BOOK REVIEW: The Fated Sky (Lady Astronaut, #2) by Mary Robinette Kowal

The Fated Sky is the sequel to a book I mostly enjoyed (The Calculating Stars) but my enjoyment of this Hugo award-winning novel was leavened with some qualms and niggling concerns. While I liked getting to know the main character Elma York and was thrilled with the prominent appearance of mathematical concepts like the Fibonacci series and prime numbers, there always seemed to be “something off” about the ethos of the first book. The premise is very clever: suppose the Space Race started a decade earlier due to an external animating force caused by a cataclysmic event which makes the necessity of humanity colonizing the solar system more urgent because the Earth will become increasingly more inhospitable in the next century. This time shift means that the social tensions based around race and gender that actually happened in our 1960s and 1970s occur in the book’s timeline of the 1950s in the context of the Space Race. The  main character, Elma York,  is a white Jewish woman who is something of a mathematical savant. She and her husband Nathaniel get jobs with the International Aerospace Coalition (IAC). She becomes a celebrity as the “Lady Astronaut” and thus is given leeway to break barriers and violate cultural mores without repercussions someone of her status would be expected to suffer. In the first book it was somewhat titillating to see these issues addressed (even awkwardly and somewhat ineptly) in the context of a speculative fiction novel but on further reflection I don’t think the overall result is positive and this becomes increasingly clear in the second book. The problem for me with both The Calculating Stars  and The Fated Sky is that in most social situations the reader is more aware of the racial or cultural implications than Elma is. This device of Elma’s cluelessness is one that the author uses to demonstrate the illogic of discrimination and animus repeatedly to the reader. I would argue that while the author uses the device effectively she also repeats and frequently re-inscribes racist and sexist tropes (inadvertently, I think) while trying to illustrate how wrong these are to the reader. In The Fated Sky there are numerous examples of this problem. For example, Elma is on a ship to Mars with 4 men and 3 women when she finds a (used) condom. Of course she assumes that one of the men (probably the captain, whom she has a very difficult relationship with and is a known philanderer) is forcing himself on one of the other women (both of whom are women of color). It doesn’t even occur to her that it could be evidence of sexual activity between two of the men! But there are numerous problem with this scenario. 1) (why) would 2 (presumably straight) men having sex on a 3-year space journey be using condoms (especially in an era where contraception was basically illegal and HIV/AIDS didn't exist)? 2) why would an allegedly intelligent astronaut not know to not throw a condom away in the toilet and  cause a disruptive plumbing incident? 3) why would the author later kill off one of the gay characters in a freak accident? Does the author not know about the vicious trope of the doomed homosexual who always dies before the end of the story? Despite revealing society’s homophobia through Elma’s cluelessness the author has reproduced it through her treatment of the two male characters who loved (in multiple senses of the word) each other. While it is true by martyring one of the gay characters she raises the profile of the remaining gay character but there's no way to dispel the conclusion that by having a freak fatal accident occur to one of the gay characters is a re-enactment of the "doomed homosexual" trope. There are (many) other examples of how the author does this in The Fated Sky  with both gender and race (Elma is sometimes quick to notice and call out patriarchal/sexist behavior but then some of her favorite and most lauded activities involve her prowess in the kitchen!) One interesting aspect of the book that is a highlight, is the portrayal of multiple Jewish celebrations (even in space!). The sensitivity by which a minority religion is portrayed is incongruous to how ethnic and racial minorities are depicted. For example, race is the primary fault line in the time being portrayed in the books but as I have said before, the author uses the main character's outsider status to illustrate to the reader how ignorance/unfamiliarity with the lived experience of others can highlight the salience and pervasiveness of racism and sexism. But the problem is that these encounters are only ever presented to the reader through Elma's perspective, which tends to marginalize the agency of the characters who are racial (and ethnic) minorities. Overall, I was somewhat dubious about reading the second book in the series after reflecting more on the deficiencies of the first (which won the Hugo Award for Best Novel). But the large number and the high average Goodreads ratings of both books convinced me to give it a try despite these misgivings. It's unlikely I will make that mistake with the third book!

