Diversity Headlines
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Even More of Your Favorite People Speaking Out Against Stop-and-Frisk
To help people understand that the NYPD's Stop-and-frisk policy is everyone's issue the creator of "This Week in Blackness" Elon James White issued an open call for submissions asking people to lend their virtual voices. White asked folks to submit videos of themselves rapping along to the song "10 Frisk Commandments."
An excerpt from the "10 Frisk Commandments Remix" is below:
I've never known a time when I wasn't really warned
about how blackness is perceived with some malice and some scorn.
But Mama I'm sure I didn't do nothing wrong
And then she said that's not the point I just don't want to see you gone.
Growing up it was me who was questioning the fact that being black
That I was somehow always under some sort of attack
It was the bad kids, the thuggish ones, I will be okay
and that's the same bullshit they used on Kimani Grey
The video features Pittsburgh-based rapper Jasiri X and Florida-based artist and producer Willie Evans Jr. rapping alongside comedian Baratunde Thurston, New York Councilman Juamaane Williams, writer and activist Janet Mock, New York State Senator Kevin Parker, and many more people from all walks of life.
"I look at the 10 Frisk Commandments Remix as true hip hop with a message." said Elon James White. "This isn't some wack song that tells everyone to sing kumbaya. This is a hard-hitting track with amazing production by Willie Evans Jr. and real-life perspectives that have been lacking in mainstream hip hop."
The video ends by asking viewers to sign a ColorOfChange petition demanding that NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Commissioner Ray Kelly abolish Stop and Frisk.
Watch 9-Yr-Old Asean Johnson Fire Up Protesters to Fight School Closures
Nine-year-old Asean Johnson may need to stand up on a chair to be seen above the podium from which he speaks, but he holds in him a wisdom and fire well beyond his years. Watch him address the crowds that assembled Monday to protest Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's school closures agenda, which will affect Garvey Elementary School, where Johnson is a student, and a proposed 53 other schools in the district.
"Kids need safety. Rahm Emanuel is not caring about our schools. He's not caring about our safety," Johnson said at the rally. "He should be invested in these schols, not closing them. He should be supporting these schools, not closing him."
Emanuel's projected plan to shutter dozens of schools is ostensibly a bid to address a serious budget shortfall. And yet, teachers, parents and students in Chicago have come together to argue that shutting down schools is a wrong-headed move that overwhelmingly and disproportionately affects communities of color. (Asean Johnson's addressed the racial inequity in Emanuel's agenda too.)
Alas, despite months of protest, including multiple acts of civil disobedience and Johnson's own passionate pleas, the Chicago Tribune reports that perhaps just five of the projected 54 schools may be saved.
Walmart Security Allegedly Suspected Father of Kidnapping Biracial Kids
A Prince William County, Virginia father is speaking out after a Walmart security guard allegedly called police to report a possible kidnapping because the man's three young daughters appeared to be of a different race.
The father, who only identified himself as Joseph, is white and his wife of ten years is black and according to a Walmart manager that meant their children "didn't fit."
On Thursday evening, Joseph took all three girls to the Walmart in Potomac Mills in Woodbridge to cash a check. He says they weren't there long, but spent a few extra minutes in the parking lot while he buckled the girls in and then made a phone call.
Joseph says he then went to up his wife, Keana, and as they were arriving home, they were shocked to find a Prince William County police officer waiting for them.
"He asks us very sincerely, 'Hey, I was sent here by Walmart security. I just need to make sure that the children that you have are your own,'" Joseph says.
DC Breaking Local News Weather Sports FOX 5 WTTG
Walmart issued the following statement to MyFoxDC: "There's still a lot of unknowns at this time and we're currently looking into the situation." Still no apology.
But just imagine if it was the other way around: a black father with a light-skinned baby.... I'll let comedian (and Colorlines board member) W. Kamau Bell tell you what happens next:
The 'Motor Voter Act' Turns 20 Today. Is It Aging Well?
