links for 2011-08-07

"Then, as now, African Americans were the most overrepresented group in the shelter system. According to the 2005 report, people of color comprised approximately 27 percent of the general population in King County, but 57 percent of the people who were homeless at the time.
"In 2005, the reasons cited for the disparity included a lack of employment and affordable housing, housing discrimination, domestic violence and disparate treatment in the criminal justice system, where persons of color are also overrepresented.
"Some things haven’t changed. In May 2011, the national unemployment rate of blacks was 16.2 percent, double that of whites at 8 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics."

"If, as Mrs. Lawrence has insinuated on multiple occasions, police unwillingness to protect and serve Black communities in England made it clear that Black people were unwelcome in the country, one can understand that the fight for justice for Stephen became a struggle for Black Britons, Caribbean and African migrants along with their British-born children, to lay claim to their rights as citizens of the United Kingdom."

"She was also, like me, Latina. Or at least, I thought she was. It's only now, as I see her character's full name spelled out in online obituaries, that I realize perhaps she was meant to be Italian. In fact, Charles, who was born Annette Cardona, was of Mexican and Italian ancestry. She certainly looked Latina to me. And at the time I'm recalling — this was the mid-'80s — there weren't too many representations of Latina women on film and TV. Those that did exist were often portrayed as the other, as my women's studies professors might have once put it, pushed to the margins of the narrative."