Siren call for attentive action

We are once again at a critical turning point for our children and nation. Despite all the harsh lessons of the past and all the lofty rhetoric about who we want and need to be as a 21st century multicultural nation in a multiracial and multicultural world, we’re heading in the wrong direction -- backwards into a second Post-Reconstruction Era. We need to correct course and challenge the huge and interlocking economic and racial inequality that threaten the very idea of America.

Marian Wright Edelman, is
an activist for the rights
of children,and founder of
the Children's Defense Fund

So many of the formidable threats millions of poor children of all races, but especially black children, face today are actually dangerous steps backwards. The Cradle to Prison Pipeline™ which places one in three black boys (and one in six Latino boys) born in 2001 at risk of imprisonment. Mass incarceration of people of color -- especially black males. “Stop and frisk” racial profiling in policing. Huge racial disparities in often harsh, arbitrary, zero-tolerance school discipline policies that deny countless children of essential education and push them into the criminal justice system. Massive attacks on voting rights with new identification -- “show your papers” or get new papers policies -- and cost burden (“poll tax”) requirements which especially impact the poor, minority groups, the elderly, the disabled, and the young. Resegregating and substandard schools denying millions of poor black and Latino children skills they will need to work in our increasingly competitive globalized economy. Each and all of these are siren calls for attentive action. Source

A tale of two hoodies: Mark Zuckerberg vs. Trayvon Martin

In my opinion, the following blog post is so significant, it is my hope that every black blogger in the blogosphere will re-post it:

Why not invoke Charles Dickens given the dramatic times in which we are living? Two young men -- one still a minor. Two hoodies. One dies in his hoodie and the other becomes an overnight billionaire.

Trayvon Martin and Mark Zuckerberg both sported the hooded sweatshirts, known as hoodies, that are near-universal gear for those under 30, and beyond. Hey, even I've got a couple and maybe you do, too. People who support George Zimmerman claim that leftists want to make Trayvon Martin's death into a race issue when it is not -- even to the degree of blaming the victim for being killed by Zimmerman because he was wearing an ubiquitous hoodie.

"I think what's far more significant is what Trayvon Martin looked like on that night, Bill. Aside from the fact that he's dressed in that thug wear -- look at the size of him, he's not a little kid."

Geraldo Rivera to Bill O'Reilly Fox News

Never mind that George Zimmerman outweighed his teenage victim Trayvon by about 100 lbs, reportedly. The hoodie made Trayvon look like a hood justifying an attack by a neighborhood vigilante. Yet when Mark Zuckerberg appeared on Wall Street during the roadshow run-up to Facebook's IPO, his choice of a hoodie instead of a stiff suit was lauded as culturally cool.

Sure, Zuck caught some static from Wall Street haters who wear ties, but most saw his casual attire represented via hoodie as a nod to Silicon Valley style where what's in your brain is more important than what you're wearing. Indeed, Zuckerberg's hoodie is standard issue at Facebook's Palo Alto headquarters and bears a special mandala design inside that expresses FB's design construct and flow.

Star Jones recently pointed out the double standard inherent in how two young men wearing hoodies were treated in the public eye by the media. She was dismissed as just another angry black woman by others on the show, and right-leaning bloggers on the 'net.

 

But does Star have a point? Trayvon committed no crime -- he was merely walking home one fateful night after a trip to 7-11 for Skittles -- yet was accosted by a stranger as suspicious in part, it's claimed, because of his hoodie. When Mark Zukerberg wore a hoodie to launch Facebook's public stock offering, he was praised as an icon of a new generation representing the best of American values.

We can see this mirror in law enforcement practices. Study after study shows that young whites are more likely to use marijuana than blacks or Latinos, yet blacks are at least seven times more likely to get arrested for the same offense. Mark Zuckerberg was probably not a victim of New York City's [or Peoria's] terrible "Stop and Frisk" policy during his recent trip to Wall Street's halls of power. But who's the real gangsta here?

Some Wall Street analysts are questioning possible unethical behavior by Facebook's executives and its partner Morgan Stanley in "selective dissemination of information" that gave insider knowledge to some large investors but not others. FB's stock is being called "muppet bait for the masses" who didn't know that Facebook's quarter one earnings estimates had been cut mid-launch. The stock is now sinking like a stone in the NASDAQ stock echange. It's not clear how much Zuckerberg himself knew about the alleged financial shenanigans and shakedowns. But we all must be left wondering -- who would Geraldo name as the hood wearing "thug wear" now?

It's a tale of two hoodies where guilt and innocence are turned upside down, where one young man ends up rich and another ends up dead -- depending on whether you're white or you're black.

Cheryl Contee writes as Jill Tubman for the award-winning & top-ranked black political blog JackAndJillPolitics.com, which she co-founded in 2006. She is also the co-founder of Fission Strategy, which provides innovative social media & mobile services to nonprofits and foundations. Cheryl specializes in online advocacy, engagement, and communications. Follow Cheryl Contee on Twitter at @ch3ryl.

How does it feel to be stopped and frisked?

From ColorLines comes this excellent video and accompanying story of what it feels like to be stopped and frisked by police in Brownsville, Brooklyn. That neighborhood, along with the nearby neighborhoods of Crown Heights and East New York, are some of the "Impact Zones" flooded with police officers to address the sorts of low-level, quality-of-life crimes police departments believe lead to more violence. The goal is to stop and frisk individuals under legal authority to do so, no matter how tenuous the premise, and frisk them to determine if they have drugs or weapons.

Stop-and-frisk policies probably contribute to the basket of tactics that help save lives. But I'm not sure the cost we pay, that the citizens of Brownsville [or Peoria, Illinois] live in a police state, especially since the people who usually have to put up with those kinds of intrusions of state power are poor and brown. At what level it's worth it, and at what level it's too much of an intrusion, are the first conversations we should be having about policing, but we're not. In the meantime, such policies serve only to exacerbate the already worn tensions between police departments and communities of color.

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