Jul

21

Arrested for BAHWB (Being at Home While Black)

Filed Under Black/African American Issues, Education and Academia, Race and Racism | 6 Comments

Preeminent scholar Hanry Louis Gates was arrested for “breaking into” his own home.   It’s one of those moments, that I’d love to use to challenge those people who suggest that the discrimnation people of color face is reduced to “class” disadvantage.  All the degrees in the world, huge grants, and the class status that being a Harvard Professor affords, still doesn’t shelter one from racism.

Here’s the story on Yahoo!.

Apr

10

Racist Views of Asian Suicide

Filed Under Education and Academia, Race and Racism, Uncategorized, Xenophobia and Immigration | 10 Comments

(crossposted at APAforProgress.org)

I’ve been following this story at Angry Asian Man: Cornell Blog Thinks Asian Suicide is Funny. The Cornell blogger, D. Evan Mulvihill, wrote a pathetic piece consisting of mashed-together racist jokes about Asians; the low point was a joke about Asian-American students killing themselves, drawing from a sad history at Cornell.

The original piece was taken off, and the blogger left a typically passive-aggressive non-apology in its place. He changed his tone yet again after people pointed out he wasn’t really apologizing. Perhaps he’s finally learned a lesson.

The topic of suicide was very much on my mind recently after reading this story about suicides in Okinawa during WWII. In popular American culture, suicide is associated with Japan more than any other country. Who doesn’t know words like hara-kiri and kamikaze? I grew up knowing about this stereotype, and I always hated it. Japanese don’t value life, worship death, aren’t fully human… that’s what it suggested to me. It’s obvious that this kind of specialized stereotype has also started extending to all Asians/Asian-Americans.

In reality, the nationalities most likely to kill themselves are predominantly Eastern Europeans. Here are the latest figures. Yet there’s no white suicide stereotype.

The reasons behind the Okinawa suicides were complex and historically contingent. They were not caused by some mystic quality inherent in Japanese culture.

Similarly, ignorant people like D. Evan Mulvihill like to think of Asian-American suicide as reducible to a single, culturally bound factor. Those mean, strict Asian parents!

His very first commenter does a great job of pointing out his mistake.

Claire:

[...]

and, as comfortable as it would be for you to believe that white american institutions are driving asian americans to suicide because we cant handle the pressure of high expectations, thats not actually at all the case. the east asian educational systems that korean american, chinese american, and japanese american immigrant parents are coming from is MUCH higher pressure/higher expectation than the floppy, sad, post-bush american school system. so exactly the opposite would be true: asian students would be finding an advantageous differential in the amount of academic pressure they get in the US. THIS is in fact why asian american studentsespecially the children of immigrants do so well in american schools.

the factors that ACTUALLY lead to asian american depression are: institutionalized bullying and poor or no anti-bullying strategies by institutions, the constant pressure of being treated as an outsider by individuals and institutions in the country you grew up in, a lack of opportunities that match your educational level and familial expectations, failure to see yourself reflected or celebrated in our countrys image of success or normativity, constantly being viewed and discussed publicly as a problem, institutionalized mockery (like your article)especially when that is the only media image in which you find yourself, lack of public social support for yourself, your family, and your other relationships, etc.

Mar

4

Support Vivian Stringer’s Book

Filed Under Black/African American Issues, Education and Academia, Gender and Sexism, Pop Culture, Race and Racism | 1 Comment

Vivian Stringer is the head coach of the Rutger’s women’s basketball team,? so? many of you may have heard her name in the wake of Don Imus’s racist and sexist comments.? ? However,? her story and her influence as a pioneering woman extends well beyond the Imus controversy.? ? She has an amazing biography, and she is undoubtably a pioneering African American woman.? Her influence? as a role model extends well beyond her coaching background, as revealed in the press surrounding the book:

