Our friends at Socialcast put together this incredible infographic that puts the need for diversity into neat perspective:

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According to findings from a recent study by University of Southern California Professor Dmitri Williams, only 10 percent of characters in video games are Black, and even then most are depicted as gangsters or athletes.

Some would argue that while so many African Americans religiously play video games, they cannot see themselves getting into an industry that is predominately white. Others point to institutional bias and inequality of opportunity in the gaming and tech industries.

Read more at the Grio.

According to the Harvard Gazette, the university’s incoming class included a record number of Black and Latino students.

While these institutions tout their diversity, they’re do so by admitting wealthy, non-American students of color, rather than Black and Latino students from the U.S.

The problem, of course, isn’t that Black immigrants are going to Ivy League schools in large numbers; educational success should be applauded no matter where the student is from. But the large numbers of African immigrants on American college campuses, coupled with the remarkably small numbers of native Blacks on those same campuses, calls into question the effectiveness of America’s affirmative action programs.

Read more at Good.is

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The Root Reports:

Some child care providers in the state aren’t too happy about it. One day care owner told a local news station why she’s against the proposal: “They are infringing on a lot of our rights. [...] We’re not giving parents a choice. We’re not giving children a choice. We’re not giving caregivers a choice.”

Is the rejection of multiculturalism merited, or racist?

You Decide.

Read More At TheRoot.com

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The data shows a declining number of white adults and growing under-18 populations of Hispanics, Asians and other minorities. Nationwide, 67 percent of adults are white, but just 54 percent of children are.

“Were it not for Hispanics, the nation’s child population would have declined,” the report’s authors wrote. According to the analysis, Hispanics saw the largest absolute increase in children, at 4.8 million. The nation’s white population grew by only 1.2 percent, far lower than the national growth rate of 9.7 percent and well below the 43 percent growth rates for Hispanics and Asians.

Read The Whole Story

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Roland Martin talks with Richard Prince about the AOL Huffington Post deal, what it means for African-American journalist and diversity in online media.

ATLANTA — A Democratic U.S. Senate candidate from Georgia says he used to be suspicious of white people because he never spoke to one his age until his all-black high school consolidated with an all-white one when he was 18.

The 57-year-old Michael Thurmond said those suspicions dissipated as he interacted with whites at his Athens, Ga., school

Before that, he said “the only white friend I had was on TV – Beaver,” from “Leave It to Beaver.”

Thurmond made the remarks in a keynote speech Tuesday at a diversity conference sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C.

The USDA last month forced employee Shirley Sherrod to resign from her Georgia position when a blogger posted a heavily edited video that made her appear racist. Later it was shown her remarks were taken out of context and officials asked her to return.

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Minority woman are underrepresented

Minorities and women are still underrepresented in the boardrooms of Fortune 500 companies, lagging far behind the national population percentages, according to U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez, a Democrat out of Hoboken.

The chairman of the Senate Democratic Task Force released today the results of a survey on representation of women and minorities among the senior management of major firms. Survey participants represent 219 of Fortune 500 companies.

Hispanics are found to be the least proportionately represented on boards and fared worse on executive teams. The Menendez “Corporate Diversity Survey” also looked at the Fortune 500 firms practice of contracting with minority and women-owned businesses.

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Top Black Female Politicians

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“As chair of the Senate Democratic Hispanic Task Force, one of my top priorities has always been promoting and expanding diversity at all levels of our economic, political and social sectors, and the basic understanding that has resulted from this survey will help guide us in doing so,” said Sen. Menendez.

“This report clearly confirms what we had suspected all along – that American corporations need to do better when it comes to having the board rooms on Wall Street reflect the reality on Main Street, ” he said. “We need to change the dynamic and make it commonplace for minorities to be part of the American corporate structure. It is not just about doing what’s right, but it’s a good business decision that will benefit both corporations and the communities they’re tapping into and making investments in. That’s why I’m offering my recommendations and to work one-on-one with companies who want to move those numbers and company executives who want to make a difference in the community.”

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But instead, the school is in turmoil, with much of the faculty in an uproar over the resignation of a popular principal, the third in five years. In her departure speech to teachers in late June, the principal cited several reasons for her decision, including tensions over a lack of diversity at the school, which had been the subject of a controversial graduation address the day before by one of the school’s few African-American students.

Read more at NYTimes

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by Malik Russell

Over a century ago, scholar and sage W.E.B. Dubois wrote in his groundbreaking book, The Souls of Black Folks that “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line.”

