Commentary: African American Scientists and Inventors
by Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
On August 1, 1969, a tall, pleasant-featured black man of thirty-six manned a powerful laser at the Lick Observatory in Santa Clara, CA. At his command a pulse of concentrated coherent light shot toward the moon, aimed at a mirror placed on the lunar surface by Apollo 11 astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong. The reflected beam was timed by sensitive detectors here on Earth, for the first time measuring to within five meters the exact distance between us and our nearest planetary neighbor.
Hildreth (Hal) Walker Jr. had come a long way since his father had given him a toy ray-gun thirty years before. Whether due to accident, instinct or design, his father's gift presaged what was to become a remarkable career in science -- one that overcame many hurdles and pitfalls.
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Hal Walker grew up in the institutionalized segregation of the Deep South before the Civil Rights movement. Opportunities for young black men to do anything other than menial labor were practiclly nil. In Louisiana, though, Hal managed to befriend the only white residents of his poor neighborhood, an Italian family that owned a vacuum cleaner repair shop. Free time spent watching the repairman rebuilding and rewiring the machines was his first brush with the mechanics and electronics that fascinated him. Later, in a Los Angeles Jr. high school, he was fortunate to have a kindly workshop teacher named Mr. Dietz who recognized the young student's aptitude for mechanics and electronics, as well as his determination to master and improve anything he touched.
At this time, too, between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, Hal befriended several fellow students who shared his love of electronics. This was the age of do-it-yourself crystal radios and simple motor kits, and the budding scientist experimented with everything he could get his hands on. "I got shocked a few times," he says now with a laugh, " but it taught me the power and potential of electricity; the rules of action and reaction."
Also during this period, largely thanks to his teacher, Hal became interested in the movie industry -- not in front of the camera, but behind it. Filming technology transfixed him, and he wanted to work with the cameras. Upon graduation from high school, he planned to apply for a job in the film industry. But it was not to be. Because he was black, the industry unions stonewalled, not even permitting him to work as a lowly projectionist in the cinema. A promising door was slammed in his face.
After a period of confused despair, Hal picked himself up and decided to enter the military; at least there he might have a chance to work in technology. By 1951, the Korean War was making itself felt even in Hal's neighborhood, and he joined the Navy, hoping to serve on one of the giant aircraft carriers that had long intrigued him. This wish, at least, was granted, and four years later he left the Navy as a qualified electrician's mate. He now had his first professional status, his first real-world experience outside the US, and the key to the door of higher education: the G.I. Bill......Read More
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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The subtext is that while whites are much more likely to have used cocaine than blacks, blacks are much more often imprisoned for cocaine-related crimes—in part because blacks seem to use crack which is more heavily criminalized than powder cocaine. Slate: California Eliminates Crack/Cocaine Sentencing Disparities.
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California has eliminated the legal distinction between cocaine and crack for purposes of criminal sentencing. Gov. Jerry Brown signed the California Fair Sentencing Act on Sunday; the bill alters the state's laws such that identical weights of "cocaine" and "cocaine base" (the legal term that often refers to crack) are treated the same. Previously, for example, individuals convicted of possessing at least 14.25 grams of cocaine base were subject to the same property forfeiture laws as those who possessed 28.5 grams of cocaine, while the law now applies only to those convicted of possessing at least 28.5 grams of either substance.
President Obama signed a similar revision to federal law in 2010, though that bill merely reduced and did not eliminate the cocaine/crack disparity.
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The jury deliberated just five-and-a-half hours in this retrial of the so-called “loud music” murder case. The Root: Jordan Davis Killer Convicted of 1st-Degree Murder.
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here is finally justice for 17-year old Jordan Davis, the young man gunned down by Michael Dunn after a verbal dispute over loud music in a Jacksonville, Fla., gas station in November 2012. Dunn was found guilty of first-degree murder by a jury of eight men and four women who deliberated just five-and-a-half hours.
