Paula Kerger Quietly Leads the Way

I had the privilege of sitting down with Paula Kerger, President and CEO of PBS. We met at her office at PBS headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. 

This is a serene office. I noticed your guitar by the window. Do you play?

The guitar was a gift from our station in Buffalo, WNED, who were instrumental (pun intended) in organizing that city’s guitar festival. Our colleagues at the station were aware of my adolescent ambition to be the next Joni Mitchell. This was only an ambition, however, as my guitar skills are quite limited and my voice is suited only for the shower.

PBS won 32 Emmy Awards last year. What do you attribute that success to?

PBS is dedicated to harnessing the power of media to change lives. That has been our mission for more than 40 years and it guides our work every day. It leads us to present the best content we can offer in every genre. This includes substantive, in-depth journalism; thought-provoking history and science; and arts programming that allows everyone to have a front seat to outstanding work from across the country and around the world, as well as curriculum-based, research-driven programming that helps children build critical skills, preparing them succeed in school and life.

Our content is unlike anything offered elsewhere in the television landscape. We are honored that the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences recognized this so generously. I was particularly proud that the Emmys we won were for many types of programming – 12 Daytime Emmys for children’s series, 14 Primetime Emmys for everything from drama and arts to history, and six News and Documentary Emmys.

You were the Station Manager of Channel Thirteen in New York for thirteen years. Now you are President and CEO of PBS in Washington. Media is a competitive industry. How has the way you have navigated your career been different between the two cities?  Is the nature of competition different between the two cities?

Washington and New York are indeed two very different cities, but my work at PBS is actually more focused nationally. Most of my time is spent considering what will best serve our public television audience in communities across the country, ensuring that the work we deliver meets the needs of citizens.

Let’s talk about Independent Lens and POV. There have been some schedule changes to those shows recently. They were shifted from Tuesday nights at 10 PM to Thursday nights at 10 PM, which is viewed as a less desirable timeslot. Some have said this is evidence that PBS is falling on its sword, so to speak, and reneging on its commitment to independent programming in favor of mass appeal shows. What’s your perspective on that? 

PBS is fully dedicated to independent film and the diversity of content they provide. Just last year, approximately 120 independent productions appeared in the PBS primetime schedule. For decades, PBS has been a destination for a wide spectrum of voices, points of view, and distinctive visions.

We recognize the many outstanding awards earned by the independent filmmakers we have presented. Their acclaimed work contributes immeasurably to our schedule.

PBS, POV, and ITVS share a common commitment to independent film and are dedicated to working together towards our shared goals. Our recent joint conversations have been productive and we agreed to alternative scheduling options for Independent Lensand POV.  We plan to discuss these updates at PBS’ Annual Meeting, which is May 14-17 in Denver, CO.

I’m proud that five of the six News & Documentary Emmys I mentioned earlier were for POV – which won four awards – and Independent Lens. And earlier this month, PBS garnered seven George Foster Peabody Awards, more than any other organization. This is a competition for television and radio that recognizes “excellence, distinguished achievement, and meritorious public service.” Two honors went to POVand one to Independent Lensthis year.

Gwen Ifill was inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) Hall of Fame this year. Jim Lehrer recently announced his retirement after 37 years as the lead anchor ofNewshour. What are the plans for Newshour going forward?

One of the best aspects of my job is that I get to work with such talented, committed people. Gwen and Jim are incomparable journalists and I am so grateful for their work and all that they bring to PBS. While Jim has retired, he is still an integral part of PBS Newshour.

The series has undergone a number of successful transitions in its long history. It first launched in 1975 and has grown and changed over the years while retaining a steadfast commitment to outstanding reporting that has never altered.

I am confident in the show’s future because of the outstanding leadership there. Not only does Jim continue to guide the series, even though he has stepped out of his daily role, the recent appointment of Bo Jones as the CEO last October demonstrates that the program is in good hands.

And, of course, Newshour continues to boast one of the most talented, hard-working, and respected journalistic teams on television. The work that Jeffrey Brown, Gwen, Hari Sreenivasan, Ray Suarez, Margaret Warner, Judy Woodruff, and the rest of the Newshour team do every day continues to meet the very high expectations viewers have had of the program for decades.

