Which Would You Choose?

From Slate - 

White Out

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Why integrating America’s neighborhoods and cities is harder than we think. 

By Jamelle Bouie

White homebuyers are reluctant to look past their preconceived notions of class.

Photo by Marilyn Volan/Shutterstock

There’s no question that white Americans prefer white neighborhoods. As I noted in a Wednesday column, “20 percent of whites said their ideal neighborhood was all white … [a]nd only 25 percent of white respondents said they would live in a neighborhood where one-half of their neighbors were black.”

JAMELLE BOUIE

Jamelle Bouie is a Slate staff writer covering politics, policy, and race.

At the same time, this polling doesn’t tell us why. I implied prejudice, but there are other options. It could be ethnocentrism—positive feelings about your racial compatriots. Or it could be a class difference, where whites avoid black neighbors—and black neighborhoods—out of real or perceived differences in the quality of homes, schools, services, and amenities. And if so, there’s a related question: Do blacks act similarly, avoiding black or significantly black neighborhoods for the same reason?

Because of our egalitarian norms and the real wealth and income differences between blacks and whites, it’s easy to conclude that white preference for white neighborhoods is a kind of class discrimination, which we can fix through active, interventionist policy. But in this situation, the answer we might want isn’t the one that’s true. For white homebuyers, race matters, and not just as a proxy for class.

The main vehicles for this finding are a series of experiments from Maria Krysan, a sociologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago. In more than a decade’s worth of studies, Krysan and her collaborators have looked at the relationships among neighborhood desirability, class, and race, drawing from surveys and interviews with whites, blacks, and other groups.

In one experiment Krysan and her researchers developed 13 videos showing five neighborhoods of different social class levels: lower working class, upper working class, blemished middle class, unblemished middle class, and upper middle class. Participants would infer the wealth and income of neighborhoods in the short videos by aesthetic qualities: the size of the lots, the conditions of the homes, and so on. A blemished middle-class neighborhood would have homes with overgrown yards and boarded-up garages, while an unblemished one would have neither.

In addition to class characteristics, Krysan also added people. For four of the five neighborhoods—the fifth was empty, as a control—researchers made three variations. Each one had a different racial composition. In one version of the upper-middle-class video, the residents were white. In another they were black. And in another there was a mix. They would wear the same kinds of clothes and do the same kinds of activities. In private, participants would watch the videos—with random assignments for the racial composition—and then rate them in terms of home costs, property upkeep, safety, future property values, and school quality.

For all participants, white and black, class mattered. The wealthier the neighborhood—as inferred by characteristics—the higher the rank. But for whites race was a major influence. “Whites who saw an all-White neighborhood ranked the neighborhood significantly more positively than Whites who saw the identical neighborhood with all Black residents,” writes Krysan. And in turn mixed neighborhoods had higher ratings than black ones but lower ratings than the all-white alternatives. This was true in every neighborhood across every dimension other than property upkeep. If whites saw blacks in the unblemished middle-class neighborhood, for example, they assumed more crime and worse schools than if it were all-white. (Indeed, a 2001 study from sociologists Lincoln Quillian and Devah Pager found that reports of crime and disorder increase with the proportion of black residents in a neighborhood even after you control for the actual levels of crime and disorder.)

An earlier experiment using real-life cities had similar results. Researchers asked respondents in four metropolitan areas—Atlanta, Boston, Detroit, and Los Angeles—to rate 23 communities of different incomes, social characteristics, and racial compositions. Again, class matters, but so does race. With more blacks came a lower rating, even when the neighborhood was prosperous.

As for ethnocentrism? In a study of whites who flee, Krysan found that negative stereotypes—and not pro-white feelings—were the “strongest predictor of white-flight attitudes.” The more people believe that blacks will bring crime and poverty, the more likely they are to leave when black families arrive.

Race matters for blacks too, just in different ways. Blacks aren’t averse to black neighbors. In another similar video experiment, blacks gave their highest ratings to mixed-race neighborhoods, followed by black neighborhoods, and ending with white ones. Fear shaped these feelings. For all-black neighborhoods it was fear of official neglect from authorities and elected officials. For all-white ones it was fear of discrimination and unfair treatment from neighbors and others. And while Latinos aren’t the focus in this work, other research finds that “whites prefer living with Latinos over African Americans … [and] Latinos prefer neighborhoods with both a significant proportion of Latinos and whites,” although they prefer integration into all-white areas to integration with black Americans.

What does this all mean? As it stands, segregation is still the rule. And whites in particular live in mostly white neighborhoods, with little if any movement into significantly or even predominantly black areas. If this preference is a proxy for class—if whites don’t oppose black neighbors, just the conditions of black neighborhoods—then integration becomes an easier task: Improve mixed-race and predominantly black neighborhoods—enhancing schools and services—and you attract white buyers, increasing diversity and breaking down our walls of separation.

But to a good degree, this preference is prejudice—a function of anti-black stigma. In which case greater integration—and greater racial equality—is even further away than it looks.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/05/whites_prefer_to_live_with_whites_why_integrating_america_s_neighborhoods.html

Rescue a Friend vs. Eating a Piece of Chocolate

http://www.slate.com/articles/video/video/2015/05/animal_empathy_testing_rats_with_water_and_chocolate_video.html

A Beautiful, Black Ballerina

Misty Copeland continues to defy the odds with grace and poise.

