Category Archives: Racism/Diversity

Kids, Racism/Diversity

For Black Girls, Teenage Behavior is Criminal

From TakePart.com

We all watched in horror, the video of South Carolina school resources officer,  Ben Fields, of the Richland County Sheriff’s office, as he flipped  a black teen on her head and dragged her across a classroom floor as if she were a piece of trash. This because she began using her cell phone in a math class, against her teacher’s instruction.

This brings into question the kind of reality that a person in authority has in mind when a classroom disruption becomes criminal behavior requiring physical force.  She did not have a weapon. She was not threatening anyone. She was not following directions in a way that is pretty typical of teen in the throes of hormonal flux or any child, for that matter. We can think of all sorts of reasons that she did not comply instantly. It seems that this lack of instant submission that police officers seem taught to expect is a central factor in many of the police abuse cases that have been in the news lately.

As we work hard to raise our children and get them to adulthood safely, the school should be the one reliable safe place. It should be the one place that understands children, how their minds work and how their behavior varies with their humanity. It is not so anymore.  And it is especially not so for African American children. More……

Books We're Reading, Kids, Racism/Diversity

Between the world and Ta-Nehisi Coates – Every black mother should read…..

Gallery

Between-the-World-and-Me-Random-House“Crazy”….is what people feel when their reality doesn’t match that of the masses. “Crazy” is what many black folks have been made to feel upon entering the wider American culture. In many parts of the US, whites make blacks look and feel crazy because of their denial of racism.

“Between the World & Me” is a new, non-toxic, natural antidepressant. A balm of words, concocted by a master pharmacist of the black experience, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Senior Editor at The Atlantic Monthly. Ta-Nehesi puts racism on a glass slide and puts the slide under a microscope that not only magnifies for dissection, the pathogen thereon,  but allows one to verify the feeling caused by that pathogen.

This is a book that every mother, actually every black person, should read. It helps gel those streams of hurt, embarrassment, anger, disgust, frustration, sadness, reactive paranoia and as he points out, fear, that roll constantly off black people’s backs. In more solid form, one can more closely examine them and then toss them away. Or one can examine them, identify them and set up preventive barriers.

Kids, Racism/Diversity

“Carrying On” What did Ruby Dee & Ossie Davis teach their children about racism?

Carrying On
by Hasna Muhammad

(from Sankofa.org)  To see very touching photos of their mother-daughter experiences go to crumbnavigation.com

My parents, Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, are needed in times like these. They would join the voices of folks like Harry Belafonte, Danny Glover, and Alicia Keys to carry on about the resurgence of police killings of unarmed black and brown people; this Strange Fruit refrain. My role as a literary and visual artist and social activist begins at Sankofa.org, the place where dedicated, like-minded people are helping today’s artists use their influence to bring necessary attention to this and other grassroots movements.   More…

Kids, Racism/Diversity

Black children expelled from school 3 times more than their white counterparts

Black students with learning disabilities were suspended much more often than white students with the same problems.
Black students with learning disabilities were suspended much more often than white students with the same problems.

A study released today by the US Department of Education shows that racism is alive and well in public schools across the country.  This study included data from every school district in the country which showed:

  • Black students were expelled or suspended at triple the rate of whites
  • Black girls were expelled more often than most other students and at more than double the rate of white students
  • Black students had less access to qualified and trained teachers than white students
  • 25% of school districts pay teachers in less diverse schools up to $5000 more than teachers in predominantly black or Latino schools
  • This disparity in treatment begins early with black preschool students representing 43 percent of preschoolers suspended more than once when they are only 18 percent of the preschool population.

This early pattern of school mistreatment shapes black children to fit into the school to prison pipeline, with 16 percent (black students’ population) comprising 27 per cent of students referred to law enforcement and making up 31 per cent of students arrested in school. Recall the case of the five year old Florida girl who was handcuffed with her ankles bound for throwing a temper tantrum in 2005 or the six year old Georgia kindergartner who was handcuffed and taken to the police station  for having a meltdown over candy.