A new proposal drafted by the Unicode Consortium would introduce more “racial diversity”, apartheid actually, into the popular emoji characters used in messages on smartphones.
The proposal, edited by Google’s Mark Davis and Apple’s Peter Edberg, would bring skin tones, based on the Fitzpatrick scale for dermatology, to emoji characters in five hues ranging from a pale creme to a dark brown.
To use the new emoji, users would select the emoji person or character and then add a tone. On compatible phones, a single emoji image or glyph would be show up.
On phones that do not support the new font, users will likely see a standard emoji glyph and then a color swatch next to it indicating the skin tone.
The skin tone modifiers would work on all people-related characters, including those that depict couples. A possibility for emoji with couples would be to enter in the skin tone value for each person separately.
Right now, the proposal is still a draft and there is no timeline for implementation so we don’t know when it will reach your phones.
Non-Hispanic white patients who underwent a gastric bypass procedure lost slightly more weight over a three-year period than Hispanic or black patients, according to a Kaiser Permanente study published in the journal Surgery for Obesity and Related Diseases.
Researchers examined the Kaiser Permanente electronic health records of more than 20,000 racially and ethnically diverse patients in Southern California who underwent bariatric surgery from 2004 through May 2013.
They found that, on average, at three years following gastric bypass surgery, non-Hispanic white patients lost 63 percent of their excess weight; Hispanic patients lost 59 percent; and black patients lost 56 percent.
With vertical sleeve gastrectomy patients, the researchers found no significant differences between racial or ethnic groups in the percentage of excess weight lost.
The study examined the two types of bariatric surgery and found that patients who underwent the now common gastric bypass procedure lost more weight over the same period than patients who underwent the more recently developed vertical sleeve gastrectomy procedure.
The study also found that overall, gastric bypass patients lost an average of 59 percent of excess weight (an average 81.5 pounds) and vertical sleeve gastrectomy patients lost an average of 46 percent (57.6 pounds) after three years of follow-up.
“Studies have shown that bariatric surgery is associated with sustainable weight loss for patients with extreme obesity, but there is very little research to show how these procedures affect persons of different races and ethnicities, especially in the long term,” said study lead author Karen J. Coleman, PhD, of the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Department of Research & Evaluation.
“To address the current gaps in the knowledge about bariatric surgery, we created a registry of patients who underwent surgery to monitor quality and safety outcomes and assist clinicians who are caring for these patients after their surgery.”
An African-American student at Sacramento State University is under fire for her recent work of art – which consisted of “lynching” two white men from a tree on the northern California campus.
The men were reportedly actors and were in no real danger during the project, which took place during the day in early December while students were on campus. The men were hung from a tree with a thick rope.
The senior responsible for the performance art, Christina Edwards, defended her project to Fox 40 News.
“The purpose of this performance was to bring to light social injustices and the issue of inequality that impacts me and my community as a whole,” Edwards said.
Edwards says she chose to illustrate this time in history by using race reversal, in an effort to shine new light on an old but standing matter. And says she followed all campus procedures.
The university doesn’t see it that way, however. University President Alexander Gonzalez released this statement saying, in part: “The university did not approve the display, and I want to assure everyone that I am working to address the multiple issues raised by this incident.” – thecollegefix.com
Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe inadvertently took a swipe at black violence on Saturday when he called on men not to hide behind culture to perpetuate gender-based violence.
He did not venture into racial differences however, but it is a well-established fact that gender-based violence is rife in black communities.
Despite concerted media efforts – with much-publicised high profile cases – to portray white men as equally violent, rape figures have increased dramatically since 1994, most involving black perpetrators.
Motlanthe was addressing a poorly attended National Men’s Rally at the Johannesburg Stadium on Saturday afternoon.
The event was aimed at addressing issues of violence and abuse against women and children.
Under the theme of “Not in My Name”, Motlanthe addressed a stadium with many open seats.
He said that gender inequality was a huge stumbling block in fighting abuse.
He added that only if men helped defeat stereotypes and the classification of women could the scourge truly be stopped.
“If we take refugee behind culture, we will then perpetuate gender-based violence,” said Motlanthe.