Title: The Fated Sky.
Author: Mary Robinette Kowal.
Paperback: 384 pages.
Publisher: Tor Books.
Date Published: October 1, 2018.
Date Read: April 21, 2020.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★☆☆  (3.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: B+ (3.33/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: B+.
IMPACT: B-.
WRITING: A-.

BOOK REVIEW: The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

The Calculating Stars is the (Nebula and Locus) award-winning book by Mary Robinette Kowal about the 1950s space race but set in an alternate time line where a meteor hits the Earth near Chesapeake Bay, decimates the Eastern Seaboard and catalyzes the greenhouse effect, endangering human survival on Earth. The main character of The Calculating Stars is Elma York, a former WASP pilot and mathematical genius who ends up working as a “computer” for the International Aerospace Coalition, the space agency responsible for managing the race to the stars. The impetus behind the space race in this timeline is not a US-Russia proxy war but a race to get to space in order to save humanity before Earth becomes inhabitable due to the runaway global warming caused by the long range after-effects of the asteroid collision. One shorthand view of the book is that it is a version of “The Right Stuff” and "Hidden Figures" told from the perspective of a Jewish white woman who is obsessed with going into space but has to combat social conservatism and sexist mores in order to achieve her dream. Elma is a fun character and it was fun to spend time with her. She has a pretty severe undiagnosed anxiety disorder; during episodes where this manifests as panic attacks  she tries to get through by doing mathematics. For example, she will mentally recite the beginning of the list of prime numbers or the Fibonacci series or do 4-digit arithmetic operations in her head. Her husband, who is also Jewish, an engineer and eventually becomes her boss at the IAC, helps to distract/calm her down at times of stress (such as facing a room full of reporters). Elma becomes internationally known as “the Lady Astronaut” through her advocacy in the media of the idea that women should join the space program. This is an interesting SFnal twist because in real life no one but white men were considered by NASA to become astronauts in the equivalent time period (1950s to 1970s). Although I like Elma I’m not as enamored with the book as a whole. Of course, as a black gay mathematics professor I’m in favor of the author’s depiction of the regimented/stilted mores of the 1950s and the spotlight she puts on the senselessness of the discrimination based on gender (and race) that occur(red) in such an important science/engineering enterprise. I also love the fact the story is infused with a love of mathematics and science/engineering and was intrigued that  it is told from the perspective of a white Jewish woman. But for me there was a spark missing which prevented me from emotionally connecting with the story. I think this may be because ultimately the stakes are too low. Since this is an alternate timeline (caused by a very unlikely event) the overarching idea that the space race needs to be successful earlier in time in order to save humanity is not that compelling. And even though I want Elma to succeed at breaking barriers, she will/would be fine even if she didn’t go into space. So although I enjoyed spending time with Elma and love the centering of math and science in the rare context of a SFnal book which pays close attention to identity and positionality of its characters,  I ended somewhat unmoved by  The Calculating Stars. I admire it more than I adore it. However, I will most likely read the sequels in the trilogy because I am curious about how the story ends, and when that occurs with any first book, it must be considered a success. There's a reason why it is very likely to win the 2019 Hugo award for Best Novel in addition to its other accolades.

Title: The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut, #1).
Author: Mary Robinette Kowal.
Paperback: 432 pages.
Publisher: Tor Books.
Date Published: July 3, 2018.
Date Read: July 20, 2019.

GOODREADS RATING: ★★★★☆  (4.0/5.0).

OVERALL GRADE: A- (3.83/4.0).

PLOT: A-.
IMAGERY: A-.
IMPACT: A.
WRITING: A.

#NSF REPORT: U.S. Doctorate Recipients At Near All-Time High (2016 Data)

The National Science Foundation has released its annual Survey of Earned Doctorates and there are some interesting nuggets in the data (up to 2016):

