While 2014 will forever be known as the year of the world’s biggest Ebola outbreak — and the first cases of Ebola contracted in the United States — the virus is just one of several impactful changes in our medical and personal health landscape. From cancer research breakthroughs to innovative food policies to strides in the search for an HIV vaccine, we’re quite a bit further in our understanding of medicine than we were last year. Thanks to research in 2014… Your Fitness Tracker Data Could Lead To The Next Big Medical Discovery Your FitBit, Jawbone and other personal tracking devices and apps are logging every step you take, every bite you eat and …

While 2014 will forever be known as the year of the world’s biggest Ebola outbreak — and the first cases of Ebola contracted in the United States — the virus is just one of several impactful changes in our medical and personal health landscape. From cancer research breakthroughs to innovative food policies to strides in the search for an HIV vaccine, we’re quite a bit further in our understanding of medicine than we were last year.

Thanks to research in 2014…

Your Fitness Tracker Data Could Lead To The Next Big Medical Discovery

Your FitBit, Jawbone and other personal tracking devices and apps are logging every step you take, every bite you eat and every hour you sleep.

All of that data is a potential treasure trove for health researchers, which is why University of California, San Francisco and the American Heart Association are inviting people from all over the world to plug their apps and devices into the Health eHeart platform. The hope is that people who track their health data can provide scientists with powerful, real-world and real-time insights that they can then use to make observations and associations between things like exercise, diet and heart disease.

Dr. Elliott Antman, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and president of the American Heart Association, called the big data push unprecedented and said it could pave the way for how big clinical research projects are conducted in the future.

“This dwarfs even the largest studies that we could do in a conventional randomized trial,” Antman over the phone to HuffPost. “This platform allows us to gather information in a free-living population, as opposed to the artificial atmosphere of a medical clinic.”

The best observational, longitudinal studies involve cohorts of tens of thousands of participants, but the Health eHeart study has the potential to synthesize data from up to one million users.

A Single Donor Transformed Mental Health Research Funding Forever

The deaths of high-profile and beloved people like actor Robin Williams kept depression, suicide and mental health at the forefront of the news in 2014. There’s no doubt that losing Williams and others sparked important conversations like HuffPost’s Stronger Together series, where people share how mental illness has affected their lives.

And just as the death of one person has opened up a broader conversation about depression, a single donation may have done the same for research. Philanthropist and businessman Ted Stanley announced in July the donation of $650 million to the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, which will finance research to find and treat the genetic roots of mental illness, reported NPR. The gift was inspired by Stanley’s son, who has bipolar disorder.

The New York Times noted that the donation “comes at a time when basic research into mental illness is sputtering, and many drug makers have all but abandoned the search for new treatments.” For that reason, Dr. Ken Duckworth, medical director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, called the donation a “game changer” and a “long-term play that will pay-off” in an email to HuffPost.

Cancer Patients Can Use Their Own Immune Systems To Fight Tumors

Cancer patients are unlocking the power of their own immune systems to shrink their tumors with immunotherapy drugs — a class of medicine that can either train your immune cells to recognize and attack cancer, or boost your immune system with man-made immune proteins. The Food and Drug Administration approved the first such immunotherapy drug, called Keytruda, for patients with advanced melanoma who are no longer responding to other drugs. Keytruda is just one of several immunotherapy drugs being developed to combat a wide variety of cancers.

“These drugs represent a groundbreaking advance in the treatment of cancer,” said Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society to HuffPost. “This probably is the most important breakthrough [cancer] news of 2014.”

Sequencing Cancer Tumor Genes Reveals Better Ways To Treat Patients

But researchers are also excited about the promise that genomic sequencing holds for the treatment of cancer. Scientists in several different institutions are working on ways to analyze the genes of cancer tumors to see how they differ from a patient’s healthy tissue. Identifying what makes tumors tick could help doctors match patients with clinical trials or medicines that can best shrink tumors or stop them from growing, all the while doing as little damage as possible to the healthy tissue.

