Black people are too often unaware of their own accomplishments
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Flossmoor Teen Accepted into 13 Colleges—4 of Them Ivy League
<iframe width="476" height="293" src="http://abc7chicago.com/video/embed/?pid=127702" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Flossmoor Teen Accepted into 13 Colleges—4 of Them Ivy League
Meet the Flossmoor resident and H-F High School grad who was wanted by more than a dozen schools.
Posted by Lauren Traut (Editor) ,
June 21, 2014 at 09:15 AM
A Flossmoor teen was thinking he'd have trouble getting into college—turns out he would have more than a dozen to choose from.
Desmond Amuh was nervous about his chances at acceptance, so he threw his name into many different piles, and was left with a different kind of conundrum.
Too many from which to choose.
Amuh was accepted to 13 schools, including four Ivy League. A graduate of Homewood-Flossmoor High School, the 18-year-old plays classical piano, in addition to clarinet in the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra, ABC7 reports.
Yale won him over, for its strong economics program and the opportunity to continue playing music. He plans to major in economics and political science. Staring down a price tag of $60,000 to attend Yale, Amuh is pursuing scholarships to help offset the cost.
He points to President Barack Obama as a role model.
"Maybe one day I'll be the first African American chairman of the Federal Reserve," Desmond told ABC7.
http://homewood-flossmoor.patch.com...accepted-into-13-colleges4-of-them-ivy-league
<iframe width="476" height="293" src="http://abc7chicago.com/video/embed/?pid=127702" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Flossmoor Teen Accepted into 13 Colleges—4 of Them Ivy League
Meet the Flossmoor resident and H-F High School grad who was wanted by more than a dozen schools.
Posted by Lauren Traut (Editor) ,
June 21, 2014 at 09:15 AM
A Flossmoor teen was thinking he'd have trouble getting into college—turns out he would have more than a dozen to choose from.
Desmond Amuh was nervous about his chances at acceptance, so he threw his name into many different piles, and was left with a different kind of conundrum.
Too many from which to choose.
Amuh was accepted to 13 schools, including four Ivy League. A graduate of Homewood-Flossmoor High School, the 18-year-old plays classical piano, in addition to clarinet in the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra, ABC7 reports.
Yale won him over, for its strong economics program and the opportunity to continue playing music. He plans to major in economics and political science. Staring down a price tag of $60,000 to attend Yale, Amuh is pursuing scholarships to help offset the cost.
He points to President Barack Obama as a role model.
"Maybe one day I'll be the first African American chairman of the Federal Reserve," Desmond told ABC7.
http://homewood-flossmoor.patch.com...accepted-into-13-colleges4-of-them-ivy-league
Homeless valedictorian moves from shelter to Georgetown dorm
Homeless valedictorian moves from shelter to Georgetown dorm
By Contessa Gayles @CNNMoney
July 16, 2014: 11:16 AM ET
Last month, Rashema Melson lived in a single room with her mother and two of her six siblings at a Washington, D.C., homeless shelter. Now, she lives in a dorm room at Georgetown University.
While the very thought of a dorm may be enough to leave some feeling claustrophobic, Melson smiled about her new living situation.
"The dorm is great," she shared. "I only have one roommate, it's spacious. I have a great view of the trees and the sunlight, so I love it."
The 18-year-old attended Anacostia High School in Southeast Washington, a part of the city notorious for crime and where gun violence has claimed the lives of students of the public school. With a course load and after-school schedule that included AP courses, four sports and book club, the straight-A student managed to become the valedictorian of her class.
Melson received admissions and scholarship offers from several colleges. She accepted an offer from Georgetown University, where she'll attend on a full scholarship.
Getting a head start on her college courses during an accelerated summer session, Melson moved onto the Georgetown University campus at the start of July.
College life comes as a relief to Melson, who just weeks ago was one of the several hundreds of people who lived in one the 288 rooms at D.C. General, Washington's largest homeless shelter for families. Formerly a centuries-old public hospital that was shut down by the city, neighboring facilities include a jail and a substance abuse clinic. There, Melson had a narrow bed that doubled as her desk for studying during the school year.
"I really just try to block it out," said Melson.
Despite her academic excellence, Melson says she felt constant pressure to get a job to help out her family, rather than pursue extracurriculars, like track and field. Leading up to graduation day where she would deliver the valedictory speech, Melson was overwhelmed with worry and guilt about leaving her family behind at the shelter as she moved out and on to pursue her dreams.
"It was graduation rehearsal," Melson recalled, "it was like, this is it. I'm about to go to college. I'm about to leave and they're still going to be here. And so the pressure fell on my shoulders. I just started crying."
Homeless for the majority of her teenage life, Melson described how she became used to the lack of comforts most Americans take for granted.
For instance, hot water wasn't always consistent at the shelter, and she often came home from athletic practices to freezing cold showers. That was nothing new for Melson. The teen recalled when her family overstayed their welcome at a family friend's house, the homeowner shut the hot water off to force her family out.
"We were taking cold showers for about two months," Melson said, "and sometimes my mom would boil water on the stove and she would come fill it up in the bathtub and say, 'Alright, this is what we got to work with.'"
Melson's family may soon be on the move again.
Following the disappearance of an 8-year-old girl from D.C. General, and amid allegations of staff misconduct and abuse and hazardous living conditions, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray announced that his administration is pursuing plans to close the shelter.
A single mom without a job, Melson's mother Vanessa Brown knows her daughter will continue to worry about her family's situation from school.
"I just have to let her know that no matter what, we're still going to survive and we don't let this bring us down," Brown said.
After college, Melson plans to go to medical school and become a forensic pathologist -- a career path inspired by her father, who was murdered when she was just a baby. And she's committing to helping other young people overcome hardship to achieve their goals as well, launching the Rashema Melson Scholarship Foundation.
"There are a lot of kids that I see in the shelter and I want them to know this isn't how your life has to be just because of your family," Melson said. "You can always overcome this."
http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/16/new...torian-college-georgetown/index.html?iid=Lead
Homeless valedictorian moves from shelter to Georgetown dorm
By Contessa Gayles @CNNMoney
July 16, 2014: 11:16 AM ET
Last month, Rashema Melson lived in a single room with her mother and two of her six siblings at a Washington, D.C., homeless shelter. Now, she lives in a dorm room at Georgetown University.
While the very thought of a dorm may be enough to leave some feeling claustrophobic, Melson smiled about her new living situation.
"The dorm is great," she shared. "I only have one roommate, it's spacious. I have a great view of the trees and the sunlight, so I love it."
The 18-year-old attended Anacostia High School in Southeast Washington, a part of the city notorious for crime and where gun violence has claimed the lives of students of the public school. With a course load and after-school schedule that included AP courses, four sports and book club, the straight-A student managed to become the valedictorian of her class.
Melson received admissions and scholarship offers from several colleges. She accepted an offer from Georgetown University, where she'll attend on a full scholarship.
Getting a head start on her college courses during an accelerated summer session, Melson moved onto the Georgetown University campus at the start of July.
College life comes as a relief to Melson, who just weeks ago was one of the several hundreds of people who lived in one the 288 rooms at D.C. General, Washington's largest homeless shelter for families. Formerly a centuries-old public hospital that was shut down by the city, neighboring facilities include a jail and a substance abuse clinic. There, Melson had a narrow bed that doubled as her desk for studying during the school year.
