Internationally, some nations with substantial racial or ethnic variation among their populations have acknowledged that addressing issues of racism, institutional or interpersonal, should be a priority.
Seeking to continue the Biden Administration’s efforts to confront global systemic racism and injustice, in June 2022, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken appointed Desirée Cormier Smith as the first Special Representative for Racial Equity and Justice (SRREJ) in U.S. history.
Smith discussed her first six months in office in a one-on-one interview with the AFRO.
“Special Representative Cormier Smith will lead our efforts to protect and advance the human rights of people belonging to marginalized racial and ethnic communities and combat systemic racism, discrimination, and xenophobia around the world” and “also ensure that our own policies are protecting and advancing the rights of people belonging to marginalized racial and ethnic communities,” Blinken said.
“I was relieved to see an office created to look at the situation of marginalized racial and ethnic communities around the world. We didn’t have that, and I felt like it was a blind spot in our foreign policy. I never expected to be asked to serve in this capacity and I am honored to be the first one.” Smith said.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Gregory W. Meeks (D-N.Y.), and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) praised the Biden Administration’s creation of the new position in a joint statement saying the “appointment will play a critical role in streamlining our efforts to secure human rights and fight inequality around the world.”
Despite the obvious existence of racism, and the relevance and significance of her role, some policy experts consider racism as a theoretical claim and have criticized the Administration’s decision citing cost issues, resentment within State’s existing bureaucracy, and misunderstanding among foreign governments concerning who really creates policy.
The United Nations (UN) Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights recently acknowledged that lived experiences are key to achieving racial justice and equality, with Acting High Commissioner Nada Al-Nashif presenting a UN human rights report on racial justice and equality for Africans and people of African descent.
“This appointment was really humbling but I carry my responsibilities with great joy and humility. I find comfort knowing that I’m not the only one doing this work” Smith said. “There are countless activists in civil society, and inside and outside of government. They might not have the same title, but we’re working towards the same things” she continued.
Smith’s background as a Los Angeles native, member of marginalized communities, professional experience as well as her passion and commitment to improving social and economic conditions for marginalized populations, make her appointment as America’s first SRREJ more ideal, timely, poignant and critical.
Smith is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, with public and private sector experience working in the U.S. Foreign Service in Mexico, South Africa, and Washington, D.C., in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs and at the Open Society Foundations.
Since her June appointment, Smith has been extremely busy working to advance equity in the frontiers of diplomacy, foreign policy and international public policy, including working with racial and ethnic communities around the world and with the UN on the newly established Permanent Forum for People of African Descent (PFPAD).
The inaugural Permanent Forum for People of African Descent (PFPAD) session was held in Geneva, Switzerland.
Over the last six months, Smith has worked across continents to advance and protect the human rights of racial and ethnic marginalized communities. She was a member of the U.S. Presidential Delegation to the inauguration of Francia Marquez, Colombia’s first Black vice president; worked to support marginalized ethnic populations around the world including people of African descent and Indigenous communities; and worked with members of civil society at international forums and conferences such as the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit.
“Even though my mandate does not include a domestic policy focus, my credibility to do this work globally depends on how we’re doing here in the U.S. In order for us to credibly talk about how racial equity is needed overseas in other countries, we have to also practice that here at home.” Smith said.
Smith has also been heavily involved UN human rights initiatives focused on racial equity, and co-led the U.S. delegation at the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination meetings at the OHCHR in Geneva; participated in the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) Global Forum against Racism and Discrimination in Mexico, and supported the inaugural sessions of the PFPAD in Geneva.
“I have built a small but mighty team, and I’m very proud of what we’ve been able to accomplish. We’re in the process of evaluating as we head into the new year,” Smith said, reflecting on her first six months as the first SRREJ in U.S. history.
Considering lessons learned through her career and upcoming work in 2023, Smith said “It’s important that we bring our lived experiences to work. I have been able to relate with people from around the world, because I can see myself in them and they see themselves in me.”
“I lead with humility and explain that I cannot admonish other governments because that shuts down the conversation. This work cannot be about us trying to dictate what’s best for communities. We must start by engaging with and listening to communities.” Smith said.
Undeniably influenced by her grandfather, Smith mentioned that his passion, candor and pursuit of justice currently help her fulfill her international duties. “My grandpa was not a shy man and he always had the right things to say. I’m motivated doing this work because I know he would fearlessly and unapologetically work towards justice, and not hold any parts of himself back to make other people uncomfortable,” Smith said.
For most people, when they think of what “homelessness” looks like — an image of a disheveled, mentally-ill person living on the sidewalk in a tent is the stereotype that comes to mind.
But there is no one way to be homeless.
In fact, most families, individuals, and youth are one crisis away from experiencing homelessness. And living in a country as economically and racially unequal as the United States puts Black folks at increased risk for housing insecurity.
Black folks are not the poster child for housing insecurity, despite accounting for 39% of people experiencing homelessness and more than 50% of homeless families with children. However, structural racism, COVID-19 excessively impacting Black folks, and an inequitable housing system that too often rejects, dismisses or exploits Black renters have left millions of folks housing insecure.
It’s easy to get distracted by the idea that sleeping inside of a building or car is the opposite of housing insecurity or even the solution — but that shows the true invisibility of this issue.
With home ownership and rent costs spiraling higher and higher, what if being unhoused looks like the minimum wage-earning barista who makes your coffee every day living out of a car, or the politician running for Congress couch surfing, or the medical assistant at your doctor’s office?
On top of that, being LGBTQ, experiencing domestic violence, aging out of foster care, or being immunocompromised all affect the ability to find stable housing.
The Intersection of Domestic Violence
As a former foster youth and a juvenile delinquent, with no immediate family, Allison Pratt did not know what a stable home even looked like — let alone where to find one. After aging out of foster care, in her early 20’s she married a man in the military who quickly became abusive.
“We are so excited to embark on this journey of being ourselves that we are mimicking the things around us,” Pratt says.
The cycle of experiencing abuse started when Pratt was molested as a child. As a foster youth, bouncing from home to home — and never being taught saying no is an option — made it difficult for her to leave her domestically abusive husband.
“It’s like we see what we’re supposed to do but because no one is properly explaining the foundation of it we’re just kind of going with the flow,” she says. “I thought I was supposed to stay.”
But, the decision to leave or stay became clearer when her husband began sexually abusing her.
“My second child was conceived of marital rape,” she says. “I had the right to say no and getting pregnant made me sick.”
During this time, Pratt was adamant about getting an abortion — but after visiting five clinics over the course of a couple of weeks there was always some reason she couldn’t get the procedure. Initially, she was turned away for not having a driver to take her home after the procedure, then she was repeatedly given an inaccurate date of gestation. During one of her final visits, the clinic did not give her a blood test.
