Commentary: African American Scientists and Inventors
by Black Kos Editor, Sephius1
Erich Jarvis is an associate professor of neurobiology at Duke University Medical Center. He leads a team of researchers who study the neurobiology of vocal learning, a critical behavioral substrate for spoken language. The animal models he studies include songbirds, parrots and hummingbirds. Like humans, these bird groups have the ability to learn new sounds and pass on their vocal repertoires culturally, from one generation to the next. Jarvis focuses on the molecular pathways involved in the perception and production of learned vocalizations, and the development of brain circuits for vocal learning.
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To accomplish this objective, Dr. Jarvis takes an integrative approach to research, combining behavioral, anatomical, electrophysiological, and molecular biological techniques. The discoveries of Dr. Jarvis and his collaborators include the first findings of natural behaviorally regulated gene expression in the brain, social context dependent gene regulation, convergent vocal learning systems across distantly related animal groups, the FOXP2 gene in vocal learning birds, and the finding that vocal learning systems may have evolved out of ancient motor learning systems.
In 2002, the National Science Foundation awarded Jarvis its highest honor for a young researcher, the Alan T. Waterman Award. In 2005 he was awarded the National Institutes of Health Director’s Pioneer Award providing funding for five years to researchers pursuing innovative approaches to biomedical research. In 2008 Dr. Jarvis was selected to the prestigious position of Investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Jarvis received a B.A. from Hunter College and a Ph.D. from Rockefeller University......Read More
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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Sixty years after Brown v. Board, America's classrooms may not be separate, but they're still not equal. The New Republic: Even Well-Integrated Schools Treat Black Students Differently.
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But the problem now isn't just that many schools have reversed the desegregation gains of the '70s and '80s. It’s that white and black students get different treatment—and end up performing at different levels—in the few schools that they attend together. In other words, even where Brown has seemed to succeed, serious racial inequality persists.
Minority families petitioned for integration in the 1950s in part because white schools were better funded. But, as a majority of the Court’s justices would later argue, a disparity in resources wasn’t the only problem. Segregation also had a psychological aspect on students, making education inherently unequal. In the unanimous Court's opinion, Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote that "to separate [black children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority … that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone." Segregation, he added, denoted a sense of inferiority that "affects the motivation of a child to learn."
Today, even in schools that have achieved some level of diversity, there’s evidence that students of different races are still being treated differently. A 2007 study from the Journal of Educational Psychology analyzed dozens of previous studies, spanning more than three decades, on how teachers interact with different kinds of students. Researchers found that, overall, teachers' expectations and speech varied depending on the race of the student. Teachers directed the most positive behavior, like questions and encouragement, to white students.
A 2012 study from the American Sociological Association found, "Substantial scholarly evidence indicates that teachers—especially white teachers—evaluate black students' behavior and academic potential more negatively than those of white students.” The study analyzed the results from the Education Longitudinal Study, a national survey of 15,362 high school sophomores, as well as their parents and teachers. Again, the evidence showed a bias among white teachers that favored white students.
Ironically, it was Brown that led to massive decline in the number of African American teachers. Segregated counties often operated two school districts—one for blacks and one for whites. When the school districts integrated thousands of African American teachers were fired or laid off. Today’s teacher force reflects that decline in diversity. A new report from the Center for American Progress found that 80 percent of public school teachers are white, while nearly 50 percent of students are minorities.
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Why American schools are becoming segregated once again. Slate: Still Separate and Unequal.
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Before considering the report, it’s worth taking a closer look at the process of school desegregation. Almost immediately after Brown, white Southerners met the decision with “massive resistance.” In Virginia, segregationist Democrats pushed sweeping educational changes to combat integration. In 1956, the Commission on Public Education—convened by Gov. Thomas Stanley—asked the General Assembly to repeal compulsory education, empower the governor to close public schools, and provide vouchers to parents to enroll their children in segregated private schools. In the next few years, whites would open “segregation academies” across the state, while closing public schools to block integration.
Following Stanley’s lead, whites across the South worked to keep blacks out of their schools with rules, legislation, angry mobs, and outright violence. But it failed. Within the decade, new civil rights laws had enhanced federal power. By the end of the 1960s, the federal government was authorized to file suit against segregated school districts and work to dismantle them “root and branch.”
As Nikole Hannah-Jones details for ProPublica, federal desegregation orders helped “break the back of Jim Crow education in the South, helping transform the region’s educational systems into the most integrated in the country.” She continues, “In 1963, about 1 percent of black children in the South attended school with white children. By the early 1970s, the South had been remade—fully 90 percent of black children attended desegregated schools.”
The problem today is that these gains are reversing. As the Civil Rights Project shows, minority students across the country are more likely to attend majority-minority schools than they were a generation ago.
The average white student, for instance, attends a school that’s 73 percent white, 8 percent black, 12 percent Latino, and 4 percent Asian-American. By contrast, the average black student attends a school that’s 49 percent black, 17 percent Latino, 4 percent Asian-American, and 28 percent white. And the average Latino student attends a school that’s 57 percent Latino, 11 percent black, 25 percent white, and 5 percent Asian-American.
But this understates the extent to which minority students—and again blacks in particular—attend hyper-segregated schools. In 2011, more than 40 percent of black students attended schools that were 90 percent minority or more. That marks an increase over previous years. In 1991, just 35 percent of black students attended schools with such high levels of segregation.