"I really just try to block it out," said Melson.
Despite her academic excellence, Melson says she felt constant pressure to get a job to help out her family, rather than pursue extracurriculars, like track and field. Leading up to graduation day where she would deliver the valedictory speech, Melson was overwhelmed with worry and guilt about leaving her family behind at the shelter as she moved out and on to pursue her dreams.
"It was graduation rehearsal," Melson recalled, "it was like, this is it. I'm about to go to college. I'm about to leave and they're still going to be here. And so the pressure fell on my shoulders. I just started crying."
Homeless for the majority of her teenage life, Melson described how she became used to the lack of comforts most Americans take for granted.
For instance, hot water wasn't always consistent at the shelter, and she often came home from athletic practices to freezing cold showers. That was nothing new for Melson. The teen recalled when her family overstayed their welcome at a family friend's house, the homeowner shut the hot water off to force her family out.
"We were taking cold showers for about two months," Melson said, "and sometimes my mom would boil water on the stove and she would come fill it up in the bathtub and say, 'Alright, this is what we got to work with.'"
Melson's family may soon be on the move again.
Following the disappearance of an 8-year-old girl from D.C. General, and amid allegations of staff misconduct and abuse and hazardous living conditions, D.C. Mayor Vincent Gray announced that his administration is pursuing plans to close the shelter.
A single mom without a job, Melson's mother Vanessa Brown knows her daughter will continue to worry about her family's situation from school.
"I just have to let her know that no matter what, we're still going to survive and we don't let this bring us down," Brown said.
After college, Melson plans to go to medical school and become a forensic pathologist -- a career path inspired by her father, who was murdered when she was just a baby. And she's committing to helping other young people overcome hardship to achieve their goals as well, launching the Rashema Melson Scholarship Foundation.
"There are a lot of kids that I see in the shelter and I want them to know this isn't how your life has to be just because of your family," Melson said. "You can always overcome this."
http://money.cnn.com/2014/07/16/new...torian-college-georgetown/index.html?iid=Lead
Ethiopia & Black America: The Forgotten Story of Melaku & Robinson
Ethiopian & African American Relations
The Case of Melaku E. Bayen and John Robinson
By Ayele Bekerie
Updated: Sunday, August 24, 2008
New York (Tadias) – In 1935, African Americans of all classes, regions, genders, and beliefs expressed their opposition to and outrage over the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in various forms and various means. The invasion aroused African Americans – from intellectuals to common people in the street – more than any other Pan-African-oriented historical events or movements had. It fired the imagination of African Americans and brought to the surface the organic link to their ancestral land and peoples.
The time was indeed a turning point in the relations between Ethiopia and the African Diaspora. Harris calls 1935 a watershed in the history of African peoples. It was a year when the relations substantively shifted from symbolic to actual interactions. The massive expression of support for the Ethiopian cause by African Americans has also contributed, in my opinion, to the re-Africanization of Ethiopia. This article attempts to examine the history of the relations between Ethiopians and African Americans by focusing on brief biographies of two great leaders, one from Ethiopia and another one from African America, who made extraordinary contributions to these relations.
It is fair to argue that the Italo-Ethiopian War in the 1930s was instrumental in the rebirth of the Pan-African movement. The African Diaspora was mobilized in support of the Ethiopian cause during both the war and the subsequent Italian occupation of Ethiopia. Italy’s brutal attempt to wipe out the symbol of freedom and hope to the African world ultimately became a powerful catalyst in the struggle against colonialism and oppression. The Italo-Ethiopian War brought about an extraordinary unification of African people’s political awareness and heightened level of political consciousness. Africans, African Americans, Afro-Caribbean’s, and other Diaspora and continental Africans from every social stratum were in union in their support of Ethiopia, bringing the establishment of “global Pan-Africanism.” The brutal aggression against Ethiopia made it clear to African people in the United States that the Europeans’ intent and purpose was to conquer, dominate, and exploit all African people. Mussolini’s disregard and outright contempt for the sovereignty of Ethiopia angered and reawakened the African world.
Response went beyond mere condemnation by demanding self-determination and independence for all colonized African people throughout the world. For instance, the 1900-1945 Pan-African Congresses regularly issued statements that emphasized a sense of solidarity with Haiti, Ethiopia, and Liberia, thereby affirming the importance of defending the sovereignty and independence of African and Afro-Caribbean states. A new generation of militant Pan-Africanists emerged who called for decolonization, elimination of racial discrimination in the United States, African unity, and political empowerment of African people.
One of the most significant Pan-Africanist Conferences took place in 1945, immediately after the defeat of the Italians in Ethiopia and the end of World War II. This conference passed resolutions clearly demanding the end of colonization in Africa, and the question of self-determination emerged as the most important issue of the time. As Mazrui and Tidy put it: “To a considerable extent the 1945 Congress was a natural outgrowth of Pan-African activity in Britain since the outbreak of the Italo-Ethiopian War.”
Another of the most remarkable outcomes of the reawakening of the African Diaspora was the emergence of so many outstanding leaders, among them the Ethiopian Melaku E. Bayen and the African American John Robinson. Other outstanding leaders were Willis N. Huggins, Arnold Josiah Ford, and Mignon Innis Ford, who were active against the war in both the United States and Ethiopia. Mignon Ford, the founder of Princess Zenebe Work School, did not even leave Ethiopia during the war. The Fords and other followers of Marcus Garvey settled in Ethiopia in the 1920s. Mignon Ford raised her family among Ethiopians as Ethiopians. Her children, fluent speakers of Amharic, have been at home both in Ethiopia and the United States.
Melaku E. Bayen, an Ethiopian, significantly contributed to the re-Africanization of Ethiopia. His noble dedication to the Pan-African cause and his activities in the United States helped to dispel the notion of “racial fog” that surrounded the Ethiopians. William R. Scott expounded on this: “Melaku Bayen was the first Ethiopian seriously and steadfastly to commit himself to achieving spiritual and physical bonds of fellowship between his people and peoples of African descent in the Americas. Melaku exerted himself to the fullest in attempting to bring about some kind of formal and continuing relationship designed to benefit both the Ethiopian and Afro-American.” To Scott, Bayen’s activities stand out as “the most prominent example of Ethiopian identification with African Americans and seriously challenges the multitude of claims which have been made now for a long time about the negative nature of Ethiopian attitudes toward African Americans.”
The issues raised by Scott and the exemplary Pan-Africanism of Melaku Bayen are useful in establishing respectful and meaningful relations between Ethiopia and the African Diaspora. They dedicated their entire lives in order to lay down the foundation for relations rooted in mutual understanding and historical facts, free of stereotypes and false perceptions. African American scholars, such as William Scott, Joseph E. Harris, and Leo Hansberry contributed immensely by documenting the thoughts and activities of Bayen, both in Ethiopia and the United States.
Melaku E. Bayen was raised and educated in the compound of Ras Mekonnen, then the Governor of Harar and the father of Emperor Haile Selassie. He was sent to India to study medicine in 1920 at the age of 21 with permission from Emperor Haile Selassie. Saddened by the untimely death of a young Ethiopian woman friend, who was also studying in India, he decided to leave India and continue his studies in the United States. In 1922, he enrolled at Marietta College, where he obtained his bachelor’s degree. He is believed to be the first Ethiopian to receive a college degree from the United Sates.
