Black in America, V

Esto es una continuación del tema Black in America, IV.

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Black in America, V

1LolaWalser
Nov 9, 2020, 3:25 pm

Fascinating report from 1964. Fascinating resonances in 2020. The same struggle for liberation and the same elements of oppression.

The Negro Voter (1964)

"In 1944, when the "whites only" primaries in the South were abolished, American Negroes began to vote in large numbers for the first time. Now {1964}, two decades later, the Negro vote is becoming an important element in local, state, and national elections. The questions that arise in this 1964 Presidential election year are: How will the Negro vote? Will he go Democratic or Republican? What does the Negro vote want? Negro voting influence, however, varies with the regions of the country"

2John5918
Nov 10, 2020, 12:32 am

Not in the USA, but the same era.

Barbara Blake Hannah: The first black reporter on British TV (BBC)

When British TV got its first black reporter in 1968 some viewers strongly objected and she was sacked in less than a year. Now, half a century later, a British Journalism Award has been named in her honour. Looking back, how does Barbara Blake Hannah feel about the way the country treated her?

"Too many times you buy a sandwich that you later realise had been spat in, or you're walking down the street and are spat at yourself, or best case scenario, are told '{N-word} go home.' But when I roamed the streets as a reporter with a camera, no-one cared that I was black. They just cared about being on TV, that's one reason why I loved the job"...

3John5918
Nov 13, 2020, 7:59 am

Barack Obama: 'Americans spooked by black man in White House' led to Trump presidency (Guardian)

Donald Trump “promised an elixir for the racial anxiety” of “millions of Americans spooked by a black man in the White House”, Barack Obama writes in his eagerly awaited memoir. Those Americans, Obama writes, were prey to “the dark spirits that had long been lurking on the edges of the modern Republican party – xenophobia, anti-intellectualism, paranoid conspiracy theories, an antipathy toward black and brown folks”. In A Promised Land, which comes out on Tuesday, Obama continues: “It was as if my very presence in the White House had triggered a deep-seated panic, a sense that the natural order had been disrupted. Which is exactly what Donald Trump understood when he started peddling assertions that I had not been born in the United States and was thus an illegitimate president”...

4John5918
Editado: Nov 17, 2020, 12:30 am

Pope Francis makes historic, wise choice with Cardinal Gregory (National Catholic Reporter)

It is rare to find a moment in the life of the Catholic Church, a 2,000-year-old global institution, that truly merits the adjective "historic." But Pope Francis' naming of Washington Archbishop Wilton Gregory as one of 13 new cardinals certainly fits the bill.

Gregory, who has led the church in the nation's capital since May 2019, will be the first African American to receive the red biretta, the first to be assigned honorary leadership of a parish in Rome, and the first to be included among the most select and influential group of Catholic prelates...

The significance of those firsts is hard to overstate. As University of Pennsylvania professor Anthea Butler told NCR on Oct. 26, Black Catholics have "waited a very long time for this to happen."

Or as Fordham University's Fr. Bryan Massingale put it: "This is a way of saying that Black Catholics are seen; that we matter in the church"...


Although that last quote should be qualified as "Black Catholics in the USA", since there are already many black Catholic cardinals from Africa and elsewhere. Globally it has long been the case that black Catholics "are seen" and "matter in the church". Indeed a number of African cardinals have had prominent roles in the Vatican for quite a few years. Peter Turkson from Ghana, Wilfred Fox Napier from South Africa, Robert Sarah from Guinea and recently Ambongo Besungu from DRC are some that spring to mind immediately.

5Matke
Nov 19, 2020, 5:01 pm

>3 John5918: I think this explanation is too simple. That’s not to say that the election of a black man to the Presidency was not a huge, disturbing shock to many people, some of whom were positive that they weren’t prejudiced in any way.

I don’t know how much you saw and/or remember of the widespread, disgusting, mean-spirited, embarrassing (to a US citizen) treatment of both Obama’s during the campaigns and especially after his election. It was unbelievable that we had this festering wound that could erupt like that. Most of us were appalled at the ugly underside of American life that was revealed.

It’s a scar on our history that we’ll never be able to live down.

All that said, I believe that there were many other issues/problems that resulted in the election of Mr. Trump.

6Matke
Nov 19, 2020, 5:03 pm

On a lighter note, I vividly remember the headline in The Onion immediately after the election:

Black Man Given Worst Job in America!

Ah for the good old days of innocent, gently mocking humor.

8Earthling1
Nov 25, 2020, 11:38 pm

Este miembro ha sido suspendido del sitio.

9margd
Nov 29, 2020, 6:37 am

Playing music while young and black:

Man (47) charged with fatally shooting a 19-year-old Black man in Ashland (Oregon) over ‘loud music’
Jayati Ramakrishnan | Updated Nov 28, 2020; Posted Nov 26, 2020
https://www.oregonlive.com/crime/2020/11/ashland-man-charged-with-murder-after-a...

10John5918
Dic 19, 2020, 11:17 pm

Pastors want answers on Chicago police raid that wrongly targeted woman (Guardian)

Pastors disturbed about how Chicago police treated a Black woman whose home was mistakenly the target of a raid spoke with the mayor on Friday, demanding more information about the city’s efforts to keep a lid on bodycam video of the 2019 incident. Anjanette Young, a social worker, is seen on police video repeatedly pleading with officers that they are in the wrong place. She was not allowed to put on clothes before being handcuffed at her home...

11John5918
Dic 21, 2020, 11:15 pm

Kansas City Star apologizes for decades of racist reporting (Guardian)

The Kansas City Star’s top editor has apologized for past decades of racist coverage and the newspaper has posted a series of stories examining how it ignored the concerns and achievements of Black residents and helped keep Kansas City segregated. The newspaper said a detailed examination of its past coverage and that of its longtime sister newspaper, the Kansas City Times, documented how they often wrote about Black residents only as criminals or people living in crime-plagued neighborhoods and ignored segregation in Kansas City, Missouri, and its public schools...

The Star’s apology and its lengthy series of stories, posted on its website on Sunday, followed a Los Angeles Times editorial in September apologizing for past racially biased coverage. The Montgomery, Alabama, Advertiser in 2018 apologized for “shameful” decades of coverage of lynchings, and National Geographic magazine apologized the same year for its past racist coverage...

12margd
Dic 29, 2020, 4:25 am

The year of Karen: how a meme changed the way Americans talked about racism
Julia Carrie Wong | 27 Dec 2020

...More than just an amusing meme, Karen allowed for a new kind of discourse about racism to gain credence in the US.

...(Apryl Williams, a professor of communication and media at the University of Michigan) offered three simple rules to avoid being a Karen. One: recognize the privilege and history of being a white woman in this society. Two: avoid calling the police on people of color unless someone is in imminent danger of harm. And three: “Understand that it’s just not always about you, period. People are not out to get you for the most part, people are not trying to hurt you or harm your property or make you uncomfortable,” she said. “You’re not that special, Karen. You’re not that special.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/27/karen-race-white-women-black-ameri...

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Video shows woman falsely accusing Black teen of stealing phone she left in Uber
Wilson Wong | dec 28, 2020

A woman falsely accused the 14-year-old son of jazz musician Keyon Harrold, who is Black, of stealing her iPhone in a NYC hotel...
...she was a guest at the hotel earlier in the week...she retrieved her phone after an Uber driver recovered it later that same day...

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/video-shows-woman-falsely-accusing-black-te...

14John5918
Dic 31, 2020, 11:04 pm

‘It took its toll’: the terrible legacy of Martin Luther King’s fight with the FBI (Guardian)

In his new film MLK/FBI, Sam Pollard lays bare the injustices the FBI heaped on the civil rights leader, but paints a picture of a complex man dealing with his personal life and its baggage alongside his political beliefs...

16John5918
Ene 27, 2021, 11:07 pm

'Black resistance endured': paying tribute to civil war soldiers of color (Guardian)

In a new book, the often under-appreciated contribution that black soldiers made during the civil war is brought to light with a trove of unseen photos...

17John5918
Feb 16, 2021, 11:13 am

Black historical figures who shook the world, from a warrior queen to a Mexican president (World Economic Forum)

February marks Black History Month in the United States and Canada, a time to reflect on the ways Black people have contributed to society. But the contributions of Black people don’t just apply to Black history, or even simply American or Canadian history. Black people have impacted politics, culture and the economy around the world; Black history is world history. Here are seven figures that show that the story of Black people has always had global impact...

Mansa Musa: the richest man in history...
Nzinga Mbande: warrior queen of Angola...
Alessandro de' Medici: the 'Black Prince of Florence'...
Abram Petrovich Gannibal: Russia's African imperial...
Blanche Bruce: from slavery to the senate...
Vicente Guerrero: the Americas' first Black president...
Yasuke: samurai unlike any other...

18SolomonCinco
Feb 21, 2021, 5:18 am

>12 margd:
Hmmm. I'm sure there are, indeed, many self-righteous, ignorant white women. Labeled "Karen" this year. But I've also been around many self-righteous, ignorant black women. What would happen if the media suddenly started labeling the latter instances as being perpetrated by a generic stereotypical black name such as "LaQuesha"? There are just as many "LaQuesha" stories out there as "Karen" stories.

19SolomonCinco
Feb 21, 2021, 5:19 am

>1 LolaWalser:
You're seriously comparing black rights in 1964 to those in 2020?? You need to study your civil rights history.

20SolomonCinco
Feb 21, 2021, 5:23 am

>5 Matke:
Obama was treated with kid gloves by the media during his presidency. Trump, on the other hand, was treated with contempt from Day One. Your argument is ridiculous.

21SolomonCinco
Feb 21, 2021, 5:29 am

How many blacks were killed by other blacks in the past year, as compared to blacks killed by police officers? How many whites were murdered by blacks, as compared to blacks murdered by whites? Look at the stats.

22kiparsky
Feb 21, 2021, 1:37 pm

>21 SolomonCinco: As anyone who works with data professionally will tell you, it's premature to "look at the stats" before you have a question that you want to answer. What are you hoping to learn from comparing these particular numbers? What conclusions would you like to be able to draw or repudiate based on what you find?

23alco261
Feb 21, 2021, 1:57 pm

>21 SolomonCinco: The correct comparison is how many black were murdered by police officers compared to whites murdered by police officers? The list would be George Floyd situations only with the person wearing white skin. May we see those stats?

24LolaWalser
Feb 21, 2021, 3:51 pm

Given that this person doesn't acknowledge that systemic racism--or racism at all--even exists, it's going to be hard to have a reality-based, fact-dependent conversation with them.

Consider >18 SolomonCinco:

What would happen if the media suddenly started labeling the latter instances as being perpetrated by a generic stereotypical black name such as "LaQuesha"?

The "Karen" meme refers to the phenomenon of white middle-class racism, evidenced in real instances of racist attacks perpetrated by entitled white women. The satire isn't aimed at the name "Karen" per se, but at the pernicious behaviour of white people who deliberately subject black people to official and unofficial policing. In the US, this means that such "Karens", tapping the power of the police, may even endanger black people's lives.

For this phenomenon to exist--and therefore for the meme to exist--it is necessary to have a racist, white supremacist system in place, such as in the US. And this is why your "LaQuesha" hypothetical is impossible, nonsensical, and in fact a racist supposition in itself.

There is, in fact, no evidence of black people calling the cops on white people comparable to the spate of incidents that have resulted in the "Karen meme". I looked, and I also can't find any evidence that black people call the cops on other black people so casually, with such petty malice and prejudice, as these proverbial "Karens".

In short, the "Karen meme" reflects something about American reality; there is no symmetrical phenomenon victimising white people.

25kiparsky
Feb 21, 2021, 4:03 pm

>24 LolaWalser: I agree. It's intriguing that our new friend seems to think that the "Karen" business is about the fact that certain white women are "self-righteous" and "ignorant", and not about the phenomenon of white people (a) assuming criminality when they see Black faces and then (b) asserting (falsely) to the police that the people behind those Black faces have committed criminal acts.

26LolaWalser
Feb 21, 2021, 4:39 pm

>25 kiparsky:

Recall that these "Karens" have also attacked black children, as in:

Permit Patty: Woman 'calls police' on eight-year-old for selling water

And why wouldn't they, when the police can pepper-spray 9-year-olds?

I do want to underline that "Karen" racism is just one kind of racist behaviour. It's important to bring it out in the light because the perpetrators are so often the type of people who would otherwise deny they had a racist thought in their head--the comfortable, the middle class, the suburban, the "good" white people, the "nice" white women.

27John5918
Editado: Mar 6, 2021, 11:31 pm

Amanda Gorman tells of being followed by security guard who said she looked 'suspicious' (Guardian)

Amanda Gorman, the poet who won acclaim for her performance at Joe Biden’s inauguration, has told of being followed home and accosted by a security guard who allegedly claimed she looked suspicious.

She said the incident, on Friday night, was emblematic of “the reality of black girls” in the US, in which “one day you’re called an icon” but the next day considered a threat...

“In a sense, he was right. I AM A THREAT: a threat to injustice, to inequality, to ignorance. Anyone who speaks the truth and walks with hope is an obvious and fatal danger to the powers that be”...

28margd
Abr 11, 2021, 12:23 pm

Daycaring while Black... :

‘Not one Black child has food’: Viral image shows only the white kids in a daycare class eating
'This is truly unbelievable.'
Eilish O'Sullivan | Apr 10, 2021

A live stream of a daycare center classroom captured caregivers apparently feeding white kids before Black children in Georgia, sparking accusations of racism against the center...

...The (Instagram) account tagged the Kids ‘R’ Kids corporate office in its post. The corporate office responded on Thursday by calling the screenshot “disturbing” and cutting ties with the location in question.

