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This article talks about the historical significance about the NFL player protest movement and its ongoing importance.
https://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/doi/full/10.1080/07393148.2019.1686739

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this article talks about two boys who committed the same crime. one black and one white but the black guy was given a way longer sentence.

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KING: Brock Turner and Cory Batey, two college athletes who raped unconscious women, show how race and privilege affect sentences

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When Cory Batey was a 19-year-old standout football player at Vanderbilt, he raped an unconscious woman. The ample evidence, including security cameras showing the unconscious woman being carried into a dorm room and cellphone photos and…

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This article is from a female African Americans point of view on white privilege. she provides her own encounters and statistics that show how prevalent white privilege is in todays world.

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People are uncomfortable with the term "privileged."

"Categorizing and generalizing of this type are just veiled forms of discrimination and/or racism," one man wrote.

I'd like to take this opportunity to set the record straight.

If you are a white person in America, you were born privileged. That's just a fact.

It's nothing to be ashamed of. It's not anybody's fault. There's no need to get defensive about it.

The best thing to do is just acknowledge it.

Being privileged does not necessarily mean that you have a perfect life. It does not mean that you come from wealth or that you always obtain everything you want - or deserve.

It doesn't give you a pass to be lazy and shiftless. It doesn't automatically guarantee you success. White skin no more relieves you of taking responsibility for your life, working hard and thinking smart than it does for people with dark skin.

It just means that you have a head start over the rest of us.

White privilege means that you were born with an inherent advantage over every other race of people. The whiteness of your skin alone allows you to leave the starting gate quicker and to run the race with fewer obstacles. White skin comes with certain other perks, too, many of which are taken for granted.

American culture itself is white-centric. For example, as an African-American woman, I can rarely find makeup that matches my exact skin tone. Though cosmetics companies have gotten a lot better at adding more diverse colors to their lines, I still most often have to buy two shades and mix them together to get a match.

That's just an inconvenience, though. Other issues require much more attention.

If you were born white, you are likely to earn more money than an African-American or Hispanic co-worker who does the same work. You are more likely to be considered for a promotion than a racial minority who is just as qualified. Numerous studies back this up.

Let's be clear, though. This has nothing do with a person's actual level of intelligence. It has nothing to do with how talented or untalented someone really is. It has nothing to do with the kind of human being someone is. It is all about perception.

But the perception many white people have about other white people - whether it is conscious or subconscious - is that they are smarter, more ambitious, more dependable and harder working than African-Americans.

"Privilege is hard work and sacrifice. Then when paid for this hard work ... others who do nothing get jealous and bring race into it," a woman emailed me.

Black and brown people have no reason to be angry with white people for being born white. We don't buy into the adage that because someone happened to be white, they are smarter than the rest of us. Nor do we believe that every white person seated at the head table deserves a space there.

What we do understand is that white skin opens doors that often slam shut in the faces of dark skin. That's what we have a problem with.

It is easy to blame the staggering unemployment rates among African-Americans and Hispanics on their lack of education, training or individual initiative. In America, we like to think that the dream can be achieved by anyone who works hard to attain it. But that simply isn't true.

The reality is that blacks and Latinos have never gotten an equal shake. When affirmative action sought to level the playing field, white people got mad and put an end to it.

As a result, hiring discrimination based on race remains alive and well, meaning blacks and Hispanics have to work twice as hard just to get a foot in the door.

Last year, researchers at Northwestern University, Harvard University and the Institute of Social Research in Oslo, Norway, reviewed multiple studies and concluded that the level of hiring discrimination against African-Americans had not changed in 25 years.

According to the data, whites receive on average 36 percent more callbacks than blacks, and 24 percent more callbacks than Latinos. When employers don't even bother to call you back, that means you don't get the job.

Until the country reverses itself and African-Americans are sitting in all those glass offices at businesses and major corporations, white people will never have to worry about being discriminated against because of their race.

The subtle and sometimes overt biases against African-Americans begin long before adulthood. African-American men, in particular, often spend a lifetime trying to overcome tags that are placed on their backs as soon as they enter kindergarten.

Research shows that black boys are much more likely to be labeled as troublemakers than white boys. According to a U.S. Department of Education report, black children - particularly boys - are nearly four times more likely to be suspended from school than white children.

When young white people get into trouble, adults are much more empathetic than they are to African-Americans who experience similar problems.

Just look at the opioid epidemic. When shooting up heroin became a crisis among white kids, the country rushed to embrace them, saying, "Don't worry, we're going to figure out how to help you." Money was poured into counseling and rehab.

When black kids got hooked on crack cocaine in the 1980s, America said, "Toss those thugs in jail." When there weren't enough jails to hold all of them, we poured money into building more.

This is what white privilege looks like.

As long as there's a need to talk about race and class in America, I'll continue to use the terms privileged and underprivileged. You might want to hold on to this column as a reference.

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Yes, white 'privilege' is still the problem

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People are uncomfortable with the term "privileged." "Categorizing and generalizing of this type are just veiled forms of discrimination and/or racism," one man wrote. I'd like to take this opportunity to set the record straight. If you are a white person in America, you were born privileged. That's just a fact.

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Article: More diversity is needed among teachers

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Article: More diversity is needed among teachers

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This article was written by Sara Friedman, and she talks about how most teachers in schools aren't of color. She talks about how 50% of students identify as being of color, while 40% of schools don't have a single teacher of color.

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Policy

Creating a More Diverse Teacher Workforce

A new report outlines how the teacher workforce can become more diverse to adapt to changing demographics across the United States.

In the United States, 50 percent of students identify as being a person of color, while only 20 percent of teachers identify themselves as such, according to a U.S. Department of Education National Center for Education Statistics study. Forty percent of public schools don't even have a single teacher of color. A new report from the Council of Chief State School Officers looks to shift the paradigm to allow for more diversity in teaching and free flow of ideas that demonstrate culturally responsive practices.

CCSSO is working to develop "learner-ready teachers" on how able to model and develop in students the skills that they to succeed today including the ability to think critically and analytically and the understanding to the differing needs of their students. In March, CCSO launched the Diverse and Learner-Ready Teachers Initiative (DLRT) to increase the ethno-racial diversity of the teacher workforce and support future and current educators to effectively teach a diverse population of students. The DLRT program is a network of ten states and over 30 national collaborating organizations to create system-level changes.

"States recognize that to be successful in this work they need to work towards a future where all students, regardless of race, experience teaching and learning with teachers of color during their PK12 schooling experience. This requires that states work in partnership with local education agencies and educator preparation providers through an equity lens to effectively address diversity gaps," according to the report.

In order to attract and prepare diverse and learner-ready teachers for the workforce, the report makes recommendations:

1. Revise and enforce licensure standards and accompanying assessments to ensure a culturally responsive teacher workforce.

2. Analyze and monitor teacher licensure requirements.

3. Invest in multiple pathways into teaching to increase the ethno-racial diversity of the teacher workforce and retain teachers of color.

4. Adopt and implement rigorous approval standards to assure that teacher preparation programs recruit candidates from diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds and produce quality candidates of all backgrounds who are capable of demonstrating culturally responsive practices.

The report also makes recommendations to address working conditions and supports for teachers, especially for teachers of color:

1. Annually and publicly report on multiple indicators of the diversity of the teacher workforce.

2. Track and report on differential teacher retention and turnover rates.

3. Dedicate federal funding to workforce diversity initiatives.

4. Convene key stakeholders to analyze data and address diversity gaps where they exist.

5. Ensure that culturally responsive practice is one of multiple measures included on teacher evaluations and that professional learning is required to improve practices.

The full report can be found here.
About the Author

Sara Friedman is a reporter/producer for Campus Technology, THE Journal and STEAM Universe covering education policy and a wide range of other public-sector IT topics.

Friedman is a graduate of Ithaca College, where she studied journalism, politics and international communications.

Friedman can be contacted at [email protected] or follow her on Twitter @SaraEFriedman.

Click here for previous articles by Friedman.

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teacher diversity in the united states 2019

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Creating a More Diverse Teacher Workforce -- THE Journal

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Policy A new report outlines how the teacher workforce can become more diverse to adapt to changing demographics across the United States. In the United States, 50 percent of students identify as being a person of color, while only 20 percent of teachers identify themselves as such, according to a U.S.

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This article, written by Jeremy B. White talks about a new survey that has found that most Americans still believe that racism still exists. They found out that 67% of people who took the survey still believe that racism is still a thing, 30% of people said that it still was a thing but wasn't a major issue, and 3% of people said it doesn't exist at all.

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Affirming the reasoning for thousands of Starbucks employees attending racial bias training, a new survey found most Americans believe racism is a paramount issue.

Just under two-thirds of respondents to an NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll said that racism remains a "major problem" in American society. Nearly three-quarters said racial discrimination against blacks represented a serious issue.

While 30 per cent of people said racism was not a major problem, they still agreed that it exists. Only a tiny sliver, 3 per cent, said it does not exist.

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Sharing the full story, not just the headlines

Other responses suggested that Americans remain deeply divided about the role race plays in their society, even as strong two-thirds majorities said they interacted with a mix of people from different races at work, school and social situations.

Many people are pessimistic about race relations, the poll found, with a plurality (45 per cent), saying they were getting worse while one-fifth of people felt things were improving. A third of respondents said things were about the same.

But statistically equivalent shares of people believed that race draws either too much or too little attention. While a majority (57 per cent) of people agreed that "white people benefit from advantages in society that black people do not have", a large chunk (41 per cent) said that dynamic matters little or not at all.

People offered those responses after a series of incidents in which authorities have been called on African-Americans who were not breaking the law, forcing discussion of the ways prejudiced beliefs shape everyday interactions.

Starbucks mandated training for some 8,000 employees after two black men were arrested at a Philadelphia location of the coffee shop chain as they awaited a friend, prompting a national outcry.

Soon after the Starbucks incident prompted an apology from the chain's CEO, Nordstrom Rack's president apologised after a store manager called the police on a group of young African-American men. In another situation, a white woman called the police on a black Yale University student slumbering in a common area.