Melaku started his medical studies at Ohio State University in 1928, then, a year later, decided to transfer to Howard University in Washington D.C. in order to be close to Ethiopians who lived there. Melaku formally annulled his engagement to a daughter of the Ethiopian Foreign Minister and later married Dorothy Hadley, an African American and a great activist in her own right for the Ethiopian and pan-Africanist causes. Both in his married and intellectual life, Melaku wanted to create a new bond between Ethiopia and the African Diaspora.
Melaku obtained his medical degree from Howard University in 1936, at the height of the Italo-Ethiopian War. He immediately returned to Ethiopia with his wife and their son, Melaku E. Bayen, Jr. There, he joined the Ethiopian Red Cross and assisted the wounded on the Eastern Front. When the Italian Army captured Addis Ababa, Melaku’s family went to England and later to the United States to fully campaign for Ethiopia.
Schooled in Pan-African solidarity from a young age, Melaku co-founded the Ethiopian Research Council with the late Leo Hansberry in 1930, while he was student at Howard. According to Joseph Harris, the Council was regarded as the principal link between Ethiopians and African Americans in the early years of the Italo-Ethiopian conflict. The Council’s papers are housed at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University. At present, Professor Aster Mengesha of Arizona State University heads the Ethiopian Research Council. Leo Hansberry was the recipient of Emperor Haile Selassie’s Trust Foundation Prize in the 1960s.
Melaku founded and published the Voice of Ethiopia, the media organ of the Ethiopian World Federation and a pro-African newspaper that urged the “millions of the sons and daughters of Ethiopia, scattered throughout the world, to join hands with Ethiopians to save Ethiopia from the wolves of Europe.” Melaku founded the Ethiopian World Federation in 1937, and it eventually became one of the most important international organizations, with branches throughout the United States, the Caribbean, and Europe. The Caribbean branch helped to further solidify the ideological foundation for the Rasta Movement.
Melaku died at the age of forty from pneumonia he contracted while campaigning door-to-door for the Ethiopian cause in the United States. Melaku died in 1940, just a year before the defeat of the Italians in Ethiopia. His tireless and vigorous campaign, however, contributed to the demise of Italian colonial ambition in Ethiopia. Melaku strove to bring Ethiopia back into the African world. Melaku sewed the seeds for a “re-Africanization” of Ethiopia. Furthermore, Melaku was a model Pan-Africanist who brought the Ethiopian and African American people together through his exemplary work and his remarkable love and dedication to the African people.
Colonel John Robinson
Colonel John C. Robinson arrives in Chicago after heroically
leading the Ethiopian Air Force against the invading Mussolini’s
Italian forces. (Ethiopiancrown.org)
Another heroic figure produced by the anti-war campaign was Colonel John Robinson. It is interesting to note that while Melaku conducted his campaign and died in the United States, the Chicago-born Robinson fought, lived, and died in Ethiopia.
When the Italo-Ethiopian War erupted, he left his family and went to Ethiopia to fight alongside the Ethiopians. According to William R. Scott, who conducted thorough research in documenting the life and accomplishments of John Robinson, wrote about Robinson’s ability to overcome racial barriers to go to an aviation school in the United States. In Ethiopia, Robinson served as a courier between Haile Selassie and his army commanders in the war zone. According to Scott, Robinson was the founder of the Ethiopian Air Force. He died in a plane crash in 1954.
Scott makes the following critical assessment of Robinson’s historical role in building ties between Ethiopia and the African Diaspora. I quote him in length: “Rarely, if ever, is there any mention of John Robinson’s role as Haile Selassie’s special courier during the Italo-Ethiopian conflict. He has been but all forgotten in Ethiopia as well as in Afro-America. [Former Ambassodor Brazeal mentioned his name at the planting of a tree to honor the African Diaspora in Addis Ababa.] Nonetheless, it is important to remember John Robinson, as one of the two Afro-Americans to serve in the Ethiopia campaign and the only one to be consistently exposed to the dangers of the war front.
Colonel Robinson stands out in Afro-America as perhaps the very first of the minute number of Black Americans to have ever taken up arms to defend the African homeland against the forces of imperialism.”
John Robinson set the standard in terms of goals and accomplishments that could be attained by Pan-Africanists. Through his activities, Robinson earned the trust and affection of both Ethiopians and African Americans. Like Melaku, he made concrete contributions to bring the two peoples together. He truly built a bridge of Pan African unity.
It is our hope that the youth of today learn from the examples set by Melaku and Robinson, and strive to build lasting and mutually beneficial relations between Ethiopia and the African Diaspora. The Ethiopian American community ought to empower itself by forging alliances with African Americans in places such as Washington D.C. We also urge the Ethiopian Government to, for now, at least name streets in Addis Ababa after Bayen and Robinson.
I would like to conclude with Melaku’s profound statement: “The philosophy of the Ethiopian World Federation is to instill in the minds of the Black people of the world that the word Black is not to be considered in any way dishonorable but rather an honor and dignity because of the past history of the race.”
Ethiopian & African American Relations
The Case of Melaku E. Bayen and John Robinson
By Ayele Bekerie
Updated: Sunday, August 24, 2008
New York (Tadias) – In 1935, African Americans of all classes, regions, genders, and beliefs expressed their opposition to and outrage over the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in various forms and various means. The invasion aroused African Americans – from intellectuals to common people in the street – more than any other Pan-African-oriented historical events or movements had. It fired the imagination of African Americans and brought to the surface the organic link to their ancestral land and peoples.
The time was indeed a turning point in the relations between Ethiopia and the African Diaspora. Harris calls 1935 a watershed in the history of African peoples. It was a year when the relations substantively shifted from symbolic to actual interactions. The massive expression of support for the Ethiopian cause by African Americans has also contributed, in my opinion, to the re-Africanization of Ethiopia. This article attempts to examine the history of the relations between Ethiopians and African Americans by focusing on brief biographies of two great leaders, one from Ethiopia and another one from African America, who made extraordinary contributions to these relations.
It is fair to argue that the Italo-Ethiopian War in the 1930s was instrumental in the rebirth of the Pan-African movement. The African Diaspora was mobilized in support of the Ethiopian cause during both the war and the subsequent Italian occupation of Ethiopia. Italy’s brutal attempt to wipe out the symbol of freedom and hope to the African world ultimately became a powerful catalyst in the struggle against colonialism and oppression. The Italo-Ethiopian War brought about an extraordinary unification of African people’s political awareness and heightened level of political consciousness. Africans, African Americans, Afro-Caribbean’s, and other Diaspora and continental Africans from every social stratum were in union in their support of Ethiopia, bringing the establishment of “global Pan-Africanism.” The brutal aggression against Ethiopia made it clear to African people in the United States that the Europeans’ intent and purpose was to conquer, dominate, and exploit all African people. Mussolini’s disregard and outright contempt for the sovereignty of Ethiopia angered and reawakened the African world.
