can’t-miss UK/NAACP Education & Civil Rights Initiative VIRTUAL CONFERENCE | Cloaking Inequity

can’t-miss UK/NAACP Education & Civil Rights Initiative VIRTUAL CONFERENCE | Cloaking Inequity

CAN’T-MISS UK/NAACP EDUCATION & CIVIL RIGHTS INITIATIVE VIRTUAL CONFERENCE

Talk with National Leaders and Experts! Register now for this can’t-miss virtual conference hosted by the University of Kentucky’s Education & Civil Rights Initiative May 7-8, 2021 Register here by Thursday, May 6, for Education & Civil Rights for the New Decade!

Explore some of the most pressing issues of our time in this two-day, virtual conference. You’ll have the opportunity to take part in multiple tracks hosted by expert community partners.

The conference is provided through a partnership between the Education and Civil Rights Initiative at the University of Kentucky College of Education, the UK Rosenberg College of Law, the NAACP, and the Kentucky Community and Technical College System. The conference is free and open to all, through the generous support of WesBanco. View Agenda & Register You won’t want to miss featured speakers and panel events such as: Friday, May 7 Conference Keynote 10:45 – 11:15 a.m. EST Derrick Johnson, President and CEO of the NAACP, will open the conference. President Johnson formerly served as vice chairman of the NAACP National Board of Directors, as well as state president for the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP. A longstanding member and leader of the NAACP, Mr. Johnson has helped guide the Association through a period of re-envisioning and reinvigoration. Saturday, May 8, 10-11 a.m. EST Opening Keynote Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings will open the second day of the conference. As the former Kellner Family Distinguished Professor of Urban Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Dr. Ladson-Billings is known for her work in the fields of culturally relevant pedagogy and critical race theory. Saturday, May 8, 5:45-6:45 p.m. EST Closing Keynote Raymond Pierce, CEO of the Southern Education Foundation, will close the conference with a keynote. In his work with the Southern Education Foundation (SEF), Pierce leads the organization’s historic mission of advancing educational opportunities for African American and low-income students in the southern states. Since joining SEF in January 2018, Pierce has focused the organization on policy research, education legislation and leadership development. SEF has also launched a workforce development initiative and is expanding its efforts to strengthen parental engagement in support of improving student learning. Saturday, May 8, 11 a.m.-12:15 p.m. EST Plenary: A Conversation with National Education Leaders Dr. Walter Bumphus, President and CEO of the American Association of Community Colleges Dr. Norma Cantú, Commissioner of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and Professor of Law and Education at the University of Texas-Austin Dr. Belle Wheelan, President of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges. Thank you to our KCTCS partners for making this plenary possible.Register by Thursday, May 6 to reserve your spot! Conference tracks will include:  ● Law & Justice* ● K-12 Education* ● Community Organization ● Post-Secondary ● Financial Literacy *Continuing education credit is available upon request. Law and Justice continuing education credit is pending CLE approval.Housed in the Department of Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation, the Education and Civil Rights Initiative is a research collaboration with the NAACP, the nation’s largest and most preeminent civil rights organization. The focus of this collaboration is to ensure that every child in America experiences equitable access to education. Learn more about the initiative on our website.

can’t-miss UK/NAACP Education & Civil Rights Initiative VIRTUAL CONFERENCE | Cloaking Inequity

Betsy DeVos' Legacy: Transforming How The Education Department Treats Civil Rights | HuffPost

Betsy DeVos' Legacy: Transforming How The Education Department Treats Civil Rights | HuffPost

Betsy DeVos’ Legacy: Transforming How The Education Department Treats Civil Rights

The Education Department has been slow to investigate complaints of discrimination related to COVID-19, HuffPost has learned. Employees say it’s part of a pattern of disorganization that has emerged under Trump.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has spent months failing to make meaningful progress on urgent complaints of education discrimination relating to COVID-19, even as the pandemic continues to turn schools upside down and put vulnerable students at an even further disadvantage, according to multiple sources.  

