Vector Institute: Black and Indigenous AI Education and Internship Programs

This is blatant and open race discrimination by one of the leading AI research institutes of Canada! Appalling!

This like back to the plantation! It is an insult to any black or indigenous person!

The ends justify the means!

"The Vector Institute launched in March 2017 with generous support from the Government of Canada, Government of Ontario, and private industry, and in partnership with the University of Toronto and other universities."

Black and Indigenous AI Education and Internship Programs | Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence Vector Institute is committed to developing programming for Black and Indigenous students, postdocs, and recent graduates to build research and expand career pathways in AI for historically underrepresented groups. This year, Vector launched a machine learning course and AI internships to accelerate and expand access to knowledge of AI to Black and Indigenous students and postdocs in Canada. The programming provides relevant, hands-on learning and work experience in machine learning and AI. It is designed to meet the criteria of Special Programs in line with the values of the Ontario Human Rights Code to assist underrepresented groups to achieve equal opportunity in the field of AI.

The Absurdity of Thinking Disparities Prove Discrimination

Very recommendable! But a bit too short, many very controversial issues were left out or barely mentioned, e.g. the infamous, scandalous affirmative action by institutions of higher education (including elite universities) in the U.S.; disparate impact; incarceration of black Americans; police violence or law enforcement actions etc.

The title though is spot on!

The Absurdity of Thinking Disparities Prove Discrimination

Not Every Black Church Shooter Is White

Posted: 9/23/2015

Trigger

Just read Police: Man Suspected in Church Shooting Upset Over Breakup. I saw another article about this crime. Neither the racial affiliation of the perpetrator nor of the churchgoers is really mentioned in this article.

Here is another news article regarding this even by Yahoo News. At least this article mentions that “was visited by President Barack Obama this year for its significance in the civil rights struggle”.

The Racial Identity Concealed

ABC as well as another major news source (forgot which one) leave it to the reader to guess the race of the shooter. The other source at least showed a picture of the suspect. Is this just a coincidence? Doubt it!

Apparently, this shooting does not fit the official narrative!

People Killed By Police In The U.S.

Posted: 5/2/2015

Trigger

Just came across this older article “More Than 1,000 People Have Been Killed by Police in 2014” (published Dec. 9, 2014). It relies largely on this anonymous website “http://www.killedbypolice.net/”. Not sure how accurate the information is on this website.

The article mentions that there is no national database or statistics available in the U.S. that reliably records all killings of people committed by police officers. The FBI statistics is based on voluntary reporting by police agencies, but a significant number of police agencies do not participate or underreport etc., e.g. New York state does not participate at all.

Many Whites Are Killed

Why the mainstream media do not appear to research how many whites are killed by police is a deplorable!

Of the over 1,100 people killed in 2014 according to the article and website above, many were white if you glance over the spreadsheet and if you accept the racial classification as correct. Many entries do not state the race of the killed person. I would estimate that at least 30% of the listed killed persons are white.

Thus, you have again the question of supposedly disparate effect on blacks vs. whites? Right? Wrong, the circumstances and location of where the person was killed matter as well.

Are Overall Too Many Killed?

The FBI numbers reported in the above article of individuals killed by law enforcement per year in 2013 were 461 (source; The FBI calls this justifiable homicide). There is apparently quite a discrepancy between the FBI numbers and the above website.

Between 2009 - 2013, the FBI reported between 397 and 461 killed persons per year by law enforcement officers (source). There is no breakdown given by race, gender etc.

Contrasting this with the FBI reported justifiable homicides per year committed by private citizens “killing of a felon, during the commission of a felony” we see numbers ranging between 266 and 315 for the same period 2009 - 2013 (source).

A quick search on similar German statistics appears to show that on average 1 person per 10 million population were killed by police using firearms in recent years (or about 8-10 people total per year). Other forms of killing (e.g. by car chase) or some police departments are not included in the statistics etc. Extrapolating these numbers to the U.S. would result on average about 33 persons killed by police.

According to the FBI, in 2013 a total of 12,253 individuals were murdered of which 5,537 were reported as white and 6,621 as black (source).

So if it is true that 1,000 or more people were killed by police in 2014, then this would suggest that too many were killed. More research into this would not hurt.

Killed By Police Website

Unfortunately, we do not know who is behind or how accurate the information is.

Unfortunately, gender and race were not separated and you can not sort or filter the spreadsheet. Thus, this information is needlessly useless for further investigation.

Jesse Owens Revisited

Posted: 4/26/2015

Trigger

Just watched for the 2nd time “AMERICAN EXPERIENCE/Jesse Owens”. Unfortunately, this great documentary about this son of a sharecropper and grandson of a slave expires very soon (4/30/15) on the PBS website.

