CityLab: How Charlotte's Nasty Early 1900s Politics Paved the Way for a Century of Segregation

But what few people know is that the South wasn’t always so segregated. During a brief window of time between the end of the Civil War and the turn of the 20th century, black and white people lived next to each other in Southern cities, creating what the historian Tom Hanchett describes as a “salt-and-pepper” pattern. They were not integrated in a meaningful sense: Divisions existed, but “in a lot of Southern cities, segregation hadn’t been fully imposed—there were neighborhoods where blacks and whites were living nearby,” said Eric Foner, a Columbia historian and expert on Reconstruction. Walk around in the Atlanta or the Charlotte of the late 1800s, and you might see black people in restaurants, hotels, the theater, Foner said. Two decades later, such things were not allowed. [...]

This amorphous period of race relations in the South was first described by the historian C. Vann Woodward, who wrote in his 1955 book, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, that segregation in the South did not become rigid with the end of slavery, but instead, around the turn of the century. “There occurred an era of experiment and variety in race relations of the South in which segregation was not the invariable rule,” he wrote.

During that time, Foner said, black residents could could sue companies for discriminating against them—and win their lawsuits. Blacks could also legally vote in most places (disenfranchisement laws did not arrive in earnest until about 1900), and were often allied with poor whites in the voting booth. This alliance was strong enough to control states like North Carolina, Alabama, and Virginia at various points throughout the late 19th century. [...]

This wasn’t the first time whites and blacks had allied politically. In Virginia in the late 1870s, black and poor white voters formed the Readjuster Party, which worked together to overcome the power of white political elites. In North Carolina; they also worked together to write the Constitution of 1868, which mandated the creation and funding of a state system of public education.

read the article 

Political Critique: Women’s Reproductive Rights are the New Black

The initial change in legislation, which was proposed by the governing Law and Justice party (PiS) on the 23rd of September 2016, sought to completely ban all abortion. This would mean that in cases of incest and rape, victims would be forced to carry the child throughout the entire pregnancy. The implementation of the new legislation could also lead to police investigations around miscarriages. In the case of admittance to hospital, following a miscarriage, the police would be informed in order to determine whether the miscarriage was due to natural causes, or as a result of an attempted ‘abortion’. Should the woman be found guilty, she could be sentenced to up to 5 years in prison. [...]

The first protest against the blanket ban took place on the 3rd of October, seeing as many as 30,000 people on the streets of Warsaw alone. Many women boycotted work and classes in order to attend the protest. Most were dressed in black, symbolic of ‘mourning the death of the women’s rights,’ if the legislation were to be passed. They also carried placards, bearing messages such as “My uterus, my opinion” and “Girls just wanna have FUN-damental rights”. [...]

Another protest erupted on the 24th of October, in response to a new proposal made by Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of PiS. Kaczyński said that his party wants to ensure that even pregnancies involving a child that is “certain to die or very deformed, still end in birth, so that the child can be baptised, buried, have a name”. The new proposal would mean that abortion is still permitted in cases of rape and incest, and where there is health or life in peril. It would, however, illegalise the removing of a foetus that is irreparably damaged. [...]

In wake of the controversy surrounding the school, disciplinary hearings have been issued to the female teachers who supported the protest. So far, only one teacher – Aleksandra Piotrowska – has been found innocent by the Board of Education in Katowice. During the hearing, the committee said that everyone has the right to religion and freedom of speech. However, the committee also brought to attention the fact that in the etiquette of the teaching profession, particular caution and sensitivity should be taken when voicing personal opinions.

read the article 

Jacobin Magazine: The Romanian Protests

The stated goal — to address prison overcrowding and avoid a European Union fine. The true goal — to pardon and protect a whole raft of loyal PSD politicians and public officials facing prosecution for  crimes such as corruption in office (now decriminalized for sums less than $48,000) among a host of others (pardoned for sentences less than five years). [...]

The following night, three hundred thousand rallied, and on February 5, a day after the government rescinded its decree but indicated it would seek parliamentary approval for some of its original proposals, over half a million poured onto the streets of Bucharest angrily demanding the government’s resignation. Four days later, a scapegoat, the country’s justice minister, resigned. The protests continue with fifty thousand again assembled last weekend. [...]