In September, employees in at least some of the department’s regional offices were informed that civil rights complaints specific to COVID-19 ― such as for children who have not been receiving accommodations for their disability during remote learning ― would require scrutiny from the highest levels of management, a development that would substantially slow the pace by which any of these complaints could get resolved. 

A parent and an advocate have also been given the message that coronavirus-related complaints are unlikely to be addressed in the near future. After disability rights advocate Marcie Lipsitt filed several complaints on behalf of families whose children with disabilities were not receiving appropriate services from their school during shutdowns, she received a call from a department attorney informing her that complaints referencing COVID-19 were receiving greater scrutiny than non-coronavirus complaints and rewriting them without references to the pandemic could help them get processed faster. 

HuffPost has also reviewed an email from regional management to a group of employees telling them that COVID-19 complaints are requiring additional review from headquarters. Still, the Education Department has denied that such levels of scrutiny are taking place. 

“This information is categorically false and represents the viewpoint of a low-level employee CONTINUE READING:

Watch LIVE: Breonna Taylor’s America | Cloaking Inequity

Watch LIVE: Breonna Taylor’s America | Cloaking Inequity

WATCH LIVE: BREONNA TAYLOR’S AMERICA

The University of Kentucky College of Education is hosting an online discussion, “Navigating Your Teens in Breonna Taylor’s America,” beginning 11 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 12.

Focused on empowering students and educators, the discussion will be streamed live on the College of Education YouTube channel. Participants are encouraged to submit questions via email at CollegeofEdQA@gmail.com.

The discussion is designed to offer guidance to youth as they search for justice while balancing school, work, friendships, family and their personal well-being. Panelists will answer questions, such as:

• What is the “arc of justice” and why does it take so long to get there? Will we ever?
• How do I focus on school while trying to process racial traumas?
• Why does it feel like some people don’t see my pain and stress?
• How do I find my voice and where does it fit in?
• How can teachers and school leaders embrace students during painful events, such as the Breonna Taylor decision?

The discussion will be moderated by Gregory Vincent, executive director of the college’s Education and Civil Rights Initiative in collaboration with the NAACP. The initiative is based in the Department of Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation, where Vincent is a professor. Panelists for this program will include:

• Tiffany D. Loftin, NAACP Youth and College Division national director; 
• Candice Hargons, assistant professor, Department Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology; 
• Cheryl Matias, professor, Department of Curriculum and Instruction;
• Kenneth Tyler, professor and chair, Department of Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology; and
• Carol Taylor Shim, director, UK’s Bias Incident Support Services.

The University of Kentucky is increasingly the first choice for students, faculty and staff to pursue their passions and their professional goals. In the last two years, Forbes has named UK among the best employers for diversity, and INSIGHT into Diversity recognized us as a Diversity Champion three years running. UK is ranked among the top 30 campuses in the nation for LGBTQ* inclusion and safety. UK has been judged a “Great College to Work for” three years in a row, and UK is among only 22 universities in the country on Forbes’ list of “America’s Best Employers.” We are ranked among the top 10 percent of public institutions for research expenditures — a tangible symbol of our breadth and depth as a university focused on discovery that changes lives and communities. And our patients know and appreciate the fact that UK HealthCare has been named the state’s top hospital for four straight years. Accolades and honors are great. But they are more important for what they represent: the idea that creating a community of belonging and commitment to excellence is how we honor our mission to be not simply the University of Kentucky, but the University for Kentucky.

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Watch LIVE: Breonna Taylor’s America | Cloaking Inequity

Fix America With Libraries, Playgrounds, and Parks - The Atlantic

Fix America With Libraries, Playgrounds, and Parks - The Atlantic

Fix America With Libraries (And Playgrounds and Parks and Rec Centers)

Investing in public infrastructure should be at the center of a 21st-century civil-rights agenda.

s the covid-19 pandemic continues into the fall, the Trump administration has ruled out any further action on a federal relief package. Meanwhile, state and local governments, lacking federal support, are considering deep cuts to budgets and public services. These measures reflect a deep problem in American policy and culture: the systematic undermining of public infrastructure.