After his address, Motlanthe was joined by Minister of Women, Children and People with Disabilities Lulu Xingwana and Johannesburg Mayor Parks Tau in signing a pledge promising no form of violence against women and children would be enacted in their name.
The government is trying to fight worsening perceptions about the level of violence in South Africa, with little enthusiasm from most inhabitants, however.
When was the last time you saw Uncle Tom’s Cabin in a theater? The answer is probably never. As far as I can tell, a theatrical version of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s controversial novel hasn’t been performed in the Philadelphia area for many decades, and that also appears to be true for the rest of the country, with the exception of a couple of attempts in New York City over the years. But one Philadelphia theater company says that it’s time to bring the story back to the stage, but with a twist.
EgoPo Classic Theater, a company that describes itself as “edgy, innovative, and inspiring,” is set to debut Uncle Tom in May at Delancey Place’s Plays & Players Theater. Auditions begin this weekend. The show will mark the end of EgoPo’s vaudeville-themed season, which started with their excellent all-female Assassination of Jesse James and continues in March with The Life (and Death) of Harry Houdini.
Uncle Tom was quickly transformed into a theatrical work after the novel’s 1852 publication. And although the book was immensely popular (its sales in the 1800s were only surpassed by those of the Bible), the various theatrical versions were even more so.
Because copyright laws were not what they are today, the scripts strayed freely from the original text, and the show eventually became a centerpiece of minstrel performances, complete with blackface and the most exaggerated racial stereotypes possible. Plus, the book itself wound up on some “banned book” lists, and the NAACP objected to its language and characterizations. No wonder the progressive theater world sought to distance itself in later years.
For the May production, EgoPo artistic director Lane Savadove and Glenn Odom, a literary studies professor at Rowan University, are creating a new script. “We’re doing a realistic, naturalistic version that will be incredibly respectful of the novel,” promises Savadove. “We’re not writing anything. We’re using the book word-for-word, cutting it just so that it works in a theatrical format. I really want the novel to speak for itself on the stage. This is not going to be some post-modern version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
I asked him why it was important to do Uncle Tom now, why he wants to pick it up after all these years.
“The play got tagged as racist not because of the book but because of the minstrel shows,” he explains. “The book was written as an anti-racist piece, and in the last 10 years, the top African American scholars like Henry Louis Gates and Cornel West have gone back to reclaim it as an important part of racial history. And so, we wanted to go back now that it’s seen in this new light and create a new theater version.”
One person who is not convinced that this is necessarily a good idea is Philadelphia actor James Ijames, who teaches the most prominent version of the Uncle Tom scripts in his “Race on the Stage” course at Temple University.
“The citing of Henry Louis Gates and Cornel West to somehow say, ‘See, the black guy said it’s OK!’ is problematic,” says Ijames. “Citing the elder statesmen is akin to the ‘some of my best friends are black’ argument. That notion and rebuttal and defense doesn’t have anything to do with anything.”
Further complicating the matter is Savadove’s decision to swap races in the casting process. In other words, white actors will play slaves while black actors will play their owners.
I talked to one white actor who plans to audition for the show, even though his concerns are “numerous.” The actor, who asked to remain anonymous, points out that many of the stereotypes commonly associated with black culture can be traced back to Uncle Tom, from the “Aunt Jemima” figure to the hyper-educated, very proper black man.
“Those stereotypes were built off of white characterizations of blacks,” he says. “I don’t know how having white actors playing black characters introduces anything new to this story. I sincerely hope that there is an artistic objective beyond being edgy for the sake of being edgy.”
But his biggest and “admittedly selfish” concern is the dialect and language that he’ll be expected to use.
“I have a hard time listening to myself delivering the language,” he notes. “It sounds like a blatantly racist caricature.” He says that he can’t even read his lines in public.
Savadove tries to explain his unusual casting decision: “Even though, by all accounts, the dialogue is incredibly historically accurate, it’s a loaded subject to have a black man speak in a Southern slave dialect. And so we’re switching the races. And we’re painting a picture of an America where it happens to be that the whites became enslaved and the blacks became the slave owners. We’re pointing out the randomness with which the blacks became enslaved and the whites became empowered.”
