Month: March 2017

This article is part of HuffPost’s Project Zero campaign, a yearlong series on neglected tropical diseases and efforts to fight them.

Rabies is one of the most lethal viruses known to man. It kills virtually 100 percent of victims who don’t get the vaccine within 10 days of exposure.

Rabies almost exclusively kills people in developing countries ― which means it is not a priority disease for the West.

Anyone exposed to the virus has 10 days to get the vaccine, a method known as post-exposure prophylaxis. The vaccine is 100 percent effective, but many people cannot afford it. 

A recent study in Kenya found that bite victims paid up to $500 for treatment, nearly half the average per capita income.

India alone, where more than a fifth of the population lives on just $1.25 a day, accounts for 35 percent of rabies deaths worldwide.

Another 36 percent of deaths take place in sub-Saharan Africa, where two-fifths of people live on less than $1.25 per day.

Complicating the issue is the fact that rabies falls between government ministries for animal and human health, according to Felix Lankester, who started his career as a wild animal vet and is now a clinical assistant professor at the Paul G. Allen School for Global Animal Health at Washington State University.

“Health globally has been divided into human health and animal health,” Lankester said, even though 60 to 70 percent of human diseases come from animals.

“Dogs transmit [rabies], so agriculture ministries need to intervene,” he said. “Yet because it’s people that suffer, it’s health ministries that benefit from the reduced cost of the human disease.”

Coordinating a veterinary response to a human health problem is not easy, says Lankester, whose project ― the Serengeti Health Initiative ― oversaw the elimination of canine rabies in Tanzania’s Serengeti, one of the world’s most famous national parks.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

The majority of the 2,000 people in the United States formally exonerated of crimes they never committed are black, according to a new report examining the relationship between race and wrongful convictions.

In addition, the majority of more than 1,800 innocent defendants framed by law enforcement since 1989 in widespread police scandals are African American, says the report, “Race and Wrongful Convictions in the United States,” published Tuesday as a companion to the annual National Registry of Exonerations.

“Judging from the cases we know, a substantial majority of innocent people who are convicted of crimes in the United States are African Americans,” the report declares.

The report examines exonerations for defendants who had been wrongly convicted of murder, sexual assault and drug crimes since 1989.

Murder

The report found a range of factors leading to wrongful convictions, including including government misconduct, false guilty pleas by innocent people, and situations where it was later determined that no crime was committed.  

The National Registry of Exonerations now lists 2,000 exonerations since 1989. On average, those who were cleared had served almost nine years in prison. Some had been on death row. Others were younger than 18 when they were convicted, or had intellectual disabilities. 

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

In a decision that should send ripples through the criminal justice system, the Supreme Court ruled Monday that the Constitution empowers judges in criminal cases to scrutinize racist statements made by jurors during jury deliberations.

Such deliberations, held in secret and without the presence of judges, are largely shielded from court review under the “no impeachment” rule. The general principle behind it is that the jury system would suffer if judges were constantly second-guessing what jurors decide behind closed doors.

But in a 5-to-3 ruling, the Supreme Court looked at its precedents and found a constitutional exception to that rule whenever there is evidence that a juror exhibited racial bias in voting to convict a defendant.

“This Court’s decisions demonstrate that racial bias implicates unique historical, constitutional, and institutional concerns,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his opinion, which conceded that the jury system is human and thus can be flawed. “An effort to address the most grave and serious statements of racial bias is not an effort to perfect the jury but to ensure that our legal system remains capable of coming ever closer to the promise of equal treatment under the law that is so central to a functioning democracy.”

The ruling ― joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan ― is highly readable and was replete with the kind of language Kennedy reserves for landmark rulings, such as those he has authored on gay marriage and affirmative action in higher education.

“It must become the heritage of our Nation to rise above racial classifications that are so inconsistent with our commitment to the equal dignity of all persons,” Kennedy wrote.