Even more striking is the regional variation. While hyper-segregation has increased across the board, it comes after staggering declines in the South, the “border states”—Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri, i.e., former slaveholding states that never joined the Confederacy—the Midwest, and the West. In the Northeast, however, school segregation has increased, going from 42.7 percent in 1968 to 51.4 percent in 2011. Or, put another way, desegregation never happened in the schools of the urban North.
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On Wednesday Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of the New York Times, told a stunned staff that Baquet was replacing Jill Abramson, the newspaper’s first female executive editor. The Root: Dean Baquet Named 1st African-American Executive Editor at the New York Times.
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ean Baquet will become the first African-American executive editor at the New York Times, replacing Jill Abramson, who leaves the top position unexpectedly. The news apparently stunned New York Times staffers, who did not see this move coming.
On Wednesday Arthur Sulzberger Jr., publisher of the New York Times and chairman of the New York Times Co., first told senior staff of the changng of the guard and then informed the full newsroom around 2:30 p.m., the New York Times reports.
While the reason for the change was not immediately made clear, Baquet—a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and a former editor of the Los Angeles Times—seems a fitting choice to lead the newspaper.
"It is an honor to be asked to lead the only newsroom in the country that is actually better than it was a generation ago, one that approaches the world with wonder and ambition every day," said Baquet, who at the time of his appointment to helm the New York Times was the newspaper's managing editor.
Baquet, 57, was born in New Orleans and has worked in the newspaper industry for more than 25 years, beginning in 1980 with his hometown paper, the States-Item, before it merged with the Times-Picayune, Businessweek.com reports.
Dean Baquet
YOUTUBE
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Nigeria’s booming film industry has taken a step in the right direction with the forthcoming U.S. release of Half of a Yellow Sun. The Grio: Nigeria’s Nollywood film industry woos Hollywood stars.
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The blockbuster movie stars Oscar nominee Chiwetel Ejiofor, alongside Hollywood star Thandie Newton, as well as other reputable actors.
The film is directed by celebrated playwright-turned-filmmaker, Biyi Bandele. It is based on a bestselling novel of the same name by acclaimed author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. “I read the book,” says Nigerian-born British director. “I loved it and fell in love with the characters.”
He says he wanted to direct a film adaptation because “I had never encountered African characters like Kainene [singer and actress Anika Noni Rose] and Olanna [Newton] on the big screen before.”
With a budget in the region of $10 million, Yellow Sun is one of the more expensive films to come out of the Nigeria. “There was some talk of shooting in South Africa, but I couldn’t see it,” says Bandele. “I insisted we shot in Nigeria.”
Chiwetel Ejiofor and Thandie Newton in a film still from "Half of a Yellow Sun" ©2012 Shareman Media Limited / The British Film Limited / Yellow Sun Limited)
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Prison Culture is releasing copies of “No Selves to Defend: A Legacy of Criminalizing Women of Color for Self Defense” to help raise money for Marissa Alexander’s legal defense fund. ColorLines: Women’s Prison Anthology Aims to Raise Money for Marissa Alexander.
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Prison Culture is releasing a limited edition of 150 copies of “No Selves to Defend: A Legacy of Criminalizing Women of Color for Self Defense” to help raise money for Marissa Alexander’s legal defense fund.
Alexander was sentenced to 20 years for firing a shot during an altercation with her husband, Rico Gray, who had twice previously been arrested for domestic abuse against Alexander.
The book will feature the Alexander’s incarceration story along with those of Lena Baker, Inez Garcia, Rosa Lee Ingram, Joan Little, Cece McDonald, the New Jersey 4, Cassandra Peten, Bernadette Powell, Juanita Thomas, Yvonne Wanrow and Dessie Woods.
The anthology will be available for purchase in early June for $50 plus $5 shipping at Free Marissa Alexander.
Illustration: Molly Crabapple
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Unfortunately this article tainted a formally innocent sound of summer for me. NPR: Recall That Ice Cream Truck Song? We Have Unpleasant News For You.
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Nigger Love A Watermelon Ha! Ha! Ha!" merits the distinction of the most racist song title in America. Released in March 1916 by Columbia Records, it was written by actor Harry C. Browne and played on the familiar depiction of black people as mindless beasts of burden greedily devouring slices of watermelon.
I came across this gem while researching racial stereotypes. I was a bit conflicted on whether the song warranted a listen. Admittedly, though, beneath my righteous indignation, I was rather curious about how century-old, overt racism sounded and slightly amused by the farcical title. When I started the song, the music that tumbled from the speakers was that of the ever-recognizable jingle of the ice cream truck. (For the record, not all ice cream trucks play this same song, but a great many of them do.)
As quickly as it began, the music paused, and this call-and-response ensued:
Browne: "You niggers quit throwin' them bones and come down and get your ice cream!"
Black men (incredulously): "Ice Cream?!?"
Browne: "Yes, ice cream! Colored man's ice cream: WATERMELON!!"
My mouth dropped. The music immediately resumed and so did the racism. I soon realized that the ice cream truck song was forever ruined for me, especially once the chorus began:
Nigger love a watermelon ha ha, ha ha!
Nigger love a watermelon ha ha, ha ha!
For here, they're made with a half a pound of co'l
There's nothing like a watermelon for a hungry coon
Origin Of The Song
I wondered how such a prejudiced song could have become the anthem of ice cream and childhood summers. I learned that though Mr. Browne was fairly creative in his lyrics, the song's premise and its melody are nearly as old as America itself. As often happens with matters of race, something that is rather vanilla in origin is co-opted and sprinkled with malice along the way.
This story may well sour any pleasant childhood memories of chasing after ice cream trucks in the summer.
iStockphoto.com
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