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President Barack Obama Addresses African American Issues

atlantashottesthiphop — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 21:13:44 +0000

Today (September 12th), TheUrbanDaily (and its sister sites in the InteractiveOne family) presented questions to a panel of White House administration representatives. At the end of the hour-long event, President Barack Obama made a surprise appearance and outlined his plans to help African Americans seeking jobs.

President Obama also spoke briefly about the importance of the online community, because it allows a “two-way conversation.”

Thanks to those of you who submitted questions and comments via Facebook and Twitter to the White House.

Jennifer Hudson Sings “Happy Birthday” To Barack Obama [VIDEO]

Happy Birthday Obama: 50 Things You Might Not Know!

Ways Parents Can Teach Children To Care About Others

Elev8 — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 17:18:04 +0000

In a world where violence and cruelty seem to be common and almost acceptable, many parents wonder what they can do to help their children to become kinder and gentler—to develop a sense of caring and compassion for others. Raising kids who care isn’t a solution to violence by itself, but it’s reasonable to worry that being exposed to a lot of violence—whether it’s on television or on the streets —could make your children hard and uncaring. People sometimes think that children don’t really see the outside world—or other people—the way adults do, that they only view the world from their own eyes and in their own way.

The most important thing you as a parent can do is to let your children know how much it means to you that they behave with kindness and responsibility. When you see your child doing something that you think is thoughtless or cruel, you should let them know right away that you don’t want them doing that. Speak to your child firmly and honestly, and keep your focus on the act, not on the child personally—something along the lines of ‘What you did is not very nice’ rather than ‘YOU are not very nice.’

Be frank, honest and upfront with your kids about what kind of behavior you do and don’t like. Keep your comments short and to the point; the idea is to teach them, not to make them feel guilty. In other words, our actions speak louder than words. If you are consistently caring and compassionate, it’s more likely that your children will be, too. Children watch their parents, and other adults, for clues on how to behave.

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Anti-Abortion Billboards Invoke Race In Metro Atlanta

Denise Dunbar — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 19:22:16 +0000

VIA: New York Times

ATLANTA, GEORGIA — Anti-abortion groups have erected scores of billboards here with an alarming message: “Black children are an endangered species.”

The groups responsible insist that they are not exaggerating, despite contrary federal data. The billboards, which show a close-up of a worried-looking African-American boy, are an effort to highlight data showing that black women get a disproportionate number of abortions, especially in Georgia, and that the number in Georgia is increasing.

“The impact of abortion has become so great that it has begun to impact our fertility rate,” said Catherine Davis, the minority outreach coordinator for Georgia Right to Life, the state’s main anti-abortion group, which has sponsored the billboards in partnership with the Radiance Foundation, a group based in Atlanta that encourages adoption.

The billboards — there are 65 now and will eventually be 80, Ms. Davis said — were created in conjunction with a new Web site, www.toomanyaborted.com, which says that all of Georgia’s abortion clinics are in “urban areas where blacks reside.” The Web site connects abortion to segregation, saying that after the civil rights era, racists went “underground,” and that today “abortion is the tool they use to stealthily target blacks for extermination.”

It also says that Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, wanted to reduce the population of blacks, an assertion that Planned Parenthood has disputed.

Ms. Davis said Georgia Right to Life would also support state legislation that would make it a crime for abortion providers to solicit business based on the race or sex of the fetus.

In 2006, 57.4 percent of the abortions in Georgia were performed on black women, even though blacks make up about 30 percent of the population, according to the most recent figures from the federal Centers for Disease Control. Of the 37 states that reported abortion data by race, Georgia was second only to New York and Texas in the number of abortions performed on black women. Only Mississippi and Maryland reported a higher percentage of abortions going to black women than Georgia.

But there was little evidence that abortions had made black children unusually endangered. The fertility rate, or births per 1,000 women of childbearing age, among black women remains higher than the national average and has inched up in recent years, according to C.D.C. data.

The advertising campaign has drawn fire from supporters of abortion rights. Loretta Ross, the executive director of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Health Collective in Atlanta, said the billboards painted black women as either monsters intent on destroying their own race or victims of whites who control abortion clinics.

“The reason we have so many Planned Parenthoods in the black community is because leaders in the black community in the ’20s and ’30s went to Margaret Sanger and asked for them,” Ms. Ross said. “Controlling our fertility was part of our uplift out of poverty strategy, and it still works.”

Ryan Bomberger, who left his job in advertising to found the Radiance Foundation and who designed the billboard, argued that it was not intended to induce shame.

“This is not a campaign that targets black women,” Mr. Bomberger said. “It’s a campaign that exposes an industry that we believe targets African-Americans.”