Andrew Halcro: Diversity doesn't burden Anchorage economy, it bolsters it; Anchorage Daily News, 4/27/14

Andrew Halcro, Anchorage Daily News; Andrew Halcro: Diversity doesn't burden Anchorage economy, it bolsters it:

"For the last few years, the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce has adopted diversity as one of our key focus areas. The goal is to promote Anchorage as a dynamic and inclusive community, where access to opportunity is equal and we strengthen the local economy by strengthening our community.

According to Richard Florida, American economist and social scientist at the University of Toronto, America's "creative class" (today's younger workforce demographic) will be the leading force of growth in the future economy, expected to grow by more than10 million jobs in the next decade. This creative class includes almost 40 percent of the current population.

For Anchorage to attract the creative class, Florida argues, it must possess "the three T's": talent (a highly talented/educated/skilled population), tolerance (a diverse community, which has a "live and let live" ethos) and technology (the technological infrastructure necessary to fuel an entrepreneurial culture).

To ensure Anchorage remains a dynamic city, we must cultivate the three T's while understanding that embracing diversity is an important bridge to a healthy community and economic vitality."

How the Supreme Court’s ruling on Michigan affirmative action affects colleges; Washington Post, 4/23/14

Nick Anderson, Washington Post; How the Supreme Court’s ruling on Michigan affirmative action affects colleges:

"The new Supreme Court ruling on affirmative action leaves in place, for now, a system that allows public universities in Maryland, Virginia and many other states to consider race and ethnicity in admissions.

But the ruling adds momentum to a movement that seeks to end racial preferences in college admissions, not only in Michigan but throughout the country.

The court Tuesday upheld Michigan’s ban on the use of race as a factor in admissions to state universities. It was the second major affirmative-action ruling concerning higher education in less than a year: In a June ruling on a Texas case, the court ordered tighter scrutiny of race-conscious admissions, preserving the principle that affirmative action is permissible in some circumstances.

The upshot: Colleges in several states with affirmative-action bans, including California and Washington state, must continue to use colorblind admissions. Those in states without bans must be prepared to justify why consideration of race is essential for assembling a diverse class."

Diversity low in educator courses at Mass. colleges: State encourages more nonwhites to be teachers; Boston Globe, 4/28/14

James Vaznis, Boston Globe; Diversity low in educator courses at Mass. colleges: State encourages more nonwhites to be teachers:

"Many theories abound for the low enrollment, but the main reason could be a public relations problem facing the teaching profession, said Mitchell Chester, the state commissioner of elementary and secondary education.

“For too many people, teaching is not a desired profession,” Chester said. “Too often, there is a negative perception of what it means to be a teacher, and for people who have multiple options for careers, teaching is the one they would choose the least. Our society, unfortunately, doesn’t hold teachers in high esteem.”

Hiring more teachers of color is emerging as a priority for state and local officials as Massachusetts experiences a major shift in student demographics. Over the last two decades, the segment of students who are African-American, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American has grown from 21 percent of statewide enrollment to 35 percent this year.

Earlier this year, the Boston public schools stepped up recruitment of teachers of color, as the number of black teachers fell below a decades-old federal court order that requires at least 25 percent of the teaching force to be black. Boston officials expect to release the results of the recruitment effort in the coming weeks.

Many educators believe a more diverse workforce could help teachers better connect with their students and keep them engaged in learning. But debate persists on how much schools need to diversify their workforces, with many educators maintaining that top-notch teaching — regardless of the race or ethnicity of the teacher — trumps other factors."

A Rancher’s Romantic Revisionism; New York Times, 4/25/14

Charles M. Blow, New York Times; A Rancher’s Romantic Revisionism:

"Soon after Bundy’s views on slavery and “the Negro” came to light, the conservative supporters he had accrued began to scurry and others pounced.

But I refuse to let Bundy’s fantasies about slavery and projections about “Negroes” be given over to predictable political squabbling. The legacy of slavery must be liberated from political commentary.

Casual, careless and incorrect references to slavery, much like blithe references to Nazi Germany, do violence to the memory of those who endured it, or were lost to it, and to their descendants.

There is no modern-day comparison in this country to the horrors of slavery. None! Leave it alone. Remember, honor and respect. That’s all.

How could slaves have been “happier,” when more than 12 million were put in shackles, loaded like logs into the bowels of ships and sailed toward shores unknown, away from their world and into their hell?

How could they have been “happier” to be greased up and sold off, mother from child, with no one registering their anguish?

