Police discriminating against Africans: report

By Kellie Lazzaro

Thirty young people were interviewed over the past year, as part of the study by the Springvale Monash Legal Service.

Community development worker Shane Reside has told ABC local radio that most reported feeling over policed and unfairly hassled.

"The kinds of things that they were describing was being stopped several times in a single day by the police to give them their name and address and to explain themselves," he said.

"Sometimes this was when they were hanging out at night or around a train station, but for a lot of these young people it was actually part of their daily lives, you know, like on their way to school, on their way to childcare to pick up their baby brother."

"These are the kinds of day-to-day activities they were doing when they found that the police would come and just stop them randomly, which is certainly not something that happens for the rest of the community."  Read more...

Obama and black caucus talk summer jobs for youths

by David Goldstein

President Obama told the Congressional Black Caucus today that he would try and help them get money for a summer youth jobs program, according to Rep. Emanuel Cleaver of Missouri, who attended the meeting.

   “We need a summer youth jobs program and we need it quickly,” said Cleaver, a Kansas City Democrat who chairs the CBC’s jobs task force. “He obviously couldn’t guarantee that it would happen, he only guaranteed that he would try to make it happen.”  Read more...

Selling Food Stamps for Kid’s Shoes

By Seth Wessler

Unable to find jobs, kicked off welfare, women in Connecticut are forced to sell food assistance to buy basic necessities.

When Congress overhauled welfare in 1996, it created the Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) program that placed time limits on aid and made cash assistance contingent on finding a job. Connecticut adopted the shortest time limit in the country—just 21 months—and nationwide the number of families on TANF dropped from 4.8 million before welfare overhaul to about 1.7 million families in 2008.
Most people who left the rolls were pushed into insecure and low-wage work. At the time in 1996, there was no national debate about what would happen to families if an economic crisis struck. Now, with a national recession that many analysts recognize as a depression in poor communities of color, even those low-wage jobs are few and far between...  Read more...

Fighting for Their Lives, incarcerated youth

By Leticia Miranda

Today, he is one of almost 1,775 prisoners who were sentenced as youth and locked up for life without parole, according to a report released by The Sentencing Project, a prison reform research and advocacy organization. A staggering 77 percent of those youth are Black or Latino.  Read more...

Teen Girls Drawn to Cigarette Ads in Fashion Mags

by Monique El-Faizy

Cigarette manufacturer RJ Reynolds took its campaign into the heart of chic-girl culture, and ran ads for the pink camel-bearing brand in magazines that are teen faves such as Vogue, Cosmopolitan and Glamour. Some of the ads resemble magazine fashion pages. A new study published in the April issue of Pediatrics shows the approach grabbed the attention of teens.   Read more...

“The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness”

A new book by legal scholar and civil rights advocate Michelle Alexander argues that although Jim Crow laws have been eliminated, the racial caste system it set up was not eradicated. It’s simply been redesigned, and now racial control functions through the criminal justice system.  Read more...

Michelle Alexander, author of the new book The New Jim 

Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. A

former director of the Racial Justice Project at the ACLU of Northern California, she now holds a joint appointment at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and the Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University.

What are the Top Schools for Entrepreneurship?

By Lawrence Watkins

CNN's financial website has listed the top five places to study if you want to be an entrepreneur. I have been an entrepreneur for a few years now, and I can tell you that it's not a place for those who are short-sighted or weak minded. You don't always know where your next month's pay is coming from, and you have to be able to manage people. But the other side of it is that you get more freedom than you have from working at a job, and you also have a chance to make a lot of money if you do things the right way. The verdict for me is that I love running my own business.   Read more...

Texas Board of Education Says Hip Hop Is Not a Cultural Movement

By Boyce Watkins, PhD

The Texas State Board of Education apparently doesn't believe that hip hop should be considered a social movement in America. They also decided to remove various areas of civil rights and global politics from their curriculum, to exchange them for conservative historic figures and beliefs.

After deciding that hip hop should not be taught as a social movement, they also agreed to remove institutional racism and it's presence in American society. To make matters more interesting, they chose to eliminate important references to Latino and Hispanic figures.  Read more...

Self-Esteem 101: Fostering Self-Love in Teens

By Hayat Mohamed

Self-esteem is not a concept that develops on its own. Although the media holds a significant responsibility for causing many of our young black girls to be dissatisfied with their bodies, hair, and skin color; as adults, it is our responsibility to counteract those messages. It's imperative that we teach our girls at a young age that there is no one standard of beauty and being beautiful comes from accepting who you are -- flaws and all. Parenting teenage girls can be difficult, but the following tips for building self-esteem in young ladies might help you navigate the stormy waters.   Read more...

