Racial discrimination has cost American economy trillions. Tulsa, massacres just a start.

Marcus Anthony Hunter
Sun, May 30, 2021

Houses on fire after the Tulsa massacre

Racism is costly.

In fact, a recent Citigroup report estimated that racial discrimination has cost the American economy $16 trillion. Most notably, the report identifies a substantial $13 trillion loss in potential business revenue because of racial discrimination in lending to Black entrepreneurs and Black businesses. Although these figures are estimates for the last two decades, they point to a repeated pattern of costly preventable violence – financial and physical – against non-white people in America.

When a Black community in America is destroyed, America's progress is destroyed.


More in Reparations: Nearly two dozen Black massacres in American history. Reparations? Rarely.

For Black America, the economic losses are very direct. The wage gap, for example, puts the highest average earnings for Black men at more than $20,000 less than it is for white men.

But economic struggles in the Black community trickle down in ways that are less obvious, but certainly not less meaningful, to non-Black members of society. A close in the wealth gap over the past 20 years would have meant $2.7 trillion more spent on cars, clothes and other goods, services and investments that would have supported jobs for everyone.

Indeed, 100 years later, the story of the Tulsa massacre remains relevant for identifying racism’s true and lasting costs. The lessons and events of this horrific episode provide powerful insights into how acknowledging the effects, costs and destruction of systemic racism is key to healing and repairing the nation today.

Born of the ingenuity of Black migrants, Tulsa's Greenwood community was a bustling and dynamic Black financial district in the heartland of the American Southwest. Before the massacre, that approximately 35-block Black Wall Street community was worth $1 million (the equivalent of $15 million today).

Rather than bask in the glory of the success of Black Wall Street, white leaders, businessmen and residents guided by fear, hatred and a readily believed racist trope that turned out to be, by most accounts, untrue – that a Black male, in this case a 19-year-old, had attacked a white 17-year-old female – saw to it that a mosaic of terror befell the neighborhood by spring 1921.

White mobs looted hundreds of homes and burned down others. Some Black families escaped, but an estimated 300 members of the community were killed. Fires burned from the night of May 31 well into the next day. Little to no property, bank accounts, keepsakes or family heirlooms survived, generating a pattern of loss, death and trauma that endures today.

An African American photographer looking at the ruins of the Midway Hotel in Tulsa.

So how do we get beyond these traumatic losses?

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., and Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., are among those calling for a national Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Commission that will, at the least, force things that have been previously hidden into the light. The Tulsa massacre was ignored by the local government for decades. In a perfect world, the commission will set the nation on the road to racial and financial recovery. We must seize this historic opportunity to achieve a future in which the false notion of a racial hierarchy is finally obliterated.

The commission seeks to properly memorialize, archive, mitigate and prevent harms and violence like the massacres in America that didn't begin or end with Tulsa. That's complementary to existing calls for reparations for African Americans long heralded by late Rep. John Conyers and now advanced by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, in H.R. 40, a bill that would establish a commission to study the history of discrimination and avenues for repair.

Perhaps we can look to South Africa for an example (even if an imperfect one) of how commissions can acknowledge hurt, make victims financially whole and help a nation collectively move forward.

The process included gruesome testimony that took seven years and included stories of violence, rape and murder from 2,000 people of the apartheid era – some of whom committed acts of violence, others who were victims. The commission surely helped the nation avoid genocide and massive brutality in apartheid's aftermath. The solution included payments to each victim's family that totaled $85 million. Not everyone was happy with the final outcome, but it was a step in the right direction, and it started with the acknowledgment that horrible human atrocities happened.

Testimony from the victims and descendants of the Tulsa massacre, and every other recorded massacre in our nation's history, is vital. It has the potential to not only right the ship but also move the nation forward with a newfound awareness of how and why racism's influence hinders our collective prosperity and solidarity.

Black activists and leaders on the ground have worked tirelessly to restore, repair and replenish the Greenwood district. This work has not been easy, but it's necessary.

The loss of a financial district anywhere in America is a financial threat and loss for all Americans.

Understanding that is the key to racial healing, racial equity and a more prosperous inclusive future. All of our lives – regardless of ethnic background – and economy depend on it.

Marcus Anthony Hunter, a sociology and African American studies professor at UCLA, is the author of several books, including "Chocolate Cities: The Black Map of American Life."

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Racial discrimination has cost USA trillions. Tulsa is just a start.

As US marks 100th anniversary of Tulsa race massacre, African Americans still feel outcast

Issued on: 31/05/2021 - 

Text by: FRANCE 24Follow|

Video by: Solange MOUGIN

AT THE END OF THE ARTICLE 

At the foot of modern buildings on an anonymous street in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a few discreet metal plaques catch the eye. "Grier shoemaker," "Earl real estate" -- riveted to the ground, they bear the names of Black-owned businesses that once stood there before being destroyed during one of the worst racial massacres in the United States, in 1921.

A rare vestige of a neighbourhood so prosperous it was called Black Wall Street, the plaques prove that the history of Greenwood -- a historically Black neighborhood of Tulsa -- is understood not by the monuments that currently stand, but the ones that are no longer there.

On the eve of a visit from President Joe Biden, popular with African-American voters, who will attend Tuesday's commemorations of the 100th anniversary of the massacre, and after a year marked by the Black Lives Matter movement, the killings resonate with current events more than ever.

Destroyed neighbourhood

"They came over and destroyed Greenwood and burned everything down," Bobby Eaton, 86, a neighborhood resident and former civil rights activist, told AFP.

A century ago, in the southern US town, the arrest of a young Black man accused of assaulting a white woman sparked one of the worst outpourings of racial violence ever seen in the country.

