Black Students Underachieve to Avoid ‘Acting White’

A majority of gifted and well-performing black students are not reaching their fullest academic potential for fear of being labeled ‘acting white.” Researchers surveyed about 300 teachers and 928 lack students nationally in public schools before concluding that peer pressure and fear of being isolated as traitors to the black race is forcing many bright students to under perform at school.

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300 Million Americans Today. 420 Million By 2050.

By 2050 non-Hispanic white Americans will represent a bare majority of 50.1% of the population. The Hispanic population will have doubled to 24%. Asians will have doubled to 8% and African-Americans will be up to 14% of the population. Americans are expected to continue to gravitate west and south and the middle of the country will continue to empty out.

This article is the last of a series of five that appeared in the Christian Science Monitor over a month’s time. Links to each appear at the end of the article.

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Young Latinas at Risk

Latina girls, one of the fastest-growing groups of youths in the country, are in trouble. Research shows they are more likely to drop out of school and to use drugs and one in six of them attempt suicide. In this half-hour episode of Talk of the Nation, NPR invited researchers and a reporter to talk about the risks to high school age Latinas who are first or second generation in the United States. In addition to suicide, they also experience depression, social isolation, and have the highest rate of teen pregnancy among all girls. These young women attempt to straddle two cultures: traditional Hispanic culture and the woman’s role in it they get at home from their mothers, and the freedoms associated with American culture they get in school and elsewhere in our society. Click on the link above to listen to this interview.

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Black Kids Accused of ‘Acting White’ When They Get Good Grades
 
According to Roland Fryer Jr. and Paul Torelli in “An Empirical Analysis of Acting White,” published in May 2005, acting white describes a set of social interactions in which black adolescents ridicule other black adolescents for investing in behaviors characteristic of whites – getting good grades, speaking standard English, raising their hand in class, for example. This article includes descriptions of a number of programs that have been started to confront this problem.

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Being Young, Black and Male

This news article surveys conditions of and reasons for the criminalization of black males and describes a number of programs and approaches to the problem.

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Hmong Culture Clashes with US Laws

A traditional Hmong wedding in Colorado has produced a cultural and legal conflict. When the 26-year-old groom married a 13-year-old bride the Hmong community looked on in approval. The State of Colorado sees things differently. Andres Xiong, the groom, is facing two counts of sexual assault and abuse on a child in connection with the marriage.

Disparity by Design

This Justice Policy Institute report describes how drug-free zone laws impact racial disparity and fail to protect youth. Following a year of research and discussion among the members of the New Jersey Sentencing Commission’s members, the commission came to several startling conclusions:

• In areas where schools, parks, and public housing developments are numerous and closely spaced, overlapping zones turn entire communities into prohibited zones –erasing the very distraction between school and non-school areas that the law was intended to create.
• By blanketing densely populated black and Hispanic neighborhoods, the laws were creating unwarranted racial disparity in the use of incarceration for people convicted of drug offenses.
• Laws had failed entirely to accomplish their primary objective of driving drug activity away from schools and school children. The law had no measurable deterrent effect and was not being used to sanction individuals that sell drugs to children. 50 page pdf file.

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New Studies Warn That Black Men in the United States Are in a Dire Situation

In new studies experts at Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and other institutions show that the huge pool of poorly educated black men are becoming ever more disconnected from mainstream society, and to a far greater degree than comparable white or Hispanic men. The new data paint a more extensive and sobering picture of the challenges they face:

• The share of young black men without jobs has climbed relentlessly. In 2004, 72 % of black male high school dropouts in their 20’s were jobless.
  
• Incarceration rates reached historic highs in the past few years. In 2004, 21% of black men in their 20’s who did not attend college were in jail or prison, up from 16% in 1995.
  

In the inner cities, more than half of all black men do not finish high school.

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THE LINK

The Winter 2006 issue of CWLA’s online newsletter examining  the link between juvenile justice and child welfare is available online. This issue has two articles:

Legal Analysis in Systems Integration, and
African American Males in Foster Care and the Risk of Delinquency

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Pew Hispanic Center

The Pew Hispanic Center is a research organization. Its mission is to improve understanding of the U.S. Hispanic population and to chronicle Latinos’ growing impact on the entire nation. There are many research reports and survey briefs on this site. The brief below is one example.

Generation Differences – reports on the characteristics of first, second, and third generation Hispanics, including Generation One and a Half

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Teens Sent to Prison for Lynching

Five white South Carolina youths admitted their roles in an attack on a black teen and received prison sentences. The five accosted a black teen as he walked along a rural road last July. South Carolina legally defines lynching as a mob attack against an individual where the victim survives.

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School Readiness: Closing Racial and Ethnic Gaps

The Spring 2005 issue of The Future of Children, the Packard Foundation online journal, addresses racial and ethnic differences in school readiness across the country. Although these gaps in educational achievement have narrowed over the past thirty years, test score disparities among American students remain significant. These gaps already exist by the time children enter kindergarten. Research suggests that what happens to children early in life has a profound impact on their later achievement. Eight articles address the size of the gap, synthesize what is known about its causes, and identify policy solutions.

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Hispanic Teen Pregnancy and Birth Rates: Looking Behind the Numbers

This new Child Trends Research Brief reports that reductions in teen pregnancy and childbearing among Hispanic teens lag behind U.S. teens overall.  Hispanics represent the fastest-growing segment of the U.S. population, with a 40% growth rate from 1990 to 2000. Hispanic teens represent an important target group for pregnancy prevention programs. 8 page pdf file.

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Cultural Competency Resources

Here are two Internet resources for information on cultural competency:

The National Center for Cultural Competence – The resources on this Georgetown University web site include definitions of cultural and linguistic competence and a section on self-assessment tools and processes.

Cultural Competency: A Practical Guide for Mental health Service Providers – While this handbook is intended for mental health professionals, it contains information useful to the rest of us too. The Guide is a product of the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health at the University of Texas. Click here for a link to the foundation’s publications page. All publications here appear to be downloadable in pdf format.

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Forum Focus: Countering Structural Racism

The Forum for Youth Investment’s latest newsletter includes an article on the need to continue to deal with race and racism in the daily lives of youth of color, to counteract stereotypes and institutionalized policies and practices that lead to differential expectations and treatment, and for young people to have safe places to explore the impact of race and racism on their identity and choices. Click on the link above and scroll down the page. 4 page pdf file.

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Outreach to New Americans

This project of the National Crime Prevention Council provides training and technical assistance at little or no cost. The project promotes partnerships between refugee communities and law enforcement agencies to address the problem of crime and crime victimization in refugee communities.

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This year as of the end of September, Mexican authorities had repatriated more than 9,800 unaccompanied Mexican minors under the age of 17 who were caught crossing illegally. Children report traveling with a series of strangers, moving northward on buses or as stowaways on freight trains and vegetable trucks, staying in safe houses and fleabag hotels. 

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