RaceWire

Rewriting History in Texas

2010-03-14T04:38:23Z

Rewriting history sounds like a daunting task, but an elite group of educational “experts” in Texas makes it look easy. In the Lone Star State, all you need to dictate education policy is an abiding faith in dead white men, an unshakeable belief in “free enterprise," and a coveted spot on a conservative-packed panel.

As we reported last summer, Texas educators and politicians have been embroiled in a fierce battle over standards for the state's history, government and economics textbooks, which come up for renewal every ten years. On Thursday, the right-wing-dominated 15-member Board of Education voted on a set of new guidelines for the next decade that seem to actually go back in history, harkening back to somewhere between, say, the Alamo and the War of Northern Aggression.

The 10-5 vote cemented an ideological revisionist campaign that activists decry as an assault on civil rights and historical reality. The guidelines, to be finalized and adopted in May following a public comment period, will enlighten students as to the following:

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America was founded by great men committed to molding the Republic according to their vision of biblical providence. Don't believe any of that hippy-dippy church-state separation stuff. (And don't assume that the First Amendment is any more important than the right to bear arms).

Capitalism is a sacrosanct principle of society, but shall now be referred to as “free enterprise” (the New York Times quotes board member Terri Leo: “Let’s face it, capitalism does have a negative connotation... You know, ‘capitalist pig!’ ”). And American “imperialism” will heretofore be described as “expansionism.”

Discussions of sex should not focus on gender identity, because that could lead to conversations about transgender people and other things conservative board members find icky.

When studying civil rights history, children should learn about the “unintended consequences” of major progressive social policies like the Great Society and Affirmative Action.

Pioneering activists like Dolores Huerta of United Farm Workers and Archbishop Oscar Romero don't deserve to be studied as influential political leaders.

Hip hop, due to its degraded content, should not be considered a genre of music in high school history curricula.

Last summer, the board considered proposals to shove social justice activists into history's dustbin. Children don't need to learn about figures like Thurgood Marshall and Cesar Chavez, the logic went, because their contributions to American society didn't merit a place in a history curriculum. Some of the more egregious ideas, particularly efforts to erase mentions of race, gender and inequality, were passed over in the final haggling. This week's debates nonetheless devolved into an ugly war of words, disputing everything from terminology used to describe America's system of government (they prefer "constitutional republic" to "democracy"), to whether to acknowledge the Federal Reserve in a discussion of economic history.

The “updated” standards, which bear the stamp of Christian-right ideologues (background checks via Texas Freedom Network) could have a ripple effect across the country, since the state's huge student population makes it a major textbook market.

But more importantly, the guidelines offer a glimpse into the minds of enormously influential people who operate outside the education bureaucracy and the legislature, whose dictates are underwritten by a hardline culture war. The collateral damage falls on Texas school children, who are mostly children of color, locked in a intensely segregated school system with huge racial disparities in academic achievement. Their minds will be sculpted by a right-wing cabal who reside in a myopic world that couldn't be further from these children's communities. The new textbook standards reveal that the authors know all too well that a young mind is a terrible thing to waste—especially when it can be pressed into the service of reactionary politics.

Image: "The Settlement of Austin's Colony, or The Log Cabin" (Texas State Library and Archives Commission).

Democrats Who Oppose Student Loan Reform Love Banks More Than They Care About Students

2010-03-11T19:15:41Z

Time's running out for student loan reform, and it's being held up by Democrats in Congress. CBS is reporting that some nine senators currently oppose SAFRA, the student loan reform bill that would replace government subsidies of private (and predatory) lenders like Sallie Mae with a direct student loan program. The bill is currently tied to the reconciliation "fix-it" bill for health care.

The Congressional Budget Office last year estimated that SAFRA would mean a $87 billion savings for taxpayers. And if SAFRA doesn't pass, officials have warned that Pell grants, which currently serve 8 million low-income college students, would get cut from their current maximum of $5350 to a measly $2150. But SAFRA would actually increase the current rate to $5,550 and be allowed to grow with inflation plus 1 percent every year thereafter.

In the wake of national protests against tuition increases, SAFRA is a much-needed piece of policy for students of color. These days, nearly 70 percent of undergrads graduate with student loan debt. And the average debt level in 2008 was $23,200. Students deserve better than what the largely unregulated student loan industry is currently providing.

But many of the senators who oppose SAFRA are in deep with leading student loan company Sallie Mae, and have taken on the company's talking points as their own. Namely that if SAFRA passed, Sallie Mae would lose 30 percent of its workforce, a claim that Pedro de la Torre from Campus Progress neatly crushed. He wrote for The Nation:

According to Sallie Mae's own numbers, even if SAFRA becomes law and the subsidized Family Federal Educational Loan (FFEL) program is abolished, the company may actually end next year with nearly the same number of employees in the United States as it has now, and possibly even more.

