Diversity Headlines

Last week, during a press conference hosted by House Democrats revealing their new Voting Empowerment Act legislation, Rep. Jim Clyburn dropped a bomb of a statement, picked up by The Hill:

"Voter ID is not a problem. Everybody that goes to vote shows some form of ID," Clyburn said. "The big problem has been the process ... you go through to get there."

Was this just a super-regrettable error, another poor choice of words -- today he was rebuked by the Obama campaign for accusing Mitt Romney's Bain Capital of "raping" companies -- or is Clyburn throwing in the towel on the voter ID fight?

I wasn't able to get clarity from the congressman himself. His office informed me that the proper context for his statement was that the problem is with the states that are administering the laws, for example states that allow concealed weapon IDs to vote, but not student IDs. But you'd have to forgive someone if they weren't able to derive that context from the statement Clyburn actually made. For voting rights advocates, it sounded like Clyburn threw voter ID proponents a free ticket. I can already see True the Vote making t-shirts out of the statement with a picture of Clyburn with Martin Luther King.

Clyburn's state, South Carolina, is currently embroiled in a legal battle with the US Department of Justice over a photo voter ID law that Gov. Nikki Haley signed into law last year. The law was blocked because DOJ found that over 230,000 residents, mostly African Americans, lacked the proper ID needed for voting, and the state failed to produce any evidence of the voter fraud they said they needed the law for. South Carolina sued DOJ in response and federal judges are still deliberating the case.

But Clyburn's pessimism around overturning the photo voter ID law began earlier this month. Speaking to Democrat activists in early May, Clyburn -- who has a long history of overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles to civil and voting rights -- said "I just do not trust the judiciary that we're operating under." In other words, he told them they better organize, because it ain't looking good with the men in robes.

He may be on to something. Not long after the VEA announcement, a federal appeals court rejected an Alabama county's challenge to Section 5, stating that it's still constitutional and still necessary in today's context. But as election law professor Rick Hasen pointed out, the dissenting judge in the appeals court's three-judge panel apparently set it up so that the Supreme Court could overturn Section 5, the keystone of the Voting Rights Act, which itself is an essential component of the civil rights legislation won in the 1960s. Says Hasen, the dissenting judge "has provided a way for the conservatives on the Supreme Court to end Section 5 without having to declare that it would necessarily be unconstitutional if Congress tweaked it."

Jeffrey Toobin, made a similar observation today in The New Yorker.

Losing faith in the courts is one thing, though, but Clyburn very clearly said that voter ID laws aren't even a problem -- a statement that left even fellow voting rights activists puzzled. Liz Kennedy, counsel for Demos' Democracy Program, told me she was "a little surprised" by Clyburn's statement, but figured Clyburn probably meant to emphasize the "creaky systems" of voting -- voter registration problems, and loose guidelines that allow for intimidation at the pools -- that "lead to more people not being able to cast a vote."

Judith Browne Dianis, co-director of the civil rights organization Advancement Project told me that "Clyburn is right," but only on the fact that federal law (Helping Americans Vote Act or HAVA) does require an ID for first-time voters when they register. The difference, says Browne Dianis, "is that just like with the TSA, the law allows for multiple forms of ID. On the other hand, state photo ID restrictions allow only one form of ID and the underlying documents needed to get it, like official birth certificates, are extremely difficult, and even expensive, for many people to acquire."

In South Carolina, there are counties where as many as 14% of residents don't have the specific state government-issued ID that would be required under the voter ID law. Seven of the counties with the highest percentages of ID-less registered voters are among the ten counties with the highest percentage of voters of color, according to the Department of Justice.

The VEA doesn't address photo voter ID laws. But it does address major problems such as finally getting the voter registration house in order after years of risky Jenga-playing with it have left it with so many holes that it's bound to soon topple in the messiest of ways. According to the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, nine million voters were prevented from voting in 2008 as a result of residency rules or registration deadlines, and as many as three million couldn't vote because of problems with their registrations. As long as the voter registration system is prone to errors, then conservatives will claim that as voter fraud making it easier for courts to sympathize with photo voter ID laws. At that point, we'll have moved from Americans voting to choose their government to people in government choosing who gets to vote.

