tag:newamericamedia.org,2009-04-06://19 2013-05-24T19:52:25Z New America Media is a nationwide association of over 3000 ethnic media organizations representing the development of a more inclusive journalism. Founded in 1996 by Pacific News Service, New America Media promotes ethnic media by strengthening the editorial and economic viability of this increasingly influential segment of America's communications industry. tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11490 2013-05-24T19:05:53Z 2013-05-24T19:52:25Z

Staff ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103
Editor’s Note: New America Media hosted an awards ceremony Thursday in Memphis, celebrating the winners of The Teacher Who Changed My Life essay contest, in collaboration with local ethnic media. During the ceremony, winners were honored alongside the teachers profiled in their essays. Three contestants out of more than 40 entries were awarded cash prizes for their essays in three separate categories – Teenage, Adult and Teacher in Memory. Below are their winning essays.


Rescuing a Student From Abuse
Winner, Teacher In Memory Category
Profile of Isabel Godoy by Yolanda Solorio
Submitted in Spanish, Translated by Liz Gonzalez

To my dear elementary school teacher. To my guardian angel!

I always wanted to tell her that I loved her, that she was special to me, that I was very grateful to her, for her goodness, patience, her advice and for her love.

One day, my father’s friend, who was the school bus driver, molested me. I remember looking for love and protection. I told my hero, my dad, and I remember how I cried – hurt, humiliated and filled with guilt. My father put me down even more. He took off his belt and beat me like an animal while he yelled at me calling me a whore. He told me that if that was done to me it was because I had provoked it. Until this day, at 53 years of age, I do not understand how the abused person has these feelings of guilt. How could I, at almost 7 years old, provoke a married man of 30 or 40 years, with children. Since that day, my life changed, my attitude, my person.

That was where the work of my teacher began. When she noticed my change in attitude, she armed herself with patience until one day, when I told her everything that happened to me -- the abuse I was subject to and the beating from my father.

I remember that my teacher cried, screamed, as if I was hers. She hugged me very tight and kissed me. Later we went to the principal’s office and she had the bus driver fired, but not without first going to slap him and spit on him. Then she went to my house to complain to my father about his macho and unloving attitude.

That day my teacher’s work with me began. She dedicated herself to make my life more bearable with love, patience, and a lot of tenderness. She talked to me a lot, about God, about her trips, about life. She would give me gifts, things that were probably insignificant like a pin, a pencil, etc. but for me they were like treasures.

I thank her from the bottom of my heart for her love therapy. Since that day, I have not been able to call my parents Mom or Dad. Even today they are just Soledad and Juventino.

Currently, I am not happy, but I try to live my life without harming anyone, or attempting once more to take my own life. Every time I am sad or desperate the memory of my teacher comes to my mind, may God keep her in his glory. Thank you for allowing me this homage to my beloved elementary school teacher.

(From El Norte)


A Teacher’s Gift That Keeps on Giving
Winner, Teenage Category
Profile of Anika Graham by LaTreece Tate

In life, you come across someone who has helped you get through things, besides your parents. While I was in middle school, I was a quiet girl who was not active in anything. I only cared about school. Until one day I decided to try out for the step team, but for some reason I was not scared. The next day, I heard my name being announced that I made the step team. I was in a lot of shock. The step team coach, Ms. Graham, was a very kind and thoughtful person, but she meant business.

In middle school, I was the type of person that did not like help from others. During this time, my life went all wrong. My grandfather died, cars broke down, and there were money issues. When my grandfather died, I was torn emotionally and mentally. Sometimes I would just sit in shock. Ms. Graham knew something was not right because that day I didn’t do my work. Also when I got to step practice I did not put all I had into steps. I was moody with a bad attitude. She pulled me to the side and asked me, “What is wrong?” I started telling her everything that was wrong with my life. She told me if I ever needed anything, just tell her. Most people always told my family that all the time, so I ignored it.

After practice, I waited for someone to pick me up for an hour, but no one arrived. Suddenly Ms. Graham came up to me at the bottom of the steps where I was sitting. She told me my mother called and told me to walk home. I thought to myself, “This cannot happen to me on this dark cold night.” I picked up my backpack and headed for the door. Ms. Graham stopped me and said, “Where do you think you are going in this cold?” I told her I had no other way home and walking was my only choice. She told me to sit back down and wait for her.

Five minutes later, I got in the car with Ms. Graham and on my way home we talked about my problems. She told me that she had had a side conversation discussing my attitude and how I do not like to ask for help. As we pulled in my driveway, she gave me a $100 bill. I told her that I could not take it, but she continued insisting. I remember myself repeating, “Thank you,” over and over again.

Now when I see people act like I did that day, I walk up to them and ask them are they alright.

(From The New Tri-State Defender)


The Go-to Person in Case of Emergency
Winner, Adult Category
Profile of Andrew Duck by Maribel Villarreal

I met Mr. Duck (Señor Pato) back in 1998. I came to the United States and started high school with no knowledge of any English. The majority of the students were English-speaking students, with only very few of us Latinos.

Señor Pato always showed us personal interest in our goal to learn English. He would not talk to us in Spanish very easily. He would push us to try our best to speak the words we were being taught in his class. It was very frustrating for me to go to the other classes because other students would always make fun of me and gave me a really hard time. Señor Pato would ALWAYS tell us not to be discouraged. He always said, “They are just a little bit jealous because you guys speak a second language.” Señor Pato reminded us how beneficial it was for us to be bilingual. These words taught me to never give up and always try my best. I have two other sisters who attended the same high school, and Señor Pato was a tremendous help for them too.

My sisters and I were here in the country alone, as my parents were back in Mexico. Señor Pato would take the time to talk to us and tell us to be careful. He asked us how we were doing at work and outside of school. He knew we all had a job and that every day right after school, we went to work. Mr. Duck even helped us in the school library to catch up with our homework in other classes. I admired Señor Pato and was very thankful to have a teacher that really cared about his students’ progress. Sometimes I felt as if he was our “guardian” since he was the only go-to person in case of emergency.

Without him and his continuous encouragement, I would not have finished high school. I believe I would have given up. I am the first person in my family to ever graduate from high school! My sisters and my parents are very proud of me. Right after high school, I worked at a law firm as a secretary. After college, I worked as a bank manager. Right now, I have put a pause on my career due to my three beautiful children.

Recently when I attended a school meeting with my six-year-old daughter, I found out that Mr. Duck is now the director of ESL for Memphis City School. I was so happy to find him and even more so when I found out that he is the director of the ESL program. I could not think of a better person for this position than he. I will always be thankful to Mr. Duck for his words and his dedication to his career as a teacher. I am sure that he’s still making differences in people lives.

(From New America Media)

This essay content is supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. All of the winning entries will be available soon on NewAmericaMedia.org.



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Christopher Tidmore and Michael Patrick Welch ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 BATON ROUGE, La. -- As the legislature scrabbled to restore money for some 8,000 students in danger of losing their MFP-funded scholarships to private schools, in the wake of a Supreme Court decision, the state’s most prominent pro-voucher group, the Black Alliance for Educational Options, held a rally last Wednesday to keep the program going.

The African-American advocacy group demonstrated the unusual convergence between Black activists and prominent Republicans on the subject of school choice, but their rally occurred as the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education and the State Senate kept going back and forth arguing who had the ability to amend the state budget to keep the vouchers funded.