• The largest share of doctorates awarded in 2016 was in the life sciences (nearly 23 percent), followed by engineering (17 percent), and psychology and the social sciences (16.5 percent). All fields of humanities and arts made up 10 percent of doctorates awarded.
• The time between students entering graduate school and receiving doctorates has fallen in all fields of study over the past 20 years, but, on average, it still takes years longer to earn a doctorate in non-S&E fields than in S&E fields.
• The number of S&E doctorates awarded to U.S. citizens and permanent residents grew 2 percent since 2015 and 39 percent since 2006. The number of doctorates in S&E fields awarded to temporary visa holders grew 2 percent since 2015 and 20 percent since 2006.
• The number of doctoral awards to temporary visa holders is highly concentrated -- 10 countries accounted for 71 percent of the doctorates awarded to temporary visa holders from 2006 to 2016. The top three countries -- China, India and South Korea -- accounted for 54 percent of the doctorates awarded to temporary visa holders.
• Women have earned a slight majority of all doctorates awarded to U.S. citizen and permanent residents each year since 2002, and women have earned more than 30 percent of all doctorates awarded to temporary visa holders over that period.
• From 1996 to 2016, the number of women earning degrees in S&E fields increased by 84 percent.
• The number of doctorates awarded to blacks or African Americans who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents increased by 32 percent from 2006 to 2016. For the same period, the proportion of doctorates earned by Hispanics or Latinos increased by 67 percent.

One key take-away for me is that 1) Latino doctoral recipients now outnumber African-American and that the gap between male and female STEM doctorates is actually slightly widening, even as both numbers increase (see the graphics at the top of this page).

Hat/tip STEMPROF newsletter edited by Mark Connolly.

GRAPHIC: The racial/ethnic demographics of U.S. Top 10 metro areas

Information on race in America, especially in metropolitan areas in the United States. This is from a recent deep dive into race, politics and demographics by the Boston Globe's award-winning Spotlight team as the paper tried to examine why Boston is perceived as "more racist" than other big cities.

REPORT: No Educational Achievement Gap Between Multiracial and White Students

A new report published by the Brookings Institute, a liberal think-tank in Washington D.C. claims that there is educational gap between multiracial and white students. This would seem to contradict the race-based theories  trying to explain the achievement gaps which are often found when one analyzed educational attainment data through a racial and ethnic lens.

Here's an excerpt from the report, authored by Jonathan Rothwell, an Economist who works at Gallup

Despite the growing number of multiracial students, almost no attention has been given to their educational outcomes. But gaining a better understanding of how multiracial students perform may cast useful light on the causes of race gaps more generally. My analysis shows that:

1.    Students of multiracial identity are from families with lower socioeconomic status than whites; 

2.    They attend schools that are far more integrated with whites and Asians compared to blacks, Hispanics, American Indians, and Pacific Islanders 

3.    Multiracial students have the same average test scores as whites on math, science, and writing; 

4.    For reading tests, multiracial students outperform other groups, including Asians; and 

5.    These results contradict the controversial hypothesis that between group differences in IQ result from genetic differences between races.

These findings suggest that the race gaps in academic achievement in the United States are the result of inequality, especially in terms of access to educational opportunities, and therefore could be closed under fairer political, social, and economic arrangements.

This is just more evidence about the socially constructed nature of race and the arbitrariness of racial categories. If "white"

Fusion Adds Data To #GayMediaSoWhite Discussion

John Walker at the Fusion website analyzed the covers of the magazines of The Advocate, Out and Attitude and produced this useful infographic (seen above) to determine the (lack of) diversity represented therein.

The summary of the data is:

Representation on the cover of Out, June 2011 – May 2016In the past five years, Out has featured 78 people on the cover of its magazine. That figure includes repeat appearances by Dustin Lance Black, Ellen Page, Neil Patrick Harris, and Zachary Quinto. The mag’s upcoming May 2016 issue will feature Troye Sivan, a gay white singer-songwriter from Australia who rose to fame on YouTube.
Sixty-six of those 78 people have been white (85%), and 31 of those white people have been queer and/or trans (40%). Twelve of the 74 individuals featured on Out‘s covers have been people of color (15%), and eight of them have been queer people of color (10%).Representation on the cover of The Advocate, June 2011 – May 2016I was unable to locate cover imagery for the following six issues of The Advocate: September 2011, December 2011, January 2012, May 2012, June 2012, and July 2012. But of the covers I was able to find—excluding the publication’s more abstract, evocative cover art—at least 35 people have been featured on the cover of The Advocate over the past five years.At least 10 of those 35 individuals have been people of color (29%). At least eight of those 35 were queer and/or transgender people of color (23%). That includes the mag’s April/May 2016 cover star DeRay Mckesson, a prominent figure in the Black Lives Matter movement who is currently running for mayor of Baltimore.Representation on the cover of Attitude, June 2011 – May 2016Attitude has featured 111 people on its covers in the past five years. That tally includes repeat appearances by Adam Lambert, Dan Osborne, Gareth Thomas, Greg Rutherford, Harry Judd, James Hill, Thom Evans, and Tom Daley.
One-hundred and six of those 111 have been men (95%). The remaining five were women (5%), all of whom were white. (This gender disparity isn’t as troubling as it could be, given that—unlike The Advocate and Out—Attitude is specifically marketed to gay men.) No trans or nonbinary people of any race or ethnicity have been featured on the cover of Attitude in that timeframe.