After giving birth to her son at 22, she became more protective of her body and Pratt says her husband became more financially abusive. But, she worked hard to get a job, rebuilt her life, and moved from Texas to Los Angeles, leaving her abuser behind.
Courtesy of Allison Pratt.
At that time, she was still young enough to receive foster care services and got counseling with other mothers who had children through rape. With support around her, she was able to create a somewhat stable life for her children, but things started to change again when she got a new partner.
At first, she says her partner wasn’t violent towards her, but she started to notice similar patterns of emotional and psychological abuse. Now, at 32, Pratt has had a restraining order against her ex-partner for three years — she says he continues to break the order. In October, she took her children and left their home to protect her family.
“That’s why I like to say ‘housing insecure’ because we do have a home, we just choose not to live in that,” she says. “We need a safe space.”
Since she left, Pratt and her children have been living in between places. They lived in an Airbnb for a few weeks, stayed with friends, and in mid-December, she was on week one of a 14-day hotel voucher.
After calling 213 shelters throughout Los Angeles County, San Diego County, and other counties in California she says no one has room for a family of five, or they won’t accept them as most of her children are unvaccinated.
“I noticed it’s been very hard in getting assistance because, like I said, the adult pool is so crowded and people are almost less empathetic,” she says.
According to the Family and Youth Services Bureau, on one single day in 2015, more than 31,000 adults and children who left homes with domestic violence found help in a domestic violence emergency shelter. But, that same day, more than 12,000 requests for services were left unmet due to a lack of funding or staffing issues.
“Why do you assume that all the homeless people gotta look like people at the gas station,” she says of a common perspective people have. “Why do you say all the homeless people have to look like people on Skid Row.”
ALLISON PRATT SAYS.
Pratt says people are quick to point the finger at her — like she should have known her ex-partner was going to be abusive, or they downplay the severity of her abuse. But what people often forget is she has no family to turn to for help — something she says folks who didn’t grow up in foster care seem unable to understand.
On top of that, because she doesn’t fit the stereotype of what being “homeless” looks like, those at the shelter have questioned if she really needs help.
“This perspective of us being like thieves or crackheads, or druggies, it’s not all true. I understand that some homelessness is due to mental health, but they should definitely broaden that scope,” she says. “There is this stigma that if you’re homeless, you got to look homeless. I don’t think me, and my children have ever looked homeless.”
Regardless of how someone looks, Pratt says whether they fit that stereotype or not, everyone should be able to receive help and services.
“Why do you assume that all the homeless people gotta look like people at the gas station,” she says of a common perspective people have. “Why do you say all the homeless people have to look like people on Skid Row.”
With bouts of homelessness throughout the past nine years, she decided to run for Congress this year — Pratt lost to Democrat Maxine Waters, but she realized many politicians do not have a lived experience of domestic violence, foster care, or housing insecurity, something she centered her campaign around. With this lack of experience, she says politicians who end up in positions of power do not always have the level of awareness it takes to help folks experiencing homelessness.
Although she is unsure if she plans to run for office again, Pratt makes it clear that although traumatic experiences lead many people into housing instability, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
“Even in homelessness, you are not broken.”
The Intersection of Youth
In a 2016-17 national survey, roughly 700,000 minors, or 1 in 30 between the ages of 13-17 experienced some form of homelessness, whether that be living on the street, in a shelter, or couch surfing.
These youth may experience housing insecurity due to family conflicts, the juvenile justice system, the educational system, toxic stressors, gun violence, or trafficking violence.
But Black youth are arguably the most vulnerable to facing housing insecurity when so many young ones are already growing up in a system that was not built for them.
That’s why Los Angeles-based Sanctuary of Hope focuses on stabilizing young people who are in some form of crisis.
Founder and executive director Janet Kelly says they primarily serve Black youth between the ages of 16-25 who are housing or economically insecure and help young people who are being trafficked, are domestic violence survivors, and are expectant parents.
“I saw everything from young people engaging in survival marriages where they would marry someone just because they needed to be fed, or they needed to have a relationship to be prostituted, pimped out on the streets months later. Or enter into abusive relationships or get involved in violent situations that really didn’t help them in the long run,” she says.
As a Black-led organization, Hope’s priority is to have a welcoming and culturally affirming environment specifically for Black young people. For Black youth, there is often a different environmental scrutiny that is experienced — an added layer of “anti-Blackness” — Kelly says. Non-Black youth are afforded additional support and services, while the system is not always so quick to help young Black people who are struggling with housing.
“If you look at it at how even Black youth are viewed, most Black youths are adulted. There is this expectation that they should know and be able to get on their feet and pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” she says.
Kelly says Black youth are often invisible in plain sight — it’s not just the young ones who are living in an encampment, it’s the young people whose parents have died or those who were raised by grandparents who now have a health crisis.
The Intersection of Being LGBTQ
The “majority of people in this country are one crisis away from experiencing homelessness,” Kahlib Barton says. The 31-year-old, who is Black, gay, and nonbinary, is the co-director of technical assistance at True Colors United, an organization focusing on the experiences of LGBTQ youth.
Courtesy of Khalib Barton.
Barton has faced his fair share of struggles — experiencing homelessness was one of them. Barton, who uses he and they pronouns says while attending Prairie View A&M University in Texas between 2009-2012, at 19 he was diagnosed with HIV.
At the time, he lived in a rural town outside of Houston, with no access to a car. It made things difficult for Barton to receive care — which was more than an hour away.
“Honestly, I’m thinking about my morbidity and it’s like OK, I’m just going to end up dying because I was never going to get care,” he says.
Eventually, he dropped out of university and moved to Denver because there were better opportunities to get HIV healthcare. Shortly after, he found a job and was able to receive support and housing services for people living with HIV and AIDS. But when Barton lost his job, he lost his housing too.
That’s when Barton experienced homelessness for the first time.
“Homelessness can look like a Moncler jacket or Nikes on your feet,” he says. “I consistently kept up — you know what I mean? My appearances were always something that I kept up throughout my whole time experiencing homelessness.”
KHALIB BARTON, CO-DIRECTOR OF TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE AT TRUE COLORS UNITED SAYS.
He had the option to move back to Texas, but it was either no housing with HIV care or no HIV care with housing. According to the Trevor Project, about 26% of Black LGBTQ youth experienced homelessness or housing instability in 2021, with an average of 28% among all youth surveyed.
In his early 20s and living in Denver, Barton got introduced to advocacy and activism for public health and housing.
“I’ve always had this lens of this intersectional approach of public health issues will not be addressed without us addressing housing and that we should view housing as a public health crisis,” he says.