On May 31, 1921, after the arrest of Dick Rowland, hundreds of furious white people gathered outside the Tulsa courthouse, signalling to Black residents that a lynching -- a common practice at the time and until as recently as the 1960s -- was imminent.

A group of African-American World War I veterans, some of them armed, mobilized in an attempt to protect Rowland.

Tensions spiked and shots were fired. Fewer in number, the African-American residents retreated to Greenwood, known at the time for its economic prosperity and many businesses.

The next day, at dawn, white men looted and burned the buildings, chasing down and beating Black people living there. All day long, they ransacked Black Wall Street -- police not only did not intervene but joined in the destruction -- until nothing was left but ruins and ashes, killing up to 300 people in the process. The destruction left some 10,000 people homeless.

With a blue cap on his head and a T-shirt commemorating the massacre's centennial pulled over his shirt, Eaton feels marked by this event that he never saw but heard so much about as a child in his father's barber shop.

"I learned a lot about the riots as a very young person, that has never left my memory," he said.

'Don't own the land'

In his opinion, as with many others in the neighbourhood, it was the African-American prosperity that sparked the destruction. "That caused a great amount of jealousy, and it's still doing so.

"That mentality that destroyed Greenwood to begin with, to a great extent still exists right here in Tulsa," Eaton said.

>> Inside the Americas: 1921 Tulsa massacre - Remembering a dark chapter in American history

Even 100 years after the massacre, racial tensions remain high.

In the Black Wall Street Liquid Lounge – a coffee shop named, like many businesses in Greenwood, in homage to the neighbourhood's golden age – Kode Ransom, a 32-year-old African-American man, sports long dreadlocks and a big smile as he greets customers.

A happy co-manager of the business, he has one regret: not owning the walls around him.

"People hear 'Black Wall Street', they think that it's completely controlled by Black people. It's actually not," he said.

Ransom estimates that about 20 African-American-owned businesses exist in Greenwood, and they all pay rent.

"We don't own the land," he said.

An urban planning policy, called urban renewal, carried out by the Tulsa city council since the 1960s, has had the effect of driving out African-American owners whose houses or businesses, deemed dilapidated, were demolished to make way for new buildings.

The construction of a seven-lane highway through the middle of the main street finished disfiguring the neighbourhood.

"At the time when Greenwood was Greenwood, you had 40 blocks, and now it's all being condensed down to half of a street... and even on that half of a street it's still not really just Black Wall Street," said Ransom, sighing.

Evicted

A few meters from the cafe, in the Greenwood Art Gallery, manager Queen Alexander, 31, arranges the exhibited paintings, which celebrate African-American culture.

She also pays rent – and it's about to go up by 30 percent. The opening of a large museum dedicated to the neighbourhood's history, the Greenwood Rising History Center, which will officially open Wednesday, has caused rent for the surrounding businesses to increase.

One of her acquaintances, who had run a beauty salon in Greenwood for more than 40 years, was evicted. "She couldn't afford the rent," said Alexander.

Outside the bay windows of her gallery, Alexander observes the gentrification at work.

"You do see now white people walking their dogs, and riding their bikes, in neighbourhoods that you would never have seen them before," she said, noting the opening of a baseball field, a Starbucks and "a college that I probably couldn't afford."

For her, Greenwood without its African-American owners and historic buildings is no longer really Black Wall Street but "Greenwood district with some Black business leases."

And "if we all get evicted tomorrow, this is white Wall Street."

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

TALK TALK SHOP
Climate talks resume online as pressure to act grows

Issued on: 31/05/2021 - 

With increasingly dire warnings that the pace of global warming is outstripping humanity's best plan to cut emissions, the pressure for progress is high PATRIK STOLLARZ AFP/File

Paris (AFP)

For the first time since 2019 and following a flurry of net-zero pledges from the world's largest emitters, UN climate negotiations resume Monday in a virtual format just six months before the crunch COP26 summit.

The talks, nominally hosted by the United Nations climate change programme in the German city of Bonn, will all be informal, meaning that no decisions will be taken during the three-week dialogue.

But with increasingly dire warnings from scientists that the pace of global warming is already outstripping humanity's best plan to cut emissions, the pressure for progress to be made on a number of thorny issues is high.

In 2018, countries agreed to many elements of the Paris agreement "rulebook", governing how each nation implements its goals.

But several issues remain unresolved, including rules about transparency, carbon markets, and a unified timeframe for all countries to ratchet up their emissions cuts.

At the last UN climate summit in December 2019, countries also failed to agree upon a universal system of reporting climate finance.

Nathan Cogswell, a research associate at the World Resources Institute, said a deal on greater transparency was "a central component of the effective implementation of the Paris agreement".

"The upcoming session will hopefully help parties get closer to that."

One of the thorniest debates during recent UN climate talks has been Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, which deals with the trade of emissions cuts.

A major sticking point remains over rules to avoid double counting emissions reductions within both bi-lateral and international carbon markets.

Some wealthy nations without the natural resources -- forests, for instance -- to mitigate their contribution to climate change have spent huge amounts on projects to preserve those habitats in other countries.

Currently both the buying and selling nations may count the project towards their domestic climate action, opening the door for the same cut to be counted twice.

Cogswell said that a failure to agree on a protection against double counting emissions reductions by the end of the COP26 in Glasgow in November would "weaken the ambition of global efforts" to fight climate change.

- 'Not ideal' -

Covid-19 forced Britain and the UN to shelve talks originally scheduled for last year until the end of 2021.

As the pandemic continues to rage, particularly among developing nations most vulnerable to the impacts of climate change, negotiators will need to achieve tangible progress during the three-week Bonn talks.

