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Kanye West defends ‘White Lives Matter’ T-shirt in Tucker Carlson interview

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Kanye West defends ‘White Lives Matter’ T-shirt in Tucker Carlson interview

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This article is something relevant for this generation and this time in society where we are seeing more police brutality in people of color. Kanye as a person of color and an influential music artist is seen promoting a different perspective explaining it as "I just channel the energy, it just feels right. It’s using a gut instinct, a connection with God and just brilliance."

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Kanye West on Thursday offered a simple explanation for his "White Lives Matter" T-shirt - saying he wore the controversial attire at a Paris fashion show because "they do."

The 45-year-old rapper doubled down on his decision to wear the shirt in an hour-long sit-down with Fox News' Tucker Carlson, where he also appeared shocked by the backlash the stunt caused.

"I do certain things from a feeling," West said. "I just channel the energy, it just feels right. It's using a gut instinct, a connection with God and just brilliance," he said about wearing the shirt.

West, who now legally goes by the first name Ye, said his father had reached out to him about the shirt, which he found hilarious.

"I thought the shirt was a funny shirt. I thought the idea of wearing it was funny. And I said, 'Dad, why do you think it's funny?' And he said, 'Just a black man stating the obvious.'"

West told Fox News' Tucker Carlson it's "an obvious thing" that white lives matter in response to the backlash he's received over the T-shirt.

TuckerCarlson/Twitter

West has been criticized publicly by many - including Vogue editor Gabriella Karefa-Johnson and supermodel Gigi Hadid - for wearing the shirt to his fashion show on Monday. Other models in the show wore the same shirt.

"They're looking for an explanation - as an artist, you don't have to give an explanation, but as a leader, you do," the "All of the Lights" rapper told Carlson.

"So the answer to why I wrote 'White Lives Matter' on a shirt is they do. It's an obvious thing," West said.

In the wake of the controversy, West's contract with Adidas was reportedly "under review."

West wore the shirt on Monday at a show at Paris' Fashion Week.

Twitter/Candace Owens

When Carlson asked the "Gold Digger" rapper what he thought made the "White Lives Matter" statement so controversial, West blamed "a group mob" of "liberal Nazis" as well as the media, which he said pushes white societal norms.

"Because the same people that have stripped us of an identity and labeled us as a color have told us what it means to be black and the vernacular you're supposed to have," he said.

He told an anecdote about his father, a former Black Panther, facing racial discrimination growing up in Delaware as one of the only, if not the only, black families around. When his father attended a black university, West said, his father was told by his black classmates that he "talked white."

The controversy behind the shirt, he said, stemmed from a black girl saying she "felt traumatized" after seeing it.

West told Carlson he and his father thought the shirt was funny.

TuckerCarlson/Twitter

"It's like a black girl saying 'I felt traumatized when I saw a black man wearing something he wasn't supposed to wear,'" he said.

He compared it to Quentin Tarantino's 2012 film "Django Unchained," in which Samuel L. Jackson's character, a house slave, is upset with Jamie Fox's character, a free black man, for riding on a horse in antebellum America.

"If we saw ourselves as a people and not a race, then we would treat our people better," West, who called the Black Lives Matter movement a "scam" earlier this week, later said.

"In America, we as blacks, we'll look down each other on how good we speak. But we're speaking English. There's nothing whiter than English. We're not in our native tongue, actually. So we judge each other on white goal lines, not based on exactly what our culture is based on."

West is no stranger to contentious wardrobe choices. He wore a MAGA hat during his infamous visit with President Donald Trump at the White House in 2018. The rapper also wore a jacket with the Confederate flag on it back in 2013.

He told Carlson that the support he's expressed for Trump and other issues have isolated him from friends and even put him at risk of violent attacks.

"My so-called friends/handlers around me told me if I said that I liked Trump, that my career would be over. That my life would be over. They said stuff like 'People get killed for wearing a hat like that.' They threatened my life. They basically said that I would be killed for wearing the hat," West said.

"I had someone call me last night and said, 'Anybody wearing a White Lives Matter shirt is going to be green-lit.' That means they are going to beat them up if they wear it. I'm like, you know, 'Okay, green-light me, then.'"

More of West's interview with Carlson is scheduled to air on his program tomorrow night.

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Kanye West defends 'White Lives Matter' T-shirt in Tucker Carlson interview

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Kanye West on Thursday offered a simple explanation for his "White Lives Matter" T-shirt - saying he wore the controversial attire at a Paris fashion show because "they do." The 45-year-old rapper doubled down on his decision to wear the shirt in an hour-long sit-down with Fox News' Tucker Carlson, where he also appeared shocked by the backlash the stunt caused.

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Cultures and Race is not a Halloween costume

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Cultures and Race is not a Halloween costume

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I chose this article because every year for halloween we see some interesting creative costumes. But then there's the costumes where people feel the need to dress up as a different race or ethnicity. As a Latina, growing up, i would dress up as a super hero or my favorite tv character but every once in a while i would see a non-hispanic person dressed up as a "chola" with the black and white flannel, baggy kakis, dark lipstick and thin eyebrows. If someone were to describe this "costume" to me I would say this is how 90% of the Latinas I went to high school with dressed like. How is this an entertainment? To make matters worse, they say phrases like "ese" which just add to the insult to our slang talk. Latinos are not the only ones who deal with this. Like stated in the article on Halloween there were teenagers at a local store dressed as prisoners wearing blackface. This was an outrage. For people to think that a period in time where actual human beings suffered and went through hell, that it would be fun to dress up like them?

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A video of a group of Utah teenagers wearing blackface while dressed in prison outfits at Walmart on Halloween night has gone viral and sparked outrage in the community and across social media.

In the video, a woman confronts three white teenagers who appear to be posing as Black criminals and are accompanied by another teen seemingly dressed up as their prison guard at a Walmart in Cedar City, Utah.

"You guys are not going to get into college-you guys are not going to get any scholarships-because this is a hate crime," the woman can be heard saying in the video.

One of the teens then laughs off her response, saying "We all dropped out of high school, so it's OK," per the video.

Near the end of the clip, which has garnered over 6 million views on TikTok and attention from the governor, police, and Walmart, an individual can be heard ordering the teens to leave the store.

Utah Governor Spencer Cox addressed the video in a statement, saying, "We strongly condemn racism in all its forms and we call on every Utahn to reject such offensive stereotypes, slurs, and attitudes. We must do better."

"We don't tolerate discrimination or demeaning behavior of any kind and are incredibly disappointed by what is shown in this video," a Walmart spokesperson said in a statement. "After learning these people were in the building, our associates immediately instructed them to leave the property."

Cedar City police said they were unaware of the incident at the time it took place, but the department has now opened an investigation.

See social media reactions to the video below.

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Video Of Teens Dressed As Prisoners, Wearing Blackface Sparks Outrage | BIN: Black Information Network

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A video of a group of Utah teenagers wearing blackface while dressed in prison outfits at Walmart on Halloween night has gone viral and sparked outrage in the community and across social media.

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I choose this article because many people do not know about the racism that exist in Santa Barbara. It is also important to see how the pattern starts and continues from early ages and the influence it has on the culture of youth which shapes interactions and social patterns.

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News

Principal on Leave for a Week After Speaking Hate Word

The Santa Barbara Unified School District is in damage-control mode after Santa Barbara Junior High School experienced another racial incident. Unlike the physical assault by students on a Black classmate in February, this one involved the verbal use of the N-word by the junior high principal Daniel Dupont.

The earlier incident that caused an outcry was when several Latinx students reenacted the George Floyd murder by kneeling on a Black student's head and neck at the junior high and used racial epithets that included the N-word. It wasn't until the child's parent spoke during public comment at a school board meeting that the district notified the school community of the assault. Due to privacy reasons, it could say little about what actually occurred, but the student continued to be harassed on campus, the family said.

This incident with Principal Dupont took place in early November, and after repeated questions from the Independent, the district issued a statement on Wednesday that stated an investigation had taken place by two administrators in response to "an alleged verbal incident" that placed the principal on administrative leave. Any more detail of the incident itself was unavailable because of employee and student privacy rules, the district stated. It also listed a number of initiatives underway, such as anti-racism measures, reviews of systemic practices, and training taking place.

However, after the district's legal counsel approved, the district added that Dupont was talking with students in his office after they were using the word in the hallway to incite anger. In trying to make them understand how unacceptable it was, he used the word himself in full, unabbreviated. In addition to the administrative leave, multiple remedial measures were taken that could not be detailed due to personnel privacy rules.

Dupont himself sent an email to school parents. In it, he expressed his regret that he did not live up to standards "with some of my own actions recently. My response to a recent student verbal incident was problematic." He said he was back from a week's leave while the incident was under review and had spent the time in professional learning "to make needed adjustments."

That this occurred at the highest level of the junior high is striking. Dupont had been on the principal track for eight years, starting at an Orange County district and previously the assistant principal at Santa Barbara High School since 2019 before joining the junior high this June. He'd been a Spanish teacher for 14 years of his career.

Steps Taken Since February

Parent reaction was strong after the February assault, not only to the incident but because the district delayed notifying the school community - veiling its email in student-privacy-clouded terms - until it had investigated the incident. But in response to this and other February incidents, the district started several measures: It hired James Joyce III - for his Coffee with a Black Guy expertise in discussing racial issues - to work with the students and families affected by the physical attack. Another measure was to organize a group now called the Combating Anti-Blackness Working Group. In turn, that group has formed two committees: one to evaluate that curriculum, books, and posters reflect all students; the second to consider sharing stories of student experiences.

In April, the district started a racial incidents reporting system that receives its information from school administration, i.e., principals. The reporting system's working definition for incidents is: "A race-related incident is defined as any incident in which a person or group is targeted for their race or perceived race. The targeting can be emotional, physical, and/or verbal; virtual and/or in-person; direct and/or indirect, regardless of intent."

At the school board meeting on Tuesday, Assistant Superintendent ShaKenya Edison reported that six incidents had occurred across three schools between October 25 and November 9. Since the reporting began on September 27, there were a total of 16 incidents, not including Dupont's.

Currently, a racism survey is on its third refinement of questions to assess experiences among staff and students. At the news that the survey was not yet ready to go, School Boardmember Wendy Sims-Moten suggested the contractor should come speak to the board if they still didn't understand that the topic at hand was racism, not equity.

Connie Alexander, who helped form and presides over the Santa Barbara Chapter of the NAACP, told the board of the conversations she had with the families and the children after racial slurs were uttered or harmful attacks took place. Expressing her appreciation for the board's effort toward transparency, she reminded them that the N-word has a history and was used to abuse and hurt Black people, and even in the murder of African-American people.

The board had passed a resolution only minutes before that stated all of the school community would "refrain" from using slurs. Alexander made the point that the seriousness of the harm that results required a ban on the word. "The NAACP wants you to come in a little bit stronger," she advised.

Sims-Moten responded, saying the district was working toward a culture of zero tolerance of hate speech: "I get it," she said. "Someone says the N-word, and you just want to throw that person away." However, Sims-Moten said, the better resolution was transforming behavior, perhaps through restorative practices, because the person had to understand the effect they had: "We don't want to just say go out into the community and continue."

Too Little Too Late

For some other leaders in the Black community, however, the district is doing too little too late, as it had in February. Simone Ruskamp, one of the founders of Healing Justice Santa Barbara, said the Dupont incident reminded them of what happened in February, which is Black History Month, at the same junior high school. "After that racial attack, the district sent very general emails," Ruskamp said. Also, it wasn't until Healing Justice held a meeting with parents that they learned of other incidents involving Black children by perpetrators across the color spectrum. The group appealed to the district for information, and a month later the district admitted 12 incidents had occurred.

Anti-Black racism wasn't confined to the upper grades. Five of the 16 incidents recorded by the Santa Barbara district since September occurred at elementary schools. Healing Justice newly learned of an incident at the Goleta school district. In early November, a 7-year-old boy was choked by a classmate who was using the N-word.

In that case, the district sent a notice to the school's parents within a week. Superintendent Diana Galindo-Roybal was clear that the N-word had been used toward a Black student and outlined disciplinary consequences: that the "response to inappropriate and unsafe behavior will be developmentally appropriate to the age and maturity of the individual ... in a manner that upholds the dignity of the child." In an email to the Independent, she noted the school has a full-time psychologist whose services had been offered to both families.

For Krystle Farmer Sieghart, another founder of Healing Justice Santa Barbara, this was also an inadequate response. Though sincere, the psychologist was not Black and not trained in having restorative conversations dealing with prejudice against Black people. She said she offered to bring in a Black PhD student from UC Santa Barbara's Hosford Center, the university's psychology clinic, which Healing Justice had also arranged for students and families in the Santa Barbara district. The Goleta district had not yet responded, she said.

Connie Alexander of the NAACP also spoke to the Goleta board after the incident involving the first grader. As well as calling for a commitment to banning the use of the N-word, she argued that a widespread education effort was necessary; at least two generations were arguably unaware of the history of violence that underlies the word. "They don't understand the violence they evoke," she said. "They think it's just part of popular culture, but it's not."

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The Santa Barbara school district's Combating Anti-Blackness Committee is open to anyone in the community. Interested Anti-Blackness Task Force Members can RSVP to askthesuperintendent@sbunified.org.
Correction: This story was corrected regarding the district's statement on Dupont and its overall anti-racism measures. Support the Santa Barbara Independent through a long-term or a single contribution.
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Another Racial Incident at Santa Barbara Junior High - The Santa Barbara Independent

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News Principal on Leave for a Week After Speaking Hate Word The Santa Barbara Unified School District is in damage-control mode after Santa Barbara Junior High School experienced another racial incident. Unlike the physical assault by students on a Black classmate in February, this one involved the verbal use of the N-word by the junior high principal Daniel Dupont.

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Discrimination towards Muslim women and face coverings 

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Discrimination towards Muslim women and face coverings 

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Regardless of the Pandemic hate crimes continue to rise for minority groups. This article, explains how discrimination has increased towards people who wear religious head/face coverings mainly Muslims and Jewish people. A factor of COVID-19 it had accustomed people to normalize face covering making religious head/face covering “less of an issue”. The real "issue" continues to be an issue because the pandemic encouraged wearing masks for a short period of time disregarding the plain facts of these discriminative norms. In the article the author questions “ Why is it normal for people to cover their faces now and not before?” This is a great question that I think simply sums up an answer that this is occurring because of racism and discrimination towards people of color.

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The Charlatan, Carleton's independent newspaper

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"Are you friends with her? But she is a fucking terrorist!" That was what a stranger told my sister a few years ago when we were out with my friends. I was shocked and did not know how to respond. I am a Muslim hijabi and I always know that discrimination is out there, but that was the first directly racist statement that I ever heard.

Discrimination against minority groups is prevalent in Canada, especially against people who wear religious face coverings, who are mostly Muslims. According to a Statistics Canada report in 2018, there were a total of 173 police-reported incidences of hate crimes against Muslims. The report also notes 54 per cent of all religious-motivated hate crimes are committed against Muslim and Jewish people. These hate crimes included in-person and online verbal comments, physical incidents, and even vandalism of mosques and places of worship.

Over the last few months, I have seen fewer stories on my social media feeds of hate crimes against people who wear religious face coverings, such as a burka or niqab, than I saw pre-COVID-19. However, discrimination is still alive and well in Canada.

I walked down the streets in Ottawa a few days ago and had a few disgusted looks and atrocious comments aimed at me, but not as often as before COVID-19. Religious face coverings seem to be less of an 'issue' for now. The conversations surrounding religious coverings have quieted down in the wake of mask-wearing during COVID-19, at least here in Ottawa, and for many good reasons.

To begin with, covering your face by wearing a mask to protect yourself from getting the virus has become the new norm. On July 15, Ottawa Council passed a bylaw that states people are required to wear a mask in enclosed public spaces, such as malls, restaurants, recreational facilities, and public transport. Many transit companies have also required mandatory face masks in cities like Toronto, Hamilton and Guelph.

With all of these laws, you walk almost anywhere and you will see people wearing masks, including people who are wearing religious face coverings. People who wear religious face coverings are no longer considered "outsiders," "barbaric" or "oppressed" for covering their faces, simply because we are all covering our faces. It makes no sense to make a negative slur against them because we are all covered up.

Politicians are also busy with pressing issues that face the community and the world during this sensitive time. Politicians have to provide medical equipment for essential workers to protect themselves, provide testing kits to detect the virus, assess the situation and decide whether to move to the next phase of opening up or go back to lockdown, and provide funding for Canadians who are economically affected by the crisis. Thus, it is not surprising that media attention is directed towards significant decisions that are happening in the world, which are predominantly COVID-19-related, rather than religious face coverings.

On the level of regular Canadian folks, most of them have too many issues on their own plates to worry about whether someone is covering their face with a niqab or burqa. The COVID-19 virus messed up our whole lives and made us get accustomed to new lifestyles in a very short amount of time. 52 per cent of employed Canadians have reported working from home, according to a survey by the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA). University students are studying online and other students in elementary and middle school are getting homeschooling. These are just some of the changes that people have to go through, and caring whether someone is covering up is definitely not a priority.

The pandemic will end eventually, it is just a matter of time. Mask-wearing might be the new norm for some time or it may not. Regardless, I hope that Canadians take this time to question their racist beliefs about religious face coverings. Many of the reasons for people to advocate for banning religious face coverings with laws like Bill 21 in Quebec, such as the safety of Canadians and better communication, are ridiculous because these 'problems' don't seem to exist in a society where people cover their faces because of the pandemic. The issue is far deeper than just covering faces; it is about not accepting people who are different from typical white folks, which is ironic in a country that prides itself in having a multicultural and accepting society.

We will hear more incidents about hate crimes, vandalism and Bill 21 when COVID-19 is no longer the pressing issue of Canadians, but here are questions to ask: Why is it normal for people to cover their faces now and not before? Why when minority groups wear a religious face cover is it a huge issue and they are demanded by law to take it off, but if someone who is white covers their face, the problems disappear? The answer lies within racism, but some people might not admit it.
Featured image by Rodaina Ibrahim.

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Opinion: Remember mask-wearing when racists debate religious face coverings post-pandemic - The Charlatan, Carleton's independent newspaper

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"Are you friends with her? But she is a fucking terrorist!" That was what a stranger told my sister a few years ago when we were out with my friends. I was shocked and did not know how to respond. I am a Muslim hijabi and I always know that discrimination is out there, but [...]

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This look has been around for years portrayed by black and hispanic/latino cultures. It has always been frowned upon. The dark lip looks "gangster type" or "ratchet". Why is it all of sudden an american/white person does it it's okay and becomes a huge trend.

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The problem with TikTok's 'clean girl' aesthetic

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A trend that's had beauty influencers in a chokehold was interrupted by a viral tweet calling it classist, racist, texturist and fatphobic.

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Figure skating clubs and rinks have a long history of being very exclusive...and its still being perpetuated today by coaches, organizations, and other skaters.

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Before figure skating practice, Michael Baker would ask his mom to let him out of the car before they got to the entrance of the ice rink.

"He would say, 'Mommy, why don't you just drop me here?'" Shirley Brown, Baker's mom, told NBC News. "And I knew exactly why he was doing it."

They still haven't replaced their beat-up 2007 Toyota Rav 4, one in a long list of sacrifices made to support Baker's skating. Brown has delayed her retirement. They can't go on vacation.

Baker, 17, dreams of one day competing in the Olympics. But even if he has the talent to make it, the family worries the cost may hold him back.

Baker started skating at 13, when he signed up for lessons at a mall on his birthday. A coach saw that Baker had talent and offered to teach him.

"In the beginning, it was very, very, very tough," Brown said. "I find that it's an elitist sport. You're not welcomed by some of the parents. We don't look like them."

Baker is the only Black skater training at his rink in New Jersey.

From formal gatekeeping to high barriers to entry, the sport has a long history of excluding Black figure skaters. There aren't any Black skaters on the U.S. team competing at this year's Olympics, and the last time an African American skater competed at the Games was 16 years ago. There aren't many Black fans, either. U.S. Figure Skating, the sport's national governing body, found that only 2 percent of fans were African American. This disparity can also be seen throughout the sport.

"There's no Black kids," said Olivia Alexander, a 19 year old who has skated since preschool. "And if there are, it's very few."

A history of exclusion

The first U.S. skating clubs - local organizations that host test sessions, competitions and shows - were founded on the East Coast in the mid-1800s.

"Like many clubs like that in that period, they were exclusionary," Philip Hersh, a sports journalist who has covered 19 Olympics, said. "They were exclusionary of Jews, they were exclusionary of Blacks, they were exclusionary of a lot of other people."

The late Mabel Fairbanks was one of those excluded skaters. When she started skating in the early 1900s, she was denied access to rinks and couldn't join clubs, according to Olympic historian Bill Mallon, because she was Black and Native American.

But she skated anyway - at free sessions in the park and in nightclubs' ice shows. And she coached prominent skaters, knocking down the barriers she had faced as a skater.

"Mabel is the woman who paved the way for skaters of all color," Tai Babilonia, one of Fairbanks' former students, said. "She would say you'll have to jump higher, spin faster and shine brighter because you look a little different from the other skaters."

Babilonia became the first U.S. skater of partial African American descent to qualify for the Olympics, in 1976 and 1980.

Then in 1988, Debi Thomas won bronze, making her the first Black American to medal at the Winter Olympics.

But there still aren't many Black figure skaters, especially in the upper echelons of the sport. Since Thomas, only one Black American figure skater has gone to the Olympics - Aaron Parchem in 2006.

'I was the only person of color at the rink'

Today, skaters, coaches, parents and administrators cite the high cost of the sport, racism and a lack of exposure as reasons why there still aren't more Black and brown skaters.

It costs about $35,000 per year to hire Baker's two coaches and choreographer. Ice time is an additional $360 for 40 one-hour sessions.

Equipment costs can also pile up. Alexander estimates her boots, ordered from Italy, cost about $800 and her blades, sold separately, cost more than $1,000. Her costumes were each about $1,600, plus $20 each competition for a new pair of tights.

And competition fees, hotels and transportation all add up.

But cost isn't the only issue - Black skaters recount the microaggressions they have faced in the sport. When Alexander skated competitively, she said, people would comment that she's a "natural athlete."

"Just because I'm Black doesn't mean I'm a natural athlete," she said.

Joel Savary, a skater turned coach, said he showed up to a competition and was told the rink was closed. And one day at practice, when he was putting on his skates, a woman suggested they weren't his.

"That was very jarring for a 14-year-old to think someone was calling them out and saying they're stealing skates," said Savary, author of "Why Black and Brown Kids Don't Ice Skate." "I was then acutely aware that I was the only person of color at the rink."

When Savary moved from Florida to Delaware to train, he saw other elite skaters of color and wondered why he hadn't seen any of them on TV.

"You turn on the skating on TV, and you only see the same people," he said. "Or maybe they show 30 seconds of one skater of color. You blink, you miss it."

That's not the case with other sports.

"On TV, they see LeBron James, Patrick Mahomes," Baker said. "You see people who were trailblazers and people to look up to in the Black community."

Figure skating, he said, could use a trailblazer, too.

Ready for change

Decades after the first Black American skating trailblazer, Mabel Fairbanks, the sport still grapples with some of the same problems of its past. And U.S. Figure Skating knows it; last year it hired its first director of diversity, equity and inclusion, Kadari Taylor-Watson.

"We do have issues with the people feeling like they are on the outskirts of this sport because of the institutionalized racism that has been part of this sport since it began," Taylor-Watson said.

Other organizations are also addressing these issues of inclusion and accessibility. Savary founded the Diversify Ice Fellowship and Foundation, which gives financial support to elite skaters of color and works with schools to introduce skating to Black and brown kids. Figure Skating in Harlem and Figure Skating in Detroit both offer skating and educational training to girls of color.

"We do have diverse skaters throughout the sport," said Taylor-Watson. "It's just that they're not able to matriculate into these higher positions as judges, as coaches."

She said U.S. Figure Skating has plans to examine membership data to understand why these problems persist - and what it can do differently.

Skaters and parents say they're ready for change.

"I'm so tired of the talk," said Brown. "I want to see some action. I want to see some brown faces on the ice. Make it more accessible."

Baker believes sponsorships could help defray the costs. Savary would like to see more Black and brown skaters on TV. And Alexander wants to see education.

"What is the sport going to do?" said Alexander. "Are you going to educate the coaches about the discrimination and the unintentional racism that they exhibit?"

Baker skates almost every day, pushing himself to get better and better in the hopes of making the Olympics someday.

He is trying to get to a point where people say, "'Wow, this kid can jump,'" said Brown. "And they're more fascinated by his technique. So they don't see the color anymore."

Baker wrote a poem about skating called "Defy the Odds." In it, he lists some of the criticisms he has heard over the years - that he's too tall and too old and that he'll never be an Olympic champ - and wonders if he should even dare to dream: "If only they would believe and see beyond the mold. See the dream. See the possibilities. See me!"

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'We don't look like them': Black figure skaters face barriers to entry from a young age

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Before figure skating practice, Michael Baker would ask his mom to let him out of the car before they got to the entrance of the ice rink. "He would say, 'Mommy, why don't you just drop me here?'" Shirley Brown, Baker's mom, told NBC News. "And I knew exactly why he was doing it."

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"Whether it's Latino or Asian or whatever you are, I feel like it's way harder to go up on TikTok if you are not white," TikTok creator Noah Webster said. TikTok's popularity has been significantly helped by Black creatives, whose trends, dances and challenge ideas were often scooped up and repackaged by white creators, boosting those creators to internet stardom.

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Months after TikTok apologized to Black creators, many say little has changed

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“Whether it’s Latino or Asian or whatever you are, I feel like it’s way harder to go up on TikTok if you are not white,” TikTok creator Noah Webster said.

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Upon Queen Elizabeth’s death I seen many of the racist actions that were brought to social media about the royals family racist past and then never apologizing for their actions such as racist remarks made by the queens husband publicly, discriminatory employment practices, links to Britain’s slave trade in the 1500s and many more.

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algorithmically fuelled violence and racism is a huge problem we will need to confront as a species.

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Getty Images

Facebook algorithms amplified hate content against the Rohingya minority prior to widespread violence committed against the group by Myanmar's military in 2017, according to findings in a new report from Amnesty International.

"While the Myanmar military was committing crimes against humanity against the Rohingya, Meta was profiting from the echo chamber of hatred created by its hate-spiralling algorithms," said Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard in response to the report, referring to Facebook's parent company.

Amnesty's assessment claims that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, knew that its algorithms were contributing to the spread of hateful content against the Rohingya, but that the social media giant failed to address the problem.

"Actors linked to the Myanmar military and radical Buddhist nationalist groups flooded the platform with anti-Muslim content, posting disinformation claiming there was going to be an impending Muslim takeover, and portraying the Rohingya as 'invaders,'" Amnesty said in its report.

Posts including one describing a Muslim human rights defender as a "national traitor," were shared over 1,000 times. These posts often included comments calling for the murder of Muslim minorities.

"Don't leave him alive. Remove his whole race. Time is ticking," one person commented on the image, according to the Amnesty report.

Facebook also platformed hateful posts from Myanmar's leadership, according to Amnesty International.

"We openly declare that absolutely, our country has no Rohingya race," wrote the leader of the Myanmar military, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, in 2017.

A year prior to the genocide, Meta's internal research found that Facebook's recommendation systems "grow the problem" of extremism, according to documents viewed by Amnesty.

The Hill has reached out to Meta for comment on the report.

Facebook's hate speech policies prohibit users from posting content targeting a person or group of people with "violent speech or support in written or visual form," "subhumanity," "dehumanizing comparisons" and "generalizations that state inferiority," among other things.

On The Money - Dem leaders draw heat after stock trading ban stalls CDC has 'moderate confidence' that monkeypox cases will keep falling or plateau

A group of Rohingya refugees sued Facebook last year, alleging that the company failed to act in the face of dangerous rhetoric that led to the massacre of thousands.

More than 25,000 Rohingya were murdered during the conflict and thousands more were raped in Myanmar's Rakhine State, driving 700,000 people to flee.

The Biden administration declared the mass violence seen in the Rakhine State to be genocide and a crime against humanity earlier this year.

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Facebook amplified hate before Rohingya massacre: Amnesty report

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Facebook algorithms amplified hate content against the Rohingya minority prior to widespread violence committed against the group by Myanmar's military in 2017, according to findings in a new report from Amnesty International. "While the Myanmar military was committing crimes against humanity against the Rohingya, Meta was profiting from the echo chamber of hatred created by...

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This NPR video as it highlights the response to the increase of attacks on people of Asian descent of how pairs have started to walk in pairs for safety as well as showing individuals discuss their fears that have emerged/re-emerged.

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In response to an increase in violent attacks targeting people of Asian descent, some people across the U.S. have started regularly walking with loved ones out of concern for their safety.

In Pasadena, Calif., 87-year-old Janet Setsuda recalls her childhood spent in a Japanese internment camp during a morning stroll with Kevin Holmes, a local volunteer chaperone who has developed a close friendship with Setsuda as a result of their many walks together. Less than 50 miles away, in Chino, Calif., college student Sophie Moline, fearing that her mother, Charisse, could be a target, accompanies her on a walk through their local park. And in New York City, community organizer Michelle Tran joins her mentee, high school freshman Tiffany Yuen, on her evening walk home - something they began doing more regularly after Tiffany was verbally harassed in Chinatown last year.

This film follows the three pairs on their walks as they discuss the fears that have emerged (and in some cases, re-emerged) over the course of the pandemic, as well as the unexpected joys that this new practice of walking together has brought to their lives.

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VIDEO: Amid the rise in anti-Asian hate, these pairs feel safer walking together

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In response to an increase in violent attacks targeting people of Asian descent, some people across the U.S. have started regularly walking with loved ones out of concern for their safety.

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Education on the history of racism for children is becoming censored in America

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Education on the history of racism for children is becoming censored in America

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This article analyzes the ways in which new laws dictating what teachers can teach in America are changing the curriculum and what children know coming out of school. Censoring laws have been historically destructive across the world. We have seen that in the short-term, teachers are very hesitant and scared to say certain words or even bring up topics for fear that they could lose their jobs. In the long-term, this tactic could have radiating impacts on the awareness of the next generation and availability of information.

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D. Rae Garrison, the principal of West Jordan Middle School in Utah, chose not to offer the American Institutions class, because it grapples with current events, and classroom conversations in previous years had covered the Black Lives Matter movement. (Kim Raff for The Washington Post)

A Utah student group was called "Black and Proud." The principal had it renamed. A New Hampshire history teacher used to discuss current events in a unit about race and economics. No more. And Florida school officials canceled a lecture for teachers on the history of the civil rights movement while they considered whether it would violate state rules.

In 13 states, new laws or directives govern how race can be taught in schools, in some cases creating reporting systems for complaints. The result, teachers and principals say, is a climate of fear around how to comply with rules they often do not understand.

The new measures typically bar teachers from suggesting the United States is a racist country, from elevating one race or gender over another or implying that one race is superior. So far, they have not triggered wholesale rewrites of the curriculum, and few educators have faced prosecution or punishment. Some teachers say they see no changes at all.

But manyteachers nonetheless describe a chilling effect. They say they now err on the side of caution for fear that a student or parent might complain, resulting in a public battle - or even, in extreme cases, that they might lose their jobs. In New Hampshire and Oklahoma, which allow anyone unhappy with a teacher to complain to the state, there is an extra layer of fear. Teachers found to be out of compliance can lose their teaching licenses.