Barton’s bouts of experiencing homelessness did not end there. He moved to Washington, D.C. after a friend said they would help him get back on his feet, but he was not able to receive the support initially offered. Additionally, trying to navigate the healthcare services in D.C. proved to be more difficult.
“I ended up experiencing street homelessness for like a little while in D.C.,” he says.
But one thing Barton makes very clear is, whether he lived on the street or was couch surfing, he remained regularly employed. But like many others experiencing homelessness, being employed did not keep him housed. Barton says oftentimes people have this image of what homelessness looks like and that people are supposed to present themselves in a specific way, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
“Homelessness can look like a Moncler jacket or Nikes on your feet,” he says. “I consistently kept up — you know what I mean? My appearances were always something that I kept up throughout my whole time experiencing homelessness.”
Maintaining a social media presence never gave people a reason to doubt Barton was struggling, let alone sleeping in bathhouses and between homes. To this day, family members and friends are shocked when Barton shares that he was experiencing homelessness — which speaks to the true invisibility of what being unhoused looks like.
In order to achieve a more righteous and equitable and hopefully liberated world, we really need to focus on identity and understand how these issues impact the intersections of individuals,” he says. “The identities that we have create unique experiences of privilege and oppression and my identities absolutely created unique experiences of privilege and oppression at times.”
The Intersection of Being Immunocompromised
K.A. Lalsingh, a 68-year-old Black and South Asian woman living in Los Angeles has a unique experience with housing insecurity. She struggles with multiple health conditions, including a mobility issue and a compromised immune system — in November of 2016 she was forced to give up her home because she could no longer afford it.
Courtesy of K.A. Lalsingh.
With her compromised immune system, it was important for Lalsingh to stay in a home that could adequately fit her needs. But that wasn’t always possible. From 2016-2021, she says she couch-surfed with friends and family, with some of the homes leaving her feeling “miserable and unwelcome.”
“I don’t like to put myself out with people who don’t want me, but I had nowhere to go,” she says. “It was that or go in the street, and with all my health conditions, I was terrified.”
During the five years, Lalsingh was in unstable and inconsistent housing, she sought out support services to help her find a place — she made calls to local libraries to ask for resources and reached out to organizations that help medically disabled seniors.
But, navigating a housing system with so many holes and cracks in it left her with no other choice but to live in a shelter beginning in September 2021. Lalsingh says she constantly had to battle to receive her Social Security benefits, with case managers and social workers often giving her misinformation.
Life in the shelter was anything but glamorous.
“So, people come in with trauma, get new trauma, and exit with trauma — and they end up on the street.”
K.A. LALSINGH SAYS.
She says she started to notice a pattern of cultural preference and favoritism when it came to helping women get resources in the shelter. Lalsingh says she questioned: “Why did it work for her? Is it because she’s Asian? Is it because she’s white? Is it because I’m Black? What is it that I’m not getting?”
“The overtones of racism come into play,” she says.
Throughout Lalsingh’s interview with Word In Black, she was outspoken about the inadequacies of the government systems in place — systems that are failing to help women get adequate housing.
One example is the California Department of Housing and Community Development mismanaging COVID-19 relief funds for people experiencing homelessness — with the state receiving $316 million under the federal CARES Act, the department did not properly distribute the funds.
“At the shelter level, the broken system is they don’t do what they’re designed to do. They don’t use the money they are budgeted to have, money that is being set back or used for other things,” Lalsingh says. “They get donations and don’t make it available to the residents, all the good stuff they keep. And they carry it to the corporate office.”
With shelters being underfunded, or improperly funded, and many of the folks Lalsingh encountered experiencing mental health issues, it became clear to her how few services were available to those inside. She says some residents were forcibly exited from the shelter she was living in because they had violent outbursts or were unable to control their emotions — something she says indicated how little relief residents got.
“So, people come in with trauma, get new trauma, and exit with trauma — and they end up on the street,” she says.
For the last couple of years, like many people experiencing housing and economic insecurity, Lalsingh has been waiting to receive a housing voucher. Once, she was denied for making $250 more a month than the low-income threshold requirement. Now, after approval, she’s been up against a new challenge: finding a landlord that will accept the voucher.
“I had a landlord who owns 50 or 60 properties say … ‘we can’t accept a voucher, we can’t deal with that element, it downgrades the value of our property’,” she says.
California implemented a new law in 2020 that forbids property owners from rejecting applicants based on their Section 8 housing vouchers, but landlords still refuse to rent to people who have them.
In early December, after more than a year of living in the shelter, Lalsingh was told she would be transferred to a shelter on Skid Row.
“I am immunocompromised, and I have very poor vision, and I use a cane, and I see nine specialists — and you want me to be on Skid Row?” she says of the shelter that planned on transferring her, despite her being weeks away from getting her own place.
On Dec. 10, she self-exited from the shelter. And, after six years of being housing insecure, she says she should be getting keys to her new place soon.
The latest installment of Marvel Studios’ Black Panther saga, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” did more than just sell out theaters– it positively influenced millions of young, Black audience members across the country.
The film put Black excellence on the big screen in full display for Black children, looking to see their likeness and image blended with the superhero realm, according to behavior specialists.
Makungu Akinyela, a licensed family therapist and professor of Africana studies in Atlanta, said the film had had a staggering effect on Black people.
“The idea of a hero or a mythology gave not only Black children but Black people something healthy for their imaginations,” said Akinyela, when asked about the positive impact of Black representation in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever. “It gave good principles: by not following through with revenge and thinking about the community and not just self.”
“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” has made an impact on viewers not only in the United States but across the globe. Featuring a predominantly Black cast as powerful, influential, smart and intriguing characters– there’s no wonder why people have had so much to say about the film.
Representation –especially in film– is salient to the next generation of young Black minds because it promotes a healthy way to self-identify, while providing a sense of belonging, importance and positive self-awareness for the present and future, she and other therapists said.
Akinyela said that as a baby boomer, films with such dynamic Black characters– like those seen in Black Panther– weren’t around to stimulate his mind. He began to turn to real life heroes around him: civil rights and Black power activists of the 60’s and 70’s.
“Many of these Black Panther comic books were developed and inspired by the rise in the Black community,” said Akinyela. “That’s where many of these ideas generated from.”
Indeed, it is impossible to ignore the connection between the creation of the Black Panther comics, first released in 1966, and the Black Panther Party of the 60s and 70s.
The Black Panther comic was a platform for children and adults to enjoy the political, social, and cultural norms and ideologies of the times in comic book form.
Akinyela said that the film showed characters of color “working together and being committed to each other and especially to their people.”
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, offered many lessons, to include the importance of sound leadership, community, and the triumphant strength and spirit of the Black community.
The movie inspired schools across the United States to take their students to see this film.
