Civil Rights Project Reports Deepening Segregation and Challenges Educators and Political Leaders to Develop Positive Policies

On May 17, 1954, the Unites States Supreme Court ruled “separate educational facilities are 

inherently unequal,” thereby ending nearly 60 years of de jure racial segregation in seventeen states. 

Despite initial challenges, by 1970, Southern schools were the most integrated schools for black 

students in the country. Beginning in the 1990s, however, a series of Supreme Court decisions 

allowed for the abandonment of desegregation plans in favor of neighborhood schools, and cut 

funding intended to remedy the educational harm caused by segregation. The effect was an almost 

immediate return to segregated schools for many American students. 

The Civil Rights Project today released three new studies showing persistent and serious increases in segregation by race and poverty, with very dramatic results in the South and West, the nation’s two largest regions where students of color now comprise the majority of public school enrollment. 

For decades, the Civil Rights Project has monitored the success of American schools in reaching the goals of integrating schools and equalizing opportunity in a changing society. Segregation is directly linked to severe problems, such as high dropout rates, lack of experienced teachers, and fewer resources. E Pluribus… Separation summarizes the most rigorous research to date showing that segregated schools are systematically linked to these and other unequal educational opportunities.

This new research by the Civil Rights Project includes an extensive report on national trends, “E Pluribus… Separation: Deepening Double Segregation for More Students,” as well as two smaller regional reports, “The Western States: Profound Diversity but Severe Segregation for Latino Students,” and “Southern Slippage: Growing School Segregation in the Most Desegregated Region of the Country.”

In the reports, the authors underscore the fact that simply sitting next to a white student does not guarantee better educational outcomes for students of color. Instead, the resources including expert and experienced teachers and advanced courses that are consistently linked to predominately white and/or wealthy schools help foster real and serious educational advantages over minority segregated settings.

The Obama Administration, like the Bush Administration before it, has taken no significant action to increase school integration or to help stabilize diverse schools undergoing racial change due to changes in the housing market. Small positive steps in civil rights enforcement by the current administration have, however, been undermined by the strong pressure it used to expand charter schools, the most segregated sector of schools for African American students.

Latino students, who  attend more intensely segregated and impoverished schools than they have for generations. The segregation  increases for Latinos are most dramatic in the West. 

In spite of declining residential segregation for black families, and their large-scale movement to the 

suburbs in most parts of the country, school segregation for black students remains very high and is 

increasing most severely in the South, which led the nation in school integration after the l960s 

desegregation struggles took effect. 

Segregation is directly linked to  severe problems, such as high dropout rates, lack of experienced teachers, and fewer resources. E Pluribus… Separation summarizes the most rigorous research to date showing that segregated schools are systematically linked to these and other unequal educational opportunities.

Founded in 1996 by former Harvard professors Gary Orfield and Christopher Edley, Jr., the Civil Rights 

Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles is now co-directed by Orfield and Patricia Gándara, professors at UCLA. 

Impact of Racially and Socioeconomically Isolated Schools 

Before describing current enrollment trends in the United States, it is important to understand the impact of segregated schools on student outcomes. Racially and socioeconomically isolated schools are strongly related to a range of poor educational outcomes, including less experienced and less qualified teachers, high levels of teacher turnover, less successful peer groups, and inadequate facilities and learning materials. While studies have documented teachers as having the single largest impact on student academic achievement, highly qualified, experienced teachers are less likely to teach in low-income, high minority schools than their less experienced peers. For those who do, overall salaries and advanced training opportunities are lower, and curricula are often less challenging and more reliant on rote skills and memorization than in schools in more affluent neighborhoods. 