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), aka the "Motor Voter Act," which allowed Americans to register to vote at federal government offices with which they regularly interface. Before NVRA passed in 1993, Americans could only register to vote at their local registrar's office, which could be inconvenient because those offices were often open for limited days and hours, and usually understaffed. If you couldn't get off work to access the registrar's office when it was open, then there were tremendous burdens around getting registered.
Since NVRA was passed, citizens can now register to vote when they go to public assistance offices to apply for welfare or disability benefits, or at their local DMV when they apply for a drivers license -- hence the nickname "Motor Voter Act" -- and also allowed for mailed-in registration forms. The result was that over 30 million people registered via the new paths opened by NVRA in its first year.
The public policy think tank Demos is today asking for the federal government to further expand access to voter registration by creating more paths. One way they suggest, in their report "Registering Millions," is by offering voter registration through U.S. Citizenship and Immigrant Services so that immigrants can immediately register upon their naturalization.
According to the report, naturalized Americans who are already registered to vote turn out on Election Day at rates similar to native-born, and in some instances even higher. Their are huge gaps though in the registration and general voter participation rates between naturalized and native citizens. Setting up registration at naturalization ceremonies could help close that gap Demos suggests.
They also recommend opening voter registration at Indian Health Services offices, noting that two out of five American Indians and Alaska Natives are not registered to vote though eligible. The report also calls for modernizing the antiquated voter registration systems and implementing same-day registration, so that voters aren't purged due to errors, restrictive laws or because of pressure applied from anti-voting rights groups.
Voter registration has a long ugly history in America, particularly for African Americans and people of color. These recommendations seek to correct that.
New Revelations About NYPD's Muslim Spying Program
More information emerged from the Associated Press this week about the New York Police Department's vast program to spy on Muslim communities. Court documents in a civil rights suit challenging the program reveal that the police Demographics Unit filed over 4000 reports in the last three years on Muslim community activities. In the same period, the Associated Press reports, the division logged the details of 200 conversations recorded in clandestine visits by police and informants.
The AP, which first reported on the Demographics Unit two in 2011, also reported today that at least one police informant paid by the NYPD to spy on Muslims said he used a strategy called, "create and capture." The AP, which viewed texts between the informant and a police detective, reports:
(Police informant Shamiur) Rahman told the AP last year that he made about $9,000 over nine months spying widely on friends and others. He said the NYPD encouraged him to use a tactic called "create and capture." He said it involved creating conversations about jihad or terrorism, then capturing the responses and sending them to the NYPD.
[snip]
Rahman allowed the AP to review months of text messages with [detective Stephen] Hoban from January to September 2012.
"Hey bro," Rahman told Hoban in one message. "I think im going to bring up jihad with these guys tonight, see what they say and know and then go home because everyones really just praying and stuff."
The NYPD denies that they used the tactic. The city claims the demographics unit only followed leads. But there's no evidence that the unit uncovered a single lead. Rather, it functioned to collect information on the mundane day-to-day lives of Muslims in New York and surrounding states. Informants and uncover police followed around Muslim student groups and one police report noted the location of a black Muslim pre-school in New Jersey.
West Coast's Second Largest Paper Drops the Term 'Illegal Immigrant'
The San Francisco Chronicle changed its style on the term "illegal immigrant" Monday, Poynter.org reports. The Chronicle is the largest newspaper in Northern California and the second largest on the West Coast, according to its publisher the Hearst Corporation.
The San Francisco Chronicle's announcement comes after the Associated Press changed its style on the term in April, followed by the Los Angeles Times in May. The New York Times urged its writers to "consider alternatives when appropriate."
The newspaper's new style will "essentially match" the Associated Press' style on the term, David Steinberg, copy desk chief at the Chronicle, said in an email to Poynter.org.
Below is the Chronicle's new stylebook entry on "illegal immigration:"
Illegal immigration
Entering or residing in a country in violation of civil or criminal law. Except in direct quotes essential to the story, use illegal only to refer to an action, not a person: illegal immigration, but not illegal immigrant. Acceptable variations include living in or entering a country illegally or without legal permission.
Except in direct quotations, do not use the terms illegal alien, an illegal, illegals or undocumented immigrant. This prohibition also applies to headlines.
Do not describe people as violating immigration laws without attribution.