Reasons to Rejoice

If time permits, listen to this podcast interview of Malcolm Gladwell discussing how disadvantages can be turned in your favor.

http://downloads.wired.com/podcasts/assets/underwire/geeksguide150final.mp3

Read the accompanying article in WIRED.com.

http://www.wired.com/2015/05/geeks-guide-malcolm-gladwell/

Well That's Not Good

 From Wired - FEDS SAY THAT BANNED RESEARCHER COMMANDEERED A PLANE 

A security researcher kicked off a United Airlines flight last month after tweeting about security vulnerabilities in its system had previously taken control of an airplane and caused it to briefly fly sideways, according to an application for a search warrant filed by an FBI agent.

Chris Roberts, a security researcher with One World Labs, told the FBI agent during an interview in February that he had hacked the in-flight entertainment system, or IFE, on an airplane and overwrote code on the plane’s Thrust Management Computer while aboard the flight. He was able to issue a climb command and make the plane briefly change course, the document states.

“He stated that he thereby caused one of the airplane engines to climb resulting in a lateral or sideways movement of the plane during one of these flights,” FBI Special Agent Mark Hurley wrote in his warrant application (.pdf). “He also stated that he used Vortex software after comprising/exploiting or ‘hacking’ the airplane’s networks. He used the software to monitor traffic from the cockpit system.”

Hurley filed the search warrant application last month after Roberts was removed from a United Airlines flight from Chicago to Syracuse, New York, because he published a facetious tweet suggesting he might hack into the plane’s network. Upon landing in Syracuse, two FBI agents and two local police officers escorted him from the plane and interrogated him for several hours. They also seized two laptop computers and several hard drives and USB sticks. Although the agents did not have a warrant when they seized the devices, they told Roberts a warrant was pending.

A media outlet in Canada obtained the application for the warrant today and published it online.

The information outlined in the warrant application reveals a far more serious situation than Roberts has previously disclosed.

Roberts had previously told WIRED that he caused a plane to climb during a simulated test on a virtual environment he and a colleague created, but he insisted then that he had not interfered with the operation of a plane while in flight.

He told WIRED that he did access in-flight networks about 15 times during various flights but had not done anything beyond explore the networks and observe data traffic crossing them. According to the FBI affidavit, however, when he mentioned this to agents last February he told them that he also had briefly commandeered a plane during one of those flights.

He told the FBI that the period in which he accessed the in-flight networks more than a dozen times occurred between 2011 and 2014. The affidavit, however, does not indicate exactly which flight he allegedly caused to turn to fly to the side.

He obtained physical access to the networks through the Seat Electronic Box, or SEB. These are installed two to a row, on each side of the aisle under passenger seats, on certain planes. After removing the cover to the SEB by “wiggling and Squeezing the box,” Roberts told agents he attached a Cat6 ethernet cable, with a modified connector, to the box and to his laptop and then used default IDs and passwords to gain access to the inflight entertainment system. Once on that network, he was able to gain access to other systems on the planes.

Reaction in the security community to the new revelations in the affidavit have been harsh. Although Roberts hasn’t been charged yet with any crime, and there are questions about whether his actions really did cause the plane to list to the side or he simply thought they did, a number of security researchers have expressed shock that he attempted to tamper with a plane during a flight.

“I find it really hard to believe but if that is the case he deserves going to jail,” wrote Jaime Blasco, director of AlienVault Labs in a tweet.

Alex Stamos, chief information security officer of Yahoo, wrote in a tweet, “You cannot promote the (true) idea that security research benefits humanity while defending research that endangered hundreds of innocents.”

You cannot promote the (true) idea that security research benefits humanity while defending research that endangered hundreds of innocents

— Alex Stamos (@alexstamos) May 16, 2015

Roberts, reached by phone after the FBI document was made public, told WIRED that he had already seen it last month but wasn’t expecting it to go public today.

“My biggest concern is obviously with the multiple conversations that I had with the authorities,” he said. “I’m obviously concerned those were held behind closed doors and apparently they’re no longer behind closed doors.”

Although he wouldn’t respond directly to questions about whether he had hacked that previous flight mentioned in the affidavit, he said the paragraph in the FBI document discussing this is out of context.

“That paragraph that’s in there is one paragraph out of a lot of discussions, so there is context that is obviously missing which obviously I can’t say anything about,” he said. “It would appear from what I’ve seen that the federal guys took one paragraph out of a lot of discussions and a lot of meetings and notes and just chose that one as opposed to plenty of others.”

History of Researching Planes

Roberts began investigating aviation security about six years ago after he and a research colleague got hold of publicly available flight manuals and wiring diagrams for various planes. The documents showed how inflight entertainment systems one some planes were connected to the passenger satellite phone network, which included functions for operating some cabin control systems. These systems were in turn connected to the plane avionics systems. They built a test lab using demo software obtained from infotainment vendors and others in order to explore what they could to the networks.

In 2010, Roberts gave a presentation about hacking planes and cars at the BSides security conference in Las Vegas. Another presentation followed two years later. He also spoke directly to airplane manufacturers about the problems with their systems. “We had conversations with two main airplane builders as well as with two of the top providers of infotainment systems and it never went anywhere,” he told WIRED last month.