Coleman Report.pdf: Equality of Educational Opportunity (COLEMAN) Study

Perhaps the single best-known piece of social science research ever done in this country is the study produced by sociologist James Coleman in 1966 under the authority of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, commonly called “the Coleman Report.” Coleman’s work is the second largest social science research project in history, covering 600,000 children in 4,000 schools nationally. Federal Education Policy and the States, 1945-2009

Facebook buys virtual reality co. Oculus for $2B

Facebook said Tuesday, March 25, 2014, it has agreed to buy Oculus for $2 billion, betting that its virtual reality may be a new way for people to communicate, learn or be entertained.

Irvine, Calif.-based Oculus VR Inc. makes the Oculus Rift, a virtual reality headset that's received a lot of attention from video game developers, though it has yet to be released for consumers. The headsets cover a user's eyes and create an immersive world that reacts to turning one's head or moving back and forth.

Facebook plans to build on Oculus' technology, developing th virtual reality headset for other areas such as communications, education, and entertainment.

What is the Oculus Rift?

Picture a set of ski goggles in which a large cellphone screen replaces the glass. The screen displays two images side by side, one for each eye. A set of lenses is placed on top of the screen, focusing and reshaping the picture for each eye, and creating a stereoscopic 3D image. 

CAREERS

Oculus Rift HD virtual reality head-mounted display

Left Brain Talks To The Right Hand, Study Finds

The finding, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that our brains are hard-wired to process gestures and speech and language on the same side of the brain. For right-handed people, that's usually the left side.

It also supports the view that speech arose from a combination of short sounds and hand gestures that were intended to communicate something. Those gestures probably would have been carried out by the right hand, since that is usually the dominant hand.

There's lots of other evidence that gestures were involved in early language, says David Armstrong,

Mike Dutton, Doodler

Dorothy Irene Height helped convince President Dwight Eisenhower to desegregate schools, encouraged President Lyndon Johnson to appoint black women to government positions, counseled First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, stood next to Dr. King when he delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech, and sat on the stage for President Barack Obama's first inauguration. Monday marks the 102nd anniversary of her birthday, a moment celebrated by a Google Doodle in her honor.

Over nearly 80 years of service, Ms. Height fought for the rights of African Americans, women, and handicapped people. Yet her vast career was nearly nipped in the bud.

You can watch President Obama’s eulogy of Height below

After growing up in a steel town outside Pittsburgh, she was admitted to Barnard College in New York. However once she arrived on campus in 1929, administrators told her that she needed to leave. The school had an unwritten rule that it would only accept two black students per year. Height was the odd woman out.

"Too distraught to call home, as she later wrote, Ms. Height did the only thing possible," the New York Times wrote in her 2010 obituary. "Clutching her Barnard acceptance letter, she took the subway downtown to New York University. She was admitted at once, earning a bachelor’s degree in education there in 1933 and a master’s in psychology two years later."

In fact, Barnard turned away another future public servant that same year. Sylva Gelber, who played a role in the women's movement in Canada, was rejected because “the Jewish quota was already filled.”

Her achievements include lobbying first lady Eleanor Roosevelt on civil rights as a YWCA worker during protests in New York's Harlem, helping to convince President Eisenhower to desegregated schools, and helping to organise the 1963 March on Washington.

Dorothy Irene Height: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know
Gay Community Loses Black Civil Rights Ally Dorothy Height
Height told the audience at the 1997 Human Rights Campaign National Dinner, which was honoring her civil rights work: "Civil rights are civil rights. There are no persons who are not entitled to their civil rights. ... We have to recognize that we have a long way to go, but we have to go that way together."

Dorothy I. Height

top: Seen with President Kennedy as he signs the Equal Pay Act. below: President Obama signs a bill in her honor

African Feminism celebrated during Women’s History Month

This year, several Black women’s groups celebrated Women’s History Month with events promoting programs of feminist activism. Barnard College hosted an all-day African Women’s Rights and Resistance Conference on continuing developments in African women’s feminist work. A documentary explored the suffrage movement in the Bahamas and the need to include women’s rights in that island nation’s constitution. And Black Women’s Blueprint took the rape of Black women in the United States to the United Nations.

