ID,Title,Content,Basis,URL,Sentiment, 1,"Census data: US is diversifying, white population shrinking","No racial or ethnic group dominates for those under age 18, and white people declined in numbers for the first time on record in the overall U. S. population as the Hispanic and Asian populations boomed this past decade, according to the 2020 census data. The figures released Thursday by the U. S. Census Bureau offered the most detailed portrait yet of how the country has changed since 2010 and will also be instrumental in redrawing the nation’s political maps. The numbers are sure to set off an intense partisan battle over representation at a time of deep national division and fights over voting rights. The numbers could help determine control of the House in the 2022 elections and provide an electoral edge for years to come. The data also will shape how $1. 5 trillion in annual federal spending is distributed. The data offered a mirror not only into the demographic changes of the past decade, but also a glimpse of the future. To that end, they showed there is now no majority racial or ethnic group for people younger than 18, as the share of non Hispanic whites in the age group dropped from 53. 5% to 47. 3% over the decade. The share of children in the U. S. declined because of falling birth rates, while the share of adults grew, driven by aging baby boomers. Adults over 18 made up more than three quarters of the population in 2020, or 258. 3 million people, an increase of more than 10% from 2010. However, the population of children under age 18 dropped from 74. 2 million in 2010 to 73. 1 million in 2020. “If not for Hispanics, Asians, people of two or more races, those are the only groups underage that are growing,” said William Frey, a senior fellow at Brookings’ Metropolitan Policy Program. “A lot of these young minorities are important for our future growth, not only for the child population but for our future labor force. ” The Asian and Hispanic populations burgeoned from 2010 to 2020, respectively increasing by around a third and almost a quarter over the decade. The Asian population reached 24 million people in 2020, and the Hispanic population hit 62. 1 million people. The Hispanic boom accounted for almost half of the overall U. S. population growth, which was the slowest since the Great Depression. By comparison, the non Hispanic growth rate over the decade was 4. 3%. The Hispanic share of the U. S. population grew to 18. 7% of the U. S. population, up from 16. 3% in 2010. “The 2020 Census confirmed what we have known for years the future of the country is Latino,” said Arturo Vargas, CEO of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Educational Fund. The share of the white population fell from 63. 7% in 2010 to 57. 8% in 2020, the lowest on record, driven by falling birthrates among white women compared with Hispanic and Asian women. The number of non Hispanic white people shrank from 196 million in 2010 to 191 million. White people continue to be the most prevalent racial or ethnic group, though that changed in California, where Hispanics became the largest racial or ethnic group, growing from 37. 6% to 39. 4% over the decade, while the share of white people dropped from 40. 1% to 34. 7%. California, the nation’s most populous state, joined Hawaii, New Mexico and the District of Columbia as a place where non Hispanic white people are no longer the dominant group. “The U. S. population is much more multiracial and much more racially and ethnically diverse than what we have measured in the past,” said Nicholas Jones, a Census Bureau official. Some demographers cautioned that the white population was not shrinking as much as shifting to multiracial identities. The number of people who identified as belonging to two or more races more than tripled from 9 million people in 2010 to 33. 8 million in 2020. They now account for 10% of the U. S. population. ",2,https://apnews.com/article/race-and-ethnicity-census-2020-7264a653037e38df7ba67d3a324fc90d,FALSE,156 2,Workplace Diversity and Inclusion Gets Innovative,"wont be long before U. S. minorities are not in the minority anymore. Due to projected growth among Asian, Hispanic and multiracial groups, traditionally underrepresented populations will hit majority status by 2044, according to the Census Bureau. Smart companies reflect that reality in the collective makeup of their employees. Their leaders understand that yesterdays workforce cant lead them into tomorrow. We see diversity and inclusion as a business imperative, says Wanda Hope, chief diversity officer at Johnson & Johnson in New York City. That sentiment is shared by leaders at AT&T, where 42 percent of employees are people of color. It makes good business sense to have an employee base that looks like our customer base, says Cynthia Marshall, senior vice president of human resources and chief diversity officer at the Dallas based company. To truly serve the populations we want to serve, we need diverse groups of employees, suppliers and vendors. AT&T attracts a diverse pipeline of applicants by partnering with universities to help prepare minority students for work; it also supports underrepresented employees through mentorships and employee resource groups. ?The business case for attracting a wider range of employees will only get stronger as the country grows more diverse. If youre not good at attracting and retaining women and people of color, youre competing for an increasingly smaller portion of talent, says Joe Gerstandt, a diversity consultant based in Omaha, Neb. And thats a fundamentally flawed strategy. But diversity is not just about mirroring the countrys demographics. Its also about innovation and performance. Companies that exhibit gender and ethnic diversity are, respectively, 15 percent and 35 percent more likely to outperform those that dont, according to global management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. And research indicates that organizations with more racial and gender diversity bring in more sales revenue, more customers and higher profits. Diversity also matters at the top: McKinsey found that companies in the top quartile of executive board diversity had returns on equity that were 53 percent higher than those in the bottom quartile. Moreover, organizations with more female executives are more profitable, according to a 2016 analysis of more than 20,000 firms in 91 countries. Attracting, retaining and developing diverse professionals stirs innovation and drives growth, says Mike Dillon, chief diversity and inclusion officer for PwC in San Francisco. That statement is backed by decades of sociological and economic research, and there are myriad reasons it holds true. In part its because people with different backgrounds and perspectives bring different information to the table. Members of diverse teams cant take for granted that their teammates think the same way they do. That leads them to question their own assumptions and anticipate alternate viewpoints. The result? More creative ideas and solutions. Which is exactly what a company like Johnson & Johnson needs. Because we are an innovation company, we need a global workforce that not only represents our customers and patients but also constantly brings in new insights, says Peter Fasolo, chief human resources officer. At Johnson & Johnson, the hiring and promotion of diverse employees is factored into the determination of managers annual bonuses. ",2,https://www.shrm.org/hr-today/news/hr-magazine/0217/Pages/Disrupting-Diversity-In-The-Workplace.aspx,TRUE, 404,Future immigration will change the face of America by 2065,"A snapshot of the United States in 2065 would show a nation that has 117 million more people than today, with no racial or ethnic majority group taking the place of today’s white majority, according to new Pew Research Center projections. About one in three Americans would be an immigrant or have immigrant parents, compared with one in four today. Share of Immigrants and Their Children on the Rise These projections show that new immigrants and their descendants will drive most U. S. population growth in the coming 50 years, as they have for the past half century. Among the projected 441 million Americans in 2065, 78 million will be immigrants and 81 million will be people born in the U. S. to immigrant parents. The projected changes in population makeup could have implications in a variety of realms, changing the face of the electorate, raising the education levels among the foreign born population and altering the nation’s birth patterns. By 2065, No Racial or Ethnic Group Will Be a Majority Non Hispanic whites will remain the largest racial or ethnic group in the overall population but will become less than a majority, the projections show. Currently 62% of the population, they will make up 46% of it in 2065. Hispanics will be 24% of the population , Asians will be 14% and blacks will be 13% . The U. S. electorate already is more diverse than ever, and the projected demographic changes would produce a rising share of non white potential voters. One important factor is the rising age of the second generation – people born in the U. S. to at least one immigrant parent. Currently, a large share is not yet eligible to vote. This group’s median age is 19, meaning half are younger and half are older. But by 2065, their median age will be 36, according to the new projections. The projected rise of Asians as the nation’s largest immigrant group has its own implications, among them potentially increased education levels. Among immigrants who arrived within the past five years, Asians already outnumber Hispanics, in part because of a sharp recent drop in immigration from Mexico. This slowed Hispanic immigration also will have a longer term impact: In 2065, Asians will outnumber Hispanics among all immigrants – 38% to 31%. The increased share of Asian immigrants among all immigrants means that education levels of the foreign born population could rise sharply, because Asian immigrants tend to be better educated. Among recent immigrants from Asia, for example, 57% have completed college, compared with 13% for recent Mexican immigrants and 28% for immigrants from other Central or South American nations. ",2,https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/05/future-immigration-will-change-the-face-of-america-by-2065/,TRUE, 410,"Early Benchmarks Show ‘Post-Millennials’ on Track to Be Most Diverse, Best-Educated Generation Yet","As a new generation of Americans begins to take shape and move toward adulthood, there is mounting interest in their attitudes, behaviors and lifestyle. But how will this generation change the demographic fabric of the United States? A new Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data finds that the “post Millennial” generation is already the most racially and ethnically diverse generation, as a bare majority of 6 to 21 year olds are non Hispanic whites. And while most are still pursuing their K 12 education, the oldest post Millennials are enrolling in college at a significantly higher rate than Millennials were at a comparable age. The parents of post Millennials are more well educated than the parents of Millennials and those of previous generations, and this pattern most likely contributes to the relative affluence of the households in which post Millennials live. More than four in ten post Millennials are living with at least one parent who has a bachelor’s degree or more education. Roughly a third of Millennials in 2002 had a parent with this level of education. The high school dropout rate for the oldest post Millennials is significantly lower than that of similarly aged Millennials in 2002. And among those who were no longer in high school in 2017, 59% were enrolled in college – higher than the enrollment rate for 18 to 20 year old Millennials in 2002 and Gen Xers in 1986 . The changing patterns in educational attainment are driven in part by the shifting origins of young Hispanics. Post Millennial Hispanics are less likely than Millennial Hispanics to be immigrants – 12% of post Millennial Hispanics were born outside the U. S. , compared with 24% of Millennial Hispanics in 2002. Previous research has shown that second generation Hispanic youth tend to go further in school than foreign born Hispanic youth. That is borne out in this analysis, as 61% of second generation Hispanics ages 18 to 20 who were no longer in high school were enrolled in college in 2017, compared with 40% of their foreign born counterparts. Overall, the share of post Millennial Hispanics enrolled in college is significantly higher than the rate for Millennials in 2002 . 1 More broadly, the post Millennial generation is being shaped by changing immigration patterns. Immigration flows into the U. S. peaked in 2005, when the leading edge of the post Millennial generation was age 8 or younger. The onset of the Great Recession and the large decline in employment led to fewer immigrants coming to the United States, including immigrant children. As a result, the post Millennial generation has fewer foreign born youth among its ranks than the Millennial generation did in 2002 and a significantly higher number who were born in the U. S. to immigrant parents, though this may change depending on future immigration flows. ",2,https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/11/15/early-benchmarks-show-post-millennials-on-track-to-be-most-diverse-best-educated-generation-yet/,TRUE, 412,Millennials overtake Baby Boomers as America’s largest generation,"Millennials have surpassed Baby Boomers as the nation’s largest living adult generation, according to population estimates from the U. S. Census Bureau. As of July 1, 2019 , Millennials, whom we define as ages 23 to 38 in 2019, numbered 72. 1 million, and Boomers numbered 71. 6 million. Generation X numbered 65. 2 million and is projected to pass the Boomers in population by 2028. The Millennial generation continues to grow as young immigrants expand its ranks. Boomers – whose generation was defined by the boom in U. S. births following World War II – are aging and their numbers shrinking in size as the number of deaths among them exceeds the number of older immigrants arriving in the country. Population figures for 2019 and earlier years are based on Census Bureau population estimates . Population sizes for 2020 to 2050 are based on Census Bureau population projections released in 2017 . Live births by year are published by the National Vital Statistics System of the National Center for Health Statistics. This post was originally published on Jan. 16, 2015, under the title “This year, Millennials will overtake Baby Boomers. ” It was updated April 25, 2016, to reflect the changing population, under the headline “Millennials overtake Baby Boomers as America’s largest generation” This reflected the Center’s definition of Millennials at the time . A third revision published March 1, 2018, reflected the Center’s newly revised definition, under which Millennial births end in 1996. Under that new definition, the Millennial population was smaller than that of Boomers, resulting in the headline “Millennials projected to overtake Baby Boomers as America’s largest generation. ”",2,https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/28/millennials-overtake-baby-boomers-as-americas-largest-generation/,TRUE, 414,"Meet the US workforce of the future: Older, more diverse, and more educated Deloitte Review, issue 21","ARE you a US based organization searching for tomorrow’s workers? Look around your workplace. The oldest Millennials are just 37, and will likely keep working for several decades. 1 The demographic changes that determine many of the key characteristics of the workforce happen slowly. But they happen. Over time, those demographic shifts can compound to make a big difference. It’s a difference we can already see. The main long term changes in the workforce are, in fact, not new; employers have been adjusting to them for decades. Yet they can have real implications for how organizations approach everything, from workforce planning to diversity initiatives. They are: The US workforce is aging, and it will continue to age. That’s partly because of low birth rates but it’s also because people more often continue to work even as they get older. If 70 is the new 50, we shouldn’t be surprised to find more 70 year olds working. That’s already been happening, and it is expected to happen even more in the future. The US workforce is becoming more diverse. Changing immigration patterns and the entrance of more women into the labor force started this process in the 1960s, and it will likely continue. If current trends continue, tomorrow’s workforce will be even more diverse than today’s by gender, by ethnicity, by culture, by religion, by sexual preference and identification, and perhaps by other characteristics we don’t even know about right now. Americans continue to become more educated. Like all demographic processes, the slow rate of the change may make it less than obvious to employers who are coping with fast change in production technologies. But more and more young people are going to college, and many workers are increasingly trying to improve their educational background mid career. One could say that tomorrow’s workers will be much like today’s but more so. And the challenges and benefits of an aging, diverse, and educated workforce, many of which are already evident, will likely only grow in the future. Changing population, changing workforce With Millennials who represent the largest labor market share of any single generation holding center stage, and Generation Z now entering from the wings, one might think that the US workforce of the future will be increasingly tilted toward younger workers. 2 However, on the whole, projections suggest that America’s future workforce will be older than the current workforce, just as it is expected to be increasingly female and more racially and ethnically diverse. This age shift in the workforce mainly results from increased population and labor force participation among older age cohorts, combined with declining population and labor force participation of the youngest cohort. As shown in table 1, the three oldest cohorts are projected to increase their labor force participation rates through 2024, just as they have over the prior 20 year period. The labor force participation rate of the large middle section of the labor force, 25 to 54, is expected to rebound slightly, after 20 years of decline. The labor force participation of the youngest cohort, 16 to 24, is expected to continue trending down, as more young people stay in school longer, as we discuss later. When the projected labor force participation rates of each cohort are multiplied by the cohort’s population size, the overall picture, shown in the last row of table 1, indicates a continued decline in the participation rate. ",2,https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/deloitte-review/issue-21/meet-the-us-workforce-of-the-future.html,TRUE, 415,Women in Tech Statistics Show the Industry Has a Long Way to Go," Let’s face it, tech still has an issue with gender diversity. The tech sector sadly lags behind the rest of the job market when it comes to hiring women. As the percentage of employed women across all job sectors in the US has grown to 47%, the five largest tech companies on the planet only have a workforce of about 34. 4% women. While controversial technologies or flashy CEOs get most of the negative airtime, it’s the lack of women in the tech industry that seems to be the largest problem looming overhead. Why are many women not able to get into a managerial or technical role? One answer could be “the broken rung. ” Women currently remain highly underrepresented in software engineering and computer science related jobs . In fact, women software engineer hires have only increased 2% over the last 21 years. Instead of talking about “glass ceilings,” we should acknowledge that women have a much larger barrier at being hired for technical entry level positions. This “broken rung” in the career ladder already puts women at a disadvantage, which leads tech companies into a cycle of hiring employees with the same gender and race . It unfortunately gets even more discouraging for women of color in the workplace. Though Asian women, black women and Latinas report the desire to be promoted more than white men or women, they’re still often promoted less. The “broken rung” is even more broken for women of color, who only make up 18% of entry level positions, as opposed to 30% of white women and 35% of white men. We have a tough road ahead towards creating gender and racial equality in the tech workplace.  “[Gender inequality] should shame us all in the 21st century because it is not only unacceptable, it is stupid” UN Chief Antonio Guterres.  Covid 19 has challenged just about every notion of life, so how about women in technology? First, it’s reported that 57% of women have felt burned out from the mandatory work from home caused by the pandemic. This burnout, from struggling to balance being both a working professional and a functioning parent, is leading to a mass exodus of women from the workforce. In 2020 alone, 1. 2 million parents exited the workforce with a staggering three quarters of those people being women. A large portion of those who have stayed in the workforce are reporting that being behind screens has caused a regression of gender parity that was pacing in the right direction pre pandemic. The pandemic has challenged everyone, but it seems to have hit working mothers in tech especially hard. ",1,https://builtin.com/women-tech/women-in-tech-workplace-statistics,FALSE, 416,Gender discrimination comes in many forms for today’s working women,"About four in ten working women in the United States say they have faced discrimination on the job because of their gender. They report a broad array of personal experiences, ranging from earning less than male counterparts for doing the same job to being passed over for important assignments, according to a new analysis of Pew Research Center survey data. The survey – conducted in the summer before a recent wave of sexual misconduct allegations against prominent men in politics, the media and other industries – found that, among employed adults, women are about twice as likely as men to say they have experienced at least one of eight specific forms of gender discrimination at work. One of the biggest gender gaps is in the area of income: One in four working women say they have earned less than a man who was doing the same job; one in twenty working men say they have earned less than a female peer. Women are roughly four times as likely as men to say they have been treated as if they were not competent because of their gender , and they are about three times as likely as men to say they have experienced repeated small slights at work because of their gender . There are significant gaps on other items as well. While 15% of working women say they have received less support from senior leaders than a man who was doing the same job, only 7% of working men report having a similar experience. One in ten working women say they have been passed over for the most important assignments because of their gender, compared with 5% of men. The survey, which was conducted July 11 Aug. 10, 2017, with a nationally representative sample of 4,914 adults , also asked about sexual harassment in a separate question. It found that while similar shares of women and men say sexual harassment is at least a small problem in their workplace , women are about three times as likely as men to have experienced it personally while at work . In more recent surveys conducted by other organizations, the share of women reporting personal experiences with sexual harassment has fluctuated, depending in part on how the question was asked. In an ABC News/Washington Post survey conducted Oct. 12 15, for example, 54% of women said they have received unwanted sexual advances from a man that they felt were inappropriate whether or not those advances were work related; 30% said this had happened to them at work. In an NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll conducted Nov. 13 15, 35% of women said they have personally experienced sexual harassment or abuse from someone in the workplace. The Center’s survey asked about sexual harassment specific to the workplace. The survey was conducted as part of a broader forthcoming study on women and minorities in science, technology, engineering and math fields. ",1,https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/12/14/gender-discrimination-comes-in-many-forms-for-todays-working-women/,FALSE, 417,What Is Gender Bias in the Workplace?," Bias is prevalent in every aspect of our lives. Our brains are hardwired to categorize things we encounter in order to make sense of the complicated world around us. However, biases can cause us to form prejudices against others, which allows for egregious inequalities to form between different demographics. While bias comes in many forms, this article focuses on gender bias and its role within the workplace. Well cover what it is, where and when it happens, along with 13 ways you can reduce gender bias and ultimately build a more diverse and inclusive workplace. It should be noted that while there is a spectrum of gender identities, due to constraints within existing literature we’ll focus on the gender binaries ? male and female. Feel free to click the links below to skip ahead. An in depth analysis of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the technology industry.  Table of ContentsGender bias is the tendency to prefer one gender over another.  ",1,https://builtin.com/diversity-inclusion/gender-bias-in-the-workplace,FALSE, 418,How stereotypes impair women’s careers in science,"Does discrimination contribute to the low percentage of women in mathematics and science careers? We designed an experiment to isolate discrimination’s potential effect. Without provision of information about candidates other than their appearance, men are twice more likely to be hired for a mathematical task than women. If ability is self reported, women still are discriminated against, because employers do not fully account for men’s tendency to boast about performance. Providing full information about candidates’ past performance reduces discrimination but does not eliminate it. We show that implicit stereotypes predict not only the initial bias in beliefs but also the suboptimal updating of gender related expectations when performance related information comes from the subjects themselves. Abstract Women outnumber men in undergraduate enrollments, but they are much less likely than men to major in mathematics or science or to choose a profession in these fields. This outcome often is attributed to the effects of negative sex based stereotypes. We studied the effect of such stereotypes in an experimental market, where subjects were hired to perform an arithmetic task that, on average, both genders perform equally well. We find that without any information other than a candidate’s appearance , both male and female subjects are twice more likely to hire a man than a woman. The discrimination survives if performance on the arithmetic task is self reported, because men tend to boast about their performance, whereas women generally underreport it. The discrimination is reduced, but not eliminated, by providing full information about previous performance on the task. By using the Implicit Association Test, we show that implicit stereotypes are responsible for the initial average bias in sex related beliefs and for a bias in updating expectations when performance information is self reported. That is, employers biased against women are less likely to take into account the fact that men, on average, boast more than women about their future performance, leading to suboptimal hiring choices that remain biased in favor of men. ",1,https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2014/03/05/1314788111,FALSE, 419,The female CEOs on this year’s Fortune 500 just broke three all-time records,"In 2021, the number of women running businesses on the Fortune 500 hit an all time record: 41. But thats not all. For the first time two Black women are running Fortune 500 businesses . And another executive is making history at the helm of the highest ranking business ever run by a female CEO . These three milestones together amount to an exceptional year for the leadership of the Fortune 500, which ranks Americas largest companies. The 67 year old list has long been seen as a microcosm of U. S. business at large. For that reason, the number of female chief executives on the ranking is a closely watched statistic among those who track gender diversity in boardrooms and C suites across the country. While these achievements are notable, theyre only part of the story. Having a total of 41 women chief executives amounts to female leadership for just 8. 1% of the Fortune 500. Says Lorraine Hariton, CEO of the gender equality organization Catalyst, We need to tell the optimistic but not exuberant story around whats happening for women. A watershed moment The number of women running Fortune 500 companies is influenced by several factors, including executive leadership changes and companies either growing large enough to make the list, or shrinking to fall off it. So while the ever vacillating number is not a scientific assessment of the state of women in American business, it does provide a useful snapshot. That snapshot had a watershed moment this year, when former Aetna president Karen Lynch took over as the CEO of CVS Health in February . With CVS ranked No. 4 on this years list, the $268 billion retail pharmacy turned health care giant is now the largest company ever to be run by a female chief executive. That distinction was previously held by General Motors in 2014, when the automaker, led by CEO Mary Barra at the time and now ranked No. 22, was listed at No. 6. ",1,https://fortune.com/2021/06/02/female-ceos-fortune-500-2021-women-ceo-list-roz-brewer-walgreens-karen-lynch-cvs-thasunda-brown-duckett-tiaa/,TRUE, 420,"Percentage of the U.S. population with a college degree, by gender 1940-2020","In an impressive increase from years past, 38. 3 percent of women in the United States had completed four years or more of college in 2020. This figure is up from 3. 8 percent of women in 1940. A significant increase can also be seen in males, with 36. 7 percent of the U. S. male population having completed four years or more of college in 2020, up from 5. 5 percent in 1940. 4 and 2 year colleges In the United States, college students are able to choose between attending a 2 year postsecondary program and a 4 year postsecondary program. Generally, attending a 2 year program results in an Associate’s Degree, and 4 year programs result in a Bachelor’s Degree. Many 2 year programs are designed so that attendees can transfer to a college or university offering a 4 year program upon completing their Associate’s. Completion of a 4 year program is the generally accepted standard for entry level positions when looking for a job. Earnings after college Factors such as gender, degree achieved, and the level of postsecondary education can have an impact on employment and earnings later in life. Some Bachelor’s degrees continue to attract more male students than female, particularly in STEM fields, while liberal arts degrees such as education, languages and literatures, and communication tend to see higher female attendance. All of these factors have an impact on earnings after college, and despite nearly the same rate of attendance within the American population between males and females, men with a Bachelor’s Degree continue to have higher weekly earnings on average than their female counterparts. ",1,https://www.statista.com/statistics/184272/educational-attainment-of-college-diploma-or-higher-by-gender/,TRUE, 421,Employee Resource Groups Are Essential. But Is Yours Effective?," Michael Harris, senior manager in delivery management at Avanade, has worked at the global professional services and IT consultancy for 11 years. Harris, who is Black, joined three of Avanade’s employee networks internal groups for employees who identify as members or allies of a certain demographic. Harris allied with Adelante, for Latinx employees; Prism, for LGBTQ+ employees; and the women’s network.  He didn’t join the network for Black employees because one did not exist. “I never really had an opportunity to connect with people who look like me,” Harris said.  In February of 2014, he met with Avanade’s lead for inclusion and diversity and shared his vision for a network for Black employees. In May of 2019, Harris and 50 other Avanade employees unveiled INSPIRE. Today, INSPIRE has 400 Black members and allies who connect and host events, including a June 2020 celebration of Juneteenth, which marks the day the last enslaved people in the United States learned of the Emancipation Proclamation. Membership in employee networks, also known as employee resource groups or affinity groups, connects employees with like minded people throughout their organization and builds solid career skills, too. Starting INSPIRE, for instance, helped Harris sharpen skills such as taking meeting minutes, presenting to large audiences and organizing events.  Professional development is one reason Seattle based Avanade began setting up employee networks in 2013. The Latinx network hosts a quarterly Latinx Leader panel, where senior leaders share their paths and offer advice to attendees, said Hallam Sargeant, chief inclusion and diversity officer. Mentoring is a big part of the networks, “because we know that finding a mentor who shares your background and lived experiences is rare and extremely impactful,” Sargeant said. The networks also give employees from underrepresented groups a chance to gain visibility and leadership development opportunities. Instead of employee resource groups, Chicago based fintech company M1 Finance established task forces.  “ERGs sometimes don’t make tangible differences,” said Maria Selvaggio, vice president of people at M1. “We wanted people to see the effects of what they are doing. ” The company employs 200 people, 164 of whom are members of at least one task force. In a recent office poll, 80 percent of employees called their task force involvement the most important or a very important aspect of their work at M1, Selvaggio said.  ",1,https://builtin.com/diversity-inclusion/employee-resource-groups,TRUE, 422,How These Tech Companies Get More Women Into Leadership," Ask Robin Ducot the secret to her success in becoming a CTO, and her reply? She didn’t know better.  “My dad was an engineer, and my mom ran a research team at MIT involving distributed systems. I also went to a high school that offered programming long before it was commonplace,” Ducot told Built In. “Not only did I start programming when I was a kid, I had a strong female technical role model so I just never knew I wasn’t supposed to do this kind of job. ”Ducot, a high ranking tech executive at San Mateo, California based AI company Momentive, formerly known as SurveyMonkey, is part of an executive group where half of her company’s senior vice presidents and C level executives are women in leadership roles  a rarity among the male dominated tech industry.  “When people used to ask Ruth Bader Ginsburg how many women would be enough on the Supreme Court, she famously said, ‘When there are nine. ’ We had decades of exclusively white male tech leadership teams, and no one blinked an eye until recently,” said Ducot. “I’d love to see more companies that are 100 percent women. Until then, I guess we’ll have to settle for 50 50. ” Last year, women represented only 25. 2 percent of the nation’s computer and mathematical workforce even though they accounted for 46. 8 percent of the overall U. S. workforce, according to the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. And when it comes to Fortune 500 CIOs, CTOs, and CISOs, women comprised only 22 percent of the top tech positions last year, according to Boardroom Insiders’ 2021 report.  But despite such a low percentage of women in tech leadership roles, some companies like Momentive, Intuit and Workday have managed to onboard leadership teams of 30 percent or more who are women. Like all strategies, they’re born out of a desire to achieve or fix something. So when it comes to increasing the number of women in leadership roles, these companies point to the benefits of attracting and retaining more women at their companies, such as, providing a diversity of thought when developing products and services for customers and creating an inclusive environment. ",1,https://builtin.com/women-tech/women-in-leadership,TRUE, 423,Women in the Workplace 2021," A year and a half into the COVID 19 pandemic, women have made important gains in representation, and especially in senior leadership. But the pandemic continues to take a toll. Women are now significantly more burned out and increasingly more so than men. Despite this added stress and exhaustion, women are rising to the moment as stronger leaders and taking on the extra work that comes with this: compared to men at the same level, women are doing more to support their teams and advance diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts. They are also more likely than men to practice allyship. Yet this critical work is going unrecognized and unrewarded by most companies, and that has concerning implications. Companies risk losing the very leaders they need right now, and it’s hard to imagine organizations navigating the pandemic and building inclusive workplaces if this work isn’t truly prioritized. There is also a disconnect between companies’ growing commitment to racial equity and the lack of improvement we see in the day to day experiences of women of color. Women of color face similar types and relative frequencies of microaggressions as they did two years ago and they remain far more likely than white women to be on the receiving end of disrespectful and “othering” behavior. And while more white employees see themselves as allies to women of color, they are no more likely than last year to speak out against discrimination, mentor or sponsor women of color, or take other actions to advocate for them. The impact of the last year and half on women is still far from clear. But the risks to women and the companies that depend on their leadership are very real. Read the full report Express interest in the 2022 study Women in the Workplace is the largest study on the state of women in corporate America. Based on data from 423 companies employing 12 million people, this year’s report features:It’s clear from this year’s report that there’s a gap between intent and action when it comes to allyship. LeanIn. Org’s new Allyship at Work program is designed to close this gap and empower employees to take meaningful action as allies. Ninety four percent of program participants feel more equipped to practice allyship and would recommend the program to a colleague. Find out why organizations like Adidas, Walmart, and WeWork are using the program and how you can bring it to your company at leanin. org/allyshipatwork. McKinsey & Company offers an award winning executive training program to equip diverse leaders in the U. S. and Europe with the network, capabilities, and mindsets needed to achieve their professional goals. Since launching its Black Leadership Academy in September 2020, McKinsey has enrolled 17,000 participants from more than 500 organizations. In 2021, McKinsey also launched the Black Economic Mobility Institute to examine the economic context and opportunities of Black and African Americans. This fall McKinsey & Company will launch the Hispanic and Latino Leadership Academy and an Asian Leadership Academy. Visit mckinsey. com/featured insights/diversity and inclusion to explore McKinsey’s full collection of research and insights on DEI. ",1,https://womenintheworkplace.com,FALSE, 424,"Research: Women Ask for Raises as Often as Men, but Are Less Likely to Get Them"," Previous research has found that women are less likely to initiate salary negotiations than men are. But a new study of Australian women found no gender differences in negotiation behavior. Women were just as likely as men were to ask for higher salaries, and men and women were equally likely to report avoiding negotiations if they feared it would hurt their relationship with their boss. It’s possible that women’s behavior is changing; it’s also possible that this study is more accurate, since the dataset is based on real world behavior, not surveys or lab experiments. The bad news? While women ask just as often as men, women are less likely to get what they ask for. It’s a concrete fact that women earn less than men do. The true gender pay gap is not known with certainty, but, when comparing equally qualified people doing the same job, most estimates by labor economists put it at 10% – 20%. The crucial question remains its cause. One common explanation is that women are less likely to negotiate their salaries. We’ve seen this in both bestselling business memoirs like Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In and in previous studies like the research based Women Don’t Ask. Gaining access to a more recent, and more detailed, dataset allowed us to investigate this question anew. What we found contradicts previous research. The bottom line of our study is that women do “ask” just as often as men. They just don’t “get. ”Even we were surprised by the results. We had expected to find less asking by the females. Instead, we found that, holding background factors constant, women ask for a raise just as often as men, but men are more likely to be successful. Women who asked obtained a raise 15% of the time, while men obtained a pay increase 20% of the time. While that may sound like a modest difference, over a lifetime it really adds up. We also examined the idea that women act less assertively in negotiations for fear of upsetting the relationship with their boss or colleagues . We found no support for this in our data. Instead, we found that although employees do sometimes say that they do not ask for a raise because of concern for their relationships in the workplace, this is equally true of men and women. Both 14% of males and 14% of females say they have done this. In our project, we examined 4,600 randomly selected employees across 800 workplaces. The sample is from Australia and the survey was completed in 2014. To our knowledge, it is the only nation with really good information on “asking” behavior. Although a small country, it arguably has the interesting advantage for our work that it is representative of a mixture of cultures . Most of the statistical sources used by management researchers and labor economists do not record “asking” behavior, and do not record people’s motivations for refraining from asking. But our dataset did have this information. First, the individuals in our data were questioned in detail about their motives, behavior, and histories. Unlike in standard data sources, therefore, it is in principle feasible  admittedly in an imperfect way  to inquire into why women and men choose to act in the ways observed. Second, our data are from matched worker employer surveys in which random samples of male and female employees can be studied. This is a valuable feature, as it makes it possible to control for a large number of background factors about workplaces that are not observable to the statistical investigator, and would be impossible to allow for properly in many conventional statistical sources. ",1,https://hbr.org/2018/06/research-women-ask-for-raises-as-often-as-men-but-are-less-likely-to-get-them,TRUE, 425,Race and underemployment in the US labor market," Guidance for the Brookings community and the public on our response to the coronavirus »Learn more from Brookings scholars about the global response to coronavirus » Each month a new reading of the unemployment rate helps us assess the health of the labor market. However, as many have pointed out, the unemployment rate is in some ways a narrow measure of the labor market that misses important aspects of labor market distress. A broader indicator of labor market weakness called the underemployment rate and in Bureau of Labor Statistics jargon referred to as the U 6 unemployment rate takes into account some of this additional distress. Examining both unemployment and underemployment is useful for analyzing different aspects of the labor market, and, as shown below, it can reveal dramatic racial disparities.  In addition to the number of unemployed , the underemployment rate captures the number of people who work part time but would rather have a full time job  and those who want and can take a job but have not looked for work in the past four weeks .  These groups make sense to include in a measure of underemployment because while they are not unemployed in the formal sense, they would work more if the option presented itself.  While the unemployed are often those most ready to take new jobs, workers who are marginally attached and part time for economic reasons also stand ready to take full time employment when employers are hiring. At its peak in the wake of the Great Recession, the underemployment rate was 17. 1 percent in October 2009, indicating that more than one in six people were experiencing some sort of labor market hardship . This was far above the 10. 0 percent unemployment rate at the time and demonstrates the wide swath of individuals who were in labor market distress in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Since then the underemployment rate has steadily declined, and is now below its prerecession low, but it did not fall below its prerecession low for nearly a year after the unemployment rate did.  In addition, at 7. 2 percent in June 2019, the underemployment rate is nearly double the June 2019 unemployment rate of 3. 7 percent.  This makes clear that while a relatively small percentage of people are both out of work and currently searching for a job, there is still a considerable amount of underutilized labor and many people for whom the labor market is not providing adequate opportunities. ",2,https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2019/08/01/race-and-underemployment-in-the-u-s-labor-market/,FALSE, 426,There Are Only 4 Black Fortune 500 CEOs," In spite of all the progress made in Black representation in America, these advances have yet to translate to the C suite in corporate America. With the resignation of Tapestry CEO Jide Zeitlin in July 2020, the number of Black CEOs among the Fortune 500 dropped to a woeful four. One person will soon be added to that list as Rosalind Brewer, Starbucks’ chief operating officer, will take over as the CEO of Walgreens Boots Alliance. She will be leaving Starbucks at the end of February and will then be the only Black woman CEO at a Fortune 500 company. Unfortunately, this list will shrink again when Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier retires in June 2021. Find Out: 25 Biggest Companies You’ve Never Heard OfOver the complete history of the Fortune 500, which dates back to 1999, there have only been a total of 18 Black CEOs leading America’s Fortune 500 companies. The peak year for representation was 2012, when a still anemic total of six Black CEOs led corporate America’s most prominent companies. As Black History Month unfolds, it’s a good time to take a closer look at the four Black CEOs paving the way for future leaders of color. Last updated: Feb. 16, 2021Before he began his executive career, Marvin Ellison earned his bachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Memphis, followed by an MBA at Emory University. Ellison then served 15 years in a variety of operational and leadership roles at Target before moving on to Home Depot, where he spent an additional 12 years in high level operations roles. Ellison’s first stint as a CEO came when he took the reins at J. C. Penney, where he also served as chairman. After reducing debt and generating positive sales and earnings growth, he moved on to the position he now holds at Lowe’s. See: What’s Next for Disney and Other Big Companies in 2021",2,https://www.yahoo.com/now/only-4-black-fortune-500-200024302.html,FALSE, 427,Systemic Discrimination Among Large U.S. Employers," We study the results of a massive nationwide correspondence experiment sending more than 83,000 fictitious applications with randomized characteristics to geographically dispersed jobs posted by 108 of the largest U. S. employers. Distinctively Black names reduce the probability of employer contact by 2. 1 percentage points relative to distinctively white names. The magnitude of this racial gap in contact rates differs substantially across firms, exhibiting a between company standard deviation of 1. 9 percentage points. Despite an insignificant average gap in contact rates between male and female applicants, we find a between company standard deviation in gender contact gaps of 2. 7 percentage points, revealing that some firms favor male applicants while others favor women. Company specific racial contact gaps are temporally and spatially persistent, and negatively correlated with firm profitability, federal contractor status, and a measure of recruiting centralization. Discrimination exhibits little geographical dispersion, but two digit industry explains roughly half of the cross firm variation in both racial and gender contact gaps. Contact gaps are highly concentrated in particular companies, with firms in the top quintile of racial discrimination responsible for nearly half of lost contacts to Black applicants in the experiment. Controlling false discovery rates to the 5% level, 23 individual companies are found to discriminate against Black applicants. Our findings establish that discrimination against distinctively Black names is concentrated among a select set of large employers, many of which can be identified with high confidence using large scale inference methods.",2,https://www.nber.org/papers/w29053,FALSE, 430,Millennials overtake Baby Boomers as America’s largest generation,"Millennials have surpassed Baby Boomers as the nation’s largest living adult generation, according to population estimates from the U. S. Census Bureau. As of July 1, 2019 , Millennials, whom we define as ages 23 to 38 in 2019, numbered 72. 1 million, and Boomers numbered 71. 6 million. Generation X numbered 65. 2 million and is projected to pass the Boomers in population by 2028. The Millennial generation continues to grow as young immigrants expand its ranks. Boomers – whose generation was defined by the boom in U. S. births following World War II – are aging and their numbers shrinking in size as the number of deaths among them exceeds the number of older immigrants arriving in the country Because generations are analytical constructs, it takes time for popular and expert consensus to develop as to the precise boundaries that demarcate one generation from another. In early 2018, Pew Research Center assessed demographic, labor market, attitudinal and behavioral measures to establish an endpoint – albeit inexact – for the Millennial generation. Under this updated definition, the youngest “Millennial” was born in 1996. Here’s a look at some generational projections. Millennials With immigration adding more numbers to this group than any other, the Millennial population is projected to peak in 2033, at 74. 9 million. Thereafter, the oldest Millennial will be at least 52 years of age and mortality is projected to outweigh net immigration. By 2050 there will be a projected 72. 2 million Millennials. Generation X For a few more years, Gen Xers are projected to remain the “middle child” of generations – caught between two larger generations, the Millennials and the Boomers. Gen Xers were born during a period when Americans were having fewer children than in later decades. When Gen Xers were born, births averaged around 3. 4 million per year, compared with the 3. 9 million annual rate from 1981 to 1996 when the Millennials were born. Gen Xers are projected to outnumber Boomers in 2028, when there will be 63. 9 million Gen Xers and 62. 9 million Boomers. The Census Bureau estimates that the Gen X population peaked at 65. 6 million in 2015. Baby Boomers Baby Boomers have always had an outsize presence compared with other generations. They peaked at 78. 8 million in 1999 and remained the largest living adult generation until 2019. By midcentury, the Boomer population is projected to dwindle to 16. 2 million. ",4,https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/04/28/millennials-overtake-baby-boomers-as-americas-largest-generation/,TRUE, 440,Employment Situation of Veterans Summary,"The unemployment rate for veterans who served on active duty in the U. S. Armed Forces at any time since September 2001 a group referred to as Gulf War era II veterans declined to 4. 6 percent in 2021, the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The jobless rate for all veterans decreased to 4. 4 percent in 2021. In August 2021, 44 percent of Gulf War era II veterans had a service connected disability, compared with 27 percent of all veterans. This information was obtained from the Current Population Survey , a monthly sample survey of about 60,000 eligible households that provides data on employment, unemployment, and persons not in the labor force in the United States. Data about veterans are collected monthly in the CPS; these monthly data are the source of the 2021 annual averages presented in this news release. In August 2021, a supplement to the CPS collected additional information about veterans on topics such as service connected disability and veterans current or past Reserve or National Guard membership. The supplement was co sponsored by the U. S. Department of Veterans Affairs and the U. S. Department of Labors Veterans Employment and Training Service. For more information, see the Technical Note in this news release. Highlights from the 2021 data: The unemployment rate for all veterans was lower than the rate for nonveterans in 2021. Unemployment rates for both male and female veterans decreased in 2021. The rate for male veterans was 4. 4 percent, little different from the rate of 4. 2 percent for female veterans. Unemployment rates declined over the year for veterans of all service periods: Gulf War era II veterans ; Gulf War era I veterans ; World War II, Korean War, and Vietnam era veterans ; and veterans of other service periods . However, these rates remain above their levels in 2019, prior to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Unemployment rates for White and Black veterans were lower than for their nonveteran counterparts in 2021, while the rates for Asian and Hispanic veterans were not statistically different than their nonveteran counterparts. Among the 386,000 unemployed veterans in 2021, 56 percent were ages 25 to 54, 39 percent were age 55 and over, and 5 percent were ages 18 to 24. Among Gulf War era II veterans, the unemployment rate of veterans with a service connected disability declined to 3. 2 percent and the rate for veterans with no disability decreased to 3. 6 percent in August 2021. Gulf War era II veterans who reported a service connected disability rating of less than 30 percent were much more likely to be in the labor force than those with a rating of 60 percent or higher in August 2021 . In August 2021, 27 percent of employed veterans with a service connected disability worked in the public sector, compared with 21 percent of veterans with no disability and 13 percent of nonveterans. In 2021, the unemployment rate of veterans varied across the country, ranging from 1. 6 percent in Kentucky to 7. 6 percent in Washington. The Veteran Population In 2021, 18. 5 million men and women were veterans, accounting for about 7 percent of the civilian noninstitutional population age 18 and over. Of all veterans, about 1 in 10 were women. In the survey, veterans are defined as men and women who have previously served on active duty in the U. S. Armed Forces and who were civilians at the time these data were collected. Veterans are much more likely to be men than are nonveterans, and they also tend to be older. In part, this reflects the characteristics of veterans who served during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam era, all of whom are now over 60 years old. Veterans who served during these wartime periods accounted for about 36 percent of the total veteran population in 2021. Forty two percent of veterans served during Gulf War era I or Gulf War era II . Twenty two percent served outside the designated wartime periods. Gulf War era II Veterans In 2021, there were 4. 7 million veterans who had served during Gulf War era II . Seventeen percent of these veterans were women, compared with about 4 percent of veterans from World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam era. Two thirds of all Gulf War era II veterans were between the ages of 25 and 44. In 2021, the unemployment rate for Gulf War era II veterans was 4. 6 percent, down considerably from the rate in 2020 but up from 2019 , prior to the COVID 19 pandemic. Among Gulf War era II veterans, the unemployment rates for men and women both declined in 2021 . These rates were not statistically different from each other. The unemployment rate for male Gulf War era II veterans, at 4. 6 percent, was lower than the rate for male nonveterans, at 5. 5 percent, in 2021. By age, unemployment rates for male Gulf War era II veterans and nonveterans were not statistically different, with one exception: 45 to 54 year old male Gulf War era II veterans had an unemployment rate of 2. 6 percent, lower than the rate of 4. 2 percent for their nonveteran counterparts. The unemployment rate for female Gulf War era II veterans was 4. 9 percent in 2021, not statistically different from the rate for female nonveterans . By age, unemployment rates for female Gulf War era II veterans and nonveterans were not statistically different. Employed Gulf War era II veterans were twice as likely to work in the public sector in 2021 as employed nonveterans 27 percent versus 13 percent. Among the employed, 15 percent of Gulf War era II veterans worked for the federal government, compared with 2 percent of nonveterans. ",4,https://www.bls.gov/news.release/vet.nr0.htm,FALSE, 441,PERSONS WITH A DISABILITY: LABOR FORCE CHARACTERISTICS,"The employment population ratio that is, the percent of the population that is employed for persons with a disability increased by 1. 2 percentage points from the prior year to 19. 1 percent in 2021. This was nearly the same ratio as in 2019 , before the impact of the pandemic. The ratio for those without a disability, at 63. 7 percent in 2021, increased by 1. 9 percentage points over the year but was 2. 6 percentage points lower than in 2019. The lower ratio among persons with a disability reflects, in part, the older age profile of persons with a disability; older workers are less likely to be employed, regardless of disability status. However, across all age groups, persons with a disability were much less likely to be employed than those with no disability. In 2021, the employment population ratio for persons with a disability ages 16 to 64 increased to 31. 4 percent, while the ratio for persons without a disability in the same age group increased to 72. 5 percent. The ratios for persons age 65 and over with a disability and without a disability showed little or no change from the prior year. Persons with a disability were less likely to have completed a bachelor’s degree and higher than those with no disability. Among both groups, those who had attained higher levels of education were more likely to be employed than those who had attained less education. Across all levels of education in 2021, persons with a disability were much less likely to be employed than were their counterparts with no disability. Workers with a disability were more likely to be employed part time than those with no disability. Among workers with a disability, 29 percent usually worked part time in 2021, compared with 16 percent of those without a disability. The proportion of workers with a disability who worked part time for economic reasons was higher than their counterparts without a disability . These individuals were working part time because their hours had been reduced or because they were not able to find a full time job. In 2021, persons with a disability were more likely to work in service occupations than those with no disability . Workers with a disability were also more likely than those with no disability to work in production, transportation, and material moving occupations and sales and office occupations . Persons with a disability were less likely to work in management, professional, and related occupations than those without a disability . A larger share of workers with a disability were self employed in 2021 than were those with no disability . In contrast, a smaller share of workers with a disability were private wage and salary workers than were those without a disability . The proportion of persons employed in government was about the same for both persons with a disability and persons without a disability . ",3,https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/disabl.pdf,FALSE, 442,"Labor force characteristics by race and ethnicity, 2019","In 2019, the overall unemployment rate for the United States was 3. 7 percent, however, the rate varied across race and ethnicity groups. Among the race groups, jobless rates were higher than the national rate for Blacks or African Americans , American Indians and Alaska Natives , and people categorized as being of Two or More Races . Jobless rates were lower than the national rate for Asians , Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders , and Whites . The rate for people of Hispanic or Latino ethnicity, at 4. 3 percent, was higher than the rate of 3. 5 percent for non Hispanics. Labor market differences among the race and ethnicity groups are associated with many factors, not all of which are measurable. These factors include variations in educational attainment across the groups; the occupations and industries in which the groups work; the geographic areas of the country in which the groups are concentrated, including whether they tend to reside in urban or rural settings; and the degree of discrimination encountered in the workplace. This report describes the labor force characteristics and earnings patterns among the largest race and ethnicity groups living in the United States Whites, Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics and provides detailed data through a set of supporting tables. The report also contains a limited amount of data on American Indians and Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders, people who are of Two or More Races, detailed Asian groups, and detailed Hispanic groups. Because of their relatively small sample sizes, estimates for these additional groups are not included in all tables. The data were obtained from the Current Population Survey , a monthly survey of about 60,000 households that is a rich source of information on the labor force. For definitions of terms and concepts used in this report, see the technical notes. Additional information about the CPS can be found at www. bls. gov/cps/documentation. htm. The sections that follow highlight some of the major findings on the labor force characteristics of race and ethnicity groups in 2019. ",2,https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/race-and-ethnicity/2019/home.htm,TRUE, 443,EMPLOYMENT CHARACTERISTICS OF FAMILIES — 2021,"The number of families with at least one member unemployed fell by 2. 5 million to 5. 6 million in 2021. The proportion of families with an unemployed person, at 6. 7 percent, fell by 3. 1 percentage points from the prior year but remained above its 2019 value of 4. 9 percent. In 2021, the proportion of families with an unemployed person declined for White , Black , Asian , and Hispanic families. Black and Hispanic families remained more likely to have an unemployed member than White or Asian families. In 2021, among families with an unemployed member, 67. 4 percent also had at least one family member employed, little changed from the prior year. The proportion of families with an unemployed member that had at least one family member working full time fell by 1. 4 percentage points to 58. 5 percent in 2021. In 2019, prior to the coronavirus pandemic, 62. 4 percent of families with an unemployed member had at least one family member working full time. Among families with an unemployed member, Black families remained less likely to also have at least one family member who was working in 2021 than White , Asian , and Hispanic families. In 2021, 5. 5 percent of married couple families had an unemployed member, which was less than the shares for families maintained by women and for families maintained by men . Among families with an unemployed member, those maintained by women remained less likely to also have an employed family member than families maintained by men and married couple families . 2 Families and Employment In 2021, 78. 5 percent of families had at least one employed family member, up from 78. 2 percent in 2020 but below the 2019 share of 81. 2 percent. From 2020 to 2021, the likelihood of having an employed family member increased for Black , Asian , and Hispanic families, but changed little for White families . Black families were the least likely to have an employed family member in 2021. Families maintained by women remained less likely to have an employed member in 2021 than families maintained by men or married couple families . Among married couple families, both spouses were employed in 46. 8 percent of families, up from 45. 5 percent in the prior year. In 2021, only one spouse was employed in 25. 3 percent of marriedcouple families, down from 26. 7 percent in 2020. ",4,https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/famee.pdf,FALSE, 444,Labor Force Characteristics of Foreign-born Workers Summary,"The unemployment rate for foreign born persons in the United States was 9. 2 percent in 2020, up sharply from 3. 1 percent in 2019, the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The jobless rate of native born persons also increased sharply; it was 7. 8 percent in 2020, up from 3. 8 percent in 2019. The marked increases in these measures reflect the effect of the coronavirus pandemic. Data on nativity are collected as part of the Current Population Survey , a monthly sample survey of approximately 60,000 households. The foreign born are persons who reside in the United States but who were not U. S. citizens at birth. Specifically, they were born outside the United States , and neither parent was a U. S. citizen. The foreign born include legally admitted immigrants, refugees, temporary residents such as students and temporary workers, and undocumented immigrants. However, the survey does not separately identify persons in these categories. For further information about the survey, see the Technical Note in this news release. Highlights from the 2020 data: In 2020, the share of the U. S. civilian labor force that is foreign born was 17. 0 percent, down from 17. 4 percent in 2019. From 2019 to 2020, the overall labor force declined by 2. 8 million; the foreign born accounted for 1. 1 million of this decline, or 38. 4 percent. From 2019 to 2020, employment fell by 2. 7 million among the foreign born, a decline of 9. 8 percent. Employment also fell among the native born ; however, in relative terms, the decline was about half as large, at 5. 4 percent. Hispanics continued to account for nearly half of the foreign born labor force in 2020, and Asians accounted for one quarter. Foreign born men continued to participate in the labor force at a considerably higher rate in 2020 than their native born counterparts . In contrast, 53. 2 percent of foreign born women were labor force participants, lower than the participation rate of 56. 8 percent for native born women. In 2020, foreign born workers were more likely than native born workers to be employed in service occupations; natural resources, construction, and maintenance occupations; and production, transportation, and material moving occupations. Foreign born workers were less likely than native born workers to be employed in management, professional, and related occupations and in sales and office occupations. The median usual weekly earnings of foreign born full time wage and salary workers were $885 in 2020, compared with $1,000 for their native born counterparts. Demographic Characteristics The demographic composition of the foreign born labor force differs from that of the native born labor force. In 2020, men accounted for 57. 3 percent of the foreign born labor force, compared with 52. 1 percent of the native born labor force. By age, the proportion of the foreign born labor force made up of 25 to 54 year olds was higher than for the native born labor force . Labor force participation is typically highest among persons in that age bracket. In 2020, nearly half of the foreign born labor force was Hispanic, and one quarter was Asian. Hispanics and Asians made up much lower percentages of the native born labor force, at 12. 0 percent and 2. 4 percent, respectively. About 16. 2 percent of the foreign born labor force was White and 10. 1 percent was Black, compared with 70. 7 percent and 12. 1 percent, respectively, of the native born labor force. ",4,https://www.bls.gov/news.release/forbrn.nr0.htm/labor-force-characteristics-of-foreign-born-workers-summary,FALSE, 445,"Unemployment Rates During the COVID-19 Pandemic","The COVID 19 pandemic has had a significant effect on labor market metrics for every state, economic sector, and major demographic group in the United States. This report provides information on unemployment rates, labor force participation rates, and nonfarm payrolls in the United States during the ongoing pandemic. It presents CRS analysis of overall unemployment rate trends during the pandemic. The report first examines these trends nationally, and then at the state and industrial levels. Next, it examines how unemployment rates varied across demographic groups. The report then repeats this analysis, where appropriate, for the labor force participation rate, which sheds light on the size of the workforce willing and available for work. The final portion of the report analyzes the impact the pandemic has had on overall employment and by sector. Among other findings, this report showsthe following: ? In April 2020, the unemployment rate reached 14. 8% the highest rate observed since data collection began in 1948. In July 2021, unemployment remained higher than it had been in February 2020 . ? The labor force participation rate declined to 60. 2% in April 2020 a level not seen since the early 1970s then began a partial recovery in May 2020. The labor force participation rate was 61. 7% in July 2021, 1. 7 percentage points below the level in January 2020, before the pandemic and the economic recession. ? Nonfarm payrolls shed 22. 1 million jobs between January 2020 and April 2020, with employment declining to 86% of its pre recession level. In July 2021, aggregate employment remained 5. 4 million jobs below its pre recession level. ? The COVID 19 pandemic has impacted economic sectors disparately. The leisure and hospitality sector lost the largest number of jobs since January 2020, and persons last employed in this sector have consistently exhibited some of the highest unemployment rates throughout the pandemic. Additionally, the education and services sector and the government sector have exhibited the second and third largest losses in jobs since January 2020, despite relatively low unemployment rates among persons last employed in these sectors. ? The COVID 19 pandemic has impacted demographic groups disparately. Although all demographic groups were affected, persons identifying as Black or Hispanic and younger workers generally experienced relatively high peaks in unemployment and relatively steep declines in labor force participation over the course of the pandemic. Additionally, persons with lower educational attainment have generally experienced relatively higher unemployment rates and lower labor force participation throughout the pandemic. ",4,https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/R46554.pdf,FALSE, 446,"17.0 percent of U.S. labor force in 2020 was foreign born, down from 17.4 percent in 2019","The share of the U. S. civilian labor force that is foreign born was 17. 0 percent in 2020, down from 17. 4 percent in 2019. The economic downturn resulting from the COVID 19 pandemic disproportionately affected the foreign born labor force. In 2020, the overall labor force declined by 2. 8 million; the foreign born accounted for 1. 1 million of this decline, or 38. 4 percent. Among Asians in the labor force, 68. 5 percent were foreign born. The next largest share were Hispanics or Latinos; 44. 8 percent of the labor force for that group were foreign born. The labor force participation rate of the foreign born declined by 1. 5 percentage points in 2020 to 64. 5 percent. This is the percent of the population that is either employed or unemployed. The labor force participation rate for foreign born men declined by 1. 4 percentage points to 76. 6 percent, while that for foreign born women fell by 1. 6 percentage points to 53. 2 percent. The labor force participation rate of the native born also declined over the year, falling by 1. 3 percentage points to 61. 2 percent. The rate for native born men declined by 1. 5 percentage points to 65. 9 percent, and that for native born women was down by 1. 1 percentage points to 56. 8 percent. Foreign born men continued to participate in the labor force at a considerably higher rate in 2020 than their native born counterparts . In contrast, 53. 2 percent of foreign born women were labor force participants, lower than the participation rate of 56. 8 percent for native born women. Labor force participation rates for the foreign born varied across the major race and ethnicity groups in 2020, ranging from 59. 9 percent for foreign born Whites to 69. 3 percent for foreign born Blacks. Participation rates for the native born showed less variation across major race and ethnicity groups, ranging from 58. 9 percent for native born Blacks to 65. 0 percent for native born Hispanics. ",2,https://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2021/17-0-percent-of-u-s-labor-force-in-2020-was-foreign-born-down-from-17-4-percent-in-2019.htm,TRUE, 447,Highlights of women's earnings in 2019,"In 2019, women who were full time wage and salary workers had median usual weekly earnings that were 82 percent of those of male full time wage and salary workers. In 1979, the first year for which comparable earnings data are available, women’s earnings were 62 percent of men’s. Most of the growth in women’s earnings relative to men’s occurred in the 1980s and in the 1990s . Since 2004, the women’s to men’s earnings ratio has remained in the 80 to 83 percent range. This report presents earnings data from the Current Population Survey , a national monthly sample survey of about 60,000 eligible households conducted by the U. S. Census Bureau for the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics . The weekly and hourly earnings estimates in this report reflect information collected from one fourth of the households in the monthly survey and averaged for the calendar year. The data in this report are distinct from the annual earnings estimates for full time, year round workers collected separately in the Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the CPS and published by the U. S. Census Bureau. The earnings comparisons in this report are on a broad level and do not control for many factors that can be important in explaining earnings differences, such as job skills and responsibilities, work experience, and specialization. The earnings estimates referenced throughout this report are medians. The median is the mid point in the earnings distribution, with half of workers having earnings above the median level and half having earnings below. See the accompanying technical notes section for more information, including a description of the of the data source and an explanation of the concepts and definitions used in this report. ",1,https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/womens-earnings/2019/home.htm,TRUE, 448,Diversity and Inclusion Top the List of Talent Practices Linked to Stronger Financial Outcomes,"Based on a survey of 454 global organizations that generated more than $750 million in revenue in 2013, the research findings show that large organizations with mature talent strategies had 2.3 times higher cash flow per employee over a three-year period. Mature smaller organizations had 13 times higher mean cash flow from operations when contrasted with less mature peer organizations. Despite the financial benefits, the research found the majority of organizations surveyed are missing out on benefits associated with mature talent activities. ""Our study found that fully 70 percent of respondent organizations are at the lowest levels – Levels 1 and 2 – of talent management maturity,"" said Stacia Sherman Garr, vice president, talent and HR research, Bersin by Deloitte, Deloitte Consulting LLP. ""By contrast, Level 3 organizations, which account for 19 percent of respondent organizations, have a relatively clear, data-based talent strategy. Those organizations at Level 4 – considered the most advanced or mature organizations and account for just 10 percent of all organizations – have targeted, integrated and inclusive talent activities that heavily reinforce the importance of leader growth and a widespread learning culture. But what really differentiates them is their approach to diversity and inclusion."" In addition to indicating to employees that their diversity is welcomed, these mature organizations align their diversity and inclusion strategy to organizational objectives. They also integrate diversity and inclusion with learning, performance management and succession management. ""These high-level and broad-based strategies help to reinforce the importance of bringing in people of diverse backgrounds and behaving in inclusive ways,"" said Garr. ""Organizations that built these high-impact D&I strategies and practices strive to create a 'conversation' or relationship with employees, which communicates to them that they are fully understood and valued by the organization. This relationship also encourages employees to contribute their whole range of experiences and perspectives."" To help organizations turn the principles of high-impact talent management into action, the research identified the following high-impact practices: Develop a systemic – rather than a transactional – relationship with talent. Mature organizations view talent as an asset – versus a cost – and develop an increased understanding of employees from both a quantitative and a qualitative perspective. These organizations also provide a mechanism for doing something with their insights. One way this happens is through the tighter integration between talent analytics and workforce planning and talent strategy. Create a strong culture of leadership and learning. Approximately 90 percent of Level 3 and Level 4 organizations have a leadership strategy aligned to organizational objectives and cultivate a culture of learning in the organization to a great or moderate extent. These organizations are also more likely to invest in accelerated development programs for frontline managers, middle managers and critical talent segments that drive a disproportionate share of key business outcomes and influence an organization's value chain significantly. Integrate leadership development activities with other talent processes. Existing leadership development initiatives for front-line and middle managers should be reassessed and better targeted to meet the unique needs of these learners and the broader organization. Leadership development efforts should also be integrated with all other talent processes. To do this effectively, the organization needs to shift from a concept of leadership development programs to a system of leadership growth – the idea that the growth of leaders occurs throughout the organization in many ways, not just through programs or special initiatives.",4,https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bersin-by-deloitte-diversity-and-inclusion-top-the-list-of-talent-practices-linked-to-stronger-financial-outcomes-300177724.html,TRUE, 449,How Diverse Leadership Teams Boost Innovation,"A recent BCG study suggests that increasing the diversity of leadership teams leads to more and better innovation and improved financial performance. In both developing and developed economies, companies with above average diversity on their leadership teams report a greater payoff from innovation and higher EBIT margins. Even more persuasive, companies can start generating gains with relatively small changes in the makeup of their senior teams. For company leaders, this is a clear path to creating a more innovative organization. People with different backgrounds and experiences often see the same problem in different ways and come up with different solutions, increasing the odds that one of those solutions will be a hit. In a fast changing business environment, such responsiveness leaves companies better positioned to adapt. This argument has always made intuitive sense, and now we have some convincing correlations to add to the case. DIVERSITY GAINING MOMENTUM WORLDWIDE We surveyed employees at more than 1,700 companies in eight countries across a variety of industries and company sizes. We looked at perceptions of diversity at the management level across six dimensions gender, age, nation of origin , career path, industry background, and education . To gauge a company’s level of innovation, we looked at the percentage of total revenue from new products and services launched over the past three years. Broadly, 75% of respondents said that diversity is gaining momentum in their organizations. Employees at companies in emerging markets reported greater progress over the past several years than companies in developed markets. The biggest takeaway we found is a strong and statistically significant correlation between the diversity of management teams and overall innovation. Companies that reported above average diversity on their management teams also reported innovation revenue that was 19 percentage points higher than that of companies with below average leadership diversity 45% of total revenue versus just 26%. ",4,https://www.bcg.com/en-us/publications/2018/how-diverse-leadership-teams-boost-innovation,TRUE, 450,Why diversity matters,"We know intuitively that diversity matters. It’s also increasingly clear that it makes sense in purely business terms. Our latest research finds that companies in the top quartile for gender or racial and ethnic diversity are more likely to have financial returns above their national industry medians. Companies in the bottom quartile in these dimensions are statistically less likely to achieve above average returns. And diversity is probably a competitive differentiator that shifts market share toward more diverse companies over time. While correlation does not equal causation , the correlation does indicate that when companies commit themselves to diverse leadership, they are more successful. More diverse companies, we believe, are better able to win top talent and improve their customer orientation, employee satisfaction, and decision making, and all that leads to a virtuous cycle of increasing returns. This in turn suggests that other kinds of diversity for example, in age, sexual orientation, and experience are also likely to bring some level of competitive advantage for companies that can attract and retain such diverse talent. We’re not suggesting that achieving greater diversity is easy. Women accounting for an average of just 16 percent of the members of executive teams in the United States, 12 percent in the United Kingdom, and 6 percent in Brazil remain underrepresented at the top of corporations globally. The United Kingdom does comparatively better in racial diversity, albeit at a low level: some 78 percent of UK companies have senior leadership teams that fail to reflect the demographic composition of the country’s labor force and population, compared with 91 percent for Brazil and 97 percent for the United States. These numbers underline the work that remains to be done, even as the case for greater diversity becomes more compelling. We live in a deeply connected and global world. It should come as no surprise that more diverse companies and institutions are achieving better performance. Most organizations, including McKinsey, must do more to take full advantage of the opportunity that diverse leadership teams represent. That’s particularly true for their talent pipelines: attracting, developing, mentoring, sponsoring, and retaining the next generations of global leaders at all levels of organizations. Given the higher returns that diversity is expected to bring, we believe it is",4,https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/why-diversity-matters,TRUE, 451,"Diversity Linked To Increased Sales Revenue And Profits, More Customers","in one of only a few studies to empirically examine the implications of organizational diversity, sociologist Cedric Herring found that a workforce comprised of employees of both genders and varying racial backgrounds resulted in positive business outcomes. Although previous research on diversity in the workforce has suggested diversitys negative impact on group dynamics and communication, this study makes the case for diversity in clear financial terms, said Herring, the interim head of the sociology department at the University of Illinois at Chicago and a professor of sociology and public policy at the University of Illinois Institute of Government and Public Affairs. Herring found that companies reporting the highest levels of racial diversity brought in nearly 15 times more sales revenue on average than those with the lowest levels of racial diversity. Gender diversity accounted for a difference of $599. 1 million in average sales revenue: organizations with the lowest rates of gender diversity had average sales revenues of $45. 2 million, compared with averages of $644. 3 million for businesses with the most gender diversity. For every percentage increase in the rate of racial or gender diversity up to the rate represented in the relevant population, there was an increase in sales revenues of approximately 9 and 3 percent, respectively. Herring found racial diversity to be a better determinant of sales revenue and customer numbers than company size, the companys age and the number of employees at any given work location. Companies with a more diverse workforce consistently reported higher customer numbers than those organizations with less diversity among staff. In terms of racial diversity, companies with the highest rates reported an average of 35,000 customers compared to 22,700 average customers among those companies with the lowest rates of racial diversity. The difference is even larger for gender diversity rates. That is, companies with the highest levels of gender diversity reported an average of 15,000 more customers than organizations with the lowest levels of gender diversity. Herring also found that the smallest incremental increase in levels of racial or gender diversity resulted in more than 400 and 200 additional customers, respectively. Although a corporate workforces gender composition did not have a significant impact on a companys relative market share, Herring found that racial diversity was among the most important predictors of a companys competitive positioning relative to other firms in its industry. According to the research, as racial and gender diversity levels increased in a companys workforce, its profits relative to those of its competitors also increased. Herring analyzed data from the National Organizations Survey , reviewing a subset of 506 United States based for profit businesses that provided information about workforce diversity, sales revenue, customer numbers, market share and profitability between 1996 and 1997. The NOS contains information from a sample of the 15 million organizations in Dun and Bradstreets Information Services data file. Herrings work in the April issue of the American Sociological Review is accompanied by two other studies relevant to race in the workplace; one is on equal employment opportunity and the other examines race discrimination lawsuits. On the topic of equal employment opportunity, sociologist C. Elizabeth Hirsh of Cornell University analyzed the direct impact of discrimination charges on workplace segregation, as well as indirect pressures presented by legal and organizational environments. She found that companies do not desegregate in the wake of sexual discrimination charges filed directly against them, but they do respond to Equal Employment Opportunity enforcement in their industries and in the broader legal environment. Hirshs findings also suggest that organizational factors are more pivotal to race desegregation than legal intervention. For example, larger companies and those with more females in management were found more likely to promote workplace integration. Hirsh concludes that by making an example of employers found in violation of the law, Equal Employment Opportunity enforcement creates a legal environment that encourages policy compliance among other employers. ",4,https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/03/090331091252.htm,TRUE, 452,How Diversity Can Drive Innovation,"Most managers accept that employers benefit from a diverse workforce, but the notion can be hard to prove or quantify, especially when it comes to measuring how diversity affects a firm’s ability to innovate. But new research provides compelling evidence that diversity unlocks innovation and drives market growth a finding that should intensify efforts to ensure that executive ranks both embody and embrace the power of differences. In this research, which rests on a nationally representative survey of 1,800 professionals, 40 case studies, and numerous focus groups and interviews, we scrutinized two kinds of diversity: inherent and acquired. Inherent diversity involves traits you are born with, such as gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Acquired diversity involves traits you gain from experience: Working in another country can help you appreciate cultural differences, for example, while selling to female consumers can give you gender smarts. We refer to companies whose leaders exhibit at least three inherent and three acquired diversity traits as having two dimensional diversity. By correlating diversity in leadership with market outcomes as reported by respondents, we learned that companies with 2 D diversity out innovate and out perform others. Employees at these companies are 45% likelier to report that their firm’s market share grew over the previous year and 70% likelier to report that the firm captured a new market. 2 D diversity unlocks innovation by creating an environment where “outside the box” ideas are heard. When minorities form a critical mass and leaders value differences, all employees can find senior people to go to bat for compelling ideas and can persuade those in charge of budgets to deploy resources to develop those ideas. Employees of firms with 2 D diversity are 45% likelier to report a growth in market share over the previous year and 70% likelier to report that the firm captured a new market. Most respondents, however 78% work at companies that lack 2 D diversity in leadership. Without diverse leadership, women are 20% less likely than straight white men to win endorsement for their ideas; people of color are 24% less likely; and LGBTs are 21% less likely. This costs their companies crucial market opportunities, because inherently diverse contributors understand the unmet needs in under leveraged markets. We’ve found that when at least one member of a team has traits in common with the end user, the entire team better understands that user. A team with a member who shares a client’s ethnicity is 152% likelier than another team to understand that client. Inherent diversity, however, is only half of the equation. Leaders also need acquired diversity to establish a culture in which all employees feel free to contribute ideas. Six behaviors, we have found, unlock innovation across the board: ensuring that everyone is heard; making it safe to propose novel ideas; giving team members decision making authority; sharing credit for success; giving actionable feedback; and implementing feedback from the team. Leaders who give diverse voices equal airtime are nearly twice as likely as others to unleash value driving insights, and employees in a “speak up” culture are 3. 5 times as likely to contribute their full innovative potential. ",4,https://hbr.org/2013/12/how-diversity-can-drive-innovation,TRUE, 453,Diversity drives better decisions,"It’s no secret that greater organizational diversity improves productivity and wellbeing. Now, a white paper from online decision making platform Cloverpop has found a direct link between inclusive decision making and better business performance. The study analyzed around 600 business decisions made by 200 teams, across a range of companies. Researchers found that when diverse teams made a business decision, they outperformed individual decision makers up to 87 per cent of the time. Diverse teams were also shown to make decisions faster than individual workers, and benefited from a 60 per cent improvement on decision making. “Unfortunately, non inclusive decision making is all too common,” says author Erik Larson. “All male teams make about 38 per cent of the decisions in a typical large company, and the gap is even worse among less diverse firms like those in Silicon Valley’s technology industry. ” Effective decision making also increases with greater diversity in a team. All male teams were shown to make better business decisions than individuals 58 per cent of the time, while gender diverse teams outperformed individuals 73 per cent of the time. Teams that were geographically diverse, and included members with different genders and at least one age gap of more than 20 years, were the most successful – making better business decisions than individuals 87 per cent of the time. “This research aligns with behavioural economics theory, which has clear implications for results focused companies,” says David Daniels, assistant professor in the department of management at Stanford University. “Business strategy should revolve around a decision making process. ”",4,https://www.peoplemanagement.co.uk/article/1742040/diversity-drives-better-decisions,TRUE, 454,How and Where Diversity Drives Financial Performance,"Summary. Does diversity really drive performance? To assess this claim, the Boston Consulting Group surveyed more than 1,700 companies across eight countries to examine the relationship between managerial diversity, the presence of enabling conditions, and innovation outcomes. They examined the correlation of multiple aspects of diversity gender, age, national origin, career path, industry background, and education both individually and collectively. They found that companies with above average total diversity had both 19% higher innovation revenues and 9% higher EBIT margins, on average. The presence of enabling conditions for diversity such as fair employment practices, participative leadership, top management support, and open communications is worth up to 12. 9% in innovation revenue. These relationships between innovation and diversity were strong in all geographies, though the precise patterns of diversity and performance varied across cultures. There are, therefore, multiple paths to harness diversity. A broad based approach that values multiple aspects of diversity produces the best results. close Tweet Post Share Save Buy Copies Print Diversity is both an issue of fairness and, some say, a driver of innovation and performance. To assess the latter claim, we undertook a large, cross country study into the relationship between multiple aspects of managerial diversity, the presence of enabling conditions such as leadership support for diversity, and innovation outcomes. ",4,https://hbr.org/2018/01/how-and-where-diversity-drives-financial-performance,TRUE, 455,How advancing women’s equality can add $12 trillion to global growth,"Gender inequality is not only a pressing moral and social issue but also a critical economic challenge. If women who account for half the world’s working age population do not achieve their full economic potential, the global economy will suffer. While all types of inequality have economic consequences, in McKinsey Global Institute report, The power of parity: How advancing women’s equality can add $12 trillion to global growth, we focus on the economic implications of lack of parity between men and women. Play Video Video A “best in region” scenario in which all countries match the rate of improvement of the fastest improving country in their region could add as much as $12 trillion, or 11 percent, in annual 2025 GDP. In a “full potential” scenario in which women play an identical role in labor markets to that of men, as much as $28 trillion, or 26 percent, could be added to global annual GDP by 2025. MGI’s full potential estimate is about double the average estimate of other recent studies, reflecting the fact that MGI has taken a more comprehensive view of gender inequality in work. Even after decades of progress toward making women equal partners with men in the economy and society, the gap between them remains large. We acknowledge that gender parity in economic outcomes is not necessarily a normative ideal, as it involves human beings making personal choices about the lives they lead; we also recognize that men can be disadvantaged relative to women in some instances. However, we believe that the world, including the private sector, would benefit by focusing on the large economic opportunity of improving parity between men and women. A McKinsey Global Institute report finds that $12 trillion could be added to global GDP by 2025 by advancing women’s equality. The public, private, and social sectors will need to act to close gender gaps in work and society. ",1,https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/employment-and-growth/how-advancing-womens-equality-can-add-12-trillion-to-global-growth,TRUE, 456,Glassdoor’s Diversity and Inclusion Workplace Survey,"Glassdoor’s vision is a world where workplace transparency leads to more inclusive company cultures and where every employee is treated equitably. Everyone deserves to work in a place where they can truly be themselves and feel like they belong, and understanding the state of diversity and inclusion at a company is key. According to a new Glassdoor survey conducted by The Harris Poll, job seekers and employees report that disparities still exist within companies concerning experiences with and perceptions of diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace. Glassdoor’s D&I workplace survey underscores how important D&I is to job seekers and employees today, revealing the differences among underrepresented groups and the talent employers may miss out on if they don’t embrace transparency around D&I. Today, we launched new product features that deliver greater transparency into the current state of diversity, equity, and inclusion within companies. These new product features come as 3 in 4 job seekers and employees today report that a diverse workforce is an important factor when evaluating companies and job offers. These features are part of Glassdoor’s public commitment from our CEO, Christian Sutherland Wong leveraging its product and resources to help achieve equity in and out of the workplace. To help end inequality, shine a light on inequities in the workplace, and anonymously share your demographics to help pinpoint pay and diversity disparities, here. The vast majority of employees and job seekers today are paying attention to the state of D&I at companies. Access to D&I insights, trends and data is a crucial step in the job search process. If job seekers and employees don’t have access to D&I information to make informed decisions about where to work, employers risk losing quality and diverse talent that otherwise may have contributed to their company’s success. “Many companies have been making commitments around D&I in recent months, but now job seekers and employees want to see action and a real change from employers,” said Glassdoor Chief People Officer, Carina Cortez. “It’s critical to understand how different groups look at D&I from their own work experiences, reinforcing the overdue need for all employers to improve when it comes to diversity, inclusion, and belonging in the workplace. ” Sponsored The survey found that among U. S. employees and job seekers: Diversity & inclusion is an important factor for the majority of today’s job seekers, but more so for underrepresented groups. However, inequities still exist as more Black and Hispanic employees have quit jobs due to discrimination. More than 3 in 4 employees and job seekers report a diverse workforce is an important factor when evaluating companies and job offers. About 4 in 5 Black , Hispanic , and LGBTQ job seekers and employees report a diverse workforce is an important factor when evaluating companies and job offers. Nearly half of Black and Hispanic job seekers and employees have quit a job after witnessing or experiencing discrimination at work, significantly higher than white job seekers and employees. 71% of employees would be more likely to share experiences and opinions on diversity & inclusion at their company if they could do so anonymously. Job seekers and employees want employers to step up their transparency around D&I. If employers don’t, they will miss out on diverse talent. Significantly more Black and Hispanic employees say their employer should be doing more to increase the diversity of its workforce than white employees. About 1 in 3 employees and job seekers would not apply to a job at a company where there is a lack of diversity among its workforce. But, this is significantly higher for Black job seekers and employees when compared to white job seekers and employees, and among LGBTQ job seekers and employees when compared to non LGBTQ job seekers and employees. ",2,https://www.glassdoor.com/blog/glassdoors-diversity-and-inclusion-workplace-survey/,FALSE, 458,Diversity and inclusion: The reality gap,"DIVERSITY and inclusion has become a CEO level issue around the world. The digital organization of today, which operates as a network of teams, thrives on empowerment, open dialogue, and inclusive working styles. Leading organizations now see diversity and inclusion as a comprehensive strategy woven into every aspect of the talent life cycle to enhance employee engagement, improve brand, and drive performance. The era of diversity as a “check the box” initiative owned by HR is over. CEOs must take ownership and drive accountability among leaders at all levels to close the gap between what is said and actual impact. In this year’s survey, the proportion of executives who cited inclusion as a top priority has risen by 32 percent compared with our 2014 survey. Over two thirds of executives rate diversity and inclusion an important issue . Thirty eight percent of executives report that the primary sponsor of the company’s diversity and inclusion efforts is the CEO. In todays political, economic, and global business environment, diversity has become increasingly important. The number of executives who cited inclusion as a top priority has risen 32 percent from the Human Capital Trends 2014 survey, and in the last three years, the percentage of companies that rate themselves excellent at gender diversity went up by 72 percent. Based on this year’s survey, 48 percent of companies consider themselves adequate at focusing on global cultural diversity, and 69 percent of companies consider themselves adequate or excellent at supporting a variety of family models in the workforce. This year, the issue is broader than the standard business case and requires a more comprehensive view: Diversity and inclusion now impacts brand, corporate purpose, and performance. Not only is the public increasingly aware of the issue ,1 but employees are also expressing stronger views on diversity and inclusion. Millennials, for example, see inclusion as a mandatory part of corporate culture, defining how the company listens to them at work. 2 Shareholders, customers, and suppliers are all taking a closer look at this issue. As awareness around diversity and inclusion grows, diversity and inclusion have become more important for talent acquisition and a company’s employment brand. Many organizations operate in an environment of high transparency, which employees demand. For younger workers, inclusion is not just about assembling diverse teams but also about connecting team members so that everyone is heard and respected. 3 Companies should align their approach with the expectations of Millennials and others, or they will likely lose talent. If one considers the fact that organizations now operate as networks,4 it becomes even clearer that diversity and inclusion can reinforce organizational performance. New research by Deloitte and other academic institutions demonstrates that diverse and inclusive teams are more innovative, engaged, and creative in their work. 5 Our research comparing high performing teams against lower performing teams supports the view that people must feel included in order to speak up and fully contribute. 6 Despite this increased emphasis and scrutiny, however, we believe businesses face a reality gap: Results appear to be too slow. CEOs who have abdicated responsibility for this issue to the CHRO or chief diversity officer must now take ownership and hold business leaders accountable at all levels. People today are slowly becoming aware of both unconscious and explicit bias, and some organizations are starting to take action to expose the issue and make institutional changes to deal with it. 7 The most popular solution today is training. But while such interventions are helpful, it appears that making people aware is not enough. Organizations should consider making structural changes, implementing transparent, data driven solutions, and immersing executives in the world of bias to give them a visceral understanding of how bias impacts decision making, talent decisions, and business outcomes. We highlight this trend because this issue has become increasingly important. Employees and stakeholders are starting to voice concerns, but solutions built around training and education are not working well enough. A set of “new rules” is being written that will demand a new focus on experiential learning, process change, data driven tools, transparency, and accountability. ",4,https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights/focus/human-capital-trends/2017/diversity-and-inclusion-at-the-workplace.html,TRUE, 459,6 HR & Recruiting Stats You Need to Know for 2018,"Diversity and inclusion. Maternity and paternity leave. Company wellness programs. These are just a few areas where major changes in thought and practice in HR and recruiting took place in 2017. Going into 2018, it’s crucial for employers to be aware of the trends that are shaping employee hiring and retention. As HR becomes increasingly data driven, statistics can be used as a valuable window into the must know HR and recruiting trends for the coming years. These six statistics give insights into the direction the field is going see the rest in the 65 HR & Recruiting Stats for 2018 ebook. 1. 83% of employees/job seekers are likely to research company reviews and ratings when deciding on where to apply for a job. Job seekers are increasingly using resources online to get more information about the aspects of the company that matter to them most, from benefits packages to salary data. In light of this, companies must be increasingly cognizant of what information is posted about them on websites like Glassdoor, and what impression it gives to potential employees. [Related: Responding to Glassdoor Reviews: What, Why and How] 2. 69% of executives rate diversity and inclusion as an important issue in 2017, up 32% from 2014. Within the last few years, the issue of diversity in the workplace has become more visible than ever before. Companies are finally realizing that increasing diversity and inclusion in the workforce is a win win for both employers and employees and if your company doesnt prioritize these items, you could be left behind. 3. 70% of moms with kids younger than 18 are in the labor force, with about three fourths of all employed moms working full time. The landscape of working mothers has changed dramatically over the last four decades, with many mothers coming back to work soon after pregnancy and working full time with young kids at home. Policies that accommodate for motherhood are crucial in attracting candidates with children. 4. 54% of employees who take vacation/paid time off report being able to completely “check out” while they are on vacation. As technology increasingly permeates the fabric of our lives and workplace demands intensify, some employees find their vacation days transforming into another form of telecommuting. Setting clear boundaries for employees and managers on workplace demands is a must as these trends continue otherwise, you may end up with disengaged and burnt out employees that are eager to leave. 5. Healthcare costs rose at a 15% slower rate among wellness program participants. The results are in: wellness programs are an invaluable investment for the cultivation of a happier, healthier, more productive workforce. Workplace programs that encourage exercise, healthy eating and stress reduction not only lead to more satisfied employees they actually drive down long term healthcare costs. ",4,https://www.glassdoor.com/employers/blog/6-hr-recruiting-stats-you-need-to-know-for-2018-and-beyond/,TRUE, 461,Many Adults with Disabilities Report Frequent Mental Distress," A study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that adults with disabilities report experiencing more mental distress than those without disabilities. An estimated 17. 4 million adults with disabilities experience frequent mental distress, defined as 14 or more reported mentally unhealthy days in the past 30 days. Frequent mental distress is associated with adverse health behaviors, increased health services utilization, mental disorders, chronic diseases, and functional limitations. Prior work has shown that adults with disabilities are more likely to live below the federal poverty level and lack access to health care due to costs both of which are associated with a higher occurrence of mental health conditions. Increasing social cohesion, community participation, access to health promotion opportunities, and delivery of mental health screening, care, and support services could help reduce mental distress among adults with disabilities. Read the full article published in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. Read a full summary of the MMWR that is written for all audiences. CDC’s National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities is working to ensure that people with disabilities have the same opportunities for overall well being as people without disabilities ",2,https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/features/adults-with-disabilities-mental-distress.html,FALSE, 462,"Prevalence of Disability and Disability Types by Urban-Rural County Classification – United States, 2016","The American Journal of Preventive Medicine published a new report comparing the percentage of adults with disabilities living in urban versus rural U. S counties. By analyzing self reported data from the 2016 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System across six levels of urbanization, CDC researchers were able to estimate Researchers found that the percentage of adults living with disability was highest in noncore counties and lowest in large central and fringe metropolitan counties. Compared with adults living in large central metropolitan counties, adults living in noncore counties were These findings serve as reminders that people with disabilities live in all geographic areas. It is important that public health programs include people with disabilities living in rural communities. NCHS Urban–Rural Classification Scheme for Counties1CDC researchers analyzed data on adults with disabilities for counties categorized according to the 2013 NCHS Urban–Rural Classification Scheme for Counties. 1 From most urban to most rural, these categories include Nearly 19% of noncore counties in this study are in the Southern and Midwest regions of the United States, compared to 3. 1% in the West coast region, 2. 9% in the Northeast, and 6. 7% nationally. BRFSS allows respondents to self report on up to six functional types of disability. Specifically, participants were classified as having one of the six disability types if they answered “yes” to the following questions: Respondents who answered ‘yes’ to at least one of the disability questions were classified as having “any disability. ”CDC supports 19 state disability and health programs and two National Centers on Health Promotion for People with Disabilities, all of which promote healthy lifestyles and work to improve the quality of life for people with disabilities.  The primary goals of the state programs are toCDC’s Disability and Health website also provides information and resources to increase awareness about disability inclusion, helping to ensure that every individual, with or without disabilities, can live, work, learn, and play in their communities. We encourage you to visit the Disability and Health website to find helpful information about disability inclusion and learn more about CDC also maintains the newly updated Disability and Health Data System , an online interactive tool that provides instant access to state level, disability specific health data. Users can customize the disability and health data they view, making it easy to find data on adults with and without disabilities and by functional disability type. ",3,https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/features/disability-prevalence-rural-urban.html,FALSE, 464,What it’s like returning to the office as a person with a disability: ‘My biggest fear was physical survival’," This is part of CNBC Make Its My First Day Back series, where people share their stories of what its like to return to the office after working from home during the Covid 19 pandemic. Are you planning to return to the office soon? Share your stories with us here. Name: Alexa Dectis Age: 29Office: Netflixs Los Angeles office Working home since: March 13, 2020Returned: April 19, 2022 Return requirements: Proof of Covid 19 vaccine and negative Covid 19 test Theres a lot to dread about returning to the office: waking up late, hitting traffic, meeting co workers for the first time the list continues.  But as Alexa Dectis recalls, her return to office fears boiled down to physical survival.  At 16 months old, Dectis was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy, a progressive neuromuscular disease that weakens the muscles and can make activities such as speaking, walking, breathing and swallowing incredibly difficult or, for some, impossible.  I realized from a really early age that the only way I could make something of myself would be if I used the power of my brain to overcome the weakness of my body, she tells CNBC Make It. I also knew that I needed a career that solely relied on my intellect  thats what brought me to the legal profession, because you can be a really great lawyer without needing to move any muscles in your body.  Dectis is unable to walk and uses a motorized chair to travel. She can comfortably speak, eat and type, but relies on caregivers to assist her with other physical needs, such as showering and dressing.  Since the start of the pandemic, Dectis had split her time working on Skydances legal team from her apartment in Los Angeles, where she lives alone, and her parents house in Pennsylvania.  Earlier this year, however, a recruiter from Netflix reached out to her with an offer to join the streaming giants minors, immigration and diligence team as a legal associate.  She accepted the job with the expectation that she would go into Netflixs Los Angeles office three days a week, and work from home the other two days. You dont say no to Netflix, Dectis says. And this was the job, and the team, that Ive always dreamed of working in.  CNBC Make It: How did you prepare to return to the office, and how did Netflix help?Alexa Dectis: It required a lot of planning and scheduling I had to plan out who would get me ready for work in the morning and which commute worked best for me, because I cant drive. Its easier to take public transit I prefer the bus because it allows me more independence, but it adds time to my day because it almost doubles my commute. Even when Im in the office, I have to plan out when I drink water, because a care assistant needs to take me to the bathroom. So every day at lunch, I have to arrange for a caregiver to come to Netflixs office for 15 minutes, help me use the bathroom once, and then leave.  Having spinal muscular atrophy impacts my workday a lot. But its also taught me excellent time management, and its taught me to make the most of every opportunity because so many people with disabilities are unable to work, and the fact that I get to have this incredibly fulfilling career is something that I will always be so thankful for. Netflix has an accommodations team, and they made sure I had an adjustable desk as well as a laptop that syncs to my computer at the office, so I dont have to carry too much work equipment between my apartment and the office.  How did the first day go? I woke up at 6 a. m. and one of my care assistants helped me get ready for the day, then I took some calls with colleagues in other time zones from home.  I took the bus to work and arrived around noon, met my manager in person for the first time, met the team and got to work. Something I was super nervous about, when lunchtime rolled around, was if I would be able to reach things in the cafeteria.  ",3,https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/16/what-its-like-returning-to-the-office-as-a-person-with-a-disability.html,FALSE, 465,People With Disabilities Say New Bills Could Make it Impossible For Them to Vote: 'I'm Being Punished'," Voters with disabilities say a new spate of GOP backed laws aimed at tightening voting rules could put their own right to vote at risk, making it a legal requirement that voters hand it their absentee ballots themselves, rather than using drop boxes. While drop boxes were widely used in the 2020 election , many GOP led legislatures have made moves to outlaw their use. In Wisconsin, a ban on ballot drop boxes went into effect for local elections in April; the state Supreme Court there is now weighing whether to keep that ban in place. Those who want to ban ballot drop boxes argue doing so will strengthen the integrity of elections and prevent voter fraud . Critics say such measures will simply make it harder to vote, adding hurdles for those who cant easily get to a polling place to vote in person, or dont have the ability to take time off to do so. RELATED: Michelle Obama Lauds Major New Voting Rights Bill and Urges Senate to Pass ItCritics also point to another consequence of making it difficult to send mail in ballots or use drop boxes: those who cant physically bring their ballot to a clerk, or put an absentee ballot in the mail themselves, would not be able to vote at all. Martha Chambers, who uses a wheelchair after being paralyzed from a horseback riding injury 27 years ago, described the challenges of voting to NPR. I have the ability to put a pen stick in my mouth, so I can fill it in and I can sign the ballot and ask a witness to witness my ballot, Chambers told NPR. They would have to place the ballot in the envelope and actually put it in the mail or take it to the clerk. It would be difficult for me to put a ballot in my mouth and put it in a mailbox; I couldnt reach that mailbox. Wisconsins current statute on voting allows for absentee voting but it mandates that the envelope containing an absentee ballot shall be mailed by the elector, or delivered in person, to the municipal clerk issuing the ballot or ballots. Chambers told NPR that, under that statute, It would be illegal for her to fill out a ballot, and have someone else put it in the mailbox for her: the individual who would assist me would be committing a crime, crazy as that may seem. She continued: Its sad because theres a large group of people that just wont do it because they think its illegal or theyre not going to count it, and why bother?RELATED: Texas Democrats Flee State in Protest to Block Voting Changes as Governor Promises Jail TimeStacy Ellingen, who has athetoid cerebral palsy, told NPR the statute makes her feel as if she is being punished. I do feel like Im being punished just because Im physically not able to put a ballot in a mailbox, she told NPR. My caregivers help me fill out the ballot and put it in the mailbox. Its literally the only way for me to vote, she continued. If this stands, I wouldnt be able to vote for the people actually making the decisions that affect my life. The states Supreme Court is slated to make a decision on whether to overturn the ban on drop boxes in June, but a similar situation is playing out in other states. According to a report by the Stanford MIT Healthy Elections Project, more voters used drop boxes in the 2020 general election than in any other election in American history. The report notes that, in 2020 and prior, just eight states  Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington state had laws regulating drop boxes. But in the years since, Republican lawmakers many spurred by former President Donald Trumps attacks on mail in voting have moved to discontinue their use, despite there being no evidence that they lead to voter fraud. According to research by Stateline, an initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts, 19 states enacted new voting restrictions in 2021, including limits on early and mail in voting. Some states , have continued to add restrictions in 2022. ",3,https://people.com/politics/new-voting-drop-box-laws-target-people-with-disabilities/,FALSE, 466,Many Adults with Disabilities Report Frequent Mental Distress," A study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that adults with disabilities report experiencing more mental distress than those without disabilities. An estimated 17. 4 million adults with disabilities experience frequent mental distress, defined as 14 or more reported mentally unhealthy days in the past 30 days. Frequent mental distress is associated with adverse health behaviors, increased health services utilization, mental disorders, chronic diseases, and functional limitations. Prior work has shown that adults with disabilities are more likely to live below the federal poverty level and lack access to health care due to costs both of which are associated with a higher occurrence of mental health conditions. Increasing social cohesion, community participation, access to health promotion opportunities, and delivery of mental health screening, care, and support services could help reduce mental distress among adults with disabilities. ",3,https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/features/adults-with-disabilities-mental-distress.html,FALSE, 467,Primary Care Providers’ Level of Preparedness for Recommending Physical Activity to Adults with Disabilities," Primary care providers are more likely to discuss physical activity with their patients with disabilities if they feel prepared to do so. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Preventing Chronic Disease journal published a new study that looked at how prepared primary care providers feel to recommend physical activity to adults with disabilities. CDC scientists found that PCPs, specifically family doctors, internists, and nurse practitioners, are more likely to recommend physical activity to their patients with disabilities on a regular basis if they feel prepared to do so. However, just over 1 in 3 PCPs strongly agreed that they felt prepared to discuss physical activity with their adult patients with disabilities. Currently, half of PCPs recommend physical activity to their patients with disabilities at most visits. Everybody needs physical activity for good health, and prior studies found that adults with disabilities are more likely to be physically inactive than those without disabilities. PCPs are in a key position to influence physical activity participation among their adult patients with disabilities. The recently published article highlights PCPs’ characteristics that are related to feeling prepared to discuss physical activity with adult patients with disabilities. The article also highlights PCPs’ reported barriers to recommending physical activity to their patients with disabilities. Public health practitioners could use this information to develop resources and tools that may help PCPs feel more prepared to discuss and recommend physical activity with their adult patients with disabilities. Read the scientific summary of the article. CDC’s Disability and Health Branch at the Division of Human Development and Disability supports and provides funding for two National Centers on Health Promotion for People with Disabilities that focus on improving the quality of life for people living with disabilities, including their physical activity: The Branch also supports 19 state based programs toLearn more about the State Disability and Health Programs. Courtney Long EA, Stevens AC, Carroll DD, Griffin Blake S, Omura JD, Carlson SA. Primary Care Providers’ Level of Preparedness for Recommending Physical Activity to Adults With Disabilities. ",3,https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/features/kf-activity-recommendations.html,FALSE, 468,Socioeconomic Factors at the Intersection of Race and Ethnicity Influencing Health Risks for People with Disabilities," Adults with disabilities from some racial and ethnic groups are more likely to smoke and be obese. Income and education may also be related to these behaviors. The Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities has published a new study looking at the relationship between income and education, and two health behaviors smoking and obesity among people with disabilities from different racial and ethnic groups. To conduct this study, CDC researchers used information reported by respondents to the 2007 2010 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System surveys. Researchers found that the proportion of adults living with disabilities varies by race and ethnicity, with the highest among American Indian/Alaska native adults and lowest among Asian adults . Similar to people without disabilities, people with disabilities with low levels of income or education are more likely to smoke or be obese. However, according to this study, how income and education relate with smoking and obesity differs by race and ethnicity. Everyone, including people with disabilities, needs health care and health programs to stay healthy and avoid unhealthy behaviors. Public health professionals can use the information in this article to highlight groups who may be more likely to report smoking and obesity, and to ensure that programs that promote good health are inclusive of people with disabilities. Read a scientific summary of the article. The infographic below shows the percentage of people with disabilities in each racial and ethnic group who report that they are obese or that they smoke. Health promotion and disease prevention programs focusing on smoking and obesity that are inclusive, not only of people from diverse racial and ethnic groups, but also inclusive of people with disabilities may help. This can be done by CDC’s Disability and Health Branch monitors the health of people with and without disabilities, and supports the inclusion of people with disabilities in public health programs that prevent disease and promote healthy behaviors. In addition, CDC works to eliminate barriers to health care and improve access to routine preventive services. CDC supports 19 state based disability and health programs and two National Public Health Practice and Resource Centers, which promote healthy lifestyles and work to improve quality of life for people with disabilities. The primary goals of the state programs are to CDC also maintains Disability and Health Data System , an online interactive tool that provides instant access to state level, disability specific health data. Users can customize the disability and health data they view, making it easy to identify health differences between adults with and without disabilities. ",3,https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/features/kf-socioeconomic.html,FALSE, 469,"Building Back Better: Toward a disability-inclusive, accessible, and sustainable post COVID-19 world"," Some people with disabilities have severe illness from the virus that causes COVID 19 due to underlying medical conditions, if they live in a group setting, or because of systemic health and social inequities.  CDC recommends that all people age 5 and older receive a COVID 19 vaccine. Adults with disabilities are less likely to report hesitancy about getting vaccinated; yet, are more likely to report experiencing difficulties obtaining a COVID 19 vaccine than adults without a disability. It is critical to ensure that people with disabilities are able to access COVID 19 vaccines to keep themselves and their loved ones safe. December 3 is International Day of Persons with Disabilitiesexternal icon. In the United States, 1 in 4 adults has a disability. 1 Many people will experience a disability at some point during their lives. Disabilities may include difficulty with walking or climbing stairs; hearing; seeing; or concentrating, remembering, or making decisions. Although the term “people with disabilities” sometimes refers to a single population, this is a diverse group of people with a wide range of needs and abilities. Two people with the same type of disability can be affected in very different ways. Some disabilities may be hidden or not easy to see. A recent CDC study found that adults with disabilities were more likely than adults without a disability to report difficulty getting vaccinated against COVID 19. 2 Among unvaccinated adults, those with a disability were more likely than were those without a disability to report challenges such as:Health disparities are differences in health and access to services. Addressing these barriers to COVID 19 vaccination for people with disabilities can help reduce health disparities, increase COVID 19 vaccination demand, and increase the number of people with disabilities who get the COVID 19 vaccine. COVID 19 Materials for People with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities and Care ProvidersPeople with intellectual and developmental disabilities face unique challenges and are more likely to get very sick from COVID 19. Throughout the COVID 19 pandemic, parents, family members, and caregivers have been working hard to help the people they care for stay healthy and safe during this difficult time. This social story follows Izzy as she gets her COVID 19 shot. This poster reminds people to wash their hands to stay safe from COVID 19. Esta historia social interactiva utiliza opciones de llenar el espacio en blanco y selección múltiple para ayudario a prepararse para la vacuna contra el COVID 19. Esta historia social le hace seguimiento a Izzy cuando va a vacunarse contra el COVID 19. This interactive social story uses fill in the blanks and multiple choice options to help you prepare for getting a COVID 19 shot. This video shows how to stay safe from COVID 19 by washing hands. During the COVID 19 pandemic, isolation, disconnection, disrupted routines, and diminished health services have greatly impacted the lives and mental well being of people with disabilities. Everyone reacts differently to stressful situations. How one responds to stressful situations, such as the COVID 19 pandemic, can depend on their background, support systems , financial situation, health and emotional background, the community they live in, and many other factors. People with disabilities or developmental delays may respond strongly to the stress of a crisis, particularly if they are also at higher risk for serious illness from COVID 19 . Public health efforts that make COVID 19 vaccination information, scheduling, and sites more easily accessible for persons with disabilities might help to address health inequities and increase vaccination demand and coverage. 2 These efforts include:",3,https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/features/COVID-19-and-disabilities.html,FALSE, 472,The Mental Health of People with Disabilities," Adults with disabilities report experiencing frequent mental distress almost 5 times as often as adults without disabilities. Call your doctor if your mental health gets in the way of your daily activities for at least 14 days in a month. December 3rd is International Day of Persons with Disabilities. In the United States, 1 in 4 adults 61 million have a disability. Many people will experience a disability at some point during their lives. Disabilities limit how a child or adult functions. These limitations may include difficulty walking or climbing stairs; hearing; seeing; or concentrating, remembering, or making decisions. Although “people with disabilities” sometimes refers to a single population, this is a diverse group of people with a wide range of needs. Two people with the same type of disability can be affected in very different ways. Some disabilities may be hidden or not easy to see. A recent study found that adults with disabilities report experiencing more mental distress than those without disabilities. 2 In 2018, an estimated 17. 4 million adults with disabilities experienced frequent mental distress, defined as 14 or more reported mentally unhealthy days in the past 30 days. Frequent mental distress is associated with poor health behaviors, increased use of health services, mental disorders, chronic disease, and limitations in daily life. 2During the COVID 19 pandemic, isolation, disconnect, disrupted routines, and diminished health services have greatly impacted the lives and mental well being of people with disabilities. 3Call your healthcare provider if stress gets in the way of your daily activities for several days in a row. Free and confidential resources can also help you or a loved one connect with a skilled, trained counselor in your area Everyone reacts differently to stressful situations. How you respond to stressful situations, such as the COVID 19 pandemic, can depend on your background, your support systems , your financial situation, your health and emotional background, the community you live in, and many other factors. People with disabilities or developmental delays may respond strongly to the stress of a crisis, particularly if they are also at higher risk for serious illness from COVID 19 . We are often asked this question, and many of us say we’re “fine. ” But this has been a difficult time lately, and emotions can be complex. You may be feeling sad, worried, or stressed. It helps to stay positive and remind yourself of your strengths. Visit How Right Nowexternal icon for inspiration and resources to find what helps. CDC provides funding for two National Centers on Disability that focus on improving the quality of life for people living with disabilities. Special Olympics’ Inclusive Healthexternal icon programming focuses on improving the physical and social emotional well being of people with intellectual disabilities by increasing inclusion in health care, wellness, and health systems for Special Olympics athletes and others with intellectual disabilities. “I learned relaxation techniques and now always try these when I find myself overwhelmed. I would recommend these strategies to others, too. A strong mind is an important part to a happy body,” shares Kayte Barton, a Special Olympics athlete from Minnesota. Barton was a part of the Special Olympics committee to help develop emotional health programming for Special Olympics athletes across the world in its flagship Special Olympics Healthy Athletes®external icon program. Special Olympics’ Strong Mindfulness program offers free, 1 hour mindfulness sessions for people with intellectual disabilities and their families.  Participants learn deep breathing techniques, body awareness and progressive muscle relaxation, mindful movement, and guided meditation. They also receive a Strong Minds Activity Guide designed to help them develop their coping skills in everyday life. ",3,https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/features/mental-health-for-all.html,FALSE, 473,Physical Activity for People with Disability," Everybody needs physical activity for good health. However, less than half of U. S adults with serious difficulty walking or climbing stairs report engaging in aerobic physical activity. 1 For those who are active, walking is the most common physical activity. 1 Yet, adults with disabilities report more environmental barriers for walking than those without disabilities. 2 Here are some ways that people with disabilities can stay active and healthy. Physical activity plays an important role in maintaining health, well being, and quality of life. According to the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, 2nd editionpdf iconexternal icon, physical activity can help control weight, improve mental health, and lower the risk for early death, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers. Physical activity can also improve mental health by reducing depression and anxiety. For people with disabilities, physical activity can help support daily living activities and independence. Any amount of physical activity that gets your heart beating faster can improve your health. Some activity is better than none. For even greater health benefits, the Guidelines recommend that all adults, with or without disabilities, get at least 150 minutes of aerobic physical activity per week. Activities can be broken down into smaller amounts, such as about 25 minutes a day every day. Muscle strengthening activities, such as adapted yoga or working with resistance bands, provide additional health benefits. One in four U. S. adults is living with a disability,3 defined asAdults with disabilities are more likely to have obesity, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, or cancer than adults without disabilities. 4 Physical activity can reduce the risk and help manage these chronic conditions. Many adults with disabilities and chronic health conditions can participate in regular physical activity; however, it’s important to consult with a healthcare professional or physical activity specialist to understand how your disability or health condition affects your ability to safely do physical activity. If you have a disability and want to make physical activity part of your daily routine, here are some options. Engaging in physical activity outdoors can help improve your physical health, as well as your mental health and well being. Most people can engage in an active lifestyle through walking including people with disabilities who are able to walk or move with the use of assistive devices, such as wheelchairs or walkers. 5 In fact, walking is the most common form of physical activity reported among active adults with mobility disability. 1Unfortunately, adults with disabilities report fewer neighborhood environmental supports and more barriers for walking than those without disabilities. 2 To improve this, resources were created to help promote the development of supportive environments for walking for individuals with disabilities. Being active in your home can also be a good option. Here are some resources that can help you stay physically active while at home. Decide how much physical activity is right for you and your fitness level, pick an activity you enjoy for example, gardening, doing chores around the house, wheeling yourself around in your wheelchair, walking briskly, or dancing and find ways to include your favorite physical activity into your everyday life. CDC’s Disability and Health Promotion Branch, within the Division of Human Development and Disability, supports and provides funding for two National Centers on Disability that focus on improving the quality of life for people living with disabilities, including their physical activity level. ",3,https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/features/physical-activity-for-all.html,FALSE, 474,"Prevalence of Disability and Disability Types by Urban-Rural County Classification – United States, 2016","The American Journal of Preventive Medicine published a new report comparing the percentage of adults with disabilities living in urban versus rural U. S counties. By analyzing self reported data from the 2016 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System across six levels of urbanization, CDC researchers were able to estimate Researchers found that the percentage of adults living with disability was highest in noncore counties and lowest in large central and fringe metropolitan counties. Compared with adults living in large central metropolitan counties, adults living in noncore counties were These findings serve as reminders that people with disabilities live in all geographic areas. It is important that public health programs include people with disabilities living in rural communities. Read a summary of the article »external icon*2013 NCHS Classification Scheme for Counties1CDC researchers analyzed data on adults with disabilities for counties categorized according to the 2013 NCHS Classification Scheme for Counties. 1 From most urban to most rural, these categories include Nearly 19% of noncore counties in this study are in the Southern and Midwest regions of the United States, compared to 3. 1% in the West coast region, 2. 9% in the Northeast, and 6. 7% nationally. BRFSS allows respondents to self report on up to six functional types of disability. Specifically, participants were classified as having one of the six disability types if they answered “yes” to the following questions: Respondents who answered ‘yes’ to at least one of the disability questions were classified as having “any disability. ”CDC supports 19 state disability and health programs and two National Centers on Health Promotion for People with Disabilities, all of which promote healthy lifestyles and work to improve quality of life for people with disabilities.  The primary goals of the state programs are to CDC’s Disability and Health website also provides information and resources to increase awareness about disability inclusion, helping to ensure that every individual, with or without disabilities, can live, work, learn, and play in their communities. We encourage you to visit the Disability and Health website to find helpful information about disability inclusion and learn more about CDC also maintains the newly updated Disability and Health Data System , an online interactive tool that provides instant access to state level, disability specific health data. Users can customize the disability and health data they view, making it easy to find data on adults with and without disabilities and by functional disability type",3,https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/features/disability-prevalence-rural-urban.html,TRUE, 476,CDC and Special Olympics: Inclusive Health," Physical activity is the cornerstone of good health. However, less than half of U. S. adults with disabilities meet the recommended physical activity guidelines. 1 Learn how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is working with Special Olympics to increase participation in year round wellness programs among people with intellectual disabilities a term used when a person has certain difficulties with thinking, learning, remembering, and reasoning. May is National Physical Fitness and Sports Month. Physical activity plays an important role in maintaining health, well being, and quality of life. According to the Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans, physical activity can help control weight and lower the risk for early death, heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and some cancers. Physical activity can also improve mental health by reducing depression and anxiety. For people with disabilities, physical activity can help support daily living activities and independence. Any amount of physical activity that gets your heart beating faster can improve your health. It helps to remember some activity is better than none. For even greater health benefits, the Guidelines recommend that all adults, with or without disabilities, get at least 150 minutes of aerobic physical activity per week, which can be broken down into smaller amounts each day. Muscle strengthening activities, such as adapted yoga or working with resistance bands, provide additional health benefits and are recommended two days a week. Fitness plays a key role in the mission of the Special Olympics a CDC partner organization that provides year round sports training and athletic competition in a variety of Olympic type sports for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, giving them continuing opportunities to develop physical fitness, demonstrate courage, experience joy, and participate in a sharing of gifts, skills, and friendship with their families, other Special Olympics athletes, and the community. Physical activity, good nutrition, and hydration enhance athletes’ sports performance and improve their overall health and quality of life. Recent Special Olympics data reveal that fitness programming is urgent, given that more than half of Special Olympics athletes are overweight, almost a third have obesity, and 57% have hypertension. 2CDC and Special Olympicsexternal icon have joined forces to increase the number of people with intellectual disabilities who participate in year round wellness programming that includes flexible fitness intervention models and resources to promote weight loss and decrease blood pressure. Special Olympics also trains coaches and fitness instructors to work with people with intellectual disabilities and develops partnerships to support local and national fitness participation. Inclusive health means people with intellectual disabilities are able to take full advantage of the same health programs and services available to people without intellectual disabilities. To prevent illness and promote healthy behaviors and safety for people with disabilities, CDC is committed to disability inclusion in public health programs, working to eliminate barriers to health care and improve the ability to get routine preventive services. As part of this work, CDC supports Special Olympics’ efforts to improve the physical and social emotional well being of people with intellectual disabilities by increasing inclusion in health care, wellness, and health systems for Special Olympics athletes and others with intellectual disabilities. More broadly, the Special Olympics partnership with CDC supports a range of health initiatives, including This partnership leverages the Special Olympics community of more than 700,000 athletes with intellectual disabilities, 135,000 coaches, and 700,000 volunteers to spark nationwide change. ",3,https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/features/special-olympics-heroes.html,TRUE, 477,31st ADA anniversary: Health is for all of us," July 26, 2021 marks the 31st anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act , a civil rights law that promotes the inclusion of people with disabilities in every aspect of life. Learn what CDC is doing to support disability inclusion, which can improve health for all. Anyone can have a disability at any point in their life. Disabilities, which limit how a child or adult functions, may include serious difficulty with walking or climbing stairs; hearing; seeing; or concentrating, remembering, or making decisions. One of every four adults in the United States has some type of disability, 1 and many people will experience a disability during their lifetime. This month is the 31st anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act , a civil rights law that prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities in all areas of public life. The ADA has made a positive difference in the lives of those who have disabilities by providing better access to buildings, transportation, education, and employment and creating opportunities for individuals with disabilities to work, play, and contribute in their communities. However, challenges remain with access to health care, as well as inclusion of people with disabilities in health promotion and disease prevention programs. 1Additionally, people with disabilities continue to face significant differences in health compared to people who do not have disabilities. For example CDC recognizes ADA as an important policy for facilitating the inclusion of people with disabilities in federal efforts related to health and health care. As such, CDC strives to improve the health of people with disabilities by providing access to disability data, fostering state and national collaborations to promote inclusion, and developing tools for disability inclusion. Below are some of our most recent resources and tools for disability inclusion. Knowing the differences in health between people with and without disabilities is the first step in making sure people with disabilities have access to the programs and services that can help improve their health. CDC created the Disability and Health Data System to provide vital information to better understand the health needs of adults with disabilities at the state and national levels. Equipped with these data, state epidemiologists, researchers, policymakers, public health professionals, and anyone interested in the health of adults with disabilities can plan for inclusive communities that offer the programs and services needed to improve the health of this population. With DHDS, you can get answers to questions such as CDC funds the Association of State and Territorial Health Officialsexternal icon, the National Association of County and City Health Officialsexternal icon and the Association of University Centers on Disabilitiesexternal icon through a project titled, “Addressing Needs of People with Disability in COVID 19 Preparedness, Planning, Mitigation, and Recovery Efforts in the United States. ”The purpose of this project is to ensure that the needs of people with disabilities are addressed in COVID 19 planning, mitigation, and recovery efforts through People with disabilities need public health programs and healthcare services for the same reasons everyone does to be healthy, active, and engaged as part of the community. Including people with disabilities in public health programs and activities ensures improvements in the overall health and wellbeing of the entire population. CDC provides resources that public health practitioners, healthcare providers, and others can use to help ensure that every person – with or without disabilities – can participate fully in their communities. Visit the Inclusive Healthy Communities Model webpages to learn how ten communities in five states used IHCM to implement disability inclusion strategies and make healthy living easier for all people across community sectors where they live, learn, work, play, pray and receive care. ",3,https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/features/ada-anniversary.html,FALSE, 479,"Prevalence of Disabilities and Health Care Access by Disability Status and Type Among Adults — United States, 2016"," The Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report  published a report describing adults with disabilities in the United States, as well as the differences in health care access by disability type. Using 2016 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System data, CDC scientists analyzed the survey responses of those adults 18 years of age and older who had any of the following six types of disabilities: They found that 1 in 4 adults in the United States, or 61 million people, have at least one of these disabilities. Anyone can have a disability, and a disability can occur at any point in a person’s life. However, this report found disabilities more common among adults 65 years of age and older; approximately 2 in 5 adults in this age group have a disability. Disability was more commonly reported by women, non Hispanic American Indians/Alaska Natives , adults with income below the federal poverty level, and adults living in the southern region of the United States. Researchers also found that, in general, adults 65 years of age and older with any disability reported better access to health care compared to younger adults with a disability. However, disability specific disparities in health care access were common, particularly among young and middle aged adults. Generally, adults with vision disability reported the least access to health care and adults with self care disability reported the most access to care. Research on the number of people with disabilities, their characteristics, and their disability specific differences in health care access might enable health care professionals to address disability specific barriers to health care, ensure inclusivity of health programs, and improve the health of people with disabilities. Researchers looked at the responses, given by people with disabilities, to four health care access questions: They found that, for each disability type, having health insurance coverage, a usual health care provider, and receiving a routine check up increased with age, while having an unmet health care need because of cost decreased with age. Findings for specific age groups are outlined in the table below: BRFSS is an ongoing state based telephone survey of noninstitutionalized U. S. adults aged 18 years or older living in the community . This is the first time a question about hearing difficulty has been included in the BRFSS, which may be why the number of people with disabilities is higher than previously reported . CDC supports 19 state disability and health programs and two National Centers on Health Promotion for People with Disabilities, all of which promote healthy lifestyles and work to improve quality of life for people with disabilities.  The primary goals of the state programs are to The CDC’s Disability and Health website also provides information and resources that public health practitioners, health care providers, and others can use to increase awareness about disability inclusion, helping to ensure that every individual, with or without disabilities, can live, work, learn, and play in their communities. We encourage you to visit the Disability and Health website to find helpful information about disability inclusion and learn more about CDC also maintains the newly updated Disability and Health Data System , an online interactive tool that provides instant access to state level, disability specific health data. Users can customize the disability and health data they view, making it easy to find health data on adults with and without disabilities and by functional disability type. ",3,https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/features/kf-adult-prevalence-disabilities.html,TRUE, 481,Article Highlights: The Guide to Community Preventive Services and Disability Inclusion," People with disabilities need to be included and have access to the disease prevention and health promotion programs they need to stay healthy and lead full, active lives. In a recent report in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine , CDC scientists summarize how public health recommendations from the Guide to Community Preventive can be adapted to better benefit people with disabilities. One in five adults in the United States have some type of disability. Compared to adults without disabilities, adults with disabilities are more likely to be obese, smoke, have high blood pressure, and be physically inactive. Any of these can increase the risk for medical conditions, such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and some cancers, which are also more common among adults with disabilities. People with disabilities need health programs and services for the same reasons anyone does – to be healthy, active, and part of the community. However, they frequently experience barriers that keep them from obtaining the health care they need and participating in health promotion and disease prevention programs in their communities. As community organizations and public health officials implement the recommendations found in the Community Guide, they may wish to consider removing the health barriers people with disabilities sometimes face when trying to use these programs. With the appropriate adaptations, people with disabilities are more able to benefit from the disease prevention and health promotion programs they need to stay active and healthy, and lead full lives. The Guide to Community Preventive is a resource where public health officials and community organizations can go to see what proven programs exist to address public health issues, such as cancer screenings, access to physical activity, drinking and smoking, among many others. There are several types of changes that health promotion and disease prevention programs such as those within in the Community Guide can use to make sure people with disabilities are included, such as table indicating types of changes pdf icon[288 KB, 10 pages]external icon for each type of program is included with the AJPM report as online supplemental information. This resource can be used to guide specific changes that can improve the access of people with disability to these proven health promotion and disease prevention programs. People with disabilities are the best advocates for appropriate adaptations to public health interventions. Including people with disabilities from the beginning of an implementation will help a program succeed. The Guide to Community Preventive Services and Disability Inclusion. ",3,https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/features/preventive-services-and-disability-inclusion.html,TRUE, 482,"Adults with One or More Functional Disabilities – United States, 2011-2014"," Working age adults with disabilities are more likely to live in poverty, have less than high school education and be unemployed. How can we improve this?Social_round_facebook Social_round_twitter email iconThe Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report has published a new report that describes the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of working age adults with disabilities living in U. S. communities. What’s unique about this report is that the researchers also looked at these characteristics by number of disability types. According to the report, about 12% of working age adults in the United States have any disability and nearly 6 in 10 of them have only one disability type. Living in poverty, having less than a high school education, or being in the labor force, but looking for work, are each more common among adults who have a disability, even those with only 1 disability, compared with those with no disability. Adults with disabilities had from 1 to 6 disability types; the researchers assigned them to groups of adults who had 1, 2, 3, or 4 or more disability types. As the number of disability types increased from 1 to 4 or more, people in those groups were increasingly more likely to live in poverty, have less than a high school education, or if in the labor force, to be looking for work. This MMWR presents important information that public health officials and decision makers can use to understand the characteristics of working age adults with disabilities, including those with multiple disabilities, and make sure they are included in programs and policies designed to increase social participation. United States, 2011 – 2014Working together, public health professionals, employers and communities can address the barriers that may be keeping people with disabilities from getting into the workforce and obtaining the social, economic and health benefits that employment can offer. CDC currently supports 19 State Disability and Health Programs and two National Centers on Disability. State Disability and Health Programs inform policy and practice at the state level. These programs ensure that individuals with disabilities are included in ongoing activities within the state that prevent disease and promote health. The National Centers on Disability",3,https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/disabilityandhealth/features/keyfinding-adults-with-multiple-functional-disabilities.html,FALSE, 483,Feds Warn Employers Against Disability Discrimination,"The federal government is offering new guidance to help businesses ensure compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act as they use technology in hiring and other human resources practices. Increasingly common methods that employers are using to select new hires, judge performance and determine pay or promotions may discriminate against people with disabilities, federal officials say. The U. S. Department of Justice and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission say artificial intelligence and other software tools used by companies can result in employers violating the rights of people with disabilities under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Businesses frequently use computer based tests or resume scoring software to screen job applicants as well as other technology to assess the performance of current and prospective workers. In guidance issued late last week, the agencies point out that without safeguards, software tools can screen out capable people with disabilities. For example, a wheelchair user interviewing for a cashier position may be turned away by a chatbot if they say they cannot stand for hours even though they could do the job while seated, the EEOC notes. The guidance stops short of telling employers that they cannot use artificial intelligence and other software tools, instead detailing what steps should be taken to ensure ADA compliance. When utilizing technological tools, employers should consider the impact on people with various disabilities and have a process for providing reasonable accommodations when appropriate, the guidance indicates. Employers should also remember that if software tools make people disclose information about their disabilities or medical conditions, that could lead to inquiries or medical exams that are not permitted. “Algorithmic tools should not stand as a barrier for people with disabilities seeking access to jobs,” said Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Justice Department. “This guidance will help the public understand how an employer’s use of such tools may violate the Americans with Disabilities Act, so that people with disabilities know their rights and employers can take action to avoid discrimination. ”Beyond guidance for employers, the EEOC is also offering tips for people with disabilities who believe they have been discriminated against. “New technologies should not become new ways to discriminate,” said EEOC Chair Charlotte A. Burrows. “If employers are aware of the ways AI and other technologies can discriminate against persons with disabilities, they can take steps to prevent it. ” With a slew of new actions and additional resources, federal education officials are taking steps to ensure that students with disabilities and their families can access school services. In May 2021, 11 year old Ryan Larsen walked out of his elementary school in between classes. A year later, there are few signs of the boys whereabouts. Industry associations and business owners say serial plaintiffs are increasingly using the ADA to extract tens of thousands of dollars in settlements, not to promote access as the law intended. ",3,https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2022/05/16/feds-warn-employers-against-disability-discrimination/29857/,FALSE, 484,"Inspired by daughter, architect approaches accessibility as a 'lifestyle'"," Megen Olfert smiles thinking about the backyard treehouse her father designed for her when she was a kid.  It was wide enough for a motorised wheelchair to maneuver inside, and a cement path wound its way through the backyard up to the treehouse instead of stairs or a ladder.  I felt like I was on equal ground as a kid, said Megen, recalling friends coming over to hang out, because sometimes when youre disabled it means you have to do things differently even though you can do the same thing. It made me feel included. Megen was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at nine months old. It became clear to her parents, Charles and Leila Olfert, that their daughter would need a wheelchair and their house would not meet Megens needs. So, Charles began designing a new home for the family.  Ceiling track lifts were installed in Megens room and bathroom, which allowed her to safely transfer from her wheelchair to her bed and bathtub. Wide hallways ensured Megen could freely move throughout the main floor, and the driveway was level with the street so that she could roll into the house instead of using a wheelchair ramp.  I think that there is a kind of negative public connotation when you see a giant wheelchair ramp coming up to the front of your house. I dont like that, said Charles, an architect and one of the founders of AODBT Architecture and Interior Design in Saskatoon. There are so many ways to do a wheelchair ramp that is built right into the landscape and are more subtle. Charles works with businesses and organizations to make their spaces more accessible for people with physical and intellectual disabilities. He credits Megen with expanding his outlook on accessibility issues. Accessibility isnt really a passion of mine, he said. Its a lifestyle because we have a daughter with a disability. Everything that Ive been doing has this lens thats part of my work. When Megens elementary school, George Vanier School, needed a ramp in 1988, Charles helped build it. When high school was on the horizon for her, Charles helped design St. Joseph, including a top notch wheelchair accessible bathroom. Megen was having an impact and helping others in our city and she didnt even know it, he said. Megen is now 39 and lives with her service dog, Que, in a condominium run by Cheshire Homes in Saskatoon, which facilitates independent living for those with disabilities. Her father helped design the home to meet all of her accessibility needs. It even features a device that gives Megen autonomy when it comes to feeding Que.  I want to be able to feed my own dog without assistance, said Megen. I do this every day, twice a day.  For the past 14 years, Megen has worked at Home Depot in Saskatoons Stonebridge suburb. Her encyclopedic knowledge of the store has made her a star with customers, and she hopes her presence will remind them of the potential of people with disabilities.  We need to get more employers to be more accessible to both physically and intellectually disabled people, she said. Charles, meanwhile, hopes more businesses will see the benefits of prioritizing accessibility in their design. He is one of a handful of Saskatchewan architects who have taken the Rick Hansen Foundations certification course that teaches how spaces can be more inviting to people with disabilities. It includes everything from designing signs to help alleviate anxiety to creating spaces for people with hearing issues.  There are only three buildings in Saskatchewan that have been certified gold by the Rick Hansen Foundation: AODBT and the Ronald McDonald House in Saskatoon, and Mosaic Stadium in Regina. Its going to take a little extra money and space and time, so you have to find a client that maybe has that mission in mind already that wants to provide those services, he said. It also does project a good public image.  Charles would also love to see the Saskatoon widen its sidewalks and make them smoother for people who are in wheelchairs. Oftentimes, Megen will operate her power wheelchair on the street while Que walks on the sidewalk because of the shape they are in.  Something Megen believes would make a difference when it comes to accessibility in Saskatoon that doesnt cost a thing   is empathy. ",3,https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/accessibility-architect-saskatoon-1.6448395,TRUE, 485,Unlock the Powerful Gifts Your Disability Taught You About Being a Better Leader,"Empathy and active listening are two skills every effective leader should have. The experience of living with a disability provides an advantage in recognizing the importance of these skills and wielding them in the workplace. As a leader, you are responsible for a challenging yet essential role within your company. If you live with any type of condition, be it physical or mental, from blindness to neurodivergency, your experiences overcoming this adversity can be an asset. With the help of the empathy and active listening skills youve likely developed, you can create a more lively and supportive corporate culture and build a more synergistic workplace. Here are three areas where demonstrating empathy and active listening will make your business an encouraging and productive environment. You have probably seen your fair share of working environments that lack some of the accommodations you need for your disability. If you use a wheelchair or other mobility aids, perhaps you have noticed a lack of ramps and elevators in many buildings. It can be incredibly frustrating to navigate spaces like these. The good news is, the kindness and patience you have gained from facing adversity will allow you to better understand others’ struggles. When an employee comes to you with a problem, you can assure them that they are not alone. Channel your compassion by empathizing with your employees. Even if you have not faced the exact same difficulties as them, you can still acknowledge and value their concerns by paying close attention to what they are telling you. Active listening involves making a conscious effort to understand and absorb what others are saying. Encourage their continued input. Practicing these skills will improve your listening comprehension while also showing your employees you care about their point of view. Being considerate toward every member of your company will foster a workplace that thrives on unity. Related: Leaders With Disabilities Have Instincts That Inspire Their Teams and Stimulate ProductivityAs someone with a disability, you are probably very aware of your own limitations, which is a real asset when it comes to empathizing with others. Have you ever had a job where you felt like you couldn’t say no to a project? This kind of pressure often results in burnout, which can be harmful to you, your team and ultimately, the work you produce together. Take stock of everything you are asking your employees to do and ask yourself, “Is it too much?”Certain behaviors on your part such as expecting employees to respond to emails while on vacation, discouraging them from taking time off or pressuring them to put their career ahead of their family could be creating an environment where people feel uncomfortable with prioritizing themselves and their health. To mitigate this, start by setting some boundaries of your own. Some healthy examples of this would be using “Do Not Disturb” settings on communication devices while you are busy or only taking on one major project at a time. Communicate your personal limits clearly with your team, and then allow them to set their own. Their boundaries may be very different from yours, and you can treat this as an opportunity to understand the other person better. You may learn someone is uncomfortable with working overtime because they value their family time. Approach these conversations with empathy, picturing what each person’s responsibilities look like from their perspective. Finally, remember your active listening skills; making an effort to recognize and remember your employees’ boundaries will demonstrate you care about their well being. Once your team members know you accept their limits, they will feel more comfortable communicating them to each other. An open minded team that respects its workers’ comfort zones is one that performs together cohesively. ",3,https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/424196,TRUE, 486,"Supreme Court Decision Weakens Disability Rights, Advocates Say","Disability advocates are not happy about a recent decision from the U. S. Supreme Court limiting the ability to seek damages from many discrimination claims. A recent U. S. Supreme Court decision chips away at disability rights, advocates say, by making it harder to bring claims under some of the nation’s anti discrimination laws. The high court ruled late last month 6 3 against Jane Cummings, who is deaf and legally blind, determining that emotional distress from discrimination is insufficient harm to warrant a lawsuit under four federal civil rights laws. Cummings sued after Premier Rehab Keller in Texas declined to provide her a sign language interpreter at her physical therapy appointments. The therapy provider said that Cummings could use notes, lip reading and gestures to communicate instead. argued that Premier Rehab Keller discriminated against her on the basis of disability, violating the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and the Affordable Care Act, which apply to facilities that receive federal funds like the therapy provider does. However, a federal judge determined that Cummings’ only injuries were “humiliation, frustration and emotional distress” and indicated that the laws in question did not allow for the recovery of damages in such cases. A federal appeals court affirmed the ruling and a majority of the Supreme Court agreed. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said that damages for emotional distress are not available in most breach of contract cases, so it’s unreasonable to think that business receiving federal dollars should be held to a different standard. “After all, when considering whether to accept federal funds, a prospective recipient would surely wonder not only what rules it must follow, but also what sort of penalties might be on the table,” Roberts wrote. In addition to the Rehabilitation Act and the Affordable Care Act, the ruling applies to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. In dissent, Justice Stephen G. Breyer noted that discrimination often harms in ways that are purely emotional. “It is difficult to square the court’s holding with the basic purposes that antidiscrimination laws seek to serve,” Breyer wrote. “The court’s decision today allows victims of discrimination to recover damages only if they can prove that they have suffered economic harm, even though the primary harm inflicted by discrimination is rarely economic. … The court’s decision today will leave those victims with no remedy at all. ”The ruling puts people with disabilities in a precarious position, advocates say. “These civil rights statutes are intended to protect the rights of people with disabilities and other historically disenfranchised groups. In foreclosing relief for the emotional distress that may ensue from discrimination, this holding diminishes the dignity and respect that people with disabilities deserve and are entitled to as full members of our society,” said Peter Berns, CEO of The Arc. The ruling will effectively “weaken the protections for people with disabilities in the Rehabilitation Act and the Affordable Care Act,” according to Ira Burnim, legal director at the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. “Nearly 50 years since the passage of the Rehabilitation Act, too many people with disabilities continue to face isolation and humiliation as a result of discrimination,” Burnim said. “By limiting their ability to seek and obtain money damages for the emotional distress they experience when their rights are violated in many cases, the only cognizable harms such plaintiffs experience today’s decision has significantly limited their access to justice. ”",3,https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2022/05/09/supreme-court-decision-weakens-disability-rights-advocates-say/29843/,FALSE, 487,"Intersection of Disability Race Explored at Free, DEI Virtual Conference: Civil Rights Advocate Kimberlé W. Crenshaw Disability Activists to Present","As issues at the intersection of disability and race remain under recognized due to a lack fluency or awareness, nonprofit agencies AHRC Nassau and The Arc of the United States are responding with a free, online conference on May 18 to connect attendees of all abilities and backgrounds with research, best practices, and most importantly, with each other. The Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Virtual Conference, Beyond the Comfort Zone: Understanding and Eradicating Injustice, Racism and Inequality in the Field of Developmental Disabilities, will explore the history, the latest research, and opportunities for the increased inclusion of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities as well as recognition for direct care staff, who are primarily Black, Indigenous, and people of color . Disability is an underdeveloped area of DEI. For those with no prior connection to the experience of disability or the underlying issues related to race, there can be shame and hesitation in trying to discuss these issues or worse, silence, said Stanfort J. Perry, Conference Chair and CEO of AHRC Nassau. The purpose of this online conference is to create a platform offering the latest insight on the intersectionality of issues pertaining to ableism and racism to encourage questions, conversations, and above all, shine a spotlight on those whom society has marginalized. More than 30 years since the passage of the Americans With Disabilities Act, people with disabilities remain one of the most marginalized groups – at high risk of violent crimes to contracting and dying from COVID 19. Their essential support staff, who make tasks of daily living and participation in the wider community possible, are predominantly women of color who have spent years advocating for a living wage. According to a report from the University of Minnesota – Institute on Community Integration and The National Alliance for Direct Support Professionals, Black/African American Direct Support Professionals were paid less per hour than white DSPs, and a higher percentage of Black/African American DSPs worked 40 or more additional hours per week. Though there is overwhelming need, an overall lack of funding has resulted in a 43% national turnover rate in the direct care workforce and a staffing crisis. Self advocates, like Jessica Campbell, have advocated for years for necessary funding to ensure services and supports to lead an independent life. Imagine not being able to get medication, access money, stay clean, cook, do your job, or go out into the community thats what a staffing crisis means to us, said Campbell, who is currently a member of AHRC Nassaus Board of Directors and a Field Assistant for the Long Island Region at the Self Advocacy Association of New York State. The upcoming DEI Virtual Conference is important to Campbell because in addition to addressing some of these issues during a conference panel, she hopes more people have a chance to be understood and that more people can begin to understand the experience of disability. For Peter Berns, CEO of The Arc of the United States, Disability providers, at the state and federal level, are working within legal, legislative, and service frameworks that can be complex and difficult to navigate regardless of whether you receive services, work in the industry, or seek to understand as an outside observer. Within these systems, people with disabilities and their direct care staff can become further and further removed from the action of daily life, and lead lives in parallel to their peers without disabilities with few interactions, largely unseen and unheard, said Berns. The DEI Virtual Conference speaker lineup will offer valuable perspectives on how meaningful change must be the result of collective partnership and advocacy across all facets of society. ",3,https://www.yahoo.com/now/intersection-disability-race-explored-free-164700507.html,TRUE, 489,What’s Next For Disability Policy?," Disability PolicyThe disability community in the United States finds itself in uncertain times. For people with disabilities, the last several years have been at once terrifying and exciting. Disabled people have on the one hand faced unprecedented dangers, like the Covid 19 pandemic and repeal of the Affordable Care Act. At the same time they have marveled at strong signs of the disability community’s political power, and steps towards previously unimaginable but deeply cherished policy goals. The election of President Joe Biden with a thin Democratic majority in Congress held out real hope of relief and achievement for a battered but resilient disability community. Biden had put forward a fairly substantial disability platform. It wasn’t as ambitious as some of his primary rivals, like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. But it proposed far more in disability policy than any previous Presidential nominee. Most notably, the administration’s original Build Back Better plan included what would have been historic investments in home care, and some long overdue fixes and increases in Supplemental Security Income, . But Build Back Better’s massive “reconciliation” package stalled. The pandemic has continued, inflation is rising, war is raging in Eastern Europe, and the President’s approval ratings are low. According to a recent poll by The Century Foundation and Data For Progress, just 1 in 3 disabled voters believe their leaders in Washington care about people with disabilities. With politics in Washington now even more polarized and distracted, and disabled voters’ faith in their lawmakers shaky at best, what can disabled people realistically expect now? And what can the disability community fruitfully focus on in the months ahead?Despite recent setbacks and disappointments, disability policy experts and activists believe that some important objectives and goals are still achievable. Here are three disability policy areas still considered not only important to disabled people, but ripe for real accomplishment. The top priority is still to substantially increase funding for Home and Community Based Services, which enable people with significant disabilities to live independently in their own homes rather than care facilities. The goal is to reduce or if possible eliminate “waiting lists” of elderly and disabled people who are qualified for home care but can’t get it solely because of inadequate funding. HCBS increases would also enable states to raise pay and benefits for home care workers, to address the worsening shortage of workers and pay home care workers what they deserve. This was part of the Build Back Better plan, originally to be a $400 billion investment over 10 years a figure that was significantly reduced during negotiations, but would have still been historic and important if it had passed. Disability policy leaders say that increased funding for HCBS is part of ongoing efforts to agree on a scaled down version of Build Back Better. “There is a smaller economic bill that we are hoping to at least include HCBS,” says Mia Ives Rublee, Director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress. “There’s wide caucus support for expanding access to HCBS,” adds Bethany Lilly, Director of Income Policy at The Arc, “and we and our Hill champions are going to continue to push hard for this to be included. ““Disability advocates are also talking about how to come back and push for more transformative fixes” to HCBS,” says Julia Bascom, Executive Director of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network. Longer term policy goals for HCBS include:Like most disability policy issues, building home care to its full potential in disabled people’s lives is a combination of small steps, broad ambitions, and patience. “This work will take decades,” Bascom admits. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2022/04/30/whats-next-for-disability-policy/?sh=69f1480c26bd,FALSE, 492,How To Look For Help If You Have A Disability,"Where can people with disabilities and their families turn for help? How should they start? The answer depends on what exactly each disabled person is looking for. Near the start of every journey with disability, there’s a time when all the tests, treatments, and therapies end, and disabled people ask, essentially, “What’s next? Who’s going to help me now?”Part of the problem is that “help” is probably too broad a word. It can mean too many things, especially to people with different disabilities and vastly different paths to life with a disability. That’s why it is so important for disabled people to think carefully about what exactly they are looking for what “help” actually means to them. Most disabled people are looking for some combination of several qualities: This can include medical and practical information on their specific disabilities, basic knowledge of benefits, support services, and disability rights laws. And most disabled people aren’t just looking for more information, but better as in accurate, up to date, and unbiased, or at least with clearly identifiable points of view disclosed upfront. In other words, disabled people want information they can trust. Disabled people often want and need something more than just lists of programs and their contact information. They crave a sense of direction, purpose, and endorsement from people who have some kind of credibility on disability matters. At the same time, most disabled people are wary of too much advice, especially when it’s too confidently or aggressively given. People with disabilities want advice and perspective, not condescending or unsolicited lectures, or demands. Disability can be lonely, especially when you have to argue or fight for what you need. Most people with disabilities at some point want more than anything else to find someone to join them in their struggles. But kindness and good intentions aren’t always enough. Disabled people want to find people and organizations that also have some kind of standing and influence that might make a difference in whether the answer to some disability related need is going to be a “yes” or “no. ” And eventually, most people with disabilities also want someone who will help them to learn their own advocacy skills, so they can grow in their ability to fight for themselves. Attitude, mindset, and even allies can only get you so far in dealing with disability related barriers. For many disabled people the most urgent and difficult to satisfy priority is simply getting money to live safely and decently, when earning a living in traditional ways is impractical, reduced, or interrupted. They also often need specific kinds of tools and equipment that offer mobility and in other ways help disabled people live more independently and productively. And people with certain kinds of disabilities need one on one help from other people to complete everyday physical tasks and organizational needs. Independence is within reach for most if not all disabled people. But it often requires things that disabled people in particular find it difficult to afford without outside help and funding. Most people want companionship on the journey through life. People with disabilities especially crave partnerships and friendships with people who can relate personally to the disability experience. Many also look for spaces and settings where disabled people can feel free to share their unvarnished feelings about living with disabilities. This kind of support is different from what professional service providers, advocates, and even most family members can provide. But it’s something people with disabilities are in a unique position to provide to each other. When people with disabilities look for help, they are looking for some combination of these things, with different priorities depending on each person’s unique situation. And there’s another question on top of it all. What do disabled people expect help to look like, to feel like?",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2022/04/18/how-to-look-for-help-if-you-have-a-disability/?sh=1b82230371ea,FALSE, 493,5 ‘Takes’ On Disability For Parents Of Disabled Kids,"In late April 2022, Facebook users interested in disability issues and culture liked and shared a post by “Diary Of A Mom. ” In it, the mother of an autistic young woman describes a series of refreshingly pleasant encounters in a shopping mall and Build A Bear store. On the surface the post seems fairly typical of memoirs and vignettes shared on social media by thousands of “Special Needs Parents. ” But this post was something different. It was both positive and starkly realistic, and both proud and confessional. This did not go unnoticed by a number of disabled activists who are often wary of disability stories shared by parents, which tend to be either sentimental or horrific, self congratulatory or self pitying. In the mother’s account, store employees and customers are curious about her daughter’s unusual mannerisms, but not hostile. The young woman didn’t get the kind of public reception many autistic and otherwise disabled children get awkwardness, a cold shoulder, even irritation. The mother argues that her own genuine acceptance and lack of embarrassment about her daughter encouraged others to adopt the same accepting attitude. The mother’s calm and open approach to her autistic daughter demonstrated how they should behave towards her themselves. They seem to have followed her lead. But what makes this post even more meaningful and unusual is that it’s also a confession. The mother isn’t patting herself on the back. The point of her story is that her approach to her daughter’s disability wasn’t always so positive and affirming. She used to be more anxious, more focused on controlling her disabled daughter’s unusual behaviors, and more embarrassed by them. “The message I was inadvertently sending to my daughter was awful. That I was ashamed. ”She’s more relaxed now, and no longer ashamed. This is not only far healthier for her daughter, obviously, but also for the mother herself, and a much better example for everyone her daughter meets. This mother began with one kind of “take” on her daughter’s disability. Now she has a different one. The story describes a parent’s distinct and admirable shift in approaches to autism. But it also underscores the more general importance of how parents understand their children’s disabilities. It’s not just about specific decisions, approaches, and parenting techniques, but about parents’ broader understanding of disability itself. Whether they realize it or not, parents inevitably adopt one or some combination of approaches to disability. Some of it’s unconscious, but it’s also a choice. And from the disabled person’s perspective, exactly which medical care, therapies, adaptive equipment, services, and educational approaches parents get for their disabled may be less important in the long run than parents’ basic take on disability. But what are these takes? Here are five of the most common ways parents and families of disabled children and youth understand and conceptualize disability and how they envision their proper role in their disabled children’s lives. In this view, disability is something to be fought and defeated. Most parents are introduced to their children’s disabilities by medical professionals. This tends to encourage parents to fight against disabilities in many of the same ways people fight a disease, like cancer. This negative, embattled take on disability is most readily recognized in language habits. Children and youth with disabilities are spoken of as “battling” or “overcoming” disabilities, not “adapting” to them even less likely “embracing” them. This mindset makes some sense. Many disabilities are caused by medical problems, and a few of them can at certain key moments be usefully reduced by medical treatments and therapies. And people with disabilities certainly do have to fight many kinds of adversity. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2022/04/24/5-takes-on-disability-for-parents-of-disabled-kids/?sh=17224e8a23a3,TRUE, 494,Are we in danger of rolling backwards on global disability inclusion progress?," The journey for disability inclusion in the international development sector has gained much momentum in the last 15 years. In 2018 the UK government demonstrated leadership on the issue, as joint hosts with Kenya of the very first Global Disability Summit , as well as the release by Department for International Development of their first Disability Inclusion strategy. Many of us working in the disability and development space, including the Bond Disability and Development Group , were keen to see the Foreign Commonwealth and Development Offices direction of travel following the launch in February 2022 of their new Disability Inclusion and Rights Strategy by Vicky Ford, minister for Africa, Caribbean and Latin America at this year’s second GDS.  The strategy, which is to last until 2030, is complemented by 18 Commitments as well as the overriding commitment to steer the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to “meaningfully engage, empower and enable people with disabilities to exercise and enjoy their full rights and freedoms on an equal basis with others, without discrimination and across the life course. ” What did we learn from the government’s new strategy? The high ambition in the strategy is welcome and it is important to acknowledge the continued progress and leadership shown by the FCDO Disability Team. However, there is concern within the sector that the disability inclusion space is shrinking in the UK government, with real potential that rather than going forward, movement will be static at best and is in serious danger of reversing the good progress made.  The strategy states that the foreign secretary aims to harness the “the full force of UK’s diplomatic and development expertise” alongside the FCDO’s wide global coverage to deliver real change for people with disabilities.  However, to get to where you want to go, you require a vehicle that is fit for purpose, with clarity on how you will get there and the means to do it. Currently on disability inclusion, both the delivery plan and funding for are, as of yet, unknown.  At the International Development Committee’s recent evidence session, Bond DDG members spoke of “project devastation”, and as a Bond Group we were dismayed that despite the UK government knowing that the recent Official Development Assistance cuts would severely affect programmes related to people with disabilities, they still went ahead.  Aid spending cuts were mostly made in Africa and Asia, where people with disabilities are most likely to need greater assistance, and the cuts were made in the middle of the Covid pandemic, a time when support was even more acutely needed. The DDG in welcoming the Disability Inclusion and Rights strategy also list seven key factors in its response that the FCDO, and the development sector more broadly, should keep in mind, if we are to ensure progress by 2030:1. Recognise support from Bond’s Disability and Development Group. In signalling its approval of the strategy, Bond DDG member organizations are also ready to continue to support the FCDO, to help realise and achieve the ambition that it so clearly sets out.  2. “Nothing about us without us” must be ensured. Meaningful engagement across the diversity of disability and keeping Organisations of People with Disabilities must be at the centre of how the FCDO develop and implement the strategy.  3. FCDO outcomes have to be more than just a slogan. For their “Rights, Voice, Choice and Visibility” commitment to have an effective impact, they need to be underpinned by targets that fully enable a rights based approach to mainstreaming disability inclusion as well as providing specific disability focused support.  4. Increase the commitment to girls and women. To be seen as a leader on inclusion, there needs to be serious and qualitative investment across services and policies, in every sphere of FCDO’s engagement, that are truly gender transformative and disability inclusive.  ",3,https://www.bond.org.uk/news/2022/04/are-we-in-danger-of-rolling-backwards-on-global-disability-inclusion-progress,FALSE, 496,What to Look for in a Disability Insurance Policy,"The COVID 19 pandemic has shown how unexpected events can affect one’s well being and financial stability. You may have friends or family members who were physically and financially impacted by the coronavirus. Or you may have been personally affected. While no one has a crystal ball to predict the future, there are ways you can protect yourself and your family against the unexpected. It’s likely you have considered how life insurance could protect your family should you unexpectedly pass away. But have you considered what would happen if an illness or injury kept you from earning your usual income? How would you and your family pay monthly bills and maintain your lifestyle? You may think you are covered by the disability income protection benefits that many employers offer, such as group short term and long term disability insurance. Short term disability usually pays benefits for a few months if you are unable to work, and when that runs out, long term disability benefits kick in. What you may not know, however, is that long term disability insurance typically only pays 40% to 60% of an employee’s base salary to a specified maximum.  Income protection insurance, also known as individual disability insurance, pays benefits in addition to long term disability, which will cover more of your income. Some individual disability insurance policies even cover bonuses, commissions or other incentive compensation not covered by long term disability insurance. By adding income protection insurance, you’ll receive more benefits, allowing you to continue paying your bills and maintain your lifestyle into the future. The monthly benefit amount you receive is based on your income at the time you purchase the policy and will begin paying after you meet a benefit waiting period. Benefits will be paid until you recover, or the maximum benefit period is reached, whichever comes first. When you apply, you’ll choose the benefit waiting period and maximum benefit period that work for you. For example, if you have significant savings, you may feel comfortable choosing a longer benefit waiting period to lower the cost of your policy. While all income protection policies should have these options, not all policies are the same. So, make sure to look for these key policy features to ensure you’re protected when you need it most:You’ll want to buy a policy that will allow you to increase your coverage as you earn more money. If you were to purchase a policy today, you’d qualify for a specific monthly benefit that reflects your current income. But what monthly benefit would you expect 10 years from now? For example, if you earn an annual salary of $100,000 today and receive a 4% raise each year, you’ll make $148,000 in 10 years. It’s important to have the ability to increase your coverage to match your future and support your lifestyle for the life of the policy. It’s also important that your benefits keep pace with inflation. As we emerge from the pandemic, the United States continues to experience high levels of inflation. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in March 2022 that the consumer price index was up 7. 9% over the previous 12 months. In such inflationary conditions, it’s important that benefits keep pace as costs increase. Look for an income protection policy with a rider that will adjust benefits each year to align with the consumer price index. Having a residual disability rider will help fill in the gap if you’re disabled but can still work just not at full capacity. Some residual riders pay half your monthly benefit up to a certain time period, such as a year. Others pay proportionate to your income loss. And some will pay a benefit if you return to work full time, but your earnings still lag due to your disability. If you became catastrophically affected by a disability by losing your sight or hearing or two or more limbs, for example a catastrophic disability rider will pay an additional benefit on top of your monthly benefit. This could help your family pay for the extra care you would need, such as a home health aide. ",3,https://www.kiplinger.com/personal-finance/insurance/604526/what-to-look-for-in-a-disability-insurance-policy,FALSE, 497,Vaccinating Children with Disabilities Against COVID-19," Information for Vaccine Providers and Partners Planning VaccinationCDC recommends everyone 5 years and older get vaccinated against COVID 19 ? including children with disabilities who may be at a higher risk for severe illness from COVID 19. This page includes strategies to improve COVID 19 vaccine accessibility for children with disabilities and special healthcare needs. Many children with disabilities have underlying medical conditions ? such as lung, heart, or kidney disease, a weakened immune system, cancer, diabetes, some blood diseases, or conditions of the muscular or central nervous system ? which put them at increased risk for severe illness from COVID 19. Similarly, children with developmental disabilities, such as cerebral palsy, an intellectual disability, or autism, may be at increased risk of mental health concerns from social isolation and severe illness from COVID 19. They may also have barriers to accessing needed health care and other characteristics that increase their risk of becoming infected with the virus that causes COVID 19, includingA special healthcare need can include physical, intellectual, and developmental disabilities, as well as long standing medical conditions, such as asthma, diabetes, a blood disorder, or muscular dystrophy. Children and youth with special healthcare needs require more care for their physical, developmental, behavioral, or emotional differences than their typically developing peers. Learn more about Children and Youth with Special Healthcare Needs in Emergencies. Consider implementing and supporting the following strategies and vaccination accommodations to ensure children with disabilities and special healthcare needs – and their caregivers, family members, and service providers – under your care can receive their COVID 19 vaccinations at the clinic location:10 Tips from Special Olympics Athletes on How to Make COVID 19 Vaccination Clinics InclusiveSpecial Olympics partnered with Jefferson Center for Autism and Neurodiversity to raise COVID 19 vaccine awareness. Children are allowed by law to have their service animal accompany them at COVID 19 vaccination sites. Remember, children with disabilities and special healthcare needs benefit most from team based. Trusted care providers can work with parents and caregivers to learn and address any specific vaccination concerns. ",3,https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/covid-19/planning/children/disabilities.html,FALSE, 498,Ending the Two-Tier System of Disability Benefits," In the period before the adoption of disability benefits, people with disabilities who were unable to work were often forced into destitution and viewed as undeserving of public support. The creation of public disability benefits marked a drastic shift in the government’s treatment of people with disabilities, signalling societal recognition of their right to financial security. But despite such changes, out of date views on the worthiness of people with disabilities to receive benefits prevail. The US currently employs a two tier system whereby those who have worked receive improved benefits and those who have not worked “long enough” are left behind. All people with disabilities deserve to live with dignity and financial security. To achieve this, the United States must move beyond arbitrary notions of deservingness and abolish the two tier system.  The system of disability benefits that is in place today was first established by the Social Security Act in 1935. Notably, the Social Security Act created two separate programs for the provision of disability benefits. The main program is established in Title II of the act and is known as Social Security Disability Insurance . Eligibility for this federal program requires that individuals meet a set of conditions, including at least 20 quarters of work experience in the past 40 quarters; this made SSDI inaccessible for those born with disabilities and those who became disabled before accruing enough work credits. These people could only receive benefits through Supplemental Security Income , a significantly less generous program that provided cash assistance to low income people with disabilities who did not meet the work history requirement. This distinction between SSDI, which is still only available to those with work histories, and SSI has persisted to the present day, creating substantial difficulty for those people with disabilities forced to rely on SSI. There are numerous issues with SSI, all of which can cause significant hardship for recipients. The first and most glaring is that SSI provides only subpoverty level income to its recipients. The maximum SSI benefit for an individual in 2022 is $841 a month, or $10,092 a year. In contrast, the federal poverty line for an individual in 2022 is $13,590 a year. As a result, people with work limiting disabilities who rely entirely on SSI for their income are forced into poverty, leaving them with little financial security.  To make this reality even worse, SSI program rules are designed to make it extremely difficult for recipients to earn additional income. Only individuals who earn less than $841 a month from any income source are eligible for the program, and each additional dollar earned of “countable” outside income reduces benefits received from SSI by one dollar. SSI also imposes significant restrictions on assets for recipients: Assets over $2000 disqualify an individual from receiving SSI. These rules force recipients to avoid saving and to not seek out additional sources of income in order to keep their benefits, as each additional dollar earned in income is offset by a decreased benefit payout. When considered with the fact that the SSI benefit is below the federal poverty line, it is obvious that SSI is a failure as a social insurance program, likely stemming from the perception that those without work histories are less deserving of public assistance than those with work histories. Fixing the immediate problems with SSI is not a difficult task, as the failures of the program are clear. A recent bill proposed by Senator Sherrod Brown , the Supplemental Security Income Restoration Act, would go a long way in patching the glaring hole in the social safety net that SSI currently represents. The bill proposes raising the SSI benefit to 100 percent of the federal poverty level and indexing it to inflation, raising the asset cap from $2,000 to $10,000, and raising the income recipients can earn before being subjected to benefit reductions. These reforms would significantly improve the quality of life of Americans with disabilities, and polling by Data for Progress, a progressive polling firm, finds that these changes, along with the removal of the asset cap, are overwhelmingly popular among the American public.  Given this polling, it is likely that the lack of policy action taken to improve SSI is less a result of political resistance and more a result of inertia and lack of attention. A determined campaign to improve SSI could therefore yield real benefits for people with disabilities who rely on it. ",3,https://brownpoliticalreview.org/2022/04/ending-the-two-tier-system-of-disability-benefits/,FALSE, 499,Advocates say people with disability are increasingly ‘forgotten’ in emergency planning," Insufficient accomodation and government support spark calls for better resourcing and planning in disaster responsesAfter being evicted from her short term accommodation to make way for tourists, flood victim Margaret was left with nowhere else to go. “I would have been homeless, living out of my car with two dogs,” the 79 year old said. After panicking all afternoon about where she would end up, Margaret, who asked that her surname not be published, received a last minute call from the state led Community Recovery Program informing her she would have a roof over her head for at least another week. “I feel like a hot potato,” she said. “I’m too old to be moved every seven days. It’s taken a lot out of me. ”Margaret lives with a mobility disability and said she has been moved six times since she was evacuated from her Gympie home in February. She is not alone. According to advocacy groups, many people with disabilities are struggling to access appropriate support after flooding in northern NSW and Queensland. Margaret said under the recovery program, she has been repeatedly placed in unsuitable accommodation that does not cater to her needs. “I was first moved to a bed and breakfast in Imbil, where the closest town is 7km away. I thought how the heck am I supposed to get to town? Because there’s no public transport,” she said. She said she was later moved to a yurt in the mountains that only had an outdoor barbecue for cooking and no inside shower. “I had two falls there because I was really stressed out and then I had to be taken to hospital,” she said. “I don’t feel like I belong in my own country any more. ”A coalition of 40 peak advocacy organizations have written an open letter demanding better resources and planning for disaster responses for people with disability. They say people with disability “continue to experience risks, neglect and serious negative impacts during disasters and emergencies”, resulting in “loss of services, supports and basic needs, as well as physical and psychological injuries”. “We cannot continue to underestimate the significant and long term effects of these events for people with disability and carers,” the letter states. Giancarlo de Vera, senior manager of policy at People With Disability Australia, said people with disability are feeling increasingly “forgotten” when it comes to emergency planning. “We’ve had stories of being stuck in danger and being isolated … We’ve heard about people losing their wheelchairs,” de Vera said. De Vera said people with disability are often turning to the community for assistance as they are not receiving sufficient support from the government. “They’re not seeing inclusive support … or decision making quick enough,” de Vera said. “Throwing money at a problem doesn’t solve it. “We want … to be trusted, to be the driving stakeholder to create plans that protect us and keep us safe. ”Sign up to receive an email with the top stories from Guardian Australia every morningQueensland’s Department of Communities, Housing and Digital Economy declined to comment on any specific case due to privacy laws, but said it is providing “a range of assistance to people requiring short and longer term accommodation. ”“The department assists people with their housing needs, including through temporary and emergency accommodation such as hotels and motels, where they are unable to remain in their homes as they have been impacted by the flooding,” a spokesperson said. The spokesperson said housing assistance has been provided to 768 flood affected households as of 31 March and a $600,000 Rapid Response Fund has been established “to deliver enhanced housing and homelessness services in impacted areas”. Overall, as of 7 April, 100,151 flood grant applications have been received by the government, with 42,810 payments totalling $17,776,546 made. ",3,https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/apr/11/advocates-say-people-with-disability-are-increasingly-forgotten-in-emergency-planning,FALSE, 500,New York: What is the megacity like for people with disabilities?," A close look into the state of accessibility in one of the world’s largest and most diverse cities. Hundreds of millions of citizens around the globe flock to metropolises to access opportunities, freedom and adventure. For many, these cities sustain an ideal way of life with essential services, grocery stores, hospitals, offices and cultural attractions often just a few blocks away. But for people with disabilities, life in a big city is often a different story. More than one billion people – approximately 15 percent of the global population – experience some form of disability. According to the United Nations, people with disabilities include those who have “long term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments, which in interaction with various barriers, may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others”. By 2050, some 68 percent of the world’s population is expected to live in urban areas, up from today’s 55 percent. And as the world’s urban areas grow, there is an urgent need for cities to adapt to the needs of disabled people to ensure they are not marginalised and excluded. Unlike any other marginalised group, anyone can become a member of the disability community at any point in their life. People can develop a physical disability because of an accident, illness, or simply, old age. New York City, one of the world’s largest and most diverse cities, is considered by some to be one of the least accessible in the United States when it comes to public transportation. So what is it like today to live in New York City with a disability?The city’s Metropolitan Transit Authority subway and bus system is well connected and operates round the clock, making travel opportunities seem endless, but for the 550,000 New Yorkers who have difficulty walking, using this system to get around the Big Apple is not so appealing. Of 472 active subway stations, for example, fewer than a quarter are equipped with elevators. According to TransitCenter, a US nonprofit organization working towards more just and environmentally sustainable transit, that means a person who can navigate stairs can enjoy a total of 222,312 station to station trips while a person who requires an elevator can access only 11,990, or 5 percent, of the total possible trips. The opportunities for a disabled person to travel are further reduced when considering the length of time that elevators spend out of service. The worst offender, 161st Street Yankee Stadium station, is down 111 days of the year. I live in New York City with cerebral palsy and use a motorised wheelchair to travel long distances for safety and time efficiency reasons. During my undergraduate university years, I lived on campus in upper Manhattan, the most metropolitan of the city’s five boroughs and travelled 20 blocks to get to the nearest accessible subway station. Each time, I’d hope it was a good day and the elevator would be operational. On different occasions, I’d find myself stuck on a subway station with a broken elevator. In such situations, I had two options. I could wait for a kind stranger to help me carry my 27kg chair up flights of stairs. Alternatively, I could get back on the train and ride it to the next closest station with an accessible lift, which could be as many as a dozen stops away, and then either take the bus or ride the subway from the opposite track back to my destination in the hopes that side would have a functioning elevator. New York subway stations tend to have different elevators for people going downtown and going uptown. The MTA aims to make New York City’s subway system, the city’s central nervous system which runs on 100 year old technology, completely disability accessible by 2034. At present, 25 percent is accessible. Making the subway fully accessible will enable people with disabilities to better access essential buildings like hospitals and schools and allow them to be more included in society. ",3,https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2022/3/30/new-york-what-is-the-megacity-like-for-people-with-disabilities,FALSE, 501,Disability inclusion at work: the many not the few,"Teresa Almeida examines how disability prejudice perpetuates workplace ableism and the disability unemployment gap. People with disabilities face ongoing barriers to employment, as well as within the employment cycle and peer atmosphere. More flexible accommodation for all employees will help increase disability inclusion within companies. One billion people, or 15 per cent of the world’s population, experience some form of disability, making them one of the largest and most heterogeneous diversity groups in society . In the UK, 20 per cent of adults report having a disability, with 70 per cent of those estimated to be non visible . Despite the existence of a range of non discrimination legislation and policies, disability is associated with higher levels of inequality across the labour force and social and political environments . Indeed, disabled people have been subject to historical and present day marginalisation, as “ableism” or the privilege of not having a disability, creates barriers for accessing power, resources, and opportunities . At work, there is a growing body of evidence exploring the labour market outcomes of disabled people. This evidence indicates that finding and retaining work when one is disabled is a challenge. Working age disabled people are more likely to be unemployed, earn less and encounter more barriers to advance in their careers . In Europe, the employment rate among those with disabilities is 47 per cent , compared to 67 per cent among those without a disability . In the US, the gap is wider: 19. 