Author: vanessa mahmoud

psychotherapist, author

DEPRESSION: One Black Man’s Story – Wellness & Empowerment – EBONY

by vanessa mahmoud, posted in African American Psychology, Challenges and Wounds, Individual Therapy, Writing our Stories

DEPRESSION: One Black Man’s Story – Wellness & Empowerment – EBONY. When my grades started dropping senior year of high school, I didn’t think much of it. School had never held much interest to me and I had always done just enough to “get by” anyway, so not being able to focus in Physics or AP Government wasn’t a big deal to me. And I never had many true friends, just a bunch of associates who came in out and of my life, so the fact that I closed myself off from them didn’t register as a warning sign. The sleeping in late, the not eating, the constant worrying about things that hadn’t happened…I thought I was just being my normal, neurotic self.

But staring in the mirror, wondering how much blood there would be if I bashed my head against it, wasn’t normal. Sitting at the dinner table thinking about taking the knife I’m using to cut my steak to slit my wrists, wasn’t normal. Something was missing.

I had thought about suicide before, but never in any real way. It was always a “what if?” Now, it had become a “maybe I should…” I learned firsthand what the true meaning of the word “depression” was.

Something was missing, but I had no idea what.

I “got over” it though. I moved past it. I never spoke a word of it to anyone. I was “better.”

Two years later, I wasn’t just “better”, I thought I was completely “cured.” I spent the summer in Atlanta working a well-paying internship, going to concerts every week, meeting some of my heroes, just enjoying life.

Then I bought the Gnarls Barkley album, St. Elsewhere. I was taken aback. I realized I wasn’t too far removed from the space Cee-Lo was singing from. The isolation, the helplessness, the feeling of being trapped inside your own mind and it being locked from the outside and there is no one around to pick the key up from under the welcome mat to let you out…these feelings were all too familiar. I never spoke a word of it to anyone. No matter. Cee-Lo was doing that for me.

There’s a song toward the middle of the album called “Just a Thought” that is a hauntingly accurate description of what goes through a person’s mind while suffering from severe depression. Each verse ends with the phrase “…and I tried, everything but suicide, but it crossed my mind.” I could only nod silently in agreement as he belted out the most secret of my thoughts for the whole world to hear.

No Shame Day: My Thoughts on Stigma, My Story

by vanessa mahmoud, posted in African American Psychology, Writing our Stories

An honest and brave account of personal struggles with mental illness……

addyeB's avatarButterfly Confessions

When I jumped on the Twitter this morning, I saw a tweet with a link to a blog  on Huffington Post titled, “No Shame Day: Working to Eradicate Mental Illness Stigma in the Black Community.”

After reading it, I clicked on the #NoShame hashtag and saw tweet after tweet from African-Americans detailing their struggles with mental illness and sharing how the stigma within the Black community regarding mental illness has had an impact on them.

I went to The Siwe Project website and cried reading story after story of other Black men & women who have had to suffer in silence because of how crippling and degrading the stigma is. Suffering from and living with a mental illness is difficult enough-having to battle and fight against stigma in addition to it makes it excruciating. It chokes out hope, leaving a person feeling alone, isolated, and unable to use their voice…

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Black women are among country’s most religious groups – The Washington Post

by vanessa mahmoud, posted in African American Psychology, Spirituality

Black women are among country’s most religious groups – The Washington Post.

Crabs in a Barrel Syndrome

by vanessa mahmoud, posted in African American Psychology

25 Surprising Facts about Psychology | Psychology Today – StumbleUpon.

Crabs in a Barrel Syndrome: Will it ever end?

Don’t crawl over and compete; instead, celebrate each other.
Published on March 21, 2011 by Melody T. McCloud, M.D. in Black Women’s Health and Happiness

Haters. Do you know some people who just can’t celebrate when someone else is doing a good thing? People who don’t want to see anyone else be celebrated for their good deeds, or even for just looking good? Well, here’s a “McCloudism” from my book, Living Well: “When you do your thing, remember…you will have “haters”; but never let people get you off track. Sometimes even family members will become jealous and try to derail your efforts and destroy your spirit. But no matter what obstacles come against you, you can make it if you treat people right, stay focused on your goal and stay true to yourself and your God.”

