If you missed it, here’s a quick summary: with the words  “Hood Disease” emblazoned next to her head, Wendy Tokuda of the San Francisco Bay area’s CBS affiliate KPIX delivered the following, “Even the Centers for Disease control says that these kids often live in virtual war zones and doctors at Harvard say they actually suffer from a more complex form of PTSD, some call it ‘hood disease.’” The story then began to discuss the set of complex issues that many youth of color in high poverty areas experience daily and some of their consequences on academic engagement.Tokuda’s reporting made it appear as if Harvard scholars coined and were studying “hood disease” which set off a firestorm and multiple questions about research, Harvard, and the sources of the story. A trip to Tokuda’s personal Facebook page reveals that she derived the term “hood disease” from Mark Beasley. Who is Mark Beasley you ask? Beasley is one of Tokuda’s Facebook friends.

The jokes should write themselves here, but this is the sort of propaganda that reinforces dangerous stereotypes about people of color, especially those with economic challenges. Even if you dismiss the ill-fated term,  the report is still framed in a way that makes it seem that the issues that youth in urban high poverty neighborhoods face are actually a disorder that they co-create.

Within the social sciences there is a long history of suggesting that problems among Black and impoverished communities are a function of their own practices and beliefs and divorced from larger social problems. In 1965, the Moynihan Report famously popularized the concept of “tangle of pathology” that argued Black female headed households perpetuated poverty, not lack of access to jobs and economic resources. Later arguments about the “culture of poverty” came to dominate academic and social policy circles resulting in divestments from communities of color and the belief that Black culture was the issue and the role of social structure was minimal, if meaningful at all.

Essentially, Blackness is the disease—or so the narrative goes.

Read more at EBONY

Nightmares – The worst-case scenario has occurred. Not the disaster, but the funds that were intended for disaster relief getting diverted. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina the US public got one of its first glances at issues the Red Cross had with doing disaster work by stumbling, squandering, and misappropriating relief funds. After the earthquake in Haiti, globally donations poured into Wyclef Jean’s Yele foundation, only to learn that the infrastructure was not on the ground and the organization as grossly mismanaged. And now Hurricane Sandy has left many with donation skepticism given increasing claims that the Red Cross is not doing a sufficient job.

Things I tend to consider in giving:

Capacity – Does the organization that you are sending money to have the capacity to get the needs of the affected met? This question is probably the biggest “black box” that you have to consider. In moments of tragedy everyone wants to help, but the question of do they have the skills or the access to do it is tough to discern. In general, I will sift through sites like Charity Navigator or Charity Watch to see how they rank major charities. Keep in mind; they deal with larger established brands, so you won’t see many local organizations that are asking for assistance. Additionally, they rank “efficiency” which gets defined differently depending on the service. If you’re into number and policy wonky stuff you can check out their methodologies or buy a Guide Star Charity Check report.

Community – One of the things that is important to me when I’m giving is to think about which groups get reached and which groups of people do not. It could be because of geography or demography (race, class, gender, ethnicity). As I have begun to receive messages from loved one in Hurricane affected areas I’m starting to hear them talk about lack of attention that getting to low-income areas like the Rockaways. Media coverage matters, but not everyone has access to that spotlight. While funds may go to storm relief, often where it actually goes is unknown. For this reason, I try to leverage local connections.

I have the advantage of being in New York City and being connected to a number of grassroots organizations that don’t do relief work, instead the do community building. In that way, their weekly food pantries, clothing drives, and know your rights campaigns have endowed them with relationships to some of the harder hit communities. While organizations/businesses like People’s Survival Program, Occupy, or Mrs. Dorsey’s Kitchen will never appear on a Charity Navigator, my opportunity to pick up a phone and call them to lend a dollar or hand is priceless. I’ve seen them say, “I went by area X today, no one is there. We’ll be there tomorrow with X, Y, and Z” because they need it.”