Genomic testing ushers in a new era of personalized cancer care, or the notion that what may be best for one patient may not work for another patient — even if they technically have the same kinds of cancer. To Dr. Norman Edelman, Senior Scientific Advisor for the American Lung Association, genomic analysis of cancer tumors is at the “very top of the list” for important medical breakthroughs of 2014.

“Now we know that a significant percentage of lung cancers — it may be as much as 10 percent — have genetic abnormalities that can be detected,” said Edelman. “More importantly, we have drugs to deal with it. ” Editor’s note: genetic abnormalities play a role in five to ten percent of all cancers.]

We’re Getting Closer To Defeating Polio For Good

There are three different types of Polio, a devastating, highly infectious viral disease that can cause death and permanent paralysis. Type 2 poliovirus appears to have been gone since 1999, and the world has now gone two years without encountering a case of Type 3 poliovirus, says Dr. Walter Orenstein, Associate Director of Emory Vaccine Center and the president-elect of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases.

“While that’s still too short a time to be certain, it gives great encouragement to the principle that two of the three polio types may be eradicated,” said Orenstein to HuffPost. Cases of Type 1 poliovirus are mostly concentrated in countries like Pakistan, which had 276 cases this year, and Afghanistan, which had 24 cases.

“We’re marching closer and closer to polio eradication,” said Orenstein. Societies can prevent polio with widespread vaccination campaigns, and the U.S. eradicated the disease in 1979.

Smoking Rates Are Lower Than Ever

The numbers are in. Rates of cigarette smoking are continuing to decline in the U.S. and dropped to under 20 percent in 2013 — the lowest rate since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention started keep track of smoking rates in 1965. The CDC report, which chronicled the drop in smoking rates between 2005 and 2013, was released Nov. 2014. It also noted that while some people still smoke, they’re smoking less cigarettes.

Edelman said the drop signaled several important and positive cultural changes around smoking in the U.S.

“Keep trying to quit — the evidence suggests that if you keep trying enough times, you will be able to quit, and quitting is very important for your health,” said Edelman. “Also, if you continue to smoke, you’ll be among a smaller and smaller group of people who do it.”

A Vaccine For HIV Is Within Reach

Vaccines that were able to protect monkey from contracting SIV (simian immunodeficiency virus, a disease analogous to HIV in humans) are looking especially promising as a potential vaccine for HIV, according to Harvard Medical School professor Todd Allen, Ph.D.

Researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health may soon begin a preliminary human trial based on research they completed injecting monkeys with long-lasting AIDS drugs, reported the New York Times. Check out HuffPost’s story on the biggest HIV/AIDS research breakthroughs of 2014 for more information.

A National Food Policy Could Include Nutrition And Environment And Human Rights Too

Food thought leaders like Mark Bittman (of The New York Times), Michael Pollan (author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma) are calling on President Barack Obama to create a national food policy to manage the U.S. agriculture industry, improve conditions for farm laborers and protect widespread access to healthy food.

Dr. Robert Lustig, a pediatric endocrinologist of University of California, San Francisco (and the professor behind the viral “Is Sugar Toxic?” YouTube video) called this movement one of the biggest pieces of news from a nutritional public health perspective in an email to HuffPost.

In a Nov. 7 op-ed for the Washington Post, Bittman and Pollan called for Obama to create, via executive order, a national food policy that would streamline the eight different federal agencies that oversee various aspects of the American food system and guarantee the right “every American to eat food that is healthy, green, fair and affordable.”

It’s an outsized, but much needed, vision of the future. Consider this: When a government-appointed group of nutrition experts decided to gather information on how food choices impact the environment (a first), Congress came out against the council’s interest in the environment and directed the Obama administration to ignore their concerns when they issue new national dietary guidelines in 2015, reports NPR.

An Ebola Vaccine (Or Two) Is In Clinical Trials

Orenstein also expressed hope in two highly promising Ebola vaccines that are currently in phase 1 clinical trials. Both of them are two different viruses that have an Ebola gene inserted in them, to induce immunity in the deadly disease. However, one of them was temporarily suspended Dec. 11 over concerns that it caused mild joint pain in the hands and feet of study participants.

