HP responds:

“We are working with our partners to learn more. The technology we use is built on standard algorithms that measure the difference in intensity of contrast between the eyes and the upper cheek and nose. We believe that the camera might have difficulty “seeing” contrast in conditions where there is insufficient foreground lighting.”

“Foreground lighting”??!!?? LMAO!!!

Now it’s not like I think HP’s oversight was committed on purpose. I think they just didn’t care.

Also, I do wonder if maybe such a glaring oversight is the result of having no person of color testing the technology? Did HP just think no one would notice? I know black folks are only 12% of the US population but HP does have global clients of color, right?

And so it goes…

Via SharkFu on Twitter

As the victim of violent bullies as a child, when I lived in New York I dreaded being on the subway at the time schools let out because of the overt aggression displayed by many of the packs of junior high and high school kids taking the subway to get wherever they headed after school.

Andrew’s essay is raw and honest.

Love it or hate it, I hope you will share your thoughts in the comment section.

I am perplexed as to why Gatorade hasn’t dropped Tiger Woods endorsement deal yet. But then again, it is an energy drink. I guess it all makes then since at the time of this post, Tiger’s up to 7 dalliances. That’s a lot of strokes for any putter.

And no, it is not lost on me that all of Tiger’s down low paramours are not of the black, Latino or Asian persuasion. I can’t say I’m surprised. I mean, the man couldn’t even give ‘black’ a whole word in his self-descriptor of ‘Cablinasian’. Black only got the *bluhh*.

Anyhow, step back with me to a funnier time. Courtesy of Chappelle’s Show, I present The Racial Draft:

HA! What’s YOUR take?

Lingering on Taser Facebook pages, you’d think that it wasn’t very often that Taser related deaths related occur. And when they do happen? You could be persuaded that it’s always the fault of some drug addicted or genetically challenged skell whose body just couldn’t handle what had to be done.

What alarms me is that so many law enforcement officers and singularly enthusiastic supporters of Taser appear to ignore the fact, fundamental to our justice system, that we are ALL presumed innocent until proven guilty. Time and time again, officers are caught on tape as they shock compliant and/or ailing, men, women and children – too many times in the back.

Call me crazy, but that’s how I expect cowards and sadists behave – not officers of the law. There’s nothing honorable about Tasing a 10 year old or a pregnant woman celebrating a baptism, or looking to surrender her child to responsible authorities or a man who’s doing exactly what officers are asking him to do.

I understand that many people see the ravages of crime and don’t feel much empathy with anyone who finds themselves in the grasp of law enforcement.

But my ‘justice’ streak vibrates even harder than my thick ‘law and order’ streak. There have been 50 Taser related deaths in the United States so far this year. That’s 50 too many.

READ MORE: Stop Taser Torture – Blogging for Justice

Please join me and dozens of other concerned bloggers, passionate to stop the abuse of Tasers. Already this year, there have been 50 Taser related deaths.

One of my colleagues calls Taser deaths “extrajudicial execution”: judge, jury and executioner all rolled up into a handheld 50,000 volt electric apparatus that’s considered “non-lethal”.

There’s a lot of talk these days about the glory of our American democracy. And its ideals are glorious. But when the pillar of our justice system is cracked the whole damn dream is shaky.

I hope you’ll join us.

Hate incidents related to the election occurred in all parts of the country. An interracial couple in Apolacan Township, Pa., who supported Obama, found the remains of a burnt cross in their garden. In Madison County, Idaho, elementary school children allegedly chanted “assassinate Obama” on a school bus. In Mount Desert Island, Maine, black effigies were reportedly hung from nooses.

Many of the election-related hate crimes were violent. For example, there were five reported attacks by white supremacists on blacks and Latinos in California’s San Jacinto Valley that police described as a reaction to the election. And on Staten Island, two 18-year-olds were among a group of men who yelled “Obama” as they assaulted a black teenager with a baseball bat just hours after Obama clinched the presidency.

Source: Anti-Black Hate Crimes Rise, Data Remains Flawed, Southern Poverty Law Center-Hate Watch

Like sexual assault and domestic violence, it is likely that hate crimes are underreported.

One of the most widely publicized incidents involved the burning of a black church, the Macedonia Church of God in Christ, just a few hours after Obama’s win was confirmed. At the time of the burning, federal investigators called the act a probable hate crime.

