ID,Title,Content,Basis,URL,Sentiment,
1301,The problem with Apu: why we need better portrayals of people of color on television,"This piece is part of a series on race and racism in Australia. The series examines this complex and incendiary topic, and the role it plays in contemporary Australia. You can read the rest of the series here and here. While giving a talk at a community arts organization in Parramatta on why the stories of diverse areas like Western Sydney are not seen on mainstream screens, I was introduced to a screenwriter who had formerly worked for one of Australia’s longest-running soaps, Home and Away. His take was that having studied post-colonial theory as a white person in the 1990s, he was hesitant to write stories based on experiences and cultures other than his own. Another prominent producer on the panel declared that he never thought about diversity when deciding what stories to invest in. These perspectives – avoidance for fear of offending and a color blind disregard for diversity, respectively – are emblematic of our faltering progress on the issue of media diversity. Most recently, the issue has been in the spotlight due to reports that the controversial character of Apu is going to be written out of the iconic animated sitcom, The Simpsons. Read more: Goodbye Apu -- here's what you meant to us The fact that the Apu issue has made international headlines speaks to not only the wide appeal of The Simpsons, but also the grief this characterization has caused viewers of South Asian origin over the years. In his 2017 documentary, The Problem with Apu, Indian-American comedian Hari Kondabolu explored how this prime-time stereotyping has been a source of racial micro-aggressions and slurs, even for Simpsons’ fans who appreciate the bent rules of comedy. The controversy surrounding Apu is not a case of taking offense at a benign joke. Research has shown that being exposed to certain comedic devices and conventions over the long term naturalizes racial stereotypes and differences for audiences of all backgrounds. The characterization of Apu has real implications for the lives of people of color who bear the brunt of bullying based on the character, and for actors of South Asian origin who are only seen as authentic if they sound and act like they run a Kwik-E-Mart. Kondabolu’s documentary recognizes Apu as a form of “brownface”, where a white actor dons the exaggerated characteristics of another racial group. Turning characters into caricatures, this practice perpetuates demeaning stereotypes and distances the viewer from the characters in question. A non-Indian actor (Hank Azaria) voicing Apu in a thick, exaggerated accent may not have been out of place in 1990. However, a growing awareness of the potentially harmful repercussions of such characterizations means that it is no longer so. So what are the alternatives for maintaining the essence of good comedy while portraying non-white communities in a substantive and ethical manner? Since 2016, I have been working on an Australia Research Council-funded Linkage project that examines the parallel histories of migration and television in Australia. Through interviews with creators of “diverse” content, it has become evident that comedy is often a lightning rod for broader conversations about racial stereotyping. For people of color, it can serve as a specific narrative tool to help them create their own authentic stories. ",2,https://theconversation.com/the-problem-with-apu-why-we-need-better-portrayals-of-people-of-colour-on-television-106707,FALSE,33
1303,Georgia’s gubernatorial race could be a bellwether for Democrats nationally,"Democrats haven’t won a major statewide office in Georgia since 2000, but this year’s gubernatorial race in the state is a tossup. As a political scientist who studies elections and lives in Georgia, I’ve been watching this race closely. Polls have the Republican candidate, Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, and the Democratic candidate, former State House of Representatives Minority Leader Stacey Abrams, in a virtual dead heat. Political forecasters at FiveThirtyEight estimate this is the closest statewide race in the nation. The 2018 gubernatorial election is Democrats’ best chance in decades to pick up a Georgia win. From the outside, Georgia appears to be a solidly red state, but underneath the surface it’s pretty closely divided. There have been 10 races in Georgia for major statewide offices – that includes senator and governor – since 2000. Democrats have lost all of those races, but based on data I’ve compiled the Democratic candidate has won 45 percent of the vote five times, and 47 percent of the vote three times. Republicans have won an average of 52.9 percent of the vote. This is a very low average margin of victory for a state in which one party wins so consistently. Each candidate in this year’s gubernatorial race has a significant electoral weakness. Kemp is a far-right conservative who won the primary election with a campaign grounded in anti-immigrant and pro-gun messages, and Donald Trump’s endorsement. He’s facing a strong national Democratic tide brought on by President Trump’s lagging popularity and high levels of enthusiasm among Democratic voters. Abrams is an African-American woman running for office, and even in 2018, minority and women candidates have a harder time winning elections. In both cases, these qualities may hurt the candidate in the general election by dampening voter enthusiasm. Kemp made national headlines in April and May during the Republican primary with a campaign designed to win over the most conservative voters in Georgia. Kemp released an ad in which he had a conversation with a teenage boy while pointing a gun at him as an illustration of how committed he is to upholding the Second Amendment. In another ad he boasted about “round[ing] up criminal illegal aliens” in his own pickup truck. This conservative rhetoric is well-designed to win a Republican primary, because the people who vote in primary elections tend to prefer strongly ideological candidates. Kemp easily defeated his more moderate opponent, Casey Cagel, who lamented that the primary had devolved into a contest over “who had the biggest gun, who had the biggest truck, and who could be the craziest.”A significant body of research suggests that the conservative image Kemp built up in the primary will not serve him well in the general election. People who vote in general elections tend to be more ideologically moderate than primary voters. And even though voters have grown more polarized over recent years, they remain more centrist than party activists or elected officials. General election swing voters – true partisan “independents” – aren’t looking for strong ideologues. They tend to prefer moderate candidates who appear bipartisan. All of this means that in general elections, moderates have an advantage. In those contests, ideologically extreme party nominees win a significantly smaller share of the vote than moderate nominees. Candidates who win a primary with a strong ideological campaign might try to moderate their stances for the general election, but that usually doesn’t work very well. Voters may not believe the switch in tone is genuine, or the candidate may have already alienated core voters in the primary. ",2,https://theconversation.com/georgias-gubernatorial-race-could-be-a-bellwether-for-democrats-nationally-100943,FALSE,
1305,Being born in the wrong ZIP code can shorten your life,"Newly released data on life expectancy across the U.S. shows that where we live matters for how long we live. A person in the U.S. can expect to live an average of 78.8 years, according to the most recent numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). However, life expectancy varies widely across geography. A child born in Mississippi today could expect to never reach his or her 75th birthday. But a child born in California, Hawaii or New York could expect to reach their expect to live into the early 80s. At the neighborhood level, these differences are sometimes even more drastic, appearing even when communities are only a few miles apart. In Washington, D.C., for example, people living in the Barry Farms neighborhood face a life expectancy of 63.2 years. Yet, less than 10 miles away, a baby born in Friendship Heights and Friendship Village can expect to live 96.1 year, according to CDC data. Just 10 miles represent a life expectancy difference of almost 33 years, a generation lost due to premature deaths. Overall, any two census tracts in the U.S. can differ in expected life expectancy by 41.2 years, a staggering range. These missing lives have important social and economic costs, for families, communities and workplaces. The opioid epidemic and increases in suicide rates are partially responsible for premature deaths and a decline in life expectancy, especially among working-class, middle-age whites. But these causes fail to explain long-standing differences in life expectancy across place, race and class. Neighborhoods with large black populations tend to have lower life expectancies than communities that are majority white, Hispanic or Asian. Such racial differences reflect the places in which different races live, not the individual characteristics of people themselves. Research shows that black communities are less likely to have access to resources that promote health, like grocery stores with fresh foods, places to exercise and quality health care facilities. This is true even in middle-class neighborhoods. These communities also have less opportunities for economic prosperity, with higher unemployment rates and fewer opportunities to work and quality education, all of which shape health outcomes across a lifespan. How well a place is doing economically affects how long people who live there can expect to live. Places that are economically distressed, for example, tend to have the lowest life expectancies. As new research from the Census Bureau and researchers at Harvard and Brown universities shows, children from places that are economically disadvantaged tend to have worse outcomes as adults. People who earn less also tend to die sooner. One study from Raj Chetty, a leading researcher on economic opportunity and health, and colleagues suggests that lower incomes are associated with shorter lifespans in the U.S. Income is not distributed evenly across the country. Uneven income patterns may reflect unequal public investments in social programs that help people earn more, like education. Place, race and class shape how well, and how long, people live. But state and local governments could play a role in increasing life expectancies. Research shows that where local government spending is higher, life expectancies increase among those with lower incomes. From my perspective of a public health researcher, investments that could improve health behaviors – such as building grocery stores, increasing exercise opportunities and discouraging smoking – could also increase life expectancy. Policies that promote economic prosperity and address the impacts of racial segregation – such as investments in quality education, safe and affordable housing, and improved public transportation – could also help.",2,https://theconversation.com/being-born-in-the-wrong-zip-code-can-shorten-your-life-104037,FALSE,
1306,It’s naive to think college athletes have time for school,"From my first day as a sociology professor at a university with a Division I football and men’s basketball team, education and athletics struck me as being inherently at odds. Student-athletes filled my courses to take advantage of the fact that the classes met early in the morning. The football and men’s basketball players – most of whom were black – quickly fell behind due to scheduling constraints. Only so much time was set aside for academics and, often, it wasn’t enough. Academic rigor and athletic success were simply incompatible goals. Now – as a researcher who is studying college athletes through the lens of race and class – I have compiled evidence to show just how much more time college athletes devote to sports over academics. Early data from my ongoing research on the academic experiences of black Division I football and men’s basketball players shows that they spend three times as many hours per week on athletics as they do on academics. On average, the players spend more than 25 hours on sports-related activities other than games, such as practice, workouts, general team meetings, film sessions and travel. On the other hand, the player spend less than eight hours on academics outside of class, such as writing papers, studying, getting tutored or working on group projects. This imbalance is institutionally constructed and perpetuated. Perhaps most disturbingly, the student-athletes I surveyed perceive this lopsided situation as “normal.” Some may argue that the players should be satisfied with the fact that their scholarships enable them to reap the benefits of a college education. The problem with that argument is that college athletes aren’t able to fully actualize their identities as students to the same degree as their classmates. College sports is just too demanding, and universities do not make any special concessions for athletes’ additional time commitments. It is important to distinguish the lives of college athletes who don’t generate money for their institutions, such as soccer and tennis players, versus those who are deeply intertwined with the generation of revenue for colleges, universities and the NCAA, which cleared US$1 billion in revenue in 2017. That kind of money cannot be made without serious time commitments among the players.Every time I watch a college football or men’s basketball game on TV, I can’t help but wonder what the players on my screen missed in class that day. They are students such as Jalen (a pseudonym), a football player who requested a meeting with me mid-semester. He wanted to discuss how my office hours conflicted with the team practices and film sessions. For an hour we discussed what he understood as unfixable. Jalen wanted and needed to utilize the main academic support systems provided by the college, but literally didn’t have the time. Jalen was by no means alone. Rather, his plight was emblematic of untold numbers of college athletes who struggle to balance sports and academics. So, are college athletes workers who attend school part-time? Or are they students who play sports part-time? Players at schools across the country are speaking up about the fact that they generate revenue for the colleges they play for but not for themselves. They have attempted to unionize and filed lawsuits to get what they see as their fair share. Meanwhile, the NCAA claims that student-athlete balance is not only possible but that most Division I players achieve it. The reality is most football and men’s basketball players underperform academically and routinely graduate at lower rates than “other student-athletes, black non-athletes and undergraduates in general.”",2,https://theconversation.com/its-naive-to-think-college-athletes-have-time-for-school-100942,FALSE,
1308,Barbershop Talks: A safe place to discuss Black masculinity,"Many Black men have a special relationship with their barbers. This unique connection has resulted in a series of events called the Barbershop Talks, where the “neighborhood barbershop” is used to create a safe space for Black community members to meet. In these informal meetings, participants are encouraged to openly discuss Black masculinity and critical issues that affect Black men and boys in Canada. Besides stimulating conversations, the idea is to brainstorm solutions to some of the significant stresses Black men and boys face. The first Barbershop Talks was held Feb. 28, 2018, in a local Ottawa barbershop called The Rite Cut. It was scheduled for two hours but ran for three. Based on the positive response, francophone communities were invited to the second discussion, which took place on July 11 simultaneously in three cities: Ottawa, Montréal and Toronto. Although it is likely that some of these conversations already occur in small interpersonal, informal or accidental spaces, we wanted to host a formal discussion with the community. Both francophone and anglophone attendees of the July events said they experienced similar racially charged micro aggressions in Canada. Common among those experiences was the feeling that Black Canadian men and boys were associated with negative stereotypes that demonized their existence. Why hold them at barbershops? One participant said his barber was his “therapist, coach and his everything.” He also mentioned that going to visit his barber for a haircut on a regular basis helped build his identity as a “Black man” and as he got older “it was a necessity” for him to visit his barber. We felt it was important to focus on issues facing Canadian Black men because there are many misconceptions that racial discrimination does not exist in Canada. In particular, misconceptions about Black men — both anglophone and francophone — can grow and fester. Stereotypes of Black men and boys can hinder their autonomy and dampen their ability to cultivate healthy self-perceptions. This denial of racism also robs people and communities of places where they can talk freely about the real issues they are dealing with as Black men. Read more: Dear white people, wake up: Canada is racist As Black men and boys respond to and resist the false identities that are superimposed upon them, they wrestle with their identities as they struggle to process racist misconceptions of themselves. For young men trying to develop a healthy understanding of themselves, this is especially challenging. Scholars like Franz Fanon and W.E.B. Du Bois documented these issues in their work published decades ago. More recently, critical race theorists like Stuart Hall, bell hooks, Paul Gilroy, Katherine McKittrick, Kimberlé Crenshaw and George Elliott Clarke) have continued to discuss questions of Black consciousness in North America. This sample of writers and scholars represents a range of expertise. While they may not agree on every issue concerning Blackness or racialized males, their diversity of thought and scholarship showcases the range of ideas within historical-political contexts. Philosopher Tommy Curry looks at deconstructing Black masculinity in his 2017 book,The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood. Curry argues: ",2,https://theconversation.com/barbershop-talks-a-safe-place-to-discuss-black-masculinity-99985,FALSE,
1309,That racist caricature of Serena Williams makes me so angry,"Serena Williams did something that even President Barack Obama could not do. She got angry and showed it. At the recent U.S. Open Tennis Championship, Williams disagreed with some of the calls made by the umpire. They argued. Williams became so annoyed that she smashed her racket into the ground. Another tennis superstar was also famous for smashing his racquets. In the 1980s I watched John McEnroe curse and crash his way through many matches. His confrontational behavior was legendary. It was expected and accepted as part of his playing style. Williams’ display of anger has tournament umpires threatening to refuse to work with her. Beyond the obvious differences in the decades between McEnroe and Williams, as well as some changes in tennis rules, I think their demonstration of anger mirrors the power and privilege in society. It matters who gets to show their anger. And who gets to feel the hard edge of it. What is most interesting is not Williams’ anger but a cartoon that purported to depict it, drawn and circulated by Mark Knight for The Herald Sun newspaper in Australia. The cartoon ignited a wildfire of protest from the moment it was printed. In the caricature, Williams is shown as an angry woman, jumping up and down protesting the umpire’s decision. The visual language of the Williams character is instantly and culturally recognizable to many. It is just another variation of the mammy stereotype. Only this time she is angry rather than grinning. The mammy stereotype originated in slavery. She was always a rotund woman, dressed in an apron and headscarf and with a grin as wide as her hips. Its function was to show Black women as docile, dim-witted creatures who lovingly took care of the white household. They were not a threat. The days of the whip are long gone but the mammy stereotype lives on. In the film world, there is Hattie McDaniel playing Mammy in Gone With The Wind. There is Lillian Randolph, the voice of Mammy Two Shoes, and the object of fun in the classic series Tom & Jerry. And there are the maids played by Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer in The Help. A mammy might be living right now in your kitchen. Pick up a box of pancake mix and Aunt Jemima smiles back at you. Her updated portrait cannot hide her origins in the kitchens of slavery. Or how about a mammy or Aunt Jemima cookie jar for the counter? These are readily available on mainstream shopping websites. Vintage ones costs more because they are collectors’ items. In the cartoon, the Williams caricature is almost 10 times the size of the other woman. While this centers her as the dominant figure in the drawing, the scale of the size difference has racial overtones too. The Black figure is taller, larger and stronger in the drawing as well as in the white imagination. For example, in hospitals Black women get less medication to manage pain as nurses and doctors assume they are stronger and don’t feel it as intensely. Black women living with mental health issues face a similar racial stereotype about their strength. When therapists and psychiatrists believe that we are so strong, they are less likely to take our suffering seriously and more likely to misdiagnose and mistreat it. Black women who are assertive risk being labeled the “angry Black woman.” This is a powerful tool for quashing discussions of different perspectives and seeks to silence Black women. It has stalled or killed many Black women’s careers.",2,https://theconversation.com/that-racist-caricature-of-serena-williams-makes-me-so-angry-103390,FALSE,
1310,Are today’s white kids less racist than their grandparents?,"In America’s children, we often see hope for a better future, especially when it comes to reducing racism. Each new generation of white people, the thinking goes, will naturally and inevitably be more open-minded and tolerant than previous ones. But do we have any reason to believe this? Should we have faith that today’s white kids will help make our society less racist and more equitable? Previous research has had mixed findings. So in order to explore more fully what white kids think about race, I went straight to the source: white children themselves. In my new book, “White Kids: Growing Up with Privilege in a Racially Divided America,” I explore how 36 white, affluent kids think and talk about race, racism, privilege and inequality in their everyday lives. Before beginning my research, I looked at what previous studies on the racial attitudes of young white people had found. According to some researchers, we do have reason to be hopeful. Using survey data, they found that young white people are expressing less prejudice than generations before them. For instance, white support for segregated schools – a traditional measure of racial prejudice – has dramatically decreased over a 50-year period. And surveys show that younger whites are less likely to express racial stereotypes than older whites. But a second group of researchers disagreed. They found that whites today simply articulate racial prejudice in new ways. For example, according to national survey data, high school seniors are increasingly expressing a form of prejudice that sociologist Tyrone Forman calls “racial apathy” – an “indifference toward societal, racial, and ethnic inequality and lack of engagement with race-related social issues.” Racial apathy is a more passive form of prejudice than explicit articulations of bigotry and racial hostility. But such apathy can nonetheless lead white people to support policies and practices that align with the same racist logic of the past, like a lack of support for social programs and policies designed to address institutional racism or an indifference toward the suffering of people of color. Other researchers question the ability of surveys to capture honest responses from whites about race-related questions or to describe the complexity of whites’ perspectives on race. As useful as surveys can be, they don’t allow us to fully understand how white people explain, justify or develop their views on race. In order to better understand how white children think about race, I interviewed and observed 30 affluent, white families with kids between the ages of 10 and 13 living in a Midwestern metropolitan area. Over the course of two years, I immersed myself in the everyday lives of these families, observing them in public and in the home, and interviewing the parents and the kids. A few years later, when the kids were in high school, I re-interviewed a subset of the original group. These children had some shared understandings of race, like the idea that “race is the color of your skin.” But when I brought up topics like racism, privilege and inequality, their responses started to diverge, and there was more variation than I anticipated. Some kids told me that “racism is not a problem anymore.” But others told me in great detail about the racial wealth gap, employment discrimination, unequal schooling, and racist treatment of black kids by police. As an 11-year-old named Chris explained:",2,https://theconversation.com/are-todays-white-kids-less-racist-than-their-grandparents-101710,FALSE,
1311,Minority job applicants with ‘strong racial identities’ may encounter less pay and lower odds of getting hired,"Race based discrimination is common in the hiring process. For example, racial minorities are less likely than whites to receive a callback when they apply for a job. There are also wide earning gaps, with African-Americans and Latinos earning a fraction of what whites and Asians do. Yet despite laws that aim to reduce employment discrimination and improve attitudes toward diversity, these patterns have not changed for decades. When analyzing these problems, researchers and others tend to focus on how the experiences of racial minorities compare with those of whites. Often missing is whether there are differences among individuals of the same racial group in terms of how they experience bias. That is where my new study, which focuses on perceptions of others’ racial identities, comes in. People have more than one identity, such as being a mom, a Muslim, an athlete, a scientist and so on. Just as we commonly think about the importance of each of our identities to who we are – such as being a dad or very religious – we make the same assessments of other people. That is, we evaluate other people’s identities to understand which ones are most fundamental to who they are. And it turns out, the conclusions we come to about each other’s “perceived identities” can have a big effect on how we interact with them. As a researcher who has spent the last 19 years examining diversity and inclusion, I was interested in how perceptions of identity affected a racial minority’s prospects as a job applicant. More specifically, I wanted to know if the perception that an applicant has a strong racial identity affected her ability to get a job and how much she’d get paid. Past research has shown that our inferences about others’ personal identities can influence how we interact with them. In some cases, people might talk about how their identity is important to them, or how it reflects a critical part of who they are as a person. In other cases, we make assessments based on cues. For example, we might think someone strongly identifies as Latino when they are members of a Latino student organization. Or, we might infer a weak identity among people who engage in actions that are seemingly contrary to the interests of their group.For example, psychologists Cheryl Kaiser and Jennifer Pratt-Hyatt found that whites interact more positively with racial minorities they believe weakly identify with their race – and more negatively with those with stronger racial identifies. Specifically, whites expressed more desire to be their friends and offer favorable ratings of their personality. Drawing on their work, Astin Vick, a former student of mine, and I examined whether African-American women’s and Latinas’ presumed racial identity affect their job ratings. Using an online data collection platform, we asked 238 white people who indicated that they currently or previously worked in the fitness industry to review the application of someone applying to be a club manager. They were told to review a job description, a hiring directive from the club owner, a summary of each applicant’s relevant background and a picture. All applicants had the same experience, work history and education. The pictures were used to indicate an applicant’s race. Most importantly, we varied each applicant’s relevant affiliations and community service to suggest whether she had a strong identification to her racial group or a weak one. ",2,https://theconversation.com/minority-job-applicants-with-strong-racial-identities-may-encounter-less-pay-and-lower-odds-of-getting-hired-102305,FALSE,
1315,Could Andrew Gillum be the next governor of Florida?,"Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum electrified Democrats with his surprising victory in the Florida’s Democratic primary – but will he go on to win in the general election? Come November, voters will choose between Gillum and Trump-endorsed candidate U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis. DeSantis, who represents Florida’s Sixth Congressional District, won his nomination by a significant margin. Both men are 39 years old, politically experienced Florida natives – perhaps the only two similarities they share. After trailing in the polls for weeks before the election, Gillum, who spent US$6.5 million in the primary, defeated three opponents who each spent more than $100 million in their campaigns. Gillum, the only candidate who was not a millionaire, received $650,000 in last-minute contributions from donors such as Tom Steyer and George Soros. He now joins Georgia’s Stacey Abrams and Maryland’s Ben Jealous – two other young African-Americans with strong chances of winning their state’s gubernatorial elections. Each won their Democratic primaries because of the strong backing from black voters. But because none of them could have won with the black vote alone, their campaigns emphasized issues voters of all races were concerned with, like health care, and education and jobs. All received significant backing in some predominantly white communities. Their victories are significant and rare because only four African-Americans have ever served as governors in our nation’s history – but winning during the general election won’t be an easy task. Gillum in particular is competing in a state that hasn’t elected a Democratic governor in 20 years. True, former President Barack Obama won Florida twice, but it was by close margins – 3.8 percent in 2008 and 0.9 percent in 2012. Then, President Trump again put Florida in the red category in 2016 by defeating Hillary Clinton by a mere 0.8 percent. However, as a professor of political science and African-American studies, I believe the unpredictable outcomes in recent national elections – as well as Florida’s tendency to swing from red to blue – should encourage Gillum. So how can Gillum win? He’ll need a large turnout among his base of minority voters and progressives. He’ll also need to expand his appeal among moderate Democrats and to seek crossover support from Republicans who are dissatisfied with President Trump. In the primary, he won only 18 of the state’s 67 counties. Some of these included cities and towns with larger minority populations, but others were rural or suburban predominantly white counties – like Clay, Escambia and Hamilton. Gillum also did well in South Florida counties like Broward, Hendry, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach. Unfortunately for Andrew Gillum, he won’t be running against Ron DeSantis alone. He’s also be running against Donald Trump. DeSantis is one of Trump’s most loyal allies. Hours after Gillum won the primary, Trump referred to him as “[ DeSantis’s] biggest dream … a failed socialist mayor.”A more troublesome dilemma for Gillum concerns Tallahassee’s problems. Three years after he entered office, in June 2017, the FBI issued a subpoena of city records. Although Gillum is reportedly not the focus of their corruption investigation, the investigation allows the DeSantis campaign to accuse him of being untrustworthy regardless of the outcome. Tallahassee also has the highest crime rate in Florida, even though crime has actually decreased since Gillum began his term in 2014.",2,https://theconversation.com/could-andrew-gillum-be-the-next-governor-of-florida-102451,TRUE,
1316,Why South Africa’s main opposition isn’t gaining traction against the ANC,"After more than two decades in power, South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC) is in severe trouble. The euphoria around the appointment of the new president Cyril Ramaphosa is rapidly fading as he increasingly encounters resistance from within the party to a thorough cleansing of the state. On top of this the financial crises in key public utilities seem to be getting worse while key economic indicators like unemployment, production and inflation are rapidly deteriorating. You would think that amid all of this the prospect of the official opposition, the Democratic Alliance (DA), displacing the ANC at the next election would be getting better. But the latest polls indicate that the DA’s support has shrunk since the last election. The party’s prospects of equalling its performance at the last national poll – when it obtained 23% of the national vote – look dim. What, then, is going on? There are a whole host of reasons to point to. The first is that Ramaphosa, despite his initial post-Zuma popularity having been punctured, remains a far more impressive and weighty figure than the DA’s leader, Mmusi Maimane. Part of Maimane’s problem is that DA’s attraction to many has been its claim to represent cleaner and more efficient government. But these claims are being severely tested as it faces the dilemmas and temptations of running the three major metros it took control over after the 2016 local government elections. It gained control by forging awkward coalitions with the Economic Freedom Fighters (to whose principles it’s bitterly opposed) and other smaller parties. This has meant that its hold on power has often looked fragile, and it’s had to engage in all sorts of wheeler-dealing. Necessary, but not good for the image. Meanwhile, the party allowed its fight with its Cape Town mayor, Patricia De Lille, to drag on for far too long. And then of course there is the issue of race, which divides the party all the way to the very top. The DA was founded on principles of liberalism. Its ideological position comes with the assertion that the individual, not the group, is the primary unit of society, and that freedom and equality are realised through the freedom of the individual. That’s not sitting very well within many of its newly found black supporters. On top of this, the DA’s classic liberalism has run up against the problem of how to address racial disadvantage on an individual basis in a society where fundamental rights and material goods have been allocated by race historically. Either the DA breaches its liberal principles by accepting the need to address racial disadvantage frontally. Or, if it doesn’t, it sends out the message to black voters that it’s not really committed to addressing racial inequality. This tension played out recently when the party became embroiled in an internal spat over whether or not to support Black Economic Empowerment, an affirmative action policy. Until recently the DA’s share of the vote in the country has increased with every election. That growth came at the cost of having to dilute its core liberal principles, as it sought to expand its appeal beyond its white base to black, colored, and Indian voters. In 2013 the party accepted that race should become a basis for redress. In 2015, it adopted freedom, fairness and equality of opportunity into its constitution. Subsequently Maimane has also suggested the party needs to adopt affirmative action by pushing hard for the DA to accept the need for “greater diversity” in its composition. This was a way of saying that more black people are needed in leadership positions without actually using those words. ",2,https://theconversation.com/why-south-africas-main-opposition-isnt-gaining-traction-against-the-anc-101828,FALSE,
1318,Colorism – how shade bias perpetuates prejudice against people with dark skin,"When a person of colour with light skin rises to prominence, or becomes the first to occupy a particular position, it’s often heralded as a sign that structural barriers to the progress of people of colour have been removed. This was the case when Meghan Markle married Prince Harry in May, joining the British royal family as the Duchess of Sussex. Some media reports portrayed Harry’s marriage to Meghan, who has one black parent and one white parent, as signifying “hope” for people of colour while others said the match could spark a “royal cultural revolution”. This parallels what happened when Barack Obama, the son of a white mother and black father, was celebrated as “the first black president” in the US. His election was described as a “milestone in race relations,” ushering in a “postracial country” – one that had moved beyond race. However, the outstanding achievements of some prominent people of colour with light skin doesn’t signify an advance for black people, or people of colour more generally. Those with light skin still benefit from the privilege that comes with an approximation to whiteness. People of colour with light skin who are public figures are often viewed as having transcended their “race”, whereas negative perceptions of people of colour more broadly are left largely unchanged. There have been some recent incidents where people of colour with light skin have expressed disdain for those with darker skin. The Radio 1 DJ and TV host Maya Jama, who is of Somali and Swedish descent and celebrated as “unquestionably stunning”, was compelled to apologise when an offensive tweet she posted in 2012 resurfaced. Colourism is prejudice involving the preferential treatment of people with light skin within and between ethnic groups. While it affects both men and women, colourism intersects with sexism so that it particularly affects women of colour. The sociologist Meeta Rani Jha argues: Physical attractiveness, whiteness, and youthfulness have accrued capital just as darker skin colour, hair texture, disability, and ageing have devalued feminine currency. Mathew Knowles, the father of the superstar singer and actress Beyoncé and singer Solange, has highlighted how light skin leads to opportunities in the entertainment industry: When it comes to black females, who are the people who get their music played on pop radio? … Mariah Carey, Rihanna, the female rapper Nicki Minaj, my kids … and what do they all have in common? Grime artist Lioness told BBC Newsbeat that she gave up music for seven years in part because talent scouts made it clear she would have more success if she had lighter skin. According to the BBC, between January 2017 and early June 2018, of the 68 female solo artists in the British Top 40, 17 were of black ancestry and the vast majority had light skin. Colourism has evolved in different ways in different parts of the world. In countries with a history of transatlantic slavery, or European colonialism, colourism dates back to the preferential treatment given to people of colour with light skin who were often the progeny of white slave masters or colonisers. Today, there are still considerable advantages to having lighter skin. Research in the US has pointed to advantages for people of colour with light skin in education, the job market and relationships. Women of colour are burdened with an oppressive ideal of what is “beautiful” that often excludes the majority of the world’s population. ",2,https://theconversation.com/colourism-how-shade-bias-perpetuates-prejudice-against-people-with-dark-skin-97149,FALSE,
1319,‘BlacKkKlansman’ – a deadly serious comedy,"Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman delivers more than a brilliantly entertaining story. Officially, BlacKkKlansman is about Ron Stallworth , the first African American police detective in the Colorado Springs Police Department who infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan with the help of a white proxy. The film is based on actual events discussed in Stallworth’s 2014 memoir, Black Klansman: Race, Hate, and the Undercover Investigation of a Lifetime. The actors humorously and yet believably drive home the film’s strong racial irony. Stallworth’s operation upsets a string of Klan meetings and attacks, including a comically rendered attempt to bomb the female head of the Black student union. Stallworth dupes the “Grand Wizard” of the KKK, David Duke . Stallworth and Duke have a series of phone conversations about Stallworth’s feigned white nationalist beliefs and the upcoming ceremony marking his initiation into the “Organization. ” Drama and hilarity abound when Stallworth is assigned to personally guard Duke at the event and Duke is unable to make any connection between his new initiate and the police officer. What makes this film good is not that it successfully delivers the story it promises, but that it also exposes how our racial past has only changed its bell bottoms for straight legs. Or put another way, BlacKkKlansman showcases how past racism still operates in the present. Spike Lee offers a parody of U. S. President Woodrow Wilson’s enthusiastic endorsement of the 1915 box office hit, Birth of a Nation. Birth of a Nation, based on a novel by Thomas Dixon, Jr. , and unabashedly titled The Clansman, an Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan. , is set just after the American Civil War. Both book and movie were used as propaganda to depict the Klan as saving the white race from the newly emancipated Blacks, rendered in the film as crazed rapists and criminals. Lee successfully uses the past, as he has done in movies like Do the Right Thing , to artistically quash the anticipated criticism that a film by a Black director that portrays white racism is guilty of being anti white. In contrast, by integrating the facts about Birth of a Nation, Lee explodes this phoney critique and points to the real racial irony: That films depicting white supremacy are likely to be wildly popular, even praised by presidents of their time, while a film that depicts the personal and professional impacts of racism, particularly on Black people, is subject to petty but popular criticism that the film is inherently anti white. Lee does not tread lightly, but marches into this racial terrain at the end of the movie by explicitly invoking images of U. S. President Donald Trump’s equivocation that some white nationalists are very fine people. To artistically execute this heavy history in a film that runs two hours and 15 minutes is no easy feat. But Lee does not disappoint. Lee deftly offers comedy as a necessary relief. For example, Connie Kendrickson, , the wife of a Klan member, Felix Kendrickson , is an eager Jane, reminiscent of a classically uncool, geekish, eager to please teenager. She dresses up rather badly in a two piece, too loose, bright red pantsuit to pursue her first terrorist act of planting a bomb. She foils the plan and the result is pure humor. ",2,https://theconversation.com/blackkklansman-a-deadly-serious-comedy-101432,TRUE,
1320,"John A. Macdonald should not be forgotten, nor celebrated","The recent decision by the City of Victoria to remove a statue of Sir John A. Macdonald from in front of city hall has sparked much discussion about whether statues and other commemorations of historical figures should be removed or replaced. This is not the first time a statue of Macdonald's has caught the attention of Indigenous people. For many Canadians, there is a fear that removing statues or changing names of buildings will erase the country’s history. Others charge that we cannot judge a historical person’s actions based on contemporary standards. But even by historical standards, a story by Rachel Décoste in the Huffington Post shows that Macdonald was “way more racist than his contemporaries. ” Some say that to attach the word racist or genocide to Macdonald is simply scapegoating for past misdeeds. Many have justified removing Macdonald’s statue because of the residential schools that were implemented under his watch. Though those schools have had a tremendous long term negative impact on First Nations people, it was only one of many policies that negatively impact First Nations and Métis people. For example, while Macdonald was prime minister, the Métis were attacked twice, the Canadian army led an unprovoked attack against Chief Poundmaker’s people, many First Nations and Métis leaders were jailed , Louis Riel was hanged for treason even though he was an American citizen, the largest mass execution in Canadian history occurred with the hanging of eight Cree and Assiniboine men in North Battleford, Sask. The Indian Act was amended and became much more oppressive and punitive and a starvation policy was implemented. Many Canadians resist the notion that Canada was responsible for genocide against Indigenous people. Many point to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission findings that the residential schools were cultural genocide as evidence that “real” genocide did not occur here, even though the residential schools system meets the UN definition of genocide. Though the starvation policy has received some attention after James Daschuk published Clearing The Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation, and The Loss of Aboriginal Life, few Canadians see this as a genocide inflicted on First Nations and Métis people. Macdonald implemented the recommendation of Edgar Dewdney to close Fort Walsh, located in the Cypress Hills in southwestern Saskatchewan, as a means to assert control over First Nations and Métis people, removing Indigenous people from the area in which the Canadian Pacific Railway would be travelling. At the time, thousands of First Nations and Métis were living in the region and depended on the food rations that were offered at the fort. The government knew that the food rations were needed because starvation was rampant. The result of the starvation policy decision resulted in many deaths. Historians have not yet done a good job of finding out how many Indigenous people died, but Cowessess First Nation demonstrated that this policy led to the deaths of 320, or 33 per cent of its band members. Cowessess was just one band of many who were in the Cypress Hills and directly impacted by this genocide. However, as I recently wrote in “Historians and Indigenous Genocide in Saskatchewan:” ",2,https://theconversation.com/john-a-macdonald-should-not-be-forgotten-nor-celebrated-101503,FALSE,
1321,The promise of personalized medicine is not for everyone,"Could your medical treatment one day be tailored to your DNA? That’s the promise of “personalized medicine,” an individualized approach that has caught the imagination of doctors and researchers over the past few years. This concept is based on the idea that small genetic differences between one person and another can be used to design tailored treatments for conditions as diverse as cancer and schizophrenia.In principle, “personalized” is not meant to mean one person but not another, though that may not turn out to be the case. Existing genetic and medical research data conspicuously underrepresent certain populations. Case in point: Last month, researchers published a surprising study on youth suicide rates. Scientists long believed that white youth had the highest rates of suicide. But, examining data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, they found that suicide rates for African-American children under the age of 13 were twice as high as for whites. This finding turned long-held assumptions about racial imbalances in mental illness on its head. It could not be explained by economic circumstances, suggesting that there are other factors at play, perhaps even genetic factors. Suicide is a complicated personal act, but science has shown that genes play an important role. This unexpected result may have implications for prevention and treatment based on genes – in other words, personalized medicine. But the state of current genetic research suggests that African-Americans will likely miss out on many of the potential future benefits of personalized medicine. As lead author Jeffrey Bridge of the Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Ohio noted to the Washington Post, “Most of the previous research has largely concerned white suicide. So, we don’t even know if the same risk and protective factors apply to black youth.”Few experts have studied the possible genetic causes for African-American suicide, focusing instead on environmental and social reasons. While most mental illnesses such as depression are first diagnosed in adulthood, they actually have their origins early in development, as genes and the environment interact to shape the brain of a growing fetus. For example, my colleagues and I published a study in May showing that genes and pregnancy problems combine to increase the likelihood of schizophrenia. This should cause some alarm, because African-American women have much higher rates of pregnancy complications. Black infants die at twice the rate of white infants. Again, this is not explained by socioeconomic reasons. In short, a higher rate of pregnancy problems likely puts African-Americans at increased risk of developing mental illnesses, perhaps explaining the noticeable increased rate of suicides. Additional genetic data on this population could potentially illuminate the issue. To better understand genes that increase the risk for mental illness, researchers study the brains of people who have died. They examine how genetic differences could have led to changes in the brains of people who developed these conditions. This is one of the best ways to understand any brain disorder at a biological level. But African-Americans are underrepresented in large-scale genetic and neuroscience studies. One 2009 analysis revealed that 96 percent of participants in large genetic studies were of European descent. When researchers looked at the matter a couple of years ago, they found that the proportion of people with African ancestry in these studies had increased by only 2.5 percent. Similarly, studies of African-American brains are almost nonexistent.",2,https://theconversation.com/the-promise-of-personalized-medicine-is-not-for-everyone-100997,FALSE,