"The absence of a COP left a tremendous amount of work to be done... if we want to deliver at Glasgow," said Marianne Karlsen, chair of a major technical forum at the UN-led negotiations.

The two-week sessions -- expanded this year to three -- normally involve thousands of representatives from more than 180 countries, and often rely on behind-closed-doors bargaining between delegates to get deals done.

Karlsen said the virtual configuration of talks was "not ideal at all".

"We really wanted to be able to have all the interactions of when we meet in person but there was no other option," she said.

Tosi Mpanu Mpanu, chair of the UN's SBSTA technical working group, said delegates needed to use the virtual negotiations to "prioritise a way to capture progress, so we can capture that progress when we meet in person, and make decisions" in Glasgow.

"It's important that we send a clear message to the world: We are very much engaged in resolving the Paris rulebook and to tackling this climate change conundrum."

© 2021 AFP

SC Indian chiefs say their culture is disappearing. They want to ‘stand up and be recognized’


Christina L. Myers
Sun, May 30, 2021

The chiefs of South Carolina Native American tribes say that for generations they have been striving for society to acknowledge their heritage and historical contributions in the very place their ancestors have always dwelled. Still, after centuries on this land, they have to prove their existence — in a society they say has rendered their narratives obsolete — in order to be recognized in the eyes of government.

But how does one prove identity when it is innate? The hue of your skin, the texture of your hair and the structure of your face may superficially define identity yet cannot adequately characterize generations of ancestors traced in DNA.

State tribal leaders say their value —their identity — is defined by a heritage of rich traditions and bloodline of pride not adequately exemplified in a textbook. And their validation, they add, should not depend on an arduous governmental process of documentation, proving genealogical kinship to their native descendants or archaeological discoveries validating their material culture and tribal significance.

“We…the Indians in this state, in the United States is the only race, the only people that’s got to prove who they are…no other race in the country has got to prove to the state of South Carolina, to our government, that we are who we are,” Santee Indian Organization Chief Randy Crummie told The State.

However, proving their tribal history and ancestral lineage is part of the expectation — the standard — required of Native American tribes to be formally recognized, achieving a status that affords the tribes legal and financial benefits. It is not lost on them that they have to prove their identity in a system framed by the colonizers who settled on their land.

And while the tribes’ ancestors cultivated this land centuries ago, it was not until 2005 that South Carolina recognized its first American Indian tribe: the Waccamaw Indian People. The tribe located in Horry County is one of nine state-recognized tribes in South Carolina.

Other Pee Dee area tribes include the Sumter Tribe of Cheraw Indians, Pee Dee Indian Tribe of S.C. and the Pee Dee Nation of Upper S.C.

The Edisto Natchez-Kusso Tribe, Santee Indian Organization and Wassamasaw Tribe of Varnertown Indians are located in the Lowcountry. The Beaver Creek Indians are based in the Midlands, and in the Upstate region are the Piedmont American Indian Association Lower Eastern Cherokee Nation.

The Catawba Indian Nation is the sole federally recognized tribe in the state.

The South Carolina Commission for Minority Affairs grants state recognition to tribes, affording them access to some educational, environmental and economic grants. And in order to petition for such status, native entities are required to meet certain criteria including providing contact information of their tribal leaders, a mission statement, documents indicating their efforts to promote Native American culture and address the socio-economic challenges they face as well as historical narratives indicating their establishment.

In a statement to The State, the commission said in part, “the agency has supported the state’s Native American tribes in various ways, more recently through the distribution of PPE supplies; providing information on COVID-19 testing and vaccination sites; serving as a liaison between tribal leaders and the SC Department of Health and Environmental Control to establish COVID-19 testing locations in communities across the state; identifying grant opportunities; and connecting organizations to address water access.”

In South Carolina, only 10 tribes remain that haveattained tribal recognition out of what historians estimate were 29 distinct ethnic groups before Europeans settled the continent.

“It’s a rigorous process…developing your history over 100 years and their genealogy and their current tribal membership role. Their archaeological background…pulling all that together in a large file that is reviewed by this group,” said Christopher Judge, archaeologist and USC Lancaster assistant director of Native American Studies.

Judge added that for some Americans, it’s a privilege to never have to worry about proving one’s identity — a liberty Native Americans are not afforded.

“As a Caucasian middle-class male, we don’t get asked these questions.”

Subtle reminders of how far society has yet to come to recognize and value the lives of Native Americans are apparent on a daily basis, the chiefs say. Whether it’s completing the “other” section of a doctor’s form, proudly penciling in “Native American” as their race, only to get lab results labeled, instead, as a “white male.” Or, when visiting a local school, a bright-eyed child gleams up and asks, “Where is your horse?”

But more than government recognition, the chiefs say they desire to be seen — beyond primitive figures discussed during seasonal lessons in a classroom or only acknowledged by state officials during their designated month of recognition in November.

“Native Americans exist. … Native Americans exist in South Carolina. When we talk about history, we have to be inclusive, even when we don’t know it,” S.C. state archaeologist Jonathan Leader said.

“The things that give us our history are reliant on other people’s history we pretend to ignore…they are so embedded in our history that whether we recognize it or not, it produces who we are.”

Native American chiefs in South Carolina say they strive to honor the land their ancestors were ordained with, sharing their native language, traditional regalia, song and art with the next generation while educating their surrounding communities in order to keep their heritage alive.

And preserving their rich history and sacred traditions in a society that has erased so much of them propels tribal leaders and state archaeologists to hold tighter to what remains by educating the community about the tribes in South Carolina.

