Racial Equity

"The Black Butterfly: The Harmful Politics of Race and Space in America" is Lawrence Brown's first book. In this work, he demonstrates that America cannot make Black Lives Matter until the nation makes Black neighborhoods matter.

You can purchase this book in a variety of places, but here are links to independent bookstores where you can order the book.  Please support them if you can!

Baltimore Bookstores

1. Urban Reads Bookstore https://www.oururbanreads.com/product-page/the-black-butterfly-the-harmful-politics-of-race-and-space-in-america

2. Red Emma's https://redemmas.org/titles/34742-the-black-butterfly--the-harmful-politics-of-race-and-space-in-america…

3. The Ivy Bookshop https://ubjo.theivybookshop.com/book/9781421439877

4. Atomic Books https://atomicbooks.com/products/the-black-butterfly

5. Charm City Books https://charmcitybooks.com/r/tu/bzm

6. Greedy Reads Bookstore https://www.greedyreads.com/?searchtype=keyword&qs=the+black+butterfly+lawrence&q=h.tviewer&using_sb=status&qsb=keyword

Independent Bookstores Around the Nation

1. Turning Page Bookshop (Goose Creek, SC) https://turningpagebookshop.com/shop/ols/products/the-black-butterfly-the-harmful-politics-of-race-and-space-in-america-lawrence-t-brown…

2. The Seminar Co-op Bookstores (Hyde Park, Chicago) https://www.semcoop.com/black-butterfly-harmful-politics-race-and-space-america

3. The Book Stall (North Shore, Chicago) https://www.thebookstall.com/book/9781421439877

4. Trident Books (Boston, MA) https://www.tridentbookscafe.com/book/9781421439877

5. Tattered Cover (Denver, CO) https://www.tatteredcover.com/book/9781421439877

6. Park Roads Books (Charlotte, NC) https://www.parkroadbooks.com/book/9781421439877

7. Pyramid Books (Boynton Beach, FL) https://pyramidbooks.indielite.org/book/9781421439877

This project aims to develop a high-level equity approach to inform the City of Vancouver's Equity Framework for City Plan. Includes best practices on racial and gender equity, intersectionality and decolonization from local governments across North America and Oceania. Provides directions for embedding equity in city planning in a meaningful, transformative and substantive manner to positively impact the lives of all residents, particularly those communities excluded by colonial and other unjust systems.

In the days and weeks following the April 27, 2015 Baltimore Uprising, politicians and civil leaders promised that things would change and be different in the wake of the most explosive social and racial upheaval in Baltimore since the 1968 Holy Week Uprising following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on April 4 that year. As Baltimore Sun reporter Kevin Rector wrote in an article nearly a year after the April 27, 2015 Baltimore Uprising:

However, within one calendar year of the 2015 Baltimore Uprising, city leaders had announced that they were deliberating the authorization of $660 million in tax increment financing bonds, commonly knows as TIFs. The $660 million in TIF bonds were to be issued for the infrastructure needed for a $5.5 billion redevelopment project in Port Covington led by the real estate arm of Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank.

Abstract. This is the introduction to a special issue, focusing on African Canadians, gender and sexuality. This special issue adds to the body of empirical knowledge about gender and sexuality and how they relate to identities, structures, and systems within African Canadian communities. All of the articles feature qualitative inquiries. These were conducted in Nova Scotia, Quebec, Ontario, and British Columbia and focused on education, policing, sexual agency and romantic relationships.

This case study follows a district racial equity initiative from policy formulation through implementation, and finally to the review of a high school discipline measure. The initiative had a consistent theme of addressing implicit bias. However, over time, district equity champions expanded the definition of implicit bias beyond its conventional meaning of subconscious prejudices and perceptions that may influence action. These champions came to identify policies, practices, and curriculum that presumed and privileged underlying White norms, and were thus implicitly biased. Hence, implicit bias became evident in powerful structural racism across the school system.