Last February, the FBI in Denver, where Roberts is based, requested a meeting. They discussed his research for an hour, and returned a couple weeks later for a discussion that lasted several more hours. They wanted to know what was possible and what exactly he and his colleague had done. Roberts disclosed that he and his colleague had sniffed the data traffic on more than a dozen flights after connecting their laptops to the infotainment networks.

“We researched further than that,” he told WIRED last month. “We were within the fuel balancing system and the thrust control system. We watched the packets and data going across the network to see where it was going.”

Eventually, Roberts and his research partner determined that it would take a convoluted set of hacks to seriously subvert an avionics system, but they believed it could be done. He insisted to WIRED last month, however, that they did not “mess around with that except on simulation systems.” In simulations, for example, Roberts said they were able to turn the engine controls from cruise to climb, “which definitely had the desired effect on the system—the plane sped up and the nose of the airplane went up.”

Today he would not respond to questions about the new allegations from the FBI that he also messed with the systems during a real flight.

The Tweet Heard Round the World

Roberts never heard from the FBI again after that February visit. His recent troubles began after he sent out a Tweet on April 15 while aboard a United Airlines flight from Denver to Chicago. After news broke about a report from the Government Accountability Office revealing that passenger Wi-Fi networks on some Boeing and Airbus planes could allow an attacker to gain access to avionics systems and commandeer a flight, Roberts published a Tweet that said, “Find myself on a 737/800, lets see Box-IFE-ICE-SATCOM,? Shall we start playing with EICAS messages? ‘PASS OXYGEN ON’ Anyone?” He punctuated the tweet with a smiley face.

Find myself on a 737/800, lets see Box-IFE-ICE-SATCOM, ? Shall we start playing with EICAS messages? "PASS OXYGEN ON" Anyone ? 

— Chris Roberts (@Sidragon1) April 15, 2015

The tweet was meant as a sarcastic joke; a reference to how he had tried for years to get Boeing and Airbus to heed warnings about security issues with their passenger communications systems. His tweet about the Engine Indicator Crew Alert System, or EICAS, was a reference to research he’d done years ago on vulnerabilities in inflight infotainment networks, vulnerabilities that could allow an attacker to access cabin controls and deploy a plane’s oxygen masks.

In response to his tweet, someone else tweeted to him “…aaaaaand you’re in jail. :)”

Roberts responded with, “There IS a distinct possibility that the course of action laid out above would land me in an orange suite [sic] rather quickly :)”

When an employee with United Airlines’ Cyber Security Intelligence Department became aware of the tweet, he contacted the FBI and told agents that Roberts would be on a second flight going from Chicago to Syracuse. Although the particular plane Roberts was on at the time the agents seized him in New York was not equipped with an inflight entertainment system like the kind he had previously told the FBI he had hacked, the plane he had flown earlier from Denver to Chicago did have the same system.

When an FBI agent later examined that Denver-to-Chicago plane after it landed in another city the same day, he found that the SEBs under the seats where Roberts had been sitting “showed signs of tampering,” according to the affidavit. Roberts had been sitting in seat 3A and the SEB under 2A, the seat in front of him, “was damaged.”

“The outer cover of the box was open approximately 1/2 inch and one of the retaining screws was not seated and was exposed,” FBI Special Agent Hurley wrote in his affidavit.

During the interrogation in Syracuse, Roberts told the agents that he had not compromised the network on the United flight from Denver to Chicago. He advised them, however, that he was carrying thumb drives containing malware to compromise networks—malware that he told them was “nasty.” Also on his laptop were schematics for the wiring systems of a number of airplane models. All of this would be standard, however, for a security researcher who conducts penetration-testing and research for a living.

Nonetheless, based on all of the information that agents had gleaned from their previous interview with Roberts in February as well as the Tweets he’d sent out that day and the apparent signs of tampering on the United flight, the FBI believed that Roberts “had the ability and the willingness to use the equipment then with him to access or attempt to access the IFE and possibly the flight control systems on any aircraft equipped with an IFE systems, and that it would endanger public safety to allow him to leave the Syracuse airport that evening with that equipment.”

When asked by WIRED if he ever connected his laptop to the SEB on his flight from Denver to Chicago, Roberts said, “Nope I did not. That I’m happy to say and I’ll stand from the top of the tallest tower and yell that one.”

He also questions the FBI’s assessment that the boxes showed signs of tampering.

“Those boxes are underneath the seats. How many people shove luggage and all sorts of things under there?,” he said. “I’d be interested if they looked at the boxes under all the other seats and if they looked like they had been tampered. How many of them are broken and cracked or have scuff marks? How many of those do the airlines replace because people shove things under there?”

Regardless of whether the authorities have a case against him, however, there has already been some fallout from the incident. Roberts told WIRED that today investors on the board of directors of One World Labs, a company he helped found, decided to withdraw their investments in the company. As a result, One World Labs had to lay off about a dozen employees today, half of its staff.

Roberts said there were other factors contributing to the board’s decision but his legal situation “was probably the final straw.”

