Nearly four decades after the United States government mandated the use of the terms “Hispanic” or “Latino” to categorize Americans who trace their roots to Spanish-speaking countries, a new nationwide survey of Hispanic adults finds that these terms still haven’t been fully embraced by Hispanics themselves. A majority (51%) say they most often identify themselves by their family’s country of origin; just 24% say they prefer a pan-ethnic label.

Moreover, by a ratio of more than two-to-one (69% versus 29%), survey respondents say that the more than 50 million Latinos in the U.S. have many different cultures rather than a common culture. Respondents do, however, express a strong, shared connection to the Spanish language. More than eight-in-ten (82%) Latino adults say they speak Spanish, and nearly all (95%) say it is important for future generations to continue to do so.

Hispanics are also divided over how much of a common identity they share with other Americans. About half (47%) say they consider themselves to be very different from the typical American. And just one-in-five (21%) say they use the term “American” most often to describe their identity. On these two measures, U.S.-born Hispanics (who now make up 48% of Hispanic adults in the country) express a stronger sense of affinity with other Americans and America than do immigrant Hispanics.

The survey finds that, regardless of where they were born, large majorities of Latinos say that life in the U.S. is better than in their family’s country of origin. Also, nearly nine-in-ten (87%) say it is important for immigrant Hispanics to learn English in order to succeed in the U.S.

This report explores Latinos’ attitudes about their identity; their language usage patterns; their core values; and their views about the U.S. and their families’ country of origin. It is based on findings from a national bilingual survey of 1,220 Hispanic adults conducted Nov. 9 through Dec. 7, 2011, by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center.

The burdens of poverty affect most, if not all aspects, of social relations. Most prominently (and unsurprisingly), women carry the greatest burden of the social predicaments that arise from a dire lack of economic security.  Women in groups hit hardest by financial strain easily become seen as sources of further strain on their families. Education is often either inaccessible or seen as an unnecessary part of a young girl’s growth and life.

This is not always necessarily the case, as there is much evidence that shows support of girl-child education by, specifically, mothers who realize the role education can play in providing a better life for their children. Yet, despite this, in many instances across the world (primarily in developing countries, but not limited to them), young girls are forced to accept the strain upon their families that they are perceived to pose. This position can lead many young girls, either by coercion by family or by “choice,” onto the road towards prostitution, sex slavery, or even suicide.  Yet perhaps the most common result is marriage.

An article published earlier this month on EurasiaNet explores the impact of poverty on “early marriage” in Tajikistan. The article cites a recent study by the Eurasia Foundation that looks at the issue of “informal justice” in Tajikistan. While looking at a variety of issues, the article dedicates a good amount to gender relations, specifically the issue of non-state-administered justice for women in unregistered marriages, which come in a variety of flavors, one of which is early marriage. Marriage before the age of 18 is illegal under Tajik law and subject to harsh punishment.

However, it is commonly practiced and encouraged by many religious clerics who not only feel it is sanctioned within Islam but also believe it to be a solution to the problems of poverty faced by women in a country ravaged by years of war.

The bike riders and current wave of home-buying white people are just the latest blossom of massive change that took root 60 years ago.

Portland State University professor Karen J. Gibson's article "Bleeding Albina" (which should be required reading for all Portlanders, offered to newcomers in a welcome packet that includes a bike light and a vacuum-sealed Kettleman's bagel) spells out the factors that led the Albina neighborhood—North Williams is the center of Albina, which covers the area north of I-84, east of what's now I-5, and west of NE 20th—to become Oregon's largest black neighborhood, and then to disintegrate.

One can't really downplay the impact of straight-up racism on the neighborhood. In 1919, Portland's Board of Realtors declared that it was against their code of ethics to sell a house to a black or Chinese person in a white neighborhood. A study in the 1950s found that 90 percent of real estate agents would not sell a house to a black person anywhere other than a black neighborhood. While these "redlining" rules were eventually phased out, disparate lending rates remain today: During the mortgage crisis, it came out that banks were twice as likely to give subprime mortgages to black and Hispanic borrowers than to white borrowers of the same income level.

That redlining made Albina the black cultural center of Oregon in the late 1940s and 1950s, with North Williams as its beating heart. The corridor was lined with small black-owned businesses: groceries, bakeries, record shops, churches, pool halls, bars, and jazz clubs. Despite the difficulty getting loans, 57 percent of neighborhood residents owned their homes.

The increasing popularity of intermarriage. About 15% of all new marriages in the United States in 2010 were between spouses of a different race or ethnicity from one another, more than double the share in 1980 (6.7%). Among all newlyweds in 2010, 9% of whites, 17% of blacks, 26% of Hispanics and 28% of Asians married out. Looking at all married couples in 2010, regardless of when they married, the share of intermarriages reached an all-time high of 8.4%. In 1980, that share was just 3.2%.
Gender patterns in intermarriage vary widely. About 24% of all black male newlyweds in 2010 married outside their race, compared with just 9% of black female newlyweds. Among Asians, the gender pattern runs the other way. About 36% of Asian female newlyweds married outside their race in 2010, compared with just 17% of Asian male newlyweds. Intermarriage rates among white and Hispanic newlyweds do not vary by gender.
At first glance, recent newlyweds who “married out” and those who “married in” have similar characteristics. In 2008-2010, the median combined annual earnings of both groups are similar—$56,711 for newlyweds who married out versus $55,000 for those who married in. In about one-in-five marriages of each group, both the husband and wife are college graduates. Spouses in the two groups also marry at similar ages (with a two- to three-year age gap between husband and wife), and an equal share are marrying for the first time.
However, these overall similarities mask sharp differences that emerge when the analysis looks in more detail at pairings by race and ethnicity. Some of these differences appear to reflect the overall characteristics of different groups in society at large, and some may be a result of a selection process. For example, white/Asian newlyweds of 2008 through 2010 have significantly higher median combined annual earnings ($70,952) than do any other pairing, including both white/white ($60,000) and Asian/Asian ($62,000). When it comes to educational characteristics, more than half of white newlyweds who marry Asians have a college degree, compared with roughly a third of white newlyweds who married whites. Among Hispanics and blacks, newlyweds who married whites tend to have higher educational attainment than do those who married within their own racial or ethnic group.
Intermarriage and earnings. Couples formed between an Asian husband and a white wife topped the median earning list among all newlyweds in 2008-2010 ($71,800). During this period, white male newlyweds who married Asian, Hispanic or black spouses had higher combined earnings than did white male newlyweds who married a white spouse. As for white female newlyweds, those who married a Hispanic or black husband had somewhat lower combined earnings than those who “married in,” while those who married an Asian husband had significantly higher combined earnings.
Regional differences. Intermarriage in the United States tilts West. About one-in-five (22%) of all newlyweds in Western states married someone of a different race or ethnicity between 2008 and 2010, compared with 14% in the South, 13% in the Northeast and 11% in the Midwest. At the state level, more than four-in-ten (42%) newlyweds in Hawaii between 2008 and 2010 were intermarried; the other states with an intermarriage rate of 20% or more are all west of the Mississippi River. (For rates of intermarriage as well as intra-marriage in all 50 states, see Appendix 2.)
Is more intermarriage good for society? More than four-in-ten Americans (43%) say that more people of different races marrying each other has been a change for the better in our society, while 11% say it has been a change for the worse and 44% say it has made no difference. Minorities, younger adults, the college-educated, those who describe themselves as liberal and those who live in the Northeast or the West are more disposed than others to see intermarriage in a positive light.
Public’s acceptance of intermarriage. More than one-third of Americans (35%) say that a member of their immediate family or a close relative is currently married to someone of a different race. Also, nearly two-thirds of Americans (63%) say it “would be fine” with them if a member of their own family were to marry someone outside their own racial or ethnic group. In 1986, the public was divided about this. Nearly three-in-ten Americans (28%) said people of different races marrying each other was not acceptable for anyone, and an additional 37% said this may be acceptable for others, but not for themselves. Only one-third of the public (33%) viewed intermarriage as acceptable for everyone.
Divorce. Several studies using government data have found that overall divorce rates are higher for couples who married out than for those who married in – but here, too, the patterns vary by the racial and gender characteristics of the couples. These findings are based on scholarly analysis of government data on marriage and divorce collected over the past two decades.