It must become the heritage of our Nation to rise above racial classifications that are so inconsistent with our commitment to the equal dignity of all persons.
Justice Anthony Kennedy

The case arose after two Colorado jurors in the criminal trial of a Latino, Miguel Peña-Rodriguez, reported to his attorney that another juror had made “anti-Hispanic” comments during deliberations. The defendant had just been convicted of harassment and unlawful sexual contact with two teenage girls.

According to those jurors, the biased juror had expressed his belief that Peña-Rodriguez was guilty because “Mexican men had a bravado that caused them to believe they could do whatever they wanted with women” and that “he did it because he’s Mexican and Mexican men take whatever they want.” He had also referred to the defendant as “an illegal,” even though he was legally in the country.

Colorado courts refused to accept these jurors’ revelations to contest the verdict and let Peña-Rodriguez’s conviction stand. He was sentenced to two years’ probation and was required to register as a sex offender.

Recognizing that every state and the federal government follow a version of the no-impeachment rule, the Supreme Court nonetheless said it was its responsibility to “enforce the Constitution’s guarantee against state-sponsored racial discrimination in the jury system.” 

“A constitutional rule that racial bias in the justice system must be addressed — including, in some instances, after the verdict has been entered — is necessary to prevent a systemic loss of confidence in jury verdicts, a confidence that is a central premise of the Sixth Amendment trial right,” Kennedy wrote.

The high court cautioned that not just any “offhand comment indicating racial bias or hostility” during deliberations will allow a defendant to challenge his or her verdict ― but only those statements in which “racial animus was a significant factor in the juror’s vote to convict.”

Kennedy’s opinion left it up to the states to determine the proper procedures in similar cases moving forward. The court also noted that there are already safeguards in the criminal process to screen out and contain biased jurors ― such as the jury selection process and the instructions judges give prior to deliberations.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the text of the Constitution did not compel the majority’s conclusion.

“In its attempt to stimulate a thoughtful, rational dialogue on race relations … the Court today ends the political process and imposes a uniform, national rule,” Thomas wrote. “The Constitution does not require such a rule. Neither should we.”

Justice Samuel Alito, in a separate dissenting opinion joined by Thomas and Chief Justice John Roberts, called the decision “well-intentioned” but said the ruling will undermine the finality of jury verdicts and may lead to a slippery slope of similar challenges ― for example, if there’s evidence that a juror expressed sexist or religiously bigoted views during deliberations.

“Today’s decision — especially if it is expanded in the ways that seem likely — will invite the harms that no-impeachment rules were designed to prevent,” Alito wrote. He noted that jurors, unlike judges and attorneys, are ordinary people who should be allowed “to speak, debate, argue, and make decisions the way ordinary people do in their daily lives.”

But Kennedy and the majority saw things differently, singling out racial discrimination as “especially pernicious in the administration of justice” ― bad enough that not even everyday jurors should be allowed to use it against a defendant.

“It is the mark of a maturing legal system that it seeks to understand and to implement the lessons of history,” Kennedy wrote.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Struggling with the whole “mature adult” thing? Illustrator Prudence Geerts feels your pain.  

On the Instagram account Planet Prudence, the 25-year-old computer science student shows her comic alter ego fumbling to get through everyday life. Most days, little Prudence brings her A-game but on other days, just remembering to put on deodorant is a challenge.

In an interview with The Huffington Post, Geerts said she strives to give readers the “most awkward, most human parts” of herself.

“You can say my account is like reading my diary. It’s based on how I feel, what I do and situations I’m in,” she said. “In a way, she’s become kind of like my heroine because of how awkward, yet loveable she is!”

Scroll down to see more of the highly relatable comics and head to Planet Prudence for even more. 

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Ben Carson, the new secretary of housing and urban development, portrayed enslaved Africans as immigrants during a speech to the agency’s employees on Monday.

Yes, he called people who were enslaved “immigrants.” No, this isn’t a joke.

