Where California stands on the Syrian refugee situation, how to talk to kids about the Paris terror attacks, Charlie Sheen reveals he has HIV.
Could the Paris attacks impact the presidential race? Probably not, expert says
The attacks in Paris have altered the tone of the presidential election -- at least for now.
In the wake of the violence, Republican candidates were quick to criticize the policies of the Obama Administration. Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee asked House Speaker Paul Ryan to put an end to the Administration's plan to accept Syrian refugees. In a TV interview Sunday, Jeb Bush called for a no-fly zone over Syria -- a move the president has so far rejected.
Meanwhile, at Saturday's Democratic debate, candidates faced tough questions about how they would deal with the so-called Islamic State.
Will the Paris attacks have any effect on primary voters? Take Two put that question to Philip Seib, professor of public diplomacy and international relations at USC.
Press the play button above to hear the segment.
'The institution wasn't built with us in mind': SoCal students talk race, discrimination on campus
Nearly 400 students have moved into administrative offices at Occidental College to protest the "unfair" treatment of minority students.
This follows rallies and hunger strikes at nearby Claremont McKenna College last week, which prompted the resignation of the Dean of Students, Mary Spellman after she had sent an email that was seen as racially insensitive.
There has been some pushback against the student protests at Claremont: a letter circulating Tuesday said that it was "inappropriate" to force the dean from her position.
But students of color at campuses across Southern California say campus racism continues to be a major problem. Take Two spoke to students from three institutions to hear their concerns.
No communication
Makiah Green recently graduated from USC, where she completed her undergraduate and graduate studies. She now operates
, a Twitter-based forum where students of color can share their campus experiences. She says that the concerns of black students aren’t being heard by campus decision makers.
“The problem is that these institutions were not built with us in mind," Green says. "When administrators are making decisions in the boardroom they are not considering the needs and the concerns of students of color and minorities in general.”
Green says USC's efforts to address this problem have been ineffective.
“You have people in the middle who are like, diversity hires, but often times these officials don’t have decision-making power to actually implement the changes that the students are demanding, and so that’s why we’re going for the presidents -- because they're the ones that can actually change things,” Green says.
We are Mizzou
Janay Williams is a senior at UCLA and chair of the African Student Union. She tells Take Two’s A Martinez that black students on campus face many of the same injustices that led students to protest at the University of Missouri.
“Mizzou is UCLA and UCLA is Mizzou,” Williams says. “We are all the same. We’re all just black students attending these institutions that are supposed to be there to help us grow [and] unfortunately we are targets of racist attacks and microaggressions and all of these things that are going on on our campuses.”
In response to critics
Dominique Curtis is the president of the Pan African Student Association for the Claremont Colleges. She helped organize last week’s demonstrations. When asked how she would respond to critics who might suggest she just "suck it up," Curtis said the problems have become too big to ignore.
“These colleges are just micro versions of what’s going on in the real world,” Curtis says.”So even if I get over it and get through college, I’m still going to have to have a job where I’m going to meet these issues. I’m still going to have a community where I meet these issues. I think this became very evident last year with the Black Lives Matter protests. This stuff carries over and -- for my mental health -- I can’t just suck it up because these things build up until you see what’s happening now, where students just [had] enough and they can’t take it anymore.”
Press the blue play button above to hear the roundtable discussion.
The Brood: How can parents talk with kids about the Paris attacks?
It's incredibly difficult for most of us to comprehend terrorist attacks, like the ones that shook Paris on Friday.
But what if you are a kid? How do you process that someone would randomly kill people throughout a city? And how can you feel safe in a world such as this?
Clinical psychologist Enrico Gnaulati offers some tips on how to talk about difficult and tragic subjects with kids.
Limit their exposure
"I'm a firm believer in protecting kids' benign denial systems. So, for me, I would want to just limit exposure right away. If a parent quickly discerns that this is a heinous event that touches them to their primal core... and they get a sense that this is something awesome and big and frightening and frightful, I would say at that point, one of the primary things they can do as a parent is just limit exposure. So my approach would be turn off the radio, turn off the TV."