Today, optimism springs eternal as a new century and new firsts for Black folks symbolize a socially utopian world only found at the end of rainbows and during one brisk night last November when for a moment everything was right with the world and potential for change unlimited. Then we woke up and realized the post-racial world we were waiting for hadn’t arrived yet-probably held up at the airport and placed on someone’s no fly list?

When the post-racial society does arrive, it may have to stand since the color line will likely refuse to give up its seat. Of course, many things have changed including the hair care products in the Whitehouse, but in many cases, this change is relative. African Americans have made progress relative to their enslaved and legally discriminated against ancestors (many still around today), yet relative to White Americans, little distance has been gained in the racial gaps of wealth, education and position. This assertion is more fact than opinion and substantiated by various studies including a recent study by the Urban Institute on the level of diversity among the leadership of Baltimore-Washington, D.C. area non-profits.

For social prophets blindly ushering in the post-racial era, the results of this study are both disappointing and surprising. For the highly educated Black professionals who make up the world’s most educated and qualified group of Africans in the Diaspora, there was little surprise-its simply something we cannot talk about-not if we want to work again.

According to the study Measuring Racial-Ethnic Diversity in the Baltimore–Washington Region’s Nonprofit Sector, from the Urban Institute, while people of color make up 49 percent of the population of the region, they only make up 22 percent of the executive directors.

http://www.urban.org/publications/412053.html

In the chocolate cities of Baltimore and Washington D.C., the discrepancies between population and power are even less post-racial as they make up only 30-34% of the executive directors but almost 70 percent of the population. In northern Virginia, people of color make up 40 percent of the population and a meager 5 percent of non-profit executive directors.

What is alarming for people of color is the fact that the non-profit, public and government sectors ostensibly represent areas full of liberalized Whites less discriminatory than the private sector and even willing to vote for a Black man for president. One might guess that the color line did not receive the memo that it was supposed to stop at the non-profit sector.

When one looks at paid staff and management staff at region non-profits, African Americans in particular make up nearly 38 percent of paid staff and almost 31 percent of management. Non-Hispanic whites make up 49 percent of all staff and 58 percent of managers. Additionally, the study points to the fact that “young people of color are not entering the ranks of executive directors as readily as their non-Hispanic white counterparts.”

Of course, the advocates of the new religion of post-racialism are now clearing their throats to mention that we do have Barack Obama as president and that in itself confirms a new era of race relations. Yet even in the Whitehouse, the color line remains.

According to a recent analysis done by the Washington Post looking at Obama appointments, people of color, particularly African Americans who as canaries in the mine are suffering the uneven brunt of the economic recession and mass unemployment-are not seeing the change promised.

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/2009/federal-appointments/

Of Obama’s 404 senior political appointments, 258 are white and the second most group is listed as racially unknown (64), while African Americans, Latinos, and Asians represent 54, 39, and 20 respectively of the President’s appointments. Therefore, despite the ever-promulgated educated-diversity of this region and the national population, whites still make up nearly 64% of the new “Black” president’s appointments. Closer to the Oval Office, among the 39 staff appointed to the Whitehouse, 25 are white, and only seven are Black.

Anyone who has worked in the non-profit arena of Washington-Baltimore region knows that African Americans in the non-profit and public sectors tend to walk on eggshells and your accomplishments tend to matter most when compared to other people of color and matter least when compared to that White candidate with half your experience and educational qualifications. Affirmative action is like that cousin you keep hearing bout’ at family reunions but ain’t never seen yet. Each time you nail the perfect interview you think you will finally be introduced to him but he never shows up. Instead, you get a glistening letter on nice paper that says the organization decided to rewrite the job description.

Or maybe that’s just for tall dark-skin men like me who choose to work in fields that revolve around social justice issues disparately impacting Black men-such as prisons or criminal justice policy. Often times you end up a a finalist for a position and instead of being named to the position, you instead get a pat on the back and an offer to do consulting with that same organization. For many of our white liberal friends working on issues that disparately impact our communities-they have no issue of guilt nor conscious after realizing that the same racism they accuse the system of is reflected in their own organizations and the organizations/foundations that fund them.

A decade ago while conducting an interview for an online radio newsmagazine started by a Black website (The Black World Today) long before other major/white media organizations got the idea, I interviewed Playthell Benjamin, noted author and former press secretary for Malcolm X (El Hajj Malik El Shabazz) and he broke down the difference between “White Supremacy,” and “racist.” According to Benjamin, while racist do not care for Black Folk nor desire to be around them, White Supremacists don’t mind having Black Folk around or working with them… “so long as they are the ones in control.”

