Katherine Johnson: The Girl Who Loved to Count
I have always been ridiculously proud of being black. My parents filled me with the stories of those who fought for Caribbean independence like Julian Fedon, Queen Nanny and Toussaint L’Ouverture. For the few years my family lived in Canada, my dad owned a black book store and I loved nothing better than to sit in a corner reading a book and listening to grown folk talk about history and politics. I learned about the ongoing struggle in America and the rest of the black diaspora an to reverse centuries of racism and imperialism at a very early age.Spending my formative years in London and Toronto I got read and hear about so many heroes that bucked the restrictions of antebellum and Jim Crow America without the malignant dynamics that serve to minimize and disregard the acts of these heroes in this country.I was deeply impressed by the fighting spirit of black people of all walks of life. By the time I was nine I was recite more facts about black accomplishments than a J. A. Rodgers book!
Since I was surrounded by this knowledge I never got the idea that math and science was for white men. I competed and won borough and city wide science fairs. I went to natural science camp and I am proud alumni of the Bronx High School of Science. It wasn’t until my tenure as a doctoral student I got the message that black excellence was not to be seen or heard. I was asked by several professors indirectly and directly to tone down my rhetoric when it came to issues of race because I was making white students uncomfortable. One vile little weasel of a professor actually told me I had to learn “how to talk to white people!” In my doctoral program the feelings of whites were more important than my education, a lesson that was a far more bitter pill to swallow than when illness stopped me completing my degree.
This is why women like Katherine Johnson (portrayed by Tajari P. Henson in the film Hidden Figures) has my undying admiration. She served this country when she didn’t have the right to vote. She helped this country garner the prestige of winning the space race when she couldn’t buy a home next to her white colleagues. She had to temper her brilliance, yet excel at her work in era where the toxic brew of racism and sexism was the norm. I doubt my pride would have let me reach the heights of technical brilliance that she and her colleagues did. Ms. Johnson performed her duties with quiet dignity and we are now able to bask in the glow of her accomplishments and show the next generation able to how fantastic black female mathematicians and scientists can be.
Johnson was born in 1918 in the little town of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, Johnson was a research mathematician, who by her own admission, was simply fascinated by numbers. Fascinated by numbers and smart to boot, for by the time she was 10 years old, she was a high school freshman–a truly amazing feat in an era when school for African-Americans normally stopped at eighth grade for those could indulge in that luxury.Her father, Joshua, was determined that his bright little girl would have a chance to meet her potential. He drove his family 120 miles to Institute, West Virginia, where she could continue her education through high school. Johnson’s academic performance proved her father’s decision was the right one: Katherine skipped though grades to graduate from high school at 14, from college at 18.
Continued at: Katherine Johnson: The Girl Who Loved to Count | NASA
Remembering 9 women behind the civil rights era’s biggest achievements
These women may be lesser known to most Americans, but they are my heroes and
I walk gratefully in their footsteps.
Americans may know the names of Rosa Parks or Coretta Scott King, but the numerous other women who played key roles in the fight for equal rights are too often wiped from the history books.
“There’s a Chinese saying, ‘Women hold up half the world,”‘ the late civil rights historian and NAACP chair Julian Bond told NBC News in 2005. “In the case of the civil rights movement it’s probably three-quarters of the world.”
Here are just nine of other women who made indelible contributions to the civil rights era:
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- Septima Poinsette Clark
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- Pauli Murray
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- Daisy Bates
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- Diane Nash
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- Jo Ann Robinson
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- Amelia Boynton Robinson
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- Ella Baker
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- Dorothy Height
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- Fannie Lou Hamer
Continued on MLK Day: Meet 9 lesser known women behind the civil rights era’s biggest achievements
ABWW Hater of the Day: Steve Harvey
Long before Steve Harvey gained mainstream fame I was not feeling his brand of humor. I thought he was the least talented of the Kings of Comedy and was constantly distracted by high top fade toupee. I thought his sit com was bland remix of every school sit com from Welcome Back Cotter to Saved by the Bell to Hanging with Mr. Cooper. I tried to give it a chance but I began seeing the disturbing mysogynoir patterns in the Steve Harvey Show. While sweet, but dim witted Lovita easily settled into a traditional romance and wedded bliss with Cedric, Steve Hightower chaffed at being supervised by and in love with an obviously more qualified Regina Greer. The time honored trope of “will they, won’t they” is marred by what would become Harvey’s signature black woman hating schtick on stage. Calling the gorgeous and svelte Wendy Raquel Robinson “piggy” changes from affectionate adolescent snapping to ugly mysognoir power plays if one is paying attention to the growth of Harvey’s comedy career.
