A "long ago" work of scientific racism.
A note on Science and Racism
by Chitown Kev
Going from the ISIS murder and immolation of a Jordanian pilot to a comparison of the ISIS murders with the American lynching of black folks to a discussion of liberal racism (mind you, Miss fou could give a rat’s ass about all of that) to President Obama’s speech at the National Prayer Breakfast and the all-too predictable pearl-clutching of conservative Christians over the President’s fine speech has, in one sense, been one of the best national civic discussions that I can remember. And that discussion continues.
It has also given rise to the presumption that religion is the primary source and perpetrator of world evil; the implication that if only religion or, to be more precise, the alignment of religion with political power, could be eradicated, then we would all live happily ever after in a world where reason and logic rules, where people keep their spiritual beliefs to themselves, and everything would work, if not perfectly, then better and more efficiently for everyone.
As a black person in American society, I cannot afford to be fooled by that presumption.
At those times, I remind myself to take a peek at the Wiki page on scientific racism.
Scientific Racism
(Frankly, the “scientific racism” wiki page leaves something to be desired; for example, the section on antiquity seems rather weak and seems to utilize only one contemporary overview of the requisite material.
Nevertheless, the wiki page contains an impressive list of philosophers (e.g. Voltaire, Kant, Hegel) and scientists (e.g. Linneaus, Darwin) who contributed to the scientific basis for racism, wittingly or unwittingly (as may have been the case for Darwin)…these thinkers are also considered to be at the forefront of "western" rationalism and the sciences
I then go down and read Dr. Samuel Cartwright’s (now) hilarious description of drapetomania, which Cartwright described to a Louisiana medical society as some sort of disorder "unknown to our medical authorities, although its diagnostic symptom, the absconding from service, is well known to our planters and overseers"
To me, the best thing about the "scientific racism" wikipedia page is that it exposes the links between scientific racism and public policy even as it misses some really obvious stuff.
And while much of this racist science has been reduced to "pseudo-science" by many specialists, racism under the guise and supposed authority and rigor of science and rationalism remains a pop cultural phenomenon; often hitting the top of best seller lists.
And, needless to say, this can apply to quite a bit of "scientific" polling as well.
At the moment, I am working on a (very long and detailed!) diary in which the basic thesis is that religion is one subset of an entire set of "ideology", religious ideology can (and often does) work in concert with other ideologies. One of those other ideologies is white supremacy.
I am unsure that science, like religion, constitutes an "ideology.'
What I do know (and the historical record amply documents) is that science and rationality, when combined with the ideology of white supremacy can produce social effects every bit as devastating as those of religious ideology.
And I cannot, as a black man in America, afford to forget that.
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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The US has been tracking demographic data since 1790. Needless to say, a lot has changed in the country in the last 200 years. Colorlines: Census Infographic: How ‘Slaves’ Became ‘African-Americans’.
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The United States has been tracking demographic data since 1790. Needless to say, a lot has changed in the country in the past two centuries. A new infographic produced by the Center for American Progress tracks the U.S. Census’ shifting racial categories and offers a compelling bird’s eye view of race in the U.S. After all, so much of our race conversation is embedded in the labels we use for ourselves and others.
The U.S. didn’t bother setting aside a category to count American Indians until 1860, nearly a century after the Declaration of Independence. Blacks in the U.S. have perhaps undergone the most change. First designated only as “slaves” in 1790, the Census eventually added in new categories for “quadroon” and “octoroon” blacks in 1890. In the 20th century alone, black people in the U.S. have been officially labeled “Black,” “Mullato,” “Negro,” and eventually also “African American.” The label “white” is the only category that has persisted, unchanged, since 1790.
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Cops expose their racism on Facebook, and you thought it was only teenagers whop said too much. The Marshal Project: When Police Go Rogue on Facebook.
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Last week, Seattle police apologized for an incident in which a female officer arrested a 69-year-old man walking in the city with a golf club. She said he wielded the club as a weapon. He said it was simply a cane. Police video supported the man’s account.
But it was only after another discovery – made by a Seattle newspaper, The Stranger – that the police department removed the officer from street duty, assigning her to a desk.
