"Census projections suggest America may become a minority-majority country by the middle of the century. For America's children, the future is now," Kenneth Johnson, a sociology professor at the University of New Hampshire, told the Associated Press. Johnson researched many of the racial trends in a paper being released Wednesday.

Johnson said that more Hispanic women of prime childbearing age tend to have more children than women of other races.  (Click here to read more.)

A UC San Diego student admitted Friday to hanging a rope noose from a campus library bookcase in an act that triggered more protests at a school already roiled by other recent racially charged incidents.

Angry students responded to the incident by storming and occupying the office of UC San Diego Chancellor Marye Anne Fox. The sit-in continued for about six hours Friday and ended without arrests, and a sympathy protest at UCLA lasted about an hour, officials said.

UC San Diego police confirmed that the student contacted them Friday morning and acknowledged responsibility for placing the noose the night before on a lamp fixture atop a seventh-floor bookcase in the campus' main library. Police did not release the woman's name or race or provide any information about a motive. (Read more)

Franks said slavery “is a crushing mark on America's soul, yet today half of all black children are aborted. Half of all black children are aborted. Far more black children, far more of the African American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by the policies of slavery."

(According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, black women get almost 40 percent of the country’s abortions, even though blacks make up only 13 percent of the population.)

Said Mike Stark: “To be fair, Congressman Franks is as sincere as he is conservative. The issue of life never falls out of first place in his legislative priority list. I don’t believe for one second that he intends to insult anyone; I don’t think he sees the racism (or paternalism) in what he’s saying. Still… This is pretty bad.”

Here’s the video---check out the 6:00 mark:

PLAYBOY: Do black women throw themselves at you?
MAYER: I don't think I open myself to it. My [penis] is sort of like a white supremacist. I've got a Benetton heart and a [expletive] David Duke [penis].

Samuels argues that Mayer’s comments may mirror the unspoken sentiments of some mainstream men in power:

Sadly, even though an initial public outrage had Mayer apologizing via his Twitter account and found him crying on stage during an apology, my guess is Mayer will suffer little for his comments. And the reason is very simple. He clearly said out loud what a large majority of mainstream men in power feel in private. I'm referring to those invisible men in the corner offices with the influence and power to put women in movies, on magazine covers, and television shows. The ones who decide what beauty looks like, how much it weighs, and what age it should be. The ones who, just like John Mayer, have deemed black women as just not good enough.

Mayer apparently suffers from foot-in-mouth syndrome and is known to say stupid, incendiary stuff. That said, unlike Samuels, I don’t think his comments are hurtful, as she later writes. I refuse to give him that much power---so much legitimacy. I know very little about Mayer, other than he’s a clown who prefers to sleep with white women. So what. That’s his preference. No loss here.  

I did used to love his war anthem, “Waiting on the World to Change.” But now that I know there’s a huge gap between the heart of the singer and the message in the song ---I’m no longer interested in that either.

I’m a fan of what Maya Angelou says about knowing people. It goes something like: When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.

Absolutely. To Mayer’s black backup singers, I’d add: Don’t drink the Kool-Aid.

Take a look at Samuels’ commentary here.

Also, check out Kyra Kyles piece on the subject! 

If you’ve chosen, as my family has, to live in a racially diverse neighborhood, the exposure to people of different skin hues is only the beginning. There is no racial utopia; no guarantees that racial harmony or enlightenment will follow. Understanding one another takes work. 

In their book, NurtureShock, authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman acknowledge that discussions about race don’t come easily.  Why? Because often, parents (the authors specify “white parents”) talk in code, using ambiguous language such as “Everyone is equal” or “Under the skin, we’re all the same.”

The reality is that while those comments are nice in their ideal---“everyone should be equal”---everyone is not, and we can point to any number of racial disparities to show this. Authors suggest that glossing over may get us through a sticky moment, but is far too simplistic.

Another mistake that some parents make is assuming children are color-blind or don’t notice racial differences. But that’s not the case. Children do notice and some form conclusions as early as three years old.