But like so many hate crimes each year, the church burning never made it into the FBI’s statistics. Even though the DOJ released a statement about arrests in the Springfield case and condemned the acts as motivated by “racism,” the city of Springfield reported no hate crimes in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Unfortunately, it is not surprising that a hate crime would fail to make it into the FBI’s data. The DOJ itself has found that the hate crimes statistics drastically underreport the number of such crimes each year.

Source: Anti-Black Hate Crimes Rise, Data Remains Flawed, Southern Poverty Law Center-Hate Watch

It’s estimated, in a report by the Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, that the actual number of hate crimes is 20 to 30 times higher than what is reported. That would mean that the real incidents of hate crime in America actually total about 190,000. That’s a staggering number.

Do you think that number is correct?

Hat Tip @QueerJohnPA on Twitter

READ More: More anti-gay, religious-motivated crimes reported, Associated Press

READ More: A White Gays Guide on How to Deal with the Black Community for Dummies: Chapter 12- What About the Hate Crimes That Gays Committed on Blacks Last November?, Jasmyne Cannick

My conservative friends think I’ve gone and lost my mind. They think so because standing in the outstretched palm of middle age, I am increasingly politically liberal. Oh sure, my personal evolution goes against trend. In fact I bet you’ve heard some version of the age old saying, “If you’re not liberal in your 20s you don’t have a heart. But if you’re not conservative in your 40s you haven’t got a brain.” or “If you’re conservative when you’re younger, you have no soul. If you’re liberal when you’re older, you have no sense.”

I’ve always had plenty of sense. But the funny thing is, as I get older I have more compassion. As I get older, I see more clearly that some of the mistakes I’ve made have been less than determinative or even forgiven because of various privileges I enjoy. My lucky charms include the way my brain works, the way I speak, being born with a certain kind of face considered attractive in this society and a body that’s healthy. Some of this privilege stems from being raised by two very strong, persevering, innovative black women who taught me from birth that “black is beautiful” and powerful and historical and worthy. They taught me that reading was the key to everything and that my brain would save my life. I was born into a family that believed my fate was largely in my hands and that I could do anything.

In my late teens, twenties and most of my thirties I embraced the bootstrapper’s credo that if I could do “it” anybody could. But the narrative I had constructed of my life, the narrative that sustained and propelled me, had a lot missing. What I left out of that analysis was the enormous amount of assistance I’ve had along the way. There were teachers who encouraged and protected me, for example. And I was raised in a time when our economic system provided my mother with full health and dental benefits, even on a small secretary’s salary. Her coverage also included mental health benefits which allowed me to go into therapy and work through a serious depression that plagued me much of my young life. I get queasy when I speculate about the self-defeating behaviors I might have adopted if I had not had the privilege of intensive therapy in my teens.

In a recent episode of “The Wire”, one of the series’ most heart shattering characters, Dookie, asks a would be mentor “How do you get from here to the outside world?” The mentor, a good man and ex-con who started a small boxing gym to keep kids off the street, answers with a gentle voice “I wish I could tell you.” In “The Wire” “here” is Baltimore. And there are hundreds and thousands of “Dookies” searching for our help to navigate out of an urban purgatory toward opportunities that so many of us take for granted. I have to stand for those kids. And you know, it is in America’s best interest to help. I believe strong, safe communities are the backbone of a strong America. Strong, intellect expanding educational opportunities for all children is what will most ensure America’s place as an innovation leader in the world. To compete in the global arena we are going to need the best ideas from all corners of society.

And regarding being “soft” on defense? No one says that to my face. I lived through 9/11. My husband and I were under the South Tower when the first plane hit. We sprinted away from the dust cloud rolling just behind us as the second tower fell. We were evacuated from our home for four weeks. I believe in strong national defense. But I see war is a last option, not the default response to threat. I believe the strongest national defense strategy will honor gathered intelligence as it is presented. And I believe one of the strongest recruiting tools for the military would be demonstrating that we as a society value the soldiers who return from combat and the families of those who don’t.

One of the recurrent statements by conservatives is that liberals are all emotion and conservatives all rational thought. I find that observation amusing because conservatives are as angry and passionate as liberals but conservatives frame their emotions as logical. “If you don’t feel like I do, well then you must be a crazy lib!”

Maybe.

From big thinker with a wide world view, long time reader and friend JP:

Gold and Blood at Record Highs, from Wall Street to the Congo (11/3) Excerpt:
The soaring price of gold and the plummeting price of human life are converging this week. Is that good or bad news?

