Their are so many great books out there that I just keep getting more and more.
Here are some recently added additions to my book collection.
The End of Racism by Dinesh D' Souza- OK this one is my one regret. This book is an absolute pile of nonsense. Don't waste your time, his theories are utterly racist in themselves, and he is so far off base that I doubt that he sees the problem.
Negro Thought in America 1880-1915 by August Meier- The so called "Progressive Era" was really only progressive for Whites. This book talks about what lie was like for Black people in America, and what their positions were.
Everyday Racism by Annie S Barnes- Some of the acts in this book will make you wonder aloud, while others will actually make you cry. Filled with stories that remind all of us that racism, or as the author calls it "The White Virus" is still alive and well.
40 Ways to Raise a Nonracist Child by Barbara Mathias & Mary Ann French- This book gives 40 common sense ideas on how to help raise your child with a nonracist way of dealing with the world. It helps White people understand how they can get their children involved in diversity as well as helping them see the way things are for people of color in this country.
Everyday Acts Against Racism edited by Maureen T. Reddy- Another one that will make you tear up. Different stories from a host of people from different cultural backgrounds. A pretty easy read with some great stories that will make you feel there is some hope.
I have a couple others, but I haven't started reading them yet. I haven't read all the way through the ones above, but enough to tell everybody about them.
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Friday, February 15, 2008
Black Kids Doing Better than ever
I just read this article from the Chicago Defender at http://www.chicagodefender.com. It is nice to see that there is some good news in the war for equatibility. I should point out that we still still have a long way to go, but progress is taking place. Anyway, I just discovered the Defender today, it has a lot of great articles surrounding the Black community as well as national and local news for the city of Chicago, where it is out of . What we need as a White community is a good source of info for the issues that are important to the black community. Obviously you can ask a member of the Black community, but remember the myth that White people have that a Black person represents their whole community. Don't assume that one person opinion, no matter how well informed he ar she is, can represent a whole race of people.
OK, enough of my own opinions heres the article. Enjoy.
New Report: Black children doing better than ever
but still trail white children in quality of life
Black children are doing better than ever, but still have a long way to go before closing the racialethnic gap in quality of life, according to a report released last month by the Foundation for Child Development. The report was the first ever to analyze and compare trends in the well-being of Black, white, and Hispanic children over a span of nearly two decades.
According to the report, all children experienced overall improvements in quality of life between 1985 and 2004. However, because improvements were greater for Black and Hispanic children during this time span - particularly after 1993 - the gap between them and whites is narrowing. But even if trends continue at their current pace, it will take at least an entire generation to fully eliminate these gaps.
“Even if we manage to continue to make progress towards closing the racial-ethnic gaps in children’s well-being at the same rate we have been, it would take another 18 years before Black children essentially caught up with white children,” Ruby Takanishi, president and CEO of FCD, said. “As a leading world superpower, America can do and should do better than this,” Takanishi continued. The report is entitled “Racial- Ethnic Inequality in Child Well- Being from 1985-2004: Gaps Narrowing but Persist.”
The researchers pulled data from several years of the FCD Child Well-Being Index-an annual analysis of the quality of life for all American children. It found that the gap in the overall quality of life separating Black children from white children narrowed by 26 percent- a change driven largely by promising improvements in safety, economic security and health for children of color.
A few other key findings of the report include:
- Education is stagnant: While Black children have made progress in many areas, substantial gaps in education between white and Black children have shown little improvement. The Black disadvantage in preschool enrollment has been eliminated, but the gaps in reading and math indicators have barely changed, and the same is true of the Black-white gap in completing a bachelor’s degree.
- Black children have seen the biggest improvement in their likelihood to commit a violent crime. While all children were much less likely to commit a violent crime in 2004 than they were in 1985, the likelihood of Black children committing a violent crime has decreased so significantly that it is now nearly on par with whites. Hispanic youths are less likely than whites to commit crimes or be victims.
- While the likelihood of all youth voting is up, Black youth are now more likely to vote than ever before, and the likelihood of Black youth voting is improving faster than it is for white children.
