As you’ve probably noticed already, gay rights is a very charged and controversial issue in American society. Nowhere is this more true than among Black Americans. As the New York Times reports, the issue of whether or not to accept homosexuality has divided many predominantly Black churches around the country:

In St. Paul, the Rev. Oliver White, senior minister of Grace Community Church, lost nearly all his 70 congregants after he voted in 2005 to support the blessing of same-sex unions in his denomination, the United Church of Christ. . . .

Some black ministers, like their white counterparts, said they had been moved to reconsider biblical passages about same-sex relations by personal events, like finding out that a friend or relative is gay. Some members of the clergy contend that because of the antipathy to gay men and lesbians, black churches have done little to address the high rate of H.I.V. infection among African-Americans. . . .

Some leading African-American religious thinkers and leaders — like Cornel West, the Rev. Peter J. Gomes and the Rev. Michael Eric Dyson — have called for inclusion of gay men and lesbians. But other leaders are convinced that the Bible condemns homosexuality and that tolerance of gay men and lesbians is a yet another dangerous force buffeting the already fragile black family.

Although I don’t have any sources to cite, I have heard consistently heard that in general, Blacks tend to be less accepting of homosexuality in general and same sex marriage specifically than other racial groups. This divisive sentiment is described quite well in the article and its examples of how congregations have dwindled in Black churches that have openly accepted gays and lesbians.

In fact, my students and I recently covered this topic in my “Race, Class, Gender, and Ethnicity” course (that also includes Sexuality topics). We watched the excellent documentary video Tying the Knot that convincingly illustrated the connections between the current opposition to same sex marriage and the opposition to interracial marriage prior to the Supreme Court striking down state bans on interracial marriage in 1968.

Ultimately, I might be tempted to take the easy way out of this debate and say that homosexuality is a very moralistic issue that defies rational analysis and therefore people can disagree based on their personal convictions. But in the end, as the article points out, Black pastors who used to cite the Bible in their opposition to homosexuality have changed their mind and have found other Bible passages that support accepting homosexuality.

My point is that even if homosexuality is a moralistic issue, morals can -- and often do -- change. Similar to how opponents used the Bible to preach against interracial marriage before 1968 and how most people nowadays see very little link between the two, so too do I feel the same way about moralistic interpretations of homosexuality.

The bottom line is, people of all races will still oppose homosexuality. But we are seeing that using the Bible to base their opposition is increasingly becoming a very tenuous foundation.

I’m assuming that not too many of you have heard of Andrea Jung. No, she’s not some up-and-coming actress or singer. Rather, she occupies a much more potentially powerful position as the only Asian American woman CEO of a Fortune 500 corporation, in this case Avon Cosmetics. As BusinessWeek magazine reports, she and her company have had some ups and downs lately but seem to be back on the upswing:

At the height of Jung’s problems, in December, 2005, management guru Ram Charan gave her a piece of pivotal advice. He advised Jung to go home that Friday night and imagine she had been fired. Then, he said, return Monday morning with the mindset of someone brought in from the outside. “If you can be that objective and blend in your institutional knowledge and relationships, you’re going to have an advantage,” he told her. . . .

Jung’s No. 1 role continues to be communicating the company’s new strategy. In the weeks leading up to and just after the February analysts’ gathering, Jung visited Bangkok, Hong Kong, London, São Paulo, Shanghai, and Warsaw. All that travel comes at a sacrifice. Jung has a daughter who will graduate from high school this spring and a son who is 9.

She says she has completely re- prioritized her life in the past two years, skipping business dinners and formal evening affairs in order to be sure she sees them when she’s in New York. But she also tells her children that she loves the company and the work, even if it has been grueling in recent months. “I think it’s important they know that,” she says. “Otherwise why would you do this?”

To be honest, I really don’t know anything personally about her and how important she considers her identity as a woman and/or as an Asian American. Nonetheless, but I think it’s important to know that there are examples of Asian American success in the corporate world out there, especially in her case as not just Asian American, but also as a woman. As such, whether she thinks about it or not, she potentially wields a lot of power and influence over not just people in her industry but Asian Americans -- particular women -- who see her as a role model.