On a social network board (which I’m sure I’ll exit this summer), I recently saw a post from a new author in which she was asking about “haters.” Apparently she had received some negativity about her upcoming book, or perhaps other things she’s doing or saying. Even though I’ve never met the woman personally, we have been in regular communication because the theme of her book, Black Woman Redefined is, in many ways, similar to that of mine, Living Well, Despite Catchin’ Hell; (the “hell” is what I call “psycho-social stressors,” some, listed below).

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Each of our books addresses the negative media images of Black women in our society and the social challenges many Black women face, some due to their own deeds.

As a physician (an obstetrician-gynecologist), I add to that conversation by presenting how such negative imagery, low marriage statistics, social rejection, often disrespect, and the educational/work inequity with many Black men; plus already-present medical challenges, including the risk of HIV/AIDS, “down-low” men, and more can (and mostly does) have a negative effect on our physical health. In Nelson’s book, she reportedly features Black women whose names you know from politics and the media; in mine, I give voice and visibility to some highly-accomplished sisters of whom you may not have heard. In her first email reply to me last fall, she expressed our “synergy”; I agreed, and together we celebrate.

When I first joined that same social network, I asked another Black female physician (and author) who does national TV segments if she’d be kind enough to simply post word of my new book on her page, for it is the first Black women’s health book written by a physician in eight years, and no one else really gives voice to Black women’s specific health concerns and challenges. Plus, I have great endorsements, from the medical, psychological, educational and celebrity world (the foreword is by Pauletta Washington, the beautiful wife of Academy Award winner, Denzel Washington). My colleague’s reply: “Congratulations on your book.” Poof. That was it.

Some people just don’t want to see others succeed, or they feel threatened if a little light shines on someone else, even for a minute. This has been a well-known “syndrome” in the Black community, but is said to exist in lawyers, even preachers. It may in fact, just be human nature. But it doesn’t have to be. As I mention in Living Well, do your thing; do it well. Your light will shine, and we can celebrate you. When it’s someone else’s turn, celebrate them. This is America; there is plenty room at life’s table for everyone to get their slice. As people, as a race, as women…we don’t have to compete, we can complement…and ain’t that a good thing?

April is National Poetry Month, check out some word. It is also National Minority Health Month. Be Healthy, Be Blessed…and make sure you are Living Well !

Copyright © 2011 Dr. Melody T. McCloud

Souls Journal : Jihadis in the Hood

by vanessa mahmoud, posted in African American Psychology

Souls Journal – StumbleUpon.

Jihadis in the Hood

Race, Urban Islam and the War on Terror

by Hishaam Aidi
published in MER224

In his classic novel Mumbo Jumbo, Ishmael Reed satirizes white America’s age-old anxiety about the “infectiousness” of black culture with “Jus Grew,” an indefinable, irresistible carrier of “soul” and “blackness” that spreads like a virus contaminating everyone in its wake from New Orleans to New York. Reed suggests that the source of the Jus Grew scourge is a sacred text, which is finally located and destroyed by Abdul Sufi Hamid, “the Brother on the Street.” In a turn of events reminiscent of Reed’s storyline, commentators are advancing theories warning of a dangerous epidemic spreading through our inner cities today, infecting misguided, disaffected minority youth and turning them into anti-American terrorists. This time, though, the pathogen is Islam, more specifically an insidious mix of radical Islam and black militancy.

Since the capture of John Walker Lindh, the Marin County “black nationalist”-turned-Taliban, (1) and the arrest of would-be terrorist José Padilla, a Brooklyn-born Puerto Rican ex-gang member who encountered Islam while in prison, terrorism experts and columnists have been warning of the “Islamic threat” in the American underclass, and alerting the public that the ghetto and the prison system could very well supply a fifth column to Osama bin Laden and his ilk. Writing in The Daily News, black social critic Stanley Crouch reminded us that in 1986, the powerful Chicago street gang al-Rukn — known in the 1970s as the Blackstone Rangers — was arrested en masse for receiving $2.5 million from Libyan strongman Muammar Qaddafi to commit terrorist acts in the US. “We have to realize there is another theater in this unprecedented war, one headquartered in our jails and prisons,” Crouch cautioned.