The PSD, the ruling Communist Party of old, is the party par excellence of this crony capitalism. It played a pivotal role managing and overseeing the transition from the statist economy of the Cold War era to the privatized, neoliberal economy of today, while ensuring financial advantage for itself and its allies. It remains a key mediator of the sometimes brazenly incestuous relations between business and bureaucracy. In short, the PSD is the principal party of the Romanian ruling class. [...]

The arguments the Left will have to employ — the need to struggle against neoliberal austerity and corruption from below, to radically redistribute Romania’s wealth, to expropriate the country’s super-rich moguls, to challenge Romania’s relationship with the European Union and the United States, to support neutrality between east and west, to advocate the idea of a Balkan federation as the best defense against imperialism and nationalism — will be tough to make, for they signal a decisive break with the asphyxiating consensus of Balkan politics of the last quarter century.

read the article 

Nautilus Magazine: 5 Languages That Could Change the Way You See the World

The way that different languages convey information has fascinated linguists, anthropologists, and psychologists for decades. In the 1940s, a chemical engineer called Benjamin Lee Whorf published a wildly popular paper in the MIT Technology Review that claimed the way languages express different concepts—like gender, time, and space—influenced the way its speakers thought about the world. For example, if a language didn’t have terms to denote specific times, speakers wouldn’t understand the concept of time flowing.

This argument was later discredited, as researchers concluded that it overstated language’s constraints on our minds. But researchers later found more nuanced ways that these habits of speech can affect our thinking. Linguist Roman Jakobson described this line of investigation thus: “Languages differ essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.” In other words, the primary way language influences our minds is through what it forces us to think about—not what it prevents us from thinking about. 

These five languages reveal how information can be expressed in extremely different ways, and how these habits of thinking can affect us.

read the article 

Salon: Extremism from both sides: What does the research tell us about Islamist extremism and far-right extremism?

Our research has also identified violent Islamist extremist plots against 272 targets that were either foiled or failed between 2001 and 2014. We are in the process of compiling similar data on far-right plots. Although data collection is only about 50 percent complete, we have already identified 213 far-right targets from the same time period. [...]

The locations of violent extremist activity also differ by ideology. Our data show that between 1990 and 2014, most Islamist extremist attacks occurred in the South (56.5 percent), and most far-right extremist attacks occurred in the West (34.7 percent). Both forms of violence were least likely to occur in the Midwest, with only three incidents committed by Islamist extremists (4.8 percent) and 33 events committed by far-right extremists (13.5 percent).

Targets of violence also vary across the two ideologies. For example, 63 percent of the Islamist extremism victims were targeted for no apparent reason. They just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, often visiting symbolic locations or crowded venues such as the World Trade Center or military installations.

In contrast, 53 percent of victims killed by far-right extremists were targeted for their actual or perceived race or ethnicity. Far-right extremists, such as neo-Nazis, skinheads and white supremacists, often target religious, racial and ethnic, and sexual orientation and gender identity minorities. [...]

Our analyses found that compared to Islamist extremists, far-right extremists were significantly more likely to be economically deprived, have served in the military and have a higher level of commitment to their ideology. Far-right extremists were also significantly more likely to be less educated, single, young and to have participated in training by a group associated with their extremist ideology.

read the article 

The Atlantic: How Anti-Trumpism Is Hijacking the Anti-Brexit Movement

On Monday afternoon, roughly 100 protesters swathed in European Union flags and carrying signs bearing slogans like “I am not a bargaining chip,” “EU Worker Making Britain Great Again,” and “Brexit and Trump: Sound the Alarm,” gathered quietly on Parliament Square, opposite the British Houses of Parliament. Silently, they linked arms and formed a circle on the grassy lawn, holding up their placards for photographers, who had ample space to maneuver. The demonstration, part of a national day of action to support the rights of EU citizens, migrants, and asylum-seekers in a post-Brexit United Kingdom, had been in the works for months. In the immediate aftermath of the referendum vote in June, thousands marched in support of the same causes. Yet on Monday, the demonstrators dispersed after posing for photographs for about an hour, many filtering into parliament to lobby their representatives—a run-of-the-mill protest, by most measures. [...]

Since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, left-leaning Londoners have been asking themselves whether Trump or Brexit is worse. May is expected to trigger Article 50, which will begin Britain’s withdrawal from the EU, as early as the first week of March. The long road to Brexit, marked by murky legal proceedings, negotiations, and carefully worded government assurances, has obscured its potential ramifications, including a $58.4-billion economic contraction and a 3-percent drop in GDP by 2020, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The economy is already showing signs of a labor shortage as EU workers consider leaving their jobs in Britain. Despite that, Brexit is almost certainly permanent: There is no legal precedent for the withdrawal of Article 50, though some lawmakers contend it can be done. [...]

