March 26 - April 1, 2021

On June 19, 2020, I made a commitment to educate myself on the lingering effects of racism, discrimination, and bias in America. Every day through June 18, 2021, I will read an article or book chapter, listen to a podcast, watch a movie or documentary, view a webinar, or do something substantive to educate myself in these areas. As part of that commitment, I will post to this blog each Friday with a list of what I've done over the past week as well as any pertinent thoughts or reflections.

Today's post covers the week of March 26 - April 1, 2021.

 

Saving a Language You're Learning to Speak 

This episode of the NPR podcast Code Switch features the story of Larry Kimura, a Hawaii native and Professor of Hawaiian at the University of Hawaii-Manoa, and his attempts to save the language native to the islands. After an overthrow of the Hawaiian queen in the late 1800s, Hawaiian was banned as an official language in favor of English. This led to a near disappearance of the language. In 1980, Kimura co-founded the Punana Leo preschool, which aimed to educate children exclusively in the Hawaiian language. Today, the Punana Leo schools include education through high school, have expanded to all five islands, and helped produce more than 5000 native Hawaiian speakers under the age of 18.

 

'We saw this coming': For Asian-Americans, This Current Moment of Violence is All Too Familiar 

Kavitha Davidson writes this story for The Athletic, featuring interviews with Vicky Nguyen of NBC News, Mike Magpayo, men's basketball coach at UC-Riverside, and Pat Chun, athletics director at Washington State. They each talk about their experiences with racism and their hopes for the future. Magpayo and Chun both cite sports as a critical avenue for learning about difference and finding common ground. Chun says, “Being in a team setting does afford you this opportunity to not look at someone’s background as your first level of judgment. It’s what can they do for me on the court or on the field that can help me, before anything else. And that allows a different entry point for relationships.”

 

Killings by Police Declined After Black Lives Matter Protests

Jim Daley reports for Scientific American on a study linking Black Lives Matter protests to a decrease in police killings of civilians. Travis Campbell, an economist at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, published his findings in the Social Science Research Network. Campbell used a quantitative technique called "difference in differences" to analyze data collected from 2014-2019. He found that police killings fell an average of 16.8% in municipalities with protests when compared with those without protests. Campbell reasons BLM may have this effect because it causes police departments to adopt reforms such as body cams or community policing.

 

How Do Women Feel About Women's History Month? Conflicted. 

Erin Spencer of the New York Times gathers the perspectives of five leading women during Women's History Month - Deb Haaland, Secretary of the Interior; Angela Cesena, Executive Director of Latina SafeHouse; Dr. Nneka Dennie, co-founder of the Black Women's Studies Association; Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement; and Dr. Kelly Graham, physician and Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School. The consensus among these women is we should acknowledge both the contributions of leading women throughout history and dedicate ourselves making even more progress in the future.

Bumble Co-Founder Becomes World's Youngest Self-Made Woman Billionaire, Thanks to IPO

Whitney Wolfe Herd, founder and CEO of the dating app Bumble, took her company public this week and promptly became one of the youngest self-made billionaires in history. Wolfe Herd founded Bumble after suing her previous employer, Tinder, for sexual harassment in 2014. Her suit alleged she was threatened by her former boss and stripped of her title as co-founder. When she started Bumble she again had to overcome misogynistic coworkers on her way to steering the company toward an IPO. Bumble is unique in the dating app world in that only women can make the initial outreach.

Two Georgia Churches Grapple With the Shootings in Atlanta

The New Yorker's Charles Bethea traces the responses of two Baptist churches following the murders of six Asian women in Atlanta. One, the Sugarloaf Korean Baptist Church in Suwanne, Georgia, wrestled with the concept of confronting racism and forgiving the shooter, Robert Aaron Long. The other, the Crabapple First Baptist Church in Milton, Georgia, was forced to confront that Long was a member of its congregation. The article discusses what binds the two congregations together and how they differ in their responses to racism and violence.

Why Are There So Few Women Professors?

Dr. Kimberly Hamlin, Professor of History at Miami (OH) University, writes this op-ed for the Chronicle of Higher Education. Hamlin cites various statistics that point to gender bias in the promotion of tenured women to full professor. She also discusses the barrier to leadership and research opportunities faced by women faculty who have caregiver responsibilities for children and parents. Hamlin claims that the problem persists not for a lack of solutions, but rather a lack of institutional will. She points to greater flexibility in the timing of research and promotion and incentives for diversifying full professorships as potential solutions to the problem.