Black Brass

An excerpt from the NY Times - 

‘Is Austin on Your List?’: Biden’s Pentagon Pick Rose Despite Barriers to Diversity

With retired Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III’s nomination to be the first Black defense secretary, the Pentagon comes face to face with its record as a place where people of color struggle to climb. 

By Helene Cooper

WASHINGTON — Retired Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, who is on the brink of becoming the first Black man to be secretary of defense, rose to the heights of an American military whose largely white leadership has not reflected the diversity of its rank and file.

For much of his career, General Austin was accustomed to white men at the top. But a crucial turning point — and a key to his success — came a decade ago, when General Austin and a small group of African-American men populated the military’s most senior ranks.

As a tall and imposing lieutenant general with a habit of referring to himself in the third person, General Austin was the director of the Joint Staff, one of the most powerful behind-the-scenes positions in the military. His No. 2 was also a Black man, Bruce Grooms, a Navy submariner and rear admiral. Larry O. Spencer was a lieutenant general who was the arbiter of which war-fighting commands around the world got the best resources. Dennis L. Via was a three-star general who ran the communications security protocols across the military.

And Darren W. McDew, a major general and aviator with 3,000 flight hours, was a vice director overseeing the plans the Joint Staff churns out.

At one point in 2010, the men thought they should capture the moment for posterity since nothing like that had happened before and likely would not happen again. They summoned the man who had made it happen, their boss, Adm. Mike Mullen, President Barack Obama’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, into a room for a photo.

“What is this about?” Admiral Mullen asked when he walked in.

“History,” General McDew replied.

From left, Brig. Gen. Michael T. Harrison, Lt. Gen. Larry O. Spencer,
Lt. Gen. Dennis L. Via, Adm. Mike Mullen, Lt. Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III,
Rear Adm. Bruce Grooms and Maj. Gen. Darren W. McDew in 2010.
Most of these men went on to higher ranks.Credit...via Darren W. McDew

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/us/politics/biden-lloyd-austin-defense-secretary.html?referringSource=articleShare

Viola Davis: The 60 Minutes Interview

https://youtu.be/2wamHj6w2Mo

O Christmas Tree (O Tannenbaum) - Fingerstyle

Carnival: Behind the Scenes

Let's talk about $50,000 in student debt forgiveness....

Michelle Obama's Best Advice For Students | How To Succeed In Life

Take a Seat in the Harvard MBA Case Classroom

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7iwXvBnbIE&t=504s

Look What Happens When You Spin This Cake

Kanneh-Mason Family play Ave Maria (with Hobbit intro) at Bath Festival ...

Agreed?

From Time - 

The 10 Best Movies Based on a True Story

By the Time Staff

https://time.com/5910721/best-movies-based-on-true-story/ 

The First DACA Rhodes Scholar

An excerpt from CNN - 

This student just became the first Latino DACA recipient to win the Rhodes Scholarship. He says it's all because of his elementary school teacher

By Nora Neus, CNN

(CNN)  In second grade, Santiago Potes walked into Marina Esteva's gifted and talented classroom at Sweetwater Elementary School in Miami, Florida, for the first time.

He was an undocumented immigrant from Colombia who entered the country when he was 4 years old. Esteva said she quickly noticed his intelligence and wanted to nurture him toward success.

Now, Potes is the first Latino DACA recipient to be awarded a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship.

On Saturday, the Rhodes Trust announced that Potes, a 2020 graduate of Columbia University in New York, would be one of the 2021 Rhodes Scholars.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/26/us/santiago-potes-latino-daca-rhodes-scholarship/index.html

Jamie Foxx's Emotional Speech On His Father's Incarceration | The Graha...

Redemption Song (Arr. Kanneh-Mason)

Obama on masculinity: 'You don't need eight women around you twerking'

Top Black Grad!

 An excerpt from Black Enterprise - 

STUDENT WHO TOOK 21 AP COURSES BECOMES THE FIRST BLACK MALE VALEDICTORIAN AT HIS HIGH SCHOOL

by BLACK ENTERPRISE Editors

Congratulations Rawlin Lee Tate Jr. This is something to be truly proud of! 🎓🎆 https://t.co/jObG4Uo7sb

— Jennifer Jones Newbill (she/her/hers) ✨ (@JenNewbill) November 17, 2020

https://www.blackenterprise.com/student-who-took-21-ap-courses-becomes-the-first-black-male-valedictorian-at-his-high-school/ 

Almost Christmas (2017) - Inviting the Mistress to Dinner Scene (8/10) |...

JERUSALEMA Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra & Jazzart Dance Theatre

One Night in Miami... | Official Trailer

No Licking!

Oh hi, moose. We have strict instructions about your snack habits. #jasper #Alberta 🇨🇦 pic.twitter.com/xSNo7YBrXS

— Carolyn Campbell (@_CLCampbell) November 15, 2020

https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/22/americas/canada-warns-moose-lick-cars-trnd/index.html 

 

Even the Robots Are Biased

 An excerpt from the NY Times - 

Can We Make Our Robots Less Biased Than We Are?

A.I. developers are committing to end the injustices in how their technology is often made and used.

By David Berreby

Chris S. Crawford, a computer scientist at the University of Alabama. “I personally was in Silicon Valley when some of these technologies were being developed,” he said, and more than once, “I would sit down and they would test it on me, and it wouldn’t work. And I was like, You know why it’s not working, right?”Credit...Wes Frazer for The New York Times

Over the past decade, evidence has accumulated that “bias is the original sin of A.I,” Dr. Howard notes in her 2020 audiobook, “Sex, Race and Robots.” Facial-recognition systems have been shown to be more accurate in identifying white faces than those of other people. (In January, one such system told the Detroit police that it had matched photos of a suspected thief with the driver’s license photo of Robert Julian-Borchak Williams, a Black man with no connection to the crime.)

There are A.I. systems enabling self-driving cars to detect pedestrians — last year Benjamin Wilson of Georgia Tech and his colleagues found that eight such systems were worse at recognizing people with darker skin tones than paler ones. Joy Buolamwini, the founder of the Algorithmic Justice League and a graduate researcher at the M.I.T. Media Lab, has encountered interactive robots at two different laboratories that failed to detect her. (For her work with such a robot at M.I.T., she wore a white mask in order to be seen.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/22/science/artificial-intelligence-robots-racism-police.html