Ironically, the only moments where I felt something akin to what Whites experience as non-stigmatized o “white privilege,” or that elusive “affirmative action,” was working as a journalist in the Black Press.

Today, Whitehouse occupant notwithstanding, Dubois’s prophetic comment still rings true, albeit one slight change. The problem of the twentieth century will be the problem of the color line-And so too, will the problem of the color line plague Black Folks in the 21st Century. Peace

 Malik Russell is an activist, educator and author and journalist..

From the NY Times:

PARIS — France is embarking on a grand experiment — how to diversify the overwhelmingly white “grandes écoles,” the elite universities that have produced French leaders in every walk of life — and Rizane el-Yazidi is one of the pioneers.

The daughter of protective North African parents in the tough northeastern suburb of Bondy, Ms. Yazidi is enrolled in a trial program aimed at helping smart children of the poor overcome the huge cultural disadvantages that have often spelled failure in the crucial school entrance exams.

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“For now we’re still a small group, but when there will be more of us, it’ll become real progress,” said Ms. Yazidi, 20. But she is nervous, too. “We’re lucky, but it’s a great risk for us,” she said. “We might never make it” to a top school.

Because entrance to the best grandes écoles effectively guarantees top jobs for life, the government is prodding the schools to set a goal of increasing the percentage of scholarship students to 30 percent — more than three times the current ratio at the most selective schools. But the effort is being met with concerns from the grandes écoles, who fear it could dilute standards, and is stirring anger among the French at large, who fear it runs counter to a French ideal of a meritocracy blind to race, religion and ethnicity.

Click here to read more.

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WASHINGTON — The minority population in the United States is steadily rising and now makes up 35 percent of the total, advancing an unmistakable trend that could render them the new American majority by midcentury.

New Census estimates show minorities added more than 2 percent in 2009 to 107.2 million people, boosted by a surge in Hispanic births and more people who described themselves as multiracial. During this time, the white population remained flat, making up roughly 199.9 million, or 65 percent, of the country.

In 2000, whites comprised 69 percent of the total population and minorities 31 percent.

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Currently four states — Hawaii, New Mexico, California and Texas — as well as the federal enclave of Washington have minority populations that exceeded 50 percent.

And it is one state more from 2000, when Texas had not yet become a minority state. The 35 percent overall minority proportion of the population was up from 34 percent a year ago.

The new Census estimates released Thursday documented a widening age and race divide. They also are the last government numbers before completion of the 2010 census later this year, which could change the balance of political power when legislative districts are redrawn based on population and racial diversity.

The overall rise in the minority population is due to recent sharp increases in minority births, especially among Hispanics, who made up more than half of the total population gains last year. There are now roughly 9 births for every 1 death among the Latino population, compared to a roughly one-to-one ratio for whites.

As a result, even with immigration of Hispanics now slowing, U.S. minorities make up 49 percent of the children born in the U.S., up one percentage point from 2008. Based on current rates, data from the 2010 census could show a new “tipping point” in which babies born to minorities outnumber that of babies born to whites.

About 1 in 4 counties now have more minority children than white children or are nearing that point.

“Fertility is playing a critical role in reshaping the racial and ethnic structure of the country,” said Kenneth Johnson, a sociology professor at the University of New Hampshire.

Multiracial Americans, the fastest growing U.S. demographic group, are also adding to minority gains. About 5.3 million last year were identified as being of multiple race or ethnicity, up 3.2 percent from the previous year.

Among the individual races, Hispanics grew by 3.1 percent to 48.4 million and Asians increased 2.5 percent to 13.7 million. They now represent about 15.8 percent and 4.5 percent of the U.S. population, respectively.

Blacks, who make up about 12.3 percent of the population, increased less than 1 percent last year to 37.7 million.

“Most parts of the country are now totally dependent on minorities for achieving growth in their young adult and child populations,” said William H. Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, citing the low birth rates among whites as well as the aging white baby boomer population.

“Minorities are especially important for current and future labor force gains in all but the most rapidly growing parts of the country,” he said.

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From The Columbus Dispatch

In a TV world with The Cosby Show as a distant memory, TBS has quickly become the home of minority-driven comedy.

Actors of various ethnicities are found on the broadcast networks and the biggest of the cable outlets, often playing characters in ensemble dramas such as Grey’s Anatomy — although some (such as CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which stars Laurence Fishburne) cast nonwhite actors in leading roles.

In comedy, however, diversity seems to have hit a wall, especially since the demise of UPN.

The recent Fox sitcom Brothers was quickly pulled from the schedule after disappointing ratings.