“Our company has decided to terminate that franchisee’s Kids ‘R’ Kids contract and branding, effective immediately, leaving them to operate independently,” President and CEO David Vinson said in the statement, posted to Instagram. “We apologize to the family, the community and all of those impacted by this situation and will use this as a learning tool to remind our Kids ‘R’ Kids staff on the importance of diversity and inclusivity.”

Vinson added that the corporate office will help locate alternate preschool options for families displaced by the decision.

It remains unclear if the daycare will continue operations...

https://www.dailydot.com/irl/white-children-eat-before-black-children-daycare-im...

29Molly3028
Abr 12, 2021, 2:15 pm

https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2021/04/12/holy-st-i-just-shot-him-chief-believes...

‘Holy S**t, I Just Shot Him’: Chief Believes Officer Meant To Use Taser In Fatal Shooting Of Daunte Wright

30Molly3028
Editado: Abr 15, 2021, 11:47 am

https://www.mediaite.com/entertainment/where-are-the-good-apples-trevor-noah-bre...

‘Where Are the Good Apples?’ Trevor Noah Breaks Down in Tears While Speaking Out Against Police Brutality

. . . Noah then said that while there are good people that join the police force, as they want to protect those in need, they are deterred from speaking up against the actions of other cops because “they themselves know that if they do something, they’re going against the system.”

“We’re not dealing with bad apples, we’re dealing with a rotten tree,” Noah said bluntly.

31John5918
Abr 15, 2021, 12:20 pm

>30 Molly3028:

Thanks, Molly. That's a powerful statement by Trevor.

32margd
Abr 19, 2021, 9:43 pm

Awaiting Chauvin verdict, watched "American Skin" DVD gifted to my son by African American colleague. (Long story.) Special to him, obviously. Hope Chauvin jurists believe their eyes...

33rastaphrog
mayo 8, 2021, 9:00 pm

A womans home appraisal jumped by $100K when she removed all signs that she was black.

https://fox59.com/news/indianapolis-homeowner-files-discrimination-complaint-aft...

34alco261
mayo 9, 2021, 9:54 am

>33 rastaphrog: I'm not trying to provide excuses, but that article makes me wonder if the problem might be the sort of thing discussed in Weapons of Math Destruction. What caught my eye were the statements about "comps" - comparable housing - and the houses that were used for comparison. If the appraiser decided to be nothing more than a button pusher and did their research based on a computer program and one of the fields in that program listed race of home ownership I could see how you would get the "comps" they said they used.

All you would have to have is an AI built with a training set that hadn't been cross checked for bias with respect to race of homeowner. Given that kind of data and given the way AI's function it would be an easy matter for homeowner race to have more weight than home location. If this was indeed the case (and please, I'm not saying it is - I don't know what happened) then it tells you a lot about the quality of the appraisers because, if true, those appraisal companies have in their employ people who do not bother to look at anything other than a computer display. In other words, why bother to employ them - they can be replaced by a big red button.

35margd
mayo 14, 2021, 8:43 am

An informative, but sad, listen--transcript below:

Black Americans And The Racist Architecture Of Homeownership
Ailsa Chang, Christopher Intagliata, Jonaki Mehta | May 8, 2021

44-Minute Listen. Transcript.
This story is part of an NPR series, We Hold These Truths, on American democracy.

...The story of housing discrimination is rooted in a long history of racist government policies perpetuated by the real estate industry and private attitudes that began with slavery. The federal government began to push and expand homeownership in the New Deal era through innovations like the 30-year mortgage.

But one way Black people and other minority groups were left out systematically was through a process known as "redlining" which labeled certain areas as "risky" for a home loan. African Americans and immigrants were relegated to areas, marked in red on government-sponsored maps, where poverty was most concentrated and housing was deteriorating.

...The Fair Housing Act of 1968 recognized segregationist practices like redlining to be unconstitutional. But the law only prohibited future, formalized discrimination rather than undoing the foundationally racist landscape on which homeownership in America was built.

... while Los Angeles, one of California's major metropolises, would become the battleground for hard-fought civil rights victories for Black Americans, it was also a place where housing segregation, predatory real estate practices and exploitative lending thrived.

...One of the most prevalent tools white residents used to maintain the segregation ... was the racially restrictive covenant.

...the 1948 U.S. Supreme Court Case Shelley v. Kraemer, also argued by Miller, that would deem racially restrictive covenants unenforceable...

Blockbusting: How a predatory real estate practice changed the face of Compton

A window of opportunity: Black flight from Compton to the Inland Empire
...a pattern that has now been tracked all over the United States. Several studies have found that Black and Latinx borrowers were charged significantly more for mortgage loans than white borrowers with similar financial situations between 2004 and 2008.

A financial innovation called "mortgage-securitization" incentivized investors to sell as many loans as possible. Lenders would often steer homebuyers who could have qualified for conventional government mortgages into riskier loans that put more money in the lenders' pockets — telling buyers they could have a bigger house, lower payments, or both...

Black homebuyers today pay an unequal price
...researchers at UC Berkeley have been exploring a fourth barrier that has nothing to do with credit risk: outright discrimination.

The researchers analyzed nearly 10 million home loans and found that Black and Latinx borrowers are still being charged more, even after controlling for risk. That means Black and Latinx homebuyers with the same credit score and percent down payment as white homebuyers are still paying more for their loans, despite posing no additional risk to the lender — which amounts to illegal discrimination, based on past court rulings.

The study also found that the higher the concentration of Black or Latinx residents in a neighborhood, the more Black or brown buyers in that neighborhood are overcharged.

The people who were disproportionately targeted belonged to the same communities that had been redlined, locked out of neighborhoods because of racially restrictive covenants, and blockbusted. Now, predatory loans would take away the wealth that so many had spent their lifetimes building...predatory INCLUSION...

...The cumulative effects of these legal policies and discriminatory practices mean Black Americans pay more to own a home — what some experts call a "Black tax" on homeownership. It also means they accumulate less wealth over their lifetimes than white Americans — on the order of tens of thousands of dollars of lost savings and investments, according to an analysis by MIT's Golding and his colleagues.

...Among his first executive orders, President Biden in January directed the Department of Housing and Urban Development "to take steps necessary to redress racially discriminatory federal housing policies."..

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2021/05/08/991535564/black-americans-and...

36margd
Editado: mayo 19, 2021, 5:30 pm

I'd run, too...

‘I’m scared’: AP obtains video of deadly arrest of Black man
JIM MUSTIAN | 5/19/2021

Louisiana state troopers were captured on body camera video stunning, punching and dragging a Black man as he apologized for leading them on a high-speed chase -- footage of the man’s last moments alive that The Associated Press obtained after authorities refused to release it for two years...

https://apnews.com/article/ronald-greene-death-louisiana-eca021d8a54ec73598dd72b...

37John5918
mayo 20, 2021, 12:13 am

‘I am seeking justice’: Tulsa massacre survivor, 107, testifies to US Congress (Guardian)

For nearly a century she was denied a voice by a culture of silence. Finally, at the age of 107, Viola Fletcher got a national stage on Wednesday to bear witness to America’s deep history of racial violence.

Fletcher is the oldest living survivor of a massacre that took place in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on 31 May and 1 June 1921 when a white mob attacked the city’s “Black Wall Street”, killing an estimated 300 African Americans while robbing and burning more than 1,200 businesses, homes and churches. She was just seven years old at the time.

For decades the atrocity was actively covered up and wished away. But Fletcher and her 100-year-old brother are seeking reparations and, ahead of the massacre’s centenary, appeared before a House of Representatives judiciary subcommittee considering legal remedies...

“I will never forget the violence of the white mob when we left our home. I still see Black men being shot, Black bodies lying in the street. I still smell smoke and see fire. I still see Black businesses being burned. I still hear airplanes flying overhead. I hear the screams. I have lived through the massacre every day”...

38John5918
mayo 26, 2021, 2:00 pm

One Year After George Floyd's Killing: Black Catholics Are Exhausted, Yet Hopeful (ACI Africa)

Father Boxie has become a sought-after speaker on the topic. The African American priest has presented not only to groups and parishes in the Archdiocese of Washington, where he serves as chaplain at Howard University, but across the country. “I’m happy to do it, but it gets exhausting,” said Father Boxie.

The fatigue the young priest speaks of isn’t primarily physical, but emotional. He says there is a real burden experienced in repeatedly sharing painful accounts of racism — be they historical, such as opposition to the 1965 episcopal ordination of Harold Perry in New Orleans on the grounds that he was Black, or personal, taken from Father Boxie’s own life.

Despite how tiring the work is, Father Boxie says that “it’s worth it” if it means helping others grasp Catholic teaching on the sin of racism. He’s encouraged by widespread engagement on the issue. “The fact that the conversation is still going almost a year after George Floyd was killed, that’s a sign of hope,” said Father Boxie...

39John5918
mayo 26, 2021, 11:34 pm

>37 John5918: Tulsa massacre: The search for victims, 100 years on (BBC)

A hundred years after white mobs rampaged through an affluent black neighbourhood, the search for bodies is a deeply personal mission for one doctor. "My job," says Dr Phoebe Stubblefield, "is to let the bones speak." Now the forensic anthropologist is at the forefront of the search for victims of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre... "There are not very many black forensic anthropologists," she says. "For Tulsa, it's this rare chance of let a black person use black bodies to tell their story."

As the centenary of the Tulsa massacre approaches, it remains the worst single incident of racial violence in US history... Against a backdrop of racial segregation, Ku Klux Klan rallies and lynchings, on 31 May 1921 armed white mobs went on the rampage in the prosperous black neighbourhood of Greenwood. Dozens, if not hundreds, were killed. Thousands were injured. Homes and businesses were looted and burned to the ground. Within 16 hours the area had been obliterated...

40John5918
Editado: Jun 1, 2021, 12:09 am

Tulsa massacre: Biden urges Americans to reflect on ‘deep roots of racial terror’ (Guardian)

In a speech marking 100 years since the Tulsa race massacre, Joe Biden called on Americans to think upon “the deep roots of racial terror” in the United States and to destroy systemic racism in their society. In hard-hitting words as part of a declaration of a day of remembrance for the hundreds of Black victims of the 1921 mass killing in Oklahoma, Biden used unusually strong language to describe America’s history of racial strife. “On this solemn centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre, I call on the American people to reflect on the deep roots of racial terror in our nation and recommit to the work of rooting out systemic racism across our country,” Biden said in a statement... “The federal government must reckon with and acknowledge the role that it has played in stripping wealth and opportunity from Black communities”...

41John5918
Jul 1, 2021, 12:17 am

Black in the UK. Any similarities in the USA?

‘We kept getting people saying: excuse me, you don’t look gay’ – how Black people fought for a space at Pride (Guardian)

Thirty years ago, a group of Londoners had to battle to get LGBTQ+ people of colour their own place to party at Pride. What started on a ghetto blaster paved the way for today’s UK Black Pride...

42John5918
Editado: Jul 3, 2021, 2:55 am

'Hiking as a black person in the US can be nerve-racking' (BBC)

Mardi is part of Outdoor Afro, an organisation which encourages black nature lovers into the outdoors. The keen hiker has experienced discrimination from some white people while out exploring nature. But she is keen to change the narrative and get more African Americans outside and engaging with nature.


A year ago, Black physicists at Fermilab demanded change. What’s happened? (Science)

Within days of the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on 25 May 2020, five early-career Black physicists at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) began to write what became a 17-page manifesto calling on lab leaders to do more to achieve racial justice and equity.

The manifesto was a daring—and unprecedented—act of public protest by employees of the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) preeminent high-energy physics laboratory. The scientists, all under the age of 40 and none of them tenured, say they knew they lacked institutional clout. But Doug Berry, Jessica Esquivel, Brian Nord, Bryan Ramson, and Tammy Walton could no longer tolerate what they saw as the lab’s failure to provide “a welcoming, equitable, and just work environment for Black people,” they wrote. Transforming an institution at which Black scientists have historically been almost invisible should begin, they continued, by “listening to and doing what Black employees say they need, and not making plans for us without us.” And they chose a name, the Change Now collective, that emphasized their sense of urgency and the importance of united action...

Now, a year later, advocates and others are taking stock of what has been achieved—and what hasn’t. At Fermilab, both Change Now members and lab management say they see some progress in addressing justice and equity issues they spelled out in their June 2020 manifesto. But significant disagreements remain over the needed pace of reform, the transparency of those efforts, and who bears the primary responsibility for catalyzing change...

43John5918
Jul 22, 2021, 12:52 am

Critical race theory: the concept dividing the US (BBC)

Critical race theory has become a topic of fierce political debate in the US in recent months. The conflict has most prominently played out in public school districts, as parents, teachers and school administrators grapple with how to teach race, discrimination and inequality in the classroom.

For supporters, it's an important framework for understanding the way systemic racism can perpetuate discrimination and disadvantage. For opponents, it's a subversive plan to indoctrinate young Americans to reject their country and its history.

To start, there is an inability to even agree on what critical race theory is, where it came from and what it seeks to accomplish. Beneath the rhetoric, however, lies an ongoing fundamental dispute about equality and equity - what these concepts mean, and what government's role should be in addressing them...

44margd
Editado: Jul 29, 2021, 6:34 am

Night driving while black... I remember seeing a teensy white hood on a stake when day driving (hurricane escape road) inland from an international adoptees' reunion on SC coast--with our two children of color in the backseat. Sent chills down this mom's spine, though the responsible piss-ant wasn't worth the emotion I suspect.

