EthnicMajority

I wanted to inform EthnicMajority readers of some new documentaries that have recently been released by California Newsreel. They look at contemporary civil rights issues such as housing descrimination, unfair incarceration and health inequities along racial lines.

TULIA TEXAS

Though its scrupulous investigation of a landmark case, this documentary uncovers the deep-rooted assumptions about race and crime that still permeate our society and undermines our justice system. The film convincingly shows how the ‘war on drugs’ has become a war on due process, waged against African Americans.

http://www.newsreel.org/nav/title.asp?tc=CN0218

SCARRED JUSTICE: THE ORANGEBURG MASSACRE

This documentary brings to light one of the bloodiest tragedies of the Civil Rights era after four decades of deliberate denial. The killing of four white students at Kent State University in 1970 left an indelible stain on our national consciousness. But most Americans know nothing of the three black students killed at South Carolina State College in Orangeburg two years earlier.

http://www.newsreel.org/nav/title.asp?tc=CN0223

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The research stirred debate throughout the legal community, and Sander said he was surprised at the vehemence with which people attacked his motives. A former Volunteers in Service to America participant, fair-housing activist and campaigner for Chicago’s first black mayor, Sander, who is white, insisted he was simply trying to examine an important question.

Full story…

OAK BROOK, IL: McDonald’s increased communications efforts for its second year of helping Hispanic high school students prepare for college. It is promoting its “Steps for Success College Workshops” and the company’s scholarship program, funded by Ronald McDonald House Charities (RMHC).

McDonald’s partnered with Hispanic American Commitment to Education Resources (part of RMHC) and the Hispanic Scholarship Fund for the effort. Valencia Pérez & Echeveste, which handles Hispanic consumer marketing for McDonald’s, is providing PR support.

Full story…

A belief that Asian-Americans are taking over American universities, out-performing other groups and grabbing the bulk of mathematics, science and engineering degrees has been debunked in a landmark study.

American popular culture is full of claims that Asian-Americans are “over-running college campuses with high enrolment” but “such impressions exaggerate” their presence in American education, the study said.

Entitled ‘Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders — Facts, Not Fiction: Setting the Record Straight’, the study was conducted by New York University, a group of mostly Asian-American educators, and the College Board, a group that holds standardised tests for mostly high school students.

The study showed that the number of Asian-American students at institutions of higher learning was inflated by foreign students from Asian nations and that not all were top students gaining easy entry to the best colleges and universities to become doctors and engineers.

Full story… 

The study about midlife women’s attitudes toward physical activity is now conducted through Internet.

Eligible participants for this study is midlife women aged 40 to 60 years old who do not have any mobility problems; who can read and write English; who are online; and whose self-reported ethnic identity is Hispanic, non-Hispanic (N-H) White, N-H African American, or N-H Asian.

The tangible benefit of participation is a $10 Target gift certificate for each
person who completes an Internet survey and a $50 Target gift certificate for
each person who participates in the online forum later.

For more information, please follow this link:  http://mapa.nur.utexas.edu/MAPA/

When he graduated from high school, Roberto Tinoco didn’t really know what his options were for further education. Tinoco, whose family emigrated from Mexico to California when he was a child, had a 1-year-old daughter to support. “I was a young dad. I had all these responsibilities at home, and a lot of people told me that maybe I should give up school so that I could support my family,” Tinoco remembers. So he found a job as a check-cashing teller. The business’s owner had once been a minority-mentoring coordinator at the University of California (UC), Davis, and she believed Tinoco had potential. “She helped me realize that I still had to take care of my education and that there are opportunities out there for me,” Tinoco says.

With his boss’s encouragement, Tinoco enrolled as a biology major at Mt. San Antonio College, a 2-year school in Walnut, California. After 2 years of studying hard, getting laboratory experience, and working full-time, he applied to six UC campuses and was accepted by all of them. “I was amazed at the level of recruitment these universities have at community colleges,” he says. He chose UC Irvine, persuaded largely by a minority scholarship offered through the university’s NSF-funded California Alliance for Minority Participation (CAMP) program. Now a third-year Ph.D. student in viral immunology at UC San Diego, Tinoco advises students following a similar path to “stay focused on obtaining your goal and surround yourself with people who care about helping you in your education.”

Full story…

Sandra Romero and Bibiana Vega do their best to shrug off taunts from fellow Latino classmates at Del Mar High School in San Jose.

The 17-year-old seniors are called “whitewashed.” Mataditas – dorks. Cerebritas – brainiacs. They’re told they’re “losing their culture” – just because Sandra has a 4.0 grade-point average and Bibiana has a 3.5.

The put-downs are clear: Smart is not cool.

And too many Latino students are choosing cool over school.

But a few miles away at Hyde Middle School, in the heavily Asian Cupertino Union School District, Tiffany Nguyen detects the opposite attitude. If you’re not smart, “you’re really looked down on,” said the Vietnamese-American eighth-grader.

After years of tiptoeing around racial issues for fear of invoking stereotypes, California educators are now looking squarely at how ethnicity and culture shape achievement and attitudes toward school.

Full story… 

Educators gathered for the workshop on promoting faculty diversity at the National Education Association: American Federation of Teachers (NEA-AFT) conference held in Washington last week, heard from higher education officials about not only achieving a racially diverse faculty, but achieving a diversity, which also includes women and people with disabilities.

Lezli Baskerville, president of the National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education (NAFEO), said historically Black colleges and universities have a successful model to achieve a diverse professoriate.

Close to 48 percent of HBCU faculty come from diverse racial backgrounds, said Baskerville, adding that approximately 52 percent of the faculty at HBCUs are Black, 33 percent are White, 7 percent are Asian American and 3 percent are Hispanic.

Full story…

According to a new study, released by the University of California, Los Angeles, (UCLA), college admission rates of Asian American students at select public universities have thrived in the absence of affirmative action, whereas the admission rates of Black, Hispanic and White students have declined.

In a review of enrollment statistics from three states where affirmative action bans are in effect ? California, Florida and Texas ? the report also revealed that across all races, the male population drops in schools with blind admissions processes. Researchers examined admissions at five select institutions ? the University of California, Berkeley; UCLA, the University of California, San Diego; the University of Florida; and the University of Texas at Austin.

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In 2003, students at Harvard University surveyed the university’s hallways and meeting areas and found four centuries of portraits of esteemed scholars and benefactors. Three of the 302 portraits were people of color.

To their credit, Harvard administrators recognized a problem. They came up with $100,000 to commission a Harvard Minority Portraiture Project to add some new faces in prominent locations on the university’s walls.

When it comes to allowing the curriculum to embrace the study of Asians in America, however, the Harvard administration has shown more reluctance. Part of the reason is that Harvard sees itself, and is seen by many outside the university, as an institution that has been at the forefront of educational innovation since its founding in 1636.

Full story…