Monday, February 16, 2015

Even College-Educated Blacks Have Trouble Getting Jobs; Condolencesfor Young Black National Cares Mentor; Michael Holzman and Chains of BlackAmerica on WVON; Saving the African American Child



Making Progress; Moving Forward!
Even College Doesn't Help Black Graduates Get Jobs
Condolences for James Earl Jones
Listen to Michael Holzman Discuss The Chains of Black America
Celebrate 150 Years of 13th Amendment
Sobering News About Black Males
Saving the African American Child
Study: Even for college-educated blacks, road to full-time work is rocky
After more than a year of networking and applying for jobs, college graduate Jeramey Winfield still hasn't found full-time work. The North Lawndale resident was a standout student and envisioned a career in marketing or event planning. (Phil Velasquez, Chicago Tribune)
By Lolly Bowean
February 12, 2015
Months before he graduated from college, Jeramey Winfield was sending out resumes and applying for jobs online in Chicago.
The media studies major hoped to jump from Colby-Sawyer College in New Hampshire right into the Chicago workforce, in marketing or event planning, so he could get his own apartment and begin helping his family financially. But after more than a year of networking, sending out applications and asking mentors for help, Winfield still doesn't have a full-time job. In fact, he said, he's rarely been called back for an interview.
"I had this picture in my mind of working downtown, taking the train in and contributing to my profession," said Winfield, who often wears dapper, fitted business suits. "I had this vision of helping my mom out, since she struggled to raise five of us. I wanted to give her some relief."
While unemployment is falling to its lowest level in years, recent college graduates across the country are nonetheless struggling to find work. A new report found that, for young African-Americans with a four-year degree, the job search has been especially brutal. They are having a harder time than whites finding a job, are more likely to be in a job that does not require their college degree and are being paid less than white workers with the same experience.
Even African-Americans who study science, technology, engineering and math - majors that have been winners in the job market - have had a hard time finding work, said John Schmitt, a senior economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research, who co-authored that recent report, "A College Degree is No Guarantee."
"We are looking at a group of people who did everything right," Schmitt said in an interview. "They graduated high school like they were told. They went to college and graduated. They entered the labor market. But they are more likely to be unemployed than their white counterparts."
The gap between whites and blacks has been fueled by many factors. Black college graduates don't have strong networks, and they often don't have the experience to navigate the corporate world and reach the people who hire. More important, according to Schmitt, young African-Americans can face a measure of discrimination when they try to get their foot in the door, sometimes losing job opportunities to white applicants.
Among recent black graduates ages 22 to 27, the jobless rate in 2013, the last year for which data are available, was 12.4 percent compared with 5.6 percent for whites. For black 22-year-olds just leaving college, 67.1 percent were underemployed, compared with 56.2 percent for all college graduates in that age group, Schmitt said.
Click Here to Read Full Story
Our Condolences to the Family of
James Earl Jones, Clark Atlanta University and the National Cares Mentoring Movement
James Earl Jones (1994 - 2015)
Dear National CARES Supporters,
One of our treasured Clark Atlanta University student mentors, James Earl Jones, lost his life to gun violence on Monday night, sending shock waves throughout Atlanta and the two campuses where we are working. Grief counselors have been brought to the CAU campus and to Clark Middle School. Tracey Knight, project director of our HBCU Rising STEM and literacy program, sent the following email to our Atlanta supporters and STEM professionals who mentor our CAU college students in the two-tiered mentoring initiative.
My heart aches for the family, the students and all of us who've lost yet another young Black life to the unrelenting violence that has so disrupted our impoverished communities. Black poverty is increasing; it's intergenerational, systemic and sustained by public policies that punish the poor, inequities in education, joblessness and hopelessness. We've lost a brilliant and joyful Rising Scholar---- on the heels of the 30-plus students at Harlan High, on the South Side of Chicago, who were shot, and the one murdered--- all in the past academic year.

Violence is the child of poverty.

These tragedies demonstrate painfully and powerfully why we recruit and deploy mentors and are building transformational group-mentoring programs for replication throughout the nation. Transformation is possible! With a proven plan, strategic unity, commitment
---- and faith, our struggling children and community will heal and win!