“The board has deemed it a risk. So that was one factor in many that made their decision,” he said. “Their decision was not to fund the organization any further.”

http://www.wired.com/2015/05/feds-say-banned-researcher-commandeered-plane/

Happy Times

https://www.thegrommet.com/collections/top-shared/happy-mat

It's also available at Amazon.

When Is It Cheating?

From The Root - 

Tom Brady and the Privilege of Whiteness

If the New England Patriots’ quarterback were black, the conversation wouldn’t be about NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell or the system but how the lack of a work ethic and morals led him to cut corners. 

BY: DAVID J. LEONARD

Posted: May 16 2015 3:00 AM

 

Tom Brady 

AL BELLO/GETTY IMAGES

Editor’s note: This piece was first published at New Black Man (in Exile).

Tom Brady demonstrates the unflinching power of whiteness in contemporary America. Black people are punished and demonized for cheating. White men like Tom Brady get to do all sorts of s--t for a competitive edge, and they are gaming the system. This is yet another demonstration of white privilege.

Recently the NFL released the Wells Report, which concluded that Tom Brady—America’s quarterback, its golden boy, Giselle’s husband and the man who “shut up” Richard Sherman with a 2015 Super Bowl victory—was a cheater. Commissioned by the NFL, the Wells Report (pdf) looked into accusations that members of the Patriots organization conspired to circumvent league rules governing game balls. Specifically, it found the following:

* “It is more probable than not that New England Patriots personnel participated in violations of the playing rules and were involved in a deliberate effort to circumvent the rules.”

* “Based on the evidence, it also is our view that it is more probable than not that Tom Brady ... was at least generally aware of the inappropriate activities involving the release of air from Patriots game balls.”

Yet the narrative that emerged has focused on how, at worst, he made a mistake; that if the accusations were indeed true, it was a lapse in judgment, since Brady has “integrity” and is a “good boy.”

More common has been a focus on an unfair and arbitrary process, on the morally bankrupt NFL and the fascism of Commissioner Roger Goodell. Indeed, it seems, Tom Brady is the first player to deal with an unjust system, to endure the hypocrisy of Goodell’s NFL. Their selective outrage is telling.

If he were black, people would be calling him a criminal and saying that his behavior reflected some innate values. They would blame hip-hop, single mothers and the culture of poverty. If he were a black player, the conversation wouldn’t be about Goodell or the system but how the lack of a work ethic and morals led him to cut corners, to win “by any means necessary.” If he were black, the conversation would turn to affirmative action and how he was forced to cheat because he lacked the skills needed to excel at this elite level.

But Tom Brady is white. No wonder the report and the announcement of a four-game suspension have led many into the virtual streets:

“Tom Brady’s Life Matters”

“An Outrage”

“An Injustice”

“An Unjust Ruling”

“A Capricious Rule”

“Unfair and Arbitrary” 

Sean Gregory, channeling narratives about white victimhood, wrote, “It’s actually pretty easy to pick on the cool kid. You don’t come across as a bully.” No, it’s pretty easy to brutalize the poor and to abuse the powerless; it’s easy to take a black life and then blame the person for his own death.

Many have asked, “What’s the big deal? It wasn’t much of advantage, and besides, he has won plenty without such advantage.”

Others have acknowledged that he may have violated an NFL rule, but is it a rule that really matters? Besides, everyone is doing it. As sports commentator Jim Rome has long said, “If you are not cheating, you are not trying.” But if you are white, cheating is not really cheating but merely an effort to get an edge, to garner a competitive advantage, and is no big deal.

No harm, no foul.

For white athletes like Brady, what happens in the locker room is supposed to stay in the locker room.

For black athletes, cheating—whether taking performance-enhancing drugs or taking “easy-A classes”—is a sign of moral and communal failure.

Just months ago, Little League Baseball stripped Jackie Robinson West of its title because of allegations of cheating. Although JRW violated a ridiculous and arbitrary rule in allowing a few kids from outside the district to play on the team, a punishment was deemed warranted and necessary.

Many within the sports media and the public fomented outrage. “Rules are rules,” we were told. There is no excuse for cheating and not following the established rule. It doesn’t matter that everyone is doing it. It didn’t matter that the kids from Jackie Robinson West didn’t get an advantage. Rules are rules, and if you break them, there are consequences.

The punishment directed at JRW was necessary, we were told, because it sent a message to kids that cheating has consequences. But I guess these same concerns don’t apply to Tom Brady and the Patriots. Their cheating isn’t a sign of eroding values; their wanton disregard for the rules isn’t a threat to our moral fabric.

But what about the kids? You would think by the very different responses that Tom Brady is not a role model.

“The truth is that many Americans have a dishearteningly high tolerance for cheating in professional sports,” writes the Chicago Tribune. “We dismiss the evidence. We make excuses. Sammy didn’t know that bat was corked! Who can prove all those players used steroids? Everyone puts a bit of Vaseline on the ball now and then. What’s the big deal about letting a little air out of a football?”

This separate and racially unequal acceptance of “cheating” extends beyond the sporting landscape. Look no further than what Michelle Alexander terms the “New Jim Crow.” According to the American Bar Association, while blacks account for 14 percent of all drug users, they make up 34 percent of all drug arrests and a whopping 53 percent of those given prison sentences for a drug offense. White kids getting high, popping Adderall and selling dime bags is nothing to worry about. Their cheating, or law breaking, is neither a threat nor seen as in need of punishment.

