Commentary: African American Scientists and Inventors
by Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
Lifelong learning has been key to Reatha Clark King's success and personal satisfaction. She has earned three degrees and worked to help others have the same opportunity. Born Reatha Clark in 1938 in Pavo, Georgia, she moved many times while growing up because her mother had to look for work were she could get it. Clark was often teased for being poor, but she focused on her studies, graduating high school as valedictorian and winning a scholarship from Clark College in Atlanta as a home-economics major. A black Ph.D.chemistry professor in college inspired her to pursue a career in chemistry. Her senior year there she won a Woodrow Wilson scholarship, which enabled her to enroll in the University of Chicago graduate program. She studied physical chemistry with a focus on thermodynamics, and earned a master's and Ph.D
(con't)
As an undergraduate, Clark met fellow chemistry major, N. Judge King, at a Morehouse College basketball game. They were married in 1961 and later had two children.
It took a while for Clark King to land her first research job after grad school, but it was worth the wait. She became a project leader at the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C., determining the effects of heat on alloys (a combination of two or more metals). Clark King invented a coiled tube that allowed hot liquids like fuel to cool, so they wouldn't explode; research that was vital to NASA. She left the Bureau after five years when her husband got a teaching job in New York, where she also switched to become an educator. In 1968 she joined the faculty at York College, an inner-city school in New York, later becoming an associate dean, all while earning an MBA at Columbia University.
In 1977, Clark King became president of Metropolitan State University in Minneapolis, Minnesota, for 11 years, promoting opportunities for minorities and women in higher education. "I realized early in life that education is our best enabling resource," she has said, "that technical skills are important, and that my stamina for championing educational opportunity for all people is inexhaustible."......Read More
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Millions of African- and Caribbean-born people are missing from the immigration-reform conversation. A few of them tell The Root that they will not be shut out. The Root: Black Immigrants Join the Debate
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On March 11, at a press conference on Capitol Hill, Tolu Olubunmi came out publicly as an undocumented immigrant for the first time.
"It's been nerve-racking because it puts me at a risk," the 30-year-old told The Root about her speech supporting Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin's (D-Ill.) reintroduction of the DREAM Act. The bill, which passed in the House last year but failed to clear the Senate, would provide a path to citizenship for undocumented youths like her, brought to the United States as children. "But I think you have to focus on the individuals to get away from the politics of an issue that's so divisive. Once you know that there are real people attached to the statistics, then you have to start working on real solutions."
Olubunmi, who was born in Nigeria, is also one of 3 million black immigrants in this country. Despite moving from Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America at a remarkable rate -- and despite an estimated 400,000 having undocumented status -- they are barely footnotes in an immigration-reform conversation that is usually framed as a Mexican-border issue. But in light of newer, smaller-but-growing communities, as well as recently granted protected status for Haitians in particular, black immigrants are becoming stronger voices, advocating for reform from their diverse perspectives.
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After 25 years on the air, Oprah’s very last episode of her daily talk show is aired this week. Colorlines: Oprah’s Conflicted, Empowering, Shaming Bond With Women Like Me
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After 25 years on the air, Oprah’s very last episode of her daily talk show is airing today. It is the end of an era for a show that’s redefined media and transformed television. And I for one am not going to miss Oprah Winfrey at all.
First of all, she is not going anywhere. Did any of you really take Jay-Z seriously when he announced he was retiring from the studio a few years ago? It’s the same thing for me now. And while the end of her daily show marks the end of a cultural era, not only is Oprah not retiring, she is not even retreating from the massive platform she’s built for herself over the past few decades.
Oprah will move on to her eponymous cable channel, the Oprah Winfrey Network, which creates a deliciously appropriate acronym. Instead of just one hour of television a day, she will help program 24 hours of it. It will never be the same as her daily talk show, I know. But she will continue to publish her magazine, the covers of which she graces every month. Her daytime talk show may be over, but she will continue to be an omnipotent cultural presence. She will continue to make headlines every time she exhales, and every other time she’s seen cavorting with her best friend Gayle King.
Oprah is so firmly enmeshed in the cultural firmament that I don’t know how anyone could miss her. I myself was raised on a steady diet of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” in a family of Oprah devotees, and even though I stopped watching the show regularly years ago, I find it impossible to escape her reach.
