to the African-American community. 

Here’s my question of the day:  To what extent does Black backlash against past discrimination contribute to continued racial disparities? 

Here are some examples: 

1. Academic achievement is deemed to be “White” among some Black folk, is frowned upon, and those who do so are deemed to be “oreos.”  

2.  When Whites dominated urban cities, public projects often displaced African American neighborhoods (“Urban renewal means Negro removal”).  Now that African Americans control many urban cities, similar concerns about regentrification persist, and change and growth has evaded many urban areas.   

3.  Whites are deemed too culturally insensitive to adopt Black children, and tens of thousands of black children go unadopted.     

4.  Black slaves in Haiti overthrow white masters, and the experience causes them to enact restrictions on immigration, foreign investment, and trade.  The stagnant nation eventually descends into chaos.  The Dominican Republic, which shares the same island, doesn’t have such strong reaction to slavery, welcomes immigration, trade, and foreign investment, and is currently doing much better than Haiti.  

My point is not to look down on self-reliance and self-awareness, or to suggest that black folk should just “loosen up” and forget about the past because “prosperous whites no longer exploit less fortunate blacks.”  I’m not saying that African Americans should blindly trust establishment voices or ignore history.  My point is to raise some questions.   

QUESTION SET 1:  WHAT SHOULD BLACK FOLKS DO?  What opportunities for growth have African Americans missed due to this skepticism?  What pitfalls have African Americans avoided due to the skepticism?  How much energy does the skepticism require?  Is there any way to hone the skepticism so that it is less sweeping and more precise—so that it more accurately blocks the pitfalls but allows us to take advantage of the opportunities?

QUESTION SET 2:  WHO SHOULD BEAR THE COSTS OF SKEPTICISM?  Are the opportunities for growth missed by Black folks as a result of this skepticism a cost of past discrimination, and if so, should all Americans accept this as a problem and work to address it?   Or are Black folks themselves responsible for their skepticism, and should the costs of any missed opportunities that result be borne by Black folk alone?

Posted by Spencer Overton at 06:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (49) | TrackBacks (0)

Earl Ofari Huthinson is a veteran black political commentator and author.  Below is his rather sobering analysis of Barack Obama's presidential prospects.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0129/p09s02-coop.html

Posted by Terry Smith at 02:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (64) | TrackBacks (1)

Super Bowl XLI has two Black head coaches. Clearly this fact has engendered and will continue to engender questions about race and football hierarchy. One question that is being asked is whether this presents some milestone, a taste a things to come; a new era. The attached MSN Sports article raises another related question: "Do you know when blacks will have truly arrived in this profession?" The answer: "When bad black coaches get hired a second or third time."  The notion is that white coaches are given more opportunities to succeed--and more professional space to fail. One can query whether and to what extent these issues can be framed to focus on black professional
success more generally. How do we know when blacks have made it in a profession? Is it a question of numbers? Or is it about opportunities to succeed and space to fail? Perhaps it is both. To return to the Super Bowl, this much is clear: only one of these coaches can win. Presumably both
have the professional space to lose. 

The article is http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/6418414

Posted by Devon Carbado at 02:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (54) | TrackBacks (1)

Anti-affirmative action activists may be gearing up for round 2.  In the wake of Proposition 2, the anti-affirmative action measure approved by voters in Michigan, public universities are seeking race neutral means of ensuring racial and ethnic diversity.  President of the ironically named Council for Equal Opportunity Roger Clegg told the New York Times that he has "a real problem" when schools adopt facially race neutral measures designed to achieve diversity -- Clegg claims "predetermined racial or ethnic goals.  Clegg says that "both in law and in common sense, the motivation matters."  

Clegg is undoubtedly referring to the Supreme Court's decision in Washington v. Davis that racially neutral government actions that have a disparate impact on a particular racial group violate the Equal Protection Clause if they are motivated by an intent to discriminate.   Are Clegg and his compatriots ready for a second round of litigation to undermine the newly devised admissions policies enacted in response to bans on race conscious policies?  If so, how will these suits fare?

Michigan voters approved the following language: 

Universities like Wayne State Law School have adopted policies that do not mention race or ethnicity, but instead grant preferences for, among other things, Detroit residence, overcoming discrimination, and being multilingual.  It seems as though these criteria can be met by people of any race or ethnicity -- white people as well as Blacks and other racial and ethnic groups live in Detroit, are multilingual, and indeed, a white person from a Black neighborhood in Detroit may contend that she has suffered from discrimination.  

While Clegg's group would bring a suit challenging the programs in state court rather than federal court since the claim would be under Michigan's constitution, it is interesting to think about how such a program would fare under Washington v. Davis.  Would a court find that Wayne State Law's admissions criteria were intended to discriminate against whites?  The first question is whether the criteria would have a disparate impact upon whites.  Arguably yes -- more Blacks than whites live in Detroit, more Blacks than whites have suffered from discrimination, more Latinos than whites are multilingual.  

The more difficult question is whether the criteria were devised with the purpose of "discriminating" on the basis of race.  Wayne State Law will contend that the program is intended to ensure a breadth of experience and view points at its law school -- not to discriminate on the basis of race.  Because white people as well as people of other races and ethnicities can meet the criteria, Wayne State will argue, these criteria cannot be said to discriminate on the basis of race -- even if the goal includes racial and ethnic diversity.  Also -- Wayne State may claim that it valued these qualities in its applicants before Prop 2 -- so the criteria were not created as a proxy for race.  Would Wayne State Law prevail?

Posted by Rachel Godsil at 02:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

Many seem to believe that people of color and women are apt to complain about race or gender discrimination whenever they experience it (and even when they don’t).  These same people often assume that those reporting discrimination derive considerable benefits from reporting the discrimination.  So – according to this particular conventional wisdom – people of color and women are somehow better off because they have an excuse for their failures or even better, leverage to get what they want.  According to social psychologists Cheryl Kaiser and Brenda Major in the fall issue of Law & Social Inquiry, the opposite is true. 

In multiple studies, social psychologists have found that people of color and women often do not report experiences of discrimination and perhaps more tellingly, those who report discrimination experience significant social costs.  Men and women of all races tend to think less well of those who claim discrimination – even if the claim is reasonable.  At first glance, this tendendency would seem to be explained by a general aversion to people blaming others for their failures or mistakes rather than taking responsibility for their own actions.  However, social psychologists have found that people don't think less well of people who attribute poor evaluations to the evaluater being a jerk.  Why might people judge more harshly those who are discriminated against than those treated badly by a jerk?  And what ramifications does this tendency have on discrimination law suits?

Posted by Rachel Godsil at 09:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (229) | TrackBacks (10)

Professional football history was made today.  When the Chicago Bears and Indianapolis Colts won their respective conference games to earn births to Super Bowl XLI, Lovie Smith and Tony Dungy became the first African-American coaches to advance to the Super Bowl.  This development, of course, means that in two weeks either Coach Smith or Coach Dungy will become the first African-American to win a Super Bowl.

While I applaud Coaches Smith and Dungy, I’m ambivalent about racial firsts.  I’m happy whenever Black expertise gets its due.  But that joy derives from the same predicate causing my distress: the rarity with which American institutions recognize Black proficiency.  Racial stigma, of course, has a longstanding provenance in our society.  Its irreducible thesis is that Black people do not possess the same human capacity as others.  That premise reconciled the repression wrought by slavery and Jim Crow with the high-minded liberalism of America’s professed democratic ideals.  The challenge of extricating ourselves from this history remains our country’s principal racial dilemma — one containable by formal mandates but eradicable only by radical transformations in social perceptions. 