]]> Six Democrats (Senators Thomas R. Carper of Delaware, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Bill Nelson of Florida, Mark Warner of Virginia and Jim Webb of Virginia) have nevertheless continued to maintain this line, and jointly signed a letter to Harry Reid announcing that they wouldn't back health care reform if it included SAFRA. Thank goodness the folks at Firedoglake show that the number of college students in each of these senators' respective states completely dwarfs the number of student loan industry employees.

Students of color have reason to be angry. And not just because Sallie Mae's been accused of racial discrimination in its lending policies. Because on the whole, 39 percent of undergrads graduate with unmanageable levels of debt, defined as monthly loan payment that exceeds 8 percent of their income. But 55 percent of Black students have unmanageable levels of student debt, and 58 percent of Latino students leave college with unmanageable debt.

And because it's illegal to refinance private loans, many students get locked into their loans with exorbitant interest rates. In this economy, with so many other pressing bills to pay and so few jobs to be had, defaulting on student loans is not unheard of. Black and Latino graduates end up defaulting on their loans at five and two twices the rate, respectively, of white students.

SAFRA ain't a joke, folks. It's urgent and it's necessary. Call your senator today. Especially if you happen to live in Arkansas, Virginia, Maryland, Nebraska, Florida or Delaware!

Conservatives: Immigration's Bad for the Environment

2010-03-11T18:01:39Z

As the immigration reform debate heats up on Capitol Hill, right wing opponents are uping the ante with sensationalist and factually inaccurate claims. The latest? Immigration increases the country's ecological footprint.

This latest claim came as part of a new report released by Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR), an alleged front group for uber conservative Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR):

Mass immigration is increasing America’s Ecological Footprint (EF), pushing our country deeper into ecological deficit. Approaching 310 million, U.S. population currently exceeds the carrying capacity of our land and resource base. Nevertheless, high immigration levels exacerbate these trends by pushing our population to ever more precarious heights, preventing U.S. population stabilization, forcing annual growth rates to more than three million net new residents, and driving our numbers to a projected 440 million by 2050.

Read the rest.

They're wrong, of course. As Walter Ewing points out, there's no one-to-one relationship between population size and pollution. In fact, newly arrived immigrants are probably among the most ecologically friendly folks around. They're more likely to use public transportation and less likely to waste food.

But consider this the latest round in green xenophobia.

Photo credit: Southern Poverty Law Center.

A Fat Tax on Thin Wallets: Soda Politics Fizzle in NY

2010-03-11T17:14:01Z

Can the government cure an epidemic by passing a bill? Sounds too good to be true, but like many health claims, New York's so-called “fat tax” proposal comes with a big disclaimer: the idea of reducing obesity by imposing a surcharge on unhealthy habits churns the debate over equity, race and privilege in our food system.

Amidst an imploding budget, Governor David Paterson's proposed “sin tax” on sugary soft drinks is an awkward attempt to legislate dietary changes. Some hail it as a challenge to the junk food hegemony, but in reality, the poorest New Yorkers, particularly those living in racially segregated underserved neighborhoods, need a lot more than a pinch in their wallet to embrace a healthier “lifestyle.”

Ideally, the obesity tax is designed to encourage people to opt for water, juice or some other alternative to the usual hypersweetened fizzy elixirs. As with the cigarette taxes that many credit for reducing smoking, the idea is to deter people from harming themselves by raising the consequences of making an unhealthy choice.

If only it were that simple. Consumption-based excise taxes are generally considered to be regressive, since they pose a greater burden on struggling households that can't afford any price hike, however morally correct.

]]> One obesity researcher at the University of Alberta (apparently, even an awesome universal health care system doesn't cure fatness), told CanWest News that such taxes could result in punishment but not discipline:

“It's always a concern when you talk about taxation of food, you have to figure out who consumes those foods," said John Spence. Foods high in fat and calories and low in nutrition can often be cheaper, and more filling, than healthier foods. Adding a tax to the foods low-income people already tend to opt for would be akin to "taxing the poor," said Spence.

"I don't think a junk food tax, or a soda tax, or a bad food tax — whatever it is — on its own is going to be effective," he added. Other measures, such as subsidizing nutritious foods to make them more affordable would have to be taken in concert in order for a junk food tax to really make a difference, he said.

When Paterson first rolled out the fat tax in 2008, New York Times columnist Clyde Haberman challenged the Governor's logic: why levy a "progressive" tax that targets the poor while allowing agribusiness and other food industries to keep fattening their bottom line while fattening our bottoms?

“If the governor is really insistent that we’re levying this tax because of a public health concern about obesity, that leads me to ask: O.K., where’s the fast-food restaurant tax?” said James Parrott, the chief economist and deputy director of the Fiscal Policy Institute, a liberal research group....

By absolutely no coincidence, the New Yorkers who pay these particular taxes tend to be those who can afford them the least. Poor people spend disproportionately on smokes, booze and unhealthy soft drinks, not to mention on the prayer that God will drop everything else and shower lottery millions on them.