Specify wherever possible how someone entered the country illegally and from where. Crossed the border? Overstayed a visa? What nationality?
People who were brought into the country as children should not be described as having immigrated illegally. For people granted a temporary right to remain in the U.S. under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, use temporary resident status, with details on the program lower in the story.
The San Francisco Bay Area, Central Coast, and San Joaquin Valley have substantial populations of undocumented immigrants, according to The Public Policy Institute of California.
Better Language Interpretation Crucial for New Social Security Commissioner
From the Jury Box -- Thoughts on the Stop-and-Frisk Trial
Hyphen TV: Gangnam Style Grandma
Gangnam grandma on So You Think You Can Dance, You've Got a Friend in Judith Hill on The Voice, and big trouble on The Big Brain Theory.
'Undocuqueers' at Crossroads Over Immigration, Gay Rights
Senators Add Protection for Detainees to Immigration Bill
The Senate Judiciary Committee went into immigration high gear yesterday, working later into the evening on 50 amendments to the immigration reform bill. At the end of the day of markup, the bill was amended in a number of ways to protect the human rights and civil liberties of detainees. Rights groups claimed the votes as small victories in their long effect to chip away at the abuses of immigration detention and deportation.
Among the biggest victories for the rights of detainees was the passage yesterday of an amendment.pdf) from Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., to limit the use of solitary confinement for detainees. A recent investigation by the NY Times found that at least 300 Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees are held in solitary confinement each day. This means they're kept in a cell for at least 22 hour a day. Half are held in these conditions for more than two weeks at a time, sometimes in tiny windowless cells.
The Times investigation found that ICE lacks guidelines and rules for the use of solitary confinement. The Blumenthal amendment would send the agency clear limits on the practice, especially for young and mentally ill detainees, and require ICE to develop oversight mechanism for it's hundreds of facilities, including the private and county jails with ICE contacts.
The senators also agreed on another Blumenthal amendment.pdf) that limits ICE's authority to conduct raids near schools, hospitals, and religious institutions.
A major amendment sponsored by Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., and Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, would protect children of detained and deported parents from entering foster care or becoming stranded if their mother of father is taken by immigration agents. The amendment is the only one of the over 100 considered so far by the committee to have passed with full bi-partisan support with votes of approval from all 18 members of the committee.
The Humane Enforcement and Legal Protections for Separated Children Act.pdf), as the amendment is called, was introduced as a stand-alone bill by members of Congress in recent years but never became law. It allows parents to make addition phone calls to arrange for their kids' care and makes it easier parents to take part in county child welfare and family court proceedings that affect parental rights and children's custody. The amendment would also require that ICE consider the best interest of kids when making decisions about the detention of their mother or father.
A 2011 Colorlines.com investigation estimated that there were at least 5000 children of detained and deported parents in foster care around the country. Detained parents have often been excluded from the juvenile court proceedings where decisions are made about their parental rights and the future of their children.
The Senators narrowly fended off an amendment.pdf) from Sen. Grassley that would have barred from the path to citizenship any undocumented immigrant suspected of gang activity, even if they have not been convicted of any crime. As I've written before, provisions that bar immigrants on the basis of suspected gang attachments often rely on overly broad local standards for identifying gang membership and would have overwhelmingly impacted young immigrants of color. The immigration reform bill already includes a provision to exclude immigrants from the provisional path to citizenship if they are deemed to have participated in a gang and knew that their activity was criminal. The Grassley amendment would have vastly expanded this exclusion by forcing immigrants to prove that they didn't know they were part of a gang.
The committee will continue markup today in hopes of making it through all amendments and sending the bill to the Senate floor soon after the Memorial Day weekend. Though yesterday's votes suggest the path forward in committee could be a reasonably smooth one, a number of controversial amendments may create additional turbulence. Ultimately, the bill is expected to leave the committee and head to the Senate floor where the bill's supporters hope it will garner broad support. The fate of immigration reform in the House remains far less certain.