1323,Why the media are to blame for racialising Melbourne’s ‘African gang’ problem,"Just before Channel 7 aired a Sunday Night special devoted to Melbourne’s “African gangs” problem earlier this month, the race discrimination commissioner, Tim Soutphommasane, went on Twitter to criticize a promotion spot as “fear-mongering and racial hysteria”.The same could be said of a string of stories in the Australian media in recent months on violent incidents committed by “African gangs” or people of “African appearance”. The death of a 19-year-old Sudanese woman at a party in Melbourne earlier this month was linked in some reports with gang violence – something Victorian police ruled out. Even a gate-crashing incident at a teenager’s birthday party this week was deemed a news story of national importance by The Australian due to the culprits’ racial identity. Such media coverage is, sadly, something African-Australians have been exposed to before - it seems to have popped up regularly in some form over the past ten years, at least. Before this, it was the Lebanese who were said to be forming menacing gangs, and before them, the Vietnamese and the Italians. The Australian media have a poor record in dealing with difference and diversity. The central issue here is not that violent incidents are being covered – it’s the media’s duty to report on issues of public safety. The problem is the disproportionate amount of attention focused on the so-called African gang problem in Melbourne and the way these incidents are being discussed. Among the universe of labels available to describe these crime incidents in Melbourne, the media have, predictably, fallen back on the familiar ground of racial or national identity. Seemingly unconcerned with the great diversity that defines Africa, the label “African gangs” has become lazy shorthand for anyone of African descent. One wonders whether a white person from Africa would be included under this “African gangs” umbrella. One of the questions many migrants have is why their nationality, race and cultural background has become such a defining feature in crime coverage when the whiteness of other criminal offenders is essentially ignored and rendered invisible. Read more: Sudanese heritage youth in Australia are frequently maligned by fear-mongering and racism As Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton perhaps inadvertently suggested last week when he railed against “a major law and order problem in Victoria” that wasn’t happening elsewhere, why haven’t the media blamed these incidents on “Melbourne gangs”? Or, while we’re at it, why not call them “male gangs” or, as has sometimes been used in an attempt to include non-black offenders, “youth gangs”? Of course, none of this would improve the media coverage of the recent Melbourne violence. These labels are just as useless in describing the complex mixture of social, cultural and economic factors behind these offenses as a focus on racial identity. As the Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner Stephen Leane has said, there’s not even consensus on whether “gangs” have been involved at all. But at least these alternative labels would carry less of the injurious baggage that racial labels do. Not only do racial labels implicate all Africans in violent crime, they also keep alive that most pernicious of links between race and behavior. If the race of offenders is the only part of their identity worth mentioning in news reports, then it stands to reason this has a causal link with their behavior. Other complex factors that contribute to crime get ignored.",2,https://theconversation.com/why-the-media-are-to-blame-for-racialising-melbournes-african-gang-problem-100761,FALSE,
1324,"Thank you, Sandra Oh – a first for the Emmys","When I learned that Sandra Oh was the first woman of Asian descent to receive an Emmy nomination for a lead role in the BBC drama, Killing Eve I experienced a lot of conflicting emotions. I was excited for her. I wanted to share everything about Sandra Oh on social media. I wanted to celebrate her success not just as an actress, but as a Canadian actress of Korean descent who is also an outspoken advocate for greater representation in film and television. Oh seems to pull this off effortlessly with an affable charm and certain grace that is now a trademark of her wide ranging but always honed in characters. The news that Oh had been nominated was bittersweet for me. While thrilled for her success and all the implications of it, it also reminded me of my struggles as a former actress. Oh’s nomination and the growing success of Black and other racialized actors in recent years signals a crucial and welcome change. This shift is hopeful for those in the industry who, like my former self, struggle and reconcile with internalized racism and sexism embedded into Hollywood’s social orders of inclusion. It has been 10 years since I graduated from theatre school when I was one of two Asians in the entire theatre program. The theatre community of the large and conservative western Canadian city where I was born and where I worked consisted primarily of white middle aged patrons accustomed to seeing mostly “white” theatre. After all my training, I was cast in only one professional production as a “quiet and non interfering ” Beijing foreign exchange student. When I received notes from the white director on how to adjust my Chinese accent, it became clear to me that I was not expected to draw from my own experiences and understanding of Chinese people , but to give back to white audiences the Asian stereotype they were expecting. My program also held annual auditions for the city’s Shakespeare in the Park production, but I quickly realized that for directors and many audiences too, it was unimaginable that an Asian woman could play Juliet in a Shakespearean play. After several failed attempts to secure roles in shows for both large and small theatre companies, I had to ask myself a serious question that I later found out a lot of actors and actresses of color ask themselves: Am I just a lousy actor, or does my race and ethnicity have something to do with my lack of work? Many artists of color continue to suffer from this compulsive questioning of whether their ethnicity has anything to do with their work status. This insecurity is an unfortunate symptom of internalized inferiority and racism produced by the history of Asian representation on Hollywood screens. In a recent interview with the Toronto Star, Oh discussed these matters quite frankly, going so far as to say that they profoundly affected her mental health. When she has these candid dialogues in the public eye, Oh radically disrupts the conventional ways in which Asian women are seen and portrayed in North American film and television. For example, American war films have done tenacious cultural work to represent Asian women as hyper sexualized and docile subjects who are always available or vulnerable to white male violence . ",2,https://theconversation.com/thank-you-sandra-oh-a-first-for-the-emmys-100645,FALSE,
1325,Companies that promise to lighten baby skin color reinforce prejudice,"Skin lightening is a longstanding practice that occurs in many parts of the world. It’s been done through the use of creams, lotions, soaps, folk remedies, and staying out of the sun. The desire for light skin has been extended to children too. Advice to “marry light” is not uncommon in Asian and black families, for example, in order to produce a light-skinned child. Some have also tried to lighten the skin of their unborn child with the help of new technologies, whether or not these technologies are effective or safe. In Ghana, some women have reportedly taken a pill to lighten the skin of their fetus despite the questionable science. Others in the US using IVF technology have selected egg or sperm donors with light or white skin irrespective of the inaccurate results. There is even the possibility – however remote at the moment – of genetic selection of embryos for traits such as fair skin. If there was a diagnostic test for skin tone that could be carried out on embryos, for instance, reproducers could select “this” embryo likely to have fairer skin over “that” one likely to have darker skin. Philosophers have offered some conflicting moral principles to provide direction on whether people looking to have a child via assisted conception technologies should select certain embryos. While some have suggested that we should not select at all, others have argued we should select embryos in various morally significant ways. These include picking: the “best” child; the child you most want; the child that will do the least harm to others; or the child that will provide the most benefit to others. Whatever the current plausibility of these various interventions, I believe there is a wider socio-political question to ask in these debates. This goes beyond individual decisions, and looks at the role played by companies which provide embryo, or sperm or egg, selection services, or skin-lightening products, and those legislators who govern such practices. Companies that produce skin-lightening pills for fetuses, laboratories that develop technology for non-disease embryonic selection, and clinics that offer sperm and eggs likely to have lighter skin at a higher cost, all have a vested, monetary, interest in offering these services or products. Liberal democracies too might want to allow such services or products because decisions about children are private matters and such states profess to respect citizens’ autonomy. Non liberal democracies might want populations that are stronger, smarter, more competitive or more beautiful. The hypothetical argument is that, so long as there are protections in place – it is medically safe, no one is coerced, and there is recourse to resolve disputes – then it should be permitted. However, there are moral arguments – most often raised in the case of disability, but no less relevant in other cases – against these practices. Foremost among them is a concern over being eugenic if we select against disability. Applying this to the skin color case, if babies are bred to have fairer skin, could whole populations of darker skinned people begin to disappear? Defenders of non-disabled embryo selection reject this eugenic concern. They argue this is because neither the state, at least in liberal democracies, nor companies, are mandating the selection of particular traits. Rather it is individuals who are choosing what they want. This could apply equally to the skin color case too. ",2,https://theconversation.com/companies-that-promise-to-lighten-baby-skin-colour-reinforce-prejudice-95024,FALSE,
1326,"Race of mass shooters influences how the media cover their crimes, new study shows","police found Josh Boren, a 34-year-old man and former police officer, dead in his home next to the bodies of his wife and their three children. The shots were fired execution-style on Boren’s kneeling victims, before he turned the gun on himself.On Aug. 8, 2015, 48-year-old David Ray Conley shot and killed his son, former girlfriend and six other children and adults at his former girlfriend’s home. Like Boren, Conley executed the victims at point-blank range. Both men had histories of domestic violence and criminal behavior. Yet despite the obvious similarities in these two cases and perpetrators, the media, in each case, took a different approach. When describing Boren, the media focused on his good character and excellent parenting, going as far to call Boren a big “teddy bear” despite a prolonged history of domestic violence. They attributed his crime to “snapping” under the significant stress of his wife’s recent divorce filing. In Conley’s case, media reports made little attempt to include any redeeming aspects of his personality. Instead, they focused exclusively on Conley’s history of domestic violence and prior drug possession charges. If you were to read articles about Conley, you would likely infer his crime stemmed from his inherently dangerous and controlling personality. What might explain the differences in media coverage? Could it have something to do with the shooter’s race? Boren, it turns out, was white; Conley was black. In a recent study, we explored whether the race of mass shooters influences how the media depict their crime, their motivations and their lives.We found that the discrepancies in the media coverage of Boren’s and Conley’s crimes were indicative of a broader phenomenon.For the study, we randomly selected 433 online and print news articles covering 219 mass shootings from 2013 to 2015. While definitions of a mass shooting can vary, we adhered to the one most commonly used in empirical research: an event in which four or more people are shot, excluding the shooter. Next, we created a unique data set based on information provided in the articles. We coded each article for a variety of variables associated with the crime and the shooter, including setting of the shooting, number and gender of victims killed and injured and age of the shooter. After analyzing the data, we found that the shooter’s race could strongly predict whether the media framed him as mentally ill. (Less than 1 percent of the crimes had a female perpetrator.)In all, about 33 percent of the articles in our study describing the crimes of a white shooter made a mention of mental illness. On the other hand, 26 percent of articles describing a Latino shooter and only two percent of articles describing a black shooter mentioned mental illness. In fact – holding all aspects of the crime equal – white shooters were nearly 95 percent more likely to have their crimes attributed to mental illness than black shooters. Latino shooters were 92 percent more likely than black shooters to have mental illness mentioned as a factor. Furthermore, those articles that did describe a white shooter as mentally ill would often suggest that the shooter had been a generally good person who was a victim of society. The shooting, in other words, was out of character.",2,https://theconversation.com/race-of-mass-shooters-influences-how-the-media-cover-their-crimes-new-study-shows-100152,FALSE,
1327,U.S. support of formula over breastfeeding is a race issue,"When the United States threatened Ecuador with trade and aid restrictions if it did not withdraw a World Health Assembly breastfeeding promotion resolution that most people considered benign, if not banal, reactions ranged from shocked to amused. Experts explained that the U.S. resistance, although extreme, was nothing new. The United States previously demonstrated its allegiance to the formula industry by refusing to sign on to the World Health Organization’s Ban on the Marketing of Breast Milk Alternatives. This U.S. stance, like its intimidation of Ecuador, flew in the face of near universally accepted medical and scientific research proving that breastfeeding saves lives. Perhaps even more surprisingly, both acts perpetuate an alarming racial divide in breastfeeding rates that leads to significant racial health disparities. American support of the formula industry comes at the cost of the health and lives of Black and brown babies, at home and abroad. Both the resolution and the U.S. opposition to it stemmed from a decline in formula sales in the United States. The industry has sought to make up for its considerable domestic losses on the global market. The racial aspects of this local-global dynamic are hidden in plain sight. Black women in the United States use formula at consistently and disproportionately higher rates. A complex combination of legal, policy and structural factors severely constrict their infant feeding choices. White women, on the other hand, use formula less and less. Laws and regulations facilitate their breastfeeding and popular culture glorifies it. The formula industry has responded to the corresponding decline in sales to white women at home by ramping up its marketing to Black and brown women overseas. This strategy opens the door to misleading and dangerous advertising that Ecuador’s resolution sought to curtail. Racially targeted marketing of formula has dire consequences, at home and abroad. In the United States, Black mothers and children suffer disproportionately from a host of illnesses and conditions linked to formula use, from ear infections to infant mortality. Overseas, families sold on the superiority of formula that lack the means to purchase sufficient quantities often dilute it, with sometimes deadly consequences. Inadequate nutrition and contaminated water lead to an estimated 800,000 infant deaths a year.Racism — be it explicit, structural, or unconscious — accounts for the widespread indifference to the racially disproportionate effects of U.S. breastfeeding policies. At home, the stereotype of the “bad Black mother” pervades popular culture, from Tyler Perry comedies to the Best Picture Oscar-winning film Moonlight. Black women are the face of the Welfare Queen, a myth manipulated by politicians and the media to raise support for cuts to welfare benefits based on the false perception that they go largely to the undeserving, Black poor. During slavery, whites prevented Black mothers from nursing their children, justifying this harm by dehumanizing Black women and devaluing Black motherhood. Mammy loved the white children in her care but neglected her own. Similarly, today’s Welfare Mother has children solely to collect a fat government cheque. She has no business breastfeeding. She is fair game for the formula industry.A similar disregard for the fates and well-being of migrant, non-white mothers and children is now infamous, as the world has watched the troubling and inhumane separation of families who arrive at U.S. borders seeking refuge. These separations disrupt the mother-child bond, causing health and emotional consequences yet to be measured. ",2,https://theconversation.com/u-s-support-of-formula-over-breastfeeding-is-a-race-issue-99987,FALSE,
1329,When race triggers a call to campus police," Visiting Professor of Public Policy, University of Virginia Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow, University of California, Berkeley Assistant Professor, The Ohio State University Andrea Marie Headley has received funding in the past from the U. S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics to conduct research on police community relations. Brian N. Williams and Megan LePere Schloop do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. The Ohio State University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US. University of Virginia provides funding as a member of The Conversation US. View all partnersOn a beautiful spring afternoon on a picturesque college campus, two campus police officers responded to a black professor’s “good afternoon” with a request to see his identification. The professor paused for a moment but decided to comply. He wondered if perhaps his attire – slacks, a button down shirt and loafers – didn’t signal that he belonged. As he presented his ID, another group of colleagues – all white – arrived and asked what was happening, so the professor told them. His colleagues asked the officers – in a sarcastic way – if they needed to show identification as well. The officers hurriedly returned the professor’s ID and didn’t respond to his colleagues’ inquiries. This isn’t fiction. It happened to one of us. We are researchers with a keen interest in how race comes into play during day to day interactions with police both in and outside of college campuses. College campuses are often thought of as safe spaces and commonly regarded as forward thinking environments. However, as our anecdote and recent events demonstrate, merely being a student or even a faculty member does not always equate to acceptance and inclusion, particularly if the student or professor is a member of a minority group on campus. Consider, for instance, two recent incidents on college campuses that involved racial profiling by proxy – that is, instances where police are summoned to a situation by a biased caller. One incident took place in Colorado on the campus of Colorado State University during a campus visit and tour. Two prospective students, who were Native Americans males, were accused of acting “odd” due to their quiet disposition and clothing by a parent of another student on the campus tour. Due to her heightened suspicions, she called the police on the two teens. The other incident took place in Connecticut on the campus of Yale University. In this instance, a white student called the police on a black female graduate student who took a nap while writing a paper in their dorm’s common room. Both cases serve to show how racial micro and macro aggressions aren’t limited to neighborhoods. They surface on college and university campuses as well. These recent incidents come not even two years after the hashtag #BlackOnCampus flooded Twitter, exposing the daily occurrences of racism experienced by black students, and leading to protests focused on race relations on over 50 college campuses. Campuses have often been described as “microcosms of society,” so these incidents send a troubling message that the racist attitudes and behaviors that were part and parcel of American history endure in the present. They also highlight the need to move beyond policies addressing the legal restrictions that historically limited access to spaces and places to certain racial groups. Moving beyond this negative aspect of our nation’s past requires a shift in the current discussion from one that focuses on law enforcement and campus safety towards one in which we candidly discuss shared historical fallacies about the much maligned “other. ” This unpacking necessitates an understanding of how we, as a society, got to where we are today. ",2,https://theconversation.com/when-race-triggers-a-call-to-campus-police-97507,FALSE,
1330,Success of French football team masks underlying tensions over race and class,"The French football team has won the 2018 World Cup, 20 years after it triumphed on home soil in 1998. “Les Bleus”, as they’re called, are back in the nation’s good books, celebrated for their excellent performance in this year’s tournament, right through the 4 2 win over Croatia in the final. Out of the limelight and the glare of success in Russia 2018, however, a question continues to dog French football – the role of race and class in the selection of national players. On the surface, this may seem strange with the attention given to the multicultural harmony of the 1998 World Cup winning team. The straight talking former captain of the French national team, Zinedine Zidane, recently said of his country’s 1998 win: It was not about religion, the color of your skin, we didn’t care about that, we were just together and enjoyed the moment. This echoed the sentiment of the times, that a multicultural team of united “black, blanc, beur” players had united under the cause of the French national team to lift the World Cup for the first time. Triumph, on the football field, demonstrated that integration had been successful in France and anyone could reach the top of French society. Zidane, the star of France’s 1998 World Cup winning team, was born to Berber Algerian parents. He grew up in Marseille’s infamous “La Castellane” estate, seen as one of the toughest estates in one of France’s toughest cities. Two decades later, Kylian Mbappé – a 19 year old of Cameroonian and Algerian heritage – who grew up in the Bondy suburbs of Paris, is the star of the French team. Some commentators have discussed the 2018 success of Les Bleus as a return to the joys of “black, blanc, beur” multicultural national celebration, acceptance and celebration of ethnic diversity. Yet others have been critical of the way politics, integration and football have been mixed together again. Zidane and Mbappé bookend a couple of decades where the ethnic make up of the national team has come under fierce scrutiny, often taking worryingly racist forms. Questions about the French team’s ethnic credentials were present even before their 1998 victory against Brazil. The far right leader of the Front National , Jean Marie Le Pen argued that some the team were “foreigners” who didn’t know how to sing the national anthem. When Le Pen made it to the second round of the presidential election in 2002, some of the world cup winning footballers, including the captain, Marcel Desailly, campaigned hard against him. In 2010, the French team crashed out of the World Cup in South Africa at the group stage, winning no games. Behind the scenes, the manager Raymond Domenech had terrible relations with the players, obscenities were screamed and the captain Patrice Evra had an on field bust up with the fitness coach, Robert Duverne. Rather than question the incompetence of these two white coaches in managing the national side, blame fell quickly on the players, whose commitment to the French team was questioned. The criticism went further than the usual rumblings about spoilt and overpaid players, taking on a distinctly sinister and racial tone when the philosopher Alain Finkielkraut called the team a “gang of thieves with mafia morals”. While this referred to the footballers by their presumed class backgrounds as children of France’s crime ridden, suburban housing estates, some pointed to a racial undertone as these estates are also synonymous with black and Arab youths. ",2,https://theconversation.com/success-of-french-football-team-masks-underlying-tensions-over-race-and-class-99781,FALSE,
1331,Why the case of Jahi McMath is important for understanding the role of race for black patients,"California teenager Jahi McMath, who suffered catastrophic brain injury as a result of a routine tonsil surgery, died on June 22, 2018. Her death came after four years of her family fighting in court to continue her care in California. Eventually, they moved her to a facility in New Jersey, a state that accommodates religious views that don’t recognize brain death. Much of the popular discussion in the case centered on the family’s refusal to accept the diagnosis of brain death. However, as a philosopher who writes on bioethics and race, I believe an underappreciated aspect of the discussion was the role of race – both in how the medical personnel dealt with the family and how the family interpreted their interactions with the medical establishment. On Dec. 9, 2013, the 13 year old McMath entered Children’s Hospital and Research Center in Oakland, California, for what should have been a routine tonsillectomy. The young girl was, according to her mother’s account, frightened that something would go wrong. Her mother reassured McMath that she would be okay. McMath’s post surgical complications began about an hour after her surgery. A nurse provided a bin to catch the blood that McMath had begun spitting up. Although the nurses indicated to the family that some post surgical bleeding was normal, two hours later, McMath’s blood filled two plastic bins and the bandages packing her nose were saturated with blood. Her hospital gown was also covered in blood. According to the family, four and a half hours passed before a physician saw her, despite the family’s repeated pleas for intervention. The hospital has maintained that they can not discuss Jahi’s case in detail because of privacy laws. Bleeding complications, though rare, can occur after tonsillectomy because tonsils are near arteries. As a result of the immense blood loss, McMath’s heart stopped and her brain was deprived of oxygen. Three days later, on Dec. 12, 2013, the medical staff at Children’s Hospital declared McMath brain dead. Hospital personnel encouraged the family to withdraw life support and donate her organs. McMath’s family refused to accept the diagnosis, and a court battle to keep McMath on life support ensued. A judge in California initially ruled that McMath could remain on life support until Jan. 7, 2014. However, the Alameda County coroner issued a death certificate anyway. Philosopher Jeffrey P. Bishop, who holds the chair of health care ethics at Saint Louis University, writing in Harvard Divinity School bulletin noted the ethical oddities of the case. In California, once two physicians confirm brain death, the patient is legally dead. The body is then technically released to the coroner before being released to the family so that they can make arrangements. In the case of McMath, she was still in the hospital and on a ventilator when these procedures kicked in. From the beginning, the case was tangled up with all sorts of questions regarding the nature and diagnosis of brain death. Although there are long established criteria, how brain death is determined in practice can vary. These differences in practices can contribute to confusion, particularly among the lay public, about brain death. Her family rejected the brain death diagnosis alleging the hospital had a conflict of interest and simply wanted McMath’s organs. Rather than dismiss the family’s concerns as paranoid or ignorant, it is important to understand the historical realities faced by black patients in their encounters with the U. S. medical system. ",2,https://theconversation.com/why-the-case-of-jahi-mcmath-is-important-for-understanding-the-role-of-race-for-black-patients-99353,FALSE,
1332,Considering race in college admissions: 3 questions answered,"On July 3, the Trump administration announced it will reverse several policy memos outlining how colleges and universities can use race as a factor in admissions. The memos aren’t law, but rather Obama era guidance – issued jointly by the departments of Education and Justice – stating that the federal government recognizes “the compelling interest that postsecondary institutions have in obtaining the benefits that flow from achieving a diverse student body. ” Without the memos in place, the Trump administration reportedly plans to revert back to the policy set during President George W. Bush’s administration. This is policy that “strongly encourages the use of race neutral methods. ”Stella Flores, associate professor of higher education at New York University, shares her insights on the likely effects of the change. I’d predict that a key effect will be misinformation and inaccurate communication to colleges and universities on what is still permissible under law. The guidance documents had provided more clarity on what the court rulings addressing race conscious admissions permitted. For example, the documents lay out a process of regular monitoring to ensure accountability in admissions. They are clear about what a race neutral policy approach should look like. They also explain why diversity constitutes an educational benefit for schools and institutions of higher education. They therefore clearly stipulate when it was acceptable for colleges to use race as one factor in admissions when race neutral policies weren’t meeting the goals of diversity. Rolling back these guidance documents will make it less clear what policies are acceptable and may lead to fewer opportunities for underserved populations who are already more likely to be left off the radar of admissions. Eight states, some jurisdictions and institutions currently bar the use of race in admissions. The result of these bans is blatantly clear and predictable. We see large drops in the enrollment of black, Latino and Native American students, with a particular hit to the black community. What’s more, research on race neutral methods like those reportedly favored by the Trump administration shows these methods have been remarkably ineffective in leading to more racially and ethnically diverse student bodies. Even as the nation has grown more diverse, most elite colleges and universities have still only made moderate progress in the race and ethnic makeup of their student bodies. Without policies that do consider race, like affirmative action, that progress would have been even more minimal. My hope is that leaders of colleges and universities will adhere to what is permissible under state and federal laws and act on the side of diversity. Growing diversity in the nation’s K 12 schools may make this easier. However, direct attacks on diversity policies and changes in court appointments could slow or dramatically reverse this progress. The narrowly tailored framework has been part of our educational practice since at least the 1978 Bakke decision. This ensured that there must be a compelling interest to the role of diversity in educational settings, which Justice Kennedy consistently supported. A future court may reject this moderating notion that embracing the overall diversity of life in the U. S. can lead to educational benefits inside and outside of the classroom. In my opinion, however, the power of diversity in the schools, colleges, military and other institutions is already present and flourishing. We are a stronger nation because of our diversity. ",2,https://theconversation.com/considering-race-in-college-admissions-3-questions-answered-99351,FALSE,
1333,The 100-year-old rallying cry of ‘white genocide’," Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Queens University, Ontario Cynthia Levine Rasky does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. Queens University, Ontario provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation CA. Queens University, Ontario provides funding as a member of The Conversation CA FR. View all partnersWhen white supremacists rallied in Charlottesville, Va. , in August 2017, it woke the world up to the mobilization of extremist groups in our North American cities. With the recent announcement that the white supremacist who organized the Charlottesville rally is planning to mark the anniversary with an event in Washington, D. C. , it becomes undeniable. What ideas fuel such groups? A clue lies in the Charlottesville cry of “you will not replace us,” which morphed into “Jews will not replace us. ” The rallies are an indication of a fear of an imminent “white genocide,” a propaganda term used by white supremacists to indicate their beliefs that the “white race” is dying. This fear is so central that it’s inscribed in their infamous slogan known as “the fourteen words”: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children. ”“White genocide?” As it turns out, the idea is not original. The current ideas of the white nationalist movement are old ones full of myths and unscientific, obsolete “research. ”The idea of white genocide comes from the concept of “race suicide” first articulated by intellectuals and politicians well over 100 years ago. Talk of “race suicide,” the idea that the white population could die out, was so popular in its day that it shaped laws and policies in both the United States and Canada, including: Immigration law, eugenics programs and the prohibition of abortion . Support for these initiatives were mainstream and expressed by white folks from all social classes and political positions. Today, that discourse has shifted from mainstream to extremism as contemporary white supremacist groups galvanize members around their trumped up panic about their eventual demise. Believing their dominance as a white “race” is threatened, along with their unearned entitlements and conferred dominance, extremist groups promote violence to achieve their desired end a fictive nation of whiteness. Their targets are not only racial, ethnic and religious minorities, but also sexual minorities and women. Why? Because power is not restricted to whiteness; it is accomplished intersectionally. In other words, whiteness wields maximum power when it intersects with masculinity and heteronormativity. “Race suicide” can be traced to the scientific racism of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A popular literature, it flourished at that time, and was promoted by political leaders and the intellectual elite. One contributor was Lothrop Stoddard, whose 1920 book, The Rising Tide of Color Against White World Supremacy was the most inflammatory in a line of such books. Stoddard built on his mentor Madison Grant’s 1916 book, The Passing of the Great Race, or the Racial Basis of European History, which in turn was built on his friend William Z. Ripley’s 1899 book, The Races of Europe: A Sociological Study. With little to no references, research or documentation to support their claims, these writers asserted the inherent superiority of the “Nordic” group of Europeans. But Stoddard went a step further. He wrote that Nordic superiority needed protection from more numerous, inferior traits of other races. He reasoned that Nordic superiority was “genetically recessive” and therefore unstable and in need of political intervention to ensure the segregation of groups. In his introduction to Stoddard’s book, Grant wrote: ",2,https://theconversation.com/the-100-year-old-rallying-cry-of-white-genocide-98378,FALSE,
1334,Erasing race but not racism in the Peter Khill trial,"On June 27, 2018, a jury found Peter Khill not guilty of second degree murder for the Feb. 4, 2016 killing of Jonathan Styres, an Indigenous father of two from Ohsweken, Ont. , from the Six Nations. I have a unique perspective on this case. Not only as a critical race scholar who examines historical, social and political issues within criminal justice, mental health and immigration systems, but also as a potential juror who was summoned as “Juror No. 4018” to serve as one of the first two triers in the proceedings. Styres, 29, was killed after being shot twice by Peter Khill with a shotgun in the driveway of Khill’s home. According to reports, Styres was allegedly breaking into Khill’s truck. Khill, a former reservist, loaded a shotgun with a turkey choke and shot downward at the unarmed Styres, within two meters, twice, without a warning shot. During the trial, it was reasonable to ask if the shooter could see his target. But not one question could be asked of what and who he saw in terms of identity. It could not be asked what he thought in that moment. He was not asked to examine how his perceptions might have influenced how he responded. The case comes in the wake of recent controversial acquittals in the killings of both Colten Boushie and Tina Fontaine earlier this year. Those two cases garnered widespread attention to the systemic colonial continuities and systemic racism in Canada and within the Canadian criminal justice system. Read more: Clearing the plains continues with the acquittal of Gerald Stanley Media reporting on the Khill trial suggested it addressed recent criticisms of systemic racism within the criminal justice system. The jury was reported to have been “screened for potential racism. ” Some news outlets like the Toronto Star and the Hamilton Spectator reported that racial bias within the jury was addressed through screening and that “race did not play a role in the shooting. ” A CBC news story indicated that jurors were questioned for racial bias and this was a significant improvement on previous proceedings in other cases. As a trier, I served a unique function in the jury selection process. Two people are randomly selected by the judge to confer on whether a person is acceptable or unacceptable as a potential juror. The decision is mainly based on a response to one question, crafted by the judge and previously approved by the legal counsel of both the defense and the prosecution. The first two triers do not go on to become jurors. The judge patiently described this process in detail at each stage. He repeated on more than one occasion that this selection process and jury system in Canada was the best in the world. The one and only question posed was: “Would your ability to judge the evidence in this case without bias, prejudice or partiality, be affected by the fact that the deceased victim is an Indigenous person and the person charged with this crime is a white person?”The jurors are also asked to declare if they have any conflicts of interest and if they have any reasons why they should not serve on a jury. Possible reasons include: Undue hardship, whether financial or otherwise, planned vacations or leaves which would affect their ability to serve. On many occasions, potential jurors were excused from service because their situation did not allow for financial security during their service. Therefore, the process already systematically precludes a number of people from having an equitable chance to serve on the jury. ",2,https://theconversation.com/erasing-race-but-not-racism-in-the-peter-khill-trial-99337,FALSE,
1335,How do Americans really feel about interracial couples?," Psychology Researcher, Northwestern University Allison Skinner Dorkenoo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. View all partnersAccording to the most recent U. S. census, approximately 15 percent of all newlywed couples are interracial. More interracial relationships are also appearing in the media – on television, in film and in advertising. These trends suggest that great strides have been made in the roughly 50 years since the Supreme Court struck down anti miscegenation laws. But as a psychologist who studies racial attitudes, I suspected that attitudes toward interracial couples may not be as positive as they seem. My previous work had provided some evidence of bias against interracial couples. But I wanted to know how widespread that bias really is. To answer this question, my collaborator James Rae and I recruited participants from throughout the U. S. to examine implicit and explicit attitudes toward black white interracial couples. Psychologists typically differentiate between explicit biases – which are controlled and deliberate – and implicit biases, which are automatically activated and tend to be difficult to control. So someone who plainly states that people of different races shouldn’t be together would be demonstrating evidence of explicit bias. But someone who reflexively thinks that interracial couples would be less responsible tenants or more likely to default on a loan would be showing evidence of implicit bias. In this case, we assessed explicit biases by simply asking participants how they felt about same race and interracial couples. We assessed implicit biases using something called the implicit association test, which requires participants to quickly categorize same race and interracial couples with positive words, like “happiness” and “love,” and negative words, like “pain” and “war. ” If it takes participants longer to categorize interracial couples with positive words, it’s evidence that they likely possess implicit biases against interracial couples. In total, we recruited approximately 1,200 white people, over 250 black people and over 250 multiracial people to report their attitudes. We found that overall, white and black participants from across the U. S. showed statistically significant biases against interracial couples on both the implicit measure and the explicit measure. In contrast, participants who identified as multiracial showed no evidence of bias against interracial couples on either measure. The figure below shows the results from the implicit association test. The lines indicate the average discrepancy in the length of time it took participants to associate interracial couples with positive words, when compared to associating same race couples with positive words. Notice that for multiracial participants, this average discrepancy overlaps with zero, which indicates a lack of bias. Next is a figure detailing the results from the explicit bias test, with lines measuring average levels of explicit bias against interracial couples. Positive values indicate bias against interracial couples, while negative values indicate bias in favor of interracial couples. Note that multiracial participants actually show a bias in favor of interracial couples. Although we cannot know for sure from our data, we believe that the lack of bias observed among multiracial participants may stem from the fact that they’re the product of an interracial relationship. Then there’s the reality of their own romantic relationships. Multiracial people have few romantic options that would not constitute an interracial relationship: Over 87 percent of multiracial participants in our sample reported having dated interracially. ",2,https://theconversation.com/how-do-americans-really-feel-about-interracial-couples-99173,FALSE,
1337,Training Journal,"Disability awareness training can positively impact the development of a business in many ways. Chris Jay explains. It’s a common misconception, that simply following the necessary legislation makes a business accessible. It doesn’t. Whilst The Equality Act 2010 demands that a business has a duty to make ‘reasonable adjustments’, many businesses overlook disability awareness training as a part of these adjustments and therefore fail to change the culture of a business. Such training is essential if you want to develop your workforce’s understanding and perception of disability which is arguably the most important step in becoming an inclusive organization. Let’s take, for example, a business that has made an outstanding effort in developing its physical environment. The reception has been altered to accommodate wheelchair access, an accessible toilet has been added, accessible car parking spaces have been included, ramps and stairway lifts are now readily available. However, no attention has been paid to developing the organization’s understanding of disability. All of the physical adjustments will be poorly utilized if the culture of a workplace remains unchanged and staff lack an inclusive mindset. A business such as this has, in theory, opened a door without inviting anyone in. Who is awareness training for? Many organizations view disability awareness training as something that might not be relevant to their staff with the understanding that their workforce is already very forward thinking and empathetic. It may be that despite your attempts to be more inclusive, like many, you have overlooked the most important element the process of changing attitudes. However, these organizations will be interested to learn that research from the charity Scope has revealed that a large majority of people in the UK actually feel uncomfortable when speaking to someone with a disability and feel ‘awkward’ about seeming patronizing or saying the wrong thing.  Furthermore, many workplaces still demonstrate a lack in empathy, with 53% of people with disabilities stating that they have experienced bullying or harassment at work because of their impairments. So, could these issues be impacting your business or staff? It may be that despite your attempts to be more inclusive, like many, you have overlooked the most important element the process of changing attitudes. Disability in the UK It would be very poor business practice to ignore 22% of the population however, if you are an organization choosing to ignore inclusivity, you are doing exactly that. According to the latest government reports there are close to 14m people in the UK living with a disability . It is therefore impossible to view disability as something that simply isn’t relevant to your business. With a vast majority of disabilities being ‘hidden’ , it could well be that as an employer, you may well employ more people with disabilities than you already know about. Without an inclusive culture that embraces disability, it may be that they are not comfortable disclosing this, which could mean they are not properly supported and therefore could be unhappy or failing to work to their best potential.  In addition, it is worth considering that the staff you employ may develop a disability in time, as only 17% of people are born with a disability, 83% acquire it later in life. In fact, 780,000 become disabled every year. What is awareness training? Disability awareness training helps staff to develop a positive understanding of disability by raising confidence and removing any barriers that may exist. ",3,https://www.trainingjournal.com/articles/opinion/why-we-need-change-perceptions-disability,FALSE,
1338,We need learning disability doctors," I would like to support the proposal for exploration of developing the role of a senior doctor specialising in the health and welfare needs of people with intellectual disabilities . I have a wide range of experience with people with ID/learning disability as a specialist speech and language therapist and now as a non registered intermediary working with family and criminal courts; a brief canvass of colleagues working with people with ID across a variety of services all express the view that this is long overdue. On average in the UK, people with a learning disability experience poorer health and healthcare than the rest of the population . It is timely for all professionals involved in the area of learning disability/ID to urge their professional bodies to lobby the government for at least a pilot project to be initiated. Janet ChambersSpeech and language therapist, London Apropos the letters from Becky Jenner and Dr Kirsten Lamb . GPs take time to learn. When in March 1962 a group of parents formed what is now the National Autistic Society, few doctors had heard of autism but were – only slightly – more familiar with childhood psychosis or even juvenile schizophrenia. However, more than 50 years later, autism is both a worldwide disability and meaningless as well. The two go hand in hand. So stay with Rett’s syndrome. Doctors will learn from you, Becky Jenner, as they learned from us. What we need now, given the years taken to train doctors, is more learning disability nurses. One at least in each NHS trust area; and trained to deal with the complex problems enumerated by Dr Lamb. Primary care needs to recognize that specialist support should be now, not never. Michael BaronCo founder and chair, National Autistic Society Join the debate – email guardian. letters@theguardian. com Read more Guardian letters – click here to visit gu. com/letters Do you have a photo you’d like to share with Guardian readers? Click here to upload it and we’ll publish the best submissions in the letters spread of our print edition",3,https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/aug/05/we-need-learning-disability-doctors,FALSE,
1340,25% of Americans are disabled. So why aren’t the Democratic candidates talking about it?,"These are the core obsessions that drive our newsroom defining topics of seismic importance to the global economy. These are some of our most ambitious editorial projects. Enjoy! Our emails are made to shine in your inbox, with something fresh every morning, afternoon, and weekend. Director of disability, Center for American ProgressJuly 26th marked the 29th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act . While normally folks would ignore this year and focus on the act’s more momentous upcoming 30th anniversary, given that we are in the midst of a presidential campaign, this anniversary deserves our attention now. To commemorate the day, multiple presidential candidates issued statements or discussed legacies in support for the community. This was significant for us. But it was also largely symbolic. While it was a nice gesture, absent new policy commitments or deliveries on promised staffing announcements, it was still just that a gesture. This year, the Disability Rights Center of New Hampshire issued a survey on disability issues for the 2020 presidential race. The survey, the first to be released so far, focuses on five areas of concern for the community: sub minimum wage, inclusive education, mental health services, the domestic workforce shortage, and access to assistive technology. The country has at least 61 million people living with disabilities, but in the three presidential candidate debates so far, we have not seen a single mention or inclusion in a debate answer. One in four Americans lives with a disability, according to the CDC, and it impacts one in three families in the country. Conceptually, disability includes cancer survivors and people living with eating disorders, in addition to people who use mobility devices, who are Blind or Deaf, who have learning disabilities, who have neurological impairments, and numerous other conditions. The disability community has always championed a passionate voice for advocacy, dating back to the 1930s when people formed the League of the Physically Handicapped and fought employment discrimination by the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression. In the modern era, we’ve seen political leadership from within our own community, including Illinois senator Tammy Duckworth, who fought to filibuster Title III of the ADA in 2018. There’s growing momentum around Arizona’s newly elected state representative Jen Longdon, as the fact that she uses a wheelchair is shedding some light on issues of access. And there have been moments where public attention has focused on disability concerns as part of the electorate this year. Back in June, the Miami Lighthouse for the Blind issued a scathing report that detailed the lack of website accessibility across all candidate campaigns. What that means for the lay person is that a website’s information, images, videos, and navigation are unable to be accessed and translated by the software used by people who are Blind, Deaf, or who have learning or other disabilities, in order to be able to access information online. At the same time, we see the intolerance that disabled folks face daily even those who have been elected to office, as in the recent denial of reasonable accommodation to Wisconsin representative Jimmy Anderson. Anderson is paralyzed and uses a wheelchair, but he has been prohibited from calling in to meetings because it has been deemed “disrespectful. ”This shows that even though the ADA requires public service spaces to be accessible by law, in some places they still don’t want us here. People with disabilities are feeling excluded. Every time a candidate rattles off a list of groups that are marginalized, we hold our breath to see if we will be included. The majority of times we aren’t, even though we know that we exist in each of those other communities mentioned. ",3,https://qz.com/1679748/disability-issues-are-absent-from-the-democratic-debate/,FALSE,
