Democrats and Republicans battle over tough, new election laws in Florida, and the outcome of the 2012 presidential election may hang in the balance. “Voters in America: Who Counts,” 7/15 8pm ET, CNN.
By the CNN Wire Staff
(CNN) – Barbara Graves, who helped her husband launch Black Enterprise magazine in 1970, died Friday after a three-year battle with gall bladder cancer, the company said.
Graves, 75, died at Howard University Hospital in Washington, D.C.
Graves was an elementary school teacher before helping her husband, Earl G. Graves Sr., launch the magazine. She "held every major position, including editorial director, circulation director and chief financial officer."
The businesswoman also was co-founder of the Black Enterprise Women of Power Summit, which describes itself as "a professional leadership conference designed especially for executive women of color," and is a known as a major networking event.
By Sarah Springer, CNN
(CNN) - Olivia Pope is smart, runs a successful business and is the center of attention when she enters a room.
She’s the kind of woman who magazines say every woman can be, and the type that others love to hate.
There’s just one thing: She is also black.
After a successful first season, viewers know that Pope, the lead character on ABC’s “Scandal,” is African-American.
But they might not realize the significance of her race. FULL POST
Editor's note: Sherrilyn A. Ifill is a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law and the chairwoman of the U.S. Programs Board of the Open Society Foundations. She is the author of "On the Courthouse Lawn: Confronting the Legacy of Lynching in the Twenty-first Century."
By Sherrilyn A. Ifill, Special to CNN
(CNN) – The United States has a dignity problem. The concept of dignity is recognized by law in countries all over the world. It is a cornerstone of both international humanitarian law, which governs the treatment of prisoners of war, and international human rights law.
But it has little power in American jurisprudence. A robust recognition and protection of dignity is precisely what we need, particularly if we are to understand how racism has broken its tether and become enshrined again in state laws and policies across the United States.
Take racial profiling - the single most explicit manifestation of racial prejudice in the United States today. Nearly 700,000 individuals a year are subject to the brutal indignity of the New York Police Department's stop-and-frisk policy. The vast majority are young African-American and Latino men. In a New York Times op-ed in December, 23-year-old Nicholas Peart heart-rendingly described his initiation into the world of stop-and-frisk beginning at age 14. This rite of passage for innocent young black men requires submitting without complaint or question to being harassed and targeted by the police. Even showing an "attitude" can escalate encounters into an arrest or even death.
Stop-and-frisk policing is only one aspect of the national indignity of racial profiling. Police surveillance of law-abiding Muslims (here again the New York police play a central role) and the pulling over of motorists for "driving while black" are two others. Rather than recognize how these practices strike at our bedrock constitutional rights to due process, equal protection and freedom from unreasonable searches, the Supreme Court recently doubled down on racial profiling. It decided that the discretion of police may be complemented by the discretion of jail officials to strip-search the 14 million Americans who are arrested each year.
Editor's note: In the Security Clearance "Case File" series, CNN national security producers profile key members of the intelligence community. As part of the series, Security Clearance is focusing on the roles women play in the U.S. intelligence community.
By Pam Benson, CNN
(CNN) - You don't really expect to simply fall into the spy business, but for Jeanne Tisinger, that's pretty much how it happened.
She was a business major at George Mason University, looking for some experience in her field while continuing her studies. She joined the college's work-study program and, much to her amazement, her first interview was with the Central Intelligence Agency.
"I was surprised they were even hiring co-op students," she says. "Why would they want a college kid to come into their version of campus? I wasn't sure what they were going to do with me. Then there was, of course, a part of me that was. wow, the mystique of the CIA – what better place to start. It was just kind of a bit of a wide-eyed wonder."
That was nearly three decades ago.
"I'm the classic story of sometimes it's better to be lucky than good," Tisinger says.
She's still with the agency, rising through the ranks to become the CIA's first female chief information officer nearly two years ago. Her job is to oversee the CIA's vital information technology systems and coordinate information-sharing.
Editor's note: Pedro Noguera is a professor at New York University and director of the Metropolitan Center for Urban Education. He is editor of "Unfinished Business: Closing the Achievement Gap in Our Nation's Schools" and author of "The Trouble With Black Boys ... And Other Reflections on Race, Equity and the Future of Public Education."
By Pedro Noguera, Special to CNN
(CNN) - For the past 25 years I have been working as an educator, researcher and policy advocate.
I am also the parent of four children who have attended public schools.
In each of these roles I have tried to improve public education and advance the educational rights of children, particularly those who have historically been poorly served.
Given my background, I was pleasantly surprised by Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's recent assertion that education was "the civil rights issue of our time".
Romney is only the most recent politician to connect changes in education to civil rights. Similar remarks have been made by President Obama as well.
Typically, the politicians who make such declarations link it to a call for reform.
Romney has chosen to connect his declaration to the issue of choice and vouchers.
The question is: Why does Romney believe that simply by promoting school choice the problems that plague public education in America will go away?