That’s got to be great news for the Democratic Republic of Congo, which sits atop the world’s most concentrated collection of untapped gold and other precious metals. Latest news on the Street shows that mining company Randgold advanced 6 percent after saying it’s boosting its stake in the DRC’s lucrative Moto gold deposit. Source: Gold and Blood at Record Highs, from Wall Street to the Congo, The Smart Asset

From long time reader and insightful commenter Jim Johnson comes an introduction to author Edward P. Jones:

The Known World of Edward P. Jones (11/15) Excerpt:
Edward Paul Jones is sitting at a table in Guapo’s restaurant in Tenleytown early on a midsummer evening, looking down into a glass of red wine. Nobody in the place recognizes him, although he’s arguably the greatest fiction writer the nation’s capital has ever produced.

His three books, two of them collections of short stories set in black Washington, have been hailed as masterpieces. He’s won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critic’s Circle award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, a MacArthur “genius grant,” the Lannan Literary Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and a bunch of (by comparison) trifling stuff. He’s won nearly $1 million in literary awards alone, never mind earning hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties. Source: The Known World of Edward P. Jones
The Pulitzer-Prize-winning author may be the most celebrated writer Washington has ever produced. He also may be the most enigmatic. Washington Post

And new reader Joanna Ng sent along an article from the Oxford University Press on the former Louisiana Justice of the Peace Keith Bardwell.(11/3) Here’s an excerpt:
Yet it would be a mistake to assume that attitudes like Bardwell’s can be safely consigned to the past. A significant segment of several state populations still refuses to recognize that interracial marriage is a legal right. In 1999 and 2000, when South Carolina and Alabama finally got around to removing bans on interracial marriage from their state constitutions, the public vote was roughly 60 percent for removing the bans and 40 percent for leaving them in the state constitutions. Source: Keith Bardwell: Wrong But Not Alone, OUP Blog

Enjoy and please share your thoughts. The article on Congo is maddening.

But here we are. And after so much voice, heart and soul spent here in support of electing President Barack Obama, and the glorious too short afterglow of the 2008 election, racial talk is now razor sharp. I’m glad for it because I believe we’re cutting open some of the bilious sores that have too long festered under gauzy faux politeness and eggshell walkin’.

And so, after a serious walkabout, I’m back and re-committed to creating a space where people of all ideologies speak honestly and thoughtfully. I re-enter this arena with an even firmer commitment to confront racism and bigotry and explore the myriad ways race, culture and class impact how we move through the world.

So if you’re looking to hash out ideas in a community committed to doing the hard work and having the hard conversations, in hopes of finding even a little common ground, well this is the place for you. Welcome.

And to those of you who’ve made up the AAR community for these many months, I’ve missed you and I hope you’ll stay. We’ve got work to do.

Whether you support his policies or not, there is a new sheriff in town, and you get to call him President Barack Hussein Obama. Fact.

Some never let the facts interfere with obsession. Are the “birthers” racist? Some are and some aren’t, like the rest of us. I’ve read block-caps comments from “birthers” who are black, white, Latino, Native American Indian and Asian – or at least they claim to be. In each and every explanation of their convictions, President Barack Obama’s overall ‘otherness’ (Muslim father, international education, bi-racial heritage) is integral to the justification for the perpetual ‘Kenyan birth certificate’ witch hunt.

After all, you would think that if this was solely an issue concerning “the rule of law,” this document, posted on the internet, would be enough. Or on a political partisan tip, you would think that when Ann Coulter, Karl Rove, the McCain and Clinton presidential campaigns all say there’s nothing to the claims that President Obama is “foreign born,” then that would be enough. Think for a second. Do you really believe that Karl Rove would have chosen to keep this out of the 2008 presidential campaign? And it’s no coincidence that some of the same folks who swore up and down that “a friend, of a friend, of a friend had actually seen the mythic Michelle Obama “whitey tape” now refuse to drop their conviction that our commander-in-chief is in fact an un-entitled poseur.

The hysterical “birther” movement is about an inability to face the fact that your narrative is now obsolete. Oh yeah, I hear and read the comments proclaiming, “I want my country back!” Well guess what? It’s not just yours, it’s mine, too! And you can’t ignore that any longer. Majority (Electoral College votes) rules – at least for four years at a time. So, what’s my unsolicited advice to those who are hung up and hurtling on a circular path to a hard dead end? Just stop it and focus on putting forth your ideas about how America can be made better. If you don’t like President Obama, then start raising money and amassing voter support to defeat him in 2012. You may have noticed, we are in a bit of an economic crisis. If you’ve got any good ideas bring ‘em. If not, stop making a mockery of a party that once meant something to me and which I still believe needs to be viable in order for America to function as she should.