1345,"“Queer Eye” demonstrates how we can show disability, but still fail to represent it","These are the core obsessions that drive our newsroom defining topics of seismic importance to the global economy. These are some of our most ambitious editorial projects. Enjoy!Our emails are made to shine in your inbox, with something fresh every morning, afternoon, and weekend. On July 19, Netflix released the fourth season of its hit show Queer Eye. In episode two, titled “Disabled but Not Really,” we meet the first visibly, explicitly disabled “hero” to be featured in the show’s history. Wesley Hamilton is a wheelchair user, a community activist and adaptive athlete who founded an organization called Disabled But Not Really, which is how this episode landed on its title. Queer Eye is best known as a show about acceptance and personal growth, but it is also a show about design. Bobby Berk, the interior designer of the show’s cast, has been praised as the “unsung hero” of the “fab five” for his dramatic and intensive home makeovers, while Tan France, the group’s style expert, teaches subjects how to express their identities with fashion that fits their lifestyle. As disabled designers, we feel the need to respond to “Disabled but Not Really,” and contextualize it within a larger pattern of stories that are told about disability and design. Before the episode aired in full, Queer Eye announced its “Disabled but Not Really” episode in a season four preview. We immediately noticed a disconnect between the way disabled versus nondisabled Queer Eye fans responded on social media. Members of the disabled community were quick to point out how the episode’s title and framing perpetuates the harmful idea that disability is inherently negative. These criticisms frequently referenced the #SayTheWord hashtag, which was created by activist Lawrence Carter Long to express a communal sense of pride in our distinct disabled identity. As this conversation was playing out on disability Twitter, nondisabled fans of the show were tweeting about how much Wesley inspired them. The episode was a platform for the fab five to teach nondisabled audiences about how integral design is to disabled lives and culture. Hacking our clothes, homes and environments is part of the everyday experience of being disabled. We repurpose kitchen items to reach inaccessible knobs and shelves. We adapt sports equipment to care for and protect our bodies. We share tips on how to navigate urban spaces as safely and efficiently as possible. But the hacks featured on Queer Eye were used to demonstrate how Wesley was not really disabled. This is one of the many ways that “Disabled but Not Really” succeeded in showing disability, while failing to represent it. As members of the disabled community, we saw glimpses of our own experiences, but they were quickly reabsorbed into a narrative that deliberately distanced itself from disabled culture. The fact that Wesley has named his organization Disabled But Not Really is a reflection of his own truth and identity. But the people behind Queer Eye have a different responsibility, as media spokespeople and influencers of popular culture if nothing else. The show didn’t address what discounting the disabled community triggers for many in wider disabled communities, especially those of us who devote our time and careers to disability activism and awareness. Framing the episode this way discounts an important reality: that disability is an identity, like many others not something that needs to be overcome. Consider the conversation between Wesley and Antoni about how basic activities, such as cooking, can be dramatically shaped by inaccessibility. Queer Eye did a good job of demonstrating the access barriers Wesley encounters, both in his home and at the grocery store. Throughout these scenes, we see Wesley and the fab five repeatedly discussing his eventual independence. Access to independent living is undeniably an important tenet of disability rights advocacy. But support systems and care networks are a crucial part of this advocacy. For disabled people, independence cannot exist without interdependence, but the show seeks to portray these concepts as mutually exclusive. ",3,https://qz.com/1671776/the-problem-with-queer-eyes-episode-about-disability/,FALSE,
1346,What A New Report Says About Disability Representation In Children's TV Shows," Although kid favorite TV shows like Peppa Pig and Puppy Dog Pals have recently introduced children around the world to disabled characters, a new report out of the UK confirms what many members of the disabled community already know: Disability is often misrepresented in popular children’s media, or simply left out altogether. The report, from streaming video on demand service Hopster and the research company Dubit, analyzed 50 popular programs for preschool aged kids in terms of representation across a diverse array of identities and groups. The findings within “Is TV Making Your Child Prejudiced: A Report into Pre school Programming” echo previous research from the GLAAD Media Institute and the Center for Scholars and Storytellers out of Toronto’s Ryerson University and UCLA, which suggests that disabled characters are woefully underrepresented onscreen. SHANGHAI JANUARY 25, 2019: A girl plays with an interactive game in the Peppa Pig World of Play. . . [+] indoor theme park in Shanghai. Despite comprising 22% of the UK population and around 25% in the U. S. , only 16% of the kids’ programs analyzed had a disabled character and none were lead or central characters. What’s more, when disabled characters were shown, they were often not central to the plot, serving as part of a token throwaway moment or a moral lesson on bullying. Worse yet, many disabled characters in kids’ shows like Dinotrux and Lego Ninjago were presented as villains, cementing the unfortunate glue that often sticks fear, evil, and disability together in the minds of children and adults alike. The report also covers a number of other harmful stereotypes that figure prominently in popular kids’ programming, including negative and caricatured portrayals of same sex parents and LGBTQ characters as well as BAME characters, working class and poor families, and women. Some parents wonder if representation in a TV show or two matters all that much. Do kids really absorb the messages they see on TV? In fact, a growing body of research suggests that, when it comes to kids and pop culture, implicit bias starts early. . . and representation matters.  Not only do stereotypes, erasure, and prejudiced attitudes onscreen rub off on kids who don’t believe to a given minority group; they can also negatively impact the self esteem of both children and adults within that group. 8% of kids in the UK are disabled, and this kind of programming ? whether it paints them as scary or meant to be excluded, or simply doesn’t show them on screen at all ? can have a lasting effect on self esteem and feelings of belonging.  Still, there are reasons to remain hopeful. Newly introduced characters like Peppa Pig’s Mandy Mouse and Puppy Dog Pals’ Lollie, both wheelchair users, have been garnering attention for their positive portrayals of disability. In both cases, viewers have noticed that the characters’ disabilities are dealt with matter of factly, rather than relying on tokenism, “inspiration” or pity. Additionally, Mandy Mouse and Lollie aren’t identified solely with their disabilities, instead serving as fully fledged, fleshed out characters like any others on the show.  Although positive examples remain limited, many disabled parents, parents of disabled children, and advocates hope that the influx of recent research around the lack of disability representation in children’s media serves as a catalyst for better things to come. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/lauradorwart/2019/07/25/what-a-new-report-says-about-disability-representation-in-childrens-tv-shows/?sh=1c7f2b5473c7,FALSE,
1347,Disability Equality Index shows steady growth of inclusion," The index shows steady growth in disability inclusion in all industries, though it notes some areas where companies could still improve.  In a statement, Ted Kennedy, Jr. , disability rights attorney and AAPD board chair, said, Companies that champion disability inclusion significantly outperform their peers across key financial indices including revenue, net income, profit margins and shareholder returns.  AAPD is truly impressed by this years DEI participation and were proud to collaborate with the business community to prioritize industry wide disability inclusion practices. The index noted there are still areas where employers could improve, including how many ask candidates during the interview process if they need a reasonable accommodation and the number of businesses that review company wide employee engagement surveys for specific takeaways from employees who identify as having a disability .  In contrast to the index list of companies, 64% of employers in The Standards Absence and Disability Readiness Index scored a C, D or F in disability practices and 56% earned a C, D or F grade in disability and absence management. These companies struggled with managing medical leave for workers with disabilities under the Family Medical Leave Act and Americans with Disabilities Act. Employers must understand medical leave and disability laws, both on the federal and local levels, as they look to expand their talent pool to include candidates with disabilities. Get the free daily newsletter read by industry expertsTopics covered: HR management, compensation & benefits, development, HR tech, recruiting and much more. Zoe Gross, a lead at the Autism Self Advocacy Network, spoke to HR Dive about top to bottom accommodations for autistic folks. Employee learning trends are shifting, influenced by the coronavirus pandemic, generational preferences and technological advances. Subscribe to HR Dive for top news, trends & analysisTopics covered: HR management, compensation & benefits, development, HR tech, recruiting and much more. Get the free daily newsletter read by industry expertsTopics covered: HR management, compensation & benefits, development, HR tech, recruiting and much more. Zoe Gross, a lead at the Autism Self Advocacy Network, spoke to HR Dive about top to bottom accommodations for autistic folks. Employee learning trends are shifting, influenced by the coronavirus pandemic, generational preferences and technological advances. The free newsletter covering the top industry headlinesTopics covered: HR management, compensation & benefits, development, HR tech, recruiting and much more. ",3,https://www.hrdive.com/news/disability-equality-index-shows-steady-growth-of-inclusion/559012/,TRUE,
1349,Supervisors’ Comments Are Direct Evidence of Disability Discrimination,"Theres no cause we cant effect when we come together as one HR. Members may download one copy of our sample forms and templates for your personal use within your organization. Please note that all such forms and policies should be reviewed by your legal counsel for compliance with applicable law, and should be modified to suit your organization’s culture, industry, and practices. Neither members nor non members may reproduce such samples in any other way without SHRM’s permission. To request permission for specific items, click on the “reuse permissions” button on the page where you find the item. A trial is warranted under the Americans with Disabilities Act when the employers supervisors are alleged to have directly discriminated against and failed to accommodate an employee suffering from episodic panic attacks and depression, a federal district court ruled. Less than six months after starting employment at Crain Automotive Holdings LLC, the claimant had chest pains at work. Believing it to be a heart attack, she left to go to the emergency department. Following a few days of treatment, she was diagnosed as having panic attacks. She returned to work, only to suffer another attack. Approximately one week after her first episode, Crain terminated her employment, with the claimants supervisors telling her that things were not working out due to her health problems and that she needed to take care of herself. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued on behalf of the claimant for failure to provide a reasonable accommodation and disability discrimination. Denying summary judgment, the District Court found that a jury would decide whether the claimants diagnosis of anxiety, depression and panic attacks substantially limited her ability to take care of herself, communicate with others or think coherently, which are major life activities under the ADA as amended. Citing Congresss intent to broaden the definition of a disability, the district court disregarded Crains arguments that the claimant could perform other major life activities and could work through her episodic panic attack. [SHRM members only toolkit: Accommodating Employees Disabilities]Crain also maintained that it was unaware of her disability. However, the district court found that the timing of the termination in conjunction with the claimant e mails reporting her symptoms and treatment were sufficient to infer that Crain knew of her disability. Similarly, it was for a jury to decide whether Crain received her doctors note, which stated that she needed three weeks off work. The district court explained that an employee with a disability need not use magic words like reasonable accommodation when requesting an accommodation but must provide sufficient information under the circumstances, such as a doctors note, when the employer can be fairly said to know of both the disability and the need for an accommodation. While stray remarks in the workplace by non decision makers or statements made by decision makers unrelated to the decisional process do not constitute direct evidence of discrimination, the nature of the supervisors statements was different. Here, the comments at the time of termination were tied directly to the claimants disability, thus amounting to direct evidence of discrimination sufficient for a jury consideration. ",3,https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/legal-and-compliance/employment-law/pages/court-report-supervisors-comments-are-direct-evidence-of-disability-discrimination.aspx,FALSE,
1350,Marching for Disability Rights in New York City,"Human Rights Watch marched in the 5th annual Disability Pride Parade in New York City, alongside thousands of people with disabilities, disabled persons organizations, companies, local politicians, and others. The participants marched for inclusion, awareness, visibility, and a dignified perception of disability, and to encourage New Yorkers to view people with disabilities through a lens of pride rather than charity. Beyond New York City, disability pride parades also occurred in in Brighton, Rome, and Calgary, demonstrating that the disability rights movement is growing. Over 120 organizations marched in New York City representing people with physical and sensory disabilities, psychosocial disabilities, developmental disabilities, learning disabilities, autism, and more. It was a rare opportunity for New York City’s disability community to come together, as public and private spaces in the city remain largely inaccessible to many people with different types of disabilities. New York subways are tricky terrain with few elevators. Street and subway signs are not accessible for people with visual disabilities, and too few crosswalks have audible signals. Disability Pride Parade organizers provided reasonable accommodations such as sign language interpretation, text description of maps, live transcription services, a wheelchair accessible parade route, wheelchair accessible restrooms, and more, making the parade accessible and inclusive for all participants. People with disabilities are active members of society who regard their disability as part of their identity. Sunday’s Pride Parade brought people together to celebrate that the city was accessible and inclusive for one day. Now, New York City should improve accessibility and make this something to celebrate every day. Medically Unnecessary Surgeries on Intersex Children in the US Use of Force against Inmates with Mental Disabilities in US Jails and Prisons",3,https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/07/16/marching-disability-rights-new-york-city,TRUE,
1352,Apple says new disability-themed emojis ‘fill a significant gap’," Apple announced on Wednesday that it is adding emoji characters that represent people with disabilities as a means of filling a “significant gap” and encouraging more inclusion and diversity. “Celebrating diversity in all its many forms is integral to Apple’s values and these new options help fill a significant gap in the emoji keyboard,” according to a company statement honoring World Emoji Day. The new designs include a guide dog, an ear with a hearing aid, a person in a wheelchair and multiple prosthetic limbs. Users will also be able to customize the holding hands emoji, which is typically used to represent couples and relationships, to fit more than 75 possible combinations of gender and skin tone. {mosads}The update also includes new food icons, including a waffle and falafel, animals such as a sloth and orangutan, and items including a sari a traditional Indian garment and an orange construction safety vest. In a letter last March to the Unicode Consortium  which develops standards for the widely used digital icons Apple proposed the addition of emojis representing people with disabilities to help “foster a diverse culture that is inclusive of disability. ”Apple worked with disability rights organizations including the American Council of the Blind and the National Association of the Deaf to develop the emoji characters. The 59 new designs will be available this fall as part of a free software update, Apple said. The Hill has removed its comment section, as there are many other forums for readers to participate in the conversation. We invite you to join the discussion on Facebook and Twitter",3,https://thehill.com/news-by-subject/technology/453450-apple-says-new-disability-themed-emojis-fill-a-significant-gap/,TRUE,
1353,UN Climate Resolution Emphasizes Protection of Disability Rights,"The United Nations Human Rights Council made history on Friday when it adopted a resolution on climate change and the rights of people with disabilities. The resolution calls on governments to adopt a disability inclusive approach when taking action to address climate change. The impacts of climate change disproportionately affect people with disabilities. They are frequently in situations of social, economic, and political disadvantage and may not have access to adequate resources, information, and services necessary to adapt to the effects of climate change. For example, people with disabilities may feel the health impacts of climate change more severely, as some are more susceptible to invasive disease due to pre existing health conditions. Additionally, many are at particular risk of neglect, abandonment, and even death during instances of migration or natural disasters, which are increasing in frequency and ferocity, due to physical, communication, and other barriers, as well as disrupted support networks. This is the first time the Council has addressed the rights of people with disabilities as they relate to climate change. While women, indigenous peoples, and youth have successfully become part of discussions around climate action, persons with disabilities have largely been absent. This resolution could be an important first step to remedy that gap, presenting an opportunity for persons with disabilities to engage in the conversation about climate resilience and for governments to ensure that happens. The resolution includes a mandate for the Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights to conduct a comprehensive study–engaging governments, United Nations bodies, intergovernmental organizations, and disability rights groups–focused on ways to better protect and promote the rights of persons with disabilities in the context of climate change. As is central to the disability rights movement, governments, UN agencies, and environmental groups should echo the principle “nothing about us, without us” in acting on this resolution. Governments need to reach out and listen to people with disabilities, who are among those who feel, or will feel, more acutely the adverse effects of environmental change, and will be important leaders in fighting it. Abuses Against Older People in Armed Conflict Lack of Access to Political Participation for People With Disabilities in Iraq
",3,https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/07/15/un-climate-resolution-emphasizes-protection-disability-rights,FALSE,
1357,When a Teacher Called Me 'Lazy' Because of My Disability," I was the first child with a physical disability to enter my elementary school. Having a student with a physical disability was something new for the school staff and the school wasn’t built to be accessible. However, during my time there the school worked extremely hard to meet my physical needs so I could receive the same education as my classmates. I had a one-on-one aide to help with my physical challenges, such as helping with taking my notes. My hand control is affected by my disability, so handwriting in school was a huge struggle for me. I had to battle through many different struggles, such as being bullied and people of all ages misunderstanding my disability.The first time a teacher judged me because of the “special needs” label given to me was in the sixth grade. The first day in class all the students were allowed to pick their seats. I went and sat at the desk by two of my friends who also had disabilities. Once every child was seated, she made my friends and I switch seats, separating us from each other. We were the only students she forced to move. Over the school year, my friends and I were often treated like we were troubled students, even though we were following the classroom’s rules.Related:? Why I Struggle With Fireworks as a Person With Cerebral PalsyRight before winter break, my elementary school would invite all the classes into the gym to enjoy a movie. When my class entered the gym, I went to sit down by my friends. Right before the movie began playing, the same teacher came up to us and told us if she heard us make one peep during the movie, we would have to write a five-page essay about it. Once again, we were the only students she threatened. We were good kids! Now as a young adult looking back at these moments, I can’t help but believe this teacher saw all students with disabilities as nothing but troubled.In middle school and my first year of high school, the school followed my IEP correctly. The schools allowed me to use a rolling backpack so I wouldn’t have to carry heavy textbooks in my arms. The school made sure there was an aide helping me with my writing and note taking. My teachers would cut down my classwork and homework because they knew I understood everything, but it takes me twice as long to complete my work because of my physical challenges. At times I was given extra time to complete tests. I was allowed to leave class five minutes early to get to my next class, so I wouldn’t get knocked over by the crowd of students.Related:? What I've Learned About Finding Employment With a DisabilityAfter my first year of high school, my family had to move states due to my dad’s job. It took the new school half a year to start following what was written in my IEP. I came home discouraged every single day because I couldn’t keep up physically in my classes. I went from being an A and high B student to a C student. Thankfully, the following year everything on my IEP was put into place. The teachers began cutting down my work, gave me extra time to complete tests, provided copies of the class notes, and allowed me to leave class five minutes early. I had a one-on-one aide to help me with writing. I would tell her my words and answers for the assignments and she would write them down on the paper.Then came senior year. I was with my same one-on-one aide like the year before, but things began changing. I would ask for her to help with the writing on assignments, because this what she was being paid to do, but sometimes she just replied, “No one will be able to help you with this stuff out of high school.” While she would spend time on her iPod in the back of the classroom, I would be up front struggling with trying to keep up with the writing by myself.Related:? Why Choosing a Psychiatrist Is Challenging as Someone With a Physical Disability",3,https://news.yahoo.com/teacher-called-lazy-because-disability-180027001.html,FALSE,
1358,Why Using the Word 'Inspiration' to Describe Disability Is Harmful," If there was one word I could ban from the dictionary, it would be “inspiration.” The reason why I think this word is so particularly horrible is because of the way it is frequently connected to people with disabilities and chronic conditions. I believe it both glorifies and belittles the reality of living with a disability.My relationship with this word is complicated. Before I started having medical issues, I was called an inspiration because my sister was severely autistic. Looking back on it, nothing could have sounded more ridiculous than being called an inspiration for going to school and doing what everyone else was doing. My peers who did the same things as me didn’t get called an “inspiration,” so it was quite strange to hear this word applied to me.Being called an inspiration was damaging because it created an extremely high standard for me to live up to. As a sibling of someone with severe autism, I always felt I had to sort of “make up for” the difficulties my sister faced. Being called an “inspiration” made me feel like I had to be perfect, when in reality no human on this planet is perfect.Related:? Animal Advocacy Instagram Account Draws Ire Saying Service Dogs Are Unfair Animal LaborI also found this term to be incredibly demeaning to my sister. Was it really that terrible to have a sister with autism that I must be an inspiration for living with her? You wouldn’t call a person with a neurotypical sibling an inspiration because they lived under the same roof as their sibling. I’m not going to say everything was easy, and that I didn’t have hard times with her growing up, but calling me an inspiration for doing what a good sister should do was nothing short of ableism.I put that all aside until about six months ago, when I started to feel really weak and was in quite a bit of pain. I started seeing a lot of doctors, and went through months of knowing something was wrong until finally getting a treatment plan. I felt debilitated at every point, yet once again I did what everyone else did. I went to class, took my medicine and went on with my life despite it being harder.Related:? The One Thing That Helped Me Battle Isolation as a Parent of a Medically Fragile ChildDuring this complicated process, I spoke at a conference in D.C. about my work in developing inclusive cycling programs for people with disabilities. After my speech, someone went up to me and called me the “i” word, and I re-discovered my true annoyance for it. My first reaction was to smile politely, but inside I didn’t know what to say. I was in a professional setting and didn’t want to appear like I was overreacting. I understood that this person was probably moved by what I had said earlier, but I also once again felt uncomfortable being described as an “inspiration.”You see, no one calls you an inspiration when you’re sitting at home in bed because you can’t get out of it. No one would call the amount of creams, pills and portable heating pads I keep in my bag at all times “inspirational.” There is nothing inspiring about my endless stream of doctor’s appointments, and not knowing how I’m going to feel when I wake up the next day.Related:? We Need to Start Questioning the Costs of Adaptive EquipmentA lot of abled people have the idea that disabled people are not able to accomplish basic tasks, and therefore we must be inspirations for getting out of bed in the morning. We must be inspirations for going to work, exercising and just living our lives like anyone else would. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Disabled people may have hardships accomplishing basic tasks, but there is nothing inherently inspiring about our existence. Disabled people don’t exist to be your morning dose of inspiration. If you wouldn’t call a person without a disability an inspiration for going to work or riding their bike, why would you say it to a disabled person?",3,https://news.yahoo.com/why-using-word-inspiration-describe-190033155.html,FALSE,
1361,Michigan lawmakers want new look for state’s disability signs," In this Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2015 photo, a modernized handicapped sign is affixed to a door at The Mall at Millenia in Orlando, Fla. Advocates want to replace the familiar image of a stick figure in a wheelchair with this action oriented logo to emphasize ability, not disability. AP Signs marking accessibility for people with disabilities in parking lots, bathrooms, buildings and other areas could get an update in Michigan under two House bills recently considered in committee. House Bills 4516 and 4517, sponsored by state Reps. Beau LaFave, R Iron Mountain, and Greg VanWoerkom, R Norton Shores, calls for a gradual replacement of new and existing accessibility signs in parking lots and businesses to a modified design. Where the current International Symbol of Accessibility shows a straight backed figure in a wheelchair, the updated design would have to “depict a dynamic character leaning forward in a wheelchair with a sense of movement under the bills. New York and Connecticut have already adopted similar legislation, LaFave said, and a handful of cities around the country have also moved to change their signs. As introduced, the legislation would kick off a phase out of the old signs, requiring any new sign placements or replacement signs to carry the updated symbol. During a recent House Health Policy Committee hearing, LaFave said updating the symbol would better reflect the lifestyles of people with disabilities. “The new logo reflects active independence rather than stationary, helpless people who can’t do anything on their own,” he said. “We want people in our communities to think of individuals with disabilities as playing an active role, and not just sitting in a chair and letting life pass them by or being pushed around by others. ”Both public and private entities are required to follow federal standards under the Americans with Disabilities Act when it comes to posting signage and making buildings wheelchair accessible. According to an analysis of the bills by the nonpartisan House Fiscal Agency, the legislation could potentially create a situation where entities would have to post two versions of the signs to comply with both state and federal standards or run the risk of litigation if the new design wasn’t approved by the federal government. The legislation would also task the Michigan Department of Civil Rights with ensuring the word “handicapped” was not used on the signs or in communication from state or local governments. The bills have 50 co sponsors apiece, with support from both Democrats and Republicans. They remain before the House Health Policy Committee, and would need to pass the House, Senate and be signed by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to become law. At the committee level, the effort was supported by the Disability Network of Michigan, the Michigan Developmental Disabilities Council, the Michigan Association of Rehabilitation Organizations and other disability advocates. Note to readers: if you purchase something through one of our affiliate links we may earn a commission. ",3,https://www.mlive.com/news/2019/07/michigan-lawmakers-want-new-look-for-states-disability-signs.html,TRUE,
1362,Why Do People Think My Disability Means I Should Be Depressed?," Freelance journalist, co founder of lifestyle e magazine;Disability Horizons Arabic and founder of disability blog Careless. As long as I can remember, people have praised me for “always smiling”. Every so often I encounter strangers who say “look at you smiling with all that you have”. I usually respond by laughing, because I truly don’t have a reply. Or, rather, I don’t have the energy to explain. How can I explain my internal battle, how can I reveal a ‘weakness’ that I need to keep locked away because if it comes out and is visible for everyone to see then it will became part of my reality, like a guest that will invade your space and never leaves? More urgently, how can I make people understand that my disability has never been an issue that made me low or triggered my negative mood?I was born with muscular dystrophy, a progressive muscle wasting condition. I have never experienced life without disability, and for that reason I have always accepted and embraced my disability. It is part of who I am, so how can I dislike or reject it? How can I long for something I have not known?When I tell people this though, I can see in their eyes the disbelief as they give me a pity look which says ‘we know you are down because of your disability, and trying to hide it’. Disability in mine and other’s experience does not have to affect your quality of life – recent research has shown life satisfaction for people with spinal cord injury showed they are not affected by their physical ability. It baffles me people can’t see there are so many other factors that will affect your mental thoughts. The fact that from a very young age you are constantly ‘fighting’ a new daily battle; from getting accepted by your peers at school, to convincing inadequate teachers that your wheelchair does not mean you are not smart enough to sit an exam, to being excluded from social outing due to inaccessibility. And things only get harder as you grow older. Choosing a subject to study becomes almost a battle as you try to prove to universities that your disability is not an issue and you are forced to get a health certificate to be worthy of a place whereas every student only has to present their grades. Applying for more than 300 jobs and reaching the interview stage only to get rejected every time, and you know it’s your disability that is being rejecting and not your experience or qualifications. Missing appointments or events because taxis won’t stop for you because of your wheelchair. Going to see your doctor when you are ill and the minute they see you decide whatever pain you are going through has to be part of your disability, no matter how hard you try to explain. Why does everyone want to blame disability for their outdated attitudes? And more importantly, why does everyone want me to be low because of my disability? In reality, it is them that have the problem with my disability and not me. I would strongly urge people to look at the person, not their disability. Look at our inner characters, not our appearance, to talk to us. Understand our thoughts and experiences rather than making sweeping assumptions based what you have been ‘taught’ about being disabled by TV and media. Over the years I developed my own system of dealing with any dark or negative thoughts, and found my escape through writing. I might not talk too much to people about my issues for fear they won’t understand or empathise, but when I write? I find a pen and paper far more open and understanding. Freelance journalist, co founder of lifestyle e magazine;Disability Horizons Arabic and founder of disability blog Careless. ",3,https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/disability-mental-health_uk_5cee9661e4b0ad8391636710?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAACv90YcUY24pOK3rwJKsv88nKpr9m8giC5D1dEnmYjMEVi_gUXfOE5YRKYR30vd_hhFyf-iBAHuh6m4xge8jiyINKL3_aFoj6u1cZaQAeqlpk292xkyKh5gJ-FUFpr6FOFrOOFgMaUNuGXubiqNsaEGQpWKkKzlfBu2cujcJ6fjJ,TRUE,
1363,The Two Words No Person With A Disability Wants To Hear," Guest WriterI was 36 when my legs surrendered. I was diagnosed with a degenerative disc disease and arthritis a decade earlier, and it had finally progressed to the point where my spine refused to continue supporting my ungrateful body, and my legs put in their notice. It came as quite a blow. I had always been an active person. Until mere months before becoming disabled, I was walking my children all over the city, staying out from breakfast until dinner. The all day adventures of my 36th summer suddenly became limped walks to the nearest park by fall, and I struggled to make it to the backyard by winter. It caught me by surprise, and it was terrifying. I had first sought a diagnosis in my 20s when my back would go “out. ” I would have a few days here and there when my back would be acutely sore, and then it would get better. When my doctor handed me the words “degenerative disc disease,” I immediately grabbed onto the word degenerative. Would this mean I would one day be paralyzed? My doctor assured me it would not. She told me that the disc would eventually wear away completely, and my spine would fuse. She even said that once this happened, the pain would likely get better. This gave me hope. Each time my back would flare up, I reminded myself that this was par for the course. It was painful, but not worrisome. Then came the day it didn’t get better ? or at least, not in the same sense. My occasional but extreme pain from temporarily slipped discs had morphed into pain whenever I stood for more than 30 seconds. The pain from my back had shifted into my legs, and even walking down a hallway or standing in line at a store became unbearable. This was completely foreign to me, and it scared me. But I still didn’t yet believe it to be permanent. An MRI confirmed that I did have the degenerative disc disease, which afflicts many people and is not generally this major a problem for most people ? I am an unlucky exception. It also showed a bulging disc, arthritis which was poking boney spikes into the nerves in my spine, some inflammation around another disc, and a healed fracture. I had, at some point, broken my back and not even realized it. “Individually, all of my problems were minor and unfixable; but together, they rendered me disabled and unable to walk without pain further than the length of a short hallway without assistance. ”None of these problems alone are serious. Individually, all of my problems were minor and unfixable; but together, they rendered me disabled and unable to walk without pain further than the length of a short hallway without the assistance of walker with forearm rests, a shopping cart to lean on or occasionally a wheelchair. Unwilling to accept this fate, I sought the help of multiple doctors and therapists. The consensus was clear: This just happens to some people. I can try to improve it with physiotherapy, exercise and even some procedures, but all of it will be a lot of effort for minimal improvement. The overall professional suggestion? Do whatever gives me some kind of relief and accept that this is not something that goes away. The loss of my mobility was indeed a loss. I grieved my former body and the things it could do. I grieved the future I had expected to have as an able bodied individual. As it goes with grieving, the loss never fully goes away, but I have come to terms with my new normal. I’m prepared to accept my limitations and work with them. But there was one phenomenon I wasn’t fully prepared for. From the moment of my first vertebrae twinge, my friends and family suddenly became spine experts. They may be educated as teachers, IT specialists, salespeople, and every other vocation, but my diagnosis instantly transformed them into orthopedists. Then came the two words no one with a disability wants to hear – “you should. ”“You should see another doctor. ” I’ve seen several, including specialists, they all agree with the course of treatment I’m following – but thank you. ",3,https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dont-say-this-to-person-with-disability_n_5d110b67e4b0aa375f512674?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAKgvvhSoZO_Wfse269mcAo1h8MsUoVnKdZlcfspdNa-BDgk1f5-Zsmf8Yu_ViZ1pnab1jSggcp5B9DF7_clPGMwMbsylItOheyYYd0NEp4p8d9vMDqL8eTq5RD1N83_nQbMBUvEEpAekJJ_RFyDZAaE4MGk0u81qhmDF04ygMaHz,FALSE,
1364,Not one 2020 candidate has a website that is accessible to the blind," The first stop to reaching disabled voters is making sure they can access your policy proposals. First person essays and interviews with unique perspectives on complicated issues. The growing list of presidential candidates has something in common beyond their Oval Office aspirations: None of them think disabled people should be able to access their websites. On Tuesday, a day before the first Democratic debates, every presidential candidate was called out by the Miami Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired for having an inaccessible campaign site, just months after Politico put the candidates on blast for shoddy Spanish translation sites. Blind and low vision users, along with disabled people who have certain other impairments like seizure disorders and cognitive disabilities as well as those who are deaf and hard of hearing can’t actually use the candidates’ websites. It’s just the first in a series of obstacles disabled communities face when trying to make informed voting decisions, even though these groups have an especially vested interest in politics. Thirty five million eligible voters are disabled, and disability turnout lags behind that of nondisabled voters by 6 percentage points; if disabled people voted at the same rate as their nondisabled counterparts, there would be 2. 2 million more voters. One of the reasons is that voting is extra difficult for disabled people. Inaccessibility of polling places and election materials is a factor, as are voter suppression tactics disabled people are less likely to have state identifications, for example, and get caught in voter ID laws. Yet even though we show up to vote, many campaigns historically have failed to engage with our community. The 2020 candidates’ campaign sites highlight this issue. “Political campaigns have a long way to go to meaningfully engage with disabled voters when something so basic as a website poses a major barrier. Not a great look for any candidate talking about inequality, diversity, and inclusion,” notes Alice Wong, the founder and director of the Disability Visibility Project and one of the co partners behind #CripTheVote. When people think of website accessibility, they should consider blind and low vision users first. Accessible websites have features like alternate text on images so people who can’t see them have context, high contrast text, the ability to resize text as needed, and clearly labeled navigation elements. But sites should also have captioned and transcribed videos, and should be laid out thoughtfully for the benefit of people with cognitive impairments; website design should definitely not, for example, make visitors vomit, as happened to me with one campaign site’s strange animation effects. They should use clear, plain language for people with intellectual, cognitive, and developmental disabilities. Virginia Jacko, CEO of Miami Lighthouse for the Blind, an organization that provides services to promote independence for blind and low vision people of all ages, spearheaded the user testing for the 2020 candidates’ sites. The study was conducted by an entirely blind technical staff . Testers found significant errors that made it difficult or impossible to engage with the candidates’ websites. “I was surprised because not a single candidate either the people who are going to be here for the debate or the Republican candidate not a single one had an accessible website,” said Jacko. They argue that this is a violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act, though disability rights attorneys I spoke to note that the law behind the ADA and websites is complicated, and this may not be an argument provable in court. Former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, and former Rep. John Delaney had websites with the fewest errors, while Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, along with Mayor Pete Buttigieg, came in last in the assessment. Lighthouse for the Blind told me the Andrew Yang and Warren campaigns have both reached out to discuss design improvements since the study was released. ",3,https://www.vox.com/first-person/2019/6/26/18759522/2020-candidates-disability-issues-blind-accessible,FALSE,
1365,Meet the people fighting for health care access for disabled kids detained at the border," Disabled kids in custody have the right to disability protections. First person essays and interviews with unique perspectives on complicated issues. Horrific conditions at a Clint, Texas, Border Patrol facility came to light last week when attorneys visiting the site described unaccompanied children babysitting each other, premature infants without adequate care, and other horrendous circumstances, which Representative Alexandria Ocasio Cortez sharply described as “concentration camps. ” While numerous human rights and civil liberties groups including RAICES, the ACLU, the Civil Rights Education and Enforcement Center, and the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights are working at the border to document and fight conditions in these facilities, one type of group that’s been involved may be a surprise to some: Disability rights organizations. Some of these organizations have a secret weapon in the form of a legal mandate that allows them to demand access to facilities that others, such as members of Congress, may struggle to get into. It’s the harsh conditions of detention centers at the border that allow many disability advocacy groups to qualify for access and join the fight for changes that can benefit both disabled and non disabled immigrants. “The intersection of disability and immigration is just one of the intersections that’s really important to look at, especially right now,” said Richard Diaz, who works with Disability Rights California, the state’s protection and advocacy organization. P&As are found across every state and US territory, with a mandate to defend the personal and civil rights of the disability community. When it came to the decision to get active in immigration detention facilities, “we had the responsibility to help people in these centers, just as we have the responsibility to help people with disabilities anywhere in California. ”Disability rights groups have accelerated their involvement in immigration detention in recent years. In its role as a P&A, Disability Rights California is entitled to demand access to state and private facilities if it has concerns about the wellbeing of disabled people housed there. So does Disability Rights Texas, which inspected shelters in 2018 to determine if disabled children were being housed there and whether they were receiving adequate care. Similarly, Disability Rights Florida evaluated and reported on the Homestead temporary shelter, a tent camp housing 1,350 children. While P&A representatives cannot demand entry to federally owned and operated facilities, their scope is quite broad and urgent. ACLU attorney Claudia Center noted that the physical and emotional trauma people are fleeing and enduring on their way to the US and in detention makes huge numbers of immigration detainees members of the disability community, at least temporarily. Mental health issues associated with stress and trauma like anxiety, depression, and post traumatic stress disorder are common in immigration detention facilities, and can be covered under disability law if the condition includes disabling symptoms. “People who are in detention, who are seeking asylum or refugee status or have experienced border crossings, are fleeing violence and threat. Almost by definition, these are people with disabilities … because of everything they have gone through,” Center said. And any disabled people in immigration detention, whether they have PTSD or use a wheelchair for mobility and whether in facilities operated by ICE, Border Patrol, or a local jail under contract are covered by the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, meaning they’re entitled to accommodations. This includes physically accessible facilities, interpreters for deaf detainees, and materials accessible to blind and low vision people, said Center. It also includes rights like being accompanied to immigration hearings and interviews, receiving legal representation when they cannot represent themselves, or taking breaks during testimony. Many of these accommodations are not provided, making them clear violations of the Rehabilitation Act. ",3,https://www.vox.com/first-person/2019/6/26/18716078/concentration-camps-border-detention-kids-immigrants-disability,FALSE,
1366,One doctor’s disability may lead to curriculum change in India," Intended for healthcare professionalsSatendra Singh’s disability inspired him to fight for others facing similar discrimination. Priti Salian reports that the physician’s plans for curriculum reform could help both patients and doctors with disabilitiesSatendra Singh, 42, cannot remember walking unaided. After contracting polio at nine months old, he spent a lot of his childhood in hospitals and getting fittings for leg braces. He remembers always being late for classes as a medical student. “It used to take me 20 extra minutes to walk across the corridors and climb a flight of stairs,” Singh, who now teaches physiology at the University College of Medical Sciences and Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, in New Delhi, told The BMJ. “Back then, I had no idea about my right to accessibility as a person with a disability,” says Singh. But when his application for a teaching job at a medical school was rejected by a government organization, something snapped. “I was told that people with disabilities weren’t suitable to take on the role of teachers in medical colleges,” says Singh, who was already employed as a physician with UCMS at the time. “I was shocked, as no one had questioned my competence throughout my undergraduate and postgraduate studies or even as faculty in UCMS. ”Opportunities for doctors with disabilities, even in developed countries, can be limited. In the UK, for example, the General Medical Council has recently been encouraging medical educators to support disabled students. 1Singh was distraught. “I already had a secure government job, but I thought what about others who are jobless and are screened out?” he says. After he wrote a letter of complaint to the health ministry, the college allowed him to reapply, but he wasn’t hired. He continued, pressing the government to allow physicians with disabilities to apply for other jobs",3,https://www.bmj.com/content/365/bmj.l4215,TRUE,
1371,"It’s Perfectly OK To Call A Disabled Person ‘Disabled,’ And Here's Why"," Senior Lifestyle Reporter, HuffPostShayla Maas is disabled. No, she doesn’t mind if you call her that. “I am actually disabled. I have multiple disability conditions, including Ehlers Danlos syndrome, so it’s OK,” said Maas, who hosts the podcast “Tips and Tricks on How to Be Sick. ” “I am equally fine with you calling me ‘person with a disability,’ but don’t be afraid to say the word ’disabled. ”In fact, Maas said it only gets weird when people dance around the word “disabled” with euphemisms like “handicapable” or “differently abled. ” As she put it, “If someone feels like labeling me as ‘disabled’ makes me less of a person in some way, that’s really saying a lot about them, isn’t it?”The way Maas chooses to identify herself as a disabled woman despite other people’s discomfort with the word highlights an interesting cultural divide: While more and more disabled people are embracing the word “disability” and urging others to do the same with viral social media campaigns like #SayTheWord, nondisabled people are slow to catch on. That’s in part because schools, medical professionals and human resources trainings have long advocated for “person first language,” in which you identify the person before their disability, such as “student with autism or person with cerebral palsy. Person first language is meant to emphasize that the person isn’t defined by their disability. But as actually disabled people will tell you, their disabilities are a vital part of who they are. That’s why many prefer “identity first language,” in which the disability is put front and center in the terms we use. Examples include terms like “disabled people” or “Deaf person” rather than “person with a disability. ”“I use identity first language because disability is inextricably linked to who I am. ”By leading with the disability rather than tacking it onto the end, you’re affirming and validating the person and their disability. “I use identity first language because disability is inextricably linked to who I am,” said Emily Ladau, a disabled writer from Long Island, New York. “Disability is part of what makes me me, and you shouldn’t have to go out of your way to emphasize that I’m a person first in order be reminded of my humanity. ”That said, there are some obvious common sense exceptions. “I absolutely would not be OK with anyone calling me a ‘Larsen syndrome woman’ or a ‘wheelchair person,’” Ladau said. “I’m a woman who has Larsen syndrome. I’m a wheelchair user. I’m not a diagnosis or a piece of mobility equipment. But I am disabled. ”The person first language was born out of empathy. In the 1980s, health advocates and people with disabilities championed terminology that put the person before their condition or disability. After years of enduring so called “neutral,” clinical terms like “mental defective” or “afflicted,” person first language was a way to reclaim humanity and personhood, according to Lydia X. Z. Brown, a disability justice community organizer and lawyer. “Person first language is still widely used by people with intellectual disabilities and many other communities of people with disabilities,” Brown said. Today, the loudest proponents of person first language are non disabled people, including parents of disabled children, teachers and medical practitioners who may have been taught to “treat the patient, not the disease. ”It’s a problem because they frequently shout over and dismiss actual disabled people who prefer identity first language by insisting that the only respectful language is person first language,” Brown said. “That’s inaccurate. Sometimes it is respectful to use person first language, and sometimes it is respectful to use identity first language. Neither are innately disrespectful. ” Today, many disabled people particularly the Deaf and autistic communities prefer identity first language and have reclaimed what were once considered to be euphemisms like “crip,” similar to how the LGBTQ+ community reclaimed the word “queer. ”",1,https://www.huffpost.com/entry/what-to-call-disabled-person_l_5d02c521e4b0304a120c7549,TRUE,
