My son has been suspended five times. He’s 3.

 


As we talked, I admitted that JJ had been suspended three times. All of the mothers were shocked at the news.

“JJ?” one mother asked.

“My son threw something at a kid on purpose and the kid had to be rushed to the hospital,” another parent said. “All I got was a phone call.”

One after another, white mothers confessed the trouble their children had gotten into. Some of the behavior was similar to JJ’s; some was much worse.

Most startling: None of their children had been suspended.

Tunette Powell’s 3-year-old son, Joah, has been suspended from school five times. (Tunette Powell)

After that party, I read a study reflecting everything I was living.

Black children represent 18 percent of preschool enrollment but make up 48 percent of preschool children receiving more than one out-of-school suspension, according to the study released by the  Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights in March.

Click through to read more.

Source: www.washingtonpost.com

 

implicit bias

 

racial discrimination

 

What White Children Need to Know About Race

 

Silence is a racial message and a “tool of whiteness.” In order to support the goals of their diversity mission statements and work toward a “racially just America,” schools need to take a more proactive approach to teaching white students about race and racial identity.

Students must develop a sense of how systemic racism works on an individual, community, and institutional level.

 

– Click through to read more –

 

Source: www.nais.org

 

Many white people do not have an urgency about racial injustice.

 

Many white people live in segregated communities where they do not see racial injustice. Unless people tune into the right media channels, they are not going to have a feeling for the insidiousness of racial injustice.

 

Powerful Cartoon Asks Americans To Consider The Potential Of The Children At The Border

Invoking well-known undocumented immigrant and Pulitzer Prize winner Jose Antonio Vargas who came to the U.S. as a child, the cartoon wonders about what could be.

Source: www.buzzfeed.com

 

I will start asking people, “What kind of refugee was your family?”

 

  • War refugee
  • Economic refugee
  • Political refugee

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart: America’s Immigration Crisis: Kid Edition

 

Republicans always claim America is the best nation on Earth; to their chagrin, child refugees fleeing violence and poverty in Latin America are listening.

Source: www.hulu.com

U.S. Turns Back on Child Migrants After Its Policies in Guatemala, Honduras Sowed Seeds of Crisis – VIDEO – Democracy Now!

 

DANA FRANK:
Yeah, when we talk about the fleeing gangs and violence, it’s also this tremendous poverty. And poverty doesn’t just happen. It, itself, is a direct result of policies of both the Honduran government and the U.S. government, including privatizations, mass layoffs of government workers, and a new—in Honduras, a new law, that’s now made permanent, that breaks up full-time jobs and makes them part-time and ineligible for unionization, living wage and the national health service. And a lot of these economic policies are driven by U.S.-funded lending organizations like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, which itself is funding the corrupt Honduran police. The Central American Free Trade Agreement is the other piece of this. Like NAFTA did for the U.S. and Mexico, it opens the door to this open competition between small producers in agriculture in Honduras, small manufacturers, and jobs are disappearing as a result of that.

So, with this poverty that we’re seeing that people are fleeing, it’s not like people are like, “Let’s go have the American dream.” There are almost no jobs for young people. Their parents know it. And we’re talking about starving to death—that’s the alternative—or being driven into gangs with tremendous sexual violence. And it’s a very, very tragic situation here. But it’s not like it tragically just happened. It’s a direct result of very conscious policies by the U.S. and Honduran governments.
Click through for VIDEO and transcript.

Source: www.democracynow.org

VIDEO – Luis Gutierrez about children at the border

 

Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., says the “border is secure,” and he warns against demonizing the undocumented children arriving at the U.S. from Central America.

 

Source: www.cbsnews.com

 

Does anyone think that Central American has been manipulated in order to provide a new source of low cost labor to the U.S.?

 

How is it that Central American countries used to be livable but now are too dangerous to live in?

 

What international politics have cause this chaos?

 

Pope Francis: Migrant Children Must Be ‘Welcomed And Protected’

“This humanitarian emergency requires, as a first urgent measure, these children be welcomed and protected,” Pope Francis said.

Source: thinkprogress.org

The process Congress wants to use for child migrants is a disaster

 

A secret UN report obtained by Vox reveals Border Patrol agents are failing to protect Mexican children.

Mexican children are treated differently than Central American children at the border

BY LAW, AGENTS SHOULD ASSUME CHILDREN ARE IN DANGER; IN PRACTICE, AGENTS ASSUME THEY’RE NOT

It’s not that Central American kids need to be protected less; it’s that Mexican kids need to be protected more

 

Source: www.vox.com