The overall data can be summarized with this final quote of the data analysis is:

By the way, of the 21 people who appeared on more than one of these magazine covers, we found that seven (33%) are straight white cisgender men. Two of the repeat cover stars are queer women (10%), Lady Gaga and Ellen Page. Just one (5%), Michael Sam—who has been seen on both Out and Attitude—is a person of color.

Discuss!

CELEBRITY FRIDAY (BONUS): Is Rachel Dolezal Black Simply Because She Says She Is?

Social and popular media have been going buck wild about the story of Rachel Dolezal, the  apparently white woman who has been posing publicly as a Black woman for at least the last 10 years.

NPR's Code Switch blog has a useful roundup of online coverage:

In a bizarre turn of events, a prominent civil rights leader and Africana studies professor in Spokane, Wash., has been accused of pretending to be black for personal gain. 

Rachel Dolezal, 37, heads up the local chapter of the NAACP in Spokane and has apparently identified as black for several years. Dolezal's story came to light after she was accused of falsifying reports of multiple hate crimes. Local reporters contacted her parents, who made a startling claim backed up by a birth certificate and old pictures. They say their daughter's heritage is Swedish, German, Czech and a little bit Native American. But definitely not black. 

Predictably, this story has blown up all over the Internet as people try to make sense of it all: Why did she do it? Didn't anyone suspect? What's up with that hair?

As many experts have pointed out, people have been "passing" as a different race for hundreds of years. It's just that almost always this has meant that it was people who would generally be characterized as "Black" (or African-American) passing as something else, usually a racial identity which is less marginalized. What makes the Dolezal situation so unusual is that it is an example of someone voluntarily adopting a subaltern identity, presumably to garner some kind of advantage that they otherwise wouldn't have had access to if they maintained their original identity.

Some people are trying to compare the Dolezal story to the Caitlin Jenner story but that is clearly just stupid.

Dolezal engaged in such actions in order to be perceived as black, in a racialized American environment where that matters. Trans people transition in order to be the gender we feel inside and, while there may come a time when posers will appropriate trendy trans culture for profit, right now, there's no advantage to transitioning when you're not trans.

In some sense this Dolezal situation shows that there has been progress of race relations in America where it is possible for some people to actually believe that their social circumstances would improve if they were perceived as Black or African-American.

Hat/tip to Wonder Man

114th Congress Begins: 80% White, 80% Male, 92% Christian (Representative of America? NO!)

Via Talking Points Memo comes this excellent infographic visualizing the (lack of) diversity in the 535 Members of the United States Congress who are supposed to represent the 320 million people who live in this country. Most of the diversity that does exist in Congress comes from the Democrats, not the Republicans.

Specifically:

There are a total of 81 minorities that are Democrats in both houses combined and 16 that are Republicans, according to data from CQ. The 114th Congress also has 79 Democratic women and 29 Republican women, also according to CQ. 

Of the 188 Democrats in the newly sworn-in House of Representatives, 78 are minorities, according to CQ. Despite the rise of new stars like Rep. Mia Love (UT, pictured above) just 12 of the 246 Republicans in the House majority are minorities. In the Senate, percentages are slightly better for Republicans. There are four Republican senators who are racial minorities and 3 Democrats who are racial minorities. 

By gender, there are 65 House Democrats who are women and 23 women are on the other side of the aisle, according to CQ. That leaves 123 Democratic men and 223 Republican men. In the Senate, there are 14 Democratic women and a record six Republican women leaving 30 Democratic men plus another two Independents who caucus with Democrats and 48 Republican men.