"The law is really, really vague," said Jen Given, a 10th grade history teacher at Hollis Brookline High School in Hollis, N.H. The New Hampshire law bars teaching that people of one age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, race, creed, color, marital status, familial status, mental or physical disability, religion, or national origin are inherently superior or inferior to people of another. But Given said she's not clear on the definition of "inherently," "superior" or "inferior."

"We asked for clarification from the state, from the union, from school lawyers. The universal response is no one's really sure," she said. "It led us to be exceptionally cautious because we don't want to risk our livelihoods when we're not sure what the rules are."'

Tell the Post: Teachers and parents, tell us how race is being taught at your schools

Supporters say the laws are needed to pare back offensive lessons about race in America, including the notion that White people today - even children - bear responsibility for sins of the past, and those that emphasize American racism over more unifying and uplifting elements of U.S. history.

Some officials have made it clear they are on the lookout for transgressions. In a speech last year, Richard Corcoran, the Florida education commissioner, said it was important to "police" teachers to make sure they are not indoctrinating students with a liberal agenda.

"I've censored or fired or terminated numerous teachers," he said. "There was an entire classroom memorialized to Black Lives Matter and we made sure she was terminated."

Opponents say teachers need the freedom to teach all of American history - the good and the bad - and that conversations about the unequal effects of slavery, systemic racism and White privilege are an important tool for helping students to analyze current events and controversies.

In recent years, many school districts have worked to examine structural racism in their systems - conducting "equity audits" and looking at discipline and achievement data through the lens of race. Many have added curriculums, books and lessons about racism and White privilege. In many places, these efforts accelerated following the murder of George Floyd in May 2020.

The backlash followed. A study published by UCLA's Institute for Democracy, Education and Access surveyed 275 teachers who belong to organizations that address equity and tolerance and found the majority reported efforts to block teaching on issues of race. Some teachers also said their districts were pulling away from previously announced equity efforts.

Laws limiting the teaching of race, gender and related questions now exist in Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. Executive actions, such as rules approved by a state board of education, are in place in Alabama, Florida, Utah and Virginia. In Georgia, the state board of education approved a resolution along these lines, but it was never codified into rules. In Montana, the attorney general issued an opinion on the issue. In Arizona, a law that imposed limits on teaching race was invalidated by the state supreme court.

Virginia's new governor launches term with focus on education, thrilling some and terrifying others

Outside pressure is likely to persist. At least 27 states are considering legislation this year that would limit how race and, in some cases gender, can be taught in schools. Republicans see this issue as a winning one and are campaigning across the country against a basket of race-related policies they label as critical race theory.

Rewriting the lesson plan

Interviews with teachers and principals across the country reveal that educators are changing the way they teach about race in response to the new laws, sometimes in subtle ways.

In New Hampshire, Given said she used to teach students about racial disparities in economics partly by tying relative lack of Black wealth to Jim Crow laws and discriminatory mortgage policies known as redlining. Not anymore.

"We started avoiding modern parallels in order to avoid any question coming up that we were, by including this information, we were somehow suggesting one group is better than the other," she said.

An hour north, in Hopkinton, N.H., high school English teacher Kate LaClair said she used to talk about the idea of privilege, including White privilege, during a unit on race. This year she plans to avoid any mention of that. She also is not going to have her students take the implicit bias test from Harvard or read articles critiquing it, as she has in the past.

"I'm just being more aware of buzz and trigger words," she said.

What is critical race theory, and why do Republicans want to ban it?

In August, about a month after Oklahoma's new law passed, administrators in Edmond, Okla., sent a slide presentation to staff saying that teachers should avoid using the terms "diversity" and "White privilege" during classroom discussions, according to a screenshot obtained by The Washington Post. Regan Killackey, who teaches English at Edmond Memorial High School, was so disturbed that he contacted the ACLU in Oklahoma and is now a plaintiff in a suit challenging the law.

"I was watching what was happening around me and ethically I couldn't remain silent," said Killackey, who is White and has taught for 18 years. This year, he said, "I have taught differently. I've had to edit myself in a way that I've never had to think about in my entire career."

Edmond Public Schools spokeswoman Susan Parks-Schlepp said in an emailed statement that the slide presentation was "preliminary in nature." The district later added "new slides [that] clarified for teachers that diversity could be discussed in the classroom," she said.

And at Utah's West Jordan Middle School, outside Salt Lake City, Principal D. Rae Garrison decided not to offer a popular course called American Institutions this year partly because one unit discusses current events, including the Black Lives Matter movement. She said the teacher did not feel comfortable teaching the class until they are certain that the material does not violate the new law.

They've made some changes and plan to offer the course again in the fall, she said, but she leaves open the possibility that she'll again pull the course or modify it further.

"If we're going to have people having an issue it would be with this class," she said. While the teacher awaits guidance from the state, no decision has been made yet about whether to keep the Black Lives Matter material.

The Pulitzer Center, which distributes a curriculum based on the "1619 Project," said one of the 42 participating school districts dropped out of a training program due to state legislation. Donnalie Jamnah, manager of K12 Partnerships, said "quite a few" teams "had to respond to some pushback to the work, (but) most were able to address those parent or community concerns." She said a better test may come with the second cohort of teachers later this year.

Targeting books

In other challenges, parents have sought to remove books from reading lists, or teachers have done it preemptively.

A complaint under the new Tennessee law has been filed against the "Civil Rights Heroes" module of a second-grade reading curriculum - specifically four books detailing the life stories of Martin Luther King, Jr., Ruby Bridges and Sylvia Mendez. It charged that the books betray a "narrow and slanted obsession on historical mistakes ... that makes children hate their country, each other, and/or themselves."

The complaint came from the Williamson County chapter of Moms for Liberty, a national advocacy group that pushes for greater parental control over education.

The chair of the group, Robin Steenman, said in an email that her Moms for Liberty chapter is "genuinely concerned about the graphic, violent and racially divisive contents in the curriculum," saying this content is not appropriate for second grade. She said she and other chapter members first grew concerned when a mother charged that her biracial child was "negatively impacted by the teaching."

A spokeswoman for the Williamson County school district said this week that the district is reviewing challenges to 30 texts, including these titles.

In Oklahoma, the Edmond district eliminated a rule that teachers of an American literature course include at least one text authored by a woman or a person of color that meaningfully interrogates issues of race and identity, Killackey said. In a statement, Edmond schools spokeswoman Parks-Schlepp said the district reviews and updates its book lists annually to make sure they comply with state academic standards.

Last year, in Hopkinton, a teacher had students read an excerpt of the book "Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You," causing a stir. The controversy triggered a review, which is still ongoing, so the book is not currently being taught, said LaClair, who heads the English department at Hopkinton Middle/High School.

In Florida, rules approved by the state board of education that are otherwise open to interpretation include one clear directive: Schools may not teach the "1619 Project," a set of essays and a book developed by the New York Times that argues slavery was central to America's founding.

Pinellas County history teacher Brandt Robinson, who had spoken at a school board meeting about these issues, was accused by a parent of violating the law because his syllabus included a book about Black Americans that referenced the year 1619. The parent lost her appeal.

"Here is a woman who didn't know what she didn't know," Robinson said.

Changes large and small

Administrators have felt the need to make a raft of other adjustments to accommodate the new rules.

In Osceola County, Fla., the school district had scheduled a January professional development session for teachers with Michael Butler, a history professor at Flagler College in St. Augustine, on the history of civil rights. Officials canceled it in part because they worried it would run afoul of the state's rules.

"The district needed time to review the training materials in light of the current conversations across our state and in our community about critical race theory," said district spokeswoman Dana Schafer. The teachers involved were instead moved into a training session with a different presenter.

This was also a concern in Edmond. Killackey said at the start of the school year, he learned administrators had nixed a module on anti-racist teaching from mandatory professional development training. The program had included holding "courageous conversations" about thorny social topics, including racial issues.

Parks-Schlepp said the district "has not changed its professional development training because of the law." She noted that the module, though now voluntary, "still exists on our educator dashboard and is available for any teacher who wants to view it."

Other modifications have been mostly symbolic, though some find the symbolism can be meaningful. In Davenport, Iowa, in 2020, school librarian Linda Smithson decorated windows with decal sayings including "Black Lives Matter," "Science is Real," "Love is Love" and "Women's Rights are Human Rights."

Smithson recalled just one complaint, from a student who asked, "Don't all lives matter?," prompting a conversation. Last summer, she said her principal asked her to take the decals down, citing the new law. "He didn't want to offend anybody, and he didn't want to wind up on the news," she said. She complained, and in a meeting with a district official, she was again told to take them down because they were "political," she said.

"Which ones are political?" she replied. She stuck to her position and was allowed to keep the decals but, in a concession, replaced a large Black Lives Matter flag in her library with a smaller one. A district spokesman had no comment.

At her Utah middle school, Garrison instructed a student group to change its name from "Black and Proud" to "Black Student Alliance." Two years ago, she said, a father got "right up in my face" and demanded, "How dare you have a 'Black and Proud' group at our school. Can my son start a group called 'White and Proud?'"

Public education is facing a crisis of epic proportions

Garrison ignored the complaint - until the law passed last year, and she decided she should change the name just in case. She added that she likes the new name and finds it to be a positive change.

Nonetheless, she said: "I'm looking at things from a fear-based lens. ... There's a general distrust that's been going on between parents and schools."

In the fall, a parent at Kearsarge Regional Middle School in Sutton, N.H., complained that an educator was displaying a rainbow flag symbolizing LBGTQ+, said Steve Patterson, the school principal.

"A parent challenged me and said, 'That's against the law,'" Patterson said. "He made the case that the flag was at the front of the room more prominently than the U.S. flag, which it wasn't."

Patterson consulted with a district attorney who told him the flag was fine. "A pride flag is actually a message of inclusion," Patterson said. "It doesn't say any group is inherently inferior or superior."

A climate of fear

Overall, Patterson sees teachers showing more caution. He worries, for instance, about an upcoming unit teaching the Holocaust. Might someone conclude that teaching this history sends a message that people of German descent are guilty by association? He doesn't anticipate teachers losing their teaching licenses, but he doesn't think that is the point.

"Are they changing the nature of the conversations in school? Yeah," he said.

Liz Close, who teaches ethnic studies at Anderson High School in Austin has detected a low hum of anxiety all year. Close, 35, teaches about institutionalized racism in America and how some of the worst parts of our nation's history inform the present. "I know that if I get a parent who does not agree with these concepts, I'll be in trouble," she said.

So far this year, though, no parents have submitted complaints. Close, who is White, has not changed much, but she did remove a link to the 1619 Project. "I still tell them about it. I say it's a resource, you can read it - but I'm not putting it on my curriculum page," she said.

Elsewhere in Texas - in Brownsville, on the Mexico border - Scott Frank began the year by offering his fellow teachers a primer on what the new law meant for them. The law bars them from "race or sex stereotyping" and forbids schools from requiring teachers to teach about current, controversial issues. He closed by encouraging them to read the language of the law themselves.

A couple teachers approached Frank afterward to ask if they could teach specific concepts or issues. Feeling out of his depth, Frank replied, "If it's not stated specifically that you can't teach it, then yeah, if it's relevant to your course, you can teach it."

"There is a nervousness in the air," Frank said. "It's just a feeling like, don't rock the boat. Are you willing to lose your job over this kind of thing?"

At the start of the year, administrators at Valanna White's high school in Cleveland, Tenn., convened a special meeting to discuss how the law might affect teaching, said White, 39. Their advice boiled down to: "Don't teach your opinions, and if you think you can get in trouble for it, don't do it," she said.

White, who said she is the only African American teachers in the majority-White Walker Valley High School, said she never taught opinions but is now careful to delineate the source of everything.

"It is, 'This is information that I gained from C-SPAN. This is information that you can look at at this website,'" White said.

She hesitates to answer questions about slavery and the Jim Crow era in America: "Miss White, what do you think about why people would treat each other that way?" "How would you handle it if you were enslaved?" "How would you handle it if you lived under Jim Crow?"

If she is asked about critical race theory, she now replies, "I don't have a thought on that."

Before the law passed, White said, she would try to draw her students out, pressing them to consider the causes of racism and urging them to inspect and understand their own feelings about the darkest parts of American history. She would have made clear all student opinions are valid and emphasized the need to think critically and empathetically about history.

"Now, I shy away," she said. "I say: 'We can't talk about that.' Or: 'We shouldn't.'"

More on race in education

What is critical race theory? Frequently asked questions | Video explainer

K-12: The next book ban: States aim to limit titles students can search for | DeSantis accused textbooks of 'indoctrination.' Here's what he meant. | Teens fight for the right to read with 'banned-book clubs' and lawsuits

Higher ed: A formerly enslaved woman helped found a key American university | William & Mary unveils memorial for enslaved people | After controversies, Georgetown Law students call for culture shift | How popular merit college scholarships have perpetuated racial inequities

Virginia's fight over schools: Va. school board delays vote on telling parents how students self-identify | Supreme Court lets Thomas Jefferson High School admissions policy stand | Youngkin's move to force Loudoun school board elections called 'troubling'

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New critical race theory laws have teachers scared, confused and self-censoring

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The provisions in 13 states are vague, and tip lines allow parents to report on instructors who violate them. As a result, teachers and principals around the country report a chilling effect, where they are changing what they say in the classroom.

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Actors in "Rings of Power" receive racism backlash

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Actors in "Rings of Power" receive racism backlash

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I love the whole Lord of The Rings and the Hobbit series. The characters in the new movie are diverse and are great actors for their part, and yet they receive hate for the mere color of their skin? Unbelievable to me.

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Elijah Wood in "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring." (Warner Bros.)

LONDON - J.R.R. Tolkien has said that his vision of Middle-earth, the fantastical world in his acclaimed Lord of the Rings novels, reflects his "wonder and delight in the earth as it is."

Those who have taken up the latest television series inspired by his imagination are firing back against a torrent of racial abuse they say their Black actors have received and doubling down on protecting the British author's multifaceted world.

Creators and cast of Amazon Prime Video's "The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power," which debuted Sept. 1, issued a statement Wednesday in "solidarity and against the relentless racism, threats, harassment, and abuse some of our castmates of color are being subject to on a daily basis."

"JRR Tolkien created a world which, by definition, is multi-cultural. A world in which free peoples from different races and cultures join together, in fellowship, to defeat the forces of evil," it said. "Our world has never been all white, fantasy has never been all white. Middle-earth is not all white."

The statement also championed "fans of colour who are themselves being attacked simply for existing in this fandom. We see you, your bravery, and endless creativity," it added. "You are valid, you are loved, and you belong."

The new Lord of the Rings series, explained

The sentiment was echoed by former stars and hobbits: actors Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd, who played Frodo, Samwise, Merry and Pippin, respectively, in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, released in the early 2000s.

Wood shared an image on Twitter with castmates wearing T-shirts with Elvish writing on them, tweeting, "You Are All Welcome Here." The move was repeated by Astin, who wore a baseball cap featuring the same wording.

In a rare act of multiverse alliance, the Star Wars Twitter account added its support, writing, "From Middle-earth to a galaxy far, far away... #YouAreAllWelcomeHere." Black actors John Boyega and Moses Ingram have previously spoken out against online racist abuse they have received for appearing in the sci-fi franchise.

You Are All Welcome Here @LOTRonPrime @DonMarshall72 #RingsOfPower https://t.co/8txOhlHa2f pic.twitter.com/nWytILT0zG
- Elijah Wood (@elijahwood) September 7, 2022

You are all welcome here.#RingsOfPower @LOTRonPrime #MiddleEarth #Samwise @ElijahWood @BillyBoydActor @DomsWildThings @DonMarshall72 https://t.co/w2tdZ4nFwN pic.twitter.com/f4RsBKE9an
- Sean Astin (@SeanAstin) September 7, 2022

Cast members in the new series have decried racist abuse they have faced since appearing in the eight-part show.

"We belong in Middle-earth," tweeted Latino actor Ismael Cruz Córdova, who plays elf warrior Arondir in the Prime Video series. In another tweet, he wrote: "Looking for zero favors but to live with the same chances to dream and thrive as anyone else. If you've ever felt discarded, marginalized, silenced - you are my people. And this moment is yours too!"

Black British actor Lenny Henry, like author Tolkien, hails from the diverse English city of Birmingham. He plays a hobbit prototype, Sadoc Burrows, a Harfoot in the series. Often in the fantasy genre, "you don't see yourself as a Black person," he told the British edition of GQ magazine. But he said that with this show, "things are being reconfigured."

Actress Whoopi Goldberg also went viral online earlier this week, remarking on the backlash toward the make-believe show.

"Are you telling me Black people can't be fake people too? Is that what you're telling me? ... What is wrong with y'all?" she said on ABC's "The View" talk show. "We would like to see as many people represented in fantasy as exist," she added, chiding those who "have problems because there are Black hobbits."

Tolkien "based identity very strongly on language, and that's how he saw culture," Nick Groom, author of "Twenty-First-Century Tolkien: What Middle-Earth Means to Us Today," told The Washington Post on Thursday.

"There is a lot of racial diversity in Tolkien's different species," which include humans, elves, hobbits and dwarves, among others, he said.

"Tolkien embraces racial diversity," said the professor of English literature at the University of Macau. "There are three races of hobbits," he noted, with some described as being "browner of skin."

Writing in the 1930s, Tolkien, who was born in South Africa, was "well aware that color of skin can be a differentiating characteristic," and he included that in his works, said Groom. However, popular depictions in paintings, plays and on-screen have "tended to be very White," he added, influencing audience perceptions.

'The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power' is beautiful, banal boredom

The series debuted to an audience of more than 25 million people globally on its first day, making it the biggest premiere in the history of Prime Video, the company said.

"It is somehow fitting that Tolkien's stories - among the most popular of all time, and what many consider to be the true origin of the fantasy genre - have led us to this proud moment," Jennifer Salke, head of Amazon Studios, said in a statement after the show's launch last week. She added that the "tens of millions of fans watching ... are our true measure of success."

The eight-part series delves into the fabled Second Age of Middle-earth's history and is set thousands of years before the events of Tolkien's novels "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings."

Executive producer Lindsey Weber told The Post in an interview this month that the show would cover the forging of the rings, the rise of the dark lord Sauron and eventually the last alliance of elves and men. She said the series was made for those who have never read the books but that it also has baked-in details for "the die-hard fans, the scholars of the legendarium."

It takes fantasy fans on a prequel journey and is likely to run for 50 hours over five seasons, according to showrunners and executive producers J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay, with a total budget expected to top $1 billion.

The series comes 21 years after the first film in Jackson's theatrical trilogy. Like that film, it was also shot mostly in New Zealand.

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Elijah Wood supports diverse 'Rings of Power' cast after racism backlash

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LONDON - J.R.R. Tolkien has said that his vision of Middle-earth, the fantastical world in his acclaimed Lord of the Rings novels, reflects his "wonder and delight in the earth as it is."

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Fans were racially abusing Brazilian soccer player Richarlison during a match, throwing bananas and other objects at him after he scored a goal. This had not been a singular occurrence, as there have been multiple instances of fans having racist chants, throwing objects, and targeting players on social media based on the color of their skin. Even in an environment focused on friendly competition and sportsmanship such as professional soccer, there is still a lot of racist discrimination and harassment.

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Brazil's impressive end to its World Cup preparation was overshadowed by racist abuse as forward Richarlison had a banana thrown at him by a fan during the 5-1 victory over Tunisia in Paris on Tuesday.

The Tottenham Hotspur star scored Brazil's second goal but as he celebrated a banana was thrown at him among other objects. Teammate Fred was then seen kicking the banana off the pitch.

After the match Richarlison posted on Twitter: "As long as they stay 'blah blah blah' and don't punish, it will continue like this, happening every day and everywhere. No time bro! #racismonao [racism no]."

Brazil's football federation (CBF) released a statement condemning the actions of the perpetrator and called for stronger action against racism.

"Unfortunately a banana was thrown on the pitch towards Richarlison, scorer of the second Brazilian goal," read a CBF statement on Twitter.

"The CBF reinforces its position to combat racism and repudiates any manifestation of prejudice."

CBF President Ednaldo Rodrigues later added: "This time, I saw it with my own eyes. This shocks us. We must always remember that we are all equal, regardless of color, race or religion.

"The fight against racism is not a cause, but a fundamental change to sweep this type of crime from the planet. I insist on saying that the punishments need to be more severe."

CNN Senior Sports Analyst Darren Lewis tweeted: "Football has always known that you address racism by docking points & throwing clubs/countries out of competitions. Zero tolerance.

"Until then, players should walk. Surely one day they will realise their commercial power & take action across the board."

Prior to kick off, Brazil's players had posed in front of a sign that read, "Without our black players, we wouldn't have stars on our shirt." The stars refer to the record five World Cup titles that Brazil has won.

The players made the statement in response to the racist abuse that Brazil winger Vinicius Jr. had experience from Atletico Madrid fans in the Madrid derby.

The Real Madrid star was subject to abusive chants, including monkey chants, before and throughout the match.

"They say that happiness bothers," Vinicius said on his experience. "The happiness of a victorious black Brazilian in Europe bothers much more.

"But my desire to win, my smile and the sparkle in my eyes are much bigger than that. You can't even imagine it. I was a victim of a xenophobic and racist comment. But none of that started yesterday.

"Weeks ago they began to criminalize my dances. Dances that are not mine.

"They belong to Ronaldinho, Neymar, [Lucas] Paqueta, [Antoine] Griezmann, Joao Felix, Matheus Cunha ... they belong to Brazilian funk and samba artists, reggaeton singers, and black Americans.

"Those are dances to celebrate the cultural diversity of the world. Accept it, respect it. I'm not going to stop."

Other players like compatriot Gabriel Jesus had already raised the issue of Vinicius' abuse. The Arsenal forward paid tribute to his Brazil teammate by performing Vinicius' celebration when he scored against Brentford 10 days ago.

Football world governing body FIFA did not immediately respond to CNN's request for comment. FIFA President Gianni Infantino was at Tuesday's game at the Parc des Princes.

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Brazil forward Richarlison racially abused as fan throws banana at him during 5-1 victory over Tunisia in France | CNN

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Brazil's impressive end to its World Cup preparation was overshadowed by racist abuse as forward Richarlison had a banana thrown at him by a fan during the 5-1 victory over Tunisia in Paris on Tuesday. The Tottenham Hotspur star scored Brazil's second goal but as he celebrated a banana was thrown at him among other objects.

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In this article Actor Caleb McLaughlin from the famous tv serie ‘Stranger Things’ explains how he dealt with racism with fans in his acting career.

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"Sometimes it's hard to talk about and for people to understand, but when I was younger it definitely affected me a lot," the actor shared at the Heroes Comic Con Belgium convention.

McLaughlin appeared at the Heroes Comic Con Belgium convention on Sunday and spoke from the stage about the racism he was shown by some of the Stranger Things fans.

"It definitely took a toll on me as a younger kid," the actor said, as seen in video shared by one of the panel's attendees. "My very first Comic-Con, some people didn't stand in my line because I was Black. Some people told me, 'Oh I didn't want to be in your line because you were mean to Eleven.' Even now some people don't follow me or don't support me because I'm Black. Sometimes overseas you feel the racism, you feel the bigotry. Sometimes it's hard to talk about and for people to understand, but when I was younger it definitely affected me a lot."

McLaughlin, now 20, has portrayed Lucas Sinclair - a member of the core Dungeons and Dragons crew with Finn Wolfhard's Mike, Noah Schnapp's Will, and Gaten Matarazzo's Dustin - since season 1 of Stranger Things, which debuted in 2016 when he was 14. After the two-part fourth season, which streamed on Netflix this summer, the actor will return for the fifth and final season.

McLaughlin acknowledged at the panel that he was getting into a "deep conversation," but said his kid self would feel like, "Why am I the least favorite? The least amount of followers? I'm on the same show as everybody from season 1."

"My parents had to be like, 'It's a sad truth, but it's because you're the Black child on the show... Because I was born with this beautiful chocolate skin, I'm not loved," he said. "But that's why with my platform I want to spread positivity and love because I do not give hate back to people who give hate to me."

Black actors from other franchises, like Steve Toussaint and Ismael Cruz Córdova, have also recently addressed their experiences with racism among fandoms.

Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon reimagines the seafarers of House Velaryon as wealthy Black conquerors, instead of the pale skin and purple eyes described in George R.R. Martin's books. Toussaint, who stars on the show as Lord Corlys Velaryon, had said, "It seems to be very hard for people to swallow. [Fans] are happy with a dragon flying. They're happy with white hair and violet-colored eyes, but a rich Black guy? That's beyond the pale."

Córdova, in turn, revealed his DMs were filled with "pure and vicious hate speech" since becoming the first person of color to portray an elf in a fantasy franchise with The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. "I fought so hard for this role for this very reason," the actor said. "I felt that I could carry that torch. I made sure that my elf was the most Elven, the most incredible, because I knew this was coming."

Episode Recaps

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'Stranger Things' star Caleb McLaughlin calls out racism from fans

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"Sometimes it's hard to talk about and for people to understand, but when I was younger it definitely affected me a lot," the actor shared at the Heroes Comic Con Belgium convention. McLaughlin appeared at the Heroes Comic Con Belgium convention on Sunday and spoke from the stage about the racism he was shown by some of the Stranger Things fans.

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Indigenous-specific racism is still present in the northern Manitoba health-care system, the boss of the Northern Health Region says. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)

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Racism against Indigenous people entrenched in health care, Manitoba CEO admits while vowing to eradicate it

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Racism against Indigenous people entrenched in health care, Manitoba CEO admits while vowing to eradicate it

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This article explains how the Indigenous race has been stepped on and pushed away from healthcare. Indigenous patients haven't been given the healthcare they need.

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This flyer distributed across the state of New Mexico during their 2022 elections shows a young child getting a haircut by a dark skinned barber. The poster reads "Do you want a sex offender cutting your child's hair?" which the indicates barber is a criminal due to their skin color. There is nothing in this ad to indicate who the barber even is and shows that implicite rascism behind this ad.

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A political flyer sent across the state by the Republican Party of New Mexico that shows dark-skinned hands cutting a boy's hair with the implication that the barber is a criminal is being called racist because Democrats contend the barber's hands were intentionally darkened.

The mailer was sent out to voters in at least nine state House districts in central and southern New Mexico. The advertisement accuses the various Democrats of voting "to allow convicted sex offenders to receive professional licenses for activities such as cutting hair or working as a nail technician."

Several House Democrats and others gathered at a Martin Luther King Jr. memorial near the Albuquerque Convention Center on Tuesday to condemn the ad.

"This is one of the most vile examples of racist dog whistles that I have ever seen," said New Mexico House Majority Leader Javier Martínez, D-Albuquerque.

At the news conference, Democrats showed the original stock image of a white person cutting a white child's hair. The altered version shows the hands have been darkened.

Republicans, in response, said a "shadowy, gray" figure doesn't fit a racial category.

"Any charge of racism over this mailer is ridiculous," said Rod Montoya, New Mexico House Republican whip. "Charges of racism are simply a smokescreen to distract attention from progressives' voting records which put the interests of convicted criminals over the safety of law-abiding New Mexicans."

The districts that received the mailers were in the Albuquerque and Las Cruces areas. The individual Democratic legislator was swapped out but much of the ad stayed the same when it was sent to the House districts, according to Democratic officials.

One of the bills in question was proposed during the 2021 legislative session and sought to modernize the state's laws governing barbers and cosmetologists, in part by removing a requirement such hair professionals have at least some high school education.

During the House floor debate on the bill, Rep. Stefani Lord, R-Sandia Park, proposed an unsuccessful amendment that would have allowed a barber's license to be denied or revoked if they failed to register as a sex offender after conviction.

The bill ultimately passed the House on a 48-15 vote, but stalled in a Senate committee. Martinez said another bill that was referenced in the mailer was also related to occupational licenses.

"I thought that we were better than this," said the Rev. Charles Becknell Sr., the president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. "It is time we put an end to this kind of crap. ... We're better than this."

New Mexico Republicans are trying to cut into majorities that Democrats hold in both chambers. One of the messages they have been campaigning on is crime rates in New Mexico.

House Republican candidates at an event last week promoted a series of bills they said they would support if elected. The bills address pretrial release, firearms trafficking laws, DWI laws, organized retail crime and other elements of the criminal justice system.
Journal Bureau Chief Dan Boyd contributed to this report.

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State House Republicans accused of 'racist' mailer

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A political flyer sent across the state by the Republican Party of New Mexico that shows dark-skinned hands cutting a boy's hair with the implication that the barber is a criminal is being called racist because Democrats contend the barber's hands were intentionally darkened.

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The 1619 Project is about how the first 20 enslaved Africans arrived in America as slaves. They were brought to one of the first colonies and auctioned off but we should never forget how many years it took to abolish slavery altogether. Reading this article will help you understand how slavery has impacted communities and cultures in the U.S.

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American slavery began 400 years ago this month. This is referred to as the country's original sin, but it is more than that: It is the country's true origin.

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I choose this article because it highlights the obvious effect that the pandemic and covid 19 had on African Americans and on racism. During this time is when the murder of George Floyd sparked global attention to the issue of police brutality and systemic racism that of which we are still dealing with today when we read different stories of more people of color dying in the news everyday.

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"Riot Sweeps Chicago" should sound and feel intuitively familiar. However, this headline covered the front pages of a newspaper over a hundred years ago. Named the "Red Summer of 1919", a spate of violence and bloodshed occurred from April to November 1919 with riots, lynchings, and mobs across the country. Hundreds of African American lives were claimed and hundreds more were left maimed and homeless. The most violent episodes occurred in Chicago, IL, Washington, D.C. and Elaine, AR and were precursors for what many are now learning to be the Black Wall Street Massacre in Tulsa.

Signifying the Red Summer, Eugene Williams, an African American teenager, violated the unofficial segregation of a Chicago beach and then was stoned by a man, who was part of a white mob, and then subsequently drowned. The terrorizing racism that followed ignited one of the longest and bloodiest race riots ever witnessed in the country. Similar to today, these racist incidents that captured national and international attention came on the heels of a pandemic-the 1918 influenza outbreak.

Fast forwarding to a century later, the COVID-19 pandemic, the murder of George Floyd and the protests demonstrations attended by millions, as well as the insurrection of 2021, all mirror a place that we have seen before in this country. It seems that syndemics, or rather the aggregation of multiple epidemics (e.g., coronavirus, police brutality), followed by racial violence are the strands that make up America's DNA.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the murder of George Floyd ignited global attention to police brutality and systemic racism in the United States. In spite of social distancing recommendations, mask wearing Black Lives Matter protesters flooded the streets across the world during a " Racial Reckoning Summer of 2020." From late May until the end of June 2020, roughly 20 million people in the United States participated in demonstrations over the death of George Floyd, as well as Breonna Taylor, another Black body, among many, perceived to be discriminatorily targeted and killed by police.

Following the murder of George Floyd, systemic racism was finally classified by many as a public health crisis. This was for good reason. Structural racism also fortifies and informs policies in the United States that perpetuate racial disparities in health outcomes, inequalities in health determinants, such as housing, education and healthcare, as well as through the discriminatory policing of African Americans. Beyond the mortality of police violence, research has shown that this type of violence also contributes to negative health outcomes, such as psychological stress leading to stroke or accelerated aging.