“After the slave insurrections, there was this massive effort to erase African culture, and also Native American culture. By 1790, they’re no longer enumerating on the Census,” Judge said, adding natives of this land — now South Carolina — date back to the last ice age — 13,000 years prior to the first European or African arrival.

“People who are Native American, they’re falling under the category of free person of color…And then what we have found at the Native American Studies Center is that they become invisible,” Judge, the center’s assistant director, said.

A feeling of invisibility — losing their cultural identity — caused some natives to blend in with or adapt to society’s norms in order to survive, Beaver Indian Tribe Chief Louie Chavis said.

“A lot of people are ashamed and embarrassed to be called an American Indian. There is a great stigma that kind of goes with it,” Chavis said. “All of our native people, we have the attitude or the thought that we will survive…we have endured so long without.”

Chief Randy Crummie of the Santee Indian Organization at the tribe’s community complex in Holly Hill, South Carolina on Tuesday, April 13, 2021. Crummie works full time in addition to his responsibilities as chief.

‘We’re here’

“Prejudice.” It’s a word Chief Randy Crummie says embodies the struggles of growing up American Indian in a small, rural town of Orangeburg County — Holly Hill — during the ‘60s. It was a time of segregation when Native Americans were often mistreated, undermined and relegated to separate learning facilities when there was no place for them in the white or Black schools.

“I grew up when the Indians weren’t allowed to go to the public schools in town…in the 60s,” the 61-year-old Santee Indian Organization chief said. “The whites would come out and taught the Indians.”

American Indian children like Crummie often found their haven in single-room institutions. Those schools included the Leland Grove School educating children of Marlboro and Dillon County, the Varner Town Indian School in the Varner Town Indian Community and, for the children of Holly Hill, it was Santee Live Oak Indian School, which closed in 1966 due to integration and served as the tribal headquarters for the Santee Indian Organization. Indian schools then became folded into “colored schools,” Leader said.

In losing their schools, Native Americans found themselves losing hold of what little they held as their own in a society that shunned them.

A discriminatory past is still felt today for the tribal reservation that stretches along the nearly 5-mile strip of road in Holly Hill — a place where, the grandson of a tribal chief says, some people still fail to acknowledge them as an American Indian community. Still, being the leader of his tribe means advocating on their behalf, even if it’s simply acknowledging their existence.

“They just need to recognize that we are here. We’re here. We’re not asking America for nothing,” Crummie said.

“It’s about helping my people.”

‘Grandfather has extremely blessed my people’

Chopping and delivering firewood to warm homes or climbing atop a 12-foot ladder to pick figs for a fellow tribal member to prepare preserves are just a few ways retired lineman Chief Louie Chavis helps to take care of his Native American community — one he says has been self-sufficient despite their circumstances.

They are circumstances that have forced them to adapt to a world that was forgetting who they were — causing some indigenous people to lose a sense of themselves, their own cultural identity, Chavis said.

“[It’s] trying to either adapt to exactly where we are but what people are looking, thinking or either expecting us to be.”

However, for more than 16 years, the 73-year-old has been leading his growing 650-member tribe while keeping the legacy of the Beaver Creek Indians alive despite the obstacles preserving their history presents.

Their ancestors settled along branches of the Edisto River, along Big and Little creeks, in Orangeburg County. And their presence there spans over two centuries to today.

“My people, our tribe, we don’t even do a pow wow, we do a gathering where anyone is welcome to come. We break bread,” Chavis said. “You do not have to prove anything to come and have a good time. Enjoy, fellowship and try. Just try to look and see … how close the similarities are with such a difference in culture.”

And the grandson of a Lake City Pentecostal preacher says faith has sustained his people.

“Grandfather has extremely blessed my people. All of our native people…we have the attitude or the thought that we will survive. We have endured so long without,” the 73-year-old said.

“We knew then and now, as Grandfather True, the Great Spirit, the master of life, the giver of life, Yahweh…He’s always been there. And tomorrow when we wake up, He’ll still be there.”

Chief John Creel at Little Rock Holiness Church on Tuesday, April 6, 2021. Creel began pastoring as a temporary position 25 years ago, and has pastored ever since.

‘To whom much is given, much is required’

Chief John Creel of the Edisto Natchez-Kusso Tribe has been providing spiritual and physical nourishment to people of this state and foreign lands — ministry and medicine joining hand-in-hand as his service and purpose in life for over two decades. And it was an evening at the Edisto Indian Church of God — hearing how ministry was impacting Native Americans of South Dakota — that changed the trajectory of his life as a teen. Face quivering, with tears running down his face, Creel said he knew the Lord was calling him to a higher purpose: preaching the word of God.

“I asked my brother…did you hear him say there’s a young man in here that God’s got His hand on…called into the missions? And he said, ‘No,’ ” the 53-year-old said. “I was not confused…It was like I heard the spirit say to me, ‘I was speaking to you.’ ”

The Medical University of South Carolina associate professor and family medicine physician hails from generations of tribal leadership: his father served as chief in 1982 and a distant cousin held the leadership role for 20 years. Creel is only in his second year as chief, an elected position, though he’s served on tribal council since 1995. His commitment to his community is best characterized by his sacrifice and service that has led to expanding the services offered by the Edisto Indian Free Clinic — an establishment he helped reach nonprofit status and acquire additional medical staffing — as well as the organizing of the Little Rock Holiness Church of Cottageville, South Carolina.

Still, there is so much more the married father of three desires to have for his tribe: a 20-bed assisted living facility, the addition of a free dental clinic, a museum and a space for elders to teach the next generation the skills of their ancestors.

“They know how to do things with their thumbs on phones and games but they don’t know how to farm, plant and grow crops or fish or hunt,” Creel said. “We’re wanting to revive our basket making and our Cypress boat paddle which our tribe is famous for.”

