The Paw Print

A news publication created by Baruch's College Now high school journalism class

race and culture

Are Waste Transfer Stations Evidence of Environmental Racism?

by Leave a Comment

By Jeremy Williams

The New York City council held a meeting on Thursday where they made a step towards regulating waste transfer stations in neighborhoods across the city, after two people were killed by sanitation trucks in six months.

The City Council passed bill  0157-2018-C or the “Waste Equity Bill” which will divert trash from overburdened waste transfer stations which are usually located in low income or minority dense districts. Councilman Reynoso sponsored the bill, He believes addresses environmental racism which he referred to as an “insidious method, to which historically disadvantaged communities are made to suffer because of the color of their skin.”

 Reynoso represents District 34, encompasing North Brooklyn and Ridgewood, Queens which has the highest concentration of waste transfer stations within the city.

Before the City Council passed this bill, 72 year-old Leon Clark was killed after being struck by a private sanitation truck in the Bronx, on April 27th. This bill targets dangerous sanitation trucks that recklessly speed through neighborhoods posing a risk to elderly residents. Councilman Reynoso asked the council, “How could a city that prides itself on progressive politics… possibly allow a system like this to exist.”

21-year-old Mouctar Diallo was also killed by a sanitation truck in the Bronx, on November 7th, 2017.

Councilwoman Adams, who represents the 28th District said, “The bill has admirable goals.” However she still struggled with it saying, “While this bill addresses capacity reformation… conspicuously absent are the persistent issues of air pollution, truck traffic, foul odors, and other matters that affect my quality of life and the quality of life of the people in Southeast Queens.” Adams, who did vote in favor of the bill, said that in the future she hopes for a more collaborative effort.

The councilmembers hope to approve a bill in the future that not only tackles increased truck traffic but attacks all of the negatives of waste transfer stations including poor air quality, which is especially harmful to people with asthma. Woodhull Hospital, which serves the 34th district has the highest rate of asthma related admissions across the entire city.

Expect a bill that will bring stronger regulations for waste transfer stations and private sanitation companies in the near future.

Israeli Nation-State Bill: Much Ado About Nothing

by Leave a Comment

By: Russell Stern

For the past week, there has been a heated controversy surrounding the Israeli Nation-State bill, which the Israeli parliament passed into law on July 19, 2018. Almost immediately after the bill was passed, Israel’s sworn enemies loudly denounced it as discriminatory against the country’s minorities. But all of this commotion is just another attempt to revive the slanderous accusation that Zionism is racism, a long discredited anti-Israel smear.

The criticism came from the usual suspects: the New York Times, whose political articles are very hostile toward Israeli policy, the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Movement, which seeks the elimination of the Jewish state, and Arab members of the Knesset, Israel’s legislative body.

Arab Knesset member Ahmed Tibi, a former aide to Palestinian Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat, harshly declared that the bill will cause, “the death of democracy,” in Israel. Other opposition members instantly joined Tibi in his condemnation of the bill, screaming, “Apartheid!” They blatantly accused the law of being discriminatory and racist.

But the bill does not discriminate against Israeli Arabs or other minorities in any way, shape or form. It does not revoke civil rights enjoyed by minority groups in Israel. It does not prevent them from practicing their own religion, running for political office, voting in Israeli elections, or having access to Israeli universities. Furthermore, the Nation-State law does not supersede the Israeli Declaration of Independence of 1948, which ensures, “complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex.” In fact, it was only meant to reaffirm Israel as the state of the Jewish people, and declare it the historical homeland of Jews worldwide.

The bill also reinforced Jerusalem being the official capital of Israel, and “Hatikvah” being the state’s national anthem. Not only this, but the law stressed the importance of certain Jewish holidays in Israel, such as Independence Day, Memorial Day, and Holocaust Remembrance Day. In short, this bill was not meant to have any practical impact; it was only passed into law to send a message to Israel’s foes that the Jewish state is here to stay.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the bill as, “a defining moment in the history of Zionism.” Zionism is defined as the movement for the re-establishment, development, and protection of a Jewish nation in what is now Israel. Considering the horrifying fact that six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, and that anti-semitism has existed for nearly 2,000 years, the Israeli government certainly had a right to pass this bill, and their reason for doing so is clear. The Jewish people originated in the land of Israel. And they have been there since the 10th century B.C.E. They were there before anyone else.

Critics, however, argue that the bill treats Arabs in Israel as second-class citizens. Specifically, they object to the clause of the bill which states, “The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.” However, this argument is deeply flawed because Israel was specifically created and recognized as a Jewish state by the United Nations in 1948. Of course Jews have the exclusive right to self-determination in Israel, because Israel is a Jewish state.

Critics also oppose parts of the bill which state that Hebrew is the official language of Israel and that Jerusalem is the official capital of Israel. However, the Palestinian Authority’s basic law and draft constitution includes clauses and articles that are very similar, and there has been no criticism of that document. Specifically, according to Chapter One of the 1995 Basic Law draft by the PLO, “The Palestinian people are the source of all authority which shall be exercised, through the legislative, executive, and judicial branches.” Also, Chapter Three of the draft states, “The Arabic language shall be the official language of Palestine.”

