Here’s your totally crowd-sourced week in review, in haiku.
Your face in the cloud
Means privacy is fleeting
Time to get offline?
– Jessica Helfand
Jerry loved ‘Pac, but
Iowa roses don’t bloom.
It’s his turn to leave
– Hugh Weber
Trump waves racist flag
To obscure squalor, torture
Of border camp kids
– @defcon_5
Heat is upon us
So sweltering, so constant
When will coolness come?
– Ellen Stark
Watching CATS trailer
Judy, Idris, Ian, James
What were they thinking?
– Ellen Stark
small victory news
trafficker was denied bail
his homies ghosted
– Nicole Sanchez
fifteen bucks an hour
the underserved deserve it
so do senators
– Paolo Guadino
Thank you for all the crowdsourced love this week! Have a cool and supportive weekend. I am grateful for all of you.
On Point
Rep. Ilhan Omar hears a different chant After days of attacks by the president and being subject to the racist chant, “Send her home!” by the crowd at a Trump election rally, the Somalian-American lawmaker was met at the airport in her home state with cheers of “Welcome home, Ilhan!” Omar has been receiving death threats since her election, some have been quite serious. Her colleagues continue to fear for her safety. Republican lawmakers have done little to stop the president’s attacks. Now, Trump falsely claims that he asked the crowd to stop the ugly chant. The Guardian
Not all diversity outcomes are created equally A new study finds that the very people who add “diversity” to teams aren’t having good experiences on them. Researchers from Michigan State University and University of Michigan looked at diversity on science teams in two categories: demographic (race, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, and nationality) and industry background (career stage, academic discipline, and tenure on the team). Then, a sample of 266 participants from 105 National Science Foundation-funded environmental science teams answered in-depth questionnaires. “Participants with more underrepresented demographic characteristics, such as black women or gay men not born in the United States, perceived their team climate—or attitudes and expectations on the team—to be more negative.” MSU Today
Journalism matters, the R. Kelly edition Today marks the one week anniversary of the day the disgraced singer was arrested by federal agents and indicted on 13 accounts, including child pornography. Turns out, the federal investigation was born after a Homeland Security agent watched Surviving R. Kelly, the searing docuseries by filmmaker dream hampton. Says a source, the agent was "looking at the victims' interviews and realized that 'this is so much bigger than [what] he has previously been charged with.'" Kelly was ordered to be held without bond on Tuesday. Vice
On Background
How black chefs are changing food In addition to make you hungry, this wonderful piece from John Eligon and Julia Moskin will also make you proud. The 16 black chefs profiled are forging new foodways, drawing from a variety of overlooked or diminished traditions, and breaking away from the limiting idea that black chefs must always reflect the food of the American South. It’s a delicious trend: Some 17% of chefs are black, and the number of black-owned food establishments increased by nearly 50% between 2007 and 2012. “It’s up to us to be transparent with our information and our techniques, and pass along to the next generation,” said Mashama Bailey, executive chef at The Grey in Savannah, Ga., and the winner of this year’s James Beard award for Best Chef: Southeast. “We got to kind of strike while the iron’s hot right now.” New York Times
Colson Whitehead takes the fucker down again I’ve been eagerly awaiting Colson Whitehead’s latest novel,The Nickel Boys, which tells the horrifying inspired-by-true-events story of two black boys who were sent to an abusive reform school in Florida that operated during Jim Crow. But this interview with the author is the perfect way to get Whitehead back in your head; Literary Hub explores the nuts and bolts of his writing habits (10 a.m. to 3 p.m.); what’s occupying his imagination (Mars); and how he deals with writer’s block. “The element of surprise is key, and a carefully considered angle of approach. Speed is a big factor,” he advises. “Then you just ram into it and take the fucker down. Planning, cunning—these skills will come in handy when humanity makes its leap forward into the uncharted universe within.” Lit Hub
Pardon me, white man. How’s whiteness working for you? Claudine Rankin is contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a professor of poetry at Yale. But this piece explores whiteness, an idea which has come into sharp relief for her after developing and teaching a class called Constructions of Whiteness for two years. It was a way to participate in the growing field of whiteness as a study; the universal construct of a specific kind of institutionalized power. The creation of that class alone is instructive, and then Rankin decides to do the kind of “field work” that will be very familiar to many of you. "Perhaps this is why one day in New Haven, staring into the semicircle of oak trees in my backyard, I wondered what it would mean to ask random white men how they understood their privilege." New York Times