When I refer to public infrastructure, I mean something much more expansive than roads and bridges; I mean the full range of goods, services, and investments needed for communities to thrive: physical utilities such as water, parks, and transit; basics such as housing, child care, and health care; and economic safety-net supports such as food stamps and unemployment insurance. But under America’s reigning ideology, public infrastructure like this is seen as costly, inefficient, outdated, and low-quality, while private alternatives are valorized as more dynamic, efficient, and modern. This ideology is also highly racialized. Universal services open to a multiracial public are vilified, coded in dog-whistle politics as an undeserved giveaway to communities of color at the expense of white constituents. The result has been a systematic defunding of public infrastructure since the 1970s.

Read: Privatization is changing America’s relationship with its physical stuff

Now under the extreme pressures of the pandemic and the economic collapse, the true costs of this underinvestment have become appallingly clear. As the country looks at how to respond to both the recent demands for racial justice and the needs of survival and rebuilding from the COVID-19 crisis, any recovery agenda will have to overcome these ideological and institutional attacks on the idea of public infrastructure, and commit to investing more dollars into our public infrastructure, dismantling racialized barriers to access, and embracing an economic narrative that defends these public goods.

On an economic score alone, massive investments in public infrastructure would pay off. Every dollar invested in transit infrastructure generates at least $3.70 in returns through new jobs, reduced congestion, and increased productivity, without accounting for the environmental and health benefits. For each dollar invested in early-childhood education, the result is $8.60 worth of economic benefit largely through reductions in crime and poverty. A universal health-care system would save Americans more than $2 trillion in health-care costs (even accounting for the increased public expenditure that would be needed) while securing access to life-saving care for more than 30 million Americans. The fact that federal and state governments fail to make these investments is not a matter of limited resources, but rather of skewed priorities. The 2017 Trump tax cuts of $1.9 trillion sent most of its gains to corporations and the wealthiest Americans; the United States has spent more than $820 billion on the Iraq War since 2003, and hundreds of billions every year to fund the CONTINUE READING: Fix America With Libraries, Playgrounds, and Parks - The Atlantic

ANDRE PERRY: Teaching about Breonna Taylor is a 'must' for teachers

Teaching about Breonna Taylor is a 'must' for teachers

Teachers need to talk about Breonna Taylor

Teaching a Shakespearean tragedy simply won’t do when you’re confronted with real ones every day

No one has been held accountable for the killing of Breonna Taylor, another innocent victim of police, who shot her at least five times in the hallway of her home during the disastrous execution of a search warrant.

A grand jury declined to indict the two police officers who killed Taylor, 26, in her Louisville apartment, finding they had acted in self-defense after one was shot by Taylor’s boyfriend, who stated he did not know the men breaking into the apartment after midnight were police officers. A third officer, Brett Hankison, was fired in June for shooting into the apartments in Taylor’s building, but only charged last week with a lesser offense of first degree wanton endangerment. The residents of those apartments were white, according to an attorney for the Taylor family.

Educators need to encourage students to say their own names when society doesn’t.

If not for Black Lives Matter, Taylor’s case probably would not have received national attention. BLM activists have rallied behind the social media hashtag #sayhername to bring attention to the Black women victims of “racist police violence,” whose stories are often untold and typically don’t make national headlines.