And not only that, but according to Article Two of The Constitution of Jordan, “Islam is the religion of the State and Arabic is its official language.” Article One of the constitution states, “The people of Jordan form a part of the Arab nation, and its system of government is parliamentary with a hereditary monarchy.” Egypt’s constitution proclaims that it is “an Arab republic” and “part of the Muslim world.” And the formal name for Iran is the Islamic Republic of Iran.

It is interesting that similar laws in the dozens of Muslim-ruled countries have not received any criticism whatsoever. But when the world’s only Jewish country attempts to define itself as a Jewish nation, it is viciously attacked for doing so. The inescapable conclusion to be drawn from this double-standard is that much of the world is opposed to the existence of a Jewish state, no matter how tiny.

‘This is America’: Satirical Commentary or Subliminal Warning?

by Leave a Comment

Childish Gambino a.k.a Donald Glover

Despite the early devotion of white patriarchy to construct an ideal country, the topic of equality has always been a difficult thing to manage in the US. With women and African-Americans seeking the privileges white men have, the demand for equality has slowly, but surely been met over time.

However, racism and discrimination still linger in the world today. To counteract this, many movements started along with creations such as Donald Glover’s “This is America” released on May 5,2018 on Youtube. This satirical criticism of America’s tendencies analyzes what America has come to.

Donald, otherwise known as Childish Gambino, has used his fame to create a song that not only embodies the harsh reality of America, but uses it to help people focus on important subjects such as racism, police brutality, and gun violence. This is done through Donald’s nihilistic view on the world. He expresses this view through the choreography and lyricism of the music video.

One example is in the video where it begins in a very light tone, with repeated lyrics while Gambino contorts his body towards the man playing guitar. Donald dons gold chains, raggedy pants and an untrimmed beard. This alludes mostly to how slaves looked. His sporadic movements into smooth movements, induce a feeling of discomfort that African-Americans feel living in America while police brutality and racism exists.

At the 0:53 mark, the character Gambino plays pulls out a firearm from his back pocket and shoots the man playing guitar. This immediately catches the viewer off-guard. It completely juxtaposes the tone of the beginning of the video into something much darker. The pose he does while this occurs is believed to be reminiscent of a Jim Crow drawing.

Right after the first killing, Gambino places the gun he used carefully into the arms of a young African-American youth holding a red cloth. Two more young adult African-Americans then drag the dead body away from the camera’s perspective. This entails that whoever is doing the killing, which I believe to be America itself holds guns to be of more importance than the deaths they cause. America consistently has protected the rights of guns despite the amount of destruction they are able to do and as shown via the dragging. The youth of the country are then forced to deal with the burden and clean up the messes America makes.

Something really important to take note of after each killing Gambino is responsible for is that there are no consequences. Taking the character of America as a whole, it shows the power it holds in creating destruction and never facing no repercussions in return.

The crimes he commits result in no consequences, making him invulnerable and above the law. This is because Gambino represents white America. In the video, white America is free to kill any black man, woman, or child. It is the grim surrealism that African-American men and women have to face while living in an America where white men control almost everything happening in it.

Also showing what America has come to is the lyric, “you just a black man in the world you just a barcode”. This line references how people gain profit from barcodes. They scan them with the gun and then pull the trigger. It represents that no matter how much wealth or power an African-American may possess, white America will find a way to profit off of you whether it be through music, media, and more.

“This is America” pays homage to the insolence of white America and how the country’s foundation is built on systematic oppression of other races. We all live in the same nation, yet discrimination occurs no matter who you are. Gambino perfectly depicts this rift between races by showing the targeting of black Americans by eloquently orchestrated choreography and lyrics. The country’s alarming rates of inequality is why it will eventually implode.

 

The Invisibility of Black Autism

by Leave a Comment

Autism is known by most as the “White Person’s Disease”.

Autism: a mental condition, present from early childhood, characterized by difficulty in communicating and forming relationships with other people and in using language and abstract concepts.

I recently discovered this twitter thread:

 

It made me think of 3 very important questions:

Are black children and minorities less likely to even get diagnosed with autism? Therefore less likely to get treatment earlier on when it’s most vital.

Are minorities in general given less sympathy when it comes to learning disabilities like autism and other similar conditions?

Is autism in fact a “White Person’s Disease’?

 

My first response was to go to Google and see if this twitter thread was just an isolated experience for one black mom. The other immediate lightbulb that went off was “How many people of each race have autism? Maybe majority diagnosed are white and that’s why autism isn’t heavily focused on in the black community?”

I went to Google and typed “people with autism broken down by race” and thousands of results came within seconds. Articles with headlines like “Blacks are less likely to get diagnosed with autism” or “Autism Race Problem” or “Autism, Like Race, Complicates Almost Everything” were screaming at me. There’s a whole community of people who see and believe that there’s a real problem with blacks and autism, a divide that needs to be dealt with.

Of course, I don’t believe in a utopian society where race never has an affect on anything, but something as simple as a mental condition shouldn’t have any link to a certain group of people.

