Systematic exclusion of supermarkets from low-income neighborhoods.
Yes, people need education.
Yes, people are cultural but it is becoming cultural to have unhealthy foods in the hood.
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Hip-hop
Hip hop is a form of musical expression and artistic subculture that originated in African-American and Hispanic-American communities during the 1970s in New York City, specifically within the Bronx.
How America and hip-hop failed each other
President Nixon announced a war on drugs, but it was President Reagan who started the modern battle in 1982, when hip-hop was in its infancy. This fight would not only shape the black community but also mold hip-hop, a music and culture whose undercurrent remains black male anger at a nation that declared young black men monsters and abandoned them, killing any chance they had at the American Dream.
In the early 1980s, most of the socially conscious hiphop records mentioned drugs as one of the many problems affecting black Americans, not the central one. When they did touch on drugs, they were almost always depicted negatively; doing drugs was a character failing, and the songs usually portrayed the speaker as a bystander trapped in a ghetto, observing it, not participating in its ills. They were like griots, storytellers. Take Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message,” which begins: “Broken glass everywhere!” — a mirroring James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling’s “broken window theory,” which holds that a building with broken windows invites serious crime because it signals neglect. The song offers a litany of societal ills, with drugs being just one of them.
Grandmaster Melle Mel’s “White Lines” from 1983 is one of the few early hip-hop songs to deal directly with drugs. Mel focuses on cocaine rather than crack, which was not yet a major problem in American cities. Mel speaks in the first person and breaks the bystander norm, taking on the role of a user, although ultimately as an artistic device rather than truly implicating himself as later MCs would. And he uses the song to implore listeners to avoid cocaine — unlike so many future MCs who would try to make selling and using drugs look sexy.
Hip-hop’s journey between those two mind-sets happened as the unemployment rate among black men soared to twice the level among whites, passing 21 percent in 1983. A year later, the FBI’s antidrug funding increased more than tenfold — just in time for the start of the crack epidemic in 1985.
The prevalence of drugs alongside the dearth of jobs made joining the drug trade hard to turn down. It was a road many young black men chose because they lacked better options. Crack, a sort of fast-food version of cocaine, allowed some the chance to earn as much as they would have by owning a McDonald’s franchise, when their only other option was working at one. The crack trade allowed some young men to support their families.
MCs who grew up in the 1980s would brand themselves veterans of the drug trade because drugs dominated their economic possibilities, and those of an entire generation of young black men. But by the end of that decade, hip-hop had been transformed in response to a world filled with crack, rich and ruthless drug lords, militarized police forces, a level of violence not seen in the country since Prohibition, prison sentences as long as basketball scores, and lives ruined by a drug that was insanely addictive.
In the 1990s, whites comprised 70 percent of those arrested and 40 percent of the incarcerated, but that white crime did not reverberate outward to say something about the character of all white people. By contrast, black crime suggests something is wrong with the entire race.
Hip-hop is the product of a generation in which many black men did not know their fathers. How did these fatherless MCs construct their masculinity? For some, it was by watching and idolizing drug dealers. Many would make it as rappers by packaging themselves as former dealers — either because that is what they were or because that’s who they revered. I’m talking about the Notorious B.I.G., Nas, the Wu-Tang Clan, Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, 50 Cent, the Clipse, Rick Ross and others. By then, it seemed as though an MC needed to claim drug-trade stripes to earn acceptance among hip-hop’s elite.
Hip-hop could have grown into a challenge to the war on drugs but instead accepted it as a fact of life and told bluesy, or braggadocious, stories about its part in it.
Ross is just one of many whose music idolizes dealers, and who carry scars from the drug trade like medals. They swallow the stereotype whole. Ross’s entire career reflects this shift: He is a former corrections officer who took on the name of a legendary cocaine dealer — “Freeway” Ricky Ross — and proclaimed himself “the biggest boss that you’ve seen thus far” in his song “The Boss.” He’s just one of many MCs who have made millions by swallowing the drug-dealer stereotype whole, and thus deploying the drug problem and the criminalblackman myth for personal gain.
The nation surely failed its black male citizens by targeting and imprisoning them when joblessness and the crack epidemic left them with few real options. They were conveniently villainized, arrested and warehoused to help politicians, judges, prosecutors and police win the public trust.
But hip-hop also failed black America, and failed itself. It’s unavoidable that hip-hop and the war on drugs would become intertwined. But the music could have been a tool of resistance, informing on the drug war’s hypocrisies instead of acquiescing to them. Hip-hop didn’t have to become complicit in spreading the message of the criminalblackman, but the money it made from doing so was the drug it just couldn’t stop getting high on.
In the early 1980s, most of the socially conscious hiphop records mentioned drugs as one of the many problems affecting black Americans, not the central one. When they did touch on drugs, they were almost always depicted negatively; doing drugs was a character failing, and the songs usually portrayed the speaker as a bystander trapped in a ghetto, observing it, not participating in its ills. They were like griots, storytellers. Take Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message,” which begins: “Broken glass everywhere!” — a mirroring James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling’s “broken window theory,” which holds that a building with broken windows invites serious crime because it signals neglect. The song offers a litany of societal ills, with drugs being just one of them.
Grandmaster Melle Mel’s “White Lines” from 1983 is one of the few early hip-hop songs to deal directly with drugs. Mel focuses on cocaine rather than crack, which was not yet a major problem in American cities. Mel speaks in the first person and breaks the bystander norm, taking on the role of a user, although ultimately as an artistic device rather than truly implicating himself as later MCs would. And he uses the song to implore listeners to avoid cocaine — unlike so many future MCs who would try to make selling and using drugs look sexy.
Hip-hop’s journey between those two mind-sets happened as the unemployment rate among black men soared to twice the level among whites, passing 21 percent in 1983. A year later, the FBI’s antidrug funding increased more than tenfold — just in time for the start of the crack epidemic in 1985.
The prevalence of drugs alongside the dearth of jobs made joining the drug trade hard to turn down. It was a road many young black men chose because they lacked better options. Crack, a sort of fast-food version of cocaine, allowed some the chance to earn as much as they would have by owning a McDonald’s franchise, when their only other option was working at one. The crack trade allowed some young men to support their families.
MCs who grew up in the 1980s would brand themselves veterans of the drug trade because drugs dominated their economic possibilities, and those of an entire generation of young black men. But by the end of that decade, hip-hop had been transformed in response to a world filled with crack, rich and ruthless drug lords, militarized police forces, a level of violence not seen in the country since Prohibition, prison sentences as long as basketball scores, and lives ruined by a drug that was insanely addictive.
In the 1990s, whites comprised 70 percent of those arrested and 40 percent of the incarcerated, but that white crime did not reverberate outward to say something about the character of all white people. By contrast, black crime suggests something is wrong with the entire race.
Hip-hop is the product of a generation in which many black men did not know their fathers. How did these fatherless MCs construct their masculinity? For some, it was by watching and idolizing drug dealers. Many would make it as rappers by packaging themselves as former dealers — either because that is what they were or because that’s who they revered. I’m talking about the Notorious B.I.G., Nas, the Wu-Tang Clan, Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, 50 Cent, the Clipse, Rick Ross and others. By then, it seemed as though an MC needed to claim drug-trade stripes to earn acceptance among hip-hop’s elite.
Hip-hop could have grown into a challenge to the war on drugs but instead accepted it as a fact of life and told bluesy, or braggadocious, stories about its part in it.
Ross is just one of many whose music idolizes dealers, and who carry scars from the drug trade like medals. They swallow the stereotype whole. Ross’s entire career reflects this shift: He is a former corrections officer who took on the name of a legendary cocaine dealer — “Freeway” Ricky Ross — and proclaimed himself “the biggest boss that you’ve seen thus far” in his song “The Boss.” He’s just one of many MCs who have made millions by swallowing the drug-dealer stereotype whole, and thus deploying the drug problem and the criminalblackman myth for personal gain.
The nation surely failed its black male citizens by targeting and imprisoning them when joblessness and the crack epidemic left them with few real options. They were conveniently villainized, arrested and warehoused to help politicians, judges, prosecutors and police win the public trust.
But hip-hop also failed black America, and failed itself. It’s unavoidable that hip-hop and the war on drugs would become intertwined. But the music could have been a tool of resistance, informing on the drug war’s hypocrisies instead of acquiescing to them. Hip-hop didn’t have to become complicit in spreading the message of the criminalblackman, but the money it made from doing so was the drug it just couldn’t stop getting high on.
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Is Teach For America A Program For The Poor Or For The Rich?
I’m going to start with full disclosure: I have never liked Teach for America. If that’s going to bug you, you might want to move on to the next blog.
Why do I dislike Teach For America? Because it has nothing to do with permanent investment in our schools, or thoughtful reform of education. Because it is one of many organizations that seem to exist more or less to give privileged young people the “life experience” that will qualify them to go on to their next advanced degree. Because it relies for its prestige on the idea that people who are middle or upper class naturally have something special and intangible to offer to the poor. Because it activates our not so thinly-veiled social contempt for people who chose the hard work of teaching public school as a career, often doing it for decades in places where they are forced to buy books and classroom supplies out of their own salaries.
I dislike TFA because public education does not exist to give graduates of elite colleges and universities a couple swing years so that they can later go on to great graduate schools and fabulously well paid careers. I dislike TFA because I am a teacher, and I am quite clear that you don’t learn to teach in five weeks, much less teach students who have a range of social, economic and developmental problems; who are often hungry, in pain, angry or frightened; and who come in unruly waves of 40-50 every 45 minutes. So thank you Michael Winerip for interviewing numerous elite college grads who are struggling with the “stigma” of having been rejected by this glitzy non-profit because there aren’t so many paralegal and entry-level Wall Street jobs this year; and thank you for using this as an opportunity to take a look at this popular NGO that makes a lot of claims for itself that are thinly documented.
As someone who is a career teacher, I am offended by the notion that anyone can step into a classroom and teach effectively, even though they are inexperienced and virtually untrained, because they are oh-so-smart and have successfully gotten into Harvard or Zenith. And teaching public secondary school is harder than teaching, or being a student in, college. Public school is open to the public, folks, and nobody does a sort for you to separate out the ones who are ready to learn, or who already speak English. Magnet and charter schools can be even harder to teach in, since in their initial years they are often the dumping ground for students who have been expelled from and flunked out of other schools.
But let’s be clear: mostly I dislike Teach for America because it is not school reform and it claims to be. It is a neo-liberal romance about the ways in which volunteerism by elites can replace a political and fiscal commitment to lifting Americans out of poverty by supporting, and investing in, the schools that poor people attend. Worse, TFA is a spiritual extension of those internship programs that these eager young things with BA’s larded their records with to get into elite colleges and universities in the first place. The logic is: if it looks good for me, then it must be good for “them.” As Winerip comments, “Teach for America has become an elite brand that will help build a résumé, whether or not the person stays in teaching. And in a bad economy, it’s a two-year job guarantee with a good paycheck; members earn a beginning teacher’s salary in the districts where they’re placed.”
And they don’t stay in teaching. Perhaps the worst aspect of TFA is that it views teaching as a kind of boot camp for entering the leadership class. TFA’s website claims that “corps members and alumni are creating fundamental change,” but what that change comprises, and what counts as change, is not clear. The website cites research “that Teach For America corps members’ impact on their students’ achievement is equal to or greater than that of other new teachers. Moreover, the most rigorous studies have shown that corps members’ impact exceeds that of experienced and certified teachers in the same schools.” But in fact, if you click on the link that supposedly leads you to that research, you find that “Studies of TFA teacher vary widely in both their findings and the strength of their methodologies.” Hmmm. And actually, although you can get citations for these studies, the documents themselves have not been uploaded to the website.
What the website doesn’t tell you is how many of those teachers quit in the first six months. As Winerip notes, according to one study, “by the fourth year, 85 percent of T.F.A. teachers had left” New York City schools.” That’s change for you. My guess is the rate of attrition is higher and faster in the Mississippi Delta, currently identified by TFA as a location in great need of amateur teachers. According to one of my former students who entered the program over five years ago and is still teaching in the troubled urban system he was assigned to, his cohort lost half its membership in the first year, and he is the only original member of his team still in teaching.
TFA has not helped to build a permanent corps of excellent teachers who will train other career teachers or use their classroom training to become effective principals. Hence, it has nothing to do with a program of fundamental, structural reform for our nation’s public schools. It has nothing to do with how schools, and school systems, might use their centrality to communities to address issues that are currently crippling education, such as unfunded testing mandates, the effects of poverty and unemployment, teaching critical thinking rather than rote memorization, or state budget cuts that eliminate books and raise class sizes. TFA does, however, seem to be a training ground for education bureaucrats, such as Chancellor Michelle Rhee of the District of Columbia, who continues to blame most of her system’s problems on undocumented teacher incompetence.