“That’s what America is about,” Carson said. “A land of dreams and opportunity. There were other immigrants who came here in the bottom of slave ships, worked even longer, even harder for less. But they too had a dream that one day their sons, daughters, grandsons, granddaughters, great grandsons, great granddaughters might pursue prosperity and happiness in this land.”

Sure, enslaved Africans had dreams of “prosperity and happiness” ― and freedom ― but Carson’s quote makes it seem as though they came to America to provide their children with a level of well-being they otherwise couldn’t give them.

Enslaved Africans had no choice in coming to the U.S. or deciding how they would lead their lives once they arrived (in other places, like this Vox article mapping America’s history of immigration, enslavement is falsely categorized as “forced migration”). They were kidnapped, transported to America under deplorable conditions, sold like livestock and placed on plantations to work grueling hours for nothing in return. They were routinely beaten, killed, raped and tortured by slave masters and their families. Their attempts to escape or rebel were violently thwarted and, if enslaved Africans were able to obtain freedom, they still lived their lives as a second-class citizens.

Carson’s choice of words romanticizes the horrors of African enslavement and the subsequent struggles black Americans faced. Slavery’s legacy in the U.S. led to generations of black people being lynched, disenfranchised and barred from attaining the political, social and economic capital held by their white peers.

Aside from being nonsensical, Carson’s comment plays into the bigger problem of glossing over the history of people of color in America by painting the U.S. as a thriving “nation of immigrants” ― as Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, an activist and author, pointed out for Monthly Review Zine in 2006.

“Misrepresenting the process of European colonization of North America, making everyone an immigrant, serves to preserve the ‘official story’ of a mostly benign and benevolent USA, and to mask the fact that the pre-U.S. independence settlers, were, well, settlers ― colonial settlers, just as they were in Africa and India, or the Spanish in Central and South America,” she wrote.

“So, let’s stop saying ‘this is a nation of immigrants.’”

Yes, let’s ― so I can stop writing articles about something as simple as enslavement not being a choice. 

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

It was never really about the emails.

Remember the private email server and account that Hillary Clinton used to conduct official State Department business during her tenure as Secretary of State? Of course you do! It was the subject of months of Congressional investigations, numerous tweets from Donald Trump, front page headlines, and calls to “lock her up!” “But her emails” became a widely-circulated meme.

So, what happened when it came out that Vice President Mike Pence used a private email account to conduct government business ― and was hacked ― during his time as governor of Indiana? Predictably, a whole lot of nothing.

“There’s no comparison whatsoever,” Pence told CNN last Friday, when questioned about the parallels between his personal email account and Clinton’s. (Pence had previously praised the FBI on more than one occasion for investigating Clinton.)

No one is arguing that Pence should be taken down for sending emails about government business on his AOL account ― after all, neither Clinton nor Pence have been found engaging in any criminal activity. 

And these two incidents were not exactly the same. One could say that using a private email account as Secretary of State ― especially given that the State Department explicitly discourages the use of personal email accounts ― meant that Clinton’s email account became a big red flag, and therefore became a national issue during her presidential campaign.

But looking at the two cases side by side, it’s impossible not to take note of the disparate reactions and wonder the cause.

In October, a poll from Public Policy Polling found that 84 percent of Trump supporters believed that Clinton should be sent to prison, while 40 percent believed she was “an actual demon.” Yet just three short months later, a poll from the same polling company found that 42 percent of Trump supporters believed that President Trump should be allowed to have a private email server.

And when it was reported in January that Trump senior advisers Kellyanne Conway, Steve Bannon, Sean Spicer and Jared Kushner were using email accounts through a private RNC email system, it was a virtual non-issue.

The headlines have faded, the investigations turned up nothing, and Clinton is not “locked up” ― she’s attending Broadway shows and hiking in Chappaqua. But the “email (non) scandal” remains a potent symbol of people’s worst instincts about Clinton. She’s untrustworthy. She’s conniving. She’s power-hungry. She’s a liar. She’s corrupt. She thinks she’s “above the law.”