I hope she does recognize her status and position in this regard and can serve as a positive force to create more opportunities for Asian Americans to follow her path and break through the glass ceiling into the ranks of corporate executives.

The nation’s top universities always seem to be talking about the need to have a more diverse faculty, with one of the justifications being to match their diverse student population. How is an elite school like MIT doing? According to Diverse Issues in Higher Education, they apparently have the proverbial half-full, half-empty situation:

Of MIT’s 1,000 faculty members, 54 are Black, Hispanic or American Indian. The 27 members of those underrepresented minority groups with tenure make up 3.6 percent of the senior faculty.As much as MIT has fretted about faculty diversity, it appears to have done better than similarly selective colleges with a science and engineering focus.

In its latest survey on the climate for Blacks at top colleges, the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education called MIT’s performance in hiring Black faculty “far superior” to the California Institute of Technology and other science-oriented universities. The survey reported that Caltech has two Black professors, both tenured, on a faculty of 309. Carnegie Mellon University also trails MIT, but not as much, the survey found.

Such universities have cited the shortage of minority scholars with doctorates in science or engineering as a major obstacle to increasing diversity. Gray has mentioned this pipeline problem in reflecting on his failure to add more minority faculty at MIT. But the pipeline has been expanding. The National Science Foundation reports the number of Blacks, Hispanics and American Indians awarded doctorates in science or engineering increased significantly in the past decade. They earned 10 percent of those degrees in 2005, compared to 7.7 percent in 1996.

But hiring young scholars with those degrees is only the first step. Giving them support so they have the best shot at winning promotions is another.

Therein lies the bulk of the problem that MIT and virtually all other universities face when trying to hire more Black, Latino, and American Indian faculty -- hiring them is easy, but retaining them and making sure they have the best chance at getting tenure is completely different. As it relates to helping minority grad students to succeed or diversifying faculty at the Universities of California, the issue is the same -- if you talk the talk, you also have to walk the walk.

That means that hiring faculty of color isn’t enough -- they also face specific and unique challenges in establishing their careers in a predominantly White social environment. It’s that culture of unconscious bias and resistance that needs to change in order for faculty at places such as MIT to become more diverse.

In states such as California where there are large numbers of both Latinos and Asian Americans, it is inevitable that these two groups are going to have more and closer interactions with each other. The results of such interactions can be positive or they can be negative. As New American Media reports, recent interactions between Latinos and Koreans in the Los Angeles area unfortunately seem to be fraught with more negativity than positivity:

In clubs, schools and the work place Koreans and Latinos are increasingly sharing the same spaces, and yet there is little interaction between them. One public high school teacher here noted that his Korean and Latino students have “learned from their relatives to mutually ignore each other.”

As the two communities continue to grow they are becoming more dependent economically on one another. In major cities across the U.S. it is now common to find Korean-owned establishments employing predominantly Latino workers. While this opens opportunities for cultural exchange it also often leads to serious, sometimes violent, misunderstandings. . . .

Tensions between the two groups have been growing for several years. There has been a recent spike in court cases involving Korean business owners and their Latino employees . According to the New York-based National Mobilization Against Sweatshops, Latino immigrant workers filed a lawsuit against the Food Bazaar, a Korean supermarket chain for $1.5 million in unpaid wages. . . .

One story that caught the attention of both communities was the killing of a Korean man in late January by his Latino employee after his boss apparently criticized him for not working hard enough. The incident raised fears among Koreans, who are concerned over a repeat of the deadly Los Angeles riots of 1992, in which African Americans, angered by perceived racism from Korean storeowners, burned and looted Korea- owned establishments. This time, they say any riots that break out could be between Koreans and Latinos.

It is indeed a shame that two groups of people who share many historical and cultural elements in common don’t take the time to learn more about each other and instead, rely on stereotypes and eventually get sucked into the institutional mechanisms of racism and end up taking their frustrations out on each other.

As the article mentioned, there are indeed similarities with the kinds of tensions that existed between Blacks and Koreans back in the early 1990s that helped to spark the Los Angeles Riots in 1992. However, I am optimistic that things will not get that bad this time around because unlike the situation that existed in 1992, there are now many community organizations -- particular ones that serve the Korean population -- that have the opportunity to take proactive action to lessen tensions and promote more understanding.