3 per cent of those with a disability were employed compared to 66. 3 per cent without disabilities in 2019 , with estimates showing this disparity is increasing over time. While these data might not paint a complete picture, with other factors such as age and education being correlated with disability, discriminatory practices in the labour market have also been identified in correspondence experiments. In these studies, fictitious profiles are sent in job applications to open positions, with the only difference being disability status. By monitoring the resulting call backs, researchers can measure unequal treatment solely based on disability, providing direct evidence of lower recruitment outcomes . For instance, in a large scale field experiment in Canada, applications were sent to 1,477 open positions . The researchers found that disclosing a physical disability halved the call back rate of applicants: from 14. 4 per cent for those without a disability to 7. 2 per cent when disclosing a disability within an application. As disability scholars point out, few groups experience as much discrimination as people living with disabilities, yet the labour market inclusion of disabled people can help break down entrenched stereotypes, benefiting individuals, organizations, and national economies . A well documented reason for the lower participation of disabled people in the labour force is a lack of awareness of disability, coupled with pessimistic views or beliefs about disabled workers’ performance . Central to workplace disadvantages and discrimination associated with disability are biases stemming from either inaccurate information or prejudice. Employers tend to underestimate the productivity or work capacity of disabled employees and overestimate the costs of making workplace accommodations or reasonable adjustments to reduce disadvantages for disabled people . ",3,https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/businessreview/2022/03/31/disability-inclusion-at-work-the-many-not-the-few/,FALSE, 502,"Hired for ability, not disability","Michael Reiner at his desk in the newsroom of Youngstown Channel 27 WKBN. His day begins at 4 a. m. , writing and editing news copy, and posting to the station’s website and social media. YOUNGSTOWN Wellsville resident Michael Reiner, 25, works as a digital web producer for Youngstown’s Channel 27 WKBN. Among news stories he posted Thursday on the WKBN website was: “Columbiana County Board of Developmental Disabilities recognizes WKBN. ”The story is about the station being recognized for hiring a person with a disability. That person is Michael Reiner. His disability is cerebral palsy. He walks with forearm crutches. Reiner loves sports and early developed a sports writer’s skills. He competed in the Scripps National Spelling Bee in 8th grade. In high school he freelanced high school sports for The Morning Journal. Later, as a journalism major at Kent State University, he worked in sports for the student television station, TV2 KSU. CCBDD Superintendent Bill Devon told WKBN that it’s good business to hire those with disabilities. “They are very successful, dedicated and loyal. . . You get an employee who shows up every day, that’s a very good employee. ” Reiner worked as an intern doing digital media for the CCBDD Reach 4 More program. It was Justin Shilot, digital media manager for WKBN, who first spotted his talent and drive when Reiner was only a freshman at KSU. “I grew up in Wellsville and I follow its basketball team. Michael was writing recaps of the Wellsville games on Facebook for fun and it caught my attention. It was more than you’d expect: stats, quotes from coaches and players, photos. He took that initiative. I found out he was a friend of a cousin of mine and I reached out to him,” said Shilot. Shilot spoke about Reiner to WKBN Director of Digital/Production John Amann. “I told him Michael was doing all this work just for the love of it. ” Reiner was invited to intern at the station in 2017. In the summer of 2019, before his senior year as a journalism major at KSU, Reiner served another internship at WKBN, this time in web production. Shilot and he worked closely during that stint. “We were a two man team, tracking down all the scores for all the football games throughout Friday nights in four counties, posting and revising them over and over. ” A month after graduating in May 2020, he snagged his first real job, director of social media and marketing at Mountaineer Casino, Racetrack and Resort. After a year there, he began working for WKBN in September 2021. “We got a peek at him as an intern,” said Vice President and General Manager David Coy. “He’s a hard worker and loves this crazy business. ”Reiner’s work day at the station begins at 4 a. m. and ends after the noon news. He writes and edits news copy, posts news stories and images to both the WKBN and Channel 33 WYTV websites, continually updating the websites with breaking news, and posting on Facebook and Twitter. Technology allows him to watch in real time which stories are being clicked on and by how many people in the web audience. “It’s a fast paced environment and I love it. It’s ever changing. I love the people I work with and I love telling the stories of the people in the valley,” he said. Michael lives in Wellsville with his parents, Bill and Paula Reiner, and twin brother Mitchell, who works in sales in Pittsburgh. “He has always been positive,” said his father. “He never says no to any challenge. He will try anything. Even physical tasks that some others might be timid about trying. If I say, ‘Want to go off roading?’ he says, ‘I’m ready, let’s go. ”Chelsea Simeon, digital executive producer, is his immediate supervisor at WKBN. “There’s nothing not to like about Michael. He’s the hardest working employee here. I have to chase him out of here some days. Everybody loves him and he gets along with everyone,” she said. ",3,https://www.salemnews.net/news/local-news/2022/03/hired-for-ability-not-disability/,TRUE, 503,‘A WHOLE NEW WORLD OF CREATIVITY’: Music instructor thrives on teaching kids with disabilities," Pictured: Gabriel Ashley strums his guitar as he works with Alec Harter during his lesson at Greenfield Music. Alec has been using his musical skill and talent to help inspire the same love he has for music by giving lessons to kids with disabilities. Wednesday, March 23, 2022. Tom Russo | Daily ReporterGREENFIELD With a silver ring in his nose and a collection of colorful tattoos running up both arms, Alec Harter looks every bit the rock star. But he’s a big softie when teaching music to children with disabilities. On Wednesday, he gently guided 9 year old Gabriel Ashley through a 15 minute ukulele lesson at the Greenfield Music Center, where Harter has been teaching for two months now. Pictured: Gabriel Ashley strums his guitar as he works with Alec Harter during his lesson at Greenfield Music. Alec has been using his musical skill and talent to help inspire the same love he has for music by giving lessons to kids with disabilities. Wednesday, March 23, 2022. Tom Russo | Daily ReporterPictured: Gabriel Ashley strums his guitar as he works with Alec Harter during his lesson at Greenfield Music. Alec has been using his musical skill and talent to help inspire the same love he has for music by giving lessons to kids with disabilities. Wednesday, March 23, 2022. Tom Russo | Daily ReporterPictured: Gabriel Ashley strums his guitar as he works with Alec Harter during his lesson at Greenfield Music. Alec has been using his musical skill and talent to help inspire the same love he has for music by giving lessons to kids with disabilities. Wednesday, March 23, 2022. Tom Russo | Daily ReporterPictured: Gabriel Ashley strums his guitar as he works with Alec Harter during his lesson at Greenfield Music. Alec has been using his musical skill and talent to help inspire the same love he has for music by giving lessons to kids with disabilities. Wednesday, March 23, 2022. Tom Russo | Daily ReporterThe 27 year old musician plays guitar, bass, ukulele, banjo, piano and drums, and loves sharing his love of music with kids. He has a special place in his heart for kids like Gabriel, who need a little extra guidance and support. The lifelong Greenfield resident said the sentiment goes back to when he was a young boy learning to play guitar. He witnessed an instructor at the Greenfield Music Center showing an abundance of patience with a relative of Harter’s who is autistic. “Seeing how our instructor handled him, I thought that was the coolest thing,” he said. That was about 20 years ago, and the student has since become the teacher. “I think it’s really cool to teach kids with special needs,” Harter said. He said it doesn’t phase him when a child needs to be repeatedly redirected or has a meltdown in the middle of a lesson. He simply redirects and gently perseveres. Before becoming a music teacher, Harter worked at an autism center in Warsaw, Ind. , where he worked with both foster kids and kids with disabilities. He found a great way to connect with them was through music. He would later teach music to children with disabilities at the Pendleton Music Academy before joining the staff at the Greenfield Music Center. “I’ve seen firsthand the impact music has in the life of someone with special needs versus those who are never introduced to music,” said Harter. Music has a way of touching a person’s soul unlike anything else, he said. “People with autism or sensory disorders react differently to smells and textures,” he said. “When I play guitar with an amp, I can give them something new to experience. Those sounds are textures for their ears. That’s not something they come across every day. ”Teaching them to play an instrument gives students with disabilities some control over the sound, and opens up a whole new world of creativity, he said. Gabriel’s mom, Lora Ashley, said her son looks forward to his lesson with Harter each week. ",3,https://www.greenfieldreporter.com/2022/03/25/a-whole-new-world-of-creativity-music-instructor-thrives-on-teaching-kids-with-disabilities/,TRUE, 504,Disability influencer and mom of 4 fights stereotypes by sharing her parenting experiences online: ‘The only thing I can't do is walk’," When TaLisha Grzyb met her tutor in college, she had no idea that she was meeting her future husband. “I was always very much focused on education, and even when he asked me out, I sort of told him no. Its like the running joke in our relationship. I told him no two times, and then it’s third times the charm, TaLisha tells Yahoo Life. TaLisha, a disability advocate, and her husband Quentin were married in 2016. Shortly after their honeymoon, TaLisha discovered that she was pregnant with twins. From the beginning, she knew that her pregnancy would be unique because TaLisha lives with muscular dystrophy, a disease that causes muscle weakness and muscle loss. For some it can impact mobility and motor functions. For TaLisha, congenital dystrophy means that she has never been able to walk due to low muscle tone, and she uses a wheelchair full time. TaLisha and Quentin welcomed healthy twins boys, Micah and Mason, in 2017, and went on to have two more children. Today the proud mother of four shares her experiences on a Youtube channel called, Rolling Through Life with Talisha. She knows there are a lot of misconceptions about mothers with disabilities, and shes on a mission to normalize her familys experiences. According to the National Council on Disability, there are 4. 1 million parents with disabilities in the U. S. , and many face legal and social challenges as they raise their families. The organization Partnerships for Action, Voices for Empowerment reports that parents with disabilities are referred to child welfare services and permanently separated from their children at disproportionately high rates. In fact, 35 states include disability as grounds for termination of parental rights. Growing up, TaLisha had frequent doctors visits and hospitalizations, but says that she was raised by parents who encouraged her to achieve and push through obstacles. “I was not allowed to say I cant do something and they raised me just as they would any other child,” says TaLisha. “Ive always wanted to be a mom because I just fell in love with the way that I was raised. ”When she met Quentin, they agreed that children would be a part of their future, and TaLisha says she never questioned her ability to carry a baby or be a mother. “I never focused on what I cant do. Like in my head, the only thing I cant do is walk,” she tells Yahoo Life. The doctors, however, saw things differently, and TaLisha says that her pregnancy with the twins wasnt met with positivity. TaLisha recalls that doctors mentioned terminating her pregnancy and asked her several times if she wanted to keep the babies. “I know moms without a disability are not treated in that manner. So I kind of built a distrust for the medical community because of that reason,” says TaLisha. “When youre a new mom, youre very vulnerable. Youre very hormonal. And I feel like in my head, all I should have been hearing is, Congratulations, how can we help you?”After the twins, the couple welcomed their third son, Tyson, in 2018 by cesarean section. In 2021, TaLisha became pregnant with their fourth child and decided to take back some of the control she felt was missing from her previous deliveries by having an at home vaginal birth. “I didnt agree when they wanted to do the C section because they wanted to do it at 38 weeks and I wanted to be full term,” TaLisha shares. “I’m not able to be given an epidural since I have a rod in my back. I have to be put fully asleep, so Im given general anesthesia for my C section, and Im not awake for the birth. I dont hear the first cry or anything like that, and I sort of felt robbed in that aspect with my previous deliveries. ”TaLisha intended to do an at home birth with a midwife, but because she was considered high risk, she couldn’t find a midwife who would take her on as a client. Instead, she and Quentin studied, prayed, meditated and delivered their fourth son, Titan, together at home, with help from her mother. TaLisha insists that this isn’t the right approach for everyone, but she felt confident that this was the best decision for her family. ",3,https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/disability-influencer-and-mom-of-4-fights-stereotypes-by-sharing-her-parenting-experiences-online-183629499.html,TRUE, 505,Justice News,"Today the Justice Department reached a settlement agreement with Ready to Work, a not for profit residential, work and social services program for individuals who are homeless, with facilities in Aurora and Boulder, Colorado. The settlement agreement addresses civil rights violations identified during the course of an investigation conducted by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. It resolves a complaint under Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act that Ready to Work discriminated against an individual with opioid use disorder by denying her admission to its residential, work and social services program because she uses a prescribed medication to treat her OUD. Under the agreement, Ready to Work will not deny services on the basis of disability, including OUD, or apply standards or criteria that screen out individuals with disabilities. The agreement also requires Ready to Work to adopt non discrimination policies, train staff on its non discrimination obligations, and report on compliance. Ready to Work will also pay damages to the Complainant. “People with opioid use disorder are too often subject to discrimination rooted in myths and stereotypes rather than in science,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “This agreement will ensure that people with opioid use disorder do not face discriminatory barriers when seeking access to housing, jobs and social services, which are critical to support recovery and combat the epidemic of opioid addiction. Ensuring that people with opioid use disorder can obtain essential services without facing discrimination is an important priority for the Civil Rights Division. ",3,https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-secures-settlement-resolve-disability-discrimination-against-people-opioid,TRUE, 506,Top 5 Tips For Employers For Handling A Request For Disability-Related Accommodation," Employers who invest in effective accommodations with employees who experience a work limiting . . . [+] health condition can retain valuable talent. When an employee’s health situation changes, they may need to request a reasonable accommodation due to long term effects from a medical condition. For employers, it is vital that your managerial and Human Resources teams are prepared to handle these instances – with a focus on providing an employee with the accommodation they require while balancing the needs of your organization. The Americans with Disabilities Act defines a reasonable accommodation as a modification to a job, work environment, or the hiring process. These adjustments allow an individual with a disability to have an equal opportunity to get a job and perform their job tasks to the same extent as people without disabilities. Employers can thoughtfully be prepared to handle these requirements with some preparation. Below is some general guidance from Allsup Employment Services , with a list of the top 5 tips for handling a request for accommodation. Handling a Job Accommodation request due to Disability: 5 Tips 1. Review the Americans with Disabilities Act interactive process. This is a 5 step process that fosters open, honest communication between you and your employee so that your organization can do its best to meet the needs of the individual. If you’re not already familiar with this process, check in with your HR department and be sure to review it. It’s important to have an understanding of it prior to having to use it. 2. Make it easy for the employee to talk with you. Keep in mind that for an employee – sharing their health situation and limitations with you can be intimidating and uncomfortable. Be as open and receptive as you can. For example, you can let the employee know you want to set them up for success in their position. It’s helpful if you relay that your office is a safe, private environment where they can be transparent in talking about their challenges and that any and all conversations about their request is kept strictly confidential. 3. Request the proper documentation. Ask for the proper medical documentation from your employee. It could be as simple as a doctor’s note. One of the Vocational Rehabilitation Case Managers at AES shared a success story with me. One of her clients who worked as a cashier, fractured her ankle and called her, worried that she’d need to quit her job since she could no longer stand all day. The case manager advised her to talk to her employer and let them know her situation. The employer asked for a note from her orthopedic surgeon. Upon receipt of the note, her manager agreed to provide a stool for her to sit on at her cash register while her ankle mended. The stool was already in the store, so this was a simple solution that cost the employer no money and quickly addressed the concern. 4. Work with Human Resources. There will be times when you’ll need to strategize with HR to make sure you come up with the best solution. HR is a partner you can work with to brainstorm and figure out what works best for both the company and the employee. Many times solutions are simple: a flexible schedule to accommodate medical appointments, equipment to outfit the employee’s home office or a remote work situation. 5. Offer to reassess if and when necessary. Let your employee know they can come back to you if something in their situation changes and they require more or different assistance. Reassure them that in this event, you’ll reassess with them and try to find a solution that works for both of you. These are a few of our top tips to help with reasonable accommodations. Employers who would like to find more information on this topic can also check out the Job Accommodation Network , whose services are funded by the U. S. Department of Labor, Office of Disability Employment Policy. JAN provides free consulting services for employers. Your organization can receive individualized consultation about various aspects of job accommodations, including the accommodation process, solutions, product vendors, referral to other resources, and ADA compliance assistance. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulamorgan/2022/03/15/top-5-tips-for-employers-for-handling-a-request-for-disability-related-accommodation/?sh=2a5928425603,TRUE, 507,"Person First, Disability Second: The Road to Full Inclusion","“We Thrive: Health for Justice, Justice for Health” Shared language around the experience of disability is a starting point for having increased choices in the world. It also helps ensure people with disabilities are respected for who they are as people. Practice and policy must shift to become person centered. Disability is a core justice issue, but people with disabilities are often an afterthought where social justice is concerned. Unless you have a disability or a relationship with a person who has a disability, the barriers to full inclusion may not be immediately visible; but inherent bias and a lack of engagement of people with disabilities have led to separate, segregated service models that continue to isolate people with disabilities from the community and their typical peers. The “invisibility” of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities to typical citizens has long been a marker for potential abuse and neglect. 1Disability cuts across all segments of society. Even though an estimated sixty one million American adults have a disability and about seven million Americans have intellectual and developmental disabilities , the challenges faced by people with disabilities remain largely hidden from view, and systems of support are often lacking. 2 Opportunity exists to build neurodiversity and disability into justice conversations. 3 A recent study showed that 90 percent of companies had diversity priorities, but only 4 percent factored in disability. 4 Certainly, the conversation about diversity, equity, and inclusion is not a new one in the nonprofit sector. Increased consideration for “accessibility” is gaining traction as DEIA reflects issues of ableism and sanism. 5 It also signals greater attention and investment from nonprofit and other leaders. Broadly speaking, equity and inclusion initiatives have increased in prominence in the nonprofit sector in the wake of the movement against anti Black racism, thanks to the activist efforts of the Movement for Black Lives and Black Lives Matter keeping antiracist work front and center. According to Nonprofit HR’s 2021 Nonprofit Diversity Practices report, Black Lives Matter “responses” inspired 63 percent of 675 North American organizations to make “adjustments to prioritize/reprioritize diversity objectives, programs and/or initiatives. ”6 Of the surveyed organizations, 28 percent also reported that they planned to increase or had increased their diversity budget. 7 However, only 6 percent had provided “ability centered training. ”8The structural exclusion and underfunding of disability programs create troubling outcomes that appear at each life stage for people with disabilities. 9 Special education funding through the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act has not progressed alongside existing needs. 10 In 2020, Congress funded only 13. 2 percent of its 40 percent contribution leaving states and local districts on the hook for $24 billion in costs. 11 Like so much in the disability sector, service funding varies across individual states and becomes an annual advocacy charge to maintain or even meet the status quo. 12 A justice lens begins with putting the person first when referring to the experience of disability: a person with developmental disabilities; a person who resides in a group home. It’s about acknowledging the experience of disability for a person rather than using a diagnosis to define a person’s personality, interests, or goals. When possible, consider not referring to the disability at all and just tell the story. Language goes to deeper issues that tie to visibility and the systemic exclusion of people with a disability. Some people live independently, in supportive apartments, in group homes, or with their families. How people with disabilities process and engage with the world is as varied as the human experience itself. ",3,https://nonprofitquarterly.org/person-first-disability-second-the-road-to-full-inclusion/,FALSE, 510,"After Disability Awareness, What’s Next?"," After disability awareness …“Disability Awareness” has never felt more necessary right now and at the same time pitifully inadequate. Take for example the disability community’s recurring negative reactions to recent Center for Disease Control statements and recommendations. Disabled and chronically ill people have many substantive problems with the CDC’s actual policy of late. But the situation has been made even worse by the way they have been communicated, by the CDC itself and by its Director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky. A lot of the distrust is specific to the pandemic. Some of it might be unavoidable. But some more broad lessons are certainly there to be learned. In particular, it has become clearer than ever that simply mentioning disabled people demonstrating “awareness” of them isn’t enough. Disability awareness is necessary, but not sufficient. But in professional, academic, and corporate cultures it tends to be treated like a one time inoculation, or a to do list box to be checked off. Busy people with scores of intense responsibilities may understandably want to be able to “take care of” an emerging constituency like the disabled community with something simple, like disability awareness. But awareness is only the first step in a rich and complex array and continuum of disability thinking and understanding. What else is there? What are some possible next steps after basic disability awareness?Disability awareness tells people that it’s time to stop using offensive disability slurs, like “retarded,” and to update formerly approved but now outdated words, like “handicapped,” to “disabled” or “person with a disability. ”A next step might be to move towards identity first phrasing, like “disabled person” or “autistic person. ” Better yet, ask the disabled person what disability terms they prefer and respect their preference without lecturing them. Disability awareness says don’t stare at disabled people, but don’t look away or avoid them either. And disability awareness tends to suggest that it’s okay to ask a disabled person questions, because that shows you aren’t afraid of them. A more nuanced and flexible approach is even better. In most situations, interact with disabled person as you would anyone else, until you get clear indication from the person that they need or want you to do something different to accommodate their disability. But don’t ask a disabled person personal questions about their disability unless you are a close friend or relative, or have a specific professional need to ask. Don’t expect every disabled person you meet to “educate” you about disability. Some disabled people are happy to do that. It’s a kind of personal mission for them. But many if not most prefer to just get on with their day, and don’t appreciate being pressured to offer free labor the effort it takes to teach a random stranger how to treat disabled people with respect. Disability awareness calls for businesses and other organizations to learn about and comply with accessibility standards, like those in the Americans with Disabilities Act, as well as state and local codes. Since access barriers are still far too common, decades after accessibility standards have been in place, compliance would certainly be a plus. But mere compliance is literally “the least we can do. ” Accessibility standards are starting points. To move beyond disability awareness, aim for maximum ease of unassisted use and access for everyone not the just minimum needed to avoid a lawsuit. And ask disabled people and their organizations for advice on making buildings and online services accessible and user friendly. To provide better service to people with disabilities especially employees and students disability awareness emphasizes learning about and following the “reasonable accommodation” guidelines in the Americans with Disabilities Act. The standard approach for organizations has been to set clear policies for applying for and evaluating disabled people’s requests for accommodations. And the responsibility to accommodate disabled people has been understood to be limited to what is easy and inexpensive to provide. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2022/02/28/after-disability-awareness-whats-next/?sh=1dba646f7297,FALSE, 512,Why billions in Medicaid funds for people with disabilities are being held up," Lauren Weber Andy Miller From The American Rescue Plan Act that President Biden signed into law increased funding to Medicaid, but delays and red tape have kept several states from claiming much of the cash almost a year later. Doug Mills/ Images hide caption The American Rescue Plan Act that President Biden signed into law increased funding to Medicaid, but delays and red tape have kept several states from claiming much of the cash almost a year later. Matthew Southern, 35, who has intellectual and developmental disabilities, is able to stay out of an institution because health aides paid through a Medicaid program assist him and his roommate with ordinary tasks. But amid a worker shortage worsened by the pandemic, Southerns father, Dan, has had to step in to fill in gaps in his sons care by volunteering at their home 45 minutes away from his northwestern Atlanta suburb. He blames the low pay across the industry. No one wants to work for $12 an hour, Dan Southern said. People can work at Burger King and make more money. Last year brought an injection of hope: The federal government, through the American Rescue Plan Act that President Joe Biden signed into law in March 2021, increased funding with a 10 percentage point match that could amount to some $25 billion in federal money for Medicaid home and community based services, which have long faced staffing crunches. That massive infusion of cash could be used by states to buttress wages, move people off waiting lists for disability services, train more workers, or expand covered services for vulnerable elderly and disabled people, helping to keep them out of nursing homes. But almost a year later, Indiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Ohio and Washington were among 19 states as of Feb. 17 yet to receive the conditional approval needed from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to fully access the money. Over half of states 28 of them received such approval in 2022, according to CMS. Thats more than nine months after the relief package was signed into law. California, for example, received its conditional approval Jan. 4. Other states have their own red tape and are waiting for legislative or other approvals, Kaiser Health News found by querying all state Medicaid offices. We all would have liked to see the money out sooner, said Damon Terzaghi, a senior director at ADvancing States, a national membership association for state aging and disabilities agencies. Bureaucracy is what it is. Daniel Tsai, director of the CMS Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services, said that this infusion of federal aid was a life changing amount of funding, and that CMS staffers were doing everything they could alongside states to move forward as quickly as possible. Tsai also pointed out that the states partial approval from CMS, which theyve all received, allows them to access some of the money. But some states such as Kansas and Wyoming have been reluctant to do so without full approval. Others bemoaned the slow federal process. The Medicaid disbursement process contrasts sharply with the distribution of relief dollars through Medicare channels to hospitals, said Connie Garner, national public policy adviser for Easterseals, a health care provider for people with disabilities. Garner said the typical back and forth in the federal state Medicaid partnership is part of the reason for the delay, as well as states desire to spend the massive amount of cash wisely. But funding is needed now, she said. Needed care cant wait, she said. A 2021 survey by the American Network of Community Options and Resources, an advocacy group for providers that support those with intellectual and developmental disabilities, found that because of staffing shortages, more than three quarters of service providers were turning away new referrals, more than half were discontinuing programs and services, and the vast majority were struggling with recruitment and retention of staff. ",3,https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2022/03/02/1083792436/why-billions-in-medicaid-funds-for-people-with-disabilities-are-being-held-up,FALSE, 514,Don't be scared to talk about disabilities. Here's what to know and what to say," Thomas Lu Sylvie Douglis Lets start with some numbers. More than 1 billion people nearly 15% of the worlds population experience some form of disability. In the United States alone, about 61 million, or 1 out of every 4 adults, live with at least one disability. So its probably safe to say that you know someone with a disability or might be disabled yourself. To be clear, these disabilities may not be physical or even visible: they could be learning, developmental or intellectual disabilities, or mental or chronic illness, to name a few. But as common as disability is, not many people know how to talk about disability or how to interact with disabled people. To so many people, [disability] remains a mystery, this very scary and overwhelming topic, says disability rights activist and writer Emily Ladau. We dont talk about it. We ignore it. We shy away from it. We hide it away. But thats not what we should do when it comes to disability, because its just something thats part of what makes people who they are. In her book Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to be an Ally, Ladau shares thoughts on how both nondisabled and disabled people can collectively make the world a more inclusive and accessible place. Emily Ladau is a disability rights advocate, speaker and the author of Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally. Left: Ten Speed Press; Right: Rick Guidotti hide caption Ladau, a wheelchair user with multiple disabilities, points out that there isnt a single story of the disabled experience. She says, while it isnt disabled peoples responsibility to educate people without disabilities about the nuances of living with a disability, progress is made through dialogue. I believe that offering honest and sincere guidance and conversation remains a key part of the path forward for the disability. Thats how progress has been made by the powerhouse disability activists who have come before me. Its how we will continue forward, she writes. We talked with Ladau about the sorts of guidance she would give to someone – disabled or not – who wants to be a better ally and help destigmatize disability in America. Disability is a natural part of the human experience, says Ladau. Theres no singular experience of what it means to be disabled, and theres certainly nothing inherently bad or shameful about being disabled or having a disability. So the words disabled or disability? Use them. They are not bad words. Ladau defines ableism as attitudes and actions that devalue someone on the basis of their disability. It exists in many different forms and places. Ableism can be as small as someone asking about your disability by saying, Whats wrong with you? or as big as a lack of accessible public transportation that provides a disabled person a means to access employment, education or even healthcare. Detail from the cover of Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally by Emily Ladau. Tyler Feder/Ten Speed Press hide caption Detail from the cover of Demystifying Disability: What to Know, What to Say, and How to Be an Ally by Emily Ladau. There is no one disabled community. As Ladau says, If youve met one disabled person, then youve met one disabled person. Every person with a disability has a unique experience with their own disability. Within Ladaus family, for instance, she, her mom and uncle have the same rare genetic disability. But for each of them, the disability manifests and impacts them differently. One persons experience may inform another persons, but no singular experience reflects that of the entire community. ",3,https://www.npr.org/2022/02/18/1081713756/disability-disabled-people-offensive-better-word,TRUE, 515,3 Disability Microaggressions And Why They Matter,"What are disabled people supposed to make of everyday ableist talk? Should they brush it off as just annoying, but predictable comments from people who should probably know but usually don’t? Or, is there more to casual ableism than irritation? And how hard should non disabled people work to avoid it? Does it really matter? Ableism isn’t words alone, but it isn’t just actions either. Ableist talk matters the language, conversational habits, and ideas that intentionally or not, sadden, frustrate, and anger disabled people. The somewhat contested term “microaggressions” happens to serve very well in this case to label and describe the effects of ableist talk. Many are small offenses by themselves. But their effects can be huge and harmful when accumulated gradually over a lifetime living with disabilities. Though sometimes meant well, they can still feel like attacks, and leave as lasting an imprint as any physical act of aggression. Here is a look at three of the most common types of microaggressions disabled people have to deal with in everyday communication. First, there are the words nobody should use, like: “retarded” or “retard,” “moron” or “idiot. ” Then there’s outdated terminology like “handicapped,” and well meaning but off putting euphemisms like “differently abled,” “special needs,” and “mentally / physically challenged. ” There’s unnecessarily negative phrasing like “wheelchair bound,” “confined to a wheelchair,” and “suffers from. ” And there’s the ongoing debate within the disability community itself over whether to say “person with a disability” or “disabled person. ” While these examples aren’t all equally despised or controversial, they all have the potential to put off or offend any particular disabled person. Why people use these words …Even the most insulting and now virtually taboo disability related words and phrases were mostly at one time considered more or less accurate, if not entirely neutral. In fact, quite a lot of the terminology that grates on disabled people today was originally crafted to be empowering or less “negative. ” But, disability language never stops evolving. At the moment, it’s moving mostly away from overwrought and fussy euphemisms once considered “politically correct,” like “person with a disability” and “special needs,” towards simpler and more widely defined use of “disability” and “disabled. ” So while some words are clearly insulting and off limits, others may be more fairly thought of as merely off base and unfortunate. What it feels like …Hearing offensive terminology hurts. Hearing outdated terminology can be a clue about the speaker’s level of understanding about disability. Hearing cheery euphemisms feels nauseating and condescending. And it’s all tiring for disabled people who hear troubling terminology like this constantly. Even the least picky disabled person can’t escape at least some annoyance from ableist speech. Why it matters …Language both reflects thinking about disability, and shapes it. The words and phrases people use to talk about disability signal what they may be thinking whether or not that reading is always accurate and over time channels their thinking about disability in certain directions. Language practices also help answer an important question. Are disabled people to be viewed as gross and contemptible, or vulnerable and sad or simply another segment of the population with more or less equal standing, and with no inherent emotional baggage to be overly concerned about? Language and speech habits offer clues and nudges in certain directions, good or bad. The most common example of condescension is the habit some people can’t seem to break, of speaking to disabled people of any age like they are immature children. It’s using an uncharacteristically soft, slow, high pitched, cooing voice when speaking to disabled youth and adults. But it’s not just about tone of voice. It’s also the assumption that disabled people are less self aware, less able to know and manage their own needs, less able to understand things.  ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2022/02/26/5-disability-microaggressions-and-why-they-matter/?sh=1f0b95fb7e17,FALSE, 517,Social Security Disability Insurance: Who can apply for this benefit?,"The US government provides assistance to people with disabilities through their Social Security Disability Insurance scheme, in the event they meet certain requirements. To get this benefit, however, your medical condition should meet Social Securitys strict definition of disability. Meanwhile, in order to be eligible to apply for SSDI you should also have worked under Social Security. This monthly benefit is received by those who are unable to work for a year or more due to their medical condition. The US government makes clear through their official website that people with partial disability or short term disability are not eligible for the payments. Benefits usually continue until you can work again on a regular basis, reads the Social Security release. There are also several special rules, called work incentives, that provide continued benefits and health care coverage to help you make the transition back to work. If you are receiving SSDI benefits when you reach full retirement age, your disability benefits automatically convert to retirement benefits, but the amount remains the same. You qualify for the benefit in the event that you cant work and engage in substantial gainful activity because of your disability. Meanwhile, you can enter into the Social Security Disability Insurance scheme if your condition has lasted or is expected to last for at least one year or to result in death. This is a strict definition of disability, explains Social Security. Social Security program rules assume that working families have access to other resources to provide support during periods of short term disabilities, including workers compensation, insurance, savings and investments. ",3,https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/us-news/2022/02/14/620a3558ca47419f4f8b4598.html,FALSE, 519,People with disabilities get career boosts thanks to Moffitt Cancer Center and MacDonald Training Center,"Cadajah Brooks finally has a job. A really good one, too, making sure hospital rooms at the Moffitt Cancer Center are clean and perfect for patients. I just love it, said the woman with special needs. Sometimes Ill talk to the patients, ask them how they feel. Make them smile. Brooks learned and earned the job thanks to a groundbreaking partnership between Moffitt and Tampas award winning MacDonald Training Center, which gives people with all disabilities a big employment boost for jobs in technology, manufacturing, healthcare and hospitality. Moffitt funded, designed, and outfitted a Skill and Simulation Lab at MacDonald that allows students to learn necessary facets of environmental services. This eMerge Career Collaborative gives students with special needs the chance to earn a living wage and gain more independence. It also works toward shattering misconceptions. When you give someone with a disability the equal opportunity to succeed in life, contribute to society and care about others, they always will, said Karenne Levy, president and CEO of MacDonald Training Center. ",3,https://www.abcactionnews.com/money/angies-list/health/people-with-disabilities-get-career-boosts-thanks-to-moffitt-cancer-center-and-macdonald-training-center,TRUE, 521,A quadriplegic lawyer's 3 best tips for career success for others with disabilities: 'I'm a big believer in living with adventurous wheels'," In 2004, a surfing accident left Josh Basile with a severe spinal cord injury and permanent paralysis at age 18. Though his life was forever changed, Basile continued to chase his dreams and graduated magna cum laude from law school. Basile, now a lawyer, philanthropist, disability rights advocate, and community relations manager for web accessibility company accessiBe, has worked tirelessly to promote web accessibility and be a leader in the disability community. From fighting for the catastrophically injured in court, to inventing an inclusive sport called Slingshot Golf, to founding a nonprofit for others with spinal cord injuries, Basile has seen immense success throughout his career. CNBC Make It spoke with Josh Basile to discuss three tips for others with disabilities trying to achieve career success:Find somebody that is doing something well and learn from their experiences, says Basile. Gaining insight from others who share similar circumstances can be useful for those unsure of their future potential after a traumatic injury. Follow in someones tracks because so much in the working world is figuring out what not to do, he told CNBC Make It. Analyze what mistakes to avoid and let that guide you in the right direction. Basile credits mentorship for providing him with motivation early on in his paralysis journey. My mentors taught me that life goes on in beautiful ways and that I could still wheel after my goals and dreams with purpose. They showed me what was possible and gave me the confidence to fight and advocate for a better future. Mentorship has been proven to be beneficial in the workplace, according to a 2020 study from Guider, a career development company. According to the study, 87% of mentees feel like their mentoring relationships gave them a sense of empowerment and boosted their self confidence. People with mentors are also promoted 5 times more than those without them. According to Basile, your personal and professional success will largely be influenced by recognizing the worth of your contributions. Too often persons with disabilities are thought of as charity. And that is so far from the truth. Basile says. Theres such great value in your unique voice, skills, and talents. Businesses need you. Being able to articulate your strengths and fully contribute at work takes confidence. Believing in yourself not only helps you rise to the occasion but also shows others what youre capable of despite having a disability.  Basile is proud to share that his self confidence has not only given him career success, but hes also expecting a baby boy in March. Theres a popular saying that goes life begins at the end of your comfort zone. Being adventurous as someone with a disability can be extremely nerve wracking, especially when theres still so much room for improvement in accessibility and inclusivity. However, Basile reassures that there are so many opportunities open to you if you just have the willingness to try. I have proactively stepped out of my comfort zone by partnering with accessiBe to help raise awareness, both online and through the media, about the importance of web accessibility, and what it truly means for people with disabilities and businesses of all sizes, he says. Im a big believer in living with adventurous wheels. The outside world can be very scary, but youre going to end up finding out that there is so much life to be lived. Basile also says that putting yourself out there is also beneficial to the disability community as a whole. Once youre out there, not only are you improving your quality of life, but youre also starting to change the narrative of the world around you. You start teaching people around you about the value and importance of having workers with disabilities at all levels of business, not just at the entry level. Youre helping create a better world. Check out: 77% of workers with disabilities say their employer has done a better job supporting them since the pandemic started43% of employees say they have little opportunity for mobility at work38% of women in tech plan on leaving their job within the next 2 years heres why",3,https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/06/quadriplegic-lawyer-shares-3-tips-for-success-as-a-person-with-disabilities.html,TRUE, 522,Why technology accessibility is key for disability inclusion at work," Technology, like video conferencing tools and online messaging systems, has gained prominence in workplaces across the country, especially during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic as many businesses have switched to remote and hybrid models. In fact, more than half of U. S. workers rely on technology to complete their jobs. For workers with disabilities, tools for accessibility, like screen readers and subtitles for video meetings, are extremely important and necessary for workplace inclusion. 2021 was a prominent year for DE&I efforts across businesses nationwide, as 77% of workers with disabilities say their employer has done a better job supporting them since the pandemic started. But there is still progress to be made, and technology accessibility is a great place to start.  For quadriplegic lawyer and community relations manager, Josh Basile, accommodations in tech have been life changing. I was injured back in 2004. We didnt have the technology and the scalable solutions that we have today to make the internet more accessible. And watching how our technology has advanced and evolved, I see more and more independence for myself, he tells CNBC Make It. Technology, like AI powered applications on websites, gives me another way of being able to access the world around me and be included. According to The Employer Assistance and Research Network, a resource hub for workplace disability inclusion, technology accessibility means tools that can be used successfully by people with a wide range of abilities and disabilities. This allows everyone in the workplace to interact with different systems and programs in a way that best suits their needs and capabilities.  Basile, who is a community relations manager at accessible, a web accessibility hub, says that technology accessibility in the workplace has allowed him to be more efficient and refined. Its incredible what you can do with the right technology or the right accommodations, he says. Its created an even playing field in many ways. It allows you the opportunity to contribute at your highest level. And, over the years, its helped me continue to improve my output and contribution in the workplace. For example, Basile uses a QuadStick, a mouth operated controller, to surf the web and edit word documents with his voice. There are tools like AI powered solutions that can create customizable experiences for different disabilities, he says. So its not just for persons that are paralyzed or that are blind. Its also for people that have cognitive disabilities like ADHD and epilepsy. EARN lists several areas where companies may need to improve their technology accessibility efforts, including email and other electronic correspondence; self contained products like calculators, printers, and copying machines; and software applications and operating systems. Promoting inclusion through accessibility is proven to have several benefits for businesses. Not only does it increase productivity and boost corporate image, but it also aids in employee retention and recruitment. A recent Adobe study found that, amongst millennials with and without a disability, almost 3 in 4 say that accessibility and inclusivity are deciding factors in evaluating a job opportunity.  Basile looks at it as a domino effect. Disability employment is becoming more attainable and less complicated. And youre having more people, as theyre entering the workforce with a disability, have success stories, and then all of a sudden, other people are saying if Josh can do it, I can do it, too. Check Out:77% of workers with disabilities say their employer has done a better job supporting them since the pandemic started43% of employees say they have little opportunity for mobility at work 35% of women who left or lost their jobs during the pandemic are still unemployed get",3,https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/26/why-technology-accessibility-is-key-for-disability-inclusion-at-work.html,TRUE, 523,Government ‘must tear up national disability strategy’ after high court defeat,"Disabled campaigners have called on the government to tear up its “fundamentally broken” National Disability Strategy, after the high court ruled that the much criticised document was unlawful. The high court found that a botched consultation had made it “impossible” for disabled people to “shape” the content of the strategy. Mr Justice Griffiths found this week that the consultation, launched early last year through a national survey, was unlawful because the thousands of disabled people who took part were not given enough information about the government’s proposed strategy to allow them “intelligent consideration and response”. The government had argued that the survey was just an information gathering exercise, but the court had heard how the Disability Unit’s own website listed the survey at the time as an “Open Consultation”, while it was hosted on the unit’s “Consultation Hub”, with the promise that responses would inform the strategy’s development. The court also found that the survey’s multiple choice format, and the word limit on the small number of questions that allowed free form responses, “did not allow for a proper response even to the issues canvassed in the Survey”. Because the court has found that the consultation was unlawful, so is the strategy, which was published last July. It is not yet clear what action the government will take following the ruling, although a spokesperson said it was considering its next steps. Doug Paulley , one of the four disabled campaigners who took the judicial review* against work and pensions secretary Therese Coffey, said it was “entirely clear” that the consultation had not been “fit for purpose”. He called on the government to withdraw its “fundamentally broken” national strategy and “start afresh with disabled people’s organizations and disabled people at the heart of it, as they always should have done”. He said: “What I would hope for is they would actually go to DPOs and disabled people and do a proper consultation and focus on what disabled people actually want, which is enforceable and genuine rights. “What I think they will actually do is appeal the judgement. ”But he said the judgement meant there was “a very clear ruling that the strategy is now unlawful and will remain so until something is done”. One of the four claimants, disabled activist Miriam Binder , died last month, and her family said today that they were “incredibly proud” of the part she had played in the legal victory. Her daughters said in a statement: “It is a bittersweet moment for us as a family that our mum is not here to see this, but mum didn’t do this for just herself, she took on this fight for every disabled person in the UK. “We are so incredibly proud of her and her courage. “She has always been a stalwart campaigner for justice, particularly for disability rights and equality. “We are elated with the judgement and hope this makes a difference to the lives of those living with a disability. “This is an extremely fitting bequest and we take comfort in the knowledge that she made a difference. ”In depth analysis of the government’s strategy by Disability News Service after it was published last summer showed it had been padded out with scores of pledges to “discuss” or “consider” further action, to commission lengthy research, and to carry out reviews of existing policies. At the time, Inclusion London called it “a cynical re packaging of current polices and current budgets”, while the DPO Forum England, a network of many of the country’s leading DPOs, said it had ignored bold action on increasing benefit levels, supporting inclusive education, combating the disability employment gap, increasing accessible housing, and reforming social care. ",3,https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/government-must-tear-up-national-disability-strategy-after-high-court-defeat/,FALSE, 524,New Guidance About COVID-19 and Disability Under the Americans with Disabilities Act," As we enter the third year of the COVID 19 pandemic, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has updated its Guidance about when COVID 19 is considered a disability and would then qualify a person for the protections pursuant to the Americans with Disabilities Act . This supplements Guidance from the Department of Health and Human Services about whether Long COVID is a disability under the ADA. The guidance, released in December 2021, is clear that contracting COVID 19 is not automatically considered a disability. Rather, the symptoms of COVID 19 that resolve in a few weeks with no additional consequences are specifically NOT considered disabilities. In fact, the EEOC Guidance says that the disability analysis is exactly the same for COVID as it is for any other possibly disabling condition. The EEOC also states that a person who has experienced COVID 19 and fulfills the criteria, below, can be regarded as an individual with a disability. The analysis to determine if COVID 19 has resulted in a disability is as follows:The truly helpful aspects of the new EEOC Guidance are the examples. For instance, the following are considered ADA qualifying COVID 19 disabilities:Examples offered that are NOT considered COVID related disabilities under the ADA are symptoms that resolve within a few weeks, such as:Despite the nearly two year wait for the EEOC to provide Guidance about the interplay between the ADA and COVID 19, no new analysis was provided. The standard disability analysis should be used anytime a situation is presented where the ADA may apply. To learn more about how this guidance affects the printing industry and what to expect in the future, join PRINTING United Alliance to gain access to the foremost experts in the space as well as to answer individual questions as it relates to your business operation. And, as COVID mandate changes are rapidly evolving, members can reach out to our expert Alliance staff for further questions on this, or other important matters: Marci Kinter, VP, Government & Regulatory Affairs: mkinter@printing. org; Gary Jones, Director, Environmental, Health and Safety Affairs: gjones@printing. org; and Adriane Harrison, VP, Human Relations Consulting: aharrison@printing. org. Follow the latest alerts on COVID 19 from the PRINTING United Alliance Government Affairs team online. This piece was originally published on printing. org. Adriane Harrison is Vice President, Human Relations Consulting at PRINTING United Alliance. Adriane assists members with a wide variety of HR matters involving statutes, regulations, policies, procedures, culture, and staffing, as well as the gamut of day to day HR issues. In addition, she supports professional development by conducting webinars, participating in panel discussions, and speaking at industry events on human resources issues. Currently, Adriane is the Chairperson of the Graphic Communications Workforce Coalition, a member of the Women in Print Alliance, and a founder of the Women’s Print Mentoring Network. Adriane received a journalism degree from the University of Illinois and a law degree from DePaul University in Chicago. As an attorney, Adriane practiced in both the public and private sectors. Her work was in the areas of Constitutional, commercial, securities, and criminal law. Adriane and her family live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.  In these unprecedented and uncertain times, PRINTING United Alliance and NAPCO Media are committed to providing the printing and visual communications industries with the most up to date resources on the ongoing COVID 19 situation. The staff is here to help you as we all weather this storm together. This webinar will examine how printing operations are adapting to changing conditions and enhancing customer value.  Back for its 38th year, this venerable list ranks the largest printing companies in the U. S. & Canada. Catch a glimpse into whos who in printing & the key trends impacting the graphic arts industry. ",3,https://www.piworld.com/post/guidance-covid-19-disability-under-americans-disabilities-act/,FALSE, 526,Self-Employment Can Be A Vital Method For Returning To Work After Disability," Self employment offers an unparalleled level of autonomy for people with disabilitiesThe COVID 19 pandemic has caused considerable turmoil in the American job market for nearly two years. Unemployment levels rose higher in just the first few months of the pandemic than over the first two years of the Great Recession, with low wage and low hour workers experiencing the majority of job losses and many economists drawing comparisons to the Great Depression of the 1930s. While the latest news about unemployment is encouraging, the persistence of the virus and its variants leave the future uncertain. If a silver lining is to be found, though, it may be in the radical increase in self employment that we have seen during the pandemic. With the rising necessity to switch from in person to remote work environments, employers are getting more comfortable with enlisting independent contractors. Hiring freelance workers presents a number of benefits for organizations, including the ability to more quickly onboard specialized talent as well as reduce the costs of full time employee retention. It’s not just employers who enjoy the benefits of self employed and freelance workers, though. There are many reasons people might give up their traditional 9 to 5 job in favor of working for themselves, either as a freelance worker or business owner. These are many of the same reasons that self employment may be appealing to men and women looking to get back into the workforce after leaving due to a medical condition or disability. Self employment offers an unparalleled level of autonomy for people with disabilities. Even the best, most employee centric companies often involve a hierarchy and corporate framework that can involve several levels of accountability and operational processes. Self employment allows for self management, letting you use and grow your skills and abilities naturally without the need to answer “up the ladder” within an employer environment.  When various governments and groups mandated lockdown protocols earlier in the pandemic, businesses that relied on employees to work in person had more complicated issues to resolve, while others were able to successfully pivot to remote/online connectivity. While we hopefully won’t have the same extent of limitations going forward, many employers are allowing workers, and particularly freelancers, the continued flexibility of not having to commute into an office. This can present a tremendous benefit for someone with a disability who has limited mobility. The concept of work life balance is getting increased attention among workers, and for a good reason. Everyone has their own personal lives and commitments that they tend to outside of a work environment, whether that is spending time with family members or participating in your favorite hobby. People with disabilities may have additional demands on their time, such as regularly scheduled meetings with medical providers, tests and screening appointments, and physical therapists, which could impact their ability to work a typical eight hour workday. One benefit of the self employed lifestyle is getting to set your own work hours that will allow you to be most productive and not conflict with other engagements, while still meeting the company’s business needs.  People who live with disabilities often have to deal with unfair stereotypes, stigma, and assumptions about their condition and abilities. These attitudinal barriers can unfortunately prove to be just as difficult to overcome as any practical limitations posed by their health condition. Self employment can bring a sense of self empowerment. The feeling of truly being in control of one’s life and being able to make real, tangible contributions to a team or workforce can have a significant positive impact on a person’s mental health and self image. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulamorgan/2022/01/24/self-employment-can-be-a-vital-method-for-returning-to-work-after-disability/?sh=59903d954f1a,FALSE, 529,Project aims to improve end of life care planning for people with learning disabilities," Improving end of life care planning for people with learning disabilities will be the focus of a new two year study that aims to produce a toolkit of guidance, approaches and resources, as well as staff training materials.  The research project has been commissioned to help staff in learning disability services support the estimated one million people living with learning disabilities in England, two thirds of which are based in residential care or supported living settings when reaching the end of their lives. It will be headed up by Professor Irene Tuffrey Wijne, learning disability and palliative care expert at Kingston and St George’s, and Dr Rebecca Anderson, research associate in the Centre for Health and Social Care Research, run jointly by the two universities. They will be supported by two researchers Richard Keagan Bull and Amanda Cresswell who have a learning disability. The project will also include leading experts and industry professionals from The Open University, The Mary Stevens Hospice, Voluntary Organisations Disability Group, and Dimensions and MacIntyre. Professor Tuffrey Wijne said: “Learning disability services support staff are at the frontline of end of life care provision and planning but are often unprepared for this, lacking confidence and knowledge. They’ve asked for help in knowing how to get these discussions and planning right for the people they support, as people with learning disabilities can find it hard to understand what is happening and are rarely involved in ensuring their end of life care is given according to their wishes and preferences. During the first six months of the study, The Open University will lead a review to find out what is known about end of life care planning with people with learning disabilities, and what approaches and resources are already available. The wider project team will also hold focus groups with people with learning disabilities, their families and professionals, asking them for their views and preferences. Working with a team of people with learning disabilities, family carers and healthcare staff, the project team will then select, and develop further, preferred approaches and resources identified as being most likely to work well with people with learning disabilities across a range of circumstances. MacIntyre and Dimensions will then evaluate these approaches in practice through a pilot project with around 30 people they support. ",3,https://www.learningdisabilitytoday.co.uk/new-study-to-improve-end-of-life-care-planning-for-people-with-a-learning-disability,FALSE, 530,"Mindset Matters: New Year, New Outlook On Mental Health And The Disability Economy As Central For Corporate Growth"," Pandemic fear psychology and anxiety of virus contagion or psychological fears of disease or . . . [+] contagious infections with 3D illustration elements. While a New Year is upon us, the world is once again dealing with another coronavirus surge. As many companies were preparing for the initial stages of their return to work strategy they are once again scrambling to figure out how to quickly adapt to this ever changing climate. Everyone throughout the corporate ecosystem from executives to employees is feeling a level of uneasiness causing a true mental disruption across their everyday lives. This variable of the unknown is continuing to lead to interference within one’s psyche and a decrease in organizational morale. Dealing with these challenges once again proves the point that corporate culture must engage in mental health and corporate well being strategies as a cornerstone for continued growth in the digital economy of the 21st Century where work life is in constant momentum and the questions of how and where we work is evolving in real time. This ever changing reality needs a champion to bridge the concerns around mental health with that of business life. Companies must find a more effective way to tackle the emotional rigidity that has beleaguered our world for almost two years by discovering a pathway towards emotional agility where individuals and organizations have more agency and control of their emotional needs and develop more effective ways to respond to both the fluctuations in the market and that of a changing business landscape. What has often been lacking in evaluating this burgeoning and diverse Disability Economy is the protean nature of its capabilities. The Disability Economy is not defined just by market segments, demographics, or even the spectrum of disabilities themselves, but rather even something more profound. It offers organizations a lens into creating a better understanding of a changing corporate environment and the needs of the individuals who serve them. It helps shape a business philosophy that leverages the lived experience of disability as a way of strategic thinking and assists in honing the skills of long range planners while providing leadership insights needed to transform the business design for the future ahead. In providing this framework, the philosophical arm of the Disability Economy can serve to amplify the needs of mental health and campaign for greater improvement across the corporate landscape that gets us to a place where we can be cognizant of the needs of others and how that has a tangible impact in the daily work environment. Psychologist Susan David in her book, Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change, and Thrive in Work and Life wrote that “Being emotionally agile involves being sensitive to context and responding to the world as it is right now. ” It is this very idea that is central to the ethos of the Disability Economy. As the world changes, culture changes, people you know change. Understanding emotional adaptability means knowing that things can change while having the capability to be able to work through it. The world as it is now will not be what it will be in the future nor is it what it was in the past. By being adaptable to ones surroundings means you can work through how the world is right now. It is essential to be able to be both empathetic and have the capacity to listen.  Organizational cultures are recognizing that there must be a new way of doing business. They are coming to the realization that the value of their business should always be about its people and being able to serve their needs is vital in these unpredictable times. Yet, the Disability Economy having evolved by the very nature of its roots sees the inextricable connection between taking care of the person as a whole and as Dr. David states “Recognize that life’s beauty is inseparable from its fragility. We’re young until we’re not. We’re healthy until we’re not. We’re with those until we’re not. ”",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathankaufman/2022/01/07/mindset-matters-new-year-new-outlook-on-mental-health-and-the-disability-economy-as-central-for-corporate-growth/?sh=70d18fb76313,TRUE, 531,77% of workers with disabilities say their employer has done a better job supporting them since the pandemic started," 2021 was a prominent year for DE&I efforts across businesses nationwide. Hybrid work not only helped with issues like workplace discrimination, but ushered in a more accessible environment for disabled workers.  According to a recent Adobe survey of 1,000 full time workers, part time workers, and students based in the U. S. including respondents with and without disabilities, employers have done a better job supporting disability needs, but improvements can be made to etiquette education, recruitment and retention. With 1 in 4 American adults identifying as disabled, according to the CDC, its important for employers to have policies and initiatives that prioritize and empower workers with disabilities. The start of the Covid 19 pandemic caused workplaces to be more intentional in creating workplace inclusivity, and many survey respondents noticed a major change. In fact, among people with disabilities, over three quarters say their workplace is doing a better job of supporting them , while a similar number of people say their co workers are considerate of their unique needs. But though progress has been made, there is still room for improvement. About 70% of respondents with disabilities rated their organizations disability etiquette training as fair, which indicates that improvements are needed. In addition, more training was embraced by others, with 77% of employees interested in learning more about the impact of mental wellness and how to work with diverse learning styles. The majority of survey respondents without a disability say they frequently or sometimes consider the accessibility needs of their coworkers with disabilities. However, the remaining 18% report that they rarely or never consider the accessibility needs of their coworkers.  Regardless of disability status, 84% of those surveyed feel co workers would benefit from workplace accessibility. According to EARN, the employer assistance and research network on disability inclusion, workplace accessibility isnt limited to just physical accessibility; it includes digitally accessible information and communication technology as well. Accessibility at work is also valuable for business owners.  Its not only people with disabilities who benefit from accessible workplaces. Accessible workplaces help businesses increase productivity; ensure a wider pool of talent can apply for, maintain and advance in employment; and expand their potential customer base, EARN says on their website. The majority of members of the disability community surveyed by Adobe say that accessibility and inclusivity benefits are a deciding factor in evaluating a job opportunity. Most millennials, with and without a disability, found these benefits particularly important, with 80% citing them as a major decision making factor. As Americans are increasingly quitting their jobs in the current Great Resignation, the pressure is on for employers to improve their initiatives to retain staff. Among people with disabilities, mental health support was a leading area of interest, with 73% identifying it as a major concern, compared to 33% of those without disabilities. Access to hybrid work was also a major deciding factor among employees, especially with the ongoing pandemic. Adobe found that 46% of the general population first look at a companies hybrid and remote work policies when deciding about an employment opportunity. This was even more favorable amongst the disability community, with 58% preferring remote and hybrid workplaces. Check out: These 3 women quit without another job lined up heres how they financially prepared35% of women who left or lost their jobs during the pandemic are still unemployed 43% of employees say they have little opportunity for mobility at work",3,https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/30/employers-better-supported-workers-with-disabilities-in-2021-but-still-can-improve.html,TRUE, 532,2022 New Years Resolutions For The Disability Community," 2022 New Year’s ResolutionsAs 2021 draws to a rather messy close, especially for people with disabilities, it’s time for another round of disability themed New Year’s Resolutions. Last year’s resolutions here were focused on disabled people’ s individual habits. This year, let’s look at resolutions for the disability community as a whole. There are scores of worthwhile goals. Here are a few that have the potential to make the most impact:Make sure any normalization of Covid doesn’t leave disabled and chronically ill people unacceptably vulnerable. The disability community started 2021 fighting for access to vaccination a fairly straightforward battle. We enter 2022 fighting just as hard, but against more complex and diffuse problemsThere may be no way now to completely eradicate Covid 19, or to fully protect the most medically and practically vulnerable among us from its effects. But it’s not out of the question that in 2022, we could do a better job not just with Covid itself, but how it affects the disability community. We can do this by squarely confronting the now familiar matrix of pandemic problems specifically affecting disabled and chronically ill people, including substantial overlap with the elderly. These familiar problems for us. But they are much too often forgotten or misunderstood by our nondisabled neighbors, government leaders, and even scientific experts. Higher risk and vulnerabilityMany of us have medical conditions that make it more likely we will catch Covid, and that if we do, our risk of serious illness or death is higher even if we are fully vaccinated. Many of us also live in practical situations like living in congregate care facilities or having retail jobs that can’t be done from home that limit our ability to protect ourselves. Inadequate access to preventative measuresEven now, there are people with disabilities who face accessibility barriers to vaccination. This includes “homebound” people, those who lack adequate transportation, and people who have extra difficulty navigating web based registration systems. For some disabled people, like people with lung diseases or autism, even wearing a mask really can be too difficult. Onus on disabled people to protect ourselvesAs the already shaky commitment to society wide pandemic prevention erodes even further, a consensus could develop that those of us at highest risk should be solely responsible for protecting ourselves. We will need to fight hard to maintain some semblance of social responsibility with Covid, so disabled and chronically ill people aren’t left completely on our own, and forced to essentially hide from our fellow citizens who decide they are “done with Covid. ”We need to resolve now that by the end of 2022, we will substantially reduce risk, illness, and death rates from Covid 19, specifically for people with disabilities and chronic illnesses. And we need to ensure that disabled and chronically ill people aren’t the only people forced to isolate ourselves because everyone else has forgotten or minimized the danger.  Maintain or increase disabled voter participation. Earlier this year, disability voting researchers at Rutgers University found that 2020 voting rates for people with disabilities in the U. S. rose substantially, thanks in part to more methods of casting a vote being made easily available as a pandemic measure. Can we maintain this progress? Can we finally close the persistent voting participation gap between people with and without disabilities? There are a few things we can at least try to do as we approach the November 2022 Midterm Elections. First, we can make easier access to mail in voting and a variety of other methods more permanent. Mail in ballots alone don’t solve all disabled people’s voting accessibility problems. But along with more accessible polling sites and machines, and early voting opportunities, voting by mail makes voting easier for everyone, especially people with disabilities for whom voting in the traditional manner is often inherently more difficult. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2021/12/31/2022-new-years-resolutions-for-the-disability-community/?sh=29321f423c88,TRUE, 533,Unintentional discrimination’ at the heart of disability lawsuit against California community college district," In a case some say could have a profound impact on disabled students’ rights, California’s largest community college district is planning to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court a case centered on blind students’ access to textbooks, handouts and other classroom materials in a format they can understand. Arguing that federal disability rights laws don’t cover unintentional discrimination, the Los Angeles Community College District board of trustees has announced it would ask the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a lower court’s ruling in favor of the students. But in hopes of settling the case before it reaches the high court, the board also plans to ask for a 60-day extension to allow negotiations to continue. The deadline for the extension is Jan. 3. The Americans with Disabilities Act, enacted in 1990, protects people with disabilities — including those enrolled in college — from discrimination. Read more about the ADA and the plaintiffs’ complaint against Los Angeles Community College:Americans with Disabilities ActPlaintiffs’ complaint against Los Angeles Community College DistrictRuling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit“(We’re directing our attorneys) to engage immediately in negotiations to identify a constructive and mutually beneficial resolution to successfully resolve the matter,” said board President Gabriel Buelna. “The district is committed to diversity, equity, inclusion and access for all students, especially those with disabilities or other needs, to pursue their higher education.”The case stems from a 2017 lawsuit brought by two blind students, Roy Payan and Portia Mason, who claimed the district did not provide important academic materials, such as algebra textbooks and syllabi, in an audio or Braille format. The result was that the students could not complete classes required to transfer to a four-year college. Some blind students had to wade through years of bureaucratic delays to obtain materials in a suitable format, while others had to hire tutors to read the material aloud. Other students just gave up and dropped out, said Patricia Barbosa, an attorney representing the plaintiffs. Even worse, Barbosa said, the district assigned blind students who were unable to take math classes into a class they had even less ability to participate in: film. The district did not immediately explain why this happened.“Education is a magic bullet for people who are disabled. It allows them to get out of poverty, gain independence, move their lives forward,” Barbosa said. “The whole purpose of the community college district is to offer an education to marginalized people. In this case, they did not do that.”Under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, colleges, employers and other organizations must provide the same opportunities and rights to disabled people as they do to nondisabled people. For blind students enrolled in college, that means classroom materials must be in Braille or a digital format that can convert to audio. Colleges typically have offices dedicated to helping disabled students obtain whatever extra help they need. But at Los Angeles Community College, help was not always available, Payan said. He tried taking algebra four or five times, he said, with no success. Most instructors said they couldn’t convert handouts to audio-friendly files because they didn’t know how. When Payan requested an audio version of the textbook, an administrator said the textbook company wouldn’t provide it because the college didn’t have enough blind students to make it worthwhile. One of Payan’s math instructors proposed enlarging the type on handouts.“I said, ‘You can make it the size of a car, I still can’t see it,’” said Payan, who’s been blind for more than a decade. Payan ended up hiring a tutor to read the algebra material aloud. He passed the class, which allowed him to transfer to California State University, Los Angeles, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in public administration. He’s now a doctoral student at the University of Southern California studying public policy.",3,https://edsource.org/2021/unintentional-discrimination-at-the-heart-of-disability-lawsuit-against-california-community-college-district/665076,FALSE, 534,Disability: An Identity That All Can Share,"Author, filmmaker, and disability policy strategist Day Al Mohamed. International Day of Persons with Disabilities is December 3, and we have daily reminders of how inclusiveness in society has benefited all. The day is recognized and celebrated by a myriad of nations. It was first proclaimed by the United Nations as an annual observance in 1992, with the goal to promote “an understanding of disability issues and mobilize support for the dignity, rights and well being of persons with disabilities. ”In early December, I always see blog posts and memes in the disability community about this but it doesn’t seem to be very visible and I find myself wondering, why not? Is it because most people just don’t know? Disability is a huge part of American society. There are more than 61 million people with disabilities living in the United States today. That is 1 in 4 adults. Someone you know absolutely has a disability. Day Al Mohamed and guide dog Gamma. “Disability is an inescapable element of human existence and experience. Although it is rarely acknowledged as such, it is also a fundamental aspect of human diversity. ” But what does that mean? What does having a disability look like? It seems like such a simple question but there are so many descriptions and definitions of what a disability is. It varies by country and culture, and even by individual organizations/agencies. In fact, the US Federal government alone, has more than 60 different definitions of disability! The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health defines disability as having three dimensions: As for what disability looks like…well, a person with a disability can look like anyone else. Disability exists on a continuum. Two people with the same type of disability can be affected in very different ways. Not to mention disabilities that may be hidden or not easy to see. Disability is one of the only identities that can happen to anyone at any time. This means when you get a concussion and afterward you have trouble processing – you’ve got a disability; when your grandma needs a walker – she’s got a disability; when your friend develops diabetes or has anxiety – they’ve got a disability. The truth is that disability is a natural part of the human condition. This is especially true when you consider aging and how technology has allowed us to live longer. More than 30% of Americans over age 65, and over 50% of those over age 75 have some kind of disability. I’m a history buff, and even I was surprised to learn that disability has been present from the very founding of America. Gouverneur Morris, one of the Founding Fathers and Penman of the Constitution, was an amputee! You might not recognize the name, but I am sure you will recognize some if his most famous and recognizable words: “We, the People, of these United States…”And he’s not the only one. Disability became much more visible nationally after the Civil War when nearly 300,000 soldiers from the Union Army alone returned home injured. Many could no longer work their farms or in the factories as they had before. From this new disabled population, the first comprehensive pension system for disabled veterans was born. There is a great rumor about the Veteran’s Pension Building in Washington, DC : that its stairs were built wide enough and shallow enough to allow disabled veterans to ride their horses up them to the Pension Office. I’m not sure if it is true, but it is a fun story. ",3,https://www.thirteen.org/blog-post/disability-identity-all-can-share/,TRUE, 535,Long-term disability? He said/she said fight leads to this result,"There was evidence to support both sides. Here’s why the scales tipped in favor of an employee seeking long term disability benefits.  A maintenance supervisor had long term disability insurance. His employer provided the insurance. The policy provided two years of benefits for claimants who could not perform their current jobs. Benefits continued beyond two years for claimants who could not perform any job. The employee left his job in July of 2016 due to lower back pain. He had back surgery two months later. The insurer cut benefits under the policy after two years. It said the employee could perform sedentary work. MRI results were “relatively mild,” the court said. But the employee’s doctor said he needed to avoid lifting, bending and prolonged sitting. The employee further noted that he successfully applied for Social Security disability benefits. Those benefits are available only to those who are not able “to engage in any substantial gainful activity. ”The insurer hired a doctor. The doctor said the employee could do sedentary work. And the insurer stood by its decision to deny the claim for extended benefits. The employee sued. He claimed that the denial violated ERISA. A lower court ruled in his favor. The insurer appealed. The U. S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed the lower court’s ruling. It upheld the finding that the employee could not work. The insurer pointed to evidence indicating an ability to work. That included its examining physician’s opinion that the employee could do sedentary work. The physician also said the employee engaged in “symptom magnification. ” The insurer also noted that the MRI results were mild. But that evidence had to be balanced against other evidence indicating that the employee could not do even sedentary work, the appeals court said. That evidence included the fact that the employee had successfully applied for Social Security disability benefits. Also, evidence from other health care professionals indicated he could not work. The employee’s own accounts of debilitating pain were also probative, the appeals court explained. There was evidence that the employee was not disabled. But there was also enough evidence to permit the lower court’s decision that he was, the appeals court ruled. The appeals court affirmed the lower court’s decision. ",3,https://www.hrmorning.com/news/long-term-disability/,FALSE, 536,"Disability action inadequate; must be strengthened by governor, lawmakers","At a time when state has billions of dollars in federal money plus state treasury receipts dramatically outperforming projections, the Wolf Administration is failing to fully address the collapse of the community system that provides critical services for people with intellectual disability and autism. The Administration’s actions may have tragic consequences for people with disabilities. Congress and the President have asked governors to rescue disability programs by increasing funding for the community system’s Direct Support Professionals. DSPs provide lifesaving, caring support for persons with disabilities, and this goal was a key element of the passage of the American Rescue Plan. It is also a vital provision of the pending Build Back Better legislation. Our Commonwealth has received money to achieve this goal, but doing so requires leadership by our Governor to use both the federal dollars and PA’s increasing revenues for this purpose. Instead of responding to the crisis, the Wolf Administration has presented a plan that fails on several fronts:· Fails to strengthen community services as required by federal law. · Fails to fund a wage that will hire enough skilled workers to operate community services. · Fails to offer a pathway to reduce an up to 60% turnover in community program staffing. · Fails to provide rates for sufficient staffing for programs serving people with medically and behaviorally complex issues. · Fails to restore service to 6,500 people who have lost supports in the last 18 months. · Fails to provide Equal Pay for Equal Work 30% less than state workers. · Fails to support the 5,000 people in crisis at this moment. PA requires community programs to provide the gold standard of quality supports. Providers are expected to hire people who can deliver mental health support; teach people how to obtain and hold jobs; administer medication; support people with severe behavioral challenges and medical fragility; be trained in first aid, CPR, and other life saving procedures; and work with a state bureaucracy that requires reams of documentation each day for every daily activity as well as all medical and behavioral events. Underfunding has resulted in a daily struggle to find qualified workers with prior training or understanding of people with disabilities. This challenge has a direct impact on the quality of services, and has resulted in significant additional training and education expenses for providers. In addition, 12,000+ people are now on endless waiting lists. 5,000+ people are in emergency status. 6,500+ people have lost services in the last 18 months. Families of people with disabilities, service providers, and DSPs join in asking the governor to fully fund the $541 million needed to begin salvaging this system. This is not a difficult concept. It is within reach. But first Governor Wolf must lead by revising disability rates to stop the further collapse of this system. The governor has repeatedly promised service providers that he would protect people with disabilities and their DSPs. We remain deeply disappointed in the actions to date. Our governor can either rescue people or leave them exposed to significant risk. We implore Governor Wolf to avoid the collapse of the intellectual disability system on his watch. Thousands of Pennsylvanians with disabilities depend on his leadership. Gary Blumenthal is the brother of an adult with significant challenges from autism. He has worked for over 40 years in the disability community as a Kansas state legislator, a federal official in the Clinton and Obama administrations and as vice president of InVision Human Services, with offices in Harrisburg, Reading and Wexford. ",3,https://www.sungazette.com/opinion/other-commentaries/2021/12/disability-action-inadequate-must-be-strengthened-by-governor-lawmakers/,FALSE, 537,"Covid Can Be a Disability Under Anti-Bias Law, EEOC Says (1)","Workers who contract Covid 19 can be protected from discrimination under the Americans with Disabilities Act, the U. S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said in new guidance Tuesday. Depending on each worker’s circumstances, the EEOC said, the virus can meet the ADA’s three definitions for a disability, which cover actual physical or mental impairments that substantially limit a major life activity, an employer’s perception that a worker has a disability, or the worker’s record of impairment. Someone who has Covid 19 and experiences multiple day headaches, dizziness, and brain fog attributed to the virus is an example of an impairment under the ADA. However, not every person with Covid 19 will qualify as disabled, the agency said. Employers must assess each employee individually to determine if they meet the appropriate standards, it said. If someone has Covid 19 but is asymptomatic or has mild symptoms like the flu that only lasts a few weeks with no other consequences, they wouldn’t qualify. The agency’s revised guidance expands on a September update that said workers suffering from “long haul” Covid 19 may be disabled under the ADA “in certain circumstances. ” The Health & Human Services and Justice departments said in July that long Covid can classify as a disability. There is no requirement for limitations from Covid 19 to last a particular length of time for someone to qualify under the ADA, the EEOC said. That includes if symptoms come and go. Impairments that result from getting Covid 19, such as a stroke that limits brain function, can be considered a disability under the ADA. It could be a potential violation of the ADA if an employer prevents an employee from returning to work once they are no longer infectious. “Like effects from other diseases, effects from COVID 19 can lead to a disability protected under the laws the EEOC enforces. Workers with disabilities stemming from COVID 19 are protected from employment discrimination and may be eligible for reasonable accommodations,” EEOC Chair Charlotte Burrows said in a statement. “There’s no changes to the law, it’s what we’ve been saying the whole time that Covid can be a disability,” said Eve Hill, board chair of the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, a disability law advocacy organization. Karla Grossenbacher, a partner at Seyfarth Shaw focused on labor and employment law, said there’s “nothing unexpected” in the guidance. “But it’s good to have confirmation that the analysis is what we thought it would be,” she said. Grossenbacher said this provides “clear guidance on how to analyze the issue” when an employee applies for accommodations based on Covid 19 and that the same traditional analysis applies for determining whether accommodations are necessary. “One of the things employers often don’t understand, if Covid aggravates another underlying preexisting condition, that condition can become a disability, even if it wasn’t before,” something the guidance addressed, said Hill, a partner at Brown Goldstein & Levy focused on civil rights law. “Everybody being on the same page is really useful,” Hill said.",3,https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/covid-can-be-a-disability-under-federal-anti-bias-law-eeoc-says-5,FALSE, 538,Mindset Matters: Reframing Entrepreneurship And Disability To Shape A New Business Culture," Author Adam Grant speaks during the Massachusetts Conference for Women . 2017 at the Boston Convention Center on December 7, 2017 in Boston, Massachusetts. During this Covid 19 pandemic, the world of business has had to redefine itself at a rapid pace. Moving from a centralized work environment to a remote reality has opened new pathways for opportunities by various means, among them are persons with disabilities. But despite the coronavirus being an accelerant to new ways of working, it is time to pivot once again to look at the larger tapestry of business culture and explore the arena of entrepreneurship which is the oxygen of emerging business culture. As the rules of work are changing moment to moment, the significance of entrepreneurship must once again be evaluated and seen through the new lens of a budding Disability Economy. This column is not about exploring specific entrepreneurs within the developing space, but rather how we can begin to think about entrepreneurship from a meta perspective and recognize that the developing Disability Economy is critical for the growth of entrepreneurship while providing an intersectional attitude across the larger business culture. In his book Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know, professor and writer Adam Grant wrote that “Intelligence is traditionally viewed as the ability to think and learn. Yet in a turbulent world, there’s another set of cognitive skills that might matter more: the ability to rethink and unlearn. ” It is these skills that will be critical in redefining how we think or reexamine disability in the context of the business culture of the 21st Century while realizing that entrepreneurs with disabilities can boldly stake their claim within the world at large. If true disruption of the rules of business is to take place, then we must learn how to think differently and embrace it is an essential tenant of the Disability Economy. By applying these ideas to a growing business lexicon, the world of disability entrepreneurship offers a new perspective around the future of work and invigorates some of the heavy liftings around changing the stigma that has often been hardwired into the traditional attitudes of the corporate culture. While the role of entrepreneurship serves as a vehicle to reassess perception, for the disabled entrepreneur it is an instrument of empowerment that shapes leaders, creates new opportunities, and expands the possibility for the growth of new industries while enhancing the very status of this community, and creating a gateway to compete in the global marketplace. To take the next steps of economic empowerment for persons with disabilities or even the evolution of the Disability Economy, there must be a way to clarify that the value of different needs is not about ‘otherness’, but rather expanding the vantage point through a lens of a diversity of thought that opens up a perspective for new opportunities that can have a significant influence across an ever changing economic landscape. As we begin to discuss a broader framework of disability entrepreneurship and its place in the Disability Economy, we must discuss another branch of thinking known as intrapreneurship which is based on the idea of behaving like an entrepreneur while working within the confines of larger corporations. Recognizing that a sea change is happening in the areas of diversity and inclusion, organizations like The Valuable 500, Purple Space, to The National Organization on Disability, Disability: IN, and numerous others are continuing to push to get disability to be acknowledged as vital stakeholders for corporate growth within an emerging digital economy. Yet to do this, there needs to be another step that is essential for not only putting the wheels in motion but allowing for lasting change. Intrapreneurship offers a mechanism for this to happen and creates an opportunity for employees with disabilities to amplify their narrative as a lynchpin that fosters greater innovation and creativity that leads toward a superior competitive advantage and increased economic growth. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathankaufman/2021/12/17/mindset-matters-reframing-entrepreneurship-and-disability-to-shape-a-new-business-culture/?sh=2823b43c774f,TRUE, 539,How to ensure your holiday celebrations welcome people with disabilities," whether they’re online or in person – give us all a chance to catch up with friends, share a meal or just have a good time. The best of these celebrations include everyone, regardless of ability. Austin nonprofit Knowbility spends the year helping to create accessible web sites and other digital experiences. For the holidays, Knowbility staff turned their attention to providing tips for party planners and participants. This week, they produced a webinar with tips and even some accessible gift suggestions for people with disabilities. “I think sometimes people are intimidated by a disability, and they’re afraid to acknowledge it,” said Knowbility executive director Sharron Rush. “But people with disabilities understand that they have disability, and it’s not a thing of shame. It’s not something to be awkward about. ”“When people host virtual celebrations, you want to make sure that the platform you using has the ability to provide closed captioning. So someone with a hearing disability can feel included, can participate in the conversations. ” – Mariella Paulino“One of the things that you’d always want to be sure that you do if you have a blind person in your group on an online meeting is begin by saying, ‘This is Sharron. And my opinion is this and this and this. ’ And then when you’re finished, you signal that, ‘This is Sharron, and I’m done. ’” – Sharron Rush“If you’re inviting a blind person to an event, make sure that you give a quick introduction of the space that they’ll be in. There’s a table in the middle of the room. You’ve got a few sofas to the right. Something short like that is a great way to get your guests a little more comfortable with the space. ” – Anthony Vasquez“One of the things that everyone should absolutely do for the dinner table this year is they should have a clear mask that allows somebody with a healing disability to lip read. ” ",3,https://www.texasstandard.org/stories/how-to-ensure-your-holiday-celebrations-welcome-people-with-disabilities/,TRUE, 542,International Day of Persons with Disabilities 2021," December 3 is International Day of Persons with Disabilities , and on this Day WHO joins other partners around the world to celebrate a day for all. More than 1 billion people experience disability, and this figure is predicted to rise, due in part to population aging and an increase in the prevalence of noncommunicable diseases. Despite this, few countries have adequate mechanisms in place to respond fully to the health priorities and requirements of persons with disabilities.  While disability correlates with disadvantage, not all people with disabilities are equally disadvantaged. Much depends on the context in which they live, and whether they have equal access to health, education and employment, among others. As governments and the international community continue to battle the COVID 19 pandemic, and chart a course forward, it is essential that disability inclusion is central to health system planning, development, and decision making. Strong, effective health systems support robust health emergency management. WHO is committed to supporting Member States and development partners to fulfill their commitment to leave no one behind, by addressing disability inclusion in the health sector, including as part of our efforts to end the COVID 19 pandemic. ",3,https://www.who.int/news-room/events/detail/2021/12/03/default-calendar/international-day-of-persons-with-disabilities-2021,FALSE, 544,Bob Dole Lived With a Disability for Decades. Here's How It Shaped His Life and Legacy," Bob Dole was just 21 years old when he suffered the injuries that would change his life. In April 1945, while stationed in Italy during WWII, the young soldier was struck by enemy fire. As a result of his wounds, Dole was permanently left without feeling in his right hand and arm, which measured more than two inches shorter than his left after reparative surgeries; part of his left hand was also left numb. Dole, who died on Sunday at the age of 98, would live with and be shaped by the aftermath of those injuries in the years that followed, including the 30 he spent as a U. S. senator from Kansas. While Dole, once a three sport athlete, was initially left despondent by his injuries, he went on to speak about his disabilities openly over the years. In a 1969 speech to the Senate, Dole spoke passionately about the challenges faced by those with disabilities, calling the community a minority group that “has always known exclusion; maybe not exclusion from the front of the bus, but perhaps from even climbing aboard it; maybe not exclusion from pursuing advanced education, but perhaps from experiencing any formal education; maybe not exclusion from day to day life itself, but perhaps from an adequate opportunity to develop and contribute to his or her fullest capacity. ” From then on, Dole worked to advance the rights and protections of individuals with disabilities, most notably through the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, a seminal piece of legislation that was meant to guarantee rights and improve the day to day lives of individuals with disabilities. Disability rights and advocacy were also part of Dole’s 1996 bid for president against incumbent Bill Clinton. “President Clinton says, ‘I share your pain,” Dole said at a campaign event that year. “I can say, ‘I feel your pain. ”Of course, Dole’s wounds affected more than his politics. In 1996, he detailed for the New York Times the ways in which they affected his daily life, from getting dressed to eating. And in an interview with Ability magazine, Dole said his disability changed the entire course of his life. “Having a disability changes your whole life, not just your attitude,” Dole said. “Prior to my injury I was a pretty good athlete, but afterwards I learned to apply myself more and made good grades for a change. ”That kind of total life adjustment is not uncommon, says Bill Fertig, director of the resource center at United Spinal Association, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the lives of those with disabilities. “Each and every physical injury is different, regardless of what the diagnosis says, and each person experiences their loss differently,” says Fertig, who became paralyzed after a motorcycle accident about 20 years ago. “[But] the things that change are in your life, which then becomes a new part of your life. It’s the new normal. ”Michele Karel, a geriatric mental health specialist at the U. S. Department of Veteran’s Affairs’ Office of Mental Health and Suicide Prevention, says people have a huge capacity for adjustment, either after a catastrophic injury or during the normal course of aging. “Most of us imagine, ‘I could never live if I lost my vision, if I could no longer walk,” she says. “We don’t imagine we can adjust, but then we do. ”The stresses of a long term physical or cognitive disability can take their toll, and Karel says veterans who suffer catastrophic injuries are at higher risk of mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. But generally, through treatment, most individuals do eventually learn to adjust, even if that means reevaluating goals and priorities. “If we have losses in some areas, it doesn’t mean we’ve lost everything,” Karel says. “We select the things that we’re good at, we select our strengths, and really optimize what we can do in those areas, and we learn to compensate for the areas that we struggle with. ”",3,https://time.com/5510675/bob-dole-disability/,TRUE, 545,First Person: Fighting human trafficking in Malawi,"An award winning disability activist from South Africa, and one of 17 United Nations advocates for the Sustainable Development Goals, lives with spinal muscular atrophy, and faces many difficult daily challenges. Ahead of International Day of Persons with Disabilities, on 3 December, Mr. Ndopu discusses how he has overcome barriers to travel the world advocating for others with disabilities. This feature has been edited for clarity and length. Eddie Ndopu was talking to Melissa Fleming, the United Nations Under Secretary General for Global Communications. You can hear the full interview on the UN podcast, Awake at Night. “At the age of two, I was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy, a degenerative condition that affects the muscles and results in progressive weakness. In other words, the older I get, the weaker I become, and my doctors gave my family a prognosis that I would not live beyond the age of five. I have outlived myself by 25 years and counting.  However, Im grappling with the physical manifestation of this rare disease and what is doing to my body: What I was able to do five years ago, Im no longer able to do today. I had dreams of becoming an artist. I used to sketch incessantly, and now Im no longer able to do that. But, on the other hand, my disability has really been a gift in the sense that it has allowed me to dream new dreams. I still have my spirit. I still have my mind and I still want to be of service to humanity and the world. And so, while I move through the world, with great difficulty, I know that there is so much more that Im able to offer. My mother has truly been the wind beneath my sails. I admire my mother, not just as a parent, but as a human being, who, in many ways, has sacrificed so much of her own life in order to step in and not just be a primary caregiver but really be my biggest advocate. Because of my degenerative condition, I need to be turned at night every two hours to prevent pressure sores from forming. My mom did that for the better part of my life. Every day, seven days a week. I need to wake up to three hours ahead of time to get dressed. I need assistance, with bathing, with clothing, with feeding, every aspect of my life thats physical. All of that needs to be facilitated. Right now, I have a team that consists of about four people but my mum did all of that, for twenty something years, single handedly. The reason why I was able to attain a mainstream education at the age of seven and become one of only a handful of disabled children in the entire country to be enrolled in a regular school, is because of my mum’s persistence, knocking on every door and being told, “This is not going to work”. She did not just do it as my mom. I think she did it because she believed deeply that I am deserving of a life that is truly open, and so I really owe her a debt of gratitude.  I have since gone on to graduate from Oxford with a Masters in Public Policy and became the first African with this degenerative disability to do that. Ever. For me, thats not just a personal achievement, it also feels like a symbolic victory for all of the disabled kids around the world who never get to see the inside of a classroom. The turning point was when I was offered admission into the African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg. Its a Preparatory School for future world leaders. I made it all the way to the finalist weekend, and they called and said, ‘were not sure were able to meet your needs’. I wrote a letter to the founders of the Academy and I said, My name is Eddie. I believe I am a leader, I think you have made a mistake. I really, really need to be in the school, because I have a dream to make education accessible and inclusive for all of the children with disabilities on the continent of Africa. I want to be able to do that. ",3,https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/11/1106042,TRUE, 546,November - A Month Of Disability Inclusion Hitting The Headlines," In the UK the tag line for the global climate change summit, COP26, this month in Glasgow was “Together for our Planet”. It was billed as a moment to “unite the world” and bring real concrete change to address the climate crisis. Yet to bring everyone together, to allow everyone to unite, we need everyone to have at the very least access to the debate. A participant walks past a COP26 UN Climate Change Conference poster on the first day of the COP26 . . . [+] UN Climate Change Conference at the Scottish Event Campus in Glasgow, Scotland, on October 31, 2021. COP26. Israeli minister, Karine Elharrar, whose attendance depended on the venue catering for her wheelchair was unable to take part and participate in these vital conversations. The car she arrived in was not allowed inside the event, despite her delegation informing organisers of her access needs in advance of the conference. The shuttle bus she was offered instead was not wheelchair accessible. The UKs Environment Secretary, George Eustice, responded to the incident by saying “What would normally happen in this situation is that Israel would have communicated that they had a particular need for their minister”, yet the Equality Act 2010 requires all buildings to have disabled access. The build up to this event has been in the works since 2020, the Equality Act was passed in 2010. The plans for this particular event went through a number of checks before they were signed off. This ‘mistake’ is evidence that inclusion is not at the top of the agenda, it’s not a priority, it’s an afterthought. If leaders want to host global events to discuss the vision of the future, all of those invited to sit at the table must be able to do so. Whilst this supposed mishap permeated the press in the UK, we are seeing promising discussions revolving around disability inclusion on the other side of the pond. This month, in the U. S. , the Supreme Court was waiting to hear a case that could potentially have profound effects on disability rights. The question at the heart of the case, CVS Pharmacy, Inc. vs. Doe, was whether claims of unintentional discrimination against people with disabilities are allowed under federal law. The debate demonstrated vital progress to ensure that inclusion tops the agenda in policy discourse and decision making. Presently, the work of disability activists has paid off, CVS has withdrawn its case as the pressure from those fighting for the protection of rights for persons with a disability proved overpowering . This is a step towards changing the global narrative that currently sees disability as a side note. An image of the sign for the CVS Pharmacy as photographed on March 16, 2020 in Wantagh, New York. . . . [+] Yet, as we have seen time and time again with disability inclusion, where there are steps forward there seem to be steps back. In Canada, the government has announced that changes to Canada’s medical assistance in dying law are officially in force. The new law includes changes to eligibility and procedural safeguards which now see the decision period for assisted death reduced to 90 days. In response to this decision multiple disabled people have advocated their anger and frustration at the system. Jeff Preston, who has muscular dystrophy and was recently interviewed by CBC on the decision stated, We suffer because we are isolated in our homes, not because were disabled, but because we dont actually move forward on accessibility. ” Further to this Dr. Ramona Coelho, who predominantly works with persons with a disability, expressed her concerns over the new declarations These people are asking for disability supports that are being declined. During COVID, the disparity with this community has become worse. Many of them are denied home care services, and yet they can die within 90 days if they become suicidal. . . that is an extremely weak safeguard. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/carolinecasey/2021/11/22/novembera-month-of-disability-inclusion-hitting-the-headlines/?sh=2c2827e13f44,TRUE, 547,4 Common Ways Companies Alienate People with Disabilities," Executives and product team leaders need to stop excluding people with disabilities and understand that their decisions affect how users interact with every aspect of their products and services. At this point, leaders have the right tools at their disposal, but need to become more aware of their oversights. The author presents four common mistakes leaders make that prevent people with disabilities from interacting with their companies.  First, they expect users to do the hard work for them. Second, they don’t understand that accessibility requires constant maintenance. Third, they overlook how accessibility applies to every step of the customer journey. Finally, they fail to bring accessibility tools into their own teams’ workflows. Every day, business leaders make seemingly small but meaningful mistakes that leave a large population of users with disabilities out in the cold. Companies are aware that they should be prioritizing the accessibility of their product and in turn the inclusiveness of their brand in order to maximize their reach and value. Yet in many cases, they make the wrong choices because they don’t know where their gaps in understanding are or who they’re unintentionally excluding. For example, earlier this year, there was outrage after leading UK train websites went grayscale as a tribute to Prince Philip after his death a well intentioned change that left people with visual impairments unable to use them. Executives and product team leaders need to stop excluding people with disabilities and understand that their decisions affect how users interact with every aspect of their products and services. At this point, we have the right tools at our disposal, but we need to become more aware of our oversights. Avoid the following four mistakes that prevent people with disabilities from interacting with your company. You can’t rely on user feedback to patch up your product for you as you build it. Expecting to power ahead and have your users flag your product’s flaws through in app ratings, sporadic surveying, and quantitative feedback that gives little depth is lazy and inefficient. You have to be doing 80% of the hard work, which means making the conscious effort to avoid the design flaws that will exclude people from using your product. Anyone can educate themselves on where those problems might arise by capitalizing on the available resources for designers and product development teams, such as Apple’s Accessibility for Developers platform. Only expect users to assist you in refining your product and concept and to pick up on issues you missed despite your best efforts.  You won’t be 80% perfect to start, but your internal benchmark has to be high in order to avoid putting the burden on your users. Consumers know when they’re being used rather than treated as partners or co creators in the process. An important aspect here is trust: Your community must trust that your business’s entire purpose is to solve a problem that affects their daily lives. That way, they’re helping you co create the product as you actively seek out and listen to their needs. If you’re committed to them, they’ll be committed to helping you achieve those goals. That partnership means building your product out in the open, involving a diverse community of users from the earliest stages. You can do that by sharing your designs or ideas on dedicated Slack channels, Twitter threads, or with selected groups of people, and ask that the community brainstorm new concepts with you and build on top of them. Allow for a continual, positive feedback iteration loop where users see the results each time and are let in on your thinking about why decisions were made. Accessibility isn’t an accessory. It’s not something that will just stay in place once you’ve made the initial effort to obtain it. It’s part of the machinery that keeps your business moving, and it needs constant maintenance. As your product grows and as your consumers’ behavior changes, new issues will surface constantly. ",3,https://hbr.org/2021/11/4-common-ways-companies-alienate-people-with-disabilities,FALSE, 550,Justice News,"The Justice Department today filed a lawsuit against Uber Technologies Inc. for charging “wait time” fees to passengers who, because of disability, need more time to enter a car. Uber’s policies and practices of charging wait time fees based on disability have harmed many passengers and potential passengers with disabilities throughout the country. The lawsuit, filed in the U. S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that Uber violated Title III of the Americans with Disabilities Act , which prohibits discrimination by private transportation companies like Uber. In April 2016, Uber began charging passengers wait time fees in a number of cities, eventually expanding the policy nationwide. Wait time fees start two minutes after the Uber car arrives at the pickup location and are charged until the car begins its trip. The department’s complaint alleges that Uber violates the ADA by failing to reasonably modify its wait time fee policy for passengers who, because of disability, need more than two minutes to get in an Uber car. Passengers with disabilities may need additional time to enter a car for various reasons. A passenger may, for example, use a wheelchair or walker that needs to be broken down and stored in the car. Or a passenger who is blind may need additional time to safely walk from the pickup location to the car itself. The department’s lawsuit alleges that, even when Uber is aware that a passenger’s need for additional time is clearly disability based, Uber starts charging a wait time fee at the two minute mark. The lawsuit seeks relief from the court, including ordering Uber to stop discriminating against individuals with disabilities. Additionally, the department asks the court to order Uber to modify its wait time fee policy to comply with the ADA; train its staff and drivers on the ADA; pay money damages to people subjected to the illegal wait time fees, and pay a civil penalty to vindicate the public’s interest in eliminating disability discrimination. “People with disabilities deserve equal access to all areas of community life, including the private transportation services provided by companies like Uber,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “This lawsuit seeks to bring Uber into compliance with the mandate of the Americans with Disabilities Act while sending a powerful message that Uber cannot penalize passengers with disabilities simply because they need more time to get into a car. Uber and other companies that provide transportation services must ensure equal access for all people, including those with disabilities. ”Uber’s wait time fees take a significant toll on people with disabilities,” said Acting U. S. Attorney Stephanie M. Hinds for the Northern District of California. “Passengers with disabilities who need additional boarding time are entitled to access ridesharing services without discrimination. This lawsuit seeks to assist people with disabilities to live their lives with independence and dignity, as the ADA guarantees. ”",3,https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-uber-overcharging-people-disabilities,TRUE, 551,Google Seeks Help From People With Speech Issues,"Google is working on an app to help people with disabilities better communicate. Google wants to make it easier for people with disabilities that affect their speech to communicate with those around them and they’re looking for some help. The company has developed an app that’s able to decipher the speech patterns of those with impairments. The app known as Project Relate can be used to transcribe spoken words to text in real time and it can speak the words that a person has said using a computerized voice. It can also communicate with Google Assistant, which allows users to assign tasks to their smartphone and other devices using voice commands. Now Google is looking to test the technology in the real world. For millions of people, being able to speak and be understood can be difficult as a result of conditions that can impact speech, including stroke, ALS, cerebral palsy, traumatic brain injury or Parkinson’s disease,” wrote Julie Cattiau, product manager at Google AI in a posting about the effort. “Today, we’re inviting an initial group of people to test Project Relate, a new Android app that aims to help people with speech impairments communicate more easily with others and interact with the Google Assistant. ”English speaking people in the U. S. , Canada, Australia and New Zealand who have conditions that make their speech difficult to understand can sign up to be testers of the new app. Participants will be asked to record a series of specific phrases so that the app can learn their individual speech patterns, Google said. Then, they will be able to take advantage of the app’s features and offer feedback. “With your help, we hope to build a future in which people with disabilities can more easily communicate and be understood,” Cattiau wrote. This is not the first time that Google has sought voice samples from people with disabilities in order to improve its speech recognition technology. In 2019, the company worked with the Canadian Down Syndrome Society to collect speech samples from adults with Down syndrome to program its algorithm to better understand the unique speech patterns of those with the chromosomal disorder. That effort was associated with a broader Google initiative called Project Euphonia aimed at training computers to better understand individuals with speech impairments. With a slew of new actions and additional resources, federal education officials are taking steps to ensure that students with disabilities and their families can access school services. In May 2021, 11 year old Ryan Larsen walked out of his elementary school in between classes. A year later, there are few signs of the boys whereabouts. Industry associations and business owners say serial plaintiffs are increasingly using the ADA to extract tens of thousands of dollars in settlements, not to promote access as the law intended. ",3,https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2021/11/15/google-seeks-help-from-people-with-speech-issues/29595/,TRUE, 552,Apple’s iPad Gets Assistive Technology Boost,"The TD Pilot from Tobii Dynavox is a certified Apple accessory that adds eye tracking technology to the iPad. Through a partnership with a venerable name in the world of assistive technology, people with disabilities can now control Apple’s iPad using nothing more than their eyes. Tobii Dynavox said this week that it is launching an add on device that will bring its eye tracking technology to the iPad. Known as the TD Pilot, the certified Apple accessory attaches to a standard iPad to seamlessly integrate eye tracking capabilities into all of the typical features of the tablet. In addition, TD Pilot includes TD Talk, an eye controlled app to generate speech, as well as TD Snap, which offers symbols for users to select in order to communicate. TD Pilot offers powerful speakers, an extended battery, an “ultra rugged design” and can be mounted to a wheelchair, Tobii Dynavox said. The eye gaze technology works even in bright light outside and there is a partner window on the backside of the device so that words written out using eye gaze can be seen by others a user is communicating with. “We are excited that people who need this technology will have the opportunity to control iPad using just their eyes,” said Sarah Herrlinger, Apple’s senior director of global accessibility policy and initiatives. “At Apple, we build foundational technology, including support for eye tracking, into our operating systems to make them accessible, and we’re thrilled that Tobii Dynavox’s TD Pilot is leveraging that to enable people with disabilities to pursue their passions. ”TD Pilot is a medically certified device meaning that it is available by prescription and can be paid for by health insurance. Tobii Dynavox has long offered its eye gaze technology through Windows compatible devices, but this is the company’s first foray into Apple products. Another company called Skyle also offers eye tracking for iPad. With a slew of new actions and additional resources, federal education officials are taking steps to ensure that students with disabilities and their families can access school services. In May 2021, 11 year old Ryan Larsen walked out of his elementary school in between classes. A year later, there are few signs of the boys whereabouts. Industry associations and business owners say serial plaintiffs are increasingly using the ADA to extract tens of thousands of dollars in settlements, not to promote access as the law intended. ",3,https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2021/11/18/apples-ipad-gets-assistive-technology-boost/29605/,TRUE, 553,One in 10 children worldwide live with disabilities,"Nearly 240 million children worldwide, or one in 10, live with disabilities and experience deprivation in indicators such as health, education and protection, according to a new report released by the UN Children’s Fund  on Wednesday.  The agency’s Executive Director, Henrietta Fore, said the new research confirms what she already knew:?children with disabilities face multiple and often compounding challenges, in simply realizing their rights. “From access to education, to being read to at home; children with disabilities are less likely to be included or heard on almost every measure. All too often, children with disabilities are simply being left behind”, Mrs. Fore said. Nearly 240 million children with disabilities face challenges in getting access to basic needs including nutrition, health, access to clean water and sanitation, and education. Our latest report uncovers the hardship children with disabilities face around the world. Access to education is one of several key areas examined in the report.  Children with disabilities are 24 per cent less likely to receive early stimulation and responsive care, and have 42 per cent fewer chances of achieving foundational reading and numeracy skills.  The probability of never attending school is 49 per cent higher for them.  In health terms, they have 25 per cent greater chance of suffering from wasting, and 34 per cent greater chance of stunted development. They are also 53 per cent more likely to have symptoms of acute respiratory infection. These children are also 51 per cent more likely to feel unhappy day to day, and 41 per cent more likely to be discriminated against.  The probability of experiencing severe corporal punishment is 32 per cent greater than for children without disability.  According to the report, however, the disability experience varies greatly. There is a spectrum of risks and outcomes, depending on the type of disability; where the child lives; and what services they can access. Children who have difficulty communicating and caring for themselves are the most likely to be out of school, regardless of education level, explains the analysis. Out of school rates are higher among children with multiple disabilities, and?disparities become even more significant when the severity of the disability is taken into account.  Maria Alexandrova, 20, a UNICEF youth advocate for inclusive education from Bulgaria, said that “inclusive education cannot be considered a luxury. ” As a woman with disabilities, she says her experiences show that, for far too long, “children with disabilities have been excluded from society in a way that no child ever should be. ” “No child, especially the most vulnerable, should have to fight for their basic human rights alone. We need governments, stakeholders and NGOs to ensure children with disabilities have equal, inclusive access to education”, Mrs.  Alexandrova said. With the new publication, UNICEF is calling on governments to provide?children with disabilities with equal opportunities.  Member States should also consult?persons with disabilities and consider the full range of disabilities, as well as the specific needs of children and their families, when providing inclusive services and equitable quality education. Stressing the importance of the new report, the UNICEF chief said that “exclusion is often the consequence of invisibility. ” “We have not had reliable data on the number of children with disabilities for the longest time. When we fail to count, consider and consult with these children, we are failing to help them reach their vast potential”, Mrs. Fore said. The report?includes data from 42 countries?and covers more than 60 indicators, from nutrition and health, to access to water and sanitation, protection from violence and exploitation, and education.  ",3,https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/11/1105412,FALSE, 556,10 Things Everyone Should Know About People With Disabilities And Employment,"What more is there to say, this later in October, about National Disability Employment Awareness Month, or NDEAM for short? It’s hard to come up with anything new to say about disability and employment. Millions of disabled Americans are looking for a good job, but can’t find one, no matter how good the economy might be. Lots of them have gone far out of their way to earn career credentials. Many have endured physical, mental, and financial hardships along the way that most people would never put up with themselves. Meanwhile, millions of other disabled people work hard every day, in low wage jobs and work programs. They and the work they do has value, but they aren’t treated or paid that way. Most people know this, at least vaguely, unless they are decades rather than years behind current understanding of disability issues. It’s hard to On the other hand, it’s relatively easy to exhort employers for the thousandth time to “hire the disabled,” extolling the supposed benefits of having disabled employees. So that’s what a lot of NDEAM seems to amount to. It’s a true and necessary message, but it feels insubstantial and inadequate. People with disabilities who are looking for work may find things like NDEAM superficially encouraging, but is it really much help? Does yet another annual round of corporate resolutions and seminars really amount to much in the way of better access and opportunity? It’s complicated, too. Claims about how hard working and reliable disabled people are, though in a way usually true, often feel like they might be counterproductive encouraging inflated expectations and even exploitation. Are we so desperate for “a chance” that we will literally do anything, for any small reward? Still, it’s always helpful to share practical tips ways that employers can actually make work more accessible and genuinely worthwhile for applicants and employees with disabilities. Maybe the best thing to do each October is go back to basics, and try to give the broadest possible audience as much basic information as possible on disability and employment. Before another disability employment month ends, it may help to review some of the things that disability employment experts and people with disabilities know pretty well already, but others, including some disabled people, might not be so clear about. 1. Rates of unemployment for people with disabilities are consistently very high much higher than for non disabled people. Raw numbers alone don’t tell the full story. We have to compare employment rates of disabled and non disabled people, in two distinct measures: True, the pandemic raised unemployment rates for everyone. However, its impact on employment was somewhat worse for disabled than for non disabled people. And the overall employment gap between disabled and non disabled people rarely changes by more than a percentage point or two either way. Even accounting for disabled people who aren’t looking for work because of their disabilities, paid work is just much harder to find than it is for people who aren’t disabled.  2. Disability rights laws like Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act are designed to protect disabled people from workplace disability discrimination, and mandate accessibility and individual accommodations. But these regulations are hard to enforce. In most real life workplaces, the threat of an ADA discrimination lawsuit from a disabled applicant turned down for a job, or a disabled employee denied and accommodation just isn’t that significant. The ADA provides a valuable template for equal opportunity, but not as much protection as some might think. 3. The federal government and some states have numerical hiring goals in an effort to open up employment opportunities to people with disabilities in government. This provides a potentially strong incentive, but only for a fairly narrow segment of the workforce,",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2021/10/25/10-things-everyone-should-know-about-people-with-disabilities-and-employment/?sh=76ecdc68476e,FALSE, 560,Children With Disabilities Face Special Back-To-School Challenges," in the East Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles. The center is a free preschool for children who are blind or visually impaired. LOS ANGELES Christopher Manzo, a boy with curly brown hair and bright blue and yellow glasses, has lived a third of his five years at home because of the pandemic. And he is more than ready for kindergarten. Hand in hand with his mother, Martha Manzo, he walks into the Blind Children’s Center, a low rise building nestled among apartment complexes in East Hollywood. In the brightly colored hallway, filled with paintings of animals, Manzo kneels to hug Christopher before he scurries unsteadily to his cubby. “God take care of you and be with you,” she says. “And have fun. ”Born with congenital hydrocephalus that damaged his brain and left him with severely impaired vision, cognitive difficulties and a lack of coordination, Christopher hasn’t missed only school the past 18 months he’s missed out on a host of vital occupational, physical and language therapies, as well as socialization with other kids. At home, Christopher couldn’t look at a computer screen long enough to attend therapies or classes on Zoom, said Manzano, in an interview conducted in Spanish. “He would strain his eyes, look away, and his attention would falter,” she said. “He couldn’t devote the same attention as a kid without disabilities. ”Christopher “could have advanced much more” since the pandemic hit if he hadn’t missed so much school, said Manzano, who is 36 and has three other children, ages 12, 10 and 8, whom she also has had to guide through months of home schooling. Yet the return to school raises particular health issues for Christopher and other children with disabilities who are at increased risk for serious bouts of COVID 19, said his pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, Dr. Liza Mackintosh. Though he isn’t immunosuppressed, Christopher has trouble coughing up secretions, which leaves him vulnerable to lung and respiratory infections, she said. Compared with other adults in contact with children, his parents, teachers and therapists “have to be more vigilant about mask wearing, hand hygiene and social distancing,” she said. In short, Manzo was deeply worried about the threat of COVID 19 exposure Christopher faced at school. But it was a risk she felt he could no longer avoid, to get on with his life. Trying to learn from home was “really hard on him,” Manzo said. “He couldn’t understand why he couldn’t go to school or the park or to his therapies. ”“I know COVID is still among us, but I also can’t keep him at home like he’s a crystal bubble and protect him,” she said. “He needs contact with other kids and his teachers. ”The challenges faced by Christopher during the pandemic have been shared by many of the roughly 7 million U. S. children and young adults, ages 3 to 21, with special needs. Online platforms usually don’t work for them. For example, Christopher needs to feel Braille letters to read he can’t do that on a computer screen. Students with disabilities had “sort of this double hit where it was very hard to access school services and very challenging to continue to work on developing new skills,” said Dr. Irene Koolwijk, a specialist in developmental behavioral pediatrics at UCLA Health. It took a lot of preparation to get Christopher and the 40 or so other children attending the Blind Children’s Center back into the building of the private, infant to kindergarten school. All the children are blind or visually impaired, and most also have disorders ranging from autism and albinism to cerebral palsy and epilepsy. The school practices reverse mainstreaming, in which a few children with typical development share the classroom with children with disabilities. ",3,https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2021/10/20/children-with-disabilities-face-special-back-to-school-challenges/29546/,FALSE, 565,"Disability Employment Awareness Month shines light on practical research, outreach in School of Kinesiology"," It’s not glamorous. In fact, this process is mostly excruciatingly hard work, filled with constant setbacks, day in and day out. Fortunately, there are people who specialize in this rebuilding process, and they are at Auburn University. Leading these efforts in Auburn’s School of Kinesiology are Jaimie Roper, assistant professor and director of the Locomotor and Movement Control Lab, and Melissa Pangelinan, associate professor and director of the Pediatric Movement and Physical Activity Lab and Abilities Unlimited. In their labs, the professors connect biomechanics and neuroscience to help those with disabilities and traumatic brain injuries find new function, capabilities and, ultimately, new lives. “My goal has always been to train students and work with populations where we can have the most impact,” Roper said. “Particularly people with movement issues. I want to discover how they can move better, faster and more efficiently. ”When I came to Auburn in 2015, I knew I didn’t want to just be in my office, doing research that a handful of people are going to read and benefit from,” Pangelinan said. “I wanted to be involved in community based research with people who need our help. ”In short, Pangelinan and Roper conduct research designed to help people where they are today. And they teach their students to do the same. School of Kinesiology graduate students Matt Beth, Cole Burton and Mary Grayson Nix know this firsthand. As an undergraduate at Iowa State University, Beth experienced a traumatic brain injury, or TBI, and subsequent physical disabilities after falling from a three story building. Burton was hit by a motorist outside of Birmingham while on an Auburn geology class field trip, and as a collegiate student athlete, Nix experienced a career ending concussion and head injury during a soccer game. Each of these students has a different story, background and experience but what unites them is the experience of a traumatic injury and loss, and subsequently, finding hope and healing as they rebuild their lives at Auburn. Matt BethBefore his fall, Beth was experiencing the very best of college life as the president of his fraternity, a regular on the Dean’s List and thriving with his friends and girlfriend. This all changed in 2016. Moving to Auburn represented a milestone in Beth’s recovery. His physical ailments include the inability to walk, talk or move his left arm or leg. He communicates by typing with one finger. But his disabilities haven’t limited his academic success. “After spending two years solely focused on my rehabilitation in the aftermath of my TBI, I came to live in Auburn with my dad and stepmom,” Beth said. “I then spent the next year disproving people who told me I could never return to college. ”He graduated Suma Cum Laude from Auburn in 2020 and then completed a master’s degree in exercise science in 2021. “My doctors told me that I would never finish my undergraduate degree,” he said. “During my undergraduate endeavors, I had Dr. Christopher Wilburn as a teacher. He took me under his wing and encouraged me to pursue graduate school. This was a defining moment for me because this was the first time since my TBI which happened four years earlier that someone outside of my family saw past my injury to see potential in me. ”Beth is now a graduate research assistant in Roper’s lab and pursuing a Ph. D. “I have already learned a great deal about movement disorders, neurodegenerative diseases and the connection between neuroscience and biomechanics from her and I am very much looking forward to learning more from her in the coming years,” he said. “I have also found myself applying the concepts to my own exercises to make them more useful to me. ”",3,https://ocm.auburn.edu/newsroom/news_articles/2021/10/061258-disability-employment-awareness-month.php,TRUE, 566,What Moves Some People With Disabilities To Be Disability Activists?,"Most people with disabilities have to be advocates at some point. We have no choice. Some later adopt it as a calling, for ourselves and others like us. A few are inspired to commit to more long term and consequential disability activism with the potential to benefit thousands or millions of disabled people. Activism as a way of life offers unique and valuable rewards to the committed activist. It also wears us down, both physically and emotionally. This may be even more true in particular for disability activism. It’s one of the most common avenues for building a more liberating sense of self for people with disabilities. It also regularly chews disabled people up, leaving many of us exhausted, disappointed, and demoralized. We may end up more empowered and connected in some key ways, but at the same time worn out, cynical, and alienated in others. A wheelchair user can do all of the supposedly “right things” to get restaurants and stores in their area to install ramps and accessible restrooms. But years of good faith, polite but persistent advocacy may still fail to bring about anything but vague promises, mild regret, and only the most minor changes. Coalitions of both professional and grassroots disability organizations may fight for decades to expand home care and end institutionalization, but continue to run into political obstacles and public indifference or misunderstanding. Still, victories do happen. Individual advocates sometimes win the services, benefits, or accommodations they were initially denied. And organized disability activism does shift thinking and practices over time. Occasionally it wins genuinely historic changes, like passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Outspoken disability advocates and activists are sometimes portrayed and secretly viewed as obsessive cranks or bitter, angry malcontents. We are never satisfied! We nitpick unimportant details! We let our rage overrule good sense! Maybe worse than all of this, our intense focus on seemingly narrow issues makes us boring! Or, so goes the familiar narrative. At the same time, strong advocates and activists are often admired, at least in theory. We know that social progress is almost always driven by activists, by people who are dissatisfied with the way things are and willing to devote themselves to changes that few other people seem to care about. And successful advocacy is almost always praised, at least for a time.  Disability activism is also supposed to be, among many other things, a community. It’s one of the few venues where disabled people collaborate, communicate, and socialize. So while the purpose of disability activism isn’t to make us feel connected and supported, at it’s best, activism can give us community. Unfortunately, this is often an ill defined and elusive goal. Activism doesn’t always breed kindness. And fighting for disability rights and justice doesn’t guarantee that the fight itself will always be fair, inclusive, or nurturing to those carrying it out. A great many disabled people find in disability activism an enduring community and true acceptance for the first time in their lives. But just as many find burnout, backbiting, and surprising flavors of intersecting prejudice in a movement whose purposes are supposed to be the opposite of these things. Disability activism can be incredibly rewarding. It can also break your heart. So why do disabled people become disability activists? It’s a question worth exploring. Practical ReasonsMany of us first become disability activists because they have to:For those of us born with disabilities, it often begins with our parents being forced to fight for an equal, integrated education. Later, we ourselves start tangling with programs, services, and benefits that are supposed to help us, but are often too difficult to obtain, and then too restrictive to allow personal growth and self sufficiency. Eventually, we experience the everyday grind of asking for accommodations and assertively insisting on opportunities, because if we don’t we won’t get anywhere, or even perhaps survive. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2021/09/14/what-moves-some-people-with-disabilities-to-be-disability-activists/?sh=37f6894b5393,TRUE, 567,Amanda Cachia," “The politics of creative access: Guidelines for a critical dis/ability curatorial practice,” Interdisciplinary Approaches to Disability Looking Towards the Future, Volume 2, Edited by Katie Ellis, Rosemarie Garland Thomson, Mike Kent, Rachel Robertson, Routledge: New York, 2019. How can a deep engagement with disability studies change our understanding of sociology, literary studies, gender studies, aesthetics, bioethics, social work, law, education, or history?Interdisciplinary Approaches to Disability identifies both the practical and theoretical implications of such an interdisciplinary dialogue and challenges people in disability studies as well as other disciplinary fields to critically reflect on their professional praxis in terms of theory, practice, and methods.  Topics covered include interdisciplinary outlooks ranging from media studies, games studies, education, performance, history and curation through to theology and immunology. Perspectives are drawn from different regions from the European Union to the Global South with chapters that draw on a range of different national backgrounds. Our contributors who write as either disabled people or allies do not proceed from a singular approach to disability, often reflecting different or even opposing positions. The collection features contributions from both established and new voices in international disability studies outlining their own visions for the future of the field. ",3,http://amandacachia.com/writing/politics-creative-access-guidelines-critical-disability-curatorial-practice/,FALSE, 573,"Disabled Afghans in special jeopardy, warns exiled campaigner"," After her flight from the Taliban, blind activist Benafsha Yaqoobi says fellow vulnerable compatriots are in danger World leaders must act to protect disabled Afghans who are in immediate danger under Taliban rule, a prominent blind human rights activist has urged after being evacuated to the UK. Benafsha Yaqoobi, a commissioner at the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission , said she fears the Taliban will neglect and discriminate against people with disabilities due to the belief, held by many in the country, that disability is a punishment from God for the sins of parents. Speaking to the Guardian, Yaqoobi said: “I want from the UK and EU to please, please, create a special visa for women whose lives are in danger, people with disabilities whose lives are in danger. “There are millions of people with disabilities there without any support, without food, without clothes, without education, without any basic human rights. We must raise their voices. ”After a distressing journey to Kabul airport, Yaqoobi was evacuated by the Danish and traveled to the UK where she has spent the past 10 days in quarantine in a London hotel, and said she plans to contact activist Malala Yousafzai to discuss ways they could work together to help those suffering under the Taliban. “I am scared the plight of the Afghan people will fade from the news. People with disabilities and women need help, people will die,” she said. Yaqoobi and her husband, Mahdi Salami, who are both blind, were guided to Kabul airport by an assistant who is now in hiding in the country. She said they were beaten and pepper sprayed during their three attempts to flee, and when she heard gunfire she feared her husband and assistant had been killed. “It was really traumatic as a person with visual impairment. When they were shooting, they were shooting into the air, but I didn’t understand,” she said. “I was crying too much. It was really difficult for me and I couldn’t control myself, I screamed. ”She said there were children falling over and being trampled and injured outside the airport gates, where she and he husband were repeatedly pushed back. On their third attempt to escape, they were rescued under darkness after waiting for five hours in a remote location. Yaqoobi believed she would be killed by the Taliban if she didn’t flee the country as a woman in a prominent position. She was often recognized in the street, and gave an hour long TV interview just four days before Kabul fell. “I was very scared because I was so well known. I covered my face with sunglasses and a mask, and went out the house to see if I would be recognized. When I got a taxi the driver said he knew me and had seen me on TV last week,” she said. “I felt I could be introduced to the Taliban very easily. ”Yaqoobi has served on the AIHRC since 2019, and along with her husband founded the Rahyab Organisation to provide education and rehabilitation training for blind Afghans. Since taking power in Afghanistan last month, the Taliban has sought to assure the population it will respect the rights of women and minorities, and will not return to the brutal regime it implemented during the 90s when the group was last in control. However, these assertions have been met with doubt by many and there have been reports of human rights abuses in the country. “We will see in the future whether it happens. But the important issue for me now is people are dying, they’re starving and trying to leave,” said Yaqoobi, adding she hopes one day it may be safe for her to return to her home country. “I don’t have anything now. But I have a big hope. Although I was forced from my nation, they will not take it from my heart for ever. ”",3,https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/06/disabled-afghans-in-special-jeopardy-warns-exiled-campaigner,FALSE, 574,"School policing falls hardest on Black students and those with disabilities, study shows","A school safety officer removed a third grader from class, took him to a staff bathroom, closed the door and berated him, telling the frightened child to “stop crying like a little girl. ”His crime? Refusing to leave art class after an argument with another student at their northeast Philadelphia elementary school. In the aftermath of the incident in 2017, Philadelphia schools issued a statement acknowledging it was not handled correctly. But a charged encounter with an officer in school is far from rare. Nationally, students were referred to law enforcement nearly 230,000 times during the 2017 18 school year, exemplifying why demands to restrict policing at schools are growing. “You’ve got some police officers that just can’t help themselves,” said the child’s father, Isaac Gardner. “You’re taking a little elementary school child in the bathroom. You ain’t supposed to be doing that. ”A Center for Public Integrity analysis of U. S. Department of Education data found that school policing disproportionately affects students with disabilities, Black children and, in some states, Native American and Latino children. Nationwide, Black students, such as Gardner’s son, and students with disabilities were referred to law enforcement at nearly twice their share of the overall student population. Schools in some states are far more likely than others to refer students to law enforcement, regardless of their race and disability status. New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin schools did so at rates at least twice the national average. The repercussions ripple through communities in urban, suburban and rural areas alike. Lancaster County Public Schools, a three school district in remote eastern Virginia, had a referral rate 17 times the national average.  In Philadelphia, one of the nation’s 20 largest school districts, the referral rate for all students was seven times the national average. Thirty one states, as well as the District of Columbia, referred Black students to law enforcement at more than twice the rate of white students, the Public Integrity analysis found. These sharp disparities come despite years of mounting pressure on schools to stop policing kids. “They’re criminalizing some ordinary behavior of students, and they’re certainly disproportionately referring students of color to the juvenile justice system rather than disciplining them at school,” said Maura McInerney, legal director at the Education Law Center, a Pennsylvania legal advocacy group. In 2017, a national study at the University of California, Irvine, found that on campus arrest rates for children younger than 15 increased in areas where the federal government made grant money available in 1999 for school resource officers – a response to the mass shooting at Columbine High School. The funding was available whether a district struggled with crime or not, which helped researchers tease out the impact. Nationwide, roughly a quarter of law enforcement referrals lead to arrests, federal data shows. Students may be issued citations that require them to appear before judges or other juvenile court system officials. The federal data doesn’t specify what the referral was for, nor the result. In 2019, a Vermont student with a disability that causes bone pain was forcefully subdued by a school resource officer after educators suspected, erroneously, that the 17 year old had a vape. The officer demanded to search his backpack. The boy objected, using foul language, and the officer told him that he was “acting retarded. ” The officer pushed the student to the floor, arresting and handcuffing him and leaving him with bloody knuckles and bruised wrists. Should we defund school police? Teacher is torn about how to keep kids safe. ",3,https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2021/09/08/police-schools-black-and-disabled-children-face-harsher-discipline/5436023001/,FALSE, 577,"Cross-Disability Solidarity: Shannon Finnegan and Bojana Coklyat Interviewed by Amelia Rina"," A project for resource sharing, discussion, and collaboration about creative approaches to image description. In 2020, Instagram users uploaded 347,222 stories every minute. In those sixty seconds, Facebook users uploaded 147,000 photos, and Zoom hosted 208,333 participants in virtual meetings. After a year of mostly interacting with people through mediated digital encounters like video chat, social media, and email, companies of all sizes are failing to adequately consider their users needs and experiences. Imagine having someone read an article to you, and when she got to an image, she provided a description like: “Still from SOPHIE’s 2018 video Faceshopping, directed by SOPHIE and Aaron Chan,” “House On Cannonball Street Rachelle Dang2,” “At the Shed, people who came for a concert by Kelsey Lu avoided the lobby and entered from doors leading directly into the McCourt space,” or simply “Pierre Seinturier. ” These are alt texts taken from articles published in Artforum, BOMB, and the New York Times. Other magazines didn’t have alt text embedded in their images at all. Though the institutionalized art world has long perpetuated an ocular centric model, art, like the human experience it tries to describe, engages all our senses. Artists Shannon Finnegan and Bojana Coklyat have been working toward a more thoughtful and inclusive internet by demonstrating the beauty and accessibility of describing images. In their book, Alt Text as Poetry, and throughout their online resources, workshops, and broader ecosystem under the same name, Finnegan and Coklyat educate and inspire their audiences to see web accessibility as a creative opportunity, not an onerous obligation. Amelia Rina Amelia Rina Can you explain what alt text is and how it’s used by blind and low vision people?Shannon Finnegan Alt text is a written description of an image posted online. Alt text can also be added to images in digital documents . When done well, alt text is a way for people who are blind, have low vision, or certain cognitive disabilities to access an image. It’s also important for people with low bandwidth internet connections. To understand alt text, it is also helpful to understand screen readers, which is software that people can use to access digital displays. The screen reader outputs the text on the screen to a synthetic voice or digital braille display. For example, on a website, a screen reader might readout options in the navigation bar, followed by the title, the first paragraph, the second paragraph, etc. When a screen reader encounters an image, it’s unable to “read” it. So instead, it looks for the alt text an associated description of the image, embedded in the code. This is how alt text functions as a non visual alternative to an image. AR When websites aren’t accessible, how does that affect the online experience of people with disabilities? Bojana Coklyat It makes them feel like they don’t belong. People may think that the internet is a great equalizer, but for me, as someone who lives with low vision, I often feel left out of social media due to images that are not described. We miss out on events and the camaraderie that exists when sharing images online.  Overall, it can be overall less enjoyable and lead to a lack of the sense of connection that virtual spaces are meant to encourage. Feeling connected online is especially important to many people during the pandemic. When I first learned we were approached to do an interview with BOMB, I went to their website to see how accessible it was. I found that it was difficult to navigate it with my screen reader and that most images didn’t have alt text beyond captions. This kind of discrimination unfortunately exists on many art websites, despite disabled people continuing to push for more accessible websites in the art world. We hope participating in this interview will impact how art publications and organizations make their websites more accessible. ",3,https://bombmagazine.org/articles/bojana-coklyat-and-shannon-finnegan-interviewed/,TRUE, 579,A call to action for international sport to embrace disability inclusion," Across international sport federations, disability is often missing from non discrimination statements and policies it is time to change that. At a time when diversity and inclusion are hot topics, the 15% who have a disability want effective change to remove the inequality and inactivity. To end discrimination and transform the lives of the world’s 1. 2 billion persons with disabilities so they can be visible and active members of an inclusive society. Put persons with disabilities at the heart of the diversity and inclusion agenda. It has been energizing to see the global Wethe15 campaign, launched just prior to the opening of the Tokyo Paralympic Games, lighting up global landmarks in the color purple, and raising awareness for disability inclusion in communities and societies around the world. While this symbolic support is a good starting point, what does this mean in terms of taking meaningful concrete action for disability inclusion within international sport? Hopefully Wethe15 can signal to the global community that disability inclusion applies to the world of sport. Across international sport federations , disability is often missing from non discrimination, diversity, and inclusion statements and policies. Wethe15 has the potential to serve as a catalyst for international sport to ensure that disability is stated as part of the fabric of all non discrimination, diversity, and inclusion initiatives.  For the Wethe15 campaign to be fully effective and meaningful, it needs to garner support and leadership from all international sport governing bodies. The UN Human Rights report on physical activity and sports, under article 30 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, states in point 78, “Local, national and international organizations involved in sport, recreation and physical activity should commit to the full inclusion of persons with disabilities, and those that have already committed to human rights and non discrimination overall must be sure to explicitly include persons with disabilities. ”A sample of current non discrimination statements from 10 international sport federations and the International Olympic Committee makes it clear, however, that disability is still not explicitly recognized in many of these statements. World ArcheryNot allow any form of discrimination in its actions or decisions, be it discrimination of any kind such as race, color, sex, sexual orientation, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. World Athletics Preserve the right of every individual to participate in Athletics as a sport, without unlawful discrimination of any kind undertaken in the spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play. IIHF Ice Hockey The IIHF does not permit discrimination against a private person or group of people on account of race; skin color; ethnic, national or social origin; gender, gender expression or gender identity; physical and mental disability; language; religion; political associations; birth or other status; sexual orientation or any other reason. FIE Fencing To ensure that the principle of non discrimination on the grounds of race, sex, ethnicity, religion, political opinions, family status or other, is respected. FIFA Football Discrimination of any kind against a country, private person or group of people on account of race, skin color, ethnic, national or social origin, gender, disability, language, religion, political opinion or any other opinion, wealth, birth or any other status, sexual orientation or any other reason is strictly prohibited and punishable by suspension or expulsion. World RugbyTo prevent discrimination of any kind against a country, private person or groups of people on account of ethnic origin, gender, language, religion, politics or any other reason. ",3,https://www.sportanddev.org/en/article/news/call-action-international-sport-embrace-disability-inclusion,FALSE, 580,30 Days of MD: Seeing Disability Through a Different Lens,"This is Matt DeEmilio’s story: My name is Matt DeEmilio. I’m 27 years old, and I am the coordinator for disability support services at Coastal Carolina Community College in North Carolina. My job entails granting reasonable accommodations for equal access, raising awareness of all disabilities, and training faculty and staff in areas of accessibility. Many individuals come into my office afraid of the next person who will judge them or put them in a box. In society, we categorize disabilities by what we think others can do and yet haven’t spent a day in their shoes. Let’s take a look through a different lens. Has anyone parked in a handicapped parking spot? I’m sure we are all guilty of it but we just created a barrier. We create barriers all the time without thinking about it, but we can make changes if we’re willing to listen. I’m not an individual who has muscular dystrophy, but I know what it is. I’m not a person who experiences many barriers compared with others with MD, but I’m here to listen. Finally, I’m not a person to create a stigma about your diagnosis, but I’m here to help advocate. I had the pleasure of doing an ableism workshop with Dani Liptak from Muscular Dystrophy News. This workshop was for faculty and staff to understand the importance of how to approach individuals with disabilities, what ableism is, and the stigma of inspiration. It helps to understand the importance of not asking an individual with any disability about their “battles,” how great it was that they were able to wake up, or how blessed they are because they can make their own breakfast. Does it bother you if a person struggles to get into a bathroom? Or if their wheelchair doesn’t fit through the door? Maybe it does and maybe it doesn’t. For me, I’m bothered by it even if it isn’t my family member or friend. Every individual should have the same access as everyone else. I truly believe that all individuals were put on this earth for a reason. Individuals with disabilities can be great parents, siblings, role models, administrators, advocates, and much more. Muscular Dystrophy News’ 30 Days of MD campaign will publish one story per day for MD Awareness Month in September.",3,https://musculardystrophynews.com/2021/09/02/30-days-of-md-seeing-disability-through-a-different-lens/,TRUE, 581,Disney Making Changes To Disability Access At Theme Parks,"A masked family walks past Cinderella Castle in the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. Big changes are coming once again to Disney’s system for providing accommodations to people with disabilities at its theme parks. The company said this month that it is “making some enhancements” to what’s known as the Disability Access Service, or DAS, program. The move comes nearly eight years after a revamp of Disney’s access policies that prompted lawsuits from families of those with developmental disabilities. The Disability Access Service program allows people with disabilities who have trouble tolerating long waits to obtain a return time for rides and other attractions so that they do not have to physically remain in a line. Visitors have had to wait until arriving at Disney World or Disneyland to seek the accommodations. However, with the changes rolling out this fall, Disney says that people will be able to enroll up to 30 days before their arrival through a live video chat with a cast member. At that time, individuals will also be able to select two experiences per day through the DAS Advance planning option and they will get a one hour return window for those activities on the day of their visit. In addition, the Disability Access Service program will be tweaked to allow visitors to get a return time for rides and other experiences via an app rather than having to go to each attraction or a kiosk. The updates are part of a broader overhaul happening at Disney World and Disneyland this fall. The company is doing away with its FastPass system, a free offering that allows visitors to skip the line for a limited number of attractions, in favor of a fee based model. Disney is also launching a digital tool called Disney Genie that’s designed to offer a personalized itinerary complete with current and expected wait times for attractions. Disney made major changes to its disability access system in 2013. Previously, theme park visitors with disabilities were able to receive a Guest Assistance Card that often allowed them to skip to the front of lines for rides. Disney said it ended that option because it was “abused and exploited. ”The Disability Access Service was implemented in its place. That led to lawsuits from dozens of families of children with autism and other disabilities who claimed that the more restricted access was a violation of their rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The first of the lawsuits went to trial last year and a federal judge ruled in favor of Disney. With a slew of new actions and additional resources, federal education officials are taking steps to ensure that students with disabilities and their families can access school services. In May 2021, 11 year old Ryan Larsen walked out of his elementary school in between classes. A year later, there are few signs of the boys whereabouts. Industry associations and business owners say serial plaintiffs are increasingly using the ADA to extract tens of thousands of dollars in settlements, not to promote access as the law intended.",3,https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2021/08/24/disney-making-changes-to-disability-access-at-theme-parks/29460/,FALSE, 582,WeThe15: Disabled Community Skeptical of New Disability Awareness Campaign," Rachel Charlton Dailey is a health and disability journalist. They serve as editor in chief of The Unwritten, a platform for the stories of disabled people. Their work features in publications such as Healthline, Huffpost, Metro UK, The Guardian, and Business Insider. Angela Underwoods extensive local, state, and federal healthcare and environmental news coverage includes 911 first responder compensation policy to the Ciba Geigy water contamination case in Toms River, NJ. Her additional health related coverage includes death and dying, skin care, and autism spectrum disorder. WeThe15 To coincide with disabled people from around the world gathering for the Tokyo Paralympic Games this week, the International Paralympic Committee and International Disability Alliance have launched the biggest ever human rights movement for disabled people. The campaign, called WeThe15, was launched ahead of the Games on August 19. The name is a nod to the 15% of the worlds population that is disabled. The goal of the WeThe15 campaign is to end discrimination toward disabled people and to publicly campaign for disability visibility, accessibility, and inclusion. The campaign will start by focusing on Paralympic athletes but will expand to promoting equity for disabled people from across disciplines from sports and business to arts and entertainment for the next 10 years. This year, in light of the pandemic, the organizers are concentrating on COVID 19 vaccine access for disabled people. While the goal is admirable, many disabled people do not expect the campaign to bring about meaningful change. Branded badges and social media hashtags make it easy for people and companies to make a show of supporting disabled people, but some experts predict that their support will be empty. Companies ought to commit to real change, Dr. Amy Simmons, a doctor of sociology in disability studies and currently a research assistant at the University of Kent, tells Verywell. If a company edits their logo to include a patch of purple [from the campaign], but their actions do not indicate any commitment to change, their involvement in WeThe15 only serves to boost their moral capital and sales. The IPC, the Special Olympics, the Invictus Games Foundation, and the International Committee of Sports for the Deaf have teamed up for the first time for WeThe15. A major part of their Paralympic strategy is promoting the role of assistive technology in improving accessibility and inclusivity for disabled people. In a statement, IPC President Andrew Parsons said that by partnering with Special Olympics, Invictus Games, and Deaflympics, there will be at least one major international sport event for persons with disabilities to showcase WeThe15 each year between now and 2030. Parson added that sports events, in particular, add great value to the campaign and underline the hugely positive impact sport can have on society, and that they strongly believe WeThe15 could be a real game changer for persons with disabilities. ” A 90 second video detailing the realities of disabled life aired during the Opening Ceremony of the Paralympic Games, reaching an estimated global audience of 250 million people. A host of organizations from across the globe will be supporting WeThe15 alongside the aforementioned athletic groups, including the Internal Disability Alliance, United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization , UN Human Rights, The European Commission, The Valuable 500, Global Citizen, and Global Disability Innovation Hub, among others. These organizations say they will work with governments, businesses, and the public over the next decade to initiate lasting change for disabled people. This includes taking steps to put disabled people at the heart of diversity and inclusion agendas. ",3,https://www.verywellhealth.com/wethe15-disability-campaign-5198425,FALSE, 583,The pandemic's affect on students with disabilities,"Ella Gipe is a 10 year old attending fifth grade at Shaull Elementary School in Cumberland County. She lives with down syndrome and mild autism. We did have the option to go virtual all year if we chose, but we decided not to, because she benefits much more with in person learning, her mom Lisa said.  Lisa also said that even with school in session, Ella still missed out on a number of therapies that were offered in school, pre pandemic. All those things went virtual last year so that was very trying, so we are so thankful we went back in person, she said. I mean, we made due, but it was very frustrating.  She isnt alone. A May 2020 survey of nearly 1,600 parents by Advocacy group ParentsTogether, found that only 20% of respondents said their children were receiving some special education services and 39% reported receiving no services at all. By summer 2020, a larger poll showed more than 80,000 secondary and upper elementary students with disabilities may have also been facing more mental health challenges than their peers. In fall 2020, several school districts reported sharp spikes in the number of their students with disabilities failing their classes. Sherri Landis works with ARC of PA, a nonprofit which helps people with disabilities. She says connecting families with support and resources has been very limited due to COVID 19. We have our concerns, she said. I mean, it is difficult for the districts, and its extremely difficult for the individual families receiving care. The biggest problem, she says, is a lack of paraprofessionals, or trained aids that assist teachers in classes. The school districts are experiencing the same shortages as many other businesses and industries in the state, she explained. We need paraprofessionals. We need special education teachers. There was a special education shortage before the pandemic and this has just made it worse.  Luckily for the Gipes, they havent felt that pinch in the Cumberland Valley School District. Im thankful we are in the district that we are in, because they recognized the importance of in school learning, not just for children with developmental disabilities like Ella, but all kids, especially elementary school.  Landis admits not everyone has been as lucky as Ella and theres a lot of ground that needs to be made up.  The school districts understand that this is a population of students that really need that extra support and so were hoping that they work with the families in order to get that for all the students, she said",3,https://www.fox43.com/article/news/education/students-disabilities-pandemic-education-local/521-5af76b6f-56e0-4d88-afc5-e401a0e41586,FALSE, 584,Politics K-12,"Despite the challenges presented by the COVID 19 pandemic, schools must meet their obligations under federal law to identify and serve children with disabilities, the Education Department said in new guidance Tuesday. “Regardless of the COVID 19 pandemic, or the mode of instruction,” children with disabilities are entitled to a free and appropriate public education, the U. S. Department of Education’s office of special education and rehabilitative services wrote in a letter to state and local educational administrators. The attached guidance document focused on Child Find, a portion of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act that outlines states’ obligations to identify, locate and evaluate all children with disabilities, even those younger than school age and those who do not attend public schools. Among other things, the guidance notes that schools may use federal COVID 19 relief funding provided through the American Rescue Plan to help address a backlog of evaluations. And schools may need to make extra efforts to locate and identify children who didn’t enroll in the 2020 21 school year to ensure their needs are addressed. In addition, children with “long COVID” or prolonged post COVID side effects “such as fatigue, mood changes, or difficulty concentrating” may qualify for special education services if those conditions adversely affect their ability to participate and learn, the guidance says. The document is the first in a series of Q&A documents the Education Department plans to release on special education in the coming weeks, Katherine Neas, acting assistant secretary of the office of special education and rehabilitative services, wrote. Other documents will cover topics like evaluation, reevaluation, meeting timelines, and providing services, she said. Advocates say the pandemic has been particularly challenging for students with disabilities as schools strained to provide appropriate services and accommodations during remote learning. They’ve also cautioned that interruptions to in person learning have given educators fewer opportunities to recognize potential learning disabilities and have led to a backlog in special education evaluations in some districts. The Education Department’s guidance acknowledges these challenges, and prods schools to act. “Generally, children who attend virtual schools or, as experienced during the pandemic, receive instruction virtually, do not have the same degree of face to face interactions and in person contacts with a teacher or other school staff as children who attend brick and mortar schools on a full time basis,” the document says. “As such, teachers of these students have limited opportunity for casual observation of a child’s learning abilities and early recognition of issues that may impact their learning. ”In that case, schools should ensure they are relying on more than teacher observations to identify students who may need services, the guidance says. ",3,https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/schools-must-identify-students-with-disabilities-despite-pandemic-hurdles-ed-dept-says/2021/08,FALSE, 585,RJI," Mizzou Logo If teens on TikTok can add captions to videos, you can, tooDisability. Just say the word already.  For an industry that seeks to deliver factual information to communities while avoiding euphemism, journalists have a bad habit of falling back on imprecision when discussing topics that are unfamiliar or make us uncomfortable. “Special needs,” “handicapped” and “differently abled”  all ableist phrases that classify an entire class of people as “less than” and fail to accurately convey meaning.  More than 6 million Americans live with a disability. The disability community is a spectrum of experiences that a single word will never fully capture. But recent updates to the Associated Press Stylebook are a necessary change and a good first step for every newsroom: When possible, ask people how they want to be described. Some people view their disability as central to their identity, and use identity first language such as an autistic woman or an autistic. Others prefer person first language such as a woman with autism or a woman who has autism. In describing groups of people, or when individual preferences can’t be determined, use person first language. The journalism industry’s past resistance to simply saying the word “disabled” in coverage is the tip of the iceberg. Journalists cannot begin to represent a group of people if you cannot find the wherewithal to use language that respectfully and accurately describes who they are.  It is time to move beyond updates to the style guide.  When was the last time that you wrote or edited a story that quoted a person with a disability and was not a health or science story? How about the last time you read a news story that centered on people with disabilities? If you haven’t included perspectives from the disability community in your coverage during the last 19 pandemic months, you are failing. Healthcare, education, business, politics, entertainment, labor rights, transportation  every beat is a disability beat.  And the full effects of the coronavirus pandemic are not yet known. Long COVID is very real and the Biden administration says Americans who are diagnosed will be covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act. We are looking at thousands of people around the world who will be officially counted as members of the disability community. And being counted has real life consequences.  Identifying as disabled, which I do as someone living with Crohn’s disease, gives a person real power and protections under U. S. law. And the accommodations secured under the ADA do not only apply to people born with disabilities, but to those experiencing temporary disability or recovering from illness.  When journalists are ashamed, afraid or inconvenienced by accurately reporting on the disability community, we cause harm by minimizing the power that comes with identifying as disabled.  Just as representing disability in our coverage is critical, so is hiring and supporting journalists with disabilities. Ensure that disability is included in your diversity and inclusion conversations. Those annual employee engagement surveys you ask staffers to complete so you can report out diversity numbers? Include an option for employees to identify as a person with a disability.  My diagnosis six years ago has made me a better journalist and has entirely shaped who I am as a newsroom leader. My body has forced me to practice work life chemistry for myself and for the teams I manage. I’ve learned to be an advocate for communities I cover and a more empathetic listener to the needs of our audiences. Empathy and listening are key pillars of effective product design. Actively seeking out feedback from the disability community on how your news products should be accessed by people who require different accommodations will make your news products better for everyone.  ",3,https://rjionline.org/news/is-disability-invisible-in-your-newsroom-its-beyond-time-to-fix-that/,FALSE, 587,Nasdaq’s Snub To Boardroom Disability Inclusion Initiative — A Missed Opportunity," Disabled Manager Sitting With His Work Colleagues Last week, the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission placed its stamp of approval on a Nasdaq initiative that largely sidelines people with disabilities when it comes to boardroom diversity reporting. Arriving less than 2 weeks after the U. S. celebrated the 31st anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act , the development can be viewed as something of a kick in the teeth to campaigners, employees and jobseekers advocating for greater workplace disability inclusion. Under proposed rule Release No. 34 90574, Nasdaq listed companies will be compelled to report on the composition of their boards of directors. This entails a requirement that organizations have two diverse directors, including one identifying as female and another as an underrepresented minority, or LGBTQ+, or they must explain why they do not. When it comes to this second category of forming part of an “underrepresented minority,” disability will not be considered as a qualifying criterion for this group. The announcement reaffirms the idea that, despite accounting for 20% of the world’s population, in 2021, disability continues to be viewed as workplace D&I’s poor relation. Prior to last week’s announcement, not only did disability organizations vigorously campaign and lobby Nasdaq and the SEC to include disability within the definition, they also received strong public support from the Leadership Council on Civil and Human Rights, the National LGBT Chamber of Commerce, the U. S. Black Chamber and Women Impacting Public Policy, in addition to others. In a press release, Disability:IN, a global player in driving disability inclusion and equality in business stated that it was “deeply disappointed” by the SEC’s stance. Ted Kennedy, Jr. , chairman of the American Association of People with Disabilities and Co Chair of the Disability Equality Index, a joint initiative by Disability:IN and the AAPD, further added, “Nasdaq sends the message to corporate America that people with disabilities don’t count in diversity metrics. ”Though principally a boardroom initiative, little doubt remains that diverse workplace culture is often sparked and sustained from the top down through determination and role modeling at the leadership level of an organization. In this context, a sense of widespread disappointment would appear apt as, particularly during a year when many have been revaluating traditional assumptions about how we work, the case for workplace disability inclusion as a business advantage would appear clearer than ever. Not only do employees with disabilities provide organizations with insights based on lived experience into a market worth over $8 trillion, but there are also the friends and family of disabled people to consider. Lest we forget, in a regular non pandemic year, people with disabilities dine out, travel and enjoy retail experiences and so goods and services with accessibility embeded bring in, not just people with disabilities, but their associates too. Disabled employees also possess creativity, originality and diverse perspectives to problem solving because life with a disability in an able bodied world is a full time exercise in problem solving. In some cases, certain neurodiverse employees can actually significantly outperform their neurotypical peers. Depending on the task at hand, some differently wired brains can achieve enhanced states of concentration, or may possess superior numeracy skills. The likes of Microsoft don’t run dedicated neurodiverse hiring programs as a cynical tick box exercise. The company views it as a tool to optimize a valuable resource. Why then, according to a report from the Return On Disability Group that mirrors the SEC and Nasdaq’s latest stance, do only 4% of companies run disability inclusion initiatives in contrast to 90% purporting to prioritize diversity overall?",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/gusalexiou/2021/08/13/nasdaqs-snub-to-boardroom-disability-inclusion-initiative---a-missed-opportunity/?sh=7c8f25dfbdf9,FALSE, 588,"Swimming superstar Ellie Cole on diversity, accessibility and bringing people joy"," The six time gold medallist is campaigning for WeThe15 – a global human rights movement that will feature at the Tokyo 2020 ParalympicsEllie Cole is a bona fide Australian sporting champion. Yet as other women athletes, or sportspeople of colour or other minorities can attest, success is no shield sometimes. “You know, six years ago, I was working at a place and I was told that I was a ‘diversity hire,’” she tells Guardian Australia from a training camp in Cairns. The star swimmer believes the comment was made in jest. But she was disappointed. “And I think that’s when I really started asking myself questions about what’s happening outside of the sporting space,” she says. “Because as a prolific athlete, I do live in a bit of a bubble. What’s actually happening out there in the real world needs to be spoken about more. ”This article includes content provided by Instagram. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click Allow and continue. On Thursday the International Paralympic Committee – along with dozens of other major organizations – will launch WeThe15, which they hope to be the world’s largest human rights movement. The 15 refers to the estimated 15% of people across the globe who have a disability. The lofty goal of the 10 year campaign, which will be a key feature of the Paralympics opening ceremony on 24 August, is to “act as a global movement publicly campaigning for disability visibility, accessibility and inclusion”. Organisers say the opening ceremony will embrace the inclusion agenda in an unashamed way that past games have not. The campaign is being launched with a slick 90 second film with a thought provoking message that boils down to: people with disabilities don’t need your pity, they deserve your respect. When Cole was asked by the International Paralympic Committee to take part in the campaign, she thought of her parents. “When they were told that I was going to have my leg amputated at three … their first response was that they felt this overwhelming sense of fear about what my future was going to be like,” Cole says. “They didn’t know anyone else who had a disability. ”As a child, Cole’s parents enrolled her in swimming to help with her rehabilitation. This week, at 29, she will head to Tokyo for her fourth Paralympics. Cole is the reigning champion in the 100m backstroke S9 and has 15 Paralympic medals to her name – six of them gold. To put that in perspective, Emma McKeon, Australia’s most successful Olympian after Tokyo, has 11 medals, five being gold. Cole has received an order of Australia and a striking photograph of her perched on the rocks at Wylie’s Baths in Coogee, prosthetic leg and Australian flag in the foreground, is among the collection at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. She first went to the Paralympics in Beijing aged 16. She recalls skipping maths class to watch Libby Trickett win gold in the 100m butterfly in the Olympics. The fact she would be competing at an equivalent meet weeks later didn’t dawn on her. “I didn’t even think, like, ‘I’m going to be over at this thing competing myself,’” she says. Her sense of what the Paralympics are has changed since then. And so has the public’s. Cole traces that shift in attitudes back to London 2012. She recalls seeing billboards depicting athletes with a disability as she made her way around the city. “I was walking down the street, and I was with a friend of mine who had no arms and no legs,” she says. “So he was walking on two prosthetic legs. And another friend of mine who had no legs, and another woman who was short statured, and I was thinking, like, ‘We are going to be a sight for sore eyes. It’s like a disability cocktail. ’“We didn’t get like a second look in the streets of London. I couldn’t believe that. I’d never been anywhere where that hasn’t happened before. ”",3,https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2021/aug/19/swimming-superstar-ellie-cole-on-diversity-accessibility-and-bringing-people-joy,TRUE, 589,Google Launches Program To Hire More People With Autism,"Google is teaming up with Stanford University in an effort to make its workforce more neurodiverse. The technology giant said recently that it is launching a new program aimed at bringing more people with autism into its cloud workforce and supporting them better. With Google Cloud’s Autism Career Program, the company said that it will work with experts from the Stanford Neurodiversity Project part of the university’s medical school to train as many as 500 Google Cloud managers and others who are integral in the hiring process to work more effectively with candidates who have autism. Stanford will also help coach job applicants with autism and the support will continue if candidates are hired. In addition, there will be changes to the interview process for those who are part of the Autism Career Program in order to be more accommodating, according to Rob Enslin, president of global customer operations for Google Cloud. Candidates with autism may receive extra interview time, be offered questions in advance or be able to do their interview in writing. “These accommodations don’t give those candidates an unfair advantage,” Enslin said in a blog post about the new program. “It’s just the opposite: They remove an unfair disadvantage so candidates have a fair and equitable chance to compete for the job. ”Enslin cited statistics showing that just 29% of those with autism have paid employment, a situation he called “tragic” and one he said is in many cases the result of unconscious bias. “This bias often unintentionally marginalizes great candidates and means businesses miss out on valuable talent who can contribute and enrich the workplace,” Enslin said. “This program is just one example of Google Cloud’s commitment to inclusion, and it is an important step forward to building a more representative team and creating value for customers and stakeholders. ” With a slew of new actions and additional resources, federal education officials are taking steps to ensure that students with disabilities and their families can access school services. In May 2021, 11 year old Ryan Larsen walked out of his elementary school in between classes. A year later, there are few signs of the boys whereabouts. Industry associations and business owners say serial plaintiffs are increasingly using the ADA to extract tens of thousands of dollars in settlements, not to promote access as the law intended. ",3,https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2021/08/09/google-launches-program-to-hire-more-people-with-autism/29435/,TRUE, 590,"BYU graduate writes, stars in film that explores disability"," A film written by and starring a Brigham Young University graduate will make its way to a streaming service and potentially film festivals in the coming months. And it tells a story not often represented in film. Andrew Justvig, who was born with cerebral palsy, has long dreamed of making a career working for Disney. He wrote plays in his Master of Fine Arts program at UC Riverside, but I never set out to make a movie, Justvig said. The opportunity to see an award winning play he wrote, The Anxiety of Laughing, filmed for a new streaming service, the Disability News Report, fell into his lap, Justvig said. The plan was to film a stage production of the play to be directed by one of Justvigs former professors at UC Riverside, Robin Russin. But Russin discussed the project with his friend Michael Bulbenko, who is part of the production development team at Fujifilm and an expert cinematographer. Stage plays presented on film often dont turn out as well as one would hope, Russin noted. He said, Well, this doesnt make sense, we should just make a movie, Russin recalled. Bulbenko joined the project, as well. Part of it was that Fuji was drawn to Andrew just like everybody else is, they were excited by him and his story, and we decided, OK, lets make a movie, Russin said. The Anxiety of Laughing tells the story of a stand up comedian with cerebral palsy who is helping his fiancee who is abled deal with their challenges. It also explores the lead characters dynamic with his fiancees mother, who is hesitant about her daughters relationship, Justvig said. On a small budget and without the backing of traditional filmmaking platforms, they filmed last week at Justvigs in laws home while the in laws got sent on a vacation. Though they met the first day of filming, Justvig says he bonded with his co star, Brandi Robinson, who played his girlfriend, as they stayed at that home. It helped them play their roles despite having only met the first day of filming. Russin said the cast was so invested in the story that they just made it happen, completing the shoot in just five days. For me, weirdly enough, it was the easiest shoot Ive ever done, because everybody was just working like clockwork together and really paying attention, Russin said, explaining that hes worked on shows like Americas Most Wanted and various theater projects. Out of the five scripts hes written, this is the most important, Justvig said. I just hope they buckle up because it is funny, but its the truth, and sometimes truth is painful, Justvig advised potential viewers. Russin noted that often in movies that deal with disability, abled actors play disabled characters. But now, the film industry is coming to the understanding that authenticity matters in casting. And here, we actually have Andrew, who has cerebral palsy, playing the character of someone who has cerebral palsy. Theres authenticity to it that I think is different than the way disability has been shown before, Russin said. The script provides insights into not only what it means to be born with a disability but what its like to become disabled when you dont have that as part of your normal experience, Russin said. So this is a play that I think has a great deal to share with the abled community, and also with the disabled community. I think it speaks to both, because its a very realistic, gentle, loving, but not evasive look at what life is like for people who live with disability, he added. Justvig said he wanted to explore what it really means to be disabled. And I really wanted to show that in my own life, people dont see me and my wife when we are alone. The truth is, I do a lot of the cleaning, because my wife has a full time job, and now a baby. I really have become the go to partner, so thats kind of the background, he explained. ",3,https://www.ksl.com/article/50222413/byu-graduate-writes-stars-in-film-that-explores-disability,TRUE, 593,"New training, education urged for police interaction with students with disabilities","Research in the College of Education and Human Development aims to improve interactions between individuals with disabilities and police officers with national training program. Research in the College of Education and Human Development aims to improve interactions between individuals with disabilities and police officers with national training program. Research in the College of Education and Human Development aims to improve interactions between individuals with disabilities and police officers with national training program. Despite a myriad of programs and trainings across the country, individuals with disabilities who exhibit suspicious behavior, and may lack communication and social skills, could result in a police officer’s ability to appropriately respond to and handle calls – which may result in higher rates of excessive force and incarceration. Across their lifespan, people with disabilities are more likely than those without disabilities to come into contact with police, either as a victim or as a perpetrator of a crime – this includes students, according to a scientific article authored by Lindsay Diamond of the University of Nevada, Reno and published in the SAGE journal publication Intervention in School and Clinic. For years, policing and working with individuals with disabilities has been a topic of conversation in my household, Diamond, assistant professor of special education in the Educator Preparation program in the College of Education & Human Development, said. Having a husband who is an officer and many family members and friends who work for various agencies, I have always been interested in the interactions between police and individuals with disabilities. In the last five years, this interest area has grown due to the events portrayed in the media, and I realized it was time to take some action. I conducted a study across the state to determine what is happening in Nevada. Specifically, these publicized incidences across the country have raised concerns regarding an officer’s ability to appropriately respond to and de escalate situations involving a person with a disability. To address these concerns, researchers, including Diamond and her graduate student in the College of Education & Human Development, have sought to determine the perceptions of police officers toward people with disabilities, as these perceptions and biases will influence police officers’ ability to effectively respond to and handle calls for service. A police officer’s perceptions about people with disabilities are formed over time and often based on their personal life experience, on the job training and job experience. However, while some officers report a greater understanding of people with disabilities, the results of many officers’ actions highlight the inability to differentiate between someone with or without a disability. Diamond and her co author Lindsey Hogue, also in the Universitys special education academic program of the College of Education & Human Development, found that while there are many trainings throughout the country, the content, quality and mode of delivery is inconsistent across states, schools and law enforcement agencies. This variability calls for the need for a structured and systematic training approach for both students with disabilities and police, they concluded. Following the study on these interactions and how police and people with disabilities prepare for these interactions, Diamond and Hogue at the University of Nevada, Reno have proposed a two pronged training and education approach to prepare the two groups for more successful interactions. In their peer reviewed article, Preparing Students with Disabilities and Police for Successful Interactions published in February 2021, the authors present a general overview of the two pronged training approach. ",3,https://www.unr.edu/nevada-today/news/2021/police-student-interaction,TRUE, 594,"Rising senior offers insight on virtual classes, dealing with disability","One local disabled student said online classes have made things much easier for when she’s been hurting too much one day or stuck in the hospital. ALBANY As summer break comes to an end, students and teachers are preparing for the 2021 22 school year. After missing in school instruction for a year due the pandemic, students will fully be coming back to school with hope that life may be getting back to normal. With a new school year comes the elevation of new seniors. These students have worked hard throughout their school careers to get where they are. A Class of 2022 senior shares her thoughts of how the pandemic has forced schools to adapt education in a way that’s beneficial in more ways than previously thought. With a disability, learning and showing up to school can be more of a chore than many assume. With virtual classes, it’s easier to take a breather and not worry about how much pain you will be in simply walking from class to class. Students are now able to have all of their work and help from their teacher at the click of a button. This can eliminate extra challenges that can occur for those students with physical disabilities and those with mental health problems as well, which can cause a teenager to be less likely to speak out in front of a full classroom. The rising senior offered her thoughts on some questions about school in the age of COVID: How has the pandemic changed the way you see education? Did you learn better during the pandemic or before? The pandemic helped my education greatly as I was able to learn at my own pace, and I found that I worked much better online than I did in person. How have virtual classes helped you while dealing with a disability? Online classes have made things so much easier for when I’ve been hurting too much one day or stuck in the hospital. It’s helpful that I can still listen in directly to the teacher and still interact with my peers. Pre COVID, I had to spend half the day lying down due to crazy back and neck pain. Now, online school means I don’t have to miss as much, and I’m no longer constantly in pain. With a disability, what are some difficulties in classrooms that you don’t need to worry about online? It’s quite frustrating to see how many people don’t seem to understand how many accommodations a school has to make for students like me. I feel pretty much like an outsider at times. Many times I’ve had to ask for classroom layouts to be changed just so I can get in the room and move around in a wheelchair. It also sucks having to constantly sit in the front of the classroom. What do you think schools should do about online learning? While I believe that socialization is an important factor of a student’s mental health, I also believe that students that have medical needs should have the option to work online and have the same opportunities as their peers. ",3,https://www.albanyherald.com/local/rising-senior-offers-insight-on-virtual-classes-dealing-with-disability/article_d4f98e56-f712-11eb-98fb-bb3d1d0bb74d.html,TRUE, 595,Joint Faculty Hire Spotlights Disability," Florida State’s creative writing program wanted one professor but hired two. The fact that they were both disabled was something of an afterthought, but the professors say the move matters  and follows years of activism on the part of disabled scholars. Florida State University’s English department was seeking a poet. The department was ultimately interested in two applicants: Jillian Weise and L. Lamar Wilson. Both happened to be disabled. And Florida State found the money to hire them both. Whether Florida State originally intended this to be a cluster hire in support of diversity and inclusion is immaterial to all involved, as that’s what it’s become anyway. In hiring two openly disabled scholars at the same time, in the same department, Florida State is raising awareness of scholars with disabilities and valuing their contributions. It’s also offering community to two scholars who are used to being the only disabled professor in the room. “For me, this is huge,” said Weise, an incoming associate professor of creative writing at Florida State who previously earned tenure at Clemson University. “This is like a foundational moment that is a credit, of course, to Florida State University. But it’s actually preceded by years and years of disability rights activism in higher ed. ”Disabled professors aren’t often spoken of, Weise said, much less held up to students as models of what professors and administrators can look like. This dynamic exists across fields. A recent federal report on academic scientists, for instance, found that 9 percent of scientists reported at least one disability, compared to about 11 percent of the general population. This doesn’t mean that all scientists disclose their disabilities in the classroom or to their colleagues, either, as some disabilities are less obvious than others. Ableism persists across academe. Within the field of creative writing, in particular, Weise said that disabled scholars continue to face hostility. “We dont need nondisabled people to exclusively tell our stories,” Weise said. “It’s time for a kind of revolution in creative writing, where disabled poets, memoirists, novelists, screenwriters, are not just accepted but invited and welcome. ” As for Florida State’s English department bringing on two disabled creative writers, Weise said, “No other creative writing program has done that. ”Weise, who was born disabled and refers to herself as a “cyborg” on account of her computerized prosthetic leg, is a longtime disability rights activist. Wilson, an assistant professor of creative writing who most recently taught at Wake Forest University, can’t quite say the same. He was born with Erb’s palsy, which affected the use of his left hand, but the culture in his family growing up was not to talk about it. He learned to play basketball, tennis and trumpet and, later, to type quickly for school and work. Wilson is otherwise outspoken, but again and again, he’s been rewarded professionally for making it easy for others to ignore his disability. This is something he’s trying to unlearn including from Weise, he said recently. “What I’ve appreciated about her friendship and … I would even go as far as to say mentorship, is that she’s not going to let me be left behind,” Wilson said of Weise, who is the more senior scholar and enters Florida State with tenure. “What she seems to be indicating to me is that we’re going to do this strategically, together. ”The pair recently submitted their office accommodation requests, for instance, and have discussed workplace climate. Weise was unable to move to Florida during the pandemic, while Wilson, whose family lives in Florida, has been teaching at Florida State online for a year already. Weise and Wilson, who previously worked together on a New York Times poetry installment by disabled writers, will both begin teaching on campus this fall. ",3,https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/08/06/joint-faculty-hire-florida-state-spotlights-disability,TRUE, 596,"Blind Oregonian competing in Paralympics works to bridge gap between mental health, disability"," I loved sports growing up but visually couldnt really keep up with my sighted peers. BEND, Ore. Whats more important: winning a gold medal, completing a masters degree, or helping grow an international sport?If your name is Eliana Mason, the answer is all of the above, and the sport might be one youve never heard of, called goalball. Its the only Paralympic sport thats not an adaptation of a previous sport. It was designed after World War II for blinded veterans. Mason picked up the sport, and has made it a major part of her life.  She had her cataracts removed when she was just nine days old. Compared to a person with 20/20 vision, Mason needs objects to be 15 times closer to be able to see them.  But shes never let that bother her.  For Mason, adapting to your differences is the name of the game. Were athletes, were resilient, we face adversity in games all the time and so, how can we use this to our advantage?” Mason said.  And when shes playing goalball, everything else seems secondary. I love this sport so much,” Mason said. “It brings me so much joy, and I feel so empowered when Im on the court and just getting to be an athlete. Goalball is designed for those visually impaired. So I always joke that goalball is for blind athletes, but you have to visually see it to understand it,” Mason said.  