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GETTING ALONG WITH 300 MILLION AMERICANS WHO AREN'T QUITE LIKE YOU THE VISCIOUS MYTH EVEN ACADEMICS, THE MEDIA & LIBERALS ACCEPT
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A PEOPLE: THREE CENTURIES OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY TOLD BY THOSE WHO LIVED IT. THE HEAD NEGRO IN CHARGE SYNDROME WE WILL BE HEARD: WOMEN'S STRUGGLE FOR POLITICAL POWER GET BUSY, GET EQUAL TOOLK KIT FOR LGBT ACTIVISTS
BLACK GAY, LESBIAN,
BI INDIAN LATINO WOMEN YOUTH Just the facts New Census data finds that abut one quarter of the nation's kindergarteners are latino. - 2009
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MARCH 2010 87% OF NYC COP STOP-AND-FRISKS ARE BLACK OR LATINO FEBRUARY 2010 GENDER GAPS IN MATH LINKED TO FEMALE STATUS MINORITIES STILL LAGGING ON CAMPUSES JANUARY 2010 CATHOLIC BIGOTS PUSHING ANTI-GAY "TREATMENT" WHAT HAPPENS TO THE ARCHIVES OF MINORITY NEWSPAPERS THAT GO OUT OF EXISTENCE? OBAMA NOMINATES U.S. ATTORNEY WHO LED SHOW TRIAL AGAINST IMMIGRANTS DECEMBER 2009 HOW RELIGIOUS EXTREMISTS AFFECT PUBLIC LAWS CONT'D NOVEMBER 2009 DEALING REALISTICALLY WITH UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS CATHOLIC GENDER SEGREGATIONISTS STRIKE AGAIN THE GAY MARRIAGE DEFEAT IN MAINE THE START OF THE WOMEN'S MOVEMENT FEDERAL JUDGE TACKLES ANTIGAY MARRIAGE LAWYER TALK OF LATINO BOYCOTT OF CENSUS TEXAS JUDGE SAYS BAN ON GAY MARRIAGE VIOLATES CONSTITUTION STUDY: GAY ADOPTION DOESN'T HARM EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF CHILDREN OCTOBER 2009 FEMALE LAWYERS HAVE BETTER CHANCE OF BECOMING JUDGES WITH MALE NAMES   LAW FIRMS MOST GAY FRIENDLY EMPLOYER SEPTEMBER 2009 BUSTING THE MYTH ABOUT WOMEN AND MATH THE GATES CASE: WHAT THE MEDIA DIDN'T NOTICE JULY 2009 THE EARLY YEARS OF GAY LIBERATION U.S. LAWS SUPPRESS MUSLIM CHARITIES JUNE 2009 130 CLERGY PUBLICLY SUPPORT GAY MARRIAGE IN DC FIREFIGHTERS ARE NOT LAW CLERKS GREAT MOMENTS AT YALE UNIVERSITY SUPREME COURT DENIES CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS TO GAYS WITH SUPPORT OF OBAMA MEN FOUND NO MORE PROMISCUOUS THAN WOMEN JIM CROW RETURNS TO THE SOUTH, WITH LATINOS AS THE NEW BLACKS EARLIER THE VISCIOUS MYTH EVEN ACADEMICS, THE MEDIA & LIBERALS ACCEPT This is something you were unlikely to have read about in the media at the time the statement was issued. A search of major media found almost no mention. The same is true today: the myth of race as a biological entity is right up there was creationism as a scientific myth, the main difference being is that even many liberals believe the race myth. American Anthropological Association Statement on "Race" (May 17, 1998) The following statement was adopted by the Executive Board of the American Anthropological Association, acting on a draft prepared by a committee of representative American anthropologists. It does not reflect a consensus of all members of the AAA, as individuals vary in their approaches to the study of "race." We believe that it represents generally the contemporary thinking and scholarly positions of a majority of anthropologists. In the United States both scholars and the general public have been conditioned to viewing human races as natural and separate divisions within the human species based on visible physical differences. With the vast expansion of scientific knowledge in this century, however, it has become clear that human populations are not unambiguous, clearly demarcated, biologically distinct groups. Evidence from the analysis of genetics (e.g., DNA) indicates that most physical variation, about 94%, lies within so-called racial groups. Conventional geographic "racial" groupings differ from one another only in about 6% of their genes. This means that there is greater variation within "racial" groups than between them. In neighboring populations there is much overlapping of genes and their phenotypic (physical) expressions. Throughout history whenever different groups have come into contact, they have interbred. The continued sharing of genetic materials has maintained all of humankind as a single species. Physical variations in any given trait tend to occur gradually rather than abruptly over geographic areas. And because physical traits are inherited independently of one another, knowing the range of one trait does not predict the presence of others. . . From its inception, this modern concept of "race" was modeled after an ancient theorem of the Great Chain of Being, which posited natural categories on a hierarchy established by God or nature. Thus "race" was a mode of classification linked specifically to peoples in the colonial situation. It subsumed a growing ideology of inequality devised to rationalize European attitudes and treatment of the conquered and enslaved peoples. Proponents of slavery in particular during the 19th century used "race" to justify the retention of slavery. The ideology magnified the differences among Europeans, Africans, and Indians, established a rigid hierarchy of socially exclusive categories underscored and bolstered unequal rank and status differences, and provided the rationalization that the inequality was natural or God-given. The different physical traits of African-Americans and Indians became markers or symbols of their status differences. As they were constructing US society, leaders among European-Americans fabricated the cultural/behavioral characteristics associated with each "race," linking superior traits with Europeans and negative and inferior ones to blacks and Indians. Numerous arbitrary and fictitious beliefs about the different peoples were institutionalized and deeply embedded in American thought. Early in the 19th century the growing fields of science began to reflect the public consciousness about human differences. Differences among the "racial" categories were projected to their greatest extreme when the argument was posed that Africans, Indians, and Europeans were separate species, with Africans the least human and closer taxonomically to apes. Ultimately "race" as an ideology about human differences was subsequently spread to other areas of the world. It became a strategy for dividing, ranking, and controlling colonized people used by colonial powers everywhere. But it was not limited to the colonial situation. In the latter part of the 19th century it was employed by Europeans to rank one another and to justify social, economic, and political inequalities among their peoples. During World War II, the Nazis under Adolf Hitler enjoined the expanded ideology of "race" and "racial" differences and took them to a logical end: the extermination of 11 million people of "inferior races" (e.g., Jews, Gypsies, Africans, homosexuals, and so forth) and other unspeakable brutalities of the Holocaust. "Race" thus evolved as a worldview, a body of prejudgments that distorts our ideas about human differences and group behavior. Racial beliefs constitute myths about the diversity in the human species and about the abilities and behavior of people homogenized into "racial" categories. The myths fused behavior and physical features together in the public mind, impeding our comprehension of both biological variations and cultural behavior, implying that both are genetically determined. Racial myths bear no relationship to the reality of human capabilities or behavior. Scientists today find that reliance on such folk beliefs about human differences in research has led to countless errors. At the end of the 20th century, we now understand that human cultural behavior is learned, conditioned into infants beginning at birth, and always subject to modification. No human is born with a built-in culture or language. Our temperaments, dispositions, and personalities, regardless of genetic propensities, are developed within sets of meanings and values that we call "culture." Studies of infant and early childhood learning and behavior attest to the reality of our cultures in forming who we are. It is a basic tenet of anthropological knowledge that all normal human beings have the capacity to learn any cultural behavior. The American experience with immigrants from hundreds of different language and cultural backgrounds who have acquired some version of American culture traits and behavior is the clearest evidence of this fact. Moreover, people of all physical variations have learned different cultural behaviors and continue to do so as modern transportation moves millions of immigrants around the world. How people have been accepted