Sundown Towns Are Still A Problem For Black Drivers

“It’s when you veer off to the back roads that don't connect to the highway, that's when you find yourself in trouble."
Ade Onibada | July 22, 2021

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/adeonibada/sundown-towns-racism-black-drive...

45John5918
Jul 31, 2021, 12:44 am

‘I was fearful for my safety’: St Louis health official speaks out on racist abuse (Guardian)

A top public health official in a St Louis suburb has spoken out after he was targeted by racist abuse at a council meeting on re-introducing mask mandates to prevent the spread of Covid-19...

46TheToadRevoltof84
Editado: Ago 5, 2021, 2:17 pm

Este miembro ha sido suspendido del sitio.

47kiparsky
Ago 5, 2021, 2:38 pm

>46 TheToadRevoltof84: Just to make sure we're on the same page, can you tell us briefly what you think "systemic racism" actually means?

48TheToadRevoltof84
Ago 5, 2021, 3:44 pm

Este miembro ha sido suspendido del sitio.

49kiparsky
Ago 5, 2021, 4:11 pm

So, you don't have a definition for the term you're using? Got it. Are you sure you're ready for this conversation? It sounds like you need to do some reading.

You're allowed to google if you don't know the answer. I just want to know what you think the phrase that you used means.

50TheToadRevoltof84
Ago 5, 2021, 4:40 pm

Este miembro ha sido suspendido del sitio.

51kiparsky
Ago 5, 2021, 6:25 pm

Okay, so the reason I'm asking you what you think the phrase means is because your claim that it is extremely rare suggests that maybe you don't mean the same thing everyone else means, and I'd like to know what you mean when you use the phrase. And from your response I'm not sure you actually know what you think you mean when you use the phrase, or you would have simply answered the question.

But since we're talking, maybe we can work it out together, and figure out together what it is you think is very rare in America. Let's start with a simple question: do you believe that the claim that "systemic racism exists" implies the existence or influence of people who suffer from racial prejudice? Does systemic racism, in your view, require racists?

52TheToadRevoltof84
Ago 5, 2021, 11:08 pm

Este miembro ha sido suspendido del sitio.

53kiparsky
Ago 6, 2021, 12:09 am

>52 TheToadRevoltof84: Okay, completely unresponsive but at least you're trying, I'll give you credit for that.

So you're saying that you believe that the assumption that black people are "inferior and cannot succeed in our system" is a racist one. Okay, I agree with that, and I'll even assert that if we see differential outcomes by population in a society, there must be an explanation for that, and that that explanation cannot be based on intrinsic inferiority of the populations with the worse outcomes, nor on the superiority of the groups with the better outcomes. That would not only be a racist claim (which you've stated and I've agreed with you there) it would also be an idiotic claim, since to my knowledge no claim of any such intrinsic inferiority or superiority has even been found to stand up to inspection.

I think we agree on all of that, wouldn't you say?

54John5918
Editado: Ago 6, 2021, 7:16 am

>52 TheToadRevoltof84:, >53 kiparsky:

Which is all well and good, but doesn't address "systemic racism", which >46 TheToadRevoltof84: claims "is so rare today". That's why kip's question is so relevant to a sensible conversation - what does The Toad actually mean by the "systemic racism" which "in America is so rare today"?

Incidentally, >46 TheToadRevoltof84: states that "The facts tell me" that this is the case, but in fact only cites one single fact, "One false police report".

Completely off topic, but what was the Toad Revolt of '84? Some left wing liberation struggle by amphibians which passed me be completely?

55TheToadRevoltof84
Editado: Ago 6, 2021, 8:22 am

Este miembro ha sido suspendido del sitio.

56kiparsky
Ago 6, 2021, 9:30 am

>55 TheToadRevoltof84: I take it from your response that you agree with >53 kiparsky:, that it would be both racist and contrary to all available evidence to claim that inherent inferiorities are a valid explanation for different outcomes between different racial groups. Is this correct? (pardon me for repeating the question, but I do want to be sure we're actually in agreement on this point)

57TheToadRevoltof84
Editado: Ago 6, 2021, 11:33 am

Este miembro ha sido suspendido del sitio.

58kiparsky
Ago 6, 2021, 11:38 am

>57 TheToadRevoltof84: Okay, so if we agree on that, then the observed disparities in outcomes, for example economic outcomes, between different populations must spring from some cause which is not an inferiority of the groups experiencing the worse outcomes, right?

This is a straightforward extrapolation from the point on which we have found our hard-won point of agreement, so I don't expect it'll be controversial.

Now, this suggests that either there is a massive campaign by people with individual bias against those groups to deprive them of good outcomes, or there is something systemic, something structural, about our society which produces those outcomes regardless of individual actors' predispositions about those groups. I'll point out that this is an inclusive "or", it's possible that both factors are in play, but at least one must be true.

Are we still in agreement?

59TheToadRevoltof84
Ago 6, 2021, 11:53 am

Este miembro ha sido suspendido del sitio.

60kiparsky
Ago 6, 2021, 12:00 pm

>59 TheToadRevoltof84: Okay, so your theory is that Black people "have not accepted that culture", and that is the explanation for disparities in economic outcomes between Black communities and other communities in the US, is that right?

61TheToadRevoltof84
Ago 6, 2021, 12:02 pm

Este miembro ha sido suspendido del sitio.

62margd
Ago 19, 2021, 5:00 am

Palate-cleansing: dribbling while black :)

Rex Chapman @RexChapman | 5:34 PM · Aug 18, 2021:
This teenager in Canada got a knock on his door from the neighbors and
thought he might be in trouble for dribbling his basketball all hours of the day.

That’s not why they were there.

Please take 2-minutes. Kindness. Humanity. Community. Pass it on…

2:00 / 2:00 ( https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1428108062640979970 )
From
Global Edmonton
---------------------------------------------------------------------

(Canadian Tire is a Canadian retail company which "operates in the automotive, hardware, sports, leisure and housewares sectors." (Wikipedia) It's been around forever, surviving Walmart entry into Canada, etc. Its Jumpstart Charities "helps kids overcome financial and accessibility barriers to sport and recreation in an effort to provide inclusive play for kids of all abilities": https://jumpstart.canadiantire.ca/ )

63John5918
Ago 22, 2021, 12:02 am

‘Racist and flat out wrong’: Texas Republican blames Black Americans for Covid surge (Guardian)

Dan Patrick, the Republican lieutenant governor of Texas, has refused to apologise for blaming rising Covid-19 hospitalisations and deaths on unvaccinated African Americans, comments one Black Houston official called “racist and flat out wrong”... Sylvester Turner, the Democratic mayor of Houston, who is African American, said Patrick’s comments were “offensive and should not be ignored”.,,

64margd
Editado: Ene 26, 2022, 2:02 pm

Harlan M. Krumholz et al. 2022. Racism as a leading cause of death in the United States (Opinion). BMJ 2022;376:o213 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.o213 (Published 25 January 2022) C

During the past year, the dual crises of the covid-19 pandemic and police violence have opened many people’s eyes to the ways in which the political construct of race—and anti-Black racism in particular—continue to determine who lives and who dies in the United States. Moreover, research is showing how little progress we are making in eliminating inequalities... Within medicine, physicians and other healthcare professionals are reckoning with the ways in which research has falsely looked at race as a biological attribute rather than a social construct over centuries, contributing to systems of racism in healthcare delivery. At long last, medical science is declaring that race is not biological, but that racism has profound consequences for health...
___________________________________________________

Police Violence, Health Inequities, and Elevated Risks for Black Women
Tom Kutsch | Jan 21, 2022

Is neighborhood police violence worsening health outcomes for Black women? A new study from researchers at Northwestern University and NorthShore University HealthSystem suggests it could be. The research, published in the journal Science Advances, found that neighborhoods with frequent formal complaints about excessive use of force by police correlated with certain health inequities. Specifically, Black women living in neighborhoods with reports of police violence were 1.2 times more likely to deliver babies preterm and 1.4 times more likely to develop cardiovascular disease. The researchers established those links after accounting for other possible stressors, like neighborhood disadvantage and high rates of homicide. The study also observed a link between elevated use of force complaints and excess risk for preterm delivery in assessing groups of women and comparing multiple births for the same woman. “These findings suggest police violence may be an unrecognized contributor to health inequity for Black women,” the author wrote.

https://www.thetrace.org/newsletter/police-violence-health-inequities-and-elevat...
------------------------------------------------------------------

Alexa A. Freedman et al. 2022. Complaints about excessive use of police force in women’s neighborhoods and subsequent perinatal and cardiovascular health. Science Advances • 19 Jan 2022 • Vol 8, Issue 3 • DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abl5417 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abl5417

Abstract
There are substantial, unexplained racial disparities in women’s health. Some of the most pronounced involve elevated rates of preterm delivery (PTD) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) among Black women. We hypothesized that stress associated with excessive use of force by police may contribute to these disparities. In two prospective cohorts derived from electronic health records (pregnancy cohort, N = 67,976; CVD cohort, N = 6773), we linked formal complaints of excessive police force in patients’ neighborhoods with health outcomes. Exposed Black women were 1.19 times as likely to experience PTD... and 1.42 times as likely to develop CVD ..., even after adjustment for neighborhood disadvantage and homicide. The excess risks of PTD were also observed in maternal fixed-effects analyses comparing births to the same woman. These findings suggest police violence may be an unrecognized contributor to health inequity for Black women.

65John5918
Feb 12, 2022, 7:40 am

US father and son 'chased and shot' black FedEx driver (BBC)

A black delivery driver in Mississippi who says he was pursued and shot at by two white men while on the job has argued that they should face hate crime charges... According to Mr Gibson, he was delivering a FedEx package in Brookhaven, about 55 miles (88km) south of Jackson, Mississippi on 24 January when his van was cut off by a pickup truck as he was pulling out of a driveway. He swerved around it, then encountered a man in the street pointing a gun at him and gesturing for him to pull over. He ducked behind the steering wheel as the man opened fire, he said. Bullets damaged the van and packages inside but no one was hurt in the shooting. Mr Gibson said the two men, identified as father Gregory Charles Case and son Brandon Case, then pursued him, firing more shots, until he got onto the highway to return to the FedEx distribution centre... In his complaint to police, Mr Gibson said he was not taken seriously until he and his manager went to the station the next day to show them the bullet holes in the van. He was wearing a full FedEx uniform, and was driving a marked rental van when it happened, he said...

66John5918
Mar 9, 2022, 10:23 pm

Black Panther Ryan Coogler director mistaken for bank robber (BBC)

The director of hit superhero film Black Panther was mistaken for a bank robber as he tried to take money out of his own account in the US, a police report has revealed. Ryan Coogler was briefly arrested after trying to withdraw $12,000 (£9,100) from the Atlanta bank in January. The teller had reportedly told her boss she suspected an attempted robbery after misinterpreting the situation. Mr Coogler told US outlet TMZ the "situation should never have happened"...

67margd
mayo 2, 2022, 7:41 am

What's the difference between racism in America and South Africa? (3:02)
Trevor Noah, The Daily Show
https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1520674250834784256

68margd
mayo 31, 2022, 7:49 am

On social media, Sweden being bashed for apparent racism (not offering dinner to visiting child, in this case a POC). Led to interesting discussion on cultural differences in hospitality--with maps! Like to see verification, but interesting discussion:

Incompent Beneficiary of Nepotism @WallySierk | 12:58 PM · May 29, 2022:
https://twitter.com/WallySierk/status/1530956689855217665

This is blowing people’s minds, so as an amateur historian and sociologist I’m going to try to explain this development/ cultural artifact.

MAP- will you receive food at someone's home, Europe
https://twitter.com/WallySierk/status/1530956689855217665/photo/1

We can see that there is a strong correlation with The Northern Germanic cultures and it has to do with various adaptations and reactions to the specific honor /shame economy of the Norse “Empire” (what is commonly referred to as Viking culture. ).

This correlates with the strength of this practice in the Scandinavian countries, and the mixed practice in Anglo/Norse/Norman England and Norman France.

In Norse culture, hospitality (providing food, drink, lodging) was a duty of higher status individuals towards people of lower status, but the act of receiving hospitality created an obligation or debt on the part of the recipient.

So, hospitality not only brought honor to the giver, it had the potential to bring shame to the recipient. Norse culture, and as it progressed through the Middle Ages, was incredibly personally violent. People fought duels, violently extracted debts and squeezed renters

One of the challenges of the Protestant church in Scandinavia post 30 years war was to create a culture that tamped down on personal violence and civic unrest. Since the root of a lot of the interpersonal violence was competition for status and extraction of payment

The Church , with the framing of early Protestant Humanists began to promote the ideal of the free member of society, owing no one and owed nothing. If the culture could get rid of the interactions that caused friction, people could live more peaceful lives .

This became much more important in the very difficult 1700/early 1800’s, as population pressure, growing inequality and industrialization pushed a lot of Scandinavians out of the homeland and into America and other colonies. As people left and land changed hands ,

And people signed colonization and settlement contracts, some elites manipulated the debts in order to extract more value from the average person, which crated a lot of pain. When people were able to escape debt, they felt a lot better. So, for the sake of egalitarianism

And reduction of conflict, they created a society that minimized the creation of debt and obligation, and maximized the ability of the individual/family to be self sufficient. This “not feeding the neighbor kids” weirdness Is about maintaining peace in the community.

