Commentary: African American Scientists and Inventors
by Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
James Edward West was born on February 10, 1931 in Prince Edward County, Virginia. He was an inquisitive young boy, fascinated with electronics and always ready to take things apart to discover how they worked. His curiosity almost got the better of him when he was eight years old and decided repair a broken radio. Confident that he had fixed the radio, he plugged it into a ceiling outlet, standing on the brass footboard of his bed. Unfortunately, a bolt of 120 volts of electricity shot through his body, temporarily paralyzing him where he stood. Fortunately his brother was standing nearby and knocked him onto the floor, terminating the shock he was receiving. Undeterred, rather than being afraid he became even further intrigued by electronics and electricity.
(con't.)
Although his father had encouraged him to pursue an education, he pushed him to go to medical school, noting that very few Blacks were ever hired by universities for science oriented careers. His father was afraid that James was "taking the long road toward working at the post office." After graduating from high school, however, West enrolled at Temple University in 1953 and received a Bachelor of Science degree in Physics in 1957. While in school, he had worked during the summers as an intern for the Acoustics Research Department at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hills, New Jersey. Upon graduation he was hired by Bell Labs in a full-time position as an acoustical scientist specializing in electroacoustics, physical and architectural acoustics.
In 1960, West was teamed up with Gerhard M. Sessler, a German-born physicist, and the two were tasked to develop an inexpensive, highly sensitive and compact microphone. At the time, condenser microphones were used in most telephones, but were expensive to manufacture and necessitated the use of a large battery source. Microphones convert sound waves into electrical voltages, thus allowing the sound to be transmitted through a cord to a receiver.
Because of the associated expense of condenser microphones, they were impractical for everyday home usage. West and Sessler decided to use an electret (an electrical insulator material) using an inexpensive film made of teflon and stretched it taut so that it hung over the top of a metal surface. After being exposed to an electrical field, the electret was able to hold its charge. As West described, "as you talk into the microphone, pressure fluctuations in the air distort the film. Charges in the metal surface experience fluctuating forces as the polarized electret moves above it. As a result of these forces, a very small current flows from the metal surface through a wire that touches it." Their electret microphone solved every problem they were seeking to address. It was inexpensive, could hold a charge without having to be connected to a power source, was compact and durable and could be applied to common uses in the office or in the home.....Read More
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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From the series "Tell Me More". NPR: Black Indians Explore Challenges Of 'Hidden' Heritage
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Tell Me More concludes its observance of National Native American Heritage Month with a look at the struggle of some African Americans for acceptance by those whom they consider kin. Host Michel Martin explores shared black and Native American heritage with William Katz, author of Black Indians: A Hidden Heritage, and Shonda Buchanan, an English professor, who is of North Carolina and Mississippi Choctaw Indian ancestry.
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Yup Rep. King is a racist, and it's been obvious for years. Talking Points Memo: Steve King: Black Farmers' Settlement Is 'Slavery Reparations' (VIDEO)
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The Senate last week finally approved the multi-billion-dollar funding for the Pigford II and Cobell settlements, which will allow the government to pay out claims to African-American farmers and American Indians who were discriminated against in recent decades by government agencies. Now, the House -- which has passed the funding several times over -- will have to approve it, probably this week. The House, in fact, was voting on procedural motions surrounding the bill as this post was written.
That means the opponents are coming out of the woodwork.
Rep. Steve King (R-IA), who's been one of the most vocal opponents of the Pigford settlement for black farmers, has taken to cable news and the floor of the House to speak against the settlement. King's argument is that the bulk of the Pigford II claims are fraudulent because there are fewer black farmers than claimants -- a flimsy argument when you consider that many African-Americans lost their farms over the past few decades due, in part, to USDA discrimination that denied them loans -- which is the point of the settlement program.
On Monday night, he suggested that President Obama, as a senator, may have been prejudiced to help the black farmers.
"Figure this out, Madame Speaker: We have a very, very urban Senator, Barack Obama, who has decided he's going to run for president, and what does he do?" King said. "He introduces legislation to create a whole new Pigford claim."
The Other Racist Thing Rep. King Said About Pigford (VIDEO)
A few days ago we told you about some of the things that Rep. Steve King (R-IA) had said on the House floor in opposition to a settlement that will benefit black farmers discriminated against by the USDA. Those things included that the claims amount to "slavery reparations" orchestrated by a "very, very urban president."
Just in case people forgot this was the guy who also did this last year. So yeah he has a long history of this sort of stuff.