Rhee recently laid off over 250 teachers: how many of them will be replaced by TFA fly-by-nighters, whose salary is paid by a combination of private and federal dollars? I don’t know about other states, but because of drastically reduced property tax revenues, Connecticut is currently laying off young teachers who have actually committed to teaching as a career, not as a temporary stopgap before law school. Other states are waiting anxiously to hear whether Congress will pass a bill that would fund the Obama Administration’s new education initiative, and whether they will actually receive the millions of dollars they were promised for system-wide education initiatives. Will these funds be replaced by well-intentioned and untrained young people from elite schools who are here today and gone tomorrow?
comment- Ultimately, the Great TFA debate comes down to a simple question: Do you think a Band-Aid fix (in the form of TFA teachers) is better than the current situation or do you think a Band-Aid fix actively precludes real solutions?
http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/tenuredradical/2010/07/is-teach-for-america-program-for-poor/
TFA Research- http://www.teachforamerica.org/our-organization/research#card
Why do I dislike Teach For America? Because it has nothing to do with permanent investment in our schools, or thoughtful reform of education. Because it is one of many organizations that seem to exist more or less to give privileged young people the “life experience” that will qualify them to go on to their next advanced degree. Because it relies for its prestige on the idea that people who are middle or upper class naturally have something special and intangible to offer to the poor. Because it activates our not so thinly-veiled social contempt for people who chose the hard work of teaching public school as a career, often doing it for decades in places where they are forced to buy books and classroom supplies out of their own salaries.
I dislike TFA because public education does not exist to give graduates of elite colleges and universities a couple swing years so that they can later go on to great graduate schools and fabulously well paid careers. I dislike TFA because I am a teacher, and I am quite clear that you don’t learn to teach in five weeks, much less teach students who have a range of social, economic and developmental problems; who are often hungry, in pain, angry or frightened; and who come in unruly waves of 40-50 every 45 minutes. So thank you Michael Winerip for interviewing numerous elite college grads who are struggling with the “stigma” of having been rejected by this glitzy non-profit because there aren’t so many paralegal and entry-level Wall Street jobs this year; and thank you for using this as an opportunity to take a look at this popular NGO that makes a lot of claims for itself that are thinly documented.
As someone who is a career teacher, I am offended by the notion that anyone can step into a classroom and teach effectively, even though they are inexperienced and virtually untrained, because they are oh-so-smart and have successfully gotten into Harvard or Zenith. And teaching public secondary school is harder than teaching, or being a student in, college. Public school is open to the public, folks, and nobody does a sort for you to separate out the ones who are ready to learn, or who already speak English. Magnet and charter schools can be even harder to teach in, since in their initial years they are often the dumping ground for students who have been expelled from and flunked out of other schools.
But let’s be clear: mostly I dislike Teach for America because it is not school reform and it claims to be. It is a neo-liberal romance about the ways in which volunteerism by elites can replace a political and fiscal commitment to lifting Americans out of poverty by supporting, and investing in, the schools that poor people attend. Worse, TFA is a spiritual extension of those internship programs that these eager young things with BA’s larded their records with to get into elite colleges and universities in the first place. The logic is: if it looks good for me, then it must be good for “them.” As Winerip comments, “Teach for America has become an elite brand that will help build a résumé, whether or not the person stays in teaching. And in a bad economy, it’s a two-year job guarantee with a good paycheck; members earn a beginning teacher’s salary in the districts where they’re placed.”
And they don’t stay in teaching. Perhaps the worst aspect of TFA is that it views teaching as a kind of boot camp for entering the leadership class. TFA’s website claims that “corps members and alumni are creating fundamental change,” but what that change comprises, and what counts as change, is not clear. The website cites research “that Teach For America corps members’ impact on their students’ achievement is equal to or greater than that of other new teachers. Moreover, the most rigorous studies have shown that corps members’ impact exceeds that of experienced and certified teachers in the same schools.” But in fact, if you click on the link that supposedly leads you to that research, you find that “Studies of TFA teacher vary widely in both their findings and the strength of their methodologies.” Hmmm. And actually, although you can get citations for these studies, the documents themselves have not been uploaded to the website.
What the website doesn’t tell you is how many of those teachers quit in the first six months. As Winerip notes, according to one study, “by the fourth year, 85 percent of T.F.A. teachers had left” New York City schools.” That’s change for you. My guess is the rate of attrition is higher and faster in the Mississippi Delta, currently identified by TFA as a location in great need of amateur teachers. According to one of my former students who entered the program over five years ago and is still teaching in the troubled urban system he was assigned to, his cohort lost half its membership in the first year, and he is the only original member of his team still in teaching.
TFA has not helped to build a permanent corps of excellent teachers who will train other career teachers or use their classroom training to become effective principals. Hence, it has nothing to do with a program of fundamental, structural reform for our nation’s public schools. It has nothing to do with how schools, and school systems, might use their centrality to communities to address issues that are currently crippling education, such as unfunded testing mandates, the effects of poverty and unemployment, teaching critical thinking rather than rote memorization, or state budget cuts that eliminate books and raise class sizes. TFA does, however, seem to be a training ground for education bureaucrats, such as Chancellor Michelle Rhee of the District of Columbia, who continues to blame most of her system’s problems on undocumented teacher incompetence.
Rhee recently laid off over 250 teachers: how many of them will be replaced by TFA fly-by-nighters, whose salary is paid by a combination of private and federal dollars? I don’t know about other states, but because of drastically reduced property tax revenues, Connecticut is currently laying off young teachers who have actually committed to teaching as a career, not as a temporary stopgap before law school. Other states are waiting anxiously to hear whether Congress will pass a bill that would fund the Obama Administration’s new education initiative, and whether they will actually receive the millions of dollars they were promised for system-wide education initiatives. Will these funds be replaced by well-intentioned and untrained young people from elite schools who are here today and gone tomorrow?
comment- Ultimately, the Great TFA debate comes down to a simple question: Do you think a Band-Aid fix (in the form of TFA teachers) is better than the current situation or do you think a Band-Aid fix actively precludes real solutions?
http://chronicle.com/blognetwork/tenuredradical/2010/07/is-teach-for-america-program-for-poor/
TFA Research- http://www.teachforamerica.org/our-organization/research#card
Race, unfortunately and tragically, factors into gun death at the metro level. The share of the population that is black is positively related to both the overall rate of gun death (.56) and even more so with gun-related homicides (.72). The pattern is similar for the share of the population that is comprised of young black males which is also positively related to the overall rate of gun death (.55) and murder by gun (.70). That said, we find no significant association between any type of gun death and the share of the population that is Hispanic. The importance of gun control cannot be minimized. The state level is the appropriate level to examine this. And our previous state level analysis found gun deaths to be significantly lower in states with stricter gun control laws.
The rate of gun deaths is negatively correlated with states that ban assault weapons, require trigger locks, and mandate safe storage requirements for guns.
Death by gun clearly reflects the class divides which vex America, being substantially more likely in poorer, less advantaged places. And this concentrated nature of gun violence makes it easier for those in more affluent and sheltered places to ignore its consequences. Yes, our nation is in desperate needs of strategies to bridge its burgeoning class divide, but if we truly care to limit the carnage caused by guns in our society, controlling them is the best place to start.
Renowned urbanist Richard Florida at the London Conference
Leading author and thinker on urbanism Richard Florida, professor at University of Toronto and NYU and senior editor at the 'Atlantic', speaks about the potential of the creative classes at the London Conference 2012.
The London Conference is produced by IPPR and the Centre for London.
concentration of advantage and disadvatage
"Much homicide is black-on-black, much inner-city, much gang-on-gang, unlicensed illegal guns, whereas the mass shootings have all been individual, white-on-white, mostly non-urban, often licensed guns (although often licensed to others as in [Sandy Hook])."
distinguished criminologist, Alfred Blumstein of Carnegie Mellon University
it's time to essentially flip the construct of concentration and clustering on its head. Instead of focusing just on "concentrated disadvantage" to describe crime, we should also focus on "concentrated prosperity." He adds that the main problem in making the connection between the concentration of urban prosperity and disadvantage is that our measures are far too broad. To do so would require more micro-level data at the neighborhood or Census tract level, something like a "micro place-based Gini coefficient."
John Roman, an urban crime expert at the Urban Institute, took a detailed look at the declining homicide rates in America's largest 24 urban centers
The concentrated nature of economic advantage is a central feature, if not the central feature, of the rapidly evolving urban knowledge economy. We are seeing the rise of an increasingly spiky world where prosperity and economic advantage are becoming increasingly uneven and concentrated at every single geographic scale — between as well as within cities and metros, globally and national, and across neighborhoods and communities.
We have tons of research that compares metros. What we need is better data and more research which looks inside our cities — at their increasing economic and geographic divides, tracing differences in income and wage levels, class and industry composition, density and other factors at a much more fine-grained scale.
distinguished criminologist, Alfred Blumstein of Carnegie Mellon University
it's time to essentially flip the construct of concentration and clustering on its head. Instead of focusing just on "concentrated disadvantage" to describe crime, we should also focus on "concentrated prosperity." He adds that the main problem in making the connection between the concentration of urban prosperity and disadvantage is that our measures are far too broad. To do so would require more micro-level data at the neighborhood or Census tract level, something like a "micro place-based Gini coefficient."
John Roman, an urban crime expert at the Urban Institute, took a detailed look at the declining homicide rates in America's largest 24 urban centers
The concentrated nature of economic advantage is a central feature, if not the central feature, of the rapidly evolving urban knowledge economy. We are seeing the rise of an increasingly spiky world where prosperity and economic advantage are becoming increasingly uneven and concentrated at every single geographic scale — between as well as within cities and metros, globally and national, and across neighborhoods and communities.
We have tons of research that compares metros. What we need is better data and more research which looks inside our cities — at their increasing economic and geographic divides, tracing differences in income and wage levels, class and industry composition, density and other factors at a much more fine-grained scale.
How Economic Development Is Changing the Geography of Urban Crime
"I found gun-related murders to be higher in metros with higher poverty levels, higher levels of inequality, more blue-collar working class economies, and higher shares of commuters who drive to work alone (a proxy for sprawl, among other factors)."
Safer, healthier cities draw and keep new residents away from the unsustainable suburbs and exurbs. But while the numbers point to positive trends on the whole, they also REVEAL our sacrifice zones: Cities that have not been revitalized in this recent wave, where we have allowed poverty and violence to concentrate, out of sight and mind — cities that go unmentioned in the wake of mass murders like the one in Newtown, though they are actually our mass murder capitals.
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/12/how-economic-development-changing-geography-urban-crime/4187/
Safer, healthier cities draw and keep new residents away from the unsustainable suburbs and exurbs. But while the numbers point to positive trends on the whole, they also REVEAL our sacrifice zones: Cities that have not been revitalized in this recent wave, where we have allowed poverty and violence to concentrate, out of sight and mind — cities that go unmentioned in the wake of mass murders like the one in Newtown, though they are actually our mass murder capitals.
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/jobs-and-economy/2012/12/how-economic-development-changing-geography-urban-crime/4187/
Wednesday, December 19, 2012
We Don't Play With Guns At School
I am grateful that early childhood education emphasizes social-emotional development, as it helps ensure that students will mature into self-regulating and independent individuals. And I strongly believe that teaching preschool students (and all students, for that matter) to connect meaningfully with each other is vital. Only when students learn the power of empathy can they develop genuine relationships.
More than anything, I am thankful to work in a field built on the ideals of joy and love. I am proud that my kids feel safe in my classroom and that they know that they are loved by me. And while I understand that they may sometimes face things no child should, I take solace in knowing that, aside from the occasional tantrum, my kids have had positive experiences in our school thus far. This reaffirmed my response to Samiyah on Friday.“Yes, guns hurt people, and we don’t hurt each other in school. Instead… we… tickle each other!” Their innocent laughter filled my heart as we played on the carpet, a sound that serves as a hopeful reminder of the joy of this work.
http://www.teachforamerica.org/blog/we-dont-play-guns-school
More than anything, I am thankful to work in a field built on the ideals of joy and love. I am proud that my kids feel safe in my classroom and that they know that they are loved by me. And while I understand that they may sometimes face things no child should, I take solace in knowing that, aside from the occasional tantrum, my kids have had positive experiences in our school thus far. This reaffirmed my response to Samiyah on Friday.“Yes, guns hurt people, and we don’t hurt each other in school. Instead… we… tickle each other!” Their innocent laughter filled my heart as we played on the carpet, a sound that serves as a hopeful reminder of the joy of this work.
http://www.teachforamerica.org/blog/we-dont-play-guns-school
Friday, December 14, 2012
Wednesday, December 12, 2012
Out of the top 11 countries with the widest gaps between rich and poor, the U.S. is third... right after Hong Kong, China and Singapore
http://dss.ucsd.edu/~ecomisso/philo28/documents/Inequality09.pdf
http://dss.ucsd.edu/~ecomisso/philo28/documents/Inequality09.pdf
Monday, December 10, 2012
Personal responsibility
"Personal responsibility is not supposed to be a ticket to separation: it is an instrument of moral and cultural inclusion, the chief weapon in the fight to overcome unfairness. They do not want to sit in some ghetto sideline; they want to be in the middle of the action" (Newman, 1999 p. 267)
Friday, December 7, 2012
Riding the Subway as Therapy
Wrapped in steel and plastic and surrounded by strangers, riding public transportation can be therapeutic as a trip to a local psychologist or a night out with my friends.