But that’s to be expected, said Orenstein.

“What looks like very promising animal data may not be borne out in the clinical trial,” he told HuffPost. Ebola has infected 17,942 people and killed at least 6,388, according to the most recent situation report from the World Health Organization. The epidemic, which mostly affects countries in West Africa, reportedly started with a single case in Dec. 2013.

Source article – 

The Most Exciting Health Stories Of 2014

Of all the issues raised by the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, perhaps the most intractable is the challenge of restoring opportunity to the high-poverty, high-crime, racially segregated neighborhoods where police and minority communities often collide most sharply.

Of all the issues raised by the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, perhaps the most intractable is the challenge of restoring opportunity to the high-poverty, high-crime, racially segregated neighborhoods where police and minority communities often collide most sharply.

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The Battle To Boost Opportunity

SAN FRANCISCO — Michael Brown’s father spoke in San Francisco on Monday evening, where he urged students to get an education and told of his own recently learned lessons on police violence. “It really didn’t hit hard until it hit my own backyard,” Michael Brown Sr. said about the killing of his unarmed son in August by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Weeks of protest in the Bay Area since a Missouri grand jury decided on Nov. 24 not to indict former Ferguson officer Darren Wilson for fatally shooting the 18-year-old lured Brown Sr. to San Francisco to express gratitude for the support and to show solidarity with demonstrators and students. “I’m real tired of our …

SAN FRANCISCO — Michael Brown’s father spoke in San Francisco on Monday evening, where he urged students to get an education and told of his own recently learned lessons on police violence.

“It really didn’t hit hard until it hit my own backyard,” Michael Brown Sr. said about the killing of his unarmed son in August by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri.

Weeks of protest in the Bay Area since a Missouri grand jury decided on Nov. 24 not to indict former Ferguson officer Darren Wilson for fatally shooting the 18-year-old lured Brown Sr. to San Francisco to express gratitude for the support and to show solidarity with demonstrators and students.

“I’m real tired of our kids getting misused and abused,” Brown told several hundred people at Mission High School. “I’m here to stand, stand strong, with you all to make a change.”

On Sunday, Brown sent a similar message at Third Baptist Church in San Francisco, according to the Contra Costa Times.

Brown’s trip to the West Coast shows his growing role as a public voice of opposition to police violence against minorities.

“Somebody’s got to stand up and take a stand,” Brown said in brief remarks, wearing a St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap and a T-shirt with photos of his son. “It’s my job and my duty to stand for all of us.”

In response to questions from the audience later, Brown called for outfitting all police with cameras.

Monday’s event was organized by Mission High School’s Black Student Union with assistance from the local NAACP chapter, according to a spokeswoman for the San Francisco Unified School District.

Students and other members of the public swarmed Brown on stage for photographs at the end of speeches.

“With the current events going on, we thought that there should be a movement,” said 15-year-old sophomore Damaris Bonner, the Black Student Union’s minister of communications. “We are the youth, but we’ve got to be the example for the generation coming up.”

Bonner said classmates got the idea for inviting Brown after seeing “Selma,” the new film about the civil rights movement.

Sophomore Damaris Bonner speaking to students at Mission High School on Monday.

The stage was decorated with banners saying “Black Lives Matter. All Lives Matter,” and “I Can’t Breathe,” the dying words of Eric Garner when a New York police officer fatally choked him.

We are in a state of emergency, said Cephus “Uncle Bobby” Johnson, whose nephew Oscar Grant was unarmed when a transit officer killed him on a train platform in 2009. “If you fail to stand up and speak to this issue what kind of life will your children have?”