Photographer Myra Greene has been exploring photography's description of race and the challenges of describing whiteness by photographing her white friends for the past 10-years. "My White Friends" is a collection of Greene's photographs that she's now trying to develop in to a book.

Greene recently started a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for her book, the New York Times' "Lens" blog interviewed her recently about her project and provides more insight:

Myra Greene grew up in New York, where she was used to being around people of different races. But as she embarked on her photographic career, her work and travels took her to places where she was the only African-American.

And she knew it.

"I'm always thinking about race," she said. "I recognize it when I'm the only black person in a room. My white friends will notice I'm the only black person, too. But they don't notice a room full of white people."

The photographs "are attempts to image a racial category that has an intangible description," Green wrote on her Kickstarter fundraising page.

Shawn Michelle Smith, Associate Professor of Visual and Critical Studies at School of the Art Institute of Chicago delves deeper in to meaning of her work on Kickstarter:

"Greene asks viewers to see these portraits as racialized - to see them as "white." Her series asks viewers to notice the whiteness of her subjects, and to query whether or not one would see that whiteness without Greene's prompting. Her title, My White Friends, creates an interesting insider-outsider tension, suggesting a comparison it does not complete. The title encourages one to ask -- Who is the person claiming these friends, and what other friends does she have? "

To help Green publish her book or to learn more about her work visit her Kickstarter page.

Meet Presentation High School seniors Alexandra, Angela, Angelica, Elizabeth, Emily, Isabella, Madeline, and Vi Nguyen who submitted senior quotes for the yearbook that once combined read "We know what you're thinking, and no, we're not related!"

A picture of the yearbook first spread around San Jose, Calif. where the young women attend high school but it quickly made international international headlines appearing on "Gawker," London's "Daily Mail" and they even had a segment on CBS's "Inside Edition."

The San Jose Mercury News caught up with the Nguyens:

A few months ago, Presentation High School senior Isabella Nguyen thought it would be funny if she and her friends -- who all share the same last name -- used their senior quotes in the yearbook to spell out a message: "We know what you're thinking, and no, we're not related."

That message went viral this week. And the eight students -- who actually include twin sisters -- have become mini-celebrities caught in a media frenzy that even they've referred to as "Nguyen-sanity."

Each of the students at the all-girls Catholic school in San Jose -- Alexandra Nguyen, Angela Nguyen, Angelica Nguyen, Elizabeth Nguyen, Emily Nguyen, Isabella Nguyen, Madeline Nguyen and Vi Nguyen -- had a word or two from the phrase printed beneath their names in the yearbook, which students got Monday.

The Nguyen seniors say they're ready for even more coverage.

"We're shooting to be on 'Ellen' or the 'Today' show," said Isabella Nguyen.

Last week the creator of HBO's "Girls" Lena Dunham tweeted a picture of Donald Glover on the set of the show that just started filming it's second season, then the New York post published a photo of both stars sitting on a stoop together with flirtatious body language, now Dunham is staying tightlipped about the whole thing.

"Even though the show [from week to week] is just a slight shift in people's emotional landscapes, I like to act like we're protecting state secrets," Dunham told TVLine.com.

Dunham's "Girls" has received criticism for the lack of diversity on the series but she recently told NPR's "Fresh Air" the show's second season would be more diverse.

"Now we have the opportunity to do a second season and, believe me, that will be remedied," Dunham said. "I'm really excited to introduce new characters into the world of the show. Some of them are great actors of color."

Now everyone is dying to know if Glover is a new love interest on the show. What say you?

The Southern Poverty Law Center has filed two federal civil rights complaints against the Jefferson Parish school system for allegedly discriminating against black and disabled students and sending them to alternative schools, where they often languish for months or even years before returning to school. Now the civil rights organization is highlighting racially charged comments made by one of the district's psychologists as evidence of potential racial biases.

"Young Black Thugs who won't follow the law need to be put down not incarcerated. Put down like the Dogs they are!" read one tweet made by Mark Traina, the Jefferson Parish school psychologist, who has worked with alternative schools and in central administration.

