THE SAN BERNARDINO
AMERICAN
“A Man In Debt is So Far A Slave” -R.W. Emerson
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NEWSPAPER A Community Newspaper Serving San Bernardino, Riverside & Los Angeles Counties
Volume 54 No. 32
November 23, 2023 Thursday Edition
Mailing: P.O. Box 837, Victorville, CA 92393 Office: (909) 889-7677 Email: Mary @Sb-American.com Clifton@Sb-American.com
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Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them and these will continue till they have resisted either with words or blows or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance those of whom they suppress. —Fredrick Douglass (1849)
Crisis: Black Families Schools aren’t prepared to handle AAreLooming Facing More Threats to Homeownership racist bullying Antonio Ray Harvey and Edward Henderson | California Black Media
by Maya Pottiger Word in Black Breana Calloway stood in front of the Illinois State Senate in March to testify in favor of the Racism Free Schools Act. It pass ed the Senate unanimously, passed through the House, and was signed into law in August. Calloway, a principal-intraining in Chicago and a former Teach Plus Fellow, worked with her cohort to pass the act, which she said “puts something on the books to protect staff and students from racial harassment.” The goal was to distinguish racial harassment from bullying, because bullying is something that persists, whereas racial harassment can happen once and still cause the same amount of harm. And it aims to provide training for teachers, because so many “are not prepared to deal with it,” Calloway said. Growing up in predominantly White spaces, this was personal to Calloway. She wanted to make sure that not only was her story being told, but so were the stories of thousands of students who experience this daily. Now they’re figuring out how to implement it, hold people accountable, and even take it national. “This is something we want to expand upon,” Calloway said. “This is something that is super monumental for us here in Illinois, and we’re definitely looking forward to expanding.” Racist bullying isn’t going anywhere Bullying isn’t going away. If anything, it’s evolving and becoming more targeted, said Tyler Cook, a second-year eighth-grade math teacher in Philadelphia. “Bullying has become much more intersecting,” he said. “As we’ve adopted more inclusive language and different ways of recognizing the intersections in the world, that also has created more room for violence and harm.” Cook, a Black and queer educator, is open with his students about how he identifies. Fed up with the offensive vernacular he’s heard students use, Cook leads Safe Zone workshops, teaching his students how to address different identities, and be open and mindful of others’ identities. But it only sticks situationally. Even though Cook knows his students respect him, he’s found they are no longer thinking about his identity when they leave his classroom. He’s overheard students say, “This person is a , but I’m not talking about Mr. Cook.” Cook wants students to understand that there aren’t exceptions to derogatory terms. “You’re talking about a community that I am accepted into, a community that I feel a part of,” Cook said. “When you say that to one person, you’re saying that to all.” Despite making up only 15 percent of the public school
The high cost of housing, predatory financing programs, and the temporary nature of a critical government assistance program are all factors making it harder for Black Californians to buy homes -- or keep the ones they already own. Policy leaders, building industry organizations and other concerned advocates are expressing concern that, if left unchecked, this crisis could worsen. “We have a massive housing shortage, and we should do
Despite making up only 15 percent of the public school population, Black students were 35 percent of those who reported being bullied because of their race. (Photo courtesy of Unsplash/ Jakob Owens)
population, Black students were 35 percent of those who reported being bullied because of their race, according to a 2018 report by the U.S. Department of Education’s Civil Rights Data Collection. Race-based bullying accounted for nearly a quarter of all bullying reported in the analysis, and it was the top reason Black students were bullied. Cyberbullying is also a huge problem among teens, with 46 percent of teens ages 13-17 reporting any type of cyberbullying, according to a 2022 Pew Research Center report. Black students, at 40 percent, were the least likely to report cyberbullying, and 29 percent said they experienced offensive name-calling. However, data from Boston University’s Wheelock College of Education and Human Development shows that searches for both school bullying and cyberbullying dropped between 30 percent to 40 percent during virtual learning in spring 2020. The drop continued through the fall and winter of the 2020-2021 school year, but increased back to pre-pandemic levels, and students returned to in-person schooling. Part of the problem, Cook said, is that the education system “is not quite all the way there” to support educators, students and families as they navigate these new spaces. “I don’t see bullying going away anytime soon,” Cook said. “The moral code is played out. We need to update it just like we need to update our laws, our
policies.” The burden falls on Black teachers Neither Cook nor Calloway, who spent seven years as a teacher in Chicago, recall any specific training on handling racial harassment or racist bullying. And yet the responsibility of navigating racial harassment and racist bullying incidents are often assigned to Black teachers. “It’s given to you to figure it out,” Calloway said. But it’s not just the students. It also comes from the teachers, Calloway said. As a Black teacher, Calloway explains, the environment can become hostile when you try to speak up. “The burnout, for me, I experienced because I’m constantly speaking out for Black children, their experiences, trying to make it better. And I’m not shielded from that,” Calloway said. “So I’m shielding myself from these experiences, from an administration and other teachers, but also trying to shield the students from that, as well.” Progressive movements don’t help the cause While the Black Lives Matter Movement dominated the news cycle and Gen Z is talked about as being a progressive generation, neither have done much to help eliminate racial harassment or racist bullying.