Perhaps Romney is not aware that choice and voucher systems have actually been around for a while, and in the cities that have adopted these policies, the challenges confronting American education have not gone away. FULL POST
By Paul Gittings, for CNN
(CNN) - A century after her childhood inspiration Jim Thorpe won two gold medals at the Stockholm Olympics, synchronized swimmer Mary Killman will be competing in her first Games in London this year.
Like the legendary athlete, Killman comes from a part Native American background in Oklahoma, and is a registered member of Citizen Potawatomi Nation (CPN).
Thorpe, who grew up in the Sac and Fox Nation, was spoken of in hushed tones by her elders.
"I'm very proud of my background," Killman told CNN. Her tribe are proud of her as well, regularly highlighting her achievements in their publications.
Editor's note: Ruben Navarrette Jr. is a CNN.com contributor and a nationally syndicated columnist.
By Ruben Navarrette Jr. , CNN Contributor
San Diego (CNN) - You've probably read those articles about how, in the United States, minorities are becoming the majority. That's a polite way of describing what is really going on. Namely, that the U.S. population is becoming more Latino and less white. More than any other group, it is Latinos who are driving demographic changes.
Last week, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that, of all the babies born in the United States in 2011, more than half were members of minority groups. Latinos, Asians, African-Americans and other minorities accounted for 50.4% of births last year, marking the first time in U.S. history this has happened.
Immigration is a driving force. So is the fact that Latinos have higher birthrates because they tend to be younger and starting families. According to the report, Latinos have a median age of 27; with whites, it's 42.
When I read these kinds of stories, I wince. Some people assume that making lawmakers, media and corporations aware of population trends will persuade them to see the value in diversity and cause them to reach out to nonwhite populations. In my experience, it doesn't have that effect at all. People tend to do what they want to do the way they've always done it.
But what you can set your watch by is the backlash to these stories. It's rooted in fear, but also in human nature. No one likes being told they're being displaced or pushed aside, or that they're not going to be as relevant as time goes on.
Editor’s note: Susan Bodnar is a clinical psychologist who works with people from diverse backgrounds and teaches at Columbia University’s Teachers College and at The Stephen Mitchell Center for Relational Studies. She lives in Manhattan with her husband, two children and all of their pets.
By Susan Bodnar, Special to CNN
(CNN) - When I learned of the news that a young black male, Trayvon Martin, had been shot and killed, it knocked the tears out of me.
Could this have happened to my child? One of his friends?
Martin was like many of our adolescent children – a little bit confused about his identity, and perhaps acted out as most teenagers do.
But we should stop viewing the release of recent evidence, and news about George Zimmerman as a spectacle.
Instead let’s discuss how a white Hispanic man came to view an unarmed black teenager as dangerous, and explore racism’s lingering vestiges after the death of Trayvon Martin.
Editor's Note: This post looks at Marvel Comics’ “Astonishing X-Men #50”, part of the monthly X-Men books.
By Topher Kohan, CNN
Marvel Comics’ mutant character Northstar has not often been a headliner. If all you know about the X-Men is what you've seen in movies starring Hugh Jackman, then you likely don’t know him at all.
That changes with this week's “Astonishing X-Men #50” when Northstar takes center stage and prepares to go from one of the first openly gay superheroes in comics to the first married gay hero at Marvel. That's if his paramour and manager Kyle says yes, of course.
Northstar has had a tumultuous history. He starred in “Alpha Flight,” a long-running and well-remembered series for Marvel in the 80s and 90s, but his star fell not long after he came out as a gay man.
At the time his coming out was a huge development, but since then it has been ignored, played up for positive effect or played almost for laughs, such as a brief period where Northstar was retroactively declared to be an actual fairy. (Seriously, this is a storyline in a comic book you can own.)
“Astonishing X-Men #50” is an easy jumping on point for new readers of the line and has the added bonus of featuring Northstar, an X-Men character that I personally think is great.
He promotes AIDS awareness and mental health, two issues dear to his heart thanks to obstacles faced by his adopted daughter and his sister, respectively.
Earlier this year Archie comics had a same-sex wedding in its books that got a lot of press, but this is the first time a superhero is tying the knot.
Editor's note: Shamena Anwar is an assistant professor of economics and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University; Patrick Bayer is a professor of economics at Duke University; and Randi Hjalmarsson is an associate professor in economics at Queen Mary, University of London.
By Shamena Anwar, Patrick Bayer and Randi Hjalmarsson, Special to CNN
(CNN) - The Sixth Amendment right to a trial by an impartial jury is the bedrock of our criminal justice system. Yet the promise of impartiality is called into question when defendants face juries that include few, if any, members of their race.
The small percentage of black people in the U.S. population, less than 13%, and in some cases, their systematic exclusion from juries, means that black defendants routinely face all-white juries in many states and counties.
Concerns about jury representation go hand-in-hand with the sense that the racial makeup of juries might make a big difference for conviction rates in criminal trials. Surprisingly, we know very little about this.
What defines you? Maybe it’s the shade of your skin, the place you grew up, the accent in your words, the make up of your family, the gender you were born with, the intimate relationships you chose to have or your generation? As the American identity changes we will be there to report it. In America is a venue for creative and timely sharing of news that explores who we are. Reach us at inamerica@cnn.com.
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