On Monday, the Times-Picayune reported Traina worked in central administration with the process of referring children to alternative campuses.

Santorum wins Mississippi and Alabama primaries: I grew up in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana-I am a Wallace Man at Heart!

-- Mark A. Traina (@MarkATraina) March 14, 2012

In another tweet about the Republican presidential primaries in March, Traina wrote, "I grew up in Mississippi, Alabama and Louisiana - I am a Wallace Man at Heart!"

"It's particularly alarming to have someone who works for the school system in a position of authority be pro-segregation," Eden Heilman, a lawyer with the Southern Poverty Law Center told NOLA.com, referring to Traina's remark about George Wallace, segregationist governor of Alabama.

"The Southern Poverty Center knows that these allegations are ABSOLUTELY NOT TRUE!," Traina wrote in an education forum on NOLA.com last week. "Everyone knows that our jails throughout the United States are disproportionately filled with black people. Why would the rate be any different in an educational environment," Traina went on to ask.

The Southern Poverty Law Center complaint filed with the department's Office of Civil Rights claims the district's alternative school policies have resulted in students with disabilities accounting for 52 percent of referrals to alternative schools, when they represent only 11 percent of the district's student population. Black students account for 78 percent of all alternative school referrals even though they are only 46 percent of the district's student population.

NEW ORLEANS -– Voting rights advocates won an important legal victory earlier this month that will ensure Louisiana’s public assistance agency clients—the state’s poorest and most marginalized residents—will be offered an opportunity to register to vote. In a forceful decision,... Chicago Defender http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103

Kimberly Shanklin drives slowly through the narrow residential streets of East Oakland in her gray van. When she spots a goateed, dreadlocked young man crossing the street, Shanklin stops the car and calls out to him. "Excuse me! I just wanna give you some information. About a free community health fair." She digs around in her green tote bag for a flyer, while the man shakes his head and keeps walking. "You can sign up for health insurance!"

He changes his mind and turns around, taking a flyer and nodding wordlessly at her before walking away. Undeterred, Shanklin starts driving again. "Sometimes, some people think we might be undercovers out here," she says, laughing cheerfully. With her effervescent smile, big white hoop earrings and bedazzled nails dressing up her red t-shirt and black jeans, Shanklin doesn't look like the 42-year-old mom that she is.

For the past six weeks, the groups Causa Justa:Just Cause, Communities for a Better Environment, Oakland Community Organizations, and Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment have sent teams of workers like Shanklin out to knock on doors every day talking to Oakland residents about healthcare and an upcoming community fair being held at Laney College. Their goal is to enroll poor and working-class people in healthcare coverage that's newly available to them under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Obama Administration healthcare law passed in 2009.

After visiting a house with an elderly couple who are undecided about whether they'll make it to the health fair, Shanklin walks up to Tiffany Darnell's house.

"Hi, how ya doin'? I'm Kimberly from Causa Justa:Just Cause, and we're giving out information for a free community health fair this May 19. We're trying to focus on people who don't have healthcare."

Darnell cuts her off there. "Are they gonna be working on your teeth? 'Cause I can see the doctor sort of, but I don't have dental."

"They're doing screenings, and LifeLong's gonna be there and they have dental," Shanklin tells her. After chatting a bit, she finds out that Darnell worked at Highland Hospital as a housekeeper for 10 years before getting laid off recently. She still has Medi-Cal, California's version of the federal low-income program Medicaid, but the state cut coverage for dental care in 2009.

"I chipped a back part of my teeth," Darnell says. "They still give the children dental, so my daughter at least is not gonna walk around like her mama here." Back in the van, Shanklin sympathizes. She doesn't have dental coverage either. And now that she's been laid off from her job of 12 years, working at a homeless shelter, she's falling behind on rent too. "I'm not worried," she says stoically. "Something will come up, it has to."

While health reform faces a Supreme Court ruling this June on its constitutionality, California has pledged to move forward in implementing the ACA at the state level. Massive preparations have been underway to expand Medi-Cal coverage and roll out in 2013 the Health Benefits Exchange, a new market for affordable insurance plans.