I say all of this because one cannot consider the accomplishments of Coaches Smith and Dungy separate from this social context.  These are the first two Black coaches to reach the Super Bowl not because Black folk did not have the expertise to perform at this level until now, but because the social devaluation of Black competence artificially repressed the opportunities available to Black coaches. So while we affirm Coaches Smith and Dungy, we should remember both the untold number of Black coaches whose race disqualified them from head-coaching opportunities, and also the continuing need to forcibly remove from our institutions the continuing taint of racial stigma. 

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 11:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (202) | TrackBacks (1)

Many of you are aware of Oprah Winfrey’s philanthropic efforts in South Africa, which include the establishment of The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, a $40 million project.  She has received two sets of criticisms relevant for building this school. First, people question whether she should have spared some expense to spread the opportunity more broadly. Second, others wonder about the move to Africa given the quality of inner city schools. This second criticism emerged at least in part in response to Winfrey’s statement that she has become “frustrated” with inner city schools.

Last week Oprah appeared on Anderson Cooper where she discusses what motivated her to pursue the project. I attach the transcript and redact portions of it below.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening, everyone.

 . . . Oprah Winfrey . . . is speaking out, after spending tens of millions of dollars to build a school for underprivileged girls in South Africa, speaking out and taking heat, would you believe, for spending too much.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: I guess there's been some criticism in South Africa from some school officials that this is almost too extravagant, that the school -- the school is almost too nice for these kids.

But, for you, that was part of the message.

OPRAH WINFREY, HOST, "THE OPRAH WINFREY SHOW": You know, when I first came here and started the idea of building the school, people were saying, isn't that too much?

And the criticism was, too much for African girls. I was told, they are coming from huts. Why do they need all this? And my point was that you're -- it doesn't matter where you come from. What matters is what can be done with your life.

And, so, I wanted too create an environment, the most beautiful environment, that would inspire them.

…

ANNOUNCER: She believes she can change the world, one girl at a time.

WINFREY: What I'm trying to tell them is that it doesn't matter where you come from. What matters is what is possible for you. And this school is about opening up possibilities for these girls.

ANNOUNCER: One hundred and fifty-two very lucky girls, and the chance of a lifetime.

…

ANNOUNCER: But her efforts have stirred outrage.

WINFREY: I don't worry about the criticism, because I know that my intention is pure. And I know -- know that the goal is to create successful leaders for the future.

WINFREY: Everybody, these are my girls.

…

"I became so frustrated with visiting inner-city schools," she said, "that I just stopped going. The sense that you need to learn just isn't there. If you ask the kids what they want or need, they will say an iPod or some sneakers. In South Africa, they don't ask for money or toys. They ask for uniforms, so they can go to school."

Posted by Devon Carbado at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (1117) | TrackBacks (2)

Welcome to The Police Complaint Center

Police Crimes

FBI investigates taped LAPD beating

New Orleans Police Beating

Head of Florida Law Enforcement Quits after Making Stupid Racial Remarks: Bush Appointee Compared Black leaders to Osama bin Laden and Jesse James.

Continue reading "The Illusionists" »

Posted by Terry Smith at 05:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBacks (0)

Former BlackProf Guest Contributor Tanya K. Hernandez wrote an interesting op-ed piece that appeared in today's L.A. Times.

Professor Hernandez writes:

The acrimonious relationship between Latinos and African Americans in Los Angeles is growing hard to ignore. Although last weekend's black-versus-Latino race riot at Chino state prison is unfortunately not an aberration, the Dec. 15 murder in the Harbor Gateway neighborhood of Cheryl Green, a 14-year-old African American, allegedly by members of a Latino gang, was shocking.

Yet there was nothing really new about it. Rather, the murder was a manifestation of an increasingly common trend: Latino ethnic cleansing of African Americans from multiracial neighborhoods. Just last August, federal prosecutors convicted four Latino gang members of engaging in a six-year conspiracy to assault and murder African Americans in Highland Park. During the trial, prosecutors demonstrated that African American residents (with no gang ties at all) were being terrorized in an effort to force them out of a neighborhood now perceived as Latino.

For example, one African American resident was murdered by Latino gang members as he looked for a parking space near his Highland Park home. In another case, a woman was knocked off her bicycle and her husband was threatened with a box cutter by one of the defendants, who said, "You niggers have been here long enough." 

Hernandez concedes that a number of factors play into the increasing levels of histility, but points out that we should not ignore the effect that "Latino culture and history in fueling the rift."  According to Hernandez, "[t]he fact is that racism — and anti-black racism in particular — is a pervasive and historically entrenched reality of life in Latin America and the Caribbean."  Thus, Hernandez concludes that "it should not be surprising that migrants from Mexico and other areas of Latin America and the Caribbean arrive in the U.S. carrying the baggage of racism."

The complete article can be viewed here.

Hernandez shines a much needed spotlight on the distinctive form of entrenched anti-black prejudice sourced from Latino culture that, as a result of the immigration flux, has begun to percolate here in the United States.

Although Hernandez raises many points worth discussing, the question I'd like to pursue here relates to strategic response.  If we take Hernandez' diagnosis as correct, what, if anything, should be done to remedy the situation?

Posted by Christopher Bracey at 04:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (265) | TrackBacks (6)

In an op-ed in last week’s New York Times (available here to Times Select subscribers), Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson challenged Black folk to overcome “The Last Race Problem.”  Patterson’s argument derives from W.E.B. DuBois’s analysis of the dual components of the color line: the exclusion of Black people from America's political, economic, and social elite; and the segregation of Black folk from the cultural lives of White Americans. 

Patterson declares that Black folk have overcome the institutional-power dimension of the race problem, but have failed to integrate into White cultural life because of continued residential segregation.  I want to focus here on Patterson's institutional-integration claim; I'll deal in another post with his residential-segregation claim.  Patterson raves that the United States is a “global model” for the “diversity of its elite [and] the participation of blacks and other minorities in its great corporations and its public cultural life.”  His evidence?   

A black man has led the world’s most powerful military machine and stood a good chance of winning the presidency on the Republican ticket had he run; another is now a leading challenger for the Democratic nomination. A black woman, Oprah Winfrey, is perhaps the nation’s most powerful cultural force; another, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, is one of the world’s most powerful people and is the nation’s public face before the world. The recent decisive gubernatorial victory of Deval Patrick in Massachusetts is yet another instance of full public integration. And in popular culture, blacks’ presence is out of all proportion to their numbers. 

I fear that Professor Patterson may be suffering from a bout of myopia.  The very methodology by which he seeks to establish his premise reveals its vacuity.  It seems painfully obvious that the experience of five individuals — as impressive as their accomplishments might be — cannot show the extent to which a class of 40 million has infiltrated the corridors of American power.  Patterson’s anecdotal approach, moreover, implies the absence of classwide data vindicating his claim — an implication which is factually true given the demonstrable facts about continued White institutional domination in this country.  To wit: less than 1% of Fortune 500 CEOs are Black; merely 1.6% of law-firm partners are Black; and comparable percentages of Blacks comprise the senior-executive ranks of virtually all of the institutions constituting American economic, social, and cultural power.   

Indeed, the very contexts represented by each of Patterson’s individual anecdotes are illustrative.  The potential presidential candidacies of Colin Powell and Barack Obama don’t prove much: Powell never ran so he never won a primary, let alone a nomination; Obama, right now, is a media sensation, but he hasn’t integrated anything yet.  In fact, he proves the rule: he’s the sole Black person in the Senate, and merely the third since Reconstruction.  And, of course, there’s never been a Black candidate who’s ever won a major-party presidential (or vice-presidential) nomination. 