Oprah Winfrey on stage with stars, including Tyler Perry (far right), during her daily show’s finale episode on May 24, 2011. Photo: Getty Images/Daniel Boczarski
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Something we don't like to talk about The Root: 'Dark Girls' Documentary Exposes Skin Color Bias
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he upcoming documentary, Dark Girls, explores the deep-seated biases and attitudes about skin color that are experienced particularly by dark skinned women, outside of and within African-American culture.
While the issue certainly isn't brand new, this approach appears to be. Colorism traditionally arises in an adversarial fashion: Someone accuses someone else (a director, a magazine editor, perhaps all of Hollywood) of embracing unfair standards of beauty that exclude many black women. (Just today, Osama bin Laden's former mistress Kola Boof took to Twitter to attack rapper Wale for perpetuating dominant standards of beauty in his music video for, "Pretty Girls," calling him self-loathing).
But 'Dark Girls' seems to take a different angle. Rather than vilifying the perpetrators of bias, the preview shows women being allowed to tell their own stories in a manner that sends an undeniable message about how nonsensical, painful, and historically fraught our stubborn views of skin color and beauty can be.
(Hellobeautiful.com
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Just another Hollywood Rag? BlackMediaScoop: ESSENCE UNDER FIRE
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Essence is under fire today and I must admit the article is intriguing. Is Essence losing focus or is Raynard Jackson too harsh on the publication?
Essence Magazine used to be the preeminent magazine for Black women in the U.S. They, like many Black publications, have lost their relevance; and in the process become an embarrassment to the very group they claim to target.
Essence was founded in 1968 by Ed Lewis, Clarence Smith, Cecil Hollingworth, Jonathan Blount, and Denise Clark. Their initial circulation began at around 50,000 per month and now is estimated to be over 1 million per month. It is a monthly publication focusing on Black women between the ages of 18 and 49. Essence was bought out by Time Inc. in 2005, thus no longer being a Black owned publication (similar to B.E.T.).
The impetus behind the founding of Essence was to show a side of Black women that was never portrayed in the mainstream media. Images of Black women were controlled by white media outlets that had little to no knowledge of the Black community. Most of these images were very stereotypical and lacking substance.
There were unique issues relevant to Black women that other publications were totally ignorant of. Black women could not wear the same makeup that white women could—there are differences in skin type. Black women have unique issues when it comes to styling their hair—there were no mainstream publications that dealt with these differences.
So, initially, Essence met a very real need and provided a venue for Black women to share common experiences with each other (remember, this was pre-internet days when you didn’t have all the instant communication we have today).
Essence portrayed Black women in the most positive of lights. They made Black women feel proud to be Black and female! That was then, this is now.
Now, Essence is just another Hollywood rag (focused on Black women), sprinkled with a few substantive, positive stories; but, that is no longer their focus!
I looked at the cover picture for the past year and each cover featured an entertainer. Isn’t this the same stereotyping that we have accused white media of—showing Blacks as only entertainers? There is nothing wrong with having entertainers on the cover, but is that all there is to offer Black women?
I can guarantee that most Black women have never heard of Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander, Alicia Jillian Hardy, or Katie Washington.
When I went on Essence Music Festival’s website and looked at the speakers listed under “Empowerment”I was stunned and quite embarrassed!
The Essence Music Festival is the nation’s largest annual gathering of Black musical talent in the U.S. It is a 3 day event filled with cultural celebrations, empowerment panels, and nightly entertainment by some of the biggest names in music. It is held in New Orleans, LA every July. The event attracts more than 200,000 people.
THEN
NOW
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Back home in Gambia, Amadou Jallow was, at 22, a lover of reggae who had just finished college and had landed a job teaching science in a high school. New York Times: Chasing Riches From Africa to Europe and Finding Only Squalor
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n his West African homeland, Mr. Jallow's salary was the equivalent of just 50 euros a month, barely enough for the necessities, he said. And everywhere in his neighborhood in Serekunda, Gambia's largest city, there was talk of easy money to be made in Europe.
Now he laughs bitterly about all that talk. He lives in a patch of woods here in southern Spain, just outside the village of Palos de la Frontera, with hundreds of other immigrants. They have built their homes out of plastic sheeting and cardboard, unsure if the water they drink from an open pipe is safe. After six years on the continent, Mr. Jallow is rail thin, and his eyes have a yellow tinge.
"We are not bush people," he said recently as he gathered twigs to start a fire. "You think you are civilized. But this is how we live here. We suffer here."
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[] When a Black Woman is Fed-up! by princss6
[] D.C police slam wheelchair bound homeless man on ground, then charge him with assaulting an officer by TheHalfrican