The BAEO leadership estimated that close to 1,000 people attended the gathering on the steps of the State Capitol. Governor Jindal made a rare appearance at an educational protest declaring, “This is about pursuing the American dream. We must not go backward.” Jindal has been absent from any recent public school gatherings in recent weeks.

Howard Fuller, National Board Chair of BAEO, told The Louisiana Weekly, “We should not live in a country where only parents with money can decide where to send their children to school. If funds are not allocated to save this program now, the impact could be devastating to thousands of low income and working class families in Louisiana who already have very limited educational options.

Are we okay with sending these parents the message that their children do not deserve a quality education?”

The thousands to which Fuller referenced amount to almost 5,000 children currently participating in the program and an additional 3,000 who have been awarded scholarships for the upcoming school year.

Moreover, interest has continued to grow in the last year with 12,000 parents applying to enroll their children for the 2013‐2014 school year.

Ken Campbell president of BAEO told LouisianaToday.com, “the court’s ruling, to us clarifies that the voucher program is legal. Now we go into a position where we have to fight for dollars for these kids that just want an education.”

Campbell expressed hope the rally will motivate lawmakers to find another way to come up with the money, noting, “this is the time to look at our priorities, and I think right now, we have to look to the future of these children. We also have to look towards the future of the state of Louisiana, and I don’t think there’s anything more important than ensuring our kids receive a quality education.”

Campbell said if nothing else, they plan to show through the rally that the kids they’re fighting for are worth fighting for. “We shouldn’t live in an America where only people with money get to choose if their children should receive a quality education. I think America is better than that.”

The controversy began March 7, 3012, when in the case of Louisiana Federation of Teachers v. State of Louisiana, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that the state’s so called “school choice” voucher program could not be funded through the Maximum Foundation Program (MFP), a mechanism the court decided is reserved for public schools. Tuesday’s 6-1 decision does not affect whether Louisiana can have a school choice program; it only means that that program cannot be funded through the MFP.

The state’s Act 2 law, passed by the Louisiana Legislature and signed by Governor Bobby Jindal in 2012, expanded a pre-existing private school tuition voucher program called the Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence program (SSEEP), which provides vouchers to students in families “with a total income that does not exceed 250 percent of the current federal poverty guidelines,” if the child is also attending a public school rated C or below by the Louisiana Department of Education. The SSEEP vouchers help pay for these children to attend a private school of choice.

The Louisiana Federation of Teachers sued to stop SSEEP, claiming it is another attempt to siphon off public funds to private interests, which in turn weakens New Orleans’ already tenuous public school system. “We were fighting to not starve out the funding these public schools need to rehabilitate,” says President of United Teachers of New Orleans (UTNO) Larry J. Carter Jr. “We aren’t against vouchers, but the funding stream is unconstitutional. They wanted MFP shifted from public school to private and parochial schools, and the constitution spoke to that, and that’s what we fought against.”

The Supreme Court upheld a District Court ruling that the MFP was constitutionally mandated to only fund public schools, and as such also nullified the 2012-13 MFP, saying the Legislature didn’t follow proper procedure. That meant the state automatically reverted to the previous year’s funding formula.

This caused a dual problem, both ostensibly cutting off the voucher funds, and leaving the budget severely indebted to local school districts. The problem was that under the constitution, the MFP can only be amended by the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education, with the legislature either approving or rejecting their proposal by an up or down vote. As the rally gathered outside the Capitol at 1 p.m., the Senate Education committee had sent it back to BESE, only to get the same MFP back, hand-delivered, by day’s end.

BESE President Chas Roemer had released a statement on Monday arguing that BESE had no need to revisit the 2013-14 funding formula. The original did include vouchers, yet also contained a clause that severed the private school portion if the court found it unconstitutional.

That argument held with sway with Senate Education Committee Chair Conrad Appel, who sent the funding bill back to BESE for revision. Senate’s lawyers argued that legislation stated the voucher portion would be severed if the Baton Rouge district court decision “is not reversed by the Louisiana Supreme Court.”

The high court upheld parts of the district court decision but overturned others, most notably the Jindal Administration’s teacher and school evaluation reforms.

Appel did not have to wait long. Roemer replied within hours. According to the BESE Chairman, the Senate Ed Committee did not work off the last draft passed by BESE. Severance occurred if “the funding mechanisms … are held to be unconstitutional.” His staff, Roemer explained, had accidentally submitted language from a draft version rather than the final copy in their letter to Appel.

Said Bill Maurer, an attorney with IJ who argued for SSEEP before the high court, “The education provisions of the Louisiana Constitution were designed to provide a quality education to Louisiana school children. [The court’s] decision undermines that purpose. For the thousands of families who wish to exercise a choice to send their children to the school that is best for them, these private alternatives now must be funded through annual appropriations, and will be subject to the yearly efforts of the politically powerful representatives of the educational status quo to stop any effort to provide real competition.”

Rally organizers saw State Superintendent John White maintaining that the vouchers will be restored by simply subtracting $40 million from the MFP. Since the students never attended public school, the schools need not be paid for non- existent pupils. Once subtracted, the money automatically returns to the state’s general fund, where a line item can task it pay for this year’s and next year’s voucher program.

Given the governor’s difficulties with the legislature after the botched tax reform debacle, though, it is hardly as simple as White suggested. The final vote could be close. After all, last year’s original MFP passed the House with just 51 votes, the bare minimum needed for a resolution, instead of the 53 required to enact a Bill. The governor, lacking the added two votes, called the resolution approving the BESE budget, “sufficient,” but the Supreme Court disagreed in its ruling. It must pass as a Bill, and Jindal must now find 53 votes in a legislature even more discontented than last year.

Still, White did say that the separate education program that will let public school students take free online classes taught by private organizations and universities—that was slated to begin statewide next year—will instead start as a smaller, pilot program because of the court ruling, funded entirely by his departmental budget.

The Supreme Court said like vouchers, it is unconstitutional to pay for the “Course Choice” program through the public school financing formula, so the program next year will come from the budgets for the state education board and the education department. Though, the final cost and from which programs White will draw the funds remained unclear as this newspaper went to press.]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11483 2013-05-23T17:02:04Z 2013-05-23T17:04:21Z

New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly called the recent shooting death of a black gay man a hate crime.Police said Elliott Morales, a 33-year-old ex-convict, was yelling anti-gay slurs before he allegedly shot to death Mark Carson, following a...

The NorthStar News ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly called the recent shooting death of a black gay man a hate crime.

Police said Elliott Morales, a 33-year-old ex-convict, was yelling anti-gay slurs before he allegedly shot to death Mark Carson, following a brief argument Friday night in New York's Greenwich Village.

Carson and his friend walked away from Morales and his two friends, but Morales followed Carson to continue his end of the argument.

Carson, 32, was shot once in the face, and he died instantly. Morales attempted to escape by running and blending into the crowd, but police caught him with a pistol, believed to be the murder weapon.

"This clearly looks like a hate crime," Kelly said during a Saturday news conference. On Sunday, prosecutors charged Morales with murder as a hate crime.

Carson's murder is the second involving a black gay man in four months. Marco McMillian, an openly gay black men who was running for mayor of Clarksdale, Miss., was found murdered February 27 near a Mississippi River levee.