and treated within the context of a given society or culture
has a direct impact on how they perform in that society. The
"racial" worldview was invented to assign some groups
to perpetual low status, while others were permitted access to
privilege, power, and wealth. The tragedy in the United States
has been that the policies and practices stemming from this worldview
succeeded all too well in constructing unequal populations among
Europeans, Native Americans, and peoples of African descent.
Given what we know about the capacity of normal humans to achieve
and function within any culture, we conclude that present-day
inequalities between so-called "racial" groups are
not consequences of their biological inheritance but products
of historical and contemporary social, economic, educational,
and political circumstances. JULY 2008 TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR TALKING ABOUT RACE Although the concept of race was originally a racist idea - a means of defining another culture as inferior - some scientists are still having a hard time giving it up. This story describes an effort to find common ground amongst different viewsw: New Scientist Even with the human genome in hand, geneticists are split about how to deal with issues of race, genetics and medicine. Some favor using genetic markers to sort humans into groups based on ancestral origin - groups that may show meaningful health differences. Others argue that genetic variations across the human species are too gradual to support such divisions and that any categorization based on genetic differences is arbitrary. These issues have been discussed in depth by a multidisciplinary group - ranging from geneticists and psychologists to historians and philosophers - led by Sandra Soo-Jin Lee of Stanford University, California. Now the group has released a set of 10 guiding principles for the scientific community, published as an open letter in this week's Genome Biology. 1. All races are created equal No genetic data has ever shown that one group of people is inherently superior to another. Equality is a moral value central to the idea of human rights; discrimination against any group should never be tolerated. 2. An Argentinian and an Australian are more likely to have differences in their DNA than two Argentinians Groups of human beings have moved around throughout history. Those that share the same culture, language or location tend to have different genetic variations than other groups. This is becoming less true, though, as populations mix. 3. A person's history isn't written only in his or her genes Everyone's genetic material carries a useful, though incomplete, map of his or her ancestors' travels. Studies looking for health disparities between individuals shouldn't rely solely on this identity. They should also consider a person's cultural background. 4: Members of the same race may have different underlying genetics Social definitions of what it means to be "Hispanic" or "black" have changed over time. People who claim the same race may actually have very different genetic histories. 5. Both nature and nurture play important parts in our behaviors and abilities Trying to use genetic differences between groups to show differences in intelligence, violent behaviors or the ability to throw a ball is an oversimplification of much more complicated interactions between genetics and environment. 6. Researchers should be careful about using racial groups when designing experiments When scientists decide to divide their subjects into groups based on ethnicity, they need to be clear about why and how these divisions are made to avoid contributing to stereotypes. 7. Medicine should focus on the individual, not the race Although some diseases are connected to genetic markers, these markers tend to be found in many different racial groups. Overemphasising genetics may promote racist views or focus attention on a group when it should be on the individual. 8. The study of genetics requires cooperation between experts in many different fields Human disease is the product of a mishmash of factors: genetic, cultural, economic and behavioral. Interdisciplinary efforts that involve the social sciences are more likely to be successful. 9. Oversimplified science feeds popular misconceptions Policy makers should be careful about simplifying and politicising scientific data. When presenting science to the public, the media should address the limitations of race-related research. 10. Genetics 101 should include a history of racism Any high school or college student learning about genetics should also learn about misguided attempts in the past to use science to justify racism. New textbooks should be developed for this purpose. The Stanford group didn't always agree when coming up with these ideas. Predictably enough, the biomedical scientists tended to think of race in neutral, clinical terms; the social scientists and scholars of the humanities argued that concepts of race cannot be washed clean of their cultural and historical legacies. But both groups, according to the letter, recognize the power of the gene in the public imagination and the historical dangers of its misrepresentation as deterministic and immutable. Sam Smith, Great American Political Repair Manual 1997 The most important fact about race: It doesn't really exist. At least not the way many Americans think it does. There is simply no undisputed scientific definition of race. What are considered genetic characteristics are often the result of cultural habit and environmental adaptation. As far back as 1785, a German philosopher noted that "complexions run into each other." Julian Huxley suggested in 1941 that "it would be highly desirable if we could banish the question-begging term 'race' from all discussions of human affairs and substitute the noncommittal phrase 'ethnic group.' That would be a first step toward rational consideration of the problem at hand." Anthropologist Ashley Montagu in 1942 called race our "most dangerous myth." Yet in our conversations and arguments, in our media, and even in our laws, the illusion of race is given great credibility. As a result, that which is transmitted culturally is considered genetically fixed, that which is an environmental adaptation is regarded as innate and that which is fluid is declared immutable. Many still hang on to a notion similar to that of Carolus Linnaeus, who declared in 1758 that there were four races: white, red, dark and black. Others make up their own races, applying the term to religions (Jewish), language groups (Aryan) or nationalities (Irish). Modern science has little impact on our