In 1693, the people of Salem had witches to channel their rage and distrust of women towards. In 2016, Americans had Hillary Clinton.  

The outsize vitriol that exploded in reaction to Clinton’s private email server was always more of a symptom than a cause. Before the FBI began looking into her emails, Clinton had weathered decades of criticism ― much of it gendered. Her facial expressions, hairstyles, makeup (or lack thereof), and her last name were always considered fair game. She was both told her success was thanks to her husband, and simultaneously taken to task for her husband’s moral and political failings. When she held a job, she was loved. When she asked for a job, she was hated.

So by the time the email “scandal” erupted, the public was already primed to look at Clinton with a base level of distrust and disdain. Many on the right (and some on the far left) already wanted to “lock her up.” The emails simply gave them a tangible reason to chant about it in public spaces.

On the day that the story about Pence’s email broke, Clinton and her longtime advisor Huma Abedin were on a plane. A fellow passenger snapped a photo of her, later realizing that in that moment Clinton was reading the front page of USA Today, which bore the headline, “Pence Used Personal Email In Office.”

That is the face of a woman who has been held accountable many times over for her mistakes while her male contemporaries are consistently given the benefit of the doubt, skating by on the promise of their innate worthiness.

“But her emails” allowed thousands to justify a burning hatred for one rather conventional female politician. But his emails? They’re already forgotten.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

Essence entertainment director Cori Murray stopped by the HuffPost Black Voices’ biweekly talk show “BV Breakdown” ― a Facebook Live show that discusses hot topics, current events and self-care tips ― on Thursday to share her thoughts on who’s on the up and up in Hollywood. 

Black Voices’ associate editor Taryn Finley and senior culture writer Zeba Blay sat down with Murray, who was also joined by Buzzfeed entertainment reporter Sylvia Obell, to share her perspective as an entertainment insider.

Here are five women Murray said should be on your list of Hollywood up-and-comers to watch in 2017:

1. Gina Prince-Bythewood

Best known for her 2000 romance film “Love and Basketball,” starring Sanaa Lathan, Gina Prince-Bythewood is no Hollywood newbie. Prince-Bythewood will be directing the upcoming fictional Fox series “Shots Fired,” which is centered on police brutality in South Carolina. Lathan will also star in the series. 

2. Dee Rees

In a $12.5 million deal, Netflix recently bought director Dee Rees’ critically acclaimed film “Mudbound.” The film, which follows soldiers returning home from WWII, stars Carey Mulligan, Jason Mitchell and Mary J. Blige.

3. Stella Meghie

Stella Meghie’s name may not ring a bell just yet, but the Toronto native may soon be at the center of Hollywood’s attention when romance film “Everything, Everything,” starring Amandla Stenberg, is released this May.

4. Jessica Williams

Former “Daily Show” correspondent Jessica Williams should have been on your radar yesterday. One half of the “2 Dope Queens” podcast, Williams will be starring in Netflix’s “The Incredible Jessica James,” about a young playwright living in New York City. 

5. Yvonne Orji

Yvonne Orji is everybody’s bestie as Molly in “Insecure.” But Orji really won our hearts with her realness when she opened up to “The Breakfast Club” in November about being a virgin at 32 years old and having experienced bullying when she was younger. 

Look out, Hollywood. All this black excellence ain’t here to play. 

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

A pair of siblings in Southern California used their school’s “Dr. Seuss Week” celebration as an opportunity to educate their fellow students on the author’s problematic past.

Last week, a South Pasadena elementary school celebrated “Dr. Seuss Week” in conjunction with Read Across America Day, which takes place annually on the author’s birthday. Two students, 11-year-old Rockett and 10-year-old Zoe, were upset to learn that their classmates didn’t seem to know about the racist streak in the cartoonist’s early work.

Before he rose to fame with his children’s books, Dr. Seuss (born Theodor Seuss Geisel) drew a number of political cartoons during World War II. Many of these drawings featured racist portrayals of Japanese citizens and Japanese Americans. The cartoons ranged from stereotypical caricatures to fear-inducing propaganda that vilified people of Japanese descent and justified their internment.