Read the rest at The NorthStar News
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Paul Nathanson ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 WASHINGTON, D.C.—As advocates for elders and people with disabilities anticipate President Obama’s choice of a new Social Security Commissioner, a group of us from the Strengthening Social Security Coalition presented our recommendations at a briefing on Capitol Hill last week calling for changes to improve the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) ability to serve large numbers of the program’s most vulnerable beneficiaries. That includes lower-income individuals, especially immigrants and those from ethnic groups.

The Social Security Coalition includes over 320 national and state organizations representing more than 50 million Americans. Our “Transition Report for a New Social Security Commissioner” covers a range of concerns from the agency’s overloaded staff to SSA’s need for enhanced research on retirement and disability.

Almost 2 Million Elders

One factor underlying all of these issues in our increasingly diverse population is the need for greater access to assistance for individuals with limited English proficiency. The organization I direct, the National Senior Citizens Law Center (NSCLC), whose staff helped coauthor the new report, has shown, that those struggling to understand English face serious obstacles in learning about and gaining access to government programs, such as Social Security.

The 2010 U.S. Census contains some startling statistics related to the number of older adults who are not proficient in English. More than one in seven (14.2 percent) of our nation’s 43 million adults 65-plus speak a language other than English at home. Among them, almost 2 million elders are considered Limited English Proficient (LEP), a term the federal government has standardized to refer to those who speak English less than “very well.”

The new report, developed with a range of organizations, such as the National Women’s Law Center, the Diverse Elders Coalition and Latinos for Secure Retirement, states, “It is essential that SSA communicate with individuals in a language in which they are proficient and that up-to-date informational material on benefits be provided in a variety of different languages.”

Among those applying for Supplemental Security Income (SSI)—people requesting a small boost in their benefits because they have extremely low-incomes, a third seek this additional income support based on old age. Previous analysis by SSA showed that almost four in 10 of those older adults asked the agency to receive assistance in a language other than English.

Early Language-Access Leader

Previously, SSA was an early leader in language access among federal government agencies. For example, after SSA installed point-of-entry kiosks in its local field offices some years ago, advocates pointed out that they were generally working in English only. SSA instructed local offices to make them available in several of the most commonly spoken languages.

In fact, SSA has a very good policy of providing interpreters. It requires its offices to provide an interpreter at no charge on request and prohibits the use of children as interpreters. And the agency requires the same policy for state agencies performing disability determinations (DDSs).

However, as our report states, “At present, implementation is spotty, with advocates reporting that in many SSA offices LEP individuals are still asked to bring their own interpreters.”

Simply put, it is crucial that SSA communicate with individuals in a language they understand. And it needs to do more to ensure that its offices apply these regulations uniformly.

That means the administration needs to require more resources for training SSA personnel on the interpreter policy—including the additional time necessary to interview an individual with an interpreter.

The report also calls on the new commissioner, when appointed, to implement a systems change to fully implement SSA’s interpreter policy. Currently, SSA asks people for their language preference when they apply for benefits. But if the person doesn’t answer or the reply isn’t clear, the program defaults to English. SSA needs to eliminate the English default option.

In addition, SSA has increasingly come to rely on the use of telephone interpreter services as a primary means of serving LEP individuals. Although these are useful for simpler requests, telephone interpreter services should not be permitted for handling more complex matters and certainly not for administrative hearings or conferences.

The report recommends, “The best and most economical means of serving LEP individuals is through the use of bilingual SSA employees.” We believe that before picking up the telephone to call a general interpreters’ service, agency offices should look for an interpretation-trained SSA employee, someone who knows the program, is more apt to be more sensitive to the person’s needs and understands the confidentiality requirements.

Serving Immigrant Communities

As we concluded in the report, “The new commissioner needs to make a concerted effort, as hiring opportunities arise, to hire more bilingual staff for assignment to field offices,” particularly where there is a high level of language access needs, such as newer immigrant communities.

Currently, SSA provides its notices in English. And it offers only some, but not all, in Spanish. The agency provides none of its notices in any other language. To address this, SSA needs to provide all notices in Spanish and in other major languages spoken by recipients of its programs. It also needs to do a better job of identifying the language spoken by each of the people it serves.

Even though SSA has a number of publications on its program benefits in 16 different languages, these are only available online and are no longer stocked in local Social Security offices. A majority of people over age 65, especially those with low-incomes and those with limited English proficient, still do not have consistent Internet access—in any language—including African-American households.

Clearly, SSA policy needs to be rethought and informational publications should be made available to those who visit local Social Security offices.

The ability for all those who receive Social Security or Supplemental Security Income benefits to understand their benefits and their rights is essential. With the appointment of a new Social Security commissioner, NSCLC and other advocates believe these and other fixes can and should happen.

Paul Nathanson directs the National Senior Citizens Law Center. He co-chairs the Strengthening Social Security Coalition’s Adequacy of Benefits Committee and NSCLC staff contributed to new report.



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Pictured above: Street Narcotics Enforcement Unit officers from the 28th Precinct conduct a Stop and Frisk in Harlem in 2006. Photograph by Damaso Reyes.NEW YORK -- It was one word that struck me. More than any other word spoken over...

Damaso Reyes ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 Pictured above: Street Narcotics Enforcement Unit officers from the 28th Precinct conduct a Stop and Frisk in Harlem in 2006. Photograph by Damaso Reyes.


NEW YORK -- It was one word that struck me. More than any other word spoken over the past 10 weeks of court testimony in Floyd v. City of New York, the civil trial questioning the New York Police Department’s policy of “Stop, Question and Frisk."

“No.”

In over 8,000 pages of official court transcripts from the trial that ended on Monday, it is spoken time and time again by sergeants, precinct commanders and current and former high ranking officers within the police department. The question being replied to was a variation on this: “Does it bother you that in the vast majority, nine out of 10 stops, no enforcement action was taken? No summons, no arrest, no weapons found?”

“No.”

This is perhaps the heart of the case that the Center for Constitutional Rights brought to Judge Shira Scheindlin’s courtroom on the 15th floor of the federal courthouse in lower Manhattan. Authorities see no wrongdoing, despite the fact that over the past decade, NYPD officers have conducted nearly 4.5 million stops in a city of 8 million. Eighty-five percent of those stopped were black or Latino, meaning that many people have been stopped more than once. 

During the bench trial, members of the press were seated in the jury box, a metaphor not lost on me. As a New Yorker of color, and one who has been stopped by the police, I had an intense personal interest in the trial. Perhaps it’s also because I have spent much of the past 10 years outside the country as a foreign correspondent, watching from afar as my city and country changed after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 to prize security above nearly all else. Back in New York for a few months, I decided to spend some time observing the trial.

When I was stopped, on a train platform after visiting my mother’s house in central Brooklyn, two white officers came up to me and asked if they could look in my bag. There had been a robbery, they explained, and were looking for a suspect. I knew my rights. I could have refused to consent to a search of my bag. I also wanted to get home and my train was coming. If I refused, would they hold me anyway? Would they ask me for my ID and run a background check? Maybe, maybe not. At that moment I didn’t want to deal with the hassle, so I agreed. They didn’t find anything, politely thanked me for my time and moved on. No form was filled out.

Apparently, I fit a description.

Both in the press and in the courtroom, the city’s lawyers as well as NYPD officials defended Stop-and-Frisk as an important law enforcement tool that gets guns off the streets and stops crime.

