TechRepublic: AI-powered tool aims to help reduce bias and racially charged language on websites. “Website accessibility tech provider UserWay has released an AI-powered tool designed to help organizations ensure their websites are free from discriminatory, biased, and racially charged language. The tool, Content Moderator, flags content for review, and nothing is deleted or removed without approval from site administrators, according to UserWay.”
racism
ProPublica: After a Year of Investigation, the Border Patrol Has Little to Say About Agents’ Misogynistic and Racist Facebook Group
ProPublica: After a Year of Investigation, the Border Patrol Has Little to Say About Agents’ Misogynistic and Racist Facebook Group. “The Border Patrol vowed a full accounting after ProPublica revealed hateful posts in the private Facebook group. Now congressional investigators say the agency is blocking them and revealing little about its internal investigation.”
Washington Post: Twitter permanently bans former KKK leader David Duke
Washington Post: Twitter permanently bans former KKK leader David Duke. “Avowed white supremacist David Duke was permanently banned from Twitter for repeated violations of the social media platform’s rules on hate speech. The former Ku Klux Klan leader and one-time Louisiana legislator’s most recent tweets included a link to an interview he conducted with Holocaust denier Germar Rudolf. Other posts promised to expose the ‘systemic racism lie,’ as well as the ‘incitement of violence against white people’ by Jewish-owned media. He also shared misinformation about the danger and spread of the coronavirus.”
NPR: Classical Music Tries To Reckon With Racism — On Social Media
NPR: Classical Music Tries To Reckon With Racism — On Social Media. “Two controversies broke out this week regarding accusations of anti-Black racism in classical music. One involved two high-profile international soloists, pianist Yuja Wang and violinist Leonidas Kavakos. The other features less prominent individuals — a group of academics — but it also points to the slowness of the classical music community to take up difficult conversations about race and representation. But in both cases, the accusations and the rebuttals have played out speedily on social media — within a community that still relies heavily on hierarchical prestige and institutional power.”
University of Washington: UW Libraries publishes new online research guides on racial justice, African American experience in Pacific Northwest
University of Washington: UW Libraries publishes new online research guides on racial justice, African American experience in Pacific Northwest. “The African American Research & Archival Collections in the Pacific Northwest Collections guide was compiled and released in June. This guide highlights archival and printed materials, photographs and moving image collections available in UW Special Collections that relate to Black communities, political groups and civil rights movements in the Pacific Northwest. UW Libraries also has created a tab titled ‘Racial Justice Resources: Keeping Current.’ The guide is a starting point for students and faculty ‘seeking to better understand issues related to racial justice and racism in America.'” Yes, some of the content is university access only, but the Keeping Current page is stuffed with resources. STUFFED.
The Verge: How the world’s biggest general science society is tackling racism
The Verge: How the world’s biggest general science society is tackling racism. “The world’s largest multidisciplinary scientific society has decided to take on systemic racism. The move by The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), publisher of the esteemed Science journals, comes after Black scientists came forward to protest racism within academia and the sciences, and organized a strike on June 10th, that AAAS joined. In a letter to its 120,000 members this month, AAAS CEO Sudip Parikh announced that the 172-year-old institution has come up with a plan to hold itself accountable for making itself and the sciences more diverse.”
Axios: Hate speech has soared online since George Floyd’s death
Axios: Hate speech has soared online since George Floyd’s death. “On June 3, at the height of nationwide protests, DoubleVerify, which uses its own technology to scan pages online so advertisers can avoid objectionable content, says instances of hate speech were more than 4.5 times higher than usual — the highest-ever rate it has measured to date.”
New York Times: Black Business Owners Had a Harder Time Getting Federal Aid, a Study Finds
New York Times: Black Business Owners Had a Harder Time Getting Federal Aid, a Study Finds. “A nonprofit sent Black and white ‘mystery shoppers’ to branches of 17 banks, where they asked for loans under the Paycheck Protection Program. White customers got better treatment.”
