Category Archives: Education and Black Citizens

Sexualizing Young Black Girls, Growing Up Too Fast

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“For Black girls like me the transition out of childhood into a complex and ill-defined “womanhood” happens swiftly and without warning. According to a Georgetown Law study released earlier this year, Black girls are stripped of their innocence as early as the age of 5. The study, called “Girlhood Interrupted,” found that survey participants perceived that Black girls need less nurturing, protection, support, and comfort, and that Black girls are more independent and know more about adult topics, including sex. This phenomenon was dubbed “adultification” by the study authors, and they wrote that it refers to “the extent to which race and gender, taken together, influence our perception of Black girls as less innocent and more adult-like than their white peers.”And sadly, America’s fraught history with race plays a role in this: The “adultification” of Black children has its roots in slavery, when Black girls and boys were treated like chattel and subjected to cruel treatment, just like their adult counterparts. And in the case of Black girls, it’s further exacerbated by the often early onset of puberty. As the study reported, “on average, African American girls mature physically at a faster rate than [w]hite girls and as a result can be perceived as older.”

Source: Sexualizing Young Black Girls, Growing Up Too Fast

Creating Safe and Inclusive Schools: The Federal Role in Addressing Discriminatory School Discipline

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Data from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights Data Collection demonstrate that students of color, students with disabilities, and other historically underserved students, are disproportionately suspended and expelled compared with their White and nondisabled peers. These disparities are not a result of more incidences of misbehavior; instead, students of color are punished more harshly for the same behaviors, especially non-violent offenses like tardiness or “talking out of turn.” Research shows that these discriminatory and exclusionary discipline practices have a significant negative impact on these same students as even one suspension can double the likelihood of a student dropping out. Research also shows that zero-tolerance policies make schools less effective and less safe—not safer—for students.

 

Source: Creating Safe and Inclusive Schools: The Federal Role in Addressing Discriminatory School Discipline

The Human Cost of Higher Education’s Adjunct Shift – The Atlantic

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Thea Hunter was a promising, brilliant scholar. And then she got trapped in academia’s permanent underclass.

To be a perennial adjunct professor is to hear the constant tone of higher education’s death knell. The story is well known—the long hours, the heavy workload, the insufficient pay—as academia relies on adjunct professors, non-tenured faculty members, who are often paid pennies on the dollar to do the same work required of their tenured colleagues.

The position is often inaccurately described as akin to a form of slavery. Thea, a scholar of rights, slavery, and freedom, would have been the first to say that is not the case. It is more like the lowest rung in a caste system, the one that underrepresented minorities tend to call home.

 

Source: The Human Cost of Higher Education’s Adjunct Shift – The Atlantic

Baby Bonds: A Plan for Black/White Wealth Equality Conservatives Could Love?

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Baby Bonds: A Plan for Black/White Wealth Equality Conservatives Could Love?

By Lynn Parramore

OCT 25, 2016 | RACE  

Darrick Hamilton calls for spreading the benefits of asset-ownership to all Americans.

 

JOIN THE INSTITUTE IN DETROIT FOR A CONFERENCE ON RACE & ECONOMICS, NOV. 11-12.

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New Report: The Capitol of Suspensions: : Examining the Racial Exclusion of Black Males

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New Report- The Capitol of Suspensions: : Examining the Racial Exclusion of Black Males in Sacramento County

Across the nation, Black males are routinely exposed to exclusionary practices that remove them from learning environments (Howard, 2008, 2013; Wood, 2017; Wood, Essien, & Blevins, 2017). These practices include over-placement in special education, in-school suspension, out-of-school suspension, and even expulsion (Losen & Skiba, 2010). Among these forms of exclusionary discipline, suspensions have been a topic of continued interest in the past several years, with numerous reports and studies demonstrating that California is home to some of the most egregious suspension patterns in the country.

As detailed in a recent report, GET OUT! Black Male Suspensions in California Public Schools, Sacramento County is ground zero for some of the highest total suspensions in the State. In fact, Sacramento county has the second highest total suspensions in California, falling only behind Los Angeles County. This rate exceeds those in other urban counties, such as San Bernardino, Riverside, Contra Costa, Alameda, and San Joaquin (Wood, Harris III, & Howard, 2018).

