HARLEM BOOK FAIR ON PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS, PICTURES AND ADDITIONAL VIDEO EXCERPTS

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HARLEM BOOK FAIR ON PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS

Watch Cornell West describe the distinction between the catastrophe of voting for Mitt and the disaster of voting for Barack.





    WHO IS FAILING WHOM? BLACK MALES and THE AMERICAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 

LOCATION: Schomburg/Hughes Auditorium 

TIME: 2:00p – 3:15p 

Moderator: Dr. Carlton E. Brown, President, Clark Atlanta University 

Panelists: Dr. Akil Khalfani (The Hidden Debate); Baruti Kafele (Motivating Black Males to Achieve in School and in Life); Dr. John Michael Lee, Jr. – Policy Director, The College Board Advocacy and Policy Center; Dr. Shaun Harper (Student Engagement in Higher Education) 

A disproportionate number of failing schools, across grade levels, are predominantly comprised of poor, racial, and ethnic minority students. These segregated schools tend to have fewer financial, human, and material resources than schools in more affluent areas. By the time students who attend these schools reach high school, the academic challenges they face have been compounded by years of substandard education and low expectations. 

Only 55 percent of all black students graduate from high school on time with a regular diploma. On average, African American twelfth-grade students read at approximately the same level as white eighth graders. The twelfth-grade reading scores of African American males were significantly lower than those for men and women across every other racial and ethnic group. Public education has failed black America. 

The story doesn’t end after high school. For those fortunate enough to be able to go on to college, black male students perform significantly less well than all other students including black female students. Retention and graduation rates also remain much lower. Who holds the accountability? Where are the answers? 

DECISION 2012: RACE, DEMOCRACY and THE NEW JIM CROW 

LOCATION: Schomburg/Hughes Auditorium 

TIME: 3:30p – 4:45p 

Moderator: Peniel Joseph (Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama) 

Panelists: Khalil Gibran Muhammad (Dark The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America); Cornel West (Democracy Matters: Winning the Fight Against Imperialism); Fredrick C. Harris (The Price of the Ticket: Barack Obama and Rise and Decline of Black Politics); Sonia Sanchez, author and activist (Shake Loose My Skin) 

The wealth gap between white and African American families has more than quadrupled over the course of a generation; the median wealth of white households is 20 times that of black households; and at least 35% of African Americans have no recent Brandeis University study found "the wealth gap between white and African Americans has more than quadrupled over the course of a generation" and the Pew study found "nearly half of African Americans born to middle-income parents in the late 1960s plunged into poverty or near-poverty as adults." 

In 1994, journalist Ellis Cose surveyed successful, middle-class African-Americans and uncovered an often unspoken rage. Seventeen years later, Cose discovered a major change among middle-class blacks: They have become one of the most optimistic groups in America. The election of Baraka Obama has heightened the optimism. But what happens when a community loses that core of ‘righteous indignation’ that successfully carried it through the Civil Rights era? In ‘paying the price’ for having more, do African Americans – a once-cohesive community – now look to each other less? 

How important to African Americans is the re-election of President Barack Obama, and can we truly expect his impact to shift the corrosive cultural and economic tensions that underlie the American fabric?  ADDITIONAL COMPLETE VIDEO OF THREE OTHER PANELS