Cnn.com
February 21, 2010 1:16 p.m. EST
New leader vows she'll bring 'new generation' to NAACP
NEW YORK (CNN) -- The new chairwoman for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, one of the oldest civil rights groups in the nation, said Sunday she'll work to bring a new generation into the organization.
Roslyn Brock, a health care executive and former NAACP vice chair, was selected to fill the seat left by Julian Bond, a civil rights leader who has held the post since 1998. Brock, 44, is the youngest person to ever serve in the position.
"I want to get the word out that the NAACP is alive and well, and that we are a multi-cultural, multi-racial organization," Brock said on CNN's "Sunday Morning."
"It is our goal to extend a broader net, to encourage all Americans who believe in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness to come and join us."
Full Story: http://www.cnn.com/2010/POLITICS/02/21/us.naacp.leadership/index.html
Hartford Courant
JESSE WASHINGTON AP National Writer
4:35 p.m. EST, February 20, 2010
NAACP elects 44-year-old health care executive Roslyn Brock as its youngest board chairman
NEW YORK (AP) — The NAACP elected a health care executive as its youngest board chairman Saturday, continuing a youth movement for the nation's oldest civil rights organization.Roslyn M. Brock, 44, was chosen to succeed Julian Bond. She had been vice chairman since 2001 and a member of the NAACP for 25 years.Brock works for Bon Secours Health Systems in Maryland as vice president for advocacy and government relations, and spent 10 years working on health issues for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. She joins Benjamin Todd Jealous, the 37-year-old CEO of the NAACP, as leader of the 500,000-member organization.Brock said she plans to focus on pushing for policy changes to eliminate inequality, strengthening the relationship between the national and local NAACP branches and holding people accountable."It's not always what someone is doing to us, but what we are doing for ourselves," Brock said in an interview.
Full Story: http://www.courant.com/business/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-us-naacp-election,0,3388863.story
Showing posts with label Julian Bond. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Julian Bond. Show all posts
Sunday, February 21, 2010
Thursday, December 17, 2009
Reactions: Is It Time for Class-Based Affirmative Action?
The Chronicle of Higher Education Review
December 16, 2009
A new study from Public Agenda has found that the main reason students drop out of college is that they have to work. That raises the question: Has the time come for an affirmative-action policy based on socioeconomic status?
And that raises a further question: Are the selective institutions that could provide enough financial aid to needy students, so they could work less, doing enough to recruit them? In other words, should the discussion of retention include a discussion of class and admissions? The Chronicle asked a group of scholars and experts what they thought.
Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation:
Three trends are likely to push the idea of affirmative action for low-income students to the forefront in the next couple of years.
First, the enormous underrepresentation of low-socioeconomic students at selective institutions, always an embarrassment to higher education, is getting worse. A 2004 Century Foundation study found that at the most selective 146 institutions, 74 percent of students come from the richest socioeconomic quarter of the population, and just 3 percent from the bottom quarter, a roughly 25:1 ratio. Research by The Chronicle and others suggests that in recent years, the stratification has grown even greater, putting pressure on universities to take action.
Second, increasing attacks on race-based affirmative action will very likely push universities to put in place class-based programs as an indirect and legally sound way of promoting racial diversity. A new challenge to racial preferences at the University of Texas at Austin, currently before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, could prevail in the Supreme Court, where the new swing justice, Anthony Kennedy, dissented in the 2003 University of Michigan case supporting racial preferences. Meanwhile, Ward Connerly has plans to bring anti-affirmative-action initiatives to Arizona and Missouri in 2010.
Third, we have a liberal African-American president who is uniquely positioned to ease the transition from race-based to class-based affirmative action, having said that his own daughters don't deserve preferences in college admissions, and that low-income students of all races do. But if economically disadvantaged students are admitted to selective colleges through affirmative action, will they be able to graduate? With the right support programs, yes. As the new report from Public Agenda finds, students drop out not because they're unprepared, but rather because they are stretched financially and have to work to make ends meet. A forthcoming Century Foundation report by Edward Fiske finds that a new program, the Carolina Covenant, has increased graduation rates by ensuring that financial aid and support programs are in place for low-income students. Likewise, research by William Bowen and colleagues finds that students are more likely to graduate at selective universities than less-selective ones—even though the standards are more demanding—perhaps because selective institutions have greater resources to support students.