Oprah Winfrey may be a cultural force, but Black influence culturally and artistically has always been an indelible element of American life.  In any case, the corporate gatekeepers of the means by which cultural products are disseminated remain controlled by a White elite — and these gatekeepers consequently dictate the content of American culture: hip-hop, for example, is what the Big Four record labels say it is.  Condi’s appointment proves nothing more than Thurgood Marshall’s appointment to the Supreme Court 40 years ago: supremely talented individual African-Americans, under the right circumstances, can ascend aberrationally to high places.  Finally, Patterson’s claim that Deval Patrick’s election represents “full public integration” takes the cake.  Patrick is merely the second elected Black governor in the history of the United States.  If that’s “full public integration” on a scale fit for global replication, the soft bigotry of low expectations is worse than advertised. 

The fact of the matter is that African-Americans are a long way from comprehensive integration concerning the institutional levers that constitute power in American society.  Orlando Patterson’s sociological work is legendary.  But this op-ed is way off base.  More later on his analysis of the cultural side of DuBois’s dichotomy.

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 12:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (149) | TrackBacks (0)

I'd like to thank Shavar for the generous introduction -- I am honored to be included as a guest-blogger.  I thought I would begin my visit by highlighting the work of a man I'd describe as "practicing" environmental justice.  Environmental justice is often associated with attempts to block noxious land uses from poor communities and communities of color that are already inundated with such uses.  This work is obviously important -- and most of my own EJ practice was focused on opposition work.  However, it doesn't answer the question of how best to invigorate communities that have been alienated from the economic mainstream.  For those interested in the latter question, I am happy to introduce the work of Will Allen of Growing Power in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  He is heading up an urban farm in the middle of Milwaukee's inner city.

Continue reading "Practicing Environmental Justice" »

Posted by Rachel Godsil at 05:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (36) | TrackBacks (1)

Stories abound in corporate America of blacks getting whiteboyed–slammed in often subtle ways by behavior whose effect, if not purpose, is racial subordination. From Ellis Cose’s The Rage of A Privileged Class to the more recent entry, Herman Malone’s Lynched By Corporate America, these tales have been propagated for mass public consumption and, at least ostensibly, for education. Predating and coinciding with Professor Richard Sander’s congenital obsession with proving black inferiority in the legal profession, similar narratives as well as supporting data have emerged about whiteboying in the practice of law. (See, for example, The Good Black. I do mean to be impious toward Professor Sander’s work, for it is curious when a white man devotes so such energy to demonstrating why an already under-represented group should be more under-represented instead of explaining the structural advantages that allow over-represented groups to remain over-represented.) And of course, the casual observer of politics witnesses whiteboying with a frequency that allows him to pull examples from the tips of his fingers. Black Republican Michael Steele, who once described President Bush as his "homeboy," was passed over by the President for the position of Republican National Committee Chairman in favor a white Cuban. Congressman Alcee Hastings, exonerated of criminal wrongdoing as a judge by a jury of his peers, was passed over as Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, purportedly because his impeachment while on the bench made him unfit to serve in such a sensitive post. The catch: the impeachment was based on the same conduct for which Hastings was found innocent, occurred nearly seven years after his acquittal, and its sanction did not, as was the Senate’s prerogative, forbid Hastings from holding "any Office of honor, Trust, or Profit under the United States."

A colleague of mine at a northeastern law school recently shared with me her own brush with whiteboying. A white male faculty member of no particular institutional stature had excluded her from a meeting for which her committee duties made it appropriate that she attend. This was not done inadvertently: the white male colleague explained that because he and his black colleague did not get along, he had excluded her to present the best face possible to a job candidate for whom the meeting was scheduled. It was a real-time example of the "personality defense" that has come to be raised to explain away circumstances that are equally susceptible to a reading of discrimination. The black professor’s only "clash" with her white colleague had been to disagree with him on occasion in faculty meetings.

Continue reading "Whiteboyism, American-Style" »

Posted by Terry Smith at 08:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (224) | TrackBacks (0)

As the nation is called upon today to mourn the passing of President Gerald Ford, it's fitting to reflect on his civil rights record.  Political commentator Earl Ofari Hutchinson succintly does so in the attached commentary.

Posted by Terry Smith at 04:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (88) | TrackBacks (0)

Looking for a New Year’s Resolution?  Below find selected ideas from the best-selling book “The Covenant” that can also work to improve the plight of the African-American community as a whole.

1)  Take responsibility to improve your diet; eat at least one additional fruit or vegetable daily. 

2)  Walk one mile everyday.  Take the stairs instead of the elevator at work or in your apartment building. 

3)  Read to your children or grandchildren every day.   

4)  Create clean, quiet spaces for your children to do homework; check to make sure that assignments are completed. 

5)  Become involved in your children's school--PTA, school committees . . .  

6)  Encourage religious institutions to provide support (jobs, counseling) for adults returning to the community from prison.   

7)  Register to vote, and then make sure to vote in all elections. 

8)  Support . . . measures to reform local laws restricting the right to vote of ex-felons; and efforts to secure voting rights for all residents of the District of Columbia. 

9)  Open and maintain a savings account, no matter what your family's income is. 

10)  Invest in a home computer, especially if you have children.  Make sure your home computer is connected to the Internet. 

Posted by Spencer Overton at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (143) | TrackBacks (0)

I was sitting in a very scenic  Tunisian café overlooking the ocean when I noticed that one of the waiters looked like a fellow Black American. I have this feeling quite a bit here as most of the people would be defined as looking Latino or Black in a US socially constructed sense. This particular young man was a very dark brown, much darker than most Tunisians. To me, he was a black Tunisian. I have been told in many Arab countries that they do not characterize their citizens that way, and the so-called blacks do not identify that way either.   Everyone is just a Tunisian or a Palestinian. I usually follow up and say: “would a light skinned person want their daughter to marry a darked skinned citizen?”” Are the darker ones likely to have lesser education or face higher unemployment?”  I am always assured, “no problem.”  Well now, I  frequently mention Darfur, where all the Sudanese are Muslim, but where the ones perceived as Black are facing genocidal treatment.

Posted by Adrien Wing at 06:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (41) | TrackBacks (2)

Six months ago, the “Washington Post” launched a series titled “Being A Black Man” and has since published numerous articles exploring the lives of Black men in American society.  I was particularly interested in one article, “Dad Redefined,” and other studies focusing on what it means to be a Black father.  According to some poor, young Black fathers, they need to be there for their children, spend time with them, guide and discipline them, and provide them with emotional support.   

Fathers also need to provide things like food and shelter, but many Black fathers did not mention economic support unless prompted by the interviewers, focusing instead on “being there for their children.”  Unfortunately, some Black men provide neither.  Nearly half of all Black children do not live with their fathers and many receive little or no child support.  This is not news.  Politicians and the media have repeatedly told us that many Black fathers are “deadbeats.”  But what if they are not?  

Of course, there are men (and women) of all races who do not support their children.  But Black men are perceived as the greatest deadbeats even when their reasons for not paying child support might have more to do with being “deadbroke” than being “deadbeat.”  Seventy percent of the child support arrears owed in 2003 was accumulated by men earning $10,000 a year or less.  Over 2.5 million nonresident fathers of poor children are poor themselves.  These men are not necessarily “deadbeats;” they are “deadbroke.” 