Sojourner Truth, in her “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech, delivered in 1851 at the Women’s Convention in Akron, Ohio, lamented: “I have borne 13 children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard me!”...

Romantic revisionism of this most ghastly enterprise cannot stand. It must be met, vigilantly and unequivocally, with the strongest rebuttal. Slaves dishonored in life must not have their memories disfigured by revisionist history.

America committed this great sin, its original sin, and there will be no absolution by alteration. America must live with the memory of what its forefathers — even its founding fathers — did. It must sit with this history, the unvarnished truth of it, until it has reconciled with it."

Obama: Reported comments by team owner 'racist'; Associated Press via Yahoo News, 4/27/14

Julie Pace, Associated Press via Yahoo News; Obama: Reported comments by team owner 'racist' : President Barack Obama said Sunday that comments reportedly made by the owner of a U.S. pro basketball team are "incredibly offensive racist statements," before casting them as part of a continuing legacy of slavery and segregation that Americans must confront.

"When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, you don't really have to do anything, you just let them talk," Obama said when asked to respond to the reported comments from Los Angeles Clippers' owner Donald Sterling...

Obama cast the comments through a broader prism of racism in America, adding that "we constantly have to be on guard on racial attitudes that divide us rather than embracing our diversity as a strength."

"The United States continues to wrestle with the legacy of race and slavery and segregation, that's still there, the vestiges of discrimination," Obama said during a news conference in Malaysia, where he was traveling.

"We've made enormous strides, but you're going to continue to see this percolate up every so often," he added. "And I think that we just have to be clear and steady in denouncing it, teaching our children differently, but also remaining hopeful that part of why statements like this stand out some much is because there has been this shift in how we view ourselves.""

Debbie Allen Knows There Won't Be Diversity On TV Until We Meld Into One Melting Pot Of A Race; HuffingtonPost.com, 4/23/14

Lauren Duca, HuffingtonPost.com; Debbie Allen Knows There Won't Be Diversity On TV Until We Meld Into One Melting Pot Of A Race: "Debbie Allen remembers the segregated water fountains of the 1960s. Growing up in Texas, life was so difficult, she and her family crossed the border into Mexico, so they could live without the binds of American racism. Things come a long way since then, of course, but Allen knows that the tired old question of diversity won't get an answer, until we all become one big old melting pot of a race (read: look exactly like Rashida Jones). Huff Post TV talked to Allen about the way she's seen things change from her role as Lydia Grant on "Fame" in the early 1980s to work with Shonda Rhimes on "Grey's Anatomy" and "Scandal," and what we can expect in terms of (very literal) post-racialism."

[Podcast] Proactively Addressing Bias and Microinequities in the Workplace; Cornell University, 3/10/14

[Podcast] Cornell University; Proactively Addressing Bias and Microinequities in the Workplace:

"Ernest Hicks, retired manager of corporate diversity at Xerox Corporation, discussed ways to proactively address bias and micro-inequities in the workplace, Jan. 15, 2014. The program is part of the new Inclusive Excellence Academy, supported by the University Diversity Council to advance the Toward New Destinations initiative."

Human Rights Campaign Plans LGBT Equality Push In The South; Associated Press via HuffingtonPost.com, 4/26/14

Jay Reeves, Associated Press via HuffingtonPost.com; Human Rights Campaign Plans LGBT Equality Push In The South:

"A national organization is launching a three-year, $8.5 million campaign to promote LGBT equality and push for new legal protections in three Southern states.

The Washington-based Human Rights Campaign is planning what it calls the "Project One America" in Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi...

The activist group hopes that a campaign built on fostering conversations and dialogue will help ease resistance and make it easier to change laws."

Colleges Seek New Paths to Diversity After Court Ruling; New York Times, 4/22/14

Tamar Lewin, New York Times; Colleges Seek New Paths to Diversity After Court Ruling:

"Leaders in higher education, upset by Tuesday’s Supreme Court decision upholding Michigan’s ban on race-based preferences in college admissions, said the ruling would nudge them further along the path of finding alternative means to promote diversity in their student bodies.

Race remains a permissible element in admissions in states without such a ban, and many educators hailed the dissent by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, which emphasized the continuing significance of race. Still, they said affirmative action appeared to have a limited future.

“Most of us have already started to look at other variables than race, especially first-generation students, and low-income students,” said Muriel Howard, president of the American Association of State Colleges and Universities. In debates taking place in various parts of the country, many educators have argued that such methods produce diversity but far less effectively."