1372,Mom creates magnetic buttons after family member with disability struggled to get dressed," Gina Adams was inspired by her stepfather who had Parkinsons disease. Gina Adams, a mother of two in Michigan, saw firsthand the toll that Parkinsons disease took on her stepfather, especially when he was unable to do everyday things like button his own shirt. He was a brilliant engineer and a guitar player, and when he could no longer button his own shirt, it was devastating for him, Adams told Good Morning America. I saw my stepdad with this whole closet of clothes he couldnt wear. A few years later, when her children entered their teens, Adams went back to school to get her MBA. It was while she was there that she came up with a solution to the problem that her stepfather had been facing along with millions of other people who have dexterity issues that prevent them from getting dressed on their own. Adams is the founder and CEO of Wareologie, a company that designs products for people with disabilities. The startup’s first product is Buttons 2 Button, magnetic adapters that can be attached to button down shirts. My background is in the apparel industry, and I believe our clothes express ourselves and our identity, Adams said. And it is so important for people to lead their lives with a sense of normalcy. The adapters can be used on any traditional button down shirt. One part goes over the shirt button and the other part on the buttonhole to turn shirts into magnetic closures. Adams said she envisions people using the adapters to help with everything from multiple sclerosis and arthritis to recovery from hand surgery and Parkinsons, the disease that struck her stepfather. One in four U. S. adults has a disability that impacts major life activities, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The fashion industry has become more inclusive in recent years with adaptive clothing designed specifically for people with disabilities, but Adams wanted to make sure her product was affordable too. The adapters are sold in sets of 10 for $30. Life doesn’t have to be that hard, so if this is one thing we can do to help people, it keeps us going, said Adams, who has spent more than two years researching and raising capital. Adams also went through a divorce while starting her business and has made her new venture a family affair with her kids. They helped her research hundreds of shirts and buttons as she figured out challenges like how to make the buttons machine washable and transferable, both of which they are. I am very fortunate to have found my life’s purpose, Adams said. Despite the trials and tribulations of an entrepreneur, this company feels right. Helping people regain confidence, time and dignity is important. Cheryl Angelelli, of Clinton Township, Michigan, has been in a wheelchair since a diving accident left her paralyzed at the age of 14. She said she was always limited when she would shop for shirts because she could not wear button down shirts. Angelelli, now an ambassador for Buttons 2 Button, said the product is as much a psychological boost as it is a fashionable one. When you have a disabling accident like I did, you lose so much of your confidence and self esteem and independence, so you want anything you can do that gives it back, Angelelli said. Aside from fashion, it gives a psychological benefit too. I can button my shirt faster now than when I had full use of my hands, she added. Wareologie is currently taking pre orders on the Buttons 2 Button adapters. Adams and her business partner, James Murtha, who has a spinal cord injury, are also working to expand the line of products to include things like jeans and clothes for kids. Down the line, Adams said she has plans for a concierge service where people will be able to send their clothes to be retrofitted, adding, We are on a mission to restore independence with fashionable and stylish products. ",1,https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Wellness/mom-creates-magnetic-buttons-family-member-disability-struggled/story?id=63690017,TRUE,
1374,DEAFinitely Dope: Handing rap music to the deaf," Matt Maxey was born with profound hearing loss and has used hearing aids his whole lifeHe founded DEAFinitely Dope to help bring music to the deaf community As A$AP Rocky’s “Praise the Lord” begins blaring through the speaker, Matt Maxey smiles. “Turn it up,” he says, pointing his finger to the sky. Maxey is animated, kinetic. But he isn’t just dancing; he’s bringing the song to life. Every move has meaning. Maxey is the founder of DEAFinitely Dope, an organization that aims to bring the deaf and hearing communities together through music. “Music is life. Music is my passion. It’s my motivation. It’s my everything. ” Maxey listens to music in a very different way than most. He was born with profound hearing loss. When he was very young, his mother and grandmother discovered that he couldn’t hear when they would turn on the vacuum cleaner behind his back. When he didn’t react, they began yelling. He didn’t flinch. His mother and a doctor decided to get him hearing aids and speech therapy so he could get used to communicating with the hearing world. There was no need to learn sign language. “She figured that with the way I read, I was smart and could learn sign language later in life. ” Maxey says his level of hearing loss is like “trying to hear underwater. ” “Without hearing aids, I can hear about 25% of what’s going on. With hearing aids, I can hear about 60% to 75%. ” Maxey took an interest in music at an early age because he could hear it better than he heard people. It was easy for him to understand and connect with. The Atlanta native gravitated toward local artists like Lil’ Jon and Usher but also liked country music. “It gave me a new appreciation for the soul in people’s voices. You can hear the pain, the joy. That’s something that I never completely understood communicating and interacting with a person. ” After high school, he moved to Washington to attended Gallaudet University, a university for deaf and hard of hearing students where American Sign Language was the main form of communication. Maxey, who had never learned sign language, struggled to fit in with his classmates. “Their whole attitude with new signers was like, ‘Nah, you’re not good enough,’ ” Maxey said. “I kinda had to use self training. ” So he turned to his passion, music, and practiced signing the words of his favorite songs. “I have a lot of listening experience to music. I know a lot of these lyrics. Let me just add all these vocabulary words to all these songs and see if I can keep up. The more songs I learned, the more vocabulary I learned. ” Maxey videoed himself signing to refine his motions. As he became more fluent, his movement began to perfectly match the rhythm, lyrics and messages of the songs he interpreted. When he posted some of his videos on social media, they went viral in the deaf and hearing communities. “I wanted to make this my job. I wanted to make this my life. ” Thus, DEAFinitely Dope was born. “Some deaf people have never experienced music in a way that they can understand. We’re bringing music to them in a way that is more visually stimulating. ” DEAFinitely dope visits schools, does motivational speaking and even held an ASL music camp. But what has brought the organization the most spotlight is interpreting for musicians. Maxey’s style of interpretation is not standard word for word typical ASL. An example Maxey uses is “turn up. ” Saying that in conversation is very different than shouting it from a stage in song. “It’s just expressing the action. Think poetry in motion: ‘How do I portray that visual image?’ Especially with lyrics, they are trying to paint a picture for you. Sign language is a way to bring that picture to life, so I’m just trying to connect the dots to see what way is best and most visually stimulating. ” ",1,https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/17/health/turning-points-deafinitely-dope-chance-the-rapper-matt-maxey/index.html,TRUE,
1376,"New Disability Inclusion Strategy is ‘transformative change we need’, says Guterres","Disability inclusion is not only a fundamental human right, it is “central to the promise” of the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development, UN Secretary General António Guterres told the annual conference on the Convention of Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which began on Tuesday. “When we fight to secure those rights, we move our world closer to upholding the core values and principles of the United Nations Charter”, he explained. “When we remove policies or biases or obstacles to opportunity for persons with disabilities, the whole world benefits”. “Disability inclusion is central to the promise of the Agenda. Together, we can raise awareness remove barriers. Together, with persons with disabilities as agents of change, we can build an inclusive, accessible & sustainable world. ”  this end, the UN chief said he was launching a new UN Disability Inclusion Strategy on Tuesday, “to raise the standards of the UN’s performance on disability inclusion across the board, and action to bring about the unified and transformative change we need”. With an accountability framework to monitor progress and address challenges, the new strategy has clear benchmarks, and will encourage more persons with disabilities to work in, and be better supported by, the UN. “I want the United Nations to be an employer of choice for persons with disabilities”, he stressed. “I want the United Nations to be fully accessible for one and all”. According to Mr. Guterres: “We can no longer be a platform for change when persons with disabilities cannot access that platform, to speak”. “Realizing the rights of persons with disabilities is a matter of justice as well as a common sense investment in our common future”, the UN chief said, but “we have a long way to go in changing mindsets, laws and policies to ensure these rights”. He urged participants to make the goals and the objectives of the Convention “a reality on the ground”. Mr. Guterres cited last year’s first ever UN Flagship Report on Disability and Development, which highlights core challenges, including disproportionate levels of poverty, lack of access to education, health services, employment and the under representation of persons with disabilities in decision making and political participation. Together, we can raise awareness and remove barriers – UN chief
“We must do much more to address discrimination and exclusion, particularly against girls and women with disabilities”, he underscored. “We must also do much more on transportation, infrastructure and information and communications technology to make our cities, rural areas, and societies inclusive”. “Together, we can raise awareness and remove barriers”, he maintained. “Together, with persons with disabilities as agents of change, we can build an inclusive, accessible and sustainable world”. “My hope,” he concluded, “is that people with disabilities particularly women and girls one day live in a world that protects, respects and values us. ”Addressing delegates in the General Assembly Hall, Catalina Devandas, Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities said that despite multiple agendas and competing priorities, “the rights of people with disabilities cannot be marginalized”. She lauded the new UN Disability Inclusion Strategy to ensure that “people with disabilities are included in all development, human rights and humanitarian aid efforts”. While calling it “an ambitious and far reaching proposal that can mean a turning point for the inclusion of people with disability” in all pillars of the UN’s work, she warned that the strategy is “just the starting point of a long process”. The UN expert called for the Member States to politically and financially support the strategy, flagging it as “a good investment” in strengthening the UN’s capacity to provide “better and greater support to national efforts to realize the rights of people with disabilities. ”",1,https://news.un.org/en/story/2019/06/1040231,TRUE,
1377,Ways to Improve Your Company’s Disability-Inclusion Practices," Despite articles on the advantages that people with disabilities can offer employers, too many companies hold themselves back when it comes to hiring people with disabilities. They see hiring persons with disabilities as being “the right thing to do” but do not see it as part of a talent strategy that will benefit the company and outweigh what they see as the potential expenses and risk.  In fact, a recent study by the National Organization on Disability indicates that only 13% of companies in the U. S. have reached the Department of Labor’s target of having 7% disability representation in their workforce. That mindset puts companies at a disadvantage when it comes to acquiring and leveraging the talent they need in today’s tight job market. How can a company update its thinking and strategies related to this neglected category of talent? There are four ways to make it happen. Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal told the story of Nathan Mort, an employee of Gordon Food Service who tracks warranty claims and has a high functioning form of autism. The article noted that the number of people with disabilities entering the workforce is rising  good news for the economy, for people with disabilities, and for employers. Despite articles on the advantages that people with disabilities can offer employers, too many companies hold themselves back when it comes to hiring people with disabilities. They see hiring persons with disabilities as being “the right thing to do” but do not see it as part of a talent strategy that will benefit the company and outweigh what they see as the potential expenses and risk.  In fact, a recent study by the National Organization on Disability indicates that only 13% of companies in the U. S. have reached the Department of Labor’s target of having 7% disability representation in their workforce. That mindset puts companies at a disadvantage when it comes to acquiring and leveraging the talent they need in today’s tight job market. Hiring people with disabilities need not cost any more than hiring someone without a disability. Accommodations for the majority of people with disabilities cost nothing. And when there is a cost involved with providing technology or other tools, it’s usually less than $500 and there are tax incentives available to help. Moreover, recent economic modeling found a strong correlation between financial performance and well developed disability inclusion practices. How can a company update its thinking and strategies related to this neglected category of talent? We see four ways to make it happen:1. Identify and change processes that support unconscious bias.  Are your recruiting and hiring processes discouraging applicants with disabilities, or limiting their ability to demonstrate their strengths?At Microsoft, managers realized that people with autism weren’t getting hired despite clearly having the required knowledge and intellect. As Jenny Lay Flurrie, the company’s chief accessibility officer, told us, “We discovered that the problem was the interview process, so we did away with that process entirely for candidates with autism. ” Microsoft instead began working with a local autism support organization to bring in candidates for a different type of evaluation process. The assessment program involved a series of exercises designed to test teamwork and technical skills; it also provided real time training. Now, says Lay Flurrie, “we feel confident we haven’t overlooked a strong candidate simply because a common assessment practice doesn’t play to their strengths. ”This way of thinking also applies to people development and training processes. Even small changes in standard training programs can make a big difference. ",1,https://hbr.org/2019/06/4-ways-to-improve-your-companys-disability-inclusion-practices,TRUE,
1378,Why People Hide Their Disabilities at Work," According to a recent study by the Center for Talent Innovation, 30% of the professional workforce fits the current federal definition of having a disability and the majority are keeping that status a secret. Only 39% of employees with disabilities have disclosed to their manager. Even fewer have disclosed to their teams and HR. Some have no choice but to disclose because their disability is visible. But because so many disabilities are unable to be seen, many people with disabilities must decide when, whether, and with whom to share their disability status. Professionals with disabilities have a myriad of reasons for hiding their identities: They fear teasing or harassment. They worry their relationships with coworkers will change. Many express concerns that their manager might see them as lazy or less capable, and that their career progress will stall as a result. There is no silver bullet solution, but there are steps you can take toward disclosure. First, look for signals of support from your organization. Then, get to know your manager and identify allies. Finally, join or start an employee resource group. Work is stressful. If you’re hiding a disability, the daily grind of early mornings, deadlines, and office politics is compounded into a far heavier burden. You live in fear of being discovered. You work overtime to mask your authentic self. But you aren’t alone. In the Center for Talent Innovation’s “Disabilities and Inclusion” study, we discovered that a full 30% of the professional workforce fits the current federal definition of having a disability and the majority are keeping that status a secret. Only 39% of employees with disabilities have disclosed to their manager. Even fewer have disclosed to their teams and HR . Almost none have revealed their disability to clients. Some have no choice but to disclose. In our survey, 13% of employees told us that their disability was visible; they wear this aspect of their identity for the world to see. Employees in this group may use a wheelchair, rely on a seeing eye dog, or have a prosthetic limb. But well over half of employees reported that their disability is invisible, agreeing with the statement, “unless I tell them, people do not know that I have a disability. ” Invisible disabilities include depression and other mental health conditions, ADHD, and diabetes, among many others. For another 26%, their disability can be visible or invisible, depending on the circumstances. Someone who has low vision, for example, may only use a cane in unfamiliar places. Because so many disabilities are invisible , most people with disabilities must deliberately decide when, whether, and with whom to share their disability status. In our study, we calculated the value of disclosing this aspect of your identity: Employees with disabilities who disclose to most people they interact with are more than twice as likely to feel regularly happy or content at work than employees with disabilities who have not disclosed to anyone . They are also less likely to regularly feel nervous or anxious or isolated . Through interviews, we see the long term boon of incorporating your disability status into your leadership brand. Take Chris Schlechty, a software development engineer for Microsoft who has muscular dystrophy. In addition to his primary job responsibilities, he serves as his team’s “accessibility driver,” ensuring that products meet the needs of people with all kinds of disabilities. “If there’s an engineering question around accessibility, Chris is the first person you go to,” his coworker Melissa shares. Chris’s unique insight allows him to identify unmet market needs and innovate for his employer all because of his disability. ",1,https://hbr.org/2019/06/why-people-hide-their-disabilities-at-work,FALSE,
1379,Why Hiding A Disability From Coworkers May Hurt Not Help You," Michael Phelps speaks candidly about his experiences with depression at the Ruderman Family. . . [+] Foundation dinner at the Four Seasons. When a recent article in the Harvard Business Review explained why people hide their disabilities at work and a study they conducted showed the value of disclosing a disability in the workplace it confirmed a hunch Ive had for a long time. Keeping quiet about mental health issues or learning and attention differences on the job creates stress and anxiety. Over the last year, Ive interviewed dozens of people who are positive examples of how to disclose a disability. Their journeys, while often bumpy, are a hopeful counternarrative to the negative stories people often tell. Still, it is very common for employees to refuse to talk about their mental health at work because of the stigma and shame it may cause. Estimates vary, showing a low of 4% and a high of 40% of people choosing not to disclose a disability at work. In the Harvard Business Review study, they calculated the positive side of disclosing a disability and found that people who do open up to those close to them at work are likely to feel twice as happy at work than those who dont. Who are these mental health rebels? Some people call them Bridgers and Busters . They do not live under a cone of mental health silence like their Boomer elders have. Nor do they live in constant fear of stigma on the job. Its true theyve gotten some blowback from colleagues who see them as weaker or messier once they are aware of their ADHD, depression or similar issues. But, those critics didnt last, particularly when they did quality work. Many younger people with learning and attention disabilities , who also often grapple with mental health issues, are now being counseled to advocate strongly for themselves. Their positive experiences of asking for help, whether it be from community mentors, crisis text lines or school counseling, make disclosure more appealing than it ever was in the past. This minority embraces the idea of tearing down boundaries and celebrating people’s differences in both their personal and work lives. Its possible this tipping point on disclosure has a darker side: suicide, depression, and anxiety are at unfathomable highs. Keeping secrets certainly doesnt seem to be helping. One clear alternative is helping a new generation of employees to create safe spaces and trusting relationships in the workplace. The U. K. is often a source of inspiration for me when it comes to mental health advocacy. Take the example of This Can Happen, a group that hopes to make an impact on high stress workplaces by sharing their experiences with colleagues and offering them more help than they have in the past. They are stepping up to mentor and offer resources to the next generation of lawyers. Joffe with members of Verizon Media’s Neurodiversity Employee Resource Group which she founded in. . . [+] 2017. Jay Ruderman, president of The Ruderman Foundation says there still aren’t enough people speaking out candidly about mental health issues. It will take time, he says. He is actively promoting more open discussion of mental health issues. “As the father of teenagers, this issue of youth mental health is very real and scary. I hope to elevate the issue by honoring people who speak openly to this generation,” he says. ",1,https://www.forbes.com/sites/denisebrodey/2019/06/07/why-hiding-a-disability-from-coworkers-may-hurt-not-help-you/?sh=67e53f515bf0,TRUE,
1207,Your Column Here – Incentivizing the Employment of Those with Ability and Disability,"At a time when hiring a skilled, and experienced prospective employee who happens to have a disability is too often overlooked, employers may be uninformed about incentives for hiring a person with a disability. First, it’s a win win that enriches a business and its workforce by adding diversity and raising awareness about being part of a corporation or business with an inclusive policy toward its work force. Employers may hesitate to hire a qualified worker with great skills, work experience and recommendations because the prospective employee has a disability. Workers with disabilities frequently face this difficulty. Employers needn’t hesitate. The IRS offers significant incentives to encourage hiring of qualified employees who happen to have a disability. Without covering all the IRS incentives, tax credits up to 40% of the worker’s wages, depending on whether the worker is full or part time, are available . The amount of incentive will vary according to the target group . In addition, there is a Disabled Access Credit available through the IRS which mitigates the cost of updating a small business facility in order to accommodate those with disabliities. For larger businesses there is the Architectural Barrier Removal Tax Deduction that helps cover costs of removing barriers for those with mobility challenges . Vocational rehabilitation services and agencies assist employers in rehabilitation technology for established employees who become disabled. State programs that provide financial support for “Stay at Work/Return to Work” programs, and injury preventions programs are other resources available to employers. The Council of State Administrators of Vocational Rehabilitation knowns as “The NET” is particularly useful in assisting employers . In any community there are those who are chronically unemployed, and too often it’s the qualified worker with a disability. Employers can be part of enriching their community and their own standing in the community and industry by familiarizing themselves and availing themselves of the numerous resources that support employing workers with a disability. Dee Cappelli, CommissionerSanta Monica Disability CommissionSources: Kenney, Dave. EfficientHire. com. “Are There Tax Incentives for Hiring People with Disabilities, June 10, 2018IRS Council of State Administrators of Vocational Rehabilitation 
",3,https://www.smdp.com/incentivizing-the-employment-of-those-with-ability-and-disability/182367,TRUE,
1209,Is Apple’s Inclusion Of Disability-Themed Emojis Four Years Too Late?," The new Apple iOS update released a line of disability related emojis. On Monday, October 28, Apple released nearly 60 new emoji characters with its iOS 13. 2 software update. Among interracial couples and gender neutral characters, the emoji keyboard now includes the anticipated disability centric characters and icons. Now included in Apple’s emoji library are service dogs for the blind and characters in wheelchairs and with prosthetic limbs. Although beginning 2015, Apple has made significant strides in its efforts to diversify its emoji collection, disability inclusion hasn’t been a part of its initiative until now. It was only in 2018 that Apple started to advocate for emoji options that were more inclusive to people with disabilities. The tech company sent a proposal to Unicode Consortium the nonprofit organization that sets the global standards for emojis advocating for 13 new emojis that would represent disabilities. “Currently, emoji provide a wide range of options, but may not represent the experiences of those with disabilities,” Apple wrote in its March 2018 proposal. “Diversifying the options available helps fill a significant gap and provides a more inclusive experience for all. ”With people with disabilities composing the largest minority group in America, it’s a wonder why it took this long for Apple to introduce this addition to its emoji collection. Especially as a tech company that prides itself, ensuring its products and software accommodate people with disabilities, such emojis should have been a part of its diversity and inclusion efforts back in 2015. Even though dozens of disability advocacy groups are praising Apple for the milestone, people with disabilities and their allies are offering their constructive criticism, most of them referring to the lack of representation of intellectual and invisible disabilities. One example is an op ed in The Washington Post by Amy Silverman, a journalist who covers disability related issues and a mother of a teenager with Down syndrome. “Just as the blue and white international “handicapped” symbol falls far short of including all people with disabilities,” Silverman writes, “so does this handful of emoji. ” She goes on by admitting that it’d be challenging to design an emoji with Down syndrome or other intellectual and developmental disabilities without feeding into the hurtful stereotypes and slurs. Silverman continues, “Emoji[s] are such a quick read. How easy it will be to use a wheelchair emoji to tell someone, ‘You’re so lame!’ or ask with a hearing aid image, ‘Are you deaf?!’”If Apple had thought of disability inclusive emojis back in 2014 and 2015 along with the rest of its diverse emojis, the company would’ve had more time to perfect its representation of a broad spectrum of disabilities, just as it has with its racially diverse characters. However, on the other hand, Apple needs to toe a fine line of opening a can of worms. Despite the recent efforts of removing the R word from medical and social terminology when describing a person with an intellectual disability, the derogatory word is still very much a part of mainstream culture. For example, Senator Kamala Harris called the actions of President Trump “mentally retarded” in early September. She soon after apologized for using the insulting word. Apple must keep a close eye on how the disability related emojis are used by its customers, as well as continue developing emojis that are inclusive of the full spectrum that disabilities encompass.  ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahkim/2019/10/31/apple-disability-related-emojis/?sh=3154c5635929,FALSE,
1211,Myths And Facts About Disability Employment: QA With A Vocational Rehabilitation Specialist," The myths about works with disabilities continue to prevent them from being hired. In honor of National Disability Employment Awareness Month, Diane Winiarski, the director of vocational rehabilitation at Allsup Employment Services, provides insight on the current state of disability employment in the country. In doing so, she debunks various myths that employers have about workers with disabilities, provides best practices on hiring and accommodating disabled workers and explains the work Allsup is doing to promote financial stability among people with disabilities. Allsup and its subsidiaries provide nationwide Social Security disability, veterans disability appeal, return to work, exchange plan and Medicare services for individuals, their employers and insurance carriers. Allsup professionals deliver specialized services supporting people with disabilities and seniors so they may lead lives that are as financially secure and as healthy as possible. Founded in 1984, the company is based in Belleville, Illinois.  Sarah Kim: What are the biggest misconceptions employers have about hiring people with disabilities?Diane Winiarski: Many employers overlook hiring people with disabilities because they incorrectly expect to have added insurance costs, less productivity, more days off, or other additional costs. The reality is that hiring people with disabilities is financially and culturally beneficial for businesses. A 2018 study by Accenture found that companies who hired people with disabilities outperformed their peers and saw a wide variety of improvements. These businesses saw 72% more productivity, 45% better workplace safety, 30% higher profit margins and 200% higher net income.  Not only are people with disabilities qualified for a variety of positions, but they are also eager and ready to work. We work with thousands of people every year, and when asked, 52% of them say that they want to work again if and when their medical condition improves.  Diane Winiarski is the director of vocational rehabilitation at Allsup Employment Services. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only around one third of the working age people with disabilities are currently employed. How can we improve this number? What do you see as the biggest challenge for this population on getting hired?It’s true the unemployment rate for people with disabilities is nearly double to the national unemployment rate . The myths about hiring individuals with disabilities are a major factor in keeping this group from being hired. The other issue is a lack of awareness about the resources people can use to find employment.  For the millions of Social Security Disability Insurance beneficiaries, there is a free program provided by the SSA called Ticket to Work. Only 30% of these individuals even know it exists. Employment Networks are part of the program and provide free job placement services, career counseling, and more. ENs streamline the employment process, complete the necessary paperwork, and connect qualified workers with the right businesses that need their talent. There are about 600 ENs across the U. S. , providing support to individuals. Since starting, Allsup Employment Services has helped thousands of former workers find employment. Do you think the equal opportunity, anti discrimination, and reasonable accommodations laws and regulations are enough for protecting and promoting employees with disabilities? What could the government do better with the services they provide?We’ve come a long way in the disability rights movements, improving this marginalized group’s civil rights and enacting laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act . However, there is still more that can be done. We need to bring more awareness to employers about the types of reasonable accommodations that employees with disabilities actually need to get a job done and help business progress. Reasonable, in this case, means affordable. It’s any change that doesn’t cause undue harm to a business. Most of these accommodations are free or under $500. These reasonable accommodations can be as simple as modified schedules, flexible hours, or remote positions. Employers are apprehensive about hiring a person with disabilities because they aren’t fully educated about how easy it is to provide these accommodations.  ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahkim/2019/10/25/allsup-winiarski-ndeam/?sh=76b4d07712a8,FALSE,
1212,Disability Risk Creates ‘Catch-22' for Workers in Bias Suits," By Bruce KaufmanSeveral appeals courts have ruled that an employer is within its rights under federal law to fire or not hire a worker because of the risk of a future impairment. This includes potential diseases sprung from obesity or the potential to catch Ebola on a trip to Africa. EEOC Clash: The interpretation clashes with the advocacy of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which has brought at least one case arguing a worker does not need to have a physiological disorder in order to be protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act. At least five appeals courts have confronted this issue . . . To read the full article log in. Learn more about a Bloomberg Law subscription. Learn more about a Bloomberg Law subscription. ",3,https://news.bloomberglaw.com/us-law-week/disability-risk-creates-catch-22-for-workers-in-bias-suits,FALSE,
1213,The Truth Of Disability Employment That No One Talks About," In the U. S. , thousands of disabled workers are victims of sub minimum wages. October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and it’s about time to discuss the staggering unemployment and sub minimum pay rates among the disability community. According to data obtained by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the employment population ratio for people with disabilities was 19. 1% in 2018, compared to 65. 9% for people without disabilities. Although the lower rate among people with disabilities reflects, in part, the age profile of the population older people are less likely to be employed across all age groups, people with disabilities were much less likely to be employed than their non disabled peers. Out of the small population of people with disabilities who are hired, many receive sub minimum wages. In recent years, there have been reports of an estimated 420,000 individuals with disabilities who have been paid an average of just $2. 15 per hour. The reason that employers can give such low wages is due to a loophole in the 1938 Fair Labors Standards Act. There’s a cause that allows any firm with a 14 certificate to pay out wages based on productivity or ability, even at rates below the minimum wage. These wages have been recorded to be as low as three cents per hour. Employers justify these sub minimum wages by saying they’re providing the workers with vocational training and jobs for those who otherwise never find one. These jobs are part of “community rehabilitation programs,” or what is sometimes called “sheltered workshops. ” Such programs are comprised of a mix of nonprofit and private firms, and they receive both federal and private contracts that allow them to use the labor of disabled workers. At such jobs, employees often do piecemeal work, which is often referred to as the eight Fs of disability employment: food, filth, fetching, folding, filing, flower, festive and friendly.  Many community rehabilitation programs claim to have the best interest of people with disabilities, but their actions say otherwise. For example, Rock River Valley Self Help Enterprises, an Illinois nonprofit, billed itself as a vocational training program for people with disabilities. But it primarily operated as a subcontractor for local factories, providing menial tasks to workers with developmental disabilities, such as scraping debris from metal casts.  Cheryl Bates Harris, a senior advocacy specialist at the National Disability Rights Network, describes the employment programs as “a bridge to nowhere,” since disabled people often become trapped in these career paths that don’t lead to anywhere or anything.  Sheltered workshops undoubtedly reinforce the dangerous notion that disabled people must be isolated and kept from society, whether to protect them or protect others from them. This population too often gets ignored in discussions of fair wages and workplace diversity and inclusion. It is as if they can be silenced if they are not seen, which feeds into the vicious cycle of disabled people being treated like second class citizens. According to a 2018 report by the National Council on Disabilities, the ten most extensive sheltered workshops had combined annual revenue of $523 million, and the CEO of the biggest sheltered workshop received a salary of $1. 1 million while employing 1,790 sub minimum wage workers. It is alarming to think that a law that was passed over 80 years ago still dictates the livelihood of people with disabilities. This attests to the fact that societal and political perceptions of disability haven’t evolved throughout the decades.  ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahkim/2019/10/24/sub-minimum-wages-disability/?sh=b886b3fc22be,FALSE,
1215,Scenario teaches students to treat patients with intellectual disability," The man lying on the hospital bed seemed confused, uncooperative and fearful. Then Brea Davidson approaches him with a colorful blue bandage and a genuine smile. It is exactly the kind of lesson Callie Ray was hoping she and the other students would learn. Ray, a fourth year student at Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University, is the first to complete a new elective course on creating her own medical simulation scenario for students and she chose to focus on one of her special interests, treating patients with intellectual disabilities. The scenario involved a 30 year old man named Tom Smith, really a medical simulation mannequin where Ray in an adjacent control room provided the voice, who was being prepped for surgery but whose IV had fallen out and whose caregiver had stepped away to go home. The five third year medical students who cautiously entered the room in the Interdisciplinary Simulation Center have to convince the patient to allow the nurse to put the IV back. Jackson Reynolds squats down next to the bed so his face is at the same level with the patient, a move he saw when he was shadowing physicians in high school, because its intimidating to tower over a patient. He tries explaining what will happen without using medical jargon but Ray as the patient stubbornly resists it. Maya Milton finds his panda bear nearby and holds it out to him and he eagerly accepts it. Heeyah Song remembers being told the patient likes art and offers to let him color. The colorful bandages are the final piece to gain acceptance as the scenario ends with a successful IV placement. Nice work, said Dr. Matthew Tews, associate dean for educational simulation, as he watched from the control room. That was fantastic. Leaving the students on their own in the room is a big part of the learning experience, said Dr. A. J. Kleinkeksel, course director and assistant professor in the Department of Medicine. Our goal is to get them to do as much as they can themselves, she said. But it can also produce some anxiety for the students, even though they know the scenario is not real. The feeling of being responsible for something is not something they are used to at this stage of their education, Kleinheksel said. One student told her that he has been disciplined to think in terms of multiple choice answers and simulations allow them to think more openly and creatively. I hear this all the time, Tews said. Why didnt we get this sooner?A big part of running a simulation is the debriefing process and Tews compliments the students on how they approached the scenario. Adam Aston said they were more expecting to have their clinical skills challenged and this one tested us as far as our human abilities. Milton said she too was prepared for a medical challenge, then its like bringing us back to reality. You need to know how to talk to people first. Ray, who wants to go into child neurology, said it can be difficult to treat patients with intellectual disability who may also have a limited ability to convey what is wrong. With an intellectual disability, sometimes they may not understand why they are in a hospital, she said. So really the No. 1 goal is to make them comfortable and to make them understand as much as possible when they are in that uncomfortable situation. Ultimately, it is to help the students become better communicators and caregivers, Ray said. Were trying to figure out different ways we can expose students to learning how to communicate with people that are different from them, she said. The Interdisciplinary Simulation Center at Augusta University helps train all of the health related professions at the university in high tech simulation labs that allow students to hone their skills without risk to actual patients. ",3,https://www.augustachronicle.com/story/news/2019/10/23/scenario-teaches-mcg-students-to-treat-patients-with-intellectual-disability/2461974007/,TRUE,
1216,The Beauty and Care of Disabled Friendships," Disability Visibility Project Creating, sharing, and amplifying disability media and culture A. H. Reaume “I can’t do language right now,” I told Cathleen as we edged along in stop and go traffic.  Getting these words out was difficult. They came slow and halting and hurt my brain. In the quiet that descended after I spoke, I wondered how I would explain what was happening to me if she asked unsure if I’d be able to string the right words together on my now heavy tongue. There is something deeply vulnerable about suddenly losing the ability to talk and process what others are saying. I never quite know how to navigate it. After my brain injury, I had to relearn how to walk and talk at the same time. I would open my mouth and the words either wouldn’t be there or they would come out halting. “Want… strawberries. Brain… injury… can’t… talk,” I once told a vendor at a farmer’s market a month and a half after my injury. The vendor smiled in sympathy and placed the strawberries in a bag.  Back then, people were understanding. My friend Gio, who was my main support in the aftermath of my injury, once joked that someday I would be a walkie talkie again as I held onto his arm as he took me for the 20 minutes of daily exercise I was allowed. He’d just asked me a question and I’d stuttered on the answer. Seeing my distress, he patted my arm and said we could try walking and talking again the next day. We walked in silence after that. I remember feeling deeply loved in that moment as I concentrated on just slowly placing one foot in front of the other.  It was okay not to be okay. Over two years later, it’s hard now for people to understand that things like processing language can still be a challenge for me. Most days, I can walk without losing my balance and talk without my speech slowing to a crawl. I can even do both at the same time. People have since seen me vociferously debate complex literary theory and make a room full of friends laugh with an impromptu 10 minute comedic monologue.  I seem okay – even if in those moments my internal experience is different from how it appears, even if in those moments I am sometimes trying to power through brain fog, cognitive impairments, or fatigue in order to say what I want to say.  People who have never had their experience of their bodies radically change often understand recovery as something linear. You hit a milestone or regain a skill and that’s it – you’re now always able to do that thing. But that’s not how brain injuries work. I try to tell people what my neuro optometrist told me – hoping that if they understand that I spend my days carefully monitoring how my brain reacts to things they will be more empathetic.  “Imagine that an injured brain is like a pot boiling on the stove,” I repeat my doctor’s words for friends. “When I got injured, my brain lost many of the connections between its neurons. As it healed, it’s rerouted things inefficiently. My brain is therefore using up way more energy when I do typical things – it’s boiling much hotter than other people’s brains. ”“So, you have a hot brain,” friends often joke when I get to this part. I roll my eyes and continue. “Yes! And in order to keep that ‘hot brain’ from boiling over, I needed to take water out or turn down the heat after I was injured. Now, I did that by healing my brain and retraining it to have more efficient connections, but that’s a slow process and as my brain heals all sorts of things add water to that pot – stress, sensory stimuli, emotional experiences, physical activity, different kinds of cognitive demands – and quite suddenly it can overboil. ”It’s difficult to live with a brain always on the verge of boiling over – I never know if I’ll be able to do what I’ve planned to do in a day or if suddenly I’ll be stilled by the intense fatigue and brain fog that sets in when my brain ‘overheats. ’ When that happens, often all I can do is lie on my couch for hours with my eyes closed – doing nothing but resting and hoping my brain will recover.  ",3,https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/2019/10/22/the-beauty-and-care-of-disabled-friendships/?fbclid=IwAR1vVskrnFigauAeHDE5x3n7-Pm-_Ym47hSMNbYSGswIW4UZhkn6gGm5G7k,TRUE,
1217,"The ADA’s “Vague” Definition Of Disability Is A Feature, Not A Bug"," Americans with Disabilities Act ADA and glasses. . In October 2019, the 8th Circuit Court ruled in an ADA case against Dollar General that a worker could be considered disabled under the Americans with Disabilities Act even if she doesn’t specifically identify herself as “disabled. ” The plaintiff’s precise diagnosis is less important than her fairly obvious need for the kinds of accommodations that help people with disabilities do their jobs effectively. This is just the latest example of the remarkable practicality of the ADA’s definition of disability. Gatekeeping has always been a preoccupation in disability policy and culture. What, exactly, do we mean when we say someone is “disabled?” Is disability always a medical condition that can be measured precisely? Is it a cultural designation defined by being treated in a certain way? Or do we need to rely on lists of approved conditions that do or don’t qualify as officially “disabled?”When the ADA was developed in the late 1980s and passed in July, 1990, it embraced and helped define a distinctly inclusive definition of disability, using what has been called a “three pronged” definition. In its Technical Assistance Manual on the ADA, the U. S. Department of Justice explains:“To be protected by the ADA, one must have a disability, which is defined by the ADA as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities, a person who has a history or record of such an impairment, or a person who is perceived by others as having such an impairment. The ADA does not specifically name all of the impairments that are covered. ”To understand what makes this definition of disability revolutionary, it’s important to dig deeper into how this definition works. The practical, flexible way the ADA defines disability may be the law’s strongest, most socially significant quality. But it has also been one of the law’s most controversial aspects. Critics have long asserted that the ADA definition of disability is too “vague. ” The Supreme Court more than once ruled accordingly, for a time narrowing how the law’s actual scope. Then, in 2008, Congress passed the ADA Amendments Act, , reinforcing the principle that the ADA definition of disability should be interpreted broadly. Jinny Kim, Director of the Disability Rights Program at Legal Aid At Work in San Francisco explains: “Under the ADAAA, the question “should be whether [covered entities] have complied with their obligations,” and, “. . . the question of whether an individual’s impairment is a disability under the ADA should not demand extensive analysis. ”There are both weaknesses and strengths in the ADA’s definition of disability today. First of all, the laundry list of specifically excluded conditions added to the original bill to secure key votes for passage , do not hold up well today, either morally or legally. They read as petty betrayals, and don’t even make any practical sense, given the ADA’s core idea of functional impairments regardless of cause or diagnosis. The ADA’s nuanced approach to disability opened the door for courts to narrow the definition, which for awhile they did until the 2008 ADA Amendments Act clarified and strengthened the principle of a broad and inclusive definition. Also, what are viewed by some as completely appropriate advancements of disability rights protections to previously unprotected disabled populations have often been popularly portrayed as evidence that the ADA is an ill defined free for all opportunity for anyone to claim “special treatment. ” Even though they are exactly the kinds of questions of practical effect the ADA was specifically designed to resolve rationally, headlines asking whether previously ill defined conditions like obesity and anxiety “count” as disabilities under the ADA often carry an undercurrent of irony and disdain. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2019/10/14/the-adas-vague-definition-of-disability-is-a-feature-not-a-bug/?sh=431880f649b0,TRUE,
1221,"Disability Advocate Sues Minneapolis, Scooter Companies For ADA, Anti-Discrimination Violations","For many, e scooters are a fast and fun way to get around. But for people with disabilities like Noah J. McCourt, those two wheels are terrifying. “When they come hurdling at you … it makes me feel like I am going into meltdown mode,” McCourt said. He lives with autism and developmental coordination disorder, and says the scooters cause him major anxiety, and are impossible to get around. “I don’t know how someone with a wheelchair or someone with a mobility impairment or someone with even a vision impairment is supposed to get groceries. What are people with disabilities supposed to do?” said McCourt. 