? A gifted athlete, she had to fight for a place on an all-white cheerleading squad in the sixties. In 1981, just as her coaching career was taking off, her fourteen-month-old daughter, Nina, was stricken with spinal meningitis. Nina would never walk or talk again. Still grieving, Stringer brought a small, poor, historically black college to the national championshipsa triumph hailed as Hoosiers with an all-female cast. In 1991, her husband, Billher staunchest supporter, the father of her children, and the love of her lifefell dead of a sudden heartattack, but that same year, she led yet another young team to the Final Four. Through these dark times and othersincluding her bout with cancer, shared here for the first timeStringer has carried her burdens with grace. Given her history, it was no surprise that she led her team to respond to Don Imuss slurs with dignity and courage.

Standing Tall is a story of quiet strength in the face of punishing odds. Above all, it is an extraordinary love storylove for the game, for the players she has coached, for her close-knit family, and for the husband she lost far too soon. It will resonate long after the last page.

Stringer releases her autobiography today and I encourage everyone to check it out.? ? It’s often that I? put up stories about the mistreatment of black women in the US,? so it is nice to have an occasion to celebrate some one who helps challenge those images of black women.

Update: Here is an interview I heard with her today.?

Mar

2

A Big White Lie About Race and Hiring

Filed Under Black/African American Issues, Education and Academia, Mail Bag, Original Essays and Analysis, Race and Racism, Sociology | 38 Comments

I received this comment a few days ago, and quite frankly it’s hard not to critique something like this. The writer calling him/herself chiba said,

Heres an interesting one.

I cant get a full-time job at my school because Im white. The administration (dean) has made it clear to the departments (hiring committees) that there WILL be 50% minority professors in all departments.

Im not sure what the double standard is there, but it kinda bugs me. I always thought they were supposed to hire GOOD teachers, not black/Hispanic/Asian/etc. teachers.

I don’t think for one minute there is a predominantly white University in the United States of America where half of the employees (especially faculty members) in all of the academic departments are people of color. In fact, it is rare that people of color make up more than 20% of faculty members, and in the data I’ve analyzed as part of my old job, Black, Latino, and Native American faculty members are all highly underrepresented compared to their percentage of the population (which would be about 12%, 13.5%, and 1%). Furthermore, these groups are even more underrepresented among PhDs. I’m sure the Dean knows this, and I don’t believe for one minute that any University Dean would issue such a mandate. Here’s why: 1) Because setting a rigid number would be illegal and 2) Because it would NOT be possible to meet such a goal. In fact, when I sit at faculty meetings and go to conferences like the American Sociological Association conference, I’m always amazed at how white the professoriate is. I’ve been at several conference sessions and faculty meetings in my lifetime where there was not a single person of color in the room.

I also find it interesting that the commenter suggests in the final statement that “black/Hispanic/Asian/etc” teachers are somehow not good teachers. Unfortunately, this rhetoric is typical when many whites talk about how they think race plays out in the hiring process. Many white Americans assume that they are somehow more qualified than the people of color who apply for the same job. Unless a person has looked through the entire applicant pool, how would that person know if the “black/Hispanic/Asian/etc” teachers are not good teachers. How would the person know that white teachers are somehow more qualified? They clearly don’t know and are making a guess based more on prejudice than data.

To me the “I’m white so I can’t get a job” line seems more like a lame excuse. There are studies showing that whites often have advantages in the job interview process, so rather than chalking up one’s difficulty getting a job to people of color, perhaps (white) people should look over their resume. Send out more applications. Try revising their cover letters. Beef up their qualifications. Blaming people of color and whining about how hard it is for a white person to get a job is not going to help anyone: Not the whiny white job seeker and not the people of color in the same applicant pool.