Further, although the majority of poor, nonresident Black fathers do not make formal child support payments, many are quite involved in their children’s lives and make in-kind and nonfinancial contributions to their children.  For example, they buy diapers, baby formula, groceries, toys, and baby furniture.  One may wonder why these fathers do not simply pay child support instead, however minimal.  There are a number of reasons.  The items a father brings to his children are tangible evidence of his efforts to provide for them despite his dire circumstances.  As such, the items have greater significance, visibility, and durability than cash payments which often disappear almost immediately as bills are paid or, in the case of children receiving public assistance, are used to reimburse the government for benefits it has provided the children.   

Deadbroke Black fathers also make nonfinancial contributions—they often take care of their children in ways traditionally associated with motherhood.  Because these men are often unemployed (or underemployed), they are available to take their children to school, to the doctor, and to watch them while their mothers work or run errands.  Many researchers, myself included, have been surprised to learn that many “absent” Black fathers see their children not only on weekends, as divorced middle-class fathers often do, but often see them almost daily.   

The law does not recognize these contributions.  They do not count under our current definition of child support.  Maybe they should.  American society is alarmed at the high percentage of absent fathers—those who have little or no contact with their children.  Studies suggest that children with absent fathers are more likely than children with involved fathers to perform poorly in school, to have low self-esteem, to become pregnant at an early age, to abuse drugs, and to engage in delinquent behavior.  These children also feel rejected and often blame themselves for their fathers’ disappearance.   Although, as Professor Dorothy Roberts has noted, policymakers have treated paternal absence “as a distinctly Black problem,” recent studies have found that poor, nonresident Black fathers are more involved with their children than are nonresident white or Latino fathers.  Many men with child support arrears, however, are compelled to hide from their children because they fear detection by child support enforcement officials and possible incarceration.   If society wants to encourage more Black men to remain a part of their children’s lives, we must address an unintended effect of aggressive child support enforcement policies—they drive poor fathers away from their children. 

Notably, many Black mothers seem to recognize the nonmonetary contributions that poor Black fathers make.  They often do not pursue poor Black fathers for child support and focus instead on securing fathers’ presence and involvement with their children.  Some Black mothers fear that pursuing deadbroke fathers for payments that they cannot make will discourage them from seeing their children and from contributing at all.  As one Black mother stated:  “I don’t care about the child support. Just see the child.”  

This does not mean that deadbroke fathers should be exempt from paying child support.  Children need food, shelter, medical care, etc. and in-kind and nonfinancial contributions are just not enough.  Further, Americans have made it clear that we have no desire to support other people’s children.  However, before pursuing deadbroke men for child support payments that they cannot make, the law should take steps to help these men obtain the skills needed to secure stable and decent paying jobs so that they can support themselves and their children.  In the meantime, or until we come up with a better solution, we might want to consider crediting poor fathers for in-kind and nonmonetary contributions as child support.  It might encourage more fathers to see their children more frequently—a benefit to children that, unlike child support, is “priceless.”

Posted by Solangel Maldonado at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (77) | TrackBacks (1)

This New York Times piece describes the extent to which race limits the childcare options available to Black families.  I find most distressing the degree to which internalized stigma causes Black folk — and people of color generally — to act on the basis of racially informed stereotypes in their dealings with one another, which in the childcare context means Black nannies are disproportionately unwilling to nuture Black children raised by Black parents.  The article also suggests the universality of the costs imposed by racism.  I posted previously on the extent to which environmental racism and classism causes people of color disproportionately to breathe polluted air.  This piece informs that just as Black people pay a racial tax just to breathe in this country, so too do they to bear children.  These contexts simply illustrate the extent to which whiteness is social capital.  Not only does it affirmatively grant benefits, but also it signals the absence of the disabilities white supremacism posits of folk of color — a valuable social commodity in its own right.

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 07:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (380) | TrackBacks (1)

The rape charges against the three Duke lacrosse players were dropped, because “the accuser had begun to waver on crucial details.”   

I mentioned this story back in March, and I increasingly feel as though these high profile incidents stand in for real discussion on race.  If the Duke players were found guilty, it would have stood in for some “truth” that America disregards all black folk.  The dropping of the charges threatens to validate the impression that black folk generally fabricate their victim status.     

The Scottsboro Boys, Ossian Sweet, Tawana Brawley, Rodney King, OJ Simpson, Amadou Diallo—the list goes on of conflicts that stand in for our racial predilections.  The athletic contest is another (admittedly more inspirational) variation.  Jack Johnson, Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson, Arthur Ashe, Debbie Thomas, and Tiger Woods have inspired many to break barriers, but the successes or failures of these individual athletes do not always reflect racial progress in society generally.   

Such is the problem with analysis by anecdote in America, which is common not just with race but in a variety of contexts.  Anecdotes are easy to understand, but they don’t accurately reflect typicality and frequency, and they lead us to assume we know more than we actually do. 

Posted by Spencer Overton at 01:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (33) | TrackBacks (1)

One of the challenges I faced when writing HUNGRY FOR MORE: A Keeping it Real Guide for Black Women on Weight and Body Image was convincing my editors of the connection between working out and hair.  What was an obvious nexus to me was a mystery to those with “wash and wear” do’s. After much debate, I had to break it all the way down.  The following is an excerpt from HUNGRY about the trouble with hair. 

 And oh yes, Merry Christmas and Happy Kwanza to all and to all a Good Fight.                                

                                           ****                              

Since when we discovered chitlins, the length and texture of black hair have been a source of classism, political identity, and mainstream acceptance. As slaves, black women covered their hair with "do rags," or cut it off or wore plaits while working the fields. However, when a white slave-owner fathered a child by a black woman, that newborn’s hair often was more straight than nappy. Thus, Caucasian-type hair gradually came to be considered "good" hair (as in white) while tresses that were naturally tightly curled or "nappy" were labeled "bad.”      

Unfortunately this kind of thinking still exists in the black community, influenced not only by intraracial prejudices but also by the Eurocentric mass media that equates beauty with looking white. As a result, many black women press, perm, or weave their hair straight in order to be considered attractive and conventional.        

Black women who work out regularly tend to opt for natural styles, braids, wigs, twists, and dreadlocks--which are perfectly fine if you own your own business or work in education, the arts, or other professions that require less conformity. However, in corporate America, those who fit into the company culture are considered valuable employees. Black women working in a conservative environment are less inclined to want to risk rocking the boat by wearing their hair naturally, which might be considered too Afrocentric for a company’s image. Blending in without drawing attention to your hair--no matter how qualified you are--could mean a promotion or a raise in pay. Even today, cornrows and French braids raise eyebrows in some quarters and are considered unprofessional.   The urgent health crisis, however, begs the question: Does a black woman have to choose between being in shape and looking beautiful? Faced with the current obesity predicament, isn’t it time we viewed things through a different lens, adopting a new vision of beauty for African Americans and all women that relies less on superficiality and more on physical and emotional well-being?

Posted by Robyn McGee at 01:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (377) | TrackBacks (3)

Starting in May 2007, China will tighten its requirements for foreigners seeking to adopt.  Foreigners who are obese, unmarried, or over 50 years of age will be barred from adopting from China as will those with certain health “problems,” including a history of anxiety or depression.  China will also require that adoptive parents have a net worth of at least $80,000, a high school diploma, and have been married at least two years.  In cases where one spouse had previously been divorced, the couple must have been married for at least five years. 

Given these restrictions and the high cost of international adoptions ($20,000 to $35,000 for adoption fees, donations to orphanages, travel and lodging expenses, etc.), one might expect Americans’ interest in adopting children from China, the vast majority of whom are girls, to decrease in the near future.  This is unlikely for a number of reasons.  First, China’s new policies are not as restrictive as those of some other sending countries.  Second, there is very high demand for Chinese girls.  The question is why is demand so high.  One reason is gender.  The majority of persons seeking to adopt want a girl and, while some countries do not allow parents to select the gender of the child, if you adopt from China, you will get a girl. 

