Raw Root

Mariam 

Victims of police brutality… Art by Ashley A. Woods.

This is my submission for the APB - Artists Against Police Brutality book - with John Jennings and Bill Campbell. Please take the time to read about the victims in the subsequent posts.

On Wednesday, I sat down waiting for one of the girls I tutor to get off her music lesson (I go to pick her up sometimes) and heard 3 very distressed mothers talking about this: one had lost a childhood friend in that accident, one was telling how in that plane there was an entire family whose kids went to school with hers, the other telling how her pregnant friend’s boyfriend was in there too. They were hurting, they were angry.

Women of Color Working in STEM Fields Are Frequently Mistaken for Janitors 

Almost half of Black and Latina women working as scientists have been mistaken for a janitor or administrator their offices, reveals a new report on the experiences of women of color working in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields.

"As one Latina statistician told researchers, “I always amuse my friends with my janitor stories, but it has happened not only at weird hours.” She calmly informed someone that she had the key to the office, not the janitor’s closet.

That detail is part of “Double Jeopardy: Gender Bias Against Women of Color in Science,” the new report by the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California that surveyed 500 female scientists and conducted in-depth interviews with 60 more. It provides a damning look at how gender and racial bias impacts women’s mental health and careers.

The conventional wisdom is that women don’t work in the sciences at the same rate as men because of a lack of early encouragement for girls to pursue STEM careers and because they’re more likely to leave careers to have kids. But the interviews show that those explanations leave out the hostile and discouraging environment that many women face in male-dominated classrooms, offices, and labs. Of the 60 scientists interviewed in the report, 100 percent reported that they had experienced gender discrimination during their careers. More than 75 percent of the African-American women scientists surveyed reported having to prove their intelligence over and over again. They feel they can’t afford to make a single mistake.”

Read the full piece here

Photo caption: Teenage scientist Alexa Dantzler works in a chemisty lab at Emory University. Photo by Isabelle Saldana.

Some Children are More Equal than Others 

February 9

Twitter user and live streamer, MissJupiter1957, was pulled from her wheelchair and assaulted by police, arrested and charged with “failure to obey police orders and 3rd degree assault” on a police officer. Her wheelchair was also confiscated by police.