Historic Images of African-American Life During the Depression
Photographs from the Farm Security Administration which collected and kept a record of American life between 1935-1944

FOUR DETROIT ESCORTS WHO USED BACKPAGE TO ADVERTISE HAVE BEEN FOUND MURDERED, AND A STRIPPER IS MISSING. ALL OF THEM ARE BLACK AND MID- TO LATE TWENTIES.
http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20111226/METRO01/112260388

http://www.freep.com/article/20120106/NEWS01/201060479/Dozens-pray-for-missing-mom-of-6-other-women-working-in-sex-industry

Signal boost. Please be careful.

An additional note from SWP: they were not “escorts”, and she is not a “stripper”. These were and are PEOPLE who worked in the sex industry as escorts and a dancer. Please do not take our humanity away and replace it with a job title. Be careful, workers in and around this area and elsewhere. Be safe, be vigilant, be well.

Learning about girls and women who have participated in popular music traditions throughout the 20th century is an amazing way to integrate music into the history and social studies classrooms. Although girls (and boys) often have access to contemporary popular music where women abound, mainstream images of women and girls are often either over-sexualized or they present unrealistic and consumer-driven versions of “girl power.” By looking at the ways girls and women have made popular music in the past, students can learn how to recognize stereotypes, discuss historical realities for girls and women of other eras (including the ways that not only gender, but race and class play a role in these realities), and learn about trailblazing women who are traditionally left out of music histories, such as Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Wanda Jackson and ESG.

Prostitution becomes a trafficking crime when the victim is a minor, or at any age if controlled by force, fraud or coercion. Sundvall-Williams says she had to walk up and down Portland’s 82nd Avenue, a thoroughfare running through several residential neighborhoods, each night to bring home $300 or face a beating by her pimp.

The life of a trafficking victim typically involves starvation, confinement, beatings, gang rape and forced drug use. They must also contend with addiction, broken bones, concussions, burns, vaginal and anal tears, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), sterility, miscarriages, forced abortions and even contagious diseases like tuberculosis, hepatitis, malaria and pneumonia. Psychological damage includes mind-body separation, disassociated ego states, shame, grief, fear, distrust, hatred of men, self-hatred, suicide and suicidal thoughts, post-traumatic stress disorder, acute anxiety, depression, insomnia, physical hyperalertness and self-loathing. Some victims suffer from traumatic bonding, a form of coercive control in which the perpetrator instills fear as well as gratitude for being allowed to live.

Intertwined with sexual trafficking are sexual abuse, drug and alcohol abuse and poverty. In a law review, Sarah Deer, a Muscogee (Creek) Nation citizen and professor at the William Mitchell School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota wrote that many women and girls are coerced into sex work—on and off reservations—by drug dealers to pay for their drugs.

This type of sexual violence targets Native women and girls due to the culture of silence in every community, the widespread poverty, and the legacy of appalling sexual violence committed by white men against Native women, says Deer. The U.S. government acknowledges that the rates of sexual abuse and rape committed against Native women and girls are higher than those for the general population.

One of the few opportunities a trafficked woman has for escape is when her pimp allows her to enter a medical facility for treatment of injuries, pregnancy or STDs. Hospitals and clinics can intervene—as they do for victims of domestic violence—though many lack the proper training to do so.

First-time filmmaker Jordan Thierry offers context and conversation in this honest exploration of fatherhood in Black America. Through a telling of his own story and interviews with historians, he traces the roots of the fatherless Black home and reveals a history much more complex and profound than is often told. Putting that history into perspective is a dialogue among fathers discussing their experiences, inspirations, and insight on how communities can come together to ensure the power of a father's love is not lost on America's Black children.

A project to pave the way for humanity's journey to the stars will be helmed by a former astronaut, Mae Jemison, already a pioneer in her own right. She will lead DARPA's 100-Year Starship project, the BBC says, citing DARPA documents.

Jemison, the first black woman in space, was one of scores of people to submit proposals for DARPA's ambitious project. It doesn't seek to build an actual starship per se but rather a program that can last 100 years, and might one day result in one. As DARPA said last year, it's more of a thought experiment than a construction project. The idea itself sparked some other pretty audacious proposals, including one by J. Craig Venter to send human genomes toward the stars and reconstruct them upon arrival.