In order to fundamentally address the race based health disparities of COVID-19 and so many other conditions that disproportionally worsen the health of African Americans, we have to move beyond the person-centered approach and stop pushing policies that "blame" the sick and "reward" the healthy. Health policies need to, now more than ever, reflect the role of social determinants, or rather the conditions (e.g., health care access; affordable housing; employment) that influence and shape disease risks for individuals and populations, as well as, the structural racism that saturates the policies of these determinants. Once the magnitude of these determinants are fully appreciated, health policy strategies and solutions imbued with an ecological model that aims to understand the multiple and interacting determinants of health behaviors at many levels [(interpersonal (e.g., family), organizational (e.g., workplace), community (e.g., neighborhood), public policy (e.g., state laws)] beyond the individual can then begin to tackle the health inequity issues that were present long before the COVID-19 pandemic began.

But, social change must expand beyond health care. To transform and reorient this country into an antiracist society, or one that ensures equity and justice for all by consciously fighting against racism on individual and institutional levels, the question, from Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, "what is wrong with policies?" needs to be asked and followed with action. From corporate America and small businesses to institutions and not-for-profits, leaders and stakeholders at all levels should aim to address the following:

Confront racist ideologies, including one's own, with the utmost level of intolerance

Create programs, measures, and systems of accountability for antiracist policies

Develop a systematic approach to assessing and monitoring the cultural climate

Promote education and dialogue about racism, its causes, and effects

Apply intersectionality to understanding interdependent systems of discrimination

Commit to identifying and dismantling racial inequities and disparities

Leverage your position of power to champion antiracist practices and policies

Today, many people think that pandemics and protests have never uniquely come together in this country, but they would be wrong. We have been here before. The question is what will happen now to prevent history from repeating itself in the decades ahead. In order for this moment to not just be a fleeting one that recognizes the impacts of historical and contemporary racism and does little to change policies, the recommendations above should strongly be considered to achieve an antiracist society and repair the damage of racial discrimination.
Jennifer D. Roberts is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Kinesiology, School of Public Health at the University of Maryland College Park (UMD) and Founder and Director of the Public Health Outcomes and Effects of the Built Environment (PHOEBE) Laboratory. Her scholarship focuses on the impact of built, social, and natural environments, including the institutional and structural inequities of these environments, on the public health outcomes of marginalized communities.

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Pandemics and protests: America has experienced racism like this before

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"Riot Sweeps Chicago" should sound and feel intuitively familiar. However, this headline covered the front pages of a newspaper over a hundred years ago. Named the "Red Summer of 1919", a spate of violence and bloodshed occurred from April to November 1919 with riots, lynchings, and mobs across the country.

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A year long trial in which leaders of a Neo-Nazi group, who were openly racist towards African migrants, were finally convicted of several charges in the Greek judicial system. This article is evidence of racism towards those of color all across the globe, not just in the United States.

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‘They don’t accept you’: Afro-Greeks struggle to be seen

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While the Golden Dawn verdict was widely praised, Afro-Greeks say much more is needed to end racism.

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Patrick Lyoya was shot by a Caucasian police officer after trying to escape violence in his original home in Congo. Patrick was unarmed and not a violent threat to the police officer.

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About 4.6 million, or one in 10, Black people living in American are immigrants, according to a January report from Pew Research Center.

Although they are only 7% of the non-citizen population, Black immigrants make up 20% of deportations on criminal grounds, according to a 2018 Black Alliance for Just Immigration report.

When the Lyoya family arrived in the United States in 2014 after facing years of war and persecution in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the refugees thought they had finally made it.

They were living in Malawi when they won asylum to live in the U.S., part of a growing number of refugees from Congo in Michigan.

"They told us that in America, there's peace, there's safety, you're not going to see killing anymore, that it was basically a safe haven," Dorcas Lyoya said in Congolese during an interview with the Detroit Free Press, part of the USA TODAY Network, through a translator.

But this month, her first-born son, Patrick Lyoya, was fatally shot in the back of the head by a police officer after a struggle, an incident that has outraged civil rights advocates and led to protests in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
WHAT WE KNOW: Patrick Lyoya killed after struggle with officer during Grand Rapids traffic stop
Lyoya's death and others like it can rattle the sense of security of Black immigrants and refugees who came to the U.S. to escape violence only to find themselves vulnerable to the same brutality and racism African Americans encounter from police as well as the additional specter of federal immigration authorities, immigration advocates told USA TODAY.

"It's shocking to Black migrants who have this vision of the United States as the land of the free and the home of the brave," said Nana Gyamfi, executive director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. "There's a notion that police here are going to be different."

Patrick Lyoya's death brings fear in growing Black immigrant community

About 4.6 million, or 1 in 10, Black people living in American are immigrants and that number is projected to double by 2060, according to a January report from Pew Research Center. The Black immigrant population is racially and ethnically diverse, but in the last decade Africans have become one of the fastest growing segments through refugee admissions and the diversity visa lottery program, according to the Migration Policy Institute.

Although refugee admissions hit a record low in 2021, over the past two fiscal years people from the Congo became the the largest group of refugees to settle in Michigan, according to data from the U.S. State Department.
'OUR COMMUNITY DESERVES ANSWERS':Michigan police release video of fatal shooting of Patrick Lyoya after traffic stop in Grand Rapids
Grand Rapids is home to the largest Congolese refugee population in the state thanks to employment opportunities as well as family and social connections like churches, saidChris Cavanaugh, director of Samaritas ' New American Resettlement program in West Michigan.

Samaritas helps refugees meet many of their immediate needs and offers a cultural orientation on what it means to live life in America, he said. But they didn't talk much about the racial implications of being Black in America until George Floyd's murder sparked a nationwide racial justice protest movement in 2020, which Cavanaugh said a number of Congolese refugees joined.

In the wake of Lyoya's death, Cavanaugh said Samaritas is hoping to support refugee communities by providing resources to help them access services in their native language including during interactions with law enforcement.

"Certainly the Congolese community is feeling some fear, kind of scared over what happened and I would say rightfully so," Cavanaugh said. "Those maybe who have much less English skills are just more apprehensive about getting pulled over or how they're supposed to respond in certain situations."

A history of violence, from Amadou Diallo in 1999 to Botham Jean in 2018

Many Black immigrants and refugees are surprised when they encounter violence from both police and immigration officials, Gyamfi said.
'I'M LEAVING, AND I'M JUST NOT COMING BACK':Fed up with racism, Black Americans head overseas
"We have to deal with the violence that police inflict on us because we're Black," Gyamfi said. "And then the additional violence that then often is inflicted on us by ICE in this immigration enforcement system because of our migrant status."

But Black migrants have long been subjected to the same racism and brutality that disproportionately affects Black Americans.

Protests broke out for several weeks in 1999 after Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo was killed by four white police officers in New York City who said they thought his wallet was a gun. All four officers were acquitted of second-degree murder charges. That same year, Patrick Dorismond, a 26-year-old Haitian American, was killed by police sparking another wave of protests in New York.

In 2016, prosecutors declined to charge a suburban San Diego police officer for fatally shooting 38-year-old Alfred Olango, who arrived in the United States as a refugee from Uganda in 1991. Then, Amber Guyger, a former Dallas police officer, was convicted of murder for the 2018 killing of Botham Jean, a native of the Caribbean island of St. Lucia.

'Double-barreled racism' embedded in immigration laws, law enforcement

Black immigrants are also disproportionately detained and deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said Bill Ong Hing, a law and migration studies professor at the University of San Francisco.
OPINION: Police should stop making minor traffic stops that too often turn into major tragedies
"Embedded in the immigration laws are these anti-Black aspects beginning with the visa system," Hing said. "They face this double-barreled racism when it comes to law enforcement."

Although they are only 7% of the non-citizen population, Black immigrants make up 20% of those deported on criminal grounds, according to a 2018 report from the Black Alliance for Just Immigration.
Contributing: The Associated Press Contact Breaking News Reporter N'dea Yancey-Bragg at nyanceybra@gannett.com or follow her on Twitter @NdeaYanceyBragg
Even minor offenses can trigger deportation proceedings, which can make common interactions with police like traffic stops more tense. Black drivers in Michigan are more likely to be pulled over, searched and arrested by troopers, a study of 2020 traffic stops found.

"The way that most Black migrants end up getting deported is through contact with the police," Gyamfi said. "There is an awareness that this can happen and there is a lot of anxiety around any type of police contact."

Hing, founder of the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, said more immigration advocacy organizations began paying attention to this issue in the wake of Floyd's death. Personal experiences of racism and high-profile cases like Lyoya's have also started to shift the way Black migrants view themselves.

"They may start out seeing themselves as different from African Americans, but realize that the mainstream, including the police, treat them like any other Black person which is not good," he said.

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Patrick Lyoya escaped violence in Congo for the 'safe haven' of the US. Then police killed him.

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About 4.6 million, or one in 10, Black people living in American are immigrants, according to a January report from Pew Research Center. Although they are only 7% of the non-citizen population, Black immigrants make up 20% of deportations on criminal grounds, according to a 2018 Black Alliance for Just Immigration report.

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Racial discrimination permeates the healthcare systems of many countries, including the United States. This has negative consequences for both patients and healthcare workers, leading to higher risks of illness and, in some cases, lower standards of care for people of color (POC).

The COVID-19 pandemic draws attention to this. A May 2020 study estimates that in the U. S., Black people were 3.57 times more likely to die from COVID-19 than white people. Similarly, the risk of death within the Latinx population was nearly twice that of the white population.

Data from other countries reveal the same problem. A 2020 report from Public Health England found that in England, COVID-19 death rates were higher among Black and Asian people than white people.

The report also found that healthcare workers from marginalized groups felt unable to voice their concerns about the lack of personal protective equipment and COVID-19 testing in the pandemic's early stages.

This article explores how racism affects various aspects of U.S. healthcare, including pregnancy, emergency treatment, mental health treatment, and more.

Racism has a profound impact on mental and physical health, and can make it more difficult for people to access healthcare services.

In 2015, the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) found numerous examples of health inequity for POC in the U.S., including:

Lower life expectancy: In 2014, Black males and females had lower average life expectancies than white males and females.

Higher blood pressure: Between 2013 and 2014, 42.4% of Black males had high blood pressure, compared to 30.2% in white males. During the same period, 44% of Black females also had this condition compared to 28% in white females.

Lower rates of influenza (flu) vaccination: Flu vaccines can save lives. However, in 2014, only 60% of Black and Latinx people aged 65 or over got a vaccination, compared to 70% of white and Asian people of the same age.

Strain on mental health: A 2015 review found that racism was strongly associated with mental health difficulties, contributing to stress, anxiety, and depression. This was especially true for Asian American and Latinx groups.

Some of these findings are influenced by racial inequality that exists outside of the healthcare system. For example, economic disparities between racial groups make it more difficult for some to get health insurance, preventing people from getting medical care.

In 2014, around 20% of Black adults could not access health insurance compared to 10% in white and Asian adults. For Latinx adults, this figure was 35%. A 2012 study also found that predominantly Black zip codes were 67% more likely to have a shortage of primary care physicians (PCPs).

However, racism also exists within healthcare itself and can lead doctors to neglect, disbelieve, or actively discriminate against patients. The following sections look at specific ways of how this manifests.

A 2016 study found many white medical students wrongly believe Black people have a higher pain tolerance than white people. Of all the participants, 73% held at least one false belief about the biological differences between races.

Examples of these beliefs include Black people having thicker skin, less sensitive nerve endings, or stronger immune systems. The researchers note these beliefs are centuries old, and that some 19th-century doctors used them to justify the inhumane treatment of slaves.

These myths still have an impact today. In a previous study, Black children with appendicitis were less likely to receive appropriate pain medication than white children. The same was true in research on people with recurring cancer.

In addition to the limited access to trauma centers that people in predominantly Black areas have, evidence suggests racial bias may prevent POC from receiving emergency care.

For example, according to Frontiers in Pediatrics, doctors in emergency departments (EDs) are less likely to:

classify Black and Latinx children as requiring emergency care compared to white or Asian children

admit Black or Latinx children to the hospital after visiting the ED

order blood tests, CT scans, or X-rays for Black, Latinx, or Asian children compared to white children

This study did not look at the cause of these differences. However, the researchers say they cannot be explained by social, economic, or clinical factors that would change how doctors treat POC in emergencies.

Differences in emergency care also apply to adults. A 2020 study shows that between 2005 and 2016, medical professionals were 10% less likely to admit Black patients to the hospital than white patients. It also suggests Black people were 1.26 times more likely to die in the ED or hospital.

Racial disparities also affect the medical care of pregnant people and newborn babies.

The term "infant mortality" refers to the proportion of babies who die below the age of one compared to those that live. Organizations often use infant mortality to measure the success of postnatal healthcare.

Between 1999-2013, infant mortality tended to decrease in the U.S. However, there were still disparities between racial groups. The following 2013 data comes from the :

Black people also face higher risks during pregnancy. According to a , they are 3-4 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white people in the U.S.

Chronic illnesses are long-term health conditions that can severely impact someone's quality of life. Sometimes, they can cause disability and require ongoing medical care.

A 2019 study found that Black people aged 51-55 were 28% more likely to already have a chronic illness compared to white people of the same age. The study also found that Latinx people of the same age accumulated chronic diseases faster than white people.

The researchers note numerous factors may affect this, such as chronic stress, chronic inflammation, lower rates of insurance coverage, and less access to quality healthcare or PCPs.

According to Mental Health America (MHA), mental illness rates are roughly equivalent between some marginalized groups and white people. However, there are some significant areas of difference, such as:

Disability

Overall, Black people experience a disproportionate amount of disability from mental health conditions compared to white people. Depression in Black and Latinx people is also more likely to be persistent.

Schizophrenia

Black males are four times more likely to receive a schizophrenia diagnosis than white males. MHA suggests this is because clinicians can overlook the symptoms of depression and focus more on psychotic symptoms when treating Black people.

Addiction

Native and Indigenous Americans have the highest alcohol dependence rates out of any marginalized group. Conversely, Asian Americans may be under-diagnosed.

A 2016 study suggests doctors are less likely to diagnose alcohol addiction in Asian Americans compared to white people, despite having the same symptoms.

This may occur due to the "model minority" stereotype, which frames Asian Americans as successful and self-reliant. The implicit bias this creates may lead doctors to overlook signs that Asian American patients require help.

Many studies reveal racial disparities in how marginalized groups access and receive healthcare in the U.S. Sometimes, these disparities are related to socioeconomic inequality.

However, biases and stereotypes also have a serious impact on how doctors treat POC. This can lead to over- or under-diagnosis of certain conditions, a lack of proper pain management, and increased health risks, even when economic status is not a factor.

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Racism in healthcare: Statistics and examples

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Racism affects healthcare in many ways, making it more difficult for marginalized groups to access medical treatment in the United States.

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This has been all over the news this week but I think this is something that stood out to me a lot. The fact that people are trying to make themselves feel better for being racist by saying mermaids can't be black scientifically because they are under water and not in the sun, is absolutely ridiculous. Mermaids don't scientifically exist so just say that you're being racist.

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Ever since Disney released the first look for its 2023 live-action remake of "The Little Mermaid," the internet has been sodden with wave after wave of racist critics complaining that Ariel, the completely fictional underwater fish woman, shouldn't be Black. Hashtags like #notmyariel are bouncing around social media, and YouTube hid the dislike counter on the official video after it was bombarded with racist comments and more than 1.5 million "dislikes." One group of critics went as far as to share a digitally altered version of the teaser that featured a White woman in place of the movie's star Halle Bailey, who they called a " woke actress."

By now, we know it's not unusual to see racist responses whenever a person of color is cast in a role considered "traditionally" White. While there are plenty of legitimate reasons to dislike a movie, these critics often hide their discomfort behind other thin arguments, claiming historical or cultural accuracy or, of all things, science.

Here are some real arguments people have levied to protest the casting choice. The facts prove they just don't hold water.

Claim: 'The Little Mermaid' is a Danish story, therefore Ariel should be White

The original "Little Mermaid" story was written by Hans Christian Andersen and first published in 1837. If we're going to dignify this argument, according to the text, Ariel and the rest of her mermaid kin are from "far out in the ocean" (literally the opening lines of the story) at the "bottom of the sea." So, not Denmark or anywhere near it.

If critics are truly worried about staying faithful to the original story, we shouldn't gloss over the original ending where the mermaid is instructed to kill her prince, but throws the knife away in despair and dissolves into sea foam instead. Not to mention, while the 1989 Disney version has a Prince Eric with bright blue peepers, Anderson specifically described the prince as having "coal-black eyes" and "raven hair." (Also "The Little Mermaid," who doesn't even have a name in the original story, isn't real.)

Claim: Mermaids live under the sea and therefore would not have dark skin

"From a scientific perspective, it doesn't make a lot of sense to have someone with darker skin who lives deep in the ocean." So says far-right pundit Matt Walsh, who opined about the "Little Mermaid" casting on "The Matt Walsh Show." He claims he framed the comment as a joke, since he goes on to say that "​​not only should the Little Mermaid be pale, she should, actually, be translucent." However, the context of his comment is still racially charged, and he still implies pale skin is closer to a "scientific" mermaid than dark skin.

Again, if we're going to take an academic look at these unnecessary bits of discourse, not all abyssal creatures are pale. Not all underwater creatures are pale. Also, since mermaids also get close enough to the surface to see other humans, if you want to look at it scientifically, mermaids would probably have a specific type of pigmentation that allowed for both a deep sea and shallow water existence. We also know that, centuries ago, seafarers often mistook one particular animal for a mermaid: the manatee, which is not pale. (Also "The Little Mermaid" isn't real.)

Claim: Mermaids are a European mythological figure and therefore Ariel should be White

Numerous Twitter scraps have cropped up with people trying to argue European folklore, or even Homerian epics like "The Odyssey," have some sort of monopoly on the idea of mermaids. In reality, it's fascinating to see how many different cultures throughout history have arrived at parallel folklorical themes. Humanoid creatures that dwell in the water are part of innumerable mythologies around the world.

East Asian and Oceanic folklore is replete with stories of underwater kingdoms and merpeople both good and evil, from the Magindara in some Philippine regions to the tale of the Indian Princess Suriratna or Hwang-ok that reached South Korea. Middle Eastern folktales compiled in the classic "Arabian Nights" collection, which dates back more than a thousand years, feature several accounts of sea-dwelling human creatures. In parts of continental Africa and among the African diaspora, folklore describing water spirits, oftentimes in the shape of beautiful women, are common. According to Shona mythology in Zimbabwe, the "njuzu" are mermaids who occupy lakes or rivers.

(Also, not all Europeans are White. Also, "The Little Mermaid" isn't real.)

Claim: Making Ariel Black is ruining childhoods and changing the character

On message boards and comment sections across the internet, people are debating whether a new, dark-skinned Ariel somehow negates or erases the classic 1989 version.

Disney's 1989 "The Little Mermaid" is still available to watch, own and share. The animated character of Ariel is part of Disney's wildly profitable "Disney Princess" franchise and her name and image are valuable and heavily trademarked Disney properties. The red-haired, fair-skinned Ariel is here to stay.

Far from ruining childhoods, many fans think making a different iteration of Ariel will only increase the Disney magic. Just look at the sweet reactions of young Black children and the praise of Disney icons like Jodi Benson, the voice of the original Ariel.

More importantly, the remake of one film doesn't erase the existence of the previous films: 1999's Mr. Darcy and 2005's Mr. Darcy live in harmony with every other character from the roughly 300 "Pride and Prejudice" film remakes. Pennywise looks different in every "It" iteration, as does Frankenstein's monster. The story of "Cinderella," which predates even the famous Brothers Grimm version, seems to have a different remake out every year. One notable version, 1997's "Rodgers & Hammerstein's Cinderella," featured a racially diverse cast that included singer Brandy as the first Black Cinderella and Whitney Houston as the fairy godmother. It aired on TV as part of the "Wonderful World of Disney."

While Disney has produced a very famous iteration of "The Little Mermaid," it isn't the first, only, or universally definitive work. No one owns the concept of mermaids or what they look like. A White, red-haired animated teenager is not the only version of "The Little Mermaid" to exist.

Also - and this is very important - "The Little Mermaid" isn't real.

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Analysis: A definitive rebuttal to every racist 'Little Mermaid' argument | CNN

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Ever since Disney released the first look for its 2023 live-action remake of "The Little Mermaid," the internet has been sodden with wave after wave of racist critics complaining that Ariel, the completely fictional underwater fish woman, shouldn't be Black.

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Coming across this article only brings to the forefront how people with higher power continue to have control over what can and cannot be taught in the education system when it questions the "History of America" as we all know it has been over glossed.  The educational system is a shining light on what they see as correct but if we could reach younger children with these topics even though they are a hard discussion to have maybe, just maybe we can see a better outcome in the future and maybe one day the future generations will look back at this point of time and realize how uneducated we were as a country because truth be told people from all over different regions impacted or were impacted by manifest destiny of the new world.

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Teachers say in new survey they’re being told not to talk about racism and race

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Over half of teachers and almost 6 in 10 teachers of color oppose legal limits on discussing race and racism. “It’s heartbreaking for our youth,” a Latino activist and educator said.

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The most racist thing since 'white' bread! 

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If you like a PB and J, You might be a racist

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NY Times - The Upshot of Rich-Poor Relationships

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NY Times - The Upshot of Rich-Poor Relationships

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Recently read this report by the NY Times regarding the importance of establishing cross-class relationships for students with a lower socio-economic background in order to facilitate upward economic mobility in adulthood. The article outlines some of the steps that are being taken to increase diversity and the limitations thereof. The inference here is that we must not just provide the opportunity for cross-class interaction but also to facilitate and normalize relationship building between social classes.  While the article isnt specifically aimed only at racial disparity, it is noted that there is a strong correlation between race and upward moblity. This is because racism itself continues to be a roadblock in creating the social connections which are necessary to move beyond inequities-- perpetuating pre-existing marginalizations well into adulthood.  SUPER interesting article, especially having spent a lot of time studying the inequities that exist in public education.

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Claire Cain Miller, Josh Katz, Francesca Paris and Aatish BhatiaAug. 1, 2022

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Vast New Study Shows a Key to Reducing Poverty: More Friendships Between Rich and Poor

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An analysis of 21 billion Facebook friendships, covering 84 percent of U.S. adults aged 25 to 44, puts cross-class relationships at the heart of income mobility.

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Understanding that racism is the value that is placed on us as humans based on our physical features, I cannot help but compare the contrast between the response seen here and in the aftermath of Katrina to the more recent local flooding/mudflow response in Montecito. I watched this documentary and felt it really highlighted how much room for growth we have as a country with respect to the disparities that POC face and the lack of response to those who endured the trauma of Katrina during the catastrophe and thereafter. Completely unreal and devastating.

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The inquiry, part of an administration-wide racial justice initiative, came amid claims that the city has ignored illegal dumping in Black and Latino areas.

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The investigation is likely to be one of the most ambitious environmental justice reviews undertaken by the Justice Department in recent years. Credit... Sergio Flores for The New York Times

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department opened a wide-ranging investigation on Friday into the City of Houston's failure to address environmental racism, including the rampant dumping of garbage - and even bodies - in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods, officials said.

The investigation, prompted by hundreds of resident complaints logged by a local legal aid group, is likely to be one of the most ambitious environmental justice reviews undertaken by the department in recent years.

The inquiry will be led by the civil rights division in coordination with the department's new environmental justice office. It will look into whether officials in Houston, the nation's fourth-largest city, systematically discriminated against residents by allowing 11 of 13 incinerators and landfills to be placed in the city's northeast section over the past several decades.

The announcement is part of the Biden administration's wider effort to address racial disparities that have relegated people of color to areas where they face far greater risk of exposure to carcinogens and other harmful pollutants, flooding and an array of environmental blights that decrease life spans, quality of life and property values.

Many of the problems outlined on Friday by Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general who leads the civil rights division, stem from a decades-long history of injustice rooted in racism and malign neglect, historically at the hands of white local officials.

But some issues are more recent: The Justice Department plans to pay particular attention to reports that residents who call Houston's 311 system to complain about dumping and other environmental violations have been routinely ignored, Ms. Clarke said during a call with reporters.

Illegal dump sites in low-lying Houston "not only attract rodents, mosquitoes and other vermin that pose health risks, but they can also contaminate surface water and impact proper drainage, making areas more susceptible to flooding," Ms. Clarke said.

Mayor Sylvester Turner, a Democrat, criticized the investigation, saying that his administration had increased fines for illegal dumping and taken steps to improve conditions in the city's Black and Latino neighborhoods.

"The City of Houston was stunned and disappointed to learn about the investigation into illegal dumping by third parties launched by the U.S. Department of Justice," Mr. Turner said in a statement. "Despite the D.O.J.'s pronouncements, my office received no advanced notice. This investigation is absurd, baseless and without merit."

The mayor, who is Black, added that he had "prioritized the needs of communities of color that are historically under-resourced and underserved."

The Justice Department's investigation was prompted by a complaint from Lone Star Legal Aid, which has monitored resident complaints in Houston's northeast section. The area has become a dumping ground for "household furniture, mattresses, tires, medical waste, trash, dead bodies and vandalized A.T.M. machines," Ms. Clarke said.

Amy Catherine Dinn, the managing attorney for the legal aid group's environmental justice division, said, "This is all part of the city's legacy of environmental racism, but that problem has gotten worse as the city has grown - and these neighborhoods have been deprived of the resources that wealthier white neighborhoods receive."

Ms. Dinn said neighborhood residents had carefully documented hundreds of incidents of illegal dumping in the residential streets around a local garbage dump. They have registered their complaints through the city's 311 system, only to wait months for help while similar problems have been addressed far more quickly in more affluent neighborhoods, she said.

"This is not a one-off problem," she added. "The city has basically allowed this community to be used as a landfill."

The environmental disparities described by the Justice Department on Friday are woven into the city's urban fabric, a patchwork of commercial and residential buildings. Houston has some of the nation's least restrictive zoning laws; as a result, many of the city's petroleum processing facilities, petrochemical plants, dumps and transportation lots have been placed alongside low-income or working-class residential neighborhoods.

A 2016 study by the Union of Concerned Scientists and Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services found that people living in Houston's Harrisburg/Manchester neighborhood, a predominantly Latino area bordered by industrial facilities, suffered significantly higher cancer and asthma rates than people in other, whiter parts of the city further removed from grit-and-garbage industry.

In May, Attorney General Merrick B. Garland announced a series of policies intended to elevate the department's environmental justice efforts from the symbolic to the substantive - including the creation of an office inside the department responsible for addressing the "harm caused by environmental crime, pollution and climate change."

Even before then, the department had begun to explore criminal and civil cases under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, starting with an investigation into the sanitation and flood management system of Lowndes County, Ala., one of the country's poorest and most environmentally blighted areas.

In most of these investigations, including the Houston inquiry, the department aims to negotiate settlements with localities to address the problems that are found, Ms. Clarke said.

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Justice Dept. Will Investigate Environmental Racism in Houston

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The inquiry, part of an administration-wide racial justice initiative, came amid claims that the city has ignored illegal dumping in Black and Latino areas. Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.

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Racial differences in medical care are part of a theme experts are seeing "over and over" again.

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Credit... Mikyung Lee

Judith McClellan, a social worker who lives in Salisbury, N.C., knows what it's like to see her child in pain. Her daughter Kyarra, 15, has sickle cell disease, an inherited red blood cell disorder that most commonly affects Black people and frequently causes pain so excruciating that emergency opioids are necessary. When she was younger, Ms. McClellan said, Kyarra would describe the pain - caused by blockages in blood vessels - as feeling "like a butcher's knife stabbing me 1,000 times in the same spot."

During times of distress, Ms. McClellan said, "the protocol is we go to the nearest hospital" to receive powerful pain medications that will mitigate Kyarra's discomfort until the crisis has passed. But because the McClellans, who are Black, live an hour and a half away from Kyarra's primary hematologist, they often find themselves at emergency departments with medical staff who don't know them and who often doubt Kyarra's pain.

"If she says she has a pain level of eight - because she's not screaming and hollering - they question, 'Are you sure it's an eight? Or are you making it an eight to get more pain medication?,'" Ms. McClellan said. "Sometimes I think they think she's seeking drugs."

Dr. Andrew Campbell, director of the Comprehensive Sickle Cell Disease Program at Children's National Hospital in Washington, D.C., said that health care providers who don't understand a condition like sickle cell disease, where pain is the hallmark feature, often mislabel Black children, particularly teenagers, as "drug seekers" or "opioid abusers." There is also a "potential layer of racism" that can lead to that characterization, he added.

Last year, at a UNC hospital emergency department in Chapel Hill, N.C., a doctor reported Ms. McClellan to Child Protective Services because he was concerned about the fact that Kyarra had received 30 opioid prescriptions from 9 different doctors in North Carolina in the past year. That was too many, in his opinion. Ms. McClellan said that when she explained to the doctor that Kyarra's prescriptions were necessary and in accordance with prescribing guidelines, he said, "If you're not hiding anything, this will all work out."

When asked about the incident, Alan Wolf, a spokesman for UNC Health, said that "hospital providers are obligated under North Carolina law to report suspected child neglect or abuse."

In the end, the agency decided not to pursue the report, Ms. McClellan said, because "it didn't meet the qualifications for abuse and neglect."

Dr. Emily Hartford, an assistant professor in pediatric emergency medicine at the University of Washington who studies how differences in care can affect children, said that Kyarra's experience is part of "a theme we're starting to see over and over in the literature."

In June, for instance, Dr. Hartford and her colleagues published a study in the journal Academic Emergency Medicine that analyzed the medical records of 833 12- to 16-year-olds who visited the Seattle Children's hospital emergency department for migraine treatment between 2016 and 2020. They found that the children who were Black, Asian, Hispanic or who preferred to speak in a language other than English were less likely than white children to receive strong intravenous pain-relieving medications, despite reporting similar pain levels.

This jibes with past research, Dr. Hartford said, which has found that when children of color visit emergency departments for issues like bone fractures or appendicitis, for example, they are less likely than white children to be given appropriate pain medications, like opioids. Many studies have also found similar variations in pain treatment among adults of color.

"We would like there to be no differences by ethnicity and languages," Dr. Hartford added. But "we have to uncover them as the first step to addressing them."

Pain is subjective, hard to measure and often invisible. And in children - even more so than in adults - it is frequently misunderstood, undertreated and dismissed, as research has shown.

But in children of color, treatment can be worse. Dr. Ron Wyatt, a senior fellow at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement who is based in Madison, Ala., noted that false beliefs about biological differences between Black people and white people - dating back to slavery - have had lasting effects on how people of color are treated in medical settings.

As part of an often-cited study published in 2016 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, for instance, researchers from the University of Virginia surveyed 222 white medical residents and students and found that more than a third of them believed that Black people had physically thicker skin than white people did. And about 7 percent believed that Black people's nerve endings were less sensitive than white people's. The participants with such erroneous beliefs also made less accurate pain treatment recommendations, the study authors found.

Dr. Lisa Cooper, a professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University and director of its Center for Health Equity, has found in her own research that the more implicit (or unconscious) bias white physicians have, the more poorly they communicate with Black patients.

One of her studies found that white doctors dominated conversations more with Black patients than they did with white patients, making it far more likely that Black patients' concerns would go unheard and their conditions and pain would go undertreated. "It's definitely a safety issue," Dr. Cooper said.