Whereas black drug dealers are dangerous thugs, white Wall Street executives are smart businessmen working under the rules of capitalism.

Whereas black kids taking diapers are looters, those who have stolen land, resources and so much more are patriots.

For Brady, and white America as a whole, we have been told over and over again that there needs to be proof, indisputable evidence that “America’s golden boy” is a cheater. 

Brady demonstrates yet again that whites are innocent ... until proved innocent. Any evidence to the contrary proves that the system is flawed, that we have a miscarriage of justice. 

And don’t even come at him with circumstantial evidence. In a nation where video after video of white police officers killing unarmed black men and women has not prompted arrest, much less conviction, circumstantial evidence has little chance of penetrating the Teflon power of whiteness.

If only the same rules applied to Barry Bonds, who, to date, has never tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs.

If only the same rules applied to Freddie Gray, who looked at an officer funny in the wrong way, prompting his arrest and ultimate death.

In 2012 Tom Brady got into a heated argument with an assistant coach. It was dismissed as no big deal and a sign of his “passion for the game,” and he remained the league’s golden boy. Compare this with endless examples of black athletes who have routinely been demonized in any instance when they challenged their coach. When Brady talks trash to his opponents, it is a sign of his competitiveness; Richard Sherman, on the other hand, is a “thug” who doesn’t respect the game.

The racial double standards are endless. It is no wonder that Brady and his supporters are outraged. He’s being penalized despite playing by the rules of America’s ultimate game, where white is always right.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2015/05/tom_brady_and_the_privilege_of_whiteness.3.html

When Speaking the Truth Hurts

From The Root - 

For Black Scholars at PWIs, Speaking Truth to Power on Social Media Can Be ‘Professional Suicide’

In the wake of Boston University condemning incoming professor Saida Grundy for her controversial tweets on race, black scholars are speaking out about the pressures they face not to “rock the boat” at their institutions and on social media.

BY: KIRSTEN WEST SAVALI

Posted: May 16 2015 3:00 AM

 

THINKSTOCK

African-American scholars at predominantly white institutions are faced with a challenge that resonates from the streets of Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., all the way to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.: Tiptoe lightly around white supremacy or face consequences.

Saida Grundy, an incoming associate professor of sociology and African-American studies at Boston University, faced swift condemnation this week for her tweets about slavery and the generations of self-entitled white men that the peculiar institution spawned, proving that social media is riddled with land mines for young, black academics. Despite her widespread support, organized with the hashtag #IStandWithSaida, Robert A. Brown, president of Boston University, released a statementcondemning Grundy’s tweets as racist and bigoted, followed by Grundy’s releasing a statement expressing regret that she expressed herself “indelicately,” while not walking back the substance of her critique.

She has continued to face vicious backlash for her statement, mostly from white Twitter users directed to her page by various conservative news organizations, and sparks from the fire she inadvertently started have even burned other people. Chanda Hsu Prescod-Weinstein, an MLK postdoctoral fellow in physics at MIT, tells The Root that expressing support for Grundy has proved problematic for her over the past week.

“I've been getting all sorts of grief on Twitter for talking about ‘white folks’ and ‘white supremacy’ in relation to Dr. Saida Grundy,” Prescod-Weinstein says. “Someone on Twitter tagged MIT to try and get me in trouble.

"I don't have a faculty position,” she continues, “so the public character assassination could have serious professional repercussions for me.”

According to black professors who shared their experiences with me, this difficult dance of what’s appropriate to say on and off social media as it pertains to racism is not new, and it is shadowed by the ever-present question of just how black one is allowed to be when navigating predominantly and traditionally white spaces. They are often charged with shaping the minds of privileged, white students while remaining plugged into the struggles of black America that are increasingly being discussed in 140 characters or less. Constantly bracing themselves for punishment does not make that any easier.

Kiese Laymon, an associate professor of English at Vassar College, recently faced heavy criticism of his own after his essay exposing racial profiling at Vassar went viral. He has also faced censorship from the college for statements he’s made on Facebook about “white tears.” Because he holds a tenured position, he tells The Root that he has more career security than Grundy, but remains empathetic to the precarious position in which she finds herself.

“I can't imagine coming into a job as a young black woman to a PWI [predominantly white institution] where the administration, the students nor the faculty have done the education to start with, and now you're coming in on double parole,” Laymon says. “It's terror and terrifying.”

Laymon, who is also author of How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America and Long Division,contends that predominantly white institutions often feel that black scholars owe them a debt of gratitude that requires they speak very carefully on issues of race both inside and outside the ivory tower.

“Black students and faculty at these places are often treated like we’re lucky to be here from trifling and well-meaning white faculty, staff and students,” Laymon says. “And yes, I think it’s another example of this destructive racial bargain where most of us don’t come from much money, and a lot of folks have kids, or extended family who rely on them, so you’re supposed to only deal with white racial superiority theoretically or in your classroom.”

“But we’re never ever to hold the administrators and colleagues accountable. And then you hear lots of us talking about, ‘Wait until I get tenure.’ By that time, the racial terror and the hazing is already effective, and tenure isn’t the final level of promotion,” the tenured Laymon continues. “So there are all these incentives to let people treat you, your students, your colleagues like [n--gers].”