Noah J. McCourt The disability rights advocate is now suing Lime and Bird scooters, as well as the city of Minneapolis. In the lawsuit, he alleges the city and those private companies have failed to maintain accessibility of the city’s public sidewalks, curb ramps and cross walkways for people with disabilities. “People with disabilities deserve to use the sidewalks as much as anybody else,” said McCourt. He tells WCCO he has reached out to city leaders about his concerns, but hasn’t heard anything back. McCourt insists the goal of this lawsuit isn’t money it’s change. “I hope we can work together to come to a solution, but there does need to be a solution,” he said. WCCO did reach out to all the parties involved. The city of Minneapolis isn’t commenting on the lawsuit at this time. Bird also doesn’t comment on litigation, but has not operated in the city since November of last year. A Lime spokesperson provided the following statement: While we can’t comment on active litigation, Lime is committed to finding a solution that works for everyone. Dockless micro mobility significantly improves the quality of life for millions of people around the world, but as we run into challenges, the onus is on us to innovate and educate. That’s why we’ve engaged disability advocates and continue to educate riders and the community about proper riding and parking etiquette to ensure scooters are parked in an orderly, respectful way. ",3,https://minnesota.cbslocal.com/2019/10/16/disability-advocate-sues-minneapolis-scooter-companies-for-ada-anti-discrimination-violations/,FALSE,
1222,Disability activists notch win as Supreme Court declines case on Domino’s Pizza website accessibility," Disabled advocates scored a victory this week when the U. S. Supreme Court refused to review a ruling allowing a blind plaintiff to sue a retailer under the Americans with Disabilities Act for an inaccessible website. In its ruling Monday, the court declined to hear an appeal from Domino’s Pizza of a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling which found that the ADA applies to businesses’ websites along with their physical premises. {mosads}“Blind people, like everyone else, engage in multiple online interactions and transactions daily. These include much more than ordering pizza: online banking and bill payment, applying for jobs, using internet based services as part of an existing job, taking online courses or using online components of traditional education at all levels, accessing medical records, and much more,” Chris Danielsen, director of public relations at the National Federation of the Blind, told The Hill. “Had Domino’s succeeded in getting a ruling that the ADA does not cover the Internet, the ability of blind people to participate in 21st century society would have been in jeopardy. The denial of Domino’s petition means that accessibility law remains where it is now,” Danielsen added. “The Domino’s case is really about whether disabled Americans will be able to fully participate in society, as goods and services are increasingly accessed online. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 requires that places of public accommodation are accessible to disabled customers,” Matthew Cortland, a disabled disability rights lawyer based in Massachusetts, told The Hill. “In this case, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had to decide whether the ADA applies to the websites and apps of a place of public accommodation and not just its physical locations,” he added. The decision specifically holds that websites connected to a physical business are covered by the ADA, Danielsen added. “Some courts have gone further, ruling that even if a business is only on the web, the ADA still applies. In addition, some states have civil rights laws that cover disability and apply to websites as well as physical places of business,” he told The Hill. “In other words, while the legal landscape hasn’t actually changed, the Supreme Court decision affirms the importance of making websites accessible for businesses and other entities covered by the ADA and other laws,” he added. “There is a case still pending in the 11th Circuit [the Gil v. Winn Dixie case] that was argued a year ago and no opinion has been issued yet, where the court could make clear whether it will require a nexus to a physical place in order to cover websites,” said Eve Hill, an attorney at Brown, Goldstein & Levy, a Baltimore based law firm specializing in disability rights. In the meantime, plaintiffs have filed nearly 600 accessibility complaints under the ADA specifically relating to websites, with defendants ranging from Ralph Lauren Corp. to Activision Blizzard Inc. , according to Bloomberg Law. Hill said the next step for the Domino’s case will be returning to the trial court for discovery and trial. “If the Court had taken the case, it would have been very significant because they would have been deciding a question that was not involved in the particular case on which no appellate court had issued a decision and would have been deciding whether the websites of ADA covered businesses were subject to the effective communication and nondiscrimination requirements of the ADA,” she said. “Eventually, we may see the Supreme Court take up a case on this topic. What might that look like? Let’s say someone in Texas sues over website or app inaccessibility. The case may eventually get to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. If the 5th Circuit were to rule that the ADA doesn’t require websites and apps to be accessible, if they disagree with the 9th Circuit, that’s called a ‘circuit split,” Cortland told The Hill. ",3,https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/464897-disability-activists-notch-win-as-supreme-court-declines-to-take-up/,TRUE,
1225,Learn Correct Terminology With the Disability Style Guide," I have used the term “special needs” freely and often throughout my life. I have a brother with autism, and the phrase is pretty versatile and, I thought, inoffensive. But things change. Back in April, I wrote a piece for Offspring called “How to Parent a Typical Child When You Also Have One With a Disability. ” Yes, it’s a mouthful, but as I learned during the editing process I should not use the phrase “special needs child. ”Why? Because, as the National Center on Disability and Journalism’s Disability Language Style Guide points out: The term “special needs” was popularized in the U. S. in the early 20th century during a push for special needs education to serve people with all kinds of disabilities. The word “special” in relationship to those with disabilities is now widely considered offensive because it euphemistically stigmatizes that which is different. The term “special education” is still widely used when referring to public school programs, although some government entities use titles like “exceptional student services. ”Have a sweepy, moppy friend Eufy RoboVac G30 Hybrid is a great, and cheap, robot vacuum that quietly goes about its business, supports Google Assistant and Alexa, and has limited mapping functionality. Although I am a journalist and I have a brother with a disability, I had no idea this style guide existed. Which is to say, don’t feel badly if you’re not up on all the appropriate phrasing and terminology. It’s not about getting it perfect it’s about trying and being open to learning how to be better. Instead of “special needs,” the style guide advises “to cite the specific disability or disabilities in question. The term ‘functional needs’ is preferred when a term is required. For example, ‘addressing the functional needs of people with disabilities’ could be used when referring to a facility or program. ”The style guide acknowledges from the get go that things change quickly, which makes it tough for journalists and people wanting to be mindful that they don’t cause accidental offense to keep up. Kids are naturally curious this is a wonderful thing. But they also haven’t mastered social cues. …In general, the guide recommends person first language. That means you recognize the person before the disability, so “the person, who has a disability” instead of “the disabled person. ”The guide is 41 pages, so this isn’t going to be a comprehensive look, but here are some other guidelines to keep in mind: You may notice a trend here: If you don’t know, just ask. It can be difficult to do we don’t like to appear naïve, and we don’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable . However, it’s worth a moment of discomfort to make another feel valued and heard. If you can’t ask the person directly, ask a caregiver. My brother, for example, can’t tell you how he likes to be identified he’s nonverbal but my family doesn’t mind if you call him “autistic,” which is a debate the guide recognizes: Some people object to using “autistic” as an adjective and prefer “someone with autism. ”It’s not an exact science, but simply being aware can go a long way in preventing hurt feelings and helping a person with a disability. This is by no means the only guide like this. The Diversity Style Guide, put out by the Center for Integration and Improvement of Journalism at San Francisco State University, is another tool for journalists that can help you use sensitivity to navigate a complex world. ",3,https://lifehacker.com/learn-correct-terminology-with-the-disability-style-gui-1838449345,TRUE,
1226,Social Security Disability reform is needed now to ensure the program remains in existence," Before lawmakers leave for another recess, we are once again dealing with a September full of last-minute funding attempts and series of bills that seek to promote individual member priorities instead of attempting to solve some of the most pressing issues facing our government. Issues like our national debt, or the insolvency of Social Security and Social Security Disability (SSDI), that will have lasting effects on Americans for generations to come. And while addressing these issues may seem like an issue for tomorrow, the truth is, if legislators do not act now, we risk being unable to effectively adjust these policies without massive fall out. I can’t pretend to offer a solution for all the issues our nation is facing- but one problem we can start to address now is the solvency and efficiency of the Social Security Disability Insurance program (SSDI). At its core, the current SSDI program is flawed. Almost half of the factors used in determining eligibility for the program are not medically based and continuing disability reviews (CDRs), that help ensure the benefits are going to those who need them are not regularly conducted.Further, the latest Social Security Trustee report estimates that the SSDI trust fund will be depleted by 2054. While this projection is significantly later than 2018’s estimate of 2032, it is still well within the lifetime of most Americans alive today. SSDI was created so that people who are unable to work because of disability have a way to support themselves – if we make changes now we can ensure that this vital program remains intact well beyond the next 35 years.That is why I am introducing the Making DI Work for all Americans Act. This bill makes key reforms to SSDI that target the efficiency and long-term solvency of the program, all while not changing the benefits current recipients receive.The provisions in this bill target SSDI’s inefficient determination process and outdated measurement of disability by requiring Social Security to update the list of jobs that exist in the national economy- for example removing jobs like “telegraph editor” and adding the variety of technology-related jobs that have entered the economy. The bill also directs Social Security to update their medical-vocational grids, or the non-medical determinants used to assess eligibility for SSDI, to account for the modernization of the workforce.This bill also subjects SSDI judges to a similar code of ethics that is applied to other judges and adds a review process for judges whose rates of approval for benefits are significantly outside of their peers. Further, Making DI Work for all Americans Act allows disability applicants to be in control of their own money by ending Social Security autopayments to representatives. Under the current system, Social Security deducts payment for their representatives from the benefits applicants are approved for- whether the representative provided assistance or not.Additionally, Making DI Work for all Americans Act increases the frequency of continuing disability reviews. This is so that SSDI does not become a long-term income replacement program for those with temporary need, while also ensuring the program is available for those who need it when they need it.Finally, the largest change this bill makes is to restore the program to its original goal of poverty prevention through the establishment of a flat anti-poverty benefit for all new recipients. Currently, individuals with the lowest income, and therefore the highest need for these benefits, receive the smallest benefit checks. By moving to a flat benefit, we can ensure that those who need SSDI are able to live off of it, while the overall longevity of the SSDI program is increased.Over the past few years, fewer people are using SSDI as a long-term unemployment solution- which has added years to the program’s solvency. However, in order to ensure that this program remains in existence to serve those who need it, we have a responsibility to address the issues with the program now- not 10, 20, or 30 years from now when it is too late. Because of this, I am excited to introduce the Making DI Work for All Americans Act, which transforms SSDI into a more effective program that meets the needs of individuals with disabilities while increasing the longevity of the program.",3,https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/politics/462804-social-security-disability-reform-is-needed-now-to-ensure-the/,FALSE,
1227,New Disability Study Space to open later this month," The newly completed Disability Study Space is set to open in the third week of September, bringing neurodiverse students a room with everything from sound proofed walls to standing desks. The study space, located in the basement of the John D. Rockefeller Library, is structured to be accessible to students with a range of disabilities, including mobility limitations, but is uniquely designed for those with sensory differences, according to Leah VanWey, associate provost for academic space. The project had a budget of $50,000 and was funded by Provost Richard Locke’s office. VanWey gave credit to Disability Justice at Brown and the Undergraduate Council of Students for bringing this issue to her attention. “The UCS and the students involved in DJAB made a strong case for the isolating effect of the lack of study space for neurodiverse students,” VanWey wrote in an email to The Herald. “They argued that no existing study spaces were adequately meeting the needs of this population, and that the result was students isolated in their dorm rooms to study. ”“Right now, as a disabled student, I have never once studied in a library,” said Silver Mckie ’22, the community coordinator of DJAB. “A lot of spaces in the libraries have ambient noise and fluorescent lighting and things that aren’t accommodating for students with sensory issues. ”Although the space was renovated this summer, DJAB is in the process of conducting a soft opening to gather feedback before the official launch, according to Sumera Subzwari ’21, the lead coordinator of DJAB. The space will technically be available to all students but will require talking to the librarian for access; it will also have a key code on the door to prevent people from taking items, Mckie added. Mckie and Subzwari were part of a focus group to advise interior designers on how to make the space more accessible. The group met in May and looked over floor plans, furniture samples and carpet swatches to give feedback before the space underwent construction over the summer. “We decided on a combination of blue and tan for the color scheme that wouldn’t be too distracting,” Subzwari said. “We also split up the room in two sections so one section would be geared more toward group work and the other toward independent work. ”The space also has a combination of chalkboards and whiteboards as well as noise cancelling headphones to account for sensory sensitivities. Standing desks and chairs that accommodate all body sizes are meant to ensure physical accessibility. DJAB is also pushing to create a Disability Justice Cultural Center in Arnold Lounge, which members of the group previously proposed to UCS in April, The Herald previously reported. “What the disabled community really needs right now are spaces where we can meet with other disabled folks and talk about our lived experience,” Mckie said. “The cultural center has a community focus, while the study space has an academic focus,” said Victor Padilla GS, a member of the Disability Study Space Focus Group. On top of the DJCC, Padilla is hoping to expand accessible spaces for graduate students with disabilities, who he says have access to even fewer resources than undergraduates. He hopes to see the new study space serve as a prototype for improving accessibility on different parts of campus, including beyond College Hill. The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. is a financially independent, nonprofit media organization with more than 250 students working across our journalism, business and web divisions. ",3,https://www.browndailyherald.com/article/2019/09/new-disability-study-space-to-open-later-this-month,TRUE,
1229,Mindset Matters:  The Personal Is Professional In The New Narrative Of Disability," To truly understand the anatomy of the New Disability Narrative it is essential to see the lived experience as the linchpin to a more diverse way of thinking and provides greater insight into how disability is creating a new vocabulary for business in the economy of the 21st century. In defining this new narrative, we must look towards the lives of entrepreneurs, founders and other business leaders who have been vocal about how their own experience with disabilities have impacted their business decisions and has been influential in defining their own success. One of the most high-profile examples of how the lived experience of disability shapes one’s business acumen comes from the ABC Television series, Shark Tank. Three of the six Shark Tank investors having been dealing with learning disabilities and credit this experience into making them more successful entrepreneurs. On Business Insiders podcast “Success! How I Did It” Daymond John extrapolated on how his learning disability forced him to create a style as an entrepreneur that has payed dividends conveying that “As I look at, it was always a workaround,"" he expressed. ""I would read something — I had to read it three times — then I'd have to go and try to do anything in there that I read because I don't know if I grasped the information correctly. So, it always made me take action."" In 2014 fellow investor Barbara Corcoran told Entrepreneur that in growing up with a learning disability it forced her to be more creative and social than classmates who took to schoolwork more easily. The critical piece that she pointed out was that she was able to conquer her own insecurity over it and embrace it. Learning to fully accept her own disability provided her with an ethos of what makes a good business leader stating that “the kids that are so good at school, that don't have to fight for it, very often they don't do as well in life and business because they're not flexible,"" she said. ""There's no system dictated to them out there like it is in school and they certainly tend not to make good entrepreneurs."" Not unlike Corcoran, Kevin O'Leary was initially ashamed of his learning disability, until he learned to find the best strategies to control it. Then he considered it a “gift” as he told Entrepreneur in 2016 stating that, ""staying focused in challenging times and on the task’s, you're trying to achieve in business is very important, and that is actually how you get over dyslexia. Forcing yourself to focus over and over again."" Having high profile business leaders with invisible disabilities such as the cast of Shark Tank as well as others that include Charles Schwab, Richard Branson, Tommy Hilfiger and many more begin to accentuate the impact they have as change agents across the business landscape. It is through their lived experience that they are helping to articulate The New Disability Narrative as a strength based model that is redefining societies understanding of not only of what a person with a disability is capable of, but how this experience can provide real strength in the evolution and growth of a business. The New Narrative of Disability provides an alternative to the conventional tropes that disability comes from a place of perceived weakness. In fact, what is emanating from the business ecosystem is that the lessons of great leadership have found its genesis within the lived experience of disability. In the age of globalization companies look for a competitive edge, C-level executives, senior management and innovative entrepreneurs need to be more attuned to thinking through modern leadership strategies. In a time when the very definition of a corporation is being refined The New Disability Narrative can play a seminal role in how to think through leadership and its impact across both the social and economic environments of the time and help to galvanize companies to rethink the mission of their organization. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathankaufman/2019/09/20/mindset-matters--the-personal-is-professional-in-the-new-narrative-of-disability/?sh=3f68e1a42aa9,TRUE,
1230,OPINION: Disability support goes beyond accommodations," Claremont Colleges NewsI am transgender, queer and disabled. I am able to be as out and proud of my identities as I am today because of key social, cultural and legal events: the Stonewall riots, the 504 sit ins, various pro LGBTQIA+ marches in Washington, D. C. , the Capitol Crawl, Lawrence v. Texas, Olmstead v. L. C. , the striking of Proposition 8 in California and the Americans with Disabilities Act. All of those events contribute to rich communities with long histories and cultures within the United States. It would be foolish to argue that LGBTQIA+ people or disabled people do not have substantial cultural movements. Yet at the Claremont Colleges, celebration of queer cultures is ingrained in our community, while celebration of disabled cultures is less visible. This is in large part due to the lack of any sort of disability cultural center on the campuses. The 7C Student Disability Resource Center and disability services at all seven colleges do good work. Their work, however, is focused on academic and housing accommodations.  Events focused on disability history and culture on campus are more often held by student groups or through academic programming, although the SDRC and campus specific offices provide financial and social support for some events. The bigger issue is that neither these offices nor any other office provide continued cultural or social support for disabled students in the same way that, say, the Queer Resource Center does for LGBTQIA+ students. It’s easy to see why: fulfilling their legal mandate to provide accommodations to hundreds of disabled students is already enough of a task. Failing to see disability as a core identity and instead viewing it as a pathology to be accommodated alienates disabled students from our community’s history and culture. The colleges may be doing what is required of them by law to the best of their ability, but it isn’t enough. Disability accommodations do have roots in the social model of disability, which views disability as just as much the failure of an ableist society as a pathology or problem. But a true social model view of disability services would also acknowledge the history and culture of disability. Young people have always had a significant role in disability rights movements. It is imperative that young disabled people know this know our community’s history and that we know it as we transition into college, adulthood and lives of our own.  For many marginalized students, college is the first time we can meet other young people like us. Disability is no exception. Disability history, like any history of a marginalized group, is full of struggle, violence and pain, but it is also full of pride and wonder. To ignore or deny the history and culture of the community that owns it is to pretend that disability is static, negative and isolating. It is to deny the existence of the power of disability rights movements, and it is to place shame on the shoulders of disabled people just for existing. I don’t want to imply that culturally competent and culture specific services in Claremont completely remedy systemic injustices for marginalized students, faculty and staff of any group. Marginalized community members of all backgrounds are routinely screwed over, and it’s often marginalized community members who do the bulk of work to make sure our communities get what they need on campus. I also don’t want to imply that I expect the already overworked staff members of the SDRC and campus specific disability services offices to take on the burden of running a disability cultural center. The colleges, as a whole, should take on the task of creating and staffing such a center, just like they have done with cultural programs and centers for many other marginalized groups. ",1,https://tsl.news/opinion-disability-support-goes-beyond-accommodations/,FALSE,
1231,Georgetown Disability Alliance Pushes for Recognition," September 19, 2019 by Meredith Miller 2 Comments Georgetown Disability Alliance, a developing student organization, will encourage education on disability issues and advocate for on-campus accessibility and awareness of both physical and mental disabilities in its conception, according to a Sept. 7 announcement. Co-founders Anna Landre (SFS ’21) and Kenna Chick (SFS ’20) are founding the student organization to draw attention to issues affecting students with disabilities on campus. Specifically, the alliance plans to advocate for increased funding and staffing for the Academic Resource Center, which provides academic assistance for students with chronic health conditions, learning disabilities and psychological/psychiatric disorders, according to Landre and Chick. The Georgetown Disability Alliance is not currently recognized by the Student Activities Commission, but Landre and Chick plan to undergo the new club development process next semester to be fully recognized and receive Access to Benefits status. Georgetown student culture creates stigmas that perpetuate the notion that mental health problems and learning disabilities conflict with one’s ability to achieve, Landre said. “At a school like Georgetown, disability is not something you really talk about because it’s seen as incompatible with your success here, with fitting in here, especially when it comes to learning disabilities and mental health issues,” Landre said in an interview with The Hoya. Despite the stigma surrounding those living with disabilities, as many as 1 in 8 Georgetown students are registered with the ARC, according to Landre. The club plans to work on expanding the ARC’s resources to better accommodate these students. Additionally, Landre and Chick plan to potentially work toward creating an Americans with Disability Acts Compliance and Advocacy officer within the Georgetown administration.The club also hopes to create an environment where students can relate to one another’s stories and experiences with disabilities. As a student with disabilities, finding a community of others with similar experiences on campus has been difficult, according to Landre. “I have felt a pretty big lack of community,” Landre said. “It’s been kind of on an individual basis with meeting random people.” Georgetown launched its Disability Studies program in 2017, allowing students to minor in the study area, though some courses were available as early as 2010. The Georgetown Disability Alliance will add to a lineage of steps taken on campus to bring more awareness to members of the Georgetown community living with disabilities, according to Sylvia Önder, a Disabilities Studies faculty member. “We have a long way to go, but we have also, over time, improved awareness of the problems by teaching a variety of Disability Studies classes here at Georgetown,” Önder said in an interview with The Hoya. “I am impressed by our students’ willingness to listen and learn, and by their impulse to take action and get things done to make this a better place for us all.” Requests for accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act are currently referred to Rosemary Kilkenny, the vice president for Institutional Diversity and Equity for the university. Creating an inclusive community for students with disabilities through language and actions is important on campus, according to Kilkenny. “It is incumbent upon us to recognize that as members of this community, we all share and have a responsibility to foster an inclusive environment in our verbal communications and actions,” Kilkenny wrote in an email to The Hoya. The student organization is an opportunity to better articulate the needs of students with disabilities and provide them with a more fitting support system that expands past medical accommodations, according to Chick. ",3,https://thehoya.com/georgetown-disability-alliance-pushes-recognition/,FALSE,
1232,Disability Rights Washington’s Breaking Barriers Award Winners," Christine Lew (She/her) has spent the past four years working as a disability justice advocate. Christine’s advocacy work has focused primarily on expanding access to post-secondary education for students with disabilities at the University of Washington, from which she recently graduated. She served as the Associated Students of the University of Washington (ASUW) Student Disability Commission’s (SDC) first-ever Assistant Director, and for two years as the Director from 2019-2021. Over the course of her career, she managed around 30 interns, and organized more than 15 different events centered around disability pride, allyship education, and disability studies.Christine is a mad/disabled identifying Asian American woman. Both of Christine’s parents are Deaf, so she grew up with American Sign Language (ASL) as her first language. As a CODA (Child of Deaf Adults), she was raised within the Deaf community and surrounded by Deaf culture, and therefore, had a front-row seat to the ableism and discrimination that Deaf people face from the hearing world. Watching those experiences drove her to create inclusive, accessible spaces for Deaf/disabled students during her time at the University of Washington.During her time as the Assistant Director, Christine and her team began to notice that many disabled students had a difficult time attending student-led events. She led and drafted the 50 page proposal for the ASUW Office of Inclusive Design (OID); the first of its kind in the nation. As of the 2021 – 2022 academic year, this entity will provide funding and guidance to student clubs and programs that want to make their programming inclusively designed.Her advocacy work also influenced her academic research. In her senior year, she completed an independent research project about ‘Disability Gain’, which explores the ways in which different bodies/minds can become advantageous within certain contexts. She interviewed many Deaf/disabled people about their thoughts and experiences, and presented her findings at the UW Undergraduate Research Symposium in May 2021.Christine graduated from the University of Washington in Spring 2021 with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and Disability Studies with interdisciplinary honors, and a minor in ASL. Her research and activist work has been recognized through various awards including recognition as a member of the 2021 Husky 100, as a recipient of the Dennis Lang Award in Disability Studies, and the two-time recipient of the Harlan Hahn Endowment Fund for research in Disability Studies.Christine continues her career in service of the disability community, serving as a member of the Seattle Disability Commission. She is also one of the founders of Crip Riot: a disabled-owned and led company committed to bringing expressions of disability pride to the world, through unapologetic media, clothing, education and activism and of Myers Fork Consulting: providing HR support, ADA coordinator services and equity workshops to businesses and organizations across the Puget Sound. Their expected launch in Summer 2021, is a continuation of Christine’s commitment to positive identity development, equity and access for the disability community. ProtestAccess provides post-production accessibility for social justice content. In doing this work, ProtestAccess is committed to centering disabled Black/Indigenous/People of Color and removing barriers to participation in social justice conversations. Ultimately, ProtestAccess “strives for a world in which we need not exist because accessible media is the standard.”The volunteer-run collective was established June 1, 2020, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests that followed the murder of George Floyd, and formed by a small group of Children and Siblings of Deaf Adults, communication access service providers, & others involved in Deaf communities. ProtestAccess has grown into a community of 300+ remote volunteers from all over the world who have processed nearly 1,000 pieces of content for d/Deaf/Hard of Hearing, Blind/Visually Impaired, and English Language Learners. There is a multilingual component to the work as well, with services offered in African American Vernacular English (AAVE), English, Spanish, French, and more! ",3,https://www.disabilityrightswa.org/breaking-barriers-awards/,TRUE,
1233,Remembering a Powerful Voice in the Disability Rights Movement,"It is with deep sadness that we mourn the passing of Marca Bristo, tireless partner to and supporter of Human Rights Watch’s Disability Rights program. To me and so many around the world, Marca was a true force of nature; a fierce advocate, visionary thinker, incredible mentor, and kind friend. She died Monday at the age of 66. Marca dedicated her life to pushing for the rights of people with disabilities in the United States and abroad. And she left her mark: from playing a key role in the adoption of the Americans with Disabilities Act to founding Access Living in Chicago, to influencing other countries’ efforts on equality, inclusion and independent living for people with disabilities. I first met Marca during negotiations on the United Nations disability rights treaty in New York. She quickly became a mentor and ally. When Marca spoke, you listened because she asked the tough and necessary questions. She embodied the disability community’s motto: “Nothing about us, without us. ” She was extraordinary. When I joined Human Rights Watch nearly 10 years ago, I knew we needed a strong group of advisers, particularly experts with disabilities, to steer our new work on disability rights. I knew we needed Marca. From the start, Marca demanded that we not only advocate for inclusion and accessibility but practice it ourselves. Marca was instrumental in pushing Human Rights Watch to hire more staff with disabilities, make our offices more accessible, and develop a reasonable accommodations policy. Human Rights Watch benefitted a great deal from her wise counsel, dogged questions, and steadfast encouragement – and so did I, both professionally and personally. “I’m proud of you, kiddo,” she told me during one of our last phone calls. It meant all that much more when she called me some time ago to share that Human Rights Watch would be the recipient of Access Living’s 2019 Lead On! Award for the empowerment, inclusion and independence of people with disabilities. I felt like a student being recognized by her master teacher. And on the evening of the gala, it was clear we were celebrating all that Marca had taught us. My thoughts go out to Marca’s family and the many people around the world whose lives she touched. As we continue our fight for the rights and inclusion of people with disabilities, with their voices at the forefront, Marca’s legacy lives on. Abuses Against Older People in Armed ConflictLack of Access to Political Participation for People With Disabilities in Iraq",3,https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/09/09/remembering-powerful-voice-disability-rights-movement,FALSE,
1235,Mindset Matters: Why Corporate Strategy Needs The New Disability Narrative," Labor Day has come and gone, yet it is a point of demarcation when summer ends and the working world begins anew. Corporations are heading into the last quarter and focusing on setting up their strategic initiatives for the coming year ahead. Within this post Labor Day stretch it is important that C Level Executives and other stakeholders not only take a pause to think about their own corporate strategy, but to think about the importance of why critical diversity and inclusion strategies like that of the New Disability Narrative are truly a vital component of corporate growth across multiple areas of an organization. As pointed out in several Mindset Matters columns the New Disability Narrative is based on the premise that there are elements of the lived experience of disability that one can take valuable lessons from and be translated and modified to meet the needs of both personal and corporate success.  A key ingredient of this business philosophy that cannot go unnoticed is that this new narrative speaks to the idea that at its very core is the need to foster Change and Growth. These fundamental principles play a necessary role in the lifecycle of individuals across the corporate ecosystem to the inherent overall progression of an organizations competitive drive to succeed and provide long term value both internally for its employees and externally for its customers. While one cannot disregard the practical needs in terms of developing new strategies and initiatives for hiring and integrating persons with disabilities into the global working community, the New Disability Narrative deviates from the current employment storyline that has been a central theme since the signing of the American with Disabilities Act and other corresponding laws both in the United States and beyond. The vision of the New Disability Narrative is so that it is not to be viewed solely within the confines of the diversity and inclusion and human resource bubble, but to be part of the broader business strategy that has a longer reach into numerous business segments and due to its malleability it can grow and evolve with the business.  One could argue, that the New Disability Narrative is a leadership tool that is critical for growth of the corporation of the 21st century. It is time for C Level Executives and senior management to rethink the way disability is being currently chronicled in the business space and consider how their organizations can benefit from the core values that the New Disability Narrative espouses. As trends have shown the number of entrepreneurs and founders who deal with numerous types of disabilities such as learning disabilities and mental health issues is on the rise. The very concept of disability is becoming further intrenched in the everyday culture of the business of the digital age. This progression only helps to bolster the fact that the New Disability Narrative must be seen through the lens of leadership and a new understanding of disability as a tool for leadership can be a value add for any organization. As we take the New Disability Narrative beyond the realm of diversity and inclusion and into the domain of leadership, corporations must become more accountable not only to the origins of this business philosophy but to the value that this community serves to the strength and growth of an organization.  In doing so, a foundation is built stating that persons with disabilities have inherent value and offer numerous avenues for corporate growth that are critical for promoting a competitive advantage. Building on this supposition corporate executives will be better equipped to incorporate the New Disability Narrative and its broader concepts into their larger strategic initiatives. As the New Disability Narrative morphs into a business philosophy it is important to recognize what makes it so powerful is the ability to draw upon the foundations of the narratives that came before. The notion that the disability community is steeped in the idea of nothing about us without us, as this should be something that all C Level Executives aspire towards because in order to truly meet the needs of employees and customers alike they must look to the disability experience to gain greater intel into what is needed for better success in these ever changing times. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathankaufman/2019/09/09/mindset-matters-why-corporate-strategy-needs-the-new-disability-narrative/?sh=399d4d8e7360,FALSE,
1236,Disability rights groups join challenge to ‘public charge’ rule," A coalition of 17 disability advocacy and civil rights groups filed a brief in support of a lawsuit filed by 21 states against the Trump administration’s “public charge” rule, which would expand the forms of public aid that could disqualify immigrants from receiving green cards.In the amicus brief filed Tuesday in the Eastern District of Washington, the groups, which include the Center for Public Representation (CPR), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network and the American Association of People with Disabilities, argue the rule will restrict disabled people from becoming citizens.{mosads}The rule, announced in mid-August, is scheduled to take effect Oct. 15. It would add programs including food stamps and Medicaid to those the government can cite to claim an immigrant is likely to become a “public charge” and deny them a green card.“In the new test, they have really taken these multiple factors in a way that per se excludes people with disabilities,” Alison Barkoff, director of advocacy at the CPR, told The Hill.For example, she said, while the public-charge rule has historically factored in health, “now they’ve basically taken this health factor and defined it as disability,” she said.Under the rule’s expansion, she said, a health condition requiring home- and community-based services covered by Medicaid would be flagged as a “heavily-weighted negative factor,” even for people with private insurance, Barkoff said.Under the new rule, she added, “the fact that someone has a disability under the same factual circumstances triply counts against them.”The CPR argues in the brief that the expanded rule is a violation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act, the nation’s first disability-related civil rights law. Section 504 prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability within programs receiving federal financial assistance.“If you look at the history of the public charge rule there is a very long, dark history of discriminating against immigrants with disabilities,” Barkoff said, citing early 20th century laws that “literally … said we will keep out quote-unquote ‘defective people.’ ”The expansion, she added, would be “completely contrary to congressional intent in immigration law and in the series of disability rights law passed over the last 30 years.”“Congress has explicitly recognized the importance of Medicaid in enabling people with disabilities to be productive, contributing members of society,” Claudia Center, senior staff attorney with the ACLU, said in a separate statement.“Studies show that access to Medicaid increases employment for people with disabilities. That is the opposite of a public charge,” she added.Rebecca Cokley, director of the Center for American Progress’s Disability Justice Initiative, told The Hill that access to Medicaid and the services that come with it “are lifesavers for people with disabilities and their families.“The public charge rule punishes immigrants and their family members by making them choose between their healthcare and their immigration status,” she added. “This is yet another deliberate attack on two communities that have been under assault since day one of this administration.”Mia Ives-Rublee, an activist who founded the Women’s March on Washington’s Disability Caucus and supervised efforts to make the event fully accessible, said the move would increase the likelihood of a public health crisis.“Disabled people are some of the highest users of public assistance due to how expensive it is to live in the United States with a disability or chronic medical condition (known as the disability tax),” she told The Hill.“This new rule will make it less likely for disabled immigrants and their families to seek services or get medical help, making them even more vulnerable and creating a higher likelihood of a public health crisis. The public charge rule is an antiquated policy based on eugenics and should be left in the past,” she added. ",3,https://thehill.com/regulation/healthcare/460901-disability-rights-groups-join-challenge-to-public-charge-rule/,FALSE,
1238,Disability Rights Should Be Central in US Presidential Race,"This week, ten United States presidential candidates will take the stage to debate climate change, healthcare, immigration, economic inequality, and education – all of which have direct implications for people with disabilities. But will there be any mention of disability rights? During July’s debates, not a single question or answer touched on disability rights. The absence of this key issue in the debates underscores the obstacles people with disabilities face trying to take part meaningfully in the American political system. One in four Americans live with a disability, including 35 million people of voting age. But voter turnout among people with disabilities is low. According to one analysis, if people with disabilities voted at the same rate as other US voters, they would cast 2. 35 million additional votes. Candidates should work to improve accessibility for and engagement of people with disabilities in this election cycle. Almost 30 years after the Americans with Disabilities Act became law, the US electoral system is still shockingly inaccessible for people with disabilities. Earlier this summer, one study found that every 2020 presidential candidate’s website failed to comply with the ADA. The US Government Accountability Office found that more than half of all polling places it examined around the 2016 presidential election had at least one obstacle for people with disabilities: voting stations that were not accessible for wheelchair users, dysfunctional earphones for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, and lack of privacy for voters with disabilities. Unfortunately, these obstacles are not limited to polling stations; a lack of reasonable accommodations also affects elected representatives once in office. A Wisconsin state representative, Jimmy Anderson, who uses a wheelchair and has difficulty traveling, was denied his request to dial in to legislative meetings by phone. Refusing to provide this reasonable accommodation sets a dangerous precedent for all Americans with disabilities. In spite of these challenges, 2018 midterms saw a promising increase in voting rates among people with disabilities. Silence on disability rights during the 2020 presidential race – particularly amid many minority specific discussions around racism, immigration, and women’s rights – is both notable and unacceptable. Candidates seeking elected office should work to uplift the voices of all constituents, including the quarter of Americans who have disabilities, and champion policies that would promote their full inclusion in US politics. Medically Unnecessary Surgeries on Intersex Children in the US Use of Force against Inmates with Mental Disabilities in US Jails and Prisons
",3,https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/09/09/disability-rights-should-be-central-us-presidential-race,FALSE,
1240,Don't miss a story,"Emergency evacuations can be difficult and dangerous, especially for people living with disabilities. “For say, somebody with a physical disability, you can’t evacuate a building if the power goes out or if there’s a natural disaster because the elevators go down,” Alex Ghenis says. Ghenis is a policy and research specialist with the World Institute on Disability, a nonprofit that works on disability rights issues. “I personally have a spinal cord injury that I’ve had for about 15 years now,” he says. “I have no use of my legs. I have limited use of my arms. If there’s a natural disaster, then I’ll need to figure out how to evacuate. I will need to find accessible sheltering, which, you know, emergency shelters are not always readily and fully accessible. ”People with other types of disabilities face different challenges. For example, blind or deaf people may struggle to locate shelters or communicate with emergency personnel. Ghenis says as climate change makes extreme weather more common, cities and states should work to understand the specific ways that people with disabilities are affected. Then they can develop inclusive preparedness plans that address the needs of everyone. Samantha Harrington, Associate Editor of Yale Climate Connections, is a journalist and graphic designer, with a background in digital media and entrepreneurship. 