views. Our concept of race comes largely from religion, literature, politics, and the oral tradition. It comes creaking with all the prejudices of the ages. It reeks of territoriality, of jingoism, of subjugation, and of the abuse of power. DNA research has revealed just how great is our misconception of race. In The History and Geography of Human Genes, Luca Cavalli-Sforza of Stanford and his colleagues describe how many of the variations between humans are really adaptations to different environmental conditions (such as the relative density of sweat glands or lean bodies to dissipate heat and fat ones to retain it). But that's not the sort of thing you can easily build a system of apartheid around. As Thomas S. Martin has written: "The widest genetic divergence in human groups separates the Africans from the Australian aborigines, though ironically these two 'races' have the same skin color. . . . There is no clearly distinguishable 'white race.' What Cavalli-Sforza calls the Caucasoids are a hybrid, about two-thirds Mongoloid and one-third African. Finns and Hungarians are slightly more Mongoloid, while Italians and Spaniards are more African, but the deviation is vanishingly slight." Regardless of what science says, however, myth can kill and cause pain just as easily as scientific truth. And regardless of what science says, there are no Japanese players in the NBA or, as anthropologist Alice Brues told Newsweek, "If I parachute into Nairobi, I know I'm not in Oslo." In fact, give or take a few thousand years, it's unlikely that those of a Nordic skin complexion would stay that way living under the African sun. Similarly, the effects of a US diet are strong enough that the first generations of both European and Asian Americans have found themselves looking up at their grandchildren. In such ways adaptation mimics what many think of as race. But who needs science when we have our own eyes? If it looks like race, that's good enough for us. Further, we are obsessed with the subject even as we say we wish to ignore it. A few years back, a study of urban elections coverage found five times as many stories about race as about taxes. We can't even agree on what race is. In the 1990 census, Americans said they belonged to some 300 different races or ethnic groups. American Indians divided themselves into 600 tribes and Latinos into 70 categories.  Even as we talk endlessly of race and ethnicity, we simultaneously go to great lengths to prove that we are all the same. Why this contradiction? The answer can be partly found in the tacit assumption of many that human equity must be based primarily on competitive equality. Listen to talk about race (or sex) and notice how often the talk is also about competition. The cultural differences (real or presumed) that really disturb us are ones of competitive significance: thigh circumference, height, math ability and so forth. We accept more easily other differences -- varieties of hair, degree of subcutaneous fat, prevalence of sickle cell anemia -- because they don't affect (or affect far less) who gets to the top. Once having decided which traits are important, we assign causes to them on the basis of convenience rather than fact. Our inability to sort out the relative genetic, cultural, and environmental provenance of our differences doesn't impede our judgment at all. It is enough that a difference is observed. Thus we tend to deal neither with understanding what the facts about our differences and similarities really mean -- or, more importantly, with their ultimate irrelevance to developing a world where we can live harmoniously and happily with each other. We don't spend the effort to separate facts from fiction because both cut too close to our inability to appreciate and celebrate our human differences. It is far easier to pretend either that these differences are immutable or that they don't exist at all. TWINS STUDY: HOMOSEXUALITY SHAPED BY GENES, RANDOM ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS IDAHO: EVEN GAY PARADE FLOATS
ARE A PROBLEM JUNE 2008 MOTHERS IN WORK FORCE DECLINING Sharon Johnson, WeNews - The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 60 percent of married mothers are now in the work force, 4 percentage points lower than in 1997. The rate of married mothers of infants who work fell 6 percentage points to 53 percent. With mothers representing about two-thirds of adult women those figures help explain why the United States is one of only two industrialized countries--the other is Japan--out of 23 where women's work force participation rate fell between 1994 and 2006, according to data from the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Reversal of Trend From the 1950s through the 1990s the percentage of U.S. women in the paid work force steadily increased. But that trend has begun to reverse and today 3.3 million fewer women are working than would be if the trend had continued. While a spate of news reports has explained the trend as women preferring to stay home or "opting out," an array of women's policy groups disagree. The real explanation, they contend, is a workplace that fails women on some basic interlocking fronts: inflexible scheduling requirements, job discrimination, lack of child care, lack of parental leave, lack of sick leave. Researchers for the San Francisco-based Center for WorkLife Law found 13,000 cases of discrimination that showed that mothers were 79 percent less likely to be hired and 100 percent less likely to be promoted because they are held to a higher standard than non-mothers in their companies. . . The United States, Swaziland, Liberia, Lesotho and Papua New Guinea are the only countries among 173 surveyed in 2007 by the Institute for Health and Social Policy at Montreal's McGill University that don't guarantee paid maternity leave to new mothers. The Family Medical Leave Act, which provides 12 weeks of job-protected leave to new parents or adoptive parents or caregivers of elderly relatives, only applies to firms with 50 workers or more, said Williams. "This disproportionately affects women who earn low wages . . . or work for small companies." Then there's the cost
of child care, which ran between $4,000 and $20,000 a year per
child in 2001, according to a study from the Children's Defense
Fund in Washington. . . TWINS STUDY: HOMOSEXUALITY SHAPED BY GENES, RANDOM ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS SCIENTIFIC BLOGGING Homosexual behavior is largely shaped by genetics and random environmental factors, according to findings from the world's largest study of twins. Researchers from Queen Mary's School of Biological and Chemical Sciences and Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm report in the Archives of Sexual Behavior that genetics and environmental factors (which are specific to an individual, and may include biological processes such as different hormone exposure in the womb), are important determinants of homosexual behavior. . . Dr Qazi Rahman, study co-author and a leading scientist on human sexual orientation, explains: "This study puts cold water on any concerns that we are looking for a single 'gay gene' or a single environmental variable which could be used to 'select out' homosexuality - the factors which influence sexual orientation are complex. And we are not simply talking about homosexuality here - heterosexual behavior is also influenced by a mixture of genetic and environmental factors. . . "Overall, genetics accounted for around 35 per cent of the differences between men in homosexual behaviour and other individual-specific