Race+Matters


 * Race Matters**


 * Do you see, hear, feel, or experience racism on a daily basis? on an occasional basis? never?**


 * What have teachers, mentors, or others done that have made an impression on you personally to demonstrate or promote understandings of diversity and multiculturalism and deconstruct racial stereotypes** **?**

In 2010 school segregation is not decreasing but increasing beyond what it was in the mid-1970s.
 * [|Study Finds Widespread School Segregation] from Northeastern University.**


 * [|2010 report finds an achievement gap between African American and White male students] **is even greater than commonly known. The report, **//A Call for Change//**, was prepared by the **Council of the Great City Schools** uses achievement test data from 2009.

//**__Black and White Wealth Accumulation Draws Farther Apart__**//
//**__ [|http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/business/2010/05/19/am.romans.wealth.race.gap.cnn] __**// Brandeis University's Heller School for Social Policy and Management released a new report about the gap between accumulated wealth of Black and White Americans during the past 23 years. There is four-fold difference between the two groups now. [|http://iasp.brandeis.edu/whatsnew/index.html]

=== **__//After Battling Racism, Veteran Found Peace on His Golf Course//__ ** === EAST CANTON, Ohio — Every corner of the modest two-story frame clubhouse he owns and operates, every tee and green of Clearview Golf Club, the 18-hole course he designed and built, bears the imprint of Bill Powell. Sown 63 years ago in an act of defiance, nurtured by the sheer force of will of the man whose vision gave it birth, the club stands as a monument to a golf giant who has battled racism in relative obscurity most of his life. On Wednesday in Minneapolis, on the eve of the P.G.A. Championship at Hazeltine National Golf Club, a national spotlight will illuminate Powell’s many life achievements when he receives the P.G.A. Distinguished Service Award, the P.G.A. of America’s highest honor.

The great-grandson of Alabama slaves, Powell wi ll be there to accept it. He is 92, his once-imposing frame slightly bent by time and by a stroke a decade ago. His wide shoulders and thick arms are reminders of the fine athlete he was. His speech survived, as did a powerful presence that emanates from deep-set eyes that smolder or sparkle, depending on the topic. To feel the heat that burned down the barriers in the days before Jackie Robinson donned a Dodgers uniform, ask Powell about the circumstances that led to his building a golf course from scratch after returning from World War II, in which he served as a techsergeant in the Army Air Corps.

“I was denied the rights accorded me in the G.I. Bill,” he said, his eyes widening and his anger rising. “I was denied this right. Here’s a guy of color that was captain and coach of his golf team in high school, captain of his football team, and when I come and try back to get a loan, they tell me, ‘Bill, go there and get a loan.’ ”

No local banks would grant a loan to Powell, who grew up in Minerva — a small town about 20 miles east of Canton — where he caddied from the age of 9. In an era when blacks could not stand in line with whites to apply for a job, when the Army was segregated, Powell was reminded of the deep societal differences between England and Scotland, where he had been stationed, and Ohio. It hardened his resolve, as Powell said, “I had just left a country where I was treated like a human being, so how was I supposed to be satisfied to be treated like dirt?”

He borrowed money from two black physicians, one from Canton and one from nearby Massillon, and from his brother, Berry Powell, who mortgaged his home. Bill Powell bought the original 78 acres he had spotted when driving with his wife, Marcella, down Route 30 — one of the earliest east-west access highways in the country — and they went to work. It was in the spring of 1946, and Powell was 29.

He did much of the heavy work himself, clearing brush, pulling out fence posts and hauling away stones in a wheelbarrow. He seeded the fairways by hand, sometimes helped by Marcella, who died in June 1996 after 56 years of marriage.

Their three children also did their part: Billy, the oldest son, now deceased; Lawrence, now the golf course superintendent; and Renee, a fine golfer who played on the L.P.G.A. Tour in the ’70s and early ’80s and is now the head professional. While supporting his young family with a nighttime job as a security guard at the Timken ball bearing factory, Powell finished the first nine holes of the course in two years. It opened in April 1948. After Powell bought another 52 acres, the back nine opened in 1978.

Standing in the afternoon shade of a massive oak on a hill near the first tee last week, Renee Powell smiled as she pointed down the first fairway of the course, which is one of just 15 on the National Register of Historic Places.

“He and my mother planted most of the trees you see there bordering the first hole,” she said. “When you think about what he was able to accomplish here, with everything that was arrayed against him, it really is quite amazing.”