The other thing that I hope is different nowadays is that hopefully the political leaders of Los Angeles will also take proactive steps to facilitate dialog between the Latino and Korean communities before such negative incidents and tensions get out of hand. In other words, hopefully all sides involved will have learned their lessons from 1992.

We know by now that many states have taken steps on their own to “crack down” on illegal immigrants by giving local and state police more power in imprisoning them and restricting social services and other rights to them. These efforts are apparently working as farmers in many states fear that the migrant farm workers they’ve come to depend on for years are now leaving for other states. So who will do the farm work? As the New York Times reports, new programs now allow prison inmates to fill in:

Under the program, which has drawn criticism from groups concerned about immigrants’ rights and from others seeking changes in the criminal justice system, farmers will pay a fee to the state, and the inmates, who volunteer for the work, will be paid about 60 cents a day, corrections officials said. . . . Last year, the Colorado General Assembly passed tough legislation that included giving local law enforcement broader powers to check immigration status and restricting access to social services for workers without proper documentation.

Immigrant rights group, however, said the Colorado program was myopic. “Many immigrants are leaving Colorado for other states that will actually embrace their contributions as good citizens and hard workers,” said Julien Ross, state coordinator for the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition. . . . A group calling for changes in sentencing, the Colorado Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, is also uneasy about the program. The group views the inmates’ pay as problematic.

“This feels like the re-invention of the plantation,” said Christie Donner, the group’s executive director. “You have a captive labor force essentially working for their room and board in order to benefit the employer. This isn’t a job training program. It’s an exploitative program.” . . . “They won’t be paid big bucks, but we’re hoping this will help our inmates pick up significant and valuable job skills,” [said the Director of CO’s Corrections Dept.].

I have a few reactions here. One is from the farmer’s point of view, as long as the wok gets done, they probably don’t really care who does it. Second is if inmate participation is voluntary, once they actually start doing that kind of back breaking work, a lot of them will probably quit and not come back, especially since it’s only for 60 cents a day. Perhaps they’ll have a new appreciation for what the migrant workers do day in and day out.

I also laughed when I read the statement from the Corrections official that “They won’t be paid big bucks, but we’re hoping this will help our inmates pick up significant and valuable job skills.” Really? What significant and valuable job skills are those? Are these skills going to be transferable to get well-paying stable jobs once the inmates are released? Or are they just another form of exploitative labor with no future?

In the end, I predict that even though these programs will be politically popular, they will eventually become much less so among the inmates.

Since 9/11, the U.S.’s image around the world has gone from one extreme to the other. In particular, after the U.S. invaded Iraq, it basically took a nosedive. Where does it stand today? As reported by the Associated Press/Salon.com, a new survey shows that the U.S. had the third worst negative image around the world, as more people had a negative view of the U.S. than even North Korea:

The survey for the British Broadcasting Corp.’s World Service asked more than 28,000 people to rate 12 countries -- Britain, Canada, China, France, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, North Korea, Russia, the United States and Venezuela -- as having a positive or negative influence on the world.

Israel was viewed negatively by 56 percent of respondents and positively by 17 percent; for Iran, the figures were 54 percent and 18 percent. The United States had the third-highest negative ranking, with 51 percent citing it as a bad influence and 30 percent as a good one. Next was North Korea, which was viewed negatively by 48 percent and positively by 19 percent.

Canada had the most positive rating in the survey, with 54 percent viewing it positively and 14 percent negatively. It was followed by Japan and France. . . . Britain, China and India were viewed more positively than negatively, while Russia had more negative than positive responses. Opinion on Venezuela was evenly split.

“It appears that people around the world tend to look negatively on countries whose profile is marked by the pursuit of military power,” said Steven Kull, director of the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes, which conducted the research along with pollster GlobeScan. “Countries that relate to the world primarily through soft power, like France and Japan and the EU in general, tend to be viewed positively,” he added.

More people think North Korea has a positive influence in the world than the U.S.?!? Bush needs to know that he’s sunk pretty low when people around the world think that an eccentric and unstable dictator who starves his own people while indulging in western luxuries is seen in a more positive light than him. Nice work, Dub . . . maybe you can try harder next time to get to the very bottom, below Iran and Israel.