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Michael Brown’s Father Expresses Solidarity With Bay Area Protesters

The president of the Cleveland Patrolmen’s Association on Monday refused to back down from criticizing a Cleveland Browns player as “pathetic” for wearing a shirt calling for justice for two unarmed black men who were killed by police officers in Ohio. Cleveland Patrolmen’s Association President Jeffrey Follmer on Sunday issued a statement criticizing Browns wide receiver Andrew Hawkins for wearing a shirt saying, “Justice For Tamir Rice and John Crawford,” before the team’s game. Tamir Rice, 12, was shot to death by Cleveland police last month while carrying a pellet gun. Crawford, 22, was killed by police officers in August while holding a toy rifle in a Walmart in Dayton, Ohio. “It’s pretty pathetic when athletes think they know the law,” Follmer …

The president of the Cleveland Patrolmen’s Association on Monday refused to back down from criticizing a Cleveland Browns player as “pathetic” for wearing a shirt calling for justice for two unarmed black men who were killed by police officers in Ohio.

Cleveland Patrolmen’s Association President Jeffrey Follmer on Sunday issued a statement criticizing Browns wide receiver Andrew Hawkins for wearing a shirt saying, “Justice For Tamir Rice and John Crawford,” before the team’s game. Tamir Rice, 12, was shot to death by Cleveland police last month while carrying a pellet gun. Crawford, 22, was killed by police officers in August while holding a toy rifle in a Walmart in Dayton, Ohio.

“It’s pretty pathetic when athletes think they know the law,” Follmer said on Sunday. “They should stick to what they know best on the field. The Cleveland Police protect and serve the Browns stadium and the Browns organization owes us an apology.”

After Hawkins explained on Monday that he wore the shirt thinking of what could happen to his 2-year-old son, Follmer refused to back down.

“It’s not a call for justice, they were justified,” Follmer said during an interview on MSNBC Monday evening. “Cleveland police officers work with the Cleveland Browns hand-in-hand, and when he disrespects two of our police officers, he disrespects everybody else.”

Follmer said video shows police officers were justified opening fire on Rice within two seconds after pulling up on him in a park. He said that the 12-year-old, who police thought was 20, “wasn’t unarmed,” even though he had a gun that could fire non-lethal pellets.

A grand jury will consider whether to indict the officer who killed Rice. In September, a grand jury decided not to indict the officers who killed Crawford.

Follmer expressed little sympathy for parents who worried that their unarmed children might be killed.

“How about this? Listen to police officers commands, listen to what we tell you, and just stop,” Follmer said. “I think that eliminates a lot of problems. I have kids too, they know how to respect the law. They know what to do when a police officer comes up to them.

“I think the nation needs to realize that when we tell you to do something, do it, and if you’re wrong you’re wrong, and if you’re right, then the courts will figure it out.”

Originally from – 

Cleveland Police Union Refuses To Back Down From Criticism Of NFL Player For Tamir Rice Shirt

It turns out Samuel L. Jackson has a voice as big as his heart. The celebrated actor recently made a video calling out celebrities who participated in the ALS awareness “Ice Bucket Challenge” videos. Following a wave of massive protests against police brutality and racial violence, Jackson challenges solidarity through song. To start things off, the veteran actor sings the protest song himself, one that includes slain Staten Island father Eric Garner’s famous last words: “I can’t breathe.” I can hear my neighbor crying ‘I can’t breathe,’ now I’m in the struggle and I can’t leave, calling out the violence of the racist police, we ain’t gonna stop till people are free. We ain’t gonna stop till people are free. Jackson’s not the only …

It turns out Samuel L. Jackson has a voice as big as his heart.

The celebrated actor recently made a video calling out celebrities who participated in the ALS awareness “Ice Bucket Challenge” videos. Following a wave of massive protests against police brutality and racial violence, Jackson challenges solidarity through song.

To start things off, the veteran actor sings the protest song himself, one that includes slain Staten Island father Eric Garner’s famous last words: “I can’t breathe.”

I can hear my neighbor crying ‘I can’t breathe,’
now I’m in the struggle and I can’t leave,
calling out the violence of the racist police,
we ain’t gonna stop till people are free.

We ain’t gonna stop till people are free.

Jackson’s not the only actor to issue a challenge against violence and racism; Orlando Jones made a social splash with his “Bullet Bucket Challenge” video to “advance the cause of human rights into its own viral phenomenon.”

In the words of Jackson, “Come on, sing it out.”

