Image Is Everything

Here's another eye opener in war against black people.

A recent study of what has been called the "Racial Empathy Gap" helps explain disparities in everything from pain management to the criminal justice system. But the problem isn’t just that people disregard the pain of black people. It’s somehow even worse. The problem is that the pain isn’t even felt.In other words black people don't feel pain the same way as white people.

Researchers at the University of Milano-Bicocca and the University of Toronto Scarborough have revealed that,” The human brain fires differently when dealing with people outside of one’s own race.”(1) This study found that the degree of mental activity when White participants watched non-White men performing a task was significantly lower than when they watched people of their own race performing the same task. “In other words people were less likely to mentally simulate the actions of other-race than same-race people.” (2) shows that people, including medical personnel, assume black people feel less pain than white people and helps explain disparities in areas from health care to criminal justice.


ANOTHER study showed that people, including medical personnel, assume black people feel less pain than white people. The researchers asked participants to rate how much pain they would feel in 18 common scenarios. The participants rated experiences such as stubbing a toe or getting shampoo in their eyes on a four-point scale (where 1 is “not painful” and 4 is “extremely painful”). Then they rated how another person (a randomly assigned photo of an experimental “target”) would feel in the same situations. Sometimes the target was white, sometimes black. In each experiment, the researchers found that white participants, black participants, and nurses and nursing students assumed that blacks felt less pain than whites.


But the researchers did not believe racial prejudice was entirely to blame. After all, black participants also displayed an empathy gap toward other blacks. What could possibly be the explanation for why black people’s pain is underestimated?


It turns out assumptions about what it means to be black—in terms of social status and hardship—may be behind the bias. In

additional experiments, the researchers studied participants’ assumptions about adversity and privilege. The more privilege assumed of the target, the more pain the participants perceived. Conversely, the more hardship assumed, the less pain perceived. The researchers concluded that “the present work finds that people assume that, relative to whites, blacks feel less pain because they have faced more hardship.”


This gives us some insight into how racial disparities are created—and how they are sustained. First, there is an underlying belief that there is a single black experience of the world. Because this belief assumes blacks are already hardened by racism, people believe black people are less sensitive to pain. Because they are believed to be less sensitive to pain, black people are forced to endure more pain.

A brother just can't seem to catch a break.

Just the Facts and Nothing But

Posted on Huffington Post by
Larry K. (elfish)



Cliven Bundy Facts:

I. He and his Family has never owned the Disputed Land.

1. Bundy Claims his family has owned the land since 1877, before the BLM existed and before grazing permits were required.

2. However, Clark County property records show Bundy bought the 160 acre ranch in 1948 and included no rights to BLM land.

The Bundys didn't start grazing on the land until 1954.

3. The land is part of the Las Vegas Grazing District, established under the Taylor Grazing Act on Nov. 3, 1936. This was 10 years before the Bundys owned the land.

4. The BLM was founded in 1946, two years before they bought the land.

II. $16 Million Profits From Federal Land.

Why can't Bundy use his 160 acres for grazing?

Answer: money. Bundy is using Federal Land to graze cattle because he wants more cows and 160 acres isn't big enough to handle all the cows he wants. With Federal Land, he can have more cows and make more money.

Nevada land only supports one cow per 20 acres so he can only graze about 8 cows on his land. But using Federal Land, Bundy is grazing an extra 3,387 head of cattle. (We know this because Bundy owns $1.1 million in grazing fees over a 20 year period. So $1.35 per cow per month works out to 3,395 cows.)

Net Profit per cow is running about $250. That means Bundy is making an extra $848,765 a year by using Federal Land. Even if he paid the government grazing fee, his profit would still be $818,765.

Over the 20 years of the dispute, Bundy has made $16 million.

III. Ranch Welfare. Bundy has received $8.2 million in services from the Tax Payers.

1. Bundy Refuses to pay $1.35 per head, per month to graze his cattle on Federal Land saying the land belongs to the states.

2. If the land in question were state land, Nevada charges $15.50, so instead of owing $1.1 million to the Federal Government, Bundy would owe Nevada $12.6 million. Private land runs $14.50 and $20 per head, so private costs would be between $11.8 and $16.3 million.

3. Even if it was State Land, Bundy couldn't graze it, because the Nevada withdrew all grazing rights in the area in 1993.

4. The government spends millions maintaining the land and keeping it suitable for grazing. The Government routinely kills predators, removes trees to create more grazing land, drills wells, builds dams, controls weeds spread by cattle, fights fires and builds roads to access the land. The Government Accounting Office, it cost the government $8.10 per head to maintain the land. That means that, Bundy is receiving $8.2 million in services courtesy of the Tax Payers.

Larry please don't sue me. People need to see this.

A Couple of Words You Should be Familar With

Some stuff I came across while on walkabout around the Internet.

Postmemory

Describes the relationship that the “generation after” (that would be you guys in your forties and below) bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of those who came before-to experiences they “remember” only by means of the stories, images, and behaviors among which they grew up. But these experiences were transmitted to them so deeply and affectively as to seem to constitute memories in their own right. Postmemory´s connection to the past is thus actually mediated not by recall but by imaginative investment, projection, and creation. To grow up with overwhelming inherited memories, to be dominated by narratives that preceded one´s birth or one´s consciousness, is to risk having one´s own life stories displaced, even evacuated, by our ancestors. It is to be shaped, however indirectly, by traumatic fragments of events that still defy narrative reconstruction and exceed comprehension. These events happened in the past, but their effects continue into the present.

-----Marianne Hirsch was born in Romania after the Second World War and immigrated to the United States as a teenager. She is William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Professor in the Institute or Research on Women and Gender at Columbia University, as well as Vice President of the Modern Language Association of America.

Belief

The single most powerful word in the world is "belief". Everything we do, say and think, hinges upon what we believe. People kill for what they believe in, they die for what they believe in and some even spend most of their time worrying about what other think about them.

To understand what a significant force a simple belief is, contemplate the words of American psychiatrist, William C. Menninger, who described behavioral disorders in the following terms:

"Throughout history, people have used a series of...objects on which to project their insecurity; werewolves, incubi, withches, mental patients, Christians, Jews, Catholics, Negroes and many other innocent victims...This insecurity is a fear...of being conquered by (a) horde that is different in some way...Through any means of...persecution...we maintain our security."

I rest my case.

http://gotoblonde.com/word/

I Am Back

After a rather lengthy absence... I have returned. I'm not as angry, self serving, pompous,or as critical as before. I've discovered that after reading over some of my old posts that I rather liked the FOOL. He had guts and a take no prisoner attitude. A rare personality for a black man. And does that make me the kindlier, gentler, go along to get along black man? At this point I don't know, because I have just emerged from one of those life-changing events that you always hear about and hope you never have to endure. Otherwise known as a shit storm to the uninitiated. I have also discovered a new meaning for FUBAR.

I won't be posting every day as I did in the past and I've already trimmed some stuff from the blog. De-cluttered it I think they call it. That's about all I feel like doing right now. Short and sweet.