Feb

13

A Quick Response to the Black Model Minority Immigrant Meme

Filed Under Black/African American Issues, Education and Academia, International Racism, Race and Racism, Xenophobia and Immigration | 9 Comments

Since I’m on federal jury duty this week, I won’t have too many fancy posts, but I wanted to take the time to repost a comment I put up over at Blackprof. I figured rather than derailing this thread at Racialicious, which somehow deteriorated into a model minority discussion, I would just repost the Blackprof comment. The comment is in response to a statistic suggesting that foreign born blacks are overrepresented at elite, American universities (I have edited out the typos, and shortened the comment slightly.):

What often is lost in these debates is how immigration policy and other social processes related to migration affect the type of person who immigrates to the US.

Since 1965, US immigration policy routinely favors highly educated migrants. This is particularly true for (non-refugee) African migrants and (non-refugee) Asian migrants. We generally give immigration preferences to people who are highly educated. I recently saw a presentation at a sociology conference–the typical African immigrant family in the US has a higher median income than the average white American born family. Its not like these families and individuals are coming from a remote village in Cameroon. They are already the middle and upper class, or they have some remarkable talent. My husband and his first sibling who immigrated to the US are prime examples of thishis sister has a PhD in languages or translation from a school in Nigeria. She speaks 5 languages and works for the UN. She wouldnt be here if she didnt have that skill, and she would not have gotten that skill had her father not had enough money to send her to boarding school in Nigeria (where the public school system is a complete joke). My husband, on the other hand, was a talented runner, and he wrote 250 different US Universities, showing them his times and inquiring about the potential for a track scholarship. He got 3 offers, and ran for a division I school.

Caribbeans are in different position, but I think there is a sense in which the migration process requires great stamina. In order to make it, you have to have a lot of determination…..

And personally I do believe that affirmative action should apply to Caribbean immigrants, whose ancestors were also enslaved. But I also believe that affirmative action should be used as more than just a way to compensate for past discrimination. My sense is that present discrimination should also be accounted for, and I believe in affirmative action for diversity purposes, but thats a slightly different debate.

So the key point is that there isn’t anything “special” about these cultures that leads this groups to succeed. Immigration policies, and the immigration process insure that significant numbers of (documented) West Indian and African immigrants are well educated and financial successful prior to entering the US.

Dec

11

When You Use “Race Science” Against Yourself (And Don’t Even Know It)

Filed Under Black/African American Issues, Education and Academia, Race and Racism, Sociology | 25 Comments

Disclaimer: I think racial DNA tests are absurd, and are based primarily on social notions of race, not actual distinct genetic and biological human categries. Personally, I think the idea of African, Asian, or European DNA borders on absurd, and I do not endorse the use of “racial DNA tests.” However, I couldn’t resist posting this because I got a really big chuckle out of it.

Remember a few months ago when renown Nobel Prize winner James Watson claimed blacks were naturally less intelligent than whites–well I wonder if he now thinks he is less intelligent other “whites.” Check this out:

JAMES WATSON, the DNA pioneer who claimed Africans are less intelligent than whites, has been found to have 16 times more genes of black origin than the average white European.

An analysis of his genome shows that 16% of his genes are likely to have come from a black ancestor of African descent. By contrast, most people of European descent would have no more than 1%.

The study was made possible when he allowed his genome – the map of all his genes – to be published on the internet in the interests of science.

This level is what you would expect in someone who had a great-grandparent who was African, said Kari Stefansson of deCODE Genetics, whose company carried out the analysis. It was very surprising to get this result for Jim.

Watson won the Nobel prize, with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, after working out the structure of DNA in 1953. However, he provoked an outcry earlier this year when he suggested black people were genetically less intelligent than whites.

This weekend his critics savoured the wry twist of fate. Sir John Sulston, the Nobel laureate who helped lead the consortium that decoded the human genome, said the discovery was ironic in view of Watsons opinions on race. I never did agree with Watsons remarks, he said. We do not understand enough about intelligence to generalise about race.

The backlash against Watson forced him to step down as chancellor of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York state, after 39 years at the helm. He had said he was inherently gloomy about the prospects for Africa because all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really.

The analysis by deCODE Genetics, an Icelandic company, also shows a further 9% of Watsons genes are likely to have come from an ancestor of Asian descent. Watson was not available for comment.