Despite being seen by many progressives as modest reform that didn't go far enough, the ACA has some big implications for uninsured people and people of color. Its expansion of Medicaid eligibility to everyone under 133 percent of the poverty level is hugely important for low-income people who didn't meet the program's categorical as well as income requirements (Medicaid largely serves poor families with young children, pregnant women, and disabled people). Twenty-seven percent of African Americans and Latinos receive health coverage through Medicaid, compared to 11 percent of white people, according to a report from the Alliance for a Just Society.

The ACA also entails a large shift of resources toward expanding health infrastructure and services, with $9.5 billion allocated over five years and $1.5 billion for community health centers, which disproportionately serve people of color and uninsured or underinsured patients.

But one of the biggest challenges, advocates say, will be educating the people who need it most about the ACA's benefits and laying the groundwork for their enrollment in health coverage.

"A lot of ACA is still up in the air, a lot is still to be determined at the state level. People really need to be involved in making their voices heard to make sure that it ends up serving communities," says Dr. Damon Francis, head of the Urban Male Health Initiative of Alameda County. "If we can take this moment not just to expand coverage but to redefine what healthcare is from a community perspective, we can potentially make a lot of change."

Building Healthy Communities from the Ground Up

Through the East Oakland Building Healthy Communities project, part of an initiative funded in 14 cities by The California Endowment, Oakland's health advocacy and social justice communities are working to harness ACA resources and direct attention toward the deep problems of East Oakland. It's a place where health outcomes leading to a life expectancy 10 years shorter than wealthier parts of the city are shaped by high unemployment, homicide rates, lack of grocery stores, chronic disease, and other forces. Once home to good manufacturing jobs with Mothers Cookies and General Motors as well as one of the nation's first urban malls, East Oakland today is a microcosm of the structural components of racial health disparities.

To be effective at both saving lives and holding down costs, healthcare must be accessible, consistent, and preventive -- elements emphasized in the ACA through provisions such as the Community Transformation Grants that focus on place-based social and environmental determinants of health. As it is, more than 40 million people a year do not get healthcare when they need it because they can't afford it, and thousands of deaths each year are attributable to lack of insurance, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Getting and staying enrolled in low-income assistance programs poses a formidable challenge for many poor and working families. Lengthy applications, long wait times, and lost paperwork characterize most enrollment processes. Seventy percent of people enrolled in Medi-Cal or HealthPAC (Alameda County's program for those who don't qualify for Medi-Cal) get dropped from coverage, according to Amy Chen of Bay Area Legal Aid.

"Making sure people can keep their coverage is just as important once the pie gets expanded," Chen says.

Community Health Fair Day

The doors don't open at the WeConnect health fair being held at Laney College's gymnasium until 10 a.m., but Gregory Posey shows up at eight, knowing how crowded these events can get.

Posey, 52, has never had health coverage or been to a hospital in more than 30 years. Now though, his teeth have been bothering him, and the only option offered by basic dental services is to pull the tooth. He had an appointment at San Francisco General Hospital, but the bill would have been $169, and Posey kept putting it off to see if he could find a better deal.

He has worked odd jobs ever since his job at Oakland's Parks and Recreation department, funded by the federal stimulus, ended. Five years ago, Posey was released from prison, where he has bounced in and out of incarceration since the age of 26--due in large part to his alcohol addiction and the trouble he got in as a result.

"I know me, my weakness is alcohol. Whenever I got mad, I started drinking alcohol, and then I'd go smoking dope and it would be eff the world," he says. "So now I don't touch nothing. You gotta find out about you. Some people, they do it because they gave up on themselves--that's why they're out there. Do you love yourself or do you hate yourself? Look in the mirror."

With the help of a substance abuse program, Posey got clean and sober in prison.

"I've been blessed, I got another chance. Life is good," he says. "I just gotta get my mouth fixed."