This study examined how participation in an inquiry-based workshop on assessing course syllabi for equity-mindedness and cultural inclusivity fostered community college math faculty learning about racial/ethnic equity and equity-mindedness. Findings show that the workshop prompted reflection on what equity means and how participants’ teaching practices and classroom environments affect students, especially students of color. For some, reflection was followed by insights about their role as instructors and equity-minded changes in practice; for others, reflection affirmed the value of their existing conceptions and current practice. Despite initial signs of learning, there was little evidence that participants developed lasting equity-mindedness.

Racial inequities in healthcare in the US and the UK are well documented, yet disparities stubbornly persist at disturbing levels in high-income countries such as these. While some healthcare institutions have been using anti-bias training to address the problem, it has had no impact on reducing inequities. While well-intentioned, it could be argued that mere training, without legally enforceable procedures to reduce racial bias, will maintain the status quo.

There is limited research that explores the dropout and re-enrollment experiences of girls of color in urban schools despite these students having higher rates of early school withdrawal than their racial counterparts. Girls of color that dropout often have to navigate racial and gender stereotypes within a larger heteronormative system of oppression that challenges their identity as young women. Drawing from Role-Identity and Social Stress Theory, this qualitative study examined the intersection of race, gender, and space in structuring how female students of color negotiated their status as former “dropouts” to returners. Their narratives illustrate how dropout stigmas of girls of color are mediated by the context in which they experienced racial microstressors, and how they negotiated parent relationships in their pursuit of a high school diploma.

Research on American universities’ involvement in slavery has primarily been historical. We drew upon Critical Race Quantitative Inquiry, or QuantCrit, to devise a methodology to measure various ways Black college students respond to their institution’s history of slavery, and to explore factors that may relate to these responses. Data were collected from 93 students of African descent at a Southern US institution historically involved in slavery. Multiple linear regression models accounted for 35.9% of the variance in students’ emotional responses, 27.3% in behavioral responses, and 13.6% in psychological responses to the institution’s enslavement history. Statistical results show the relevance of background characteristics and contemporary racialized experiences in predicting student responses. Based on the findings of this exploratory study, we recommend that as leaders of institutions with histories of slavery consider ways to address their respective histories through higher education reparations, that they consider the impact of this violent history on contemporary Black students. Next steps to expand the study and further explore the impact of university histories of slavery are proposed.

This resource provides concrete ways in which researchers can incorporate a racial and ethnic equity perspective at every stage of the research process: landscape assessment, study design and data collection, data analysis, and dissemination.

This conceptual article reviews current research on racial disparities in disciplinary practices in early childhood education and work to address these issues within a positive behavior support (PBS) framework. Building largely on the Pyramid Model, recommendations and a culturally responsive approach are suggested for use within a program-wide PBS framework in early childhood settings. Future directions are discussed to guide efforts toward reducing disparate racial discipline practices in early childhood programs.

Contents:

1 The Uneasy Conscience of a White Christian | 1
Joi: Code-Switching | 19
2 The Power and Effects of Racial Socialization | 23
3 The Harm of Whiteness to Oneself | 33
Beth: Forming an Identity | 40
4 Moral Imagination | 43
Jonathan: Police Encounters | 52
5 Black and Wild, Like a Bear: Police Brutality and Moral Perception | 56
6 Black Power, White Power | 63
Devlin: Systems | 75
7 Inhabiting Every Nook and Cranny of American Life | 79
8 Is Abortion Worse than Racism? | 92
Israel: Racial Undertones | 99
9 “But I Didn’t Mean to Hurt You”: Racial Microaggressions and Whiteness | 103
Ana: Being Latina in the United States | 119
10 Is Racial Equity a Conservative or a Liberal Concern? | 122
Lisa: Belonging | 130
11 The Resistance of Southern Whites to the 1961 Freedom Rides | 133
12 How Slavery Affects Us Now | 138
Jonathan: Church Encounters | 143
13 Why Church Integration May Never Happen | 147
Devlin: Breaking Down Walls | 157
14 What We Whites Must Do | 161