And his unwavering determination to grow and preserve the tribal community can be exemplified by his motto, included in the signature of every email correspondence. It’s a testament to his role as a caregiver for the community and for his own family: a family where he cares for his life-long companion and wife, battling stage four colon cancer and a son born with spina bifida and hydrocephalus who was miraculously revived to life four years ago.

“God’s delays are not denials. Don’t give up in the midst of trials.”

Chief Pete Parr of the Pee Dee Indian Tribe poses for a portrait at the tribal grounds in McColl, South Carolina on Wednesday, April 7, 2021.

‘We are beginning to stand up and be recognized’

As a child, Chief Prentiss “Pete” Parr of the Pee Dee Indian Tribe recalls sitting in an open field in Cheraw, peering out over a seemingly endless sea of cotton, watching his mother — inflicted with polio from the waist down causing her feet to club — as she maneuvered her way through the crop, picking the fluffy fiber from its stalks.

“I can remember my mom when I was about three of four-years-old, we used to sit at one end of the cotton row, and she would pick down the row and come back and then she moved me over to another row,” Parr said.

“My dad worked in a cotton mill and my mom worked beside him…and when the cotton season was over, they… picked tobacco.”

Hard work is ingrained in the son of a Scottish, Irish and American Indian father and mother whom he calls a “full-blooded” Pee Dee Indian, sustaining the family of seven that lived between Cheraw and Baltimore, Maryland.

The 71-year-old says he always considered himself American Indian, officially joining the tribe in 1982 though South Carolina only recognized them in 2006. However, the retired iron worker says that the state was not always welcoming to his race, causing some to deny who they were in order to survive.

“South Carolina was a bad state for Indians. I don’t know the reason why, but our people was just not recognized, was not wanted or I guess they figured we was no value,” Parr said.

“We have Native Americans here that are hurting, that are in need.”

And the vestiges of ignoring their needs for so long can be felt today for some members of the tribe, Parr says, referencing an apparent mistrust and fear in the government — some are even hesitant to be vaccinated for COVID-19.

However, those challenges do not preclude them from giving back to their surrounding communities: Parr says with the assistance of Marlboro County Council and state Rep. Pat Henegan, the tribe sponsored a food giveaway which provided over 900,000 pounds of food and perishable items to families in surrounding communities in 2020 during the height of the pandemic.

“I care about my people, which is in the Pee Dee, but we care about all Native Americans,” Parr said. “They thought they killed the good seeds in the ground, and we’re the product of that seed now. We are actually beginning to stand up and be recognized.”

Renewed calls for Catholic Church apology after mass grave of Indigenous children found in Canada

Rebecca Falconer
Sat, May 29, 2021

An Indigenous Canadian group announced plans Saturday to identify the remains of 215 children, some as young as three, found buried at the site of a former residential school, per CBC News.

The big picture: The discovery of the Tk’emlups te Secwépemc First Nation children's remains has renewed calls for the Roman Catholic Church to apologize for its role in Canada's policy of the 19th and 20th centuries that saw Indigenous children removed from families to attend state-funded residential schools.

Many of the almost 150,000 children attending the schools from 1883 to 1996 to "assimilate" into white Canadian society encountered neglect and abuse, as their native languages and cultures were forbidden, the Washington Post reports.

Canada's government apologized in 2008, admitting that physical and sexual abuse in the schools was widespread.

Details: Tk'emlups te Secwépemc First Nation Chief Rosanne Casimir said in a statement announcing the discovery Thursday, "To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths."

She said in a later statement that more bodies could be uncovered as not all areas had been searched at the Kamloops Indian Residential School — which the Catholic Church ran from 1890 to 1969 before the Canadian government took over its administration until the school's closure in 1978.

Assembly of First Nations regional chief Terry Teegee told the CBC that forensic experts would join the BC Coroners Service and the Royal B.C. Museum for the identification.

Prime Minister Trudeau tweeted Friday that the discovery was "a painful reminder of that dark and shameful chapter of our country's history."

Of note: The Roman Catholic Church has declined to apologize for its role in what Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission found in 2015 to be cultural genocide, despite Trudeau writing to Pope Francis to ask for one.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has urged the pope to apologize, but First Nations Child and Family Caring Society executive director Cindy Blackstock noted Friday that the "Catholic Church has yet to do that, and to really accept full responsibility for reparations to families," per CTV News.

"So that's something that we need to look into the Catholic Church to be doing, to accept that" accountability, Blackstock said.

What they're saying: Archbishop of Vancouver J. Michael Miller said in a statement to CTV News,"[W]e pledge to do whatever we can to heal that suffering."

Between the lines: While it's not yet known how the children died, "accidents, fires and contagious illness at residential schools all contributed to a high death toll, which the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has estimated at more than 4,000 children," the Washington Post notes.

Editor's note: This article has been updated with new details throughout.

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Why waiters give Black customers poor service


Zachary Brewster, Associate Professor of Sociology, Wayne State University
Sun, May 30, 2021, 

Some people argue the poor service is because of a stereotype that Black people tip less. PavelVinnik/iStock via Getty Images

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.

The big idea

When Black diners get poorer service from wait staff and bartenders than white customers, it’s more likely because of racial bias than the well-documented fact that they tip less, according to a new survey I recently published.

To reach that conclusion, my colleague Gerald Nowak and I recruited over 700 mostly white full-service restaurant servers and bartenders to review a hypothetical dining scenario that randomly involved either white or Black customers. We then asked them to predict the tip that the table would leave, the likelihood that the table would exhibit undesirable dining behaviors and the quality of service they would likely provide the table.