You see the same ethic in the tales from Lake Woebegone , the passive aggression is small town Denmark and Minnesota, the stereotype of the Norwegian fisherman quietly drinking to keep from dealing with trauma, the ethics of Janteloven- it’s all about minimizing

Interpersonal conflict and maintaining civic peace. I personally think it needs to be moderated in order for people to live healthy complete lives, but I hope that the revulsion that many people were expressing will be tempered by understanding the source of it.
-----------------------------------------------------------

Djura Malevic @DjuraMalevic | 4:27 AM · May 31, 2022
MAP-traditional family systems in Europe ( https://twitter.com/DjuraMalevic/status/1531553041396244481/photo/1 )

Simon Kuestenmacher @simongerman600 | 6:05 PM · May 21, 2022:
Alcohol death rates in Europe. Apparently very low in cultures where drunkenness is frowned upon and where alcohol is only consumed in company of others and served alongside meals. Spain and Italy for example. Source: https://buff.ly/3wDQcRz
MAP- alcohol death rates, Europe ( https://twitter.com/simongerman600/status/1528134802859126785/photo/1 )

aziz gilani @TexasVC | 8:41 AM · May 30, 2022
Almost perfect correlation between current+former Muslim countries and hospitality.
Map-will you receive food ( https://twitter.com/TexasVC/status/1531254393747693568/photo/1 )
Map-Ottoman Empire ca 1400 ( https://twitter.com/TexasVC/status/1531254393747693568/photo/2 )
Map-https://twitter.com/TexasVC/status/1531254393747693568/photo/3
Map-https://twitter.com/TexasVC/status/1531254393747693568/photo/4

Serving a meal to your guest is literally written into many Muslim codes:
Coming from the desert, hospitality is an obligation to ensure survival. Not serving food is a grave offense. Etiquette codes actually focus on the opposite problem, reminding guests not to overstay beyond the host's means!
Text excerpt ( https://twitter.com/TexasVC/status/1531286822084567040/photo/1 )

فيفي @Fifi_the_Fl0wer | 10:45 PM · May 30, 2022:
no actually… it came specifically from bedouin tradition

69John5918
mayo 31, 2022, 8:12 am

>68 margd:

What's POC in a Swedish context? In South Sudan it denotes "Protection of Civilians", as in the POC camps run by the UN.

I fully agree that offering food and hospitality is an obligation in desert (and many other) cultures in Africa and the Arab world. That has been my experience in Sudan. But it's painful watching international staff from NGOs, UN, embassies, etc (and on some occasions even churches) being welcomed into the homes of local people, where they are feasted and feted, yet when those same local people approach an international compound they can't even get near the gate before being chased away by security personnel.

70jjwilson61
mayo 31, 2022, 7:18 pm

>69 John5918: POC = Person of color

71John5918
Jun 1, 2022, 12:07 am

>70 jjwilson61:

Ah, thanks. Silly of me not to think of that, but then it's a term which isn't in common usage on this continent.

722wonderY
Editado: Jul 1, 2022, 2:54 pm

Akron, Ohio

Eight police officers, one young black man fleeing an attempted traffic stop, possibly 60 bullet wounds. Jayland Walker was a DoorDash driver.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/clarissajanlim/akron-ohio-police-shooting-j...

Oh, and afterward, they handcuffed him.

73John5918
Jul 24, 2022, 12:16 am

Meet Elijah McCoy, The Pioneering Black Engineer Whose Inventions Inspired The Phrase ‘The Real McCoy’ (ati)

In 1872, Elijah McCoy created a tiny device that automatically lubricated steam engines while they were running — and revolutionized the railroad industry in the process... Eight years of rigorous training prepared McCoy for a career as an engineer. But when he returned to America after the Civil War, McCoy could not find a job. Companies weren’t willing to hire Black engineers... In the post-Civil War era, Black men and women were still excluded from professional jobs... Instead of working as an engineer, McCoy took a job at Michigan Central Railboard as a fireman and oiler... At the time, locomotives required frequent manual oiling... McCoy created a lubrication cup that evenly and automatically distributed oil across every moving part. Instead of frequently stopping for maintenance, locomotives could run for significantly longer... Dozens imitated McCoy’s device. But the original lubricator worked much better than the knockoffs. Railroad engineers would specifically ask for McCoy’s oil drip cup to avoid inferior products. Engineers would ask for “the real McCoy” – and soon, the phrase became popular to describe any genuine article over a cheap knockoff...


74margd
Ago 9, 2022, 3:28 am

Black in preschool...

Do Early Educators’ Implicit Biases Regarding Sex and Race
Relate to Behavior Expectations and Recommendations of
Preschool Expulsions and Suspensions?
A RESEARCH STUDY BRIEF
Walter S. Gilliam, PhD
Angela N. Maupin, PhD
Chin R. Reyes, PhD
Maria Accavitti, BS
Frederick Shic, PhD
Yale University Child Study Center // September 28, 2016

Abstract
Preschool expulsions and the disproportionate expulsion of Black boys have gained attention
in recent years, but little has been done to understand the underlying causes behind this
issue. This study examined the potential role of preschool educators’ implicit biases as a viable
partial explanation behind disparities in preschool expulsions.

Participants were recruited at a large conference of early educators and completed two tasks.
In Task 1, participants were primed to expect challenging behaviors (although none were present) while watching a video of preschoolers, balanced by sex and race, engaging in typical activities, as the participants’ eye gazes were tracked. In Task 2, participants read a standardized vignette of a preschooler with challenging behavior and were randomized to receive the vignette with the child’s name implying either a Black boy, Black girl, White boy, or White girl, as well as randomized to
receive the vignette with or without background information on the child’s family environment.

Findings revealed that when expecting challenging behaviors teachers gazed longer at Black
children, especially Black boys. Findings also suggested that implicit biases may differ depending
on teacher race. Providing family background information resulted in lowered severity ratings
when teacher and child race matched, but resulted in increased severity ratings when their race
did not match. No differences were found based on recommendations regarding suspension or
expulsion, except that Black teachers in general recommended longer periods of disciplinary
exclusion regardless of child gender/race. Recommendations for future research and policy
regarding teacher training are offered.

...Conclusions and Implications
Preschool expulsions and suspensions disproportionately deny access to early education to boys, Blacks, and especially Black boys. The findings in the current study attempt to elucidate underlying processes that contribute to the well-documented racial disparities in school readiness and subsequent
educational- and later-life achievement and opportunity. Fortunately, recent research suggests that implicit biases may be reduced through interventions designed to either address biases directly or increase teachers’ empathy for children. Useful guiding principles by which early educators may explore and discover their own implicit biases and strive to deliver more equitable services
may also prove helpful.

In the course of teacher-family interactions, early educators may learn more about the struggles, and strengths, of the families they serve. However, it seems likely that teachers may benefit from increased training and ongoing guidance, perhaps through services such as early childhood mental health consultation, to understand how best to use this information, increase their empathic
understanding of the child, and avoid feelings of hopelessness, especially when teacher and child race do not match. Given the significance of this issue, serious consideration should be given to a potential role for evidence-based bias-reducing interventions as a core component of preservice and ongoing in-
service early childhood teacher training.

Also, greater home school collaboration and parental involvement in Head Start programs has been shown to predict less harsh child discipline by parents and improved school behaviors, raising the question of whether greater connections between parents and early educators may also predict less
harsh discipline (e.g., expulsions and suspensions) by early educators. Indeed, very recent efforts to reduce exclusionary school discipline practices through scalable and near zero-cost interventions designed to increase middle school teachers’ capacities for student empathy have yielded very promising results in terms of decreased suspension rates. Future work in this area should explore
the potential protective effects of better home-preschool connections and early educators’ emotional connectedness to the parents and families they serve and the impact this may have on preschool expulsions and suspensions.

Biases are inherent attributes that all humans possess and form naturally through the course of everyday interactions and exposure to media. These biases can become very harmful, however, when beliefs about groups lead to unquestioned assumptions about individuals within those groups, especially when empathic responses do not engage. When these assumptions lead to important decisions regarding how we choose to educate our youngest citizen learners, or deny educational opportunities through preschool expulsions and suspensions, the potential for lasting harm is great.

752wonderY
Ago 10, 2022, 5:03 pm

>74 margd: I saw this firsthand in my older daughter’s kindergarten class. There was a bright and charming black boy with lots of energy and curiosity. It didn’t seem excessive to me. The times I was in the classroom, the white female teacher came down harshly on him for perceived behavior issues.
We moved away within a couple of years, but I’ve sometimes wondered how he fared.

76margd
Ago 23, 2022, 11:45 am

>75 2wonderY: I’ve sometimes wondered how he fared

Expectations can have a huge effect on students. There's a study that showed just asking a student's gender on a math test was enough to knock a significant amount off girls' scores!
_____________________________________________

Maryland: selling home while black

Home Appraised With a Black Owner: $472,000. With a White Owner: $750,000.
Debra Kamin | Aug. 18, 2022

Nathan Connolly and his wife, Shani Mott, say an appraisal company undervalued their home based on their race. The couple has filed a lawsuit in Maryland...

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/18/realestate/housing-discrimination-maryland.ht...

77John5918
Sep 3, 2022, 1:16 pm

Watering flowers while Black: A pastor shares his story of wrongful arrest (NPR)

When Michael Jennings went over to his out-of-town neighbors' house to water their plants, he thought he was just doing a simple, straightforward act of kindness. But when Jennings, 56, saw that officers from Alabama's Childersburg Police Department had arrived, he knew that the situation would take a turn. "When they first pulled up, I already knew that it was gonna be something," Jennings said in an interview with NPR... "{The officer} parked around back and walked around front. And immediately, you could tell by the tone of his voice I was already guilty," he said... "I'm supposed to be here. I'm Pastor Jennings. I live across the street," Jennings told an officer, in newly released body camera footage of his arrest obtained by NPR... Following Jennings' arrest and being placed in handcuffs, an unidentified neighbor — the same one who called authorities about Jennings being a "suspicious person" — told the police officers that she recognized him. "He lives right there, and he would be watering their flowers. This is probably my fault," the neighbor told officers.But despite the unidentified woman telling officers she indeed knew Jennings, he was still arrested and charged...

78John5918
Sep 4, 2022, 12:44 am

Not a wonderful world: Louis Armstrong tapes reveal how racism scarred his life and career (Guardian)

Audio diaries including previously unheard material tell of the jazz giant’s anger over the prejudice he faced...

79Molly3028
Editado: Sep 4, 2022, 11:31 am

https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/3625822-water-crisis-in-jackson-mi...
Water crisis in Jackson, Miss., raises concerns about environmental racism

***
This has been decades in the making and climate change has likely moved their plight to the front burner.

80John5918
Ene 19, 2023, 11:09 pm

Ron DeSantis bans African American studies class from Florida high schools (Guardian)

Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, has rejected a new advanced placement course in African American studies from being taught on high school campuses. He argues that the course violates state law and “lacks educational value”. This move is the latest in a series of actions to keep conversations and lessons about race, sexuality and gender identity off the state’s school campuses...

81MartyBrandon
Feb 24, 2023, 12:39 am

>80 John5918: While I don't like politicians meddling about with academic curricula, the objection was about the ideological slant in the course, which included topics like black queer theory while excluding black conservatism. The course was approved after a few minor changes were made, but there was no media coverage of that.

82Molly3028
Feb 25, 2023, 1:24 pm

https://www.mediaite.com/entertainment/watch-cnns-chris-wallace-gets-schooled-on...
CNN’S Chris Wallace Gets Schooled on How MAGA Can Be Considered ‘A Racist Remark’ By Bryan Cranston

I…when I see the Make America Great Again, my comment is, do you, do you…Do you accept that that could possibly be construed as a racist remark? And most people, a lot of people go, how could that be racist make America great again? I said, so just ask yourself from, from an African American experience, when was it ever great in America for the African American? When was it great? So if you’re making it great again, it’s not including them.

So it’s, it’s to teach us in the woke world to open up and accept the possibilities that our privilege has created blind spots for us. And maybe I haven’t seen what is really happening yet in all my years.

83kiparsky
Feb 25, 2023, 3:28 pm

>81 MartyBrandon: I would disagree with the idea that the changes were a response to an "ideological slant". If we consider African American studies to be a legitimate discipline, and I do, then it's worth noting that the changes more or less defeat the entire purpose of offering an AP course in that discipline, since a student can pass the AP exam, and get credit for the course, without learning anything about essential topics and notable figures in African American studies. That is, the AP African American studies curriculum proposed by the College Board is useless for anyone seeking to prepare for work in African American studies.
Far from being a critique of an "ideological slant", the changes were an ideologically driven rejection of African American studies as a discipline, pushed through by the Sleepy movement, driven I suspect by a desire to rub the tummies of their Lost Cause contingent. It's just another dog-whistle, really.

84MartyBrandon
Feb 28, 2023, 2:56 pm

>83 kiparsky: I agree that it was politically motivated: DeSantis is trying to gain favor with the MAGA contingent of his base as well as moderates suffering from "woke fatigue". However, the curriculum changes were made without much of a fight and did not seem that significant (I only skimmed the content of the original course), which suggests that the College Board knew the course was biased and played along with the political stunt to just get on with it. If not, then how do you explain the absence of black conservatism in the initial curriculum? What essential tops do you think were left on the cutting floor? My understanding is that most of the contentious material was made optional, allowing some freedom of the local district to tailor the course.

85kiparsky
Mar 2, 2023, 1:41 am

>84 MartyBrandon: Sorry about the slow reply.

I'm basing my take on the reporting from the Times, mainly this article
According to this article, the changes included the following:


The College Board purged the names of many Black writers and scholars associated with critical race theory, the queer experience and Black feminism. It ushered out some politically fraught topics, like Black Lives Matter, from the formal curriculum.
...
the study of contemporary topics — including Black Lives Matter, incarceration, queer life and the debate over reparations — is downgraded. The subjects are no longer part of the exam
...
The expunged writers and scholars include Kimberlé W. Crenshaw, a law professor at Columbia, which touts her work as “foundational in critical race theory”; Roderick Ferguson, a Yale professor who has written about queer social movements; and Ta-Nehisi Coates, the author who has made the case for reparations for slavery. Gone, too, is bell hooks, the writer who shaped discussions about race, feminism and class.