My approach – In the case of Hurricane Sandy, I’m doing my best to spread what I have around. Yes, there is a need for major disaster organizations like Americares to get relief to people, but there is also a need for local grassroots groups to get your assistance. In the end, I have a belief in people that whatever I provide will get where it needs to be. Will it all get there, I doubt it, but if all give something (be it money or volunteering our time) then the load is lighter and the work has greater impact. The thing that I think is the worst-case scenario is to not give at all. The 20, 50, 200 dollars that you give will be put to some work, which is worth it to me. I’d rather give and see some of it lost than to not give and see none of it gained.

Recently, a picture

Sadly, the United States has become the leader of incarceration in the world and it is incarceration that is undoing the sanctity of our communities. not books. Unfortunately, if we don’t begin to prepare children and adults for what has become the virtual inevitability of dealing the prison system, we’ll be attempting to live in a fairy tale. We have come to the point where real life non-fiction is necessary for children and adults.

Read More

America has entered

From President Obama’s landmark announcement that he supports same sex marriage to Beenie Man posting a video asking for forgiveness of his past homophobic songs, tolerance is in! However, tolerance is not justice. In fact, tolerance basically boils down to finding something unobjectionable. Tolerance is the lowest form of acceptance because it allows one to support in words but not follow up with actions. If we are not careful, our tolerance will only serve to maintain the status quo. If we want to move from tolerance towards justice, it will take more than not objecting to same-sex marriage, it’s going to take a commitment to fight injustice and create safer communities for all. Read More

As I climbed the subway stairs

“I’ll beat the shit out of you, b*tch. You think I won’t. Keep talking slick to me!” My heart sunk and the heat of the day intensified. The young woman stood leaning against the wall as her companion berated her. He then demanded her phone and said he’d call whomever she had been speaking to “speak to them.” She refused. The more he yelled, the less she engaged him. Enraged by her silence he continued on, “Oh, so you think you’re smart? You think you’re a woman now? You ain’t no real woman! You’re immature. You’re a little girl. You spend your money on dumb things like clothes and red bottoms [the popular and expensive Christian Louboutin heels]  You ain’t not woman, I’m a man. I take care of myself. I get money. I put a roof over my head. I’m in school.”

As he barked, I then noticed something: I was the only one watching. We were on 145th and Saint Nicholas in Harlem at one of the busiest train stations in New York City and the corner was well populated. But no one, besides me, was paying attention. Read More.

The Window Sex Project addresses and tackles the every day practice in which women are “window shopped,” that is forced to bear unsolicited verbal harassment from men while walking on the street. Through community workshops and choreographed performance, The Window Sex Project will give voice to these concerns and restore agency to women by equipping them to manage street harassment, celebrating their bodies and creating a public artwork, specifically a dance performance which takes place in an art gallery.

This performance will be followed by a panel that I will be moderating.
The performance and panel will be held at Barnard on Monday April 2nd at 6:30pm in the Diana Event Oval.

Hear Sydnie Mosley speak about the WSP and International Anti-Street Harassment Week.

Follow this link to see some excerpts of the performance
(sorry wordpress is not letting me the videos)
The Window Sex Project: World Premiere Promo from Sydnie Mosley on Vimeo.

I will be moderating a panel discussion on the performance, responding to street harassment and how to create safe communities.

To get tickets and learn more about the Window Sex Project click here.

All are welcome some tell your brother, sister, mother, cousin and others to be in the place for dynamic performance and conversation.

In days past, a canary in a coal mine was critical for safety. Miners would keep a caged canary in a mine and as long as they heard the canary singing they knew they were safe from the noxious gases that they were exposed to. If the canary stopped singing and/or dropped dead, miners also knew the mine was no longer safe to work in. Our neighborhoods are our mines and street harassment is a noxious gas that threatens our community safety and stability but goes unacknowledged. The time has come to notice the canary is no longer singing, our communities are getting less and less safe and if we don’t take notice, no one will.