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Most Americans believe racism is still a major problem in their society

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Affirming the reasoning for thousands of Starbucks employees attending racial bias training, a new survey found most Americans believe racism is a paramount issue. Just under two-thirds of respondents to an NBC News/SurveyMonkey poll said that racism remains a "major problem" in American society. Nearly three-quarters said racial discrimination against blacks represented a serious issue.

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This article from the NY Times is about how the global pandemic is affecting Asian Americans. With the origin being in China, this virus is causing stereotypes and rumors to spread about Asian populations.

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This NY Times article claims that COVID-19 is seen to be impacting black populations and neighborhoods at high rates compared to other racial groups. This editorial discusses this topic from the perspective of a black male who has personal connections to this issue.

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Jeremiah Ellison, a member of the Minneapolis City Council, fears for his neighborhood. Credit... Jenn Ackerman for The New York Times

Opinion
This virus is poised to rip through black neighborhoods like mine.

Jeremiah Ellison, a member of the Minneapolis City Council, fears for his neighborhood. Credit... Jenn Ackerman for The New York Times

By

MINNEAPOLIS - The 12-hour drive to Detroit is always a chore, but on the last day of March, the pandemic gave a sinister hue to even the most banal elements of a Midwest road trip. Every time we used a bathroom, grabbed a gas pump or bought a snack was an opportunity to get infected. Making things worse, Detroit was seeing an explosion of coronavirus cases.

My grandmother had just died unexpectedly at the age of 82 - raised on a farm in Louisiana, she had always been healthy; to me, she seemed indestructible. Nana raised us - not just my dad and uncles, but nearly the whole family. Skipping her funeral didn't seem like an option.

Nana was so beloved. She could have easily packed Gesu Catholic Church under normal circumstances. Instead, we sat in the James H. Cole Funeral Home, a beautiful little spot near the Motown Museum, but not where I would have imagined having her funeral. All in attendance sat six feet apart and in every other row; nearly everyone wore a face mask. Funerals have, all of a sudden, become tricky - dangerous even.

Image

The author with his grandmother.

As unusual as it all seemed, the history of Detroit could have helped you predict its future when it came to this crisis.

I hope it won't surprise anyone to hear that Detroit has a history of racial violence - interpersonal, economic and institutional. The short version goes something like this: Black people began to make incremental economic and political gains; white Michiganders became incensed, fled as fast as possible into the surrounding area and bled the city for every drop of wealth on their way out. There's more, but that's really a story for native Detroiters to tell.

Given that history, it's no wonder Detroit - and places like it - are underwater in this crisis. Milwaukee, Chicago and New Orleans have all seen black people absorbing the full force of the outbreak. This virus is poised to rip through every black neighborhood in America.

Quietly, on the north side of Minneapolis, sits one of those neighborhoods.

I represent Ward 5 on the Minneapolis City Council, but where I'm from, people just call it the Northside. The short version, again, goes like this: Our corner of the city has always been plagued by flooding and weak soils, so naturally, it's where the city parked its "undesirable" populations. In the early part of the 20th century, that population was Jewish, then black, then Southeast Asian.

Today the Northside is about half black, a quarter Hmong and a quarter everything else. It's a neighborhood challenged by low wealth and some violence, but we're not defined by that.

The Northside is where Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis created the Minneapolis Sound that Prince would later make famous. The Northside was the home of the underappreciated but behemoth civil rights figure and union organizer Nellie Stone Johnson. It's the place my parents were told was "the hood" when they arrived, but coming from Detroit, it was the only place in the city where they felt comfortable raising us.

In 2015, an Atlantic article called " The Miracle of Minneapolis " said that "no other place" in America "mixes affordability, opportunity and wealth so well." But that wealth has always eluded Northsiders. And by eluded, I, of course, mean, it has been denied.

Minneapolis is not unique in its use of redlining and restrictive covenants that kept blacks from owning property. Minneapolis is not unique in using the construction of highways to annihilate black neighborhoods. Minneapolis is not unique in placing its worst polluters in and near its black and brown neighborhoods. And unfortunately, we are also not unique in our failure to seriously seek a remedy to these harms.

Minneapolis hosts some of the worst disparities between black and white success in America. Educational outcomes, wealth and wages and homeownership gaps shouldn't be this wide, much less in a place so prosperous for white people. It should be noted that disparities between whites and Latinos, and whites and Southeast Asians, are also incredibly pronounced here. And it should be doubly noted that Native Americans are the poorest residents in the city. Black people are not the only ones left behind in the "miracle of Minneapolis."

During every crisis, well-meaning white people here make a ritual of acknowledging the city's steep inequities, but we've been hearing the same "woe is you" sentiment for a long time. It's as if people think the mere acknowledgment is the work. But as North Minneapolis prepares to brace ourselves for the grim future Detroit and Milwaukee have shown us, the death tolls suggest that acknowledgments don't mean a thing. I want to take us back to this notion of remedy.

When I joined the City Council two years ago, I focused on housing stability and environmental justice. Last year we became the first city in the country to end single-family zoning, making more housing units possible. We passed inclusionary zoning, which requires a percentage of affordable housing on every project. The Council president and I rewrote our housing-inspections approach to focus more on creating livable conditions, not just issuing citations. This allowed us to keep renters in place while holding their landlords accountable for safe, dignified conditions - a proposition that had previously been an either-or deal.

I stood with my constituents to fight a major polluter in the neighborhood, Northern Metals. It had been caught lying about its emissions - spewing lead, cobalt, chromium, nickel and other dangerous particulates that can cause asthma.

The courts seemed determined to give the company a soft landing. It had been given years to shut down, but when the deadline came, the company asked for an extension and kept operating. Then it was caught lying about its emissions again. Finally, on Sept. 23, 2019, more than 30 months after it had first been caught, Northern Metals was sent packing.

Northern Metals paid nearly $3 million in fines to the state, but just a fraction of that went to the people most harmed. Given their lifelong health issues, it was pennies when fortunes are owed.

We're now learning that underlying conditions like asthma can be a death sentence for people of any age if they come down with Covid-19. Staring down the barrel of this threat, it feels like we're too late. The real fight isn't won by defeating Northern Metals. The real fight is won when the air is clean - an ask that is always made to feel far-fetched.

Discrimination shouldn't just end; the inequity it causes should be remedied.

In " The Case for Reparations," Ta-Nehisi Coates chronicled the carefully designed circumstances that have placed black people, by and large, in a position of low wealth in America. It's not a force of nature, it's not even a puzzle - the how we got here is known and the path out is knowable.

In modern American politics, the concept of reparations is still more fantasy than viable policy option. Name-dropping it may get you applause from certain crowds, but the discussion typically ends there. We should have found a way to pay out reparations long ago. Now this pandemic is bringing forward the full horror of our inability to reckon with America's history of racial terror. For many black people experiencing the disproportionate impact of this crisis, any solution will come too late; the consequences of our inaction are too final.

Leaving Detroit, I thought about the disproportionate number of black folks dying from the coronavirus because they had asthma, diabetes or hypertension. Because they had limited access to affordable, healthy food. Because they lived near factories. Because they couldn't afford to visit a doctor or because they couldn't afford to miss work. Because their blood pressure was perpetually too high from a lifetime of being stressed out by all of the above.

I thought about how predictable this all was. How preventable.

Remembering the funeral, the absence of hugs, the absence of a full church and the absence of Nana, I pictured all the funerals happening - or being postponed - in New Orleans, Chicago, Milwaukee and elsewhere.

Last week, I learned that Nana had tested positive for the coronavirus, and knowing that makes me angrier - as though she didn't truly pass but was snatched from us.

In my last conversation with Nana, about a month ago, she called to tell me she'd seen a clip of me on CNN giving a speech at a Bernie Sanders rally: "Guess who just saw your black behind on TV all the way from here in Detroit?"

She teased me, about my shirt and my facial hair, and told me they didn't actually play any of the audio from my speech, but that she was excited anyway. Before hanging up, she took on her serious tone, where her voice gets just a little deeper but you can still tell she's smiling ear to ear: "I'm proud of you, kid. Keep doing great work."

It's a simple instruction. And no matter how futile the work can feel, I'm not going to let those words leave my mind.

Jeremiah Bey Ellison is a City Council member in Minneapolis.

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Opinion | Stop Talking About Inequality and Do Something About It

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Opinion This virus is poised to rip through black neighborhoods like mine. Jeremiah Ellison, a member of the Minneapolis City Council, fears for his neighborhood. Credit... Jenn Ackerman for The New York Times By MINNEAPOLIS - The 12-hour drive to Detroit is always a chore, but on the last day of March, the pandemic gave a sinister hue to even the most banal elements of a Midwest road trip.

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This editorial covers the issue of kneeling during the national anthem and the importance of the movement that this created. This started when Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem and was most recently lit up again with Nike including Kaepernick during one of its advertisements.

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Controversy over NFL players kneeling during the national anthem was thrust back into the spotlight just days before the league kicks off its next season after Nike announced on Monday it would feature former quarterback Colin Kaepernick in an upcoming ad campaign.

Protesters burned their Nike shoes, investors sold shares and some consumers demanded a boycott after the sports apparel and footwear company said Kaepernick, who started the kneeling protest in 2016, would be one of several faces for a campaign marking the 30th anniversary of its "Just Do It" slogan.

But the brand recognition that comes with the campaign may be just what the company wanted, and marketing experts have predicted it would ultimately succeed.

"This is right on the money for Nike. They stand for this irreverent, rebellious attitude. In this case, it's reinforcing the brand," said Erich Joachimsthaler, CEO of strategy consulting firm Vivaldi.

The ad refers to Kaepernick's loss of NFL income with the quote: "Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything."

Under mounting pressure, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell had announced in May that the league planned to fine teams whose players refuse to stand during the national anthem this season. The league's new policy no longer requires players to be on the field during the anthem, allowing any players who wish to protest to remain in the locker room.

The players' union, which said it was not consulted on the policy change, is negotiating with the league on the issue of protests.

Before the announcement in May, the league's policy had been that players were encouraged to stand during the song, but they were not required to do so - a position that President Donald Trump had been extremely critical of.

The president has embraced the issue as a political cause, frequently criticizing players for taking a knee at games and questioning their patriotism. Critics have defended the peaceful protests as a fundamental American right to free speech.

