Commentary: African American Scientists and Inventors
by Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
Michael Phillip Anderson (December 25, 1959 – February 1, 2003) was a United States Air Force officer and NASA astronaut, who was killed in the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster when the craft disintegrated after reentry into the Earth's atmosphere.
Anderson was born in Plattsburgh, New York, into an Air Force family and grew up as a military brat. He attended high school in Cheney, Washington, while his father was stationed at Fairchild Air Force Base, west of Spokane.
(con't.)
Anderson graduated from the University of Washington in 1981 and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force. After completing a year of technical training at Keesler Air Force Base, Mississippi, he was assigned to Randolph Air Force Base, Texas. At Randolph he served as Chief of Communication Maintenance for the 2015th Communication Squadron and later as Director of Information System Maintenance for the 1920th Information System Group.
In 1986 he was selected to attend Undergraduate Pilot Training at Vance Air Force Base, Oklahoma. Upon graduation he was assigned to the 2d Airborne Command and Control Squadron, Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska as an EC-135 pilot, flying the Strategic Air Command's airborne command post code-named "Looking Glass." While stationed at Offutt, he completed his master's degree in physics at Creighton University in 1990.
From January 1991 to September 1992 he served as an aircraft commander and instructor pilot in the 920th Air Refueling Squadron, Wurtsmith Air Force Base, Michigan.
From September 1992 to February 1995 he was assigned as an instructor pilot and tactics officer in the 380th Air Refueling Wing, Plattsburgh Air Force Base, New York.
Anderson logged over 3,000 hours of flight in various models of the KC-135 and the T-38A aircraft.
Selected by NASA in December 1994, Anderson reported to the Johnson Space Center in March 1995. He completed a year of training and evaluation, and was qualified for flight crew assignment as a mission specialist. Anderson was initially assigned technical duties in the Flight Support Branch of the Astronaut Office. Anderson flew on missions STS-89 and STS-107, logging over 593 hours in space.....Read More
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Eliminating destination bias was initially an unintended byproduct of the ride-sharing apps — now it’s quickly being marketed as a feature. Buzz Feed:Uber And Lyft Position Themselves As Relief From Discrimination.
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Last Tuesday afternoon, Genie Lauren, a 29-year-old black New York native, and activist, sporting a business casual outfit, attempted to hail a cab heading downtown from Midtown East. “Two cabs drove right past me,” Lauren said. “One guy looked like he saw me and looked like he was going to come to me and drove away.”
Frustrated and in a hurry, Lauren told BuzzFeed News that although she’s a rare and reluctant Uber customer (“I try not to use [it] all the time because I know about the whole Uber labor issue”), she opened her Uber app and requested a ride. Shortly after, Lauren tweeted about the experience:
Lauren’s cab-hailing experience is, unfortunately, not unique to black passengers and other darker-skinned people. “Every black person I think has had that experience,” Dennis Parker, director of the American Civil Liberties Union racial justice program, told BuzzFeed News. “Whether they have people drive by or the ‘I’m not going to Brooklyn.’”
Though it’s hard for organizations to quantify this type of racial discrimination, historically, taxi drivers in many cities have refused to drive to certain destinations. In a 2011 undercover operation, the Taxi and Limousine Commission found that out of 1,330 cabs more than 336 refused to travel to places like the Bronx and northern Manhattan.
Many people of color like Lauren are turning to app-based car services like Uber, Lyft, and Gett for relief from either discrimination or destination biases — a point that the companies have become quick to tout. For the ride-sharing companies, what was initially an unintended byproduct of the app — or a happy accident of sorts — is quickly being marketed as a feature.
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The increasingly purple state of Georgia is a 2014 test case in Republicans’ war on black voting. The Root: In Georgia’s Midterms, the Cold War Against Black Voters Gets Hot.
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There are plenty of clichéd metaphors we apply to elections and warfare.
Getting out the vote is the “ground war,” hotly contested states are “battleground states” and any campaign commercial in which candidates aren’t hugging each other is an “attack ad.”
And there’s another cliché to add to the mix that’s never been more apparent than in this year’s midterm elections: With control of the U.S. Senate within the grasp of Republicans for the first time in almost a decade, the “cold war” of voting has suddenly gone “hot.” And if you look across the nation, African Americans are the most likely to get burned.