The officer is white. The man she arrested with the golf club is black. Last year, the officer posted this on Facebook:
“If you believe that blacks are NOT accusing white America for their problems then you are missing the point of the riots in Ferguson and the chronic black racism that far exceeds any white racism in this country. I am tired of black peoples paranoia that white people are out to get them. … I am tired of black people saying poor poor me …”
When Seattle’s police chief read those Facebook comments last week, she said she was “shocked and disappointed.”
Around the country, other chiefs can relate. So can other communities where officers – and sometimes, the police chiefs themselves – have posted Facebook messages that created controversy and sometimes led to suspensions or firings. Such episodes have played out on other social-media sites, of course. And, like the Internet itself, they extend beyond the United States. (In the United Kingdom, more than 150 officers have faced disciplinary action for bad Facebook behavior, including one constable who wrote: “Let’s not be so soft on these [worst expletive imaginable] out there.”)
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Good Governance Africa survey shows that 16 African countries have near 100% vaccination rates, part of a broader success story in combatting the disease. The Guardian: Measles vaccination rates in parts of Africa surpass those in North America.
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While parts of North America are experiencing the worst measles outbreak in 15 years, a new report shows that Africa has increased immunisation rates significantly, making the continent a world leader in protecting children against the disease.
The widespread availability of safe and affordable vaccines in even the most volatile and poor regions of African countries has seen immunisation rates surpass those of in the US, according to the 2015 Africa Survey, an annual report by Good Governance Africa (GGA).
The US has a 91% vaccination rate, while in Canada, which is currently experiencing an outbreak in Toronto, it is 84%, according to a UN estimate. A 95% rate is required for so-called “herd immunity”.
A survey this week by Canadian researchers found that a fifth of the population still believed the long-debunked myth that the measles vaccine causes autism.
Ninety per cent of measles cases in the US involve people who have not been vaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown, according to US Centers for Disease Control.
A child receives a vaccination in Tchadoua, south-west Niger. Photograph: Issouf Sanogo/AFP/Getty Images
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The tallest apartment building in Africa was built as a modernist tribute to apartheid. Now it’s something far more important. Slate: South Africa’s Tower of Dreams.
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In late 2007, a series of print advertisements began appearing across Johannesburg, showcasing glitzy new apartments for rent in a downtown high-rise. Emblazoned with the phrase “Live Your Life,” the ads featured a series of imagined occupants who looked like they’d jumped straight out of central casting for the new South Africa—diverse, middle class, and blithely hopeful.
In one, a young Indian woman faced her parents in the doorway to her apartment, shock registering on their faces as they glanced past her to the shirtless white man asleep in the bed inside. In another, the camera bent upward from ground level to show a gay couple in pastel shirts—one man black, the other white—staring dreamily at each other in front of a concrete high-rise.
For anyone actually familiar with Johannesburg, however, these ads simply didn’t compute. For one thing, the apartment block on offer—a 54-story tower called Ponte City—was hardly prime yuppie real estate. In fact, the tallest apartment building on the continent was by then perhaps the city’s most notorious address, the garish center point of a trio of rundown inner city neighborhoods—Yeoville, Berea, and Hillbrow—best known to outsiders for their drug trade, violent crime, and poverty.
And the tower itself was a dated offering to the gods of high modernism—a massive gray concrete tube with an open center jutting out from a hillside overlooking the city’s downtown. Courtesy of its ungainly bulk and its central geography, Ponte had been the most visible icon of Johannesburg’s blight in the years following South Africa’s transition to democracy in the mid-1990s, a reputation few had forgotten.
What the developers were demanding, then, seemed beyond audacious: They wanted the hipster middle class to drop themselves straight into the concrete heart of Johannesburg’s south Bronx, its Compton, its Anacostia.
Ponte City, Johannesburg, South Africa, 2008.
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Potentially lethal methane at the bottom of Lake Kivu is being harnessed to solve Rwanda’s energy poverty, but the project needed complex funding agreements to get off the ground. The Guardian: The killer lake: how an exploding lake became a gold mine for Rwanda.
