COMMENTARY: AFRICAN AMERICAN SCIENTIST AND INVENTORS
By Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
Aprille Ericsson-Jackson was born the oldest of four daughters in Brooklyn, NY. She spent her childhood growing up in the Bedford Styvesant neighborhood, specifically, the Roosevelt projects on Dekalb Avenue. She was bussed to the elementary school, P.S. 199 in Brooklyn. She first realized she had an aptitude for mathematics and science during her attendance of Marine Park JHS where she was the only black student enrolled in the Special Progress program. In her senior year of JHS, she won second place in the Science Fair and scored in the 90s on all her regent and citywide exams. She graduated with high honors and was a member of the school band, the girls basketball team, the science club and the honors club. She passed the exams for all of New York's Technical High Schools: the Bronx School of Science, Styvesant and Brooklyn Technical.
At the age of 15 years, she moved to Cambridge, MA to live with her grandparents and attended high school at the Cambridge School of Weston. She played basketball and softball in high school and in the Cambridge Recreation Leagues. During her senior year of high school, she was a volunteer Physical Education Teacher for several Cambridge elementary schools. Today she still enjoys playing football, basketball, softball, cycling and tennis. Her coed softball team travels around the country playing.
Upon completion of her education at MIT, she was encouraged by her best friend to attend Howard University (HU) in Washington, D.C. There she obtained a Masters of Engineering and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering, Aerospace option. Her research objective at HU has been to develop practical design procedures that can be used in conjunction with optimal digital controllers for future orbiting large space structure systems like the Space Station. Her research at HU has allowed her to travel to Germany, Canada and England to present technical papers. She has won several student paper competitions; the last and most prestigious one was at the 6th International Space Conference for Pacific-Basin Societies were she won first place for the Ph.D. student competition....Read More Here
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News round up by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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With black votes in the balance in the Democratic primary, would-be candidates are already developing aggressive policies to target inequality. The Atlantic: The Racial Wealth Gap Could Become a 2020 Litmus Test
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When Senator Elizabeth Warren announced that she’d formed a presidential exploratory committee, she hit all the populist notes that have become standard in her career, addressing a besieged middle class that’s constantly undermined by powerful corporate and political elites. “In our country, if you work hard and play by the rules, you ought to be able to take care of yourself and the people you love,” the senator said in her video announcement. But the second part of her message stood out for the way she acknowledged how many Americans, namely people of color, are barred from reaching the middle class. “Families of color face a path that is steeper and rockier, a path made even harder by the impact of generations of discrimination,” Warren said.
As the first high-profile politician to announce a presidential run, Warren is the pacesetter for the 2020 Democratic primary. Her prominent mention of the racial wealth gap signals that it could become a defining issue in the race, especially at a time when people of color matter more than ever to the Democratic Party’s chances. With surging black and Latino voting power offering new pathways to victory in 2020, candidates might feel more compelled than in past races to offer bold strategies to fix the enduring economic legacy of white supremacy.
The racial wealth gap is a straightforward issue that almost nobody can agree on how to fix. White people have way more money than everyone else, and it’s not just income: Although there are persistent differences in wage, salary, and benefits between races, much of the wealth gap is attributable to real estate and other individual assets, as well as disparities in familial assets and incomes. As described in a graphic in Warren’s video, and confirmed by recent studies of economic data, the median wealth of white families sits north of $100,000, while black median wealth hovers around $0, and might even be negative. And while the differences between white and black Americans are the most extreme, other underrepresented minority groups also face vast deficits relative to white families.
The cause of those wealth gaps is relatively straightforward, too: racism. According to Sandy Darity, a Duke University economist and one of the country’s leading researchers on race, wealth inequality, and economic policy, the enduring black-white disparities trace all the way back to slavery. “I would start with the failure to grant the formerly enslaved the 40 acres and a mule that they were promised,” Darity told me. “Had those land grants been made, I think we would be talking about a very different America from the one that we are experiencing now.” To that history, Darity adds the theft of black life and wealth by lynch mobs and perpetrators of more common acts of violence.
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Forget the Wall! Our City’s Water Has ‘Dangerously High’ Levels of Lead. The Root: Newark Mayor to Trump
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Newark, N.J., Mayor Ras J. Baraka wrote a letter to Donald Trump, urging the president to ditch his potential plan to fund his long-sought border wall with emergency funds and instead send some of that money to Newark to replace faulty lead lines that are leaking “dangerously high levels of lead” into the city’s tap water.
“I am writing to express my deep concern that you are seriously thinking of declaring a national emergency to fund a proposed $5 billion border wall,” Baraka wrote to Trump in a Jan. 14 letter provided to The Root. “I want to bring your attention to a true emergency that puts millions of our citizens at risk: The decaying infrastructure of our water systems which has created a crisis in Newark, the State of New Jersey and across America. Dangerously high levels of lead are entering homes and our children’s blood through lead service lines despite the fact that any level of lead can damage the developing brains of young children.”