So, these days, the new TBS block of minority-oriented programming stands virtually unopposed.

It was that momentum that led Ice Cube, the rapper turned actor turned TV producer, to take Are We There Yet? to TBS.

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While many Latino baseball players have spoken out in favor of removing the All Star Game from Arizona in protest of the state’s controversial new immigration laws, Commissioner of Baseball Bud Selig has defended holding the game there. Check out what Roland has to say to Selig about ignoring players’ concerns:

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While many Latino baseball players have spoken out in favor of removing the All Star Game from Arizona in protest of the state’s controversial new immigration laws, Commissioner of Baseball Bud Selig has defended holding the game there. Check out what Roland has to say to Selig about ignoring players’ concerns:

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Roland Martin says President Obama’s push to get Black and Latino votes is a little too late. But he has good advice on HOW to get those crucial votes.

WATCH here:

Catch this week’s FULL episode Sunday at 5pm & 11pm on TV One!

Submit your video questions and comments HERE!

Roland Martin says President Obama’s push to get Black and Latino votes is a little too late. But he has good advice on HOW to get those crucial votes.

WATCH here:

Catch this week’s FULL episode Sunday at 5pm & 11pm on TV One!

Submit your video questions and comments HERE!

From Reuters.com:

CANNES (Hollywood Reporter) – “The Wire” star Idris Elba wants British television to stop talking on-screen diversity and “just do it”: put more actors of color on the small screen.

“If you look at American television, it is nothing to see a cast that is multi-racial. So we shouldn’t shy away from demanding more diversity on British TV. Only because it reflects the culture we live in,” said the English actor, who also guest-starred as a no-nonsense corporate VP on the U.S. version of “The Office.”

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CHICAGO — That historically all-white club known as the U.S. Senate is likely to lose what little diversity it has after November’s elections.

Two white men will be competing for President Barack Obama’s former seat in Illinois, now held by Roland Burris, the chamber’s lone African-American. Appointed by the scandal-tainted former governor, Burris won’t be seeking a full term.

In contests in Florida, Texas and North Carolina, black candidates face daunting challenges to joining the august body, from difficulty raising cash to lack of name recognition to formidable rivals.

Blacks comprise 12.2 percent of the nation’s population, but you wouldn’t know it in the 100-member Senate. Come next year, the total number could add up to zero.

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“It certainly is not a desirable state of affairs,” said David Bositis, a senior political analyst with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

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Bositis noted that blacks don’t make up the majority population in any state and in states where there are large numbers of blacks, as in the South, there are racial divisions that make getting elected difficult.

Florida is more likely to produce the next Hispanic senator than it is the next black senator.

Former state House Speaker Marco Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, is locked in a close race with Gov. Charlie Crist for the Republican Senate nomination and the chance to succeed GOP Sen. Mel Martinez, who left before his term ended. Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., who was elected in 2006, is the Senate’s only Hispanic member and is one of only six Hispanics elected since the 1920s.

Rep. Kendrick Meek, one of 41 African-Americans in the House, is the front-runner for the Democratic nomination in Florida, but polls show him trailing both Rubio and Crist.

In Texas, Republican Michael Williams is looking at running for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison’s seat. Hutchison is challenging Republican Gov. Rick Perry. Williams is a commissioner on the Railroad Commission of Texas, which regulates the oil and gas industries in the state.

In North Carolina, Chapel Hill attorney Kenneth Lewis, a former state fundraiser for Obama, is one of three leading Democrats seeking to challenge GOP Sen. Richard Burr. Another black Democrat, Nathaniel Cooper, has raised just $1,600 to compete in the May 4 Democratic primary.

In Georgia, former Rockdale County chief of staff R.J. Hadley, a first-time candidate, hopes to take on Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson but has not yet raised the minimum $5,000 filing fee.

Carol Swain, a Vanderbilt University political science and law professor, said that party leaders need to be committed to a diversified legislative body and that qualified black candidates with money must step up to try to get elected.

“One of the reasons why it’s difficult for minorities, especially blacks, to win statewide is the cost of campaigns,” she said. “It takes millions of dollars to run a Senate campaign.”

On Tuesday, neither of the two black challengers in the Illinois’ primary — Chicago Urban League President Cheryle Jackson, a Democrat, and little-known former suburban Chicago alderman John Arrington, a Republican — could compete against the better-funded and better-known candidates who captured the major party nominations.

Five-term Rep. Mark Kirk won the GOP nomination and Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias walked away with the Democratic nod. Both are white.

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Illinois has a history of sending black senators to Washington, with three of the nation’s four black senators in modern times coming from the state.