However, the Washington Post points out that it is in the area of religious representation that the Congress does the worst. There is only 0.2% representation (i.e. 1 member) who declares themselves to have no religious affiliation while 20% of Americans declare that they are affiliated with no specific religion.

EYE CANDY: Anthony Moufarej

Anthony Moufarej is a 22-year-old model from Quebec, Canada. According to his Model Mayhem page he is 6-foot-1 and 200 pounds and of Middle Eastern descent (which we could probably figure out from his name). According to other websites, he is from Lebanon.  Here at MadProfessah.com our motto is "Hawt is hawt" and we have featured other models of Lebanese descent before, like the stunning Adam Ayash.

Anthony has a presence on Facebook and there are lots of pictures of him available on Tumblr and Pinterest.

Happy Holidays!

POLL: Is Obama "Black" Or "Mixed-Race"? Majority Of Americans Pick The Latter...

A new poll from the Pew Research Center called "The Next America" dives deep into the future demographics of America and reveals how American's views on race an racial identity have changed and are continuing to change.

For example, a majority of respondents (52%) to a poll when asked about the racial identity of President Barack Obama in 2009 said that they think of him as "Mostly Mixed Race" while only 27% said they thought of him as "Mostly Black."

Notably, these results differed by the racial identification of the respondents. Black people said that Obama was Black by the rate of 55% to 34% who said he was mixed. The group that was the least likely to call Obama "Black" was Hispanics!

The report also shows what America will look like in coming decades, with the majority of Americans expected to be from non-White racial groups around 2040.

What do you think, is the President Black or Mixed-Race? Is there some reason he can't be both? (That would be my answer.)

Hat/tip to Huffington Post Politics

CA State Senate Abandons Attempt To Restore Race-Conscious College Admissions

Bad news today out of the Democratic state senate, where a state constitutional amendment that would place a partial repeal of Proposition 209 on the November 2014 ballot has been tabled. Proposition 209 passed in 1996 and banned the use of race, ethnicity or gender in public education, public contracts or public employment. The state senate had passed SCA 5 by a vote of 27 to 9 on January 30, 2014.

Speaker John Perez (and State Controller candidate) announced today that the Assembly would not consider the measure. According to the San Jose Mercury-News Asian-American state senators switched from support to opposition due to pressure from the community.

Last week, saying they had received thousands of calls and emails from constituents, senators Leland Yee, D-San Francisco; Ted Lieu, D-Torrance; and Carol Liu, D-La Cañada/Flintridge asked Assembly Speaker John Perez to stop the bill. 

"As lifelong advocates for the Asian-American and other communities, we would never support a policy that we believed would negatively impact our children," they wrote in a letter to Perez. 

In 1996, California became the first state to outlaw affirmative action in public university admissions and state hiring, a policy that took effect in 1998. The amendment would have allowed voters to lift that ban, either this fall or in 2016. 

Hernandez and others have said that misinformation about what affirmative action would mean -- such as racial quotas for new freshmen -- spread quickly, stoking parents' fears about their children's chances of getting into UC, the state's public research university system. 

Using racial quotas in admissions would be unconstitutional; recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions have strictly limited consideration of race in public university admissions. UC officials last week said any suggestion of quotas is irresponsible: "We have never done that, and we never would," said Nina Robinson, UC's associate president and chief policy adviser.

 Hopefully the legislature will realize that it is important to be able to use race as a factor in college admissions.

Eye Candy: Adam Ayash (3rd time)

Adam Ayash is a very attractive model who has appeared as Eye Candy two times before (May 6, 2013 and July 29, 2013). I first discovered Ayash through a post by MechaDude. You can see even more and (better) pics of Adam online.

Hat/tip to MechaDude2001.

GRAPHIC: Explains Why GOP Acts The Way It Does

Ryan Lizza of the New Yorker explains why the GOP majority in the U.S. House voted to shut down the federal government for the first time in 16 years last night. It was primarily due the far rught wing of the Republican majority, who have been dubbed the "suicide caucus" by fellow conservative commentators.

As the above map, detailing the geography of the suicide caucus, shows, half of these districts are concentrated in the South, and a quarter of them are in the Midwest, while there’s a smattering of thirteen in the rural West and four in rural Pennsylvania (outside the population centers of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh). Naturally, there are no members from New England, the megalopolis corridor from Washington to Boston, or along the Pacific coastline. 