Response went beyond mere condemnation by demanding self-determination and independence for all colonized African people throughout the world. For instance, the 1900-1945 Pan-African Congresses regularly issued statements that emphasized a sense of solidarity with Haiti, Ethiopia, and Liberia, thereby affirming the importance of defending the sovereignty and independence of African and Afro-Caribbean states. A new generation of militant Pan-Africanists emerged who called for decolonization, elimination of racial discrimination in the United States, African unity, and political empowerment of African people.
One of the most significant Pan-Africanist Conferences took place in 1945, immediately after the defeat of the Italians in Ethiopia and the end of World War II. This conference passed resolutions clearly demanding the end of colonization in Africa, and the question of self-determination emerged as the most important issue of the time. As Mazrui and Tidy put it: “To a considerable extent the 1945 Congress was a natural outgrowth of Pan-African activity in Britain since the outbreak of the Italo-Ethiopian War.”
Another of the most remarkable outcomes of the reawakening of the African Diaspora was the emergence of so many outstanding leaders, among them the Ethiopian Melaku E. Bayen and the African American John Robinson. Other outstanding leaders were Willis N. Huggins, Arnold Josiah Ford, and Mignon Innis Ford, who were active against the war in both the United States and Ethiopia. Mignon Ford, the founder of Princess Zenebe Work School, did not even leave Ethiopia during the war. The Fords and other followers of Marcus Garvey settled in Ethiopia in the 1920s. Mignon Ford raised her family among Ethiopians as Ethiopians. Her children, fluent speakers of Amharic, have been at home both in Ethiopia and the United States.
Melaku E. Bayen, an Ethiopian, significantly contributed to the re-Africanization of Ethiopia. His noble dedication to the Pan-African cause and his activities in the United States helped to dispel the notion of “racial fog” that surrounded the Ethiopians. William R. Scott expounded on this: “Melaku Bayen was the first Ethiopian seriously and steadfastly to commit himself to achieving spiritual and physical bonds of fellowship between his people and peoples of African descent in the Americas. Melaku exerted himself to the fullest in attempting to bring about some kind of formal and continuing relationship designed to benefit both the Ethiopian and Afro-American.” To Scott, Bayen’s activities stand out as “the most prominent example of Ethiopian identification with African Americans and seriously challenges the multitude of claims which have been made now for a long time about the negative nature of Ethiopian attitudes toward African Americans.”
The issues raised by Scott and the exemplary Pan-Africanism of Melaku Bayen are useful in establishing respectful and meaningful relations between Ethiopia and the African Diaspora. They dedicated their entire lives in order to lay down the foundation for relations rooted in mutual understanding and historical facts, free of stereotypes and false perceptions. African American scholars, such as William Scott, Joseph E. Harris, and Leo Hansberry contributed immensely by documenting the thoughts and activities of Bayen, both in Ethiopia and the United States.
Melaku E. Bayen was raised and educated in the compound of Ras Mekonnen, then the Governor of Harar and the father of Emperor Haile Selassie. He was sent to India to study medicine in 1920 at the age of 21 with permission from Emperor Haile Selassie. Saddened by the untimely death of a young Ethiopian woman friend, who was also studying in India, he decided to leave India and continue his studies in the United States. In 1922, he enrolled at Marietta College, where he obtained his bachelor’s degree. He is believed to be the first Ethiopian to receive a college degree from the United Sates.
Melaku started his medical studies at Ohio State University in 1928, then, a year later, decided to transfer to Howard University in Washington D.C. in order to be close to Ethiopians who lived there. Melaku formally annulled his engagement to a daughter of the Ethiopian Foreign Minister and later married Dorothy Hadley, an African American and a great activist in her own right for the Ethiopian and pan-Africanist causes. Both in his married and intellectual life, Melaku wanted to create a new bond between Ethiopia and the African Diaspora.
Melaku obtained his medical degree from Howard University in 1936, at the height of the Italo-Ethiopian War. He immediately returned to Ethiopia with his wife and their son, Melaku E. Bayen, Jr. There, he joined the Ethiopian Red Cross and assisted the wounded on the Eastern Front. When the Italian Army captured Addis Ababa, Melaku’s family went to England and later to the United States to fully campaign for Ethiopia.
Schooled in Pan-African solidarity from a young age, Melaku co-founded the Ethiopian Research Council with the late Leo Hansberry in 1930, while he was student at Howard. According to Joseph Harris, the Council was regarded as the principal link between Ethiopians and African Americans in the early years of the Italo-Ethiopian conflict. The Council’s papers are housed at the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University. At present, Professor Aster Mengesha of Arizona State University heads the Ethiopian Research Council. Leo Hansberry was the recipient of Emperor Haile Selassie’s Trust Foundation Prize in the 1960s.
Melaku founded and published the Voice of Ethiopia, the media organ of the Ethiopian World Federation and a pro-African newspaper that urged the “millions of the sons and daughters of Ethiopia, scattered throughout the world, to join hands with Ethiopians to save Ethiopia from the wolves of Europe.” Melaku founded the Ethiopian World Federation in 1937, and it eventually became one of the most important international organizations, with branches throughout the United States, the Caribbean, and Europe. The Caribbean branch helped to further solidify the ideological foundation for the Rasta Movement.
Melaku died at the age of forty from pneumonia he contracted while campaigning door-to-door for the Ethiopian cause in the United States. Melaku died in 1940, just a year before the defeat of the Italians in Ethiopia. His tireless and vigorous campaign, however, contributed to the demise of Italian colonial ambition in Ethiopia. Melaku strove to bring Ethiopia back into the African world. Melaku sewed the seeds for a “re-Africanization” of Ethiopia. Furthermore, Melaku was a model Pan-Africanist who brought the Ethiopian and African American people together through his exemplary work and his remarkable love and dedication to the African people.
Colonel John Robinson
Colonel John C. Robinson arrives in Chicago after heroically
leading the Ethiopian Air Force against the invading Mussolini’s
Italian forces. (Ethiopiancrown.org)
Another heroic figure produced by the anti-war campaign was Colonel John Robinson. It is interesting to note that while Melaku conducted his campaign and died in the United States, the Chicago-born Robinson fought, lived, and died in Ethiopia.
When the Italo-Ethiopian War erupted, he left his family and went to Ethiopia to fight alongside the Ethiopians. According to William R. Scott, who conducted thorough research in documenting the life and accomplishments of John Robinson, wrote about Robinson’s ability to overcome racial barriers to go to an aviation school in the United States. In Ethiopia, Robinson served as a courier between Haile Selassie and his army commanders in the war zone. According to Scott, Robinson was the founder of the Ethiopian Air Force. He died in a plane crash in 1954.
Scott makes the following critical assessment of Robinson’s historical role in building ties between Ethiopia and the African Diaspora. I quote him in length: “Rarely, if ever, is there any mention of John Robinson’s role as Haile Selassie’s special courier during the Italo-Ethiopian conflict. He has been but all forgotten in Ethiopia as well as in Afro-America. [Former Ambassodor Brazeal mentioned his name at the planting of a tree to honor the African Diaspora in Addis Ababa.] Nonetheless, it is important to remember John Robinson, as one of the two Afro-Americans to serve in the Ethiopia campaign and the only one to be consistently exposed to the dangers of the war front.
Colonel Robinson stands out in Afro-America as perhaps the very first of the minute number of Black Americans to have ever taken up arms to defend the African homeland against the forces of imperialism.”