Other Americans go to China because they want to avoid open adoptions, the predominant form of adoption in the U.S., where the birth parents maintain contact (ranging from letters to telephone calls or visits) with the adoptive parents and/or the child.  International adoptions are closed-- birth parents generally do not know the identity of the persons who adopted their child or have any contact with the adoptive parents or child.  Adoptive parents sometimes go abroad because they fear that the birth parents will change their minds and reappear to claim the child.  Although this is extremely rare, Americans may prefer to adopt a child from China and be assured that the birth parents will never be able to find them.   

Despite these “advantages” of international adoptions, there are many Americans who would have preferred to adopt domestically, but did not because they thought they would have to wait years for a healthy infant in the U.S.  It is true that the demand for white infants exceeds their supply and thus, adoptive parents may wait years for a white child.  However, this is not true of African-American infants.  There are many healthy African-American infants available for adoption through private agencies and, in some cases, through foster care agencies.  Indeed, hundreds of Canadian, French, and German citizens, among others, come to the U.S. each year to adopt healthy African-American infants. 

Further, the wait for an African-American child is rather short.  In my own research, I interviewed numerous agencies placing African-American children and their records reflect that while a family could wait years for a white child, those seeking to adopt an African-American child often had one within 6 months to a year.  Why is the wait so short?  Because demand for African-American children, especially African-American boys, is significantly lower than demand for white children.  Many adoption agencies charge lower fees (sometimes half) for African-American children as compared to white (or Asian-American or Native-American) children because demand for African-American children is so much lower. 

There are countless reasons why Americans adopt internationally, and from China primarily.  But let me suggest one reason in particular—race.  There are many more white families seeking to adopt than there are white infants available and, while there are African-American children available, some white families are not interested in adopting African-American children.  These same persons, however, are often willing to adopt nonwhite children from other countries, primarily China.  Their reasons might not be racially motivated.  For example, some white Americans have expressed concern that some African-Americans will object to their adoption of African-American children.  Others worry that they lack the ability to raise an African-American child with a healthy racial identity or will be unable to teach that child how to cope with racial prejudice.  These reasons aside, I suspect that some Americans’ preferences for children from China over African-American children might be racially motivated.

Studies suggest that white Americans’ implicit biases against African-Americans might be stronger than those against persons of Asian or Latin-American descent.  For example, recent studies have shown that Americans marrying interracially find African Americans to be the least desirable marriage partners.  Similarly, whites consider African Americans to be the least desirable neighbors and prefer to live near other (non-African-American) minorities.  If we agree with Professor Neil Gotanda and other scholars who argue that a racial hierarchy exists in American society where “whites are at the top, African-Americans are at the bottom and Asians and Latinos are in between,” it is plausible that this same racial hierarchy exists in the adoption market. 

White families adopting transracially may prefer a Chinese girl over an African-American boy because they hold unconscious biases against African-American boys.  Some adoptive parents honestly believe that girls from China are smarter than African-American children.  Given our society’s labeling of Asian-Americans as the “model minority,” and African-American men as potential criminals, this is not surprising.  Thus, I suspect that regardless of how onerous the restrictions might become, some Americans will continue to adopt from China, Korea, Guatemala, and any other country that opens its doors to foreigners seeking to adopt their non-Black children.

Posted by Solangel Maldonado at 10:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (72) | TrackBacks (1)

Do Black Women Hate Taye Diggs? 

Now that Diggs’ second   television series in a row, a show called “Day Break” has gotten the axe (Diggs’ other show “Kevin Hill” was dumped by UPN last year), the buzz on various Internet gab sites is Black women have once again turned against the guy who gave Stella her groove back and are staying away from anything Taye-related in droves. 

It has been down hill for Taye among black women since it was discovered that he was happily married to a white actress.   Tony award winner Idina Menzel, the original Elsapha, the wicked witch from the much acclaimed Broadway musical “Wicked” is Mrs. Taye Diggs.  Lots of folks (black women) don’t like that pairing one damn bit.

It happens in real life too. No matter how accomplished, handsome or intelligent a man, no matter how equally yoked he and his partner,  if a black man  is married to someone other than a black woman, he is somehow at best diminished and  loathed at worst by some black women. The feeling among some sistas is this: there are not enough “good” black men to go around.  How dare you ignore me and choose her. So Taye Diggs’ is the proxy for other men who favor non-black women.  A high and mighty Hollywood actor brought to his knees by the ratings gods whose minions are black women, television’s most reliable and fickle audience.   

Could it be Taye like Wesley Snipes before him has raised the ire of black women by flaunting their desire for non black women while expecting to be accepted and loved and watched by sistas?  Or is it a case of reality rudely interrupting our celluloid fantasies?  Taye’s real “sin” is that he is such a good actor, he fooled us into believing that he could romance, love, and desire a woman who looked like us.  When the truth was revealed of his true preference we felt, duped, fooled, and rejected by a hero who never was.

Posted by Robyn McGee at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (208) | TrackBacks (2)

In this week’s issue of the “NY Times Magazine,” a reader asks "The Ethicist” whether she is a racist because her enjoyment of “The Nutcracker” ballet last Christmas “was severely marred by the appearance of a black snowflake and then, even worse, a black Snow King.”   According to this anonymous reader, “the aesthetic incongruity was inconceivable.  The entire ballet was spoiled.  It is analogous to a one-legged midget playing Tarzan.”  Randy Cohen, the columnist, replied that this does make her “a racist – not in the sense of exercising a virulent antipathy toward African-Americans but of being, like most of us, affected by feelings about race.”

Mr. Cohen suggested that the reader compare her reaction to the black snowflake and Snow King with her reaction to the actors in “Gladiator” or “The Lion King.”  No one really objects to a New Zealander playing the role of a citizen from ancient Rome or to a human being playing the role of a lion.  Even assuming that the race or ethnicity of the actor might arguably be relevant is some contexts; here, we are talking about dancing snowflakes and snow kings, not people.  Let’s not forget that “The Nutcracker” is the story of a young girl’s dream of a magical nutcracker that battles a Mouse King, turns into a prince, and takes her to a snowy wonderland with dancing snowflakes and a Sugar Plum Fairy.  When you attend “The Nutcracker,” you enter a fantasy world, one in which, I would hope, the race of dancing snowflakes does not matter.

Posted by Solangel Maldonado at 01:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (33) | TrackBacks (4)

Last night I was glued to the television set as I watched Paula Zahn discuss "Skin Deep: Racism in America.”  The broadcast discussed the results of a CNN poll of 1,207 Americans, including 328 Blacks and 703 non-Hispanic whites.  (The ethnic or racial backgrounds of the other 176 participants was not disclosed).  The program also included a panel of race experts, including Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, Professor Michael Eric Dyson of the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, Paula Rothenberg, author of “White Privilege: Essential Readings on the Other Side of Racism,” Ronald S. Martin of the Chicago Defender, Jared Taylor of American Renaissance magazine, and John McWhorter of the Manhattan Institute.  The results of the poll are available on CNN’s website, but here are some highlights from the broadcast. 

●          84% of Blacks and 66% of whites think racism is a serious problem in America.  

●          43% of whites and 48% of Blacks personally know someone who they believe is racist, but only 13% of whites and 12% of Blacks believe that they themselves have racial biases.  

●          Real estate agents frequently steer whites away from integrated neighborhoods and steer Blacks towards predominantly Black neighborhoods.

●          It is still harder for Blacks than for whites to hail a cab in New York City.

