Race Equity / Social Justice

“What if I was made for evil?” These are the words of a 15-year-old African American male that I will never forget. He was in an alternative to incarceration program. As a social worker, in my usual capacity of trying to encourage and uplift this young man, I told him that he was made for good and he countered with the aforementioned question. He said, ‘If someone was made for good, then someone had to be made for evil.’ He asked, what if that was him? It stopped me in the middle of my...

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The shift to a Healing-Centered Engagement Model releases culture as a root cause of trauma, to instead celebrate the intrinsic resilience and the capacity to promote PCEs that ethnic history, racial and other social identities afford. This is particularly important for white, privileged communities to embrace, given their historical diminishment of non-white cultures.

Patrick Wall Senior Reporter, Chalkbeat Newark Black-white segregation rate is three times the national average. The schools in Newark and nearby communities are among the most severely segregated in the nation, according to a new nationwide analysis. The Newark area ranks first in economic segregation and second in Black-white segregation, according to the analysis of public and private schools in all 403 metropolitan areas in the United States. The rate of segregation between Black and...

TAYLOR JUNG | NJ Spotlight More people of color borrow than white counterparts, adding to racial wealth gap. For New Jersey school psychologist Norma Reyes, not having to make her student loan payments the last two years has been a “blessing.” While the Biden administration pushed back payments to the end of August and is expected to make a student loan announcement in the coming weeks, the looming and unclear future of her debt is unsettling. “However, those loans are still there. And it’s...

Patrick Lavery | NJ1015 The fourth annual State of Babies Yearbook, released Tuesday by the Washington, D.C.-based organization Zero To Three, places New Jersey in the top 12 states in the nation for infants and toddlers, but also offers evidence the Garden State should continue to make improvements for its youngest residents. The rankings in the study are classified by the letters G-R-O-W: getting started, reaching forward, improving outcomes, or working effectively. In two categories, for...

We join our fellow community members in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in solidarity and sorrow after the police killing of Patrick Lyoya , who was a father and son. In media coverage, we saw the gut-wrenching grief of his family reflected on his mother’s face. Mrs. Lyoya’s expression is a stark visual reminder of the way systemic racial violence disrupts the lives of children, families and communities every day . All our communities confront crises born of racism, which is embedded in all of our...

Another record year for reported bias incidents in New Jersey Dino Flammia | NJ1015 For the third straight year, New Jersey has experienced a record number of reported acts of prejudice, according to a report compiled by the New Jersey State Police. New Jersey was home to 1,871 reported bias incidents in 2021, preliminary numbers suggest. That total represents a 29% increase from the 1,447 bias incidents reported for 2020. "New Jersey is proudly one of the most diverse states in the country,...

Eric Scott | NJ1015 After two years of remote learning and hybrid classes, New Jersey's K-12 students continue to struggle and are in danger of falling even farther behind. Even with in-person learning since the start of the current school year, the struggles are evidence in every grade level. The non-profit education advocacy group JerseyCAN recently completed the first comprehensive look at so-called 'learning loss,' and the results should alarm every parent. On average, New Jersey...

By MICHELLE BOORSTEIN Washington Post White-supremacist groups continued in 2021 to distribute propaganda at a historically high rate, a report published Thursday says, part of what some experts call an increasingly panicked reaction to growing diversity in America. The Anti-Defamation League’s research found 4,851 reported cases of white supremacist propaganda in 2021, including racist, anti- Semitic and anti-LGBTQ items. That’s down 5% from 2020 but way up from 294 cases in 2017, when the...

By Vashti Harris | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com and Matthew Stanmyre | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com For Tionni Kennedy, Bridgewater Commons mall is a place she frequently visits to hang out with friends, browse through stores, and gab over meals in the food court. It’s also where Kennedy, who is Black, said she often encounters racism. The 17-year-old from Piscataway feels the glare of store workers when she walks into shops and notices how they always seem to follow her as she looks at...

Michael Symons | NJ1015 Photo credit: here TRENTON – Legislation advancing in the state Senate would create a Division of School Desegregation in the state Department of Education, responsible for identifying instances of racial and socioeconomic segregation and ways to ensure diverse enrollment in New Jersey public schools. The division would compile statistics on the racial, ethnic and economic composition of each public school and do a comparative analysis of the educational outcomes of...