Dr. Cristina Gonzalez, a professor of medicine at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City who teaches physicians how to recognize and manage their implicit biases, said she remembered one instance years ago when a young Hispanic patient came into the hospital complaining of severe pain. A staff member said, "I don't think he is really in pain." He was eventually diagnosed with a gallbladder infection, ‌Dr. Gonzalez said, but those doubts could have delayed his treatment and caused damage‌ that could have been life-threatening.

"Delaying care has significant health downstream effects," she said.

Experts emphasized that the onus should not be on patients to improve their own care. In recent years, there has been a push by researchers, hospitals and lawmakers to help health care providers become more aware of their biases - which everyone has - and to change their behavior accordingly. But "those are things that take time," Dr. Wyatt said. In the meantime, these strategies may help parents at the hospital:

Keep records. Write down your child's medications, symptoms and pediatrician's contact information. Then, give the staff this information, which will help them assess what type of care your child needs faster. This is particularly helpful if your child has a chronic condition and is taking medication regularly.

Get to know the hospital staff. Vanessa Finch, of Fort Lauderdale, Fl., whose son Kahleeb Beckett died at age 24 during a sickle cell crisis at the hospital, said that when Kahleeb was young, she found ways to connect with the hospital workers. "I volunteered. I kicked it with the social workers. I stayed in those doctors' faces," she said. "That makes a difference." She discovered that when the medical staff felt a more personal connection to her son, who was Black, they were more empathetic to his pain.

Try to alleviate your child's anxiety. Studies show that anxiety and pain are intricately interwoven and some surprisingly simple tactics can help to reduce anxiety and lessen perceptions of pain. These may include having your child imagine a favorite place, listening to a guided imagery exercise or offering distractions, like music or a video. You can use these strategies while waiting for treatment.

Take deep breaths. "We know that parents' distress about their child's pain in the E.D. really impacts how their child experiences pain and how they respond to treatment," said Emily Law, an author of the recent study on migraine treatment in adolescents and an associate professor of anesthesiology and pain medicine at the University of Washington. So do what you can to stay calm, whether that involves taking deep breaths or stepping out of the exam room to call a friend for support.

If necessary, file a complaint. If you feel that your child hasn't been treated appropriately, ask to speak with a hospital social worker or write a complaint to the hospital to hold them accountable.

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Pain in Children is Often Ignored. For Children of Color, It's Even Worse.

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Racial differences in medical care are part of a theme experts are seeing "over and over" again. Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share. Judith McClellan, a social worker who lives in Salisbury, N.C., knows what it's like to see her child in pain.

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Carol Schumacher of the Navajo Nation had grappled with untimely deaths; her mother died at 65 of pulmonary disease, and her father died at the same age in a car crash caused by a drunken driver. But she was not prepared for the devastation of Covid: Since it arrived in the U.S. more than two years ago, she has lost 42 family members to the virus.

Dealing with the massive death toll strained her own health, Schumacher told our colleagues. "I just wasn't mentally prepared to deal with so much loss," she said.

That loss has been tragically common among Native Americans, the C.D.C. revealed last week: From 2019 to 2021, their life expectancy fell from 71.8 years to 65.2. Covid was largely to blame.

Typically, experts start to worry when they see drops in life expectancy that measure in just tenths of a year; Native Americans lost nearly seven years. The drop erases the equivalent of more than four decades of American life expectancy gains. And the average Native American person is now expected to live as long as the average American did in 1944.

There is no one explanation for Covid's death toll in these communities. But the main causes appear to involve poverty. Native Americans tend to have higher rates of underlying health problems that exacerbate Covid, as well as worse access to health care.

"Even prior to the pandemic, rates of death among Indigenous people were higher in lots of categories," said Dr. Laura Hammitt, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University. Covid magnified those health disparities, causing a drop in life expectancy with no modern precedent in the U.S.

Since vaccines became available, Covid deaths among Americans have typically tracked closely with vaccination rates. For example, resistance against vaccines in predominantly Republican communities has led to more Covid deaths in recent months among white Americans than among Black or Hispanic Americans - a shift from the early days of the pandemic, as this newsletter has explained.

The link breaks down when it comes to Native Americans. Vaccination rates among Native Americans are higher than they are among Black or Hispanic Americans, according to C.D.C. data. Yet Native Americans have died from Covid at one of the highest rates of any race or ethnicity since the start of the pandemic:

Experts say other factors, besides vaccination rates, are to blame.

Among them: Native Americans have some of the highest rates of health conditions, such as obesity and diabetes, that make a person much more likely to die from Covid.

Health care is also often inaccessible. The Indian Health Service, a federal program that provides care to more than two million Native Americans, has a fraction of the funding on a per-person basis received by Medicare, Medicaid or the Veterans Health Administration. "How can somebody think this is not a problem? Yet it's become normal," said Loretta Christensen, the service's chief medical officer.

As a result, Native Americans frequently have to travel long distances to get health care. Its quality can be shoddy. A quarter of Native Americans reported experiencing discrimination when visiting a doctor or a health clinic, one poll found. Cultural and language barriers can also make it difficult for Indigenous people to get the care they want. Given those obstacles, some try to tough out illness at home, with potentially deadly results.

Poverty can play a more direct role, too. Roughly one in four Native Americans live in poverty. The stress from it can worsen health, studies have found.

Consider Arizona, one of the states with the highest share of Native Americans. There, the highest Covid death rates strongly overlap with counties where more Native Americans live and where poverty is the highest. They also correlate with the places with the least access to internet (a sign of economic neglect):

Widespread poverty limits what precautions people can take to avoid Covid. People living paycheck to paycheck can't afford to take time off work to avoid spreading or catching the virus. Native Americans also often lack access to internet, electricity and running water - making remote work, virtual schooling or telemedicine impossible.

And Native Americans often live in crowded, multigenerational homes. So if they are sick, they can easily spread the virus to the rest of the family, including older relatives who are much more vulnerable to Covid.

In other communities, the presence of one or some of these issues has made Covid deadlier. But Native Americans are dealing with all of these problems at once - the kinds of conditions that allow a pandemic to flourish.

The suffering of Native Americans shows that preventing deadly pandemics isn't just about containing the pathogens that cause them, but also about improving the health of communities across the board.

For now, the vaccines offer the best protection against severe illness from Covid. Now that the federal government has authorized the next generation of Covid vaccines, the most important step people can take to protect themselves is to get their shots.

Image

The Obamas unveiled their portraits in the East Room. Credit... Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Biden hosted Barack and Michelle Obama to unveil their official portraits, which will be displayed at the White House. "Welcome home!" Biden said.

The Justice Department must decide by tomorrow whether to appeal a federal judge's order to appoint a special master in the Mar-a-Lago case.

Prosecutions over voter fraud are rare and penalties vary, often affecting people who didn't know they were breaking the law, The Times found.

Vladimir Putin at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Russia, yesterday. Credit... Pool photo by Sergei Bobelyv

Weird Al Yankovic, left, and his movie double, Daniel Radcliffe. Credit... Sinna Nasseri for The New York Times

Weird Al: For his latest movie, Daniel Radcliffe picked up an accordion.

Prescribed fire: How to save a forest by burning it.

Product parade: Takeaways from Apple's fall updates.

It's never too late: To open an inn in the Catskills.

Ask Well: Can you get hooked on melatonin?

A Times classic: "Love hacks" to improve your marriage.

Advice from Wirecutter: The best ice cube tray.

Lives Lived: As an NPR foreign correspondent, Anne Garrels covered numerous wars. For a time she was the only U.S. network reporter broadcasting from Baghdad, where she subsisted on Kit Kat bars. She died at 71.

"Why not me?" Frances Tiafoe, 24, reached the semifinals of the U.S. Open, the first American man to do so since Andy Roddick in 2006. The No. 1-ranked Iga Swiatek defeated Jessica Pegula, the last remaining American on the women's side.

Joe Flacco, QB1 again: The New York Jets will officially turn to the veteran quarterback with Zach Wilson sidelined with a knee injury through at least Week 4 of the N.F.L. season. Wilson, the 2021 No. 2 pick, expects to pick up where he left off when he returns.

In 1926, Agatha Christie went missing. The story of her 11-day disappearance - as strange as a plot in one of her detective novels - is part of a new biography by Lucy Worsley.

After her husband, Archie, began an affair with a younger woman, Christie fell into a depression. While out for a drive, she crashed her car down a hill and into a hedge. The car was found, but she was not; she had fled to a spa hotel. She stayed there under a false identity, which shared a surname with her husband's paramour. She placed an enigmatic newspaper ad. Finally, two musicians recognized her as the famous missing author.

"Whatever the true circumstances of Christie's severance with reality, the media had a field day," Molly Young writes in a review of the biography. "Her book sales shot up."

For more: This 2019 article recounts the story of Christie's disappearance using Times articles of the day.

Credit... Johnny Miller for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Rebecca Jurkevich.

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Carol Schumacher of the Navajo Nation had grappled with untimely deaths; her mother died at 65 of pulmonary disease, and her father died at the same age in a car crash caused by a drunken driver. But she was not prepared for the devastation of Covid: Since it arrived in the U.S.

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In reading about the Santa Barbara court house I read that supervisors resolution that declared racism as a public health emergency in Santa Barbara country and ornaments tangible health effects connected with extensive racism.

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Racism and Discrimination that Young Filipinos Face in Hong Kong

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Racism and Discrimination that Young Filipinos Face in Hong Kong

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This article discusses how Ysabelle Limsiaco, a 20-year-old Filipino Hongkonger who was born and raised in Hong Kong, attended neighborhood schools and speaks Cantonese with ease, faces racism and discrimination in Hong Kong.

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'I was so mad': young Filipino Hongkongers on racism they face in the city

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Young Filipinos born and raised in Hong Kong talk about their experiences with racism and discrimination as a new video project aims to create more visibility and awareness for them.

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BIPOC Teachers protest the microaggressions they experience in the workplace

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BIPOC Teachers protest the microaggressions they experience in the workplace

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This article discusses teachers from an Oregon School that wrote an email citing support for their BIPOC principal who was rumored to be fired. In this email, teachers list the multiple microaggressions they themselves have experienced as well as seen directed at their principal. One thing that stuck with me from this email was " Principal Moffett is held responsible for… solving situations of racism in which she is a victim". I think this is such an important thing to acknowledge.

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Oregon ‘BIPOC’ teachers claims eye-rolling is an example of a ‘harmful practice rooted in White supremacy’

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Oregon educators at Errol Hassel Elementary School complained about ‘micro and macro aggressions’ allegedly perpetrated against them in an email to administrators obtained by Fox News Digital.

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This article discusses incidents of Asian hate crimes in San Francisco. Due to the pandemic, there has been a rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans based on discriminatory thinking that places the blame of COVID-19 on an entire race. Despite the huge media coverage that these incidents received, the perpetrators were rarely charged with hate crimes. The increase in these crimes has led to many discussions of leadership in politics within San Francisco as well as arguments on which communities need the most aid. Looking at what is happening in SF, and around the world, there is a definite pattern of racist behaviors and thoughts. These issues are rooted in our countries history, and yet we have not learned from our past at all.

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Why High-Profile Attacks on SF’s Asian Communities Rarely Lead to Hate Crime Charges | KQED

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KQED and The San Francisco Standard reviewed 12 high-profile criminal cases involving Asian victims during 2020 and 2021 to shine a light on the aftermath of incidents that quickly enter the public consciousness and then fade.

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Asian hate crimes against Asian American rises

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Asian hate crimes against Asian American rises

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This article shows us about racism which is just happened in California these day. In Oakland, CA Chinatown residents have been targeted with robberies and anti-Asian abuse. They decided to fight back with volunteer patrols, and their presence is helping to deter crime. And it happened in June, 2022. They interviewed some of Asian American who live near this place. They said Chinatown is second home but they feel like it is not safe anymore. And it really affects the safety in Chinatown and most of robbers target to elderly people.

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RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

A 64-year-old grandmother assaulted and robbed. A 52-year-old woman shot in the head with a flare gun. Researchers say hate crimes targeting Asian Americans have soared. Business and civil rights groups have been demanding that something change. And in one California neighborhood, it did. NPR's Eric Westervelt reports from Oakland.

ERIC WESTERVELT, BYLINE: This time last year, Oakland's Chinatown seemed like a ghost town as the latest COVID variant combined with a wave of thefts and brutal attacks against Asian Americans to unnerve the community. Many customers and tourists stayed away, and business owners, like insurance broker Jennifer Gee, would close up early.

JENNIFER GEE: Our elderly are being hurt. People are getting robbed on the street. There's even, like, carjacking or car windows being broken into. So it really affects the safety of Chinatown, and that's why they don't want to stay here late.

WESTERVELT: But today, things are better. People are staying out a little later. Businesses have bounced back. That's due in part to an all-volunteer Chinatown citizen patrol Gee helps organize called the Blue Angels. Victor Kuang has run a Chinese herbal medicine store here for 30 years. He got involved in the patrol effort early on.

VICTOR KUANG: (Through interpreter) Chinatown is like a big family. And during the attacks and the news, my young son asked me, Dad, will there be a Chinatown in the future? Will it exist for us?

WESTERVELT: The volunteer patrol looks more like a glee club that's been to a home security superstore than menacing crime fighters - young and old, teens to retirees, are dressed in bright blue vests, with black baseball caps that say security. They walk the neighborhood three days a week, equipped with cameras, walkie-talkies, air horns and powder-blue umbrellas.

GEE: Just to kind of deter any crime - for self-defense, if anything happens.

WESTERVELT: Gee says if patrol members see crime, they turn on their body cameras, maybe sound their air horn, and dial a direct line to a local Oakland police liaison officer. Important, too, she says - the patrols act as a kind of bridge to the police for community members who may not speak English well and are often wary of police.

GEE: And they don't necessarily know how to report crime when it happens to them. So that presence - so they know there's someone local that will care about what happened to them and be able to relay that to police.

WESTERVELT: Businesswoman Eva Liu says she's grateful for the patrols. She's eight months pregnant and runs a small import/export business here. When a thief recently tried to steal goods off her shelf, she says, she was petrified. But she sounded her air horn, and the loud blast got the attention of the volunteers, and the thief took off - but not before he shouted an anti-Asian slur, she says, and hurled a bottle at her.

EVA LIU: (Through interpreter) He threw the bottle at me. I turned to protect the baby, and the bottle hit my back. He's yelling at me, calling me names. It was scary, but the air horn and patrols helped scare him for sure.

WESTERVELT: Most of the patrol members are Asian Americans who work or live in the neighborhood, but not all.

BOB BATTINICH: I was an ex-boxer. My main thing is I don't like bullies. You see an old person, they need to be honored.

WESTERVELT: Seventy-one-year-old retiree Bob Battinich (ph) shows up for most every patrol with his umbrella, pepper spray, and his head on a swivel. Battinich says he's built relationships here over years, coming to Chinatown for traditional medicine, food and friendships.

BATTINICH: I love the culture. I love the street sales here. Look at - you see an - here's an old man right here. He's out with his daughter. This is beautiful. It's family.

Ni hao.

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Ni hao, ni hao.

WESTERVELT: This citizen effort is only part of the solution. Oakland Police have also increased foot and car patrols in Chinatown and appointed a new liaison officer who the volunteer patrol members say speaks some Cantonese. The combined efforts have helped drive down property crime and assaults - in this part of Oakland, at least. LeRonne Armstrong is the city's police chief.

LERONNE ARMSTRONG: Whether that group is going to blow whistles, like some of them do, or have their body-worn cameras on and going to record an event, it makes it a hard place to commit crime when the criminal sees multiple people watching.

WESTERVELT: But you have to wonder - are citizen patrols really a viable long-term solution, and are they doing anything to address the deeper anti-Asian sentiment underlying some of the attacks? On a walk here with Carl Chan, head of the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, I ask him if he's at all concerned about the patrols backfiring.

CARL CHAN: This is not about, like, being a hero. It's a group effort, and they are trained to make phone calls immediately and contact the necessary authorities.

WESTERVELT: So you would rather they deter and report. They're not out there to try to intervene.

CHAN: Absolutely. We don't want to intervene because, you know, this is not their job.

WESTERVELT: Chan says the patrols have been instrumental in bringing back not only people and customers, but rebuilding the confidence of the businesses and their employees. People here, he says, now just feel safer. Eric Westervelt, NPR News, Oakland.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

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As hate crimes against Asian Americans rise, a California neighborhood takes action

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In Oakland, Calif., Chinatown residents have been targeted with robberies and anti-Asian abuse. They decided to fight back with volunteer patrols, and their presence is helping to deter crime.

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Rise in Asian-Hate Crimes, San Francisco

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Rise in Asian-Hate Crimes, San Francisco

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This news articles addresses the rise in Asian-Hate crimes in the San Francisco, Bay Area. According to the article, these crimes have risen 567% in the past year. Going from 9 incidents to 60 incidents in one year.

I chose this article because I'm from San Francisco and have witnessed / seen videos of racism against Asians and Pacific Islanders, during and following the pandemic. It's very sad to see and highlights racism & racial prejudice during global events. It also highlights how racism is an ongoing occurrence, and is seen in our communities.

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The mayor of San Francisco expressed despair over the increase in reported hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders last year, up an astonishing 567 percent from the previous year, according to preliminary figures released by the police department on Tuesday.

Mayor London Breed pledged continued support for the community, saying she suspects actual numbers are much higher because people are reluctant to report to the police.

The initial count shows 60 victims in 2021, up from nine in 2020. Half of last year's victims were allegedly targeted by one man. Officials did not name the man, but appeared to be referring to the case of a man accused of vandalizing at least 20 establishments.

It would have broken her heart if the grandmother who raised her had been attacked "in the way that we see so many of our seniors of the AAPI community being attacked," Breed said at Tuesday's press conference. "But that did not happen. Because as a community we protected one another. And that's what we have to do now more than ever."

Hateful attacks against the AAPI community - Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders - surged nationally during the pandemic, fueled in part by then-President Donald Trump's calling Covid-19 a derogatory nickname that insulted China. The Stop AAPI Hate coalition out of San Francisco State University tracked more than 10,000 incidents of hate from March 2020 through September 2021.

In San Francisco and elsewhere, video clips of Asian Americans being attacked and robbed on public streets alarmed the community so much that frightened seniors stayed home. Most recently, former San Francisco Bay Area resident Michelle Go died in New York City after a mentally disturbed man pushed her in front of a subway. Officials there say there is no indication the man was motivated by racial bias, but Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are still rattled.

San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said at Tuesday's news conference they have expanded the crime tip line to include more languages and are sharing safety tips for Lunar New Year celebrations. But he also acknowledged his department is only part of a criminal justice system that includes prosecution and judges.

Statistics do not show the whole picture because not everyone reports incidents. Also, prosecutors are unable to tack on hate crime enhancements without a clear statement of bias by the alleged attacker. This has frustrated some victims and their families, who see the charge as a sign of accountability.

San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who faces a recall election in June, has come under fire from some Asian American victims.

On Tuesday, lawyers for Anh Lê filed a federal lawsuit against Boudin, saying his office has systemically refused to uphold the rights of Asian Americans victimized by racial violence. Lê says the DA's office never informed him of a lenient plea deal cut with his attackers or the lack of a hate crime charge until after the fact.

Rachel Marshall, a spokeswoman for the DA, said in a statement that Boudin has been a "steadfast advocate" for improved services and support for the AAPI community. He has added multilingual advocates to his office and launched an AAPI elder abuse steering committee, she said.

The mayor at Tuesday's news conference declined to comment on the lawsuit.

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San Francisco reports major rise in anti-Asian hate crimes

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The mayor of San Francisco expressed despair over the increase in reported hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders last year, up an astonishing 567 percent from the previous year, according to preliminary figures released by the police department on Tuesday.

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The training will teach educators how to create “racially affirming environments” in their classrooms.Getty Images

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Oregon DOE spending $1.9 on ‘anti-racist fellowship’ teachers’ training

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Oregon DOE spending $1.9 on ‘anti-racist fellowship’ teachers’ training

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In this article, Grossman reports how the department of education in Oregon wants to distribute 2 million dollars for a fellowship, to train K-12 educators from diverse backgrounds to reject the "eurocentric worldview" of "individualism." The anti-racist fellowship that is funded by ODE, is broken down into various arcs. The fellowship is meant to expand teachers' knowledge of an individual and the organized and standard affects of discrimination on institutions and society. The Oregon Department of Education has spoken to FOX news Digital affirming that the law explicitly administers the state to provide programs that enlist and maintain racial, ethnic, or linguistic assorted instructors in Oregon Even though I don't live in this state, I am interested in teaching, so this article was very interesting.

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Homelessness and Racism in San Fransisco

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Homelessness and Racism in San Fransisco

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I chose this article because it is close to home. While many of us may believe that we aren't around racism or even subject to it, racism can happen around us, but especially to the impoverished. A study done in San Fransisco depicts how the numbers of African Americans who are homeless is steadily above all else. African Americans are also staying homeless longer than other racial minorities. This is due to our systems and discrimination that African Americans still face in our society. This reflects our failed justice, homing, food and educational services towards these people. And with a rapid increase, these numbers aren't lowering anytime soon.

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San Francisco Chronicle
October 11, 2016
By Jeff Kositsky and Marc Dones

A 2011 study found African Americans are more likely than whites to become homeless. Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle A 2011 study found African Americans are more likely than whites to become homeless.

Homelessness - and how best to end it - has been a topic of conversation over the past several years at the state, federal and community levels around the country. However, what we do not say often enough or loudly enough is that racism and homelessness are inextricably linked. Yes, racism. It's time to speak the truth. It's time to call it what it is.

More than 40 percent of people using shelter in the United States each year are African American, nearly three times their portion of the general population. A 2011 study by George Carter from the Census Bureau found that even when controlling for poverty, African Americans are dramatically more likely than whites to become homeless. Additionally, there is some evidence that they stay homeless longer. The only other racial group that comes close to these rates of homelessness is Native Americans.

The situation in San Francisco is similar; African Americans, Latinos and Native Americans are overrepresented among those who experience homelessness. According to the 2015 San Francisco Homeless Point-in-Time Count, African Americans make up only 7 percent of the general population, but are approximately 36 percent of people who are homeless.

There is a deep and abiding problem within the reality of American homelessness that points unequivocally to racial injustice. For adults, the systemic exclusion of people of color from the housing market through redlining tactics meant they were largely excluded from home ownership until roughly 1970 - after the passage and partial implementation of the Fair Housing Act.

As we discuss the possibility of ending homelessness in San Francisco and in the United States, we must understand that without a simultaneous conversation about race, we would be disingenuous at best and self-sabotaging at worst. We cannot hope to make progress on a problem that is the result of racial inequity without engaging with how racism shapes our present.

If homelessness reflects the continued failure of our social systems to serve people equally in housing, education, health care and criminal justice, then the necessary question has to be: How can we, as a society, transform these systems? We believe that this question is vital and cannot be answered in a vacuum. We must come together and agree to do the difficult and necessary work of understanding our nation's history and identifying what we must do to move forward.

San Francisco has nationally recognized homeless programs such as Direct Access to Housing, Project Homeless Connect, rapid re-housing, and Navigation Centers that have their roots here. Since 2004, more than 23,000 people have ended their homelessness with assistance from the city and service-provider partners. The San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing and many partners are working hard to address the immediate and growing problem of homelessness. However, we need to look at issues such as housing policies, education and racial injustice if we are to permanently end homelessness.

Jeff Kositsky is the director of the San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. Marc Dones is an associate for equity initiatives and diversity at the Center for Social Innovation in Needham, Mass.

To learn more
The San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing, in partnership with the Center for Social Innovation, Hamilton Families, Project Homeless Connect, and HandUp.org., are hosting a series of events and trainings. The first community conversation is:

When: 6 p.m., Monday, Oct. 17 (Doors open at 5:30 p.m.)

Where: Herbst Theater, 401 Van Ness Ave., San Francisco

For details: http://bit.ly/2e77det

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For Too Many, Homelessness Begins with Racism

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A 2011 study found African Americans are more likely than whites to become homeless. Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle Photo: Leah Millis, The Chronicle A 2011 study found African Americans are more likely than whites to become homeless.

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Chinese influencers profiting from the exploitation of Africans

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Chinese influencers profiting from the exploitation of Africans

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28-year-old Cheng Wei is a famous influencer who has a large fan base predominately based in China. He is being accused of participating in a multimillion-dollar ring that promotes a sense of cultural and economic superiority among Chinese fans by exploiting racist ideology. Originally from China, Wei moved to Zambia and began traveling from cities to villages recording himself "helping others in need". In some of the videos he has posted, some of his followers remarked "All good - except too black". Wei has even expressed his own opinions by saying, "This is not China but Africa... Africans are inherently savage, barbaric, you know? They only have profits in their eyes". The influencers portray themselves as being wealthy gods that provide aid to locals with clothes, health, money, and housing. In reality, experts have gone to say that their work essentially provides a life line for racial inequality. Researcher Cheng Zuo, from the University of Michigan who specializes in Chinese digital media shared, “[Chinese] tend to think of themselves as targets of racism. They do not think about themselves as doers of racism, that they are also practicing racism to other people. But they are". This is a prime example that any race can be promote racist ideology views regardless if they are themselves a part of a group that is victim to racism.

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On the afternoon of May 24, a beauty pageant took place at an apartment in Kitwe, Zambia. The contestants, numbered from one to seven, took turns walking in front of the camera to loud music from a hit Chinese matchmaking show. "Are you single?" a young Chinese man asked the Zambian women, before telling them to repeat back lines to the camera he recited in Chinese. "Hello everyone ... I'm 19," the first woman said after him. "I'm single. ... My eyes are small."

Halfway around the world, this was primetime entertainment in China. Tens of thousands of viewers were watching live on the Chinese video app Kuaishou and offering their takes. "All good - except too black," one person commented while the seventh woman was instructed to sing a song. "Number five has straight legs," another viewer remarked.

The host, 28-year-old Cheng Wei, who accumulated close to 10 million followers across different Chinese social platforms under the handle "African Mr. Hello," offered his own opinions after introducing the women. "This is not China but Africa," Cheng said. "Africans are inherently savage, barbaric, you know? They only have profits in their eyes."

Cheng is one of many Chinese influencers overseas who made a fortune, promoting a sense of economic, cultural, and political superiority among Chinese fans by exploiting racist ideology, experts told Rest of World. In dozens of videos filmed and uploaded by these influencers, Black people, including children, are shown to embrace Chinese language and culture. Black women are degraded as sexual objects, participating in beauty pageant shows and calling Chinese vloggers laogong, or "hubby." The influencers portray themselves as wealthy saviors who provide locals with money, jobs, clothes, health care, housing, and food.

"The Chinese always want to show Africans that they are a different type of partner from what Africa had with the colonists."

Women, claimed to be Miss World participants from African countries, dance around a Chinese man on video posted to the @kingofafrica account on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.

Rest of World analyzed more than two dozen popular accounts based in Guinea, Tanzania, Zambia, Mozambique, and Kenya as well as other countries in Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia and found that the vloggers, with follower counts that reach into the millions, together make up a multimillion-dollar e-commerce industry. Part of China's livestreaming e-commerce boom, experts say, was built on top of hours of racist and misogynistic content. During that particular 4.5-hour livestream, Cheng sold about $22,000 worth of T-shirts, facial wipes, and watches, according to tracking service Bihukankan.

Although the vloggers often claim to be helping out in Africa, experts say their work essentially monetizes racial inequality. "[Chinese] tend to think of themselves as targets of racism. They do not think about themselves as doers of racism, that they are also practicing racism to other people. But they are," said Sheng Zou, a researcher at the University of Michigan who specializes in Chinese digital media. "If you look at the representations in those videos, they are trying to establish the kind of contrast between them as modern subjects and Africans as somewhat inferior, somewhat premodern subjects that are backward."

In June, a viral BBC investigation exposed a Chinese video maker in Malawi named Lu Ke who was accused of physically abusing at least one black child. After the video prompted a global outcry, the Chinese government vowed to crack down on online racism. The country's all-encompassing censorship apparatus often turns a blind eye to xenophobia, which the state does not view as an imminent threat to its rule, according to researchers. Soon after the BBC documentary was released, social media platforms, such as Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu, WeChat, and Douyin, China's version of TikTok, blocked users from searching video accounts containing the term "Africa." Almost all the top Chinese influencers in Africa stopped their daily livestreams. Cheng told us that Kuaishou had told him the livestream ban on Africa-based vloggers was triggered by the BBC investigation; Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu, and Bilibili did not respond to requests for comments. ByteDance declined to comment on the crackdown. Tencent, owner of WeChat, also declined to comment on the ban and referred Rest of World to the app's policy against hate speech.

Only when racism from the Chinese internet triggers backlash in Africa, a key economic and diplomatic partner, does Beijing feel the need to act, said Emmanuel Matambo, research director at the University of Johannesburg's Centre for Africa-China Studies.

"[The Chinese government] only respond when there's outrage," Matambo told Rest of World. "The Chinese always want to show Africans that they are a different type of partner from what Africa had with the colonists."

A man dances after receiving cash from his Chinese employer. Chinese influencers in Africa often film their staff expressing gratitude for receiving payment, gifts or even food.

But in Zambia, Matambo said, some Chinese entrepreneurs' patronizing way of treating local people and lack of understanding of their culture has caused problems. Zambian workers have long complained about labor abuse at Chinese firms, such as being told not to join unions or allegations of being detained at factory sites during Covid-19 outbreaks.

One of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese migrants who moved to Africa to seek economic opportunities, Cheng went to work at an air filter factory in 2015 in Zambia, hoping to escape the fierce competition for jobs at home and find a fast track to success. Hailing from a rural part of Henan province - an economic backwater in inland China - Cheng dropped out of secondary school after his first year. Months into his arrival in Zambia, in early 2016, before TikTok was launched, Cheng started posting short videos of Africans on Kuaishou, then the dominant short-video app in China. He called the account "African Mr. Hello," because "hello" was the only English word he knew when he went to Zambia.

In an interview with Rest of World in June, Cheng told us that he first made money from the virtual tips sent by his fans in China. After work, he would walk around the village where he lived filming local people, food, and markets. He would film children chanting Chinese poems and lining up to collect snacks he bought for them. He made a series of videos as he delivered food to an impoverished elderly man and another video where he showed himself helping to build a wooden hut for him.

Runako Celina, producer of the BBC's Racism for Sale, the documentary that led to public outcry across the African continent - said such content reinforces the discrimination against Africans in China. "This industry is situated in these wider narratives around African-ness: of poverty, of neediness that allows for saviorism to play out," she told Rest of World. Celina, who also founded digital platform Black Livity China to document Black people's experiences in China, added that "it feels very human zoo in nature."

After three years in Zambia, Cheng became a full-time vlogger. He hired local women to act in his videos and livestreams, showing them telling jokes in Chinese and cooking Chinese dishes in giant pots. Cheng noted to Rest of World that images of charity and Chinese culture being adopted abroad were particularly popular, pointing to positive comments from fans. As his fan base in China expanded, Cheng went from behind the scenes to being a central character in front of the camera himself, wearing sunglasses and Dior shirts - an image of a wealthy, powerful, and fashionable Chinese man who generously helps local Africans and is widely revered.