These are “habits that are more common among those who have the least amount of political power,” said Andrea Batista Schlesinger, executive director of the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy, a liberal but nonpartisan research center in New York. “To do something in the most politically efficient way is to tax or hike the fees of those who have the least power,” she said.

But once again, Paterson, who has had his own moral position challenged in recent weeks, is using dietary moralism to plug the budget gap. The rhetoric about obesity appears to be incidental to the main political reality: tax hikes are hard to swallow in times of fiscal crisis, so politicians may sugar-coat them with a social cause and target them toward people who wouldn't have donated to their campaigns anyway.

It's true that Paterson has promised to couple the tax with other initiatives to encourage exercise and enhance access to healthy foods in underserved neighborhoods. And none of the concerns raised about the soda tax should foster public sympathy for the beverage industry, which has countered Paterson's paternalism with a populist crusade for soft drink liberty.

Taxation, when implemented equitably, can be a useful lever for changing people's behavior. But it doesn't seem that this proposed tax was designed with food justice or health equity in mind, given its scientific uncertainty and inherent racial and class bias. So far, we're not seeing a parallel effort to dramatically change the urban food landscape, so that nutritious fresh produce is as accessible to poor kids of color as it is to yuppies living next door to a swanky food co-op (but wait, that would require spending money, and the whole point is to plug the budget hole, right?).

Will the First Lady's ambitious national anti-obesity initiative get snared on the narrow “personal responsibility” canard? Or could the campaign raise the profile of obesity, and its race and class contours, to advance structural reforms that involve positive incentives, public education, and the political and economic empowerment of consumers?

For now, in place of a national health plan, states are chewing on a fat tax. Should we be cheering Paterson's dietary evangelism when it falls heavily on people already paying for socioeconomic inequality with their health? Can the government make a moral case for extracting money from the poor for their own good, when massively subsidized corn growers continue to swell urban America's sweet tooth?

Those questions are a little too heavy for Albany, which seems more worried about balanced budgets than about balanced diets, or for that matter, balancing the health burden of marginalized communities.

(h/t Robert Knight at WBAI)

UPDATE: Monica Potts makes some interesting points in response to my piece on TAPPED. Clearly, we're both in favor of progressive policies to check the obesity epidemic, but she takes the more optimistic view that even though this tax is essentially regressive, the potential disproportionate impact on poor people is offset by the overall progressiveness of the projected behavioral modification. Granted, New York has made efforts to enhance access to healthy food in marginalized communities, but we're still very far from a comprehensive movement toward real food equity. Meanwhile, the punitive tone of policies like this still hit hardest the people who are already struggling with both poor health and limited options. (As for the scientific uncertainty, yes, we know excess sugary drinks are linked to health problems. But I've included a link to an analysis of fat-tax policies that raises questions about how useful a tax would be in *promoting* healthier choices, which is ostensibly the key to this policy). No doubt that rationalizing the price of harmful products can have an impact on unhealthy behavior, but advocates should be concerned about the emphasis on an essentially regressive tax, while efforts to tackle the structural issues are limited and harder to sustain in a time of fiscal crisis.

Image: Best Ad

Immigration Reform in 2010? Here's What's on The Table Right Now.

2010-03-10T18:01:16Z

President Obama hasn't abandoned immigration reform, mostly because immigration rights advocates won't let him forget about the promises he made. We've been hearing whispers and murmurs about talks that President Obama has had with lead immigration bill authors Senators Chuck Schumer and Lindsey Graham.

Schumer, a Democrat from New York, has been working for nearly a year on crafting a bill with Graham, a South Carolina Republican--and, the lone Republican working on immigration right now--that will pass through the Senate. We've heard no word that Rep. Luis Gutierrez from Illinois, who introduced his own bill in December, was there. (Though the unofficial word is that Nancy Pelosi and Zoe Lofgren, who chairs the House immigration subcommittee, don't want to move anything through the House till they know the Senate will pass a bill.)

But La Opinion's been keeping up with the latest developments from Schumer's office. ColorLines spoke with Bill Hing, an immigration law professor at UC Davis and USF, about what's on the table right now.

So this is what we're looking at right now, starting with the positive:

-The 600,000 people with current deportation orders would get to stay and apply for legalization, unless they have a criminal record. This could include a broad range of people, from folks who've overstayed their visas to people who've been rounded up in raids. It's looking like this bill will provide no protection for people with criminal deportation orders. Unfortunately, this is no surprise.

-An official registration system for people already in the country. There will likely be an open window for people to come forward and register and begin a legalization process. They would probably have to pay a "penalty," $500 or so. A background check would be conducted. Proof of employment would have to be provided--no deadbeats or burdens on the public allowed, is the implication. Employers would be able to register their workers who are undocumented with no penalty.

]]> -The implementation of an "identity verification biometric system" that would function like a national ID card, but with an added eyeprint or fancy fingerprint. Biometrics as an identification device are very broad, but ultimately, it calls for very high-tech, and some would say, highly intrusive, way of tracking people in the country.