Each player, with varying levels of visual impairment, wears vision blinding glasses. Mason and all goalball athletes can see nothing, relying on the sound of bells inside the ball and their athletic instinct. The three pound ball is thrown up to 40 miles an hour, attempting to make it past three defenders. The coaches and the fans can only celebrate after a goal, and have to stay completely silent otherwise.  Mason, a Beaverton native, discovered goalball when two Paralympians moved to Oregon, and changed her life forever. I loved sports growing up, but visually couldnt really keep up with my sighted peers, she said. So discovering a sport that was adaptive and meant for blind athletes was life changing for me. ”Nearly a decade later, shes set to compete in her second Paralympic Games, and add a gold medal to her trophy case, which includes a bronze medal from Rio. Josh Lucas works with Mason in goalball clinics through the nonprofit Angel City Sports.  She was a phenomenal player then, and shes only gotten better since,” Lucas said.  He coached against her when she was younger and said she was born to lead. Shes been that type of leader since she was young I could tell,” Lucas said. “Shes always been very calm. So it wasnt easy to coach against her, when you cant rattle her. Rattle her, you cannot. After the COVID 19 pandemic postponed the Olympics and Paralympics, Mason kept training for the Games, while taking classes for her masters degree in clinical mental health counseling. So I want to bridge that gap between mental health and disability and be someones individual, and come to and work with people who have lived experience and understanding of what it means to live life with a disability and bridge that gap,” Mason said. She said there are a lot of things misunderstood about the Paralympics. First off, a lot of people have never heard of them and thats just a huge area of education gap,” Mason said. And so I think people dont recognize if youre a Paralympic athlete, you train and work just as hard as an Olympic athlete. Mason wants both Paralympic athletes and all people with disabilities to be shown a little more understanding. I think a lot of people assume what you can or cannot do,” Mason said. “Instead of assuming what someone is capable of, ask them or let them tell you or let them show you. Lucas knows whether its on or off the court, Masons going to change the sport, and a lot of peoples lives. The impact she could make is immeasurable, Lucas said. We dont know where its going to go, but we need people just like her. ",3,https://ktvz.com/sports/olympic-zone/2021/08/07/blind-oregonian-competing-in-paralympics-works-to-bridge-gap-between-mental-health-disability/,TRUE, 598,U.K. Government’s National Disability Strategy Receives Lukewarm Response," Close up Of A Hands Protecting Disabled Handicap IconThe U. K. Government’s long awaited National Disability Strategy, which was announced yesterday, has received a muted response from charities and other organizations representing the interests of the country’s 14. 1 million disabled people. The widespread consensus appears to be that the strategy, which covers a raft of policy areas from housing to employment and transportation, just about meets minimum expectations but appears to be somewhat lacking in substantive detail and imagination. The new proposals involve £1. 6 billion of funding centered around 100 policy commitments. The special educational needs sector is set to receive a cash boost of £300 million to create more places in special schools and improve existing provision. There will also be a renewed focus on building more accessible housing stock with 10% of homes built through the £11. 5 billion Affordable Homes Programme 2021 26 being allocated to supported housing. On the employment front, the Government has proposed a consultation on mandatory disability workforce reporting for businesses with over 250 staff and a new online hub for both employers and disabled employees offering advice on disability discrimination and flexible working. Plans will also be formalized to create more efficient passporting of workplace adjustments via the Access to Work scheme for those entering the workforce or moving between roles. Heralding the proposals as potentially transformational for disabled Britons, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said, “Just as our talented Paralympians are set to take the stage in Tokyo next month, at home we are harnessing that same ambition and spirit, to build a better and fairer life for all disabled people living in the U. K. ”Later continuing, “Our new National Disability Strategy is a clear plan – from giving disabled people the best start in school to unlocking equal job opportunities, this strategy sets us on a path to improve their everyday lives. ”However, Angela Rayner, the opposition Labour party’s Shadow Secretary of State for the Future of Work, who has a disabled son, told ITV News, This government has not gone far enough. “Unfortunately, I think many people who live with a disability have seen their standard of living decline under the Conservatives and this strategy does nothing to address those issues, she commented. It is a view echoed by CEO of Disability Rights UK Kamran Mallick who said, “The strategy has insufficient concrete measures to address the current inequalities that disabled people experience in living standards and life chances. ”Over the past 12 months, the Government’s disability strategy was underpinned by a survey with over 14,000 responses. However, right from the outset, the survey came under fire from U. K. DPOs or Disabled People’s Organizations for not being co designed alongside the disability community and being exclusionary as it was online only. There was criticism leveled at some of the questions, particularly those attempting to elicit whether non disabled respondents would consider entering into an intimate relationship with a person with a disability. Now that the strategy has been announced, there appears to be a widespread sense, as the country continues to emerge from the Covid 19 pandemic, that the metaphorical can is simply being kicked further down the road. Commenting on the strategy’s employment commitments, Steve Ingham CEO of global recruitment giant PageGroup and himself a wheelchair user says, “in March 2021, I co signed a letter to the Prime Minister urging for the introduction of mandatory reporting on the disability pay gap, as well as minimum thresholds for disabled staff in large companies. There is still a regulatory gap for disabilities, and business leaders frequently tell us that disability is too complex of an issue for them to grapple with, leading many to ignore it. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/gusalexiou/2021/07/29/uk-governments-national-disability-strategy-receives-lukewarm-response/?sh=12518e3e3eb9,FALSE, 600,Disability rights activists speak out about the plan to return to ‘normal’ in the fall," Davis, CaliforniaThe Disability Rights Advocacy Committee and UC Access Now are putting pressure on the UC system to retain remote learning options for students with disabilitiesBy KATHLEEN QUINN campus@theaggie. orgAs the UC plans to fully re open campuses in the fall, students with disabilities said they feel like the gains made during the pandemic in terms of accessibility are being undone.  Sarah Thuebet, a third year communications major and the president of ASUCD’s Disability Rights and Advocacy Committee , said that the committee is partnering with the Veterans Committee and the Transfer Re Entry Center to write a resolution challenging the decision to remove online options. She hopes the resolution will be drafted in early fall and presented shortly thereafter. “We’re really frustrated by this,” Thuebet said. “Not just for students with disabilities, there are a lot of students who have really benefited from remote learning. ” Sheila Kulkarni, an alumnus of UC Davis and a current graduate student in chemistry at UC Santa Barbara, is now an organizer with UC Access Now, a UC wide disability advocacy group. Kulkarni said that since the start of the pandemic, professors have emphasized leniency and allowed students extra time on assignments. “We should have been doing that regardless,” Kulkarni said. “Where was this energy when people [were] having to prove their disabilities over and over again to the school to get the same grace that’s extended to everyone now because of COVID 19?” DRAC released a survey to students asking for their opinion on the removal of online options in the fall. Though it has only received approximately 100 responses so far, 60% were in favor of continued remote learning options.  “We want to be able to have that option to be online or not,” Thuebet said.  According to the Student Disability Center website, the center is planning for in person instruction with classrooms at full capacity.  Jennifer Billeci, the director of the Student Disability Center, said that her office will be treating requests for online learning as an accommodation that will be reviewed on a case by case basis.  “I would encourage those who feel like an accommodation makes sense for them to contact us and contact us early,” Billeci said. “It’s not going to be an easy accommodation, so early gives us more opportunity to make it effective. ”Richard Tucker, the chair of the Academic Senate at UC Davis, said that outside of faculty with medical exemptions, all courses that were not previously virtual will be held in person, on campus. “Faculty who have a medical exemption from returning to campus will be allowed to apply for permission to continue with emergency operating status for their courses,” Tucker said. “We’re looking at those applications, but I’m not anticipating that very many remote courses will be added through that process. ”Megan Lynch, a second year master’s student in horticulture and agronomy at UC Davis and the founder of UC Access Now, sent a “Demandifesto” to the leaders in the UC system in July 2020 in an effort to highlight the challenges that students with disabilities face at the university.  “It was conceived rather naively, perhaps as a short term thing, because I had faith that as a public institution that the people we had entrusted with their six figure salaries to run this place would actually want to improve these things once it was brought to their attention,” Lynch said. According to Billeci, the SDC is trying to make it easier for students by maintaining a hybrid appointment model where students can sign up for appointments both online and in person. “Our goal in life is to make it so easy [to get accommodation] that you forget about us,” Billeci said. “If we are doing it right, we melt into the background. ”Kulkarni said that they disagree with the university’s plan to re open campuses to full capacity in the fall. ",3,https://theaggie.org/2021/07/29/disability-rights-activists-speak-out-about-the-plan-to-return-to-normal-in-the-fall/,FALSE, 601,"Across Federal Workforce, People With Disabilities See Need For More Representation"," Deepa Shivaram President Joe Biden, center, signs a proclamation during an event in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Monday, July 26, 2021, to highlight the bipartisan roots of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Susan Walsh/AP hide caption President Joe Biden, center, signs a proclamation during an event in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Monday, July 26, 2021, to highlight the bipartisan roots of the Americans with Disabilities Act. When Tony Coelho wrote the American with Disabilities Act 31 years ago, his goal was to ensure that people with disabilities could participate in the workforce with equal opportunities of inclusion and success. Three decades later, people with disabilities the largest minority group in the country remain underrepresented in the workforce, particularly within the federal workforce. Four years ago, the government set a benchmark calling for every agency to commit to having no less than 12% of its employees made up of people with disabilities. But even that number fell below parity, given that 26% of American adults, or 61 million people, have a disability, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Tracking the governments progress has also proven difficult. Despite the 12% benchmark, the Office of Personnel Management does not routinely track or report retention data on employees with disabilities, according to the Government Accountability Office. Some of the clearest figures come from a 2020 report from the GAO, which found that while hiring of people with disabilities increased from 2011 2017, more work needed to be done to boost retention, training and reasonable accommodation efforts. Coelho says progress has been made: nearly every presidential candidate provided a disability policy plan in the 2020 election. For the first time, there are sign language interpreters for every White House press briefing, and the White House Domestic Policy Council has its first ever director of disability policy. But advocates say its important to continue the momentum. The government, as the nations largest employer, has worked toward being a model workplace for people with disabilities for decades, even before the ADA was signed. The Biden administration has pledged that their hires and appointments will reflect what America looks like, but advocates say change is not just about hiring practices it is measured by changes in workplace culture around how people with disabilities are perceived, and in building workplaces that address accessibility within the framework of equity and inclusion. President George H. W. Bush signs the Americans with Disabilities Act on July 26, 1990. Barry Thumma/AP hide caption President George H. W. Bush signs the Americans with Disabilities Act on July 26, 1990. When President George H. W. Bush signed the ADA 31 years ago this month, the law called for reasonable accommodations to be made for people with disabilities to conduct the essential aspects of their job. But Cindy Otis says thats not what happened for her. Otis, a former CIA analyst and wheelchair user, says that in her 10 year career at the CIA, she faced a number of barriers within the agency that made it difficult to perform basic aspects of her job. She says she also had the added stress of not wanting to bring up too many of these restrictions out of fear of being seen as complaining, or less capable as her colleagues. On several occasions at the start of her career, Otis says she had to call for assistance to open a heavy vault door that was impossible to open from a seated position. Then, she says, she was told she was starting to annoy people when she asked to be let in everyday and should avoid being seen as a troublemaker. ",3,https://www.npr.org/2021/07/31/1020746037/disability-access-representation-ada,TRUE, 602,Disability advocates calling for reform as US Paralympian Becca Meyers drops out of Games citing lack of support," Becca Meyers asked for her mother to be her personal care assistant. Disability advocates and elected officials are calling on the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee to rethink its policies after a Paralympic gold medalist swimmer was denied a request to have a care assistant travel with her to Tokyo due to COVID 19 restrictions. Becca Meyers ordeal also speaks to the larger issue of disability inequities amplified by the pandemic, advocates say. Meyers, 26, who is blind and deaf, was set to compete at the Paralympics in Tokyo with the womens swim team in August, and requested that her mother join her as her personal care assistant. Assistants are assigned to help the athlete navigate the Olympic village and with any other duties that are limited because of their disability. Meyers, who won three gold medals in the 2016 Games, announced that she had chosen to withdraw from the team after the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee denied her request, citing COVID 19 restrictions on the number of personnel it could send to Tokyo. I am angry, I am disappointed, but most importantly, I am sad not to representing my country, she wrote in a statement posted on Twitter. The news stunned the Paralympian and disabled community as theyve been looking forward to her swimming for over five years, Kristin Duquette, a former Team USA swimmer and disability rights advocate, told ABC News. Duquette, who works as a preparedness officer for the Federal Emergency Management Agency and has muscular dystrophy, acknowledged the difficulties that COVID 19 poses in keeping the athletes safe during the two week event, but she said the USOPC could have easily complied with Meyers request. It is a stain on the USOPCs efforts to be inclusive and diverse, she told ABC News. The committee defended its decision in a statement released Wednesday, citing the strict COVID 19 restrictions. It added that a single personal care assistant has been assigned to the U. S. Paralympics Swimming team who has more than 27 years of coaching experience, including eleven years with para swimmers. This PCA joins a staff of 10 additional accomplished swim professionals, all who have experience with blind swimmers; totaling 11 staff for 34 athletes, the USOPC said in a statement. Meyers noted that her mother has accompanied her to events as her personal care assistant since 2017 and was essential for her to compete. Duquette, who is friends with Meyers, emphasized that an athletes personal care assistant is trained to assist with specific limitations that come from a Paralympians particular disability. She noted that Meyers is the only member of Team USA swimming who is both blind and deaf. There is a lot of anxiety that goes into travel. A personal care assistant is really dependent on the disability you have, she said. Meyers announcement sparked calls from Congress to meet the needs of the American Paralympians. U. S. Sens. Maggie Hassan, D N. H. , and Ben Cardin, D Md. , both called on the committee to rethink its rules. Hassan sent a letter to the USOPC reminding them that many disabled Americans are already facing too many hurdles when it comes to athletics and it should set an example for the rest of the world. [The athletes] should not be forced to navigate the Tokyo Olympics without the support that they need, particularly in the midst of a global pandemic, she wrote in her letter. Move United, a nonprofit group that promotes parasports, also called on the committee to rethink its policies given the limited resources for Paralympians. Too often as a community, we are faced with inadequate resources to promote our best selves, and when this happens we should speak up and advocate for our rights to access and accommodation, the group said in a statement to ABC News. We are saddened that Becca Meyers will not be competing in the Paralympics next month. Duquette said the coronavirus has amplified the day to day difficulties that the disabled community faces. From accommodations to assist deaf persons who cant read lips through a mask to difficulties transitioning to a work from home setup, the community has had extra mental stress on top of their fears of catching the virus. Disability is at the bottom when we think of diversity and inclusion, she said. Duquette said she hopes this situation will open more Americans eyes to disability rights and spur change beyond the sports world. Hopefully this is a learning lesson, she said. But this is at the expense of someones dream. 24/7 coverage of breaking news and live events",3,https://abcnews.go.com/Sports/disability-advocates-calling-reform-us-paralympian-becca-meyers/story?id=78972529,FALSE, 603,"Organization asks city to tackle disability issues, ETHRA service"," A local organization is calling for the city of Oak Ridge to be more accessible to people who have mobility issues, as well as requesting better transportation services. Members of the group, the Transportation and Mobility Committee of Strong and United, spoke to the Oak Ridge Municipal Planning Commission on Thursday.  Strong and United is a local organization that has been discussing various Oak Ridge issues. Member Marian Wildgruber, accompanied by her service dog Farrah, gave a presentation. Theres a lot of people in Oak Ridge that would be out and about if they could be, Wildgruber said. She recommended the city invest more money for crosswalks, sidewalks and signals to help people living with disabilities travel in Oak Ridge more easily. She described the current sidewalks as crumbling and unsafe. She said the city does not need to raise taxes, but could move money away from other priorities. She compared the citys current spending of $100,000 per year for 30 years for fixing what she called the worst Americans with Disabilities Act problems with its slated spending of $200,000 per year replacing light fixtures at parks and ballfields. She also said the citys contract with East Tennessee Human Resources Agency , which provides bus services, should include service on Sundays and evenings. She also pointed out that the buses do not allow people to leave Oak Ridge on Saturdays. In her presentation and an interview afterward, she pointed out other weaknesses in the citys ability to provide public transportation, including the end of the volunteer myRide program by which volunteers provided rides to senior adults and the end of a taxi program prior. She also criticized the current system, ETHRA, for only providing people with on demand public transportation if ETHRA is contacted within 72 hours of the need, rather than within the same day. She explained both in her presentation and an interview afterward that mobility issues for people with disabilities are personal. She said she is blind, but was hoping she would be able to walk to Oak Ridge Unitarian Universalist Church. However, she said the lack of signals or crosswalks at certain crossings and the lack of a sidewalk near Summit Medical Group of Oak Ridge, 809 Oak Ridge Turnpike, prevented her from making the trip. Theres currently no way to get to my church, without being in a car, safely, she said. Were hoping to reach out to people in Oak Ridge who have disabilities or know people who do, she said. She said people could contact her at mwildgruber@comcast. net. People can contact her at that email she said, who want to be part of this effort to improve transportation and infrastructure in Oak Ridge, as well as for people who have mobility needs or concerns. Oak Ridge Municipal Planning Commissioner Charlie Hensley, in response, said he would certainly recommend funds for helping people with disabilities in the capital improvement program, called the CIP, a list of funding priorities prepared by the Planning Commission. However, he said there is sometimes difficulty finding funds. Its frustrating from this side too, he said. Oak Ridge Community Development Director Wayne Blasius described requests from Wildgruber and her fellow committee member Tom Burns as reasonable. Apart from Wildgruber and Burns, the committee includes Bill Moore, James Lewis, Linna Nicholas and Heidi Brenner. ",3,https://www.oakridger.com/story/news/2021/07/21/organization-oak-ridge-should-tackle-disability-issues-ethra-service/7987374002/,FALSE, 609,Mindset Matters: Witnessing A New Relationship For Business And Disability," Since the next sequence of Mindset Matters columns will emphasize the developing relationship between business and disability rather than employment related issues it is important to acknowledge a critical detail, the fact that there are moments when the connection between disability and business can be seen as if there are on two divergent paths when in reality embracing the lived experience of disability must be a key driver for the future of business innovation and developing a competitive advantage for long term growth. While employment issues are often a central narrative, rethinking the relationship between business and disability must begin to be amplified even more.  To begin to dig into this further it is important to think about the notion that the lived experience of disability has a direct connection to many of the business trends of the day. By looking at some of the key industries for startup’s we can begin to get a better picture of where these relationships can grow, but even more importantly why cultivating these relationships make good business sense. Whether it be industries such as EdTech, Healthcare to Leisure and Entertainment it is critical to show the appeal of the disability experience to build a solid foundation for growth. As digital technology is changing the way we learn, EdTech is becoming one of the most appealing industries to start a business. The plethora of opportunities are there, and the capacity to intersect disability and education solutions has hardly begun. Whether highlighting social emotional learning apps, language learning apps to early childhood technologies, the potential to integrate the knowledge of the disability experience can be a real economic force to help these businesses scale and meet the growing demands for these diverse digital learning tools. Not unlike EdTech, Leisure and Entertainment have also become a hotbed of action for entrepreneurs in the startup space. From fashion brands to video games, the demand from the consumer is there and the space for entrepreneurs with disabilities will certainly be needed. According to Vogue Business, the $400 billion accessible clothing market has only begun to take shape and will continue to evolve. The role of the entrepreneur and fashion startups will be a driving force in the marketplace. Similarly, accessibility in the video game market is now reaching a feverish pace where stalwarts like Microsoft and Sony are trying to get their share of this $150 billion market. Yet, there is room for young entrepreneurs out there from game developers, engineers, and other fresh minds who can enter the industry and show that gaming is for everyone and that everything from subtitles to one handed control systems can be beneficial for all. It is this appreciation that propels the very inclusive ethos of the disability experience that is central to business success. Building on this very idea, we must pursue the notion that articulating a relationship with business and the disability community has to be a multifaceted approach. Leadership from startup entrepreneurs to C level executives at Fortune 500 and 1000 companies can explore how to gain market share in these new industries by rethinking the relationship between disability and business. No longer can the disability market be seen through this myopic lens of just a niche market, but rather is viewed as a bazaar that has a mix of cultures and ideas that serve as a panorama for business opportunities.  If organizations can reassess how to build a relationship around disability, then they will be in a better position to reap the benefits. In the next Mindset Matters column, we will go deeper into the mechanics of what building a multifaceted relationship within the disability community can look like and how to connect to the larger business landscape. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathankaufman/2021/07/14/mindset-matters-witnessing-a-new-relationship-for-business-and-disability/?sh=5773d6e25ace,TRUE, 612,How the airline industry still refuses to accommodate disability,"When her wheelchair was severely damaged during her flight on Delta Airlines from Minneapolis to Newark, New Jersey, the model and influencer Bri Scalesse took to TikTok and recorded a video that quickly went viral. Today my freedom and independence was taken away, she said. I dont know how Im going to live my life. Pretty much no one looks forward to airline travel. But if youre a wheelchair user, flying isnt just an inconvenience; it can be devastating. Airlines were reported to have lost or broken 10,548 wheelchairs or scooters in 2019. In 2018, 36,930 disability related complaints were made to airlines. Airlines were reported to have lost or broken 10,548 wheelchairs or scooters in 2019, more than 1 out of every 100 they handle, yet little has been done to address the problem. A disability rights group called All Wheels Up is trying to change that by fighting for the Air Carrier Access Amendments Act, co sponsored by Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D Wis. , and Rep. Jim Langevin, D R. I. The act would require new airplanes to meet accessibility standards and existing aircraft to make modifications to accommodate disabled passengers. According to a report last year by the Transportation Department, airlines damage about 29 disabled travelers wheelchairs every day. No data are available from before 2019, because airlines werent mandated to report or track how many wheelchairs they lost or damaged before that. My wheelchair is my freedom, a part of me, Scalesse told MSNBC. I was devastated. Because wheelchair damages or losses are so common, flying is just not a privilege that equally extends to the disability community. Eighty percent of the wheelchair community does not fly because of a risk to their physical selves or a loss of their wheelchair due to damage, said ??Michele Erwin, the founder and president of All Wheels Up. The organization lobbies for wheelchair users to independently maneuver themselves onto the plane with dignity and safety and to make air travel fully accessible for millions of people who use Wheelchairs around the world. It’s about respecting human rights but it’s also about recognizing the disability community as consumers. Erwin says that along with the organizations vice president, Alan Chaulet, she successfully got airlines to start reporting the number of mobility devices they compromise and to commit to making flying accessible to the disability community. Erwin and Chaulet emphasize that its about respecting human rights but its also about recognizing the disability community as consumers. Flying is tough, but thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act, most destinations are accessible and so are many more around the world, Chaulet said. People with disabilities have money to spend. Airlines arent just losing money on wheelchair repairs, replacements or flight reimbursements or by offering future travel vouchers for disgruntled disabled travelers; theyre also missing out on the business of potential customers who stay away from flying for fear of becoming another headline. And its also not just wheelchair losses and damage its delays like the one that forced disability rights activists to crawl out of a Delta flight in 2015. Bathrooms on planes arent accessible to people with most mobility issues. While trains and buses are forced to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act and create accessible wheelchair spots and restrooms, planes have been exempt from complying with the law because they are still following the Air Carrier Act, which was passed in 1986, before the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law. While some airlines seem to be showing interest in All Wheels Ups research, education and training programs, the pace of chance is slow. They are taking those steps, Erwin said of the airlines. I just wish they were taking more aggressive steps. . . . Unfortunately, we are still a few years away from the implementation of a wheelchair spot on airplanes. ",3,https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/how-airline-industry-still-refuses-accommodate-disability-n1273650,FALSE, 613,Minnesota to phase out unequal pay jobs for people with disabilities," Krystal Halford recalls feeling jubilant after landing a job at an assembly plant in Eagan that employs people with disabilities. But after opening her paycheck, Halfords excitement turned to dismay. For two weeks of work, Halford discovered that she had made just $100 amounting to less than $4 an hour. It sent a message that I wasnt valued, that I didnt deserve what others have because I happen to be different, said Halford, 32, who has Aspergers syndrome, a developmental disorder. Halford is among thousands of Minnesotans who have been paid less than the minimum wage solely because they have a disability. They work at dozens of centers across the state, known as sheltered workshops, that are allowed under a loophole in federal law to pay people with disabilities based on their productivity, rather than a fixed hourly rate. In many cases, their pay amounts to less than $1 an hour for basic tasks such as sorting and packaging merchandise, shredding paper or picking up garbage on work crews. More than 8,000 Minnesotans with a range of disabilities, including Down syndrome, cerebral palsy and autism spectrum disorder, attend these cloistered workplaces among the most of any state, according to federal workforce data. Now, this separate and unequal payment regime is coming to an end. This month, after years of pushing by disability advocates, Minnesota became the latest state to move to abolish the practice of paying people with disabilities a subminimum wage. Tucked deep inside a 533 page budget bill is a measure that establishes a task force to develop a plan to phase out subminimum wages by August 2025. Lawmakers also approved $14. 1 million in grants to help disability service providers transform their business models and boost work options in the community. The practice of paying subminimum wages began in the Great Depression as a way to give people with disabilities a chance to learn job skills. But in recent years, the practice has come to be seen as discriminatory, exploitative and a violation of civil rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act. A Star Tribune investigation in 2015 found that many of those in Minnesotas workshops spend years toiling in poverty and isolation with little hope for advancement. At least eight states including Colorado, Maryland, Oregon and Washington have moved to prohibit subminimum wage employment in the hope of integrating more people with disabilities into the general workforce. And early this year, President Joe Biden signaled his desire to end subminimum wages as part of his broader proposal to boost the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour for all workers, including those with disabilities. The world is moving in this direction, said Sen. Jim Abeler, R Anoka, chairman of the Human Services Reform Finance and Policy Committee. Everyone deserves a chance to be as independent as possible and they shouldnt be trapped in a subminimum wage job when they could work at a market wage. But the move to phase out subminimum wages is expected to force dramatic changes at approximately 80 centers across the state that provide a wide range of support services for people with disabilities. Many of these facilities sometimes called day activity centers have long struggled to find skilled workers for their clients. The demand for more staff is expected to intensify as centers transition more people to jobs in the regular workforce. People may require one on one job training, transportation and other services, providers said. Many parents of adult children with disabilities have vigorously supported the alternative wage system, partly due to fears that their children will have nowhere to go if workshops close. In many smaller towns across Minnesota, workshops are bustling hubs of activity, where individuals make social connections and participate in crafts and learning activities. Many centers are the primary source of transit for adults with disabilities, shuttling them to and from work and activities in the community. ",3,https://www.startribune.com/minnesota-to-phase-out-subminimum-wage-jobs-for-people-with-disabilities/600076878/,FALSE, 615,Disability activists push for more inclusive Pride celebrations,"The coronavirus pandemic changed how the United States and countries around the world celebrate Pride month. This summer, many American cities opted for a hybrid celebration, hosting socially distanced marches or completely virtual events. But activists are still pushing organizers to make events accessible for the disabled community. Annie Segarra, a disability activist, who has Ehlers Danlos Syndrome and uses a wheelchair, said things like video captions, translators and audio descriptions of visual events can mean the world to disabled individuals who want to join the celebrations but are afraid of being left out. “Accessibility is not just about physical spaces,” Segarra told CBS News. “Depending on your disability, your access needs are going to be different, and unfortunately, that’s something that a lot of people just don’t consider. I think that people see accessibility as solely a physical experience. So typically, I guess, a representation issue for wheelchair accessibility. But it’s just so much larger than that and it’s such an important conversation to be able to include a number of various disabilities so that the conversation of accessibility doesn’t in itself become exclusive. ” Alexis Hillyard, a YouTuber who was born without her left hand, said it’s freeing when she’s in a space where she and her disability are accepted.  “Accessibility means that people are able to move through and exist in spaces they deserve to be a part of without feeling like they need to change who they are, make themselves smaller and make sacrifices to be able to be in that space,” the 39 year old said. “It’s like being able to be and exist in your full self, as you are, without having to change or adapt to the world around you. ” On her cooking channel, StumpKitchen, Hillyard explains how her disability is an important tool she uses every day and an integral aspect of her life. She’s also deliberate in making her videos as accessible to her viewers as possible. “I didn’t realize before how much I would subconsciously hide my arm or wonder if people were staring or wondering what they were thinking about me or feeling sorry for me,” Hillyard said. “It was a beautiful surprise and just an awareness and release of tension you were feeling that you didn’t realize that you had. ”Segarra said the ability to take inaccessible events virtual, like drag nights at clubs she could not attend in her wheelchair, expands just how many LGBTQ+ individuals can celebrate with their community and makes her heart “three times as full. ” But she also calls many COVID 19 concessions “emotionally complicated” as they are proof to the disabled community that accommodations now considered common could have been implemented sooner.  “All of a sudden, the pandemic came and it very much felt like now that this affects non disabled people, we can make those changes at the drop of a hat,” Segarra said. “When disabled people requested it prior, it was in no way. So while it was such a relief to be able to get those accommodations, the sting of ableism was still there because then you had the option all along to get with these accommodations, but literally because of who we are, because this is the disabled community asking you for it, you thought that we were dismissable. Therefore, you wash your hands of being able to create an accessible, open space, accessible working environment for a single community. ”Segarra also says that those trying to be more inclusive should keep in mind the larger goal of dignity rather than just checking accessible boxes. For both Hillyard and Segarra, their disabilities and queer identities are interwoven aspects of their lives. Every year, the discourse about making Pride more accessible emerges and often upsets some able bodied people. ",3,https://www.wlns.com/top-news/disability-activists-push-for-more-inclusive-pride-celebrations/,FALSE, 616,A chance to 'amplify one another': What is Disability Pride Month?," For Tiffany Yu, Disability Pride Month is about recognizing her disability as an integral part of who she is. For Anthony Rios, its about accepting that his disability makes him different, not worse.  The Americans with Disabilities Act was signed by President George H. W. Bush on July 26, 1990, a landmark law that prohibited discrimination against people with disabilities. In that same year, Boston held the first Disability Pride Day.  Although Disability Pride Day isnt nationally recognized, parades are held in a number of places nationwide, such as Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, San Antonio and more.  In 2015, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio declared July Disability Pride Month in celebration of the ADA’s 25th anniversary. The month is a chance to honor each persons uniqueness as a natural and beautiful part of human diversity, according to Americas Disability Community. Moving away from special needs:Disability advocates, experts implore you to stop saying special needsRios, who is blind, said he grew up hearing his family and adults talk about his disability as if it were a disease or burden. When he was 10, he recalls his mother praying and asking God why her son was cursed with blindness. As he grew older and found friends within the disabled community, Rios said he learned to accept and thrive with his blindness.  Every July, Rios said hes reminded that he doesnt need the sympathy of others – just the acceptance of his disability.  We dont want your pity. We want your pride, Rios told USA TODAY.  When she was 9, Yu was in a car accident that paralyzed one of her arms and took her fathers life. For years, Yu tried to hide her disability by wearing long sleeve shirts and refusing to talk about the accident. She later developed post traumatic stress disorder and took on the challenge of healing and accepting herself. So not only did I become disabled, I also lost a parent and experienced childhood trauma. I think that so much of my healing process has been really experiencing the full embodiment of who I can be and who I am, Yu told USA TODAY. So this month is about people with disabilities like me falling in love with themselves. Conversations about disabilities:Britney Spears forced IUD sparks important conversations about disabilityThis Disability Pride Month she hopes to celebrate the small wins and joys in life, such as learning to curl her hair with the assistance of her foot. She hopes to bring pride to the term disabled and awareness to ableism, the discrimination of people with disabilities.  I want people to confront what creates ableism and why they dont like the word disabled because in reality, there is nothing evil or wrong with being disabled, said Yu, founder of Diversability and Awesome Foundation Disability Chapter. Rebecca Cokley said she was fortunate to grow up in a home that didnt make her feel different or as an outcast. Cokley and her parents have achondroplasia, a type of bone growth disorder that results in dwarfism. Although most of her friends with disabilities werent welcomed in their communities, they were welcomed in Cokleys home. So in her adult life and professional work, Cokley strives to provide those safe spaces for everybody.  For her, Disability Pride Month is not only about embracing disabilities but also learning to love yourself on hard days.  For me this month is not only about celebrating disabilities but remembering theres going to be days where you wont always love your disability, and thats OK too, Cokley said.  When celebrating Disability Pride Month, Jessica Ping Wild urges people to listen and amplify voices from people with disabilities. She said the community is hurting from a lack of representation and care from able bodied people. Ping Wild has CHILD syndrome, a rare inherited disorder that causes limb underdevelopment or absence and large patches of skin to become inflamed. She said celebrating this month is important because everyone deserves to feel good about the skin theyre in and everyone experiences disability differently. The community is diverse, and everyone deserves a voice, Ping Wild said. ",3,https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/07/02/how-disability-pride-month-started-and-what-means/7840560002/,TRUE, 617,How Funders Can Make Disability Visible," Disability is a relatively untapped area of investment for philanthropy, but one that offers promise of change and multiple avenues for donor impact. By Catherine Hyde Townsend & Bess Rothenberg Jun. 30, 2021 COVID 19 has laid bare what the disability community has been telling us all along: current systems have failed people with disabilities because they were not created with disabled people in mind. 1 As the new UN Special Rapporteur for Persons with Disabilities Gerard Quinn noted at the Human Rights Council’s 46th session, “The COVID 19 pandemic has painfully shown that . . . persons with disabilities are treated as if they are invisible . . . invisibility can create inequality, and unequal treatment can itself lead to, or reinforce, invisibility. ”One in five Americans have a disability, one in every three families has a household member with a disability, and more than one in three of us globally will eventually join the community. And yet a CEP report on equity in philanthropy notes that just 9 percent of foundations reported an increase of funding related to people with disabilities since the pandemic began, and not one explicitly mentioned disability in any of their interviews. Funding for disability policy, advocacy, and rights is paltry, with just six foundations investing over $1 million in 2018, while, globally, just $57 million of grantmaking included persons with disabilities . In 2016, disability leaders called the Ford Foundation out for excluding disability in the foundation’s then new mission to combat inequality. This humbling moment pushed us to make a comprehensive effort toward disability inclusion in both our grantmaking and operations. Disability leaders have been teaching us that addressing inequality means understanding and investing in disability work. Disability not only intersects but profoundly exacerbates the very inequality that social justice philanthropy is committed to addressing. On the one hand, poverty causes disability in a myriad of ways, from lack of access to healthcare and proper nutrition to a greater likelihood of living and working in dangerous environments. On the other, disability also causes poverty, given the outsized expenses of healthcare, discrimination in employment, and public policies which are designed to limit many disabled people to subminimum wages. Disabled people are three times as likely to be denied healthcare and twice as likely as non disabled people to die from lack of basic care while up to 50 percent of use of force incidents with the police involve a person who is disabled. Girls and young women with disabilities experience gender based violence at rates up to 10 times more than those without disabilities. Disability is a relatively untapped area of investment for philanthropy, but one that offers promise of change and multiple avenues for donor impact. We hope that by sharing the steps we have taken, and our lessons learned, other funders can build a roadmap toward disability inclusion. Traditionally, many equate disability with a medical impairment or diagnosis, relegating the issue to medical professionals who seek cures and parents who seek therapies. However, disability is also an identity rooted in a long history of power, discrimination, and community. Disability has a culture; indeed, it has many cultures. Without recognizing disability as a political identity grounded in community and pride, we cannot fully understand why disability is fundamental to social justice “A system that places value on people’s bodies and minds based on societally constructed ideas of normality, intelligence, excellence, desirability, and productivity,” as Talila A. Lewis defines it, ableism defaults and prioritizes non disabled bodies. It perpetuates stereotypes and discriminatory practices deeply rooted in anti Blackness, eugenics, misogyny, colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism. ",3,https://ssir.org/articles/entry/how_funders_can_make_disability_visible,FALSE, 620,Amazon Studios Prioritizing Disability Inclusion,"The Hollywood studio behind “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “One Night in Miami…” and “Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm” is committing to put more people with disabilities on screen. Amazon Studios said this month that it will take new steps to increase inclusion of people with disabilities and other underrepresented groups in films and series. The commitment comes in a new inclusion policy and a playbook that outlines “guidelines for its collaborators in the creative community. ” “We wanted to move beyond good intentions to creating mechanisms that hold us accountable to a high bar,” said Latasha Gillespie, executive head of diversity, equity and inclusion at Amazon Studios. “This inclusion policy and inclusion playbook add important, additional depth and guidance for our internal teams and external partners to ensure we continue to advance our shared mission of amplifying the best creatives and content around the world. ”The inclusion policy covers story development, hiring and production and includes expectations for documentation and meeting certain goals. Namely, Amazon Studios said it is aiming to include one speaking character with a disability, one from the LGBTQIA+ community as well as three characters from regionally underrepresented racial, ethnic or cultural groups in each production. In addition, the policy indicates that actors should be cast in roles that match their identity in terms of gender, nationality, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation and disability. There are also goals related to seeking bids from a diverse group of production vendors or suppliers and to address pay equity. The studio indicated that productions will need to complete a report template covering the inclusion goals within one month of wrapping up principal photography. Amazon Studios said it worked with experts at the USC Annenberg Inclusion Initiative, the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund and other groups to create the new policies, which the company said are intended to minimize biases and increase representation in front of and behind the camera. With a slew of new actions and additional resources, federal education officials are taking steps to ensure that students with disabilities and their families can access school services. ",3,https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2021/06/22/amazon-studios-prioritizing-disability-inclusion/29389/,TRUE, 623,Moms push back against transplant discrimination based on disability,"A West Michigan mom is rewriting the rules when it comes to the state’s organ donation process, inspiring legislation banning discrimination based on disability. Lindsay Filcik’s 3 year old daughter Ivy was born with Down syndrome. “When Ivy was born, it really changed my world quite a bit and opened my eyes to a lot of the discrimination that happens for people with disabilities,” Filcik said. By the time Ivy was 1, Filcik discovered her daughter could even be discriminated against during the organ transplant process. After doing some digging, Filcik learned individuals with a physical or intellectual disability have been denied a spot on a transplant list because of their disability. She said people have also received lower priority on a transplant waitlist based on their disability. “It really hurt knowing that there were people that would find life not worthy of saving if she were ever in need of an organ transplant,” Filcik said. “I have two typical children and to know that their lives may be categorized differently than hers is just not OK,” Flick says some health care professionals have defended the move, believing that people with a disability may have trouble following post transplant care instructions or lack the support to do so, potentially wasting the donation. But for the parents of a kid with a disability, there’s no excuse. Cyndi Peters of Grand Rapids also has a son with Down syndrome. Peters joined Filcik in advocating for change, wanting to know why Michigan hasn’t done more to protect those with a disability. “There’s like 12 or 13 states that already have this legislation on the books, and so I was just confused why doesn’t every state have this?” Peters said. Though the federal Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 bans discrimination during the transplant process, the National Down Syndrome Society says people with disabilities still don’t receive equal consideration for organ transplants. With the help of the NDSS as well as state lawmakers, the moms helped craft House Bill 4762, outlawing the denial of a transplant or lowering a person’s place on a transplant waitlist based on a physical or intellectual disability. The state House passed the bill last week with overwhelming support. They also approved another piece of legislation that would allow HIV patients to donate their organs to HIV positive recipients. Both bills must be passed by the Senate and signed by the governor to become law. Sunday will be National HIV Testing Day. The Kent County Health Department has teamed up with the Grand Rapids Red Project to provide free HIV testing and education.",3,https://www.wlns.com/news/moms-push-back-against-transplant-discrimination-based-on-disability/,FALSE, 626,Hear My Voice: A win for music artists with a disability," Krip Hop Nations George Doman, aka georgetragic, is a Los Angeles based rapper who helped bring a Sports Emmy award for the Netflix film ‘Rising Phoenix. ’Plastic leg braces, also known as ankle–foot orthosis have been integrated as a part of my framework. Sometimes, on many visits to doctor, Paralympic Games posters would grace the office walls. I was impressed with the stature of those Para athletes as I was navigating through life as a disabled adult. Preparing for your destiny is often questioned, as self doubt tends to sink in, muddying the waters my sound waves seem to form during every recording session. I was told many times that lyrics covering disabilities would not reach the shores of the mainstream, but on 8 June 2021, the Netflix documentary about the Paralympic Games ‘Rising Phoenix’ became a sound wave built on the strength of those same titans; it generated a typhoon. Yes, men and women would recognize our power in disabilities, and those same gatekeepers would have to answer some questions regarding inclusion. I question, merely judging any unsigned artists based on followers, verification badges, or YouTube viewership? Unfortunately, social security does not cover the high contract prices or fees. Our music business has lost the essence of finding unique artists because traditional gatekeepers lock access to the promised land! A&Rs , managers, and producers charge submission fees to rigged contests. Music executives no longer execute their intuition as the intimidation of using only their ears to pick and choose who may influence the masses takes the presidency. Krip Hop and their crew of leaders disabled this very thought process by winning, the Sports Emmy. Trophies, accolades, and recognition are merely war medals. My personal life was more of a battle with human rights, as earning a simple job interview was tarnished by discriminatory remarks. See, Im a rap artist, but I have regular dreams of a disabled body, but I also want to provide for myself and my family. Hollywood gave Drake a wheelchair to cover strength during his time filming Degrassi . And it makes me question the depiction of our stories on screen. We need more connection to the human spirit, and the disabled community is ready to tell and share their beautiful imperfections. When I was 17, I met a successful entrepreneur during an awareness week who happened to be disabled. I heard his story of having a family, a wife, and peace of acceptance in society. I asked him how he gathered the strength to pursue a family and success, and without uttering a word, I was covered in tears, the very tears that drowned me in self doubt.  With the Emmy win, I realised maybe inclusion is achieved by the same hardships that make us question our existence in the world. I found my existence and a fitting position as a brands campaign assistant for the International Paralympic Committee, were not only is inclusion championed, but empathy too is practiced. To the recording studios and companies that discriminated against me in Los Angeles, your closed minds missed out on a Sports Emmy winner! ",3,https://www.paralympic.org/blog/hear-my-voice-win-music-artists-disability,TRUE, 627,When Disability Representation Falls Short," Get regular updates to your inbox. by Brianna Albers | June 21, 2021 Everyone knows that I’m a “Star Wars” buff. Lately, I’ve been listening to “Star Wars” audiobooks, specifically the Old Republic series. I’d heard some not so great things about the first novel, “Revan,” but eventually, my curiosity won out. After all, if there’s one thing “Star Wars” audiobooks have going for them, it’s the performance from sound effects to triumphant fanfares. The second book in the series, “Deceived” by Paul S. Kemp, is fun in that it introduces characters and locations from the companion game, “Star Wars: The Old Republic. ” I keep going, “Oh, I know this place! I know that person!” It has enriched my relationship with my favorite video game no small feat, considering that I’ve been playing it on and off since 2013. Of course, “Deceived” has its flaws. The book follows several characters, including a smuggler named Zeerid. A former trooper, Zeerid resorted to running spice the “Star Wars” equivalent of narcotics when his daughter, Arra, was injured in an accident that killed Zeerid’s wife. We learn over the course of the novel that Zeerid has spent the past couple of years working for the Exchange, a gang syndicate, all to buy a hoverchair the “Star Wars” equivalent of a flying wheelchair for his daughter. I wanted to enjoy the disabled representation. I have a soft spot for father daughter relationships, and I’ve been longing for a character like me a character with faulty legs, a defective body in the “Star Wars” universe. But the more I listened, the more uncomfortable I became. Zeerid often reflects on Arra’s situation, lamenting his daughter’s disability. He spends much of his time with Arra wishing she could walk or, at the very least, have one of those expensive hoverchairs. Meanwhile, Arra seems perfectly content with her body. We’re not privy to her internal dialogue, but the author suggests that, unlike Zeerid, Arra does not see her condition as tragic, or even something to fix. Her disability is simply a facet of life. In fact, more than anything, Arra wants to spend time with her father, Zeerid, who justifies his absence by putting his pay toward that elusive hoverchair. At one point, Arra’s caregiver Zeerid’s sister in law takes him aside. Zeerid has been working tirelessly, and while his determination is commendable, the fact of the matter is that Arra misses her father. She doesn’t care about expensive technology or up and coming treatments. All she wants is to be with the person she loves during her formative years. We eventually realize that Zeerid feels responsible for Arra’s accident. His desire to provide for Arra, while genuine, is tinged with guilt. He wants to buy a hoverchair so he can assuage his conscience. Arra’s disability is a plot point, but more than that, it is something to be fixed and nothing more. Zeerid agrees to deliver spice to a besieged world for a considerable amount of credits. He puts the advance toward a hoverchair, and surprises his daughter with it before setting out on the mission. She’s understandably excited, but we can tell that her joy stems from seeing her father for the first time in ages. Zeerid is so intent on “fixing” his daughter that, in so doing, he is slowly ruining their relationship . This is the kind of representation that hurts more than helps. Disabled girls are seen as tragedies in real life; the last thing I want is for that sense of “worst case scenario” to bleed into my choice of fiction. Arra can’t walk. Her accident was traumatic for all parties, and rightfully so. But Zeerid can’t see past his own prejudice, while Arra is busy living life to the fullest, hoverchair or no. It’s a narrative that plays out time and again, and frankly, I’m tired of it. ",3,https://smanewstoday.com/columns/2021/06/21/when-disability-representation-falls-short/,FALSE, 628,Teen addresses Ohio bill as future of disability rights lies in oversight amendment,"Get hyperlocal forecasts, radar and weather alerts. Please enter a valid zipcode. SaveCOLUMBUS, Ohio An Ohio teen addressed legislators at the Ohio Statehouse on an amendment to a bill addressing services to those with disabilities. As Erin Fearn, 14, walked with her loyal dog companion, Gratto, she reflected upon her testimony from a few weeks ago in front of the Ohio Senate Finance Committee, fighting to save the non profit advocate Disability Rights Ohio.  “Amendment to House Bill 110 just wasnt right,” Fearn said. “That was no place to be talked about within the state budget, and thats something actually needs to be done about that, to make sure that DRO is capable of helping people, not just disabilities but everywhere. Someone who has a voice that can be silenced and make sure that voice is heard. ” Erins mom, Charity, said her daughter has used DROs resources since 2018 for her own disability.  House Bill 110 calls for extra oversight of Disability Rights Ohio, a federally mandated independent organization. Charity fears if the amendment in House Bill 110 passes in the state budget, ripple effects may follow. “If that happens, that can put a lot of other programs in danger in Ohio, like opportunities for Ohioans with disabilities that provides job training and education,” Charity Fearn. “I have tremendous amounts of fear about my daughter and whats going to happen to her as I age and become older and, you know, services being available to her. ” State Sen. Mark Romanchuk, who is pursuing the amendment, said change is necessary because of complaints concerning DRO.  He said the organization has contacted residents of Intermediate Care Facilities, or ICFs to discuss services without parents or guardians present“The individuals that are living in ICFs, are not as high functioning as Miss [Erin] Fearn was, so it’s a different person that we’re talking about here,” Romanchuk said. “In order to be a resident of an ICF, you’ve already received a diagnosis of intellectually disabled. ” DRO representatives said while that has been their approach, most of their clients are adults and minors haven’t been contacted directly.  Meanwhile, Erin Fearns said she will continue the fight, advocating for all people with disabilities.  People with disabilities deserve an independent voice, to uphold laws and fight against without retaliation,” said Erin Fearn.  The state’s budget runs through June 30. ",3,https://spectrumnews1.com/oh/columbus/news/2021/05/24/future-of-disability-rights-ohio-,FALSE, 632,Feds Launch Hotline To Help People With Disabilities Access COVID-19 Vaccines,"A new push is underway to help more people with disabilities get vaccinated against COVID 19. The U. S. Department of Health and Human Services is unveiling what it’s calling a first of its kind national hotline offering information and services directly aimed at boosting access to the shots for people with disabilities. Officials said the Disability Information and Access Line can help people find nearby vaccine sites, make appointments and link people with local services like accessible transportation. The hotline also can provide information and resources to answer questions and address concerns about the vaccines and can connect callers to information and services that promote independent living and address fundamental needs, such as food, housing and transportation,” the federal health agency said. The resource is being offered through a partnership of the Administration for Community Living and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in collaboration with the National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities, the National Council on Independent Living, the National Disabilities Rights Network and other organizations.",3,https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2021/06/14/feds-launch-hotline-to-help-people-with-disabilities-access-covid-19-vaccines/29374/,TRUE, 634,How To Find Your Disability Community," Disability CommunityThere seems to be a wide gap between how we talk about “The Disability Community,” and the number of disabled people who actually feel like a part of it. Most disabled people want to connect with a vibrant, supportive community of their peers. Some can’t find the disability community at all and don’t know where to look. Others do find it, but feel excluded, or can’t find a welcoming way in. This is an especially common problem for people new to disability – like disabled youth, adults with new disabilities from illness or accident, and older people with age related impairments. But plenty of people with lifelong disabilities also struggle to find acceptance among their disabled peers. Some of the problem stems from divisions, hierarchies and exclusivity among disabled people – the same kind of divisiveness found in every other social group and subculture. But despite the disability community’s many faults, there are ways for individual disabled people to break through and find fellowship, support, and cooperation. Here are three tips for people with disabilities looking for a welcoming and empowering disability community:1. Don’t look for “The” Disability Community. Look for “A” disability community that’s right for you. There isn’t a single, all encompassing Disability Community. But there are many interesting, quite different, but overlapping disability communities. Each one has a different focus, style and personality. So before you dive in, think about what you are hoping to find:Once you have a better idea of what exactly you are looking for, you can start a more thorough and deliberate search for communities that are most likely to meet your needs. 2. Explore the many different versions of “Disability Community”There are thousands of formal organizations and informal groups to choose from. Here are a few of the most basic types of disability community to consider:Disability policy development and activismJoin with others in developing, defending, and changing laws, policies and programs that support and serve people with disabilities. In the U. S. , you can start by exploring and teaming up with advocacy organizations like the American Association of People with Disabilities, ADAPT, ARC, and the National Council on Independent Living. It also helps to keep up with current disability rights and policy issues by reading about and joining advocacy campaigns on Facebook and Twitter, which offer more information and interaction than most disabled people can ever get in person. Local disability advocacyGet involved with other disabled people in your area to advocate for local disability issues, like street and sidewalk accessibility, building code enforcement, and state funding of disability services. Most cities, counties, and regions have local chapters of disability organizations that work on local advocacy. A good place to start is your nearest Center for Independent Living, nonprofit service and advocacy organizations governed and staffed by people with disabilities. There are CILs in every state and territory of the U. S. , and many in other countries too. You can join with their advocacy efforts, and learn from your CIL what other disability organizations in your area are doing. Disability cultureDisability culture is the sum of all creative work by people with disabilities, particularly work that focuses on and reflects disability experience. It includes disability based journalism, cultural commentary, blogging, podcasting, vlogging on YouTube, Instagram and TikTok, books, poetry, painting, music. You can gain a lot of insight from enjoying disability culture. You can also develop a unique and valuable voice creating your own works of disability culture. And the more disabled people participate in disability culture the richer and more empowering it becomes. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2021/05/31/how-to-find-your-disability-community/?sh=2f88ea3410fe,TRUE, 635,The Pandemic Pushed KKR To Bet $55 Million On Improving Disability Access In The Digital World," This is an excerpt from Deal Flow, Forbes’ daily newsletter about big buyouts, big mergers and the rest of Big Finance. Want a new edition in your inbox every afternoon? Subscribe here. We go to school online. We go to work online. We go to the doctor online, order food online, visit with our friends and family online. These were all options before the pandemic, to varying degrees. But a seismic shift has occurred during the past year, one that has made it harder than ever to thrive in the physical world of bodies and buildings without also successfully navigating the virtual realm of browsers and bytes. This has created acute problems for some people with disabilities, who far too often are forced to use websites, apps and other online offerings that were very clearly not designed with them in mind. And those problems were one of the primary reasons KKR made a $55 million investment this week in Essential Accessibility, a Toronto based software provider that helps other companies ensure that their digital offerings are accessible and usable for people with disabilities. Making the online world easily navigable for everyone is the primary aim at Essential Accessibility. “There were so many offline, physical experiences that people were used to having that transitioned exclusively to digital,” said Jake Heller, a managing director at KKR who leads the firm’s technology focused growth unit. “And it’s highlighted the need to provide access to those with disabilities. ”The CDC estimates that more than a quarter of all adults in the U. S. are living with some form of disability. And everyone with a different disability has different digital needs. For people with blindness or other vision difficulties, an inaccessible website can be unusable. For people with hearing impairments, subtitles are a necessity. Individuals with limited mobility or dexterity may find it difficult or impossible to use a mouse to navigate around a web page. These issues have existed for decades. But lately, they have become inescapable. When Massachusetts, for instance, launched its registration system for COVID 19 vaccines in March, the only way to book was an appointment was to do so online. Opting out of the digital world is no longer an option. One reason companies should be concerned with making sure their digital products are accessible to everyone is because it is simply the right thing to do. But there are also other motivations for those who need an extra push including an increased rate of lawsuits aiming to hit companies where it hurts for failing to comply with standards outlined by the ADA and other guidelines. The most prominent recent example involves Domino’s, which was successfully sued by a blind man named Guillermo Robles after he was unable to order food from the restaurant online despite using screen reading software. The Supreme Court denied a request for appeal in 2019, establishing a precedent that the ADA does in fact apply to online platforms. Now, thousands of lawsuits related to website accessibility are filed in the U. S. each year. That’s one factor driving an increased acknowledgement among the corporate world that digital access is something that needs to be addressed. “When we were early stage at this, it just wasn’t front and center. It wasn’t a priority for organizations,” said Simon Dermer, a co founder of Essential Accessibility and the company’s chairman. “And now, the last few years, it’s coming to fruition. ”Essential Accessibility’s platform aims to improve on the traditional, consulting based approach to digital accessibility by combing a sense of a personal touch with its proprietary software. The goal is to make it easier than ever for customers to both improve and monitor the digital accessibility of any online offerings while accounting for the wide range of different features that various users might require. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevindowd/2021/05/30/kkr-bets-55-million-on-improving-disability-access-in-the-digital-world/?sh=10c90e4d1d3c,TRUE, 636,Northeast Guilford High senior doesn't let disability define her,"“Trust the process. ”That’s the motto Northeast Guilford High Senior Anslyn Wright lives by. “Whether that’s your education, your personal life, whatever it may be. You’re always going to have a successful outcome as long as you just trust the process,” Wright said. Wright is an active and outgoing student. She participates in Girl Scouts, Future Business Leaders of America, and the Women’s Ministry at her church. Saturday she will graduate with honors. “I’m really excited, it’s been a long journey,” Wright said. “I loved my time at Northeast. I feel like the staff they always encourage the students to be as successful as possible and want what’s best for us. ”The road to success hasn’t been easy. Wright suffers from a form of muscular dystrophy. The genetic disease confines her to a wheelchair and requires her to receive assistance from a full time nurse. RELATED: Triad high school senior gets accepted into 17 colleges“The disease has impacted my education because I have to figure out different ways to do certain things that just come naturally to most people,” Wright explained. Despite her limitations, she said with the help of her family she’s managed to adapt to any situation. “They always want the best for me,” Wright said. “They do any and everything in their power to make sure that I’m successful. ”As she starts her new chapter, she said her goal is to continue to “trust the process” and be as independent as possible. Wright plans to attend Guilford Technical Community College with a major in Medical Office Administration ",3,https://www.wfmynews2.com/article/news/education/northeast-guilford-high-senior-doesnt-let-disability-define-her/83-385fddfd-cf7e-4012-b38c-fce08ed96937,TRUE, 637,Disability Advocacy Organization Opens Exclusive Spanish Intake Hours," Disability Rights Iowa provides advocacy and legal assistance to people with disabilities. In an effort to reach all of Iowa’s populations, they have added an exclusive schedule solely for Spanish speakers: Tuesdays 11 a. m. to 1 p. m. and Thursdays 4 p. m. to 6 p. m. The grant funded organization is designated as a State Protection and Advocacy System through federal mandate. There is a P&A in every U. S. state and territory. Our mission and purpose is to protect the rights of individuals with disabilities, and promote community integration and access to services for those folks, staff attorney Charissa Flege said. She clarified DRI is an independent, private nonprofit though, not part of the government. In an effort to have their clients reflect the states population demographics, DRI staff worked with community leaders within the Latino and Spanish speaking communities to determine the first step needed was offering those exclusive Spanish hours. Vanessa Santos Nila, the new bilingual intake specialist and outreach coordinator at DRI, helped lead the initiative. She said bringing the conversation to Latino communities in the state will be a long term project. “You know there’s a lot of barriers within our community, theres the stigma, the fact that, you know, disability or discapacidades is not even something that is spoken about. And if it is, its spoken about in a very negative light, Santos Nila said. DRI is partnering with the Iowa Office of Latino Affairs in an awareness campaign for the new Spanish intake hours. They started with simply advertising a definition for disability in Spanish. For people who dont speak Spanish or from Spanish speaking communities, they dont understand that we have to start from the basics, like what is a disability? What is the definition? And from there just work very methodically to kind of make the community aware, Santos Nila explained. Then hopefully years down the line, well become an agency that they can look at and recognize: Okay, yes, I have a disability or I have a child with a disability. As an example to describe the difficulties talking about disability in Spanish, Santos Nila brought up the complexities of Spanish grammar. When describing a persons feeling, the Spanish language uses a temporary verb. There isnt a lot of flexibility in the language to describe a long term mental or emotional status. Santos Nila said theres one other aspect to consider: I think just lack of information is whats causing us from not being able to talk about it. The exclusive hours havent warranted many calls yet, but Santos Nila said reaching a new community will take some time. And its time well spent according to DRI attorney Flege. She said ensuring all communities have access to resources has a ripple effect across the state. If you look at our community as a whole, we all do better when everybodys needs are met, when everybody has access to employment, when everybody has access to health care, when everybody is able to stay employed at jobs that they love, Flege said. This is important to Iowans. Collectively. ",3,https://www.iowapublicradio.org/ipr-news/2021-05-25/disability-advocacy-organization-opens-exclusive-spanish-intake-hours,TRUE, 638,College of Law Announces Inaugural National Disability Law Appellate Competition," The College of Law and the National Disabled Law Students Association will co host the inaugural National Disability Law Appellate Competition , to be held virtually March 25 27, 2022. This new advocacy competition will feature a minimum of 12 teams from law schools across the United States. The competition problem will cover a significant and timely legal issue in disability law and will consist of an appellate brief writing component and an oral argument component. The College of Law’s Travis H. D. Lewin Advocacy Honor Society and the Disability Law Society are co sponsors of the competition. “NDLAC is the first national appellate advocacy competition to focus exclusively on disability law. It will enable students to develop their oral advocacy skills while simultaneously navigating a challenging important area of disability law,” says Professor Michael Schwartz, director of the College of Law’s Disability Rights Clinic. “The competition will replicate a realistic appellate court setting by exposing students to actual judges and lawyers who are familiar with appellate practice. ”Each team may be comprised of two or three students. Teams will be assigned to represent either the petitioner or respondent and will write an appellate brief on behalf of that assigned party. During the preliminary rounds, each team will argue on behalf of each party. The highest scoring teams will then move on to the quarterfinal round, the semifinal round and ultimately the final round where a winning team will be decided. “The College of Law encourages law students from across the country to participate in this new, first of its kind advocacy competition and to be part of history!” says Professor Todd Berger, faculty director of advocacy programs. “Breaking new ground in advocacy competition, I’m pleased to add NDLAC to Syracuse Law’s two other national and international tournaments, the Syracuse National Trial Competition and the Transatlantic Negotiation Competition. ”For information, visit the NDLAC webpage. Applications will open in August 2021. Carlton Daniel Jr. G’16 fell in love with filmmaking at an early age. Growing up in Ohio, he spent a lot of his childhood at the local movie theater, browsing for videos at Blockbuster and dissecting films with his family…. Creative advertising students at the Newhouse School have set the program record by winning an impressive 195 awards in one year. “What most impressed me about the awards the Newhouse creative advertising students won was not the amount but the…Syracuse University Trustee and alumnus Larry Kramer ’72 has had a legendary career as a journalist, media executive and entrepreneur. His award winning career included more than 20 years as a reporter and editor with the San Francisco Examiner and The…Rockell Brown Burton, an experienced academic leader and accomplished researcher with a passion for cultivating impactful, mutually beneficial relationships, has been named associate dean of inclusivity, diversity, equity and accessibility at the Newhouse School.",3,https://news.syr.edu/blog/2021/05/24/college-of-law-announces-inaugural-national-disability-law-appellate-competition/,TRUE, 639,Disabled Scientists Are Often Excluded From The Lab," Emily Kwong Thomas Lu Professor with muscular dystrophy working with engineering students setting up adjustable stage at chemical analysis instrument in a laboratory Disability Professor with muscular dystrophy working with engineering students setting up adjustable stage at chemical analysis instrument in a laboratory scientists and students with disabilities are often excluded from laboratories in part because of how theyre designed. Emily Kwong speaks to disabled scientist Krystal Vasquez on how her disability changed her relationship to science, how scientific research can become more accessible, and how STEM fields need to change to be more welcoming to disabled scientists. ",3,https://www.npr.org/2021/05/27/1000869161/disabled-scientists-are-often-excluded-from-the-lab,FALSE, 641,5 Simple Ways To Support Disability Activism,"Disability activism is empowering. For some disabled people who get involved, it opens up avenues for friendship and “chosen family” among other disabled people that they may have missed all of their lives. In some circles at least, disability activists are admired. Activism can be a strong source of pride. Disability activism is also useful. It makes real positive change. But not everyone can become a full time activist, or even a part time advocate for more than an occasional personal need. There can be many reasons for this:But none of these are enough reason to shun disability activism entirely, if its goals are your goals. There are ways to help that don’t require full on commitment or a wholesale change in your life and personality. 1. Share disability articles and action alerts on your social media platforms This is especially helpful if you have “friends” and “followers” from other professions and communities, who don’t spend much time with disability issues. Your credibility with them may prompt at least a few of them to read and think about disability issue for the first time, or from a new perspective. Examples:2. Amplify the voices and work of disabled activistsSocial media in particular has built in ways for you to boost what other people are saying and doing. Boosting other people’s work and ideas is a valid and valuable way to contribute to disability issue discussions, especially if you don’t yet feel comfortable explaining things in your own words. It’s also a way to “pass the mic” to others who struggle to be heard, but have something valuable to say. Non disabled allies and disability activists especially should make it a priority to share the words and work of activists who have disabilities themselves. Examples:3. Tell your own disability story this is often the best way to start having your own say. Begin by explaining exactly how a disability issue affects you as a disabled person, or as an ally to a disabled person. If you are a non disabled ally though, like a parent or spouse, make sure not to confuse your story with your disabled loved one’s own story. They may be related, but they aren’t the same. You can only really tell your story from your point of view. Also, don’t stop with your story. If your goal is some kind of concrete change, don’t just tell your story to make people feel bad for you, or to center your own struggle only. Whenever possible, draw clear connections between your personal situation and a broader disability issue, how it affects other disabled people, and actions your audience can take to address the issue. Examples:4. Connect advocacy for yourself or a loved one with a disability, and activism for the broader disability community can be useful to think of this by calling the persuasion work you do to solve your own disability related needs and conflicts “advocacy,” and work with others on broader disability policies and practices “activism. ”Both advocacy and activism are important and have their place. But their goals, methods, and tactics are often quite different. And carefully chosen activism has enormous potential to expand the scope and positive impact of effective advocacy,, beyond yourself or your family alone. Examples:5. Remember disability issues when you voteDisabled people have been voting in greater numbers in recent years. But disabled people on average still register and vote at lower rates than non disabled people. And it is still hard to pin down whether there is a coherent “disability vote,” with identifiable, predictable points of view. That’s partly because it’s not clear how much disabled people factor in their disability experiences when they do vote. You don’t have to make disability your top political priority to make a difference with your ballot. You don’t have to set aside all of your deepest opinions. You don’t have to put your disability in charge of your vote. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2021/05/15/5-simple-ways-to-support-disability-activism/?sh=58ea1953678e,TRUE, 642,"At disability parade, Montclair is ‘proud to know everybody’","About 100 people marched from Heningburg Field to Rand Park on Sunday as part of Montclair’s first annual Disability Pride parade. Organized by the Montclair Friday Group, a support and social action group for parents of children with disabilities, the parade was an effort to address what participants saw as a lack of community recognition of Autism Awareness Month which occurs in April this year.  Board of Education member and mother to a 10 year old with autism Allison Silverstein said she had been “really looking forward to April 2 as World Autism Day,” hoping the day would be a chance for disabled kids to be recognized and celebrated.  “But the moment came and went and almost nothing happened,” Silverstein said. “I was sad, and I was disappointed. ”She shared those feelings with the Friday Group, an online community and weekly drop in group for parents of children with special needs in Montclair. “From that conversation, an idea started,” said Silverstein, who is also on the leadership team for the community’s Special Education Parents Advisory Council. Montclair Friday Group founder Alma Schneider said members decided to have their own version of Disability Pride New York City Parade, which was cancelled this year due to the coronavirus. “We decided, lets just do it ourselves,” Schneider said.  Mike LeDonne, founder of the NYC parade, said the idea sprung from his desire for the world to see his daughter, Mary, in the same way he did. Mary has a rare syndrome called Prader Willi and hydrocephalus . He was planning for the NYC parade to be a small, local event but it has become something much bigger, he said.  “Disability pride means were proud to know everybody,” LeDonne said. “And the people that are disabled, they have rights, same rights everybody else does. ”In Rand Park, community members spoke about the importance of the parade and normalizing disability. Sign language was used throughout the event.  Julia Frances, a mother of a daughter with Down syndrome and who has a disability of her own, said there are lots of possibilities for “different abled” people in this country.  “We are here because we have to tell the world that we are here and we are here to stay,” Frances said.  Montclair High School senior Minal Rosenblum shared her experience with Down syndrome, saying she’s learning to advocate for herself as a student in MHS’s Center for Social Justice, an interdisciplinary program focusing on the impact of social movements.  “People who have Down syndrome are basically normal,” Rosenblum said. “They do regular things like hanging out with friends and going to work. They enjoy life. Some people dont care about disability. They think some people with disabilities should not be included in school, and they should be separate. That is called discrimination. ”Rosenblum said people with disabilities should be proud of who they are and paraphrased Lady Gaga’s song “Born This Way”. “I have a disability, and nobody can mess with me,” Rosenblum said. “I love myself the way I am because I am born this way. ” Ezra Rifkin, who has autism and who will graduate this spring from Montclair High Schools Community Based Transition program, said laws like the American Disabilities Act cant work when they are ignored or disobeyed and said its important for those with and without disabilities to work together to fight discrimination. “Make sure that people with disabilities are at the table when you are discussing them. Nothing about us without us means that when you are talking about town planning, building construction, transportation, education and jobs, make sure were there to represent ourselves, Rifkin said. ",3,https://montclairlocal.news/at-disability-parade-montclair-is-proud-to-know-everybody/,FALSE, 646,Disability and DEI: Overlooking a group that is everywhere,"After a year where diversity, equity, and inclusion became a hot topic in the workplace, advocates for workers with disabilities express cautious optimism about the nation’s movement toward a more inclusive workplace. There has been progress, they say, but disabled workers many of whom have no outward sign of disability can still feel overlooked or undervalued by the companies they work for. Part of the problem, advocates say, is that “disability” covers such a wide range of conditions, many of them not apparent to people who may be co workers or managers. And workers who start a career free of disabilities may acquire one or more as they grow older. On the positive side, half of CFOs believe the economic impact of COVID 19 is waning. White PaperSponsored by MeMDThe Burnout Epidemic: Why Employers Must Address Work Related Burnout & How Telebehavioral Health Can HelpTwo thirds of workers are experiencing burnout at work. Help your employer clients address this leading issue with an easy to implement telebehavioral health solution guaranteed to lower absenteeism and improve productivity at a low cost. Browse More Resources ›GuideSponsored by GRAIL, LLCThe Missing Piece in Employee Cancer benefits in the current benefits landscape for self insured employers, solutions exist to help you and your employees navigate an increasingly complex oncology process. ",3,https://www.benefitspro.com/2021/05/14/disability-and-dei-overlooking-a-group-that-is-everywhere/?slreturn=20220431221415,TRUE, 649,Expert Advice for Traveling Abroad With a Disability," Features & Advice Lacey Pfalz May 10, 2021 Traveling internationally can be a daunting idea for many people for a variety of reasons: pricing, long travel times, language barriers and more. But for people with disabilities, traveling internationally can sometimes feel like an impossible experience. However, that isn’t necessarily the case. Cory Lee is an Accessible Travel Blogger at CurbFreeWithCoryLee. com, where he writes about his personal experiences traveling domestically and abroad in a wheelchair. A vacation to the Bahamas as a teenager fueled his desire to see the rest of the world, and he made traveling not only his passion but also his career. “I would encourage any new travelers to start small and work their way up to bigger trips. Go on a weekend getaway to a nearby city. This will give you a chance to get familiar with what you need in terms of accessibility. Then, you could take a short plane ride to get familiar with the ins and outs of air travel with a disability,” said Lee. The Rise of the Staycation$17 Billion Cannabis Tourism Industry Will Only Continue. . . US Summer Vacation Spending Projected To Reach $194 Billion“Once you feel comfortable, you can then travel internationally and you’ll be much more prepared and feel more confident in your ability. There are also a ton of resources online to better prepare you for travel. Some of my favorites are accessible travel blogs and Facebook groups ,” he said. Besides starting small, Lee also stresses the importance of knowing what every traveler needs to focus on in terms of accessibility. Whether it be finding accessible tours or making a handy list of nearby hospitals in case of an emergency, the Internet can provide avid researchers with a wealth of information. “When traveling internationally, I think it’s most important to have a positive attitude and expect the unexpected. On almost any trip, especially as a wheelchair user, something is going to go wrong. When that happens, it’s important to stay calm and know that for every problem, there is a solution,” he said. “Be prepared by researching as much as possible before the trip this could include looking up wheelchair repair shops within the destination and having that list handy or knowing various accessible transportation companies in case you need alternative transportation quickly. ”Travel insurance is also incredibly important to have for those with preexisting conditions, but not all travel insurance plans are equal or even cover preexisting conditions. “I think travel insurance is important for every traveler, but especially people with disabilities. I use Allianz Travel Insurance’s annual plan, which does cover preexisting conditions. It has proven to be well worth the annual fee. In 2019, I suffered a skull fracture while on a trip in New Mexico. Without the travel insurance, I would’ve been stuck with some huge hospital bills,” Lee said. According to the latest CDC data, 61 million Americans live with a disability, which is about one in four individuals. The Open Doors Organization found that in 2018 and 2019, 27 million Americans with disabilities took 81 million trips, spending $58. 7 billion on their travel expenses. Those with disabilities play an important role in the travel and tourism economy, and providing them with the knowledge and ability to travel where they choose is paramount. That’s partly where travel advisors come in. Travel advisors can, like their title suggests, advise those with disabilities on the best travel insurance plans, accessible tours, methods of transportation and even accommodations that fit the specific client’s needs. They can also take some of the pressure to research these important factors off of the client’s shoulders. As an advisor, it’s important to understand exactly what challenges clients with disabilities face, so they can successfully plan a vacation without any snags: “The word ‘accessible’ means something different to every person with a disability. It’s important to ask specifically what each person needs in terms of accessibility, instead of just assuming that what’s accessible for one person is accessible for all,” said Lee. ",3,https://www.travelpulse.com/news/features/expert-advice-for-traveling-abroad-with-a-disability.html,TRUE, 651,The Minnesota Daily," Beginning in fall 2021, the Critical Studies Disability Collective will host the project that examines disability through the lenses of race, disposability and more. Illustration by Hailee Schievelbeinby Katelyn VuePublished May 4, 2021Starting next fall at the University of Minnesota, a new three year project will host virtual workshops, reading groups and speaker events focusing on the experiences of people with disabilities using a critical lens. The project, titled “Refusing Disposability: Racial and Disability Justice Toward Another World,” is hosted by the University’s Critical Disability Studies Collective and will cover topics like intersectionality and amplified vulnerability during the pandemic. The overarching theme of the CDSC’s project focuses on the campaign and hashtag that started when the pandemic hit, #NoBodyIsDisposable, to resist triage discrimination. As hospitals and medical professionals reached capacity during the pandemic, triage protocols applied a hierarchy system to prioritize providing treatment for certain patients over others. The campaign, #NoBodyIsDisposable, advocates for the resistance of triage discrimination, which many argue disproportionately denies treatment and minimizes the lives of people with disabilities, elders and more. “Before COVID 19, marginalized communities have had reason to fear bias in medical settings. We are terrified of being killed by the people who are supposed to care for us. Let’s protect each other and fight for the resources and policies we need to get through this emergency together,” read the #NoBodyIsDisposable campaign’s open letter to medical professionals around the country. A project lead and University professor, Dr. Jennifer Row, said that part of the CDSC project would examine the system of triage protocols to understand how and why medical professionals treat certain lives as more valuable than others. Three University graduate students formed the CDSC in 2015 to create an academic community to study disability at the University. Ultimately, the current goal of the CDSC is to establish a department with a major or minor in critical disability studies. “We are trying to engage folks in the study and understanding of disability as a sort of cultural site, so by that we mean not a medical problem or a medical issue that disabled folks need to fix,” said Dr. Angela Carter, CDSC co founder and co chair. “But instead … thinking and understanding disability more from the humanities and social science perspective. ”The CDSC’s project will also include workshops to support University instructors who want to develop new courses to advance students’ learning, grow academic scholarship and expand research on critical disability studies. “The University of Minnesota is really behind its Big Ten peers,” Row said. “[Critical disability studies] really is a prominent field that is being celebrated, explored and researched across the country and the U is direly behind because we have nothing. We do not even have an undergraduate minor. ”Another core component of the CDSC’s project is to create an online public access curriculum for instructors outside the University to learn about critical disability studies, integrate it into their courses and share knowledge. “The creation of a public access curriculum breaking down that boundary between the larger world and the ivory tower, creating that as a bridge and making sure that knowledge is facilitated in such a way that it is useful, usable and applicable by the public,” said Dr. Jessica Horvath Williams, CDSC co chair and project lead. Row said the CDSC plans to make a website for a public access curriculum that may include webinars, shared syllabi, and activities that can be adaptive for K 12 educators to teach their students. CDSC members plan for the first two years of the project to be virtual and the last year to be in person. The CDSC will invite activists, scholars, authors and artists to speak at events on various topics related to critical disability studies. ",3,https://mndaily.com/267703/news/new-three-year-project-will-deepen-knowledge-on-disability-by-facilitating-virtual-spaces-and-discussions/,FALSE, 652,The Mental Toll of Disability Is Inflating — We Have to Do Something,"The weight of living in a world that doesn’t consider disabled people’s needs is piling on. Something has to change. We live in a society that presumes disability is intrinsically tragic. In reality, for me and many others, being disabled actually comes with many beautiful things, including a vibrant and loving community. However, when the entire world is built without you in mind, the mental tax of living inflates beyond belief. There are 1 billion disabled people worldwide, and 1 in 4 American adults live with a disability. Yet even in countries where access is a legal right, our needs are an afterthought. In the U. K. , nearly half of all people living in poverty are disabled, and they are 28. 6 percent less likely to be employed than nondisabled people. In the early months of the COVID 19 pandemic, 6 in 10 COVID 19 deaths in the U. K. were disabled lives. Globally, disabled people are disproportionately impacted by natural hazards due to inaccessible disaster relief. It’s no wonder, then, that 32. 9 percent of disabled adults in the United States reported experiencing frequent mental distress. And that was in 2018 before being in the midst of a pandemic devaluing disabled lives. Clearly, something needs to shift. Kaley Roosen, PhD, CPsych, a clinical psychologist at the Toronto Psychology Clinic, says that disabled people’s lives can feel more chaotic because they need to rely on factors outside of their control, like transportation and housing, in order to function. “Living a life where a person feels very little of a sense of control due to depending on so many outside, often unreliable sources can lead to mental health issues including depression, anxiety, addiction, and eating disorders,” she says. For many disabled folks, mental health problems stem from outside influences, not from disability itself. “I think my mental health conditions are rooted in my inability to slow down and to breathe for a second for fear of ableist repercussions,” says freelance journalist John Loeppky, who has cerebral palsy and generalized anxiety disorder. For entrepreneur and diversity coach Sonya Barlow, living with chronic migraine means questioning her every move. “It causes me to double think what I do daily, who I am, and how I should be,” she says. Numerous factors contribute to the mental health challenges of the disabled community, but one of the most significant is global inaccessibility. “The burden of navigating an inaccessible world takes up a large mental and emotional load,” says Roosen. “That hypervigilance can be compared to living in a war zone. ”Many disabled people are blocked from socializing because accessibility is not a priority in venues, which can lead to intense feelings of isolation. “A lot of old pubs are not wheelchair accessible and when all my friends are going there, you do start to feel left out,” shares freelance journalist Faith Martin. Although laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act are designed to shield disabled people from discrimination, many are excluded by inaccessibility. In 2017, the company 1800wheelchair surveyed Americans who identify as disabled, those they live with, and their caregivers. Of the 554 people surveyed, 20 percent said they or their loved one face an accessibility barrier every single day. Being sidelined can be especially difficult when maintaining friendships. While nondisabled peers can make plans instantaneously, disabled people have to pre plan every detail. “It’s very hard to be different. I have to plan every night out point to point, otherwise I’ll be finished the day after because of fatigue, pain, and dislocations,” says student and freelance writer Niamh Ingram. ",3,https://www.bezzyms.com/discover/mental-well-being-ms/health-the-mental-toll-of-disability-is-inflating-we-have-to-do-something/,FALSE, 654,Microsoft Takes Aim At The ‘Disability Divide’,"Microsoft is committing to a broad a range of steps to become more inclusive of people with disabilities. Technology giant Microsoft is promising big steps in the coming years to make its products and workplace even more accessible and inclusive to people with disabilities. The company says that in the next five years it will roll out a host of accessibility improvements to products, boost disability hiring efforts and invest in programs to help increase graduation rates among college students with disabilities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields, among other efforts. “This new initiative will bring together every corner of Microsoft’s business with a focus on three priorities: Spurring the development of more accessible technology across our industry and the economy; using this technology to create opportunities for more people with disabilities to enter the workforce; and building a workplace that is more inclusive for people with disabilities,” wrote Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, in a recent blog post about the five year plan to address the “disability divide. ” Already, Microsoft employs a chief accessibility officer and offers an adaptive Xbox controller and other accessible technology. The company also has a hiring program specifically for people with autism. But the new initiative, which will be the focus of Microsoft’s annual Ability Summit this week, will mean an even stronger commitment to inclusion, Smith said. He described accessibility improvements to Microsoft 365 and Microsoft owned LinkedIn and GitHub as well as a new fund to help propel innovation to drive down the cost of assistive technology. In addition, Smith indicated that Microsoft will expand its inclusive hiring programs to reach more countries and people with a broader range of disabilities. The company will work with its suppliers to create a “culture of accessibility” and partner with other businesses and nonprofits to help ease the path to employment for people with disabilities, he said. “If there is one thing we have learned from 25 years of work on accessibility at Microsoft, it’s this: People with disabilities represent one of the world’s largest untapped talent pools, but we all need to act with bolder ambition to empower disabled talent to achieve more,” Smith wrote. After multiple delays, federal officials are plowing ahead with a long awaited Medicaid rule establishing standards for what counts as home and community based services for people with disabilities. With a slew of new actions and additional resources, federal education officials are taking steps to ensure that students with disabilities and their families can access school services. In May 2021, 11 year old Ryan Larsen walked out of his elementary school in between classes. A year later, there are few signs of the boys whereabouts. ",3,https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2021/05/05/microsoft-takes-aim-at-the-disability-divide/29325/,TRUE, 657,Telling a potential employer about a disability in a remote-work environment," This article was published more than 1 year agoReader: I took early retirement last year. Shortly thereafter, I decided I wasn’t quite ready to stop working. With the coronavirus pandemic in full swing, I went back to school to become a paralegal. This worked out perfectly, as I am disabled and use either a walker or a cane, and the virtual classes were easy to attend. I am starting to apply for paralegal positions. Due to the continuing pandemic, the work is listed as remote, and the interviews are virtual as well. At what point in the process do I let a prospective employer know I am disabled? I don’t want this to hinder any opportunities, but I also don’t want to surprise them with this information and make it appear as though I was hiding something. What’s the best way to disclose a disability in this virtual job hunting environment?Karla: If a prospective employer thinks your skills are a fit for the job, and your disability doesn’t interfere with your performance which it shouldn’t do, if the remote job is anything like your virtual classes then it shouldn’t matter when you disclose. But I respect your concern about springing an unexpected challenge on a potential employer. Work Advice: The delicate issue of disclosing a disability during the application processInstead of thinking of it as “disclosing” anything, approach it in the spirit of performing due diligence on whether this job and this workplace are a good fit for you, because you’re confident you’d be a great hire. During the interview or while you’re considering an offer, ask: Does the employer intend for the job to remain remote once the coronavirus exposure is no longer a concern? Is remaining remote an option? If not, then you will need to know how accessible the office is for people who use mobility aids elevators, stairs, emergency evacuation plans. As I’ve said before, if any good comes of the pandemic, it will be the confirmation of just how many office jobs can be performed from home as effectively as from a commercial office. Although some tasks legitimately require in person interaction for legal or security reasons, it’s harder for employers to arbitrarily deny remote work options if they have a year’s worth of evidence that their workers can be just as productive from home. Work Advice: My co workers are grumbling about my telework privilegesReader: A customer of our office has offered me a one week stay, at no charge, at a vacation home during the summer. Our office staff all serve this customer, and I am no more helpful than the person next to me. The customer is thrilled to gift the week, but I feel so guilty that others don’t have the same opportunity. Do I take the offer or turn it down? I somehow think I would feel better turning it down. I literally couldn’t fall asleep last night thinking about it. Karla: Pros of accepting this generous offer: It would be a lot of fun. Cons of accepting:If you have a long established personal friendship with this customer outside of work, and the vacation was given in the context of that relationship, it might be a different matter. Otherwise, you should not accept gifts from a client that you cannot share with colleagues, with one exception: A customer who feels you have been particularly helpful can write a note to your boss saying as much. ",3,https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/04/29/telling-potential-employer-about-disability/,FALSE, 660,7 Core Arguments Of Disability Rights," Close up of a wheelchair symbol on a brick roadThe “Disability Rights Movement” is partly built around a series of arguments about disability itself. It’s about what disability is, and what disabled people want –– and don’t want. And as arguments, they are also responses to implied counter arguments –– things that other people believe about disability that disabled people don’t agree to. Many versions of these core beliefs are well known and easy to find. Here are just a few examples offering a variety of perspectives within roughly the same basic theme:The Americans with Disabilities ActThe full text of this 1990 disability rights laws starts with Findings and Purposes. It is an overview of the many ways disabled Americans are discriminated against, and the main approaches the law will use to address those systemic problems. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with DisabilitiesAppropriately for an international document, the Guiding Principles of the Convention read as a universal statement of shared beliefs and goals for disabled people’s rights in all societies. In addition to the usual focus on inclusion, equal opportunity, and accessibility, the convention also notably includes “equality between men and women,” and the rights of children with disabilities, as integral parts of disability rights. Sins InvalidSins Invalid is a California based disability arts and performance group whose mission is anchored in a particular vision of disability justice. This is a more holistic and ambitious standard than the more legally and individually based concept of “disability rights. ” Sins Invalid’s Ten Principles of Disability Justice expresses a distinctly collective, anti capitalist perspective, with an emphasis also on interdependence, cross disability cooperation, and solidarity across all liberating social movements. These principles are about more than access to society as it is, but also about remaking society to be more just and humane for everyone, including disabled people. Global Disability Rights NowThis is a “resource center’ offering information and guidance on disability rights globally, with particular projects in several specific countries. It is a partnership of a number of well known and respected disability rights organizations. The website includes 10 Principles of Disability Rights, which focuses on practical, concrete ways of achieving disability rights goals. It also acknowledges some limits on what disabled people can expect in any given situation, while at the same time emphasizing the need for enforcement and real consequences for inaccessibility and disability rights violations. “Nothing about us without us. ”This phrase is as close to a “grand unified theory” as can be found in disability culture. Since about the 1990s, “Nothing about us without us” has been an influential disability rights slogan, first in South Africa’s disability rights movement, then disseminated widely in the United States and around the world. It expresses a goal disabled people want to achieve. At its best, it is also a pledge for how the movement itself must be conducted, with disabled people always involved and in the lead. These and other lists of disability rights principles and goals are each important and valuable in themselves. It can also be useful to revisit, restate, and remix them. We do this partly to clarify what we believe so we can more fully draw out the implications for policy and our own everyday behavior. Reviewing and re crafting the core arguments of disability rights can help all of us –– non disabled and disabled alike –– think about how our own beliefs about disability issues stand in relation to others in the movement and to society at large. Here then is another attempt to draw out the kind of strong and meaningful principles that shape the aspirations and tactics of today’s disability rights movement:",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2021/04/22/7-core-arguments-of-disability-rights/?sh=5bd2b9955471,FALSE, 661,Disability in children and adolescents must be integrated into the global health agenda," Childhood disability is not a priority in health systems. A recently published article in the BMJ by Cieza and colleagues argues why this needs to change. Firstly, the number of children with disability is increasing. More children are surviving, but not all of them are thriving. The article explores trends in prevalence of a number of health conditions associated with high levels of disability comparing data from 1990 and 2019. Results show that numbers of children and adolescents living with disability rose substantially owing to population increases with some conditions such as migraine, asthma, hearing impairment or injuries exceeding 100 million cases among those aged <20 years. This means more children need health services to optimise their functioning. However, most health systems cannot deal with the current needs of children with disability, let alone meet the rising demand. Secondly, children with disability often need specific rehabilitation services related to their impairment or functioning limitations. Yet these interventions often do not exist, are underdeveloped or under resourced. When available, services are often costly, not physically inclusive, or accessible only in urban areas. The result is poor quality of services an issue often raised by children with disability and their caregivers. Lastly, access to care is a human right. Children with disability repeatedly face barriers to care causing suffering, hardship, and isolation. The greatest obstacles they encounter are negative attitudes. Without change, these children will continue to be denied access to services by health providers. Because of all these factors, disability urgently needs higher priority in child and adolescent health agendas. To move forward we need a shift of attitudes and the commitment of all relevant parties in the disability and health sectors. Governments need to scale up service delivery with a strong focus on primary healthcare. Rehabilitation services should be expanded to reach all children in need. ",3,https://www.who.int/news/item/19-04-2021-disability-in-children-and-adolescents-must-be-integrated-into-the-global-health-agenda,FALSE, 665,3 Ways Disability Allyship Can Go Off Track," It’s a good time to rethink not only how non autistic or “neurotypical” people can best support autistic people but also how non disabled people in general can do better in supporting people with any kind of mental, developmental, or physical disability. There’s no shortage of good intentions. Most people if asked would say that they at least want to do right by people with disabilities. But being a good disability ally requires more than goodwill. The disabled community is well past the point of being satisfied with simple recognition or mere shows of support, as we might have been 30 years ago. We’re not even looking for advocacy, if it means non disabled people speaking for us, defending their perception of our rights without our full participation or consent. It’s always important to do the right thing when you can, and to be counted on the side of disabled people and our needs. But it’s even more important to discover and center disabled people’s concerns, priorities, and preferences, even if you don’t always understand or agree with them. We need allies fighting with us, not just advocates fighting for us. Fortunately, we seem to be gaining more genuine allies every year. That’s worth celebrating. Still, as more people learn about disability issues, it’s important to be alert for ways that disability allies can lose their way. The following are three of the most common ways that even the best, most committed disability allies can go wrong. 1. Listening to disability awareness seminars instead of disabled people. Articles and training on disability issues and etiquette are certainly valuable. They can be especially useful for people just starting to learn disability issues. Formal training can teach the basics of how to behave towards disabled people in social situations. You can learn a bit about how everyday accessibility problems affect disabled people. And you can start to get some rough guidelines on common questions, like whether or not to ask disabled people about their disabilities, or what terminology to use and what to avoid. But disability awareness seminars and webinars are no substitute for listening to actual disabled people. Our individual views and preferences don’t always match the standardized rules of “disability awareness. ” Some of us want to be left alone; others crave interaction. Some of us invite questions and are happy to explain our experiences. Others of us feel besieged with people’s curiosity and want to choose when and how we will “educate” people about disability. Practical accessibility affects each disabled person differently too. Some of us are more bothered and confrontational about it than others. And we have different opinions on disability terms. Some, like the “R word” for intellectual disability, are clearly off limits. Others, like whether to say “person with a disability” or “disabled person,” are still open to debate and personal taste. Rules and philosophies learned in advance can help, but they will only get you so far. The worst thing you can do is lecture disabled people you meet in real life on how we should process our own experiences. Yet, this happens, a lot. It’s entirely possible, even common, to meet disabled people whose views on disability are different from what you’ve been taught. Regardless, never tell or imply to a disabled person that you understand disability issues better than they do – even if you have reason to believe that might really be true. If you find yourself thinking that a disabled person’s views on disability issues are wrongheaded or uninformed, and that it’s your job to enlighten them – stop yourself. Think about it carefully, and proceed only with great caution. Or, leave it alone, and respect the opinions and choices of the disabled person you are talking to. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2021/04/14/3-ways-disability-allyship-can-go-off-track/?sh=699397227a81,FALSE, 667,'It's Mean-Spirited.' A Blind Disability Advocate on How Georgia's New Election Law Could Make Voting Even Harder," Gaylon Tootle, a Black and blind disability advocate in Augusta, Ga. , has been fighting to make it easier for people in his state to vote for years. Georgia’s electoral system posited challenges for disabled voters even before the state enacted a sweeping overhaul of its election law on March 25, becoming among the first of hundreds of restrictive voting measures introduced in state legislatures across the country this year to be signed into law. During the 2020 presidential election, Tootle struggled to fill out his own absentee ballot. “Hell, I couldn’t do nothing with it,” Tootle says. His wife had to help him out. That’s in part why Tootle who spends his days working as an independent living advocacy coordinator at nonprofit Walton Options, which serves thousands of disabled residents across 16 counties in the state has been working nonstop, like many in Georgia, to evaluate the implications of the law and ensure disabled voters can still exercise their right to vote. More than a quarter of adults in Georgia have a disability, according to the U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The new law, which Republicans allege will restore trust in the electoral system, contains close to a dozen restrictions. Disability activists have criticized the law’s motivations for being misguided given there was no widespread fraud in recent elections and said its restrictions are ableist because it will present additional barriers for disabled voters. “As a Black and blind voter here in Georgia, I’ve already had issues with the system,” Tootle tells TIME from his office at Walton Options where he spends most of his time on the phone helping disabled Georgians navigate through all sorts of accessibility challenges, from housing to employment. “This stuff is in your face. It’s mean spirited, there’s no concern: how will it impact my people?”The Georgia chapter of ADAPT a national advocacy group for disabled Americans said in a statement: “We all strongly condemn this new law as Jim Crow 2. 0 which suppresses all voters because it is ableist, racist, colonialist, and deplorable. ” Maria Town, president and CEO of the American Association of People with Disabilities said in a statement that she took issue with the new law “increas requirements for identification that people with disabilities are less likely to have, and restrict the use of ballot boxes. ” She urged Congress to pass federal legislation, like the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, to preserve and expand voting access nationwide. “Disability and voting rights advocates have worked for decades to undo racist and ableist voting policies that limit access to the polls,” Town said. “Senate Bill 202 in Georgia is a direct reaction to the record turnout in the 2020 election, particularly among Black disabled voters. ”Tootle and other disability advocates are also concerned about restrictions related to out of precinct ballots and volunteers providing food and water to voters. Voters can no longer cast a valid provisional ballot if they are at the wrong precinct but right county before 5 p. m. under the new law. It’s a rule that could especially pose an obstacle for disabled voters who may be confused about where to vote. It’s not always obvious which precinct to vote at given the possibility for last minute changes to polling sites. Now, provisional votes cast after 5 p. m. will only count if a voter signs a statement saying they could not arrive at their designated precinct before the voting period ends at 7 p. m. “You’re not taking into account that I may have…a cognitive disability or learning disability, which sometimes causes me to simply make mistakes,” Tootle says. “You’re going to have some Black and brown folk that go in there, simply made a mistake and their vote will be automatically cancelled. ” ",3,https://time.com/5953063/disability-advocate-georgia-new-election-law/,FALSE, 668,South Seattle Emerald,"As many students receiving special education services in what Seattle Public Schools calls “intensive pathways” returned to in person learning in early April, some local educators find themselves questioning whether their students will have improved opportunities for inclusion, or if the opposite is true. Supported by a federal law, which states that all students should learn in the “least restrictive environment,” inclusion requires that students with disabilities spend as much time as possible learning with their peers who do not receive special education services. While much attention has been focused on the myriad needs of students returning to hybrid, in person learning, these teachers are concerned that inclusion of students with disabilities will be overlooked, and their need to be included will be unmet.  During the pandemic, one terrible example of exclusion was discovered in SPS at View Ridge Elementary School. According to a story by KUOW, the principal, assistant principal, and other staff members seem to have thought the least restrictive environment for an 8 year old Black boy named Jaleel was to lock him in a caged play area for hours at a time where he sometimes ate while sitting on the floor. Though state law requires any instance of “restraint and isolation” to be reported, there was no paper trail, and while Jaleel’s case may or may not be an isolated event, it brought to the fore existing questions about whether there was a tendency to exclude BIPOC students and particularly Black students receiving special education services in SPS. Joy Springer, a former middle and high school teacher who is now an occupational therapist at Jane Addams Middle School, a union leader, and part of an Education Leadership Cadre who fields questions from other OTs across the district, broke it down for the Emerald this way:”Black and Brown students are being put into these intensive service pathways, where they’re even more segregated from their peers. So they get dinged for being Black, and they get dinged for supposedly having a disability, and then they’re kind of shuffled off. They’re in a Gen[eral] Ed[ucation] school, but their classroom is hidden away from the rest of the school, they’re not really integrated, and they don’t have as much time accessing their peers. This really hurts them and it also contributes to the school to prison pipeline. A lot of our students who end up in prison ultimately have a disability; the overrepresentation of youth disability in prison is astronomical. ”In the United States, if a Black child receives special education services at some point during their K–12 education, they are more likely to be arrested than not be arrested before the age of 28 , says a 2017 report from the American Journal of Public Health. Anthony Washington, who teaches in the Social Emotional Learning intensive pathway at Garfield High School and Humanities at the Academy for Creating Excellence , told the Emerald that inclusion takes on extra importance for Black students in a city as white as Seattle is. Washington elaborated, “When you’re thinking about just being able to function on a daily basis in our society. Having the ability to be able to communicate, and understand and critically think about multiple perspectives, is absolutely vital to survival …The only way you can do that is experiencing other people, other perspectives. ”“Exclusion is extremely important … My kids [students] are segregated. I’ve called them political prisoners to try to get people to understand what my kids deal with on a day to day basis, and their IEP’s [Individual Education Program] relationship with the criminal justice system at any given moment. So inclusion can be the difference between the two. Figuring it out, having the perspective necessary to pick up on certain things, and being excluded, and feeling excluded, and following that path to where it leads which is usually not positive. ”",3,https://southseattleemerald.com/2021/04/14/sps-educators-confront-issues-of-race-and-disability-as-students-return-to-schools/#more-64219,FALSE, 669,Is disability the last bastion of the representation debate?," Back From #MeToo to Black Lives Matter, as a society we have been discussing the relationship between representation and equality more than ever over the last few years. But while progress is being made in so many areas, people with disabilities are still struggling to find a voice above the accepted narrative, says Ross Lannon, the 27 year old blogger and multi media content creator behind A Life on Wheels. He says: “While we still have such a long way to go, I think things have improved over the last few years. “On TV and in the media now, you are starting to see all sorts of people: people of different shapes and sizes, different races, different sexual orientations. But disability is one thing that always seems to get left behind. ”On our screens, for example, people with disabilities are often one dimensional, he says. They tend to be portrayed as struggling with their disability, rather than dealing with all the same highs and lows of life as everyone else. “There are some positive disabled characters, but nine times out of ten their sole purpose in the programme is based around their disability,” says Ross, who was diagnosed with spinal muscular atrophy Type 2 when he was a toddler. “When you think that something like 22% of the population has some form of disability, you have to question how that counts as representation. ”It matters, he tells pharmaphorum, as it creates role models and lets young people know that their disability does not define them. “We need to learn to break down those barriers. There are people in the world who look a little different or who have mobility issues, but we are just the same as everyone else. Just because we have to do things a little different, it doesn’t mean that we can’t succeed. “The next generation need a better level of representation so they know they know they can achieve what they want to achieve,” said Ross. A resonating hobby A Life on Wheels started out as Ross’ hobby back in 2017 and has been growing steadily ever since. The blog, which covers lifestyle topics and reviews events and products, was even nominated for a National Diversity Award last year. “It started as a hobby, just a way of documenting my life as a young man with a disability that I could look back on in years to come,” he says. “It grew and grew and it is now a real passion of mine. I am a bit of a cheeky chappie, so I say anything and everything on there. I think people enjoy the honesty and the comedy of it. ”Crucially, his wheelchair is incidental, not central, to the content. Recent articles, for example, have included a look at trolls online and covered Ross’ lockdown diaries. Says Ross: “It’s not purely about disability because I don’t like being put in that box. Of course, I touch upon access and disability, but that’s not the main focus. I just want to make people smile and live my life. “I want people to get to know Ross, that I have my own character and my own personality. There is more going on in my life that being sat here on four wheels. ”Vision of possibilities This approach has gained Ross a legion of fans, and he often receives emails and messages to thank him for his work. “The other day someone reached out to say they had shown my website to a class of kids with disabilities to show them the things that they could do – so these kids could see that I have been on the beach on my wheelchair, that I have been roller skating, abseiled and driven a speedboat,” says Ross, who lives in Cornwall, UK. “It is great to show them that regardless of being in a wheelchair, you can still do so much. ”He also hopes his work is helping to break down some of the preconceptions about disability that can feed well intentioned but offensive comments. “I do get frustrated sometimes when I’m doing a mundane task and someone says something like ‘wow, you are so inspirational’. ",3,https://pharmaphorum.com/views-and-analysis/is-disability-the-last-bastion-of-the-representation-debate/,FALSE, 671,COVID-19 amplifies the complexity of disability and race," Professor, Critical Disability Studies, University of Toronto Associate Professor of Social Work, McMaster University Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Physical Therapy, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto Lecturer, Disability Studies at Kings University College, Western University Karen Kume Yoshida receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. . Ann Fudge Schormans receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Chavon Niles and Susan Mahipaul do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. McMaster University and University of Toronto provide funding as founding partners of The Conversation CA. McMaster University, Western University, and University of Toronto provide funding as members of The Conversation CA FR. Western University provides funding as a member of The Conversation CA. View all partnersIn Canada, COVID 19 has exacerbated long standing institutional and systemic inequalities for disabled people. And these inequalities are rooted in ableism. Ableism represents beliefs, social practices and policies that produce and privilege expectations of able bodiedness and able mindedness. Resulting in the marginalization, exclusion and oppression of people with mind/body differences. Disabled people’s identities are also intersectional they may be racialized, gendered, elderly, may live in poverty and/or are part of newcomer communities. This viewpoint further reveals the persistent and invisible injustices disabled people experience and is important for developing policies, resources and supports for those affected by the pandemic. Read more: What is intersectionality? All of who I am The term intersectionality, coined by Black feminist legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, illustrates how the systemic oppression Black women experience differs from that of Black men or white women because of the intertwining effects of various systems of oppression . An intersectional lens allows us to examine how peoples’ different social identities are interconnected. How different contexts create privilege , and/or oppression . The following are stories our colleagues have shared with us. Jeff Preston is a white man who has lived with disability all his life. He grew up with the support of his family, attended school and earned his PhD. He is now an assistant professor in Disability Studies at King’s University College at Western University in London, Ont. He uses an electric wheelchair and requires assistance from his attendants. This assistance allows him to get out of bed, get dressed and get to work. “What has been important here is my day to day. My attendants and access to resources. On Day 1 of the pandemic one of my attendants resigned as they were heading home. Another one … now is not coming back, so I am down two attendants. If I lose another, I will be in a tight spot. How will I get out of bed? How can I work? What happens if I get sick?”Preston is privileged as a white man and a university professor who was raised in a family with financial and social resources to support him and his education. He receives direct funding to hire attendants to support his daily activities, which the pandemic complicated. Government mandates to stay at home and follow strict physical and social distancing guidelines assume that everyone can abide by them. For Preston, like other disabled persons, these mandates do not consider his need for attendants to get on with his daily life. ",3,https://theconversation.com/covid-19-amplifies-the-complexity-of-disability-and-race-157933,FALSE, 677,The Intersection of Disability and Climate Change,"Climate change threatens all of us. But for those of us living with a disability an estimated 15% of the global population the threat, compounded by discrimination, marginalization, and other pre existing inequalities, is even greater. Master’s student David Liebmann, a HGSE Sustainability Fellow, wants to bring awareness to this threat, especially in the world of education a world where people with disabilities often lack access and face discrimination. Liebmann, a veteran educator who has worked in independent schools for almost 30 years, previously taught environmental studies and English at schools in Maine, Georgia, Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts. Here at HGSE, Liebmann researches the intersection of climate change and disability. He is presenting his research on April 1 at “The Intersection of Disability and Climate Change,” an event sponsored by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. We asked Liebmann to talk to us about the important work unfolding in this new field. What is this new area of study, and why is it important? Climate change will be the central political and moral issue of the 21st century. It will affect everyone, but not equally. For example, one oft cited estimate suggests 200 million people will be climate refugees by 2050. According to the World Health Organization, 15% of the global population has an intellectual or physical disability, so 30 million of those climate refugees will require different kinds of support. That jumped out to me and made me begin to research the intersections of climate change and disability. Theres not much formal study on this yet, though my research points to a brief letter in the November 8, 2019 edition of Science that seems to have initiated the academic communitys response. How exactly does climate change affect people with disabilities? Simply harder than people without. Broadly speaking, many people with disabilities live in greater poverty with more significant challenges than everyone else. Imagine a hurricane: people with disabilities would need early access to shelter, social supports, and medical assistance as needed. As potential climate refugees along with everyone else affected, some people with disabilities will require a different level of support in terms of access to food, shelter, and transportation. If Hurricane Sandy or Katrina or wildfires or summer heat waves or flooding become norms, everyones needs shift into a higher category. How does this work intersect with education? Educators are often the first professionals to do sustained work with kids with disabilities, broadly defined. Teachers will also be called upon in coming years to educate all students about climate change, climate science, and adaptation to a warming planet. Schools include diverse individuals of many backgrounds, so it makes sense for teachers to begin to think about ways they can be supportive, get involved in advocating for the rights of disabled students, and take action together. A mantra of the disabled community is Nothing about us without us. Its vital to remember that the work must be a partnership, whatever it looks like. What drew you to this emerging field? I was a student of the natural environment as an undergrad after growing up as a hiker and camper in Georgia. As I launched into teaching, I encountered students with disabilities and wanted to support them, so the two things simply co existed for many years. Also, as we all learn, it is common for folks as they age to develop various disabilities. This certainly happened to my late parents, who had mobility issues. After they passed, there was an infamous European heatwave in summer 2019 that took many lives. I put all those things together and came to discover this work. ",3,https://www.gse.harvard.edu/news/21/03/intersection-disability-and-climate-change,FALSE, 678,Disability Advocates Raise Concerns About Sweeping Voting Bill,"Texas The Texas Senate is taking up a sweeping piece of legislation that seeks to stifle local efforts that make it easier to vote. Republicans said the goal is to ensure no one takes advantage of the electoral system, but some advocates believe the bill is targeting some of the most vulnerable voters.  To apply for an absentee ballot in Texas, voters must be age 65 and older or living with a disability. During the November election the Texas Supreme Court ruled the lack of immunity to the coronavirus does not qualify as a valid reason to expand voting by mail, but they did allow voters to assess their own health. In its introduced form, Senate Bill 7 would seek to change that by requiring voters to show proof they are living with a disability.  “What weve heard most about, and when I say heard, I mean sworn testimony before the committee from prosecutors from law enforcement officers and I mean prosecutors both Republican and Democrats, from election officials about mail ballot fraud, in particular, folks claiming disability who do not in fact have a disability,” Sen. Bryan Hughes, R Mineola, said. Advocates for those living with disabilities argued the bill unfairly singles them out, particularly the provision requiring those seeking mail in ballots to provide written documentation from the security administration, veterans affairs, or a licensed physician.  “Voters with disability just want to vote, they just want to be able to go to the polls and have their vote counted, unfortunately, and some, because in some circumstances, those voters have support needs that need some sort of accommodation, we treat them differently,” said Jeffrey Miller, a policy specialist for Disability Rights Texas.  The proposed legislation would mandate anyone assisting voters in completing ballots to fill out an additional form explaining their relationship, as well as the manner and reason why assistance is necessary. This also applies to caregivers who drive voters to polling locations and help them there. The bill also allows poll watchers to record voters who need assistance.  “We dont trust people that assist people with disabilities. We think theyre probably trying to exploit them in some way,” Miller said.  GOP lawmakers are looking to tighten Texas’ election laws for the sake of security and integrity, despite the lack of evidence showing widespread voter fraud. I think this is a very problematic piece of legislation, said Myrna Perez, a native Texas and the director of the Brennan Center for Justices Voting Rights and Elections Program. This is just one other barrier where it looks like the politicians are trying to choose their voters rather than have their voters choose them.  SB 7 would also prevent counties from extending early voting hours, ban drive thru voting, and prohibit counties from using grant money to administer elections.  I think all voters need to fight back. I think all voters need to tell their politicians clearly that they want a free, fair and accessible vote, that we are all better off when all of us who are eligible are participating and voting,” Perez said. The bill would also establish an online tracking system of a mail in ballot, a less controversial aspect of the bill, which Hughes argues eases the process.  “We’re making it easy to vote, but making it hard to cheat. Some people dont like that,” he said. ",3,https://spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/san-antonio/news/2021/04/01/disability-advocates-raise-concerns-about-sweeping-voting-bill-,FALSE, 679,"Disability Must Stop Being Workplace DI’s Poor Relation, Says Disabled Conservative Peer","The Conservative peer charged with chairing a groundbreaking commission reporting on critical issues feeding into the U. K. government’s National Strategy For Disabled People says it’s high time disability inclusion is accorded equal weight to other parts of the diversity spectrum. Last week, the Centre for Social Justice’s Disability Commission published “Now Is The Time,” a report exploring ways of addressing the country’s disability employment gap. Lord Kevin Shinkwin , who was born with Osteogenesis imperfecta, also known as brittle bone disease, says lawmakers are failing to offer disabled people similar safeguards to those enjoyed by other populations with protected characteristics. “Sadly, it is still the case today that we have major firms beating themselves across the chest and saying ‘hey, look at us – we are really committed to D&I and then not addressing disability at all,” says Shinkwin. He continues, “I know that there are some very large firms, I wont name them, who still produce standalone annual D&I reports that don’t even mention disability. ”Addressing the core actions parliamentarians can take on this, Shinkwin says, “Weve had mandatory gender pay gap reporting since 2017. It is the law for organizations to report where they are on this under threat of sanction. So why cant there be a read across for disability?”The Conservative peer, who enjoyed a 20 year career working in various roles across the not for profit sector, before being introduced to the U. K. House of Lords in November 2015, is keen to see better outcomes for a population segment for which the disability employment gap currently stands at 52% of disabled people in work, compared to 81% of non disabled people. “Perhaps we will have to phase in the change gradually,” he says. “But if you believe in the principle of equality of opportunity, the government is not treating groups with protected characteristics equally, which is a fundamental premise of equality legislation. ”Shinkwin intends to table a Private Members’ Bill when parliament reopens in May mandating enhanced disability reporting in the workplace. He firmly believes voluntary schemes like the Disability Confident scheme need to be more robust and that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s National Strategy for Disabled People should be supported by a legislative framework and enforcement regime with teeth. “Some people say and I’ve heard colleagues say, ‘We have a philosophical objection to mandating’, says Shinkwin. “Well, as both a conservative and a disabled person, I have a philosophical objection to failure and exclusion. At the moment, weve got both,” he continues. “And so, without enforcement, the carrot doesnt work. We need to make the carrot more attractive, but also have a bit of a stick. ”Further adding, “I’m not in the business of berating businesses but there are going to be firms who are much less inclined to act. We need them to be incentivized but also know that there are penalties for non compliance. “The truth is, over the past 26 years, we havent made nearly as much progress as we should have. Indeed, some disabled people say we are going backward. ”The Centre for Social Justice’s submission was preceded by an open letter to Prime Minister Boris Johnson signed by the likes of Post Office CEO Nick Read, Schroders CEO Peter Harrison and Clifford Chance Global Managing Partner Matthew Layton urging the PM to make good on his promise of a truly transformative National Strategy for Disabled People. Concerning its recommendations on improving the employment prospects of disabled people, the “Now is The Time” report further addressed a number of critical areas. These include, in addition to introducing mandatory workforce reporting, increasing supported routes into employment, reforming the government’s Access to Work scheme to support workplace adjustments and extending tendering requirements for government procurement to incorporate disability employment metrics. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/gusalexiou/2021/03/30/disability-must-stop-being-workplace-dis-poor-relation-says-disabled-conservative-peer/?sh=7b6643bc89ff,FALSE, 682,Some MI Disability Rights Advocates Call Vaccine Rollout Inadequate," Starting Monday, Michiganders age 16 and older with disabilities or certain medical conditions will be eligible to receive the COVID 19 vaccine. Breannah Alexander Oppenhuizen is with the Michigan Disability Rights Coalition. She said little has been done at the state level to ensure prompt access to the vaccine for these vulnerable communities. “Were seeing even in trying to register people in the places where we can actually get them registered, theyre not getting appointments until into the May, June appointment slots, she said. Alexander Oppenhuizen said it’s also been difficult to register people with disabilities, and those who speak a language other than English for a vaccine slot. “So for us to be now a year from the initial discovery of the COVID virus, and to still be so behind in planning for the most vulnerable communities, she said. Its startling, and something that we need to discuss further. The Michigan Disablity Rights Coalition has been raising these concerns with the state since December. Little planning is being done, and ultimately commerce is being prioritized in the vaccine distribution and the people, Alexander Oppenhuizen explained. If commerce wasnt being prioritized, Alexander Oppenhuizen said there would have been more planning from the state to address issues like transportation access to a vaccine appointment for those with disablities. So there was concern about if people use Spec Tran to get to [their] appointment, am I going to have issues getting to my appointment on time?, she said. There are small, localized issues that could have been dealt with better have they been heard by the institutions who have the ability to set priorities. Alexander Oppenhuizen said the decentralized nature of vaccine distribution, from scheduling to administering the vaccine, creates a series of challenges for communities vulnerable to the virus.  ",3,https://www.wkar.org/health/2021-03-22/some-mi-disability-rights-advocates-call-vaccine-rollout-inadequate#stream/0,FALSE, 714,Local providers advocate for state support of disability services,"March 9 marked Disability Services Day in St. Paul, an annual opportunity for disability service providers around the state to advocate for the needs of their clients and facilities. Because of COVID 19, the event had to be moved online this year, so local advocates didnt get any face time with legislators. The pandemic has created significant limitations for Nobles County Developmental Achievement Center . Its been really difficult when you try and operate with half capacity, said Bob Schreiber, DAC director. The DAC is allowed to have more than half of its normal capacity, but its not back to 100% yet. Pre COVID, the center could serve 57 people. Currently, the state is allowing 42 at a time. On the minds of local providers this year is the call to raise the U. S. minimum wage. One of the services offered at the DAC is matching clients with a job in the community, such as housekeeping at AmericInn, assembling filter bags for Bioverse and shredding documents for Avera and Johnson Builders & Realty. These jobs give clients a sense of purpose and an important role in the community. That means so much to them, Schreiber said. Thats the reason they get up and put their pants on. However, due to clients disabilities, they are often unable to work at the same level as an average minimum wage employee. The government has created a designation called a special wage, where clients are paid based on their production. Their wages are re evaluated locally at least every six months. Its a fair and equitable wage, Schreiber said. If the minimum wage is raised, explained program manager Tina Stamer, the special wage would be eliminated. These clients would have nowhere to go, she said, adding that DAC clients are among the lowest functioning in the area, so they dont have the ability to go out and earn a regular minimum wage. One issue service providers advocate for year after year is improved funding for disability services. Direct care staff are often underpaid. Their jobs are difficult and require significant physical and emotional stamina. The DAC would like to offer competitive wages, but they can only pay so much, due to funding from the state, Schreiber and Stamer explained. While the DAC had to be closed during COVID, managers opted to pay staff their full wages and insurance, in an effort to avoid losing the employees. The most difficult part of the pandemic, though, has been missing the clients. We are a huge part of their life, Stamer said. Were with them a little over six hours a day. Clients have missed the staff, too. Theyve loved being allowed back as the governor turns the dial on loosening COVID restrictions. Its heartwarming to see their faces after that long sabbatical, Schreiber said. Thats whats kept me in this job for 30 years. Stamer agreed. Were not looking at production; were looking at people, she said. ",3,https://www.dglobe.com/news/local-providers-advocate-for-state-support-of-disability-services,FALSE, 715,How Germany violates conventions on disability rights," Germanys sheltered workshops for people with disabilities exist in breach of a UN treaty. Now the European Parliament has voted to phase them out but Germanys 3,000 workshops may not be going anywhere. It is a bright sunny day at the Westhafen canal, an industrial area of Berlin where factories and cranes tower above from all sides. It is the end of the workday at one seven story concrete building. Employees wearing masks are streaming out, being helped aboard minibuses by staff members in high visibility jackets or heading to the nearby train station. This is a sheltered workshop, where all employees have some form of mental or physical disability . These workshops have existed in Germany in some form for over 50 years. But this month the European Union adopted a new disability strategy which calls for the end of the workshops. Berlins largest workshop has operated on a reduced scale during the pandemicA whole spectrum of people work here, from those with learning difficulties to people with serious physical disabilities, managing director Dirk Gerstle said, sitting in a spacious, sunbathed room by the canal that serves as the facilitys art workshop. The BWB workshop is Berlins largest, with some 1,600 employees, and is one of more than 3,000 in Germany that employ a total of about 320,000 people. The employees take on a wide range of tasks, from artisanal labor to metal and woodwork, packaging confectionery and administrative tasks tailored to their experience and ability. Built into the mandate of the workshop is a responsibility for the care and rehabilitation of the employees, Gerstle said. The social aspect of their daily life, as well as psychological and physical support, is just as important as the work that they do. Gerstle described the employees as a community. Article 27 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which was ratified by Germany in 2008. requires signatories to promote the acquisition by persons with disabilities of work experience in the open labor market. By not banning workshops, EU member states are still failing to meet their obligations, Katrin Langensiepen, a German Green and a member of the European Parliament who helped sculpt the blocs new disability strategy, told DW in a statement. Langensiepen, who is the first woman with a visible disability to be elected to the European Parliament, is the author of a report that calls for the phasing out of sheltered workshops. Her report, approved by a large majority in Strasbourg last week, demands that EU member states ensure that sheltered workshops should be limited to an option for a temporary period for people with disabilities in their working life cycle [and] speed up deinstitutionalization. The European Parliament has sent a clear signal against the segregation of people with disabilities, Langensiepen said in her statement. Instead of promoting old systems that make people with disabilities invisible, we are advocating for strengthening social alternatives where people with and without disabilities work together. Langensiepen is the first woman with a visible disability to sit in the European ParliamentUnder Germanys current model, the primary purpose of sheltered workshops is to integrate people with disabilities into other jobs. But in fact fewer than 1% or people manage this transition. In a typical year at the BWB, Gerstle said, 10 employees might move to other jobs, or about 0. 6% of his workforce. One obstacle is the fact that the workshops have to operate as for profit businesses. This means that in order to pay employees and exist under the legal framework, there are economic targets that have to be met. ",3,https://www.dw.com/en/how-germany-violates-conventions-on-disability-rights/a-56901202,FALSE, 718,International Women’s Day Challenge: Choose To Be Disability Inclusive," Una Fonte, a disability and feminism advocateEvery year in March we mark International Women’s Day, a day for celebrating women but also for highlighting the struggles and inequalities that still exist for women around the globe. This year the theme selected is “choose to challenge”. The “choose” aspect of the theme feels especially poignant since the last few years have seen more people than ever come to realise that the work of social justice must not be passive or performative, it requires real engagement and an authentic commitment to action. It is also an important reminder to those of us that are in a position to choose that choice is a privilege unavailable to many, making it all the more important that those who can take a stand, do. The “challenge” aspect of the 2021 theme is a little more open to interpretation, and no doubt means different things to different women. For me it resonates most in the context of challenging stereotypes and societal norms since that is what so much of my work is really about, but challenge could also mean to confront discrimination or oppression, and it could mean to challenge yourself. This IWD I would like to challenge the idea that women’s rights and disability rights are separate issues. Through the work of Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw the world has come to know the term “intersectionality” but how many of us have taken steps to really understand the intersections that exist within the causes we care about, and truly examine our positions and potential biases? If you are a passionate feminist then it is your business to care about ableism, champion the causes of disabled women and amplify their voices. Disabled women are part of the norm, around 10% to be specific, that’s nearly 17 million women in the UK alone. We are not merely a side issue to be sympathetic to, our rights and freedoms are entwined with yours. Within any marginalized group you are likely to still find a hierarchy that reflects the biases of the world around it. Despite best intentions we know that sexism still exists in the disabled community and that ableism absolutely exists within the feminist movement. And we’re not just talking about a few bad apples either. Outdated and harmful views about disability are deeply ingrained and systemic so to address them we must be informed and wise to the issues. To give one example of the history here, I recently watched an excellent TEDx talk by Una Fonte, who has albinism and is legally blind. She explained the importance of intersectional feminism and referenced the support for Eugenics among some important feminist figures in order to encourage wider support for abortion rights and birth control. Yes, that’s right mid century feminists argued that disabled people could be eradicated if women were given the ability to control their pregnancies, actually harnessing ableism as a tool to further an agenda that did not factor in the views or rights of disabled women. An ugly legacy and something that is rarely spoken about. In fact, aspects of that misguided thinking still exist today. Beyond the skeletons in the closet there is often an erasure of disabled women in the conversation about gendered discrimination as well. When we talk about the pay gap for example we rarely mention that disabled women earn less than both disabled men and abled women. Did you know that in the UK “on average, non disabled male employees earn £2. 15 more , compared to disabled male employees that are paid £11. 80 per hour, and non disabled female employees earn £1. 53 more  per hour compared to disabled female employees that earn £10. 20 per hour?”. That’s a huge 36% difference. And according to the UN disabled men are twice as likely to be in work than disabled women. In an essential report sponsored by ‘The Female Lead,’ Terri Apter follows up her 1994 work “women don’t have wives” to try and dissect why women are still absent from the top jobs, despite the changes in social attitudes and narratives over the past 25 years. I quote:",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/drnancydoyle/2021/03/07/international-womens-day-challenge-choose-to-be-disability-inclusive/?sh=8733dca70c6c,TRUE, 720,"Bill aims to study state’s disability services, prevent people from “falling through the cracks”","The costs that come with Grace Peterson’s cerebral palsy are not small. “A custom manual wheelchair is $14,000. $5,000 to put a ramp on our deck, and $25,000 just to adapt a vehicle,” Grace’s mom, Sammantha Peterson, said. Sammantha says because her daughter doesn’t have an intellectual disability, she’s not eligible for certain developmental disability services that would make managing her cerebral palsy easier. “Some of those services are access to Medicaid, respite, home renovations and vehicle modifications,” Sammantha said. But a bill aims to address that, by studying the state’s current services and figuring out what’s needed. “What we hope to come out of this study is that ability to not let anybody fall through the cracks,” Roxane Romanick said. Romanick has experience advocating for families with Down syndrome but says kids like Grace should be covered in the current services, too. “In my work, have seen people who end up falling through the cracks with the current programs that exist. We really are not meeting all the people we should be,” Romanick said. Grace, who’s 10 years old, and her mom testified in front of the Senate Human Services committee to show their support for Senate Bill 2256. “I think it will help me so that I can get my van, my car for me. And respite and stuff,” Grace said. The bill provides $150,000 in funding to the Department of Human Services to conduct a study, which, a DHS representative says it supports. “We believe that it is an important issue to study developmental disabilities as a whole, from the state’s perspective as far as where there are gaps and what we can do to improve services,” DHS Developmental Disabilities Division Director Tina Bay said. Bismarck Sen. Dick Dever sponsored the bill after he says similar legislation in 2017 didn’t fully address the problem. “There has been concern that some people are eliminated from services that it seems to me should be available to them,” Dever said. The committee did not yet vote on the bill, but Grace says she’d like to see it pass. “I’m just here for me and all my friends, and please vote do pass. ”According to the CDC, about 7 percent of children nationwide have been diagnosed with a developmental disability. ",3,https://www.kxnet.com/news/local-news/bill-aims-to-study-states-disability-services-prevent-people-from-falling-through-the-cracks/,FALSE, 721,5 Questions That Help Define The Outlines Of Disability Advocacy,"What is the shape of disability activism? There is a lot of natural variation in the large and diverse disabled population, and many different opinions among the smaller core of committed disability activists. But there are some beliefs, positions, and mindsets that shape the community of individuals and organizations loosely referred to as “Disability Activism. ” They aren’t exactly boundaries or litmus tests. They are more like magnets that draw disability advocates in certain directions. What are these key positions? How do we identify them? Here are five questions that go a long way towards defining disability activism as more than a set of moods and activities, but rather a movement with both diversity and a distinct direction. 1. Is disability mainly a medical or a social experience? The disability experience has two main aspects. First, there are people’s own mental and physical conditions, practical impairments, pain, discomfort, illness, and lack or loss of functioning. These form the conventional components of disability itself. It is essentially a person experience, and medically based. Then there are the barriers people encounter that are related to their disabilities, but come from the outside. This can include lack of physical, sensory, or mental access to essential spaces, processes, goods, and services – and discrimination by individuals, laws, institutions, and practices. These are the social forces that make disability so much more than a purely personal and medical experience. These two aspects of disability have for some time been referred to as the “Medical” and “Social” models of disability. Most disabled people experience elements of both. But whichever comes to be your dominant concern is both affected by and then further shapes how much you look to yourself for a better life and how much you look to outside people and social forces. Modern disability activism is mostly based in the Social Model of disability. It is more concerned with collective action to make society more accepting, equitable, and accessible, and focused much less on funding for medical research or development of new treatments and therapies. This less a matter of right or wrong, than it is a difference in focus. But it’s enough of a difference to give disability activism a noticeably different tone, flavor, and direction than, say, fundraising for medical research, or treatment of disabling conditions. Broadly speaking, disability activism seeks to fix society’s ableism, not fix disabled people’s disabilities. That gives disability activism it’s most essential and distinct shape and dimension. 2. Should “disability” itself be defined narrowly or broadly? 30 years ago or more, the “disability community” was mostly understood to be people in wheelchairs, plus blind people, Deaf people, and people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Now more than before, we include mental illness, learning disabilities, chronic illnesses, and chronic pain as disabilities. In 1990, the ADA’s definition of qualifying disability helped solidify this trend which continues to this day. Most people with any experience at all in disability culture acknowledge that this more expansive definition of “disability” is right and proper. But the truth of it still isn’t fully established, even within the disability advocacy community itself. There is still an implied hierarchy in which people with physical disabilities dominate, and those with other disabilities, especially those with mental illness or intellectual disabilities, are still too often treated as secondary partners. And outside disability culture, people still tend to associate the word “disabled” first with wheelchairs, crutches, and prosthetics, and maybe hearing aids and guide dogs – with other disability groups treated as adjunct or distinct groups with different sets of concerns and standards of treatment. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2021/02/28/5-questions-that-help-define-the-outlines-of-disability-advocacy/?sh=30743e175e97,TRUE, 722,2020 marked 7-year high unemployment rate for people with disabilities," The agencys data show a clear decline in employment for persons with a disability, though HR industry observers have noted that the pandemic may also have created some positive changes for this category of job seekers. Accessibility to job opportunities has long been a challenge for individuals with disabilities. However, due to public health measures taken to limit the spread of COVID 19, many employers adopted hiring processes that are mostly or entirely virtual. Moreover, that adoption is expected to continue well into 2021. Combined with other measures to reduce bias in the hiring process, this change could vastly improve accessibility for individuals with disabilities, according to sources who spoke to HR Dive last year. A similar change has occurred with respect to telework and other flexible work arrangements. The impact of remote work in 2020 could change, for instance, the compliance conversation about whether such arrangements could be considered reasonable accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Still, there are steps that employers can take to support workers with disabilities during the pandemic. A 2020 report by the Association of People Supporting Employment First noted that many persons with disabilities work in essential categories of jobs, such as those in grocery stores and healthcare facilities. Many of these essential workers regularly rely on supports from job coaches and employment specialists to navigate changes in business practices and job responsibilities, ASPE said. These direct support professionals are crucial in ensuring the safety and health of people with disabilities. In an opinion piece to HR Dive, consultant Toby Mildon wrote that employers may want to reach out to their employees and listen to their experiences during the pandemic. Among other things, employers can also ensure that technologies adopted in the past year, such as online meeting platforms like Zoom, have accessibility features enabled, Mildon wrote. – Ryan Golden @RyanTGolden Get the free daily newsletter read by industry experts Topics covered: HR management, compensation & benefits, development, HR tech, recruiting and much more. The recruiting process has seen massive disruption as problems caused by the pandemic necessitated creative solutions. The workplace bias watchdog said it is eyeing everything from vaccine mandates to artificial intelligence. ",3,https://www.hrdive.com/news/2020-marked-7-year-high-unemployment-rate-for-people-with-disabilities/595959/,FALSE, 723,A Disability Day of Mourning: Remembering the Murdered and the Vulnerable,"In 2012, Elizabeth Hodgins shot and killed her 22 year old son, George, in his childhood bedroom in Sunnyvale, Calif. She then turned the gun on herself. Although she murdered her own child, local news described Elizabeth Hodgins as a “devoted and loving mother. ” George, on the other hand, was called “low functioning and high maintenance. ” George was autistic, and article after article reinforced a single message: His disability made George somehow responsible for his own death. Another mother who knew the Hodgins family told the San Jose Mercury News: “We don’t know what caused this mother to do this. But every mother I know who has a child with special needs has a moment just like that. ” Zoe Gross remembers reading about the murder, and the whiplash she felt: “The pivot was really quick from ‘there’s been this crime and this tragedy’ to ‘caregivers of autistic adults face terrible burdens, and the mother was driven to this. ’” Gross is the director of advocacy at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, and is on the spectrum herself. “This isn’t how society reacts when there’s a murder suicide and there isn’t a disabled person involved,” she told me. Gross noticed a pattern in how the media covered George’s murder and other similar murders. “It’s like they’re working off the same script. … We’re pretty clear that no matter what is going on in someone’s life, murder is still unacceptable. But that goes out the window when you introduce disability. ”In response, Gross founded the Disability Day of Mourning. On March 1 every year, disability communities gather to mourn disabled people murdered by their caregivers. The first vigil was held in 2012, outside Sunnyvale City Hall. “It was a small group. We had some local [advocates] there. And we had some people from the community who knew George,” Gross recalled. Since then, the Disability Day of Mourning has become an international movement, with 32 vigils planned across the world. Because of the pandemic, all vigils this year will be virtual, except for the one in Sydney, Australia, where Covid 19 is less widespread. “We usually have between 30 and 40 sites every year. Most of them in the US, but we’ve also had sites in the UK, Australia, and China,” Gross said. At every vigil, advocates read from a list of names. The first year, the list was short. “It wasn’t because there hadn’t been a lot of people killed. … It was because it was just a list that I had put together on my own,” Gross said. The original enumeration included names from multiple years, and was based on a similar catalog called the Record of the Dead, which had been published on the now defunct blog Feminists with Disabilities. Now there are hundreds of names, and it is no longer practical to read it in its entirety. “Most will now read just the names that have been added the year since we had the previous vigil,” Gross explained. It isn’t clear how many disability motivated filicides happen each year. While the FBI tracks the number of children killed by their parents in the United States, information about motive is not usually collected. Instead, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network tracks news stories about caregivers who kill. The stories are collected on a website and maintained by a volunteer. “It’s done with Google news search,” Gross explained. The person “has a pretty specific Boolean search string of words that they use. … It’s the best methodology available to us. ”",3,https://www.thenation.com/article/society/disability-day-mourning/,FALSE, 725,It’s Time To Stop Even Casually Misusing Disability Words," Words Have PowerContent warning: This article mentions and discusses offensive words related to people with disabilities. It’s not “oversensitive,” or too “new” of a concern for organizations and businesses to take a hard look at reforming ableist language. Ableism itself is not a new phenomenon, even if “ableism” is a new word to some of us. And avoiding offensive language throughout organizations isn’t just about preventing bad publicity. Curbing use of stigmatizing and problematic language makes workplaces safer for diversity, more productive for employees, and friendlier to customers and clients. This should certainly include identifying and ending use of universally offensive disability slurs, like the word “retarded. ” Few would seriously argue that it is okay for any organization to tolerate either intentionally insulting or casual use of this word, now widely referred to as “The R Word. ” But the effort to reduce ableist language should also include rethinking more commonly used and traditionally accepted disability words and expressions that while not always offensive, tend to reinforce ableist thinking. Start with abusive, corrosive slurs to avoid in all cases, effective yesterday. These words are peppered throughout some people’s everyday conversation, and have many different shades of contextual meaning. However, they are all terms that have historically been used to label people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. And while these and similar words were at one time considered technical or “scientific” labels, they have always also carried a heavy social stigma and power to inflict real harm. Most people with these disabilities have intensely painful experiences being called “retarded,” “moron,” or “idiot” in clearly insulting ways. The fact that a people still use such terms without intending to hurt disabled people doesn’t matter. They are harmful in all cases. People with intellectual and developmental disabilities, particularly those actively involved in self advocacy, are strikingly clear that they do not accept use of these terms, especially “retarded,” under any circumstances. That should be reason enough for any of us to banish these words from our vocabularies. Other disabilities are widely stigmatized too, including physical and mobility impairments, and mental illness. When we use “cripple,” “invalid,” “crazy,” “insane,” or “stupid” to refer to a person, either face to face or indirectly, there is really no way to interpret it as neutral or socially acceptable, particularly in anything like a public or professional environment. So we should stop using them to refer to any person, no matter what we think of them. True, there are exceptions where people with certain disabilities use derogatory terms among themselves – like a disabled person referring to themselves with irony or pride as a “cripple” or “crip,” and people with mental illness calling themselves “mad. ” But even when we “reclaim” such terms for ourselves, we do so with a great deal of care and discretion. And this is not a privilege open to people outside our disability communities. As a general rule, these are words that should never be applied to a person, certainly not in public and professional settings. Organizations can feel confident adopting a “zero tolerance” policy on these terms, with no need for elaborate nuance or justifications. Next, rethink how we use more casual, everyday disability words. But what about disability words that are used in more ordinary conversation when you’re not even talking about a person?Until fairly recently, even disability advocates typically agreed to an informal deal. The general public would stop using a small handful of the most harmful disability slurs, while more causal disability adjectives and metaphors would be regarded as acceptable because of their long use and relative lack of personal offense. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2021/02/20/its-time-to-stop-even-casually-misusing-disability-words/?sh=6636e7b57d4e,FALSE, 726,When Does COVID-19 Become A Disability? 'Long-Haulers' Push For Answers And Benefits," Gabrielle Emanuel From Jodee Pineau Chaisson sits in her office in Springfield, Mass. , on Jan. 12. Pineau Chaisson, a social worker, contracted the coronavirus last May and continues to have symptoms even months after testing negative for the virus. Meredith Nierman/GBH News hide caption Jodee Pineau Chaisson sits in her office in Springfield, Mass. , on Jan. 12. Pineau Chaisson, a social worker, contracted the coronavirus last May and continues to have symptoms even months after testing negative for the virus. When COVID 19 first arrived in the U. S. , Jodee Pineau Chaisson was working as the director of social services for a nursing home in western Massachusetts. By the middle of April, residents at the Center for Extended Care in Amherst were getting sick. In early May, Pineau Chaisson was tapped for a particular duty: I was asked to go onto the COVID 19 units to do FaceTime calls so they could say goodbye to their family members, she recalls. I was very scared. She was worried about contracting the virus but also felt like she owed it to her residents. So, at 55 years old and with no preexisting conditions, Pineau Chaisson put on an N95 mask and a white jumpsuit and she entered the units to help. Three days later, she had COVID 19. She says shes certain she was exposed at the nursing home since, at the time, she wasnt seeing anyone outside of work or shopping in stores, and shed even moved out of her house and into an apartment to avoid bringing the virus home to her wife. Thinking back, Pineau Chaisson wonders if she was sweating too much, which made it harder for her mask to work well. Or, perhaps, she got too close while trying to facilitate the FaceTime calls. It has now been almost 10 months since Pineau Chaisson got sick, yet she is still dealing with a series of devastating ailments. She says she has memory problems, body pain, heart palpitations, depression and chronic fatigue. Sometimes it can even be hard to walk up the stairs to my bedroom, she says. Pineau Chaissons wife has become her primary caregiver. She said her wife has always been supportive and encouraging, even when she needed help getting in and out of the shower. Shes a nurse, so I lucked out, Pineau Chaisson says. Pineau Chaisson is a so called long hauler. These are people who survive COVID 19 but have symptoms sometimes debilitating symptoms many months later. As scientists scramble to explain what is going on and figure out how to help, disability advocates are also scrambling: They are trying to figure out whether long haulers will qualify for disability benefits. Disability advocates and lawmakers are calling on the Social Security Administration to study the issue, update their policies and offer guidance for applicants. If we end up with a million people with ongoing symptoms that are debilitating, that is a tremendous burden for each of those individuals, but also for our health care system and our society, says Dr. Steven Martin, a physician and professor of family medicine and community health at UMass Medical School. We know whats coming. So, we have to make sure that were on top of this, says U. S. Rep John Larson, a Democrat from Connecticut, who joined with another member of Congress to write a letter asking the SSA to work with scientists to understand what support long haulers might need. Applying for benefitsAfter contracting COVID 19, Pineau Chaisson was hospitalized twice and took 12 weeks off work under the Family and Medical Leave Act. After that, she says, she was still dealing with complete exhaustion and extreme memory loss. She wasnt well enough to return to work and, she says, the nursing home fired her. ",3,https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2021/02/22/966291447/when-does-covid-19-become-a-disability-long-haulers-push-for-answers-and-benefit,FALSE, 727,Colorado lawmakers consider adding symbol to state IDs to indicate disability,"Colorados newest attempt at police reform is so subtle, youd have to know what youre looking for to see it. For the second time in three years, lawmakers will consider adding a symbol to state issued IDs that indicate the person has a disability. The bill, HB21 1014, would also allow for a computer notation on a persons license plate record, so that if law enforcement were to run the plate, they would know that the driver or passenger has a disability. Not a physical disability. Ultimately, starting the conversation with our law enforcement that approaching somebody with an invisible disability has to be done from a different perspective, said State Rep. Dafna Michaelson Jenet, D Commerce City. Invisible disabilities can include autism, deafness, ADHD, something that could impair an interaction with law enforcement. This is a way to very clearly, very easily, very quickly communicate, there is something different about the way I operate, so you have to pause and lets figure out how we work together, said Michaelson Jenet. RELATED: Denver City Council approves additional COVID 19 relief, housing : This will result in a culture change: Independent panel to investigate sexual harassment claims in Colorado Judicial branchLawmakers in Alaska passed this type of bill in 2017. It creates a symbol, the letter I, to be used on state issued IDs to indicate someone has an invisible disability. If you are going to stop someone on the street and ask for their identification, if you have that symbol that you have voluntarily opted in, it is a starting point for a conversation about what is different about me, said Michaelson Jenet. She first attempted this bill in 2019, but it didnt make it out of the first committee. This came from a student from Littleton High School, Rebecca Zickerman, when she was in high school, as a student with Cerebral Palsy. She was afraid that if she got pulled over, she might have jerky behaviors that could cause an officer to interact with her inappropriately, said Michaelson Jenet. That version of the bill required that a person provide a form signed from a physician or psychiatrist or other medical professional to qualify for the disability symbol. This year, that is not included in the bill. We worked very closely with the disability community, and the number one reason that were not requiring medical personnel to sign off is because medical personnel dont always identity the invisible disability, said Michaelson Jenet. Alaskas law also requires training for law enforcement, as well as an addition to the states driver handbook to include driver’s obligations when they are stopped by an officer. Michaelson Jenets bill does neither, but a companion bill handles the training aspect. Its purposeful that theyre separate, but they also are driving down the highway in parallel lanes in trying to get to the same place, said State Rep. Meg Froelich, D Englewood. Froelich is the sponsor of HB21 1122, which creates a 10 person commission to recommend new training guidelines to be considered by the peace officer standards and training board . The recommendations for new training for law enforcement and first responders would be due by July 2022. The hope is, with training they go through a, sort of, checklist; is this person not complying with what Ive asked them to do because of these reasons that are perfectly legitimate and not about defiance, said Froelich. The idea of our bill is not to just simply say to the police academies, you need to do a better job on training people for interactions with folks with disabilities, it is to bring the disability community to the table. The commission would include two people with disabilities and two parents of a child with a disability. ",3,https://www.9news.com/article/news/local/next/colorado-lawmakers-symbol-state-ids-disability-license/73-63536538-7c8c-4b58-8c47-0d8aab82c415,TRUE, 728,"Despite risk of COVID-19, some fear people with disabilities are ignored in coronavirus response"," CORRECTION: Dessa Cosma is a wheelchair user and a little person. An earlier version of this story was incorrect.  LANSING  Laura Hall has done what she can to limit her exposure to the coronavirus. She rarely goes out, gets groceries delivered to her Okemos home, winnowed her close contacts to a small circle.  But Hall, who has spastic cerebral palsy, cant go it alone. Her husband and roommate help her manage her disorder, helping her climb in and out of her wheelchair, shower and reach things in the kitchen. She doesnt want to get sick with COVID 19. A bout with the flu last year put her in the hospital for more than a week.  I couldnt imagine what COVID would do, she said. If Hall were to get sick, it wouldnt be reflected in public coronavirus reports published by the state and federal government, which report COVID 19 cases among other groups on public databases. Despite her risk, she is not among the highest prioritized for vaccines. People with intellectual and developmental disabilities have been neglected throughout the coronavirus pandemic despite their risk of catching and developing serious cases of COVID 19, disability rights groups say.  The state of Michigan has no way to actually tell us how much the disability community has been impacted by COVID because they didnt collect [enough] data on it, said Theresa Squires Metzmaker, Michigan Disability Rights Coalition CEO.  If they dont have any data, they dont have anything to look at and say this group needs to be prioritized. Information can lead to action, said activist Dessa Cosma, executive director of Detroit Disability Power. She said Michigan should undertake robust tracking of COVID 19 cases among the disability community to understand how the coronavirus affects the community and how to keep people safe. The disparities are beyond what the data shows, she said. If were not tracking it in Michigan, we cannot identify how it affects them. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services started collecting information on COVID 19 patients disability status in August, roughly five months after the states first case. So far, 3,950 case records in the Michigan Disease Surveillance System show the patient had a disability, department spokesperson Lynn Sutfin said in an email. Metzmaker said she had grave concerns about the accuracy of the states data about coronavirus among people with disabilities, which appears to indicate COVID 19 cases are low in the disability community despite research that shows otherwise. She emphasized the need for robust information about COVID 19 deaths as well as cases among people with disabilities. The state health department also is working with Michigan State University to review COVID 19 deaths, which will track disability status among the sample of 200 representative cases under review, Sutfin said. The departments health systems analyst is using Medicaid data to identify Medicaid enrollees with disabilities who died of COVID 19, and the University of Michigan is collecting disability status information as part of their Michigan Recovery Surveillance Study, she said.  Some research shows people with certain disorders and conditions, like Down syndrome, which occurs in one out of every 700 babies, are at higher risk of contracting COVID 19 and developing a serious or fatal case of the disease.  Researchers who evaluated death rates of New York COVID 19 patients found those with developmental disorders, such as disorders that affect a persons learning, speech or language, had the highest odds of dying from the disease. Those with intellectual disabilities and conditions such as Down syndrome were at third highest risk among patients under 70. The findings were published in a November white paper by researchers from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, the West Health Institute and FAIR Health, a nonprofit that pushes for health care cost transparency.  ",3,https://www.lansingstatejournal.com/story/news/2021/02/22/michigan-disability-rights-groups-data-higher-vaccine-priority/4488463001/,FALSE, 729,Disability Rights CT files federal complaint over age-based vaccine rollout,"CT Mirror Connecticuts Nonprofit Journalism. In the first formal challenge to Gov. Ned Lamont’s age based vaccine distribution plan, Disability Rights Connecticut has filed a complaint with the U. S. Office for Civil Rights against the state and the governor “for discriminating against persons with disabilities” by not prioritizing them over the general population. The complaint, which was filed Wednesday, calls on the agency, which is a part of the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services, to “immediately investigate and issue findings on an expedited basis” that Connecticut’s age based policy for vaccinating state residents unveiled this week “constitutes disability discrimination” that violates federal law. [Breaking with national recommendations, Lamont says Connecticut’s vaccine rollout will now be prioritized by age]The advocacy group’s complaint also asks the federal agency to direct Connecticut to “immediately revise’” its vaccine policy to include prioritization for individuals with medical conditions, regardless of age, and to advise the state that it must have a process for people with disabilities to obtain a modification for its vaccine policy. The administration declined to comment on the complaint. The six page complaint alleges that the rollout violates the Americans with Disabilities Act because, among other reasons, it imposes eligibility criteria for the vaccine that “discriminates against and unfairly burdens individuals with disabilities. ” Ultimately, it accuses the state of “perpetuating discrimination against people with disabilities. ”The Connecticut Mirror is a nonprofit newsroom. 88% of our revenue comes from readers like you. If you value our reporting please consider making a donation. Youll enjoy reading CT Mirror even more knowing you publish it. Get CT Mirror briefings with enterprise reporting, investigations and more in your inbox daily. Lamont said Monday he is shifting the state’s COVID 19 vaccine distribution program to one strictly based on age for everyone other than school employees and child care workers, leaving many younger people with chronic medical conditions feeling left behind. Under the previous plan, those age 16 and over with certain chronic medical conditions were next in line to get the vaccine. The complaint notes that the new policy does not allow for exceptions for qualified individuals with disabilities. [People with disabilities were next in line for COVID vaccine. Then the plan changed. ]“Connecticut has adopted this policy even though it is well established that people with disabilities are disproportionately negatively impacted by COVID 19 and more likely to contract the virus and experience severe, often life threatening, and prolonged systems,” the complaint reads. Under the age based rollout, individuals between the ages of 55 and 64 will be eligible for inoculation on March 1. Those between 45 and 64 are eligible on March 22. People age 35 to 44 are eligible for vaccination beginning April 12. And those age 16 to 34 are eligible May 3. ",3,https://ctmirror.org/2021/02/25/disability-rights-ct-files-federal-complaint-over-age-based-vaccine-rollout/,FALSE, 730,"For disability-rights advocate advising Missouri vaccine plan, the work is personal"," Over two decades ago, Kasey Kittell opened Sara Hart Weir’s eyes to a population of people who are often overlooked. Kittell was born with Down syndrome, a condition in which a person has an extra chromosome that can cause a range of developmental and intellectual disabilities. The two met when Kittell was entering high school and Weir became her peer mentor to help her with the transition. Their relationship laid the foundation for what would become Weir’s life’s work advocating for people with disabilities. Weir and Kittell became close friends, with Weir later becoming Kittell’s co guardian. Years later, Weir became president and CEO of the National Down Syndrome Society. In January, Weir was brought on by the state of Missouri to help ensure those with disabilities, like Kittell, don’t get left behind during the rollout of the COVID 19 vaccine.  But Kittell won’t get the chance to receive the vaccine or spend time with Weir once the pandemic is finally over. Just weeks after Weir took on her new role, Kittell died of COVID 19 and pneumonia four days after she was admitted to the hospital. She was 36 years old. “Her little lungs and her little heart just kind of started to give up with the pneumonia and COVID,” Weir said. “It’s still very, very, very shocking. ”For Weir, it has made her work even more necessary. “She hadn’t had the vaccine yet, or had access to it in her group home in Kansas, and I think it just puts everything into perspective,” Weir said, “and all the important work that we’re doing in Missouri … to get the vaccine to the people that need it the most. ”Weir joined Missouri’s Department of Health and Senior Services as a special advisor for COVID 19 last month to provide expertise and advocate for the rights and well being of people with disabilities amid the rollout. During her time at the National Down Syndrome Society, Weir played a major role in the passage of the ABLE Act, which created tax free savings accounts for people with disabilities. Her work advocating for people with disabilities was central to her ultimately unsuccessful campaign for Kansas’ 3rd Congressional District last year. Weir was brought on through an initiative between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials. She will be aiding Missouri with public health emergency preparedness planning and response programs through 2021, said Lisa Cox, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Senior Services. Missouri was one of 12 states selected to participate based on factors like disability prevalence and the COVID 19 burden in the state, Cox said. According to the CDC, adults with disabilities are three times more likely than adults without disabilities to have underlying conditions, which can put them at higher risk for developing severe illnesses if they contract COVID 19. Studies have found that adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities are at least two to three times as likely to die if they contract COVID 19. With no national count of COVID cases in group homes, experts have raised concerns that a lack of data is leaving them with an incomplete picture of the virus’ impact on people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. An Associated Press survey of every state back in June found that at least 5,800 residents in facilities caring for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities had contracted COVID 19 at the time, and more than 680 had died. The actual figure is almost certainly higher, the AP reported. While Missouri’s own 106 page vaccine distribution plan notes that Immediate Care Facilities for people with intellectual disabilities fall under long term care facilitates to be prioritized, it doesn’t delve into specific strategies on how to reach Missourians with disabilities. ",3,https://www.columbiatribune.com/story/news/2021/02/21/disability-rights-advocate-advising-missouri-vaccine-plan-work-personal/4532889001/,FALSE, 731,What To Look For In A Disability Organization,"There’s an important question that may get too little attention in the world of disability services, activism, and culture. If we really care about people with disabilities and disability issues, we should all do better than just tossing pocket change in every fundraising bucket we see, or signing up for every walkathon a coworker’s kid puts in front of us. But how do we choose which disability related causes and organizations to support? Some criteria are the same for any kind of charity or organization seeking voluntary support. Look for sound, transparent finances and accounting practices. Make sure they use funds to further an important mission rather than simply enriching top executives. Support organizations that give regular, readable reports of services provided, advocacy accomplishments, and goals achieved. Look for strong oversight by a genuinely representative Board of Directors or similar governing entity. These are basic tips for choosing any charity or cause, for donations or for volunteering. But what other qualities should we look for specifically in disability organizations? Here are some criteria and questions to ask, and why they are important: Organization Type and ScopeThis is the most traditional and well known type of disability organization. Their goals are mainly to fund medical research into treatments and cures for specific disabling conditions, and in some cases to help provide some of those treatments to people with those conditions. The closest thing to an original is the March of Dimes, started by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1938 to find a cure for polio. But the model continues, with some modernizing alterations, in the March of Dimes itself and in other legacy organizations like the Multiple Sclerosis Society, Muscular Dystrophy Association, United Cerebral Palsy Association, and the Alzheimer’s Association. Notably, many of these organizations are better known to the general public for their fundraising events, and less for the work they do. Most disability organizations provide at least some personal and material assistance directly to disabled people and their families. For some, direct service is the main focus. Services can include funding for adaptive equipment, paying for certain high cost medical procedures, or enriching experiences like support groups and summer camps. In local chapters and offices, direct services may also include one on one information, counseling, and advocacy assistance to address disabled people’s everyday needs, concerns, and barriers. Two examples of agencies that provide direct services are The Arc, which encompasses hundreds of local chapters that serve people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and Centers for Independent Living, a nationwide network of local not for profit organizations which are governed and staffed mainly by disabled people and serve people with a wide variety of disabilities. Direct advocacy for individuals facing disability discrimination and other barriers is a type of direct service. But it is also inseparable from activism, in which disability organizations, more loosely organized groups, and individual advocates fight for permanent changes in practices, policies, and laws to make life better, more accessible, and more just for all disabled people. Some organizations, like the American Association of People with Disabilities and ADAPT focus mainly or exclusively on advocacy, while others like Centers for Independent Living, the National Federation for the Blind, and the Paralyzed Veterans of America combine advocacy and activism with direct practical services. Some people prefer to focus on people with a particular kind of disability. It might a very specific condition, like Down Syndrome, or a somewhat broader category of disability, like intellectual and developmental disabilities, mental illness, or mobility impairment and wheelchair users. Another approach is to support organizations and coalitions that try to serve and advocate for people with the widest variety of disabilities, on issues and barriers common to all or most people with any kind of disability. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2021/02/16/what-to-look-for-in-a-disability-organization/?sh=2eda46d55a84,TRUE, 734,Improving disability accessibility across Springfield College’s campus,"About fifteen years ago, Dr. Daniel Zukergood, a professor of education at Springfield College, sent groups of students in his Multicultural Education course all over the campus with nothing but wheelchairs. Their task: to see where they could go, and where their “disability” prevented them from going. Before there were building codes, laws, and state legislation, it was not easy for people with a disability , or a person who uses a wheelchair to navigate all buildings. With the long history of Springfield College and the age of some of the buildings on campus today, it’s interesting to see how the college has come. Dr. Zukergood speaks about his experience teaching his highly acclaimed Multicultural Education class, and the idea of ableism, or discrimination in favor of able bodied people.  “There was limited access to a lot of different places on campus,” Zukergood says. He went to Weiser Hall with one group of students, and attempted to get to a classroom in the basement with a student in the wheelchair.  “We had four people holding her wheelchair going down those first steps into the basement, and we couldn’t do it… it was a near catastrophe,” he explains. The students also discovered multiple dormitory halls and buildings that couldn’t be accessed in a wheelchair.  A few wrote letters to the president at the time, Richard B. Flynn, informing him of the issues on campus. “I’d love to say that we made a big difference. I’m sure that it helped [with] what we did,” Zukergood continues, “but I don’t think that we were the driving force. ” Two years ago, I was a student in EDUC 237 with Dr. Zukergood. In regards to sexism, classism, racism, ableism, and more, he asked our class to think about ourselves as individuals in relation to these ism’s. I believe many professors and students at Springfield College are what one could consider “active anti oppressors” in regards to many ism’s. Dr. Zukergood sees himself as an active anti oppressor when it comes to issues of gender, class and race. Yet in regards to ableism, Dr. Zukergood selflessly admits that he has been a “passive oppressor”. I think this applies to a lot of people. It’s not intended to make you feel bad, nor is the term “passive oppressor” meant to hurt anyone, but Zukergood makes a point in his class to his students that in many cases, “people aren’t interested in disability until it happens to them or someone in their family. Those who are privileged rarely see or acknowledge their privilege. ” Dr. Zukergood’s class has positively impacted many students to advocate and push for change on campus and in the world. While his activity on disability accessibility wasn’t necessarily an integral role in creating changes on campus, it is a prime example of his ability to bring attention to some of the issues. To get a more personal and in depth experience about accessibility on campus, I talked with Springfield alum and friend, Luie Gomes, who lived on campus for a total of six years in three different dorm buildings. Gomes, born with cerebral palsy, spent the majority of his time navigating the campus via electric wheelchair. Sometimes he would use a standard wheelchair, but as a person who regularly uses different kinds of wheelchairs on campus, Gomes has a unique experience. “I have no complaints,” Gomes expresses. “If there wasn’t a perfect situation, Residence Life did a phenomenal job of accommodating as best they could. ” Gomes praises Springfield College for their help over the years. The school did make some things easier, like providing him with an access key for the elevator in the Senior Suites when it was shut off so that he could still have access to laundry and other facilities. But Gomes does want to remind his peers of the bigger picture. ",3,https://scstudentmedia.com/improving-disability-accessibility-across-campus/,TRUE, 735,"After four years of planning, Duke Disability Cultural Center to open this semester","After nearly four years of anticipation, the Duke Disability Cultural Center will open its doors later this semester if COVID 19 conditions at Duke permit.  The center, which will be located in Room 033 of the Bryan Center, will offer resources open to anyone who may benefit from them, including meeting spaces for disability related organizations, a study room and a disability studies library. The center will also host social events throughout the year. Members of the Duke Disability Alliance began developing plans for the Center in 2017, wrote senior Maddie Fowler, DDA’s former co president and a current executive board member, in an email. The planning process involved gathering input from friends, drawing up extensive proposals and searching for possible locations. When this student centered space officially begins operations, Duke will become one of just nine universities across the country to feature a disability cultural center, Fowler wrote. “The idea for the Cultural Center was born with our former president and Duke alumnus Jay Pande [Trinity ‘20], who presented the idea at a general body meeting in fall 2017,” she wrote “I remember it well because it was one of my very first [general body meetings] with DDA and everyone was so excited about it. We were first able to check out our new temporary space in person last October 2020, but we are hoping to be open on a limited basis starting later this semester, spring 2021,” she continued. After DDA members were able to secure the Bryan Center room, they needed to purchase furniture and make renovations, including finding appropriate options for natural lighting and adaptive infrastructure. Delays due to the COVID 19 pandemic and erratic communication between the DDA and Duke administration prolonged the operation, Fowler wrote, but did not halt the efforts of DDA members.  “It has definitely been a team effort, with input from many DDA members, Duke admin, disability community members, and allies from across Duke,” Fowler wrote. “We have also learned so much and been empowered through our connections and partnerships with other universities’ disability cultural centers and disability activists. ”The centers opening is contingent on Dukes COVID 19 guidelines, DDA President Simran Prakash, who is also photography editor for The Chronicle, wrote in a message.  While providing resources is an important goal of the Disability Cultural Center, the DDA also wanted to make it the hub of a supportive community for anyone at Duke affected by a disability.  In Fowler’s words, the purpose of the Center is to show that disabilities are experienced every day, not on an on and off basis they influence a person’s culture, experiences and overall identity. These ideas are frequently discussed during the DDA’s virtual general body meetings, which occur every other Saturday, Fowler wrote.  She also encouraged anyone who thinks they could benefit from the Center to reach out to DAA to learn more.  “The more disabled and allied voices we have in our organization, the stronger we can be as a community at Duke,” Fowler wrote. E",3,https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2021/02/duke-university-four-years-planning-duke-disability-cultural-center-open-resources-library,TRUE, 736,The Guardian view on disability and Covid: shine a light," Families are worried that people with learning disabilities have not been prioritized. Who can blame them? A review by the Care Quality Commission of the allocation of do not resuscitate orders to some care home residents without consultation, during the first wave of the pandemic, is expected shortly. But already, new concerns have been raised that the same practices may be recurring. Normally, these orders should only be made when people are too frail to benefit. But the charity Mencap says that it has heard recently from people with learning disabilities who are concerned that they have been barred from potentially life saving treatments. There are complaints, too, about the vaccine rollout, with questions raised both about the prioritization criteria and the decisions made regarding specific cases. Six out of 10 people who died from Covid until November last year had a disability, with disabled adults aged 18 34 dying at 30 times the rate of the general population. While the government’s medical advisers decided that the over 65s faced a higher risk of death than many younger disabled people, some campaigners believe that more people with disabilities should be classed as “extremely vulnerable”. Existing categories, they argue, may not take account of all the reasons why learning disabled people could be in danger. For example, they might not be able to describe symptoms clearly if they become ill. Or they could be at additional risk because they live in communal settings in close proximity to others. On Tuesday, the BBC presenter Jo Whiley went public with her frustration that she had received a summons to be vaccinated before her younger sister, Frances, who lives in a care home and has diabetes and learning difficulties. Of course, no system is perfect. A new tool, QCovid, developed by scientists at Oxford University, should improve the current one. It will add information on people’s ethnicity, socio economic status and body mass index to calculate risk more precisely. As a result, 800,000 people will be bumped up the list for vaccination. But whatever impact this has on disabled people, there are wider lessons to be drawn from their high death rate and difficult experiences during the pandemic. The future of social care is widely understood to be a pressing policy question, even if politicians have yet to offer a convincing answer. But adults with disabilities are too often left out of a conversation that is assumed to be all about older people. This assumption is false. In 2018 19, 293,000 people aged 18 64 received council funded social care in England, mostly at home, with 70% of them needing it because of learning difficulties. Currently, these younger adults account for around a third of all those receiving social care, and around half of all local authority social care spending, with the number of learning disabled adults projected to keep rising, in part due to medical advances. The prejudice associated with learning difficulties has lessened over recent decades. Derogatory language that used to be commonplace is less prevalent. Public awareness of conditions including autism has markedly increased. But in important ways, the situation was deteriorating even before the pandemic. Last year, the CQC highlighted poor standards of care in some hospitals. The shortage of specialist nurses is among serious gaps in the NHS workforce. In the community, benefits freezes and cuts to local services such as libraries have made it harder for people with additional needs to participate in social and economic life. As ministers plot Britain’s recovery, they should be pressed to ensure that their plans include people with disabilities, who are too often ignored, and have endured particular hardships under Covid. ",3,https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/feb/16/the-guardian-view-on-disability-and-covid-shine-a-light,FALSE, 738,"Disability appeals take months, sometimes years, just for a hearing"," People are left waiting for years, sometimes even decades, to receive government benefits they’ve paid into their whole life. Disability claimants who have their cases denied and have to go through the appeals process often have no idea when their case will finally be heard. “I had a family member that was waiting on social security disability for eight years” Columbia resident Jimmie James said. “He received his social security disability and within two weeks he passed away. ”James applied for disability himself after four deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan left him with PTSD and a spinal disease. He was denied at first, just like 64 percent of people who apply, but eventually the South Carolinian won his appeal after ten months. “My whole goal was to get out and still continue to work. So, when that ability was taken away from me, it makes you nervous because now you don’t know what you’re going do,” James said. After an initial claim is denied, people applying for disability can appeal their case to an administrative law judge. “The sickest of the sickest people typically will get approved at initial application but not always,” attorney George Piemonte said. “I have had many people with terminal cancer and other diseases that still ended up having to come to me for help because Social Security denies their claims. ”Piemonte is president of the National Organization of Social Security Claimants’ Representatives. When people are denied disability he helps represent them in front of an ALJ. New data obtained by WBTV shows that the average wait time before getting a hearing in the Charlotte office is 284 days. “And that’s just the time from when they request a hearing, that doesn’t include the time from when they first filed their application,” Piemonte said. “Right now from filing application to getting in front of ALJ, we’re probably in about the two year period. ”But that’s just the average. “We’ve had many clients over the years pass away waiting for their hearing. ” Piemonte said. Records provided by NOSCCR show that as of December there were 2,660 disability cases that had been pending for more than 1,000 days. Piemonte says many of these are likely cases that have never been transferred from paper files to electronic files and because no in person hearings are being scheduled during the pandemic their cases are currently on hold. Piemonte has one client who first filed two decades ago and because her files are paper, has been waiting for a hearing since January 2020. “In 15 years has not come up with a solution to handling paper files, and now those people are really paying the price,” Piemonte said. WBTV reached out to the Social Security Administration to ask what they’re doing about these wait times and how they plan on handling paper case files. A spokesperson wrote us back saying the agency has “made significant progress by reducing the average wait times by nearly 11 months since September 2017. ”",3,https://www.wbtv.com/2021/02/11/disability-appeals-take-months-sometimes-years-just-hearing/,FALSE, 739,"Unfavorable Attitudes To Disabled People Rife Amongst Medics, Says New Study"," Cropped shot of an unrecognizable male doctor standing with his arms folded inside of a hospital . . . [+] during the dayA new study published in this month’s issue of the health policy research journal Health Affairs has revealed some unsettling insights on the attitudes of U. S. physicians towards people with disabilities. According to the research led by Lisa I. Iezzoni, MD, a specialist in the clinical experiences of individuals with disabilities based at Massachusetts General Hospital , more than 80% of the 714 U. S. doctors surveyed affirmed that people with disabilities enjoy an inferior quality of life to that of non disabled people. Potentially more worryingly, a mere 40. 7% of participating physicians from a cross section of specialisms around the country, reported a high degree of confidence in providing a similar quality of care to patients with disabilities to the rest of their patient cohort. Furthermore, only 56. 