These eighty members represent just eighteen per cent of the House and just a third of the two hundred and thirty-three House Republicans. They were elected with fourteen and a half million of the hundred and eighteen million votes cast in House elections last November, or twelve per cent of the total. In all, they represent fifty-eight million constituents. That may sound like a lot, but it’s just eighteen per cent of the population. 

[...] 

In short, these eighty members represent an America where the population is getting whiter, where there are few major cities, where Obama lost the last election in a landslide, and where the Republican Party is becoming more dominant and more popular. Meanwhile, in national politics, each of these trends is actually reversed. 

In one sense, these eighty members are acting rationally. They seem to be pushing policies that are representative of what their constituents back home want. But even within the broader Republican Party, they represent a minority view, at least at the level of tactics (almost all Republicans want to defund Obamacare, even if they disagree about using the issue to threaten a government shutdown).

So this explains why Republicans seem so far out of touch with the rest of the American population. It's because they actually are!

Hat/tip to Rachel Maddow.

DEBATE: Is There Racism In Online Gay Dating?

There is an interesting discussion going on about whether (and how) racism plays a role in online dating by gay men. With the proliferation of electronic means by which gay men can find each other (websites, cellphone apps) the many ways by which men desire broadcast to each other has become clearer, easier to scrutinize, and in some cases, problematic.

On some dating sites, one can search for "dating" partners (and  I use the word "dating" liberally, because what we are really talking about is "hooking up") using various features or physical characteristics of the desired partner. Sometimes one of those features to be searched on is the race of the person you are looking to "date." (Other features are age, height, weight, et ceteraThe primary question for debate is whether it is racist to communicate a racial preference in your desired partner. For example, some people who identify themselves as one particular race may seek to only "date" within that same racial group, explicitly saying they are only looking for that group, or conversely saying that they are not looking for partners from all other racial groups. There are also situations where people who identify with one race only seeks to date from another, different racial group. Is that more or less problematic than the first scenario? In other words, should expressing an intraracial dating preference be considered differently than expressing an interracial dating preference? Or is  excluding consideration of any particular race prima facie evidence of racial animus by definition?

My position is that it is racist to specifically exclude all members of a particular race from consideration as a sex partner or potential date. One must first always remember that racial categories are fictions, problematic figments of the imagination which are used to classify groups of people in order to reify a system of dominance and subordination. Just because race is a social construct, however, does not mean that it is not "real" and that being classified by racial categories does not have real and quantifiable impacts on real people's lives. So, coming from the perspective that race brings with it a maelstrom of conflicting and confusing forces and ideas allows me to say that yes, it is racist to specifically select or exclude partners by race. (To be clear, the definition of racism I am using is this one: a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.) By eliminating all members of a particular race from being a potential partner means that you are buying into the belief that race is "a primary determinant" of desirability. Additionally, because of the slippery nature of race there are no traits or features that are indisputably aligned with one race or another, so that to make a categorical statement about people of a certain race is almost by definition, racist in of itself.

Clearly, lots of people disagree with my position that racial preference in selecting sexual or dating partners is racist. However, there are also lots of people who agree with me that this behavior can appear pretty icky.

Rick Mula, writing at The Task Force's blog, provides some data to demonstrate that racial categories do appear to impact how gay men select partners:

Based on data published by OkTrends, a blog produced by OkCupid, white gay men respond more often to OkCupid messages from other white men than from men of color. They respond to messages from other white men 44% of the time but respond only 37.3% of the time to men of color. 

White gay men also respond less frequently to messages in general than gay men of color. On OkCupid white gay men respond to messages from all races at an average rate of 41.4%, but gay men of color respond to messages from all races at an average rate of 49.3%. 

Ironically, even though white gay men respond to messages in general less frequently than gay men of color they fail to attract the highest rate of responses to the messages they send. Middle Eastern gay men, on average, will receive about 48 responses for every 100 messages they send, while white gay men will receive an average of 45. By contrast, Black gay men will receive about 36.