",3,https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2019/09/why-climate-change-is-a-disability-rights-issue/,FALSE,
1241,Workers with disabilities face challenges getting hired — here’s how to ace the interview," Thanks for contacting us. Weve received your submission. 	When it comes to job interviews, feeling nervous or self conscious is a given. But people with disabilities face additional obstacles. “They still experience stigma and prejudice in society and need to prepare how to deal with it in a job interview,” says Susan M. Dooha, executive director at Center for Independence of the Disabled, NY. “We want to be seen as whole people who are capable of achieving not as objects of pity, or as inspirational and unreal. ”It’s up to the individual to decide if he or she feels comfortable talking about a disability during the hiring process. By law, employers aren’t allowed to ask applicants about their disability or medical history, but if your disability is visible, they may have concerns or feel awkward. “If prejudice is present, that could give you information that you need about the job environment you would encounter,” Dooha says. Career experts who counsel people with disabilities answer these most common questions on navigating an in person interview. Will they accommodate me?People with mobility issues might go to the office building days before the interview to see if it is accessible. Or, check on Google Street View or ask the interviewer when they make the appointment. If you find out that the building isn’t accessible, ask to meet someplace that is, like a nearby coffee shop, suggests Dooha. Employers are required by law to make reasonable accommodation for people seeking jobs from them not just employees. “You don’t have to mention the law, and you don’t have to use a magic word,” says Dooha. So, if you need material in a large type font or a sign language interpreter, “Simply ask,” she says. Or you may prefer talking instead of filling out a form because of a learning disability. How should I prepare?Make sure to research the employer, says Felicia Nurmsen, managing director of employee services at the National Organization on Disability. “Find out who are their customers and what is important to them,” she says. “What are they telling you that you are looking for? Keep in mind that employers who hire people with disabilities tend to perform better in the marketplace. ” With the specifics of the job in mind, tie it back to your work experiences, accomplishments and capabilities. And be prepared to give examples. Should I disclose my disability?It depends. If you’ve asked for an accommodation, you’ve already told the company about your disability. But if your disability isn’t visible, you don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, says Nurmsen. “This is very personal for people,” she says. “You can choose. Think about if disclosing helps the interview process to go smoothly or not. ”Some people with visible disabilities bring it up before or during the interview to head off awkwardness and to use as a jumping off point to discuss their skills. “Some people will opt to say, I have a disability and I want you to know that this means that I have faced barriers throughout my life that I have needed to overcome,” says Dooha. “I know my disability really well, and I know how to make things work. ”Can employers ask me about my disability?If you haven’t disclosed your disability, an employer cannot ask if you have one, inquire about your medical condition or ask about your use of sick days, says Nurmsen. The only thing they are allowed to ask is if you are able to perform the essential functions of the job with or without reasonable accommodation. What if the interviewer seems concerned about my disability?Steer the conversation back to what you can do, says Dooha. Talk about your skills and accomplishments and how they relate to the job and what the employer is seeking. Nurmsen suggests explaining that you add value to the organization by bringing a different view to the table. “Operate from a place of power and understand that you are the expert on your disability,” says Nurmsen. ",3,https://nypost.com/2019/09/03/disabled-workers-face-additional-challenges-getting-hired-heres-how-to-ace-the-interview/,FALSE,
1243,Mindset Matters: How the Disability Narrative Is Making Its Impact From The C-Suite To The Campaign Trail," We are seeing culture change happening in real time. From the Business Roundtable’s recent announcement of the redefinition of a corporation putting social responsibility front at center as a key factor to economic success to Senator and Presidential candidate Kamala Harris who just announced a comprehensive plan to tackle issues for Americans with disabilities in areas from employment to education. What we are witnessing is an acknowledgement whether consciously or unconsciously that the narrative of disability is evolving and that a once marginalized community is no longer. That in fact, through the halls of power from business to politics this community’s stock is on the rise and is becoming an integral part of the conversation of social change.Senator Harris unveiled her plan for Americans with disabilities on Thursday which focuses on issues of employment through access to education and social programs. Stating through a press release, the campaign emphasizes that it is critical that “As President, Harris will expand access to health care, fight for integrated employment opportunities and fair wages.” Whether this is a political calculation due her recent drop in the latest national polls having her tied for fourth place at 5% is not the relevant piece. What is relevant is that the proposal highlights different laws and agency programs seeking to expand access and employment opportunities, making Harris the only candidate with a plan focused exclusively on people with disabilities, according to her campaign. This recognition highlights the perceived value and power of the disability community and illustrates why redefining and integrating the disability narrative is crucial to enhance the benefit that this community poses both in politics and business.Through the actions of this past week both political and business strategists have potentially taken the next step in recognizing that the narrative of disability can be characterized from a very different vantage point than it has in the past. Having a greater understanding of the value proposition of the disability community and its impact in these realms will inevitably change the whole ball game. The critical question now is what in fact do these strategists see and why now? As mentioned in previous columns of Mindset Matters the disability community is at a tipping point both from the perspective of population and demographics to how the community intersects across a broad range of categories of diversity making it fairly unique and in essence giving it a new sense of power through various metrics that are now just being explored. In the wake of The Business Roundtable’s announcement it is important that we take a deeper dive into why the disability narrative has a direct correlation to corporate social responsibility (CSR). The new disability narrative is predicated on the fact that the lived experience of disability not only has valuable lessons to teach C-level executives in areas ranging from management to the future of work, it also offers a new template for the development of new businesses and hiring practices that can be a foundation for creating a new economic engine built on an inclusive design model that fosters a new reality that will have an impact across a global landscape. This new disability narrative is as much about advancing social inclusion as it is about developing new markets and innovative business models. Being that the disability community has exceeded the population of China at over a billion people and an economic buying power of $8 trillion dollars globally, a recognition of this community having a seat at the table is inevitable and their fingerprints on companies corporate social responsibility programs will be a forgone conclusion. Just as in business, the new disability narrative sees the power of this community taking shape in the ballot box which is certainly something that Senator Harris has recognized. With close to 61 million Americans with disabilities, this is a voting block that can no longer be ignored. Add to that the fact that this community will continue to grow due to shifting demographics, higher rates of autism and chronic illnesses, the political influence of the disability community is a sleeping giant that is slowly beginning to wake up and find its place in American political life. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathankaufman/2019/08/30/mindset-matters-how-the-disability-narrative-is-making-its-impact-from-the-c-suite-to-the-campaign-trail/?sh=512d76342a7d,TRUE,
1244,Harris unveils disability plan focusing on education and employment opportunities," Presidential candidate Sen. Kamala Harris unveiled her plan for Americans with disabilities on Thursday, with a focus on employment through access to education and social programs. “As President, Harris will expand access to health care, fight for integrated employment opportunities and fair wages, ensure our emergency preparedness and disaster programs are fully inclusive, fight to adequately fund classrooms to ensure equal access, build a diverse federal workforce that includes people with disabilities and fight for the civil rights of people with disabilities across the country,” Harris campaign wrote in a press release. The plan comes on the heels of a drop in the polls for Harris, with CNN’s latest national poll showing her tied for fourth at 5% – after clocking in at second place with 17% in a June CNN survey. The proposal highlights different laws and agency programs seeking to expand access and employment opportunities, making Harris the only candidate with a plan focused exclusively on people with disabilities, according to her campaign. On the legislative side, Harris ensured the passage of the Transformation to Competitive Employment Act, which creates a state grant program incentivizing ways for businesses to hire and integrate more employees with disabilities. Citing statistics that people with disabilities are more likely to earn low and less than minimum wages, she also promised to pass a bill raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. At the Department of Education, Harris would increase funding for and expand the agency’s vocational rehabilitation system to cover more people and services in accessing workplace accommodations and adaptive technology. At the Department of Transportation and Department of Housing and Urban Development, the California Democrat would expand accessible transportation and housing projects and require plans demonstrating full accessibility for projects seeking federal funding, pointing to projects seemingly compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act that failed to address accessibility during early planning. In the White House, Harris promised to establish senior positions to include the perspectives of people with disabilities in policy decisions, specifically domestic and economic initiatives. She would also implement government wide accessibility initiatives. Citing former President Barack Obama’s efforts to make the federal government an inclusive employer, Harris promised efforts across all agencies to prioritize disability inclusive recruitment strategies, diverse leadership, full accessibility requirements for new federal technology and timelines for updating existing technologies. The plan included a variety of other targeted initiatives, ranging from ratifying US participation in the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to backing the IDEA Full Funding Act, which ensures education funding for students with disabilities. She would also ensure disaster services and protections so that people with disabilities affected by disasters can return to normal life at the same time as everyone else. Harris’ plan also referenced general policies that she said would help people with disabilities, such as making the Child Tax Credit fully refundable and passing her “Medicare for All” plan, which would cover screenings and treatments for children with disabilities.",3,https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/29/politics/kamala-harris-disability-plan/,TRUE,
1248,This young scientist studies wild animals. Bias against disability won’t stop her," Vicky Stein Vicky Stein As a field biologist, Charlotte Devitz traverses the University of Michigan campus scooping up squirrels, trying to understand what causes some to boldly steal pizza from people’s hands while others hide at the drop of a hat. She weighs, measures and tags them, and then drops them into a custom made box that allows her to watch their behavior. Then she sets them free to scale another tree or gnaw on another nut. A little more than a year ago, she wasn’t sure this work toward a master’s degree vital to her future career as a biologist would be possible. “Especially after I had to start using a wheelchair, I didn’t think I could stay in STEM,” Devitz said. Taking classes, teaching classes and doing the independent field research necessary to pursue a career as an evolutionary biologist it all seemed insurmountable on top of her illness, she said. Charlotte Devitz, a researcher, and Fish, a service dog. Image by Sean Moore/University of Michigan NewsDevitz has Ehlers Danlos Syndrome, a set of inherited disorders that affect her body’s connective tissues, like her joints, skin and blood vessels. In addition to her wheelchair, she must use a feeding tube. Her service dog, a labradoodle named Fish, accompanies her around campus. But Devitz successfully navigated student accessibility services and medical procedures, carving out a place for herself to pursue field research despite her medical issues. She’s part of a trend: researchers expanding the boundaries of accessible science. More than 25 percent of adults in the United States identify as having a disability some physical or cognitive condition that limits their movements, senses or activities. That’s a huge group of people who are underrepresented in scientific breakthroughs and technological development at the professional level, said volcano geophysicist and geoscience education researcher Anita Marshall of the University of Florida. And that lack of representation leaves science as a whole worse off. As the world faces a climate crisis and a growing global population, we’ll need all hands on deck, Marshall said. “People with disabilities are incredible innovators. We have to figure things out on a daily basis in a world that is not built for us that kind of innovation, in science, could be amazing. And it is amazing. ”Field research is considered a necessity for some sciences. For example, 99 percent of geology degrees surveyed in 2008 required a field component, meant to give students a taste of the tools and techniques used by professional geologists. Archaeologists and anthropologists value time spent in their study systems, collecting first hand knowledge in new and unfamiliar places. Epiphanies happen in the field, a young student might be told. One could see biological processes in motion in a remote tropical forest or on a busy coral reef that could never be recreated in a lab. Marshall said there’s also a social component that makes fieldwork vital to early career researchers. “We have a culture that says that, if you cannot hike up that mountain with a pack on your back, you are less of a geoscientist,” Marshall said. Peers and potential employers consider physical and mental toughness a necessity for a budding researcher, or a way to weed out the candidates who presumably care less from those who are “serious. ” Researchers often return from hikes, boat rides, dig sites or foreign cities with new friends or closer colleagues . “Those activities are bonding activities. That’s how scientists find collaborators. That’s how students find letter writers and potential grad student advisors,” Marshall said. “When we exclude people, that’s excluding them from building the social capital that they’ll need to succeed in the field. ” ",3,https://www.pbs.org/newshour/science/this-young-researcher-studies-wild-animals-sciences-bias-against-disability-wont-stop-her,TRUE,
1249,"Maryland schools push to include LGBT, disability rights in curriculum"," School officials in Maryland are developing a school curriculum that would include teaching about the history of the LGBT and disability rights movements as part of standard history courses. The Washington Post reported that the efforts, which were encouraged by dozens of state lawmakers in a letter last month to school officials, would be presented for approval by the State Board of Education during the 2019 2020 school year. {mosads}Maryland’s State Department of Education said Friday that it had begun the process of developing such changes to the curriculum, but did not offer other details about the curriculum’s reported changes. If the changes win approval, Maryland would join at least four other states including California, Illinois, Colorado and New Jersey that have made efforts to require teaching LGBT history as part of the public school curriculum, the paper noted. A spokesperson for the Montgomery County School District told the Post that the district aims to go beyond the Department of Education’s standards for social studies and history classes. “This will include ensuring diverse texts in the new curriculum in English Language Arts, as well as is in students experiences in PE/health, fine arts, world languages, and other content areas,” Gboyinde Onijala told the Post. Del. Eric G. Luedtke  urged state officials to consider the history of the rights of LGBT and disabled communities in a letter to State Superintendent of Schools Karen B. Salmon last month. “These are important stories for our teachers to tell, not only for those students who are themselves LGBT or who have a disability, but so all of our students have a basic understanding of the challenges faced by significant segments of American society,” he wrote. The Hill has removed its comment section, as there are many other forums for readers to participate in the conversation. ",3,https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/457811-maryland-schools-push-to-include-lgbt-disability-rights-in-curriculum/,TRUE,
1251,"For Disability Activists, 3 Weeks In Oregon Is A Game Changer"," Aparna Vidyasagar Disability activists from around the world attended a seminar in Oregon. From left, Joyce Peter of Vanuatu, Sidonie Nduwimana of Burundi,, Wendy Beatriz Caishpal Jaco of El Salvador, Gina Rose Balanlay of the Philippines and Raluca Oancea of Romania. Aparna Vidyasagar for NPR hide caption
Disability activists from around the world attended a seminar in Oregon. From left, Joyce Peter of Vanuatu, Sidonie Nduwimana of Burundi,, Wendy Beatriz Caishpal Jaco of El Salvador, Gina Rose Balanlay of the Philippines and Raluca Oancea of Romania. Until she came to the U. S. this summer, Wendy Beatriz Caishpal Jaco had never been able to board a bus. Jaco, 29, uses a wheelchair, which buses arent able to accommodate in her hometown of Ahuachapán in El Salvador. She finally got on a bus that could handle a wheelchair while attending a program called WILD the Womens Institute on Leadership and Disability, held this summer in Eugene, Ore. Its not that El Salvador ignores people with disabilities, she says. For nearly two decades, there has been a law designed to give people with disabilities equal access to jobs and transportation. [The law] talks about adaptability, inclusion, says Jaco. The problem is that there is no follow up. Jaco hopes that WILD will give her the tools and training to further her role as a champion of disability rights and make a change in her country. She is one of 21 women with disabilities from around the world who attended the three week training program, organized by Mobility International USA. This years event, the ninth since its inception, ran from July 13 to August 3. The women lived with host families and experienced daily life in the city. For many, it was the first time they have spent time away from their families. As part of team building activities, they whitewater rafted, climbed ropes and played wheelchair rugby. I was able to move not only from my comfort zone, my stress zone and my panic zone, says Gina Rose Balanlay of the Philippines, who was blinded in an acid attack about 10 years ago. And through a series of workshops and seminars, the participants were taught how to find solutions for issues faced by disabled women and girls in their countries from health care to education. NPR spoke with Jaco and women from Burundi, the Philippines, Romania and Vanuatu to understand what its like to be a disability activist in their countries. Almost InvisibleNot having access to infrastructure and resources makes it easy for persons with disabilities to simply disappear, says Raluca Oancea, 37, a volunteer coordinator for a youth organization called ADAPTO in Constan?a, Romania. There are not enough ramps, no elevators and no public toilets, no accessible trains or buses [in Romania]. You cannot see so many people with disabilities on the street because they cannot leave their homes, says Oancea. And even when people with disabilities are out in public, they may face a harsh reaction, says Joyce Peter, 33, who works on disability rights with the group World Vision in Port Vila, Vanuatu. She spoke of one experience of riding the bus with the crutch she uses because she was born with one leg. A person with a disability will hop up in a bus [and] the bus driver will say you are blocking the space, she says, mimicking a grimace. So, there is no space for them. Jaco has made some progress in improving park facilities so that people in wheelchairs, or those with other disabilities can use them. Her organization, Ahuachapán Sin Barreras has helped update two existing parks in her hometown and ensured that the new parks in the city are 100% accessible. ",3,https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/08/13/749371398/for-disability-activists-3-weeks-in-oregon-is-a-game-changer,TRUE,
1252,ACNS - Anglican News Service,"Church disability advocates from various countries have called for further action from the United Nations (UN) to protect people with disabilities in areas of conflict. Eighteen leaders from the World Council of Churches Ecumenical Disability Advocates Network (WCC-EDAN), met in Beirut, Lebanon in July, to addresses concerns in the region and to evaluate the strategic plan. Executive secretary for the, Anjeline Okola Charles said all delegates saw first-hand the difficulties facing those with disabilities in refugee camps and zones of conflict in the Middle East. She said: “There were hardly any kinds of services that might support persons with disabilities and help them to cope with such circumstances. Meanwhile, for those who were unfortunate not to escape these conflict zones, they are injured and simply abandoned.”The group reflected on the various challenges refugees face and the role the UN has played over policies and funding. A statement following the meeting said: “As part of our engagement we commit to promote advocacy for refugees with disabilities at the global level and raising of awareness of the right of all refugees with disability.” The communique called on the government of Lebanon to ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. “We further request the UN to understand disability from a human rights perspective and plan inclusion from the onset of all programmes and enhance efforts to consult persons with disabilities, in order to understand their views and provide more tailored services for inclusive humanitarian action.”On 20 June, the UN Security Council passed its first-ever resolution on protecting those with disabilities in armed conflict, designed to ensure that they have equal access to humanitarian assistance.The Anglican Communion Representative at the UN, Jack Palmer-White said Anglican churches had a key role to play in supporting those either fleeing conflict or in the midst of it. He said: “We’ve seen the impact of conflict on the Anglican Al Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza and the conflict that led to the temporary closure of the Anglican Ras Morbat Clinic in Yemen. Through this resolution the UN has recognised the specific need to protect this group of people and we will continue to work with our churches and other organisations to highlight the work that is still needed.”The Anglican Alliance, which helps to co-ordinate the activities of Anglican relief and development agencies, developed a resource in partnership with Anglican churches in Burundi and Zambia to help community engagement with faith communities and people with disabilities in refugee camps. The resource, rolled out in 2014, has been helping faith communities understand people living with disability and the challenges they face. It also aims to change attitudes and provide steps for practical change. Disaster Response and Resilience Manager for the Anglican Alliance, Dr Janice Proud, said: “I am delighted to learn of the United Nations Security Council. From conversations with the church where there is armed conflict, I know that the elderly and people with disabilities are often not able to flee when armed groups sweep into their town or village. I have heard the distress from families in refugee camps who have had to leave behind or lost on the way people with disabilities, who have not been able to keep up as they fled. The intention of this resolution is to ensure that people with disabilities are protected, so that elderly women are not slaughtered when, unable to flee, they shelter in the church, as tragically happened in Bor, South Sudan as the latest civil war started.” “This resolution also gives the church and others an opportunity to work with people with disabilities and ensure that they are able to fully participate in relief distribution, that their needs are met, that they can contribute, by sharing what would make their inclusion easier and how they would like discrimination tackled. Our resource, ‘A better life together’, is a useful tool to support such work with faith leaders in refugee camps.”",3,https://www.anglicannews.org/news/2019/08/disability-advocates-call-for-inclusive-action-by-un-for-refugees.aspx,FALSE,
1253,Mindset Matters: Strengthening Business Intelligence Through The Disability Narrative," To truly move the conversation forward and embrace the disability narrative as a tool for leadership and business strategy it is critical to have a greater awareness of where we are now in terms of re-contextualizing its meaning and giving it a new set of values that it has never been associated with before. The modern definition of disability has been marked by an evolution of thought from two very distinct archetypes beginning with the medical model and evolving to the more current definition through what is often referred to as the social model of disability. These models have laid the groundwork for how society has defined disability and one may argue limited its potential. The medical model of disability developed from a biomedical perspective stating the idea that one’s disability diagnosis is directly correlated to an individual's physical body and presupposes that this disability may reduce the individual's quality of life and only through medical intervention, can this disability be diminished or corrected emphasizing the need for curing or managing illness or disability. Unlike the medical model, the social model of disability contends that disability is caused by the way society is organized rather than by a person's impairment or difference. It looks at ways of removing barriers that restrict life choices for persons with disabilities. It is from this social model where social activism took hold and the rise of civil rights became paramount leading to numerous pieces of legislation among them the Americans with Disabilities Act and the United Nations Convention for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. While these laws and policies are fundamental for the continued inclusion of persons with disabilities in the larger fabric of society there is a ripple effect within the business community that often gets minimized or seen as an afterthought. However, if we are going to expand the parameters of the disability narrative into the realm of the business lexicon this is the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room that must be discussed. Despite best intentions, there is still a residual apprehension from business leaders. While there is a plethora of information out there from hiring practices to the value of employing persons with disabilities backed up by significant research and data points from reputable organizations such as Accenture and the American Association of People with Disabilities and others, there is still a relative fear from business leaders stemming from the fact that the social model of disability has intentionally or unintentionally created a culture of litigation to make sure that the rights of persons with disabilities are being maintained. While litigation certainly plays a vital role in creating a more just society, it also can place business leaders on the defensive resorting back to areas of cost/benefit analysis of accommodations and other areas that look at disability through a lens of limitation. This idea can lead down a very slippery slope creating a back lash that is based on a form of myopia that in the end will not benefit anyone. Therefore C-level executives, entrepreneurs, founders and business educators must begin to broach the language of disability in a new way. Rather than seeing the limitations of disability, the new narrative should approach disability as an instrument of business intelligence that can be utilized to provide leadership a means to impact growth across a broad range of an organization providing new avenues for both change internally and a competitive advantage externally. By redefining the narrative and distinguishing the lived experience of disability in a different context it now has the potential to highlight the value proposition and in addition give disability a new power to expand societies framework and understanding. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathankaufman/2019/08/16/mindset-matters-strengthening-business-intelligence-through-the-disability-narrative/?sh=3e6dba3f11e8,TRUE,
1254,I started talking about disability in my classroom. It changed both me and my students.," For the first 22 years of my life, I denied having a disability. I invested all of my energy in hiding my blindness, praying for invisibility when I incorrectly copied down notes from the board, stumbled on words when reading aloud, or tripped over a step I couldn’t see. I wanted so badly to avoid the judgment and questions of others that I created a version of myself that would be perceived as normal, likable, and easy to accept.Yet maintaining this facade also caused extreme anxiety. When would people notice my disability? Would it be when I was trying to pay for a coffee and couldn’t read the prompt on the screen to complete my order? Or when I walked past friends without acknowledging them because I couldn’t see their faces? Or when I was working on a group project in class and struggled to contribute because I couldn’t even read the instructions in print?This anxiety made me adept at silencing my own voice, at taking up little to no space and bending to the whims of others in order to gain approval.In 2011, I began working as a special education teacher in Washington D.C., working closely with upper elementary school children with mild to moderate impairments. It was excruciating to watch my students face criticism from their teachers and taunts from their peers. I was constantly reminded of my own experiences of shame and stress as a child with a disability.I spent a year passively observing these uncomfortable exchanges until a conversation with a student’s parent caused me to change my approach. The student was feeling anxiety and shame around his learning disability diagnosis. With the support of his mom, we had an open conversation about celebrities who had experienced great success with learning disabilities. We reframed the idea of disability as a difference instead of a problematic diagnosis.That single conversation was not a silver bullet. Yet it set a precedent for more open dialogue and created space for him to work through his anxiety. It also, eventually, helped me with my own.I realized that my students, like myself, had a choice. They could share who they were with others and accept disability as part of their identities. They could also choose to deny disability, to pretend it didn’t exist, to laugh along with peers if they were teased for reading slowly or angering quickly, and ultimately internalize their differences as reasons to feel shame. I knew I had to encourage them to choose the first path.Here’s how I did so.First, I began to actively discuss disability with my students. When disability arose organically in student conversations, I didn’t ignore it. Instead, I asked students what they knew about the disability and shared information about the ways in which the disability could affect — but not define — an individual. I also referenced positive figures in the press who have disabilities. This helped reframe the notion of disability as only negative and increased students’ awareness of different types of disabilities.Second, I reminded students that disabilities exist on a spectrum. I illustrated this point by explaining the ways in which my blindness varied from others’. To date, I have not met another blind individual who experiences the world in the same way that I do; some blind peers can read small print more clearly but lack depth perception, while others see the world in shadows or as a contrast between light and dark.Third, I conveyed that many disabilities are not readily visible, and it’s important to avoid making assumptions. Because of my prior unwillingness to acknowledge my blindness, my differences were often incorrectly attributed to deficits in my personality or intelligence, making me feel ashamed that I could not do things that my able-bodied peers could do, such as drive a car, write a handwritten note, or navigate using street signs.",3,https://www.chalkbeat.org/2019/8/12/21108612/i-started-talking-about-disability-in-my-classroom-it-changed-both-me-and-my-students,TRUE,
1255,‘Your disability isn’t a barrier’: what it's like to go to uni as a disabled person," Sean Cullen avoided getting a diagnosis for his dyslexia until he was in his second year at university. “The stigma around students not wanting to disclose disability is big. They think it will be detrimental to their studies if they have a difficulty,” says Cullen, who is now studying for a PhD at Brunel University, while also working as a disability officer for the students’ union. Cullen, who became physically disabled as a result of an accident prior to attending university, is now receiving the support for his dyslexia he should have had from the start. “The message has been drummed in that because you have additional needs you’re not going to perform as academically well. That’s not the right message. ”While university is more accessible than ever before, with almost half of young people in England going on to higher education, people with disabilities and special educational needs are still far less likely to attend. It’s not due to their academic capabilities, but because of low expectations. Research from 2018 revealed disabled students are 10% more likely to have low educational expectations than their non disabled peers with similar school performance. This year, universities minister Chris Skidmore called on universities to do more to bridge this gap by supporting and encouraging applications from students with disabilities. “Inclusion is vital,” says Ross Renton, pro vice chancellor at the University of Worcester, which was singled out by Skidmore for leading the way in its support services. “As institutions we should reflect society, we should enable people to have fulfilling lives. ”Renton encourages students to have a clear understanding of what support is available even before applying. At Worcester, for example, there are disability advisers so students can arrange support services and work out their needs. Charity AccessAble also maps out the sites and cities on an app, so students with disabilities can work out good, accessible routes to take around campus. By having these conversations, “your disability isn’t a barrier, you’re on a level playing field with everyone else”, Renton says. “Unfortunately the nature of having any of these conditions is that life will be more difficult,” says Cullen, “but the more you can speak to people, the more solutions you can get out of it. ”Moving to London for university was a big deal. I hadn’t lived by myself before and my mum had been my primary carer since I was born. The biggest issue was making sure I could get around everywhere – I’m an electric wheelchair user for the most part, and I have cerebral palsy. Brunel is one campus and it’s mostly flat, so once I knew where I was going and which routes to use, it was better. You could be on campus and not leave for a week and you’d be fine – they have shops, cafes, a nightclub. Before I started, we spoke to an adviser about my requirements. For example, I need accommodation with automatic doors. I went for the option without carers, to throw myself in at the deep end. I had friends in my first year who offered to help, so I knew I had that backup on campus. I’m much more confident now, as I’ve learned you have to self advocate and point out issues so you get what you need, like when the lift wasn’t working and I couldn’t get to my lecture. I was a big member of the rock and metal society – I love going to concerts. I knew I could talk about that quite easily, and the disability stuff didn’t have to come into it. Dobson’s blogs at Invincible Woman on Wheels about her experiences",3,https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/aug/10/your-disability-isnt-a-barrier-what-its-like-to-go-to-uni-as-a-disabled-person,FALSE,
1256,British children’s books are still too white – responsibility to change them is on all involved,"Cuddling up in a big chair with a good book, either with a familiar adult reading to you or starting the first chapter of a book on your own is a fundamental part of childhood – emotionally as well as intellectually. Reading about people who are like yourself affects both your self image and the likelihood you will enjoy reading. Becoming a habitual reader, in turn, affects your life options. Reading about people different from yourself also encourages empathy and cultural understanding. But if the world of children’s books doesn’t include people who look like you, it is difficult to feel welcomed into reading, as the writer Darren Chetty, among others, has pointed out. And recent research suggests that child readers, especially, but not exclusively, readers of colour, are being seriously shortchanged. There simply aren’t enough authors and illustrators from diverse backgrounds being published, as academic Melanie Ramdarshan Bold pointed out in the 2019 Book Trust report on representation of people of colour among children’s book authors and illustrators. In fact, between 2007 and 2017, fewer than 2% of children’s book creators were British people of colour. Authors of colour often feel isolated within the publishing industry. They are frequently encouraged to focus on racism and similar problem narratives, a recent report from Arts Council England found. They do not have the freedom to write across the broad spectrum of children’s literature genres if they want to be published. While about a third of school age children come from a minority ethnic background, the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education found that only 7% of children’s books published in Britain in 2018 had a Black, Asian or minority ethnic character. With so few diverse children’s books being published, these books are deeply important. When characters of colour appear in children’s books, they are rarely the protagonist with the agency to effect change. Recent books sometimes still depict characters of colour as “sidekicks” who support and affirm the white main character. Other times, the “diversity” in a book appears in the background only. Characters are defined by their colour, which makes them irreconcilably “other”. Descriptive words of character features compare them to food or animals. Sometimes characters appear early on in a narrative, only to quickly disappear in favour of a refocus on the white character. These techniques can dehumanise people of colour. Children’s nonfiction, including history and science, either ignores contributions of people of colour to British society or pigeonholes particular ethnic groups into certain spaces only – such as the history of British slavery . In a single children’s book, this “sidelining” of people of colour may not matter. However, when it is the enduring norm, as Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozie Adichie stressed in her 2009 Ted talk on the danger of a single story, it situates readers of colour on the sidelines, too. This affects the reader’s perception of who matters in books. While it would be easy to suggest that the problem lies with the British publishing industry alone, this is too simplistic. All people involved with children’s books need to participate in changing the narrative so that the books being published better represent the population and encourage all children to become readers, according to the ACE report. ",2,https://theconversation.com/british-childrens-books-are-still-too-white-responsibility-to-change-them-is-on-all-involved-126853,FALSE,
1257,Does the Civil Rights Act protect LGBT workers? The Supreme Court is about to decide,"The complicated history of the Civil Rights Act in the U.S. is about to get even more so.In 1964, the act – specifically, Title VII of the act – made it illegal for employers to discriminate based on race, religion and sex, among other things. In October 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court heard three cases that raise the question whether the act prevents discrimination toward LGBT workers on the basis of sex. Two of the cases were brought by men who allegedly lost their jobs because they are gay. The third case addresses transgender discrimination in the workplace. I’m a professor of business law and I’ve done extensive research in Title VII policy and practice. I believe these cases could be some of the most important in the Civil Rights Act’s history. Title VII’s protected class of sex was complicated from the start. The original bill didn’t include protections for sex discrimination. U.S. Rep. Howard W. Smith of Virginia added those protections with a one-word change to the bill during the debate on the House floor. Later, in 1978, Congress added the Pregnancy Discrimination Act to the Civil Right Act. The change came after the Supreme Court ruled in 1976 that pregnancy discrimination was not “because of sex” and couldn’t be found illegal under the original Title VII language. This history is important given the rise of “statutory originalism” and “textualism” in judicial interpretation. Originalism means courts should interpret laws based on their original intent or purpose. Relatedly, judges who subscribe to textualism believe they should evaluate the words of a statute enacted by Congress only and not consider evidence outside the statutory language. One of the two new justices sitting on the Supreme Court hearing the cases of LGBT workplace rights, Justice Neil Gorsuch, employs textualism and originalism in judicial interpretation. LGBT rights weren’t debated as part of the original Title VII, suggesting that Gorsuch and other judges inclined to originalism would not consider them protected by the act. If the Supreme Court could find pregnancy discrimination was not “because of sex” and required an amendment to Title VII to prohibit pregnancy discrimination, it suggests that the Court could interpret the protected class of sex very narrowly. However, critics reject this “original meaning” approach to Title VII interpretation related to LGBT rights. And it is true that the court’s interpretation of the meaning of sex discrimination within Title VII – case law that has developed over more than 50 years – includes Supreme Court decisions that offer broader meaning to its language, specifically with regard to sex-stereotyping. In 1989, the court held that Title VII prohibited an employer from denying opportunities to a woman based on “stereotypical notions about women’s proper deportment” in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins.In that case, Ann Hopkins received advice from her employer that, if she wanted to make partner at the firm, she should act more feminine. The Court’s ruling meant that negative employment actions by an employer based on employee’s gender non-conformity are prohibited under Title VII. Title VII protections expanded further with Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore in 1998 when a unanimous Supreme Court held that same-sex harassment is sex discrimination under Title VII. The case involved a man working on an oil rig being bullied by other men because he was considered effeminate. The majority opinion was written by Justice Antonin Scalia, then the avowed originalist on the Court. ",2,https://theconversation.com/does-the-civil-rights-act-protect-lgbt-workers-the-supreme-court-is-about-to-decide-125290,FALSE,
1258,Cities with more black residents rely more on traffic tickets and fines for revenue,"I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the last time I got a speeding ticket. It was nearly a decade ago and it’s a pretty unremarkable story: I was on my way back to Columbus, Ohio, from a friend’s wedding and was going something like 15 mph over the speed limit. An officer pulled me over, asked me if I knew why he did, walked back to his squad car and returned with a ticket for US$90. At the time, I didn’t think much about it. I was 22, I was speeding, and that is what happened when you got caught. I didn’t consider the motives of the officer, his law enforcement agency or the financial status of the city he worked for. And I definitely didn’t consider the fact that I was a brown man driving through rural Ohio. But now that I’m a scholar of public finance, it’s all I can think about. My recent research – and that of others – shows that communities with more residents of color are more likely to rely on revenue coming from traffic tickets and other minor fines. Local governments on average don’t rely all that much on revenue from things like traffic citations, termed fines and forfeitures. According to data from the Census of Governments, the average city generated about $21 per person from fines in 2012, the last year for which there is national data. For reference, the average city generated about $150 per person from sales taxes at the time. But there is a lot of variation: Some cities get more than 10% or 20% of their revenue from fines. Why might some communities rely on fines way more than others do? One reason could be higher incidences of crime. Another might be that certain governments make a strategic choice to target passersby via speed traps. It could be a response to budgetary shortfalls or fiscal stress. And still another might be the race of the population or law enforcement agency.If it’s not clear how or why this could involve race, you should take a look at the Department of Justice report on in Ferguson, Missouri. After Michael Brown, a black man living in a majority-black community, was shot and killed by a white police officer serving in a majority-white police force, the department investigated. It found that officers in Ferguson were focused on revenue generation, a practice known as “policing for profit.” Police aggressively fined residents, primarily black residents, without much consideration of whether doing so enhanced public trust or safety. According to the report, “The harms of Ferguson’s police and court practices are borne disproportionately by African Americans, and there is evidence that this is due in part to intentional discrimination on the basis of race.”But was Ferguson an isolated case? And, more generally, what explains the variation in city use of fines? My colleagues – Charlotte Kirschner and Samuel B. Stone, also scholars of public finance – and I set out to find out. In our study, we looked at a representative sample of 93 California cities from 2009 to 2014 to determine what affects how much cities fine residents and rely on fines for revenue. We examined how fines were affected by levels of crime and public safety, city financial health and budgetary stress, and the racial composition of both the population and the law enforcement agency serving it. We found no relationship between crime or budgetary stress and fines. However, we did find that cities with larger black populations fine residents more on a per capita basis and are more reliant on fines.",2,https://theconversation.com/cities-with-more-black-residents-rely-more-on-traffic-tickets-and-fines-for-revenue-124067,FALSE,
1259,Reparations are essential to eliminating the substantial wealth gap between black and white Americans,"Four hundred years ago, America’s first enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia. Centuries later, black Americans have managed to accumulate some wealth, but it still pales in comparison to that of whites. This racial wealth gap is a result not only of the horrors of slavery but also policies – such as Jim Crow laws, redlining and modern-day mass incarceration – that followed. The average white family with at least one working adult over 25 years old owned more than nine times as much total wealth as a black one in 2016. As a scholar of wealth inequality and its causes, I believe the promise of equal opportunity for all remains unfulfilled as long as this massive gulf persists. A variety of proposals have been suggested by Democratic candidates for president and others to close this gap, such as eliminating housing discrimination and making college free for all. Two colleagues and I created an economic simulator to model the impact of five of the most ambitious proposals. Our results show why reparations that directly target African Americans are likely the only way to eliminate it. This wealth gap matters a lot because it means African Americans have far fewer opportunities to get ahead and less economic security. Wealth is what allows families to start a business, send their children to college, switch jobs when new opportunities arise, buy a house and retire comfortably. It’s also what helps people get through unexpected financial hits, such as a layoff, medical emergency or simply a leaky roof. Although whites generally have more wealth than every other racial and ethnic group, the gap between them and African Americans is particularly large. For example, the average white family had US$935,584 in wealth in 2016, compared with $102,477 for blacks and $176,635 for Latino households. Importantly, this gap between African Americans and whites persists even when we account for education. And the gap worsens with age. African Americans are much worse prepared for retirement, for instance, than whites are. My colleagues Danyelle Solomon, Connor Maxwell and I put together a simulation model to examine the effectiveness of five proposals offered by Democratic candidates and progressive experts to close the racial wealth gap. The creation of “baby bonds,” which involve the government opening an interest-bearing account for every child born in the U.S. and adding new funds annually until the age of 18Elimination of housing segregation and mortgage market discrimination such as redliningMaking college tuition free for everyone and eliminating existing student debt Creating universal retirement savings plans that are low cost and low risk, which would disproportionately benefit families of color Effective enforcement of consumer finance regulations to eliminate predatory interest rates and fees, and ensure equal access to affordable financial products. We modeled how each plan would affect the earnings and savings of people starting out their careers in 2020, at age 25, until retirement 40 years later. Importantly, we used the broadest possible versions of these proposals in our model, which meant that the impact on the racial wealth gap would likely be larger than the actual plans put forth by the politicians. We found that baby bonds led to the single largest effect. They would close 24% of the gap by the time people retire. The other policies had much more modest effects, with effective financial regulation having the smallest impact. It would only shrink the gap by 1.5%. Even if all five proposals were enacted next year, blacks would still possess just 52% of the wealth owned by whites by 2060, leaving a gap of more than $1 million.",2,https://theconversation.com/reparations-are-essential-to-eliminating-the-substantial-wealth-gap-between-black-and-white-americans-123138,FALSE,
1260,Setting the historical record straight for the critics of The New York Times project on slavery in America,"Four hundred years after the event, the New York Times has published a special project focusing on the first Africans arriving in 1619 at Point Comfort, Virginia, and the legacy of slavery in the U.S.“No aspect of the country that would be formed here has been untouched by the years of slavery that followed,” the introduction said. While there has been much praise for the project’s recasting of American history, it has been given a chilly reception by others. These critics, including former top GOP legislator Newt Gingrich, attempt to dismiss the significance of the “20 and odd” Africans who arrived in 1619 and the 12.5 million other African people who were sold into the transatlantic slave trade. “The whole project is a lie,” Gingrich said. Statements such as one in an article by Joshua Lawson – “By A.D. 1619, slavery had existed for more than 5,000 years, dating back at least to Mesopotamia” – are akin to the recurring social media mantra over recent years that America shouldn’t be blamed, it didn’t invent slavery, and that it’s been around forever. Similarly, social media comments often expresses ideas like: “Who captured them and sold them into slavery in the first place? It was their own people, black people.”These arguments may sound reasonable because they have a sliver of truth. But as a historian of the African diaspora, I know these characterizations oversimplify the complex history of the slave trade and discourage important conversations about, and an understanding of, American history. First, Africa was not, and is not, a country. Long before the Portuguese made their way to Angola in 1483, to start what became the transatlantic slave trade, African kingdoms, queendoms and empires had long occupied and ruled different parts of the continent, which is close to 12 million square miles. These centuries-old civilizations were ethnically, linguistically and religiously diverse. Wars were common, as in every other continent, and the people sold to European traders beginning in the 1490s were mostly prisoners of war, not allies. It is true that slavery has been around for thousands of years. But the chorus of social media commentary tries to remove any blame from the country’s forefathers for the American version of the institution and its devastating consequences. They are correct in their statement that slavery has been around for millennia, and that America did not invent it. But it lacks context and substance that is critical to understanding our nation’s history. Moreover, African traders were not aware of the distinct form of slavery that was to develop in the colonies – one that wed skin color to class in ways never seen before, as it became a distinct product of the trade. That form was drastically different from the African “Old World” models. Old World slavery was characterized by a more fluid status. The enslaved could own property and legally marry, and their children were not automatically enslaved. Slaves were often criminals, or victims of religious wars. More specifically, slavery in Africa was not a life term, nor was it inherited. The Old World models were more like an indenture, where there was a term of labor to be paid, and then freedom would be granted. This was nothing like the race-based chattel slavery that grew with the transatlantic trade, which guaranteed a lifetime term and the further enslavement of one’s children. Almost the entire 12.5 million captured Africans were brought to the Americas as enslaved, not indentured people. Although there are a few exceptions, those few are not representative. European criminals and poor people often held indentured status, and most migrated to the Americas by choice. Those first “20 and odd” Africans were captives, and did not choose their destiny. These are some of the striking differences between European and African laborers.",2,https://theconversation.com/setting-the-historical-record-straight-for-the-critics-of-the-new-york-times-project-on-slavery-in-america-122177,FALSE,
