Journalism – Page 14

Men Have Access To Significantly More Higher Education Programs In Texas Prisons Than Women

11May

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

EDUCATION, Journalism

Men Have Access To Significantly More Higher Education Programs In Texas Prisons Than Women

Alexa Garza has been out of prison for three years, but she still remembers how confining it felt. “I was surrounded by walls,” said Garza, who was incarcerated for two decades starting when she was 19. “I found that reading was an escape for me. I was able to read and learn and grow, and I knew that education was the key for me.” Already a high school graduate when she entered prison in Texas, Garza set out to obtain a higher education behind bars. That goal took the better part of her sentence to achieve. After a decade, she had earned two associate’s degrees. It took her five more years to earn a bachelor’s degree. Now a justice fellow for the national nonprofit Education Trust, which works toward education equity, Garza is raising awareness about the challenges of accessing post-seco...

By Listening To Other Black Mothers, As A Black Sociologist, And A Mom – I’ve Learned About Their Pandemic Struggles And Strengths

2May

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

COVID-19, Journalism

By Listening To Other Black Mothers, As A Black Sociologist, And A Mom – I’ve Learned About Their Pandemic Struggles And Strengths

I spent the 2020 spring break week setting up to teach my college courses online while helping to care for my 14-month-old grandchild, whose daycare had closed. At the same time, I couldn’t help thinking, being the sociologist I am, of the devastating consequences of COVID-19 I saw for women like me, Black mothers, whom I have studied for over a decade. Social science research can influence policy. Sharing Black mothers’ stories in their own voices may ultimately lead to more compassionate policies. My work is part of a small body of descriptive research, mostly by researchers of color, countering negativity and victim-blaming in earlier studies of Black families. My research partner, sociologist BarBara Scott, lives in Chicago, where I grew up. In our studies of Black mothers there, we’...

Better Known For Her Slave Rescues, Harriet Tubman Led Military Raids During The Civil War As Well

29Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

Journalism

Better Known For Her Slave Rescues, Harriet Tubman Led Military Raids During The Civil War As Well

Harriet Tubman was barely 5 feet tall and didn’t have a dime to her name. What she did have was a deep faith and powerful passion for justice that was fueled by a network of Black and white abolitionists determined to end slavery in America. “I had reasoned this out in my mind,” Tubman once told an interviewer. “There was one of two things I had a right to, liberty, or death. If I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive.” Though Tubman is most famous for her successes along the Underground Railroad, her activities as a Civil War spy are less well known. As a biographer of Tubman, I think this is a shame. Her devotion to America and its promise of freedom endured despite suffering decades of enslavement and second class citizenship. It is only in mod...

What It Means To Protect A Loved One Revisiting Will Smith’s Slap Seen Around The World

27Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

Journalism

What It Means To Protect A Loved One Revisiting Will Smith’s Slap Seen Around The World

It took less than a nanosecond before The Slap was seen around the world. It took a little longer – about two weeks – before the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences decided to ban Will Smith from appearing at another Oscar awards ceremony. But missing from the frenzy that consumed social media and mainstream channels about that infamous night has been a constructive discussion about the idea of protection – and how race plays a role in the perceptions of both the protectors and the protected. As a scholar of African American culture, philosophy and history, I believe the The Slap invites us to reassess the power of relations between partners and spouses. It also highlights the precarious lives of Black girls and women as a result of failures to protect them. The nature of prote...

Men’s Mental Health Supported By Building Healthy Relationship Skills

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

HEALTH & WELLNESS, Journalism

Men’s Mental Health Supported By Building Healthy Relationship Skills

Healthy relationships positively influence men’s well-being. Men who are partnered or married live longer lives than single men, and they have better mental health than women and unpartnered men. Marriage appears to offer a protective influence on men’s health, reducing loneliness, depression and suicidality, and is associated with less substance and alcohol use. Despite these benefits, male suicide continues to be a global crisis. As men’s health researchers, our focus has been on men’s suicidality. Much of this work is motivated by the fact that men complete suicide at three to four times the rate of women, and are known to use more lethal methods (guns, asphyxiation) to end their life. While major depression is a contributing factor to suicidality, a recent review concluded that being...