At times Bill Powell wondered if what he was doing was worth the trouble. But quitting never occurred to him. “As soon as someone told him he couldn’t do something, that was when you knew he could,” Renee Powell said.

That is a characteristic Powell shares with other successful entrepreneurs. Even now, he will wave off an offer of help and climb out of his golf cart to fetch a club from his shop. He admits he was once gruff, even caustic, at times, but jokes about it.

“I love everybody now,” he said, eliciting a stifled chortle from his daughter. “I do. I just love everybody.”

He smiled and added, “Listen, when you’re walking down that last hole toward the big clubhouse over yonder, you don’t want to have a lot of enemies.”

Powell no longer plays golf, but people play it because of him. Smiling under a snappy linen Hogan cap, he chatted on Thursday with some of the women from the Clearview Ladies Golf Association, asking about their health, calling each by name.

He has made peace with some of the angry memories, but Powell is not content. Still rankled by bigotry and injustice, he nonetheless hopes today’s younger generation will put an end to the lingering differences.

“We are such a heterogeneous society,” he said. “We need to learn to coexist. If you take the best thing from each different part, then something good has to come of it. For all the bad that we have, we have a beautiful country. Why else would everybody be trying to come here?”

** __//Eugene Allen, White House Butler for 8 Presidents//__ **
For America's Black citizens the White House was unattainable till 2008 except in the positions of serving. And in that position, White House butler, Eugene Allen, witnessed history for 50 hears. [|http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2010/04/01/ST2010040103462.html?sid=ST2010040103462]

[|http://www.npr.org/2011/04/09/135266059/75-years-later-black-student-finally-first-in-her-class]
 * 75 Years Later, Black Student Finally First In Class **
 * Read the transcript or listen to the story of Fannetta Nelson Gordon, denied what she rightfully earned in high school. **

**//__"Goals for Black America Not Met"__ //**
2/28/2008 An article by **Marisol Bello in the newspaper USA Today reports findings that blacks still lag behind whites significantly in income, education, and other measures of well-being**. The report finds:

• **The poverty gap between blacks and whites has narrowed since 1968 as the percentage of blacks in poverty dropped from 35% to 24%. Still, blacks are three times as likely as whites — and Hispanics twice as likely — to live in extreme poverty**.

**•School integration has declined in the past two decades. Today, 27% of black students attend mostly white schools, up from 23% in 1968 but down from 37% during the 1980s.** The **full article appears online** at: [|http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2008-02-28-kerner-commission_N.htm]

__//Cartoon Reflect or Refute School Attitudes//__
Charles Schultz’s cartoons speak to the political reality of racist attitudes in the late 60s. Take a look at what was on his mind. [|http://edgeofthewest.wordpress.com/2008/11/27/black-people-cant-swim-c/]

__//Online NewsHour: A Conversation with Ruby Bridges//__
A conversation between PBS interviewer, Charlayne Hunter-Gault, and Ruby Bridges Hall, who, as a 6-year-old first grader in 1960, became the first African American student to integrate New Orleans’ public schools. Escorted in and out of the building each day by the Secret Service, taught by a young teacher from Boston, Ruby was the only student in her classroom throughout an entire school year. [|http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/race_relations/jan-june97/bridges_2-18.html] Consider this question and write about it in your journal entry: Could you or any of your friends in elementary school have envisioned attending school each day knowing that you would be the only child in the classroom? Would you have gone into school everyday for a year without complaint ?

**//__Defining Oppression, Privilege and Racism__ //**
In a January 2009 article in //Phi Delta Kappan//, multicultural educators Ozlem Sensoy and Robin DiAngelo offer a series of definitions of important social justice terms: Material quoted from “Developing Social Justice Literacy: An Open Letter to Our Faculty Colleagues.” Ozlem Sensoy & Robin DiAngelo. Phi Delta Kappan, January 2009, pp. 345-350.
 * Oppression:** “policies, practices, norms, and traditions that systematically exploit one social group (the target group) by another (the dominant group) for the dominant group’s benefit.” Oppression is not the same as discrimination or prejudice. For oppression to occur, the dominant group must have the power to impose their control. Thus, “Prejudice + Power = Oppression.”
 * Privilege** : “rights, benefits, and advantages automatically received by being a member of a dominant group.” Privilege is often used to describe the power that Whites exert over African Americans and Hispanics or the power men exert over women in American society.
 * Racism** : “racism is a specific form of oppression.” In American society, “racism is white racial and cultural prejudice and discrimination, supported intentionally or unintentionally by institutional power and authority, used to the advantage of whites and the disadvantages of people of color.” In a social justice view, while anyone can be prejudiced toward someone else, “only whites can be racist . . . only whites have social and institutional power and privilege.