PBS has done a fantastic job with children’s programming–it won 15 Parents’ Choice Awards last year. And the beauty of it is that you and PBS have had laser-like focus on addressing the developmental and social needs of all children, especially those in low-income communities. One study even showed a positive correlation between Super WHY! and higher test scores. Tell me more about PBS’ strategy for children’s programming and how it plays into improving educational outcomes in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM).

First of all, thank you.

As I said earlier, PBS’ mission is to harness the power of media to change lives. Of course, television has tremendous power to reach children – especially those who can’t attend preschool.

We have all read that millions of children lack the basic early math and literacy skills necessary to succeed in school. We’ve been working with the Department of Education and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting for a number of years on the Ready to Learn (RTL) Initiative to develop curriculum-based programming that helps children build critical skills. We work with independent researches to ensure that our content measurably improves children’s proficiency in fundamental areas.

You mentioned the Super WHY!research, but actually there are several independent studies that empirically demonstrate that PBS programs help to close the achievement gap in a measurable way.

We have developed in innovative blend of media across all platforms – TV, online, mobile, and more – and related community engagement activities that help children learn to read with series such as The Electric Company, Martha Speaks, Sesame Street, and Super WHY!

Aided by an additional round of funding from the Department of Education, we are taking what we’ve learned about teaching literacy skills and applying it to the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Science) curriculum, the mastery of which will be of critical importance to the future of today’s children.

Programs such as The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot about That, Curious George, Dinosaur Train, and others open up the worlds of math and engineering to children with content that teaches numbers, counting, addition, subtraction, data analysis, graphing, measurement, shape recognition, pattern creation, and other key topics.

We also offer a wealth of tools for parents and teachers – in both English and Spanish – that offers information and advice about using our content at home or in the classroom to get the most out of our programming, online games, apps and other content with such resources as PBS KIDS Lab and PBS KIDS Island.

One thing we never lose sight of is that the content has to be entertaining as well as educational. If the program, game or app doesn’t draw the child in, it doesn’t matter how effective the curriculum is. That’s why I am so proud of our announcement earlier this week that in February 2012 the current PBS KIDS weekday block of preschool programming took the top four spots for kids ages two to five for the first time, according to Nielsen NPower national program ratings. Among kids ages two to five, Curious George was number one,The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot about That and Super WHY!tied for second place and Dinosaur Train placed fourth.

PBS KIDS also drew record audiences online that month; February marked the first time PBSKIDS.org was the number one kids’ site for both unique viewers and videos viewed.

Reach is a key factor in our mission. Not every child has access to a computer or even, necessarily, to school in the earliest years, but almost every child in America has access to a television. In fact, according to Nielsen reports, 79% of all children ages two to 11 watch PBS in the course of a year.

Is there is one thing you would like to tell policymakers in Washington about public broadcasting, what would it be?

That we are here to help meet the nation’s priorities in a way that delivers outstanding return on the federal investment.

Each day, the effective, efficient work of PBS stations help educate America’s children, train teachers, assist communities and first responders during local emergencies, present in-depth journalism that informs citizens about important issues in their neighborhoods and the around the globe, make the arts accessible to all citizens regardless of where they live, and more. We provide a place where ideas can be explored and discussed in respectful, civil way, which is a critical role in any democracy.

Public broadcasting’s local/national structure has both the broad reach and deep local roots to serve Americans in a way no other enterprise can match. Earlier, I mentioned the number of children who watch PBS in a year. It’s also worth noting that Nielsen data show that 91% of all US television households tune into PBS local stations over a twelve-month period.

In short, we are the nation’s largest classroom, its biggest stage for the arts, and a trusted window to the world, all for the cost of about $1.35 per person.

This is a cost that the American public call the second best use of their tax dollars, outranked only by military defense in a recent national study. This research also found PBS is considered the most trusted public institution in the country.

We are grateful for the trust the American public places in our work and are proud of the way we leverage the nation’s investment to deliver content and services that so many people rely on each day.

Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today, Paula.

You’re welcome.