Unfortunately, it appears as if black educators are expected to play the role of the help, reminding white students and reinforcing for white administrators that “they is kind, they is smart and they is important.” Even when black scholars engage in conversations on social media, it has become clear that nothing should shatter that myth.

Treva B. Lindsey, an assistant professor of women’s, gender and sexuality studies at Ohio State University, echoes Laymon’s sentiments that tenure is the brass ring that’s held just out of reach, ready to be snatched away at the hint of radical blackness in inconvenient places.

“As a tenure-track junior scholar of color at a predominantly white institution, I often think about my complicated relationship to the ivory tower,” Lindsey says. “Almost daily, I struggle with the question of voice, both inside and outside of the classroom, and in my scholarship. The struggle, however, is not primarily about whether I should use my black feminist voice, but to what extent I should expect virulent pushback from my institution and those engaging my work when I accurately discuss the realities of patriarchy, white supremacy, anti-black and brown racism, transphobia, homoantagonism, imperialism, colonialism, the BDS movement, or Islamophobia on social media?
  

“Should I concern myself with if and how someone will decontextualize a 140-character statement about anti-black state violence and demand my school fire me because of my ‘reverse racist’ or ‘bigoted views?’” she adds.

This, of course, is what happened to Grundy, and both Laymon and Lindsey have voiced support for the beleaguered professor. The same cannot be said, however, for Daryl Scott, professor of history at Howard University and president of the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History.

In a lengthy Facebook post, Scott said he had always been concerned with the potential for social media to be a dangerous place, particularly for passionate, young black scholars, but he “assumed when those two world[s] collided, folks would tamp down their personal and ideological fire when basic employment was at stake.” Scott further stated that Grundy’s was a “cautionary tale” of what happens when anti-respectability politics, particularly when engaged by black scholars, run headfirst into employment at white institutions.

“Take it from me,” Scott wrote, “a red tooth and claw may mean you made a meal of your opponent, but not even your friends will agree with your table manners, and they will disown you in polite company.”

Some people on social media took offense at Scott’s posts, believing them to be victim-blaming Grundy, while also privileging respectability over authentic and honest scholarship. When I reached out to him, so that he could expound on his statements, Scott said that he did not want to silence Grundy; he just didn’t want her to commit “professional suicide” on Twitter.

“I am not calling for scholars, especially when they are teaching, to silence themselves—far from it,” Scott wrote to me. “My position is that one should take care to give as nuanced an explanation of one’s positions as possible. I do think that academics have made a mistake of thinking the academy is the front line of the struggle. Typically we oppose respectability politics in society at large while engaging in respectability politics to get tenure and promotion. It appears that a younger generation of scholars is not willing to curb their style and advocacy in the place of employment.

“Is the academy the front line of our struggle, or is it the rear? I hold it is the rear, and I also hold the most important work we can do is not speaking truth to power, but organizing to disrupt and overturn power. Much of what goes on today in the academy is posturing for attention, not trying to effect social change. Let’s find the weak points in systems oppressing us rather than satisfying ourselves with denouncing it.”

Scott’s position, at turns both condescending and well-intentioned, may hold some merit, but it easy to see why young, black scholars who engage in scholarship outside of the cocoon of the academy may not agree. Instead, it is viewed as being held hostage by institutional expectations and restrictions that may help their white students, but not their black communities. That is the intense turmoil in which these educators seem to find themselves, not merely whether or not they can advance their careers.

“I will not self-silence while injustice pervades,” Lindsay says. “Material consequences for being outspoken exist, but I could not endure the moral consequences of not being a voice in the world.”

There are several questions that we can ask here: What does revolution look like and where can it take place? Can respectability ever be used as strategy? Is it possible to dismantle systemic racism while, to some degree, being financially dependent on the institutions which breed perpetrators of it?

From a two-party political system, which often ignores the plight of black America, to corporate America, which profits from poverty remaining the status quo in communities of color, these questions remain the same, each sector serving as evidence of the far-reaching and all-encompassing nature of white supremacy and its hold on society at large.

Clearly, these scholars are grappling with the professional and personal risks and benefits of having complicated discussions about that very thing on social media, while daring to color outside the rigid lines of the academy. Time will tell if they will ever be allowed to step down from the ivory tower and into cyberspace, or if freedom of speech for them will always be limited by restrictive codes of conduct and defined by what’s on their approved syllabi.

http://www.theroot.com/articles/culture/2015/05/black_scholars_at_pwis_face_censorship_when_talking_about_race_on_social.html?wpisrc=newsletter_jcr%3Acontent%26

12 Angry Men (1997) Trailer (Ossie Davis, George C. Scott, Jack Lemmon)

One of my all-time favorite movies.

This 1997 film is a remake of one made in 1957 with the same title.

It's available on Amazon and YouTube.

Southern Rites (HBO Documentary Films)

A Tribute to BB King

From Slate - 

Listen to the medley of songs on the clip.  I'm not a blues fan, but I think you'll agree, this is good stuff.

Side note - I saw BB live in Miami in the late 70s, and I was shocked that I was only one of three blacks in the audience.  The room was packed with young white kids.