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Whites don't need a cranky columnist to tell them what their black neighbors think. They just have to ask. The Root: The Great Urban Communication Divide
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In a long and thoughtful Washington City Paper profile last week, veteran journalist Courtland Milloy was hailed as the "crotchety grandpa the city needs."
The writer, Rend Smith, gave the Washington Post columnist credit for being among the few mainstream writers tuned in to the racially polarized passions that toppled 39-year-old incumbent Mayor Adrian Fenty in September's primary elections. Milloy's columns consistently bucked conventional wisdom about the mood of the city prior to Mayor-elect Vincent Gray's primary victory, which inspired more "WTF?" national news stories about D.C. than we've seen since Marion Barry was re-elected after his prison stint.
That their (smiling?) black neighbors were plotting an electoral revolt was apparently big news to some white residents of the District. So it probably felt like a sucker punch when Milloy did a little post-election grave dancing on "Fenty's hip, newly arrived 'creative class' firing up their 'social media' " to defend him. Milloy derided them as "myopic little twits."
Of course, this put-down was addressed in the climax of the City Paper profile, when Smith finally mustered up the courage to ask Milloy a burning question: "As he's feeling so loose, this seems the opportunity to spring my blunt question on him, the one many of those who took the 'myopic twits' column to heart might be aching to ask. 'Do you like white people?' "
Deep, deep sigh.
This is the color-coded reality of life in the District. White median income is $92,000; black median income is $34,000. The boom in cafés and farmers markets has done nothing to stem a stunning slide into poverty in recent years. In 2007 the black child poverty rate was 31 percent; in 2008 it was 36 percent, and the latest figures show that the figure has shot up to an appalling 43 percent. Forty-three percent. The poverty rate for white children is 3 percent. Unemployment doubled, and black people disproportionately lost their jobs and homes.
This is what they mean when they talk about class warfare: two trains -- one privileged, one not -- running in opposite directions at a dizzying speed, each with divergent needs and expectations from government. No need to invent it or "inject race" into it; this is the objective reality of life in the District. Yet somehow the narrative about change becomes "Courtland Milloy doesn't care about white people!"
Getty Images
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December 1st marks an important American anniversary CNN: Rosa Parks' legacy endures decades later
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An act of civil disobedience 55 years ago -- Rosa Parks' refusal to move to the back of a city bus -- made the seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama, a pivotal symbol in America's civil rights movement.
Wednesday marks the 55th anniversary of the civil disobedience on December 1, 1955.
Parks did not intend to get arrested as she made her way home from work that day. Little did the 42-year-old seamstress know that her acts would help end segregation laws in the South.
That evening after work, Parks took a seat in the front of the black section of a city bus in Montgomery, Alabama. The bus filled up, and the bus driver demanded that she move so a white male passenger could have her seat.
But Parks refused to give up her seat, and police arrested her. Four days later, Parks was convicted of disorderly conduct.
- Rosa Parks remembered 2005: Rosa Parks' legacy lives on
The events triggered a 381-day boycott of the bus system by blacks that was organized by a 26-year-old Baptist minister, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
The boycott led to a court ruling desegregating public transportation in Montgomery, but it wasn't until the 1964 Civil Rights Act that all public accommodations nationwide were desegregated.
Parks, who died five years ago in Detroit, Michigan, at 92, still has the power to inspire.
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A very sad day, based on mosttly self inflicted wounds. NYT: As Rangel Stands Silently, Censure Vote Rings Loudly
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Representative Charles B. Rangel, his gaze steady and his hands clasped before him, stood silently in the well of the House of Representatives on Thursday as Speaker Nancy Pelosi somberly read a resolution censuring him for bringing discredit to the House.
Ms. Pelosi issued the punishment minutes after the House voted 333 to 79 for the censure, the most severe sanction it can administer short of expulsion.
The vote made Mr. Rangel, a Democrat, the 23rd member of the House to be censured, and the first in nearly three decades.
After receiving his punishment, Mr. Rangel, 80, asked for a minute to address his colleagues and told them: "I know in my heart I am not going to be judged by this Congress. I’ll be judged by my life in its entirety."
Mr. Rangel and his allies had pleaded for mercy, arguing that his transgressions, which included failure to pay income taxes and misuse of his office to solicit fund-raising donations, deserved the more lenient punishment of a reprimand. But that effort failed, 267 to 146.