environmental factors (that is, not societal attitudes, family or parenting which are shared by twins) accounted for around 64 per cent. In other words, men become gay or straight because of different developmental pathways, not just one pathway." For women, genetics explained roughly 18 per cent of the variation in same-sex behavior, non-shared environment roughly 64 per cent and shared factors, or the family environment, explained 16 per cent. The study shows that genetic influences are important but modest, and that non-shared environmental factors, which may include factors operating during foetal development, dominate. Importantly, heredity had roughly the same influence as shared environmental factors in women, whereas the latter had no impact on sexual behavior in men. Dr Rahman adds: "The study is not without its limitations - we used a behavioral measure of sexual orientation which might be OK to use for men (men's psychological orientation, sexual behaviour, and sexual responses are highly related) but less so for women (who show a clearer separation between these elements of sexuality). Despite this, our study provides the most unbiased estimates presented so far of genetic and non-genetic contributions to sexual orientation." BEING DEMONIZED FOR OTHERS' INCOMPETENCE AND CRIME NUMBER OF MARRIED MOTHERS IN WORK FORCE DROPS WOMEN'S E NEWS The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that 60 percent of married mothers are now in the work force, 4 percentage points lower than in 1997. The rate of married mothers of infants who work fell 6 percentage points to 53 percent. With mothers representing about two-thirds of adult women those figures help explain why the United States is one of only two industrialized countries--the other is Japan--out of 23 where women's work force participation rate fell between 1994 and 2006, according to data from the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Reversal of Trend From the 1950s through the 1990s the percentage of U.S. women in the paid work force steadily increased. But that trend has begun to reverse and today 3.3 million fewer women are working than would be if the trend had continued. While a spate of news reports has explained the trend as women preferring to stay home or "opting out," an array of women's policy groups disagree. The real explanation, they contend, is a workplace that fails women on some basic interlocking fronts: inflexible scheduling requirements, job discrimination, lack of child care, lack of parental leave, lack of sick leave. Researchers for the San Francisco-based Center for Work Life Law found 13,000 cases of discrimination that showed that mothers were 79 percent less likely to be hired and 100 percent less likely to be promoted because they are held to a higher standard than non-mothers in their companies. . . The United States, Swaziland, Liberia, Lesotho and Papua New Guinea are the only countries among 173 surveyed in 2007 by the Institute for Health and Social Policy at Montreal's McGill University that don't guarantee paid maternity leave to new mothers. Limits on Family Leave. . . Then there's the cost of child care, which ran between $4,000 and $20,000 a year per child in 2001, according to a study from the Children's Defense Fund in Washington, D.C. Parents of children with special needs and families who lived in areas where the cost of living was higher paid even more. These costs were prohibitive for one-fourth of U.S. families with children and earnings less than $25,000 a year.
THE CASE FOR CLASS BASED AFFIRMATIVE ACTION MAY 2008 THE LOSS OF LOCAL BLACK RADIO NEWS BRUCE DIXON, BLACK AGENDA REPORT Black commercial radio station owners, like all other broadcasters, hold their licenses on the condition that they faithfully serve the public interest. But commercial black radio, whether owned by African Americans or not, is failing that test. Commercial black radio treats its audience exclusively as a market, not a polity, and acknowledges no public service obligation worth mentioning. . . The near disappearance of broadcast radio news is somewhat masked by the growth of talk radio, but whatever talk radio is, it is not news. . . This year's State of Journalism 2008 by the Pew Center for Excellence in Journalism showed that the majority of talk show topics are indeed riffs on news stories, but talk shows do not break new stories, or conduct the investigations that break the stories. . . We are witnessing the disappearance of black America's ability to talk to itself in, and to hear its own authentic voices. If Dr. Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Improvement Association were conducting their historic bus boycott under today's media regime, few people outside that city would be aware of it, and many black citizens inside Montgomery itself would be in the dark as well. In the heyday of civil rights activism many African Americans, especially in the north, had no direct ties to the student movement or to those churches and other organizations which were active participants in the Freedom Movement. They learned about the movement the same way many white Americans did. They saw it on TV, they read about it in the papers, they heard about it on the radio. Black radio, back in the days when locally produced news coverage was a staple of the medium, played a major role as transmitter and conveyor, as the very circulatory system of public consciousness in African American communities. In 1973 there were as many as 21 reporters from three black radio stations covering national and local affairs in the Washington DC market, providing broadcast constituencies with a rich diet of news and public affairs coverage upon which that community thrived. This was not too different from Atlanta or Chicago or Detroit around the same time. . . Commercial black radio, including black-owned Radio One, is in a self-serving but highly profitable rut. Spin the dial in any major market from coast to coast and you get the same handful of artists singing the same songs, whether the genre is Gospel or Hiphop or anything in between. At one time, local artists could contact local deejays, and get their music on the air in their home markets. If they succeeded there, stations in other markets might pick it up. . . . Black radio not only doesn't do news, it doesn't do art or entertainment very well either. THE CASE FOR CLASS BASED AFFIRMATIVE ACTION RICHARD KAHLENBERG, GUARDIAN, UK Republicans, who watched Barack Obama's numbers plummet over the inflammatory sermons of Rev Jeremiah Wright, are surely on the lookout for something similar. As Obama turns to November's presidential campaign, a racially-charged sleeper issue - not much discussed yet - has the danger of becoming the next Rev Wright. The issue is affirmative action, America's system of certain preferences in employment and college admissions for people of color and women, which dates back to 1965. While its salience is dwarfed in public opinion polls by larger questions like Iraq and the economy, racial preferences have potent symbolic value and present a potential minefield for America's first black presidential nominee. . . Fortunately, Obama has hinted that he may be ready to make a shift on the policy - which is the right thing to do on the merits and on the politics. He has traditionally been a strong supporter of affirmative action, campaigning against a ban on racial preferences in Michigan in 2006. But more recently, he has suggested that he may be willing to embrace preferences for low-income Americans of all races instead. How