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10 years after Ferguson, black students are still more likely to be expelled from schools

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Before he was suspended, Zaire Byrd was thriving. He acted at school plays, played on the football team, and worked out with other athletes. He had never been suspended before—he had never even been arrested.

But when Byrd got right into a fight after school sooner or later, none of that seemed to matter to administrators. Byrd said he was defending himself and two friends when three other students threatened to rob them. Administrators at Tri-Cities High School in Georgia called the fight a “gang fight”—an automatic 10-day suspension. After a disciplinary hearing, they sent him to an alternate school.

This experience almost ruined his education.

“The last four years have been really big for me, from online learning to being suspended,” said Byrd, who began highschool remotely through the pandemic. “I could have learned more, but between all that and changing schools, it was tough.”

In Georgia, black students like Byrd make up just over a 3rd of the population. But they make up nearly all of students who receive punishments that take them out of sophistication, including suspension, expulsion and transfer to an alternate school.

These disparities in Georgia and across the country became the goal of a newly energized reform movement a decade ago, spurred by the identical racial reckoning that gave rise to the Black Lives Matter movement. For many advocates, students and educators, pursuing racial justice meant addressing disparate outcomes for black youth that begin within the classroom, often through harsh discipline and underinvestment in low-income schools.

There has been some progress in lowering suspension rates for black students previously decade. But stark disparities persist, according to a review of discipline data in key states by The Associated Press.

In Missouri, for instance, an AP evaluation found that black students served 46% of all suspension days within the 2013-14 school yr — the yr Michael Brown was shot and killed by police within the state days after his highschool graduation. Nine years later, that percentage dropped to 36%, according to state data obtained through a public records request. Both numbers far exceed the share of black students in the coed population, which is about 15%.

In California, the suspension rate for black students dropped from 13 percent in 2013 to 9 percent a decade later — still thrice the suspension rate for white students.

Gradual progress, but advocates say prejudice stays

The national counting on race has elevated the concept of the “school-to-prison pipeline” — the notion that being kicked out of faculty or dropping out increases the likelihood of being arrested and imprisoned years later. School systems have made incremental progress in reducing suspensions and expulsions, but advocates say underlying biases and structures remain in place.

Consequence: More and more black children are being expelled from schools.

“This obviously fuels the school-to-prison pipeline,” said Terry Landry Jr., Louisiana policy director for the Southern Poverty Law Center. “If you’re not in school, what are you doing?”

Students who are suspended, expelled, or otherwise removed from class are more likely to be suspended again. They change into more distant from their classmates and are more likely to change into disengaged from school. They also lose time learning and are likely to have lower academic outcomes, including grades and graduation rates.

Still, some schools and policymakers have doubled down on exclusionary discipline because the pandemic. In Missouri, students lost nearly 780,000 days of instruction due to in- or out-of-school suspensions in 2023, the best number in a decade.

In Louisiana, black students are twice as likely to be suspended as white students and receive longer suspensions for a similar infractions, according to a 2017 study by the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans. But a brand new law takes effect this yr that recommends expelling any highschool or middle school student who’s suspended thrice in a single school yr.

Teachers and fogeys try to ensure children attend school

Federal guidelines for addressing racial disparities at school discipline were first issued by President Barack Obama’s administration in 2014. Federal officials urged schools not to suspend, expel or refer students to law enforcement except as a final resort, and encouraged restorative justice practices that didn’t force students out of the classroom. Those policies were rolled back by President Donald Trump’s administration, but federal and state civil rights laws still mandate the gathering of discipline data.

In Minnesota, the expulsion and suspension rate for black students dropped from 40% in 2018 to 32% 4 years later — still nearly thrice higher than the speed of black students in the general population.

The disciplinary gap within the state was so glaring that in 2017, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights ordered dozens of districts and charter schools to enter into legal settlements over disciplinary practices, particularly for Black and Native American students. In those districts, the department found, nearly 80% of disciplinary consequences issued for subjective reasons reminiscent of “disruptive behavior” were for students of color. School buildings were closed for many of the fiscal yr due to the pandemic, so it’s hard to tell whether schools have made progress since then.

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Khulia Pringle, an education advocate in St. Paul, said her daughter was repeatedly suspended. The harsh discipline led her down a improper path. At one point, Pringle said, her daughter wanted to drop out of faculty.