Despite the recent media attention, the act of peaceful protest during the national anthem at NFL games has actually been going on since the 2016 season, when Kaepernick, then-quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers, remained seated during the song before the team's first preseason game.

Learn more below about the origins of kneeling during the national anthem, the latest on Trump's feud and more.
Kaepernick takes a knee against police brutality
Kaepernick started the 2016 preseason off by refusing to stand during the national anthem, but it wasn't until the 49ers' third preseason game on Aug. 26, 2016, that anyone took notice. Following the game, Kaepernick told NFL.com that he chose to remain seated during the song as a way to peacefully protest the shootings of unarmed black people and police brutality in the country.

"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color," Kaepernick told NFL Media in an exclusive interview. "To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder."

In a New York Times Op-Ed, 49ers safety Eric Reid said he also didn't notice his teammate's silent protest until that third preseason game against the Green Bay Packers, but once he realized what was going on he wanted to support Kaepernick and his message.

"I approached Colin the Saturday before our next game to discuss how I could get involved with the cause but also how we could make a more powerful and positive impact on the social justice movement. We spoke at length about many of the issues that face our community, including systemic oppression against people of color, police brutality and the criminal justice system," Reid wrote in the Times Op-Ed. "We also discussed how we could use our platform, provided to us by being professional athletes in the NFL, to speak for those who are voiceless."

On Sept. 1, 2016, during the 49ers' next preseason game, Kaepernick and Reid knelt together during the song.

The pair, Reid said, had made the decision to switch to a kneeling position after speaking with former NFL player and retired Green Beret Nate Boyer.

"We chose to kneel because it's a respectful gesture. I remember thinking our posture was like a flag flown at half-mast to mark a tragedy," Reid wrote in the Times Op-Ed.
Backlash against Kaepernick
Following that first Aug. 26, 2016, game when people took notice of Kaepernick sitting, the 49ers and the NFL issued statements, both of which acknowledged that players had a choice on whether to participate in standing for the national anthem.

"Players are encouraged but not required to stand during the playing of the national anthem," the NFL had said in a statement.

But the backlash from the court of public opinion was swift. Even as more players joined in kneeling during the national anthem and others spoke out in support of his message, Kaepernick was crowned the least liked player in the league in a survey by E-Poll Marketing Research released in September 2016, ESPN reported.

Reid had lamented in the Times that the protest touched off by Kaepernick was - and still is - misconstrued as disrespectful to the flag, military veterans and the country as a whole.

"It has always been my understanding that the brave men and women who fought and died for our country did so to ensure that we could live in a fair and free society, which includes the right to speak out in protest," he wrote.

Kaepernick's kneeling had further polarized a league that holds strong team allegiances. While those who disagreed with the protest burned the quarterback's jersey and professed to boycott the NFL, others shouted words of encouragement from the sidelines and on social media.

Kaepernick ended the season by opting out of his contract with the 49ers. He remains unsigned by a team and has filed a grievance against the NFL, accusing the league's 32 owners of collusion.

Kaepernick said his agent reached out to all 32 teams to make sure they were aware of his interest in playing in the 2017 season.

"Colin Kaepernick's goal has always been, and remains, to simply be treated fairly by the league he performed at the highest level for and to return to the football playing field," his attorney Mark Geragos said in a statement released in October 2017.

A request by the NFL to dismiss the grievance was rejected in late August. A trial hearing that requires testimony from NFL owners could happen at some point in the future.
Trump thrusts taking a knee into national spotlight again
While some NFL players continued to kneel during the NFL preseason in 2017, their actions had gone largely ignored by most media outlets that don't already heavily cover sports - that is, until Trump spoke up.

The president's feud with the NFL began on Sept. 22, 2017, during a political rally in Alabama, where he called any player who knelt during the national anthem a "son of a b--" and suggested they should be fired.

Outraged by the president's rhetoric, many NFL players took a knee during the singing of the national anthem at games the following Sunday, while others stayed in locker rooms or linked arms with their teammates in a show of solidarity.

Goodell said Trump's comments revealed an "unfortunate lack of respect" for the league and its players. The NFLPA also rejected Trump's comments, saying it would defend players' rights to freedom of expression.

"This union will never back down when it comes to protecting the constitutional rights of our players as citizens," tweeted DeMaurice Smith, executive director of the National Football League Players Association, referring to the First Amendment's guarantee of the right to free speech.

In the ensuing weeks, Trump defended his initial statement, supported a boycott of the NFL and called on the league to outright ban kneeling during the national anthem - a demand that the league would later cow to.

Vice President Mike Pence also left a game early in Indianapolis when the visiting San Francisco 49ers knelt during the national anthem before facing the Colts on Oct. 8.

Following the Nike ad announcement, Trump told the The Daily Caller that the campaign "sends a terrible message," and mentioned that Nike is a tenant of his building at 6 East 57th St. in Manhattan, though it was unclear what he meant by the statement. "They pay a lot of rent," he added.

In a tweet on Wednesday, Trump said Nike was "getting absolutely killed with anger and boycotts," but he did not offer any evidence to back up the statement. Representatives for Nike could not be immediately reached for comment on Trump's tweet.
A country divided
In an NBC/WSJ poll released on Aug. 31, 54 percent of voters said they believe kneeling during the national anthem is inappropriate, while 43 percent felt it was appropriate.

As evidence of how polarizing the protest has become, some who were offended by Nike's ad posted social media photos of Nike shoes they had set on fire or socks with the Nike swoosh cut out. Twitter user Sean Clancy posted a picture of a pair of Nike trainers on fire on Tuesday that was retweeted over 20,000 times.

At the same time, professional athletes including Serena Williams, LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Chris Paul have joined the chorus of fans who are in support of Nike and Kaepernick.

The NFL also praised Kaepernick: "The social justice issues that Colin and other professional athletes have raised deserve our attention and action," Jocelyn Moore, the league's executive vice president of communications and public affairs, said.

Trump's initial comments back in September 2017 elicited similarly divisive responses from the public. Football fans outraged over the controversy posted videos of burned jerseys, game tickets and other memorabilia on social media under the hashtag #NFLBurnNotice.

Meanwhile, the hashtag #ImWithKap, in reference to Kaepernick, also gained traction on Twitter. Many supporters also posted photos of themselves or others taking a knee with the hashtag #takeaknee.

On Sept. 27, 2017, members of the City Council took a knee on the steps of City Hall to show their support for the NFL and the movement Kaepernick sparked.

"We decided it was time to show again that one, we believe in free speech and two, that protesting is the most American thing one can do; it is in fact the only thing that ever propelled this country to move forward," said Councilman Jumaane D. Williams (D-Brooklyn) of the group's message to Trump.
Trump's comments a distraction?
When Trump first began tweeting about the protest, many argued that the controversy was taking away from political discourse on myriad topics at the time, including a new travel ban, health care and tax reform, and the devastation in Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria.

Caught off guard by the severity of Hurricane Maria's damage, Trump did not focus on the storm for days. He came under fire after he tweeted more than a dozen times about the NFL while only posting a series of three connected tweets about Puerto Rico in the same amount of time.

"Texas & Florida are doing great but Puerto Rico, which was already suffering from broken infrastructure & massive debt, is in deep trouble...It's old electrical grid, which was in terrible shape, was devastated. Much of the Island was destroyed, with billions of dollars..." Trump tweeted on Sept. 25. "...owed to Wall Street and the banks which, sadly, must be dealt with. Food, water and medical are top priorities - and doing well. #FEMA"

Trump insisted to reporters on Sept. 26 that he was not preoccupied with the NFL controversy and that he could multitask. He visited Puerto Rico the following week.

But with the territory's 3.4 million people struggling to get food, water, power and shelter, Democratic leaders in Congress and some Puerto Rico residents, who are U.S. citizens, accused the Trump administration of being more sluggish in its response than to disasters on the U.S. mainland.
With Reuters

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NFL players kneeling during national anthem: How Colin Kaepernick started a movement and why - amNewYork

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Controversy over NFL players kneeling during the national anthem was thrust back into the spotlight just days before the league kicks off its next season after Nike announced on Monday it would feature former quarterback Colin Kaepernick in an upcoming ad campaign.

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This editorial goes in-depth on how the Rooney Rule was implemented and its overall success. The Rooney Rule was put in place to help minority coaching candidates get an interview. This happens due to the fact that it is required that for every coaching position open it is required that every team interviews one minority coach.

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One afternoon in October 2002, Johnnie Cochran assembled a press conference in Baltimore with his colleague Cyrus Mehri to discuss a proposal to reform the NFL's hiring practices. The lawyers chose a steak house named for Hall of Fame head coach Don Shula as the venue to present a study they had commissioned from a University of Pennsylvania economics professor. The study had found that, from 1986 to 2001, black NFL head coaches had a higher winning percentage than white coaches but were more likely to be fired. And when head coaching positions did become available, black coaches weren't getting the same consideration as their white counterparts: Of 139 openings during that span, only six had gone to black coaches. In January of that year, Tony Dungy was fired after a 9-7 record with the Buccaneers and the Vikings fired Dennis Green after going 5-10, his first losing season in 10 years as a head coach. "We're at the lowest point in 10 years in terms of percentage of black head coaches in the league," Mehri said.

Cochran, like so many times in his storied legal career, spoke forcefully, evoking Thurgood Marshall's name in the same breath as then-Ravens defensive coordinator Marvin Lewis. "Black coaches are being held to a higher standard," Cochran said. "Now is the time for the NFL to step up and make a change." Cochran and Mehri wanted the league to create more equitable opportunities for black coaches, and they weren't above threatening legal action. "We can litigate this. We can bring a lawsuit," Cochran said. "I think the NFL is reasonable. They understand that this can end up in the courts, and they'd rather not see that happen. But let's see if we can have a dialogue. You only litigate after you've done everything you can to negotiate."

The lawyers proposed rewarding teams for their efforts to diversify their sidelines and front offices and punishing offending organizations that didn't give coaches of color opportunities to interview for head coaching positions, including the loss of a first-round draft pick. Lower picks would be forfeited if coaches of color weren't considered for coordinator-level jobs. Cochran and Mehri's pressure paid off: In 2003, the NFL instituted the Rooney Rule (named after the late Steelers owner Dan Rooney), a hiring policy requiring organizations to interview coaches of color for head coaching positions, which was later expanded to include senior football operations jobs. The passage of the rule was helped along by the lobbying efforts of former players Kellen Winslow and John Wooten, who formed an "affinity group" of scouts, coaches, and front-office personnel.