he handles this question could have enormous implications for his candidacy. . . Twice during the primary campaign, Obama has been asked by George Stephanopoulos, who handled a review of affirmative action policies for President Clinton, whether or not he believed his own fairly privileged daughters deserve affirmative action preferences in college. Both times he answered no. Saying the opposite - "Yes, my daughters have it worse than poor white kids in Appalachia" - would have been politically disastrous. Obama then went further to say that low income and working class people of all colors deserve special consideration. This policy happens to garner strong public support: the same respondents who oppose racial preferences by two-to-one support income-based preferences by the same ratio. . . Providing a leg up to low-income students would represent an enormous change. In a recent study, Bowen found that within a given standardized test range, being an under-represented minority increases the chance of admissions by 28 percentage points but being poor makes no difference one way or the other. . . When Bill Clinton suggested a similar shift from race to class-based affirmative action in 1995, civil rights and women's groups erupted and Clinton quickly shelved the idea. . . A 2004 Century Foundation study, conducted by Anthony Carnevale and Stephen Rose, found that providing preferences based on parental income, education and occupation, and the socioeconomic status of the high school attended, would boost black and Latino admissions from 4% (under an admissions system of grades and test scores) to 10% at the nation's most selective colleges and universities, slightly below the current 12% representation under a system of racial affirmative action. Using additional factors not included in the Century Foundation study, however, would produce an even bigger racial dividend. Because of slavery, segregation and housing discrimination, the black-white gap in accumulated wealth is much larger than black-white income gap. Black net worth is about 10% of white net worth, while black income is about 60% of white income. Using net worth in a class-based affirmative action program is both the right thing to do (coming from a family having little or negative worth is an obstacle to doing well academically) and also boosts racial diversity substantially. Employing other factors, like growing up in an area with concentrated poverty (which blacks are much more likely to do than whites of the same income) would also boost the racial dividend of economic affirmative action. . . Just to be sure, however, Obama could call for a transition period from race-based to class-based affirmative action, during which time minority representation would be held harmless. And he could require conservatives to give a guarantee of support for more federal college aid before any switch occurs. EMINENT DOMAIN IS A CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE DAVID T. BEITO & ILYA SOMIN, KANSAS CITY STAR Few policies have done more to destroy community and opportunity for minorities than eminent domain. Some 3 to 4 million Americans, most of them ethnic minorities, have been forcibly displaced from their homes as a result of urban renewal takings since World War II. The fact is that eminent-domain abuse is a crucial constitutional rights issue. The Alabama Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights will hold a public forum at Birmingham's historic Sixteenth Street Baptist church to address ongoing property seizures in the state. The church was not only a center of early civil rights action, but also, tragically, where four schoolgirls lost their lives in a bombing in 1963. Current eminent domain horror stories in the South and elsewhere are not hard to find. At this writing, for example, the city of Clarksville, Tenn., is giving itself authority to seize more than 1,000 homes, businesses and churches and then resell much of the land to developers. Many who reside there are black, live on fixed incomes, and own well-maintained Victorian homes. Eminent domain has always had an outsized impact on the constitutional rights of minorities, but most of the public didn't notice until the U.S. Supreme Court's 2005 ruling in Kelo v. City of New London. In Kelo, the Court endorsed the power of a local government to forcibly transfer private property to commercial interests for the purpose of "economic development." The Fifth Amendment requires that such seizures be for a "public use," but that requirement can be satisfied, the Court ruled, by virtually any claim of some sort of public benefit. Many charge that Kelo gives governments a blank check to redistribute land from the poor and middle class to the wealthy. Few protested the Kelo ruling more ardently than the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. In an amicus brief filed in the case, it argued that "the burden of eminent domain has and will continue to fall disproportionately upon racial and ethnic minorities, the elderly, and economically disadvantaged." Unfettered eminent domain authority, the NAACP concluded, is a "license for government to coerce individuals on behalf of society's strongest interests." Some earlier civil rights champions, by contrast, often ignored, or worse helped to undermine, the rights of property owners. Ironically, the same U.S. Supreme Court which handed down Brown v. Board in 1954 also issued Berman v. Parker, in which the Court allowed the District of Columbia to forcibly expel some 5,000 low-income African-Americans from their homes in order to facilitate "urban renewal." It was Berman that enabled the massive urban renewal condemnations of later decades, which many critics dubbed "Negro removal" because they too tended to target African-Americans. Four years ago, the city of Alabaster, Ala., used "blight" as a pretext to take 400 acres of rural property, much of it owned by low-income black people, for a new Wal-Mart. Many of the residents had lived there for generations, and two other Wal-Mart stores were located less than fifteen miles away. Several of the landowners, particularly those who lacked political clout and legal aid, ended up selling out at a discount. In the three years since Kelo, 42 states, including Alabama, have enacted new laws limiting eminent domain power, but many of the new laws contain loopholes that make them easy to circumvent. Some 19 states have forbidden takings for "economic development" but continue to permit the exact same kinds of condemnations under the guise of alleviating "blight" - a concept defined so broadly that virtually any property the government covets can be declared "blighted." If takings end up becoming a key constitutional rights issue for minorities in the 21st century, it will be fitting that the crusade against them begins in Alabama, where their victims have suffered most greatly. APRIL 2008 BEFORE THE GLASS CEILING: HARD FLOORS PROGRESS REPORT A report released this week by the Center for American Progress Action Fund and Women's Voices. Women Vote details the difficulties single women face in today's economy. Forty percent make under $30,000 a year, less than married people or single men. Of 12.2 million single-parent households in the United States, more than 10 million are headed by single women. Single women still suffer unequal pay. They make only 56 cents to the married man's dollar. Overall, women's median wages pay only 77 cents for every dollar men earn. Even after last year's minimum wage raise -- the first in a decade -- an employee working 40 hours