Chuck Colson of the evangelical American Christian Mission, which ministers to inmates around the country, penned a widely circulated article in the Wall Street Journal charging that “al-Qaeda training manuals specifically identify America’s prisoners as candidates for conversion because they may be ‘disenchanted with their country’s policies’… As US citizens, they will combine a desire for ‘payback’ with an ability to blend easily into American culture.” Moreover, he wrote, “Saudi money has been funneled into the American Muslim Foundation, which supports prison programs,” reiterating that America’s “alienated, disenfranchised people are prime targets for radical Islamists who preach a religion of violence, of overcoming oppression by jihad.” (2)

Since September 11, more than a few American-born black and Latino jihadis have indeed been discovered behind enemy lines. Before Padilla (Abdallah al-Muhajir), there was Aqil, the troubled Mexican-American youth from San Diego found in an Afghan training camp fraternizing with one of the men accused of killing journalist Daniel Pearl. Aqil, now in custody, is writing a memoir called My Jihad. In February, the New York Times ran a story about Hiram Torres, a Puerto Rican whose name was found in a bombed-out house in Kabul, on a list of recruits to the Pakistani group Harkat al-Mujahedeen, which has ties to al-Qaeda. Torres, also known as Mohamed Salman, graduated first in his New Jersey high school class and briefly attended Yale, before dropping out and heading to Pakistan in 1998. He has not been heard from since. A June edition of US News and World Report mentions a group of African-Americans, their whereabouts currently unknown, who studied at a school closely linked to the Kashmiri militia, Lashkar-e Taiba. L’Houssaine Kerchtou, an Algerian government witness, claims to have seen “some black Americans” training at al-Qaeda bases in Sudan and Pakistan.

Earlier this year, the movie Kandahar caused an uproar in the American intelligence community because the African-American actor who played a doctor was American fugitive David Belfield. Belfield, who converted to Islam at Howard University in 1970, is wanted for the 1980 murder of Iranian dissident Ali Akbar Tabatabai in Washington. Belfield has lived in Tehran since 1980 and goes by the name of Hassan Tantai. (3) The two most notorious accused terrorists now in US custody are black Europeans, French-Moroccan Zacarias Moussaoui and the English-Jamaican shoe bomber Richard Reid, who were radicalized in the same mosque in the London ghetto of Brixton. Moussaoui’s ubiquitous mug shot in orange prison garb, looking like any American inner-city youth with his shaved head and goatee, has intrigued many and unnerved some. “My first thought when I saw his photograph was that I wished he looked more Arabic and less black,” wrote Sheryl McCarthy in Newsday. “All African-Americans need is for the first guy to be tried on terrorism charges stemming from this tragedy to look like one of our own.”

But assessments of an “Islamic threat” in the American ghetto are sensational and ahistorical. As campaigns are introduced to stem the “Islamic tide,” there has been little probing of why alienated black and Latino youth might gravitate towards Islamism. There has been no commentary comparable to what British race theorist Paul Gilroy wrote about Richard Reid and the group of Britons held at Guantanamo Bay: “The story of black European involvement in these geopolitical currents is disturbingly connected to the deeper history of immigration and race politics.” Reid, in particular, “manifest[s] the uncomfortable truth that British multiculturalism has failed.” (4)

For over a century, African-American thinkers — Muslim and non-Muslim — have attempted to harness the black struggle to global Islam, while leaders in the Islamic world have tried to yoke their political causes to African-American liberation. Islamism, in the US context, has come to refer to differing ideologies adopted by Muslim groups to galvanize social movements for “Islamic” political ends — the Nation of Islam’s “buy black” campaigns and election boycotts or Harlem’s Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood lobbying for benefits and cultural and political rights from the state. Much more rarely, it has included the jihadi strain of Islamism, embraced by foreign-based or foreign-funded Islamist groups (such as al-Rukn) attempting to gain American recruits for armed struggles against “infidel” governments at home and abroad. The rise of Islam and Islamism in American inner cities can be explained as a product of immigration and racial politics, deindustrialization and state withdrawal, and the interwoven cultural forces of black nationalism, Islamism and hip-hop that appeal strongly to disenfanchised black, Latino, Arab and South Asian youth.

Perceived racism may impact black Americans’ mental health

by vanessa mahmoud, posted in African American Psychology, Challenges and Wounds, Health Disparities, Racial Abuse

Perceived racism may impact black Americans’ mental health

November 16, 2011 in Psychology & Psychiatry

For black American adults, perceived racism may cause mental health symptoms similar to trauma and could lead to some physical health disparities between blacks and other populations in the United States, according to a new study published by the American Psychological Association.

 

While previous studies have found links between racism and mental health, this is the first meta-analysis on the subject focusing exclusively on black American adults, according to the study published online in APA’s Journal of Counseling Psychology.