Black men have created a cottage industry of books about why black women’s marital rates have plummeted. Mainstream media jumped on this trend for a while too. They made a pretty penny with this twaddle by conflating sexist black religiosity, pseudo Africana mythology (also know as Ashy Hotepology) with that special brand of respectability politics born out of a need control black women with a Jim Crow level of ferocity. No of these “writers” examined why black men are marrying less on whole but those who do are out marrying more. Harvey is the king of this movement. Even though his book was simply another ashy tome, it went mainstream and his deeply ignorant view of black women mutated into Dear Abby style advice for everyone color and crees. This twice divorced, thrice married adulterer was suddenly an expert on relationships!!!
On smart women:
Well, I mean, you know if a guy is out for one thing, it’s best to go for shallow, unintelligent women. You don’t want to break this news to really bright women. “Hey, I just want to do something to you this evening”…You want to find somebody shallow, really simple unintelligent, that you can run this by and they’ll sit there and go, “Wow, that sounds great.
Men cheat because women are hotass hos
Women ask that question all the time: Why do men cheat? But it’s really because there are so many women out there willing to cheat with them.
I could go on and on but someone was kind enough to compile a youtube video of the ignorant sexist, mysogynoir, homophobic, religious intolerance swill that has seeped from the open sewer that is Harvey’s mug. Harvey has ridden this trash train to a syndicated radio show, a daily talk show, two movies, hosting a daily game show and the Miss Universe pageant (insert schedufreude here). Last week, Harvey decided to expand his poison beyond his twisted version of gender and include race. This time he wasn’t just attacking black women he decided to go after Asian men.
Last week, Steve Harvey aired a segment on his his eponymous syndicated talk show about obscure, absurdly specific advice books. These were niche interest titles like Dating for Under a Dollar: 301 Ideas and How to Date a White Woman: A Practical Guide for Asian Men.
The audience laughed at the latter book in anticipation as Harvey took 15 seconds to gather himself. “That’s one page,” he finally gasped. “’Excuse me, do you like Asian men?’ ‘No.’ ‘Thank you.’”
The comedian then offered a sequel, How to Date a Black Woman: A Practical Guide for Asian Men — “Same thing. ‘You like Asian men?’ ‘I don’t even like Chinese food. It don’t stay with you no time. I don’t eat what I can’t pronounce.’” – The Hollywood Reporter
In order for you to appreciate my ire at this clown on this issue, I have let you know about my ancestry I was born in The London Borough of Haringey, UK of Jamaican and Grenadian ancestry. My maternal grandmother was half Indian and half Welsh. My parents also had friends of mixed Asian ancestry and so do I. When I moved to the Bronx, I had no idea about the sociosexual stereotypes that are imposed on Asian Americans and had crushes on many an ethnicity hue including Asian dudes. Since I was the immigrant, I saw my Asian friends as more American that I was. It really wasn’t until I moved to the midwest that I noticed the fetishization of Asian women and the emasculation of Asian men. Although black female and Asian male intermarriage occurs in the Caribbean and South American, it is rare in this country. There have been brief periods of when black women and Asian men married both in the Jim Crow South and the North before the Chinese Exclusion Act was lifted in 1943.