Pringle, then a history and social studies teacher herself, left her job to change into a baby advocate, hoping to offer one-on-one support to families experiencing harsh school discipline.

“That’s when I really started to notice that it wasn’t just me. Every black parent I worked with called me about suspensions,” she said.

Education reform quickly emerged as a goal of the Black Lives Matter movement. In 2016, when the Vision for Black Lives platform was finalized, it included a call for an education system that recognized students’ cultural identities, supported their mental and physical health, and didn’t subject them to unreasonable searches, seizures, and arrests in schools.

“We need to end mass incarceration and mass criminalization, and that starts in schools,” said Monifa Bandele, a political leader with the Movement for Black Lives. “The data shows that with every expulsion or suspension, students are more likely to end up in the criminal justice system.”

As Linda Morris, an attorney on the American Civil Liberties Union, said, black students are not only punished more harshly, but in addition they receive harsher punishments than their white peers for similar and even the identical behavior.

“Students of color are often not given the same opportunities as their white peers and can even be perceived as having harmful motives,” Morris said.

Attention to these disparities has led to some changes. Many districts have adopted restorative justice practices that aim to address the basis causes of behavior and interpersonal conflicts moderately than simply suspending students. Schools have increased their investment in mental health resources.

And for a time, some districts, including Chicago and Minneapolis, had been working to remove police from schools. Those efforts gained recent momentum in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota by a white police officer.

Schools take tougher approach to discipline after pandemic

Calls for tougher discipline and more police involvement have resurfaced in recent years as schools struggled to cope with misbehavior after months of closure due to the pandemic.

Activists point to a deeper reason for the discipline efforts.

“This response is also, in some ways, a response to the progress that’s been made,” said Katherine Dunn, director of the Opportunity to Learn program on the nonprofit Advancement Project. “It’s a response to organizing. It’s a response to the power that black, brown and other young people have built in their schools.”

After his suspension, Byrd, a Georgia student, was sent to an alternate discipline program. A district spokesman said this system is designed to help students proceed their education and receive social and emotional support during discipline.

Byrd said he waited in line every day to be searched from head to toe before being allowed to enter the constructing, a process the district says is a preventive measure and is run by the corporate that runs the choice school.

“It definitely changed him,” said his mother, DeAndrea Byrd. “He wasn’t excited about school. He wanted to quit. It was incredibly difficult.”

Byrd finished his third yr at an alternate school. He transferred to one other public school for his senior yr, where he felt supported by the administration and was able to graduate. He has since found a job close to home and plans to attend an HBCU in Alabama, where he hopes to study cybersecurity.

As Byrd reflects on the fight and its aftermath, he said he wishes the varsity had treated him like a child who had never been in trouble before, as an alternative of kicking him out.

(*10*) he said. “None of us should be punished for one mistake.”

This article was originally published on : thegrio.com
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Snoop Dogg Talks Tupac Shakur’s Influence on His Journey to Fatherhood

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In the ’90s, Snoop Dogg celebrated the discharge of his debut album and his introduction to fatherhood at the identical time. Nine months after releasing his hit album “Doggystyle” in November 1993, the West Coast rapper welcomed his first son, Corde Broadus, in August 1994. Reflecting on this era of his life with People MagazineSnoop Dogg has revealed that his friend and rapper Tupac Shakur helped him find the balance between fatherhood and fame.

“I was working on Tha Doggfather (his second album). So when (Corde) was old enough to pee and do shit, I started bringing him to the studio with me,” he told the publication.

Snoop Dogg reportedly raised Corde “among his buddies,” and Shakur recalls meeting his son on the studio and quickly becoming a part of the village he was raised in.

“Tupac loved him. It was like his nephew. Tupac was a better father than me,” Snoop recalled. “We sat there (in the recording studio) for three hours and didn’t give him anything to eat. It was like I was rapping and f**king, I wasn’t a father. (He) trained me.”

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Sadly, Shakur’s time with Snoop Dogg and his son was cut short. In 1996, the rapper was involved in a drive-by shooting that ultimately claimed his life. Despite his death, Shakur’s influence on Snoop Dogg’s parenting continued when he welcomed his second son, Cordell Broadus. Understanding the facility of community in parenting, “Drop it Like it’s Hot,” his late friend says, inspired him to sign his sons up for football.