Prior research has demonstrated that students who are regularly suspended are being tracked into the prison industrial complex, a pattern often referred to as the school-to-prison pipeline. Thus, while some students are being socialized by schools for college-going and entering into the workforce, others are being socialized for prison. Moreover, research has also shown that those subjected to suspensions are more likely to enter into the permanent underclass and to have a reliance upon social services (Darensbourg, Perez, & Blake, 2010; Fenning & Rose, 2007; Skiba, Arredondo, & Williams, 2014). Bearing this in mind, this brief sought to highlight key facts about suspensions in Sacramento County. These facts are meant to generate conversations around issues of racial injustice and educational inequities that permeate the region’s educational institutions that fortify the economic and social health of the region.

This brief details the exposure of Black males to exclusionary discipline in Sacramento County. In particular, this report highlights the high suspensions of Black boys and young men in Sacramento County public schools. Some of the key findings include:

  • Black males are 5.4 times more likely to be suspended in Sacramento County than the statewide average.
  • Nearly 18 Black males were suspended, per day, in the county.
  • Sacramento County has four school districts in the top 20 suspension districts for Black males in the State of California.
  • Sacramento City Unified is the most egregious suspension district for Black males in the State of California.
  • Black males in early childhood education (kindergarten through third grade) are 9.9 times more likely to be suspended than their peers (statewide).
  • One third of all Black male foster youth are suspended in Sacramento County.

Full Report

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The Negative Effects of Privilege on Educational Attainment: Gender, Race, Class, and the Bachelor’s Degree [Paper]

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The Negative Effects of Privilege on Educational Attainment: Gender, Race, Class, and the Bachelor’s Degree*

First published: 14 January 2014
https://doi.org/10.1111/ssqu.12003
Cited by: 1
*The author thanks Eric Lopez for outstanding research assistance. The article benefited from comments by Tad Krauze, Marc Silver, and the anonymous reviewers at SSQ. This research uses data from Add Health, a program project directed by Kathleen Mullan Harris and designed by J. Richard Udry, Peter S. Bearman, and Kathleen Mullan Harris at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and funded by grant P01‐HD31921 from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, with cooperative funding from 23 other federal agencies and foundations. Special acknowledgment is due to Ronald R. Rindfuss and Barbara Entwisle for assistance in the original design. Information on how to obtain the Add Health data files is available on the Add Health website (<http://www.cpc.unc.edu/addhealth>). No direct support was received from grant P01‐HD31921 for this analysis.

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Abstract

Objective

To show that in the contemporary United States, traditionally privileged categories of people—men, whites, and the super‐rich—complete four‐year college degrees at rates lower than their nonprivileged counterparts—women, nonwhites, and the “99 percent.”

Methods

Logistic regression and an educational transitions method are used on the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Waves 1 and 4) to predict, given college entrance, who completes a bachelor’s degree.

Results

Women, the lower 99 percent of the income distribution, and when economic resources are present, nonwhites all complete college at higher rates than men, the richest 1 percent, and whites, respectively. In a final model, rich white men as a single category are shown to complete college less than everyone else.

Conclusion

As previously excluded categories of people have gained access to higher education, the privileged are shifting their reproduction strategies away from schooling.

Students in Detroit Are Suing the State Because They Weren’t Taught to Read

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EDUCATION

Students in Detroit Are Suing the State Because They Weren’t Taught to Read

A federal judge has concluded that the Constitution doesn’t require schools to promote students’ literacy.

ALIA WONG

Students walk outside Detroit’s Pershing High, which isn’t one of the institutions named in the suit but was identified as one of the city’s lowest-performing schools CARLOS OSORIO / AP

What to do when a school is infested with vermin, when textbooks are outdated, when students can’t even read? Perhaps the answer is sue the government.

That’s what seven students in Detroit have done. Their class-action suit filed against the state of Michigan asserts that education is a basic right, and that they have been denied it.