“We focused on black American adults because this is a population that has reported, on average, more incidents of racism than other racial minority groups and because of the potential links between racism and not only mental health, but physical health as well,” said lead author Alex Pieterse, PhD, of the University at Albany, State University of New York.

Researchers examined 66 studies comprising 18,140 black adults in the United States. To be included in the analysis, a study must have been published in a peer-reviewed journal or dissertation between 1996 and 2011; include a specific analysis of mental health indicators associated with racism; and focus specifically on black American adults in the United States.

Black Americans’ psychological responses to racism are very similar to common responses to trauma, such as somatization, which is psychological distress expressed as physical pain; interpersonal sensitivity; and anxiety, according to the study. Individuals who said they experienced more and very stressful racism were more likely to report mental distress, the authors said.

While the researchers did not collect data on the impacts on physical health, they cite other studies to point out that perceived racism may also affect black Americans’ physical health.

“The relationship between perceived racism and self-reported depression and anxiety is quite robust, providing a reminder that experiences of racism may play an important role in the health disparities phenomenon,” Pieterse said. “For example, African-Americans have higher rates of hypertension, a serious condition that has been associated with stress and depression.”

The authors recommended that therapists assess racism experiences as part of standard procedure when treating black Americans, and that future studies focus on how discrimination is perceived in specific settings, such as work, online or in school.

More information: Full text of the article is available at http://www.apa.org … pieterse.pdf

Provided by American Psychological Association search and more info website

 

via Perceived racism may impact black Americans’ mental health.

Is Extreme Racism a Mental Illness?: Yes

by vanessa mahmoud, posted in African American Psychology, Petty Tyrants, Racial Abuse

Yes.

It can be a delusional symptom of psychotic disorders

Alvin F Poussaint, Professor of psychiatry1

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The American Psychiatric Association has never officially recognized extreme racism (as opposed to ordinary prejudice) as a mental health problem, although the issue was raised more than 30 years ago. After several racist killings in the civil rights era, a group of black psychiatrists sought to have extreme bigotry classified as a mental disorder. The association’s officials rejected the recommendation, arguing that because so many Americans are racist, even extreme racism in this country is normative—a cultural problem rather than an indication of psychopathology.

The psychiatric profession’s primary index for diagnosing psychiatric symptoms, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), does not include racism, prejudice, or bigotry in its text or index.1 Therefore, there is currently no support for including extreme racism under any diagnostic category. This leads psychiatrists to think that it cannot and should not be treated in their patients.

To continue perceiving extreme racism as normative and not pathologic is to lend it legitimacy. Clearly, anyone who scapegoats a whole group of people and seeks to eliminate them to resolve his or her internal conflicts meets criteria for a delusional disorder, a major psychiatric illness.

Extreme racists’ violence should be considered in the context of behavior described by Allport in The Nature of Prejudice.2 Allport’s 5-point scale categorizes increasingly dangerous acts. It begins with verbal expression of antagonism, progresses to avoidance of members of disliked groups, then to active discrimination against them, to physical attack, and finally to extermination (lynchings, massacres, genocide). That fifth point on the scale, the acting out of extermination fantasies, is readily classifiable as delusional behavior.

More recently, Sullaway and Dunbar used a prejudice rating scale to assess and describe levels of prejudice.3 They found associations between highly prejudiced people and other indicators of psychopathology. The subtype at the extreme end of their scale is a paranoid/delusional prejudice disorder.

Using the DSM’s structure of diagnostic criteria for delusional disorder,4(p329) I suggest the following subtype:

Prejudice type: A delusion whose theme is that a group of individuals, who share a defining characteristic, in one’s environment have a particular and unusual significance. These delusions are usually of a negative or pejorative nature, but also may be grandiose in content. When these delusions are extreme, the person may act out by attempting to harm, and even murder, members of the despised group(s).

Extreme racist delusions can also occur as a major symptom in other psychotic disorders, such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Persons suffering delusions usually have serious social dysfunction that impairs their ability to work with others and maintain employment.

As a clinical psychiatrist, I have treated several patients who projected their own unacceptable behavior and fears onto ethnic minorities, scapegoating them for society’s problems. Their strong racist feelings, which were tied to fixed belief systems impervious to reality checks, were symptoms of serious mental dysfunction. When these patients became more aware of their own problems, they grew less paranoid—and less prejudiced.