PLURAL+ Organizers Call on World’s Youth to Participate in the Second Youth Video Festival On Migration and Diversity

Building on last year’s successful launch of PLURAL+, a youth video festival on migration, diversity and social inclusion, the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations (UNAOC) and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) again invite the worlds youth to submit dynamic and forward-thinking videos focusing on these issues.

PLURAL+ 2009 not only provided young people with an effective platform to express themselves on key migration and diversity issues, but also the opportunity to reinforce the belief of the UNAOC and IOM that youth are indeed powerful and creative agents of social change.

Last year’s PLURAL+ participation demonstrated how young people across the world are willing to creatively engage in complex social issues such as migration and cultural inclusiveness, said Marc Scheuer, Director of the Alliance of Civilizations. We were very pleased with the quality and relevance of the entries received, and we are thankful for the commitment of PLURAL+’s partners in supporting the distribution of these videos at festivals, conferences and TV broadcasts around the world.

This year again, young people between the ages of 9 and 25 are invited to submit short videos of one to five minutes in length. The videos should express participants thoughts, experiences, questions and suggestions on migration, diversity, integration and identity, highlighting their realities as well as ideas on developing a peaceful coexistence in diverse cultural and religious contexts.

The aim of PLURAL+ is to ensure youth engagement in these important issues both at local and global levels by mainstreaming their voices through a variety of media platforms and distribution networks (broadcast, video festivals, conferences, events, Internet, DVD) around the world.

We were pleased to see that the PLURAL+ 2009 entrants shared their thoughts, struggles and fears about their identity as youth as well as migrants. The true voice of PLURAL+ is found by listening to a population which is not only entering a new society as a migrant, but entering adulthood as well. said Luca DallOglio, IOM Permanent Observer to the United Nations.

A prestigious international jury will select three winners in three age categories (9-12, 13-17, 18-25). Each winner will be flown to New York and honored at an awards ceremony at the Paley Center for Media later in the year.

In addition, PLURAL+ partner organizations will award other exciting prizes and professional opportunities. These include co-productions and a chance for awardees to gain international exposure by presenting their work at film and video festivals, conferences and events around the world.

The winning videos from the 2009 edition of PLURAL + will be presented throughout the year at several events sponsored by partner organizations such as BaKaFORUM, Anna Lindh Foundation Forum, Chinh India Festival, Roots and Routes Festival, COPEAM Conference, the Royal Film Commission of Jordans Filmmakers Workshop, Havana Film Festivals Red UNIAL, and NEXOS Alianza. In addition, broadcasters such as Aljadeed TV (Lebanon), TV Futura (Brazil), RAI (Italy) and United Nations TV affiliated networks will air the winning videos.

Participants in the 2010 competition should submit their videos between 1 March - 30 June, 2010. Further information including guidelines, rules and regulations, and the entry form can be found at the PLURAL+ website at: www.unaoc.org/pluralplus

 

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Michael Jackson's Bodyguards on Finances and Family

Michael Jackson's former body guards speak out about his love for his children, constant lawsuits, and family issues.

Revisiting an Experiment on Race

Famous 1940s test used dolls and kids to gain insight into race perspectives. See the results of the test conducted in 2010

WHO: over 85M African kids get polio vaccination

The World Health Organization says more than 85 million children under 5 in west and central Africa will be vaccinated against polio.

The agency says the massive vaccination campaign in 19 countries by U.N. agencies and the Red Cross will start March 6. It will involve more than 400,000 volunteers and health workers. It is largely funded by Rotary International.  Read more…

Chinese youth accused of not being fighting fit

 

Nick Mulvenney 

China must urgently address the physical fitness of the nation's youth or run the risk of raising a generation incapable of fighting the Japanese in a future war, the head of the country's top sports university said Thursday.

The government must immediately invest some of its new wealth in ensuring that children take regular exercise, Beijing Sports University president Yang Hua told the sports group of the largely ceremonial advisory body to China's annual parliament.

"It is time for the Chinese nation to improve the physical fitness of our next generation," said Yang. "If we miss the next three to five years a whole generation will be next to useless.

"If there was another war against Japan, would the younger Chinese be able to fight the Japanese one-on-one?  Read more…

5 ways your TV is slowly killing you

By Linda Carroll

Too much boob tube also makes you weaker, research shows

You’ve accepted the idea that TV makes you dumber. You know there are lots of more edifying things you could be doing with your time than cheering on the contestants on "Survivor."

And unless you’re working out to an exercise video, you know those hours sprawled out in front of the screen are going to make you fatter — not to mention the impact of all that junk food you’ve been tempted to scarf down during the commercial breaks.

But you’ll be surprised to learn the host of other bad things TV can do to you.

1. TV makes you deader.

2. TV makes you drunker.

3. TV can make your kid pregnant.

4. TV weakens your bones.

5. TV makes you less engaging.  Read the results in detail...