Childhood Obesity is a national epidemic that is plaguing the African American community at alarming rates. At our centennial convention, the NAACP passed a national resolution encouraging units to save our young people. First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” Initiative is the White House response to this crisis. The White House Task Force on Childhood Obesity has released a Report to the President that is now available to the public. Click here to read the report.
With support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the NAACP is addressing childhood obesity as a national health priority. (more…)

By Monique Morris, NAACP Vice President for Advocacy & Research

Originally posted at TheGrio.Com

Public opinion is loaded with divisive rhetoric that suggests that undocumented immigrants are taking “black” jobs–low wage occupations in domestic, agricultural and other industries requiring manual labor. It was the allegation that some used to fuel anti-immigrant sentiments in Arizona, and unfortunately, it is likely to live in the debates that will accompany the next wave of copycat bills in the making.

Legislators in at least ten states–including Utah, Oklahoma, Colorado, Ohio, Missouri, Georgia, South Carolina, Mississippi, Texas and Maryland–are now considering copycat bills to the one passed in Arizona, a problematic trend that promises to propel the myth that immigrants somehow keep African-Americans from working. Psychologists must revel at the simplicity of it all–the age-old strategy of “divide and conquer” that has dominated policymakers’ responses to hard issues, especially in a troubled fiscal climate when employment remains elusive for so many. (more…)

On May 5, 2010 The NAACP announced plans to confront the ad industry’s lack of diversity in employment. People of color make up just 2% of the workforce at ad agencies. A new report analyzing the Super Bowl commercials will serve as the basis for a actions through the Madison Avenue Project. The NAACP is working with attorney Cyrus Mehri of MEHRI and SKALET, PLLC, and will seek to address this issue in the coming weeks

by Quentin James, NAACP National Board of Directors

As one of its final items of business for the 2010 legislative session, the South Carolina House of Representatives this week passed a bill requiring photo identification to vote. Similar to bills passed in states like Ohio, we know this type of legislation discourages voting in communities of color and for youth. As the world continues to get more flat and new technologies allow for beneficial improvements to our way of life, our states need to better utilize technology instead of adding additional requirements.

According to the South Carolina State Elections Commission, “roughly 180,000 of South Carolina’s registered voters have neither a state-issued driver’s license nor photo ID.” Although the bill waives the five dollar fee for a state ID for residents older than 17, it immediately disenfranchises eight percent of registered voters in the state, not including those newly- registered individuals. In 2008, South Carolina had a record 76% voter turnout. Notwithstanding, 2010 is a midterm election year and most voters tend to stay home anyway. With the newly disenfranchised, South Carolina election workers can expect a slow crowd at the polls to say the least.

Voting is not a Republican or Democratic issue, but rather one of integrity. The question we are faced with in South Carolina and other states throughout this great country is will we remain true to our American values? While the right to vote has always had to be extended to additional populations, we are almost at a point of true enfranchisement of all Americans. As the Tea Party says, “I want my country back!” These types of legislation further show our current disconnect to ensuring a democratic society flourishes.

Read more at The State.

By NAACP Education Director Beth Glenn

Originally Posted on National Journal’s Education Experts Blog, in response to the question ” Should teachers train the same way doctor’s do?”

Teachers should absolutely be trained with the same care and thought that goes into medical education. The evidence about the size of a teacher’s potential impact and the growing need to teach a rapidly diversifying student body to ever greater levels of complexity demand big changes in the ways we train and support teacher candidates, novices and veteran educators.

Residencies are not only powerful training models because they expand upon the half-semester or semester-long supervised teaching experience most future teachers receive, but they also allow teachers, like medical residents, to specialize. Residencies designed to build a pipeline of well prepared teachers into a district will place teacher trainees in the same type of schools where they are committed to teach after graduation. Those with an explicit focus on training teachers to work with diverse populations will build in opportunities for teacher trainees to immerse themselves in a community through volunteer opportunities. Such a system offers the opportunity to train teachers explicitly to work with high-needs populations. It also gives them a support system of university faculty and coursework tailored to help solve their day-to-day problems. That way they have somewhere to turn during the supervised residency period and later in the crucial - and stressful - first years of teaching. High-needs schools benefit from additional expertise and involvement by university faculty and from increased rates of teacher retention when candidates and novice teachers are well-supported.

For a residency model to be maximally beneficial, it must be followed by a carefully planned induction, mentoring and coaching system to help new teachers transition from being supervised daily, to working closely with peers to perfect classroom strategies and methods, tailoring instruction to meet the needs of diverse learners.

As Chad Wick notes below, such district/university partnerships, when done thoughtfully and collaboratively, generate situations where everybody wins: Teacher candidates get high level, highly relevant extended hands-on training. Districts get new teachers well prepared to fit into the system’s culture and familiar with its requirements. Students get the benefit of a teacher who isn’t overwhelmed by adjusting to teaching alone after just a few weeks of practice, acclimating to a new system and learning about new students. Universities get a reputation for a robust teacher education program with a high success rate in placing graduates who remain in the profession beyond the critical first years.