“I put them in football and watched them work together. Football helped me become a really good father because I was around other men who were single parents, or had great wives, or were grandparents raising their sons — there was so much I could learn from them,” Snoop explained, eventually becoming a football coach. “So football and all of that was a blessing for me as a father because it taught me how to be a father.”

Snoop Dogg says that besides fatherhood, Shakur taught him a “different kind of work ethic.”

“I’ve always had a good work ethic as far as being on time, being on time and being professional. But he just showed me how to be a little bit faster… (and) not (just) fall in love with it, but fall in love with the art of being able to do it and keep doing it,” he said in Instagram post. “I feel like it’s something that’s been passed down to me and now I’m showing it through my work… And I’m passing it on to the younger generation to show them that you can do the same thing.”


This article was originally published on : thegrio.com
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CCH Pounder’s Art Collection on Display at Philadelphia Museum

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art gallery, Boston


A select portion of the gathering of works by actress CCH Pounder and her late husband Boubacar Koné is on display at the African American Museum in Philadelphia through March 2, 2025.

informed that there are 40 exhibits on display, and Pounder, who previously donated to museums as did Charles Wright in Detroit and the DuSable Black History Museum in Chicago, working with the vice chairman of curatorial services at the African American Museum in Philadelphia, Delay Duckett, to organize the gathering.

Duckett described viewing the Pounder collection in her New Orleans home as an incredible experience, but in addition a singular challenge: choosing pieces for a museum exhibit.

“It was a feast for the eyes when we walked through. The biggest challenge I had was narrowing down what we could bring to Philadelphia,” Duckett told the outlet. “To live with art of that scale and with that beauty — just being in that space was amazing. You can’t walk out without being inspired.”

The exhibition, titled “Shared Vision,” focuses on figures, paintings, and mixed media that present black bodies as sites of tension, exploring concepts related to history, identity, and relationships. As Duckett explained, the portraits of figurative works create a chance for the work to inform a story to viewers.

“Historically, portraits of figurative works, whether real or imagined, signal the power, significance, or virtue of their subjects,” Duckett said. “When you walk into a museum, especially a black museum, and you see these portraits, their power emanates from you and tells the viewer their story.”

Pounder recounts her love of portraiture, which matches back to her youth in England, where she ceaselessly visited museums across Europe, including the Louvre in France. She recalled that these institutions rarely featured portraits or representations of black people. She often felt the urge to the touch art, nevertheless it was at all times just out of reach.

“I remember at the very top of the Louvre there were these tiny 20-by-30-inch portraits of Arabs and ‘exotics,’ and the Mona Lisa and all these other wonderful people were at the bottom,” Pounder told the location. “I thought, ‘How do I get these people here?’ That’s probably what I thought when I started.”

Pounder also said that her decision to pursue acting and art collecting was inspired by a mentor at England’s Hastings College. “I really took that to heart and literally said, ‘Great! I’ll be an actress for the first half of the century and an artist for the second half,’” Pounder recalls. “It doesn’t really happen that way. Life changes.”

In 2022, Pounder spoke to about the method it uses to find out which artistic endeavors to purchase.

“It’s very rare that I buy a piece of art without interacting with the artists. The months of the pandemic have improved my internet skills, and I now correspond and have textual relationships with artists I collect from around the world, such as Alex Peter Idoko, who lives and works in Nigeria,” Pounder said.

She continued, “More than collecting, I am fascinated by the way an artist sees. A work of art is an interpretation of life from an emotional, intellectual, ancestral, or spiritual inspiration that is transferred to canvas, or carved in wood, bent in steel, blown in glass, beaded, or collaged. Being able to savor these gestures is why I collect and why I share with those who can only see… a painting.”


This article was originally published on : www.blackenterprise.com
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Britain’s public is becoming more ‘carbon conscious’ – here’s what that means

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As climate change intensifies, growing public awareness and gradual changes in behaviour will hopefully translate into transformative motion. We explore how lifestyles and governance systems need to vary to deliver a sustainable, low-carbon future for the UK.

Our research in Centre for Climate Change and Social Transformation suggests that the knowledge, attitudes and behavior of the British public about climate change have improved significantly during the last decade. Recycling rates are rising, energy consumption is decreasingAND polls show that more voters are taking climate change into consideration when selecting which party to vote for.