1,500 Rally for Mark Carson in New York City's Gay Mecca
It was New York City's largest LGBT rally in years, according to organizers. On Monday at least 1,500 people showed up to honor the life of Mark Carson and make a stand against the hate that led to his death. Carson was an openly gay 32-year-old black man who was shot and killed over the weekend in what authorities are investigating as an anti-gay hate crime.
The randomness of Carson's death has shocked the city's LGBT community. "Mark is not going to die in vain. We are not going to get beat up in vain," one rally participant told Mother Jones. "Gay rights, we're still fighting for them, and the fight is not over. We need to protect each other."
(Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
(Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
(Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
Members of Mark Carson's family speak on stage at a Rally Against Hate on May 20, 2013 in New York City. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
President Obama to Oklahoma: Every Resource Is at Your Disposal
A Medical Procedure One in Three Women Will Have in Their Lifetime
1,500 Rally for Mark Carson in New York City’s Gay Mecca
Obamas to Black Grads: Good Job. Now Stop Being Such a Failure
Graduation season is upon us, and with it the time-honored ritual of big, important graduation speeches. This weekend, Barack and Michelle Obama each gave theirs at historically black colleges--the president spoke at Morehouse, the first lady at Bowie State. This is a fabulous thing on its face. And both talked explicitly about race and opportunity.
The problem is that both also continued a pattern we have too often been forced to examine--using the world's largest bully pulpit to browbeat black people for the personal failings that the Obamas seem to believe are our largest challenge.
In both speeches, the Obamas veered into finger-wagging lectures about personal responsibility's triumph over structural inequity. The president issued now-familiar urgings for black people to stop making "excuses"--a plainly strange demand to give a room full of young people who are celebrating a big, hard achievement. The first lady told us even our dreams are insufficient, that black kids must fantasize about being successful professionals rather than celebrities. You'll not find similar themes in their speeches to non-black audiences.
This is familiar stuff, of course. From Booker T. Washington through to Bill Cosby, there's always been a deeply conservative strain of black politics that embraces the American ideal that we get only what we earn. That we dwell on racism and inequity at our own peril, because America helps those who help themselves. That we bring the white man's scorn down upon ourselves with our sloth. Pull up your pants and turn off that darn rap music! You look like a hoodlum! That kind of thing.
Of course, it's also true that unemployment among the black graduates Obama addressed will be twice the rate of their white peers if nothing changes in the government he leads. The parents of the students he lectured are far more likely to have lost their homes to predatory lending than to have financed their kids' education with that wealth. And the students are far more likely to be graduating with a large debt burden than their white peers. Who's making excuses for these realities? Are they mere acts of nature?
In any case, Ta-Nehisi Coates dug into the Obamas' finger-wagging dynamic at the Atlantic yesterday. The short essay is a must-read for those who don't understand why some black political observers struggle with President Obama's posture toward our community. Here's the take home:
I think the stature of the Obama family -- the most visible black family in American history -- is a great blow in the war against racism. I am filled with pride whenever I see them: there is simply no other way to say that.
[snip]
But I also think that some day historians will pore over his many speeches to black audiences. They will see a president who sought to hold black people accountable for their communities, but was disdainful of those who looked at him and sought the same. They will match his rhetoric of individual responsibility, with the aggression the administration showed to bail out the banks, and the timidity they showed in addressing a foreclosure crisis which devastated black America (again.)They wil weigh the rhetoric against an administration whose efforts against housing segregation have been run of the mill. And they will match the talk of the importance of black fathers with the paradox of a president who smoked marijuana in his youth but continued a drug-war which daily wrecks the lives of black men and their families. In all of this, those historians will see a discomfiting pattern of convenient race-talk.
Really, go read the whole thing.
Trabajadores Invisibles: Una cuidadora indocumentada comparte su historia
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Gobernador Brown, los condados necesitan dinero para mantener a California saludable
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Dori Maynard tweets on Diversity, Media & More
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@brokeymcpoverty You can probably end that sentence at Maury.
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Black man is hero. News media, nation seem mystified. It flies in the face of usual distorted media depiction #Ramsey http://t.co/RerQL9WEGG
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@SherriEShepherd Childless by choice & always happy 2 help those w/kids before going to my quiet house Thx for keeping the human race going!
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