We’re encouraging communities, along with NAACP units and branches, to advocate for residency models in neighborhoods with high-needs, turnaround and drop-out factory schools. And we hope our university partners, especially those at HBCUs and Minority Serving Institutions will step up to the challenge of collaboration and seize this opportunity to strengthen and diversify the pipeline to teaching. Finally, we’d like to see districts embrace the sort of cooperative spirit that opens classrooms to university faculty and teacher candidates then supports teachers in continuing to perfecting their skills after the residency.

By Jacqui Patterson, Director of the NAACP Climate Justice Initiative

Cross-posted from TheRoot.Com

As we honor the 40th anniversary of Earth Day and pay homage to the gifts of air, water, land, flora, fauna and the rich diversity of the animal kingdom, we must acknowledge that not all of the earth’s inhabitants have equal access to basic essential elements of life and well-being. Continued and progressive deprivation is a looming threat, in the form of climate change, to communities of color in the United States and countries predominated by people of color worldwide.

Climate change is a statistical change in the distribution of weather over time. One of these changes is global warming, which is the increase in the temperature of the earth’s near-surface air and oceans. Climate change is driven primarily by emissions of carbon dioxide (through energy production via the burning of fossil fuels) and exacerbated by deforestation because forests play a key role in absorbing carbon dioxide.

Here is where the justice issues and civil rights violations begin to come into play. (more…)

By Monique Morris, NAACP Vice President for Advocacy & Research

Cross-posted from TheGrio.Com

Today, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer signed into law the state’s toughest and most biased legislation addressing undocumented immigration. Currently, law enforcement officials can only inquire about a person’s legal status if he or she is suspected in a crime, but under the new law, which passed the state legislature Monday, police discretion would be elevated to allow for an inquiry regarding a person’s status if an officer has a “reasonable suspicion” that someone may not be in this country legally–whether or not that person has actually committed a crime.

In a public statement, state Senator Russell Pearce said, “illegal is not a race, it’s a crime.” But in this new law, is there really a distinction? (more…)

By Monique Morris, NAACP Vice President for Advocacy and Research

Cross-posted from TheGrio.Com

It was her tenth time looking for a job, and as she sat in front of me, a researcher with a tape recorder and tablet, she nervously twirled her hair and shifted in her seat. She described her skills as a computer technician and marketed herself as a hard worker and potentially dedicated employee, but wondered aloud whether she should just give up. She talked about “a problem” she had five years prior that landed her behind bars.

I carefully probed about her work experience since she’s been out and asked her to continue. She explained that she looks for work everyday, but more and more, she’s noticing “that question.” Sometimes, it asks whether she has ever been arrested. Sometimes, it asks whether she’s ever been convicted of a felony. Sometimes it asks whether she has had a misdemeanor or felony in the last seven years. After each arbitrary phrasing of the question, she stops.

“Why should I finish?” she asked. “I know they’re just going to take my application and throw it in the garbage.”

Finding a job is hard these days — even harder if you are one of the 600,000 people leaving U.S. prisons each year. Indeed, the study I was leading at the time did find that a criminal record significantly reduces the likelihood of a job applicant receiving a favorable response, and the issue of presumed criminality seemed to have particularly negative effects on the employment outcomes of African-American women whether or not they had a criminal record. In short, a criminal record can serve as kryptonite to an otherwise desirable applicant - a reality that we have to change.

Currently, there are only two states, Minnesota and New Mexico, which have laws that “ban the box,” or prohibit an employer from considering an applicant’s criminal conviction history unless it is directly related to the job an applicant is seeking. This Wednesday, the California Assembly’s Labor and Employment committee will convene a hearing and vote on AB 2727, to determine whether the state will become the third to stop the continued and unwarranted discrimination against people with a criminal record who want to get a job and reinvent their lives.

A criminal record performs as a tool for structural exclusion from access to some of our most basic necessities — a job, housing, higher education, childcare assistance, etc. — and more employers than ever before are considering applicants’ criminal conviction histories when making hiring decisions. In fact, the increasing use of background checks and credit checks represent a problematic tendency of employers to rely on unreliable screening tools to determine who gets a job. Contrary to public opinion, there is no evidence to support that people with weak credit are more likely to have a problematic job performance; and prior involvement in the criminal justice system does not predict future involvement in the justice system; so these tools serve as nothing more than an excuse to unnecessarily discriminate against applicants.

Previous studies led by Princeton sociologist Devah Pager and other scholars have shown that even though formerly incarcerated people are “marked” by their conviction history, when they are provided with a chance to interview, they are more likely to be hired. However, despite this evidence, these tools continue to disqualify people–disproportionately people of color–before they ever get to an interview, preventing them from competing for jobs they are otherwise qualified to work.

Now is not the time to deny anyone employment, and our focus should be on dismantling these structural barriers that prevent people from participating in the labor force. When more people work, more people pay taxes and more people are able to function in life without government assistance. Additionally, when formerly incarcerated people are employed, they are a third less likely to recidivate, which makes employment a significant tool to enhance public safety.

We must defend the extension of equal opportunity to everyone in this nation–including those who have made mistakes in their past. As we look forward to remedies that can expedite the healing of our communities and our economy, we need to ensure that equal opportunity to employment doesn’t come with an asterisk…or a box.