A cold war is a passive-aggressive war. For years the United States and the Soviet Union fought each other indirectly, through proxy wars in Africa, South America and Asia, through rock-and-roll songs and the Olympics. Eventually President Ronald Reagan just called Russia the evil empire and things went hot in the 1980s.
Likewise, the war on voting—or, perhaps more precisely, the war on black voting—had been cold for years, and the blatantly racist chants of politicians seeking to suppress black votes had given way to subtleties like racial gerrymandering by Republican and Democratic incumbents, voting-machine fraud and paying off pastors on Sundays. No one came out and said, “We have to stop blacks from voting,” but all that changed once President Barack Obama was elected twice by a coalition of voters no one had ever seen before. Young people, Asian Americans, Latinos and African Americans turning out at higher rates than any other racial group in the country scared the hell out of Republicans who feared a stable voting bloc that might turn blue states indigo and red states purple.
After 2012, suddenly the GOP was concerned about “voter fraud,” and swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida passed laws intended to suppress the vote. In the last month alone, backed by a right-leaning Supreme Court, early voting has been curtailed in Ohio and onerous voter-identification laws have been upheld in Wisconsin. But nowhere has the war on voting been more apparent than in the state of Georgia.
In September, Republican Secretary of State Brian Kemp launched an investigation directed at a nonpartisan voter-registration organization, the New Georgia Project, and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), speaking at an Atlanta press conference on Monday, knew exactly why. “There is a systematic and deliberate attempt on the part of some states,” Lewis charged, “to limit the vote of minorities, seniors and young people. Pennsylvania, Ohio, Arizona ... it violates the spirit of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.”
Board of Elections Customer Service Supervisor Sabrina German hands out absentee ballots during early voting Oct. 23, 2008, in Savannah, Ga.
STEPHEN MORTON/GETTY IMAGES
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Video is changing police abuse incidents. Slate: Indiana Police Sued After Traffic Stop Ends With Cops Smashing Window, Tasering Passenger.
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What started as a routine traffic stop in Hammond, Indiana spiraled out of control two weeks ago and ended with local police breaking the window of the car and tasering the passenger in the front seat. On Monday, the passengers in the car filed a federal lawsuit against the officers for assault, battery, and using excessive force during the stop.
The incident took place on the afternoon of Sept. 24, when Lisa Mahone was pulled over by local police for not wearing her seatbelt. A friend, Jamal Jones, was in the passenger seat and her two children, age 7 and 14, were in the back seat at the time. One of the children recorded a several minute video (above) on a cell phone of the incident. Here’s more on what transpired via the Chicago Tribune:
The officer told Mahone, 47, she was stopped for not wearing her seatbelt and asked for her driver's license. The officer also asked to see Jones' identification, according to both police and the lawsuit. Mahone produced her license, but Jones told the officer he had been ticketed for not paying his insurance and did not have his license, the lawsuit states.
Jones claims the officer drew his gun "for no reason" after Jones retrieved the ticket from his backpack and "offered the ticket to the officer." But police say Jones refused to hand over the ticket. "(Jones) refused to lower the window more than a small amount, then told the officer that 'he was not going to do (the officer’s) job' and for him to get a piece of paper," police said in their statement. "The first officer then called for back-up after asking (Jones) several more times to provide his name."
As the back-up officer arrived, "the first officer saw the passenger inside the vehicle drop his left hand behind the center console. . . Fearing for officer safety, the first officer ordered the passenger to show his hands and then repeatedly asked him to exit the vehicle," according to the statement… The lawsuit says Jones refused to leave the car "because he feared the officers would harm him."
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You can't spin this to be an instance of anything other than racial prejudice. Salon: Black teenager pepper-sprayed by police in his own home.
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18-year-old DeShawn Currie had only been Ricky and Stacy Tyler’s foster child for about a year when neighbors mistook the black teen for a burglar as he entered the family home.
The Tylers, a white family with the exception of DeShawn, had only lived in Fuquay-Varina, N.C. since July, so the neighbors hadn’t gotten to know the family very well. That’s why, when a neighbor saw DeShawn walk into their home early Monday afternoon, that neighbor called 911, mistaking the teen for a burglar.