This data demonstrates the reality that gay men have racial preferences when selecting partners or dates. This is not a surprise, and has been defended in print:

If you enjoyed and would date all races but had a special thing for lean latino boys, does that extra crush of yours make you racist? If you are an Asian boy and have that “boi” gene in you that has you searching out bigger, older white men does that make you a racist? If you think mixed raced boys are particularly sexy then does that make you especially open-minded or again, a racist? While many would weigh their answer to each question with special thought and care, I personally blanket-answer “Nope!” to all of em’! I’m quite a black or white (forgive the pun) kind of guy when it comes to most issues and unless you think people are genetically/socially/anyway unequal because of their race then I’ll stamp you with a big ol’ R for racist, but being more turned on by a particular set of men to me is totally acceptable and pretty much exactly how we are made to cruise/date/love.

Also at the Homorazzi blog where this defense of racial preference occurs, there is a survey (with nearly 500 responses) that indicates that more than 60% of respondents felt that racial preference is not racism.

This is a complicated topic but I think it is useful to think about the issues and hopefully have  a reasonable and reasoned debate.

What do you think?

Openly Gay Black Man Named CEO of Ford Foundation

Darren Walker was recently named chief executive officer of the Ford Foundation. Walker is an openly gay, Black man who will run one of the largest charitable foundations in the world. According to Wikipedia, the Ford Foundation is currently ranked 5th in the world and has assets of nearly 11 billion dollars and hundreds of employees.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports:

Mr. Walker, a gay black man who grew up in a small town in Texas, worked for nearly a decade as a lawyer and bond salesman on Wall Street before giving up corporate life in 1995 to volunteer for a year at a school in Harlem.

He went on to become chief operating officer at Abyssinian Development Corporation, a community-development group in Harlem. Mr. Walker then worked for many years at the Rockefeller Foundation, before moving to Ford in 2010 as vice president for education, creativity, and free expression.

“The opportunity to lead the Ford Foundation is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for someone of my background, with the interest in social justice and the passion for social-change work that I have,” Mr. Walker said in an interview on Thursday.

Mr. Walker’s selection—he will officially take over in September—was widely praised by philanthropy peers, who described him as a well-connected and energetic manager with an unusual ability to build consensus among different groups of people.

Congratulations to Mr. Walker! I hope he is able to have an impact on focussing the Foundation's word on addressing inequality in the United States, especially inequalities based around race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation.

Saturday Politics: Racial Disparities Between Republican and Democrat U.S. House Districts

The above graphic explains why Members of Congress who are Republicans and Democrats have very different feelings about immigration reform and other issues. Republican Members of Congress represent congressional districts generally have more White people and fewer people of color than Democrats.

Celebrity Friday: Mariah Carey Plays A Field Negro in The Butler

This photo of Mariah Carey playing a slave working in the fields in openly gay director Lee Daniels' latest movie, The Butler, is causing a stir on Twitter and other social media online. Carey and Daniels have worked together before, in the Oscar-winning (and controversial) Precious, for example, where again Mariah played against her  image as a diva, to good reviews. The Butler is about the story of Eugene Allen, who was a butler in the White House serving 8 presidents of the United States.

Actually, I am happy about the controversy because it alerted me to the existence of the film, which has a jaw-dropping cast including Oprah Winfrey, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Forest Whitaker, Terence Howard, John Cusack, Vanessa Redgrave, Robin Williams, Melissa Leo and many more. It also has a pretty strong trailer:


This looks like it might be a must-see next Fall!

Celebrity Friday: Karen Lord, Bajan Sci-Fi Author

Karen Lord, is a Barbadian science fiction author (probably the only one!?) and just happens to also be a longtime childhood friend of mine. (We're born one day apart, her in Barbados and me in Grenada. We went to secondary school in Barbados at the same time, she at Queen's College, same school as my sister, and I at Combermere.) I met up with her while I was visiting the Caribbean on my vacation from May 15-30 and caught up on what she has been doing in the last quarter century since I last saw her!

She's been busy. Karen has even more post-graduate degrees than I do (from various and varied institutions), including a Ph.D. in the sociology of religion from the University of Wales. However, what she is most well-known for is Redemption in Indigo, her debut novel first published in 2010 that has won multiple awards:

Her debut novel “Redemption in Indigo” won the 2008 Frank Collymore Literary Award, the 2010 Carl Brandon Parallax Award, the 2011 William L. Crawford Award and the 2011 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature. It also was long-listed for the 2011 Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, nominated for the 2011 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel and shortlisted in the Best Debut Novel category of the Kitschies Awards.