Jemison apparently won a contract for her proposal titled "An Inclusive Audacious Journey Transforms Life Here on Earth & Beyond," BBC said. Her organisation, the Dorothy Jemison Foundation for Excellence, is already a partner on the project with a non-profit called Icarus Interstellar and a group called the Foundation for Enterprise Development.

AN ALTERNATIVE ARCHIVE OF THE NOT-QUITE-HIDDEN BUT TOO OFTEN IGNORED FASHION HISTORIES OF U.S. WOMEN OF COLOR

News 8 learned that Jakadrien somehow ended up in Houston, where she was arrested by Houston police for theft. She gave Houston police a fake name. When police in Houston ran that name, it belonged to a 22-year-old illegal immigrant from Columbia, who had warrants for her arrest.

So ICE officials stepped in.
 
News 8 has learned ICE took the girl's fingerprints, but somehow didn't confirm her identity and deported her to Colombia, where the Colombian government gave her a work card and released her.
 
"She talked about how they had her working in this big house cleaning all day, and how tired she was," Turner said.
 
Through her granddaughter’s Facebook messages, Turner says she tracked Jakadrian down.

U.S. Federal authorities got an address. U.S. Embassy officials in Colombia asked police to pick her up.

But that was a month ago, and the Colombian government now has her in a detention facility and won't release her, despite her family's request.
 
"I feel like she will come home," the grandmother said with tears in her eyes. "I just need help and prayer.”
 
There are still many unanswered questions about how an African-American girl who speaks no Spanish is mistaken for a foreign national. Immigration officials are investigating and released a statement late Tuesday.

The account "@DurexSA" had been tweeting jokes about sex during the day, but raised the ire of some South Africans with a number of questionable quips, including the following: "Why did God give men penises? So they'd have at least one way to shut a woman up" [sic].

This comes on the eve of international awareness event 16 Days of Activism for No Violence Against Women and Children.

The account @FeministsSA tweeted, "Wonder if @Durex_USA supports @DurexSA 's stance on violence against women - penises for keeping women quiet?? WTF" [sic].

The DurexSA account later posted an apparent defence of the jokes: "our followers who we engage with regularly loves it & the those who dont, com[p]lain" [sic], and "We have posted many jokes, see our timeline… And they not violent against woman! Re-read it!!!!!" [sic].

In response, Rape Crisis (@RapeCrisis) tweeted that even when said in jest, jokes promoting sexism were "part of the system that promotes rape" [sic], while the account @FeministsSA encouraged followers to boycott the brand: "FeministsSA supports a boycott of @DurexSA but encourages everyone to still use other brand's condoms and have consensual safe sex" [sic].

An apology from Durex South Africa was later issued: "We're really sorry for causing offence today, not intentional. We believe in the rights of woman and safe sex. Thanks for putting us right." [sic].

The company's Twitter account received a large number of new followers during the controversy and became a trending topic, but was the publicity worth the brand damage? 

Gerald Mendelsohn, a professor in the psychology department at the University of California, Berkeley, conducted research involving more than one million online dating profiles, and was partly financed by a grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation.

About 81 per cent of people misrepresent their height, weight or age in their profiles, according to a study led by Catalina Toma, an assistant professor in the Department of Communication Arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who wanted to learn more about how people pres-ent themselves and how they judge misrepresentation. On the bright side: People tend to tell small lies because, after all, they may eventually meet in person.

On average, the women described themselves as 8.5 pounds thinner in their profiles than they really were. Men fibbed by two pounds, though they lied by a greater magnitude than women about their height, rounding up a half inch (apparently every bit counts).

Research on a major dating site between February 2009 and February 2010 by Mendelsohn and his colleagues shows that more than 80 per cent of the contacts initiated by white members were to other white members, and only three per cent to black members. Black members were less rigid: They were 10 times more likely to contact whites than whites were to contact blacks.

Of the romantic partnerships formed in the U.S. between 2007 and 2009, 21 per cent of heterosexual couples and 61 per cent of samesex couples met online, according to a study by Michael J. Rosenfeld, an associate professor of sociology at Stanford. (Scholars said that most studies using online dating data are about heterosexuals, because they make up more of the population.)

Dating sites and academics have got cosy before; the biological anthropologist Helen Fisher of Rutgers, for example, is Chemistry.com's chief scientific adviser, and she helped develop the site, a sister site to Match. com.

Europeans have been fascinated with the sexuality of “savages” since the Middle Ages, long before they came into contact with Africans. (The Irish were “lewd, lustful, lascivious” and so were the savages of the Americas.) During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, several English travelers had made references to the “Large Propagators” of the African men, which whetted the imaginations of many Europeans, It was immediately assumed that the large propagators [penis’s] made African men oversexed, sensuous, and lustful, and their nudity was evidence of uninhibited and restrained sexual behavior. It is Rushton’s conclusion that Africans thus beget a lot of children to whom they give little care.
Moreover the RK theory flounders in the light of some obviously contradictory and incontrovertible facts. The MOST reproductively successful population in the world are the Chinese. At the beginning of the twentieth century, they had one of the highest fertility rates in the world. Today they number more than 1.3 billion people despite small penises and presumably little interest in sex!
Race in North America: Origin And Evolution of a Worldview by Audrey Smedley. pg. 302-303

One in five Native American children in Multnomah County is placed in foster care, often with non-Native American guardians, one of the highest rates in the country, according to a densely-detailed profile of the county's Native population released today.

That compares to one in 63 for Native children across the country and one in 18 for those in Oregon, says the 113-page report, "An Unsettling Profile," produced by the Coalition of Communities of Color, Portland State University and the Native community.

The high rate of foster care for Native children in Multnomah County reflects poverty, unemployment, school failure, health problems, crime, trauma and other disadvantages, says Terry Cross, executive director of the non-profit, Portland-based National Indian Child Welfare Association.

The youngest teenagers are less avid: 45% of online 12-year-olds use these sites. That figure nearly doubles between the ages of 12 and 13, with 82% of 13-year-olds saying that they are social network site users.

In contrast to social network sites, Twitter use among teens is marked by much more variation between groups. Specifically, girls are twice as likely to use Twitter as boys (22% of online girls use Twitter, compared with 10% of online boys), and black teens are three times as likely to be Twitter users than either white or Latino teens (34% of online black teens use Twitter). Twitter adoption is especially low among younger boys, as just 2% of online boys ages 12-13 are Twitter users.