The grand jury decision in Louisville is just one more brutal reminder that Black women are not protected by law or the police in this racist, patriarchal society. This is why I was not surprised by the outcome, only disheartened and dejected. The pall of doubt and cynicism weighs heavy on many, and I often worry that it will extinguish even the hope for a CONTINUE READING: Teaching about Breonna Taylor is a 'must' for teachers

THIS WEEK WITH NEWBLACKMAN (IN EXILE)

 NewBlackMan (in Exile)

THIS WEEK WITH NEWBLACKMAN (IN EXILE)

YESTERDAY

MISS JUNETEENTH: A Conversation with Neil Creque Williams, Channing Godfrey Peoples and Treva Lindsey

by Mark Anthony Neal / 10h

'DukeCreate & DEMAN Live are teamed up with Duke Black Alumni, Duke Cinematic Arts, Screen/Society, Duke Alumni, and Duke Department of African & African American Studies for a special virtual screening and filmmaker talkback featuring the film’s producer, Duke alum Neil Creque Williams ’06, and writer/director Channing Godfrey Peoples . They were joined by Duke alum and Ohio State University Pro

SEP 17

Tiwa Savage: Tiny Desk (Home) Concert

by Mark Anthony Neal / 1d

'For her Tiny Desk (Home) Concert, Tiwa Savage returned, from London, to her birthplace of Lagos, Nigeria. She and The Alternative Sound band set up at the beautiful Jazzhole, a historic vinyl shop well-regarded among record collectors for the rarities within.'

Classical Music World Struggles to Become More Inclusive in the 21st Century

by Mark Anthony Neal / 1d

' The classical music world got even less diverse after Garrett McQueen , t he only Black classical announcer at Minnesota Public Radio, was let go for making changes to programming such as playing the song, " The Seven Last Words of the Unarmed ," by Black composer Joel Thompson in the days after George Floyd’s killing. McQueen’s firing has reignited conversations about representation in classic

Queen Quet: To Be Black and Have Land is a Revolutionary Act

by Mark Anthony Neal / 1d

'Queen Quet -- Marquetta L. Goodwine -- is a published author, computer scientist, lecturer, mathematician, historian, columnist, preservationist, environmental justice advocate, environmentalist, film consultant, and “The Art-ivist.” She is the founder of the premiere advocacy organization for the continuation of Gullah/Geechee culture, the Gullah/Geechee Sea Island Coalition.' -- LIFT Economy L

SEP 16

The Effects of Underrepresentation of People of Color in COVID-19 Vaccine Trials

by Mark Anthony Neal / 2d

'As the coronavirus death toll in the U.S. hovers around 200,000, Black, Latino, and Native Americans populations have made up a disproportionate amount of that total, with Black Americans, in particular, being more than twice as likely as white Americans to die from COVID-19. But many of the companies working to develop a vaccine have so far fallen short when it comes to recruiting people of col

Leon Ford: What It's Like to Survive Being Shot by the Police

by Mark Anthony Neal / 2d

' In 2012, Leon Ford was shot five times by Pittsburgh police officers during a routine traffic stop. “Those officers took something from me,” Ford says. “It’s not just the ability to walk—it’s something deeper.” In a new short documentary, Ford reflects on the trauma he experienced.' -- The Atlantic

Eyes Still on the Prize: Defending the Vote in Election 2020 with LaTosha Brown, Judy Richardson & Sonia R. Jarvis

by Mark Anthony Neal / 2d

'Panel on the 2020 Election, sponsored by The Center for Public Integrity with LaTosha Brown , co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund; Judy Richardson , SNCC staffer and series associate producer & education director for the Eyes on the Prize series; and Sonia R. Jarvis , professor, Baruch College, City University of New York; Moderated by Susan Smith Richardson , CEO of The Center for Public Int

SEP 15

The Sophistiratchet Scholar — Kyesha Jennings Blends Hip-Hop And Academia

by Mark Anthony Neal / 3d

'The linguistic rules of African American Vernacular English (AAVE) are widespread and catalogued — yet most classrooms still frown upon writing and speaking it. Hip-hop scholar Kyesha Jennings grew up in Queens, New York, and remembers teachers correcting her use of the possessive they and double negatives. Now, she’s on a mission to disrupt the common belief that all English follows one set of