●          51% of Blacks as compared to approximately 25% of whites polled said they had been victims of racial discrimination. 

●          Job applicants with names such as Lakisha and Jamal are 50% less likely to be called for an interview than applicants with names like Emily and Greg.

●          Racism today is different from that of the past.  It is often unconscious, subtle, and indirect. 

●          Most white Americans do not believe they have racial biases against Blacks, but studies show that the majority have implicit preferences for whites. 

Although these findings are hardly news to many of us, I was still surprised to hear people insist that they are not racist, but then make comments that suggest otherwise.  For example, one woman from Vidor, Texas said she would welcome Blacks to her town then added:  “I don't mind being friends with them, talking and stuff like that, but as far as mingling and eating with them, all that kind of stuff, that's where I draw the line."  

There were some rather interesting comments from the more conservative panelists.  Jared Taylor of American Renaissance magazine stated that Americans spend too much time talking about whites’ racism against Blacks, but never address Blacks’ racism against whites.  As an example, he pointed out that Blacks can call whites “crackers” without any repercussions, but whites cannot use the “N” word.  Although I do not believe this is a good example, it might be worthwhile to examine whether Blacks should be able to use potentially offensive words when referring to whites.  According to Mr. Taylor, whites live in constant fear of saying something that might offend Blacks.  Is this true?  If so, does this “fear” hinder opportunities for cross-cultural communication and impede the development of personal and professional relationships between Blacks and whites? 

John McWhorter, who is Black, also made some notable comments.  He believes that racism is still an issue in America, but that Blacks spend too much time and energy reacting to racist comments such as those made by Michael Richards recently.  According to Mr. McWhorter, Blacks focus on racial remarks because it makes them feel powerful.  He concluded that Blacks have to get beyond these comments.  Is he saying that Blacks overreact to racial slurs and should just get over it?

One of the most illuminating parts of the segment was Keith Oppenheim’s visit to Vidor, Texas, a town that 40-50 years ago was known as a place where Blacks were not welcome after dark and which had a strong Klan presence.  The residents of Vidor, population 11,000, claim that this racist history is just that—history.  However, in 1993, the few Black families living in a public housing project in Vidor were forced out of town by the Klan just months after their arrival.  Asked to comment on Vidor’s race issues, Mr. Taylor of American Renaissance stated that the residents of Vidor should not have been forced to live with people they did not want to live with.   

I agree that a lot of racism today is unconscious, but statements such as these suggest that there is still plenty of old-fashioned racism going around.   But there is hope. 

For those of us who fear that we might have racial biases of which we are not aware, we can test our racial preferences by taking the Implicit Association Test designed by Professor Mahzarin R. Banaji at Harvard University.  Nine college students who did not consider themselves racist took the test for this broadcast.  All but one tester showed an implicit preference for whites.  Although a few students challenged the accuracy of the test, it was heartening to see that some were genuinely disturbed by the results. One woman was close to tears and a few testers said they were disappointed or ashamed by the results.  This reaction gives me hope.  These students who are now aware (and disturbed) by their implicit biases might consider them when deciding who to hire, who to promote, who to steer to a certain neighborhood, or who to consider dangerous.   If we are aware of our implicit biases, maybe, just maybe, we can do something to change them. 

I invite you to test your implicit preferences at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

Posted by Solangel Maldonado at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (53) | TrackBacks (0)

Last night I was glued to the television set as I watched Paula Zahn discuss "Skin Deep: Racism in America.”  The broadcast discussed the results of a CNN poll of 1,207 Americans, including 328 Blacks and 703 non-Hispanic whites.  (The ethnic or racial backgrounds of the other 176 participants was not disclosed).  The program also included a panel of race experts, including Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, Professor Michael Eric Dyson of the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, Paula Rothenberg, author of “White Privilege: Essential Readings on the Other Side of Racism,” Ronald S. Martin of the Chicago Defender, Jared Taylor of American Renaissance magazine, and John McWhorter of the Manhattan Institute.  The results of the poll are available on CNN’s website, but here are some highlights from the broadcast. 

●          84% of Blacks and 66% of whites think racism is a serious problem in America.  

●          43% of whites and 48% of Blacks personally know someone who they believe is racist, but only 13% of whites and 12% of Blacks believe that they themselves have racial biases.  

●          Real estate agents frequently steer whites away from integrated neighborhoods and steer Blacks towards predominantly Black neighborhoods.

●          It is still harder for Blacks than for whites to hail a cab in New York City.

●          51% of Blacks as compared to approximately 25% of whites polled said they had been victims of racial discrimination. 

●          Job applicants with names such as Lakisha and Jamal are 50% less likely to be called for an interview than applicants with names like Emily and Greg.

●          Racism today is different from that of the past.  It is often unconscious, subtle, and indirect. 

●          Most white Americans do not believe they have racial biases against Blacks, but studies show that the majority have implicit preferences for whites. 

Although these findings are hardly news to many of us, I was still surprised to hear people insist that they are not racist, but then make comments that suggest otherwise.  For example, one woman from Vidor, Texas said she would welcome Blacks to her town then added:  “I don't mind being friends with them, talking and stuff like that, but as far as mingling and eating with them, all that kind of stuff, that's where I draw the line."  

There were some rather interesting comments from the more conservative panelists.  Jared Taylor of American Renaissance magazine stated that Americans spend too much time talking about whites’ racism against Blacks, but never address Blacks’ racism against whites.  As an example, he pointed out that Blacks can call whites “crackers” without any repercussions, but whites cannot use the “N” word.  Although I do not believe this is a good example, it might be worthwhile to examine whether Blacks should be able to use potentially offensive words when referring to whites.  According to Mr. Taylor, whites live in constant fear of saying something that might offend Blacks.  Is this true?  If so, does this “fear” hinder opportunities for cross-cultural communication and impede the development of personal and professional relationships between Blacks and whites? 

John McWhorter, who is Black, also made some notable comments.  He believes that racism is still an issue in America, but that Blacks spend too much time and energy reacting to racist comments such as those made by Michael Richards recently.  According to Mr. McWhorter, Blacks focus on racial remarks because it makes them feel powerful.  He concluded that Blacks have to get beyond these comments.  Is he saying that Blacks overreact to racial slurs and should just get over it?

One of the most illuminating parts of the segment was Keith Oppenheim’s visit to Vidor, Texas, a town that 40-50 years ago was known as a place where Blacks were not welcome after dark and which had a strong Klan presence.  The residents of Vidor, population 11,000, claim that this racist history is just that—history.  However, in 1993, the few Black families living in a public housing project in Vidor were forced out of town by the Klan just months after their arrival.  Asked to comment on Vidor’s race issues, Mr. Taylor of American Renaissance stated that the residents of Vidor should not have been forced to live with people they did not want to live with.   

I agree that a lot of racism today is unconscious, but statements such as these suggest that there is still plenty of old-fashioned racism going around.   But there is hope. 

For those of us who fear that we might have racial biases of which we are not aware, we can test our racial preferences by taking the Implicit Association Test designed by Professor Mahzarin R. Banaji at Harvard University.  Nine college students who did not consider themselves racist took the test for this broadcast.  All but one tester showed an implicit preference for whites.  Although a few students challenged the accuracy of the test, it was heartening to see that some were genuinely disturbed by the results. One woman was close to tears and a few testers said they were disappointed or ashamed by the results.  This reaction gives me hope.  These students who are now aware (and disturbed) by their implicit biases might consider them when deciding who to hire, who to promote, who to steer to a certain neighborhood, or who to consider dangerous.   If we are aware of our implicit biases, maybe, just maybe, we can do something to change them. 

