Month: September 2016

Sandra Bland’s Family Settles Wrongful Death Suit in Texas For $1.9 Million

WATCH: San Diego State Campus Police Slam & Nearly Break Student’s Back


So …the hashtag #BlackUnderAttackSDSU is trending live on social media and the following video explains why.

Just wow. The students of San Diego State University have since began peaceful protests in hopes of speaking with campus administration in regards to racial tension and campus police brutality. 

https://twitter.com/chasems_/status/776559059197583360

The details of what happened prior have not come to light, but the video — shot by a fellow student — shows nothing that warranted this young man being treated this way. The force used was excessive —very. Matter of fact, if there were no video cameras or people around, this kid might have not made it out alive. That’s a terrifying reality, especially since he was not posing a threat to the officers and was clearly well subdued. 

Horrified students took to social media to blast school officials for their handling of the situation. 

SDSU students allege that instead of school officials addressing the arrest and attempting to ease their concerns, the doors were closed and locked in their faces. 

https://twitter.com/_kemig/status/776557480604086272

How does a seemingly reasonable conversation turn into this type of confrontation? 

https://twitter.com/selfmade_kelllz/status/776566669242142720
As of yet, San Diego State University has not released any statements via the media nor social media. 

Join the discussion. 

FEATURED POST: Why Racial Bias Still Pervades America

That race remains one of our most vexing national issues – from bias in the sharing economy, to the lack of diversity in the executive ranks to the violence that plays out daily between communities and the police – comes as no surprise to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Isabel Wilkerson. “There is a direct line between our history and the headlines you see today,” she says. “And nothing will improve until we address that history.”

It took her 15 years and over 1,200 interviews to finish The Warmth of Other Suns, the massive and beautifully rendered account of the slow but steady migration of six million African Americans from the violent repression of the Jim Crow South, to the North and West in search of a better life. The Great Migration lasted between 1916 and 1970 and reshaped America in ways that we are just now starting to understand.

It was a tough road. “The migrants were cast as poor illiterates, who imported out-of-wedlock births, joblessness and welfare dependency wherever they went,” Wilkerson writes.

Wilkerson’s extraordinary reporting, however, tells a different and more nuanced tale – one of risk, hard work, and achievement despite racial barriers that still exist in some forms. “It’s hard to imagine what it would be like if there was no Great Migration,” she says. “So many aspects of what we view as American culture were affected by this unleashing of pent up, unrecognized talent, creativity and ability, that had been withheld for centuries.”

An astonishing number of prominent African American executives, artists or athletes either are, or are direct descendants of, someone who took that perilous journey.

In a recent conversation, I asked Wilkerson to help explain what we get wrong about the Great Migration, and why it is imperative that business leaders closely study the difficult history that shapes our world in unseen ways.

“If there are disparities in how African Americans are making their way in the business world, and they are encountering barriers and assumptions, it is a direct manifestation of the unaddressed history of the world in which we all live. History can be a tremendous guide, and more of a comfort than people can imagine.”

Read the entire interview here, it has been lightly edited for clarity.