For the children,

Susan Taylor
*******************************************

James was a junior, a chemistry major from Daytona Beach, Florida. He was an outstanding STEM student who maintained a cumulative 3.0 GPA. James was also very serious about becoming a physician and had plans to study infectious diseases in China next academic year. Though his academics were important to him, he spent his free time tutoring and mentoring young ones. James had a strong commitment to the HBCU Rising program and his mentees at Brown Middle School, because he himself had a challenging childhood and had exhibited wayward behavior and poor commitment to his studies. After high school graduation, he made a conscious choice to turn his life around, and he used the HBCU Rising program as his acknowledgment and payback for the grace that had been given to him. James was one of only a few Black male mentors in our program, so he not only served as a mentor for his 6 mentees but he was also a role model for every male and female Rising Scholar in the program. Needless to say, everyone loved him.
- Tracey Knight
Click Here to Learn More About this Tragic Event
Tune in to listen to
Michael Holzman
Who Will Discuss His New Book
The Chains of Black America:
The Hammer of the Police
The Anvil of the Schools
Saturday, February 14, 2015
6:00 pm central time
On WVON -1690 AM
Join us at 7:00 pm Eastern; 6:00 pm Central; 5:00 pm Mountain; 4:00 pm Pacific; 3:00 pm Alaskan; 2:00 pm Hawaiian. Call-In number at 773-591-1690
Listen to The Black Star Project's
Internationally Acclaimed Radio Program
The Parent Revolution
Every Saturday on WVON 1690AM
Click Here to Tune In.
*****************************************************************
The Black Star Project thanks the Board of Directors of The Field Foundation of Illinois, the Board of Directors of Woods Fund of Chicago, Illinois State Senator Jacqueline Collins, Illinois State Senator Kimberly A. Lightford, Chicago Alderman Will Burns and Melody Spann Cooper of WVON for their generous support for our parenting programs.
Click Here to Purchase "The Chains of Black America".
Celebrate the 150th Year of the 13th Amendment with the Illinois Amistad Commission and the DuSable Museum of African American History on Saturday,
February 21, 2015 at 740 East 56th Place, 1:00 pm. Please call 773.947.0600 for more information.
Mark Russell: Some sobering news about black males

By Mark Russell
February 10, 2015
Lance Nowlin performs with Krash Krew during the Sankofa Black Heritage Festival at the Indiana State Museum, Saturday, February 7, 2015. (Photo: Kelly Wilkinson/The Star)
This has been a very busy new year, but I did have the opportunity to enjoy the movie "Selma" and reflect upon the realities of being a black male in America in 2015. Using sources such as the Black Star Project, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Tavis Smiley and PBS, the picture that emerges is both challenging and troubling.
Let's start with employment, where it is sadly true that it is easier for a black male to illegally obtain a gun on the street than to secure legitimate employment. The adult unemployment rates for whites in December 2014 was 4.8 percent, compared with a black unemployment rate of 10.4 percent.
On June 3, 2014, the Black Star Project released a devastating fact sheet about life for black men in America. According to the report, "at comparable educational levels, black men earn 67 percent of what white men earn; white males with a high school diploma are just as likely to have a job and earn just as much as black males with college degrees."
Elsewhere the report notes that "while constituting roughly 12 percent of the total population, black Americans are represent nearly 30 percent of its poor and . . . 44 percent of all prisoners in the United States." The challenges faced by young black Americans are also staggering.
Unemployment for white youths stood at 12.2 percent in 2014, compared with a black youth unemployment rate of 24.8 percent.
Black Star relates that 67 percent of black children are born out of wedlock; that only 7 percent of black 8th-graders perform math at grade level; that only 45 percent of black men graduate from high school in the U.S.; and that just 22 percent of black males who began at four-year colleges graduated within six years.
Probably the greatest challenge and sadness is the fact that homicide is the leading cause of death for black males ages 15-34 and that suicide is the third leading cause of death for black males in that age range.
I share these sad facts not because I hate my own race but rather because the first step in solving a problem is recognizing there is a problem. And, yes, I am compelled to add that many of these ills are moral in nature, be it the absence of values that produces children born out of wedlock or the seeming lack of respect for education as a tool for not only the liberation and transformation of the mind but for the economic and body politic as well.

Click Here to Read Full Article
Russell is director of education, family services and housing for the Indianapolis Urban League. Contact him at yourvoiceforindystar@gmail.com and at Mark A. Russell @IURuss on Twitter.
Possibly the Greatest Paper Written
on Educating Black Children!!!
Saving the
African American Child
Dr. Donald Smith was the president of the National Alliance of Black School Educators in 1984 when Dr. Asa Hilliard and Dr. Barbara Sizemore led a team of Black educators to produce possibly the greatest paper ever written on teaching and saving African American children!
Dr. Barbara Sizemore Dr. Asa Hilliard
These two educators, both now deceased, were world-renowned for the work they did with and for Black children. Today, education administrators, school teachers, college professors, foundation officers, elected officials, parents, community organizers, students and anyone interested in educating Black children must read this paper!


"Saving the African American Child is a philosophical statement of belief and expectations", Says Dr. Smith. He continues, "It provides the basis for an education whose content is true, appropriate and relevant and whose processes are democratic and humane."

And finally Dr. Smith says, "While our single objective is saving
Dr. Donald Smith.
African America children, we believe that all American children will be better served by an educational system which is based on the goals of academic and cultural excellence as defined in this report."

