Almost 50% of black people aged between 16 and 24 are unemployed, compared with 20% of young white people
The left-leaning Institute for Public Policy Research says unemployment among black people rose from 35% in March 2008 to 48% in November 2009.
It rose from 12% to 20% among young white people during the same period.
The IPPR's report comes on the day the latest official unemployment figures are due to be published. Read more...
Related article
Van Dyck is one of four teachers who volunteer with Heart of Chaos, a program offering evening crafts, collage and calligraphy
"I can give them a couple of moments to realize they have potential, that they are not their crime," said Michael Denning, 30, who teaches collage and a type of meditative doodling, often using repetitive lines, called Zentangles. A former drug addict who's been clean for almost six years, Denning said he believes art has the potential to rescue people from self-made prisons of drugs and gangs. Read more...
Sponsored by Narconon International and the National Alliance for Faith and Justice, youths carried a banner promoting peace between their races. Media in southern Los Angeles County have often reported conflict between Latinos and Blacks, but today 35 youths carried a banner in the Long Beach Martin Luther King Jr. Day Parade on 16 January specifically to promote peace and to show that the majority of youth want peace and are willing to do something to make peace between the races come true. Read more...
At the opening ceremony of the meeting, Secretary of the Central Committee of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union of Vietnam Nguyen Dac Vinh said the tenth meeting between Vietnamese and Chinese youth is of greater significance in the context that the two countries are embracing the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations, which is to fall on Jan. 18. Read more...
Sometimes we forget.
Those of us in the national service field and nonprofit sector spend a lot of time preparing for big events. As an MLK Day grantee from the Corporation for National and
We offered grants and training and technical assistance and promotional materials. We busted our guts, shouting the message that youth have a desire to be engaged in their communities; that they have innovative ideas about creating positive change; that they can be the leaders of today not tomorrow; and that there's no reason that children and youth have to wait until they grow up before they contribute in a meaningful way. Read more...
By DENISE GRADY In a shift of position, the Food and Drug Administration is expressing concerns about possible health risks from bisphenol-A, or BPA, a widely used component of plastic bottles and food packaging that it declared safe in 2008. 
Why does the US owe Haiti Billions? Colin Powell, former US Secretary of State, stated his foreign policy view as the "Pottery Barn rule." That is - "if you break it, you own it."
The US has worked to break Haiti for over 200 years. We owe Haiti. Not charity. We owe Haiti as a matter of justice. Reparations. And not the $100 million promised by President Obama either - that is Powerball money. The US owes Haiti Billions - with a big B.
The US has worked for centuries to break Haiti. The US has used Haiti like a plantation. The US helped bleed the country economically since it freed itself, repeatedly invaded the country militarily, supported dictators who abused the people, used the country as a dumping ground for our own economic advantage, ruined their roads and agriculture, and toppled popularly elected officials. The US has even used Haiti like the old plantation owner and slipped over there repeatedly for sexual recreation. Read more...
One poll, commissioned by Tesco, revealed that while children had the vocabulary to be articulate, the top 20 words they used – including the Vicky Pollard lexicon of “yeah”, “no” and “but” – accounted for about a third of all the words they used. Read more...
"American primary and secondary schools fail to educate because that is not their function, Dmitry Orlov writes. "Their function is to institutionalize children at an early age." In due course inmates of the U.S. education enterprise "will go on to other institutions - jails, psychiatric hospitals, the military."
"… There is a reason why jails, hospitals and schools are often architecturally indistinguishable: they are but different parts of the same system, representing different phases of the institutionalization life cycle."
What of higher learning?
Those "who learn obedience while retaining some semblance of sanity [enter] U.S. colleges and universities [that] fail to produce graduates who have adequate general knowledge, good command of their native language [Illiteracy in the United States is abnormally high for a developed nation], and the ability to acquire specialized knowledge without any further institutional assistance." Read more...
My 2-year-old daughter surprised me recently with two words: “Daddy’s book.” She was holding my Kindle electronic reader.
Here is a child only beginning to talk, revealing that the seeds of the next generation gap have already been planted. She has identified the Kindle as a substitute for words printed on physical pages. I own the device and am still not completely sold on the idea.
My daughter’s worldview and life will be shaped in very deliberate ways by technologies like the Kindle and the new magical high-tech gadgets coming out this year — Google’s Nexus One phone and Apple’s impending tablet among them. She’ll know nothing other than a world with digital books, Skype video chats with faraway relatives, and toddler-friendly video games on the iPhone. She’ll see the world a lot differently from her parents. Read more...
More African-American children are living in poverty, many black kids still do not have access to quality health care, and a disproportionately high rate of black teenagers are having babies, according to a new report by the Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics. Read more…
To know the future of Black America in 15 to 20 years, one need only look at the dismal academic performance of 3rd- and 4th- grade Black students today. The 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress Report reveals that only 16% of African-American 4th- grade students in Illinois read at a proficient level or above. Unfortunately, Black students throughout the rest of the country do not fare much better. Read more…
Photo by: Daniel Johnson