The NFL was forced into action 17 years ago, but it's hard to find positive signs of the Rooney Rule's impact today. NFL players are overwhelmingly black now, as they were in 2003, but that isn't reflected on the sidelines or in C-suites. This year's coach-hiring cycle is as disappointing as its predecessors have been: No black coaches were hired for five open head coaching positions. One Latino coach, Ron Rivera, was reshuffled into the coaching ranks in Washington after he was fired by the Panthers. Four white coaches filled the remaining open positions: The Cowboys hired former Packers head coach Mike McCarthy, the Panthers replaced Rivera with Baylor coach Matt Rhule, the Giants turned to Patriots assistant Joe Judge, and on Monday the Browns announced the hiring of Vikings offensive coordinator Kevin Stefanski. It's the third season in a row when only one coach of color was hired for a top job.

"I don't care what flavor your ice cream is, there are candidates of color who deserve these opportunities," Rod Graves, the head of the Fritz Pollard Alliance, an advocacy organization named after the NFL's first black head coach, told me this month. Even before this latest cycle had ended, Graves said he'd be surprised if there were any positive signs for black coaches. "If a quick decision is made," he said about coaching hires, "typically it means you had your mind made up on a candidate and you didn't care to risk losing it. There's no reason to speed through this, especially when you have a wealth of candidates out there with the experience."

Football's history contains so many examples of the bastardization of the black body despite what it has offered the sport. Pollard was a head coach in 1921-and it wasn't until Art Shell was hired by the Raiders in 1989 that another black coach led an NFL team. Black coaches across the sport struggle to stay relevant, losing opportunities to white coaches with equal or lesser qualifications. Winning does not beget professional advancement. Results are not a bridge to opportunity.

"I don't care what flavor your ice cream is, there are candidates of color who deserve these opportunities." -Rod Graves, head of the Fritz Pollard Alliance

"It's discouraging, to say the least," Brian Levy, an agent for several black coaches in the NFL and college football, including Kansas City offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy, said of this hiring cycle. "We're really trying to find out what the standard is, and every year the standard changes. We're just trying to swim against the current." It's a similar sentiment that Chargers coach Anthony Lynn expressed to me last summer. "We all know," he said. "It's the criteria, to be honest with you. When the owners look at you, and you have something to do with the quarterback, or you're a play-caller, then you're more likely to get an opportunity, to be honest with you. And I think where we're going wrong is just the criteria.

"The only thing that disappoints me a little bit is when we're told the criteria, and we don't stand by it," Lynn continued.

The ongoing failure of the Rooney Rule is that it is working as intended. It wasn't meant to be the bright torch of change to make professional football fair and equitable. It was a bridge to an interview, and in this way, it has been successful. But it's meant only to eliminate one barrier to professional advancement. It's not designed to address systemic racism still in place, keeping black and brown talent from getting the top jobs in the sport. The rule provides blanket cover for those who deserve the real blame for the crisis of opportunity in the NFL, those who retain hiring power, and who ignore the virtue of what Cochran and Mehri fought to enact.

Last summer, I spent months interviewing coaches, advocates, and league executives about the state of hiring for coaching candidates of color in the NFL. The league's own hiring data, produced annually by academics at the University of Central Florida, highlights problems of unconscious bias, and systemic barriers to upward mobility faced by black and brown coaches. Researchers used data compiled from the NFL's archival human resources database to study head coaching demographics, tenure, and occupational mobility patterns from 1963 to February 2019. They pointed to the demographics of NFL owners-32 of whom (out of 34) are white-as an impediment to candidates of color, an example of the inherent bias that occurs in hiring practices.

"In addition to working to increase the number of people of color who make hiring decisions (team owners and general managers), it is imperative to work on improving 'the perception of competence' of sport business professionals of color," the report read, borrowing from the professor Kenneth Shropshire's 1996 work on the subject. "Stated differently, even if there is an increase in general managers of color and team owners of color, negative race consciousness associated with the coaching and coordinating capabilities of candidates of color may still exist and persist."

Panthers owner David Tepper told the team's website that he felt drawn to new head coach Matt Rhule because the two men shared so much in common. "He dresses like [expletive] and sweats all over himself. He dresses like me, so I have to love the guy," Tepper said. "I was a short-order cook, he was a short-order cook. Nobody gave him anything, nobody gave me anything." Many may believe comments like those are endearing. A light-hearted way into understanding how two men could become kindred spirits. But the data explains that those in hiring positions frequently gravitate toward candidates that look like they do, which adds to the shrinking of opportunities for coaches of color in the game.

The easy response is to blame the mechanisms already in place. The Rooney Rule, flawed as it may be, is not the only answer. The shame lies at the top. The shame lies with management. The responsibility to change this annual routine resides with the power brokers of football, who keep relying on the same unimaginative hires every year.

"We are in a battle for social justice," Graves wrote in an email Monday. "The current system of hiring and promoting talent into the upper levels of NFL management is a flawed system. We cannot expect fairness if business remains status quo."

"For 100 years of football, we've gone from Fritz Pollard to three or four coaches of color in 2020, and it's beyond shameful." -Graves

Troy Vincent, executive vice president of football operations for the league and a former all-pro cornerback, told me last summer that black coaches "know this game" and are asking only for "a fair process." Vincent said several times in our interview that the league "cannot require the club or make the club hire" any candidate. But he has admitted on several occasions, including last month to The New York Times, that the demographics of the league are "embarrassing." Marvin Lewis, the former Bengals head coach, unsuccessfully interviewed for the Dallas Cowboys' head coaching opening. "You keep beating your head up against the wall, but I would say-and again, this is somebody's business, this is somebody's franchise, and nobody's going to tell them who to hire," Lewis said.

Another annual study from UCF's Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport stated that racial hiring in the NFL in 2019 was the worst it has been in 15 years, citing less than 15 percent of diverse representation at the head coaching level, the general manager level, and vice president level. The NFL received subpar grades in each category.

"We need to stop focusing on the small indications of victory," Graves told me. "We should be pulling for a commitment from owners to identify a strategy that addresses diversity in leadership roles throughout their organization. Instead of every year, we're getting on the edge of our seats just for head coaches and general managers, we should know that we can't expect for every open position to have a person of color be named. For 100 years of football, we've gone from Fritz Pollard to three or four coaches of color in 2020, and it's beyond shameful."

The NFL and other athletic entities try to position themselves as arenas of meritocracy. Diversity requirements are an imposition on these stated aims. However, these are false virtues fueled by self-interest. What these ideas fail to realize, as Graves told me last summer, is that diversity is good for business. If owners were genuinely trying to find the best people possible to win football games, the riddle would've been solved long ago.

Black and brown coaches have built their own networks and pipelines to facilitate their professional advancement, but they're rendered ineffective if teams aren't seriously considering them in the first place. Coaches are, naturally, fatigued by this fight. Many told me last year about the toll it takes to work their way up through the coaching ranks. Some coaches have been trying to get a head job for decades.

Raheem Morris, an assistant with the Atlanta Falcons, told me he has to keep moving forward, even if it's a losing battle. He had to keep faith in an imperfect system. "I have no choice but to believe that," he said. Lynn lamented that the system has never "been equal." This problem has existed in football throughout its existence, at the pro level as well as in college. It is disheartening. There is no reason coaches should be optimistic about their chances of getting the top jobs in football until the league grapples with the entrenched prejudice in its game. Coaches work until they can't anymore, when the weight is too heavy to bear, when they tire of being passed over for subpar talent. For white talent. For ideas about who coaches look like. Every year, without fail, we get a glimpse of that illustration.

"This is the National Football League. We have to recognize the fact that we haven't met our obligations in that area as a league," Graves said. He is beyond ready, like so many, for something to truly change. "We are still dealing with the perception that we are incapable of leading in those areas. It's like we're talking about black coaches like they're black quarterbacks. And we have to understand that the game belongs to all of us."

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The Rooney Rule Is Broken-Will the NFL Do Anything to Fix It?

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One afternoon in October 2002, Johnnie Cochran assembled a press conference in Baltimore with his colleague Cyrus Mehri to discuss a proposal to reform the NFL's hiring practices. The lawyers chose a steak house named for Hall of Fame head coach Don Shula as the venue to present a study they had commissioned from a University of Pennsylvania economics professor.

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This editorial goes into great detail on what is Trump’s stance and how it ultimately affected the NFL commissioner to create rules on whether or not NFL players and coaches can kneel during the National Anthem. This rule states that  Players will no longer be required to be on the field during the anthem and may stay in the locker room during that time if they choose. But those who do go out to the field and don’t stand during the anthem could face a penalty.

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President Donald Trump has repeatedly called on the NFL to punish players who kneel on the field in protest of racial inequality and police violence.

Now, in the wake of the NFL's new policy that all players must "stand and show respect" during the national anthem, Trump has suggested that players who kneel don't belong in the US.

"You have to stand proudly for the national anthem or you shouldn't be playing, you shouldn't be there. Maybe you shouldn't be in the country," Trump said in an interview with Fox & Friends that aired on Thursday.

"The NFL owners did the right thing," he added.

On Wednesday, the NFL and the owners of its 32 teams announced a new policy: Players will no longer be required to be on the field during the anthem and may stay in the locker room during that time if they choose. But those who do go out to the field and don't stand during the anthemcould face a penalty.

The new policy does not ban kneeling outright - it allows individual teams to create their own rules and penalties for players who kneel or sit during the anthem. But the policy also gives the league the ability to fine teams whose players do so.

In a Wednesday statement, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell noted that the kneeling protests had called attention to important social issues but added that they had "created a false perception among many that thousands of NFL players were unpatriotic."

"This is not and was never the case," he said.

During the Fox & Friends interview, Trump also discussed immigration issues, saying that any new immigration bill would have to include provisions to build a border wall. As president, he's enacted a travel ban against citizens of several Muslim-majority countries, antagonized Mexico over the building of a border wall, and referred to Mexicans as rapists and criminals.