a week at minimum wage only earns $15,080, barely above the poverty line for a family of two ($14,000) and under the poverty line for a family of three ($17,600). Improving access to higher education will also help single women close the wage gap; currently, 84 percent of single mothers do not have a college degree. Just yesterday, the Washington Post reported that nearly 50 student lenders -- 12 percent of the market -- "have stopped issuing federally guaranteed loans in recent weeks because of paralysis in the credit markets," making it harder for single women to afford college. With over 35 percent of children born to single women in 2005, single women have a large stake in their children's future. The average cost of child care can range anywhere between $3,000 and $13,000 a year per child -- an enormous burden for struggling single women. The United States and Australia are the only industrialized countries that don't require employers to offer paid maternity leave for new mothers, though some states. The housing crisis has a disproportionate effect on single women as well, as they are more likely to be subprime borrowers. They also spend proportionally more on housing than single men. "Unmarried women need a president who will make affordable housing a priority." Finally, "More than a third -- 35 percent -- of unmarried women are over the age of 50 and face retirement on their own rather than with combined savings with a spouse," and older, single women are one of the poorest demographic groups in the United States. Health coverage is a particularly important issue for women. Four in 10 women have a chronic condition that requires ongoing medical care -- a significantly higher rate of chronic illness than men experience. At the same time, approximately 20 percent of single women have no health coverage at all. WORKING CLASS WHITES DON'T OWN PREJUDICE; THEIR BOSSES DO WHICH GAP DO WE REALLY CARE ABOUT? MARCH 2008 GAYS AREN'T AS WELL OFF AS POPULARLY THOUGHT SOCIALIST WORKER A recent study by the Williams Institute at the University of California-Los Angeles shatters many of the myths in the U.S. about gay couples and wealth. The study, based on U.S. Census data from 2000, compares gay and lesbian couples to heterosexual couples in terms of median income, wealth (such as home ownership) and resources available to raise children. While the median income for same-sex couples' households is slightly higher than for straight couples, the figure drops significantly when raising children is factored in. Same-sex couples raising children reported a median income of $46,200, compared to $59,600 for straight couples. A large part of this gap is due to the fact that even if same-sex couples are fortunate to enjoy domestic partner benefits, such as health insurance, those benefits are taxed. Spousal benefits for straight couples aren't taxed. One lesbian couple interviewed in Arizona described the impact of this extra tax for them. Tina Merrell estimated this penalty at about $10,000 per year to cover her partner and their child on her health insurance. In addition, same-sex couples are far less likely at the national level to own their homes as compared to straight couples. This fact suggests that many same-sex couples do not have the same access to wealth--rather than just income--that many straight couples have. A LETTER TO OKLAHOMA STATE REPRESENTATIVE. SALLY KERN: On April 19, 1995, in Oklahoma City a terrorist detonated a bomb that killed my mother and 167 others. 19 children died that day. Had I not had the chicken pox that day, the body count would've likely have included one more. . . That terrorist was neither a homosexual or was he involved in Islam. He was an extremist Christian forcing his views through a body count. He held his beliefs and made those who didn't live up to them pay with their lives. FEBRUARY 2008 ILLEGAL DISCRIMINATION HELPED FUEL SUBPRIME CRISIS KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL & GREG KAUFMAN, THE NATION - [Jesse] Jackson points to the targeting and steering of African-Americans and Latinos who were qualified for prime loans into risky subprime mortgages . . . "Redlining was to not loan to certain areas," he said. "This is what amounts to reverse-redlining - steering black and brown borrowers into subprime who were eligible for prime. That's out and out breaking discrimination laws." In 2005 and 2006, over 50% of all loans made to African- Americans, and over 40% to Latinos, were subprime - compared to only 19% of white borrowers. Martin Gruenberg, vice chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, said at the Rainbow PUSH Coalition's Wall Street Economic Summit in January, "Only one-sixth of this differential could be accounted for by the ability of the borrower." Analysis of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data shows that African- Americans and Latinos in New York City, Boston, Washington, Philadelphia and other cities were two to three times more likely to have subprime, high-cost loans than white borrowers with similar incomes and loan amounts. The New York Times has reported on two neighborhoods in the Detroit area - one 97 percent white with a median income of $51,000, another 97 percent African-American with a median income of $49,000. In 2006, 17 percent of the loans made in the white neighborhood were subprime, compared to 70 percent of the loans in the predominately African-American neighborhood. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan recently pointed out on National Public Radio, "An African-American earning more than $100,000 was more likely than a white person who earned less than $35,000 to be put in a high-cost, [subprime] loan. . . Clearly there is discrimination going on." The Times also reported that "around 90 percent of subprime loans originated between 2004 and 2006 carried exploding adjustable rates. Some 70 percent of subprime loans have prepayment penalties, versus 2 percent of prime loans. . . " . . It is now estimated that 2.2 million subprime home loans have already failed or will end in foreclosure - the highest foreclosure rate since the Depression - with a total equity loss of $164 billion. . . LIVING WHILE BLACK IN NEW YORK CITY YOUNG PEOPLE LEAD THE WAY ON ETHNIC, GENDER ISSUES NEW AMERICA MEDIA - With race, gender and the power of the youth vote garnering so much attention in the 2008 presidential primaries, we were curious about the demographics of the younger generation of leaders. We polled some 24 schools in San Francisco Bay Area to find out the gender and race of those they elected as their student body presidents - and found an incredibly diverse group of young people who weren't necessarily elected by a constituency that voted on racial identity alone. Of 24 schools, eight of the student body presidents are Asian, seven are white, five are African American, four are Latino, one is Arab American and one is biracial. There were 13 male presidents and 12 female presidents. Two of the schools had co-presidents, one male and one female. Some schools elected a student body president that looked like their majority populations. . . But this formula didn't hold true for all of the schools. Mohammad Abid, the student body president of the mostly white Palo Alto High School, identifies as Algerian American. Terrell Gunn, student body president of the mostly Asian Burton High School, is Filipino and African American. Statistics like these indicate a larger trend: the younger generation of voters doesn't care about the race or gender of their prospective president, a