1263,What 1860 and 1968 can teach America about the 2020 presidential election,"Fresh evidence of the nastiness and divisiveness of the 2020 presidential election emerges every day. President Trump has let loose a storm of invective over Twitter about various African American public figures and about the conditions of life in America’s inner cities. The president seems bent on exploiting a rural/urban divide and creating racial cleavage as a way to get re elected. In addition, he has questioned the patriotism of Democrats and alleged that they are trying to “destroy our country. ”Democrats have responded by denouncing the president’s racially tinged language and accusing the president and his supporters of being the ones destroying the country. “Four years of Donald Trump,” former Vice President Joe Biden claims, “would be an aberration in American history. Eight years will fundamentally change who we are as a nation. ” Biden, of course, is running for president. Nasty, divisive elections are nothing new in the United States. As someone who teaches and writes about the importance of historical memory in American law and politics, I believe the 2020 election will rival the ugliest America has ever witnessed. There are lessons that can be learned from examining this election’s parallels with two previous presidential elections – 1860 and 1968 – both of which left America deeply divided. In the lead up to the 1860 election, the nation was splintered by the question of slavery and by geography, with sectional conflicts between the more industrial northern states from the more agrarian South. Those divisions produced a schism among Democrats and the formation of two separate parties. Stephen Douglas led the anti slavery Northern Democrats, and John Breckenridge led the pro slavery Southern Democrats as their candidates for president. A third party,the Constitutional Union Party, nominated John Bell. It was a splinter party composed of disillusioned Democrats and former members of the Whig party . The Constitutional Union Party wanted to avoid secession over slavery. Bell’s
battle cry was “The Union as it is, and the Constitution as it is. ” Abraham Lincoln, an opponent of slavery, was the Republican candidate. Yet he promised to let the South hold onto its slaves so long as slavery was not extended to any new territories. “Wrong as we think slavery is,” Lincoln said, “we can yet afford to let it alone where it is… but can we, while our votes will prevent it, allow it to spread into the National Territories, and to overrun us here in these Free States? If our sense of duty forbids this, then let us stand by our duty, fearlessly and effectively. ” Despite winning the election, whites allied with the Southern Democratic Party did not see Lincoln as a legitimate president because of his opposition to the expansion of slavery and perceived hostility to the beliefs and values of Southerners. Seven Southern states seceded between Lincoln’s election and inauguration: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas. Lincoln regarded secession as illegal. Rather than waiting for Lincoln’s Union troops to act, the newly named Confederate States attacked Fort Sumter, a Union fort in Charleston, South Carolina. Thus began the Civil War, in which an estimated 620,000 soldiers were killed, nearly 2% of the U. S. population. ",2,https://theconversation.com/what-1860-and-1968-can-teach-america-about-the-2020-presidential-election-121294,FALSE,
1264,Police drugs crackdown operations can do more harm than good – I’ve seen it,"The new prime minister, Boris Johnson, has pledged to recruit 20,000 new police officers in England and Wales and appointed Priti Patel, an MP who said in 2011 that she wanted to bring back capital punishment (she has since changed her mind) as his home secretary. Many have voiced concerns about the hardline kind of governance this implies. They aren’t wrong. In her first interview as home secretary, Patel has argued that she wants to “empower” the police to “stop criminality” and hopes that criminals “literally feel terror at the thought of committing offences”. With the prospect of more police on the streets and with Patel pursuing such a hardline approach, it is particularly important to reflect critically on police practices and to learn from mistakes of the past. Research has consistently documented the over-policing of black and minority ethnic communities in Britain. Black people remain disproportionately represented across all areas of police data. It is also the neighborhoods where black and minority ethnic children are more likely to live that receive the highest levels of policing and surveillance. But more police does not always mean less social problems. A number of contradictory and harmful consequences have been associated with intensive localized policing, known as “crackdown operations”. These include: the short-term nature of positive impacts, a failure to address the root causes of crime, and damaged police-community relations. My recent research documents the immediate, short and longer-term impacts of one particular drugs crackdown operation in a disadvantaged part of a northern English city. The findings of this study suggest that the operation failed to achieve its long-term goals. Drawing on detailed observations and interviews with a group of mostly Somali young men (aged 11-25) my work suggests that police must be wary – some of their practices can do more harm than good. My research demonstrates that “terror” through intensive policing practices is not likely to “stop criminality”. Operation DRUGS took place between 2009 and 2011. It involved deploying undercover agents into parts of the city known locally as drug dealing hotspots. These agents were unknown to local police and created opportunities for crimes to be committed by offering to exchange designer items (such as clothing and trainers) for drugs. Spanning nearly two years, the operation culminated in a series of police raids and the prosecution of more than 50 people for drugs-related offences. This may sound like a success. But beyond the prosecution of convicted drug dealers, Operation DRUGS also produced a number of unintended and long-term consequences for residents in the communities affected. Paying attention to the voices of those residents reveals the unintended, yet harmful consequences of the operation.I found that local police bore the brunt of community anxieties and frustrations in the weeks that followed the operation. In the local youth club, one young person explained how he had lost faith in the police, feeling like rather than acting as a preventative force they were “there to find their targets”. Efforts by local police to build trusting community relations had been undermined by an operation in which many local officers were not involved. At the Magistrates Court, where families gathered to oversee the trial process, community workers described how the police were accused of institutional racism and complicity in what was seen to be a deceitful operation, where vulnerabilities had been exploited to get young people to commit crimes. Following the trial a number of parents boycotted the local youth forum, for failing to protect their children from the local drugs market.",2,https://theconversation.com/police-drugs-crackdown-operations-can-do-more-harm-than-good-ive-seen-it-121515,FALSE,
1265,The facts on the US children and teens killed by firearms," Professor of Public Health, University of Michigan Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine, University of Michigan Interim Vice President Research University of Michigan, Professor of Emergency Medicine and Director of the Injury Research Center, University of Michigan Marc A Zimmerman receives funding from the NIH, CDC, NIH and foundations to do violence prevention work generally and some of that funding is focused on firearm injury and death in particular. The funding does not provide additional profit for me other than covering my time to work on the projects. Dr. Patrick Carter receives research funding from the NIH and the CDC. This funding is to support research projects focused on violence and injury prevention. Rebecca Cunningham receives funding from NIH for firearm injury prevention research, as well as from the CDC for injury and violence prevention. University of Michigan provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US. View all partnersInjury is the leading cause of death for U. S. children and adolescents, accounting for over 60% of all deaths in this group. Many of these deaths occur during fun, everyday activities, like swimming in the backyard pool or during a family car ride. But a disproportionate and disturbing number of these deaths in the U. S. occur as a result of firearms. Firearms are the second leading cause of death among U. S. children and adolescents, after car crashes. Firearm deaths occur at a rate over three times higher than drownings. We have dedicated our careers to understanding violence and injury prevention, including how firearm injury and deaths happen and how they can be prevented. Causes of injury and death due to motor vehicle crashes have steadily declined over the last 20 years, but death and injury due to firearms has remained about the same over the same period. Since 2013, fatal firearm injuries for children and teens have risen unabated. Rates of death from firearms among ages 14 to 17 are now 22. 5% higher than motor vehicle related death rates. In the U. S. , middle and high school age children are now more likely to die as the result of a firearm injury than from any other single cause of death. For Americans between the ages of 1 and 19, a little over half of 2017 firearm related deaths are homicides. Another 38% of firearm related deaths in this age group are suicides, while the rest result from unintentional injuries or undetermined causes. What’s more, the U. S. has had 1,316 school shootings since 1970. The numbers of these tragic events have been increasing, with 18% of the total occurring in the past seven years since the Newtown school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. School shootings are a focus of media attention and raise awareness about the problem of firearm deaths among children and teens. But they remain the smallest proportion of deaths, accounting for 1. 2% of all homicides among 5 to 18 year olds. African American children and teens are over eight times more likely to die from firearm homicide than their white counterparts. Firearms have been the leading cause of death for African American youth for well over a decade. Firearm suicide rates are highest among American Indian/Alaskan Native and white children and teens, compared to other racial/ethnic groups. Researchers have limited information on the reasons for these racial disparities. We suspect they are likely a result of a number of factors, including socioeconomic status, firearm availability and accessibility, and lack of access to mental health services. Although firearm related rates of death for children and teens living in urban, suburban and rural communities are similar, rural rates of firearm suicide are twice as high and unintentional firearm injuries are four times higher than in urban communities. Meanwhile, firearm homicide rates are twice as high in urban than in rural communities. ",2,https://theconversation.com/the-facts-on-the-us-children-and-teens-killed-by-firearms-118318,FALSE,
1266,Police are more likely to kill men and women of color,"Michael Brown was killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri, five years ago. Since then, U.S. police have killed more than 5,000 people. Researchers and activists only know about these deaths because journalists do what the federal government has not: collect detailed information on police-involved fatalities. Because the government has not collected systematic data on police killings, the public doesn’t have definitive numbers that, once interpreted, will show how likely people are to be killed by police. In a study published on Aug. 5, sociologist Hedwig Lee, social scientist Michael Esposito and I use unofficial data to show how risk of death varies by age, sex and race or ethnicity in the U.S. My colleagues and I rely on data provided by Fatal Encounters, a dataset maintained by journalist and former newspaper editor D. Brian Burghart. Burghart conducts systematic searches of online news, social media and public records to provide a close-to-comprehensive and up-to-date archive of police killings. The database shows about 1,000 and 1,200 deaths per year since 2000. While overall, police are responsible for a very small share of all deaths – about 0.05% of all male deaths, and 0.003% of all female deaths, police are responsible for a substantial proportion of all deaths of young people. For young men, police violence ranks as the sixth leading cause of death as classified by the National Vital Statistics System, after accidents, which include drug overdoses, motor vehicle accidents and other accidental deaths; suicides; other homicides; heart disease; and cancer. Police are responsible for 1.6% of all deaths of black men between the ages of 20 and 24. Our analysis found that about 52 of every 100,000 men and boys, and about 3 of every 100,000 women and girls, will be killed by police. For comparison, the lifetime risk of a person being killed in a vehicle accident for the general population is about 970 per 100,000, and the lifetime risk of being killed by firearm in a homicide is about 350 per 100,000. People who are American Indian and Alaska Native, black or Latino are more likely to be killed by police than people who are white. Men of color have especially high lifetime risks of being killed by police. About 1 in 1,000 black men and boys are likely are killed by police. For American Indian and Alaska Native men and boys, the lifetime risk of being killed by police is about 1 in 2,000. Young men and women are at greatest risk of being killed by police. Between the ages of 25 and 29, about 2 of every 100,000 young men in the U.S. are killed by police, while about 0.1 of every 100,000 women will be killed by police. That risk is most pronounced for young men and women of color. Based on our results, I believe that the U.S. urgently needs to reduce the rates at which police kill civilians, and reduce inequalities in exposure of men and women to police violence.In my view, some common sense interventions would likely drive down rates of death. For example, investment in community based mental health and social services would reduce the use of police, jails and prisons as catch-all responses to social problems. Accountability and effective reform demands better data. The Bureau of Justice Statistics is pursuing a data collection effort that mirrors the news-based approaches that journalists have pioneered. And the Center for Policing Equity, a research center in New York, is developing a national data system to track police use of force. ",2,https://theconversation.com/police-are-more-likely-to-kill-men-and-women-of-color-121158,FALSE,
1267,Why Trump’s stoking of white racial resentment is effective – but makes all working-class Americans worse off,"Many white men say they feel threatened by the increasing presence and success of minorities in the workplace. As social scientists, we wondered if there is any evidence to support this perceived economic threat, a perception that can provide fertile ground for current rounds of racist and xenophobic political messaging. Our work at the Center for Employment Equity at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, involves using Equal Employment Opportunity Commission data to explore workplace discrimination and diversity in states and cities across the U.S. Our aim is to discover and promote more equitable workplaces. In our most recent report, called “Race, States and the Mixed Fate of White Men,” we examined the connection between minority populations and the job prospects of white men in private-sector companies. Social scientists generally agree on three research findings about white men in the U.S. and the notion that they are losing their unearned but expected racial privileges. First, white men at every education level are more likely than women and non-Asian minorities to get access to higher-wage jobs. Second, while wages of average working-class people in the U.S. have stagnated in recent decades, and economic insecurity has grown, earnings for middle- and upper-class jobs – which are dominated by educated whites – have soared. A third and more recent finding is that working-class white men are the group that is most racially resentful and most opposed to further immigration. This finding is based on analyses of survey data of the whole U.S. population examining both voting behavior and attitudes toward blacks and immigrants, zeroing in on President Donald Trump’s core supporters and the content of his political messaging to them.This resentment probably explains why working-class whites, particularly men, are so receptive to President Trump’s anti-immigrant and racist messages – and why he targets them. We suspected that the reception to racist and xenophobic messages might be a reflection of a growing competition between working-class whites and minority men for increasingly insecure, low-wage jobs. In our study, we compared different racial groups’ share of specific occupations with their percentage of their state’s workforce. In other words, we wanted to see how over- or underrepresented white, black and Hispanic men were in various jobs. In general, we found that while some white men are prospering in executive and managerial roles, there is another group of white men with very different employment experiences. At the top end of the labor market, our data showed that in every state, white men were overrepresented in executive and managerial jobs. But this white male privilege varied substantially by state. White men got even more of the top jobs in states with larger minority populations. Texas, where minorities make up a third of the labor force and white men slightly more at 37%, was the most extreme. White men held 85% of private-sector executive jobs, making them overrepresented in top jobs by 138%. Other states with sizable minority populations, such as California, New Mexico and Mississippi, similarly showed white men are especially advantaged in their control of the executive suite.",2,https://theconversation.com/why-trumps-stoking-of-white-racial-resentment-is-effective-but-makes-all-working-class-americans-worse-off-120068,FALSE,
1268,The Supreme Court decision that kept suburban schools segregated,"America recently marked the 65-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education – a landmark case intended to abolish the “separate-but-equal” doctrine of racial segregation in schools. But the racial makeup of today’s schools actually owes itself to a series of other court decisions – including one issued 45 years ago on July 25, 1974. The Milliken v. Bradley decision sanctioned a form of segregation that has allowed suburbs to escape being included in court-ordered desegregation and busing plans with nearby cities. The Milliken decision recognized “de facto” segregation – segregation that occurs as a result of circumstances, not law. This allowed schools in the North to maintain racially separate schools at the same time southern schools were being ordered by the courts to desegregate. By giving suburbs a pass from large mandated desegregation attempts, it built a figurative wall around white flight enclaves, essentially shielding them from the “crisis” of urban education. Outside a few voluntary and limited programs such as METCO in Boston and Springfield, Massachusetts, or Chapter 220 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that enabled a small number of children from cities to attend schools in the suburbs or more affluent areas, northern school districts remained largely segregated.The decision ruled that social segregation was permissible and therefore exempt from court-ordered, “forced” desegregation plans. That is, the court said, if segregation occurred because of certain “unknowable factors” such as economic changes and racial fears – not a law – then it’s legal.Originating in Detroit, a major destination of the Great Migration, the mass movement of southern African Americans to northern cities, the decision dictated how desegregation would proceed outside the South, if at all. Federal courts had issued rulings that helped eradicate legal segregation - primarily in the South - through the 1968 Green v. School Board of New Kent County and 1969 Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education decisions, even employing military force. But the nation largely understood segregation to be an issue confined to the South. Milliken brought the freedom struggle’s call for integration to the North. Twenty years after the Brown decision, the NAACP, Urban League and civil rights activists documented how segregation led to underfunded and inferior schooling across the North in cities like Chicago, New York and Detroit. Black activists in Detroit like Rev. Albert Cleage, the NAACP and black parents in segregated housing and schools began to demand education reform as the freedom struggle intensified during the 1940s. They demanded things that ranged from community control to integration in all schools as opposed to token desegregation. By 1970, the NAACP demanded a desegregated school system as promised by Brown and filed a lawsuit against the governor, William Milliken. As the Milliken case worked its way through the courts from 1970 to 1974, the nature of public education was changing. Millions of whites abandoned the cities for suburban enclaves. Like the rest of the North, Detroit experienced dramatic population shifts that decimated public schools. From the 1950s through 1970s, Detroit lost over 30% of its white population to the suburbs, where the population climbed to over 3 million. By the 1970s students of color comprised nearly 75% of a once majority-white system. More affluent whites and the few families of color who fled left behind a depleted tax base that starved public schools, as described in Jeffrey Mirel’s “The Rise and Fall of an Urban School System.”",2,https://theconversation.com/the-supreme-court-decision-that-kept-suburban-schools-segregated-120478,FALSE,
1269,Our database of police officers who shoot citizens reveals who shot citizens,"In the debate over fatal police shootings of minority citizens, one theme is persistent: White officers, rather than nonwhite officers, are primarily responsible for black Americans being shot by the police. For example, look to Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s handling of the recent shooting of black resident Eric Logan in his hometown of South Bend, Indiana. This shooting has consistently been tied to the race of the officer, who was white. When Buttigieg was asked about the city’s attempts to increase diversity on the police force, he apologized that he “couldn’t get it done.”Is it true, however, that a black person fatally shot was more likely to be shot by white officers? To answer this question, we spent over 1,500 hours creating a national database of information about all officers involved in fatal police shootings in the U.S. in 2015. Our paper based on this data, published on July 22, reveals that white officers are not more likely to fatally shoot minority civilians compared to black or Hispanic officers. Until now, there have been no federal databases on the officers involved in fatal shootings. Although organizations such as The Washington Post have tracked fatal officer-involved shootings in recent years, these databases have primarily focused on information about civilians. The few studies that have looked at officer information have been able to obtain data for only a small number of shootings. Our database includes 917 fatal shootings by on-duty police officers in 2015 from over 650 different police departments. The initial list was developed from lists of fatal shootings compiled by news organizations such as The Washington Post and The Guardian. We then contacted all police departments listed in the original lists and asked them to report on the race of every officer involved in a shooting. If follow-up calls were unsuccessful, we searched news reports to uncover officer information. The characteristics of police officers who shoot civilians closely reflect the pool of all police officers. Nationwide, 73% of all police officers are white, 12% are Hispanic and 12% are black. By comparison, 79% of officers involved in shootings in 2015 were white, 12% were Hispanic and 6% were black. Of those civilians fatally shot, 55% were white, 27% were black and 19% were Hispanic. If fatal shootings of minority civilians are due to bias by white officers, we would expect that when white officers are involved in a fatal shooting, the person fatally shot would be more likely to be black or Hispanic. This is not what we found. In contrast, when all the officers that fired at a civilian were black, a person was 2.0 times more likely to be black than when all the officers who fired were white. When all the officers that fired at a civilian were Hispanic, a person was 9.0 times more likely to be Hispanic than when all the officers who fired were white. This finding, however, does not mean that black or Hispanic officers are biased in their shooting decisions. Cities with larger populations of nonwhite civilians also have a higher proportion of nonwhite officers. Once these factors were taken into account, black and Hispanic officers were no longer more likely to shoot black or Hispanic citizens.",2,https://theconversation.com/our-database-of-police-officers-who-shoot-citizens-reveals-who-shot-citizens-119623,FALSE,
1270,"What school segregation looks like in the US today, in 4 charts","Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, a senator from California, has spoken about how she benefited from attending Berkeley’s desegregated schools. “There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me,” Harris said in the first Democratic debate to candidate Joe Biden. “So I will tell you that on this subject, it cannot be an intellectual debate among Democrats. We have to take it seriously. We have to act swiftly.”School segregation is the separation of students into different schools by race. In 1954, the Supreme Court declared segregation was unconstitutional. Desegregation efforts since then have used a variety of tools to try to overcome patterns of segregation that persist. Studies have shown that school desegregation has important benefits for students of all races. Recent research illustrates that its positive impact on the educational attainment, lifetime earnings and health of African American families persists for multiple generations. Yet, despite years of government desegregation efforts and the proven benefits of integrated schools, our recently published research shows that U.S. school segregation is higher than it has been in decades, even if there are no longer overt laws requiring racially segregated schools. In the civil rights era, nearly 80% of public school students were white, and African American students were the largest group among students of color. I have been studying school segregation and desegregation for more than a decade and also assist communities in addressing segregation. In the last school year for which my group had data, 2016 to 2017, the U.S. public schools no longer had a majority of any racial group. Despite an increase in the number of public school students since the late 1960s, there are almost 11 million fewer white children in public schools nearly 50 years later. However, white students are still the largest group of students at 48%. Latino students continue to increase nationally and in every region of the country. There are also 1 million more black students since the civil rights era, or approximately 15% of students. In some states, Asian students are increasing. Multiracial students – a group not even part of the official federal classification until 2008 – are also nearly 4%. However, white students and students of color are unevenly distributed across schools, and these differences affect their experiences in schools and classrooms.If a school were perfectly integrated, students’ exposure to students of other races would match the national racial composition of students. But white students have lower exposure to students of other races than any other group of students. The typical white student attends a school that is 69% white. This is considerably higher than white students’ national share of the enrollment. White students also have only 31% of students who are of other races, on average, in their schools. By this measure, white students are more segregated than any other group. Having limited cross-racial exposure, these students miss out on valuable benefits of such experiences. Children with more exposure to people of other races are less likely to stereotype and more likely to seek out diverse experiences as adults. However, I’m encouraged by the fact that white isolation has decreased in recent years, as the public school enrollment has become more diverse.",2,https://theconversation.com/what-school-segregation-looks-like-in-the-us-today-in-4-charts-120061,FALSE,
1271,A giant leap for humankind – future Moon missions will include diverse astronauts and more partners,"As NASA celebrates the 50th anniversary of the historic Moon landing with a live TV broadcast and events, there is a focus on recognizing the contributions of the thousands of men and women who made the Apollo 11 mission possible. This year is particularly significant for the legacy of the Apollo program because of the president’s Space Policy Directive 1, which tasks NASA with returning to the Moon by 2024. This time, the mandate requires establishing a permanent lunar base and advancing space exploration to Mars and across the solar system. As a space law and policy professor, I see positive differences with this new goal compared to the earlier space race: a focus on international cooperation, industry and astronaut diversity to achieve sustainable space exploration. While the presidential proclamation calls for returning American astronauts to the Moon, NASA is no longer in it alone. Directive 1 invites commercial and international partnerships. NASA’s return mission will also include both men and women astronauts, leading to the first woman to step on the Moon. I think this inclusive vision invokes a refreshingly equitable interpretation toward human footprints on the Moon and the collective role of humanity in space. Already companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin and Made in Space have partnered with NASA to provide advanced technologies and services necessary to extend life in space. This includes 3D printing and space transportation. In June, NASA announced new opportunities for civilian astronauts and commercial scientific research on the ISS National Lab. Currently, more than 50 companies engage in research and development for a range of commercial, pharmaceutical and educational purposes. These are positive steps, but what the space sector still needs to improve for space exploration is to equalize the gender imbalance in NASA and STEM fields. This is more challenging because women comprise only 20% of space industry employees and 30% of the workforce in STEM research and development globally. Women are further excluded when the equipment, like smaller-sized spacesuits, isn’t designed for them. But this challenge also presents an opportunity for government and industry to work together to close the gender data and technology gap. This is necessary to ensure the requisite space hardware and technologies exist for a new diverse body of NASA and civilian astronauts. The benefits of fostering an inclusive framework for space exploration are already recognized. Both the U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs and NASA state that innovation and diversity drive exploration. The 20-year old International Space Station, for instance, is a successful experiment in international cooperation in space and science. No one nation could have accomplished this alone. Inclusivity is particularly visible in the U.N. Office for Outer Space Affairs’ programs and language, where “humankind” is used instead of “mankind.” Its Space for Women Project seeks to ensure that space benefits everyone and that women play an active and equal role in space and exploration. Fairness and inclusion are, after all, important aspects of a stable society. Inclusivity also supports international policymaking at the state level. Russia recently decided to join U.N. efforts to define guidelines of behavior in space to avoid being excluded from rule-making. Back in 2016, the European Space Agency proposed a Moon Village to promote international harmony. The European Space Agency’s vision is to unite interested parties and nations to establish a sustainable Moon base for science and commercial purposes. In April, SOM, an urban planning company, and MIT presented the first concept design for this village.",2,https://theconversation.com/a-giant-leap-for-humankind-future-moon-missions-will-include-diverse-astronauts-and-more-partners-117064,TRUE,
1272,The forgotten history of segregated swimming pools and amusement parks,"Summers often bring a wave of childhood memories: lounging poolside, trips to the local amusement park, languid, steamy days at the beach. These nostalgic recollections, however, aren’t held by all Americans. Municipal swimming pools and urban amusement parks flourished in the 20th century. But too often, their success was based on the exclusion of African Americans. As a social historian who has written a book on segregated recreation, I have found that the history of recreational segregation is a largely forgotten one. But it has had a lasting significance on modern race relations. Swimming pools and beaches were among the most segregated and fought over public spaces in the North and the South. White stereotypes of blacks as diseased and sexually threatening served as the foundation for this segregation. City leaders justifying segregation also pointed to fears of fights breaking out if whites and blacks mingled. Racial separation for them equaled racial peace. These fears were underscored when white teenagers attacked black swimmers after activists or city officials opened public pools to blacks. For example, whites threw nails at the bottom of pools in Cincinnati, poured bleach and acid in pools with black bathers in St. Augustine, Florida, and beat them up in Philadelphia. In my book, I describe how in the late 1940s there were major swimming pool riots in St. Louis, Baltimore, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles. Despite civil rights statutes in many states, the law did not come to African Americans’ aid. In Charlotte, North Carolina, for example, the chairman of the Charlotte Park and Recreation Commission in 1960 admitted that “all people have a right under law to use all public facilitates including swimming pools.” But he went on to point out that “of all public facilities, swimming pools put the tolerance of the white people to the test.” His conclusion: “Public order is more important than rights of Negroes to use public facilities.” In practice, black swimmers were not admitted to pools if the managers felt “disorder will result.” Disorder and order defined accessibility, not the law. Fears of disorder also justified segregation at amusement parks, which were built at the end of trolley or ferry lines beginning in 1890. This was particularly true at park swimming pools, dance halls and roller-skating rinks, which were common facilities within parks. These spaces provoked the most intense fears of racial mixing among young men and women. Scantily clad bathers flirting and playing raised the specter of interracial sex and some feared for young white women’s safety. Some white owners and customers believed that recreation only could be kept virtuous and safe by excluding African Americans and promoting a sanitized and harmonious vision of white leisure. However, my work shows that these restrictions simply perpetuated racial stereotypes and inequality. This recreational segregation had a heartbreaking impact on African American children. For example, in his 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King Jr. described the tears in his daughter’s eyes when “she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children.”Major civil rights campaigns targeted amusement park segregation, most notably at Gwynn Oak Park in Baltimore and Glen Echo Park outside of Washington, D.C. And other parks, such as Fontaine Ferry in Louisville, were sites of major racial clashes when African Americans sought entrance. ",2,https://theconversation.com/the-forgotten-history-of-segregated-swimming-pools-and-amusement-parks-119586,FALSE,
1274,No African American has won statewide office in Mississippi in 129 years – here’s why,"Mississippi is home to the highest percentage of African Americans of any state in the country. And yet, Mississippi hasn’t elected an African American candidate to statewide office since 1890. That’s 129 years. John Stuart Mill wrote about “the tyranny of the majority” – the idea that an electoral majority will use the political structure to impose its will on the minority population – in his essay “On Liberty” in 1859. Mill could have used the way Mississippi chooses statewide offices as the symbol of this tyranny. Mississippi requires winners to receive more than 50% of the votes. When no one receives a majority, the Mississippi legislature, not the voters, chooses the winner. In late May 2019, four African American Mississippians sued in federal court to end this practice, which they say was designed to keep black candidates from winning. “The scheme has its basis in racism – an 1890 post-Reconstruction attempt to keep African Americans out of statewide office,” said former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, the chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, a group backing the lawsuit. As a professor of political science who has written about African Americans seeking elected office, I’m especially interested in barriers to minority candidates running for office. Let’s look at what happens when candidates have to win a majority of votes, or compete in large geographical areas – not just in Mississippi, but around the country. One interesting example is Georgia. My co-author, Seth Golden, recently presented his research on county elections in Georgia at an undergraduate political science research symposium. His work shows that at-large districts – where all or most candidates must run city or countywide – were statistically unlikely to provide African American representation. In 2013, Ariel Hart, Jeff Ernsthausen and David Wickert, reporters for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution looked at how at-large districts affected minority representation in Georgia. They found that “more than 100 counties elect at least one commissioner at large, meaning by countywide vote. Sixty percent of voters in those at-large contests are white; 92 percent of commissioners who hold the seats are white.” Our research updates their study, looking at minority voting and representation in several Georgia counties in 2019. Of the six from the AJC that were included in our updated analysis, only one – Rockdale County – has any African American representation on the county commission. Rockdale County has 52% African American population – a majority. Our work and that of others shows that these at-large districts make it harder for minority groups to gain power because it takes more money and organization to win them. The problem isn’t limited to just Mississippi, Georgia or even to the state level. Many cities and counties – including some in California – require candidates to carry a majority of the district in order to win. Even when minorities make up nearly 40% of the electorate, an at-large district can easily produce an all-white council. In fact, the at-large district had been the subject of a landmark Supreme Court case. In 1976, Wiley Bolden, an African American, sued Mobile, Alabama, and its at-large district system which was enacted in 1911. Bolden argued that while 36.2% of the city was black, nobody on the city commission was black, which he said was a violation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Though the Federal District Court and the Court of Appeals agreed with Bolden, the Supreme Court overturned their decision in City of Mobile v. Bolden. By a 6-3 margin, the justices ruled that the 15th Amendment did not give black candidates the right to be elected, and “only purposefully discriminatory denials of the freedom to vote on the basis of race demanded constitutional remedies.”",2,https://theconversation.com/no-african-american-has-won-statewide-office-in-mississippi-in-129-years-heres-why-118319,FALSE,
1275,Most US drug arrests involve a gram or less,"In the long-running television drama “Breaking Bad,” viewers watched the moral devolution of Walter White, a cancer-stricken high school chemistry teacher who tried to provide for the financial future of his family by cooking methamphetamine. He changed from a good man caught in a bad situation into a sociopathic offender who ruled over a crystal meth empire.Walter White represents the sort of drug offender who justifies serious punishment. He earned enormous amounts of money by producing and distributing vast amounts of harmful drugs. U.S. drug laws are designed as if every offender was a dedicated criminal like Walter White, treating the possession or sale of even small quantities of illegal drugs as a serious crime requiring serious punishment. I have studied the war on drugs for a number of years. Last December, my colleagues and I published a study on U.S. drug arrests, showing that roughly two out of every three arrests by state and local law enforcement target small-time offenders who are carrying less than a gram of illegal drugs. Virtually all states treat as felonies the sale of any amount of illegal drugs. The thinking behind these laws is that you cannot catch the big fish without catching some minnows as well. Many states also treat the mere possession of any amount of a hard drugs, such as cocaine, heroin or meth/amphetamine, as a felony. Previous studies of quantities in drug arrests have principally drawn on two sets of data: periodic surveys of prison inmates, and traffic stop data collected in response to racial profiling lawsuits. Both data sets are relatively small and somewhat limited. The prisoner surveys make no effort to verify prisoners’ descriptions of their crimes, and the traffic stop data deals with only drugs found in cars.Yet comprehensive data on drug quantities in arrests does exist. The FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System collects this information. NIBRS only began in the early 1990s though, and it is a voluntary reporting program. Police departments do not have to submit data, and most do not. As of 2003, about 20% of police agencies from 29 different states reported data. We wanted to find out how often the police made arrests involving large quantities of drugs. To make things manageable, we narrowed our study to three evenly spaced years, 2004, 2008 and 2012. The resulting data set contained over a million cases, with usable data found in over 700,000 cases. We believe our study is the most comprehensive study of drug arrest quantity undertaken to date. Some previous studies make assumptions about quantity based on whether the person was arrested for simple possession as opposed to possession for sale, but ours was the first study to use NIBRS numbers on drug quantity in a comprehensive way. Our study found that, by and large, state and local police agencies are arresting small fish, not big ones. Two out of three drug offenders arrested by state and local law enforcement possess or sell a gram or less at the time of arrest. Furthermore, about 40% of arrests for hard drug are for trace amounts – a quarter of a gram or less. Because possessing any amount of a hard drug and selling any illegal drug is a felony in virtually every state, the small size of these quantities matter. They suggest that very minor offenders face felony liability. Felony convictions make it difficult for ex-offenders to secure good jobs. They carry many other harmful collateral consequences. There are few truly big, or even medium-sized, offenders in the remaining arrests. Arrests for quantities of hard drugs above five grams range between 15 and 20 percent of all arrests, and arrests for a kilogram or more are less than 1%.",2,https://theconversation.com/most-us-drug-arrests-involve-a-gram-or-less-118440,FALSE,
1276,When America had an open prison – the story of Kenyon Scudder and his ‘prison without walls’,"In a country with mass incarceration, horrific prison conditions and a penal system suffused with racism, some American prison reform activists wistfully look to Scandinavian institutions as beacons of humane prisons. Many Scandinavian countries even have open prisons – minimum security institutions that rely less on force and more on trust. Some don’t even have a locked perimeter, and they emphasize rehabilitation and preparation for a return to society. Back in the U.S., this might seem like an unattainable ideal. But in California, nearly 80 years ago, there was an open prison. As part of our work as human rights researchers who specialize in prisons, we were studying the United Nations resolution on open prisons, which was adopted in 1955 in Geneva. In a meeting prior to this resolution, penal experts discussed open prisons in the U.S., with the American delegate calling them “the contribution of this generation” to modern prison management. Led by a prison reformer named Kenyon Scudder, the California Institution for Men was one of these open prisons. Scudder made the dignified treatment of its prisoners a cornerstone of his approach. Built in 1941 in Chino, California, the California Institution for Men was founded as an experiment in progressive penal reform. At the time, California’s maximum security institutions in San Quentin and Folsom were, as one newspaper put it, “powder kegs ready to explode.” Violence was rampant, particularly between guards and convicts, and California was considered to have one of the most oppressive penal systems in the nation. To alleviate the draconian and overcrowded conditions at San Quentin and Folsom, in 1935 the California state legislature decided to build a new prison. Kenyon J. Scudder, a veteran penologist who had a raft of ideas for how to change a prison system he viewed as archaic and inhumane, was hired to head Chino. Scudder accepted his appointment with conditions: He wanted to be granted the power to select and train the staff, and the autonomy to dictate how much freedom the prisoners could have. The California Institution for Men’s first class included 34 inmates – some who had been previously convicted for violent offenses, along with others who had committed minor offenses. Those first inmates entered an entirely different kind of prison. The California Institution for Men didn’t use terms like “warden” or “guards.” There was the “superintendent” – Scudder – and his “supervisors,” the vast majority of whom were college educated. In fact, Scudder intentionally avoided hiring supervisors who had previously worked in prisons: He didn’t want staff members with punitive mindsets. Instead of relying on batons and guns, he trained this new staff in judo for self-defense. Weapons were reserved for absolute emergencies, and Scudder emphasized the development of conflict resolution skills. Those being held wouldn’t have their identities reduced to a number. They could choose their own clothing and which jobs to do and what to study. Their cells had locks, but accounts indicate they weren’t used. The original plans for the prison called for a 25-foot perimeter wall with eight gun towers. Scudder put a halt to this; instead, he convinced the Board of Prison Directors to erect only a five-strand barbed wire livestock fence. Scudder encouraged family members to regularly visit, allowed inmates to have picnics on the grounds and even permitted some physical contact. ",2,https://theconversation.com/when-america-had-an-open-prison-the-story-of-kenyon-scudder-and-his-prison-without-walls-117289,FALSE,
1277,Minorities face more obstacles to a lifesaving organ transplant,"Patients who experience organ failure need a transplant to improve their odds of survival and to achieve a better quality of life. However, getting an organ transplant is often accompanied by several challenges, many of which can be attributed to factors like the state of an individual’s living circumstances, their economic status and where they were born.As a result, many racial and ethnic minorities, such as African Americans, Latinx individuals and Native Americans, must unjustly wait longer for a much-needed new organ – or never receive one at all because of these barriers to care. Research shows that these disparities are avoidable, especially with changes at the institutional level. Transplant trends from the United Network of Organ Sharing indicate that approximately 113,600 people are in need of a lifesaving solid organ as of June 2019. The majority have been diagnosed with kidney disease and liver disease. The most recent data shows that, in 2016, the rate of kidney failure was highest among minority groups. For example, compared to whites, kidney failure was 9.5 times higher among Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders. Latinx individuals were over 50% more likely to be diagnosed with kidney failure than those who did not identify as Latinx. Although minorities are more likely to be diagnosed with kidney failure, they are less likely to be transplanted. The majority of transplants in the U.S. go to whites. These trends are also evident in groups suffering from liver disease. Asians and Latinx individuals are more likely to be diagnosed with liver failure, but less likely to receive a transplant. A patient has to undergo several steps before they can receive a transplant. These steps include a physician deciding that a transplant is medically suitable, the patient demonstrating interest in a transplant, a referral to a transplant center, completion of a pre-transplant evaluation and identification of a suitable living donor. At each point of the transplant preparation process, there are opportunities for barriers to occur as a result of patient, provider, community and institutional factors. Together, these potentially create disparities in access. Income level may play a role. Patients with organ failure who experience poverty, for instance, may face challenges covering the cost of their insurance co-payments, especially when they do not have comprehensive insurance or private insurance. Literacy issues, such as gaps in formal education or English as a second language, may also impact a patient’s ability to understand the medical terminology involved in their treatment. This would affect their ability to communicate effectively with their providers. Limited knowledge of the benefits of transplantation can also affect patients’ ability to access transplants. Patients who are unaware that transplantation is the preferred treatment may not complete the steps to transplant and instead remain on dialysis. Providers can also play a role in limiting access. For example, doctors may not provide patients with the referral they need or wait longer to provide it. Given negative historical experiences, such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, some patients, especially those who have been historically disadvantaged or are currently marginalized, mistrust medical providers. As a result, they are less likely to seek medical assistance or trust that their providers are giving them accurate information. Also, patients who report experiences of discrimination by their medical providers are less likely to seek transplantation. They may be discouraged from seeking further medical care because they expect poor treatment by providers. ",2,https://theconversation.com/minorities-face-more-obstacles-to-a-lifesaving-organ-transplant-115038,FALSE,
1278,23% of young Black women now identify as bisexual," Assistant Professor, Sociology, University of California Santa Barbara Professor and Chair of Sociology, Barnard College The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.View all partnersSince 1972, social scientists have studied the General Social Survey to chart the complexities of social change in the United States. The survey, which is conducted every couple of years, asks respondents their attitudes on topics ranging from race relations to drug use. In 2008, the survey started including a question on sexual identity. As sociologists who study sexuality, we’ve noticed how more and more women are reporting that they’re bisexual. But in the most recent survey, one subset stood out: 23% of black women in the 18 to 34 age group identified as bisexual – a proportion that’s nearly three times higher than it was a decade ago.What forces might be fueling this shift? And what can learn from it?In the 10 years that the General Social Survey has included a question on sexual identity, rates of identification among gay men, lesbian women and bisexual men in the U.S. haven’t changed much.Bisexual identifying women, on the other hand, account for virtually all of the growth among those who say they’re lesbian, gay or bisexual. Of all of the women who responded to the 2018 survey, more than 1 in 18 identified as bisexual. One decade ago, only 1 in 65 did.The most dramatic shift among bisexual identifying women is happening among young people. In the 2018 sample, more than 1 in 8 women from the ages of 18 to 34 identified as bisexual. There were more than twice as many young female bisexuals as there were young lesbians, gay men and bisexual men combined.That’s a large shift – and it all happened in a relatively short period of time.Add race to the figures and you’ll see that young black women, in particular, account for a disproportionate share of this shift.A few years ago, we wrote about how approximately 18% of young black women identified as lesbian or bisexual in the 2016 General Social Survey sample. That rate was more than two times higher than for white women or other racial groups – and almost four times higher than for men of any racial group.By 2018, more than 25% of young black women identified as lesbian or bisexual. And the majority of that change can be accounted for by bisexual-identifying black women.Data like these help us to establish a shift is occurring, but they don’t really explain why it’s happening. Exploring the “why” requires different methods of analysis, and existing studies – like Mignon Moore’s research on gay identity and relationships among black women – can provide some clues.But beyond this, other demographic research shows that black women have led the way in other trends related to gender.Consider the gender gap in college attendance. As early as 1980, black women began to outpace black men in completion of a four-year college degree. It wasn’t until a decade later that white women started earning college degrees at a higher clip than white men.And in the first half of the 20th century, more unmarried black women started having children. Eventually, more unmarried white women started having children, too. Perhaps when it comes to sexuality, black women are also ahead of the curve. If that’s the case – and if this trend continues – we might expect women of other races to follow suit.Cultural forces might also play a role.Sociologists Emma Mishel, Paula England, Jessie Ford and Mónica L. Caudillo also analyzed the General Social Survey. Rather than study sexual identities, they studied sexual behavior. Yet they discovered a similar pattern: Young black women were more likely to engage in same-sex sexual behavior than women and men in other racial and age groups. ",1,https://theconversation.com/23-of-young-black-women-now-identify-as-bisexual-116116,TRUE,
1280,Political cartoonists are out of touch – it’s time to make way for memes,"The New York Times came under fire after a political cartoon appeared in print on April 25, 2019. In it, a blind President Donald Trump, wearing sunglasses and a yarmulke, is being led by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who’s depicted as a guide dog with a Star of David around his neck. The Times later issued an apology, called the cartoon “anti-Semitic,” and announced that it would discipline the editor and enhance its bias training. The newspaper also indicated that it will no longer use the syndication service that supplied the cartoon. To some, this might appear to be a significant move. But it fails to address larger problems with editorial cartooning – namely, the ranks of cartoonists are too white, too old and too male. As a scholar who studies social media and memetics, I wonder if political cartoons are the best way to connect with today’s diverse readership. Many crave searing, cutting political commentary – and they’re finding it in internet memes. What if internet memes were elevated – not only as a serious art form but also as an important form of editorializing that’s worthy of appearing alongside the traditional cartoon? Newspapers and magazine editors still rely on political cartoons to capture readers’ attention and to deliver some lighter material alongside heavier news stories. The need for this content isn’t going away, nor is the need for forms of communication that challenge governments and open up important public discussions – a role the political cartoonist has long held. But in many ways, political cartooning can seem like a relic of a bygone era. A 2015 Washington Post report also underscored the lack of diversity among political cartoonists in newsrooms, noting how not a single black individual was employed as one. Then there’s journalism’s top prize, the Pulitzer. An extensive 2016 study by the Columbia Journalism Review unveiled how the ranks of editorial cartoon Pulitzer winners have been largely dominated by white men. Since 1922, only two women have received a Pulitzer in this category, and it wasn’t awarded to an African American until this year, when syndicated cartoonist Darrin Bell became the first to receive the award. One roadblock to diversifying the ranks of political cartoonists is that the potential pool of candidates is limited. Few have the technical skill to draw pen-and-ink drollery, the common style for political cartooning. Another has to do with industry trends. A 2017 study found that many newspapers don’t even employ an editorial cartoonist anymore. Instead, they’ve come to rely on less expensive syndication services. Given the important function of the political cartoon, simply discontinuing their use serves no one, including publishers. But the field’s high barrier to entry – not to mention the time it takes to actually produce a cartoon – clearly poses a problem. A new, quicker and more inclusive solution to political commentary is needed. The political cartoon is technically a meme, which is simply any piece of culture that can be copied or replicated. A different sort of political cartoon, the internet meme, dominates on social media. Often crudely constructed, they’re far easier to create than, say, your typical New Yorker political cartoon. Many simply appear as a photo with text overlay, something that can be made within a few minutes via an online meme generator or mobile app. But the lack of technical skill needed means that they’re democratic in nature – and those that resonate the best will get shared the most and rise to the top. ",2,https://theconversation.com/political-cartoonists-are-out-of-touch-its-time-to-make-way-for-memes-116471,FALSE,