[h/t The Root}

Source article – 

Samuel L. Jackson Issues A Singing Challenge To Fight Police Violence

In recent weeks, protests have spread across America in response to multiple grand juries declining to indict police officers responsible for the deaths of unarmed black men. Those decisions have led to an outpouring of grief, anger and anxiety over a criminal justice system that seems to operate with little accountability, especially where the deaths of people of color are concerned. It’s not clear exactly why grand juries rarely choose to indict police officers involved in the deaths of unarmed black men. But we do hear the excuses made on their behalf. Here are some of the explanations and justifications we’ve been offered: 1. Health complications. Eric Garner’s July 17 death at the hands of NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo was captured on film and circulated …

In recent weeks, protests have spread across America in response to multiple grand juries declining to indict police officers responsible for the deaths of unarmed black men. Those decisions have led to an outpouring of grief, anger and anxiety over a criminal justice system that seems to operate with little accountability, especially where the deaths of people of color are concerned.

It’s not clear exactly why grand juries rarely choose to indict police officers involved in the deaths of unarmed black men. But we do hear the excuses made on their behalf.

Here are some of the explanations and justifications we’ve been offered:

1. Health complications.

Eric Garner’s July 17 death at the hands of NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo was captured on film and circulated on the Internet. Garner’s last words, “I can’t breathe,” later became a rallying cry during demonstrations made in his name. Pantaleo, who placed Garner in a chokehold prohibited by the police department, was not indicted for the death. Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.) said shortly after the grand jury’s decision that Garner would have survived the fatal chokehold had he not been “obese.”

2. Standing in a stairwell.

Akai Gurley, 28, was fatally shot by NYPD Officer Peter Liang in the Louis Pink housing projects in Brooklyn last month. New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton defended the shooting as an “accidental discharge” in a “dark” stairwell by a cop who had been on the force less than 18 months.

3. Resembling someone’s idea of a “thug.”

In August, 18-year-old Michael Brown was fatally shot in Ferguson, Missouri, by Officer Darren Wilson following a daytime altercation in the street. During a recent segment on NewsMaxTV, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee insisted that Brown would still be alive “if he behaved like something other than a thug,” an apparent reference to disputed witness testimony that Brown was reaching for Wilson’s gun before he was shot. (Most of the witnesses who testified before the grand jury said that Brown had his hands raised when he was killed.)

4. Wearing a sweatshirt.

Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Florida teen whose death in February 2012 led to protests across America, was blamed for his own death for wearing a hooded sweatshirt. Trayvon, 17, was gunned down by George Zimmerman, a self-appointed neighborhood watch volunteer. Shortly after Trayvon was killed, Fox News host Geraldo Rivera said, “I think the hoodie is as much responsible for Trayvon Martin’s death as George Zimmerman was.” (Zimmerman, it should be noted, was a civilian neighborhood watch officer, not a policeman.)

5. Being the child of someone with a troubled past.

Tamir Rice, 12, was gunned down by Cleveland police while holding a toy gun at a public park last month. The Northeast Ohio Media Group then ran a story about Tamir’s father, Leonard Warner, and Warner’s history of domestic violence — because, author Brandon Blackwell explained, “people from across the region have been asking whether Rice grew up around violence.”

Warner was not present when Tamir was killed. Blackwell’s story on Warner offered no background information on Officer Timothy Loehmann, who was deemed unfit for policing two years before he shot Tamir.

6. Taking your medication.

A Phoenix police officer fatally shot 34-year-old Rumain Brisbon earlier this month after mistaking a pill bottle in Brisbon’s pocket for the handle of a gun.

7. Asking for help after being in a car accident.

Jonathan Ferrell, 24, was shot in Charlotte, North Carolina, in September after surviving a car accident. Ferrell crawled through a window of his car and began banging on the door of a nearby home to get attention. When officers arrived at the scene in response to the homeowner’s report of an attempted break-in, they shot Ferrell 10 times as he approached them with empty hands.

8. (Possibly) dressing up as a character from a TV series.