Wrapped in steel and plastic and surrounded by strangers, riding public transportation can be therapeutic as a trip to a local psychologist or a night out with my friends.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Thursday, September 13, 2012
The Racialization of Criminality and the Criminalization of Race
Even after the (partial) abolition of slavery, African-Americans were subject to judicial and extra-judicial execution, disproportionate punishment for an expanding range of offenses outlined by the black codes and the later Jim Crow Laws, and unpaid work in a convict leasing system that was, by some accounts, “worse than slavery.”
Angela Davis, Joy James and others have argued that the Thirteenth Amendment did not completely abolish slavery but rather reinscribed it within the US penal system by exempting convicted criminals from protection against slavery and allowing for the hyper-incarceration of African-Americans.
Angela Davis, Joy James and others have argued that the Thirteenth Amendment did not completely abolish slavery but rather reinscribed it within the US penal system by exempting convicted criminals from protection against slavery and allowing for the hyper-incarceration of African-Americans.
Wednesday, September 5, 2012
"New Urbanism"
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/design/2012/09/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-cities/3167/
Center for the New Urbanism
Tuesday, September 4, 2012
Coping with Anger in a Healthy Way
Anger rallies people. It creates energy and motivation to rebel against dysfunctional political or social systems. It also motivates groups to go on strike say, for higher, well-deserved wages or to defend human rights. On a personal level, anger can be good if it's expressed in a focused, healthy way rather than using it to punish or harm others.
Anger is one of the hardest impulses to control because of its evolutionary value in defending against danger.
What factors make us susceptible to anger? One is an accumulation of built-up stresses. That's why your temper can flare more easily after a frustrating day. The second is letting anger and resentments smolder. When anger becomes chronic, cortisol, the stress hormone, contributes to its slow burn. Remaining in this condition makes you edgy, quick to snap. Research has proven that anger feeds on itself. The effect is cumulative: each angry episode builds on the hormonal momentum of the time before. For example, even the most devoted, loving mothers may be horrified to find themselves screaming at their kids if they haven't learned to constructively diffuse a backlog of irritations. Therefore, the powerful lesson our biology teaches us is the necessity of breaking the hostility cycle early on, and that brooding on the past is hazardous to your well-being.
For optimal health, you must address your anger. But the point isn't to keep blowing up when you're upset rather--it's to develop strategies to express anger that are body-friendly. Otherwise, you'll be set up for illnesses such as migraines, irritable bowel syndrome, or chronic pain, which can be exacerbated by tension. Or you'll keep jacking up your blood pressure and constricting your blood vessels, which compromises flow to the heart. A Johns Hopkins study reports that young men who habitually react to stress with anger are more likely than their calmer counterparts to have an early heart attack, even without a family history of heart disease. Further, other studies have shown that hostile couples who hurl insults and roll their eyes when arguing physically heal more slowly than less antagonistic partners who have a "we're in this together" attitude.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/emotional-freedom/201102/four-strategies-cope-anger-in-healthy-way
Anger is one of the hardest impulses to control because of its evolutionary value in defending against danger.
What factors make us susceptible to anger? One is an accumulation of built-up stresses. That's why your temper can flare more easily after a frustrating day. The second is letting anger and resentments smolder. When anger becomes chronic, cortisol, the stress hormone, contributes to its slow burn. Remaining in this condition makes you edgy, quick to snap. Research has proven that anger feeds on itself. The effect is cumulative: each angry episode builds on the hormonal momentum of the time before. For example, even the most devoted, loving mothers may be horrified to find themselves screaming at their kids if they haven't learned to constructively diffuse a backlog of irritations. Therefore, the powerful lesson our biology teaches us is the necessity of breaking the hostility cycle early on, and that brooding on the past is hazardous to your well-being.
For optimal health, you must address your anger. But the point isn't to keep blowing up when you're upset rather--it's to develop strategies to express anger that are body-friendly. Otherwise, you'll be set up for illnesses such as migraines, irritable bowel syndrome, or chronic pain, which can be exacerbated by tension. Or you'll keep jacking up your blood pressure and constricting your blood vessels, which compromises flow to the heart. A Johns Hopkins study reports that young men who habitually react to stress with anger are more likely than their calmer counterparts to have an early heart attack, even without a family history of heart disease. Further, other studies have shown that hostile couples who hurl insults and roll their eyes when arguing physically heal more slowly than less antagonistic partners who have a "we're in this together" attitude.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/emotional-freedom/201102/four-strategies-cope-anger-in-healthy-way
Friday, August 3, 2012
Mapping Diversity and Segregation in the USA
This website is designed to help you explore patterns of racial composition in major US metropolitan areas and individual states.
http://mixedmetro.us/
http://mixedmetro.us/
The Rise of Economic Segregation
s Americans are growing farther apart on the income scale, we are also effectively moving apart from each other within cities, into our own economic enclaves. So why is that? The answer, Taylor says, may lie more in human behavior than economic data.
"We know over the whole entirety of human history that people have a tremendous tendency to cluster among themselves, whether in tribes, whether in nations," Taylor says. "Like attracts like. That’s not always the case for some people who value diversity. But it’s sort of hardwired into human nature."
(To pause for a note on data: Pew is defining "upper-income" households as those earning more than $104,400 a year, or double the national median income. "Low-income" households are those earning less than $34,000, or two-thirds the national median. Pew also adjusted these thresholds for local cost of living).
The most economically segregated large cities in America are all in Texas: San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas top the list.
Pew isn’t in the business of coming right out and telling us that we should wring our hands over all this growing economic segregation (and for what it’s worth, America is still more segregated by race than by income, even as those trends move in opposite directions). But it’s hard to interpret this as anything other than bad news.
"I do think it’s appropriate to observe that since the very beginning of our country, our quasi-official motto has been E pluribus unum – out of many, one," Taylor says. "One could make the argument that if increasingly we live among our own kind, whether we measure that by race or ethnicity, by income, by ideology or by partisanship, that may call into question the strength of the unum. We’re doing great on the pluribus.”
-Atlantic Cities
"We know over the whole entirety of human history that people have a tremendous tendency to cluster among themselves, whether in tribes, whether in nations," Taylor says. "Like attracts like. That’s not always the case for some people who value diversity. But it’s sort of hardwired into human nature."
(To pause for a note on data: Pew is defining "upper-income" households as those earning more than $104,400 a year, or double the national median income. "Low-income" households are those earning less than $34,000, or two-thirds the national median. Pew also adjusted these thresholds for local cost of living).
The most economically segregated large cities in America are all in Texas: San Antonio, Houston, and Dallas top the list.
Pew isn’t in the business of coming right out and telling us that we should wring our hands over all this growing economic segregation (and for what it’s worth, America is still more segregated by race than by income, even as those trends move in opposite directions). But it’s hard to interpret this as anything other than bad news.
"I do think it’s appropriate to observe that since the very beginning of our country, our quasi-official motto has been E pluribus unum – out of many, one," Taylor says. "One could make the argument that if increasingly we live among our own kind, whether we measure that by race or ethnicity, by income, by ideology or by partisanship, that may call into question the strength of the unum. We’re doing great on the pluribus.”
-Atlantic Cities
Reimagining an Entire Neighborhood Through Murals
The Dutch art duo Haas and Hahn, comprised of Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn, have embarked on a mural project that is strikingly similar to the high wire act of jazz improvisation.
The artists were commissioned by the City of Philadelphia and its Mural Arts Program to paint a section of Germantown Avenue as part of an ongoing revitalization effort targeted at stagnant commercial corridors. Located in the central part of North Philadelphia a few blocks east of Broad Street, the neighborhood is better known for its abandoned houses than its arts scene. The pair began the project a year ago, moving into a tiny white house directly behind the Village of Arts & Humanities.
Urhahn credits El Sawyer at the Village of Arts & Humanities, a community-based nonprofit organization dedicated to neighborhood revitalization through the arts, with orchestrating the duo's introduction to the neighborhood. “We didn’t just show up and start painting. We showed up and started making friends, talked to people, tried to get to know the neighborhood," says Urhahn. "Basically the first half-year we talked to everybody form the police officers to the guys on the corner and everyone in between. Especially the store owners."
"The point is not to change the neighborhood," Urhahn says. "We don’t bring answers, we have to define questions and to start the conversation."
-The Atlantic Cities
The artists were commissioned by the City of Philadelphia and its Mural Arts Program to paint a section of Germantown Avenue as part of an ongoing revitalization effort targeted at stagnant commercial corridors. Located in the central part of North Philadelphia a few blocks east of Broad Street, the neighborhood is better known for its abandoned houses than its arts scene. The pair began the project a year ago, moving into a tiny white house directly behind the Village of Arts & Humanities.
Urhahn credits El Sawyer at the Village of Arts & Humanities, a community-based nonprofit organization dedicated to neighborhood revitalization through the arts, with orchestrating the duo's introduction to the neighborhood. “We didn’t just show up and start painting. We showed up and started making friends, talked to people, tried to get to know the neighborhood," says Urhahn. "Basically the first half-year we talked to everybody form the police officers to the guys on the corner and everyone in between. Especially the store owners."
"The point is not to change the neighborhood," Urhahn says. "We don’t bring answers, we have to define questions and to start the conversation."
-The Atlantic Cities
How Urban Parks Enhance Your Brain, Part 2
Our results showed that perceived restorativeness in urban forests was strongly affected by closure of view to the urban matrix through the forest vegetation. This means that perceived restorativeness was higher inside the forest with a closed (i.e. no) view to the urban matrix as compared to semi-closed and open views.
The most intriguing conclusion to be drawn here is that the size of an urban park isn't nearly as important as the density of its vegetation. Even when a nature site borders an urban road or housing development, it can function as a restorative place so long as it offers easy access to a dense interior. In other words, the ultimate goal is not to see the city for the trees.
-The Atlantic Cities
The most intriguing conclusion to be drawn here is that the size of an urban park isn't nearly as important as the density of its vegetation. Even when a nature site borders an urban road or housing development, it can function as a restorative place so long as it offers easy access to a dense interior. In other words, the ultimate goal is not to see the city for the trees.
-The Atlantic Cities
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Living in Some Parts of Chicago Can Take More Than a Decade Off Your Life!!!!!
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/neighborhoods/2012/08/living-some-parts-chicago-can-take-more-decade-your-life/2781/
Researchers with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, in conjunction with the Center on Human Needs at Virginia Commonwealth University, have found that people living in Chicago neighborhoods with a median income higher than $53,000 a year have a life expectancy almost 14 years longer than Chicagoans who live in communities with a median income below $25,000.
This research reinforces an idea we’ve written about previously: that where you live may be the most important determinant of your health.
"Place really is the fundamental [issue]," says Brian Smedley, director of the Health Policy Institute at the Center for Political and Economic Studies. "Residential segregation is really the fundamental driver of many of the health inequalities that we see."
"It is unacceptable in the world's wealthiest society that a person's life can be cut short by more than a decade simply because of where one lives and factors over which he or she has no control."
The researchers also frame this problem in another way: Chicagoans with the worst access to chain supermarkets and large independent grocery stores (in the bottom quintile) have an average life expectancy that's 11 years shorter than Chicagoans with the best access to food (in the top quintile).
This doesn’t mean that when grocery stores disappear, people die prematurely. Rather, the patterns on these maps reveal that numerous forces are all intersecting in the same parts of the city: Neighborhoods with high concentrations of poverty are also the neighborhoods with the lowest educational attainment and the least access to pharmacies and food, and they’re also the neighborhoods where the city’s minorities tend to be segregated, and where the health outcomes tend to be the worst. The correlations are just too strong to ignore. As the report warns: "These place-based patterns are neither arbitrary nor benign."
These communities, Smedley says, have experienced long-running patterns of disinvestment (by grocery chains, by employers, by banks, by cities), and health inequalities appear to be one result of it.
-The Atlantic Cities
Researchers with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, in conjunction with the Center on Human Needs at Virginia Commonwealth University, have found that people living in Chicago neighborhoods with a median income higher than $53,000 a year have a life expectancy almost 14 years longer than Chicagoans who live in communities with a median income below $25,000.
This research reinforces an idea we’ve written about previously: that where you live may be the most important determinant of your health.