The censure marks a staggering fall for Mr. Rangel, who has represented Harlem for half of his life, and had risen to become one of the most prominent and well-liked members of Congress. Ms. Pelosi, Democrat of California, called upon Mr. Rangel to appear before her, and, in a subdued tone, read the one-paragraph resolution noting his 11 violations of Congressional ethics rules.
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NYT: Uncertain Outcome in Ivory Coast Election.
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Three days after a landmark election meant to bring peace here in West Africa’s former economic leader, an old fear hung over this tattered ex-boomtown: a president who refused to give up power.
The winner should already be known. But on Tuesday night, with reporters looking on and television cameras rolling, an electoral commission member with ties to President Laurent Gbagbo grabbed sheets of voting results as they were about to be announced. He crumpled them, then angrily tore them up.
On Wednesday evening, President Gbagbo remained in power, five years after his term legally ended. His supporters insisted the results from a large section of the country — the northern half supporting his opponent, a former International Monetary Fund vice president — were false, a "masquerade," Mr. Gbagbo’s spokesman said Wednesday, and needed to be thrown out.
International observers disagreed sharply, saying there had been no wide-scale fraud. The election, which had been postponed by Mr. Gbagbo about six times before this year’s vote, was conducted correctly, the observers said.
Troops have been summoned to this commercial capital. A 7 p.m. curfew, strictly enforced, has been proclaimed. Normally teeming streets were deserted on Wednesday, except for armed soldiers and United Nations forces.
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Is the Internal Revenue Service targeting African-American and Hispanic taxpayers? Fortune: The IRS's problem with minorities
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Is the Internal Revenue Service targeting African-American and Hispanic taxpayers? That's the conclusion of a new study provided exclusively to Fortune titled "IRS Enforcement's Impact on Minority Communities," conducted by Thomas M. Evans, CEO of TaxLifeboat, a firm that advises taxpayers on resolving their problems with the IRS.
Evans stresses strongly that the disproportionate number of IRS actions against minorities isn't intentional. Rather, he charges, it's the result of overly rigid, highly-automated enforcement policies that waste taxpayer money by pursuing low-earners who either can't pay, or owe virtually nothing.
Worse, it pushes minority workers who were paying some, if not all, of their tax burden from mainstream jobs into the shadowy cash economy. "The IRS enforcement actions drive workers and revenue out of the system," warns Evans. "Once people are caught in that mill, their life changes, and they're forced to stay in the underclass."
The IRS doesn't specify the ethnic background of Americans it hits with enforcement actions. To explore the issue, Evans examined the 1,000 zip codes where the IRS had filed the largest number of liens from July 2009 to July 2010. He then mined the 2000 Census, the most recent source available, to determine the racial makeup of those areas. Evans found that, on average, the populations of those 1,000 locales with the nation's highest level of tax enforcement were 22% African-American and 24% Hispanic. That's approximately double the proportion of those minorities in entire country.
The top twenty zip codes for IRS liens range from sections in big cities such as New York and Chicago to suburbs such as Lawrenceville, Georgia outside of Atlanta, Katy, Texas a suburb of Houston, and New Castle, Delaware, a town near Wilmington.
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[] Rosa Parks, 55 years ago today by Spider Stumbled
[] Rep. Steve King invents new way to say N-BOMB on House floor by MinistryOfTruth
[] Fonio: Africa’s Oldest Cereal Needs More Attention by NourishingthePlanet
[] Rep. Steve King and his S-U-P-E-(R) Racist Reparations Dog Whistles! by Vyan
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
Since I was a child, I have been both enamored and appalled at the increasing militancy of our nation. We glory the Soldier as a Hero, one whose pedestal is not to be sullied. Songs are sung and films are broadcast about yellow ribbons and Gold Stars and red sky at morning and Johnny come marching home and tears at Arlington on Memorial and Veteran's Day with 20 gun salutes and full metal jackets shredding jungles and deserts and seas and air.
Everywhere I look, supplicants genuflect and tithe at the Altar of the Military; politicians and preachers sky pilot high school football homecoming prom dances, while daddy works in a coal mine going down down down burning fossil microbes to steam a turbine and economies and marriages suffer from codified martial strategies of weapons procurement and international arms sales.