Educator, Yulanda Weems, spoke on how Black Panther: Wakanda Forever inspired the Black youth in her community.
“A lot of these kids really need more positive role models and influences,” Weems said. “Too many of our kids don’t understand their potential and think the only thing out there for them to do is rap, produce [music], and play sports. I am hoping that seeing this movie will open up their eyes to see that people who look like them are capable of performing great things.”
“Our students really need more positive and challenging outlets,” she continued. “I hope this movie is the start of some kind of shift for Black movies for kids and adults. Our students don’t typically see ‘us’ in those kinds of roles on the regular. I’m hoping this will inspire them to want to become more.”
Akinyela said he feels the film will affect the minds of young girls in particular, who can view the character Shuri as not only a princess who’s a smart scientist– but now as the new Black Panther.
Dream Jordan is just one of hundreds of students who saw the film as part of an event sponsored by United Way of Central Maryland and the Propel Center for Baltimore City Public Schools.
“As a Black woman in America, ‘Black Panther’ has many meanings,” said Jordan, in her written response to the film. “However, my meaning is strength, power, and beauty. As a dark skin woman it is not often I see dark skin girls in power or perceived as beautiful women.”
“Black Panther shows me to be comfortable in my skin regardless of what others perceive as beauty.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Friday will present the nation’s second highest civilian award to 12 individuals involved in defending the Capitol during the insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, and safeguarding the will of American voters in the 2020 presidential election.
The White House announced on Thursday that Biden will present the Presidential Citizens Medal during an East Room ceremony marking the second anniversary of the assault on the Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump whose siege interrupted the congressional certification of Biden’s victory.
Among those being honored are seven members of law enforcement, including a posthumous award to Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died after the attack, and an award to Officer Eugene Goodman who was credited with directing rioters away from the Senate floor while lawmakers were evacuating the building.
Also being honored are two other Capitol Police officers, Harry Dunn and Caroline Edwards; Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell; Metropolitan Police Department Officer Daniel Hodges and a former officer, Michael Fanone.
Biden is also recognizing Michigan’s secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, and Rusty Bowers, a former Arizona House speaker, who resisted pressure to overturn the election results; and Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss, election workers in Fulton County, Georgia, who were subjected to threats and harassment after ensuring votes in the county were properly tabulated.
An award is going to Al Schmidt, a former Philadelphia election official who faced public pressure by Trump to stop counting valid ballots. Schmidt, a Republican, will be nominated for the top election administration post in Pennsylvania, secretary of state, by Pennsylvania Gov.-elect Josh Shapiro, a Democrat.
The Presidential Citizens Medal, created by President Richard Nixon in 1969, is the country’s second highest civilian honor after the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It is awarded to those who “performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens.”
By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent
In a filing sent to the U.S. Supreme Court this week, the Department of Justice agreed with President Joe Biden’s plan to forgive student loans.
In 2022, the president promised to forgive all outstanding student loan debt for millions of borrowers, up to a maximum of $20,000 each.
Republicans are leading the way in suing the federal government to stop the plan.
The Department of Justice, however, said last week in a court filing that Biden’s actions are perfectly legal.
Lawyers from the Department of Justice said that Congress gave the president “clear permission” to go ahead with his plan.
A federal judge in Texas invalidated a program in October that would have helped 40 million people with their student loan debt.
Two people who didn’t qualify for aid under Biden’s scheme sued the initiative on behalf of the conservative Job Creators Network Foundation.
At the time, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the government strongly disagreed.
“The President and this Administration are determined to help working and middle-class Americans get back on their feet, while our opponents, backed by extremist Republican special interests, have sued to prohibit millions of Americans from getting much-needed relief,” Jean-Pierre remarked.
The HEROES Act of 2003, according to the White House, gives the Secretary of Education the authority to forgive student debt.
“The program is consequently an illegal exercise of Congress’s legislative power and must be vacated,” wrote Judge Mark Pittman, a Donald Trump nominee.
“In this country, we are not dominated by an all-powerful executive with a pen and a phone,” he continued.
Federal student loan debt of up to $10,000 will be forgiven for borrowers with yearly incomes of less than $125,000 in 2020 or 2021, and up to $200,000 for married couples or heads of households.
Borrowers who also got a federal Pell grant might have up to $20,000 in their loans discharged.
Six states with Republican governors sued to stop Biden’s plan to forgive debts. This made the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals put a hold on the plan.
One plaintiff in Texas lost her right to have her federal student loans forgiven because the federal government did not service her loans.
Since the other plaintiff did not obtain a Pell award, the amount of debt relief to which he is entitled is just $10,000.
They said they had no way of voicing their disapproval of the program’s regulations because the administration had not followed the Administrative Procedure Act’s notice and comment rule-making procedure.
Elaine Parker, president of the Job Creators Network Foundation, stated in a statement, “This verdict supports the rule of law which requires all Americans to have their voices heard by their federal government.”
According to CNN’s reporting, Bernie Marcus, the former CEO of Home Depot, and a key Trump donor, established the Job Creators Network Foundation.
Two challenges challenging Biden’s debt relief plan will be argued before the Supreme Court in February.
In February, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in two cases.
In its petition, the Justice Department said, “The lower courts’ decisions have wrongly taken away the Secretary’s legislative authority to give targeted student loan debt relief to borrowers affected by national emergencies.”
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Damaging winds and heavy rains from a powerful “atmospheric river” pounded California on Thursday, knocking out power to tens of thousands, causing flash flooding, and contributing to the deaths of at least two people, including a child whose home was hit by a falling tree.
Officials had ordered evacuations in a high-risk coastal area where mudslides killed 23 people in 2018 as the huge storm barreled into the state Wednesday. Authorities warned residents to hunker down at home in anticipation of flooded roads, toppled trees and other risks.
It was the latest in a rapid series of atmospheric rivers — long plumes of moisture stretching far over the Pacific — to hit California. This one was a “Pineapple Express” originating near Hawaii and pulled toward the West Coast by a rotating area of rapidly falling air pressure known as a “bomb cyclone.”
In Sonoma County, Occidental Volunteer Fire Chief Ronald Lunardi said a child believed to be under 2 years old died Wednesday night after a tree fell on a home, The Press Democrat reported. In Fairfield, a 19-year-old woman died after her vehicle hydroplaned on a flooded road and hit a utility pole, police posted on Facebook.
The storm dumped rain in parts of the San Francisco Bay Area, where the region had been under flood warnings. In Southern California, the storm was expected to peak into early Thursday, with Santa Barbara and Ventura counties likely to see the most rain, forecasters said.