Keep your calm
"If the horse is out of the stable, at that point, parents managing their own emotions becomes really important. Because emotions are contagious; more often than not, kids will take a parent's a lead with respect to what are the proper emotions to have, and the right degree of intensity of emotions."
Follow your child's lead and then tread carefully
"If it's not on a kid's radar, then you don't put it on their radar... So you really have to kind of carefully gauge the situation to see if they're really in the know about what happened. And then I think you need to switch into kind of amateur psychologist mode and work from within the kid's narrative. Tease them out— what have they seen? What do they know? What's their understanding of what happened?"
Focus on the glimmers of positivity
"A focus that I would have with younger kids would be on the concept of solidarity. So, for instance, after the events occurred, maybe then turning on the TV where there are gestures of solidarity—that hundreds of countries came to France's defense, world leaders expressed their support for France. And maybe, you know, little kids tend to understand the world in binary terms— good and bad, good guys and bad guys— so then that could be a discussion where, with these gestures of solidarity, it shows that there are more good guys in the world than bad guys, and that ultimately the good guys will win and make it safe for everyone."
To hear the full interview, click the link above.
Charlie Sheen opens up about HIV status, and starts a public health conversation
Actor Charlie Sheen confirmed the rumors: the former TV star revealed he is HIV positive.
"It a hard 3 letters to absorb," he told NBC's Today Show. "It's a turning point in one's life."
According to the interview, Sheen has lived with HIV for four years.
While the virus is not the devastating killer it once was, the disease is still a serious public health concern.
"There are currently about 1.2 million people living with HIV, and about 13 percent of those don't know they're infected," says Ian Holloway at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs. "There are about 50,000 new infections every year."
Holloway says an announcement by someone like Sheen helps to shine a spotlight on an issue that may have fallen off the radar by some of the public.
"There is still a lot of stigma that exists around HIV," he says. "Being able to have more of an open conversation about it, which I think is something that anytime a celebrity discloses an HIV status, reminds us that these conversations need to take place."
Who is Les Bleus? A look at France's diverse soccer team
The French national soccer team, known as Les Bleus, takes on England at Wembley Stadium in London on Tuesday.
But it's not just any game. One of the sites hit during the Paris attacks was the iconic Stade de France in Paris, where bomb blasts caused panic among thousands of soccer fans.
Les Bleus is known as one of the most diverse teams in all of Europe. In fact, team member Lassana Diarra, who is of African descent, had family killed in the attacks and is a devout Muslim. He's vowed to take the field Tuesday in defiance of the attacks.
Historian Laurent Dubois of Duke University is the author of "Soccer Empire: The World Cup and the Future of France," and he also runs the Soccer Politics blog. He joined the show for a look at the team, and what it means to the nation of France.
Tuesday Reviewsday: Missy Elliot, Natalie Merchant and a lot more
Oliver Wang of Soul-Sides.com and music supervisor
join Take Two to run down the latest releases you need to know about.
Oliver's picks
Missy Elliot - WTF (Where They From) is back - THANK GOD - with her first new video in years and it's like she never left. It speaks to how futuristic she was when she first popped up in the late '90s…nearly 20 years later and I don't know if the pop world has ever caught up. She's been out of the game for a minute because of health issues and I hope this represents a return of one of pop's greatest talents after a too-long hiatus.
Natalie Merchant: Carnival - Paradise Is There: The New Tigerlily Recordings
For the 20th anniversary of Merchant’s big hit solo debut, "Tigerlilly," she rearranges and re-records the entire album. "Carnival" was one of the major hits from 1995 and I just remember many a car ride when a then-girlfriend would play the song and album over and over. Merchant makes interesting choices in this revisit, especially in how she strips down a lot of songs to their acoustic core and her vocal approach is less urgent and sounds more wistful. Here's the original version of the video:
Allen Toussaint - Go Back Home. Toussaint was one of the greatest musical figures out of one of the greatest musical cities in America; since the 1950s, he’s been a massive influence on the shape and sound of New Orleans R&B, having worked with everyone from Ernie K. Doe to Irma Thomas to Lee Dorsey to the Meters, etc. At the age of 77, passed away last week in Madrid, Spain while on tour. Oliver's choice was one of his favorites, but here he is performing Southern Nights.