"Place really is the fundamental [issue]," says Brian Smedley, director of the Health Policy Institute at the Center for Political and Economic Studies. "Residential segregation is really the fundamental driver of many of the health inequalities that we see."
"It is unacceptable in the world's wealthiest society that a person's life can be cut short by more than a decade simply because of where one lives and factors over which he or she has no control."
The researchers also frame this problem in another way: Chicagoans with the worst access to chain supermarkets and large independent grocery stores (in the bottom quintile) have an average life expectancy that's 11 years shorter than Chicagoans with the best access to food (in the top quintile).
This doesn’t mean that when grocery stores disappear, people die prematurely. Rather, the patterns on these maps reveal that numerous forces are all intersecting in the same parts of the city: Neighborhoods with high concentrations of poverty are also the neighborhoods with the lowest educational attainment and the least access to pharmacies and food, and they’re also the neighborhoods where the city’s minorities tend to be segregated, and where the health outcomes tend to be the worst. The correlations are just too strong to ignore. As the report warns: "These place-based patterns are neither arbitrary nor benign."
These communities, Smedley says, have experienced long-running patterns of disinvestment (by grocery chains, by employers, by banks, by cities), and health inequalities appear to be one result of it.
-The Atlantic Cities
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Can Brooklyn gentrify the right way?
“There’s nothing wrong with change, as long as we’re seeing real benefits for people of color, who are the vast majority of longtime residents and shoppers in the area,” said Alvin Bartolomey, a board member of Families United for Racial and Economic Equality, a nonprofit organization with a membership in downtown Brooklyn’s public housing communities.
Brian Browdie
Brian Browdie
The Case for More Urban Trees
*The net cooling effect of a young, healthy tree is equivalent to ten room-size air conditioners operating 20 hours a day.
*If you plant a tree today on the west side of your home, in 5 years your energy bills should be 3 percent less. In 15 years the savings will be nearly 12 percent.
*One acre of forest absorbs six tons of carbon dioxide and puts out four tons of oxygen.
*A number of studies have shown that real estate agents and home buyers assign between 10 and 23 percent of the value of a residence to the trees on the property.
*Surgery patients who could see a grove of deciduous trees recuperated faster and required less pain-killing medicine than matched patients who viewed only brick walls.
*In one study, stands of trees reduced particulates by 9 to 13 percent, and the amount of dust reaching the ground was 27 to 42 percent less under a stand of trees than in an open area.
Among other things, he calculated that "for a planting cost of $250-600 (includes first 3 years of maintenance) a single street tree returns over $90,000 of direct benefits (not including aesthetic, social and natural) in the lifetime of the tree."
Street trees create slower and more appropriate urban traffic speeds, increase customer traffic to businesses, and obviate increments of costly drainage infrastructure. In at least one recent study (reported after Burden’s analysis), trees were even found to be associated with reduced crime.
I think some of the most important benefits, though, are felt emotionally. Burden puts it this way:
~Urban street trees provide a canopy, root structure and setting for important insect and bacterial life below the surface; at grade for pets and romantic people to pause for what pets and romantic people pause for; they act as essential lofty environments for song birds, seeds, nuts, squirrels and other urban life. Indeed, street trees so well establish natural and comfortable urban life it is unlikely we will ever see any advertisement for any marketed urban product, including cars, to be featured without street trees making the ultimate dominant, bold visual statement about place.~
Source
Upward Mobility: It’s a Race Thing
...from a conservative source
The most important point that Winship makes is this: mobility might be low in America but the lack of mobility is most crushing at the lowest economic quintile, and particularly for African Americans.
The Americans who can’t leave the bottom fifth are disproportionately African American as well, adding a racial dimension to this issue that often gets ignored in conservative literature.
In a follow-up interview with FrumForum, Winship expanded on some of the black-white family differences that exacerbate these trends:
-Concentrated poverty. Winship notes that “two-thirds of black children experience a level of neighborhood poverty growing up that just 6 percent of white children will ever see.”
-Family structure. While Winship says the evidence is “mixed”, it seems that divorce is more likely to encourage downward mobility for African Americans if they start in the middle of the income distribution.
The most important point that Winship makes is this: mobility might be low in America but the lack of mobility is most crushing at the lowest economic quintile, and particularly for African Americans.
The Americans who can’t leave the bottom fifth are disproportionately African American as well, adding a racial dimension to this issue that often gets ignored in conservative literature.
In a follow-up interview with FrumForum, Winship expanded on some of the black-white family differences that exacerbate these trends:
-Concentrated poverty. Winship notes that “two-thirds of black children experience a level of neighborhood poverty growing up that just 6 percent of white children will ever see.”
-Family structure. While Winship says the evidence is “mixed”, it seems that divorce is more likely to encourage downward mobility for African Americans if they start in the middle of the income distribution.
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Examining Capitalism Through Quantum Mechanics
When the most basic elements that sustain life are reduced to a cash product, life has no intrinsic value. The extinguishing of 'primitive' societies, those that were defined by animism and mysticism, those that celebrated ambiguity and mystery, those that respected the centrality of the human imagination, removed the only ideological counterweight to a self-devouring capitalist ideology.
The ruling ideology of capitalism has sought out to extinguish any alternative thought or knowledge that understands the world in immaterial terms and replace it with the narrow ideology of materialism, consumerism, commodification.
Lastly, as if world hunger, poverty, class inequality, sickness and disease, permanent war and ecological ruination weren't enough to present a critical case against capitalism, then consider the following. In relative terms to the rest of the entire universe, quantum mechanics shows us just how narrow, constrictive and destructive the system of capitalism actually is.
Source
The ruling ideology of capitalism has sought out to extinguish any alternative thought or knowledge that understands the world in immaterial terms and replace it with the narrow ideology of materialism, consumerism, commodification.
Lastly, as if world hunger, poverty, class inequality, sickness and disease, permanent war and ecological ruination weren't enough to present a critical case against capitalism, then consider the following. In relative terms to the rest of the entire universe, quantum mechanics shows us just how narrow, constrictive and destructive the system of capitalism actually is.
Source
Police Violence, Racialized Indifference and a Hunger for Justice in Anaheim
"There is gang violence," admitted Atef, "but it has to do with the social system not providing for impoverished neighborhoods."
Arellano believes the City Council is to blame even more than the police department for the violence afflicting Anaheim. "They've been giving billions in subsidies to developers, the 1%. When the city council pays attention only to developers the rest of city crumbles." He said that the City Council has diverted resources to hotels, resorts and sports convention centers to the detriment of the city's working poor, who are already suffering from unemployment and a spike in crime.
The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM) recently published an investigation, which found that 120 black men, women and children have been killed by police, security guards or self-appointed law enforcers in the first half of 2012, the majority of whom were unarmed. That's one black person killed every 36 hours.
Thus far, less than 9 percent of those responsible for the deaths have faced charges (four police officers and six security guards and self-appointed law enforcers).
Almost all killer cops are routinely exonerated and quickly return to the street. Grieving families who invariably ask the modest question, 'why did he have to die?' are ignored. If there is some demonstrated community outrage the case may be further investigated. The legal system almost never charges these executioners and even if they do, the killing continues.
-Police Violence, Racialized Indifference and a Hunger for Justice in Anaheim
Arellano believes the City Council is to blame even more than the police department for the violence afflicting Anaheim. "They've been giving billions in subsidies to developers, the 1%. When the city council pays attention only to developers the rest of city crumbles." He said that the City Council has diverted resources to hotels, resorts and sports convention centers to the detriment of the city's working poor, who are already suffering from unemployment and a spike in crime.
The Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM) recently published an investigation, which found that 120 black men, women and children have been killed by police, security guards or self-appointed law enforcers in the first half of 2012, the majority of whom were unarmed. That's one black person killed every 36 hours.
Thus far, less than 9 percent of those responsible for the deaths have faced charges (four police officers and six security guards and self-appointed law enforcers).
Almost all killer cops are routinely exonerated and quickly return to the street. Grieving families who invariably ask the modest question, 'why did he have to die?' are ignored. If there is some demonstrated community outrage the case may be further investigated. The legal system almost never charges these executioners and even if they do, the killing continues.
-Police Violence, Racialized Indifference and a Hunger for Justice in Anaheim
Friday, July 27, 2012
Segregation Curtailed in U.S. Cities
Segregation Curtailed in U.S. Cities, Study Finds
By SAM ROBERTS
William H. Frey, the chief demographer at the Brookings Institution, cautioned that “the report sends a potentially harmful message that black-white residential separation is no longer a priority issue in this country.
“While recent modest declines in black segregation levels are welcome, the 2010 census shows that the average black resident still lives in a neighborhood that is 45 percent black and 36 percent white,” he said. “At the same time, the average white lives in a neighborhood that is 78 percent white and 7 percent black. Black segregation levels are even higher for children, signaling the continued separation of black and white families across communities with different levels of resources available for schools and other services important for nurturing the next generation.”
John R. Logan, a Brown sociologist, said: “If we want to understand the long-term trends in segregation, we have to be aware both of the progress and of the resistance to change. We are far from the ‘end of segregation.’ ”
Still, Professors Glaeser and Vigdor found that only 20 percent of blacks now live in “ghetto” neighborhoods where 80 percent of the population or more is black, compared with nearly 50 percent who lived in similar neighborhoods a half-century ago.
The findings in the report, titled “The End of the Segregated Century,” for the Manhattan Institute’s Center for State and Local Leadership did not denigrate decades of desegregation efforts. In fact, the authors said, “there is every reason to relish the fact that there is more freedom in housing today than 50 years ago and to applaud those who fought to create the change.” But they concluded that housing desegregation was not a magic bullet in providing equal opportunity.
“Residential segregation has declined pervasively, as ghettos depopulate and the nation’s population center shifts toward the less segregated Sun Belt,” Professors Glaeser and Vigdor wrote. “At the same time, there has been only limited progress in closing achievement and employment gaps between blacks and whites.”
The study’s definition of neighborhood was borrowed from the census: a tract that is home to 1,500 to 7,500 people. The analysis relied on the two most common segregation indexes: dissimilarity, or the proportion of individuals of either group that would have to switch neighborhoods to achieve perfect integration, and isolation, which measures neighborhoods where the share of the population of one group surpasses the citywide average.
By the dissimilarity index, Dallas and Houston are the least segregated big cities.
Los Angeles fared best on the isolation index.
Among cities with the largest black population, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and St. Louis ranked highest in the dissimilarity index. Among metropolitan areas, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia did.
Since 1960, the share of blacks living in neighborhoods where they account for a minority of the population has risen to 59 percent from 30 percent.
“While it may be tempting to see the overwhelmingly white nature of many suburbs as evidence of stagnation or stasis, the presence of even modest numbers of African-Americans in suburbs demonstrates the remarkable change in American society,” the study said. “Indeed, measured by dissimilarity indices, suburbs are often among the most integrated parts of America.”
Only 424 of the nation’s 72,531 census tracts recorded no black residents. More than half were either in rural areas or in metropolitan regions where blacks account for less than 1 percent of the population. Every census tract in Connecticut, Maryland and New Hampshire recorded at least one black resident.
By SAM ROBERTS
William H. Frey, the chief demographer at the Brookings Institution, cautioned that “the report sends a potentially harmful message that black-white residential separation is no longer a priority issue in this country.
“While recent modest declines in black segregation levels are welcome, the 2010 census shows that the average black resident still lives in a neighborhood that is 45 percent black and 36 percent white,” he said. “At the same time, the average white lives in a neighborhood that is 78 percent white and 7 percent black. Black segregation levels are even higher for children, signaling the continued separation of black and white families across communities with different levels of resources available for schools and other services important for nurturing the next generation.”
John R. Logan, a Brown sociologist, said: “If we want to understand the long-term trends in segregation, we have to be aware both of the progress and of the resistance to change. We are far from the ‘end of segregation.’ ”
Still, Professors Glaeser and Vigdor found that only 20 percent of blacks now live in “ghetto” neighborhoods where 80 percent of the population or more is black, compared with nearly 50 percent who lived in similar neighborhoods a half-century ago.
The findings in the report, titled “The End of the Segregated Century,” for the Manhattan Institute’s Center for State and Local Leadership did not denigrate decades of desegregation efforts. In fact, the authors said, “there is every reason to relish the fact that there is more freedom in housing today than 50 years ago and to applaud those who fought to create the change.” But they concluded that housing desegregation was not a magic bullet in providing equal opportunity.
“Residential segregation has declined pervasively, as ghettos depopulate and the nation’s population center shifts toward the less segregated Sun Belt,” Professors Glaeser and Vigdor wrote. “At the same time, there has been only limited progress in closing achievement and employment gaps between blacks and whites.”