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In 1984 37 people died on the road leading past Lake Monoun in western Cameroon. Survivors reported seeing a foul-smelling cloud of white gas, which crept low along the floor. Victims’ bodies were covered in blisters. Was someone testing chemical weapons? The US government immediately dispatched a team of scientists to find out.
Haraldur Sigurdsson from University of Rhode Island ruled out biological warfare in favour of suffocation. Following interviews with survivors, he reached the conclusion that the deadly gas cloud had emanated from the lake. Tests on the water showed that it was almost saturated with gas: Sigurdsson and his colleagues concluded that the deaths were a result of a limnic eruption, also known as lake overturn or lake explosion.
A second explosion in 1986, this time at Lake Nyos in west Cameroon, caused 1,700 deaths. “Almost certainly the lake will kill again if the gas isn’t taken out,” said British doctor Peter Baxter said in a BBC interview. The government began to tap the lake, sucking the gas from the bottom, and releasing it into the air above.
But it was at another lake that revealed “exploding lakes” could be a blessing, rather than a blight, on local communities. Lake Kivu is 2,300km east of Lake Nyos, straddling the border of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda. It is 2,000 times bigger than Nyos and 2 million people live along its shores. The Rwandan government immediately began seeking a solution to prevent catastrophic explosion at Kivu.
Their tests revealed something extraordinary. The gas in Kivu’s waters was methane, so it would be suitable for energy production. It was essential to de-gas the lake before another catastrophic explosion, but at the same time, there was huge potential for energy generation from such an enormous untapped supply of gas. This was the beginning of the Kivuwatt biogas project.
Men dive into the waters of Lake Kivu, Kisegi, Rwanda. Photograph: Kim Lundbrook/EPA/Corbis
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
There is a lifetime of dreams with which we can wish for our children, many more than we can hope to be true. We can try to avoid the nightmares of their future realities, of course. We can try to protect them, knowing it will never be enough. Knowing it for a lifetime.
But what if we dreamed a little dream for them? We could, you know.
We could dream of...
Dinosaurs in the Hood
Let’s make a movie called Dinosaurs in the Hood.
Jurassic Park meets Friday meets The Pursuit of Happyness.
There should be a scene where a little black boy is playing
with a toy dinosaur on the bus, then looks out the window
& sees the T. Rex, because there has to be a T. Rex.
Don’t let Tarantino direct this. In his version, the boy plays
with a gun, the metaphor: black boys toy with their own lives,
the foreshadow to his end, the spitting image of his father.
Fuck that, the kid has a plastic Brontosaurus or Triceratops
& this is his proof of magic or God or Santa. I want a scene
where a cop car gets pooped on by a pterodactyl, a scene
where the corner store turns into a battle ground. Don’t let
the Wayans brothers in this movie. I don’t want any racist shit
about Asian people or overused Latino stereotypes.
This movie is about a neighborhood of royal folks —
children of slaves & immigrants & addicts & exiles — saving their town
from real-ass dinosaurs. I don’t want some cheesy yet progressive
Hmong sexy hot dude hero with a funny yet strong commanding
black girl buddy-cop film. This is not a vehicle for Will Smith
& Sofia Vergara. I want grandmas on the front porch taking out raptors
with guns they hid in walls & under mattresses. I want those little spitty,
screamy dinosaurs. I want Cicely Tyson to make a speech, maybe two.
I want Viola Davis to save the city in the last scene with a black fist afro pick
through the last dinosaur’s long, cold-blood neck. But this can’t be
a black movie. This can’t be a black movie. This movie can’t be dismissed
because of its cast or its audience. This movie can’t be a metaphor
for black people & extinction. This movie can’t be about race.
This movie can’t be about black pain or cause black people pain.
This movie can’t be about a long history of having a long history with hurt.
This movie can’t be about race. Nobody can say nigga in this movie
who can’t say it to my face in public. No chicken jokes in this movie.
No bullets in the heroes. & no one kills the black boy. & no one kills
the black boy. & no one kills the black boy. Besides, the only reason
I want to make this is for that first scene anyway: the little black boy
on the bus with a toy dinosaur, his eyes wide & endless
his dreams possible, pulsing, & right there.
-- Danez Smith
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