Rockett’s and Zoe’s dad, Steve Wong, is the curator at the Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles and also teaches Asian American History as an adjunct professor at Pasadena City College.

“Early on, my wife and I have instilled in them to have a strong moral compass and sense of justice,” Steve told The Huffington Post.

Aware of Dr. Seuss’ complicated past, Steve and his wife Leslie read the author’s famous books to Zoe and Rockett. “I still remember trying to read Hop on Pop to my to kids as an exhausted father and falling asleep while reading it to them,” he recalled.

About two years ago, Leslie taught their kids about Dr. Seuss’ racist cartoons and role in swaying public opinion of the incarceration of Japanese Americans.

Knowing this piece of history, Zoe and Rockett decided to share the information about the ionic author’s past with their classmates during Dr. Seuss Week. Together, they created informational fliers to pass out at school.

When Zoe distributed the fliers to her classmates, she received mixed reactions. “Most people agreed that his cartoons were wrong and racist,” she told HuffPost. “Most people didn’t know this and thought it was very interesting, while some people did know but still liked it.”

Some students accused Zoe of spreading a fake rumor, tore up the fliers in front of her and told their teacher, who instructed her to stop passing them out.

Rockett said his teacher confiscated his fliers, “raised her voice” in disapproval and reported the incident to the principal. “I only got to hand out one because my teacher took them away, but that one person said it was interesting.”

Added Steve, “Rockett was mad that he was censored, but ultimately he was ‘whatever’ about the whole ordeal.” Zoe had a more emotional experience.

”Zoe’s teacher ‘neutrally’ told her to stop passing out the fliers, and that the request came from the principal after being notified by Rockett’s teacher,” Steve explained. “Knowing the principal was involved, Zoe was fearful the following days that she was going to get into trouble at school for her actions, and told her mom that she cried several times the first day.”

Zoe told HuffPost she wasn’t surprised some people had negative reactions but was “shocked” to learn the flier had spread to the principal and that she had caused such a problem for the teachers. “It wounded me more when friends told me that multiple girls told on me,” she said.

Still, the little girl found comfort in the friends that supported her. “People who truly agreed helped me be brave for getting in trouble and pushed me to go farther with the fliers,” she recalled.

Following the incident, Steve claimed that Rockett’s teacher sent the following email to him and his wife:

Hello Mr. and Mrs. Wong,

This morning, Rockett came to school with a stack of flyers to hand out regarding Dr. Suess. While he is absolutely entitled to his own thoughts and opinions, school is not the appropriate place for him to hand these flyers out. I am going to send them home with him today after school. I do applaud his civic mindedness.

The dad said he wrote this lengthy response:

I do want to begin my response to your email, and our children’s actions of creating the flyer, by stating that we appreciate the non-racist work of Dr. Seuss. We have a collection of his books in home and we read many on them often to our kids when they were younger. A couple of years ago, we wanted to balance our love for Seuss Geisel’s creativity by exposing our children to the darker side of his early racist works. So while we still respect his art, our family understands that Seuss Geisel, like many others we hold in high esteem, can indeed have a sordid past. Rockett wanted a way to express this to his classmates, and we gave him and his sister the okay to create something to achieve this goal of educating people about Geisel’s past racism. They came up with the flyer on their own without much oversight on my own. Nonetheless, Leslie and I approved what they were doing and are ultimately the ones to be held accountable.