However, less than one percent of all stops results in the discovery of a weapon and only 0.14 percent of all stops results in finding a gun. This, despite the fact that “suspicious bulge” or “furtive movement” is the box ticked off on the form that officers are required to fill out in a large percentage of stops.

As a journalist I’ve had my fair share of encounters with NYPD officers. A few of those instances weren’t what I would have wanted them to be. But in reporting multiple series on the 28th precinct in Harlem and after spending many days riding in radio cars, standing on rooftops and walking the streets with a variety of policemen and women, I can say I have a broader perspective on the department than most. Most officers and commanders care deeply about the communities they serve. That’s why they became cops.

But as we learned in the trial, the NYPD is, among other things, a bureaucracy. The plaintiffs claim that this bureaucracy is obsessed with numbers and passed that obsession down to the rank and file through “performance goals,” which they claim is just another way to say quota.

When the recording that Officer Pedro Serrano made of his superior Deputy Inspector Christopher McCormack telling the officer that he needed to stop “the right people” was played, eyebrows were raised. When pressed by the officer to tell him who these people were, McCormack’s response was “male blacks 14 to 20, 21.”

The department denies this was a blatant call for racial profiling but instead a commander telling his staff to address a specific problem. They have repeatedly told us that while a high number of blacks and Latinos are being stopped, the vast majority of perpetrators, as well as victims of crime, are black and Latino -- so it makes sense that these people would also be stopped and questioned.

Missing from that logic is the fact that in order for a stop to be legal, the officer must have a reasonable suspicion that a crime has just happened, is in progress, or will in the near future be committed. Putting aside the frightening idea of “future crime” for a moment, this suspicion must also be specific to the person being stopped. Simply being a black male in an area where black males commit crime is not enough.

We'll soon discover whether or not Judge Scheindlin agrees.

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Earl Ofari Hutchinson ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 May 19 marked what would have been the 88th birthday of Malcolm X, an anniversary that passed mostly unnoticed with little in the way of civic celebrations, pageants or parades. Yet the date is still worth remembering. Malcolm’s name is still revered by legions both nationally and internationally, and for good reason. A tireless, uncompromising foe of imperial wars, racism, economic exploitation and a staunch supporter of African and Third World liberation movements, Malcolm X rekindled black pride. His legacy and place in history decades after his brutal murder, a crime still shrouded in controversy and debate, are more secure than ever.

However, Malcolm’s standing in history has not exempted him or his legacy from questions, doubts or tragedies -- a point we were reminded of when his grandson and namesake, Malcolm Shabazz, was beaten to death in a bizarre incident in Mexico City on May 13, only six days before the anniversary of his grandfather’s birth. The murder tossed a sad glare back at Malcolm X, and it wasn’t the first time since his assassination in 1965 that the slain leader’s family members have suffered publicly through a tragedy.

Nor was it the first time the young Shabazz was at the center of his family’s sad train of events. Back in 1997, when he was just 12 years old, Shabazz was convicted and sentenced for a home arson attack that resulted in the death of his grandmother, Dr. Betty Shabazz, Malcolm X’s widow.

There has been much speculation that the troubles plaguing Shabazz in his childhood stemmed from a tormented relationship with his mother, Qubilah Shabazz, Malcolm X’s second daughter. By all accounts, her life was a roller coaster of woes that included failed relationships, alcohol and drug abuse, and a roving lifestyle. She grabbed headlines in 1995 when she was indicted for allegedly plotting the revenge murder of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, whom her mother Betty Shabazz had publicly accused of inciting the murder of her husband. Eventually, Betty made peace with Farrakhan, even appearing with him at a fundraiser at Harlem’s Apollo Theater after he publicly expressed remorse over Malcolm X’s murder. But she did not forgive him. What part Betty’s antipathy toward Farrakhan played in Qubilah allegedly wanting to kill Farrakhan is subject to debate, but certainly the dramatic events had to have an effect on her son, Malcolm Shabazz.

The turmoil that engulfed some of Malcolm’s family members exploded into the news once again during a well-publicized spat over possession and sale of Malcolm’s memorabilia. And later, there was the arrest of Malikah Shabazz, another of Malcolm’s daughters, followed by a guilty plea on credit card fraud charges.

Then the inevitable happened. Malcolm himself, decades after his murder, was subject to the seemingly requisite historical revisionist take on his life in the best selling book, "Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention," penned by the late Columbia University scholar and activist, Manning Marable.

In his exhaustive work, Marable tore apart what he considered myths and concoctions about Malcolm’s early and later life that had inflated him into a saintly superhero. Marable and his book were roundly attacked. But clearly, Malcolm’s life contained contradictions; like every other human being, he had real flaws.

Whether the bulk of the assertions in Marable’s version were true or not, however, they never succeeded in diminishing the towering contributions that Malcolm is today beloved for bringing to the freedom struggle. And for all the heart wrenching problems and lapses exhibited by some of Malcolm’s offspring, other family members have gone on to have successful careers in the arts and education, leading lives that add to the proud legacies of Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz. The pain of losing a famous father at a young age at the hands of assassins, and the personal journey of overcoming that loss to attain success, was movingly captured by Ilyasah Shabazz, Malcolm’s third daughter, in her memoir, "Growing Up X: A Memoir by the Daughter of Malcolm X."

Sadly, the tragedies of Malcolm X and his family will be painfully remembered. But they can never trump the triumphs of Malcolm, or the legacy of his name.


Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new ebook is How the NRA Terrorizes Congress—The NRA’s Subversion of the Gun Control Debate (Amazon). He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban Radio Network. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KTYM 1460 AM Radio Los Angeles and KPFK-Radio and the Pacifica Network.

Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson

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Joseph Torres ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 It’s important to celebrate whenever social barriers are knocked down — including the one that fell today when Mignon Clyburn became the acting chairwoman of the Federal Communications Commission.

Never before has a president appointed a woman to chair the commission — not even on an interim basis.

It’s not the first time Clyburn has made history. She’s also the first African-American woman to serve as an FCC commissioner.

But there are still many barriers that need to be knocked down. For one, we need to remove the “acting” title for the next woman to chair the FCC.

Clyburn’s accomplishment is also an opportunity to reflect on the FCC’s history of permitting and even exacerbating inequality. For evidence, just consider the impact of the agency’s policy decisions on women and people of color.

It’s no accident that our nation’s media system looks the way it does; it reflects our nation’s legacy of discrimination. Most of our first broadcast licenses were allocated to white men or white-run companies. And not much has changed.

People of color own just 3 percent of all full-power TV stations and less than 8 percent of all full-power radio stations. Women own less than 7 percent of all full-power broadcast stations. These statistics explain both the lack of diversity among staff at broadcast outlets and the paltry amount of programming featuring people of color.

But instead of adopting policies that would boost ownership diversity, the FCC and Congress have consistently pushed for greater consolidation. Thanks to socioeconomic conditions, the FCC’s approach has made it even more difficult for women and people of color to buy broadcast stations.

That’s why it was troubling when former FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski pushed for more consolidation during his tenure. One of his last moves involved a policy proposal that would allow companies to own broadcast stations and newspapers in the same market — a matter that’s still pending before the commission.

The FCC has long placated broadband and wireless companies — and Genachowski didn’t buck this trend. He failed to protect the open Internet with strong Net Neutrality rules. And he failed to provide more options for affordable broadband access, leaving many households disconnected.

