Food Deserts, HBCU’s, Discipline Gaps

Why Grocery Stores Don’t Help Communities in Food Deserts to Stay Healthy (0:38) Guest: Kelseanna Hollis-Hansen, PhD Candidate at the University at Buffalo and Graduate Research Assistant at the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences In places sometimes referred to as “food deserts” healthy food options are farther and more expensive than normal. The obvious answer would be to just put up another supermarket. But researchers at the University at Buffalo found that new grocery stores actually lead to a decrease in people eating their fruits and veggies. (Originally aired November 5, 2019).  Historically Black Colleges and Universities are Struggling to Survive (14:21) Guest: Delece Smith-Barrow is Senior Editor for Higher Education at The Hechinger Report Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Thurgood Marshall, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Spike Lee, Oprah Winfrey, Samuel L. Jackson, Chadwick Boseman –aka Black Panther. That’s just a partial list of prominent African Americans who graduated from an HBCU, which stands for Historically Black Colleges and Universities. There are more than a hundred HBCUs around the country –Howard, Tuskegee, Spelman, Shaw, Fisk, Morehouse –are some names you might recognize. If you saw Beyonce’s Coachella performance last year –or the Netflix documentary about it -that whole thing was an ode to HBCUs. She had marching bands and step dancers. Beyonce’s HBCU tribute was well-timed, because many of these schools are in crisis. Enrollment is down. Government funding is down. More than a dozen HBCUs have closed. (Originally aired November 5, 2019).  Racial Discipline and Achievement Gaps Are Related (36:05) Guest: Francis Pearman, Assistant Professor of Education in the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University In schools across the US, discipline doesn’t get handed out evenly. Black high school students are twice as likely to be suspended as white or Hispanic students. Black students also lag behind white students on standardized test scores. Are these two gaps