Until the recent crackdown, Chinese video apps rewarded populist, racist content with viewers and profits. Video sites such as Bilibili and ByteDance's Xigua pay content creators according to the traffic and advertising revenues they generate. Other video apps, such as Douyin and Kuaishou, match vloggers with advertisers and share revenue from product placement. In the afternoons, Cheng peddled cosmetics, snacks, and homewares, just like hundreds of thousands of other Chinese livestreamers. The products often don't have any ties to Africa or the content: it's simply one way to stand out in China's crowded livestream shopping industry. According to Bihukankan, Africa-based livestreamers that we examined together sold more than $7 million worth of products in May and June, with the tech companies taking 0.6% to 10% of the income. Viewers also send virtual tips, and about 50% goes to the platforms. Cheng, the most successful of all, raked in more than $5.6 million in revenue over the last three months, according to Bihukankan. Cheng said that on average, he earned some 20% of the revenue as commission. He claims that his African staff, including a 20-year-old who served as the camerawoman, were paid above the local salary level.

Western companies have cashed in as well. In Guinea, Wang Fei runs a YouTube channel with 255,000 subscribers, regularly featuring a boy he adopted from a neighbor's family on his channel. The child, whom he nicknamed "little monkey," speaks fluent Chinese, cooks Chinese food, and attends classes at a China-funded Confucius Institute. The videos have been watched 110 million times and are estimated to have earned him about $229,000, according to the YouTube money calculator on Influencer Marketing Hub. YouTube did not respond to a request for comment.

"If you film some advanced stuff here, people might not like watching. They would rather see lives that are worse than their own."

In a June video, Wang Yao, a Kenya-based influencer with 5.4 million followers on Douyin, who often appears flanked by female assistants labeled as Miss World winners representing different African countries, spoke to his audience about the abundance of mosquitoes in Africa before promoting a Bayer mosquito spray. After Rest of World asked Bayer about the product placement in July, Bayer said it had asked a distributor to remove the advert, adding that it's committed to a culture of inclusion and diversity.

In China, racially charged nationalism has been on the rise over the past few decades, as the Communist Party mobilizes people's pride toward belonging to a homogeneous Chinese nation and frames itself as leading its rejuvenation against Western hegemony. Kun Huang, a Cornell University researcher who specializes in race and Blackness in Chinese culture, says images of Chinese men wielding power in Africa plays up to a desire to see their own nation, instead of Western countries, projecting influence over others.

When asked about the beauty pageant in May, the vlogger said he had paid the contestants and offered them a nice meal in exchange for their appearances. The winner of the show, Cheng said, had joined his staff as a cook who occasionally performed in the videos. Cheng told Rest of World he believed his business was saving Africans from poverty. "I changed their fate," he said of his local employees. "I gave them new lives. They also made me successful. It's reciprocal."

Despite the crackdown, Cheng's pages are still live, as of publication. Influencers have removed the word "Africa" from their usernames generally, and they are still able to post new videos. Cheng's account, "African Mr. Hello," changed to "Mr. Hello Overseas." His new videos from Zambia still attract tens of thousands of likes. In the comment section, fans have asked when his livestreams will return.

"Chinese people love watching how other places are not as good as China," Cheng told Rest of World, arguing that he had portrayed Africa in a truthful way. "If you film some advanced stuff here, people might not like watching. They would rather see lives that are worse than their own."

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Racist videos about Africans fuel a multimillion-dollar Chinese industry

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On the afternoon of May 24, a beauty pageant took place at an apartment in Kitwe, Zambia. The contestants, numbered from one to seven, took turns walking in front of the camera to loud music from a hit Chinese matchmaking show. "Are you single?"

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In this article done by Reuters in Euro News, he highlights an issue with a supposed racial bias seen through the systems of Artificial Intelligence. Through a study done they found that there was a misrepresentation of skin colors through different avenues of different technological systems such as facial recognition and for Google it was seen through search engine results. I found this article most interesting since I had not ever considered this being an issue that was programmed for users and yet shows a racial bias to certain skin tone colors that were not included. This is an issue that has opened my eyes to much deeper issues since search engines are so prevalent to users and with technology being so accessible, what we see on a day to day basis has such a huge impact on either implicit or explicit racial bias'. Therefore, with a more inclusive color tone palette, I hope that this will impact the internet in a positive way. Although this is a European Article, google is a huge company and I am surprised that I am just hearing about this issue since I feel that it has much deeper rooted issues that underlie it and yet not publicized enough since it does affect everyone around the world not just in the United States.

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Alphabet Inc's Google unveiled a palette of 10 skin tones on Wednesday that it described as a step forward in making gadgets and apps that better serve people of colour.

The company said its new Monk Skin Tone Scale replaces a flawed standard of six colours known as the Fitzpatrick Skin Type, which had become popular in the tech industry to assess whether smartwatch heart rate sensors, artificial intelligence systems including facial recognition, and other offerings show colour bias.

Tech researchers acknowledged that Fitzpatrick underrepresented people with darker skin. Reuters exclusively reported last year that Google was developing an alternative.

The company partnered with Harvard University sociologist Ellis Monk, who studies colourism and had felt dehumanised by cameras that failed to detect his face and reflect his skin tone.

Monk said Fitzpatrick is great for classifying differences among lighter skin. But most people are darker, so he wanted a scale that "does a better job for the majority of the world," he said.

Monk through Photoshop and other digital art tools curated 10 tones - a manageable number for people who help train and assess AI systems.

Google's Monk scale already in use

He and Google surveyed around 3,000 people across the United States and found that a significant number said a 10-point scale matched their skin as well as a 40-shade palette had.

Tulsee Doshi, head of product for Google's responsible AI team, called the Monk scale "a good balance between being representative and being tractable".

Google is already applying it. Beauty-related Google Images searches such as "bridal makeup looks" now allow filtering results based on Monk.

Image searches such as "cute babies" now show photos with varying skin tones.

The Monk scale also is being deployed to ensure a range of people are satisfied with filter options in Google Photos and that the company's face-matching software is not biased.

Still, Doshi said problems could seep into products if companies do not have enough data on each of the tones, or if the people or tools used to classify others' skin are biased by lighting differences or personal perceptions.

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Google unveils new 10-shade skin tone scale to test its AI for bias

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Google has been in hot water in the past over racial biases found in its AI skincare tools. It's hoped its new 10-shade palette will help.

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Transitioning from fossil fuels can curb health problems tied to environmental racism and made worse by climate change.

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Transitioning from fossil fuels can curb health problems tied to environmental racism and made worse by climate change.

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Reading this article, I learned a lot. About something I did not even know was a problem... environmental racism! Economic injustice and racism are behind why some communities have health-protective infrastructure (such as parks) and how people have health-harming highways and industrial complexes. This research shows that low-income neighborhoods and communities of color have been disproportionately exposed to air pollution from nearly every emission source, independent of factors like geographic region.

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A Prescription for Equitable Health: Replacing Fossil Fuels

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Transitioning from fossil fuels can curb health problems tied to environmental racism and made worse by climate change.

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I saw this article about how institutional racism has been getting worse in Brazil. It brings up how a big part of black Brazilians feel unsafe walking down the streets, scared of the trauma that police officers can put them through. Data showed that 68% of the people stopped by the police in the street are black and only 25% are white. There is a trauma for black families, as black women are scared for the lives of their male family members. Although there is a very big social economic status importance for the discrimination in Brazil, the majority of the poor population is black (73%).

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Publicado: 21 Março, 2022 - 08h30 | Última modificação: 21 Março, 2022 - 08h44

Escrito por: Walber Pinto | Editado por: Marize Muniz

Nesta segunda-feira (21) se celebra o Dia Internacional pela Eliminação da Discriminação Racial, instituído pela ONU. É um dia importante que reforça a luta contra o racismo e lembra o Massacre de Sharpeville, em Joanesburgo, na África do Sul, no qual negros e negras de diversas idades foram assassinados sem compaixão durante o regime do apartheid, no dia 21 de março de 1960.

Nesta data, aproximadamente vinte mil pessoas protestavam contra a "lei do passe", em Joanesburgo. A lei obrigava negros a andarem com identificações que limitavam os locais por onde poderiam circular dentro da cidade. As tropas militares do apartheid atacaram os manifestantes e mataram 69 pessoas, além de ferir uma centena de outras.

No Brasil, são as balas perdidas e a violência policial que separam negros de brancos ao sempre ir de encontro aos corpos negros. Um quadro duro que se agravou com o desemprego recorde em meio à crise econômica que atinge pretos e pardos de forma mais intensa do que brancos.

O racismo estrutural e institucional se expressa, especialmente, na violência policial escancarada contra a juventude negra que passou a ser denunciada e reverberada ao mundo pelo movimento negro, inclusive no Brasil.

Nomes como os de Yago Macedo, de 21 anos, Yago Corrêa de Souza, de 21 anos, Alexandre dos Santos, 20 anos, Patrick Sapucaia, 16, e Cauê Guimarães, que não teve a idade divulgada, se somam aos milhares de casos de racismo institucional no país. Todos eles foram vítimas de uma política de segurança pública falha e excludente no Brasil.

As vítimas têm cor e endereço, mas é no Rio de Janeiro que a escalada de violência policial que reverbera no país contra a população negra deságua. De acordo com o levantamento do Centro de Estudos de Segurança e Cidadania (Cesec), divulgado em fevereiro deste ano, houve um agravamento do racismo nas abordagens policiais e, por consequência, em todo o ciclo da justiça criminal, no Rio de Janeiro.

A pesquisa intitulada "negro trauma, racismo e abordagem policial na cidade do Rio", mostra que 63% das abordagens policiais na cidade têm como alvo pessoas negras. Os dados inéditos revelam o caráter racista como centro da atividade policial do estado do Rio de Janeiro.

Segundo o levantamento, um quinto (17%) dessas pessoas já foi abordada pela polícia mais de 10 vezes. Diz ainda que negros correspondem a 68% das pessoas abordadas andando a pé na rua ou na praia, enquanto apenas 25% dos brancos são parados pela polícia nas mesmas circunstâncias.

"A gente percebe o quanto que essa questão de raça ainda é operante na nossa sociedade porque falar de racismo e combater o racismo vai demandar uma reestruturação de toda uma perspectiva de educação e ciência que foram pautadas a partir da perspectiva de raça", afirma Aline Martinells, pesquisadora sobre assistência social e raça e membra da rede de mulheres negras evangélicas no Brasil.

Na criminologia [conjunto de conhecimentos a respeito do crime], as teorias de raça embasam essa perspectiva quando cria o perfil dos sujeitos que tinham predisposição ao crime
- Aline Martinells

Essa violência atinge principalmente as mulheres negras, ressalta a secretária-Adjunta de Combate ao Racismo da CUT, Rosana Fernandes.

"As mulheres negras muitas vezes não conseguem nem dormir porque ficam preocupadas se seus companheiros e filhos vão voltar para casa", afirma a dirigente.

"Esses índices [de violência] trazem uma discussão muito grande que a população tem que começar a debater que é qual o sistema de segurança que a gente quer", propõe Rosana, que acrescenta: "E não é esse sistema de segurança onde as pessoas são avaliadas e julgadas simplesmente pela cor da sua pele".

Algumas das vítimas

Yago Macedo, de 21 anos, era vendedor de balas e foi morto por um policial militar em Niterói, na região metropolitana do Tio de Janeiro. Yago teria se aproximado do agente, identificado como sargento Carlos Arnaud Silva Júnior, que reagiu e alegou que pensava se tratar de um assalto.

No início desde mês, na comunidade Gamboa, em Salvador, três jovens negros foram mortos numa operação policial. As vítimas eram Alexandre dos Santos, 20 anos, Patrick Sapucaia, 16, e Cauê Guimarães.

Moradores e familiares denunciaram a ação, mas a polícia afirmou que houve confronto e por isso chegou na comunidade atirando.

Já o jovem Yago Corrêa, morador do Jacarezinho, no Rio de Janeiro, foi preso por engano na comunidade onde morava após ter ido comprar pão para um churrasco.

"O racismo é exatamente a compreensão de uma raça superior à outra e da raça como fator determinante dos sujeitos", pontua Aline.

Já para a secretária-Geral da CUT, Carmen Foro, o Brasil vive uma situação de invisibilidade e que precisa ser revelada e precionar o Estado brasileiro a mudar essa realidade. "O 21 de março se configura num momernto importante de enfrentamento, de pressão social, para que possamos alterar essa dura realidade".

Racismo institucional e estrutural

Os casos de violência apontados na reportagem praticada por agentes do Estado contra pessoas negras são exemplos de racismo estrutural, denunciado há décadas pelo movimento negro e intelectuais negros.

No Brasil, a chance de uma pessoa negra ser assassinada é 2,6 vezes superior àquela de uma pessoa não negra. Segundo os dados da pesquisa Atlas da Violência 2021 e elaborado por meio de uma parceria entre o Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública (FBSP), a taxa de homicídios por 100 mil habitantes negros em 2019 foi de 29,2, enquanto a da soma dos amarelos, brancos e indígenas foi de 11,2.

De acordo com a pesquisa, os negros representaram 77% das vítimas de assassinato no país em 2019. Essa prevalência é, historicamente, um dado frequente em estudos sobre a violência no Brasil.

"Quando Nina Rodrigues [escritor] desenha o perfil dos sujeitos criminosos que têm predisposição ao crime, e isso ainda continua operante, essas são as raízes do racismo institucional, e ele é institucional porque é estrutural", reitera a pesquisadora.

Quando a gente fala que o racismo é estrutural, a gente afirma que, na literatura, na ciência de forma geral, todos esses saberes reproduzem o racismo. Todas.
-

Para Anatalina Lourenço, secretária nacional de Combate ao Racismo da CUT, é a chamada necropolítica, uma ação do Estado de forma pensada a partir das suas políticas que determinam quem vive e quem morre.

"A luta contra o racismo deve ser construída por todos e todas, não pode ser algo secundário a outras lutas. Somos mais 50% da população preta e parda desse país, logo devemos nos perguntar, quais são as ações efetivas para a eliminação do racismo?", questiona a dirigente.

O racismo estrutural é um conjunto de práticas discriminatórias, institucionais, históricas, culturais dentro de uma sociedade que frequentemente privilegia algumas raças em detrimento de outras.

O termo é usado para reforçar o fato de que há sociedades estruturadas com base no racismo, que favorecem pessoas brancas e desfavorecem negros e indígenas.

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Violência policial contra negros e racismo institucional pioram com crise no Brasil

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No país, vítimas têm cor e endereço. Pesquisa do Centro de Estudos de Segurança e Cidadania (Cesec) mostra a escalada de violência policial na cidade do Rio de Janeiro

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Gucci making a sweater that resembles blackface

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Gucci making a sweater that resembles blackface

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I remember seeing the famous brand 'Gucci' trending on twitter a few years ago and being so disappointed and upset when I found out why. Yet another instance of racism. It's always upsetting to see things like this happen because something that is so obviously racist was approved to be on a company's website that makes millions. Blackface uses the dramatic use of makeup to imitate a black person, and was used to make fun of black people. When this happens I always think of how unprovoked it is when things like this happen. It's so important to educate ourselves to stop things like this from happening.

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This article proves many great points. The first one that I noticed was that this has been an issue for over 100 years. Not necessarily CRT but teaching about American History and how it has affected marginalized groups. It's talked about how an experiment was done with high school students. The students who learned more about these groups were more comfortable voicing their opinions as well as had a greater appreciation for other cultures contributions to today's society.

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Americans have spent over 150 years arguing about what kind of history we should teach to our children. In " Schoolbook Nation," a book that examines the history of conflicts over American curricula, historian Joseph Moreau noted that a variety of Americans have worried about the sky falling if the "wrong" versions of history were taught in our schools. Americans, as Moreau documented, were concerned about this in the 1870s, again in the 1920s and, as we've seen recently, they are still concerned today.

One present source of tension is the question of whether and how we should teach children about racism, as well as other less rosy aspects of the nation's history. Politicians, parents and other influential actors have strong and divided views about this. One side assumes that teaching a more critical version of history would be beneficial to our children and thus argue for adding more lessons critical of American history to curricula; the other side assumes that such lessons would be harmful and therefore argue that critical content should be banned from the classroom.

This, though, raises an important empirical question: What actually happens when we teach students critical lessons about American history? Or, put another way, what happens when American children learn about racism?

Social scientists have studied this question for years and found that, overall, there is a lot to be gained from schools teaching students about more challenging aspects of American history. For instance, in one field experiment conducted in high schools across the Chicago metropolitan area, University of Chicago political scientist Matthew Nelsen randomly assigned nearly 700 high schoolers to read different versions of history textbook segments and then measured what effect they had on students from different racial backgrounds.

How critical race theory became part of the culture war

Some students were assigned to read excerpts adapted from a widely-circulated history book that presents a relatively typical retelling of American history. Other students were assigned to read excerpts from a more critical history book that foregrounded "marginalized groups, systemic injustice and grassroots political action." What happened to the students that read these different versions of history?

First and foremost, Nelsen found that, compared to students who read the more traditional history text, students of all racial backgrounds benefitted from reading the more critical text. Latino and Black youth, for instance, reported a greater willingness to participate in acts of political engagement and were also more willing to express their views on a variety of issues. In another work, Nelsen also found that white students reported a greater appreciation for the contributions that Black, Latino and Asian Americans have made to American society.

Political scientists are not the only ones finding results like this. Nelsen's findings are consistent with a larger body of research conducted by a team of psychologists from Northwestern University, the University of Georgia and the University of Vermont. In their recent review of the literature on this topic, psychologist Sylvia Perry and her colleagues noted that teaching children about racism can actually increase the empathy they have for members of other groups, as well as their concerns about systemic racism. They point to studies showing, for example, that when white children learn about racism they are more likely to value racial fairness and show more positive attitudes and empathy toward Black people.

It's hard not to look at these results and think - great! - if only our schools taught more critical histories of the U.S., it could improve how different racial groups interact with each other. But that's not what's happened in the last few years. In fact, there is currently an active push to restrict how race and racism are taught in schools: Between January 2021 and April 2022, almost 200 bills were introduced across the U.S. to ban the teaching of critical perspectives on the history of the United States.

Given the benefits of teaching a more critical version of American history, one might wonder why there is such active resistance to it. But perhaps, unsurprisingly, the answer to that lies within the very same findings I already presented.

One way to summarize the research I've cited is that when American children are taught more challenging lessons about history, young people of color are inspired to become civically and politically engaged, and young white people gain greater appreciation for their fellow citizens of color. According to Columbia University psychologists Ariel Mosley and Larisa Heiphetz, there may be an expansion of "moral circles" across different racial groups - that is, young people from different walks of life could end up feeling greater moral obligations to work together and help one another and, as such, become less tolerant of the social systems that maintain and reinforce inequality.

If you believe in the virtues of a multiracial democracy, then the thought of a diverse coalition of young people coming together to help one another and push for the expansion of rights and greater equity and justice in society might be heartwarming. But if you have a different set of beliefs, ones that are more oriented toward social dominance or a preference for hierarchy and inequality, then findings like the ones I've described might be the very kind of evidence that terrifies you.

How education became today's wedge issue | FiveThirtyEight

Consider that in a recent longitudinal study that followed over 2,600 white Americans over three years, New York University and University of Massachusetts Amherst psychologists Eric Knowles, Linda Tropp and Mao Mogami found that compared to white Democrats, white Republicans believed more strongly that minority groups would collude against white people, which could threaten their standing in society if white people did not band together to defend their ingroup interests.

To be sure, these concerns about which racial groups might hold power in society are not new. Nelsen, the political scientist I mentioned earlier, noted in a recent paper that they have long been at the heart of debates about what history schools should teach. White Americans, for instance, have worried for some time now that teaching more critical history in our schools - lessons about racism and other forms of oppression - might cause the nation to lose some of its traditions, and could even lead to "reverse discrimination" against white Americans.

In other words, one reason why so many white Americans, especially white Republicans, might be concerned about the effects of teaching children about racism - and are actively trying to ban such lessons from schools - is a fear about what this type of education might mean for their own power in society. Teaching about racism could lead to greater cross-race coalition building and the expansion of rights and opportunities for racial minorities to participate in key decision-making systems, but that idea is interpreted by some Americans as an existential threat.

This is the fear that's lurking beneath the surface of debates about how to teach our nation's history. Both sides of the debate seem to have beliefs that are aligned with the evidence: They believe, for instance, that teaching critical lessons about our nation's history might change power dynamics in the U.S. For some, this is a good thing and something they want children to be taught. But for others, such lessons evoke a sense that they are, to use the language of University of Pennsylvania political communication scientist Diana Mutz, under siege by engines of change.

Additional research from Nicholas Norton at the Cornell Law Library.

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What Happens When American Children Learn About Racism?

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Americans have spent over 150 years arguing about what kind of history we should teach to our children. In " Schoolbook Nation," a book that examines the history of conflicts over American curricula, historian Joseph Moreau noted that a variety of Americans have worried about the sky falling if the "wrong" versions of history were taught in our schools.

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Tesla facing a racial discrimination lawsuit

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Tesla facing a racial discrimination lawsuit

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This news article explains how 15 African American are suing Tesla for failing to prevent racial discrimination in their workplace. After several occurrences, some employees were being called racial slurs, such as the n-word or were referred to as slaves or plantation workers. A man who complained about this many times one day found himself job-less after repeated attempts to stop being a victim to racial slurs. It was reported that some of Tesla employees drew swastikas, "KKK", or the n-word in the bathroom. After no repercussions happened there is a group of people fighting against racism in a legal matter.

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15 former or current Black Tesla employees are suing the company for allegedly failing to prevent racial discrimination at its Fremont, California factory (via ). The lawsuit, which was filed in a California court last week, details workers' claims that they were subject to racial slurs, derogatory comments, and racially-motivated harassment in the workplace.

As outlined in the filing, workers allege that their colleagues frequently used the N-word and other racist or discriminatory terms like "slavery" or "plantation" to describe the factory's work culture. In addition, Tesla allegedly left racist graffiti on bathroom walls, benches, lockers, and workstations that contained "KKK," the N-word, and drawings of swastikas.

The lawsuit claims management also took part in the harassment, "ignored repeated complaints and reports" regarding the issue, and retaliated against workers "for reporting and complaining about the discrimination." One former worker, Jasmin Wilson, claims she was sexually and racially harassed by her coworkers and managers. Her managers allegedly did nothing to report the discrimination and instead established policies targeting Wilson in retaliation for her complaints.

Another worker, Nathaniel Aziel Gonsalves, claims he was suddenly fired after nine years at Tesla in retaliation for continually reporting racial discrimination at the company. Several other workers claim they were denied promotions on the basis of race, as well as given the "most physically demanding" jobs at Tesla.

This most recent lawsuit is just one of many targeting Tesla for alleged racial discrimination and other forms of workplace harassment. Last year, a Black former elevator operator won his case that accused Tesla of not doing enough to prevent racial discrimination - he was awarded a reduced payout of $15 million. The company also reportedly paid $1 million to an employee who claimed the company did nothing after he was called a racial slur by his supervisor.

In February, California's Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) filed a lawsuit against Tesla that claims the company's Fremont factory is a "racially segregated environment where Black workers are subjected to racial slurs and discriminated against." The automaker's also under investigation by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

Tesla has denied claims of discrimination in a post on its blog, stating the company "strongly opposes all forms of discrimination and harassment."

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Tesla is facing yet another racial discrimination lawsuit

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15 former or current Black Tesla employees are suing the company for allegedly failing to prevent racial discrimination at its Fremont, California factory (via ). The lawsuit, which was filed in a California court last week, details workers' claims that they were subject to racial slurs, derogatory comments, and racially-motivated harassment in the workplace.

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Aboriginals that live on Native Lands in Canada are discriminated against everyday. The percentage of aboriginals in Canada that are incarcerated is incredibly high, and they face numerous other problems. Native women in Canada make up around "30 percent of female prisoners" there despite Aboriginals only being 3.3 percent of the population in Canada. Many believe this is due to the discrimination towards the Native groups.

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How to talk to your children about race and racism in America

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I saw this tweet come up in my feed this week, and was astounded by the dichotomy in our policing system when it comes to race. This tweet concisely summarizes the treatment of an alleged crime taking place and the subsequent extreme violence towards a Black man while known murderous White men remain unharmed. The last part of the tweet I found haunting was with the system being "built this way." In the context of culture, if a system is embedded in racism, then it takes conscious effort to reform that culture.

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In the same week:
•An unarmed Black man was shot to death 60 times by police
•An armed white man killed 3 cops, injured 4, and was arrested alive
•An armed white man killed 6 people, injured 26, and was arrested alive

The system isn't broken. It was built this way.

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In the same week:
•An unarmed Black man was shot to death 60 times by police
•An armed white man killed 3 cops, injured 4, and was arrested alive
•An armed white man killed 6 people, injured 26, and was arrested alive

The system isn't broken. It was built this way.

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In the same week:
•An unarmed Black man was shot to death 60 times by police
•An armed white man killed 3 cops, injured 4, and was arrested alive
•An armed white man killed 6 people, injured 26, and was arrested alive

The system isn't broken. It was built this way.
— Qasim Rashid, Esq. (@QasimRashid) July 6, 2022

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props_source.data.text
In the same week:
•An unarmed Black man was shot to death 60 times by police
•An armed white man killed 3 cops, injured 4, and was arrested alive
•An armed white man killed 6 people, injured 26, and was arrested alive

The system isn't broken. It was built this way.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.original_text
In the same week:
•An unarmed Black man was shot to death 60 times by police
•An armed white man killed 3 cops, injured 4, and was arrested alive
•An armed white man killed 6 people, injured 26, and was arrested alive

The system isn't broken. It was built this way.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.metadata.attachment_props.text
In the same week:
•An unarmed Black man was shot to death 60 times by police
•An armed white man killed 3 cops, injured 4, and was arrested alive
•An armed white man killed 6 people, injured 26, and was arrested alive

The system isn't broken. It was built this way.

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Since I am interested in criminal justice, my first association with the word racism was the recent examples of police violence against people of color. These are 4 short films showing examples of police brutality in 4 cities in different decades.

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In the middle of the 2020 pandemic, America was shaken by the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the protests that erupted in the aftermath. But the disturbing trends we see today in police violence are the same patterns we've seen over the last 100 years. Again and again, commissions convened to examine why police brutality sparks unrest have come to the same conclusion: We must address the poverty and systemic racism that go hand in hand with policing communities of color.

This week, we launched a series of four short films taking a critical look at what we've learned from the last 100 years of racism in policing. The solution to healing this long-standing problem is clear: It's time to divest from the police and reinvest in communities of color.

Los Angeles, 1992

In 1991, a video emerged of California Highway Patrol officers brutally beating an unarmed Black man, Rodney King, during a traffic stop. Four officers were charged, but were later acquitted. The verdict sent shockwaves through South Central Los Angeles. The concurrent drug epidemic, gang violence, and systemic racism added fuel to the fire.

Despite calls for immediate action, including an admission by the post uprising commission that the LAPD could not deal with the root causes of crime, very little changed. More money continued to go to the LAPD while funding for schools, housing, and critical social services came in second. These trends continue today.

Detroit, 1967

In the summer of 1967, a wave of protests swept the city of Detroit after the police arrested patrons of a "blind pig," an illegal after-hours bar in a mostly Black neighborhood. The partygoers included two Black Vietnam War veterans who were celebrating their return home. Throughout five days of protests, 43 people were killed, 1,189 were injured, and 7,200 were arrested.

In response, President Lyndon B. Johnson sent in the National Guard and the U.S. Army, turning Detroit's streets into a combat zone. He also set up a commission to understand the uprising. But when the commission released its findings in the Kerner Report the following year, he ignored most recommendations and set aside its findings that the root causes of the uprisings were disinvestment in Black communities, Black powerlessness and frustrated hopes, and how police "symbolize white power, white racism, and white repression" for significant numbers of Black people.

Harlem, 1935

When a Harlem shopkeeper thought he saw a teen pocket a 10-cent penknife, he tackled the boy to the ground and a police officer nearby arrested him. Protests erupted outside the store as neighbors and passersby suspected the officer was abusing the boy. The resulting riots lasted two days. Three people were killed and 75 people - mostly Black - were arrested.

Amid cries from activists, civil rights leaders, and unions, New York's Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia set up a biracial commission to diagnose the problem and to prescribe a cure. This commission found that the upheaval was due, in large part, to "the nervous strain of years of unemployment and insecurity of black residents in Harlem," in addition to "the deep sense of wrong and discrimination against them in the school system and by the police."

Chicago, 1919

On Lake Michigan in 1919, a white man threw rocks at a Black boy whose boat had drifted to the "wrong" side of the lake. The boy drowned. Protests broke out across the city.

Governor Frank Lowden appointed a commission that found that "Negroes are more commonly arrested, subjected to police identification and convicted than white offenders." But policing was just one facet of white supremacy, which touched the lives of Black people in housing, in education and in employment. Almost a century later, the Chicago Police Department's own records from 2000-2015 show that nearly 90 percent of victims of police use of force were people of color.

Today, events virtually identical to those in Chicago, Harlem, Detroit, and Los Angeles are unfolding across the country, and policing still acts as an occupying force in communities of color. The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis this year shined a bright light on what we keep getting wrong.

In 2014, Minneapolis was one of the cities piloting the Obama administration's National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice - a multimillion-dollar program that was the administration's response to national calls for police accountability. The Minneapolis police department implemented trainings on implicit bias, mindfulness, de-escalation, and crisis intervention; diversified the department's leadership; created tighter use-of-force standards; adopted body cameras; initiated a series of police-community dialogues; and an enhanced early-warning system to identify problem officers. The hope was that these training programs would professionalize policing and reduce abuses that might trigger more protests. This was all before George Floyd was killed. None of it worked.

Calls to invest more money in police departments for training ignore the lessons from Minneapolis and the fact that the racist trends we see today in police violence are not new. How much longer will we continue to pour increasing sums of money into a system of law enforcement that has demonstrated an inability or unwillingness to change after 101 years?

By looking deeply at the history of racism in policing, we can better understand why it's not just reform, but a full re-allocation of resources that is necessary for us to end violence and injustice in our communities. We've known the problem and we've known the solution for 100 years. It's long past time to act.

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What 100 Years of History Tells Us About Racism in Policing | News & Commentary | American Civil Liberties Union

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In the middle of the 2020 pandemic, America was shaken by the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the protests that erupted in the aftermath. But the disturbing trends we see today in police violence are the same patterns we've seen over the last 100 years.

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Philly teenager racially-motivated train attack

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Philly teenager racially-motivated train attack

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This article is about a Philadelphia high school student, Christina Lu, who was a victim of an attack that was brutally and racially motivated. The attack began because she saw a 14 year old Asian being attacked on a SEPTA train, which is Philadelphia's public transit, and tried to intervene. She was then attacked by the assailants who were four teenage girls. Christina Lu noted that the four girls were using racial slurs during the incident.

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Christina Lu, a Philadelphia high school student who was one of the victims of a brutal, racially motivated attack earlier this month, spoke out for the first time Tuesday.

The 18-year-old was with a group of students on a SEPTA train, Philadelphia's public transit, when she saw a 14-year-old freshman, who is Asian, being attacked on his way home from school. When Lu tried to intervene, the group of attackers threw her to the ground and began kicking and beating her. Police say the assailants, four teenage girls, used racial slurs during the incident.