This is what Hunt was wearing when he was killed. Compare to the character from Samurai Champloo. Was he cosplaying? pic.twitter.com/TlFS49OTYJ

— Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) September 15, 2014

Darrien Hunt, 22, was fatally shot in September when Utah officers responded to a call of someone walking around with a “samurai-type sword.” Cops said that Hunt lunged at them with the toy sword, but witnesses claimed to have seen him running from the officers, and an independent autopsy showed that Hunt was shot in the back.

9. Complying with a police officer’s command, immediately.

Levar Edward Jones was shot by South Carolina trooper Sean Groubert in September. As Jones stood next to the open door of his vehicle, Groubert asked him to retrieve his wallet. Jones reached into his car to do so. Groubert then demanded that Jones get out of the car, and opened fire as Jones complied. Jones asked: “Sir, why was I shot? All I did was reach for my license.” Groubert responded: “Well, you dove headfirst back into your car.”

Unlike the other black men and boys on this list, Jones survived his encounter with the police — which was lucky, because more often than not, cops shoot to kill.

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9 Absurd Justifications For Police Killings Of Unarmed Black Males

The antidote to racism partly lies in empathy, or the willingness to “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes,” as the saying goes. But scientists from universities across Europe are taking the maxim one step further, providing people an opportunity to experience life in someone else’s skin by experimenting with virtual reality as a means of helping people shed racial stereotypes. Researchers from London and Barcelona teamed up to discuss their recent experiments on virtual reality and race in a recent opinion piece for the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, published Dec. 15. The researchers found that if people got the chance to physically experience their own body with different skin…

The antidote to racism partly lies in empathy, or the willingness to “walk a mile in someone else’s shoes,” as the saying goes. But scientists from universities across Europe are taking the maxim one step further, providing people an opportunity to experience life in someone else’s skin by experimenting with virtual reality as a means of helping people shed racial stereotypes.

Researchers from London and Barcelona teamed up to discuss their recent experiments on virtual reality and race in a recent opinion piece for the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, published Dec. 15. The researchers found that if people got the chance to physically experience their own body with different skin colors (or ages and sexes), their unconscious biases against other racial groups could be diminished.

This isn’t merely a question of changing mentality or perception. The experience of “living” in different skin triggers sensory signals in the brain that allow it to expand its understanding of what a body can look like. This can “cause people to change their attitudes about others,” wrote the study’s co-researcher, Dr. Mel Slater, a part-time professor of virtual environments at the University College London and research professor at the University of Barcelona.

“Our methods and findings might help us understand how to approach phenomena such as racism, religious hatred, and gender inequality discrimination, since the methods offer the opportunity for people to experience the world from the perspective of someone different from themselves,” said Professor Manos Tsakiris of the Royal Holloway University of London in a press release about the study review.

The research has special significance in the wake of the deaths of Staten Island resident Eric Garner and Ferguson, Mo. teen Michael Brown, which U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said have raised issues over “implicit bias and pervasive community distrust,” as reported by CNN.

The authors reflected on three different experiments they had conducted in the past. In the first, called the “Rubber Hand Illusion,” white participants were made to watch a dark-skinned rubber hand being stroked on a screen, while their own hand was being stroked at the same time. This “synchronous stimulation” caused participants to feel as if they were inhabiting that rubber hand, or that it was a part of their body.

Photo A: Caucasian participants observe a dark-skinned rubber hand being stimulated in synchrony with their own unseen hand. Photo B: Caucasian participants view the face of someone from another race, being stimulated in synchrony with their own face. Photo C: Caucasian participants experience themselves as different colors (dark-skinned, light-skinned and purple) through virtual reality.

In the second experiment, called the “Enfacement Illusion,” white participants watched a video of a face of someone belonging to a different racial group than them. In the video, while the face was being stroked by a cotton bud, an experimenter was stroking the participant’s own face at the same time — again, making participants feel as if that “other” face was their own face.

In the final experiment, called “Full Body Illusions,” white female participants were asked to take a racial Implicit Association Test (IAT)–a computerized task which can reveal unconscious racial biases. Then, the women put on a virtual headset that gave them the illusion of being in an avatar’s body, which was either white, black or purple (see video below). Afterwards, the women took the racial bias test again.