We also asked participants to fill out a survey to learn how frequently they observed anti-Black expressions of bias in their workplaces and to elicit if they harbored their own prejudices toward African Americans.

Servers who either held prejudices toward African Americans, worked in a restaurant where racist remarks were frequently heard or both were significantly more likely to predict that the table with Black customers would not only tip them less but also display uncivil, demanding and dishonest behaviors. As a result, these servers also reported that they would give worse service to the Black table relative to the white one.

We found no evidence of racially disparate treatment except when one of those two conditions was present: server prejudice or racist workplace words and behaviors.
Why it matters

The link between bias and actual discrimination is widely assumed – but rarely documented – to be responsible for the mistreatment that Black Americans continue to experience while engaging in a host of routine activities.

Besides providing new evidence of this connection, our results also have important practical implications. Because surveys show that Black customers are less familiar than white people with the 15%-20% tipping norm, they do tend to tip less. Servers are thus thought to be economically motivated to give preferential service to white customers who they believe are more likely to reward their efforts.

In response, some have suggested that voluntary tipping be abolished or steps be taken to eliminate the Black-white tipping difference by increasing Black customers’ familiarity with tipping norms.

However, we did not find evidence of stereotyping and service discrimination in the absence of anti-Black bias, which suggests the solution to this problem is in addressing racial prejudices in the restaurant industry.

What still isn’t known

A drawback of our study is that we asked servers how they would think and behave under hypothetical, controlled and experimentally manipulated conditions. We can’t know for sure how this process would unfold when servers wait on actual white and Black customers. Doing so would be very challenging. And because our participants weren’t randomly selected, our ability to know how well they reflect the attitudes and workplaces of all servers and bartenders nationwide is limited.

Nonetheless, prior research has documented a relationship between what people say they would do under hypothetical conditions and what they actually do when confronted with similar situations, which gives us some confidence in the real-world application of our results.
What’s next

Right now, we’re examining racial discrimination on the other side of the table by studying restaurant customers’ tendency to discriminate against Black servers by tipping them less than white ones. By administering a survey experiment to over 2,000 restaurant customers across the nation, our ongoing research project aims to further document this form of consumer racial discrimination.

[Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter.]

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Zachary Brewster, Wayne State University.
Zachary Brewster does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.


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A new study suggests Trump's 2016 victory may have been a 'historical inevitability'

Tim O'Donnell, Contributing Writer
Sat, May 29, 2021

A new study combining historical data on demography and ideology in 21 Western democracies implies that the rise of right-wing populists like former President Donald Trump and events like Brexit "were not an abrupt departure from precedent, but rather the consequence of a 60-year-old international trend," The Economist writes. In other words, the paper, co-authored by Thomas Piketty, Amory Gethin, and Clara Martinez-Toledano, makes Trump's 2016 election victory "look like a historical inevitability."

The main finding of the paper — which like any academic study has its critics — is that "income and education began diverging as predictors of ideology" decades ago. Back in 1955, for example, "both the richest and the most educated voters tended to support conservative parties," while "poorer and less-educated people mostly chose labor or social-democratic" parties. But over time, and with "striking" consistency, the most highly-educated voters moved toward the left-wing parties, while those with less schooling "slid the other way." The wealthiest voters maintained their support of conservative parties, giving the right a "coalition" of the rich and those with less education, paving the way for politics as you know them today.

The shift appears to be global, Michigan State University's Matt Grossman noted on Twitter, but the United States "stands out as moving from almost no left/right division on education and a large division on income in 1970 to a large division on education and almost no division on income by 2010."

To safely explore the solar system and beyond, spaceships need to go faster – nuclear-powered rockets may be the answer


Iain Boyd, Professor of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, University of Colorado Boulder
Sat, May 29, 2021

Over the last 50 years, a lot has changed in rocketry. The fuel that powers spaceflight might finally be changing too. CSA-Printstock/DIgital Vision Vectors via Getty Images

With dreams of Mars on the minds of both NASA and Elon Musk, long-distance crewed missions through space are coming. But you might be surprised to learn that modern rockets don’t go all that much faster than the rockets of the past.

There are a lot of reasons that a faster spaceship is a better one, and nuclear-powered rockets are a way to do this. They offer many benefits over traditional fuel-burning rockets or modern solar-powered electric rockets, but there have been only eight U.S. space launches carrying nuclear reactors in the last 40 years.

However, in 2019 the laws regulating nuclear space flights changed and work has already begun on this next generation of rockets.

Why the need for speed?

The first step of a space journey involves the use of launch rockets to get a ship into orbit. These are the large fuel-burning engines people imagine when they think of rocket launches and are not likely to go away in the foreseeable future due to the constraints of gravity.

It is once a ship reaches space that things get interesting. To escape Earth’s gravity and reach deep space destinations, ships need additional acceleration. This is where nuclear systems come into play. If astronauts want to explore anything farther than the Moon and perhaps Mars, they are going to need to be going very very fast. Space is massive, and everything is far away.

There are two reasons faster rockets are better for long-distance space travel: safety and time.

Astronauts on a trip to Mars would be exposed to very high levels of radiation which can cause serious long-term health problems such as cancer and sterility. Radiation shielding can help, but it is extremely heavy, and the longer the mission, the more shielding is needed. A better way to reduce radiation exposure is to simply get where you are going quicker.

But human safety isn’t the only benefit. As space agencies probe farther out into space, it is important to get data from unmanned missions as soon as possible. It took Voyager-2 12 years just to reach Neptune, where it snapped some incredible photos as it flew by. If Voyager-2 had a faster propulsion system, astronomers could have had those photos and the information they contained years earlier.