lesson from which the older generation would be smart to take a cue. The results are in line with a 2007 statewide poll conducted by New America Media entitled California Dreamers, which interviewed 600 young people via cell phone. When asked how they identified themselves, more respondents (27 percent) cited their music or fashion preference as opposed to a much smaller percentage (14 percent) who defined themselves by their race. . . JANUARY 2008 SUBPRIME LENDERS TARGETED BLACKS & LATINOS GLEN FORD, BLACK AGENDA RADIO - In a report titled, "Foreclosed: State of the Dream 2008," United for a Fair Economy details the catastrophic losses inflicted on blacks and latinos in the U.S. at the hands of predatory lenders - "the greatest loss of wealth to people of color in modern U.S. history." With more than half of blacks in many cities caught in the subprime trap - and with even these usurious financing schemes disappearing in the wake of the bubble- burst - the prospects for Blacks to amass wealth have grown bleaker than at any time in living memory. . . The report shows definitively that banks and other lending institutions trapped Blacks and Latinos in predatory lending schemes as a matter of policy. "Even a surface check of the demographics shows," the report says, "that, in city after city, a solid majority of subprime loan recipients were people of color." The very scope of the crime proves that the lending crisis is not the product of black culture, but the result of calculated policies, near-uniformly carried out by virtually all of the nation's mortgage lending institutions. . . The wealth loss is staggering: People of color have collectively lost between "$164 billion to $213 billion over the past eight years," with Latinos losing slightly more than African Americans. Before the crisis hit, it was estimated that it would take 594 years - more than half a millennium - for blacks to catch up with whites in household wealth. Now, in the aftermath of the home mortgage massacre, it could take ten times as long - more than 5,000 years - before blacks achieve homeowner parity with whites. http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/012308LA.shtml DECEMBER 2007 SUNDOWN TOWNS James W. Loewen EXCERPT: A sundown town is any organized jurisdiction that for decades kept African Americans or other groups from living in it and was thus "all-white" on purpose. There is a reason for the quotation marks around "all-white": requiring towns to be literally all-white in the census-no African Americans at all-is inappropriate, because many towns clearly and explicitly defined themselves as sundown towns but allowed one black household as an exception. Thus an all-white town may include non-black minorities and even a tiny number of African Americans. . . Independent sundown towns range from tiny hamlets such as De Land, Illinois (population 500), to substantial cities such as Appleton, Wisconsin (57,000 in 1970). Sometimes entire counties went sundown, usually when their county seat did. Independent sundown towns were soon joined by "sundown suburbs," which could be even larger: Levittown, on Long Island, had 82,000 residents in 1970, while Livonia, Michigan, and Parma, Ohio, had more than 100,000. Warren, a suburb of Detroit, had a population of 180,000 including just 28 minority families, most of whom lived on a U.S. . . Most Americans have no idea such towns or counties exist, or they think such things happened mainly in the Deep South. Ironically, the traditional South has almost no sundown towns. Mississippi, for instance, has no more than 6, mostly mere hamlets, while Illinois has no fewer than 456. . . Sundown towns are no minor matter. To this day, African Americans who know about sundown towns concoct various rules to predict and avoid them. In Florida, for instance, any town or city with "Palm" in its name was thought to be especially likely to keep out African Americans. In Indiana, it was any jurisdiction with a color in its name, such as Brownsburg, Brownstown, Brown County, Greenfield, Greenwood, or Vermillion County-and indeed, all were sundown locales. . . The sundown town movement in the United States did not begin to slow until 1968, however, even cresting in about 1970, and we cannot yet consign sundown towns to the past. . . POLL EXPLORES TENSIONS, COMMON GROUND
OF U.S. ETHNIC GROUPS Latinos (44 percent) and Asians (47 percent) said they are generally "afraid of blacks because they are responsible for most of the crime." Blacks (51 percent) and Asians (34 percent) said Latino immigrants are taking away jobs, housing and political power from the black community. Latinos (46 percent) and blacks (53 percent) said Asian business owners do not treat them with respect. . . Other findings showed that groups with a higher immigrant population expressed a far greater optimism about achieving the American dream. A majority of Latinos (74 percent) and Asians (64 percent) believes that if you work hard, you will succeed in the United States. In contrast, more than 60 percent of blacks said they do not believe the American dream works for them. . . New America Media's poll was co-sponsored by nine founding ethnic media partners: Asian Journal, Asian Week, Korea Times, Philippine News, La Opinion / Impremedia, Nguoi Viet News, Sing Tao Daily, Sun Reporter, and World Journal. SEPTEMBER 2007 NY TIMES ADMITS CONCEPT OF RACE LACKS SCIENTIFIC BASIS WHAT HAPPENED TO THE BLACK CONGRESSIONAL CAUCUS? GLENN FORD, BLACK AGENDA`REPORT - The rot in the Congressional Black Caucus has led the body, as a whole, to vote in opposition to their own constituents and progressive values in sometimes greater numbers than the Democratic Caucus. What was once the most progressive political grouping on Capitol Hill - reflecting the values of the most leftist demographic in the U.S. - has devolved into a club of corporate money-takers and hired votes. The descent of the Congressional Black Caucus has been swift, and striking. Every instinct of the African American polity is to defend the CBC - but that is no longer possible. There still remains a progressive majority in the Black Caucus, but they cannot act effectively within the organization's structures, which are hitched to corporate funding. The most dramatic examples are the Caucus's acceptance of funding from Wal-Mart, and the ill-fated deal they made with arch-racist FOX News to televise presidential debates. . . Therefore, progressive CBC members have been forced to work their legislative initiatives outside of the Black Caucus, which has become a hostile environment. . . WORLD LOSING A LANGUAGE EVERY TWO WEEKS NY TIMES - Of the estimated 7,000 languages spoken in the world today, linguists say, nearly half are in danger of extinction and are likely to disappear in this century. In fact, they are now falling out of use at a rate of about one every two weeks.) Some endangered languages vanish in an instant, at the death of the sole surviving speaker. Others are lost gradually in bilingual cultures, as indigenous tongues are overwhelmed by the dominant language at school, in the marketplace and on television. New research, reported today, has identified the five regions of the world where languages are disappearing most rapidly. The "hot spots" of imminent language extinctions are: Northern Australia, Central South America, North America's upper Pacific coastal zone, Eastern Siberia and Oklahoma and Southwest United States. All of the areas are occupied by aboriginal people speaking diverse languages, but in decreasing numbers. . . At a teleconference with reporters