In other words, most of the things that make up the current discourse in and around the discipline are now either out or "downgraded" - and the "downgraded" topics apparently may be omitted completely if they're considered too triggering for local state legislators.

My understanding is that most of the contentious material was made optional, allowing some freedom of the local district to tailor the course.

According to the article "downgraded" material is "simply offered on a list of options for a required research project" - and this material can be cut if local legislation requires it, which means it will certainly not be part of the curriculum in the Sleepy states. So what remains will likely top out with the Civil Rights movement, which was about 60 years ago, and a unit on hip-hop culture.

As I understand it, the purpose of an AP course is to allow students to start pursuing second-year undergrad courses as college freshmen by giving them the intro course while they're in high school. To my mind, an intro African American Studies course that didn't spend some time on the issues that the field has been wrestling with for the last twenty years is simply not fit for purpose.

how do you explain the absence of black conservatism in the initial curriculum

I don't think that actually needs a lot of explaining: it's simply not a topic that needs a whole lot of covering. There are conservative Black figures who should certainly be discussed - for example, Clarence Thomas takes some explaining - but "Black conservativism" isn't actually a movement that's had a whole lot of traction that anyone can detect. I can't imagine why it was included in the revised curriculum, actually.

Well, okay, if I'm being honest I guess I can imagine.

86MartyBrandon
Mar 3, 2023, 10:45 am

>85 kiparsky:
We agree on the facts, but may differ on the interpretation.

Black Americans espousing conservative principles go all the way back to Frederick Douglas. There have been many prominent conservative Black public figures and intellectuals. Nearly 10% of Black Americans vote Republican, while many (including the 20% of Black Americans who are first or second generation immigrants) are socially conservative. Though it would be a mistake to exaggerate its importance, omitting it while including Black Queer theory seems like an obvious ideological red flag. Similarly, including Kimberle Crenshaw and Ta-Nehisi Coates, while omitting authors like Thomas Sowell, Glen Loury, or Shelby Steele raises similar concerns about bias.

This was a political maneuver, but not racist dog-whistling. It helped DeSantis to build credibility with the MAGAs, while nudging the course curriculum to be slightly less ideologically biased. The overall effect on the course was negligible. I think the greater concern is with setting a precedent for politicians to begin actively meddling in academia.

One final point that I'm a little unsure about. I saw the course reported as "AP African American History", but I see that many sources describe it as "African American Studies". I think the distinction is relevant because topics like Black Lives Matter and Critical Race Theory are not yet historic: they are current events. More time is needed to know how they are interpreted within a historic context. Debating them within a discussion of ongoing struggles seems appropriate, while teaching them as historic fact is not.

87jjwilson61
Mar 3, 2023, 2:55 pm

>86 MartyBrandon: Black Lives Matter may be a current event, but I believe that Critical Race Theory isn't an event but an interpretation of history and thus falls squarely in the purview of a history class

88kiparsky
Mar 3, 2023, 3:51 pm

>86 MartyBrandon: I would not deny that there have been Black conservatives in America, in fact I would presume that they have been here as long as there have been Black people in America, by some pretty simple reasoning: Since "conservative" is simply resistance to change and a desire to go back to "the way things used to be", presumably every Black person brought to America in the hold of a slaver's ship was a conservative, in that they would have had every reason to deplore this change and want to go back to the way things used to be!
While that might seem a bit too cute for you, I agree that at every stage in history, there have been Black people advocating positions that we could call, in the context of their time, conservative. However, I still don't see that there's a need for a distinct unit on "Black Conservativism" - particularly since there aren't distinct modules on other ideological strains. I would want to see those voices discussed in the context of the issues, rather than split off into a separate unit.

As for the course name, I've only seen it reported as "Studies" but it's entirely possible that the official name is "History". However, I'm not sure that makes as much difference as you suggest it should. "History" is not chronology, it's not the study of the past, it's the study of events in their context. It's quite normal in history courses to apply the techniques of history to contemporary or recent events. Furthermore, although the white popular culture only noticed it pretty recently, "Black Lives Matter" is only the recent tip of a long series of events. "Driving while Black" was a term used for arbitrary harassment of Black drivers at least twenty years ago, and the story of the Green Book tells us that that history goes back through the entire history of the automobile in America. Michael Brown was executed in 2014, but he was far from the first Black man to be shot in cold blood by a police officer. In other words, there is plenty of historical context for the material that we now summarize with the recent label "Black Lives Matter". To me it seems not only appropriate to include it, it seems that whether you call it "Studies" or as "History", the course is a mockery if it pretends that this is not critical to the Black experience in America.

As an aside, it's interesting to see you giving Douglass as an example of a conservative, since he's never struck me as someone committed to conservative principles. Booker T. Washington, perhaps, but Douglass always seemed to me more of a radical, for example in his support for women's suffrage. (As an aside to the aside, I'm never quite sure that there are such things as "conservative principles", since the nature of conservativism is simply to resist change - for example, a conservative in 2023 is a supporter of women's suffrage, because their grandmothers had it, but in Douglass' time, they could not have been. Similarly, a conservative in 2023 is a supporter of abortion rights, because it's an established fact in American law, and ending them is a radical act. It's hard to see how there's a principle there)

89John5918
Mar 4, 2023, 8:33 am

US sues Exxon over five nooses found at Louisiana plant (BBC)

The US government has sued Exxon Mobil for failing to address racial discrimination after multiple nooses were found at a worksite in Louisiana. A black employee, Milferd McGhee, discovered a noose at the Baton Rouge plant in January 2020 and reported it, a lawsuit filed on Thursday said. Exxon failed to prevent the harassment, as another noose was found in December 2020, the lawsuit alleged. It was the fifth noose to be discovered at the plant from 2016 to 2020. The lawsuit - filed by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) - alleges the oil giant violated federal law by investigating some but not all of the incidents involving nooses at the Baton Rouge chemical plant, leading to "a racially hostile work environment". "A noose is a longstanding symbol of violence associated with the lynching of African Americans," said Elizabeth Owen, an attorney with the EEOC in New Orleans. "Such symbols are inherently threatening and significantly alter the workplace environment for black Americans." When employers become aware of racially offensive or threatening behaviour in the workplace, they have "a legal obligation to take prompt, remedial action aimed at stopping it," said Rudy Sustaita, an attorney with the EEOC's Houston, Texas office...

90MartyBrandon
Mar 5, 2023, 2:27 am

>88 kiparsky: "As an aside to the aside, I'm never quite sure that there are such things as "conservative principles", since the nature of conservativism is simply to resist change - for example, a conservative in 2023 is a supporter of women's suffrage, because their grandmothers had it, but in Douglass' time, they could not have been."

I think that is a popular mischaracterization of conservatism and partly to blame for our societal rift.

Conservatism may slow progress, but it is also about preserving and incrementally extending what has already been achieved. Frederick Douglas split from his more radical abolitionist ally William Loyd Garrison when he realized that it was unnecessary to rebuild the nation upon a different foundation because the principles of equality were already baked into the Declaration of Independence with the phrase "all men are created equal". We simply needed to broaden Jefferson's original meaning and live up to that ideal -- a conservative stance. A similar expansion of the concept took place with women's suffrage.

While it's true that principles exist within a given context, conservatism, in the American context, is anchored to the classical liberalism that shaped our nation's founding: equality and the rule of law; the safeguarding of individual liberties from government encroachment; and free-market capitalism. In contrast, progressivism is improvised and reactionary since it is either employed to correct a perceived shortcoming or derived from a utopian vision of the future.

This is not a polemic against progressivism. Conservatism and progressivism are the yin and yang of governance, and there is an inherent tension between the two. Too much conservatism may lead to perpetuation of injustice, but too much progressivism leads to volatility and uncertainty (you cannot build a house on quicksand).

Throughout most of my life, the greatest threat to clearly understanding the world came from conservatives who advocated creationism over evolution or undermined climate science, but more recently both left and right have begun prioritizing feelings over facts and refuse to tolerate dissenting views to their own ideological convictions. Right-wingers have their own media echo chambers providing an endless stream of conspiracy theories and factoids for "owning the libs", while liberals have adopted the religion of virtue signaling that requires one to affirm any grievance voiced by a member of a marginalized group or risk being slandered and cancelled at the hands of a Twitter mob.

Just as I think it is wrong to dismiss climate science because it conflicts with your religion, it is also wrong to label someone a racist because they do not completely agree with your interpretation of history. If you engage in this sort demonization of your ideological adversaries, then you are helping to pave the way for the return of The Donald.

As an aside, I think Francis Fukuyama gives a good summary of America's founding ideology and how we have arrived at our current social predicament in his book Liberalism and Its Discontents.

91MartyBrandon
Mar 5, 2023, 2:29 am

>87 jjwilson61: Point taken. My understanding is that CRT has been an academic lens of analysis for some time, while its recent incorporation into popular culture is (possibly) a historic event of significance.

92kiparsky
Editado: Mar 5, 2023, 12:21 pm

>90 MartyBrandon: Interesting. We're getting off of the topic of "Black in America" here, but for me the clue is in the name: "conservative" is about resisting any change until it is absolutely forced upon you and then complaining about it until you die, at which point future conservatives will adopt the changed state as the thing that absolutely must not change. Yhat's the through line of conservativism, historically - it's why Teddy Roosevelt's founding of the National Parks is in line with Burke's qualms about the French revolution and the American loyalists' fears of independence on the one side and the bigots who resisted emancipation and then later civil rights. All of these are conservative positions, in that they are about never changing the state of things that existed when one reached adulthood. At least, that's what I learned about conservatives when I was a kid in school, and it's more or less what conservatives say about themselves when they're trying to make themselves presentable in polite society, though they usually put a slightly more self-congratulatory spin on it.

Now, if that's not what "conservative" means, then I'd be interested in knowing what you consider to be "conservative principles". I'm not trying to make a trick question out of this, and I know there isn't going to be a cohesive answer that covers everyone who is considered or who considers themselves a conservative, just as we'd both struggle to find a globally-acceptable characterization of liberalism or progressivism. (or should I say "liberism" and "progressism", in line with the weirdly malformed "conservatism"?) But it would be interesting to know how you characterize the conservative world view if it isn't about a knee-jerk fear of change (or, in other words, a conviction that the world is just fine as it is, thank you very much)

But perhaps this should be split off into its own thread though: is "conservative" a world view (a general position about how politics should happen, eg, "progress should be slowed down as much as possible and resisted by any means necessary") or is it just a set of particular preferences about policy and culture which may be continuously deformed over time, eg, "boo abortion, yay guns, down with woke" in 2023, but something else entirely in 1973 or 2073? And if it's a world view, is it possible to characterize that world view in a way that is both acceptable to conservatives and also predicts the positions held by actual conservatives?

You could ask the same question about "liberal" or "progressive", of course - but this is definitely off-topic at this point. Forking to this topic if you feel like carrying on in this direction.

So, did my argument about the need to include Black Lives Matter (and by extension, the long history of the use of authorized and semi-authorized violence to control Black populations) make sense to you?

93kiparsky
Mar 7, 2023, 11:38 am

MartyBrandon says (here):

No argument about the need to teach the long history of prejudicial violence used in law enforcement, and that's where the focus should be, not on BLM. You have it backwards. It's like saying, we need to teach about PETA and by extension animal rights. Our justice system has many problems that disproportionately impact the Black community, and there are statistics to back this up; however, the claims of BLM are controversial and not well supported. It should be an addendum, if it is included at at, and its prominence in the original curriculum suggests ideological bias.


I think we can probably agree to agree on this one. We should teach the long history of prejudicial violence in law enforcement, and I'm sure you'd also agree, in violation of the law to enforce racist cultural norms - that is, lynching as a tool of terror to conserve the existing social order and ensure that the Black community remained in its assigned place.
Where we probably disagree would be on the relationship between these two strains of violence. I believe, and I think it's a belief that's both widely held and well supported, that the connection between the two is a close one, and that it needs to be examined seriously and closely, and without fear of giving offense to "our boys in blue" - a fear which I believe has prevented many well-meaning people who consider themselves to be "conservative" (whatever we determine that to mean, that's their self-perception) and "on the right" (which may or may not mean the same thing) from approaching this two-pronged terror campaign with the seriousness it greatly requires. But whatever your position on that, clearly the Black Lives Matter movement is a response to the long history and to the contemporary fact of prejudicial violence in law enforcement, so it belongs in that discussion. It's an integral part of that history and should be taught with it - as should the prison abolition movement, which cannot be separated from it.

To use your analogy, if we decided to teach animal rights, then it would be very odd if we didn't talk about PETA. Similarly, if we want to talk about systematized violence against the Black community, it would be very odd if we didn't talk about Black Lives Matter.

the claims of BLM are controversial and not well supported

I find it interesting that you feel that this is an objection to including that movement as part of the study of the history that we're talking about. Surely that'd be all the more reason to examine the movement carefully, wouldn't it? Studying a movement as a part of history does not mean ratifying its claims wholesale, and it doesn't mean canonizing all of its adherents. It means understanding where it came from, how it arose, what it did, and what effect it had. Done honestly, this will probably make a lot of people uncomfortable, but that's not a reason not to do it.

94MartyBrandon
Mar 9, 2023, 1:37 am

>93 kiparsky: "I find it interesting that you feel that this is an objection to including that movement as part of the study of the history that we're talking about. Surely that'd be all the more reason to examine the movement carefully, wouldn't it?"