I invite you to test your implicit preferences at https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/

Posted by Solangel Maldonado at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (53) | TrackBacks (0)

The Supreme Court's decision in Brown initiated a 50-year struggle to achieve equal educational opportunity for children of color.  That struggle was largely premised on linking the educational fortunes of minority students directly to those of White students.  The theory fundamentally was that government would not sufficiently value the educational needs of minority children until White children and minority children were taught in the same schools.  Even under this theory, government concern for the educational needs of minority children was incidental: integration, according to this thinking, improved the education of minority children on the premise that White families would not permit their own children to attend inadequate schools, so that Black students essentially would be the unintended beneficiaries (free riders, apparently, from an economic perspective) of majoritarian concern for the education of White children. 

In addition to this free-rider theory, some of course reasoned that mere proximity to White students also improved the education of minority children.  This thesis has had various iterations: the social-capital permutation posits that minority children benefit educationally by exposure to the cultural and social resources of White students; the self-esteem iteration claims that racial stigma is ameliorated as minority children realize that they can achieve as much as White children.  Obviously one can challenge, logically and empirically, any of these theories; but my sole point for the moment is that Brown and its progeny were concerned almost exclusively with associating the educational needs of minority children with those of White children.

Systemic educational improvement for minority students under the Brown paradigm has been fleeting, at best, ephemeral, at worst.  Separate from the limited educational efficacy of the Brown paradigm, narrow judicial interpretations of the scope of Brown have rendered mandatory implementation of integrationist remedies implausible for much of the past 30 years, and it appears very likely that the Supreme Court will place the last nail in Brown's coffin by finding that voluntary school integration policies are themselves unconstitutional (see, e.g., "The Final Nail in Brown's Coffin?").   

As compulsory Brown remedies under federal law became implausible, civil-rights lawyers pursued school-finance remedies under state laws as an alternative to the Brown paradigm.  These efforts were motivated by the notion that if anemic implementation of Brown remedies produced de facto segregated districts beyond the reach of Brown, advocates nonetheless would litigate to ensure districts serving minority children had sufficient funding to meet students' needs.  These efforts, of course, represented an alternative model to Brown; while Brown was premised principally on linking the educational destinies of White and minority children, the school-finance paradigm presupposed de facto segregation and thus depended on the capacity of courts to imagine effective schools serving predominately minority populations.  Given the extent to which race has been socially stigmatized -- and thus the extent to which the intellectual capacity of Black people, in particular, has been called into question --  such an imagination requires a counter-cultural commitment to minority competence.  In any case, civil-rights lawyers have principally pursued school-finance remedies over the last 25 years in the ongoing effort to achieve educational equality.  But, unfortunately, empirical data concerning the educational performance of Black and Hispanic students consistently show that school-finance remedies have been systemically ineffective in achieving sustainable achievement gains for minority children.

This is where we are, and this brings me to where I think we need to go from here.  I believe it is time, once again, to consider a new approach to using the law to facilitate meaningful educational opportunities for minority children.  I suggest that civil-rights lawyers initiate a new wave of litigation premised on reshaping the governance of public schools and, in so doing, empowering minority parents to assume meaningful decision-making roles concerning the kind of education available to children of color.  Litigation efforts to this point have been focused fundamentally on widescale, largely uniform government decision-making about the educational needs of minority children; the voice and needs of individual children and parents have largely been unheeded.  And it is usually the case that policymaking focused on across-the-board remedies inevitably ignores the particular needs of minority children.  The approach I suggest does not imply, however, an atomistic preoccupation with individual needs in opposition to the civic and social purposes motivating public subsidy of educational services; rather, I suggest a public-private form of governance fundamentally different from the almost exclusively government-centered litigation model used today.

So what specifically do I have in mind?  Within the last two weeks, a team of attorneys led by me has brought two class actions on behalf of two different sets of urban parents: in one case, we represent a class of over 30,000 urban parents who have been denied their rights, under the No Child Left Behind Act, to free tutoring services from a provider of their choice and to transfer their child to a non-failing school; in the other case, we represent a class of thousands seeking to overturn funding restrictions that limit public charter schools in urban, primarily minority districts to less than 40 percent of the funding available to traditional public schools.  The NCLB case, if successful, would empower parents with the ability to choose, from among scores of providers, services responsive to the particular educational needs of their children.  Similarly, the charter-school case, if successful, would result in a funding environment exponentially more favorable to creating and sustaining a diverse range of public charter schools.  The more public charter schools available, the more choices available to minority parents to select educational services specifically responsive to their kids' unique needs.  Both cases would empower individual parents with virtually unprecedented control over the substance and character of the particular kind of educational services delivered to their children; this stands in contrast to the uniformity all-too-often characteristic of traditional public schools' approach to urban education. (see also "The Structural Inadequacy of Public Schools for Stigmatized Minorities," where I develop this thesis more).  

The point here is that efforts premised on widescale, top-down government reform efforts invariably neglect the specific educational needs of minority children.  Civil-rights lawyers, whether under the Brown or school-finance paradigms, are predisposed to believe that government should not only subsidize educational services, but should also micro-manage the particular means by which schools meet benchmarks of educational effectiveness.  This predisposition, I submit, places the specific educational needs of minority children on a collision course with the majoritatian sensibilities of government.  We now need to initiate an entirely new model of education litigation, in which the needs of minority children -- as advanced by those who know them best: their parents -- are no longer ancillary to public-school governance and decision-making, but are indispensable to fundamental decisions about educational philosophy, curriculum, and pedagogy.

Posted by Shavar Jeffries at 04:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (186) | TrackBacks (0)

 “Race Through a Liberal Lens” is a commentary by Jason Riley, a black member of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board.  

Riley complains that white liberal friends tell his expectant white wife that "interracial children are beautiful," that white liberal neighbors assume that he “chose our town for its diversity,” and that white liberals assume that he is liberal because he is black.   

I agree that, as Riley frames them, some of the statements are a bit annoying.   

But Riley doesn’t use the stories to conclude that race continues to shape the perceptions and actions of Americans of all backgrounds—including white liberals.  Instead, he seems to blame white liberals for the bulk of American race issues.  He writes:   

“As liberals constantly tell themselves, only conservatives have race issues. . . . But you know the truth is closer to the opposite. It is the left's obsession with skin pigmentation--invoking it everywhere and always, regardless of its relevance--that keeps race front and center not only in our public policy debates but even in everyday life. In his latest book, ‘White Guilt,’ Shelby Steele tackles this phenomenon with his usual peerless eloquence. He describes the endless frustration of dealing with whites ‘who have built a large part of their moral identity and, possibly, their politics around how they respond to your color.’”   

I disagree with Riley’s suggestion that liberals’ race issues are significantly greater than those of conservatives.   

Riley does not establish his claim empirically (the language “you know the truth” stands in for data).  His commentary relegates race to the status of a tool to selectively grind a personal and political ax, and to justify his worldview (a true “race card”).  Further, the use of annoying cocktail party chatter to suggest that liberals are responsible for the bulk of race issues ignores real problems in our society of racial disparities in education, incarceration, wealth, and other factors for which most of us bear some responsibility and have a stake.

 What do you think?

Posted by Spencer Overton at 12:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (260) | TrackBacks (31)

One of the comments to my last post “White Families Adopting Nonwhite Kids:  Who’s Helping Who?” asked “Is it true that only people who belong to a certain ethnic group are capable of promoting the culture generally associated with the group?”  This is a question that African-Americans, Latinos and other minority groups have debated for a long time.  Some of us have been accused of not being really Black or not being really Latino because we have white friends, speak “white” English, or have a college degree. What does it mean to be Black?  How do we know if someone is a real Latino or a real Indian?    

