Black Girls Should Matter, Too In a classroom at the University of Pennsylvania, more than a dozen black girls and women gather on a recent Saturday afternoon. A simple game begins as an icebreaker for the workshop. “Stand up if your racial identity ever made anyone doubt your abilities,” the session’s leader says. Everyone stands. “Stand up if you’ve ever been told to act like a lady.” Everyone stands again. Across generations—from high-school students to professionals with salt-and-pepper hair—a common reality appears. With a tone of resignation, Horton recalled a counselor who she said doubted her aptitude for an honors biology course. A mounting body of evidence suggests that black students across the country face daunting odds in their quest for an equitable education. Given the growing recognition that race and poverty hinder educational opportunity and outcomes, leaders ranging from policymakers to businesspeople have committed to tackling this crisis. The president’s crusade is spreading across the country.
Why Junot Diaz urges you to read more promiscuously - Home | q In a rich and wide-ranging interview, Pulitzer Prize winning writer Junot Diaz joins Shad to discuss his ongoing push for real diversity in the largely-white worlds of Western academia and literature. The Dominican-American author also comments on the importance of idealism in young people, why there's always a struggle when you come from the margins, and why — in a world packed with advice for writers — he offers his advice to readers. "Drop down out of Instagram time, out of Facebook time. Drop down into a much more human rhythm," says Diaz, adding that, for the sake of our culture and our future, we all have to learn to slow down. "To read a book is to be in the slow zone of the human." Forget advice for writers.
Cornel West's Rise and Fall by Michael Eric Dyson | The New Republic Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned” is the best-known line from William Congreve’s The Mourning Bride. But I’m concerned with the phrase preceding it, which captures wrath in more universal terms: “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned.” Even an angry Almighty can’t compete with mortals whose love turns to hate. Cornel West’s rage against President Barack Obama evokes that kind of venom. West’s animus is longstanding, and only intermittently broken by bouts of calculated love. Despite West’s disapproval of Obama, he eventually embraced the political phenom, crossing the country as a surrogate and touting his Oval Office bona fides. Obama welcomed West’s support because he is a juggernaut of the academy and an intellectual icon among the black masses. Yet West is, in my estimation, the most exciting black American scholar ever. It was that sense of scholarly excitement that drew me to West after I read his first book, Prophesy Deliverance! Hiroko Masuike / Getty Images
Most Prisoners Are Mentally Ill — The Atlantic Occasionally policymakers and activists will talk about how the justice system needs to keep mentally ill people out of prisons. If it did that, prisons would be very empty indeed. A new Urban Institute report points out that more than half of all inmates in jails and state prisons have a mental illness of some kind: Percent of Inmates Who Have Mental or Mood Issues The most common problem is depression, followed by bipolar disorder. Types of Mental Issues Among State and Federal Inmates The numbers are even more stark when parsed by gender: 55 percent of male inmates in state prisons are mentally ill, but 73 percent of female inmates are. An increasingly popular program might help thin the ranks of these sick, untreated inmates. For example, just last week Northampton County in eastern Pennsylvania saw its first case processed in its newly created mental-health court. The courts aren't a cure-all: Two-thirds of them use jail time to punish noncompliance with treatment.
‘A Conversation With My Black Son’ Continue reading the main story Video Op-Docs By GEETA GANDBHIR and BLAIR FOSTER For generations, parents of black boys across the United States have rehearsed, dreaded and postponed “The Conversation.” But when their boys become teenagers, parents must choose whether or not to expose their sons to what it means to be a black man here. To keep him safe, they may have to tell the child they love that he risks being targeted by the police, simply because of the color of his skin. This Op-Doc video is our attempt to explore this quandary, by listening to a variety of parents and the different ways they handle these sensitive discussions. We intend “A Conversation With My Black Son” to be the first in a series of videos that will foster discussions about the state of race relations in America. Op-Docs By GEETA GANDBHIR and BLAIR FOSTER For generations, parents of black boys across the United States have rehearsed, dreaded and postponed “The Conversation.”
This foreigner's guide to Irish accents will give you a good laugh Ear-gasmic sounds here. With St Patrick's Day fast approaching, we're certain that a huge amount of tourists will be flooding into the 32 counties as Irish people welcome them with open arms. We always did wonder what it would be like though if we placed a foreigner into a bar in West Cork, Derry or Dublin? Would they be able to understand what the hell was being said? This bluffer's guide to the Irish accent might help them acclimatize though thanks to the good people at Facts. What white Christians need to know about the Black Lives Matter movement Tell the Rev. Osagyefo Sekou what you think about young black people rioting in Ferguson, and he'll tell you what you think about Jesus. Jesus, he told a packed auditorium at Warner Pacific College Monday night, was born to an unwed teenager in an unimportant part of an empire. He preached a vision for a kingdom where the poor and humble were empowered. He was killed by a system that silenced its dissenters. The pastor has spent much of the last year in the streets of Ferguson and Baltimore, where young, black protestors are articulating a vision of a kingdom where they are empowered. On Monday, Sekou joined Portland faith and activist leaders for a frank conversation about the role of Christians in the Black Lives Matter movement, a phrase they used to name the broader racial justice movement stirring nationwide. We've boiled the talk down to five major takeaways for white Christians. The talk included lessons for other groups as well, but we're going to keep it simple. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
How black people can emotionally protect themselves in the age of #BlackLivesMatter As the death of Samuel DuBose in Cincinnati is added to the list of shootings by police this year, The Post's Karen Attiah gives advice for how to emotionally cope. (Ashleigh Joplin/The Washington Post) “All of these police brutality videos on my feed are making me sick,” a black male friend of mine from college posted on Facebook recently, after Sandra Bland’s disturbing encounter with officer Brian Encinia in Waller, Tex., was caught on camera. Yet again, we have video of excessive police force being exacted on an unarmed black person. We watch the footage because in America, for black people to have any hope that we might gain justice in the event of police brutality, we need to have video evidence of the violence. (Bigstock) While cellphones, social media and the #BlackLivesMatter movement have certainly helped to raise national awareness of racism and police brutality, it can literally hurt to watch these violent encounters. It can all be too much. Create something.
How a book club is helping to keep ex-offenders from going back to jail Robert Barksdale steps in front of the students in an English class at Eastern High School, searching for some semblance of redemption. “For me, school is a treat because I never got to be in school, for real,” he begins. He always envisioned visiting a school to speak to students but was beginning to realize the pressures of standing in front of the classroom. He scans the room and says: “Y’all are a little intimidating.” Barksdale was around their age when he chose the streets over school. Now, at 25, he is one. Phil Mosby, 26, hands out copies of a poem for the students to read. They were all teenagers then, charged as adults for their violent crimes. Over the past year, they finally came home. So they stick together. They fall into a high-risk category: Juveniles tried as adults are 34 percent more likely than youth tried as juveniles to return to prison, according to a 2007 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He stops to collect himself. Makes me wanna cry
Triggered: Objects Mistaken For Guns | Youth Radio Two seconds. That’s how much time it took Cleveland police officers to shoot 12-year-old Tamir Rice, a black boy who was carrying a toy gun in a park near his home earlier this year. The officers later said they mistook the toy for a real gun. Rice later died from his injuries. When Youth Radio students learned of Rice’s death, they had many questions. Triggered is a project of Youth Radio Interactive, a team of young people and professional developers who co-create apps and interactive news content linked to Youth Radio’s reporting.