Trump has long criticized NFL players' kneeling protests

The kneeling protests started in the summer of 2016 when then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick sat during the national anthem at several preseason games. When his actions were noticed by reporters, Kaepernick said he was protesting police violence and America's mistreatment of people of color.

"I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color," he told NFL.com in 2016.

Trump's critiques of the NFL protests date back to his time on the campaign trail in August 2016 when, speaking of the early days of Kaepernick's protests, he said that if the athlete was truly upset, he " should find a country that works better for him."

But they drew even more attention last September, when, during a rally for then-Alabama Sen. Luther Strange, Trump argued that players who protest should be removed from the field. "Wouldn't you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, 'Get that son of a bitch off the field right now!'" Trump said.

In the months that followed, the president repeatedly spoke about the protests and shared his thoughts on Twitter, arguing that the protests were unpatriotic.

As he did, the public conversation about the protests shifted from discussions of race and racism to the perceived patriotism or lack thereof of the players.

Over time, it became clear that NFL owners, even as fewer players took up kneeling, wanted the issue to go away. "You fellas need to ask your compadres, fellas, stop that other business, let's go out and do something that really produces positive results, and we'll help you," Houston Texans owner Bob McNairsaid during an October 2017 meeting between NFL players and owners.

With its new policy, the NFL has given Trump exactly what he wanted.
For more on the controversy, listen to the May 23 episode of Today, Explained.

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Trump praises NFL anthem rule, says kneeling players "maybe shouldn't be in the country"

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President Donald Trump has repeatedly called on the NFL to punish players who kneel on the field in protest of racial inequality and police violence. Now, in the wake of the NFL's new policy that all players must "stand and show respect" during the national anthem, Trump has suggested that players who kneel don't belong in the US.

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This article was written by Paolo Gaudiano who disagrees that all kinds of diversity but most importantly racial diversity shouldn't  be the top priority when it comes to businesses; instead they should focus on inclusion and match the person they are hiring with the majority of their current employees. This article is against racial diversity in businesses.

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As part of my work in diversity and inclusion, company leaders frequently ask me for specific suggestions on what they can do to increase diversity. Sometimes the answer surprises them: achieving diversity should not be your goal.

This isn't to say that diversity is not important - quite the opposite! I have previously argued that diversity is key to company performance. But diversity should be an outcome of your efforts to maximize your company's performance, not a condition that you try to impose. Making your company inclusive is a key ingredient to your company's success, and it will also naturally lead your company to be more diverse. In other words, you should focus on achieving inclusion, and track diversity as a measure of your success .

To understand this, consider first that human capital is the most important asset and the largest expenditure of virtually every company: regardless of what your company does, you need people to ideate, design, develop, market, sell and support your offering. Hence, anything that you do that improves the performance of your human capital will benefit your company, while any problems you create for your human capital will have a negative impact.

Now imagine that you have just hired two people to fill identical positions for which you have a detailed job description and specific requirements. The two individuals both fit the requirements perfectly, are the same age, went to the same school, and, from the point of view of this job, they are virtually identical. Let's refer to them as "work twins." However, these work twins differ in their personal characteristics: for instance, one is black and the other is white; or one is male and the other female; or one is Muslim and the other is Christian; or one is a democrat and the other is a republican. For the sake of this thought experiment, let's assume that one work twin is male and the other is female, and they are identical in all other personal traits.

In principle, these work twins should have exactly the same performance and career trajectory, and they should make identical contributions to the success of your company. But in practice, the personal traits that differentiate the otherwise identical work twins, will cause them to have different experiences. If, for example, your company's current employees are mostly men, then the female twin is likely to have a more negative experience than the male twin, giving the male twin an unfair advantage.

This simple thought experiment should already make it clear why your focus should be on inclusion rather than on diversity: whether or not our fictitious twins have different experiences has less to do with the gender of the existing employees, and more to do with how those employees treat the female employee - the less inclusive the company, the more likely that the female twin will have a worse experience and be less successful in the position.

But it's important to realize that failing to be inclusive has broad negative consequences for your entire company, not just for the female twin. By failing to be inclusive, you now have an unhappy employee, and this leads to negative ripple effects on other key aspects of your company's performance: if the female twin has lower productivity, her team will be less efficient as it is dealing with an underperforming member; if she quits because of her dissatisfaction, you will need to hire, onboard and train someone new; if she complains about her treatment, your company will get a bad reputation that will discourage other women from applying for jobs; and if she was in a role that influences any aspect of your product (design, marketing, sales, support), your company will be less able to attract female customers.

These kinds of negative ripple effects occur all the time: companies pledge to increase diversity by focusing on hiring "diverse candidates," but then these diverse candidates find themselves in an environment that is unwelcoming or sometimes downright hostile, which ultimately results in decreased ability to attract and retain talent, decreased productivity, and decreased market share. It should not be surprising that, in spite of all the money and effort invested in increasing diversity, many companies fail to move the needle on diversity.

The negative ripple effects don't stop here. Within a company, the continued push for diversity can lead to backlash from members of the privileged majority who feel that their company is discriminating against them. And the backlash can propagate to entire industries and in some cases to society as a whole - as evidenced by recent attacks on Affirmative Action.

The far-reaching implications of inclusion (or the lack thereof) also reveal the importance of making inclusion not only a core element of your culture, but also an integral aspect of all your workplace policies and processes. Even if every male employee in our fictitious company were an inclusive individual, the company may have policies and practices that are disadvantageous to the female twin, such as inadequate maternity leave and lack of flex time; or the company may have processes that allow unconscious biases to influence decisions related to hiring, compensation and promotions, to the further detriment of our female twin.

One of the beauties of inclusion, is that an inclusive culture and inclusive workplace policies can benefit anyone whose personal traits differ from the majority. Although I have used gender for our thought experiment, the same reasoning can apply to any personal trait: race, religion, sexual identity, age, education level, political views, nationality, language, physical or cognitive disabilities, body shape, dietary constraints, medical conditions, or a myriad other factors, many of which are not even considered when discussing diversity, but which nonetheless can impact workplace experiences.

As a final point, focusing on diversity creates the fundamental problem of labeling people and placing them into buckets, which fosters division. Focusing on inclusion does the opposite: it acknowledges that your employees are human beings whose varied personal traits influence their needs and behaviors. By creating an inclusive workplace you ensure that everyone is given the best opportunity to succeed. And in so doing, you will create a highly diverse company in which employees are happier, more productive and more loyal.

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Companies Should Stop Focusing On Diversity

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As part of my work in diversity and inclusion, company leaders frequently ask me for specific suggestions on what they can do to increase diversity. Sometimes the answer surprises them: achieving diversity should not be your goal. This isn't to say that diversity is not important - quite the opposite!

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This article was written by Laura Meckler and Kate Rabinowitz who explain how most schools are becoming diverse in race among students, but most of teachers are still white. This article is in favor of having more racial diversity in schools.

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SANTA ROSA, Calif. - Ricardo Alcalá's parents, born in Mexico, carried less than a second-grade education when they came to California to work the fields. His older siblings dropped out of high school. One was sentenced to prison for life and killed behind bars. Ricardo was 13 then, living in poverty.

But when he was 14, something changed. A Latina teacher told him he was too smart for pre-algebra and should move up.

"For some reason, that simple act and belief changed my entire perception of schooling, and life really," he said. "She was the first person who saw something good in me."

Now, Alcalá is a high school Spanish teacher, looking for the good in his students, most from Latino and poor families like his. He nudges boys drawn to gangs toward the wrestling team instead, and serves Mexican hot chocolate on a Monday afternoon, hoping that small treat will dissuade students from skipping class.

Not many teachers at Elsie Allen High School can connect with students in the same way. While 80 percent of students are Latino, just two of 56 teachers are - 3.5 percent.

Nationally, a Washington Post analysis of school district data from 46 states and the District of Columbia finds that only one-tenth of 1 percent of Latino students attend a school system where the portion of Latino teachers equals or exceeds the percentage of Latino students.

It's only marginally better for black students: 7 percent were enrolled in a district where the share of black teachers matches or exceeds that for students. Among Asian students, it was 4.5 percent.

Meanwhile, 99.7 percent of white students attended a district where the faculty was as white as the student body, The Post found.

In nearly all U.S. school districts, students of color outpace teachers of color

Below shows the proportion of teachers and students of color for U.S. school districts. Circles are sized to the number of all students. The teacher of color gap is the percentage of students of color less the percentage of teachers of color. The larger the gap, the less diverse the teacher population is compared with the student population.

No data for districts in Maine, New Hampshire, Utah and Vermont.

Over time, the ranks of teachers of color have grown. In 1988, 87 percent of public school teachers were white. By 2016, 80 percent were, according to federal data.

Nonetheless, the racial gap between teachers and students has widened as more young people of color have enrolled each year. In 1994, two-thirds of public school students were white; by 2016, fewer than half were.

Some of the challenge is demographic: Latinos are younger, as a group, so they make up a greater share of the student population than the adult population. Teachers may stay in the profession for decades, so it takes time for the workforce to transform.

Integration's new frontier

The lines that divide: School district boundaries often stymie integration.

What happened when Brooklyn tried to integrate its middle schools.

This trail-blazing suburb has tried for 60 years to tackle race. What if trying isn't enough?
Full data analysis: How the nation's growing racial diversity is changing our schools.
More students are attending schools with children of different races than ever before.

Read more:
What's your experience with school integration?
Voices of Shaker Heights: A community grapples with education, race and equity.

But that doesn't explain the gap between black students and teachers, and it doesn't fully explain the Latino gap either. People of color are less likely to go into teaching and less likely to stay in it. Education requirements, low pay, unhappy workplaces and lack of respect all can contribute. The result: At every step on the road from high school student to classroom teacher, people of color fall away.

They are less likely to go to college, less likely to enroll in teacher preparation programs, less likely to graduate and less likely to be certified as teachers, the Education Department found in a 2016 report.

And yet researchers have found significant positive results when black and Hispanic students have teachers who match their race or ethnicity: better attendance, fewer suspensions, more positive attitudes, and higher test scores, graduation rates and college attendance. Teachers of color also have higher expectations for students of color, which may fuel the other gains.

"Representation absolutely matters and it matters for ... almost every educational outcome you can think of," said Seth Gershenson, a public policy professor at American University.