It is time for the American Psychiatric Association to designate extreme racism as a mental health problem by recognizing it as a delusional psychotic symptom. Persons afflicted with such psychopathology represent an immediate danger to themselves and others. Clinicians need guidelines for recognizing delusional racism in all its forms so that they can provide appropriate treatment. Otherwise, extreme delusional racists will continue to fall through the cracks of the mental health system, and we can expect more of them to explode and act out their deadly delusions.

Figure 1

Figure 1

Extreme racism indicates psychopathology

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Notes

Competing interests: None declared

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References

1. American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 4th edition. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press; 2000.

2. Allport G. The Nature of Prejudice. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley; 1954.

3. Sullaway M, Dunbar E. Clinical manifestations of prejudice in psychotherapy: toward a strategy of assessment and treatment. Clin Psychol Sci Pract 1996;3: 296-309.

4. American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic criteria for 297.1 delusional disorder. In: DSM-IV-TR: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition, Text Revision. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press; 2000.

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via Is Extreme Racism a Mental Illness?: Yes.

Researchers Puzzled by Rising Death Rates for African American Women in Childbirth – Inland Valley News

by vanessa mahmoud, posted in Challenges and Wounds, Cultural Issues, Health Disparities

Researchers Puzzled by Rising Death Rates for African American Women in Childbirth

June 20, 2012 | Filed under: Health | Posted by: Admin

Community African American Women in Childbirth 300×224 Researchers Puzzled by Rising Death Rates for African American Women in Childbirth

By Marjorie Valbrun

Washington, DC–High rates of obesity, high blood pressure and inadequate prenatal care cause death from childbirth more often for African-Americans in the United States than for whites and other ethnic groups. Worsening this trend are the increasing numbers of cesarean sections nationally. These procedures can result in deadly complications for women dangerously overweight or suffering from hypertension or other ailments.

Nationally, blacks have a four-times greater risk of pregnancy-related death than whites—a rate of 36.1 per 100,000 live births compared with 9.6 for whites and 8.5 for Hispanics, according to a 2008 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Maternal mortality rates have been rising in the United States since the mid-1990s. In 1997, the black maternal mortality rate was 21.5 per 100,000 live births compared with 8.0 for Hispanics and 5.2 for whites, according to the CDC. The rate for other races was 8.8.

By 2007, the black maternal mortality rate had jumped to 28.4, roughly three times the rates among whites and Hispanics at 10.5 and 8.9 respectively. Statistics were not broken out for Asians/Pacific Islanders and Native Americans.

Trends show that black maternal mortality rates are increasing in some parts of the country, and two recent studies highlighting the problem have renewed calls for increased focus on reducing the deaths.

According to the new reports, the pregnancy-related mortality rate in some states rivals that in some developing nations. The problem is particularly acute in New York City, where blacks are nearly eight times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than whites, and in California where pregnant blacks are four times as likely to die from childbirth.

“The magnitude of this black-white gap in maternal mortality is the greatest among all health disparities . . . and that gap is growing. It’s unacceptable,” Michael Lu, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology and public health at UCLA and an expert in racial and socio-economic disparities in maternal and infant health, recently told PBS NewsHour.

The black-white gap also stubbornly persists for a variety of socio-economic reasons, including education and income levels, access to and quality of health care, and lifestyle and diet. Improved health care could reduce the maternal death rate by 40 percent to 50 percent, according to CDC estimates, but medical attention has been focused more often on reducing infant mortality during the past decades.

“When we look at some of the factors associated with maternal mortality, most of the underlying factors tend to be dominant in the African-American community, and it is manifested in the health disparities that affect our population,” says Dr. Kerry M. Lewis, chairman of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Howard University’s College of Medicine and chief of the Division of Maternal-Fetal Medicine.

Lewis, who specializes in high-risk pregnancies, says the mortality rate reflects lack of access to specialized health care that integrates comprehensive skills and technology. Too often, he says, patients are treated by family practitioners, nurse midwives, general obstetricians and gynecologists instead of specialists trained in high-risk pregnancies and medical problems that can cause complications during birth.

via Researchers Puzzled by Rising Death Rates for African American Women in Childbirth – Inland Valley News.

At the Dark End of the Street

by vanessa mahmoud, posted in Books, Challenges and Wounds, Petty Tyrants, Racial Abuse, Writing our Stories
A young survivor of sexual violence at a women...
A young survivor of sexual violence at a women’s and girl’s centre. (Photo credit: Amnesty International)

Revealing Sex Crimes Against Black Women

 

By Jan Gardner

 Before Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of the bus, she had already been fighting for racial equality for more than a decade. She strategized with other activists, organized protests, and in 1948 gave an impassioned speech that led to her election as secretary of the Alabama conference of the NAACP. In that position, she investigated cases of sexual violence and other crimes against blacks, as she had done for the Montgomery chapter of the NAACP.

