Monona, Wis., school cracks down on racist youth gang

By Gena Kittner

Officials in a suburban Madison school district are cracking down on students displaying symbols of a youth gang espousing racist ideas.

The tension, mostly between small groups of black and white students at Monona Grove High School, has led to the suspension of two white and two black students and has caused parents of minority students to worry about their children's safety.

"I never thought I'd see a situation like this," said Charlie Ellis, equity and diversity coordinator for the Monona Grove School District. "This is absolutely incredible to me." 

Atlanta Ads on Black Abortions May Go National

By Diane Loupe

A billboard campaign in Atlanta sends an incendiary message connection abortion to genocide. If the outreach tactic to black communities is considered a success in Georgia, pro-choice groups believe it will be replicated across the country.

Dr. Vanessa Cullins, vice-president for medical affairs at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, says the people behind the campaign are out to destroy Planned Parenthoods within the African American community. If they succeed in Georgia, says Cullins, they'll use the same tactic nationwide.

Ryan Bomberger of the Radiance Foundation, which designed and coordinates the billboards, says pro-life activists in 10 other states and the District of Columbia want to sponsor the billboards.  Read more...

The vast majority of black children are raised in stable, loving homes

Tracey Reynolds

It's not lone parenting but institutional racism that is failing African Caribbean boys

Tony Sewell claims that "more than racism, I firmly believe that the main problem holding black boys back academically is their overfeminised upbringing" (The boys are too feminised, 16 March). But this falls into the easy route of blaming lone mothers and the absence of fathers for wider problems of institutional racism and structural inequality that black boys (and black girls) encounter in the educational and criminal justice systems.  Read more...

Baby Fat May Not Be So Cute After All

By RONI CARYN RABIN

New research suggests that interventions aimed at school-aged children may be, if not too little, too late.

More and more evidence points to pivotal events very early in life — during the toddler years, infancy and even before birth, in the womb — that can set young children on an obesity trajectory that is hard to alter by the time they’re in kindergarten. The evidence is not ironclad, but it suggests that prevention efforts should start very early.  Read more…

Pig Virus DNA Found in Rotavirus Vaccine

By Daniel J. DeNoon

GlaxoSmithKline's Rotarix rotavirus vaccine contains DNA from an apparently harmless pig virus, the company and the FDA today announced.

The FDA estimates that 1 million U.S. kids have received the Rotarix vaccine.

The contamination was discovered by researchers developing a new technique for detecting viral material. GlaxoSmithKline confirmed that the pig virus, porcine circovirus type 1 or PCV-1, has been in the vaccine since it was developed.  Read more…

NPR Examines CDC Report On Genital Herpes, Black Community

NPR's "All Things Considered" on Friday examined a recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analysis showing that roughly 16% of U.S. residents ages 14 through 49 are infected with genital herpes, making it one of the nation's most common sexually transmitted infections. The analysis also showed that 48% of black women between 14 and 49 are infected with the virus, and that blacks have a 39% infection rate, compared with 12% among whites. In addition, 21% of U.S. women are infected with genital herpes, compared with 11% of men.  Read more...

Gender-Bender Chemicals are Turning Boys Into Girls

by: David Gutierrez

The government of Denmark has released a 326-page report affirming that endocrine disrupting chemicals are probably continuing to the birth of fewer males and the "feminization" of existing ones.

The report centers on chemicals like PVC, flame retardants, phthalates, dioxins, PCBs and bisphenol-A, all of which mimic the action of estrogen in the body. The researchers concluded that due to the prevalence of these chemicals, children could easily be exposed to high enough levels to place them at "critical risk" of harm.

The chemicals have been blamed for falling sperm counts among men worldwide, and their full effects remain unknown. A study by researchers at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, Netherlands, found that male children who had been exposed to PCBs and dioxins while in the womb were more likely to dress up in female clothes and play with dolls than boys who had not been. Other research has documented a connection between prenatal phthalate exposure and "feminization" of male genitals, including smaller penises.

Evidence is increasingly emerging that estrogen mimics might also be responsible for a puzzling phenomenon: fewer boys are being born than ever before. Typically, 106 male children are born for every 100 females in most populations. In recent years, however, this distribution has been shifting in favor of females, with endocrine disruptors a likely culprit.  Read more...