Idea Theft and Black Unemployment

Black unemployment is a symptom of persistent racial discrimination and skills gaps, but competition and trade policies play a role in unemployment that policy makers too often overlook.  Information technology (IT) and intellectual property (IP) theft is a significant threat to U.S. companies’ ability to generate revenue and thus, jobs.  Earlier this week, U.S. Senators Mary L. Landrieu (D-Louisiana) and Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), Chair and Ranking Member of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, along with a bipartisan group of 14 other Committee members, wrote a letter to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) urging it to assist 36 state attorneys general in confronting the growing problem of IT and IP theft from U.S. companies by foreign and other manufacturers. 

Some have noted that many African-Americans are already grappling with a silent economic depression.  While the nation’s employment picture has slowly improved over recent months to an unemployment rate of 8.3 percent in February 2012, the unemployment rate of African-Americans still stands at 14.1 percent, which is up from 13.6 percent in January.  This is significantly higher than the Great Recession peak overall unemployment rate of 10.2% in October of 2009. 

The fates of African-Americans have been tied to the manufacturing sector since World War II.  John Schmitt and Ben Zipperer of the Center for Economic and Policy Research have noted that manufacturing jobs “built the black middle class after World War II.”  However, between 1979 and 2007, the share of African-Americans working in manufacturing fell from 23.9 percent to 9.8 percent.  During the Great Recession’s incipient stages between December 2007 and December 2009, the manufacturing sector experienced a 14.6 percent decline in employment—among 13 other service sector industries, only construction experienced a steeper decline in jobs during that period. African-Americans were among those workers who were hardest hit during this period and are now under-represented in manufacturing. 

Improving African-American unemployment trends will require a multi-agency effort.  The Department of Labor and other agencies have already granted a consortium of 10 South Carolina educational  institutions—including Denmark Technical College (an HBCU)—$20 million to develop 37 new online courses in emerging jobs in manufacturing and other key sectors.  While this approach addresses skills gaps, the FTC can do its part by addressing IT and IP theft and ensuring the competitive landscape remains conducive to job growth. 

“Online Influence,” Race & Gender

Several services have cropped up purporting to rank the “popularity” and “influence” of social media users.  Some sites have ranked blogs based on visitor traffic alone.  The history of discrimination against small media outlets warrants a critical look at how ranking services in new media will affect small businesses seeking to develop their brands.

New services that rank user influence employ opaque criteria for ranking and assigning influence values to social media users.  By importing data from the Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Foursquare, and Google+ accounts that users authorize, Klout, which bills itself as “the Standard of Influence,” ranks individuals on a 1-100 scale—with 20 being the score of a  user with “average” influence and 50 being the score for “elite” Klout users.  The first question that many users will ask when they come to the Klout website is, “How do I raise my Klout score?”  But Klout provides only general information about how they rank their users:

Retweets, Likes, comments and other interactions on the social web are all signals of influence.  However, just looking at the count of these actions does not tell the whole story of a person’s       influence. It’s important to look at how much content a person creates compared to the amount   of engagement they generate.

What does this mean?  What is “created content?”  Does it include content that is curated, content that is remixed, and content that is created from scratch?  What is the ratio of content to engagement that raises or lowers a Klout score?  Most importantly, how are cultural factors taken into account to assess the quality of engagement? 

Other services rank user influence. PeerIndex ranks users on a “normalized” 1-100 scale. While PeerIndex explains its methodology in more detail than Klout,  it does not define the “aggressive normalization calculation” that is used to normalize the PeerIndex:

We use an aggressive normalization calculation which helps you discriminate between top authorities. The benefit is that you can more easily understand who the top authorities are. The trade-off is that many of us end up with seemingly lower scores.

For example: if you are in the top 20% by Authority in a topic like climate change, it means you have higher authority than 80% of the other community members who we measure within this topic. Your normalized Authority Score for this topic (the one displayed on your page) will be in the range of 55 to 65 (which is significantly lower than 80).

But remember, a score of 60 puts you higher that 80% of people we track in that topic. A score of 65, means you rank higher than 95% of the people we track. And we focus on tracking the top people on a specific topic, not just anyone.

Huh?  Now, I don’t claim to be a mathematician, but should I have to be?  What is the nature of this mysterious aggressive normalization calculation?  That seems to be a pretty important question, even if it is proprietary.