Lu gave a speech to a crowd outside a municipal building Tuesday afternoon as a crowd rallied demanding accountability from SEPTA and an end to anti-Asian hate, according to a video from CBS Philly.

"You all have inspired me," she said. "Everyone has been calling me a hero, but I am not. I'm just an ordinary girl from an ordinary family who saw people in need of help and so I tried to help."

The four girls who allegedly perpetrated the attack, all under the age of 17, were charged with aggravated assault, ethnic intimidation, criminal conspiracy, simple assault, recklessly endangering another person and disorderly conduct.

The mother of one of the girls spoke to NBC10 Philadelphia anonymously, saying her daughter is 12 years old and had run away from home two weeks prior to the attack.

"I was extremely hurt ... I needed to meet with you guys publicly so that you know that my family is very sincerely apologetic about what happened to that child because we all pray that our children make it home safe from school," she said.

She said she tried to reach out to the families of the victims to apologize personally.

A report released last year by the Stop AAPI Hate Youth Campaign revealed that one quarter of Asian American and Pacific Islander young adults have been targets of racism since the start of the pandemic. The discrimination most commonly came in the form of verbal harassment, cyberbullying and shunning, with students being followed home, coughed on and called racial slurs.

"I will continue to stand up against bullying and violence and help people in need," Lu said in her speech on Tuesday.

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Philly teenager, victim of brutal, racially-motivated train attack, speaks out

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Christina Lu, a Philadelphia high school student who was one of the victims of a brutal, racially motivated attack earlier this month, spoke out for the first time Tuesday. The 18-year-old was with a group of students on a SEPTA train, Philadelphia's public transit, when she saw a 14-year-old freshman, who is Asian, being attacked on his way home from school.

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Oakland City Council Declares Racism A Public Health Crisis

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Oakland City Council Declares Racism A Public Health Crisis

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I found this recent news article by simply searching for "racism" in Google. This was published 3 weeks ago, and it hits so close to home.
In the article, it talks about how council memebers voted and vowed "to work on studies and actions that advance racial equity". This made me happy, as I was proud of these council members for using their power towards the greater good.
I agree with the article where it says that the Covid-19 pandemic helped make these racist acts more visible to the world's eye.
This article had many interesting statisics and comparatives. It reassured the fact that rasicm is everywhere, and it opened my eyes even more.

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Oakland has declared a new public health crisis in the California town: racism.

Last week, members of the Oakland City Council voted without opposition to declare the public health crisis and vow to work on studies and actions that advance racial equity.

"Just because we're supposed to be progressive or whatever, doesn't mean that we don't have a history of disenfranchisement, of systemic racism, that is embedded in our city services and our culture," Councilmember Carroll Fife said during the Tuesday council meeting.

The resolution also sets aside as much as $350,000 in the city budget for a data analyst and consulting services to support the government as it works on "necessary improvements in systems for collecting and processing data to track performance and equity progress."

Darlene Flynn, executive director of the city's department of race and equity, said in an interview with television station KRON 4 that the COVID-19 pandemic made racial disparities in Oakland and around the country more visible.

"It also tends to exacerbate the impacts on communities that are already stressed by racial inequities, and we've seen this in other disasters as well, like Hurricane Katrina," Flynn said. "Whenever a big stressor hits a community, it really highlights what the underlying conditions have been for a long time."

Other cities have taken similar steps. In the summer of 2020, then-Boston Mayor Marty Walsh declared racism a public health crisis and reallocated $3 million from the city's police department to public health.

Last year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director called racism a serious public health threat.

According to an agenda report from Flynn and other city officials, Oakland residents of color tend to face poorer health outcomes than their white peers.

People who live in the North Oakland hills - a historically white neighborhood - live on average 14 to 15 years longer than residents of historically Black and Latinx neighborhoods in West Oakland and the East Oakland flatlands, the report said.

"Similar disparities between Black Oaklanders and their white peers can be observed in preventable hospitalizations, rates of diabetes, asthma, hypertension, and heart disease, death rates due to opioid overdose, babies born with very low birth weight, infant mortality, and beyond," officials added.

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Oakland, Calif., declares racism a public health crisis

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Oakland has declared a new public health crisis in the California town: racism. Last week, members of the Oakland City Council voted without opposition to declare the public health crisis and vow to work on studies and actions that advance racial equity.

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This article is a brief history lesson on the constant attack on Native American culture, the relentless appropriation of symbols, clothing, and activities that some would claim to "honor" them but perpetuates harmful stereotypes. Currently, there are parts of the U.S. that still use Native American names and symbols for schools and sports teams, and earlier this year, a drill team from Texas who call them them "indianettes", performed at Disney parks in Florida, whose chant included the phase "scalp them". The author points out multiple types of microaggressions nonnatives expressed because it has become so normalized to use Native American culture even when Native Americans try and protest against racist images, and mascots. Native American women especially experience both racism and sexism from being overly sexualized, as we've seen when it comes to Halloween "costumes". These women experience the highest rates of sexual assault and rape, with more going missing and being found murdered. The most recent trend I've seen with cultural appropriation is nonnative women using the red handprint on TikTok and their sign of protest to the recent supreme court case overruling Roe v. Wade, which prompted many BIPOC creators to "call out" nonnatives creators for using the MMIW symbol in regards to the abortion case when the symbol is used to spread awareness of the many Native American women who've gone missing and murdered.

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In this op-ed, Heather Davidson explains the normalized racism Native people witness every day.

I am Dena'ina Athabascan and Unangan (Aleutian), an Alaska Native living in California. As a Native person, there is not a day that passes where I don't come across some form of exploitive, anti-Native behaviors in play. Not a day.

Native imagery is everywhere in the United States. Our images, symbols, and cultures are used as commodities and novelties. Natives are used as logos, from butter packaging to cigarettes to baking soda to clothing. Natives are used as Halloween costumes. Native tribe names are used by the U.S. military as names for weapons. Native tribe names are used as names for vehicles. Natives are used as mascots for sports teams.

Racism toward Native people is normalized, so much so that many people do not see it as racism at all. Racist stereotypes of Native people are seemingly ingrained into the psyche of people starting in childhood, some subliminal, some direct.

Most of this Native imagery is constructed and controlled by non-Natives. While there is a constant omnipresence of such imagery, it is severely lacking real Native representation. People see more Native depictions created by non-Natives in media than they do of real Native people. This is how negative stereotypes and misconceptions are formed. This, whether consciously or not, embeds the notion that Native cultures are here for consumption. It suggests it is perfectly normal and acceptable to use Natives for products and profit, and to most people, it is - except to the very people being exploited.

Sports mascots based off of Native imagery started in the 1900s, a time when Native people were being subjected to " civilization regulations," which essentially outlawed us from practicing our cultures, languages, and religions.

Professional sports teams as well as thousands of schools use Native-themed mascots and names. I believe schools are often where children are first introduced to these acceptable, normalized forms of racism; they learn that what would be considered inappropriate and racist to other races and cultures doesn't apply to Natives for some reason. Proponents will say mascots "honor" us. But when actual Natives say otherwise, the same people "honoring" us will often dismiss us or start arguments. Quite the honor!

We're told it's not a big deal, we're too sensitive, and that we should worry about bigger issues. What many don't comprehend is that all of these issues concerning Natives and Native identity actually connect, converge, and come full circle. When we are seen as fictional characters, it dehumanizes us; when we're not seen as people, the potential for violence toward us increases. It's not "just a mascot" when these mascots perpetuate harmful stereotypes and actually generate more racist sentiments about Natives. Mascots have been shown to) have a negative impact on the self-esteem of Native children. Native students report that when they attend schools with Native mascots or team names, they are often victims of bullying. Native mascots monolith the varied, distinct tribes and nations spread across the Americas into one cliché mockery.

The NFL has a team called the Redskins, a dictionary-defined slur. The term originated from the practice of settlers collecting bloody Native scalps for bounty in the late 1800s. The MLB has a team called the Indians, and their mascot is Chief Wahoo, a grotesque red-faced "Indian" caricature. The team did state they will no longer feature Wahoo on their uniforms next year, but they will remain the Indians. These racist portrayals of indigenous peoples used under the guise of honor is the norm - a tradition, they say.

Native activists have been protesting these mascots and pointing out their degrading impacts since the 1960s. Many may try to label the campaign to change names and mascots as a politically correct crusade or a liberal cause, thus diminishing and erasing the Native cause, but that's their goal. Native mascot supporters don't want to hear or see real Natives - they apparently prefer their Natives fake and mute, rendered how they see fit.

Halloween costumes are a booming business and often feature "Native" outfits, though our cultures and people are not costumes. The sections of "Native" costumes at party stores and on thousands of online retailers are profits produced by racism, even though proponents say it's not intended to offend. Once again, these so-called little issues intercross and fuel the so-called bigger issues, which don't separate but blend and eventually combust.

These costumes are packed full of offensive, inaccurate stereotypes. The men's costumes usually play off the noble savage, brave warrior tropes, with names like "Fringed Savage," "Chief Long Arrow," "Brave Wolf Warrior," and "Primitive Tribe Indian." The women's costumes are usually hyper-sexualized, with names like "Sexy Tippin' Teepees," "Tribal Trouble," "Indian Mistress," "Sexy Native Princess," "Indian Tribal Tease," and "Pocahottie." What these costumes insinuate about Native women is very clear and very damaging, considering that Native women experience the highest rates of violence and sexual assaults out of any racial group in the United States. In both the U.S and Canada, there's an epidemic of a disproportionate amount of missing and murdered Native women and girls, which now is represented by a hashtag on social media, #MMIW.

One in three Native women will be sexually assaulted or raped in her life. Statistics say about 86% of these assaults are committed by non-Native men. While part of this is due to non-Native men preying upon Native women because they're unlikely to be prosecuted because of tribal sovereignty policies and jurisdiction laws, how we're viewed is also a factor. The over-sexualization of Native women objectifies us. When we are fetishized and exotified to the point that we lose our humanity, violence ensues.

I am not implying that clothing, costumes, or a lack thereof cause sexual assaults; however, these costumes produce dehumanizing effects. Plus, they're just tacky, majorly disrespectful, and racist. Real Native clothing, or regalia, is often sacred to us and carries meaning. We survived genocide to then go through forced cultural assimilation. It wasn't until 1978 that we could freely and lawfully practice our religions and customs. So it's a slap in the face to see our once-forbidden customs and sacred elements cherry-picked and modified for mainstream entertainment.

Anti-Native racism is still prevalent in society. Most people don't recognize it, but many Native people do, myself included. So why is it deemed acceptable? Maybe because non-Natives have been stealing and trying to control us ever since they arrived - and it's never stopped, only changed forms.

Even common phrases can carry insulting innuendos: "My spirit animal is so and so," "on the warpath," "Indian-giver," "low man on the totem pole," "went off the reservation," "the Natives are restless," "too many chiefs, not enough Indians." These phrases are actually microaggressions. Some just originated out of pure appropriation, taking something meaningful to a specific people and lessening it; for example, it's not cute or funny to say "champagne is my spirit animal." Also, quick meetings are not "pow-wows" either - pow-wows are gatherings for celebratory and ceremonial purposes and take considerable planning.

There's genuine harm in these actions. Whether it's micro-aggressions, appropriation, stereotypes, subtle or overt racism, they all hurt us. Non-Natives do not get to define or decide what is or isn't racist or harmful to Native people or the degree of relevance of certain issues, only Natives can.

A wide array of stereotypes and untruths encompass Natives, but we will break them all one at a time. Native people and cultures cannot be put in a box, each one of us is a unique individual and each tribe has a unique culture. We will never be the devised image and concept non-Natives have tried to make us out to be. We are not mascots, we are not costumes, we are not trends. We are not too sensitive or petty - these things all have real impacts and implications.

As a collective whole, most Natives do take pride in our cultures, traditions, tribes, and we honor our ancestors and our lands. We are just trying to live and thrive despite centuries of ongoing colonization, despite the attempted eradication of our lives and the intergenerational trauma many of us carry. While we are amazingly resilient, these permitted forms of racism we see and live can halt our healing and inflict more unnecessary pain.

The rise of social media has allowed us to correct misperceptions and undo stereotypes, to declare we are still here and proclaim that we refuse to allow these misrepresentations. There is some progress, some states and schools are getting rid of their Native-themed mascots. Yet there's still plenty of obstacles and people against us. We have a president who seemingly praised genocide by saying, "Our ancestors tamed a continent. We are not going to apologize for America." He also regularly uses the name of Pocahontas (whose life has been romanticized by pop culture even though she endured much trauma) as a put-down.

To dismantle these ingrained, acceptable methods of practiced racism takes work and time. But I for one will never be tamed and will never give up. And to the settlers and non-Natives who really want to honor Natives: listen to us, support us, call out other people's racist actions, don't appropriate our cultures. If you appreciate Native cultures, then buy from Native companies and artists. Acknowledge you're on stolen lands, learn the tribe whose land you now live on. Work to make the daily racism Natives face not normal. Work to make all racism cease to exist.

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This Halloween, Remember Native People Are Watching

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In this op-ed, Heather Davidson explains the normalized racism Native people witness every day. I am Dena'ina Athabascan and Unangan (Aleutian), an Alaska Native living in California. As a Native person, there is not a day that passes where I don't come across some form of exploitive, anti-Native behaviors in play.

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Standing Against Anti-Asian Racism and Violence

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Standing Against Anti-Asian Racism and Violence

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I found an article written in the year of 2019, in which Asian Americans were targeted in 3,800 hate incidents in the past year, written by the Chancellor of UCSB, Henry T. Yang. I choose to draw attention to this article due to the outrageous number of hate crimes committed against Asian Americans in order to emphasize the widespread racism that Asian Americans have experienced only within the span of one year. The author acknowledges these hate crimes towards Asian-Americans and wanted to thank the individuals of the community who have spoken out against xenophobia and remind everyone in the community that it should be a top priority for everyone to feel accepted, respected, valued, etc...

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March 19, 2021
Dear Members of Our Campus Community,
In a horrific way, this week has brought to the forefront the rise in anti-Asian violence that our country has been witnessing. Our campus is heartbroken and outraged by all hateful acts against the Asian community across the nation, in our state, and experienced by members of our own community. Such attacks go against our fundamental values at UC Santa Barbara.

The killings in Atlanta on Tuesday are appalling and tragic, and they have sparked feelings of fear and anger for the Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) community on our campus and everywhere. The rampage has also further ignited concerns of racialized misogyny, with recent reports indicating that a significant majority of anti-Asian incidents target women. We stand firmly against all forms of hate, violence, and discrimination, and stand united in solidarity with our APIDA community.

I would like to thank all of our campus community members who have spoken out against anti-Asian racism and xenophobia in recent days and weeks, including students, faculty, staff, and alumni who have written to me personally. Recent messages to our campus include a statement from our Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion condemning the rise of anti-Asian violence.

We would like to take this opportunity to remind you of resources that may be of help at a time like this. For our students who feel they may need counseling, we encourage you to contact CAPS at (805) 893-4411. For staff and faculty, our Academic & Staff Assistance Program can be reached at asap@hr.ucsb.edu. If you or someone you know wishes to communicate a bias incident or hate crime, you can file a report and find resources at studentlife.sa.ucsb.edu/bias. We care for those of you who are struggling and afraid, and we are here to support you.

As a campus family, we want our APIDA community and every member of our community to feel at home - welcome, accepted, supported, and safe. We are committed to fostering an inclusive environment, and to addressing all forms of racism and discrimination. The change we want to see in the world starts here with all of us.

Sincerely,

Henry T. Yang
Chancellor

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Standing Against Anti-Asian Racism and Violence

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March 19, 2021 Dear Members of Our Campus Community, In a horrific way, this week has brought to the forefront the rise in anti-Asian violence that our country has been witnessing. Our campus is heartbroken and outraged by all hateful acts against the Asian community across the nation, in our state, and experienced by members of our own community.

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Hi everyone, as I'm sure everyone is aware, Trump was extremely against immigrants coming from the borders of Mexico and most times wouldn't even hold back on his racist stereotypes when explaining to the public why he was building a wall. But it goes beyond just the wall and this episode dives deeper into that. I've been listening to This American Life for very long, but this episode struck a chord with me, and clearly for others as well since it was the first podcast episode in history to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize. I digress; Trump's actions and decisions affected the people on the Mexican-American border in ways much deeper than the average person knows. The people being detained at the border are forced to live and wait in "camps" that are in extremely violent areas, with little to no hygiene, food or water. Neither country wants to step up and take care of these people and a lot of them go missing or die while they wait to be let into the U.S. Some are quite literally escaping life threatening situations, but no one's reasoning matters to the American government, and this episode goes into excruciating detail on how essentially impossible it is to immigrate into the US from Mexico. Trump said to our nation that he would keep them out. Generalizing people to traits, dismissing their lives and individuality and degrading them to racial stereotypes.

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Photo Illustration: Lola Dupre; Photograph: Ira Glass

Note: The internet version of this episode contains un-beeped curse words. BEEPED VERSION.

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Note: The internet version of this episode contains un-beeped curse words. BEEPED VERSION. If you enjoyed this episode, you may like these The startling rise of the number of people on disability in America. Josh's family didn't play much of a role in his daily life-until duty called, and they took over his life.

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                                      Asian Hate                                                              'Nowhere is safe': Asian women reflect on brutal New York City killings     

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                                      Asian Hate                                                              'Nowhere is safe': Asian women reflect on brutal New York City killings     

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On January 15, 2022, Michelle Go left her apartment on the Upper West Side of New York City and was waiting for the R train at Times Square-42nd Street station. At around 9:40 am, Go was pushed onto the tracks from behind into the path of the oncoming R train. It is alleged that a 61-year-old homeless man named Martial Simon pushed her. Go was pronounced dead at the scene.

On February 13, 2022. Christina Yuna Lee was followed up to her sixth-floor apartment at 111 Chrystie Street at about 4:30 a.m. Sunday and stabbed more than 40 times by a man named Assamad Nash.

Two brutal killings in the span of less than a month have left Asian American women in New York City on edge. They claimed that they were standing back from the subway edge and walking home with pepper spray in their hands after the killings of Michelle Go and Christina Yuna Lee.

The Asian community has been suffering from hate crimes for decades. In the past few years, there has been an alarming rise of xenophobic backlash and racial harassment and violence against Asians globally, blaming China and the Chinese for the spread of the COVID-19 virus. As an Asian, I've noticed that many parents of students studying abroad recently are much more concerned about the safety of their children.

Stop the Asian hate and together we can make a difference

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Two brutal killings in the span of less than a month have left Asian American women in New York City on edge. And in metropolitan areas around the country, they say there's constant reason to be looking over their shoulder.

"I don't feel like anywhere is safe for me," said YouMe Lin, 27, a Chinese American woman who has lived in New York City for over six years. "I feel very suffocated."

Around 4 a.m. Sunday, 35-year-old Christina Yuna Lee was found dead in her bathroom stabbed 40 times after a man, Assamad Nash, allegedly silently followed her up six flights of stairs into her lower Manhattan apartment. When police arrived on the scene, they heard Lee's screams, but by the time they broke down her steel door, it was too late. Nash was found hiding under her bed, police said.

Her death follows the Jan. 15 killing of Michelle Go, 40, who was pushed in front of an oncoming train at the Times Square subway station. At a vigil held to commemorate her, New York City Mayor Eric Adams said, "I'm recommitted to ensure that this will not happen in our city."

Several women who live in the city told NBC Asian America that statements like that have felt increasingly hollow. With Lee's death in her own home, they say their safe spaces around New York are rapidly disappearing.

"It's never been to this point where, 'Hey, I might get pushed in front of a train.'"
A New York City commuter said
Authorities are investigating if Lee was the target of a crime due to racial animus or belief. Go's attacker was not charged with a hate crime. But for women who say the incidents deeply impacted them, the labels don't make much of a difference.

"The sense of panic wasn't quite as present," said Audrey Lew, 28, who commutes to the city for work. "People may be creepy and try to talk to you, but it's never escalated past that. It's never been to this point where, 'Hey, I might get pushed in front of a train.'"

'All of a sudden, there's interest'

Impacts of violence and racism are disproportionately felt by women in targeted groups, said Sung Yeon Choimorrow, executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Women's Forum, and the brutality endured by Asian Americans long predates the pandemic. But with footage of attacks circulating over the last two years, hate against Asians has become viral.

"When the pandemic-related violence against particularly East Asians started happening, people were talking about it as if it's the first time we're experiencing this," she said. "Now people are paying attention. Now they want to know. All of a sudden, there's interest."

The Atlanta spa shootings brought to the forefront the intersection at which Asian women have always existed in this country, she said. In the crosshairs of hypersexualization and racism, they face more aggression but are believed less. Out of the 3,800 anti-Asian hate incidents reported to Stop AAPI Hate between March 2020 and March 2021, 68 percent were by women.

"There is a big difference between how white women are treated versus how people of color are, even in terms of believing our stories," Choimorrow said. "Because we are invisibilized and not paid attention to, we are easier victims. Especially Indigenous and Black women. Because perpetrators feel like, 'Oh no, one's going to care.' The way we move and navigate safety is different than how white women have to."

Choimorrow herself has had rocks thrown at her while on runs near her Chicago home, and she says bystanders have often watched as attackers yelled racial slurs.

"You see some of these attacks, there are people around," she said. "People just stand there and watch what's happening. It's this sense of, 'Wow, we really are alone.'"

Chung Seto, 57, has lived in New York City's Chinatown for more than 40 years. The local organizer says that for decades, she's been struck by how the national and local governments have deprioritized Asian Americans.

"Our community has long been neglected," she said. "Chinatown didn't get the financial help after 9/11, Sandy and even during this pandemic when our businesses were shut down long before others did in the city. Couple this feeling of abandonment with the recent killings and you get an enraged community."

A renewed anxiety

Asian women and femme-presenting individuals say the fear they've started to experience after the attacks on Lee and Go is a familiar one. It's one that they've carried around since childhood when their parents would warn them to stay inside after dark and never walk home alone.

"When you're raised as a woman, you never have a good relationship with safety anywhere you live," said Mars Nevada, a Filipino American who lives in the city. "Safety is something that's never promised to you."

Nevada, who uses they/them pronouns, moved to the city from Nebraska in December 2021, when hate incidents had already become a common feature of city life.

"You see yourself in these other women and you're like, 'God, it could be me,'" they said.

As someone who takes public transit, Nevada said Go's death instilled a deep fear in them. They say they're hyperaware now when getting onto public transit, often making the extra effort to stand far from the platform edge.

"The other day, I got off at a train stop and my friend was with me. He was like, 'This was the exact stop that Michelle Go was murdered on.' I was like, 'Why would you say that?' and I made us stand near the stairs and hold onto the rails," they said.

Similar caution is reflected in the everyday lives of women of color across the city and the country. It's a vigilance so constant that it's tantamount to anxiety, Choimorrow said.

"I used to carry pepper spray in my bag, now it's in my hand while I walk the city streets to Penn Station," said Glo Lindenmuth, 29, who is Filipina and white. "I traded up to heavy boots, not just for the weather, but another safety measure, and I frequently [FaceTime] friends or call my boyfriend if I walk at night."

"Both women did everything right according to society. Christina took a cab home and Michelle was with friends. It feels hopeless."
A New York City resident said
But for many, even those measures don't feel like enough. The arbitrary and sudden nature of the killings of Lee and Go make others wonder if safety devices, security alarms or car rides home would prevent an outburst directed at them.

"Both women did everything right according to society," Lew said. "Christina took a cab home and Michelle was with friends. It feels hopeless. It doesn't matter what we do or what kind of weapons we have, this could happen to us anyway."

'Police aren't the solution'

Though the pain of the community might be biting and immediate, Choimorrow says short-term solutions like more cops on the streets aren't the answer. She knows this because the past year has been a case study for the promises of elected officials, she said.

"Whatever they're doing, it's not working," she said. "When we started seeing all this increasing violence against Asian Americans, all these mayors came out and promised additional police presence in our communities. Many of us said that's not the solution. They still went ahead and did it, and more than a year later, we're right, it's not the solution. It hasn't curbed the violence in any way."

She describes putting more cops in neighborhoods and subway stations to be a "whack-a-mole" approach that doesn't address the root causes of violence for women or any communities of color. Despite promises by officials in 2020, anti-Asian hate crimes still increased by 361 percent in 2021.

Elected officials don't have the incentive to bring about systemic change because it's not something they can put their name on, she said.

When asked to respond to claims of their ineffectiveness, an New York City Police Department spokesperson sent NBC Asian America the name of the man arrested in connection with Lee's death.

"The police aren't effective in keeping us safe. They've never done a good job of preventing crime of any sort," Choimorrow said. "You need to address the broken systemic issues in our country around mental health, around economic gaps, around racial justice."

While viral images and videos create a narrative that it's Black individuals harassing and harming Asian women, looking at that media in a vacuum is misleading, experts say. Data from Stop AAPI Hate reveals most hate incidents reported by Asian Americans during the pandemic were perpetrated by white people. And experts like Choimorrow say it's largely a result of racist messaging and slurs spread by elected officials and those in power, like former President Donald Trump and those who capitalize on anti-Asian fear-mongering.

Attacks on Asian women reveal deeply-rooted race and gender biases that exist beyond an individual level, Choimorrow said, and addressing these biases along with the crises facing the mentally ill and homelessness isn't mutually exclusive.

"Even the way media covers it," Choimorrow said. "Let's dig into the past of the perpetrator. 'Oh, he had mental illnesses, he had misdemeanors.' It's like finding a way to rationalize why that person did what they did, instead of looking at the system and saying, 'What the hell is wrong with this city or this country that Asian American women are scared to leave their homes?'"

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'Nowhere is safe': Asian women reflect on brutal New York City killings

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Two brutal killings in the span of less than a month have left Asian American women in New York City on edge. And in metropolitan areas around the country, they say there's constant reason to be looking over their shoulder.

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Can Individuals in the Blind Community See Racism?

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Can Individuals in the Blind Community See Racism?

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Hi everybody,
This video on YouTube is from my favorite channel called "Cut". They use their platform for perspective videos like such, but also for entertainment and funny videos as well :)
I was thinking back to when I was completing my undergraduate degree and was reminded of my Deaf Studies Professor. He was fully deaf and an absolute amazing professor, yet taught me much more than American Sign Language.
I was shocked when he explained to us that he has experienced racism being apart of the deaf community. People think he may not pick up on cues or social injustice because he is deaf but he does!
So I chose this video because I think it portrays some really good examples from Blind people who have/have not experienced racism and whether they do/do not consider themselves to be racist due to their blindness.
Further, here are some good quotes from these individuals in case you don't feel like watching the video:
"Seeing someone's skin color is not the only way we differentiate people's culture or race."
"I can pick out dialects and try to associate it with what race I think they might be... I shouldn't think like that but there are natural stereotypes in the world."
"There is racism everywhere. The Blind Community is no exception."

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Blind People Describe Racism | Blind People Describe | Cut

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The Impact of Racism on U.S. Immigration Past and Present

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The Impact of Racism on U.S. Immigration Past and Present

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The article I decide to share speaks on racism within the immigration system in the United States. Not only does the article share the current challenges that immigrants have faced but it also shares us the history of racism in our country. Quite frankly, it is a pretty upsetting and disturbing article to read. It is sad that our country still contributes to the concept of racism and discrimination.

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The Impact of Racism on U.S. Immigration Past and Present

The history of migration and immigration in the United States is one of the dominant forces shaping our experience of race today. While immigration for "white" Europeans has, for the most part, led to a smooth welcome into dominant society, immigrants who are people of color face a more difficult path to acceptance, much less belonging, in our nation. It is common to refer to the United States as a nation of immigrants, but the reality is that immigrants in our nation have been scapegoated, exploited for cheap labor, and treated as second-class citizens for hundreds of years.

The inflammatory anti-immigrant rhetoric embraced by President Trump's campaign was in many ways an echo of campaigns against various immigrant groups throughout history. In this chapter, you will learn about the numerous times our nation chose fear and hatred of immigrants over welcome and acceptance. Unfortunately, this has been a cycle that repeats itself time and time again.

Studying the history of immigration in the United States, as well as the laws and customs that changed over decades, illustrates how the concept of "whiteness" has been manipulated to serve those in power. Moreover, a survey of history demonstrates how "white" is less a racial identity, and instead more a privileged legal and economic status that needed to be protected and restricted to the few.

Our nation's very first immigration law passed in 1790, creating a process to grant naturalized citizenship to immigrants who had lived in the United States for at least two years. The more restrictive requirement, however, was only "free white persons" qualified (*for all intents and purposes, person meant "man"). This also excluded Native Americans, indentured servants, and both enslaved and free Black people from access to citizenship. In 1795, Congress amended the law to increase the minimum residency requirement to five years, which remains today. [1] From then on, the nation continued to grow and receive immigrants looking to start their lives in the United States.

Throughout the 19 th century, immigrants arrived in the United States from all over the world, particularly Northern and Western Europe and East Asia. Millions of individuals and families from Ireland and Germany arrived on the East Coast and settled in the East and Midwest. On the West Coast, Chinese immigrants arrived to work "first to work in the gold mines, but also to take agricultural jobs, and factory work" in the mid-1800s. [2]

Meanwhile, much of the land that currently makes up the southwestern U.S. still belonged to Mexico, making the residents there Mexican citizens or residents. In the 1840s and 1850s, due to President James Polk and the federal government's actions, wars and treaties moved the border south. As a result, these families never "crossed the border," the border crossed them. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 (following the U.S.-Mexico war) won much of the Southwest for the United States, including California, Texas, parts of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Nevada. Six years later, in 1854, the Gadsden Purchase brought what is now southern Arizona and New Mexico into the United States. [3]

The provisions of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo included safety and protection of: land ownership, language, and culture for Mexicans living in that territory, as well as access to U.S. citizenship. After the treaty was signed, however, many of those promises were broken, and it was difficult for U.S. citizens of Mexican ancestry to access their right to citizenship and retain their land. During this time, many Mexican and U.S. citizens freely traveled between the two countries for work and had friends and family on both sides of the border.

Near the end of the 1800s, the welcoming of Chinese immigrants to California abruptly stopped as fear grew that Chinese immigrants were taking over jobs and posed "a threat to society." Congress passed several laws to exclude Chinese immigrants from the country and society. In 1882, Congress passed the first of three Chinese Exclusion Acts, banning additional Chinese immigration. It was not until 1943 when China and the United States became allies during World War II that the exclusion laws were finally repealed. [4]

Immigration to the U.S. from all over the world continued into the 1900s, but two factors led to the rise of anti-immigrant sentiment across the country. First, European immigration shifted away from Protestant, Western European countries and increasingly came from Russia, Austria, and Italy, bringing a significant portion of Catholic and Jewish immigrants. Second, the Great Depression caused terrible damage to the economy and wages in the United States.

In response to the first development, Congress passed the National Origins Act in 1924 establishing a quota system to limit the number of immigrants entering the United States. In order to reduce the number of these "less-desirable" Italian, Eastern European, or Jewish immigrants, the law deliberately based the new quotas on census data from 1890, more than 20 years earlier when the majority of immigrants in the U.S. were white Protestants from Northern and Western Europe. [5].

