March 2017

When my parents sent my brother and me off to college in upstate South Carolina back in 2008, they gave us — their black, 18-year-old twin sons — a warning: Be careful around white women. And why wouldn’t they say this? Their words were meant as a talisman, one that black parents have been passing to their black sons for centuries. It wasn’t long ago, after all, that the racial caste system known as Jim Crow punished, and often killed, black men who dared even to make eye contact with a...

Nora Caplan-Bricker reported in the September/October 2015 issue of Pacific Standard that many family health-care providers lacked training in administering one of the most reliable forms of birth control available, the intrauterine device (IUD). One-third reported they’d need more training before they’d feel comfortable recommending one. In October, the Texas Tribune reported on Texas’ new policy allowing its Medicaid program to fund the implantation of IUDs in the delivery room for women...

A bill in Sacramento would make California the first state in the country where drug users could be provided with a place to inject. The bill's author says the measure is aimed at reducing overdoses and other problems caused by drug abuse. "In the U.S. we have criminalized rather than treated addiction as a medical or social issue," said Assemblywoman Susan Eggman (D-Stockton). "Our prisons are full of people suffering from issues of addiction. Being able to provide a safe place for someone...

Preschoolers who get too little sleep may be more likely to have trouble paying attention, controlling their emotions and processing information later in childhood, a new study suggests. By age 7, these sleepless kids had markedly decreased mental and emotional functioning, said study lead researcher Dr. Elsie Taveras. The children exhibited "poorer ability to pay attention, poorer emotional control, poorer executive function in general, and more behavioral problems," said Taveras, chief of...

The Hechinger Report filmed the school at the juvenile detention center in New Orleans after a new group of educators, with a different approach, took over. JJIE and Youth Today have partnered with the Hechinger Report in the past on education projects. [For more of this story go to http://jjie.org/2017/03/15/school-for-new-orleans-juveniles-evolves/]

Hidden Figures is the story of three black women — bona fide geniuses in the fields of mathematics, physics, and engineering — who were instrumental in the 1960s-era Space Race. The stories of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson unfolded during a time when few understood — let alone believed — that black women could help put the first American in space, in large part because Jim Crow — and not ability — often stood in the way of black Americans’ quest to make history.

“You can recover from all that happened to you.” That was the dose of hope I received from Sebern Fisher during a short telephone interview. She is the author of Neurofeedback in the Treatment of Developmental Trauma: Calming the Fear-Driven Brain. Her book is excellent even if you never plan on using neurofeedback. She helps explain why and how developmental trauma devastates and how it is different than single-incident trauma or traditional post-traumatic stress. Honestly – if you read her...

School segregation did not end in 1954 with the landmarkBrown v. Board of Education decision. For the past 52 years, the Cleveland, Mississippi, school district has faced ongoing litigation in response to its racially divided high schools and middle schools. After decades of legal battles and failed integration initiatives, a settlement was finalized Monday, creating a single high school on the historically white Cleveland High campus and a single middle school on the historically black East...

We’re all here for each other. Though sometimes it might seem that’s far from reality, know that it is. People are inherently compassionate, generous and kind. But we get distracted by the challenges of life, we get lost and we forget that we are one big human family, here to support one another. What brings us back to center? Our stories, the way we define the journey of our lives. Sometimes it’s unpleasant because we carry around so much baggage, but we also have the benefit of our human...

On the third day of Civic I/O, the government and policy sessions at South by Southwest (SXSW), mayors assumed the role of “Shark Tank” investors. The mayors of Denver; Orlando, Fla.; and West Sacramento, Calif., joined a panel of tech entrepreneurs to judge startups' proposals for business ideas that help solve a civic problem. The first-place prize of $10,000 went to RideAlong, a digital tool meant to facilitate safer interactions between police and people with mental illness. While about...

Admit it. Many middle-class families are scared to send their children to schools with low-income children of color. More than 60 years after the landmark Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education, that mandated desegregation in schools, and after 25 years of education reform, white families aren’t flocking to neighborhood schools or charters with black children. In my view, faith-based schools are filled with people who are afraid of poor folk as much as they are God-fearing . If...

Much of the work we do at IISC includes some element of helping to develop networks for social change . This entails working with diverse groups of individuals and/or organizations to come together and create a common vision and clear pathway to collective action and impact . I’ve been reflecting on how important it can be to not simply focus on creating or developing networks “out there” and across traditional boundaries, but also “in here,” within different recognized borders. “When a...