I tried to get Pierre to see me beyond my race, but I couldn't even challenge his views on the issue without him becoming defensive and lodging even more offensive comments. Like Pierre, many guys with whom I discussed the topic failed to recognize the racism inherent in forming a racial preference in the first place. They pointed to ex-girlfriends who fit their stereotypes and asked if I would have preferred the alternative of being viewed as undesirable because I’m not white. They couldn’t see that even if their assumptions weren't obviously insulting, they nonetheless imposed an arbitrary set of expectations on radically different women. In that sense, the random dude on the street shouting ""Ching-chong! Ching-chong!" at every passing Asian gal is not so different from the guy who invites me to dinner and earnestly asks, "Do you prefer to eat with chopsticks?"

I hung up the phone and followed the officer out of the cell and into another small room where the male FBI agent was waiting accompanied by another FBI agent–possibly the head honcho on duty. He said the three of us were being released and there was nothing suspicious found on the plane. He apologized for what had happened and thanked me for understanding and cooperating. He said, “It’s 9/11 and people are seeing ghosts. They are seeing things that aren’t there.” He said they had to act on a report of suspicious behavior, and this is what the reaction looks like.

He said there had been 50 other similar incidents across the country that day.

I was led out another door and down a long hall where I gathered my bags, which had been removed from the plane and searched. In the hallway I saw the other two men who had also been detained. They seemed happy to be being released as well. It felt strange to smile at them, and I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing.

how alcohol affects people is highly individual, with a number of factors in the mix.

Quick shots of liquor hit the bloodstream faster than slow sips of wine. Drinking on an empty stomach impairs reflexes more than consuming alcohol with food. And women and older drinkers generally hit legal intoxication levels sooner than men and younger people.

Carbonated beverages raise alcohol levels faster, because the gas irritates the stomach lining, causing alcohol to be absorbed faster. (Sweet or caffeinated alcoholic drinks aren't absorbed any faster, it just seems that way because people often consume more of them than they realize.)

Many Asians have a genetic variation that gives them a flush and a very rapid heartbeat from even a small amount of alcohol.

And factors like fatigue, stress, illness and depression can magnify alcohol's impact.

The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs released its annual report on hate violence motivated by sexual orientation, gender identity and expression and HIV status last week. The report documents 27 anti-LGBT murders in 2010, which is the second highest annual total recorded since 1996. A whopping 70 percent of these 27 victims were people of color; 44 percent of them were transgender women.

The NCAVP report found that half of those who experienced hate violence did not contact the police after their attack. The report further found that 25.4 percent of transgender women did not file a report. So what can be done to reduce these rates of violence against LGBT people and communities of color?

The Audre Lorde Project is among the groups that organize LGBT people in communities of color that are increasingly looking beyond law enforcement and the criminal justice system for a solution. The Safe OUTside the System Collective works with bodegas, businesses and organizations within Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood and surrounding areas to create safe spaces for LGBT people of color to curb violence.

The study also found that transgender people and people of color are each twice as likely to experience violence or discrimination as non-transgender white people. Transgender people of color are also almost 2.5 times as likely to experience discrimination as their white peers.

“It wasn’t a shock,” said Morales, whose organization is among the 17 anti-violence programs from across the country that contributed data to the NCAVP report. “For the last four years we’ve seen that trend—of transgender women and people of color in our communities experiencing higher levels of violence. Sadly that continues.”

Recent headlines certainly bare witness to this disturbing trend.

Lost in all the hoopla was the fact that there already exists a crop of openly queer rappers who have been making music for years. They’re talented, proud, but when it comes to mainstream media, they’re often ignored. So I reached out to some of the industry’s best and brightest to get their take on the really gay rappers who should be getting our attention. Writer and activist Kenyon Farrow summed up the bigger picture nicely when he wrote in an email: “I wish we could focus more energy and our money on artists in the community, rather than falling all over ourselves for straight people to validate our existence.” 

2011 marks the 20th anniversary of the bad-ass feminist road trip movie, Thelma and Louise.

At the time it was released, it was hailed as a groundbreaking feminist classic, an answer to the male-dominated road trip and buddy movie genres. But how much has it actually changed the way we think of gender, class, race, rape, rebellion and women movie characters? Panelists Nona Willis Aronowitz, Jaclyn Friedman, Sofia Quintero, Melissa Silverman and Jamia Wilson will lead an intergenerational discussion on these questions and more after a screening of the film.

Director: Ridley Scott. 130 min. 1991. 35mm.

African-American girls and young women have become the fastest growing population of incarcerated young people in the country. Efforts to stop mass incarceration focused on black girls are almost nonexistent in government policy, the media, foundations and academia.

This spring, the Thelton Henderson Center for Social Justice at the University of California, Berkeley’s Boalt Law School took the bold and necessary step of organizing a day-and-a-half free event titled, “African American Girls and Young Women and Juvenile Justice System: A Call to Action.”

Sociologist Nikki Jones of UC Santa Barbara and Meda Chesney-Lind, from the University of Hawaii opened up the conference with a look at the statistics.

“No,” said Jones, “black girls are not committing more crimes, even though they are being incarcerated in record numbers.”

“I’ve been studying this for decades,” Chesney-Lind said. “We have never seen these kind of numbers before. National policies like zero tolerance are responsible for the school to prison pipeline. And a dual justice system that treats white girls differently from black girls is disproportionately impacting African-American girls.

“In 2008, we knew the arrest rate in California was 49 out of every 1,000 for black girls, 8.9 per 1,000 for white girls and 14.9 per 1,000 for Latinas.”

The cause of the over criminalization of African-American young women is best understood by looking back through the lens of American history and the ideological construction of black criminality.

“In order to sustain these systems, de-humanizing stereotypes of black women were created to maintain the difference between white and African-American women,” said Priscilla Ocen, a professor at UCLA’s Critical Race Studies. “Black girls are still dealing with racial and gendered stereotypes that were used to justify punishment.”

“These historical stereotypes laid the groundwork for the creation of a dual criminal justice system – one where African American women and girls are treated differently for the same behaviors,” Ocen added.

Founded in September 2002, FAMILIES FOR FREEDOM is a New York-based multi-ethnic defense network by and for immigrants facing and fighting deportation. We are immigrant prisoners (detainees), former immigrant prisoners, their loved ones, or individuals at risk of deportation. We come from dozens of countries, across continents. FFF seeks to repeal the laws that are tearing apart our homes and neighborhoods; and to build the power of immigrant communities as communities of color, to provide a guiding voice in the growing movement for immigrant rights as human rights.

