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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Even though they promise to do so, again and again, they just can't. Slate: The GOP Can’t Quit “Willie Horton”.
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Willie Horton has returned, and he is in Omaha, Nebraska.
Or at least his reincarnation. Last Friday, the National Republican Congressional Committee began running an ad that hits all the beats of the original “Willie Horton” spot from the 1988 presidential election, from the attack on prison reform programs to the prominent use of imagery—violent, criminal black men—with heavy racial undertones. In particular, this ad—called “Nikko”—ties state Sen. Brad Ashford, the Democratic candidate in the Omaha congressional race, to Nikko Jenkins, a former inmate who received early release and went on to kill four people. Here’s the ad:
What’s unusual, as Dara Lind notes for Vox, is that the “good time” law was pushed by Republican lawmakers and signed by a Republican governor. It’s a GOP accomplishment, and a good one—a sensible tweak to our overly draconian criminal justice laws. This ad wants to hit a Democrat, but it feels like friendly fire. That this is the national GOP’s approach, however, isn’t a surprise.
In 2005, then Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman went to the NAACP to apologize for the GOP’s use of the “Southern Strategy” to prime anti-black views and polarize white voters on race. The implicit promise—to never again bait white voters against their black counterparts was almost immediately abandoned. In the 2006 Tennessee Senate race, the RNC ran a widely panned ad against then-Rep. Harold Ford—a black American—that ended with a young white woman saying, “Harold, call me,” which was read as a coded racial appeal
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The media's culture claims a victim. The New Republic: I'm a Black Journalist. I'm Quitting Because I'm Tired of Newsroom Racism.
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My first job in media was as a television producer. I was 28 years old, eager and brimming with ideas, some of which I’m sure were good and others of which I’m sure were not. Not long after starting the job, I asked to produce a segment with a well-known black actor whose work I had long followed. As the only black producer there, I knew from experience that when walking into an entirely white environment, it always felt good to be greeted by another brown face.
My white male coworker, who produced a lot of the entertainment segments and clearly wanted to meet this actor himself, said to me, in front of the entire staff: “Just because you’re black doesn’t mean you get to produce all the black guests.”
This producer had a point: He may have known just as much about film and this man's career as I did, and being black doesn't necessarily make me better qualified to do a segment about a black person. But his response was so hostile and pointed that there was no doubting his intentions: He was making clear that he wasn't afraid to mention my race aloud, lest I thought it was my personal ace in the hole. His assumption seemed to be that I’d use my race as a cudgel to get good assignments. His strategy, in turn, was to use it as a cudgel right back.
That incident over 15 years ago wasn’t an outlier. It was an initiation into a career fraught with similar experiences. And now I've had enough—I'm quitting the mainstream media.
It’s a strange and incredibly demoralizing time to be a black person in American media. The words “racist and “racism” have cynically become clickbait, all while various newsrooms are claiming that they want to hire more writers and reporters and editors of color, but don’t. What it feels like you are hearing is: We’re not really trying to diversify our newsrooms, because we don’t actually have to.
Among the challenges that make racism so difficult to fix, and so odiously constant, is that white people often don’t even recognize when they’re saying or doing something that cuts their black colleagues to the bone. Or worse, they do recognize when they’re being racially insensitive, but then demonstrate some semblance of regret and move on unscathed. If we can't say anything about this kind of behavior—or don’t—then who will? What’s more, if we do speak up, particularly if we are among the chosen few who are granted a voice in mainstream media, at what cost?
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The Whiteness Project underscores why there is so little empathy between whites and blacks. Slate: The Gulf That Divides Us.
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The interviews for the Whiteness Project—a new series from PBS and documentary filmmaker Whitney Dow—are varied, succinct, and candid. “Because slavery happened, does that mean we owe black people something?” asks one participant, who continues with other, similar observations. “I think it's hard to talk about race as a white person because, maybe, black people are just looking for a reason to tell you why you're wrong, or tell you why you owe them something,” he said. “I just don't buy into that nonsense about discrimination,” says a doctor. He insists: “If you have it upstairs, and you really commit to doing what you want to do with your life, I don't think race has anything to do with anything.”
These interviews are just the first part in a larger series, and already, they’re valuable. It’s rare that white Americans talk about race. It’s even rarer that they do so on camera. And it’s rarer still that they reveal ignorance, confess to prejudices, and share their fears.
With that said, watching the interviews is jarring. In general, you don't expect anyone to openly say he or she is “proud to be white” or warn that “a lot of white boys aren't going to be pushed around.” But although these interviews are often unpleasant, they’re also useful, since they illustrate the extent to which blacks and whites really do inhabit vastly different worlds.
Take social circles and relationships. According to a recent survey from the Public Religion Research Institute, 75 percent of white Americans have entirely white social networks “without any minority presence.” Per the interviews, it’s not just that people are unfamiliar with race, it’s that—in all likelihood—they don’t know many minorities, which leads to myths and misconceptions about their behavior and status.
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An unprecedented 8 shows featuring black artists and photographers are on display in London for the UK’s Black History Month. The Root: Black Art Lovers, London Is the Place to Be Right Now.
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To coincide with both Black History Month in the United Kingdom and the internationally renowned Frieze art fair, there are a staggering seven exhibitions by black artists—plus a historical-archive showcase presenting formerly unseen photographs of black people in Victorian Britain—currently showing in London.
Previously unthinkable in what was once a notoriously conservative, painfully homogeneous and dolefully Eurocentric art world, we appear to be seeing the emergence of a critical mass of black visibility in art’s highest echelons, and hence at last are witnessing an exponential demand for serious black art in Europe.
Headlining at a combination of private and public galleries across London right now—and during the most prestigious few weeks in the global art calendar, to boot—are the following exhibits, along with excerpts of descriptions from their galleries.
Kerry James Marshall, Untitled (Club Couple), 2014, acrylic on PVC panel, 61 by 61 inches. Copyright Kerry James Marshall 2014. All rights reserved.
COURTESY OF DAVID ZWIRNER, LONDON
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Three decades after images that shocked the world, country has become darling of the global development community – and the scourge of the human rights lobby. The Guardian: Ethiopia, 30 years after the famine.
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With an Einsteinian shock of hair and a wise man’s beard, Mulugeta Tesfakiros, just off a flight from Washington, settled into an office of glass walls and vibrant artworks in Addis Ababa. The millionaire magnate, who has gone into the local wine business with Bob Geldof, mused on the new Ethiopia: “Most of the people need first security, second food … and democracy after that.”
An hour’s drive away stand the corrugated iron watchtowers of a prison. The inmates include nine bloggers and journalists charged with terrorism. Standing in a bleak courtyard on a family visit day, they talked about how they had been tortured.
“I feel like I don’t know Ethiopia,” one said. “It’s a totally different country for me.”
This is the Janus-faced society that is the second most populous country in Africa. A generation after the famine that pierced the conscience of the world, Ethiopia is both a darling of the international development community and a scourge of the human rights lobby. Even as investment conferences praise it as a trailblazer the entire continent should emulate, organisations such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) describe it as “one of the most repressive media environments in the world”.
To be in Ethiopia is to witness an economic miracle. The country has enjoyed close to double-digit growth for a decade. One study found it was creating millionaires faster than anywhere else on the continent. The streets of Addis Ababa reverberate with hammering from construction workers as the concrete skeletons of new towers and a monorail project rise into the crane-dotted sky. Ethiopia’s government says it is on course to meet most of the millennium development goals and, by 2025, to be a middle-income country.
A man walks past a portion of the Addis Ababa light railway under construction in Addis Ababa. Photograph: Carl de Souza/AFP/Getty Images
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