Commentary: African American Scientists and Inventors
by Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
Throughout his life, Hyman Y. Chase was a man of great intellectual stature who liked to remind mere mortals, in a booming voice, that he had a PhD from Leland J. Stanford University. In 1936, at the age of 34, he was appointed Chairman of Howard University’s Zoology Department, which was financed by the Julius Rosenwald Fund.
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Chase was undoubtedly a brilliant academic, but by 1939, he was getting restless in the winds of war. Thanks to supporters like Eleanor Roosevelt, blacks were going to play a larger part in this war, and would no longer be relegated to the roles of truck-drivers and cooks. Talk of a black infantry regiment forming at Fort Devens, Massachusetts, stirred Chase to action. He left his job at Howard and entered active military service in 1940. His education earned him an officer’s rank and made him one of the first black commanding officers.
It was a tough road ahead. Chase’s first regiment was delayed at port in Virginia because the state government would not tolerate a large battalion of armed blacks in one of its ports. Chase endured this indignity, and the 366th Infantry Division was eventually deployed to North Africa. Chase’s unit ended up in Italy, where they were cut down by German fire on the Po River. Later, during occupation duty in Germany, Chase helped to mastermind the brilliant logistical plan to airlift supplies to the embattled city of Berlin, which had been blockaded by Soviet forces.
Throughout the war, charges of cowardice were made against black soldiers. Chase saw first-hand that the white officers assigned to black units were substandard, and believed that the real issue was poor leadership. (In the 1990s, Medals of Honor were awarded to seven black soldiers who served in the units that had been so harshly criticized during the war.) He knew that, in the future, it would be necessary to include well-trained black officers in the officer corp. By the time the war ended, Chase was motivated by a fury that only a man of his intelligence could focus and control. His fiery attitude angered many white officers, and he was forced to defend himself against charges that were intended to ruin his career......Read More
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Most commercial pot shops are owned by rich white men. This all-female art collective wants to remind us of the drug’s community and healing roles. Yes! The Women of Color Out to Reclaim Marijuana Culture
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As marijuana gains some measure of mainstream acceptance as a medical and recreational drug, its industry is becoming more commercialized. And many users, especially in communities of color, want to reclaim its counter-culture significance.
The group Women.Weed.Wifi. has started a movement to do just that. The women-led Seattle-based art collective celebrates the stories, lives, and creative endeavors of women of color, using cannabis as a mechanism to explore identity, community, and healing.
One in eight American adults say they smoke marijuana, according to a 2016 Gallup poll, and as one of the fastest growing markets in the country, the industry is projected to be worth over $21 billion by 2021. Washington and Colorado were the first two states to legalize recreational marijuana in 2012. Growing commercialization has caused resentment among cannabis advocates, and urban Black communities who have long suffered from the impact of the War on Drugs because of low-level drug offenses and cannabis possession. Since 2014, Washington has made more than $1.9 billion in legal sales.
Legalization for Seattle in particular has spawned a wave of recreational cannabis dispensaries that are mostly owned by wealthy white men. Seattle Times reported that Black Washingtonians who make up 3.6% of the state’s adult population only have a 2.7% stake in the state's cannabis retailers, and the the numbers for Latinos are just as bad, at 9.5% of the population, they account for 3.6% of ownership interest. According to Bill Piper, Senior Director of National Affairs at the Drug Policy Alliance, the nationwide figure hovers around 1%. The disparity underscores the disconnect between the new beneficiaries of the industry, and the Black and Brown men and women jailed for low-level cannabis possession—most of whom will never reap any profits.
While Janice Ibarra, Amanya Maloba, and Vanity Thomas, co-founders of Women.Weed.Wifi. want to see more people of color profiting from the drug, they prioritize all their creative endeavors and use weed as a tool to achieve that. Janice works in public relations and as a DJ and yoga teacher; Vanity is a full-time student and visual merchandiser; and Amanya is a budtender and freelance creative director. Through their Smoke + Stretch yoga sessions, guided meditations, Swisher Sessions podcast, zines, poetry, music, merchandise, and collaborative events, Women.Weed.Wifi. is building a counter-narrative to the white, mainstream marijuana culture in a generally “progressive” but increasingly gentrified Seattle.
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Walmart apologized after a wig cap listed on their site was described using a racial slur. It’s still unclear, however, who is responsible for typing the offensive description.
On Monday, Twitter user Kwani Lunis shared a screenshot of the product page in which the cap’s color is described as “n****r-brown.” “Hey @Walmart what are you doing?” Lunis captioned the photo.
The retail giant began receiving backlash from folks on social media, including author Roxane Gay who said the listing was “far past unacceptable.”
Following the backlash, the racial slur disappeared from the description for the wig cap which the site said is sold by Jagazi Naturals. But Twitter users noted that the offensive description was still listed further down on the page. Walmart eventually took the listing down and said that the information for each product is “provided by manufacturers, suppliers and others, and has not been verified by us.”