5% of physicians strongly agreed that they welcomed patients with disabilities into their practices. This is despite the receipt of equitable healthcare being a mandated requirement within the Americans with Disabilities Act . Commenting on the research, Iezzoni, who herself has lived with the chronic neurological condition multiple sclerosis since 1980, said, “That physicians have negative attitudes about patients with disability wasnt surprising. Later adding, “But the magnitude of physicians stigmatizing views was very disturbing. ”Drawing on parallels from across the diversity spectrum, Iezzoni posited, We wouldnt expect most physicians to say that racial or ethnic minorities have a lower quality of life, yet four fifths of physicians made that pronouncement about people with disabilities. ”These findings may be viewed as startling in ordinary times but arrive against a backdrop of the past 12 months when distrust towards doctors within certain sections of the disability community and their advocates has never been higher. Set within a wider context of disabled people feeling abandoned by governments around the world during the early days of the pandemic, media stories were quick to surface of patients with disabilities being deprioritized for ventilator treatment should they become seriously ill with Covid 19. In the U. K. , a scandal broke about doctors placing unlawful Do Not Resuscitate orders on the medical records of individuals with learning disabilities. At the same time, the much maligned Clinical Frailty Scale, which downgraded eligibility for life saving treatment based on parameters such as receiving care at home, was hastily abandoned by the National Health Service. Back in the United States, at the height of the Covid surge in March, the Office for Civil Rights at the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services moved to remind health care providers that subjective perceptions around “quality of life” should not be used to deny critical care to people with disabilities. The human cost during those harrowing days when the world changed forever was, once again, underscored by a recent Al Jazeera two part investigative documentary entitled, “COVID’s Disabled Victims. ”The report saw family members of disabled people from different countries fighting back the tears as they spoke of their experiences pleading with doctors to offer their stricken relatives intensive care treatment but being informed that their loved one “just wasn’t suitable” for these measures. In the words of a son in the U. K. grieving for his mother who had a long term neurological condition and died after being denied critical care for Covid 19, “We felt it was almost as if they didn’t really want to know. All they needed to know was that she was a disabled woman with Covid 19. That means she was a dead woman. ”While the lens of the pandemic is certainly a timely and irresistible one to look through when evaluating attitudes within the medical profession to individuals with disabilities, it is not necessarily the most instructive one. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/gusalexiou/2021/02/11/unfavorable-attitudes-to-disability-rife-amongst-medics-says-new-study/?sh=25e5a901560a,FALSE, 741,"We need beach access for everyone, and that includes people with a disability","Beach trips are a traditional part of our summers, but for some Kiwis and their family members living with a disability it can be a limiting experience. Around 1 in 4 New Zealanders have a disability. Their disability arises not from their impairments but from having to live in world designed by people who think everyone is the same. It is society, not the individual’s impairment, that is disabling. Thus, it is society that should be enabling. Examples of enabling measures are seen in efforts to provide beach access for those with disabilities with the installation of beach mats for wheelchairs, or the provision of beach wheelchairs. But after an able bodied woman suffered a significant leg injury on a beach mat, there are now concerns that Auckland City Council, and other councils across the country, might review the provision of such such mats. Any such decisions must take the rights of people with disabilities into account. These rights are to be found in international human rights law, and New Zealand’s own law. Read more: Bilingual road signs in Aotearoa New Zealand would tell us where we are as a nation The rights of people with disabilities are protected by international human rights law generally, which recognizes that everyone is born equal and all have to the right to be free from discrimination. More dedicated protection is found in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 2006, which New Zealand accepted in 2008. The convention prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability, which it describes as the interaction of people with disabilities and attitudinal and environmental barriers. It also requires countries should take action to ensure accessibility to a range of spaces and services for people with disabilities on an equal basis with those of non disabled people. These rights, like most other rights, must be weighed up with other considerations. A key concept here is reasonable accommodation. This means that necessary and appropriate changes should be made that allow people with disabilities to enjoy their rights on an equal basis with others. But such changes should not impose a disproportionate or undue burden. An Optional Protocol to the convention was also adopted in 2006, which means complaints can be made by individuals to the UN. New Zealand accepted this agreement in 2016. The New Zealand International Human Rights Action Plan 2019 2023 also prioritises the country’s leadership role in advocacy for the rights of people with disabilities. At the domestic level, the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 says everyone has the right to be free from discrimination and the Human Rights Act 1993 prohibits discrimination on the grounds of disability. Domestic law also includes the Health and Disability Commissioner Act 1994, which established both the role of the Health and Disability Commissioner and a Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers’ Rights. One of the purposes of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act 2000 is to promote the inclusion, societal participation and independence of people with disabilities. The Disability Act 2008 was passed with the aim of giving effect to New Zealand’s obligations under the UN Convention. The New Zealand Disability Strategy 2016 2026 guides the work of government agencies on disability issues. ",3,https://theconversation.com/we-need-beach-access-for-everyone-and-that-includes-people-with-a-disability-154158,FALSE, 743,"Meet Warren ""Wawa"" Snipe, the man performing the national anthem in ASL at the Super Bowl","Snipe, who is Deaf, is set to perform the national anthem and America the Beautiful in American Sign Language during the events pregame, the National Association of the Deaf announced last month.  I was very honored and humbled to be selected to perform these songs at the Super Bowl, said Snipe, a creative artist who acts, creates, performs music and more. It was always my dream to perform at the Super Bowl, and I would love to be able to perform the halftime show in ASL too! Snipe added. Eric Church and Jazmine Sullivan will be singing the national anthem during Super Bowl LVs pregame events, with H. E. R. scheduled to sing America the Beautiful. Snipe told CBS News he and the other performers will be rehearsing together to ensure we are aligned and ready for game day. Snipe explained that the ASL performances typically match the tenor, rhythm and tempo of how singers perform the songs. He said has been preparing by practicing a rendition of the songs that closely tracks how this years singers typically perform them. My approach will follow how this years singers handle the songs in their own way, the 50 year old avid football fan said.  There has been an ASL performer at the Super Bowl since 1992 and the NAD has been involved with the NFL in choosing the ASL performer since 2009, according to Howard A. Rosenblum, the NADs chief executive officer & director of legal services.  Snipe said that he believes it is important to have an ASL performer for the iconic songs at the big game for a main reason: Access. Simple as that. The Deaf and Hard of Hearing community needs access to these iconic songs just like everyone else, Snipe explained. To those who are hearing, try watching television with the sound and captions off, and youll experience inaccessibility. Why wouldnt you want to make everything accessible to everyone, including Deaf and Hard of Hearing people?He added that the representation of people in the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community delivering the ASL performance in public venues matters because ASL is the language of our community and it should be one of us doing the performance. To help make live events more accessible to the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community, Rosenblum told CBS News that ideally the ASL performances of the iconic songs would be shown in their entirety during the television broadcasts. In addition, every live event should ensure that any ASL performance or interpretation is visually displayed on large screens within the event so that everyone can see it, as well as accurate captioning provided by professionals available throughout the event for all to see, he explained. Both ASL and captioning are needed as each serves different segments of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community with some being fluent only in English or ASL, and others being fluent in both. Broadcasters have been criticized in the past for not airing full ASL performances at the Super Bowl. The Deaf community would like to view the ASL performances in its entirety on broadcast television, Rosenblum said. We do look forward to that day. We appreciate the efforts by the NFL to push sports accessibility to new heights. The NAD plans to post the full version of both performances on its YouTube page following the live broadcast.  While the chance to perform at the Super Bowl may be one of the highlights of any artists career, Snipe has been taking the stage for years. He had his first taste of performing in middle school, then majored in theater in college.  Snipe developed Dip Hop in the late 1990s, which he defines as Hip Hop through Deaf eyes, with a mix of audio and images.  ",3,https://www.cbsnews.com/news/super-bowl-american-sign-language-warren-wawa-snipe/?ftag=CNM-00-10aab6a&linkId=110870784,TRUE, 746,The Harvard Gazette,"Harvard University Chan’s School’s David Hemenway uncertain about effects of Uvalde deaths, but believes growing body of research will turn tide in timeGenSci Lab scholars urge researchers to take care crafting definitions of sex as language can make its way into law, public policy Study looks at racial, ethnic groups, and public vs. private insuranceLong term cardiovascular study looks at impact of healthy habits developed in childhood 2022 The President and Fellows of Harvard College Researchers found that many surgeons were more likely to assume women with early stage breast cancer who use wheelchairs would opt for a mastectomy instead of breast conserving surgery, believing the women don’t care about their appearance. Anna Stills/iStockBy Anita Slomski MGH News and Public AffairsDateFebruary 1, 2021February 1, 2021More than 80 percent of U. S. physicians reported that people with significant disabilities have worse quality of life than nondisabled people, an attitude that may contribute to health care disparities among people with disability, according to recent research published in the February issue of Health Affairs. The first of its kind study surveyed 714 practicing physicians from multiple specialties and locations across the country about their attitudes toward patients with disabilities. “That physicians have negative attitudes about patients with disability wasn’t surprising,” said Lisa I. Iezzoni, lead author of the paper and a health care policy researcher at Harvard affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital . “But the magnitude of physicians’ stigmatizing views was very disturbing. ”For more than 20 years, Iezzoni has studied health care experiences and outcomes of people with disability and is herself disabled by multiple sclerosis diagnosed in 1980, her first year in medical school. Only 40. 7 percent of surveyed physicians reported feeling very confident about their ability to provide the same quality of care to patients with disabilities as their other patients received. And just 56. 5 percent strongly agreed that they welcomed patients with disabilities into their practices. The physicians who reported being most welcoming to patients with disability were female and practiced at academic medical centers. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 requires that people with disability receive equitable health care. That most surveyed physicians did not give socially desirable answers about their perceptions of people with disability indicates their certainty in their beliefs, said Iezzoni. “We wouldn’t expect most physicians to say that racial or ethnic minorities have a lower quality of life, yet four fifths of physicians made that pronouncement about people with disabilities. That shows the erroneous assumptions and a lack of understanding of the lives of people with disability on the part of physicians. ”“Our results clearly raise concern about the ability of the health care system to ensure equitable care for people with disability,” added senior author Eric G. Campbell, professor of medicine and director of research for the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. “Studies of people with disability show that most don’t view their lives as tragic. ” Lisa I. Iezzoni The paper cites examples from Iezzoni’s and others’ research demonstrating that individuals with disabilities often receive inferior care. Many surgeons assume, for example, that women with early stage breast cancer who use wheelchairs want a mastectomy instead of breast conserving surgery, believing that women with disability don’t care about their appearance. And during the surge of the COVID pandemic in March, when resources such as ventilators were scarce, the Office for Civil Rights at the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services felt compelled to issue a warning to health care providers that people with disabilities should not be denied medical care on the basis of disability or perceived quality of life. ",3,https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/02/survey-finds-doctors-have-negative-perception-of-patients-with-disability/,FALSE, 749,Why One TV Writer Went From Hiding Her Disability To Advocating: ‘We Need Disabled People In All Levels’," Katherine Beattie, who has cerebral palsy, advocates for disability inclusion in Hollywood. These days, work looks a lot different for Katherine Beattie.  A producer on CBSs hit procedural drama NCIS: New Orleans, Beattie and the rest of her colleagues had to adjust their storytelling to fit Covid 19 protocols. They now meet remotely to produce each episode of season 7 versus being on set. They are also shooting in fewer locations, with fewer action scenes, and mask wearing is mandatory. The most significant change for Beattie, who has worked on the show since its inception in 2014, is not traveling to New Orleans to shoot.  Adjusting has been an arduous task for almost everyone involved but not necessarily for Beattie, who has spent her entire life adapting to a world not built for her.  Beattie was born with cerebral palsy, a group of movement disorders impacting muscle tone and posture. CP happens as the brain is developing before birth and affects how a persons brain communicates with their muscles. CP affects everyone diagnosed differently. For Beattie, having CP means tight muscles and getting tired quickly. She didnt need mobility aids for much of her upbringing, but she has used a wheelchair full time for almost eight years in her personal life. In her professional life, though, shes only used a wheelchair for four years.  That’s because, for a while, she hid her disability.  Beattie, 34, grew up in Los Angeles County and was tangentially involved in the entertainment industry. Her father, who worked in politics, would often take political candidates to screenings of The Tonight Show, and sometimes Beattie and her twin sister would tag along.  Beattie loved being backstage and meeting the celebrities. At this point, she knew she wanted to work in television in some capacity, but it would take years before she realized she wanted to be a screenwriter. She eventually decided to attend Texas Christian University in Fort Worth, Texas, and majored in their Radio, Television, and Film program. Through a contact at The Tonight Show, Beattie landed an internship at The Ellen DeGeneres Show. After graduation, in 2008, Beattie was offered a job at the show in their human interest department. She assisted the producer with all non celebrity segments. Beattie loved her coworkers and working for the show, she says, but she quickly found herself dissatisfied.  I was driving to work, and I was miserable because I hated working at the show. No fault of anybody who works there, they were all lovely people, and it was a great environment, it just wasnt for me, Beattie said.  I was driving there, and my sister at the time was a high school teacher. And I remember thinking, ‘I should call her and ask if she has a term paper that I can write. ’And then I thought, thats odd. Why would I want to write a high school term paper right now? So that was the moment for me, where I was like Oh, I missed it [writing. ]Beattie had always written in some capacity, even writing friends’ papers in school because she enjoyed it so much. But she never realized it was something she could do as a career until this moment. From that point on, she started finding people who worked in scripted television to learn how she could further her career in that direction. At the time, Beattie says, DeGenerouss wife was working on the ABC show Better Off Ted. Beattie says she began actively working with people she knew to somehow get on the show even going as far as quitting her full time job at Ellen DeGenerous because it seemed likely she was going to land a gig. But then, the show was canceled.  Beattie became a background actor to pay the bills and decided to apply for UCLA Extensions TV writing certificate program. She got in. For 18 months, she worked on her screenwriting craft while also landing gigs in the industry. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/allisonnorlian/2021/01/22/why-one-tv-writer-went-from-hiding-her-disability-to-advocating-we-need-disabled-people-in-all-levels/?sh=2457a8097de7,TRUE, 750,Fast Retailing Joins Global Initiative to Target Disability Inclusion," Todays Digital Daily Can Influencers Flip Climate Change’s Unglamorous View? Todays Digital Daily The Uniqlo parent has signed on to the Valuable 500, following in the footsteps of over 400 companies worldwideTOKYO Fast Retailing said Thursday that it has joined the Valuable 500, an initiative that encourages business leaders to champion persons with disabilities. In joining the Valuable 500 community, the Uniqlo parent company has adopted a five point commitment that supports the initiative’s goals of diversity and inclusion. While Uniqlo began actively recruiting persons with disabilities in Japan in 2001, Fast Retailing will continue to do this at its stores worldwide, while also providing acceptance training. Both Uniqlo and GU stores in Japan have a target of hiring at least one differently abled person at every store. In addition, Uniqlo was recognized in October 2020 by the New York City Mayor’s Office for People With Disabilities with the Champion of Change Award for its continued commitment to fostering inclusion among its team members. Another facet of the company’s commitment is the creation of products, services and sales spaces that reflect feedback from disabled or elderly customers. Fast Retailing started this initiative at Uniqlo Japan, and is now expanding it globally. “Front open Innerwear, a product line from Uniqlo sold in Japan through its online shop and in select stores, was developed based on feedback from customers who have difficulty putting on or removing pullover clothing,” Fast Retailing said in a release. “Product developers created the line by visiting medical institutions and facilities, and listening to feedback from hospitalized and ambulatory patients, women recovering from breast cancer surgery, persons with disabilities and the elderly. ”In March of last year, Fast Retailing launched a diversity and inclusion website, which it says is an “important corporate activity. ”A message from Fast Retailing’s chairman, president and chief executive officer Tadashi Yanai that is posted to the website calls diversity one of the company’s “most valued principles,” and notes that in order to make clothing that suits everyone in the world, it must be made by a diverse group of people. “We believe a culture of inclusiveness can engender great respect for each other’s values. This empowers us to learn from each other and to continue innovating and transforming our business for customers,” the statement says. Perhaps the most significant points of Fast Retailing’s diversity and inclusion commitment are its support for sports programs for differently abled people and its support for the disabled in local communities. Uniqlo has been an official partner of Special Olympics Nippon since 2002, donating uniforms for athletes and volunteer staff, as well as assisting with competition operations. Uniqlo Taiwan has a similar program, and Uniqlo has been a title sponsor of the Wheelchair Tennis Tour since 2014. Wheelchair tennis athletes Shingo Kunieda and Gordon Reid also serve as global brand ambassadors for Uniqlo, and the brand is the official clothing partner of the Swedish Paralympic teams. Fast Retailing initiatives that support disabled persons in local communities include a program launched by Uniqlo in South Korea in 2019, in which the brand donated approximately 6,000 items of clothing to some 1,200 individuals with cerebral palsy. The clothes had been customized to be easier to put on and remove. In addition, Uniqlo Singapore has supported a school offering vocational training to students with mild intellectual disabilities since 2017. The Valuable 500 was launched at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in 2019. Other member companies include Google, Calvin Klein, BBC, L’Oréal, Tommy Hilfiger, Kurt Geiger and Virgin Atlantic. Several Japanese companies have also signed on, including All Nippon Airlines, Dentsu, Fujitsu, Kao Corp. , Sony, Urban Research and others. ",3,https://wwd.com/sustainability/social-impact/fast-retailing-joins-global-initiative-target-disability-inclusion-1234705430/,TRUE, 753,"Disability, “No True Scotsman,” And “Zero Sum Thinking”","The most outrageous conspiracy theories now reach and influence mainstream politics. Gut instinct, and just plain prejudice, are now rapidly replacing evidence to drive the most drastic actions at the very heart of our democracy. It seems like flawed reasoning has become something of a popular trend. One of the things that makes this all so hard to cope with is that untrue and irrational arguments are presented in seemingly rational clothing. We get the appearance of carefully reasoned arguments, but based on inaccurate information, unsupported assertions, and logical fallacies. And we find it not just in Right wing populism, or in the more radical fringes of the Left. Most smaller, more specific communities and subcultures have their own unhealthy relationships with flawed thinking. This includes the disability community, both from outside and within. One bizarre example is the recent social media trend of “debunking” the accomplishments of well known deaf and blind activist Hellen Keller. The core argument seems to be that Keller’s accomplishments were not her own, but instead engineered by others. It’s an idea based on a mix of unmoored skepticism and pure ableism. Since it seems so amazing that Helen Keller did so much, , maybe common sense tells us that she really didn’t after all. What exactly we are supposed to think from there is a bit of a mystery. This sudden impulse to “go after” an almost universally admired figure in disability history is perhaps easy to dismiss, like belief in a “Flat Earth. ” However, recent events suggest that we ignore this kind of thing at our peril, including when it comes from or affects the disability community. Disability thinking and discourse have for a long time been especially plagued by two common but harmful logical fallacies – sometimes known as “No True Scotsman” and “Zero Sum Thinking. ” They each have an understandable appeal, and some slight basis in real life disability experience. But they are inherently flawed, divisive, and corrosive. And they are important not only for disabled people to recognize, but for non disabled observers and allies, too. “No True Scotsman”The ThoughtCo website explains:“The name No True Scotsman comes from an odd example involving Scotsmen:‘Suppose I assert that no Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge. You counter this by pointing out that your friend Angus likes sugar with his porridge. I then say Ah, yes, but no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge. ’”First someone states a broad generalization or prejudiced assumption about a group. Next, someone else counters by pointing out people who don’t fit the stereotype. Then, the person defending the stereotype responds by declaring the counter examples are actually not a real part of the group, thereby leaving the stereotype unbreached. It’s similar to another common fallacy – “moving the goalposts. ”So how does this formulation play out in discussions about disability?The most common instance has to do with who is and isn’t considered “truly,” “significantly,” or “severely” disabled, and by extension, who can and can’t authentically represent the disability community. Here the conflict is typically between a disabled advocate and some variety of skeptic or opponent of something the advocate stands for. For example, the disabled advocate insists that equal opportunity, meaningful choices, and civil rights under law should apply to all disabled people, not just people with certain disabilities that are regarded as “milder” or “less severe. ”A skeptic of this idea replies that while they support general disability rights principles, they don’t believe they can be fully applicable to people with certain disabilities that they believe make a person unable to exercise full rights and liberties. The advocate answers by pointing out that they themselves are disabled, and fully capable of exercising basic human rights. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2021/01/17/disability-no-true-scotsman-and-zero-sum-thinking/?sh=160857fc162a,FALSE, 754,Disability Discrimination In Health Care Under Scrutiny,"Federal officials are weighing a rewrite of regulations designed to ensure that people with disabilities do not face discrimination from medical providers amid persistent concerns about unequal access. The U. S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights is issuing a request for information on disability discrimination in the health care and child welfare systems. The move comes as the agency said that it “is aware that significant discrimination on the basis of disability against persons with disabilities persists in the nation’s health care system and in its child welfare system. ” In addition to reports of discrimination that have surfaced during the course of HHS OCR’s own activities, officials said that they’ve heard about issues from researchers, advocates and disability organizations. As a result, HHS OCR is reviewing existing relevant regulations and mulling revisions. Now, the agency is looking for feedback on what any updates should address. Specifically, officials said they would like information about disability discrimination in the context of organ transplants, life saving or life sustaining care, suicide prevention and treatment, crisis standards of care, health care value assessment methodologies, child welfare and the availability of auxiliary aids and accessible medical equipment. HHS OCR said it wants input from people with disabilities, their families, providers, disability advocates, hospitals, child welfare agencies and other stakeholders. In addition to information on discrimination, the agency indicated that it would like to hear about the costs and administrative burdens related to various approaches to tackling the issue. “We believe that persons with disabilities should not be discriminated against in vital health and human services including organ transplants, suicide prevention, the provision of life saving care and child welfare,” said Roger Severino, director of HHS OCR. “We believe the American public agrees that persons with disabilities deserve full protection under law and we seek public input on achieving that goal with respect to the most consequential, life altering contexts. ”Once the request for information is published in the Federal Register, the public will have 60 days to submit comments. In one rural county, people with disabilities and others who have been appointed a guardian may soon lose the ability to vote even if a court has expressly preserved their right to do so. After multiple delays, federal officials are plowing ahead with a long awaited Medicaid rule establishing standards for what counts as home and community based services for people with disabilities. With a slew of new actions and additional resources, federal education officials are taking steps to ensure that students with disabilities and their families can access school services. ",3,https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2021/01/19/disability-discrimination-in-health-care-under-scrutiny/29157/,FALSE, 757,"5 Reasons Why Disability Issues Should Be A Higher Priority, Even Now","The phrase “Everything that’s going on” has rarely been so potent. Presidential Election results have been openly challenged in Congress. The Capitol building itself has been physically attacked by a wild but disturbingly directed mob. The Covid 19 pandemic seems to be escalating everywhere. So it may be tempting for elected officials and political strategists to set seemingly specialized concerns aside in 2021 and focus just on a few of the perceived “fundamentals” that are understood to affect “everyone,” rather than narrower “special interests. ”Disability issues in particular risk being sidelined even more than they usually are. Despite some notable recent success in bringing disability policy to the attention of politicians, disability is still widely regarded as a niche concern. Conventional wisdom might suggest that with American democracy literally teetering on the brink, matters like Social Security rules, disability rights laws, and even health care eligibility should be put not just on the back burner, but in the deep freeze for the foreseeable future. This would be a mistake – morally, practically, and politically. Disability issues are far more important and relevant than most people realize. They also offer ground for some tentative returns to a semblance of political bipartisanship, and restoration of faith in society’s ability to do things better. Here are five reasons why disability issues shouldn’t be set aside right now. 1. The disability community is a large constituency, not a tiny special interest. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 61 million adults in the U. S. have some kind of disability – that’s 26% of the adult population, or 1 in 4 adults. 13. 7% of adults have a mobility disability. 10. 8% have cognitive or intellectual disabilities. 5. 9% of adults have hearing impairments. And 4. 6% have vision impairments. These are all minorities in the numerical sense, compared with the whole U. S. population. But they are all substantial minorities. We should also count families and friends of disabled people too, as part of a more broadly defined disability community or constituency. It’s a common mistake to assume that non disabled spouses, siblings, adult children, and work and school buddies always have the same views and priorities as actual disabled people. But they are at least potential and often genuine allies on disability issues. It’s also worth remembering that aging in particular overlaps a lot with disability. Disability becomes much more prevalent as people age, and the percentage of the population that is elderly is huge. 2 in 5 people 65 and over have a disability. The large aging population is part of what makes the disability community much larger than people tend to assume. When we think of “disabled Americans” we need to remember that it’s more than just a few people in wheelchairs. It’s a very large and diverse community of people, who nevertheless share many common experiences of having disabilities and coping with the often difficult place disabled people occupy in society. 2. Disability cuts across our political divides like few other shared experiences. Disability is more prevalent among some groups than others – as already noted by age – but also by race, region, and income. For instance, 16% of Native Americans and 11% of black people of working age in the U. S. have disabilities of some kind. However, every social and demographic subgroup includes significant numbers of disabled people. Anyone can have a distinct or marginalized identity, and be disabled as well. This affects more than just statistics. It means that the disability community itself is incredibly diverse. And the experience of disability adds extra dimensions and cross cutting perspectives to other demographic populations. For example, disability can sometimes give otherwise privileged people a taste of discrimination, sometimes even of oppression, that their non disabled peers may rarely experience firsthand. Meanwhile, less privileged people can be both further stigmatized and hindered by disability, while also at times provided with different paths to survival, community, and liberation through the disability community than are available to their non disabled peers. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2021/01/11/5-reasons-why-disability-issues-should-be-a-higher-priority-even-now/?sh=40ca01e742f8,FALSE, 758,Proposed Va. bill would protect against workplace discrimination based on disability,"A proposed bill in the Virginia House of Delegates would protect people with disabilities from workforce discrimination. Del. Mark Sickles, D Fairfax, introduced House Bill 1848 as an amendment to the Virginia Human Rights Act. The bill would extend discrimination protections to employment, housing and public accommodations for those with disabilities. “HB 1848 amends last year’s Virginia Values Act to make sure Virginians will all abilities can fully participate in our economy if reasonable accommodations can be made in the workplace,” Sickles said in a statement. “Virginia should be a place for all people, regardless of ability, to live and work free from discrimination. ”The bill would require all employers with more than six employees to make reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities unless the employer can show it would cause undue hardship. It also adds disability as a protected class and adds the federal American Disabilities Act into the Virginia code. Sickles serves as chair of the Health, Welfare and Institutions Committee. ",3,https://www.nbc12.com/2021/01/09/proposed-va-bill-would-protect-against-workplace-discrimination-based-disability/,TRUE, 760,IU Research Institute Admins Disability Resource Database," Indiana University’s Indiana Institute on Disability and Community and the AWS Foundation of Fort Wayne are partnering to implement Indiana Disability Resource FINDER as part of the university’s library information and referral services. The database provides access to community services for persons with disabilities and their families. FINDER is a free online resource specifically designed to connect people with disabilities, family members, and professionals with disability related programs and services. “Research has shown that locating information about disability services and resources is a major hurdle for community stakeholders and disability professionals,” said Derek Nord, IIDC director. “As a state wide tool, FINDER assists in making information accessible and geographically relevant for all Hoosiers. Through our extensive work across Indiana that touches on all stages of life, the IIDC is excited to expand FINDER’s reach to make it the go to resource. ”The partners say service providers, community advocates, and medical professionals regularly contribute to FINDER, keeping the information current. “Combined with IIDC’s leadership and specialized skills and experience, FINDER provides the latest technology to expand collaboration and develop new partnerships to help empower parents, teachers, caregivers, and others to find answers to disability related questions and become a more informed advocate,” said Patti Hays, chief executive officer of AWS Foundation. You can connect to the database by clicking here. Mentorship can happen at varying levels, from one off micro mentorship opportunities to deeper connections that span decades long careers. Further, mentors come in all shapes and sizes, from personal relationships to work peers or managers to educators and coaches. ",3,https://www.insideindianabusiness.com/articles/iu-research-institute-admins-disability-resource-database,TRUE, 761,Drivers with a disability can obtain a voluntary disability self-disclosure card,"It’s a new year, and there’s new policy in Maryland from the Motor Vehicle Administration. As of January 1, people who have developmental disabilities are able to obtain a card from the Motor Vehicle Administration that allows them to voluntarily disclose that information to law enforcement. The new law is designed to help people with disabilities interact with police if they get pulled over and need to communicate any challenges or issues they might have. Individuals with disabilities have different challenges. Law enforcement doesn’t necessarily know that when they’re approaching the vehicle,” Chrissy Nizer, administrator of the MVA said. The card will be a blue stock card and should be carried with a driver’s license. Law enforcement will be trained to recognize the card with a hope of both parties having a successful interaction.  “There might be things that they need to be more sensitive to and more aware of. I think this can help both law enforcement as well as the individual to be able to interact and have more of a positive experience,” said Nizer. The MVA collaborated with law enforcement and the disability community to make this happen. ",3,https://www.localdvm.com/news/local-news/maryland/drivers-with-a-disability-can-obtain-a-voluntary-disability-self-disclosure-card/,TRUE, 762,"Meet InReturn Strategies, a start-up intent on unlocking the value of America’s disabled workforce","When he was younger, James Geary never had a dream job, because people treated him as though he’d be lucky to have any job at all. Geary, 28, who has cerebral palsy, has long felt the limitations of other people’s expectations. When he was in college, people would ask: “Why are you here? No one’s going to hire you. ” In job interviews, he said, he felt pressured to downplay his disability because he didn’t want to be perceived as a burden. And when he wound up unhappy in a job that didn’t match his skill set, he was told to grin and bear it, because “people like you don’t get jobs like this. ”But everything changed after Geary connected with InReturn Strategies, a start up intent on making hiring more inclusive by bridging the gaps between employers and job candidates with disabilities. Its founder, Jim Atwater, helped Geary prepare for interviews, showing him how his perspective and experiences could be an asset to potential employers. Now, Geary works at Cerner, a global health care technology company, where his decades of experience navigating the medical system inform his work as a data analyst. He said he’s happier than he has ever been. “For me, it means that I can start building the life that I want,” Geary said, “rather than having to go along with what other people had planned for me. Diversity job openings fell nearly 60% after the coronavirus. Then came the Black Lives Matter protests. About 61 million Americans have some kind of disability, which the Americans With Disabilities Act defines as a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities. But even as inclusion becomes a marketing buzzword and major brands such as Nike roll out disability friendly products, unemployment among groups with disabilities is more than double that of the general population. Less than 20 percent of people with disabilities held a job in 2019, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It has been like this for decades. Atwater said he created InReturn Strategies to tackle what’s known as “the disability employment gap. ” As one of roughly 400 deaf entrepreneurs in the United States, he knows how workers with disabilities can be overlooked and undervalued by employers. He says members of this demographic are often the last to be hired and the first to be let go, and they are often relegated to jobs below their skill level. “There’s lots of people talking about inclusion and making tons of money from consulting, but very few people are doing anything about it,” Atwater said. “We are the mechanism to turn intent into action. ”Research shows that hiring disabled workers benefits firms’ bottom lines. A 2018 report from Accenture, which analyzed the disability protocols and financial performance of 140 companies, found that firms with the best practices saw 28 percent higher revenue, double the net income and 30 percent higher profit margins, on average, over a four year period. If the number of people with disabilities in the labor force grew just 1 percent, the nation’s gross domestic product could expand by as much as $25 billion, the Accenture report found. Companies looking to hire workers with disabilities usually follow traditional hiring channels, which often include processes that can be exclusionary. Meanwhile, access providers organizations offering services to people with disabilities don’t tend to have many connections in the private sector. “We’re building bridges where there aren’t any,” said Scott Brouillette, InReturn’s chief executive. “How are you going to hire someone you don’t understand and have no relationships with?”Stalling recovery raises stakes for Trump’s demands on economic relief bill Nathan Beck, who has spent 20 years helping people with disabilities access jobs in Hamilton County, Ohio, said it can be hard to get companies to care. ",3,https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/01/05/inreturn-strategies-inclusion-disability/,TRUE, 763,Longtime disability rights advocate Michelle Duprey named to New Haven legal staff,"Michelle Duprey, former director of the New Haven Department of Services for Persons with Disabilities, was sworn in Monday as deputy corporation counsel by Mayor Justin Elicker. Michelle Duprey, former director of the New Haven Department of Services for Persons with Disabilities, was sworn in Monday as deputy corporation counsel by Mayor Justin Elicker. NEW HAVEN Michelle Duprey, who has overseen efforts to make the city more accessible to people with disabilities for more than 20 years, was sworn in Monday as deputy corporation counsel. Mayor Justin Elicker swore in Duprey in the lobby of City Hall. In a statement, he said, “I am so excited for Attorney Duprey in her new role at City Hall. She will be an asset in whatever she works on. Her integrity, keen attention to detail, and experience make her a perfect fit for the role of Deputy Corporation Counsel. ”Duprey, who began working for the city in 1998, had been director of the Department of Services for Persons with Disabilities. She advised city departments, businesses and organizations on complying with the Americans with Disabilities Act and has been a frequent speaker about ADA compliance, diversity and the disability community. She is a member of the Connecticut Bar Association’s labor and employment section and is past chairwoman of the human rights and responsibilities section. “I am thrilled to be selected for this role at the City of New Haven,” Duprey said in a statement. “Even though I will no longer be the public voice for the disability community, I feel being given this exciting opportunity demonstrates that those with disabilities can serve in all kinds of jobs in our community, not just those you would normally expect. “This appointment speaks volumes to the broader community on diversity and inclusion without me having to say a word. And for that, I am grateful,” she said. Duprey also has served on the boards of Connecticut Women’s Education and Legal Fund, the Connecticut ACLU and the Osteogenesis Imperfecta Foundation. She has written for law journals and other publications. Corporation Counsel Patricia King said in a statement, “We are so excited to add Michelle to our team. Her expertise in the area of disability rights, the respect she has earned among City employees and also recently working with Labor Relations on COVID 19 related issues will be invaluable as we bring a broader focus on labor and employment matters in Corporation Counsel. ”",3,https://www.nhregister.com/news/article/Longtime-disability-rights-advocate-Michelle-15844619.php,TRUE, 766,Disability Advocacy Group Revamps Prison Reentry Program,"A group dedicated to helping those living with disabilities is also helping the formerly incarcerated get back on their feet. Sharif Brown of Raleigh’s Alliance of Disability Advocates is the manager of the Prison Reentry Program. Brown and his team typically work with the incarcerated up to 16 months before their release. They establish personal and professional goals, and sharpen their interviewing skills. Brown also connects them with resources for mental health, food security, and housing. “They have individuals who are post release who are struggling with their reentry, whether it’s homelessness, whether it’s lack of employment, they have been greatly affected by COVID, whatever it may be,” Brown says. Adrian Boone is the first successful participant of the Prison Reentry Program. Boone served a 20 year sentence in federal prison. While at Butner Federal Prison, he studied and worked as a biomedical equipment technician. He also worked on HVAC systems and got certified in fitness and nutrition. “I tried to set myself on a pathway to success, taking all the classes and training that I did while I was incarcerated,” Boone says. Before he was released, Brown met with Boone weekly to lay out his plans for reentering society. Boone had to learn how to use a smartphone through reading. By the time he was released, Boone was offered a job with the Alliance of Disability Advocates. “I think the connection I made with ADA catapulted me to another level and enabled me to reach those goals a lot faster than I would’ve been able to on my own,” Boone says. Watch Adrian Boone’s Journey here: https://youtu. be/OlDnco ISzY Boone started working as a community inclusion specialist, pairing people living with disabilities and the formerly incarcerated with the resources they need. He was recently promoted to revamp the Winston Salem Solutions for Independence, but his work has not changed. Because of the pandemic, Brown and his team are not currently permitted inside of prisons. They are helping newly released people with housing, medical care, and employment. According to Brown, traditional prison reentry programs don’t supply enough information or resources for people entering back into the world after a number of years in isolation. “So they’ll give you basic, generic information that might not necessarily meet the needs or requirements for your reentry but they met their requirement by giving you this information,” he says. Brown’s work is personal to him. His brother spent nearly 20 years in and out of prison. Brown says if he was aided with the correct tools the first time, his story would’ve turned out differently. “He didn’t know of any agency that could assist him, he fell back into that negative vibe and that negative path that he was on, and he reoffended,” he says. “As I do this job, I try to use the same passion that I would like I was helping my own brother. ” Brown’s program has a 2% recidivism rate as opposed to the State’s 40 45% recidivism rate. The North Carolina Council of Developmental Disabilities awarded the program funding in 2020. Brown has helped more than 150 people in prisons. The program is currently serving about 10 newly released people, but they are expecting more in coming months. ",3,https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/charlotte/news/2020/12/30/disability-advocacy-group-revamps-prison-reentry-program,TRUE, 767,5 New Year’s Resolutions For People With Disabilities,"Offering New Year’s resolutions is risky, especially when you’re giving advice to a group of people already drowning in advice, like the disability community. Disabled people are constantly bombarded with advice all year, every year, mostly on how to solve problems we already know how to solve … or how to become, or at least appear to be, less disabled. Still, there are a few goals to choose from for people with disabilities interested in committing to some useful self improvement in the new year. Here are five ideas to consider:1. Explore disability issues and culture. Being disabled is often a solitary experience. Unlike many other “minorities”, disability usually doesn’t come with a built in community. So, many disabled people, , aren’t very connected to disability activism or culture. We tend to first learn about disability from people who aren’t disabled themselves, from parents, teachers, doctors, therapists, social workers, and personal care aides. Most of us have to actively seek out the company, mentoring, and support of other disabled people. Also, disabled people tend to be more praised and rewarded for bypassing or overcoming our disabilities and instead focusing on other things. And yet, disability culture and activism are vibrant, diverse, interesting, and often empowering and fun. Disabled people who aren’t involved in disability activism and culture should consider making a conscious effort to dig into them in the year ahead. No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement, by Joseph ShapiroDisability Visibility: First Person Stories from the Twenty First Century, edited by Alice WongI’m not your inspiration, thank you very much, TED Talk by Stella YoungI got 99 problems . . . palsy is just one, TED Talk by Maysoon Zayid… and the Netflix documentary Crip Camp. 2. Venture beyond disability issues and culture. On the other hand, many disabled people are already deeply involved. In fact, once you’re introduced to disability culture and activism, it’s easy to become so absorbed in them that your view of the world can become distorted and unbalanced. Disabled life and culture are still part of life and culture in general. And disability issues in particular don’t stand alone; they are linked to all other political, social, and cultural issues. Disabled people who are heavily focused on disability culture can sometimes benefit from a conscious effort to reconnect with mainstream issues and culture. If you are a deeply committed disability activist, remember to think and speak out about social issues that aren’t exclusively about disability, but where your disability perspectives can be helpful. It’s especially important for disability activists to pay attention to issues affecting other marginalized groups that overlap with the disability community, and are focused on issues related to race, gender, economic justice, and other matters. Instead of considering these to be “separate issues,” explore how they link up with disability issues. Meanwhile, as you share with the world some of your most urgent concerns, remember also to share some of your happier moments and pleasures. It’s an annoying and illogical fact of life, but to some extent, people are more likely to take your serious concerns seriously if they can also share in some of the lighter side of your life and interests . If it feels like you might be too locked into narrow, emotionally grueling versions of disability activism and culture, consider taking a few modest steps to broaden your horizon:3. Support and uplift people with all kinds of disabilities, not just your own. One of the dirtiest secrets and worst habits of disability culture is the tendency for people with one kind of disability to overlook, disparage, and even ostracize people with other kinds of disabilities. This is often called “lateral ableism” – prejudice and discrimination from one group of disabled people against another. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2021/12/31/5-new-years-resolutions-for-people-with-disabilities-1/?sh=94c8b644830b,TRUE, 769,An Employer’s Guide To Implementing Disability Accommodations In 2021," 2021 holds great potential for employers to improve workplace equality for people with disabilities. . . . [+] The economic crisis brought about by Covid 19 touched the lives of all Americans, but individuals with disabilities were faced with more challenges than most. About 1 million people with disabilities lost their jobs between March and August, and at 12. 3% – the unemployment rate for the disability community is double the national rate of 6. 2%. The arrival of a Covid vaccine brings hope to many that life will return back to normal. But for individuals with disabilities, a return to any semblance of normal isn’t good enough. In order to improve working conditions for the disabled community, employers must begin 2021 with a plan for improving and creating more diverse and accessible workplaces.  Individuals with disabilities are often overlooked during the hiring process, but they are motivated and qualified to work in a variety of in demand industries. Many employers incorrectly assume that hiring people with disabilities is complicated and expensive, but in reality, these concerns stem from common misconceptions around accommodations and people with disabilities in the workplace.  Many people with disabilities do require some reasonable accommodations in order to work, but these changes are often simple and inexpensive. Below are answers to a few of the most common questions employers have about reasonable accommodations and how to incorporate them in 2021. 1) What is a reasonable accommodation?The legal expectation of reasonable accommodations comes from the Americans with Disabilities Act and is defined as providing assistance or making changes to a position or workplace to enable qualified employees to do their job despite having a disability, unless doing so would pose an undue hardship on the employer. Qualified employees are all those who have the requisite degrees, skills and experience to perform the job’s essential functions, with or without accommodations. 2) What do accommodations look like in practice?There are a variety of changes that could be considered reasonable accommodations, including modified schedules, flexible hours, and remote work opportunities, which are now more common than ever. This last one is a policy the disability community has been advocating for, unsuccessfully, for years. Employers, citing concerns of decreased productivity, were reluctant to implement it, but the pandemic has effectively invalidated that argument. A sizable number of Americans successfully transitioned to remote work within a matter of weeks, and with many continuing to do so, there is reason to hope that more employers will offer remote accommodations to those with disabilities in the future. 3) How much will it cost to implement these accommodations?The majority of employers would probably be surprised to know that most accommodations can be provided very inexpensively. An ongoing survey conducted by the Job Association Network found that 56% of accommodations cost absolutely nothing to implement, such as those that simply require adapting previous work styles or processes, while the rest of the accommodations cost, on average, around $500.  4) What effect do reasonable accommodations have on a workplace?In general, offering reasonable accommodations turns out to be just as beneficial for the employers as it is for individuals with disabilities. These accommodations are meant to increase productivity and allow employees to work as efficiently as possible, and the general principle that investing in employees yields better overall success holds true in this instance as well. The same JAN survey found that employers who provided reasonable accommodations benefitted from greater employee retention, improved productivity and morale, reduced workers’ compensation and training costs, and improved company diversity.  ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulamorgan/2020/12/22/an-employers-guide-to-implementing-disability-accommodations-in-2021/?sh=123cf6665b43,TRUE, 770,The Guardian view on disability rights: a deficit of attention," Twenty five years after discrimination was outlawed, progress towards inclusion and equality has gone into reverseThere should have been a feature film, or a primetime TV series. Maybe one day there will be. But this year, the 25th anniversary of the Disability Discrimination Act – a landmark piece of legislation outlawing discrimination by service providers and mandating “reasonable adjustments” by employers – passed quietly. The BBC screened The Disability Paradox, a thoughtful and introspective documentary by the Northern Irish film maker Chris Lynch. On Netflix, Crip Camp documented the disability rights movement in the US. But the high drama of the parallel struggle in Britain, which saw hundreds of activists chaining themselves to buses and blocking streets, is still waiting for such high profile treatment. Instead, at the end of an extraordinarily difficult year, people with disabilities have been among the hardest hit. Ministers have asked the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies to review figures showing that people with learning difficulties are dying from Covid 19 at six times the rate of the general population. The Care Quality Commission is investigating why do not resuscitate orders were allocated to some care home residents without consultation, causing potentially avoidable deaths. At the same time, in common with other minority groups whose members are disproportionately poor, disabled people have suffered acute economic hardships. Flaws in the design of benefits and years of cuts to local services were among the causes of rising extreme poverty before this year. With 2 million families predicted to have problems feeding themselves or keeping clean and warm as the recession deepens, that picture is expected to darken. Disability covers a vast range of experiences and conditions, some of which are lifelong but many of which are temporary or linked to old age. Research has found that many of the nearly 14 million disabled people in the UK think the equalities framework does not serve their needs well, and that things were better when they had their own watchdog, the Disability Rights Commission. In a speech last week, the women and equalities minister, Liz Truss, said the government’s new approach to equalities would emphasise practical issues such as “getting to work” – often a problem for disabled people who find themselves trapped at home because of inaccessible transport. Her emphasis on the enforcement of fair treatment should be welcomed; legislation outlawing discrimination is no use without it. But without new resources, such commitments are meaningless. Cuts to social security, local government and legal aid budgets are a key reason why, despite positive developments such as increased awareness of neurodiversity, progress towards equality for disabled people has, broadly speaking, gone into reverse. Until the worst of the pandemic is behind us, it’s hard to feel optimistic about the prospects for improvement, with low levels of representation of disabled people in public life another persistent problem. Priority access to the Covid 19 vaccine would signal that the government is serious about removing obstacles to participation – as would restoration of funds for the “access to work” scheme that used to help with transport costs. As the country starts to recover from this year of illness, policymakers must be pressed to ensure that their ambitions for levelling up do not overlook people with disabilities. Instead, addressing their needs should form part of the social infrastructure transformation that is long overdue – with an accompanying recognition that care, interdependency and difference are facts of human life. Twenty five years after discrimination against disabled people was outlawed, the ongoing failures are as striking as the progress. ",3,https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/20/the-guardian-view-on-disability-rights-a-deficit-of-attention,FALSE, 771,Disability Advocates Still Have Questions About Colorado’s COVID-19 Vaccine Plan," As the state distributes its first phase of Pfizer vaccines to healthcare locations, disability organizations are looking for more information on accessibility. Kenny Maestas works with the Colorado Cross Disability Coalition and has been collaborating with the state on these issues. Maestas joined the states COVID 19 health equity panel in April, which was phased out earlier this fall. Hes now working with the state on the vaccine rollout plan. Maestas said hes been in the hospital on a ventilator before, and the possibility that there could have been a ventilator shortage encouraged him to get involved. If there was gonna be a shortage of ventilators in rural Colorado, I wanted to know when and where, said Maestas, who lives in Prowers County. Im a single dad, I got a 16 year old son that lives with me, and that I gotta take care of for a long, long time yet. Maestas said his main focus right now is working to share vaccine information with his community and answer any questions that come up. Hes still working to understand how the vaccine affects people with pre existing health conditions. According to Pfizers summary of vaccine trials, some participants experienced side effects that included fatigue, headache, muscle pain and nausea, in addition to allergic reactions to ingredients in the vaccine. Only one severe allergic reaction has been tied to the vaccine in the U. S. so far. The company does not list any other complications, but does state that additional adverse reactions, some of which may be serious, may become apparent with more widespread use of the Pfizer BioNTech COVID 19 Vaccine. Lifes already tough enough with a spinal cord injury, I dont need any other side effects coming along, Maestas said. Emily Shuman, the director of Rocky Mountain ADA, provides guidance to individuals and organizations on compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. With so much vaccine news circulating each day, she said shes concerned about a communication gap between the state and people with disabilities. I dont know if other people are just still in woohoo mode, and havent really settled back down to start thinking about the questions yet, but I know personally thats where I am, said Shuman. She said her organization has seen rushed rollouts of COVID 19 testing sites over the past few months that have neglected to address accessibility issues for people with disabilities. She wants to know more about in person and online options for people who use screen readers or may need a sign language interpreter. Shuman is also hoping for more specifics on how people with disabilities, especially those in long term care facilities, fit into the states phased distribution. According to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Education, people with high health risks are slated to get the vaccine during the second phase, which starts in the spring. While disability advocates wait to see how they fit into the vaccine rollout, health care workers have been labeled high priority since the rollout’s planning stages. In Southern Colorado, UCHealth Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs vaccinated health care workers after receiving doses of the Pfizer vaccine on Monday.  Pueblo County received 3,000 doses of the vaccine on Wednesday, with 1,000 going to Parkview Medical Center and 190 going to St. Mary Corwin. Public Health Director Randy Evetts said Pueblo is one of nine distribution sites across the state, so remaining vaccine doses will be distributed to neighboring counties. Evetts said receiving the vaccine felt like a turning point in the pandemic. I think it offers a glimmer of hope. Its certainly created some excitement among our staff, said Evetts. I think its a beacon of light for all of us that this is now available. The health department also received ten doses to give to nurses on staff working at testing sites. Evetts said he expects it will take several weeks to vaccinate every healthcare worker in Pueblo County. ",3,https://www.cpr.org/2020/12/18/disability-advocates-high-risk-coronavirus-vaccine-plan/,FALSE, 772,How To Do Something Good In The Disability Community If You’re Not Disabled,"The field of disability services and advocacy is changing. One of the most significant shifts over the last few decades has been the rising prominence of actual disabled people within the disability field. While this is a positive development overall, it should prompt non disabled people interested in serving disabled people to rethink their position and approach. In the past, most of the workforce and leadership of disability organizations was made up of non disabled people – people with some kind of interest in serving disabled people, but without disabilities themselves. Traditionally, disabled people were assumed to be incapable of organizing for themselves and serving each other. At the same time, disability service professionals were mostly expected to be service providers, counselors, educators, and supervisors, and only occasionally as advocates or allies. Even in advocacy, non disabled people were, , granted the default role of leader and spokesperson. This left disabled people themselves cared for, , but not empowered, spoken for, but voiceless. Changing this power dynamic has been a major goal of the disability rights movement. The growing prominence and leadership of actual disabled people over the last few decades has also helped the disability rights movement succeed. Today, many more disability organizations are founded, led, and staffed by people with disabilities than ever before. Some, like the Autistic Self Advocacy Network and Centers for Independent Living are practically defined by being run “by and for” disabled people. Older organizations, too, are trying harder to include disabled people as leaders and spokespeople, not just as traditional recipients of charity, or objects of pity for fundraising campaigns. This is entirely appropriate and long overdue. It’s also a work very much still in progress, even in the most inclusive and progressive organizations. Where does all this leave non disabled people who feel they have a great idea for empowering disabled people, or simply a genuine desire to serve and uplift the disability community? Are non disabled advocates no longer welcomed in the newly empowered and disabled led disability sector? Should non disabled people interested in disability work brace themselves for suspicion and rejection? They should certainly expect to play a different role than they might have 30 years ago. That holds true whether you want to be a nonprofit CEO, a grassroots disability activist, or a one on one aide to a single disabled person. Non disabled people are generally welcomed, but they have a higher degree of honesty, selflessness, and humility to prove in the disability field. There is more to consider, but fortunately it’s not really that complicated. It mainly requires self reflection and a willingness to serve before leading. If you are not yourself disabled but are interested in working in the disability field, start by clarifying for yourself where your interest in disability comes from, and then put your plans through a critical checklist. Everyone who wants to get into disability work has their own individual reasons. But it helps to note some of the most common reasons people who aren’t disabled themselves take an interest:1. ParentingHaving a child with a disability is one of the most common introductions to the world of disability, and also the one requiring the least explanation. It’s a commitment born of necessity and parental love. At the same time, it’s also the most difficult position from which to see the difference between speaking for a disabled child and being an ally to a growing and maturing disabled person. 2. Extended FamilyOther family connections also introduce a lot of non disabled people to disability concerns. This includes being a husband or wife, or a brother or sister to a disabled person – or a son or daughter to disabled parents and grandparents, or niece or nephew to aunts, and uncles who have disabilities. Extended families struggle with the everyday barriers their disabled loved ones face every day, while hopefully also developing an understanding and acceptance of disability that other people don’t. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2020/12/16/how-to-do-something-good-in-the-disability-community-if-youre-not-disabled/?sh=377dbbf47d7f,TRUE, 773,"Ministry of Health in Kurdistan, UNFPA open the disability-friendly reproductive health facilities in Erbil Governorate [EN/AR]","The Ministry of Health of the Kurdistan Regional Government, through the Directorate of Health in Erbil, with UNFPA and in collaboration with the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs opened today the first disability friendly reproductive health facilities in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The seven facilities in Erbil Governorate were fit out with persons with disabilities friendly furniture and equipment. The project funded by the Swedish and Australian Governments and amounting for US$200,000 aims at facilitating access for women and girls with disabilities to quality reproductive health services. The primary health clinics are located in Soran, Khabat, Daratu, Mohammed Bajalan, Binaslawa and Koye districts in Erbil Governorate. UNFPA is also operating a disability friendly reproductive health facility in Mosul, Nineveh Governorate. The Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, Ms Kwestan Mohammed, said: “We are happy to announce the launch of this important project with the Ministry of Health and UNFPA. This project provides free of charge reproductive health services to 1000 women and girls with disability including pregnant women in seven primary healthcare clinics in Erbil Governorate. We hope to expand this project and reach all cities and districts in the Kurdistan Region to reach as many women and girls with disabilities as possible. I would also like to thank UNFPA and the Ministry of health for this initiative”. For his part, the Dr Dlovan Fatih stressed on the importance of this joint project with the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs in identifying and taking action to respond to the needs of women and girls with disabilities in selected areas, including referrals to the clinics and hospitals. The Director General of the Directorate of Health in Erbil hoped for the partnership with UNFPA to continue to reach a larger number of women with disabilities in need of support. UNFPA Deputy Representative, Mr Himyar Abdulmoghni also spoke on the occasion and said: “Persons with disabilities are often invisible in society, and their rights for health, education and employment are not secured. The disability friendly reproductive health facilities, that UNFPA is supporting, are a first step towards the inclusion of women and girls with disabilities and the facilitation of access to quality primary health services”. “UNFPA will continue to promote the rights of women and young people with disabilities to enjoy equal opportunities, live a life free of gender based violence, and enjoy their sexual and reproductive health and rights,” he added. The disability friendly reproductive health facilities project is part of the UNFPA WE DECIDE project that promotes the rights of women and young people with disabilities to enjoy equal opportunities, to live a life free of gender based violence, and to enjoy their sexual and reproductive health and rights. UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund, delivers a world where every pregnancy is wanted, every childbirth is safe, and every young person’s potential is fulfilled. ",3,https://reliefweb.int/report/iraq/ministry-health-kurdistan-unfpa-open-disability-friendly-reproductive-health-facilities,TRUE, 774,Disability Advocates Urge People To Get Vaccinated Against COVID-19,"Sandra Lindsay, left, a nurse at Long Island Jewish Medical Center in Queens, N. Y. , is inoculated with the Covid 19 vaccine. As the first COVID 19 vaccines become available, advocates say that people with developmental disabilities should get vaccinated and they are pushing for this population to be eligible as soon as possible. In a statement, 20 advocacy groups are calling on people in the disability community to be immunized. “We encourage our stakeholders to receive the COVID 19 vaccine,” reads the statement spearheaded by the Autism Society of America and signed by Autism Speaks, Easterseals, the National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities, the National Association of State Directors of Developmental Disabilities Services and the National Down Syndrome Society, among others. The groups said that getting vaccinated will “make it significantly less likely you’ll get COVID 19” and it “may keep you from getting severely ill if you were to contract COVID 19. ” In addition, doing so “will help protect vulnerable people around you. ”For those with disabilities, the advocates said that widespread vaccination could lead to an end to remote learning, resumption of regular therapy, support and respite care services, improved employment opportunities and it may allow individuals living in group homes and other congregate settings to see their families and friends again. “Mass COVID 19 vaccination would allow our global community to recover and help stop the pandemic,” the statement says, while noting that like other medical decisions, people should discuss the COVID 19 vaccine with their physicians. The benefits of vaccination could be greatest for those with more significant challenges, said Angela Geiger, president and CEO of Autism Speaks. “For someone with autism and limited communication skills or behavior challenges common in autism, protection afforded by the vaccine can have an immeasurable impact. It can enable renewed participation in community life, access to vital services and supports and an opportunity to begin the recovery from the disruptions in care that have taken place this year,” she said. “This can also be a crucial step for family members and caregivers of people with autism who have more significant needs. ”The push from disability advocacy groups comes as the first COVID 19 vaccine from Pfizer BioNTech started to be administered in the U. S. this week. With limited supply, the initial shots are going to health care workers and residents of long term care facilities. Advocates have been speaking out for months about the need for people with developmental disabilities to be prioritized in the distribution of any COVID 19 vaccines given the high risks they face. Research shows that people within this population who contract the virus face a two to 10 times greater risk of dying as compared to others. Nonetheless, only 10 states have specifically addressed people with developmental disabilities in their plans to allocate coronavirus vaccines, according to a new report from the American Network of Community Options and Resources, or ANCOR, which represents disability service providers across the nation. A poll out this week from the Kaiser Family Foundation indicates that 71% of Americans say they would “definitely or probably” get a COVID 19 vaccine, up from 63% in September. In one rural county, people with disabilities and others who have been appointed a guardian may soon lose the ability to vote even if a court has expressly preserved their right to do so. After multiple delays, federal officials are plowing ahead with a long awaited Medicaid rule establishing standards for what counts as home and community based services for people with disabilities. ",3,https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2020/12/17/disability-advocates-urge-people-to-get-vaccinated-against-covid-19/29126/,FALSE, 775,Alumni commemorate ADA 30 with iconic national disability rights leaders," Yale Alumni Logo Search To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act , alumni led a special livestream forum featuring two iconic national disability rights figures who were instrumental in the passage of this historic bill. The program was hosted by the Yale Alumni Association and supported by DiversAbility at Yale and the Yale Office of Diversity and Inclusion. Moderating the event were Janni Lehrer Stein ’78, an attorney and disability rights advocate who served on the National Council on Disability in the Obama administration, and Benjamin Nadolsky ’18, co founder and former president of Disability Empowerment for Yale. They led a robust discussion with Judith E. Heumann and Anthony Coelho, who shared their reflections on the ADA, its impact, and their thoughts on the future of disability policy, rights, and practices in the United States. Heumann, a lifelong disability rights advocate who served in the Clinton and Obama administrations, the nonprofit sector, and at the World Bank and State Department to promote the mainstreaming of disability rights domestically and abroad, played a prominent role in galvanizing public support to get the ADA passed. Her story was recently featured in the Netflix documentary, Crip Camp. Coelho, a former six term U. S. congressman from California who has spent his entire adult life as a champion and voice for people with disabilities, is credited by congressional colleagues as the primary author and sponsor of the ADA. Significance and Impact of the ADASigned into law in 1990 by President George H. W. Bush ’48, the ADA prohibits discrimination and mandates equal access and opportunity for persons with disabilities in all areas of public life, including employment, education, and transportation. In short, the purpose of the ADA is to ensure that people with disabilities have the same rights and opportunities as everyone else. Noting that there are 68 million people with disabilities in the United States, and at least one billion around the world, Heumann extolled the importance and impact of the ADA but also was mindful of its limitations. “There are millions of disabled individuals that continue to be discriminated against,” she said. “The stigma of disability is such still in the United States that many people are unwilling to talk about having a disability. ”Coelho indicated that one of the challenges for the ADA is keeping up with the times, particularly with advancements in technology, to ensure equal access. He noted that 98. 2% of all websites are inaccessible to people with disabilities, and while encouraged by the Supreme Court’s recent “acknowledgement” that the ADA also covers digital accessibility, he fully expects enforcement by the Justice Department and other legal and regulatory entities would be necessary to ensure compliance. In stressing the importance and wide ranging impact of the ADA, Coelho pointed out that many of the technologies and accommodations mandated by or made possible through the act, like closed captioning and wheelchair ramps, benefit not just the disability community. “So many people besides those with disabilities benefit from what the ADA has done,” he said. He warned, however, that in light of repeated and ongoing attempts to undermine and dismantle the ADA, including by those within Congress, constant vigilance is required to preserve its existence and efficacy. “The ADA is not something that we can just ignore and not worry about because it’s going to be there forever – that’s just not true,” Coelho said. “And what we’ve got to do is to keep fighting, keep educating, in order to keep it. ”Heumann said that many more people, with and without disabilities, needed to familiarize themselves with the ADA, the rights and protections that it offers, and understand how to recognize and deal with discrimination, including how to file a complaint and report violations. ",3,https://alumni.yale.edu/news/alumni-commemorate-ada-30-iconic-national-disability-rights-leaders,TRUE, 777,What’s Next For Disability Policy? Here Are Four First Steps,"President Elect Biden’s disability plan would revolutionize disability policy. It probably won’t be fully enacted, especially if his fellow Democrats don’t end up controlling the Senate. Even if they do, they won’t have enough votes to end filibusters. But there are still many worthwhile changes the Biden Administration can make to improve disabled people’s lives, and others that can be started. It’s too early to know for sure exactly what the next steps should be. With the United States as divided as ever and consumed with the pandemic and its aftermath, there will be a lot of passive pressure to set disability policy aside as somehow less important. On the other hand, progress on disability issues has almost always proceeded below the surface of politics and current events. There’s no particular reason why dedicated activists and disability policy experts can’t work with the new administration to at least begin carrying out some of the many good ideas floated during the 2020 Presidential campaign. We can start by focusing on personnel, the pandemic, short term repairs, and long term improvement. Step 1: Make sound appointmentsThere’s a familiar phrase in government, policy, and political circles: “Personnel is policy. ” You can have the best plans in the world, but they won’t doo much good without the right people to carry them out. This is surely true in the world of disability. In much of the disability community, we try to focus on policy itself, and not rely too much on a few disability superstars to make everything happen. It’s always a balancing act, and we don’t always succeed, but we try to emphasize substance and accomplishment over celebrity, charisma, and high profile symbolism. Yet, one problem with disability policy, especially at the federal level, is that there is no acknowledged leader or coordinator to oversee how all the departments of government handle disability issues and services to disabled people. That’s why one of the first and most useful things the new Biden Administration can do is fulfill its campaign pledge to create such a leadership position and fill it with a capable, knowledgeable, enthusiastic disabled person. From the Biden disability plan: “Biden will appoint a director of disability policy within the Domestic Policy Council to ensure that these issues receive the attention they deserve at the highest levels of government and are integrated in broader policy discussions. ”Meanwhile, disabled people should be seriously considered and whenever possible appointed to other key posts in some of the many federal departments that serve disabled people. This includes Health and Human Services, Medicaid and Medicare, the Social Security Administration, the Department of Education, , the Department of Labor, Veteran’s Affairs, and the Justice Department. There’s no shortage of disabled people with the experience and dedication to do a good job for disabled Americans in these departments. So it’s also important for the Biden team to be choosy. Their disability appointments should be diverse too, including disabled people of color, LGBTQ+, as well as people who may be less well known to disability insiders, but have something important to offer. Above all, while it’s important to deliberately include people with disabilities and those with authentic personal connections to disability issues, the new administration must also insist on people with in depth activism and policy experience, and not just settle for symbolic seat fillers. With the right disabled people and disability allies in place, the chances for success in any number of disability related matters becomes far more possible. Step 2: Deal with Covid 19The first priority for the whole Biden Administration will almost certainly be to try to make the final few months of the Covid 19 pandemic less terrible, while ensuring that effective vaccines are made available fairly and effectively. As it happens, this won’t be a distraction from disability issues. At the moment, addressing Covid 19 is the highest priority of all disability issues. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2020/11/27/whats-next-for-disability-policy-here-are-four-first-steps/?sh=239f65797fd9,TRUE, 780,Is Narcolepsy a Disability?," A disability is defined as any condition that interferes with your capacity to do your job or other daily activities. The World Health Organization lists three different dimensions to a disability:Narcolepsy causes symptoms that include severe daytime sleepiness and a sudden loss of muscle control. And for some people, it can create enough limitations to qualify as a disability. Research like a 2016 study has found that people living with narcolepsy are more likely to be unemployed than people without this condition. People living with narcolepsy who are employed often miss work or can’t do their jobs well because of the disorder. If you can’t work because you’re living with narcolepsy, you may be able to receive Social Security disability benefits. The first step is to find out whether your symptoms qualify you for these payments. Narcolepsy can meet the criteria for a disability in certain circumstances. The extreme daytime sleepiness and sudden loss of muscle control that may come with narcolepsy can make it difficult to work. Some people even fall asleep without warning during the day. These symptoms make certain jobs, including those that involve driving or operating heavy machinery, very dangerous. People with a disability that limits their ability to work may be able to get Social Security disability benefits. Narcolepsy isn’t on the Social Security Administration’s list of qualified disorders. But if you get frequent bouts of sleep attacks, you may still be able to get benefits. First, you’ll need to meet these criteria:To qualify for Social Security Disability Insurance , you must have worked for a certain period of time before you became disabled. In general, you’ll need to have worked for the last 5 out of the past 10 years; however, the requirement is shorter if you’ve worked for fewer than 10 years. The sooner you apply for disability benefits, the better. It can take 3 to 5 months for the SSA to process your claim. Before you apply, make sure that you have all the medical information the SSA will need from you. This includes:Your doctor can help you pull this information together. If your claim is denied, you can appeal it. You have 60 days from the date on the denial notice to file an appeal. Note that there’s a good chance your first appeal will be denied most claims don’t get approved on the first try. If your appeal is denied, the next step is to have a hearing before a judge. Hiring a disability lawyer can increase your odds of having a successful outcome at the hearing. If you still don’t get approval for disability benefits, consider asking your employer for accommodations. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, many companies are required to make changes that help their employees with disabilities do their jobs. You might ask to adjust your work hours so you can sleep later. Or you could request frequent breaks during the day to take naps. Talk with your company’s human resources manager to find out what accommodations are available to you. You can apply for Social Security disability in one of three ways:In addition to getting help from your doctor, you can seek assistance from the following resources:Narcolepsy isn’t one of the conditions the SSA considers a disability. But if your symptoms interfere with your ability to do your job, you may still qualify for benefits. The Disability Benefits Help website offers a free evaluation to help you determine whether your condition is considered a disability. Start by having a conversation with your doctor. Gather all of your medical information. Then, if possible, hire a lawyer to help steer you through the process. If you can’t afford a lawyer, don’t worry disability lawyers work on a contingency basis. That means your lawyer won’t get paid unless you win your claim. At that point, they’ll get a percentage of the back pay you’re awarded. ",3,https://www.healthline.com/health/narcolepsy/is-narcolepsy-a-disability,FALSE, 782,The Crown's learning disability storyline highlights painful lack of progress," From employment to healthcare, learning disabled people still face discrimination and inequality There are 1. 5 million learning disabled people in the UK, but they are rarely seen or heard from. Little is spoken of this demographic of people, who in many cases completely rely on others in order to live. Unless you’re a family carer or professionally involved, you may not know or have regular contact with any learning disabled people. However, in episode 7 of the latest season of The Crown, viewers learn more about the royal family and learning disabled people. Peter Morgan, creator of the series, writes about two learning disabled women, Nerissa and Katherine Bowes Lyon. In Morgan’s fictional depiction, Princess Margaret and the Queen discover that Katherine and Nerissa, their cousins on their mother’s side, are still alive, despite being listed as dead in Burke’s Peerage, and have spent their adult lives in an “institution for mental defectives”. Despite being born into wealth and privilege, Nerissa and Katherine found that their background didn’t protect them from a harsh truth that still perpetuates today: learning disabled people are, in the main, forgotten. I would like to be comforting, to ameliorate and to say the Bowes Lyon sisters were born in another time; an age that lacked enlightenment, far removed from our own. But these institutions are still with us, now called assessment and treatment units, and a recent report showed that within NHS hospitals like these and some specialist schools, learning disabled/autistic people are subjected to prone restraint every 15 minutes. The world knows how dangerous prone restraint is, because we watched in horror as a version of the technique was used on George Floyd this summer. I’d like to be able to look back to another time and place when I reflect on the fate of the Queen’s cousins. I want to say that things have moved on significantly in all areas of life for disabled people. But this month, the BBC is commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Disability Discrimination Act and seemingly only physically disabled people are being featured in the broadcaster’s celebrations. Learning disabled people are still denied work opportunities; in England, only six in 100 people with a learning disability are in employment, compared with 52. 5% of the wider disabled community in Great Britain. And in the context of the pandemic, learning disabled people in the UK are six times more likely to die of Covid 19 and learning disabled people in the UK aged between 18 and 34 are 30 times more likely to die from Covid 19. Learning disabled people have not as yet been included on the extremely vulnerable shielding list, even though respiratory conditions were the leading cause of death of learning disabled people in 2018 and 2019. In the episode The Hereditary Principle, Morgan chooses not to forget. He wanted to tell the world that these two women – the Queen’s cousins – existed. I loved the episode, and loved too that the production team chose learning disabled performers to tell Nerissa and Katherine’s story. It’s key that the representation of learning disabled people onscreen is authentically rendered, which is definitely the case with the writing and direction. There is no sentimentality, no “inspiration porn” on view. In 2009, I launched a campaign called Don’t Play Me, Pay Me after our then 14 year old child was the first autistic person in the UK to play an autistic character, in the BBC’s Dustbin Baby. At the time, it was a radical notion. The campaign drew attention to the lack of disabled people in creative industries to highlight that disabled people’s ambitions aren’t diminished by a lack of talent, only by a lack of opportunity. I met broadcasters including the BBC and the campaign prompted widespread news coverage. I was diagnosed as autistic in 2014 and went back into the acting career I’d trained for, but if TV and film representation of disabled people is rare for young disabled actors, it’s even rarer for those, like me, in middle age. ",3,https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/nov/26/the-crown-learning-disability-storyline-painful-lack-of-progress,FALSE, 788,Disability Groups Worried As Supreme Court Weighs Affordable Care Act,"Advocates say that people with disabilities have a lot to lose as the U. S. Supreme Court considers whether or not to strike down the Affordable Care Act. The high court heard arguments Tuesday in a case brought by Texas and backed by the Trump administration and several other Republican led states challenging the federal health care law. The suit, California v. Texas, alleges that the law’s “individual mandate,” requiring that most Americans buy health insurance or pay a penalty, is unconstitutional because Congress eliminated the penalty in 2017. Accordingly, those who brought the claim say that given how central the mandate is to the law, the Affordable Care Act should be thrown out in its entirety. With the Trump administration supporting the Texas position, California and a group of Democratic leaning states as well as the House of Representatives are defending the law. Nineteen national disability advocacy groups filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court urging that the law be upheld, arguing that it “uniquely and extensively benefits people with disabilities. ”Not only does the Affordable Care Act greatly increase opportunities for people to gain health insurance, but the law protects people from being denied coverage due to pre existing conditions or lifetime limits. It also guarantees coverage of services for mental illness and developmental disabilities, provides access to home health care and bars discrimination in access to health care, the advocates said. “By including these provisions, Congress intentionally sought to benefit people with disabilities,” reads the amicus brief. “It would not have wanted to sacrifice all of these protections merely because the minimum coverage provision were declared invalid. ”Groups involved in filing the brief include the American Association of People with Disabilities, The Arc, the Association of University Centers on Disabilities, the Autistic Self Advocacy Network, the Autism Society, the Judge David L. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law, the National Association of Councils on Developmental Disabilities, the National Council on Independent Living, the National Disability Rights Network and the National Down Syndrome Congress, among others. In oral arguments conducted by telephone this week, multiple justices seemed hesitant to do away with the entire law. “I think it’s hard for you to argue that Congress intended the entire act to fall if the mandate were struck down when the same Congress that lowered the penalty to zero did not even try to repeal the rest of the act,” said Chief Justice John Roberts. “I think, frankly, that they wanted the court to do that. But that’s not our job. ”Similarly, Justice Brett Kavanaugh did not seem inclined to strike the whole Affordable Care Act even if the individual mandate is found unconstitutional. “I tend to agree with you that it’s a very straightforward case for severability under our precedents, meaning that we would excise the mandate and leave the rest of the act in place,” Kavanaugh said. Disability advocates said the importance of the Affordable Care Act and the court’s determination in this case could not be more significant. “People with disabilities have long struggled to access health care that actually meets their needs,” said Alison Barkoff, director of advocacy at the Center for Public Representation, which was part of the amicus brief. “The ACA’s protections for people with pre existing conditions, essential health benefits and Medicaid expansion are tremendous advancements in that fight, and the ACA’s importance to the disability community cannot be overstated. ”A decision in the case is not expected until next year. In one rural county, people with disabilities and others who have been appointed a guardian may soon lose the ability to vote even if a court has expressly preserved their right to do so. ",3,https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2020/11/11/disability-groups-worried-as-supreme-court-weighs-affordable-care-act/29080/,FALSE, 793,Our adult son has a learning disability. How will he cope as coronavirus surges?," Families with vulnerable sons and daughters have been left adrift during the pandemic. We fear what will come nextMy younger son, Thomas, turned 40 in June. But the big party to which his many aunts, uncles and cousins had been invited had to be cancelled. Thomas has Down’s syndrome and a severe learning disability and lives in a residential home; until recently, he hadn’t been able to see his family since early March. His father and I have been able to keep in touch with our son via video calls facilitated by his key worker, and after the first lockdown eased, we were able to see him twice outdoors. His siblings and nephew and nieces saw him too. But now the visits have been put on hold again. We are fortunate that Thomas seems to have adjusted to his new routine, but we are concerned that he is not able to maintain the social contact he was used to with his family, nor take part in activities such as going to shops and cafes. Most of all he has missed going to Wolves’ home matches, which is an important part of his life. These restrictions risk him losing skills. Now the virus is surging again and another lockdown approaches. While attention has been given to the plight of older people needing care during the pandemic, there has been much less focus on adults with a learning disability, autism and/or complex needs; vulnerable people who are often completely dependent upon others for their safety and wellbeing. Other families have faced much greater challenges than ours. Some have not been able to see their relatives at all since the start of the spring lockdown. Three of the parents I am in touch with, all mothers now on their own, have not seen their son or daughter since the start of lockdown 1. One told me: “He must think that I’ve died, like his father. ”Others decided to bring their child back to the family home for the duration of the first lockdown, finding themselves faced with months of caring with no support. Robert is a thirtysomething young man with complex needs who, before the first lockdown, had two to one support, attended a day service every weekday and had residential respite many weekends. A few days before lockdown 1, all this support stopped overnight with no contact from social services. Thankfully, most of the support is now back in place. It is also fortunate that Robert’s mother, who is over 70, is in good physical health, is resilient and has some family support. I know I would not have coped. We have been lucky to have the video calls with my son, which have reassured me that he has been fundamentally OK, although I am concerned that the continuing isolation may have a detrimental long term impact. But even this contact has not been possible for everyone, particularly those with the most severe disabilities, who are not able to communicate in this way, or who would be too distressed. One young woman was very distressed at not being able to go home for visits as usual; others have been confused and upset by the halting of activities and unaccustomed confinement. We have all experienced some of this, but how much more difficult is it when you can’t understand why?All families worry that the virus may get into the home, that staff may not be coping, that their son or daughter may need medical treatment that was not accessible. They’ve all had to navigate considerable bureaucracy before being able to see their son or daughter. Some families still have not been able to, and the prospects of it happening any time soon are fast receding. These worries, and the loss of contact, concern about loneliness, loss of services and, for many, a lack of communication from care providers, have all added to the stress experienced by families. But my greatest concern is for those who, like Robert’s mum, are caring at home for an adult with challenging behaviour, and have suddenly found themselves abandoned with no support. ",3,https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/nov/04/our-adult-son-learning-disability-coronavirus-surges,FALSE, 795,"SoundWatch: New smartwatch app alerts d/Deaf and hard-of-hearing users to birdsong, sirens and other desired sounds","UW researchers have developed a smartwatch app for d/Deaf and hard of hearing people who want to be aware of nearby sounds. The smartwatch will identify sounds the user is interested in and send the user a friendly buzz along with information about them. Smartwatches offer people a private method for getting notifications about their surroundings such as a phone call, health alerts or an upcoming package delivery. Now University of Washington researchers have developed SoundWatch, a smartwatch app for deaf, Deaf and hard of hearing people who want to be aware of nearby sounds. When the smartwatch picks up a sound the user is interested in examples include a siren, a microwave beeping or a bird chirping SoundWatch will identify it and send the user a friendly buzz along with information about the sound. The team presented these findings Oct. 28 at the ACM conference on computing and accessibility. “This technology provides people with a way to experience sounds that require an action such as getting food from the microwave when it beeps. But these devices can also enhance people’s experiences and help them feel more connected to the world,” said lead author Dhruv Jain, a UW doctoral student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. “I use the watch prototype to notice birds chirping and waterfall sounds when I am hiking. It makes me feel present in nature. My hope is that other d/Deaf and hard of hearing people who are interested in sounds will also find SoundWatch helpful. ”The team started this project by designing a system for d/Deaf and hard of hearing people who wanted to be able to know what was going on around their homes. “I used to sleep through the fire alarm,” said Jain, who was born hard of hearing. The first system, called HomeSound, uses Microsoft Surface tablets scattered throughout the home which act like a network of interconnected displays. Each display provides a basic floor plan of the house and alerts a user to a sound and its source. The displays also show the sound’s waveforms, to help users identify the sound, and store a history of all the sounds a user might have missed when they were not home. The researchers tested HomeSound in the Seattle area homes of six d/Deaf or hard of hearing participants for three weeks. Participants were instructed to go about their lives as normal and complete weekly surveys. Based on feedback, a second prototype used machine learning to classify sounds in real time. The researchers created a dataset of over 31 hours of 19 common home related sounds such as a dog bark or a cat meow, a baby crying and a door knock. “People mentioned being able to train their pets when they noticed dog barking sounds from another room or realizing they didn’t have to wait by the door when they were expecting someone to come over,” Jain said. “HomeSound enabled all these new types of interactions people could have in their homes. But many people wanted information throughout the day, when they were out in their cars or going for walks. ”In the second prototype of HomeSound, the tablets sent information to a smartwatch, which is how the researchers got the idea to make the standalone app. Jain et al. /CHI 2020The researchers then pivoted to a smartwatch system, which allows users to get sound alerts wherever they are, even in places they might not have their phones, such as at the gym. Because smartwatches have limited storage and processing abilities, the team needed a system that didn’t eat the watch’s battery and was also fast and accurate. First the researchers compared a compressed version of the HomeSound classifier against three other available sound classifiers. The HomeSound variant was the most accurate, but also the slowest. ",3,https://www.washington.edu/news/2020/10/28/soundwatch-alerts-ddeaf-and-hard-of-hearing-users-to-desired-sounds/?utm_source=UW_News_Subscribers&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=UW_Today_lead&mkt_tok=eyJpIjoiT1RnMU4ySTVZbVEwWmpjNSIsInQiOiJ6dDhBaUxHZVdINndBOXpYVWhKeVFCZnU2c2pXZzFDZDRcL0t6NVpJRU1UUTBnQ1VjaUo1Z0NhbHV0eVZ0NG9kQ2hIdHRSVll0dTc1M2czNHphUno3WmpOSVlQeUtsWHRFZHZLZzVRS0cxbTk2dm5jNnR3bEV5bDd0ZGJrOTdOVDkifQ%3D%3D,TRUE, 796,The Six Short Films Of “CripTales” Tell Authentic Stories Of Disability,"There are still a few days left to enjoy a free streaming event presented by BBC America and the AMC Network, in partnership with the American Association of People with Disabilities. Through the month of October 2020, “CripTales,” a collection of short films from the United Kingdom, all of them written, directed, and acted by people with disabilities, is free to view on the networks’ websites. Curated by British actor and writer Mat Fraser, the collection features six filmed monologues, each about 15 minutes long, highlighting different facets of disability life. In each film, one actor speaks directly to the audience. The sets are simple. But they are enhanced by costumes, props, and set designs that place each story in historical and tonal context, and at times highlight certain objects … like wheelchairs, canes, and prosthetics . . . that are important in disabled people’s lives. These films succeed both as a collective artistic statement, and as an unusually in depth experience in disability awareness. Anyone who wants to understand disability life and culture beyond crude stereotypes and happy, progressive platitudes needs to watch these films. They aren’t all “inspiring” or “educational” in the conventional sense. But they are all moving and authentic, which is arguably more important. The six films of “CripTales” are:These can all be fairly described as “disability films. ” They aren’t “mainstream” films where disabled characters “just happen” to appear. But, they aren’t preachy “issue” films either. While they all make sharp social observations and judgments, watching them is neither a chore nor an exercise in pity or guilt. “CripTales” is an emotionally complex, topically diverse film series that makes a strong statement for the disability experience and disabled artists’ unique ability to interpret it. Emotionally complexFilms centered on disability and disabled characters are almost always emotional, but usually confined to a narrow range of responses, alternating between pity, sentimentality, and a vague sort of triumph. The six films of “CripTales” evoke a much broader range of emotions that are relatable to everyone, but especially familiar to disabled people, in particular:Topically diverseThese films are all “about disability. ” But they aren’t all about one single thing certainly not just about disability. Each story introduces viewers to several distinct but related aspects of disability culture and experience, including:The format of six short films allows the 90 minute collection as a whole to cover a much wider range of disability topics than many more famous Oscar winning and Oscar contending feature films about disability. A milestone and a statementPerhaps above all, “CripTales” underscores the added authenticity and integrity of disabled characters when they are portrayed by disabled actors. And it’s not just a matter of equal opportunity and representation. These disabled actors are able to portray disabiled characters honestly in ways that non disabled actors simply can’t. Non disabled actors are often praised for “accurate” portrayals of disabled characters, but what’s praised is mainly mimicry and a kind of stunt acting that calls attention to the actor and distracts from the person they are trying to bring to life. “CripTales” shows what is possible and better when the actor is able to focus on getting the person right rather than getting the disability right. “CripTales also offers the artistic visions of not one but several diverse disabled writers, actors, and directors. Disability on film usually offers us only one version of disability, or one disabled person’s interpretation of it. Disability itself is incredibly diverse. So bringing together many disabled voices is both historically significant and artistically more satisfying. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2020/10/28/the-six-short-films-of-criptales-tell-authentic-stories-of-disability/?sh=1fffc4e2b8d0,TRUE, 797,"Heading To The Polls? If You Have A Disability, Here's What To Know"," Clare Lombardo An accessible voting booth, during the New Hampshire primary at a high school in Nashua, New Hampshire. Everyone in the U. S. is facing a new barrier to voting this year: COVID 19. But if you have a disability, 2020 probably isnt the first year youve faced one obstacle or another while casting your ballot. During the 2016 election, a whopping 83% of polling places posed at least one impediment for voters with disabilities say, a pathway inaccessible to a voter in a wheelchair. And, according to a study by the Government Accountability Office, less than 40% of locations equipped their voting systems for people with disabilities to cast their votes privately: electronic voting systems werent powered on, for example, or they lacked earphones, or the stations werent big enough for a wheelchair. Its a huge problem. Researchers at Rutgers University predict that 38. 3 million people with disabilities will be eligible to vote in this years election. Thats close to 1 in every 6 voters who could have extra trouble voting because of their disability. These barriers depend on where you are and what type of disability you have, says Michelle Bishop, the voter access and engagement manager at the National Disability Rights Network. Thats even more true, Id say, in 2020, where weve seen a lot of change very quickly nationwide, she says. If youre heading to vote in person on Election Day, remember: The worst thing you could do is forfeit your right to have your voice heard, Bishop says. Heres what to remember to make sure you can exercise that important right. Check your polling place. Contact your local election official. Our Time, Our Vote has resources for voters with learning disabilities. Find a local member agency within the National Disability Rights Network. Step 1: Plan ahead and try to anticipate the barriers you might face. First, check your polling place, which may have changed due to the pandemic. Many polling places that used to be in accessible nursing homes and long term care facilities have been relocated posing dilemmas for their residents and voters who relied on their accessible spaces. Your new polling station may be more or less accessible than the last one you used. And, of course, there are other factors: It could potentially be further away, and getting there in itself can be a barrier, Bishop says. You can ask about that or any other concerns through your local elections office. Look up your local office through this website. If youre a little bit concerned about your polling place working for you, find out what else you can do, says Bishop. In many places, you might be able to vote curbside: If you can get to your polling place, but its difficult for you to get in and get all the way to the voting station, they might bring the ballot out to you. It might not be too late to get a mail in ballot depending on where you are. You need all the things you usually bring when you leave the house these days. You wouldnt show up at the grocery store completely unprepared and expect them to hand you a mask and wash your hands, says Bishop. You know the drill. Youll also want to be prepared for long lines, just in case. If you take medication on a schedule, bring some, along with water and snacks. Its not fair, in my mind, that people with disabilities sometimes have to study these rights and be prepared to assert themselves. You shouldnt have to jump through extra hoops to be able to cast your ballot, says Bishop. Its not right, but it is where were at right now. Remember these rights as you head to the polls:If you dont have what you need, let the poll workers know. Bradlees learning disability is invisible, and he says that in order to make sure he has resources to vote and to make sure everyone believes him I cant just say I have a disability. I have to be more specific. ",3,https://www.npr.org/2020/10/28/928607616/heading-to-the-polls-if-you-have-a-disability-heres-what-to-know,FALSE, 798,Mindset Matters: Arguing For A New Strategy On Disability Employment," We have only scratched the surface the value of of persons with disabilities across American . . . [+] businessThis October marks 75 years of National Disability Employment Awareness Month highlighting the significance of workers with disabilities. The idea was designed to educate the public about numerous disability employment issues while celebrating the contributions of American workers with disabilities. National Disability Employment Awareness Month can trace its origins back to 1945 at the end of World War II when Congress enacted a law declaring that the first week of October to be National Handicapped Week. It was later expanded and changed its name to the one we currently use today.  Over the years this month has become a touchpoint for disability organizations and others in the community to come together with corporate America to espouse the value of hiring persons with disabilities. During these past 75 years, the very concept of disability has become more sophisticated bringing in corporate stakeholders from areas of diversity and inclusion, talent management, to human resources. Cultivating these relationships is fundamental to the continual social participation of persons with disabilities within the larger economic milieu of American business. However, even before the coronavirus pandemic, there was a sense of groupthink that was creeping into how disability employment was talked about in the context of corporate life. While companies like Microsoft, General Motors, Ernst and Young, and others were contributing new ideas to the space, particularly as it pertained to autism, there is still a traditionally held attitude that persons with disabilities are valued, and they deserved to be considered as a powerful talent pool that is overlooked within corporate America. First of all, no one should dispute this idea, while this has been the driving force behind employment strategies for persons with disabilities, we must take a moment to see what areas in the disability space should be reexamined in the context of corporate culture and how companies should reassess their true value.  As horrible as the coronavirus has been, it has offered a silver lining in reimagining the culture of work. Companies of all sizes are learning how to adapt quickly. While there are certainly tremendous growing pains, this moment in time should be a wake up call for both American industry and disability organizations to recognize that it is time for a reset. The rules of the game are changing right before our eyes, and persons with disabilities should be in the mix not only as a valuable pool of human capital, but key drivers for shaping what the future of work can look like. This could potentially be the dawn of a new power dynamic, a shift in thinking where disability organizations are not only bolstering a pool of human capital but utilizing the power of ideas from the lived experience of disability to shape the new economy of the 21st century. This futurist approach offers a glimpse into how society needs to reassess the larger implications of workers with disabilities in American business. As the coronavirus pandemic has illustrated for numerous businesses, we are in a moment of transformation where day to day corporate life has become decentralized, we are relying on technology to be the connective tissue that glues us all together. For many workers with disabilities, this can be a blessing in disguise in the sense that management practitioners are forced to have everyone working within their own space, using personal devices, or perhaps technology provided by the organization. The focus is shifted squarely on productivity. However, this type of structure also allows workers to find their pacing and develop a style where one can get things done. For persons with disabilities being able to adapt and develop coping strategies have been a necessity in one’s daily life. This type of structure only bodes well for greater success. This should be a key lesson that companies need to embrace. Human resource and talent management executives ought to take this into account that persons with disabilities provide a new paradigmatic model that can be extracted from their own lived experience. This can then be directly translated into the companies changing business model that is being modified for a post pandemic world. Companies need to be ready so that employees with disabilities status within the world of work can be seen through a new lens.  ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathankaufman/2020/10/23/mindset-matters-arguing-for-a-new-strategy-on-disability-employment/?sh=3f9400f25e69,TRUE, 802,Mindset Matters: Disability And The Power Of Patience As A Business Asset," The practice of patience is an essential component to the future of business strategy in the environment of the 21st CenturyThe poet and playwright Neil Marcus wrote that “Disability is not a brave struggle or ‘courage in the face of adversity. ’ Disability is an art. It’s an ingenious way to live. ” As we round out the discovery of these triumvirate themes that have defined this new Disability Narrative and its relationship to the imagination of business, it is crucial to recognize that using these archetypes will only enhance an organizations capacity to embrace the constant flow of new business thinking for the present while shaping the vision for the corporate culture of tomorrow. This new narrative and its applications serve as real agents of change when thinking about its growing impact on all facets of organizational culture. It is a framework that is built on the foundation of originality, creativity, and resourcefulness that have been key ingredients of the disability experience from time and memorial. The final theme to discuss in this triumvirate is the role of Patience. In this fast paced world of the digital economy where immediacy becomes one of the most valued currencies, organizational culture often loses sight of the status patience plays in the development of a robust business strategy that can have long term implications. For those across the disability spectrum, whether it be persons with learning disabilities to those with physical disabilities, having a deep understanding of patience and its value has been essential in designing a quality of life that allows one to set goals, measure progress and setbacks while staying focused on the mission at hand, whatever it may be. It is these very ideas that can be adopted and transformed into compelling tactics and utilized by entrepreneurs, management practitioners, to corporate leaders in helping to build businesses, shape corporate culture, and be mindful of the challenges ahead.  Patience in the lived experience of disability is an essential part of life, it provides the fuel for what Neil Marcus described as the art and ingenuity that is the hallmark of those who are continually redefining their disability in a new way. This manner of thinking needs to be an essential component of the evolution of management thinking. Corporate leaders need to understand that one should not equate patience with laziness or idleness, but rather as a meaningful exercise that can help corporate culture and business leadership to find a sense of pacing that allows them to magnify their perspective and define their business strategy to continue to grow and learn. In doing so, organizations can build a strong internal culture, while developing deeper relationships with customers externally and finding the best way to shape an environment that will continually grow to meet critical challenges and position the organization to be industry leaders. The triumvirate of these archetypal themes known as Adaptation, Resilience, and Patience that guide this new Disability Narrative will help to set a standard for business while inspiring a new sense of artistry and imagination that can have a seismic impact on the corporate culture of the 21st Century. As organizations like the Business Roundtable and the World Economic Forum have broadened the definition and role of a corporation, the language of disability opens up a whole new appreciation of the power that this lived experience can have in thinking and executing new and innovative strategies around corporate infrastructure. Understanding the future of work and the inevitable evolution of corporate culture, valuing human performance will be fundamental in the long term success of any organization. Corporate leaders and management practitioners must see that embracing a human centered approach to work alongside a digital future will only be a benefit in the long run. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathankaufman/2020/10/16/mindset-matters-disability-and-the-power-of-patience-as-a-business-asset/?sh=1f24f13066d3,TRUE, 806,A Guide to Disability Resources for Remote Learning," Students with disabilities face unique challenges with the shift to remote learning at colleges and universities across the country. Whether you’re an undergraduate, graduate, or professional student, you may be wondering how the supportive services and accommodations that you’ve grown accustomed to will work in the distance hybrid model. Azusa Pacific University understands this and has gone to great lengths to pivot its accommodations and services for disability resources. The offerings should better help students navigate their coursework, leverage cutting edge technologies, and access needed support. “These are extraordinary times,” said Carmen Varela, director of APU’s Office of Accessibility and Disability Resources . “Our service delivery model is grounded in principles of justice. And we have a commitment to care for all our students, so we want to make sure that you have the equal opportunity to participate in your education and that you’re being cared for while you’re studying at APU. ”If you’re curious to learn more about the strategies APU has put into place to support its students, here’s what you need to know. To learn how APU is shifting accommodations and services for disability resources, start with the ADR Student Guide site. This is a user friendly site where you can find a comprehensive guide to academic accommodations, a Zoom recording of the Fall 2020 Question and Answer Session, and more information about assistive technology, study tips, advice for speaking to your professors, and more. “We’ve worked really hard to make sure that it’s comprehensive,” Varela said. “It covers testing, assistive technology, note takers, captioners, scribes almost everything we could think of. ”Additionally, APU is offering remote versions of accommodations that are traditionally offered in person, including:Professors are generally eager to help students with disabilities succeed. If you feel that your professor isn’t implementing your accommodations, you should reach out to them or connect with them during office hours to talk about your needs. If that doesn’t resolve your concern, don’t hesitate to contact ADR. If you contract COVID 19, the ADR staff can help you identify what types of additional accommodations you may need. Some people have mild cases while others have more serious symptoms, so accommodations are individualized. You might need flexible attendance, extended time on assignments, or note taking assistance, for example. Don’t hesitate to be candid about your condition and ask for the help you need. If you haven’t requested accommodations for your disability, you can download and complete the Request for Accommodations form. You’ll need to return that form along with verification of your disability from a medical professional. Then, you’ll schedule an intake meeting with someone from the ADR to talk about what accommodations you might need for the semester. If it’s difficult to get an appointment with your medical provider because of COVID 19, let the ADR staff know so they can help. You can apply at any time you don’t need to wait until the start of a semester. Keep in mind that accommodations aren’t retroactive, so apply as soon as possible. Veterans with disabilities should follow the same process as other students for identifying what accommodations they need and applying for them. Veterans may also qualify for VA benefits and California rehab benefits, so it’s worth having a conversation. There are many other accommodations that can be made for students and support networks they can tap into, both within and outside of Azusa Pacific. Here are some great resources to help students with disabilities connect with additional information:Do you have additional questions about other resources that can help while you’re studying remotely? Contact the Office of Accessibility and Disability Resources to learn more. ",3,https://www.apu.edu/articles/a-guide-to-disability-resources-for-remote-learning/,TRUE, 807,Here Are Some Dos And Don’ts Of Disability Language,"What’s the right way to refer to someone in a wheelchair, or a someone who can’t see, or see well, or a person who can’t hear, or hear well, someone who doesn’t speak, who has noticeable trouble understanding things, someone who is sick a lot, or always in pain, or who just seems strange or “off” in some undefinable way? The contentious debate never seems to end over what are the right and wrong words and phrases to use to discuss anything to do with disabilities and disabled people. The question resists all attempts to forge broad consensus. Disabled people, their families and friends, their allies and casual acquaintances, and their antagonists can’t agree on which words strike the right balance between accuracy, clarity, realism, and positivity. Some of us hammer away at words we find outdated and offensive. Others look around, confused, wondering when the disability words they once learned as progressive suddenly became not only passé, but provocative. Some try to use language to reshape the entire concept of disability, or redefine it out of existence somehow. Some use words to unify the diverse disability community, while others strive for specificity and ever finer distinctions between different disabilities and communities. Some work to curb the use of obviously insulting terms, while others take pride in the old adage about “sticks and stones. ” Some hope to use language to lift disabled people up, while others prefer precision and linguistic elegance. We are carefully taught by one wave of credible activists and diversity consultants to say “people with disabilities,” only to be told by a later generation of disabled people that this diminishes the experience and meaning of disability, and is in any case awkward and a little condescending. Is there a way for anyone to navigate disability language clearly, safely, and respectfully?Obviously, it’s impossible to satisfy everyone. But that doesn’t mean there are no useful guidelines. Here are a few tips to sort through the competing schools of thought on disability language, and ride the various waves of popularity and revision that disability language goes through. 1. Recognize obviously insulting terms and stop using or tolerating them. Idiot, imbecile, moron, and retarded for developmentally disabled or intellectually disabled . . . deaf and dumb for deaf and non speaking or non verbal . . . crazy, nut, looney, insane for mentally ill or mentally disabled . . . cripple, gimp for physically disabled or just disabled. These are all terms which should never be used in conversation, and there would be little loss in communication if we did just stop using them except for historical or explanatory purposes . One interesting thing to note is that nearly all of these insulting, offensive terms were once commonly accepted, even clinical descriptions for various disabilities. They weren’t viewed as insults at the time. And yet they have always carried the assumed prejudices of those times towards the people those terms represented. So while “moron” and “idiot” in the 19th and early 20th centuries were clinical terms for different “levels” of intellectual disability, the horrifically disdainful and disgusted opinions about intellectually disabled people helped make those words insulting, at the time and especially today. This discussion of banning or rendering certain words taboo inevitably leads to “what aboutism” aimed at people from marginalized groups “reclaiming” insulting terms for their own internal purposes. In the world of disability, this most notably applies to “cripple” and “crip,” which disability activists and participants in disability culture still use to refer to themselves, either ironically or defiantly. It’s the kind of situation where if you are part of the group you can use it for yourselves, but from other people’s mouths it’s an insult. There are a dozen ways to analyze and justify or criticize this intellectually, but it’s also just the way things work with people who are marginalized or oppressed. People should be allowed to use terms that mean something to them. And others need to recognize the limits of their power to regulate this practice. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2020/09/30/here-are-some-dos-and-donts-of-disability-language/?sh=52f60186d170,FALSE, 808,New data shows that homelessness is a women’s rights issue," PhD Student, Geography, McGill University PhD Candidate, Anthropology, Western University Postdoctoral Fellow, MAP Centre for Urban Health Solutions, Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute, St. Michaels Hospital, University of Toronto Senior Researcher, Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, York University, Canada Hannah Brais is a doctoral student at McGill University. She receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. She is affiliated with the Old Brewery Mission and the Womens National Housing and Homelessness Network. Alex Nelson receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. They are affiliated with the Womens National Housing and Homelessness Network, the Canadian Lived Experience Leadership Network, and the Vote Housing Campaign. Jesse Jenkinson receives funding from Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. She is affiliated with the Womens National Housing and Homelessness Network. Kaitlin J. Schwan has received funding from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation to support her research on homelessness. She is affiliated with the Womens National Housing and Homelessness Network. University of Toronto provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation CA. McGill University, York University, and Western University provide funding as members of The Conversation CA. McGill University, Western University, York University, and University of Toronto provide funding as members of The Conversation CA FR. View all partnersVisible homelessness during the COVID 19 pandemic has highlighted the housing crisis across Canada. For women, girls and gender diverse people, homelessness is often hidden, meaning that they are more likely to avoid shelters, couch surf or remain in abusive relationships than end up on the streets. Because of this, we know less about their experiences. New data from the Pan Canadian Women’s Housing and Homelessness Survey, the largest gender specific data collection of its kind in Canada, tells us a clear story. Lack of access to housing has gendered causes and effects, and gender equality in Canada depends on fair access to adequate housing. This survey, completed by 500 women and gender diverse people in 12 provinces and territories, shows us why housing is a women’s rights issue. Twenty eight per cent of women led households struggle with the affordability, suitability or adequacy of their housing. This is almost double the rate of households led by men. The Pan Canadian Survey found that many women and gender diverse people who have experiences of homelessness have no money after paying for housing. Only 14. 2 per cent can make ends meet after paying rent. We know that women and gender diverse people still earn less than men, limiting access to an increasingly unaffordable housing market. Women are also more likely to have minimum wage or part time employment, meaning housing is even more unaffordable for them. In the Pan Canadian Survey, 60. 2 per cent of participants reported not being able to afford a place to live, and 46. 5 per cent reported not being able to afford a damage deposit, moving expenses and/or utility hookups. Participants also noted that the available affordable housing was inadequate for children , in bad condition , unsafe or inaccessible to people with disabilities . More than one third of participants had also been forced to leave their most recent housing because they couldn’t afford it anymore . Gender pay inequities have a real impact on women’s right to housing. Homeless counts of the general population, without a gendered lens, report that the top reason people lose their housing is because of addiction and substance use. ",1,https://theconversation.com/new-data-shows-that-homelessness-is-a-womens-rights-issue-168647,FALSE, 809,"NSW inquiry rejects expert advice on Parental Rights Bill, and it will cause students to suffer"," PhD Candidate, Department of Psychology, Macquarie University PhD Candidate, Centre for Emotional Health, Macquarie University Associate Professor in Psychology, Macquarie University PhD Candidate, Department of Psychology, Macquarie University Emma F. Jackson is affiliated with the Academic Senate of Macquarie University. Jonathan David is an employee of Twenty10 inc GLCS NSW and President of Dayenu Sydneys Jewish LGBTQ+ Community. Melissa Norberg is the Deputy Director for the Centre for Emotional Health and the National President for the Australian Association for Cognitive and Behaviour Therapy . Veronica Sheanoda is a Consumer Advisory Committee member for her local Primary Health Network. Macquarie University provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU. View all partnersA newly released report by a NSW parliamentary inquiry ignores scientific research in supporting changes to the Education Act. These changes are likely to add to the risks of harm that transgender and gender diverse young people face. Schools need to provide appropriate care to all students. The proposed changes to the law will prevent staff from doing that for transgender and gender diverse young people. By further marginalising them, the changes could increase their already high rates of bullying, mental illness and suicide. Read more: Supporting trans people: 3 simple things teachers and researchers can do The Education Committee’s report ignored scientific research findings and recommendations presented in submissions to its inquiry into the Parental Rights Bill. One Nation MP Mark Latham, who introduced the bill to parliament last year, chaired the committee. Its report endorsed proposed amendments to the Education Act 1990 and Bulletin 55: Transgender Students in Schools that will prevent schools from teaching that gender and sex are distinct concepts. The amendments may also prevent school staff from affirming and supporting their transgender students until consent has been gained from potentially unsupportive parents, and lengthy, expensive medical procedures have been completed. By preventing appropriate care for all students, such changes will further alienate and marginalise transgender and gender diverse young people. Scientific research has for many decades regarded sex and gender as distinct, but related. Sex refers to the biological and anatomical characteristics attributed to males and females. Gender encompasses the social and cultural characteristics of men and women – for example, personality, stereotypical interests, and behaviour. Researchers recognize that sex and gender can be more related for some individuals and less related for others. Scientific research also acknowledges that neither gender nor sex is binary. The physiological characteristics used to define sex, such as chromosomes and external genitalia, can display variation outside a clear division of male and female. Moreover, both cisgender and transgender people may engage in gender nonconformity through their styles of dress, interests and behaviours. Nonbinary individuals can also have characteristics of both men and women, change between the categories, and/or see themselves as being outside the binary of male and female. Rates of mental health problems are much higher in gender nonconforming youths. In Australia, up to three in every four of these youths have been diagnosed with depression and/or anxiety. Much of this is due to school experiences such as peer rejection and bullying. Read more: Bullying linked to gender and sexuality often goes unchecked in schools Alarmingly, one in two transgender and gender nonconforming youths have attempted suicide. And about four in five report self harm or suicidal thoughts. Those who experience victimisation in school are four times more likely to attempt suicide than those who are not victimised. ",1,https://theconversation.com/nsw-inquiry-rejects-expert-advice-on-parental-rights-bill-and-it-will-cause-students-to-suffer-167539,FALSE, 810,"Gender-specific health programs address important issues, but risk creating new biases"," Research Fellow, University of Otago Lecturer in Health, Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington and University of Otago provide funding as members of The Conversation NZ. Te Herenga Waka Victoria University of Wellington and University of Otago provide funding as members of The Conversation AU. View all partnersGone are the days when health programmes were designed to simply punish or reward people to encourage behaviour change. We now know lasting behaviour change is more complex and nuanced, and this has prompted a proliferation of programmes that attend to factors like motivation, confidence, social support and social determinants of health. Among such programmes, we’ve observed a trend towards gender targeted interventions. Examples include programmes for men focusing on rugby fandom as a route to getting them to look after their health, and those for women that concentrate on small, holistic health changes to limit the impact of damaging body ideals. While biological sex is based on our anatomy and physiology, gender is a socialised identity. Our gendered identities accompany societal expectations of how we should or should not act. There is no doubt gender shapes how we “do” health the way we eat, sleep, exercise, connect with others and manage stress. While gender specific needs are important, a gendered approach may ignore people who identify as neither and it runs the risk of creating new biases. Women focused health programmes were arguably developed as an antidote to an overwhelmingly patriarchal society. The most obvious bias in health research is that much of the data on women’s health has been collected by and from men. Gendered disadvantages or inequities for women also result from poor representation in leadership positions and unfair norms that place greater expectations on them. For example, women spend more time than men doing unpaid household work and taking on caring responsibilities. These imbalances trickle down to shape how women spend their time and care for their health. In response, women specific research centres have been established in New Zealand and internationally to help close the gap in knowledge regarding women’s health. Read more: Research into pregnancy, birth and infant care is historically underfunded – and women are paying the price Similarly, organizations like YWCA and Women’s Health Victoria position gendered inequities at the centre of their work and help create a better understanding of how health programmes can effectively support women’s long term outcomes for behaviour change. In New Zealand, Shift supports young women to be physically active through a focus on collaboration, fun, building community and leadership. Next Level Health empowers women by using a holistic and weight neutral approach to behaviour change. This moves the focus away from body weight and defines health more broadly, emphasising well being, connection to people and place and other behaviours. As a result, sleep, self care and stress management become as important as physical activity and nutrition. Such programmes create a more inclusive and relevant vision of health and counteract the body image concerns women often experience due to socialised pressures to attain an “ideal” body. Despite a male dominated health system, men continue to have a higher risk of various health conditions, including coronary heart disease and being overweight. When it comes to health behaviour programmes, men are notoriously difficult to recruit. This may be due to the fact men are less likely to seek help. ",1,https://theconversation.com/gender-specific-health-programs-address-important-issues-but-risk-creating-new-biases-155840,FALSE, 812,Why female bosses get different reactions than men when they criticize employees,"imagine that your boss Ethan calls you into his office. He expresses disappointment in your recent performance and lack of commitment. How would you react? Would you accept the feedback and put in more effort? Or would you put in your office and start looking for a new job? Now, would your reaction be different if your boss was not named Ethan but Emily? I’m a professor of economics, and my research investigates this very question. This has important implications for the success of women in leadership, such as Jane Fraser, who will take over Citigroup in February, becoming the first woman to lead a major Wall Street bank. If giving feedback is more likely to backfire for women in positions of power, they may adopt less effective management strategies or become altogether less interested in holding leadership positions. Women make up 45% of employees of S&P 500 companies. Yet, they only make up 37% of managers at the midlevel, 27% of bosses at the senior level and about 6% of CEOs. These disparities remain despite women having overtaken men in educational attainment. They have also begun scoring higher on leadership competency tests in recent years. Existing studies do not find clear evidence of gender discrimination against job applicants for upper management. Due to methodological constraints, such research typically focuses on hiring for entry level positions. Discrimination in promotion is much harder to study, as work interactions are more difficult for researchers to observe. My research, however, helps address this issue. For my study, I hired 2,700 workers online to transcribe receipts, randomly assigning a male or female name to a manager and randomly assigning which workers would receive performance feedback. Results show that both women and men react more negatively to criticism if it comes from a woman. The subjects reported that criticism by a woman led to a larger reduction in job satisfaction than criticism by a man. Employees were also doubly disinterested in working for the company in the future if they had been criticized by a female boss. Women in upper management are not simply being ignored. Workers hired for the transcription in our study actually spent slightly more time reading and thinking about feedback from female managers. Nor can implicit biases explain why employees are less likely to take criticism well from women. While we found that workers in this study were, on average, more likely to subconsciously associate men with career and women with family, this tendency does not predict whether they discriminate against female bosses. This type of discrimination is also not due to a lack of exposure to female supervisors. Workers stating that their previous female supervisor was highly effective were just as likely to bristle at the criticism from a woman boss. Instead, what seems to drive the results are gendered expectations of management styles. Other studies have shown that workers are three times more likely to associate giving praise with female managers and twice more likely to associate giving criticism with male managers. People react negatively if something violates their expectations. Case in point: critical female bosses. It remains unclear the extent to which results from this study can be generalized across more traditional work settings. Yet, the “gig economy” and other remote work arrangements are a rapidly expanding part of the economy. Some have argued that these jobs offer more flexibility and thus particularly benefit women. However, findings from this study highlight additional concerns about discrimination in the gig economy due to lack of regulatory oversight and equal opportunity protections in these jobs. ",1,https://theconversation.com/why-female-bosses-get-different-reactions-than-men-when-they-criticize-employees-145970,FALSE, 813,Gender diversity in science media still has a long way to go. Here’s a 5-step plan to move it along," Senior lecturer, Australian National University Merryn McKinnon provides science communication workshops for STEM professionals commercially as part of her work with the Centre for the Public Awareness of Science. Australian National University provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU. View all partnersPublic representation of science in the media still struggles to reflect the true diversity of those who work in science, technology, engineering or mathematics . According to a 2019 report from the Women’s Leadership Institute Australia, women are quoted as sources in just 33% of science news stories. However, this figure is based on 19 articles collected within a much broader study, of which science news was not a focus. To really understand the diversity of STEM representation in the media, we need a bigger sample. Some masters students and I collected a representative sample of 655 articles published in Australia’s mainstream and science news media during 2018. In the case of international media companies with an Australian presence, we looked at articles posted on their Australian edition, some of which were produced locally and some republished from overseas. Read more: Where are the women scientists, tech gurus and engineers in our films? We tallied the genders of the journalist, sources quoted directly or indirectly, photographer and photo subject in these articles. If any gender was not explicitly stated using a readily gender identifiable name or an explicit personal pronoun, we categorised the gender as “unidentified”. Our preliminary results show that in the 468 STEM related news articles that used direct gender identifiable quotes, both women and men were quoted as sources in 28% . Articles exclusively quoting men comprised 52% of the articles we examined. Only 20% of articles exclusively quoted women. Of course, the devil is in the detail, and when you start to look at the number of individuals quoted in stories the difference is stark. One egregious example was a “holiday reading list” from science magazine Cosmos, which featured nine books written or introduced by men, reviewed by five men. If we look just at the top five STEM news providers in our sample, results are mixed. Our sampled suggested that The Conversation, the ABC and the Daily Mail have equal or greater numbers of women writing about STEM topics, compared with men. But although some of these outlets are also close to having gender parity in expert sources, the dominant voices are still generally male. If “we can’t be what we can’t see”, then it is vital that female scientists and science writers are prominent in the media landscape. But unfortunately, our results reveal that this landscape is still dominated by men. There are many reasons for this. But let’s be clear: confronting this problem is not a job just for women, or just for the media. This is a systemic, structural and societal problem and everyone has a part to play in formulating the solution. This was one of many discussions held at this month’s Catalysing Gender Equity conference, held in Adelaide by the Australian Academy of Science and Science in Australia Gender Equity , and featuring delegates from higher education, research, government, media and the private sector. Building on the release last year of the Decadal Plan for Women in STEM, the conference aimed to develop tangible ways to work towards gender equity. Of course, gender equity is just one part of the overall problem. There are many groups throughout society that similarly need equitable representation and inclusion. Nobody should be marginalised or disadvantaged because of their age, race, culture, religion, disability, sexual orientation or socio economic status. Read more: Death by a thousand cuts: women of colour in science face a subtly hostile work environment ",1,https://theconversation.com/gender-diversity-in-science-media-still-has-a-long-way-to-go-heres-a-5-step-plan-to-move-it-along-132174,FALSE, 814,Cricket Australia’s new gender rules give much-needed clarity to athletes and clubs,"Cricket Australia has made a significant contribution to gender diversity policy by producing a very detailed set of rules for elite level cricket, and guidelines for community cricket. They provide much needed clarity around what’s expected of transgender and gender diverse athletes, and what’s being asked of cricket clubs. Read more: Elite sport is becoming a platform to target the trans community On a global scale, including transgender and gender diverse athletes into sport is a work in progress. So far, in top level competitions, only the female category has been a cause for debate, stemming from the conclusion that male athletes have physical advantages over female athletes in terms of speed, strength and physique. For men transitioning to women , sports need assurance that this competitive advantage has been suitably reduced by surgical transition or taking hormones. In any case, transgender and gender diverse people face social acceptance challenges, to put it mildly. Cricket Australia, along with other Australian sports bodies who are starting to catch on, is providing unprecedented opportunities for people who, while “different”, can fit in and feel welcomed. For instance, Erica James, a cricketer who returned to the sport as a M2F player after 27 years, shows how inclusive sport clubs can boost mental health and self esteem, as the video below shows. In terms of elite level competition, Cricket Australia has followed the International Cricket Council’s Gender Recognition Policy from 2017, which was developed to accommodate transgender and gender diverse athletes in international tournaments or series. From a biological perspective, the International Cricket Council drew on the International Olympic Committee’s Transgender Guidelines. The IOC’s position is that a M2F athlete who aspires to enter the women’s category of sport must: demonstrate that her total testosterone level in serum has been below 10 nmol/L [Nanomoles Per Litre] for at least 12 months prior to her first competition . Read more: By excluding Hannah Mouncey, the AFLs inclusion policy has failed a key test This it what Cricket Australia has put in place. But the International Olympic Committee’s guidelines may change before the 2020 Olympics. Meanwhile, there is currently robust debate, most notably in the UK, about the efficacy of the International Olympic Committee’s policy position. Critics are underwhelmed by the International Olympic Committee’s lack of detail about how – from a scientific perspective – the transition requirements meet this IOC mantra: The overriding sporting objective is and remains the guarantee of fair competition. The problem is lack of detail. It’s not clear what evidence the policy is based upon. It may be scientifically sound, but it’s not in the public domain. In terms of high performance sport, Cricket Australia’s transgender and gender diverse policy is, to some extent, constrained by what relevant international bodies put in place. Cricket Australia has committed to review the policy annually. This means it can respond to any substantive changes to international sport, and fine tune for the Australian context. Read more: Israel Folaus comments remind us homophobia and transphobia are ever present in Australian sport ",1,https://theconversation.com/cricket-australias-new-gender-rules-give-much-needed-clarity-to-athletes-and-clubs-121617,FALSE, 815,Reality check: more women on boards doesn’t guarantee diversity,"More women on boards is seen as an important indicator of gender equality and board effectiveness. The Australian government’s annual gender insights report, published last week, says greater female board membership helps drive more equitable pay across all levels of an organization. The Australian Institute of Company Directors emphasises other benefits. Last month, when it published its latest gender diversity progress report, managing director Angus Armour noted diverse boards help prevent groupthink , “leading to better outcomes for shareholders, consumers, employees and the community”. All this might be true, but there’s a problem in thinking board gender statistics alone indicate significant progress on diversity if the women getting picked for boards generally belong to the same networks as the male directors. Women now hold almost 30% of all board positions in Australia’s top 200 listed companies. Former AICD head Elizabeth Proust says that’s significant, because research “has shown this is the point at which you genuinely change the conversation around any table. ” Read more: Network contagion is key to getting healthier numbers of women on company boards But that’s not necessarily what the evidence from Australia’s banking royal commission shows. Equal numbers of women and men on the boards of IOOF or Commonwealth Bank, for example, didn’t seem to lead to any better outcomes than at ANZ , Westpac or NAB . Perhaps that’s because board membership is still an extremely exclusive club. In 2018 just 220 new board appointments were made in the ASX200 . Social connections drive those appointments, according to researcher Sherene Smith. There are few “outsiders”. Read more: Company boards are stacked with friends of friends so how can we expect change? So whatever progress has been made in increasing board gender diversity, there remains a fundamental problem of a lack of equal opportunity in the board appointments process. The lack of outsiders means groupthink is still a problem, because people from similar backgrounds and social circles are less likely to have very different perspectives, or be prepared to challenge the group. Mai Chen, of New Zealand’s Superdiversity Institute of Law, Policy and Business, talks about the difference between the type of diversity that promotes diverse thinking and ticking off achievement of mere “demographic balance”. This is certainly not to say that increasing female representation on boards is pointless. As Peta Spender puts it, “the role that women play on the boards of ASX 200 companies is a measure of women’s democratic leadership”. But for greater gender equality to really contribute to greater thought diversity, we have to think about all the other factors that might be just as important, such as ethnic, cultural and socio economic backgrounds, work and life experiences, educational attainment, or even personality traits. Gender is only one facet of diversity. Ideally a board should have members who are able to not only arrive at different solutions but also voice these solutions. Different aspects of diversity may be relevant for different companies. A company with offshore businesses, for example, might require foreign directors. A tech company might need to have a director with expertise in machine learning. ",1,https://theconversation.com/reality-check-more-women-on-boards-doesnt-guarantee-diversity-103526,FALSE, 816,"Diplomacy and defence remain a boys’ club, but women are making inroads","The Lowy Institute has launched a three year study on gender representation in Australia’s diplomatic, defense and intelligence services, and the findings are critical: gender diversity lags significantly behind Australia’s public service and corporate sector, as well as other countries’ foreign services. In a field which has long ignored research on gender or feminist approaches to understanding international relations, this report is welcome and sets forth an important research agenda within Australia. Gender diversity is an important issue for all who value the pursuit of Australia’s national interests overseas. Attracting and retaining the best talent is more important now than ever before. As then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said in June 2017: The economic, political and strategic currents that have carried us for generations are increasingly difficult to navigate. The Lowy Institute found that of all the fields in international relations, women are least represented in Australia’s intelligence communities. As the funding and resources of the intelligence sector continue to grow, this is a serious problem with little transparency. The sector appears to be struggling with a “pipeline” and “ladder” problem: women are both joining at lower rates and progressing at far slower rates than their male counterparts. Another important finding is that the presence of female trailblazers in these fields, such as foreign ministers Julie Bishop and Marise Payne and Labor’s shadow foreign minister, Penny Wong, may be masking more systemic issues. This may be leading some agencies to becoming complacent, rather than proactive, on gender diversity. Read more: In the bid for more female leaders, mansplaining probably wont help Women’s pathways to leadership continue to be impeded by institutional obstacles, such as unconscious bias and discrimination built into the cultures of these sectors, as well as difficulties in supporting staff on overseas postings. For instance, the report notes that in 2017 the government cut assistance packages for overseas officers, including government childcare subsidies. This has gendered ramifications given that women continue to do the bulk of domestic labor. As such, the most important and high prestige international postings are still largely dominated by men. DFAT’s Women in Leadership Strategy has proved successful in meeting initial targets for improving women’s representation, however the industry as a whole has not yet followed suit. Further, it is not enough to just consider how many women there are, but what roles they occupy, given that women have often been siloed into “soft policy” or corporate areas and out of key operational roles needed for career progression. The report also draws attention to the marginalization of women from key policy shaping activities. From the study’s research on declared authorship, a woman is yet to be selected to lead on any major foreign policy, defense, intelligence, or trade white paper, inquiry or independent review. Read more: Women in combat: the battle is over but the war against prejudice grinds on We would mention a few exceptions of women in other high profile foreign policy roles – Heather Smith’s stewardship of the G20 during Australia’s presidency and Harinder Sidhu’s leadership in the crucial India High Commission. We would also note the contribution of Jane Duke to the ASEAN Summit in Sydney. ",1,https://theconversation.com/diplomacy-and-defence-remain-a-boys-club-but-women-are-making-inroads-119984,FALSE, 817,Pages and prejudice: how queer texts could fight homophobia in Australian schools,"Recently, the Australian Association for the Teaching of English the peak professional body for Australian English teachers published a special issue of the journal English in Australia entitled “Love in English. ” It addressed the continued marginalization of some genders and sexualities within the classroom. One article in this journal analyzed sample text lists provided by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority. The article found only two of the 21 fiction texts portrayed non heterosexual protagonists, named characters, experiences, or relationships. Before you go imagining radical queer literature stealthily making its way into the secondary classroom, the texts in question were Twelfth Night and The Great Gatsby. Read more: Telling the real story: diversity in young adult literature An extensive amount of educational research has demonstrated schools are enjoyable and productive places for some students, but not others. As much as we would like to think otherwise, it’s clear schools do not serve all members of the population equally well. Schools are sites of learning about social, cultural, political and economic positions, rights and possibilities. Schools can either double down on social inequalities or they can help change attitudes. Consider the situation of the many Australian school students who consider themselves sexually or gender diverse. A 2015 study of over 700 LGBTIQ+ Australian youth indicated 94% had heard homophobic language at school. Some 58% of these young people heard homophobic language on a daily basis. Additionally, 45% of participants had witnessed physical harassment of classmates who were perceived as being sexually and/or gender diverse. These findings are consistent with other research that indicates homophobic violence is increasing in Australian schools. The Writing Themselves In report indicated that in 1998, 69% of sexually or gender diverse young people reported homophobic violence. In 2004, this figure rose to 74%, and by 2010 it was 80%. Being provided with a safe learning environment is not the only thing queer young people are being denied. They’re also being denied the opportunity to learn about the histories and experiences of people like themselves. As researchers at Sydney and Western Sydney University have noted: Discrimination can be perpetuated by what is present and what is noticeably absent in the curriculum. Queer inclusions in curricula have the potential to make a meaningful difference to schooling environments, especially in understanding and confronting inequalities. The entire national English curriculum identifies teaching young Australians to contribute to “a democratic, equitable and just society that is prosperous, cohesive and culturally diverse” as its core purpose. In addition to this admirable aim, the Australian Curriculum’s General Capabilities and Cross Curriculum Priorities emphasize developing respect, reciprocity, empathy and open mindedness. While all of these things might be assisted by the expansion of the Australian English curriculum to include more explicit representations of LGBTIQ+ lives, it ain’t necessarily so. That’s where teachers come in. Read more: The art of seeing Aboriginal Australias queer potential ",1,https://theconversation.com/pages-and-prejudice-how-queer-texts-could-fight-homophobia-in-australian-schools-111437,FALSE, 818,Explainer: why removing sex from birth certificates matters to gender diverse people,"Next month, Tasmania’s parliament will consider a bill that would remove sex from birth certificates. If it passes, it would be the first state in Australia to take such a step. Under the proposed law, a baby’s sex would still be recorded in the register of births and hospital records, enabling the state to track sex information for statistical purposes, but it would not appear on the child’s birth certificate. The argument behind the proposal is that people who do not identify with the sex of their birth – transgender, gender diverse and intersex people – are forced to “out” themselves constantly throughout life when their birth certificate is requested. This can cause embarrassment, raise privacy concerns and potentially lead to discrimination. Sex is a biological concept that relates to a person’s physical features and characteristics, including genitalia and other reproductive anatomy, chromosomes and hormones. These features don’t always fit neatly within “male” and “female” categories. For instance, between 0. 05% and 1. 7% of people are born intersex. In contrast, gender is a social concept that describes the way a person self identifies or expresses themselves. A person’s gender identity may not always be exclusively male or female and may not always correspond with their sex assigned at birth. The majority of Australian states and territories already permit birth certificates that record an individual’s sex as something other than male or female. South Australia, the ACT, NSW and the Northern Territory all provide a range of gender neutral options for recording a person’s sex on their birth certificate, including non binary, indeterminate, intersex, other and unknown. In April, Queensland announced a review that would consider introducing similar measures. Read more: Gender diversity is more accepted in society, but using the pronoun they still divides Other countries, including New Zealand, India, Germany and Bangladesh, as well as recently New York City, also permit gender neutral and/or non binary designations on birth certificates. The proposal being debated in Tasmania goes a step further. While providing a gender neutral option on birth certificates may improve the situation for non binary and intersex Australians, there is growing interest in removing sex designations from birth certificates altogether. A March 2018 discussion paper produced by the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia recommended doing this on the basis that: it is preferable to avoid conflating information about a person’s biological sex with information about a person’s gender identity Other jurisdictions around the world are now moving in this direction. The Canadian provinces of Ontario and Saskatchewan, for instance, recently amended their laws to permit individuals to opt out of displaying a sex designation on their birth certificate. For the transgender and intersex communities, removing sex from birth certificates just makes life less complicated. Having a gender identity that does not match the sex designation on a birth certificate can create confusion and potentially expose people to discrimination when an identity document is requested, such as when they register at a school or university or apply for a passport. Birth certificates are also used to accumulate identity “points” for anything from applying for a credit card to commencing a job. ",1, https://theconversation.com/explainer-why-removing-sex-from-birth-certificates-matters-to-gender-diverse-people-105571,FALSE, 820,Female corporate leaders make firms less likely to fall foul of environmental laws,"Companies with more gender balanced boards are less often sued for breaching environmental laws, suggesting that these companies are more mindful of protecting the environment. That is the key finding of my research, published in the Journal of Corporate Finance. I studied 1,893 environmental lawsuits filed against any of the firms listed on the Standard and Poor’s 1500 composite index in the United States from 2000 to 2015. I found that for every additional woman appointed to a corporate board, the company experienced an average 1. 5% reduction in litigation risk. The average cost of an environmental lawsuit is estimated to be 2. 26% of a company’s market value, which translates into a dollar value of US$204. 3 million based on the current average market capitalization of the S&P1500 firms in my sample. This means that reducing the litigation risk by 1. 5% would be the equivalent of saving US$3. 1 million. My research only shows a correlation between the gender makeup of corporate boards and their likelihood of having been sued on environmental grounds in subsequent years. From these data it is of course difficult to draw any conclusions about the causes of this relationship. But there are nevertheless several theories that can potentially help to explain why more gender diverse boards might tend to make better environmental decisions. First, women and men tend to have different ethical standards, according to existing research. Male directors are stereotypically power oriented, whereas female directors show greater universalistic concerns for other people. Female voices in the boardroom could therefore conceivably help companies to keep the welfare of local communities in mind when making environmental decisions. Second, people who are more different from one another generally make better group decisions together. This is in part because different people can bring different perspectives to discussions and come up with a wider range of potential options from which to choose. This in turn allows them to find the optimal solution. Given that many arenas of business are still male dominated, hiring female directors generally improves boardroom diversity. Third, research shows that female executives and directors are more likely to seek advice to complement their own knowledge. Environmental decisions typically require specialized knowledge and skills, and women’s openness to receiving expert advice may thus help to minimize environmental risks. However, having more women on the board is not always better. If the proportion of female directors exceeds half, then any additional women appointed will reduce gender diversity. Given that diversity is key to good decision making, maintaining a balance of men and women on the board is important. I found that female directors make a bigger difference in reducing environmental lawsuits in companies run by male chief executives, compared with those companies that have female chief executives. Conversely, when I divided the firms into two groups with higher versus lower levels of female board representation, I found that a female chief executive only makes any difference to environmental lawsuit risk when the board is male dominated. This shows that female chief executives and female directors have complementary roles in a boardroom. Globally, women are underrepresented on corporate boards. According to the Australian Institute of Company Directors, only 21. 7% of board members of the top 500 companies on the Australian Stock Exchange are women – and 113 of those companies still have no women on their boards. ",1,https://theconversation.com/female-corporate-leaders-make-firms-less-likely-to-fall-foul-of-environmental-laws-102342,FALSE, 821,"Bragg drops out of Liberal preselection battle, calling for woman candidate","Andrew Bragg, one of the frontrunners in the Wentworth Liberal preselection battle, has withdrawn from the contest, urging the party to choose a woman. Bragg has also fuelled the row over bullying in the party, declaring allegations by Liberal backbencher Julia Banks “genuinely shocked me”. Bragg, who is close to Malcolm Turnbull and quit his job at the Business Council of Australia to run for preselection, said his stepping out of the contest could pave the way for a woman. There are three women in the field Mary Lou Jarvis, a vice president of the NSW Liberal party; Katherine ORegan, a commercial board director, and Maxine Szramka, a rheumatologist. The Liberals are worried about the impact on their vote if, as expected, the high profile Kerryn Phelps, who has a medical practice in Wentworth, contests the seat, where Turnbull had a 17. 7% margin. The huge swing that cost the Liberals the NSW state seat of Wagga Wagga at the weekend will further alarm them. The seat has been won by a well known independent. Bragg said in a statement that Banks “is an incredibly impressive woman who has made it in the upper echelons of corporate Australia. ”He said her exit from public life she had she will quit at the election “is a loss for all of us. Julia is exactly the type of professional woman that the Liberal Party must be able to attract and keep in Parliament. Her loss is an enormous step in the wrong direction. ”Bragg also said comments by former foreign minister Julie Bishop that it was unacceptable for the Liberal party to drag the nation’s female parliamentary representation ranking from 15th in 1999 to 50th “equally ring true. I believe these recent events and comments have changed the mood and accordingly I will withdraw my nomination. I am also a father and a husband who wants to see professional women make it into the highest offices in the land as representatives of the Liberal Party. This preselection provides that opportunity. ”Earlier, Liberal backbencher Warren Entsch said MPs should name names in the bullying row. One Liberal backbencher, senator Lucy Gichuhi, has threatened to out people. Entsch told the ABC: “I am of the view you don’t threat, you do it. I think there should be zero tolerance and bullying, whether it be against male or female colleagues. I think it is unacceptable and we’ve seen too much of it in the parliament in recent times. At the moment, there is a real focus on some of our female Liberal members. But don’t forget, it wasn’t that long ago that it was on the other side of politics as well,” he said. “If there are people responsible for this type of action, I think they should be at least identified and counseled, if you like. ”Entsch said that he knew Banks had been under “a lot of pressure”. “She’d been raising concerns from before this process started”, about both her own side and Labor, he said. Ensch said he “became aware of a female member of the party that was causing her a lot of grief at the time”; he had encouraged her to not be afraid and to stand up and identify the culprits. Entsch also lashed out at those in the media that had pressured MPs, singling out Sky. “I thought it was an absolute disgrace. I don’t think Sky News in particular wrapped themselves in glory. I actually saw texts coming through to colleagues encouraging them to get rid of the prime minister, from some of these commentators. And to me, that’s overstepping the line,” he said. Their “absolute dislike” of Malcolm Turnbull was “quite obvious”. ",1,https://theconversation.com/bragg-drops-out-of-liberal-preselection-battle-calling-for-woman-candidate-102906,FALSE, 822,Transgender kids get their own health-care guidelines," Clinical Psychologist and Research Fellow, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute Clinician Scientist Fellow and Paediatrician, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute Research Officer, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute Carmen Pace is a member of the Australian and New Zealand Professional Association for Transgender Health. She receives funding from the Royal Childrens Hospital Foundation to support research into transgender health. Ken Pang is a member of both the Australian and New Zealand Professional Association for Transgender Health and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, as well as a Fellow of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians. He has also received funding from the Royal Childrens Hospital Foundation to support research into transgender health. Michelle Tollit has received funding from the Royal Childrens Hospital Foundation to support research into transgender health. View all partnersToday the first guidelines specific to the health care needs of transgender and gender diverse children and adolescents have been released in the Medical Journal of Australia. Gender identity is a person’s innermost sense of who they are – male, female, a blend of both or neither. Most children grow up thinking of themselves as a girl or a boy and don’t question their gender. But some children and teenagers identify as a gender that’s different to the sex they were assigned at birth. This is often referred to as being gender diverse, or transgender. Being transgender or gender diverse is now largely viewed as part of the natural spectrum of human diversity. For some people, this is just part of who they are, and it’s not a cause of concern. Others experience gender dysphoria – the distress related to the mismatch between one’s sex and gender. It’s the reason many seek help from health care professionals. Read more: Explainer: what treatment do young children receive for gender dysphoria and is it irreversible? Our clinic is the largest paediatric gender service in Australia. In the last five years referrals to our service have increased tenfold. Rising referral rates have also been reported in many other countries across the Western world. Although older international treatment guidelines exist, these are no longer fully reflective of current practices. They also focus on adults and not exclusively children and adolescents. This is important because children and adolescents are continually developing in a social, emotional and physical sense. They also exist within the context of a family and school. So taking a developmental perspective is central to providing good care. The new guidelines were developed in consultation with not only clinicians who work in the area of child and adolescent transgender health across Australia, but also members of the transgender community, their families, and relevant support organizations. And they draw on findings and recommendations from previous studies. Read more: Should the family court have to approve hormone treatment for transgender teens? Although more research is needed, we know supportive, gender affirming care during childhood and adolescence contributes to improved mental health and well being. As gender diversity is an unfamiliar area for many people, the guidelines include a list of commonly used terms. Language is rapidly evolving and people may use words in different ways. An important part of providing affirming and respectful care is to understand and use inclusive language. For example, when we see young people, we often ask what name and pronouns they would like used to build rapport and affirm their gender identity. Read more: More Australian trans stories on our TV screens, please The guidelines also outline general principles for the care of transgender and gender diverse children and adolescents:",1,https://theconversation.com/transgender-kids-get-their-own-health-care-guidelines-98308,FALSE, 823,School uniforms: what Australian schools can do to promote acceptance of gender diversity,"Earlier in the year, the principal of a private girls’ school in Sydney’s west was criticized by some media for promoting “gender fluidity” and “boasting” that a change in the school’s uniform was enabling a “variety of gender expression”. The school had given students the option of wearing shorts and long pants. This criticism was ill informed and potentially harmful to gender diverse young people. Leaders, such as the school’s principal should be supported not pilloried. Underpinning criticisms of changes in the school’s uniform policy is the assumption clothing is an essential element of gender identity. For people who hold this view, the uniform worn by girls should be distinctly different from that worn by boys in order to prevent individual and collective notions of gender from being undermined, lest children lose their sense of gender all together. Claims that our identity as male or female is biologically determined and fixed were expressed forcefully in the lead up to the same sex marriage survey in 2017. Some people opposed to marriage equality attempted to shift the terms of reference of the public debate by suggesting legalizing same sex marriage would also result in acceptance of gender fluidity and diversity in sport, employment, welfare and violence prevention initiatives. In essence, changing the marriage laws presented a danger to the stability of gender as a binary concept, and this danger was an increasing acceptance of gender fluidity or variance in Australian society. At the heart of these concerns is a rejection of gender diversity as a legitimate, lived reality. Instead, sex and gender are conflated and viewed as biologically determined. Research conducted at the Gendered Innovations center for medical research at Stanford University, shows when the difference between sex and gender is ignored the results of research can be incorrect and possibly dangerous. While sex is biologically determined, gender is a social and cultural construct that shifts and changes across time and place. Importantly, neither sex nor gender are binary but instead operate along a continuum. People who are transgender or gender diverse are people who don’t identify with the sex or gender norms assigned to them due to their physiology. People can experience this in many different ways. While it may sometimes include transitioning by taking medication, hormones or undergoing surgery, this is not always the case. Read more: Crossroads program: should we teach children that gender identity is fluid? Heres what the research says Let’s be clear, distinguishing between gender and sex is not a radical gender theory. Those researching and investigating gender across a range of disciplines have recognized for decades gender and sex are separate and different constructs, and that they’re not always fixed. The American Psychological Association also provides resources and advice about the difference between sex and gender, as well as the reality of multiple identities across the transgender spectrum. In line with these, the Australian Psychological Association recently produced guidelines to recognize the benefits of affirming transgender identities in mental health settings. This can help to relieve distress and reduce suicidal ideation. These guidelines would also benefit trans and gender diverse young people within schools and align with the recommendations of a recent study of trans young people and their parents and carers. ",1,https://theconversation.com/school-uniforms-what-australian-schools-can-do-to-promote-acceptance-of-gender-diversity-95134,FALSE, 824,Company boards are stacked with friends of friends so how can we expect change?,"Social connections drive board appointments and more than two thirds of directors in the 200 largest public companies are on the board of multiple companies. So whoever replaces ex AMP chairwoman Catherine Brenner will likely be drawn from a small pool of people. Brenner resigned after the Financial Services Royal Commission heard AMP had misled regulators, among a number of other scandals. Treasurer Scott Morrison expects more resignations at the Commonwealth Bank following a damning report from the banking regulator. I’ve interviewed directors, as well as looked at data from ongoing surveys of Australia’s top 200 public companies, and found there aren’t a lot of outsiders. Read more: There's no evidence that income management works . . . so why introduce it? We can see this anecdotally as well. ANZ chairman David Gonski is a mentor to ex AMP chairwoman Catherine Brenner. Gonski was also chairman of Coca Cola Amatil when Brenner was appointed to the board in 2008. Meanwhile Brenner’s sister in law, Maxine Brenner, sits on the boards of Orica Ltd, Origin Ltd and Qantas Airways. The corporate governance crisis in Australia will not be solved by greater gender diversity on boards or director independence given how many directors sit on multiple boards and how important social connections are to get there. It shows there truly is no diversity or independence on Australian company boards. Women held just 18. 1% of the board seats in ASX100 companies in 2012. This improved marginally to 25. 2% by 2015. In 2015, 58% of the directors in the ASX100 and 49% in the ASX200 were personally connected to the companies. This means they were either a substantial shareholder, supplier, customer, former executive, founder, adviser or had “a material contract” with the company on which board they served. Having a vested interest in a company can impair a director’s judgment. It may motivate a director to serve their own interests and not look after the best interests of a company and its stakeholders, as seen with the failure of Enron and HIH Australia. My interviews with directors suggest that board members are recruited in a fashion that excludes qualified “outsiders”. For instance, one director told me that identifying the most qualified person was not necessarily the focus of recruitment: What was decided was that those of us who were at the board could look at who we knew … I was not comfortable with that process and I fought that process and didn’t win. My preference was that we advertise for appointed members, but the feeling around the table was we would rather have people we know rather than people who come from an ad, and I didn’t get far pushing that change. I felt it was a boys’ club and I wasn’t happy with it. Being honest, it wasn’t casting the net wide enough. When I pressed my interviewees on how they achieved board membership, many reflected on skills, qualifications and experience. However, when the interviewees spoke about recruiting new board members the process is unstructured, featuring factors such as “reputation” and “background”. One interviewee said: The background of the candidate is very important so you feel comfortable, or you feel there’s less chance of making a mistake if you choose this person. Read more: Experienced shareholders better than independent directors for business My research found that the social identity of candidates is a significant criterion in the selection of Australian company boards. Closed social networks are the primary means of identifying new board members. ",1,https://theconversation.com/company-boards-are-stacked-with-friends-of-friends-so-how-can-we-expect-change-95790,FALSE, 826,"We have marriage equality, now we need LGBTQi+-inclusive sexuality education in schools","The results of the same sex marriage postal survey were clear: Australia voted in favor of equality. The marriage equality bill has passed, and the mandate to deliver inclusive sexuality education in schools is more pressing than ever. LGBTQi+ inclusive sexuality education should embrace diversity in the classroom, the staff room and in whole of school policies. LGBTQi+ inclusive sexuality education reduces negative stereotypes and biases, creating a safer school environment for LGBTQi+ students. When schools adopt inclusive policies across all school curricula , all students feel safer. The acronym stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and more. Adolescents might not want a specific label, or might not feel safe disclosing their identities or attractions. So, we’re talking about a varied group, and about a lot of our country’s young people. Around 10% of Australian secondary students are same sex attracted. A smaller percentage will identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual. Gender identity is how an individual conceives of themself as male, female, both or neither. Usually, this develops in the pre school years. Read more: When do children develop their gender identity? We don’t have good Australian data yet, but a national survey in New Zealand found 1. 2% of secondary students identified as transgender. About 1. 7% of children are intersex, which means they are born with physical sex characteristics that don’t fit medical and social norms for female or male bodies. A recent survey suggested intersex adults are more likely to be non heterosexual. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation defines “comprehensive sexuality education” as being age appropriate, culturally relevant, scientifically accurate and non judgemental and acknowledges diversity. This means it includes information about, and resources relevant to, sexuality and gender diverse students. Comprehensive sexuality education also addresses values, relationships, consent and pleasure, and provides information about access to relevant health services. It has a positive impact on knowledge, decision making skills, communication with parents or carers, and use of protection against pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections for sexually active students. Read more: Rational, modern sex education is a must for all Aussie kids Canada and some states in the USA already mandate LGBTQi+ inclusive sexuality education. Australia now has a national curriculum on Health and Physical Education that generally adopts these principles. The problems are insufficient time, training, resources and policy support. This makes it difficult for many of our teachers to cover the range of topics that constitute comprehensive sexuality education for all students. A massive 44% of same sex attracted Australian young people rated their sex education at school as not useful at all. A recent survey of 2,000 students in Victoria and South Australia found young people want less repetition of biology and more information about gender diversity, violence in relationships, sexual pleasure, intimacy and love. I was the medical writer for Dolly Doctor for 23 years before the magazine closed. I found adolescents’ concerns about sex were mostly about changing bodies, feelings of arousal and attraction , and relationships. Adolescents who were thinking about having sex wanted information about consent, communication, how to negotiate various types of sexual experiences, and pleasure. ",1,https://theconversation.com/we-have-marriage-equality-now-we-need-lgbtqi-inclusive-sexuality-education-in-schools-87501,FALSE, 827,"Sorry, but there’s no business case for gender quotas","There’s support across the globe for increased female participation at leadership levels. In Norway, it’s a legislative requirement that at least 40% of the board members of listed companies are women. Spain, Italy, Belgium and The Netherlands also have mandated quotas. Firms and organizations in other countries, including Australia, are voluntarily adopting gender targets. Of the many reasons put forward to promote gender diversity in workplaces, a call for general fairness is one of the more effective and is easily understood. But the debate becomes illogical when diversity advocates claim that company performance will automatically lift if there are more women involved in executive level decisions. In fact, it does women a disservice to raise such unrealistic expectations. The findings of a range of diverse research projects that I have been involved with, using data from a number of countries and from different periods starting in 1996, make it evident that there is no actual business case for gender targets. Some companies may do better with more women, but others may not. If it really were clear that simply adding a woman to the board would increase shareholder value by a significant amount, you can be sure that firms would already be doing it. This is business, after all. Of course, there is a fairly large literature arguing that such a business case exists. In essence, such claims point to a correlation between firm performance and gender diversity on the board. That correlation is always positive if you only look at it as a correlation. But what the literature completely ignores is the question of whether this correlation is causal. As soon as you try to address the causality question, you don’t find this positive relationship anymore. But the news is not all bad. Our research has revealed benefits that women bring to boards: notably conscientiousness, better corporate governance and performance accountability. Women also appear to be tougher monitors of management. The likelihood that a CEO will get fired if performance goes down is higher when more women are on the board. Whether a tough board is always a good thing is contestable. If a board is constantly nitpicking and looking over the CEO’s shoulder, the CEO is less likely to share much information with the board, which may be less than ideal for decision making. In the female participation debate, nothing is black and white. But we do know that women are more likely to turn up to board meetings than men, and that men show up for more meetings when there are more women on the board. Also, when it comes to directors’ pay, women are more aligned with shareholders by having a greater portion of equity in their compensation. These are likely positives. Also, contrary to their counterparts in the wider population, women on boards are less tradition bound and less averse to risk than men. This encourages the idea that if women were able to have an effect on boardroom decisions so that their values were reflected, they could facilitate innovation. Another possible positive. I’m a big advocate of diversity and value working in diverse groups. But at the same time, I don’t believe who we work with should be mandated. Some senior managers may decide that they’re happier working with men. Perhaps they enjoy going off to football games after board meetings and believe that women wouldn’t enjoy that sort of bonding. Sometimes people just work better with particular types of people. If that means men and the company is operating well, then that’s a perfectly valid approach, if regrettable from an equal opportunity point of view. ",1,https://theconversation.com/sorry-but-theres-no-business-case-for-gender-quotas-9145,FALSE, 830,Mind the gap: company disclosure discrepancies not sustainable,"The recent decision by two Australian retailers to sign an accord protecting suppliers in Bangladesh has highlighted discrepancies in company disclosure of sustainability issues and the need for clearer reporting guidance. Kmart and Target became the first Australian companies to sign the Global Union Federations’ building and safety accord, following the collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in Bangladesh. According to Oxfam Australia, Big W and Cotton On are also making moves to sign the accord; however, a lack of information on which companies have suppliers in Bangladesh means a potential lack of other Australian signatories. Recent research by Catalyst Australia, a collaborative policy network, shows that this lack of supply chain information is not an isolated incident and that significant gaps exist in sustainability reporting by Australian companies. Many ASX listed companies are increasingly reporting on sustainability alongside financial matters. In a 2012 report, the Australian Council for Superannuation Investors found that 83% of companies listed on the ASX 200 to some extent reported on sustainability matters. Sustainability, a term often interchangeably used with corporate social responsibility, represents a commitment to operate in an economically, socially and environmentally sustainable manner. The Global Reporting Initiative provides the most well known reporting frameworks. However, previous research has shown that significant gaps exist between claimed levels of GRI reporting and the information found in company reports. Catalyst Australia developed a CSR dashboard to gauge the quality of sustainability reporting by Australian companies. It analyzed 32 companies across six topics gender equality, environmental impact, labor standards, supply chains, community engagement and community investment and found great variation in how they reported on their social and environmental activities. Some of these differences can be attributed to the tendency of companies to concentrate on those areas that affect their performance, while meeting stakeholder demands for transparency and disclosure. At the same time, discretionary reporting can lead to highlighting achievements that reflect well on companies while overlooking other important areas. However, Catalyst also found that clearly defined reporting expectations lifted reporting and performance. Gender equality, carbon emissions, energy efficiency, and worker health and safety were well covered topics, compared to other areas. The majority of companies addressed these topics in their public reports, even when disclosures revealed negative performance outcomes. It is significant that these areas have strong external reporting guidance. For example, disclosures around gender diversity have recently benefited from the increased guidance of a new reporting regime, established through Australian Securities Exchange Corporate Governance Principles. Doubtless, the CSR diversity reporting results reflect the clear guidance provided by the ASX Principles, along with a more activist approach by the federal government in spearheading the new Workplace Gender Equality Agency. External policy underpinning environment topics also helps steer public disclosures. In addition to a growing number of companies voluntarily reporting to the Carbon Disclosure Project, corporations registered under the commonwealth government’s National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Act 2007 are required to report carbon emissions and energy consumption. This has focused attention on reporting in these areas, particularly when compared with other environmental indicators such as waste production and water consumption. ",1,https://theconversation.com/mind-the-gap-company-disclosure-discrepancies-not-sustainable-15083,FALSE, 831,Women’s contribution to science goes unheard," Editor and Proposal Developer, University of Toronto Junior research group leader, Max Planck Institute Deborah Buehler received funding from Natural Science and Engineering Council of Canada and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. Julia Schroeder receives funding from the Volkswagen Foundation, Germany, and a Marie Curie Career Integration Grant. University of Toronto provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation CA. University of Toronto provides funding as a member of The Conversation CA FR. View all partnersEven today there are few women graduate students and even fewer women academics, especially in the STEM fields . Why is this the case, even in 2013, and what can we do about it?Lower visibility of female scientists is one of many potential reasons for the under representation of women in senior academic ranks. To succeed in academic science, researchers must produce many widely cited publications and attract independent funding. Success clearly requires doing excellent science. However, academics can also raise their profiles and improve their work through presenting their findings at major international conferences. In academic science, as in many other high profile professions, it is hard to advance if your voice is not heard and your work is not known. In a new study published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology, along with 37 academics from around the world, we investigated the numbers of female and male invited speakers at six biannual congresses of the European Society for Evolutionary Biology – the most prestigious gatherings of evolutionary biologists in Europe. Male speakers invited to the congress outnumbered female speakers, a finding that was expected since women make up a smaller proportion of the pool of potential speakers. But women were under represented even after taking this into account. We compared the number of female and male invited speakers to the number of females and males available in the potential pool of candidate speakers. What qualifies a candidate to be considered is debatable, therefore we investigated two pools. Using sex ratio data from the world’s top ranked institutions for life sciences and first authors in the top tier journals we found only about half as many females as expected. This shows that high quality science led by female academics is under represented in comparison to that of their male counterparts. If this dearth of female voices in conferences harms women’s advancement within academia, then society as a whole is also losing some of its best scientists. On delving deeper into the data from the 2011 congress, we found women were under represented as invited speakers, not because men were invited proportionally more than women, but because men accepted invitations more often. This result is based on a single conference in a single discipline, and the two lead authors of the study, Julia Schroeder and Hannah Dugdale, are investigating whether this trend can be generalised. So why would men accept speaking invitations more than women? There are many reasons, but two stick out. First, the most demanding phase of a career in academic science coincides with the age at which most scientists, women and men, are starting families. In a perfect world, women and men would share the demands of building a family equally, but recent research has shown that babies matter more in the careers of female academics. Second, women are less likely than men to self promote – behaviour that may be a form of self defence, since studies show that it doesn’t pay for women to be seen as successful and ambitious. The roots of these trends probably begin long before girls and boys embark on academic careers. We are conditioned from a young age to believe that caring for the children is the woman’s domain, whereas career success is the man’s domain. ",1,https://theconversation.com/womens-contribution-to-science-goes-unheard-15532,FALSE, 833,Stand by your woman: shareholders should demand more balanced boards,"The lone lady in a suit is always a matter of interest, whether on a listed company board or in Tony Abbott’s cabinet. Not only does it seem inequitable that women are underrepresented in these influential positions, but there is now considerable research to suggest that organizations perform better and more efficiently if there are women at the top. Much has been said about whether governments should set quotas or targets for female participation on boards, but what about shareholder action? As the legal owners of a corporation’s equity, perhaps it is time for shareholders to push for gender diversity amongst their elected board representatives. In the United States this is exactly what has happened companies with all male boards have been targeted by institutional investors. Over the last two proxy seasons at least 45 shareholder resolutions have been filed asking these companies to reveal their approach to increasing gender diversity. This is against the background of a very slow increase in female board representation. The latest Catalyst figure for women on boards in Fortune 500 companies in the United States is 16. 6%, only marginally higher than the 2005 figure of 14. 7%. In a country that has rejected the concept of affirmative action, it is unlikely that strong regulatory action will be implemented. The concept of imposing a Norwegian style quota on corporate America has hardly been discussed. So perhaps it is not surprising that women’s groups have focused their powers of persuasion not on government, but on institutional investors. The Thirty Percent Coalition has teamed up with some of the major activist funds to try to persuade companies to consider gender diversity in the boardroom as a priority. The Coalition’s goal is for women to hold 30% of public company board seats by 2015. Their campaign, aimed at stimulating dialogue about diversity policies, began with letters sent to 168 companies that had no female directors. Further action has included the filing of shareholder resolutions with 20 companies in the 2012 proxy season and 25 companies in the 2013 proxy season. In 2013 three resolutions went to a vote. At CF Industries the vote received support of 50. 7%. This marked the first time a board diversity resolution received majority support. Will Australian companies face similar pressures this AGM season? Even though at the last formal count there were 281 companies in the ASX 500 with all male boards, with only 9. 2% of all ASX 500 board seats held by women, it is unlikely. This is for several reasons. Firstly, Australian corporate law makes it relatively hard for shareholders to file resolutions. Section 249D of the 2001 Corporations Act dictates that shareholders can only requisition a meeting if they have 5% of the votes or if 100 members sign a request for a meeting. This has resulted in only a few large groups being able to put forward shareholder resolutions – the Australian Shareholders Association, Green groups and Unions. As Stephen Mayne has often lamented, “The requirement that 100 signatures are necessary to produce a shareholder resolution in Australia has long been a ridiculous barrier to a proper culture of shareholder pressure. ” In the United States literally hundreds of shareholder resolutions are filed every season. Although there are still rules on who can file a resolution they are less strict than in Australia – only 1% of the votes or a total shareholding worth $2000 is required. ",1,https://theconversation.com/stand-by-your-woman-shareholders-should-demand-more-balanced-boards-18909,FALSE, 834,Gender equality reporting is not ‘red tape’," Associate Professor of Law, The University of Melbourne Beth Gaze receives funding from the Australian Research CouncilUniversity of Melbourne provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation AU. View all partnersAmid the federal government’s broader agenda to cut red tape, business groups are reportedly lobbying the federal government to weaken legislation requiring companies to report on gender equality measures. The Business Council of Australia, previously a supporter of such reporting is said to be among the lobbyists arguing it is too onerous and expensive. Legislation for workforce gender equality was first introduced in 1986 and revised in 1999 and 2012. It applies to all private sector employers and higher education institutions that employ 100 or more people. The Hawke Labor government’s Affirmative Action Act required companies to develop and report on an affirmative action plan to provide equal opportunity for women in their workforce, and to report on their progress in implementing the plan. Plans were supposed to set targets for inclusion and promotion of women, but there was little incentive for compliance the only sanction was being named in a report to Parliament, and the monitoring agency had limited powers and resources. Howard government changes in 1999 renamed it the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workforce Act, reduced reporting requirements, made more of the data confidential, and allowed organizations that complied to report every two years rather than annually. The Gillard government’s 2012 changes to the Act aimed to make it more effective in encouraging companies to act on equal opportunity for women at work. Consistent with the modern emphasis on monitoring outcomes and indicators rather than inputs and processes, the Workforce Gender Equality Act 2012 shifted the emphasis in reporting from policies and their implementation to workforce data. Employers are required to report on several “gender equality indicators”, including the gender composition of the workforce and governing bodies such as councils or boards of directors; pay equity between women and men in the workforce; and availability and use of flexible working arrangements for male and female parents and carers. Reporting was made more transparent: reports are publicly available except for personal information and pay data, which can only be reported in aggregate form. Employees and shareholders have to be notified about the report and how to access it. The Act’s only requirement is for employers to report data on their workforces once a year to the Workplace Gender Equality Agency. It does not require any particular workforce practices to be adopted. Companies that fail to improve gender equity at work are not punished. The only incentive for change is positive recognition. The Agency recognizes top performing companies through awards, by its Employer of Choice for Women certification, and by publicising best practice initiatives. It also publicises “the business case”, the evidence of the benefits to business when there is greater equity for women in a company’s workforce. Even with compliance by major companies, change in the workforce has been glacial. The Workforce Gender Equality Agency’s annual Census of Women in Leadership has shown negligible improvement in the proportion of women in senior executive ranks in Australia’s top 200 companies over ten years. Pay equity data shows the current pay gap between men and women is 17. 5% and has consistently been between 15% and 18% over the past two decades. This suggests that little or no progress has occurred in moving towards workforce gender equality. Women remain concentrated in a small range of industries that pay less than male dominated industries, and in all industries women have lower pay and lower workforce status than men. Some of this gap might be explained by family and caring responsibilities that some women have, but the fact that it affects women who don’t have such responsibilities (for example the gender gap in graduate pay immediately out of university, indicates the pervasive and complex nature of the issue. ",1,https://theconversation.com/gender-equality-reporting-is-not-red-tape-22892,FALSE, 836,"More women on FTSE 100 boards, but still not enough","The number of women on the boards of FTSE 100 companies has reached 22. 8% and 17. 4% for FTSE 250 companies according to the latest Women on Boards Interim Report. This is significant progress for gender equality/diversity at the top level of business, marking an 82% increase in the number of women on FTSE 100 boards and a 124% increase for FTSE 250 companies. The progress report was launched by Nicky Morgan and Jo Swinson, MPs and compiled by me and my colleagues at the Cranfield School of Management. It monitors how the UK’s largest companies are complying with the Financial Reporting Council’s updated Corporate Governance Code. Introduced in October 2012, changes to the code meant companies are now required to now include levels of diversity in their annual reports. Companies are now required to report on their boardroom diversity policy, any measurable objectives and progress against these objectives. Diversity was also to feature as part of the board evaluation process. From measuring the reality of the statistics on women in leadership and board positions across the top FTSE 350 companies, we aimed to comment on the extent to which gender diversity is becoming an integrated part of corporate strategy. In March 2011, the Davies Report into women on boards identified a number of actions required to redress the significant gender imbalance in organizations’ leadership. This is still a major problem when there are women obtaining better qualifications than men, but not being rewarded for their work commensurately. In some professions this has been the case for more than 20 years. Lord Davies set what was considered a stretch target of 25% women on boards by 2015, as the figure had plateaued at around 12% for a few years. His report cites a number of the many business case arguments for a better gender balance in company leadership teams. The strongest one for me is that of optimizing how talent is managed and ensuring that the UK’s largest listed companies really are being run by the most talented individuals. It is undoubtedly clear that significant progress has been made in the past three and a half years on increasing the overall proportion of female held directorships in FTSE 350 companies. It was only in June this year that the last all male board in the FTSE 100 finally appointed its first woman director and now only 28 out of the FTSE 250 boards remain all male. With little more than a year left to reach the 25% target set by the government, the number of women now on FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 boards marks good progress after years of inertia. The momentum that has gathered is a testament to the many people involved in making this happen, but there is still some way to go. What is also encouraging to see is the substantial number of companies reporting thoughtfully and in detail on various aspects of their diversity strategies. Some of the best examples of managing the talent pipeline cited in the report come from those companies in traditionally male sectors, such as engineering, mining and resources. In the FTSE 100, the numbers of companies complying with some aspects of the amended Code have increased substantially in the past year. The emphasis on clear and transparent reporting of gender metrics, measurable objectives and best practice across the boardrooms and senior management teams of our largest organizations is beginning to have an effect. This demonstrates that gender diversity is becoming an integral part of corporate strategy, which is only a good thing for businesses. ",1,https://theconversation.com/more-women-on-ftse-100-boards-but-still-not-enough-33854,FALSE, 837,Why women should not use the non-profit sector to reach corporate boardrooms,"Australia is one of the worst performers in board gender diversity. In an attempt to combat this, women have been encouraged to head to the not for profit sector to gain board experience as a stepping stone to the male dominated corporate boardroom. Yet this advice is not actually supported in practice. Research shows it is still a corporate career that counts with the big boards. The opening line on the Women on Boards website is: The Third Sector is usually a good hunting ground for women seeking directorships. It offers personal satisfaction and rewards as well as valuable experience and networks to up and coming directors. Most ASX directors have at least one Third Sector Board in their portfolio. In her top five strategies for cracking a corporate board, research professor Carol Kulik suggests starting small and volunteering on a local charitable board. Korn Ferry managing director Katie Lahey recently included in her top ten tips for getting a board seat, experience on non profit, government or smaller boards. This emerging career strategy for women seeking corporate board membership raises two questions. Do women actually move from non profit directorships to corporate boards? And what is the benefit for not for profit organizations? Research conducted in the United Kingdom has highlighted the importance of networks and that women recruited to corporate boards are more likely to have experience as directors on boards of smaller firms. However, the 2012 Census of Women in Leadership reveals that Australian women on the boards of the ASX top 200 companies often had strong backgrounds in the fields of law, finance and accounting. Many women also had careers in investment banking. Around 25% had public sector experience as regulators, politicians or academics. The question was not asked, but reviewing the figures and the backgrounds of the women on our major corporate boards, no female director had been recruited from a long career working in the non profit sector. Moreover, research suggests that when it comes to head hunting board members, the search is predominantly not for profits seeking corporate experience. There are many not for profits that require unpaid board and management committee members such as local Out Of School Hours organizations. Some such as the YWCA also specifically seek female board members. Serving on the board of a not for profit can be an enriching experience. Aside from the satisfaction that flows from working for the public good, it can broaden one’s resume in skills and experience. It may even lead to new job opportunities. However, the idea that corporates look to not for profit boards to recruit board members is not supported by the evidence. Not for profits, like women, battle unjustified prejudice. The range of not for profit organizations is not dissimilar to the range of for profit businesses. There are small volunteer operated organizations, services concentrated within states or nationally, and international organizations with Australian subsidiaries. Similar to other businesses, some not for profits are exceptionally effective in governance and operations and some are not. Nonetheless, the sector is often regarded as amateurish, inefficient and in need of the superior expertise of the business sector. ",1,https://theconversation.com/why-women-should-not-use-the-non-profit-sector-to-reach-corporate-boardrooms-32907,FALSE, 838,Diversity fatigue: why business still struggles to close the gender gap,"Many large organizations are now on their second or third wave of diversity and inclusion programs. A good number of them are still struggling to identify obvious improvements in the metrics they hoped to see changes in. Yet, ironically, increasing numbers of people are beginning to express “diversity fatigue”. The statistics on corporate diversity in Australia still paint a frustratingly dismal picture. Today’s report from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency finds women comprise 39. 