While politicians and media figures often talk about the importance of our nation’s changing demographics, few are willing to do anything to make our media system more representative of the population it serves.

There’s hope that Clyburn can begin the important work of ensuring the FCC places the interests of the public over those of a small corporate elite.

Clyburn has defended the Lifeline program — which provides access to basic phone service for poor households — against political attacks. She’s spoken out against the unlawful practice of charging predatory rates for phone calls that prisoners make to families and friends. Clyburn should pass an order to end this unlawful practice — and should also direct the Commission to conduct studies to address the shameful state of broadcast ownership diversity.

President Obama has nominated Tom Wheeler, a major donor to his presidential campaign who formerly headed the trade associations for both the cable and wireless industries, as Clyburn’s successor. The president’s choice of an industry lobbyist to lead an agency established to serve the public interest has troubled many.

Until the next chair is confirmed, Clyburn should do everything she can to gain back the public’s trust in the commission.

Joseph Torres is senior external affairs director of Free Press, a nonpartisan organization building a nationwide movement for media that serve the public interest.


]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11447 2013-05-19T10:00:00Z 2013-05-17T19:06:05Z

Laura Murphy ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 On Mother's Day, someone decided to shoot into a crowd of parading New Orleanians, injuring 19 people. Video footage of the event indicates that I was just feet away from the shooter. My family and friends think I should stop going to second-line parades or into "bad neighborhoods" (read: black neighborhoods, of course).

And some of them want me to leave New Orleans altogether. But this Sunday I am going to the second line, just as I will go any other Sunday when I wake up feeling like dancing -- which is more often than you'd think. I want people to know why.

New Orleans brass bands play what you might call second-line standards. There are the local favorites, such as "Roll With It" and "It Ain't My Fault"; there are the traditional dirges played to an upbeat tempo, like "I'll Fly Away"; and there are the popular covers that everyone sings in unison. My personal second-line jam is the Stooges Brass Band's rendition of the O'Jays' R&B classic "Back Stabbers."

On Sunday at the Original Big 7 Mother's Day second line, it took me only three or four notes to recognize Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody," another crowd pleaser. People immediately started swaying, the "buckjumpers" trotted out some of their finest footwork and soon enough everyone was cheering, "With somebody who loves me!"

As the brass band pealed out the melody, I sidled up to my husband, a New Orleans transplant of three years and a second-line fanatic. I held his hand as we danced in the street with hundreds of other people -- black, white, Asian, Latino, young, old, native, transplant and all kinds of in-between. I silently rehearsed the only words I have to describe the second line: pure joy.

Only seconds later, just after we turned into the narrower streets of the 7th Ward neighborhood, we heard the all-too-familiar sound of gunfire. I think I heard four shots before I realized that I needed to get to the ground. I dropped to my belly right in the middle of the street, and other people fleeing the violence fell on top of me.

I remember that a soft, white T-shirt brushed my cheek, and I instinctively caressed the shoulder of a stranger, hoping to calm myself as much as her. Three or four more shots rang out before the firing stopped. Only feet from where the shooter had reportedly emerged from the shadows of a family home, we all lay in a silent pile, collectively holding our breath for several seconds more before we felt it safe to run.

When we returned to the corner a minute or so later, the scene was gruesome. People were writhing, bleeding, on every corner, on all sides of the spot where I had just dropped to the ground myself. The shooter had been indiscriminate, and if he had a target, it was impossible to tell who it could have been, because there were children, older ladies and dancing men among the 19 innocent people he callously wounded.

As the days pass and the fear and anger that emerged at the scene release me, a new frustration emerges. I can't help but keep wondering why more people don't seem to care or even know that this happened.

And I am going to say this very clearly: The reason so few people seem to care about this mass shooting is that the victims are assumed to be black.

Not So Normal

Every time I say something like this, I feel as if I'm preaching to the choir, but when I listened for that familiar chorus of affirmation this week, I didn't hear it. Somehow I keep expecting people to stop me on the street to process it, as many did when I was heading home through predominantly African-American neighborhoods right after the event. I expected Facebook and Twitter to be on fire with sympathy for the victims. I suppose I half expected there to be nationally organized fundraisers for the 19 people in the hospital. But all I heard were crickets.

How can so many people in this country -- people for whom violence is not the norm -- resign themselves to violence simply by relegating it to the category of "street violence" or "black-on-black violence"? When people thoughtlessly repeat this refrain, they suggest that everyone in that crowd should equally be considered a perpetrator simply because he or she is black, even though there was only one shooter, maybe two, who took aim at hundreds of innocent, dancing, celebratory black citizens festively enjoying a sunny Mother's Day afternoon.

When white people designate this as a "problem in the black community," the glaring implication is that violence is a problem endemic to the black community, that it is inherent and that it is both impossible to solve and not "our" problem anyway. That is the assumption motivating all the horrendous comments that make blackness the explicit or implicit source of violence instead of laying the blame on one cruel person. And it is that same assumption that silences and repackages our mourning over the violence that occurred in New Orleans this weekend.

Instead, what is endemic, and certainly feels intractable, are the systemic inequalities that persist in New Orleans and in the U.S. overall, injustice for which we are all responsible. Research coming out of the Orleans Parish Place Matters project indicates that life expectancies can differ by 25 years in New Orleans, depending on ZIP code, an indicator of the racial breakdown of a population. Place Matter's work shows that "social, economic, and environmental conditions in low-income and non-white neighborhoods make it more difficult for people in these neighborhoods to live healthy lives."

Furthermore, the study proves what should be clear to everyone: Neighborhoods that lack good schools and worthwhile opportunities are correlated with higher rates of violence. When we know this, we cannot hold individuals solely responsible for violence; we must respond urgently to the inequality in our educational institutions, employment opportunities and health care.

And maybe it is easier for many white and middle-class people to turn a blind eye to violence that happens in black communities because they think it cannot happen to them or to anyone they know. How does an entire race become anonymous to the point of seeming alien? How do white Americans live in this country and pretend that they do not know and are not responsible for their neighbors simply because of race?

Second-Line Community Building

I dance and talk and sing and debate with people of all races and classes and professions on Sunday afternoons. We are friends, neighbors and dancing partners, despite all the differences that may divide us. It is hard for me to imagine how anyone could live in New Orleans and not have relationships across what might seem to be impossible boundaries in some other towns. And it is hard for me to imagine living anywhere else anymore.

Knowing and loving people who are different from us, embracing their talents, joys and jokes, as well as recognizing and responding to their hardships and suffering is what makes us able to fight for and get passionate about justice in this world. Sometimes I get angry when I hear that someone is concerned about breast cancer only after a family member suffers from it or follows news from Ireland because he or she has some imaginary ancestral connection to the place. Why are the people who look like you more valuable than the people who don't? Why do we bother to learn about the suffering of our own community when we completely fail to respond to the suffering in others?

The story of violence and injustice in the black community is not my story to tell. There are many people who know it better than I do and have the most effective strategies (though often not the resources) for responding to it. But it should not be the sole responsibility of the African-American community to inform white Americans of the discrimination and inequality that determine the very life outcomes of the citizens of this nation and world.

It makes me sick to have to write this. I didn't want to say anything about being a witness to violence in New Orleans to anyone. I didn't want to post to Facebook or to Twitter that I had been in the 7th Ward on Sunday because I am afraid that it will be my story, the story of an innocent middle-class white person who was affected by the shooting, that gets picked up.