I found it quite condescending by American Experience to allude to Jesse Owens as if he was an Uncle Tom American.

There are a number of things many people probably do not remember or do not even know about this extraordinary athlete and the Olympic Games of 1936 in Hitler’s Germany. I bet, a lot of African-Americans would be surprised too.

Highlights

1. There were at least two black American male athletes at the time competing for the world track record in the 100 meter dash, Jesse Owens and Eulace Peacock. Peacock would have qualified for the Olympic Games of 1936 had he not been injured.
2. There were at least two white men who discovered and promoted Jesse Owens talents as an athlete very early on, i.e. Charles Riley and Larry Snyder (?). One of them encouraged or helped Owen to become even the first black man elected captain of an Ohio State varsity team.
3. There were at least two black athletes on the U.S. olympic track team, famous Jesse Owens and lesser known Ralph Metcalf. Both of them won multiple gold medals. The documentary did not mention, but Ralph Metcalf himself almost won the gold medal already at the Olympic Games of 1932 (his loss by not even one second was contested) and later became a member of the U.S. House of Representatives (not mentioned in the PBS documentary).
4. I was not aware that Jesse Owens won a total of four gold medals at the Olympic Games of 1936
5. The documentary specifically points out that all the chosen U.S. athletes for the Olympic Games of 1936 were traveling together on the same luxury ocean liner (S. S. Manhattan) crossing the Atlantic ocean (about 359 athletes). Dozens or so pictures were shown of the social life of the white and black athletes together on the boat. It was described as a life far different from home for the black athletes. Unfortunately, the documentary does not mention how many black athletes were on the boat and whether or how any segregation etc. was maintained. There were apparently a lot more stories about this transatlantic trip (see e.g. the story of Eleanor Holm)
6. Although I grew up in Germany, I did not know that one of Hitler’s favorite Aryan athletes, a tall, blond man (Luz Long), who lost the long jump against Owens would walk around the stadium, arm in arm with Owens. What a scene to behold!
7. Avery Brundage, who later became a well known, because he served 20 years as the president of the International Olympic Committee, saw to it that Jesse Owens would lose his amateur status.
8. Obscurity, financial struggle, and unsuccessful career after the Olympic Games. According to the documentary, he was only discovered again decades later as if was a consequence of racial discrimination.
9. The Wikipedia article about Jesse Owens mentions that U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt never invited him to the White House upon his return from the Olympic Games. The PBS documentary made no mention of this, was it because Owens joined the Republican Party? According to this entry in Wikipedia, FDR invited the white athletes to the White House. Owens is quoted in this entry as saying: "Hitler didn't snub me--it was [FDR] who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram." Unfortunately, these remarks by Owen are not well sourced it appears (here is a repeat of the above quote by History Channel)
10. In 1976, Jesse Owens was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest award bestowed upon a civilian, by Gerald R. Ford. I am not sure whether the documentary showed that.
11. I believe, the PBS documentary did not mention that a number of black American athletes won medals at the Olympic Games of 1936:
    Archie Franklin Williams (followed by a remarkable career later), a black athlete, won the Gold medal in the 400 meters of the Olympic Games of 1936. The bronze medal went to James LuValle, another black athlete with a distinguished lifetime career.
    Then, there was John Woodruff, black athlete, who won the 800 meters.
    Fritz Pollard Jr. the son of Fritz Pollard (first black NFL head coach), who won bronze in the 110 meter hurdles.
    Jack Wilson won the silver medal in the bantamweight class
    Unfortunately, I do not have the time to do more research on this.
12. “Owens ran to gold in German-made track shoes handcrafted by the founder of [German] Adidas [Adolf “Adi” Dassler]” according to History Channel, providing him and other athletes with extra long spikes. The PBS documentary is mute on this peculiar fact.
13. “His mother performed makeshift surgery on him with a knife.
    Owens, the 10th and last child of a pair of poor sharecroppers, was a sickly child. The day after his 5th birthday, he developed a large fibrous bump on his chest that began to painfully press against his lungs. Unable to afford a doctor to remove it, his parents decided to perform the surgery on their own. As Owens bit down hard on a leather strap, his mother used a sterilized kitchen knife to carve into her son’s chest and remove a golf-ball sized growth. Owens suffered a great loss of blood but survived.” according to History Channel. This is very remarkable, but entirely missing from the PBS documentary.

Takeaway

PBS American Experience completely missed the opportunity to tell the astonishing story of how many black American athletes competed and won medals at the Olympic Games of 1936 in Hitler’s Germany. Was this simply an oversight or was it deliberately done?