A few years later, during the Great Depression, those in power turned against Mexican immigrants, blaming them for the nation's economic troubles. President Herbert Hoover led a wide-ranging campaign with the slogan " American Jobs for Real Americans." White people across the country supported this campaign, as there was near-universal consensus among white people that the category "real Americans" excluded Mexican immigrants. State and local governments not only in the Southwest, but all across the country, conducted the "Mexican Repatriation" efforts of the 1930s with support and funding from the federal government. The various agencies involved did not keep consistent records, but historians estimate that around 1 million, if not more, people of Mexican descent were forcibly deported.

The various deportation efforts failed to limit the euphemistically named "repatriation" to Mexican immigrants, and included many U.S. citizens of Mexican descent. Some research says that as many as 60% of those sent "home" to Mexico in the 1930s were U.S. citizens: U.S.-born children of Mexican-descent who had never before traveled south of the border. [6] Thousands of people of Mexican descent were deported from Los Angeles, where local agencies conducted raids on the Mexican community and other parts of the Southwest. In the Midwest also, Mexican immigrants were removed from jobs and deported, all to make the factory jobs they held "available for white people." Major companies, including Ford, U.S. Steel, and the Southern Pacific Railroad, colluded with the government by laying off thousands of Mexican workers. [7]

In 1935 a similar repatriation effort was instituted for Filipino immigrants after the Tydings-McDuffie Act set a plan for the Philippines to become an independent country. The Act also instituted a new immigration quota of only 50 Filipino immigrants per year. (Previously, when the Philippines was a United States colony, the U.S. government classified Filipino immigrants as "nationals" and immigration to the U.S. was unrestricted.) Facing much less coercion than the Mexican repatriation efforts, only about 2,000 immigrants voluntarily chose to return to the Philippines. [8]

Other policies, outside of immigration policy negatively affected the lives of immigrants and people of color. The Wagner Act of 1935, previously mentioned as a contributor to the racial wealth and income gap, excluded farm workers and domestic workers, many of whom were Latinx or Asian immigrants, as well as Black workers. This policy harmed Black workers and immigrant workers by prohibiting them from receiving the benefits of organizing and creating unions. Additionally, other policies that contributed to the racial wealth gap also disproportionately affected immigrant communities and the descendants of immigrants, including the National Housing Act, the Federal-Highway Act, subprime loans, and the war on drugs.

The hypocrisy of using the term "real Americans" to deport people of Mexican descent:

The United States of America is not the only geographic location with "America" in its name. Indeed, the continents of North and South America have an arguably stronger claim to the term. Many people from Central and South America consider themselves "American" and find it problematic when residents of the United States refer to themselves as American to indicate their nationality instead of respecting the name of the continent. We at NETWORK often write out "people of the United States" to avoid the incongruity of calling some people "American" but not extending the term to others who also fit that category. In the case of forced deportations of Mexicans who are also residents of "the Americas," the irony is doubly cruel.

Read more at Affinity Magazine:
http://affinitymagazine.us/2016/11/02/reminder-the-united-states-is-not-america/

A noticeable pattern emerges throughout our nation's history of immigration: when the economy needs immigrant labor, restrictions decline and immigrants are welcomed into the country. However, if circumstances change and immigrant labor is no longer needed, the U.S. position on immigration shifts to restriction, deportations, and xenophobic rhetoric.

Immigration to the East and West coasts was welcomed throughout the first century of the United States' existence as it provided laborers and settlers to populate the vast states and territories contained in our new nation. During World War II, there was once again a labor shortage and immigrants were needed to fill the gap. In 1942, the "Bracero" program was created. Temporary workers were welcomed in, mainly from Mexico but also Barbados, the Bahamas, Canada, and Jamaica, to work in agriculture. Workers through this program were not eligible for permanent residency in the United States, and working conditions were awful for immigrants. These temporary workers were paid very little and their children were not allowed to attend public schools. Farmers used the program long after the war ended because farmworkers were not allowed to form unions or organize, allowing employers to pay their workers as little as they wanted. Congress ended the program in 1964, though other forms of temporary worker visas continue to this day. [9]

Finally, in the midst of the Civil Rights movement, Congress passed immigration legislation ending the old quota system in 1965. The Immigration and Naturalization Act replaced the previous quota system with "a preference system based on immigrants' family relationships with U.S. citizens or legal permanent residents and, to a lesser degree, their skills." [10] The framework of an immigration system laid out in this law is still the basis of our immigration system today. This 1965 immigration law did much to remedy the shortcomings of the racist quota system and usher in immigration based on family unification. However, our laws are still woefully outdated.

A broken immigration system means broken families and broken lives. Jose Antonio Vargas

Just by glancing at the front page of nearly any newspaper, it is clear that our current system fails to meet today's immigration reality. Despite the fact that the majority of visas are granted to family members of citizens and legal permanent residents, even those with family connections experience unreasonable wait times to immigrate to the United States. Immigrants from the four countries with the longest wait times (Mexico, India, China and the Philippines) can face wait times of more than 20 years depending on family relation- ships, employment status and other factors.

The issue of wait times is separate from the current crisis of asylum seekers at the U.S.-Mexico border. Violence and instability in Central American countries, including Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador, cause many to leave their homes without the time or resources to immigrate through family or employment-based immigration channels. Instead, they are making the difficult journey to the U.S.-Mexico border and presenting themselves to border officials as asylum-seekers. It is legal under U.S. and international law for families and individuals seeking asylum to come into the United States for a determination of eligibility. The Trump administration's recent policies to indiscriminately close the border or require asylum seekers to remain in Mexico contradicts our laws and puts people into very dangerous situations, which have led to deaths of migrants at the border.

While the majority of immigrants have legal residency in the United States or have become naturalized citizens, immigrants who are undocumented in the United States experience significant challenges to provide for themselves and their families. Undocumented individuals face uncertainty in every aspect of their lives and endure barriers to employment, healthcare, and other necessities. While the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans) programs proposed by the Obama administration raised hope of security for some undocumented individuals, those hopes were never fully realized. The Supreme Court declared that DAPA was unconstitutional and it never went into effect, while DACA has faced legal challenges and attacks from the Trump administration over the past few years.

Meanwhile, immigration enforcement in the United States has been responsible for cruelly separating immigrant families through detention and deportation. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, also known as "ICE" was created in 2003, as part of the national response to the September 11 attacks. Throughout President Obama's two terms, ICE conducted more than 2 million immigrant removals, more than any other president until that time. Now, President Trump's administration has implemented changes to ICE tactics, upping the number of raids and deportations and made them crueler. Under the Obama Administration, undocumented immigrants in "high-priority categories," including gang members, people with felony convictions, and those who posed security threats were prioritized for deportation while law-abiding undocumented immigrants, especially long-time residents and relatives of U.S.-citizens were mostly exempt from deportation. It is now common for people who have lived in the U.S. for decades and parents of U.S.-citizen children to be separated from their families and deported.

The origin of this cruel immigration enforcement system was the 2003 decision to create ICE and move immigration under the purview of the new Department of Homeland Security. This shift was one of the factors that shaped a more critical view of immigrants and immigration and criminalized undocumented immigrants for the first time. This was a marked difference than in the past when immigration had been overseen by the Department of Labor and immigrants were seen as positive contributors to our nation and economy.

Since the beginning of the Trump administration, verbal attacks against immigrants from other countries have frequently been broadcast from President Trump and other members of his administration. Whether disparaging the countries many immigrants come from, or arguing in favor of the Muslim ban, messages degrading immigrants who are people of color are coming from our nation's highest office. Overall, the majority of people in the United States disagree and believe that immigration is a good thing, and less than a quarter, only 24%, of people supported cutting immigration. A survey by the Pew Research Center showed that "since 2001, the share of Americans who favor increased legal immigration into the U.S. has risen 22 percentage points (from 10% to 32%), while the share who support a decrease has declined 29 points (from 53% to 24%)." [11]

For more than a decade, Congress has talked about passing comprehensive immigration reform with no legislative success. It is past time for our immigration system to reflect and respond to the current realities of immigration in our world.

At NETWORK, we are proud to have immigrants and the descendants of immigrants in our Spirit-filled network of activists. We advocate for policies that welcome immigrants and fulfil our faith teaching to "love our neighbor" and support for family unity, as well as understanding and appreciation of immigrant communities.

Because there have not been any reasonable updates to our immigration system over the past decades, today, our system is broken. Millions of individuals face the struggle of being undocumented in the United States. Many undocumented people have lived in the United States for years, and have spouses, children, and extended family here. Approximately 16 million people in the U.S. live in mixed-status homes, and our nation's policies are not keeping up with that reality. [12] Instead, they punish the children and family members of undocumented immigrants, even if those family members are U.S. citizens themselves.

One such family, members of our Spirit-filled network, lives in Ohio. When Adriana (names changed for protection) went to the DMV to get her drivers' permit, she was unable to do so because of her mother's undocumented status. Not only that, but Adriana, who was born in the United States, was accused of faking her birth certificate, social security card, and other documents. Their story was chronicled by reporters from the local paper.

Read the full account, through Adriana's eyes, here:
https://www.wcpo.com/longform/living-in-the-shadows-part-1

...no one puts their children in a boat unless the water is safer than the land. Warsan Shire, Home

Oramos, por un mundo sin violencia, por los que no tienen voz, oramos por que se res- pete la dignidad de las mujeres, para que los niños puedan compartir una comida digna con sus padres.

Oramos por los trabajadores del campo, para que sean tratados como seres humanos, para que puedan tener un sueldo justo, oramos por los que luchan cada día en la campaña por Comida Justa, por los aliados que marchan junto a los trabajadores y exigen justicia.

Oremos por aquellos que con su fe, creyeron en la voz de los trabajadores y sin dudarlo nos apoyaron, y nos vieron como hermanos y seres humanos, y siguen luchando para que las corporaciones tomen responsabilidad y respetar a los trabajadores.

Oramos por los líderes de fe conscientes, que con su fe nos dan esperanza a los traba- jadores y juntos construir un mundo de justicia e igualdad, estamos agradecidos por su apoyo, y ayudarnos a mantener viva la fe, celebramos juntos las victoria que hemos tenido, y hemos creado el Programa de Comida Justa, la cual nos da a los trabajadores la oportunidad de reportar los abusos que antes enfrentabamos, que las mujeres por primera vez, no tenemos que cargar con el peso de la violencia sobre nuestras espaldas.

Seguimos orando para que la expansión del modelo del programa llegue a más traba- jadores, ya que es una solución a los abusos que los trabajadores enfrentan diaria- mente.

Oramos para que la explotación laboral no siga afectando a las personas de color, a los migrantes, ni a los seres humanos en general, oramos para que la desigualdad no siga existiendo.

Oramos para que los que dirigen las corporaciones no tengan un corazón lleno de avari- cia, y sean más tolerantes con la humanidad, que tengan conciencia y puedan ver como sus malas decisiones afectan a sus semejantes, a sus hermanos en Dios, que somos los trabajadores.

Amén.
English translation:
We pray for a world without violence and for those whose voices are not heard. We pray for the respect of the dignity of women. We pray that children can share a dignified meal with their parents.

We pray for farmworkers: that they be treated as human beings, that they receive a just wage. We pray for those who fight every day in the Campaign for Fair Food, for the allies who march together with farmworkers and demand justice.

Let us pray for those who, with their faith, believed in the voice of farmworkers and without doubting it, supported us. Let us pray for those who saw us as siblings and fellow human beings, and who keep pushing for corporations to take responsibility and respect farmworkers.

We pray for the conscious faith leaders, who with their faith give us hope as farmworkers that we can build a world of justice and equality. We are grateful for their support and the way they help us keep our faith alive. Together we celebrate the victories we've won. We celebrate the Fair Food Program, which gives us as farmworkers the opportunity to report abuses that we faced for years. For the first time, women don't have to carry the burden of violence on our backs.

We also pray for the expansion of the program to reach more workers, as a solution to the abuses workers face daily.

We pray that labor exploitation no longer affects people of color, migrants, or human beings in general. We pray that inequality no longer exists.

We pray that those leading corporations do not have hearts full of greed and that they are more tolerant of humanity, that they have a conscience and they can see how their bad decisions affect others, their siblings in God, who are the workers.

Amen.
Written by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers Women's Group

Which parts of the history of immigration in the Unites States were unfamiliar to you, if any? Had you been told a different story?

Do your ancestors have an immigration story? How is it similar or different to the history you read here?

How did "whiteness" shape the trajectory of different groups of immigrants in the United States?

Do you hear anti-immigrant rhetoric in your daily life? What argument against immigration is repeated most? Mindful of the "big picture" of the history of immi- gration in the United States, how could you respond?

Take action with NETWORK to call for just immigration policies that honor the dignity of immigrants and the importance of family unity. Visit www.networklobby.org/immigration for the latest political updates.

Read
This article from PBS illustrates how tactics used by government officials to separate people by perceived "whiteness" has changed our notion of what it means to be white, and what that looks like for our immigration policies.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the U.S. government conducted unconstitutional raids and deportations against Mexican immigrants, known as "Mexican repatriation." This Atlantic article gives insight into that history, and what it means for immigration policy today.
Watch
This infographic from Kathleen Kowal traces the history of immigration policy in the U.S., starting with colonialization and ending in the present day.
Listen
This episode of NPR's Fresh Air delves into the history surrounding Mexican "repatriation" - returning people to their native country. The impetus for these mass deportations was fear and racism, and the episode explains it in the context of 1920s and 1930s history.

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The Impact of Racism on U.S. Immigration Past and Present - NETWORK Advocates

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The Impact of Racism on U.S. Immigration Past and Present The history of migration and immigration in the United States is one of the dominant forces shaping our experience of race today.

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Israel’s apartheid against Palestinians: a cruel system of domination and a crime against humanity

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Israeli authorities must be held accountable for committing the crime of apartheid against Palestinians, Amnesty International said today in a damning new report. The investigation details how Israel enforces a system of oppression and domination against the Palestinian people wherever it has contro…

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China has been accused of committing crimes against the Uyghur

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China has been accused of committing crimes against the Uyghur

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This has been an issue for many years and it has not been until recently when media finally started headlining this atrocious activity of China. It is no secret that the world holds fear and prejudice against people who share different culture and beliefs with everyone else.  Such as the Uyghur, who are mostly a Muslim community within the country of China. They’ve been placed in “reeducation camps” and have sentence to prison terms. They have been targeted to minimize the influence this minority hold in China. They are located in Xinjiang which is the country’s largest region where 1/5 of cotton of the world is produced. It wasn’t until 2020 where there was proof that there were half a million individuals picking cotton by force. China denies these accusations but it is without a doubt, that these reeducation camps exist and they need to be abolished and people should be free to their own opinions and culture.

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Who are the Uyghurs and why is China being accused of genocide?

24 April 2013

Updated 24 May 2022

Image source, Getty Images

Image caption,
The Uyghurs are the largest minority ethnic group in China's north-western province of Xinjiang

China has been accused of committing crimes against humanity and possibly genocide against the Uyghur population and other mostly-Muslim ethnic groups in the north-western region of Xinjiang.

Human rights groups believe China has detained more than one million Uyghurs against their will over the past few years in a large network of what the state calls "re-education camps", and sentenced hundreds of thousands to prison terms.

A series of police files obtained by the BBC in 2022 has revealed details of China's use of these camps and described the routine use of armed officers and the existence of a shoot-to-kill policy for those trying to escape.

The US is among several countries to have previously accused China of committing genocide in Xinjiang. The leading human rights groups Amnesty and Human Rights Watch have published reports accusing China of crimes against humanity.

China denies all allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The Chinese government - speaking after details of the Xinjiang Police Files were published - said the peace and prosperity brought to Xinjiang as a result of its anti-terrorism measures were the best response to "all sorts of lies".

Image source, Google

Image caption,
Satellite images show rapid construction of camps in Xinjiang, like this one near Dabancheng

There are about 12 million Uyghurs, mostly Muslim, living in Xinjiang, which is officially known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR).

The Uyghurs speak their own language, which is similar to Turkish, and see themselves as culturally and ethnically close to Central Asian nations. They make up less than half of the Xinjiang population.

Recent decades have seen a mass migration of Han Chinese (China's ethnic majority) into Xinjiang, allegedly orchestrated by the state to dilute the minority population there.

China has also been accused of targeting Muslim religious figures and banning religious practices in the region, as well as destroying mosques and tombs.

Uyghur activists say they fear that the group's culture is under threat of erasure.

More on this story

Imams targeted in China's Xinjiang crackdown

Uighur camp detainees allege systematic rape

The cost of speaking up against China

China 'has created dystopian hellscape in Xinjiang'

China's 'tainted' cotton

Where is Xinjiang?

Xinjiang lies in the north-west of China and is the country's largest region. Like Tibet, it is autonomous, meaning - in theory - it has some powers of self-governance. But in practice, both regions are subjected to major restrictions by the central government.

Xinjiang is a mostly desert region and produces about a fifth of the world's cotton. Human rights groups have voiced concerns that much of that cotton export is picked by forced labour, and in 2021 some Western brands removed Xinjiang cotton from their supply chains, leading to a backlash against the brands from Chinese celebrities and netizens.

In December 2020, research seen by the BBC showed that up to half a million people were being forced to pick cotton in Xinjiang. There is evidence that new factories have been built within the grounds of the re-education camps.

The region is also rich in oil and natural gas and because of its proximity to Central Asia and Europe is seen by Beijing as an important trade link.

In the early 20th Century, the Uyghurs briefly declared independence for the region but it was brought under the complete control of China's new Communist government in 1949.

Image source, Getty Images

Image caption,
Uyghur women pick cotton in Xinjiang. Rights groups have voiced concerns about forced labour in the region

What are the allegations against China?

Several countries, including the US, UK, Canada and the Netherlands, have accused China of committing genocide - defined by international convention as the "intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group".

The declarations follow reports that, as well as interning Uyghurs in camps, China has been forcibly mass sterilising Uyghur women to suppress the population, separating children from their families, and attempting to break the cultural traditions of the group.

The UK parliament declared in April 2021 that China was committing a genocide in Xinjiang.

A UN human rights committee in 2018 said it had credible reports that China was holding up to a million people in "counter-extremism centres" in Xinjiang.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute found evidence in 2020 of more than 380 of these "re-education camps" in Xinjiang, an increase of 40% on previous estimates.

Analysis of data contained in the latest police documents, called the Xinjiang Police Files, showed that almost 23,000 residents - or more than 12% of the adult population of one county - were in a camp or prison in the years 2017 and 2018. If applied to Xinjiang as a whole, the figures would mean the detention of more than 1.2 million Uyghur and other Turkic minority adults.

The UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said the files contained "shocking details of China's human rights violations".

Video caption,
In 2018, the BBC found all reporting was tightly controlled

Earlier, leaked documents known as the China Cables made clear that the camps were intended to be run as high security prisons, with strict discipline and punishments.

People who have managed to escape the camps have reported physical, mental and sexual torture. Women have spoken of mass rape and sexual abuse.

What was the build-up to the crackdown?

Anti-Han and separatist sentiment rose in Xinjiang from the 1990s, sometimes flaring into violence. In 2009 about 200 people died in clashes in Xinjiang, which the Chinese blamed on Uyghurs who wanted their own state. But in recent years a massive security crackdown has crushed dissent.

Xinjiang is now covered by a pervasive network of surveillance, including police, checkpoints, and cameras that scan everything from number plates to individual faces. According to Human Rights Watch, police are also using a mobile app to monitor people's behaviour, such as how much electricity they are using and how often they use their front door.

Since 2017, when President Xi Jinping issued an order saying all religions in China should be Chinese in orientation, there have been further crackdowns. Campaigners say China is trying to eradicate Uyghur culture.

The Xinjiang Police Files, which all date from before 2019, shed further light on Uyghurs being punished for alleged crimes that took place years ago. Many appear to have been targeted for their mobile phone use, for listening to "illegal lectures" or not using their phones enough, which is regarded as a sign the user is trying to evade digital surveillance.

Video caption,
China's ambassador: "There is no such concentration camp in Xinjiang"

What does China say?

China denies all allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang. In response to the Xinjiang Police Files, China's foreign ministry spokesman told the BBC that the documents were "the latest example of anti-China voices trying to smear China". He said Xinjiang enjoyed stability and prosperity and residents were living happy, fulfilled lives.

China says the crackdown in Xinjiang is necessary to prevent terrorism and root out Islamist extremism and the camps are an effective tool for re-educating inmates in its fight against terrorism.

It insists that Uyghur militants are waging a violent campaign for an independent state by plotting bombings, sabotage and civic unrest, but it is accused of exaggerating the threat in order to justify repression of the Uyghurs.

China has dismissed claims it is trying to reduce the Uyghur population through mass sterilisations as "baseless", and says allegations of forced labour are "completely fabricated".

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China has been accused by the US of genocide and crimes against humanity against the Muslim minority group.

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This article discusses the motive of the white gunmen who shot and killed 10 Black people. His motive for murdering these innocent people was to prevent "eliminating the white race." This terrible act of racism is one of many evil acts that is happening in the world. It is a sad reality that people of color are scared for their lives everyday because of the color of their skin. This is not the first hate crime against people of color but I hope that people will become more aware of this global issue and take action.

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This article shares Raul Peralez's story on how he was treated due to the color of his skin. The police would pull him over, and search his car without any reasonable cause. Raul says that due to the way he dressed, the car he drove, and because he was "cruising" they suspected he was apart of a gang which gave them reasonable cause to search his car. The preconceived idea the police had about Raul was because of his darker skin tone, if he was white and dressed differently the police wouldn't feel they had "reasonable cause" and would leave him be.

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Growing up in San Jose, Councilmember Raul Peralez found himself sitting on a curb while police searched his car - dozens of times.

His crime? Driving slowly in his forest green 1965 Impala Super Sport lowrider as a person of color.

"I was often told (by officers) that because of the car I drove, the way I was dressed, and because I was out cruising that they had reasonable suspicion I was a gang member or had weapons or drugs with me," Peralez said, who later became a cop himself. "The officers never found anything in my car but they always found out I was a scholar athlete at Cupertino High School and later a math major at San Jose State University."

The downtown councilmember said it was the city policy - which outlawed cruising in San Jose streets - that gave officers the right to unfairly to target people like him because of the color of their skin or their culture.

Now, for the first time in three decades, that law is overturned and decked-out cars can once again cruise the streets. The Chicano community in San Jose is celebrating the victory.

The San Jose City Council this week unanimously approved ending fees and fines associated with cruising-arguing it's inherently discriminatory. The ban, which prohibits lowriders and other decked-out cars from driving slowly through city streets, was implemented in the early 1990s to curb gang violence.

"As a council we (said) this is not a policy we should embrace any longer," said Peralez, who led the charge to repeal the ban. "It's not one our police department (says) they actually utilize... and it's blatantly discriminatory and racist when you look at the wording."

Cruising has been part of the Latino culture since the 1940s and grew to be a symbol of Mexican American resistance against discrimination during the Civil Rights era. Two decades later, it became associated nationally with gang violence and illegal activity. Cities across the country enacted laws prohibiting the repetitive driving of any motor vehicle past a traffic control point that was congested or near a checkpoint.

"So in downtown, if you miss your turn and you get lost and you go around a couple times you can essentially be in violation of this ordinance," Peralez said. "It was very, very broad."

The ordinance was so broad that police officers could stop and search any person driving a lowrider. This impacted brown and Black residents the most, the councilmember said, and they were stopped repeatedly by San Jose police.

Councilmember Sergio Jimenez experienced the same discrimination.

"I've been sat on the curb many times over the course of my lifetime growing up in East San Jose," Jimenez said. "It was for no reason. I was never arrested, nothing like that. Just simply pulled over because a vehicle was too low or we drove by maybe a little too frequently."

Law enforcement leaders pushed back on the repeal, arguing the policy helps stop dangerous activities like sideshows, especially as traffic fatalities spike in San Jose.

Police Chief Anthony Mata proposed an alternative to repealing the ban - allowing lowriders during permitted events - but policymakers said there are enough rules to protect city streets.

Community leaders in San Jose and across the state supported the city's move to repeal the ban, noting the contributions of the lowrider community.

"San Jose is where the pillars of the lowrider culture are," said David Polanco, United Lowrider Council of San Jose (ULCSJ) chairman. "Regardless of the no cruising signs, the culture has thrived in many ways."

He said the lowrider council holds toy and food drives and has worked with Kaiser Permanente and the San Jose Public Library to give back to the community. More young people are getting involved, he added, which keeps them away from other dangerous activities.

National City Vice Mayor Marcus Bush, whose city sits outside of San Diego, said his community also lifted its cruising ban this week. He said San Diego businesses saw a 20-30% increase in revenue on days cruising events were held. He believes San Jose could see similar results.

"This is more than just about the cars. It's about the music. It's the art, it's the food, it's people gathered together and just celebrating," Bush said.

John Ulloa, a professor who teaches a class on the history of lowriding at San Francisco State University, called the ban an "archaic" law rooted in institutionalized racism.

"Lowriding is part of not only San Jose's social and cultural fabric," he said, "but a global worldwide phenomenon that is celebrated as artistic and an expression of cultural pride."
Contact Jana Kadah at [email protected] or @Jana_Kadah on Twitter.

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San Jose nixes 'blatantly racist' policy - San José Spotlight

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Growing up in San Jose, Councilmember Raul Peralez found himself sitting on a curb while police searched his car - dozens of times. His crime? Driving slowly in his forest green 1965 Impala Super Sport lowrider as a person of color. "I was often told (by officers) that because of the car I drove, the...

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I found this article interesting because it discusses the idea that racism is a parasite.  That we all have the parasite of racism inside of us but we are not all active executioners.  It also touches on an ugly truth that some people enjoy watching human rights being violated while others take to the streets to fight for equal human rights.  Unfortunately, this is modern-day and not just in our American history.

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Civil rights activists like Jesse Jackson and Van Jones have called the George Floyd killing a modern-day lynching. In the video of the brutal murder, which was recorded by a young bystander, police officer Derek Chauvin is seen kneeling on Floyd's neck, compressing his airway. In a deja vu of the police killing of Eric Garner in 2014, Floyd repeatedly gasps "I can't breathe," and then, "I'm about to die."

Almost eight minutes into the video, Floyd's pleas for help go quiet, and a person nearby can be heard saying, "They just killed him." The whole time, Chauvin looks complacent and self-righteous, one hand in his pocket. It's almost as if he derives erotic pleasure from causing a black man to suffer and die.

The same look of pleasure and smugness could be seen in the faces of the executioners and spectators at the spectacle lynchings of Jim Crow America. In his short story "Going to Meet the Man" (1965), Black writer and civil rights activist James Baldwin masterly demonstrated the perverted nature of Jim Crow racism.

At the outset of the story, Jesse, a racist deputy sheriff, is lying in bed with his wife Grace, initially unable to achieve an erection. Jesse's mind wanders back to a lynching he witnessed as a young child. The black victim-who is viewed by young Jesse as "the most beautiful and terrible object he had ever seen till then"-is approached by a knife-wielding chieftain, who erotically weighs, cradles, stretches and caresses his testicles before he proceeds to brutally castrate him.

By recounting the horrifying and violent racist acts that he has witnessed and participated in both as a child and as an adult deputy sheriff, Jesse eventually becomes so sexually aroused that he forces himself on his wife, whispering, "Come on, sugar, I'm going to do you like a n****r; just like a n****r, come on, sugar, and love me like you love a n****r." While raping his wife, "labor[ing] harder than he ever had before," his mind wanders back to the morning after the lynching, once again hearing the sounds of "the first cock crow, and the dogs bark, and the tires on the gravel road."

Before the civil rights movement, black people did not have human status or inherent worth; their value resided in their utility as a tool for satisfying the abnormal, sexual fetishes of white men.

Unfortunately, this is not just a dark chapter of American history. It is modern-day horror. In the video of the Floyd killing, Derek Chauvin, Floyd's main executioner, seems to experience a similar kind of almost erotic thrill from his position of supremacy while kneeling on Floyd's neck, torturing him to death.

We all have the parasite of racism living inside of us but we are not all active executioners. Some are remote spectators, passively deriving thrill and pleasure from watching black bodies being violated. Others take to the streets, risking their lives in the hope that White America eventually will listen.

America's most unseemly stain arguably is the systemic racism infiltrating every corner of its towns and cities. But Floyd wasn't murdered by systemic racism. The most egregious acts of violence against blacks are perpetrated by the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the lynch mob of Jim Crow America and the onlookers who went on a picnic to watch a black man get tortured and die.

Systemic racism needs to end, but at this moment in time it's even more urgent that the modern-day lynch mob be brought to justice.
This post is based on work in progress with Aleks Hernandez.

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The Parasite of Racism That Lives Inside You

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Civil rights activists like Jesse Jackson and Van Jones have called the George Floyd killing a modern-day lynching. In the video of the brutal murder, which was recorded by a young bystander, police officer Derek Chauvin is seen kneeling on Floyd's neck, compressing his airway.

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Racism in Mexico: Challenging mestizaje and the cosmic race

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Racism in Mexico: Challenging mestizaje and the cosmic race

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Mexico is a country that is racially diverse and contains a history of rich culture. We know that the Europeans (Spanish) conquered the lands of Mexico which were inhabited by the inedginous who long lived there before colonial times. There was an intertwining of races between Europeans, Indeginous, those of African descent, etc. And it is because of this, that people believe that since there is such racial diversity (Mestizos) in Mexico, the narrative of the country having racism cannot be prevalent. It didn't have a racist history like the US in terms of Laws and Segregation. However, it is a false statement and draws away from the true realities that exist in Mexico. Mexican society tries to assimilate the already existing inedginous and black populations. There is also the seeking of trying to “whiten” Mexicans.

Being Mexican-American, I know that in our Mexican communities, there is a negative stigma around being dark skinned. Growing up, lighter skinned Mexicans were often praised and considered more attractive. As a kid, I liked the nicknames my mother gave me such as “Morena” or “Prieta,” but I later found out she was also given these names for being dark. But, my mother is not dark. She is a light brown tone, I however am much darker than her.  It is unfortunate that the fear of having dark skin sparks in many children.  It seemed as if being called dark skinned was a negative connotation. But one finds themselves wondering, why is the topic of racism either ignored or denied in Mexican society?  What lies beyond that ignorance? This video talk explains Mexico's racist dynamics and racialized peoples' resistance against this system of oppression.

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Thursday, February 11, 2021
6:00 pm/Michigan EST
5:00 pm/ Mexico City

Join the event via Facebook

Join the event via YouTube

Racism in Mexico Event Flyer (PDF).
Invited Speaker: Jumko Ogata
Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM)

The official narrative on race in Mexico suggests that racism is absent due to mestizaje practices. Mexicans are defined as the mixed descendants of Europeans and Indigenous peoples, and Mexico does not have racist laws like the US, so racism seems impossible. In reality, the insidious nature of Mexican racism consists in its apparent invisibility. How can we talk about something if it does not exist? Mestizaje discourse promotes the mixture of races while seeking to whiten Mexicans and assimilate Indigenous and Black populations. This talk explains Mexico's racist dynamics and racialized peoples' resistance against this system of oppression.