“We anticipate that this may be one of the most challenging and impactful series of storms to touch down in California in the last five years,” said Nancy Ward, director of the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed said at a news conference that the city was “preparing for a war.” Crews cleared clogged storm drains, tried to move homeless people into shelters, and passed out emergency supplies and ponchos to those who refused to go.
The city distributed so many sandbags to residents that supplies temporarily ran out.
Powerful winds gusting to 85 mph (136 kph) or more forced the cancellation of more than 70 flights at San Francisco International Airport and downed trees and power lines. Firefighters rescued a family after a tree fell onto their car. The fire department reported “large pieces of glass” fell off the Fox Plaza tower near the Civic Center, although no injuries were reported. It was “highly possible” the damage was wind-related, the department tweeted.
More than 180,000 homes and businesses were without power in California early Thursday, according to poweroutage.us.
The storm is the latest of three atmospheric river storms in the last week to reach the drought-stricken state. California Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency to allow for a quick response and to aid in cleanup from another powerful storm that hit just days earlier.
In Southern California, evacuations were ordered for those living in areas burned by three recent wildfires in Santa Barbara County, where heavy rain forecast for overnight could cause widespread flooding and unleash debris flows.
Among the towns ordered to evacuate was Montecito, where five years ago huge boulders, mud and debris swept down mountains through the town to the shoreline, killing 23 people and destroying more than 100 homes.
Elsewhere, a 45-mile (72-kilometer) stretch of the coastal Highway 1 running through Big Sur was closed Wednesday evening in anticipation of flooding and rock falls. Farther north, a 25-mile (40-kilometer) stretch of Highway 101 was closed due to several downed trees.
Drivers were urged to stay off the roads unless absolutely necessary, especially with heavy snow expected in the mountains.
Evacuation orders were in place in Santa Cruz County’s Paradise Park along the swiftly moving San Lorenzo River, as well as in areas along the Pajaro River. Residents who fled wildfires in the Santa Cruz Mountains in 2020 packed their bags as the towns of Boulder Creek, Ben Lomond and Felton were all warned they should be prepared to evacuate.
Sonoma County authorities issued an evacuation warning for a string of towns along the Russian River.
The storm came days after a New Year’s Eve downpour led to evacuations in Northern California and the rescue of several motorists from flooded roads. A few levees south of Sacramento were damaged, and at least four people died in flooding.
The storms won’t be enough to officially end the state’s ongoing drought, now entering its fourth year, officials say.
Atmospheric rivers, named by researchers in the 1990s, occur globally but are especially significant on the U.S. West Coast, where they create 30% to 50% of annual precipitation, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent
A new report has revealed that California law enforcement officers searched, detained on the curb or in a patrol car, handcuffed, and removed from vehicles more individuals perceived as Black than individuals perceived as white, even though they stopped more than double the number of individuals perceived as white than individuals perceived as Black.
The data revealed that officers stopped 2.9 million individuals in 2020. Most were African Americans and members of the LGBTQ community.
The agency said that the data included what officers “perceived” to be the race, ethnicity, gender, and disability status of people they stopped, even if the perception was different from how the person identified.
According to the data, authorities search African Americans 2.4 times more than whites and disproportionately more than other racial and ethnic groups.
It also found that individual officers perceived as transgender women were 2.5 times more likely to be searched than women who appeared cisgender.
Data for the report came from the state’s most important law enforcement agencies, like the California Highway Patrol.
However, the highway patrol didn’t include data analyzing stops based on gender identity.
All agencies must report the data in 2023.
“The data in this report will be used by our profession to evaluate our practices as we continue to strive for police services that are aligned with our communities’ expectations of service,” Chief David Swing, co-chair of the Board and past president of the California Police Chiefs Association, said in a statement.
The report further showed that Black and Hispanic individuals were more likely to have force used against them compared to white individuals, while Asian and other individuals were less likely.
Specifically, the odds of having force used during a stop were 1.32 times and 1.16 times as high for Black and Hispanic individuals, respectively.
Asian and other individuals whom officers stopped had lower odds of having force used against them (0.80 and 0.82, respectively) relative to the odds for those perceived as white.
Search discovery rate analyses showed that, when officers searched individuals, all races, or ethnic groups of color, except for Asian and Middle Eastern/South Asian individuals, had higher search rates despite having lower rates of discovering contraband than individuals perceived as white.
Furthermore, a search and discovery rate analysis show that officers searched people perceived to have a mental health disability 4.8 times more often and people perceived to have other types of disabilities 2.7 times more often than people perceived to have no disability.
Still, they discovered contraband or evidence at a lower rate during stops and searches of people with disabilities.
Officers used force against individuals perceived to have mental health disabilities at 5.2 times the rate at which they used force against individuals they perceived to have no disabilities.
The data show that Black and Hispanic/Latinx individuals are asked for consent to search at higher rates than white individuals.
Officers searched Black, Hispanic/Latinx, and multiracial individuals at higher rates for consent-only searches than all other racial/ethnic groups.
These consent-only searches resulted in lower rates of discovery of contraband (8.5%, 11.3%, and 13.0%, respectively) than searches of all other racial and ethnic groups.
The reason for the stop was a traffic violation in more than half of the stops where officers conducted a consent-only search (consent being the only reason for the search) of black, Hispanic/Latinx, and Middle Eastern/South Asian individuals.
On the other hand, less than 30% of the consent-only searches of white people happened during traffic stops.
The people who wrote the report said that searches based on consent alone lead to fewer discoveries than searches based on reasonable suspicion or probable cause.
With consent-only searches, the rate of finding something was 9.2 percentage points lower for Black people than for white people.
“Given the disparities in the data on consent searches, the board questions whether consent searches are truly voluntary,” the authors wrote.
While the data show that most people consent to a search when asked by an officer, research from the report reflects that this “consent” is not necessarily voluntary because of the inherent power inequality between a law enforcement officer and a member of the public.
The research shows that this natural power imbalance is evident in vulnerable groups, such as people with mental health problems or young people, who may be more likely to give in to authority.
“Indeed,” the authors wrote, “RIPA data reflects that for both people with mental health disabilities and youth, a larger proportion of their stops that began as consensual encounters resulted in searches, as compared to people without mental health disabilities or adults.”
Board members said they carefully looked at the data about people who were stopped and searched because of their status as people under supervision.
The Board’s analyses reveal significant disparities that warrant further examination of law enforcement practices.
For example, officers performed supervision-only searches – where supervision status is the only basis for the search – of individuals perceived as Black at 2.8 times the rate at which they performed supervision-only searches of individuals they perceived as white.
Similarly, officers also performed supervision plus searches – where the officer had some other basis to search the person – of Black individuals at 3.3 times the rate they performed supervision plus searches of white individuals.
The rates of discovering contraband for supervision-only searches were lower for all racial/ethnic groups than white individuals; Black individuals had the most considerable difference in their discovery rate (-11.4 percentage points) compared to whites.