Rockett and Zoe’s great-grandmother and great-grandfather who are still with us today, along with 120,000 innocent others (most of them American citizens), were forcibly removed from their homes and sent to U.S. concentration camps due to lack of leadership, rampant racism, and war hysteria. There was no basis or evidence of Japanese Americans involved in any espionage, and the U.S. has since apologized for the unconstitutional act against its own American citizens. However it is important to understand that Seuss Geisel, helped fuel that racism and war hysteria with many racist cartoons that he published during that time. His cartoons targeting Japanese Americans directly contributed to the public support of Executive Order 9066 (the executive order that incarcerated Japanese Americans). This is not an opinion, much like Hitler’s anti-Semitism is not an opinion, for Geisel’s hatred of Japanese is well documented, and is chronicled in American history books. Unfortunately our family has had a direct impact and has suffered directly from Geisel’s cartoons.

We understand it is in your opinion that school is not for this type of “educational” encounter that Rockett attempted to present today. Perhaps trying to educate his fellow classmates with a flyer may have been a little unconventional and has placed you in an uncomfortable position. We respect your opinion and authority of what is deemed appropriate in your classroom, much as I would expect the same in my classroom, and will of course defer to you about what is appropriate. However I do have to say I disagree in principal with your standpoint that “school” is not the appropriate place to disseminate new, or differing ideas. America’s educational intuitions should pride themselves as space for critical thought, as an environment to think outside the box, as an instution to understand that the arts, science, and history (including our American heroes) are not one dimensional subjects with only one narrative, but subjects with differing intersectional layers. As a teacher myself, I try to create a space where students can critically challenge assumptions, a space where students can question history, science, math, a space to propose a new perspective on older models. I was taught in school that the incarceration of Japanese Americans was for their own good. I wish that someone had challenged that perspective.

This is not to say that Geisel did not have a change of heart later in life. Perhaps he was just keeping up with the times when racial intolerance became distasteful in America, nonetheless he did make that turn. If I did have more oversight I would have insisted that they include his turnaround. However, we trusted that the kids did adequate research and based the flyer in facts.

We do appreciate that you applaud Rockett for his civic mindedness, and we appreciate the education you are providing him. I apologize for the length of this email, but I thought it was important to convey.

Sincerely,

Steve

The kids’ elementary school is a “fairly progressive” public school, said Steve, noting that the website boasts of its ethnic and cultural diversity and strong community ties. Notably, the school emphasizes its “Core Values,” which are respect, integrity and diversity.

“Schools should be a space for critical thought, especially in these new times,” Steve explained. “Rockett was first inspired to do something about Dr Seuss week because of these core values.”

Added Rockett, “Drawing racist cartoons are not respectful, do not show integrity and hurt people that are different than you. It does not show diversity because it is trying to gain anger against a person because of their differences.”

The elementary schooler said he wishes his teacher had allowed him to pass out the fliers, or used the incident as a teaching moment to share a lesson about this piece of history. The school did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.

“I hope that people learn that Dr. Seuss was not perfect and that he drew racist cartoons,” said Rockett. “I also hope that people will learn that everyone has a dark side and that nobody, not even very famous people, are perfect.”

Both siblings also noted that Dr. Seuss reportedly later expressed remorse for his depiction of Japanese people and tried to make up for it with his later work.

Zoe said she was “shocked,” “speechless” and “very curious” when she first learned about Dr. Seuss’ racist cartoons. She expected her classmates to have a similar reaction.

“I just wanted to inform them and meant no harm,” she said. “I didn’t want people to deeply hate him for what he did. After all, he regretted his cartoons.”

“In my opinion we didn’t violate any rules or core values,” she added. “Doing this gave me a big lesson: In life, you will always have to take risks, and there are always consequences for having a voice and doing what you believe in.”

H/T Angry Asian Man

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

I’ll never forget the first time I realized people saw my brother and dad differently. I was 13 and it was after 9/11. My family was in New York City visiting my brother who lived there at the time, and we were walking down the street when a man with an Australian accent yelled “Hey, Bin Laden, go home” as his friend mimed playing a flute while shaking his head from side to side.

No one said anything as they laughed and walked past us. We actually pretended it didn’t happen, and later that day, I remember overhearing my mom nonchalantly mentioning to my dad that maybe they should consider moving back to India.