All of which is to suggest that class-based affirmative action won't lead unprepared low-income students to drop out. To the contrary, it should increase graduation rates—a central goal of the Obama administration.
Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP and a professor of history at the University of Virginia:
I think the time has long passed for adding socioeconomic status to the categories of affirmative action, but it must not and cannot be viewed as a replacement for race. Poverty is not a proxy for race, and to pretend that it is would eradicate the initial rationale for affirmative action—to correct for society's demonstrable biases against people of color regardless of their socioeconomic status.
The murder some years ago of Bill Cosby's son by a white racist who later bragged about the shooting to his friends shows how feeble the Cosbys's great wealth was in protecting their son against this ugly virus. The recent news that black graduates of prestigious colleges and universities feel they must "whiten" their résumés to hide their blackness demonstrates how little effect affirmative action in its original iteration has today, and how our current substitution of "diversity" for actual race-based affirmative action has rendered the latter almost useless. How many of our colleges count students from Africa and elsewhere toward their "affirmative action" goals?
So bring on socioeconomic status. And while you're at it, bring back race-based policies—you cannot get beyond race without going to race.
Full Story: http://chronicle.com/article/Reactions-Is-It-Time-for/62615/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
December 16, 2009
A new study from Public Agenda has found that the main reason students drop out of college is that they have to work. That raises the question: Has the time come for an affirmative-action policy based on socioeconomic status?
And that raises a further question: Are the selective institutions that could provide enough financial aid to needy students, so they could work less, doing enough to recruit them? In other words, should the discussion of retention include a discussion of class and admissions? The Chronicle asked a group of scholars and experts what they thought.
Richard D. Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation:
Three trends are likely to push the idea of affirmative action for low-income students to the forefront in the next couple of years.
First, the enormous underrepresentation of low-socioeconomic students at selective institutions, always an embarrassment to higher education, is getting worse. A 2004 Century Foundation study found that at the most selective 146 institutions, 74 percent of students come from the richest socioeconomic quarter of the population, and just 3 percent from the bottom quarter, a roughly 25:1 ratio. Research by The Chronicle and others suggests that in recent years, the stratification has grown even greater, putting pressure on universities to take action.
Second, increasing attacks on race-based affirmative action will very likely push universities to put in place class-based programs as an indirect and legally sound way of promoting racial diversity. A new challenge to racial preferences at the University of Texas at Austin, currently before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, could prevail in the Supreme Court, where the new swing justice, Anthony Kennedy, dissented in the 2003 University of Michigan case supporting racial preferences. Meanwhile, Ward Connerly has plans to bring anti-affirmative-action initiatives to Arizona and Missouri in 2010.
Third, we have a liberal African-American president who is uniquely positioned to ease the transition from race-based to class-based affirmative action, having said that his own daughters don't deserve preferences in college admissions, and that low-income students of all races do. But if economically disadvantaged students are admitted to selective colleges through affirmative action, will they be able to graduate? With the right support programs, yes. As the new report from Public Agenda finds, students drop out not because they're unprepared, but rather because they are stretched financially and have to work to make ends meet. A forthcoming Century Foundation report by Edward Fiske finds that a new program, the Carolina Covenant, has increased graduation rates by ensuring that financial aid and support programs are in place for low-income students. Likewise, research by William Bowen and colleagues finds that students are more likely to graduate at selective universities than less-selective ones—even though the standards are more demanding—perhaps because selective institutions have greater resources to support students.
All of which is to suggest that class-based affirmative action won't lead unprepared low-income students to drop out. To the contrary, it should increase graduation rates—a central goal of the Obama administration.
Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP and a professor of history at the University of Virginia:
I think the time has long passed for adding socioeconomic status to the categories of affirmative action, but it must not and cannot be viewed as a replacement for race. Poverty is not a proxy for race, and to pretend that it is would eradicate the initial rationale for affirmative action—to correct for society's demonstrable biases against people of color regardless of their socioeconomic status.