Yes, a properly constructed course does exactly this -- encourages one to examine historical events from more than one vantage point, to assess the underlying motivations and grievances, and to the degree possible arrive at a balanced understanding of what transpired. But the course was evidently not designed to do this. Coleman Hughes recently hosted a roundtable discussion of DeSantis' anti-woke antics. They mentioned not only the course structure, but its reading list, which came from a narrow range of the ideological spectrum, as further evidence of bias. Here is the episode in case you are interested in a thoughtful discussion of the issue:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ron-desantis-war-on-wokeness-with-kmele-fo...

Though I value academic integrity, my interest in this was principally political. DeSantis is best positioned to challenge Trump for the Republican nomination, thereby ensuring that we will be spared another Trump presidency (Democrats have pinned our hopes on a frail octogenarian). In order to woo some of the ~30% of republicans committed to Trump, DeSantis is engaged in Trumpian performances that are mostly symbolic, such as lowering the flag for Limbaugh, "don't say gay", and calling out wokeness in African American history. Given the current academic climate, it would be surprising to open any history book and not find ideological bias, and I believe it was a mistake for DeSantis to choose African American History as his target since this would predictably lead to accusations of racism.

This was political theater that actually nudged the curriculum in a more balanced direction, and calling it racism or a suppression of Black history is reactionary nonsense. I'd like to live in a world where wise academicians write the course curriculum and politicians stick to politicking, but if DeSantis' game stays benign and helps to bring the republican party back to a more centrist and viable option, I'm okay with it. A democracy is not healthy when one of the ballot options is dangerous and crazy.

95kiparsky
Mar 9, 2023, 2:55 am

>94 MartyBrandon: I do not believe for a moment that it was a mistake for Desantis to choose African American History, it was clearly a deliberate choice. I have no idea whether Governor Snowflake personally maintains a bias against Black people, but he knows damned well that he couldn't be elected as dogcatcher without the racist vote, so he went out to get it, the same way he chose to court the racist anti-immigrants and the homophobic and transphobic vote, and the misogynist vote.

> nudged the curriculum in a more balanced direction

"Balance"? That's actually a bit funny. I've gotten so used to conservatives wailing and gnashing their teeth about the loss of "objectivity" in academia, and now you're telling me that you think we should tailor students' coursework for "balance"? I actually don't think that makes a lot of sense. There's history, there's stuff that happened, we shouldn't pretend it didn't happen just because it makes Governor Snowflake feel bad.

> calling it racism or a suppression of Black history is reactionary nonsense

Personally, I don't think that single-word explanations are much use, which is why I haven't said those sort of simplistic things. But let's look at what happened and see if we can work out what we think, like reasonable people.

A course was designed by people who actually teach in the field, and it was changed because a politician wanted to score some points. Clearly we agree on that, since you say exactly the same thing in your last paragraph. The points that he was scoring were clearly those of the Trump supporters that he's trying to peel off, as you say. The changes he demanded, and got, were ones designed to make White southerners feel less bad about things they, for the most part, didn't do and in a lot of cases weren't even alive for. That's pretty much all there is to his race policy: all these bad Black and Brown people should just stop making White people feel bad. (I can just hear him now: "For pete's sake, haven't they suffered enough??")

Okay, so what do you think was going on? Do you think that the Trump voters that Governor Snowflake is courting are on the whole fiercely concerned with academic rigor and that they identified serious flaws in the College Board's curriculum, and that's what got the good Governor all riled up? Of course not, let's not be ridiculous. This is not and never has been about academics. He's trying to get one over on someone, the question is what and on whom?

My view is not what you seem to think it is - I actually think that you're looking at entirely the wrong thing here. Snowflake's target here isn't Black people, though that aspect probably doesn't hurt him in going after that critical segment of Trump's base. What Snowflake really wants is for people to see him going up against the "elites" - that is, people who went to ivy-league schools like Yale and Harvard. To me, this is the same sort of pose that all politicians use - the blue jeans and the feed cap and the carefully chosen cultural reference to signal that you're "of the people". The racial aspects of it, for him, are not the point, they're just an incidental bonus. Really, he wants to be seen striking a blow for ignorance. And, to be fair, it's working.

96MartyBrandon
Mar 11, 2023, 12:09 am

>95 kiparsky: "What Snowflake really wants is for people to see him going up against the "elites" - that is, people who went to ivy-league schools like Yale and Harvard. "

"Snowflake" is a graduate of Harvard, but I would agree that he wants to be seen as opposing the elites, particularly the finger-wagging sort who know nothing about conservatism but nonetheless feel certain that any action taken by a conservative must be rooted in racism.

". . . and it was changed because a politician wanted to score some points. Clearly we agree on that,"

Yes, we do agree on this. I've written it a couple of times now. And I don't particularly like it, but it did have the side-effect of nudging the course in the needed direction.

97kiparsky
Mar 11, 2023, 12:57 am

>96 MartyBrandon: "Snowflake" is a graduate of Harvard

Yes, and also Yale. That's exactly my point: he wants to pretend that he isn't a member of the "ivory tower elite", which of course he is. Obviously, education at an institution of that sort codes as "liberal" in the weird game of cultural bullshit that we see played out today, and that's why he does what he does. There isn't a principle at work here, and he has obviously got no interest in African American History one way or another, this is just a way to pander to those members of his base who are stupid enough to fall for it. But also, as a consequence, I find myself agreeing with you that his action is not motivated by his racism - though it's not hard to see that it's motivated by his assumptions about the racism of those whose votes he's hoping to get by lying to them about who he is and what he's done.

(I use the term "Snowflake", incidentally, because that seems to be the term applied in his milieu to someone who spends an inordinate amount of time whining and moaning about imagined slights and generally can't cope with living in a world where people disagree with them. If the shoe fits, it's sauce for the gander, or whatever the saying is)

the finger-wagging sort

This is a bit rich, if you don't mind me saying so. Governor Snowflake seems to spend his entire time in "finger-wagging" of one sort or another. In fact, that seems to be his main strategy for getting people to pay attention to him. In fact, the reason we're talking about this now is precisely because of an episode of "finger-wagging" that he indulged in - and a very successful one, too. He's also given the benefit of his powerful finger to a lot of drag queens, a number of Venezuelan immigrants, the Disney corporation, and who knows who else. If there's anyone who counts as "the finger-wagging sort", this is the guy.

Yes, we do agree on this. I've written it a couple of times now.

I know that. I always rejoice when I can find a point of agreement and underscore those points, because I prefer a collaborative effort to seek consensus to the sort of silly shouting match that make up so much of what passes for political discourse today, both on this forum and in the wider world.

Where we disagree is on the question of whether an academic curriculum should be written by professionals in the field, or by politicians nursing the more outre grievances of their electorate. I think when teaching history, we should be looking at the facts of the matter, and I don't think we should be omitting those facts that the more sensitive souls of the South object to just because they find reality makes them feel bad.

98John5918
Mar 11, 2023, 6:48 am

Florida's battle over how race is taught in schools (BBC)

Florida is leading a national movement by Republicans to reshape how and what schoolchildren are taught about race. Governor Ron DeSantis is spearheading the crackdown on what he calls "woke" ideology. But teachers in the state told the BBC that the changes have had a chilling effect, with many fearing they may break the law if they discuss the realities of US history...

99BaileyHercus
Mar 11, 2023, 6:55 am

Este usuario ha sido eliminado por spam.

100MartyBrandon
Mar 13, 2023, 4:05 am

>97 kiparsky: That's exactly my point: he wants to pretend that he isn't a member of the "ivory tower elite", which of course he is.

In the conservative mind, he isn't an elite. Conservatives respect wealth, particularly if it is self-made, and to a lesser extent education, so long as it is in something considered useful. They use "elite" pejoratively for people who look down on them and want to tell them what to think and how to behave (that's the finger-wagging).

I agree that DeSantis is engaged in a whole range of performative acts to curry favor with the extreme elements of the republican base, which includes some unsavory characters. While I don't have any insight into his true character, my guess is that he makes MAGA noises because he has to in order to get the republican nomination. And that's good for us. It means that someone more centrist and less crazy than most MAGAs has found a winning strategy. DeSantis has at least one outstanding attribute: he isn't Trump.

101kiparsky
Mar 14, 2023, 7:52 pm

>100 MartyBrandon: Well, we're drifting steadily away from the topic again, but I feel like some of that requires a response.

Frankly, I think if I'd said to you that conservatives were a cultural group and not an intellectual leaning, you'd have objected to that, but you've made that premise implicit in your reply. So I don't know what to do with that at all. The point about conservatives not caring much about the meanings of words and preferring emotional rather than rational language, I'm also fine with that but again, I don't think that's something that I could have said to you without getting some pushback. Again, I'm a bit flummoxed. Are these the sort of things that you can only say if you're in-group, but not if you're out-group?

102MartyBrandon
Mar 15, 2023, 2:36 am

>101 kiparsky: "Frankly, I think if I'd said to you that conservatives were a cultural group and not an intellectual leaning, . . ."

It's both, depending upon how you use the word. Small "c" conservatism (google it) is the intellectual leaning, while "conservative", the way that it is commonly thrown about in the US, has evolved to refer to a cultural group whose ideological roots can be traced to the original meaning but who are commonly portrayed as "white right-wingers", though small "c" conservatism is prevalent across a variety of cultural groups.

"The point about conservatives not caring much about the meanings of words and preferring emotional rather than rational language . . ."

Your words, not mine. My experience is that most people who strongly identify with either end of the spectrum are emotionally driven. Few have a thoughtful response for why they believe what they do.

103John5918
Mar 15, 2023, 4:55 am

>102 MartyBrandon: My experience is that most people who strongly identify with either end of the spectrum are emotionally driven. Few have a thoughtful response for why they believe what they do

My experience would be the opposite. I find that most of the people I know on the leftward end of the political spectrum (including myself) have a very thoughtful response; the world would be a better place if there were more equality (both in income and opportunity), more concern for the common good, more care for the environment, more analysis and attention paid to systemic issues, more justice for all (including economic, distributive, restorative, racial, gender and other aspects of justice), less militarism, etc. I can't speak for those on the rightward end of the spectrum.

104kiparsky
Mar 15, 2023, 10:22 am

>102 MartyBrandon:
Small "c" conservatism (google it) is the intellectual leaning, while "conservative", the way that it is commonly thrown about in the US, has evolved to refer to a cultural group whose ideological roots can be traced to the original meaning but who are commonly portrayed as "white right-wingers", though small "c" conservatism is prevalent across a variety of cultural groups.

Ah, now we're getting somewhere. So the common meaning of the word does not imply an coherent ideological position, but a cultural grouping, and there's a specialized usage which might imply a coherent ideological position, and it's the latter that we're working so very hard to identify over there in that other thread.

Things are starting to become a little clearer, but it's a little confusing that you spell both "conservative" and "small-c conservative" with a lowercase initial letter. How do I know which one you mean when you use the word?

Your words, not mine.

Sorry, I assumed your description of their behavior generalized. I take it then that conservatives do not in general specialize ordinary words which have perfectly good definitions in order to give them purely pejorative connotations, and that this is something they only do with the word "elite"? Today, I learned. (Presumably we're talking about "ordinary-usage conservatives" here, and not "small-c conservatives")

105John5918
Editado: Mar 15, 2023, 10:56 am

>104 kiparsky: conservatives do not in general specialize ordinary words which have perfectly good definitions in order to give them purely pejorative connotations

Even here in the pages of LT there are a number of words which are used regularly by some "conservative" posters, and which I also see reported commonly in the media, in a way which has little if anything to do with their actual meaning, and with pejorative connotations - eg elite, woke, leftist, socialist, communist, Marxist, liberal, AntiFa, BLM. While noting this fact, I make no assumptions about conservatives in general.

106MartyBrandon
Mar 18, 2023, 12:20 am

>104 kiparsky: "Things are starting to become a little clearer, but it's a little confusing that you spell both "conservative" and "small-c conservative" with a lowercase initial letter. How do I know which one you mean when you use the word?"

I'm not practiced in writing about these things, but the distinction between conservatism, the ideology, and Conservative (big "C"?) as it is commonly used in discussions of American politics is an important point that just a little reading in this area reveals. I attempted to point this out in earlier posts. I know about Conservatives (the people) through my upbringing, but only recently realized the ideological distinction, which is its own thing but also the root of Conservative principles.

"I take it then that conservatives do not in general specialize ordinary words which have perfectly good definitions in order to give them purely pejorative connotations, and that this is something they only do with the word "elite"?"

I don't know. I've never considered other examples. I was drawing upon personal experience. Ted Turner, Ross Perot, and Sam Walton could all be considered elite, but my family would consider them ordinary guys who worked hard and got ahead. They even portrayed themselves that way (Sam Walton made a habit of driving a pickup truck). It's the pretentious sort of elitism that rubs Conservatives the wrong way -- my father was happy for me to get an education but not if it meant being an "egghead". This anti-intellectualism is also a part of our nations history and seems to persist especially within conservative ideology. Trump somehow manages to tap into it.

107MartyBrandon
Mar 18, 2023, 12:27 am

>103 John5918: "I find that most of the people I know on the leftward end of the political spectrum (including myself) have a very thoughtful response . . ."

I live in a very progressive community with people who profess the values you describe; however, most are not giving a {b}thoughtful{/b} response. Similarly, most folks where I was raised give predictable answers about what they value without ever having taken the time to think deeply about them.

108John5918
Editado: Mar 18, 2023, 2:08 am

>107 MartyBrandon:

Fair comment. I don't live in the USA, although I would add that most of my left of centre US friends and colleagues are also very thoughtful about their political values, examining issues through the lens of social justice.