A demographic mismatch

The power of these connections is apparent here in Sonoma County, a liberal part of America north of San Francisco. It is home to rugged California coastline, stunning vistas and some 425 wineries - but also poverty. Forty-five percent of students in the county are Latino. Latino teachers are far more scarce.

In the Roseland School District in Santa Rosa, 92 percent of students last year were Latino, but just 14 percent of teachers were. That's a gap of 78 percentage points, one of the biggest in the country, The Post found.

In the neighboring Wright Elementary School District, nearly two-thirds of students last year were Latino. There was one Latino teacher.

Celio Batres, 17, a senior at Roseland Collegiate Prep whose family emigrated from El Salvador, recalled an assignment to explore different cultures and feeling like he couldn't connect with his white teacher. "She grew up in a middle-class family, basically living the American Dream, and that's completely different from my family and the way we were brought up," he said.

He said it was different with the one Latino teacher he had. Tomas Salinas talked about his own home growing up, the aroma of food wafting from the kitchen where his mom was cooking. "My house, it's the same way," Batres said.

A classmate, Sebastien Jean, 17, who is black and Hispanic, remembers that his elementary school teachers were all white, so he started acting what felt like white, absorbing what he called the "Caucasianness of it."

"I sort of lost my flavor," he said.

That created tension with his mother. "I would go home and start talking about the weather and gas prices and my mom would be like, 'Where did you get that from?' "

It was different with Mr. Salinas. "He treats us like we're his children."

Salinas, whose parents are Mexican, remembers being on the other side. A Latina teacher hung Mexican and American flags in his fourth-grade classroom, not far from where he teaches today. "That just spoke to me as a kid," he said. Now, as an English teacher, he incorporates Latino authors into his course.

But being one of the only Latino teachers isn't easy. He remembers his first day at his job, when staff were gathering in the gymnasium. He found himself standing by another Latino man - a custodian. "I remember thinking I should go sit with other [teachers], but that was my comfort zone," he said.

Leaders of the Wright and Roseland districts said their priority is finding the best teachers available. Hispanic teachers are hard to find, they said.

"It would be lucky and wonderful if they were [Hispanic], but we need the best of the best," said Amy Jones-Kerr, superintendent of the Roseland district.

"You don't want all of your Hispanic kids looking up to a bunch of white teachers and that's basically what we have so, yeah, it's an issue," said Adam Schaible, superintendent of the neighboring Wright district. "It's not a front-burner issue for me or for my district. I think in the hiring process, we are always giving preference to people who are bilingual, bilingual Spanish. There aren't that many of them."

Schaible said he has tried to find Latino aides or other paraprofessionals for a countywide teacher-training program aimed at recruiting Latino teachers. But he said he hasn't found anyone to recommend, partly because a bachelor's degree is required to participate.

The demographics are similar in the county's largest district, the Santa Rosa City Schools. Superintendent Diann Kitamura said she thinks about the problem every day.

She said she is looking for teachers through wider advertising, attending more job fairs, making sure all their materials are in Spanish as well as English, even staffing a booth at a summer farmers market in town. She applied for a grant to recruit teachers from Mexico and Spain.

Creating a more diverse workforce is a long-term proposition. In the meantime, she says she's doing what she can to boost Latino achievement. After considerable debate, the school board changed a policy that had funneled many Latino students into an academic program that is not rigorous enough to qualify students to attend state universities, even if they receive perfect grades. Under the new policy, most students are put into the college prep sequence.

Santa Rosa also changed school board elections, with members now chosen to represent districts within the city, rather than being elected at-large. The resulting board is now far more diverse.

And Kitamura is looking at balancing teaching assignments between the more affluent east side of town vs. the more heavily Latino west side.

"The west always has the newbies," she said.

At Elsie Allen High, Alcalá teaches Spanish, coaches the wrestling team and, when he thinks it might motivate a student, tells the story of his brother's death, and how it motivated him to get serious about school. He tells them poverty is no excuse for failure. He tells them selling drugs is what landed his brother in prison. He'll sometimes visit his students' parents at home.

"I have no fear to go to someone's house and talk to them in their native language," he said.

In a nearby classroom, veteran teacher Paul Fleischer, who is white, energetically engages his psychology students, dressed in shorts and a loud Christmas sweater. He uses clips from "My Cousin Vinny" to explain elements of memory.

He works to show interest in his students' culture and their lives, and said he is sometimes invited to their homes. But unlike Alcalá, he doesn't usually go. As for the ethnicity of teachers, he said: "Yes, it matters. But there's nothing I can do to be Latino."

Sonoma County officials say recruiting teachers is hard. The pay is low - an average of about $49,000 a year to start - and housing costs are high, even more so after the 2017 Tubbs fire destroyed thousands of homes. Becoming a teacher in California typically requires four years toward a bachelor's degree and another year or two to earn a certification. Latino students are less likely to have parents who can pay their tuition, so they borrow money to get through college. That creates pressure to find higher-paying jobs afterward.

The local college, Sonoma State University, draws students from throughout California, so graduates are not necessarily looking to stay in the county afterward. The university produces only about 95 education graduates a year anyway.

Concerned, the Sonoma County Office of Education, which works with the 40 independent school districts in the county, is trying to create subsidized housing for teachers.

The county also created the program to train more teachers, with a special focus on local Latino paraprofessionals and other staff who might want to advance. So far, 16 people working in schools have been referred, said Jason Lea, who is running the program.

Lea also hopes to encourage more local Latino college students to go into teaching, but says it can be a hard sell.

"If you're first generation [in college], there's a lot of pressure to be successful," he said. "Teaching does not necessarily stick out in the minds of people as a place to go to make money."

Finding teachers and keeping them

Creating a diverse teaching corps is not just about hiring. It's about retention. Black and Hispanic teachers are less likely to remain in the profession than their white peers.

In 2012-2013, 85 percent of white teachers were in the same school as the year before. For black teachers, it was 78 percent and for Hispanic teachers, 79 percent, federal data show.

That's partly because black and Hispanic teachers are more likely to work in urban schools, where students have higher needs and where burnout is high for everyone, experts say.

Research shows that for black and Hispanic students, having a teacher like them can make a significant difference in academic achievement. So there's been a recruitment push to get teachers of color into struggling schools. The Post analysis found people of color made up 20 percent of all teachers, but 34 percent of those in high-poverty districts.

That push has meant more teachers of color are in these tough, burnout jobs, said Richard Ingersoll of the University of Pennsylvania's Graduate School of Education, who has studied the gap between teachers and students of color.

"It's not enough to recruit," he said. "If we don't improve retention, I'm not optimistic for closing the gap."

A report by Teach Plus, a nonprofit that advocates for a diverse teaching force, and the Education Trust, an advocacy group focused on equity, concluded that many teachers of color find antagonistic work cultures and feel undervalued. That, on top of the low pay, drives many of them out, the report found.

Burnout is driven by too little support, too little funding and a general lack of respect for the profession, said Marquita Grenot-Scheyer, assistant vice chancellor for teacher training programs at California State University.

"They are oftentimes the only teacher of color in a particular school, so oftentimes they are asked to be the spokesperson for all teachers of color, or the disciplinarian for all students of color," she said. "You are adding additional responsibilities onto a beginning teacher who is trying to figure out how to be a teacher."

And sometimes, those teachers lose jobs they would like to keep. In recent years, there was a push to close low-performing schools, where black and Hispanic teachers are more likely to teach. Decades ago, when courts ordered desegregation plans, many black teachers who had taught in all-black schools lost their jobs.

Today, the gaps are present in virtually every school district, The Post analysis found. In places where teacher demographics match the students, the overwhelming number of students are white.

The share of teachers and students for each school district in the United States by race

The teacher gap or surplus is the share of students less the share of teachers of a given race. Circles are sized by the number of students of that race in a district.

No data for districts in Maine, New Hampshire, Utah and Vermont. Maryland and North Carolina did not report the share of Hispanic or Asian teachers.

Research shows it matters. Studies find that having a same-race teacher makes black and Hispanic students more likely to graduate from high school and enroll in college and can even affect a choice of major. One study looked at black students who had at least one black and one white teacher in high school and found the black teachers more likely to expect black students would finish college. Another found that black students were more likely to be referred to gifted and talented programs when they had black teachers.

Studies find the race of a teacher does not affect white students in the same way, although there may be life benefits from exposure to diverse perspectives and role models. Most children aren't getting that. About 8 in 10 students live in districts where black or Hispanic teachers make up less than 5 percent of the faculty.

Pockets of success

Some school districts are finding more success. The Alhambra Unified School District is one of several east of Los Angeles that have recruited a substantial number of Latino teachers, although there's still a gap. In Alhambra schools, 41 percent of students last year were Latino compared with 25 percent of teachers.

Administrators say the effort is helped by homegrown talent - students graduate from their high schools and then return as teachers, buoyed by a large teacher-training program at the local university, California State University at Los Angeles. Unlike Sonoma State, Cal State-L.A. primarily draws students from nearby communities.

"I'm doing student teaching two blocks away from my home," said Kimberly Leal-Juarez, 28, who is working toward her teaching certification at the Los Angeles university.

She said she never had a Latino teacher until high school and rarely felt supported. She recalls one of her teachers calling her college application essay "melodramatic," a shot that stung her enough to abandon the idea of applying to college for several years. She said she had written about domestic violence in her home. "I didn't know how to fix my personal statement. It was real for me."

On the sprawling, 46-acre campus of San Gabriel High School, part of the Alhambra district, the effort to recruit Latino teachers feels urgent. Latino students, who make up about 34 percent of the student body, chronically lag behind Asian students, who make up most of the rest.

Talking with students, one name kept popping up: English teacher Virginia Parra. Asked if there was a teacher they could relate to, one Latino student after another mentioned her.

She helps run the school's program for first-generation students - about 25 or 30 teens from each grade, mostly Latino, who have academic potential. Teachers work with them to improve grades and prepare for college. On one classroom wall, Parra tracks how many have submitted applications. On another, she's pinned pennants from local universities and some farther away: Harvard, Yale, Brown.

Growing up, Parra said, her father was always working and rarely set foot in school. Her mom was embarrassed that her English wasn't good enough and shied away from teachers. Parra says she got lucky that a teacher noticed her and pushed her toward advanced classes and college. Now, she is doing the same, moving Latino kids into and through her AP English Language course.