And if you want to read a bunch of racist rubbish you can go read the comments to the article, too.

Nov

21

Re-Teaching Thanksgiving

Filed Under Education and Academia, Original Essays and Analysis, Race and Racism, Sociology | 28 Comments

Admin’s Note: I found the article mentioned below on Yahoo! news last year, but it was after Thanksgiving, so I stored it away with my other 35 unfinished posts in hopes of putting it up this year. Since it is not up on Yahoo! anymore, I had to search around for it.

When I was in 3rd grade, I had an argument with my teacher. It was an academic argument, not one about behavior or anything like that. See my teacher told us that Columbus discovered America, and I asked her,

“Mrs. Childers, I don’t understand. How could Columbus discover American if the Indians were already here?”

I don’t remember her exact response, but I it didn’t make sense to me, so I responded,

“I think the Indians discovered America.”

This is a true story as my mother can verify. For the most part I accepted what I was taught, but this wasn’t logical.

Now some teachers are starting to re-teach American history to focus on Native Americans’ perspectives as well. This article highlights different perspective on teaching Thanksgiving and American history. One of the ethical dilemmas for small children is how real can we get. The brutal facts of history can be pretty depressing, but I do have to admit I like the exercise the teacher mentioned below uses:

Teacher Bill Morgan walks into his third-grade class wearing a black Pilgrim hat made of construction paper and begins snatching up pencils, backpacks and glue sticks from his pupils. He tells them the items now belong to him because he “discovered” them.

There are several keys issues that come up when teachers think about teaching racism to students. Things such as:

  1. What is age appropriate?
  2. How truthful can you be about what happened based on age? For example, do you tell first graders that the Europeans killed the Indians by giving them blankets with deadly diseases or do you wait until they are older? At what age, would it be appropriate to show lynching photos?
  3. How much is the curriculum teachers are encouraged to use (or required to use) biased toward a Eurocentric viewpoint? And what aspects need to be more balanced if there is a bias?
  4. The article also mentions a school where the children dressed up as Indians and wore feathers, which were considered sacred religious objects by a local tribe. So another question is would be are our teachings and classroom exercises respectful and informed. We may be using classroom techniques that are insensitive and in some cases stereotypical or ignorant.

I’m sure there are other issues to consider these are just a few that came to my mind.

And on a final note, I still think “the Indians” discovered America.

Nov

6

“The historical significance of the noose” on NPR

Filed Under Black/African American Issues, Education and Academia, Media Praises and Critiques, Race and Racism | 6 Comments

Yesterday while traveling I got to listen to NPR – Radio Times is a local Philadelphia broadcast and yesterday they interviewed Professor Ifill from UMaryland.

From the site page:

The historical significance of the noose. In recent months, the hangman’s noose has re-emerged as a symbol of racial hatred against African-Americans. We’ll talk with SHERRILYN IFILL a Professor of Law at the University of Maryland about the history of lynching of in America and what this says about race relations today. Ifill is a former Assistant Counsel at the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and author of On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the 21st Century.

? The podcast is worth a listen, and can be downloaded here.

Some points that? Ifill emphasized? that I? truly wish? CNN had covered better in their recent “Special Investigation”: (N.B. I’ve only listened to it once so far, while driving, so these are just the points I remember – I enjoyed the whole interview… as much as one can enjoy it, given the horrendous subject matter).

? 1. Public lynchings were often not just “in the dead of night” occurances, but drew crowds of white men and boys (occassionally women) from the entire region. People would close up their shops. Local police would direct traffic. The attacks often happened in public places, even, as Ifill’s book title states, on the courthouse lawn. In a time before 24-7 news channels and instant film, newspapers would not cover the event. If state officials or state police tried to investigate these crimes, they would find no witnesses.