Why are we not more people familiar with those athletes in our days? Is it perhaps it does not fit into the generally repeated, neat narrative that only after Jackie Robinson (1947) or Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) or after the civil rights struggle were black athletes given opportunities. I believe, the story of Jesse Owens and other black athletes significantly contradicts this dominating narrative.

I have written a number blog posts about race relations, American Civil War, Martin Luther King Jr. etc. here. I believe, the story of Jesse Owens and the other, above mentioned athletes supports my argument that the much celebrated Civil Rights Struggle was more like a second, unnecessary American Civil War (see e.g. here). I would further contend that thanks to these two unnecessary Civil Wars, race relations in the U.S. are still so contentious.

On Anti Miscegenation Laws And Jim Crow Laws

Trigger

Recently, I was curious which states had what kind of so called Jim Crow laws on their books. I consulted Wikipedia about this and found this article “List of Jim Crow law examples by State”

To my great surprise, Wikipedia listed tons of miscegenation laws passed by various states (see e.g. here). One could almost get the impression that these kind of laws were the main component of Jim Crow laws.

Two Way Racial Discrimination

I would strongly argue that miscegenation laws are very different from e.g. separate but equal discrimination. Hence, I do not believe that miscegenation laws are good examples of racial discrimination or Jim Crow laws.

With these miscegenation laws white individuals were as much discriminated against as black, native or other non-white individuals. If two adults cannot marry or cohabit etc. when they love each other, then this is discrimination against both. Both are treated equal. Or in other words it affected whites as well as blacks in the same way.

Same Fate

If you look at two of the perhaps most famous cases before the U.S. Supreme Court on interracial marriage, you will find out that both spouses shared the same sentencing for their violation of state miscegenation laws (see Loving v. Virginia of 1967 and Pace v. Alabama of 1883; you got to love the name of the first case or the Loving couple versus Virginia, an irony of history).

American Experience On Penn Station

Trigger

Just watched American Experience on Penn Station in New York city. My remarks here will be preliminary as I did not have time for further research on this topic. This is a great documentary!

Own Experience

One of my first trips to my new and first employer in the U.S. around 1995 was from J. F. Kennedy Airport to Penn Station in New York city. I was not too impressed with this underground rail station with Madison Square Garden on top of it. The post office next to it looked more impressive.

Well, this documentary corrected my views thoroughly.

Quick Notes

CEOs of the Pennsylvania Railroad  (PPR, the largest railroad company in the U.S. for decades and at one time the largest publicly traded company in the world) company were dying on their job so did Alexander J. Cassatt.

It was a colossal private project financed by private money without government subsidies. “[T]he total project cost to the Pennsylvania Railroad for the station and associated tunnels was $114 million” (Wikipedia).

Lot’s of black sandhogs workers were hired to drill the tunnel under the Hudson River. Thus, it was possible to hire black Americans to work on dangerous jobs to work closely together with white workers in tight spaces in the early 20th century preceding Civil Rights and all that. This documentary shows a lot of photographies of black and white workers working together.

The great Baths of Caracalla in Rome was a model for Penn station.

When on site accidents and rising death toll during construction became a public concern, journalists were allowed to tour the tunnels as a pioneering public relations approach.  PPR hired a pioneer of public relations, i.e. Ivy Lee. “[H]e was considered to be the first public relations person placed in an executive-level position [at PPR]. In fact, his archives reveal that he drafted one of the first job descriptions of a VP-level corporate public relations position.” (Wikipedia).

Cassatt was inspired and studied the Gare d'Orsay train station in Paris to learn about an underground train station and how electric powered locomotives pulled the trains into this station.

The demolition of Penn Station in 1963 was the tipping point for building preservation and historic landmarks in the U.S. Grand Central Station survived because of it.

Disparate Impact Pretext

Update As Of 11/10/2013

Here is an article by the Cato Institute titled “The Feds Are Running from a New Jersey Fight over Race, Housing” about how twice the federal government pulled out from cases before the U.S. Supreme Court to avoid having the highest judges take a look at disparate impact.

More To Do With Reverse Racism Or Discrimination

Disparate Impact appears to be a preferred tool employed by the federal government to supposedly demonstrate a case of racial discrimination. In my opinion, the use of this tool is more evidence for reverse Racism or Discrimination.

Statistics Are Damned Lies

Statistics is no science. It is a tool that uses non-mathematical methods and applied mathematics to analyze and interpret data.

Statistics applied to human behavior cannot prove discrimination or racism or what caused it. It can only show some disproportionate, unexpected outcome or some correlation. Statistics can be suggestive, but it is woefully insufficient.

Those who apply statistics are in control of the input data and ultimately of the result. That’s why they say, the only statistics I trust in is my own.