In his letter, Baraka wrote that “more than 20 other New Jersey cities and towns have elevated levels of lead in their tap water” and that those communities are mostly composed of black and brown residents.
Newark has responded to that crisis by distributing more than 25,000 water filters to impacted residents, with a goal of distributing 40,000 filters. Newark has also developed a public-private partnership with the State of New Jersey, the City of Newark, and eligible homeowners to replace lead service lines, a process that will take up to 10 years to complete.
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The nation is in the midst of the longest running government shutdown in U.S. history. According to The Business Insider, 800,000 federal employees and millions of government contractors are currently going without pay.
Almost a month in, the damage is not only taking place on the national economy, but it is also affecting many African-American federal workers and their families. NPR’s All Things Considered host, Ari Shapiro spoke with Guardian reporter, Jamiles Lartey, about how the shutdown has disproportionately affected Blacks, who make up more of the federal workforce than any other population.
In the NPR interview, Shapiro stated that for generations, government work has provided good wages and job security for African-Americans who may have faced discrimination in the private sector. Black families not only have a fraction of the wealth of white family, but also since many of them live paycheck to paycheck, are being severely affected by the shutdown.
“The profound racial wealth gap in the U.S. makes it far more difficult for the average Black American to sustain a long period without a paycheck as compared with a white American,” Lartey said.
“We don’t have numbers of, you know, Black federal workers’ wealth versus white federal workers’ wealth. It’s probably much closer than the broader disparity,” he added. “But, you know, overall Black Americans are less likely to have friends, family, networks, access to credit. You know, you name it. Things that will help you survive a period without a paycheck, they’re less likely to have it.”
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The way Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) sees it, the banking industry has gotten a free ride for far too long.
As the new chair of the House Financial Services Committee, she’s ready to bring in Wells Fargo executives for questioning, scrutinize what Mick Mulvaney did as leader of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and create a subcommittee on discrimination to make sure the lending industry playing field is level. She is going to make a lot of powerful people uncomfortable.
“This was known as the juice committee. There is no more juice in this committee,” Waters said in a speech at the Center for American Progress Action Fund on Wednesday, her first policy address as committee chair. So-called “juice committees” are generally ones that oversee lucrative industries and are seen as desirable to members because they’re a good platform for fundraising from those industries.
But Waters made it clear the committee is now about oversight.
“The time for accountability for his actions is about to begin,” Waters said at CAP on Wednesday, referring to Mulvaney, now Trump’s acting chief of staff and Office of Management and Budget director.
Consumer protection isn’t the sexiest of issues, but it’s one that affects literally everyone’s life — from credit cards to mortgages to student loans. And this administration has demonstrated a clear industry bent, watering down rules that would curtail predatory payday lenders, dismantling financial protections for the military, and taking an overall more pro-Wall Street stance. Waters may be able to use the spotlight on her to draw attention to that.
Waters said on Wednesday she wasn’t relying on the Trump administration “for much of anything.” She said she was open to working with Republicans — to a point. “I will work with those on the opposite side of the aisle who want to work on issues that we are alluding to,” she said, “but, of course, if they don’t, I have the gavel.”
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A bloody, day-long terrorist attack on a hotel complex in Kenya’s capital has ended, leaving at least 14 people dead and others severely injured.
On Tuesday, four militants from al-Shabaab — a Somalia-based terrorist organization with ties to al-Qaeda — struck the luxury DusitD2 hotel in Nairobi in what police described as a coordinated attack. What followed was a 20-hour siege that left 11 Kenyans and several foreigners, including at least one American, dead. Early Wednesday morning, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta told reporters that “all the terrorists [have been] eliminated” and that 700 people escaped to safety.
The group says it launched the assault in response to President Donald Trump’s declaration last year of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
That, however, doesn’t make much sense. It’s more likely that the strike is really the latest catastrophe in a decade-plus struggle between Kenya and al-Shabaab. The group, which in recent years has killed scores of Kenyans in malls, universities, and small villages, continues to strike mostly over Nairobi’s US-backed efforts to militarily defeat it in neighboring Somalia.
It’s a fight that, sadly, shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.
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The Louisville Regional Airport Authority Board announced yesterday (January 16) that its members voted to rename the Kentucky city’s primary airport after one of its most famous residents: boxing legend and racial justice activist Muhammad Ali.
Per the statement, the decision to formally change Louisville International Airport’s name to Louisville Muhammad Ali International Airport followed the recommendation of a working group that the board convened more than a year ago. Lonnie Ali called the decision to honor her late husband “a fitting testament to his legacy.”
Today (January 17) would have been Ali’s 77th birthday, had he not died from septic shock in June 2016. His widow marked the occasion with a message to fans:
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