Minority Births on Track to Outnumber White Births - Local News. WASHINGTON – This year could be the "tipping point" when the number of babies born to minorities will outnumber that of babies born to whites, demographers said Wednesday. Minorities make up nearly half the children born in the U.S., part of a historic trend in which minorities are expected to become the U.S. majority over the next 40 years.
The numbers are growing because immigration to the U.S. has boosted the number of Hispanic women in their prime childbearing years. Minorities made up 48 percent of U.S. children born in 2008, the latest census estimates available, compared to 37 percent in 1990. "Census projections suggest America may become a minority-majority country by the middle of the century. For America's children, the future is now," said Kenneth Johnson, a sociology professor at the University of New Hampshire who researched many of the racial trends in a paper being released Wednesday. Broken down by race, about 52 percent of babies born in 2008 were white.
For example: Doubling of maternal deaths in U.S. 'scandalous,' rights group s. One-third of pregnant women in the United States suffer from pregnancy-related complications each year, the report says. Amnesty International report calls for better maternal care in United States"Women are more likely to die than in 40 other countries," Amnesty saysCDC: Whites' mortality rate is 9.5 per 100,000 pregnancies, blacks' rate is 32.7 (CNN) -- Deaths from pregnancy and childbirth in the United States have doubled in the past 20 years, a development that a human rights group called "scandalous and disgraceful" Friday.
In addition, the rights group said, about 1.7 million women a year, one-third of pregnant women in the United States, suffer from pregnancy-related complications. Most of the deaths and complications occur among minorities and women living in poverty, it noted. Amnesty International issued a report Friday that calls on President Obama to take action. Video: Pregnant women die needlessly White women have a mortality rate of 9.5 per 100,000 pregnancies, the CDC said. Arrests highlight education busing issues. Police arrest protesters at a school board meeting Tuesday in Raleigh, North Carolina. Activists arrested protesting new education policy in North CarolinaWake County School Board recently voted to end busing Busing had been used to promote diversity in North Carolina schoolsThe newly elected school board is in favor of community-based schools (CNN) -- The arrest of 19 protesters at a rancorous school board meeting Tuesday brings the issue of busing and diversity in education into the national spotlight.
The North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP and local African Methodist Episcopal Zion Churches held a mass mobilization march Tuesday in Raleigh, North Carolina, to protest the recent decision by the Wake County Board of Education to end a 10-year-old socioeconomic diversity plan for public schools. The school board voted 5-4 on March 23 to end "forced busing," a method initiated in the 1970s to promote diversity in public schools. The Rev. 19 arrested at school board meeting. Race, genes, and intelligence. (1) - By William Saletan - Slate. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights … Will Saletan writes about politics, science, technology, and other stuff for Slate. He’s the author of Bearing Right. Follow him on Twitter. Follow Last month, James Watson, the legendary biologist, was condemned and forced into retirement after claiming that African intelligence wasn't "the same as ours.
" "Racist, vicious and unsupported by science," said the Federation of American Scientists. I wish these assurances were true. If this suggestion makes you angry—if you find the idea of genetic racial advantages outrageous, socially corrosive, and unthinkable—you're not the first to feel that way. The same values—equality, hope, and brotherhood—are under scientific threat today. Evolution forced Christians to bend or break. I'm for reconciliation. Remember, these are averages, and all groups overlap.
How could genes cause an IQ advantage? Newburgh, Where Gang Violence Reigns. A Troubled Dream: The Promise and Failure of School Desegregation in Louisiana (9780826513892): Carl L. Bankston, Stephen J. Caldas. Magazine Preview - Building a Better Teacher. Illustration by R. Kikuo Johnson Benjamin Norman for The New York Times Doug Lemov, left, observes a fifth-grade class at True North Troy Preparatory Charter School, a school he helps run in Troy, N.Y. Lemov himself pushed for data-driven programs that would diagnose individual students’ strengths and weaknesses. But as he went from school to school that winter, he was getting the sinking feeling that there was something deeper he wasn’t reaching. But when it came to actual teaching, the daily task of getting students to learn, the school floundered. Around the country, education researchers were beginning to address similar questions.