John Robinson set the standard in terms of goals and accomplishments that could be attained by Pan-Africanists. Through his activities, Robinson earned the trust and affection of both Ethiopians and African Americans. Like Melaku, he made concrete contributions to bring the two peoples together. He truly built a bridge of Pan African unity.
It is our hope that the youth of today learn from the examples set by Melaku and Robinson, and strive to build lasting and mutually beneficial relations between Ethiopia and the African Diaspora. The Ethiopian American community ought to empower itself by forging alliances with African Americans in places such as Washington D.C. We also urge the Ethiopian Government to, for now, at least name streets in Addis Ababa after Bayen and Robinson.
I would like to conclude with Melaku’s profound statement: “The philosophy of the Ethiopian World Federation is to instill in the minds of the Black people of the world that the word Black is not to be considered in any way dishonorable but rather an honor and dignity because of the past history of the race.”
The 11-Year-Old Fashion Entrepreneur Behind 'Mo's Bows'
Stylish Citizen Kid Mo creates his own custom bow ties
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/6D5bUoRI720" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The 11-Year-Old Fashion Entrepreneur Behind 'Mo's Bows'
Karsten Strauss
8/06/2013 @ 8:30AM
When you look at the short but potential-packed career of Moziah Bridges, one gets the impression that this is a young man in a hurry. The Memphis, Tennessee-based youth is carving himself a place in the fashion world one bow tie at a time.
Young Master Bridges – Mo, for short – has been designing and sewing his own ties since his grandmother taught him how when he was nine years old. Like all innovators (yeah, I said “innovators,” let’s give it to him) his product ideas arose out of a lack he saw on the market.
“I really was a young dapper man and I couldn’t find any other bow ties that I really like,” he told Fox News. “So my grandma – my lovely grandma – she’s been sewing for over 80 years, or something crazy like that, so I wanted to start my own business making bow ties.”
“You don’t have to wait until you’re older,” his mother Tramica Morris said. “If you have a dream and you have a passion, we say go for it.”
Bridges chooses the fabrics for his creations himself and is quite particular about the styles. His pieces range from relatively traditional polka-dots and stripes to multi-colored paisley and sports team-themed ties. He has earned over $30,000 thus far with his one-man (one-boy) business, selling on his own Etsy page accessible from his website.
But Bridges is also attracting the attention of retail stores. According to his site, his wares are available in boutiques in Tennessee, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, South Carolina and Arkansas. He recently got a shout-out from Oprah Winfrey’s O Magazine.
Bridges has also created a product that raises funds for a charity. “I made this bow tie called the Go Mo! Scholarship Bow Tie and 100 percent of the proceeds go to help kids go to summer camp because I feel like it’s good to help the community and that’s what I’m doing.”
As for the future of Mo’s Bows, Bridges told FORBES that he’s looking to expand his offerings. “I see Mo’s Bows adding neck ties, pocket squares and other accessories for men,” he wrote in an email. “I also want to get enough money to start a cool kids clothing company that has nice blazers and pants for kids who like to look good like me.
“Ralph Lauren started selling neck ties when he was 10 years old so I think I can be real famous like him so I will keep my business going all the way until I get older.” *
The surge in online shopping and ecommerce has liberated several generations of artisans and entrepreneurs. No longer slowed by the cost of paying for brick-and-mortar retail stores, designers of products from fashion accessories to software are finding that not only can they start and run their own businesses for less money and less help, they can also make a killing doing it.
The ease of starting up an online shopping experience has freed up the younger generation as well and kids with supportive parents to offer a guiding hand can get a head start as entrepreneurs, turning their interests into businesses. One notable success story in progress is 15-year-old Madison Robinson, of Galveston, Texas, founder of Fish Flops apparel. Robinson has exceeded $1 million in sales and looks to expand her product line while inking deals with mega-retailer Macy’s.
Will Bridges reach a similar money milestone some day? He is certainly on the right track.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/karsten...ear-old-fashion-entrepreneur-behind-mos-bows/
Stylish Citizen Kid Mo creates his own custom bow ties
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/6D5bUoRI720" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The 11-Year-Old Fashion Entrepreneur Behind 'Mo's Bows'
Karsten Strauss
8/06/2013 @ 8:30AM
When you look at the short but potential-packed career of Moziah Bridges, one gets the impression that this is a young man in a hurry. The Memphis, Tennessee-based youth is carving himself a place in the fashion world one bow tie at a time.
Young Master Bridges – Mo, for short – has been designing and sewing his own ties since his grandmother taught him how when he was nine years old. Like all innovators (yeah, I said “innovators,” let’s give it to him) his product ideas arose out of a lack he saw on the market.
“I really was a young dapper man and I couldn’t find any other bow ties that I really like,” he told Fox News. “So my grandma – my lovely grandma – she’s been sewing for over 80 years, or something crazy like that, so I wanted to start my own business making bow ties.”
“You don’t have to wait until you’re older,” his mother Tramica Morris said. “If you have a dream and you have a passion, we say go for it.”
Bridges chooses the fabrics for his creations himself and is quite particular about the styles. His pieces range from relatively traditional polka-dots and stripes to multi-colored paisley and sports team-themed ties. He has earned over $30,000 thus far with his one-man (one-boy) business, selling on his own Etsy page accessible from his website.
But Bridges is also attracting the attention of retail stores. According to his site, his wares are available in boutiques in Tennessee, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, South Carolina and Arkansas. He recently got a shout-out from Oprah Winfrey’s O Magazine.
Bridges has also created a product that raises funds for a charity. “I made this bow tie called the Go Mo! Scholarship Bow Tie and 100 percent of the proceeds go to help kids go to summer camp because I feel like it’s good to help the community and that’s what I’m doing.”
As for the future of Mo’s Bows, Bridges told FORBES that he’s looking to expand his offerings. “I see Mo’s Bows adding neck ties, pocket squares and other accessories for men,” he wrote in an email. “I also want to get enough money to start a cool kids clothing company that has nice blazers and pants for kids who like to look good like me.
“Ralph Lauren started selling neck ties when he was 10 years old so I think I can be real famous like him so I will keep my business going all the way until I get older.” *
The surge in online shopping and ecommerce has liberated several generations of artisans and entrepreneurs. No longer slowed by the cost of paying for brick-and-mortar retail stores, designers of products from fashion accessories to software are finding that not only can they start and run their own businesses for less money and less help, they can also make a killing doing it.
The ease of starting up an online shopping experience has freed up the younger generation as well and kids with supportive parents to offer a guiding hand can get a head start as entrepreneurs, turning their interests into businesses. One notable success story in progress is 15-year-old Madison Robinson, of Galveston, Texas, founder of Fish Flops apparel. Robinson has exceeded $1 million in sales and looks to expand her product line while inking deals with mega-retailer Macy’s.
Will Bridges reach a similar money milestone some day? He is certainly on the right track.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/karsten...ear-old-fashion-entrepreneur-behind-mos-bows/
Roland Fryer, Clark Medalist 2015
The John Bates Clark Medal is basically the Nobel Prize for Economics for economist under 40.