The first black senator in the 20th century was Edward W. Brooke, a Massachusetts Republican who served from 1967 until 1979. The first to hold the Illinois seat was Carol Moseley Braun, a Democrat who won it in 1992. She lost six years later to Republican Peter Fitzgerald, who is white and didn’t seek a second term. Obama captured the seat in 2004 by trouncing another black candidate, conservative Republican Alan Keyes. Obama relinquished the seat when he was elected president, and it was filled by Burris.

Burris was appointed by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich after Blagojevich was arrested for allegedly trying to sell Obama’s seat.

Obama’s former seat is now a prime takeover target for Republicans. The attention on it has intensified since the GOP’s upset win in Massachusetts last month claimed the late Sen. Edward Kennedy’s seat.

For some in Illinois, the bigger embarrassment would be for Obama’s old seat to fall to the GOP.

“It needs to be a Democrat,” Chicago teacher Tina Fakhrid-Deen said.

For his part, Kirk borrows a line from Massachusetts’s new U.S. senator: “I think that this seat is not owned by any one particular group or politician. It’s owned by the people of Illinois.”

From USA Today:

Stephanie Jones didn’t waste any time firing off a letter to ABC once she learned that the musical chairs that followed the retirement of World News anchor Charles Gibson had landed George Stephanopoulos a promotion.

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Since 2002, the former senior adviser to President Clinton had served as moderator of This Week, ABC’s Sunday morning political talk show. Earlier this month, he was named host of Good Morning America, replacing Diane Sawyer, who got Gibson’s job.

“As you know, none of the major Sunday morning talk shows currently features a minority host, and the lack of racial diversity is an ongoing concern we have urged you to address,” Jones wrote to ABC News President David Westin and Ian Cameron, executive producer of This Week.

Three years ago, Jones, who heads the National Urban League Policy Institute, criticized the “paucity” of blacks on TV’s five leading Sunday morning news talk shows — This Week, NBC’s Meet the Press, CNN’s Late Edition, FOX News Sunday and CBS’ Face the Nation. Next year, she will issue a follow-up report that credits the networks for making some progress, Jones told me.

Click here to read more.

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From Mercury News:

In its earliest days, Facebook was primarily a white and Asian phenomenon. No more. In the first study of the race and ethnicity of its U.S. users, Facebook said Wednesday that blacks and Latinos have joined the social networking giant at a rapid clip in the past several years.

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Illustrating the growing diversity of online users as the Internet matures, a study by Facebook researchers found that about 11 percent of the social network’s approximately 100 million U.S. members were African-American, about 9 percent were Latino and 6 percent were Asian, according to a post on Facebook’s blog Wednesday evening — a much higher share for blacks and Latinos than four years ago.

Facebook does not ask its more than 350 million worldwide members to disclose their race. But researchers at the Palo Alto-based social network used a Census Bureau database of the demographic characteristics of 150,000 American surnames to track the rapidly changing racial makeup of its U.S. members over the past four years.

“What we’ve seen over time is that as Facebook has grown in the U.S. population, we’ve come to represent a cross-section” of Americans who are online, said Cameron Marlow, the Facebook data scientist who led the study.

Click here to read more.

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From the Wall Street Journal:

When Barack Obama sat down with Russia’s ITAR-Tass news agency last summer, the reporter concluded the interview by presenting the president with nesting dolls of American politicians. “Only Democrats inside,” the reporter said reassuringly, “No Republicans.”

“Excellent,” replied Mr. Obama, laughing.

The president probably wouldn’t have minded either way, but, if only inadvertently, the Russian purge of Republicans is expressive of a trend among those who give and receive dolls: an intensifying concern with matching the characteristics of the figurine with those of its owner.

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Some children, of course, have always yearned for a doll that looks just like them, with the same eye and hair color and, for the luckiest, even a matching set of clothes. More commonly, children have enjoyed dolls not for narcissistic satisfaction but for their imaginative potential as hand-held adventurers that can be moved about and made to talk or fly. A corncob doll works as well for those purposes as a custom-made mini-me.

For children who wish to see their own faces reflected back at them, the toy industry has never before strained so assiduously to please. American Girl, the Mattel-owned company that sells 18-inch dolls with realistic hair and moveable limbs (including a line of historical dolls), offers an array of mannequins that can be configured with Godlike genetic specificity: For $95 to $109, parents can purchase a playmate that mirrors their daughter’s hair (blond, red, auburn, caramel, brown, dark brown, brown-black or black-brown), eyes (blue, hazel, green or brown), skin (light, medium or dark), and even attributes such as freckles, bangs, curls and pierced ears.