B.B. King’s Greatest Performance

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The three-song medley at the heart of his masterpiece may be the best 12 minutes of live musical performance ever recorded.

By Jack Hamilton

B.B. King performs in Germany in 1971.

"B. B. King, Audimax Uni Hamburg, November 1971 (Heinrich Klaffs Collection 56)" by Heinrich Klaffs. Licensed under CC BY-SA 1.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

B.B. King, a titan of American music who died Thursday at 89 years old, lived for so long, did so much, and was so deeply woven into our cultural fabric that it was easy to take him for granted. “The King of the Blues,” he was called, although too often in the offhanded and unthinking tone in which people call Budweiser the King of Beers. King was a singer and guitar player of unfathomable depth and dimension, and his music was a watershed: In the middle part of the 20thcentury, no performer so effortlessly melded country blues to the more urban, “modern” sounds of post–World War II rhythm and blues than King: not Muddy Waters, not Howlin’ Wolf, not the still-missed Bobby “Blue” Bland. Already on his first major hit, 1951’s “3 O’Clock Blues,” King exemplified this fusion in spades: the urbane and jazz-inflected guitar playing, the lush and billowing horns, the vocal performance that seems to channel Lonnie Johnson and Blind Lemon Jefferson out of one lung, Jimmy Rushing and Frank Sinatra out of the other.

Writing about 89-plus years of B.B. King’s life quickly starts to feel like writing a history of American pop music itself—he spent his boyhood picking cotton in the Mississippi Delta and his twilight years as a capitalized National Treasure, a living metonym for the blues. So instead I will write about a scant 12 minutes of B.B. King’s life, the three-song medley of “Sweet Little Angel,” “It’s My Own Fault,” and “How Blue Can You Get?” that sprawls over the first side of King’s masterpiece, Live at the Regal. This medley is, in my completely subjective and admittedly grief-stricken opinion, the greatest 12 minutes of live musical performance ever recorded. It should be mandatory listening today, and for everyone of every generation to come.
Live at the Regal, recorded at Chicago’s Regal Theater in 1964 and released in 1965, kicks off, first, with a blisteringly fast rendition of “Every Day I Have the Blues.” The dust settles and the crowd is already convulsing; the band starts noodling behind B.B., who announces his intention to go back and “pick up some of the real old blues. If we should happen to play one that you remember, let us know it by making some noise.” Noise shall soon be made.

“Sweet Little Angel” comes in like a thunderbolt. B.B. plucks an ascending triplet line, drummer Sonny Freeman detonates his snare drum on the downbeat, and we’re off. B.B. plays an opening chorus of guitar solo, then leans into the first verse. “I’ve got a sweet little angel/ I love the way she spreads her wings,” he croons, a line that’s older than the Delta soil but sounds newly exquisite each time you hear it. (A quick, woefully incomplete genealogy: Lucille Bogan sang, “I’ve got a sweet black angel/ I like the way he spreads his wings,” on 1930’s “Black Angel Blues,” probably the earliest recorded instance of the line. King claimed to have nicked the phrase from Robert Nighthawk, who recorded his own version of “Black Angel Blues” but changed the name to “Sweet Black Angel.” The Rolling Stones then borrowed that title—after their 1969 tour with King—for their tribute to Angela Davis on 1972’s Exile on Main St. A mindboggling amount of musical history ran through and around B.B. King.)

It’s 1964, and B.B.-mania is in full swing.

King was 39 when he recorded Live at the Regal—not exactly a spring chicken, but he was at the apex of his abilities as a singer. His control on “Sweet Little Angel” is virtuosic, shifting from gospel belt to sultry croon to his swooping, heavenly falsetto. His voice quivers, growls, thrills, teeters on the brink of combustion. “Sweet Little Angel” is a song of tribute and awed devotion—“I asked my baby for a nickel/ and she gave me a $20 bill”—until we hit the last verse. “If my baby quit me, I do believe I would die/ If you don’t love me, little angel/ Please tell me the reason why.” A plot-twist ending: It’s a goddamn breakup song. And right as the realization hits, the guitar solo comes in, and the whole world falls away.

No one has ever played electric guitar quite like B.B. King—what he lacked in technical chops he made up for with gifts of melody, phrasing, and cerebral precision that, among improvisational soloists, place him in the company of Miles Davis and no one else. The solo coming out of “Sweet Little Angel” is a masterpiece of tone, range, and above all restraint. The spaces between King’s phrases are as thrilling as the phrases themselves; he lingers and sustains where a less assured musician would dash to the next idea; his mastery of dynamics is so complete that each string seems to have its own voice, and its own breath. Every note is perfect from the moment it appears to the moment it recedes.

And he’s just getting started. As King’s solo ends, the band keeps playing the groove, the great pianist Duke Jethro sprinkling fills as B.B. works the crowd with stage patter. Soon they go into “It’s My Own Fault,” a hammy catalog of romantic misbehavior: “She used to make her own paychecks/ and bring them on home to me/ I would go out on the hillside/ and make every woman drunk.” A tenor saxophone weaves call-and-response with King’s vocal, Sonny Freeman cracks the two and four with increasing ferocity. On the heels of the last verse, King takes another guitar solo, this one gnarlier and more flamboyant than the last, with scalding 16th-note runs nestled against what is now an avalanche of female screams. It’s 1964, and B.B.-mania is in full swing. Pulling out of the turnaround, the band modulates up a half-step, into the medley’s closing number, “How Blue Can You Get?”