Technorati has long ranked blogs using its “Auth” methodology.  But among its top 100 blogs, know how many focus on issues specific to women, African-Americans, Latinos, Asians or American Indian communities?  Zero.  Compare this to the population-at-large which is nearly 30% minority (ie. not “White alone”).  The number of blogs on Technorati’s list that are actually owned and operated by people of color is less easy to discern, but you can draw your own conclusions by reviewing the list here.  

These trends continue a history of disparities in media ratings.  Just four years ago, Arbitron, the gold standard ratings service for the radio industry, was sued by the New York and New Jersey attorney General’s offices and African-American and Latino broadcasters for implementing a new ratings methodology that failed to adequately measure the listening habits of African-American, Latino and cell phone-only households.  The case settled in 2009, with Arbitron agreeing to “substantially improve” its methodology and pay $390,000 to New York and New Jersey and $100,000 to a minority radio trade group.

Ratings are a form of currency that advertisers use to place advertisements.  If that currency is skewed in favor of producers of mainstream content, producers of niche content lose out. The difference between traditional media ratings and online ratings of users is that traditional ratings companies are accredited by an independent organization called the Media Ratings Council (MRC).  MRC accredits methodologies without releasing proprietary details to the public.  Perhaps online ratings should receive accreditation as well. 

It is time for a dialogue about how online ratings and influence metrics affect the profitability and reputations of minorities and women.

ESPN, Freedom of Speech and Jeremy Lin

When ESPN suspended Max Bretos and fired Anthony Federico for using the phrase “chink in the armor” in their coverage of Jeremy Lin and the New York Knicks’ loss to the New Orleans Hornets last week, righteous indignation about the dwindling First Amendment ensued.  That predictable response is a symptom of the low standard that is set for hosts and pundits.  But the First Amendment has nothing to do with this.  ESPN’s decision was more likely motivated by the fact that it wanted to avoid an employment discrimination charge by its Asian-American employees.

Kevin Ota, ESPN Digital’s Director of Communications said as much:

We again apologize, especially to Mr. Lin. His accomplishments are a source of great pride to the Asian-American community, including the Asian-American employees at ESPN. 

Incendiary talk show host Glenn Beck, who left Fox News after his primetime show lost 400 advertisers and suffered a nearly 40 percent ratings decline  following efforts to boycott the show, took to his internet tv station, Glenn Beck TV (GBTV), to defend Mr. Bretos and Mr. Federico.

Mr. Beck said of “the left”:

Freedom of speech … What they do is they slowly but surely take away … they make you afraid to say something.

Freedom of speech is in danger here more than anyplace in the world.    

Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination against employees on the basis of “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin” with respect to their “terms, conditions, or privileges of employment.”  When Congress proscribed discrimination with respect to the “terms, conditions or privileges of employment,” it intended to prevent all forms of workplace discrimination, including discrimination creating a hostile or abusive working environment (Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson).  A workplace “permeated with discriminatory intimidation, ridicule, and insult” that is “sufficiently severe or pervasive to alter the conditions of the victim’s employment and create an abusive working environment” creates a hostile or abusive working environment and thus violates Title VII.  However, there is no requirement that the discrimination lead to serious physical or psychological harm to the employee (Harris v. Forklift Systems, Inc.).  Whether a working environment is indeed hostile or abusive is determined from the perspective of a reasonable person (i.e. a jury).  The same standard applies in the context of race (National R.R. Passenger Corp. v. Morgan). 

Eighteen eighty-four in Tennessee—during the Jim Crow era—that’s the earliest case I could find saying that employers, as long as they don’t break the law, can fire employees for any reason (Payne v. The Western & Atlantic Railroad Company).  That far predates the start of Mr. Beck’s vast, left-wing conspiracy, which he usually says came about around the time of Hitler.   

ESPN was interpreting the law.  Employers are not subject to the free speech provisions of the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from abridging the freedom of speech.  ESPN was free to interpret the law in any way it thought prudent to prevent the creation of a hostile work environment that would lead to an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) charge.  For example, if ESPN had taken no action, it ran the risk that supervisors would have felt emboldened to harass their Asian-American employees. In that case, ESPN would have done nothing to prevent creating a hostile and abusive work environment and would therefore have exposed itself to vicarious liability for the subsequent acts of the supervisor. 

