Diversity Headlines

Civil rights activists hailed an FBI advisory board decision June 5 which would add Hindus, Sikhs, Arabs and other ethnic minorities to a report that tracks hate crimes.?The board recommendation must now be approved by FBI director Robert Mueller. If... India-West http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103

 PHOENIX -- Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio is taking a forced step back from the type of hard-line immigration enforcement he is notorious for. At a federal hearing Friday, defense attorneys representing the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office (MCSO) tried to... Valeria Fernández http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103

 SAN FRANCISCO – Low-income parents who have children with autism are angry that state lawmakers have passed a budget that will deprive their offspring of vital services to treat their condition.“Unfortunately, the autism community got left out in the cold,”... Viji Sundaram http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=68

It's a momentous week for the Colorlines team, as we say a bittersweet goodbye to an old friend, and offer a hearty welcome home to another.

As any regular Colorlines reader knows, Jorge Rivas has been part of the DNA of this publication and our community since--well, before it existed in this form. Back when our online presence was primarily a single news blog, Racewire, Jorge was one of our leading voices. In 2010, when we relaunched Colorlines magazine as Colorlines.com, turning a quarterly print publication into a daily news beast, we leaned heavily on Jorge's many skills to get us pointed in the right direction. Since then, he's been in the mix doing just about everything--providing pop culture coverage that's as fun as it is insightful; shooting and editing gorgeous video; developing reader polls and chats and other interactive features; laying out beautiful pages; and even fending off malware attacks. I don't oversate the point in saying that Colorlines.com would not exist without Jorge's extraordinary efforts to make it so.

Today we bid him a sad, but excited farewell. Jorge will be joining one of the most buzzed about projects in news media today--Fusion, a joint project of ABC News and Univision that is launching formally later this year. While we hate to see him leave, we're thrilled to know he'll be bringing the same racial justice lens he created at Colorlines to this exciting new effort in cable news.

Also today, we welcome home one of our favorite contributors, Aura Bogado. Aura will be joining the Colorlines team as a news editor and reporter, and we're thrilled to be able to bring her voice to the site daily. As a Colorlines editorial fellow, Aura helped lead our Voting Rights Watch project in 2012. As a both an editor and an investigative reporter, her coverage of immigration, Native communities and progressive organizing, among other things, has been groundbreaking and eye-opening. We are delighted to welcome her back to the team fulltime.

We'll be adding more new contributors throughout the year, and expanding our coverage of culture, both high and low, later in the summer. More on all that soon. For now, join us in thanking Jorge for his incredible contributions--and in welcoming Aura as we look forward to many great stories to come.

410[GONE] is an intelligent, beautiful, bristling play about a brother and sister who, together, kind of conquer death. 

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Earlier this week we brought you news of Sesame Street's important new toolkit to help kids deal with a parent's incarceration. It's an important endeavor, though one with some suspect bankrollers. The Atlantic Wire pointed out on Thursday that British contractor, BAE Systems, is one of the feature's main sponsors, and they make their money in part from for-profit prison labor. The support for Sesame Street comes from BAE System's large philantrophic arm, which you can read more about here.

So far, the series itself has sparked strong reactions both for and against the project. More from The Atlantic Wire:

The package has so far elicited pretty polarized reactions. CBS News, which unveiled the effort, praise the attempt to confront the very real issue of children with loved ones in jail: "Sesame Street, in its simple, familiar way, is trying to break [incarceration] down, using imaginary characters to explore -- and explain -- what was once unimaginable, but now more and more common." (Indeed, the U.S. incarceration rate is the world's highest.) The libertarian magazine Reason, however, saw things a bit differently: "Congratulations, America, on making it almost normal to have a parent in prison or jail."

You can see more about Sesame Street's "Little Children, Big Challenges: Incarceration" over on its website.

We knew this was coming. One June 8 Jason Collins, the first openly gay major men's professional athlete, tweeted a photo of himself standing with his old college roommate before marching in Boston's Gay Pride Parade. Collins was wearing a black Nike t-shirt with #BeTrue emblazoned on the front in rainbow-colored lettering. 