The Diversity Gap series created by Professor Malinda S. Smith and published by the Academic Women's Association at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. This 2019 of research chairs offers a brief historical overview of the emergence of equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) and the Canada Research Chairs (CRCs) and the Canada Excellence Research Chairs (CERCs), and the new Canada 150 Research Chairs. The study's findings are visualized in two infographics developed in collaboration with Dr. Nancy Bray:

Online: https://uofaawa.wordpress.com/2019/05/02/towards-closing-the-diversity-gap-in-research-chairs/

Residents' experiences provide rich insight into the factors that drive widening social and health disparities, and those experiences are not homogeneous. Only through attending to people's lived experiences will society begin to see these as issues of the entire community, and only by engaging residents in the process of community change can the kinds of change that are needed ever be achieved. Photovoice is a participatory qualitative research method that gives voice to participants' experiences and perspectives while simultaneously facilitating critical consciousness-raising for social action and social change. This study employed a Photovoice process to explore experiences and perspectives of residents and people working in organizations that serve West Louisville, and to facilitate dialogue and action leading to social change. Forty-three individuals across eight groups completed the Photovoice project, representing youth, older adults, LGBTQ people, faith leaders, educators, activists, and two groups of Black men. Analysis of photos and group dialogue within and across the eight groups identified several common themes that pointed at the historical and present structural racism in the community, the city's lack of concern for the Black community, the importance of Black history, and the need for collective community action. The public Photovoice exhibit helped inform the subsequent agenda for the city's Center for Health Equity.

Este  trabalho ressalta a  importância do investimento em políticas de ações afirmativas para  a  concretização dos direitos dos grupos sociais negros no país e  para a promoção da igualdade racial na sociedade. Neste sentido, visou­-se destacar a construção histórica  e social das relações raciais no Brasil e os reflexos das políticas de ações afirmativas na efetivação dos direitos de cidadania das minorias.
Palavras­-chave: Ações afirmativas. Igualdade racial.  Minoria Negra.

The Draft Recommended Transit Network Plan (TNP) has zero expansion of the existing network or increased job opportunity for impoverished residents. It effectively reduces resources in low income Black neighborhoods and increases resources to other demographics. It does not achieve any antipoverty goals of the city and instead reduces quality of life drastically for vulnerable populations.

It is 73 Years since the Universal Declaration of Fundamental Human Rights [UDHR] was promulgated to be a kind of “international Magan Carta of all men everywhere”. Sadly, even the freedoms, liberties and rights of “all men” on the earth are an illusion, let alone those of all humans, not least women. Among those men and women for whom fundamental freedoms, liberties and rights remain as distant as the heavens are Majority Native African Men and Women, whose tranquil lives have never been restored ever since foreign imperialism stepped their feet on the shores of Continental Africa – the Romans and Greeks, followed by Europeans Colonisation, characterised by phases of human tragedies to this day. It is heartbreaking to note that the Declaration of the UDHR has done little to dismantle the supremacist ideologies, their structures and superstructures of domination and peripheralisation, which has become even more entrenched, barring mere window dressings, superficialism and symbolism. On the 73 Anniversary of UDHR, the CORPUS GREAT SOVEREIGN RIGHTS INSTITUTES | CORPUS GREAT INSTITUTES, Centres of Excellence, Chancellery Chambers & Foundation calls for the United Nations [International Community] to get serious about including Indigenous Africa into an international Magna Carta of all humans. The endless horrible, inhumane, dehumanising and tragic images that reflect the dismal lived experiences of Majority Indigenous Africans bear witness to the 500 Year European and American Siege Against Continental Africa. We call for the 5 Centuries’ Old AntiAfrican Siege to be lifted forthwith and with the fiercest urgency of time.