Behind him, a long line starts to stretch down the breezeway, filling up with elderly people and families with strollers, most of them Asian, Latino or black. Inside the gymnasium, a team of multi-lingual workers are waiting to enroll as many people in health coverage as possible--if they can hit 150 enrollments, it will be a big success since, so far, only handfuls have been able to enroll out of the thousands of people who arrive without the documents needed. The weeks of grassroots outreach by organizers like Kimberly Shanklin have all led up to this day.

Community Needs, Community Strengths

East Oakland Building Healthy Communities has brought together organizations working on a range of issues from multiple disciplines, including the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, Youth Uprising, Urban Peace Movement, TransForm, East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy, First 5 Alameda County (a commission for children's health), the public health department, churches, and the school district, among others.

The groups and community members are working with a definition of health that revolves around priorities such as affordable housing, ending gun violence, access to fresh food, transit improvement, and jobs creation. It's a tall order for a collaboration, and when asked what he thinks will be most significant for the 10-year initiative to achieve, Dawn Phillips, a longtime Oakland organizer, says, "If we can make any concrete impact on the community-- strengthening health access in East Oakland--that would be significant. But it has to be measured around long-term institutional relationships built on a shared analysis of the problems, what's causing them, and the solutions--and that can only be done by building trust between organizations, having ongoing discussions, and working from a shared agenda."

The hard work of social change continues, one step at a time, one community leader at a time finding her voice.

Kimberly Shanklin remembers how stressful it was for her family, facing an illegal eviction when the bank foreclosed on the duplex she rented six years ago. The water got shut off, and mold in the walls was making her young children sick. "I just knew that it was wrong, and I had to fight it," she says, recalling the day Causa Justa:Just Cause held a press conference in front of her house. She was late, running to the rally, "and I turned the corner, and saw all these people. They started cheering for me, and I just started crying." She beams at the memory as she parks her van and gets out on the sidewalk.

On his porch sits an elderly man in a Costa Rica cap, with Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding cds playing on the boom box next to him. He looks to be in his 80s, and Shanklin, noticing his cap, asks if he was in the service. It turns out that he's a Korean War veteran. "I'm a vet, it's the best healthcare you can get," he says. "Don't have to worry about Medicare or any of that."

The screen door opens, and a heavy-set young man comes out. Shanklin immediately engages him, asking, "Do you have any health issues?"

"What do you mean 'health issues'?"

"Well, like some people have high blood pressure, or diabetes. Me, I have a problem with my thyroid, hypothyroidism. And I have arthritis in my back."

"Nah, I just have this weight I gotta lose. Been trying for years now."

Shanklin is already digging in her green tote for flyers and a newsletter to give him. "You can do it, you can do anything you set your mind to," she says encouragingly. "You should come out to a free community health fair, get you some health insurance."

Tram Quang Nguyen is an Oakland-based writer and former editor of Colorlines.

On Monday, Dharun Ravi, the 20-year-old Indian immigrant, convicted on 15 counts of illegal spying on his Rutgers dorm mate was sentenced to 30 days in jail. The story made national headlines after Ravi's gay roommate Tyler Clementi discovered Ravi was spying on him and committed suicide days later.

"I do not believe he hated Tyler Clementi," Judge Glenn Berman told the court. "He had no reason to, but I do believe he acted out of colossal insensitivity."

ABC News has more details:

Three of the convictions carried a sentence of five to 10 years in prison. Because Ravi is a citizen of India, and is in the U.S. on a green card, he could be deported following his sentencing. The U.S. deports most criminals convicted of felonies, with the exception of thefts of amounts under $10,000.

Ravi had previously rejected a plea deal that would have spared him any jail time or the threat of deportation, but put him on probation and would have required him to perform community service.

Ravi faces a maximum sentence of up to 10 years in prison and any jail time will likely also mean deportation for the Indian native.

The University of the Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law have partnered to launch a National Registry of Exonerations that keeps an up to date list of all known exonerations in the United States since 1989. The group's inaugural report released this week reveals 50 percent of false convictions are of black defendants.

The National Registry of Exoneration documents include 891 exonerations with summaries of the cases and searchable data on each. Their latest report focuses on the 873 exonerations that were entered in the Registry as of March 1, 2012. 