FFF has evolved into an organizing center against deportation. We are source of support, education, and campaigns for directly affected families and communities -- locally and nationally.

I asked Farrah what she thought and she was kind enough to offer the following, reflecting responses that she’s received from event organizers and jury chair people.


Conference organizers recruit from their peers, colleagues, and those they admire. If they don’t know or know of women, they don’t invite them.
If they can fill the panels or juries, then they’re done. They don’t like to un-invite people and it’s hard to add women after the fact.
Many conferences require some amount of travel; not all conferences reimburse or pay their speakers.  This can be a hardship for women who have kids at home, or who are struggling entrepreneurs.
I keep hearing, “the women we ask want to be paid.”  But the women they ask are Danah Boyd, Jane McGonigal, Amber Case, Marissa Mayer. Of course they want to be paid. They make a living writing and speaking or are in high demand.
Today I heard this feedback – the 4As only want women who are ‘heads’ of departments and running the show.
There’s an outright assumption that in the areas of technology, game theory, network theory, and analytics there aren’t enough women to choose from.


She also goes on to suggest some solutions.


Stop depending on the people (department heads) who’ve stopped growing in their careers, are no longer hands-on, and are a step behind the trends and technology defining the industry’s future.
Start with a determination to make the list (panel, jury, speakers) 50 percent men and 50 percent women. Even if you don’t achieve it you’ll be better for trying.
Pass the #toomanywhitemen list around to all the event organizers you know. (And use the hashtag  on Twitter.)
Women themselves need to step forward and make themselves available to event organizers, taking some of the responsibility. (Good post here on self-advocating.)


Why do I care? Lots of reasons. I think the future of this industry depends on its diversity

Just got this via email from a reader in Seattle. A flyer and heads up on the "Girls of Summer All Girl Alley Cat". Looks like a great event. Sort of reminds me of the SS Pussycat we had in Portland several years ago...

Wanted to let you know about an event we are holding up in the land up north. We would love to see some portland ladies come up. Flyers is below... We are now up to almost $2000 in prizes and have some really fun stops planned.

All-white, middle-aged male forum. Great.

MySpace and Facebook and (LOL) Friendster didn't have anything to bring different worlds together. Your "social network" was only yours, and there wasn't enough chaos in the system to bridge networks-you never know what's going on outside your stupid little bubble. And Black People Twitter isn't the noise in the signal that Twitter is trying to leach out-it's huge, organic and it is seemingly seriously nocturnal. Except it's really not.
A friend and I were talking the other day about why, in particular, Black People Twitter happens at night. In fact, it's the other way around: White People Twitter for the most part happens during the American daytime. Black People Twitter happens all the time.

White geek Nick Douglas had a theory about Black People Twitter a while ago. His friend suggested "These people don't have real Twitter friends. So they all respond to trending topics." This is so obviously wrong. ("No, they have their own communities and their own friends that you are not paying attention to," wrote Maria Diaz.) And then Douglas himself posted a great response to his poor dumb friend: "It's the nature of how we craft these environments to suit our core comforts and fine tune our twitter experiences. Twitter's addition of the trending topics bar has simply shattered our insulated perception of how everyone uses this thing."

The first set of 2010 Census Demographic Profiles are ready for viewing.  These profiles provide details about race and Hispanic groups, age, sex and housing status. The profiles will be released on a state-by-state basis for each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.

In the mid-1960s, President Johnson saw the need for independent nonpartisan analysis of the problems facing America's cities and their residents. The President created a blue-ribbon commission of civic leaders who recommended chartering a center to do that work. In 1968, the Urban Institute became that center.
Today, we analyze policies, evaluate programs, and inform community development to improve social, civic, and economic well-being. We work in all 50 states and abroad in over 28 countries, and we share our research findings with policymakers, program administrators, business, academics, and the public online and through reports and scholarly books

no mention of age?

The rate of maternal deaths in the state in 1999 was 8.0 deaths per 100,000 live births. By 2008, it had risen to 14.0 deaths per 100,000 live births, "The California Pregnancy-Associated Mortality Review" found. To take a deeper look, researchers examined data on pregnancy-related deaths in 2002 and 2003. Researchers determined that more than a third of those deaths had a good to strong chance of being prevented.

African-American mothers are roughly four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than all other women. Women with lower incomes and education levels were more likely to die in childbirth. There were high rates of obesity among the pregnancy-related deaths. Obesity or excessive weight gain during pregnancy was a contributing factor in one in four deaths where data on weight gain was available.

The report attributed about 1/3 of the increase in maternal deaths to improved data reporting on the subject.

Gaby Rodriguez would worry whenever anyone asked to touch her baby bump.

It wasn’t because she felt shy or embarrassed. It was because the bulge — fashioned from wire mesh and cotton quilt batting — didn’t actually contain a baby.

For the past 6Œ months — the bulk of her senior year at Toppenish High School — the 17-year-old A-student faked her own pregnancy.

Only a handful of people — her mother, boyfriend and principal among them — knew Gaby was pretending to be pregnant for her senior project, a culminating assignment required for graduation.

Her teachers and fellow students, except for her best friend, didn’t realize they were part of a social experiment.

Neither did six of her seven siblings, including four older brothers, her boyfriend’s parents, and his five younger brothers and sisters.

“You saw the side comments and the looks at her stomach,” says Myers, who says he wasn’t disappointed — “just concerned” — when she told him she was pregnant.

He says he wondered: “How are we going to take all of the potential that’s in this girl and make sure it manifests itself and not let this define who she is and let it be a roadblock to what she wants to accomplish?”

It’s a question Hispanic teens are more likely to face than white teens, Gaby found in her research. Black and Hispanic teens continue to have higher pregnancy rates than white teens.

And most teens at Toppenish High School — about 85 percent — are Hispanic.

Alejandro Arenales, director of the Chinelos de Morelos dance group, said the Portland-based performers came from across the Pacific Northwest to perform.

Sunday afternoon's Greater Hillsboro Area Chamber of Commerce event, now in its seventh year, has become a popular resource for Washington County's Latinos. At nearly 16 percent of the county's population, they are an important social group that is too often overlooked.