Racial Equality Loses at the Court; New York Times, 4/22/14

Editorial Board, New York Times; Racial Equality Loses at the Court:

"In the most eloquent part of her dissent, Justice Sotomayor rightly took aim at the conservative members of the court, who speak high-mindedly of racial equality even as they write off decades-old precedent meant to address the lingering effects of “centuries of racial discrimination” — a view that is “out of touch with reality.” The reality, she wrote, is that “race matters.”

In response to her pointed rebuke, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. wrote a terse concurrence chiding Justice Sotomayor for questioning her colleagues’ “openness and candor.” Yet the chief justice’s own words on race show no true understanding of what she called America’s “long and lamentable record” of rigging the political game against racial minorities. “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” he wrote glibly in a 2007 case striking down school integration efforts in Washington and Kentucky. “Things have changed dramatically” 50 years after the Voting Rights Act, he wrote last year in Shelby County v. Holder, which struck down a provision of that act."

Court Backs Michigan on Affirmative Action; New York Times, 4/22/14

Adam Liptak, New York Times; Court Backs Michigan on Affirmative Action:

"In a fractured decision that revealed deep divisions over what role the judiciary should play in protecting racial and ethnic minorities, the Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a Michigan constitutional amendment that bans affirmative action in admissions to the state’s public universities.

The 6-to-2 ruling effectively endorsed similar measures in seven other states. It may also encourage more states to enact measures banning the use of race in admissions or to consider race-neutral alternatives to ensure diversity.

States that forbid affirmative action in higher education, like Florida and California, as well as Michigan, have seen a significant drop in the enrollment of black and Hispanic students in their most selective colleges and universities."

‘If there’s a movie you’re gonna lose money on, make it Wonder Woman’; ComicBookResources.com, 4/14/14

Kevin Melrose, ComicBookResources.com; ‘If there’s a movie you’re gonna lose money on, make it Wonder Woman’ :

"“When I first got this role I just cried like a baby because I was like, ‘Wow, next Halloween, I’m gonna open the door and there’s gonna be a little kid dressed as the Falcon.’ That’s the thing that always gets me. I feel like everybody deserves that. I feel like there should be a Latino superhero. Scarlett does great representation for all the other girls, but there should be a Wonder Woman movie. I don’t care if they make 20 bucks, if there’s a movie you’re gonna lose money on, make it Wonder Woman. You know what I mean, ’cause little girls deserve that. There’s so many of these little people out here doing awful things for money in the world of being famous. And little girls see that. They should have the opposite spectrum of that to look up to.”

– Captain America: The Winter Soldier star Anthony Mackie, discussing playing the Falcon, and the need for more representation of women and minorities in superhero movies"

'X-Men' Mutant Benjamin Deeds Comes Out As Gay; HuffingtonPost.com, 11/20/13

James Nichols, HuffingtonPost.com; 'X-Men' Mutant Benjamin Deeds Comes Out As Gay:

"Benjamin Deeds, one of the most recent mutants to be discovered in the series, revealed his sexual orientation in "Uncanny X-Men #14," written by Brian Michael Bendis, slated for release this week.

"Continuing with Marvel’s rich tradition of character development and storytelling, this shape-shifting mutant can alter his appearance to mimic anyone he is in close proximity with," Joe Taraborrelli, Sr. Communications Manager of Marvel Entertainment told The Huffington Post. "The fact that Ben has come out as homosexual is just a small facet of who he is and what he is going to bring to Cyclops’ select team of X-Men."

This isn't the first time a comic book character has come out as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT). From Kevin Keller to Buffy to Batwoman, comic book culture has a long history of LGBT inclusivity and positive representation."

M.L.B. Report Highlights Sobering Number of Black Players; New York Times, 4/9/14

Tyler Kepner, New York Times; M.L.B. Report Highlights Sobering Number of Black Players:

"Dave Dombrowski is the head of baseball’s on-field diversity task force, but he is also the president of the Detroit Tigers. In the last year, as he studied ways to give better opportunities to African-Americans, Dombrowski realized the challenge demanded more than a committee of experts with day jobs.

“There’s so much involved in this, you need someone to focus on it daily,” Dombrowski said...

For Major League Baseball, that someone is Jerry Manuel, a former manager of the Mets and the Chicago White Sox...

Through the work of the committee, Dombrowski and Manuel said, baseball has identified many barriers, philosophical and practical, to increasing participation. But Sabathia brought up a societal issue that may be beyond baseball’s reach.