Below are key findings from the Center's study of the 873 exonerated defendants as printed in the report:

• 93% are men, 7% women;
• 50% are black, 38% white, 11% Hispanic and 2% Native American or Asian;
• 37% were exonerated with the help of DNA evidence; 63% without DNA; as a group, they spent more than 10,000 years in prison - an average of more than 11 years each.
  
• Since 2000, exonerations have averaged 52 a year - one a week - 40% of which include DNA evidence.
  
• The 873 exonerations are mostly rape and murder cases, but the data also include
  many more exonerations for other crimes than previously known.

For all exonerations, the most common causal factors that contributed to the underlying false convictions are perjury or false accusation (51%), mistaken eyewitness identification (43%) and official misconduct (42%) - followed by false or misleading forensic evidence (24%) and false confession (16%).

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A Mississippi jail is on lockdown today after a Sunday night riot left one prison guard dead and as many as 20 inmates and guards injured. According to sheriff's reports, the violence began as a gang feud and soon engulfed the privately operated facility, which holds 2,500 non-citizens incarcerated for reentering the United States after deportation and for other charges. But the fragments of information that have emerged from inmates and advocates suggest that the violence had more to do with a pattern of abuse and neglect that has emerged at privately run, for-profit prisons.

The Adams County Sheriff's office and the Corrections Corporation of America, the behemoth prison company that operates the facility for the federal Bureau of Prisons, have tightly controlled news of the riot and what caused it. In statements, officials say the violence emerged out of thin air and soon "turned into a mob mentality," according to Adams County Sheriff Chuck Mayfield.

"This could have happened anywhere, anytime," Mayfield told the Associated Press.

Prison watchdogs say that's not necessarily true. What little independent information that has emerged from inside Adams County Correctional Center suggests a different story--one of mistreatment and abuse at the hands of guards that may have reached a breaking point.

At 5 p.m. on Sunday evening, an inmate reportedly phoned a local TV station with a cell phone, sending photos to confirm that he was indeed held inside the facility.

"They always beat us and hit us," the prisoner told the local reporter. "We just pay them back. We're trying to get better food, medical (care), programs, clothes, and we're trying to get some respect from the officers and lieutenants."

According to the news report, the prisoner said that nine guards had been taken hostage.

In an interview with Colorlines.com, Patricia Ice, who directs the legal program at the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance, said that her organization has heard reports of neglect and abuse inside the Adams County facility. Ice said she received a call last month from a California woman who reported medical neglect of a family member in the jail.

"I got a complaint from a family member saying that a man had lung cancer and was being ignored," Ice said. "Three weeks earlier, he was examined by a doctor and diagnosed with lung cancer but had not received any treatment at all."

Prisoner's rights advocates say that the accounts of these inmates are consistent with documented conditions in private prison facilities around the country.

"Private prisons have a financial incentive to spend as little as possible in order to make a greater profit," said Bob Libal, of Grassroots Leadership. Libal is a longtime advocate for the rights of prisoners held in private facilities. "They skimp on staff salaries and training, which leads to high turnover rates. They spend as little as possible on services in order to maximize profit. This mentality leads to poorly run facilities where abuse, neglect, and prisoner uprisings are common."

The Corrections Corporation of America operates over 60 jails and detention centers in 20 states with the capacity to hold over 90,000 people. The facilities have a track record of violence.

The Associated Press reports:

In 2004, inmates at a different CCA prison in Mississippi set fire to mattresses, clothing and a portable toilet. No injuries were reported. The company announced after that disturbance that it would add about 25 guards at the Tallahatchie County facility.

In Idaho, violence at a CCA-run prison has prompted federal lawsuits, public scrutiny and increased state oversight. In 2010, Vermont inmates being held at a CCA prison in Tennessee were subdued with chemical grenades after refusing to return to their cells.

Reports of medical neglect inside Corrections Corp. facilities have piled up in recent years. The New York Times in 2010 reported that federal immigration officials attempted to cover up numerous neglect-related deaths inside CCA jails, which hold immigration detainees for Immigration and Customs Enforcement as well as thousands of Bureau of Prisons inmates incarcerated on immigration-related charges like "illegal reentry."