Read More

Yesterday the NYTimes ran an interesting Op-Ed piece on Charter Schools by Charles Murray entitled, “Why Charter Schools Fail the Test.” I read through it quickly and thought it to be arguing two main things: standardized tests were weak measures and that school choice was a democratic right. Both of these things meshed well with my ideology and then I arrived to the bi-line and read Charles Murray. I froze, kept reading and sure enough it was the Charles Murray. Murray’s name not ringing a bell? Well Murray was one of two authors of the uber-controversial book The Bell Curve. The Bell Curve, of course, ultimately argued that there were racial differences in intelligence, no matter how you “sliced the pie.” So this may lead one to wonder, “Why or how on earth would Murray be writing about Charter schools and supporting them?” Well to answer that you have to understand his back story.

The Bell Curve’s most controversial chapters (13 and 14) really drove home their message that intelligence (g-factor) was more prevalent among certain racial groups and lower among others. Rightfully so, many top scientists rose up to strike down the Bell Curve’s thinly veiled statements of racial superiority and inferiority. The Bell Curve was not Murray’s first set of handiwork, he is often regarded as the man who dismantled the welfare system. In Losing Ground, he essentially argued that the welfare system enabled bad behaviors and used national dollars to invest in the entrenchment of poverty. This argument, I often hear parroted by people, the catch is a great deal of research carefully demonstrates the contrary (please see any of William Julius Wilson’s or Sheldon Danziger’s bevy of books on the subject). The common sensical nature of Murray’s argument have allowed him to stay around and advance arguments that dance along and get close to idea of eugenics (the science of “bettering humans” usually by “trimming the gene pool” -this was one of Hitler’s goals during the Jewish Holocaust).

Murray in the editorial takes a step back to the question of education which he addressed in Real Education a couple of years ago. I admittedly could not stomach the whole book as he argued “four simple truths”: 1) ability varies, 2) half of america’s children are below average, 3) too many people are going to college and 4) America’s future relies on how we educate the academically gifted. They seem benign enough, right? Well put them together with his past work and you get a neat line of logic suggest (my interpretation):

Ability levels vary, so not all kids are going to do well, in fact half of kids are poor students, the other half are doing okay. So of the half that is okay, there’s really about 10 percent that should be going to college and let’s invest in those 10 percent rather than investing in the other 90 percent.

Still not seeing why it connects to the Bell Curve. If you asked Murray, what do the races of the top 10 percent look like? He’d honest respond earnestly and with his “scientific evidence” to say they’re majority White. Ah, do you see it now? The folks at the top are White and should be invested in, the folks at the bottom are non-White and shouldn’t be getting all those “hand-outs” and “special programming.”

Murray has been consistently attacked for this type of reasoning, so charter schools mark a quaint respite for his ideas. He points to the Milwaukee evidence that demonstrated that charter school and traditional public schools performed roughly equal. He suggests that home environment means a great deal for intelligence ( he doesn’t think standardized tests measure intelligence (g-factor) so they’re a weak measure) and school thus can do little to shift what students walk in. He, like many mis-readers of the Coleman Report, suggest schools CAN DO little, when Coleman actually argued schools DID DO little to affect student achievement. For Murray, choice is good because you no longer have to suggest that poor people get few options. In fact, charters are cheaper on state’s to operate and offer the basic democratic right of choice. He’d likely concede that we shouldn’t expect these schools to do anything for the children who are part of the deeply impoverished and severely unintelligent (this is his reasoning not mine).

In the end, you get a well crafted Op-Ed that says, “despite lack of success Charter schools are good.” But what operates behind the veil matters the most! His piece is animated by a lack of belief in the students within these schools and he doesn’t think schools can to move these youth towards prosperity intellectually, socially or materially. While I’m neither a fan nor hater of charter schools, I realized that who is in your camp matters. Murray’s commentary reminds me of the adage, “Everyone on the sidelines is not cheering for you.” The question is, are we savvy enough to know who is for us and against us?