Harvey’s typical hotep arrogance managed to bring the ugly trope Asian male emasculation together with the oft-promoted fantasies of black male sexual prowess and his own presumptions of the unattractiveness and hypersexuality of black women with his usual mysoginoir flair. Of course black women are too stupid to pronounce a Chinese food menu how could they possibly desire the miniscule charms of Asian men? Harvey knows that all we desire is BBC. Luckily, millennials are not in Harvey’s target demographic and some young black women and Asian men are slowly shrugging off what Harvey and many black & white fuckbois with OK Cupid profiles want them believe and are figuring out inventive ways to meet, hook up and start relationships.
Oooops…. I forgot to mention Harvey met with Orange Shitgibbon on Friday on housing issues. He wants to work with to Sleepy Uncle Ben in some capacity at Department of Housing and Urban Development. Now if that isn’t the Kingfish leading Amos and Andy into another con (Google it, young’ens,) I don’t what is. Here are some pics of sexy, hotass Asian men to momentarily take your mind off the upcoming Orange Apocalypse.
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- Donnie Yen
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- Edison Chen
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- John Cho
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- Daniel Dae Kim
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- Sendhil Ramamurthy
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- Ian Antony Dale
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- Rick Yune
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- Ken Watanabe
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- B. D. Wong
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- Will Yun Lee
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- Kenny Styles
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- Naveen Andrews
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- Tadanobu Asano
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- Raza Jaffrey
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- Byung-hun Lee
Source: The Disturbing History Behind Steve Harvey’s “Asian Men” Jokes | Hollywood Reporter
Google celebrates Nigerian writer Flora Nwanzuruahu Nwapa with a doodle
Google celebrated Flora Nwanzuruahu Nwapa, Nigerian Igbo author with a doodle on her 86th posthumous birthday yesteday.
Flora Nwapa, the mother of modern African literature and forerunner to a generation of African women writers, is acknowledged as the first African woman novelist to be published in the English language in Britain and achieve international recognition, with her first novel Efuru being published in 1966 by Heinemann Educational Books.
Source: Google celebrates Flora Nwanzuruahu Nwapa with a doodle – Vanguard News
U.S. Mint: New Black Lady Liberty Coin for 225th Anniversary
The U.S. Mint’s new $100 gold coin portrays Liberty as an African-American woman
Hello folks! It has been a long time since I have posted to this blog. In an effort to get over the shock and horror initiated by impeding elevation of the Orange Menace to PEETUS, I’m going to try to translate my burgeoning habit of “old lady yells at cloud” into bringing you all the black lady news with my own brand of trenchant cultural criticism. I also hope to upload most of my scholarly work on my sister blog site Black Is…Black Ain’t in the hopes that some shiny new blackademic will get interested in my ramblings and continue the research I couldn’t.
Well on to the topic at hand. With the election of Cheeto McPissParty we live in the post-truth world so presciently described in George Orwell’s 1984:
Actually, as Winston well knew, it was only four years since Oceania had been at war with Eastasia and in alliance with Eurasia. But that was merely a piece of furtive knowledge, which he happened to possess because his memory was not satisfactorily under control. Officially the change of partners had never happened. Oceania was at war with Eurasia: therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia. The enemy of the moment always represented absolute evil, and it followed that any past or future agreement with him was impossible.
In the America headed by the Orange Shitgibbon, an Attorney General with a documented history of racism, xenophobia, homophobia and anti-disability statements and legislation is what is needed to make ‘MERIKA GREAT AGAIN and honoring women of color for their contributions to making this country a more equitable land is racist identity politics. After the run of the African American Lady Liberty coin, there will press Asian-American, Hispanic-American and Native-American sets also. So if you want to piss off the white supremacist faction of the supporters of upcoming junta buy some gold ladies for posterity!