Bronson and Merryman write: 
“It is tempting to believe that because their generation is so diverse, today’s children grow up knowing how to get along with people of every race. But numerous studies suggest that this is more of a fantasy than a fact.”

In honor of Black History Month, click here for 5 hints for starting the conversation about race.
Read More at How to raise racist kids

And  Parents Talk About Race From NurtureShock: Book Club Discussions on Talking About Diversity With Children

On May 4, 1961, an integrated group of "Freedom Riders" left Washington D.C. for Louisiana on a Greyhound bus to challenge segregation throughout the Deep South.  After the Freedom Riders’ bus was fire bombed in Alabama—with them inside--- and they nearly were killed, hundreds of other brave Riders put their lives in jeopardy to carry out the mission. I recently met a Freedom Rider who spent the summer of 1961 on a journey that would change the course of his life. Thomas Armstrong III, 68, is a retired transportation contracts manager for the U.S. Postal Service. A 21-year resident of Naperville, Armstrong, who’s black, was arrested on June 23, 1961, when he was a 19-year–old student at Tougaloo College in Jackson, Miss. He has an upcoming memoir, “Just A Foot Soldier.” This is his story:

At Tougaloo, I was a member of the NAACP, SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) and CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) which each had a hand in the Freedom rides. 

The Interstate Commerce Commission had already outlawed segregation in interstate travel but the federal government wasn’t enforcing it. After the bus was firebombed in Alabama, a group of Nashville students continued the ride to Jackson.

We were in Jackson watching intently and praying for the students’ safety. When they arrived at the bus terminal, they were arrested right as they got off the bus.  We knew what jail meant in Mississippi: You went in but there was no guarantee that you’d come out.

When some of the Freedom Riders were released, they came to Tougaloo and asked for support to continue the rides from Jackson to Louisiana. Two of us joined them. It wasn’t a hard decision for me because the night before, the Mississippi governor had appeared on television and went on and on about how happy his ‘niggras’ were and how he had no problems with them. He said it was the outside agitators causing the problems. 

I felt like: ‘Well, what would you say if there were inside agitators?’ The governor made me so angry because having grown up here I knew the condition of blacks in Mississippi. There were hardly any satisfied black people in Mississippi, not if they were sane. 

On June 23, 1961, the two of us went to the Jackson Trailways station with two tickets to New Orleans. About 20 police officers stood outside the depot. About 20 more were inside as we walked into the ‘Whites Only’ waiting room.

The chief of police asked us to leave, saying we were disturbing the peace. I said, ’How?’ Other white people were there and on that particular day, they actually looked friendly. Everybody was smiling at us except the police.  But he had to uphold the status quo. Not the law, the status quo.

We were arrested before we got on the bus and were taken to jail. I spent four days in jail---listening to the other Freedom riders sing freedom songs and tell stories--- before the jailer came in and told me to get out. I had no idea why I was being released. I was prepared to stay there at least 39 days. According to state law, that was the length of time they could hold you if you planned to appeal.

I later found out I was released because the NAACP wanted my case to be part of a class-action desegregation case filed on behalf of Joseph Broadwater, former President of the Jackson NAACP.

I left Mississippi in 1962 because there were threats to myself and my family. But until then, I spent the  rest of my time making court appearances and demonstrating in a way that I could effective, but not get re-arrested.

What did I learn during that time? I learned that freedom is not just a destination, but a series of stops on a long and winding road.

***
It wasn’t until the landmark legislation Congress passed in 1964 and 1968 prohibiting segregation in public facilities for interstate travel that many of the Freedom Riders' dreams were fulfilled.

In the spring of my freshman year, during a conference on race, I found myself sitting across the table from a friend who was attending nearby Wilberforce University, then known as Central State College. We exchanged addresses, and later that year as I was working in Saginaw to help create a library for a local college up north, I got a letter from him. He was in jail.

"We have light, food and water," he said. "Come on down!"

What else could one do? Either I could continue the banal existence of doing mindless grunt work, or I could go change the world. I have never looked back. 