When I asked Savadove if staging the play was the subject of much debate within EgoPo, he told me it wasn’t. “We are clear in what we are doing,” he says. “And we articulated it clearly to our board.”
In light of Savadove’s justification for the racial switch and his comments regarding “randomness,” Ijames wondered about the racial makeup of that board, as did Ardmore-based playwright Quinn Eli, whose newest play will debut at Plays & Players in April alongside works by Suzan-Lori Parks and other African American playwrights.
And so I asked Savadove point blank if there were any black people on his board. He refused to answer directly. Then he pointed to EgoPo’s 2012 production of A Dybbuk, perhaps the most important play in Jewish history and one with its own controversies surrounding mysticism and Kabbalah. “You didn’t call me then and ask me if any of my board members were Jewish,” he said. No, I didn’t. But, then, A Dybbuk is no Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
In any event, both Eli and Ijames say that they intend to go see EgoPo’s Uncle Tom. And so do I.
“I’ll find it difficult to absorb the image of whites in place of blacks as slaves,” says Eli. ”And I question how effective it will be for white members of the audience who won’t have to take the horror of what happened to those who it actually happened to. It presupposes that a lot of our notions about race have changed more dramatically than I think they have. But that doesn’t mean it won’t make for interesting theater.” – The Philly Post
A protest at the University of Mississippi against the re-election of President Barack Obama grew into crowd of about 400 people with shouted racial slurs as rumors of a riot spread on social media. Two people were arrested on minor charges.
The university said in a statement Wednesday that the gathering at the student union began late Tuesday night with about 30 to 40 students, but grew within 20 minutes as word spread. Some students chanted political slogans while others used derogatory racial statements and profanity, the statement said.
The incident comes just after the 50th anniversary of violent rioting that greeted the forced integration of Ole Miss with the enrollment of its first black student, James Meredith.
Ole Miss Chancellor Dan Jones promised an investigation and said “all of us are ashamed of the few students who have negatively affected the reputations of each of us and of our university.”
On Wednesday night, about 700 people held up candles and called for racial harmony outside the administrative building at the university in Oxford, countering Tuesday’s protest over Obama’s re-election.
Police were initially alerted to Tuesday’s uproar by people who saw Twitter posts about it. The students were told to leave, but about 100 came back later. One person was charged with public intoxication and another with failure to comply with police orders. There were no reports of injuries or property damage.
Rumors about the situation were fueled on Twitter after the university’s student journalists posted a video referring to the gathering as “riots.” The student newspaper posted a video of the crowd, but much of what the students said in it is unintelligible other than the “Hotty Toddy” cheer, which is common at football games and other school gatherings.
One picture that spread rapidly on social media shows people burning an Obama campaign sign, but the university hasn’t confirmed that the picture was taken on campus. The chancellor said some photos shared on social media showed things that were not seen by police on campus, but the reports of uncivil language and racial slurs appeared to be accurate.
Some students and teachers used social media to condemn the conflict.
Ellen Meacham, an Ole Miss journalism instructor, posted on Facebook that “anyone who calls that a riot has never read or heard anything about 1962.”
She was referring to when Meredith became the first black student to enroll at the university on Oct. 1, 1962. Federal authorities deployed more than 3,000 soldiers and more than 500 law enforcement officers to Oxford during the integration. An angry mob started an uprising that killed two white men. More than 200 people were injured. Ole Miss sponsored lectures and other events this year to commemorate the 50th anniversary.
“Now, 50 years later, about 2 percent of the overall student body goes out to protest when their guy doesn’t win the presidency and a portion of that small percentage displays the ugly strain that still infects too many in our student body,” Meacham wrote.
In a state with a 37 percent African-American population, Ole Miss now has a black enrollment of about 16.6 percent. The current student body president, Kim Dandridge, is the fourth black person elected to the post.
Jones said the campus was back to normal Wednesday.