-More border "security" enforcement.. This likely means more money for border enforcement like that lovely 2,000-mile wall under perpetual construction along the U.S./Mexico border, more support for the electronic surveillance and other militaristic tactics currently in use along the border. The conservative definition of "enforcement" also includes raids and roundups, a tactic meant to terrorize people in the country, so those sorts of methods would likely be bolstered as well. But like the healthcare reform debate has shown, there won't be any so-called comprehensive reform without some compromises. Advocates are expecting that this will be one of the big ones.

How much will be lost by the time we get to the finish line? And when exactly will immigration reform happen? This year, like we are being told to believe, or next year, which seems like the very likely reality? Are these quiet meetings just empty gestures, meant to abate the palpable anger within the immigration rights community? For now, all eyes are on the March 21 "Change Takes Courage" march in right now, where thousands of families, students and immigrants rights activists are expected to turn out in Washington, D.C. to demand comprehensive reform.

It's Official: Women of Color Feel Impact of Racial Wealth Gap The Worst

2010-03-09T21:23:37Z

Click to enlarge.

It always helps to have research to confirm what you already know about racial inequity in America. But occasionally, even when the news is not new, the findings turn out to be appallingly dire, shocking even to the sensibilities of cynical people who find it hard to be surprised anymore. (That would be this blogger.)

Such is the case with the latest report on women of color and the racial wealth gap from the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, released yesterday, on International Women's Day.

Take a look at a few choice findings from "Lifting As We Climb: Women of Color, Wealth and America's Future":

-Single Black women (across all ages, from age 18 to 64) have a median wealth of $100 and single Latinas have a median wealth of $120. Single white women clock in at $41,000.
-Almost half of all Black women and Latinas have zero wealth or negative wealth. That is, their debts exceed their assets.
-Young women (aged 18 to 35) of all races have a median wealth of zero.
-And even though white women (from 36 to 49 years old) have a median wealth of $42,600, women of color in the same age bracket have a median wealth valued at $5.
-Women of color 65 and older are least likely to receive retirement income from pensions or other assets.

When it comes to every kind of financial asset that people can call their own--cash, bank accounts to actually hold their cash in, homes, stocks, bonds and businesses--women of color have less. Across the board, for every kind of financial asset, at every age and no matter whether they're single, married or divorced. Women of color have less than their white female counterparts. Less than their Black and Latino male counterparts, who still retain more wealth than white females. But each of these groups' wealth is trumped by the wealth that white men at every age bracket own.

And this is where, I know, we all start saying: what else is new?

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But the findings are an important avenue for understanding exactly how financial inequality becomes institutionalized and entrenched. Insight Center folks take a particular interest in wealth--defined as net worth, "the total value of one's assets minus debts"--as an indicator of financial stability in communities because wealth (and the racial disparities that accompany it) are transferred from one generation to the next.

And it's their savings and assets that people turn to when they've lost their jobs, when their kids get sick, when the car needs repairing, when bills need to get paid. Wealth is a measure of how well we can sustain ourselves through the lean times, or whether or not communities are able to sustain themselves at all.

The racial and gender wealth gap is persistent and severe for women of color. We need new policy to deal with the burden of institutionalized inequity. I like Insight's suggestions, which include:

-Better data collection that is disaggregated by race, gender and ethnicity. Most data available for Asian Americans obscures the complexity of the Asian American experience, and even less information is available about Native Americans and Middle Easterners.
-Support for the Employee Free Choice Act

-Eliminate asset limit clauses that bar people from being eligible for public assistance, or else public assistance will only keep people of color, and especially women of color, from achieving financial security.

-Institute minimum benefits for Social Security.

The Redeemed Immigrant: NY Gov. Makes Exception to Corrupt Rules

2010-03-08T14:25:24Z

After the mistakes he made as a kid nearly got him kicked out of the country, Qing Hong Wu has gotten a precious second chance. Embattled New York Governor David Paterson took a brief respite from a maelstrom of political scandal to act as the good samaritan this weekend: Paterson's pardon of Wu set in motion a legal process that will allow the 29 year-old Chinese immigrant to remain in the United States and seek citizenship.

Ironically, it was his desire to become an American citizen that landed him in the clutches of immigration officials. Under the rigid rules governing deportation of "criminal aliens," Wu was slated for removal after he came forward to apply for naturalization and revealed his record.

]]> Fifteen years ago, growing up as a working-class kid in Manhattan's Chinatown, Wu, who immigrated legally to the United States at age 5, became entangled with a dangerous crowd. He took part in several muggings with other teens and landed in a reformatory.

The New York Times ran a moving story on Wu's transformation. Inspired by some stern words from an Italian-American judge, Wu served his time, got his GED, and after his release, worked his way up to from clerk to VP at a major company. But once he came forward to secure legal status as a citizen, his past resurfaced and threatened him with a punishment he never anticipated.