Salon: Citing anecdotal evidence, Tillis links ‘the Hispanic population’ to North Carolina’s COVID-19 surge
Salon: Citing anecdotal evidence, Tillis links ‘the Hispanic population’ to North Carolina’s COVID-19 surge. “It is accurate that a disproportionate amount of North Carolina’s COVID-19 cases have been reported in its community. But this is also true of many areas across the country with pockets of high Latinx populations, who are often employed as ‘essential workers’ in jobs which demand sharing tight quarters with other employees, such as construction sites or factories. A number of economic and sociological conditions contribute to this imbalance, which appears in communities of color across the country. However, Tillis’ anecdotal evidence of a racial divide in proper preventive steps would appear to be off-base, if not backwards.”
Mother Jones: Black Activists Warn That Facebook Hasn’t Done Enough to Stop Racist Harassment
Mother Jones: Black Activists Warn That Facebook Hasn’t Done Enough to Stop Racist Harassment. “Despite Facebook’s recent proclamations and donations designed to indicate backing for America’s swelling anti-racist movement, the company and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg have been targeted by such activists largely because of the platform’s appeasement of President Donald Trump, even as he posts misinformation about voting and exhortations to violence. Meanwhile Facebook is also home to a chorus of Black people who use the site to fight racism but whose own posts and pages are often penalized for calling out bigotry, even as vitriol against them remains on the platform.”
MarketWatch: ‘If I tell people about what happened, I honor my ancestors.’ How the pandemic is helping a slavery historian develop a K-12 lesson plan on African-American history
MarketWatch: ‘If I tell people about what happened, I honor my ancestors.’ How the pandemic is helping a slavery historian develop a K-12 lesson plan on African-American history. “When COVID-19 stormed America in March, Christine King Mitchell took a break from her job as a docent at the Old Slave Mart Museum in Charleston, S.C. Mitchell, 64, is an historian who has made education and research on the enslavement of African-Americans from 1619 to 1865 her life’s work. But how to keep going during a global pandemic, in a moment when the May 25 police killing of George Floyd and subsequent anti-racism protests have triggered a broad cultural push to acknowledge the longstanding oppression of Black Americans more fully?”
Poynter: How the media covered two pandemics — COVID-19 and systemic racism
Poynter: How the media covered two pandemics — COVID-19 and systemic racism. “Only one thing proved able to stop news coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, or at least allow outlets to focus on a different type of story — the revitalization of a movement to stop another pandemic that has long plagued this country: systemic racism.”
BNN Bloomberg: Google Campus Security Singled Out Black, Latinx Employees
BNN Bloomberg: Google Campus Security Singled Out Black, Latinx Employees. “Google’s campus security system subjected Black and Latinx workers to bias and prompted complaints to management, according to people familiar with the situation, leading the company to scrap a key part of the approach. The internet giant encouraged employees to check colleagues’ ID badges on campus, and asked security staff to do the same. This went beyond the typical corporate office system where workers swipe badges to enter. The policy was designed to prevent unauthorized visitors and keep Google’s open work areas safe.”
An Unlikely Source of Catharsis for a Black M.L.B. Player: Social Media (New York Times)
New York Times: An Unlikely Source of Catharsis for a Black M.L.B. Player: Social Media. “Social media can be a challenging venue for tackling sensitive subjects with nuance. But for [Tony] Kemp, one of the few African-American players in Major League Baseball, sending that tweet felt like placing a bar stool at his kitchen island and inviting anyone to join him for a conversation about the issues roiling the country.”
Hechinger Report: ‘Black At’ Instagram accounts put campus racism on display
Hechinger Report: ‘Black At’ Instagram accounts put campus racism on display. “As protestors marched across the United States in June calling for racial justice, college students and recent graduates amplified their cries on Instagram. Through dozens of new Instagram accounts, they are sharing, often anonymously, what it’s like to be disrespected and harassed for being Black on campus. They’re also highlighting resources for such things as learning about white fragility, who can and cannot say the N-word and which college courses could prepare you to open your mind and check your biases.”
