Freep: The State of Charter Schools in Michigan - Corruption, Insider Dealings, and More

The Detroit Free Press has released a special investigation report on the state of charter schools in Michigan. Since the early 1990s, public charter schools have spread across the state as a solution to provide options for low-income and minority children attending failing schools. Michigan also has more charter schools operated by for-profit companies than any state in the country. As a result, for-profit educational management companies care only about the bottom-line. Until 2012, the state legislature refused to create a system of efficiency and accountability that would have prevented scams, corruption, insider dealings, nepotism ("family and friend plan"), tax evasion, and other illegal/questionable tactics. Click on the infographic below for the overview.

NBCNews.com: Wall Street an elusive dream for black Americans

Wall Street is the last civil rights barrier against freedom that needs to be demolished. Time to protest this old boys network and show that their elitism and racism won't be tolerated much longer.

Fifty years to the day that Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. told a crowd of 250,000 in Washington that "the Negro…finds himself an exile in his own land," Wall Street is mostly a foreign country for black workers.

The difficult road that blacks still face in the heart of America's financial capital was underscored by news on Wednesday that brokerage giant Merrill Lynch has agreed to pay $160 million to settle racial discrimination claims by black brokers.

Michigan Today: The Negro-Caucasian Club

The Michigan Today, a newsletter for U-M alumni, published a special article about the history of black-white relations at the University of Michigan. While U-M today sees itself as a champion for diversity and inclusion, it wasn't always the case in the early twentieth century. Rather, it perpetuated a racist campus climate.

The first two African-American students had been admitted to U-M in 1868. But only a handful followed, and by the 1920s, blacks still comprised just a tiny fragment of the student body. By University practice and informal understandings, they lived in a segregated sphere, joining white students only in classrooms.

In that era only women lived in University dormitories – but not the six or seven black women enrolled at U-M. They lived in a boarding house arranged by the University. African-American men lived in either of two black fraternity houses, Kappa Alpha Psi or Omega Psi Phi, or boarded with black families. They were not served at the Michigan Union, nor were they allowed into University swimming pools or University-sponsored dances.

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The faculty senate’s Committee on Student Affairs recognized the group as an official student organization for only one year, and only on two conditions: It must drop its stated purpose of working “for the abolition of discrimination against Negroes,” and “the name of the University of Michigan shall not be used in connection with the activities of the Club.”

ThinkProgress: Getting A College Degree Won’t Protect Black Workers From The Economy’s Racial Barriers

Blacks on average face higher underemployment and unemployment rates than their White counterparts. Racial and gender discrimination in hiring is partly to blame. Read the rest of the article on ThinkProgress.

"The economy is heavily tilted against black people. In a study of entry-level job openings, equally qualified black job applicants were half as likely as white ones to get a call back or an offer. Jobs that drug test are more likely to hire black workers because without the tests, they assume black applicants use drugs. While black workers make up 32 percent of the workforce, they make up 42 percent of minimum wage workers.

Black women have been particularly dogged in recent years in graduating college: they made up two-thirds of all black students who finished a Bachelor’s Degree in 2010 and 71 percent with a Master’s. But they still struggle in other ways: when they’re working full-time, year-round, they make 64 percent of what white men make and less than both white women and black men."

In another study, researchers found that in online sales Americans would rather do business with Whites than Blacks.

Check out more ThinkProgress articles below!

• How Retailers Could Narrow The Gender Pay Gap And Lift Women Out Of Poverty
• The Economic Inequality Lurking Among The 99 Percent
• College Graduates Can’t Buy Houses Because They’re Buried In Debt
• The Neediest Americans Are Getting The Least Government Assistance