From its discovery autism has been linked to white people. It’s now became this unfortunate stigma that the black boy having a tantrum “needs a whooping” yet the white boy “must be on the spectrum and needs treatment.”

“In some of the first clinical descriptions of autism, psychologist Leo Kanner wrote that many of the families who sought his opinion were white and middle- to upper-class… Kanner failed to consider was that the parents who had the resources to seek out a specialist about their child’s developmental problems were likely those with resources to begin with. In 1940s America, those parents were almost exclusively white, and ever since, autism has been treated largely as a white disease,” says Carrie Arnold, a Pacific Islander magazine staff member.

1 in 68 people have autism. Autism has been found, by CDC, to not be linked to the race, culture or socioeconomic status of a person, but simply to the symptoms. Yet according to the Pacific Standard, “when you look at children and adults actually diagnosed with autism, white children are 30 percent more likely to receive an autism diagnosis than blacks, and 50 percent more likely than Hispanics, according to 2014 data from the CDC. Minority children are also diagnosed significantly later than white children.” According to the CDC, while many children are diagnosed with autism at around 4 years old, researchers have determined that African-American children may be diagnosed as many as 18 to 24 months later.

Research and statistics indicate that blacks and minorities in general aren’t being treated the same as whites, even in an area that should be as racially unbiased as the medical field. But the real question is why?

Some parents aren’t as lucky as Camille Proctor, who found a support group filled with other parents whose children have been diagnosed with autism. Unfortunately for Proctor, she was the only black parent in the room. She couldn’t identify with the other parents the way she wanted to and she couldn’t get responses to certain questions. The white parents didn’t know how to answer when she asked for advice on how to deal with her son encountering the police, no one else saw it as an issue, she explains in an interview with the Pacific Standard.

With the recent movements against police brutality, I’d say, and Proctor would say, that it is a big issue. Things like this never come into play when the average person thinks about autism. In this interview with NPR.org, Proctor explains her concerns regarding blacks with autism and the police. Most people have a lack of understanding about what being autistic really entails, which could easily lead to an officer assuming that a black person with autism raising their voice at them is angry or one who is hesitant to answer a question is being resistant.

Autism, like many other diseases should be viewed as having NOTHING to do with a specific race. Every person deserves access to treatment and support groups and all the things they need to deal and cope with their autism.

Why Can’t You Say the N-Word?

by Leave a Comment

 

Asian, Middle Eastern, and Hispanic people in urban areas have seemingly become comfortable with using the N-word as their expression of friendship with black people which is in many ways insulting. This word has never been used to describe or belittle them and there is no need for it to be part of their vocabulary.

In the Oxford dictionary black (adjective) is defined as “of any human group having dark-colored skin, especially of African or Australian Aboriginal ancestry.” However, black should be defined as people with undeniably African or Australian Aboriginal features such as wide noses, thick lips, kinky hair, and darker skin because they are the “niggers.”

Many people use the excuse that their ancestors were black to use the N-word. A “Negro” is defined as “a member of a dark-skinned group of peoples originally native to Africa south of the Sahara” also relating to black people. Therefore, if someone’s race or culture is technically not black, these derogatory terms do not apply to them.

A black person may use the term as they wish. This is a word he or she cannot escape from because it’s been deeply embedded into this country that this is what “black” is and this is how the world will always see “black.” We are the so-called “nappy haired, horse mouthed, black bucks” that white America shaped us out to be. But we’ve come to own the stigma of being black in America and we have even reclaimed ourselves by referring to ourselves as “Niggas.”

Some people feel like since they’re being friendly, it’s fine to say the N-word. But that isn’t necessarily the case. For example, if two friends from the Middle East were joking around and calling each other terrorists, it would be funny to them being that it’s a word they’ve both felt personally victimized by. However, had one of those friends been of another race, it would be seen as an ignorant remark being that other races are rarely, or never, accused of being terrorists.

Many light-skinned Hispanics that I have confronted about using the N-word say, “but my ancestors were black,” to which I respond, “good for your ancestors.” Simply put, Hispanics are a mix of multiple races and peoples, whether they be African and Spanish or Native and Spanish or African, Native, and Spanish. Therefore, that makes them not one or the other but all. You are not black, your ancestors were. You have been able to escape the same reigns of terror black people have face. There are even black Latinx people who experience racism in their countries and are called “Negra/o” because they cannot escape their black ancestry. They cannot escape because the black African blood runs through their skin and features.

For mixed race people, possibly half black and half white, it is how white passing you are that determines whether or not you have the choice to say the N-word. If your features are predominantly black, you are prone to grow up manipulated by white America, you will fear their system. If your features are predominantly European, you have an advantage and are likely to have privilege.

A black person may as well be defined as someone who is manipulated by white America at birth. Someone angered and insulted by the terms “Nigger” and “Negro.” A person whose dark skin and African features apparently defines the content of their character. A person so connected to their African ancestry that they would have either been on the plantation or in the house looking after the white man’s child. And if you can’t personally relate to any of this… You’re not black.