Now we know that it's official: Nike is launching a new line specifically targeting its gay athletes and customers. The new Nike #BeTrue collection includes t-shirts, shoes, flip flops, and iPhone cases. 

Esquire tweeted photos of the collection on Tuesday:

Huffington Post's Gay Voices doesn't think that this is Nike's one-off attempt to captialize on the noteriety of openly gay athletes. 

Sports leaders, the media and advocacy groups are currently touching down in Portland, Ore. for the second annual Nike LGBT Sports Summit in Portland, Oregon.

The event, founded by Outsports' Cyd Zeigler, the National Center for Lesbian Rights Sports Project Director Helen Carroll and LGBT sports pioneer Pat Griffin, takes place June 12-15 and will include college and professional athletes, coaches, athletic administrators, political figures, LGBT advocates, journalists and more.

The country's highest profile openly gay athletes have signed endorsement deals with the company. Along with Jason Collins, the WNBA's Brittney Griner has an endorsement deal with Nike that also allows her to also wear the company's menswear.

A new report released Monday by Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders in Philanthropy takes a rare look at an often overlooked subgroup of young people: Asian American, Pacific Islander and AMEMSA boys and young men. AMEMSA stands for Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim and South Asian--it's a handy acronym worth remembering in a post-Sept. 11 U.S. context, where members of these communities often have overlapping experiences, but more typically, are seen as indistinguishable from each other.

So what ought we know about the boys and young men of these communities? Some of the facts may surprise you--and to the extent that they do, serve to highlight the grave misunderstandings the wider public has of Asian-American and AMEMSA communities broadly. Misunderstandings abound in part because of a stubborn model minority myth that suggests that all Asian Americans are wealthy, high-achieving and well-educated. The reality is far from that blanket picture. The U.S. Census Bureau's own "Asian" category now encompasses 23 different Asian subgroups, all of whom have vastly different migration histories and cultural backgrounds. Some Asians came to the U.S. as refugees of war in the 1970s, some as laborers in the 19th century, some as newly recruited engineers to the tech industry. With all that difference and with no unifying linguistic or cultural binder, Asians are a truly difficult community to categorize. 

So what about those facts?

Families with two fathers? Families with just one father? And families with none? Immigrant families; families connected by love and commitment, if not blood; families with a father behind bars--those are all still real and legitimate families. And those fathers and families all deserve the love, support and access that mothers do. 

This Father's Day, Strong Families, a project of the Oakland-based reproductive justice organization Forward Together, has got all of those kinds of families and fathers covered. After producing a similar series of inclusive Mother's Day e-cards since 2011, 2013 marks the first year Forward Together is releasing a series for dads. 

Each e-card in the series is a real work of art, and entirely customizable. Send one here.

Parte 2 de 3EnglishDENVER, Colo.--Además de hacer frente a una enfermedad que tiene muchas preguntas sin respuesta, los ancianos hispanos que sufren de la enfermedad de Parkinson también llevan la carga de hacer frente a varios obstáculos que dificultan su... Cristina Frésquez http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103

Editor’s Note: When he saw his aunt profiled on a Spanish-language TV news special on ñongos -- underground encampments of the deported and homeless built in the canals of the U.S.-Mexico border - Yaveth Gomez knew he had to... Yaveth Gomez http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103

For Alicia Torres, a mother of four in Bellevue, Wash., one of the most difficult aspects of her husband’s undocumented status has been its effect on the health of their 13-year-old son. Torres’ husband, who is a Mexican national, was... Anna Challet http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103

During the Senate's first full day of debate of the immigration reform bill, several Senators attempted to tie border security increases to the start of the legalization program. Advocates worry that such amendments could make legalization virtually unattainable. Sen. John... ImmigrationImpact.com http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103

Armed with the power of their stories, young undocumented immigrants, so-called DREAMers, have made themselves the faces of immigration reform. Their stories, about coming to the US as children and growing up to find an uncertain future, play in Washington as an urgent call to grant undocumented immigrants a path to stay in the US. 