Event co-sponsored by: MSU Romance and Classical Studies, Race in 21st Century America Conference, Department of African American and African Studies, and Global Youth Advancement Network

Visit the Event Facebook page

Learning from the
The collapse of an ecosystem

Professor Abigail Bennett talks about her research in Mexico

Saving Tapirs to Save Nicaraguan Forests

Mating, tattoos and
leaving home: A tale of growing up guppy

Kahlo without Borders

Jan 15 - Aug 7, 2022
MSU Broad Museum

CLACS on Social

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Racism in Mexico: Challenging mestizaje and the cosmic race - Live Event

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Racism in Mexico Event Flyer (PDF). Invited Speaker: Jumko OgataUniversidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) The official narrative on race in Mexico suggests that racism is absent due to mestizaje practices. Mexicans are defined as the mixed descendants of Europeans and Indigenous peoples, and Mexico does not have racist laws like the US, so racism seems impossible.

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Hate crimes increasing. What is our world today?

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Hate crimes increasing. What is our world today?

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Throughout the pandemic that was our main focus was fighting Covid-19, but now after our world is slowly resuming back to how it was, racism is now growing. Because of the pandemic the Asian community is now suffering from crazy amount of hate crimes. People blame the asian community for Covid-19 and therefore they are attacking them. Hate crimes driven by homophobia and racism resulted in a 33% surge in California last year. Crimes against Black people were  the most prevalent in 2021, raising 13% from 2020. Hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation bias increased  50% and crimes against Asian Americans were up 178%. It is crazy the world we live in today and what is going on currently.

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Anti-Black, gay, Asian bias fuel California hate crime surge

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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Hate crimes driven by homophobia and racism resulted in a 33% surge in reported incidents in California last year, following a similar spike in hate-driven attacks the year prior and confirming what officials have been hearing anecdotally since the pandemic began, the state’s at…

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After the pandemic a rise in hate crime, specifically on the Asian community dramatically rose. Due to the origin of the pandemic and some comments made by our former President, many people blamed Asians for the cause of Covid-19. However racism and hate crimes are not new and have been around for many years. Recent studies showed Asian hate crime has increased in California from 2020-2021 at 177%. Hate crimes stem from racism and it's prevalent in all parts of the world.

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The number of hate crimes in California rose for the third year in a row in 2021 and included a sizable uptick in the number of anti-Asian crimes, according to a report from the state attorney general.

The California Department of Justice released its annual report on hate crimes on Tuesday morning, noting 1,763 reported hate crimes, up 33% from the year prior.

Hate crimes against Asian Americans saw another year of triple-digit percentage increases, with crimes increasing 177.5% from 2020 to 2021, according to the report. Over the last year, the number of anti-Asian hate crimes rose from 89 to 247.

"Today's report reflects a grim reality our diverse communities know too well," California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta said at a news conference Tuesday morning. Bonta pointed to the COVID-19 pandemic as giving way to "an epidemic of hate."

Bonta said that hate crimes have increased to a level California hasn't seen since the spike in the aftermath of 9/11. In 2001, California reported an all-time high in hate crimes as the number of incidents jumped to 2,261.

Anti-Asian crimes have become a larger portion of the state's hate crimes involving race. Two years ago, about 8% of race-based hate crimes involved Asian Americans. In 2021, that number rose to 21%.

During that time, the largest share of race-based hate crimes targeted Black people. Anti-Black hate crimes rose 13% to 513 in 2021.

Hate crimes against Latinos also saw a 30% increase in 2021, and anti-Jewish hate crimes rose 32%.

Hate crimes based on sexual orientation rose as well over the last year. The report notes a 48% increase in hate crimes involving sexual orientation biases, with crimes rising from 205 in 2020 to 303 in 2021. Most of those incidents included anti-gay hate crimes against men, according to the report.

At the same time, the number of reported anti-transgender hate crimes fell about 30% last year, dropping from 54 to 38.

Los Angeles County saw the largest number of hate crimes within the state, with 630 crimes reported in 2021. The city of Los Angeles was found to have the most hate crimes among large U.S. cities in a study released earlier this year by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino. The study found sharp increases in the number of hate crimes reported across the country in 2021.

Bigotry has become more pervasive in recent years, and has spiked particularly around "conflictual events" such as elections and protests, said Brian Levin, who leads the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.

"It's not just the darkest corners of the internet anymore," Levin said. "It's in every space from sports to gaming."

Hate crimes saw a sharp uptick in June 2020 after the police killing of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests that followed, Levin said. Historically, hate crimes tend to fall after a spike, but that didn't happen in 2020. Instead, the trend of increased hate crimes has become more "sticky and elongated," Levin said.

The report was compiled using data reported by local law enforcement agencies. However, as some communities may be more hesitant to report crimes to law enforcement, Levin said the numbers could be an undercount.

"We have massive underreporting when it comes to hate crimes," Levin said. "This is really a snapshot of a trend as opposed to the actual number."

Reports of anti-Asian hate crimes began to tick up in early 2020 as anti-Asian sentiment coalesced around the COVID-19 pandemic's origins in China and the rhetoric of then-President Trump.

What followed were assaults on Asian people in Oakland and San Francisco and the deadly shootings of six Asian women at Atlanta-area spas in March 2021.

"These forms of discrimination and violence against our communities did not start with the pandemic nor is new," said Cirian Villavicencio, a member of the California Commission on Asian and Pacific Islander American Affairs.

"From Japanese internment to the murder of Vincent Chin in 1982, our communities have been historically marginalized and stereotyped as perpetual foreigners," Villavicencio said.

Other advocates pointed to increasing numbers of Americans subscribing to racist ideologies such as the "great replacement theory," which alleges a plot to diminish the power of white people. The ideology fueled the racist intentions behind the shooter who killed 10 people at a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y., last month.

"America is increasingly polarized; people are isolated and get their news and information from different sources," said Russell Jeung, a professor at San Francisco State and one of the co-founders of Stop AAPI Hate. "That has contributed to the overall increase in racism, which contributes to anti-Asian racism."

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'An epidemic of hate': Anti-Asian hate crimes in California jumped 177% in 2021

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The number of hate crimes in California rose for the third year in a row in 2021 and included a sizable uptick in the number of anti-Asian crimes, according to a report from the state attorney general. The California Department of Justice released its annual report on hate crimes on Tuesday morning, noting 1,763 reported hate crimes, up 33% from the year prior.

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Measuring the Cost of Racial Abuse in Soccer by Alan Burdick

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Measuring the Cost of Racial Abuse in Soccer by Alan Burdick

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As a soccer fan, the aftermath of the 2020 UEFA European Football Championship was quite appalling.   If you are not familiar, England and Italy were going head to head in the finals of a popular tournament.  England lost on penalties and because of that, Italy won the championship trophy.  There was a noticeable increase of racism targeted towards England's black players online in various shapes and forms.  This caused a lot of fans, either outside or in England, to become more aware towards the vile attitudes many fans have about the sport they love.  The author of the article speaks with some university researchers who researched things relating towards racism between fans and the players on the pitch.  Upon some further questions asked by the author, one of the researchers stated that “We find that players from Africa, who are most commonly targeted by racial harassment, experience a significant improvement in performance when supporters are no longer at the stadium,”. This is definitely something that we can take from the article to use for future assignments as it shows some sort of pattern regarding racism.

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Plus, fluorescent flying squirrels, aging golfers and more feats of athleticism in the Friday edition of the Science Times Newsletter.

Send any friend a story
As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.

Messages of support for Marcus Rashford, the English soccer player, were placed over offensive graffiti that vandalized a mural in Manchester after the European Championship on July 11. Credit... Peter Byrne/Press Association, via AP

Like many soccer fans around the world, Paolo Falco, a labor economist at the University of Copenhagen, was delighted by the outcome of the European Championship final last Sunday, which saw Italy defeat England in a climactic penalty shootout. And he was appalled in equal measure by the aftermath.

In the hours following the match the three England players, all Black, who missed their penalty shots were heaped with racial abuse on social media. The abuse prompted outrage from Prince William and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and revived a too-familiar aphorism: "When you win, you're English; when you lose, you're Black."

In recent years, UEFA, the governing body of European soccer, has worked to combat racism against its players, both online and in stadiums. But the behavior persists; in Italy and elsewhere, world-class players of color have been subjected to racist chants and epithets, and to even have bananas thrown onto the field. "I have experienced firsthand all sorts of terrible things being said and cursed and yelled at players," said Dr. Falco, who closely follows Serie A, Italy's top league.

In December, he and two colleagues - Mauro Caselli and Gianpiero Mattera, economists at the University of Trento, in Italy, and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, respectively - posted one of the first studies seeking to measure the impact of in-stadium abuse on the game. Their working paper, which awaits publication in a peer-reviewed journal, compared the performances of roughly 500 Serie A players in the first half of the 2019-2020 season of the main Italian championship league - before the Covid-19 pandemic, when stadiums were full and raucous - to the second half, when "ghost games" were played in empty stadiums.

Their results were stark: One subgroup of players, and one only, played noticeably better in the absence of crowds. "We find that players from Africa, who are most commonly targeted by racial harassment, experience a significant improvement in performance when supporters are no longer at the stadium," the authors wrote.

Dr. Falco spoke by phone from Copenhagen on Thursday. The following conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.
What inspired your study?
I was watching a football match after the lockdown began, and I was struck by how different an experience I was having, even on TV, by simply not hearing all the noises and all the chanting that typically goes on in the background of a football match.

I'm from Napoli, and football fans in Napoli definitely are very loud. In that kind of stadium, you see emotions expressed at their best and at their worst. And you cannot help feeling that has an impact on what's happening on the ground in the stadium.

I started wondering: Would it make a difference to all the players equally? Who are the players that are going to suffer more or less, or gain more or less, from having or not having the pressure of fans?

From left, Marcus Rashford, Raheem Sterling, Jadon Sancho, Ben Chilwell and Bukayo Saka of England's national team. Rashford, Sancho and Saka each missed penalty kicks in the final. Credit... Pool photo by Matthew Childs

What was your working hypothesis?
That players who are targeted because of their color will perform better when the pressure is removed - independent of the general pressure of playing in a stadium, which is the same for all players.

That question is incredibly difficult to address in normal circumstances, because you don't have the experiment that you would like to have: seeing how those players perform relative to themselves, before and after, with and without fans. Covid gave us precisely that natural experiment. From one day to the next, the players went from full stadiums to empty stadiums.

We got curious, and we started analyzing the data. And we found that, indeed, players are affected differentially, with the ones that are most subject to abuse seemingly experiencing an improvement in their performance the moment that they don't have this pressure on them anymore. This effect survived even after we controlled for a host of potentially confounding factors - weather, the time of day the match was played, the strength of the opposing team - so we strongly believe it's there.
What metric did you use as a measure of player performance?
There are very detailed statistics, created by a publicly available algorithm, on the performance of every player after every match. It's much more than just goals scored, and is very objective: How far did the player run during the game? How many passes did they complete?
These are statistics from a database commonly used for fantasy-team ratings and for betting purposes, is that right?

Yes, that's correct.

There is an interesting and growing literature on the effect that football fans have on teams as a whole. For instance, it has been shown that referees are not as favorable to the home team in the absence of spectators, and that the home advantage is not as pronounced in terms of who wins. What we wanted to do was look at the individual players, to see any differences in performance between those who are from certain ethnic backgrounds.

I want to go back to the very end of that game between England and Italy. Imagine for a second what goes on in the mind of those players as they approach that penalty, knowing not only that they have the same pressure as every other football player in the field but also that they're Black, that they're in a minority, and they very likely are going to be treated exactly the way that they were treated the moment that they make a mistake.

Think about the incredible pressure that is placed upon those players. It makes you almost shiver. That's why I don't think it was too big a leap of imagination to think that we could find something of this kind in the data.
What did your results show?
We found that African players performed 3 percent better in the second part of the season compared to the first part. You may think, OK, 3 percent isn't such a big deal. But if you were talking about the productivity or profits of a firm and its workers, 3 percent would be huge. If you see football players as workers, which is ultimately what they are, and they are 3 percent less productive, that has repercussions for the team as a whole.

Bukayo Saka embraced Gareth Southgate, the England team manager, after the shootout on July 11. Credit... Pool photo by Carl Recine

These are economic costs, not just moral or ethical concerns. Players of African origin play worse in front of spectators, but nobody else performs better, so overall the quality of the game decreases. This is something that should bother club owners, because they are making investments in players.

We also looked at players for teams that we know were particularly subject to abuse at the beginning of the season. The Italian authorities actually record episodes of abuse from fans in the stadium, so we know which teams were playing in matches before the lockdown where there was such racist behavior. And it was the players on those teams, including Napoli, that saw the biggest improvement in performance the most - 10 percent better - in the absence of spectators.

We're talking about the elite of the elite athletes in the country. They are in the best of the best position in terms of social status and money earned. So the fact that these athletes are affected is extremely worrying; if one were to look at the lower leagues, there must be a lot more of this going on.

Do you feel that your study group, with African players making up only 7 percent of the total, was sufficiently robust to provide meaningful results?
That's a good question. But the number of players only plays a role up to an extent, because these are players that we observe many times during the year - every week, 38 observations for each player over the course of the season, roughly half before lockdown and half after. The statistical power of the analysis is very strong because we are comparing the exact same people, not just two random samples, before and after.
As fans in the stadium, we all like to think that we are more than just spectators - that our voices have a real impact on the game. Your research suggests that we actually do, and uncomfortably so.
Sometimes I get a little bit worried about what we have done here, as we may inadvertently reassure people in their conviction that shouting racist things is going to help their team win. On the other hand, I firmly believe that research should aim to uncover facts and always be transparent about them. In this case, I hope that the people in charge of the economics of this game will understand that racism is costing them money and damaging their investments. When certain players cannot express their full potential, the game is simply not as beautiful and appealing as it could be.

The Times on Monday, July 19, 1954.

The inquiries arose because, in the recent shot-putting event, a national British record of 55 feet would have been established but for the fact that the 16-pound weight was found to have been half an ounce too light.

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Measuring the Cost of Racial Abuse in Soccer (Published 2021)

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Plus, fluorescent flying squirrels, aging golfers and more feats of athleticism in the Friday edition of the Science Times Newsletter. Send any friend a story As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. Anyone can read what you share.

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Jenny Zhang- "They Pretend to Be Us While Pretending We Don't Exist"

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Jenny Zhang- "They Pretend to Be Us While Pretending We Don't Exist"

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An excellent essay written by Jenny Zhang starting off with the occurrence of a white poet who performed a form of yellowface by submitting his work underneath a Chinese sounding name because he said that his work would not perform well underneath his white sounding name, despite the literary world being dominated by white people. It talks about how marginalized identities such as gender and ethnicity are coveted for literary clout while forgetting about the difficulties that being a person of color comes with in jealousy. Particularly as an Asian American, I also have heard similar sentiments flung at me by people accusing me that I could get anywhere I wanted to be just by being an Asian woman, completely negating all my work and implying that any talent or skills I had were something I had inherited by chance instead of gained through experience. It also reminded me about the attitude that (white) people have towards affirmative action who believe that giving qualified students of color access to institutions that have historically banned students of color, is taking away opportunities from white students who are still the overall demographic of most colleges.

I don't think I could give an accurate summary about how killer this article is, but to interest everyone in reading it here's a quote from the first paragraph "They were shameless about their envy, not shy or coy at all about their certainty that my race and gender were an undeniable asset, which, in turn, implied that I could be as mediocre and shitty as I wanted and still succeed. This was how some of my white classmates imagined the wild spoils of my literary trajectory. This was how they managed to turn themselves into the victims."

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They Pretend To Be Us While Pretending We Don't Exist

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White poet Michael Derrick Hudson's use of the Chinese pen name Yi-Fen Chou was an act of yellowface that is part of a long tradition of white voices drowning out those of color in the literary world.

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I found an article that has Luther Burrell, a rugby player, speak on the topic of racism in rugby and how it has become a common recurring issue. He talks about how racism in rugby has become "normal" and some people don't think twice before using a racial phrase or word to him and other players. Burrell suffered many racial phrases thrown at him with some being about bananas, fried chicken and slavery. While I don't watch rugby, I was surprised that these racial phrases were even being used at the professional level of any sport. Burrell is upset and thinks that the racist tendencies in the league have gone on for too long and no change is being made. To him, he calls it "the environment of the game." To me, it is sad to see that this is what an athlete considers the "environment" of his sport. The environment of sports should be competitive, high energy, and good sportsmanship, not racist. Burrell still stands as a person looking for ways to change in the game, and hopes that the younger and future generation will call out these issues and force change in the world.

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Burrell opened up about receiving comments about bananas, fried chicken and slavery and being greeted with a racial slur.

Luther Burrell

The Rugby Football Union and Premiership Rugby have apologised to Luther Burrell after the former England centre said racism was “rife” in the sport.

In an interview with the Daily Mail, the 32-year-old – who has played for clubs including Leeds, Sale, Northampton and Newcastle, plus Warrington in rugby league – spoke about dressing room “racial “banter”” that has “become normal” and “needs to be addressed”, including receiving comments about bananas, fried chicken and slavery and being greeted with a racial slur.

Bill Sweeney, chief executive of the RFU, said in a statement: “We are disturbed that this has been Luther’s experience and we applaud him for speaking out, racism in any walk of life is not acceptable.

Luther Burrell, centre, has played 15 times for England (Gareth Fuller/PA)

“I have had a conversation with Luther to see if we can learn from his experience and possibly work with him as an advocate of change.

“Inclusion and diversity is at the heart of our strategy and we want to improve education and awareness across our game.

“We apologise to Luther and all of those who have experienced any form of discrimination and will continue to work to eliminate it from our game.”

Premiership Rugby chief executive Simon Massie-Taylor said: “We applaud Luther for speaking out on this subject but it is saddening to hear some of the language and attitudes he has been exposed to.

“I have spoken with Luther to apologise for what he has experienced and to offer support.

“While there is a lot of positive activity in the area of equality, diversity and inclusion this is a reminder of how far we still need to go.”

Recounting his experiences, Burrell told the Mail: “Things get said in jest without any thought. Every week, every fortnight. Comments about bananas when you’re making a smoothie in the morning. Comments about fried chicken when you’re out for dinner.

“I’ve heard things that you wouldn’t expect to hear 20 years ago. We had a hot day at training and I told one of the lads to put on their factor 50. Someone came back and said: ‘You don’t need it, Luth, put your carrot oil on’.

Burrell hopes speaking out on the matter will lead to change (Dave Howarth/PA)

“Then another lad jumps in and says: ‘No, no, no, he’ll need it for where his shackles were as a slave’. Excuse my language but, what the f***? Where does that come from? Some players shake their head and others laugh along with it.

“People greet you as: ‘What’s up my n*****?’ It’s not meant in a bad way but when is it going to change? It’s a very, very raw subject. Over the past few years, it’s happened a lot. That’s the environment.”

Burrell said he will “never name names but it’s gone on for too long”, and expressed his hope that speaking out would lead to change.

He said: “My son and daughter, three and five, are mixed race. Would I be happy with them getting the same racial “banter” from their friends? Of course not. There are numerous players in numerous environments who have experienced it. It needs to be spoken about. Maybe it will empower the next generation to call it out and force change.”

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That's the environment - Luther Burrell claims racism is 'rife' in rugby

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Burrell opened up about receiving comments about bananas, fried chicken and slavery and being greeted with a racial slur.

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Racism in Santa Barbara education system

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Racism in Santa Barbara education system

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This article talks about a recent incident of racism that happened at Santa Barbara junior high. A student was bullied by a group of other male students, where he was called racial slurs, then assaulted.

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Education

Incident Occurred During Class, Mother of Student Speaks Out at S.B. Unified Board Meeting

A parent in the Santa Barbara Unified School District said during public comment Tuesday that her son was called the "n-word" by other students during class at Santa Barbara Junior High. The students also allegedly kneeled on his head and neck while saying, "George Floyd."

Santa Barbara Unified responded with a ParentSquare message Tuesday night: "We stand with [the parent] in condemnation of any act of violence on our campuses, in this case hate violence related to a student's race."

The assault occurred on February 16, and though Principal Arielle Curry sent a message out to all SBJH families on February 18, a district-wide acknowledgement of the hate crime was not sent out until February 22.

"I feel very unsupported at school right now, and I demand a change take place in schools immediately," the boy's mother said.

The boy's mother (whose name is being withheld at this time to protect the identity of the student) said there have been several incidents of racism against her son by other students, but the most recent incident occurred in the classroom, with students taunting her son with racist name-calling. Then, she said during a class break, the students began wrestling, which escalated to the other students pinning her son down, kneeling on his neck, and saying, "George Floyd." The mother contacted the administration, but the only response she got was from the school's principal, Arielle Curry.

Curry, speaking through district spokesperson Nick Masuda, said the teacher overseeing the children was in the classroom attending to another student when the assault occurred. Masuda also said there had been no prior incidents with the students involved. The district would not confirm if the students were suspended for their actions, only saying "corrective action was taken."

Community members rallied behind the mother during public comment, lambasting the district for not taking action earlier, or providing more resources to the family of the student who continues to be harassed on campus. Connie Alexander, a co-founder and co-executive director of Gateway Educational Services who has also worked with the student for many years, questioned the district procedure, criticizing the lack of mental-health and safety resources being provided.

"When you do this investigation, you're going to find you have some work to do," Alexander said. "We have to get past things that make us feel uncomfortable, and might feel performative. Procedure is important."
Editor's Note: This story was updated on 2/25/22 to include additional information. Support the Santa Barbara Independent through a long-term or a single contribution.
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Santa Barbara Junior High Student Allegedly Called Racial Slurs, Assaulted by Other Students - The Santa Barbara Independent

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Education Incident Occurred During Class, Mother of Student Speaks Out at S.B. Unified Board Meeting A parent in the Santa Barbara Unified School District said during public comment Tuesday that her son was called the "n-word" by other students during class at Santa Barbara Junior High.

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Clinical algorithms that factor in race when assessing a patient's risk for a host of health conditions are under scrutiny. They may result in patients of color receiving less access to and poorer quality of care than their white counterparts, fueling long-standing racial disparities. New York City health hospitals announced its removal of a patient's race from calculations used to assess kidney function. Last year, the health system's broader also saw the removal of race as part of an effort to improve access to care.

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Seminal events during the pandemic - such as the protests over the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in 2020 and the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on communities of color - have brought the issues of systemic racism and injustice to the forefront of the public's consciousness.

For some health care providers, the moment also has presented an opportunity to leverage the national conversation into new efforts to examine how existing policies and practices in medicine may be perpetuating racial health inequities.

"We're at a pivotal time," says Dr. Nichola Davis, chief population health officer for NYC Health + Hospitals, New York City's public hospital and health care system. "People's ears are open and they are willing to hear and have these courageous conversations that they maybe weren't able to have in 2019."

At issue are clinical algorithms that factor in race when assessing a patient's risk for a host of health conditions, ranging from death in connection with heart surgery to urinary tract infections in children. Critics of such calculations contend they may result in patients of color receiving less access to and poorer quality of care than their white counterparts, fueling long-standing racial health disparities.

"Race was never necessary or needed" in these algorithms, says Dr. Milda Saunders, an ethicist and health equity researcher and associate professor of medicine at the University of Chicago. "I think a lot of times when we're measuring race we're measuring racism, both structural and interpersonal racism."

Race-based adjustments within algorithms that help make clinical assessments have been around for decades. But while there is widespread acceptance within the scientific and medical communities that the concept of race is not based on biology and is instead a social construct, race correction continues to influence patient diagnoses and treatments.

And despite growing acknowledgment of the potential harms caused by race correction in medicine, so ingrained are these calculations in clinical assessments that the effort to overhaul them is often complicated with questions over what factors can be an adequate replacement.

"These are conversations that have been happening among certain subsets of people for years," Davis says. "This isn't new work for some people."

There has been notable movement of late, however: Last May, for example, NYC Health+Hospitals announced its removal of a patient's race from calculations used to assess kidney function - part of the launch of the health system's broader " Medical Eracism" initiative.

Race was first introduced in the late 1990s to calculate estimated glomerular filtration rate, or eGFR, which is commonly used by clinicians to measure the kidneys' ability to filter waste from the blood. A higher eGFR score normally suggests better kidney function.

Black patients, though, are typically assigned a race adjustment that raises their eGFR by approximately 16% or more than non-Black patients, depending on the equation used. The adjustment is tied to past findings showing higher levels of the waste product creatinine among Black people.

"Explanations that have been given for this finding include the notion that Black people release more creatinine into their blood at baseline, in part because they are reportedly more muscular," a 2020 article in The New England Journal of Medicine states. "Analyses have cast doubt on this claim, but the 'race-corrected' eGFR remains the standard."

Davis says this adjustment can negatively impact the quality of health care Black patients receive, causing delays in receiving medical interventions such as referrals to a nephrologist or dialysis. One such potential consequence was outlined in a November piece published by STAT, in which Glenda V. Roberts - a woman with kidney disease who identified as Black - wrote of how the equation delayed her evaluation for a kidney transplant.

"Unfortunately, when you look at the clinical algorithms, what many of them do is they may downplay the severity of some illnesses when you do that race correction," Davis says.

"The big change is that more institutions like the hospital system, hospital leadership and administrators are more on board with efforts toward equity than they were in prior years," says Dr. Monica Maalouf, associate program director of internal medicine for Loyola Medicine, a health system based in the Chicago area.

Maalouf says Loyola is in the process of determining how to remove race as a variable within the health system's eGFR calculations. That process has involved talks with physicians and laboratory coordinators and directors, as well as working with information technology specialists on how to remove the racial designation from the risk score's automated reporting system.

National Kidney Foundation President Dr. Paul Palevsky says the new equation marks an important step toward efforts to achieve equity in health care by providing a more accurate, race-free approach to assessing kidney function.

"It was the most common equation used in medicine that incorporated race that was reported to be used in clinical care," Palevsky says, estimating a race-inclusive equation for kidney function is used approximately 240 million times a year.

But while the change in the eGFR calculation signifies a substantial step forward, eliminating race correction in calculations for other health conditions has been more challenging, despite increased recognition about the potential harms and health disparities that can come from their continued use.

"The field has realized that when we are using race as a factor in our clinical assessments that we're actually not using a precise measure like we would do for measuring sex, or age, or other things that we use to make our clinical decisions," says Saunders, with the University of Chicago. "But we want to find the best answer, so that may involve sort of reexamining the questions and not just saying, 'Let's just drop race,' but asking what was race measuring, and then substituting that measure."

Saunders says University of Chicago Medicine recently removed race in calculating eGFR in patients, opting to adopt the algorithm endorsed by the National Kidney Foundation. She notes there also has been a broader push among clinicians in recent years to consider the impact of social drivers like income, access to food, housing status and access to transportation on patients of color when making clinical assessments.

Much of the recent attention toward removing race in clinical assessments began with the 2020 article published in the The New England Journal of Medicine, which listed about a dozen tools that included race in assessing clinical areas such as patients' lung function, risk of in-hospital death from heart failure and survival from cardiac surgery. Such tools hold the potential for harmful consequences, the article noted, and could lead to issues such as nonwhite patients not getting health care interventions as early as white patients.

"Many of these race-adjusted algorithms guide decisions in ways that may direct more attention or resources to white patients than to members of racial and ethnic minorities," wrote the authors, from Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School and NYU Langone Health. "If doctors and clinical educators rigorously analyze algorithms that include race correction, they can judge, with fresh eyes, whether the use of race or ethnicity is appropriate."

Last May, a study published by the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology introduced an updated model that does not factor in patient race for use in estimating the chance of a successful vaginal birth for women who previously had a cesarean section. By lowering the estimated chance of success for women of color, a previous version of the VBAC calculator - a tool singled out in the NEJM piece - could push them toward a C-section, which is a major surgical procedure many maternal health experts believe is performed too often.

At the same time, adjusting for race in some cases may raise the question of whether doing so is useful if it results in minority groups potentially receiving more consideration.

For example, race adjustment within an atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease risk estimator - which estimates the risk of having an event like a stroke and helps clinicians determine when to start patients on cholesterol-lowering medication - can put patients who identify as Black at higher risk than white patients. Having race correction within the tool could make it more likely clinicians will intervene earlier for Black patients.

"Using race in these clinical algorithms hasn't been all bad," says Dr. Malika Fair, senior director of equity and social accountability for the Association of American Medical Colleges. "Their intent when they were being used sometimes was to identify health inequities."

Fair says unilaterally removing race from every algorithm is a feasible approach, but fails to answer whether doing so would make things better or worse for patients. "We have to take the time to figure that out so that we don't end up inadvertently creating more racial health inequities when we remove race from the equation," Fair says.

Notably, a study published last year in The Lancet Oncology found that removing race from an eGFR equation could undercut cancer treatment in Black patients.

Dr. Megan Mahoney, chief of staff for Stanford Health Care and a clinical professor of medicine at Stanford University, says professional medical societies can play a huge part in providing and promoting guidance on alternatives that clinicians can use to assess disease risk without factoring race. Yet much of the action taken thus far aimed at eliminating race-based clinical assessment has been led by individual hospitals and health systems, which have made policy decisions after deliberation and consideration from their own experts.

Mahoney says medical societies can streamline the decision process for hospitals by serving as a trusted arbiter to review the evidence and provide guidance that most will accept.

"A particular health care system can do it, it's just that it's going to be harder to get buy-in from those who are actually implementing the change - the physicians on the front line - without the professional societies backing them," Mahoney says.

Mahoney agrees it's important to identify the root causes of health disparities for patients of color that have led to differences in risk outcomes. But she fears leaving race-based algorithms in place could reinforce concepts that tie race to biology, and could have long-term social and clinical ramifications.

"Even if there are going to be downstream changes that might put African Americans at a disadvantage, the perpetuation of race as a biological factor both in medical education and in medicine in general, the risk of that far outweighs that minor benefit some racial groups might be getting from the current state," Mahoney says. "We are really putting our medical students and a whole generation of trainees at a disadvantage when the concept of biological race is reinforced in their training."

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Seminal events during the pandemic - such as the protests over the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police in 2020 and the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on communities of color - have brought the issues of systemic racism and injustice to the forefront of the public's consciousness.

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I had thought that there was no discrimination in Japan because, unlike the U.S. and other countries, there were many different races in Japan. However, I was wrong. Through this assignment, I was curious to find out if discrimination exists in Japan. I discovered that there is some discrimination in Japan. I was shocked to learn this fact, and at the same time, I felt ashamed of myself for not knowing anything about it.

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What You Need To Know About Racism in Japan

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A quick overview of race issues in Japan for visitors.

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Racist Backlash Towards 'Kenobi' Actress Moses Ingram

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Racist Backlash Towards 'Kenobi' Actress Moses Ingram

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The show 'Obi-Wan Kenobi' has been going for a few weeks now, and when it started there was a disturbing amount of backlash towards the casting of Moses Ingram to play the role of one of the Inquisitors/main antagonists in the show. I haven't watched a ton of the show, but I've watched a few videos about this racism issue and it's pretty unpleasant. A number of people were calling her slurs, spreading racist stereotypes towards her, and claiming she was a token diversity hire on social media, and on top of that a number of conservative pundits were then saying that the racism was overblown and that "the Left" was overplaying the racism to obfuscate her mediocre acting ability, even though from what I've seen she isn't a bad actor. So overall, a ton of hateful people lashed out at an actress simply because they didn't like that a person of color was playing a character in a show they wanted to watch. This is a pretty solid example of racist behavior in our society.

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Moses Ingram, ‘Star Wars’ stand up to racist backlash over ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ casting

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Less than a week after appearing in ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi,’ actor Moses Ingram and the ‘Star Wars’ franchise are shutting down a flurry of hateful messages.