I am afraid that friends and family and colleagues will only finally believe that this is a significant event because it happened to someone they know. Look at the photos of the shooting that did make the national papers -- there are white folks everywhere in those photos, even though we made up a minuscule segment of the people who were attending the parade, and only a fraction of the people who were harmed. And let me not exonerate myself: After teaching and writing about injustice for years, I am writing about violence in my own community for the first time only after it hit close to home.

I decided that I had to say something, however, because I am a professor, and the way I attempt to effect change is through the words I write and the students I teach. I teach my students that the systemic, racialized inequalities that persist in our community and in the world carry prices and consequences that are much more significant than the cost of effective, ubiquitous education and health care -- basic necessities that we deny the majority of black citizens in my city and many others in the U.S. I teach them that it is the responsibility of every citizen to ensure that every other citizen is provided with his or her right to health and security.

And I insist that every human being deserves far more than the basic necessities. Many have suggested this more eloquently before today, but this event provides us with a moment to reflect again on our commitments. And personally, I suppose I am trying to transform the sadness and anger that grew out of my experience this weekend into something worthwhile.

The mass shooting that occurred on Sunday is not a black problem or a poor people's problem or a New Orleans problem. It is the responsibility of all of us to end the vicious inequality that leads to violence. We must all make a commitment -- regardless of our race or our class -- to the people and organizations that work to increase opportunity, education and well-being for all citizens in New Orleans and around the world.

We must support culturally informed, community-driven and -led conflict-resolution initiatives, like Project Ceasefire, that teach all of us that hatred and violence are the least effective solutions to our problems. We must dedicate ourselves wholeheartedly to addressing the problems that no doubt affect all of us, but affect us unequally.

I will be at next week's second line. I can't wait to hear the opening strains of "Back Stabbers," which I suspect will be met with an unusually emphatic "What they do!" from the crowd. I know my family and friends will be horrified, worrying that I take my life for granted.

But let me explain: The second line is the most vibrant and loving cultural tradition I know of in the U.S. It celebrates life as it commemorates death. I will be there to celebrate and commemorate, alongside all the diverse members of this community who also take that work seriously, because I never feel more alive and more a part of this community than I do when I am at a second line.

Laura Murphy is assistant professor of English and the director of African and African-American studies at Loyola University New Orleans. She is the author of Metaphor and the Slave Trade in West African Literature and editor of the forthcoming Survivors of Slavery: 20th and 21st Century Slave Narratives.
]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11451 2013-05-17T22:15:41Z 2013-05-17T22:17:17Z

Colorlines ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103
As “Wasted Wealth” lays out, close to 2.5 million families lost homes in just three years. Communities that were majority people of color saw foreclosures take place at almost twice the rate as white communities, with an average loss of wealth 30 percent higher per household.

This foreclosure tidal wave is why wealth for blacks and Latinos is at the lowest level ever recorded. Housing is the leading wealth asset for these two communities.

Although the real estate market overall has regained $16 trillion in wealth lost during the recession, these gains are largely driven by a frenzy for high-end properties at the very top of the market. “Wasted Wealth” contrasts these highs with the fact that more than 13 million homes continue to remain at risk for foreclosure. Read more here.]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11446 2013-05-17T15:22:42Z 2013-05-17T15:34:54Z

Michael Lovano ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 LONG BEACH -- Long Beach Unified might want to hide the report card it got last month. The district received an overall grade of “D+” for its effectiveness at serving low-income Latino and African American students in a study released by Education-Trust-West (ETW).

More troubling still, the district received a failing grade when it came to the achievement gap separating white students from their Latino and African American peers.

The California-based policy, research and advocacy organization, which seeks to increase student achievement in the state’s K-12 schools, handed out report cards to dozens of California's largest school districts to measure how they are serving these groups. Using data culled from the California Department of Education website, grades were based on Academic Performance Index (API) scores and graduation data for the 2011 and 2012 school years.

The overall district grades were determined by averaging out grades given across four distinct areas: academic performance, academic improvement, achievement gaps and college-readiness.

Long Beach Unified received an average grade of “C” for performance and improvement, for both low-income students and students of color. College readiness was a mixed bag, with LBUSD receiving a “C” for its graduation rates for those same students, but a “D” for college eligibility.

Latinos account for 54 percent of all LBUSD students, with African Americans comprising 16 percent. Whites currently account for 15 percent of all students in the district. Seventy percent qualify as low-income.

Multiple Causes

“As a student who has gone through LBUSD, I can say that the report card is absolutely accurate,” said Chris Covington, 22, who is of mixed African American, Mexican, Irish, Scottish and Chinese heritage.

“When I went to see a counselor, I was automatically just put in any class. I was not put into a class that addressed the A through G requirements,” said Covington, referring to the high school courses required for entry into the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) systems.

Covington also pointed to the “zero tolerance” approach to school discipline as helping to widen the achievement gap. “When I was in high school, my teacher would have referrals ready for me, to kick me out of class,” he said. Discouraged, he eventually dropped out of high school, but was hooked back in through a restorative justice program – an alternative conflict resolution model -- at Reid High School. With the help of mentors there, Covington was able to graduate on time.

In the last school year, African-Americans in the district accounted for 43 percent of all in-school suspensions, according to the California Department of Education.

“If the student is not in the class learning, then they’re not on track to graduate,” said Covington, who noted research showing an (LBUSD) student is “suspended every 19 minutes.”

Today, Covington is a mentor himself, working with Long Beach youth through a local organization, Khmer Girls in Action (KGA). He suggested that the racial achievement gaps in city schools are likely more extreme than the ETW report suggests, given the complex racial dynamics of the city.

Ethnic Khmer students from Cambodia and other Asian minorities, for example, are lumped together under the catch-all banner of Asian Pacific Islander (API), so the problems they face often go unseen due to the common misperception that all Asian students are high achieving.

“In reality, Khmer students are having trouble with [academic] achievement and with graduation rates,” he said. The city’s Khmer families, he explained, also tend to live in poverty-stricken neighborhoods around Central Long Beach, which has one of the largest Cambodian populations in the world, outside of Southeast Asia.

Malachy Keo, a 17-year-old senior at Polytechnic High School and also a member of KGA, said economic pressures at home make it difficult for him to envision going to college, let alone focus on his daily schoolwork. “My mom’s always stressing out on work and money,” said Keo. “I’m almost finishing school and I want to be able to graduate so I can help support (my mom).”

“It’s hard for parents to be strong and keep going,” he added. “Their kids gotta’ drop school and get money to help support them. Most of them [the children] will drop out and just slang” – sell drugs -- to get by.

A Different Perspective

“The latest Education Trust report contradicts every other independent review of our school district’s performance,” said Chris Eftychiou, LBUSD’s Public Information Director, via e-mail.

Eftychiou cited numerous statistics, studies, and awards commending the district, including a Global Education Study that highlighted LBUSD as one of five top performing districts worldwide; a Dispelling the Myth Award given by ETW to LBUSD for implementing district-wide improvements; and a Broad Foundation report that showed LBUSD’s African-Americans, Latinos and low-income students outperform state standards.

“The unfortunate result is that rather than dispelling myths [about African American and Latino students], Ed Trust is now perpetuating them,” said Eftychiou.