In addition to its value as a Latino community resource, the festival is an opportunity for the area's non-Latino residents to break cultural barriers. Visitors unfamiliar with the culture interacted with their Latino neighbors and took in traditional performances, art and food.

When it comes to mowing the lawn, cleaning the kitchen and performing other household chores, Southern European and some Asian men are the least likely to take part, according to a study by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The Paris-based think tank surveyed 29 countries to determine how much time people spent doing unpaid work.

The results showed women spent considerably longer than men doing daily chores, a factor that could hinder their ability to take part in paid employment, the study says.

Italian and Portuguese men spent less than two hours a day helping out at home

Yesterday, the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, CNN released a poll that showed that 25 percent of the general public and some 40 percent of Southerners sympathize more with the rebellious Confederacy than with the Union. And in a particularly revealing inversion of the historical record--more than half of the Republicans surveyed believe that slavery was not the cause of the Civil War.

Not content to merely support an insurrection against the duly elected government of the United States, 80 percent of the Republicans surveyed by CNN also expressed admiration for the leaders of the South--a cabal whose allegiance to white supremacy was most tellingly summed up by the Vice President of the Confederacy's sentiment that its, "...foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man, that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based on this great physical, philosophical and moral truth.”

Browse population growth and decline, changes in racial and ethnic concentrations and patterns of housing development.

Unionized women earn 30 percent more than non-unionized women and have access to more benefits, such as paid leave and health insurance. An IWPR report on job retention and low-income mothers found that union membership contributed to keeping moms on the job. In 2010, across race and ethnic groups, male union membership is lowest for Asian men, but Asian women have the highest membership rate of all groups of unionized women.  Black men have the highest union membership, but black women are also more likely than white women to be unionized.  Hispanic women have the lowest rate of union membership compared to other groups of women.
Although male workers are still the majority of union membership, the gap between unionized men and women over the last 25 years has narrowed considerably, with women representing the majority of new workers organized during that time. (For more on women and unions, visit IWPR’s Women in Unions initiative page.)

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Public sector unions like the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) and the American Federation of Teachers, however, have a majority female membership (52 percent and 60 percent, respectively), which makes the legislative outcome of public sector union bargaining power of particular interest to women workers. Furthermore, as you can see in the figure at left, women are 52 percent of the state public sector workforce and a whopping 61 percent of public workers at the local level (Figure 1).
If we focus on public sector employees at the local level, it becomes clear that women and their families will receive the brunt of the effects of these anti-union bills floating around state capitols in the Midwest. The most common occupation for local public sector women workers is elementary and middle school teachers (22 percent).  The most common occupation for local public sector male workers? Police and sheriff’s patrol officers, a group whose union representatives would be excluded from proposed legislation.

The porn industry is many things. Subtle is not one of them. So when Porn Inc. went searching for a job title for people like Stephen Hill, the choice was "mope." It's based on the off-camera life of these fringe actors, hangers-on who mope around the studios hoping for a bit role, which if they're lucky might bring them $50 plus food — and the chance to have sex with a real, live woman.

The attacks and subsequent suicide were big talk in the gossip-loving porn world, but Porn Valley quickly went back to business as usual. There were bigger concerns: falling DVD sales, Internet piracy and a brief industrywide production shutdown after a male performer was found to have contracted HIV.

The mope — as a person and as a job — came to rootless, shambling life in 1995, when the porn industry, seeking The Next Big Thing, latched on to the idea of the "extreme."

Feelmore510, Oakland's newest adult store, opened--somewhat appropriately--on Valentine's Day this week, but it has not been universally welcomed. When Nenna Joiner applied for permits to open the store two months ago, opponents complained that Feelmore510's Uptown location would put it within 500 feet of several major gathering places for young people, including Youth Radio, a foster housing agency called First Place for Youth, and Oakland School for the Arts.

But not everyone objects to Feelmore510. Joiner calls her store "sex positive": a welcoming shelter for customers of any gender, race, or sexual orientation. Besides toys and other sex shop staples, Joiner sells literature and vintage records, and plans to host sexual health workshops in the future. Donn Harris, executive director of Oakland School for the Arts, says the store fits into Uptown's identity as an arts and entertainment center, and that almost any store would be better than the empty storefront it replaces.

Despite vocal objections at an Oakland Planning Commission hearing in December, commissioners approved Joiner's application unanimously. The store is located at 1703 Telegraph Avenue at 17th Street. More information is available on Feelmore510's web site.

I AM A DIRECT-ENTRY MIDWIFERY STUDENT INTERESTED IN THE INTERSECTIONS OF HEALTH AND RACE, CLASS, SEX, GENDER, SEXUALITY AND DISABILITY.

The National Conference for Media Reform is the biggest and best conference devoted to media, technology and democracy. Thousands of activists, media makers, educators, journalists, policymakers and people from across the country are coming to Boston for the fifth NCMR on April 8-10, 2011.

Mississippi, Virginia, New Jersey and Louisiana all had declines in their populations of white residents ages 18 and under, according to the bureau’s first detailed report on the 2010 Census.

That drove declines in the overall white population for the decade in three of the four states. Only Virginia, whose northern suburbs have been growing fast, had a rise.

Growth in the number of white youths slowed sharply in the 1990s, up by just 1 percent in the decade, as the number of white women of childbearing age fell, according to Kenneth M. Johnson, a demographer at the University of New Hampshire.

More recently, it has dipped into a decline. The number of whites under the age of 20 fell by 6 percent between 2000 and 2008, Mr. Johnson said, citing countrywide census estimates.

The "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act" bill (HR 3) will be more damaging to women’s access to reproductive health care than the Hyde Amendment. Hyde bans federal funds for abortion for low-income women, except in very limited cases. It must be passed by Congress every year or will lapse. If Hyde ban is permanent, it'd be an unfair tier-two system: one for women with private insurance or who can pay themselves and another for low-income women. It would increase specific taxes on individuals & small businesses that would prevent women from obtaining abortion services.<br />
Women of all economic levels would suffer if this bill passes. Now, more than 80% of health insurance plans cover abortion. If this bill passes, millions of women with private insurance would lose coverage for abortion, with serious economic effects. The most devastating effect would be on the most vulnerable women, including poor women, young women, women of color, immigrants, and women who live in rural areas.

An African-American convicted of a low-level drug crime in Cook County is eight times more likely than his white counterpart to face prison time for it, according to a new report released yesterday.