ESPN was following the letter of the law and the EEOC’s guidelines for Title VII compliance.  After the Supreme Court’s decision in the now infamous Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, in which it rejected corporate spending limits in political campaigns, its tolerance for hate speech (Snyder v. Phelps), and the fact that Mr. Beck lasted on a cable news network as long as he did (compared to Roland Martin’s suspension from CNN for two tweets) it is doubtful that Mr. Beck is really concerned about the United States’ place in the world when it comes to freedom of speech.  Perhaps it was the Emancipation Proclamation that Mr. Beck and others think was the catalyst of the liberal connivance they can’t seem to define.

Who Gets the Online Sales Tax Revenue?

While analysts predict that online retail sites like Amazon are expected to enjoy growth rates of as much as 20% per year, bricks and mortar stores, including small businesses, can expect annual growth rates to decline to as little as 2.1%. Those of us who already have access to broadband know what a convenience it is to buy goods online, both in terms of the lower prices offered by online retailers and the ability to shop online without having to spend time walking or driving to several different stores looking for the right item.  But Congress is considering legislation that will not only make shopping online more expensive, but could also generate tax revenues that will benefit the wealthiest Americans.

Since 1992, cash-strapped states and local governments and businesses have been lobbying Congress to pass legislation authorizing states to collect online sales taxes from remote sellers.  That year, the Supreme Court held in Quill Corp. v. North Dakota that online retailers are not required to collect state sales taxes from consumers in states where the online retailers do not maintain a “physical presence.”  But this opinion explicitly left it up to Congress to enact legislation to permit states to collect taxes from such remote retailers. 

Momentum is building for Congress to follow suit and enact legislation.  The bi-partisan Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA) would allow states to collect sales taxes from sellers without a physical presence in the state where the consumer has initiated the transaction.  Under the MFA, states will be permitted to collect these taxes provided that they agree to the multistate, Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement (SSUTA), which 44 states, the District of Columbia, local governments and the business community have already agreed to.  States that have not agreed to SSUTA may collect state taxes from remote sellers if they agree to implement a minimum set of requirements set out by the MFA.

By exempting small online retailers with annual revenues of less than $500,000, the MFA does good things for smaller outfits competing against behemoths like Amazon and E-Bay.  But the effect of the MFA on low-income consumers is less clear.

Proponents of the MFA argue that not collecting such taxes amounts to a regressive tax regime in which only those with access to the Internet are able to take advantage of the lower prices offered by online retailers.  The MFA, they argue, levels the playing field by ensuring that online consumers pay the same taxes on goods as consumers who are forced to purchase the same goods from local establishments.  This line of reasoning neglects to consider low-income consumers who do have access to broadband.  Authorizing states to tax online purchases from sellers outside of the state would harm low-income consumers both by increasing prices and resulting in state revenues that do not inure to the benefit of the consumers in the states where online retailers maintain a physical presence. 

Before enacting the MFA, Congress should fully consider the effects of the tax on low-income consumers.  Specifically, Congress should consider whether the states in which online retailers tend to maintain a physical presence have a lower or higher tax base than the states where consumers most often initiate online transactions.  Congress should then consider how each state allocates sales tax revenues once they are received. If proponents of the MFA are correct in asserting that most online purchases are made by consumers from upper-income tax brackets, taxing transactions according to rates established in the affluent areas where these consumers live would ostensibly benefit areas that are least in need of revenue.   

In Racially Charged Political Climate, Fairfax County’s Light Touch on Hate Crimes

Vandals caused $60,000 worth of damage to a mosque under construction in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Chantilly, VA but the Fairfax County Police Department doesn’t think it was a hate crime.

They can’t be serious. Amid all the vitriolic speech occurring in the media and on the campaign trail, how could FCPD officials have possibly thought this was a sound conclusion? 

The Fairfax County website defines bias crimes as “Any unlawful action committed against a person or their property because of his or her race, religious conviction, ethnic or national origin, disability, or sexual orientation.” The website further states that “locations of events (i.e.: cultural/religious centers)” are an indicator that a “crime is bias motivated.”

Did I miss something?

If this is an indication of how Fairfax County is going to handle hate crimes during the 2012 election cycle, Fairfax County residents are in real trouble. It is practically guaranteed that this election will stoke unprecedented levels of hate crimes from people who see the re-election of a black man as president as an assault on their core values. But law enforcement officials who look the other way when hate crimes are committed are assaulting the core values of most Americans.