His recently naturalized mother regretted not jumping through the hoops sooner in order to protect her son:

Mr. Wu’s mother, Floren Wu-Li, 57, blames herself. Interviewed in the tiny sixth-floor walkup on Spring Street where Mr. Wu lived with his fiancée, she acknowledged that he would have derived citizenship if she had secured it for herself while he was still a minor. But she was naturalized only four years ago, when she was allowed to take the test in Chinese.

“We were very poor and worked very hard and had no time to look after Qing when he was a child,” she said, weeping as her daughter translated. “I had no time to learn English back then.”

No doubt immigrant advocates will hail Wu's pardon as a victory. But the redemption story shouldn't eclipse the countless other stories that never come to public light, stories with unhappier endings. Those include immigrants who never committed an actual criminal offense, but were nabbed nonetheless in ICE dragnets. There are also many others like Wu who made some bad decisions, but unlike Wu, never had a real chance to right their course in adulthood. Then there are youth of all backgrounds shunted into the juvenile justice system as children and criminalized for life.

As Governor Paterson noted in a public statement, Wu's case exemplifies the potential for individual transformation, but it also provides "the opportunity to make a forceful statement about the harsh inequity and rigidity of the immigration laws."

Politicians and the media are always intrigued by stories of personal triumph. But the uniqueness of Wu's story isn't so much his remarkable individual struggle, but the systemic injustices that prevent individuals like him from realizing their human potential. We can try to fix immigration policy one pardon at a time. But it's much more efficient to hold the entire immigration system accountable for upholding the civil rights of all who pass through it. You could call it "amnesty." Or just call it redemption for a system that has long trespassed against the least powerful among us.

Image: Todd Heisler / The New York Times

No Place Like Home: The U.N. on America's Housing System

2010-03-06T06:48:10Z

Housing is a human right. That's not a phrase you hear often in our political discourse, even though the foreclosure crisis and recession have made shelter an increasingly precarious resource for millions across the country. On the most basic level, is it that unreasonable to think human beings have a right to a roof over their heads? From a philosophical angle, what does it mean for an individual, family, or group not to have a place to call home, and how does that kind of physical insecurity affect a community's ability to thrive?

An international perspective might help us square the hierarchy of needs. A United Nations Human Rights Council report on the U.S. housing system articulates the bleak realization now dawning on a divided America: there aren't enough affordable homes for everyone, and depending on your racial, ethnic or economic background, your right to shelter is rapidly crumbling down.

The report, presented by Special Rapporteur on housing Raquel Rolnik, identifies key housing injustices: institutionalized discrimination, poverty, a freewheeling real estate market, the bias of policymakers who fail to see the link between homelessness and building sustainable homes.

]]> While largely based on a recent tour of six cities, the study traces the history of postwar housing segregation, from the warehousing of poor Black families in rental tracts to the redlining of suburbia into a white-only zone. Today, unmet needs continue to blight the housing landscape:

In past years there were significant cuts in low-income housing assistance programmes. Budget cuts in the 1980s resulted in the gradual erosion and poor maintenance of the public housing system. Further subsequent funding cuts have also significantly affected the preservation of public housing. By the early 1990s, hundreds of thousands of public housing units had become dilapidated. Over the past decade there has been a net loss of approximately 170,000 public housing units due to deterioration and decay, and much of the current public housing stock needs substantial repairs and rehabilitation. However, annual funding for public housing fell by 25 per cent between 1999 and 2006.

When federal funding is inadequate, housing agencies reduce their own expenses. Measures have included shifting units to tenants with higher incomes (who can be charged higher rents than lower-income households but typically have less need for assistance), or cutting back in areas such as security or maintenance.

The study also notes that the Section 8 housing voucher program, despite purporting to offer residents "choice" in the housing market, is so limited that it serves only a portion of eligible low-income families, while the supply of affordable public housing evaporates.

Other problems are ingrained in the architecture of exclusion:

The link between housing and health was stressed to the Special Rapporteur throughout her visit. Poor housing conditions expose residents -- especially children -- to a number of diseases. Most residents of public housing with whom the Special Rapporteur spoke complained of asthma, attributed to mould from poor maintenance of units. A resident in Los Angeles described living in slum housing conditions with rats, cockroaches, bedbugs, deteriorated piping and lead-based paint, and as a result developing chronic asthma....

During the mission, the Special Rapporteur observed many families living in subsidized housing units in conditions of severe overcrowding. This was particularly the case amongst immigrant families in Los Angeles, and most strikingly on Pine Ridge Native American Reservation, where it was described as commonplace to have three to four families living in a three-bedroom house. The conditions in the houses on the reservation were the worst seen by the Special Rapporteur during her mission, evidence of the urgent and severe need for additional subsidized housing units there.