In increasing numbers, the federal government now prosecutes border crossers who previously would have been quickly deported.

Patricia Ice said the man whose family member called her is serving a three-year sentence for illegal reentry. Ice told Colorlines.com, "I did try to contact to the jail and I never got anybody on the phone. There was nothing I could do."

An ACLU spokesperson wrote in an email that the organization is "engaged in an investigation of a handful of privately-run facilities in Mississippi," including a CCA facility.

"[C]onditions of confinement are often woefully inadequate and levels of violence can be higher at for-profit facilities," an ACLU statement said.

Catlin Carithers, 24, had worked in the prison since 2009. He died from blunt head trauma, according to the county coroner.

By yesterday afternoon, news reports said all of the 2,500 inmates in the jail were locked inside their cells as officials investigate the guard's death and identify the perpetrator. Federal and local authorities are working with Corrections Corp. to investigate the violence. The sheriff's office told the Natchez Democrat that it is on standby waiting for word from the FBI on how to proceed.

With the news that, for the first time in U.S. history, the majority of American babies are not white, it should put to rest use of the term "minorities" as a reference to America's black, Latino, Asian and Native American residents.

Nearly 30 years ago, I learned to think of myself as a person of color, and that shift changed my view of myself and my relationship to the people around me.

It is time for the entire nation, and our media in particular, to make the same move.

I am an Indian immigrant, and became a citizen in 1987.

My family came to the States in 1972 when I was five, just seven years after Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which removed bans on Asian immigration.

My father was a metallurgical engineer and we lived in predominantly white factory towns in New York and Pennsylvania.

All I ever wanted was to be fully American. But everything around me, from the population to the television, taught me that being American meant being white.

READ THE FULL ESSAY AT CNN'S "IN AMERICA" BLOG.

Like many people who lose their grandparents in adulthood, Muta'Ali Muhammad had his regrets. His 88-year-old grandfather had long suffered from heart problems before he was found dead in a Miami hotel room back in 2005. In the days, weeks and months that followed, Muhammad wished he'd had the sorts of candid conversations with his grandfather that seem plausible mostly in retrospect: How did he make his marriage work for over five decades? What did he do to make sure he always had to time to spend with his kids? Muhammad was in search of a blueprint, and felt hounded by the feeling that he hadn't recognized the most obvious one until it was too late.

That his grandfather was award-winning actor, director, and activist Ossie Davis only complicated matters even more. 

Though he missed the chance to ask his grandfather questions about his life as a filmmaker, Muhammad has promised not to make the same mistake with his grandmother,"Gram Ruby", also known as 89-year-old actress Ruby Dee. With that in mind, he's launched a new documentary project called "Life's Essentials With Ruby Dee", billed as an intimate, autobiographical look at two of the 20th century's most important and enduring black actors. It's the story of their notable carriers, political activism, and unique personal relationship. Today he's launching a Kickstarter campaign to raise $50,000 by June 30 to complete the project.

Muhammad adds that his grandparents taught him a sense of responsibility to make art that was much more than just entertainment. Their careers showed that it was possible -- and necessary.

Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee both helped pioneer 20th century black film, theater and television. They each had respectful acting careers before marrying in 1948, but together they helped break down barriers for the next 57 years. Ossie gained acclaim alongside Sidney Portier in 1950's "No Way Out." He came a celebrated and Emmy award-winning film and television actor well into later life, with more recent roles on Sesame Street and in several Spike Lee films. Ruby Dee became known for her role in the theater and film versions of "A Raisin in the Sun" and later became the second-oldest Oscar nominee for Best Supporting Actress for her role alongside Denzel Washington in "American Gangster." 

But political activism was a constant in both of their careers. Dee was an active member of several civil rights organizations throughout the 1950's and 60's, including the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), NAACP, and the Congress on Racial Equality (CORE). Davis spoke at the 1963 Civil Rights March in Washington, and gave a powerful eulogy at Malcolm X's funeral. 