In the recent scientific workWe reviewed over 240 academic studies to summarise the ways people can act of their different roles to take motion on climate change. We then compared surveys from 2008 and 2022 asking Britons about their knowledge of climate change, their attitudes towards it and their consumer decisions. We call the knowledge, skills and motivation needed to scale back an individual’s carbon footprint ‘carbon capacity’.

In 2008, 66% of respondents said they knew ‘a fair amount’ or ‘a lot’ about climate change; this rose to 80% in 2022. Over the identical period, the proportion of respondents who said they were conversant in the term ‘carbon footprint’ rose from 51% to 68%. We also found that a big majority (81%) of individuals within the UK agree that ‘significant lifestyle changes’ are needed to attain climate targets.

People are increasingly taking environmental issues into consideration when making on a regular basis decisions.
Hampton and Whitmarsh (2023)/One Earth

More engagement at home and in stores

Energy efficiency in homes has improved significantly. For example, the proportion of people that say they usually turn off lights in empty rooms has increased from 67.2% in 2008 to 73.3% in 2022.

The percentage of people that usually buy organic, locally produced and seasonal food has increased from 12.6% to 19.2%. The popularity of eating meat is largely influenced by: Demographic aspectsand we found that younger, higher educated, left-leaning people were more more likely to limit the quantity of beef of their food plan.

Recycling rates have also improved since 2008, rising from just over 70% to almost 78% of individuals saying they recycle at home. In 2022, almost 25% said they often buy products with less packaging, up from just 11% in 2008. Younger people and oldsters are much more more likely to buy second-hand, repair or reuse items.

A woman pours breakfast cereal into a plastic container.
Grocery stores are more common today than they were 20 years ago.
Author: Ben Molyneux

One of the actions aimed toward increasing the capability of the complete population to avoid wasting carbon is let’s discuss climate changeAround two-thirds (64%) of individuals surveyed in 2022 said that they had talked about climate change prior to now month, and again we found that younger, higher educated and more affluent people were most probably to achieve this.

There has been a noticeable increase within the practice of writing to politicians about climate issues (4.9% in 2022, up from 0.4%), which may be attributed to the increased ease of doing so – for instance, using email templates and online petitions. This is consistent with evidence that UK politicians have experienced a major increase generally correspondence lately, particularly in the course of the pandemic.

Bigger and harder changes are needed

Although people reported that that they had increased their efforts to avoid wasting energy at home, more effective measures were introduced, equivalent to the installation of warmth pumps still lagging behind. Structural barriers, particularly those related to home ownership, prevent many individuals from taking motion to enhance energy efficiency. For example, private and social renters could also be more constrained in making these improvements than homeowners.

The percentage of people that say they’re flying less due to climate change has fallen barely, from 23.8% in 2008 to 21.7% in 2022. However, six in 10 people said in the newest survey that they would really like to travel more. Although it was noted noticeable increase in distant work lately it it didn’t amount to to an overall reduction in transport-related emissions amongst UK residents.

Tourists entering the airplane via escalator.
‘Flying embarrassment’ fails to discourage UK holidaymakers
Ceri Breeze/Shutterstock

There is a growing interest in sustainable food decisions and Meat consumption within the UK is falling. However, our research shows that the proportion of vegetarians and vegans stays relatively low at 7.7%, having fallen by one percentage point since 2008 – although estimates of vegetarianism vary across studies.

Our findings also show that people significantly underestimate food waste. According to food waste charity Wrap, UK households generate a mean of 241 kg of food waste per 12 months – which equates to 16% of all food purchased. However, 91% of respondents to our 2022 survey believed that the food they waste was lower than 10% of what they bought.

There appears to be a growing awareness and commitment to reducing carbon footprints within the UK. Younger, more educated and wealthier people are inclined to be probably the most committed and more in a position to change their lifestyles. This shows how essential addressing socio-economic inequalities might be to any climate solution.

The progress made to this point is commendable, but incremental changes to on a regular basis habits, equivalent to turning off the lights and recycling, have gone further than more effective changes, equivalent to installing low-carbon heating systems or making significant dietary changes. More widespread lifestyle changes are needed to handle the total range of environmental challenges.

Measures to encourage people to make higher decisions about climate are inclined to fail preferred by decision makersIf we’re serious about increasing the UK’s ability to scale back carbon emissions, we want to see more concrete measures, equivalent to removing barriers to make low-carbon living decisions easy, inexpensive and attractive.

This article was originally published on : theconversation.com
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