A pedestal not to be sullied; a Hero exalted. Semper Fidelis until Johnny needs a job and a shoulder to lean on when the slide show of dismembered limbs and dead babies scorched against the charred breasts of scattered skeletons scrolls behind closed eyelids on a lazy summer afternoon; an exalted Hero until stumbled on the cold winter night theater district broken sidewalk hungry and lame and mumbling about the Newburgh Conspiracy and how he is just a festering scar on the nation and no amount of cleaning the wound will stop the seeping ooze of his forgotten service, no amount of slicing away the rotting flesh will justify the public amnesia.
Debridement
Debridement
Black men are oaks cut down.
Congressional Medal of Honor Society
United States of America chartered by
Congress, August 14, 1958; this certifies
that STAC John Henry Louis is a member
of this society.
"Don’t ask me anything about the
medal. I don’t even know how I won
it."
Debridement: The cutting away of dead
or contaminated tissue from a wound
to prevent infection.
America: love it or give it back.
Corktown
Groceries ring
in my intestines:
grits aint groceries
eggs aint poultry
Mona Lisa was a man:
waltzing in sawdust
I dream my cards
has five holes in it,
up to twenty holes;
five shots out of seven
beneath the counter;
surrounded by detectives
pale ribbons of valor
my necklace of bullets
powdering the operating table.
Five impaled men loop their ribbons
’round my neck
listening to whispers of valor:
"Honey, what you cryin’ ’bout?
You made it back."
Caves
Four M-48 tank platoons ambushed
near Dak To, two destroyed:
the Ho Chi Minh Trail boils,
half my platoon rockets
into stars near Cambodia,
foot soldiers dance from highland woods
taxing our burning half:
there were no caves for them to hide.
We saw no action,
eleven months twenty-two days
in our old tank
burning sixty feet away:
I watch them burn inside out:
hoisting through heavy crossfire,
hoisting over turret hatches,
hoisting my last burning man
alive to the ground,
our tank artillery shells explode
killing all inside:
hoisting blown burned squad
in tank’s bladder,
plug leaks with cave blood:
there were no caves for them to hide—
In the Projects
Slung basketballs at Jeffries
House with some welfare kids
weaving in their figure eight hunger.
Mama asked if I was taking anything?
I rolled up my sleeves:
no tracks, mama:
"black-medal-man ain’t street-poisoned,"
militants called:
"he’s an electronic nigger!"
"Better keep electronic nigger 'way."
Electronic Nigger?
Mama, unplug me, please.
A White Friend Flies In from the Coast
Burned —black by birth,
burned —armed with .45,
burned —submachine gun,
burned—STAC hunted VC,
burned —killing 5-20,
burned —nobody know for sure;
burned —out of ammo,
burned—killed one with gun-stock,
burned —VC AK-47 jammed,
burned —killed faceless VC,
burned —over and over,
burned —STAC subdued by three men,
burned —three shots: morphine,
burned —tried killing prisoners,
burned —taken to Pleiku,
burned —held down, straitjacket,
burned —whites owe him, hear?
burned —I owe him, here.
Mama’s Report
"Don’t fight, honey,
don’t let ’em catch you."
Tour over, gear packed,
hospital over, no job.
"Aw man, nothin' happened,"
explorer, altar boy—
Maybe it’s ’cause they killed people
and don’t know why they did?
My boy had color slides of dead people,
stacks of dead Vietnamese.
MP’s asked if he’d been arrested
since discharge, what he’d been doin’:
"Lookin’ at slides,
looking’ at stacks of slides, mostly."
Fifteen minutes later a colonel called
from the Defense Department, said he’d won the medal;
could he be in Washington with his family,
maybe he’d get a job now; he qualified.
The Democrats had lost, the president said;
there were signs of movement in Paris:
Fixing Certificates: Dog Tags: Letters Home
Our heliteam had mid-air blowout
dropping flares—5 burned alive.
The children carry hand
grenades to and from piss tubes.
Staring at tracer bullets
rice is the focal point of war.
On amphibious raid, our heliteam
found dead VC with maps of our compound.
On morning sick call you unzip;
before you piss you get a smear.
"VC reamed that mustang a new asshole"—
even at movies: "no round-eye pussy no more"—
Tympanic membrane damage: high gone—
20-40 db loss mid-frequencies.
Scrub-typhus, malaria, dengue fever, cholera;
rotting buffalo, maggoted dog, decapped children.
Bangkok: amber dust, watches, C-rations,
elephanthide billfolds, cameras, smack.
Sand&tinroof bunkers, 81/120 mm:
"Health record terminated this date by reason of death."
Vaculoated amoeba, bacillary dysentery, hookworm;
thorazine, tetracycline, darvon for diarrhea.