The study’s definition of neighborhood was borrowed from the census: a tract that is home to 1,500 to 7,500 people. The analysis relied on the two most common segregation indexes: dissimilarity, or the proportion of individuals of either group that would have to switch neighborhoods to achieve perfect integration, and isolation, which measures neighborhoods where the share of the population of one group surpasses the citywide average.
By the dissimilarity index, Dallas and Houston are the least segregated big cities.
Los Angeles fared best on the isolation index.
Among cities with the largest black population, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and St. Louis ranked highest in the dissimilarity index. Among metropolitan areas, Chicago, New York and Philadelphia did.
Since 1960, the share of blacks living in neighborhoods where they account for a minority of the population has risen to 59 percent from 30 percent.
“While it may be tempting to see the overwhelmingly white nature of many suburbs as evidence of stagnation or stasis, the presence of even modest numbers of African-Americans in suburbs demonstrates the remarkable change in American society,” the study said. “Indeed, measured by dissimilarity indices, suburbs are often among the most integrated parts of America.”
Only 424 of the nation’s 72,531 census tracts recorded no black residents. More than half were either in rural areas or in metropolitan regions where blacks account for less than 1 percent of the population. Every census tract in Connecticut, Maryland and New Hampshire recorded at least one black resident.
Critical race theory
CRT recognizes that racism is engrained [sic] in the fabric and system of the American society. The individual racist need not exist to note that institutional racism is pervasive in the dominant culture. This is the analytical lens that CRT uses in examining existing power structures. CRT identifies that these power structures are based on white privilege and white supremacy, which perpetuates the marginalization of people of color.
Hyperghettoization
Hyperghettoization, a concept invented by sociologists Loïc Wacquant, William Julius Wilson, and Willy Aybar (see Further reading), is the extreme concentration of underprivileged groups in the inner cities.[4][5]
Hyperghettoization has several consequences. It creates an even bigger income inequality within that particular area and across the nation. It destroys all of an inner city's major social structures, and acts as the straw that broke the camel's back for the social institutions of ghettos, whose positions are already precarious. Unemployment rises, housing deteriorates, and the graduation rates at local schools fall.[4][5]
Hyperghettoization has several consequences. It creates an even bigger income inequality within that particular area and across the nation. It destroys all of an inner city's major social structures, and acts as the straw that broke the camel's back for the social institutions of ghettos, whose positions are already precarious. Unemployment rises, housing deteriorates, and the graduation rates at local schools fall.[4][5]
Activism Defined
Activism consists of efforts to promote, impede, or direct social, political, economic, or environmental change. Activism can take a wide range of forms from writing letters to newspapers or politicians, political campaigning, economic activism such as boycotts or preferentially patronizing businesses, rallies, street marches, strikes, sit-ins, and hunger strikes.[citation needed]
Activists can function in roles as public officials, as in judicial activism. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. introduced the term "judicial activism" in a January 1947 Fortune magazine article titled "The Supreme Court: 1947."[1]
Some activists try to persuade people to change their behavior directly, rather than to persuade governments to change or not to change laws. The cooperative movement seeks to build new institutions which conform to cooperative principles, and generally does not lobby or protest politically, and clergymen often exhort their parishioners to follow a particular moral code or system.
As with those who engage other activities such as singing or running, the term may apply broadly to anyone who engages in it even briefly, or be more narrowly limited to those for whom it is a vocation, habit or characteristic practice. In the narrower sense environmental activists that align themselves with Earth First or Road Protestors would commonly be labelled activists, whilst a local community fighting to stop their park or green being sold off or built on would fit the broader application, due to their using similar means to similarly conservative ends. In short activism is not always an action by Activists.
METHODS
Civil disobedience
Community building
Activism industry
Conflict transformation
Cooperative movement
Craftivism
Voluntary simplicity
Economic activism
Boycott
Veganism (boycott of animal usage)
Vegetarianism (boycott of animal meat usage)
Divestment (a.k.a. Disinvestment)
Simple living
Tax resistance
Franchise activism
Lobbying
Media activism
Culture jamming
Hacktivism
Internet activism
Nonviolence
Peace activist and Peace movement
Political campaigning
Propaganda
Guerrilla communication
Protest
Demonstration
Direct action
Protest songs
Theater for Social Change
Strike action
Youth activism
Student activism
Youth-led media
Activists can function in roles as public officials, as in judicial activism. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. introduced the term "judicial activism" in a January 1947 Fortune magazine article titled "The Supreme Court: 1947."[1]
Some activists try to persuade people to change their behavior directly, rather than to persuade governments to change or not to change laws. The cooperative movement seeks to build new institutions which conform to cooperative principles, and generally does not lobby or protest politically, and clergymen often exhort their parishioners to follow a particular moral code or system.
As with those who engage other activities such as singing or running, the term may apply broadly to anyone who engages in it even briefly, or be more narrowly limited to those for whom it is a vocation, habit or characteristic practice. In the narrower sense environmental activists that align themselves with Earth First or Road Protestors would commonly be labelled activists, whilst a local community fighting to stop their park or green being sold off or built on would fit the broader application, due to their using similar means to similarly conservative ends. In short activism is not always an action by Activists.
METHODS
Civil disobedience
Community building
Activism industry
Conflict transformation
Cooperative movement
Craftivism
Voluntary simplicity
Economic activism
Boycott
Veganism (boycott of animal usage)
Vegetarianism (boycott of animal meat usage)
Divestment (a.k.a. Disinvestment)
Simple living
Tax resistance
Franchise activism
Lobbying
Media activism
Culture jamming
Hacktivism
Internet activism
Nonviolence
Peace activist and Peace movement
Political campaigning
Propaganda
Guerrilla communication
Protest
Demonstration
Direct action
Protest songs
Theater for Social Change
Strike action
Youth activism
Student activism
Youth-led media
Socialism
"Let's talk about socialism. I think it's very important to bring back the idea of socialism into the national discussion to where it was at the turn of the [last] century before the Soviet Union gave it a bad name. Socialism had a good name in this country. Socialism had Eugene Debs. It had Clarence Darrow. It had Mother Jones. It had Emma Goldman. It had several million people reading socialist newspapers around the country. Socialism basically said, hey, let's have a kinder, gentler society. Let's share things. Let's have an economic system that produces things not because they're profitable for some corporation, but produces things that people need. People should not be retreating from the word socialism because you have to go beyond capitalism."
Howard Zinn
The song Franco Un-American off the 2003 album The War on Errorism by American punk rock band NOFX references lead singer Fat Mike reading Howard Zinn as part of learning more about the world.
Howard Zinn
The song Franco Un-American off the 2003 album The War on Errorism by American punk rock band NOFX references lead singer Fat Mike reading Howard Zinn as part of learning more about the world.
Thursday, July 26, 2012
Awakening to Race Individualism and Social Consciousness in America
Awakening to Race Individualism and Social Consciousness in America
Jack Turner
To Emerson, Thoreau, Douglass, Ellison, and Baldwin, personal responsibility entailed at minimum (1) a refusal to be complicit in injustice, (2) a commitment to examine oneself for complicity, and (3) a willingness to overcome whatever complicity
one finds. Their sense of what counted as complicity was expansive:
one is complicit in injustice insofar as one authorizes it politically or enables
it socially or economically. On the basis of this idea of responsibility,
Emerson and Thoreau determined that they had to act against
racial slavery even though it took them away from the intellectual pursuits
they most loved. On the basis of this idea of responsibility, Douglass
exhorted American citizens after the Civil War to provide emancipated
slaves with the education and land they needed to lead free and
self- reliant lives. On the basis of this idea of responsibility, Ellison and
Baldwin called on white citizens to face up to the ways they benefi t from
both de jure and de facto white supremacy and to work for racial equality
not only in legal form but also in social and economic substance.
The civic project of “awakening to race” therefore
promises not only a morally reformed life, but also a keener sense of reality.
“We are capable of bearing a great burden,” Baldwin declares in
The Fire Next Time (1963), “once we discover that that burden is reality
and arrive where reality is.”13 The book also answers a question for
citizens: why should I be conscious of race and spend time and energy
eradicating racial injustice? The book responds: only by being conscious
of race can you be truly conscious of yourself and your world, and only
by working to overcome racial injustice can you ensure that you are not
complicit in it.
In 2009, African Americans were 80 percent more likely than white
Americans to be unemployed and 175 percent more likely to live in poverty.
Latinos were 38 percent more likely than whites to be unemployed
and 169 percent more likely to live in poverty.14 For every dollar of income
earned by white Americans, African Americans earned 60 cents
and Latinos 70 cents.15 For every dollar of net worth possessed by whites,
African Americans had 10 cents and Latinos 12 cents.16
In a 2008 National Election Study, 60 percent
of white respondents, 61 percent of Latino respondents, and 52 percent
of black respondents agreed that “it’s really a matter of some people not
trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder they could be just
as well off as whites.” Yet only 37 percent of white respondents—versus
51 percent of Latino respondents and 63 percent of black respondents—
agreed that “generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions
that make it diffi cult for blacks to work their way out of the lower
class.”17 This division in public opinion refl ects a distinctive “agencyversus-
structure debate” in American racial politics.18 Whereas white respondents
tend to see racial inequality as primarily the result of insuffi -
cient effort by African Americans (and presumably Latinos), blacks and
Latinos tend to see it as resulting from a combination of insuffi cient effort
and historical racial bias.19
Agency and structure are mutually constitutive rather than mutually
exclusive.20
Jack Turner
To Emerson, Thoreau, Douglass, Ellison, and Baldwin, personal responsibility entailed at minimum (1) a refusal to be complicit in injustice, (2) a commitment to examine oneself for complicity, and (3) a willingness to overcome whatever complicity
one finds. Their sense of what counted as complicity was expansive:
one is complicit in injustice insofar as one authorizes it politically or enables
it socially or economically. On the basis of this idea of responsibility,
Emerson and Thoreau determined that they had to act against
racial slavery even though it took them away from the intellectual pursuits
they most loved. On the basis of this idea of responsibility, Douglass
exhorted American citizens after the Civil War to provide emancipated
slaves with the education and land they needed to lead free and
self- reliant lives. On the basis of this idea of responsibility, Ellison and
Baldwin called on white citizens to face up to the ways they benefi t from
both de jure and de facto white supremacy and to work for racial equality
not only in legal form but also in social and economic substance.
The civic project of “awakening to race” therefore
promises not only a morally reformed life, but also a keener sense of reality.
“We are capable of bearing a great burden,” Baldwin declares in
The Fire Next Time (1963), “once we discover that that burden is reality
and arrive where reality is.”13 The book also answers a question for
citizens: why should I be conscious of race and spend time and energy
eradicating racial injustice? The book responds: only by being conscious
of race can you be truly conscious of yourself and your world, and only
by working to overcome racial injustice can you ensure that you are not
complicit in it.
In 2009, African Americans were 80 percent more likely than white
Americans to be unemployed and 175 percent more likely to live in poverty.
Latinos were 38 percent more likely than whites to be unemployed
and 169 percent more likely to live in poverty.14 For every dollar of income
earned by white Americans, African Americans earned 60 cents
and Latinos 70 cents.15 For every dollar of net worth possessed by whites,
African Americans had 10 cents and Latinos 12 cents.16
In a 2008 National Election Study, 60 percent
of white respondents, 61 percent of Latino respondents, and 52 percent
of black respondents agreed that “it’s really a matter of some people not
trying hard enough; if blacks would only try harder they could be just
as well off as whites.” Yet only 37 percent of white respondents—versus
51 percent of Latino respondents and 63 percent of black respondents—
agreed that “generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions
that make it diffi cult for blacks to work their way out of the lower
class.”17 This division in public opinion refl ects a distinctive “agencyversus-
structure debate” in American racial politics.18 Whereas white respondents
tend to see racial inequality as primarily the result of insuffi -
cient effort by African Americans (and presumably Latinos), blacks and
Latinos tend to see it as resulting from a combination of insuffi cient effort
and historical racial bias.19
Agency and structure are mutually constitutive rather than mutually
exclusive.20
Your Commute is Slowly Killing You
Broadly speaking, a long commute corresponded with several negative health outcomes. Poor sleep quality, exhaustion, and low general health were linked most strongly with lengthy commutes, though stress was apparent as well. The only negative health connection the researchers failed to confirm was long commutes and low mental health.
The Atlantic Cities
The Atlantic Cities
The Power of Colors
The Power of Colors: How Colors Are Used in (e-)Commerce to Influence You
The color theory, invented by Sir Charles Lemieiux, is a complex science involving psychology, physics, color perception, etc. Color theory tackles perceptual and psychological effects to various color combinations and contrasts.
The theory is so complex that it actually deserves the whole encyclopedia of it own, so this post won’t definitely be able to cover it all. Instead, it lists some fundamentals that you will hopefully be excited to hear.
The post covers some ways you can be influenced by colors, i.e. how your shopping decisions may be controlled by the right choice of colors in stores (or on e-commerce websites): next time when you see the color tricks, you will recognize them!