 Usually, such education-equity cases wend their way through state courts, as all 50 state constitutions mandate public-education systems, while the country’s guiding document doesn’t even include the word education. But this case, Gary B. v. Snyder, was filed in federal court, and thus seeks to invoke the Constitution. And as of this week, it’s headed to the federal appeals court in Cincinnati.

The lawyers filing the suit—from the pro bono Los Angeles firm Public Counsel—contend that the students (who attend five of Detroit’s lowest-performing schools) are receiving an education so inferior and underfunded that it’s as if they’re not attending school at all. The 100-page-plus complaint alleges that the state of Michigan (which has overseen Detroit’s public schools for nearly two decades) is depriving these children—97 percent of whom are students of color—of their constitutional rights to liberty and nondiscrimination by denying them access to basic literacy. Almost all the students at these schools perform well below grade level in reading and writing, and, the suit argues, those skills are necessary to function properly in society. It’s the first case to argue that the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to become literate (and thus to be educated) because other rights in the Constitution necessarily require the ability to read.

 

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W.E.B. DuBois Predicted the Demise of HBCUs Nearly 60 Years Ago

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“Take for instance the current problem of the education of our children. By the law of the land today they should be admitted to the public schools. If and when they are admitted to these schools certain things will inevitably follow. Negro teachers will become rarer and in many cases will disappear. Negro children will be instructed in the public schools and taught under unpleasant if not discouraging circumstances. Even more largely than today they will fall out of school, cease to enter high school, and fewer and fewer will go to college. Theoretically, Negro universities will disappear. Negro history will be taught less or not at all, and as in so many cases in the past Negroes will remember their white or Indian ancestors and quite forget their Negro forebearers.”

dubois

READ THE FULL PIECE: W.E.B. DuBois Predicted the Demise of HBCUs Nearly 60 Years Ago

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Listen to the Interview

 

HBCU Digest   

hbcu digest

OUR COMMON GROUND :: Watch Night 2016

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We have explored and examined the many issues, events and collective experiences of our time all through this year, 2016. As a people we have been challenged with disappointment; thunders of terror at the extra-judicial murders of our Brothers and Sisters; the continuing captured of them in enslavement camps by the millions;the covert oppression of children in schools that fail them or prepare them for imprisonment camps; and the failure of our government to makes us whole. As on this night in 1862, we search for the ‘North Star’ still. I impress my life and the spirit of this radio broadcast each week in the lessons of the N’Guzo Saba, striving to respect and honor Black Truth, our TRUTH.
Each week, we make a place, a sanctuary to say and claim that truth. In this coming year, we are faced with the gravest form of oppression and racism seen by none of us in our lives.  Make no mistake, on the bed of a fledgling fascism they will make every effort to eviscerate our belief in our historical accomplishments, ourselves as a people, what is ours and what is owed. We must stand tall in the dancing glow of our Ancestors and stand strong and tall. We must be strategically vigilant and believe in our Truth and the possibilities of our people still.
OUR COMMON GROUND will continue to provide the sanctuary that offers clarity, armament, comfort and a secure place for our voice, with respect and passion.  We are committed to serious analysis, seeking appropriate outcomes and input and answers.  I recently passed my 35th anniversary as host of OUR COMMON GROUND, there will be changes but our mission will never waver.  We are ALTERNATIVE ACTIVIST RADICAL RADIO and will continue in that tradition. WE least afford to let up in the face of what is coming.  We must careful about how we adjust our lenses in lunging into the “new struggle” era. Credible, useful, accurate and clear examination and action is more necessary than ever.  We are in a period of “post reconstruction” with the most visceral and evil forces controlling our public agency. We are a people who know how to survive.  For our children we continue thus.  As for our government, we may be unable to stop what will happen, however, we must stand on our Truth.
Throughout our history, the only thing that we have ever asked the OCG Family is do what you can (UJIMA, NIA) to help us grow and to bring more comrades to the Sanctuary.
Thank you for your support throughout the year. We return LIVE on January 7th.
Wishing for us the Victories of our Past and Abundance and Prosperity in our Future.
Janice Graham
Executive Producer, Host
OUR COMMON GROUND
kwanzaa16
watchnight
Date: December 31
Wed, 1862-12-31

*On This date in 1862 the first Watch Night Services were celebrated in Back communities in America.