//__"Given Half a Chance"__ //
As taken directly from the Schott Foundation for Public Education (2008), here is some of the information from the executive summary of their 2008 edition, //Given Half a Chance: The Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males.// To see the full report, please visit the Schott Foundation website at [|http://blackboysreport.org/node/13]

For over five years, The Schott Foundation for Public Education has tracked the performance of Black males in public education systems across the nation.* Past efforts by Schott were designed to raise the nation’s consciousness about the critical education issues affecting Black males; low graduation rates, high rates of placement in special education, and the disproportionate use of suspensions and expulsions, to name a few. The 2008 edition, //Given Half a Chance: The Schott 50 State Report on Public Education and Black Males//, details the drastic range of outcomes for Black males, especially the tragic results in many of the nation’s biggest cities. Given Half a Chance also deliberately highlights the resource disparities that exist in schools attended by Black males and their White, non-Hispanic counterparts. The 2008 Schott report documents that states and most districts with large Black enrollments educate their White, non-Hispanic children, but do not similarly educate the majority of their Black male students. Key examples: These trends, and others cited in Given Half a Chance, are evidence of a school-age population that is substantively denied an opportunity to learn, and of a nation at risk. //* Black students are defined by the U.S. Department of Education as “students having origins in any of the Black racial groups of Africa as reported by their school.” Data in the Report are based on information from the U. S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics and Office for Civil Rights, state departments of education and local school district//
 * More than half of Black males did not receive diplomas with their cohort in 2005/2006.
 * The state of New York has 3 of the 10 districts with the lowest graduation rates for Black males.
 * The one million Black male students enrolled in the New York, Florida, and Georgia public schools are twice as likely not to graduate with their class as to do so.
 * Delaware, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, South Carolina, and Wisconsin graduated fewer Black males with their peer group than the national average.
 * Illinois and Wisconsin have nearly 40-point gaps between how effectively they educate their Black and White non-Hispanic male students.

**//__School Desegregation Here and Now__ //**
[|New UC Report Says Districts Should Look to Berkeley Public Schools for Ideas on Desegregation Plans] is the headline on the homepage of their website. Download the **//BUSD policy brief//** to read what they have planned.
 * The Civil Rights Project at UCLA** issues a newsletter online with synopsis of court cases, reports, and pending legislation that affects students in schools. One of the newest is how the Berkley, CA schools have decided to continue the policy of integrated schools.

Professor Gary Orfield and **The Civil Rights Project at UCLA** have issued “Reviving the Goal of an Integrated Society: A 21st Century Challenge,” a recent report outlining how schools remain racially segregated 50 years after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. You will find it in their archives. [|http://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/]

=== **//__"Let them Play" By Margot Theis Raven__ //** **//__ [] __ //** === ”Let Them Play”, a true story, is an account of racism profoundly wrong and widely accepted in the U.S. at the time. Today, a short five decades from the event and a week from the Presidential election of Barack Obama, it is difficult for many citizens born after the tumultuous Civil Rights Movement of the 50s and 60s to believe that citizens in a democracy dedicated to equal rights under the law, built for two hundred years by every shade of beige, tan and brown skin tones, would behave in overtly racist ways, without conscience of error or fear of reprimand, while vehemently denying a group of citizens their rights. Reflect on and discuss these questions in your journal entry: Would examples of overt racist behavior be tolerated today and be easily recognized at public events? Have you seen or heard about contemporary examples?

=== //__  [|Lessons in Race and Humanity]  __ //  === Friday, January 25, 2008. Jeremy Dirac of the Greenfield Recorder sat in with sixth grade students at Deerfield Elementary School to learn lessons about race and humanity from World War II veteran, Raymond S. Elliot, 83, of Amherst. Elliot spoke about the racism he experienced growing up in Cambridge Massachusetts, in the military during WWII, and afterwards applying for college and becoming a chemist. [|http://www.recorder.com/story.cfm?id_no=479821]