The women embodied in the black avatars became less biased against black people in their test scores. The women who embodied white or purple avatars showed no change.

(Story continues below video.)

“Generally using these techniques, it is possible to give two sides of a conflict an experience of what it is like to be a member of the ‘other side,'” Slater told The Huffington Post in an email. “This should help to build empathy.”

“The fact that two groups independently had similar findings makes me confident that this was not just a fluke result,” Slater said in the email.

While the researchers don’t know if virtual reality can be used in the long-term to reduce racism, they do believe it may be used to help people–including the police–better understand what it’s like to be a person of another race.

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When White People See Themselves With Black Skin, Something Interesting Happens

Bail was denied on Monday to the teen charged in the shooting death of a 15-year-old Chicago boy who was gunned down while protecting his twin brother during a mugging. As the community comes to grips with the tragedy, those who knew the slain boy are denouncing the system responsible for neighborhood safety. On Saturday afternoon, identical twins Demario and Demacio Bailey were walking to a basketball game at their school in the neighborhood of Englewood when four teens approached the pair and demanded they give up their belongings. A struggle ensued. “Get off my brother,” Demario yelled at the mugger accosting Demacio, according to a police report cited by the Chicago Sun-Times. “He doesn’t have anything!” …

Bail was denied on Monday to the teen charged in the shooting death of a 15-year-old Chicago boy who was gunned down while protecting his twin brother during a mugging. As the community comes to grips with the tragedy, those who knew the slain boy are denouncing the system responsible for neighborhood safety.

On Saturday afternoon, identical twins Demario and Demacio Bailey were walking to a basketball game at their school in the neighborhood of Englewood when four teens approached the pair and demanded they give up their belongings. A struggle ensued. “Get off my brother,” Demario yelled at the mugger accosting Demacio, according to a police report cited by the Chicago Sun-Times. “He doesn’t have anything!”

One of the assailants then pulled a gun and fired. Demacio fled, but returned to find his brother had been shot in the chest, per the Chicago Tribune.

Killed just three days shy of his 16th birthday, Demario is remembered as an exemplary brother, student and community member.

“Demario was just a model student,” Demario’s advisor, Rachel Terry, told The Huffington Post. “He came to school for one purpose, which was learning. He and his brother were inseparable but competed with each other for good marks, GPA. … They were the type of students that every teacher wants.”

Demario’s worst demerit was chewing gum freshman year, according to Terry.

“In addition to mourning this loss, [Demacio] will also be forced to live with the horrible memory of watching his brother be murdered in front of him,” Dr. Garland Thomas-McDavid, the principal at Johnson College Prep, the twins’ school, said in a statement emailed to The Huffington Post.

Thomas-McDavid expressed frustration over the violence facing children in the community.

“The apologies are not enough, and after all the fanfare is over, someone still has to put their baby in the ground,” she wrote in her statement.

“I believe I speak for every mother who lives on the south side of this city in saying we don’t mind if it takes martial law to get this in order,” she added. “Demario did not deserve to die three days from his sixteenth birthday.”

Later clarifying her position on martial law, the principal wrote:

“The existing structures who are responsible for overseeing the well-being of our children when they are traveling the streets are ineffective. Multiple children are being victimized daily, and I think we should use whatever means are necessary to stop this. … Why is it that there are communities in the city where children are safe every day all day, but on the south and west sides, we are comfortable allowing children to be killed in droves? Our children are worth saving and protecting and if it’s not a priority to the powers that be, then bring someone else in here who won’t make excuses. A life is a life. A child is a child.”

Johnson Assistant Principal Ebonie Durham told HuffPost that the mood at school Monday was somber. She said police are still too few and far between in the area, adding that she wants answers from lawmakers and community leaders: “What are you doing to stop this?”

Terry told HuffPost that Johnson, a selective-enrollment high school, pays out it its own budget for increased security. She said calls for more law enforcement in the area have yielded nothing.

“I haven’t seen anything change,” Terry said.