In recent years, one of the most interesting (although not necessarily beneficial) trends in higher education has been the emergence of for-profit, mostly online colleges, most notably the University of Phoenix (UoP, who now has physical campuses in 39 states, along with their Internet courses). So now that UoP has had some time to “mature,” how are they doing compared to traditional colleges? As the New York Times reports, the answer is a decidedly mixed bag:

Its reputation is fraying as prominent educators, students and some of its own former administrators say the relentless pressure for higher profits, at a university that gets more federal student financial aid than any other, has eroded academic quality.

According to federal statistics and government audits, the university relies more on part-time instructors than all but a few other postsecondary institutions, and its accelerated academic schedule races students through course work in about half the time of traditional universities. The university says that its graduation rate, using the federal standard, is 16 percent, which is among the nation’s lowest, according to Department of Education data. . . .

But many students say they have had infuriating experiences at the university before dropping out, contributing to the poor graduation rate. Current and former students . . . complained of instructional shortcuts, unqualified professors and recruiting abuses. Many of their comments echoed experiences reported by thousands of other students on consumer Web sites. . . . Students say they liked recruiters’ descriptions of the classes, but after enrolling concluded that they were learning too little or paying too much. Many who quit say they were left with huge debts.

The article notes that there are still several lawsuits pending against UoP and that accusations still linger about whether it pays recruiters commissions based on the number of students (many who turn out to be unqualified) they sign up, which is against federal regulations. Ultimately, as my earlier post on the dangers of mixing capitalism and education describes, and as reinforced in this NYT article about UoP, there is almost always an inverse relationship between the obsessive drive for profit and the quality of education.

A cautionary tale to students who value a quality education: just say no to for-profit schools -- there is no easy shortcut in this case.

As the arguments and controversy over affirmative action rages on, colleges and universities are beginning to find new ways of revamping their admissions process so that they can reduce or even eliminate the need to consider an applicant’s racial/ethnic identity directly, while at the same time maintain and even promote racial/ethnic diversity among their student population. As Inside Higher Education reports, one such “holistic” model that’s getting national attention is that of Oregon State University:

From all of those concerns came the Insight Resume, which now counts for roughly 30 percent of the decision on whether to admit a student. Applicants respond to six questions, with only 100 words for each question. The questions are designed to measure non-cognitive qualities and to reward students who bring special experiences to the university — but to do so in a way that doesn’t reward members of any one particular group or encourage students to just pad their list of activities.

For example, students are asked about leadership, and are told to describe specific examples of leadership that they have provided “over time.” That last bit — “over time” — is critical because the system is designed to reward depth of activity over what Sandlin termed “the laundry list” of activities. Some of the other topics for short answers are special interests, dealing with adversity, responding to discrimination, and setting and achieving goals. . . .

The answers are evaluated blindly — reviewers do not see the rest of the application or even know the name of the applicant. Gender, race and ethnicity are apparent only if applicants decide to provide the information. Since the system was started, minority enrollments have gone up — not an easy thing when you are a public institution in a state not known for its ethnic diversity. Gains have been particularly notable among Latino students, rising to 775 last year, up from 432 a decade earlier.

The real evidence for the program’s success, Sandlin said, is in academic performance. Skeptics of holistic admissions tend to assume that it benefits students who are somehow weaker because their traditional measures (SAT scores and grades) may be lower. But Sandlin said that Oregon State has found a direct correlation between higher scores on the Insight Resume and retention rates.

Average GPA’s are also going up slightly. She said that the qualities being asked about reward determination, hard work, and other qualities that do in fact relate to college success as much as test scores.

I think OSU might be onto something here. Students frequently complain that standardized test scores can’t really measure their personal character or motivation to do well. With that in mind, criteria such as OSU’s Insight Resume is likely to give students a better opportunity to tell admissions officers about those qualities.

But the clincher in OSU’s favor seems to be the results -- not only is their racial/ethnic diversity on campus increasing, but as their data shows, there is a direct correlation between a student’s Insight Resume scores and their retention rate.

Bravo to OSU for trying something innovative -- and effective.