The racially-charged atmosphere can’t be denied. We have all been privy to both explicit and “coded” hate speech and vitriol in our national media and from elected officials, candidates and broadcasters. There have been many examples of blatant hate speech. In October of 2010 Rush Limbaugh said, “But there is no equality. You cannot guarantee that any two people will end up the same and you can’t legislate it, and you can’t make it happen … [S]ome people are born victims, some people are just born to be slaves.” In an article in The Hill this past Monday, Fox News’ contributor Juan Williams noted:

Race is always a trigger in politics, but now a third of the nation are people of color — and their numbers are growing. With those minorities solidly in the Democratic camp and behind the first black president, the scene is set for a bonanza of racial politics.

The language of GOP racial politics is heavy on euphemisms that allow the speaker to deny any responsibility for the racial content of his message. The code words in this game are “entitlement society” — as used by Mitt Romney — and “poor work ethic” and “food stamp president” — as used by Newt Gingrich. References to a lack of respect for the “Founding Fathers” and the “Constitution” also make certain ears perk up by demonizing anyone supposedly threatening core “old-fashioned American values.”

The code also extends to attacks on legal immigrants, always carefully lumped in with illegal immigrants, as people seeking “amnesty” and taking jobs from Americans.

Just as advertisers rely on spots and endorsements to drive sales, hate speech promotes real world effects, including hate crimes. Advertisers are so confident their advertisements will generate sales, they are willing to pay $3.5 million for a 30-second spot in the Super Bowl. Speech, especially nationally-disseminated speech by syndicated talk show hosts with high ratings and politicians on the campaign trail, can be expected to have the same effect on human behavior. In fact, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, 1,002 hate groups including neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads, black separates, border vigilantes and others have cropped up around the nation. Forty-one such hate groups have established themselves in Virginia and the District of Columbia.

It’s up to local officials to take hate crimes seriously. This recent episode in Fairfax County is a poor example of responsible governance. 

FCC Denies MMTC XM Sirius Petition

Remember when the Sirius-XM merger was approved back in 2008? Part of the deal was that Sirius XM would lease 8% of its channels to “diverse” content programmers.  The FCC thought this was a great idea, but required Sirius XM to ignore race as a factor in determining who should get to program the channels. 

The Minority Media and Telecommunications Council (MMTC) petitioned the FCC to reconsider its approval of the merger, saying that the FCC didn’t give enough consideration to new entrants without “extensive partnerships” with Sirius XM; didn’t exhaust its consideration of every non-racial category available (such as language and tribal relationships); and that the effect of the order would have too much of an adverse impact on diversity in subsequent mergers.

The FCC rejected MMTC’s petition today and pointed to the specific language in the original order approving the merger that had already addressed all of MMTC’s issues.  Even though MMTC’s petition was denied, this is still a victory for MMTC and media diversity in general because there can never seem to be enough clarity on the record. The FCC’s explicit statement that it covered all the bases establishes a clearer precedent for diversity conditions in future media mergers.

Tim Wise on the Tangible Effects of Subtle Racism

Most—if not all—courts would deem the racial effects that Tim Wise describes as being too attenuated.  But they are the very effects that constitute the modern racism we tolerate. 

There are other ignored linkages.  The other day, a friend of mine, who is African-American, told me that upon dropping her daughter off at school, a white administrator told the daughter that her hair is “just like a doll’s hair.”  It would be as much of a stretch for me to conclude that this administrator said this with any racial animus, as it was for Tim to conclude that the officer was engaged in racial profiling in the situation he describes.  Still the mother called her husband from her car to discuss the indignity and, so distracted, was pulled over for running a red light.

Whether there was racial intent behind the administrator’s comment or not, merely having to consider this question led to a distracted driving scenario in which the mother was pulled over.  Thankfully, the officer did not issue a ticket.  But these isolated incidents highlight the same pathology that leads to the health effects Tim Wise illustrates (health outcomes), legal grey areas (disproportionate incarceration rates), children of color being subjected to discipline in school more often than white children (achievement gaps), and any number of other disparities.