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leader Toni Carrier: "It's one thing to walk into a museum and see an exhibit about family history, but it's quite another thing to possibly walk out of a research center at a museum with your great-grandfather's marriage record." Color Lines: International African American Museum Launches New Center to Trace Black Family Geneology
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The International African American Museum (IAAM) strives to be more than just a collection of exhibits and historical artifacts. Instead, the future Charleston, South Carolina, institution wants to extend its mission of understanding Black family history to individual visitors, starting with its new Center for Family History.
Described on its website as "a one of a kind, unprecedented research center with a special focus on African-American genealogy," the Center for Family History includes an extensive collection of archival material and records that historians and genealogists can reference to help visitors learn more about their own ancestors' lives.
"I think the center really is going to personalize the experience for the museum visitor," genealogist and center leader Toni Carrier told The Root. "It's one thing to walk into a museum and see an exhibit about family history, but it's quite another thing to possibly walk out of a research center at a museum with your great-grandfather's marriage record."
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Unveiling the first “cultural plan” for New York’s five boroughs on Wednesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the city will link future funding for museums and arts groups to the diversity of their employees and board members.
This unusual move by the city, which rarely dictates policy to its cultural leaders, puts pressure on the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Hall, the American Museum of Natural History and other pre-eminent institutions that are led largely by white male executives and power brokers from Wall Street, real estate and other industries.
Mr. de Blasio, who is seeking re-election this year with a message emphasizing inclusion and equity, said at a news conference in Queens that the city will collect data on the makeup of the staffs and boards and require these arts organizations to submit “meaningful goals” for making their ranks more diverse.
“This will be a factor in funding decisions by the city going forward,” Mr. de Blasio said. “We do this because we believe in fairness.”
Asked if he believed that certain cultural organizations were elitist, the mayor said, “I think they were.” He added, “There is still the assumption among New Yorkers about where they belong and where they don’t belong.”
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The Nigerian-British actor opened up being a Black man in sci-fi and fantasy franchises and 'Detroit,' his upcoming film about police violence during the city's 1967 unrest. Color Lines: John Boyega Discusses Race, Sci-fi in New GQ Cover Story
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Actor John Boyega faced tremendous racism over his portrayal of a treasonous Stormtrooper in "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." Two years and millions of new fans later, the Nigerian-British Boyega insists upon the the need for on-screen representation of marginalized groups in his new GQ magazine cover story—the second in a row, after "Moonlight" star Mahershala Ali's last month, to feature a Black actor.
"I ain't paying money to always see one type of person on-screen," he says to GQ. "Because you see different people from different backgrounds, different cultures, every day. Even if you're a racist, you have to live with that. We can ruffle up some feathers."
Boyega, whose cover story was posted on GQ.com yesterday (July 17), spends most of the interview talking about his ascent to global superstardom via his lead role in the "Star Wars" film. The actor does, however, discuss racism as it pertains to other fantasy and sci-fi franchises:
"There are no Black people on 'Game of Thrones,' Boyega says. (To be fair, there are, like, three.) "You don't see one Black person in 'Lord of the Rings.' (That is true.) And though 'Star Wars' had featured a few Black characters—Billy Dee Williams as a smuggler, Samuel L. Jackson as a peripheral Jedi—they were less represented in the galaxy than Ewoks.
The actor appears next in "Detroit," a historical drama film directed by Kathryn Bigelow ("The Hurt Locker") that premieres August 4. The film depicts the "Algiers Motel incident" during the 1967 Detroit unrest, when officers from the Detroit Police Department, Michigan State Police and Michigan Army National Guard stormed and fired on a motel room occupied by 10 Black men and two White women, all unarmed. Three Black men were killed while the nine other occupants endured brutal beatings, all courtesy of the militarized police. Boyega portrays Melvin Dismukes, a real life private security guard caught up in the siege who was acquitted of assaulting two of the occupants.
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After decades of distrust and dysfunction, Buffalo makes education a priority with a community-wide commitment. The Atlantic: A Rust Belt City's School Turnaround
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As an in-school family support specialist, Stubbe serves as a liaison between students, families and a number of health, legal, and academic support services provided by local community organizations. Stubbe has a counterpart in every public school in the city, yet neither she nor her colleagues are employees of the Buffalo Public School system. Their positions were created by and are funded through Say Yes to Education Buffalo, a local chapter of a New York City-based nonprofit.
In Buffalo, a Rust Belt city still grappling with high poverty and an undereducated population, the results of the Say Yes program have exceeded expectations. Since its launch in 2012, the city’s high-school graduation rate has climbed 15 points, to 64 percent, according to New York State education department figures, the highest rate the city has achieved in more than a decade.
And black and Latino students have seen the most dramatic improvements, significantly narrowing the graduation gap with their white peers. According to Say Yes, it has awarded roughly 4,000 tuition scholarships, and the number of Buffalo schools classified as “in good standing” by the state’s education department has almost doubled since 2012, from 11 to 20.
The Say Yes promise of universal free college tuition to all Buffalo public-school graduates has grabbed public attention. But Say Yes also provides students with support specialists like Stubbe, access to medical and dental care, mental-health counseling, and legal clinics, plus after-school enrichment activities, college-readiness programs, and mentoring; it provides students’ parents with job-readiness workshops and referrals to housing services.
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