Morgan's picks
Daniel Caesar - Pilgrim's Paradise
Daniel Caesar's follow up to last year's "Praise Break," continues the intersection of love and faith. This church kid from Toronto has a tone that prompts comparisons to other singers but thematically he's in a class all by himself. Here's an earlier release called, "Violet."
Sango - Da Rochina
Soulection Soldier Sango is back to continue his ode to Baile funk, Brazilian bass music whose roots are in Rio De Janeiro. He's proven to be particularly skillful at marrying the now sound of the beats to dance music from Brazil and weaving in '90s R&B here and there for good measure. Here's a teaser video for the album.
In the aftermath of Paris, how will California move forward with refugees?
In the aftermath of the Paris attacks some U.S. governors are threatening to block efforts to relocate Syrian refugees in their states. Gov. Jerry Brown says that California will follow President Barack Obama’s lead and will remain committed to accepting Syrian refugees while ensuring a thorough and secure vetting process for these refugees.
Representative and Intelligence Committee ranking member Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., called in to Take Two to further explain California’s stance when it comes to Syrian refugees.
“It’s in the country’s long standing and proud tradition that we don’t turn our back on people in need during times of crisis. So we ought to do our part,” said Schiff.
In regards to those governors that say that will stop the process to accept Syrian refugees, Schiff is doubtful that states have the authority to do that. “I don’t think [these states] have the power to say that someone who has been admitted to the U.S. as a refugee can’t come to their state,” he said.
According to Schiff, the initial reactions from these governors is not thought out.
“In many ways this very quick reaction reminds me a bit of the aftermath of the Ebola scare, when we had some of the same governors saying we’re not going to accept health care workers who have returned who are risking their lives. That was very ill-thought out and I think similarly this initial reaction will pass,” he said.
While the representative says much of these reactions to refugees are politicized, he stresses that this should not be viewed as a partisan issue. Schiff concluded:
What we’re looking at here in the United States is not the same as what is taking place in Europe. In Europe you have hundreds of thousands of people coursing through the streets looking for a safe place, without the ability to really vet those refugees. That is not what is being proposed for the United States. We are proposing a very intensive and individualized vetting process for the refugees. So even if one of the attackers in Paris came into the refugee program amidst that flood of refugees we are doing everything possible to make sure that does not happen here.
Martin Zogg, executive director of the International Rescue Committee in Los Angeles, discussed the refugees that are already in the U.S. The IRC helps refugees resettle once they’ve made it into the country. You can listen to his conversation with host A Martinez in the bonus audio above.
Oxford's Word of the Year isn't actually a word
Each year the Oxford Dictionary crowns a word of the year, a term selected to both reflect the culture of the recent past and look ahead toward the future.
Previous entries include vape, podcast, locavore, unfriend and selfie. This week, they've announced the word for 2015. But — it's not a word. Instead, it's the popular emoji of a smiley face with tears of joy.
Sociolinguist Tyler Schnoebelen, one of the leading researchers on emoji, joined the show to explain more.
Want to get that boat out on the water? Don't forget your boating driver's license.
Starting in 2018 California State Parks' Division of Boating and Waterways will require anyone 20 years old or younger to get a California Vessel Operator Card, which is similar to a driver's license for boating. By 2025 everyone, regardless of age, will be required to have an operating card. The Division of Boating and Waterways still has a lot to decide when it comes to what the exact license test will entail and how much it will cost.
David Ingles, general manager at Blue Pacific Boating, thinks requiring operator cards is a good start. But requirements for renting, buying and driving boats could go further.