- The poverty gap between white children and Black children is closing. While rates of poverty are decreasing for all racial/ethnic groups, they are decreasing more rapidly for Black children than they are for white children.
- Black and Hispanic children also benefited from advances in the safetybehavioral domains including reduced cigarette smoking, drinking alcohol, and use of illicit drugs.
- Gaps in family economic well-being narrowed for both Black and Hispanic children as parental employment and health insurance coverage increased.
- Obesity rates rose less for Black and Hispanic children, although they remain higher than for whites.
- Both Black children and Hispanic children were advantaged compared to White children in the emotional/ spiritual domain.
- Even if Black and Hispanic children reached parity with the current level of well-being among white children, the overall well-being of all three groups would be substantially below the best that the U.S. has ever achieved on these measures, and levels of well-being currently experienced by international peers of the U.S.
“With the possibility of an economic recession, policies should aim to protect the economic security of American families, as well as key programs in health and education that support the largest number of children, especially those whose families earn below the median family income,” said Don Hernandez, researcher and author of the report.
“A number of the positive changes outlined in this report can be attributed to smart policies and an active community. If we want to continue to improve our children’s lives, we must continue push for this kind of smart policy.” Margaret Simms, senior fellow at the Urban Institute, which studies social policy, said that regardless of the progress reflected in the FCD report, “we shouldn’t become complacent.”
The Foundation for Child Development is a national, private philanthropy dedicated to the principle that all families should have the social and material resources to raise their children to be healthy, educated and productive members of their communities.
We believe that families, schools, nonprofit organizations, businesses and government at all levels share complementary responsibilities in the critical task of raising new generations.
OK, enough of my own opinions heres the article. Enjoy.
New Report: Black children doing better than ever
but still trail white children in quality of life
Black children are doing better than ever, but still have a long way to go before closing the racialethnic gap in quality of life, according to a report released last month by the Foundation for Child Development. The report was the first ever to analyze and compare trends in the well-being of Black, white, and Hispanic children over a span of nearly two decades.
According to the report, all children experienced overall improvements in quality of life between 1985 and 2004. However, because improvements were greater for Black and Hispanic children during this time span - particularly after 1993 - the gap between them and whites is narrowing. But even if trends continue at their current pace, it will take at least an entire generation to fully eliminate these gaps.
“Even if we manage to continue to make progress towards closing the racial-ethnic gaps in children’s well-being at the same rate we have been, it would take another 18 years before Black children essentially caught up with white children,” Ruby Takanishi, president and CEO of FCD, said. “As a leading world superpower, America can do and should do better than this,” Takanishi continued. The report is entitled “Racial- Ethnic Inequality in Child Well- Being from 1985-2004: Gaps Narrowing but Persist.”
The researchers pulled data from several years of the FCD Child Well-Being Index-an annual analysis of the quality of life for all American children. It found that the gap in the overall quality of life separating Black children from white children narrowed by 26 percent- a change driven largely by promising improvements in safety, economic security and health for children of color.
A few other key findings of the report include:
- Education is stagnant: While Black children have made progress in many areas, substantial gaps in education between white and Black children have shown little improvement. The Black disadvantage in preschool enrollment has been eliminated, but the gaps in reading and math indicators have barely changed, and the same is true of the Black-white gap in completing a bachelor’s degree.
- Black children have seen the biggest improvement in their likelihood to commit a violent crime. While all children were much less likely to commit a violent crime in 2004 than they were in 1985, the likelihood of Black children committing a violent crime has decreased so significantly that it is now nearly on par with whites. Hispanic youths are less likely than whites to commit crimes or be victims.
- While the likelihood of all youth voting is up, Black youth are now more likely to vote than ever before, and the likelihood of Black youth voting is improving faster than it is for white children.
- The poverty gap between white children and Black children is closing. While rates of poverty are decreasing for all racial/ethnic groups, they are decreasing more rapidly for Black children than they are for white children.
- Black and Hispanic children also benefited from advances in the safetybehavioral domains including reduced cigarette smoking, drinking alcohol, and use of illicit drugs.