Officers also reported a higher proportion of supervision-only searches during stops for traffic violations (46.9%) than during reasonable suspicion stops (24.6%).
“These were just a few of the many disparities discussed in the report,” board members noted.
“Given the large disparities observed, the Board reviewed efforts by various law enforcement agencies to limit inquiries into supervision status as well as stops and searches on the basis of supervision status.
“The RIPA data further indicates that the practice of conducting supervision-only searches shows racial disparities that result in low yield rates of contraband or evidence.”
Funeral services were held on 12/29/2022 at Memory Chapel of Anderson Ragsdale Mortuary, with a burial following at Mt. Hope Cemetery. Final arrangements were entrusted to Anderson Ragsdale Mortuary.
Mary B. Ivy was born August 1, 1925, in Clarksdale, Mississippi to Johnny and Olivia Coleman. God called her home on December 8, 2022, in San Diego, California at 3 pm with her daughter Barbara at her side.
Mary was a loving wife to Paige W. Ivy, who preceded her in homegoing in 1979. She was the mother to four children: two Sons, Hector and Rodney Ivy, and twin Daughters Deborah Rivers and Barbara Ivy. (Both Hector and Rodney preceded her in homegoing) Mary leaves behind siblings Martha Payne, Arthur Coleman, and Princella Brookshire.
Mary was an active and involved Matriarch unto her family, with four grandchildren: Tracy, Alvis, Damaan, and Ophelia; eleven great-grandchildren, and the rare blessing of creating cherished memories with twelve great-great-grandchildren. Mary loved her family so much, she even took her first great-grandchild, Bowman Paxton, as her own and raised him until his teenage years.
Mary was a homemaker and enjoyed hosting family gatherings and cooked some of the best soul food on this planet. She always kept beautiful fruit and vegetable gardens, to which all of her kids, grandkids, and great-grandkids knew to put their eggshells and banana peels in “for the soil.” Even though Mary was a stay-at-home wife and mother, she loved to take cross-country road trips and spend time fishing in Mission Valley for those “bluegills” she always raved about. She enjoyed sending folks to the “boneyard” in countless rounds of dominos andwas not quiet about it. Mary was in the Order of the Eastern Star and served her community for many, many years. Mary will be greatly missed but never forgotten.
By Dr. John E. Warren, Publisher, San Diego Voice & Viewpoint Newspaper
Perhaps for some it’s going unnoticed, but the State of California now has three Constitutional Officers that are African American: The Secretary of State, Dr. Shirley Weber; the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Dr. Tony Thurmond; and the State Controller, Ms. Malia Cohen. These are very significant milestones for a state with an African American population of just over 6 percent. In addition to these three, let us not forget that the Vice President of the United States is a Californian and part African American. These individuals remind us of what we can accomplish if we stay engaged and persevere. The time of preparation for future electoral victories is now and not weeks before the next election.
Here in San Diego, we have a Black Superintendent of the San Diego Unified School District, but that is not enough with one African American School Board member most of us rarely if ever, hear from. Please understand that while it is not right to expect favorite treatment from elected officials who look like us, neither should they be afraid to help their own just as they do everyone else. Let us not forget that “All skin is not kin”. It will take the building of coalitions beyond skin color to achieve our goals, but just as the people cited here have done to reach their offices, so can the rest of us if we put our minds to it and move beyond instant gratification. Our issues are not at Burger King and we can’t always “have it our way,” but we can stay involved and engaged beyond our personal interest. Then, there will be more of us to “salute”. Let’s rock with this new year and new opportunities to make meaningful change.
Aneth Naranjo, 23, is originally from Ecuador. She migrated to the city when she was 7 years old. Once she was settled in Brooklyn, she ended up attending primarily white schools near Manhattan Beach. She said it was next to impossible to find books about her culture in the classroom or school library for a long time, so she didn’t think about her indigenous heritage growing up. Most of her teachers made her feel like she wasn’t a part of the classroom.
“It was really a shock of different cultures. I think that not knowing the language and not knowing how things worked and the lack of adequate resources meant I would often feel isolated in school settings,” said Naranjo.
Research shows that major publishing companies that produce content and books on English Language Arts curricula in public schools across the country lack racial diversity, and that the vast majority of authors were white with a handful of Native American, Latino and Black authors.
Not knowing the language and not knowing how things worked and the lack of adequate resources meant I would often feel isolated in school settings.
ANETH NARANJO
The NYU Metropolitan Center Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools (Metro Center) analyzed the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, McGraw Hill and Savvas Learning Company (formerly known as Pearson) publishing companies. Each has their own prepared standardized curriculum: McGraw Hill’s “Wonders,” Savvas’ “myView” and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s “Into Reading.” Using a culturally responsive scorecard, which Naranjo participated in, NYU in partnership with NYC Coalition for Educational Justice (CEJ) and a team of public school parents, students and educators analyzed three of the nation’s most widely used elementary school ELA curriculum.
Flor Khan, a lead researcher on the team, said that the push to study reading list diversity preceded the “boogeyman” that is Critical Race Theory (CRT), an examination of civil-rights and racial justice activists in classes that many have used as an excuse to whitewash curriculum. A backlash against CRT has seemingly given way to a rise in banned books from Black and LGBTQIA+ authors, even ones that mention the Holocaust, in some states in 2022.
CEJ’s first report, “Diversity City, White Curriculum,” was published in 2020 and looked specifically at New York City public school reading lists and curriculum. The report showed that there was a “massive overrepresentation” of white authors and characters in pre-K and K through 3-grade programs. Of the 1,205 books CEJ analyzed, 1,003 books were by white authors with white students representing 15% of the city’s student population at the time. Their numbers indicated that it was possible for about 200,000 Latinx, 130,000 Black, and 80,000 Asian children in the city’s public elementary schools to “graduate 5th grade almost never having read a book by an author of their cultural background.”
Of the 1,205 books CEJ analyzed, 1,003 books were by white authors with white students representing 15% of the city’s student population at the time.
Khan and the team looked at content, authorship, book covers, language, curricula, narratives and reinforced stereotypes. The community research team at NYU found that the books and curriculum analyzed more recently were “culturally destructive” with “superficial visual representations to signify diversity, especially skin tone and bodily presentation, without including meaningful cultural context, practices or traditions.” They found that the language used often “demeaned and dehumanized” Black, Indigenous and characters of color, LGBTQIA+ students, and students with disabilities, while encouraging empathy and connection with white characters.
Khan noted books, such as “I Like Myself” by a white author with a white illustrator drawing and narrating a young Black girl’s story about identity and self-esteem, can be skewed. On one page, the girl with “cartoonish” hair and features interacts with a police officer that’s trying to scare her. Khan said that these “deficit” depictions don’t always uplift or empower cultural identities.