Her role in defending the rights of black women is eloquently chronicled in the 2010 book, “At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance—a New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power” by Danielle L. McGuire, a history professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan.

In her meticulously researched book, McGuire maintains that in order to fully understand the civil rights movement one must understand the history of sex crimes against black women and how these attacks were used as a weapon against the fight for racial equality. Being able to sit at a lunch counter or vote didn’t mean anything if black women couldn’t walk down the street or ride the bus unmolested.

As McGuire writes, “Between 1940 and 1975, sexual violence and interracial rape became one crucial battleground upon which African Americans sought to destroy white supremacy and gain personal and political autonomy. … If we understand the role rape and sexual violence played in African Americans’ daily lives and within the larger freedom struggle, we have to reinterpret, if not rewrite, the history of the civil rights movement.”

Black Fathers Provide Their Families, Communities Much More than Money | Black Star Journal

by vanessa mahmoud, posted in African American Psychology, Challenges and Wounds, Writing our Stories

Black Fathers Provide Their Families, Communities Much More than Money

June 18, 2012

By Editor

Fb-Button

June 13, 2012

At Atlanta Black Star, we are spending this entire week celebrating, honoring, exploring and uplifting Black Fatherhood by examining it through the lens of 7 themes: Lead, Build, Provide, Care, Protect, Work and Love. This is the third story in the series, looking at all the ways—often beyond money—that black fathers uplift their families by being providers.

Cover Photo

Black men are more than providers of food, clothing and shelter for their families. They have, for decades, been role models for their immediate families and the black community in general. What they often provide is a vision of strength, perseverance and pride.

On the fireplace mantle in the home of Mary Miller sits the picture of Andrew Jackson. Not the seventh President of the United States, but grandfather to the Miller children, Mary, Ron, Shirley and Beverly. Grandpa Jackson’s picture is the largest picture on the mantle, and appropriately so. A small man of stature, he was larger than life. He was a teacher, preacher, single parent, and inventor of two patented items: eyeglasses for cockfights, and a device to keep tractors in a straight line for plowing fields. Born in the 19th Century, some years after the emancipation, Grandpa Jackson was a stern disciplinarian who gave and demanded respect. He lived proudly and fearlessly in the Jim Crow south—emphasis on living fearlessly and Jim Crow south. Grandpa Jackson was the grandfather of my husband, Ron Miller.

The stories that stood out about Grandpa Jackson were not his inventions, per se, but how he lived and how he was an example for the community. It was not uncommon for Grandpa Jackson to direct white delivery and service people to the back door to mirror blacks who were forced to do the same in his lifetime. Grandpa Jackson was a “helluva” man.

Like Grandpa Jackson, there are thousands of stories of good black men that recycle through the black community. Only a few make it to mainstream, but not nearly enough to break the misperceptions and stereotypes.

Ever heard of Phil Jackson? No, not the Lakers coach, but the head of The Black Star Project. He founded the Chicago-based organization in 1996, and has since been relentless about eliminating the academic achievement gap between white students and black and Latino students locally and nationally.

What about Tim King, founder and CEO of Urban Prep Academies, a non-profit organization operating a network of public college-prep boys’ schools in Chicago—most of them predominantly African American—including the nation’s first all male charter high school

via Black Fathers Provide Their Families, Communities Much More than Money | Black Star Journal.

1 Church, 1 Job, 1 Young Black Man Working | Black Star Journal

by vanessa mahmoud, posted in Social Justice

1 Church, 1 Job, 1 Young Black Man Working

July 3, 2012

By Editor

Fb-Button

The Black Star Project Presents…

The 1 CHURCH, 1 JOB, 1 Young Black Man Working Program

In times of economic strain, our whole community suffers from the complications of unemployment. In an effort to develop a new model of community outreach and economic sustainability, The Black«Star Project will soon launch the 1 Church, 1 Job program. It is estimated that inChicago alone there are approximately 10,000 churches. The Black«Star Project will offer the opportunity to participate in this program to as many churches as are willing. During this five-week program, young, jobless African Americans participating will receive a salary of $1000, job training and administrative mentoring throughout, and valuable work experience to draw from in the future.

