raceAhead: The Scoop on Unconscious Bias and Five Breaking News Haikus

Your week in review, in haiku

 

1.

Walking while, doing

service while, buying breakfast

while black, black, black, black

 

2.

Aide, hushed voice. "We seem

to be at an impasse, sir."

"Get me Rodman. STAT!!"

 

3.

Mailman: "OMG

STOP! YOU'RE NOT INVITED TO

THE ROYAL WEDDING!"

 

4.

Thanos sighed. "It's you

who are wrong." Gamora sneered.

"No. NO! It's YANNY."

 

5.

Crescent moon, gates of

heaven open: Ramadan

Mubarak, Kareem

 

Have a peaceful and contemplative weekend.

On Point

Some thoughts about unconscious bias trainingJoelle Emerson, founder and CEO of Paradigm, an evidence-based inclusion strategy firm, has put together this helpful tweet thread to help answer questions about unconscious biases and mitigation efforts, ahead of the Starbucks all-hands meeting later this month. The first thing to note is that the term is broad, and it means different things to different people. But their research has found three things that define a well-designed training. Here's one: Make sure the training helps you understand (not normalize) the bias you might encounter while doing your day-to-day work.

A transgender student makes history at Spelman CollegeKeo Chaad O'Neal is the first openly transgender man to graduate the storied school, and he's already telegraphed his joy on Twitter, posting a picture in his graduation regalia with the hashtag #TransIsBeautiful. It was not an easy journey, he reports. He transferred to the school from a predominantly white college his junior year, ready to share his identity with his community, but received backlash from students, parents, and alumni, he says. "Lots of people believed that because I was trans, I didn't belong at Spelman but there was nowhere else I would rather be," he told Huffington Post. He graduates this weekend.

A homeless man was arrested for trying to buy breakfast at Burger King. Now, he's suingThe cashier, for some reason, believed the ten dollar bill Emory Ellis was trying to use at the Boston-area Burger King was counterfeit. Ellis, who is black, was arrested and spent three months in jail, the amount of time it took for the Secret Service to determine that the bill was real. That was 2015. This week, Ellis filed a $950,000 suit against the franchise and the employee for discrimination. "A person like me would've gotten an apology," said his lawyer, who is white. "But a person like Emory somehow finds his way in handcuffs for trying to pay for his breakfast with real money."

Breaking news from Sheffield, EnglandMagid Magid, a refugee from Somalia, just became Sheffield, England's youngest lord mayor at 28 years old. And he is thrilled. "Holy shit, this is surreal! With love, courage and opportunity literally anything is possible," he tweeted. Also, "So in my first full day as Lord Mayor, - I went viral, Celebrated the first day of Ramadhan, Had tonnes of amazing messages and kind words from people from all over the world!...And I also, pissed off a lot off the far right wing press. Ha!" Click through for his amazing inauguration photo and other testimony from friends. It will make your day.

The Woke Leader

Storytelling matters now, more than everThis is a wonderful interview with Maria Hinojosa, the anchor and managing editor of National Public Radio's Latino USA, and the founder of Futuro Media Group, a growing collective of writers and journalists. It's this moment in time, she says, that makes storytelling so vital. "I have to be honest that this is a very challenging time in my life as a Mexican immigrant who is an American citizen," she writes. Her experience of America is so different than the vision of her parents, who first saw the country as a beacon for democracy and justice, then ultimately a country of complex contradictions. "he work that I'm doing is part of the long arc of the role in general of people of color in this country to tell the stories, and to create the factual narrative, through journalism and through storytelling."

The woman behind one of the world's most famous picturesI will confess this now: I am shocked I did not know this. Dorothea Lange's 1936 photograph of a worried migrant mother became the most famous image of the Great Depression, yet for decades we knew nothing about the subject. (In fact, Lange never bothered to ask her name.) It turns out Florence Leona Christie was Cherokee, born to two Cherokee parents displaced from their tribal lands in Oklahoma. By the time the photo was taken, she had six young children and her husband had just died of tuberculosis. Click through for more, but this snippet of lost history was brought to my attention by her great-grandson, James Brady. "The children are my Aunt Ruby and Aunt Norma," he tweeted in a fascinating thread. In other news, Brady writes about sports for SB Nation, and refuses to use the Washington football team's full name in his articles.

Eve Ewing interviews Bomani Jones and it is exactly as good as you'd expectTwo of raceAhead's favorites are together at last - the academic and writer Ewing, and sports/society commentator Jones. Jones is about to launch a new show on ESPN; the two talked about his unexpected journey to the airwaves, and how his signature candor about race and the sports-industrial complex has played with the "just stick to sports" crowd. (Bomani became alt-famous when he wore a "Caucasians" shirt - a send-off of the Cleveland baseball team's mascot - on the ESPN show Mike and Mike.) "Many viewers still think that these opinions have no place on a sports network, especially when they come from a black man," says Ewing. Then she hands the mic to Jones. "The thorniness of the relationship between black athletes and the institutions that employ them--of need, of value, of power, of capitalist exchange, of bodies being laid on the line for the right price--is what's generally missing from popular analyses," he begins.

Quote

O moon-faced Beloved, / the month of Ramadan has arrived / Cover the table / and open the path of praise... / Let nothing be inside of you. / Be empty: give your lips to the lips of the reed. / When like a reed you fill with His breath, / then you'll taste sweetness... / Sweetness is hidden in the Breath / that fills the reed. / Be like Mary - by that sweet breath / a child grew within her.

Read more: fortune.com

https://infoforu.org/raceahead-the-scoop-on-unconscious-bias-and-five-breaking-news-haikus/