“A lot of these publishing houses are not going to go deep and hire BIPOC people to write stories,” said Khan. “They’re just going to go with representation as a band aid approach and be like the cover has a Black student on it and we can say we did our job.”
A lot of these publishing houses are not going to go deep and hire BIPOC people to write stories. They’re just going to go with representation as a band aid approach and be like the cover has a Black student on it and we can say we did our job.
FLOR KHAN
Naranjo struggled with feelings of “invisibility” and “survival” in her school experience as an immigrant, a feeling she said was transformed when she joined a Spanish club her freshman year of high school. “She was my first Latinx teacher. She was also my first Ecuadorian teacher,” said Naranjo. “Sometimes I wouldn’t really speak in her class, but just walking into her class I would feel a sense of safety and comfort that I wouldn’t feel in the rest of the school building. Just having that representation and knowing that someone understands where I’m coming from.”
Her Spanish teacher as well as several others in the club were from Ecuador, and she took pride in teaching about the country’s history of liberation. By the time of Naranjo’s junior year, she was more involved in social and educational justice causes, becoming a young activist.
“You don’t stop and think about how important it is if you’re someone who had your history always accessible to you,” said Naranjo. “Not being able to see yourself, see and learn about your history really impacts your own development. And I think people are developing as they go to school and learning beliefs, social behaviors and norms to take out into the world.”
Naranjo said that undocumented families and children being bussed up from the border during this migrant crisis in New York City are probably more vulnerable in schools than she was. She remembers her immigrant peers being referred to as “unmotivated” or “lazy” in school. Khan concurred, saying that representation in books and materials increases engagement and graduation rates because kids can then relate to lessons.
You don’t stop and think about how important it is if you’re someone who had your history always accessible to you.
ANETH NARANJO
Natasha Capers of CEJ said that these children’s stories often otherize cultures that aren’t American or eurocentric. Capers feels like nationally curriculum companies are trying to “homogenize” education since the largest funders are from conservatives in Texas. Interestingly enough, said Capers, a school district within a city and state can exercise some control over what’s available in classrooms but teachers can ultimately do their own thing or develop their own curriculum at times.
“We believe that reading stories by a culturally and ethnically diverse set of authors is critical in helping all of us understand the struggles, triumphs and everyday lived experiences of our neighbors,” said Nicole Brownstein of the NYC Department of Education (DOE). “We have already begun to train our educators in how to integrate culturally responsive books and materials into their classrooms while diversifying school libraries and ensuring that students have books that reflect their identities.”
The DOE said that educators are empowered to select materials that best represent the diverse voices in their classrooms. Schools are not limited to purchasing books through major suppliers and have access to “Hidden Voices” curricular resources, which promotes LGBTQ and Asian American and Pacific Islander cultures this school year, said the DOE.
The DOE also said they have announced resources for Black Studies, Latinx, Middle Eastern and North African, and resources for people impacted by the Americans with Disabilities Act will be developed in the coming years.
NEW YORK (AP) — It was small, as Washington celebrations go — two senior Biden administration advisers gathered with program participants near the White House on a Thursday afternoon in December to mark the end of a little-known initiative with a budget of less than $8 million.
The impact of The Community Violence Intervention Collaborative (CVIC), though, may yet be larger, both in the fight to slow the growth of gun violence and in the way philanthropy and government work together. The Biden administration used CVIC to get public funding to fight gun violence to 50 grassroots organizations that would normally be too small to get federal funding directly, as well as training and other support for 18 months to prepare them to receive even more funding.
It’s an effort some participants applauded, while others argued the president could have backed it more forcefully.
There was a feeling of momentum at the CVIC celebration, said Nancy Fishman, director at the Schusterman Family Philanthropies, toward what she and other advocates hope is the beginning of a shift in governmental approaches public safety. And it went beyond the attendance of nonprofit leaders, whose workers often go without recognition or pay, in a “rarefied space with others being celebrated,” she said.
Daamin X Durden, executive director of the Newark Community Street Team, called it surreal “to be with one another, to hear the testimony and the journey experience and just to share that camaraderie and fidelity for one another.”
On top of that, each of the 50 community violence interruption organizations at the celebration in the office building across from the White House also received $20,000, as a final “mini-grant,” which Durden said was much appreciated because it came with few strings attached.
A nonprofit, Hyphen, coordinated the initiative, which included peer exchanges, training and mentorship, provided by five national nonprofits.
Aqeela Sherrills, the advisor for the initiative at Hyphen, thinks many more officials and communities now understand violence interruption is a compliment to policing, not a strategy that is anti-police.
“We’re not expecting our cops will be everything, to be teachers, lawyers, therapists and counselors,” he said.
President Joe Biden announced the initiative in June 2021 shortly after the one year anniversary of George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police. During the second summer of the pandemic, hundreds were being shot daily, as the jump in gun homicides that started in 2020 across the country continued.
As one piece of the administration’s response, Biden urged local governments to use coronavirus relief funds to strengthen public safety through investments in police as well as community-based programs.
CVIC was another part of this public safety plan aimed to prepare grassroots groups to be accept more public funding by strengthening their infrastructure and sharing best practices to design programs.
“The theory of change for this collaborative was to focus on community groups that were the hardest to reach, that were doing incredible work locally and had very little support,” said Fatimah Loren Dreier, who leads the Health Alliance for Violence Intervention, one of the organizations providing training.
Decades of research has documented that small groups of people drive a disproportionate amount of gun violence and homicides in any given community. Violence interruption programs seek to identify those people, with some working out of hospitals, others offering a carrot-and-stick approach along with the police, while others provide cognitive behavior therapy and mentoring.
If people agree to participate, the programs often also provide economic aid like paying for food or rent and connecting them to job trainings or other skills development — interventions that reveal the close connection between poverty and violence.
Measured in terms of funds delivered to the grassroots organizations, the collaborative’s record is mixed. Six of the cities participating have so far not reported that they plan to spend coronavirus relief funds on violence interruption as of June, according to an academic analysis of Treasury Department data.
Community violence interruption programs could be funded by about $350 billion included in the American Rescue Plan available for states, cities and municipalities to use for a broad range of programs, as well as another $120 billion in aid for schools.
Alex Johnson, of the California Wellness Foundation, which funded early models of violence interruption in the 1990s, said many officials who control local budgets still do not understand the value of the approach.
Four cities, including Newark, along with several of the grassroots organizations, recently won grants from the Department of Justice.
Amanda Kass, of DePaul University, and Philip Rocco, of Marquette University, have been studying the use of coronavirus relief funds with support from The Joyce Foundation. They warn that numerous factors make it difficult to track spending, especially since municipalities have until 2026 to finalize their plans.