“Baseball’s a sport where you learn how to play catch with your dad,” Sabathia said. “There’s a lot of single-parent homes in the inner city, so it’s hard to get kids to play. Hopefully, Jerry can do some good things.”"

Former NFL player to speak at Sewickley Academy on obstacles gays face; Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, 4/9/14

Bobby Cherry, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review; Former NFL player to speak at Sewickley Academy on obstacles gays face:

"Davis last year was named executive director of You Can Play — an organization working to end homophobia among sports programs from the youth level to professional.

The organization has partnered with teams and sports leagues in an effort to educate executives, players and coaches on providing equality, safety and respect for gay athletes.

“He'll be able to talk to students about being silenced for so long in a very public position,” Sewickley Academy spokeswoman Mandi Semple said.

School leaders considered Davis as a speaker after students said the school needed to do more to educate peers about equality, the school's Diversity Director Jeremiah Jackson said.

“(Diversity is) probably the most important thing we should be focused on as a school,” he said. “The most important thing in any school environment are the people. So when we're talking about inclusion and identity, we're not just talking about sexual orientation and identity or race, we're talking about the real identities of people. And if our true mission is to help students cultivate their individual potential, they have to be able to see themselves, explore themselves and take risks in a safe space and a positive way.”"

UMass' Derrick Gordon says he's gay; ESPN.com, 4/9/14

Kate Fagan, ESPN.com; UMass' Derrick Gordon says he's gay:

"The 22-year-old shooting guard came out to his family, coaches and teammates in just a few days at the beginning of April. That's when he also decided to publicly acknowledge his sexuality.

"I just didn't want to hide anymore, in any way," Gordon told ESPN. "I didn't want to have to lie or sneak. I've been waiting and watching for the last few months, wondering when a Division I player would come out, and finally I just said, 'Why not me?'"...

Gordon, a native of Plainfield, N.J., said that a key moment for him came when the Brooklyn Nets signed veteran center Jason Collins to a 10-day contract in February. Collins, who publicly acknowledged his sexuality in April 2013, became the first openly gay player in NBA history when he took the court against the Los Angeles Lakers on Feb. 23.

"That was so important to me, knowing that sexuality didn't matter, that the NBA was OK with it," Gordon said...

"UMass is proud to have Derrick Gordon as a member of our athletic family and to honor his courage and openness as a gay student-athlete," athletic director John McCutcheon said in a written statement. "UMass is committed to creating a welcoming climate where every student-athlete, coach and staff member can be true to themselves as they pursue their athletic, academic and professional goals."

[YouTube video] Anthony Mackie Talks Captain America 2 & Playing A Black Superhero; Bossip, 4/3/14

[YouTube video] Bossip; Anthony Mackie Talks Captain America 2 & Playing A Black Superhero:

"Anthony Mackie talks about playing Falcon in the upcoming Marvel film Captain America: The Winter Soldier & diversity in Hollywood."

Brendan Eich's coming-out party ended the Mozilla way: free, open – and shut; Guardian, 4/4/14

James Ball, Guardian; Brendan Eich's coming-out party ended the Mozilla way: free, open – and shut:

"So what do gay rights have to do with browser design? Nothing, some people have been quick to say. Andrew Sullivan likened the gay rights movement to the "religious right" for "hounding" Eich out of his job. William Saleton at Slate facetiously suggested activists would now have to force the remaining 35,000 Proposition 8 donors out of their jobs.

Both writers seem concerned that Eich's resignation is a defeat for freedom of expression. If anything, it is a victory – the ouster of a founder and CEO by his own people, at a foundation based on open and equal expression, should be the new textbook example of the system working exactly as it should.

Mozilla is not just another software company. Its Firefox browser relies on the goodwill and contributions of a huge community of developers and others to keep the project running, while the group serves to educate and lobby for a free and open internet: the foundation was in the thick of battles on SOPA and PIPA, and one of the first to express serious alarm over Edward Snowden's NSA revelations.

With battles ahead on these issues and more – net neutrality perhaps biggest of all – the ability to build and maintain a diverse coalition of supporters is absolutely integral to Mozilla's prospects. Maintaining that mission is, quite literally, the first and most important duty of its CEO.

Mozilla's fix to keep its team together has always been simple: inclusiveness. The foundation has accepted anyone who supports its cause, so long as they leave their personal views at the door. Mozilla is an open-internet version of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell": left or right, pro-choice or pro-life, all are welcome, so long as they don't bring their opinions into the workplace – or their source code."