This record encouraged a belief in some people that good teaching must be purely instinctive, a kind of magic performed by born superstars. Skin color affects ability to empathize with pain. "Pain empathy is basically feeling someone else's pain," says Carmen Green, M.D. ,"This paper tells us that race plays a role in pain empathy. " If you see someone being hit, your nervous system responds as if you had been hit tooStudy subjects appeared to feel less empathy for pain of person of a different skin colorExpert: Findings suggest racial differences could play a role in some doctor-patient interactions (Health.com) -- Humans are hardwired to feel another person's pain. But they may feel less innate empathy if the other person's skin color doesn't match their own, a new study suggests. When people say "I feel your pain," they usually just mean that they understand what you're going through.
If you see -- or even just think of -- a person who gets whacked in the foot, for instance, your nervous system responds as if you yourself had been hit in the same spot, even though you don't perceive the pain physically. Complete coverage: Black or white -- Kids on race Not necessarily. Even Babies Discriminate: A NurtureShock Excerpt. - Newsweek.com. At the Children's Research Lab at the University of Texas, a database is kept on thousands of families in the Austin area who have volunteered to be available for scholarly research. In 2006 Birgitte Vittrup recruited from the database about a hundred families, all of whom were Caucasian with a child 5 to 7 years old.
The goal of Vittrup's study was to learn if typical children's videos with multicultural storylines have any beneficial effect on children's racial attitudes. Her first step was to give the children a Racial Attitude Measure, which asked such questions as: How many White people are nice? (Almost all) (A lot) (Some) (Not many) (None) Keep up with this story and more by subscribing now How many Black people are nice? During the test, the descriptive adjective "nice" was replaced with more than 20 other adjectives, like "dishonest," "pretty," "curious," and "snobby.
" Yet Vittrup figured explicit conversations with parents could change that. How do researchers test a 6-month-old? Racism, science, politics, and James Watson. - By William Saleta. James Watson, the Nobel-winning biologist, wants to go out with a whimper. He almost went out with a bang. Two weeks ago, the Times of London published an interview in which Watson apparently asserted the intellectual inferiority of blacks and Africans. A week later, in a statement to reporters and in an op-ed in the Independent of London, Watson tried to clean up what he had said. Now he just wants the whole thing to go away. Yesterday, he announced that he's retiring from his lab. Will Saletan writes about politics, science, technology, and other stuff for Slate. Follow Don't let him off that easy. I'm not saying Watson deserves more of a pounding for asserting a racial gap.
No, the reason I don't want to let Watson go quietly is that he didn't really clean up his original comments. Oh, please. In his revisionist op-ed, Watson wrote, "To those who have drawn the inference from my words that Africa, as a continent, is somehow genetically inferior, I can only apologize unreservedly. What 'Change'? Young Dem Support Crumbles. WASHINGTON -- Whither the American youth vote? A year after supporting Barack Obama for president by an overwhelming 2-to-1 ratio, young adults are cooling quickly toward his Democrats amid dissatisfaction over the lack of change in Washington and an escalating war in Afghanistan. A study by the Pew Research Center, being released Wednesday, highlights the eroding support from 18- to 29-year- olds whose strong turnout in November 2008 was read by some demographers as the start of a new Democratic movement.
The findings are significant because they offer further proof that the diverse coalition of voters Obama cobbled together in 2008 -- including high numbers of first-timers, young minorities and youths -- are not Democratic Party voters who can necessarily be counted on. Young adults' voting enthusiasm also crumbled. Democrats saw evidence of this last November, when Republicans removed Democrats from power in the New Jersey and Virginia governors's races. For example: After Financial Ruin, Plotting America's 'Comeback' Comeback America: Turning the Country Around and Restoring Fiscal Responsibility By David M. WalkerHardcover, 240 pagesRandom HouseList price: $26.00 When you give a speech, you're usually trying to deliver a few applause lines and maybe a laugh or two.
But when I went out on the road to talk about America's financial crisis, I counted my talk successful if it induced something else: shocked silence. It wasn't that hard to pull off. All I had to do was deliver a few jarring facts. "Our country is in a $56 trillion financial hole as of September 30, 2008," I would tell my audiences. "Maybe you have a mortgage on your house," I would continue. I had them hooked. As I said, it isn't that hard to shock people with the simple facts. Some of the questions I get after my speeches show this basic confusion. Or they ask: If the government's spending improves our lives and promotes economic growth, what does it matter if we have a deficit? In essence, the topic of this book is very simple.