Check out the information here
The color theory, invented by Sir Charles Lemieiux, is a complex science involving psychology, physics, color perception, etc. Color theory tackles perceptual and psychological effects to various color combinations and contrasts.
The theory is so complex that it actually deserves the whole encyclopedia of it own, so this post won’t definitely be able to cover it all. Instead, it lists some fundamentals that you will hopefully be excited to hear.
The post covers some ways you can be influenced by colors, i.e. how your shopping decisions may be controlled by the right choice of colors in stores (or on e-commerce websites): next time when you see the color tricks, you will recognize them!
Check out the information here
Can Sculptures Fix Buffalo's Urban Farming Program?
Like so many U.S. cities, Buffalo is replete with empty land. It's estimated that more than 20 percent of the city's land sits vacant. These mostly residential plots are becoming an unfortunate 21st century trademark of 20th century industrial power.
Some cities are attacking this problem by converting the empty space into urban gardens. But soil contamination makes growing edible food in the ground next to impossible. Currently, growers get around this by using raised beds, which limits how much they can produce.
That's where Brooklyn-based architect David Lagé comes in. Lagé and a team of designers would like to install sculptures that can double as above-ground growing structures. Lagé says these Artfarms will help the farms increase their yields and meet health standards for selling at farmer's markets and to restaurants.
And, he says, they could help turn the Buffalo's troubled East Side neighborhood, where much of the property is vacant, into a cultural destination.
Video here
The Atlantic Cities
Some cities are attacking this problem by converting the empty space into urban gardens. But soil contamination makes growing edible food in the ground next to impossible. Currently, growers get around this by using raised beds, which limits how much they can produce.
That's where Brooklyn-based architect David Lagé comes in. Lagé and a team of designers would like to install sculptures that can double as above-ground growing structures. Lagé says these Artfarms will help the farms increase their yields and meet health standards for selling at farmer's markets and to restaurants.
And, he says, they could help turn the Buffalo's troubled East Side neighborhood, where much of the property is vacant, into a cultural destination.
Video here
The Atlantic Cities
The Class Struggle (magazine)
The Left Wing movement
Even prior to the establishment of the Socialist Party of America (SPA) in the summer of 1901, there had been a more or less conscious left wing movement, which looked with disdain upon advocacy of a "minimum program" of ameliorative reform, instead arguing for the wholesale revolutionary transformation of politics and society. World War I intensified the feelings of alienation of the left wing from the moderate leadership of the SPA and their almost exclusive concentration upon electoral politics.[1] The Left saw the failure of the parliamentary Socialists of Europe to avert the catastrophe of war as indicative of what one historian has aptly characterized as the "fatal dilution of revolutionary principles by the party."[2] The radicals, in ever more strident terms, objected to the "parliamentary cretinism" and "sausage socialism" of the moderate wing of the socialist movement, gradually coming to view its existence as an impediment on the achievement of socialist change.
Further impetus to the Left Wing was provided by the victory of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers Party, headed by V.I. Lenin in November 1917. The Bolshevik triumph seemed to validate the perspective of the radicals that socialist change would come through revolutionary upheaval rather than through piecemeal parliamentary reform. Parallel revolutionary efforts in Germany, Finland, and Hungary seemed to signal a new historical moment to the often young and always enthusiastic Left Wing movement. This movement sought to organize itself and to give voice to its ideas via the printed word. The magazine The Class Struggle, established late in the spring of 1917, was a particularly important vehicle for this emerging Left Wing.
Even prior to the establishment of the Socialist Party of America (SPA) in the summer of 1901, there had been a more or less conscious left wing movement, which looked with disdain upon advocacy of a "minimum program" of ameliorative reform, instead arguing for the wholesale revolutionary transformation of politics and society. World War I intensified the feelings of alienation of the left wing from the moderate leadership of the SPA and their almost exclusive concentration upon electoral politics.[1] The Left saw the failure of the parliamentary Socialists of Europe to avert the catastrophe of war as indicative of what one historian has aptly characterized as the "fatal dilution of revolutionary principles by the party."[2] The radicals, in ever more strident terms, objected to the "parliamentary cretinism" and "sausage socialism" of the moderate wing of the socialist movement, gradually coming to view its existence as an impediment on the achievement of socialist change.
Further impetus to the Left Wing was provided by the victory of the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers Party, headed by V.I. Lenin in November 1917. The Bolshevik triumph seemed to validate the perspective of the radicals that socialist change would come through revolutionary upheaval rather than through piecemeal parliamentary reform. Parallel revolutionary efforts in Germany, Finland, and Hungary seemed to signal a new historical moment to the often young and always enthusiastic Left Wing movement. This movement sought to organize itself and to give voice to its ideas via the printed word. The magazine The Class Struggle, established late in the spring of 1917, was a particularly important vehicle for this emerging Left Wing.
Tuesday, July 24, 2012
New Research Finds Urban Form Plays Little Role in Sustainability
urban form may actually have very little impact on energy use and other measures of sustainability.
"To our surprise, if you compare the compact form versus the current trend, the difference in reduced transport by automobile is very minor. And if you allow the city to expand, the increase in the use of the car is only marginal," says Marcial Echenique, a professor at the University of Cambridge Department of Architecture and one of the authors of the report. "If you make the city more compact, it doesn't mean that people will abandon their car. Only 5 percent of people abandon the use of the car. Ninety-five percent carries on using the car, which means there are more cars on the same streets, therefore there is much more congestion and therefore there is much more pollution and no great increase in the reduction of energy."
"We are not very convinced of the idea that compacting cities will make very much difference in terms of environmental quality. But it will have severe consequences in terms of economics and social issues," Echenique says.
Of particular concern for these researchers is that restricting development to only high-density, urban locations could greatly increase the cost of land and housing, causing both the cost of living and the cost of doing businesses to skyrocket. Echenique worries this will cause cities to become less competitive over the long term.
In terms of reducing the environmental impacts of human development and lifestyle, Echenique says his numbers indicate that we might be better off focusing our effort on improving technology and energy efficiency. He says we'll have a much better chance of reducing the negative impacts of modern living by focusing on automobile technology and reduced energy usage in buildings. He and his team are currently working on research on the effectiveness of focusing on the technology side. Results are expected to publish later this year.
Echenique argues and his research indicates that greater gains can be achieved by making more efficient cars or better insulation for buildings than by trying to reshape the urban landscape.
"Technology offers a much better future than trying to constrain behavior of the market," he says.
He says this research shows that creating sustainable places has little to do with what they look like and far more to do with their energy use.
The Atlantic Cities
"To our surprise, if you compare the compact form versus the current trend, the difference in reduced transport by automobile is very minor. And if you allow the city to expand, the increase in the use of the car is only marginal," says Marcial Echenique, a professor at the University of Cambridge Department of Architecture and one of the authors of the report. "If you make the city more compact, it doesn't mean that people will abandon their car. Only 5 percent of people abandon the use of the car. Ninety-five percent carries on using the car, which means there are more cars on the same streets, therefore there is much more congestion and therefore there is much more pollution and no great increase in the reduction of energy."
"We are not very convinced of the idea that compacting cities will make very much difference in terms of environmental quality. But it will have severe consequences in terms of economics and social issues," Echenique says.
Of particular concern for these researchers is that restricting development to only high-density, urban locations could greatly increase the cost of land and housing, causing both the cost of living and the cost of doing businesses to skyrocket. Echenique worries this will cause cities to become less competitive over the long term.
In terms of reducing the environmental impacts of human development and lifestyle, Echenique says his numbers indicate that we might be better off focusing our effort on improving technology and energy efficiency. He says we'll have a much better chance of reducing the negative impacts of modern living by focusing on automobile technology and reduced energy usage in buildings. He and his team are currently working on research on the effectiveness of focusing on the technology side. Results are expected to publish later this year.
Echenique argues and his research indicates that greater gains can be achieved by making more efficient cars or better insulation for buildings than by trying to reshape the urban landscape.
"Technology offers a much better future than trying to constrain behavior of the market," he says.
He says this research shows that creating sustainable places has little to do with what they look like and far more to do with their energy use.
The Atlantic Cities
Saturday, July 21, 2012
Friday, July 20, 2012
sapiosexuality
Definition of sapiosexuality :.
(sā-pē-ō-sĕk-shü-ăl'ĭ-tē)
1. (n.) A behavior of becoming attracted to or aroused by intelligence and its use.
Origins: From the Latin root sapien, wise or intelligent, and Latin sexualis, relating to the sexes.
Example: Me? I don't care too much about the looks. I want an incisive, inquisitive, insightful, irreverent mind. I want someone for whom philosophical discussion is foreplay. I want someone who sometimes makes me go ouch due to their wit and evil sense of humor. I want someone that I can reach out and touch randomly. I want someone I can cuddle with. I decided this all means that I am sapiosexual.
(sā-pē-ō-sĕk-shü-ăl'ĭ-tē)
1. (n.) A behavior of becoming attracted to or aroused by intelligence and its use.
Origins: From the Latin root sapien, wise or intelligent, and Latin sexualis, relating to the sexes.
Example: Me? I don't care too much about the looks. I want an incisive, inquisitive, insightful, irreverent mind. I want someone for whom philosophical discussion is foreplay. I want someone who sometimes makes me go ouch due to their wit and evil sense of humor. I want someone that I can reach out and touch randomly. I want someone I can cuddle with. I decided this all means that I am sapiosexual.
With Depth: Archetypal Vulnerability or Availability?
In short, it is not always pleasant to be thus available. It makes life more passionate, in a sense, but one definition of passion is sacrifice willingly undertaken, and we had no choice about this sacrifice. We are simply stuck with who we are. Like those who are compelled to climb high peaks or to explore deep caverns or dive to the ocean floor, we simply go. We are helplessly available to the mountain, the cavern, or the ocean when it wishes to be known.
http://www.hsperson.com/pages/3Aug08.htm
http://www.hsperson.com/pages/3Aug08.htm
What HSPs Need to Know About Why Good People Turn Evil
Zimbardo is also famous for studying shyness and trying to help people overcome it. In his book he expresses the view that shyness as a trait is likely to lead to evil-doing through the desire to be accepted. That is, shy people are not likely to be heroes. Phil and I are friends, and I pointed out to him years ago that some people are not shy, just highly sensitive. Yet I can understand his viewpoint--while we would predict at first that HSPs would be the first to notice and resist what is wrong, there are many reasons, such as the fear of others' opinions, that could stop us.
Preventing Evil in Ourselves and Others
Zimbardo provides a list of ways for all of to maintain our personal values under extreme social pressures.
Learn to admit your mistakes so that you are able to end something when you realize you have been doing wrong. Help others to admit theirs by reducing their shame. "We all make mistakes, even horrible ones like this." "Good for you for speaking up."
Pay close attention to what's going on rather than functioning on automatic pilot. Think critically. Imagine the end results of what you are going to do or have been told to do. Easy for HSPs.
Learn to speak up rather than conform to what seems wrong, even if the others resist at first. "Do you realize what's going on here, what we're doing?" You need to do this carefully, so that you will ultimately win them over. You can't be either too defiant or too meek.
Take responsibility rather than allowing responsibility to be diffused into "Everyone's doing it" or "I was just doing what I was told." Do not let others do it either. "Everyone may be doing it, but is it right?" "Do we have to do what we were told to do?" "What about disobeying unjust laws--isn't that true heroism?"
Notice when someone is starting to dehumanize you. Force them to notice you as an individual. Emphasize your titles, degrees, or connections, or if it would help, your human needs and feelings. Make eye contact.
If others are dehumanizing someone, point out things unique about the person as well as the person's similarities to those who want to see that individual as nothing but a member of one group opposed to their own, or simply as a subhuman.
Respect just authority, but rebel against it when it is unjust. Those at the top should be serving those beneath, and if they do not, we should do as all humans have had to do since first living in groups--reject an unjust leader. HSPs are often the first to notice injustice so we can help to see when it is time to disobey.
Do not sacrifice your personal or civic freedom for the illusion of security. This is always how tyrants get their way. HSPs like to feel secure, but look ahead to the greater dangers and point them out to others.
Overall, Zimbardo says the rules boil down to self-awareness, situational sensitivity, and street smarts--the specialties of HSPs, provided we are psychologically savvy and feeling confident that we are as good as anyone. Although he places great emphasis on the situation and the universal tendency to conform, he also obviously believes people can do otherwise. At the end of his book he discusses at great length the heroism of not going along with the group, perhaps much more difficult to achieve than the heroism that is the by-product of following orders. Let's be sure that HSPs continue to be well represented on the lists of the greatest non-conforming heroes, or among those who are unknown but sometimes even greater.
http://www.hsperson.com/pages/2May08.htm
Preventing Evil in Ourselves and Others
Zimbardo provides a list of ways for all of to maintain our personal values under extreme social pressures.