Speed is good. But why are nuclear systems faster?

Systems of today

Once a ship has escaped Earth’s gravity, there are three important aspects to consider when comparing any propulsion system:


Thrust – how fast a system can accelerate a ship


Mass efficiency – how much thrust a system can produce for a given amount of fuel


Energy density – how much energy a given amount of fuel can produce

Today, the most common propulsion systems in use are chemical propulsion – that is, regular fuel-burning rockets – and solar-powered electric propulsion systems.

Chemical propulsion systems provide a lot of thrust, but chemical rockets aren’t particularly efficient, and rocket fuel isn’t that energy-dense. The Saturn V rocket that took astronauts to the Moon produced 35 million Newtons of force at liftoff and carried 950,000 gallons of fuel. While most of the fuel was used in getting the rocket into orbit, the limitations are apparent: It takes a lot of heavy fuel to get anywhere.

Electric propulsion systems generate thrust using electricity produced from solar panels. The most common way to do this is to use an electrical field to accelerate ions, such as in the Hall thruster. These devices are commonly used to power satellites and can have more than five times higher mass efficiency than chemical systems. But they produce much less thrust – about three Newtons, or only enough to accelerate a car from 0-60 mph in about two and a half hours. The energy source – the Sun – is essentially infinite but becomes less useful the farther away from the Sun the ship gets.

One of the reasons nuclear-powered rockets are promising is because they offer incredible energy density. The uranium fuel used in nuclear reactors has an energy density that is 4 million times higher than hydrazine, a typical chemical rocket propellant. It is much easier to get a small amount of uranium to space than hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel.

So what about thrust and mass efficiency?

Two options for nuclear

Engineers have designed two main types of nuclear systems for space travel.

The first is called nuclear thermal propulsion. These systems are very powerful and moderately efficient. They use a small nuclear fission reactor – similar to those found in nuclear submarines – to heat a gas, such as hydrogen, and that gas is then accelerated through a rocket nozzle to provide thrust. Engineers from NASA estimate that a mission to Mars powered by nuclear thermal propulsion would be 20%-25% shorter than a trip on a chemical-powered rocket.

Nuclear thermal propulsion systems are more than twice as efficient as chemical propulsion systems – meaning they generate twice as much thrust using the same amount of propellant mass – and can deliver 100,000 Newtons of thrust. That’s enough force to get a car from 0-60 mph in about a quarter of a second.

The second nuclear-based rocket system is called nuclear electric propulsion. No nuclear electric systems have been built yet, but the idea is to use a high-power fission reactor to generate electricity that would then power an electrical propulsion system like a Hall thruster. This would be very efficient, about three times better than a nuclear thermal propulsion system. Since the nuclear reactor could create a lot of power, many individual electric thrusters could be operated simultaneously to generate a good amount of thrust.

Nuclear electric systems would be the best choice for extremely long-range missions because they don’t require solar energy, have very high efficiency and can give relatively high thrust. But while nuclear electric rockets are extremely promising, there are still a lot of technical problems to solve before they are put into use.

Why aren’t there nuclear powered rockets yet?

Nuclear thermal propulsion systems have been studied since the 1960s but have not yet flown in space.

Regulations first imposed in the U.S. in the 1970s essentially required case-by-case examination and approval of any nuclear space project from multiple government agencies and explicit approval from the president. Along with a lack of funding for nuclear rocket system research, this environment prevented further improvement of nuclear reactors for use in space.

That all changed when the Trump administration issued a presidential memorandum in August 2019. While upholding the need to keep nuclear launches as safe as possible, the new directive allows for nuclear missions with lower amounts of nuclear material to skip the multi-agency approval process. Only the sponsoring agency, like NASA, for example, needs to certify that the mission meets safety recommendations. Larger nuclear missions would go through the same process as before.

Along with this revision of regulations, NASA received US0 million in the 2019 budget to develop nuclear thermal propulsion. DARPA is also developing a space nuclear thermal propulsion system to enable national security operations beyond Earth orbit.

After 60 years of stagnation, it’s possible a nuclear-powered rocket will be heading to space within a decade. This exciting achievement will usher in a new era of space exploration. People will go to Mars and science experiments will make new discoveries all across our solar system and beyond.

[You’re too busy to read everything. We get it. That’s why we’ve got a weekly newsletter. Sign up for good Sunday reading. ]

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Iain Boyd, University of Colorado Boulder.

Read more:



Never mind SpaceX’s Falcon 9, where’s my Millennium Falcon?


How SpaceX lowered costs and reduced barriers to space


Mining the moon for rocket fuel to get us to Mars

Iain Boyd receives funding from the following sources, none of it is related to space propulsion: Office of Naval Research Lockheed-Martin Northrop-Grumman L3-Harris

DAMN RIGHT IT HAS
The age of killer robots may have already begun



Bryan Walsh

AXIOS
Sat, May 29, 2021, 

A drone that can select and engage targets on its own attacked soldiers during a civil conflict in Libya.

Why it matters: If confirmed, it would likely represent the first-known case of a machine-learning-based autonomous weapon being used to kill, potentially heralding a dangerous new era in warfare.

Driving the news: According to a recent report by the UN Panel of Experts on Libya, a Turkish-made STM Kargu-2 drone may have "hunted down and ... engaged" retreating soldiers fighting with Libyan Gen. Khalifa Haftar last year.

It's not clear whether any soldiers were killed in the attack, although the UN experts — which call the drone a "lethal autonomous weapons system" — imply they likely were.

Such an event, writes Zachary Kallenborn — a research affiliate with the Unconventional Weapons and Technology Division of the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism — would represent "a new chapter in autonomous weapons, one in which they are used to fight and kill human beings based on artificial intelligence."




