On Saturday, January 5th 2019 Color of Change launched an interactive website "created by and for Black women and allies [that] visualizes the systems that put [their] minds and bodies at risk."
BlackWomenToo.com tracks this violence as Black women and girls experience it in entertainment, policing, healthcare, media and many other areas. Color of Change is a progressive nonprofit civil rights advocacy organization in the United States. It was formed in 2005 in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in order to use online resources to strengthen the political voice of African Americans. The College Foundation of North Carolina will sponsor, NC Countdown to College this year, October 15 - 19. During NC Countdown to College week, counselors and others at North Carolina high schools will help seniors submit online college applications for admission through the CFNC application hub. Many North Carolina colleges and universities will waive their application fees that week. Additionally in October, CFNC will give extra help to students as they fill out their Free Application for Federal Aid, or FAFSA, to determine eligibility for college aid, and use the Residency Determination Service to determine if they qualify for in-state tuition. Learn more at their site here.
Charlotte City Council's Housing & Neighborhood Development Committee is inviting local community members to provide input on a revised Housing Locational Policy. The policy serves as a guide for the location of new affordable multi-family housing developments throughout the city. The goal of the revised policy is to reflect Charlotte's current housing landscape, needs, and priorities better. Community feedback meetings will be held 6:30—8 p.m. on the following dates:
Thursday, August 23 Myers Park United Methodist Church 1501 Queens Road Tuesday, August 28 East Stonewall AME Zion Church 1729 Griers Grove Road Thursday, September 6 * Charlotte-Mecklenburg Government Center (Room 267) 600 East 4th Street Tuesday, September 11 Greater Providence Baptist Church 2000 Milton Road *This meeting will be streamed live on the City of Charlotte's Facebook page. You may provide your feedback by posting during the Facebook live stream. For more information, visit Housing and Neighborhood Development here. As reported by Fast Company, "over 41,000 people work at Google, Facebook, and Twitter but less than 2% of that workforce—only about 750 employees—is black" and notably, "the rest of the tech industry mirrors that trend with African-American representation at 5% overall." The article draws data from the The National Urban League's Digital Inclusion index "which finds that black America has 74.1% of white America’s benefits from the digital economy and shows how often people of color are getting a fair chance at upward mobility within the tech sector compared to their white counterparts." The Digital Inclusion Index demonstrates that "people of color are afforded access and opportunity to attain only three-quarters of the total pie in terms of knowledge growth, empowerment, and financial reward and that total share is built off a weighted comparison of three factors: Digital skills and occupations account for 35% of that share, with digital access being another 35%, and supportive digital policies worth 30% of the total." You can download the Digital Inclusion Index here.
The National Urban League is "a historic civil rights organization dedicated to economic empowerment in order to elevate the standard of living in historically underserved urban communities." Founded in 1910 and headquartered in New York City, the National Urban League spearheads the efforts of its local affiliates through the development of programs, public policy research and advocacy. The National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Inc.'s vision is to see Black women and girls live in a world where socio-economic inequity does not exist. As reported by US News and World Report, a new sweeping study conducted by the National Urban League indicates that "African-Americans are at 72.5% – less than three-fourths – when it comes to achieving equality with white Americans" in the areas of economics, health, education, civic engagement and social justice." According to the Equality Index:
The National Urban League is "a historic civil rights organization dedicated to economic empowerment in order to elevate the standard of living in historically underserved urban communities." Founded in 1910 and headquartered in New York City, the National Urban League spearheads the efforts of its local affiliates through the development of programs, public policy research and advocacy. The National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Inc.'s vision is to see Black women and girls live in a world where socio-economic inequity does not exist. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, House Agriculture Committee Chairman Michael Conaway’s farm bill proposal "would require SNAP participants ages 18 through 59 who aren’t disabled or raising a child under 6 to prove — every month — that they’re working at least 20 hours a week, participating at least 20 hours a week in a work program, or a combination of the two." Notably, persons who do not meet program requirements within a month "would lose benefits for one year the first time this happens, and for three years for any later occurrence."
Moreover, the proposal will likely do little to help people who are out of work find high-quality jobs and "participating states will spend considerable resources to track the millions of people subject to the requirements." Learn more about the proposed changes here. A recent study conducted by the Center for Demography and Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison finds that "the gap in student debt held by Black and White borrowers grows by 6.8% each year" and as a result, Black young adults hold 10.4% less wealth on average than their White counterparts due to differences in student-loan debt." For-profit colleges which target Black students and tend to have worse outcomes are negatively implicated in this research which indicates that "the processes that students use to both accumulate and pay down debt are racialized." This situation ensures that Black students are likely to "typically need to rely more on debt to pay for school." The study is available for review here.
The Center for Demography and Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is "a multi-disciplinary faculty research cooperative for social scientific demographic research whose membership includes sociologists, rural sociologists, economists, epidemiologists, and statisticians." Learn more about the Center here. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Trump's proposal to raise minimum rents by up to $1800 per year for the poorest households receiving federal rent assistance would put 1.7 million people (including nearly 1 million children) at risk for eviction, hardship and homelessness. Virtually all impacted households have an annual income of less than $7,000. The proposal would triple minimum rent for these families. Learn more about the proposal here.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities is a nonpartisan research and policy institute that pursues federal and state policies designed both to reduce poverty and inequality and to restore fiscal responsibility in equitable and effective ways. The National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Inc. is a non-partisan organization. A new study from the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Racial Equity at Duke University addresses "What We Get Wrong About Closing the Racial Wealth Gap." Notably, the report "addresses ten commonly held myths about the racial wealth gap in the United States" and concludes that conventional ideas, including "greater educational attainment, harder work, better financial decisions, and other changes in habits and practices on the part of Blacks" will not "bridge the racial chasm in wealth" between Blacks and Whites and that moreover, these so-called solutions "place the brunt of the responsibility on Black Americans, to correct a problem they did not create." Authors indicate that "a narrative that places the onus of the racial wealth gap on black defectiveness is false in all of its permutations" and that the cause of the racial wealth gap "must be found in the structural characteristics of the American economy, heavily infused at every point with both an inheritance of racism and the ongoing authority of white supremacy." The report can be found in its entirety here.
The Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Racial Equity at Duke University is a scholarly collaborative engaged in the study of the causes and consequences of inequality and in the assessment and redesign of remedies for inequality and its adverse effects. Concerned with the economic, political, social and cultural dimensions of uneven and inequitable access to resources, opportunity and capabilities, Cook Center researchers take a cross-national comparative approach to the study of human difference and disparity. The National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Inc.'s vision is to see Black women and girls live in a world where socio-economic inequity does not exist. In April 2018, the Charlotte Observer reported that "developers are seeking almost $24 million worth of subsidies from Charlotte's Housing Trust Fund to build new affordable apartments throughout the city, as rents continue to rise." The city of Charlotte's Housing and Neighborhood Development committee is leading the charge to building "diverse and livable communities," and heard the developer's request at a recent meeting. Click here to learn more about the work of the committee and their steps toward diverse price point housing.
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