Source: U.S. Mint: New Lady Liberty Coin for 225th Anniversary | Fortune.com
Honoring Althea Gibson, The First Black Woman to Win Wimbeldon
As an Africana/film historian and person with common sense, it has always gotten on my nerves that individuals refer to a sports as white or black. It is if America has massive amnesia and forgot that about 110 years ago blacks were not considered super athletes but sickly, frail creature prone to certain diseases, destined to “naturally die off” like the American Indian. Sports stardom is based on hard work, natural talent, access, luck and MONEY. Serena and Venus’s father worked hard to get them access so their talent and work ethic could be admired by the world and Tiger’s dad was featuring his little golf prodigy at three years of age. As black athletes become contenders in swimming, gymnastics, hockey, speed skating and other so called “white” sports we sometimes forget the people like Pete Brown, Arthur Ashe and the incomparable Althea Gibson who opened the door for today’s superstars.
Study Finds Air Pollution Linked to Increased Incidence of Diabetes and Hypertension in African American Women
The incidence of type 2 diabetes and hypertension increases with cumulative levels of exposure to nitrogen oxides, according to a new study led by researchers from the Slone Epidemiology Center (SEC) at Boston University. The study, which appears online in the journal Circulation, was led by Patricia Coogan, D.Sc., associate professor of epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health and the SEC.
Researchers assessed the risks of incident hypertension and diabetes associated with exposure to nitrogen oxides (NOx) and particulate matter (PM2.5) in a cohort of approximately 4,000 African American women living in Los Angeles. NOx are indicators of traffic-related air pollution. From 1995-2005, 531 incident cases of hypertension and 183 incident cases of diabetes occurred among the participants in the Los Angeles area. The risk of diabetes increased by a significant 24 percent, and the risk of hypertension by 11 percent, for each 12 ppb increase in exposure to NOx.
Read more at Boston University Medical Campus | Blog Archive | Boston University.
Study finds experiences of racism associated with weight gain in African American women
A recent analysis conducted by investigators from the Slone Epidemiology Center at Boston University has found that frequent experiences of racism were associated with a higher risk of obesity among African American women. The findings, which currently appear online in the American Journal of Epidemiology, found the relationship between racism and obesity was strongest among women who reported consistently high experiences of racism over a 12-year period. The research was based on data from the Black Women’s Health Study, a longitudinal study that enrolled 59,000 African-American women in 1995 and has followed them continually.
88 Nigerian schoolgirls abducted by Islamic extremists still missing
Twenty-four more Nigerian schoolgirls abducted by Islamic extremists have escaped but 85 are still missing, an education official said on Friday.
Some of the 129 young women who were abducted jumped off the back of a truck when they were kidnapped before dawn on Tuesday from a high school in the extreme north-east of Nigeria.
Others escaped into the Sambisa Forest, which bordered their school in Chibok town and was a known hideout of militants of the Boko Haram terrorist network.
Militant Muslim Leader Abubakar Shekau made the comments in a video posted online on Saturday, saying the group attacked a bus station in retaliation for the what he described as the government’s collusion with the United States in the killing of Muslims, but reamained mum on the fate of the schoolgirls.
ABWW Signal Boost: Tennessee’s Pregnancy Criminalization Law Will Hit Black Women the Hardest
I have been following Imani Gandy’s tireless work for reproductive rights for a few years. She is passionate, knowledgeable & incredibly funny as the co-host of the This Week in Blackness podcast. Read more of her work of her work at RH| Reality Check, The Grio.com, AlterNet,
In Tennessee, pregnant Black women have much to fear as a bill that would subject them to disproportionately higher rates of incarceration and detention sits on Gov. Bill Haslam’s desk, awaiting his signature. The bill, SB 1391, would impose criminal penalties on mothers of newborns who have been exposed to addictive illegal or prescription drugs in utero. While the bill appears race-neutral, prosecutors and judges will wield the law against Black women more so than white women, based on a long tradition of deeply embedded racial stereotypes about Black motherhood. Should Gov. Haslam ignore the growing outcry against SB 1391 from pro-choice and anti-choice advocates alike, the law would likely lead to Black women being thrown in jail for up to 15 years for aggravated assault should they choose to carry a pregnancy to term while struggling with an addiction to illegal narcotics
Read More at Tennessee’s Pregnancy Criminalization Law Will Hit Black Women the Hardest.
Angry Black Woman Watch 