2.? Lynching was a terrorist act towards the black (or other minority) communities – it was not just the death, but the torture and mutilation that was the message. Too often lynching is portrayed as a “vigilante” or “frontier justice” phenomenon, but it was much more than that when race was involved. The effect was to have the black communties police and stifle their own behavior (don’t rebel, don’t demand your rights, look down, don’t question, don’t complain) in order to avoid a similar fate. It also terrorized some in the white communities – Ifill pointed out that whites who were not involved in the actual lynchings were often? both afraid and ashamed, even as they were complicit in the crimes by not speaking out.

3. Most lynchings involved black men accused of killing white men, but the offenses were variable and arbitrary, and not always having to deal with white women (as is often portrayed).

4. In contrast to people who say (about this and other social justice or equality issues) that we shouldn’t focus on the history or imagery of the noose, but on other “more pressing” issues, Ifill said something along the lines that the noose has come back because it is taboo, and the way to take away its power IS to talk about it, to teach it, and to deal with it when it appears. She had good ideas about how to deal with the topic, from grade school on up.

Definitely worth a listen, and now I have another book to add to my Christmas list…

Nov

5

Race, Gender, and College Graduation Rates Student Athletes

Filed Under Black/African American Issues, Education and Academia, Gender and Sexism, Original Essays and Analysis, Pop Culture, Race and Racism | 9 Comments

Over at Field Negro several people were commenting on the case of a black college athlete accused of sexual assault. The comment thread turned into an opportunity to dis the guy because he was a 5th year senior, and the discussion devolved further with people making some baseless claims about black athletes. 1

I just wanted to clear up a few common misconceptions that were reiterated in the thread. First, in general being a 5th year senior is no big deal. In fact, it is quite common for students, regardless of whether or not they are athletes, to take more than four years to graduate. One of the biggest reasons for this is financial problems, but it may include other factors that students cannot control like family problems, health problems, poor academic advising, and course scheduling troubles2 Of course, it also includes things that students can control. Many students take just enough credits to count as full time (in a semester system that is 4 courses), but in reality they need to take more than the minimum to graduate (usually 5 classes most semesters and a few semesters with 6 classes). This is can be the result of bad advising and/or student who doesn’t pay attention to basic requirements. Some students slack off and fail classes that they have to repeat. Others don’t meet minimum grade point averages (GPA), and have to take more classes or repeat classes to get the graduation GPA level.3 For athletes, redshirts, are common. The student may sit out a season for a medical redshirt or because they are unprepared to play for the team. This leaves many 5th year senior athletes. Just because a student is in the 5th year doesn’t mean that person is a terrible student.

The second myth is that black athletes do poorly in school. Statistically, black athletes are more likely to graduate from college than blacks who are not athletes. This study from the National Consortium for Academics and Sports cites well known researcher Richard Lapchick:

It should be noted that African-American student-athletes, including revenue sport
student-athletes, graduate at a higher rate than African-Americans who are student athletes.
African-American student-athletes as a whole graduate with a nine percent
margin (52 percent vs. 43 percent) over African-American students as a whole. The
higher rate is true of male and female student-athletes alike. Male African-American
student-athletes graduated at 48 percent vs. the 36 percent for all male African-
American students. African-American female student-athletes graduate at a 63 percent
rate vs. 47 percent for African-American females in the student-athlete body as a whole.
One of the benefits of examining graduation rates is that they focus light on the fact that
too many of our predominantly white campuses are not welcoming places for students of
color, whether or not they are athletes.

This data for the significant improvement of African-American student-athletes indicates
that our athletic departments may be doing a better job in creating an environment for
success for African-American student-athletes than our institutions of higher education
are in general.

Lapchick continued, However, race remains a continuing academic issue even for
student-athletes. This is reflected in the remaining gaps between graduation rates for
white and African-American student-athletes. This is an issue that we still do need to
address on our campuses.