today, K. David Harrison, an assistant professor of linguistics at Swarthmore College, said that more than half of the languages have no written form and are "vulnerable to loss and being forgotten." When they disappear, they leave behind no dictionary, no text, no record of the accumulated knowledge and history of a vanished culture. JANUARY 2007 STUDY: BETTER EDUCATED WHITES PREFER SEGREGATED SCHOOLS, NEIGHBORHOODS RICE UNIVERSITY - A study, co-authored by Rice sociologist Michael Emerson, shows that increased education of whites, in particular, may not only have little effect on eliminating prejudice, but it also may be one reason behind the rise of racial segregation in U.S. schools. Furthermore, higher-educated whites, regardless of their income, are more likely than less-educated whites to judge a school's quality and base their school choice on its racial composition. Black-white racial segregation has been on the rise in primary and secondary schools over the past decade. While whites, especially those who are highly educated, may express an interest in having their children attend integrated schools, in reality, they seek out schools that are racially segregated. In the study, researchers found, on average, that the greater the education of white parents, the more likely they will remove their children from public schools as the percentage of black students increases. Emerson and research colleague David Sikkink, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame, know that income and other factors come into play in terms of school choice, but their study shows that, even after controlling for these variables, education has an unintended effect. Whites with more education place a greater emphasis on race when choosing a school for their children, while higher-educated African Americans do not consider race. "I do believe that white people are being sincere when they claim that racial inequality is not a good thing and that they'd like to see it eliminated," says Emerson. "However, they are caught in a social system in which their liberal attitudes about race aren't reflected in their behavior." According to the researchers, part of this behavior is explained by the place and meaning of schooling for children of more-educated white parents. Degrees, for example, become status markers, regardless of income. Parents seek quality education for their children to ensure they are not hindered from achieving the "good life." As earlier studies indicate, education is a key to social mobility and one of the most important forms of cultural capital. Emerson and Sikkink cite earlier work on school choice in Philadelphia, where race was found to be a factor in whites' evaluations of the quality of a school. Unlike blacks, who judged schools on the basis of such outcomes as their graduation rates and students' test scores, whites initially eliminated any schools with a majority of black students before considering factors such as schools' graduation rates. When they analyzed a national data set of whites and non-Hispanic blacks to see if the level of their education would have an impact on their school choice, Emerson and Sikkink found a similar pattern. "Whites with higher levels of education still made school choices based on race," explains Emerson, "while blacks did not." The researchers found that regardless of income, more-educated whites in their data set also lived in "whiter" neighborhoods than less-educated whites. Higher-income African Americans also lived in whiter, but more racially mixed, neighborhoods than lower-income blacks. "The more income African Americans made," Emerson says, "the more likely their children attended more racially mixed schools than did African American children of less-educated, lower-income parents." This, he explains, is because more highly educated or higher-income African Americans often live in areas with racially mixed local public schools, close to high concentrations of whites that have undergone desegregation plans, while African American children of less-educated, lower-income parents attend largely black schools. When separating income from their analysis, however, the researchers concluded that unlike whites, African American parents' higher-education levels don't affect their school choice. "Our study arrived at a very sad and profound conclusion," says Emerson. "More formal education is not the answer to racial segregation in this country. Without a structure of laws requiring desegregation, it appears that segregation will continue to breed segregation." Titled "School Choice and Racial Residential Segregation in U.S. Schools: The Role of Parents' Education," the study will be published in an upcoming issue of Ethnic and Racial Studies. http://www.rice.edu/sallyport/2006/fall/sallyport/segregation.html THE COST OF PREJUDICE: 2-3 BATTLE BRIGADES GAY PENGUINS: THE MOST OBJECTIONABLE BOOK IN AMERICA PLANET OUT - More than one in three LGBT Web users, 36 percent, report visiting their favorite personal blogs daily, compared with 19 percent of straight people, according to a national survey by Harris Interactive. LGBT online users also visit networking Web sites like Myspace and Friendster more than their straight counterparts, according to the Harris survey. Twenty-seven percent of LGBT adults in the country who are online said they visit the video-sharing site Youtube.com, compared with 22 percent of heterosexuals. Twenty percent were more likely to visit Craigslist.org, compared with 13 percent of heterosexuals. http://www.planetout.com/news/article.html?2007/01/03/5 DON'T ASK DON'T TELL DON'T WORK ZOGBY - Nearly one in four U.S. troops(23%) say they know for sure that someone in their unit is gay or lesbian, and of those 59% said they learned about the person's sexual orientation directly from the individual, a Zogby International poll of troops who served in Iraq and Afghanistan shows. More than half (55%) of the troops who know a gay peer said the presence of gays or lesbians in their unit is well known by others. According to the "don't ask, don't tell" policy, service members are not allowed to say that they are gay. . . According Congressman Marty Meehan (D-MA), "These new data prove that thousands of gay and lesbian service members are already deployed overseas and are integrated, important members of their units. It is long past time to strike down 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' and create a new policy that allows gays and lesbians to serve openly." Of those in combat units, 21% said they know for certain that someone in their unit is gay or lesbian, slightly less than for those in combat support units (25%) and combat service support units (22%). One in five troops (20%) in other units said they know for certain someone is gay or lesbian in their unit. Overall, nearly half (45%) say there are people in their unit they suspect are gay or lesbian, but they don't know for sure. Slightly more than half (52%) say they have received training on the prevention of anti-gay harassment in the past three years. But 40% say they have not received this type of training, which is mandated by Defense Department policy. Prominent supporters of "don't ask, don't tell" have expressed concerns about privacy in the shower, Dr. Belkin said, but nearly three out of four troops said in the Zogby poll that they usually or almost always take showers privately – only 8% say they usually or almost always take showers in group stalls. http://www.zogby.com/CSSMM_Report-Final.pdf |
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