Commentary: African American Scientists and Inventors
by Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
James E. Bowman MD, FASCP, FCAP (February 5, 1923 – September 28, 2011) was an American physician was internationally renowned as a specialist in pathology, hematology, and genetics. He was a professor of pathology and genetics at the Pritzker School of Medicine at the University of Chicago.
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James Edward Bowman was born on February 5, 1923, in Washington, D.C. where he attended Dunbar High School. He earned his undergraduate and medical degrees from Howard University in 1943 and 1946. He did medical internships at Freedmen's Hospital in Washington D.C. and at Provident Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. His residency in pathology was at St. Luke's Hospital in Chicago where he was the first African American resident.
Following residency, Bowman served as chair of pathology at Provident Hospital. He was drafted again and spent 1953 to 1955 as chief of pathology for the Medical Nutrition Laboratory at Fitzsimons Army Hospital in Denver. After leaving the military Bowman decided to move overseas. “My wife and I decided that we were not going to go back to anything that smacked of segregation,” he recalled. He became chair of pathology at Nemazee Hospital in Shiraz, Iran. “We were recently married, so we took a chance,” he said. “It changed our lives completely.” Their daughter, Valerie, was born in Iran.
In Iran Bowman saw many diseases for the first time. “I saw smallpox, brucellosis, rabies, all sorts of things,” he said. One of the most common diseases among certain ethnic groups in Iran was favism, a metabolic disease caused by an enzyme deficiency in red blood cells. The mutation, which the most common human enzyme defect, renders those who have it unable to break down a toxin found in fava beans. Favism fit with Bowman’s lifelong focus on inherited blood diseases and led to a series of important discoveries about the genetics of these diseases and the populations they affect, especially in the Middle East, Africa and America. It enabled him to travel all over the world collecting blood samples for DNA testing. It also led to frequent contacts and collaborations with University of Chicago researchers, who had first described the enzyme deficiency (Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency, or G6PD) and its connection with antimalarial medications.....Read More
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Early last September, before Occupy Wall Street was even a glint of pepper spray in an obstinate protester's eye, the NYPD were mobilizing against another crowd menace: the West Indian American Day Parade in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Gawkers: NYPD Facebook Group on West Indian Parade: ‘Filth. It’s Not Racist If It’s True’
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Sure, some officers were spotted getting into the spirit by grinding against paradegoers' behinds, but a far greater number were bracing for the mayhem that frequently accompanies the debauched annual event. This year's parade was particularly violent — there were multiple shootings, resulting in one civilian fatality and an officer wounded in his arm. In the days that followed, New York cops had had enough, and they created a Facebook group to vent their anger. It was extremely racist.
The group was called "No More West Indian Day Detail," and it's no longer up — but lawyers defending a man on trial for illegal gun possession discovered it, and found it useful to their case. They printed all 70 pages of it, and, after it failed to produce much of a reaction in court, provided a copy to The New York Times.
As the Times describes it, the group quickly grew to 1,200 members, many of whom posted under their real names. Some used language to refer to West Indians and Africa-Americans that was "so offensive," that others warned them to tone it down or they could find themselves the target of an investigation by Internal Affairs "rats."
Some of the comments:
An observation that the parade should be "moved to the zoo."
A description of parade detail as "ghetto training"
"Let them kill each other," one officer wrote.
"Filth," was a comment attributed to Nick Virgilio, a name the Times says "matches that of a police officer." Another responded: "It's not racist if it's true."
"Welcome to the Liberal NYC Gale, where if the cops sneeze too loud they get investigated for excessive force but the ‘civilians' can run around like savages and there are no repercussions."
"'They can keep the forced overtime,' said one writer, adding that the safety of officers 'come before the animals.'"
"'I say have the parade one more year,' wrote a commenter who identified himself as Dan Rodney, 'and when they all gather drop a bomb and wipe them all out.'"
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After 30 years of legal battles in what is perhaps the nation's most famous and racially charged death-penalty case, Philadelphia prosecutors announced today that they will end their battle to seek the death penalty for former Black Panther and one-time journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal in the 1981 murder of a white police officer.
NPR: Mumia Abu-Jamal: Death Penalty Dropped
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Abu-Jamal was convicted of fatally shooting Faulkner on Dec. 9, 1981. He was sentenced to death after his trial the following year.
Abu-Jamal, who has been incarcerated in a western Pennsylvania prison, has garnered worldwide support from those who believe he was the victim of a biased justice system.
The conviction was upheld through years of legal appeals. But a federal appeals court ordered a new sentencing hearing after ruling the instructions given to the jury were potentially misleading.
The U.S. Supreme Court declined to weigh in on the case in October. That forced prosecutors to decide if they wanted to again pursue the death penalty through a new sentencing hearing or accept a life sentence.
According to trial testimony, Abu-Jamal saw his brother scuffle with the 25-year-old patrolman during a 4 a.m. traffic stop in 1981 and ran toward the scene. Police found Abu-Jamal wounded by a round from Faulkner's gun. Faulkner, shot several times, was killed. A .38-caliber revolver registered to Abu-Jamal was found at the scene with five spent shell casings ...
Over the years, Abu-Jamal has challenged the predominantly white makeup of the jury, instructions given to jurors and the statements of eyewitnesses. He has also alleged ineffective counsel, racism by the trial judge and that another man confessed to the crime .
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A Black driver is seven times as likely to be stopped by police as a white driver in Milwaukee, a new study has found. Milwaukee Journal Sentinal: Black Drivers Stopped 7 Times More Often Than Whites
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A black Milwaukee driver is seven times as likely to be stopped by city police as a white resident driver, a Journal Sentinel analysis of nearly 46,000 traffic stops has found.