Learn to admit your mistakes so that you are able to end something when you realize you have been doing wrong. Help others to admit theirs by reducing their shame. "We all make mistakes, even horrible ones like this." "Good for you for speaking up."
Pay close attention to what's going on rather than functioning on automatic pilot. Think critically. Imagine the end results of what you are going to do or have been told to do. Easy for HSPs.
Learn to speak up rather than conform to what seems wrong, even if the others resist at first. "Do you realize what's going on here, what we're doing?" You need to do this carefully, so that you will ultimately win them over. You can't be either too defiant or too meek.
Take responsibility rather than allowing responsibility to be diffused into "Everyone's doing it" or "I was just doing what I was told." Do not let others do it either. "Everyone may be doing it, but is it right?" "Do we have to do what we were told to do?" "What about disobeying unjust laws--isn't that true heroism?"
Notice when someone is starting to dehumanize you. Force them to notice you as an individual. Emphasize your titles, degrees, or connections, or if it would help, your human needs and feelings. Make eye contact.
If others are dehumanizing someone, point out things unique about the person as well as the person's similarities to those who want to see that individual as nothing but a member of one group opposed to their own, or simply as a subhuman.
Respect just authority, but rebel against it when it is unjust. Those at the top should be serving those beneath, and if they do not, we should do as all humans have had to do since first living in groups--reject an unjust leader. HSPs are often the first to notice injustice so we can help to see when it is time to disobey.
Do not sacrifice your personal or civic freedom for the illusion of security. This is always how tyrants get their way. HSPs like to feel secure, but look ahead to the greater dangers and point them out to others.
Overall, Zimbardo says the rules boil down to self-awareness, situational sensitivity, and street smarts--the specialties of HSPs, provided we are psychologically savvy and feeling confident that we are as good as anyone. Although he places great emphasis on the situation and the universal tendency to conform, he also obviously believes people can do otherwise. At the end of his book he discusses at great length the heroism of not going along with the group, perhaps much more difficult to achieve than the heroism that is the by-product of following orders. Let's be sure that HSPs continue to be well represented on the lists of the greatest non-conforming heroes, or among those who are unknown but sometimes even greater.
http://www.hsperson.com/pages/2May08.htm
The Highly Sensitive Person In Love
The Highly Sensitive Person In Love
by Elaine N. Aron, Ph.D.
Why did I turn to this topic? First, a corny sounding reason, but so true: The world needs love. And I believe HSPs are meant to bring much of that love to light. But we need help with intimacy, I have found. Maybe we are afraid, have been hurt, and can't forget it. Or we have trouble being known and appreciated for who we really are. Or we have trouble in relationships because of our different needs, so that we always feel "too much" or "overly sensitive."
The Truth About The "Divorce Gene"
Most of us assume that the success of a relationship between friends or lovers depends on having good communication skills or sharing similar interests. But consider this: A 1995 study found that 50 percent of the risk of divorce is genetically determined. Does this mean success and fulfillment in social life are inherited? What can we do about that?
The single largest reason for this genetic effect is not a "divorce gene," I'm certain. (To say something is genetically determined doesn't clarify much--wearing skirts or owning a rifle is almost totally "genetically determined," thanks to the genes for gender plus a lot of cultural moderators.) Genetics enter into marriage because of the way that certain inherited temperaments cause trouble in relationships. They cause trouble only because most of us are totally ignorant about the reality of the drastic differences that can exist among nervous systems. But with the right guidance, the many "mismatches" in this world can have the most fulfilling relationships of all.
HSPs in Love
Let's start with the temperament we know, sensitivity. About 20% of us are highly sensitive persons (HSPs); at least 34% of love relationships involve an HSP. And everyone has at least one HSP friend. I have found that when HSPs aren't understood by themselves and others, that spells trouble. That's surely part of why my data show that, on the average HSPs, are a bit happier paired with each other. They understand each other.
My data also show that on the average HSPs' relationships in general are less happy--implying that relationships HSPs are in are less happy, at least for the HSP. Why? HSPs have nervous systems that pick up more on subtleties in the world and reflect on them deeply. That means, for starters, that they will tend to demand more depth in their relationships in order to be satisfied; see more threatening consequences in their partners' flaws or behaviors; reflect more and, if the signs indicate it, worry about how things are going.
Because HSPs are picking up on so much, they are also more prone to overstimulation, quicker to feel stress--including the stimulation and stress that can arise in any intense, intimate interactions. They need more down time, which can cause a partner to feel left out. They find different things enjoyable compared to others.
Sensation Seekers In Love
The Highly Sensitive Person in Love also explores, to a lesser degree, the other basic, well researched inherited trait-sensation seeking. Sensation seekers (SSs) are born with a deep curiosity and need to explore. Although this sounds like the opposite of being sensitive, nature planned it otherwise. Different genes and brain systems seem to govern the two traits, so that HSPs can also be SSs. But it certainly complicates their lives.
The Truth About The "Divorce Gene"
No wonder genetics cause 50% of the divorce rate-- this figure represents the many divorces caused by the pairing of persons with extremely different temperaments who have no clue about how the other really experiences life.
Relationship Advice For HSPs
The initial, often extraordinary attraction dissolves fast with familiarity. Then each can feel deeply disappointed with the other, even contemptuous.
Boredom is a special problem for a pair of similars, two HSPs in particular. They may be initially excited to find their similarities, but in time tend to use each other as a sanctuary rather than as a partner in exploring new experiences.
http://www.hsperson.com/pages/love.htm
by Elaine N. Aron, Ph.D.
Why did I turn to this topic? First, a corny sounding reason, but so true: The world needs love. And I believe HSPs are meant to bring much of that love to light. But we need help with intimacy, I have found. Maybe we are afraid, have been hurt, and can't forget it. Or we have trouble being known and appreciated for who we really are. Or we have trouble in relationships because of our different needs, so that we always feel "too much" or "overly sensitive."
The Truth About The "Divorce Gene"
Most of us assume that the success of a relationship between friends or lovers depends on having good communication skills or sharing similar interests. But consider this: A 1995 study found that 50 percent of the risk of divorce is genetically determined. Does this mean success and fulfillment in social life are inherited? What can we do about that?
The single largest reason for this genetic effect is not a "divorce gene," I'm certain. (To say something is genetically determined doesn't clarify much--wearing skirts or owning a rifle is almost totally "genetically determined," thanks to the genes for gender plus a lot of cultural moderators.) Genetics enter into marriage because of the way that certain inherited temperaments cause trouble in relationships. They cause trouble only because most of us are totally ignorant about the reality of the drastic differences that can exist among nervous systems. But with the right guidance, the many "mismatches" in this world can have the most fulfilling relationships of all.
HSPs in Love
Let's start with the temperament we know, sensitivity. About 20% of us are highly sensitive persons (HSPs); at least 34% of love relationships involve an HSP. And everyone has at least one HSP friend. I have found that when HSPs aren't understood by themselves and others, that spells trouble. That's surely part of why my data show that, on the average HSPs, are a bit happier paired with each other. They understand each other.
My data also show that on the average HSPs' relationships in general are less happy--implying that relationships HSPs are in are less happy, at least for the HSP. Why? HSPs have nervous systems that pick up more on subtleties in the world and reflect on them deeply. That means, for starters, that they will tend to demand more depth in their relationships in order to be satisfied; see more threatening consequences in their partners' flaws or behaviors; reflect more and, if the signs indicate it, worry about how things are going.
Because HSPs are picking up on so much, they are also more prone to overstimulation, quicker to feel stress--including the stimulation and stress that can arise in any intense, intimate interactions. They need more down time, which can cause a partner to feel left out. They find different things enjoyable compared to others.
Sensation Seekers In Love
The Highly Sensitive Person in Love also explores, to a lesser degree, the other basic, well researched inherited trait-sensation seeking. Sensation seekers (SSs) are born with a deep curiosity and need to explore. Although this sounds like the opposite of being sensitive, nature planned it otherwise. Different genes and brain systems seem to govern the two traits, so that HSPs can also be SSs. But it certainly complicates their lives.
The Truth About The "Divorce Gene"
No wonder genetics cause 50% of the divorce rate-- this figure represents the many divorces caused by the pairing of persons with extremely different temperaments who have no clue about how the other really experiences life.
Relationship Advice For HSPs
The initial, often extraordinary attraction dissolves fast with familiarity. Then each can feel deeply disappointed with the other, even contemptuous.
Boredom is a special problem for a pair of similars, two HSPs in particular. They may be initially excited to find their similarities, but in time tend to use each other as a sanctuary rather than as a partner in exploring new experiences.
http://www.hsperson.com/pages/love.htm
The Cognitive Benefits of Interacting With Nature
In sum, we have shown that simple and brief interactions with nature can produce marked increases in cognitive control. To consider the availability of nature as merely an amenity fails to recognize the vital importance of nature in effective cognitive functioning.
Earlier this year the same research group (with additional collaborators) came out with another study, set for publication in the November issue of the Journal of Affective Disorders. This time the researchers wondered how nature would influence a group of participants with clinical major depression. On one hand their symptoms could improve as attention and cognition were enhanced; on the other, their mood might worsen if they used the stroll through the woods to ruminate on troubling thoughts.
Just as before, attention performance increased more after nature walks than urban walks (in fact, the effect size was five times larger than in the 2008 study). The mood priming worked too: participants left the lab for their respective walks in worse moods than when they entered it. But after the strolls, those people who'd been through the park showed much greater improvement in "positive affect" — an emotional state typically low in depressed patients.
The study prompts several conclusions. The first, not really tied to cities, is that nature walks might provide a cost-efficient supplement to traditional treatments for major depression. As the researchers point out, the mood priming did work, meaning study participants set out on their journey thinking about a negative personal event. The fact that their positive affect improved despite this sour state shows the cognitive power of park land.
The second conclusion, more germane for our purposes, is that "incorporating nearby nature into urban environments may counteract" some of the cognitive strains placed on the brain by the city, the authors write. Recent research has suggested economic and crime benefits of urban greenery; now advocates can legitimately add "public health" to their list of arguments.
As always, caveats apply. To name just one: Nichols Arboretum in Ann Arbor, while no Central Park, is still quite vast at 123 acres. It would be nice to see the results replicated in an urban park of more modest (or, better yet, statistically average) proportions. Be great to know just how many trees it takes to give a city brain the break it needs from crossing traffic, or navigating subway platforms, or sitting in our cubicles reading Cracked.
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/arts-and-lifestyle/2012/07/how-urban-parks-enhance-your-brain/2586/
FULL REPORT: http://www.umich.edu/~jlabpsyc/pdf/2008_2.pdf
Earlier this year the same research group (with additional collaborators) came out with another study, set for publication in the November issue of the Journal of Affective Disorders. This time the researchers wondered how nature would influence a group of participants with clinical major depression. On one hand their symptoms could improve as attention and cognition were enhanced; on the other, their mood might worsen if they used the stroll through the woods to ruminate on troubling thoughts.
Just as before, attention performance increased more after nature walks than urban walks (in fact, the effect size was five times larger than in the 2008 study). The mood priming worked too: participants left the lab for their respective walks in worse moods than when they entered it. But after the strolls, those people who'd been through the park showed much greater improvement in "positive affect" — an emotional state typically low in depressed patients.
The study prompts several conclusions. The first, not really tied to cities, is that nature walks might provide a cost-efficient supplement to traditional treatments for major depression. As the researchers point out, the mood priming did work, meaning study participants set out on their journey thinking about a negative personal event. The fact that their positive affect improved despite this sour state shows the cognitive power of park land.
The second conclusion, more germane for our purposes, is that "incorporating nearby nature into urban environments may counteract" some of the cognitive strains placed on the brain by the city, the authors write. Recent research has suggested economic and crime benefits of urban greenery; now advocates can legitimately add "public health" to their list of arguments.
As always, caveats apply. To name just one: Nichols Arboretum in Ann Arbor, while no Central Park, is still quite vast at 123 acres. It would be nice to see the results replicated in an urban park of more modest (or, better yet, statistically average) proportions. Be great to know just how many trees it takes to give a city brain the break it needs from crossing traffic, or navigating subway platforms, or sitting in our cubicles reading Cracked.
http://www.theatlanticcities.com/arts-and-lifestyle/2012/07/how-urban-parks-enhance-your-brain/2586/
FULL REPORT: http://www.umich.edu/~jlabpsyc/pdf/2008_2.pdf
Thursday, July 12, 2012
FDA
It didn't take me long to see why some people considered the three letters F-D-A to stand not only for Food and Drug Administration, but also for Foot Dragging Artists. For the next four decades I've seen countless examples of failure to act, which have resulted in countless illnesses and deaths.
The FDA appears to suffer from two problems.