Karen has also recently published a new book, The Best Of All Possible Worlds, a sequel of which is already written and will come out within the next year. The new book has earned her comparisons to writers like China Mieville, Nalo Hopkinson and Ursula K. Le Guin, who are giants in the field of speculative fiction.

I am very proud to call her my friend and this week's Celebrity Friday!

GRAPHIC: No (Rich) Child Left Behind

The New York Times Opinionator blog has an interesting article entitled "No Rich Child Left Behind" by Stanford education professor Sean Reardon which publicizes a fact that most people not involved with education policy may not realize: the wealth of one's parent's is the largest factor (more significant than race or ethnicity or gender) in determining whether someone becomes a college graduate or not.

This idea is captured by this excerpt:

To make this trend concrete, consider two children, one from a family with income of $165,000 and one from a family with income of $15,000. These incomes are at the 90th and 10th percentiles of the income distribution nationally, meaning that 10 percent of children today grow up in families with incomes below $15,000 and 10 percent grow up in families with incomes above $165,000. 

In the 1980s, on an 800-point SAT-type test scale, the average difference in test scores between two such children would have been about 90 points; today it is 125 points. This is almost twice as large as the 70-point test score gap between white and black children. Family income is now a better predictor of children’s success in school than race.

And a key point to remember is that the disparity between rich kids and poor kids is widening while racial/ethnic disparities have been slowly decreasing.

The widening income disparity in academic achievement is not a result of widening racial gaps in achievement, either. The achievement gaps between blacks and whites, and Hispanic and non-Hispanic whites have been narrowing slowly over the last two decades, trends that actually keep the yawning gap between higher- and lower-income students from getting even wider. If we look at the test scores of white students only, we find the same growing gap between high- and low-income children as we see in the population as a whole. 

Professor Reardon explains the implications of this phenomenon on our society:

Meanwhile, not only are the children of the rich doing better in school than even the children of the middle class, but the changing economy means that school success is increasingly necessary to future economic success, a worrisome mutual reinforcement of trends that is making our society more socially and economically immobile. 

The entire piece is well worth reading. Check it out!

Black Voter Turnout Won 2012 Election For Obama

A new report analyzing voter turnout in 2012 confirms that well-publicized efforts by Republicans to suppress voting by minorities (a.k.a. the GOP War on Voting) resulted in record Black turnout, handing the election to President Obama even though overall voter turnout was down over 2008 (and 2004). In fact, the most dramatic finding in the report is that turnout by Black voters surpassed turnout by White voters for the first time ever. For the second presidential election in a row, the Black percentage of the presidential vote (13%) exceeded the Black percentage of the electorate (12%).

This is the key excerpt from the Associated Press story:

Romney would have erased Obama's nearly 5 million-vote victory margin and narrowly won the popular vote if voters had turned out as they did in 2004, according to Frey's analysis. Then, white turnout was slightly higher and black voting lower.

More significantly, the battleground states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Florida and Colorado would have tipped in favor of Romney, handing him the presidency if the outcome of other states remained the same.

There is a  lot of interesting information in the article for both Democrats and Republicans. First, the article notes that only only political party (Republicans) have managed to win the presidency three consecutive times in the last 60 years (1980, 1984, 1988) so that Democrats should not be confident about 2016. It also notes that Romney was a particular weak candidates, failing to energize white voters while Obama successfully energized black voters. The much vaunted Latino vote is still  only a potential factor at the presidential level, with Latino voters making up 17% of the electorate but only 11% of the vote. This could change sooner rather than later, depending on how immigration reform ends up impacting the citizenship status of the millions of undocumented immigrants of Hispanic descent living in the United States.

However my favorite oart of the story is this description of Mitt Romney by an African American voter from Cleveland, Ohio:

"A white Mormon swimming in money with offshore accounts buying up companies and laying off their employees just doesn't quite fit my idea of a president," she said. "Bottom line, Romney was not someone I was willing to trust with my future."

And that is a summation of the 2012 Republican presidential candidate in a nutshell: "a white mormon swimming in money with offshore accounts buying up companies and laying off their employees." David Axelrod must be very proud!