The murder some years ago of Bill Cosby's son by a white racist who later bragged about the shooting to his friends shows how feeble the Cosbys's great wealth was in protecting their son against this ugly virus. The recent news that black graduates of prestigious colleges and universities feel they must "whiten" their résumés to hide their blackness demonstrates how little effect affirmative action in its original iteration has today, and how our current substitution of "diversity" for actual race-based affirmative action has rendered the latter almost useless. How many of our colleges count students from Africa and elsewhere toward their "affirmative action" goals?
So bring on socioeconomic status. And while you're at it, bring back race-based policies—you cannot get beyond race without going to race.
Full Story: http://chronicle.com/article/Reactions-Is-It-Time-for/62615/?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en
Monday, April 20, 2009
Race goals are easier, not better
Jewish World Review
by Clarence Page
April 20, 2009 / 26 Nisan 5769
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com
Here's a quick history quiz for you. Which nationally prominent leader said this?
"Edicts of nondiscrimination are not enough. Justice demands that every citizen consciously adopts a personal commitment to affirmative action, which will make equal opportunity a reality."
Was it the Rev. Jesse Jackson? The Rev. Al Sharpton? Sister Souljah?
No, it was then-Gov. Ronald Reagan of California in his 1971 executive order. He sounded more liberal, at least on this issue, than the racial quota-fighter who became president nine years later.
Times have changed, but on race not all that much, as far as Julian Bond is concerned. The civil rights era hero, now chairman of the NAACP, whipped out that old quote like an ace up his sleeve during a debate at the Library of Congress last week to argue that what was good for Gov. Reagan two generations ago is good enough for America now.
I'm not as certain of that as he is. Sitting in the audience at the debate, I was struck by how much America's persistent problems with race have changed, while so many of our leading affirmative action proponents have not.
Yet I was also struck by how replacing race-based affirmative action with the class-based kind is easier to say than to do, especially at elite colleges and universities.
That's one reason why Bond opposed the evening's proposition: "Should affirmative action be based on wealth and class rather than race and ethnicity?"
President Barack Obama thinks it should, he has said in writing and out loud. "We have to think about affirmative action," he said in at last summer's convention of black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American journalists in Chicago, "and craft it in such a way where some of our children who are advantaged aren't getting more favorable treatment than a poor white kid who has struggled more." It is safe to say that, in the fashion of President Richard Nixon opening doors to China, Obama's position later helped him with white voters and didn't hurt him very much with blacks.
Full Commentary: http://jewishworldreview.com/0409/page042009.php3
by Clarence Page
April 20, 2009 / 26 Nisan 5769
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com
Here's a quick history quiz for you. Which nationally prominent leader said this?
"Edicts of nondiscrimination are not enough. Justice demands that every citizen consciously adopts a personal commitment to affirmative action, which will make equal opportunity a reality."
Was it the Rev. Jesse Jackson? The Rev. Al Sharpton? Sister Souljah?
No, it was then-Gov. Ronald Reagan of California in his 1971 executive order. He sounded more liberal, at least on this issue, than the racial quota-fighter who became president nine years later.
Times have changed, but on race not all that much, as far as Julian Bond is concerned. The civil rights era hero, now chairman of the NAACP, whipped out that old quote like an ace up his sleeve during a debate at the Library of Congress last week to argue that what was good for Gov. Reagan two generations ago is good enough for America now.
I'm not as certain of that as he is. Sitting in the audience at the debate, I was struck by how much America's persistent problems with race have changed, while so many of our leading affirmative action proponents have not.
Yet I was also struck by how replacing race-based affirmative action with the class-based kind is easier to say than to do, especially at elite colleges and universities.
That's one reason why Bond opposed the evening's proposition: "Should affirmative action be based on wealth and class rather than race and ethnicity?"
President Barack Obama thinks it should, he has said in writing and out loud. "We have to think about affirmative action," he said in at last summer's convention of black, Hispanic, Asian and Native American journalists in Chicago, "and craft it in such a way where some of our children who are advantaged aren't getting more favorable treatment than a poor white kid who has struggled more." It is safe to say that, in the fashion of President Richard Nixon opening doors to China, Obama's position later helped him with white voters and didn't hurt him very much with blacks.
