The one factor that best determines whether a school will assume greater security measures is not crime or violence — it is the presence of Black children. A new study from two academics found that even when controlling for factors such as school misconduct and neighborhood crime, the mere existence of African-American children in a school makes it more likely the institution will beef up its security. According to the study, there were greater racial disparities in arrests and suspensions of students where there are police officers or other security measures, as reported in Talking Points Memo.
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We hope this story was worth your time. For over 14 years, Atlanta Black Star has stayed Black-owned and independently run. We didn't get here by waiting on ad budgets that were never built to prioritize us. Our readers did that.
Corporate support for Black media has always been thin. Outlets like ours get roughly 1% of the $170 billion spent on U.S. advertising each year, and that margin is shrinking further as advertisers walk back the DEI-linked commitments they made in 2020. That's the backdrop. It's not why we're asking.
The wider picture isn't any steadier. Newspaper ad revenue has fallen more than 80% since 2005, and local newsrooms are closing at a rate of roughly two a week nationwide. When outlets go under, it's rarely the ones built to center a Black perspective from the ground up that get to stick around.
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