Instead, Cook thinks the movement unintentionally contributed to racism in the classroom. He said focusing attention on any specific identity, social group, or type of oppression definitely brings in allies and advocates, but it also amplifies the voices of the opposition, who say, “I don’t believe in this thing, and I don’t accept it.” “How do you level out ‘we are trying to open these young minds, and we’re trying to adopt this new transformative way of thinking,’” Cook said, “but we still have generations of people who are in these positions of power, who haven’t adopted their mindset?” Racist bullying or racial harassment are an everyday thing for many students. If anything, the bullying gets more discreet and becomes more of a microaggression, Calloway said. Racism doesn’t go away because we say it doesn’t exist, she said. “A lot of times, when people say that, you’re minimizing the everyday experiences of Black and brown children, specifically in schools that are already harmful to them because they have different ways of teaching,” Calloway said. “If racism was going away, we wouldn’t need something like the Racism Free Schools Act to protect students from racial harassment and racial bullying.” This article was originally published by Word In Black.
everything we can to increase the production of housing throughout the entire state, not just infill areas,” said Cornelius Burke, Vice President of Legislative Affairs at the California Building Industry Association (CBIA). Advocates: Smarter Policy Could Increase California’s Housing Inventory Burke was speaking on Nov. 16, along with other CBIA officials -- including the organization’s President and CEO Dan Dunmoyer -- during a webinar on how the high cost of building homes affect Blacks and Latinos homeownership. According to Dunmoyer the key to resolving the problem is effective policymaking. He said several current housing laws restrict construction even though the policymakers that introduced them may have had good intentions. One of the housing laws that is a concern to CBIA is Assembly Bill (AB) 68, the “The Housing and Climate Solutions Act.” Authored by Christopher Ward (D-San Diego). While AB 68 aims to alleviate California’s housing crisis and reduce climate change risk by expediting new home approvals, the CBIA says it is a “housing killer” and it “discourages and ignores innovation. “We believe that the decisions made by policymakers both local, state, and federal have added to this complexity and confusion,” Dunmoyer said. “As a result of that, we in California are uniquely harmed by our policies in a way that is distinct from the rest of the country.” “Compared with California, more than a third of the nation’s households can afford to purchase a $406,900 medianpriced home, which required a minimum annual income
Cornelius Burke, vice president of legislative affairs CBIA.
of $106,800,” according to data released on Nov. 10, by the California Association of Realtors (CAR). Pandemic Relief Program Is Helping Struggling Californians Keep Their Homes Black families that already own homes are also facing a number of threats, including the impending end of a taxpayerfunded homeowner assistance program. Since it was launched in 2021, the California Mortgage Relief Program (CMRP) has granted millions of dollars to thousands of homeowners struggling to keep up with mortgage payments due to job loss or other setbacks resulting from the pandemic. “Black and Latino households, in particular. had less net worth to deal with pandemic related financial hardships,” said Joe Jaramillo, an attorney at Housing and Economic Rights Advocates (HERA), a statewide housing legal service and advocacy nonprofit. Jaramillo was speaking about the problem at an Ethnic Media Services (EMS) news briefing. Jaramillo and other housing advocates in California say, like a perfect storm, several factors have converged to threaten homeownership for Blacks and other minorities. Among them is the fact that the one-time $1 billion CMRP taxpayer-funded mortgage assistance program will end when the fund is depleted. The CMRP has been the primary resource for homeowners to overcome these threats, said Rebecca Franklin, president of the California Housing Finance Agency (CalHFA). Over 23,000 Californians have kept their homes due to CMRP grants of up to $80,000 per home, amounting to a total of nearly $650 million dispersed so far. Franklin urged homeowners to continued on page 2