How it works: The Kargu is a loitering drone that uses computer vision to select and engage targets without a connection between the drone and its operator, giving it "a true 'fire, forget and find' capability," the UN report notes.

Between the lines: Recent conflicts — like those between Armenia and Azerbaijan and Israel and Hamas in Gaza — have featured an extensive use of drones of all sorts.

The deployment of truly autonomous drones could represent a military revolution on par with the introduction of guns or aircraft — and unlike nuclear weapons, they're likely to be easily obtainable by nearly any military force.

What they're saying: "If new technology makes deterrence impossible, it might condemn us to a future where everyone is always on the offense," the economist Noah Smith writes in a frightening post on the future of war.

The bottom line: Humanitarian organizations and many AI experts have called for a global ban on lethal autonomous weapons, but a number of countries — including the U.S. — have stood in the way.

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Mud cylinders reveal humans' impact on Earth began earlier than we thought

Victoria Gill - Science correspondent, BBC News
Sat, May 29, 2021

Scientists have been uncorking long, thin cylinders of soil from wetlands and riverbeds in an attempt to look back in time and understand the impact humans have had on nature. The results have made them radically rethink previous assumptions about when this started.

Short presentational grey line

"It's amazing - one of the most fascinating things," says Ondrejj Mottl.

The object of his fascination? Mud.

Dr Mottl and his colleagues have been extracting "mud cores" from the depths of lakes and wetlands. These long, tightly compacted cylinders of earth contain a record of exactly what grew in that soil when, going back millennia.

"They're our window to the past," says Dr Mottl, an ecologist based in Bergen, Norway.

Analysing these cores of mud, looking at the pollen that has settled in each layer, has brought an entirely new understanding of when human activity started changing vegetation.

Scientists had expected to see the first "signal" of human intervention a few centuries ago, when landscapes really started to transform during the Industrial Revolution. Pollen records from the mud core research have led them to radically readjust that assumption, and track our species' first impact on the natural world back to about 4,000 years ago.

It's a discovery that has major implications for the future of our forests and other natural landscapes.


With a million species at risk, what do we save?


World 'losing battle against deforestation'

The evidence for all these grand theories exists in the tiny grains of pollen that fell and settled in layer upon layer of mud over the centuries. By carefully extracting that mud, like a cork from a wine bottle, and analysing the "fossil pollen" at different depths, researchers were able to carbon date each mud layer to work out what grew, when.

Graphic: How a tube of mud revealed Africa's ancient past

But what exactly did they spot that led them to rethink theories about when man had started to impact nature? The team found in the mud an uptick in the rate of change - layer by layer - of pollen composition. Basically, each layer began to look more different from the other in terms of the plant pollen it contained.

The scientists chose to look back 18,000 years to capture the era time when the planet had started to emerge from the last ice age. Earth was defrosting, so almost every environment was changing.

"The last 10,000 years was - climate-wise - relatively stable, so [that's when] we're able to pick up the influence of humans," says Suzette Flantua, a global ecologist also at the University of Bergen, That influence started as soon as we - humans - began to clear wild vegetation to make space for ourselves, our crops and our livestock.

"We see that trend [in vegetation change] picking up at different points," says Dr Flantua. It's earlier in Asia and South America, and slightly later - about 2,000 years ago - in Europe.

Mud core research. [ 1,100 mud cores were extracted from... ],[ 1,000 locations around the world, in every continent except Antarctica ] 

According to many biologists and climate scientists, we are now in a period of the Earth's history that can be dubbed the Anthropocene - an epoch of human influence on our planet. More than three quarters of the Earth's land surface has been altered by human activity.

The mud core findings don't only change assumptions about the past. They also provide a valuable insight into where our planet's natural environment is heading.

The uptick in change, detected in that long-buried pollen, is continuing ever faster.

Hear more from the team digging into the evidence about humans' impact on our planet on Inside Science on BBC Sounds.

"We're going to continue to get that large scale human influence and on top of that there's climate change," says Dr Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist based at the University of Michigan.

It means, somewhat ironically, that if forests are to lock up as much carbon as possible and help us to minimise the impacts of climate change, we are going to have to intervene more in exactly how those forests grow.

While many conservationists support the protection of forests - leaving them alone and in tact to do their job of giving their wildlife a home and keeping lots of carbon locked away - we may have changed our planet so radically that forests will need some hands-on help simply to survive.

"There's some climate change already baked in," Dr Overpeck explains. "And most of the old trees in our forests were seedlings when it was cooler, so we need to put in seedlings that will thrive when it's warmer."

To protect forests from wildfires, which are also becoming more frequent and fiercer in warmer, drier climates, could require much more intensive forest management, too - removing smaller trees that provide that provide the "fine fuel" for wildfires.

Dr Overpeck suggests that, if we do this correctly, we could "farm forests for carbon" creating jobs at the same time.

What that will mean for biodiversity - the myriad plant and animal species that currently rely on the existing forest habitat - is much less clear and far more complicated to make a plan for. But the scientists combing through Earth's ancient pollen record say it could also guide how we protect and restore the natural habitats we have left.

"This is the critical thing," says Dr Mottl. "To know what we are trying to restore, to know what exactly is pristine wilderness - this is the most important thing. "Lots of national parks are trying to be wild and pristine, without knowing if what they are doing is returning a place to its natural state."

Rather than make assumptions based on what grows in a wild landscape now, the use of mud cores drills down to ask the Earth directly about its history. And until we have the information from nature itself, says Dr Mottl, we can't know if what we are doing for nature is for the best.

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