The conference featured Nobel Laureate Leymah Gbowee who earned global acclaim for her role in leading the mass movement for peace and women’s safety that ended the Liberian 14-year civil war.

THE VULCAN Society: NYC fire department settles discrimination lawsuit

THE VULCAN Society of black firefighters

The court battle began in 2007, when the United States Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the department after the Vulcan Society complained that the entrance exams used by the department were biased against minority applicants.

At the time, the department was over 90 percent white and a federal judge ruled that the entrance examination was in violation of civil rights laws and the United States Constitution.
About 1,500 minorities who took New York City fire department entrance exams that were found to be biased will be eligible to receive back pay totaling $98 million, a black firefighters' group that had sued the city over racial discrimination.

The settlement of the 7-year-old case capped a long and arduous legal fight by the group, the Vulcan Society, over diversity in the fire department. In a city where more than half of residents identify with a racial minority group, black firefighters have never made up more than 4 percent of the department's total. 

The issue of whether the city intentionally discriminated against minority applicants to the FDNY was decided in the Vulcans' favor by Brooklyn Federal Judge Nicholas Garaufis. But the U.S. Court of Appeals threw out the ruling last year and ordered a retrial before a different judge.

As part of the settlement on Tuesday, [March 18, 2014] the Fire Department agreed to create a chief of diversity and inclusion, who will report directly to the fire commissioner, as well as a diversity advocate who will monitor hiring practices and cadet training for discrimination.

Our Time Press: United States of America and Vulcan Society, Inc. v. City of New York

Microsoft charges the FBI millions for access to user data

Microsoft makes loads of money off things other than Windows and Office. You probably know about the millions they make from other companies selling Android devices, but what about the millions they rake in charging the FBI for access to user data?

Microsoft Says: Come Back with a Warrant, Unless You’re Microsoft

EFF has long argued that law enforcement agencies must get a warrant when they ask Internet companies for the content of their users’ communications. In 2013, as part of our annual Who Has Your Back report, we started awarding stars to companies that require warrants for content. It is now unclear whether Microsoft, one of our inaugural “gold star” companies in that category, is willing to live by its own maxim.

This controversy was brought to light by the arrest of an ex-Microsoft employee named Alex Kibkalo. According to a criminal complaint sworn in a Seattle federal court, Kibkalo stole proprietary information from Microsoft, including its Activation Server Software Development Kit (SDK), and passed the code to a French blogger.

violation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, ECPA

Courts do not issue orders authorizing someone to search themselves, since obviously no such order is needed.  So even when we believe we have probable cause, it’s not feasible to ask a court to order us to search ourselves. 

And according to Section 3.5, one of the ways users can violate the agreement and thus give Microsoft “permission” to access their content is to email content that violates the company’s Code of Conduct. Spoiler alert: the Code of Conduct is ridiculously broad.

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Sir Tim Berners-Lee: World wide web needs bill of rights

Sir Tim Berners-Lee wants more rights for users of the web

The inventor of the world wide web has marked the 25th anniversary of his creation by calling for a 'Magna Carta' bill of rights to protect its users.

"Are we going to continue on the road and just allow the governments to do more and more and more control - more and more surveillance?

"Or are we going to set up a bunch of values? Are we going to set up something like a Magna Carta for the world wide web and say, actually, now it's so important, so much part of our lives, that it becomes on a level with human rights?"

Sir Tim Berners-Lee: the future web

The Web is 25: 10 things you need to know about the web (including how much it weighs)

Inequality in America: The Challenges of Growing Inequality

"To put in context how large these education gaps are relative to the top 1 percent," Katz said, "if you are a full-time full-year worker with a college degree, your income gap relative to someone with a high school degree for a male grew by about $20,000 from 1979 to the present, and for females by $13,000." Katz estimates two-thirds of the growth of inequality in the bottom 99 percent is associated with the education gradient.