Arun Ramanathan is the executive director of Education Trust-West. He acknowledged LBUSD’s recent successes, but said the data pointed to serious issues.

“We know Long Beach is touted as a top district in California. When we saw their data, we were surprised -- very surprised,” he said. “It’s not our data. It’s the state’s data,” he added. “We have the greatest level of respect for folks down there, but the data is the data.”

LBUSD wasn’t the only district that fared poorly. Los Angeles Unified also earned an overall grade of a “D+” in the ETW report, while two other large school districts, San Francisco (“D”) and Oakland Unified (“D-“) received even lower scores.

The school district with the highest overall grade in the state, by comparison, was Baldwin Park Unified in Los Angeles County. Ninety-four percent of Baldwin Park students are low-income and 91 percent are Latino. The next two highest graded districts are also in Southern California – Los Alamitos Unified in Orange County, and San Marcos Unified in San Diego.

Still, while competing views abound, most agree the future for LBUSD looks promising. District funding is expected to almost double from $6,200 to $11,000 per pupil over the next eight years should Gov. Jerry Brown’s new funding formula for public schools pass, according to ETW.

“We will have some increase in resources,” said Virginia Torres, president of the Teacher’s Association of Long Beach. She is optimistic the revenue will help ease the racial and class disparities in education – disparities found not only in Long Beach but also in districts across the state.

Michael Lovano is a community reporter for Voicewaves, a youth-led community news hub founded by New America Media.
]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11437 2013-05-15T18:30:44Z 2013-05-15T18:34:08Z

Lindsay Boehner, daughter of Republican House Majority Leader John Boehner, married Dominic Lakhan, a Jamaican-born construction worker, who happens to be black. He also happens to have been previously arrested for marijuana possession. Now, I don't know Rep. Boehner at...

The Root ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 Lindsay Boehner, daughter of Republican House Majority Leader John Boehner, married Dominic Lakhan, a Jamaican-born construction worker, who happens to be black. He also happens to have been previously arrested for marijuana possession. Now, I don't know Rep. Boehner at all, but I am going to go out on a limb here and guess that when he envisioned his ideal son-in-law, it probably wasn't a dreadlocked manual laborer who was arrested for drugs. Very few men would envision such a man as their ideal son-in-law. Even fewer conservative men would -- and even fewer conservative, powerful white men would envision such a man as ideal for their little princess.

There are men who would have made this clear, not only to their daughter but to everyone else, possibly by not attending such a wedding. And yet there was John Boehner, the man who has served as the primary face of the conservative opposition to President Obama -- opposition that some have considered racially based in its intensity -- showing that perhaps he's not so conservative after all. He also showed that while plenty of people may have a problem with the increasingly brown America that Obama governs, one in which multiracial families are among the fastest-growing segment of the population, he is not one of them.

Read the full story at The Root
]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11425 2013-05-15T08:30:00Z 2013-05-16T20:13:40Z

Maya Rhodan -NNPA Washington Correspondent ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 WASHINGTON (NNPA) — — Whites had an average wealth of $632,000 in 2010 while Blacks had about $98,000 and Hispanics had $110,000, according to a recent study by the Urban Institute.

“Such great wealth disparities help explain why many middle-income Blacks and Hispanics haven’t seen much improvement in their relative economic status and, in fact, are at greater risk of sliding backwards,” the report says.

Blacks start out at a disadvantage.

Whites begin with about 3.5-4 times more wealth than their Black and Hispanic counterparts in their “wealth-building years,” defined as 32 to 40 years old. By age 60, the wealth of whites increases to seven times the amount of wealth Blacks are able to accrue over the same amount of time.

Levels of homeownership and retirement savings are shown to contribute to the differences in wealth among races. In 2010, less than half of Black families owned homes, while more than three quarters of white families did.

Algernon Austin, director of the program on race, ethnicity, and the economy at the Economic Policy Institute, says that Blacks were more likely to have loss their homes during the recession because they couldn’t keep up with ballooning mortgage payments.

“What we’ve seen recently is a dramatic loss of wealth for African Americans because there has been a dramatic loss of homeownership,” Austin explains. “Blacks were more likely to be given high-priced sub prime loans and were hit much harder by unemployment. Both factors—more loans, losing a job– makes it more difficult to keep up with mortgage payments.”

The recession has had a dire impact on the wealth of all Americans, with Hispanic families reporting their wealth declined by 40 percent between 2007-2010, according to the report. Blacks experienced a 31 percent decline while whites’ wealth declined by 11 percent.

Austin calls the loss of wealth experienced by the Black community a “symptom of high levels of unemployment and low wages, but particularly unemployment.”

Today, 27 percent of Blacks live in poverty. In March 2013, Blacks experienced an unemployment rate of 13.3 percent, compared to the national rate of 7.6 percent.

“Homeownership is a really important factor in terms of wealth, but so is unemployment,” Austin says. “If you’re going through frequent spells of unemployment, you’re either going to be losing wealth or going into debt.”

He adds, “The issue of jobs and income are important to address. The higher your income, the easier it is for you to build wealth. The government needs to enact policies that allow for Blacks to get greater income and get better job opportunities.”

Blacks represent about 11 percent of the total workforce, but 14 percent of the poverty-wage workforce, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

According to the Urban Institute findings, Black families saw the most dramatic decrease in their retirement assets, experiencing a 35 percent decline in retirement savings between 2007-2010.

“This finding is consistent with research that suggests lower income families are more likely to withdraw money from retirement savings after a job loss or other adverse event,” according to the Urban Institute report. “The high rates of unemployment and other financial needs that took hold with the Great Recession appear to have led to larger declines in retirement savings for Black families.”

While the Great Recession can account for much of the loss of wealth, there are other contributing factors to African Americans’ low-wealth, including policies designed to help Americans accrue wealth and policies aimed at low-income families, a large proportion of whom are African-American.

“There’s lots that the federal government does that if it was targeted to lower income Americans it could impact the wealth gap, “ Austin adds. “However, unfortunately, it’s a difficult battle because current policies benefit people who have significant political power and influence.”

In 2009, the federal government spent about $384 billion on policies that help families buy homes, start businesses, put their children through college, and retire.

Many of these policies, however, are administered through the tax code and “subsidize wealth building for the wealthiest among us, rewarding them for the size of their homes and investment portfolios,” according to a 2010 report by the Corporation for Enterprise Development titled “Upside Down: The $400 Billion Federal Asset-Building Budget.”

“The federal asset building budget provides a variety of things—opportunities for families to buy homes, start businesses, and prepare for retirement,” says Jermie Greer, the director of government affairs for CFED. “Yet, this $400 billion budget is skewed to benefit the very wealthy.”

According to the report, a middle-class family making $50,000 annually receives less than $500 in benefits from federal asset building policies, while families that make $100,000 receive $2,000 in benefits.

Tax payers who make in excess of $1 million, however, can see more than $92,000 in asset building support through mortgage and property tax deductions and investment tax breaks. Over half of the nearly $400 billion in benefits, according to the report, goes to the top five percent of tax payers.

“Conversation around tax reform so often focuses on the relationship between revenues for deficit reduction, but missed the mark on what is the social policy we want to address through the tax code,” Greer says.

“They can take some of the tax benefits that go to the very wealthy and bring them back down to people that are trying to build wealth and scratch their way out of poverty,” Greer adds.