In the same section the researchers also provide details statistics comparing 6 year graduation rates for black students. The data is divided by gender and athletic status. The numbers represent the federal averages, and the last category (Federal Rate GSR) seeks to correct for a statistical problem created when colleges have to count student transfers as dropouts even if they graduate at the school they transfer to. The pattern for black male students seems to be the opposite of that for whites–for white males being an athlete means you are less likely to graduate. Although I could not find exact numbers, I did find an older article from the November 5, 2004 edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education called “Graduations Rates Rise for Athletes” that said that overall male athletes are less likely to graduate than males who are not athletes. Since the majority of college athletes are white males, then this statistic suggests that white male athletes have lower graduation rate than white males who are not athletes, but the data below shows that this is not the case for black males.

black-athlete-college-gradu.gif
The good news is that these numbers also represent dramatic improvements for black athletes, but the bad news is that Black students graduation rate are much lower for both athletes and non-athletes.

There are a host of reasons why black athletes graduate at higher rates than black students who are not athletes. A few of those reasons would include: black athletes usually have significant scholarship money, athletes often receive tutors and extra counseling, athletes usually are required to attend “study table,” and athletes can build social networks with other athletes which provides social support unavailable to many non-athletes.

It is sad to see black athletes vilified so often in popular media, especially when they out perform other black students. Imagine how many more black college graduates we would have if we raised the graduation rates for all black students to the level that it is for black athletes. Since most black students are not athletes, this would be a very significant number. In fact, I wish we paid more attention to black students who weren’t athletes because they don’t get the same level of social and financial support. Of course, the ultimate goal would be to close the graduation gap between blacks and whites, but in the short run, raising the graduation rates for non-athlete black students is a much easier goal. But nobody is focused on that problem, since they tend to think black athletes are the source of lower achievement for black college students..

  1. Lynn has a further discussion of the rape aspect of the thread and the case. In this analysis, I just focusing on the race and graduation issues, but Lynn posts makes some important points about rape and the framing of the story. [back]
  2. In my own experience this usually involves students who need a particular class, but are unable to take it because it conflicts with other requirements or is only offered once a year. The student or adviser may not have realized this until this last minute. [back]
  3. You can’t graduate from most colleges unless you have a C average or higher, and often the student also has to achieve a minimum GPA within their major. The minimum major GPA usually ranges anywhere from a C+ to a B. [back]

Oct

4

More Nooses, More Blackface – Qui annus est?

Filed Under Black/African American Issues, Blackface Parties, Bunch-O-Links, Education and Academia, Jena 6, Race and Racism, Racism Round-Up | 7 Comments

These incidents may result in follow-up posts, so consider this the first discussion thread.

First, nooses were left twice in Coast Guard Academy bags -? the first noose was? in the bags of a black cadet, and the second was in the bag of a female instructor AFTER diversity training resulting from the FIRST noose. Why do I think someone slept through the class? I guess nooses are now de rigeur for people with a warped sense of “humor.” Part of the problem may very well be “diversity seminars” that deal in platitudes and extremes instead of valid, practical ? information.

Then, as reported by Pam’s House Blend, Shakespeare’s Sister, and The Smoking Gun, a crew of likely-drunk white college students do improptu blackface (mudface?) and hold up 6 fingers (for the Jena 6) and otherwise strike thug poses. Hint: deleting offensive material from Facebook doesn’t make it disappear, folks… Have they not heard of YouTube? Or even, copy-save?

And here I thought the collegiate wave of blackface parties was SO 2006. All I can really add right now is not the righteous indignation I should feel, but a huffy, annoyed *sigh.* All the excuses for the Jena blackface so far are nothing I haven’t heard before. It’s the same playbook, the same justifications, the same denials. And I’m betting dollars to donuts that we’ll hear the same thing from anyone implicated in the Coast Guard case. I’m tired. I don’t want to be, but I am.

———–

ON a lighter note: in case anyone’s curious about the top (and knows no Latin), the post title is cribbed from a button I own: “Hostes aliengenii me abduxterant -? Qui annus est?”? (roughly: Aliens abducted me – what year is it?)

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