'Conitus’ : I wanna go home to mama;
Brown’s mixture, ETH with codeine, cortisone skin-creams.
Written on helipad fantail 600 bed Repose;
"no purple heart, hit by ’nother marine."
"Vascular repair, dissection, debridement":
sharp bone edges, mushy muscle, shrapnel: stainless bucket.
Bodies in polyethylene bag: transport:
'Tan San Nhat Mortuary’
Blood, endotracheal tube, prep
abdomen, mid-chest to scrotum—
"While you’re fixin' me doc,
can you fix them ingrown hairs on my face?"
"They didn’t get my balls, did they?"
50 mg thorazine—"Yes they did, marine!"
Street-Poisoned
Swans loom on the playground
swooning in the basket air,
the nod of their bills
in open flight, open formation.
Street-poisoned, a gray mallard
skims into our courtyard with a bag:
And he poisons them —
And he poisons them —
Electronic-nigger-recruiter,
my pass is a blade
near the sternum
cutting in:
you can make this a career.
Patches itch on my chest and shoulders—
I powder them with phisohex
solution from an aerosol can:
you can make this a career.
Pickets of insulin dab the cloudy
hallways in a spray.
Circuits of change
march to an honor guard—
I am prancing:
I am prancing:
you can make this a career.
Makin’ Jump Shots
He waltzes into the lane
’cross the free-throw line,
fakes a drive, pivots,
floats from the asphalt turf
in an arc of black light,
and sinks two into the chains.
One on one he fakes
down the main, passes
into the free lane
and hits the chains.
A sniff in the fallen air—
he stuffs it through the chains
riding high:
"traveling" someone calls—
and he laughs, stepping
to a silent beat, gliding
as he sinks two into the chains.
Debridement: Operation Harvest Moon: On Repose
The sestina traces a circle in language and body.
Stab incision below nipple,
left side; insert large chest tube;
sew to skin, right side;
catch blood from tube
in gallon drain bottle.
Wash abdomen with phisohex;
shave; spray brown iodine prep.
Stab incision below sternum
to symphis pubis
catch blood left side;
sever reddish brown spleen
cut in half; tie off blood supply;
check retroperitoneal,
kidney, renal artery bleeding.
Dissect lateral wall
abdominal cavity; locate kidney;
pack colon, small intestine;
cut kidney; suture closely;
inch by inch check bladder,
liver, abdominal wall, stomach:
25 units blood, pressure down.
Venous pressure: 8; lumbar
musculature, lower spinal column
pulverized; ligate blood vessels,
right forearm; trim meat, bone ends;
tourniquet above fracture, left arm;
urine, negative: 4 hours; pressure
unstable; remove shrapnel flecks.
Roll on stomach; 35 units blood;
pressure zero; insert plastic blood
containers, pressure cuffs; pump chest
drainage tube; wash wounds sterile
saline; dress six-inch ace wraps;
wrap both legs, toe to groin; left arm
plaster, finger to shoulder: 40 units blood.
Pressure, pulse, respiration up;
remove bloody gowns; scrub; redrape;
5 cc vitamin K; thorazine: sixth
laparotomy; check hyperventilation;
stab right side incision below nipple;
insert large chest tube; catch blood drain bottle ...
The Family of Debridement
Theory: Inconvenienced subject will return to hospital
if loaned Thunderbird
Withdrawn. Hope: Subject returns,
Treatment:
Foreclosure for nine months unpaid mortgage;
wife tells subject hospital wants deposit,
Diseased cyst removal:
'Ain’t you gonna give me a little kiss good-bye’
Subject-wife: To return with robe and curlers—
Subject tells friend he’ll pay $15 to F’s stepfather
if he’ll drive him to pick up money owed him.
"This guy lives down the street,
I don’t want him to see me coming."
"It looked odd for a car filled with blacks
to be parked in the dark in a white neighborhood,
so we pulled the car out under a streetlight
so everybody could see us."
Store manager: "I first hit him with two bullets
so I pulled the trigger until my gun was empty."
"I’m going to kill you, you white MF," store manager
told police. Police took cardload, F and F’s parents for
further questioning. Subject died on operating table: 5 hrs:
Subject buried on grass slope, 200 yards
east of Kennedy Memorial,
overlooking Potomac and Pentagon,
to the south,
Arlington National Cemetery.
Army honor guard
in dress blues,
carried out assignment
with precision.
-- Michael S. Harper
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