Use the "less than" and "greater than" mathematical symbols instead of { and } if you want bold font. Use i instead of b for italics, u for underlining, etc.

109kiparsky
Mar 18, 2023, 1:06 pm

>106 MartyBrandon: I think you make an interesting point about the conflation of "anti-elite" and "anti-intellectual". In most people's minds, I think the idea of "elite" is associated with wealth and privilege and political influence, particularly, as you say, when they are inherited. Intellectuals and academics are for the most part not people of great wealth and privilege or influence, but populists often find them convenient targets for attack.

And, as you say, the populist pose often includes the trappings of what they consider to be the "working class life", though most working class folks can't afford the pickup trucks that those guys drive and your Carhartts don't look like that if you actually work in them, or even if you wear them long enough to need washing. What's odd is that this is not seen as "pretentious elitism", although it's elites showing off their wealth and privilege by pretending to be something they're not - namely, humble members of the working class, sans wealth, sans privilege, sans influence, sans everything.

It's odd.

110MartyBrandon
Mar 19, 2023, 9:16 pm

>109 kiparsky: "What's odd is that this is not seen as "pretentious elitism" . . ."

I didn't know any of these guys personally, so I don't actually know if Sam Walton secretly had a Ferrari. He may have been as genuine as he seemed. The oddest thing to me was how Trump became the populist champion. The most convincing explanation I have heard is that he is the hammer for smashing the system, so he at least has appeal as a tool.

111MartyBrandon
Mar 19, 2023, 9:22 pm

>108 John5918: "Use the "less than" and "greater than" mathematical symbols instead of { and } if you want bold font."

Thank you. I could not remember the chat markup syntax.

"I would add that most of my left of centre US friends and colleagues are also very thoughtful about their political values, examining issues through the lens of social justice."

We might live in the same neighborhood. However, I feel that most issues require more than one lens for examination, and a single perspective still leaves you mostly in the dark, which is why I don't consider it to be well thought out.

112John5918
Editado: Mar 20, 2023, 5:02 am

>111 MartyBrandon: most issues require more than one lens for examination, and a single perspective still leaves you mostly in the dark

Agreed, which is why I didn't say only through a social justice lens. There are other lenses, but the social justice one is worth highlighting as it is often neglected. Apologies for my lack of clarity.

113kiparsky
Mar 20, 2023, 1:59 am

>110 MartyBrandon: Again, I'm thinking of "elite" as a category that's more defined by wealth and power and influence and less by the toys that one plays with.

"Genunine" is an interesting word to choose here. Genuinely what?

The oddest thing to me was how Trump became the populist champion.

Well, they were able to sell him to the anti-choice crowd, so I wouldn't imagine this would have been a harder trick.

114margd
Mar 20, 2023, 8:13 am

Florida textbook altered to remove references to Rosa Parks’s race: report
Cheyanne M. Daniels - 03/17/23

A Florida textbook publisher removed all references of race from a lesson about civil rights icon Rosa Parks in order to get a Florida committee’s approval, according to The New York Times.

...In the current lesson by Studies Weekly, which is used in 45,000 elementary schools, the event is described: “The law said African Americans had to give up their seats on the bus if a white person wanted to sit down.”

But in an early version created for Florida’s review by Studies Weekly, the lesson changed to: “She was told to move to a different seat because of the color of her skin.”

In the group’s second updated version, race is removed completely from the lesson: “She was told to move to a different seat.”

Studies Weekly also made changes to their fourth-grade lesson about segregation laws.

In the initial version, the text explained how Black Americans were affected by Jim Crow laws that arose after the Civil War, but like its updates to the Parks lesson, the second version eliminated almost every direct mention of race. Instead, the lessons were changed to say it was illegal for “men of certain groups” to be unemployed and that “certain groups of people” were not allowed to serve on a jury...

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/3905312-florida-textbook-altered-to-rem...

115MartyBrandon
Mar 20, 2023, 12:22 pm

>113 kiparsky: " "Genunine" is an interesting word to choose here. Genuinely what?"

Genuine as opposed to "pretentious". If elitism is determined solely on material goods, then Sam Walton was elitist, but assuming that his behavior is genuine, the folks I grew up with would call him rich but still salt of the earth.

I think a utilitarian argument for Trump's appeal to pro-lifers also makes sense, and he delivered.

116kiparsky
Mar 21, 2023, 4:27 pm

>114 margd: That's a pretty grim edit, especially considering that the original version was already crafted to avoid any chafing of the delicate feelings of any bigots who might happen to read it. "Because of the color of her skin" suggests that it was her fault for having the wrong color skin, and that there's something natural or right about separating people based on the color of their skin.

But of course, the snowflakes must be protected from any knowledge of history, since it might hurt their feelings.

117kiparsky
Mar 21, 2023, 4:56 pm

>115 MartyBrandon: If elitism is determined solely on material goods

Is it, though? I don't think that people who talk about the "elite media" or the "academic elite" are talking about the high salaries earned by working journalists or professors, and they don't talk about "elitist cops", though a police officer in most cities is one of the highest paid municipal employees. I think they're talking about a status and influence that is supposedly attached to journalism and academia. More to the point, I think they're talking about class war rhetoric. They see certain classes of workers as enemies, and they use pejorative language to signal their enmity. Why don't they see the mega-rich as class enemies? Might be that they're not told to see it that way.

the folks I grew up with would call him rich but still salt of the earth.

This sounds a lot like the people who were said to like the draft-dodging prep-school dropout George Bush Jr because they thought they could have a beer with him. That is, because he affected his best Texas accent and played dumb.

Look, we're talking about politicians (I'm not sure how Sam Walton got into the picture) who put on clothing and drive vehicles specifically chosen for them for their associations with the working class, precisely because they can use those associations to gain votes and therefore power. In other words, we're talking about an "inauthentic display of symbols for personal gain".
How is it that you determine that a rich ivy-league lawyer who puts on a feed cap is "genuine" and a broke social worker who wears a Black Lives Matter T-shirt is "inauthentic", and how can I learn to how to do it too?

118MartyBrandon
Mar 23, 2023, 2:08 am

>117 kiparsky: You are the one who insinuated that wealth should be an obvious tell of one's elitism. I merely pointed out that most conservative don't have a problem with someone being rich (they want that too). It's the finger-wagging liberals that don't like.

"How is it that you determine that a rich ivy-league lawyer who puts on a feed cap is "genuine" and a broke social worker who wears a Black Lives Matter T-shirt is "inauthentic", and how can I learn to how to do it too?"

I've posted in a couple of places that it is difficult to truly know a persons authenticity, and you make that kind of judgement call all the time, just like the rest of us.

119jjwilson61
Mar 23, 2023, 11:31 am

Conservatives just don't like it when the finger wagging is done in their direction. They have no problem wagging their own fingers at liberals

120John5918
Mar 24, 2023, 11:59 pm

Not about racism, but another example of the sheer lunacy affecting Florida.

Principal fired after Florida students shown Michelangelo statue (BBC)

A principal of a Florida school has been forced to resign after a parent complained that students were exposed to pornography. The complaint arose from a Renaissance art lesson where students were shown Michelangelo's statue of David. The iconic statue is one of the most famous in Western history. But one parent complained the material was pornographic and two others said they wanted to know about the class before it was taught. The lesson also included references to Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam" painting and Botticelli's "Birth of Venus". Principal Hope Carrasaquilla of Tallahassee Classical School said she resigned after she was given an ultimatum by the school board to resign or be fired...

121kiparsky
Editado: Mar 27, 2023, 11:50 am

>120 John5918: I have to admit, I did enjoy a moment trying to take this person's outrage seriously... the idea of some Florida Parent having a moment of, trying to put it delicately, reflective contemplation I suppose is a phrase, over one of the most subtly-rendered and delicately-proportioned willies in Western art did give me a good laugh. But I do worry that they might have trouble if they were ever to inadvertently visit an art museum.

122John5918
Mar 27, 2023, 10:06 am

Italian art experts astonished by David statue uproar in Florida (BBC)

The Florence museum that houses Michelangelo's statue of David has invited teachers and students from a Florida school to visit, after an uproar over an art lesson. The school's principal quit after a complaint about a sixth-grade art class that included an image of the statue. A parent had complained the image was pornographic. Cecilie Hollberg, director of Galleria dell'Accademia, has now issued the invitation to the class. She said the principal should be "rewarded, not punished". "Talking about the Renaissance without showing the David, an undisputed icon of art and culture and of that historical period, would make no sense," Ms Hollberg said... The statue, one of the most famous in Western history, depicts the biblical David going to fight Goliath armed only with his faith in God... The incident has left Florentines and experts on Renaissance art bewildered. The David is considered a masterpiece of the Italian Renaissance and a symbol of humanist values. It has been displayed in the Galleria dell'Accademia since 1873. Ms Hollberg said she was "astonished", stating that to think that the David statue could be considered pornographic means not only failing to understand the Bible, but Western culture itself. "I cannot believe that actually happened, at first I thought it was fake news, so improbable and absurd was it," she said... The mayor of Florence, Dario Nardella, also invited the teacher who showed the students the image of Michelangelo's David to visit the city and its works of art. "Mistaking art for pornography is simply ridiculous," he tweeted. "Art is civilisation and those who teach it deserve respect"... Back in Florence, Ms Hollberg made a sarcastic remark: "From majestic statues to charming fountains and paintings, Italy is overflowing with works of art, not just in its museums, but in all its cities, squares and streets, with some featuring naked figures. "Does that make it pornography? Should entire cities be shut down because of the artistic depictions of the human form?"

123MartyBrandon
Editado: Mar 27, 2023, 4:55 pm

>120 John5918: That is lunacy, but I hope you would agree that it is also lunacy when it occurs in liberal educational venues.


Image of Prophet Muhammad shown in Hamline University art class, sparking discussions on academic freedom

124John5918
Editado: Mar 28, 2023, 12:20 am

>123 MartyBrandon:

Have you read the statement from the university which is included in the article to which you link? Any attempt to draw a comparison between the two cases is full of contradictions.

125MartyBrandon
Mar 28, 2023, 1:13 pm

>124 John5918: "Have you read the statement from the university which is included in the article to which you link?"

Fair point. I had not read the statement, which gives a defense of the instructor and academic freedom. I only wish the statement had been sincere and that the college had stood their ground for academic freedom, but that does not seem to be the case.

Art professor sues after being fired over showing image of prophet Muhammad in class

126kiparsky
Mar 28, 2023, 1:17 pm

>124 John5918: To be honest, I think that at best the statement from the university is pretty problematic at best, since it points up the fragility of academic employment in today's universities and colleges. What we have here is an employee who did her job and was fired for it because it was convenient to get rid of her. That's not great.

While I agree that the comparison is not very close, I think it's reasonable to at least recognize the superficial similarities, which boil down to objections on religious grounds to material included in two different art courses. The cases diverge pretty sharply when you try to go deeper, as you say, but it's not crazy to to at least notice that in both cases we have a big to-do because someone looked at something that someone else said they were supposed to be offended by.

What I'm having trouble with is the attempt to turn this into a "liberal intolerance" story. That doesn't hold up at all. Classically, liberalism is associated with a high degree of tolerance for the views of others, particularly when it comes to culture and religious belief. "It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg", as one great liberal write, if my neighbor believes in a different god or no god or many gods. This is the attitude of the professor in the Hamline case: she was aware of the range of religious sensitivities involved in the case, she pointed out that some material in the course might offend those sensitivities, and she went to some lengths to ensure that students who would be offended would be able to avoid that material, while also allowing those who did not subscribe to those views to benefit from the material. This is exactly how you'd expect a classical liberal to handle this situation.

Firing her, on the other hand, is a capitulation to a demand that all students on the campus should be bound by the religious strictures held by some of the students. That's a classically conservative position, since conservatives believe that religious beliefs must be imposed on those who do not hold them - or if they do not believe this, they consistently act against their own beliefs. The only anomaly here is that in this case the ones imposing their views happen to have a different set of symbols.

>123 MartyBrandon: How is it that this becomes a liberal "whatabout" case in your mind? To me, this is conservativism being wrong twice.

127John5918
Editado: Mar 28, 2023, 2:23 pm

Prohibition of images of the Prophet Muhammad are well known, date back many centuries, and are part of the traditional religious and cultural values of 1.3 billion people. It certainly does raise issues of academic freedom and cultural clashes, and global conversations have been going on about it for many years, but it is not surprising that a Muslim, particularly a "conservative" Muslim, should wish to uphold the traditional values.

Religious images such as the statue of David are well known, date back many centuries, and are part of the traditional religious and cultural values not only of 2.2 billion Christians but also of secular post-Christian civilisations which have been built on Christian religious and cultural values. Thus one would expect that a "conservative" westerner, whether Christian or secular, would wish to uphold the traditional values.

A handful of self-identifying "conservative" westerners suddenly going against the traditional values of their culture and religion does not seem to me to have anything beyond a superficial similarity with "conservative" Muslims wishing to uphold the traditional values of their culture and religion.

"Conservatives" whingeing about academic freedom also sounds pretty disingenous in the context of a thread which includes discussion on the extent to which "conservatives" are trying to limit academic freedom to research and teach about many issues.

128kiparsky
Mar 28, 2023, 2:54 pm

>127 John5918: Is there a distinction between upholding one's chosen traditional values and culture and imposing those traditions on others?

To me that's the boundary between a liberal view of religion and an illiberal one. The liberal respects everyone's right to uphold the traditions that they identify with and seeks a means of coexistence within those different traditions (as Erika Lopez Prater did), while the illiberal tradition seems to require that others practice what I preach, regardless of their views on the matter.