This conceptual article reviews current research on racial disparities in disciplinary practices in early childhood education and work to address these issues within a positive behavior support (PBS) framework. Building largely on the Pyramid Model, recommendations and a culturally responsive approach are suggested for use within a program-wide PBS framework in early childhood settings. Future directions are discussed to guide efforts toward reducing disparate racial discipline practices in early childhood programs.

COVID-19: Emerging Community Needs and Policy Solutions

Citation: Schiavo, R., Lee, L. T., Spencer, P., Washington, T., Roque-Lewis, A., Vu, A., and Health Equity Initiative. (2020). COVID-19: Emerging Community Needs & Policy Solutions. A Community Leaders Forum: Report and Call to Action. New York, NY: Health Equity Initiative. July 2020. Available at: https://www.healthequityinitiative.org/reports.html

Summary
In response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and its disproportionate impact among Black, Brown and Indigenous communities as well as other communities of color and many marginalized and underserved groups both in the Unites States and globally, Health Equity Initiative, designed, organized and hosted a Community Leaders Forum  to highlight the experience and insights of community leaders from across the United States. The Forum focused on (a) how the coronavirus underscores many of the challenges and health and social inequities we already knew existed, (b) emerging community needs in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, and (c) community-driven ideas for policy solutions that may address emerging needs and priorities that contribute to COVID-19 inequities.  This report and call to action includes the discussion from the Forum and features recommendations for policy solutions that are grounded in the experience of the community leaders who participated, and focus on a variety of topics including addressing food insecurity, mobilizing resources for hospitals and clinical practices in underserved neighborhoods, improving the quality and affordability of healthcare services, mitigating the digital divide in "redlined" neighborhoods, prioritizing funding to address loneliness and the mental health impact of the pandemic among marginalized communities, and increasing support for the work of local CBOs, among others.

Why Race? is a resource designed for practitioners who, in looking at issues of equity, are confronted with the question of why equity should be understood in terms of race rather than income. This resource aims to provide participants with responses to common questions regarding the focus on racial equity. It features a vignette between a college president and a Center for Urban Education Equity Scorecard™ team member, highlighting the conversations that can occur between higher education practitioners.

This study presents findings from an Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health Consultation (IECMHC) initiative in Arizona called Smart Support. The IECMHC used an early childhood mental health consultation model as an early childhood education intervention to address the needs of preschoolers with challenging behaviors. Dis- parities in teacher‐child relationships and discipline are some of the most persistent racial disparities impacting young Black children. The goal of IECMHC is to facilitate teachers' skills to respond to challenging child behavior and to shift teachers' internal representations of young children. This study is one of the first to link a statewide IECMHC intervention to the analysis of racial and gender teacher‐child relational and discipline disparities. Multi- level growth analyses examined whether child scores at baseline and growth over time differed as a function of child race and gender. At baseline, Black children, com- pared to white peers, and Black boys, compared to white boys, had higher teacher‐child conflict scores. These scores decreased more strongly over the course of IECMHC such that Black children's outcomes surpassed those of white peers by the end of consultation. A trend was also seen for the reduction of Black boys' preschool expulsion risk, al- though this trend was only marginally significant.

Research on American universities’ involvement in slavery has primarily been historical. We drew upon Critical Race Quantitative Inquiry, or QuantCrit, to devise a methodology to measure various ways Black college students respond to their institution’s history of slavery, and to explore factors that may relate to these responses. Data were collected from 93 students of African descent at a Southern US institution historically involved in slavery. Multiple linear regression models accounted for 35.9% of the variance in students’ emotional responses, 27.3% in behavioral responses, and 13.6% in psychological responses to the institution’s enslavement history. Statistical results show the relevance of background characteristics and contemporary racialized experiences in predicting student responses. Based on the findings of this exploratory study, we recommend that as leaders of institutions with histories of slavery consider ways to address their respective histories through higher education reparations, that they consider the impact of this violent history on contemporary Black students. Next steps to expand the study and further explore the impact of university histories of slavery are proposed.