Fast food, frighteningly slow decay: Mother keeps McDonald's Happy Meal for a whole year... and it STILL hasn't gone off

Proof, says the American nutritionist who took these photographs, that it contains so many preservatives that it is bad for the children it is aimed at.

Joann Bruso said: 'Food is supposed to decompose, go bad and smell foul eventually. The fact that it has not decomposed shows you how unhealthy it is for children.' Read more...

U.S. kids even fatter than believed, study shows

Extreme obesity among American children is much worse than previously believed, putting them at greater risk of serious health problems as they age, U.S. researchers said on Thursday.

A study of more than 700,000 children and teens in southern California found that more than 6 percent, or 45,000, were extremely obese and more boys than girls were far too heavy, the researchers reported in the Journal of Pediatrics.  Read more...

Rights groups: Social networking sites being used to spread racism, xenophobia

Three European human rights organizations are warning that social networking sites are being used to spread racist and xenophobic views — especially among young people.

In a statement the groups express alarm over an "ever-increasing" use of the Internet by racist groups for recruitment, radicalization, command and control, intimidation and harassment.

It says governments should establish or expand awareness-raising educational programs.  Read more...

Sunday marks the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

18- to 24-year-olds most at risk for ID theft, survey finds

By Allison Klein

Identity-theft cases are rising sharply across the country, as young people -- sometimes cavalier with their personal information -- are hit the hardest, according to a survey released last month.

Identity fraud can include stealing a credit card number or opening a bank account in someone else's name. Thieves generally cross state lines in the commission of their crimes and are often linked to rings overseas in places such as Russia and Spain. Read more...

Federal Panel Finds NY Dept. of Education Discriminated Against Arabic School Principal

The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has ruled the New York City Department of Education discriminated against the founding principal of an Arabic-language school in Brooklyn by forcing her to resign in 2007. In a non-binding ruling, the commission said the city had discriminated against the principal, Debbie Almontaser, “on account of her race, religion and national origin.” We speak with Almontaser and her attorney, Alan Levine.  Read more...


Related articles

• Department of Ed Discriminated Against Debbie Almontaser 
  

• Federal Panel Finds Bias in Ouster of Principal

Black fathers urged to be more involved with children

Black fathers need to become more involved with their children to help tackle social problems among young people, a government minister will say.

Mr Lammy will touch on figures that suggest 59% of black Caribbean and 44% of black African children grow up in single-parent families.

"The mark of a man is not how many children he spawns but how he matches up as a father," he will say.

Mr Lammy will also call for fathers from all backgrounds to remain in touch with their children whatever the relationship with their mothers.

He will say: "Between a quarter and a third of children with separated parents have little or no contact with their fathers.

"It is not just the structure of families that matters. It is whether fathers continue to contribute to their children's lives." Read more...

Simple, low-cost steps enhance adolescents' health

Toni Baker

A positive attitude and family environment increases the effectiveness of the interventions, Dr. Barnes reported in one of three studies presented at the American Psychosomatic Society Annual Meeting in Portland, Ore. The study comparing breathing awareness meditation to health education and life-skills training found that all methods improved blood pressure.

Dr. Barnes, who has studied the impact of mediation on cardiovascular health for more than a decade at MCG, has documented the improved stress reactivity in black adolescents with high normal blood pressures as well as lower blood pressures in black, inner-city adolescents who meditate twice daily.  Read more...

The Nation: The New Jim Crow

by Michelle Alexander

Most people don't like it when I say this. It makes them angry. In the "era of colorblindness" there's a nearly fanatical desire to cling to the myth that we as a nation have "moved beyond" race. Here are a few facts that run counter to that triumphant racial narrative:

• There are more African-Americans under correctional control toda—-- in prison or jail, on probation or parol—-- than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.

• As of 2004, more African-American men were disenfranchised (due to felon disenfranchisement laws) than in 1870, the year the Fifteenth Amendment was ratified, prohibiting laws that explicitly deny the right to vote on the basis of race.

• A black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery. The recent disintegration of the African-American family is due in large part to the mass imprisonment of black fathers.

• If you take into account prisoners, a large majority of African-American men in some urban areas have been labeled felons for life. (In the Chicago area, the figure is nearly 80 percent.) These men are part of a growing underca—e -- not class, ca—e -- permanently relegated, by law, to a second-class status. They can be denied the right to vote, automatically excluded from juries, and legally discriminated against in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits, much as their grandparents and great-grandparents were during the Jim Crow era.  Read more...