The university was planning an event for Wednesday evening called the “We are One Mississippi Candlelight Walk” to condemn the protest, according to Thomas J. “Sparky” Reardon, vice chancellor for student affairs. – AP
More than 200 people visited Towson University to hear Jared Taylor, a self-described “racial realist.”
A prospective White Student Union at Towson University added to its own controversial history when it brought an advocate for white interests to speak Tuesday at the group’s first meeting.
Jared Taylor, editor of the “racial realism” online news site American Renaissance, said he hoped to spread a message about the importance of racial separateness.
“I believe in complete freedom of association, and when given that choice most people prefer the company of people of their own race,” said Taylor, when reached by phone Wednesday. “We’re always being told to celebrate diversity and I think diversity is a source of tension.”
Many people, including a Patch reporter and other media, were denied admission to the Tuesday night event by campus security after the venue, which holds about 200, filled to capacity. Still, about 50 individuals stood outside the doors as Taylor spoke.
Taylor said his presentation centered around his support for the White Student Union and speaking out against diversity. He acknowledged that the audience reception was lukewarm—”some liked it, some didn’t.”
The White Student Union began recruiting members at Towson University a few months ago.This occurred shortly after Youth for Western Civilization, a group headed by current White Student Union President Matthew Heimbach, disbanded following allegations that its members scrawled “white pride” in chalk at locations around campus.
Youth for Western Civilization’s faculty advisor Richard Vatz, who is also a Patch blogger, resigned from his post after the chalk-writing incident, noting in his resignation letter that he “cannot in good conscience advise a group that attacks people or groups personally or tactlessly or does not recognize their dignity and the value of dignified argument in the marketplace of ideas.”
Heimbach, who did not return calls for comment on this article, previously said both groups were about celebrating white heritage and advocating for white interests, not supremacy.
“It’s a spectacular double standard that only whites are singled out and told they can’t have a race-based organization,” said Taylor, who argued that the group is necessary as demographics change making whites a minority.
Taylor said he presented evidence showing problems raised by diversity, such as data indicating that approximately 100,000 job grievances are related to racial matters. He also pointed to racial riots that occur in prisons. Taylor empathized with whites who felt the need to join gangs in prison because he said there are many black and Hispanic gangs existing outside of prison whose networks extend to jails.
But he did admit there was one benefit to diversity.
“I do enjoy ethnic food,” he said.
Many attendees were not impressed with Taylor’s presentation.
During his speech, Taylor said several people sneaked inside the venue through a fire escape and shouted an obscenity at him. Gay Pinder, a Towson University spokeswoman who was in attendance, said she just heard one person yell at the end of the presentation. She said the individual left through the rear door immediately after making the proclamation.
“It was generally a well-behaved crowd,” Pinder said.
Raymond Winbush, the director of The Institute for Urban Research at Morgan State University, said the presentation was deceptive.
“[Taylor’s] lying,” said Winbush, who is black. “He’s good at manipulating words and says he’s not racist. It’s like the white collar Ku Klux Klan.”
Towson University senior Ignacio Evans, who is also black, thought Taylor was well-spoken but called his speech “absolutely disgusting.”
“He was eloquent, put together, but inherently racist,” Evans said. “He was very anti-diversity and made assertions that people of color are inferior.”
Taylor dismissed the claims of racism as “name-calling.”
“[Calling someone racist is] something someone will say when they don’t have an argument,” he said.
Frankie Knight, a white senior family science student who didn’t know much about the White Student Union, came to the meeting after hearing about it from her professor.
“I thought it was very negative and very offensive,” she said.
Knight and Evans both noted that Taylor said blacks are genetically inferior. He denied making the statement.
“I have said the races are different….there are unquestionable differences,” Taylor said.
And Taylor was not without supporters. Johns Hopkins University engineering professor Dennis Nagle, who is white, said he believes there is truth to Taylor’s teachings.
“He’s got some interesting views on diversity that aren’t popular,” said Nagle, who was not able to get inside the event. “But he’s got evidence and documentation to back it up.”
The White Student Union is not a university-recognized student organization, but the group’s leaders are working to make it approved. Because they don’t yet have that status, the White Student Union had to book the Towson University venue for the presentation as an outside entity. – TowsonPatch
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