Roland Fryer, Clark Medalist 2015
American Economic Association Honors and Awards Committee
April 2015
Roland Fryer is an influential applied microeconomist whose work spans labor economics, the economics of education, and social problems and social interactions. His innovative and creative research contributions have deepened our understanding of the sources, magnitude, and persistence of U.S. racial inequality. He has made substantial progress in evaluating the policies that work and do not work to improve the educational outcomes and economic opportunities of children from disadvantaged backgrounds. His theoretical and empirical work on the “acting white” hypothesis of peer effects provides new insights into the difficulties of increasing the educational investments of minorities and the socially excluded. Fryer is the leading economist working on the economics of race and education, and he has produced the most important work in recent years on combating the racial divide, one of America’s most profound and long-lasting social problems.
He has mastered tools from many disciplines to tackle difficult research topics. Fryer has developed and implemented compelling randomized field experiments in large U.S. urban school districts to evaluate education interventions. He founded EdLabs (the Education Innovation Laboratory at Harvard University) in 2008 to facilitate such efforts and continues as its director. He has incorporated insights from psychology to formulate a new model of discrimination based on categorization, and he has used detailed historical archival research to understand the origins and spread of the Ku Klux Klan.
The Racial Achievement Gap and Education Policies
Roland Fryer in a series of highly-influential studies has examined the age profile and sources of the U.S. racial achievement gap as measured by standardized test scores for children from 8 months to seventeen years old. Fryer (with Steven Levitt) has shown the black-white test score gap is quite small in the first year of life, but black children fall behind quickly thereafter (“Testing for Racial Differences in Mental Ability among Young Children,” American Economic Review 2013). The racial test score gap is largely explained by racial differences in socioeconomic status at the start of schooling (“Understanding the Black-White Test Gap in the First Two Years of School,” Review of Economics and Statistics 2004), but observable family background and school variables cannot explain most of the growth of the racial test score gap after kindergarten. Fryer’s comprehensive chapter in the Handbook of Labor Economics (2011, “Racial Inequality in the 21st Century: The Declining Significance of Discrimination”) documents that racial differences in social and economic outcomes today are greatly reduced when one accounts for educational achievement gaps. He concludes that understanding the obstacles facing minority children in K12 schools is essential to addressing racial inequality. Fryer has taken up this challenge to study the efficacy of education policies to improve the academic achievement and economic outcomes of low-income and minority children.
Roland Fryer’s initial effort at designing and evaluating school-based policies focused on short-term financial incentives for students to improve measured achievement (“Financial Incentives and Student Achievement: Evidence from Randomized Trials,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 2011). Fryer implemented and analyzed randomized field experiments in over 200 urban schools across three cities where treated students were paid for working hard (reading books in Dallas), doing well on interim standardized assessments (New York City), and earning high grades in class (Chicago). Although students appeared to be aware of the financial incentives and self-reported to be motivated by then, the findings for all three cities were of zero mean impact of short-term financial incentives on student achievement. Many low-income students lacked the knowledge of how to improve their performance and did not have the necessary complementary inputs (from parents, teachers, and peers) to respond to the incentives.
In “Teacher Incentives and Student Achievement: Evidence from New York City” (Journal of Labor Economics 2013), Fryer looks at financial incentives for teachers through randomized control trials (RCTs) in New York City (NYC) middle schools and high schools. Fryer finds no systematic effect of traditional teacher incentives on student outcomes. The ineffectiveness of standard U.S. teacher incentive programs motivated work by Fryer (with Steven Levitt, John List, and Sally Sadoff) to try new approaches in a recent working paper. Fryer implemented a randomized trial in 9 Illinois schools in which teachers were selected for a pay-for-performance program but where the timing and framing of the award differed randomly across teachers. He found that a “Loss” treatment – where teachers are given the bonus initially and lose all or part of it if their students do not meet performance targets -- substantially and significantly raised student math performance. A traditional “Gain” treatment had no detectable impact. The findings suggest that the structure and framing of teacher incentives are central to their success.
The Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), a 97-block area in Harlem that combines charter schools with neighborhood services, has provided Fryer with a testing ground for school-based vs. neighborhood-based interventions. Fryer and Will Dobbie have exploited the lottery used for admission to the Promise Academy (a charter school that is part of the HCZ) to examine the impacts of the charter school on student outcomes. They find short-run improvements in math test scores that are large enough to close the racial achievement gap (“Are High-Quality Schools Enough to Increase Achievement among the Poor? Evidence from the Harlem Children’s Zone,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 2011). A follow-up study (“The Medium-Term Impacts of High-Achieving Charter Schools,” Journal of Political Economy forthcoming) finds similar substantial positive impacts on medium-term outcomes including college enrollment, high school graduation, and reductions in risky behavior. Fryer and Dobbie find similar positive impacts of attending the Promise Academy for residents and non-residents of the HCZ indicating high-quality schools alone even without the other HCZ community resources can be effective.
In “Getting Beneath the Veil of Effective Schools: Evidence from New York City” (American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 2013), Fryer and Dobbie collect data on the inner-workings of 39 NYC charter schools from interviews and surveys of principals, teachers, and students, along with administrative data. They correlate the school policies and characteristics with estimates of school effectiveness in raising student achievement from lottery-based and quasi-experimental matching estimates. They find that a bundle of five school policies suggested by their in-depth qualitative research – frequent teacher feedback, the use of data to guide instruction, high-dosage tutoring, increased instructional time, and high expectations – are strongly positively correlated with improvements in student achievement.
In “Injecting Charter School Best Practices into Traditional Public Schools: Evidence from Field Experiments” (Quarterly Journal of Economics 2014), Roland Fryer examines the impact on student achievement of bringing a bundle of the best-practices from high-performing charter schools into low-performing, traditional public schools in Houston. Fryer implements both a school-level randomized field experiment among 18 low-performing elementary schools in Houston as well as quasi-experimental comparisons of schools getting the new practices vs. comparable Houston public schools. The findings indicate that injecting best practices from charter schools into traditional Houston public schools significantly increased math achievement in treated schools by 0.15 to 0.18 standard deviations per year (similar to the impacts of high-performing charter schools) but had little effect on reading achievement (as is the case with charter schools as well). Fryer finds similar positive results from implementing such practices in public schools in Denver and Chicago.
Economics of Social Interactions and Acting White
Roland Fryer has developed new conceptual frameworks and empirical evidence to better understand the role of “cultural capital” in the creation and persistence of racial and ethnic group differences in educational investments and other social outcomes and behaviors. His early work (“A Model of Social Interactions and Endogenous Poverty Traps,” Rationality and Society 2007) developed an equilibrium model of cultural capital (group-specific investments valuable for future social interactions with a peer or social group) and showed how a trade-off can arise between the accumulation of formal education and such cultural capital. Fryer extended this framework (with David Austin-Smith, “An Economic Analysis of ‘Acting White’,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 2005) into an elegant model of peer effects and educational investments in which “acting white” (rejecting those who try too hard in school or accumulate too much education) can arise from a two-audience signaling quandary: signals that lead employers to offer high wages can induce peer group rejection. The paper represents a transparent but rigorous model of educational under-investment as a signal to peers.
