James Watson is nearly 80 and looks it — his skin is dotted with liver spots, a shock of wispy white hair (half) covers his head, wrinkles surround his blue eyes, and his teeth… Well, don't get me started on his teeth. But it's the Chicago-born Nobel laureate's ideas, not his physical appearance, that age him the most. Lauded almost 50 years ago for determining, with the help of an unrewarded female researcher named Rosalind Franklin and others, the structure of DNA, it seems like his mission since has been to sully his notable scientific works with off-color comments.
In 1997, Britain's Sunday Telegraph quoted Watson as saying that if a gene for homosexuality were isolated, women who find that their unborn child has the gene should be allowed to have an abortion.
During a lecture tour in 2000, he suggested there might be links between skin color and sexual prowess and between a person's weight and their level of ambition.
And in a British TV documentary that aired in 2003, Watson suggested that stupidity was a genetic disease that should be treated.
Watson's latest comments, about a link between race and intelligence, may have destroyed his reputation in the scientific community and his legacy for good. Stereohyped spoke to Dr. Joseph L. Graves, Dean of University Studies at North Carolina A&T University and the author of The Emperor’s New Clothes: Biological Theories of Race at the Millennium and The Race Myth: Why We Pretend Race Exists in America about James Watson, scientific racism, and the need for more scientific literacy. CONTINUED »
Here's a root of the problem with today's black youth — local governments think that baggy pants are the root of the problem. Small (and big towns) across the country are setting up laws policing fashion faster than the ACLU can draw up press releases.
•New bans have been adopted in Hawkinsville, Ga., and six Louisiana cities and parishes, including Shreveport and Alexandria.
•Proposed bans are under consideration in Trenton and Pleasantville, N.J.; Charlotte; Dallas; Baltimore; Atlanta and three other Georgia towns including Rome, Brunswick and Plains; Duncan, Okla.; and Yonkers, N.Y.
•Bans have been rejected in Natchitoches, La.; Stratford, Conn.; and Pine Bluff, Ark.
Penalties range from fines or jail time to warnings. Several towns in Louisiana, including Mansfield, near Shreveport, passed measures in June that include fines of $150 or 15 days in jail. The Dallas city council is considering a non-binding resolution against sagging pants.
If these towns want to make baggy pants against the law, what about mullets, cowboy boots, and confederate flag t-shirts? Oh, right. There would be no point. Young black males don't wear those things.
Despite all of her accomplishments, Halle Berry says she still has to fight for studios to see past the color of her skin.
Berry says race continues to be an enduring problem in the industry, claiming she has to work extra-hard to secure a leading role.
She says, “It doesn't matter that I have an Oscar, an Emmy, a Golden Globe and a Silver Bear.
"I shouldn't have had to try so hard to be considered. I should have to stop convincing studios I am right for it - it should be on my acting merit."
But it's a Catch-22, isn't it? Because studios don't show her love, she has to make movies like Catwoman and Perfect Stranger. And because she makes movies like Catwoman and Perfect Stranger studios will never show her love. And Halle Berry has it pretty good as far as black actresses go.
As Long As Al Sharpton Conducts Himself As If He's In A Suburban Italian Restaurant, Things Will Be Fine
• Al Sharpton's going on The O'Reilly Factor tonight, presumably to discuss this. It's sure to be a productive show. [BV]
• It makes sense for Nike to make a shoe just for Native Americans, since they make Air Force Ones just for blacks. [MSNBC]
• An Egyptian antiquities expert says he doesn't know why some African Americans are all up in arms about King Tut's race, because, he says, Ancient Egyptians weren't black or Arab. [AFP]
On the internet, are black women "fat" and white women "pleasantly plump?" A recent article in Gastronomica shed some light on the way we use different words to mean overweight or obese depending on the gender or the race.
Using Google as his research tool, he dug around to see how particular adjectives and euphemisms for “overweight” attached themselves to various genders and classes. Men, for example, are “portly” (39,200 results versus 746 for women) while women are “plump” (91,000 hits versus 15,500 for men).
The big finding, however, comes with black women. Disproportionate to everyone else (vastly, in some cases) they are labeled “fat,” “obese” and “overweight.” His take: As the ultimate outsiders (in race, gender, and usually class) they’re attractive targets for adjectives that carry negative connotations.
Interesting, since I just called Biggie wannabes and Kenan Thompson portly earlier today. Disregard the fact that I obviously need a thesaurus. To me, it's not a word associated with women.
As for black women getting the words with the negative connotation (I actually think plump has a negative connotation, too, it's just a more gentle way of saying someone is overweight), there is that "fat black woman" stereotype that we just can't shake. Mo'Nique famously refers to herself as such. And, of course, Martin Lawrence and Eddie Murphy don't help.
How much would you need to be paid for switching racial teams for the rest of your life? How about giving up television? A recent study suggested whites would expect to be paid much more for forgoing TV than for becoming black. One researcher considers this prime evidence that many whites have no idea of the extent to which differences between the two races go above and beyond the physical in the United States.
Respondents generally requested less than $10,000 to become Black. However, they said they’d have to be paid $1 million to give up television for the rest of their lives.
“The costs of being Black in our society are very well documented,” says study co-author Philip Mazzocco. “Blacks have significantly lower income and wealth, higher levels of poverty and even shorter life spans, among many other disparities, compared to Whites.
“When Whites say they would need $1 million to give up TV, but less than $10,000 to become Black, that suggests they don’t really understand the extent to which African-Americans, as a group, are disadvantaged,” says Mazzocco.
When the questions were made less specific and the respondents were asked how much it would cost for them to switch from being part of the racial majority in a fictional country to the racial minority, which was characterized by many of the issues faced by blacks in America, many said they should be paid $1 million to be the minority. If nothing else, this explains the anti-affirmative action movement perfectly.