Yet as is often the case of shared narratives, some people don't fit. A new project out of Mexico City aims to tell the stories of "Los Otros Dreamers," young immigrants who grew up in the US without papers but were either deported or decided that they'd take their chances in Mexico. 

The project, a book in progress, is the work of Mexico City-based, American academic Jill Anderson and Mexican photographer Nin Solis. They are travelling around Mexico to meet young people who in recent years have come back to Mexico and are now trying to build lives for themselves. "This is a new collectivity of young people," Anderson, a PhD in American Studies, told me. "This is the generation of the children of the mass migration from Mexico and they're now back."

Anderson and Solis launched a kickstarter campaign to support the project, which they plan to self-produce and then shop around to publishers. They're looking for donations to help move the project to completion.

Solis's images are coupled with deported and returning young people's own words. The book offers readers in the US and Mexico a clear view of a community that's mostly invisible in both countries. "I heard people speaking English and I assumed they were gringos, but they are from here and from there," Solis told me, of young deportees she met near her house. "I hope this project raises their visibility."

Some of the young people in the book, which is called "Los Otros Dreamers," hope that this visibility will help change U.S. and Mexican policies.  On the US side, it's about the passage of immigration reform.  In Mexico, it's about broader government recognition of the needs of young people who return.  Some need help finding work or a home.  Others, those who hope to go to college in Mexico, often find that Mexican institutions don't respect US school transcripts. Years of school in the US, can mean nothing in Mexico.

Hector Bolivar is one of the people in their book. He's lived in Guadalajara, Mexico for two years, since he left his life, his friends, and a musical instrument business that he started in Los Angeles. He told Anderson and Solis:

The entire idea of an undocumented student was taboo and  no one, including myself, knew what to do with me. [...] On my 29th birthday I had a moment of reflection. I was living in the US alone by this time, my family having moved back to Mexico a few months before, and I came upon a discovery. I was tired. I looked at my past and my future in the U.S., I looked back at my accomplishments and my failures, realizing that it was as good as it was going to get for me under my current legal status. In late June I bought my plane ticket dated August 7th, 2011. I began saying my goodbyes to everyone I knew, not knowing if I would see any of them again.

Through the book project, Bolivar has now met with others like him. And he says that he's intent on breaking the taboo around those who return.  He plans to open a store front music shop in Guadalajara.

June 11, 1963:

• Alabama Gov. George Wallace infamously stands in front of the doors of the University of Alabama's Foster Auditorium refusing to admit two African-American students, James Hood and Vivian Malone, who were there to register and integrate the college as ordered by a federal district court. 
• At 3:40 p.m. that afternoon, Gov. Wallace steps aside as Hood and Malone are escorted into the school by federalized Alabama National Guards and U.S. Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach. Malone later says, "I didn't feel I should sneak in, I didn't feel I should go around the back door. If [Wallace] were standing the door, I had every right in the world to face him and to go to school."
• Across the globe, Thich Quang Duc, a  Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk, publicly self-immolates by setting himself on fire on a busy road in Saigon. His act was a protest of Buddhist persecution by the South Vietnamese government. The Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of the suicide by Malcolm Browne brought world attention to the injustice when it ran in the Associated Press.
• Later after Gov. Wallace's stand-down and stand-aside, President John F. Kennedy addresses the nation on civil rights. Asks Kennedy, "We preach freedom around the world, but are we to say to the world, and . . .to each other that this is the land of the free except for the Negroes?" The speech cribs heavily from Martin Luther King Jr., notably the "Letter from the Birmingham Jail," which took moderate white Americans to task for not standing up more aggressively for civil rights. 
  
• That night, civil rights activist Bernard Lafayette, a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, is attacked in Selma, Alabama by a white man who Lafayette was just helping  with his car.  The attacker pistol whips Lafayette repeatedly leaving an open gash on his forehead. He is hospitalized.