In “An Empirical Analysis of Acting White” (Journal of Public Economics 2010), Fryer uses data on friendship networks for high school students and uncovers noticeable racial differences in the relationship of student popularity and grades. The findings are consistent with Fryer’s two audience signaling model of acting white with a less positive impact of grades on popularity for blacks in schools with more inter-racial contact. The work adopts measures of the popularity and racial isolation (segregation) of one’s friends based on Fryer’s rigorous and novel work on the measurement of segregation with Frederico Echenique (“A Measure of Segregation based on Social Interactions,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 2007). Fryer has empirically studied the role of racial identity and cultural capital for other social behaviors. Of particular note is his work with Steven Levitt (“The Causes and Consequences of Distinctively Black Names,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 2004) examining changes in patterns of first names of Black and White children since the 1960s.
Economics of Discrimination, Anti-Discrimination Policy, and the Racial Divide
Roland Fryer is also a leading scholar of the economics of discrimination, affirmative action, and anti-discrimination policy. His work (with Matthew Jackson) explores the psychological foundations for racial discrimination in a model of categorization (“A Categorical Model of Cognition and Biased Decision-Making,” The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics 2008). Fryer and Jackson show that specific biases emerge from optimal categorization with a fixed number of categories. Types of experiences and objects that are less frequent in the population tend to be more coarsely categorized potentially leading to discrimination against minority groups that looks like statistical discrimination (treating all members of a minority group as part of one category and not making finer distinctions).
Fryer has done important work with Glenn Loury analyzing the economics and consequences of affirmative action (“Affirmative Action and its Mythology,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 2005; “Valuing Diversity,” Journal of Political Economy 2013). Fryer and Loury provide a rigorous analysis in the tradition of optimal tax theory and provide close attention to the visibility (sighted vs. unsighted) and the timing (ex ante development assistance or ex post placement advantages) dimensions of affirmative action policies. They also have shown empirically the potential inefficiencies of “color-blind” (unsighted) affirmative action for increasing racial diversity in university admissions (“An Economic Analysis of Color-Blind Affirmative Action,” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organizations 2008 along with Tolga Yuret).
Fryer has been a leader in research on other key aspects of the racial divide including the measurement of segregation, the adverse impact of the crack cocaine epidemic of the late 1980s and early 1990s on inner-city communities, long-run trends and the determinants of rate of inter-racial marriage, the changing role of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the higher education of U.S. Blacks, and the economics and politics of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 20th century. For example, Fryer (along with Steven Levitt, Lisa Kahn, and Jorg Spenkuch in the Review of Economics and Statistics 2012) has empirically examined “The Plight of Mixed Race Kids” documenting that mixed-race children have economic outcomes between blacks and whites, but that mixed-race kids have higher levels of risky behaviors as adolescents. A Roy model of peer interactions can help explain this pattern with mixed-race kids having less of a predetermined peer group choosing riskier behaviors to gain acceptance.
Roland Fryer has emerged as a leading scholar of the U.S. racial divide and as a major figure in the evaluation of education policies to narrow the racial achievement gap. He has been bold and fearless in his willingness to use rigorous economic theory, collect new data, and to develop and implement appropriate empirical strategies (including large-scale randomized field experiments) to assess any serious hypothesis that may shed light on racial inequality and may provide policy tools to improve the long-run outcomes of disadvantaged children. Fryer’s work is marked by a creative and entrepreneurial edge. His work on testing educational reform policies has led to better models of the education production function and to promising policies for improving schools for disadvantaged U.S. students Fryer’s research illuminates the role of peer effects, social identity, and economic incentives in the educational and economic outcomes of minority groups in the United States and around the world.
https://www.aeaweb.org/honors_awards/bios/Roland_Fryer.php
The John Bates Clark Medal is basically the Nobel Prize for Economics for economist under 40.
Roland Fryer, Clark Medalist 2015
American Economic Association Honors and Awards Committee
April 2015
Roland Fryer is an influential applied microeconomist whose work spans labor economics, the economics of education, and social problems and social interactions. His innovative and creative research contributions have deepened our understanding of the sources, magnitude, and persistence of U.S. racial inequality. He has made substantial progress in evaluating the policies that work and do not work to improve the educational outcomes and economic opportunities of children from disadvantaged backgrounds. His theoretical and empirical work on the “acting white” hypothesis of peer effects provides new insights into the difficulties of increasing the educational investments of minorities and the socially excluded. Fryer is the leading economist working on the economics of race and education, and he has produced the most important work in recent years on combating the racial divide, one of America’s most profound and long-lasting social problems.
He has mastered tools from many disciplines to tackle difficult research topics. Fryer has developed and implemented compelling randomized field experiments in large U.S. urban school districts to evaluate education interventions. He founded EdLabs (the Education Innovation Laboratory at Harvard University) in 2008 to facilitate such efforts and continues as its director. He has incorporated insights from psychology to formulate a new model of discrimination based on categorization, and he has used detailed historical archival research to understand the origins and spread of the Ku Klux Klan.
The Racial Achievement Gap and Education Policies
Roland Fryer in a series of highly-influential studies has examined the age profile and sources of the U.S. racial achievement gap as measured by standardized test scores for children from 8 months to seventeen years old. Fryer (with Steven Levitt) has shown the black-white test score gap is quite small in the first year of life, but black children fall behind quickly thereafter (“Testing for Racial Differences in Mental Ability among Young Children,” American Economic Review 2013). The racial test score gap is largely explained by racial differences in socioeconomic status at the start of schooling (“Understanding the Black-White Test Gap in the First Two Years of School,” Review of Economics and Statistics 2004), but observable family background and school variables cannot explain most of the growth of the racial test score gap after kindergarten. Fryer’s comprehensive chapter in the Handbook of Labor Economics (2011, “Racial Inequality in the 21st Century: The Declining Significance of Discrimination”) documents that racial differences in social and economic outcomes today are greatly reduced when one accounts for educational achievement gaps. He concludes that understanding the obstacles facing minority children in K12 schools is essential to addressing racial inequality. Fryer has taken up this challenge to study the efficacy of education policies to improve the academic achievement and economic outcomes of low-income and minority children.
Roland Fryer’s initial effort at designing and evaluating school-based policies focused on short-term financial incentives for students to improve measured achievement (“Financial Incentives and Student Achievement: Evidence from Randomized Trials,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 2011). Fryer implemented and analyzed randomized field experiments in over 200 urban schools across three cities where treated students were paid for working hard (reading books in Dallas), doing well on interim standardized assessments (New York City), and earning high grades in class (Chicago). Although students appeared to be aware of the financial incentives and self-reported to be motivated by then, the findings for all three cities were of zero mean impact of short-term financial incentives on student achievement. Many low-income students lacked the knowledge of how to improve their performance and did not have the necessary complementary inputs (from parents, teachers, and peers) to respond to the incentives.
In “Teacher Incentives and Student Achievement: Evidence from New York City” (Journal of Labor Economics 2013), Fryer looks at financial incentives for teachers through randomized control trials (RCTs) in New York City (NYC) middle schools and high schools. Fryer finds no systematic effect of traditional teacher incentives on student outcomes. The ineffectiveness of standard U.S. teacher incentive programs motivated work by Fryer (with Steven Levitt, John List, and Sally Sadoff) to try new approaches in a recent working paper. Fryer implemented a randomized trial in 9 Illinois schools in which teachers were selected for a pay-for-performance program but where the timing and framing of the award differed randomly across teachers. He found that a “Loss” treatment – where teachers are given the bonus initially and lose all or part of it if their students do not meet performance targets -- substantially and significantly raised student math performance. A traditional “Gain” treatment had no detectable impact. The findings suggest that the structure and framing of teacher incentives are central to their success.