Sexual assault remains one of the most taboo and silenced experiences globally and particularly in the Black community. Through SOARS, A Long Walk Home is not only raising awareness but also creating spaces for solutions and healing. The final portion of the 2 hour production is a “speak out” (in the tradition of Take Back the Night) where audience members can ask questions of the cast and speak out about their experiences. At first, questions were sparse and audience members sat quietly waiting for someone to break the silence, then finally it was broken. From the audience came a flood of experiences with sexual assault from childhood to adulthood. More than just a question and answer the session, it was one of mutual sharing and support. In a group so large, one shouldn’t expect such a sacred space for sharing, but it makes perfect sense once you realize the audience is taken on an painfully intimate, triumphant and bonding journey of a survivor in the production. Multiple audience members said the story on the stage was their own story. The fourth wall was shattered! The spirit that SOARS created in the audience reminded me of a proverb that one of my baba’s once gave me. He said, “Live your life as if it is an open book, for you never know from which page someone will have to learn.” I was glad to learn from the page of Salamishah, SOARS, and the audience.

In a society defined by so much difficulty and silence around crimes such as rape, the process of not only surviving but healing is opened in a powerful way. This week, a number of my friends and those who I admire were at the Men Can Stop Rape conference. I am glad that venues that conference and SOARS exist to open dialogue and continue the work of fighting sexual violence, surviving and healing.

A Long Walk Home is beginning a preventative and healing peer-centered approach to sexual assault named Girl/Friends which will equip young women with the tools to help themselves and their community. The SOARS season for the year has closed, but when they go on tour again, I’ll make sure to post dates and tour location. In the meantime, visit their website and get a “Got Consent” tee-shirt to support their work (available in both men and women’s)!

hattip to Drew Citron

On Friday, Iyanla Vanzant will be helping folks “Tap the Power Within” with spiritual and psychological wellness work. On Saturday, Queen Afua will be helping folks by sponsoring a free cleanse day to aid in physical health. And on Sunday, The Association of Muslim Health Practitioners will be stimulating the mind by sponsoring a discussion forum on Health care access entitled, “NYC Covering the Uninsured: Universal Health care, Hope, or Hype?. Links to each of the events are below. Take the time if you can to check out each event or one event, you’ll surely come back with good things.

Friday: Iyanla Vanzant- Recession is Creation…Tapping the Power Within - 1700 Fulton @ Boys and Girls High. Brooklyn, NY – 10 dollars entry. 7:30pm

Saturday: Queen Afua- Spring Equinox one Day Cleansing Fast – 2301 5th ave @ National Black Theater. Harlem, NY – Free, registration encouraged. 9am – 5pm

Sunday: AMHP – NYC Covering the Uninsured: Universal Health care, Hype, or Hope? 413 W 46th St. @ Hartley House. Ny, NY. – Free, registration encouraged. 2-4pm.

Okay, let’s do a little basic statistics/ research methods. I know, I’m doing the “professor thing” but trust me it’s important. We have a public health crisis and you suggest condom distribution increases the problem. To figure out if this is true, we need to look at the relationship between passing out condoms and cases of HIV/AIDS. Benedict is claiming that passing out condoms actually increases the epidemic.

Key term: correlation. Correlation essentially tells you how related two things are. In basic statistics you learn that things can be correlated with each other, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that one thing cause another.

Okay, now that we’ve got correlation down, let’s look at a classic example of why correlation doesn’t mean causation (the fancy way of saying one thing causes another).

Fact: As the number of ice cream cones sold increases, the number of homicides increases.

Not a fact: Folks who buy ice cream cones are homicidal maniacs and their lactose intolerance drives them to murder.

Reality: There are are more ice cream cones sold in the summer, homicides tend to happen in the summer. Just because they are related doesn’t mean one causes the other to occur.