The Watch Night service can be traced back to gatherings also known as “Freedom’s Eve.” On that night, Black slaves and free blacks came together in churches and private homes all across the nation awaiting news that the Emancipation Proclamation actually had become law.  At the stroke of midnight, it was January 1, 1863; all slaves in the Confederate States were declared legally free. When the news was received, there were prayers, shouts and songs of joy as many people fell to their knees and thanked God.

Blacks have gathered in churches annually on New Year’s Eve ever since, praising God for bringing us safely through another year. It’s been over a century since the first Freedom’s Eve and tradition still brings us together at this time every year to celebrate “how we got over.” This celebration takes many African American decendants of slaves into a new year with praise and worship. The service usually begins anywhere from 7 p.m. To 10 p.m. And ends at midnight with the entrance of the New Year. Some people come to church first, before going out to celebrate, for others, church is the only New Year’s Eve event.

There have been instances where clergy in mainline denominations questioned the propriety of linking religious services with a secular holiday like New Year’s Eve. However, there is a reason for the importance of New Year’s Eve services in the Black experience in America.

Reference:
The African American Desk Reference
Schomburg Center for research in Black Culture
Copyright 1999 The Stonesong Press Inc. and
The New York Public Library, John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Pub.
ISBN 0-471-23924-

“Imagining Ourselves as Agentic: The Great Fallacy” :: Dr. Tommy J. Curry

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OUR COMMON GROUND with Janice Graham
“Imagining Ourselves as Agentic: The Great Fallacy”

Guest: Dr. Tommy J. Curry, Professor, Texas A&M University
Philosophy and African American Studies

12-10-16-curry-agentic2

December 10, 2016 :: LIVE :: 10 pm EST
Join us LIVE Chat and Call-In: http://bit.ly/AgenticCurry

AGENTIC

“1) A social cognition theory proposed by Stanford University Psychologist Albert Bandura that views people as self-organizing, proactive, self-reflective and self-regulating as times change. An agentic perspective states that we are not merely reactive organisms shaped by environmental forces or driven by inner impulses.

2) The capacity for human beings to make choices in the world. HUMAN AGENCY

We see the world as agents of change. We believe that we have choice over our actions and we strive to enable others to make informed, responsible decisions.”

Recently, Dr. Curry wrote in his persistent advocacy of Black males in America, “The reoccuring structure of Black males coping with their rape is to accept its impossibility and imagine themselves as agentic. We need psychologists and social workers in these communities willing to treat these boys as victims , and theorists willing to engage female perpetrated rape beyond the idea of sexual initiation.” In the context of all of us as victims of racial attack, we ask whether any of us can imagine ourselves as agentic and if such a preposition may be impeded by inherent fallacies. Dr. Curry always brings opportunities FOR “transformative discourse”. He will be joining us once again on OUR COMMON GROUND with Janice Graham.

12-10-16-curry-agenticabout Dr. Tommy J. Curry

Dr. Curry is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Texas A&M University. He is a Ray A. Rothrock Fellow 13′-16′ in the Department of Philosophy.

He is an editor of PhilPapers, Choice Magazine and a regular contributor to RacismReview.com and OUR COMMON GROUND. He is Critical Race Theorist, Anti-Colonialist, Applied Ethicist and Black philosopher.

His work in social justice, applied ethics, and bioethics concerns the present interpretation of the Belmont report, and the racial/class barriers to minority access to medical innovation in health care. He has been interviewed by Forbes.com, the Wall Street Journal, Salon.com and other popular venues for his opinions on politics, ethics, and racial justice issues.

His upcoming book in Black Studies and Black Manhood Studies | “The Man-Not” can be Pre-Ordered now on Amazon.com.

A must read is his OP-ED, When Black News Disappears: White Holds On Black Intellectuals’ Minds And Misinforming The Black Public

Racism Review | Op-Ed   Follow him on Twitter:  @drtjc

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