Sunday, December 22

Tag: history

A Long History Of Medical Abuse Suggests Why Many Black Americans Aren’t Rushing To Get The COVID-19 Vaccine
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COVID-19

A Long History Of Medical Abuse Suggests Why Many Black Americans Aren’t Rushing To Get The COVID-19 Vaccine

Black Americans have been the least inclined of any racial or ethnic group to say they’d get vaccinated against the coronavirus. The proportion of Black people who said they’ll probably or definitely take the shot has risen over time – but even by mid-January, with two COVID-19 vaccines authorized for emergency use in the U.S., only 35% of Black survey respondents said they’d get it as soon as they could, or already had gotten the shot. At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately harmed Black, Indigenous and other people of color in comparison to white members of American society. With Black Americans being hospitalized at rates 2.9 times higher than white Americans and dying from COVID-19 at rates 1.9 times higher, you might assume that Black people would be lining u...
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The Colonial History Of The Marshall Islands Limits Their Ability To Save Themselves And Could Be Wiped Out By Climate Change
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ENVIRONMENT, Journalism, VIDEO REELS

The Colonial History Of The Marshall Islands Limits Their Ability To Save Themselves And Could Be Wiped Out By Climate Change

Along U.S. coastlines, from California to Florida, residents are getting increasingly accustomed to “king tides.” These extra-high tides cause flooding and wreak havoc on affected communities. As climate change raises sea levels, they are becoming more extreme. The Marshall Islands and other small island nations are urgently threatened by rising seas. Stefan Lins/Flickr, CC BY King tides are nothing new for the Marshall Islands, a nation made up of 29 low-lying coral atolls that stretch across more than a million square miles of Pacific Ocean northeast of Australia. By 2035, the U.S. Geological Survey projects that some of the Marshall Islands will be submerged. Others will no longer have drinking water because their aquifers will be contaminated with saltwater. As a result, Marshallese w...
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Monuments ‘expire’ – but offensive monuments can become powerful history lessons
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VIDEO REELS

Monuments ‘expire’ – but offensive monuments can become powerful history lessons

Historical monuments are intended to be timeless, but almost all have an expiration date. As society’s values shift, the legitimacy of monuments can and often does erode. This is because monuments – whether statues, memorials or obelisks – reveal the values of the time in which they were created and advance the agendas of their creators. Many 9/11 monuments in the U.S., for example, serve both to remember and honor victims of the attacks while promoting national vigilance. These views garnered nearly universal support immediately after the attacks. Over time, however, as the costs and consequences of “homeland security” became clearer, unqualified support for this agenda has waned. Current debates around racism confirm that Confederate statues and Christopher Columbus statues, both of w...
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History tells us trying to stop diseases like COVID-19 at the border is a failed strategy
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COVID-19, VIDEO REELS

History tells us trying to stop diseases like COVID-19 at the border is a failed strategy

To explain why the coronavirus pandemic is much worse in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world, commentators have blamed the federal government’s mismanaged response and the lack of leadership from the Trump White House. Others have pointed to our culture of individualism, the decentralized nature of our public health, and our polarized politics. All valid explanations, but there’s another reason, much older, for the failed response: our approach to fighting infectious disease, inherited from the 19th century, has become overly focused on keeping disease out of the country through border controls. As a professor of medical sociology, I’ve studied the response to infectious disease and public health policy. In my new book, “Diseased States,” I examine how the early experience of outbr...
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Presidents have a long history of condescension, indifference and outright racism towards Black Americans
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POLITICS, SOCIAL JUSTICE

Presidents have a long history of condescension, indifference and outright racism towards Black Americans

The fury over racial injustice that erupted in the wake of George Floyd’s killing has forced Americans to confront their history. That’s unfamiliar territory for most Americans, whose historical knowledge amounts to a vague blend of fact and myth that was only half-learned in high school and is only half-remembered now. If their historical knowledge is lacking, Americans are not any better informed about the role of presidential leadership – and lack of leadership – on racial issues. They may have heard that five of the first seven presidents owned slaves, and they know – or think they do – that Abraham Lincoln “freed the slaves.” But even those tidbits of fact are incomplete. Several other presidents, including Ulysses Grant, owned slaves. And Lincoln, whose Emancipation Proclamation wa...
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Protestantism’s troubling history with white supremacy in the US
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IN OTHER NEWS

Protestantism’s troubling history with white supremacy in the US

In the long-overdue discussions taking place over the legacy of slavery and racism in the United States, few appear to be addressing the relationship between religion and racism. This comes despite notions of white supremacy being entwined with the history of religion in the United States. As a scholar specializing in issues of religion and identity, I argue for a deeper introspection around how white supremacy permeates all parts of American society, including its religious institutions. Race and religion In 1835, French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville described the character of the U.S. as the result of “the spirit of religion and the spirit of liberty,” which he argued, “elsewhere have often been at war but in America have somehow been incorporated into one another and marvelously c...
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A short history of black women and police violence
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IN OTHER NEWS

A short history of black women and police violence

Just after midnight on March 13, 2020, Breonna Taylor, an EMT in Louisville, Kentucky, was shot and killed by police officers who raided her home. The officers had entered her home without warning as part of a drug raid. The suspect they were seeking was not a resident of the home – and no drugs were ever found. But when they came through the door unexpectedly, and in plain clothes, police officers were met with gunfire from Taylor’s boyfriend, who was startled by the presence of intruders. In only a matter of minutes, Taylor was dead – shot eight times by police officers. Although the majority of black people killed by police in the United States are young men, black women and girls are also vulnerable to state-sanctioned violence. The #SayHerName campaign has worked to bring greater a...
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Police officers accused of brutal violence often have a history of complaints by citizens
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VIDEO REELS

Police officers accused of brutal violence often have a history of complaints by citizens

As protests against police violence and racism continue in cities throughout the U.S., the public is learning that several of the officers involved in the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville share a history of complaints by citizens of brutality or misconduct. Decades of research on police shootings and brutality reveal that officers with a history of shooting civilians, for example, are much more likely to do so in the future compared to other officers. A similar pattern holds for misconduct complaints. Officers who are the subject of previous civilian complaints – regardless of whether those complaints are for excessive force, verbal abuse or unlawful searches – pose a higher risk of engaging in serious misconduct in the future. A study published in...
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There’s a history of white supremacists interpreting government leaders’ words as encouragement
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SOCIAL JUSTICE

There’s a history of white supremacists interpreting government leaders’ words as encouragement

White supremacist and militia organizations are exploiting the government’s chaotic response to the coronavirus for recruitment efforts. Whatever his intention, these groups interpret President Donald Trump’s tweets to “LIBERATE” states and calling armed protesters “very good people” as support for their cause. Recent research by the Tech Transparency Project into social media accounts of white supremacists, a nonprofit that researches “the influence of the major technology platforms” on politics, policy and people’s lives, found that “some members of private … Facebook groups reacted to the president’s rhetoric (about lockdown protests) with memes of celebration.” The white supremacists’ response reflects the United States’ history of local, state and national political leaders encoura...
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A People’s History of Board Games
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GAMING

A People’s History of Board Games

If games are a reflection of our values as a society, and can influence how we think and act, can we game our way to a better world? We are living in the golden age of board games. Thousands of new board games are released every year, played by millions of people around the world. Board games, filled with strategy and exciting tension, have made a decisive comeback even in the era of video games. By 2023, the board game industry is expected to be worth $12 billion. And in 2018, tabletop games outperformed video games on the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter: Tabletop games raised a total of $165 million, while video games raised a total of $15.8 million. Like all forms of art and entertainment, games are often a reflection of our values as a society, and they can also inf...
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