Even without stipulating exact facial characteristics, it is increasingly easy for families of all colors and ethnicities to stack their toy boxes with dolls that “look like America.” Asian, African-American and Hispanic dolls have joined their fair-complexioned, flaxen-haired counterparts at all points on the price spectrum, from the expensively tasteful (Madame Alexander’s eight-inch African-American bride, $79.95) to the disconcertingly sluttish (Bratz’s “Make Up Magic Sasha,” $17.99).

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The Obama epoch, meanwhile, has brought an African-American baby boom to the nation’s dollhouses. Mattel recently introduced a new line of black Barbies with fuller lips, wider noses and curlier hair than any previous black Barbies. In another nod to reality, the complexions of these “So In Style” dolls range from caramel to chocolate brown. Earlier black Barbies were essentially dark-hued versions of the pert-featured, straight-haired, alabaster bombshell.

Next week, Disney will unveil its first black princess in “The Princess and the Frog,” a retelling of the Grimm brothers’ tale “The Frog Prince” set in 1920s New Orleans. Tiana now joins the pantheon of animated lovelies that already includes Cinderella (who is white), Jasmine (who is Middle Eastern), Mulan (from China), and Pocahontas (an American Indian). As with all Disney films, this one brings a flood of merchandise: Tiana tiaras, child-size costumes, plush toys and a figurine of Tiana’s love interest, Prince Naveen.

All this would seem to be cause for cheer. Whatever our segregated past, today children can enjoy whatever dolls they like—right?

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WASHINGTON — Eight years after the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People signed a voluntary agreement to work together to boost the number of African-Americans at its 1,000-cadet service academy, the annual enrollment and graduation figures for blacks remain in single digits.

Seven blacks graduated from the academy based in New London, Connecticut, in the spring of 2001, the year the agreement was signed.

The same number graduated from the Class of 2006, the first class for which blacks were recruited under the agreement.

Subsequently, there were seven black graduates in 2007, five in 2008 and four in 2009.

That makes 23 graduates in four years under the agreement, including the academy’s first black female valedictorian. In the four previous years the number was 33.

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Leading lawmakers have grown increasingly upset with results even as they repeatedly are told the Guard is working hard to improve diversity in a service where only 311 of its 6,787 commissioned officers are black, with only one black admiral.

“The Coast Guard has just not paid attention to it. It is not antipathy or animosity toward it,” said Rep. James Oberstar, Democratic chairman of the House of Representatives Transportation Committee. “I think we’re moving in the right direction and got the Coast Guard’s attention and we’re not going to let up.”

Under a House bill, sponsored by Oberstar and Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings, the Coast Guard subcommittee chairman, members of Congress would nominate candidates for the academy. All the other service academies have long used congressional nominations.

On a 385-11 vote last month, the House advanced the legislation to the Senate.

The Coast Guard Academy historically has taken pride in viewing itself merit-based and choosing its applicants without regard to their geographical distribution among the states.

Cummings, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, expects black enrollment to grow with congressional involvement, at least in part because the House typically has about 40 black lawmakers who would be effective recruiters in largely black congressional districts.

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The Coast Guard’s position on the bill has been rather subdued.

The academy’s superintendent, Rear Adm. J. Scott Burhoe, likes the existing “merit-based system,” but would be “fine” if Congress adopted congressional nominations.

“I think for us part of our fear is the unknown, really, right now,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press.

The Coast Guard Academy graduated its first black officer in 1966. In the 43 years since, only about 2 percent of the academy’s graduates have been black and only once has there been as many as 10 in a single year.

Two years ago, the academy drew national attention when a noose was found among a black cadet’s personal effects on a Coast Guard vessel. That was followed with the appearance of a noose for a white officer who was conducting race relations training at the academy.

Cummings said at the time that the Coast Guard must redouble its efforts in the face of a clear attempt to threaten and intimidate efforts to increase diversity.

An investigation involving 50 federal agents including the FBI produced no arrests or motives.

At present, the academy reports it has 136 minorities, with 72 Hispanics, 39 Asians and 25 African-Americans.

The Coast Guard, when asked by The Associated Press how many African-Americans were admitted to its academy as a result of the NAACP memorandum of agreement, said, through spokeswoman Nadine Santiago, that there was no way to know.

Lawmakers lashed out at the Coast Guard at a hearing last June for admitting so few blacks for the 2013 class only months after a previous hearing and discussion about the need to provide for congressional nominations.