Muhammad, now 32, had already made a name for himself as an indie film and music video director. He made documentaries of high-profile rappers like T.I., 50 Cent, and Ludacris. He started a production company called "The Raw Report." But he often struggled to reconcile his art with a social conscience that propelled him to take political stances that were, in all likelihood, antithetical to an entertainment industry obsessed with its bottom line. 

"I struggled for some time with the projects that I would direct," he says, noting that his work sometimes didn't fall in line with his political beliefs. "I share a thought that true equality affords my generation the freedom to create whatever they like artistically -- including buffoonery."

He says that this new documentary project is an attempt to bring his story, and that of his grandparents, to a new generation of artists and activists. The film will largely be seen through the eyes of Gram Ruby in conversation with her grandson about life, art, and love. And with plenty of experience in the film industry, Muhammad calls his Kickstarter campaign the "ultimate freedom" as a form of grassroots fundraising that he says falls in line nicely with his grandparent's political ideals.

"This is an opportunity to look at art over the last 90 years," he says, his voice laced with the hope that people can walk away inspired. "As we tell the story of [Ruby Dee's] and grandpa's life, you'll get to see what growth exists when it comes to our people's presence on stage, in front of the camera and behind the camera. You'll see in one sitting their trajectory and get an appreciation for where we've progressed and where we might need to do a little more work."

LOS ANGELES—A new education report finds that California schools are under more stress than ever after years of budgets cuts.The first report by EdSource to analyze school stress factors, “Schools under Stress: Pressures Mount on California’s Largest School Districts” identifies... Vivian Po http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=115

Fake Twitter accounts, posting thousands of automated messages per day, have managed to dilute and “censure” information on an upcoming protest against Mexican presidential candidate Enrique Peña Nieto, a web expert told Univision News.Web marketing expert Alfonso Tames, says that... Manuel Rueda http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103

Switched identity on Glee, the final three on American Idol, judges' mercy on America's Best Dance Crew, and Around the World in 80 Plates.

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The last song Whitney Houston ever recorded has leaked online. Produced by R. Kelly, the song is called "Celebrate" and is a duet with Jordin Sparks who appears alongside Houston in the upcoming film "Sparkle."

According to TMZ, the song performed four days before Houston's death.

About one-in-six migrants sent back to Mexico (17%) were apprehended at work or at home in 2010, according to a recent Pew Hispanic Center analysis. The rise in home or work apprehensions is a pretty significant jump from previous years--in 2005, only 3% were apprehended at home or at work.

By contrast, a declining share of Mexican migrants report being apprehended at the border--25% in 2010, compared with 33% in 2005 and nearly half (49%) in 1995.

While the number of people crossing from Mexico into the United States has fallen to 40 year lows, the rates of deportation have reached historic highs.

"The new data unveils what we already knew: as migration wanes, immigration enforcement is shifting gears, moving increasingly to the interior of the United States and is targeting people who've lived here for long periods, have homes and jobs and families here," said Colorlines.com's investigative reporter Seth Freed Wessler.

"As previous Pew data shows, nearly two thirds of undocumented immigrants have lived in the country for more than a decade and nearly half have children here. Considering these shifting demographics, the fallout of the government's insistence on deporting 400,000 people annually is likely to accumulate to toxic levels," Wessler went on to say.

Many of those deported are parents who leave children behind. Between January and June of 2011, the United States carried out more than 46,000 deportations of the parents of U.S.-citizen children, according to federal data obtained by Colorlines.com's publisher, the Applied Research Center.

Online social network company Facebook's co-founder and chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg announced on his Facebook timeline Saturday evening that he and longtime girlfriend Priscilla Chan have tied the knot."Mark Zuckerberg added a life event to May 19, 2012 on... China Daily http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103

An amateur Korean climber went missing on Mount Everest over the weekend while descending from the summit and is presumed to have fallen into a chasm and died, according to his fellow climbers and the Korean Embassy in Nepal yesterday.Congestion... Korea Daily http://publisher.namx.org/mt-cp.cgi?__mode=view&blog_id=19&id=103