May is set on her vision for making Britain a “fully independent, sovereign country,” as she has put it, by securing a “hard” Brexit—a departure from both the EU single market and freedom of movement laws—and a dramatic decrease in immigration. Protests seem unlikely to change her agenda. And despite the obvious fact that Brits have no power to oust Trump, or even to stop his state visit, the American president’s virulence makes him far easier to oppose. In Trump, Liberal Brits have found a cipher through which to vent frustrations with their own government—but by training their efforts on him, movements like the Stop Trump Coalition may have picked the wrong target.

read the article 

The Atlantic: The Facebook Algorithm Is Watching You

This matters because of what Facebook might then do with its sense of your baby-loving, Tom-Brady-hating self. It might mean that Facebook will show you more photos of babies and fewer articles about football, which in turn might affect which friends appear more frequently and prominently in your News Feed. And that might affect your perception of the world. [...]

Grosser’s latest project is an attempt to push back. He made a browser extension he’s calling Go Rando, which intercepts each time you click a reaction button on Facebook, then uses a random-number generator to select a reaction for you. “If you click ‘Like,’ you might get ‘Angry,’ or you might get ‘Haha,’ or you might get ‘Sad,’” Grosser told me. “Users can still hover and select a specific reaction if they want to—but it will randomize their reactions for them.” [...]

“I want people to think about who is reading this data,” Grosser told me. “We think of [clicking reaction buttons for the benefit of] our friends, but the primary consumers of this data are not our friends. It’s for the news feed algorithm, advertising message profiling, predictive analytics. All these different systems that are looking to mine this data, hoping to understand our hopes or fears as a way of deciding how to sell us something, as a way of deciding whether we’re dangerous, as a way of deciding whether we’re worthy of getting a loan.”

read the article 

Quartz: Want to be a better critical thinker? Here’s how to spot false narratives and “weaponized lies”

The psychologist Daniel J. Levitin, author of the new book Weaponized Lies: How to Think Critically in the Post-Truth Era, says that our talent for critical thinking also has been weakened by the sheer amount of information coming at us each day through push notifications, cable news, social media, and the 24-hour news cycle. “We’ve become less critical in the face of information overload,” he writes over email. “We throw up our hands and say, it’s too much to think about.” According to Levitin, this sense of being overwhelmed makes us more vulnerable to unsubstantiated stories from suspect sources and “alternative facts” served up by spin doctors. [...]

That said, Bowling Green professor Browne insists that “even a fourth-grader” can master some of the basics of critical thinking. The first step is to recognize that all of us have biases that are bound to affect our judgment. Thus, we must continually question our own assumptions and beliefs. Or, as Sesno puts it, “You almost have to start by asking, What do I think I know, and how do I know it’s true?” [...]

Critical thinking also requires humility, according to Levitin. “You must be willing to admit you don’t know, or that you might be wrong about something.”

Still, it is worth the effort, Levitin argues. “Evidence-based decision-making leads to better outcomes—better health decisions, financial decisions, life choices,” he says, adding: “Research shows that your gut’s going to be wrong more than it is right.”

read the article 

Broadly: 'Keeping Up With The Kattarshians' Is Iceland's New Reality TV Show About Cats

The show's premise is simple: four kittens, all from a local animal rescue shelter, are made to live together in an oversized dollhouse rigged with hidden cameras. The kittens: Guðni, Ronja, Briet, and Stubbur have captivated an Icelandic—and global—audience. Though viewing figures aren't available yet, Inga says that the show (which is available to stream online) has already attracted the highest-ever traffic to Icelandic broadcaster Nutiminn's website. [...]

How difficult was it to create the world's first reality TV cat show in an ethical way?

It took about a year to put together, because we wanted all the animal welfare authorities to approve it. And here we are, a year later, with the first reality TV show starring kittens. All the people who were laughing then aren't laughing now. [...]

What will happen to the cats after the show ends?

All four cats now have been adopted, so we're going to be putting a new litter in here in the coming days—probably next week. We'll fix up the house, put another camera or so in there, and then have more orphan kittens ready to move in.

read the article and see the photos