Harvard University's Institute of Politics hosted a discussion earlier this month on inequality in America. The panel included RSF trustee (and Harvard economist) Lawrence Katz, as well as former trustee William Julius Wilson. You can watch the panel's discussion below, but here are some of the highlights from Katz's introduction to the issue (which starts about 8 minutes into the video):
• There is little doubt about inequality trends. "Any way you slice or dice data on income earnings or wealth," Katz said, "one has seen large increases in inequality over the last 30 years."
• The share of the national income going to the top 1 percent more than doubled from 1979 to the present, from 10 percent to 23.5 percent. "If, magically, we could have kept the share of income of the top 1 percent where it was in 1979 and redistributed all that income to the bottom 90 percent," Katz said, "everyone would have 9,000 more dollars, or about 27 percent higher income."

You can learn more about the Russell Sage Foundation's efforts to examine the effects of inequality on its Social Inequality page. Here is the video:

Google: International Women's Day Doodle 2014

Published on Mar 6, 2014
Google Celebrates International Women's day 2014 with special doodle. This doodle will play (youtube) video which features a host of over a 100 inspiring women from around the worid

Here is the full list: http://goo.gl/KsN8sZ
Credit: Google.com

Which social media platform is best for your business?

It is commonly suggested that to increase your brand presence, you need to be active on all forms of social media. While that may be true, unless your company has a dedicated social media coordinator, finding the time to maintain every platform out there can be extremely time consuming.

If your company is just starting out on the Web and need to pick a few social media networks to rule over, here is our guide to choosing the best platform(s) for your business, and how to make the most out of them.

Twice Militant: Lorraine Hansberry's Letters to "The Ladder"

Lorraine Hansberry

In the late 1950s, the fight for gay rights was developing alongside the growing Civil Rights and feminist movements. An important voice in the Civil Rights struggle was author, essayist, and activist Lorraine Hansberry (1930–1965), the award-winning playwright of A Raisin in the Sun. This exhibition explores a largely unknown but significant aspect of Hansberry’s biography connecting her to the gay rights movement: the letters she wrote in 1957 to The Ladder, the first subscription-based lesbian publication in the United States.

The Ladder, and published in its May 1957 issue. The writer was identified only by her initials, L.H.N.

The reason that Ms. Hansberry was so excited about the little magazine was that it was published by and for lesbians — a trailblazing publication that spoke directly to Ms. Hansberry, who was married at the time to the Broadway producer Robert B. Nemiroff but knew by then that she was drawn to women.

At the time, the so-called Comstock laws prohibited promoting immoral behavior, which could have included this earnest discussion of lesbianism.

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the New York Public Library, via Lorraine Hansberry Properties Trust

"... in order for a person to bear his life, he needs a valid re-creation of that life, which is why, as Ray Charles might put it, blacks chose to sing the blues. This is why Raisin in the Sun meant so much to black people - on the stage: the film is another matter. In the theater, a current flowed back and forth between the audience and the actors, flesh and blood corroborating flesh and blood – as we say, testifying... The root argument of the play is really far more subtle than either its detractors or the bulk of its admirers were able to see." (James Baldwin in The Devil FindsWork, 1976) 

 Ms. Hansberry tells Mr. Terkel that “the most oppressed group of any oppressed group will be its women,” and says that those who are “twice oppressed” may become “twice militant.” 
Lorraine Hansberry (1930 - 1965)

"The unmistakable roots of the universal solidarity of the colored peoples of the world are no longer "predictable" as they were in my father's time – they are here. And I for one, as a black woman in the United States in the mid-Twentieth Century, feel that I am more typical of the present temperament of my people than not, when I say that I cannot allow the devious purposes of white supremacy to lead me to any conclusion other than what may be to most robust and important one of our time: that the ultimate destiny and aspirations of the African peoples and twenty million American Negroes are inextricably and magnificently bound up together forever."