The Harlem Children’s Zone (HCZ), a 97-block area in Harlem that combines charter schools with neighborhood services, has provided Fryer with a testing ground for school-based vs. neighborhood-based interventions. Fryer and Will Dobbie have exploited the lottery used for admission to the Promise Academy (a charter school that is part of the HCZ) to examine the impacts of the charter school on student outcomes. They find short-run improvements in math test scores that are large enough to close the racial achievement gap (“Are High-Quality Schools Enough to Increase Achievement among the Poor? Evidence from the Harlem Children’s Zone,” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 2011). A follow-up study (“The Medium-Term Impacts of High-Achieving Charter Schools,” Journal of Political Economy forthcoming) finds similar substantial positive impacts on medium-term outcomes including college enrollment, high school graduation, and reductions in risky behavior. Fryer and Dobbie find similar positive impacts of attending the Promise Academy for residents and non-residents of the HCZ indicating high-quality schools alone even without the other HCZ community resources can be effective.
In “Getting Beneath the Veil of Effective Schools: Evidence from New York City” (American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 2013), Fryer and Dobbie collect data on the inner-workings of 39 NYC charter schools from interviews and surveys of principals, teachers, and students, along with administrative data. They correlate the school policies and characteristics with estimates of school effectiveness in raising student achievement from lottery-based and quasi-experimental matching estimates. They find that a bundle of five school policies suggested by their in-depth qualitative research – frequent teacher feedback, the use of data to guide instruction, high-dosage tutoring, increased instructional time, and high expectations – are strongly positively correlated with improvements in student achievement.
In “Injecting Charter School Best Practices into Traditional Public Schools: Evidence from Field Experiments” (Quarterly Journal of Economics 2014), Roland Fryer examines the impact on student achievement of bringing a bundle of the best-practices from high-performing charter schools into low-performing, traditional public schools in Houston. Fryer implements both a school-level randomized field experiment among 18 low-performing elementary schools in Houston as well as quasi-experimental comparisons of schools getting the new practices vs. comparable Houston public schools. The findings indicate that injecting best practices from charter schools into traditional Houston public schools significantly increased math achievement in treated schools by 0.15 to 0.18 standard deviations per year (similar to the impacts of high-performing charter schools) but had little effect on reading achievement (as is the case with charter schools as well). Fryer finds similar positive results from implementing such practices in public schools in Denver and Chicago.
Economics of Social Interactions and Acting White
Roland Fryer has developed new conceptual frameworks and empirical evidence to better understand the role of “cultural capital” in the creation and persistence of racial and ethnic group differences in educational investments and other social outcomes and behaviors. His early work (“A Model of Social Interactions and Endogenous Poverty Traps,” Rationality and Society 2007) developed an equilibrium model of cultural capital (group-specific investments valuable for future social interactions with a peer or social group) and showed how a trade-off can arise between the accumulation of formal education and such cultural capital. Fryer extended this framework (with David Austin-Smith, “An Economic Analysis of ‘Acting White’,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 2005) into an elegant model of peer effects and educational investments in which “acting white” (rejecting those who try too hard in school or accumulate too much education) can arise from a two-audience signaling quandary: signals that lead employers to offer high wages can induce peer group rejection. The paper represents a transparent but rigorous model of educational under-investment as a signal to peers.
In “An Empirical Analysis of Acting White” (Journal of Public Economics 2010), Fryer uses data on friendship networks for high school students and uncovers noticeable racial differences in the relationship of student popularity and grades. The findings are consistent with Fryer’s two audience signaling model of acting white with a less positive impact of grades on popularity for blacks in schools with more inter-racial contact. The work adopts measures of the popularity and racial isolation (segregation) of one’s friends based on Fryer’s rigorous and novel work on the measurement of segregation with Frederico Echenique (“A Measure of Segregation based on Social Interactions,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 2007). Fryer has empirically studied the role of racial identity and cultural capital for other social behaviors. Of particular note is his work with Steven Levitt (“The Causes and Consequences of Distinctively Black Names,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 2004) examining changes in patterns of first names of Black and White children since the 1960s.
Economics of Discrimination, Anti-Discrimination Policy, and the Racial Divide
Roland Fryer is also a leading scholar of the economics of discrimination, affirmative action, and anti-discrimination policy. His work (with Matthew Jackson) explores the psychological foundations for racial discrimination in a model of categorization (“A Categorical Model of Cognition and Biased Decision-Making,” The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics 2008). Fryer and Jackson show that specific biases emerge from optimal categorization with a fixed number of categories. Types of experiences and objects that are less frequent in the population tend to be more coarsely categorized potentially leading to discrimination against minority groups that looks like statistical discrimination (treating all members of a minority group as part of one category and not making finer distinctions).
Fryer has done important work with Glenn Loury analyzing the economics and consequences of affirmative action (“Affirmative Action and its Mythology,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 2005; “Valuing Diversity,” Journal of Political Economy 2013). Fryer and Loury provide a rigorous analysis in the tradition of optimal tax theory and provide close attention to the visibility (sighted vs. unsighted) and the timing (ex ante development assistance or ex post placement advantages) dimensions of affirmative action policies. They also have shown empirically the potential inefficiencies of “color-blind” (unsighted) affirmative action for increasing racial diversity in university admissions (“An Economic Analysis of Color-Blind Affirmative Action,” Journal of Law, Economics, and Organizations 2008 along with Tolga Yuret).
Fryer has been a leader in research on other key aspects of the racial divide including the measurement of segregation, the adverse impact of the crack cocaine epidemic of the late 1980s and early 1990s on inner-city communities, long-run trends and the determinants of rate of inter-racial marriage, the changing role of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the higher education of U.S. Blacks, and the economics and politics of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 20th century. For example, Fryer (along with Steven Levitt, Lisa Kahn, and Jorg Spenkuch in the Review of Economics and Statistics 2012) has empirically examined “The Plight of Mixed Race Kids” documenting that mixed-race children have economic outcomes between blacks and whites, but that mixed-race kids have higher levels of risky behaviors as adolescents. A Roy model of peer interactions can help explain this pattern with mixed-race kids having less of a predetermined peer group choosing riskier behaviors to gain acceptance.
Roland Fryer has emerged as a leading scholar of the U.S. racial divide and as a major figure in the evaluation of education policies to narrow the racial achievement gap. He has been bold and fearless in his willingness to use rigorous economic theory, collect new data, and to develop and implement appropriate empirical strategies (including large-scale randomized field experiments) to assess any serious hypothesis that may shed light on racial inequality and may provide policy tools to improve the long-run outcomes of disadvantaged children. Fryer’s work is marked by a creative and entrepreneurial edge. His work on testing educational reform policies has led to better models of the education production function and to promising policies for improving schools for disadvantaged U.S. students Fryer’s research illuminates the role of peer effects, social identity, and economic incentives in the educational and economic outcomes of minority groups in the United States and around the world.
https://www.aeaweb.org/honors_awards/bios/Roland_Fryer.php
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