Courts in California and a few other states have decided that they can tell who is authentically Native-American.  Before I explain how these courts are making these determinations, some background information is necessary.  In the 1960s and 70s, social workers across the country unjustifiably removed thousands of Native-American children from their homes and tribes and placed them with white families.  As a result, in some states, 25 to 35% of Native-American children were permanently separated from their families. 

In 1978, Congress took action and enacted the Indian Child Welfare Act which provides that when a member of a Native-American tribe places a child for adoption, state courts must give preference to other members of the tribe and other Indian families before placing the child with a non-Indian family.  A minority of courts, however, have held that the Indian Child Welfare Act does not apply to children whose Indian parent (although a tribal member) does not maintain "a significant social, cultural, or political relationship with an Indian community."  According to these courts, the Indian Child Welfare Act does not apply in cases where the Indian parent is not sufficiently Indian.  How does the court determine if a parent is Indian enough?  They consider factors such as whether the parent: 

●          privately described herself as Indian

●          observed tribal customs

●          participated in tribal community affairs

●          voted in tribal elections

●          contributed to Indian charities

●          subscribed to periodicals of particular interest to Indians

●          participated in Indian religious, social, and cultural events

●          maintained social contacts with other tribal members 

Imagine for a moment what would happen if courts were to apply this criteria to other minority groups.  Are courts going to decide that a person is not really Black because he does not observe Black customs?  Is the transracial adoptee who told the New York Times that, as an adolescent, he felt awkward around other Blacks because “he did not understand Black trends in fashion or music or playing the dozens (the oral tradition of dueling insults)” not really Black?  Is a person not really Latina because she does not participate in Latino social and cultural events or maintain social contacts with other Latinos?  Is a person not sufficiently Asian because he does not subscribe to periodicals of particular interest to Asian-Americans or contribute to Asian charities?

Legislators and courts have tried to define racial and cultural identity for minorities in the past.  Isn’t this an interesting twist to the One Drop Rule?

Posted by Solangel Maldonado at 06:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (100) | TrackBacks (2)

One of the comments to my last post “White Families Adopting Nonwhite Kids:  Who’s Helping Who?” asked “Is it true that only people who belong to a certain ethnic group are capable of promoting the culture generally associated with the group?”  This is a question that African-Americans, Latinos and other minority groups have debated for a long time.  Some of us have been accused of not being really Black or not being really Latino because we have white friends, speak “white” English, or have a college degree. What does it mean to be Black?  How do we know if someone is a real Latino or a real Indian?    

Courts in California and a few other states have decided that they can tell who is authentically Native-American.  Before I explain how these courts are making these determinations, some background information is necessary.  In the 1960s and 70s, social workers across the country unjustifiably removed thousands of Native-American children from their homes and tribes and placed them with white families.  As a result, in some states, 25 to 35% of Native-American children were permanently separated from their families. 

In 1978, Congress took action and enacted the Indian Child Welfare Act which provides that when a member of a Native-American tribe places a child for adoption, state courts must give preference to other members of the tribe and other Indian families before placing the child with a non-Indian family.  A minority of courts, however, have held that the Indian Child Welfare Act does not apply to children whose Indian parent (although a tribal member) does not maintain "a significant social, cultural, or political relationship with an Indian community."  According to these courts, the Indian Child Welfare Act does not apply in cases where the Indian parent is not sufficiently Indian.  How does the court determine if a parent is Indian enough?  They consider factors such as whether the parent: 

●          privately described herself as Indian

●          observed tribal customs

●          participated in tribal community affairs

●          voted in tribal elections

●          contributed to Indian charities

●          subscribed to periodicals of particular interest to Indians

●          participated in Indian religious, social, and cultural events

●          maintained social contacts with other tribal members 

Imagine for a moment what would happen if courts were to apply this criteria to other minority groups.  Are courts going to decide that a person is not really Black because he does not observe Black customs?  Is the transracial adoptee who told the New York Times that, as an adolescent, he felt awkward around other Blacks because “he did not understand Black trends in fashion or music or playing the dozens (the oral tradition of dueling insults)” not really Black?  Is a person not really Latina because she does not participate in Latino social and cultural events or maintain social contacts with other Latinos?  Is a person not sufficiently Asian because he does not subscribe to periodicals of particular interest to Asian-Americans or contribute to Asian charities?

Legislators and courts have tried to define racial and cultural identity for minorities in the past.  Isn’t this an interesting twist to the One Drop Rule?

Posted by Solangel Maldonado at 06:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (100) | TrackBacks (2)

From the halls of Congress to local school districts to worried suburban and inner city homes, Americans are experiencing collective shock at the increasing numbers of fat kids. Some experts have even gone so far as to predict that unless the obesity rates among all children is reduced and reversed, the current generation (so-called “Generation XXXL”) may be the first ever whose life expectancy will be shorter than that of their parents.

African American and Latino children have been particularly hard hit by the childhood obesity crisis. Studies show that almost 36 percent of black children between the ages of six and eleven are overweight, and more than 19 percent are considered obese. Among twelve- to nineteen-year-olds, 40 percent are overweight and nearly 24 percent are obese.

Mexican American children fare even worse. According to the American Obesity Association, nearly 40 percent of Mexican American children aged six to eleven are overweight and almost 44 percent are obese.

Economics and weight are closely related. According to the American Obesity Association, “overweight affects African Americans across all socioeconomic levels. Minorities with low incomes, however, appear to have the greatest likelihood of being overweight, and among Mexican Americans the rate of overweight is about 13 percent higher for families living below the poverty line versus above the poverty line.”

In addition, supermarket chains that serve affordable nutritious fruits, vegetables, and lean meats are missing from low-income neighborhoods. In an effort to make food budgets stretch, many families cook meals high in fat and starch.  Feeling deprived in other areas of their lives, people living in poverty might reward themselves with cookies, cakes, and other satisfying sweets.

And of course this is the “video game” generation. Kids just aren’t getting the exercise they should. I  recommend integrating physical activity into your family’s daily routine. For example, climb stairs instead of taking the elevator, walk your child to and from school when possible, find a family bowling league, or include a game of volleyball or basketball in your weekend barbecues. Go bike riding, swim, or jump rope. These are all activities that will benefit even the youngest members of the family.

It’s also important to let your children know about weight-related diseases such as hypertension, cancer, and diabetes common among your relatives.

The goal is to enlighten and inform, not to scare your kids. There is too much denial. Speaking openly and honestly will help children be better educated about choices they make for their own lives.

Youngsters should be taught why not all foods are good for every body, and that food allergies are common problems for African Americans.

You don’t have to be a doctor to discuss in simple language how the liver and kidneys function, and why it’s so important to maintain a healthy heart and healthy weight.
.

Posted by Robyn McGee at 10:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (207) | TrackBacks (11)

Professor Shavar Jeffries noted that “[t]he Black community, like all communities, has limited political, economic, and cultural resources.  We currently allocate a disproportionate amount of these resources to affirmative-action battles.” 

While the civil rights organizations focused on affirmative action would likely disagree, Professor Jeffries’s larger point is important.  Perhaps our policy priorities have been shaped by our successes in courts in the 1950s and 60s, legal structures like tax incentives that favor c3 organizations over c4 lobbying organizations, and habit, tradition, and emotion.    

I understand that many egalitarians in our community hesitate to set priorities for fear that doing so might “write some people off,” but there is something to be said for targeting low hanging fruit and objectives that will yield big payoffs.   

So, wiping the slate clean, below fi