Housing inequality--exacerbated by the subprime crisis and its disproportionate impact communities of color--has a ripple effect on other human rights to educational and economic opportunity:

The 2008 concluding observations of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination on the report of the United States expressed deep concern that minority groups are disproportionately concentrated in poor areas characterized by substandard housing conditions. The Committee’s recommendations on this issue are firmly supported by the Special Rapporteur. The Committee also stated its concern regarding the de facto racial segregation in United States public schools. In many communities this issue is directly linked to housing, as some public school districts are funded by the property taxes of the local community, thus providing more resources to schools in wealthier neighbourhoods.

And those with no homes at all reflect the worst forms of discrimination, a racially polarized and stigmatized population that is systematically undercounted. Despite some movement toward more equitable treatment, policymakers continue to criminalize the homeless and needlessly break apart families.

More than 1.5 million children in the United States experience homelessness each year. In many cases, there are no adequate shelter facilities where parents and children can stay together and children are often removed from their parents and placed in foster care. The Family Unification Program (FUP) which aims to prevent this practice urgently needs more funds. A positive step is the resolution introduced in June 2009 by Congresswoman Maxine Waters in the House of Representatives on the right of children to adequate housing (H. Res. 582). While not yet adopted by Congress, this resolution recognizes the right of children and youth to adequate housing and states that projects that provide services to parents and other caretakers to prevent possible homelessness of youth in crisis should be created and maintained.

The report offers various recommendations for improving housing stock and developing more sustainable housing and home lending policies--such as the elimination of housing barriers facing formerly incarcerated people. One of the last suggestions is more open-ended:

Residents of public housing should have direct, active and effective participation in the planning and decision-making process affecting their access to housing. Residents should be seen as essential partners working alongside the Government in transforming public housing.

This idea embodies the core of housing as a right rather than a privilege. Underserved communities have for decades been forced to accept the policies handed down by bureaucrats who claim to know best where and how the poor should live. To make housing a truly responsive and equitable system, it requires a political framework that respects residents as central stakeholders, entitled not only to a place to call home, but to the power and responsibility of real ownership.

Image: Picture the Homeless

Anarchists Draw Heat After CA Student Walk-Outs

2010-03-05T22:58:49Z

The fallout from yesterday's massive student protests in California continues.

After a day of mostly peaceful rallies and demonstrations, the scene took a violent turn in Oakland when a group of about over a hundred protestors marched onto the Interstate and clashed with police. In total, more than 150 people were arrested.

The group, which was allegedly led by a group of white anarchists, is drawing heat from activists of color for using the protests as an opportunity to cause a ruckus at the expense of young folks of color who always end up taking the blame. Nico Dacumos wrote:

At issue here is not so much the political ideology of mostly white black bloc anarchists, but the ways that their incitement of actions here in Oakland speaks to an entitlement and privilege that makes them think it is okay to encourage people of color, mostly African American and Latino males, to engage in "violent" forms of protest when they are already groups targeted and abused by the police.
...In the end, I'm thinking about all the white kids in black I saw laughing and running down 8th Street free as shit while my friends Cooper and Puck, who went into today acting as documentation and legal observer, are sitting in jail because they wanted to support and protect the young people and people of color who were headed to the freeway behind back bloc-ers waving Syndicalist flags.

California Sobriety Checkpoints Prove Profitable for Cities While Bankrupting Immigrants

2010-03-03T19:02:47Z

A new report by the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley with California Watch found that in 2009 California's sobriety checkpoints nabbed about 3,000 drunk drivers off the road but also impounded the cars of 24,000 unlicensed drivers.

The state-aided checkpoints, which net $40 million annually in fines and seizures, are often in or near Latino neighborhoods, and vehicles seized for lack of drivers licenses mostly come from people of color -- "often illegal immigrants," according to the report.

In 1993, one year before California voters would approve Prop. 187, State Senator Elaine Alquist (D-San Jose), introduced state bill SB 976, which mandated the state stop issuing drivers license to undocumented immigrants, which Governor Pete Wilson later signed in to law. Today, while many immigrants can purchase a car and automobile insurance they cannot obtain a drivers license.

According to the report "Car seizures at DUI checkpoints prove profitable for cities", districts with large Latino population net the most car seizures. In South Gate, a Los Angeles County city where Latinos make up 92 percent of the population, police confiscated an average of 86 vehicles per operation last fiscal year and an average of 12 drivers under the influence of drugs.

But the practice continues because checkpoints are lucrative for cash-strapped cities since they're subsidized by the federal government and turn high profits from citations, towing and daily storage charges. The report also finds checkpoints are lucrative for police officers because many of them are working overtime. The Moreno Valley Police Department in Riverside County averaged 38 officers at each operation last year, six times more than federal guidelines say is required.

]]> The Investigative Reporting Program’s report did not find evidence that police departments set up checkpoints to specifically target Latino neighborhoods, but the outcome illustrates otherwise. And with budget deficits across the state, California will see an unprecedented number of checkpoints in 2010. Police are scheduling 2,500 of the operations in every region of California. Some departments have even begun to broaden the definition of sobriety checkpoints to include checking for unlicensed drivers.