8% of “other managers”, but their representation falls to 26. 1% of key management personnel and just 17. 3% of CEOs. At a board level, women hold only 23. 7% of directorships and just 12% of chairs. In the non ASX listed and medium sized company landscape, diversity and inclusion fare even worse. In these companies, diversity hardly rates a mention on the agenda of many chief executives. Despite this lack of success, there is a growing notion that men will become an endangered species in the ranks of leadership. How is it that on one hand organizations are struggling to make substantial progress, while on the other it is perceived that the pendulum has swung too far in favour of women and minority groups? Men are expressing fears that decision making is no longer merit based and that the women they manage increasingly expect a “free pass” to leadership. They also feel they are forced to promote under qualified women because of the company’s diversity targets. Diversity fatigue can most readily be heard on the part of committed practitioners and advocates. Many have become literally exhausted at the constant battle to get diversity and inclusion on the agenda, and then get it funded well enough to achieve tangible gains. Not surprisingly, a 2012 McKinsey report revealed that diversity sits very close to the bottom of the agenda for the majority of human resources professionals in large firms. Another type of diversity fatigue can be seen in the training rooms of the corporate world. Over stretched, mostly male senior executives are hauled in to workshops on unconscious bias and exhorted to add yet another aspiration to a crowded list of key performance indicators. At the same time, many of these men believe women’s gains will be at their expense. It is increasingly common to hear male executives worry they will have to compete harder for promotion with more qualified senior women. The concern is this undermines women’s merit based promotions. One of the most fundamental causes of diversity fatigue is that neither academics nor practitioners have yet identified a comprehensive, programmatic solution to increasing diversity across organizations. As a result, many initiatives are introduced that fail to yield tangible outcomes. Without being part of a broader strategy, they are then promptly forgotten. This undoubtedly contributes to the misconception that, given the amount of “diversity talk”, men may soon be in danger of disappearing from leadership. The rhetoric of diversity has outpaced the action and people have become tired of hearing about it, despite the lack of substantial progress. The WGEA report shows around half of employers have policies on the known enablers of gender equality, but few are developing strategies in these areas. Nearly half of employers have policies on flexible working but only 13. 6% have a strategy for flexible working. Similarly, 45. 2% have a policy for supporting employees with family and caring responsibilities but only 13. 2% have a strategy in this area. The 2012 McKinsey report also highlights some of the more general challenges to human resources functions in large organizations. These challenges present significant obstacles to achieving diversity and inclusion. ",1,https://theconversation.com/diversity-fatigue-why-business-still-struggles-to-close-the-gender-gap-33834,FALSE, 840,Early-career researchers the missing link for STEM diversity,"When high school physics teacher Moses Rifkin wrote a recent blog post on “Teaching Social Justice in the Physics Classroom,” he ignited a new round of conversation about white privilege and the kinds of skills scientists need. Rifkin outlined how he incorporates into his teaching a unit on “Who does physics, and why?” to highlight the lack of diversity in science, particularly physics. The problem isn’t new and it isn’t going away by itself. But it is getting more and more attention. The United States National Science Foundation recently released a report, “Pathways to Broadening Participation in response to the Committee on Equal Opportunities in Science and Engineering 2011–2012 Recommendation,” intended to “build on best practices and offer new approaches” that would “increase participation in STEM [Science, Technology, Engineering and Math] from underrepresented groups. ” This isn’t the first initiative of its kind for the agency; since 1980, NSF has had a mandate to increase the participation of women and minorities in science and engineering. A diverse science and engineering workforce is critical for innovation, entrepreneurism and a competitive national economy. Although women earn about half the bachelor’s degrees awarded in biology and chemistry, they are underrepresented in all other STEM disciplines – mathematics, computer science, earth sciences, engineering and physics. Women are half the population, but hold only 28% of science and engineering jobs. Native American and Alaska Native students earn bachelor’s degrees in STEM fields at about the same rate as white students , but are not employed in STEM fields proportionally. The number of black and Hispanic students earning degrees in STEM fields is lower than the national average, and their employment in STEM – once again – isn’t proportional. We train students in STEM fields, but ultimately they leave the carousel that is employment in research. The issues with relying largely on one demographic group to do science are many, particularly when that group does not reflect the population. Research has shown that “promoting diversity not only promotes representation and fairness but may lead to higher quality science. ” Policies that increase equity are often good for everyone – here is a recent example showing this using standardized math test scores. Increasing the diversity in science opens up the possibility of stable, high paying jobs in STEM fields to more Americans. Pulling from the entire population, including traditionally underrepresented communities, provides a more robust base for economic innovation and the knowledge intensive jobs of the future. Equity is good for business, too. Although women in technology are some of the highest performing entrepreneurs, men receive 2. 8 times more startup capital. The National Science Foundation is a key player for academics, as its budget funds approximately 24% of all federally supported basic research. NSF uses a peer based merit review system to invest in basic research that lays the foundation for important discoveries, as well as applied research that provides innovative fodder for our economy. Its prominence as a funding source for colleges and universities is part of the reason its initiatives are important for many researchers. According to the new diversity report, “the ultimate goal is to have participation in STEM fields mirror the population of the Nation. ” Specifically, that means we need to focus on recruiting and retaining the best talent from currently under represented groups: blacks, Latinos and indigenous communities, including Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders. Based on recent estimates, by 2044 the United States will be a majority minority country, so to have the research workforce mirror the population we need a clear path to retain people in research positions. ",1,https://theconversation.com/early-career-researchers-the-missing-link-for-stem-diversity-38026,FALSE, 841,"The 30% Club is coming to Australia, but ‘men speaking for women’ may miss the point","Launched in the United Kingdom in 2010 with the aim of increasing women’s board representation, the 30% Club will launch an Australian chapter in May this year. The local arm of the organization aims to increase the number of women on the boards of ASX 200 companies by 2018. Founded by Helena Morrissey, the organization takes an anti quota, business led approach by lobbying the chairs and CEOs of listed companies to commit to improving gender balance at the top table. A recent Dealbook column in the New York Times approvingly suggests the group has been instrumental in helping to “almost double” women’s board representation on listed UK companies since 2010 . On joining this club, senior male leaders are only asked to “believe in the value of diversity”, not to make any tangible commitment to actually promote women to senior roles or boards. Membership does not require a commitment to achieving the 30% representation, nor any accompanying actions aimed at improving diversity. Undoubtedly, targeted, persuasive messaging to better engage senior male business leaders is absolutely critical to making gender balance the norm in the senior ranks of organizations. However, the snail’s pace of progress challenges the apparent success of these initiatives. Any attempt to promote the issue of organizational diversity is laudable. It is a welcome change to hear prominent CEOs talking publicly about topics such as unconscious bias, and positioning diversity as a core business issue. The Australian Human Right’s Commission’s Male Champions of Change initiative is a local example of this kind of “men speaking up for women” movement. As Commissioner Liz Broderick recently pointed out, the MCC provides strong visible leadership on the issue of diversity, and proponents insist the initiative is much more than just a self congratulatory talk fest. However, in the absence of firm commitments to specific actions, how can a group of mostly white, middle class, middle aged, and well educated men avoid becoming an ideological echo chamber, mirroring each other’s concerns but neglecting to engage with the issues at a brass tacks level. The Male Champions of Change have just released their first “report card”, and it shows that companies headed by a third of them achieved as below average results in at least one of the WGEA’s diversity performance benchmarks. Commissioner Broderick rightly points out that change is more likely where a senior leader is involved. However, she also highlights a weakness for these initiatives; that change is dependent on the direct intervention of individual leaders. If our diversity achievements remain dependent on the “passion projects” of individuals, then progress risks being unpredictable, and ultimately unsustainable. When it comes from moving beyond traction, and toward action, the tougher questions of whether diversity will ever rate as a pressing organizational performance issue , are unlikely to be tackled in these private members clubs. Indeed it is hard not to notice that these group do not exactly exemplify the kind of diversity they aim to promote. If diverse groups perform better , then surely these “CEO clubs” could benefit from embracing a broader membership. Perhaps this is why the comforting rhetoric does not seem to be matched by concrete action. ",1,https://theconversation.com/the-30-club-is-coming-to-australia-but-men-speaking-for-women-may-miss-the-point-38156,FALSE, 843,"Daniel Andrews, board quotas and the myth of ‘insufficient women’"," PhD Candidate, University of Newcastle Katherine Watson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. University of Newcastle provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU. View all partnersVictorian Premier Daniel Andrews has set gender quotas for appointments to Victorian government boards, but his rationale may be counterproductive. Andrews stated that, because of his policy: “By the end of 2018, no director of an ASX company will be able to look me in the eye and tell me there aren’t enough women in our state who are qualified to join them at the table. ” Although this policy is no doubt well intentioned, Andrews’ comment reaffirms two unhelpful assumptions. Firstly, that the reason there are not more women on boards is a lack of qualified women. Secondly, that prior experience on an equivalent board is the only legitimate precursor to future board positions. These assumptions are both untrue and unhelpful. The assertion that there are insufficient qualified women for board positions is an argument used worldwide to defend gross gender inequality which cannot be justified any other way. However, in the UK, considering that 200 female board appointments would change the landscape of UK board gender diversity, researchers identified 2551 women with sufficient executive level experience, debunking the common excuse that there are insufficient qualified women. Australian research suggests female directors are held to a higher standard; of directors appointed to ASX200 boards, 80% of male directors but only 57% of female directors had no prior experience on an ASX200 board. Not only are there a great number of qualified women who could benefit the boards of ASX200 companies, but the number required to bring about equality in new appointments is small. There have been only 24 new appointments to ASX200 boards so far in 2015 and only seven of these appointments were female. Just five qualified women would be required to bring parity. In 2014 an additional 53 women would have brought parity to new ASX200 appointments. The issue is not the availability of appropriate females but the will to appoint them. Pretending the fault lies with women is illogical to the point of offence. There is no shortage of women with experience relevant to ASX200 boards, but there is an even greater pool of women who could benefit boards with their alternative fields of experience. Prior service on an equivalent board must no longer be the only legitimate qualification for “a seat at the table”. A board of diverse talents and experience is far more equipped to address complex problems and avoid “group think”. Despite this, board recruitment often relies on narrow requirements. Decisions about the necessary skills for a board director remain largely unquestioned and experience is overused as a surrogate for job skills. Although the statement “past performance is not a reliable indicator of future returns” is oft repeated, it is rarely applied to board recruitment decisions. Implementing quotas on government owned boards is a popular and effective means of promoting gender diversity on boards. Many countries have taken this step, including Austria, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Israel, Kenya, Slovenia and Switzerland. Indeed, Israel and Norway have had gender quotas for the boards of government owned companies for decades. Also, policy regarding government boards does not have to address the social contract vs free market argument regarding governmental intervention in private company affairs. In supporting the use of quotas Premier Andrews has notable supporters such as former Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner Liz Broderick, former Governor General Quentin Bryce, Treasurer Joe Hockey and Greens Senator Christine Milne. ",1,https://theconversation.com/daniel-andrews-board-quotas-and-the-myth-of-insufficient-women-39501,FALSE, 844,Why a boycott of ‘lily white’ Oscars might just start to change the film industry,"Each year, the Academy’s announcement of Oscar nominees leads to an inevitable public outcry. Critiques of the Academy Awards’ lack of diversity have become a well rehearsed response to the revelation of nominees. Last year, I wrote an article about the white, male face of 2015’s Academy Awards and the frustrations it evoked – and, at first glance, it seems like a very similar story can be told about this year’s event. When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences presented this year’s nominees on January 14, we were, predictably, presented with a homogenous group of predominantly white, male contenders across all categories. The all white line up of this year’s acting nominees is perhaps particularly noticeable – but considering that only 8% of nominations in all acting categories have gone to black actors over the past 20 years, this is hardly news. Following this year’s announcement, there has been the familiar liberal handwringing, with broadsheet newspapers contemplating the marginalisation of women and racial minorities in particular. But there is also something different going on. Something more profound and potentially punchier. It is a more overtly angry, activist response from within the industry – from black directors and actors who’ve simply had enough. Most notably, director Spike Lee and actor Jada Pinkett Smith have announced that they will not attend the main Oscar ceremony in February. Pinkett Smith has also called for a boycott: “people of colour” should not attend the event in protest of what Lee calls the “lily white” awards show. The president of the Academy, Cheryl Boone Isaacs, even issued a public apology over the lack of nominee diversity. She also announced that steps would be taken to alter the Academy membership in order to address the lack of diversity among the group of people who vote and decide who is nominated. Boone Isaacs is an African American woman. She became president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2013. As the public face of the organization, her presence is encouragingly refreshing. It seems to indicate progress, diversity and openness. The overwhelming majority of Academy members, however, are white and male – and only 14% of voters are under 50. One argument goes that a more diverse group of voters will change voting patterns and lead to more diverse nominations, as well as public recognition of a wider range of filmmaking practices. And this may well be true. Awards are not “objective measures of excellence”. They reflect the values of those whose voices count. But attempting to change the faces of voters and nominees is a bit like treating the symptom rather than the root cause of the problem. It is the make up of the film industry as a whole that needs to change – and Boone Isaacs has recognized this. Not only has she pushed for more diversity in Academy membership . She has also launched A2020, a new initiative that aims to increase diversity in Hollywood over the next five years. Especially when it comes to decision making, gate keeping and key behind the scenes roles within the mainstream film industry, women and ethnic minorities continue to be severely underrepresented. This is not to say that an increase in black producers and directors, for instance, will automatically lead to more roles for black actors and, eventually, to more awards and other kinds of recognition. But the presence of a wider range of different perspectives and experiences will no doubt, over time, challenge the white, male norm that is intrinsic to Hollywood’s institutional structures and practices. ",1,https://theconversation.com/why-a-boycott-of-lily-white-oscars-might-just-start-to-change-the-film-industry-53518,FALSE, 845,When good intentions aren’t supported by social science evidence: diversity research and policy," Professor of Psychology; Faculty Fellow Institute for Policy Research; Professor of Management and Organizations, Northwestern University Alice H. Eagly does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. View all partnersYou’d be forgiven for assuming a quick and sure way to multiply profits and amplify organizational success is to increase the gender and racial diversity of any group. According to claims in the mainstream media, the effects of gender and racial diversity are universally favorable. News stories tend to mirror this 2014 Washington Post article’s claim that “researchers have long found ties between having women on a company’s board of directors and better financial performance. ” And as Nicholas Kristoff wrote in The New York Times in 2013:Scholarly research suggests that the best problem solving doesn’t come from a group of the best individual problem solvers, but from a diverse team whose members complement each other. That’s an argument for leadership that is varied in every way in gender, race, economic background and ideology. The truth is there’s actually no adequate scientific basis for these newsworthy assertions. And this lack of scientific evidence to guide such statements illustrates the troubled relations of science to advocacy and policy, that I have analyzed in an article in the current Journal of Social Issues. I began to think more deeply about these issues during my recent service as president of the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues. This organization has worked since 1936 to join social science findings to responsible advocacy and effective social policy. This goal is laudable, but the task is supremely challenging. As I’ve come to realize, different camps have varying goals. Scientists aim to produce valid knowledge. Advocates work to promote their favored causes. Policymakers hope to efficiently deploy resources to attain social and economic ends. And they’re all assuming their claims are supported by the same body of social science research. In politically sensitive areas, advocates may eagerly invoke social scientific data that support their objectives but ignore nonsupportive findings. They may highlight politically congenial findings that are unrepresentative of the available scientific knowledge. Researchers, in turn, may fail to communicate their findings effectively. Communication is challenging when study outcomes are more complex and less affirming of advocates’ goals than what they desire and expect. These issues often arise when research addresses controversial questions of social inequality. That’s where social science myths can and do emerge. To illustrate these problems, consider two prominent social science myths about diversity. One concerns the effects of the gender diversity of corporate boards of directors on firms’ financial performance. The other pertains to the effects of the gender and racial diversity of workgroups on their performance. Advocates for diversity generally maintain that the addition of women to corporate boards enhances corporate financial success. And they hold that diversity in task groups enhances their effectiveness. Abundant findings have accumulated on both of these questions – more than 140 studies of corporate boards and more than 100 studies of sociodemographic diversity in task groups. Both sets of studies have produced mixed outcomes. Some studies show positive associations of diversity to these outcomes, and some show negative associations. Social scientists use meta analyzes to integrate such findings across the relevant studies. Meta analyzes represent all the available studies on a particular topic by quantitatively averaging their findings and also examining differences in studies’ results. Cherry picking is not allowed. ",1,https://theconversation.com/when-good-intentions-arent-supported-by-social-science-evidence-diversity-research-and-policy-54875,FALSE, 846,The real reason more women don’t code," Professor, Department of Computing and Information Systems, The University of Melbourne Karin Verspoor works for the University of Melbourne. She receives funding from the Australian Research Council, the Defence Science and Technology Group, and the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services. She is affiliated with Victorian ICT for Women and is a volunteer for the upcoming Go Girl, Go for IT event aimed at high school girls. University of Melbourne provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation AU. View all partnersI menstruate and I code. I share this perhaps shocking personal information in the interest of full disclosure, and in solidarity with a new satirical campaign from Girls Who Code. The campaign proposes a simple explanation for the low numbers of women in tech: that our hormonal cycles interfere with our ability to code. Other explanations offered up in the campaign include that women can’t code because their boobs get in the way or their long eyelashes make it hard to see the screen. These explanations are obviously ridiculous and therein lies the point. For example, if women can’t code because they menstruate, then there isn’t much we can do. After all, menstruating is part of our basic female biology. If it prevents us from concentrating, or thinking rationally, or coding … what hope do we have?According to the Australian Computer Society’s recent figures, only 28% of all ICT jobs are held by women in Australia. The proportion is even lower for specifically technical roles in ICT. So there is certainly a basis for wondering whether there is a fundamental reason that women are so underrepresented in IT and computing roles. But I’m not convinced that the latest campaign from Girls Who Code is asking the right question. “Why can’t girls code?” is a question that starts from the assumption “girls can’t code”. Is this really the prevailing attitude? There is, certainly, evidence that boys favour other boys when estimating the performance of their peers in science class. There is also evidence specifically from the open source software community that there is bias against accepting code produced by women, despite the overall high quality of their contributions. Anecdotally, most technical women can share a story of a situation where their work wasn’t taken seriously. Dr Maria Milosavljevic, national manager innovation & technology and chief information officer at the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre , told me how when she was the only girl in a year 12 computer science class, every boy in the class offered to “help” her with her assignments because they assumed she would need their help. The implication seems to be that if boys don’t accept that girls can code, then girls can’t code. To me, that’s horribly paternalistic. Worse yet is the idea that female biology is not suited to coding, an idea that was recently floated citing a 1999 study of 15 people that identified brain differences between men and women. Surely, there are biological differences between men and women. Periods, brain structure and so on must exclusively determine what women enjoy doing and what we are good at. Right?!Let’s start from the default assumption that girls can, in fact, code. Nothing in our biology prevents us from being able to learn how to code. There are plenty of examples that this is the case – after all, the proportion of women in technical roles is not 0%. And there have been some very high profile female computer scientists. They include: arguably the first computer programmer, Ada Lovelace ; the developer of the early COBOL programming language, Grace Hopper; her syster’s keeper Anita Borg; and Google’s first female engineer, now Yahoo’s CEO, Marissa Mayer. Here in Australia, Kay Thorne was one of the early programmers of the CSIRAC computer nearly 60 years ago. ",1,https://theconversation.com/the-real-reason-more-women-dont-code-59663,FALSE, 848,"Where are the women scientists, tech gurus and engineers in our films?"," Hon Research Fellow in Poetry and Theatre studies, The University of Western Australia Vivienne Glance is an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia, and a member of MEAA, Australian Writers Guild and the Greens. University of Western Australia provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation AU. View all partnersPerennial stories about the lack of women working in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics often revolve around why women are not studying these subjects, and when they do, why they don’t make their careers in these areas. The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in the Media asks a different question. Are women not working in science because there are very few women portrayed in films and on TV who are working in science?Academy Award winning actress, Geena Davis, founded the institute that bears her name to educate, advocate and influence the media and entertainment industry to encourage more diverse representations of women and girls. Over the past eight years it has provided quantitative research that exposes the unconscious gender biases in casting, screen writing and story telling. The institute has teamed up with Google to use their machine learning technology – along with the University of Southern California’s audio visual processing technologies, called GD IQ – to analyze the content of films. GD IQ automates the analysis of media content with greater precision than the human eye and can process vast amounts of data quickly. At the Equity Foundation’s Gender on the Agenda Summit held in Melbourne this week, the institute’s CEO, Madeline Di Nonno outlined some recent research findings. The institute reviewed the top grossing, non animated films of 2014 and 2015 as reported by Variety, the US published film and TV magazine. Only 17% had female leads. Male characters dominated the screen – as the main figure in the camera shot – almost twice as much as women . When a film had a male lead, men dominated the screen thrice as much as women . In films where the lead character was a woman, men still had slightly more screen time than women . When looking at speaking time for both genders, results were similar – but in male led films the gap was even greater. In films with a male lead, men spoke 33. 1% of the time while women spoke less than 10%. Further research across the same time period shows a stark lack of women characters in STEM jobs. Looking at family films, characters in STEM careers were 83. 8% male. Breaking down the figures, women were shown in life and physical sciences more often than men but in computer science, maths and in engineering just 7. 7% of those characters were women. In prime time TV programs, no women were shown in engineering, at all. Communicating science and technology to a non specialist audience is difficult enough. My research into the dramaturgy of science in performance shows approaches that can be taken to aid translating technical language and practices into accessible stories. The issue of gender in the stories we tell ourselves about science adds another layer of complexity. However, if we agree that young women and girls are influenced by the way women are depicted in film and TV, then the way women are depicted in the work place will have an effect on their career choices. Showing female characters in prestigious occupations, such as leading a team of science researchers, managing or designing major engineering projects, or applying complex mathematics to real life problems, will help build their aspirations and ambitions in these important STEM areas. The argument usually given by studios in casting men as leads is that films featuring women are not good at the box office. However, the institute’s research shows that films with lead female characters grossed 15. 8% more on average than those led by men. ",1,https://theconversation.com/where-are-the-women-scientists-tech-gurus-and-engineers-in-our-films-70032,FALSE, 849,"By excluding Hannah Mouncey, the AFL’s inclusion policy has failed a key test"," Hannah Mouncey is a transgender female who wants to play in the Australian Football League’s women’s competition . Virtually every Australian jurisdiction says an attempt to stop her doing so would amount to discrimination. But instead of taking an inclusion based, “unless there are compelling reasons not to” approach, the AFL waited until the day before the AFLW draft to announce that Mouncey was ineligible to be selected. The decision to exclude Mouncey may well breach anti discrimination law and certainly contradicts the AFL’s public position of embracing diversity and inclusivity. In its announcement this week, the AFL claimed to have been “guided by” the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission’s guidelines on trans and gender diverse inclusion in sport. Victoria’s Equal Opportunity Act says sporting bodies must not discriminate against another person by excluding them from participating in a sporting activity. But, it also provides an exception that allows organizations to exclude a person if their “strength, stamina or physique is relevant”. The AFL has relied on this provision to block Mouncey’s right to play. It said its subcommittee had:… carefully considered all the information provided by Hannah, as well as the available data on transgender strength, stamina, and physique along with the specific nature of the AFL competition. The AFL was careful not to say what information Mouncey provided and did not specify what the “available data” were or where they could be sourced. The AFL also did not go into detail about how her strength, stamina or physique were relevant. Presumably, it relates to Mouncey being 190cm tall and weighing 100kg. But Mouncey has been legally and medically cleared to play handball by its governing body, and her doctors also provided evidence to support her case for inclusion in the AFLW. There’s no doubt Mouncey’s physique is imposing. But, in women’s sport, she will be in good company. There are many examples of non transgender women in Australian national teams who are of a similar stature and strength, such as basketballer Liz Cambage . Anyone who has ever played a collision sport like AFL knows how hard it is to push a big player around, whether they are strong or not. The same goes for strong players of any size. You have to learn to deal with them in other ways, and the good players learn those techniques. And the AFLW is the elite level. It is not clear how Mouncey’s “stamina” has been measured, or why or how the AFL regards it as significant. AFL is played on the wide open space of an oval. The smaller, fitter women will run rings around Mouncey. The subcommittee said its decision was also based on “the stage of maturity of the AFLW competition”. One can only speculate on what that means, particularly where the AFL has encouraged Mouncey to reapply again next year. It may suggest the AFLW players are not yet at a sufficient level of “strength, stamina or physique” to be able to play with or against Mouncey. But, apart from being condescending and insulting to the current AFLW players, this statement also contradicts Mouncey being given permission to continue to play locally. She has been cleared to play in Canberra’s AFL women’s competition, which is arguably of a lesser standard than the AFLW. No one, including the AFL, is suggesting that Mouncey’s decision to transition to a woman is in any way motivated by an intention to play women’s sport. The AFL’s concern instead is expressed as a belief that she would have had an unreasonable physical advantage. ",1,https://theconversation.com/by-excluding-hannah-mouncey-the-afls-inclusion-policy-has-failed-a-key-test-85900,FALSE, 850,"Why can’t a man think like a woman, and a woman think like a man?","Men and women may feel like they differ on much more than just the possession or not of a Y chromosome. How we react emotionally to a situation, remember events and navigate our way around the environment has also been shown to differ between genders. Gender differences in some of our physical features can be easily determined, aside from just the obvious differences in terms of genitals. A skeleton can be identified as male or female based on the shape of the pelvis, skull and sternum. Whether our brains differ structurally is a hot topic in neuroscience. Recently, a neuroimaging study suggested that female brains are functionally more suited to social skills including language, memory and multi tasking, while men are hard wired to be better at perception and co ordinated movement. But are these abilities innate to our gender, or are they influenced by the environment? Are these studies subject to gender biases themselves? During fetal development, male and female embryos start off the same. This is why we all have nipples! But the presence of different hormones such as oestrogen and testosterone during gestation causes physical differences to start to arise – for example guiding the formation of ovaries or testes. Exposure to different cocktails of hormones as a fetus may change how the brain develops. A group of Cambridge scientists led by Simon Baron Cohen suggested that men are, on average, better at analytical tasks, whereas women are better at empathising and emotional processing. These traits were linked with testosterone levels during development. Baron Cohen analyzed foetal testosterone levels from amniotic fluid samples of their mothers. In later life they measured the children’s empathising or systemising abilities. He found lower levels of testosterone were correlated with greater empathy during childhood development. This supports the idea that women are better at empathising and detecting emotion than men. Male brains are, on average, 10% larger than females . But some scientists say that a large brain is not simply a smaller brain scaled up. A larger brain means more distance, which can slow the transmission of information down. So differences in structural connections and arrangement may reflect wiring adaptations of larger brains. A group of researchers found regional size differences of male and female brains, which may balance out the overall size difference. In females, parts of the frontal lobe, responsible for problem solving and decision making, and the limbic cortex, responsible for controlling emotions, were larger. In men, the parietal cortex, which is involved in space perception, and the amygdala, which regulates emotion and motivation, particularly those related to survival, were larger. But experiences change our brain. So are these differences due to the brain adapting to demands – in the way a muscle increases in size with extra use? Some scientists disagree completely that male and female brains differ structurally. Neuroscientist Prof Gina Rippon, of Aston University, Birmingham says that differences in male and female brains are caused entirely by environmental factors and are not hard wired at birth. The gender specific toys children play with for example dolls for girls and cars for boys – could be changing how their brains develop. Many toys aimed at boys involve physical skills and logic, whereas many girl aimed toys involve nurturing behaviours and socialising. These kinds of gender specific toys and encouraging only gender specific play could limit potential in both sexes. This has recently lead to companies developing more gender neutral toys that can aid the development of balanced skills in children. ",1,https://theconversation.com/why-cant-a-man-think-like-a-woman-and-a-woman-think-like-a-man-24663,TRUE, 852,"In families with same-sex parents, the kids are all right","A central argument made against same sex marriage is that children born into these marriages will be disadvantaged: they will grow up with inappropriate gender role modelling, be bullied at school and suffer poorer emotional well being than their peers. Same sex attracted people may come to parenthood in many ways – though former heterosexual relationships, as a foster parent or a step parent. Increasingly, lesbian couples and single women are forming families using known sperm donors or a clinic sourced anonymous donor. Male couples are also increasingly turning to egg donation and surrogacy services to become parents. The 2011 Australian Census counted 33,714 same sex couples. Around 4,000 of these couples had dependent children living with them. But this is likely to be an under representation, as not all same sex attracted people declare their relationship in the census and single parents who identify as same sex attracted would not be identified. In the United States, of the 594,000 same sex couple households in 2011, 115,000 reported having children. People may not agree with gay marriage on moral or religious grounds. But the argument that it harms children does not stack up against current evidence. In 2010, American researchers published results from a meta analysis of 33 studies comparing the well being of children raised by opposite sex couples with children raised by same sex couples. This study found no evidence that children raised by same sex parents fared any worse than other children on a range of behavioural, educational, emotional or social outcomes. The researchers also concluded there was no evidence that children raised by a single parent or same sex couples were less competent or well rounded than other children. If anything, studies of single parent families show these men and women are more flexible in their parenting styles than they are given credit for. Men are capable of gentle, nurturing parenting. Women are capable of setting rules and boundaries for children, while also teaching them football. Political concerns about lesbians’ access to fertility services means the well being of donor conceived children has entered debates about same sex marriage and parenting. In 2013, the story of Narelle Grech, a young Australian woman who had been diagnosed with terminal cancer, hit the news media. Grech was donor conceived and desperately wanted to meet her biological father before she died. Grech’s story made a powerful statement about the importance of donor conceived children having the option to know their genetic heritage. But media reports often gave the impression that every donor conceived child was searching sadly for their genetic parent. This is not the case. Some donor conceived children are highly driven to meet donor parents, some are curious and others aren’t interested. There is no evidence that donor conception causes children emotional or social damage. A 2008 study by the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network in the United States found many children raised by same sex parents had experienced or witnessed some form of homophobic harassment at school. But more commonly, young people reported feeling excluded or isolated because schools did not acknowledge their family makeup. In some cases, staff actively discouraged students from speaking about their families due to a misguided concern that this amounted to talking about sex or sexuality in the classroom. ",1,https://theconversation.com/in-families-with-same-sex-parents-the-kids-are-all-right-42605,TRUE, 853,"Engineers don’t just build things, they can help save the world","Engineers like to claim their primacy as problem solvers. But while this ability will always be critical for engineers, there is more to engineering than just solving problems. Engineering careers have become highly diverse over the past 50 years. They are now tackling complex social issues such as poverty, inequality, disaster recovery or climate change. Their work is in mega cities and small towns, remote communities and in both high and low income countries. But universities still need to catch up with this new reality. A mission to improve the living conditions of the least privileged citizens of the world – in Australia and overseas – seems to be almost entirely absent from engineering education in Australia. Serious engagement with the bigger social challenges, locally and globally, might be just what some highly motivated students are missing in this field. It could be one of the reasons why some potential students, especially women, choose to avoid engineering as a career option. Some disciplines, such as biomedical engineering, have clearly articulated their links to enhancing human lives and, at the University of Sydney at least, do attract many female students. But that’s not the case in other areas of engineering study, where the proportion of female students is as low as 14%, despite women making up about 55% of all undergraduate students in Australia. Engineering educators should make sure that students understand that, as future engineers, they can go beyond just learning how to design and build things. We need them to understand that engineering is also about dealing with issues of public interest. We need to attract students interested in problems such as those faced by people living in slums in Manila, refugee camps in Jordan and remote communities in Australia. For this to happen, engineering teaching should include more content addressing such issues, including topics that have been traditionally in the domain of social sciences. Ideally, engineering degrees should give students who are interested in these issues the opportunity to directly learn from people living in these areas by interacting with them. Such experience should include project based work directly connected to theoretical content provided in the classroom. We need to avoid two types of risks when developing new formats of engineering education with global social issues at their heart. First, the curriculum should not be framed as “engineering for poor people who cannot help themselves”. A survey commissioned by the University of Sydney showed that words such as “humanitarian engineering” resonate well with Australian students. But they are less attractive to international students, many of whom understand the conditions in developing countries first hand. A student from India might be interested in more contextually relevant education for work in her home country but would not necessarily consider work in India as “humanitarian”. It is important that a curriculum tackling global challenges that are of concern to many nationalities should not simply reflect a first world view of world affairs. ",1,https://theconversation.com/engineers-dont-just-build-things-they-can-help-save-the-world-49814,FALSE, 854,The evidence is in: greater gender diversity in science benefits us all,"The World Economic Forum estimated last year that at the current slow rate of progress, it will take until 2133 to close the global gender gap across health, education, economic opportunity and politics. We clearly need to take greater measures to close the gap. And, fittingly, the theme of this year’s International Women’s Day, celebrated today, is: Pledge for Parity. It’s a call to action that the scientific community should heed. That female scientists are underrepresented at a senior level is now well recognized; despite the fact that women comprise more than half of PhD science graduates, in Australia female academics hold only 17% of senior positions. The story is similar in the corporate sphere: the 2015 Male Champions of Change progress report found that only three in 29 affiliated major organizations – Ten Network, the Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade, and Qantas – achieved minimum gender parity goals in key management positions. Beyond the ordinary challenges for women in the workforce, female scientists face specific difficulties, especially in a cut throat funding environment. The years of intensive research required to establish an independent research career as a laboratory leader coincides inconveniently with the period during which people tend to start families. In addition, grant success hinges on a productive publication record, which adds difficulty for women who have taken career breaks to have children. A 2014 report from the Office of the Chief Scientist found that women “continue to leave STEM in unacceptably high numbers at secondary, tertiary and early career level”. Unquestionably, the lack of women in senior roles is an unfortunate waste of expertise and investment. But gender imbalance should be an issue that concerns the majority, because it’s the majority who benefit from diversity in the workplace and laboratory. Research suggests that institutional performance is positively associated with gender balance. For example, a 2012 Credit Suisse study of 2,360 companies globally found that those with at least one woman on the board outperformed companies without any female board members by 26% over six years. Another study that looked at the gender composition of management teams in S&P 1,500 companies found that women in top management positions were associated with “an increase of US$42 million in firm value. ” The same study found that companies that prioritized innovation saw greater financial gains with female managerial representation. Racial diversity has similar benefits for innovation: a study of 177 US banks found that in banks with an innovation focussed business strategy, a racially diverse workforce was related to enhanced financial performance. Diversity in science also has benefits for researchers. A study of the authors of 2. 5 million scientific papers found that publications authored by ethnically diverse groups of researchers receive more citations than do papers written by researchers of a single ethnic group. When authors with similar publication histories were compared, homophily – sticking with one’s own – was associated with lower impact papers. In terms of female underrepresentation at senior levels, a lack of role models is often cited as a reason for the attrition of female scientists. Successful women in senior positions provide crucial guidance as mentors and role models, and are also key to challenging the stereotype that science is masculine. The more schemes that promote female researchers, such as the Australian Research Council’s special female Laureate Fellowships, or the inaugural United Nations International Day of Women and Girls in Science, just passed, the greater the benefit. ",1,https://theconversation.com/the-evidence-is-in-greater-gender-diversity-in-science-benefits-us-all-55643,FALSE, 855,Searching for diversity in Silicon Valley tech firms – and finding some,"Silicon Valley technology firms have had serious problems with demographic diversity, including accusations of hostile climates toward women and minority employees. A new analysis of company level employment data I helped conduct finds, however, that some firms seem to have figured out how to create more diverse workplaces. A 2016 report from the U. S. Equal Opportunity Employment Commission, for example, concluded that the technology industry has a problem recruiting and retaining women of all races, as well as black and Hispanic men. And a 2017 report documented that while people of Asian descent were a large proportion of technology workers, their representation in management and executive positions lagged behind that of white men and white women. That suggested a glass ceiling prevented Asian workers from moving up corporate ladders. Recent research from the University of Massachusetts–Amherst’s Center for Employment Equity, where I am the director, analyzed employment data for the 177 largest Silicon Valley technology firms; included in the sampling frame were headline making firms such as Airbnb, Cisco, Facebook, Google and Uber. We confirmed that there is a diversity problem in Silicon Valley, although we also found firms that are doing better than their peers. There are two common explanations offered for the technology industry’s diversity problem. The first is that there are relatively few diverse applicants in educational and professional pipelines. The second reason, observed by industry critics, is that technology firms aren’t welcoming for anyone other than white men. For instance, two thirds of all women and three quarters of black women in the industry reported having to prove themselves over and over again to managers and co workers. Additionally, most women reported backlash from co workers and managers when they did not conform to female stereotypes. Further, a recent report on people who leave tech firms shows that unfair, disrespectful and stereotype infused treatment is widespread and an expensive source of female and minority turnover for technology firms. Both explanations suggest that the problems are the same for every firm. That seemed improbable to us: Companies differ in many ways, and we reasoned that this must be the case in managing diversity as well. In our study we looked at employee data firms supplied to the federal government about the gender and ethnic backgrounds of people working at different levels throughout the company, from entry level to top executive. We focused on the 177 largest firms in the region, but also developed a comparison to 1,277 smaller Silicon Valley area tech workplaces. What we found confirmed our suspicions that each company is different – despite the overall diversity problem in large Silicon Valley technology firms. In most of the top 177 firms we analyzed, there were few women in technical jobs and even fewer in top executive positions. Black and Hispanic men and women were rare, and were nearly entirely absent from managerial and executive jobs. Asian men and women were common in technical jobs, but rare in leadership positions. These largest firms have more black men and women than the 1,277 smaller firms – but fewer Asian men and women, and more white men. In contrast, we found that in 7 percent of these 177 largest Silicon Valley technology firms, most of the employees are women. In a handful of companies, black and Hispanic men and women make up more than 5 percent of the professional workforce, and more than 5 percent of management – which is four times their proportion in the local workforce. And though there are firms with no Asian men or women in management, there are also firms in which more than 20 percent of managers are Asian men and women. ",1,https://theconversation.com/searching-for-diversity-in-silicon-valley-tech-firms-and-finding-some-96176,FALSE, 856,Sex and gender diversity is growing across the US,"Hallquist, a transgender woman from Vermont, in 2018 made history as the first openly trans person to ever win the nomination of a major political party for governor. Sex and gender diverse people were once only able to be their authentic selves in gay and lesbian spaces. Today, from Danica Roem in Virginia to Betsy Driver in New Jersey to Hallquist in Vermont, they are running and winning major political posts throughout the United States. While it might be a surprising to see sex and gender diverse candidates run and win in political elections, with sex and gender diversity growing across the United States, this is likely only the beginning. More people of all ages are identifying as something other than male or female. According to the Williams Institute at UCLA, which studies sexual orientation and gender identity law and public policy, the percentage of trans adults an umbrella term used to describe those whose gender does not match with the sex they were assigned at birth has doubled in the last 10 years from 0. 3 percent to 0. 6 percent. In 2006, a survey discovered that 1. 2 percent of Boston high school students identified as trans. And in a recent issue of the journal Pediatrics, researchers showed that 2. 7 percent of Minnesota’s youth identify as trans and gender nonconforming. Similar to trans, gender nonconforming describes those who reject gender expectations that assume only females can do femininity while only males can do masculinity. I’m a sociologist and for more than 10 years, I have been studying sex and gender diverse people in the United States. I’ve witnessed researchers analyze everything from brain differences to the hormones a fetus is exposed to during gestation to explain the growth of sex and gender diversity. Looking to human anatomy and physiology alone is inadequate in explaining the demographic sex and gender changes that are rapidly occurring throughout our society. Does culture also play a role? Historical accounts of sex and gender diverse people date as far back as the 18th and 19th centuries in the U. S. and elsewhere. But why is it that we are now witnessing a growth in the percentage of people publicly identifying as sex and gender diverse? Did human anatomy and physiology change overnight? Or is it that people are now more comfortable rejecting the simplicity of “We’re all just male or female”?What the rising statistics likely reveal is that thanks to activists and their allies across various movements, more people, especially millennials, are now aware that people are more complex than male or female. And they are embracing this complexity by not only choosing sex and gender diversity for themselves, but by also sharing their life experiences in stories across print media and on television. Activists are organizing in the streets and fighting in the courtroom for rights. This is not recent news: For example, earlier generations of activists demonstrated against police brutality in the 1960s in what is now known as the Stonewall Riots. But the activism has accelerated and spread. Pride celebrations seem to be everywhere these days. And in the courtroom, transgender teenager Gavin Grimm is currently in the middle of a lawsuit against his Virginia high school that wouldn’t allow him to use the boy’s bathroom. That suit has raised Grimm’s profile and put him at the “center of the national debate,” according to The Washington Post. This activism lets the public know there is life beyond male or female. People now have customizable sex and genders to choose from on everything from Facebook to the dating site OkCupid. On OkCupid, one can identify as male, female, transgender, nonbinary, genderfluid or genderqueer, or choose up to five categories from many other options. ",1,https://theconversation.com/sex-and-gender-diversity-is-growing-across-the-us-98610,TRUE, 857,Australian sex education isn’t diverse enough. Here’s why we should follow England’s lead,"How children are taught about sex, relationships and sexuality at school is shaping up to be a political hot potato in Australia . It’s already been slated to be an issue in the Victorian state elections later this year. That’s just a short time from being on the agenda during the same sex marriage debate. Now a radical shift in how children in England are taught about sex, relationships and sexuality promises to be the biggest reform of its kind in nearly 20 years . Here’s what Australia can learn from the new English system, which proposes mandatory sex and relationships education across primary and secondary schools, inclusive of diversity, with age appropriate content. There is, however, a clause to allow parents to withdraw their children from these classes, and for faith based schools to continue to teach according to the tenets of their faith. Read more: Sex education gets a revamp but parents still allowed to opt kids out Current English guidelines on sex education in schools, introduced in 2000, present heterosexuality as the “norm” of human sexuality, and explicitly restricts the “promotion” of diverse sexual orientations. But the new guidelines are presented in a framework of equality and inclusion, with more balanced views of sexual and gender diversity. They have a particular emphasis on healthy relationships; safely navigating the online environment, including sexting, pornography, sexual harassment, and bullying; and will be LGBTIQ inclusive, aiming to prepare young people for their future relationships. So, the proposed changes provide an opportunity to transform the experiences of young same sex attracted and gender diverse young people at school. For the first time sexual diversity and issues relevant to LGBTIQ young people will be addressed in the curriculum explicitly. Read more: Bullying linked to gender and sexuality often goes unchecked in schools These reforms also mirror change in other western European countries , where sex, sexuality and relationships education has become much more inclusive of diversity. Together, these more progressive approaches acknowledge that, at the core of our identities are our sexual orientation, gender identity and the relationships we establish throughout our lives. In Australia, the approach is less progressive. Sex and sexuality education continues to raise anger from more conservative elements of the community. The public criticism of the Safe Schools program resulted in a fragmentation of sex education in Australia. Read more: FactCheck: does the Safe Schools program contain highly explicit material? And as the marriage equality debate in Australia unfolded, conservative political, academic, policy, religious and media commentators tried to hijack the public debate about the Safe Schools program. While marriage equality was seen as inevitable in Australia, there was less of a flavour for sexuality and gender education in Australian schools. The Safe Schools program was designed and originally implemented in Victoria, and later rolled out to all of the states and territories. It was designed to fill the gap in inclusive sex education. While sex education is addressed in the Australian Curriculum, and each of the state and territory versions of the curriculum, it’s only explicitly mentioned as part of health and physical education. So sex education is largely dealt with in biological terms ; healthy relationships are expressed in vague terms; and references to sexual orientation and gender identity are just as vague. ",1,https://theconversation.com/australian-sex-education-isnt-diverse-enough-heres-why-we-should-follow-englands-lead-100596,TRUE, 858,On gender diversity in Indonesia,"Indonesian people often perceive gender and sexuality in a binary way – male and female, masculine and feminine – without considering other genders and sexuality. Heterosexuality is deemed as the “normal” sexual orientation, if not compulsory. Homosexuality and bisexuality are considered unacceptable. Hence, the massive recent onslaught against LGBT people is not surprising, particularly in the media. However, people should understand that gender and sexual diversity are inherent in Indonesian societies. Culturally, Indonesians have recognized sexual and gender diversity as part of their daily lives. Indonesia has a rich history of homosexuality and transgenders. This fact contradicts the common belief that they are Western imports. It is time that people stopped considering homosexuality and transgender as products of Western culture. Indonesia’s culture has long been accustomed to gender diversity before colonialism and modernity exerted their strong influence in the society. Let’s take a look at the Bugis people in South Sulawesi with their gender flexibility. Since the pre Islamic era, the Bugis people have recognized five genders. They divide the society into man , woman , male woman , female man and androgynous priest . Similarly, in the same province, Torajan people also recognized a third gender, or to burake tambolang. Anthropologist Hetty Nooy Palm said the Torajan people believed the most important religious leaders in their culture are a woman, or burake tattiku, and a man dressed as a woman, or burake tambolang. In the past, transgender religious leaders in both Toraja and Bugis played important roles in their communities. Bissu and to burake led spiritual ceremonies or harvest rituals in villages. The people would admire and honour a village with a to burake. Unfortunately, this tradition has diminished due to modern values and education brought by colonialism. Same sex practices have also long existed in Indonesia. Some tribes in the southeast of Papua – similar to tribes in the eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea – practiced “ritualized homosexuality”. This practice required young men to perform oral sex on elder males as part of their rites of passage to manhood. They believed that semen was the source of life and the essence of masculinity, important for boys to become real men. In East Java, the traditional dance performance Reog Ponorogo depicts intimate relationships between two characters, warok and gemblak. The main male dancer, or warok, must follow strict physical and spiritual rules and rituals. Under these rules, a warok was prohibited from engaging in a sexual relationship with a woman. But he was allowed to have intimate relationships with young boys’ characters, or gemblak, in the performance. Although warok and gemblak were engaged in same sex acts, they did not identify themselves as homosexuals. Nowadays, women have begun to play the gemblak character. In other Javanese traditional drama performances like ludruk and wayang orang, a man playing a woman’s character or vice versa is not unusual. These rich and intricate traditions of gender diversity in Indonesia have diminished due to colonialism. Colonialism redefined the concepts of gender and sexuality according to modern religions and values. Modern religions strongly emphasize heterosexuality within marriage. Sex is considered a moral issue, so sex that happens outside marriage or between a non heterosexual couple is immoral. ",1,https://theconversation.com/on-gender-diversity-in-indonesia-101087,FALSE, 859,God made the rainbow: why the Bible welcomes a gender spectrum,"This article is part of a series exploring gender and Christianity “God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” is a line I’ve heard more than once in Christian circles. The Bible is often evoked to support so called traditional views about gender. That is, there are only two binary genders and that is the way God intended it. But is this really the case? Claims about gender in the Bible usually begin with the creation narratives. But the Adam and Eve story is also not as straightforward as it might appear when it comes to gender, namely because in English, we miss the Hebrew wordplay. Adam is not a proper name in Hebrew, but rather the transliteration into English of a Hebrew word a d m. Using the imagery of God as potter, “the adam” is a humanoid being created out of the adamah . Read more: On gender and sexuality, Scott Morrisons blind spot may come from reading the Bible too literally Biblical scholar Meg Warner writes we might best translate this person as “earth creature”. The first human appears genderless. In fact, gender roles are only introduced into the story when a counterpart is made for the earthling, when this human being is separated into two. At that point, they both become gendered: “Eve” is called woman taken from the man’s rib. Some Christians have read a gender hierarchy into this text as Eve is called a helper – or “helpmate” in the old English versions – for Adam. This term, “helper”, does not indicate a subordinate status. It is a word frequently applied to God in the Bible, and so without any sense of inferiority. There’s no doubt traditional male female gender roles are common in the Bible. After all, this is an ancient text that reflects the values of the societies from which it emerged. In these societies, masculinity was the ideal and polygamy not uncommon. This makes it all the more astonishing there are moments of gender subversion and gender diversity found within the Bible’s pages. Another creation story is found in the very first chapter of Genesis 1. It states: God created the human in God’s image, in the image of God s/he created him; male and female God created them. At first glance, this might seem obvious: God made two different, discrete sexes. But if we look at this line in its context, we see this creation account follows a poetic structure made up of a series of binaries that indicate the breadth of God’s creation: light and dark, seas and dry land, land creatures and sea creatures. In the structure of the Genesis poem, these binaries are not discrete categories, but indications of a spectrum. Read more: To Christians arguing no on marriage equality: the Bible is not decisive The sea and dry land merge on tidal plains. Some animals inhabit both land and sea. Darkness and light meet in the in between spaces of dusk and dawn. God didn’t create night or day, but night and day, inclusive of everything in between. If we apply this same poetic logic to humanity, a case can be made for sex and gender diversity built into the very fabric of creation. A creative diversity categorically called “good” by God. Queer and feminist scholars have highlighted other moments of gender subversion in the biblical text. For instance, Jacob is “smooth” and “stays in the tent” – traditional female attributes in the ancient world. Yet he is chosen over his hairy, hunter brother to lead God’s people. Rabbi Jay Michaelson describes Jacob as “gender non conforming”. ",1,https://theconversation.com/god-made-the-rainbow-why-the-bible-welcomes-a-gender-spectrum-126201,FALSE, 860,Trans Day of Visibility offers chance for community to stand in solidarity and support,"Visibility within the transgender community is often a Catch 22, especially for trans people of color, or those living in rural, conservative areas. Hiding one’s identity can be a damaging experience and increase feelings of isolation, stigma and shame. But standing out as a trans person can make someone a target for discrimination or violence. As a trans man who studies transgender health and well being, I believe Trans Day of Visibility – celebrated annually on March 31 – is an important day that allows community members to come together and find support and solidarity by knowing they are not alone. Trans Day of Visibility acknowledges the contributions made by people within the transgender, nonbinary and gender diverse communities . TDOV has been marked annually since 2009. Before then, the only day of recognition the trans community had was Transgender Day of Remembrance – a day of mourning held on Nov. 20 to commemorate trans people who have died in the previous year. Trans Day of Visibility, then, is an attempt, as the trans community puts it, to “give us our roses while we’re still here. ”Rachel Crandall, a transgender activist from Michigan, organized the first Trans Day of Visibility. By 2014, the day was being celebrated internationally. In 2015, I along with other local trans activists in Omaha, Nebraska, hosted the first of several annual events for our local community. It featured panels, Q&As and support groups for family members, trans people themselves and cisgender, or cis, people – which refers to people who identify with the sex they were assigned at birth – who wanted to learn how to be better allies to the trans community. Some of us wore T shirts that said “Ask Me I’m Trans” on the day of the event to facilitate dialogue between the trans and cis communities. Visibility as a transgender person is not a one size fits all approach for people within the trans community. Some people may embrace visibility while others, for comfort, safety or other deeply personal reasons, may not feel comfortable being visibly trans. After all, threats of violence within the trans community are not uniformly distributed. Trans women of color are most at risk, as they often face multiple forms of discrimination including transphobia, racism, classism, misogyny and misogynoir – the unique misogyny that Black women face. Because of job discrimination, roughly 20% of trans people engage in the underground economy, including commercial sex work, and may confront additional transphobic discrimination as a result of their work. Trans Day of Visibility is an attempt to break these cycles of violence and discrimination against trans people. To say this past year has been difficult for the trans community would be an understatement. During this period, trans people have been largely unable to provide in person support to one another, and those who have had physical changes can’t fully celebrate those changes with friends. Furthermore, the past year has seen an escalation in legislation that targets trans people with sports bans and attempts to limit access to health care. Over 20 states introduced at least one anti trans bill in 2020. That kind of coordinated policy campaign against a very small community – estimated to be less than 1% of the U. S. population – sends a very specific message to the trans community that we are not welcome. ",1,https://theconversation.com/trans-day-of-visibility-offers-chance-for-community-to-stand-in-solidarity-and-support-157213,FALSE, 862,What are gender pronouns and why is it important to use the right ones?," Senior Lecturer in Psychology. Clinical Psychologist, Victoria University Glen Hosking does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. Victoria University provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU. View all partnersGender pronouns are the terms people choose to refer to themselves that reflect their gender identity. These might be he/him, she/her or gender neutral pronouns such as they/them. Knowing and using a person’s correct pronouns fosters inclusion, makes people feel respected and valued, and affirms their gender identity. While people may use the terms sex and gender interchangeably, they mean different things. Sex refers to the physical differences between people who are female, male, or intersex. A person typically has their sex assigned at birth based on physiological characteristics, including their genitalia and chromosome composition. This is distinct from gender, which is a social construct and reflects the social and cultural role of sex within a given community. People often develop their gender identity and gender expression in response to their environment. While gender has been defined as binary in Western culture, gender is on a broad spectrum; a person may identify at any point within this spectrum or outside of it entirely. Gender is not neatly divided along the binary lines of “man” and “woman”. Read more: The difference between sex and gender, and why both matter in health research People may identify with genders that are different from sex assigned at birth, some people do not identify with any gender, while others identify with multiple genders. These identities may include transgender, nonbinary, or gender neutral. Only the person themself can determine what their gender identity is, and this can change over time. People who identify outside of a gender binary most often use non gendered or nonbinary pronouns that are not gender specific. These include they/them/their used in the singular, ze in place of she/he, and hir in place of his/him/her. Everyone has the right to use the gender pronouns that match their personal identity. These pronouns may or may not match their gender expression, such as how the person dresses, looks, behaves or what their name is. It’s important people, workplaces and organizations support people’s use of self identified first names, in place of legal names given at birth, and self identified pronouns, in place of assumed pronouns based on sex assigned at birth or other’s perceptions of physical appearance. Being misgendered and/or misnamed may leave the person feeling disrespected, invalidated and dismissed. This can be distressing and threaten the person’s mental health. Transgender and non binary people are twice as likely to have suicidal thoughts than the general population, and are up to four times as likely to engage in risky substance use. Read more: Almost half of trans young people try to end their lives. How can we reduce this alarming statistic? Conversely, using correct pronouns and names reduces depression and suicide risks. Studies have found that when compared with peers who could not use their chosen name and pronoun, young people who could experienced 71% fewer symptoms of severe depression, a 34% decrease in reported thoughts of suicide and a 65% decrease in suicide attempts. The following tips might help you better understand gender pronouns and how you can affirm someone’s gender identity: 1. Don’t assume another person’s gender or gender pronounsYou can’t always know what someone’s gender pronouns are by looking at them, by their name, or by how they dress or behave. ",1,https://theconversation.com/what-are-gender-pronouns-and-why-is-it-important-to-use-the-right-ones-169025,FALSE, 863,Transgender and gender diverse teens: How to talk to and support them,"Transgender youth have been around long before the word transgender has. Yet today, transgender teens are increasingly visible in society. For parents and caregivers, knowing how to talk to their children about gender can present a steep learning curve. The Conversation U. S. on Oct. 21, 2021, hosted contributors Jules Gill Peterson, an associate professor of history at Johns Hopkins University, and Dr. Kacie Kidd, medical director of the pediatric Gender and Sexual Development Clinic at West Virginia University Medicine Children’s Hospital, in a webinar titled “Transgender and gender diverse teens more visible than ever: Who they are, what they need and how to talk about sensitive issues. ”The speakers, who have both written articles for The Conversation, shared their expertise on gender diversity in teens and answered commonly asked questions. Below are some highlights from the discussion. Please note that answers have been edited for brevity and clarity. Transgender and gender diverse youth have become more visible than ever. How does transgender history inform us about where society is at in the United States? Jules Gill Peterson: A lot of the rhetoric around [trans] kids frames them as totally new – most people are getting to know that there are trans youth for the first time. The visibility that we’re dealing with today is pretty unprecedented. But that doesn’t mean [transgender] people themselves haven’t existed before. One of the challenges that anyone who’s trans faces is coming to an understanding of yourself in a culture that fundamentally doesn’t recognize that you exist. One of the most remarkable things about trans youth is that they’re able to stand up in this world that we’ve created, that gives them no reason to know who they are, and say, “Hey, actually, I know something about myself that none of the adults in my life know. ”I think history can be a really powerful grounding force to give young people a sense of lineage. It’s not like you look back in time and you see yourself reflected, by any means. But I think it can be profoundly reassuring, in a moment of not just political backlash but the general isolation that trans people face in a cis normative society, to be able to [see] that you’re not the first person to ever go through this. [I think] that is just kind of a powerful message and one that I certainly subscribe to as an adult too, but I can imagine it’s especially important for young people. What does “cis” mean and where does it come from? Jules Gill Peterson: This is actually a term from chemistry. It’s a prefix that you can put in front of words. So is the word “trans. ” Trans as a prefix means across – it’s the spatial metaphor moving across something. Cis means on the same side of. At some point on the internet, people started using that word; they were looking for a word to distinguish between people who are trans and people who are not. Cisgendered came to mean that your gender identity matches what was assigned at birth. That being said, it’s not a totally kind of innocent or uncomplicated term. I’m not sure how helpful it is to think of cisgender as something that people need to own up to, for example, in a pronoun circle . I think often the pressure for people to [identify] as cis doesn’t make any sense, either. It’s like, well, what makes you cisgender? Did you really go through that long process of deciding if your gender matched what’s on your birth certificate, like trans people have to deal with? I tend to use the word cis in my work to describe large historical structures that created that very obligation in the first place. ",1,https://theconversation.com/transgender-and-gender-diverse-teens-how-to-talk-to-and-support-them-170992,TRUE, 864,Students are left to fend for themselves when disability is not valued at Hopkins,"Self advocacy is an important tool that many people who require accommodations use. This is when an individual informs others how best to support them. However, I believe this should be a last resort. In a perfect world, all environments, including classrooms, would not require accommodations rather, they would be accessible for everyone from the start. This is the idea of universal design.  Everyone has needs regardless of disability, whether it be requiring the lights in a room to be on, a ramp instead of steps, access to food or breaks during testing. In universal design, no needs are seen as “extra” but are accounted for from the start. This is not always possible, which is where Student Disability Services steps in.  SDS should exist to alleviate the strain of requesting accommodations, but this is not always the case. Lack of support from the administration forces gaps into its system.  SDS requires students to do a lot of the bargaining for basic access needs on their own. This is especially true now that it has switched platforms for requesting accommodations from Accessible Information Management to Accommodate. Now, students must forward the letter approving their accommodations to their professors; in the past, this was automatically done by SDS. Many have been confused by this switch one of my friends called it “the new instruction free software. ” SDS should have devoted its energy to helping professors understand how to provide accommodations for online learning rather than to implementing a new system. Personally, I have had a much harder time getting the accommodations I need this semester than ever before. This is especially frustrating given that they have never been more important for me. I am hard of hearing, and I need recorded lectures to include captions. I have had this accommodation throughout my previous two years at Hopkins, and it has generally worked well. This semester, though, SDS has had a hard time keeping up with this request. Given that our entire system of learning has been uprooted, this is understandable to a point. I can tell that my professors feel just as lost about this process as I do. Several have come to me to ask questions about how to add captions, but I don’t know how to help them. SDS is happy to answer the questions, but this is not clear to faculty. Four weeks into the semester, my professors are still unsure how to provide access.  Sometimes, working with SDS can be a frustration on its own. If a student requires an accommodation, they may be required to tell SDS exactly what they need. This is fair, but the process can feel one sided. If an accommodation cannot be met, it is often up to the student to come up with new solutions.  Furthermore, a leader from SDS has told me they want to ensure they provide accommodations that are absolutely “necessary” and not those that are just “wanted. ” I believe that if an accommodation is wanted and would benefit the student, there is a good chance it should be included.  Just because students can survive without an accommodation does not mean they should have to. SDS would not have to restrict their resources to just those that are “most essential” if the administration valued and encouraged their work.  Since universal design is largely unavailable at Hopkins, the next best option is for SDS and the University to advocate on behalf of the student in the face of inaccessibility this is what they strive to do, even if it’s not always executed.  Once a student has demonstrated to SDS that they qualify for accommodations, SDS should then discuss with the professors how to adjust the classroom to be accessible. This is important, because many disabled people are uncomfortable speaking to professors directly because of the power imbalance inherent in a student professor relationship. Unfortunately, there is a lot of stigma associated with disability too, and some students fear being judged by professors for their accommodations.  ",3,https://www.jhunewsletter.com/article/2020/09/students-are-left-to-fend-for-themselves-when-disability-is-not-valued-at-hopkins,FALSE, 865,Study Finds Recreation Websites Lacking in Disability Inclusion," A new study published in the Journal of Kinesiology and Wellness finds the majority of college recreation programs assessed had “only minimal information for and representation and visibility of students with disabilities at their websites. ”A group of kinesiology researchers at Oregon State University Anna M. Bruning, Bradley J. Cardinal and Winston Kennedy examined 24 campus recreation websites for terminology and images inclusive of students with disabilities. The researchers found “large variability” in the use of inclusive language across the websites, “with one university continuing to use the outdated term ‘handicap. ’ Two universities accounted for nearly 40 percent of the observed frequencies of the 11 terms investigated. ”Similarly, while researchers identified 49 total inclusive images across the 24 websites, 14 of the programs “showed neither a person with a disability or a piece of adaptive equipment on their website. Of the remaining 10 programs, three accounted for nearly 60 percent of the images. When images were shown, they were more than twice as likely to show a piece of adaptive equipment than they were to show a person with a disability. ”Of the 24 campus recreation program websites examined, six had a statement specific to the recreation program relating to inclusivity of people with disabilities. “Unfortunately,” the Oregon State researchers write, “only a few programs seem to be making an active and intentional effort to promote inclusion of students with disabilities. ",3,https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2020/09/29/study-finds-recreation-websites-lacking-disability-inclusion,FALSE, 868,‘Indisposable’ Reveals the Lived Experience of Disability Through Art," The short film El Dios Acostado, from Ecuadorian American artist Alex Dolores Salerno, describes how Americans in search of health and longevity flocked to Vilcabamba in Ecuador, changing local culture and creating more pollution. The film incorporates access as part of its aesthetic, featuring captions and audio descriptions in Spanish and English.  Courtesy of Alex Dolores SalernoA Ford Foundation Gallery exhibition co curated by Professor Ann Fox and Jessica Cooley ’05 to mark the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act debuts Sept. 17. The exhibition will unfold online in chapters throughout the year, with an in person component scheduled to open summer 2021 in New York. The exhibition features visual and performing artists, writers, poets and activists whose work focuses on disability. The novel coronavirus sweeping through the United States has largely dealt its most deadly blows to the elderly, Black, Brown and Indigenous people, the poor, the chronically ill and disabled. They’re people often dismissed by a society that values vitality, productivity and whiteness. The inequities have always existed. The pandemic and recent protests against racism have just further exposed them in particularly stark terms, said Davidson College English Professor Ann Fox. These events of 2020 have posed an uncomfortable reckoning of our values, she said, and raise the question: “Who do we see as disposable?” Fox and Jessica Cooley ’05 pondered that as they prepared an exhibition to mark the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. With the world in deep turmoil, they wanted to remind audiences that we can’t talk about disability without also discussing race, gender, sexuality and class. They wanted to highlight presenters who’ve experienced barriers based on social inequities, and the support systems they’ve created. Their collaboration turned into the upcoming Ford Foundation Gallery exhibition: Indisposable: Structures of Support after the Americans With Disabilities Act, which debuts Sept. 17 and will unfold in periodic online chapters over the next year. The in person component of the exhibition is scheduled for summer of 2021 at the Ford Foundation Gallery, housed in the Ford Foundation Center for Social Justice in New York City. English Professor Ann FoxCooley and Fox co curated the exhibition, which features visual and performing artists, writers, poets and activists whose work focuses on disability. They include well known and emerging Black, Brown, LatinX and LGBTQ artists. It’s an evolving exhibition, “We’re kind of building the plane as we fly it,” Fox said. The original exhibition was scheduled to be in person this past summer, but the pandemic turned it into an online offering and postponed the New York show until next summer. The pandemic and ongoing protests against racism following the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other Black people also reshaped their concept. “When the pandemic collides with calls for social justice, it brings into question the value of human life in so many ways,” Cooley said. “Who is deemed worthy of life sustaining medical intervention when ventilators must be rationed? Whose lives matter when police draw their weapons? We’ve seen the horrific evidence that some lives are deemed more disposable based on ability and race and particularly the intersection of ability, race, gender and sexuality. Jessica Cooley ’05“This exhibition tackles this question: How is human life valued?,” Cooley said. “How can we insist that ableism, racism, sexism, transphobia and homophobia are called out for their destruction of life? How can we insist on our indisposability?”Access AestheticThe online components of the exhibition will range from poignant to funny to hopeful. Television and stage actor Ryan J. Haddad will serve as the emcee for the exhibition’s first online event. ",3,https://www.davidson.edu/news/2020/09/15/indisposable-reveals-lived-experience-disability-through-art,TRUE, 869,"Disability parking enforcement, in the end, is about empowerment"," Dennis Polselli is chair of the Fall River Commission on Disability. I’m writing in response to the story in The Herald News published on Wednesday, Sept. 9, regarding the Disability Parking Enforcement Program and its relationship with the Fall River Police Department with regards to the Disability Parking Enforcement Program. While the article was very informative and brought awareness to the issue of disability parking enforcement and its importance, some clarity is necessary regarding the Fall River Commission on Disability and the use of parking fines. The Fall River Commission on Disability was established in August 2006 as a result of an accessibility complaint filed with the Department of Justice by a current member of the commission. Its establishment was part of the settlement with the City of Fall River and the Department of Justice. The commission was established under city ordinance. Massachusetts General Law Chapter 40 Section 8J establishes municipal commissions on disabilities and allows for, under MGL Chapter 40 22G, disability parking fine money to be set aside in a separate account for use by commissions on disability for programs and services provided by a municipality or organizations that provide services to individuals with disabilities. Disability parking enforcement was sporadic at best from 2006 2011 when it was decided to pay two full time police officers to take on this task of consistent disability parking enforcement. The commission contributes approximately $128,000 toward this effort. We were asked to purchase two police cruisers in addition to the $128,000 we already contribute out of our account. Some of the other ways we have contributed in the past include: Disability Awareness Days, including the successful days at the Kuss Middle School coordinating by Lisa Silva, a member of our commission; scooters for the Fall River Veterans Agency; vehicles for the Fall River Veterans Agency; an accessible children’s playground at Kennedy Park; the Audible Local Ledger which provides radio reading service, including the reading of this newspaper, for persons with print disabilities; the SHARE Foundation out of UMass Dartmouth which has contributed richly to the lives of individuals with disabilities in the Fall River area, founded by Les Cory; and the Fall River Police Department’s parking enforcement program. The commission appreciates and has always supported by annual renewals, since 2011, the hard and often thankless job of enforcing disability parking and confronting non disabled persons who insist on parking in disability parking spots “just to run in for one minute” not realizing that even one minute is making it difficult for an individual using an accessible van to park. So on Wednesday, Sept. 9, the commission did not approve any vehicles by simply not seconding the motion, letting the issue die for this year. When the program comes up for renewal next year, we can have a full discussion on how best to use the money we provide for this program. We can determine how best to use the funds we dispense instead of having the terms dictated, and that’s the way it ought to be. That is the essence of disability empowerment. Dennis PolselliChair, Fall River Commission on Disability",3,https://www.heraldnews.com/story/opinion/2020/09/17/opinion-disability-parking-enforcement-in-end-is-about-empowerment/42908465/,TRUE, 870,Hopes Fade For Coronavirus Relief For People With Disabilities,"Another round of stimulus checks for people with disabilities and long sought funding to ease the fallout of the COVID 19 pandemic on home and community based services are looking increasingly uncertain. Disability advocates have been pressing lawmakers in Washington since the start of the pandemic to address the needs of people with disabilities, who have been especially hard hit. Advocates were optimistic when the U. S. House of Representatives passed a wide ranging relief bill in May, but since that time, negotiations between Democrats and Republicans have dragged. Now the situation appears to have hit a new low. Last week, a pared down coronavirus relief proposal failed in the Senate marking the latest stalemate and coming just weeks before lawmakers are set to break ahead of the November election. It’s safe to say that the disability and aging communities are feeling very demoralized and ignored by Congress,” said Nicole Jorwic, senior director of public policy at The Arc. “It’s very discouraging to hear that Congress is not feeling the pressure when you have service providers that are ready to close their doors, a direct support workforce that’s putting their lives at risk and family caregivers and individuals with disabilities who don’t know when assistance will be coming. ”The $3 trillion measure approved by the House in May included billions in additional federal funding to states to pay for Medicaid home and community based services, added benefits for direct support professionals and more stimulus payments for people with disabilities, among other items. Senate proposals released since then, however, have not addressed the specific needs of people with disabilities, advocates say, and have included provisions weakening protections under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Meanwhile, a recent survey of disability service providers across the nation found that 77 percent had already shut down or discontinued programs as they contend with increased costs and lower utilization because of the pandemic. Without help from the federal government, that could just be the beginning, advocates say, especially with the coronavirus also tightening state and local budgets. “It’s really frustrating because our providers and our DSPs continue to go to work every day. They can’t just put a pin in this until after the election,” said Shannon McCracken, vice president for government relations at the American Network of Community Options and Resources, or ANCOR, a national trade group representing disability service providers. “They need to get the job done in Congress so we can get our jobs done,” she said. In one rural county, people with disabilities and others who have been appointed a guardian may soon lose the ability to vote even if a court has expressly preserved their right to do so. After multiple delays, federal officials are plowing ahead with a long awaited Medicaid rule establishing standards for what counts as home and community based services for people with disabilities. With a slew of new actions and additional resources, federal education officials are taking steps to ensure that students with disabilities and their families can access school services. ",3,https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2020/09/14/hopes-fade-for-coronavirus-relief-for-people-with-disabilities/28948/,FALSE, 871,emote learning may not be an option for children with disabilities,"school for those in the Westhill Central School District, all kids will be staying home because the district is going with a hybrid learning model, using Wednesdays as cleaning days.  But for some parents, the hybrid model of learning is both bitter and sweet. NewsChannel 9’s Julia LeBlanc spoke with a family who shared how the model is affecting them. Jackson Terek has non verbal autism. His parents said they are grateful he will be in school four days a week, but they know on Wednesdays, he won’t be getting the help he needs. Also, they are terrified that at some point, COVID 19 could force an all remote learning model, which doesn’t work for Jackson. It’s been months since 5 year old Jackson has gotten the education he needs. He has non verbal autism and with his schooling, comes many services. His mom, Nickole Terek, said, “He normally gets physical therapy, he gets occupational therapy, speech therapy, music therapy, behavioral therapy. He was missing all of that while the school was closed. ”With the Westhill model, he’ll be getting most of that help four days a week, except for behavioral therapy. For that, his parents are paying for an outside service. They’ve been struggling to keep up during the pandemic. Joe and Nickole Terek say Jackson only got a few weeks of learning in after his summer program closed because of COVID. His dad trying to take on the role of parent, teacher, and therapist ever since. “It’s been great news that he’s going back to school for me, as far as work wise. But also that he’s getting his therapies and he’s getting what he needs,” Joe said. Especially since his parents say they notice Jackson’s been losing his progress. It’s hard for him to pick up on social cues, so he uses non verbal communication and physical touch to let others know how he’s feeling. Those are all things that can’t be done through a computer. “Remote learning has not been something that’s been beneficial for Jackson. I’ve talked with other parents whose kids also receive special education and remote learning isn’t working for them, either,” Nickole said. And though Jackson won’t be in a typical kindergarten class, he will be getting one on one attention with a small group of students. Precious time and attention his parents are terrified could be ruined if COVID strikes again.  Nickole said, “I just want people to be patient with the kids and parents, you know, with special needs. It’s a rough time for everybody, but especially for these kids. ”The Tereks say Jackson has been receiving services during school for three years and they say the district has been great when it comes to making sure Jackson gets what he needs during the pandemic. Westhill Superintendent Casey Barduhn spoke with Julia LeBlanc on Wednesday morning. Click the player below to watch the interview",3,https://www.localsyr.com/back-to-school/how-learning-looks-for-children-with-a-disability/,FALSE, 872,"Views of disability, deafness","Jaipreet Virdi was living and teaching in Canada, where she had grown up and earned her doctorate in the history of science, technology and medicine, when she found out about a job opening on the faculty of the University of Delaware’s Department of History. “I looked into it, and I learned about the University’s Hagley Program [in the History of Capitalism, Technology and Culture] and its strength in the field of material culture studies, and I thought: This is the job for me,” Virdi said.  UD agreed, and Virdi joined the faculty as an assistant professor of history in 2018. Since then, she has continued to teach, conduct research, write, give public lectures around the country and work on several other scholarly projects all related to her special interests in how disability, and particularly the technology and medical interventions associated with it, have been viewed throughout history. This year will see the publication of two of her books. Virdi is a co editor of Disability and the Victorians: Attitudes, Interventions, Legacies, published in April by Manchester University Press, and is the author of Hearing Happiness: Deafness Cures in History, published in August by the University of Chicago Press. Disability and the Victorians is a collection of essays that discuss such topics as deafness, blindness, language delay and the portrayal of characters with disabilities in popular fiction, all focused on the Victorian Era. The writers also explore how attitudes toward, and treatments of, disabilities at that time have affected society’s views even today. In addition to editing the book, with co editors Iain Hutchison and Martin Atherton, Virdi wrote a chapter on how deafness was medicalized in Victorian London, examining the Royal Ear Hospital from 1816 1916. Hearing Happiness, originally scheduled for publication in May but delayed a few months by the current pandemic, looks at deafness in America from the 1860s to the present. Virdi’s research includes a history of what the book’s publisher calls “curious cures” many of them pseudo medicine or outright fakes for hearing loss, from electrotherapy to skull hammering. The book combines scholarly research with Virdi’s personal recollections, after a bout of meningitis at age 4 left her almost totally deaf. Her struggles to adapt to her condition and to the way she was perceived by society helped fuel her personal and professional interest in disability studies. “It’s an academic book, but I guess because I’m deaf myself, I wanted it to be readable, too,” Virdi said of Hearing Happiness. Scholars, writers and activists who reviewed the book have called it “a moving story [that] will resonate with any reader seeking to understand what it truly is like to be deaf in the U. S. ” and “a landmark study in the history of technology. ”Virdi also is continuing to contribute to a long term project, “Objects of Disability,” an online resource database of historical artifacts used or made by Canadians with disabilities, and is at work on another book. Her work has been recognized by the Forum for History of Human Science, which presented her its 2019 Early Career Award. She is the subject of the “Office Hours” feature in a recent issue of the UD Magazine, where you can see some of the many disability related objects that fill her shelves, reflecting her research and attracting visits from students and colleagues. ",3,https://www.udel.edu/udaily/2020/september/disability-history-deafness-jaipreet-virdi/,TRUE, 873,Disability Activist Melissa Blake Speaks Out After TikTok Challenge Mocks People With Disabilities,"Parents tape themselves showing their children an image of their new teacher but in reality, the viral prank mocks people with physical differences. Some of these videos featured photos of Melissa Blake, a disability activist who was born with a rare genetic bone and muscular disorder called Freeman Sheldon syndrome. Since she’s not a TikTok user herself, Blake found out about the so called prank from people who follow her on other social media networks. Her followers messaged her to say they saw her photo in these videos and reported the accounts, she says. Dealing with people mocking her appearance isn’t new for Blake, but she says online bullying is getting worse. She fights back by sharing her story and remaining visible on social media despite the bullying she experiences. When people use photos of people with physical differences in this way, she says, it displays how society hasn’t normalized people with disabilities or who look different. “I feel like every time, you know, I post a selfie or I share something about my life as a disabled woman, I feel like that is representation that is going to really combat this ableism,” she says. Vocal online activists like Blake use social media to normalize people who are part of everyday life through heightened exposure and understanding. Now 39, Blake had 26 surgeries from the time she was 10 weeks old to 16 years old. With limited mobility, she can walk short distances but uses a wheelchair most of the time. Many people reacting to this trend on social media express outrage toward what these parents are teaching their children about difference by turning people’s appearance into a joke. Blake says she could understand a bit more if teenagers were driving this prank but it’s the parents choosing the photos. “When I found out that it was the parents that were doing this, I thought theyd be the ones that are teaching their children that this sort of thing isnt okay,” she says. “What I was most shocked about is that it was actual adults that think this is funny. ”When people report these types of videos, social media platforms need to take them down, she says. Blake supports zero tolerance policies for bullying on social networking services. While TikTok has since cracked down on removing videos that break its community guidelines, Blake says multiple people who reported videos that featured her face showed screenshots of the platform saying the posts didn’t violate any rules. “People with disabilities like myself can speak out all we want,” she says. “But if these social media platforms arent taking a proactive role to take down these videos when they see them, then me being so vocal is only go so far. ”Some parents who never participated in the challenge have told Blake that they used her story as an opportunity to talk with their children about physical differences. Parents can turn this “horrible prank” into something positive by using it as a vehicle to teach children not to fear disabilities, she says. “I think if we have these open conversations about disabilities and about what its like to be disabled and that people with disabilities arent so different,” she says, “I think for the next generation, they can grow up in a world where theyre not afraid of people with disabilities. ",3,https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/09/07/tiktok-new-teacher-challenge-melissa-blake,FALSE, 874,Academy Awards Make Push For Increased Disability Representation,"The Academy Awards will phase in new inclusion standards in the coming years to promote better representation of people with disabilities and other underrepresented groups in film. For the first time, movies will have to meet inclusion standards in order to contend for best picture at the Oscars and disability representation is a significant piece of the puzzle. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said this week that eligibility requirements will take effect beginning with the awards given in 2024. The move is intended to “encourage equitable representation on and off screen in order to better reflect the diversity of the movie going audience,” the Academy said. Under the new requirements, films must meet two out of four standards to be eligible for Hollywood’s top honor. The standards cover a film’s casting, storyline and who’s working behind the camera as well as training opportunities and promotional staff at the company backing the movie. Including people with cognitive or physical disabilities as well as those who are deaf or hard of hearing are among the ways that a film can satisfy the standards. For example, a film could qualify under one standard if its storyline focuses on this group or if actors with such disabilities account for a significant number of secondary or more minor roles. The new inclusion mandate also covers underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, women and members of the LGBTQ+ community. In order to be considered for best picture in 2022 and 2023, films must submit a confidential Academy Inclusion standards form, but they won’t be expected to meet the criteria until 2024. The standards will only apply to the best picture category. “We believe these inclusion standards will be a catalyst for long lasting, essential change in our industry,” Academy President David Rubin and Academy CEO Dawn Hudson said in a statement. Hollywood has long faced criticism for minimal representation of people with disabilities and other minority groups. A report out last year found that only 1. 6 percent of all speaking characters in the 100 top grossing films of 2018 had a disability. Lauren Appelbaum with RespectAbility, a nonprofit that works to promote disability inclusion in Hollywood, welcomed the Academy’s initiative. “We are especially pleased to see people with disabilities included, as too often disability is not included in diversity conversations,” she said. In particular, Appelbaum indicated that it’s significant that the Academy’s plan encourages people with disabilities to be in roles behind the camera since that will help bring about more authentic stories. While there is still work to be done, she said, “this is a major first step to bringing about change in an industry that has been resistant to change. ” In one rural county, people with disabilities and others who have been appointed a guardian may soon lose the ability to vote even if a court has expressly preserved their right to do so. After multiple delays, federal officials are plowing ahead with a long awaited Medicaid rule establishing standards for what counts as home and community based services for people with disabilities. With a slew of new actions and additional resources, federal education officials are taking steps to ensure that students with disabilities and their families can access school services",3,https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2020/09/10/academy-awards-push-increased-disability-representation/28932/,TRUE, 875,Metro Disability Coalition says TARC isn't following COVID-19 guidelines,"Leaders with the Metro Disability Coalition protested Tuesday what they called a horrible situation facing drivers with disabilities aboard Transit Authority of River City buses.  Marcellus Mayes, president of MDC, stood in front of TARC headquarters and compared buses to a nursing home on wheels. He and Bobbie Jones, the vice president of MDC, said TARC isnt enforcing personal protective equipment on buses; isnt providing drivers with enough cleaning supplies and PPE for their routes; is not making drivers coming in from hot spots or other countries quarantine before driving; and is not treating a personal care attendant like an individual who factors into the headcount. TARC has a 25 person limit on fixed routes, and TARC3, which provides transportation for people with disabilities, has a two passenger limit on buses and a one passenger limit on vans and cars.  The transit authority said in a statement that every driver receives a supply of gloves, masks and sanitizer every day and that All vehicles are sanitized daily. This mirrors the safety and precautionary measures TARC has implemented on fixed route service. Those gathered at TARC headquarters on Tuesday said those guidelines are not enforced.  Opinion:TARC is running on fumes amid COVID 19, putting people at risk Theo Hamilton, the president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1447, said Tuesday that drivers have said they may get three sanitary wipes for 18 trips. Behind him, roughly 20 people gathered in support, holding signs that read, We dont feel safe, TARC should respect disabled veterans and TARC must follow CDC guidelines.  The U. S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends keeping passengers 6 feet apart and being aware of high traffic surfaces. Our drivers recognize the importance of wearing masks and social distancing, TARC said in a statement. They too want to be safe and healthy while ensuring the safety of all passengers. TARC and TARC3 remain diligent about the safety of our community.  MDC wants TARC3 to only allow one person per bus, which Mayes said is feasible. Drivers face a predicament now, he said: They feel like they have to put themselves at risk of COVID 19 or at risk of losing their jobs.  You just have to decide in Louisville and Kentucky, said Mayes, whether it is more important to save lives or to make money. ",3,https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/2020/09/08/metro-disability-coalition-tarc-isnt-following-covid-19-rules/5750601002/,FALSE, 876,Kansas Public Radio,"Incorporated in Lawrence helps about 75 people with intellectual and developmental disabilities with jobs, assembling things like cargo straps for the federal government and medical kits.  When the day is done, Cottonwood takes them back to their homes in the community. Ettie Brightwell stood outside the building in August, telling people goodbye. Brightwell, Cottonwood’s community relations and development director, even stopped one man to tie his shoe before he boarded a van.  Cottonwood has more than 200 staff members, and there’s a help wanted sign outside of their building. The state was prepared to give organizations that provide in home care and disability services a $9 million funding increase this year to help boost workers’ pay.  Cottonwood CEO Sharon Spratt said that could have translated to about $1 or more per hour. Right now, she said, the pay is often between $10 to $12 an hour, making it hard to attract staff. “We know in today’s world that’s not a very competitive wage,” she said. But Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly eliminated the $9 million increase when the state’s revenue forecast plummeted by more than $1 billion after the coronavirus closed businesses and led to massive layoffs. As part of her $700 million plan to balance the budget, Kelly wants to delay payments, take out a loan from a state investment pool and trim money for many services including disability care and juvenile justice.  Kelly said her goal with the budget cuts is protecting what she calls the state’s economic drivers. That means avoiding cuts to education, transportation and economic development programs.  “When we come out of this pandemic, I don’t want a crumbled infrastructure,” she said. “I want a solid foundation upon which to grow. ”Kelly also acknowledged that while she has supported increased funding for disability services, this year is not ordinary.  “It’s just not responsible to increase funding for a program when you’re going to have to be cutting everywhere else,” Kelly said in an interview. Disability services in Kansas went almost a decade without a funding increase, though that has changed in the last few years. Matt Fletcher, who is executive director of the advocacy group InterHab, said the $9 million would have been the largest increase yet, at about 5%. In home care workers sometimes have to bathe and feed people or change colostomy bags.  “Its very demanding, taxing work,” Fletcher said. “And the wage that’s paid in most of the state is less than what someone could earn … in fast food or a big box retail store. ”Corrections money redirected another target of the budget balancing plan is an established fund for juvenile corrections programs. The fund has more than $40 million in it to pay for services that help keep troubled kids out of detention centers.  “In my opinion, putting kids in custody wasn’t working,” said Peggy Pratt, director of Northwest Kansas Juvenile Services.  Her organization manages programs in the northwest part of the state, including counseling for kids who are having violent outbursts and mentoring for their parents. The goal is keeping kids on a path that can keep them out of the corrections system later in life. “I really do think these are invaluable programs,” she said. “Really, we’ve just gotten started. ”Kansas changed how it ran juvenile corrections programs in 2016 and money has been building in the fund ever since. Republican state Rep. Russ Jennings said the juvenile programs haven’t ramped up as quickly as hoped, but losing $40 million might hinder future growth and impact the most vulnerable kids. “If we want to change the trajectory of children who are behaving in ways that are offensive and unlawful, we have to have the resources to do it,” Jennings said. Kelly disagrees, saying it won’t impact services because the juvenile programs have more funding than they can currently use.  ",3,https://kansaspublicradio.org/kpr-news/kansas-disability-services-were-supposed-get-boost-pandemic-changed,FALSE, 877,The Wariness That Comes With Disability,"Although there are many words to describe the disabled experience, I’ve been thinking a lot about the word “wariness” this week. Many of us in the disabled community are indeed wary of many things. We go through great lengths to anticipate pitfalls, challenges, and risks in our everyday lives. We plan out our days carefully and prudently. We make accommodations for ourselves and come up with workarounds. We have our own kind of internal calculus to consider dangers, because our bodies aren’t always dependable, and the world isn’t as inclusive as it should be. This constant wariness is something I’m trying to be mindful of in my own life because wariness can be good or bad, depending on the situation. It’s important to try to channel this feeling of wariness in a positive direction. When my siblings and I were children, my father didn’t necessarily talk about wariness, but he impressed upon us the importance of anticipating problems and challenges. Whenever I undertook a new activity, he reminded me to anticipate. And whenever I failed at something, he suggested it may have been because I didn’t anticipate all the possible pitfalls. As my siblings and I have gotten older, we’ve tried to take my father’s advice to heart. Thus, the word “anticipate” has, in some ways, become my family’s shorthand version of the widely used adage, “Prior preparation prevents piss poor performance. ” So, a manageable level of wariness can oftentimes be a good thing. It has helped me and others to be creative in making accommodations for our bodies while still pursuing the life we want to lead. For those of us with Charcot Marie Tooth disease , this often means being creative and finding ways to make up for our weak hands and ankles or our unpredictable levels of energy. And because many in our community are always looking for solutions to our unreliable bodies, the kind of wariness that inspires ingenuity and flexibility is something worth celebrating, so we can come up with solutions together. For example, I’m always on the lookout for different exercises that benefit a CMT body. Although I’m sometimes embarrassed by them in front of my able bodied friends, I’m always appreciative when my father shares his latest adaptive tools such as bottle and jar openers. On the other hand, it is easy to be overwhelmed when imagining all the ways a body can fail you. Many of my biggest regrets in life are marked by fear.  From the fear of twisting my ankle and embarrassing myself in front of my tennis instructor to the fear of pity during summer church events and birthday parties at the local roller rink, I’ve too often allowed the thought of everything that could go wrong to prevent me from trying my best and possibly succeeding. Or, at the very least, fear may have prevented me from failing in a more spectacular and worthwhile manner. Although making adaptations and compensating for an uncooperative body is one thing, making excuses for society when it should be better is another thing entirely.  Encountering and overcoming problems and challenges abled bodied folks don’t give a second thought to is nothing new for the disabled community. There was a time when disabled folks needed to plan around the fact that curb cuts weren’t common and handicapped parking was rare. Such was the situation as recently as 30 years ago right before the Americans with Disabilities Act became law in 1990.  I can hardly imagine a world without the benefits the ADA has created for many disabled folks in the United States. In the past, I’ve wondered where the disability movement goes from here. Nowadays, whenever I think of opportunities to move the needle of progress forward, I think of all the challenges and risks that we in the disability community often account for. They exist not because of our disabilities, but because of how society is lacking. ",3,https://charcot-marie-toothnews.com/2020/08/25/wariness-living-with-disability/,FALSE, 880,Mentally Preparing To Return To Work With A Disability," Experiencing a severe health condition or injury that prevents you from working is a serious enough issue to deal with – not to mention the financial hardships and potential loss of savings and retirement funds that can come with it. Another struggle, albeit one that’s often overlooked, is getting oneself comfortable with the idea of returning to the workforce if you medically recover from a disability, no matter how badly you may wish to become financially independent again. Sure, job hunting, creating a successful resume, and succeeding during an interview are challenging tasks. But sometimes, overcoming the mental anguish and anxiety that comes with embracing a new routine and returning to work after years of dealing with a medical condition can be even harder. Fortunately, there are approaches to this process that can help you mentally prepare for this transition. First, understand that recovery is different for everyone. Take your time and go at your own pace. You don’t need to apply for 50 jobs the first day you embark on a job hunt. Beef up your resume and cover letter, send out some applications, and prepare your answers to common interview questions. Keep it up and keep it steady. Second, consider easing your way back into the workforce. Especially if your disability kept you from working for a few years, it may be a better option to locate a part time position instead of a full time job. This may provide protection from becoming immediately overwhelmed.  If you’re participating in the Social Security Disability Insurance program, there is more good news. SSDI is a financial backstop paid for by your FICA taxes and managed by the Social Security Administration for people who are unable to work for at least 12 months due to a severe health condition. An important advantage of SSDI is the program known as Ticket to Work, which allows you to try to return to work without risking your SSDI or Medicare benefits. The program includes a Trial Work Period that allows you to attempt work and earn as much as you can. If you learn through this process that you’re not able to work just yet, you won’t lose the benefits you’ve worked so long and hard to receive. Third, it’s important to take your specific disability into account, and think through how best to accommodate it when you return to work. If you have a behavioral disability, it could be worthwhile to talk to your therapist and/or doctors about how to handle work related increases in anxiety or worry. If you have a physical disability, it might be worthwhile to increase your average activity level to what will be expected of you getting up and potentially going to work on a daily basis. This could include going on evening walks, or even just doing some more things around the house. Also, don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it. Finally, another approach can be to start volunteering. If you’re unsure of what type of work you would like to pursue following a disability, volunteering offers a low level introductory activity that can open your eyes to new interests, while keeping you in control of your schedule. It’s great for mental health and wellness, for practicing social skills and collaborating with others, and the options are endless: playing with dogs or cats in shelters, serving at food banks, giving time to the American Red Cross. As long as you’re doing something you’re passionate about, and doing it slowly to prevent setbacks, you’ll be one step closer to fulfilling your goals. Returning to work comes with both physical and mental challenges. By taking a thoughtful approach and keeping these tips in mind, you can absolutely overcome the hurdles. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulamorgan/2020/08/25/mentally-preparing-to-return-to-work-with-a-disability/?sh=3646dde81917,FALSE, 882,It's time for business to fix the 'disability inequality crisis': Activist and entrepreneur," Disability activist, social entrepreneur and founder of The Valuable 500 initiative, Caroline Casey, has told CNBC that business needs to be at the forefront of accelerating change to end the disability inequality crisis, as the world emerges from the coronavirus crisis.  This problem is too big for governments and charities alone to resolve. It needs the most powerful force on this planet, which in my mind is business, she said.  As we reset our system, our recovery needs to be inclusive of everyone. There are no more excuses.  Casey told CNBC that disability is still not understood as valuable, but with the exclusion of people with disabilities estimated to cost countries up to 7% of their annual GDP, according to the International Labour Organization, business needs to understand the value, not just the cost of inclusion. She said people currently consider a disability as something more akin to being weak or dependent, but actually this is an incredible market that has insight and innovation and potential. Casey, who is registered legally blind, said she hid her own disability at work until she was 28 years old, mistakenly thinking that if she spoke up about it she wouldnt have the same chances.  She launched The Valuable 500 initiative a global movement putting disability on the business leadership agenda at the World Economic Forum, Davos in 2019.  Named to emulate the Fortune 500 list of top global companies by revenue, the movement aims to sign up five hundred of the worlds largest multinational and private sector companies to commit to unlocking the business, social and economic value of the more than 1 billion people living with disability worldwide. Nearly 300 companies have already signed up across 30 countries, including Boston Consulting Group , Black & Veatch, Tommy Hilfiger, Voya Financial, Calvin Klein, Greene King and Roche Pharma UK. Speaking alongside the former CEO of Unilever and Chair of The Valuable 500, Paul Polman, Casey told CNBC that it was extraordinary that over 54% of our global boards have never had a conversation about disability.  Polman, who has championed business inclusion and sustainability, told CNBC that in the U. S. only four out of ten people with disabilities had a job, and while 98% of companies in America think inclusion is important, less than 4% include disability within that.  As such, he said there is an enormous missed opportunity, with the disability community representing an estimated global spending power of $8 trillion.  Were talking here about 15 to 20% of the world population. If you include their families with it, its probably half of the people in the world affected with disability, and yet we prioritize that to a level that to me is incomprehensible, he said.  Fifty percent of companies operating in the OECD countries rather pay a fine than fulfilling the requirement, as written in the law, to include people with disability.  Asked whether corporates were likely to put inclusion initiatives before their bottom line given the current economic climate, Polman said inclusion was a major part of optimizing longer term returns. Were seeing that now happening and unfolding in the U. S. around racial issues, weve also seen that with gender equality. Companies that are more gender equal tend to perform better, and were just advocating for the same obvious reasons that it is the same with people for disability, he said.  Casey and Polman told CNBC that unconscious bias and stigma, misconceptions around costs of inclusion, and leadership awareness, motivation and accountability were some of the reasons disability had been on the edges of business until now.  Polman, who is also co founder of Imagine, a foundation bringing CEOs together to drive change, said the Covid 19 crisis had disproportionately affected people with disability who often have less income, less access to health and less education.  ",3,https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/14/caroline-casey-its-time-to-fix-the-disability-inequality-crisis.html,TRUE, 883,States Pressured To Remove Disability Bias From Medical Care Guidelines,"In what’s being called a national precedent, yet another state is agreeing to change its approach to providing medical care during the pandemic in order to prevent disability discrimination. The U. S Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights said Thursday that it has reached a resolution with the state of Utah to revise its crisis standards of care guidelines. At issue is the state’s plan to ration care in the event that ventilators or other resources are in short supply, an issue that’s come to the fore amid the coronavirus pandemic. Disability advocacy groups have filed complaints against nearly a dozen states alleging that such plans discriminate against people with disabilities. In the case of Utah, the state has altered its plan so that medical providers must conduct an individual assessment rather than making decisions based on age, disability or functional impairment. Language allowing a person’s long term life expectancy to be factored has been removed and providers can no longer consider resource intensity or duration of need as criteria for a person to receive medical resources. In addition, under the updated policy, hospitals should not reallocate personal ventilators that people with disabilities have brought with them. Most significantly, advocates noted that Utah will not allow blanket “do not resuscitate” policies if resources are scarce and the state is including protections to keep providers from steering people into decisions to withhold life sustaining treatment. “We’ve been pleased by the cooperation of states we have approached with civil rights concerns regarding their policies and Utah’s plan is the best yet,” said Roger Severino, director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights. “Older persons and persons with disabilities have equal worth and dignity and should not be deprioritized for health care based on stereotypes and other impermissible factors. ”The HHS Office for Civil Rights previously resolved complaints against Tennessee, Pennsylvania and Alabama regarding crisis standards of care guidelines. “Today’s resolution sends a clear message during a dire time: people with disabilities must have equal access to life saving treatment during the COVID 19 pandemic,” said Alison Barkoff, director of advocacy at the Center for Public Representation, one of the groups that brought the complaints against Utah and other states. “Many states’ medical rationing plans have discriminatory provisions similar to those in Utah. We urge states across the country to heed this warning and revise their plans now to comply with federal disability laws. ” In one rural county, people with disabilities and others who have been appointed a guardian may soon lose the ability to vote even if a court has expressly preserved their right to do so. After multiple delays, federal officials are plowing ahead with a long awaited Medicaid rule establishing standards for what counts as home and community based services for people with disabilities. With a slew of new actions and additional resources, federal education officials are taking steps to ensure that students with disabilities and their families can access school services",3,https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2020/08/21/states-pressured-to-remove-disability-bias-from-medical-care-guidelines/28783/,FALSE, 884,"Yes, Disability Is Political","Politics is often a subject most people don’t want to tackle. However as a disabled and mental health advocate, I believe it should be my and other advocates’ priority to use our influence and platform to speak out about disability politics. I have often heard people say that talking about hot topics, such as Black Lives Matter and the rights of LGBTQ+ people doesn’t have a place on disability advocacy pages. I am here to argue otherwise. Disability is political, and so is disability advocacy. Disability can intersect with any marginalized group. To not amplify and advocate for those voices within our community is dividing us further. Being disabled places me as part of a marginalized minority group. Within that minority are other smaller disabled marginalized groups. As a disabled cis white woman, I have had my fair share of dealing with ableism, gaslighting and medical trauma. However, I have never been treated this way due to the color of my skin or my sexual orientation. Related:? Download The Mighty app to connect in real time with people who can relate to what youre going through. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act. If you haven’t seen the documentary “Crip Camp,” please check it out. It discusses the protests and sit ins that had to take place for those with disabilities to get Section 504 and the ADA in place. This affirms that disabled advocacy is in fact political. Disability is political when we have to fight our government to get equal treatment. Disability is political when disabled BIPOC and LGBTQ+ people are being ignored, mistreated and dying because of the color of their skin and sexual orientation. We all have different stories to share, but when we decide to ignore the political part of our disability advocacy, we ignore our fellow disabled minorities. So what can we do as fellow disabled advocates or partners to continue the discussion about disability in politics? What can we do to help out disabled minorities? I understand many of us who are disabled cannot protest, however, there are many ways to amplify, advocate and make disability advocacy intersectional. Related:? This Virtual Education Guide Can Help Disabled Students Navigating the PandemicHere are several small ways to amplify, advocate and diversify your disabled advocacy, whether it’s on social media or in everyday life. 1) Follow, post, repost and/or share Disabled Black voices. Change up your feed. How do disabled BIPOC and LGBTQ+ stories differ from your personal experiences? Share these experiences. Follow and amplify disabled black voices. Make a post or share in stories your favorite disabled BIPOC or LGBTQ+ advocates. 2) Educate yourself. Learn about systematic racism through books, media, art and podcasts. What are the facts about how the disabled BIPOC and LGBTQ+ community are treated in the medical community? Share those facts with others and on your pages. 3) Talk to family and friends about racism and homophobia. This might be small but can be so powerful. Share your thoughts on what is going on in the disabled community and how discrimination disproportionately affects minorities. 4) Get involved. Join a peaceful protest, contact your elected officials, sign petitions. Related:? 5 Free Back to School Resources for Kids With Disabilities5) Make protests accessible. 6) Donate to causes and support disabled BIPOC and LGBTQ+ businesses and creators. Advocate, amplify and diversify. Its OK to Have Mixed Feelings About Living With a DisabilityYouTube Will Discontinue Community Captions Feature in SeptemberStride Rite Releases Adaptive Sneakers for Kids With Disabilities RespectAbility Hosts Free Virtual Event About Disability Representation Near warp speeds",3,https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/yes-disability-political-064036182.html,FALSE, 885,Disability and COVID-19: A deadly virus made worse by discrimination,"The coronavirus crisis has exposed existing inequalities in the UK and “excluded” disabled people from society, campaigners have warned. As the UK grapples to manage the crisis amid fears of a second wave across Europe, charities have said that disabled people are being discriminated against, leaving them vulnerable to the virus. The statistics are stark. Disabled women who identify as “limited a lot” are 3. 2 times more likely to die of the virus than non disabled women, while disabled men in the same category are 2. 5 times more likely to be killed by COVID 19, data from the Office for National Statistics showed. According to the ONS, “limited a lot” signifies someone “usually needing regular, continuing support from family members, friends or personal social services for a number of normal daily activities”. When fully adjusted for factors such as occupation, region, area deprivation and socio economic position, the data found that “limited a lot” disabled women are still 2. 4 times more likely to die of coronavirus than non disabled women, and “limited a lot” disabled men are 1. 9 times more likely to die than non disabled men. The data also showed that 30. 3% of COVID 19 deaths in England and Wales were disabled people in the “limited a lot” category and 28. 9% were disabled people in the “limited a little” category between 2 March and 15 May. Disabled people make up 16% of the working adult population, and 45% of adults over state pension age. They are more likely to live in poverty: 19% of families with at least on disabled member live in relative income poverty, compared to 15% of families with no disabled members. There is wider evidence to suggest disabled people are not getting sufficient support during the pandemic. According to the Greater Manchester Disabled People’s Panel Big Disability Survey, 76% of the 677 people surveyed said they were dissatisfied with the help provided by the government. A third said they felt neglected by the government, citing a reduction in the number of health visits; a deterioration in their mental health; and difficulty sourcing personal protective equipment as reasons for their frustration. Sisters of Frida, a volunteer led disabled women’s organization, found that increased social isolation during the pandemic is causing psychological distress for disabled women the organization is calling for more inclusive networks of disabled people locally and online to better support and empower this community. Co director Lani Parker said: “We need to start looking at the institutional oppression that we face. That includes disabled people of color. “We need to look at the word ‘vulnerable’. It’s about who is made vulnerable rather than an assumption that someone is vulnerable to the virus. “What are the factors through which we are made more vulnerable to the virus? Most of those factors will be structural discrimination and complex and intersecting issues. ”Parker, who is a wheelchair user, said people were surprised at seeing her outside at the beginning of the pandemic, that they had assumed wheelchair users had to stay inside and shield. She said: “If you think somebody is vulnerable, you strip them of their agency, they don’t have thoughts and feelings of their own, and they are not part of a community. That is the way that ableism and the exclusion of disabled people works. ”Although some disabled people may be more likely to suffer from pre existing health conditions, making them more susceptible to complications caused by COVID 19, the Department of Health and Social Care said that until more is known about the virus, the reasons behind the ONS data cannot be fully understood. ",3,https://sports.yahoo.com/disability-coronavirus-discrimination-ons-135611408.html,FALSE, 895,Debt wiped for Corinthian students as bigger decisions loom,"As college graduates wait to see whether President Joe Biden will wipe out some of their student loan debt, his administration is taking a more limited step to address a fraud scandal at Corinthian Colleges, a for profit chain that collapsed nearly a decade ago. Anyone who enrolled in the company’s schools will have his or her federal student debt erased, clearing away $5. 8 billion for more than 560,000 borrowers the largest single loan discharge ever, according to the Education Department. Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday called it a milestone in “a journey for justice for everyone who was defrauded” and will “put real money in the pockets of real people. ” She made only a brief reference to lingering questions about the next steps on student loan debt. “As a nation, we have a lot more work to do on these issues,” she said. Biden, as a candidate, promised to address the matter if elected, and he has expressed interest in canceling $10,000 per borrower. There’s been no word on how Biden will handle the issue, even with pressure building on him. The White House has suggested there would be some kind of income criteria that would prevent high earners from benefiting. Debt payments were paused by President Donald Trump near the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, and Biden has kept the freeze in place while considering a more permanent solution. Any decision carries political risks. Republicans accuse Biden of plotting an election year giveaway. Activists are pushing him to cancel at least $50,000 per borrower, and anything less could disappoint them. “President Biden, canceling $10,000 in student debt is like pouring a bucket of ice water on a forest fire,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement. Black students and other students of color are more likely to take out loans to pay for college. The announcement about Corinthian, which operated from 1995 to 2015, seeks to close the books on one of the most notorious cases of fraud in American higher education. At its peak, Corinthian was one of the largest for profit college companies, with more than 100 campuses and more than 110,000 students at its Everest, WyoTech and Heald schools. When Harris was California’s attorney general, she worked with the Obama administration to uncover how campuses were falsifying data on the success of their graduates. In some cases, schools reported that students had found jobs in their fields of study even though they were working at grocery stores or fast food chains. Students told investigators they were often pressured to enroll with promises of lucrative employment, only to end up with huge sums of debt and few job prospects. Federal officials found that the company falsely told students their course credits could be transferred to other colleges. Harris said Corinthian tried to attract students who were single parents or unemployed and looking to improve their lives. “The company believed they could get away with it because, as predators are wont to do, they targeted people who they assumed wouldn’t fight back,” she said. Tens of thousands of former Corinthian students were already eligible for debt cancellation, but they had to file paperwork and navigate an application process that advocates say is confusing. Now, the relief will be made automatic and extended to additional borrowers. Those with a remaining balance on their Corinthian debt will also get refunds on payments already made, department officials said. But the action does not apply to loans paid in full. A spokesperson for the Education Department did not respond to a question about why that decision was made. The Corinthian scandal led to a federal crackdown on for profit colleges, and the Obama administration promised to forgive loans for Corinthian students whose programs lied about job placement rates. That administration went on to expand a process known as borrower defense to repayment, which allows any defrauded student to apply for debt cancellation. ",2,https://apnews.com/article/miguel-cardona-government-and-politics-education-higher-91b302f6ba45c463f69a9eed48ebd4b0,FALSE, 896,"After groundbreaking slave reparations report, what next?"," Reparations experts and advocates largely welcomed a move by California to publicly document its role in perpetuating discrimination against African Americans but wondered if the slew of recommendations in its report released this week will result in measurable change. Justin Hansford, a longtime reparations advocate and law professor at Howard University, called the report an exciting development. “The danger here is that everyone reads it and nods their heads and waits on the task force to initiate the response,” said Hansford, who also serves as the director of the Thurgood Marshall Civil Rights Center in Washington, D. C. “We need to have universities, local governments, businesses and others working together to do their part to address some of the recommendations. ”The 500 page document released Wednesday details the harms suffered by descendants of enslaved people and how federal, state and local laws, public officials and the courts were active in sustaining systemic racism in all facets of life for African Americans, despite the abolition of slavery in the 19th century. The California Task Force to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans, which was created by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2020, recommended a long list of actions the state can take to address the racial wealth gap, including housing reforms, reducing mass incarceration, creating a state subsidized mortgage program for qualifying African American applicants and by offering free tuition to California colleges and universities and expanding scholarship opportunities. “This country has ignored the harmful history the African American community has faced in this country and the inequities the community continues to face for far too long. This is a monumental moment not only for the State of California but the United States,” said Rick Callender, president of the California Hawaii State Conference NAACP in Sacramento, California. “When reports such as these are created for the first time in the nation’s history, they are a compelling model for other states to address the same issues. As California goes, so goes the nation,” Callender said in a statement to The Associated Press. The task force, which began meeting in June 2021, will release a comprehensive reparations plan next year. The committee voted in March to limit reparations to the descendants of African Americans living in the U. S. in the 19th century, overruling advocates who wanted to expand compensation to all Black people in the U. S. But activist Yvette Carnell said she worries that the California report and others like it could be used as a scapegoat for the federal government to avoid its responsibility to fund a national reparations movement. “I’m not opposed to this, because I think it is all for a good reason, but I would rather see these reparations commissions use that as leverage to force the federal government to do something,” said Yvette Carnell, president of ADOS Advocacy Foundation. The Georgia based grassroots organization, which began in response to a question about Black wealth, has advocated for reparations since 2020. “My fear is that all of these states will end up maybe doing something and the government at the federal level will say we support local reparations initiatives. When, truthfully, the only government that has trillions of dollars to pour resources into our community and pay us what was owed is the federal government,” said Carnell. Carnell said it feels like the report took every recommendation from Black people around the U. S. and put it all in one report, arguing it could be seen as a “Black agenda. ” But she said she wants to see specific efforts to financially repay what was taken from enslaved people and their descendants, not just repaying them by creating the kinds of programs and offices that are recommended in the report. ",2,https://apnews.com/article/thurgood-marshall-california-race-and-ethnicity-government-politics-racial-injustice-e50a9292aeca0bc8be76147fb5633841,FALSE, 898,George Floyd protester sues Florida police over eye injury,"A protester who suffered eye damage when a rubber bullet fired by Fort Lauderdale police struck her in the face during a 2020 protest over George Floyd’s murder filed a federal lawsuit this week accusing the officer and the department of violating her civil rights. LaToya Ratlieff, 36, is seeking unspecified monetary damages in her lawsuit against Fort Lauderdale, Detective Eliezer Ramos, who fired the rubber bullet, and five other officers for the injuries she suffered on May 31, 2020. She was taking part in a Black Lives Matter protest that drew thousands over Floyd’s videotaped slaying six days earlier by a Minneapolis police officer who knelt on his neck for eight minutes. A bystander’s video shows Ratlieff was struck as she choked on tear gas that had been fired by officers and stumbled into a street. She suffered a broken right eye socket, nerve damage to that eye and a 20 stitch gash to her forehead that left a scar. Her attorneys say she also suffers migraines and mental trauma. The round that struck Ratlieff was made of collapsible, hollow foam that is typically filled with a chemical irritant. According to its manufacturer, it is about the size of a golf ball, weighs slightly less and has an initial velocity of 200 mph . The rounds are supposed to be aimed at the legs and buttocks as they can be lethal if they hit the head or chest. “Two years ago, I came to Fort Lauderdale to raise my voice against police brutality. Today, I return to do the very same,” Ratlieff said in a statement read by her attorneys at a Thursday news conference outside Fort Lauderdale police headquarters. The lawsuit was filed on Tuesday. “I have every reason to believe that if the same circumstances were repeated today, the risk of someone becoming the victims of brutality at the hands of the Fort Lauderdale Police Department are as high as they have ever been. ”A police department investigation in December cleared Ramos of wrongdoing, saying he was aiming at a man who had thrown a tear gas canister back at officers when Ratlieff walked into his line of fire. The department’s then interim chief also issued an apology to Ratlieff. A department spokesman said this week it does not comment on pending lawsuits. The police investigation put the blame for the violence on some of the protesters, saying they had come to the city looking to start a confrontation with officers. Some bottles and rocks were thrown at officers but Ratlieff’s attorneys say that only began after an officer pushed a kneeling woman to the ground. The lawsuit alleges that Fort Lauderdale police did not train its officers on how to use the weapons in crowd control situations and that state law bans the firing of tear gas or rubber bullets into a crowd without first giving a warning to disperse and then ample time to leave. Stuart Ratzan, Ratlieff’s lead trial attorney, said the protest had been peaceful and lawful for several hours until police fired without warning. “To open fire on American citizens who are asking you to stop using violence against them there is no excuse for that,” Ratzan said. ",2,https://apnews.com/article/death-of-george-floyd-politics-health-florida-8a793bd8428ccae33a388232ef2d40af,FALSE, 899,"Report: Israel arrested no Jews over violent, racist march","Israeli police arrested dozens of Palestinians but no Jews during a nationalist march through Jerusalem this week in which crowds of Jews chanted racist slogans, assaulted Palestinians and vandalized Palestinian property, an Israeli newspaper reported Thursday. Israeli police had said after Sunday’s march that over 60 people were arrested, but have refused to give a breakdown, despite queries by The Associated Press. The Haaretz daily reported Thursday that it checked arrest records name by name, and found that no Jews were among those detained. It said two Jews were arrested in a separate, related incident. Tens of thousands of Israeli nationalists participated in Sunday’s parade an annual march that celebrates Israel’s capture of east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war. Palestinians consider the event a provocation. Israeli police cleared out the area for the marchers, who passed through a Palestinian neighborhood before proceeding to the Jewish Quarter of the Old City to pray at the Western Wall. Large crowds, many of them young Orthodox Jewish youths carrying Israeli flags, gathered at the entrance to the Old City’s Muslim Quarter, dancing and chanting slogans such as “Death to Arabs,” before continuing on their way. Inside the Old City, the marchers pounded on the gates of Palestinian businesses and scuffled with angry Palestinian residents. Videos captured on social media showed marchers spitting, beating and spraying pepper spray at Palestinians and journalists. Fights broke out along the route, as police mainly intervened to protect Jews and forcibly disperse Palestinians. According to the Haaretz report, nearly all of those arrested Thursday were Palestinian. Two Jewish suspects were arrested after the parade in the beating of a Palestinian journalist during unrest outside the Old City, it said. The newspaper compiled the statistics by going through court records in the days after the parade. Israeli police did not respond to a request for comment. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has said only a small minority of the flag marchers was responsible for the bad behavior and vowed to prosecute anyone who broke the law. Several other journalists were physically assaulted while covering the march, according to the Foreign Press Association, which represents international media outlets operating in Israel and the Palestinian territories. It said Israeli participants verbally and physically assaulted a BBC team, and assaulted a France 24 reporter on air. It said Quique Kierszenbaum, a freelance photographer and producer covering the march for foreign media, was pepper sprayed by an Israeli participant and punched in the face by an Israeli Border Police officer. “It is unacceptable for a police officer to attack a clearly identified photojournalist who was wearing the wristband police distributed to identify accredited journalists at the event,” it said. The association called on police to take action against the officer and Israelis who attacked reporters. “Those who attack reporters should be arrested, not protected, by police,” it said. “Unfortunately, such violence against journalists has become routine. We expect Israeli authorities who profess to respect freedom of the press to put their words into action. ” Palestinian residents of east Jerusalem have long complained of a double standard in which Palestinian crowds are frequently arrested and violently dispersed by police with clubs, tear gas and rubber bullets, while Jewish settlers often carry out attacks and vandalism with virtual impunity. Israeli police deny such charges, saying they are merely enforcing the law. The Old City is part of east Jerusalem, which Israel annexed in a move not recognized internationally and considers part of its capital. The Palestinians want east Jerusalem to be the capital of their future state. ",2,https://apnews.com/article/politics-israel-jerusalem-arrests-religion-aab822a3d8656dbc178eb875271f8084,FALSE, 902,Accused Buffalo mass shooter had threatened a shooting while in high school. Could more have been done to avert the tragedy?," Professor of Criminal Justice, Metropolitan State University Professor of Criminal Justice, Hamline University James Densley receives funding from the National Institute of JusticeJillian Peterson receives funding from the National Institute of JusticeView all partnersNearly a year before he was charged with shooting and killing 10 shoppers, and wounding three more, at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store, a then 17 year old student reportedly told his classmates at Susquehanna Valley High School that he “wanted to do a shooting, either at a graduation ceremony, or sometime after. ”He also reportedly mentioned that he wanted to do a murder suicide at the school, which is located in Broome County in New York. A teacher reported the comment – made online – to a school resource officer. Since the perpetrator had been at home when he made the comment, it triggered a visit from state police, as opposed to the school resource officer, according to an official account of the episode published in the wake of the shooting in The Buffalo News. “The State Police visited the home, talked to the student and persuaded him to undergo a mental health evaluation at Binghamton General Hospital,” the article states. “When a doctor evaluated as not dangerous – a key hurdle required in the Mental Hygiene Law to hold someone against their will – he was returned home and allowed to graduate days later. ”The story is not unlike the dozens of stories that we, a forensic psychologist and a sociologist, have collected in recent years in our effort to study the life histories of mass shooters. It typifies what we believe is one of the biggest challenges that schools face when it comes to averting school shootings – and in the case of Buffalo, mass shootings in general. And that challenge is recognizing and acting upon warning signs that mass shooters almost always give well before they open fire. With funding from the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the U. S. Department of Justice, we have built a database of 180 mass public shootings that have taken place in the United States since 1966. A mass public shooting is defined as an event in which four or more victims are killed with a gun in a public place. The goal of this project is to use data to look for patterns in the lives of mass shooters. The purpose is to develop a better understanding of who they are and why they did what they did, in order to prevent future tragedies. The findings, detailed in our 2021 book, “The Violence Project: How to Stop a Mass Shooting Epidemic,” show the person charged with the Buffalo shooting on May 14, 2022, shares many commonalities with other mass shooters. He was a young man – 98% of mass shooters are men – who targeted a retail establishment, which is the most common location for a mass public shooting in our database. The majority of mass shooters – 80% – showed signs of a crisis, as exhibited in their behavior, before the shooting. Much like the accused Buffalo shooter allegedly did, nearly half revealed their plans ahead of time, such as by posting on social media. Communication of intent to do harm is most common among younger shooters, like the accused Buffalo perpetrator, who is just 18. Over 30% of mass shooters were suicidal prior to their shooting, and another 40% intended to die in the act, according to our database. A news report indicates that the Buffalo perpetrator considered taking his own life over a dozen times. In his online diary, the accused Buffalo shooter detailed the white supremacist ideology he discovered in internet chat rooms. Our database shows that 18% of mass shootings are underlined by hate. At the same time, like a quarter of all mass shooters, the accused Buffalo perpetrator developed an interest in past mass shootings. He reportedly praised other mass shooters who were similarly inspired by racial hatred, such as the 2015 South Carolina church shooter. And like 25% of perpetrators we’ve studied, he left behind a “manifesto” for the next generation of potential mass shooters to read. ",2,https://theconversation.com/accused-buffalo-mass-shooter-had-threatened-a-shooting-while-in-high-school-could-more-have-been-done-to-avert-the-tragedy-183455,FALSE, 903,Desegregating schools requires more than giving parents free choices – a scholar studies the choices parents of all races make,"My research at this moment focuses on school choice in New York City, and particularly the role of race in how people choose high schools in New York City. This is important for a couple of reasons. One, New York City is the largest school district in the United States. Over a million kids attend school in this school district. And in 2014, there was a study that came out that was completely surprising to me as someone who was new to New York City. It said that New York state’s schools were the most segregated in the country. And that was surprising for two reasons. One, we often think of New York and particularly New York City as this really racially diverse metropolitan area. The other reason this is surprising is that, for high school in particular, there is school choice, which means students can choose to attend school anywhere across the city. A lot of the reasons we think about or talk about school segregation is that it’s tied to racially segregated housing and neighborhoods. But in New York City, those two ties are broken up. People can technically choose to attend school anywhere across the city. But yet you still see these really stark patterns of segregation. I ask in my work, why do we still see racial sorting patterns across schools and really stark racial segregation? I use both data from families’ actual applications to high schools and an experiment to understand why we see segregation in New York City schools. What’s one thing you want people to take away from your research? Even though we might think of school choice as a race neutral policy, the ways in which families interact with school choice policies are very racialized. By that, I mean a couple of things: One, that means families interpret information about schools through what I call their racial prisms – that is, their racial biases toward groups, general cultural stereotypes around groups, other experiences and exposures to different racial groups. So families are interpreting information about schools through race. They also have racial preferences for schools. In the experiment and in the administrative data, I examine schools that are the exact same but differ only by their racial demographics. And what I find is that families across different racial groups express racial preferences for schools. So in particular, I find that white and Asian families have had really stark desires to avoid Black and Latino spaces. I find that Latino families also want to avoid majority Black schools, and I find that Black families often desire not to attend majority white schools. So again, I really want to emphasize that even though we might think of school choice as race neutral or even a racial equity policy, the ways in which people are interacting with that policy are very racialized and based upon their own experiences and exposures and cultural stereotypes in our larger structure of racism. ",2,https://theconversation.com/desegregating-schools-requires-more-than-giving-parents-free-choices-a-scholar-studies-the-choices-parents-of-all-races-make-182645,FALSE, 904,Racism is different than colorism – here’s how," Professor of Social Work, Michigan State University Ronald Hall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. Michigan State University provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US. View all partnersRonald Hall is a professor in the School of Social Work at Michigan State University. He has written over 200 books/articles/monographs, etc. , on colorism – discrimination on the basis of skin tone, often among the same ethnic or racial group. Below are highlights from an interview with The Conversation. Answers have been edited for brevity and clarity. Why does your research matter and why do you study it? Hall: This research matters as the nation and indeed the world assume a more multiracial demographic. I study it to correct some of the errors made by “experts” and prepare for the future. I grew up a child of the ‘60s, and I saw and heard about a lot of racism – but I didn’t understand as a kid how to connect that to my life directly. By the time I started college in the 70s, I wanted to approach racism from a different perspective. I realized that the same kinds of behaviors that we normally label as racism are actually a form of colorism that’s acted out among people of color. “Experts” refer to colorism as a bias against dark skinned persons exclusively, but I view it more broadly as bias via complexion regardless of skin color. It’s a taboo subject. I guess for fear of being embarrassed, we just don’t discuss it publicly, and I decided to change that. I want to emphasize that it’s a misconception to think it’s something localized to African Americans. When I started to study this topic with my own money, I took to traveling the world. And it took me about 11 years. I’ve collected quantitative and qualitative data from all racial groups, including African descended Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and Asians. What’s something about your research that people would be surprised by?Most would be surprised to know that it exists among Asians. Also, I thought people in Africa of African descent would idealize African features. But in fact, having been there, particularly when I visited South Africa about 15 20 years ago, that wasn’t true. This is the product of colonization. And the Black South Africans were colonized by Europeans, and so you find this behavior that is a norm as much in Black Africa as it is anywhere else in the world. I had a focus group at one of the universities in South Africa, and I gave a question to the students. I said, “You have the ability to determine the skin color, the hair texture, the eye color of your expected daughter. And you can design their features any way you so choose. ” And for about a minute, there was silence in the room. Eventually one young man bravely raised his hand – a South African. He said, “I want my daughter to have blond hair, blue eyes and white skin. ” And this is in the aftermath of apartheid. I was shocked by that. I was shocked. One article I published using this data pertains to the “bleaching syndrome” among Latinx Americans. What do you think led to his wanting that? The social value that we put on those physical features? My guess is that this young man had been seduced by apartheid and dominated by a Western, Eurocentric environment where everything white is ideal. Although apartheid officially ended in 1994, it is now embedded in the culture, which may extended decades into the future. Fortunately or unfortunately, I believe the world is given to Eurocentric ideals. One of the most dangerous phenomena that I came across is, there is currently a global market in something called bleaching creams. For example, 77% of Nigerians use bleaching creams. ",2,https://theconversation.com/racism-is-different-than-colorism-heres-how-182316,FALSE, 907,The Cleveland Indians changed their team name – what’s holding back the Atlanta Braves?," E. P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics, Occidental College Peter Dreier does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. View all partnersIn October 1995, as the Cleveland Indians and Atlanta Braves prepared to face off in the World Series, a group of Native Americans rallied outside Atlanta Fulton County Stadium to protest what they called both teams’ racist names and mascots. Some protesters carried signs, including one that said, “Human beings as mascots is not politically incorrect. It is morally wrong. ”They marched outside the ballpark, where some vendors were selling the foam tomahawks that Braves fans wave during the “tomahawk chop” – a cheer in which they mimic a Native American war chant while making a hammering motion with their arms. It wasn’t until 2018 that the Indians officially removed their logo, a cartoonish Native American named Chief Wahoo, from their merchandise, banners and ballpark. In 2020 the owners agreed to change the Indians name itself. For the 2022 season, they would begin using the new name, the Guardians. The Atlanta Braves’ owners, however, have dug in their heels, refusing to replace a name that many Americans – including Native Americans – find offensive and derogatory. In July 2020 – in the midst of the nationwide protests around racism, sparked by the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police – some Atlanta fans again urged the team to change its name. In response, the Braves’ brass sent a letter to season ticket holders, insisting, “We will always be the Atlanta Braves. ”The insistence on preserving the team name – along with fan traditions like the tomahawk chop – is even more glaring given the city’s links to the civil rights movement. For many years, NFL football team owner Dan Snyder refused to change the name of his Washington Redskins – perhaps one of the more egregiously racist team names in any sport. But in 2020 he finally relented, yielding to pressure from investors and corporate sponsors. The team played as the Washington Football Team for two seasons before becoming the Commanders this year. However, when professional sports teams do change their names, it’s usually done for marketing reasons rather than social ones. The NFL’s Tennessee Oilers rebranded themselves the Tennessee Titans in 1999, the Tampa Bay Devil Rays became the Tampa Bay Rays in 2008 and the New Orleans Hornets turned into the Pelicans in 2013. The Braves have had their own merry go round with team names. The story begins in 1876, when Boston’s professional baseball team was known as the Red Stockings. In 1883, they became the Beaneaters and kept that name until 1907, when new owner George Dovey changed it to the Doves, a tribute to himself. In 1911, William Russell bought the team and renamed it the Rustlers, also after himself. But a year later, James Gaffney, a New York City alderman, purchased the team. Gaffney was part of Tammany Hall, a New York City political club named after Tamanend, a Delaware Indian chief. Tammany Hall used a Native American wearing a headdress as its emblem and referred to its members as “braves. ” So Gaffney gave his team a new moniker. From thenceforth they would be known as the Boston Braves. In 1935, Bob Quinn purchased the Braves after a season in which they sported the worst record in baseball: 38 wins and 115 losses. Hoping to give the team a fresh start, he renamed it the Boston Bees, but the team continued to perform poorly. In 1940, construction magnate Lou Perini bought the team and changed the name back to the Braves. In 1953, Perini moved the Braves to Milwaukee – the first team relocation since 1903. Nine years later, he sold the Braves to some Chicago investors led by William Bartholomay, who quickly began looking to move the team to a larger television market. ",2,https://theconversation.com/the-cleveland-indians-changed-their-team-name-whats-holding-back-the-atlanta-braves-181662,FALSE, 908,Students of color in special education are less likely to get the help they need – here are 3 ways teachers can do better,"When I was a special education teacher at Myrtle Grove Elementary School in Miami in 2010, my colleagues and I recommended that a Black girl receive special education services because she had difficulty reading. However, her mother disagreed. When I asked her why, she explained that she, too, was identified as having a learning disability when she was a student. She was put in a small classroom away from her other classmates. She remembered reading books below her grade level and frequent conflicts between her classmates and teachers. Because of this, she believed she received a lower quality education. She didn’t want her daughter to go through the same experience. Ultimately, the mother and I co designed an individualized education plan – known in the world of special education as an IEP – for her daughter where she would be pulled out of class for only an hour a day for intensive reading instruction. When compared to white students with disabilities, students of color with disabilities are more likely to be placed in separate classrooms. This may lead to lower educational outcomes for students of color in special education, as students with disabilities perform better in math and reading when in general education classrooms. Researchers, such as University of Arizona education scholar Adai Tefera and CUNY Hunter College sociologist of education Catherine Voulgarides, argue that systemic racism – as well as biased interpretations of the behavior of students of color – explains these discrepancies. For example, when compared to students with similar test scores, Black students with disabilities are less likely to be included in the general education classroom than their non Black peers. To curb this, teachers can take steps toward being more inclusive of students of color with disabilities. As a Black feminist researcher who focuses on the intersection of race and disability, here are three recommendations I believe can help teachers to better support students of color with disabilities. Federal law requires that schools provide parents and guardians with Procedural Safeguards Notices, a full explanation of all the rights a parent has when their child is referred to or receives special education services. These notices need to be put in writing and explained to families in “language that is easily understandable. ” However, research shows that in many states, Procedural Safeguards Notices are written in ways that are difficult to read. This can make it harder for families, especially immigrant families, to know their rights. Also, families of color report facing greater resistance when making requests for disability services than white families do. When meeting with families, teachers can take the time to break down any confusing language written in the Procedural Safeguards Notice. This can assure that the families of students of color are fully aware of their options. For example, families have the right to invite an external advocate to represent their interests during meetings with school representatives. These advocates can speak on behalf of the family and often help resolve disagreements between the schools and families. Educators can tell families about organizations that serve children with disabilities and help them navigate school systems. The Color of Autism, The Arc and Easterseals are striving to address racial inequities in who has access to advocacy supports. These organizations create culturally responsive resources and connect families of color with scholarships to receive training on how to advocate for themselves. ",2,https://theconversation.com/students-of-color-in-special-education-are-less-likely-to-get-the-help-they-need-here-are-3-ways-teachers-can-do-better-178111,FALSE, 910,Ketanji Brown Jackson confirmed as Supreme Court justice: 4 essential reads," Breaking News Editor Associate Professor of Law, Rutgers University Newark Adjunct Professorial Lecturer, American University School of Public Affairs Associate Professor of Law, Santa Clara University Professor of Political Science, University of Florida View all partnersThe phrase “in a historic vote” gets thrown around a lot in journalism – and it isn’t always warranted. But shortly after 2 p. m. EDT on April 7, 2022, a Senate roll call confirmed Ketanji Brown Jackson as the next U. S. Supreme Court justice – the first Black woman to sit on the bench. The elevation of Jackson to the Supreme Court will not change the ideological setup of the bench – which would continue to be split 6 3 in favor of conservative justices. Nonetheless, it is an important landmark in the history of the court – of the 115 justices on the Supreme Court since it was established in 1789, 108 have been white men. Race featured in Jackson’s confirmation process; so too did attempts to define her “judicial philosophy. ” The Conversation has turned to legal scholars to explain the meaning of Jackson’s potential ascension to the court. The Senate Judiciary Committee vote moving Jackson’s confirmation toward a final Senate roll call took place on April 4, 2022 – 54 years to the day since Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. The significance of the date was not lost on American University’s Bev Freda Jackson. King’s words came up in Jackson’s confirmation hearing. Republican lawmakers suggested that his vision of an America in which people are judged “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character” was at odds with critical race theory, a concept much maligned by conservatives that holds that racism is structural in nature rather than expressed solely through personal bias. Their implication: that Jackson believed in critical race theory and therefore rejected King’s vision. Bev Freda Jackson argues that this is a distortion. “By recasting anti racism as the new racism, conservative GOP leaders … use King’s words that advocated for a colorblind society as a critical part of their national messaging to advance legislation that bans the teachings of so called divisive concepts,” she writes. “Ketanji Brown Jackson is the very dream that King envisioned,” Jackson notes. “But he died before seeing the results of his nonviolent movement for social justice. ” Read more: Ketanji Brown Jackson and the color blind society of Martin Luther King Jr. Now confirmed as the next Supreme Court justice, Jackson has broken through the ultimate glass ceiling in terms of legal careers. She did so so on the shoulders of pioneering Black female judges. University of Florida’s Sharon D. Wright Austin notes, even now, “relatively few Black women are judges at the state or federal level” – which makes the achievement of those who have made it to this level all the more remarkable. Of the judges highlighted by Austin, there is Judge Jane Bolin, who became the country’s first Black female judge in 1939, serving as a domestic relations judge in New York for almost four decades. Later, in 1961, Constance Baker Motley became the first Black woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court. In all she argued 10 cases before the court, winning nine of them. Meanwhile, Judge Julia Cooper Mack is noted as the first Black woman to sit on a federal appellate court, having been appointed in 1975 and serving 14 years on the bench. These women are to be celebrated and remembered. As Austin writes, “Representation matters: It is easier for young girls of color to aspire to reach their highest goals when they see others who have done so before them, in the same way that women like Jane Bolin, Constance Baker Motley and Julia Cooper Mack encouraged Ketanji Brown Jackson to reach hers. ”",2,https://theconversation.com/ketanji-brown-jackson-confirmed-as-supreme-court-justice-4-essential-reads-180838,FALSE, 911,The color of someone’s skin doesn’t equate to definitive sameness,"Despite the highly publicized 2020 murder of George Floyd and subsequent calls for change, many people of non African descent around the world have yet to consider the lasting impacts of anti Black racism. Anti Black racism is rooted in the enslavement and historical experiences of people of African descent. It continues to harm Black people and communities, “othering” their existence while creating and maintaining tensions between non Black and Black people. As a result of anti Black racism, non Black people remain ignorant about how Black people experience discrimination and how it acts as a barrier that suppresses the civic, political and economic success of Black communities in a dominant white society. Canadian scholars like Carl James and Johanne Jean Pierre explain anti Black racism as both historical and contemporary race based discrimination that upholds white supremacy. Although George Floyd’s murder was a reminder that anti Black racism exists in western societies, it also illustrated that race based discrimination is not homogenous among Black people. The murder of George Floyd resulted from anti Black racism coupled with deep rooted, stereotypical notions of Black masculinity. In his book The Man Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood, philosopher Tommy J. Curry demonstrates that Black men are denied social spaces, defined and perceived as brute savages. And sociologist Tamari Kitossa reminds us that Black men and their bodies have been simultaneously hated and dominated by non Black people. This domination is rooted in a historical belief that Black men are uneducated and savages, which has been perceived as a social truth. In the eyes of non Black especially white people, George Floyd’s body was deemed unworthy. Black men and their bodies suffer from further discrimination when their gender is perceived as hypersexual, violent and savage. In turn, white settler society responds by attempting to control and “other” the existence of Black men. This attempt leads to social, economic and political barriers, and the murdering of Black men. Black men and women do not experience the same anti Black racism. African American studies researcher Keeanga Yamahtta Taylor outlines the unique racial and gender based oppression experienced by Black women in white capitalist societies that challenges their survival and liberation. Black women continue to experience an upward battle to be recognized. Sociologist Patricia Hill Collins contends that Black women’s social oppression is centered on the intersections of their Blackness, gender and social class. Western societies maintain social inequalities where Black women have to experience more moments of struggle to assert themselves economically and politically in comparison to white women. Black men do in fact share similar economic and political barriers but their social experiences lead to heightened sense of oppression. For instance, research has demonstrated that Black men’s experiences in education have been more challenging than Black women’s. And Black male youth are more likely to continue to be marginalized as they enter adulthood in comparison to Black women. Interrogating the difference in social experiences between Black women and Black men can lead to an appreciation of intersectionality. Doing so can help us recognize the comprehensive ways to address social inequality on the axes of race, gender, social class, sexuality, disability and age, which distinctively shape people’s lives. This all illustrates that anti Black racism is intersectional and experienced differently by Black people based on various characteristics, including gender and socio economic status. ",2,https://theconversation.com/the-colour-of-someones-skin-doesnt-equate-to-definitive-sameness-179986,FALSE, 912,People are more likely to react to a Black person’s story of injustice – even if it happened to someone who is white,"The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. People appear more willing to boycott a retailer in response to a video message about a consumer’s experience of injustice while shopping when the narrator is Black, even when the source of the actual information is from a white person, according to research I conducted with several colleagues that’s currently under peer review. We wanted to observe whether and how the race of the person telling a story of racial injustice affects the reaction of their audience. So we conducted three studies that manipulated details about the race of the storyteller and victim to isolate the role the storyteller’s race plays. In the first study, we recruited 370 white male participants using a crowdsourced academic research panel. We asked them to watch a video in which a professional male actor portraying a consumer describes shopping in a store with his family and being unfairly suspected of shoplifting. Half the participants heard the story from a white man, the rest from a Black person – who was seen as more credible on the issue in an earlier test. But after finishing the story, the man reveals that the actual source of the tale was his friend Jay, who was reluctant to speak out. A picture of him is displayed on the screen. At random, some participants see a Black man, others see a white man. Others weren’t given this information, as a control condition. Participants were then told that the speaker in the message is organizing a boycott and asked how willing they’d be to support it. We found that people were most likely to support taking strong punitive actions against the retailer if the initial source of the information was Black, even when he reveals the incident happened to his white friend. But if the storyteller was white, there was significantly less support for a boycott – though that changed if the incident happened to a Black friend. To better understand what is going on here, we conducted a second study, this time with 301 white men. The setup was the same except we didn’t use a control and asked more follow ups. In particular, we asked participants to rank how morally outraged they were about the story – a process that has been explored in the literature on consumer ethics and morality. We confirmed our earlier results and also found that the Black source causes more moral outrage a negative moral emotional reaction to unethical behavior. In other words, the Black storyteller was more effective at causing perceptions of injustice, which subsequently reduced their likelihood of altering their initial judgment in response to new information. A third study, involving 300 white men and women, replicated the study but revealed the true source of the story of racial injustice at the beginning of the video. The impact was that participants were less likely to support punitive action if they learned at the outset that the actual source was white, even if the storyteller was Black. More and more research on the persistence of misinformation shows that people often do not update their beliefs formed in response to a message in light of new information. This past research focuses on the enduring influence of message content. Our research suggests that source related judgments can exert similar enduring influence. For policymakers and others trying to share information with the public, this shows the importance of who they choose as the source of the message – such as a well known celebrity to combat vaccine misinformation. For the rest of us, it helps to recognize this bias and pay attention to the source of a message – whether it’s in a television ad or in a tweet – and consider the message separate from the source. ",2,https://theconversation.com/people-are-more-likely-to-react-to-a-black-persons-story-of-injustice-even-if-it-happened-to-someone-who-is-white-172122,FALSE, 914,Ketanji Brown Jackson set for historic Supreme Court confirmation vote: 3 essential reads,"Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are scheduled to vote April 4, 2022, on Ketanji Brown Jackson’s nomination for the Supreme Court. It kicks off a potentially historic week in which a full Senate vote could set course for the nation’s highest court seating it’s first Black female judge. The elevation of Jackson to the Supreme Court would not change the ideological setup of the bench – which would continue to be split 6 3 in favor of conservative justices. Nonetheless, it would be an important landmark in the history of the Court – of the 115 justices on the Supreme Court since it was established in 1789, 108 have been white men. Race featured in Jackson’s confirmation process; so too attempts to define her “judicial philosophy. ” The Conversation has turned to legal scholars to explain the meaning of Jackson’s potential ascension to the court. Jackson, if she wins confirmation at the next stage, a vote by the full Senate, will have broken through the ultimate glass ceiling in terms of legal careers. She would have done so on the shoulders of pioneering Black female judges. University of Florida’s Sharon D. Wright Austin notes, even now, “relatively few Black women are judges at the state or federal level” – which makes the achievement of those who have made it to this level all the more remarkable. Of the judges highlighted by Austin, there is Judge Jane Bolin, who became the country’s first Black female judge in 1939, serving as a domestic relations court judge in New York for almost four decades. Later, in 1961, Constance Baker Motley became the first Black woman to argue a case before the Supreme Court. In all she argued 10 cases before the Court, winning nine of them. Meanwhile, Judge Julia Cooper Mack is noted as the first Black woman to sit on a federal appellate court, being appointed in 1975 and serving 14 years on the bench. These women are to be celebrated and remembered. As Wright Austin writes: “Representation matters: It is easier for young girls of color to aspire to reach their highest goals when they see others who have done so before them, in the same way that women like Jane Bolin, Constance Baker Motley and Julia Cooper Mack encouraged Ketanji Brown Jackson to reach hers. Read more: Ketanji Brown Jackson’s path to Supreme Court nomination was paved by trailblazing Black women judges The fact that a Black female Supreme Court justice is long overdue is testament to the slow progress the U. S. has made toward racial – and gender – equality. Margaret Russell, a constitutional law professor from Santa Clara University, saw signs of this lack of advancement during parts of Jackson’s Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings. Questions directed at the would be Supreme Court justice were, according to Russell, tantamount to race baiting. They also sounded eerily similar to criticisms that then Supreme Court nominee Thurgood Marshall, the first Black American nominee to the court, faced in his own confirmation hearings in 1967. Both Jackson now, and Marshall then, stood accused by senators of being soft on crime and were asked about how they intended to bring race into their legal decisions. Are you prejudiced against white people in the South?” Marshall was asked by a known white supremacist senator. Similarly, Jackson was asked during her confirmation hearings if she had a “hidden agenda” to incorporate critical race theory, which holds that racism is structural in nature rather than expressed solely through personal bias, into the legal system. “I find it striking,” Russell writes, “that race has surfaced in such a major way in these hearings, more than five decades after Marshall’s nomination. In some respects, there has been progress on racial equity in the U. S. , but aspects of these hearings demonstrate that too much remains the same. ”",2,https://theconversation.com/ketanji-brown-jackson-set-for-historic-supreme-court-confirmation-vote-3-essential-reads-180531,TRUE, 915,Ukraine refugee crisis exposes racism and contradictions in the definition of human,"Not only has the Russian invasion of Ukraine brought to light the awful tragedies that accompany armed conflict, but the subsequent refugee crisis has also uncovered deeply seated racism in the country. Reporters have documented dehumanizing treatment against international students from Africa, South Asia and the Middle East in Ukraine. This treatment also extended to racialized permanent residents of Ukraine, including a long time practicing Nigerian doctor. While white women and children were given priority on vehicles departing the country, African women were barred from trains leaving Kyiv even though there were empty seats. These incidents demonstrate a racist logic that positions some people as vulnerable, and others as beyond the realm of moral obligation to receive protection. Black and racialized people, it seems, are not as deserving of care. As Black Studies researchers in the field of education, we study how colonialism and anti Blackness shape what we know. Although some have been shocked by these reports, we are not surprised. The contradictions inherent in the incidents of racism occurring in Ukraine are part of a long legacy of the exclusive ways the West defines who counts as human. The liberal notion of western society was forged during the 15th 19th centuries when Africans were enslaved across the West. Because of this, liberal conceptions of justice do not consider Indigenous, Black and racialized persons to be on the same level as white Europeans. For example, the French Revolution pursued the values of liberté, egalité, fraternité even while the French fought to uphold Black enslavement in Haiti . Similarly, the American constitution declared that “all men are created equal” while declaring that Black persons counted as only three fifths of a person. The 1948 UN Declaration of human rights was created to contest Nazism and anti semitism, but did not seek to redress centuries of colonialism of racialized people. Author and poet Aimé Césaire pointed out: “Europeans tolerated Nazism before it was inflicted on them… because until then, it had been applied only to non European people. ”Jamaican philosopher Sylvia Wynter explores the contradictions within our working definitions of what it means to be human. She explains that since the rise of Renaissance Humanism and the spread of colonialism, western origin stories have used a binary opposition between an ideal Human and a “deselected other”, where the “other” is Black, Indigenous or racialized. Beginning in the 15th century, when Europeans began colonizing the Americas, European intellectuals introduced an origin story that considered rationality the defining characteristic of being human. In contrast, they framed Indigenous people in the Americas, and Africans everywhere, as inherently lacking rationality, marking them as less than fully human. This logic justified European colonialism and the dispossession of Indigenous peoples. Africans and their descendants would be viewed as enslaveable by nature, supposedly the most lacking in reason. Around the 18th century, a revised origin story placed all human groups in a supposed evolutionary hierarchy in which white people were seen as the pinnacle of human development. ",2,https://theconversation.com/ukraine-refugee-crisis-exposes-racism-and-contradictions-in-the-definition-of-human-179150,FALSE, 917,Why does critical race theory make people so uncomfortable?,"As the war on critical race theory ramps up across the United States, it has become one of the most politicized schools of thought, sparking debate in both private and public spheres. While debates surrounding CRT are not new, it has gained increased attention following George Floyd’s murder and the Black Lives Matter Movement. Proponents of CRT argue that it is an analytical tool for unearthing and interrogating the pervasiveness of systemic racism and the myriad of ways it is embedded in society, institutional policies, processes and practices. But critics of CRT assert that it is divisive anti American discourse that villainizes white people and indoctrinates young minds. Parents and politicians express ongoing outrage and denounce the use of CRT in elementary and secondary school curricula. Similarly, as colleges and universities commemorated Black History Month in February, some parents contend that Black History Month programs and events reflect CRT principles. The rage among white nationals and extremists has transpired into inciting violence and issuing bomb threats at approximately 16 historically Black universities. Read more: Critical race theory: Diversity is not the solution, dismantling white supremacy is Given the moral panic that has erupted, some argue that much of the backlash surrounding CRT is politically manufactured or engineered. Criticisms about CRT largely stem from individuals who misunderstand and misconstrue CRT’s key tenets. According to historian and co editor of Critical Race Studies Across Disciplines, Jonathan Chism: “Many that are condemning critical race theory haven’t read it or studied it intensely. This is largely predicated on fear: the fear of losing power and influence and privilege. The larger issue that this is all stemming from is a desire to deny the truth about America, about racism. ”Critical race theory emerged in the mid 1970s as a response and opposition to color blind discourses that failed to consider how race and racial inequality are deeply rooted in the legal system. Kimberlé Crenshaw, Derrick Bell, Richard Delgado, Mari Matsuda, Patricia Williams, along with many other racialized scholars and activists, played a pivotal role in advancing CRT as a social and intellectual movement. CRT is guided by several tenets, one of which is recognizing that race is a socially constructed phenomenon that has historical and contemporary significance. A CRT analysis acknowledges how the legacy of slavery, segregation and the social construction of a racial caste system denigrates racialized people. It also acknowledges that race is ingrained and normalized in social structures and laws. CRT rejects dominant ideologies of objectivity, color blindness and meritocracy. Issues around race and racism are central to understanding power imbalances. Rather than challenge systemic racism, ideologies of objectivity, color blindness and meritocracy blame racialized people, both individually and collectively for their own oppression. Centering the perspectives and lived experiences of Black and racialized people is often emphasized through storytelling, counter storytelling and collaboration. CRT also examines the ways in which people’s intersecting and overlapping identities of race, gender, class and other axes of oppression contribute to differential experiences. It is action oriented and is committed to advancing a social justice agenda. ",2,https://theconversation.com/why-does-critical-race-theory-make-people-so-uncomfortable-176125,FALSE, 918,How a Black writer in 19th-century America used humor to combat white supremacy,"Any writer has to struggle with the dilemma of staying true to their vision or giving editors and readers what they want. A number of factors might influence the latter: the market, trends and sensibilities. But in the decades after the Civil War, Black writers looking to faithfully depict the horrors of slavery had to contend with readers whose worldviews were colored by racism, as well as an entire swath of the country eager to paper over the past. Charles Chesnutt was one of those writers. Forced to work with skeptical editors and within the confines of popular forms, Chesnutt nonetheless worked to shine a light on the legacy of slavery. His 1899 collection of stories, “The Conjure Woman,” took place on a Southern plantation and sold well. At first glance, the stories seemed to mimic other books set in the South written in a style called “local color,” which focuses on regional characters, dialects and customs. But Chesnutt had actually written a subversive counter narrative, using humor to poke holes in the nostalgic myths of the South and expose the contradictions of a racist society. After the Civil War, there was a concerted effort to portray the South as a pastoral place possessed with a culture of honor. Slavery, meanwhile, had been a nurturing, even benevolent, institution. These beliefs bled into the era’s fiction, with white authors such as Thomas Nelson Page and Joel Chandler Harris writing stories that sentimentalized and softened the complex histories of the past. Many of these stories feature a formerly enslaved older male who’s given the affectionate moniker “Uncle. ” These characters tended to describe the Civil War as an affront on the Southern way of life, while presenting the South and its landed gentry as heroic. In “A Story of the War,” for example, Harris introduces the character Uncle Remus, who recounts the time his master went away to fight the Civil War. Overcome with concern for the man who enslaved him, Uncle Remus follows him and witnesses a Northern soldier preparing to shoot him. In a moment of panic, Remus shoots the Northerner, wounding him. “A Story of the War,” like most Southern local color tales, appealed to readers invested in the Lost Cause of the Old South, a revisionist ideology that depicts the creation of the Confederate States and cause of the Civil War as just and heroic. Historian Fred Bailey notes that stories like Page’s and Harris’ were “hailed by the South’s upper classes,” while associations like the United Daughters of the Confederacy routinely read from these works at their meetings. At first glance, it would seem Chesnutt, who was mixed race and could have easily passed for white, was merely working within the dominant literary form of his time and fashioning stories geared to a white audience. Like his white contemporaries, Chesnutt, in “The Conjure Woman,” includes a character who’s an “uncle” living on the abandoned plantation where he once toiled. But Chesnutt, as literary historian Dickson Bruce points out in his 2005 essay “Confronting the Crisis: African American Narratives,” used the setting of the plantation to present a more authentic representation of slavery. Uncle Julius, who appears in each of the collection’s stories, isn’t nostalgic for some bygone era. Instead, he reflects on his own life and seeks to show the humanity of the enslaved. He uses his ability as a raconteur to cleverly swindle a white carpetbagger who bought the plantation Julius lived on during his bondage and after the Civil War. The stories are descriptive, corrective – and, most importantly, funny. ",2,https://theconversation.com/how-a-black-writer-in-19th-century-america-used-humor-to-combat-white-supremacy-176230,TRUE, 919,What The Conversation talks about when it talks about football: 3 essential reads ahead of the Super Bowl,"The Super Bowl is all about wings. Well, it’s about wings and commercials. OK, OK, it is about wings, commercials and four 15 minute quarters of broken play interspersed with moments of occasional sporting drama and a halftime singsong. In fact, football is about all that and much more. Over the last 12 months, The Conversation has published articles on everything from race and sexuality in the NFL to how climate change may affect the game in years to come. So if this year’s Super Bowl is a little dull, or you simply want to avoid being sold a truck every commercial break, here are a few interesting reads on what is happening in the football, but off the field. Super Bowl LVI is taking place in the shadow of a controversy over racial discrimination in the the NFL. On Feb. 1, former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores filed a lawsuit against three teams and the league, alleging a pattern of racist hiring practices. To George B. Cunningham, professor of sport management at Texas A&M University, the legal development is perhaps hardly surprising. His article explores the “glaring absence of nonwhite head coaches” in the NFL. Cunningham notes that at the beginning of the 2021 season there were just three Black head coaches in the NFL – the same as there were in 2003. This isn’t a result of performance; there is no evidence that Black coaches are less qualified or have worse results. Rather, Cunningham notes, “biased decision making, organizational cultures that value similarity, and societal forms of bias and discrimination are all to blame for the lack of diversity among NFL head coaches. ” Read more: Almost all NFL coaches are white lawsuit focuses on leagues abysmal record hiring diverse coaches Racial gaps at the top level of coaching isn’t the only disparity in American football. There is also a distinct lack of gay athletes in the sport. In fact, the first openly gay active NFL player only came out in June 2021. The announcement, by Las Vegas Raiders defensive lineman Carl Nassib, received widespread attention and praise. Penn State’s John Affleck writes that to “have a gay player in America’s most watched sport represents a landmark moment” but that it does not mean “the end of homophobia in sport. ”Affleck notes the case of Michael Sam, a star college football player who was projected as a fourth round draft pick heading into 2014. But after confirming in interviews that he was gay, he slid to a sixth round projection. Ultimately, “he was not selected until the 249th pick overall – eighth to last – in the final round of the draft,” Affleck writes. Barriers to out athletes continue today. Affleck cites 2021 research showing that half of LGBTQ respondents to a survey said they had “experienced discrimination, insults, bullying or abuse while playing, watching or talking about sports. ” Read more: Why its such a big deal that the NFLs Carl Nassib came out as gay Big players made big calls during this year’s NFL season – but not all of them were right, and not all of them were on the field. Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers made a call that was out of his field of expertise – and he was very, very wrong. A few days after being diagnosed with COVID 19, Rodgers offered what USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences’s Joe Árvai described as “a smorgasbord of pandemic misinformation and conspiracy theories” defending his decision to skip the COVID 19 vaccine. As someone who studies how people think, Árvai was also intrigued by Rodgers’s claim that his position on vaccination was due to his being “a critical thinker. ”",2,https://theconversation.com/what-the-conversation-talks-about-when-it-talks-about-football-3-essential-reads-ahead-of-the-super-bowl-176871,FALSE, 920,New evidence of discrimination against Black coaches in the NFL since 2018,"Boldly going where no NFL coach has gone before, recently fired Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores put his future career at stake and filed a class action lawsuit against the league, the New York Giants, the Denver Broncos and the Dolphins, alleging discriminatory hiring practices among team owners. Coincidentally, a study I began working on in the spring of 2020 was published online in the Review of Black Political Economy mere hours before Flores’ lawsuit went public. My colleagues and I used data on all NFL offensive and defensive coordinators since the 2003 introduction of the Rooney Rule, which required all NFL teams to interview at least one minority candidate for vacant head coaching jobs. We wanted to determine what factors were correlated with a coordinator’s probability of becoming a head coach. Our results identified many factors that have impacted a coordinator’s chances of landing a head coaching job. One of those factors was the coordinator’s race. The study pays specific attention to the case of Kansas City Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy, who is Black. Before Flores’ lawsuit was filed, Bieniemy had largely been the face of the discussion surrounding Black football coaches. What makes his case particularly interesting is the fact that two of his predecessors, who are both white, were quickly promoted to head coaching gigs. Many in the media have suggested that Bieniemy’s lack of head coaching opportunities can be attributed to racism. In our study, we wanted to see if there was any validity to this claim. When Andy Reid became head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs in 2013, his offensive coordinator was former NFL quarterback Doug Pederson, who is white. At the conclusion of the 2015 season, Pederson became head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles. Pederson’s replacement for the 2016 season was former Minnesota Vikings head coach Brad Childress. In 2017, Childress remained with the Chiefs as assistant head coach, and Matt Nagy, who is white, was promoted from quarterbacks coach to offensive coordinator. After only one season as Chiefs offensive coordinator, Nagy accepted a head coaching offer from the Chicago Bears. Nagy’s replacement was Bieniemy. During Bieniemy’s tenure, the Chiefs have reached four straight AFC Championship games and two Super Bowls. Using the simple rating system metric provided by Pro Football Reference. com, the Chiefs’ worst offensive performance under Bieniemy’s tutelage was better than any season for Pederson or Nagy. Yet Bieniemy, who was once again passed over in this year’s hiring cycle, still awaits his first head coaching opportunity despite reportedly interviewing for 15 such positions as of February 2022. We collected data on all 267 NFL coordinators between 2003 and 2020. In addition to race, our model accounts for a coordinator’s age; their years of experience as a coordinator; their years of NFL playing experience; what position they played in college; what positions they coached in the NFL; whether they had NFL or college head coaching experience; whether they were an offensive or defensive coordinator; whether they were coaching under an offensive or defensive minded head coach; and their performance as a coordinator. The model also controls for the number of head coaching vacancies each offseason. Our research revealed several potential reasons for why Bieniemy has yet to secure a job as a head coach in the NFL. One could have to do with the position Bieniemy played and coached prior to becoming Chiefs offensive coordinator: running back. NFL owners seem to devalue experience playing or coaching this position in their head coaches. Of the 32 head coaches to begin the 2021 NFL season, none were former running backs. Excluding special teams positions, running back was the only position not played by at least one head coach for the 2021 season. ",2,https://theconversation.com/new-evidence-of-discrimination-against-black-coaches-in-the-nfl-since-2018-176351,FALSE, 922,Challenging the whiteness of classics – remembering the Black Romans,"As with every humanities discipline, classics has responded to Black Lives Matter with justifiable introspection. As the study of the ancient world, and particularly that of the Mediterranean cultures, classics has a significant colonial legacy: British, French and Italian colonialists saw themselves as inheriting or continuing a “civilising mission” which they associated with the Romans. They assumed that the Romans shared their prejudices, particularly those associated with elitism and racism. When they thought about or represented Roman imperial history, they imagined it as dominated by White men, who were the political leaders and were responsible for cultural achievements. This is a legacy that has proved tenacious. Although there is no evidence to suggest that Roman leaders, cultural and political, were uniformly White, classics and ancient history have been associated with whiteness. Many of my students have worried about a lack of representation that works on many levels in the classics. There are few lecturers of colour – that is changing, though much too slowly. But there is also alienation from what is being studied: the Romans are not seen by these students “as people like them”. The Roman world is seen as white and one in which people of colour had no place or were at the social margins. However, one of the central elements of my teaching is to emphasise the cultural diversities of the ancient Mediterranean peoples and their social distance from contemporary societies and values. There is a gap here between the likely racial make up of the Roman population and how that has been understood. This gap, I suggest, derives from a systematic erasure of Black Romans from Roman history. This erasure is similar to the “whitening” of histories and cultures, in which the presence and contribution of Black people is ignored. Racism is understood as the use of various minor corporeal differences, in particular skin colour, to create categories of people. Those categories are subsequently associated with identities, which reinforce that categorisation. Such categorisation is a peculiar and perverse modern idea. Greeks and Romans didn’t think in these ways. They were aware of differences. But for Romans, White or Black were not meaningful social categories. As a result, our sources hardly ever mention skin pigmentation, since it wasn’t important to them. It is normally impossible for us to associate particular ancients with those modern racial categories. But this absence of evidence has allowed the assumption that most prominent Romans were, in our terms, White. However, there is every reason to think that many leading Romans were, in our terms, Black. Septimius Severus was a Roman general who became emperor in 193 CE. He was born in Leptis Magna in modern Libya. Almost all depictions of Severus are statues or on coins. They show him as having curly short hair and a beard, which is sometimes forked. Such depictions do not represent his skin pigmentation. But unusually we have a painting of Severus, the Severan Tondo in the Altes Museum in Berlin. The Tondo shows Severus, Julia Domna, his wife, and their children – the future emperor Caracalla and Geta. Geta’s face was obscured after his murder by Caracalla. The greying Severus clearly has dark skin. Painted depictions of emperors circulated widely, partly through the military and partly through imperial cult, as we can see in this marvellous bust of Severus himself in the Archaeological Museum at Komotini, Greece. There can be little doubt that this is what people thought Severus and his family looked like. And yet, Severus’ Blackness has historically been questioned. ",2,https://theconversation.com/challenging-the-whiteness-of-classics-remembering-the-black-romans-175180,FALSE, 923,"New flood maps show US damage rising 26% in next 30 years due to climate change alone, and the inequity is stark"," Research Fellow, University of Bristol Executive Director, Wharton Risk Center, University of Pennsylvania Professor of Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences, City University of New York Professor of Hydrology, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol Oliver Wing is a Research Fellow at the University of Bristol and also the Chief Research Officer of Fathom, a flood risk analytics firm. Carolyn Kousky is the Executive Director of the Wharton Risk Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Jeremy Porter is Professor of Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences at CUNY and also the Chief Research Officer at the research and technology non profit First Street Foundation. Paul Bates is Professor of Hydrology at the University of Bristol and also a founding shareholder of Fathom. University of Bristol provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation UK. View all partnersClimate change is raising flood risks in neighborhoods across the U. S. much faster than many people realize. Over the next three decades, the cost of flood damage is on pace to rise 26% due to climate change alone, an analysis of our new flood risk maps shows. That’s only part of the risk. Despite recent devastating floods, people are still building in high risk areas. With population growth factored in, we found the increase in U. S. flood losses will be four times higher than the climate only effect. Our team develops cutting edge flood risk maps that incorporate climate change. It’s the data that drives local risk estimates you’re likely to see on real estate websites. In the new analysis, published Jan. 31, 2022, we estimated where flood risk is rising fastest and who is in harm’s way. The results show the high costs of flooding and lay bare the inequities of who has to endure America’s crippling flood problem. They also show the importance of altering development patterns now. Flooding is the most frequent and costliest natural disaster in the United States, and its costs are projected to rise as the climate warms. Decades of measurements, computer models and basic physics all point to increasing precipitation and sea level rise. As the atmosphere warms, it holds about 7% more moisture for every degree Celsius that the temperature rises, meaning more moisture is available to fall as rain, potentially raising the risk of inland flooding. A warmer climate also leads to rising sea levels and higher storm surges as land ice melts and warming ocean water expands. Yet, translating that understanding into the detailed impact of future flooding has been beyond the grasp of existing flood mapping approaches. Previous efforts to link climate change to flood models offered only a broad view of the threat and didn’t zoom in close enough to provide reliable measures of local risk, although they could illustrate the general direction of change. Most local flood maps, such as those produced by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have a different problem: They’re based on historical changes rather than incorporating the risks ahead, and the government is slow to update them. Our maps account for flooding from rivers, rainfall and the oceans – both now and into the future – across the entire contiguous United States. They are produced at scales that show street by street impacts, and unlike FEMA maps, they cover floods of many different sizes, from nuisance flooding that may occur every few years to once in a millennium disasters. While hazard maps only show where floods might occur, our new risk analysis combines that with data on the U. S. building stock to understand the damage that occurs when floodwaters collide with homes and businesses. It’s the first validated analysis of climate driven flood risk for the U. S. We estimated that the annual cost of flooding today is over US$32 billion nationwide, with an outsized burden on communities in Appalachia, the Gulf Coast and the Northwest. ",2,https://theconversation.com/new-flood-maps-show-us-damage-rising-26-in-next-30-years-due-to-climate-change-alone-and-the-inequity-is-stark-175958,FALSE, 924,"Artificial intelligence can discriminate on the basis of race and gender, and also age","We have accepted the use of artificial intelligence in complex processes from health care to our daily use of social media often without critical investigation, until it is too late. The use of AI is inescapable in our modern society, and it may perpetuate discrimination without its users being aware of any prejudice. When health care providers rely on biased technology, there are real and harmful impacts. This became clear recently when a study showed that pulse oximeters which measure the amount of oxygen in the blood and have been an essential tool for clinical management of COVID 19 are less accurate on people with darker skin than lighter skin. The findings resulted in a sweeping racial bias review now underway, in an attempt to create international standards for testing medical devices. There are examples in health care, business, government and everyday life where biased algorithms have led to problems, like sexist searches and racist predictions of an offender’s likelihood of re offending. AI is often assumed to be more objective than humans. In reality, however, AI algorithms make decisions based on human annotated data, which can be biased and exclusionary. Current research on bias in AI focuses mainly on gender and race. But what about age related bias can AI be ageist?In 2021, the World Health Organization released a global report on aging, which called for urgent action to combat ageism because of its widespread impacts on health and well being. Ageism is defined as “a process of systematic stereotyping of and discrimination against people because they are old. ” It can be explicit or implicit, and can take the form of negative attitudes, discriminatory activities, or institutional practices. The pervasiveness of ageism has been brought to the forefront throughout the COVID 19 pandemic. Older adults have been labelled as “burdens to societies,” and in some jurisdictions, age has been used as the sole criterion for lifesaving treatments. ",2,https://theconversation.com/artificial-intelligence-can-discriminate-on-the-basis-of-race-and-gender-and-also-age-173617,FALSE, 927,hmaud Arbery murderers sentenced to life in prison: 4 essential reads on the case,"USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism C. Wendell and Edith M. Carlsmith Professor of Law, Stanford University Professor of Sociology, University of Maryland Associate Professor of Law, University of South Carolina View all partners to of the three men convicted of murdering unarmed Black jogger Ahmaud Arbery learned on Jan. 7, 2021, that they will likely die behind bars. Gregory McMichael and his son Travis McMichael were sentenced to life in prison without parole at a hearing in Glynn County, Georgia. A third man, William Bryan, was sentenced to life in prison with parole. He must serve a minimum of 30 years behind bars before he is eligible. All three were found guilty on Nov. 24, 2021, of murder in a case that gained widespread attention during a national reckoning over the killing of unarmed Black men in the U. S. Arbery, a 25 year old Black man, was killed on Feb. 23, 2020, after being pursued through the predominantly white suburban neighborhood of Satilla Shores, near Brunswick in Georgia. For many, the manner of his death raised questions over the role race played in the killing, evoking a U. S. past in which gangs of white men killed Black men and boys with impunity. But race played a backseat role in the trial, being brought up only in the prosecutor’s closing argument. Instead, the nearly all white jury – 11 of the 12 jurors were white – was invited to focus more on whether the defendants were justified in trying to apprehend Arbery as he jogged down the road. The Conversation U. S. ‘s authors have explored how race and law intertwine in the following stories related to Arbery’s murder. In the course of a two week trial, jurors heard evidence from more than two dozen witnesses. At the heart of the defense was a claim that the three men accused were protected by the state’s citizen’s arrest law. Superior Court Judge Timothy Walmsley made a point of explaining the law in his final instructions before the jury retired to consider its verdict. He told them citizen’s arrests can be made only if a crime has taken place in the presence of the person making the arrest, “or within his immediate knowledge. ”The verdict in the case suggests jurors sided with the prosecution’s view that the citizen’s arrest defense did not hold water. Following the death of Arbery, Georgia weakened its 150 year old citizen’s arrest law. But as explained by Seth Stoughton, professor of law at University of South Carolina, many states retain similar legislation. In fact, citizen’s arrest laws have been around for centuries – but they have often been open to abuse. Such laws can be “badly misused by those who believe their higher social status gives them authority over someone they perceive as having lower status. ”“Frequently, this falls along racial lines,” Stoughton adds. Read more: Trial of Ahmaud Arbery’s accused killers will scrutinize the use – and abuse – of ‘outdated’ citizen’s arrest laws Lawyers for the three defendants claimed in the trial that the accused men were within their right to conduct a citizen’s arrest because they believed Arbery had committed a burglary despite there being no evidence to suggest that the 25 year old had stolen anything. Sociologist Rashawn Ray focused on the setting and circumstances surrounding the shooting – that the victim was a Black man jogging in a white suburban neighborhood. In Ray’s study of race and physical exercise, he found that Black men living in white neighborhoods were far less likely to go for a run in the areas surrounding their home than were white men, white women or Black women. The reason? “Black men are often criminalized in public spaces – that means they are perceived as potential threats and predators,” Ray writes. ",2,https://theconversation.com/ahmaud-arbery-murderers-sentenced-to-life-in-prison-4-essential-reads-on-the-case-174514,FALSE, 928,bell hooks will never leave us – she lives on through the truth of her words,"I was introduced to the work of bell hooks for the first time when I was 14 years old, sitting on my Nana’s porch, complaining about the mosquitoes and the heat. My Nana, who was probably frustrated by my endless complaints about being bored, stuck a copy of “Ain’t I A Woman” in my hand and told me just to “shut up and read. ” I remember that summer because after I read that book, all we talked about was bell hooks and who she was and who I wanted to be. I said then that I wanted to be a writer, like bell hooks, and change the world with my words. I took her words with me when I went off to college, and by then, I had my own dog eared copies of some of her books. I went to her work whenever I needed to be reminded of my strength. The world felt much safer when bell hooks and Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou were on the front line, carving out a path to freedom and modeling what a Black woman’s resistance to a system hellbent on trying to make them small looked like. bell hooks’ words went with me everywhere, even while they kept taking me back to myself. I, like countless others over the past 40 years, was inspired by bell hooks, who died on Dec. 15, 2021, at 69. As a leading Black intellectual, hooks pushed the feminist movement beyond the preserve of the white and middle class, encouraging Black and working class perspectives on gender inequality. She taught us about white supremacist capitalist patriarchal values – giving both the words to define it and the methods to dismantle it. And unlike previous generations, she prompted Black women like myself to see ourselves, claim ourselves and love ourselves with an unapologetic fierceness. “No Black woman writer in this culture can write ‘too much,’” bell hooks once wrote, “Indeed, no woman writer can write ‘too much’… No woman has ever written enough. ”I used to read her words to my sons when I was holding them in my arms, determined to practice “liberative parenting” and raise my Black sons as Black feminists. I met bell hooks in person several times in my capacity as an activist, an officer of the National Women’s Studies Association and as a scholar of African American studies. I have heard her lecture and have spoken with her, and every time, I was speechless. In her presence, I was once again the 14 year old, sitting on the porch, diving into her words and finding myself on the other side. Her words, like my Nana’s hugs, always bought me back to myself, telling me, coaxing me, pushing me to become who I was meant to be in this world. I remember speaking her words to the wind, hoping that if I ever forgot who I was, the wind would remind me. Whenever I am hungry for truth, I turn to her work. When I need support or encouragement, I turn to her work. When I need to be reminded of how to love and fight, I turn to her work. So when I heard, read, realized and finally accepted that bell hooks – genius, scholar, cultural critic, truth speaker, one who had the strength to call out and challenge white supremacy and racism time and time again – had run on ahead to see how the end is going to be, all I could do was sit and breathe. I am not OK. None of us – feminists, scholars, activists, truth seekers, survivors – who have ever been touched by her work and her words are OK. Not today. Not at this moment, and not for a minute. It is not enough to say she saved me from cutting off my tongue, because unless you know her genius, you will think that this is just about violence and not about salvation. It is not enough to say that she saved me from burning it all down, because unless you know her brilliance, you will never understand how her words taught me how to come through the fire and be better and stronger on the other side. ",2,https://theconversation.com/bell-hooks-will-never-leave-us-she-lives-on-through-the-truth-of-her-words-173900,TRUE, 929,I’m a Black woman and the metaverse scares me – here’s how to make the next iteration of the internet inclusive," Doctoral Candidate in Communication, University of Illinois at Chicago Breigha Adeyemo does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. View all partnersMarginalized people often suffer the most harm from unintended consequences of new technologies. For example, the algorithms that automatically make decisions about who gets to see what content or how images are interpreted suffer from racial and gender biases. People who have multiple marginalized identities, such as being Black and disabled, are even more at risk than those with a single marginalized identity. This is why when Mark Zuckerberg laid out his vision for the metaverse – a network of virtual environments in which many people can interact with one another and digital objects – and said that it will touch every product the company builds, I was scared. As a researcher who studies the intersections of race, technology and democracy – and as a Black woman – I believe it is important to carefully consider the values that are being encoded into this next generation internet. Problems are already surfacing. Avatars, the graphical personas people can create or buy to represent themselves in virtual environments, are being priced differently based on the perceived race of the avatar, and racist and sexist harassment is cropping up in today’s pre metaverse immersive environments. Ensuring that this next iteration of the internet is inclusive and works for everyone will require that people from marginalized communities take the lead in shaping it. It will also require regulation with teeth to keep Big Tech accountable to the public interest. Without these, the metaverse risks inheriting the problems of today’s social media, if not becoming something worse. Utopian visions in the early days of the internet typically held that life online would be radically different from life in the physical world. For example, people envisioned the internet as a way to escape parts of their identity, such as race, gender and class distinctions. In reality, the internet is far from raceless. While techno utopias communicate desired visions of the future, the reality of new technologies often doesn’t live up to these visions. In fact, the internet has brought novel forms of harm to society, such as the automated dissemination of propaganda on social media and bias in the algorithms that shape your online experience. Zuckerberg described the metaverse as a more immersive, embodied internet that will “unlock a lot of amazing new experiences. ” This is a vision not just of a future internet, but of a future way of life. However off target this vision might be, the metaverse is likely – like earlier versions of the internet and social media – to have widespread consequences that will transform how people socialize, travel, learn, work and play. The question is, will those consequences be the same for everyone? History suggests the answer is no. Widely used technologies often assume white male identities and bodies as the default. MIT computer scientist Joy Buolomwini has shown that facial recognition software performs worse on women and even more so on women with darker faces. Other studies have borne this out. Whiteness is embedded as a default in these technologies, even in the absence of race as a category for machine learning algorithms. Unfortunately, racism and technology often go hand in hand. Black female politicians and journalists have been disproportionately targeted with abusive or problematic tweets, and Black and Latino voters were targeted in online misinformation campaigns during the 2020 election cycle. This historical relationship between race and technology leaves me concerned about the metaverse. If the metaverse is meant to be an embodied version of the internet, as Zuckerberg has described it, then does that mean that already marginalized people will experience new forms of harm?",2,https://theconversation.com/im-a-black-woman-and-the-metaverse-scares-me-heres-how-to-make-the-next-iteration-of-the-internet-inclusive-173310,FALSE, 931,Hulu’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ casts Canada as a racial utopia,"When Hulu’s series The Handmaid’s Tale premiered in 2017, reviewers noted its gripping drama and dystopian exploration of rape culture and misogyny at a time when both were hallmarks of Donald Trump’s presidency. The series is adapted from Canadian author Margaret Atwood’s 1985 dystopian novel. It has won numerous awards and was recently renewed for a fifth season. But some commentators, including writer Ellen E. Jones, have criticized the series for its use of color blind casting that created inclusivity but otherwise ignored race in storylines. Others, including Noah Berlatsky, have analyzed how both the series and novel erase Black people’s history. Our research examines representations of race in speculative fiction and of Canada in U. S. literature, leading us to notice how Hulu’s series represents race and national difference. The show positions Canada as a morally superior nation that has rejected the dystopian society’s repressive and exclusionist thinking. This is especially apparent in Season 4’s focus on characters’ escape to Canada, a theme that references older abolitionist narratives. In so doing, the show obscures Canada’s history of slavery, colonialism and racism. Both the novel and show draw on U. S. history to imagine a dystopian world facing an unexplained fertility crisis. Gilead, a theocratic nation led by religious fundamentalists, has overthrown the U. S. government. Atwood’s female narrator is an educated white woman forced to become a “handmaid. ” Each month, a commander rapes her in a religious fertility ceremony. Babies born to handmaids are raised by commanders and their wives. The sole purpose of the handmaids is to rebuild Gilead’s population. Writer Priya Nair explains that Atwood’s novel draws on the historical oppression of Black enslaved women and applies it to fictional white women. For example, handmaids who are disobedient are beaten or hanged. Despite clear parallels to slavery, Atwood only obliquely references slavery when the narrator explains that the “Children of Ham” have been relocated to the Dakotas. “Children of Ham” is a Biblical phrase that was used historically to justify enslaving Africans. Nair also notes that the novel focuses on white women’s oppression, while seemingly ignoring “the historical realities of an American dystopia founded on anti Black violence. ” While the novel relies on historical experiences of Black Americans, its characters are predominantly white, a feature of Gilead that Atwood maintains in the 2019 follow up The Testaments. As reviewer Danielle Kurtzleben notes, in this second instalment: “Readers hoping to hear more about race in Gilead will be sorely disappointed. ” Atwood intentionally framed Gilead as both misogynist and racist: the theocracy is interested only in reproducing white babies and, therefore, only enslaving white women. In adapting the novel, Hulu relied on a diverse cast of actors. White actor Elisabeth Moss plays June and Black British actor O T Fagbenle portrays her husband Luke. Black actor Samira Wiley was cast as June’s best friend Moira. Actors of colour portray characters of all class positions in Gilead’s society. ",2,https://theconversation.com/hulus-the-handmaids-tale-casts-canada-as-a-racial-utopia-167766,FALSE, 932,The concrete effects of body cameras on police accountability,"Without video evidence, it’s unlikely we would have ever heard of George Floyd or witnessed the prosecution of his killer, a Minneapolis police officer. The recording of Floyd’s killing echoed the documentation in the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, two Black men who were killed at the hands of police. The circulation of such videos – witness cellphones, dashcams and police body worn cameras – have helped awaken a protest movement centered on police accountability and systemic racism in the United States. They have also diminished trust in law enforcement, which has dipped to its lowest level since 1993, according to a 2020 Gallup Survey. Nineteen percent of Black Americans said they trust police, compared to 56% of white Americans. And a majority of those polled, 56%, called for major reforms in policing, including 88% of Black people and 51% of white people. Much discussion on police reform revolves around police officer recruitment, training processes and re budgeting or “defunding” the police. But another way to reform policing is to make police services more transparent and officers more accountable. Over the past decade, the implementation of body camera technology has rapidly expanded across major metropolitan police departments, including Washington, New York and Chicago. We are criminologists and economists, and our recent study has found that providing police officers with body cameras has a substantive effect on investigations of police accountability. The cameras have also helped reduce racial bias against citizen complainants. The vast majority of U. S. public complaints against police officers are dismissed. Only 2. 1% of the citizen complaints filed in Chicago between 2010 and 2016 resulted in a disciplinary action against police officers, according to the Invisible Institute, a journalism organization that “collects and publishes information about police misconduct in Chicago” in its Citizens Police Data Project. This rate is about one third lower when complainants are African Americans. There is a similar pattern in cities like Columbus, Ohio, and Portland, Oregon. Traditional strategies to address police misconduct have focused on internal affairs divisions in police departments, which investigate possible law breaking incidents and professional misconduct within police forces, or citizen oversight review boards, which investigate citizen complaints. But both of these have been criticized for being biased against citizens. Such investigations of police misconduct have relied heavily on eyewitness accounts, often producing “he said/she said” patterns of flawed evidence and, thus, inconclusive results. This has changed, however, with the introduction of body camera technology. While there have been dozens of studies on the impact of body cameras on police behavior – with some promising outcomes in the reduction in police wrong doings – their effect on the resolution of citizen complaints has been relatively understudied. We recently studied an eight year period – 2013 to 2020 – of citizen complaint data from Chicago’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability. During that span, the Chicago Police Department assigned these cameras to its officers in a staggered fashion, district by district across a 17 month period, from June 2016 to December 2017. ",2,https://theconversation.com/the-concrete-effects-of-body-cameras-on-police-accountability-171460,FALSE, 936,Bolsonaro faces ‘crimes against humanity’ charge over COVID-19 mishandling: 5 essential reads,"A Brazilian congressional panel has recommended that President Jair Bolsonaro be charged with “crimes against humanity” over his alleged bungling of the country’s response to the COVID 19 pandemic. The near 1,200 page report, formally presented on Oct. 20, 2021, holds Bolsonaro culpable for worsening a crisis that has to date killed some 600,000 Brazilians, outlining how his failed policies allowed the virus to spread among the population. The president denies any wrongdoing. An earlier draft had called for Bolsonaro to be indicted for homicide and genocide as well, given how the ravages of the coronavirus have disproportionately hit Brazil’s Indigenous groups. But those charges were dropped from the final report. Since the beginning of the pandemic, The Conversation’s authors have been chronicling the crisis in Brazil – and Bolsonaro’s role in letting it happen. Bolsonaro certainly doesn’t stand alone among world leaders when it comes to mishandling a health crisis that has now lasted more than 18 months. But he is one of the worst, according to a panel of scholars who put together a rogues gallery of presidents and prime ministers who stand accused of letting down their population. As Elize Massard da Fonseca, at Fundação Getulio Vargas, and Scott L. Greer, at University of Michigan, explained, the Brazilian president didn’t just fail to respond, he actively worsened the crisis. “Bolsonaro used his constitutional powers to interfere in the Health Ministry’s administrative matters, such as clinical protocols, data disclosure and vaccine procurement. He vetoed legislation that would have both mandated the use of masks in religious sites and compensated health professionals permanently harmed by the pandemic, for example. And he obstructed state government efforts to promote social distancing and used his decree power to allow many businesses to remain open as ‘essential,’ including spas and gyms,” Massard da Fonseca and Greer write. But it doesn’t end there: “Bolsonaro also aggressively promoted unproven medicines, notably hydroxychloroquine, to treat COVID 19 patients. ” Read more: Worlds worst pandemic leaders: 5 presidents and prime ministers who badly mishandled COVID 19 Bolsonaro backed up his disdain for masks and social distancing with personal action. While the virus spread throughout the early months of the pandemic, he could be seen pressing the flesh with supporters and campaigning without a face covering. He duly got COVID 19 in July 2020. As Anthony Pereira, at King’s College London, wrote: “The most surprising thing about Jair Bolsonaro’s positive test for coronavirus … was how long it took to happen. ”It could have been a pivotal moment; Bolsonaro could have used his personal experience to stress the risks of catching the virus and doubled down on efforts to contain the spread. He didn’t. Instead, he took hydroxychloroquine – an anti malarial drug that has been found to have no beneficial effects in combating COVID 19 and which health experts warn could instead cause harm. ",2,https://theconversation.com/bolsonaro-faces-crimes-against-humanity-charge-over-covid-19-mishandling-5-essential-reads-170332,FALSE, 937,Deportation threats for some students come from within schools,"When Bilal, a recent immigrant from South Asia, started his sophomore year at a high school in a large southern U. S. city in 2014, it wasn’t a welcoming experience. Upon entering the school, Bilal had to go through a metal detector. Then a school police officer patted him down. Bilal did not understand why a school would need such high security measures. Still, he tried to adjust. While he did his best, teachers and administrators peppered him with questions that made him feel as if he were under extra scrutiny. They asked why his attire – a kurta, or long shirt, that he wore over his jeans – was the same as that worn by the “terrorists” they had seen on YouTube videos. They asked about his family’s loyalty: If given the choice, would he and his family choose America or their homeland?All of the questions made it challenging for Bilal to focus. He felt as if the teachers were targeting him. As experts in education, immigration and race, we know that Bilal’s experience as a recent immigrant of color is by no means isolated. We interviewed hundreds of immigrant students and their teachers across seven American cities. During our observations from 2013 through 2018, we learned that many immigrant high school students fear something we refer to in peer reviewed research as the “school to deportation pipeline. ”This is a situation in which students worry that minor infractions at school could lead to penal consequences ranging from being arrested to being subjected to deportation. Many of the students we interviewed claimed to know someone who had been deported for those reasons. Disturbingly, we found that some of the teachers and administrators not only believed there to be “school to deportation” pipeline but actually used it to strategically exclude students. The reason, as we explain in a different peer reviewed article, is they didn’t want the immigrant students to lower their standardized school test scores and jeopardize funding. Some teachers and administrators expressed concerns that immigrant students would score poorly on standardized exams, which can have negative consequences for teachers and administrators. Low test scores can trigger increased oversight, a change in a school’s administration or even a school shutdown. Even a few scores – particularly very low ones – can make a large difference to schools that are teetering between making adequate progress and those rated as failing. Zoya, a recent immigrant from East Africa, experienced such teacher worries. While she generally understood the academic content well when asked verbally, standardized tests confused her. Additionally, Zoya’s teachers did not understand her obligations of caring for siblings and helping with the family business, which occasionally made her inattentive or late or made her miss class entirely. One time she fell asleep during a standardized test and didn’t have time to complete all the questions. Zoya’s story was not uncommon. Many immigrant students we spoke with expressed a strong desire for academic achievement yet found themselves seen by teachers as having a poor work ethic or low content comprehension. A teacher at another school, Heather, shared with us: “So, this one kid … he never comes to school. But, we’re going to be held responsible for his [standardized test] scores because he’s registered, but he’s definitely not an American. ”",2,https://theconversation.com/deportation-threats-for-some-students-come-from-within-schools-165232,FALSE, 939,How multicultural churches in South Africa are breaking down race barriers,"Race is an issue that’s always simmering below the surface in South Africa. One of the ugliest aspects of the recent wave of looting and violence was the killing of people based on their race in a neighborhood in the port city of Durban. It was a reminder that the internalised apartheid stereotypes and beliefs are still firmly in place. A consolidated identity has become one of the most worrying South African realities and needs to be attended to as a matter of urgency. Churches still reflect these social divisions, with Sunday mornings being the most divided time. Churches still exist on cultural and racial lines as “all black” or “all white” churches which can be seen as exclusive or inaccessible. Race, ethnicity and national identity remain as unfinished business for the church. In a paper published in 2017 I looked at the role that churches – particularly multicultural churches – can play in addressing this problem. South African churches remain mono cultural to a large extent. They still largely reflect the social divisions of a society. But there are some – albeit a small number – that have successfully reached across racial and cultural divides to attract new members. In South African, Christians are in the majority. They made up 62% of the South African population in 2015. In my article I discuss the reconciliation potential of multicultural churches in that they are able to accommodate multiple racial groups, in a society where religious life remains overwhelmingly segregated. This isn’t new in South Africa. Religious communities played a critical role in the transition to democracy. Christian churches have condemned apartheid and have contributed to the process of nation building through civic education and for example, participating in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which was set up to uncover the truth about apartheid era human rights abuses. But it’s also true that some church traditions in the country were complicit in racism and have not fully dealt with their own apartheid legacy. I conclude in my paper that what’s needed now is that churches deepen this reconciliation potential. Religious organizations have the potential to draw people out of their private, racially segregated lives, into a safe social space where human interactions can be more intimate so as to get to know each other. My research included positive examples of churches from across the spectrum; Anglicans that were at one stage the forerunners of the Apartheid struggle that were mostly racially integrated to Pentecostal churches seeking that ‘born again’ experience, wanting to incorporate members from a range of racial and social backgrounds. These churches reach across racial and cultural divides to attract new members. They build social capital – shared values, that act as a glue, to work towards a common goal in society. These multicultural churches are a new, growing phenomenon in urban areas. They are successfully bringing together Christians from various race groups, in a society where religious life remains overwhelmingly segregated. My research shows that these types of congregations can articulate powerful, messages about social reconciliation. This makes them excellent laboratories for reconciliation. Importantly these new interracial relationships that are created, can become a model of social cohesion and can play a role in building a humane society. These multicultural churches aim to be intentionally inclusive which means more than just tolerance or assimilation into the dominant culture. It is also not a superficial coming together which is reduced to demographics. Space and opportunity are created to hear each other’s stories to help shatters racial stereotypes and beliefs that have acted as a dividing wall. ",2,https://theconversation.com/how-multicultural-churches-in-south-africa-are-breaking-down-race-barriers-167014,FALSE, 940,Critical race theory is an important tool in better understanding how religion operates in America," Adjunct Professor of Religious and Theological Studies, St. Edwards University Tiffany Puett is also the Executive Director of the Institute for Diversity and Civic Life. View all partnersThe debate over critical race theory has played out in TV studios, school board meetings and state legislatures across the U. S. It has also found its way into churches. The theory comprises a set of concepts that frame racism as structural, rather than simply expressed through personal discrimination. Scholars point to racial discrepancies in educational achievement, economic and employment opportunities and in the criminal justice system as evidence of how racism is embedded in U. S. institutions. But as its critics tell it, critical race theory is a divisive ideology that has infiltrated classrooms and needs to be stopped. By and large, such depictions of critical race theory are inaccurate and misconstrued, perhaps at times even intentionally so. But they have nonetheless made critical race theory a “culture war” issue. Religious voices, particularly among white evangelical Christians, were among the earliest and loudest in calling for critical race theory to be stopped. Conservative evangelical bloggers warned against the supposed dangers of the theory “infiltrating the church” back in 2018. And in 2019 – before the anti critical race theory movement gained widespread attention – the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest evangelical group in the U. S. , passed a resolution criticizing the theory as a problematic secular ideology that conflicts with the authority of Scripture. A push by conservative Southern Baptists to again reject CRT by name failed at this year’s convention, but a resolution was passed against any theory that frames racism in a way other than its being “a sin” to be resolved by redemption through Christ. These resolutions reflect a common evangelical ideology. Essentially, evangelical morality sees social problems such as racism as the result of sinful individuals, not larger structures or institutions. In the words of evangelical pastor and theologian Voddie Baucham: “Critical race theory is at odds with Christianity because it takes the problem of racism out of the individual heart and puts it out there somewhere in systems and structures. ” Such views from evangelicals laid the groundwork for the uproar over CRT in recent months. Rhetoric aside, it’s worth noting what critical race theory actually is: a complex body of scholarship that reflects the efforts of legal scholars to analyze how race functions in American society. As legal scholars Kimberlé Crenshaw, Neil Gotanda, Gary Peller and Kendall Thomas explain in their introduction to a key collection of writings on the topic, it explores “how a regime of white supremacy and its subordination of people of color have been created and maintained in America. ”As a scholar of religious studies, I frequently use critical race theory as a tool to better understand how religion operates in American society. While critical race theorists initially focused on how race has been embedded in our legal system, the theory can also help us think about how race is entrenched in religious institutions. It helps move beyond the idea of religion’s being primarily a matter of individual belief to seeing religious institutions and identities as shaped by larger social structures and movements. In the U. S. , race and religious institutions have been intertwined from the beginning. Early U. S. leaders used language that described a “true” American as essentially both white and Protestant. And many Protestant churches supported white supremacy through rhetoric from the pulpit, interpretations of the Bible and policies of segregation. Critical race theory sheds light on the ways that religious institutions and rhetoric have helped justify and reinforce white supremacy. ",2,https://theconversation.com/critical-race-theory-is-an-important-tool-in-better-understanding-how-religion-operates-in-america-164288,FALSE, 941,4 ways white people can be accountable for addressing anti-Black racism at universities," PhD candidate, Sociological and Anthropological Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa Karine Coen Sanchez does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. University of Ottawa provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation CA FR. University of Ottawa provides funding as a member of The Conversation CA. View all partners“I am colonized, and I must live in a world of the colonizer. Although the proverbial shackle has been removed, I am enslaved by systemic barriers. My heart bleeds of pain and anger … My lived experiences will never be based on your level of comfort. ” passage from the author’s journalThe recent resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement has ignited an ongoing debate on the role of education in the collective awakening or re awakening on racial injustice. Post secondary institutions can provide the space to cultivate new knowledge and critically discuss social inequality. As the new school year begins, many of us are eager to return to our new “normal” as we both adapt to new health measures due to COVID 19 and prepare to discuss various social issues. Universities are increasingly establishing formal mandates for addressing anti Black racism on their campuses. In the attempt to acknowledge their diverse student bodies, some professors may be preparing to teach a new “inclusive” syllabus. As these changes take place, it is critical to speak openly about social accountability. I am a Black PhD candidate in sociology who examines systematic racism embedded in educational institutions. I have found myself both formally and informally called upon to educate white people about anti Black racism. On many campuses, Black academics regardless of whether they are actually studying racism or not are asked to take on additional labour related to equity work often without compensation or the assurance that recommendations will be heeded and without acknowledgement of the risks. What are the risks? Black, racialized and Indigenous people are exposed to white denialism, which provokes a narrative of “us versus them. ” We are also subject to emotional eruptions where white people are at the centre or put in a position where they are pressed to offer personal antidotes as a testimony to the realities of systemic racism. It is critical that we pay attention to and recognize what scholars like George J. Sefa Dei, a professor of education, has named the interconnection of race, social powers and cultural practices. White accountability for addressing and eradicating anti Black racism isn’t about validating the experiences of the Black communities it is about understanding facets of one’s own social position. This means understanding the various ways that race or citizenship have shaped access to both material and cultural resources and shaped what a person takes for granted. For example, white settlers in Canada and other colonial settler societies must acknowledge the harms associated with international colonization and the slave trade and the inter generational effects on Black, racialized and Indigenous communities. Read more: How Canada committed genocide against Indigenous Peoples, explained by the lawyer central to the determination In order to undo anti Black racism and all systematic racism white people need to take accountability for the various ways they experience and exercise privilege. It also means understanding how they may covertly benefit and contribute to the cycle of racism. Sefa Dei has advocated for incorporating Africentric curricula and insights into everyday learning to undo the centring of white perspectives. But a deep incorporation of this knowledge hasn’t happened in universities. ",2,https://theconversation.com/4-ways-white-people-can-be-accountable-for-addressing-anti-black-racism-at-universities-164983,FALSE, 943,"Critical race theory: ‘Diversity’ is not the solution, dismantling white supremacy is","Race has been a mainstay in the media this year. Everyday there is another racism story in the news, on a podcast, trending on Twitter or being joked about on late night television. As a critical race educator and activist I have spent most of my life inserting race into the conversation. You would think this focus would have me thrilled. Finally everyone is talking about race. Not only are people talking about race, they are talking about critical race theory and having important conversations about the role of systemic racism in our country and across the globe. This sudden interest in CRT is largely due to former U. S. president Donald Trump’s now defunct executive order banning the teaching of critical race theory in school. Since then many states have taken up similar policies. CRT started as a legal theory that illustrates how racism becomes institutionalized, even though discrimination is illegal. It has since branched out, but the essence remains to show how race and racism continue to operate across various systems, interrogating their role in society. As American policies on CRT education in schools shows, the problem has become showing how racism operates instead of racism itself. Mainstream society becomes fearful that people will be able to articulate the ways in which systemic discrimination operates and as a result demand that we do better. This is convenient because it upholds the foundations of mainstream societal concepts like white supremacy and capitalism. And by white supremacy I don’t mean white supremacists, like the angry rioters in MAGA hats that stormed the U. S. Capitol. I mean the ideologies of white supremacy, the implicit systems that maintain whiteness as superior and allow for situations like George Floyd and Joyce Eschanquan as matter of fact aspects of existence with little to no consequences. CRT has simply become the latest target of white supremacy. But as you may guess, CRT is not the problem. The problem is diversity. Progressive folks take up “diversity” like it is the solution to every problem. We are bombarded with it through committees, policies and “commitments. ” You see it everywhere from public institutions to private corporations. Even Canada’s iconic Hudson Bay Company has been embroiled in a recent diversity scandal. While HBC was collecting donations for a campaign to “empower” Indigenous people, Black people and people of colour across the country, they used the image of Hadiya Roderique, a prominent Black lawyer in Toronto, without her permission. HBC became so blinded by their diversity mission they forgot to use diversity principles in their promotion. As a public we are inundated with images and information of different organizations and corporations attempting to advance diversity initiatives, when really it has simply become a public relations call to capitalize on woke culture. If HBC was actually trying to enact change for Indigenous people, Black people and people of color, they would know that this cannot be achieved by asking individual customers to donate $5. Instead, the corporation would have to acknowledge the systemic, institutional and residual effects of racism and white supremacy embedded in our country and as a result, their corporation. They would also have to put their money where their mouth is. This means investing in hiring and retaining diverse staff, promoting radical racialized people to senior leadership positions, making working conditions better for diverse staff through safer corporate cultures, fair pay, showing respect with initiatives like affordable childcare and paid sick days and supporting diverse brands and designers. ",2,https://theconversation.com/critical-race-theory-diversity-is-not-the-solution-dismantling-white-supremacy-is-163398,FALSE, 944,Stop and search disproportionately affects black communities – yet police powers are being extended,"The UK government has extended police stop and search powers as part of its recently announced “beating crime plan”. This is despite concern that black and minority groups are more likely to be unfairly targeted by police when they have greater discretion over who they stop and search. In the plan, the government states that these measures are needed to prevent knife crime. But there is little evidence to suggest more stop and search solves this problem. Stop and search rules were relaxed in March 2019 on what was originally meant to be a temporary basis. The change made it easier for police officers to use Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 that allows them to stop and search anyone in a specified geographic area without the usual legal requirement for “reasonable suspicion”. Under the change, officers could seek authorization for a Section 60 from inspectors rather than having to seek approval from a higher rank. This meant more officers were available to approve a Section 60, making them more easily authorized. They were also able to apply for a Section 60 to be in place for a longer period of time than before . The government’s own assessment of these changes stated it was expected that any increases in Section 60 stop and searches was likely to disproportionately affect black and minority ethnic people. Yet the beating crime plan permanently gives police forces the option to relax the rules around Section 60 stop and search. The temporary relaxation of Section 60 rules was initially introduced as a 12 month pilot scheme in March 2019 to be tested in seven forces to tackle knife crime. However, by August 2019, the government had rolled out the scheme nationally, giving all police forces the option to adopt these relaxed requirements. An evaluation of the pilot was commissioned by the Home Office, alongside promises to “assess the results”. The results of this evaluation have not yet been published. The beating crime plan states that “we know from the data that our approach is working”, a claim that is not backed by published evidence. As outlined in a recent super complaint submitted to the government by the Criminal Justice Alliance , there is little evidence to support the claim that Section 60 stop and searches reduce knife crime. Research conducted by the CJA found that Section 60 is highly ineffective, with only around 1% of searches leading to an arrest for weapons. They also argue that it is likely to cause more harm than good in the community. There is also a lack of evidence to support the argument that increasing stop and search is effective at addressing serious violence, such as knife crime. Research conducted by the Home Office has previously found that increasing stop and search had little to no crime reduction effect. Since the relaxation of the rules in 2019, Section 60 searches have risen across the country. From 2018 19 to 2019 20, Section 60 searches across all forces have increased by 35%. Section 60 stop and searches accounted for around 3% of total stop and searches conducted during 2019 20. The other powers that the police possess to stop and search members of the public , require officers to have a reasonable suspicion that an individual is carrying an illegal item. Under Section 60, officers do not need to have a suspicion to stop and search individuals. This gives officers more discretion in who to stop and removes the legal threshold granted to citizens to protect them from being arbitrarily stopped and searched. ",2,https://theconversation.com/stop-and-search-disproportionately-affects-black-communities-yet-police-powers-are-being-extended-165477,FALSE, 945,Why Gil Scott-Heron’s ‘Whitey on the Moon’ still feels relevant today,"Not long after the July 20, 1969, Moon landing, Gil Scott Heron – a poet hailed as the “Godfather of Rap” – released a scathingly critical song called “Whitey on the Moon. ” While others lauded the lunar landing as a “giant leap for mankind,” Scott Heron lamented the Moon trip in his lyrical litany. He felt the trip consumed resources that could have been better put to use helping people confront the everyday costs of living on Earth. I don’t recall precisely when I first heard “Whitey on the Moon. ” But I distinctly remember the cadence and flow sounding so much like the kinds of rap I appreciate today as a hip hop scholar and lyricist. I was especially enamored with the refrain of “whitey’s on the moon” and how the song was bookended by the immediate issue at home: “a rat done bit my sister, Nell. ” “I can’t pay no doctor bills, but whitey’s on the moon,” Scott Heron says. “Ten years from now I’ll be paying still, while whitey’s on the moon. ”The year 2021 is shaping up to be an interesting year to revisit Scott Heron’s “Whitey on the Moon. ”For one, in May 2021, the late Scott Heron was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. A hall of fame web page recognized him as a “teller of uncomfortable truths. ”Perhaps more interestingly, people are discovering “Whitey on the Moon” anew and applying its prescient precepts to the 2021 space trips of billionaires Richard Branson and Jeff Bezos, and, perhaps eventually, Elon Musk. In writing about the 2021 documentary of the “Summer of Soul” music festival of 1969, which coincided with the Moon landing, a film critic in July 2021 noted how Black sentiments about the seeming wastefulness of the Moon trip then represents an “extraordinarily topical sequence now, with billionaires funding rockets to fly into space, while memes fly around social media quoting Gil Scott Heron’s bitter song ‘Whitey on the Moon. ’”Another writer – in discussing the Branson and Bezos space trips – described “Whitey on the Moon” as “a nod to the privileges enjoyed by non Black people that allowed them to pursue their prideful pet projects that did not necessarily make the world a better place for most Americans. ”I suspect these writers sense – as I do – that we are living in the same dystopian present. It is a time in which the “whitey” in Scott Heron’s poem could be any of the three billionaires who are the faces of the current space race, which is taking place in an era of profound inequity that helped them become billionaires in the first place. There are tons of examples of earthly “Sister Nells” who have been and are currently being bitten by rats on Earth while rich white men are taking tourism to the heavenly skies. I believe that people, more or less, feel that the song points out the kind of inequity that lies at the heart of the ability to amass exorbitant wealth that affords the likes of Branson, Bezos and Musk the privilege to be the first space tourists. There’s another reason the song feels prescient. Whereas Gil Scott Heron spoke as if it’s the taxes he’s paying directly funding “whitey” on the Moon, currently the discussion surrounding Branson, Bezos and Musk is that they aren’t being taxed enough. One report even found that the three billionaires are getting tax breaks meant for poor neighborhoods. Yet as Professor of Physics and Astronomy Chanda Prescod Weinstein has argued, space exploration and helping people on Earth need not be an either or proposition. “We can afford to do the caring work of sustaining people, including honoring everyone’s right to know and love the night sky,” she writes. ",2,https://theconversation.com/why-gil-scott-herons-whitey-on-the-moon-still-feels-relevant-today-164681,TRUE, 946,"Lawsuits over bans on teaching critical race theory are coming – here’s what won’t work, and what might","As states and school districts started threatening teachers with disciplinary action for teaching about systemic racism, the question naturally arose: Does this violate the teachers’ First Amendment rights?The First Amendment protects free speech against government punishment, outside of something as extreme as a threat of violence. A school district is a government agency. So anyone punished by a school district for nonthreatening speech seems to have the makings of a First Amendment case. But from years of teaching and researching First Amendment case law, I know that this is where things get complicated. Public school teachers are government employees. And thanks to a much disputed Supreme Court decision from 15 years ago, government employees, including teachers, surrender quite a bit of free speech protection when they clock into work. Whether K 12 educators have any legally protected right to choose how and what to teach is sure to be tested soon, now that the furor over teaching kids about race and racism has reached a boiling point in communities across the country. In recent months, right wing media has fixated on “critical race theory” – a field of inquiry about the impact of racism baked into criminal justice and other powerful institutions that is taught almost solely at the law school level. The phrase has been distorted into an “anti white” conspiracy by the forces of “wokeness” to brainwash schoolchildren. Surfing this wave of media created rage, seven states have banned mentioning specified race related topics in the classroom. Some 20 other states are considering it. Arizona’s newly enacted ban, signed into law on July 9, is typical of those popping up around the country. It imposes penalties, from suspension of a state teaching license up to permanent revocation, for anyone caught teaching certain taboo concepts. The banned list includes teaching that anyone should “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress” on account of race or ethnicity, or that “meritocracy” or “a hard work ethic” are concepts created to oppress people of particular races or ethnicities. Normally, once a state sets the rules for acceptable on the job speech, public employees have no choice but to comply. That’s a product of the U. S. Supreme Court’s 2006 Garcetti ruling, in which the justices said government employees can’t rely on the First Amendment if they’re punished for on duty speech that is part of an official work assignment. Teaching is an official work assignment. So the First Amendment seems unlikely to rescue a teacher fired for teaching a forbidden subject. At the college level, federal judges have given professors a bit of extra legal protection to teach and write without fear of retaliation. The Garcetti rule does not apply with full strength on college campuses, federal courts say, because the principle of “academic freedom” allows professors to explore edgy topics that push the boundaries of students’ comfort zones. The likely explanation for why judges have hesitated to extend that same level of autonomy to K 12 teachers is that curriculum decisions are more standardized in public schools than in college. A professor at one state university is free to teach history differently from a professor at a sister university in the same state. But K 12 curriculum has long been dictated by state and local school boards, so that American history is supposed to look more or less the same from one classroom to another. ",2,https://theconversation.com/lawsuits-over-bans-on-teaching-critical-race-theory-are-coming-heres-what-wont-work-and-what-might-164534,FALSE, 947,The inherent racism of anti-vaxx movements,"We are currently experiencing a worldwide vaccination effort that’s being impeded by rising pockets of anti vaccination sentiment. There has been a recent increase in anti vaccination conspiracy theories, misinformation campaigns and protests in various countries. And while many accuse anti vaxxers of a selfish disdain for the health and safety of others, there is a underlying aspect of these movements that needs to be more widely recognized. Vaccine resistance movements have always been led by white, middle class voices and promoted by structures of racial inequality. The intrinsic racism of anti vaccination movements began with their historical origin in the 19th century. Inoculation originally referred to the older form of vaccination, where pus was taken from the pustule of someone with a mild form of smallpox and purposely scratched into the arm of a healthy person. This would ideally convey a mild form of the disease and thereby protect the recipient from more deadly forms. This type of inoculation had its foundation in a number of non western cultures before it was incorporated into western medical practice. Indeed, inoculation was practiced in China for centuries before it made its way to Europe, as well as in the Middle East and North Africa. Its use in North America was initiated by the knowledge of an enslaved man, Onesimus, who famously taught the procedure to puritan minister Cotton Mather during a smallpox outbreak in the early 18th century. These non western origins fuelled some anti vaccination criticisms during the 19th century. Opponents to the practice declared it a “filthy, useless and dangerous rite” akin to using the “charms and incantations of an African savage. ”By the turn of the 20th century, racialized language began to appear in anti vaccination dialogues which, on the surface, had little to do with race. These racial slurs served the purposes of anti vaccinationists who sought to discredit the practice. One of the most potent examples of this was in 1920, when vocal anti vaccination writer Charles Higgins published a book against vaccination. Throughout this work he consistently referred to vaccination as a “savage rite” performed by “the Medicine Man” on helpless innocent children. The racialized language utilized by these early anti vaxxers was all the more potent when weaponized by white leaders of anti vaccination leagues . Between 1860 and 1920, numerous anti vaxx leagues were founded in Britain, the United States and Canada. One of their main arguments was that compulsory enforcement was a “tyrannical interference with the rightful liberties of the people,” an accusation often levelled at health officials attempting to increase vaccine uptake in the general public. These people used their social standing to loudly condemn perceived limitations of their rights, while blindly ignoring the systemic absence of the same freedoms for racialized and low income communities. In North America, the freedom to choose vaccination was already defined by racial identity in many places. Throughout this period, Indigenous children in Canada were forced to attend residential schools, where vaccination was either implemented or ignored at the will of federal or school officials, with little regard for parental or individual choice. On the West Coast, civic public health officials actively enforced compulsory vaccination on Asian communities based on racial profiling during disease outbreaks. In 1900, city health officials in San Francisco issued mandatory plague vaccination orders for all Chinese individuals after a few cases of plague were found in the city. ",2,https://theconversation.com/the-inherent-racism-of-anti-vaxx-movements-163456,FALSE, 948,Mixed-ancestry genetic research shows a bit of Native American DNA could reduce risk of Alzheimer’s disease,"Since the human genome was first mapped, scientists have discovered hundreds of genes influencing illnesses like breast cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease. Unfortunately, Black people, Indigenous people and other people of color are underrepresented in most genetic studies. This has resulted in a skewed and incomplete understanding of the genetics of many diseases. We are two researchers who have been working to find genes that affect people’s risk for various diseases. Our team in 2021 found a genetic region that appears to be protective against Alzheimer’s disease. To do this, we used a method called admixture mapping that uses data from people with mixed ancestry to find genetic causes of disease. In 2005, researchers first used a groundbreaking method called a genome–wide association study. Such studies comb through huge datasets of genomes and medical histories to see if people with certain diseases tend to share the same version of DNA – called a genetic marker – at specific spots. Using this approach, researchers have identified many genes involved in Alzheimer’s disease. But this method can find genetic markers only for diseases that are common in the genomes of the study participants. If, for example, 90% of participants in an Alzheimer’s disease study have European ancestry and 10% have Asian ancestry, a genome wide association study isn’t likely to detect genetic risks for Alzheimer’s disease that are present only in individuals with Asian ancestry. All people’s genetics reflect where their ancestors came from. But ancestry manifests as both genetic variation and social and cultural experiences. All of these factors can influence risk for certain diseases, and this can create problems. When socially caused disparities in disease prevalence appear across racial groups, the genetic markers of ancestry can be mistaken for genetic markers of disease. African Americans, for example, are up to twice as likely as white Americans to develop Alzheimer’s disease. Research shows that much of this disparity is likely due to structural racism causing differences in nutrition, socioeconomic status and other social risk factors. A genome wide association study looking for genes associated with Alzheimer’s might mistake genetic variations associated with African descent for genetic causes of the disease. While researchers can use a number of statistical methods to avoid such mistakes, these methods can miss important findings because they are often unable to overcome the overall lack of diversity in genetic datasets. Disentangling race, ancestry and health disparities can be a challenge in genome wide association studies. Admixture mapping, on the other hand, is able to make better use of even relatively small datasets of underrepresented people. This method specifically gets its power from studying people who have mixed ancestry. Admixture mapping relies on a quirk of human genetics – you inherit DNA in chunks, not in a smooth blend. So if you have ancestors from different parts of the world, your genome is made of chunks of DNA from different ancestries. This process of chunked inheritance is called admixture. Imagine color coding a genome by ancestry. A person who has mixed European, Native American and African ancestry might have striped chromosomes that alternate among green, blue and red, with each color representing a certain region. A different person with similar ancestry would also have a genome of green, blue and red chunks, but the order and size of the stripes would be different. ",2,https://theconversation.com/mixed-ancestry-genetic-research-shows-a-bit-of-native-american-dna-could-reduce-risk-of-alzheimers-disease-159118,TRUE, 949,Incels are surprisingly diverse but united by hate,"Incels are a misogynistic online community linked to terrorism and several mass killings, including those committed by Elliot Rodger in California and Alek Minassian in Toronto. Read more: The dark possible motive of the Toronto van attacker Incels are caricatured as NEETS , basement dwelling, unkempt and socially isolated white men. However, my research with bioinformatician and data scientist Finlay Maguire, psychologist Norann Richard and sociologist Kayla Preston suggests that incel discussion boards are surprisingly diverse. Despite this diversity, we find that incels are united by their hatred of women. Incels share a belief that they are victims of “lookism. ” Lookism means that attractive people receive advantages, while unattractive people are the targets of prejudice. These arguments are not without merit, as psychological and sociological research demonstrates attractiveness has benefits such as higher income. Incels think women are to blame for lookism and its consequences. They argue that women only pursue the most attractive men, which they call “hypergamy. ” For incels, hypergamy means that women will always “trade” their partner for a more attractive man. Read more: Incel violence is a form of extremism. Its time we treated it as a security threat Incels see Tinder and Instagram as gasoline on the fire of lookism and hypergamy. They believe women use these apps to pursue only the most attractive men, leaving the majority of men unpartnered. Incels view an increasing number of single men as unjust and a growing social problem. Many white incels actively promote white nationalism. These incels are angry about interracial relationships, diversity programs and immigration. Surprisingly, some white nationalist incels believe they should remain celibate as they see themselves as too inferior to contribute to the white race. Incels rank all racial groups by attractiveness. The most attractive white men and women are “Chads,” “Stacys” and “Beckys. ” Attractive men from other groups are referred to as “Tyrones” , “Changs” , and “Chaddums” . And these labels are explicitly racist. The term “Tyrone” is taken from a YouTube series featuring a Black man approaching men or couples saying he’s going to have sex with “this man’s wife. ” Incels’ use of “Tyrone” also sexualizes Black bodies and identifies Black men as threatening to heterosexual monogamy, both of which are tied to the legacy of anti Black racism. While it is easy to think of incels as uneducated, bitter white supremacists, they are drawn from surprisingly diverse backgrounds. Some incels claim high social status, reporting enrolment at the world’s top universities. In a survey of 400 incels, 50 per cent reported receiving an undergraduate or graduate degree, while 66 per cent identified as middle class or above. Incels also identify with numerous racial and ethnic groups, labelling themselves and each other with terms like “ricecel” or “currycel” . In a 2019 survey, done through Reddit, of 1,267 incels, 55 per cent identified as white. While not a scientific survey, it suggests many incels identify as men of colour. Read more: Why charging incels with terrorism may make matters worse Incels of color argue that white incels are “voluntary celibates” because you “just need to be white” to have heterosexual sex thus losing your your incel status. The idea here is that white privilege makes it easier for white men to have sex. ",2,https://theconversation.com/incels-are-surprisingly-diverse-but-united-by-hate-163414,FALSE, 950,"No, you can’t identify as ‘transracial’. But you can affirm your gender","Earlier this week, online influencer Oli London responded to criticism after saying they identify as Korean. Having undergone surgeries to change their appearance, they equated being “transracial” with the experiences of transgender people who affirm their gender. The same reasoning behind London’s Korean identity can be compared to that of Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who identifies as Black and made headlines in 2015. Debates about “transracialism” followed. Unfortunately, it seems we haven’t learned much in this space. At their core, London’s words and actions are a prime example of racism, cultural appropriation, and transphobia, enacted from a perspective of considerable privilege. Trans and gender diverse experiences don’t equate with someone deciding to change their appearance to be part of a group whose experiences, community and struggles they can’t fully understand. Gender is our internal sense of self, whether that be man, woman, neither or both. Most people have an idea about their gender at two to three years old this may not align with the sex assigned to them at birth. Unlike gender, race presents as categorized traits that are socially constructed and understood. You can’t inherit your gender, this is internal and something individual to you but you do inherit the social construct of race. There is also much more to one’s racial identity than physical appearance it’s also about culture, community, connection and even trauma. While multicultural communities and LGBTQ+ experiences of discrimination are sometimes compared, it is important to understand these experiences are different and complex. This is particularly the case, for example, in considering trans people of color and their experiences of both racism and transphobia. People who face discrimination based on their race or cultural background can usually go home to members of their family who understand them. This is often not the case for trans and gender diverse people. Race and gender have very different histories, understandings, experiences, and implications in the face of discrimination. The very idea of being able to transition to a difference race discredits trans and gender diverse people’s experiences of gender affirmation. It also undermines the importance of cultural connections for many communities. Read more: Explainer: what does it mean to be cisgender? London, who is non binary and uses they/them pronouns, has actively chosen a “transracial” identity. But trans and gender diverse people’s decision to transition is almost always involuntary and out of necessity to live their lives authentically. Almost 50% of trans young people in Australia have attempted suicide at least once in their lives. Trans and gender diverse young people experience higher levels of psychological distress than their cisgender peers. This is not because there is anything inherently wrong with trans people, but because of how trans people are treated by others. Conflating racial identity with gender identity implies that being trans is a choice, and therefore so is race. The reality is that transitioning as a trans person is a difficult and taxing process, one that can be dangerous but also lifesaving and celebrated. ",2,https://theconversation.com/no-you-cant-identify-as-transracial-but-you-can-affirm-your-gender-163729,FALSE, 951,Racism lurks behind decisions to deny Black high school students from being recognized as the top in their class,"Two Black students – Ikeria Washington and Layla Temple – were named valedictorian and salutatorian at West Point High School in Mississippi in 2021. Shortly afterward, two white parents questioned whether school officials had correctly calculated the top academic honors. Ultimately, the school superintendent named two white students as “co valedictorian” and “co salutatorian” on the day of graduation. High school seniors with the highest GPA in their graduating class are chosen to be valedictorians and are often responsible for delivering the graduating speech. Salutatorians, who are high school seniors with the second highest GPA in their graduating class, often give the opening remarks. The superintendent attributed the mix up to a new school counselor who was given incorrect information on how to calculate class rankings. As an educational researcher who focuses on race and inequality, I am aware that the controversy at West Point High School is by no means isolated. Back in 1991 a federal judge in Covington, Georgia, resolved a dispute a Black high school senior had with a white student over who gets to be valedictorian by making them share the honor. Then in 2012 in Gainesville, Georgia, another Black valedictorian was also forced to share the honor with a white student. Later, the white student’s family asked the school to drop his candidacy from the academic honor. In 2011, Kymberly Wimberly, a Black student in Little Rock, Arkansas, had her valedictorian honor stripped away by her principal to be given to a white student with a lower GPA. Wimberly’s lowest grade during all four years of high school was a B. In the rest of Wimberly’s courses, honors and Advanced Placement courses, she received A’s. In her lawsuit, Wimberly claimed that a day after being informed that she was the valedictorian for McGehee High School, the principal told her mother, Molly Bratton, that he “decided to name a white student as co valedictorian. ” I became familiar with these kinds of valedictorian disputes when I examined the 2017 lawsuit of Jasmine Shepard. A student at Cleveland High School in Mississippi, Shepard had the highest grade point average in her class. However, the day before graduation, she was forced to be co valedictorian with Heather Bouse, a white student with a lower GPA. In my peer reviewed article analyzing Shepard’s case, I examined it from the standpoint of critical race theory. Critical race theory is a theoretical framework that examines racism as a social construct ingrained in the American legal and political system. In my analysis, I conclude that the decisions to force Black students to share top honors with white students result from a psychological discomfort known as “white fragility. ” This is a state of stress experienced by some white people when they are presented with information about people of color that challenges their sense of entitlement. I maintain that when students of color are named top students in their graduating class, as Shepard was in 2016, white society may begin to fear that students of color are encroaching upon their social turf, so to speak. I believe the disputes that arise when Black students are named valedictorian should be viewed in the context of white fragility. For example, consider what happened when a federal judge ordered the Cleveland, Mississippi, school district to desegregate in 2017 after having failed to do so in 1969 after the Brown v. Board of Education case. After the 2017 order, The New York Times reported that many whites in Cleveland “feared” that “dismantling the system would prompt whites to do what they have done in so many other Delta cities: decamp en masse for private schools, or move away. ” This is known as “white flight. ”",2,https://theconversation.com/racism-lurks-behind-decisions-to-deny-black-high-school-students-from-being-recognized-as-the-top-in-their-class-162985,FALSE, 952,Tour de France: How many calories will the winner burn?,"Imagine you begin pedaling from the start of Stage 17 of this year’s Tour de France. First, you would bike approximately 70 miles with a gradual increase in elevation of around 1,300 feet . But you’ve yet to hit the fun part: the Hautes Pyrénées mountains. Over the next 40 miles you would have to climb three mountain peaks with a net increase of a mile in elevation. On the fittest day of my life, I might not even be able to finish Stage 17 – much less do it in anything remotely close to the five hours or so the winner will take to finish the ride. And Stage 17 is just one of 21 stages that must be completed in the 23 days of the tour. I am a sports physicist, and I’ve modeled the Tour de France for nearly two decades using terrain data – like what I described for Stage 17 – and the laws of physics. But I still cannot fathom the physical capabilities needed to complete the world’s most famous bike race. Only an elite few humans are capable of completing a Tour de France stage in a time that’s measured in hours instead of days. The reason they’re able to do what the rest of us can only dream of is that these athletes can produce enormous amounts of power. Power is the rate at which cyclists burn energy and the energy they burn comes from the food they eat. And over the course of the Tour de France, the winning cyclist will burn the equivalent of roughly 210 Big Macs. To make a bicycle move, a Tour de France rider transfers energy from his muscles, through the bicycle and to the wheels that push back on the ground. The faster a rider can put out energy, the greater the power. This rate of energy transfer is often measured in watts. Tour de France cyclists are capable of generating enormous amounts of power for incredibly long periods of time compared to most people. For about 20 minutes, a fit recreational cyclist can consistently put out 250 watts to 300 watts. Tour de France cyclists can produce over 400 watts for the same time period. These pros are even capable of hitting 1,000 watts for short bursts of time on a steep uphill – roughly enough power to run a microwave oven. But not all of the energy a Tour de France cyclist puts into his bike gets turned into forward motion. Cyclists battle air resistance and frictional losses between their wheels and the road. They get help from gravity on downhills but they have to fight gravity while climbing. I incorporate all of the physics associated with cyclist power output as well as the effects of gravity, air resistance and friction into my model. Using all that, I estimate that a typical Tour de France winner needs to put out an average of about 325 watts over the roughly 80 hours of the race. Recall that most recreational cyclists would be happy if they could produce 300 watts for just 20 minutes! So where do these cyclists get all this energy from? Food, of course! But your muscles, like any machine, can’t convert 100% of food energy directly into energy output – muscles can be anywhere between 2% efficient when used for activities like swimming and 40% efficient in the heart. In my model, I use an average efficiency of 20%. Knowing this efficiency as well as the energy output needed to win the Tour de France, I can then estimate how much food the winning cyclist needs. Top Tour de France cyclists who complete all 21 stages burn about 120,000 calories during the race – or an average of nearly 6,000 calories per stage. On some of the more difficult mountain stages – like this year’s Stage 17 – racers will burn close to 8,000 calories. To make up for these huge energy losses, riders eat delectable treats such as jam rolls, energy bars and mouthwatering “jels” so they don’t waste energy chewing. ",2,https://theconversation.com/tour-de-france-how-many-calories-will-the-winner-burn-163043,TRUE, 953,We studied why South Africans vote the way they do. This is what we found,"South Africans are set to go to the polls on 27 October 2021 for the country’s sixth municipal elections since the advent of democracy in 1994. The right of all adult South Africans to vote was hard won after a long struggle against colonialism and apartheid. Voting is a cornerstone of democracy: a chance for people to elect their preferred representatives. But, what informs people’s voting decisions? Why do they choose to vote for one party and not another? In short, can we predict who they are likely to vote for in an upcoming national and a local election? Over the past four years we tracked the factors that influence South African voters’ party choices and more importantly, why they made these choices. We interviewed a nationally representative sample of about 3 400 respondents from October to December, between 2017 and 2020. In total, four waves of data were collected in face to face interviews. We are, therefore, able to compare the findings over the four waves to identify the factors that influenced their choices and also how these changed over this period. Our latest report contains the findings from the fourth wave of data collected on voter preferences amid the pandemic and in the run up to the 2021 municipal elections. Four theories are tested statistically in our research. These are rational choice, clientelistic, sociological and party identification. All are widely used to understand voting behavior across countries. The research questions and analysis model that we devised include all four theories. These provide the possible explanations for people’s voting choices. Read more: South Africa needs new thinking for its democracy to work for all In this article, we share findings from our longitudinal study to gain a better understanding of why people vote the way they do. The findings serve as a gauge of citizens’ approval or disapproval of policies and programs, and can serve to hold elected officials accountable for their decisions and actions. We asked six questions about their party choice relating to governance and trust in political leadership, corruption, socio economic well being, democratic rights, social grants and socio demographic factors such as age, gender, education and income and employment. We used a logistic regression model to assess how the four factors influenced their choices. In December 2020, 52% of respondents selected the ANC, 10% selected the opposition Democratic Alliance and Economic Freedom Fighters, respectively. A quarter were either undecided, would not vote or refused to disclose their party choice. Only 6% said they would vote differently in a local government election compared to a national election. We found the following: Rational choice model: This suggests that voters make their choices based on rational considerations motivated by self interest. Closely related factors that are pertinent that we assessed included perceptions of governance – such as trust in institutions, government performance and progress in addressing corruption. We found that concern about socioeconomic well being was the main reason respondents gave for their choice of a political party across all four waves. It was also a statistically significant predictor of voter choice in 2017. ",2,https://theconversation.com/we-studied-why-south-africans-vote-the-way-they-do-this-is-what-we-found-162942,TRUE, 954,Too few women get to invent – that’s a problem for women’s health," Assistant Professor of Business Administration, Harvard University Rem Koning does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. View all partnersMacArthur Genius and MIT professor Linda Griffith has built an epic career as a scientist and inventor, including growing a human ear on a mouse. She now spends her days unpacking the biological mechanisms underlying endometriosis, a condition in which uterus like tissue grows outside of the uterus. Endometriosis can be brutally painful, is regularly misdiagnosed and misunderstood, and has affected Griffith’s life along with the lives of over 6 million other women in the U. S. Griffith’s research and inventions have the potential to improve women’s health dramatically. The problem for women is that she stands out for another reason: She’s female. In 2020, only 12. 8% of U. S. inventors receiving patents were women, and historically male researchers have ignored conditions like endometriosis. Male researchers have tended to downplay or even outright overlook the medical needs of women. The result is that innovation has focused mainly on what men choose to research. My colleagues John Paul Ferguson, Sampsa Samila and I show in a newly published study that patented biomedical inventions in the U. S. created by women are 35% more likely to benefit women’s health than biomedical inventions created by men. To determine which inventions are female focused, male focused or neutral, we analyzed the title, abstract and start of the summary text from 441,504 medical patents using the National Library of Medicine’s Medical Text Indexer. The indexer uses machine learning to categorize the subject of a text document, including whether it has a female or male focus. Our data reveal that inventions by research teams that are primarily or completely composed of men are significantly more likely to focus on the medical needs of men. In 34 of the 35 years from 1976 to 2010, male majority teams produced hundreds more inventions focused on the needs of men than those focused on the needs of women. These male inventors were more likely to generate patents that addressed topics like “erectile” or “prostate” than “menopause” or “cervix. ” Male inventors also tended to target diseases and conditions like Parkinson’s and sleep apnea that disproportionately affect men. Conversely, inventions patented by research teams that are primarily or completely composed of women were more likely to be focused on the needs of women in all 35 years of our data. These patents are more likely to address conditions like breast cancer and postpartum preeclampsia and diseases that disproportionately affect women like fibromyalgia and lupus. However, in 1976 only 6. 3% of patents were invented by teams with as many women as men. By 2010 that figure had risen to only 16. 2%. As a result, while inventions by women were more likely to be female focused, such patents were uncommon because so few inventors were women. We found that across inventor teams of all gender mixes, biomedical invention from 1976 to 2010 focused more on the needs of men than women. Our calculations suggest that had male and female inventors been equally represented over this period, there would have been an additional 6,500 more female focused inventions. In percentage terms, equal representation would have led to 12% more female focused inventions. There are also more subtle benefits when more women invent. Female inventors are more likely to identify how existing treatments for non sex specific diseases like heart attacks, diabetes and stroke can be improved and adapted for the needs of women. Indeed, women are more likely to test whether their ideas and inventions affect men and women differently: for example, if a drug has more adverse side effects in women than in men. ",2,https://theconversation.com/too-few-women-get-to-invent-thats-a-problem-for-womens-health-162576,FALSE, 955,From abortion and porn to women and race: How Southern Baptist Convention resolutions have evolved,"The Southern Baptist Convention will convene its annual meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, on June 15, 2021, in what could be the most consequential such get together in recent memory. Just 15 years ago, the SBC boasted some 16. 3 million members across the United States. However, it is hemorrhaging members. According to data released in May, Southern Baptists have lost over 2 million members since 2006, with over 400,000 defections in the last year alone. The denomination has also been embroiled in a number of controversies in recent years. A resolution passed at the 2019 meeting condemned critical race theory, a set of ideas that view racism as structural rather than expressed through individual prejudice, prompting several prominent Black pastors to depart. And in March, Beth Moore, a very popular female Southern Baptist author and speaker, publicly announced that she was leaving the group, citing the SBC’s approval of Donald Trump and its views on gender. The widely held perception is that the SBC has lurched farther to the right over the last few years. As a result, all eyes will be on the resolutions that are debated and subsequently passed at the annual meeting, the belief being they will give tremendous insight into the trajectory of the SBC and more generally American evangelicalism, of which Southern Baptists are the largest group. I’m a religion data analyst who wrote a computer script to collect and organize the text of all the resolutions passed at the annual meeting data back to 1845 to see if there were any patterns. What became clear was that many of the “bread and butter” culture war issues that fueled the SBC 20 years ago – such as abortion and homosexuality – have faded and been replaced by a new set of issues that seem to be furthering the divide between conservatives and more moderate members of the Southern Baptist Convention. One thing to note is that for the first 100 years of the convention, which was formed in 1845, the culture wars that dominate the conversation today were largely absent. The discussion concerning race began only in the 1940s, but that quickly ebbed a decade later. In the 1970s, the annual meeting began to turn to concerns about abortion and how that affected women in the United States. In the early years after the Roe v. Wade decision in 1973, many resolutions that discussed abortion also contained the word “women. ” But that linkage began to weaken by the late 1980s. Discussion around abortion peaked in the mid 1990s, which is right about the same time that topics concerning homosexuality were being discussed with greater frequency. [Like what you’ve read? Want more? Sign up for The Conversation’s daily newsletter. ]But in the last 10 years, there’s clear evidence that the classic culture war issues of abortion and homosexuality have faded. In fact, the word “homosexuality” has not appeared in a resolution since 2013. In their absence, race and gender have become much more central to the debate. Pornography – a hot resolution topic during the 1980s when the pornographic industry was experiencing a boom – no longer registers as a concern worthy of registering in a resolution. The last meeting of the SBC occurred in 2019, and there was both a resolution on women not being included in the selective service, which would determine who would be eligible for a military draft in the U. S. , and one against the teaching of critical race theory. There’s ample reason to believe that both the role of women and race will be on the minds of the attendees next week, given the amount of media coverage to the topics in the run up to the event. ",2,https://theconversation.com/from-abortion-and-porn-to-women-and-race-how-southern-baptist-convention-resolutions-have-evolved-162411,FALSE, 956,Driver’s license suspensions for failure to pay fines inflict particular harm on Black drivers,"Imagine being unable to pay a US$50 traffic ticket and, as a result, facing mounting fees so high that even after paying hundreds, maybe thousands, of dollars toward your debt you still owe money. Imagine being fired from your job because you’ve been forced to use unreliable public transportation instead of your car. And imagine going to jail several times because, even though your license is suspended, you had to drive to work. These are some of the situations facing millions of Americans who were unable to pay fines – and whose lives were turned into a nightmare by overly punitive policies in response. And these policies have an outsize, and damaging, impact on Black Americans, according to our research. Most cities and states have policies that allow them to suspend a driver’s license for nonpayment of fines and fees, most commonly traffic fines. These policies are so popular that judges have described them as “the most valuable tool available to the municipal courts for inducing payment on past due accounts. ”Studying the effects of these policies can be difficult because there is no uniform national reporting of crime statistics. Anecdotal evidence suggests that failure to pay fines – not dangerous driving – is the most common reason for driver’s license suspensions in the United States. And research indicates that these burdens are primarily borne by low income people and people of color. As a public affairs scholar who has written extensively about labor markets and criminal justice systems, I’ve conducted research with Joanna Carroll supports these conclusions. But it also illuminates a previously unknown racial inequality of the policy. Our research suggests that, by appearing on the driver’s record, license suspensions increase the probability that Black – but not white – drivers incur more traffic tickets. Even after the debt is paid and the license regained, these suspensions continue to harm drivers, and these harms exclusively affect Black drivers. This shows that suspensions don’t just trap people in a cycle of mounting debt but also a cycle of negative interactions with the criminal justice system. We studied a sample of over 2,000 drivers who received traffic tickets in Marion County, Indiana, home to Indianapolis, between 2011 and 2016. In that county, if a driver fails to pay or contest a ticket within 72 days, their license is automatically suspended. This means that judges and other members of the justice system cannot choose who receives a suspension. Every driver in our sample paid their ticket in the days surrounding the payment deadline. This is an ideal environment to study the long term impacts of suspensions because it creates two groups of people that are easily comparable: those who paid the ticket right before the deadline, thus avoiding a suspension, and those who paid after the deadline and received a suspension. We found that Black drivers who received a failure to pay suspension increased their likelihood of getting another ticket by up to nine percentage points. White drivers, meanwhile, saw a roughly three percentage point decrease in their likelihood of getting another ticket. We attempted to identify differences between white and Black drivers that might explain this result but were unable to do so. For example, Black drivers are not committing more offenses than white drivers, nor are the offenses they commit more serious. Black drivers are just as likely as white drivers to pay their tickets. And Black drivers are more likely than white drivers to reinstate their license after the suspension. ",2,https://theconversation.com/drivers-license-suspensions-for-failure-to-pay-fines-inflict-particular-harm-on-black-drivers-157764,FALSE, 958,Pain of police killings ripples outward to traumatize Black people and communities across US,"It’s been one year since George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer set off the largest protests in U. S. history and a national reckoning with racism. Beyond the protests, every police killing – indeed, every violent act by police toward civilians – can have painful and widespread consequences. Each year, U. S. police kill about 1,000 people, which equals approximately 8% of all homicides for adult men. This risk is greater for Black men, who are about 2. 5 times more likely to be killed by the police than white men. The effects of these killings ripple from the individual victim to their families and local communities as they cope with the permanence of injury, death and loss. People victimized by the police have demonstrated higher than usual rates of depression, psychological distress and even suicide risk. But the pain doesn’t stop there. Public health research I am conducting with my research team at the University of California, Berkeley finds that the harm from police killings of Black people goes beyond the people and places directly involved in these incidents to affect Black Americans far from the site of the killing, who may have never met the victim. Evidence shows that many Black Americans across the U. S. experience police killings of other Black people as traumatic events, and that this trauma diminishes the ability of Black communities to thrive. One of the key studies illustrating this ripple effect of police killings on the mental health of Black Americans was published in the medical journal The Lancet in 2018. Boston University researchers surveyed 103,710 people in the U. S. to measure the relationship between police killings and Americans’ mental health. Among survey respondents, each police related fatality of an unarmed Black person in the state where they lived was associated with an increase in the number of days when they reported poor mental health relating to stress, depression or emotional issues. The authors estimated that the cumulative impact of U. S. police killings of unarmed Blacks could add up to 55 million additional poor mental health days for the U. S. ‘s 44 million Black people. Police killings of armed Black people did not elicit the same distress among Black Americans. And white Americans suffered no additional poor mental health days, as defined by the researchers, after exposure to police killings – no matter the circumstances or race of the victim. The authors speculated that historical and institutional patterns of systematic, targeted violence against Black people – combined with a general lack of legal consequences when police officers commit such crimes – make the killings of unarmed Blacks particularly stressful for Black Americans. “Racism, like trauma, can be experienced vicariously,” they concluded. A 2021 study substantiates the Boston University’s mental health findings. Scouring emergency department admission records in 75 counties in five U. S. states, researchers found that within three months following a police killing of an unarmed Black person in the county in which they reside, Black Americans sought treatment at local emergency departments for depressive symptoms 11% more frequently than in other months. Black women experience acute fear that their children will be harmed by the police. Those who expressed beliefs that Black youth are at higher risk for having negative police experiences were 12 times more likely to report symptoms of depression during their pregnancy than other women, according to one study from 2017. ",2,https://theconversation.com/pain-of-police-killings-ripples-outward-to-traumatize-black-people-and-communities-across-us-159624,FALSE, 960,Denying Black musicians their royalties has a history emerging out of slavery,"In the summer of 2020, Black Lives Matter protests and activism included voices arguing for economic justice in the recording industry. The Black Music Action Coalition demanded music industry executives account for “inequities in the treatment of Black artists. ” BLM and the BMAC spotlighted what cultural anthropologist Maureen Mahon calls the recording industry’s “racialized political economy. ” Mahon writes that Black performers “occupy a subordinate position,” even as their music serves as a “central creative resource” in the industry and the culture. Since the early 20th century at least, the recording industry in the United States routinely underpaid African American artists. It’s long been suspected by performers, their families, music fans, scholars and critics that negligent and even fraudulent accounting practices denied African American artists and their families opportunities to accumulate wealth and enter the American middle class our research shows how those practices worked. We a communication professor and a law professor have been studying racialized contracting and accounting in the recording industries since 2015. We have presented our findings at academic conferences, in academic journals and a forthcoming book. We have discovered archival evidence preserved by activists, lawyers and labour organizations that demonstrates in detail how some of these systems produced tragic outcomes for many artists. In the spring of 1993, at the age of 57, Sam Moore wrote to his union’s health and retirement plan to inquire about the status of his pension account. As a singer of long lived hits including “Soul Man” and “Hold On, I’m Coming,” he planned to quit touring and enjoy the fruits of his decades long career. The Health and Retirement Funds of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists did not reply with good news. Moore learned he was entitled to a single payment of US$2,285, and a monthly payment of US$67, for up to five years. These figures, the H&R Funds told Moore, were based on his earnings since the early 1960s: around US$66,000. With the help of a pension expert, Moore and his wife estimated these decades of earnings added up to more like US$3 million. They believed his pension should have been around US$9,000 per month. Along with a dozen other singers, all but one of them African American, Moore sued the AFTRA H&R Funds for failing to monitor his earnings and to enforce Atlantic Records’ contractually mandated employer contributions to his health care and retirement accounts. The suit wound on for nine years, and settled in 2002 for US$8. 4 million, to be distributed among hundreds of artists . Nearly 20 years later, BLM and BMAC have provoked renewed industrial self scrutiny. In December 2020, BMG Rights Management completed a review of its recording contracts for racial discrimination. BMG found “significant” racial disparities in royalty payouts to Black and racialized artists in four of its labels. The BMG findings were not surprising. Commentators have long noted pervasive adverse contractual terms for African American recording artists. ",2,https://theconversation.com/denying-black-musicians-their-royalties-has-a-history-emerging-out-of-slavery-144397,FALSE, 961,Census 2021: Canadians are talking about race. But the census hasn’t caught up.,"This May, Canadians will again be asked if they identify as a member of a set list of minority groups when filling out the long form census. That data is used to measure the portion of Canada’s population that are designated as visible minorities, a concept and term increasingly out of step with the times. The pandemic has laid bare racial inequalities, and racial justice activist groups, like Black Lives Matter, have put anti Black racism high on the public agenda. Systemic racism, rather than visible minority status, is at the centre of debate. While Canadians are now talking more explicitly about race, the census has yet to catch up. “We’re going to have to ask ourselves, what do we want to do with that category now?” says Michael Haan, a demographer and member of a committee that advises Statistics Canada on ethnocultural diversity. According to him, the committee has had many internal debates about terminology. Canada’s anti racism strategy, which draws on decades’ worth of research, states that race is a social construct. There is no basis for classifying people according to race, but racial bias and discrimination have very real effects. The question is: How do we get relevant data from the census and other surveys on the impact of systemic racism?Statistics Canada tries to gather this information without directly asking about race. Race based data is needed, says Jean Pierre Corbeil, a diversity specialist at Statistics Canada. But he wonders whether that actually requires referring to race on the census. Historically, the government has been reluctant to ask directly about race, which has led to a lack of disaggregated data. After the Second World War, the census used indirect methods of estimating the non white, non Indigenous population through racial proxies like language or ethnocultural origin. That changed in 1996, says political scientist Debra Thompson, when Statistics Canada began asking Canadians whether they identified as a visible minority. The term, Thompson notes, makes it seem “that things are not about race when of course they absolutely are. ”The question on visible minorities was added to the census because of the Employment Equity Act. In order to measure how the white versus the non white population fares in the labor market as required by this law, the government needed to know who is a visible minority. For the purposes of the Employment Equity Act, says Haan, the question works. But he acknowledges the drawbacks: “Is it a perfect facsimile of race or racialization? No, it’s not. ”Many criticized, and still criticize the government’s approach. The United Nations has repeatedly pointed out that the term “visible minority” lumps together diverse communities and threatens to erase differences among them. Corbeil says Statistics Canada is well aware of the criticism. However, changing the terminology is politically sensitive. Moving away from it would likely require changing the Employment Equity Act, says Fo Niemi, head of Montreal based Center for Research Action on Race Relations. Instead, Statistics Canada is trying to respond to the demand for more race disaggregated data through special crowdsourced surveys and increasing sample sizes of marginalized people to allow for enhanced analysis. For example, with support from the federal Anti Racism Secretariat, it has produced a socio economic analysis on the Black population. ",2,https://theconversation.com/census-2021-canadians-are-talking-about-race-but-the-census-hasnt-caught-up-158343,FALSE, 963,"South Africa remains a nation of insiders and outsiders, 27 years after democracy","Twenty seven years into democracy, South African politics is still for the few. And those who complain the most have the least to grumble about. Since South Africa is highly unequal and remains divided into insiders and outsiders – those who benefit from the market economy and those who can’t – we might expect its politics to be a loud battle between those who have and those who don’t. Most commentators believe it is. Within the governing African National Congress , a battle rages between the “radical economic transformation forces”, who purport to champion the interests of the poor majority, and their market friendly opponents. Outside it, the third biggest party, the Economic Freedom Fighters , some in the ANC alliance and the advocates of black consciousness and pan Africanism are assumed to speak for those who live in poverty. There is much radical talk which creates this impression. The left wing tradition in South Africa goes back over a century – it was injected into the mainstream of anti apartheid politics by the alliance between the ANC and the Communist Party. But, while it is common for political activists to use left language, all politics is still, as it was before 1994, insider politics. Then the insiders were whites – now they are the minority who receive an income from the formal economy each week or month. In the country’s insider politics, the majority who try to survive outside the formal economy are talked about, but are never heard. The “radical economic transformation forces” are people trying to gain a bigger share of what the few enjoy, not to share it with the many. The EFF’s chief concern is to challenge white privilege in the insider economy, not to open it to the outsiders. According to one survey, EFF members have, on average, higher incomes and qualifications than ANC members. Over the past few years, the country has witnessed a furious debate over whether the government should be able to expropriate land without compensation. Only one group has been ignored – the millions of landless people who have the greatest stake in the outcome. Since insider politics is often about insisting that you speak for the poor when you have consulted no one who lives in poverty, both sides of the debate did their best to show that the landless were on their side. Those who wanted expropriation found a few landless people to take to official hearings. Their opponents in the media interviewed just as few landless people who were reported to not want expropriation. But no one spoke for the people without land. During the first year of COVID 19, a debate raged over whether lockdown measures were needed. The official opposition, the Democratic Alliance, echoed the global right wing by demanding that all activity be allowed. The EFF insisted that nothing should be opened. The ANC claimed to adopt a “scientific” approach in which public health and the economy’s needs were balanced. None of them spoke for – and to – the majority who were forced to travel on taxis which they knew might spread the virus, to earn incomes in ways which might infect them, and whose need was to find a way to feed their families without falling ill. Read more: South Africas 2019 poll showed dangerous signs of insiders and outsiders Insider politics also shapes another conflict which divides “left” and “right” – the demand for free higher education. This is a rallying cry of the left which is denounced by opponents as a Marxist assault on the market economy. But the “left” demand boils down to insisting that the children of the corporate and professional elite should be educated at public expense. This, would, of course, mean that less money would be available to address the needs of people living in poverty. ",2,https://theconversation.com/south-africa-remains-a-nation-of-insiders-and-outsiders-27-years-after-democracy-159561,FALSE, 966,The truth about racial inequalities and COVID-19 - and what should be done to address the long-term impacts,"It didn’t take long for the world to feel the pandemic’s impact on existing inequalities. A year after the arrival of COVID 19, however, and many of those outcomes have proven to be far more wide reaching and devastating than anticipated, especially where race and ethnicity is concerned. As more research emerged over the course of the past year, the role that structural racism has played in furthering these inequalities has become increasingly apparent. Vaccine mistrust among black and Asian communities has been revealed to be far more complex than initially portrayed by the government. The limitations of also looking at data through a “BAME” lens have been exposed, with calls for less generalized information about COVID 19 related outcomes for wildly disparate and varied ethnic groups. And within the youth labor market, black people have been hit the hardest by COVID 19 restrictions. Against the backdrop of the government’s controversial report on race and ethnic disparities, it appears that there’s a struggle between two camps about why these racial inequalities intensified throughout the pandemic. On the one hand, as espoused by the report, there are those who believe that structural racism doesn’t play a role in dramatically accelerating these issues. On the other is the understanding that race, ethnicity and structural racism are significant factors in aggravating disparities. In order to understand how far reaching these COVID 19 related outcomes are in terms of racial inequality, The Conversation is running a webinar on May 4, 2PM BST, the second in a series in partnership with the International Public Policy Observatory . The webinar will bring academics together to discuss the full social and health impacts of the pandemic on various black, Asian and ethnic minority communities and what we need to do now to ensure better policies and outcomes as we recover from COVID. Society and Arts editor, Kuba Shand Baptiste, will host the event and she will be joined by: Claudia Bernard, Professor of Social Work at Goldsmiths and member of the Black Female Professors Forum, which is conducting research into the impact of COVID 19 on black, Asian and minority ethnic people in the UK. Winston Morgan, Reader in Toxicology and Clinical Biochemistry and Director of Impact and Innovation, University of East London, who has written for The Conversation about why racism needs to be seen as a bigger factor in dealing with vaccine hesitancy. James Nazroo, Professor of Sociology at the University of Manchester and co author of a recent rapid evidence review on inequalities in relation to COVID 19 and their effects on London, as well as co author of a state of the nation report on Ethnicity, Race and Inequality in the UK. Mariko Hayashi, Director of the Southeast and East Asian Centre , a London based community organization, and an independent researcher on migration and human rights in the UK as well as East and Southeast Asia. The webinar will be free to watch directly via these link on Facebook, YouTube and on Twitter. No registration is needed. IPPO was commissioned by the Economic and Social Research Council in response to COVID 19, to develop a knowledge system that is quick and responsive while also grounded in the latest and most robust evidence. This webinar forms part of IPPO’s ongoing work on COVID 19’s unequal impacts on society, and how policymakers in all parts of the UK can best respond to this.",2,https://theconversation.com/the-truth-about-racial-inequalities-and-covid-19-and-what-should-be-done-to-address-the-long-term-impacts-159250,FALSE, 967,Student loan debt is costing recent grads much more than just money," Associate Professor of Philosophy, Iowa State University Professor of Law, University of California, Irvine Assistant Professor of Sociology, Arizona State University Dalié Jiménez has previously received grant funding from the Student Borrower Protection Center and the Lumina Foundation. Raphaël Charron Chénier has previously received a research grant from the Student Borrower Protection Center. Kate Padgett Walsh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. University of California, Irvine, Iowa State University, and Arizona State University provide funding as members of The Conversation US. View all partnersPresident Joe Biden promised to forgive up to US$10,000 in student loan debt during his 2020 campaign. We assembled a panel of academics to talk about the effects student loans have on recent graduates. Kate Padgett Walsh, associate professor of philosophy at Iowa State University Student debt is too much when it threatens the physical and mental health of young borrowers. Today’s college graduates now finish school with almost $30,000 in student loan debt, on average, an increase of over 300% from 1970 after adjusting for inflation. Research shows that the burden of this debt causes poorer mental health,poorer physical health and less overall satisfaction with life. It also causes borrowers to delay marriage, postpone renting or buying their own homes and put off starting new businesses. Student debt is also too much when it blocks access to the American dream, the idea that success is possible in the U. S. no matter a person’s background. Students who are the first in their family to attend college and low income students have a much harder time paying off their student loans, and they end up defaulting more often than other students. Black students, who owe 60% more than their white counterparts, struggle even more to pay back their loans, in part because of persistent racial wealth and income gaps. The government’s original purpose in lending to students was to help people of modest means get a college education. But today, it is precisely those borrowers who are most harmed by student debt. Dalié Jiménez, professor of law at the University of California, Irvine School of Law Providing broad debt relief for student borrowers is something President Biden’s Department of Education could do today. That move would greatly lessen gender and racial inequality and boost the economy. As a result of the COVID 19 pandemic, the government paused interest charges and payments for most federal student loans, but this temporary relief is set to expire at the end of September 2021. After that, defaults are likely to return to pre pandemic levels. Before the pandemic, borrowers were defaulting on federal student loans every 26 seconds, or just over 1. 2 million times per year. The returns to higher education are large, and they benefit society as a whole as well as individual students. Effectively requiring the least wealthy to take on personal debt to go to college instead of directly investing in higher education was a policy mistake. It has harmed not only the roughly 40% of borrowers who did not finish their degree and now owe money that is difficult to discharge in bankruptcy; this is money that can remain outstanding until the borrower’s death. But it has also harmed society as a whole. Providing broad debt relief would likely give Congress an incentive to focus on finding a way to fund higher education that addresses runaway tuition and does not rely on loans to students in need. Raphaël Charron Chénier, an assistant professor of sociology at Arizona State University Student debt exacerbates economic inequality, particularly between white and Black households. ",2,https://theconversation.com/student-loan-debt-is-costing-recent-grads-much-more-than-just-money-158189,FALSE, 968,How race-related stress could be driving educators of color away from the job,"The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. When teachers of color experience high levels of race based stress in schools, they can also have an increasingly negative sense of belonging, according to new research. For the study, we analyzed survey data from educators of color across Iowa. To get at whether they were experiencing race based stress, we asked whether the educators felt supported raising concerns with their peers about racism in schools or if they felt the need to ignore or avoid it. I conducted this research along with my colleagues – education researcher Duhita Mahatmya and community and behavioral health professor Eboneé Johnson. Teachers reported less support from colleagues than did principals. Over 75% of the teachers in our sample reported a negative sense of belonging, especially when they thought school districts would not devise policies to actively address equity and racism. Over half of U. S. public school students are students of color, but educator demographics do not mirror the student population. In 2003, 17% of public school teachers and 18% of public school principals identified as persons of color. By 2017, those numbers had risen to only 21% of teachers and 22% of principals in public schools. Currently in Iowa, 3% of teachers and 4% of principals in public schools identify as people of color, as compared with 26% of students. These workforce trends can be traced back to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case, when the U. S. Supreme Court ruled that public school segregation was unconstitutional. Following the ruling, tens of thousands of Black teachers and school administrators were either fired or demoted. White parents’ not wanting their children taught by Black teachers was among the reasons. Despite ongoing recruitment efforts, teachers of color still leave the profession at a rate almost 5% higher than their white peers. When there are few or no educators of color in public schools, students of color have historically been more likely to experience low academic expectations and disproportionately high rates of discipline. Also, Black and Hispanic students are less likely to be enrolled in advanced placement or gifted courses. Students of color – particularly Black and Hispanic students – have been shown to achieve more academically when they have a teacher of color. Some scholars contend that educators of color experience “racial battle fatigue,” a term coined by education professor William A. Smith at the University of Utah. Racial battle fatigue describes the physical, emotional and psychological toll on people of color when they experience racism in predominantly white spaces. In our study, we cannot definitively say that negative feelings that educators of color have about their school communities will cause them to leave the profession. However, we do suggest that race based stress is a factor. Stress has caused many educators to leave the profession, even before the COVID 19 pandemic. It will take more than just dedicated recruitment efforts to diversify the educator workforce and create inclusive schools. Retention strategies alone won’t be effective unless there are changes in the workplace environment itself. [Over 100,000 readers rely on The Conversation’s newsletter to understand the world. Sign up today. ]In our study, we surveyed educators of color still working in Iowa schools. We don’t know how educators of color who have left the profession would have responded. Additionally, we don’t yet know the impact of the “triple pandemic” of COVID 19, racism and an economic recession on the stress levels of educators of color. ",2,https://theconversation.com/how-race-related-stress-could-be-driving-educators-of-color-away-from-the-job-157734,FALSE, 971,Why Pakistani students benefit the most from going to university,"In the UK, people from all ethnic minority groups are now more likely to go to university than white British people. But does university education pay off when it comes to their future earnings? I looked at this question in a recent report, co authored with Jack Britton at the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Lorraine Dearden at UCL. We found that the financial benefits from university are positive on average for all ethnic groups even after accounting for taxes and student loans. Gains are highest for South Asian students, middling for white students, and mostly lower for black students. The benefits are especially large for Pakistani students, with an estimated boost to average earnings of more than a third by age 30. Adding up predicted gains over the whole life cycle and taking into account taxes and student loans, we found that doing a degree is worth around £200,000 for Pakistani students – around twice the average return for all students we calculated in previous work. This is not because Pakistani graduates have especially high earnings. In fact, the opposite is true: Pakistani graduates have the lowest graduate earnings of all ethnic groups, with typical earnings at age 30 of £23,000 for men and £19,000 for women. Instead the reason is that – based on comparing similar people who did and didn’t go to university – Pakistani graduates would have earned much less had they not gone to university. Typical earnings at age 30 of Pakistani men and women who did not go to university are only £13,000 for men and £11,000 for women. An important factor explaining the large earnings gains for Pakistani graduates appears to be that Pakistani students are more likely than White British students to choose subjects with good job prospects at university, such as business, law, or pharmacology. They are also less likely to choose degrees with low or negative financial returns, such as creative arts. This reflects a more general pattern. All Asian groups are more likely to study “high return” subjects at university, which appears to be a major factor behind the comparatively large gains for these groups. These findings appear to contradict a claim in the government’s recent race commission report. According to the report, an explanation for the low graduate earnings of many ethnic minority groups is that “ethnic minority students, and especially Black students, from lower social status backgrounds are not being well advised on which courses to take at university”. Our findings suggest that the opposite is true for South Asian students, as they tend to study more lucrative subjects than white students. We also find no evidence that black students choose lower return subjects than white students. This does not mean that poor career advice is not a problem – but it doesn’t seem to affect ethnic minorities disproportionately. The government’s report also suggests that ethnic minorities have low graduate earnings because they attend less selective universities. It is true that students from ethnic minorities – especially black students – are more likely to attend lower tariff universities, and that graduates of these institutions earn less than other graduates. But importantly, this does not mean that these universities offer low returns. Many graduates of these institutions would have had much lower earnings still if they had not gone to university at all. Overall, we found no evidence that ethnic minorities’ institution choices lower their gains from attending university. ",2,https://theconversation.com/why-pakistani-students-benefit-the-most-from-going-to-university-158088,TRUE, 973,"The Atlanta attacks were not just racist and misogynist, they painfully reflect the society we live in","I am heartbroken but I’m not surprised. The targeted killing of eight women in Atlanta, six of them Asian, is a brutal result of decades long exclusion and oppression, legitimized in law and colonial reverberations, that allow a white dominated settler society to thrive, justifying differential treatment of racialized migrants. Many blame former U. S. president Donald Trump for calling COVID 19 the “Asian flu,” “Kung Flu” and “China Virus,” among other terms, for this increase in violent attacks and harassment. And while it’s certainly contributed, these violent attacks, harassment and hate expressed against people of Asian descent did not begin with Trump or the pandemic. Read more: Anti Asian racism during coronavirus: How the language of disease produces hate and violence Here is where the toolkit built by critical race and feminist theorists can help us understand that the tragic deaths of these women are not new, not isolated, but represent racist, misogynist violence and are reflective of the society we live in. Those who were killed were targeted not only because of their race and gender but also because of their perceived work and immigration status. In other words, they were targeted because of their intersectional identities. Women were killed. It is undeniable that violence against women is one of the leading causes of death of women around the world. The Canadian Femicide Observatory recently confirmed that 160 women and girls were killed by violence in Canada in 2020, with 90 percent of the incidents involving a male accused. Six of the eight women in Atlanta were Asian. We’ve seen a significant increase in violence against Asians during the pandemic. In the United States, according to Stop AAPI Hate, 3,800 incidents were reported during the pandemic, with 68 percent of them being reported by women. This is a 150 percent increase in the number of hate incidents against Asians and Canada is not immune. Per capita, Canada has a greater number of incidents reported than the United States. According to Fight COVID Racism, there have been 928 incidents of violence due to discrimination against Asians since the pandemic began. Tied to this is the perceived immigration or citizenship status of Asians in North America. Immigration status has long been used as a way to separate and exclude racialized people in the post colonial project of preserving a white dominated settler society. The 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act was designed to keep racialized persons from settling in Canada. It was also designed to keep the “Yellow Peril” out, and for 24 years provided a mechanism to conduct health examinations based on misunderstandings that such persons were contagions. This early identification of “foreigners with disease” has framed our current discourse. While history tells us how North Americans may have come to fear Asian people and how Asians have been and still are perceived as vectors of disease, our current laws continue to justify differential treatment of racialized migrants. Migrant essential workers in agriculture, caregiving, health care, meat processing and other sectors come to Canada with temporary residence status without their families. Because of their precarious immigration status, they are subject to abuse, long working hours and the withholding of pay, all with little legal protection or recourse. ",2,https://theconversation.com/the-atlanta-attacks-were-not-just-racist-and-misogynist-they-painfully-reflect-the-society-we-live-in-157389,FALSE, 974,5 ways to address internalized white supremacy and its impact on health,"During the summer of protests, workplaces, institutions and many businesses seemed to have finally “awakened” to the plight of Black folks and the injustices we face. But the conversation needs to go further. We need to also have a discussion about the impact of white supremacy on our physical and mental health. The definition of internalized racism is “the acceptance, by marginalized racial populations, of the negative societal beliefs and stereotypes about themselves. ” There are many spaces where internalized white supremacy has created detrimental impacts on Black people’s health. To continue Black resistance, decolonization, and dismantling white supremacy we need to address some of these realities. In this era of multiple pandemics COVID 19 next to systemic anti Black and anti Indigenous racism discussing the impact of internalized racism on our health is crucial to furthering Black resistance, healing and emancipation. As a global social justice health researcher and psychotherapist with a private practice, I have collected both research based evidence as well as clinical experiences from this past year of the damage of white supremacy and internalized racism. Some of the earliest conceptions and seminal researchers who have work on internalized racism are: W. E. B Du Bois in his 1903 The Souls of the Black Folk, Marcus Garvey in 1923, Franz Fanon on Black masks in 1952 and The Wretched of the Earth in ‘65, Albert Memmi’s work on the colonizer and the colonized in 1965, to name a few. For a review of psychological literature on internalized racism, check out the 2019 paper by: E. J. R. David, Tiera M. Schroeder and Jessicaanne Fernandez. White supremacy is maintained through systems of punishment and religious indoctrination. The over 400 years of colonization’s violence on Black people’s lives, including the killing, mass incarceration, co optation and demonizing of our resistance movements through white supremacist systems and practices, have been internalized and as a result impact our health. Read more: Racism impacts your health Internalized white supremacy is a direct result of systemic anti Black racism and intersectional violence. It creates pain, suffering, and rifts and divisions in our communities and movements. It occurs when folks of colour believe racist stereotypes and act them out in their daily lives. Internalized white supremacy supports systematic violence by ensuring that oppressed peoples are consumed by “whiteness” or proximity to it, as the measure of greatness or goodness. Meanwhile, “Blackness” and other racialized identities are internalized as subservient or bad. Internalized white supremacy has its history in Black communities through the brutal enslavement of Africans. The separation of African families and the threat of death, sexual and physical violence, racist scientific experiments, and other cruelties created feelings of powerlessness and trauma that purported whiteness as superior, and Blackness as inferior. There is continuing research in the fields of psychology, health, medicine and education, to name a few, on internalized white supremacy and its detrimental impacts on our physical and mental health. ",2,https://theconversation.com/5-ways-to-address-internalized-white-supremacy-and-its-impact-on-health-152667,FALSE, 975,Film and TV diversity behind the camera is getting much worse,"Talk of the lack of diversity in the film and TV industries starts to bubble up around awards season every year. This year is no different with the Golden Globes notably snubbing one of the most critically acclaimed shows of 2020, I May Destroy You, and its young, black female creator, Michaela Cole. Despite repeated pledges to improve diversity it seems the situation isn’t getting any better. In fact, recently published data from the Creative Diversity Network found that diversity behind the camera is getting worse over time. The report found that positions such as directors, producers and camera operators are being filled less and less by those who identify as black, Asian or minority ethnic, disabled, transgender or the over 50s. In drama, perhaps the most high prestige genre of all, the data revealed that behind the camera contributions by black, Asian and minority ethnic people had fallen from 8. 6% in 2018 19 to 5. 9% in 2019 20. Also, there has been a decrease in the contributions from women in senior roles. My research adds a human element to such inequalities. In 2020, I collaborated with the Leeds production company Candour and screen industry professionals to create a research led film series called Industry Voices. We sought to document the testimonies of those with experience of inequality, looking at the sectors of television, film and games. Presenter and comedian Sideman resigned from the BBC last year after the corporation initially defended the use the N word by a white presenter in a television news broadcast. He told us there was a need for change in the make up of regulatory bodies, noting that it’s crucial to have people of color included in decisions that affect them. Sideman’s comments are particularly prescient in relation to the all white Ofcom board, who received 384 complaints regarding the use of the racial slur that caused him to resign. Drawing out this focus on power and the fact that inclusion is critical to democracy, the study explored processes of hiring and progression in the screen industries. Speaking about her experiences of both getting in and getting on in the screen industries, Channel 4 commissioning editor, Fozia Khan noted how her gender held her back when it came to moving from the role of producer to director. Fozia’s sentiments were bolstered by Welsh documentary producer and director, Liana Stewart, who noted:When you’re a female, and then you’re Black on top of it, and then you’re working class, there’s not many reference points, there’s not many people you can see who are [producers or directors]. In line with this, screenwriter and chair of the Writers’ Guild, Lisa Holdsworth criticized the “trickle up effect” that occurs when many companies only have diversity hiring policies when it comes to entry level positions, such as runners. For instance, the BBC’s board only has one black, Asian or minority ethnic member while Channel 4’s has two members. To make things worse, the BBC’s news board recently let go of its only non white member, Kamal Ahmed. Broadly, our contributors pointed to the problematic and nepotistic nature of hiring practices in the screen industries, and the fact that these processes are often undertaken on a “nod and a wink”. It is, ultimately, still about who you know, rather than what you know. In project based industries like film and TV, processes of hiring and progression are far from transparent, and questions of who has power are central to understanding the inequality in the sectors. One of the key findings of our research was not only that inequality needs to be tackled by those at the top but also that the configuration of those who make up the top needs to be decisively reconfigured. ",2,https://theconversation.com/film-and-tv-diversity-behind-the-camera-is-getting-much-worse-154622,FALSE, 977,What I learned when I recreated the famous ‘doll test’ that looked at how Black kids see race,"Back in the 1940s, Kenneth and Mamie Clark – a husband and wife team of psychology researchers – used dolls to investigate how young Black children viewed their racial identities. They found that given a choice between Black dolls and white dolls, most Black children preferred to play with white dolls. They ascribed positive characteristics to the white dolls but negative characteristics to the Black ones. Then, upon being asked to describe the doll that looked most like them, some of the children became “emotionally upset at having to identify with the doll that they had rejected. ”The Clarks concluded that Black children – as a result of living in a racist society – had come to see themselves in a negative light. I first heard about the Clarks’ doll experiment with preschool children during a Black studies class in college in the early 2000s. But it wasn’t until one of my daughters came home from preschool one day in 2017 talking about how she didn’t like being Black that I decided to create the doll test anew. When my daughter attended a diverse preschool, there weren’t any issues. But when she switched over to a virtually all white preschool, my daughter started saying she didn’t like her dark skin. I tried to assuage her negative feelings about the skin she was in. I told her, “I like it. ” She just quipped, “You can have it. ” But it wasn’t just her skin color she had a problem with. She told me she also wanted blue eyes “like the other kids” at her school. Perturbed, I spoke with others about the episode. I began to suspect that if my daughter had identity issues despite being raised by a culturally aware Black mom like me – an educator at that – then countless other Black children throughout America were probably experiencing some sort of internalized self hatred as well. The Clarks’ research was used in the 1954 landmark Brown v. Board of Education case to advance the cause of integrated schools. Their findings about Black children’s negative view of themselves were attributed to the effects of segregation. But I knew from experience that the preference for whiteness that the Clarks found was not limited to just Black kids in segregated schools in the 20th century. It was affecting Black kids in integrated schools in the 21st century as well. Maybe, I thought, the racial bias wasn’t related to schools as much as it was to the broader society in which we live. Maybe it was much more nuanced than whether Black kids attended an all Black school or went to school alongside other kids. But to verify that Black kids were still viewing their Blackness in a negative light the way the Clarks found that they were back in the 1940s, I would have to do so as a researcher. So I set out to get my doctorate in early childhood education and began to look deeper into how children develop racial identities. In their doll test studies, the Clarks prompted young children to respond to questions of character. They would ask questions like, which doll – the Black one or the white one – was the nice doll? This required the children to select a doll to answer the question. This experiment – and prior research by the Clarks – showed that young children notice race and that they have racial preferences. While these studies let us know that – contrary to what some people may think – children do, in fact, see color, the tests were far from perfect. Although I respect the Clarks for what they contributed to society’s understanding of how Black children see race, I believe their doll tests were really kind of unnatural – and, I would even argue, quite stressful. What if, for instance, the children were not forced to choose between one doll or the other, but could choose dolls on their own without any adults prodding them? And what if there were more races and ethnicities available from which to choose?",2,https://theconversation.com/what-i-learned-when-i-recreated-the-famous-doll-test-that-looked-at-how-black-kids-see-race-153780,FALSE, 978,Women of color spend more than $8 billion on bleaching creams worldwide every year,"The idealization of light skin as the pinnacle of beauty affects self esteem for women of color around the world. In many cultures, skin color is a social benchmark that is often used by people of color and whites alike in lieu of race. Attractiveness, marriageability, career opportunities and socioeconomic status are directly correlated with skin color. As a result, many women of color seek chemical remedies to lighten their complexion. They have created a booming global business in bleach creams and injectables valued at US$8. 6 billion in 2020; $2. 3 billion was spent in the U. S. alone. The market is projected to reach $12. 3 billion by 2027. In my work in behavioral science and colorism, I studied the phenomenon of skin bleaching during a decade of travel around the world during which I visited every major racial group – and tracked the growth of this industry. The practice has both significant racial implications and health concerns. As I stated during my interview on Oprah’s 2015 “Light Girls” documentary, while bleaching the skin is common, it’s both dangerous and potentially life threatening because products contain steroids, hydroquinone bleach and mercury. The World Health Organization warns that skin bleaching can cause liver and kidney damage, neurological problems, cancer and, for pregnant women, stillbirth. The practice is not new. It became popular in many African countries in the 1950s; today, about 77% of Nigerians, 27% of Senegalese and 35% of South African women bleach their skin. Indian caste based discrimination was outlawed in 1950, but dark skinned women are still persecuted – and fair skin remains a distinguishing social factor, associated with purity and elite status. In the Middle East, the practice of bleaching is most common in Jordan, with 60. 7% of women bleaching. The Brazilian government seems to sanction white skin over dark by encouraging immigration from Europe and discouraging persons of African descent. Light skin is idealized in North America, but the phenomenon is contentious because bleaching is perceived as a desire to be white. So bleaching creams are marketed in the U. S. not to lighten skin, but to “erase blemishes” and “age spots. ”Their use in the U. S. spiked after the 1967 U. S. Supreme Court ruling that legalized interracial marriage. In the aftermath of the civil rights movement, dark complected immigrants from developing countries flocked to the U. S. , carrying with them an ideal of light skinned beauty – and they bleached their skin to attain it. Bleach cream manufacturers now face growing pressure to address racism, with activists arguing that their products perpetuate a preference for lighter skin. In 2020, Johnson & Johnson announced that it will no longer sell two products marketed to reduce dark spots that were widely used as skin lighteners. L’Oreal, the world’s largest producer of bleach creams, pledged to remove the words “white,” “fair,” and “light” from labels – but it will still manufacture these products. [Deep knowledge, daily. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter. ]Some among African countries have moved to ban bleaching creams. The success of the blockbuster film “Black Panther” has likewise sparked a movement celebrating dark skin, with hashtags including #melaninpoppin and #blackgirlmagic. As I see it, public education and activism on this issue must prevail to protect the health and self esteem of women of color. The failure of either will only prolong the problem – while sustaining an $8. 6 billion bleach cream beauty industry. ",2,https://theconversation.com/women-of-color-spend-more-than-8-billion-on-bleaching-creams-worldwide-every-year-153178,FALSE, 982,Why a shootout between Black Panthers and law enforcement 50 years ago matters today,"In the early hours of Feb. 10, 1971, police surrounded a property in High Point, North Carolina, where members of the Black Panther Party lived and worked. In the ensuing shootout, a Panther and a police officer were both wounded. The incident did not receive much national attention at the time – armed conflict of this type was relatively common during the late 1960s and early 1970s. But 50 years on, as the U. S. reckons with a year that saw militarized police confront Black Lives Matter protesters and fail to prevent an attack on the U. S. Capitol, I believe the circumstances of this shootout are relevant today. As a historian who has interviewed participants in the confrontation for a coming book, I see the raid in the context of a then emerging strategy of urban policing in the U. S. , shaped by the racial and political clashes of the 1960s and forged through a growing partnership between local and federal law enforcement. That strategy, of criminalizing Black political activism at a time when white reactionary protesters were accommodated, has defined police responses to Americans’ activism – and political violence – over the past half century. The approach of law enforcement on the bitterly cold morning of Feb. 10, 1971, was aggressive and combative. Brad Lilley, the 19 year old leader of the High Point branch of the Black Panthers, woke at 5 a. m. to discover about 30 police officers and sheriff’s deputies surrounding the rented house he shared with three other teenage members of the organization. The police were seeking to evict the Panthers. Despite the fact that Lilley and the other members were paying rent on time, High Point police were looking to force them out in line with a national strategy of pushing Black Panthers out of communities because of their political activities. According to a High Point Enterprise local newspaper reporter on the scene, the force was “heavily armed and wearing flak jackets,” though none of the residents had a record of criminal violence. The Enterprise also questioned the police department’s aggressive strategy in the crowded residential neighborhood, stating “someone could have been killed in the comparative safety of his home. ”Ironically, High Point Police Chief Laurie Pritchett, who was on the scene that day, had previously built a national reputation by avoiding combative tactics. Pritchett had been chief in Albany, Georgia, in 1961 when the civil rights group the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee began organizing a movement to desegregate the city. His nonviolent approach to policing during this campaign largely thwarted those efforts, even after Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference became involved. King later called Pritchett “a basically decent man. ” Some Black High Pointers described Pritchett’s approach on Feb. 10 as inconsistent with his generally nonbelligerent law enforcement practices. Interviews I have conducted suggest that the strategy of Feb. 10 exemplified Pritchett’s adoption of a more militant policing trend in the city. Lilley told me that just a few days before the shootout, a High Point police officer stopped his car and told him, “I know who you are. ” According to Lilley and two other passengers in the car, the officer said he was a marked man and was going to be killed. Such targeting of leaders of the Black civil rights movement had become increasingly common for law enforcement since the FBI began surveilling King in 1963, and it accelerated after President Lyndon Johnson declared a “war on crime” in 1965. That surveillance, and the FBI’s COINTELPRO operation that sought to infiltrate Black revolutionary groups like the Panthers, reflected a shift in federal law enforcement’s response to the civil rights movement. ",2,https://theconversation.com/why-a-shootout-between-black-panthers-and-law-enforcement-50-years-ago-matters-today-153632,FALSE, 983,The hidden story of when two Black college students were tarred and feathered,"One cold April night in 1919, at around 2 a. m. , a mob of 60 rowdy white students at the University of Maine surrounded the dorm room of Samuel and Roger Courtney in Hannibal Hamlin Hall. The mob planned to attack the two Black brothers from Boston in retaliation for what a newspaper article described at the time as their “domineering manner and ill temper. ” The brothers were just two among what yearbooks show could not have been more than a dozen Black University of Maine students at the time. While no first person accounts or university records of the incident are known to remain, newspaper clippings and photographs from a former student’s scrapbook help fill in the details. Although outnumbered, the Courtney brothers escaped. They knocked three freshmen attackers out cold in the process. Soon a mob of hundreds of students and community members formed to finish what the freshmen had started. The mob captured the brothers and led them about four miles back to campus with horse halters around their necks. Before a growing crowd at the livestock viewing pavilion, members of the mob held down Samuel and Roger as their heads were shaved and their bodies stripped naked in the near freezing weather. They were forced to slop each other with hot molasses. The mob then covered them with feathers from their dorm room pillows. The victims and bystanders cried out for the mob to stop but to no avail. Local police, alerted hours earlier, arrived only after the incident ended. No arrests were made. Incidents of tarring and feathering as a form of public torture can be found throughout American history, from colonial times onward. In nearby Ellsworth, Maine, a Know Nothing mob, seen by some as a forerunner to the KKK, tarred and feathered Jesuit priest Father John Bapst in 1851. Especially leading into World War I, this method of vigilantism continued to be used by the KKK and other groups against Black Americans, immigrants and labor organizers, especially in the South and West. As with the Courtney brothers incident, substitutions like molasses or milkweed were made based on what was readily available. Although rarely fatal, victims of tarring and feathering attacks were not only humiliated by being held down, shaved, stripped naked and covered in a boiled sticky substance and feathers, but their skin often became burned and blistered or peeled off when solvents were used to remove the remnants. When I first discovered the Courtney brothers incident in the summer of 2020 – as Black Lives Matter protests took place worldwide following the May death of George Floyd – it felt monumental to me. Not only am I a historian at the university where this shameful event occurred, but I’ve also devoted the past five years to tracking down information about the Red Summer of 1919, the name given to the nationwide wave of violence against Black Americans that year. University alumni records and yearbooks indicate the Courtney brothers never finished their studies. One article mentions possible legal action against the university, although I couldn’t find evidence of it. Local media like The Bangor Daily News and the campus newspaper reported nothing on the event. A search of databases populated with millions of pages of historic newspapers yielded just six news accounts of the Courtney brothers incident. Most were published in the greater Boston area where the family was prominent, or in the Black press. While most of white America was unaware of the attack, many Black Americans likely read about it in The Chicago Defender, the most prominent and widely distributed Black paper in the nation at the time. ",2,https://theconversation.com/the-hidden-story-of-when-two-black-college-students-were-tarred-and-feathered-147895,FALSE, 986,Biden has pledged to advance environmental justice – here’s how the EPA can start," Professor of Public and Environmental Affairs, Indiana University David Konisky does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. Indiana University provides funding as a member of The Conversation US. View all partnersOn his first day in office President Joe Biden started signing executive orders to reverse Trump administration policies. One sweeping directive calls for stronger action to protect public health and the environment and hold polluters accountable, including those who “disproportionately harm communities of color and low income communities. ” To lead this effort Biden has nominated Michael Regan to head the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency. Regan, who currently heads North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality, would be the first Black man to serve as EPA Administrator in the agency’s 50 year history. His appointment has fueled expectations that the agency will make environmental justice a top priority. The EPA first created an Office of Environmental Justice in 1992, but I know from my research on decades of the agency’s work that it has never given the issue sustained attention. Despite activism from a growing environmental justice movement, widespread evidence that pollution over burdens poor and minority communities, and a Clinton era executive order that mandated federal action, the EPA has largely failed to modify its programs, policies and decision making processes in response. The agency’s toolkit for taking on environmental injustice is limited. Current environmental laws do not require it to craft policies to address unequal pollution burdens, and in some cases they make it difficult to do so. Several House and Senate members have introduced bills to give the EPA such a mandate, and they may try again in the new Congress. But the agency can get started before that happens. In my view, EPA officials can advance environmental justice immediately by striving for inclusive decision making. This means not just listening to people of color and other communities suffering from pollution burdens, but empowering them to be involved in decisions that affect their lives. Historically the EPA has too often taken an “announce and defend” approach to its decisions. By giving these communities more voice, I believe the agency will make better decisions and show that it is committed to changing its historical insensitivity to environmental justice goals. Second, EPA leaders should prioritize enforcement activities in overburdened communities. Numerous studies have shown that federal and state agencies conduct fewer inspections and impose lighter penalties when offending pollution sources are located in low income neighborhoods and communities of color. Researchers have documented this pattern on issues including air pollution, drinking water and hazardous waste management. EPA enforcement has declined for many years, so the agency needs to ramp up these efforts overall. But its leaders have full discretion to target enforcement toward companies located in communities that are heavily polluted. And they can use existing resources, such as the EJSCREEN mapping tool, to help identify these communities. EPA officials will need to coordinate these enforcement efforts with the U. S. Department of Justice, which is responsible for prosecuting cases. In addition, the EPA will need to set clear expectations that states, which do the lion’s share of enforcement, also prioritize environmental justice communities. Another thing the EPA can do now is make better use of its authority under the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Specifically, Title VI of the Civil Right Act prohibits organizations that receive federal funds from discriminating against protected groups. This includes state and local agencies that issue permits and carry out other activities to implement federal pollution control laws. ",2,https://theconversation.com/biden-has-pledged-to-advance-environmental-justice-heres-how-the-epa-can-start-152512,TRUE, 987,How African body markings were used to construct the idea of race in colonial Brazil,"In the 1700s, the gold rush in southeast Brazil created a high demand for mining labor. The Minas Gerais region became one of the main destinations for African slaves. For the first half of the century, demand was met by a trade circuit connecting the ports of the Bight of Benin to Salvador in Bahia. People from those ports acquired a reputation among the Portuguese as the best hands for mining gold. With time, they created a commercial system of slave classification. Many Africans were grouped with the understanding that they are naturally suited for certain jobs. Slaves were sorted by anatomy and the purported ability to function better in certain climates, resistance to diseases, and life expectancy. Based on this classification, they were either assigned to the fields or less rigorous housework. This process of stereotyping was unwittingly aided by many Africans with body markings. The markings represented aspects of their lives. They were commonly scarification marks, tattoos and cuts. These indicated their identities, ethnicity, religious affiliation, life events, accomplishments and social status. Sometimes they were made to obtain spiritual protection. Others were permanent beauty marks. These meanings were lost to the Portuguese. They used them simply to profile and identify slaves. The markings also helped to recapture escaped slaves and ensure slaveholders paid taxes. In my study of colonial archives, I researched how physical attributes shaped the way Africans were viewed. Race relations in Brazil are generally thought of in terms of multiple skin colour categories associated with various interethnic relationships. But its largest enslaved population consisted of Africans. So, it is important to understand how colonial society dealt with their diversity of origins to construct blackness. Slavery in Brazil did not, in fact, automatically erase the diversity of African origins and reduce people to one racial category – ‘Black’. It happened over time. In the Brazilian regions where gold and diamonds were mined, slave ownership was taxed. The tax office began listing slaves’ Christian names, ages, origins, purchase price and body markings in official registries. They also put this information on the identification cards that slaves had to carry with them. Scarification was then used as a marker of the person’s homeland. Here’s a description I found from 1752: “Domingos Sabarú, 20 years old, with smallpox pockmarks, and four small spears on top of his right eyebrow, two circles on top of the left eyebrow, a small grid in the middle of the eyebrows, a star at the temple in the corner of his right eyebrow and the more signs that are on every face of Sabarú, valued at 300 thousand réis”. . These colonial interpretations of African scarifications oversimplified their original meanings. In several regions, their meanings went far beyond ethnicity or origin. In West Africa, some skin patterns express religious affiliation with specific entities of the hierarchy of gods and deified ancestors called voduns in the Gbe speaking area or called orishas in the Yoruba territories. In these cases, marking were acquired as part of the rites of initiation. Other markings are records of significant events such as a death in the family. They can also symbolize belonging to a complex multi leveled society. These marks indicated an individual’s age, medical history, and their social, political and gender related status. Some marks are formed from the injection of medicines and substances believed to offer protection from unseen forces. Some were just creative expressions. ",2,https://theconversation.com/how-african-body-markings-were-used-to-construct-the-idea-of-race-in-colonial-brazil-151509,TRUE, 989,South African policies go some way to tackling poverty and inequality. But more is needed," Senior research fellow at the Centre for Social Development in Africa, University of Johannesburg The research was funded by the National Development Agency . University of Johannesburg provides support as an endorsing partner of The Conversation AFRICA. View all partnersSouth Africa is one of the most unequal societies in the world. More than 50% of the population live in poverty. Despite notable gains in poverty reduction post apartheid, poverty levels have remained consistently highest among women, black South Africans, people with disabilities, and those living in rural areas. The government has committed itself to addressing poverty, inequality and social exclusion – understood as disadvantage by gender, race, disability or place. The mandate is laid out in the constitution and in the government’s National Development Plan. The plan was adopted in September 2012 as a blueprint for eliminating poverty and significantly reducing inequality by 2030. But do the country’s laws, policies and strategy documents show exactly how poverty, inequality and social exclusion will be tackled? To answer this question, researchers at the Centre for Social Development in Africa undertook an extensive review commissioned by the National Development Agency. We explored how policy makers and legislators have faced these systemic challenges in drafting their documents. We reviewed 501 legislative, policy and strategy documents under the Medium Term Strategic Framework Outcomes, the implementation strategy of the National Development Plan . The documents cover education, health, safety and security, economic growth and employment, skills, infrastructure, rural development, human settlements, local government, environment, public service, social protection, nation building and social cohesion. We reviewed each document to determine the number of references to poverty, inequality, social exclusion, gender, race, disability, youth unemployment and spatial inequality. Then we analyzed whether the references were generic or specific. We considered whether the documents showed an understanding of the issues and looked for solutions. Our findings reveal that there is at least some engagement with poverty, inequality and social exclusion in all governmental sectors. But it’s inconsistent. We identified steps that could improve progress. We found that 10% of legislative documents and more than half of all policy and strategy documents mentioned poverty, inequality, social exclusion, gender, race, disability and spatial disparities at least once. The social protection sector showed the highest average number of references to poverty , inequality and social exclusion in its documents. The public service sector showed the lowest number of references. We also discovered that there are many more references in policy and strategy documents than in legislative documents. More references don’t mean deeper engagement with these issues. In some cases the issues are not critically analyzed. References to poverty, inequality and social exclusion must explain how they affect each law and policy. They should also offer strategic interventions. Some sectors do take this holistic approach to policy making. In the health sector, for example, we found that some policy and strategy documents examine the connection between poverty, inequality and health outcomes. The Breast Cancer Control Policy, for instance, identifies transport as a constraint to accessing health services. We also found that references to gender and spatial disparities are most common when addressing social exclusion. But references to population groups, disability and youth who are not in education or training are inconsistent across the board. Policies matter and can make a real difference. But on their own they are insufficient. They must be implemented. Change happens through stakeholders and processes. ",2,https://theconversation.com/south-african-policies-go-some-way-to-tackling-poverty-and-inequality-but-more-is-needed-151696,FALSE, 990,The perils of associating ‘white’ with ‘privilege’ in the classroom," Ph. D. Candidate in Political Science, University of California, Berkeley Ritika Goel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. View all partnersWhite privilege – the social advantage that benefits white people over others simply on account of skin color – has become a racial justice catchphrase. Peggy McIntosh, an academic who originated the term in 1989, described it like this: “An invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was meant to remain oblivious. ” As examples, she highlighted the appearance of being financially reliable, shopping alone without being harassed and seeing representation of her race in history books and the media. In the wake of George Floyd’s death, an increasing number of white Americans agree that white privilege exists. That includes a growing number of Republicans. Despite the term’s pervasive use, little attention has focused on how it affects victims of racial injustice, particularly young people of color whose identities are still being shaped. As a scholar of political psychology, I believe that associating “white” with “privilege” can do more harm than good because it reinforces harmful stereotypes. It can make people of color feel that social privilege belongs only to white people. If racial minorities believe they are perceived as disadvantaged, the stereotype can diminish their academic performance by activating a psychological phenomenon called stereotype threat – the fear of conforming to a negative stereotype. That, in turn, induces underperformance on intellectual tasks. And it has also been shown to reduce confidence and heighten anxiety. Discussions regarding white privilege are not restricted to social media. Increasingly, they are being adopted by university websites and racial justice activists. This phrase can serve as a constant reminder to students of color that society perceives them as being socially inferior and economically disadvantaged by default. In other words, those using the phrase “white privilege” to address racial inequities may, paradoxically, reinforce white privilege. Social psychology research shows that when minority groups are exposed to unflattering stereotypes that deem them inferior, they will often underachieve academically. This happens because stigmatized groups subconsciously experience a fear of confirming the negative stereotype – such as “Black students struggle in college” – according to research conducted by academics at Stanford University in the 1990s. This intimidation implies to the stigmatized person that they might not belong in the field where the tested abilities are important. In the Stanford study, Black students underperformed compared to white counterparts when told that the test was “diagnostic” – a “genuine test of your verbal abilities and limitations. ” However, when this description was excluded, there was no such detrimental effect on performance. Even subtle cues can activate this threat to self image. When students were asked to record their race before the test, Black students performed worse than their white counterparts. This phenomenon came to be known as stereotype threat. And it has since been established across several studies to explain the underperformance of stigmatized groups, ranging from non Asian ethnic minorities to women in quantitative fields in which math skills are important. With the pervasive use of “white privilege” on social media, race is more strongly associated with privilege and its connotations about socioeconomic class – that people who are privileged must be wealthy. This implies that people of color are typically poor. ",2,https://theconversation.com/the-perils-of-associating-white-with-privilege-in-the-classroom-143933,FALSE, 991,What the ‘doctor’ title means for women of color with doctorates,"Editor’s note: In a Dec. 11 Wall Street Journal op ed, conservative author Joseph Epstein sparked widespread backlash, especially from women in academia, when he chided incoming first lady Jill Biden for using “Dr. ” before her name while she is not a physician. Biden, a community college professor, has a doctor of education degree – or an Ed. D. Although Jill Biden is white, Epstein’s essay offended many academic women of color for whom the refusal to acknowledge their Ph. D. is particularly hurtful, say Dr. Robyn Hannigan, provost of Clarkson University, and Dr. Cecilia E. Suarez, assistant professor in the Department of Agricultural Education and Communication at the University of Florida. The Conversation US usually adheres to Associated Press style – which calls for reserving the “doctor” titles for medical doctors and dentists in news articles. But it’s making an exception for this article about the importance the title holds for women scholars with Ph. D. s. I am not only a woman who holds a Ph. D. in a male dominated field, but a woman of mixed heritage . There was never a time during my Ph. D. studies that I was not made aware that I was different, sometimes unwelcome, and most assuredly unlikely to thrive in academia. I am still taken aback when introduced at functions or to peers by my first name after prior introductions of my male colleagues included “doctor. ” Though it may not always matter to my ego if I am called “doctor,” it is critically relevant to fostering a culture of respect and belonging. As an academic, my Ph. D. is my calling card. It’s a sign that I was trained “properly” and that I am an independent researcher and leader in my field. Without it I would not have achieved my professional successes. There have only been a handful of times when I’ve encountered people who refuse to use the title “doctor. ” I certainly have had numerous encounters, particularly on airplanes, with people who, when I tell them I am Dr. Hannigan and I explain what I study, they respond with a variant on the theme of “Oh, so you’re not a real doctor. ” While I am usually unperturbed by not being introduced or addressed as “doctor,” I am sensitive to introductions that are followed by “and she is Native American” – as if being Native American were a barrier to achieving a Ph. D. in and of itself. Every time I hear this I hear the “and” emphasized in a tone of shock and awe. I imagine people thinking: Can you believe it? She is Native American and went to college and someone gave her a Ph. D. ? No one has ever said “and she is of Irish descent. ” Well meaning people seek to use my presence as a doorway to open conversations around Indigenous issues and concerns. I do still bristle when these situations occur but, of late, have begun to embrace them. I now clearly see the opportunity being handed to me – to make sure we are having the tough conversations, making real cultural change and creating systems that ensure people of color and across the gender spectrum can thrive in academia. Dr. Cecilia E. Suarez: The now infamous Wall Street Journal op ed giving Dr. Jill Biden the uninvited “advice” to shed her earned title of “Dr. ” is yet another drop in the ocean that exemplifies patriarchy and white privilege. ",2,https://theconversation.com/what-the-doctor-title-means-for-women-of-color-with-doctorates-150194,FALSE, 992,Thousands of Brazilians who won elections as Black candidates in 2020 previously ran for office as white," Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Florida Andrew Janusz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. University of Florida provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US. View all partnersBrazil is undergoing a strange racial reckoning after bombshell revelations that thousands of veteran politicians had changed their self identified race between the 2016 and 2020 elections. Afro Brazilians – a category that includes Black and mixed race people – comprise 56% of Brazil’s population but 43% of elected officials. So when almost 29,000 Afro Brazilian city council and mayoral candidates took office on Jan. 1 after winning their races last November, communities of color celebrated their growing political representation. But Brazilian politics may not be as diverse as official statistics suggest. More than 42,000 veteran politicians who ran for office in 2020 had changed their self declared race since their last campaign, potentially to gain access to new campaign financing earmarked for Black candidates. Of the 28,764 winners who identified as Afro Brazilian last year, 16% – 4,580 people – had identified themselves as a different race when they ran for office in 2016, data from Brazil’s Superior Electoral Court shows. Nearly all were previously registered as white, according to my analysis of Brazil’s race switching politicians. The data analyzed does not include first time candidates, whose past racial identification is not documented. Brazilians were outraged when they learned that so many veteran politicians had decided to identify as Black. Black voters are left questioning whether the lawmakers actually understand their experience as a marginalized majority – and represent their needs in the halls of power. As in the United States, nonwhite Brazilians are more likely than whites to be killed by police and to die from COVID 19. They also lag behind whites on virtually every objective indicator of well being, from education level to income. Afro Brazilian activists have demanded that elected officials address these longstanding racial inequalities, with limited success. The country has a few federal affirmative action and racial justice programs. But the country’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, has pledged to eliminate even those efforts at equality. His administration claims that Brazil is a “racial democracy,” a society free of racism and discrimination. In my research on Afro Brazilian political representation, I found a pervasive belief that life would improve for communities of color if more Afro Brazilians held political power. I interviewed Brazilian activists, politicians and voters in 2016 and 2018. Many claimed that Afro Brazilian lawmakers advocate for nonwhites and prioritize their needs. They pointed to the actions of politicians like Rio de Janeiro city council member Marielle Franco, an outspoken critic of police violence who was assassinated in March 2018. There is some evidence to back up this belief. My research indicates that Afro Brazilian legislators do behave differently from their white colleagues. In Congress, they are more likely to introduce legislation that celebrates Blackness, such as establishing a national day of Black consciousness, and to author bills that address racial disparities and racial discrimination. “I know the position of Blacks in this country,” said Benedita da Silva, Brazil’s first Black female member of Congress, in a 1987 interview with The New York Times following her electoral victory. “I have a special responsibility to speak out on the subjects that I know about – against racial discrimination. ” The 4,580 new Afro Brazilian lawmakers who assumed office on Jan. 1 after years or a lifetime of passing as white may not have that understanding of Blackness or feel the same responsibility toward Afro Brazilian communities. ",2,https://theconversation.com/thousands-of-brazilians-who-won-elections-as-black-candidates-in-2020-previously-ran-for-office-as-white-151363,FALSE, 993,Rooting out racism in children’s books,"Ten years ago, I sat down with my then 8 year old daughter to read a book before bedtime. The book was sort of a modern day “boy who cried wolf” story, only it was about a little girl named Lucy who had a bad habit of telling lies. In the story, Lucy borrowed her friend Paul’s bike and crashed it. Lucy lied to Paul, telling him “a bandit” jumped in her path and caused the crash. I saw the image and stopped reading. I was stunned. The image on the page was the racist stereotype of the “Mexican bandit” wearing a serape, sombrero and sandals. By training, I am a critical race theorist in education who understands that racism is ingrained into the fabric of our society in general, and in educational institutions in particular. One area of my research is about how people of color experience racial microaggressions, which are often subtle but significant attacks – verbal or nonverbal. They can take on many forms, such as remarks about one’s identity, and occur because of institutionalized racism. Although I am an academic who studies racism, in that moment, as a parent, I felt unsure about how to help my daughter understand what we were seeing in that book. Around the same time, I read an opinion piece by children’s book author Christopher Meyers in The New York Times titled “The Apartheid of Children’s Literature. ” It outlined the problem of racial representation in children’s literature. These personal encounters prompted me to investigate the portrayals of people of color in children’s books. I learned that the Cooperative Children’s Book Center , a research library based at the University of Wisconsin, has been collecting data on the number of children’s books published in the U. S. authored by and about people of color. The data is disturbing. In 2015 – when I began this research – there were 85 books published in the U. S. that included Latinx characters from the 3,200 children’s books the center received that year. That’s about 2. 5% of the total, whereas Latinx kids represent about 1 in 4 school children in the U. S. Since then, there has been an upward trend for all ethnic or racial groups. However, books written by and about people of color remain a very small proportion of books published each year. The most recent CCBC data reports books with Latinx characters were about 6% of the more than 4,000 children’s books the center received in 2019. The lack of representation of communities of color in children’s books is another longstanding problem – one that has persisted since at least the 1920s when renowned sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois first expressed his concerns about anti Black racism in children’s books. Books can serve as important tools for children to develop their own sense of self and identity. When children of color do not see themselves in the books they read, this sends the message that they and their communities are not important. In a study published in 2020, my colleagues and I used critical race theory to develop a rubric to critically analyze racial representations in children’s books. Drawing from this research, here are five questions to consider when choosing books about people of color:It is important to see people of color represented in a wide array of characters to avoid falling into racist tropes and stereotypes. When characters of color are present, it is important to recognize the position they play in the story line. Children should have the opportunity to see characters of color as main characters, central to the stories they read. ",2,https://theconversation.com/rooting-out-racism-in-childrens-books-149432,FALSE, 994,"In 2020, TV and film still couldn’t get abortion right"," Data Analyst, University of California, San Francisco Research Sociologist, University of California, San Francisco Stephanie Herold receives funding from The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation. Gretchen Sisson receives funding from the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation. University of California, San Francisco provides funding as a member of The Conversation US. View all partnersAccording to decades of research, abortion is an incredibly common and safe medical procedure. But if you learned about abortion only from movies and TV, that’s not the story you’d see. For the last eight years, we’ve been studying onscreen depictions of abortion. We’ve found that Hollywood tends to dramatically exaggerate the medical risks associated with abortion while downplaying real barriers to access. Aside from a few exceptions, 2020’s onscreen content continued to reflect patterns we’d identified in previous years. Overall, we tracked 31 television storylines and 13 movie plot lines about abortion in 2020. They include titles like the American release of the French film “Portrait of a Lady on Fire”; HBO’s “Unpregnant” and “Never Rarely Sometimes Always”; Hulu’s “Little Fires Everywhere” and “Mrs. America”; and the independent film “Saint Frances. ” Thirty one of them featured a character having or disclosing an abortion. This is more than we’ve seen in previous years. In the past, more characters changed their minds, had miscarriages or didn’t even consider having an abortion when faced with an unplanned pregnancy. Other patterns, however, remained remarkably consistent. As in previous years, 74% of this year’s abortion plot lines featured white characters. No characters were parenting at the time of their abortion, and the majority of them faced few, if any, legislative, financial or logistical barriers to accessing an abortion. This is inconsistent with what we know about real life people who get abortions. For example, in the U. S. , abortion patients are most often people of color. After seeing an increase in characters of color obtaining abortion onscreen in 2019, we had hoped that this trend might continue. In fact, the number and proportion decreased. Similarly, the majority of U. S. abortion patients are parenting at the time of their abortions and cite their need to care for their children as a reason for an abortion. Yet, only one character who got an abortion on television in 2020 was raising a child. Finally, despite the nearly insurmountable barriers many face to getting an abortion, only five plot lines portrayed characters struggling to access abortion care. We did not, for example, see characters have to repeatedly reschedule appointments because they could not take days off of work or school or could not find child care. Nor did we see characters grapple with the devastating effects of the Hyde Amendment, a provision that denies the use of federal funds for paying for abortions. It essentially denies coverage of abortion for people who receive health insurance through the government – many of whom are already struggling to make ends meet. These are just a few of the many onerous obstacles that the majority of U. S. abortion patients face in the United States. Yet they remain virtually absent onscreen. Still, there was some content that made strides. In “Unpregnant” and “Never Rarely Sometimes Always,” barriers to access were central to the plots. Each starred white, teenage girls who road trip with a friend to abortion clinics in states that don’t have laws mandating parental consent. The films go to great lengths to portray the logistical and financial hurdles to accessing care, and the emotional fortitude and social support needed to make it possible. And although characters of color had their abortion stories told less frequently than in 2019, the few that did were notable: The film “The Surrogate” tells the story of a young Black woman acting as a gestational carrier for a gay couple. An episode of “Vida” portrays Emma, a queer Latina, having a medication abortion and learning that her sister has had one, too. In “I May Destroy You,” Arabella, a young Black writer, divulges a past abortion to her therapist, who’s trying to help her heal from a sexual assault. ",2,https://theconversation.com/in-2020-tv-and-film-still-couldnt-get-abortion-right-152223,FALSE, 1009,3 Ways Candidates Can Make A Real Difference On Disability Employment,"It’s not enough anymore for politicians to furrow their brows about the high rate of unemployment for people with disabilities. And “urging” employers “give disabled people a chance,” while all to the good, only goes so far. Government action alone can’t solve the problem. But there are specific policy changes that could help. If candidates want to earn disabled people’s votes, getting serious and creative about addressing structural barriers to disabled people’s employment goals would be a good start. Scope and scale . . . There are a hundred ways to measure the state of disability and employment. Here are just a few key indicators: A 2017 study by the Kessler Foundation offers additional insights into employment and unemployment patterns among people with disabilities:“68. 4% of survey respondents were striving to work. The striving group is comprised of individuals who are currently working , those not currently working but who have worked since disability onset , those who have not worked since disability onset but are currently looking for work , as well as those who have never worked but reported looking for work . ”The Kessler survey also found that the most common barrier to employment cited by disabled people was a lack of health insurance or concerns over possibly losing it. The size of the problem is easy to measure, and there are scores of theories on why disabled people are so consistently under employed. There are also scores of programs and initiatives, both public and private, aimed at improving the situation. But in an election year, we may legitimately ask, “What more can government do to budge the needle on disability employment?” What long term structural reforms can candidates propose that will differentiate themselves during the campaign, and, if elected, finally make a real difference? Here are a few ideas:1. Restructure benefits and healthcare to remove disincentivesSocial Security Disability, , Supplemental Security Income, , and to some extent Medicaid and Medicare, are traditionally anchored in the idea that being disabled means being unable to work. Technically, this is still what makes a disabled person eligible for income support and free or low cost health care. Likewise, if a disabled person on any of these benefits starts working and earning income, it raises the question of whether they need benefits anymore. It has never been a simple matter of “on or off” benefits. Social Security has for a long time included rules called Work Incentives that are supposed to allow recipients to ease into the workforce and make a smooth transition to self sufficiency. However, the goal is still assumed to be getting off of benefits entirely, and there are limits to how long any particular disabled person can work and still collect benefits. Plus, the settings for how much you can earn and save and still be eligible are woefully out of date, even those that rise yearly with cost of living, and despite recent improvements like the ABLE Act. Even when effective, these regulations are complicated, and full compliance can be difficult. So most disabled people who work or want to work have to contented with the constant risk of earning just a little too much in a given month, or working for one month longer than a limit, and winding up worse off financially because of a sudden loss of benefits, or worse, an overpayment resulting in a huge repayment debt to Social Security. Most critically, loss of Medicaid, Medicare, or both can render many disabled people unable to work at all … catapulting them in a moment from productive work and rising prosperity to unemployable. As currently designed, the rules for these programs try to do two somewhat contradictory things: encourage disabled people to work if they can, and terminate their benefits when they are supposedly working enough to support themselves without help. But current rules fail to fully account for how often disabled people in particular need both earned income and benefits to maintain a decent living. They also fail to accommodate the more cyclical, fluctuating, part time, and non traditional nature of many disabled people’s work. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2020/06/14/3-ways-candidates-can-make-a-real-difference-on-disability-employment/#55da00de74cc,TRUE, 1011,Hospitals Told To Allow Visitors For Individuals With Disabilities,"University Campus in Worcester, Mass. indicates that there are no visitors permitted during the COVID 19 crisis. In a move that advocates say has national implications, federal officials are clarifying that hospital no visitor policies must have exceptions for needed support people for those with disabilities. The U. S Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights said Tuesday that it reached a resolution with the state of Connecticut in a first of its kind complaint filed by disability advocates. The complaint alleged that the state’s policies related to hospital visitors during the COVID 19 pandemic violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and the Affordable Care Act. Hospitals across the nation have instituted policies curtailing visitors in an effort to slow the spread of coronavirus. In some cases, advocates said that such policies lack needed exceptions for people with disabilities. In Connecticut, the state guidance which led to the civil rights complaint indicated that a support person should be allowed at the hospital with patients with intellectual and developmental disabilities who receive services from the state’s Department of Developmental Services. However, the same accommodation was not extended to others with similar needs who are not supported by the state agency. As part of the resolution with the HHS Office for Civil Rights, Connecticut is issuing an executive order creating a new statewide policy requiring that people with disabilities be allowed to have a designated support person with them at the hospital. If a patient with a disability is at the hospital for more than a day, they are entitled to two support people, but only one may be present at a time. “This resolution proves that states can keep people safe during this pandemic without sacrificing the right of persons with disabilities to the support they need to receive equal access to medical care and treatment,” said Roger Severino, director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights. Disability advocates said that while the resolution is specific to Connecticut, its significance extends beyond the state. “Today’s resolution sets a national precedent for how states and hospitals can ensure their policies comply with federal disability laws,” said Alison Barkoff, director of advocacy at the Center for Public Representation, one of the organizations that brought the complaint. “The COVID 19 crisis has laid bare the discrimination that people with disabilities face in accessing health care. We appreciate OCR’s leadership and collaboration with us to ensure people with disabilities can access the care they need. ” As an upstart airline from the founder of JetBlue works to expand, the company says it will put a premium on better serving travelers with autism. Julie Beckett fought to care for her hospitalized daughter at home, ultimately helping to bring changes to Medicaid that improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of families nationwide. In one rural county, people with disabilities and others who have been appointed a guardian may soon lose the ability to vote even if a court has expressly preserved their right to do so. ",3,https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2020/06/10/hospitals-told-allow-visitors-disabilities/28451/,TRUE, 1013,Disability rights advocates' online vigil honors 'unseen and unheard' voices,"As a teenager, Beverly Black lived at the Denton State School which she said she hated so much that she once escaped on a horse. Black spoke during “Unheard,” a virtual candlelight vigil on Saturday, hosted by the Free Our People Project, a collaborative of North Texas disability rights advocates, organizations and community leaders. North Texas disability rights advocates called for greater autonomy for people with disabilities Saturday evening during a virtual candlelight vigil. The event, titled “Unheard,” also honored the 445 people currently institutionalized at the Denton State Supported Living Center. Val Vera, a disability justice activist, said people with disabilities need equal rights now more than ever. While the coronavirus pandemic has amplified the voices of some such as health care workers, renters and small business owners people with disabilities remain largely overlooked. “Now, let’s be clear,” Vera said. “The pandemic did not cause institutional oppression: It simply revealed it. ”The vigil, held via videoconference, was hosted by the Free Our People Project, a collaborative of North Texas disability rights advocates, organizations and community leaders. In addition to increased state funding for community supported living, the evening’s speakers called for greater awareness of disability rights. Institutions like the Denton State Supported Living Center perpetuate oppression and discrimination, Vera said. The center, previously called the Denton State School, has come under fire recently for its handling of residents and staff during the coronavirus pandemic. A total of 55 residents have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to Denton County Public Health. One of those residents, a man in his 60s, died earlier this month. Sixty seven staff members have tested positive. Self advocate Beverly Black lived at Denton’s state school when she was a teenager. She said she yearned for more independence during her time there and was not allowed to take showers on her own. Black said she hated the institution so much that she once escaped on a horse, riding back to her family’s farm in Cleburne. She was then readmitted to the institution against her will. Now in her 60s, Black lives in her own home with her husband, Wayne. She said she would hate it if she were ever forced to return to the state school. “No way!” Black said. “I enjoy my freedom. ”Addressing the vigil’s 32 participants, Denton City Council member Deb Armintor said that, when appropriate, people with disabilities are entitled to live within the community. Involuntary institutionalization of certain citizens could be a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, she added. Armintor said she wishes she could do more to help those who live in institutions like the state living center and the county jail. “It is impossible to represent people when you can’t see them and you can’t hear them,” she said. “We need to do what we can as a city to support those activists who are pushing for change at the state level. ”The state government offers Medicaid waiver services so that Texans with disabilities can receive community based living services, according to disabilities resource website Navigate Life Texas. Before these waivers, people only had the option of living in hospitals, institutions and nursing homes. But to receive these autonomy enhancing services, one must first sign up on a so called waiver interest list. Some people with disabilities have been waiting for more than 11 years on such lists, according to disability rights website Texas Medicaid Waiver. Currently, there are 156,161 Texans on the list. ",3,https://dentonrc.com/news/disability-rights-advocates-vnline-vigil-honors-unseen-and-unheard-voices/article_7c8431cc-a728-5e70-b04a-0191a4c23016.html,FALSE, 1014,Google Offering New Tools To Help Those With Disabilities,"Google is adding new accessibility features to its array of offerings. Google is introducing new technology to simplify smartphones for those with cognitive disabilities and it’s beefing up its map program to make it easier to know if destinations are accessible. The company said this month that it is releasing an app called “Action Blocks” for Android devices that’s designed to make routine smartphone tasks like calling mom or turning the lights off less cumbersome. With the app, users can create a one touch button that displays on their home screen to complete actions that typically require multiple steps. For people with cognitive disabilities or age related cognitive conditions, it can be difficult to learn and remember each of these steps,” wrote Ajit Narayanan with Google’s central accessibility team and Sharlene Yuan of Android Accessibility in a posting about the app. “Create an Action Block for any action that the Google Assistant can perform, like making calls, sending texts, playing videos and controlling devices in your home. ”Separately, Google said that it is also launching a feature in Google Maps called “Accessible Places. ” When enabled, users see a wheelchair icon prominently displayed to denote if a location has an accessible entrance. In addition to details about entrances, the maps program offers information about whether a place has accessible seating, restrooms or parking. Google Maps will also indicate if it has confirmed that a business or other destination does not have an accessible entrance, the company said. “With this feature ‘rollout,’ it’s easier to find and contribute wheelchair accessibility information to Google Maps. That benefits everyone, from those of us using wheelchairs and parents pushing strollers to older adults with tired legs and people hauling heavy items,” wrote Sasha Blair Goldensohn, a software engineer with Google Maps, in a posting about the development. “And in this time of COVID 19, it’s especially important to know before you go so that you won’t be stranded outside that pharmacy, grocery or restaurant. ”At present, Google said it has accessibility information for more than 15 million places around the world, a figure that has doubled since 2017. The new offerings come as Google is also bringing improvements to Live Transcribe, an app that provides real time transcription for conversations, and Sound Amplifier, which clarifies the sounds around you as an upstart airline from the founder of JetBlue works to expand, the company says it will put a premium on better serving travelers with autism. Julie Beckett fought to care for her hospitalized daughter at home, ultimately helping to bring changes to Medicaid that improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of families nationwide. In one rural county, people with disabilities and others who have been appointed a guardian may soon lose the ability to vote even if a court has expressly preserved their right to do so. ",3,https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2020/05/28/google-offering-new-tools-to-help-those-with-disabilities/28382/,TRUE, 1018,"Returning To Work, Disability, And COVID-19"," Work, COVID 19, and Disability COVID 19 has raised a series of challenging issues about the workplace as parts of the country ease restrictions and people return to work.  Here are a few. Jennifer is an obstetrician who has been asked to resume working at her hospital on site, in a week.  Like millions of other Americans, she has persistent asthma. Jason is 60, and was laid off from his restaurant related work during COVID 19.  He was told that the choice to fire him was because he was in a high risk group , while younger people were retained.  Nahom is the CEO of a small business and wants to make sure that, when employees return to work, they are not sick.  He would like to administer a COVID 19 test to workers before they come into the office. There are a series of steps that employers can take to protect a workplace against COVID 19 and ensure compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act, the federal law that protects people with disabilities from discrimination.  To be covered by the ADA, the employer must have at least 15 employees, the employee must have a disability that is covered by the law, and the employee must be able to do the work, explained Professor Robert Dinerstein, the Director of the Disability Rights Clinic at American University’s Washington College of Law. He points out that an employer needs to look at each worker – or potential worker’s situation individually. Nahom’s situation is perhaps the easiest.  The federal government has issued technical assistance and guidance on just this situation. Because this would be a mandatory medical test, it must be “job related and consistent with business necessity. ” A worker who has COVID 19 could pose a “direct threat” to other employees and anyone else at the workplace, Nahom can require COVID 19 testing of all employees before they enter the workplace. The test must be accurate and reliable, and Nahom needs to remember that an elevated temperature is only one sign of COVID 19. Nahom is permitted to require that a worker who has COVID 19 symptoms stay home, and can require a doctor’s note when the employee wants to come back to work.  To ensure workplace safety, Nahom can also require that employees engage in certain safety measures. Indeed, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration has issued new guidelines for employers concerning social distancing, the provision of face masks, and other appropriate steps during a pandemic. The other situations are more complicated. Jennifer’s persistent asthma would probably qualify as a disability, so the next question, Dinerstein explains, is whether what she is doing is an “essential function,” or a fundamental responsibility of that position.  If so, then the employer is entitled to require that Jennifer be available to perform those functions. If, by contrast, delivering babies is a “non essential” function, then the employer cannot refuse to accommodate her disability. Assuming that delivering babies is considered essential, then the best advice for Jennifer is for her to figure out whether her employer can offer her a reasonable accommodation, without incurring “undue hardship. ” That would mean making changes in her work environment so that she can do her job.  To see if that’s possible, Dinerstein suggests that, as the EEOC regulations provide, she engage in an interactive process with her employer.  While one possibility would be shifting all telehealth appointments to Jennifer and baby delivering to another physician, delivering babies could well be defined as an “essential function” that Jennifer would be unable to perform. On the other hand, Jennifer could ty to rearrange her responsibilities and trade with another physician, although the employer is not required to accept that new division of labor. Even if Jennifer volunteered to take leave without pay, the employer might not be required to accept that because it could create “undue hardship” if an employer would have to keep her position open, for example. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/naomicahn/2020/05/07/three-lessons-on-work-disability-and-covid-19/#625172ba3704,TRUE, 1019,COVID-19 Teaches Us A Lot About Differences In The Disability Community," COVID 19 is drawing increased attention to longstanding inequities and divisions in society. But while this is an extremely broad phenomenon involving just about everyone, it’s also happening in narrower, more specific ways among people with disabilities. The iron vice of pandemic is making some major cracks in the disability community a lot more visible. It’s not difficult to see how COVID 19 affects various parts of society differently and unevenly. For example:Employment status People are divided not just by whether they are able to keep working, but whether they can work from home or are in “essential” jobs where they are forced to work at higher risk of infection. Income People are divided by whether or not they have the income and savings to weather shutdowns more smoothly. Race People of color, especially Black people, are much harder hit by COVID 19 infection, serious illness, and death. Elderly Older people are at higher medical risk from the virus, a risk amplified when they live confined in crowded institutions. Disabled and chronically ill People with “pre existing conditions” are generally at higher risk from COVID 19, both medically and from an array of practical barriers and institutionalization, as well as specific resource gaps and the threat of outright discrimination in treatment. It’s not just that disabled people in general are at higher risk. Within the disabled population itself, there are major disparities in the how we experience the pandemic. We all face the same bundle of heightened dangers, which will undoubtedly change shape and distribution as the pandemic progresses. But disabled people aren’t all experiencing the pandemic in the same ways. And some of these differences in what we face as disabled people are significant and revealing. Some disabled people find it much easier than others to protect themselves through isolation. We know that isolation is the best personal defense against COVID 19, as well as the best strategy for fighting the pandemic itself. Many disabled people live more or less independently, and can therefore isolate relatively easily. Some of us live on our own, but need in home help every day or at least frequently, which makes isolation more difficult, but still possible to achieve through careful management. But many disabled people live in nursing homes, group homes, and other centralized “facilities” where isolation is nearly impossible. Not only are they forced to live with not just one or two, but five, ten, a dozen, or hundreds of other people, with few ways to maintain the required physical distance. On top of that they are cared for not by just one, two, or three aides, but by a rotating group of dozens or scores of staff, all exposed to dozens of other patients, with the attendant potential for exponential spread of any infection. We are seeing this built in problem with institutions demonstrated daily, with tragic results. Disabled people’s risks from COVID 19 are determined not by our disabilities and illnesses alone, but also by how our living and service arrangements affect our ability to protect ourselves. Income and wealth makes all pandemic coping mechanisms easier and more effective, including for people with disabilities. Money, and the lack of it, is a major component of stability, safety, and comfort, in good times and in bad. This is true for everyone, including, , for people with disabilities. Money is probably the single most effective and flexible tool for dealing with any disability. It buys access, security, even respect … to an extent. Income and wealth cannot buy full equality and acceptance, but it absolutely cushions the practical effects and complications of ableism. And in an emergency, money can make the difference between a difficult inconvenience and a deadly bind. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2020/04/30/covid-19-teaches-us-a-lot-about-differences-in-the-disability-community/#44e442fb7714,FALSE, 1020,5 Reasons Why There’s No Wrong Time To Fight For Disability Rights," “Now is not the time!”It’s a cliche because the sentiment itself is so familiar. You have something important to discuss, or an urgent need, but everyone seems to agree that there are more important matters to attend to. Sometimes that’s true. Other times it can be an excuse to put off an annoying problem or awkward problem. Either way, it can be frustrating to hear when your own issues seem at least as important as everyone else’s. It’s rarely said out loud, but a powerful argument lurks wherever people talk about disabled people’s rights and needs. It’s the idea that there are times when it is wrong for disabled people to advocate for our needs and rights. It’s not just non disabled people who believe this. Many, if not most disabled people believe it too on some level, or at least feel it from time to time. We’re about to say something, and we stop, telling ourselves, in effect, “Now is not the time. ”The logic is easy to understand. Sometimes what’s vitally important to you personally just isn’t as important to everyone else. And sometimes, what’s good for one person, or a small group of people, isn’t good for the community as a whole. Although Americans are famously proud individualists, we also revere solidarity and sacrifice. Some amount of prioritizing also makes sense. We can’t always do everything worth doing, and difficult decisions must sometimes be made. Sometimes, matters of life and death, of the wellbeing of the entire community, should take precedence over one person’s needs or rights, or even over the needs and rights of a subset of people who have more specialized needs. Is the middle of a global pandemic really the time for disabled people to speak up about the finer points of being accommodated in overworked hospitals?At a time when it’s hard to imagine how we’re going to manage any kind of voting by the November Election Day, should disabled people quibble over whether mail in ballots or polling places are fully accessible?Is it right for us to insist on the letter of law and regulations for special education of disabled students, when schools are struggling just to teach the basics online?The answer to these and similar questions of equal access and fundamental rights of disabled people must be yes. Yes, it is always appropriate for disabled people to advocate for our rights, for full accommodation and inclusion, no matter what else is happening. But why? 1. Disabled people’s needs and rights are always among the first to be forgotten. For a variety of complex reasons, disabled people’s place in society is a paradox. One day we are the most privileged, praised, and sentimentalized of all “minority groups. ” The next we are firmly, sometimes brutally reminded that we are regarded as the most pitied, burdensome, and superfluous segments of society. People find it easy to cherish and protect certain disabled individuals, sometimes to a harmful degree. But as a group our collective needs and rights are more often treated as trivial, unknowable, and simply “too much. ”Occasionally, some combination of shrewd activism, skilled policy insights, and a relatively optimistic period of “domestic tranquillity” allows disabled people to make a leap ahead. There are times when our needs and protests find a receptive audience with enough time and attention span to help us get something done. But as soon as almost any other problem feels more urgent and widespread, and especially in moments of nationwide or global existential threat, disabled people’s needs become luxuries once again. What does it matter that wheelchair users can’t eat at inaccessible restaurants or go to see a movie if they are all closed anyway because of a global pandemic?How much can we expect school systems to follow every Individualized Education Plan during lockdown, when they are struggling just to teach the basics over Zoom?",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2020/04/24/5-reasons-why-theres-no-wrong-time-to-fight-for-disability-rights/#42a51e8d3ac1,TRUE, 1022,"Enchanted Chapters, bookstore catering to disability community, closing after 10 months"," It wasnt the inaugural year Andrea Montepagano hoped to have for her business. Enchanted Chapters, the north Phoenix bookstore with an inclusive atmosphere designed to cater to people with autism and other disabilities, is closing its doors after only 10 months in business. As a businesswoman, I looked at every aspect  what were the pros, cons, possibilities of things that would or could happen and a pandemic never even crossed my mind, Montepagano said. It was one of those things that just came out of nowhere. We did what we could but it, unfortunately, wasnt enough to keep us going. Montepagano attributes the closure to the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent restrictions that halted foot traffic into the store tucked into a north Phoenix strip mall. Though she offered curbside pickup and online orders, Montepagano said it wasnt enough. She estimates she was maybe getting one or two transactions every few days. To have to close our doors and get our name out there, youre going up against Amazon and Target and Walmart for books, Montepagano said, adding that its further complicated by not being able to offer the in person local bookstore experience that drove people into her store before. She used her own money and received a Paycheck Protection Program loan, federal aid used by many small businesses to keep them afloat during the pandemic, that covered payroll for about seven weeks in an attempt to stay afloat. Even after Gov. Doug Duceys stay at home order ended on May 15, Montepagano said there was a dramatic decline in sales.  They held on as long as they could, but the desire to enforce social distancing measures meant that they paused programs that made their store unique, like sensory friendly story times and book clubs designed with the disability community in mind. Both Montepaganos 7 year old daughter Charlie and 4 year old son Callum have autism and enjoyed playing with the toys and store pets, a bird named Potter and a Sphinx cat named Bellatrix. She knows her children will miss the place, but said the future may hold opportunities for other ways to cater to the disability community. Pretty much everything I do in life is in consideration of my daughter, Montepagano said. Anything I can do to help her and her peers, I would love the opportunity to do again. Lana and Montepaganos daughter, Charlie, shared a classroom at school and Booth saw Montepaganos post about her new business on a Facebook group for mothers of children on the autism spectrum prior to its October opening. She took her children to the store for its grand opening and continued going back almost every week, saying the store seemed immediately like a familiar place. Booth said theyve been asked to leave libraries numerous times for her childrens behavior, but that Enchanted Chapters was an inclusive environment where she and her children felt better understood. They primarily went to the store for its events, like sensory friendly storytime, that they were hoping to get back to once the pandemic was over. My son absolutely loves the bookstore, Booth said. Since hes been quarantined, thats one of five places hes been asking to go repeatedly. Booth said she and other parents she knows were devastated by the news of the closure and that her son was very upset. He asked if they could return at least once for more books and to bid farewell to the staff and animals at Enchanted Chapters. Booth said she mourns the loss of a place that prioritized accessibility and made her children feel welcomed. Im sure theyre not the only business thats doing this but this is something that had so much potential for the autism community, she said. She said shes not aware of any bookstores like Montepaganos, but hopes someday that void will be filled. Theres other things to do in the community, but I cant think of anything that would match what Enchanted Chapters worked to accomplish and was looking to do in the future, she said. ",3,https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/phoenix/2020/07/11/bookstore-catering-disability-community-closing-after-10-months-enchanted-chapters/5399451002/,FALSE, 1024,Disability Community Challenged By Pandemic," Navigating the pandemic hasn’t been easy for anyone, but it’s been especially hard on the disability community. The impact on peoples ability to get around and communicate has been varied.  It was Jonathan Slifkas first trip to West Hartford Center since the streets were rearranged to accommodate outdoor dining and he didn’t know what to expect. “It appears that they’ve done a really good job,” Slifka, who lives in West Hartford, said. “The only question I would have here just really quickly would be a question of the parking. Because I know there’s at least one handicapped parking space on this street that has been blocked off and I would think by law they would need to make another one to make up for that. ” West Hartford Town Manager Matt Hart said new handicapped spaces were added to make up for the ones that were taken away. But advocates said its more complicated than that.  “There’s also issues around is it the most accessible pathway from where the new parking space is even if it was marked to where they need to go. Are you going up a hill? Is it a gravel pathway? There’s just so many pieces of access,” Eileen Healy, president of the CT Association of Centers for Independent Living, said. “That I don’t expect businesses who are struggling to get themselves open to really have to think about. ” Healy said there hasn’t been much discussion about how to accommodate people with disabilities as businesses reopen.  “I think it’s all new and we’re not necessarily thinking of all of the potential access needs that the disability community may need,” Healy said.  Mobility is just part of the challenges for the disability community.  Unemployment, access to health care, and mental health services are also concerns for the disability community.  “The whole trauma of COVID 19 and the whole impact on the fact that you’re seeing your grandma, your aunties and your friends and people dying as well as persons who are getting sick and you know people of color are not necessarily able to go to different places in the house to quarantine because you may have multi generational of people that are in the house,” Rev. Robyn Anderson said. ”If mom has cognitive difficulties and mom has mental health issues and shes not able to connect to the services that theyre accustomed to or has difficulty transitioning to the telehealth services that has a great impact also on the family. ” Anderson, a pastor in the Blackwell AME Zion Church in Hartford and director of the ministerial health fellowship, said there’s been no outreach to that community. But maybe there’s a silver lining.  “All of this working from home, going to school remotely. Those things that people with disabilities requested for decades, as accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act and other laws and we were told no we can’t do that. It’s a fundamental alteration, it’s an unreasonable request, it’s too expensive. It’s an undue burden and yet those things were able to happen,” Kathy Flaherty, executive director of the Connecticut Legal Rights Project, said.  Flaherty said the disability community seems to have been left out of the reopening process. “Why is it OK to create a society that only some people can participate in? And that I think is a fundamental problem with what’s going on,” Flaherty said.  For years the disability community has struggled with employment. ”I think a lot of times people with disabilities have been told they applied for jobs and then they can’t get the job because they say you can’t work from home. We can’t accept that. And now everybody’s working from home,” Healy said.  Healy said maybe that’s something positive that has come out of the pandemic. Employers might be more willing to hire a disabled person who can do the work from their home.  ",3,https://www.nbcconnecticut.com/news/local/disability-community-challenged-by-pandemic/2298501/,FALSE, 1025,We Need To Stop Patrolling The Borders Of Disability," Deciding who is and isn’t disabled, who does and doesn’t deserve accommodation, is complicated. Most efforts to distinguish fakers from “real” disabled people usually do more harm than good. There is sometimes real reason for skepticism. One of the newest weapons in the ongoing politicization of Covid 19 is the trend of people seeking moral and legal cover for their refusal to wear a face mask, by claiming that they can’t wear them because of an underlying health condition or disability. This woman’s sudden public tirade, and calling the Trader Joe’s staff “Democratic pigs,” undermine her claim that she should be excused from wearing a mask in public because of a breathing condition. Many disabled people certainly do advocate for their rights, sometimes forcefully. But most disabled people don’t respond quite this way to awkward or mildly ableist encounters like this in public places. And the woman’s choice of words strongly suggests a political motive having nothing to do with disability rights. At the same time, disabled people also know what it’s like to have our disabilities doubted, our claims questioned, and our need for accommodations dismissed. We also know the humiliation of being diagnosed on the fly, based only on our appearance and bystanders’ assumptions. Sometimes we even do it to each other, casting disdain on people with disabilities different from our own. One of the most common forms of everyday ableism, and one of the worst impulses within the disability community itself, is the instinct . . . for some even the passion … for guarding the boundaries of disability. This tendency is heavily fed by sensationalist news, entertainment, and social media. Stories with nothing to them at all, and those with a kernel of truth but blown out of proportion, are repeatedly pressed into a toxic narrative of disability and dishonesty. “Mainstream media coverage largely focuses a lot on people with disabilities as fakers, takers, or moneymakers,” says Rebecca Cokley, Director of the Disability Justice Initiative of the Center for American Progress:“They’re either faking their disability or the severity of their disability to gain access to perceived privileges under law. Takers, who maximize all that they can get in terms of benefits, whether or not they are in need of it. And moneymakers, who are people who sue frequently for violations of the law. ”There are real boundaries to the experience of disability, and measured scrutiny of disability claims is sometimes necessary. But too many people’s self righteous obsession with policing disability does more day to day harm actual disability fakery. It’s time we all back off from these judgmental habits. That includes nondisabled people openly hostile to disability, but also some of our allies, and disabled people ourselves. “Handicapped” ParkingOne of the most corrosive experiences of everyday ableism among people with very real but less apparent disabilities is being confronted for parking in accessible parking spaces. For some reason, would be nondisabled allies are particularly enthusiastic. These self appointed parking monitors leave abusive notes on disabled people’s cars, or confront them in person. They often mean well. They are after all defending these spaces for people who need them. The problem is that they operate from a very narrow idea of who counts as disabled. This usually means drivers who use a wheelchair, or who are very visibly old, frail, or unsteady on their feet. They condemn anyone who looks young, seems to walk “normally,” or otherwise doesn’t “look disabled. ” Over time, being repeatedly badgered in this way becomes a real deterrent to using accessible parking, and to going out in general. Over eager, misinformed handicapped parking enforcement has exactly the opposite of its intended effect. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2020/06/30/we-need-to-stop-patrolling-the-borders-of-disability/#83e2c882ae1b,FALSE, 1026,Beware of discrimination in the workplace based on age and disability,"As workers age, they generally improve their job skills and have higher job efficiency. Many don’t want to retire because they’re just getting their “second wind. ”Even so, some employers may grow concerned over the higher wages paid to their older employees who have earned raises over the years. Also, employers might think older workers may not be able to do some physical or mental tasks as well as they once could or job requirements can change, such as learning new technology. But stereotypes about older workers are often false. Each worker is entitled to have his or her own true abilities recognized and respected in the workplace. Of course, there is a distinction between age and disability. A disability can occur at any age, but under federal law, a person age 40 years or older is considered an older worker. The protections for older workers are that an employer cannot treat them any differently for compensation, hiring, discharge, layoffs, callbacks, terms and conditions of work, or privileges of employment because of their age. A June 2020 decision from the United States Supreme Court affirmed that the same employment protections apply to gay and transgender employees of any age. Switching to disability protections, if an employee of any age becomes disabled and their capacity to do their current job diminishes, an employer is required to offer reasonable accommodation to the employee so that the person can continue to earn a living and do their job well. When an employee can no longer handle at least one major life activity and the employer is aware of that, then the employer must make reasonable workplace accommodations for the person’s disability. Major life activities include, but are not limited to, caring for oneself, performing manual tasks, seeing, hearing, eating, sleeping, walking, standing, lifting, bending, speaking, breathing, learning, reading, concentrating, thinking, communicating and working,Many employees and employers don’t know about the requirement for providing reasonable accommodation for disabilities. It is important that employees are aware of this opportunity to continue working so that each can help their employer help them stay in their job. For disability protections to apply, a worker does not have to be in a wheelchair or suffer from a medical illness. Also, in situations where the employer believes that the employee can no longer handle job tasks, even when that is not true, there is a requirement to make reasonable accommodations for the employee. Being 40 or older is not itself considered a disability. Reasonable accommodations are required only if an employee cannot handle one or more major life activity. When needed, an employee can make a complaint based on age, disability or other types of illegal discrimination by the employer to the West Virginia Human Rights Commission at no cost. If after investigation the complaint is found to have probable cause, the employee may be able to get his or her job back, receive reasonable accommodations on the job and/or be paid monetary damages. Because of a real or perceived disability, some employers may decide to move the employee to a lower paying job or require them to become an independent contractor, not an employee. Those actions are not reasonable accommodations unless the employee voluntarily agrees. ",3,https://www.williamsondailynews.com/news/beware-of-discrimination-in-the-workplace-based-on-age-and-disability/article_3bb25021-fa20-5fc9-89f8-50df6d976daa.html,FALSE, 1027,Carolyn Hax: A less visible disability is still a disability,"Six years ago, I suddenly lost feeling in my fingers and toes and had neuropathic pain that was debilitating and stopped me from working. We were able to figure out what the disease was and I mostly recovered. I still have pain/muscle weakness in my feet when I walk too much. Im in my early 30s now but cannot go to the grocery store, concerts or museums because of how much walking they take and the pain that results. Some suggest I use a wheelchair for these, but I feel like if I do its a lie. Im physically able to walk, it just results in pain, and thus I feel like a fake if Im in a wheelchair. I now avoid anything that requires walking, and thus Ive gotten mad at life for handing me these circumstances that keep me from doing normal things. Ive asked my family/friends if Im a fake if I use a wheelchair without NEEDING it, but I feel like they are all biased from dealing with the fallout of me walking too much and so Im writing to you. I think part of my issue is that I look able bodied and so I worry about being judged, or getting sympathy I dont deserve. I feel like a wheelchair should be reserved for those truly disabled. Whats your opinion? Invisible DisabilityInvisible Disability: My opinion is that our tough it out, I’ll do anything to avoid being judged culture has become a kind of collective insanity. Use whatever medical devices you require to participate fully in life. The end. I’m glad you’re doing better. Now, please, just start doing. Re: Invisible: The human mind is incredible at rationalizing. Its really, really common for disabled people to think theyre not disabled, or disabled enough, even when the average sensible person would read their symptoms and understand that yes, this person is experiencing something truly debilitating. Debilitating pain is a disability. On top of that, your brain is lying to you about it. Please stop beating yourself up for not looking like Tiny Tim. anonymous: Invisible: I have peripheral neuropathy and cant walk any distance. Instead of a wheelchair, consider a mobility scooter. People dont look at you funny when you get off a scooter and walk short distances as they might if you use a wheelchair. Also, you have my deepest sympathy. People just dont understand. I Am YouRe: Invisible: Military veteran here. In my experience, rarely do veterans park in the reserved for veterans spaces because they always think theres someone more veteran or deserving than they are. You say in your letter Ive gotten mad at life for handing me these circumstances that keep me from doing normal things, but your whole letter is about how you could do normal things if you just used a wheelchair. So life isnt keeping you from doing them, you are. All that is to say if you look hard enough, you can find someone who needs a wheelchair more than you, but that doesnt mean you dont need it. Will people judge you? Not the decent ones. ",3,https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/advice/carolyn-hax-a-less-visible-disability-is-still-a-disability/2020/06/22/ef2b6dc0-acf0-11ea-a9d9-a81c1a491c52_story.html,FALSE, 1028,Disability community advocate: 'We can’t warehouse humans'," Monday marked the 21st anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that allowed people with disabilities the right to live in their community and not be subject to unjustified isolation. But advocates said much more must be done, especially in the age of COVID 19. The Center for Disability Rights hosted a webinar Monday that looked at the impact of the Olmstead v. L. C. decision, and attendees discussed ways to ensure that everyone has a right to live and participate in the community. Britney Wilson of the National Center for Law and Economic Justice said her aunt, who was in a nursing home, lost her life to the new coronavirus. She said this shows what happens when you lock people away and treat them like they don’t exist. “I think the crisis has illustrated everything that the disability community has been saying for decades,” she said. Gregg Beratan, CDR’s director of advocacy, said the impact of institutionalization is especially noteworthy during the coronavirus pandemic by the disproportionate number of deaths in nursing homes. “If we take one lesson from this crisis, it’s that we can’t warehouse humans.  Disabled people have a right to community,” he said. Looking ahead, the center’s national policy director, Dara Baldwin, said much like the Black Lives Matter movement, people in the disability community need to take charge to make sure that disabled people and the elderly get adequate care. “It is specifically irritating in the disability community when you have a bunch of able bodied white, wealthy privileged people who are at the center of being in charge of what happens to disabled bodies,” she said. CDR is advocating for passage of the Disability Integration Act, which would provide home and community based services to people with disabilities and senior citizens as an alternative to institutionalization. This story is reported from WXXIs Inclusion Desk. ",3,https://www.wxxinews.org/post/disability-community-advocate-we-can-t-warehouse-humans,FALSE, 1030,"Disability, Codependency, and Narcissistic Relationships","My husband, Jared, and I both share an interest in psychology and human relationships. We often bond over discussions about mental health and the way human beings interact. As a couple affected by hemophilia and mental health issues, we find such conversations therapeutic as we are able to share our personal takes on the matter. Recently, we had a conversation about how persons with disability may become easy victims of narcissistic abuse. They can spend many years lacking awareness of their situation. They may even sympathize with their abuser. Only after achieving a certain degree of emotional distance would they be able to realize that they had been manipulated. Persons with disability are often dependent on other people for their needs. They may rely on others for access to basic amenities, or for activities that give their lives a sense of “normalcy. ” PwDs may turn to a frequent companion often a partner for these things. They may see this companion as the only reason they are “capable. ” They may also rely on this person for emotional validation or mental stability. As empowering as this setup may be to a PwD, it may also serve as a gateway to codependency. Many PwDs harbor feelings of being misunderstood or neglected because of how “different” they may seem from other people, or because they view themselves as “less capable” when compared with “normal” people. This may lead to them having to constantly seek approval from other people to feel like they are worthy. A PwD may start to crave their companion’s approval because it is meaningful to them. As they become more bonded to this person, they may build their sense of identity around that relationship without even realizing it. This marks the beginning of codependency. A codependent relationship is unhealthy. Such relationships are typically imbalanced or one sided. One person often uses up all their time and energy pleasing the other person, at the expense of their own needs. They may take on the role of a “fixer,” enthusiastic to solve other people’s problems without asking for anything in return. Sadly, this role is quite easily filled by a PwD seeking self worth who is conditioned to believe that self sacrifice will prove them worthy in others’ eyes. The fragile mental state of many PwDs may also make them easy targets for people with narcissistic personalities. Narcissists are overly involved with themselves, and place their needs and desires on top of anyone else’s. They exhibit selfish tendencies and possibly aren’t aware of it. Narcissists are often charming in the beginning. They may choose someone as a partner because they believe this person is “special. ” This can be the case with PwDs, as the mere fact that they are different can make them seem unique. Narcissists shower their new partners with adoration but this comes to an abrupt end once their partner’s natural flaws or inadequacies show up. When this happens, they begin to criticize their partner and subject them to verbal abuse. This may consist of name calling, hurtful one liners, or jokes that aren’t funny. The narcissist may target their PwD partner for their disability. The codependent PwD may then want to win back the narcissist’s favor and try to change. Sadly, this is a cycle that repeats itself. For a PwD in such a relationship, this can be doubly destructive. The constant blows to self esteem may cause them to lose confidence in their own selves entirely. They may even end up dissociated, experiencing lapses in memory and in their sense of self. They may become anxious, depressed, chemically dependent, and even suicidal more so than they were because of their condition alone. This is a cry for help that’s often unheard. And it’s important that we know if this is happening to the PwDs in our lives. Untangling oneself from a codependent relationship, or one with a narcissist, is hard. It’s hard enough for people without chronic illnesses, but more so for a person who naturally needs to cling on to a carer. ",3,https://hemophilianewstoday.com/2020/06/15/disability-codependency-narcissistic-relationships,FALSE, 1032,"4 Disability Clichés, And What You Can Say Instead"," Awkward silences beg to be filled. Sometimes it’s best to let them be, but these days it seems like we all feel compelled to share what insights we have on difficult and painful events, even if we don’t really have anything new to offer. Disabled people share a particular perspective on this. For decades, well meaning and self aggrandizing people alike have drawn from the same small bundle of clichés and empty nostrums about disability. Mostly it’s non disabled people trying to demonstrate understanding and solidarity with disabled people. Sometimes it’s disabled people themselves struggling to make sense of their own experiences. Either way, these disability clichés tend to end up impeding rather than improving communication and understanding. We need more discussion about disability issues, not less. And we need as many people as possible to join in. But before diving in without reflection, it’s a good idea to ask whether what we have to say is true, valuable, and called for. Here are four phrases and aphorisms disabled people hear about disability a lot nuggets of wisdom that either add little to real understanding, or worse, send our thinking off into fruitless and harmful cul de sacs of philosophizing. While there may be slivers of truth in any of them, to most disabled people in most situations they ring false and trite.  1. “Everyone has some kind of disability. ”Why people say it:• To minimize the significance of a person’s disability, which is assumed to be an unpleasant thing, by claiming that disabilities are far more common and “normal” than they appear. • To reduce disability to just another characteristic, weakness, or flaw that anyone can have. In effect, it’s an effort to get around the social stigma of disability by defining disability itself out of existence. • The phrase is sometimes intended to encourage a kind of social change in how disabled people are regarded. Other times it’s an internal coping mechanism for disabled people themselves. It’s worth noting that a good many disabled people actually agree with this idea and use it themselves. Smoothing out and dismantling the whole concept of “disability” is a fairly popular way of processing the social identity of disability that some disabled people find helpful.  What’s wrong with it:The problem is that significant numbers of disabled people actually don’t agree, and those who do object to it usually really hate it. Disability blogger crippledscholar explains part of the problem this way:“Some nondisabled people internalize this rhetoric and use it to make their common place and not actually disabling problems seem like metaphors for real actual disability. “There is of course a small element of truth to the idea that “everyone has some kind of disability. ” If you accept that disabilities are just another trait or weakness, then of course, everyone has weaknesses, so everyone has a kind of “disability. ” But this only holds water on the most abstract, cocktail party philosophizing level.  As a practical matter, disability isn’t just another characteristic. It’s much more of a day to day factor in people’s lives than eye or hair color, or a minor lack of aptitude, like not being able to carry a tune. The ADA defines disability as an impairment that “significantly impairs one or more major life activities. ” Another rule of thumb is that if you have a physical or mental condition that you have to think about and plan around most every day, it’s a disability. It’s not merely a different ability or aptitude. Moreover, blurring the outlines of disability and essentially erasing it delegitimizes and erases the feelings of disabled people about their disability experiences. It also increases the likelihood that family, friends, and coworkers will forget about and dismiss the unique practical needs disabled often have in real life situations. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2020/06/05/4-disability-clichs-and-what-you-can-say-instead/#2610f16a14f2,FALSE, 1033,Worker with disability alleges inflexible return-to-work order was discriminatory," The U. S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission  has reminded employers that the Americans with Disabilities Act and other nondiscrimination laws are still enforced during the pandemic. And as employers look to reopen as states lift restrictions, many may be wondering about obligations to accommodate workers with disabilities. The agency said in May 7 guidance that the ADA generally requires employees to request accommodations, so an employer need not seek out employees with medical conditions that could place them at higher risk for severe illness from the novel coronavirus. Notably, however, an employer may be responsible for initiating the interactive process if it knows or should know that an employees disability is interfering with his or her work. But what happens when an employee with a disability requests an accommodation like an exemption from a return to work order or a mask policy? As always, employers will need to evaluate each request on a case by case basis and consider whether it meets the laws reasonableness standard or whether it poses an undue hardship. [W]here an employee with a disability needs a related reasonable accommodation under the ADA , or a religious accommodation under Title VII , the agency said, the employer should discuss the request and provide the modification or an alternative if feasible and not an undue hardship on the operation of the employers business under the ADA or Title VII. Employers also must beware benevolent discrimination, EEOC has cautioned. While telework has been encouraged as an infection control or prevention strategy and often is viewed as a reasonable accommodation, employers must not single out employees for telework or leave based on a protected characteristic, such as disability. Get the free daily newsletter read by industry expertsTopics covered: HR management, compensation & benefits, development, HR tech, recruiting and much more. Two years ago, ICE temporarily allowed employers to review Form I 9 documents remotely. SHRM now expects the safety measure to become permanent. Photo by Curtis Adams from PexelsBack then the argument was that its illegal, DMEC lead Terri Rhodes said. Well, now you dont have that argument. Subscribe to HR Dive for top news, trends & analysisTopics covered: HR management, compensation & benefits, development, HR tech, recruiting and much more. Get the free daily newsletter read by industry expertsTopics covered: HR management, compensation & benefits, development, HR tech, recruiting and much more. Two years ago, ICE temporarily allowed employers to review Form I 9 documents remotely. SHRM now expects the safety measure to become permanent. Photo by Curtis Adams from PexelsBack then the argument was that its illegal, DMEC lead Terri Rhodes said. Well, now you dont have that argument. The free newsletter covering the top industry headlinesTopics covered: HR management, compensation & benefits, development, HR tech, recruiting and much more. ",3,https://www.hrdive.com/news/worker-with-disability-alleges-inflexible-return-to-work-order-was-discrimi/579535/,FALSE, 1038,COVID-19 doesn't cancel out the ADA: disability rights during a pandemic," Protesters – and some politicians – say its time to get back to normal. That some deaths from COVID 19 are inevitable. But whose deaths, and lives, are we talking about?Elderly and immunocompromised people, and folks with disabilities, are among several demographics that are disproportionately at risk for this disease. We spoke to attorney and disability rights advocate Robyn Powell about what she’s seeing in the community, and her own experience as someone who relies on in home carers. Get a quick look at the most important local stories of the day with KUOWs Today So Far newsletter. KUOW is the Puget Sound region’s #1 radio station for news. Our independent, nonprofit newsroom produces award winning stories, podcasts and events. ",3,https://www.kuow.org/stories/disability-rights-pandemic,FALSE, 1039,Disability Advocates Fear Losing The Fight For Inclusion In Post-Pandemic Hollywood," Kelli McNeil on set filming the trailer for Daruma. For almost a year, Kelli McNeil has been fundraising for her movie Daruma, a film she calls a “dysfunctional family road trip. ”The big twist: the two main characters, Patrick and Robert, are disabled. Patrick is a paraplegic and Robert is a double arm amputee, but unlike most Hollywood narratives, the disabilities aren’t the focus of the script, nor are they an obstacle to overcome. And, after a nationwide search, McNeil cast two actors with disabilities to play the lead characters. Her work is notable in an industry still grappling with a dearth of disability centric storylines and characters. Although representation has seen some improvement over the years in television and film, advocates argue it is still all too rare to see people with disabilities working in front of or behind the camera.  Now, with the presence of a worldwide pandemic – and Hollywood virtually shut down – they fear the fight for inclusion will only get more complicated once productions start back up. Tobias Forrest, who plays Patrick in Daruma, on set, filming the trailer for the film. “We don’t know how things will turn out, but there is a lot of fear among activists,” said Deborah Calla, Co CEO of The Media Access Awards, a nonprofit organization that celebrates and creates opportunities for people with disabilities in media. “Once production begins, there will likely be fewer opportunities because of modified production, lower budgets, less money, and modified storylines. We have a good chance of going back a few steps in terms of inclusion. ”And if disability inclusion falls behind, Calla and her co CEO Allen Rucker say, it will be detrimental. “You have to understand that in the field of diversity, people with disabilities were not even included until a few years ago in Hollywood, they were just left out,” Rucker said. “But about three years ago, because of the ‘Me Too’ movement, all of the sudden people with disabilities were getting hired to be guest stars on shows, then to be stars and then people with disabilities were creating their own shows. ”“It was a real positive feeling,” he said.  “But with the COVID pandemic, who knows what’ll happen next. ”Tobias Forrest, who plays Patrick in Daruma, on set filming the trailer for the film. In mid March, COVID 19 forced the vast majority of Hollywood to come to a screeching halt. Theatrical releases were cancelled, and everything from indie film productions to entire festivals were shut down or postponed indefinitely. Everything stopped.  Many Hollywood professionals have been out of work since, including Tobias Forrest, a quadriplegic, cast by McNeil to play one of the leads in Daruma. While it was his first lead role in a 15 year career, Forrest has seen much success in recent years, and fears how the Pandemic will impact him and other professionals with disabilities. “I’m really hoping the big movie people, the Spielbergs and big time producers and directors, will be like, ‘Now is our chance for authenticity,’ because they were having to watch what all of us have been having to watch during this quarantine,” Forrest said. “I don’t want to go back to being the ‘guy in the wheelchair. ’ I want to be the lawyer or doctor… the person who just happens to be in a wheelchair. ”Although strides have been made in recent years, doors have typically been closed for people with disabilities in Hollywood, despite being the largest minority in the United States. A quarter of the population – about 61 million Americans – identify as a person with a disability, according to the CDC. According to a GLAADs 2019 2020 Where we are on TV report, the amount of regular primetime broadcast characters counted who have a disability was at an all time high of 3. 1 percent but still a severe underrepresentation of people with disabilities in the American population. Then theres the fact that 80 percent of disabled characters on television are portrayed by able bodied actors, according to the Ruderman Foundation. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/allisonnorlian/2020/05/28/disability-advocates-fear-losing-the-fight-for-inclusion-in-post-pandemic-hollywood/#396863f9aa26,FALSE, 1040,"Disability Equals Disenfranchisement, Lawsuit Says"," In person voting during the Wisconsin primary. Photographer: Thomas Werner/BloombergAs the Trump administration and a mix of governors and state legislatures try to suppress voting by mail across the Union, a coalition of disability rights groups and citizens with disabilities is still fighting for full enfranchisement, 30 years after the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The latest battleground is New York State, where the group has filed suit in the Southern District of New York against the state’s Board of Elections for discrimination against New Yorkers with disabilities.  While the state’s mail in Absentee Voting program has recently been expanded in response to Covid 19 to enable voting by mail rather than by visiting a public polling place, no provision has been made for those who are unable to privately and independently mark a paper ballot. And although active duty military and citizens overseas can cast their votes electronically, that option is simply not allowed for the disabled. Along with several citizens, the plaintiffs’ coalition includes New York State affiliates of the National federation of the Blind , the American Council of the Blind and the Center for Independence of the Disabled, all backed by their national offices. They are represented by law firms including Disability Rights Advocates, Disability Rights New York, and Brown Goldstein Levy LLP, a leading firm in disability rights advocacy.  The lawsuit charges that the BOE continued to exclude an accessible absentee option for the blind and people with other print disabilities. Such exclusion leaves affected voters with no choice other than to go to public polling places, potentially exposing themselves to the new corona virus and the threat of severe illness or death it carries. Ironically, avoiding this outcome is precisely why the state BOE is expanding access to mail in ballots for non disabled voters. “People just want to vote,” says eve Hill, an attorney with Brown Goldstein Levy. Hill represents the NFB of New York State and plaintiff Rasheta Bunting, the blind New Yorker who instigated the case. “It’s important for people who want to vote to be able to vote. ”A spokesman for the New York State Board of Elections responded that he had no comment. A hearing is scheduled for Friday – and a primary is scheduled for June 23rd. This disconnect is what Karen Gourgey, a blind plaintiff, said pushed her over the edge to join the lawsuit. “When Governor Cuomo published an executive order saying no one should have to go to the polls in fear for their health, I was, ‘no one but whom?’ That was my bottom line. ” Referring to the recent election in Wisconsin that forced voters to go to public voting stations, she added, “I’m not compromising my health for anything. ”The New York State complaint is neither an isolated situation nor a new voting rights issue. Legislation requiring states to make electronic absentee ballots available to the military and overseas citizens was enacted in 2009 – nearly 20 years after the passage of the ADA and yet it included no provision for voters with disabilities. While such balloting methods can easily be designed to include people with disabilities, only a handful of states have moved to do so, often following legal action. “We’ve told the states we’re coming,” says Hill. Last September, the national office of NFB sent letters to some 40 Secretaries of State calling on them to make absentee balloting accessible – and this was well before the threat of Covid 19 made in person voting a public health hazard. The Federation received replies from only three states, two of which, Alabama and Minnesota, said that legislation would be required to extend accessible absentee voting to the blind and disabled, while Virginia said that it is cognizant of the requirements of the ADA, and that it is working to make its electronic voting system accessible. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterslatin/2020/05/27/disability-equals-disenfranchisement-lawsuit-says/#1da8b4614f5a,FALSE, 1042,Covid-19 Crisis Triage — Optimizing Health Outcomes and Disability Rights,"On March 28, 2020, the Office of Civil Rights at the Department of Health and Human Services opened investigations into recently released critical care crisis triage protocols. 1 Disability rights advocates are urging Congress to prohibit crisis triage based on “anticipated or demonstrated resource intensity needs, the relative survival probabilities of patients deemed likely to benefit from medical treatment, and assessments of pre or post treatment quality of life. ”2 The Americans with Disabilities Act proscribes adverse treatment of persons with disabilities, but discrimination is common, including in the health system. 3 With surges in Covid 19 cases creating the potential for extreme shortages of critical care resources, health care organizations are planning for crisis level triage, with guidance provided by professional societies and ethicists that aim to allocate scarce resources primarily so as to save the most lives. 4Crisis triage protocols should seek to optimize health outcomes, but doing so requires explicit protection of core values, such as the equal moral worth of all people. We offer policy recommendations capable of meeting both goals. Allocation of ventilators has become symbolic of the difficult ethical choices we face, but the criteria and processes we recommend apply to any scarce medical resource. Disability rights advocates recognize that in disasters it may be “appropriate for providers to delay non essential care [and] not be obligated to provide quantitatively futile care. ”2 Yet crisis triage arises only in forced choice scenarios, when not everyone can receive essential care. Some disability rights advocates assert that in such circumstances, triage based on assessing patients’ likelihood of benefit is fundamentally incompatible with respect for human dignity. Instead, they propose adopting a first come, first served process. 5 But that approach would leave many people with disabilities worse off; in particular, people facing transportation, communication, and other barriers to access could be systematically disadvantaged. We believe that crisis triage protocols should focus on identifying the patients who are most likely to die without a ventilator yet most likely to survive with one, using the best available clinical survivability scores, not broad categorical exclusions. “Survivability” is sometimes defined as living to hospital discharge or 1 year after discharge or long term, a criterion that is neither practical nor ethical. The ability to predict long term survival is poor and therefore susceptible to bias. Furthermore, many disadvantaged populations have reduced life expectancy, and triage protocols should not exacerbate health inequities. Near term survivability, moreover, can be assessed independently from disability. Consider two patients with Down’s syndrome, one with adequate cardiac function, the other with cardiovascular disease. Down’s syndrome is an inappropriate triage consideration, but worse baseline cardiac function confers lower survivability with Covid 19. Cardiac dysfunction could therefore be integrated into the scoring system, but only if the criterion applied to all patients, not just those with Down’s syndrome. Patients with adequate heart function, irrespective of physical or mental disability, would then have the same triage score. Patients with preexisting cardiovascular disease would receive lower scores because they’re less likely to derive benefit from the intervention, not because of disability. ",3,https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2008300,FALSE, 1045,"Disability, Aging Advocates Caution About Reopening Too Quickly","Wheelchairs sit folded at the Arturo Merino Benitez International Airport in Santiago, Chile, Monday, April 20, 2020. International flights have been canceled for a month since the start of a lockdown to help contain the spread of the new coronavirus pandemic. Esteban Felix/AP PhotoAdvocates for people with disabilities and older adults say the state Supreme Courts decision to overturn Wisconsins Safer at Home order puts their communities at risk. Before the court’s ruling on Wednesday, 32 state and national groups filed an amicus brief laying out the increased risks of COVID 19 infection for the disability and aging communities. Many people from these communities live in long term care facilities and group homes, the brief notes, where there’s a higher risk that infections can spread. Plus, caregivers who provide in person care and services are not able to social distance, and a shortage of personal protective equipment could put that caregiving workforce and their clients at risk.  When workers become infected, they expose their families and communities, said Lisa Pugh, co chair of the Survival Coalition of Wisconsin and Disability Organizations, in a press release Thursday.  Pugh called on prioritizing the caregiving workforce for distribution of personal protective equipment, testing and an eventual vaccine. People at high risk of serious illness or death from COVID 19 rely on the actions of the entire community for protection, said Survival Coalition co chair Beth Swedeen in the release. Stay informed with WPRs email newsletter. Enter email address Re opening means a new normal. Wearing masks, continuing social distancing, flexibility for employees to work from home, online and curbside options, and strategies to safely conduct in person business will need to continue for the foreseeable future. Matt Ford lives in Verona and is quadriplegic. He said in an interview that the overturned order makes him nervous about hiring new workers to come to his house to help with meals, dressing and other tasks. Im not even equipped with any kind of PPE to hand to them at the door and say, Could you put a mask on? Ford said.  It feels like we’re undoing everything that we just did, Ford said.  Earlier in May the Survival Coalition laid out specific steps they felt were needed to protect the disability and aging communities, including having those communities represented in discussions as local and state officials develop plans to reopen. ",3,https://www.wpr.org/disability-aging-advocates-caution-about-reopening-too-quickly,FALSE, 1046,Newsom shakes up disability politics," CalMatters California, explained In summaryThe Capitol’s perennial jousting over workers’ compensation has been jolted by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s order extending eligibility for benefits to all workers deemed to be essential who are infected with coronavirus. By clicking subscribe, you agree to share your email address with CalMatters to receive marketing, updates, and other emails. The cloistered community of political lobbyists who specialize in the massive, but otherwise obscure, system of compensating workers for job related illnesses and injuries had been preparing for one of their periodic clashes. And then Gavin Newsom interceded. About once a decade, those with stakes in the nearly $20 billion a year workers’ compensation system do battle over the rules governing both eligibility for benefits – medical care and cash support – and their scope. There are five major interest groups – employers, insurers, labor unions, medical providers and lawyers who specialize in compensation claims – and typically, three will make a deal to financially benefit themselves and gang up on the other two to persuade legislators and governors to ratify the deal. It last occurred eight years ago, when former Gov. Jerry Brown signed an agreement between employers and unions, with insurers implicitly supportive, to curb medical costs and use the savings to increase cash payments to disabled workers. It worked as the deal’s sponsors hoped. In fact, it was something of a financial windfall to employers because savings more than offset cash benefit costs. Employers’ insurance costs declined, although they remained the nation’s second highest as a percentage of payrolls, according to surveys by Oregon’s Department of Consumer and Business Services that are widely accepted as authoritative. With those effects, a new decennial clash appeared to be brewing, possibly pitting a union medical lawyer coalition against employers and insurers – but the politics of workers’ compensation suddenly changed last week. Newsom declared that at least temporarily, workers deemed to be doing critical work during the COVID 19 pandemic and becoming infected would be presumptively eligible for workers’ compensation without having to prove that it occurred on the job. By clicking subscribe, you agree to share your email address with CalMatters to receive marketing, updates, and other emails. “This is a way of providing support to our critical workers that are essential in our capacity not only to meet the needs of people today, but as we begin to enter into this new phase and start to reopen our economy,” Newsom said. Unions had been pushing Newsom for weeks to act, while business and employer groups countered that it would sharply increase their costs, make it more difficult to resume operations and thus worsen an already serious economic recession. The latter cited a study by the Workers’ Compensation Insurance Rating Bureau about the heavy costs of a presumptive eligibility order, saying, “the annual cost of COVID 19 claims on ECI workers under a conclusive presumption ranges from $2. 2 billion to $33. 6 billion with an approximate mid range estimate of $11. 2 billion, or 61% of the annual estimated cost of the total workers’ compensation system prior to the impact of the pandemic. ”The study dealt with a “conclusive presumption” while Newsom’s order provides a “rebuttable presumption” that employers could, at least theoretically, dispute. But in practice it’s not likely to appreciably alter the order’s effect. The decree is retroactive to March 19 and will, unless extended, expire in two months. If just temporary, its cost impact on employers might not be as heavy as they fear, but unions will be pressing Newsom to keep it in place indefinitely. In the short run, political conflict over workers’ compensation will probably focus on the parameters and longevity of Newsom’s action. It likely will bleed over into another pending issue: whether businesses that continued to operate after being deemed essential during the pandemic should receive a blanket immunity from personal injury lawsuits. ",3,https://calmatters.org/commentary/newsom-shakes-up-disability-politics/,FALSE, 1047,Readers respond: Disability workers need support," I want to share the story of invisible but essential workers who are caring for our neighbors with intellectual and developmental disabilities during this crisis. Direct support professionals, or DSPs, work 24/7, often in people’s homes, where they cannot practice social distancing. They support people who need help with basic hygiene, health and nutrition, connecting with loved ones, taking medications and more all despite having as hard a time as hospitals securing personal protective equipment. Yet Medicaid funded disability service providers are at risk of closing permanently because they lack funding to cover overtime and hazard pay for DSPs, who are essential during this pandemic. The federal government has overlooked these services entirely, along with the vulnerable people they support, in distributing congressionally appropriated CARES Act funding. Without DSPs, people with disabilities, especially the medically vulnerable, risk being institutionalized or forced into already overwhelmed hospitals unnecessarily. The good news is that Sen. Ron Wyden and Rep. Greg Walden can make a difference by holding the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services accountable in distributing federal resources to Medicaid programs. People with disabilities in Oregon and the DSPs on which they rely desperately need your support. Gerald Nebeker, SalemNebeker is a fellow of the American Association of Intellectual and Developmental DisabilitiesNote to readers: if you purchase something through one of our affiliate links we may earn a commission.",3,https://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/2020/05/readers-respond-disability-workers-need-support.html,FALSE, 1048,"As a person with a disability, quarantine is what I deal with every day"," Jill Martin has up to 75% off fun finds for home, kitchen and more!SectionsShowsMoreFollow todayMore BrandsAs you sit at home right now reading this, you may be longing for many things you grew accustomed to. Maybe it’s the simple banter from the breakroom at work, going to a friend’s house for wine night or your weekly gym sessions. Are you feeling incredibly isolated and frustrated with the lack of control over your life and social interactions?Your feelings are valid. The pain, frustration and fear you have felt the last couple of months are completely real and I understand what you are going through more than you can imagine. Since a car accident at a young age left me paralyzed, I have been a full time wheelchair user. Having a disability has often forced me to be isolated and socially distant, while everyone else my age was out having fun, “normal” lives. As a child, I couldn’t play on sports teams with my peers or go to sleepovers and didn’t have people I could regularly connect with who were in a similar situation as me. In college, I had surgeries where I was recovering alone at home during multiple summers, missing out on potential career opportunities or chances for new experiences. Im happy that for most of you reading this, the physical distancing and isolation you’ve experienced during the pandemic is temporary. The pain you’re feeling will subside and many of these minor inconveniences that feel huge in the moment will end and you will get your life back, even if it’s different. There are many lessons you can take with you from this experience. Here are just a few that I think are important to remember:Our society conditions us to believe that if we’re busy and out doing things, that we’re important or being productive. That’s just not so. Your forced stillness right now is vital to having a clear view of who you are and want to be. It’s why people meditate. When this is over, schedule time for yourself to be just home, doing “nothing. ”I can’t tell you how frequently I have to miss out on parties and get togethers because someone’s house isn’t wheelchair accessible or the gathering is at a place that’s completely inaccessible. It was especially tough when I lived in New York and I didn’t have a single friend with a wheelchair accessible apartment. All of these “experts” discuss how important it is to keep a routine throughout your time in quarantine. As someone who has spent countless days separated from people and living a Groundhog Day like life, I believe that a routine is not nearly as important as variety. I had a friend say to me the other day that it just feels like his life is on hold right now, and that’s simply not true. I know it may feel that way, but life is never on hold just because you can’t go outside. You can keep growing, learning, living and making life something worthwhile. Easier said than done, but I promise there’s always something to look forward to. When I felt my most isolated in late 2018, Mumford and Sons announced a new album. That small glimmer became my something to look forward to and it got me through the darkest month of my life. I have an elderly aunt in Los Angeles who said she feels like there’s nothing to be excited about. I realized that we all have an enormous power to become someone’s something. I hope that you haven’t lost a loved one during this time, but we have all lost something. Maybe you lost your job, a trip, a graduation night. And I’m so sorry for what you have lost. You may have to find a creative way to properly grieve and it’s OK to acknowledge this disappointment. Even when life gets back to normal, please remember to call or text people. Someone may seem all right, but we all need extra support sometimes. Quarantine and the pandemic won’t last forever, but I hope you remember that for some, this is a way of life. You can reach out, be helpful and grow, no matter the situation you’re in. Please be safe, healthy and patient. ",3,https://www.today.com/health/what-person-disability-wants-you-know-about-quarantine-t180804,FALSE, 1050,Let COVID-19 expand awareness of disability tech,"The COVID 19 pandemic shows that these are not as impractical as we have always been told. Supermarkets, restaurants and pharmacies can deliver; remote working, medicine and education are possible for many; and social lives can be rewarding without requiring us to leave home. All around me, I see academic colleagues adopting disability led hacks and long sought accommodations. I wish everyone had thought about these workarounds and about disabled people at all earlier. When lockdowns end, we must not forget these lessons, not least because the pandemic will disable people, and the impacts will be felt most by the most vulnerable parts of society. Academia is paying for its ableism. At many universities, in person research with human participants and in laboratories has been curtailed. If these projects had considered disabilities, they might be better off: disabled academics already plan in short increments, with built in flexibility. In 2014, I returned to my job as an assistant professor, newly multiply disabled a hard of hearing amputee battered by chemotherapy and more. I felt out of place. I could no longer access many spaces, including most of my colleagues’ offices, and I sought the camaraderie of other disabled faculty members, staff and students. My disabled comrades and I recognize the diversity of disabilities: congenital and acquired; ranging from cognitive to sensory, mobility and more; apparent and not. Many of us pursue research that emphasizes how disabled people are the best experts on the technologies and structures that meet our needs. Disability awareness: The fight for accessibility one of my projects examines accounts of disabled people’s lived experiences with technologies, and how they differ from those of the scientists and engineers behind the tech. I planned my work intending to recruit disabled students among my researchers. Most of the studies can be done remotely, even from bed, and on a funky, asynchronous timetable as needed. Last year, when I had lung surgery, my group shifted gears without worry. And because of its disability led design, my team’s project is pandemic proof. Another project, to gauge the experiences of students in civil engineering classes, was designed to include participants with a range of disabilities. So we obtained approval for flexibility in communication format: we conduct our interviews by text, e mail, Zoom and other means. Because we planned for disabled people to lead and participate in the research, we’re well prepared for the current situation or for any other. Many disabled people are also adept at managing our energy, and forgiving ourselves for not always meeting conventional metrics of ‘productivity’. My non disabled colleagues are now struggling to adjust, but my team appreciates that ‘clocks should bend to our bodies’, not the other way around. Some disabled people call this concept Crip Time, reclaiming a derogatory term in pride . ",3,https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01312-w,FALSE, 1051,Disability Service Providers Struggling To Stay Afloat Amid COVID-19,"Service providers nationwide are contending with lost revenues, higher costs and new challenges as they work to support people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. A survey of 689 provider organizations across the country finds that 68 percent have been forced to close one or more of their offerings due to government shelter in place orders in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The closures account for an average of 32 percent of annual revenue. Meanwhile, the groups are dealing with escalating costs for overtime, hiring additional employees and shifting away from in person staff training. All told, the changes stemming from COVID 19 represent 40 percent of the providers’ annual revenue, on average. The findings come from an April survey conducted by the American Network of Community Options and Resources, or ANCOR, a national trade group representing disability service providers. The data was analyzed by Avalere, a Washington based health care consulting firm. “It’s staggering,” said Gabrielle Sedor, chief operations officer at ANCOR, of the results, which the group released late last week. “What the survey is showing us is that providers really are on the brink and they’re in dire need of fiscal relief. ”More than half of providers surveyed said they only have enough cash on hand to continue providing services for another five or six weeks, Sedor noted. While most continue to be paid for at least some services, she said they’re strained. “I don’t think I’m aware of anyone who has closed their doors yet, but some providers are close,” Sedor said. ANCOR is hopeful that the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services will allocate some of the funding already made available in a March stimulus bill known as the CARES Act to aid Medicaid funded disability service providers, Sedor said. Outside of financial concerns, the top challenges organizations cited in the survey were staffing and access to personal protective equipment like masks and face shields. Among organizations that shut down programs, the most affected services were day programs, supported employment and transportation. Smaller organizations those employing fewer than 200 direct support professionals have been hit especially hard, the survey found, with closures alone accounting for a 40 percent hit to their bottom lines. As an upstart airline from the founder of JetBlue works to expand, the company says it will put a premium on better serving travelers with autism. Julie Beckett fought to care for her hospitalized daughter at home, ultimately helping to bring changes to Medicaid that improved the lives of hundreds of thousands of families nationwide. In one rural county, people with disabilities and others who have been appointed a guardian may soon lose the ability to vote even if a court has expressly preserved their right to do so. ",3,https://www.disabilityscoop.com/2020/05/04/disability-service-providers-struggling-to-stay-afloat-amid-covid-19/28271/,FALSE, 1052,How climate-related hazards increase vulnerabilities among the most at risk populations and the necessary convergence of inclusive,"Humanity & Inclusion with generous financial support from the Hilton Foundation, wishes to contribute to the analysis of vulnerabilities caused by climate related disaster risks with this report, in a context of worldwide hydro meteorological changes. Through it, HI begins to paint a more accurate account of the vulnerabilities related to climate change, with a particular focus on the situation of people with disabilities. With the aid of a large number of outside documents, program evaluations, research studies, and expert opinions the report demonstrates the following in regards to climate change and the hydrological hazards associated with climate change: It first consisted of reminding that there is a link between a changing climate and an increase in the frequency and severity of hydro meteorological hazards, with a significant diversity of situations based on geographic location;The hydro meteorological consequences of climate change are having an impact on the health and economic welfare of individuals and communities; The climate related hazards are having a disproportionately negative impact on people with disabilities; Climate change hazards are a driver of disability. ",3,https://reliefweb.int/report/world/disability-and-climate-change-how-climate-related-hazards-increase-vulnerabilities,FALSE, 1053,Disability Will Be Part Of The New Normal," The uncertainty thats risen along with the pandemic is prompting many to speculate on the future of . . . [+] societys new normal. Predicting the highlights of the post pandemic new normal is the new rage. But how should we begin to think about the new normal for people with disabilities? With “abnormal” a common stand in for “disabled,” let’s jettison the “ab. ” Disability is normal, even common, affecting some 20% of the U. S. population.  The only abnormal part of disability is that much of society still blanches at moving beyond lip service or grudging regulatory compliance when it comes to providing access to the disabled in normal work, school and social environments. As unwelcome and threatening as the novel coronavirus is, its arrival during the run up to the 30th anniversary of the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act commands attention. By forcing people all over the U. S. to shelter in place, this virus is introducing America to how so many people with disabilities lived their lives before the passage of the ADA–and so many who still do. People with vision, hearing, mobility and cognitive challenges to functionality have found themselves living out their days inside walls that they were forbidden, unable or expected never to leave, stretching back into history. To encounter the disabled out and about was to fear contagion. Now, with contagion ubiquitous and invisible, everybody is inspiring that fear in everybody else. That, unfortunately yet hopefully, is just the interim normal.  When it does give way, it will be up to all of us to reshape normalcy so that it really is the norm. These are all essential components of what the new normal for people with disabilities should become as the new normal for everyone takes shape in the wake of a less menacing viral environment. Actually, it looks like what the new normal for all should be. It should be normal to be able to go anywhere; normal for students to access their textbooks, materials and classrooms; normal for people to be able to operate their desktop and mobile devices; normal to be able to access the internet and navigate the web; normal to visit museums and performance venues; normal to shop in store or on line; normal to go out to drink and dine; normal to travel; normal to find a rewarding job paying a living wage or to own a business; normal to rent or own a good home; normal to access good health care; normal to vote. In other words, to do all the normal things that normal people normally do, even encounter normal hassles and obstacles. Most people with disabilities can list one by one the times they have encountered abnormal obstacles when trying to achieve each one of these normal goals.  An abnormal obstacle is one that is peculiar to disability and other social and economic disadvantage, usually an expression of fear, low expectations or both. These typically include, among others: uninvited touching or pulling; inappropriate questions or comments; an insistence on providing assistance when none is needed; misguided instruction aimed at preventing entry; illegal physical barriers to entry; inaccessible technological barriers to participation. We are constantly reminded that the virus does not discriminate. True, but society does. That is amply evident in the infection and death rates in cities, counties and states across the country. The virus, like a radioactive dye injected into a body to identify diseased tissue, flows naturally toward and concentrates in the most damaged places in the social contract. It highlights with unflinching clarity how and why people of color, the poor and people with disabilities are all disproportionately feeling this newest, dispassionate aggressor. The disabled are rightly enraged and horrified by the looming shadow of eugenics hovering over emergency rooms and COVID 19 wards. The pandemic has been most devastating to virtually all disadvantaged communities, which already have been especially marked for the Potter’s Field – or just marked  as the virus blossomed.  ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterslatin/2020/04/29/disability-will-be-part-of-the-new-normal/#1ca7456a7b26,FALSE, 1054,3 Ways The COVID-19 Pandemic Could Change Disability Policies And Practices," How will our world change after the pandemic?Will go completely back to normal and try to forget all of this ever happened, the way so many Americans did after the 1918 Influenza pandemic? Will we just change a few habits, policies, and plans to confront future outbreaks? Or, will we go a bit further and make bigger reforms we once thought impossible, but now seem both feasible and wise? We should probably be wary of attempts to use the COVID 19 pandemic to “win” long standing political arguments. On the other hand, we would be foolish to ignore how the pandemic might legitimately reshape and re prioritize old policy and ideological debates. And we shouldn’t be afraid to do some key things quite differently from now on. Maybe nations and governments around the world will find the wisdom, techniques, and urgency to cooperate on genuinely global threats, like pandemics and climate change. Health care debates, so centered in the United States on cost and the public vs. private divide, may now take capacity and nationwide organization into account as well. Then there is the potential impact on the oldest political argument of all finding the right balance between public health and safety, and individual liberty. And in the disability sphere especially, our experience with the pandemic, however it turns out in the end, may suggest new ways of looking at some old issues. 1. A wider acceptance of doing business online, “from home. ”The COVID 19 pandemic has brought unprecedented acceptance of living life online. Millions of “essential” workers are unaffected and unprotected by this option, and most of the rest of us are anxious to get back to living life “in person. ” But this embrace of online life has struck a chord with many disabled people, who have long fought for the option to work, learn, and do business “from home. ”Disabled people have decidedly mixed emotions about this. On the one hand, we are glad to see employers, schools and universities, and government offices adopt business and communication practices that offer disabled people more flexible, accessible options. We hope against past experience that once proven, these new options will remain active after the crisis is over. On the other hand, it’s hard not to feel taken aback at how quickly and enthusiastically the “work from home” lifestyle has been accepted, almost as a fun novelty. For decades, disabled people have lost major opportunities because of what now turns out to have been indifference, or simple human reluctance to try doing things differently. It’s not about trivial convenience. Disabled people lose jobs because they aren’t allowed the option to work from home, or even apply. Disabled students are forced to drop out of college because professors and administrators won’t be flexible about on site attendance when disabilities flare up. Disabled people are punished and penalized for missing all kinds of appointments and hearings due to ill health, unreliable transportation, and above it all government and nonprofit agencies that refuse to modernize and offer even the most simple online tools. Even during the pandemic, it’s far from certain whether voting access will be improved by allowing universal access to mail in ballots, or whether insistence on in person voting will disenfranchise millions, including disabled and medically vulnerable citizens. To be clear … not all disabled people want to work from home. Some of us have jobs that can’t be transferred home. Many disabled people lack adequate devices and internet connections. And many of us prefer to work and learn outside of our homes, side by side with our friends and coworkers, and face to face with customers. Online and work from home options have sometimes been sold to disabled people as an alternative to making workplaces more accessible and less discriminatory. This is not what we are looking for. Working from home should never be treated as a substitute for community accessibility, accessible transportation, and community integration. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2020/04/20/3-ways-the-covid-19-pandemic-could-change-disability-policies-and-practices/?sh=5a5cadfc6706,FALSE, 1055,Mental Health And Disability Inclusion: How To Make Sure You Are Commissioning Credible Support Services For Your Business,"By now we have all realized that in 2020 we are not going back to business as usual after the pandemic. We’ve got a wonderful opportunity here to redefine the world of work, and implement policies that are inclusive. In my company, we’ve had a surge of engagement and camaraderie through taking care of each other and communicating well. We’ve better understood how to connect with remote workers properly, and we will be working on instituting these techniques going forward. This learning curve has led me to consider two key issues that all employers are going to have to address as we define the new normal: mental health and flexible working for disability and carer inclusion. In considering disability inclusion and mental health support advice, I have observed a proliferation of offers from people who are currently displaced from their usual activities. It is a buyers’ market for these services, but we should exercise caution when we commission. Not all mental health consultants have the right skills for dealing with serious trauma. Experts by experience need supervision to handle safeguarding. We need a broad spectrum of advocacy and expertise, multi disciplinary working and a framework in which there are referral routes for issues outside our expertise is best practice. To help your planning, I’ve got 4 key themes with questions to consider when commissioning an organization to help you with mental health support at work. Qualifications And TrainingThe first and most important line of enquiry should be to establish the credentials of the organization and the training that their delivery staff receive. What are the specific qualifications and training of anyone who will be working directly with your team? Are any of the team mental health nurses, social workers, psychologists, medics? Does the organization provide professional expertise in a wide range of conditions or processes? How are the staff trained, supported and supervised ongoing in this emergent field where the science is rapidly updating? A credible organization or individual will be more than willing to discuss how they stay up to date with formal scientific and professional bodies of knowledge. There is a lot of risk built into the uncertainty of what comes next, hiring the right qualifications and credentials can buffer your company from mistakes. Proof Of ResultsBefore making any decisions you should also ask if the organization publishes any sort of evaluation or long term follow up to assess the effectiveness of their services other than testimonials. Whilst testimonials can be a great way to get a sense of a company’s work, cold hard proof they are not. Any credible and professional organization should be constantly evaluating the effectiveness of their methods and be able to provide evidence of their success. Management, coaching and psychology professionals have been trained in ‘evidence based’ approaches for many years now and should not be willing to cite the odd anecdote as verification of their work. Testimonials should be the cherry on the cake, not the whole offering, as a testimonial can be heavily influenced by human factors such as good rapport with the service provider. Instead, look for organizational data that is more objective, such as turnover, promotion rate, supervisor ratings of improvement, contract performance, service level agreements and more. accountability the organization regulated in anyway with a third party to whom you could complain if a service was not adequate? For example, are staff registered with a professional coaching body or a professional regulator such as medical/nursing boards, the APA or the HCPC ? Does the organization have an externally verified Quality Standard compliant with ISO or similar which would guarantee a rigorous complaints process if things went wrong? ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/drnancydoyle/2020/04/22/mental-health-and-disability-inclusion-how-to-make-sure-you-are-commissioning-credible-support-services-for-your-business/?sh=412caf143c21,TRUE, 1058,How a CSE student's hearing disability shaped his experiences in diverse environments,"Jain almost drowned in a scuba diving lesson. While training on the water surface, he couldn’t bring his hearing aids and was incorrectly taught how to inflate his jacket. Jain, waving for help, was fortunately spotted by a crew member who pulled him into safety.  This wasn’t the first time Jain had encountered a disability related accident during the course of his 15 month trip. He documented his perspectives as a hard of hearing traveler backpacking across 21 countries in an autoethnographic study. Today, Jain is a third year Ph. D. candidate in computer science and engineering who believes in cultural diversity in accessibility design. He is also a certified scuba diving instructor, earning his license from a diving school in the Red Sea in Egypt.  “A person goes through so many different experiences across cultures and geographies,” Jain said. “To ask someone questions in a lab setting, it’s hard to know about the person unless you actually live that experience. ” Emerging in a new location is one of the reasons why people love to travel, but the unfamiliarity of a new place is often difficult for people with disabilities. While urban cities are making progress in designing accessible tourism, these spaces mostly recognize visible disabilities, such as blindness or motor impairment. In his autoethnography, Jain gives rich insights into his relationship with accessible technology in various geographies, societies, and cultures.  As a hard of hearing person, Jain relies on hearing aids and lipreading to interpret other people’s speeches. In situations where he can’t see the person’s face or is surrounded by high background noise, this communication becomes difficult. For instance, when Jain was sitting at the back of a shared vehicle heading into the deep mountains of Spiti Valley, India, he felt “spatially lost” because he couldn’t lipread and did not know where he was. He didn’t tell anyone that he is hard of hearing because he feared that someone might take advantage of the fact.  “People ask me questions [about] why I didn’t tell or ask,” Jain said. “Disclosing [your] disability is not always safe in every situation. ”On a flight from Milan to Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, he wasn’t able to hear the flight attendants and his own voice due to the plane’s engine.  The crew understood his speeches through hand gestures and repetition, but not entirely. As a result, Jain missed a meal on the flight and settled for cold water when he asked for a hot drink. However, Jain also benefited from his hearing aids during the journey. Since he can turn the aids off, he was able to sleep through the night in a Costa Rican hostel known for its wild party nights.  A part of his autoethnography was recognizing the “cultural tensions” surrounding disability in different regions. Jain noticed that people in India were “overly sympathetic” when addressing disability. When he told a gate agent at the Kushok Bakula Rimpochee Airport that he was hard of hearing, the agent immediately grabbed his hand and escorted him to the plane.  “There is a very sympathetic view [toward disability] in India,” Jain said. “People are like ‘I want to help people,’ and there’s just too much pity. ” In contrast, Jain noticed that people in the United States are “overly polite” to his disability. When he realized that his name was called multiple times for boarding in Boston, he walked to the staff feeling very guilty for wasting their time. While the staff said everything was fine, he noticed that they were actually “passive aggressively” polite, not knowing his disability.  “I figure social niceties somehow conflict with accessibility here,” Jain wrote in his travel diary. “If she had asked, I would have explained my hearing loss. ”",3,https://www.dailyuw.com/science/article_b5ff751a-7f90-11ea-ba5a-5bd28972ce97.html,TRUE, 1059,Duke Disability Cultural Center opening on hold due to campus closure," The independent news organization of Duke University The opening of a Disability Cultural Center was a project three years in the making for Duke Disability Alliance. Now, it will have to wait at least until the fall. The idea for the center was born in Fall 2017, according to junior and DDA Co President Maddie Fowler. The group has been researching the idea, writing proposals and meeting with administration since then. Their efforts would have resulted in the opening of a temporary space in the Bryan Center last week, a milestone that is now on hold while campus is closed during the coronavirus pandemic. The goal of the center “would [be to] allow this community to feel welcome on campus, to find each other and build social support networks, and to explore and express disability culture,” said Marion Quirici, lecturing fellow of the Thompson Writing Program and DDA’s faculty advisor. Fowler also expressed disappointment that the seniors who have been working on the project will no longer be able to see it come to fruition.  Although Duke has provided academic accommodations for disabled students, Fowler argued that disability as an identity has been overlooked.  “At Duke there is a lot of this idea that disability is something you need to have an accommodation for and that’s all,” she said. “Disability is so much more than that different and unique challenges that we need support for. ”Duke offers centers and resources for other minority groups, such as the Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity and the Mary Lou Williams Center for Black Culture. Quirici said it would be good for Duke to have a center “recognizing disability and neurodiversity. ”Quirici pointed out that individuals with disabilities make up 10% of the global population, which makes them the largest minority group in the world.  By researching centers at other universities for students with disabilities, the DDA designed a space that would best suit the disabled community’s needs at Duke. The plans include a sensory friendly, accessible area for students to collaborate, study and relax, as well as a space to hold seminars or workshops. They hope to provide a full time staff to coordinate these events. Artwork by Duke students and local artists exploring themes of disability will adorn walls friendly to colorblind students.  In creating a Disability Cultural Center, Duke would join a list of other universities who have already recognized this need, including: Stanford University, University of Washington, University of Missouri, Syracuse University, University of Arizona and University of Illinois at Chicago, among others. The center scheduled to open this week, however, would have been a temporary space. Fowler said the group identified the space at a meeting before spring break. They planned to create a library of work in disability studies to be housed there, alongside hosting meetings and events.  The library would give students and faculty access to works from a field that doesn’t often receive visibility or recognition. This increased visibility would also fight stigma on campus and promote disability pride. “We also were planning to use the temporary space as an opportunity to figure out how to put into practice all of the accessibility features we had designed for the Cultural Center, and to figure out how to make our Cultural Center the most welcoming, accessible and supportive space possible,” Fowler said. Despite the community being separated by the COVID 19 crisis, the DDA still celebrated Pride Week online April 6 11. This includes a change of plans for Accessibility Matters Day, which began in 2011, according to Cuquis Robledo, lab manager for the Health Humanities Lab. Usually, students would celebrate by pledging to take only accessible routes that day, which Robledo said was meant to “showcase campus inaccessibility. ” ",3,https://www.dukechronicle.com/article/2020/04/duke-disability-cultural-center-opening-campus-closure-covid19,FALSE, 1060,Pennsylvania Reverses Guidance on Disability Care During Covid-19,"Pennsylvania’s response to the Covid 19 pandemic will now comply with federal civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination based on disability, resolving a complaint filed against the state’s Department of Health. The changes ensure providers in the state can’t make decisions based on disability as they determine who will receive life saving treatment and access to things like ventilators. The Office for Civil Rights at the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services announced Thursday that state officials had revised the Interim Pennsylvania Crisis Standards of Care for Pandemic Guidelines, which previously listed specific impairments or disabilities that would put those people lower on the priority list for care. “Triage decisions must be based on objective and individualized evidence, not discriminatory assumptions about the prognoses of persons with disabilities,” said Roger Severino, director of the OCR. “We must ensure that triage policies are free from discrimination both in their creation and their application, and we will remain vigilant in achieving that goal. ”Disability rights advocates, including Disability Rights Pennsylvania, filed a complaint April 3 alleging the state’s guidelines weren’t in compliance with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act. The complaint alleged the state’s guidelines unlawfully singled out and authorized the denial of treatment to individuals with disabilities when prioritizing access to critical care. That’s contrary to direction from the OCR outlined in a March 28 bulletin reminding hospitals and health care providers that civil rights laws still apply in the midst of a pandemic. Pennsylvania officials have agreed to change state guidelines to remove criteria that automatically made people with particular disabilities a lower priority. They also agreed to ensure that no one is denied care based on stereotypes, assessments of quality of life, or judgments about a person’s worth based on the presence or absence of disabilities. The state is also eliminating guidelines that in lieu of an individualized patient assessment used “preexisting conditions that are disabilities” to determine a priority score for patient care. The OCR closed the complaint investigation as satisfactorily resolved without a finding of liability because Pennsylvania officials were responsive and agreed to revise the guidelines. This is the second enforcement action OCR has taken on disability civil rights laws during the COVID 19 public health emergency. Earlier this month Alabama complied with direction from the OCR to take down criteria around ventilator rationing from 2010 that allegedly discriminated against disabled and elderly people. The document allegedly allowed ventilators to be denied to people based on “profound mental retardation” and “moderate to severe dementia. ”The Alabama review was spurred by a complaint by the Alabama Disabilities Advocacy Program and The Arc of the United States.",3,https://news.bloomberglaw.com/pharma-and-life-sciences/pennsylvania-reverses-guidance-on-disability-care-during-covid-19,FALSE, 1064,The very worst time to dismantle the disability safety net," A man applies for a social security disability claim. It’s too late to save those who’ve died from COVID 19. We also can’t recoup the time we could have spent preparing our now overburdened health care system. But there’s one thing we can do: Preserve our country’s effective and trusted disability safety net, despite efforts by the Trump administration to dismantle it. I’m hoping the president’s team has learned from its severe missteps in dealing with this pandemic and understands that many of the systems and processes in place do indeed work, if they’re properly implemented and supported. Now is not the time for more disruptions and freelancing of unproven theories. I know our country’s disability system works because I’ve had to rely on it through numerous major health care crises. Thirteen years ago, I was permanently disabled from an accident and had to undergo four spinal surgeries. In 2011, I survived kidney cancer and fought my way into remission after losing part of my right kidney. In 2013, I was diagnosed with lupus, which causes me severe fatigue; most days it’s a struggle to get out of bed. I now manage over 10 preexisting conditions, take 38 medications and rely on self injections of biologic medication to slow the progression of my diseases. When I was able to work as a research analyst, I paid into Social Security, as we all do. While most people think of Social Security as only being there for retirement, it also provides payments to the long term disabled who are unable to work. For six decades, administrative law judges across the U. S. have heard cases from claimants and made impartial eligibility decisions based on medical reports and knowledge about occupations and workplaces. Medical experts think we’re about to see a major explosion in Americans with long term disabilities because of this horrific virus. Scientific American reported that up to one in five COVID 19 patients have signs of heart injury; other science media report that some patients suffer from reduced lung capacity, leaving them “gasping for air when walking quickly. ” These will be patients who will need to pursue disability claims. I trust ALJs to decide which COVID 19 patients will be eligible for Social Security disability income. Unfortunately, the Trump administration wants to put its thumb on the process through Executive Order 13843, which allows the Social Security Administration to discard the merit system for picking ALJs and instead allows it to choose any attorney with a license to make important disability decisions. A distinguished group of lawmakers in the U. S. House and Senate are pushing back against this power grab by supporting the ALJ Competitive Service Restoration Act; it would preserve due process protections for the American public by restoring the fair and unbiased administered hiring process for ALJs. As Congress debates future recovery and stimulus bills, it should recognize that not every COVID 19 patient will be able to return to the workforce. These patients have had to overcome a lack of treatments, ventilators and masks. The least we can do for them is to protect the disability system that we know works. Morley is a patient advocate based in New York City; he has testified numerous times before congressional committees regarding patient rights and needs. ",3,https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-the-very-worst-time-to-dismantle-disability-safety-net-20200408-lbdb4ahkqrellj3l2qdrmpgpsy-story.html,FALSE, 1067,Disability groups file discrimination complaint challenging Kansas' COVID-19 treatment rationing policy change," Disability Rights Kansas, Topeka Independent Living Center, Tessa Goupil and other legal advocacy partners have filed a complaint with the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights in relation to the ventilation rationing plan instituted by the state. The groups argue the plan in the states Toolkit for COVID 19 discriminates against people with disabilities because under the plan, medical professionals would take away the ventilators of patients receiving care, including those who use a ventilator on a regular basis. “It is completely unacceptable to have the State of Kansas pre determine the value of the lives of people with disabilities when guiding how life saving equipment and services should be given,and how they can be taken away. said Tessa Goupil, a 49 year old mother with a neuromuscular disorder who uses a ventilator. The complaint calls on the Office of Civil Rights to take immediate action to address this discrimination and assist local jurisdictions and providers to develop non discriminatory approaches before there are lethal consequences to application of these illegal policies. ",3,https://www.wibw.com/content/news/Disability-groups-file--569173881.html,FALSE, 1069,Disabled advocates warn coronavirus stimulus does not address pandemic’s impact on community," Although the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package negotiated by the Senate and the White House is likely to pass the House after passing the Senate late Wednesday night, disabled activists and advocates are warning its provisions do not do enough for the community after resources for them have been strained by the pandemic. “There is nothing that the disability community asked for in these bills,” Rebecca Cokley, director of the liberal Center for American Progress’s Disability Justice Initiative, told The Hill in an email. “If anything, in their various iterations the legislation occasionally attempted to make things worse for the disability community with attempts at blanket waivers for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, and attempts to exempt people on Supplemental Security Income and Social Security Disability Insurance from being able to access any cash benefits tied to the response,” she added. While the initial Senate package was defeated in the Senate, falling short of the 60 votes necessary for cloture, Cokley told The Hill there was little improvement on disability issues between that and the final package. “This is a classic case of ‘everything about us without us,’ where Congress is making policies that largely ignore the needs of people with disabilities and chronic conditions,” she said. For some, the pandemic and the various changes and shutdowns it has required of Americans has served to illustrate the already fragile state of the social safety net for disabled people, particularly as the health care system has been forced to prioritize those affected by the virus, which experts say is a particular risk for people with underlying conditions. “Disabled people have always had tenuous relationships and uncertainty with the state,” Alice Wong, a disabled activist who frequently writes on the intersection of politics and disability issues, told The Hill in an email. “This pandemic just exacerbates our survival as we face even more challenges in living day to day and accessing basic services such as healthcare. ”“On the whole, I see a lot of legitimate fear within the disability community as healthcare systems develop guidelines on triaging treatment and access to ventilators,” she added. “The casual ableism and ageism I see is a slap in the face to so many of us who are working hard to be seen and advocate for of us. It’s exhausting and frankly demoralizing. ”The fallout of the pandemic, Cokley told The Hill, has cost numerous people the home and community based services they rely on, indicating a need for increased funding to secure the direct care workforce. “We also need robust paid family medical leave that allows parents who have need of it to care for adult children with disabilities to be able to access it,” she added. “Given the shelter in place rules being enacted by cities, it makes no sense that people with disabilities cannot access the surpluses of their medications to be able to allow them to stay safe at home. This needs to change. ” Failure to properly address disability issues amid the pandemic, she noted, will affect people who are not disabled as well, “because our folks don’t get what they need to be able to comply with physical distancing, we will need to go out. And that exposes us, and society at a much greater rate. So not only is Congress neglecting us, but their lack of action is endangering many more. ” ",3,https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/489685-disabled-advocates-warn-coronavirus-stimulus-does-not-address-pandemics/,FALSE, 1071,Do Your DI Efforts Include People with Disabilities?," There are more than one billion people worldwide – around 15% of the population – living with a disability. As consumers, they represent a market the size of the United States, Brazil, Pakistan and Indonesia combined and a disposable income of more than $8 trillion. As workers, they can ease talent shortages and add to the organizational diversity that drives better decision making and innovation. So how can you expand your organizations diversity and inclusion initiatives to include disabled people? First by rethinking your hiring practices, including job descriptions and interviews. Second, my ensuring your workplace fully accessible, from physical environment to work day structure and technology. Third, by innovating around products and services for those with disabilities. Businesses have long been drivers of social change. Across the globe, companies have begun acknowledging vital challenges and injustices such as climate change and pay gaps. Diversity and inclusion is one such defining issue, and, although huge progress has been made towards equality across boundaries of gender, race and sexual orientation, one aspect of D&I is too often neglected: disability. The UN Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities defines those for whom it advocates as as “people who have long term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others. ”Although 90% of companies claim to prioritize diversity, only 4% consider disability in those initiatives, according to a report from the Return On Disability Group. And only a small subset truly serves customers with disabilities. We’d therefore describe even the most progressive organizations as “divers ish. ” That’s the word we used when we launched our Valuable 500 campaign a push for companies to commit to inclusion that encompasses people with disabilities at the World Economic Forum Annual Summit last year. Making this change should not be a chore. It is an opportunity. The World Bank estimates that there are more than one billion people worldwide – around 15% of the population – living with a disability. As consumers, they represent a market the size of the United States, Brazil, Pakistan and Indonesia combined and a disposable income of more than $8 trillion, as noted by the Return On Disabilty Group. As workers, they can ease talent shortages and add to the organizational diversity that drives better decision making and innovation. If your company wants to show the world that it truly sees the value in everyone, there are plenty of steps leaders can take right away to improve disability inclusion in your hiring processes, in the accessibility of your workplace, and in the products and services you offer. Start by understanding the barriers that discourage people with disabilities from applying to work for you – e. g. application format, online accessibility, and even the language of job descriptions. In some cases, companies will include generic requirements for physical tasks, such as driving, typing, lifting, or the ability to sit for long periods, even if the role does not actually demand them. These are coded descriptions that weed out anyone with a disability at the first step. Standard in person interview practices can also disadvantage those with disabilities, and bias often creeps into hiring decisions. There are several companies who are leading the way in disability inclusion, however. For example, Virgin Media has partnered with Scope to support one million disabled people in getting into and staying in work by the end of 2020 – a campaign titled Work with Me. Together, the two organizations developed an online hub designed to help users gain confidence and skills as they apply for jobs. Internally, Virgin Media created a disability awareness guide for line managers and works with its resourcing partners to ensure accessibility is considered throughout the recruitment process. ",3,https://hbr.org/2020/03/do-your-di-efforts-include-people-with-disabilities,TRUE, 1073,"Mindset Matters: The Coronavirus, Disability, The Lessons Learned From Resiliency"," As the pandemic of the coronavirus disrupts our daily life across the globe this is a moment to take a deep breath and pause. We are all in a snapshot in time where business, as usual, has come to a grinding halt and patience, discipline and resiliency will be essential characteristics of our lives over the next few weeks and months. We must recognize that these attributes are not only important now, but lessons that should be applied to the core values of your daily rituals within one’s business life. Even in this existential crisis, organizational leadership can draw from the disability experience and glean powerful lessons and tools that can be applied to develop a culture that sees barriers simply as challenges that can be dealt with by being more innovative and adaptable to changing times. The great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy wrote “the two most powerful warriors are patience and time”. The lived disability experience teaches us that these two ingredients are essential in cultivating a quality of life that allows us to thrive for the long term. However, in understanding patience we must also embrace frustration to not only recognize it, but to be cognizant of its importance to employees and find ways to absorb its impact. In absorbing this frustration, it is critical to acknowledge that corporate institutions have distinguished their culture on the premise that employees conform to a certain way of thinking and working. From Wall Street to Silicon Valley this sense of conformity is ubiquitous throughout, yet, for the lived experience of disability it is not only the state of conformity but a stasis that has always been part the very foundation of daily life. The intellectual Randolph Bourne in his 1911 essay The Handicapped understood this and wrote “The doors of the deformed man are always locked, and the key is on the outside. He may have treasures of charm inside, but they will never be revealed unless the person outside cooperates with him in unlocking the door. ” With conformity we must see cooperation as a vital equalizer in a time of great change. For persons with disabilities the basic need for connection is fundamental to their lives. Whether it be assistance through human beings or utilizing technology to connect or assist in activities of daily living. Due to the egregious nature of the coronavirus social distancing has become the new normal and the need to shift one’s mindset to rely more heavily on alternative ways have become significant. Throughout history the lived experience of disability has been accustomed to this type of behavior, whether it be the “ugly laws” that extended from the United States to the Philippines from the 1700s through the mid 1970s. These laws decreed it illegal for “any person who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or deformed in anyway, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object, to expose to him or herself of public view. ” These draconian laws have provided a blueprint to where we are at this very moment. Yet, the difference is that as a society we have to engage in a new way of thinking and draw upon the lived experience of disability to both find new opportunities for connection and a greater understanding that though we as a society are under duress resiliency plays a crucial role in our ability for long term survival and growth. This is no longer just about a business strategy, but rather, creating a tool for life and utilizing the lived experience of disability to shape a robust instrument to help navigate a culture of the unknown for these alarming times. We must draw upon the lessons of resiliency to help us find a way to a solid footing and accept what we cannot control and engage in what we can. This has been an essential way of life for persons with disabilities and it is time to gain a greater respect for their experiences and build a better understanding of how this lived experience can serve as a valuable resource and greater way to express a need for connection which is needed in this time more than ever before. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathankaufman/2020/03/16/mindset-matters-the-coronavirus-disability-the-lessons-learned-from-resiliency/?sh=1ea3a53c2428#67b2af922428/,FALSE, 1074,Disability discrimination complaints now top race discrimination,"For the first time ever, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission claims of disability discrimination topped race discrimination claims in 2019. And U. S. companies are doing a poor job of addressing disability inclusion, according to a group of human resources professionals. Only 13% of workplaces have disability specific inclusion initiatives, according to the Society for Human Resource Management in D. C. Half of HR professionals have never gone through any kind of disability inclusion training, the group says. “There are employers who may not be aware of their responsibility to comply with federal and state laws regarding disabilities. Some employers may be focusing their training efforts on other issues, like sexual harassment, especially in light of the #MeToo movement, and the increase in state laws which mandate such training,” SHRM’s Amber Clayton told WTOP. “Disability training is not required under federal law, though it is recommended, so that could be another reason. And there could be situations where employers have never experienced hiring or employing someone with a disability, so they may not think the training is necessary,” she said. Workers with disabilities are twice as likely to be unemployed, according to the group. The SHRM Foundation has launched a new certificate program to help HR and hiring managers obtain the skills to hire, retain and advance workers with disabilities. What should disability inclusion training include?“Describing what it means to provide reasonable accommodations, and how to work alongside employees with disabilities,” Clayton said. “For example, learning how individuals with disabilities communicate, how they perform certain functions, and avoiding language or actions that may be perceived as offensive to someone who has a disability. ”More than three quarters of HR professionals wrongly define “disability” as something that is primarily physical, overlooking the needs of many potential or existing employees with mental disabilities. Employers can register online for the free educational certificate program, developed by the SHRM Foundation. Jeff Clabaugh has spent 20 years covering the Washington regions economy and financial markets for WTOP as part of a partnership with the Washington Business Journal, and officially joined the WTOP newsroom staff in January 2016. ",3,https://wtop.com/business-finance/2020/03/disability-discrimination-complaints-now-top-race-discrimination/,FALSE, 1076,"Twitter expands hateful conduct rules to ban dehumanizing speech around age, disability and now, disease"," Last year, Twitter expanded its rules around hate speech to include dehumanizing speech against religious groups. Today, Twitter says it’s expanding its rule to also include language that dehumanizes people on the basis of their age, disability or disease. The latter, of course, is a timely addition given that the spread of the novel coronavirus COVID 19 has led to people making hateful and sometimes racist remarks on Twitter related to this topic. Twitter says that tweets that broke this rule before today will need to be deleted, but those won’t result in any account suspensions because the rules were not in place at that time. However, any tweets published from now on will now have to abide by Twitter’s updated hateful conduct policy. This overarching policy includes rules about hateful conduct meaning promoting violence or making threats as well as the use of hateful imagery and display names. We continuously examine our rules to help make Twitter safer. Last year we updated our Hateful Conduct policy to address dehumanizing speech, starting with one protected category: religious groups. Now, we’re expanding to three more: age, disease and disability. For more info: Twitter Safety March 5, 2020The policy already includes a ban on dehumanizing speech across a range of categories, including also race, ethnicity, national origin, caste, sexual orientation, gender and gender identity. The policy has expanded over time as Twitter has tried to better encompass the many areas where it wants to ban hateful speech and conduct on its platform. One issue with Twitter’s hateful conduct policy is that it’s not able to keep up with enforcement due to the volume of tweets that are posted. In addition, its reliance on having users flag tweets for review means hate speech removal is handled reactively, rather than proactively. Twitter has also been heavily criticized for not properly enforcing its policies and allowing the online abuse to continue. In today’s announcement, Twitter freely admits to these and other problems. It also notes it has since done more in depth training and extended its testing period to ensure reviewers better understand how and when to take action, as well as how to protect conversations within marginalized groups. And in 2106, it created a Trust and Safety Council to help it better understand the nuances and context around complex categories, like race, ethnicity and national origin. Unfortunately, Twitter’s larger problem is that it has operated for years as a public town square where users have felt relatively free to express themselves without using a real identity where they’re held accountable for their words and actions. There are valid cases for online anonymity including how it allows people to more freely communicate under oppressive regimes, for example. But the flip side is that it emboldens some people to make statements that they otherwise wouldn’t and without any social repercussions. That’s not how it works in the real world. Plus, any time Twitter tries to clamp down on hateful speech and conduct, it’s accused of clamping down on free speech as if its social media platform is a place that’s protected by the U. S. Constitution’s First Amendment. According to the U. S. courts, that’s not how it works. In fact, a U. S. court recently ruled that YouTube wasn’t a public forum, meaning it didn’t have to guarantee users’ rights to free speech. That sets a precedent for other social platforms as well, Twitter included. Twitter for years has struggled to get more people to sign up and participate. But it has simultaneously worked against its own goal by not getting a handle on the abuse on its network. Instead, it’s testing new products disappearing Stories, for example that it hopes will encourage more engagement. In reality, better enforced policies would do the trick. The addition of educational prompts in the Compose screen similar to those on Instagram that alert users to content that will likely get reported or removed are also well overdue. ",3,https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/05/twitter-bans-hate-speech-around-age-disability-and-in-the-wake-of-the-coronavirus-outbreak-disease/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAFPrIkANecE5_95KYnSZXg5aOvykL9KQekRlRNkrVhcjlvQ-vD9fy-sdPMk35fWbaTYnU19akEJW7tMWUjN8QDW8EM6ywq-RBq5mdMazTRvZxTo8S0_Lo_DNlpaQHbrraIzjIulgZRhdfkc_L1KFEuqr3vpsHQL-EZA1PmuGzvHX,FALSE, 1077,"30 years after Americans with Disabilities Act, college students with disabilities say law is not enough","Kyle Cox was on his way to class during an ice storm in January 2019 when an outdoor wheelchair elevator at Texas A&M University malfunctioned. For 30 minutes, Cox, a graduate student, was trapped outside with sleet pelting him on an unseasonably frigid day in College Station. Building staff draped him in blankets and coats while they worked to free him from the handicap accessible lift designed to help disabled students access the building with ease. By the time he had cleaned up and composed himself, class was over. Cox, 24, of El Paso, Texas, who is pursuing a masters in public administration, is hearing impaired and has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which requires him to use a wheelchair. While school officials work to make Texas A&M accessible to people with disabilities, Cox says he still faces challenges navigating the campus. “Problems like this do happen on campus and I end up missing class or getting there late even when I leave sometimes up to an hour before class to give myself enough time to make it. ” he said. The school said in a statement that it strives to be welcoming to people with disabilities, saying it works to be “proactive in addressing accessibility needs as well as to respond as quickly as possible when individuals report problems. ”But Cox says there’s more to be done. “Yes, there’s an elevator for wheelchair users but it doesn’t help if it’s broken, or if paths are blocked, or if I’m sitting in the wheelchair seating in the back during a speech which I can’t hear because of my hearing impairment. ”This year marks 30 years since the Americans’ with Disabilities Act was enacted and while significant strides have been made to accommodate students with disabilities at colleges and universities across the country, some students and disability advocates say the law doesn’t go far enough to meet the needs of the disabled. The number of college students with disabilities has steadily increased over the years, and now makes up a significant population of the national student body. Nearly 20 percent of undergraduates reported having a disability in 2016, and nearly 90 percent of colleges and universities reported enrolling students with disabilities in 2011. Under the ADA, public and private colleges and universities must provide equal access to postsecondary education for students with disabilities, but there is room for interpretation. If an institution can prove that making the accommodations and modifications would constitute an undue financial or administrative burden, the alterations aren’t required. Every institution of higher education provides disability services and accommodations in its own way, with its own interpretation of laws, said Wendy Harbour, associate executive director for programs and development at the Association on Higher Education And Disability. “A student might be disabled at one college but not another, based on how they use documentation of students’ disabilities, Harbour said. Or one campus may offer tutoring or special programs for students with some disabilities, and others don’t. “There is no national training, certification or licensure for professionals providing disability services and accommodations,” she continued. Students with disabilities at several institutions across the country, including Princeton, the University of Maryland, the University of Georgia and the University of Minnesota, have reported a wide array of challenges. NBC News spoke with over a dozen college students with various disabilities who said that they have faced significant difficulty with accessibility and accommodation beyond just physical barriers, and that this has affected their sense of belonging on campus. Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore follows the guidelines of ADA by labeling room numbers in Braille to accommodate blind students, but freshman McClain Hermes says that without including the office names, the accommodation is of little help. ",3,https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/30-years-after-americans-disability-act-college-students-disabilities-say-n1138336,FALSE, 1078,Exploring Disability Politics And “Four Freedoms” For People With Disabilities," Universal Images Group via ImagesWhat do disabled people want?Those of us who have disabilities ask ourselves this all the time. Our families, teachers, and service providers ask much the same thing, though not always in the same way or from quite the same angle. The question of what disabled people want also has extra resonance and urgency this year, as candidates for President, and soon for Congress, state, and local offices try to figure out what to say about disability issues. Politicians have taken stands and positions on disability issues before, and made some promises too. But this election year is arguably the first time several major candidates have spent real time and effort crafting complex positions on disability issues. You can find links to Presidential candidates’ disability policies by visiting these pages:There is a lot to digest, and that’s a welcomed improvement over previous elections. The most we used to hear on disability issues was vague pledges of support, and maybe one or two solid policy positions. Not all of this year’s candidates have put in the same level of consultation and detail yet, but overall they address a much wider range of issues, and in greater depth, than ever before. On the other hand, what’s on those websites today is what candidates say they want to do, for and with disabled voters. The question remains … broadly speaking, across all other political, ideological, demographic, and economic categories, what do disabled people really want?Since it is an election year, it seems appropriate to look for some direction and inspiration to the United States’ most unambiguously disabled President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Roosevelt was a full time wheelchair user through his Governorship of New York and his presidency. He contracted Polio in 1921 and never walked again unaided. He was elected President in 1932 and served until his death in 1945. In his January 6, 1941 State Of The Union address, as war raged in Europe and Asia, President Roosevelt mapped out a broad vision for a postwar world. It became known as the “Four Freedoms” speech, because in it Roosevelt outlined four “Freedoms” he believed should apply worldwide, for all people: Freedom of speech Freedom of worship Freedom from want Freedom from fearIt wasn’t a list of bills to advocate or oppose, programs to fund, borders to set and defend, or narrow fixes for every constituency. It was a statement of principles and goals, centered on the ideal of “Freedom. ”On a side note, it’s both ironic and somehow fitting that because of barriers built into its design, the Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island, New York City, which prominently features words and images of FDR, was sued in 2017 for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act and New York State accessibility codes. The suit was settled later the same year with an agreement to make and maintain accessibility improvements thereby ensuring greater freedom of movement for people with disabilities visiting a site honoring freedom and a wheelchair using President. “Freedom” is a powerful idea for everyone. Roosevelt’s “four freedoms” apply just as much to people with disabilities as to anyone else. But “freedom” is also a uniquely important word in disability culture. It may be second only to “Independence” in holding unique meaning and emotional resonance for people with disabilities. “Free Our People” is a key slogan of ADAPT, historically one of the most prominent and influential disability activist organizations in the U. S. It’s a simple phrase, almost bland. But imagine the alternatives: “Help Our People” “Save Our People” “Protect Our People”Focusing on “Freedom” is significant. It sends a distinct message, and firmly underscores the disability community’s priority on liberation over all other goals, even worthy ones like safety and security. But does “Freedom” really cover all of our needs and ambitions?",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2020/03/04/exploring-disability-politics-and-four-freedoms-for-people-with-disabilities/?sh=6684f73119c4,FALSE, 1079,"Disability Innovation: 3 Pitfalls To Avoid, 5 Tips For Success"," You’re disabled. Someone in your family has a disability. Or maybe you are just naturally motivated to help disabled people live better lives. And you have an idea . . . a brilliant idea that’s going to change the lives of people with disabilities and make a real name for yourself. The thing about innovation in the world of disability is that there are some very specific ways it tends to go wrong. Unrealistic expectations, poor planning, and inadequate market research are bad for any new venture. But new products, initiatives, and service models intended to benefit people with disabilities are both tantalizingly easy to think of, and depressingly likely to fail or fizzle out. So before launching that brilliant new “game changer” idea that’s going to revolutionize disabled people’s lives, it’s helpful to identify some of the most distinctive ways such projects go off the rails or fail to thrive. 1. Inventions that look cool and exciting, but aren’t very usefulEvery few months, we see a round of stories about some new high tech product in development, or just about to hit it big, that’s going to “solve” a basic problem for people with disabilities, particularly those with mobility impairments. They generate a certain amount of excitement, but also skepticism and backlash. The problem is that these new products are often awesome, but impractical, and usually unaffordable for most disabled people. They also illustrate the subtle divide between two different responses to disability between masking or overcoming specific impairments, and making everyday life with disabilities easier. Two insightful articles illustrate this point. Rose Eveleth writes in The Atlantic about “The Hidden Burden of Exoskeletons for the Disabled,” about the downsides to the development of electronically powered suits intended to give people with spinal cord injury a mechanical way to regain movement and mobility. And in Vox. com, s. e. smith writes critically about stair climbing wheelchairs and other devices that “disability advocate and design strategist Liz Jackson” terms “disability dongles,” in an article titled “Disabled people don’t need more fancy new gadgets. We just need more ramps. ” The titles alone of these two articles perfectly capture the problem disabled people have with so many technological innovations meant to help them. While some people with physical disabilities do thirst for high tech ways to walk, like exo skeletons, what most of them really want in a more immediate way is better, more affordable wheelchairs, and more accessible buildings and neighborhoods. And although stair climbing wheelchairs are of course clever and intriguing on a purely novelty level, for many wheelchair users they are out of reach and annoyingly beside the point.  The core problem with most of these futuristic innovations is that they represent a non disabled idea of what disabled people really need and want. They stem from misplaced priorities and a lack of understanding of what’s most useful and attainable for actual disabled people. Our notions of “defeating” disability are typically quite fleeting and abstract, while we focus more seriously on immediate, everyday needs and barriers. As both Eveleth and smith point out, some of these “gee whiz” inventions even threaten to undermine more broadly relevant advocacy goals, like full accessibility. 2. Starting new projects that others are already doingA similar lack of perspective, though of a different kind, complicates needed efforts of disability advocacy. Disabled people in particular see scores of problems that could be, should be solved through creative approaches and campaigns. And quite admirably, some of us “step up” and try. The problem is that quite often, disabled people and even disability organizations pursue similar, campaigns and projects in isolation. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2020/02/29/disability-innovation-3-pitfalls-to-avoid-5-tips-for-success/?sh=10c4f8b26874,TRUE, 1081,5 Tips For Job-Hunting Individuals With A Disability," Finding a job that’s the right fit is difficult. It’s even harder if you are one of the millions of Americans with a disability. As motivated, qualified and determined as individuals with disabilities may be, discrimination and incorrect stereotypes remain a persistent barrier to this group’s entrance into the workforce. The job application and job interview process is the perfect place to put those myths to rest and prove doubters wrong. Individuals with disabilities can do just that by:1. Highlighting their own abilities. Success starts with choosing a role that suits someone’s knowledge, expertise and interests, so individuals can enter into any potential employment situation with confidence. I work with many people who are unsure if it’s a good idea to reference their disability on a resume. Unless it affects their ability to effectively perform essential job functions, there is no reason to do so. Instead, individuals should take every possible chance, whether on a resume or in an interview, to remind employers why they are the right fit for a job. They should note their skills and experience, and continuously express their excitement to become a capable part of the team. 2. Refusing to answer inappropriate and illegal questions. While we have come a long way in disability rights, there’s still a lot of confusion about interview dos and don’ts – and I’m not just talking about what to wear or what key words or phrases to include. As far as interview content goes, if someone has a disability, they are not legally required to disclose it to an employer. Under the Americans with Disabilities Act , an employer cannot legally ask if someone has a disability before making a job offer. If an employer does ask, rather than reacting negatively, an individual with a disability should divert the question by asking in reply, “Is that a legal question to ask in an interview?” If they are persistent and continue to push for an answer, that may be an indicator of an noninclusive work environment individuals are better off avoiding. However, it’s important to note that once a conditional offer is made, the employer can ask questions about an individual’s health, disability, limitations, and even require that someone have a medical examination. These questions are completely legal as long as the employer treats all the candidates the same. 3. Addressing gaps in work history. It’s okay to be honest with a potential employer and let them know that the reason one had to stop working was because of a serious decline in health. This is true especially if it prompted them to apply for Social Security Disability Insurance benefits. This is a perfectly reasonable situation that employers should understand. After making that brief explanation, individuals should focus on highlighting their work history and the experience they had prior to taking a leave from work. In my work with SSDI recipients, I’ve found that the majority are older individuals who have more than 20 years of work experience and industry knowledge – valuable assets that put many individuals with disabilities ahead of other candidates. 4. Knowing what accommodations one needs to work efficiently. Let employers know about the technologies and accommodations that help you work efficiently. Need a standing desk? Flexible work hours? The opportunity to work remotely? Screen reading software? Whatever accommodations an individual with a disability may need, the sooner they make a potential employer aware, the better. Only 40% of employers are confident about how to implement disability accommodations, and many think these accommodations are way more expensive than reality. A report from the Job Accommodation Network under the U. S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy found that 57% of accommodations don’t cost businesses anything, and the rest are typically under $500. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulamorgan/2020/02/25/5-tips-for-job-hunting-individuals-with-a-disability/?sh=4d5cc3d18049,TRUE, 1082,Self-Help Or Activism: A Fundamental Divide In The Disability Community," It shouldn’t be a surprise, but it’s helpful to remember that disabled people don’t always agree or get along with each other, even about disability itself and how to deal with its problems. Here is a fairly typical exchange between two disabled people . . . A: “Last night I went to that restaurant everyone’s talking about, and when I got there I couldn’t get in because there are two steps at the entrance and no ramp! We should do a campaign or protest to get them to comply with accessibility standards. ”B: “Well, you can’t expect everything to be accessible every time. I always double checked the accessibility before going there, and if it’s not going to be accessible, I go somewhere else. Anyway, nobody’s going to appreciate it if we try to publicly shame a new small business. ”Here’s another …A: “I lost my job because my boss and coworkers didn’t want to deal with my disability. We need stronger enforcement of disability rights in the workplace. ”B: “We already have the ADA. What more do you expect? When I first started my job, I made sure to explain my disability to everyone in a calm, comfortable way. Maybe you should get some training or counseling on how to ask for accommodations and defuse ableist behavior. ”And another …A: “My monthly disability check isn’t enough to live on. The amounts we get are way overdue for an increase. ”B: “There’s no way the government is going to give us more money, when most taxpayers think they should be cutting spending. I rely on benefits too, but I make it work through part time work, and control my spending. You should get some help with budgeting and money management. ”What’s going on here? What is the best strategy for disabled people who want better lives more freedom, respect, and financial security? Is there a fundamental conflict between disabled people improving themselves, and fighting against ableism and injustice? Do exchanges like these reflect opposite and opposing views, or just differences in emphasis and communication styles?Arguably, there are even competition slogans:Self Help: “The only disability in life is a bad attitude!”Activism: “Nothing about us without us!”One of the main apparent fault lines running through the disability community separates two basic approaches to disability and the barriers disabled people regularly encounter. There is no official term for them, because they aren’t formal categories. But it’s probably not too far off the mark to call the two approaches “Self Help” and “Activism. ”Self Help“Self Help” is mostly self explanatory. It’s about helping yourself. It’s about tackling the problems and barriers you face as personal challenges to overcome through your own individual effort and personal growth. For disabled people, it is grounded partly in the “Medical Model” of disability in which disability is mainly something to be overcome by disabled people themselves, not really a social problem for anyone else except family and certain medical and educational professionals. Examples of Self Help perspectives on disability include:Whatever the problem, in the Self Help approach it is essentially up to each disabled person to figure out a solution for themselves. This has two advantages. First, it is immediate, practical, and concrete, and therefore generally easier for most people to learn and understand compared to more abstract philosophies and complicated social goals. Second, it is optimistic. Self Help assumes that you can solve your own disability related problems. Success is fundamentally in your hands, and you don’t have to wait for people to change their minds, or for Congress to change laws. At the same time, by placing responsibility for success in your hands, the Self Help approach implicitly saddles you with the blame for problems that you aren’t able to fix. You are responsible for your own unhappiness, since in the Self Help view, there is always something more you should be able to do. This can lead very quickly from buoyant optimism to crushing defeat, and sense of very personal moral failure. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2020/02/23/self-help-or-activism-a-fundamental-divide-in-the-disability-community/?sh=25d5d12d6ece,FALSE, 1083,Six Key Character Traits Of A Disability Inclusion Leader," Photo:An inclusive workplace doesn’t happen overnight. Organizations must actively work to make it inclusive for differently abled people. Leaders, in particular, must create an inclusive work culture that recognizes unique talents, traits and the expertise of people with disabilities. Inclusive leadership not only encourages each team member to voice their thoughts, but research has also revealed that it leads to better business performance. A Bersin by Deloitte study found that companies embracing inclusion and diversity in all business aspects statistically outperform their competitors to achieve 2. 3 times higher cash flow per employee. A leader who encourages disability inclusion has several character traits that separate them from regular business leaders. Here’s how theyre different:1. Respect For IndividualityInclusive leaders always embrace and respect individuals’ ideas and differences in opinion. They factor in the inputs from both neurotypical individuals and those who are differently abled. Its a person’s skills, abilities and attitude and not their physical or mental state of being that make them who they are. Leaders who support disability inclusion don’t differentiate on the basis of a person’s physical or mental impairment. Importantly, management researcher Kristie Rogers has found that employees who feel respected are more satisfied with their employer. 2. PatienceA disability inclusion leader is gifted with the virtue of patience. Some differently abled employees may take a longer time to complete their work. No matter how long it takes, an inclusive leader allows the necessary time. Having a nice sense of humor often helps. While work has to be carried out seriously, a cheerful workplace environment goes a long way in empowering differently abled people to attain success. 3. CuriosityOpen mindedness, along with a passion to learn and relearn, is the hallmark of an inclusive leader. Each day presents us with new information on how a worker with a disability can contribute better to an organization. Disability inclusion leaders keep abreast of emerging ideas and work to eliminate their blind spots. They actively listen to their differently abled team members and synthesize a range of ideas that make them feel respected, valued and represented. 4. A Collaborative MindsetInclusive leaders understand that for a successful collaboration, all team members should be encouraged to share their perspectives. An environment in which both neurotypical and differently abled employees feel empowered promotes open thinking. Diversity of thought is a critical component of effective collaboration; its about forging oneness among the team so that all members can work toward a common goal. 5. Intuitive NatureA differently abled team member may find it difficult to express themselves during a group activity. They may at times feel confused or overwhelmed. This is where an inclusive leader comes in, using their intuitive skills to help the worker feel comfortable and included. Such leaders also sport a calm temperament while working with all team members and group dynamics. 6. Challenging The Status QuoDisability inclusion leaders are never hesitant to challenge entrenched organizational attitudes and prejudices. They push boundaries and, at the same time, are never afraid to acknowledge their limitations. They seek contributions from all members to achieve team goals. Given the unique skills, capabilities and personalities of each individual with a disability, there are no exhaustive rules for all cases. A disability inclusion leader, therefore, needs to be flexible in their approach and willing to adapt to the dynamics of an always changing workplace and its constituent components. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbeshumanresourcescouncil/2020/02/25/six-key-character-traits-of-a-disability-inclusion-leader/?sh=1575d2ea17e5,TRUE, 1085,Series explores lived experiences around ability and disability," Explore campus at your own pace. Expanding W&Ms reach, educating for impact and evolving to excel. Celebrating the work of W&M faculty, staff and students. Find team highlights, scores, info and how were {em}All In{/em} for the Tribe. Nothing about us without us. That’s one of the mantras of the disability rights movement and a sentiment that helped frame the first in a series of discussions about ability and disability taking place this month at William & Mary. “Another common phrase in the disability rights movement is disability rights are human rights and disability rights are civil rights,” said Professor of Practice Christina Jones. “These seem obvious, but they point to the inhumane and uncivil ways that people with disabilities have been treated in the not too distant past. ”Jones is the director of the PELE Special Education Advocacy Law Clinic at W&M Law School. She is also the cousin of a young woman with autism, and she became a person with a disability herself last year when she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. Jones was one of dozens of people who shared their stories in small group discussions Feb. 13 during the first session of this year’s Daily Work of Justice series. Sponsored by the Office of Community Engagement, the series “invites people directly involved in an issue to share their lived experience, as a way of providing space for others to engage with empathy, understanding and action,” according to its website. This year’s series is co sponsored by The Arc of Greater Williamsburg, which serves adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Two faculty members and a student with a disability were also part of the committee that planned the series. “William & Mary has been the backbone of support for The Arc for over 40 years,” said Executive Director Pam McGregor. “We have had the benefit of incredible faculty and student volunteer support, interns, athletic teams, the Best Buddies and the Pi Phi women’s fraternity who serve as tutors for our literacy program. With the support of William & Mary over the years, we have thrived and enriched the lives of many of our Arc clients and family members. ”All of the sessions are held from 6:30 to 8 p. m. in the Sadler Center’s Tidewater Room. The next is planned for Feb. 20 and will focus on people who work within systems to support those with disabilities. The third, scheduled for Feb. 27, will center on advocates, policy makers and community leaders who work toward change. The sessions are free and open to the public, but attendees are asked to register online. For participants who are living with a disability, they have an opportunity to tell their story, have their voice heard and share a perspective a non disabled person would not have, said McGregor. “For a community member listening, they gain insight, understanding, and an awareness of the challenges and realities of living a life with a disability. The participants also have an opportunity to see how a person with a disability has many abilities and has goals and dreams like everyone else. ”“The goal of DWOJ is to break down barriers and misconceptions about people with a disability and to raise awareness of the many ways a community can embrace and empower these amazing people. ”Jones opened the first session saying that disability presents itself differently in each person. “We recognize the many ways people in this room contribute to our campus and our world,” Jones said. “We strive to make our campus more accessible, our programs more inclusive and opportunities more widespread, knowing that it benefits us all. ",3,https://www.wm.edu/news/stories/2020/series-features-lived-experiences-of-those-with-ability-and-disability.php,TRUE, 1086,Institute for Disability Studies Leaders to Promote Self-Advocacy in Kenya,"The University of Southern Mississippi’s Institute for Disability Studies has been awarded a mini grant to increase self advocacy awareness among youth and young adults with disabilities in Kenya. The award is funded through the Professional Fellows Program on Inclusive Disability Employment . PFP IDE is sponsored by the U. S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and administered by the Association of University Centers on Disabilities in partnership with the Institute for Community Inclusion at the University of Massachusetts Boston and Humanity & Inclusion. The mini grant will help IDS facilitate in person training for STEP UP International. Two young adult leaders Taylor Carley, IDS’ Self Advocacy Coordinator, and Nathan Hatten, an alumnus of several IDS Transition to Adulthood programs, have been selected to help lead this training. Carley and Hatten will travel to Kenya and share their personal stories and promote self advocacy and leadership skills for Kenyans with disabilities. Both are leaders in the Starting Today Empowering Peers through Uniting and Participating Council which celebrated its 12th anniversary in January. The STEP UP Advisory Council is composed of youth and young adults with and without disabilities. Council members serve as leaders within their schools, colleges/universities and communities. The Council focuses on issues facing all young people including leadership, self advocacy, transition, health care, education, employment, and recreation. Carley notes, “I am excited about going to Africa and sharing my passion for disability equality. My personal quote is that disability is an ability, and I am like everyone else. I can’t wait to share how I am reaching my dreams and inspire youth there to do the same. ” Since 2017, the Professional Fellows Program has supported opportunities for mid career professionals to participate in five week intensive international fellowships at a university based research and education center for disabilities in the U. S. The first year focused on fellow areas connected to the Americans with Disability Act and all fellows since 2018 have focused on inclusive employment. IDS was selected to host fellows from Kenya in both 2017 and 2018 and IDS’ Associate Director, Dr. Jerry R. Alliston, was selected as an outbound fellow to provide employment training and technical assistance in Nairobi and Mombasa, Kenya in November 2018. Since that time, IDS has continued providing assistance through on line training and guidance. “It has been a pleasure for us to assist our colleagues in Kenya to meet the needs of individuals with disabilities, specifically through the development of a self advocacy group in Mombasa and plans to establish additional groups across Kenya” said Alliston. Alliston, Carley and Hatten will collaborate with 2018 International Fellow Vincent Ogutu, a disability employment specialist in Nairobi, Kenya representing Cheshire Disability Services Kenya . In addition, self advocacy training will be coordinated through 2017 ADA Fellow Nuala Alibhai, the Learning Student Support Coordinator for junior and seniors at the Aga Khan Academy Mombasa. During the training, Nathan plans to share his personal motto to “Never give up. Keep striving to do your best and work towards your goals. ” ",3,https://www.usm.edu/news/2020/release/ids-leaders-promote-self-advocacy.php,TRUE, 1087,First Coast senator wants to end disability discrimination in organ donation," A senator from right here on the First Coast is advocating for the fair distribution of vital life saving organs.  Sen. Aaron Bean, who represents Nassau County and parts of Duval, filed a bill last year that would prohibit doctors and other entities from denying people organ transplants based on an individual’s disability. The issue was originally reported on by Everitt Rosen of Fresh Take Florida, who says that twelve states already have such laws in place. Many of those states have made the case that the practice is discriminatory. However, other lawmakers have concerns about the success rates of these procedures and the overall quality of life they provide.  A 2004 survey, detailed in a report from the National Council on Disability, found that only 52% of people with disabilities who requested a referral to a specialist regarding an organ transplant actually received a referral.  And 35% of those “for whom a transplant had been suggested” never even received an evaluation. Beans bill hopes to crack down on medical facilities that deny organ transplant services like evaluation, surgery and counseling to those diagnosed with disabilities. Read the full bill. More than 113,000 people, including children, are currently the national transplant waiting list. For more info about organ donation resources, check out OrganDonor. gov. Next up in 5Example video title will go here for this videoIn Other NewsNotifications can be turned off anytime in the browser settings. ",3,https://www.firstcoastnews.com/article/life/first-coast-senator-wants-to-end-disability-discrimination-in-organ-donation/77-9d814820-c378-4c8d-84a7-cd4fe9eed9d2,FALSE, 1090,The Invitation ‘Come As You Are’ Gives To Disability,"Wong and Actor Hayden Szeto attend SAG AFTRA Foundation Conversations presents Come As You Are at SAG AFTRA Foundation Screening Room on February 11, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. After the success of The Peanut Butter Falcon earlier this year it’s been wondered where the next film looking at disabled representation will come from. Though movies are slowly attempting to discuss disability or, in even smaller cases, hire disabled performers, there are still clear cut topics that are perceived as taboo. In the case of the new feature Come As You Are, a movie that frankly discusses sex and disability is breaking all manner of barriers. Director Richard Wong, star and producer Grant Rosenmeyer, and the subject the film is based on, Asta Philpot, sat down to discuss their indie darling and the struggles to discuss the interrelationships between disability and sex. Grant Rosenmeyer: What really excited me was the script by Eric Linthorst. I came to it back in 2013. I was in a Writers Workshop with Eric while he was developing the script for the American producers who were remaking the Belgian film, which was based on Asta’s life. Eric tapped me on the shoulder one day when I was 22 years old and he was like, “hey, youre an actor, right? Are you coming back next week because youd be really good to read the lead in this script Im developing called Come as You Are. ” He tells me the story and Im like, “thats the wildest logline Ive ever heard, how fun and different. ” I love road movies; I love this style of comedy, but the way in was through these three guys and Ive never seen that before. Theres something so poignant about it and so heartwarming, it also is so funny. Just knowing Eric has a child with a disability added another layer to it. It was such a special project and then seeing the documentary that Asta was in for the BBC, For One Night Only. Hes such a special human being. It was a no brainer. But it also took years to come together and I didnt understand what the holdup was in Hollywood for this story. Richard Wong: I had heard about it from a friend of mine and, much like Grant, when I heard the logline I was like, “Whoa, that sounds up my alley. ” If you watch my other films the connective tissue [is] movies about a community condition, and movies about regular people with regular problems and obstacles they have to overcome; the human condition and the things we all have in common. We all have our obstacles that are different but it connects us and is essentially what being human is all about. When I heard about the story and read it and ultimately fell in love with it, it was something that naturally attracted me because those are the kinds of stories Im interested in. I love movies that are not exactly high stakes but the stakes mean so much to those characters that it is high stakes. I love those slice of life movies and movies where you can jump into someones world for a minute and gain a new understanding of different kinds of people and different kinds of obstacles that they have. Asta Philpot: No, not at all. When I first did the BBC documentary I decided to do it because my friend died without ever having that sexual experience and its something we always talked about, me and my friends from school. After that I thought nobody with a disability should not have this experience because every human being should have [physical] contact and feel that connection with another human being. The feedback from the BBC documentary has been incredible and Im so happy with the movie Grant and Richard created. Its my lifelong passion to help people and make people happy in my position. Ive got a lot more to offer. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/kristenlopez/2020/02/13/the-invitation-come-as-you-are-gives-to-disability/?sh=4c8e83b5d7cc,TRUE, 1093,UMD needs a disability studies department," Symbols used to mark areas and services accessible for persons with certain disabilities. Photo courtesy of National Park Service. Views expressed in opinion columns are the author’s own. The University of Maryland touts fearless ideas and innovation, especially in science and technology. But why not try to be on the forefront of progress in the humanities as well? Disability studies, which emerged as an academic field in the 1980s, can still be greatly expanded and it would benefit this university to contribute to that growth. Disability studies, like women’s and gender studies, sit at the intersection of disciplines in both science and the humanities. It focuses on the use of different lenses and theories to understand the way our society views disability and how those perceptions and policies can be harmful or productive.  About a month ago, the students of the group ASL NOW launched a petition to convince the University of Maryland to start an American Sign Language major. Garnering over 1,000 signatures, the petition demonstrates the need for such a major and a department to house it. It would also be one way to kickstart a robust disability studies program. Currently, the university only offers a disability studies minor, but it’s housed in the education college and has no formal department of its own. While Syracuse University has the oldest disability studies program, founded in 1994, other colleges, like Ohio State University and the University of California, Berkeley have also developed their own. Classes in this field might look like “Disability Law, Policy, and the Community,” or “Disability in Global and Comparative Perspective,” both of which are offered at the University of Washington. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of disability studies, it would open the door to more collaboration between STEM and the humanities. This university already encourages this interaction through programs like the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities. A full disability studies department with its own faculty could provide a clear space for such interaction using humanities lenses in conjunction with, for example, hearing and speech sciences, could place this university at the forefront of research in this area.  Another reason to create a disability studies department or major is that more students would take these topics more seriously. In my experience, our few ASL classes are often at maximum capacity because students see them as an easy way to fulfill a language requirement or as an easy class to fill their schedule. There’s nothing wrong with taking ASL classes for those reasons, but having a department dedicated to disability studies would allow the classes to be a gateway to learning more about the field and community as a whole.  And, much like our women’s studies department, most students don’t really understand the full potential of this field. As a women’s studies major, I’ve had plenty of people ask me for clarification on what the field even is or how I plan to use my degree.  Many people don’t realize that having a degree in disability studies, women’s studies or any related field gives you a variety of analytical perspectives through which to examine any other problem. Having experience in these fields ensures that you, in whatever profession, are empathetic, socially conscious and well rounded in your work. It can inform policy, create better health care practices and help produce a more equitable society overall.  This university has the resources to fund important research in this field and establish a dedicated new department. Disability studies could offer students an enhanced education and enrich academia this university would do well to contribute to it. ",3,https://dbknews.com/2020/02/02/umd-asl-major-disability-studies-department/,TRUE, 1095,It’s Time To Explore The Unique And Conflicting Narratives Of Disability Issues," In at least one way, disability issues are the same as any other issue. Facts and details are important, but they don’t explain the full range of debated approaches and priorities. Powerful narratives are also involved … some truthful and drawn from genuine, lived experience of disability, others dishonest or based on fear and prejudice. The increased prominence of disability issues in the 2020 Election campaign makes understanding these narratives more important than ever. Here are four disability issues that are getting some attention right now, along with suggestions about the competing disability narratives that lie underneath the facts, assertions, and arguments of each one. 1. Social Security Disability and SSIWhile Social Security itself is in general highly valued by people with disabilities, most agree that its disability programs are long overdue for reform. But disabled people, and others who look closely at Social Security, have vastly different ideas of what, exactly, needs to be changed. There are currently two dominant models: to narrow eligibility and serve fewer people, in order to preserve the program for the disabled people who “really need them” … or, to significantly expand and extend benefits, specifically by allowing disabled recipients to work, earn, and save a lot more than current rules allow, ultimately making disabled people more financially secure and fulfilled. These two very different ideas of Social Security Disability reform are at least partially animated by two very different narratives:Social Security Disability’s finances are out of control. Social Security is an important program, but it is threatened by cheating and lax eligibility standards. Too many people who aren’t really disabled are able to collect Social Security. This puts “truly” disabled people at risk of losing benefits someday if the program goes bankrupt. Or . . . Disabled people should be able to work and save without losing benefits. Social Security is financially essential for millions of disabled people. But its current medical and financial eligibility rules trap disabled people in poverty. Fear of losing benefits deters many disabled people from even trying to work, and when they do work they have to worry constantly about crossing arbitrary thresholds and losing benefits. Benefits are too low in general, and rules should be changed to allow disabled people who become able to work to work longer, earn more, and save more money without losing benefits. While these two narratives lead to opposite proposals, it’s interesting to note that they each look at a quite different “problem” with Social Security. Driven largely by the first narrative, the Trump Administration has proposed changes that would increase the frequency of Continuing Disability Reviews, in an effort to cut social security rolls and spending. Meanwhile, Presidential candidates Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren have both put forward plans to solidify benefits for disabled people who work. 2. Long Term Services and SupportsPeople with disabilities who need ongoing help with basic everyday tasks … like bathing, dressing, going to the bathroom, cooking, housekeeping, or just moving around . . . usually rely a variety of services broadly known as “long term services and supports. ” But while in theory these services belong to a single category, serving a single basic purpose, they actually differ a great deal. Long term services and supports in practice tend to reflect one of two different sets of priorities: health, safety, and control … or freedom, self direction, and integration. Details of each person’s services and choices typically involve a unique and personal combination of medical, practical, financial, and administrative factors. However, trends and policies in these services are also heavily influenced by competing narratives of disability and long term care:",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2020/01/27/its-time-to-explore-the-unique-and-conflicting-narratives-of-disability-issues/?sh=767a42e2b69b,TRUE, 1097,Former St. Paul mayoral aide alleges discrimination for her disability,"A former employee in the office of St. Paul Mayor Melvin Carter has filed a discrimination complaint against the city of St. Paul with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, claiming the mayor’s office failed to accommodate her disability. Carter said he was “disheartened” by the situation and will seek an independent investigation. Hope Hoffman said she joined the mayor’s office as a policy associate on June 17. She resigned Oct. 29 and filed her complaint on Tuesday, according to her and city records. On Wednesday, she testified before the state Senate Human Services Reform Finance and Policy Committee, which held a hearing on the treatment of public employees with disabilities. Hoffman, a former intern in Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton’s office and for federal Judge Donovan Frank, said she was born with spina bifida and lives with obvious walking limitations. Among them, she walks with a prosthetic leg as a result of a medical amputation a year ago. Hoffman said among her duties at City Hall, she was required to attend events with the mayor. “This wasn’t an issue until I was scheduled to an event that had no parking and enough walking that almost made me pass out,” she told the committee. “Following the event, I made a request over email that I be informed if events would have limited parking and significant walking. I received no email reply. And when talking with my manager a few days later, they suggested that I could instead Google Earth it and find out myself. ”Hoffman said that after her request, her work duties soon took a turn. “The kind of work I was asked to do changed,” Hoffman said. “I was asked to make quick trips between departments, which they knew would be tiring and difficult for me. I was asked to clean up conference tables with trays and pitchers they knew I couldn’t carry. … They intentionally gave me miscellaneous admin work, without clear direction, so that when I failed, they justified sitting in on all of the meetings I was assigned to in order to make sure that I was, quote, ‘able to do the work. ’ ”Hoffman said she filed a complaint with the city’s Human Resources department but was told to direct her concerns to the city’s Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator, who asked that she put in a formal request for accommodations. Hoffman said she received other assistance during her employment that did not require special documentation proving her disability, such as being allowed to park in the deputy mayor’s parking spot, which is closer to the City Hall entrances than typical street parking. On Wednesday, a spokesman for the Minnesota Department of Human Rights said he could not confirm or deny the existence of a complaint unless an investigation had closed. In a statement, Carter said, “I’ve disheartened our efforts to ensure Ms. Hoffman’s success were not enough to make her feel supported. I am working with city leadership and staff to learn from and prevent this experience from recurring in the future. ”Hoffman’s statements to senators Wednesday followed remarks by two former employees from the Minnesota Department of Human Services who allege their disabilities weren’t accommodated, a topic reported by the Pioneer Press in November. The lead Democrat on the committee is Sen. John Hoffman, DFL Champlin, who is Hope Hoffman’s father. We invite you to use our commenting platform to engage in insightful conversations about issues in our community. We reserve the right at all times to remove any information or materials that are unlawful, threatening, abusive, libelous, defamatory, obscene, vulgar, pornographic, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable to us, and to disclose any information necessary to satisfy the law, regulation, or government request. ",3,https://www.twincities.com/2020/01/22/former-st-paul-mayoral-aide-alleges-discrimination-for-her-disability/,FALSE, 1099,5 Ways To Think About The Complicated Relationship Between Disability And Work," The relationship between people with disabilities and work is important, but also complex and often misunderstood. The high rate of unemployment for people with disabilities is a major problem, and increasing good employment opportunities is a high priority for the disability community. In 2018, the unemployment rate for people with disabilities was 8%, twice the rate for people without disabilities. The employment to population ratio for people with disabilities in December 2019 was 30. 6, compared to 74. 8 for non disabled people. Another sign of the issue’s importance is that so far, four of the candidates currently vying for the 2020 Democratic nomination have endorsed very specific policies related to disability and employment. Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren have all committed to ending the practice of paying less than minimum wage to some disabled workers. Additionally, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Warren have proposed major changes in Social Security Disability rules that would allow disabled people who rely on benefits to work, earn, and save more without losing this support. These and other disability policy ideas assume that, by and large, disabled people want to work, and need help removing barriers to reaching their employment goals. For its part, the Trump Administration is proposing a different kind of change in Social Security, by stepping up the rate and intensity of Continuing Disability Reviews, with the aim of discovering people who maybe shouldn’t be receiving benefits and eliminating them from the rolls. This is also in line with the administration’s ongoing effort to encourage states to adopt work requirements for Medicaid eligibility, a policy direction based partly on the idea that benefits recipients, including some who have disabilities, need to be forced to work through negative incentives. Clearly, we need to think more deeply about what work means for people with disabilities. For a start, here are five things to consider:1. Some disabled people want to work, some don’t. It’s complicated. The first thing to understand is that while no type of disability makes paid employment completely impossible in all cases, any disabled person, at any particular time, may have good reasons for not working, or for making a deliberate, rational decision not to look for a job. For one thing, most disabled people go through times in their lives, usually more than once, when the physical or mental costs of trying to hold a job are just too high, and the sensible thing is to focus on basic survival and health. Plus, the kinds of work that are more compatible with a person’s specific disability may not be in demand, or not in line with a specific disabled person’s skills, training, or qualifications. Freelance writing can be a flexible option for people with fluctuating chronic illness or pain, but not everyone is a good writer. Likewise, job openings for construction workers may be plentiful in a given area during certain times, but those jobs may not be the best match for a wheelchair user. Most disabled people aspire in some way to a satisfying, well paying job and a promising career. But intending to work one day is not the same thing as actually looking for work at any given moment. Again, a sensible approach to financial security and pursuing life goals can include times when a disabled person is quite intentionally not looking for a job. And, while it’s important to recognize that most people with disabilities who are looking for work deserve a chance and can probably do a good job, we also need to acknowledge that there are some disabled people for whom employment may never be a top priority. Disability alone doesn’t determine this, but it can be a factor. The key here is that nobody can tell in advance, once and for all who is and isn’t “capable” of working, and nobody should try. But it’s a possibility that should’t be shied away from. In a society steeped in the work ethic, this is a difficult concept for some people to grasp, even for some with disabilities. Nevertheless, unemployment, underemployment, and inconsistent employment should never be prejudged as a moral failing, for any disabled person, or for disabled people generally. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2020/01/13/5-ways-to-think-about-the-complicated-relationship-between-disability-and-work/?sh=356c6c29586f,FALSE, 1106,4 Ways To Understand The Diversity Of The Disability Community," Accessibility computer iconIt’s not easy to get a handle on what “The Disability Community” thinks. In July of last year, Rutgers University professors Lisa Schur and Douglas Kruse published a report on disabled people’s voting trends in the 2018 elections, which was a followup on a major report they issued on how disabled Americans voted in 2016. A background goal of these reports, one that disability activist groups are particularly interested in, is to try to identify what a “disability voting bloc” might look like and how it might shape not just disability policy, but actual elections. As we enter another big election year, with signs of more voting and political activity by disabled people, is it yet possible for candidates to harness a “disability vote?” Kruse and Schur’s data suggest that disabled Americans are nearly as diverse and politically polarized as the population at large. Disability itself is a widely diverse set of experiences, and disabled people’s views on disability issues fall into several very different patterns.  And it’s not just a puzzle for politicians. How can companies, community organizations, and individuals really know how to treat disabled people in everyday life properly when the disability community itself contains so many different perspectives and opinions? How do disabled people explain ourselves and what “we” want, when we so rarely agree with each other?People with different kinds of disabilities do share significant problems and experiences in common, as well as certain basic priorities, such as physical mobility, the right to make our own decisions, and the struggle for both financial stability and social respect. But then why are there such enormous differences by nearly every measure among the approximately 61 million people with disabilities in the United States?The disability community’s diversity can be confusing, but it’s not incomprehensible. We just need to dig a bit deeper to understand some of the most important differences in experience and thinking among people with disabilities, Here are four worth exploring . . . 1. Types of disabilityThe most obvious differences are between different types of disability. We can think of them in terms of broad categories, like physical, cognitive, sensory, mental health, and learning disabilities. Or we can focus on specific diagnoses, like spinal cord injury, Cerebral Palsy, and chronic pain . . . Down Syndrome and traumatic brain injury . . . blindness and deafness of varying degrees . . . depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia, or dyslexia, ADHD, and autism. Each comes with its own constellation of accompanying strengths and impairments. Each category and specifc type of disability also comes with different ableist stereotypes and intensities of discrimination. Physically disabled people are often seen as either lazy or excessively brave. People with intellectual disabilities tend to be either ridiculed or sentimentalized. People with mental illness are feared. Autism is still widely viewed as an “epidemic” and a tragedy for families. And these stereotypes aren’t only imposed by non disabled people; disabled people do it to each other, too. We often speak with concern and disapproval about a “hierarchy of disability” and “oppression olympics” the habit of people with one kind of disability trying to boost their own legitimacy by disassociating themselves from people with other kinds of impairments, or claiming some kind of higher status or greater degree of stigma and hardship. The most common example is people with physical disabilities minimizing the importance of being in a wheelchair by saying, “At least there’s nothing wrong with my mind!” as if having a cognitive disability was somehow less acceptable. The specific types of disabilities we have powerfully shape how we understand and respond to disability, how we view our place in society, and how we relate to our fellow disabled people. While we all share much in common, the real and perceived differences in perspective and experience can’t be wished away. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2020/01/03/4-ways-to-understand-the-diversity-of-the-disability-community/?sh=5b3e65ad3d3e,TRUE, 1107,Disability community fights for higher wages,"Kyle Stumpf may be different from his co workers, but at Papa John’s, he is treated and paid like any other employee. His biggest asset he brings is his amazing smile, Kyles father Bill Stumpf said. Workers with disabilities can qualify to be paid less than minimum wage, but the disability community is split on whether this helps or hurts them. Kyle used to work at a sheltered workshop, businesses staffed exclusively by those with disabilities. He made only $3 an hour. He had a place to go every day, he was paid a little bit and he was safe, Bill said. But over time, the Stumpfs began to feel the federal labor law, which allows people with disabilities to be paid based on a productivity formula, held their son back. It is the civil rights issue for the disability community right now, Alison Barkoff with the Center for Public Representation said. People with disabilities are not worth less and we cannot have laws that say that. ”Barkoff argues Congress should phase out the special minimum wage and sheltered workforces, like Alaska and New Hampshire did. Bill and Kyle came to Washington, D. C. to push for the same thing, and to show off Kyles success. But not all advocates for the disability community are convinced that is a good idea. “What would happen is people absolutely would lose their jobs over time because there is an economic factor to it. And the people with the most significant disabilities would have fewer opportunities, Kate McSweeny, vice president of government affairs and general counsel at ACCSES, said. If the House Democrats get their way, federal minimum and special minimum wage workers may get a massive raise to $15 an hour. But that appears unlikely to gain traction in the Republican Senate or with President Donald Trump. ",3,https://www.kait8.com/2019/12/26/disability-community-fights-higher-wages/,FALSE, 1108,Ableist Narratives That Poison Disability Policy And Disabled People’s Lives," Stereotype word cloud concept with abstract backgroundJust a few weeks before Christmas, word started to come out that the Trump Administration is proposing to change how Social Security reassesses the ongoing eligibility of Social Security Disability Insurance recipients. The goal is to reduce SSDI rolls by identifying people on SSDI who shouldn’t be … people believed to be likely to “get better,” or people who otherwise should be working. Whatever the specifics of the proposal, and regardless of its actual effects if it is adopted, the effort is largely driven by widespread belief in a specific narrative about disability … that disability benefits cheating and abuse is widespread, and that that thousands, maybe millions of people with a variety of physical or mental conditions don’t actually deserve the benefits and accommodations meant for “real” disabled people. Like many ableist stereotypes and narratives like this, there are small kernels of truth here. SSDI payments did go up, during and just after the Great Recession, suggesting that there may actually be more to some disability determinations than just medical facts. However, this narrative pre existed the recent rise in SSDI, and this ableist story apparently continues to thrive, even though SSDI rolls have since gone down. If it ever was a crisis, it isn’t a crisis now. Yet, the narrative lives on. And in the United Kingdom, a similar story and ideology of “benefits scroungers” has driven over ten years of the most stigmatizing and damaging policies faced by people with disabilities anywhere in the industrialized world. One of the key ways to combat any prejudice is to be able to identify specific prejudicial acts and beliefs when you see them in real life. Ableism is more than negative stereotypes or blanket assessments of disabled people’s character or habits. It is also a collection of shared narratives … or stories … made up of fleeting personal encounters, misapplied value judgments, and lightly substantiated rumors … all of which coalesce into what people “know” about disability and disabled people. What follows are descriptions of four of the most common ableist narratives of disability. To be clear, the statements and examples are meant to illustrate common ableist stereotypes, not approve them. These are faulty, harmful ideas. 1. FakersA lot of people who claim to be “disabled” really aren’t. They use the ambiguity of certain medical or mental conditions to steal benefits and accommodations meant for “really” disabled people. Examples:The most common story is that people in high poverty areas who can’t find work end up going on disability because they also happen to have chronic pain or long term illnesses that might not prevent them from working, but can be used to get them on permanent benefits. People with mental health problems like anxiety and PTSD are believed to use these fluid diagnoses to get financial benefits, or other accommodations like being allowed to take emotional support animals anywhere they want. And then there’s a real favorite … people who park in accessible parking spaces, but sure don’t look disabled. The effect on disabled people:Anyone who uses any disability related benefit or accommodation is subject to shaming or attack by people, institutions, or bureaucracies convinced we are cynically on the make, playing the system. This constantly deters people from using benefits and accommodations that could make their lives easier and more productive. And it keeps those of us who do use benefits in constant danger of having them taken away, based largely on an ideologically driven stereotype. 2. LazySome disabled people aren’t interested in working hard or improving themselves. Instead, they use their disabilities as an excuse for laziness or failure, and expect others to take care of them. Or, if a person does work hard and succeeds, then they can’t really be disabled. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewpulrang/2019/12/27/ableist-narratives-that-poison-disability-policy-and-disabled-peoples-lives/?sh=5e9e6c6937eb,FALSE, 1109,Social Security Administration change in disability rules could cut benefits to tens of thousands," A Trump Administration proposal to require more frequent paperwork reviews of people receiving Social Security disability benefits could cut benefits to tens of thousands of people across the nation. The plan has alarmed advocates for people with disabilities, who say the rules will place older adults and children at risk for losing benefits in a federal program already under scrutiny for taking years to process disability paperwork and wrongly denying qualified applicants. This is kind of at the worlds on fire level in the social security disability world, said Jen Burdick, an advocate for federal disability program reforms who also serves as an attorney with Community Legal Services of Philadelphia. Its really just a backdoor way to cutting people from the program, she said. Social Security Administration officials say the plan is designed to ensure taxpayer funded benefits are going only to those who deserve them. The rule would ensure more frequent checks to verify if someones health has improved enough to go back to work. SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS CHANGES:What Trumps proposed cuts could mean for recipientsWe expect that the changes we are proposing would enhance program integrity and ensure that only those who continue to qualify for benefits will receive them, a statement from the agency said. The agency also expects to save money. The reviews will add $1. 6 billion in administrative costs over the next ten years, but save $2. 8 billion in disability benefits by cutting beneficiaries a saving of about $1. 50 in for every dollar spent. The projected savings, however, are significantly lower than in the past. In its annual report submitted to Congress in August before the new rules were unveiled, the Social Security Administration noted that every dollar spent on disability reviews had yielded $19 dollars in benefit costs. I dont think its a very efficient use of money, said Kathleen Romig, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities who opposes the new rule. Social Security Administration oversees two disability programs, SSI for low income individuals without a work history and SSDI for workers who become disabled. In total, more than 16 million adults and children receive disability benefits, including roughly 170,000 in Tennessee.  To qualify, adults must demonstrate they have a long term medical or psychological condition that prevents them from working. Children are eligible for disability if they are blind or have severe functional limitations that are expected to last a year or result in death. SSI recipients must also be low income. Once on disability, adults and children are subject to continuing disability reviews by Social Security staff. The reviews require recipients to submit medical records and other documents to prove they are still too incapacitated to work. The reviews vary depending on a persons condition. Individuals whose conditions are expected to improve with time  babies born prematurely, for example  are in a category called medical improvement expected and reviewed every six to 18 months. People with debilitating or terminal conditions are in a category called medical improvement not expected and reviewed every five to seven years.  The Social Security Administration is proposing a new category, medical improvement likely that would review some of these recipients every two years. Federal officials estimate they would conduct an additional 4. 4 million reviews over the next decade in this new category if the news rules take effect. The proposal did not estimate how many people would lose benefits, but experts who reviewed the plan calculated that the estimated number of reviews and projected savings reported by the agency would result in tens of thousands of people losing disability benefits each year. ",3,https://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2019/12/26/trump-administration-disability-plan-could-cut-benefits-tens-thousands/2642632001/,FALSE, 1111,"As an autistic woman, the disability question at the Democratic debate finally made me feel seen"," History was made at Thursday’s Democratic debate in Los Angeles, when Politico correspondent Tim Alberta asked a question about integrating people with disabilities into their communities and the workforce. For the 61 million American adults with disabilities, it was the first time ever that they’d seen themselves reflected in the questions asked of the candidates seeking to represent them in the Oval Office. The question was initially directed to billionaire longshot candidate Tom Steyer. When Steyer skirted answering the question, Alberta posed a similar question to tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang, asking if Yang could “outline specific steps that the government should take to help integrate these young people into the workforce and into their local communities. ”Yang responded by asking the audience if they had family members, friends, or neighbors with special needs or autism. Yang is the father of an autistic child. Audience members raised their hands and clapped in the affirmative. As an autistic woman myself, I perked up. Yang specifically elaborated on the issue of unemployment, saying, “We go to employers and say, ‘Hey, this special needs person can be a contributor in your workplace,’ which may be correct, but thats not the point. ” Instead, Yang argued, the point is that humans have “intrinsic value” and should be protected on those merits alone. He also plugged his signature Freedom Dividend of $1,000 a month, which he said is “going to help families around the country adapt. And then were going to take this burden off of the communities . . . and make it a federal priority, not a local one. ”Yang’s argument has merit. Disability drives innovation, and people with disabilities are able to bring competitive advantages to the workplace, so his focus on employment was sound. But his point that “we have to stop confusing economic value and human value” was salient, and his rhetoric echoed what disability community leaders, activists, and allies have been saying all along but from the powerful position of a presidential debate stage. While Yang’s answer was not perfect his repeated use of the phrase “special needs” garnered some criticism it exposed viewers to an issue of which many in the disability community are profoundly aware. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unemployment rate for people with disabilities was at 8% percent in 2018 more than double the unemployment rate for nondisabled Americans . As an autistic person, I am especially aware of the abysmally high unemployment rates for people with my same disability; the unemployment rate for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities like autism has been cited to be as high as 85%. After Yang’s response, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren jumped in to address the question. Warren, a former special education teacher, trafficked in specifics in her trademark wonky style. She in particular said she wants to prioritize the full funding of the Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, also known as IDEA, a law that requires that students with disabilities receive a free and appropriate public education. That means these individuals benefit from the creation of an individualized education plan in order to receive special education services after requesting and receiving an evaluation; the IEP is a collection of documents that detail a student’s strengths, weaknesses, and goals, helping to create a comprehensive, custom record of the student’s education. In 2017, the Supreme Court ruled that public schools need to provide more than the bare minimum so students with disabilities will be able to make “appropriately ambitious” progress. A bare minimum education would be a free education within the school system, rather than one that addresses all the complexities of a student’s situation. While the ruling did not make an immediate impact, it sends a clear signal that special education issues are being heard and respected nationwide and that standards need to be higher for students with disabilities. ",3,https://www.mic.com/impact/as-autistic-woman-the-disability-question-at-the-democratic-debate-finally-made-me-feel-seen-19624939,TRUE, 1112,School suspensions don’t just unfairly penalize Black students – they lead to lower grades and ‘Black flight’,"School suspensions are intended to deter violence and punish students who demonstrate problematic behavior. Yet, when I interviewed 30 Black high school students in southeast Michigan who had been suspended from school and 30 of their parents, I learned that many students were suspended because school officials misinterpreted their behaviors. Additionally, the suspensions led to students’ grades dropping significantly and to some parents withdrawing their children from their school districts. I published my findings in the Children and Youth Services Review and Urban Education journals as part of my ongoing research on how Black students and parents view school punishment and its impact on their daily lives. You might assume that these punitive disciplinary practices have stopped since so many children are not physically in school due to the COVID 19 pandemic. You would be wrong. News reports show that suspensions have continued throughout the pandemic, while children are attending school remotely from their homes. For example, in September, school officials suspended 9 year old Louisiana student Ka’Mauri Harrison for six days because he placed a BB gun on a shelf in his room after one of his siblings tripped over it during virtual learning. In other incidents, such as when 12 year old Isaiah Elliot played with a toy gun during virtual art class, school officials sent law enforcement officers to his home – terrifying everyone in their household. Although these cases attracted considerable media attention, I believe most do not. Collectively, these instances of unwarranted school punishment raise important questions about their impact on millions of individuals – particularly Black students and parents. The most recent data shows Black students represent 15% of K 12 public school students in the U. S. but receive 39% of school suspensions. In one interview after another, students told me they were denied the opportunity to explain their side, which could have led school officials to determine a suspension was unnecessary. Parents also said educators and administrators ignored them throughout the disciplinary process. For example, Sandra, a ninth grader, received a five day suspension for de escalating a fight between peers. “I feel like they didn’t hear me out,” she said. “I told my mom and my dad and they was like, ‘Yeah, I don’t see why they suspended you. ’ … [T]he [school officials] was like, ‘We feel like you threatened her. ’ I’m like, ‘I didn’t, and the girl even said I didn’t threaten her. ’ When I came back to school she was like, ‘Why did you get suspended?’ and I was like, ‘[Because] they said I threatened you,’ and she was like, ‘How did you threaten me?’ I’m like, exactly. So, I just felt like they should have listened to me and let me explain the whole situation. ” Mike’s daughter Kimberly, a ninth grade student, received a five day suspension for hugging a boy. “To suspend a child for five days for giving a person a hug is ridiculous,” he said. “I raised my voice about it many times. Their policies around suspension are very unnecessary. ”Students also told me their achievement declined by as much as two letter grades due to suspensions. Students and parents attributed the academic declines to missing high point value assignments, experiencing difficulty catching up, missing vital instruction and educators’ unwillingness to distribute makeup assignments to suspended students. “[School discipline] affected my grades a lot,” said Marcus, a 10th grade student who received a 39 day suspension after he punched a gated window in response to his teacher calling him a “failure. ” “I go up there to get my work, but it’s hard to do the work when you are outside of school. You get where you’re not receiving the proper guidance to do the work. ”",2,https://theconversation.com/school-suspensions-dont-just-unfairly-penalize-black-students-they-lead-to-lower-grades-and-black-flight-150240,FALSE, 1113,‘My vote will be Black’ – A wave of Afro-Brazilian women ran for office in 2020 but found glass ceiling hard to break,"Messages urging Afro Brazilians to support Black candidates filled social media in the days before Brazil’s Nov. 15, 2020 elections. “Do not forget your masks, your identification, a pen and that you are BLACK!!!”“This Sunday my vote will be Black. ” People of African descent make up 56% of Brazil’s population and just 17. 8% of its Congress. But Black political participation is surging in Brazil, especially in local government. Some 250,840 Black Brazilians ran for city council this year, up from 235,105 in 2016. When the winners take office, Afro Brazilians will make up 44% of city councils nationwide. Afro Brazilian women also saw significant firsts in the 2020 election, winning 14% of city council seats nationwide. In the 2016 election, Afro Brazilian women won just 3. 9% of city council seats. Black women still hit a hard glass ceiling when aiming for higher office, though. Just 13 of the 513 representatives in the lower house of Brazil’s Congress are Afro Brazilian women, and the 81 member Senate has only one Black woman, Eliziane Gama. The first Black woman to have served as governor in Brazil, Benedita da Silva, this year lost her race to be mayor of Rio de Janeiro. But winning isn’t necessarily the only reason Afro Brazilian women hit the campaign trail. Black women’s political participation has soared in Brazil since the 2018 assassination of Marielle Franco in Rio de Janeiro. Franco was a Black lesbian city councilwoman who advocated for the city’s poor Black slum communities, in what Brazilian media dubbed the “the Marielle Effect. ”“Marielle’s murder could have had a chilling effect upon Black candidates, [but] it instead inspired a wave of Black candidacies,” writes the Afro Brazilian scholar Dalila Negreiros in the leftist publication NACLA Report on the Americas. Even before Franco’s killing, there were many Black women politicians – and my research shows how they opened the door for groundbreaking candidacies like Franco’s. Trailblazers include Benedita da Silva as well as Janete Pietá, who represented São Paulo in Congress from 2007 to 2015. I interviewed Pietá and many other Black female politicians in Brazil between 2004 and 2007. This was during Brazil’s economic boom under the leftist president Inacio Lula da Silva. Most of the women whose campaigns I studied were from Lula’s Workers Party, but one, Eronildes Carvalho, was a right leaning evangelical. I found that the women often used race and gender in their campaigns to mobilize voters, especially in predominantly Black cities. When running for Congress, Pietá told me she wore bright colors and did her hair in interesting styles, with short braids in the front, like bangs, and longer braids in the back, to show pride in her African ancestry – “even though it looks like a joke” to some. “A large part of the Brazilian population…have origins of African descent. Nevertheless, some of them are not conscious of this,” Pietá told me. Olivia Santana also put her race and gender up front when running for city council in the northeastern city of Salvador in 2004. She proudly announced herself as the “Negona da cidade,” the big Black woman of the city. “It was a slogan that was more about the history of elections, of Black participation in elections,” Santana told me in 2006. “My campaign made the Black racial question visible. ” While city council members may see their race and gender as an asset, I found Afro Brazilians running for federal office did not believe racial appeals would be helpful. ",2,https://theconversation.com/my-vote-will-be-black-a-wave-of-afro-brazilian-women-ran-for-office-in-2020-but-found-glass-ceiling-hard-to-break-150521,FALSE, 1115,Not a day passes without thinking about race: what African migrants told us about parenting in Australia,"Race informs how Black parents raise their children in Australia. Our study, published in the journal Child and Family Social Work, found it complicates parenting in ways that non Black parents might not have to consider. We interviewed 27 highly skilled professional African migrants from eight different Sub Saharan African countries about their experiences of employment, belonging and parenting in Australia. Parents of Black African children told us they had to consider how race affected the identity, perception, opportunities and well being of their children. One parent, who overheard her daughter telling her friends about her experiences as a Black teenager, reflected: This week I heard her tell one of her friends; there is no one day that passes without her thinking about this . Yeah, and her friends were really, really […] shocked. They said they do not have to think about it. Then, she said, ‘Every day when I get on to the bus, you know, I think about who I am and if somebody is going to say something, when I am on the streets, you know, I think about what will somebody think or say or do. ’ Read more: Growing Up African in Australia: racism, resilience and the right to belong Many parents said they were unprepared for the extent to which race would become a defining marker of their parenting process in Australia. One parent noted school was especially difficult for his children. He described instances in which his son had been called “a nigger” and threatened with violence, as well as fighting for his daughter’s rights to wear her afro natural hair in school. It put a lot of pressure on them and on me as a parent to explain without creating differences between them and the white kids […] We create a lot of explanations and conversations around who they are. Parents of Black men and boys, in particular, reported feeling more concerned about the stereotype of black masculinity and how much more likely their sons were to be criminalized or profiled by police. One parent said she constantly reminds her son that, because he is a young African male, he must …always be conscious wherever he goes or wherever he is. Some parents reported feeling overwhelmed and unprepared to support their children to deal with racial slurs, micro aggressions and racial exotification . Participants reported a significant aspect of parenting involved teaching their children about their blackness and self worth. Because blackness is often interiorised in white dominant contexts, many told us they felt if their children weren’t taught about racial dignity and self worth, they would grow up internalizing feelings of inferiority. One parent explained how, for her two children:We have conversations about what they look like, how they are different to other people, and people may want to point out those differences. [We teach them] being different does not mean being inferior or anything like that […] we talk to them to be confident about who they are and to be proud about where they have come from and their African heritage. Another parent reflected:We have had instances […] where he has sort of alluded to the fact that somebody told him, ‘You are Black, you are not like us’. And we have taken that up very quickly with the school authorities we have tried to tell him in a soft way […] being African doesn’t make him inferior. ",2,https://theconversation.com/not-a-day-passes-without-thinking-about-race-what-african-migrants-told-us-about-parenting-in-australia-149167,FALSE, 1116,"Biden wins – experts on what it means for race relations, US foreign policy and the Supreme Court","The American public has had its say and for the first time in a generation denied a sitting president a second term. President Donald Trump’s tenure lasted just four years, but in that time he dragged policy on an array of key issues in a dramatic new direction. Joe Biden’s victory, confirmed by the Associated Press late morning on Nov. 7, presents an opportunity to reset the White House agenda and put it on a different course. Three scholars discuss what a Biden presidency may have in store in three key areas: race, the Supreme Court and foreign policy. Brian Purnell, Bowdoin CollegeThe next four years under a Biden administration will likely see improvements in racial justice. But to many, it will be a low bar to clear: President Donald Trump downplayed racist violence, egged on right wing extremists and described Black Lives Matter as a “symbol of hate” during his four year tenure. Indeed, according to polls, most Americans agree that race relations have deteriorated under Trump. Still, Biden is in some ways an unlikely president to advance a progressive racial agenda. In the 1970s, he opposed busing plans and stymied school desegregation efforts in Delaware, his home state. And in the mid 1990s he championed a federal crime bill that made incarceration rates for Black people worse. He bungled the hearings that brought Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court by allowing Republican senators to dismiss Anita Hill’s damning testimony of Thomas’ sexual harassment and by failing to allow other Black women to testify. But that was then. During the 2020 campaign, President elect Biden consistently spoke about problems stemming from systemic racism. Many voters will be hoping that his actions over the next four years must match his campaign words. One area that the Biden administration will surely address is policing and racial justice. The Justice Department can bring accountability to police reform by returning to practices the Obama administration put in place to monitor and reform police departments, such as the use of consent degrees. More difficult reforms require redressing how mass incarceration caused widespread voter disenfranchisement in Black American and Latino communities. “My administration will incentivize states to automatically restore voting rights for individuals convicted of felonies once they have served their sentences,” Biden told The Washington Post. The killing of George Floyd earlier this year reinvigorated talk of addressing systemic racial discrimination through fundamental changes in how police departments hold officers accountable for misconduct and excessive force. It is unclear how far President elect Biden will walk down this road. But evoking the words of the late civil rights icon and Congressman John Lewis, he at least suggested at the Democratic National Convention that America was ready to do the hard work of “rooting out systemic racism. ”Biden can help address how Americans think about and deal with unexamined racial biases through reversing the previous administration’s executive order banning anti racism training and workshops. In so doing, Biden can build on psychological research on bias to make American workplaces, schools and government agencies equitable, just places. ",2,https://theconversation.com/biden-wins-experts-on-what-it-means-for-race-relations-us-foreign-policy-and-the-supreme-court-149327,FALSE, 1118,American suburbs radically changed over the decades – and so have their politics,"Suburban voters in a number of areas are considered critical swing voters. The growing political stakes reflect the dramatic changes that have happened in American suburbia in recent years, says Dr. Jan Nijman, director and distinguished university professor at the Urban Studies Institute, Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University. He edited the book, “The Life of North American Suburbs,” which examines how the once homogeneous suburbs have become far more diverse and varied from one other. The United States was the birthplace of the 20th century suburb. After World War II, the archetypal “sitcom” suburb of the 1950s – white, middle class households with male breadwinners and traditional gender roles, in single family homes – assumed near mythical proportions. They were seen as a settled, stable place where middle class families had “arrived. ” Change was not a part of that dreamy constellation. But suburbia proved far from stable, because of three major trends: the rapid growth of suburban populations, growing diversity due in part to immigration and economic changes that brought increasing inequalities. If you add up these trends, the result is the increased sorting of populations into highly diverse suburban patterns. By the year 2000, the suburban U. S. population exceeded that of central cities and rural areas combined. Today, there are many more types of suburbs than, say, 30 years ago. While cities are said to be diverse, they are really sorted into various types of suburbs where different types of people live in a sort of suburban bubble. If today somebody tells you they live in the suburbs, it does not tell you a lot. Rather, it raises the question “What suburb?”Suburbs now are definitely not all white, middle class or dominated by families with traditional gender roles. They vary a great deal in terms of well being, race and ethnicity. The distinction between central cities and suburbs has blurred. This is due to the suburbanization of previously excluded lower income groups and ethnic minorities, and to the gentrification of large parts of central cities – more wealthy people moving back in. Suburbia continued to grow, but increasingly because many lower income people didn’t have anywhere else to go. For some of the less expensive, far out suburbs, it was reflected in the phrase “Drive till you qualify. ” Since 2000, poverty in the suburbs has grown much faster than in central cities. By 2010, well over a third of the suburban population in the U. S. was nonwhite. The majority of African Americans now live in suburbs, and certain suburbs have also become the first and primary destination for foreign immigrants. What really stands out are the enormous contrasts and inequalities between suburbs. For example, in metro Atlanta, where I am based, one of the suburban areas to the north has a life expectancy of 84 years – as high as Switzerland’s – and household incomes twice Atlanta’s average, and the residents are mostly white. Compare this to an inner suburban area west of downtown, where life expectancy is only 71 – comparable to Bangladesh – incomes are less than half the Atlanta average, and most residents are Black Americans. You could drive from one world to the other in 15 minutes. The 2020 elections are sometimes referred to as a battle for the suburbs, for good reason. In recent elections, while urban areas have generally been strongly Democratic and small towns and rural areas have been predominantly Republican, it is in the suburbs where things are more dynamic. Especially in the all important swing states, the outcomes tend to revolve around “swing suburbs. ” ",2,https://theconversation.com/american-suburbs-radically-changed-over-the-decades-and-so-have-their-politics-147731,FALSE, 1119,"In two political battlegrounds, thousands of mail-in ballots are on the verge of being rejected","Tens of millions of Americans have already cast their ballots for the 2020 election by mail, building on a historic shift in voting methods that started with primary elections held during the COVID 19 pandemic. Mail in ballots, however, aren’t automatically accepted as in person ballots are. Rather, they can be rejected if they have signature defects on their return envelopes. Unless cured by voters – which means that voters fix the signature errors on them – these submitted ballots will be rejected. Thanks to ongoing reporting of voter turnout in two battleground states, Florida and North Carolina, we can identify the number of mail in ballots at risk of being rejected. So far, we can tell that there are thousands of ballots flagged for rejection in these two states. In addition, racial minorities and Democrats are disproportionately more likely to have cast mail ballots this election that face rejection. Above, we use the word “risk” when describing ballots in Florida and North Carolina that have been flagged for rejection. While these ballots have signature defects, they have not yet been formally rejected. Not all states have the same requirements for mail in voting, but ballots usually face rejection if they’re missing a voter’s signature. Another source of defects is an ostensibly mismatched signature. This happens when an elections official concludes that a voter’s signature on a return envelope doesn’t match the voter’s signature on file. Some states, like North Carolina, require witness signatures on ballot return envelopes, with the lack of such a signature considered a defect. Our counts of mail ballots facing rejection in Florida and North Carolina are conservative. When calculating them using official data, we assume that any inconsistencies we find in the data are resolved in favor of ballot acceptance. That said, here is what we know as of Oct. 22. In Florida, 3,210,873 voters have cast mail ballots, and of these, 15,003 ballots face rejection, corresponding to a potential ballot rejection rate of 0. 47%. This rate is not an estimate. It is based on counts drawn from official statewide data. These thousands of mail ballots currently in limbo can make a difference. Consider the 2018 midterm election. In his successful United States Senate bid in this contest, Republican Rick Scott beat incumbent Democrat Bill Nelson by only 10,033 votes. Over 2 million Floridians have yet to return the mail ballots sent to them by county election officials, so the number of mail ballots subject to rejection in Florida could grow well beyond 15,000. In North Carolina, an even greater percentage of mail ballots face rejection. In that state, 8,228 of 701,425 mail ballots fall into this category, yielding a potential rejection rate of 1. 2%. As in Florida, North Carolina’s elections can be extremely close. In the state’s 2016 gubernatorial race, a mere 10,277 votes out of roughly 4. 