Hilary Shelton, the NAACP’s senior vice president for advocacy and policy, said the Coast Guard asked to enter into their nonbinding memorandum of agreement in 2001 after the Coast Guard recognized its record in recruiting blacks was dismal. Eight years later, he acknowledged that the current black enrollment figures are “sad and unfortunate.”

He was unsure about the use of congressional nominations as a solution. He said adding another step in the selection process could be “stifling” for recruitment.

“I am convinced that we probably need to do a thorough assessment of what we’ve done thus far and find ways of actually making it more robust,” he added. “You need to work with community-based organizations like the NAACP to make sure that this great opportunity is there for them and indeed they can be successful.”

Wanda Sykes’ weekly Fox comedy show debuts 11 p.m. EST Saturday, followed by George Lopez’s four-night-a-week talk show on TBS, starting 11 p.m. EST Monday. They join “The Mo’Nique Show” on BET.

Lopez is counting on an audience hungry for something different — as in the first Hispanic to host a nighttime talk show on a major network, cable or broadcast.

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Sykes is the first black late-night host since the late 1990s, when celebrities Earvin “Magic” Johnson and Keenan Ivory Wayans tried and failed to follow in Arsenio Hall’s successful 1989-94 footsteps.

“There’s a huge percentage of people not watching late-night TV at all,” Lopez said, figuring that the shows headlined by hosts including David Letterman, Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Kimmel draw from roughly the same audience pool.

For people of color, the actor and comedian said, “I don’t think a lot of their needs are met with the current talk shows. I would pull a different audience.”

Shari Anne Brill, an analyst with media-buyer Carat USA in New York, echoes Lopez’s assertion.

“There is a huge, growing multicultural population in this country, and the current late-night fare doesn’t really take them into account,” she said.

But neither Lopez nor Sykes are talking about practicing exclusionary TV. Lopez’s ABC sitcom drew a cross-section of viewers, and Sykes said she expects her show to attract the same mixed crowd she gets at her standup appearances.

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“Young, old, male, female, all races, gay, straight. I love the audience that I draw,” Sykes said.

She rebuts the idea she got the job because of her gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation (the actress-comedian, who appears on CBS’ “The New Adventures of Old Christine,” came out as gay in 2008).

“I do understand the importance of being on a late-night talk show as a black, gay woman. But I’ve been at this for 20 years. I don’t think they (networks) were saying, ‘Hey, it would be fun to get a black woman on late-night. Who fits that role?’

“I got this show in spite of being a black lesbian,” she said, adding that viewers will tune in to see her or Lopez and not a type.

“It’s all driven by the host. It’s not what you’re getting from a minority, it’s us,” Sykes said.

She doesn’t see an “Obama effect” in the sudden late-night diversity, given that she was approached before the election of the first African-American U.S. president. But Lopez said his interest was piqued as he campaigned for the Democratic candidate.

“Being with Barack for a year and seeing the people and how their eyes and their faces filled with hope for him, for this country … and, on a very smaller scale, to have a show that is fun and can galvanize people and bring them together” was appealing, he said.

The two shows, as sketched by their hosts, will take different approaches.

Lopez promises to bring “the party back to late-night,” signaling a looser, hipper hour in the tradition of “The Arsenio Hall Show,” said analyst Bill Carroll of media buyer Katz Television in New York. Sykes is planning Bill Maher-type panels with both lighthearted and serious discussion of politics and culture as part of her mix.

“In some ways, these shows are looking at breaking the mold,” Carroll said. “Lopez Tonight,” he suggests, could be “what late-night might look like in the future.”

Sykes, whose show replaces Fox’s “Mad TV,” could compete successfully in her partial overlap with NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” analyst Brill said. “Viewers could watch her show and then switch to ‘SNL’ in time for the news, which is the only part that’s funny anyway.”

Eva Longoria-Parker, Ellen DeGeneres and Los Angeles Lakers basketball star Kobe Bryant are the scheduled debut night guests for Lopez. Sykes will welcome Mary Lynn Rajskub of “24,” Daryl “Chill” Mitchell of “Brothers” and “The Amazing Race” host Phil Keoghan.

John Ridley, head writer for Sykes, said he’s wary of asserting that the show will “blow apart” the late-night model.

“If you look at all the shows, they’re not different. Are we going to have a monologue? Absolutely. Guests? Yes. A panel? Yes. But it reflects Wanda’s sensibility,” he said.

And that, it’s safe to say, is not akin to what Carroll calls the “predominantly middle-aged — to be kind — white men” that have long dominated late-night.

Boarding school.