By the end of the five-week program, all those who participate will gain something valuable. The workers, in addition to the five weeks of steady salary, will develop the skills and knowledge they need to pursue lasting employment. The churches will strengthen their community by keeping young people away from extra-legal forms of income, violence, and joblessness. Businesses will gain cheaper labor, informed workers, and federal recognition. Finally, those governmental bodies offering their support will help combat the problems they’ve been appointed to solve.

via 1 Church, 1 Job, 1 Young Black Man Working | Black Star Journal.

Racism in Schools: Unintentional But No Less Damaging

by vanessa mahmoud, posted in African American Psychology, Cultural Issues, Ethnic Identity

Racism in Schools: Unintentional But No Less Damaging.

Alejandra is the daughter of Mexican immigrants who speak little English and hold down jobs cleaning houses and working in a hotel. Last year, she graduated from a high school in Santa Barbara, Calif., where the student population is roughly half poor Latino and half affluent white.

Their worlds rarely intersect, with most white students taking high-level courses and most Latinos enrolled in the general-ed classes. But during her high school years, Alejandra was the exception.

She was the only Latino student with immigrant parents enrolled in a college-level program known as International Baccalaureate studies. Many of the fellow students came from the Santa Barbara County community of Montecito, one of the wealthiest enclaves in the nation (Oprah Winfrey has a home there). It was often an uncomfortable experience.

Alejandra finished high school with a 3.3 GPA — no small feat given her background and the rigorous program from which she graduated.

Nonetheless, when it came time to talk to her guidance counselor about future plans, the counselor dissuaded Alejandra from pursuing her dream to attend a four-year university. The counselor instead advised her to go to the local community college. Alejandra complied, and today is a student at Santa Barbara City College.

The experience, she said, filled her with self-doubt.

“I thought, maybe I’m not as good as I think I am,” she told Miller-McCune.com.

Battling Subtle Messages
Though racism in the public education system no longer takes the overt form of segregated schools, white students spitting on black students with impunity or National Guardsmen with rifles blocking the entrance to a school, several nonprofit organizations around the country focusing on racial justice in public schools say it’s still ubiquitous.

Although the counselor no doubt had Alejandra’s best interests in mind, the decision to steer her away from a four-year university was a classic example of unintentional racism, said Jarrod Schwartz, executive director of Just Communities Central Coast, a nonprofit based in Santa Barbara and dedicated to dismantling institutional racism in schools. (The group was founded in 2001 as The National Conference for Community and Justice of California’s Central Coast, which in turn had its roots in the venerable National Conference of Christians and Jews.)

“Most of the racism in schools today is not born out of intense hate and does not come from this place of wanting the worst for students of color,” he said. “It’s subtle.”

The organization spends much of its time informing educators about the everyday red flags that may be invisible to them, but glaringly obvious to many minority students and teachers of color.

A well-meaning high school counselor, for instance, may learn the names of all her white students, but barely any of her Latino pupils. A white teacher may call on students of color only for the easy questions. A teacher may embarrass a student of Korean descent by assuming the student knows how to pronounce a word in Vietnamese.

In May 2000, on the 40th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education — the landmark case that ruled segregated schools unconstitutional — the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the state of California that brought the essence of institutionalized racism into sharp focus. Filed on behalf of 100 students in San Francisco, the case was named after Eliezer Williams, then a seventh-grader at Luther Burbank Middle School in San Francisco.

At Williams’ school, the textbooks were so scarce, students could not take them home; they were so old they still did not recognize the collapse of the Soviet Union. At certain times during the school day, there were no bathrooms; attorneys said students had urinated or defecated on themselves for lack of a restroom. The school was infested with vermin.

The suit argued that the state was failing to provide thousands of California students with the basic necessities for a decent education. Most of the students in question were poor minorities. In 2004, the case was settled, with the state setting aside $138 million for improving the textbooks and facilities of underserved student populations across California.

In a paper, Terry Keleher and Tammy Johnson of the Applied Research Center — a racial justice think tank — argued that the Williams case shows that institutionalized racism is alive and well in the 21st century.

“Institutional racism is frequently subtle, unintentional and invisible, but always potent,” they wrote. “Often, institutional racism involves complex and cumulative factors; for example, when many students of color, year after year, do not have access to fully credentialed teachers, high-quality curriculum materials and advanced courses.”  (see rest of article at above link)