The report, published by the Disproportionate Justice Impact Study Commission, analyzed arrest data from 2005, the most recent year that complete data is available. It was commissioned by the General Assembly in 2008 to research the notion that minorities -- and particularly young black men in inner cities -- were disproportionately subjected to drug arrests, prosecution and sentencing.

That's just what the report found.

Class 4 possession laws, the least severe felony charges, accounted for the majority of racial disproportionality in incarceration, the Commission writes. In Cook County, home to Chicago, Class 4 possession accounted for the majority of all arrests in 2005. Few of those charged only with Class 4 (and not with some other crime, drug or violent) were sentenced to jail terms. But the overwhelming majority of those who were, by an eight-to-one ratio, were black.

Most Class 4 cases were dropped, at roughly equal rates among nonwhites (45 percent) and whites (40 percent). But of those cases that were continued, white defendants were nearly twice as likely (36 to 19 percent) to be sentenced to court supervision or probation.

Images of successful African American athletes inspire the dreams of millions of young Black men. That matters in a culture where athletes are viewed as demigods, yet positive images of Black masculinity are hard to find. Author Thabiti Lewis takes a hard look at sport, racism and images of Black masculinity in his groundbreaking new book ‘Ballers of the New School: Race, Sports and American Culture.’ A professor at Washington State University, Vancouver, Lewis has a full schedule that includes talking to young men and women in cities across the country about masculinity, sport and race.

Fifty years ago, “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” lit up the Billboard Top 40. It was the first ever number-one song by an all-black female group, and it remained on the charts for 15 weeks. “Tomorrow” was an anthem of female adolescence, giving voice to the challenges of being a girl who longed for both love and sex at a time when only “bad girls” would admit such a thing. Until “Tomorrow”, most popular songs of the time defined women as conquests or aspirations, mere objects of male desire. There had been very little music made for girls, by girls and about girls. “Tomorrow” was revolutionary.
Written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin when they were 18 and 21 respectively, “Tomorrow” marketed the sounds of rock'n'roll, R&B and Motown to a predominantly young, white, female audience.

Perhaps the single strongest show of support for international women’s rights from President Obama came when he nominated Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton — who, as First Lady, made famous the phrase “women’s rights are human rights” — to serve as his secretary of state. The establishment of the Office of Global Women’s Issues within the State Department and the president’s appointment of Melanne Verveer as the first ever ambassador-at-large for Global Women’s Issues became the most visible and immediate expressions of that commitment.
The Office of Global Women’s Issues has also spurred private funding for the Secretary’s International Fund for Women and Girls, which supports non-profits and NGOs doing direct, on-the-ground work with and for women around the world.
In May 2009, President Obama announced the Global Health Initiative: a $63 billion, six-year commitment to combat AIDS and tropical diseases such as malaria, and to help improve maternal health in the world’s poorest countries. The president’s 2011 budget allots for an increase in the Global Health Initiative, specifically to programs that decrease maternal mortality.
The International Violence Against Women Act, which would prepare and require the United States to respond to outbreaks of gender-based violence in armed conflict, failed to leave committee in the U.S. Congress. Activists will be looking to the administration to more strenuously support this legislation in the 112th Congress.
March 2009, Obama created the White House Council on Women and Girls.

According to the Center for American Women in Politics (CAWP), President Obama has appointed women to fill 7 of 22 existing cabinet or sub-cabinet level positions, approximately 32% of available positions; 3 of the 7 are women of color. At the maximum level, women held 42% of these positions under Bill Clinton and 24% under George W. Bush.
Broadening the scope to women in “high level” positions, Obama has appointed or nominated 19 women to fill senior roles in his administration; 8 of these positions went to women of color, including Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Nancy Sutley, chairwoman of the White House Council on Economic Equality and the only open lesbian to hold a senior level position within the administration.

In late 2006, The Healing Roots Center was developed to address the specific needs of African and African-American survivors of domestic violence, a long underserved population in Portland. Although women of color are one of the highest risk groups for domestic violence, they were not accessing services through traditional confidential shelters in numbers that reflected the need. The Healing Roots Center is the only drop-in center in Oregon focusing on African immigrant and African-American communities and dedicated to the empowerment of black women and their children who have survived domestic and sexual violence.

The CDC has just released a report on Health Disparities and Inequalities Report with new numbers detailing the uneven mortality and morbidity in the U.S.  Family Inequality‘s Philip Cohen highlighted the data on pre-term birth among whites, blacks, Asians/Pacific Islanders, Hispanics, and some Hispanic subgroups.
It shows that Asians and whites are less likely to give birth to pre-term babies than other groups, with blacks suffering the worst outcomes. As for the interesting finding: notice the wide range of outcomes for Hispanics of difference origin. Reporting only “All Hispanic” hides important variation. We can be assured that that variation is true for the other racial groups as well.

Though it’s too early to predict this case’s full political impact, it’s certain that anti-abortion groups will use it to push for further restrictions on women’s reproductive rights. But the legislation pushed by these anti-abortion conservatives is what has forced women into such life-threatening situations. Poor women throughout the United States cannot afford safe abortions and in consequence sometimes make extremely dangerous choices.

“Because of the Medicaid ban on abortion funding and state restrictions, poor women in the state and in Philadelphia really face horrific choices about what to do if they have an unwanted or unplanned pregnancy, or a pregnancy that poses significant health problems,” says Rose Corrigan, a professor of politics and law at Drexel University. “So what I’ve seen is that women often shop around for abortion services. Women are so poor that a few dollars really make a difference.”

Corrigan is also a volunteer at the Women’s Medical Fund, a Philadelphia organization that offers financial assistance to poor women seeking abortions. She says that her organization has been advising women against visiting the Women’s Medical Society since the mid-1990s.

This month, the Guttmacher Institute, crunched the numbers on race and clinic location. After cross-indexing racial and ethnic information from the 2000 U.S. Census with the Guttmacher Institute's own 2008 census of known abortion providers, researchers found:

* 63 percent of abortion providers are located in predominantly non-Hispanic white neighborhoods.

* 12 percent are located in predominantly Hispanic neighborhoods.

* 9 percent of abortion providers are located in predominantly black neighborhoods.

* 1 percent of abortion providers are located in other predominantly non-white neighborhoods.

* 15 percent of abortion providers were located in neighborhoods where no racial group constituted a majority of the population.