A different jury in February failed to convict Dunn on the murder charge, only finding him guilty on three counts of attempted murder for firing into the SUV at Davis' three friends. That jury deadlocked on the killing of Davis, some apparently believing Dunn's claim that the teenager was threatening him. The state prosecutor quickly announced plans to retry the 47-year old Dunn, much to the relief of the young man's parents, Ron Davis and Lucy McBath. They had expressed tremendous frustration with the original verdict and had stressfully endured weeks of testimony in the second trial. That testimony included Dunn's insistence that he feared for his life, according to WJXT.
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Ebola is sweeping into areas of West Africa that had been largely spared the onslaught and are unprepared for it. New York Times: A Hospital From Hell, in a City Swamped by Ebola.
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“Where’s the corpse?” the burial-team worker shouted, kicking open the door of the isolation ward at the government hospital here. The body was right in front of him, a solidly built young man sprawled out on the floor all night, his right hand twisted in an awkward clench.
The other patients, normally padlocked inside, were too sick to look up as the body was hauled away. Nurses, some not wearing gloves and others in street clothes, clustered by the door as pools of the patients’ bodily fluids spread to the threshold. A worker kicked another man on the floor to see if he was still alive. The man’s foot moved and the team kept going. It was 1:30 in the afternoon.
In the next ward, a 4-year-old girl lay on the floor in urine, motionless, bleeding from her mouth, her eyes open. A corpse lay in the corner — a young woman, legs akimbo, who had died overnight. A small child stood in a cot watching as the team took the body away, stepping around a little boy lying immobile next to black buckets of vomit. They sprayed the body, and the little girl on the floor, with chlorine as they left.
As the Ebola epidemic intensifies across parts of West Africa, nations and aid agencies are pledging to respond with increasing force. But the disease has already raced far ahead of the promises, sweeping into areas that had been largely spared the onslaught and are not in the least prepared for it.
The consequences in places like Makeni, one of Sierra Leone’s largest cities, have been devastating.
“The whole country has been hit by something for which it was not ready,” said Dr. Amara Jambai, director of prevention and control at Sierra Leone’s health ministry.
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Black people’s disdain for “proper English” and academic achievement is a myth. Slate: Talking White.
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“All right, hear me out,” begins the young black woman in a video uploaded to the website LiveLeak last Friday. “There is no such thing as ‘talking white,’ … it’s actually called ‘speaking fluently,’ speaking your language correctly. I don’t know why we’ve gotten to a place where as a culture—as a race—if you sound as though you have more than a fifth-grade education, it’s a bad thing.”
She continues like this for nearly two more minutes, emphasizing the point that her speech reflects proper English and attacking the idea that it’s a deviation from black identity.
If she was hoping for a positive response, she got it. In addition to thousands of shares and tweets, it reached more than 560,000 views and made the front page of Reddit.
Not that this was a surprise. The main ideas—that black Americans disparage “proper English” and education and use a “broken” version of the language—have wide currency among many Americans, including blacks.
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In the last 10 years, however, new research has challenged the “acting white” theory. In a 2005 paper, sociologists Karolyn Tyson, William Darity Jr., and Domini Castellino found “that black adolescents are generally achievement oriented and that racialized peer pressure against high academic achievement is not prevalent in all schools.”
According to their research—drawn from interviews with students across eight North Carolina schools—racialized stigma against high achievement exists. But it requires specific circumstances, namely, predominantly white schools where few blacks attend advanced classes. There, black and white students hold racialized perceptions of educational achievement, and black students are often isolated by stigma from both groups. As one school counselor notes:
They did not like being in honors courses because often they were the only ones. ... Also, some of the kids felt that if they were in these honors classes, that there appears, the black kids look at them as if they were acting white, not recognizing that you could be smart and black. A lot of white kids look at them, basically, “You're not supposed to be smart and black, so why are you here?”
By contrast, “acting white” accusations were least common at the most segregated schools, a finding echoed by a 2006 study from Harvard economist Roland Fryer, who found “no evidence at all that getting good grades adversely affects students’ popularity” in predominantly black schools.
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