129John5918
Mar 28, 2023, 11:57 pm

>128 kiparsky:

Yes, of course I agree, and I myself hail from what you describe as the "liberal" view of religion. I'm simply responding to what I think is a rather superficial comparison between the two cases as presented by Marty, particularly in the context of trying to unpack the concept of "conservative" . Modern US citizens who object to an ancient, traditional and much-loved western art form are not being "conservative", they're actually being quite radical, creating a breach with the traditional values and culture which we're told "conservatives" treasure.

130Molly3028
Editado: Abr 9, 2023, 9:37 am

As of the first week of April in the year 2023, the evidence is irrefutable ~ the modern-day GOP has the rights of blacks in the crosshairs of their gun scopes.

131Molly3028
Editado: mayo 17, 2023, 8:22 am

https://www.alternet.org/it-started-with-obama/
'It started with Obama': Nikki Haley blames first Black president for regressing race relations

***
In other words ~ Everything was just dandy when Blacks knew their places and kept their mouths shut. I am not Black, but I can appreciate how hearing this crap from a female presidential candidate in 2020's America devastates Black mothers.

132John5918
Editado: mayo 17, 2023, 8:46 am

>131 Molly3028:

Reminds me of white South Africans who used to tell me that under apartheid "the blecks were heppy".

133John5918
mayo 26, 2023, 12:14 am

Aderrien Murry: Mississippi boy, 11, shot by officer after calling police (BBC)

An 11-year-old boy who was shot by an officer after calling police for help has been released from hospital, his family says. Mississippi police arrived at Aderrien Murry's home on Saturday responding to a domestic disturbance call placed by the boy, then shot him in the chest, according to his mother. She said the boy asked her "what did I do?" after being shot. The officer involved has been placed on leave as the shooting is investigated...

134aspirit
mayo 31, 2023, 8:03 am

South Carolina store owner arrested after police say he shot 14-year-old he thought was shoplifting to death (WSB-TV)

Deputies reviewed surveillance video and determined that Carmack-Belton was not shoplifting.

“Regardless, even if he had shoplifted four bottles of water, which is what he initially took out of the cooler and then he put them back, even if he’d done that, that’s not something you shoot anybody over, much less a 14-year-old, but you just don’t do that,” {County Sheriff} Lott said.

The Richland County coroner said the teen suffered one gunshot wound to the lower back. Lott said he was running away {from the attacker into the street} when he was shot.

135margd
Editado: Jun 3, 2023, 6:24 am

For Black drivers, a police officer's first 45 words are a portent of what's to come
Nell Greenfieldboyce | May 29, 2023
Heard on All Things Considered (3 min)

...Car stops that result in a search, handcuffing, or arrest are nearly three times more likely to begin with the police officer issuing a command, such as "Keep your hands on the wheel" or "Turn the car off."

...stops ultimately involved searches, handcuffings, or arrests...less likely when a police officer's first words provided a reason for the stop.

...body-worn cameras...

All of the stops in this study occurred in a racially diverse, medium-sized U.S. city over the course of one month

...The scientists controlled for factors such as the officer's gender and race, as well as the neighborhood crime rate. About 200 officers were involved in these stops. "It's not really a function of a few officers driving this pattern" ...

The words or actions of the person behind the wheel of the car didn't seem to contribute to escalation. "The drivers are just answering the officers' questions and explaining what's going on...They're cooperative."

...188 Black men...listen(ed) to recordings of the opening moments of car stops....those Black men were highly attuned to the implications of a police officer starting an interaction with a command. "When officers began with orders without reasons, Black male participants predicted that the stop would escalate in over 84% of those cases"....

And even though none of the stops in this study involved the use of force, Black men worried about the possibility of force 80% of the time when they heard a recording of a law enforcement officer issuing a command without offering a reason.

..."In this country, we know much more about fearing Black people than the fears of Black people," says (Jennifer Eberhardt, a social psychologist at Stanford University). "Many Black people fear the police, even in routine car stops. That fear is a fear that could be stoked or set at ease with the first words that an officer speaks."

..."There are stark racial differences in who is stopped and who's not," says (reviewer Tracey Meares, a Yale Law professor and a founding director of the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School), who points out that in the one-month period covered by this study, the city's police officers did 588 stops of Black drivers and only 262 stops of white drivers. Over 15% of Black drivers experienced an escalated outcome such as a search, handcuffing, or arrest, while less than 1% of white drivers experienced one of those outcomes. "(Researchers did) not draw... any conclusions from that, but these are things we should just be paying attention to...It strains credulity that there are that many more traffic violations."

(Co-author Eugenia Rho, a researcher at Virginia Tech. ) says in planning this study, they had initially set out to look at patterns related to traffic stop escalation for white drivers too, but realized that it happened so infrequently for white drivers that there just weren't sufficient numbers to even include them in the analysis.

https://www.npr.org/2023/05/29/1178279383/for-black-drivers-a-police-officers-fi...
--------------------------------------------------

Eugenia H. Rho et al. 2023. Escalated police stops of Black men are linguistically and psychologically distinct in their earliest moments. PNAS, 30 May 2023. 120 (23) e2216162120. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2216162120 https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2216162120

Significance
Amid calls for police officers to de-escalate encounters with Black citizens, this work sheds light on when and how car stops escalate, as well as their psychological impact on Black men. Our analysis of police body-worn camera footage reveals that stops ultimately resulting in escalation differ in their conversational structure in the earliest moments of the encounter: in as little as the first 45 words the officer speaks. Listening to these escalated encounters evoked anxiety, suspicion, and worry about officer use of force for Black men, who are disproportionately subjected to escalated outcomes. The findings reported here not only inform approaches to de-escalation but also demonstrate the power and promise of systematic footage review more broadly. To improve police–community interactions, we could start by examining them.

Abstract
Across the United States, police chiefs, city officials, and community leaders alike have highlighted the need to de-escalate police encounters with the public. This concern about escalation extends from encounters involving use of force to routine car stops, where Black drivers are disproportionately pulled over. Yet, despite the calls for action, we know little about the trajectory of police stops or how escalation unfolds. In study 1, we use methods from computational linguistics to analyze police body-worn camera footage from 577 stops of Black drivers. We find that stops with escalated outcomes (those ending in arrest, handcuffing, or a search) diverge from stops without these outcomes in their earliest moments—even in the first 45 words spoken by the officer. In stops that result in escalation, officers are more likely to issue commands as their opening words to the driver and less likely to tell drivers the reason why they are being stopped. In study 2, we expose Black males to audio clips of the same stops and find differences in how escalated stops are perceived: Participants report more negative emotion, appraise officers more negatively, worry about force being used, and predict worse outcomes after hearing only the officer’s initial words in escalated versus non-escalated stops. Our findings show that car stops that end in escalated outcomes sometimes begin in an escalated fashion, with adverse effects for Black male drivers and, in turn, police–community relations.

136John5918
Jun 3, 2023, 7:02 am

>135 margd:

I think it's been mentioned before that the police culture and training in the USA appears to be to immediately "take control" and dominate the situation. When dealing with a member of the public, whether innocent or guilty, who has reason to fear the police or who is impaired by drink, drugs or mental issues, that approach will almost invariably lead to an escalation of the situation. On the other hand, in many parts of the world the police are trained to immediately de-escalate any situation in which they find themselves. It's a systemic issue.

137margd
Jun 3, 2023, 8:44 am

I wonder, too, if quotas for traffic police might be contributing factor?

138margd
Jul 22, 2023, 10:35 am

Derek Thompson (The Atlantic) @DKThomp | 2:51 PM · Jul 21, 2023:

New study: The lifetime risk of incarceration for black men declined by nearly half from 1999 to 2019.

In 2009, young Black men were much more likely to experience imprisonment than college graduation. Ten years later, this trend had reversed.

Graph ( https://twitter.com/DKThomp/status/1682463302465597441/photo/1 )

Link: https://read.dukeupress.edu/demography/article/doi/10.1215/00703370-10863378/380...

139John5918
Jul 26, 2023, 12:13 am

Witness claims police said ‘Is he one of us?’ as they restrained Malcolm X killer (Guardian)

A witness to the 1965 assassination of Malcolm X has come forward to claim that a comment he overheard as police were restraining assassin Thomas Hagan outside the Audubon Ball room proved to him that the New York police department and FBI knew beforehand that there would be an attempt on the civil rights activist’s life. Mustafa Hassan said he heard an officer ask of Hagan, “Is he one of us?”...

140John5918
Ago 11, 2023, 3:02 am

Tears. Shock. Joy. Why viral Alabama boat brawl matters (BBC)

The man seen receiving the first blow was a black man who, in the words of Montgomery police chief Darryl Albert, was simply "doing his job". Damien Pickett was a co-captain of the Harriett II, a riverboat carrying over 200 passengers that needed to dock but couldn't. A much smaller pontoon boat was wrongfully docked in the Harriett II's designated space. The occupiers of the pontoon boat were white men. Instead of moving their pontoon, they decided to hit Mr Pickett. But before police could arrive and quell the violence, chaos erupted. Roughly two dozen people had joined the fight... the sentiment among the city's black community since the incident was one of fatigue, and solidarity with men who joined with the boat co-captain as he stood his ground. "When a {boat co-captain} is just doing his job and saying you can't dock here you have to move, and he's met with aggression and racial slurs, that is telling of what many citizens in this city have endured for years"... "When people saw the black people, first of all, come to the defence of someone who was endangered and who happened to be black, and we saw the police respond by appropriately subduing the suspects, that's a rare thing to see... If you're on social media, you see a million videos of police brutality against black people, you see a million videos of people calling the police on black people for walking through white neighbourhoods… it is rare to see such an explicit example of justice being meted out"...

141John5918
Ago 27, 2023, 12:43 am

He became the first Black mayor of a rural Alabama town. Then a white minority locked him out (Guardian)

For years the mayor in Newbern was appointed, not elected. When Patrick Braxton won the election, the outgoing mayor and his cronies refused to accept it... In November 2020, Patrick Braxton, a volunteer firefighter and contractor from Newbern, Alabama, was elected mayor of the 133-person town. He wanted to have a peaceful and timely transfer of power... Braxton won the first mayoral election in the town in over a century. Braxton’s decision to run for mayor upended a decades-long political system of entrenched disenfranchisement and effective mayoral dictatorship. For decades, mayors had been appointed, not elected. Braxton’s campaign triggered the first election in recent history, and made him the first Black mayor since the town was established 169 years ago. From the day he was sworn in, until now, nearly three years later, Stokes and his cronies have refused to acknowledge Braxton’s legitimacy as mayor, going so far as to prevent him from accessing city mail and funds. Earlier this year, Braxton and his four appointed city council members filed a lawsuit against Stokes and his city council alleging that the former mayor and his allies violated federal civil rights law by preventing Braxton from acting as mayor...

142John5918
Sep 1, 2023, 11:46 pm

North Carolina judge investigated for saying racial bias exists files lawsuit (Guardian)

A North Carolina supreme court justice is suing the state’s judicial standards commission for allegedly violating her right to freedom of speech. After Justice Anita Earls made public comments about the lack of diversity in the North Carolina court system, the commission launched an investigation into her statements. According to a federal lawsuit filed by Earls’ lawyers, she has been “subjected to a series of months-long intrusive investigations,” which have led to a “chilling of her first amendment rights”. In a June article on Law360, Earls pointed out the lack of diversity among North Carolina supreme court law clerks. “If you look at who is hired to serve as clerks to the justices … we have plenty of female clerks, but on racial diversity we’re lacking,” Earls said in the interview, pointing out that there was only one Black clerk and one Latina clerk employed in the court’s latest term. Earls also said that she had witnessed “implicit bias” in court, telling the publication she witnessed a Black litigator being “attacked unfairly” by Earls’ colleagues. Earls said the court’s racial equity trainings and committees to increase diversity and inclusion had been disbanded. Earls, North Carolina’s only Black female supreme court justice, alleges that the commission is targeting her ability to critique the court, especially on matters of diversity...

1432wonderY
Oct 19, 2023, 7:39 pm

Leonard Allan Cure, freed after a wrongful conviction, is shot dead in a traffic stop

https://www.npr.org/2023/10/18/1206760289/leonard-allan-cure-wrongful-conviction...

144John5918
Dic 14, 2023, 11:01 pm

Judge sentences Black child, 10, to three months of probation for peeing in public (Guardian)

Tate county youth court judge Rusty Harlow handed down the sentence Tuesday after the child’s lawyer reached an agreement with a special prosecutor. The prosecution threatened to upgrade the charge of “child in need of supervision” to a more serious charge of disorderly conduct if the boy’s family took the case to trial, said Carlos Moore, the child’s attorney. “I thought any sensible judge would dismiss the charge completely. It’s just asinine,” Moore said. “There were failures in the criminal justice system all the way around”...

1452wonderY
Editado: Ene 6, 6:34 pm

Not all of them are black, but there are 215 bodies buried in a paupers grave in Jackson Mississippi without notification of kin. One man’s ID was still in his pants pocket.
Coroner is blaming the police. Police are blaming the coroner.
Records before 2015 are “lost.”

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/list-names-people-buried-paupers-grave-hind...

146Molly3028
Ene 12, 12:38 pm

https://atlantablackstar.com/2024/01/12/ben-carson-says-slavery-is-nothing-to-be...
Dr. Ben Carson Tells Iowa Crowd That America’s History of Slavery Is ‘Nothing to be Ashamed of’ As He Campaigns for Donald Trump

***
Carson's ancestors must be weeping a waterfall of tears.