June 12, 1963:

• Just after midnight, NAACP field secretary Medgar Evers is assassinated in the driveway of his home in Jackson, Mississippi by Klan member Byron De La Beckwith. Evers' wife and children were at home awaiting his arrival when it happened. Bernard Lafayette's wife Colia worked closely with Evers and was in Jackson when he was murdered, nursing her own wounds from King's Birmingham clash with police in April that year. 
• Later that morning, Bernard Lafayette checks out of the hospital against doctors wishes after learning what happened to Evers. But Lafayette didn't go home to change his bloody clothes. Instead, as Gary May wrote in his book "Bending Toward Justice," Lafayette "immediately went into the downtown streets, a walking advertisement that showed the city's racists that they could not run him out of town." Selma civil rights lawyer J. L. Chestnut found Lafayette walking with his "eyes all swollen, face bruised, blood all over his shirt. Chestnut tried to get him to go home, but Lafayette told him "No way," and word his blood-stained shirt for the rest of the month. 

A new report commissioned by the Department of Housing and Urban Development revealed yesterday that prospective renters or home buyers of color are significantly less likely to be shown units compared to white home seekers.  The results of the study, conducted by the Urban Institute with a $9 million grant from HUD, are fairly unsurprising--discrimination is present everywhere and housing is no exception.

But as ProPublica's Nikole Hannah-Jones reports, HUD has no plans to do anything to stop the practices revealed in the new study. Hannah-Jones writes:

[T]he more startling thing may be what HUD intends to do with its findings. ...[T]he federal agency has no plans to use these tests to actually enforce the law and punish the offenders.

Once a decade for the last 40 years, HUD has produced a massive survey to reveal the pervasive discrimination that, year after year, exists in America's housing marketplace. But as ProPublica reported late last year, HUD as a policy refuses to invest the same kinds of time, resources and techniques in prosecuting those guilty of the very discrimination its expensive studies uncover. Instead, HUD outsources testing used to find and punish discriminatory landlords to dozens of small, poorly funded fair housing groups scattered across the country.

And Congress has shown little appetite for forcing HUD to do more meaningful enforcement. A bill that would create a national testing enforcement program at HUD is expected to soon die in committee for the third time.

The Urban Institute conducted 8,000 tests in 28 cities by sending testers of color and white testers with otherwise equal qualifications to realtors to inquire about apartments and homes. The report found that black, Asian and Latinos borrowers are less likely to be shown houses or apartments. That means folks of color have fewer options for where to live, are forced to spend more time and money looking for a home, and end up stuck in neighborhoods some may hope to leave.

As the author of the Urban Institute report said in a video that accompanies the report, "discrimination in housing contributes to the persistence of broader inequalities in housing, in home ownership, in neighborhoods, access to education, wealth building. So where we live really matters."

ProPublica's previous investigation revealed that HUD has consistently refused to act affirmatively to stop these practices despite clear legal, decades-old prohibitions against racial discrimination in housing.

Parte 1 de 3  EnglishDENVER, Colo.--Es estimado que la Enfermedad de Parkinson (PD) afecta sobre un millon de personas en EEUU, con un estimado de 60,000 nuevos pacientes diagnosticados cada año. Los estudios revelan que los latino americanos tienen más alto... Cristina Frésquez http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103

LOS ANGELES – Kevin Hyun Kyu Lee, 22, an organizer with the Korean Resource Center, remembered that his mother would always warn him when he was young, “Never get sick because we are uninsured.” That's because as undocumented immigrants they... Liz Gonzalez http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103

PHOENIX – Luz Ruiz Rascón noticed the signs as she stepped into her home. Missing lampshades, grease in the kitchen, papers everywhere. Tiny details that any other time would have caused her to admonish her children. “They missed me. They... Valeria Fernández http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103

Pictured above: Protesters gather in front of Immigration offices in San Francisco to support Gaerlan. Photo by Rene Ciria-Cruz.SAN FRANCISCO -- U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) cancelled the deportation order for Karla Gaerlan, an undocumented immigrant from the Philippines,... Rene Ciria-Cruz http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103