1282,The US white majority will soon disappear forever,"Since the settlement of Jamestown in 1607 and the start of the Colonial period, the U.S. has been predominantly white. But the white share of the U.S. population has been dropping, from a little under 90% in 1950 to 60% in 2018. It will likely drop below 50% in another 25 years. White nationalists want America to be white again. But this will never happen. America is on its way to becoming predominantly nonwhite. The U.S. federal government uses two questions to measure a person’s race and ethnicity. One asks if the person is of Hispanic origin, and the other asks about the person’s race. A person is defined as white if he or she identifies as being only white and non-Hispanic. A minority, or nonwhite, person is anyone who is not solely non-Hispanic white. Whites were not the first people to settle in what is now the U.S. The first immigrants were a people known today as American Indians and Alaskan natives, also commonly referred to as Native Americans. They arrived in North America around 14,000 years ago. When Christopher Columbus arrived in America in 1492, there were around 10 million American Indians living in the lands north of Mexico. But by the 1800s their numbers had dwindled to about 1 million. They are now the smallest race group in the U.S. The first sizable stream of immigrants to what is now the U.S. were whites from England. Their arrival at Plymouth in 1620 in search of religious freedom marked the start of large waves of whites coming to this land. When the U.S. was established as a country in 1776, whites comprised roughly 80% of the population. The white share rose to 90% in 1920, where it stayed until 1950. The proportion of whites in the U.S. population started to decline in 1950. It fell to gradually over the years, eventually reaching just over 60% in 2018 – the lowest percentage ever recorded. Although the majority of the U.S. population today is still white, nonwhites account for more than half of the populations of Hawaii, the District of Columbia, California, New Mexico, Texas and Nevada. And, in the next 10 to 15 years, these half dozen “majority-minority” states will likely be joined by as many as eight other states where whites now make up less than 60% of the population. Census Bureau projections show that the U.S. population will be “majority-minority” sometime between 2040 and 2050. Our research suggests that this will happen around 2044. Indeed, in 2020, there are projected to be more nonwhite children than white children in the U.S.The nonwhite population is growing more rapidly than the white population. Minorities accounted for 92% of the U.S. population growth between 2010 and 2018, with Latinos comprising just under half of the nation’s overall growth. Why are the numbers of white people declining, and why are nonwhite numbers increasing? The answer is basic demography: births, deaths and immigration. White women have an average of 1.7 children over their lifetimes, while Latina women average 2.2. The total fertility rates of blacks, Asians and American Indians are in between. So whites have fewer births than all nonwhite groups. There are also big differences in age structure. Sixty-two percent of Latinas 15 years of age or older are of childbearing age. Only 42% of white women fall into this group. Latinos also have lower mortality rates than whites. Demographers call this the “epidemiological paradox.”",2,https://theconversation.com/the-us-white-majority-will-soon-disappear-forever-115894,TRUE,
1283,"At work, women and people of color still have not broken the glass ceiling","Did you notice the race of your barista this morning? What about the sex of your mechanic?I have observed that when I shop, most of the employees look like me. When I go to work, most of my co-workers look different from me. If my observations about occupational segregation hold across the labor force, women and people of color like myself have yet to break the glass ceiling. So, I sought evidence of continuing barriers to equal employment for members of historically marginalized groups. My new study, presented at the Midwest Political Science Association Conference on April 5, shows that barriers indeed remain. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission regulates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. This statute outlaws discrimination, segregation and other employment actions motivated by sex, race, color, religion or national origin. As part of its regulatory activity, the EEOC requires private employers with more than 100 employees to annually complete the EEO-1 form. This form asks employers to describe the race and sex of all employees, grouped by a number of occupational categories. I analyzed the high-level occupations of “professionals” – which includes engineers, lawyers, doctors and teachers – and “officials and managers.” I grouped all other occupations, such as “craft workers” and “laborers,” together, because they occupy lower positions on the career ladder, despite spanning industries. My study plotted demographic trends in these groups from 1996 to 2016. I then compared each demographic group’s representation in the broader labor force. White men have historically and disproportionately held official, managerial and professional occupations. But, between 1996 and 2016, the proportion of jobs held by this group declined across all occupations. I believe that some of this is due to the increasing percentage of people of color in the overall U.S. population. Trends in white women’s employment representation over the last 20 years suggest that Title VII is having an impact among this group. In 2016, white women made up 32% of the U.S. labor force. Although their representation in official and managerial occupations is a bit lower, at 29.8%, their numbers have been increasing.White women are overrepresented in professional jobs, occupying 38.2% of positions. However, their share of these jobs is declining, possibly because more white women are being promoted to official and managerial roles. Nonwhite women occupy an intersectional social position, potentially facing unlawful employment barriers based on both their perceived sex and race. My study demonstrates that, like white women, nonwhite women are underrepresented in official and managerial occupations. However, their representation is increasing. In 2016, they were 10.9% of the labor force, but 8.6% of officers and managers. Meanwhile, nonwhite women are overrepresented in professional occupations and their representation is increasing. That suggests to me that they are not being promoted from this level as white women are. In lower-level occupations, like labor and service, nonwhite women are overrepresented, and their representation is increasing. The same is true for nonwhite men. Because the employer submits the EEO-1, employees who work more than one job may be counted multiple times. My research suggests that workers in the “other” occupational category, including those working for minimum wage, are disproportionately nonwhite, and some are likely holding more than one job. ",1,https://theconversation.com/at-work-women-and-people-of-color-still-have-not-broken-the-glass-ceiling-115688,FALSE,
1284,Google’s algorithms discriminate against women and people of colour," Assistant Professor of Digital Cultures, University of Alberta Jonathan Cohn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. University of Alberta provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation CA. University of Alberta provides funding as a member of The Conversation CA FR. View all partnersAt the start of Black History Month 2019, Google designed its daily changing homepage logo to include an image of African American activist Sojourner Truth, the great 19th century abolitionist and women’s rights activist. But what would Truth say about Google’s continual lack of care and respect toward people of colour? While bringing more attention to Sojourner Truth is venerable, Google can do better. As a professor and researcher of digital cultures, I have found that a lack of care and investment by tech companies towards users who are not white and male allows racism and sexism to creep into search engines, social networks and other algorithmic technologies. For instance, when I search for “woman” or “girl” via Google’s image search, the vast majority of results are pictures of thin white women . People of colour are not completely absent, but they are underrepresented on Google’s image search. For example of the first 50 images when searching for “girl,” 46 displayed white girls, three were of Asian girls and only one included a Black girl. These well documented disparities in search engine results are in part due to the dismal low number of Black women working at Google only 1. 2 per cent of their workforce. To make matters worse, Google suggests that I narrow down my search results with adjectives ranging from “attractive” to “skinny” to “pregnant. ” In contrast, when searching for “men” , the first three adjectives are “cartoon,” “hair style” and “old. ” These adjectives may be descriptive, but they also replicate the stereotype that women are primarily valued for their beauty and reproductive organs and men are important for their personality and wisdom. Stereotyping is endemic to most any digital technology like Google that aims to replicate how humans already sort information. Social media researcher and UCLA professor Safiya Noble has written most extensively on this topic. In her book Algorithms of Oppression, she points out that Google suggests racist and sexist search results are the user’s fault since they simply reflect our own cultural assumptions and previous search histories. Noble also illustrates how Google’s algorithms skew their results in ways that prioritize advertisers and the white affluent audiences they are often trying to attract. My research has shown how these biased practices are unthinkingly adopted from earlier industries and technologies dominated by white men. After reading Noble’s work, many of my students decided to test Google out themselves. They found that while the specific searches that Noble performed now lead to reasonable results, many others do not. Google has clearly made a change since Noble conducted her research. Google has not publicly stated why they made this change, but the timing suggests it was in response to Noble’s work. What caught my student’s eye was that Google’s algorithms still appears to favour sexualized images of Latinas and Asian women and girls in both their search results and the images displayed. The student’s informal search results featured scantily clad women and seemed to do so much more than their white counterparts. The racism on Google is certainly not limited to the search result images it displays. It is also evident in its autocomplete function, which tries to guess what exactly you want to search for. ",1,https://theconversation.com/googles-algorithms-discriminate-against-women-and-people-of-colour-112516,FALSE,
1285,Why LeBron James’ I Promise School should be more like LeBron and not shy away from issues of race,"When it comes to dealing with issues of race and social justice, LeBron James has never been shy to speak his mind. For instance, in a recent HBO series, “The Shop,” LeBron laments how in the NFL, “they got a bunch of old white men owning teams and they got that slave mentality.”At a time when issues of race continue to play a prominent role in American society – from police killings of unarmed black men to racial disparities in America’s criminal courts – we find LeBron’s boldness and willingness to speak out on these issues commendable. Which made it surprising to us that plans for a public elementary school in Akron, Ohio that four-time NBA MVP LeBron launched in 2018, to help students who are struggling to stay on track academically, largely ignored how important race is in educational attainment. While we can appreciate the NBA great using his star power and considerable wealth to open a school for children in his hometown who are struggling academically, much like LeBron once was himself, we levy this criticism from our vantage point as scholars and students who study race in education. One of us – Kevin O'Neal Cokley – is an education scholar who has studied and written a book about the psychological and environmental factors that impact black student achievement. Two of us – Nolan Krueger and Marlon L. Bailey – are doctoral students in an educational psychology department.Before we explain why we believe the I Promise School should deal with race more boldly and more explicitly, let us first identify the areas where we believe the school is getting things right. The I Promise School employs “rigorous problem-based, inquiry-oriented learning” that involves having students work together to solve problems. This is good because research has found that black students from low-income families prefer a more communal and collectivist approach to school work, not individualistic competition. Instead of relying on suspensions and expulsions, which tend to disproportionately impact black children, the I Promise School relies on what the school’s leaders refer to as the five “habits of promise.” These are: problem-solving, perspective, partnership, perseverance and perpetual learning. This is especially important given how school suspensions and expulsions lead to higher dropout rates.One of the things that stands out most about the school is its “I Promise Family Plan.” This plan offers a range of supports and resources for students and families. The resources include a food pantry, a barbershop and hair salon, and help for parents to improve English comprehension and earn their GED. This family plan is also designed to help remove barriers to graduation. For example, providing free uniforms, a free bicycle and helmet, a computer to every student and an onsite laundry facility may help families who are short on cash get the things they need. This lessens the likelihood that children will be teased and bullied in school, which would create a negative school climate. Especially noteworthy is the school’s treatment of fathers. Instead of assuming that fathers are not involved in the lives of their kids, the I Promise School has a Father’s Walk Day in which fathers are formally welcomed to the school. The I Promise School is praised as being the first of its kind because it will have an extended school year that lasts from July to May. It also features longer school days from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Longer school days have been shown to promote attendance and positive academic outcomes.",2,https://theconversation.com/why-lebron-james-i-promise-school-should-be-more-like-lebron-and-not-shy-away-from-issues-of-race-104528,FALSE,
1286,"How US tax laws discriminate against women, gays and people of color","What and how a country chooses to tax says a lot about its values. A core value built into the DNA of America, for example, is equality. And in practice, Americans imagine their country to be more equal than it is and strive to treat every member of society that way. But, as I learned in researching my book “Our Selfish Tax Laws: Toward Tax Reform That Mirrors Our Better Selves,” America’s tax laws paint a different picture. Instead of reflecting a society constantly striving to better itself, U.S. tax laws are mired in the past. They reinforce the social and economic marginalization of women, racial and ethnic minorities, the poor, members of the LGBTQ community, immigrants and people with disabilities. For instance, U.S. tax law has chosen marriage as the defining characteristic of all individuals when deciding how income tax returns should be filed. That is, most Americans file their 1040s either as “single” individuals or as “married filing jointly.” But even when taxpayers in these two groups have equal incomes, they aren’t necessarily treated equally.Among married couples, our tax laws give preferential treatment to those whose marriages comport with “tradition” – that is, with one spouse working in the labor market and the other in the home. These couples are rewarded because they pay less tax than if they earned the same amount but hadn’t married. In contrast, those in “modern” marriages – with each spouse working outside the home – often suffer marriage penalties. These couples pay more tax than if they earned the same amount but hadn’t married. And “single” taxpayers never receive a bonus but instead often pay more tax than a married couple with the same income. While the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed in 2017 temporarily mitigates the marriage penalties for some two-earner married couples, it fails to address other aspects of the tax laws that contribute to the marriage penalty. Low-income married couples, for example, are still hit with significant marriage penalties under the Earned Income Tax Credit. At the same time, the act increased the bonuses paid to single-earner married couples that provide financial encouragement for one spouse – traditionally, the wife – to stay at home. To take a simple example, an individual making US$100,000 with no dependents who takes the standard deduction would see a 43 percent reduction in taxes in 2018 by marrying a stay-at-home spouse but would have seen a reduction of only about 38 percent in 2017. The penalty for not marrying increased correspondingly. The tax treatment of employment discrimination awards is another example. Traditionally, personal injury awards have been excluded from taxable income. Courts differed on whether employment discrimination awards were covered by this exclusion, with some courts allowing these awards to be recovered tax-free and others requiring them to be taxed. In 1996, Congress stepped in to end litigation over this issue and decided to take away the exclusion, thus requiring workers to report an employment discrimination award on their federal taxes. Disadvantaged groups are the ones most likely to suffer from employment discrimination. The top categories of discrimination reported by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission include race, disability, sex, age and national origin. Members of the LGBTQ community also suffer discrimination, but legal protection is not available for them in every state. All of these groups bear significant monetary and psychological costs as a result of employment discrimination. The awards they are given are intended to help mitigate those costs – to make them whole. Such awards should not be taxed any more than the awards that make victims of car accidents whole for their injuries, which are still covered by the exclusion. ",1,https://theconversation.com/how-us-tax-laws-discriminate-against-women-gays-and-people-of-color-115283,FALSE,
1287,"Growing Up African in Australia: racism, resilience and the right to belong","Review: Growing Up African in Australia, edited by Maxine Beneba Clarke, Magan Magan and Ahmed YussufFor many African-diaspora people in Australia, belonging means masking yourself. To fit in is to curate one’s Africanness and one’s blackness. You teach yourself to see-saw between the splitting identities of who Australia needs you to be, and who you really are. You just never simply are. A new collection of writing curated by Australian writer Maxine Beneba Clarke explores this state of conditional belonging. This is the latest in a series of “Growing Up” anthologies published by Black Inc.Clarke, with the assistance of Ahmed Yussuf and Magan Magan, has put together a nuanced collection that illustrates the diversity of Africanness and how it is experienced here. In her introduction, Clarke highlights the perverseness of the slave trade and the insidiousness of colonialism, upsetting the dominant perception that Africans only arrived in Australia recently. They did not. The first recorded African-diaspora settlers were convicts who landed with the First Fleet in 1788. They were 11 in number and quite involved in the colonial project of displacing Aboriginal people from their land. That’s where the conversation begins – as it should. The phrase African-diaspora people is deliberately used instead of “Africans”, to include people of Afro descent who do not necessarily “come from” Africa. From Brazil, to Guyana to Jamaica, Africa ceases to be a geographical space and becomes an embodied experience. People of Afro-descent live everywhere across the globe and carry different histories, belief systems and ideological convictions. What often unites them in Australia, as the book establishes, is the singularity with which they are classed. “The Africans”. Growing Up African is divided into six sections, but there are clear themes throughout: displacement, isolation, racism, resilience, survival, and the fight for the right – or privilege – to call Australia home. Read more: Speaking with: Author Anita Heiss on Growing Up Aboriginal in Australia In the first section, contributors explore their “roots” and their childhoods in Australian backyards and playgrounds. They share memories of establishing connection with the new country and the longing for the other home – the one they left behind. Many reflect on the joy and gratitude they felt upon their arrival in Australia. Others explore the extent to which meaningless wars and conflict ripped their lives apart, forcing them to abandon homes, friends and families – and the resulting trauma, grief and loss. Nyadol Nyuon, an industrial lawyer in Melbourne, writes:The shameless indifference of war means that families become strangers. War reduces the most intimate relationships to meaningless connections […] [it] not only separated me from my grandmother; I was also separated from my mother and knew little of my father. I grew up with fragments of who they are, the broken links of kinships. Relationships with the new country are complicated not only by the shock of the newness of a different space, but also by Australia’s history. It is within this colonial context that the Afro-Blackness of African-diaspora Australians is made visible. Here they begin to feel, or are told, that their blackness is a marker of something – something less desirable. The book’s most dominant theme is racism – both overt and covert – and how it punctuates the lives of black people living in Australia. Historically, and still today, skin color has been a marker of difference and a gauge of otherness here. ",2,https://theconversation.com/growing-up-african-in-australia-racism-resilience-and-the-right-to-belong-113121,FALSE,
1288,The bias hiding in your library,"For many years, the Library of Congress categorized many of its books under a controversial subject heading: “Illegal aliens.”But then, on March 22, 2016, the library made a momentous decision, announcing that it was canceling the subject heading “Illegal aliens” in favor of “Noncitizens” and “Unauthorized immigration.”However, the decision was overturned a few months later, when the House of Representatives ordered the library to continue using the term “illegal alien.” They said they decided this in order to duplicate the language of federal laws written by Congress. This was the first time Congress ever intervened over a Library of Congress subject heading change. Even though many librarians and the American Library Association opposed Congress’s decision, “Illegal aliens” remains the authorized subject heading today. Cataloging and classification are critical to any library. Without them, finding materials would be impossible. However, there are biases that can result in patrons not getting the materials they need. I have worked in university libraries for over 20 years, and I’d like to highlight some issues of bias that you need to be aware of in order to find what you’re looking for. The U.S. does not have an official national library. However, the Library of Congress fills this role on several fronts. Many libraries across the U.S. adopt policies established by the Library of Congress, such as their call numbers and subjects for cataloging books. Its subject headings system is one of the most popular in the world. Subjects are used to assign call numbers, so that items on similar topics are grouped together. An item will have only one call number, but it can have multiple subjects. Using a specific system ensures consistency. For example, imagine how many variations of “William Shakespeare” you might have to search for if libraries did not use the authorized term “Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616.”In April 2018, I presented my research into issues of library bias in the Library of Congress Classification and Subject Headings at NCORE, the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education in New Orleans. Today, when I search for subjects containing “women” or “men,” the results are unbalanced. There are 4,065 subject terms containing “women” and only 444 containing “men.”One example of bias is subjects containing the word “astronauts.” Women are designated with “Women astronauts” and “African American women astronauts,” but there is no subject heading for male astronauts. A book about astronauts who are men would have the general subject “Astronauts,” unless the racial identity prompted the use of a subject like “Hispanic American astronauts” or “Indian astronauts.” Likewise, a book about Russian astronauts would have a geographic subdivision added: “Astronauts – Soviet Union” instead of “Russian astronauts.” Without gender, race or geographic qualifications, “Astronauts” can be assumed to mean white American men in terms of library subjects. Another exercise I did was to search for professions that are traditionally perceived as female. Nurses, for example, were divided equitably, with subjects for both “Male nurses” and “Female nurses.” However, under “Prostitutes,” there was only a “Male prostitute” subject heading, revealing the generic assumption that most prostitutes are female. This is not to say that there aren’t positive changes occurring. For example, in the late 1970s, “Afro-Americans” replaced “Negroes.” This was in turn replaced by “African Americans” or “Blacks” in 2000. In 2001, “People with mental disabilities” replaced “Mentally handicapped” and “Retarded persons.” ",2,https://theconversation.com/the-bias-hiding-in-your-library-111951,FALSE,
1289,Does most of your paycheck go to rent? That may be hurting your health,"New data on health across the U.S. shows that high housing costs are harming Americans’ health – and that some communities are affected more than others. The 2019 County Health Rankings, an annual collaborative report from the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, shows that 11 percent of U.S. households are severely burdened by housing costs. This means that more than 800,000 households spend at least half of their income on housing. In communities with high housing costs, residents rate their health as lower, are less likely to be able to purchase enough quality and nutritious foods, and have higher rates of child poverty. As a health researcher, this is a theme that I have seen in studies over and over again. While many communities face high housing costs, these burdens are not universally shared. Renters are more likely than homeowners to spend more than half of their paycheck on housing. The costs of homeownership have improved over the past few years, but housing costs for renters have not. There are also racial differences. More than 1 in 10 white households spend more than half of their income on housing, with a median income of US$56,000. But among households headed by blacks, the median income is $33,000 – and about 1 in 4 black households experience these housing costs burdens. Another key finding from the County Health Rankings report is that segregated communities with more households headed by black residents are twice as likely to face severe housing cost burdens than white households. Why are black Americans more likely to spend so much of their incomes on housing? One reason is that black neighborhoods were targeted in a process called redlining, especially between the 1930s and 1965. Banks and other lenders excluded black communities from favorable loans and charged higher interest rates on mortgages, leading to higher housing costs – even when homes were valued less than similar homes in white communities. Redlining is not explicitly practiced in the same way today, but its damage and discrimination remains – such as how banks targeted black homeowners with subprime loans. The consequences of this became clear in the 2008 recession, when black homeowners suffered worse outcomes compared to white homeowners. These practices led to higher foreclosure rates and steeper declines in home values during and after the recession, limiting opportunities for black communities to build wealth through homeownership. There is a powerful relationship between housing and health. When people pay too much for housing, they must make tough choices between paying their rent or mortgage or paying for food, medicine and other resources that support their health. In 2015, households that are burdened by housing costs spent 53 percent less on health care, food and transportation combined, compared to households that do not spend more than half of their income on housing. To afford housing, some families spend less on food, do not buy enough food, or buy less nutritious and cheaper food. These families may also live in homes with structural deficits and other inadequacies, where they are at higher risk for health conditions like lead paint poisoning and asthma. Research shows that segregated communities are more likely to be exposed to more threats to their health. For example, a study published in March showed that black and Hispanic populations are exposed to 56 percent and 63 percent more air pollution compared to white residents, even though white residents are more likely to contribute to pollution. ",2,https://theconversation.com/does-most-of-your-paycheck-go-to-rent-that-may-be-hurting-your-health-113432,FALSE,
1290,Skilled blue-collar jobs are growing – though women aren’t getting them,"In the press, the phrase “blue collar” is often used as shorthand for white working-class men. The visibility of this specific slice of the workforce has risen significantly since the 2016 election, when white working-class voters were frequently cited as key to Trump’s success. The president’s rhetoric has mixed blue-collar advocacy with more specific appeals to the white working class, playing on feelings of societal neglect and increased competition with nonwhite workers. Our new data analysis, published in March, looks at employment data for skilled craft and trade workers, the relatively privileged slice of the blue-collar labor market, including carpenters, mechanics, plumbers and more. For those in the workforce without an advanced degree, a craft job is something of a gold standard. These are among the highest-paid and most stable blue-collar jobs. Between 2011 and 2015, the average yearly income within these skilled craft and trades jobs was just over US$45,000. Compare that to an average income of $24,539 for laborers, who perform largely unskilled manual tasks, often within the same worksites as craft positions. So who is getting these high-paying blue-collar jobs? And to what degree do the data support the media narrative? Our analysis reveals that the craft workforce is racially diverse and geographically varied, but overwhelmingly male-dominated. Using the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s 2016 records, we analyzed how race, geography and other factors influence craft employment patterns. We looked at representation rates for black, white and Hispanic men, based on the number of craft jobs held by a group relative to that group’s participation in state labor markets. For instance, since black men made up 10.2 percent of craft workers in New Jersey, but only 5.6 percent of the state labor force, then we can say that they are 81.4 percent overrepresented in these jobs in New Jersey. Other racial and ethnic groups were not included in our analysis, due to their low overall representation in craft labor positions in most states. With the exception of Hawaii, white men are employed in craft positions in all other states at substantially higher rates than their presence in state labor forces. White men have the highest relative employment rates in craft jobs in states on the northeastern seaboard: Delaware, New York, Maryland, New Jersey and Rhode Island. Hispanic men are also largely overrepresented in craft jobs, although their degree of overrepresentation varies more than white men’s across states. In Louisiana, for example, Hispanic men comprise 3 percent of the labor market, yet they hold 13.9 percent of craft jobs, an overrepresentation rate of 366 percent. Black men are overrepresented in skilled craft jobs in all but four states. Like Hispanic men, they have a high peak representation in North Dakota, driven, we believe, by the fossil fuel industry boom. Where are the women? The short answer: not working in craft jobs. Nationwide, women are 80 percent underrepresented in craft jobs. The best state for access to craft jobs for women is New Hampshire, with 77 percent underrepresentation. Most states, however, hover closer to Montana, which posts the worst rate of 93 percent underrepresentation. Women’s representation also differs from the racial pattern for men. Hispanic women held the most access, followed next by black women. White women were least likely to be employed in craft positions.",1,https://theconversation.com/skilled-blue-collar-jobs-are-growing-though-women-arent-getting-them-112660,FALSE,
1291,Beyond blackface: How college yearbooks captured protest and change,"Ever since a photograph surfaced of someone in blackface – and another dressed in a Ku Klux Klan robe – on the medical college yearbook page of Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam in February, efforts to scour college yearbooks have focused on finding similarly racist imagery.USA Today, for instance, sent 78 reporters to page through more than 900 college yearbooks from the 1970s and ‘80s. The newspaper not only discovered photographs of students dressed in KKK robes and blackface, but also at mock lynchings and other blatant “displays of racism.”This focus on the racist reveling of college graduates from yesteryear who are today’s power elite is justified. However, as one who has studied college yearbooks – and who has written a book about going to college in the sixties – I believe this narrow focus on racist imagery obscures a similarly important element of college yearbooks that began to appear during a critical turning point for higher education in the United States. One of my biggest concerns with the current focus on racist imagery in college yearbooks is that in the search for images of blackface, journalists and others are overlooking the importance of the faces of black students. Black representation is important to consider because it wasn’t until the latter half of the 20th century that many of America’s colleges and universities began to accept black students. Because of the topic of my book, I’ve mostly studied yearbooks from the 1960s – some 20 years before Northam graduated from medical school. During this time period, in the Southeastern Conference – where a Confederate legacy still loomed – the first African-American student on a varsity basketball team was Perry Wallace of Vanderbilt during the 1967-68 season when he was a sophomore. Wallace appears on five different pages of the 1969 edition of The Vanderbilt Commodore, the college yearbook at Vanderbilt University. Perry majored in electrical engineering. He graduated from Columbia Law School and went on to become a distinguished law professor at George Washington University. The 1968 and 1969 editions of The Kentuckian – the college yearbook at the University of Kentucky where I teach – are also interesting case studies. The University of Kentucky is home of the first African-Americans to play football in the Southeastern Conference: Greg Page and Nate Northington, later joined by Wilbur Hackett and Houston Hogg. The 1968 edition of the university’s yearbook – The Kentuckian – focused on a team tragedy – Page’s death. “Page had lain paralyzed for over a month due to an injury suffered in preseason practice,” an entry in the yearbook states. “But as it had to be, football continued.”The appearance of black students in college yearbooks during this time period serves as a historical reminder that even though many colleges had become racially desegregated earlier, campus activities were still often racially exclusive. Black students were first admitted to the University of Kentucky in 1949 but were not allowed to participate in many student activities until much later – 1967 in the case of varsity sports. That’s a long delay. It indicates that admission did not necessarily mean full citizenship within the campus community. My other concern about the focus on racist imagery is that it distracts from the fact that, particularly during the late 1960s, college yearbooks helped chronicle an era of student protest and campus activism. Sometimes, college yearbook editors deliberately put images of traditional campus events alongside images of demonstrations and protests.",2,https://theconversation.com/beyond-blackface-how-college-yearbooks-captured-protest-and-change-111419,FALSE,
995,Black candidates can win in swing districts,"During the 2020 presidential election, there was a lot of discussion about what makes an electable candidate. Is it someone who is moderate? A candidate who can turn out the base? Do other attributes of the candidate matter? In my research, I looked at one specific characteristic of potential electability: the candidate’s race. Conventional wisdom previously held that Black Democratic candidates struggled to win swing congressional districts due to racial prejudice among white voters. As a result, they were encouraged to run instead in districts considered safe because most of their constituents were Black and were strongly Democratic. In 2018, however, multiple Black Democratic candidates ran – and won – in competitive congressional districts that had high percentages of white voters. Examples of these representatives include Lucy McBath of Georgia and Colin Allred of Texas, both of whom were recently reelected. There were very few Black Republican candidates, only one of whom claimed victory in 2018. Scholars have found that some white voters are unwilling to support a Black candidate, even if that candidate holds similar views. However, many of these voters who hold racially conservative views are likely to vote Republican anyway, so neither a Black Democratic candidate nor a white one would get their votes. Based on these findings – and the success of Black Democratic candidates in 2018 – I wanted to investigate how their performance compared to white candidates in similar districts. I looked at congressional seats that were held by Republicans or were open seats formerly held by Democrats, and focused on the 112 districts where votes for president in 2016 fell within 10% of the national presidential vote. These districts are typically either majority white or have a very large plurality of white voters. In those 112 districts, 11 Black candidates ran in 2018. My statistical analysis found that they did not do worse than white candidates running in similarly competitive districts. Of the 87 non Hispanic white Democrats running, 36 won – or 41. 4%. Six of the 11 Black candidates won, or 54. 5%: McBath and Allred, as well as Jahana Hayes of Connecticut, Lauren Underwood of Illinois, Antonio Delgado of New York and Steven Horsford of Nevada. All six won in districts within 5% of the national presidential vote, the sort of districts where most Democratic victories occurred in 2018. What explains their success? These candidates had extraordinary biographies. For example, Delgado was a Rhodes Scholar, and McBath became a prominent gun control advocate after her son was shot and killed for playing music in a parking lot. This may have allowed these candidates to win despite the racially prejudiced attacks they faced. Nonetheless, these results show that the conventional wisdom that Black Democratic candidates cannot win outside of majority Black districts did not hold in 2018. The 2020 election gave further evidence of Black Democrats’ electability in competitive districts. Each of the six Black representatives who had won these narrowly divided districts in 2018 won reelection in 2020 – even as many of their fellow first term Democratic colleagues lost reelection in similarly competitive districts. This indicates that Democrats can back more diverse candidates without worrying it will cost them at the polls. [The Conversation’s most important election and politics headlines, in our Politics Weekly newsletter. ]While my research focused on district level races, future investigations should look at statewide elections in battleground states as more Black candidates run for U. S. Senate and governor. In the November 2020 elections, Black Democratic candidates such as Jaime Harrison in South Carolina and Mike Espy in Mississippi both lost, but they did better than Joe Biden did in their Republican leaning states. ",2,https://theconversation.com/black-candidates-can-win-in-swing-districts-151980,TRUE,
999,NCAA amateurism appears immune to COVID-19 – despite tide in public support for paying athletes having turned,"Despite the coronavirus pandemic, college sports have mostly chugged along – albeit with cancellations, postponements and pauses in play. While many college athletes are grateful for the opportunity to compete, the pandemic has laid bare just how few basic rights they possess. College athletes are navigating this strange sports season with increased health risks, but with little leverage or say about the conditions under which they’ll play. In contrast, their professional counterparts in leagues such as the NBA, WNBA, MLB and NFL, thanks to their respective unions, actively negotiated special accommodations, health measures, truncated seasons and the ability to opt out of playing. They also continually negotiate their economic rights, such as how their sport’s revenue is split up and the minimum and maximum amounts that players may be paid. Will this unusual season be the one that finally compels the NCAA to grant players broad economic rights, too?The public, it seems, is increasingly on board. According to a newly published study I conducted with Ohio University sports management professor Dave Ridpath, the tide in public opinion – at least when it comes to pay – has already been turning. However, race plays a big role in determining the level of support. In our study, we analyzed survey data that I collected from nearly 4,000 U. S. adults in late 2018 through early 2019. One of the questions we asked respondents was whether college athletes should be allowed to be paid, as athletes, beyond the costs to attend school. Based on our findings, 51% of U. S. adults indicated support for this right by early 2019. This coincides with subsequent results from other polls that indicate rising levels of support for college athletes’ basic economic rights. For example, an October 2019 Seton Hall Sports Poll found that 60% of U. S. adults supported college athletes being allowed to be paid for the use of their names, images and likenesses. Results from an AP NORC survey in December 2019 pegged that support at 66%. Previous research had consistently found that most U. S adults were opposed to college athletes being paid and were even against college athletes being able to negotiate for rights through a union. The rising support for some basic economic rights for college athletes comes at a time when people are paying more attention to the massive financial hauls of some college sports programs, particularly through men’s college football and basketball. These profits have led to enormous salaries for many coaches and administrators. The NCAA has long claimed that college sports would lose their allure if college athletes were paid – that the magic of watching amateurs simply playing for pride while representing a cherished university would disappear, and fans would become less enchanted by college sports. Yet we found that the most passionate sports fans were actually the most likely to support the idea of permitting college athletes to be paid. Race, however, does seem to influence respondents’ support for college athletes’ economic rights. In our study, the odds for white adults strongly agreeing that college athletes should be allowed to be paid were 36% lower than those for nonwhite adults. When we zeroed in on Black and white respondents, we found that the odds for Black adults strongly agreeing with payment allowances were two and a half times those of whites. Why might this be the case? It could have to do with the way race and class are intertwined with amateurism. ",2,https://theconversation.com/ncaa-amateurism-appears-immune-to-covid-19-despite-tide-in-public-support-for-paying-athletes-having-turned-146279,TRUE,
1003,Disability Equality Index reveals 2020 “Best Places to Work for Disability Inclusion”,"The Disability Equality Index , the nation’s most comprehensive annual benchmarking tool, facilitated by leading non profits Disability: IN and the American Association of People with Disabilities have revealed this year’s 205 top scoring companies. The DEI is a prominent benchmarking tool for the Fortune 1000 and America’s top 200 revenue grossing law firms to gauge their level of disability workplace inclusion against competitors. In its sixth official year, the DEI continues to see an increase in year over year participation, with the number of top scoring companies more than quadrupling to 205 in 2020 as compared to 43 in 2015. “The Disability Equality Index top scoring companies represent those businesses that have invested in accessibility and inclusion across their enterprise. As we celebrate the 30th anniversary of the ADA, it is wonderful to see the progress made by these companies, and we hope to see continued progress and support for the DEI over the next 30 years,” said Maria Town, President and CEO of AAPD. Jill Houghton, President & CEO, Disability: IN said “The best way to attract, retain and grow talent with disabilities is to create an accessible, inclusive workplace. This year’s top scoring Disability Equality Index companies are demonstrating their commitment to many of the numerous leading disability inclusion practices featured in the DEI, recognizing that there’s still room for improvement. We are proud to have developed strong partnerships with corporate allies who are committed to advancing disability inclusion and equality across their businesses in the United States and around the world. ”Making the world inclusive for all isn’t only the right thing to do, it’s also good for business. The Accenture report “Getting to Equal: The Disability Inclusion Advantage,” produced in partnership with Disability: IN and the AAPD, found that companies that offered inclusive working environments for employees with disabilities achieved an average of 28% higher revenue, 30% higher economic profit margins, and 2x net income of industry peers. The potential for wide scale impact grows, as in 2020, 247 companies participated in the DEI, accounting for a total U. S. workforce of 11 million people. This year, we saw significant growth in employee self identifications rates. In 2020, 5. 5% of current employees self identify as having a disability compared to 3. 7% in 2019 . In addition, the efforts of disability inclusion in business is now a much larger conversation. With multi national corporations operating outside of the United States, the DEI methodology was updated to reflect the changing landscape. The Non U. S. Operations category continues to be not weighted but is an opportunity to collect non discrimination policy language, ERG activity, and overall best practices from U. S. based companies with additional operations outside of the United States. Some findings include: Disability inclusion in business is a growing topic for investors in driving sustainable performance. A global investor coalition, representing more than $2. 8 trillion in combined assets, have called on companies they invest in to become more disability inclusive, through a “Joint Investor Statement on Disability Inclusion. ”¨The coalition is led by New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli and Oregon State Treasurer Tobias Read, and includes large institutional investors such as California State Teachers’ Retirement System and non U. S. investors such as Australian based Ethical Partners Fund Management. ",3,https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/07/15/2062514/0/en/Disability-Equality-Index-reveals-2020-Best-Places-to-Work-for-Disability-Inclusion.html,TRUE,
1005,Mindset Matters: The Evolution Of Disability In Corporate Life And The Next American Frontier," With the anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act approaching it becomes imperative that as a society we begin to reframe this piece of legislation and examine it in a newfound way. Corporate culture should take the lead in advancing this opportunity because it is through shrewd leadership that will not only reveal the sheer power of the ADA but offers a new vision that lies in front of us to strive toward a just and equitable nation. By expanding the meaning of the ADA beyond the bounds of legal parlance corporate culture has a tool to see the enormity of possibilities where imagination and creativity can become part of the arsenal that brings us to the next wave of growth and prosperity. The disability community can use the slogan “Nothing About Us Without Us” to show the world of business that they should no longer be marginalized, but rather part of the larger conversations in corporate life from human capital issues to product development. The disability community must play a fundamental role in the growth of business for the 21st century. In the nascent description of The Americans with Disabilities Act through the lens of business, it will be the next wave of entrepreneurs and venture capitalists that may have even more profound roles than activists and those in the halls of Congress. It is the language of business that impacts the minutia of our daily lives. Whether it is the products and services we buy to make our lives better or the media we consume that shapes the way we think, business provides an ongoing narrative to the circadian rhythm of our lives. It is so commonplace, that we often don’t even recognize the power it exerts. Entrepreneurs with disabilities can no longer sit idle, they must get into the arena and explore not only how to use a great idea to start a business, but help set the stage for other entrepreneurs with disabilities to not only contribute to the economy but develop a pathway for potential employment and job security for those that may not have been given the opportunity.  While the ADA can serve to galvanize creative entrepreneurs with disabilities to start their journey to become founders and business owners, it is just as important for venture capitalists to think about the Americans with Disabilities as a tool to envision a new market sector that is rife with opportunity in a whole host of ways. Venture capitalists play a unique role in the evolution of the ADA as a business document. Perhaps venture capitalists can be appreciated like the patron families of the Italian Renaissance such as the Medici’s. It is their role to provide support to these young entrepreneurs and create a foundation that enhances their opportunity for success but also develops a pipeline where there is further potential for growth and the ability to foster a business ecosystem for those with disabilities where they can thrive.  However, as venture capitalists should play a role in cultivating entrepreneurs with disabilities, companies from numerous sectors ranging from technology, healthcare, to consumer products should be open to potential investing in outside companies as well as thinking about the role of the intrapreneur. It is the character of the intrapreneur that offers another road for innovative, passionate, go getters with disabilities to help redefine their role in the business milieu and show their value in the future of business. However, for this to come to fruition takes a joint effort. Corporate leaders have to be aware that one, this is a real possibility, and two create the opportunity for there to be the mechanism for real communication to take the next steps. It is here where diversity and inclusion leadership and Employee Resource Groups become an essential role in this process. Much like the accelerator programs that pepper the landscape of the technology industry, diversity and inclusion leaders to C level executives have to rethink the actual use of disability ERG groups and explore their true potential beyond just their role to foster a diverse, inclusive workplace aligned with the organizations they serve. Rather, the ADA should galvanize companies to go deeper and think about how they can mine for talent and serve the organization to better innovate, create, and ultimately generate more revenue. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathankaufman/2020/07/12/mindset-matters-the-evolution-of-disability-in-corporate-life-and-the-next-american-frontier/#7ce561936a5a,TRUE,
1006,New research reveals strategies for global disability inclusion,"The voice of the global staffing industry A new study of 120 global brands shows how over 90 percent of businesses are recognising the importance of disabled employees and customers. The study is the first to consider how businesses are serving the needs of disabled people at a global and local level and how to share best practices. The study, called ‘Towards a Disability Smart World: Developing a global disability inclusion strategy’, was conducted by Business Disability Forum in partnership with energy company Royal Dutch Shell. It draws on evidence and case studies from the experience of organizations including Shell, Unilever, HSBC, Accenture and Microsoft. The report shows that: Yet, whilst more than 80 percent of respondents say that their organization had made one or more commitments to disability inclusion at a central level, only about 20 percent of respondents had a global strategy for disability inclusion in place and resourced. The study identifies several common barriers to creating a global strategy for disability inclusion. These include: For organizations which have worked to overcome these challenges the benefits are clear, with over 80 percent reporting improvements for disabled colleagues and customers on a global scale. Over 90 percent reported senior level buy in at an early stage to be key in gaining engagement, traction, and stronger accountability at a local level. Diane Lightfoot, CEO, Business Disability Forum, said:“As recent times have demonstrated, we are living in a global world and there is more need than ever before for businesses to respond to disability inclusion at a corporate wide level. This study shows that businesses are recognizing that need, but often face common barriers when responding to it. “Based on the experiences of 120 leading global brands, we want to offer organizations practical advice on how they can overcome those challenges and achieve positive change for their workforce and customers alike. ”Lyn Lee, Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, Shell, said:“While most leaders of organizations will agree that disability inclusion is the right thing to do, there are challenges and barriers which many need to address. We hope this research into best practices will create impact collectively through collaboration and partnership, and benefit companies as they develop global strategies to do more for people with disabilities. ”ProgressThe study shows that workplace adjustments, along with recruitment and onboarding, are the areas where businesses have made the most progress in disability inclusion. These were followed by buildings and built environments; digital technology; and retention and development of employees. Communication and marketing; customer or client experience; and procurement and supply chain, were the areas where there is the least evidence of progression. Fundamental lessons study draws on feedback and case studies from respondents to highlight some fundamental lessons for organizations looking to develop their own global disability inclusion strategy and to provide a practical roadmap to others starting out: Diane Lightfoot said: “Disabled people are expected to be more disadvantaged by the impact of Covid 19 than non disabled people; particularly in developing countries. This is an opportunity for global businesses to make a positive difference. Introducing a corporate wide policy on disability inclusion is a sensible place to start and the roadmap included in this report is designed to help businesses get on the right track. ”The study, ‘Towards a Disability Smart World: Developing a global disability inclusion strategy’, and the accompanying roadmap, can be downloaded on Business Disability Forum’s website. The Global Recruiter Newsdesk bringing you balanced journalism, accuracy, news and features for all involved in the business of recruitment from around the world",3,https://www.theglobalrecruiter.com/new-research-reveals-strategies-for-global-disability-inclusion/,TRUE,