“They was like, ‘Put your hands on the door,’” said DeShawn in an interview with a local television station. “I was like, ‘For what? This is my house.’ I was like, ‘Why are y’all in here?’”
DeShawn said he became angry when officers pointed out the pictures of the Tyler’s three younger children on the mantle, assuming he didn’t belong there. An argument ensued and DeShawn said one of the officers pepper-sprayed him in the face.
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Because of health concerns, sub-Saharan Africa might get its first white head of state since apartheid. Economist: Zambian politics White man, burdened.
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ZAMBIA rarely makes a stir at the annual UN general assembly in New York. But when Michael Sata, the president, failed to turn up for his speech this year, other African delegations took note.
The 77-year-old had collapsed in his hotel suite on September 25th and was treated by doctors sent by the American government. He had rarely appeared in public in recent months. When he addressed the Zambian parliament earlier in September he joked, “I am not dead,” and then left without delivering his speech.
Under the Zambian constitution, if Mr Sata becomes unfit to work he will be replaced by his vice-president, Guy Scott, pending a new election to be held within 90 days. If so, Mr Scott would be the first white man to head an African state since the end of apartheid in South Africa two decades ago. What is more remarkable is that few Zambians seem concerned—a marked contrast from neighbouring South Africa or Zimbabwe, where politics is still riven by questions of race and colonialism.
The Cambridge-educated economist is the only one of about 40,000 white Zambians to make it to the higher echelons of politics. Born in Livingstone, the 70-year-old is the son of white Anglo-Scots who arrived before independence. He has been a popular MP, like his father, Alec, who campaigned against colonial rule. The younger Mr Scott was lauded as agriculture minister in the 1990s. As vice-president since 2011, he and the man he calls “the boss” have steered a sensible course, keeping the economy growing at about 6% a year. The government welcomed white farmers expropriated in Zimbabwe. Having campaigned against Chinese dominance in industry, the government has made its peace with Asian business partners.
Zambian vice-president, Guy Scott
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OMG!!! EBOLA IS HERE! EVERYBODY PANIC. No. Don’t. I’m just kidding. The Grio: Our ignorance of Africa is more dangerous than Ebola.
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The Ebola virus is not the flu, and it should be taken very seriously because it is deadly, with an estimated 70% mortality rate. However, panicking is not (and has never been) productive in fighting (and winning) any battle. With it comes misinformation, stigmatizing and the vilifying of an entire region and people. The media is especially complicit in that process, as reporters do the most with the absolute least.
Andrea Tantaros, a FOX News host had the unmitigated gall to tell viewers that “in these countries they do not believe in traditional medical care, so someone could get off a flight and seek treatment from a witch doctor who practices Santeria. This is a bigger fear. We’re hoping they come to the hospitals in the U.S., but they might not!”
All the NOPES that ever NOPED in NOPELAND. I already know that FOX News broadcasts are the place where logic goes to die a slow painful death, but that’s EXTRA ignorant, even for them. That foolishness is a bridge to folks also wondering whether travel from West Africa needs to be barred until further notice. No amount of facepalming is sufficient enough to express my disgust about this. NONE.
The narrative about Africa has always been a simple, singular picture of the poor helpless, disease-ridden child with mosquitoes all over it. The continent is seen as one huge Sally Struthers commercial pleading for help, and the media will not let go of that depiction. While Africa does need aid, Africa is also rising. However, right now it’s seen as the Ebola zone. Like my shero Chimamanda Adichie said, “The single story creates stereotypes, and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”
The entire continent is being stigmatized, and people are making stupid comments like, “You’re going to South Africa? Aren’t you worried about Ebola?” Yes, uninformed ignoramus. Because an Ebola outbreak in Liberia and Sierra Leone surely means you can’t visit anywhere else. Because Africa is one giant country.
Left, Fox News host Andrea Tantaros says African Ebola victims may seek "witch doctors." Right, Nowa Paye, 9, is taken to an ambulance after showing signs of the Ebola infection in the village of Freeman Reserve, about 30 miles north of Monrovia, Liberia, Tuesday Sept. 30, 2014. Three members of District 13 ambulance service traveled to the village to pick up six suspected Ebola sufferers that had been quarantined by villagers. (AP Photo/Jerome Delay)
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