For a list of things you can do to keep undocumented immigrants from losing their cars, El Reflejo provides a list of things we can do to keep people informed:

Check the Crime and Public Safety section of your local paper for checkpoints, set up a Google alert, or sign up for text message alerts on Copwatchla.org. Then, when you find out where the next checkpoint will be, let people know! Make a listserv, post a bulletin, send text messages, make announcements at church, organization meetings or any other groups. My friend’s dad even keeps a sign in his trunk to place around checkpoints so people know where they are. Be creative!

How Exactly Does A Lasso Turn Into A Noose? And Other Thoughts On UC Campus Racism

2010-03-02T20:38:53Z

The student who left a noose hanging in the UCSD campus library came forward last week and has since been suspended. Yesterday, she apologized in a statement published by The Guardian, UCSD's student newspaper.

In her words:

I found a small piece of rope on the ground earlier in the day. While I was hanging out with my friends a bit later, we tried jump-roping with it and making it into a lasso. My friend then took the rope and tied it into a noose. I innocently marveled at his ability to tie a noose, without thinking of any of its connotations or the current racial climate at UCSD. I left soon after with one of my friends for Geisel to study, still carrying the rope. After a bit of studying I picked up the rope to play with, and ended up hanging it by my desk. It was a mindless act and stupid mistake. When I got up to leave, a couple hours later, I simply forgot about it. This was Tuesday night.

She ends by saying:

I know what I did was offensive — regardless of my intentions — I am just trying to say I’m sorry. As a minority student who sympathizes with the students that have been affected by the recent issues on campus, I am distraught to know that I have unintentionally added to their pain.

Where to start? Should I dig into the comments that people have left beneath her statement? The ones that display incredulity at the fact that she's still suspended when, duh, she didn't mean any harm by her actions? Should I unleash my anger at the 524 people (I see you, Asian American students!!) who've joined the Facebook group "UCSD Students Outraged That People Are Outraged About The Compton Cookout"? (I am, however, heartened by the 854 students who've signed this one.)

Would it be instructive to delve into the collective psyche of our society, and that which lives in the bubble of college life? Is it worth commenting on the particular strain of frat boy bravado that shuts down every kind of social awareness and common sense and turns everything into a joke? Would it be helpful to write an indictment of the university administration that, in its silence and complacency, gives its tacit support of the racism in its midst?

The sources of my anger are many, and after reading this woman's apology, they continue to grow. There are moments--when I am feeling charitable--that I think it's possible this student had no idea what she was doing, that she just did not have the learned experience or personal imagination or mental capacity to make the connection between the symbolism of a noose and the events unfolding on her campus. Her apology is earnest, she writes sincerely, she is contrite.

]]> But if that's the case, I think we have even more reason to be disturbed. Racial ignorance is in many ways so much worse than the kind deployed by people with actual malicious intent. Last Friday, the Black Cultural Center at the University of Missouri was vandalized when thousands of cotton balls were tossed all over the building. At a town hall that the university held in response to the incident, people expressed frustration that some folks simply could not make the connection between Blacks in America and cotton.

What would I say to this gal if I could talk to her directly? A noose is never just a noose. And it's not just your fault alone that you didn't know that. The university where you go to school bears some responsibility for not funding ethnic studies, for obscuring the history of people of color in this country, for cutting funding for recruitment and retention programs that would make UCSD a vibrant, racially diverse campus. The state must be held accountable for making public education inaccessible to Blacks, Latinos, Native American, Southeast Asian and Pacific Islander students. You've got a lot to learn, but we've all been let down by institutions that turn a blind eye to the inequity and racism in our world.

Click here to read the 32 demands for policy change the UCSD Black Student Union has issued to the university administration.

White House To Invest $850 Million For Black Colleges And Universities

2010-03-02T19:02:22Z

An 8 person drumline from Virginia State University plays in the Cross Hall of the White House before an event honoring Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

In 1980, President Jimmy Carter signed Executive Order 12232, which established a federal program "to strengthen and expand the capacity of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCU) to provide a quality education."

Last week President Obama held an HBCU event at the White House to announce his executive order strengthening Carter's initiative decades earlier. Obama says these schools have felt the pain of the recession (and his own cuts last year) the most because they enroll a higher proportion of low and middle-income students. His order includes $850 million which will ensure students can afford a college education and HBCUs can improve and expand facilities.

Beverly Daniel Tatum, president of Spelman College, the oldest historically Black college for women in the U.S. notes that HBCU are still relevant to the nation's future, even if we have a Black president.

Consider the fact that while the 105 public and private HBCUs make up only 3% of today's colleges and universities, more than 20% of all African-American college graduates attended an HBCU. Particularly in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), where Black students are woefully under-represented in most predominantly white institutions, HBCUs have demonstrated great effectiveness in fostering academic success.

The assistance comes at a perfect time. With all the hate crimes happening at public and private institutions this year we may see more applicants applying to HBCUs.