That day I learned two things: Being brown makes me a “bad” kind of different and America was not considered a permanent home for my family.

Since the election, moving out of the country is once again a prominent topic of conversation. My parents are looking into Canada’s immigration policies; they’re planning to renovate real estate in India just in case. My dad nonchalantly mentioned needing to learn to protect himself. When we talked about it, he listened to my argument for nonviolence, but his final comment struck me deep: “So you’d rather see me dead than be able to protect myself?”

Every single day I wake up with a sense of dread that something is going to happen to someone I love. The chances just keep getting greater.

My heart hurts that these are the conversations that take up my quality time with my family now – that every single day I wake up with a sense of dread that something is going to happen to someone I love. The probability keeps feeling greater.

Do we belong here?

Srinivas Kuchibhotla’s wife asked this very question in a Facebook post after her husband was shot by a man who yelled “get out of my country” in Kansas last week.

Do we belong here?

What is belonging, but a particular set of people who create a community that provides comfort, security and acceptance? I belong with my friends. I belong with the community my parents have been a part of in Virginia. I belong in my workplace.

Yet I was told to go home by an aggressive Trump supporter a few months ago and I was startled because I thought I was home.

America prides itself on being a melting pot of colors and faiths. This, along with the opportunity to excel, was reason enough for my parents to bring their two children to Virginia and have me here. But lately it feels like we’ve been naïve.

The fact that the Kansas incident didn’t produce so much more outrage or media coverage emphasizes to me that my family and I (along with other people of color, Muslims and targeted minorities) don’t matter. It took six days for the White House to even mention the attack. It’s outrageously disappointing. But it’s not new. People of color are being threatened or attacked or worse, killed, every day.

It reminds me of the boiling frog metaphor: When a frog is put into boiling water, it immediately jumps out, but if you heat the water slowly, it doesn’t perceive danger and thus is boiled. 

Almost every day, I read or hear about a story of a minority being accosted or attacked. And as long as our government leaders are silent, and as long as we allow discriminatory rhetoric to go unchallenged in the media, hate will only continue to flourish. People of color are growing accustomed to imminent danger and living in fear of threats and attacks; before we know it, we’ll all be, or know someone, personally affected by this prevalent hate.

As long as our government leaders are silent, and as long as we allow discriminatory rhetoric to go unchallenged in the media, hate will only continue to flourish.

Just days after the Kansas shooting, an Indian man was shot dead outside his home in South Carolina and then days later, a Sikh man was shot in his driveway in Seattle.

Maybe this American melting pot is just a pot that has been heating up slowly and is boiling us like frogs.

Srinivas Kuchibhotla, Harnish Patel and Deep Rai represent people of color, minorities, my family, and my loved ones.

My brother, a turban-wearing Sikh man, is an ER physician at Duke University and just last week he had to deal with an Islamophobic patient who asked him if he was going to treat him differently because he was Jewish (and because he assumed my brother was Muslim).

My brother treated the patient with respect because the issue isn’t what faith he practices, but that people of color, Muslims and Sikhs are getting targeted and attacked for no other reason than appearances and preconceptions.

My reaction to this incident wasn’t shock. It was gratitude that it was nothing more.

It’s always been normal for my mom to call twice when she’s trying to get in touch with me, and usually it never indicates an urgent matter. But now every time she calls me twice, my heart pounds a little faster. Did something bad happen to my dad, or my brother? Do we know someone who was attacked or killed?

America isn’t feeling like the land of the free anymore; it feels more like the land of fear.

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices

”Get Out” is being universally praised by critics for its ability to sprinkle social commentary over the mixed combination of horror and comedy.

The directorial debut of Jordan Peele, who also wrote and produced the film, follows a young black man who is meeting his white girlfriend’s parents for the first time. But the visit doesn’t turn out as he planned, hoped or wished it would.

Now, Funny Or Die has taken the premise a level up by adding Donald Trump into the mix. This is “Get Out (Of The White House).”

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Source: HuffPost Black Voices