"Some of the students are struggling, or they never saw themselves capable of being in an AP class. And in the beginning we talk about why they're here and their purpose and telling them that they're all valued and they should be here," she said.

She seems a little embarrassed talking about her impact. But her wall is full of notes from students, and another mound of cards is put away, along with a stack of yearbooks whose pages are filled with student messages.

Ashley Macias, 15, who came to California from Mexico when she was 3, was already feeling insecure when she learned the cross-country team was dominated by Asian students. She wanted to be part of it, but feared she didn't fit in. Macias talked to Parra, and learned she had run cross-country in high school. "And that kind of pushed me to want to go back because I felt if she did it, you know, it's okay if I go, too."

Parra also encouraged her to compete in a poetry competition. She performed her poem called "Assumptions," eviscerating those who assume she's a criminal, a "ghetto girl" or stupid in school. "I have never worked on a field," her poem says. "But even if I had to why would that be so bad."

"I find myself not being scared to do much anymore," Macias said. "And I think that's because of her."

About this story

For 44 states and the District of Columbia, teacher race data was obtained from each state's Department of Education. Teacher data for Arizona and Virginia was obtained from school districts. Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont and Utah were unable to provide reliable data, or any data at all. The collected teacher data covers districts that serve 94 percent of American students. The data can be accessed here.

Data for Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Montana, New York, Tennessee and some districts in Virginia and Arizona are for the 2016-17 school year. All other school district data is for the 2017-18 school year.

Teacher data is based on head count, not full-time equivalent. That is, a part-time teacher counts as one, not a fraction of one. School districts with fewer than four teachers or where the teacher-to-student ratio was less than two or greater than 25 were excluded. Districts where the share of unknown or not reported teacher race data exceeded 10 percent were also excluded.

Asian, Black, Native American, Pacific Islander and white race categories exclude anyone with Hispanic ethnicity.

Some school districts do not include all races in their data or group certain racial groups together. In these instances, the student data has been made to mirror how the school district reports and a note has been placed in the scatter plot.

Rhode Island, Montana and Arizona report teacher race and ethnicity separately. This means that the data provided double counted Hispanic teachers in racial categories. Race data for Rhode Island and Montana was estimated for districts where the Hispanic proportion was very low or the share of white teachers was very high, which was true of most districts. More detail can be found in the code below. For Arizona, combined race and ethnicity data was collected from districts where available.

Student race data comes from the Common Core of Data from the National Center for Education Statistics.

The race gap was calculated by subtracting the share of students in a given race or group of races from the share of teachers of that same race or group.

Data and code for this analysis can be found here.

Additional graphics work by Armand Emamdjomeh. Edited by Stephen Smith and Danielle Rindler. Photo edited by Mark Miller. Copy edited by Jamie Zega. Designed by J.C. Reed.

About this story

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America's schools are more diverse than ever, yet teachers are still mostly white

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Warning: This graphic requires JavaScript. Please enable JavaScript for the best experience. and SANTA ROSA, Calif. - Ricardo Alcalá's parents, born in Mexico, carried less than a second-grade education when they came to California to work the fields. His older siblings dropped out of high school.

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In Jon Greenberg's article, he writes about 10 reasons white privilege still exists and how he knows it when he sees it. Throughout this article, he mentions plenty of famous or relevant events and even adds links so there are numerous of resources!

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Lessons people of color have taught me that changed my life-and could change yours too.

This article was originally published by Everyday Feminism. It has been edited for YES! Magazine. If you checked out the Jose Antonio Vargas documentary about White people, aptly titled White People, you'll know that many White people struggle to discuss race (not that some of you needed a documentary to confirm this fact). Throw "White Privilege" into the discussion, and the awkwardness-and defensiveness-can multiply astronomically. What is White Privilege? The reality that a White person's whiteness has come-and continues to come-with an array of benefits and advantages not shared by many people of color. It doesn't mean that I, as a White person, don't work hard (I do) or that I haven't suffered (well, I have known struggle), but simply that I receive help, often unacknowledged assistance, because I am White.

Or, as Ta-Nehisi Coates writes, I "believe [I am] White." I've yet to get a DNA test, which led to a surprising result for a White supremacist who thought himself 100% White. Perhaps most indicative of the power and prevalence of White Privilege is that, though people of color have been fighting racism since its invention, those who are most associated with White Privilege education tend to be White people: Tim Wise, Robin DiAngelo, Paul Gorski, and, of course, Peggy McIntosh, author of the 1989 article, "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack." And I understand why Peggy McIntosh's "Knapsack" article continues to fill anti-racist syllabuses 26 years later. Her list of privileges makes the concept readable and digestible-heck, the success of Everyday Feminism is largely because of this listing format. For example: "I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group" or "If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones." Taken together, McIntosh's list reveals a privilege she never explicitly states: the privilege to feel normal. But how odd is it that White people are the ones who so often disproportionately get the credit for educating about White privilege? Think of it this way: Because I have always had full use of my legs, I'd be the last person you'd turn to to learn about life in a wheelchair. In fact, navigating a tour of the state capital with a student in a wheelchair for 30 minutes taught me more about life in a wheelchair than my previous 30+ years had taught me. Yet, when it comes to White Privilege, White people somehow become the authority. While I have indeed learned important lessons from prominent White anti-racist educators (like the above ability-privilege analogy that I pulled from Tim Wise), here are lessons people of color have taught me that have changed my life-and they could change yours as well.

1. I Have the Privilege of Having a Positive Relationship with the Police, Generally

Sure, the police who patrolled the affluent neighborhoods of my youth were an inconvenience to a few keggers, and I maintain that a traffic violation from the late 90s was unfair, but I grew up thinking of the police officers as a source of safety if I were ever in danger; I certainly never viewed them as the source of danger. In 1999, Amadou Diallo-and the 41 bullets that police officers in plainclothes discharged at this unarmed Black man with no criminal record-taught me that not all share this privilege. Diallo was for me what Michael Brown has been to some White people. Too many Black and brown people are not safe with the police. Not even if you are child, a lesson Tamir Rice and Dajerria Becton taught me. Not even if you are seeking medical help, a lesson Jonathan Ferrell taught me. Not even if you call the police for help with your mentally ill son, a lesson Paul Castaway's mother taught me. Not even if your back is turned, a lesson Rekia Boyd and Walter Scott taught me. Not even if you tell the police you "can't breathe," a lesson Eric Garner taught me. Not even if you have your hands up, a lesson Antonio Zambrano-Montes and Michael Brown (according to sixteen witnesses) taught me. Not even if you are "safe" in custody, a lesson Tanisha Anderson, Natasha McKenna, Freddie Gray, and Sandra Bland taught me. Not even if you plead for help while in custody, a lesson Sarah Lee Circle Bear taught me. These are just a fraction of my teachers, those whose names reached the media, which too often neglect reporting police killings of women of color and Indigenous people. Of course, I might not have learned any of these lessons if not for the efforts of Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, a movement that is changing White perceptions of racist policing, not to mention our entire political landscape.

2. I Have the Privilege of Being Favored by School Authorities

Kiera Wilmot and Ahmed Mohamed, both of whom were arrested for bringing science projects to school while Black or brown, helped teach me this lesson. Recently, one Black 12-year-old was suspended for intimidating a White girl through his staring-staring that took place during a staring contest. Huh? Studies confirm such mistreatment of Black and brown students. In one, White students who reported that they committed 40 crimes in a year were "as likely to be imprisoned as black and Hispanic students who reported committing just five offenses." In my hometown of Seattle, Black middle school students are nearly four times as likely to be suspended as White students, a reality that has attracted an investigation by the federal government. One federal study found similar disparities start as early has preschool. Preschool. As a parent of a White 4-year-old, I can't fathom how such heavy-handed practices would ever help my child (who recently smacked my face because he didn't want me to leave his room at bedtime). But because we're White, I'm unlikely to ever receive the call from school officials that Tunette Powell recounts in her article, " My son has been suspended five times. He's 3."

3. I Have the Privilege of Attending Segregated Schools of Affluence

That's true, even if I'm White and poor, a demographic rarely forced to live in " concentrated poverty." If you are Black and poor, however, you are nearly 19 times more likely to live in concentrated poverty than poor White Americans. When I was growing up, Brown v. The Board of Education was more than history; it was a value. Civil Rights icon Thurgood Marshall taught me this lesson. And research shows that both people of color and White people benefit from integrated schools. Even though we "ended" segregation in 1954, segregation is the norm in 2015; integration has long ago been forced from the table of education reform. Using fear tactics and coded language, White people continue to be the barrier to any attempt at integration, a fact that This American Life reminded us of last summer with its must-listen, two-part series " The Problem We All Live With." In Seattle, it was a White parent, unhappy she couldn't get her daughter into a nearby (recently renovated) high school, who shut down a district's efforts to integrate its public schools-which, not ironically, many White families had already fled because of previous integration efforts. Even in " progressive" Seattle, people of color can't even find a safe yoga class for people of color without a White person crying discrimination.

4. I Have the Privilege of Learning about My Race in School

In response to White politicians' outrageous shutting down of Tucson Unified School District's Mexican American Studies program- a program that dramatically reduced educational disparities for Latinx students- a movement to increase ethnic studies is growing, winning victories in districts that are predominately of Color, such as Los Angeles Unified and most recently Oakland Unified. Until White America joins the fight, the lesson that educator and activist Jose Del Barrio teaches below will continue to hold true:

Unfortunately, in too many schools and districts, ethnic studies is not even an elective.

5. I Have the Privilege of Finding Children's Books that Overwhelmingly Represent My Race

And the whitewashing of curriculum extends into bookstores (less so into libraries) where I live. And it's not because I'm a bad shopper (though I am). In a New York Times op-ed, Walter Dean Myers taught me that "of 3,200 children's books published in 2013, just 93 were about Black people." And that doesn't mean the remaining 3,107 are filled with people of color of various races. In 2013, only 8 percent of children's books were written by or about people of color. On my many trips to Seattle bookstores, I find the few such stories that do exist tell the stories of Civil Rights icons and trailblazers, such as Jackie Robinson and Rosa Parks. And while these stories are important and inspirational, I have not yet been ready to teach my 4-year-old that people of color have been normally oppressed; I just want him to view the faces of people of color as normal. Fortunately, the #WeNeedDiverseBooks campaign we can join has emerged to take on this privilege, which is actually a curse if we want our children to interact with others based on reality, not stereotypes.