I told my mother that I wanted to participate in the Freedom Rides and she called a fellow who was the head of CORE (Congress of Racial Equality) in Ann Arbor.

We did some preparation work. In Dearborn, Michigan, we went to a restaurant to test whether blacks were being served. In Cincinnati, we picketed another restaurant. In Montgomery, Alabama,  we role played and practiced nonviolent resistance by learning how not to respond to racist taunts and jeers. 

Finally, we made our way to a Trailways bus station in Montgomery for the four-hour trip to Jackson, Mississippi.

There were eight of us and we had to stand in the aisle the entire trip because the bus was crowded with other passengers.

One guy on the bus was angry and asked me why, as a white person, I was participating. I told him that if the point was integration, it took two races. He wasn’t happy with that answer and didn’t think it was funny.
When my fellow Freedom Riders and I got off the bus in Jackson, the police were waiting for us at the depot. We walked into the “Colored Only” waiting area and we all were arrested---blacks and whites. 
I spent a week in the Jackson city jail before being transferred to Mississippi’s notorious Parchman penitentiary. We were stripped of our clothes and given a pair of boxer shorts, which is all I wore during my entire five-week stay.

There was no reading material except for two letters from home a week.  We stayed in a large field house in a room that was like a dormitory. Because many of us were students or professors, we held classes and put on improvisational theater to pass the time. 

Midway through my stay, as another rider was being placed in detention for arguing with a guard, I volunteered with many others to go into detention too, and in we went. From within the jail, we were able to play "fill the jail."  We had come there to fill the jail and overwhelm the system.

Inside the cell, there were no mattresses on the metal bunks and there was only one roll of toilet paper per cell, which also served as a pillow for the inmates.

Most of our meals consisted of lukewarm beans but toward the end of our jail time, the prison officials served us salty ham and eggs for breakfast.  It was their warped way of trying to make the time spent seem less onerous.

After the Freedom Ride, I was a Socialist for a year. I continued working on voter registration drives and engaged in other protests, including for gay rights.

In two years I had met the love of my life. In 1967, I moved with my job---I was then a Greyhound ticket agent--- and my lover to San Francisco.  Four months too late for the "Summer of Love," gosh darn it, but in plenty of time for the high baroque of the early 1970s.

At one point, we owned a successful candle making business, which we sold to one of our most loyal customers. Now, in retirement, I teach music over the Internet.

I can say that the Freedom Ride changed my life. Before the ride, I was in a world that people made for me. Afterward---it was like hatching out of an egg--- I realized I could change the world, and re-make my own.

photo: Daniel Stevens' mugshot from 1961; and Stevens recently at Bon jour Cafe in Hyde Park. (Abel Uribe/ Chicago Tribune)
 

As he struggles to craft a jobs bill that can win support of Republicans and Democrats, President Obama met today with a group of black leaders who want him to focus on a particular concern: Combating an unemployment epidemic whose burden has fallen disproportionately on African Americans.

Braving a deluge of snow that shut down most other business at the White House for the day, activists supportive of the president's economic policies in the recent past lobbied for a new approach more tightly focused on the needs of chronically depressed communities.

Although the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate declined in January for whites and Hispanics, it increased by three-tenths of a percentage point for blacks. Despite that disparity, opinion polls still show soaring approval ratings for Obama among black voters.  (Click here to read more.)

photo: Attending a meeting at a snowbound White House today: Rev. Al Sharpton, of the National Action Network, stands outside the West Wing. (Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais / AP

“How about if senators represented particular demographic groups, based on gender and race? White women would elect the biggest group of senators -- 37 of them, though only 38 women have ever served in the Senate, with 17 currently in office. White men would have 36 seats. Black women, Hispanic women and Hispanic men would have six each; black men five; and Asian women and men two each. Women voters would control a steady and permanent majority -- making, say, discriminatory health-care measures such as the Stupak Amendment and the horrible dearth of child-care options for working mothers seem untenable.”

(Click here to read the story.)