Click Here to read the full report, Saving the African American Child.
Majority of Black Americans
Are Living through Worst Economic Conditions
Liquid Wealth of Black Americans $200
By Phillip Jackson
February 10, 2015
(Sri Lanka) Welcome to America, where Black Americans are more likely to be under-educated, unemployed and imprisoned than their White peers; where Black Americans, in general, have significantly less wealth, dramatically lower-quality housing, much poorer nutrition and sub-standard medical care. This is an America where Black people remain relatively silent while these conditions and a raging economic genocide, eliminates them, their children and their grandchildren from ever participating in the American mainstream!
Recent economic, wealth and employment reports confirm what much of Black America already knows: We are in serious TROUBLE and multitudes of Black people exist in deep poverty. Many Black people in America are not just poor by American standards; many of us are third-world poor. Black Americans are in an economic free-fall with no fiscal backstop. Many Black Americans will live their entire lives without ever having a positive net worth. Most Black people today who work are like "sharecroppers", men and families who did most or all of the work on a farm, but seldom earned enough to pay their debts and never owned anything of value.
But it gets much worse! When you remove vehicles and other durables from the equation, according to New York University economist Edward Wolff, the median Black family worth is just $1,700 (while 40 percent of Black families have zero or negative wealth). The median White family worth (without durable goods) is roughly 69 times more than that of Black families, or about $116,800.
And worst of all, the sad reality is that liquid wealth is largely non-existent within Black families. Liquid wealth is the money used to pay bills, buy food, pay the rent and cover emergency situations. In 2011, the Center for Global Policy Solutions in a report entitled Beyond Broke, showed the median liquid wealth of Black Americans as only $200, compared to $23,000 held by Whites.
More than $100 billion might have been extracted from Black American communities during the recent recession according to a report by the Center for Responsible Lending, Foreclosures by Race and Ethnicity. This economic carnage of the Black American economy constitutes a kind of "financial rape" of the African American community, similar to the devastating effects of colonization on the African continent. Black Americans might never recover. Never!
Black America cannot wait for the government, foundations and universities to save us. Annually, Black Americans generate about $1 trillion within the U.S. economy. We must take control of our financial resources and improve Black personal finances, our family wealth and our communities' economies. Although life might be good economically in America, the majority of Black Americans are living through the worst economic conditions in modern history!
Click Here to reaqd full article or to leave a comment on this article
Black Girls Matter:
New Report Exposes Gendered and Racial Disparities in Education Too Often Erased
In one school district, Black girls are 53 times more likely to be suspended than White girls
Photo provided by The Black Star Project
By Feminist Newswire
February 5, 2015
Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out,. Overpoliced and Underprotected was recently released by the African American Policy Forum (AAPF) and Columbia Law School's Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies.
Researchers for the study used data and personal interviews with young women of color in Boston and New York to expose how racism, sexism, and class issues erase Black girls' experiences in the school system, limit their educational opportunities, and marginalize their needs, while pushing them into low-wage work, unemployment, and incarceration.
"Gender and race norms place black girls at risk," said the report's lead author, Kimberlé Crenshaw, in its launching webinar yesterday.
Often, conversations about race in education focus on the achievement gap between Black and white boys, but many efforts refuse to acknowledge that Black girls experience these same gaps between themselves and their white counterparts - and often in greater numbers. Sometimes, the magnitude of racial disparities for girls is greater than that of boys, despite the minute attention paid to black girls' lives.
The report highlights the negative impacts of zero-tolerance school systems and punitive disciplinary philosophies on girls, such as how law enforcement and security personnel make girls feel less safe. "It feels like you're in jail," one interviewee told researchers. "It's like they treat you like animals, because they think that's where you're going to end up."
Girls interviewed for the study also cited sexual harassment as part of their educational experience, and reported that administrators did little to protect them from harassment and violence. Some were punished for engaging in self-defense or asked to leave classrooms where they were being harassed in order to make the disruptions stop.
Black girls are also targeted unfairly by administrators for suspension and expulsion. In the 2011-2012 school year, for example,12 percent of all African American girls in pre-Kindergarten through Grade 12 were suspended, a suspension rate six times the rate for white girls and higher than rates for white, Asian, and Latino boys.
In some school districts, all the girls suspended were Black. In one, Black girls were 53 times more likely to be expelled than their white counterparts.
Click Here to Read Full Story
Click Here to Read Full Report, Black Girls Matter
Breaking the School-
to-Prison Pipeline
sponsored by
Citizens United to
Save The Southland
with
Dr. Bambade Shakoor-Abdullah
The Honorable David Johnson
and Phillip Jackson
Saturday, February 28, 2015
12:30 pm
Thornwood High School
17101 South Park
South Holland, Illinois

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