Full Commentary: http://jewishworldreview.com/0409/page042009.php3
Friday, April 17, 2009
Scholars Debate the Efficacy of Race Versus Class-based Affirmative Action in College Admissions
Diverse Issues in Higher Education
by Michelle J. Nealy
Apr 17, 2009, 10:26
Substituting class for race-conscious affirmative action may be more politically palatable, but it does little to improve racial diversity on college campuses, said affirmative action proponents at a debate Thursday evening.
“Substituting class for race may make some more comfortable with affirmative action, but it makes poor policy,” said NAACP chairman Julian Bond, during a debate between four activists and scholars on whether class-based affirmative action should replace race-conscious admissions.
The debate came as race-based opportunity policies have been impeded by statewide referendums. Last November, Nebraska became the latest state, behind California, Michigan and Washington, to ban affirmative action. In a sign of where diversity policies are headed, the Supreme Court two years ago ruled that public school administrators should use socioeconomic status, not race, to integrate segregated public schools.
Arguing in favor of class-based preferences in college admissions at a debate held at the Library of Congress, Dr. John McWhorter rejected policies that lower standards for Black and Hispanic students in an effort to increase diversity.
“If you set the bar low, that is the kind of performance you will get. [Moreover] there is no evidence that the presence of Black and Latino students significantly improves education,” said McWhorter, senior fellow for the Manhattan Institute.
There is also the argument that the beneficiaries of race-based affirmative action policies are middle- to upper-class Black and Hispanic students, not necessarily those from underprivileged backgrounds.
Class-based policies, proponents say, may generate more public support since lower-and middle-class White are often the casualties in race-based affirmative action.
Still Bond, a civil rights icon, insists that using class as a substitution for race would be an abandonment of affirmative as it was intended.
“Affirmative action resulted from an American consensus,” Bond said, as “a remedy for past racial injustices. Changes in our society, not least in the election of our first African-American president, do not signal a change in our racial temperature so significant that race-conscious affirmative action can now be discarded.”
Adding to Bond’s argument, Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University and a prominent advocate of affirmative action said succinctly, “You will not get racial diversity if you just rely on class and wealth. This has been studied by many. If you use only income, you will only increase the proportion of White students.
Full Story: http://diverseeducation.com/artman/publish/article_12492.shtml
by Michelle J. Nealy
Apr 17, 2009, 10:26
Substituting class for race-conscious affirmative action may be more politically palatable, but it does little to improve racial diversity on college campuses, said affirmative action proponents at a debate Thursday evening.
“Substituting class for race may make some more comfortable with affirmative action, but it makes poor policy,” said NAACP chairman Julian Bond, during a debate between four activists and scholars on whether class-based affirmative action should replace race-conscious admissions.
The debate came as race-based opportunity policies have been impeded by statewide referendums. Last November, Nebraska became the latest state, behind California, Michigan and Washington, to ban affirmative action. In a sign of where diversity policies are headed, the Supreme Court two years ago ruled that public school administrators should use socioeconomic status, not race, to integrate segregated public schools.
Arguing in favor of class-based preferences in college admissions at a debate held at the Library of Congress, Dr. John McWhorter rejected policies that lower standards for Black and Hispanic students in an effort to increase diversity.
“If you set the bar low, that is the kind of performance you will get. [Moreover] there is no evidence that the presence of Black and Latino students significantly improves education,” said McWhorter, senior fellow for the Manhattan Institute.
There is also the argument that the beneficiaries of race-based affirmative action policies are middle- to upper-class Black and Hispanic students, not necessarily those from underprivileged backgrounds.
Class-based policies, proponents say, may generate more public support since lower-and middle-class White are often the casualties in race-based affirmative action.
Still Bond, a civil rights icon, insists that using class as a substitution for race would be an abandonment of affirmative as it was intended.
“Affirmative action resulted from an American consensus,” Bond said, as “a remedy for past racial injustices. Changes in our society, not least in the election of our first African-American president, do not signal a change in our racial temperature so significant that race-conscious affirmative action can now be discarded.”
Adding to Bond’s argument, Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University and a prominent advocate of affirmative action said succinctly, “You will not get racial diversity if you just rely on class and wealth. This has been studied by many. If you use only income, you will only increase the proportion of White students.
Full Story: http://diverseeducation.com/artman/publish/article_12492.shtml
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