See, now you see why Pope Benedicts statement is asinine and dangerous. Pope Benedict, saying that distributing condoms increases the problem would mean that condom distribution increased the epidemic. Ridiculous! Particularly on the continent, with many countries suffering from astronomical rates of HIV/AIDS, not distributing profilatics would likely increase the transmission of the disease. While Benedict is sticking with his sect’s insistence upon the non-use of contraception, following their doctrine could lead us further down the rabbit hole. Additionally, large numbers of married and unmarried people have HIV/AIDS, which essentially means advocating against contraception within relationships will likely increase the transmission of HIV/AIDS by exposing more people to additional hazard. You know, I can’t really figure out a way that the approach he’s advocating would be good for these countries ravaged by the most devastating disease of our time.

It worries me that people will follow the Pope’s statement and align themselves without seriously interrogating the “real world” implications of his doctrine. Okay, I’m getting off my soapbox… for right now.

The above line played on my ipod as I arrived to Grand Central. Each time I’ve heard this line and changed the “but I’d” to “nor.” This is strange practice I developed as an adolescent when I heard lyrics I didn’t want to repeat or feared repeating them in front of my parents. I’d change niggas to brothas, you know the drill. It sort of provides a psychological space for me to relate to the sentiment of the artist, but put my own spin on it. Well, when I was revising Kanye’s lyric in my head this time something rung about the danger of the line. Earlier in the day I was talking to one of my best friends about another close friend who has anger issues, particularly towards women. I concluded the topic by telling friend, “I’m gonna have to ask my boy who is a domestic violence expert, I just don’t know.” My conclusion was much less a solution than a throw away, since I’d reached that same conclusion before but never followed through. How do we truly begin to break cycles of domestic violence? I’m not sure, and listening to Kanye didn’t move me closer to figuring that painful issue out.

As I arrived to my train platform I turned the lyric over and over in my mind and then suddenly I witnessed a man leap and nearly tackle an accompanying female onto the train track which was occupied by a trash train. I, nor the 30 some odd people on the platform, could seem to believe our eyes. We all froze in confusion. The offender then fell to the ground with the woman to hug her, almost as if to make sure she was alright.  As we stood on the platform, none of us spoke, none of us voiced concern, none of us queried the woman still down, we all sat there paralyzed. When she stood up to all our looking eyes it was almost as if we diverted our eyes in unison. Almost like we were ashamed to be looking. I remained locked on the couple, but said nothing. Most of the rest of the platform turned their attention to the arriving train. Old school Chicago sociologists used to write about the malaise that befell city residents. An indifference to stimuli small and large, an even keelness that may be a necessary adaptation to living in a city of millions in such close proximity. In my time in NYC, I’ve joked about the arrival of this malaise with friends, but I fully saw the veil fall before me when I boarded the train with the other witnesses.

As I rode to the next stop, a million rationalizations flashed through my head for what I saw and justifications for my silence. I thought of the million conversations I’ve had about compromising my safety and being told not to do so. I thought, “maybe he has PTSD and when he heard the clang of trash bags being thrown on the train he had a flashback.” All sorts of far out things ran through my mind, still none of these things quailed my stomach.

As we arrived at the next stop I couldn’t take my/our inaction, so I decided to return to see if they were still there. I steeled myself for my return. I had no idea if they would still be there and if they were there what I would do or say. I ran across the platform to a train to reverse my trip. I returned to the platform at Grand Central to find them boarding the train into another car than the one that I was exiting. I hopped out and as they got on, she saw me. We made eye contact and I mouthed “are you okay?” While his back was turned she nodded her head and mouthed “yeah.”