When her mother presented the idea to Stormi Abrams-Haggard as she completed eighth grade at a Chicago public school, Stormi wasn’t quite sure what to think of it.

Her mother, Kecia Abrams, had become increasingly ill, suffering from sarcoidosis of the lungs, and someone had suggested she look into Milton Hershey School in Hershey, Pa., for her two daughters.

Hershey seemed a long way from their Park Manor neighborhood.

“But I’ve always been open to new things,” said Stormi, now 17 and starting her senior year at the nation’s largest free boarding school for underprivileged kids.

“I would say I was nervous — not scared, more anxious,” the youth said. “It took a lot of getting used to — especially sharing a home with 13 other girls, when it had been just me, my mom and sister. Today, I can say it’s the best thing that ever happened to me. I’ve gotten so much.”

[SOURCE: Chicago Sun-Times]

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]]> http://newsone.com/305957/boarding-schools-see-increase-in-diversity/feed/ 1 Boarding Schools See Increase In Diversity (thumbnail) ionesfontaine mma_haverstock_277 http://newsone.com/294527/conference-promotes-national-parks-to-minorities/ http://newsone.com/294527/conference-promotes-national-parks-to-minorities/#comments Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:52:11 +0000 Smokey D. Fontaine http://newsone.com/?p=294527 ]]>

From CNN:

Audrey Peterman grew up surrounded by Jamaica’s verdant mountains and lush mango orchards. She’d watch fish and an occasional shrimp dart in the stream that flowed near her house. When she settled in America, she yearned to relish the natural beauty of her new homeland.

She and her husband, Frank, climbed into their Ford F-150 pickup and drove 12,000 miles through 40 states to see 14 national and state parks. She marveled at the untouched vistas of the Badlands, Yellowstone and Yosemite national parks.

But amid the breathtaking views, she noticed a glaring omission. Under the pristine blue skies, there were hardly any people of color.

“At Yellowstone, it occurred to me — how come there are no black people around?” Peterman said.

Why? she wondered. Why weren’t they enjoying the parks they helped create, the public lands that belonged to them as well? Peterman embarked on a crusade to address the problem.

This month, her work will culminate in a national conference in Atlanta, Georgia — Breaking the Color Barrier in the Great American Outdoors — that focuses on increasing the participation of minorities in outdoor activities.

Peterman said she hopes to showcase the diversity of Americans who are committed to the environment and expose more people of color to the great outdoors.

“I never saw stories on national parks or the environment in Ebony, Jet or Essence,” she said. “Parks are an unknown quantity to people of color.”

Click here to read more.

]]> http://newsone.com/294527/conference-promotes-national-parks-to-minorities/feed/ 0 Conference Promotes National Parks To Minorities (thumbnail) ionesfontaine yellowstone-park_9590 http://newsone.com/291847/opinion-ivy-league-can-teach-ncaa-about-coach-diversity/ http://newsone.com/291847/opinion-ivy-league-can-teach-ncaa-about-coach-diversity/#comments Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:15:15 +0000 Smokey D. Fontaine http://newsone.com/?p=291847 ]]>

From The Root:

Most football coaches are brimming with optimism this time of year, but few with as much Tom Williams, the first black head football coach at Yale University. It has little to do with his expectations about the annual grudge match with Harvard later this year. Williams has broken through one of the most insidious glass ceilings in sports. He’s a black man coaching at a well-known school.

There are only four black coaches at the 119 schools that comprise Division 1A, the highest level of competition in the NCAA. The Ivy League is in Division 1-AA, where Williams joins Columbia University’s Norries Wilson, the first black coach in the Ivy League.

The extreme lack of diversity became a major issue shortly before Williams’ hiring in January. Turner Gill, a former standout quarterback on a powerhouse University of Nebraska team in the ‘80s and veteran coach, helped turn around a moribund program at the University of Buffalo. But he was passed over for the head coaching job at Auburn University in favor of Gene Chizik, who coached an Iowa State University team in complete disarray. Chizik’s ISU team went 5-19 during his two seasons there, not exactly the sort of track record that qualifies you for a promotion. NBA Hall of Fame player Charles Barkley, an Auburn alumnus, called his alma mater racist for the decision. Meanwhile James Franklin, a top assistant coach at the University of Maryland was passed over for many openings before opting to take a coach-in-waiting position there. He will succeed current coach Ralph Freidgen whose contract runs until 2012.

The Ivy League has succeeded in diversity in ways that other conferences should envy. In addition to their high marks in football, half of the conference’s basketball coaches are African-American, which compares favorably to the 30 percent average in the NCAA.

Click here to read more.

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