Search results for: “node/Science”
-
NY Times TV Critic Defends ‘Angry Black Woman’ Story
Questionable Framing of Story on “Scandal” Creator It was just three weeks ago that the New York Times was vilified over a story calling the slain 18-year-old Michael Brown “no angel,” a mistake partly attributed to insensitive editing. On Friday, critics paid and unpaid leaped on a Times story in which the error was not just…
-
Smart Students From Low-Income Families Lock Down 4-Year, Tuition-Free Rides
There’s an ascending player in the cluster of nonprofit organizations that help high-achieving students from low-income families get into the best colleges in the nation, and it’s employing a simple strategy to entice qualified students: If you get into the school of your choice, you get to go for free, the New York Times reports. And for all four years, might I add. When the…
-
Climate Activists Warn Obama About His Pro-Gas Views
Even though President Barack Obama has been getting tough on power plants to push them to cut back on their carbon dioxide emissions, his administration supports the extraction of natural gas, and environmental groups are warning him to fix that blemish on his climate legacy, Al-Jazeera reports. Climate experts are saying that contrary to the Obama administration’s…
-
Maybe My Weird Version of Blackness Isn’t That Weird
Growing up, I always thought I was weird. Even my own mother said so. I was a nerdy black girl who was quiet, shy and introverted; who struggled to find out who I was and to be comfortable in my own skin. For years I felt I had to put on masks of identities that…
-
Who Was the 1st Black Rhodes Scholar?
Editor’s note: For those who are wondering about the retro title of this black-history series, please take a moment to learn about historian Joel A. Rogers, author of the 1934 book 100 Amazing Facts About the Negro With Complete Proof, to whom these “amazing facts” are an homage. Amazing Fact About the Negro No. 90: How did the shattering…
-
An Educator’s Perspective: It’s Too Easy to Blame Parents When Kids Can’t Read
Every semester I hope things will be different. I hope that when I walk into my English-composition and writing courses, the majority of my students will, at the very least, be equipped with the basics: They’ll know how to write paragraphs, how to read critically and how to comprehend a text in order to form their own opinions…
-
New Cosby Bio Looks Like a Best-Seller
Richard Prince’s Book Notes™: Journalists’ Fall Offerings (Part 1) Mark Whitaker, a former network news executive who spent the bulk of his career at Newsweek magazine, has produced a reader-friendly biography of entertainer Bill Cosby, an icon who has been part of American life for 50 years. The book seems destined for the fall best-seller…
-
Questioning the Deaths Dubbed ‘Houdini Handcuff Suicides’
A name has been given to the recently publicized rash of alleged gunshot “suicides” by young men of color who were handcuffed and in police custody: Houdini handcuff suicides. The moniker is an homage to the famed magician Harry Houdini, who staged jail escapes in shackles. It also highlights the puzzling circumstances under which Victor…
-
How Media Have Shaped Our Perception of Race and Crime
How Media Skew Our Views of Race, Crime Distortions Bolster Harsher Penalties, Study Finds “Skewed racial perceptions of crime — particularly, white Americans’ strong associations of crime with racial minorities — have bolstered harsh and biased criminal justice policies [PDF],” the nonprofit Sentencing Project reported Wednesday, outlining the role played by the news media in skewing…
-
Do’s and Don’ts for Teaching About Ferguson
It’s no exaggeration to refer to the shooting death of unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown at the hands of a Ferguson, Mo., police officer, the treatment of protesters and civilians by a militarized police force in in its aftermath, and the context of racial inequality in which they all happened as an American tragedy. But there’s…