A Look At K-Pop's Black American Influence And Activism During Black Lives Matter

by Mark Anthony Neal / 3d

It's no secret that K-pop groups such as BTS are heavily influenced by Black American artists. But now these groups are facing a call to action that comes along with embracing American culture — and that's activism. Here & Now 's Tonya Mosley speaks with Crystal Anderson , affiliate Korean studies faculty member at George Mason University and author of the new book Soul in Seoul: African American

SEP 14

Cite Black Women: Race, Technology and Abolition -- A Conversation with Ruha Benjamin

by Mark Anthony Neal / 4d

'Race is coded into every aspect of our technological lives, from automatic soap dispensers to Zoom calls. In this episode, host Christen Smith sits down with Prof. Ruha Benjamin of Princeton University to her work on racial coding, how racism and technology work hand in hand, and what we can do to create abolitionist futures despite this racism.' -- Cite Black Women Cite Black Women · S2E9: Race

Jazz Elder Sonny Rollins on the Musical and Political History of Harlem After Its Renaissance

by Mark Anthony Neal / 4d

'Saxophone Colossus Sonny Rollins takes us back to his home neighborhood of Harlem, where he was born during its Renaissance; marched for W.E.B. Du Bois and the Scottsboro Boys ; and schooled by artists like Billie Holiday , Fats Waller , and Coleman Hawkins .' -- The Tight Rope

Reggie Jackson, Dave Winfield, Andre Dawson and Derek Jeter Talk Race in Major League Baseball

by Mark Anthony Neal / 4d

'Hall of Famers Reggie Jackson , Dave Winfield , Andre Dawson and Derek Jeter sit down with Harold Reynolds to discuss the black gap in baseball and where the sport goes from here.' -- The Players' Tribune

Why Many Rural Americans Still Don’t Have Reliable Internet

by Mark Anthony Neal / 4d

'As many schools around the country start the year virtually, residents in rural communities like those in West Virginia are asking why they don’t have reliable Internet service. The recent bankruptcy of Frontier Communications provides insight into how U.S. broadband policies have fallen short for many Americans.' -- Wall Street Journal

Gangster in the White House Attacks Nikole Hannah-Jones and Her Controversial 1619 Project

by Mark Anthony Neal / 4d

' Nikole Hannah-Jones , winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, shares her upbringing in Iowa, the influence of Ida B. Wells, and the roots and reaction to her controversial 1619 Project.' -- The Tight Rope

'Two Dollars And A Dream': Interview with Stanley Nelson & A'Lelia Bundles

by Mark Anthony Neal / 4d

' A discussion with director Stanley Nelson and author A'Lelia Bundles about the real story and legacy of Madam C.J. Walker , the first female self-made millionaire in America. Moderated by Tina Martin .' -- WORLD Channel

The Little Rock Nine: Civil Rights History Celebrated Through Dance

by Mark Anthony Neal / 4d

' Elizabeth Eckford was one of nine Black students to further the civil rights movement by enrolling at the historically segregated Central High in Little Rock, Arkansas. The historic images of her courageously walking through an enraged mob of White students, teachers and parents, have been burned into the collective consciousness of activists for equality around the world. The First Day , which

PSA — RESIST COVID/TAKE 6! - A Collaboration with Carrie Mae Weems & The Peace Poets

by Mark Anthony Neal / 4d

'Bro/Sis Artist in Residence Carrie Mae Weems partners with Bro/Sis and our alumni The Peace Poets to create a public health campaign - a PSA and billboards - focused on COVID.' -- The Brotherhood Sister Sol

SEP 12

Bettye LaVette Might Be Just What You Need Today

by Mark Anthony Neal / 6d

' Bettye LaVette just released Blackbirds , an album of reinterpretations of songs popularized by some of her favorite jazz singers.' -- World Cafe Words and Music from WXPN

Keeping Up With Amanda Jones, Score Composer On The Rise

by Mark Anthony Neal / 6d

' Amanda Jones is the first African American woman ever nominated for an Emmy for an original television score. She got her start because producer/writer Lena Waithe took a chance on her.' -- Morning Edition

 NewBlackMan (in Exile)