Tipped Restaurant Workers Especially Women Of Color Reported More Harassment During The Pandemic

25Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

Journalism, SOCIAL JUSTICE

Tipped Restaurant Workers Especially Women Of Color Reported More Harassment During The Pandemic

Nearly half of women working in restaurant positions where they receive tips said they have experienced increased harassment from customers or supervisors during the two years of the pandemic, according to a new survey first shared with The 19th. Seventy-three percent of all women and 78 percent of women of color in these jobs said they regularly endure or witness “sexual behaviors from customers that make them uncomfortable,” the report said. The survey was released by the advocacy nonprofit One Fair Wage in partnership with the University of California, Berkeley’s Food Labor Research Center. “I was shocked. I could imagine that things either would be getting better or that things are pretty much the same. But people are saying that it just keeps getting so much worse, particularly for...

Unlearning Racism As A Non-Black Person Of Color

20Apr

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Journalism

Unlearning Racism As A Non-Black Person Of Color

The first time I learned about the history of race and racism in America was during my first year of college, when I read Ta-Nehisi Coates’ book Between the World and Me. Before then, I had plenty of lessons on race, only none of them had ever happened in the classroom. Growing up as a mixed-race Iranian American girl in the suburban Midwest, being the target of racism was as integral to my education as learning how to read. As a kid, my skin was much darker than it is today, and in my mostly White classroom, I was usually one of the brownest kids and undoubtedly the most hirsute. My race has always been ambiguous, but my hairiness earned me the name “Bigfoot” from some of my classmates. Some who knew my racial background opted for more targeted insults, such as “terrorist” and “Muslim f...

20Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

Journalism, SOCIAL JUSTICE

Black Girl Magic On Bikes

Cycling has struggled to rid itself of the racism and sexism that makes it a tragically exclusive mode of transportation, but Black Girls Do Bike is riding to change that one pedal stroke at a time. Founded nearly a decade ago in Pittsburgh, Black Girls Do Bike has grown to over 100 chapters across the U.S. by connecting women, and Black women in particular, interested in biking as a form of transportation, recreation, and competition. “As I was biking, I realized that no one really looked like me in those groups I was going out biking with; there were not very many women, there were not many women of color,” Chyri McLain-Jackson, founder of the BGDB Indianapolis Chapter told the Indy Star. Myriad levels of systemic racism have combined to put Black people at increased risk for numerous ...

An Intimate Glimpse Into Segregation-Era Life For African Americans – The Gordon Parks Exhibit

15Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

Journalism, SOCIAL JUSTICE

An Intimate Glimpse Into Segregation-Era Life For African Americans – The Gordon Parks Exhibit

In the spring of 1950, Gordon Parks, the first African-American photographer for Life Magazine, returned to his hometown of Fort Scott, Kansas. On assignment for the magazine, Parks photographed his middle school classmates, who were dispersed among Fort Scott and other Midwestern cities and towns. The resulting images – while quite personal to Parks – offer a glimpse into a community and a set of experiences shared by many African Americans of his generation. Depicting the realities of discrimination without the veil of nostalgia, it’s a body of work that captures the resiliency of a community at a significant point in American history – just prior to the Civil Rights Movement. But for reasons unknown, Life never published the series. Now, the powerful exhibit of over 40 segregation-er...

Don’t Listen To The Sanitized Version Of History – Jackie Robinson Was A Radical

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

Journalism

Don’t Listen To The Sanitized Version Of History – Jackie Robinson Was A Radical

In our new book, “Baseball Rebels: The Players, People, and Social Movements That Shook Up the Game and Changed America,” Rob Elias and I profile the many iconoclasts, dissenters and mavericks who defied baseball’s and society’s establishment. But none took as many risks – and had as big an impact – as Jackie Robinson. Though Robinson was a fierce competitor, an outstanding athlete and a deeply religious man, the aspect of his legacy that often gets glossed over is that he was also a radical. The sanitized version of the Jackie Robinson story goes something like this: He was a remarkable athlete who, with his unusual level of self-control, was the perfect person to break baseball’s color line. In the face of jeers and taunts, he was able to put his head down and let his play do the talki...