Keontay Thompson, an older student and friend of the twins, said the area where Demario was killed is know to be dangerous and poorly monitored. “We always have to stick together,” he said of walking with the twins in that area, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Carlos Johnson, 17, appeared before a judge Monday and was charged as an adult with first-degree murder, robbery with a firearm and attempted robbery with a firearm, local outlet WGN reports. Two 17-year-olds and a 16-year-old were also charged with murder, reports the Sun-Times.

The school has organized a fundraiser to help the family with funeral costs.

Source: 

Chicago Community Reels After Teen Fatally Shot While Defending Twin During Robbery

For years one of my favorite lazy-Saturday rituals was to go to my local thrift store and shop. On one particular Saturday I went to the store in the afternoon, and the radio was playing. “Fellas, call in and tell me two things you love about Black women after the commercial break,” the DJ said. When I heard that question, my stomach immediately tightened. Even though I hadn’t yet heard any of the listeners’ perceptions of Black women, I already knew in my gut what they were going to say. “We’re back,” said the DJ. “Caller, you on the line? What do you love about Black…

For years one of my favorite lazy-Saturday rituals was to go to my local thrift store and shop. On one particular Saturday I went to the store in the afternoon, and the radio was playing.

“Fellas, call in and tell me two things you love about Black women after the commercial break,” the DJ said.

When I heard that question, my stomach immediately tightened. Even though I hadn’t yet heard any of the listeners’ perceptions of Black women, I already knew in my gut what they were going to say.

“We’re back,” said the DJ. “Caller, you on the line? What do you love about Black women? What two qualities do you love about Black women?”

“I love me a strong, independent Black woman,” the first Black male responder said.

By the time the third Black responder uttered that same term, “strong Black woman,” I was in the coat section and in a bad mood.

“Why are those the only damn words that come to mind when describing Black women?” I asked myself.

Intellectually I knew the answer: The intersection of race, class, and gender for Black women in this country has meant having to reconcile a legacy of slavery and the creation of dehumanizing tropes and stereotypes like the “strong Black woman,” created by the white patriarchal engine to systemically control our reproduction, destroy our families, and distort to ourselves and our men. And the truth is that Black women had to be many things, one of which was strong, to endure the ravages of slavery and Jim Crow. I also understand that this is why we as a culture value this attribute at the expense of so many others.

But there is far more to being a Black woman than being strong and independent. So, shortly after leaving the thrift store, I created my own survey and asked approximately 75 Black women to describe themselves. While I was disappointed to see that Black women too had internalized many of the same stereotypes that have been paraded as truth, I found it refreshing to see that many Black women understood the complexity of their human experience and were able to articulate that complexity by choosing words that more fully and accurately encompasses what it means to be a Black woman.

Here are seven of the ways the Black women I surveyed see themselves that, thankfully, have nothing to do with being strong:

1. Fashionable: Some of us love to look good and smell good and love to be on the cutting edge of fashion trends. Others are always watching how we put colors together and how we tend to our hair.

2. Spiritual: Many Black women describe themselves as women of faith whether they identify as Christian, Muslim, Rastafari, Santero, or “not religious but spiritual.” Many Black women strongly believe that they are connected to a higher being and that there is someone out there larger than themselves.

3. Family-oriented: Black women are often the ones to remember the birthdays, send the Christmas cards, and plan the family reunions. Family fuels a lot of Black women’s happiness and sense of belonging.

4. Funny: Most Black women love to laugh and make their friends and families laugh. We push back against that “ABW” (“angry Black woman”) stereotype.

5. Happy: Just as many of us are funny, often we’re also happy people with healthy emotional dispositions and worldviews. This happiness also comes from our ability to be grateful.

6. Sexy and sensual: Many Black women embrace their sexuality and femininity. They feel desirable; they see the beauty of their skin tone, their features, their bodies, their natural smells, and their hair.

7. Intelligent: Black women see themselves as cognitively well-endowed. They believe that Black women are able to juggle the matrix of life because of our ability to think quickly and creatively.

What adjectives would you use to describe Black women beside “strong”?

Originally posted here:

7 Adjectives to Accurately Describe Black Women Other Than ‘Strong’ and ‘Independent’