- Gaps in family economic well-being narrowed for both Black and Hispanic children as parental employment and health insurance coverage increased.
- Obesity rates rose less for Black and Hispanic children, although they remain higher than for whites.
- Both Black children and Hispanic children were advantaged compared to White children in the emotional/ spiritual domain.
- Even if Black and Hispanic children reached parity with the current level of well-being among white children, the overall well-being of all three groups would be substantially below the best that the U.S. has ever achieved on these measures, and levels of well-being currently experienced by international peers of the U.S.
“With the possibility of an economic recession, policies should aim to protect the economic security of American families, as well as key programs in health and education that support the largest number of children, especially those whose families earn below the median family income,” said Don Hernandez, researcher and author of the report.
“A number of the positive changes outlined in this report can be attributed to smart policies and an active community. If we want to continue to improve our children’s lives, we must continue push for this kind of smart policy.” Margaret Simms, senior fellow at the Urban Institute, which studies social policy, said that regardless of the progress reflected in the FCD report, “we shouldn’t become complacent.”
The Foundation for Child Development is a national, private philanthropy dedicated to the principle that all families should have the social and material resources to raise their children to be healthy, educated and productive members of their communities.
We believe that families, schools, nonprofit organizations, businesses and government at all levels share complementary responsibilities in the critical task of raising new generations.
Saturday, February 9, 2008
Time to get off the high horse
In 2007, my very own congressman, David Wu, made the statement that there were Klingons in the White House. Funny as that Star Trek reference was I think he got it wrong. Most of the representative administration is white, and if white people as a whole are anything in the Star Trek Universe they are the Ferengi. The capitalistic, technology stealing, Ferengi.
We as white people love to blow our own horn as to all of the great things we have accomplished. Well, let's set the record straight. We haven't accomplished all that much to be proud of. We invented the car and steam power, but those were really just advances on existing technology. The light bulb? Yeah, Thomas Edison invented it, but he would have been hard pressed to make it work without the filament made by Lewis Howard Latimer, a black man.
In fact Black people are responsible for almost all of the civilization changing inventions. Fire (or discovering how to use it), the wheel, writing, math, philosophy (I know I thought it was the Greeks too. Turns out I was wrong.), using stone to build. The list goes on. Then when all of Europe went into the Dark Ages, and went a little bat shit crazy with the whole religious thing, it was the Middle East that kept all of the knowledge of the world from disappearing. That's right those crazy terrorist we are all so afraid of kept the light of knowledge burning while all of us White folk were burning each other at the stake in the name of God.
Again, as a White person, I am not trying to spread white guilt, or make anyone feel bad. My mission is to knock all of us White people off of the high horse we ride around on as if we deserved to be their by perdition. It's OK to be White, I'm proud of being White. What it's not OK to be is vain due to ignorance. Instead realize that our history that we have learned is mostly a lie based on the need for White people to maintain a sense of superiority and control. Later.
We as white people love to blow our own horn as to all of the great things we have accomplished. Well, let's set the record straight. We haven't accomplished all that much to be proud of. We invented the car and steam power, but those were really just advances on existing technology. The light bulb? Yeah, Thomas Edison invented it, but he would have been hard pressed to make it work without the filament made by Lewis Howard Latimer, a black man.
In fact Black people are responsible for almost all of the civilization changing inventions. Fire (or discovering how to use it), the wheel, writing, math, philosophy (I know I thought it was the Greeks too. Turns out I was wrong.), using stone to build. The list goes on. Then when all of Europe went into the Dark Ages, and went a little bat shit crazy with the whole religious thing, it was the Middle East that kept all of the knowledge of the world from disappearing. That's right those crazy terrorist we are all so afraid of kept the light of knowledge burning while all of us White folk were burning each other at the stake in the name of God.
Again, as a White person, I am not trying to spread white guilt, or make anyone feel bad. My mission is to knock all of us White people off of the high horse we ride around on as if we deserved to be their by perdition. It's OK to be White, I'm proud of being White. What it's not OK to be is vain due to ignorance. Instead realize that our history that we have learned is mostly a lie based on the need for White people to maintain a sense of superiority and control. Later.
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