So far, Kass and Rocco found participating cities allocated $71.7 million toward violence interruption programs — less than 1% of the $7.8 billion in coronavirus relief funds available. Their study excluded participating counties, Washington, D.C., and Rapid City, South Dakota.
Some CVIC participants said they expected more money to come to them through the initiative. Dujuan Kennedy, who leads the violence interruption work for FORCE Detroit, felt Biden wasn’t sincere in his support.
“It may be a talking point for him. It may be a campaign, but for us, it’s our little brothers, our sons, our daughters, our babies,” he said. “People are really dying out here.”
In the summer, Pastor Mike McBride, the leader of the nonprofit Live Free USA, who has advocated for violence interruption for two decades, invited Kennedy and others to attend the signing ceremony at the White House for the gun safety legislation that helped states put in place “red flag” laws and included $250 million in funds for violence interruption. The U.S. Secret Service turned Kennedy away at the gates, along with several others, he thinks because of his manslaughter conviction. A U.S. Secret Service spokesperson said Kennedy and others, did not “meet federal security entrance requirements” and that the decision was not made by the White House.
“My issue with that is: How can you acknowledge us and say we’re responsible enough to curb violence, but you’re allowing our records to prevent us from standing on your front grass?” Kennedy said.
Kennedy doesn’t want an apology but instead, a pathway to redemption for people like him who are saving lives in their community and have made amends with the loved ones of the people they harmed or killed.
Archana Sahgal, president of Hyphen, said the White House gathering in December proved there is no space between the administration’s words and actions and said she expects funding for violence interruption to increase as a result of the initiative.
Julie Rodriguez, a senior advisor to Biden who has championed the collaborative, was not available to be interviewed and did not respond to a request for comment.
Nina Revoyr, who leads the Ballmer Group’s work in Los Angeles, believes the White House has conferred a new level of credibility and legitimacy on violence interruption work. That along with George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police and the suffering and anger caused by the pandemic, has created a moment where both foundations and governments are more open to investing in violence interruption.
“It’s not that the work hasn’t existed,” Revoyr said. “What has shifted is the moment in time.”
Research indicates that inequity for students of color, students from low-income backgrounds and students with disabilities has led to disparities in special education enrollment.
The National Center for Learning Disabilities has studied the overrepresentation of Black students in special education programs that relates to identification, placement and discipline.
They concluded that Black children in special education are often subjected to harsher discipline than others, labeled as emotionally disturbed, experience teacher’s bias, and if disabled, are more likely to be restrained and excluded from general education classrooms.
Black students have been overrepresented in special education in the U.S. since the Office of Civil Rights first started to sample school districts in 1968.
NYC Coalition for Educational Justice Director Natasha Capers added that older Black and brown students could be misclassified, due to behavior or environmental factors, into special education because it’s assumed “something has to be wrong with them.” Capers posited that contributes to why there are such high numbers of these kids represented in these programs.
The center reported that Black students have been overrepresented in special education in the U.S. since the Office of Civil Rights first started to sample school districts in 1968.
Mayor Eric Adams, the Department of Education (DOE) and Chancellor David Banks recently announced an expansion of early childhood education special-education seats across the five boroughs. Adams and Banks have similarly spoken about dyslexia, reading and learning disabilities as well these programs being underfunded.
“I know from personal experience what it’s like not to have had the support I needed to learn and thrive as a child. For far too long, our young students living with disabilities have struggled in a system that hasn’t been fully able to meet them where they are,” said Adams in a statement.
Our work is to strike the balance between getting services to students who need them while ensuring that no one ends up in a classroom that does not support them in the way that they need.
NICOLE BROWNSTEIN, DIRECTOR OF MEDIA RELATIONS AT THE DOE
Early childhood special education seats were usually limited and teachers were paid less than their general education teachers, said the Mayor’s Office. By early next year, the mayor will add a total of 800 new seats under a $130 million investment over two years.
“Our goal is for all of our students to have the opportunity to learn in the most enriching and inclusive environment possible, demonstrated by our recent early childhood special education expansion,” said Director of Media Relations at the DOE Nicole Brownstein. “Our work is to strike the balance between getting services to students who need them while ensuring that no one ends up in a classroom that does not support them in the way that they need.”
Brownstein said that the DOE acknowledges that there are inequities in the special education process they are actively working to address. The DOE is focusing on professional development on anti-racism and implicit bias training, adopting culturally responsive assessment practices, ensuring that psychologists have access to standardized tools that have been normed over a diverse group, and implementing new tools that allow clinicians to analyze data in an unbiased way.
Special education in the city is broken down into parts: early intervention constitutes infants and toddlers ages 0-3-years-old, early preschool is ages 3-5-years-old, and then “school aged” is K-12.
Randi Levine, policy director for Advocates for Children of New York, said that based on the data, Black students disproportionately rank in high numbers in “school aged” special education classes compared to other races while simultaneously missing out on critical access to early intervention and preschool special education when needed.
“In preschool there’s a different situation relative to overall enrollment, children of color are underrepresented among preschoolers receiving special education services while white children are overrepresented,” said Levine.
1,222 students were waiting for a preschool special education seat in a classroom, the shortage of seats being especially acute in the Bronx and southern Queens.
Levine said there certainly is a “worry” that Black and brown children that aren’t in early special education will need more intensive services later on in school, but there isn’t an official casualty as to why the inverse happens in preschool.
In a report conducted by Advocates for Children, researchers found that in the 2019-20 school year, 1,222 students were waiting for a preschool special education seat in a classroom, the shortage of seats being especially acute in the Bronx and southern Queens.
“I’m super happy that these seats are expanding. People have been saying that the lack of preschool special education seats were a problem since the announcement that there was going to be universal pre-K,” said Capers.
Levine said that going into the COVID pandemic in 2020, school closures and online learning were very hard on special education students and those with Individualized Education Program (IEPs). She appreciates the commitment to the “legal and moral obligation” the city has taken on in expanding the early education seats, and notes how important it is to identify young children in need of special education services as early as possible.
“Early childhood special education is foundational to equitable, high quality public education in our city, and I’m encouraged to see it expanded with more seats and more providers,” said Public Advocate Jumaane Williams in a statement. “Children with disabilities deserve all the same opportunities to thrive in New York City schools, and this announcement is an essential step forwards for accessibility, inclusion, and educational equity. Quality early childhood education has an outsized impact on young people throughout their lives, and I’m glad to see the City Council and Adams administration heeding the calls of parents, providers, and advocates by funding these invaluable programs and services.”
Ariama C. Long is a Report for America corps member and writes about politics for the Amsterdam News.
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