First, its own staff requires virtually absolute proof -- as in dead bodies with toe tags identifying the chemical cause of death -- that a substance is deadly before it dares reverse a previous approval.
Second, agency officials fear that companies would run to their friends in Congress to stop the agency from acting. And with the current pro-business House of Representatives, that is not an idle concern. But whatever the underlying cause, the public expects -- and deserves -- greater protection from the agency that was established to keep harmful substances out of their daily diet.
Huff Post
The FDA appears to suffer from two problems.
First, its own staff requires virtually absolute proof -- as in dead bodies with toe tags identifying the chemical cause of death -- that a substance is deadly before it dares reverse a previous approval.
Second, agency officials fear that companies would run to their friends in Congress to stop the agency from acting. And with the current pro-business House of Representatives, that is not an idle concern. But whatever the underlying cause, the public expects -- and deserves -- greater protection from the agency that was established to keep harmful substances out of their daily diet.
Huff Post
MONSANTO
Monsanto’s GMO corn has been linked to weight gain and organ function disruption, while GMO crops and pesticides destroy our farmland and environment. According to the Alliance of Natural Health, the grandchildren of rats fed GMO corn were born sterile. GMO is just one of those things to avoid, but with our own government in bed with Monsanto, it’s not easily done. Monsanto has recently launched a proverbial war against the open labeling of genetically modified foods, and only through activism and awareness can it be overcome.
Leaders in the disinformation campaign launched against the labeling initiative cry out that it would be—like the infamous Proposition 65, “The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986”—a way for bounty-hunting trial lawyers to file suits against even natural food companies for supposedly selling products containing undisclosed GMOs. Of course, GMO’s ally StopCostlyFoodLabeling.com receives funding from the Council for Biotechnology Information. It should be no surprise that the likes of Monsanto and Dow count themselves members of the said organization.
It hasn’t been long since the Food and Drug Administration deleted 1 million signatures and comments from the “Just Label It” campaign calling for the labeling of GM foods, even after 55 politicians offered support for the initiative. It only shows that the fight against GMOs won’t be easy (or cheap).
Still, it’s worth fighting.
Reading the STOP the Costly Food Labeling Proposition:
THE BOTTOM LINE: THE PROPOSED FOOD LABELING INITIATIVE IS EXTREME, COSTLY AND MAKES NO SENSE.
Right... right.
Read more: http://naturalsociety.com/monsanto-launches-campaign-stop-gmo-labeling/#ixzz20R0HXAa5
Leaders in the disinformation campaign launched against the labeling initiative cry out that it would be—like the infamous Proposition 65, “The Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986”—a way for bounty-hunting trial lawyers to file suits against even natural food companies for supposedly selling products containing undisclosed GMOs. Of course, GMO’s ally StopCostlyFoodLabeling.com receives funding from the Council for Biotechnology Information. It should be no surprise that the likes of Monsanto and Dow count themselves members of the said organization.
It hasn’t been long since the Food and Drug Administration deleted 1 million signatures and comments from the “Just Label It” campaign calling for the labeling of GM foods, even after 55 politicians offered support for the initiative. It only shows that the fight against GMOs won’t be easy (or cheap).
Still, it’s worth fighting.
Reading the STOP the Costly Food Labeling Proposition:
THE BOTTOM LINE: THE PROPOSED FOOD LABELING INITIATIVE IS EXTREME, COSTLY AND MAKES NO SENSE.
Right... right.
Read more: http://naturalsociety.com/monsanto-launches-campaign-stop-gmo-labeling/#ixzz20R0HXAa5
SENSIBLE FOOD POLICY
Between 2008 and 2010, the US Farm Bill gave nearly 8x more financial subsidies to genetically engineered corn and soy (most of which is for livestock feed and high fructose corn syrup) than to support fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Consumption of fruits and vegetables has been on the decline in the US, while medical costs associated with heart disease, cancer, and diabetes continue to rise.
With more than $500 billion at stake over the next 5 years, the Farm Bill has immense and far-reaching impacts on crop subsidies, conservation policies, fresh food programs, and SNAP (food stamps).
Time to act is running out. Under the draft House version, federal crop insurance subsidies would drastically increase to an unprecedented average of $10 billion/year — with no subsidy caps, no income limits, and not even minimal conservation requirements.
-Ocean Robbins
With more than $500 billion at stake over the next 5 years, the Farm Bill has immense and far-reaching impacts on crop subsidies, conservation policies, fresh food programs, and SNAP (food stamps).
Time to act is running out. Under the draft House version, federal crop insurance subsidies would drastically increase to an unprecedented average of $10 billion/year — with no subsidy caps, no income limits, and not even minimal conservation requirements.
-Ocean Robbins
Wednesday, July 11, 2012
STRUCTURAL RACISM AND COMMUNITY BUILDING
-How is it that a nation legally committed to equal opportunity for all—
regardless of race, creed, national origin, or gender—continually reproduces
patterns of racial inequality?
-Why, in the world’s wealthiest country, is there such enduring poverty among
people of color?
-How is it that in our open, participatory democracy, racial minorities are still
underrepresented in positions of power and decision making?
Without fully accounting for the historical and ongoing ways in which racial dynamics produce inequities between whites and people of color, the social justice and antipoverty field risks pursuing strategies that are misguided, incomplete, or inappropriate to the challenge.
The statistical portrait of the American population broken out by race reveals persistent disparities between people of color and white Americans in almost every quality of life arena, the most basic being income, education, and health.
The statistical portrait of the American population broken out by race reveals persistent disparities between people of color and white Americans in almost every quality of life arena, the most basic being income, education, and health.
The correlation between race and well-being in America remains
powerful.
Beginning with the expropriation of Native American lands, a racialized system of power and privilege developed and white dominance became the national common sense, opening the door to the enslavement of Africans, the taking of Mexican lands, and the limits set on Asian immigrants (8).
Over time, beliefs and practices about
power and privilege were woven into
national legal and political doctrine.
While committing to principles of
freedom, opportunity, and democracy,
America found ways to justify slavery,
for example, by defining Africans as nonhuman. This made it possible to deny
Africans rights and freedoms granted
to “all men” who were “created equal.”
Only when white Southerners wanted
to increase their political power in the
legislature did they advocate to upgrade
Africans’ legal status to three-fifths of a
human being. Thus, from the earliest
moments in our history, racial group
identities granted access to resources and
power to those who were “white” while
excluding those who were “other” legally,
politically, and socially.
Racism in twenty-first century America is harder to see than its previous incarnations because the most overt and legally sanctioned forms of racial discrimination have been eliminated. Nonetheless, subtler racialized patterns in policies and practices permeate the political, economic, and sociocultural structures of America in ways that generate differences in well-being between people of color and whites. These dynamics work to maintain the existing racial hierarchy even as they adapt with the times or accommodate new racial and ethnic groups. This contemporary manifestation of racism in America can be called “structural racism (9).”
White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks (18).
. . . . whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and
average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as
work which will allow ‘them’ to be more like ‘us.’
It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage . . . is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all.”
-Peggy MacIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the In
“. . . a child born in the bottom 10
percent of families ranked by income
has a 31 percent chance of ending
up there as an adult and a 51 percent
chance of ending up in the bottom
20 percent, while one born in the top
10 percent has a 30 percent chance
of staying there.”
Psychological studies of African American adolescents have demonstrated that consistent negative imaging contributes to negative self-acceptance and mental health problems (22).
Moreover, the attitudes that manifest
themselves at the individual level can
also aggregate all the way up into a
national consensus about race that,
in turn, influences policies, practices,
and representations. Experimental
studies of the effects of news stories
on the public suggest that television
images have the potential to catalyze
and reinforce opinions about public
policies that contribute to racially disparate outcomes: “A mere five-second exposure to a
mug shot of African American and Hispanic youth offenders [in a 15-minute newscast]
raises levels of fear among viewers, increases support for ‘get tough’ crime policies, and
promotes racial stereotyping.”
---EDUCATION---
Public education is probably the national system that holds the greatest potential for reducing racial inequities over time.
Looking closely at specific school districts reveals even greater inequities in investments. In the predominately white school district of Manhasset, just outside New York City, students receive twice as many resources as their predominately black and Latino counterparts in or close to New York City’s urban core (28).
RACIAL EQUITY ITSELF NEEDS TO BE A PRIORITY OBJECTIVE OF ANYONE COMMITTED TO PROMOTING SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, AND POLITICAL JUSTICE.
The implication for action is that social change leaders must adopt an explicitly raceconscious approach to their work: they must factor race into their analysis of the causes of the problems they are addressing, and they must factor race into their strategies to promote change and equity.
Source
regardless of race, creed, national origin, or gender—continually reproduces
patterns of racial inequality?
-Why, in the world’s wealthiest country, is there such enduring poverty among
people of color?
-How is it that in our open, participatory democracy, racial minorities are still
underrepresented in positions of power and decision making?
Without fully accounting for the historical and ongoing ways in which racial dynamics produce inequities between whites and people of color, the social justice and antipoverty field risks pursuing strategies that are misguided, incomplete, or inappropriate to the challenge.
The statistical portrait of the American population broken out by race reveals persistent disparities between people of color and white Americans in almost every quality of life arena, the most basic being income, education, and health.
The statistical portrait of the American population broken out by race reveals persistent disparities between people of color and white Americans in almost every quality of life arena, the most basic being income, education, and health.
The correlation between race and well-being in America remains
powerful.
Beginning with the expropriation of Native American lands, a racialized system of power and privilege developed and white dominance became the national common sense, opening the door to the enslavement of Africans, the taking of Mexican lands, and the limits set on Asian immigrants (8).
Over time, beliefs and practices about
power and privilege were woven into
national legal and political doctrine.
While committing to principles of
freedom, opportunity, and democracy,
America found ways to justify slavery,
for example, by defining Africans as nonhuman. This made it possible to deny
Africans rights and freedoms granted
to “all men” who were “created equal.”
Only when white Southerners wanted
to increase their political power in the
legislature did they advocate to upgrade
Africans’ legal status to three-fifths of a
human being. Thus, from the earliest
moments in our history, racial group
identities granted access to resources and
power to those who were “white” while
excluding those who were “other” legally,
politically, and socially.
Racism in twenty-first century America is harder to see than its previous incarnations because the most overt and legally sanctioned forms of racial discrimination have been eliminated. Nonetheless, subtler racialized patterns in policies and practices permeate the political, economic, and sociocultural structures of America in ways that generate differences in well-being between people of color and whites. These dynamics work to maintain the existing racial hierarchy even as they adapt with the times or accommodate new racial and ethnic groups. This contemporary manifestation of racism in America can be called “structural racism (9).”
White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools, and blank checks (18).
. . . . whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and
average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as
work which will allow ‘them’ to be more like ‘us.’
It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage . . . is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all.”
-Peggy MacIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the In
“. . . a child born in the bottom 10
percent of families ranked by income
has a 31 percent chance of ending
up there as an adult and a 51 percent
chance of ending up in the bottom
20 percent, while one born in the top
10 percent has a 30 percent chance
of staying there.”
Psychological studies of African American adolescents have demonstrated that consistent negative imaging contributes to negative self-acceptance and mental health problems (22).
Moreover, the attitudes that manifest
themselves at the individual level can
also aggregate all the way up into a
national consensus about race that,
in turn, influences policies, practices,
and representations. Experimental
studies of the effects of news stories
on the public suggest that television
images have the potential to catalyze
and reinforce opinions about public
policies that contribute to racially disparate outcomes: “A mere five-second exposure to a
mug shot of African American and Hispanic youth offenders [in a 15-minute newscast]
raises levels of fear among viewers, increases support for ‘get tough’ crime policies, and
promotes racial stereotyping.”
---EDUCATION---
Public education is probably the national system that holds the greatest potential for reducing racial inequities over time.
Looking closely at specific school districts reveals even greater inequities in investments. In the predominately white school district of Manhasset, just outside New York City, students receive twice as many resources as their predominately black and Latino counterparts in or close to New York City’s urban core (28).
RACIAL EQUITY ITSELF NEEDS TO BE A PRIORITY OBJECTIVE OF ANYONE COMMITTED TO PROMOTING SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, AND POLITICAL JUSTICE.
The implication for action is that social change leaders must adopt an explicitly raceconscious approach to their work: they must factor race into their analysis of the causes of the problems they are addressing, and they must factor race into their strategies to promote change and equity.
Source
Introduction
Hi.
My name is Jessica.
I like to learn.
This will be my outlet for my research.
And nerdy fascinations of sorts.
You can also check out my site here where I have posted papers written:
http://independent.academia.edu/JessicaBaltmanas
-JB
My name is Jessica.
I like to learn.
This will be my outlet for my research.
And nerdy fascinations of sorts.
You can also check out my site here where I have posted papers written:
http://independent.academia.edu/JessicaBaltmanas
-JB
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)