Most lower- and middle-income families use homeownership to build wealth. In fact, homeownership accounts for the largest proportion of wealth among lower and middle-income households.

Yet, homeowners with lower incomes often don’t receive enough of a deduction to make a difference. According to the CFED report, nearly 80 percent of the value of mortgage and property tax deductions went to the top 20 percent of taxpayers.

“Social policy is really focused on income and the income people earn,” Greer says. “While people need jobs and it’s important that people are able to earn income, but that’s not the only piece of puzzle when you think about wealth.”

“We need to think not only about income, but providing benefits and incentives that help people build wealth through starting businesses, buying homes, being protected from predatory lenders.”

For low-income families in particular, federal programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, help ensure families have basic necessities, but don’t assist in helping to develop economically stable households.

“Many safety net programs even discourage saving: Families can become ineligible if they have a few thousand dollars in savings,” he Urban Institute report says.

Individuals who receive benefits from assistance programs can only have savings that equal up to $2,000 before risking losing their benefits. States currently have the flexibility to wave these limits, which keep people from accumulating money that can help them start a business or build wealth that can lead them out of poverty.

Thirty-six states currently waive limits to the SNAP and Temporary Assistance to Needed Families programs.

There are also programs, such as the Self-help Homeownership Opportunity Program (SHOP), which helps low- to moderate-income families purchase homes, that can help low-income families build wealth through homeownership, but the programs received less funding than low-income rental programs in 2010.

Austin says that through implementing more policies that benefit a wider range of people from varying socioeconomic backgrounds, we could begin to see the wealth gap “start shrinking instead of watching it grow.”

“It’s possible to prevent [the wealth gap] from growing larger and even shrinking it, but none of the policies that will ensure that will happen by themselves,” Austin says. “With all of these things, they aren’t likely to happen overnight.”

This article was originally published in the May 13, 2013 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
]]> tag:newamericamedia.org,2013://19.11429 2013-05-15T08:20:00Z 2013-05-14T20:37:30Z

Ann-Marie Adams ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 HARTFORD, Conn.  – School reform is like baking a cake. You need all the ingredients to make it work, many experts say. So if state and city officials wonder why closing the achievement gap is moving slowly, perhaps they should revisit numerous reports that gave them a solid blueprint for progress.

In Connecticut, where Gov. Dannel Malloy has taken a leadership role in transforming urban education, diversity is the missing ingredient that has likely resulted in the tepid result unveiled at Hartford Public School’s 2013 State of the Schools symposium at the Bushnell Theater earlier this month. This news comes after the excitement of an educational reform bill passed in the General Assembly last year. However, teacher diversity has been marginalized in discussions about ed reform and submerged in contentious debates over testing, privatization, or charter vs public schools.

At the school district’s symposium, we were reminded of what works. The very first panel with Janice Brown of the much touted success story, the Kalamazoo Promise, made it clear: children do what they see. And if they don’t see images of themselves in the classroom, it is difficult to imagine beyond that.

Other experts have confirmed this idea. According to a 2004 study by the National Education Association, increasing the racial and ethnic diversity in the teaching workforce is directly linked to closing the academic achievement gap. Teacher diversity is about having culturally responsive teachers who understand students and adapt to different learning styles.

The NEA’s report also states that although teacher quality has been noted as an imperative for successful reform, the notion of diversity “ is often marginalized rather than accepted as central to the quality of education.”

In Hartford, one of the state’s turnaround districts that received money and flexibility to make substantial changes, officials said the teaching force is almost 25 percent minority. That figure is questionable. Too many parents in the Hartford school district are seeing schools with nearly an all-white teaching staff “clueless” about their children’s needs and who lack cultural competency to interact with their parents.

Many parents have been encountering this problem before early 2000 when Hartford started, in earnest, to close the achievement gap. Former Hartford Public School Superintendent Anthony Amato, hired to lead what some dubbed the most dismal school district in Connecticut, said on April 17, 1999: “We will never be last again!”

In 2000, Hartford schools surpassed New Haven’s school district on the Connecticut Mastery Test scores. Since then, Hartford has been inching its way upward on standardized tests, a unit used by administrators, politicians and parents to measure academic improvement.

Three school superintendents later, Hartford Public School is still inching along toward closing the achievement gap. But this time, the progress is highly scrutinized. There are more stakeholders -- business partners, foundations, and savvy school reformers — who want accountability and quick results. This time, its even more of an imperative that the state, last in job creation, prepares a workforce for the future and to make every student college ready. The nation’s standing in the world also depends on this singular fact, and many politicians conceded that much.

“We didn’t get into this problem in a short time,” said Malloy during his remarks at the symposium. “It took a long time to get into this situation. It’s going to take time to get out of it. Change is hard.”
Yes, we know change is hard and it takes time—especially in the state with the tag line: “land of steady habits.”

But like the governor concluded himself: that line made popular by Mark Twain in the gilded age, a period when the city was the richest in the country, doesn’t work anymore. Hartford is now the second poorest city of its size. And Connecticut has “lost its edge” as a leader in education. So clearly, we can’t keep going in that direction.

And if we don’t hold everyone accountable for real results then, as many recognize, “we’re simply using words to describe what makes us feel best.”

Therefore, we should hold districts accountable for marginalizing the issue of diversity. We know this is the missing ingredient. The human resource is abundant in Connecticut with many unemployed teachers of color. School officials should stop making excuses as to why they cannot add that missing ingredient and hire more teachers of color.

We already know that diversity works.

Dr. Ann-Marie Adams is completing a manuscript about race, reform and education in Connecticut.
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Colorlines ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 report, titled “Diversity on Evening Cable News in 13 Charts,” women and other people of color are underrepresented as guests on evening cable news programs at MSNBC, CNN and Fox News.

Media Matters examined the guests of thirteen evening cable news shows on CNN, MSNBC and Fox News during the month of April 2013. During that time period, only 33% of MSNBC guests, 29% Fox News guests and 24% CNN guests were female. Latinos fared much worse. Only 3% of Fox News guests and 2% of CNN and MSNBC guests were Latino.

An excerpt of some of the findings are below:

White Guests Were Hosted Most Often On Cable News. Fox News had the largest proportion of white guests — 83 percent. African-Americans were the largest non-white group on all networks, representing 19 percent, 10 percent, and 5 percent of guests on MSNBC, Fox, and CNN, respectively.


Read more here.

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Louisiana Weekly ]]> http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103 According to the data found in a new report, “The Buying Power of Black America,” now may be the most opportune time ever for businesses to develop a strategy for increasing their share of the Black American market. With the nation slowly recovering from recession, Black consumers represent the margin of profitability in most consumer product categories.

“What the recession did to Black America’s buying habits is to give them a reason to re-evaluate how they spent the billions of dollars they earned collectively,” said Ken Smikle, president of Target Market News and editor of the report. “Before tight economic times, companies felt they could afford to take their loyalty—especially to top brands—for granted. That changed during the downturn. Price was a bigger factor driving purchasing decisions. Now brands have to earn the loyalty of Black consumers all over again. Black consumers are asking brands, ‘what have you done for me lately.’”

For the past 17 years, Target Market News has published the only report that breaks down in dollars the impact of the Black Consumer Market. Now approaching a trillion dollars in spending, the earned income of Black America is already the 16th-largest market in the world, and is on the verge of surpassing the gross national income of Mexico.

Read the rest at the Louisiana Weekly
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