6. I Have the Privilege of Soaking in Media Blatantly Biased Toward My Race

Everyday Feminism writer Maisha Z. Johnson deepened my understanding of this bias that rears its unwelcome, White-loving head, for example, in pictures that humanize White killers while simultaneously dehumanizing victims of Color:

Two sets of pictures, one with and one without mugshots- for the same crime, covered by the same reporter (on the same day) -further illustrate this bias:

And these biases are besides a media that, according to Vanity Fair, continue to be overwhelmingly whitewashed (not to mentioned malewashed, straightwashed, and youthwashed). If you are still not convinced, check out actor Dylan Marron's website, Every Single Word, through which the Venezuelan American has edited mainstream movies so that only the characters of color speak. Even the two-hour-and-19 minute-movie, Noah -set in a region filled with Brown people-is reduced to just eleven seconds. More proof is just one Google image search away. Google "beauty" and count the people of color. Here's what my search found (and notice the glaring lack of Idris Elba images):

And if the media are not blatantly biased, remember that they are covering a blatantly biased country, one that views the epidemic of heroin, used overwhelmingly by White people, as a "health problem" instead of a "crime problem." Apparently, the addictions of White people merit a " gentler war on drugs," not the three-strikes laws and mandatory minimums that have devastated Black and brown communities.

7. I Have the Privilege of Escaping Violent Stereotypes Associated with My Race

Given that, throughout this country's history, White people have been responsible for unspeakable atrocities against people of color-genocide, forced migrations, lynchings-what a set up that violent stereotypes attach to people of color and not to White males like me. Or the three White males recently charged with plotting to bomb " black churches and synagogues as part of a race and hate war."

Or these two, pictured above, who were arrested for threatening the lives of Black students at the University of Missouri, students who had dared to protest rampant racism on campus.

The Huffington Post's Julia Craven recently taught me that, since September 11, White supremacists (who tend to be White) have perpetuated more terrorism in the United States than any foreign threat. The Southern Poverty Law Center connects nearly 100 killings to a single White supremacist website, Stormfront (whose users also tend to be White). And though I share a similar skin color as these violent White people, I move about free from violent stereotypes-and I haven't even brought up all the famous White serial killers! Meanwhile, Homeland Security misdirects its resources on the surveillance of the Black Lives Matter activists who dare to protest rampant racism in our country.

8. I Have the Privilege of Playing the Colorblind Card, Wiping the Slate Clean of Centuries of Racism

Another set up that benefits White people. And I don't mean to sound judgmental. If we have espoused colorblindness, it's because we have been taught to do so. However, countless students of color have taught me a different lesson: Race is a fundamental part of their identities and deserves to be acknowledged and appreciated. Yes, race is a social construction based on physical differences that, genetically speaking, make as much sense as classifying people by fingerprint pattern and blood type. Nevertheless, White people have been using the invention of race, through policy and legislation , to systematically benefit White people from as early as the colonial era. And when overt racism (finally) became socially unacceptable-after, of course, vast inequality had become deeply entrenched in every aspect of political, social, and economic life-we switched to colorblindness, making it virtually impossible to address this societal inequality. It also makes it very difficult for White people to examine their implicit biases, like the ones that associate lighter skin with intelligence. Or the ones that prescribe less pain medication for Black and Latinx children than White children in "severe" pain. Or the ones that prefer White-sounding names when it comes to school discipline, job applications, and government inquiries. And, of course, who pays the heaviest price? Again, what a setup, one that clearly benefits White people, though it does lead to some hypocrisy:

9. I Have the Privilege of Being Insulated from the Daily Toll of Racism

Then I watched Color of Fear, and Victor Lee Lewis taught me a new reality (as did Lee Mun Wah, who made the film). And while it's not the job of people of color to educate White people on racism, it's no longer difficult to find useful resources that teach about the toll Victor Lee Lewis powerfully describes above.

10. I Have the Privilege of Living Ignorant of the Dire State of Racism Today

Shaun King, a prominent voice of the Black Lives Matter movement, set me straight on November 10, 2015.

We are living during a "Civil Rights Movement." Will you spend it enjoying the privilege to ignore the movement- or will you join it?

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10 Examples That Prove White Privilege Exists in Every Aspect Imaginable - YES! Magazine

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Lessons people of color have taught me that changed my life-and could change yours too. This article was originally published by Everyday Feminism. It has been edited for YES! Magazine. If you checked out the Jose Antonio Vargas documentary about White people, aptly titled White People , you'll know that many White people struggle to discuss race (not that some of you needed a documentary to confirm this fact).

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John Tures writes about how he believes white privilege is just another form of racism and shouldn't be talked about because in the end, white people get discriminated against. With that being said, Tures just relies on quotes from others to further his argument.
(the link won't load when I try to plug it in here so here's the worded link: https://www.ledger-enquirer.com/opinion/article219554050.html )

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Neal McCluskey writes about why affirmative action should not be allowed at public universities in America. His argument lies on the notion that public colleges are government-funded, whereas private colleges are independent of the government.

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Many people were likely surprised when the long-awaited decision in the Harvard Asian-discrimination case came down and U.S District Judge Allison Burroughs ruled in favor of Harvard. It appeared the smart money, after the shroud was removed from the Harvard admissions process, would be on Harvard losing, a seeming perpetrator of discrimination against Asian-Americans.

Thankfully, the smart money was not so perceptive after all, because diversity may well have value, past discrimination may call for rectification, and allowing maximum freedom is the best way to deal with values-laden problems that have no clear solutions.

The first thing to remember is that Harvard is a private institution, not public.

Basically, private institutions should be free to have affirmative action, but it should be prohibited at public institutions.

A public institution - a government institution - must be held much more strictly to "objective" admissions than private.

Not only am I against government mandated affirmative action for public colleges, I am against those institutions choosing affirmative action. Of course, since public colleges are government institutions, what they might choose is de facto a government mandate from a state citizen perspective.
Related: OPINION: Harvard ruling is a positive step for diversity, but will the Supreme Court walk it back?
Unlike private schools, everyone is forced to fund governments and their institutions - indeed, government is the only entity that can legally jail or execute you - and that makes a public institution denying someone a benefit far more dangerous than when a private institution does. Unequal treatment by government is inescapable.

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"A public institution - a government institution - must be held much more strictly to "objective" admissions than private."

But why should a private school get to take race or ethnicity into consideration when admitting students?

First there is basic freedom - we should be very hesitant to allow government, with its monopoly on force, to tell private actors how they must run themselves. More to the immediate question at hand, as concerning as decisions based on race are, there is reason to believe, including substantial research largely at the collegiate level, that diversity has educational and other benefits for students.

In light of competing goods - treating everyone without regards to race and the benefits of diversity-we need to allow space for numerous approaches to balancing the two, both to see which mixes end up producing the best overall outcomes, and because all people are individuals who value not just these goods, but academic achievement, creativity, social networking, and many other factors that go into evaluating applicants - and assembling classes - differently.

There is also a strong argument that African Americans continue to suffer from centuries of grossly unjust treatment in the United States, and the right thing for institutions to do is to take that into account - it may have depressed their SAT scores, or kept them from an AP Biology course - when evaluating African-American applicants.

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Again, we do not want government doing this - government treating people differently based on their race was the central problem to begin with - but we otherwise want to leave as much room as possible for efforts to ameliorate past wrongs.
Related: OPINION: Federal judge's Harvard ruling was the right one - but here's why it will have little impact on who is offered admission
All that said, it is very easy to sympathize with Asian Americans, who do, as a broad group (and it is always problematic to discuss broad groups) work very hard academically and "play by the rules." And it may well be that they are being treated unfairly.

But we should want, as much as possible, the power of persuasion, not the power of government, to be what moves people and institutions away from what may be morally problematic, towards what may be morally better.

Bottom-up recognition of many questionable admissions policies may be manifesting itself in increasing attention to legacy admissions, athlete preferences, and, of course, seemingly just buying a student's way into a college.

What is the right or wrong thing to do is often very difficult to discern, with many different goods competing against each other. In light of this, we should want as much freedom to weigh things differently, and make different decisions, as possible. The Harvard ruling does that.
This story about government affirmative action was produced by Neal McCluskey is the director of the Cato Institute's Center for Education Freedom and the author of Feds in the Classroom: How Big Government Corrupts, Cripples, and Compromises American Education. The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our newsletter.

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Affirmative action should be prohibited at public colleges

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Many people were likely surprised when the long-awaited decision in the Harvard Asian-discrimination case came down and U.S District Judge Allison Burroughs ruled in favor of Harvard. It appeared the smart money, after the shroud was removed from the Harvard admissions process, would be on Harvard losing, a seeming perpetrator of discrimination against Asian-Americans.

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This article was written by a Japanese student that compares affirmative action policies in American universities to the gender inequalities at the University of Tokyo. The article stands in favor of affirmative action in college admissions.

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Although there are controversies surrounding affirmative action, it is an important means of achieving social equality. As an exchange student from Japan, where most universities do not consider applicants' social background as a factor in their admissions process, I support the merits of affirmative action. The University of Tokyo, my home institution, is one of the most prestigious schools in Japan , as Harvard is in the United States. The University of Tokyo has long suffered from its homogeneous student body, especially in terms of gender. Its undergraduate student body consists of over male students and less than 20 percent female students. These numbers are unacceptable, especially compared to Northeastern's 49:51 male-to-female student ratio, or Harvard's 51:49.
Yuki Takahashi is a third-year sociology major at The University of Tokyo, participating in an exchange program at NU for one year.

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Op-ed: Affirmative action grants opportunity to marginalized applicants

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On Oct. 1, Federal District Court Judge Allison Burroughs presided over the highly publicized case brought by a group of Asian-American applicants, or Students for Fair Admissions, against Harvard University. The group claimed Harvard's race-aware admission process discriminated against Asian-American applicants. The case garnered significant public attention, as it once again questioned the use of...