6 million cast separated the winner, Democrat Roy Cooper, from incumbent Republican Pat McCrory. The number of ballots at risk in North Carolina – 8,228 – remains smaller than this margin but could grow as more ballots are returned. The risks of mail ballot rejection are not spread uniformly across voters, and rejected mail ballots are not politically neutral. ",2,https://theconversation.com/in-two-political-battlegrounds-thousands-of-mail-in-ballots-are-on-the-verge-of-being-rejected-148616,FALSE, 1120,Why is race still in the British blood pressure guidelines?,"I looked around the lecture theatre and scribbled down what the lecturer had said: ABCD. ACE inhibitors , Beta blockers, Calcium channel blockers and Diuretics. These were the four groups of drugs used to treat high blood pressure – except there were exceptions. We didn’t use beta blockers anymore and ACE inhibitors don’t work for black people, specifically black African or Afro Caribbean people. The lecturer explained to us that all black people were inherently less likely to respond to ACE inhibitors. This is what I learned at medical school, and this is what medical students still learn today. Now, as a practicing GP, this is the guidance we use every day . On the other hand, in the US blood pressure guidance, there is no mention of race. Why the disparity? Do black people really react to blood pressure drugs differently from white people? Are black bodies different from white bodies? Speculation on why black people have higher blood pressure than white people is often attributed to a genetic adaptation to slavery: specifically, salt retention allowed black people to survive long trips on slave transportation ships across the Atlantic Ocean. The implication that there are inherent biological differences between black people and members of other races has entered blood pressure medication guidance. Black people are labelled “low renin responders” so are less likely to respond to ACE inhibitors. But there are several things wrong with this idea:The highest quality evidence found a small but statistically significant 4mmHg difference between the response to ACE inhibitors between black people and white people. If black people were all poor responders to this drug, you would expect the difference to be far bigger. There is conflicting evidence on whether ACE inhibitors are beneficial or detrimental in terms of heart disease outcomes for black people. If they didn’t work that well, surely there would be no change or a clear detriment. Even if black people are inherently different from white people, what medication should a person receive if they have a black parent and a white parent? What if they have a grandparent of African heritage? Using the “one drop rule” – where any person with even one ancestor of black ancestry is considered black – could be problematic as very few people can trace their ancestry back a few generations. This means it is difficult to rule out any African or Caribbean heritage in anyone’s lineage. A commercial genetics test probably won’t help you. Recent genetic research consistently shows that there are greater genetic differences between members of the same race compared with members of different races, looking generally and specifically at African Americans. The social and economic circumstances and the environment in which a person lives has a greater effect on health than biological or genetic factors. So could there be an alternative explanation for why black people have higher blood pressure compared with white people? Could poverty, stress or perceived racism be reasonable explanations? Medicine is not objective; scientific research is conducted by people who bring their own perspectives. These biases color the way research is conducted, the way data is analyzed and the way conclusions are drawn. Perhaps it’s time for an overhaul. ",2,https://theconversation.com/why-is-race-still-in-the-british-blood-pressure-guidelines-144971,FALSE, 1121,Kids’ perceptions of police fall as they age – for Black children the decline starts earlier and is constant,"The deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and most recently Dijon Kizzee at the hands of officers come in an age when over policing and underserving minority communities has, as some experts believe, resulted in a “legitimacy crisis” in American policing. The reality is that these events are also impacting children. Youth today are growing up in what has been described as an “era of mistrust” of police. Across racial and ethnic groups, youths’ perceptions of police have dropped in recent years to a decades long low. Yet, the amount of the decline differs across demographic groups. In fact, Black youth report the most dramatic declines, and the gap between their perceptions and white youths’ perceptions has been increasing. As scholars of policing and the criminal justice system, we study how and when perceptions of police change during childhood and adolescence. Studies have already shown that personal politics affects how people interpret news. But our research suggests this process may begin during the teenage years or even earlier. Research looking at high school seniors finds that how white youth perceive law enforcement depends on their political views. White students that identify as liberal or Democratic leaning report worse perceptions of police, whereas white conservative youths report substantially better opinions of the police. Yet political views do not seem to affect how Black teenagers view police. Black teenagers across the political spectrum report the most negative perceptions of police. It is perhaps not surprising that teens of color, and Black teenagers in particular, report the poorest perceptions of law enforcement – these perceptions reflect their lived reality where Black teenagers are often presumed criminal and unjust police stops result in stress, anxiety and depression. It also likely reflects the frequent reminders that Black teenagers have of unjust interactions between police and Black communities – through social media as well as their own experiences and those of families and friends. But our study found that perceptions of law enforcement take shape at much earlier ages. We surveyed nearly 1,000 children aged 7 to 14 in Southern California. At 7 years old, kids across all racial and ethnic backgrounds view law enforcement similarly in high regard. However, that does not last. While white youths’ perceptions of police remain relatively stable from the ages of 7 to 14, Latino kids’ perceptions begin to drop at around 9 years old. Black children’s perceptions decline even more rapidly and consistently beginning at around 7 to 8 years old. As Black kids grow up from ages 7 to 14, their perceptions of law enforcement drop every year – we did not find an age at which Black youth one year older did not report significantly worse perceptions of law enforcement. These perceptions don’t just affect individual kids; they affect society too. While research examining youths’ intentions of entering law enforcement as a career is still in its infancy, we believe that perceptions of the police clearly matter. While the racial and ethnic demographics of the United States have grown more diverse, policing has not caught up. Compared to the general public, a disproportionate majority of police officers are white, non Hispanic men, and that number is only growing larger across departments, according to newly released federal data. This is despite emerging research suggesting that increasing the proportion of minority officers might enhance community members’ perceptions of police and the criminal justice system. ",2,https://theconversation.com/kids-perceptions-of-police-fall-as-they-age-for-black-children-the-decline-starts-earlier-and-is-constant-145511,FALSE, 1122,Microaggressions aren’t just innocent blunders – new research links them with racial bias,"A white man shares publicly that a group of Black Harvard graduates “look like gang members to me” and claims he would have said the same of white people dressed similarly. A white physician mistakes a Black physician for a janitor and says it was an honest mistake. A white woman asks to touch a Black classmate’s hair, is scolded for doing so and sulks, “I was just curious. ”It’s a pattern that recurs countless times, in myriad interactions and contexts, across American society. A white person says something that is experienced as racially biased, is called on it and reacts defensively. These comments and other such subtle snubs, insults and offenses are known as microaggressions. The concept, introduced in the 1970s by Black psychiatrist Chester Pierce, is now the focus of a fierce debate. On one side, Black people and a host of others representing multiple diverse communities stand with a wealth of testimonials, lists of different types of microaggressions and compelling scientific evidence documenting how these experiences harm recipients. Some white people are on board, working to understand, change and join as allies. Still, a cacophony of white voices exists in the public discourse, dismissive, defensive and influential. Their main argument: Microaggressions are innocuous and innocent, not associated with racism at all. Many contend that those who complain about microaggressions are manipulating victimhood and being too sensitive. Until recently, the majority of research on microaggressions has focused on asking people targeted by microaggressions about their experiences and perspectives, rather than researching the offenders. This previous research is crucial. But with respect to understanding white defensiveness and underlying racial bias, it’s akin to researching why baseball pitchers keep hitting batters with pitches by only interviewing batters about how it feels to get hit. My colleagues and I – a team of Black, white and other psychological scientists and students – went directly to the “pitchers” to untangle the relationship between these expressions and racial bias. We asked white college students – one group at a university in the Northwest, another at a campus in the southern Midwest – how likely they are to commit 94 commonly described microaggressions that we identified from research publications and Black students we interviewed. For example, you are meeting a Black woman with braids; how likely are you to ask, “Can I touch your hair?” We also asked our participants to describe their own racial bias using well known measures. Then, we asked some participants to come to our laboratory to talk about current events with others. Lab observers rated how many explicitly racially biased statements they made in their interactions. We found direct support for what recipients of microaggressions have been saying all along: Students who are more likely to say they commit microaggressions are more likely to score higher on measures of racial bias. One’s likelihood of microaggressing also predicts how racist one is judged to be by lab observers, as they watch real interactions unfold. We’re currently analyzing the same kind of data from a national sample of adults, and the results look similar. With some microaggressions, like “Can I touch your hair?,” the influence of racial bias is real but small. When the white woman who asked to touch the Black woman’s hair responds, “I was just curious,” she’s not necessarily lying about her conscious intentions. She likely is unaware of the subtle racial bias that also influences her behavior. One can demonstrate racial bias and curiosity at the same time. ",2,https://theconversation.com/microaggressions-arent-just-innocent-blunders-new-research-links-them-with-racial-bias-145894,FALSE, 1125,Diversity’s Ofcom complaints: audiences consume Black culture but don’t want to engage with the realities,"After a Saturday night performance on ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent , Ofcom received more than 22,000 complaints and counting. This is its second highest number of complaints about a TV show since 2010. Was it nudity, violence, profanities or religious controversy that drew such outrage? No, it was a performance by the dance troupe Diversity that tackled racism and paid homage to the Black Lives Matter movement. The performance contextualized COVID 19 and racism as two diseases inflicting British society. It restaged the images of a white policeman kneeling on the neck of a Black man in direct evocation of the arrest and killing of George Floyd in the US in May. The piece was powerful, emotive and performed with utter integrity and passion, concluding with an invocation of love as the fundamental answer to the ails of our time. In that sense, the piece was far from being problematic or radical in content. The apparent outrage by members of the public manifested in a deluge of complaints to Ofcom and a barrage of racial abuse and hate on social media directed at Diversity and its leader Ashley Banjo. Much of the abuse did not mask the inherent and violent racism that prompted it, as one comment cited by Banjo on his Instagram showed: If you don’t like living in a white country go live in Africa. I think you would genuinely feel more comfortable there. As would I if you did. Criticism of the performance, the choreography, and the Black Lives Matter movement was all, sadly, expected, but the worst of the social media backlash, according to Banjo, was something else: No I don’t mean ‘criticism’… I mean ‘racism’. I mean hate… I mean the very thing that makes every single second of that performance and every single complaint worth it. The incomprehensibly high number of complaints, though astonishing, speaks to Britain’s problematic conceptualization of race and its relationship to racism. It shows a general intolerance to confront it. This, in part, is based on the denial of racism and a mythical idea of Britain as post racial, where racism and racial inequality no longer exist. These, in turn, foster and allow white supremacy as a system of structural white dominance to go unchecked. But, if anything, the backlash against Diversity “proves the large extent to which Britain’s got racism, rather than talent”, as the journalist Nicole Vassell wrote. Many complaints cited the political nature of the act; others the fact that BGT is a family show and therefore the wrong platform for the piece’s content. Both points are fundamentally flawed. In its long run, BGT has had numerous political acts . However, only Diversity’s was deemed too political and problematic. The complaints point at a more sinister disbelief, and perhaps outrage, that this predominantly Black dance crew were granted access and ownership of their representation because therein lies power as the sociologist Stuart Hall explains:[Power has to be understood] in broader cultural or symbolic terms, including the power to represent someone or something in a certain way within a certain ‘regime of representation’. It includes the exercise of symbolic power through representational practices. The complaints lead us to believe that political Black bodies and voices are deemed threatening and that Diversity is transgressing the limited and conditional space afforded to it. This is a subtle reminder to this predominantly Black dance troupe to “know your place” and “don’t be too big for your boots”. All is further evidence of the precarious, restricted and probationary access and representation of Black and ethnically diverse creatives in the cultural public space. ",2,https://theconversation.com/diversitys-ofcom-complaints-audiences-consume-black-culture-but-dont-want-to-engage-with-the-realities-146263,FALSE, 1126,"Rocks: care, childhood and power in a story of modern urban girlhood","“You don’t know what hurt is,” 15 year old Rocks utters in a compelling and stark, cinematic take on friendship, family and the complexities of care. When Rocks comes home one day to find her mother gone, leaving only a brief note and some £20 bills behind, she is determined to stick with her younger brother, even if it means evading “the social” and other adults in authority. The film follows her and her East London friends as she struggles to care for her brother in increasingly difficult circumstances. It would be easy to interpret this film as a story of a girl made to prematurely shoulder adult responsibilities, as other reviews have. But my research with children and young people suggests that to do so would miss the mark. Instead, it shows how treating children as simply vulnerable dependants can mean that practices, policies, and institutions which are intended to protect them can end up belittling them or exacerbating children’s marginalization. “Close your eyes. Think of everything that is happy. And keep on breathing in and out. And stop thinking of all your worries,” Rocks’ brother Emmanuel says to her as they pass time in a gritty hotel room, paid for with the last of their money. This reassuring moment of emotional closeness is emblematic of many examples in the film of young people caring for each other. The film adeptly portrays both the challenges and joys of family and friendship as Rocks’ friends make every effort to support her, even if their efforts are refused or cause further problems for Rocks. My own research is full of similar examples of the ways that children care for others. A soft pat on the back provided by one 4 year old to another in tears. Showing newly arrived lone child migrants where to shop for familiar foods or how to cook on their own. Interpreting so those learning English can access education or housing. Providing advice and advocating for young people trapped in the woods around Calais or in the unofficial refugee camp. Sharing bus passes with those who do not have them. Sending money to family members trapped in war zones, refugee camps, or conditions of destitution. Laughing and joking together, to make space for joy. In the film, as in my research, young people have the capacity to care for each other and adults in their lives: emotionally, socially, practically and financially. Many also want to do so, feel that it is right to do so and feel a sense of pride in the way they care for others. It is not that it is fundamentally problematic for children to have responsibilities or that in doing so they are “adultified”. What is crucial in understanding Rocks’ experience, and those of the children and young people involved in my research, is understanding the conditions in which such care happens. “Listen Rocks. I think you should tell someone. About your mum,” Rocks’ best friend Sumaya says carefully. “I don’t think so,” Rocks replies firmly. While the reasons for her reluctance are never made explicit, her fear of being found by social services is palpable as is her distress when the moment eventually arrives. Insights from children and young people involved in my research offer some helpful ways of understanding Rocks’ reticence. Many social workers see themselves as working for children’s best interests and being guided by principles of children’s rights enshrined in the Children’s Act . But, for young people, it often feels like decisions are made for them and about them, rather than with them. Their limited institutional authority and fiscal independence exacerbate their sense of simply being told what to do. Their “best interests” are always determined by others. The more contact they have with social services, the less they feel any sense of control over what happens in their lives. ",2,https://theconversation.com/rocks-care-childhood-and-power-in-a-story-of-modern-urban-girlhood-146223,FALSE, 1130,What young people have to say about race and inequality in South Africa,"Meritocracy is the belief that holding power or success should be judged on people’s individual ability, rather than on wealth or social connections. At first glance, this appears to be a reasonable proposition. But the focus on individual merit becomes harder to fathom as one enters the messy world of structural inequality and discrimination. As our research shows, ideologies of meritocracy and individualism create obstacles for collective action towards a more equal and just society. Our findings were published in the book Race in Education, the outcome of a thinktank on the effects of race at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study. Using a methodology called Dreaming Workshops, our study explored how Grade 11 students, of around 16 and 17 years old, from different schools in the South African coastal city of Durban imagined race, racism and non racialism in a utopian future. Young South Africans are being socialised into a highly racialised society and experience severe disparities. Expecting them to eradicate racism without dismantling material inequalities is a deferral of adult responsibility. Mindful of this, we designed a study to listen to young people’s ideas, as opposed to looking to them for solutions. The five schools that participated in this study, three government and two private, are located in a middle class, formerly “white” area in Durban. The schools have, on average, a diverse but mostly middle class student body, with some students travelling from townships to attend class. Under apartheid townships were poorly resourced and under serviced residential spaces designated for people racialised as black. Each school in the study had approximately 20 students per class. One school markets itself as girls only, one as boys only, the other three are open to all genders. Young people involved in the study were deeply aware of inequality. For them, reducing inequality was a priority if the country was to move towards a better future. It is notable that non racialism was not a concept volunteered by any of the students as a future ideal, despite it being a constitutional principle in South Africa. At present there is little clarity on the meaning of non racialism. It is equated to a multiplicity of ideas, among them mobilisation against apartheid, multiracialism, multiculturalism, nation building, and race blindness. What students did want eradicated from their utopia was racial discrimination and racism. The meanings they attached to race shifted depending on the conversation, for example, race when it related to racial quotas as opposed to race when it related to culture, identity or politics. Racial identities played an important role in these young people’s sense of self. But some thought it is the “weirdest thing ever” that people sit in “race groups” during lunch breaks. They make sense of this by explaining that people sit with others who share their culture. Using race and culture as proxies for each other is very much part of the South African experience of racialization. The “commitment” to racial identities, however, was more complex than it first appeared. There was an uneasiness between accepting and feeling pride in racial identities, and not wanting them to count as measures of social value. They frequently vocalized a rejection of racial stereotypes and racism. ",2,https://theconversation.com/what-young-people-have-to-say-about-race-and-inequality-in-south-africa-141451,FALSE, 1131,Black and Latino essential workers experience greater safety concerns than their white counterparts," Assistant Professor of Sociology and Labor Studies, UMass Amherst Professor of Practice and Graduate Program Director, UMass Amherst Professor of Sociology; Director, Center for Employment Equity, UMass Amherst The Center for Employment Equity receives funding from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. Clare Hammonds and Jasmine Kerrissey do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. UMass Amherst provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US. View all partnersThe Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work. Black and Latino essential workers are more likely to feel stressed over job safety and security as well as family pressures than white workers, according to a recent survey of essential workers we conducted in Massachusetts, among them doctors, sanitation workers and grocery employees. Specifically, 70% of Black workers and 78% who are Latino reported that they didn’t feel safe on the job, compared with 58% of white people. This is not simply because Latino and Black workers were more likely to be in low wage jobs. When we analyzed low wage workers separately, Latino and Black people in this group were still far more likely to feel unsafe in the pandemic than their white counterparts. We found that access to benefits on the job is critical to maintaining personal and family health. Across all of the dimensions we looked at, workers of color were less likely to have access to basic job benefits, including health insurance and paid sick leave, compared to white essential workers. Black and Latino respondents were also more likely to report that the intensity and stress of their work had accelerated since the pandemic began. A Black woman working as a cashier at a grocery store said:“It is really stressful. We are all working really hard to keep it together because we have families to provide for, and people think we are robots that are just there to get pay. We have to care for ourselves and for each and every client that comes in, making sure they keep the right distance and sometimes they don’t even listen to us. ”Stress also comes from experiences off the job. We found that Latino and Black essential workers were over 10% more likely to have experienced food, child care and housing insecurities compared with white essential workers. All essential workers have good reason to feel unsafe doing their jobs in the middle of a pandemic, but it’s particularly bad for those who earn low wages, a higher percentage of whom are people of color. Since Massachusetts has some of the strongest labor market protections in the United States, whatever is happening to essential workers there is most likely worse in many other states. In our opinion, there must be universal solutions to combat racial inequalities and the risks associated with working during the pandemic. Universal health care and expanded paid medical leave can help prevent COVID 19 from arriving and spreading at workplaces, while improving testing and treatment in Black and Latino communities is also important, as these communities face the highest risk of infection. Individual workplaces can do their part to address racial inequities by providing all essential workers with substantial hazard pay, organizing the job site to allow for maximum social distancing and ensuring that personal protective equipment – like masks and hand sanitizer – is provided to all workers. As states grapple with how to reopen workplaces safely, it is critical to establish health and workplace protections that help address longstanding racial inequities in the labor market. We are sociologists of work, labor and inequality. For this particular study, we surveyed 2,600 essential workers throughout Massachusetts from April 24 to May 1. ",2,https://theconversation.com/black-and-latino-essential-workers-experience-greater-safety-concerns-than-their-white-counterparts-141180,FALSE, 1132,Changing the Federal Reserve mandate could provide a down payment to ending racial inequality,"The job of slicing up the economic pie in the U. S. has traditionally fallen to Congress, with the Federal Reserve tasked with making sure there is enough to go around. But this could soon change. Under proposals put forward by Democrats in Congress, the mandate of the Fed would be tweaked for the first time since 1977, when its objectives were made explicit: promote maximum employment, stable prices and moderate long term interest rates. Under the new proposals, the central bank would gain an additional task of reducing racial inequality. In short, the central bank could be handed the pie cutter and told to make sure everyone gets a fair share. If passed, the Federal Reserve Racial and Economic Equity Act would shift some of the responsibility for addressing systemic racial inequality away from Congress. Given that the nation’s politicians have failed to level the playing field to date, that may not be a bad thing. My work with economist Valerie Wilson finds that the economic position of Black Americans is equivalent to their relative position in 1979, with Black men earning on average 31% less than white men and Black women 19% less than white women. When you factor in the incarcerated population, Black Americans are no better off than they were in 1950. As a former chief economist at the U. S. Department of Labor who has researched racial inequality, I believe that the proposed changes to the Federal Reserve’s mandate would improve the economic status of Black Americans and that the Fed can achieve this in three key ways. The main tool the Fed has in guiding the U. S. economy is through the setting of interest rates. Adjusting its benchmark interest rate changes the cost of borrowing for companies and consumers, which in turn can stimulate or subdue their spending. When the unemployment rate is extremely low – as it was prior to the pandemic – the Fed may increase interest rates. This puts a brake on private consumption and investment and protects against inflation. The problem is that currently the Fed focuses on the national jobless rate, the same one reported every month in the news. This figure obscures the wide variation among different regions and demographic groups, not to mention it ignores the growing share of Americans who are underemployed. At present, the Fed uses the national unemployment rate to help guide its rate setting. But even during times of prosperity, the Black American jobless rate is roughly two times the white rate. As a result of the Fed targeting the national unemployment rate – which is roughly equal to the white rate – interest rates are hiked before many Black Americans fully experience the benefits of a deep and lengthy economic boom. My research with former Fed economist Seth Carpenter shows that when the Fed puts its foot on the brakes, the Black jobless rate rises more. Black teen unemployment suffers the most from this brake pumping. But in line with a change to the mandate to include reducing racial inequality, central bankers could ditch the national rate as its target and instead use the Black unemployment rate. Doing so would still maintain strong economic growth for white Americans but would enable the Fed to set rates in a way tailored to addressing the economic needs of Black people too. The Fed can also use tools handed to it under the Community Reinvestment Act to narrow racial wealth differences and provide Black Americans with greater access to credit. The act, enacted in 1977, requires the Fed to use its oversight powers to encourage financial institutions to help meet the credit needs of the communities in which they do business, particularly in low and moderate income neighborhoods. The new proposals specifically call on the Fed to aggressively implement the act. ",2,https://theconversation.com/changing-the-federal-reserve-mandate-could-provide-a-down-payment-to-ending-racial-inequality-144102,FALSE, 1133,How Hollywood’s ‘Alien’ and ‘Predator’ movies reinforce anti-Black racism,"What makes Black people more likely than others to be killed, beaten, tortured and raped by white police officers and vigilantes? Although Black men are killed by the police more than any other group, Black women are regular targets of police violence even though this fact is often rendered invisible. A culture and history of racist misrepresentation may have something to do with it. Why has there been considerable tolerance among the silent majority of white people for animal like, demonic representations of Black people in media and popular culture? The short answer is that we are dealing with a culture of domination. It is a culture that thrives on the sexualized demonization of Black people. Two examples of this are Ridley Scott’s Alien, which comports with the trope of Black women as alien breeders and Predator, written by brothers Jim and John Thomas, that riffs on images of Black men as dreadlocked, violent and superhuman. Read more: George Floyds death reflects the racist roots of American policing George Floyd’s recorded and widely publicized killing as well as the killing of Breonna Taylor in her own home serve as catalysts for many white people discovering anti Blackness and the reality of police violence. This reckoning asks that we examine the racist anti Black cultural tropes that span art, politics and social control. On March 13, Breonna Taylor, a nurse in training, was killed by Louisville, Ky. , police officers in her own home after police broke in using what is known as a “no knock” warrant. Some researchers count as many as 80,000 no knock warrants every year in the U. S. as many times as there are people at an average NFL game. Until recently, there has been considerable complacency about police killing and raping of Black people. There is equally little effort to conceptualize in theoretically accessible ways how representations in cinema mesh with political racism. Black women have been portrayed in contemporary white social and political culture as super fertile and indestructible breeders whose sexual reproduction must be controlled. This is a shift from the slave breeding campaign that emerged across the Americas after Britain’s abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and slavery in 1834. This shift in public policy and white attitudes toward Black women’s sexual reproduction is evident in the U. S. , especially with the 1965 Moynihan Report and 1970 Moynihan Memorandum. As part of the Republican Party’s Southern Strategy, Richard Nixon set in motion the myth of the Black welfare queen. This myth was later adopted by the Democrats. It is now so fundamental a mythology in the white imagination that hardly any amount of contrary evidence can dislodge it. Enduring narratives about Black family pathology particularly that of the overbearing and single Black mother have led to damaging representations of Black women. Read more: Raising children under suspicion and criminalization Ridley Scott’s Alien franchise, with its vicious and endlessly breeding carbon black alien mother, came at the height of neoliberal experiment and in the U. S. especially, an all out assault on Black people. In the context of anti Black culture, the film signifies the Black woman as an unkillable and ceaselessly breeding alien who threatened the body politic. In terms set by historian Lothrop Stoddard’s white supremacist 1920 book The Rising Tide of Color, a Black woman’s sexual reproduction is imagined to signal the genetic extinction of the white republic. ",2,https://theconversation.com/how-hollywoods-alien-and-predator-movies-reinforce-anti-black-racism-127088,FALSE, 1135,Coronavirus: The ‘yellow peril’ revisited,"This past spring, Asian students at Queen’s University indicated that they were victims of racial discrimination as a result of COVID–19. Their complaints echoed similar incidents of racial discrimination and exclusion of Chinese students at other Canadian universities. This rise in anti Asian sentiments is not limited to university campuses. The president of the United States recently yet again called COVID–19 the “China Virus. ” While some American officials have tried to downplay the president’s rhetoric, others blamed China’s culture for the virus. Despite consensus among social scientists that race is a social construct, xenophobic attacks on Chinese communities and Asians at large during the pandemic show that race has real life consequences for groups marked as an other. Blaming Chinese people or Chinese culture for the pandemic only serves to reinforce stereotypes of East Asians as the “yellow peril. ”How do constructions of the Chinese as “diseased” inform their dehumanization and that of East Asian communities in Canada and globally? How does their dehumanization at this time mirror the techniques of racialization of other racial and ethnic groups that have often played out in popular media? These are difficult questions that can be better understood by examining the racism that Chinese communities in Canada and the U. S. have suffered well before they were regarded as members of today’s “model minority. ” Chinese immigrants first arrived in Canada when Chang Tsoo and Ah Hong entered British Columbia to prospect in the Cariboo gold rush in 1858. By 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act legally restricted Chinese laborers from the U. S. and resulted in Chinese migration to Canada and Mexico. At the time, the law was the first of its kind at the federal level in the U. S. and denied Chinese immigration for over 80 years. The act was in place until the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and prohibited Chinese laborers, both skilled and unskilled, from entering the U. S. In a study of the historical antecedents of severe acute respiratory syndrome , writer Carianne Leung found that Chinese communities in Canada were historically constructed as the “yellow peril” and their presence compared to that of the plague. Chinese settlements in the country “were regarded with the same hysteria as an infectious disease spreading across Canada. ” In 1885, a commissioner described Vancouver’s Chinatown as an “ulcer” and suggested that, if left untreated, would “cause disease in the places around it and ultimately the whole body. ” At that time, newspapers discursively cast Chinatowns as relating to “disease and filth. ” By the mid 1890s, the Vancouver municipal council included Chinatowns as categories for inspection, along with “sewage,” “slaughter houses” and “pig ranches. ”Linking COVID 19 with China invokes a well worn narrative of Chinese people as “diseased,” a link also present with the appearance of SARS in 2003. It is a technique of racialization that works to dehumanize via discursive practices. Language is used to cast Chinese communities as a foreign and dangerous other. In this example, the idea of illness, sickness and disease is invoked. A group must first be dehumanized and stripped of their humanity before their marginalization can be justified. ",2,https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-the-yellow-peril-revisited-134115,FALSE, 1136,We need to unpack the word ‘race’ and find new language," Evan Pugh University Professor of Anthropology, Penn State Senior research associate, Department of Anthropology, Penn State Nina G. Jablonski receives funding from the National Science Foundation of the U. S. A. , the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation. George Chaplin receives funding from the National Science Foundation of the U. S. A. Penn State provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US. View all partnersRace thinking has been discredited for decades. But it is still with us. Yet race is a historical contingency, not a state of nature. One of the most sinister things about race is that its sibling, racism, not only lasts, but continues to grow. Race has so co opted our consciousness and language that any attempt to deal with the effects of racism has been very difficult. The language of race was one of the questions that occupied us, a group of academics, during the course of a multi year series of discussions that constituted the Effects of Race project at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study. The addictiveness of race thinking thwarts all efforts to unite humanity into a common cause. New endeavours to utilise race for economic, educational, biological, and – most recently – genetic reasons continue despite the fact that people share so many overwhelming commonalities. Any subdivisions erected between people are essentially meaningless. Many embrace race as a concept, but it mostly persists because the damage caused by racism persists. The economically powerful see race as a shorthand for class, intelligence, education, ability, as well as biology. The economically disadvantaged see it as the cause of their suffering and as a uniting principle. In both cases, it is a factor used to justify an Us Them dichotomy. What can be done about the durability of the concept of race? One thing we can consider is changing the vocabulary. Language space is constantly changing, but the reuse of value laden words has the power to reinforce past preconceptions and prejudices. Reusing old race words in new contexts doesn’t remove their original meanings, it only adds to them. The language space of race is so crowded that new terms with no connections to past meanings are hard to derive, but a new vocabulary is what is needed because so many of the old words are derogatory and hurtful. Neologisms like “people of colour” arose in the 1930s after “coloured people” became restricted to mean African American people in the United States. It was revived again at the end of the twentieth century as an inclusive group of people identified as anyone who wasn’t a person of European descent with light skin – “whites” – and who were subjected to differential treatment by the dominant white culture. Read more: Why does racism prevail? Leading scholars apply their minds One successful effort has been the conversion of hateful speech by subjugated people themselves. The word “queer” was once a highly derogatory term for people who prefer partners of the same gender. Redeployment and repurposing of the word as a positive identifier has lessened its impact as a slur, even though it is still used as marker of Us Them. In fighting homophobia, the upbeat neologism “gay” has been more effective at thwarting discrimination of non binary sexuality. Repurposing official race labels like the apartheid era “Black” and “Coloured”, for utilitarian purposes of government and social restitution in South Africa, has not seen the power and confusion of those words diminish much. Any reuse or redefinition of race thinking terms just reinforces all previous meanings. So, should we stop talking about race? In a word, no. We must understand the full expanse and power of racial language. Denial of race will not bring about the demise of race, instead it only cloaks terms that perpetuate the power of the concept and its potential for harm. ",2,https://theconversation.com/we-need-to-unpack-the-word-race-and-find-new-language-138379,FALSE, 1138,"Telework mostly benefits white, affluent Americans – and offers few climate benefits","Back in in 2018 – in the pre pandemic world – about 5% of the U. S. workforce teleworked from home. That changed dramatically with the onset of the COVID 19 pandemic; by May 2020 that number had jumped to about 35%. Tech giants Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and Twitter announced plans to extend teleworking well into the fall and possibly beyond. It’s a sea change that will permanently alter the way America works – and how companies conduct business. Telework offers a host of potential advantages, including improved productivity, lower costs for employers, greater flexibility and less stress for workers, lower exposure to pollution for commuters and less traffic congestion – not to mention job security during the pandemic for those who can do it. A study conducted in 2017 found that many job applicants valued the option to work remotely and would, on average, accept about 8% lower wages to do so. Our team is researching connections between the pandemic, how people live and work in cities and city climate action. Transportation is central to this issue because it is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions and access to reliable and affordable transportation is inequitably distributed – and it was severely disrupted by the pandemic. Early research suggested that teleworking reduced vehicle use – and with it, emissions – so it’s frequently touted as a way to combat climate change. But subsequent studies revealed a more nuanced picture. Our research indicates that a rush to embrace teleworking should be tempered with two realties: Increased telework will exacerbate inequality in America under current economic and social conditions, and the climate benefits are probably very modest, at best. Opportunities to telework vary greatly in the U. S. , depending on race, income level and occupation. About 37% of jobs could be performed entirely at home, particularly in the fields of education and professional, scientific, technical and information services; in management positions; and in finance and insurance. These positions are overwhelming held by white Americans. Meanwhile, low wage, work from home jobs are among the few available to people of color. Well paid telework is a quality of life benefit that is unavailable for many, especially those who are among the bottom half of U. S. wage earners or who lack a college degree. The service sector is a good example, with just 1 in 100 employees able to telecommute. Meanwhile, one fifth of Black and Hispanic men work in service occupations. Poor teleworking opportunities track alongside disparities in income and education. One in 5 workers in the top 10% income bracket work at home, but for the lowest bracket, numbers drop to just 1 in 100. Education matters, too: 37% of those with a bachelor’s degree or higher reported working from home in 2019 compared with just 16% of those who only held a high school diploma. ",2,https://theconversation.com/telework-mostly-benefits-white-affluent-americans-and-offers-few-climate-benefits-142251,FALSE, 1140,Edmonton finally drops the Eskimos — and may my grandchildren never hear the E-word again,"It’s a good day in Edmonton. It’s a good day in Canada. It’s a good day for Inuit. After all the years that I and other Inuit Canadians have been complaining about the name of Edmonton’s team in the Canadian Football League, it’s good to know the franchise has finally decided it will no longer be known as the Eskimos. It’s been a long time coming, and it has finally arrived. I’ve been an outspoken critic of Edmonton’s refusal to rename its CFL team. As an Inuit writer and researcher, this has been a very personal cause for me. Read more: Edmonton Eskimos is a racial slur and its time to stop using it My cause lies in the names of Joel, Isaac, Ellie, Mack and Aurora my grandchildren, who I am hoping will never have to experience the E word. They are brilliant and beautiful children who deserve to grow up in a world where racist terms won’t harm them. After years of campaigning for a name change, I wasn’t confident the team would do the right thing. One of Canada’s top sports columnists said it would be “insane” to make the change now, given the costs associated with rebranding the team. I heard DJs on a local radio station lamenting that there wasn’t a need for yet another sports team to change its name. Through it all, I wondered why they never heard what Inuit were saying about a term we consider racist. As someone who has publicly criticized the team for years, I’ve been called the b word and the c word, among other things. To those people who filled my Facebook page with the most horrible language and the worst name calling, all I can say is shame on you again. It’s tragic to know that in 2020, there are still so very many people who will not hear the Indigenous side of an issue or who will sigh and say that they are sick of the constant change and everyone having a cause. I am not alone in my constant campaign against the name. I stand next to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson, national Inuit leader Natan Obed and artists Tanya Tagaq and Susan Aglukark. Sen. Murray Sinclair has been suggesting the need for a name change since he released the Calls to Action from his Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015. The commission listed several ways sports could lead to reconciliation, including the promotion of anti racism awareness in sports. It only took five years for Edmonton to pay attention. As an advocate for a name change, it’s been disturbing that the general public doesn’t understand the harm created by the E word. They want to stay loyal to a team name instead of considering the opinions and feelings of the Inuit, the smallest Indigenous Canadian group that have the highest amounts of disparity. Ignoring those feelings suggests it’s OK that Inuit Canadians live their lives in poverty, that there remains food insecurity in the Canadian North based on the price of food alone and that most Inuit parents eat once a day so that their children can eat three times in a day. It’s OK that teen suicide and drug and alcohol abuse is rampant and yet there are a lack of treatment centers in northern communities. The debate about the team name also revealed that most non Indigenous Canadians don’t want to examine their own racism. They don’t want to think about what that E word does to future generations of Inuit youth and small children. They don’t want to think about what the E word makes people think of that cute little guy in a fur ringed parka, standing next to a seal breathing hole with a harpoon in his hand. ",2,https://theconversation.com/edmonton-finally-drops-the-eskimos-and-may-my-grandchildren-never-hear-the-e-word-again-143170,FALSE, 1141,Addressing anti-Black racism in post-secondary institutions can transform Canada after the COVID-19 pandemic,"COVID 19 has brought issues of racism and inequality in our education systems into stark relief. We must now consider the role of colleges and universities in transforming Canada for the better after coronavirus. Some have argued that the humanities and social sciences have a particularly important role in shaping our responses to the pandemic. Others suggest that now is the time to rethink higher education and pivot to a more decentralized model that reduces demands on the environment and opens up horizons for innovation and flexible learning. Canadian colleges and universities are an important site for imagining and enacting a better Canada post pandemic. Addressing the experiences of Black students, staff and faculty in these institutions is essential to move through and beyond crisis towards societal transformation. One way to approach such fundamental issues is to examine the experiences of Black people within the academy. Black people in Canada have always had challenging relationships with educational institutions. Their experiences can be characterized as an enduring crisis, one that will most likely outlive our current pandemic. As important sites where future workers are educated and developed, and where global events like COVID 19 are studied and theorized, universities and colleges offer unique spaces to think deeply about these critical interconnections as we engage in protest against anti Black racism and move toward possible transformations beyond the pandemic. So what might we glean from all of the ways in which Black people in higher education have managed to survive and persist during the coronavirus? And how might understanding their experiences be useful in thinking about how colleges and universities can contribute to a post coronavirus future?As a Black college administrator and someone whose doctoral research looks at the experiences of Black people in higher education, I have witnessed how the pandemic has wreaked havoc in the lives of Black students and colleagues first hand. I’ve observed how Black students, faculty and staff have had to attend to home lives shot through with constant worry for loved ones who are employed on the front lines; the constant threat of layoffs that has disproportionately impacted Black and racialized staff; and how the need to maintain employment has made the continuation of studies near impossible for far too many Black students. Indeed, the coronavirus continues to have a disproportionate impact on all aspects of Black life. All of this comes on top of an already tenuous and vexing relationship with post secondary institutions, where historically high push out/dropout rates, social isolation and anti Black racism is pervasive. Read more: Living and breathing while Black: Racial profiling and other acts of violence Black people have known crisis ever since the trans Atlantic slave trade, and we have known it in the academy well before COVID 19. To be Black and active in the academy is to know what it means to survive, largely by practising what York University humanities scholar Christina Sharpe has termed “care”. Care can be discerned in the countless check ins on the states of well being of Black students and colleagues; in the meetings after the meeting where what was both said and left unsaid by non Black colleagues is unpacked; and in the spontaneous email threads where supports and mental health resources for Black people are shared. ",2,https://theconversation.com/addressing-anti-black-racism-in-post-secondary-institutions-can-transform-canada-after-the-covid-19-pandemic-141366,FALSE, 1143,How the dimensions of human inequality affect who and what we are," Professor emeritus of Sociology, University of Cambridge Göran Therborn does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. University of Cambridge provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK. View all partnersWhat does it mean to be human today? It is an excellent starting point for thinking about human inequality. To be human, in an elementary sense, means three things. First, you are a sexed living organism, capable of feeling pain and pleasure and of reproduction, with a delimited lifespan of development and decay, subject to vicissitudes of health and illness. Secondly, you are a person, with a self and a reflexive capacity, flourishing or suffering in social environments. Thirdly, you are a creative, goal oriented actor, collective as well as individual, endowed with resources of varying size and kind. The possibilities of flourishing as a human are shaped by processes of equality. Differences are either given – by God or by Nature – or chosen as lifestyles. Unlike difference, inequality is a historical social construction. The three dimensionality of humanity gives us three kinds of human inequality. These are vital, existential and resource. Vital inequality refers to socially determined distributions of health and ill health and of your lifespan. It can be measured in life expectancy and in health expectancy or your years without serious illness. Where demographic life tables are missing, infant and child mortality are more accessible indicators. Existential inequality sums up the unequal social treatment of persons. On one end of the spectrum resides denial of recognition, autonomy, existential security, dignity and respect. These can be achieved through acts of neglect, bullying, degradation and humiliation. The ultimate result is a denial of their humanness. At the opposite end are selective attention, freedom, emotional security, encouragement, respect and admiration. Existential inequality is structured and processed by categories and lenses of othering – such as sex, race, ethnicity, caste or religion. It is arguably the most hurtful and wounding of inequalities. It has given rise to a range of egalitarian movements – feminist, anti racist, nationalist, anti caste, anti bigotry. It has been an important driver of workers’ movements, in which the demand for recognition of workers’ human dignity has been central. So far, however, existential inequality has received little systematic analysis and study. It is hardly quantifiable and is difficult to compare. Legal practices and public norms, recurrent demographic and health surveys, opinion surveys, anthropological studies, autobiographies and media reporting provide qualitative evidence. Resource inequality expresses the unequal allocation of resources to act among human actors. It is most frequently gauged through distributions of income and wealth and of so called human capital. Less studied in this context, although highly relevant, are distributions of power and rights. The three dimensions of inequality are interconnected and interact or “intersect”, but each has its own dynamic and trajectory, globally and nationally. Othering means seeing and treating a set of people as being of a different kind than you and your type of people, as strange, peculiar and inferior. Viewing “race” as a category of existential othering means highlighting its character as a socio cultural construction that is subject to change. This occurs alongside many other constructs such as gender, ethnicity, caste and religion. In early 20th century Europe, “race” was often synonymous with ethnicity. For example, “the British race” or references to geo ethnic groups, such as the “Alpine” or “Mediterranean race”. In continental Europe today, “race” is hardly used at all. ",2,https://theconversation.com/how-the-dimensions-of-human-inequality-affect-who-and-what-we-are-137296,FALSE, 1145,Why does racism prevail? Leading scholars apply their minds," Evan Pugh University Professor of Anthropology, Penn State Professor Emeritus of Law, University of South Africa Nina G. Jablonski receives funding from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the National Science Foundation . Barney Pityana is affiliated with The 70s Group, an independent gathering of South African political activists from the 1970s. It aims to contribute to informed political and economic thinking in society. Penn State provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation US. University of South Africa provides funding as a partner of The Conversation AFRICA. View all partnersAll people belong to one biological species and there are no human “races”. So why does belief in race persist? It may be a scientific misconception, but it is real. It defines the lived experience of many people and determines how governments act and how people treat one another. How did race come to have this power and this durability? A project was undertaken to address these very questions and to get at the heart of the “everydayness” of race in South Africa and elsewhere. Called the Effects of Race Project, it was started at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study in South Africa in 2013 as part of a broader project at the institute called Being Human Today. One of us along with political sociologist Gerhard Maré organised and convened the project. Our goal was to create new scholarship that could eventually inform outlooks and policy on “race thinking”. Seven years later, we wanted to present a brief summary of some of the outcomes of the project and why they matter. When we began the project, we couldn’t see exactly what the future held in store, but we knew that the poisons of race thinking and racism were killing people. Temporary antidotes were no longer going to work. Soon, the toxic nature of race thinking and racism would be exposed and fully understood so that they could be expelled from the body of humanity. We gathered together scholars from South Africa, the US and Europe who had years of experience in thinking about race. They came from sociology, anthropology, geography, law, the humanities, and education. Some of them were anti apartheid leaders and are still engaged in efforts to raise South Africans out of that chasm of injustice. The group met for about two weeks each year from 2015 to 2017, in the cold of the winter in the Western Cape. At the beginning of our work we had little more than hope. We fully appreciated that race thinking and racism were big and powerful topics that had defied and defeated many previous expectations. We also recognized that we needed to inspect common misconceptions about race and understand how these continued to exist in public policy ecosystems. The perspectives on race and racism that each of us brought to the group were never the same, but we listened carefully and responded thoughtfully. Through successive discussions, we cultivated the mutual respect and trust that made it possible to venture into the most difficult and sensitive subjects at length without fear of judgment or reprisal. As one of our members, Njabulo Ndebele, put it one afternoon:The elephant is in the room, and we are petting it. We mused over whether we were not just being indulgent academics, failing to respond practically to matters that affect the lives of ordinary people. But we then realised that much of what we accomplished was the act of discussion itself. Significant insights and realisations emerged from honest, probing discussions among trusted parties. The process was as important as the subject matter. We realised people of all ages and sorts, and especially children and youth, who had long been segregated by the weight of the built environment, needed more opportunities to mix in formal and informal settings, and share their experiences, dreams, and aspirations. This was not a new insight, but the fact that all of us felt its impact, to our bones, made it profound. ",2,https://theconversation.com/why-does-racism-prevail-leading-scholars-apply-their-minds-138363,FALSE, 1146,Black churches have lagged in moving online during the pandemic – reaching across generational lines could help,"From online campaigns for justice to popular TikTok challenges, Black young adults are at the forefront of social media trends. But when it comes to the Black Church, the same cannot be said – it has lagged behind in the rush to go digital. There is a reason for that. But as a scholar of online religious practices, I believe that ascribing the problem to a generational divide and declining church engagement among young people is overly simplistic. Such a view, I argue, fails to understand the complex dynamic between Black young adults and the Black Church. The pandemic is one case in point. Early in March, before state and federal guidelines were handed down, Black churches were split over whether to remain open or close their doors to congregants during the pandemic. Some churches designed innovative practices to cater to congregants during the lockdown, like church service by phone, drive in services or livestreaming worship before empty pews. But others continued with in person services despite stay at home orders. A survey in late April found that worshipers at historically Black churches were the least likely to say that their services had moved online. The slow move to online technology by some Black churches has been attributed in part to an aging hierarchy. Nonetheless, studies suggest that racial and economic disparities could also be factors in why many Black churches struggled to go online prior to and during the pandemic compared to non Black churches. On average, Black Americans face greater barriers to internet access and high speed connection at home than do white Americans. This disparity extends to Black young adults. So called Black millennials – those age 23 to 38 – total well over 11 million. They are the largest living population of African Americans. Polling suggests a declining number are involved in the Black church. The number of young adults and Black Americans identifying as Christian fell by 16 percentage points and 11 percentage points, respectively, between 2009 and 2019. Those who do identify as Christian – 65%, according to a 2014 Pew survey – participate in a diverse range of faith practices. In my forthcoming book on religion and Black young adults, I note the emergence of Black young adults who make a living through online faith based practices. These include D. Danyelle Thomas, founder of Unfit Christian, who fosters a popular Facebook community and provides intuitive tarot readings by email. There are others who provides Christian content through art and sermons to online subscribers, like Joseph Solomon, and YouTube personalities like Umar Johnson, who espouses Pan Africanist thought as a response to religion. The technological prowess of Black young adults as religious content creators is out there. But it can sometimes be overlooked in part due to longstanding perceptions of young people as lazy or feckless that dovetail with similar tropes about Black people that have been around since the 19th century. It is also complicated by misconceptions over the behavior of so called millennials, and how that term is applied to Black young people. Back in 1991, researchers Neil Howe and William Strauss wrote the bestselling book “Generations,” coining the term “millennial” that went on to describe those born between 1981 and 1996. They followed it up with a more in depth look at the generation in “Millennials Rising. ” But the generalizations that Howe and Strauss make are based on a very small, mostly affluent white student population in Fairfax County, Virginia. ",2,https://theconversation.com/black-churches-have-lagged-in-moving-online-during-the-pandemic-reaching-across-generational-lines-could-help-132170,FALSE, 1152,"Coronavirus weekly: racism, COVID-19, and the inequality that fuels these parallel pandemics","The protests against systemic racism and police violence sweeping the globe highlight the intersection between two pandemics: COVID 19 and racism. Researchers are pointing out that structural inequalities mean people of color are hit harder by the coronavirus. Politicians are also concerned the protests may trigger an increase in the spread of COVID 19, so public health experts are providing tips on how to protest safely. And while many countries grapple with increasing rates of COVID 19, New Zealand has declared it has eliminated the virus, and is now aiming to keep it that way. In this week’s roundup of coronavirus stories from scholars across the globe, we explore the disproportionate impact of COVID 19, New Zealand’s success, and the latest on drug trials. This is our weekly roundup of expert info about the coronavirus. The Conversation, a not for profit group, works with a wide range of academics across its global network. Together we produce evidence based analysis and insights. The articles are free to read – there is no paywall – and to republish. Keep up to date with the latest research by reading our free newsletter. Past pandemics have exposed existing inequalities, and this one is no different. Our experts explain why COVID 19 is having a greater impact on people of color and other marginalized groups. Disproportionate impact. Black Americans have been dying from the coronavirus at nearly three times the rate of white Americans, while black people in the United Kingdom are four times more likely to die from COVID 19 than their white compatriots. Medical historian Mark Honigsbaum writes about the relationship between pandemics and inequality. Social justice is crucial to healthcare. Systemic racism means marginalised groups have limited access to resources that impact health, according to an interdisciplinary team of US health researchers. Doctors need to be trained to understand the social determinants of health to deal with problems like COVID 19, argue researchers from Rwanda’s University of Global Health Equity. Safely protesting. Public health experts are concerned the protests will increase the spread of COVID 19. An infection prevention researcher at Monash University gives some tips on how to minimise the risk of transmission when taking to the streets. “Fear of what others might think when they see a Black man in a mask. ”. Despite masks providing increased safety during the pandemic, black and other minority groups are often subjected to racist abuse or discrimination when wearing them. Jasmin Zine of Wilfrid Laurier University explores the racial politics of mask wearing. A lack of clean water. Clean water is crucial for hygiene and hand washing, key elements of infection control. But many people do not have access to good quality water, especially in slums and refugee camps, according to researchers from the National University of Singapore and the University of Glasgow. New Zealand has hit the historic milestone of zero active cases, and lifted almost all its coronavirus restrictions. Two of the leading public health experts behind the successful elimination now explain the challenge of maintaining it. Meanwhile, across the Tasman Sea, experts chart Australia’s journey in controlling the virus. Cautious celebration. New Zealand has successfully eliminated COVID 19, but elimination is not one point in time: it requires ongoing work. Two public health professors from the University of Otago describe five ways the country can protect itself in the long term. Asymptomatic cases. Removing coronavirus restrictions in New Zealand increases the chance of a new outbreak to 8%, according to modeling from an interdisciplinary research team. This is because there may be hidden asymptomatic cases that haven’t been uncovered by testing. ",2,https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-weekly-racism-covid-19-and-the-inequality-that-fuels-these-parallel-pandemics-140255,FALSE, 1153,Seven ways businesses can value black lives (beyond social media posts),"Protests have erupted across the world in response to the killing of George Floyd on May 25 in the US. Then came, where black squares dominated social media in a bid to show support for the Black Lives Matter movement. While this has raised awareness, that is only the first step towards addressing racial injustice. The next step is to actively make a change. Here are some ways businesses can show their support beyond tokenistic social media posts. They can play a pivotal role in actively changing their workplaces. Advocating for diversity and inclusion publicly should be more than just a marketing exercise, otherwise, it’s just Black Power washing. This is where brands issue empty statements about their commitment to ethnic minorities without showing a real commitment to change their practices. One of many examples of how to stand for real change is Nike’s sponsorship of Colin Kaepernick, which showed that a company was willing to stand for freedom of speech when the NFL and their customer base was divided on the issue of racial injustice. This action involved taking a risk and alienating some of Nike’s customers. Simply posting a black square on Instagram one day and going back to business as usual the next day is disingenuous. Businesses should pledge to be part of the solution. By now we all know that as consumers we have some power to vote with our wallets. This means you can actively seek out black owned businesses to spend with. Some lists can make your spending more informed, from those that list businesses supporting black communities and others that compile the responses to racial injustice of various brands. There are two main reasons to be anti racist. The business case: the idea that avoiding discrimination makes good business sense. And the moral case: the idea that avoiding discrimination is the right thing to do ethically and legally. An anti racist takes action to challenge racial inequality. It is not enough to avoid acting on the unconscious biases we all hold. Being anti racist is about speaking out on and changing structural inequalities at work. This year, 2020, is the poster year for anti fragile businesses, organizations that improve and strengthen from crises and stress. We can combine being anti fragile with being anti racist. How has your organization responded to recent crises? Would uncovering racism or other forms of discrimination in your organization be an opportunity to change and improve? Do your employees have the freedom to speak up and out about discrimination? We are all diverse and unique. However, for some, these characteristics of diversity combine to create a toxic cocktail of inequality. Race inequality can be compounded by issues of class, gender and age. The same efforts made to promote equality based on one characteristic should be applied to all. In the UK we are now committed to reporting the gender pay gap. The next step is reporting the pay of different ethnic groups within the organization. Minority groups are disproportionately affected by conflict and war and many become refugees who can no longer depend on their state for protection. Businesses can join the 150 UK workplaces, colleges and community groups who sponsor refugees through the citizens UK’s scheme or international ones. Discrimination is still a major factor in the unemployment of ethic minorities. To reduce this you could invest in blind hiring practices. Removing names from CVs is the first step. This can be followed by diversity auditing. We can ask ourselves how diverse are the teams making hiring decisions? Are we advertising in places that may attract a diverse talent pool? ",2,https://theconversation.com/seven-ways-businesses-can-value-black-lives-beyond-social-media-posts-140096,FALSE, 1154,"As Minneapolis burns, Trump’s presidency is sinking deeper into crisis. And yet, he may still be re-elected","Violence has erupted across several US cities after the death of a black man, George Floyd, who was shown on video gasping for breath as a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, knelt on his neck. The unrest poses serious challenges for President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden as each man readies his campaign for the November 3 election. If the coronavirus had not already posed a threat to civil discourse in the US, the latest flashpoint in American racial politics makes this presidential campaign potentially one of the most incendiary in history. COVID 19 and Minneapolis may very well form the nexus within which the 2020 campaign will unfold. Trump’s critics have assailed his handling of both and questioned whether he can effectively lead the country in a moment of crisis. And yet, he may not be any more vulnerable heading into the election. As the incumbent, Trump certainly faces the most immediate challenges. Not since Franklin Roosevelt in the second world war has a US president presided over the deaths of so many Americans from a single cause. The Axis powers and COVID 19 are not analogous, but any presidency is judged by its capacity to respond to enemies like these. With pandemic deaths now surpassing 100,000, Trump’s fortunes will be inexorably tied to this staggering figure. Worse, the Minneapolis protests are showing how an already precarious social fabric has been frayed by the COVID 19 lockdowns. Read more: Donald Trump blames everyone but himself for the coronavirus crisis. Will voters agree? Americans have not come together to fight the virus. Rather, they have allowed a public health disaster to deepen divisions along racial, economic, sectional and ideological lines. Trump has, of course, often sought to gain from such divisions. But the magnitude and severity of the twin crises he is now facing will make this very difficult. By numerous measures, his is a presidency in crisis. And yet. Trump, a ferocious campaigner, will try to find ways to use both tragedies to his advantage and, importantly, makes things worse for his challenger. For starters, Trump did not cause coronavirus. And he will continue to insist that his great geo strategic adversary, the Chinese Communist Party, did. And his is not the first presidency to be marked by the conflagration of several US cities. Before Minneapolis, Detroit , Los Angeles and Ferguson, Missouri were all the scenes of angry protests and riots over racial tensions that still haven’t healed. And in the 19th century, 750,000 Americans were killed in a civil war that was fought over whether the enslavement of African Americans was constitutional. Trump may not have healed racial tensions in the US during his presidency. But, like coronavirus, he did not cause them. Not unhappily for Trump, Minneapolis is a largely Democratic city in a reliably blue state. He will campaign now on the failure of Democratic state leaders to answer the needs of black voters. Trump will claim that decades of Democratic policies in Minnesota – including the eight years of the Obama administration – have caused Minneapolis to be one of the most racially unequal cities in the nation. In 2016, Trump famously asked African Americans whether Democratic leaders have done anything to improve their lives. What do you have to lose by trying something new, like Trump? He will repeat this mantra in the coming months. ",2,https://theconversation.com/as-minneapolis-burns-trumps-presidency-is-sinking-deeper-into-crisis-and-yet-he-may-still-be-re-elected-139739,FALSE, 1155,Riot or resistance? How media frames unrest in Minneapolis will shape public’s view of protest," Assistant Professor of Journalism, Indiana University Danielle K. Kilgo receives funding from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. Indiana University provides funding as a member of The Conversation US. View all partnersA teenager held her phone steady enough to capture the final moments of George Perry Floyd’s life as he apparently suffocated under the weight of a Minneapolis police officer’s knee on his neck. The video went viral. What happened next has played out time and again in American cities after high profile cases of alleged police brutality. Vigils and protests were organized in Minneapolis and around the United States to demand police accountability. But while investigators and officials called for patience, unrest boiled over. News reports soon carried images of property destruction and police in riot gear. The general public’s opinions about protests and the social movements behind them are formed in large part by what they read or see in the media. This gives journalists a lot of power when it comes to driving the narrative of a demonstration. They can emphasize the disruption protests cause or echo the dog whistles of politicians that label protesters as “thugs. ” But they can also remind the public that at the heart of the protests is the unjust killing of another black person. This would take the emphasis away from the destruction of the protests and toward the issues of police impunity and the effects of racism in its many forms. The role journalists play can be indispensable if movements are to gain legitimacy and make progress. And that puts a lot of pressure on journalists to get things right. My research has found that some protest movements have more trouble than others getting legitimacy. My co author Summer Harlow and I have studied how local and metropolitan newspapers cover protests. We found that narratives about the Women’s March and anti Trump protests gave voice to protesters and significantly explored their grievances. On the other end of the spectrum, protests about anti black racism and indigenous people’s rights received the least legitimizing coverage, with them more often seen as threatening and violent. Decades ago, scholars James Hertog and Douglas McLeod identified how news coverage of protests contributes to the maintenance of the status quo, a phenomenon referred to as “the protest paradigm. ” They held that media narratives tend to emphasize the drama, inconvenience and disruption of protests rather than the demands, grievances and agendas of protesters. These narratives trivialize protests and ultimately dent public support. Here’s how this theoretically plays out today: Journalists pay little attention to protests that aren’t dramatic or unconventional. Knowing this, protesters find ways to capture media and public attention. They don pink “pussy” hats or kneel during the national anthem. They might even resort to violence and lawlessness. Now the protesters have the media’s attention, but what they cover is often superficial or delegitimizing, focusing on the tactics and disruption caused and excluding discussion on the substance of the social movement. We wanted to explore if this classic theory fit coverage from 2017 – a year of large scale protests accompanying the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency. To do so, we analyzed the framing of protest reporting from newspapers in Texas. The state’s size and diversity made it a good proxy for the country at large. In all, we identified 777 articles by searching for terms such as “protest,” “protester,” “Black Lives Matter” and “Women’s March. ” This included reports written by journalists in 20 Texas newsrooms, such as the El Paso Times and the Houston Chronicle, as well as syndicated articles from sources like the Associated Press. We looked at how articles framed the protests in the headline, opening sentence and story structure, and classified the reporting using four recognized frames of protest:",2,https://theconversation.com/riot-or-resistance-how-media-frames-unrest-in-minneapolis-will-shape-publics-view-of-protest-139713,FALSE, 1157,Coronavirus: its impact cannot be explained away through the prism of race," Reader in Toxicology and Clinical Biochemistry, Director of Impact and Innovation, University of East London Winston Morgan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. University of East London provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK. View all partnersFrom the start of the coronavirus pandemic, there has been an attempt to use science to explain the disproportionate impact of COVID 19 on different groups through the prism of race. Data from the UK and the US suggests that people categorised as black, Hispanic and south Asian are more likely to die from the disease. The way this issue is often discussed, but also the response of some scientists, would suggest that there may be some biological reason for the higher death rates based on genetic differences between these groups and their white counterparts. But the reality is there is no evidence that the genes used to divide people into races are linked to how our immune system responds to viral infections. There are certain genetic mutations that can be found among specific ethnic groups that can play a role in the body’s immune response. But because of the loose definition of race and recent population movements, these should be seen as unreliable indicators when it comes to susceptibility to viral infections. Indeed, race is a social construct with no scientific basis. However, there are clear links between people’s racial groups, their socioeconomic status, what happens to them once they are infected and the outcome of their infection. And focusing on the idea of a genetic link merely serves to distract from this. Read more: Coronavirus: BAME deaths urgently need to be understood, including any potential genetic component You only have to look at how the statistics are gathered to understand how these issues are confused. Data from the UK’s Office for National Statistics that has been used to highlight the disparate death rates separates Indians from Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, and yet groups all Africans . This makes no sense in terms of race, ethnicity or genetics. The data shows those males categorised as black are over 4. 6 times more likely to die than their white counterparts from the virus. They are followed by Pakistanis/Bangladeshis , and then Chinese and Indians . Most genome wide association studies group all south Asians. Yet, at least in the UK, COVID 19 can apparently separate Indians and Pakistanis, suggesting genetics have little to do with it. The categories used to collect government data for the pandemic are far more suited to social outcomes such as employment or education. This problem arises even with recent analysis that purportedly show people from ethnic minorities are no more likely to die once you take into account the effects of other illnesses and deprivation. The main analysis only compares whites to non whites, masking the data for specific groups, while the headline of the newspaper article about the study refers only to black people. Meanwhile, in the US the groups most disproportionately affected are African Americans and Hispanics/Latinos. All these groups come from very different population groups. We’ve also seen high death rates in Brazil, China and Italy, all of whom have very different populations using the classical definition of race. The idea that COVID 19 discriminates along traditional racial lines is created by these statistics and fails to adequately portray what’s really going on. These kinds of assumptions ignore the fact that there is as much genetic variation within racialised groups as there is between the whole human population. ",2,https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-its-impact-cannot-be-explained-away-through-the-prism-of-race-138046,FALSE, 1158,Inquiry into coronavirus nursing home deaths needs to include discussion of workers and race," Professor, Department of Equity Studies, York University, Canada Tania Das Gupta does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. York University provides funding as a member of The Conversation CA FR. York University provides funding as a member of The Conversation CA. View all partnersCOVID 19 has most severely affected elderly residents and their caregivers in long term care nursing homes. In Ontario, coronavirus has claimed the lives of well over 1,400 people, both residents and caregivers, in the long term care system. Although many issues have been discussed in relation to this crisis in long term care, one crucial factor has not been discussed as much: the issue of race. Why is race important here? Nursing homes and long term care in Canada are predominantly staffed by immigrant women, migrants and refugees mostly women of colour. In Montréal, up to 80 per cent of the workers in long term care are racialized women. Many of us have recently learned that long term care homes are increasingly funded by the private sector animated by profit making. This business model has created challenging conditions within which COVID 19 and other infections rapidly spread. A team of researchers led by Pat Armstrong at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives said the high incidence of deaths in long term care homes are an indication of the lack of value placed on two groups of people: the elderly and their caregivers. Having a conversation on racism is a challenge in an environment where race talk is often seen as an indication of racism. Even the collection of race based data has been controversial. The reluctance to speak about race in long term care homes may be contributing to what appears to be race blind reporting of the way the pandemic is impacting communities. In general, long term care workers are so poorly paid that many have to survive by combining multiple jobs in different care homes. As a result, they can inadvertently become potential carriers of infection. But they often have little choice. Many are not unionized, which means they do not have sick leave benefits. Even if they are not feeling well, some would hesitate to stay home because of lost income. British Columbia recognized this issue and acted quickly. The province restricted caregivers to one nursing home, topped up their wages and made them full time workers. If we were not in the middle of a pandemic affecting elderly residents would these reforms have been made? Probably not. To make profits in these privately owned and operated care centres, owners have relied on a racialized and gendered workforce of immigrant and migrant women, assumed to be both cheap and disposable. Their cheapness and disposability are predicated on societal assumptions about their inferior quality of labour, lack of skills and unavailability of better employment opportunities. Despite the fact that they are considered “essential” workers, they earn low wages, are insecure and even subjected to workplace violence. Expendability becomes synonymous with long term care workers. Research conducted by the Canadian Union of Public Employees and Ontario Council of Hospital unions concluded that about 90 per cent of long term care staff in Ontario have suffered physical violence, while around 70 per cent of racialized and Indigenous staff have experienced related harassment. This culture of violence is due to their social vulnerability as women of colour and as immigrants. The perceived disposability of these workers is perpetuated not only by their insecure status as part time, temporary and contractual workers, but also due to their status as newcomers and non citizens. ",2,https://theconversation.com/inquiry-into-coronavirus-nursing-home-deaths-needs-to-include-discussion-of-workers-and-race-139017,FALSE, 1162,Race-based health data urgently needed during the coronavirus pandemic," Assistant Professor, Social & Behavioural Health Sciences, Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto Assistant Professor, Centre for Studies in Family Medicine Associate Program Director of the Public Health & Preventive Medicine Residency Program at the University of Toronto, University of Toronto Kate Mulligan works for the Alliance for Healthier Communities. She sits on the Toronto Board of Health and the board of the Association of Local Public Health Agencies. Jennifer Rayner works for the Alliance for Healthier Communities. Onye Nnorom does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. University of Toronto provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation CA. University of Toronto provides funding as a member of The Conversation CA FR. View all partnersA one size fits all approach to COVID 19 does not work. David Williams, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, recently said the province will not collect data on race and other indicators of who is being hardest hit by the COVID 19 pandemic, saying, “regardless of race, ethnic or other backgrounds, they’re all equally important to us. ” Williams says he’s following the guidance of the World Health Organization and he’s not alone. No Canadian province or territory currently collects these data, although Alberta’s Chief Medical Health Officer Deena Hinshaw committed last week to looking into it in partnership with First Nations communities. A spokesperson for the Public Health Agency of Canada similarly said the federal government has “no plans” to collect disaggregated data on social determinants of health as risk factors for COVID 19. There are outbreaks in shelters, among migrant farm workers and in long term care homes. LGBTQI2S people have been harder hit by economic shutdowns. Meanwhile, temporary closures of consumption and treatment services for people who use drugs have increased their vulnerability. Public facing essential workers continue to risk exposure, all pointing to their expendability masked under a one size fits all response. While the provinces are unresponsive to calls for race based data, there has been some movement. After thousands of people and hundreds of organizations called for the collection of race based and sociodemographic data, some local public health units in Ontario stepped up to fill the provincial void. Peel, Toronto and London Middlesex public health units have all announced plans to collect and use sociodemographic and race based data for contact tracing. Nationally, groups like the Pan Canadian Dialogue to Advance the Measurement of Equity in Health Care continue to advance the conversation. But the federal and most provincial governments still refuse to act. An Ontario Ministry of Health spokesperson claims that current legislation does not “authorize health information custodians to collect race based data. ” Yet, as researchers in health equity, we know this is possible under current laws, because we and our partners have long gathered data on race and other social factors that affect health and healthcare. Long before the pandemic, many racialized communities were advocating to advance the systematic collection of race based data in health care. The WHO says health systems need equity informed data to take informed action. Strikingly, the Ontario Public Health Standards require the collection of these data, supported by Williams’ own 2018 report Improving the Odds: Championing Health Equity in Ontario. The United States does collect race based data. The evidence shows that African Americans and Indigenous people are among the hardest hit by the coronavirus. Systemic anti Black racism has been cited as a root cause of African American health disparities. ",2,https://theconversation.com/race-based-health-data-urgently-needed-during-the-coronavirus-pandemic-136822,FALSE, 1163,"Coronavirus discriminates against Black lives through surveillance, policing and the absence of health data","The claim that COVID 19 and its associated medical and social responses do not discriminate belies the history of how pandemics work and who is most impacted by them. States of emergency show that citizenship privileges some, is partial for others and disappears others. In our early analysis of national media coverage, those experts sharing the grim statistics of infections and deaths, those front line workers seen as risking their lives and those who have lost loved ones are predominantly white. Black, Indigenous and racialized people, and many whose lives have been further imperilled by this pandemic, remain virtually disappeared from the Canadian landscape. That makes collective care for members across our communities untenable. We take pause and reflect on how this will impact Black people across economy, health and policing, to name three areas of concern. Black people tend to be employed in low paying and highly feminized jobs: these include clerical jobs, janitorial staff, orderlies and nursing assistants who are now determined as essential services. Black people are also more likely to work in the grey and underground economy, which are forms of labour that might involve payments outside the regular labour force and taxation system, and not counted in GDP. Effectively, anti Black racism has already ensured that Black people and undocumented residents are less than citizens in late modern capitalist Canada. Yet, the people who are likely most at risk are the ones who are being asked to sacrifice their lives. Collectively, Black people in Canada find themselves among the most disadvantaged in all indicators of what is considered a “good life. ”The attempt to interrupt the spread of the virus has brought together policing and public health. Since at least the post emancipation period in the Americas and this period includes Canada public health and policing have been launched against Black communities. Both public health and policing depend on assessing Black people as wayward. In the post emancipation Americas, early public health campaigns sought to “train” Black women on child rearing, cleanliness of homes and food preparation. Indeed, as late as the 1960s, one of the justifications for the destruction of Africville, N. S. , was the public health claim that the community was at a health risk as there was no sewage system. Instead of providing necessary services, the community was forcibly removed. Public health has historically been an extension of policing for Black people that has positioned us as suspicious and nefarious in our actions and movements. In our current state of emergency, this union of policing and public health has led to more Black people being arrested, detained and physically restrained in the name of public health protection. The current rules around movement put Black people at risk, more vulnerable to intensified policing when in public and potentially exposed to the virus at work. ",2,https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-discriminates-against-black-lives-through-surveillance-policing-and-the-absence-of-health-data-135906,FALSE, 1164,The unintended consequences of marijuana decriminalization,"America’s decades long war on drugs disproportionately harmed minorities. Now, it seems that decriminalization of marijuana hasn’t leveled the playing field. Black men are 12 times more likely than white men to spend time incarcerated in the United States. College enrollment for black men has declined since the 1986 Anti Drug Abuse Act went into effect. I am a scholar of public policy. In my book, “From Criminalizing to Decriminalizing Marijuana: The Politics of Social Control,” I aim to provide a historic overview of marijuana legislation and its impact on minorities. Some drug laws related to marijuana are easing. As of this writing in early 2020, twenty five states have introduced decriminalization reforms, with 11 states allowing adult recreational use. Such reforms directly impact adults 21 years of age and older, but they also have indirect effect on younger Americans. Even though marijuana is still illegal for people under 21, evidence is emerging that decriminalization is increasing the number of kids who consume weed illegally. As I wrote in my book, young people have always been the main buyers of marijuana. Smoking marijuana has become an important part of growing up for many U. S. teenagers, a fact not acknowledged by any marijuana reform advocacy analysis. Additionally, crime data show that even in the most permissive legal environments, minority youth continue to be disproportionately arrested and convicted on marijuana charges. From 2000 to 2014, self reported usage rates in Americans 15 years of age and older doubled. These rates include teens and those under 21, for whom marijuana use continues to be and most likely will continue to be illegal. Those who advocate for marijuana reform ignore the fact that looser laws promote more marijuana use, especially by young and marginalized Americans who buy the drug in illegal markets. For example, arrest data show that in Colorado, legalizing recreational use for anyone 21 and over caused a significant increase in the arrest rates of African Americans and Hispanics under that legal age limit. At the same time, arrests for underage whites decreased. In Washington state, arrests on all marijuana charges fell by 90% between 2008 and 2014, but “hazard rates” for African Americans remained unchanged. This means they were still twice as likely as whites to be arrested on marijuana charges. In other words, decriminalization has done little to change historical patterns in national marijuana arrest trends. Liberal Americans tend to believe marijuana legalization drives reform. There are three distinctly different categories of marijuana policy reform – decriminalization of possessing a small amount of marijuana, legalizing medical marijuana and decriminalizing recreational use. The reform diffusion trend picked impetus in 2000, when Hawaii and Nevada legalized medical marijuana through their state legislatures. This signaled the beginning of the political normalization of marijuana reform. Previously, medical marijuana laws were reformed largely by ballot initiatives in states with constitutions that have a direct democracy measure. In my book, I analyzed the political, economic and demographic predictors of each type of policy reform from 2000 to 2014. The results indicate that rising marijuana usage rates, a ballot initiative allowing voters a say in the matter and the experience of neighboring states are the main factors driving decriminalization in general. ",2,https://theconversation.com/the-unintended-consequences-of-marijuana-decriminalization-131270,FALSE, 1165,Coronavirus is not the great equalizer — race matters,"One of the first stories to use race based data to talk about the risk that Black communities face because of COVID 19 came on March 30 from the Charlotte Observer. The article said Black residents in Mecklenburg County, in Charlotte, N. C. , accounted for 43. 9 per cent of the 303 confirmed COVID 19 cases locally, but Black residents make up only 32. 9 per cent of the county’s population. More recently, the non profit investigative journalism site Pro Publica published a story on April 3 based on early data that shows “African Americans have contracted and died of coronavirus at an alarming rate. ”Indigenous communities globally have also been speaking about how the new virus may have more devastating impacts on their communities. The fear and mistrust of health systems expressed by many in Black, Indigenous and racialized communities stem from historical eugenic practices of both governments and individual doctors. These communities have experienced systemic racist violence for generations. They have recently experienced xenophobic responses to COVID 19 and historically, other health crises. I have worked for over 25 years in community health and as a health scholar. I have worked with survivors of trauma who have experienced colonial violence. I am concerned how anti Black racism, anti Indigenous racism and other forms of intersectional violence will impact the health of our communities during this crisis. Based on my research, I believe that the actions and omissions of world leaders in charge of fighting the COVID 19 pandemic will reveal historical and current impacts of colonial violence and continued health inequities among African, Indigenous, racialized and marginalized folks. Recently, I have had discussions about COVID 19 with family, friends and colleagues globally about the impacts of the coronavirus on the health of African, Indigenous, racialized and marginalized folks. The question often asked is: how will we navigate health systems that continuously violate us? We are talking about those who, like us, live with intersectional social locations, such as race, indigeneity, age, ability, gender/gender identity, sexual orientation, refugee status, class and religion. Will these social factors play an implicit role in health care workers’ decisions? Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said: “Our government is going to make sure that no matter where you live, what you do or who you are, you get the support you need during this time. ” This sounds good in a speech, but how will it be practiced in a system that does not provide adequate services for racialized and marginalized communities? African and Indigenous folks encounter racist health systems that impact their physical, mental, financial and spiritual well being. To add to this, low income communities’ ability to protect themselves from COVID 19 is severely restricted, as money is needed to support social distancing, pay bills, buy food supplies and hand sanitizer. History tells us these disparities increase during stressful times. Many government leaders ignored the warning signs emitting from China at first, including U. S. President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Did racism impact the way some leaders initially responded to the virus both in their response to China and to the African leader of the World Health Organization ? ",2,https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-is-not-the-great-equalizer-race-matters-133867,FALSE, 1166,We are entering a recession – but what did we learn from the last one?," Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Texas at Austin Postdoctoral Researcher, Stanford University Ken Hou Lin receives funding from the National Institutes of Health, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, and the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Megan Neely does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. View all partnersAs the coronavirus continues to spread around the world, it is abundantly clear that the global economy is entering a recession – the first we’ve seen since 2008. Some officials have compared the last period of economic decline – also know as the Great Recession – to the Depression, which began in 1929. Yet it is clear that these two downturns differed not only in severity but also in the consequences they had for inequality in the United States. Though the Depression was bigger and longer than the Great Recession, the decades following the Great Depression substantially reduced the wealth of the rich and improved the economic security of many workers. In contrast, the Great Recession exacerbated both income and wealth inequality. Some scholars have attributed this phenomenon to a weakened labor movement, fewer worker protections and a radicalized political right wing. In our view, this account misses the dominance of Wall Street and the financial sector and overlooks its fundamental role in generating economic disparities. We are experts in income inequality, and our new book, “Divested: Inequality in the Age of Finance,” argues that inequality from the Recession has a lot to do with how the government designed its response. Reforms during the Great Depression restructured the financial system by restricting banks from risky investment, Wall Street from gambling with household savings and lenders from charging high or unpredictable interests. The New Deal, a series of government programs created after the Great Depression, took a bottom up approach and brought governmental resources directly to unemployed workers. On the other hand, the regulatory policies since the financial crisis that began in 2008 were largely designed to restore a financial order that, for decades, has been channeling resources from the rest of the economy to the top. In other words, the recent recovery was largely focused on finance. Governmental stimuli, particularly a mass injection of credit, first went to banks and large corporations, in the hope that the credit eventually would trickle down to families in need. The conventional wisdom was that banks knew how to put the credit into best use. And so, to stimulate economic growth, the Federal Reserve increased the supply of money to banks by purchasing treasury and mortgage backed securities. But the stimulus didn’t work the way the government intended. The banks prioritized their own interests over those of the public. Instead of lending the money out to homebuyers and small businesses at historically low interest rates, they deposited the funds and waited for interest rates to rise. Similarly, corporations did not use the easy credit to increase wages or create jobs. Rather, they borrowed to buy their own stock and channeled earnings to top executives and shareholders. As a result, the “banks and corporations first” principle created a highly unequal recovery. The financial crisis wiped out almost three quarters of financial sector profits, but the sector had fully recovered by mid 2009, as we covered in our book. Its profits continued to grow in the following years. By 2017, the sector made 80% more than before the financial crisis. Profit growth was much slower in the nonfinancial sector. Companies outside of the financial sector were more profitable because they had fewer employees and lower wage costs. Payroll expenses dropped 4% during the recession and remained low during the recovery. ",2,https://theconversation.com/we-are-entering-a-recession-but-what-did-we-learn-from-the-last-one-131435,FALSE, 1167,Black turnout in primaries might make Democrats think twice about swing voter strategy,"Big wins for Joe Biden on Super Tuesday and in the South Carolina primary a few days earlier have seemingly bolstered a centrist view of how best to capture the presidency: appeal to the middle, pick up swing voters. It is true that a sizeable chunk of moderates cast a ballot for Biden over his main rival, the more radical Bernie Sanders, in these contests. But a closer look at how the vote broke down suggests a different interpretation: Biden’s surge may be less about moderates and more about getting out the anti Trump vote. As a political scientist who teaches in South Carolina and studies African American politics, I believe that understanding what drove the outcome of these early primaries may be key to creating a successful Democratic strategy to beat Donald Trump. One clear takeaway from the recent primaries is that African American voters are indispensable to Biden – or any other Democrat who wants to win the presidency. In the South Carolina primary, Biden enjoyed a 29 point victory over Sanders. This was due in large part to 61% of South Carolina’s black voters swinging behind Biden – a weight of support no doubt helped by an endorsement by the state’s influential black U. S. Rep. Jim Clyburn. In fact, black voters cast nearly 60% of all votes in that contest. This support carried through into Super Tuesday. In Alabama, 72% of black voters supported Biden, representing nearly half of Democrats posting a ballot in that state. Overall, Biden received a median of 58% of the black vote across the 14 Super Tuesday state primaries, compared to just 35% of the median white vote. Biden needs black voters so much, he has hinted at selecting a black running mate – possibly Sen. Kamala Harris or 2018 Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams. This direct courting and mobilization of the black vote stands in contrast to an “expansion election” strategy touted by some Biden supporters. An expansion strategy – similar to what Hillary Clinton’s campaign tried in 2016 without success – seeks to appeal to moderate Republicans and independents while still inspiring high turnout among the party’s traditional base. At a campaign rally on the eve of the Texas primary, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, speaking in support of Biden, stated that as he could mobilize a broad anti Trump coalition. Klobuchar said it would include not only a “fired up Democratic base” of African Americans and other minorities, but “independents and moderate Republicans” as well. At the heart of this strategy is the belief that there are sufficient numbers of crossover voters who can be persuaded to switch party. Political scientists call this the “median voter” theory: Candidates have a better chance of winning a general election if they tack to the center and capture a wider electorate rather than focus on their own partisans. Exit polls from Super Tuesday provided mixed support. They revealed that Sanders got a third of all independent votes – 8 points more than Biden, but that Biden beat Sanders among self identified moderates and conservatives by a margin of 30 points. Therefore, political scientist Rachel Bitecofer has argued that this swing voter strategy is deeply flawed at a time when the electorate is so polarized. Borrowing from the “negative partisanship” theory of Alan Abramowitz and others – which suggests that voters are motivated by which party they are against rather than who they are for – Bitecofer’s models assume there is really no such thing as a swing voter in the modern American electorate. This is especially true given how race or racial differences inform both party allegiances and party policy. ",2,https://theconversation.com/black-turnout-in-primaries-might-make-democrats-think-twice-about-swing-voter-strategy-132729,FALSE, 1168,Why some Americans don’t trust the census,"More than 4 million Americans may not be represented in the upcoming 2020 census. This is a problem, as the once every 10 year census affects everything from federal funding to political representation to research projects that rely on accurate census data, like the ones my colleagues and I conduct at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The 2020 census is fraught with uncertainty for a variety of reasons, including a lack of money, a growing distrust in government and the months of debate over the now dropped citizenship question – which the Census Bureau itself called a major barrier to participation. According to a report from the Urban Institute, an economic and social policy think tank, in the Census Bureau’s 2018 Rhode Island census test, “There were still reports that, despite the question’s exclusion, people did not want to answer the census because of immigration related fears. ”Researchers who work with census data know that people don’t participate in the census for different reasons – several of which may be related to fear over how data is stored and used. The Census Bureau conducted a survey in 2018 to better understand what attitudes the average American may hold about the census, and what motivates them to participate, if they choose to. This data would ultimately help drive the bureau’s marketing strategy for the upcoming census, as well as identify key strategies for reaching hard to count communities. A nationally representative survey was sent to 50,000 households across all 50 states. Approximately 17,500 people responded to the survey. These results were then weighted to represent all householders in the United States ages 18 and older. The Bureau conducted 42 additional focus groups with audiences that are at risk of low census participation: racial and ethnic minorities, those with low internet proficiency, rural residents and people who recently moved. They found a lack of trust in all levels of government, across all surveyed groups. Roughly one quarter of respondents were worried that their responses to the census would be used against them. Those most concerned? Non Hispanic Asians, households not proficient in English and those born outside of the U. S. A quarter of respondents were worried about data privacy and confidentiality. Racial and ethnic minorities were much more concerned about this than non Hispanic whites. Ten percent of the people surveyed believed incorrectly that the census could be used to “locate people living in the country without documentation. ” Another 37% didn’t know if the data would be used in that way. Over a quarter of households surveyed indicated a low likelihood – or no likelihood whatsoever – of filling out the census form this year. In hopes of encouraging those least likely to participate in the census, the Census Bureau also sought to identify what would be most likely to motivate households to participate. They asked respondents to choose from a list of options which was “the most important reason, to you personally, that you should fill out the census form. ”Many of these same communities that were concerned about data confidentiality and privacy also said that they are more likely to participate in the census if they are made aware of its benefits to the public good. Funding for public works projects was the most popular choice, with 30% of householders identifying it as their primary or most important reason for participation. ",2,https://theconversation.com/why-some-americans-dont-trust-the-census-130109,FALSE, 1169,7 lessons from ‘Hidden Figures’ NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson’s life and career,"Katherine Johnson, an African American mathematician who made critical contributions to the space program at NASA, died Feb. 24 at the age of 101. Johnson became a household name thanks to the celebrated book “Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians who Helped Win the Space Race,” which later became a movie. Her legacy provides lessons for supporting women and other underrepresented groups in mathematics and science. As a historian of mathematics, I have studied women in that field and use the book “Hidden Figures” in my classroom. I can point to some contemporary ideas we can all benefit from when examining Johnson’s life. Early in her life, Johnson’s parents fostered her intellectual prowess. Because there was no high school for African American children in their hometown of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, the family relocated to Institute, West Virginia, during the school year. Johnson entered West Virginia State College High School as a preteen and enrolled at the age of 14. While at West Virginia State, Johnson took classes with Angie Turner King. King taught at the laboratory high school while she worked to become one of the first African American women to earn masters degrees in math and chemistry. She would go on to earn a Ph. D. in math education in 1955. King taught Johnson geometry and encouraged her mathematical pursuits. Thirteen years older than Johnson, she modeled a life of possibility. Johnson graduated from West Virginia State College at the age of 18. While there, she had the good fortune to learn from W. W. Schieffelin Claytor, the third African American to earn a Ph. D. in mathematics in America. Claytor encouraged Katherine to become a research mathematician. In the 1930s, a little over 100 American women counted themselves as professional mathematicians. Once Johnson completed the standard mathematics curriculum at West Virginia State College, Claytor created advanced classes just for her, including a course on analytic geometry. Mathematics concepts build on one another and the mathematics she learned in this class helped her in her work at NASA many years later. She used these analytical skills to verify the computer calculations for John Glenn’s orbit around the earth and to help determine the trajectory for the 1969 Apollo 11 flight to the moon, among others. Long before psychologist Angela Duckworth called attention to the power of passion and perseverance in the form of grit, Katherine Johnson modeled this stalwart characteristic. In 1940, she agreed to serve as one of three carefully selected students to desegregate West Virginia University’s graduate program. She also had to be “assertive and aggressive” about receiving credit for her contributions to research at NASA. In 1960, her efforts helped her become the first African American and the first woman to have her name on a NASA research report. Currently, the NASA archives contain more than 25 scientific reports on space flight history authored or co authored by Johnson, the largest number by any African American or woman. When NASA was formed in 1958, women were still not allowed to attend the Test Flight briefings. Initially, Johnson would ask questions about the briefings and “listen and listen. ” Eventually, she asked if she could attend. Apparently, the men grew tired of her questions and finally allowed her to attend the briefings. In 1940, Johnson found herself among the 2% of all African American women who had earned a college degree. At that time, she was among the nearly 60% of those women who had become teachers. ",1,https://theconversation.com/7-lessons-from-hidden-figures-nasa-mathematician-katherine-johnsons-life-and-career-132481,TRUE, 1171,Goldman Sachs’ push for board diversity doesn’t go far enough,"Several European countries – including Norway, Germany, Finland, France and Spain – have introduced quotas for women on company boards. Other countries have introduced voluntary targets and imposed penalties for failing to appoint women directors. And this year, public companies in California will face a US$100,000 penalty if their boards don’t include women. Recently, Goldman Sachs announced that it will not take a company public unless the business has at least one woman on the board of directors. This signals a growing consensus among large investors that companies with all male boards are less profitable and less competitive than other companies. This push is important, particularly as women directors remain significantly underrepresented on corporate boards and the U. S. falls behind a number of other countries in women’s presence on boards. But it’s not enough. We are a sociologist and a management professor, and for more than a decade, we have analyzed the impact of board diversity. Our research shows that companies with diverse boards are more innovative, enjoy stronger community relations, have better equity and diversity policies and outcomes, pursue more environmentally sustainable practices and are better governed. While a single woman on the board can move a business in the right direction, companies with a critical mass of women directors – that means three or more – outperform others on nearly every measure. Our work shows that women’s presence on the board increases leadership opportunities for other women. When women serve on the board, other women are more likely to be appointed CEO and enjoy longer tenures compared with women CEOs in companies without board diversity. Women on the board also shield women CEOs from the glass cliff, the tendency to appoint women to top leadership roles during times of crisis. Board service can also serve as an important leadership pipeline. Only 5% of Fortune 500 companies have a woman CEO and fewer than 1% have a woman of color at the helm, so fostering talent is necessary to create change. All too often companies practice a “one and done” policy when it comes to appointing women to corporate boards. Women are most likely to be appointed to boards when the current woman director is stepping down. In other words, the end of one woman’s tenure motivates the board to appoint another woman. This tendency reveals that many companies view women as tokens, necessary to check the right box but not vital to board functioning. Appointing a single woman to a board can limit her ability to demonstrate the full range of her talents. Being the “only one” on the board can heighten one’s outsider status, increase performance pressures and exacerbate sexist stereotypes. Appointing a single woman to the board also doesn’t guarantee influence. Often women are relegated to lower prestige board committees and denied leadership roles. While women hold 23% of corporate board seats in the Fortune 500, they hold only 5% of board chair positions. Our research also shows that women directors’ influence over board decisions is the true source of change. In a recent study, we analyzed whether women’s presence on executive boards influenced the gender wage gap among senior executives. We analyzed companies under three conditions: Women served on the board, women served on the compensation committee and women chaired the compensation committee. Women’s presence on the board or on the committee had little effect on compensation outcomes, but when women chaired the all important compensation committee, the gender wage gap disappeared. ",2,https://theconversation.com/goldman-sachs-push-for-board-diversity-doesnt-go-far-enough-130985,FALSE, 1172,Even very young children can become prejudiced but schools can do something about it,"Racism has negative consequences for children’s health. It harms the kids who experience it personally and those who witness it, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, an organization that represents 67,000 doctors who treat children. I’m a developmental psychologist who studies the origins of prejudice in children, including teenagers. The research team I lead investigates the kinds of experiences that can help make kids become less prejudiced. We help local school districts with their efforts to encourage all children to get along well with others, including their classmates and teachers. Getting along well with others in childhood is about making friends, respecting others’ viewpoints, and thinking about what’s fair when resolving conflicts. Kids who have repeated conflicts with their classmates suffer in many ways, including experiencing stress and anxiety. Consequently, they may become withdrawn and not feel like going to school. Bias can make it harder for people from different backgrounds to become friends with each other. That includes implicit biases that lead to things like microaggressions – everyday verbal and nonverbal insults that are often unintentional but nevertheless convey negative messages about others based on personal characteristics. It is also hard to make friends when other kids at school exclude you simply because your family is from another country. By adolescence, implicit bias can lead teenagers to use explicit racial slurs or harass their classmates. Unfortunately, instances of explicit bias in childhood and adolescence – such as calling someone the n word or disparaging them for being an immigrant – are growing more common. What’s important to know, though, is that while these biases are taking hold, children also are developing positive beliefs about the importance of what it means to be fair. That can mean the need to take turns, share toys and avoid hurting anyone. This contradiction can sometimes result in confusion and conflict. Children often don’t get the consequences of their actions or what makes someone else feel bad. The good news is that the biases of children are not as hard to overcome as is the case with adults. Scholars like me call friendships with other kids from different cultural, ethnic and racial backgrounds “cross group friendships. ” These bonds play a positive role to help children to reject or at least question stereotypes, from the internet, movies, politicians, the media, family or peers may not be true. My research team has found that children who have friends from different backgrounds are able to reject stereotypes. When children observe others who are friends from different groups then they are more likely to think “If someone from my group likes them then they must be OK. ” Discovering shared interests, hobbies, and values with new kids helps to diminish attitudes that might be based on stereotypes. Psychologists have found that people who form cross group friendships when they’re young are less likely to harbor prejudice as children or adults. My colleagues and I have learned that when teachers encourage children to listen to one another, care for each other, and form friendships, children do better in school. What’s more, when students learn about the historical contributions of famous individuals from both majority and minority backgrounds, they are less likely to display prejudiced attitudes. Our University of Maryland program, Developing Inclusive Youth, is an eight week program for elementary school students in third through fifth grade. Students log into an online curriculum tool and watch social exclusion scenarios among an animated group of characters, boys and girls, spanning many ethnicities as well as different immigration and class statuses. These situations occur during recess, in class, at home, and other everyday situations. ",2,https://theconversation.com/even-very-young-children-can-become-prejudiced-but-schools-can-do-something-about-it-116936,FALSE, 1173,Expanding the definition of family to reflect our realities,"The second Monday in February is Family Day in parts of Canada. Started in Alberta in 1990, four additional provinces celebrate Family Day: British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Ontario and New Brunswick. Québec is one of few jurisdictions that does not have a civic holiday in February, though the province has generous family leave policies. This year, to coincide with the emphasis on family, Concordia University and the Vanier Institute of the Family are hosting a conference on families and family life on Feb. 20. The conference will explore some of the tensions and dichotomies embedded in families. For one, how do we define what family means? How we define family is an important starting point for conversations on family life. Who’s in? Who’s out? Who actually counts as family? For some, family means married parents with children, or married heterosexual parents with children. For others, it may mean a chosen family, or a cohabiting couple with no children. For our conference, we are using an adaptation of the Vanier Institute’s definition: a family consists of any combination of two or more people, bound together over time, by ties of mutual consent and/or birth, adoption or placement, and who take responsibility for various activities of daily living, including love. Our research has identified the need to attend to extended families, including grandparents, aunts and uncles. It also includes the need to extend the definition of family to non traditional family forms including LGBTQ2S+ families, chosen families, multi generation families that include grandparents, single parents and people living alone. It wasn’t until 2001 that Statistics Canada gathered information on multi generational households, and in 2011 the census first counted stepfamilies and foster children. Families in Canada are diverse and our programs and policies should be responsive to this diversity. We find that a narrow definition of family can neglect the experiences of single parent, poor and minority families. For example, research shows that women of color and low income women often experience and interpret motherhood differently than white, class privileged mothers. Recently, researchers began to examine how diversity related to race, class and sexual orientation affects grandparent grandchild relationships. To continue to expand our understanding of families’ experiences, we need to think more broadly about what factors matter in families. How we define family impacts social policy like parental, maternity and paternity leave entitlements and child care tax credits. Caregiver benefits and compassionate leave policies are also tied to family status. Eligibility depends on whether you are a family member. In health care contexts, visitors in intensive care units and emergency departments are often restricted to immediate family and grandparents often don’t have rights when it comes to child custody cases. So a comprehensive definition of family influences how we develop programs for families and who is eligible. ",2,https://theconversation.com/expanding-the-definition-of-family-to-reflect-our-realities-131743,TRUE, 1174,"Minority patients benefit from having minority doctors, but that’s a hard match to make","In today’s America, minority patients still have markedly worse health outcomes than white patients. The differences are greatest for black Americans: Compared to white patients, they are two to three times as likely to die of preventable heart disease and stroke. They also have higher rates of cancer, asthma, influenza, pneumonia, diabetes, HIV/AIDS and homicide. For many of them, structural racism and unequal treatment remain a contributing factor to disease and death. I am a physician who studies health disparities and ways to improve health care delivery. My work focuses on people of color, including those who are black and indigenous. Improving health care delivery for these groups of people is a complicated and multi layered task, but solutions exist. One of them is to increase the probability that minorities see doctors of their race or ethnicity, which I refer to as patient provider racial and ethnic concordance. I have partnered with Prof. Edwin Lindo, a critical race theorist, to help explain why. In the current workforce, diversity among physicians is limited. That can lead to mistrust in doctor patient relationships, even during routine checkups. Black patients, for instance, may feel more wary with a white doctor than a black doctor, and white doctors may feel less comfortable caring for minoritized patients. Mounting evidence suggests when physicians and patients share the same race or ethnicity, this improves time spent together, medication adherence, shared decision making, wait times for treatment, cholesterol screening, patient understanding of cancer risk, and patient perceptions of treatment decisions. Not surprisingly, implicit bias from the physician is decreased. A Stanford University study paired black men in Oakland, Calif. , with either black or non black doctors. The men seen by black physicians were more likely to engage with them, and even consent to preventive services like cardiovascular screenings and immunizations. And, the study found that black doctors were more inclined to write detailed notes about their black patients. Those men who had the least trust in the medical system – and the least exposure to it – benefited the most from racial/ethnic concordance. The study estimates this approach could reduce the black white mortality gap due to heart disease by 19%. But what happened in Oakland is not going to happen anytime soon across the U. S. Based on the latest figures, white doctors make up 56% of the physician workforce, with Asian doctors at 17%. Just under 6% are Hispanic doctors. Only 5% are black doctors. Yet by 2042 – just over 20 years away – the combined minority population is set to become the majority in the U. S. Based on those numbers, it will be difficult for the physician workforce to mirror the population in the near future. But given the benefits of a more diverse workforce, all educational and medical institutions – from grade school through completion of medical training – should invest in building a more diverse workforce. In the meantime, there is another way to augment patient provider racial/ethnic concordance: Increase the presence of minority providers who are part of a team based model of care, including registered nurses, doulas, certified nurse midwives and nurse practitioners. ",2,https://theconversation.com/minority-patients-benefit-from-having-minority-doctors-but-thats-a-hard-match-to-make-130504,FALSE, 1177,Is hiring more black officers the key to reducing police violence?,"High profile cases of officer brutality against black citizens in recent years have caused Americans to question the racial makeup of their police departments. Many advocates believe that diversifying these forces will help reduce police violence against people of color. My research suggests increased representation might not solve the problem. I interviewed nearly 200 protesters and residents of Ferguson and Baltimore – cities that saw widespread unrest following the officer involved deaths of two black men, Michael Brown and Freddie Gray – for my book “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot. ”What I heard repeatedly was that hiring more officers of color wasn’t enough. The people I spoke to said issues of structural inequality in society and a problematic police culture were creating the breakdown of trust between communities and police. Citizen distrust of the police can strain police community relations because officers typically depend on cooperation from the public to solve crimes. Residents are more likely to cooperate when they view the police positively. Racial diversity has long been an issue within U. S. police departments. Of the 701,000 full time sworn officers working in 2016 – the latest year for which national data is available – just 27% were officers of color. The proportion of minority officers has nearly doubled in 30 years, growing from 14% to 27% between 1987 and 2016. But minority hires still lag behind the general population, where nearly 40% of Americans are non white. Small departments tend to be less diverse. Forces serving fewer than 10,000 people are 87% white, while the largest departments are on average around 50% white. Take Baltimore for example. Just over half of the city’s police are officers of color – below the 63% of Baltimore residents who are black, but still more diverse than neighboring departments and the national average. Yet, the Baltimore Police Department was found by the Department of Justice in 2016 to have engaged in a pattern of unconstitutional racially biased policing. This came despite Baltimore making “efforts to attract and promote minority candidates,” as the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division noted in its report. Around a quarter of the people I spoke to in Baltimore and Ferguson said they believe black officers enforced the law more fairly than their white colleagues, and were more courteous and respectful. But a similar proportion of those who reported having personal experiences with black officers said they believe non white officers operate aggressively when they encounter black civilians. Scholars have offered several explanations as to why there doesn’t appear to be a strong correlation between an officer’s race and how they treat civilians. The culture within the police department is often cited. New recruits learn to perform police work by observing the practices of their colleagues, internalizing them, and then executing them. Pressure to conform to a prevailing police culture plays a critical role in shaping behavior and determining how officers treat civilians of different races. Officers of color are not exempt from this process. They may even feel obliged to adopt the values of the department to fit in or advance their careers. Evidence suggests that hiring a racially diverse police force on its own will not solve the problems of policing. Some studies have found that hiring more minority officers is not correlated with a reduction in the killing of citizens. Others have shown that the use of lethal force increases with the proportion of black officers. ",2,https://theconversation.com/is-hiring-more-black-officers-the-key-to-reducing-police-violence-126075,FALSE, 1178,"A brief history of black names, from Perlie to Latasha","Most people recognize that there are first names given almost exclusively by black Americans to their children, such as Jamal and Latasha. While fodder for comedians and social commentary, many have assumed that these distinctively black names are a modern phenomenon. My research shows that’s not true. Long before there was Jamal and Latasha, there was Booker and Perlie. The names have changed, but my colleagues and I traced the use of distinctive black names to the earliest history of the United States. As scholars of history, demographics and economics, we found that there is nothing new about black names. Many scholars believe that distinctively black names emerged from the civil rights movement, perhaps attributable to the Black Power movement and the later black cultural movement of the 1990s as a way to affirm and embrace black culture. Before this time, the argument goes, blacks and whites had similar naming patterns. Historical evidence does not support this belief. Until a few years ago, the story of black names depended almost exclusively on data from the 1960s onward. New data, such as the digitization of census and newly available birth and death records from historical periods, allows us to analyze the history of black names in more detail. We used federal census records and death certificates from the late 1800s in Illinois, Alabama and North Carolina to see if there were names that were held almost exclusively by blacks and not whites in the past. We found that there were indeed. For example, in the 1920 census, 99% of all men with the first name of Booker were black, as were 80% of all men named Perlie or its variations. We found that the fraction of blacks holding a distinctively black name in the early 1900s is comparable to the fraction holding a distinctively black name at the end of the 20th century, around 3%. We were interested to learn that the black names of the late 1800s and early 1900s are not the same black names that we recognize today. The historical names that stand out are largely biblical such as Elijah, Isaac, Isaiah, Moses and Abraham, and names that seem to designate empowerment such as Prince, King and Freeman. These names are quite different from black names today such as Tyrone, Darnell and Kareem, which grew in popularity during the civil rights movement. Once we knew black names were used long before the civil rights era, we wondered how black names emerged and what they represented. To find out, we turned to the antebellum era – the time before the Civil War – to see if the historical black names existed before the emancipation of slaves. Since the census didn’t record the names of enslaved Africans, this led to a search of records of names from slave markets and ship manifests. Using these new data sources, we found that names like Alonzo, Israel, Presley and Titus were popular both before and after emancipation among blacks. We also learned found that roughly 3% of black Americans had black names in the antebellum period – about the same percentage as did in the period after the Civil War. But what was most striking is the trend over time during enslavement. We found that the share of black Americans with black names increased over the antebellum era while the share of white Americans with these same names declined, from more than 3% at the time of the American Revolution to less than 1% by 1860. By the eve of the Civil War, the racial naming pattern we found for the late 1800s was an entrenched feature in the U. S. ",2,https://theconversation.com/a-brief-history-of-black-names-from-perlie-to-latasha-130102,TRUE, 1181,Where are the Hispanic executives?,"Many organizations have prioritized workplace equality and access to high paying, executive level jobs for minority groups in recent years. Several 2020 presidential candidates are putting forward plans to increase minority executive positions by diversifying corporate boards, punishing companies with poor diversity track records and increasing funding for minority led business institutions. However, according to our own 2019 analysis, white men still hold the majority of executive positions such as CEOs, management directors and financial officers. As economic and communication scholars, we looked at Equal Employment Opportunity Commission employment data for executives at large and mid sized companies. Our analysis shows that white men sit in 65. 5% of these high paying boardroom positions while representing only 38% of the U. S. workforce. The dominance of white male executives, however, is by no means evenly distributed across the country. Our report tracks representation among Hispanic executives city by city. As of 2019, Hispanics are the largest minority group in the U. S. at 18. 3%. Statistics from 2017 show that Hispanics make up 17% of the labor force. However, they occupy only 4. 3% of executive positions in the U. S. Hispanic representation is roughly equal to that of black executives and somewhat lower than Asian American executives. The gap between labor force and executive representation is wider among Hispanics than any other group. Executive jobs offer salary – US$155,586 on average – benefits and job security that simply are not available in lower level positions. They also offer the power to drive initiatives, including those focused on diversity. Pittsburgh is the only large city in the U. S. to nearly reach equity. Hispanics comprise 1. 3% of the city’s executive workforce and 1. 4% of its overall labor market. That low overall representation is a trend among cities with the best equity. Four out of five American cities with the most equitable representation – Pittsburgh, Detroit, St. Louis and Cincinnati have Hispanic populations of less than 4%. These findings fall in line with our earlier research showing that minority representation in executive positions is highest in areas with the lowest minority population. The final city in the top five, Miami, stands out for its high representation of Hispanic executives at 24. 6% and high percentage of Hispanics in the overall workforce at 44. 1%. Miami is also an anomaly among other large cities with Hispanic work forces such as Houston – 43% overall labor force and 10. 3% executive representation – and Los Angeles – 34. 2% labor force and 8% executive. Driving Miami’s high representation is likely the city’s strong economic connections to Central and South America, which favors Hispanic cultural background and Spanish language capability among top executives. This is especially true with regards to the many media based companies located in Miami, such as Telemundo, which targets consumers throughout the Spanish speaking world. So how do things look at the other end of the scale? New York City has the largest Hispanic population in the U. S with 2. 3 million individuals. They comprise of 22. 6% of the city’s total workforce, including 28. 7% of its service workers and 40% of its laborer positions. ",2,https://theconversation.com/where-are-the-hispanic-executives-128981,FALSE, 1182,Why you don’t see many black and ethnic minority faces in cultural spaces – and what happens if you call out the system,"Have you ever been to the theatre, looked around, and thought about how predominantly white the audience is? Does the same impression come to mind when visiting museums? If it does and the answer is a resounding yes, then you’re not alone. There is a major problem in Britain’s cultural industry and it’s time we all took a hard look at why. For years now, there has been a growing recognition of the ethnic inequalities in the creative sector. Arts Council England found it to be prevalent and persistent, particularly in theatres and museums: 12% of the workforce in national organizations in the council’s portfolio were from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, and just 5% across its major partner museums. In positions of leadership, this fell to only 9% of chief executives and 10% of artistic directors in national portfolio organizations. On executive boards at partner museums it was 3%. A recent survey showed that 92% of top British theatre leaders were white. In TV, a report from communications regulator Ofcom showed that ethnic minorities were also considerably underrepresented. It highlighted “a cultural disconnect between the people who make programs and the millions who watch them”. This is all despite a number of leading institutions introducing action plans and policies to improve their diversity. While Arts Council England launched the Creative Case for Diversity in 2011, to emphasize the importance and value of diversity in the arts and its significance in enriching artistic practice, leadership and audiences, leading broadcasters the BBC and Channel 4 have ramped up efforts to increase diversity. Yet change of the status quo seems to be minimal and in some cases static. The cultural sector remains steeped in ethnic inequality. There are many factors for why Britain’s cultural sector appears to be circumscribed by whiteness in ideology and practice, production and consumption. Diversity strategies seem to be failing so far, partly because “diversity” itself is a problematic term that can often dilute the problem and depoliticize the issue of racial discrimination. In the creative sector, it has morphed from an aspiration to tackle racial inequality into a drive for better business and economics – a rationale that downshifts the social impact of ethnic inequality, as film studies fellow Clive Nwonka argues. The business case for diversity can help campaign for ethnic equality, but using it merely as a business tool can mask discriminatory practices and shift focus away from deeper issues of structural racism – for example, in embedded attitudes about art production, its consumers and its exclusivity; attitudes that enforce creative hierarchies that align with racial and class hierarchies. Many a myth still exist about cultural creation, what constitutes high or low culture, and the attitudes of ethnic minorities towards cultural participation. Commonly held opinions include, for example, that audiences from black and ethnic minorities are hard to engage – a view that ignores the lack of ethnic representation in the sector, among other realities pertaining to education and class. In 2014, and in response to calls by actress Meera Syal for theatres to cater to Asian audiences, distinguished actor Janet Suzman was staunchly criticized for claiming that theatre was a “white invention”, that “runs in their [white people’s] DNA”. Consciously or not, statements like these contribute to a segregation of culture, and a hierarchy of cultural production. In What is this “black” in black popular culture?, Stuart Hall articulated how the ordering of culture into high and low serves to establish cultural hegemony: ",2,https://theconversation.com/why-you-dont-see-many-black-and-ethnic-minority-faces-in-cultural-spaces-and-what-happens-if-you-call-out-the-system-128792,FALSE, 1183,Children of color already make up the majority of kids in many US states,"Demographers project that whites will become a minority in the U. S. in around 2045, dropping below 50% of the population. That’s a quarter century from now – still a long way away, right? Not if you focus on children. White children right now are on the eve of becoming a numerical minority. The U. S. Census Bureau projects that, by the middle of 2020, nonwhites will account for the majority of the nation’s 74 million children. The share of the U. S. non Hispanic white population has fallen since the mid 20th century. Between 2010 and 2018, the number of white children fell by 2. 8 million, or 7. 1%. In contrast, nonwhite children grew by 6. 1%. In 2018, the last year for which data are currently available, the proportion of people in the U. S. under 18 years of age was just barely more white than nonwhite. However, children under 11 were more nonwhite than white. In almost one third of U. S. states, nonwhite children outnumber all white children under 18 in 14 states – including Nevada, Hawaii, Georgia and Maryland – plus the District of Columbia. Nonwhite children currently outnumber white children ages 0 to 4 in these 15 states and in Louisiana. In the next few years, the same will be true in North Carolina, Illinois and Virginia, followed a little later by Connecticut and Oklahoma. In the coming decades, the percentage of all white children will drop – from 49. 8% in 2020 to 36. 4% in 2060. Why will white children become the numerical minority? We draw on the insights of demographer Kenneth Johnson and his colleagues to understand this trend. First, the declining number of white children reflects the significant aging of the white population. Whites in the U. S. have a median age of 43. 6, much higher than those of all other racial or ethnic groups. Latinos, in particular, are much younger, with a median age of 29. 5. Slightly more than one fifth of whites are age 65 and older, while elders account for only about one tenth of nonwhites. Indeed, today in the U. S. there are more white elders than white children. The older age of whites is mainly due to fewer white births than white deaths. Between July 2017 and July 2018, there were 0. 88 white births in the U. S. for every 1 white death. In the case of Latinos, the ratio was 5 births for every 1 death. Whites also have lower fertility rates than most other racial and ethnic groups. Even if white women increased their fertility levels, their actual numbers of births would not go up that much, because there is a shrinking number of white women of childbearing age. Only 41% of white women aged 15 and older are in the childbearing ages of 15 to 44, when most births occur, compared to 57% of nonwhite women. In the coming decades, people of color will have an increasing presence in all U. S. institutions, in higher education, the workforce and the electorate. Americans are already seeing the consequences of these demographic shifts in higher education. Between 2009 and 2017, the number of white undergraduate students in the U. S. dropped by 1. 7 million, while the number of Latino undergraduates rose by 1. 1 million. In addition, U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projections show that, between 2014 and 2024, the white share of the civilian labor force is declining, while the share of nonwhites is estimated to rise. Furthermore, people of color will increasingly be part of the voter rolls and slates of political office seekers in the coming decades. ",2,https://theconversation.com/children-of-color-already-make-up-the-majority-of-kids-in-many-us-states-128499,TRUE, 1184,3 big ways that the US will change over the next decade,"The U. S. has just entered the new decade of the 2020s. What does our country look like today, and what will it look like 10 years from now, on Jan. 1, 2030? Which demographic groups in the U. S. will grow the most, and which groups will not grow as much, or maybe even decline in the next 10 years? I am a demographer and I have examined population data from the U. S. Census Bureau and from the Population Division of the United Nations. Projections show that whites will decline; the number of old people will increase; and racial minorities, mainly Hispanics, will grow the most, making them the main engine of demographic change in the U. S. for the next 10 years and beyond. The U. S. population today, at the start of 2020, numbers just over 331 million people. The U. S. is the third largest country in the world, outnumbered only by the two demographic billionaires, China and India, at just over 1. 4 billion and just under 1. 4 billion, respectively. Ten years from now, the U. S. population will have almost 350 million people. China and India will still be bigger, but India with 1. 5 billion people will now be larger than China, with 1. 46 billion. The U. S. is getting older and it’s going to keep getting older. Today, there are over 74. 1 million people under age 18 in the U. S. There are 56. 4 million people age 65 and older. Ten years from now, there will almost be as many old folks as there are young ones. The numbers of young people will have grown just a little to 76. 3 million, but the numbers of old people will have increased a lot – to 74. 1 million. A lot of these new elderly will be baby boomers. For example, take the really old folks – people over the age of 100. How many centenarians are in the U. S. population today and how many are there likely to be 10 years from now? According to demographers at the U. S. Census Bureau, the number of centenarians in the U. S. grew from over 53,000 in 2010 to over 90,000 in 2020. By 2030, there will most likely be over 130,000 centenarians in the U. S. But this increase of centenarians by 2030 is only a small indication of their growth in later decades. In the year of 2046, the first group of surviving baby boomers will reach 100 years, and that’s when U. S. centenarians will really start to grow. By 2060 there will be over 603,000. That’s a lot of really old people. I sometimes ask my undergraduate students how many of them have ever actually seen a person 100 years old or older. In my classes of 140 or more students, no more than maybe six raise their hands. Lots more college students will be raising their hands when they are asked that question in 2060. In 2020, non Hispanic white people, hereafter called whites, are still the majority race in the U. S. , representing 59. 7% of the U. S. population. In my research with the demographer Rogelio Saenz, we have shown that the white share of the U. S. population has been dropping since 1950 and it will continue to go down. Today, after whites, the Hispanic population is the next biggest group at 18. 7% of the U. S. , followed by blacks and Asians. What will the country look like racially in 2030? Whites will have dropped to 55. 8% of the population, and Hispanics will have grown to 21. 1%. The percentage of black and Asian Americans will also grow significantly. So between now and 2030, whites as a proportion of the population will get smaller, and the minority race groups will all keep getting bigger. Eventually, whites will become a minority, dropping below 50% of the U. S. population in around the year of 2045. ",2,https://theconversation.com/3-big-ways-that-the-us-will-change-over-the-next-decade-126908,TRUE, 1185,What happens when black Americans leave their segregated hometowns,"Where someone grows up is profoundly important for their life chances. It influences things like the schools they attend, the jobs, parks and community resources they have access to and the peers they interact with. Because of this comprehensive influence, one might conclude that where you grow up affects your ability to move up the residential ladder and into a better neighborhood than the one you grew up in. In a new study, my co authors and I show that for many children, where they grow up is profoundly important for where they end up as adults. But for black Americans who move away from the cities of their youth, moving out often means moving up the residential ladder. One important kind of residential disadvantage that social scientists like me are interested in is racial segregation. This generally refers to the separation of black people from white people in the neighborhoods in which they live. Considerable research shows that living in a more racially segregated area is connected with worse outcomes for black people in a variety of areas of life, influencing everything from the probability of graduating from high school to life expectancy. Black people remain highly segregated from white people in many areas of the United States, including Chicago, Detroit and New York. Indeed, a 2015 study found that over 50% of black people in the U. S. lived in highly segregated areas. In other words, the majority of U. S. black people live in neighborhoods that are predominantly black and racially isolated. These neighborhoods are often underfunded in terms of business and educational investment, distant from job opportunities and more likely to be targets for crime. Children in these neighborhoods are at a distinct disadvantage in terms of their health, education and future economic prospects. Given these disadvantages, it would seem that growing up in a segregated area would have dramatic effects on a person’s life chances going forward. For children who stay in the same place where they grew up, this seems to be the case, as my co authors and I found in a recent study. We looked at data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a survey of 4,800 families and their descendants that began in 1968 and has continued surveying these individuals to this day. Specifically, we looked at where black children grew up and where they lived as adults. We broke down geography by metropolitan area. Each metropolitan area generally includes a city and a number of surrounding neighborhoods, totaling 100,000 residents or more. First, we looked at those who grew up in segregated metropolitan areas and stayed in those same areas as adults. They ended up living in more impoverished, racially isolated, lower income neighborhoods in their adulthood, compared to children who grew up in less segregated metro areas. However, when we turned our attention to individuals who moved out of the metro areas they grew up in, into new cities or states, we found a profoundly different set of relationships. It didn’t matter whether a person had grown up in an area that was highly segregated or not – they lived in less impoverished and racially isolated neighborhoods as well as higher income neighborhoods after they moved to a new metro area. This was true regardless of their own education, income and employment status, among other characteristics. ",2,https://theconversation.com/what-happens-when-black-americans-leave-their-segregated-hometowns-128277,TRUE, 1186,The long moral shadows cast by South Africa’s colonial history,"The post apartheid state in South Africa inherited many colonial legacies. It has transformed considerably over the past 25 years. But it retains mechanisms of a state that secured power for a select few at the expense of most of its citizens. In my book, Queering Colonial Natal, I looked at the ways in which the settler state “queered” African and Indian social practices in the 19th century. By “queered” I mean that settler regimes defined these practices as threats to the social order they wanted to impose in colonial Natal established by the British in 1843, today South Africa’s KwaZulu Natal province. They did this by decrying the practices as inherently wrong and themselves as superior and civilized. At the same time, colonial archives reveal that both African and Indian people challenged these claims. For example, parliamentary reports show that while settler marriage laws imposed monogamous, heterosexual unions as the only legitimate form of matrimony, local populations asserted the legitimacy of their own polygynous institutions in colonial courts. I traced the complicated histories of race, sexuality and power in contemporary South Africa, focusing on colonial Natal. The colony offers a particularly valuable space to study as it hosted competing African, Indian and European settlers in relatively close proximity. Understanding the social and legal issues in colonial Natal gives insight into the ways power operated in southern Africa – and the British Empire more broadly. The entanglements of race, gender, class and sexuality in contemporary South Africa flow in part from the contradictions of the settler colonial state. In tracing the history, I believe it’s possible to see the long shadows that colonial history casts over the country’s complicated present. This provides the opportunity to see that situations aren’t inevitable. It is possible to look for new ways to understand and navigate the contradictions in our contemporary world. One of the major themes I looked at was state control. This extended to marriage and social reproduction, the legal managing of alcohol and the ways mission institutions claimed civilizing power over all peoples. I also examined the politics of access to education in the colony. This was to show how different people used ideas of race and gender to claim legitimacy and belonging. I argue that the colonial state attempted to mark African social practices as aberrant. Or, as I write in the book, as “queer”. This included practices such as isithembu , ilobolo , clothing and beer drinking. Settlers marked these practices as inherently wrong. They oriented themselves in opposition to them as a way of asserting their normalcy or civilized status. Africans and Indians in Natal didn’t accept this labeling. As my research shows, they challenged it. Using occupation, belonging and settlement, people sought to challenge easy claims to power and authority. At the very least, they tried to “unsettle” them. They also used colonial courts to challenge legal pronouncements. One case I examined was the continuous effort of the settler state to ban alcohol consumption by Africans and Indians. The ban on Africans drinking liquor began in the 1850s. The Natal legislature debated – but frequently failed to pass – legislation banning the brewing or consumption of umqombothi, so called “Native beer”, throughout this period. ",2,https://theconversation.com/the-long-moral-shadows-cast-by-south-africas-colonial-history-127123,FALSE, 1187,Why support for the death penalty is much higher among white Americans,"Sentencing a person to die is the ultimate punishment. There is no coming back from the permanence of the death penalty. In the U. S. , the death penalty is currently authorized by the federal government, the military and 29 states. The primary rationale for using the death penalty is deterrence. As public policy, I believe that capital punishment has largely not proved to be an effective deterrent. Nevertheless, for decades the death penalty has been popular. However, support for the death penalty has been declining over the past 25 years and is near historic lows. Critics point to issues such as inhumane killing procedures, a plunge in crime rates and the death penalty’s high cost. I study the impact that public policies like the death penalty have on African Americans, and I see a problem that isn’t often discussed in the media: the significant racial disparity in public opinion about the death penalty. The racially inequitable application of the death penalty was highlighted on Nov. 15, 2019, when, in an unexpected turn of events, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halted the execution of Rodney Reed less than one week before he was scheduled to be executed for the 1996 murder of Stacey Stites. The case was racially charged. Reed, a black man, is accused of killing Stites, a white woman, and was found guilty by an all white jury. The Reed case is one of many capital murder cases that present an opportunity to critically examine the application of the death penalty. As director of the Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis at the University of Texas at Austin, I lead an organization that is committed to the elimination of racial bias and disparities through promoting equitable public policies. Since 1976, people of color have accounted for 43% of total executions and make up over half of inmates who are currently scheduled to be executed. In Texas, African Americans make up less than 13% of the population yet represent 44. 2% of death row inmates. Nationally, African Americans make up 42% of death row inmates. When both race and gender are considered, disparities in sentencing become even more pronounced. Homicides involving white female victims are significantly more likely to result in a death sentence than homicides with any other victim characteristics. However, beyond the explicit examples of racial bias in the criminal justice system that typically get the most attention, there remains another, more subtle bias related to the beliefs held by jurors. People who oppose the death penalty cannot serve on a murder case jury where the death penalty is a possibility. Only individuals who say they would consider the death penalty can serve. When you examine the numbers behind support of the death penalty, a trend emerges. White people make up the core of support for the death penalty in the United States. Studies indicate that white people show significantly higher support for the death penalty than do black people. This is consistent with a 2018 poll by the Pew Research Center, which found that 59% of white people favor the death penalty, compared with 47% of Latino and 36% of black people. Among white people, evangelical Protestants show the strongest support for the death penalty, with 73% favoring it. Why do white people support the death penalty at much higher levels than black people? According to research, one answer is racial prejudice. White Americans tend to associate criminality with racial minorities. In one study, researchers found that, after controlling for factors including education, family income, religion and political ideology, white people with stronger anti black attitudes were more likely to support the death penalty. ",2,https://theconversation.com/why-support-for-the-death-penalty-is-much-higher-among-white-americans-127853,FALSE, 1188,Was that joke funny or offensive? Who’s telling it matters,"In September, before the start of its 45th season, “Saturday Night Live” brought on some new cast members. The decision to hire one of them, Shane Gillis, was roundly criticized after disparaging jokes he’d made at the expense of Asian and gay people quickly surfaced. A week after announcing Gillis’ hire, the show fired him. On the other hand, critics widely lauded the addition of comedian Bowen Yang. Ironically, Yang also tends to poke fun at Asian and gay people during his sets. So, why did Yang get to keep his job, while Gillis lost his? We study why some jokes land and others don’t – and why the identity of the person telling the joke matters. Yang, it seems, can “get away” with this sort of humor precisely because he is both Asian and gay, while Gillis is neither. Many of us intuitively understand that it’s more permissible for people to openly judge or criticize social groups they belong to than those they do not belong to. For example, many Americans may feel justified in calling out the country’s faults while lambasting a non American for doing the same. This phenomenon is called the intergroup sensitivity effect, and we wondered whether it applied to humor. To test this, we ran a series of studies in which we examined whether people’s reactions to disparaging jokes would change based on who was telling the joke. In our first study, we showed participants a mock Facebook profile belonging to either a gay or a straight man who had posted a joke about gay people. We then asked the participants to rate how funny, offensive and acceptable they found the joke. Participants considered the joke funnier, less offensive and more acceptable if the poster was gay. We wanted to know whether this effect also applied to jokes about race. So, in a second study, we showed participants a mock Facebook profile belonging to an Asian, black or white man who had posted a joke about Asian people. Here, participants rated the joke as funnier, less offensive and more acceptable when the owner of the Facebook profile was Asian. We then ran a third study in which we directly asked participants how acceptable it was for members of different social groups to make jokes about their in group or various out groups. We found that participants, on a consistent basis, were more receptive to humor based on gender, race and sexual orientation if the person making the joke was also a member of the targeted group. So why, exactly, does the group membership of the joke teller matter so much? We think it may have something to do with how an audience interprets the joke’s intent. Some humor researchers distinguish between what they call “antisocial intentions” – in which humor is used to inflict harm and reinforce stereotypes about a social group – and “prosocial intentions” – where humor is used to empower the group and challenge stereotypes about it. When humor is deployed in a self referential way, perhaps the audience is more prone to perceive it through a prosocial lens. For example, when Bowen Yang speaks with an exaggerated Chinese accent, audiences may more readily construe this as coming from a benign place. Maybe he’s satirizing the racist ways in which others portray Chinese people, or perhaps he’s affectionately parodying his own culture. But no matter the real reason, he certainly wouldn’t want to inflict harm on his own group – or so the thinking goes. On the other hand, when Shane Gillis does the same, audiences may be less likely to give him the benefit of the doubt – and more likely to infer malign and racist intentions. He doesn’t identify with his targets in any way. Maybe he truly does harbor disdain. ",2,https://theconversation.com/was-that-joke-funny-or-offensive-whos-telling-it-matters-126167,FALSE, 1189,The Disability List Aims To Change Perceptions And Create Profitable Projects In Hollywood,"As Hollywood inches toward giving minority communities a voice and a more representative onscreen presence, The Disability List, announced last month at the 40th Annual Media Access Awards, has shown Hollywood the reasons why diving in is preferable to tiptoeing. The newly curated list of promising unproduced scripts, created by The Black List in partnership with the Media Access Awards, Easterseals, and the Writers Guild of America Writers with Disabilities Committee, acknowledges the largest minority community in the United States and showcases the fact that strong screenplays include characters who have disabilities. Producer Deborah Calla and writer producer Allen Rucker, both members of WGA Writers with Disabilities Committee, serve as co CEOs of the Media Access Awards, founded by Norman Lear, Fern Field, and Norman G. Brooks in the late 1970s to advance the portrayal and employment of people with disabilities. Calla notes that this collaborative effort is focused on accessibility and normalizing the experience of disability, shining a light on the fact that the disabled community has lacked accurate onscreen representation. To date, the disparity between real life and big screen is calculable and the forces behind The Disability List hope to narrow the gap. According to the CDC, one in four adults in the United States, 26% of the population, have a disability. Less than 3% of onscreen roles depict them. And inclusion in the writers room and beyond are equally as rare. In many ways, The Disability List, like the Media Access Awards is about educating the industry as much as educating the public. Having a writer with a disability in the writers’ room “brings a uniqueness that is missing in storytelling,” says Calla who also notes the specificity that that writer is able to address with respect to characters who share similar experiences. Says film executive and The Black List founder Franklin Leonard, “The goal here is to raise the visibility of these scripts and sort of free ride the reputation that The Blacklist has created for identifying great quality material, so that everyone says, Wait a minute, heres a list that The Blacklist is vouching for, we should probably read those scripts. So the hope is that a bunch more people read the work thats on them and if one of those, or many of those people that read it say, ‘Hey, I love this. Id love to find a way to get it made,’ it sort of shifts the demand curve for the supply of material that has gone overlooked for reasons having nothing to do with its actual value. In order to be considered for inclusion on the prestigious list of ten scripts, each script required at least one prominent character with a disability. Scripts did not have to focus on disability, merely character representation. Writer Katherine Beattie’s selected manuscript Unstable focuses on the life of a woman with cerebral palsy. The logline : “For a young woman with Cerebral Palsy, being disabled isn’t a problem it’s her family that’s the challenge. ”Beattie’s semi autobiographical script features a main character who, like her, has cerebral palsy. “Its meant to be like any other comedy except, you know, the main character is disabled and theres a lot of humor that comes from that. ”A writer for NCIS: New Orleans, Beattie notes that while the scripts acknowledging disability have always been out there, they have also been overlooked. “Nobody has been able to find them because theyre not looking. Because up until very recently, Hollywood has been like, Well, why would we want to tell that story? Thats sad. Thats not going to make us any money. And what having an organization like The Black List, and the Media Access Awards vouch for these scripts says to Hollywood is that, No, these arent sad. These are good scripts and its just a natural part of the human experience that we dont often get to see. ’”",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/nancyberk/2019/12/16/the-disability-list-aims-to-change-perceptions-and-create-profitable-projects-in-hollywood/?sh=34d36c5cefa7,TRUE, 1190,Divergent Diversity: Why Has LGBTQ+ Achieved Such Progress And Disability Hasn’t?," In the last decade, we have seen 28 countries worldwide pass same sex marriage laws from Portugal, Iceland and Argentina in 2010, to Austria, Costa Rica and Taiwan in 2019. There has been a raft of other pieces of right based legislation passed into law, from adoption rights to outlawing hate speech and hate crimes. In the last decade we have witnessed legislative progress on disability rights too. The most significant is the 2011 new Americans with Disabilities Act mandating increased accessibility requirements for recreational facilities as well as standards of service provision. In the US, about 15 million Americans identify as LGBTQ+ whereas there are 40 million people living with a disability. In terms of volume, the bigger minority has made less progress. In the minds of many businesses and governments LGBTQ+ is not a cost line item, whereas they view disability as a significant budget commitment. However, legislation is only the start. It’s been the shift in cultural attitudes that has seen greater inclusion of LGBTQ+ people than ever before. And the lack of shift that has left many disabled people out in the cold. LGBTQ+ change has been cultural, disability legislativeHow do we witness cultural change? When Casey Stoney, the Captain of the England Women’s football team, came out as lesbian, it was a major milestone for straight people supporting a gay role model. When Ireland voted by a huge majority to legalise same sex marriage, it was the first country in the world to do so by a referendum. When Prince William appeared on the front cover of gay magazine, Attitude, stating that no one should be bullied because of their sexuality, it was another landmark moment. In Pete Buttigieg we now have an openly gay man running to be American President. We haven’t yet seen such a cultural shift in attitudes towards disability. A lot of change surrounding disability has been resisted, rather than embraced, such as captioning requirements for broadcast video and, since 2014, internet based businesses also. It’s been the law, rather than culture that has led the way, for example the 2010 Rosas Law, which changed references in many US federal statutes that referred to mental retardation to make them refer, instead, to intellectual disability. Barack Obama renamed White Cane Safety Day as Blind Americans Equality Day. It was left to the UN and World Health Organisation to release a joint international statement “eliminating forced, coercive and otherwise involuntary sterilization”. Horns and halo effectThis divergence between culturally led LGBTQ+ advancement and legislatively driven disability stalling has partly become a self fulfilling prophecy. We can understand it in terms of the horns and halo effect. When we come to regard something as positive, we can see subsequent tropes in its image as positive – a halo effect. Conversely, when we remain fearful or ignorant of something, we can be subject to the horns effect. For example, the more LGBTQ+ inclusion becomes normalised the more straight people want to include. The longer disability appears segregated, the harder it remains for non disabled people to include. It was only in 2006 that countries started to adopt the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities . Whilst the CRPD has now been ratified by 163 countries, the cultural change is in many cases yet to start. Much of the disability legislation still focuses on fundamental basic rights. For example, the launch of the UN Global Initiative for Inclusive Information and Communication Technologies aims to allow everyone to simply communicate with each other.  Many of the LGBT rights passed such as permitting the celebration of civil partnerships in religious buildings in the UK are great but these buildings often remain physically inaccessible for disabled people, essentially leaving the door shut to some while opening it for others. One of the more recent high profile disability issues to hit the US media has been emotional support pets on flights. For many, this just fuels the horns effect. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/sfrost/2019/12/17/divergent-diversity-why-has-lgbtq-achieved-such-progress-and-disability-hasnt/?sh=6a36d123fb43,FALSE, 1191,Disability History: Fundraising Special,"Nadina LaSpina is a well known activist in the disability rights movement who has been arrested countless times for civil disobedience. She’s been in the streets with Disabled In Action, ADAPT, The Disability Caucus, and other groups. After teaching Italian for many years, Nadina LaSpina created and taught courses in Disability Studies at The New School. She lives in New York City. Her book, Such a Pretty Girl: A Story of Struggle, Empowerment. and Disability Pride has been reviewed prominently and she was featured this week in appearances at . Jean Stewart became disabled in 1978 following pesticide exposure. This launched a life of disability rights activism and midwife her novel, The Body’s Memory, from St. Martin’s Press. Her stories, poems, and essays have appeared in many anthologies including Staring Back: The Disability Experience from the Inside Out, from Penguin. Jean is also a naturalist with a degree in botany who currently devotes herself to environmental and climate change activism. She is a founding member of EEL, Electricity Equals Life, a disability group formed in response to PG&E’s power shutoffs. Her disability rights activism has taken her to Cuba, India, Brazil, and Mexico. We discuss Kim E. Nielsen’s book,A Disability History of the United States. the first analysis of disability throughout United States history. It covers the period prior to European arrival through the present. Dr. Nielsen is a Professor of Disability Studies, History, and Women’s & Gender Studies at the university of Toledo. Her scholarship centers on historical debates about who is fit to participate in civic life; using gender, disability, and changing notions of competency as her tools of analysis. Her other books include Beyond the Miracle Worker: The Remarkable Life of Anne Sullivan Macy and Her Extraordinary Friendship with Helen Keller ; Helen Keller: Selected Writings ; The Radical Lives of Helen Keller ; and Un American Womanhood: Anti Radicalism, Anti Feminism, and the First Red Scare Adrienne Lauby and Eddie Ytuarte are hosts at Pushing Limits and they co produced this program. Y",3,https://kpfa.org/episode/pushing-limits-fundraising-special-december-06-2019/,TRUE, 1192,Let’s not be silent around disability. It’s an asset.," Having a disability is central to my identity it is both an attribute and an asset. I believe it makes me a more empathetic leader, a better listener, a natural collaborator, and I’m fortunate to have employers, and my team, see it the same. I’ve moved steadily up the ladder and held leadership positions at some of the most respected organizations in Chicago. My path is paved both by hard work, but also because of many mentors, colleagues, and employers who believed in my ability to lead teams, guide decisions, and make a positive impact both on the organization and the communities they served. I was good for their bottom lines. I may also be an exception, though not because I’m an exceptional person. Despite accounting for nearly a quarter of the city’s population, unemployment and poverty outcomes for people with disabilities track among the worst. Those rates are even more bleak for those who experience disability and are people of color. Diversity and inclusion strategies that are leveraged in the workplace should be no different when applied to disability. That’s because disability touches every community, every race and ethnicity, all genders, all sexualities. We are everywhere. We are everyone. But we don’t always reveal ourselves. In a study of disability and white collar jobs, Center for Talent Innovation found that only 3. 2 percent of employees self identify as having a disability to their employers, yet 30 percent of employees have a disability. This silent 27 percent does so out of fear of discrimination, misjudgment and stigma. The result? A real lack of representation and voice where we need it most: tables of influence and decision making. Today, I lead an organization that’s seeking to change the culture and narrative around disability. ADA 25 Advancing Leadership is connecting leaders with disabilities to those very tables of power. Our 140 Members sit on commissions and nonprofit boards, and they are leading in those spaces with their whole selves, which includes disability. Our paths are different, but they are impactful, and ultimately, they are creating a culture of inclusion. We need partners and allies in this work. We need employers from all sectors to create strategies that are inclusive of disability and that not just retain, but advance, talent. We need policy makers to include people with disabilities at the tables when they create and implement policies that impact all communities. We need leaders with disabilities pushing us forward. Most important, we need to make disability and our conversations around it, natural. Disability is not a pejorative, a bad word, or an unfortunate condition. It’s an aspect of life and a point of view that is powerful and deserves to be emboldened.",3,https://www.chicagobusiness.com/opinion/lets-not-be-silent-around-disability-its-asset,TRUE, 1193,The US needs to lead again on disability rights," There are more than one billion disabled people worldwide. That’s about one in seven people and these numbers are only growing. People acquire disabilities through natural disasters, conflict, military service, age, climate change and disease .  In 2010, I was appointed as the State Department’s first special adviser on international disability rights. This was the natural progression of American leadership: the landmark Americans with Disabilities Act which will celebrate its 30th birthday next year has become a global gold standard, and served as the foundation for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities . However, the special adviser position has been vacant since January 2017, and the U. S. has been noticeably absent from international disability rights fora. American leadership on disability rights has eroded. There is still real political will within the State Department to promote the rights of disabled people, and highly capable staff to implement this vision, but the authority, access and respect garnered by a high level political appointee is the missing piece. The right leadership will elevate the Office of International Disability Rights; put a much needed disability lens on State’s everyday work; and give international disability rights its rightful place in leadership conversations on funding, resources and inclusion.  There are ambassadors at large and special envoys for other critical issues and groups, including the Office of Global Women’s Issues; Trafficking in Persons; Monitoring and Preventing Anti Semitism; and International Religious Freedom. Yet, because the special adviser position remains empty, there is currently no political appointee dedicated to the rights of disabled people, which at 15 percent of the global population is one of the largest minority groups in the world.  Beyond the sheer size of the disabled population, international disability rights is simply good policy. Disability rights are human rights, and the core of State’s mission is to advance the human rights of all people worldwide. The political participation and leadership of disabled people, including those who belong to other underrepresented groups such as women, young people and internally displaced people, is crucial to resolving conflict and sustaining peaceful and prosperous democracies. In short, the U. S. needs to be doing more not less on disability rights.  Fortunately, Congress is taking action. Both the House and Senate are introducing versions of the Office of International Disability Rights Act, which would codify the Office of International Disability Rights at the U. S. State Department ; mandate a high level political appointee to lead the office; and require a State wide disability policy something the agency currently lacks. H. R. 3373, the bipartisan House side version of the act, already has 25 co sponsors.  This bill is critical. In government, titles do matter, granting access and sparking responsiveness both within State and abroad. With the authority granted to me as the special adviser, my team and I improved inclusion agency wide and helped raise the visibility of and respect for disabled people. For example, after the establishment of a politically appointed disability position, U. S. embassies all over the world began to substantively engage with the disability community. The perspective and information provided by disabled persons organizations provided a critical, previously unheard perspective, resulting in strengthened annual country reports on human rights and trafficking in persons.  Furthermore, before the creation of the international disability rights team, there was not a single disabled person participating in the Young African Leaders Initiative . By 2017, there were 65 disabled YALIs. This leap was only possible because I, as the special adviser, happened to be in the right meeting at the right time. How many opportunities is State currently missing, every day, to advance the human rights of disabled people, simply because there are no disability rights staff with access to the high level conversations where critical decisions are being made?",3,https://thehill.com/opinion/civil-rights/473438-the-us-needs-to-lead-again-on-disability-rights/,FALSE, 1194,International Day Of Persons With Disabilities – Disability Inclusion Is Long Overdue," Over the last decade progress on gender and sexual orientation in the Western world has been palpable, yet not on disability. In Ireland, gay marriage has been sanctioned by a popular vote, something unimaginable even ten years prior. In the UK, gender pay gap reporting is now mandatory for all large companies. Yet when it comes to disability, we have not seen comparable progress. Why?Who you know mattersOne of the reasons lies in what academics refer to as “inter group contact theory”. In other words, meeting people outside one’s usual circle of friends and associates. One of the main reasons for gender being taken ever more seriously in Western corporations is the undeniable fact that women are half the population and the most vocal “minority”. Female pressure from customers, shareholders, politicians and employees has moved this up the agenda. One of the main reasons for LGBTQ+ issues being taken ever more seriously is the fact that most straight people now know someone who is LGBTQ+. It could be a family member, colleague or friend. This decreases the fear of difference, because it becomes more known, more real, even more friendly. In Ireland, it was young LGBTQ+ people persuading their grandparents to advocate for equality online that was a key factor in the successful gay marriage campaign. Disability inclusion requires more contact between disabled and non disabled people. One of the best examples of this happening en masse is the Paralympic Games. In Beijing, prior to 2008, disabled people were virtually invisible. As a direct consequence of the Games coming to town, the city bulldozed thousands of drop curbs to make sidewalks easier to navigate and made a large part of the city’s transit system accessible. This contributed to more interaction between disabled and non disabled residents. OtheringThis increased familiarity with “minorities” can decrease the “othering” they experience. But while many straight people now know LGBTQ+ people and increasing numbers of men have female professional equals at work, the same cannot be said for disabled people. Take Brooke Ellison, for example. She is the first quadriplegic person to graduate from Harvard and now a leading professor in her field. While a student, she recalls a class when the women in the class, fed up with male dominated conversation, self organized. They corresponded by email and then at the start of the class took over the stage to change the course of the conversation. Except that Brooke was not included on the emails and could not have mounted the steps to the stage in any case. Did the female classmates not see one of their own? Familiarity is one of the best ways to deal with othering. Given that over 80 million Americans have a disability there is a large group of people for the remaining 247 million to get to know. Someone in the family has a mental health condition, there will be a colleague with a hidden disability, there is a need for all of us to become allies. Overcoming barriersIn terms of physical barriers, the majority of offices and workplaces are still not accessible. Public transport is another key barrier, and even new technology is not inclusive. Cities like Beijing, London and now Tokyo have made great strides in this area but many more cities could follow suit. In terms of non physical barriers, there is still much stigma around mental health, lack of knowledge of even basic terminology or how to flex work environments to accommodate different needs. Organisations like the City Mental Health Alliance in London are raising this up the agenda and global organizations such as KPMG and EY have publicly supported partners that have disclosed mental health conditions, acting as role models for others in their firms. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/sfrost/2019/12/03/international-day-of-persons-with-disabilities--disability-inclusion-is-long-overdue/?sh=150472f82f0d,FALSE, 1196,"Disabled workers paid 12% less, 'damning' UK official figures show"," Charities say negative attitudes and lack of understanding of disability hold people backDisabled people continue to face prejudice in the workplace campaigners have said, after latest government figures showed they were paid on average 12. 2% less than those without impairments, equivalent to £1. 48 an hour. According to Office for National Statistics data, the median pay for disabled employees in 2018 was £10. 63 an hour, compared with £12. 11 an hour for their non disabled counterparts. The disability pay gap was widest for people classified as having a mental impairment – defined by the ONS as depression and anxiety, mental illness, nervous disorder, epilepsy or learning disability – who earned an average of £9. 82 a hour. People with a physical impairment faced a pay gap of 9. 7% while those with other impairments – defined as including cancer, HIV and multiple sclerosis – faced the narrowest gap, at 7. 4% . The highest pay gap was in London, where disabled employees were paid 15. 3% less than non disabled employees, while the narrowest was in Scotland, at 8. 3%. James Taylor, head of policy and public affairs at the disability equality charity Scope, said: “The disability pay gap is a damning symptom of disabled people being hindered in the world of work. “Plenty of things stack up against disabled people to prevent them from getting into, staying in and progressing in employment. Sometimes it’s negative attitudes and assumptions, or a lack of reasonable adjustments that hold disabled people back. Sometimes it’s a simple lack of understanding or knowhow from employers. Although the pay gap has remained more or less unchanged since 2014, the ONS statistics found that the disability employment gap has shrunk slightly since 2013. In 2018, 50. 9% of working age disabled people were in employment, compared with 80. 7% of non disabled people, a gap of 29. 8 percentage points compared with 34. 2 points in 2013. The Conservative government promised in 2016 to halve the employment gap by helping an extra 1 million disabled people into work, although the party’s 2019 election manifesto downgrades this by committing them merely to “reduce” the disability employment gap. Jill Miller of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development said: “Too many disabled people continue to face prejudice and struggle to get into employment or to remain in work, and are less likely to progress to senior management roles or to work in professional occupations. “Businesses that aren’t inclusive – and don’t manage health and disability effectively – risk missing out on hard working and talented individuals, and damaging their reputation among staff and customers. They could also face legal action if they fail to comply with equalities law. ”The study found almost one in five of Britons between 16 and 64 had a disability last year, with the proportion rising from 11. 9% among the youngest age group, to 31. 4% among those aged 60 64. ",3,https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/dec/02/disabled-workers-paid-12-less-damning-uk-official-figures-show,FALSE, 1197,"‘Green Book’ director Farrelly, brother get disability award"," Green Book director Peter Farrelly and his filmmaker brother, Bobby Farrelly, are being recognized for pressing Hollywood to do a better job of casting and portraying people with disabilities In Peter Farrellys 2018 Oscar winning film, “Green Book,” chauffeur Tony Lip quips: “The worlds full of lonely people afraid to make the first move. ”Neither Farrelly nor his brother, Bobby Farrelly, the director of 1998’s “There’s Something About Mary,” fits that description. Both are being recognized for pressing Hollywood repeatedly and publicly to do a better job of casting and portraying people with disabilities. The Boston based Ruderman Family Foundation, a leading voice in calling for more opportunities for the disabled, said Wednesday the brothers are the recipients of its sixth annual Morton E. Ruderman Award in Inclusion. The foundation told The Associated Press it picked the Farrellys for their outspoken efforts to make movies more inclusive and authentic. They’ll be presented with the award next spring. “When you tell a story, you want it to take place in a real world and it’s not a real world if they don’t include everybody,” said Peter Farrelly, who co wrote and directed “Green Book,” which won Oscars for best picture and best original screenplay. Bobby Farrelly recalled how the brothers played with children with disabilities in the neighborhood where they grew up in Cumberland, Rhode Island, just over the border from Massachusetts. “They made us laugh. They were our friends,” he said in a videotaped message. “And so when we started making movies, we thought, why wouldn’t we include people with disabilities in the movies in the stories that we tell because they are a part of our life. ”The brothers have collaborated on other hit films including “Dumb and Dumber,” “Me, Myself & Irene” and “The Heartbreak Kid. ”Ruderman says its research shows that only 5% of the characters on top TV shows are played by actors with disabilities. In reality, Peter Farrelly says, 20% of the U. S. population has some kind of disability. It says Hollywood, meanwhile, frequently depicts people with disabilities in a way that “perpetuates misconceptions and stereotypes. ” The foundation works for more inclusion and opportunities for the disabled. Previous recipients of its award include Olympic swimming champion Michael Phelps, Oscar winning actress Marlee Matlin and former Democratic U. S. Sen. Tom Harkin, of Iowa, a driving force behind the Americans with Disabilities Act. “Despite its immense potential for leadership in inclusion, social justice and civil rights, Hollywood has for far too long left disability out of the conversation about diversity. But changemakers like the Farrelly brothers are indispensable players in efforts to shift the conversation,” foundation president Jay Ruderman said. Actor Dwayne The Rock Johnson, who has worked closely with the foundation, also has been calling for Hollywood to cast more actors with disabilities. This story has been updated to correct that Dwayne Johnson has worked closely with the foundation, but not a member of the foundations board.",3,https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory/green-book-director-farrelly-brother-disability-award-67488602,TRUE, 1199,Biderman: Learning not to hide a disability was the best lesson of all," My hearing loss had been a millstone that I carried alone. Once technology allowed me to hear more, I could share my burden. There is a hard lesson I have learned: trying to hide a disability comes with a painfully high cost. I grew up with a serious hearing loss, bluffing and pretending to hear. Then, as now, there was a stigma attached to my deafness: it implied that you were not too bright, doddering if aged, not worth talking to, someone to avoid. Because it is an invisible disability, those with a hearing loss often try to hide it. But my lesson applies to those with more visible disabilities as well. After I started wearing a hearing aid at the age of 11, I self consciously hid it under long thick hair. I did not discuss my disability; I did not ask for accommodations, even when I went to York University in Toronto, for there were none. I did not advocate on my own behalf and didn’t even know how to. Instead, I kept my head down. I over compensated. I faked it. This all changed when I learned to hear with cochlear implants, surgically implanted devices that stimulate my hearing nerves directly. It was then that I slowly became aware of the cost of trying to hide my disability. People were interested in my new bionic hearing in a way that they had never been interested in my boring old hearing aids. Colleagues at work wondered what kind of digital processing chip my device had. “Is it a pentium chip?” one asked. Instead of something to hide and be ashamed of, my hearing loss and my admittedly imperfect – but improving – ability to understand speech, birdsong, even symphonies with my new technology became a point of pride. In the early days after receiving my implants, I was constantly recruiting hearing people to help explain the strange noises I heard with my cochlear implants. The buzzing noise I heard at work? The fluorescent lights. The whooshing sound outside? The wind in the trees. Whereas my hearing loss had been a disability that I carried on my own shoulders, alone, ironically once I could hear more, I could share its burden. Friends, family and acquaintances were willing to share the load; they were curious about this loss, this technology, this ability to hear with mere electrodes zapping the nerves of my inner ear. They were prepared to help me interpret the strange sounds I heard, prepared to believe that someone deaf was worth talking to. I used to pretend that I could hear, smiling at jokes for which I did not catch the punch line – because to stop the conversation and say, “pardon,” aside from ruining a good joke, was often of no avail because I would still not understand. And then, I would feel guilty at the wasted good will of the person patiently repeating what was said. I hid my disability rather than shared it. But now, with my new bionic hearing, I had a fighting chance! I could ask for a repeat and hear it. And the repeats were not needed as often. I have so much more sound information to work with than I had when I used my old hearing aids. Now, there is no need to fake it because I am open about my hearing loss . I am unashamed. Ironically, when my hearing improved, I understood better how to live with a disability. I understood that there is no need to hide it for it was the hiding of my disability and not my disability itself that made me appear foolish and not too bright. The cost of not advocating for my needs and trying to hide my disability had been my authenticity. Where previously I had been bluffing, inauthentic and closeted, now I have come out of the closet of deafness and become more authentic. I have slowly learned to ask for the accommodations that I need. This is part of the lesson that all persons with a disability, young and old, with visible and invisible disabilities, need to learn. No matter what the disability or it’s extent, it is neither something to hide, nor yours alone to bear. ",3,https://ottawacitizen.com/opinion/columnists/biderman-learning-not-to-hide-a-disability-was-the-best-lesson-of-all,TRUE, 1201,Mindset Matters: How The Image of Disability Impacts The Corporate Bottom Line," Part One: Setting The Groundwork Mindset Matters is going to use the next several columns to take a deep dive into the world of image and perception and how that directly effects business and the overall culture. There is a direct correlation to the value proposition and economic realities of persons with disabilities based on how they are perceived across the mainstream culture. The upcoming columns will focus on industries like film, television, advertising and fashion where it is not only image that drives perception but shapes our cultural understanding of what is considered acceptable. In developing that general acceptance these industries are becoming the driving force in setting trends and becoming the taste makers for the society at large. This is why over the year’s artists, innovators and entrepreneurs have pushed so hard to have a voice and cultivate an image of disability within these spheres of influence to educate and broaden a cultural awareness of the disability community as a critical demographic. It is important to reiterate that in setting the groundwork for understanding the power of perception business must play an essential role in this process. We are at a tipping point in our society where the disability community can no longer be ignored. Just by the shear numbers any business who excludes those with disabilities are failing their organization both internally and externally. In the United States alone, there are 61 million people with disabilities making up over 20% of the population and this does not include the impact on family and friends. For companies that rely on a business to consumer model it is essential that they begin to explore their business strategy through a disability lens or pay the consequences of loosing a potential competitive advantage. Corporations need to cultivate a new strategy towards integrating disability into the mainstream culture and enlightening businesses on the true value of this community long term. Creating a foundation of meaning making within the larger cultural framework is essential. This is where public relations, advertising and communication firms play a critical role in shaping perception and defining the image of disability across a range of social milieus opening up new categories to the larger culture. A prime example of how communication firms are establishing the framework for culture change is the Valuable 500 “Diversish” campaign developed by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO. This campaign has served as a seminal moment in the intersection between disability, business and how that is shaping corporate leaders’ perception towards accountability and inclusion. The “Diversish” campaign was unveiled at the World Economic Forum’s Annual Summit in Davos, Switzerland.  This had been the first time where disability took such a prominent role by being discussed on the main stage of the event. Using satire as backdrop Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO where able to poke fun at businesses that call themselves diverse but, either ignore, overlook or defer anything related to disability. The “Diversish” campaign offers a mockumentary style approach to show the often absurdity of corporation’s inability to not only see disability as an essential cornerstone of any diversity strategy, but through the power of the moving image helps redefine the judgement of disability. Society needs public relations, advertising and communication firms to be the spark plug in helping to reframe peoples understanding of disability by stabilizing the narrative and aligning the disability experience not as an outsider but rather allying with brands that are familiar to a larger swath of society. By doing this a new tone can be set where the very notion of disability is treated as something that has inherent value and is important to both the business and consumer. It also displays that the disability community can and is actively participating in the culture at large.  This framework helps to define a new reality where the perception of disability is being transformed and the power of numerous media platforms offer the next wave of communication. ",3,https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathankaufman/2019/11/18/mindset-matters--how-the-image-of-disability-impacts-the-corporate-bottom-line/?sh=5c349e716c65,TRUE, 1202,Literature as a mirror: Representing disability in fiction," The stories that we hear shape how we see the world. Since childhood, we have looked to literature as a source of identification. We associate ourselves with characters that we read about, and these associations shape our assumptions and beliefs about ourselves.  In an ideal world, literature would accurately reflect the demographics of our society.  However, as most of us have probably recognized, this is not the case. The majority of literary figures are white, cisgendered, straight, often male and of able body and mind. This leaves many demographics of people underrepresented in the literature they read, which has insidious and often overlooked effects on their view of themselves and their place in the world.  One of the most vastly underrepresented groups are those with disabilities. Over 56 million Americans are living with a disability representing nearly 19 percent of the civilian population.  However, this population is rarely ever portrayed in literature. And when they are, the narrative surrounding them is often harmful.  Disability activist and author Kenny Fries has created a set of questions to test the representation of disability in literature. The Fries test asks, Does a work have more than one disabled character? Do the disabled characters have their own narrative purpose other than the education and profit of a nondisabled character? Is the characters disability not eradicated either by curing or killing? It seems we should be able to name thousands of works that pass the Fries test due to the prevalence of disability in America. However, when novelist Nicola Griffiths compiled a list of all of the books that pass the Fries test, she found a total of only 67 books.  Author Marianne Ryan, who has a disability, writes that when people with disabilities are represented in literature they, more often than not, “serve as merely the means to an end, a perpetuation of ableist thinking that construes and objectifies people with deformity or disability as inherently pitiable, powerless, defeated. ” One popular example of this harmful narrative is the book “Me Before You,” which was later turned into a popular movie. It follows the life of Louisa Clark, who is tasked with caring for a quadripeligic man, Will Traynor.  Throughout the novel, the two slowly develop a romantic relationship. Will, however, cannot bear to live as a quadripeligic and seeks out assisted suicide, leaving Louisa a sizeable inheritance. This narrative presents disability as something irreconcilable with happiness, and treats the death of a main character as a cathartic ending.  “Searching the cultural landscape for references and role models, it’s not easy to find many women simply living their lives while disabled,” Ryan states.  This is the complicated truth of disability representation in literature. People with disabilities are either completely erased from the narrative, or they are seen exclusively as something to be cured and pitied.  Disability activists such as Ryan and Fries are fighting for the normalization of disability a literary character with a disability should also be able to have a rich personal and public life, and not be solely defined by their disability.  Ryan goes on to describe the unique challenges facing the representation of women with disabilities, people of color and queer people. She quotes Griffiths, stating, “You only seem to be allowed one degree from the norm. If the norm is straight white rich boys, then you can be a woman, you can be queer, you can be crippled, but you can’t be all those things. ” Representation is incredibly important for people who are outside the norm because it allows them to create an identity for themselves in an environment that so often ignores their existence. When it comes to disability representation in literature, it is clear that we need to redefine that norm. ",3,https://www.dailycardinal.com/article/2019/11/literature-as-a-mirror-representing-disability-in-fiction,FALSE, 1203,"Fluidity in disability: Exploring the spectrum of language, identity"," If language is an expression of identity, why does it often favor able bodied folx? When it comes to disabilities, mental health or chronic illnesses, a label is prescribed to the individual whether they control it or not. While some can open doors to support and treatment, others can confine people into boxes built on ableist assumptions.  This language, in turn, can force people with disabilities to be isolated to society’s view of themselves and limits the words they use to describe their experiences.  Words have the ability to oppress or empower individuals what we don’t realize is how our language can be extremely harmful and perpetuate binaries. Therefore, through this ableist lens, “normal” is valued, while difference in experience is “othered. ”Society has become increasingly aware of racist, sexist, homophobic language, but ablesist language is too often disregarded.  Many times, people are uncomfortable with disabilities, and the words ascribed to folx with disabilities allows those people to be more comfortable with their own experiences  not allowing the person with a disability to have ownership over their body. Half of the slurs and insults used against others are deeply rooted in casual ableism mocking people with disabilities or mental illness. It may not be an active intention to target people with mental illnesses, but by creating these negative connotations it has already assigned a certain meaning. “If a culture’s language is full of pejorative metaphors about a group of people, that culture is not going to see those people as fully entitled to the same housing, employment, medical care, education access and inclusion as people in a more favored group,” said Rachel Cohen Rottenberg, a disability rights activist. By using language that harms people with disabilities, it “others” the experiences that most people face throughout their lifetime, including interactions with healthcare professionals and interviews for jobs. This affects how people interact with one another, how teachers educate their students and how legislation is written.  Often, people in positions of power use microaggressive language that can belittle a person with disabilities. But these small moments of oppression add up and inflict how able bodied folx view people with disabilities   and how they look at themselves.  The language of ableism contributes to the idea that the dehumanization of people with disabilities is culturally acceptable. When it comes to disability, there are certain diagnoses widely recognized and considered acceptable by society. If it is invisible or non apparent generally, chronic pain, illnesses and mental health it is excluded from the conversation. Invisible disabilities are not given the recognition or support they need, further stigmatizing mental health and chronic diseases. There are some people who have a chronic illness but choose to not consider it a disability since the definition of disability does not fully cover their experience.  According to the Social Security Administration, disability is defined as the “inability to engage in any substantial gainful activity by reason of any medically determinable physical or mental impairment which can be expected to result in death or which has lasted or expected to last for a continuous period of not less than 12 months. ”One of the biggest problems to recognizing chronic illness as a disability is being seen as something static or unchanging. Those living with chronic illness know it is not static it can inhibit work or performing daily tasks but it is not predictable. The ever changing form of disability poses problems within the system, limiting who is able to receive benefits and who isn’t.  Disability comes with a range of labels and identities, serving as an umbrella term. Labelling can be helpful to provide access to support but it can also be a crude way of grouping people together to separate from abled bodied people confining them as “othered. ”",3,https://www.dailycardinal.com/article/2019/11/language-of-disability-ed-board,FALSE, 1205,Castro unveils sweeping disability plan," Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro on Wednesday issued a comprehensive disability plan that his campaign called “the most ambitious and intersectional agenda this cycle” to advance disabled people’s rights and opportunities. The plan would make major investments in special education and infrastructure to ensure schools are compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act It would also expand affordable housing to ensure access for disabled people, adding at least 450,000 accessible units, and developing disability inclusive natural disaster evacuation plans. The plan also includes a section on “Dignity for People with Disabilities,” calling for an end to institutionalization and defending the landmark Olmstead v. L. C. decision, which held that mentally disabled people have the right to live in communities rather than institutions if professionals determine it to be appropriate. Castro’s plan calls for ratifying the U. N. Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and convening a global summit with other heads of state to address disabled rights. The plan calls to do away with the Social Security Disability Insurance “benefit cliff” that prevents disabled people from earning an income and to scrap the Trump administration’s expansion of the “public charge” rule expanding the types of public aid immigrants can be denied a green card for receiving, which advocates have said will particularly harm disabled people. “There should be no second class citizens in America. I’m fighting for a future where everyone counts, including people with disabilities,” Castro said in a statement. “ But progress doesn’t happen by accident. We have to be intentional with our policies so that everybody has the ability to prosper. That’s what this People First Disability Plan is all about connecting the dots between different issues to lift up people that have been left out,” he added. “There are no highly paid lobbyists walking the halls of congress advocating for the poorest disabled Americans to have a better life, and we don’t have deep pockets for campaign contributions. Which makes what Julián Castro has done all the more remarkable,” Matthew Cortland, a disabled disability rights lawyer based in Massachusetts, told The Hill. “Secretary Castro has proposed raising the maximum benefit a disabled SSI recipient can possibly get from just 74% of the federal poverty level to at least 100% of the federal poverty level, ending the Social Security Administration’s hostile approach towards disabled people, and tearing down the barriers in the SSI program that prevent disabled Americans, including me, from marrying,” Cortland added. The Hill has removed its comment section, as there are many other forums for readers to participate in the conversation. ",3,https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/470192-castro-unveils-sweeping-disability-plan/,TRUE, 1292,Ensuring racial equality – from classrooms to workplaces – depends on federal regulations Trump could roll back,"The Trump administration is considering eliminating one of the federal government’s most basic tools for preventing racial discrimination.When the government runs or funds programs, those programs are obligated to ensure that everyone gets equal access and treatment. This duty comes from something called “disparate impact regulations.” These regulations require the programs to pay careful attention to whether their policies cause racial disparities.From my perspective as a scholar of discrimination law, abandoning these regulations would be a major departure from the federal government’s mission since the 1960s of ensuring racial equality. In the 1950s and 60s, civil rights advocates challenged racial segregation and inequality in every facet of public life – from schools, buses and bathrooms to employment, housing and restaurants. Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to stamp out as much of that discrimination as possible, prohibiting discrimination in all those areas and more. But Congress went beyond just prohibiting “discrimination.” It recognized that prohibiting policies with obvious or explicit intent to discriminate was not enough to ensure equality. Following Congress’s lead, the Department of Justice concluded in a 1966 report that policies that impact one racial group more than another should also be prohibited. Numerous other agencies agreed and put in place what we now call “disparate impact regulations.”The fact that some policy or practice disproportionately affects a racial group does not alone violate the regulations. The disparity, if serious enough, simply triggers further investigation by a federal agency. That investigation involves two key additional questions. First, does the program have a good reason, or “legitimate justification,” for the policy that is causing the racial disparities? If not, the agency can block the policy because the disparities are unjustified. But if the program has a good reason, which it often does, the second question is: Can an alternative policy achieve the program’s goals without producing egregious racial disparities? If so, the program should pursue the less discriminatory alternative because the disparities are clearly unnecessary. Today, discrimination and inequality continue largely due to subconscious racial biases. These biases are rampant and affect everything from who gets a job to who gets suspended from school. These regulations alleviate the need to dig into individuals’ minds and search for very difficult to prove racial motives. These regulations, like in decades past, further racial equality by asking that officials justify disparities and pursue alternative policies when possible. For instance, a 2014 report from the U.S. Department of Education found that schools were suspending and expelling African-Americans more than three times as often as white students. Most of the time it was for minor misbehavior. While racial bias often plays a role in these disparities, federal agencies focused on the negative long-term consequences of school exclusion – consequences that are unnecessary. The Department of Education asked districts, when possible, to pursue alternatives that would bring down disparities and still maintain school order. This could include programs that prevent misbehavior before it occurs – like student behavioral supports and staff training. Schools that implemented those alternatives saw misbehavior and school exclusion drop, and saw academic achievement increase. Agencies’ ability to push this change rested solely on the power given to them by disparate impact regulations. ",2,https://theconversation.com/ensuring-racial-equality-from-classrooms-to-workplaces-depends-on-federal-regulations-trump-could-roll-back-110868,FALSE, 1293,The US adoption system discriminates against darker-skinned children,"When it comes to adoption, Americans might assume that each child is treated equally. But research shows that darker-skinned children are repeatedly discriminated against, both by potential adoptive parents and the social workers who are charged with protecting their well-being. Social workers are often called upon to assess a newborn’s skin color, because skin color influences potential for placement. As a 2013 NPR investigation found, dark-skinned black children cost less to adopt than light-skinned white children, as they are often ranked by social workers and the public as less preferred. According to Washington University law school professor Kimberly Jade Norwood, “In the adoption market, race and color combine to create another preference hierarchy: white children are preferred over nonwhite. When African-American children are considered, the data suggest there is a preference for light skin and biracial children over dark-skinned children.” As a social worker with an interest in the social effects of skin color, I believe that the social work profession must be held accountable for its discriminatory practices. Regardless of race, adopting parents prefer to adopt a light-skinned child. A 1999 study at the Institute of Black Parenting, a Los Angeles adoption agency, showed that as many as 40 percent of the African-American couples expressed a preference for a light-skinned or mixed-race child, regardless of their own complexion. Children who are white are slightly more likely to be adopted out of foster care. Of the more than 400,000 children in foster care awaiting adoption in 2017, about 44 percent were white, while the majority were children of color. However, of those who were adopted with public agency involvement, 49 percent were white. According to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 2004 data shows that children with lighter skin were adopted more quickly out of foster care. While white children waited 23.5 months on average, black children waited 39.4. In preparing a paper on this subject in 2017, I found a 1999 report from the American Civil Liberties Union which conducted a court-authorized review of 50 adoption case files in New York City. They concluded that the practices of social workers favored children with more Caucasian features. When social workers were asked about this, they contended that it was to insulate dark-skinned children from rejection. Research suggests that the skin color issue continues to be a problem across the U.S. A study similar to that of the ACLU’s was conducted in 2010 in the state of Michigan. This study looked at 1,183 adoptive Michigan families who adopted children from 2007 to 2009, through both public and private adoption agencies. According to the findings, 42 percent of adoptive parents’ most recently adopted children were “very fair or somewhat fair” in skin color, while 31 percent were “somewhat dark or very dark.”Finally, research shows that it costs more to adopt a white child in the U.S. than it does to adopt a black child. According to the NPR investigation, it costs about US$35,000 to adopt a white child, absent legal fees. Meanwhile, a black child cost $18,000. These prices, which are set internally at adoption agencies based on a number of factors, suggest that white children have a higher market value in the adoption marketplace and are more highly sought after by adoptive parents. The evidence suggests that social workers do discriminate based on skin color. What’s more, private agencies that do not employ social workers no less enable skin color discrimination by referring to adoptees’ skin color.",2,https://theconversation.com/the-us-adoption-system-discriminates-against-darker-skinned-children-110976,FALSE, 1296,Emotion-reading tech fails the racial bias test,"Facial recognition technology has progressed to point where it now interprets emotions in facial expressions. This type of analysis is increasingly used in daily life. For example, companies can use facial recognition software to help with hiring decisions. Other programs scan the faces in crowds to identify threats to public safety. Unfortunately, this technology struggles to interpret the emotions of black faces. My new study, published last month, shows that emotional analysis technology assigns more negative emotions to black men’s faces than white men’s faces. This isn’t the first time that facial recognition programs have been shown to be biased. Google labeled black faces as gorillas. Cameras identified Asian faces as blinking. Facial recognition programs struggled to correctly identify gender for people with darker skin. My work contributes to a growing call to better understand the hidden bias in artificial intelligence software. To examine the bias in the facial recognition systems that analyze people’s emotions, I used a data set of 400 NBA player photos from the 2016 to 2017 season, because players are similar in their clothing, athleticism, age and gender. Also, since these are professional portraits, the players look at the camera in the picture. I ran the images through two well-known types of emotional recognition software. Both assigned black players more negative emotional scores on average, no matter how much they smiled. For example, consider the official NBA pictures of Darren Collison and Gordon Hayward. Both players are smiling, and, according to the facial recognition and analysis program Face++, Darren Collison and Gordon Hayward have similar smile scores – 48.7 and 48.1 out of 100, respectively. However, Face++ rates Hayward’s expression as 59.7 percent happy and 0.13 percent angry and Collison’s expression as 39.2 percent happy and 27 percent angry. Collison is viewed as nearly as angry as he is happy and far angrier than Hayward – despite the facial recognition program itself recognizing that both players are smiling. In contrast, Microsoft’s Face API viewed both men as happy. Still, Collison is viewed as less happy than Hayward, with 98 and 93 percent happiness scores, respectively. Despite his smile, Collison is even scored with a small amount of contempt, whereas Hayward has none. Across all the NBA pictures, the same pattern emerges. On average, Face++ rates black faces as twice as angry as white faces. Face API scores black faces as three times more contemptuous than white faces. After matching players based on their smiles, both facial analysis programs are still more likely to assign the negative emotions of anger or contempt to black faces. My study shows that facial recognition programs exhibit two distinct types of bias. First, black faces were consistently scored as angrier than white faces for every smile. Face++ showed this type of bias. Second, black faces were always scored as angrier if there was any ambiguity about their facial expression. Face API displayed this type of disparity. Even if black faces are partially smiling, my analysis showed that the systems assumed more negative emotions as compared to their white counterparts with similar expressions. The average emotional scores were much closer across races, but there were still noticeable differences for black and white faces. This observation aligns with other research, which suggests that black professionals must amplify positive emotions to receive parity in their workplace performance evaluations. Studies show that people perceive black men as more physically threatening than white men, even when they are the same size.",2,https://theconversation.com/emotion-reading-tech-fails-the-racial-bias-test-108404,FALSE, 1298,Clemency for Cyntoia Brown was long overdue,"Cyntoia Brown will be released from prison in August — a surprising and welcome development in the case of a teenager who was convicted of killing a man when she was just 16 and forced into sex work.In announcing his decision to grant clemency in the high-profile case, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam said a recent ruling by the state’s Supreme Court that Brown must serve 51 years in prison before being eligible for parole was “too harsh, especially in light of the extraordinary steps Ms. Brown has taken to rebuild her life.”News stories and social media have widely reported and shared Brown’s plight. Many compared her harsh sentence to lesser ones for white juveniles since the state of Tennessee first tried her case more than 10 years ago. In 2004, Johnny Allen, 43, solicited sex in exchange for money from Brown, who was 16 at the time. Brown argued that she feared for her life and thought Allen was going to shoot her, so she shot and killed him in self defense, according to court records. Despite these details, the state of Tennessee still tried her as an adult and convicted her of first-degree murder. There was so much wrong about this story, which underlies the treatment of young, poor girls and women living in unstable situations. Many of these youth are regularly exposed to drugs, violence and multiple forms of trauma. A 2011 PBS documentary about Brown’s life and trial revealed the challenges Brown faced in her young life. The documentary showed Brown, dressed in an orange jumpsuit, hair pulled into ponytails, waiting to hear from a judge to see if she would be tried as a juvenile or adult. Her mother was raped at age 16 by an older man and she was given up for adoption. Her adoptive father routinely inflicted physical abuse on her. At 15, she ran away and met a 23-year-old drug dealer, “Kut Throat,” who raped her and forced her into sex work. After a disagreement with him, she left and went to a local burger place. That is where she met Allen, who asked if she was looking for “action” — meaning was she selling sex? After bartering, they agreed on $150 for the “exchange.” They went to his home, ate, had sex and remained in his bed. Allen boasted about being a former soldier and said he had multiple guns in his home. He grabbed Brown and rolled over. She feared for her life, grabbed a gun and shot him.Brown’s sentence seemed even harsher in light of the fact that the United States Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional to give juveniles mandatory life sentences without parole. According to the Tennessee Supreme Court, Brown’s sentence fell within the parameters of the constitution because she would have been eligible for parole once she turns 67. But thanks to the governor’s decision on clemency, she will be released from prison to supervised parole on Aug. 7 after serving 15 years. Brown’s story mirrors other marginalized young women of color living in the United States. I have conducted fieldwork with 50 incarcerated Latinas, age 12-19, in Southern California and wrote a book about their lives: Caught Up: Girls, Surveillance and Wraparound Incarceration. The girls I spoke with often experienced abuse in their homes. They ran away to escape the abuse. They spoke about being left no choice but to engage in high-risk behavior, including shoplifting, hitchhiking or soliciting. They were vulnerable prey for older predators who began “relationships” with them, exchanging sex for access to clothes, food and shelter. Many like the ones I spoke with end up behind bars. ",2,https://theconversation.com/clemency-for-cyntoia-brown-was-long-overdue-108776,FALSE, 1299,How a race scare left South Sudanese star basketballers with nowhere to play,"One of Australia’s most successful youth basketball organizations, the South Sudanese Australian Basketball Association, was forced to cancel their 16th annual Summer Slam tournament last week after being unable to find a venue in Melbourne willing to host them. Players were distraught when the association called off the event. This is the second cancellation of one of the association’s basketball tournaments in Victoria over the past two years. Read more: Sudanese heritage youth in Australia are frequently maligned by fear-mongering and racism The Association issued a statement in response: We have struggled to get stadiums to host the tournaments. When we got a stadium, unrealistic barriers were put in the way so that the event was not held. Stadium managers are afraid to host our event because of the African gang stories they see in the news. Some of our partner organizations have also had concerns towards our event because of the fear that has been created. The actions of a few teenagers in the community are being unfairly used to stereotype the vast majority that are doing the right thing. The cancellation of the tournament has national implications. Last year, the Victorian Basketball Association called the South Sudanese Summer Slam “a boon for hoops”.Australia’s national team, the Boomers, frequently calls up naturalized immigrants, especially those from South Sudan, who have had notable successes in the NBA and in universities across the US. Current national level players of South Sudanese descent include Thon Maker, power forward for the Milwaukee Bucks; Deng Adel, who plays in the NBA’s development league; Mangok Mathiang; Ater Majok; and Mathiang Muo. Many of these players competed in the South Sudanese Australian Basketball Association’s Summer Slam tournament. The cancellation has been reported in the New York Times under the headline “In Australia, a Sudanese basketball league finds itself sidelined by racist fears”. The South Sudanese Australian Basketball Association blamed the media for their coverage of “African youth issues”. Over the past year, liberal politicians in Victoria and nationally have used the threat of gang violence in Melbourne to stoke support before last month’s election in Victoria.In July, liberal politicians faced criticism for a poster that promised “only the liberals will stop gangs hunting in packs”. From Canberra, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton echoed this extreme rhetoric when he claimed in January that Melburnians were afraid to eat out because “they’re being followed home by these gangs”. Read more: Dutton's demonization of refugees is the latest play in a zero-sum game Past South Sudanese Australian Basketball Association tournaments have been linked to property destruction and violence. A group of teenage girls trashed an Airbnb apartment and bombarded responding police with projectiles. In 2015, a fan was stabbed in the car park of the Warribee Stadium. However, there is no evidence that South Sudanese sporting events are more violent than similar competitions and the Victoria Police have had to correct false claims made by politicians correct false claims made by politicians about Sudanese immigrant criminality. Moreover, unlike recent AFL and NRL scandals, there are no allegations that the Sudanese basketball players have engaged in anti-social or violent behavior, although South Sudanese sporting associations are frequently mistaken for gangs both in Melbourne and in Sydney. ",2,https://theconversation.com/how-a-race-scare-left-south-sudanese-star-basketballers-with-nowhere-to-play-107940,FALSE,