According to the 2000 census, blacks and Hispanics each made up about 12 percent of the U.S. population. "These statistics definitively refute the assertion that most abortion clinics are located in predominantly African-American neighborhoods," the study concludes.

surnames map showing density of concentration of names.

A Memphis high school is scrambling to reduce the number of teen pregnancies after 90 of its students were pregnant sometime this school year.
The staggering number of pregnant girls at Frayser High amounted to nearly 11 percent of the school's approximately 800 students.
While the numbers at Frayser High are staggering, they weren't that far out of the ordinary for Memphis, where the teen pregnancy rate is between 15 and 25 percent.
Frayser High School is a title one school, where 95 percent of students are eligible for free lunches and more than 100 students drop out between 11th and 12th grade, according to Public School Review.com.

The authors, Helen Brayley and Ella Cockbain, from UCL's Jill Dando Institute of Security and Crime Science, said they were surprised their research, confined to just two police operations in the north and Midlands, which found perpetrators were predominantly but not exclusively from the British Pakistani community, had been cited in support of the claims that such offences were widespread.
Their comments follow claims that a culture of silence has impeded investigations into a hidden pattern of offending by British Pakistani gangs sexually abusing hundreds of young white girls.

Mohammed Shafiq, chief executive of the Ramadhan Foundation, a Muslim youth organisation, has condemned the perpetrators, claiming they believed that "white girls have fewer morals" and are "less valuable" than Muslim girls.

But Brayley and Cockbaine, whose six-month study was cited as evidence, said they were worried that limited data had been extended "to characterise an entire crime type, in particular of race and gender". They challenged claims that white girls were deliberately sought out by offenders. "Though the majority … were white so too were the majority of local inhabitants." Comparing the percentage of white people in the areas with black and ethnic minorities, their data, they said, showed "black and ethnic minority girls over-represented among the victims".

They added: "This challenges the view that white girls are sought out by offenders, suggesting instead that convenience and accessibility may be the prime drivers for those looking for new victims."

Hilary Willmer, of the Coalition for the Removal of Pimping, said that since 2002 her group had supported 400 families where girls were the victims of grooming and sex abuse by mainly Pakistani men. "The vast majority are white families and the perpetrators are Pakistani Asians. We think this is the tip of the iceberg." But she cautioned against treating the matter as a race crime. "It's a criminal thing."

According to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, in 2009, the victims were mainly "white British in their mid and late teens" but also Bangladeshi and Afro-Caribbean. Networks of "white British, British Asians and Kurds had been "identified" as internal traffickers, with ethnic and national background varied "between groups" and geography.

In 1970, according to a new NCCP report analyzing data from the U. S. Current Population Survey, Annual Social and Economic Supplement, March 2010, 47.3 percent of young adults aged 18 to 24 were living at home. By 2009 52.8 percent were living at home.  In 1970 less than 30 percent were enrolled in school; by 2008, the percentage had increased to 45.5 percent.

Disconnection varies by age, race, ethnicity, and nativity say the researchers.
Disconnection is highest among young adults aged 19 to 21.
The rate of disconnection is highest among American Indian and Alaska Native young adults (28.8 percent).
Black, Hispanic, and other young adults also face a high likelihood of being disconnected relative to their white and Asian counterparts.
Asian young adults have the lowest rate of being disconnected at 7.4 percent.
The likelihood of being disconnected is higher among young adults who were born outside the U.S. (18.8 percent) compared with their native-born counterparts (14.4 percent).

Researchers used satellite images to compare tree cover around the houses of 5,696 women who gave birth in Portland in 2006 and 2007. Pregnant women living in houses graced by more trees were significantly less likely to deliver undersized babies. 

Tree cover made no difference in the rate of pre-term births, but researchers found a consistent link to the prevalence of infants who were small for their gestational age. For each 10 percent increase in tree coverage within about 50 yards of a home, the rate of undersized newborns decreased by 1.42 per 1000 births. As it stands, about 70 of every 1,000 newborns in Portland are small for gestational age. 

Studies in animals and people make clear that maternal stress is harmful to a developing fetus and can increase the probability of underweight birth. In a variety of human clinical trials, exposure to nature and greenery significantly reduced people's stress levels and helped them withstand high-stress situations.

Dr. Stephen Fortmann, a senior investigator at the Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research in Portland who was not involved in the study, finds the results intriguing. "It points out that some of the neighborhood level factors that effect health might work in ways we haven't thought about," Fortmann says.

Women located on leafier Portland streets were more likely to be younger, white and non-Hispanic, have fewer previous births, and live in newer and more expensive houses. To test for the impact of tree cover on birth outcomes, Donovan and co-authors used a statistical model to subtract the known effect of the mother's age, ethnic background, household income, education, use of prenatal care and many other variables that can influence fetal development.
For now, the study suggests that Portland could look forward to three fewer undersized newborns per 1,000 births if the city were to achieve its goal of boosting the area covered by trees to 33 percent.

Henrietta died of an especially virulent cervical cancer. Tissues from the biopsy of her tumor were cultured, and to everyone’s surprise, these cells grew. In fact, they grew and grew. The cell line, named HeLa (for Henrietta Lacks) was distributed to scientists all over the world. They were used to develop vaccines, cure diseases, test atomic blasts. HeLa cells traveled into space to help determine the effects of space travel on humans.

It is a story of science and a story about the long-term effects on the Lacks family, who only became aware that Henrietta’s cells were still living all over the globe many years after her death and burial in an unmarked grave.

At the heart of the story is Johns Hopkins Medical Center and the book highlights the distrust the surrounding black community had for the hospital that was built, philanthropically, to serve its interests. This distrust was rooted in the African-American stories about “night doctors,” who kidnapped black victims for medical experiments. Unfortunately, as I learned in my reading, there is truth in these stories – both in the mistreatment of blacks at the hands of experimenting doctors, but also in horror stories used to frighten slaves into submission. In fact, the idea of “night doctors,” who crept around at night dressed in white to appear spectral, looking to steal and torture African-Americans, gave rise to the Klu Klux Klan.

Prior posted his 'No Negros Allowed' sign after he says he had some problems with black people in the past and needed to make a policy against them.<br />
Federal and State law says if the business is open to the public, prohibiting people based on race is illegal. If the man's proposed gentlemen's club was going to be a private club, then an African American historian says he could discriminate.