This is no tale of heroism. In fact, I don’t even know what would have happened if she said “no” or anything else. In a way, I feel like the answer she provided was for both of our comforts. I know domestic violence is often a long process fraught with personal, financial, and social issues. The disconnection that I felt fall between her and I when I watched her get tackled is still disturbing me. It only reminds me of the conversations I’ve had with close friends, women who I consider sisters, that have suffered in both emotionally and physically abusive relationships. Facing oppression in a moment often makes a person feel powerless, sadly I felt that way tonight.  This post has no solutions, no conclusion, it’s just a painful reflection on the world we live in and the one we must confront if we want to make it a better place to be for all.

First a press release from Dr. Thomas LaViest at John Hopkins.

MEDIA RELEASE
July 28, 2008

Johns Hopkins Health Disparities Expert Criticizes CNN Report

Baltimore – Promoting unproven theories as a key cause of the
enormous health gap between African Americans and other ethnic
groups will likely widen the gap further, said a leading researcher
working to close the gap.

Thomas A. LaVeist, PhD, Director of the Center for Health Disparities
Solutions at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health was
alarmed when he saw the health care segment of CNN’s “Black In
America” series and heard the salt-sensitivity theory being promoted
as a key reason to explain why blacks are unhealthy compared to
whites and other groups.

“I commend CNN and Soledad O’Brien for tackling this very important
topic, but to expose an audience to this theory is very troubling and
disappointing,” LaVeist said.

During the segment, O’Brien interviewed Harvard economist Roland
Fryer who said he believes the salt-sensitive theory may be key to
unlocking why blacks on average have poor health. The salt-
sensitivity theory claims that during the transatlantic slave trade,
African slaves whose bodies held higher levels of salt were better
able to survive the long brutal voyage to the Americas. Their
descendants are now genetically disposed to hypertension and other
diseases that are tied to salt.

“This bogus theory just won’t seem to die,” LaVeist said. “Even
though public health researchers have discredited the theory it
continues to be promoted by people who are not knowledgeable about
the field. THE AVERAGE HEALTH CONSUMER WATCHING CNN COULD TAKE THIS
AS THE GOSPEL AND RUN WITH IT TO THEIR OWN DETRIMENT.”

Most research scientists who work on this public health problem would
agree that some of the key health disparity causes are:

• Blacks are exposed to more environmental toxins because of
residential segregation
• Blacks have less access to quality healthcare
• Higher levels of poverty among African Americans
• Higher levels of use of harmful products such as cigarettes
• Less healthy diets
• Less healthy foods in African American communities
• Residing in more stressful environments

“To suggest that health disparities are caused by a gene that exists
in African Americans and does not exist in others is ridiculous.
There are no genes found in only one race group,” LaVeist
said. “Hypertension and all other major causes of death are caused by
a complex set of factors. They are not single gene diseases. If race
disparities were primarily caused by a gene, that gene would have to
cause hypertension and cancer and diabetes and glaucoma, and Crohn’s
disease and asthma and HIV-AIDS and every other condition that is
more prevalent in blacks and we know no one gene does that.”

“I respect professor Fryer, but quoting an economist as an expert on
health disparities is like interviewing me for a story about why gas
prices have spiked,” LaVeist said. “Not only are researchers at
Hopkins working on this problem, but people are working on this issue
right there in Atlanta where CNN is headquartered. The problem of
health disparities is complex. By trying to reduce it to a simplistic
explanation we risk having health care providers, policymakers and
patients feel there is nothing they can do to address the issue.”

About Thomas LaVeist:
As the William C. and Nancy F. Richardson Professor in Health Policy,
and Director of the Hopkins Center for Health Disparities Solutions
at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. LaVeist has
studied the major healthcare gaps in America, the trends causing them
and the problems they create. His work is enabling healthcare
organizations and individuals to prepare for a new America—a minority
majority.

Second, an editorial by Osagie Obasogie penned a little over a year ago in response to Oprah’s show advancing the same bogus salty theory.

Both commentaries I received via the Spirit of 1848 listserv, thanks for sharing Shak-G.