B.B. instructs the audience to “pay attention to the lyrics, not so much my singing or the band,” then rips off yet another chorus of guitar solo that revels in the absurdity of this request. And the lyrics aren’t even that good: As blues standards go, “How Blue Can You Get?” is a little too direct, too single-entendre, its famous opening line—“I’ve been downhearted, baby/ ever since the day we met”—bereft of the vague, sumptuous poetry of a couplet like “I’ve got a sweet little angel/ I love the way she spreads her wings.”

But good Lord, does B.B. sell this one. “How Blue Can You Get?” on Live at the Regal is pure incendiary ecstasy, all the way through to its shattering, stop-time climax. Everyone in this club knows this song; everyone in this club is reacting as though it is being written on the spot. When we reach the song’s applause line—“I gave you seven children/ and now you want to give them back” (God, who says this to someone?)—B.B. leans into “gaaave” with such force it seems to upend the whole building.

“How Blue Can You Get?” doesn’t end so much as collapse into a heap of exhaustion. The crowd goes berserk, the only conceivable response to 12 minutes of music that does just about everything one could ever hope music to do. John Lennon once described the blues as “a chair, not a design for a chair or a better chair. … You sit on that music.” Somewhere right now B.B. King is sitting on that chair, like a throne.

Tough Girls

This 12 minute video features two female Chinese bodyguards in training.

http://www.vice.com/video/chinas-elite-female-body-guards-015

Nap Time

He Said, "Yes"

One of the most incredible people to come across my path, was the doctor who agreed to take Ben on as a patient when we were trying to get him moved from Forth Worth, Texas back home to Sacramento.

He said, "Yes."

You see, when Ben had his horrific accident, he was in a trauma center - the wonderful John P Smith Hospital in Forth Worth - for a month, then he was transferred to a rehabilitation hospital for another month, and then he was moved to a nursing home for a few days, five to be exact.

When it was clear the insurance would not cover more than a month at the rehab hospital, the search was on to find someplace where Ben could get the medical attention he needed until he was well enough to get him back home.

The only options we had were nursing homes.

I've said this before, but it's worth repeating - you never want to see your child in a nursing home.

He did move into a nursing home, but I vowed to do everything I could to get him out of there as soon as possible.

So, when a move was inevitable, I began the search for a doctor in Sacramento who would accept Ben as a patient.  That's the only way his insurance coverage would continue.

I called every doctor I knew, but no one was willing to accept Ben because he was a multiple trauma patient.  The risks were still high that things could go wrong.

Of course I shared this need with everyone I knew, and a dear friend mentioned it to her kids, one of whom was neighbor to the head of trauma at UC Davis Hospital in Sacramento.

I called this doctor and talked to him about the many surgeries Ben had already had (about half of the 23 surgeries he would have in total).  He spoke with the doctors in Forth Worth and reviewed his medical files.  Then I asked him to take Ben on as a patient, and  . . .

He said, "Yes."

And it wasn't a reluctant "yes," but a wholehearted one.

A "willing to do whatever it takes" kind of "yes."

And so, five days after he arrived at the nursing home, Ben checked out.  My brother Terry and Frankie rented a large SUV, put the seats down in the back, made a makeshift bed, got Ben inside, and drove him virtually nonstop to Sacramento.

Now I need to mention that Ben couldn't walk.  His pelvis was broken, along with one of his legs.  He had rods protruding from his pelvic area that formed a kind of halo like you see with people who have head injuries.

The day after Ben arrived, Dr. W called to check on him.

He called me.

Now he had accepted Ben as a patient sight unseen, and we hadn't met yet, but he called to see how Ben was.

I was so grateful for this incredibly kind gesture, which would be the first of many.

A few days after Ben got home, he couldn't hold down food, so I contacted Dr. W and he directed us to the hospital and navigated us through the system to get in as quickly as possible.

That's when we met for the first time.

When I say this man was a Godsend, I mean it in every sense of the word.  He was our miracle.

Ben was hospitalized off and on at UC Davis for the next year and a half.

And with every hospitalization, Dr. W was there making sure Ben was OK.  He was there, calling me, making sure I understood what was happening, and providing comfort and peace of mind when the surgeries seem like they would never end.

Although it's been almost ten years since the accident, it feels like yesterday.

How do you thank someone who saved your life?  Or the life of a loved one?

How do you thank someone for the kindness, generosity and expertise that saved your child?

How do you express the gratitude of a lifetime?

If I said thank you every day for the rest of my life, it would not begin to convey the gratitude and appreciation I have for Dr. W for what he did for Ben, for us.

I hope that in this simple gesture of posting this, the world will know just how wonderful this doctor . . . this man, is.

Dr. W . . .

From Ben, Frankie, and the entire Sharpe family . . .

A million thanks!!!





 

Choosing Optimism

http://www.upworthy.com/allow-this-post-to-make-you-happy-with-science?c=upw1&u=6861cbea6edfdfe5a709ee39ad3c14b64135e61f