All Articles Tagged "discriminiation"
Black Journalists Trade White Newsrooms for Black
(Columbia Journalism Review) — It started as a trickle. Sylvester Monroe resigned in 2006 as Sunday national editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and, two months later, joined the staff of Ebonymagazine. In 2008 the renowned byline of Jack E. White, the first black columnist at Time magazine, began to regularly appear on The Root, where Lynette Clemetson, formerly ofThe New York Times and Newsweek, was managing editor. By March of this year when Constance C. R. White, once an influential New York Times fashion writer, was named editor in chief of Essence, the trickle had swelled into a river of prominent African-American journalists streaming to black-oriented media. The names of veterans like Lynette Holloway and E. R. Shipp, formerly of The New York Times; Teresa Wiltz, Natalie Hopkinson, and Michael Cottman, all of The Washington Post; Joel Dreyfuss, formerly of Fortune and PC Magazine, and Amy DuBois Barnett ofHarper’s Bazaar and Teen People, are turning up in places like Ebony, Jet, and Essence; at BlackAmericaWeb.com, a division of Reach Media, Inc.; and at The Root, the online site spearheaded by Harvard’s Henry Louis Gates Jr. and published by The Washington Post Company. Some of these moves were prompted by layoffs and buyouts; others by disillusionment with mainstream journalism or a desire to delve more deeply into African-American issues. Whatever the reasons, with increasing frequency, African-American journalists are reversing the once common trajectory from the black press to the mainstream. New ventures like HuffPost Global Black, a vertical for Arianna Huffington’s widely read website that will be launched in partnership with Sheila Johnson, cofounder of Black Entertainment Television, are likely to quicken the pace.
Kentucky Schools Charged With Discriminating in Discipline
(Louisville Courier-Journal) – A complaint filed Friday on behalf of six students and their families accuses Jefferson County Public Schools of violating federal civil rights laws with “vague and ambiguous discipline procedures” that punish African-American and disabled students more harshly and more often than white students. The 26-page complaint, filed by several prominent legal organizations, including the Southern Poverty Law Center in Alabama and the Lexington-based Children’s Law Center, asks the U.S. Department of Education to require the district to change its disciplinary policies. The students and their families are not seeking money and instead want “systemic change” in the district, said Rebecca DiLoreto, litigation director of the Children’s Law Center. The changes include requiring the district to adopt training for teachers and administrators in “positive behavior interventions,” revising the school code of conduct and tracking and reviewing data on school disciplinary practices to eliminate discrimination against students. “There is an overall question of fairness and whether the treatment of these students is appropriate,” DiLoreto said Friday. “But there is also a question about Jefferson County’s overall use of discipline as a way to push these students out of school and into the criminal justice system.”
ACLU Sues FBI Over Racial Mapping
(AP) — The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal lawsuit in New Jersey over the FBI’s collection of racial and ethnic data in local communities. In the complaint filed today, the ACLU says it filed a Freedom of Information Act request last July seeking the release of records about the FBI’s “mapping” of local communities under the Domestic Intelligence Operations Guide.