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Love, Exciting and New: Van Jones Tells Glenn Beck to Come Aboard -- We're Expecting You

2010-03-01T21:49:09Z

Van Jones shows that the work to bring racial equity to the green economy is not over, but in our hands... and in our collective hands, the work must be guided by love.

Take that Glenn.

(Listen to Glenn Beck's response after the jump.)

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Start a Conversation That Says No to Racial Profiling

2010-03-01T19:11:11Z

RaceWire's parent company, the Applied Research Center, partnered with the Rights Working Group in the production of the video above.

In the aftermath of 9/11, the Rights Working Group (RWG) works to restore the “American commitment to protect civil liberties and human rights for all people in the U.S.” Last week, RWG launched the The Racial Profiling: Face the Truth campaign which will build alliances amongst directly-affected communities, coordinate advocacy efforts and field activities, and educate and mobilize broad support for legislative and policy reforms.

The timing of this effort couldn’t be better.

As police officers accused of abusing people of color continue to be routinely acquitted, as the federal government heightens airport security checks of passengers from 14 mostly Muslim nations, and as Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials and local sheriffs continue to unfairly target and inhumanely treat dark-skinned immigrants, it’s clear that racial and religious profiling continues to be standard operating procedure.

A recent USA Today poll finds that 71% of people said they were in favor of racial profiling at airports. That’s a far cry from the broad support that existed for a federal measure to end racial profiling first introduced in 2001, which quickly evaporated in the wake of the attacks of September 11, leaving the proposed legislation to languish.

]]> But efforts to jumpstart the federal bill are now underway in the current session of Congress. According to Rights Working Group, “Now is the time to have conversations and share our stories on how racial and religious profiling impacts our communities. This is the time to make a powerful public statement about the changes that need to happen - changes that will guarantee the protection of our civil liberties and human rights.”

The Face the Truth campaign has three policy objectives:

Secure passage of federal legislation to ban racial profiling - the "End Racial Profiling Act."

Revise the June 2003 Department of Justice Federal Guidance on Racial Profiling to eliminate the border and national security loophole, to include profiling based on religion and ethnic origin, and to ensure that the guidance is enforceable.

Eliminate Department of Homeland Security programs that result in racial profiling in immigration enforcement.

Please share and distribute the video widely and encourage your friends to join this campaign. The mobilizing has now begun to generate interest and recruit hosts for the growing schedule of local conversations that will be taking place over the next several months.

Join today by visiting www.nightof1000conversations.org for the conversation and campaign resources.

You'll find information on how to join or host a conversation and easily download a toolkit and everything you need to get started

Women on Cash Assistance Testify on The Hill to Change TANF Policies

2010-02-27T00:12:29Z

In D.C. these days, it’s hard for anyone to yell loudly enough to get heard over the buzz of health care reform. But in the shadow of Obama’s healthcare summit yesterday, about a hundred congressional staffers, reporters and advocates piled into a House briefing room to listen to low-income mothers talk about welfare.

Yesterday’s briefing was organized by the Women’s Economic Justice (WEJ) network, a cohort of low-income women’s community organizations. Several current and former cash assistance recipients were there to share their stories and I also spoke in my capacity as a researcher to the serious need for a reform of the Temporary Aid to Needy Families program.

The women on the first panel spoke through tears about the failures of welfare reform to help them get out poverty. In the words of one mother, “TANF was my biggest barrier to getting me and my family out of poverty.”

About halfway through the first panel, Congressman Jim McDermott, a Democrat from Washington, stepped in and spoke for a few minutes about the need to change the way we deal with poverty and re-reform welfare. He condemned TANF policies that abandon children and push women into lives of working poverty.

TANF (pronounced TAN-ef) was created in 1996 during welfare reform in the Clinton years. It instituted time limits on aid and made cash assistance tied to a person’s ability to find work. The poverty didn’t go away, but the help for families in need sure disappeared fast. In 2008, there were 1.7 million families on TANF, down from 4.8 million families in the pre-welfare reform years.

]]> “People are very worried about Haiti right now,” McDermott said, “But you can see many of the same things here.”

Diana Spatz, the director of LIFETIME and an organizer of the briefing spoke after the first panel. “We’re not looking for pity here,” she said. “These are realities that we can change by changing this policy.”

The briefing, which was conducted again later in the day for Senate staffers, called Congress to restructure TANF to substantively keep families from falling into the depths of poverty. Several women demanded that the program be adjusted to allow mothers to continue to receive cash assistance while they attend college. Others recounted stories that expose the failure of the program to support women facing domestic violence. And several women said that as long as there is no time limit on poverty, there should be no time limit on receipt of cash assistance.

Though the Obama administration has announced it will not move to reauthorize the TANF program but, rather, will extend it for a year, the WEJ groups refused to be silent about what is needed to end poverty. For them, reauthorizing TANF is as urgent as health care reform.

Check out my recent ColorLines investigation about how the TANF program has pushed families of color precariously close to the edge.