Similarly, Milwaukee police pulled over Hispanic city motorists nearly five times as often as white drivers, according to the review, which took into account the number of licensed drivers by race.
Police also searched black drivers at twice the rate of whites, but those searches didn't lead to higher rates of seized weapons, drugs or stolen property.
The review found that the disparities spanned all seven police districts. The two with the greatest racial discrepancies - Districts 1 and 6 - have the lowest crime rates, and both have predominantly white populations.
The disparities found in Milwaukee are greater than other large metro police departments where traffic stop data is collected, including Charlotte, Kansas City, Raleigh and St. Louis.
In those jurisdictions, black drivers were stopped between 1.6 and 2.2 times as often as white drivers, according to 2010 data from North Carolina and Missouri. Hispanic drivers in those cities were between 0.7 and 1.2 times as likely to be stopped as whites, taking into account the overall driving-age population. Using that same measure, Milwaukee's disparities were 3.9 for blacks and 2.1 for Hispanics.
Dennis Walton, outreach director at the Milwaukee Fatherhood Initiative, said he feels he was the victim of racial profiling in a 2009 incident when he was stopped by police on the south side.
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A Republican is convicted for authorizing misleading "robocalls" -- just one tactic being used to deter voters. The Root: Black Voters Told, 'Relax, Don't Vote'
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Those who are still confused about why Republicans spend so much energy making it harder for people to vote should pay some attention to a case that concluded this week in a courtroom in Baltimore. There, the campaign manager for 2010 Republican gubernatorial candidate, and former Maryland governor, Robert Ehrlich was tried and found guilty of election fraud based on an attempt to suppress the African-American vote by authorizing the use of misleading robocalls.
The 23-second calls (listen to one here), targeted at 110,000 homes in Baltimore City and Prince George's County three hours before polls closed on election night in 2010, told voters that they could stay home. Incumbent Gov. Martin O'Malley and President Obama, the voice on the phone explained, had been "successful." The caller encouraged voters to just "watch the returns on TV."
Knowing a couple of important points may help those outside Maryland understand the Republican candidate's effort. First, the calls were all targeted at Baltimore City and Prince George's County -- the two largest majority-black jurisdictions in the state. Second, President Obama wasn't even on the ballot in 2010.
This case was a slam dunk. Paul Schurick, the campaign manager, admitted that he had authorized the consulting firm run by notorious Baltimore election guru Julius Henson to allow the phone calls. Henson, who is black, has been known for campaign tactics that skate close to the line. He has worked for both Democrats and Republicans.
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Newt Gingrich can count on one vote that he won't get if he wins the Republican nomination in 2012 — his sister's. The Root: Newt's Gay Sister Plans to Vote Obama
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Candace Gingrich-Jones, a gay rights activist, slammed her brother in an interview with MSNBC saying that while they get along, they disagree on an issue extremely important to her: gay rights. Gingrich opposes gay marriage.
"He is definitely on the wrong side of history when it comes to those issues," Gingrich-Jones said.
Gingrich, whose campaign has been on a rollercoaster ride since he announced his run for the presidency earlier this year, is now the Republican frontrunner in 3 of 4 battleground states.
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It's not just about photo ID. A far-reaching wave of state laws will make voting in 2012 harder. The Root: The War on Black Voters
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A curious phenomenon occurred in 2011. As if in concert, 40 Republican-controlled state legislatures introduced changes to their voting procedures. The laws read as minor tweaks and adjustments, and they vary from state to state, but they all have the outcome of making it harder to vote. Incidentally, the efforts have been strongest in battleground states that were competitive in the 2008 election. Among the people most impacted are millions of eligible African-American, Latino and youth voters who supported President Obama and Democratic candidates in droves in 2008.
Or perhaps that effect is not so incidental.
"This is not a coincidence," said Rashad Robinson, executive director of Color of Change, one of several organizations to cast the laws as a coordinated assault on the voting rights, and political power, of people of color. "Not only because of the states where we're seeing [new voting laws] pop up, but it's also not a mistake because of the way that this has been done."
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Black flight is a phenomena that is often overlooked. HuffingtonPost: Income Inequality Growing As Affluent Blacks Leave Cities: Census
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What happens within the black community when the gap widens between the poor and the affluent? That's one question raised by new census data showing well-off African-Americans leaving cities for the suburbs and the South while the ranks of the black poor grow larger.
Over the past decade, the share of black households ranking among the poorest poor – those earning less than $15,000 – climbed from 20 percent to 26 percent, according to census figures released Thursday. Other racial and ethnic groups posted smaller increases. During the same period, the percentage of African-Americans making $200,000 or more a year was unchanged at 1.1 percent, even after the Great Recession.
Meanwhile, in a reversal of the Great Migration that once pushed blacks to flee Southern racism for economic opportunity in northern cities, many affluent blacks are returning to the South. Incomes and black populations have grown in the last decade in cities such as Atlanta, Dallas and Miami.
David Lamothe, associate general counsel for a major bank in Charlotte, grew up in New York City with parents who immigrated from Haitian poverty and climbed into the middle class. Now he is associate general counsel for a major bank in Charlotte, where he lives with his pediatrician wife and their three children, ages 8 to 14.
He is acutely aware of differences in the dynamic of today's black community.
"Growing up, when we went to a party, it was all black kids, and we had no idea how much money their parents made. Everybody went to the same party. My best friend lived in the projects. My kids don't have that," said Lamothe. "There's not much opportunity for them to see those kids (from low-income families). There's more stratification."
Despite some gains for middle-class blacks, African-Americans on average last year still had rising poverty and worsening economic situations compared with whites. The mostly suburban counties where blacks had growing and higher-than-average income make up about 19 percent of the black population. That's compared with 45 percent of blacks who lived in urban counties and small towns where black incomes fell relative to whites.
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