Since the 1960s, researchers have been scrutinizing a handful of patients who underwent a radical kind of brain surgery. The cohort has been a boon to neuroscience — but soon it will be gone.
"Vincent Harding was wise about how the vision of the civil rights movement might speak to 21st-century realities. He reminded us that the movement of the ’50s and ’60s was spiritually as well as politically vigorous; it aspired to a “beloved community,” not merely a tolerant integrated society. He pursued this through patient-yet-passionate cross-cultural, cross-generational relationships. And he posed and lived a question that is freshly in our midst: Is America possible?"
Excerpt:
Tippett:When you say that we, as human beings, have a built-in need for stories, what your work shows is that we human beings also know what to do with stories, right? So that, as you say, the young people you work with know to take those stories as tools and pieces of empowerment in this day, this year.
Harding:For their own best work. Because now, it’s a powerful time in this country for young people and others to be asking the question, “And what are we for?” Do we exist for some reason other than competing with China or finding the best possible technological advances? Are there some things that are even deeper that we are meant for, meant to be, meant to do, meant to achieve? Jimmy Baldwin used to like to talk about us achieving ourselves, finding who we are, what we’re for, and making that possible for each other.
So you’re right about — the story — just as you were speaking, what I was thinking about, Krista, was when the mother with the baby at her bosom starts telling stories is clearly not just to pass on information. What I find is that, even in some of the strangest situations, most often where I go, where I speak, where I share, I start out by asking people to tell a little of their stories. And it is amazing what people discover of themselves, of their connections, of their community. It’s wonderful.
Tippett:You know, I’ve learned that too. To ask someone even to tell a little of their story is to give them a gift because we don’t get asked that question. And we do learn as much as we tell. You wrote a very important book, Hope and History.
"James Baldwin, my famous Baldwin quote, and he has a gazillion, obviously. But my favorite Baldwin quote is, “The interior life is the real life.” The interior life is the real life. “And the intangible dreams of a person may have a tangible effect on the world.” It’s basically saying, what one can imagine, internally, what one can think about when nobody knows, when nobody’s around, one’s secrets, could shift human life. What an amazing thing to think about.
And my role, even with Stamped and remixing — and the reason we called it a remix is because it’s not a YA adaptation, because I actually rewrote the entire book.
I wanted — we, he and I both — wanted to figure out how we could tap into the imagination of young people. And when it comes to books around race, or when it comes to history books, usually they are presented to students, not humans."
Which lead me to listening to James Baldwin on YouTube.com
"Mavis Nicholson speaks exclusively to American Civil rights activist and renowned Playwright novelist, essayist, poet, and social critic James Baldwin. First shown: 02/12/1987"
From YouTube.com:
Author James Baldwin taped a candid and fascinating studio interview at WCKT - Miami in 1963. Featured in this edition of the long-running program, "Florida Forum": questions by an in-studio audience and a panel of local journalists.
bio: James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 -- December 1, 1987) was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.
Baldwin's essays, for instance, "Notes of a Native Son" (1955), explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th century America, vis-à-vis their inevitable if unnameable tensions with personal identity, assumptions, uncertainties, yearning, and questing.[1]
Some Baldwin essays are book-length, for instance, The Fire Next Time (1963), No Name in the Street (1972), and The Devil Finds Work (1976).
His novels and plays fictionalize fundamental personal questions and dilemmas amid complex social and psychological pressures thwarting the equitable integration of not only blacks yet also of male homosexuals—depicting as well some internalized impediments to such individuals' quest for acceptance—namely in his second novel, Giovanni's Room (1956), written well before the equality of homosexuals was widely espoused in America.[2]
Baldwin's best-known novel is his first, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953).
James Baldwin Speaks! "America, it is not the Negro problem, it is your problem!"
Speech to the Los Angeles The Non-Violent Action Committee December, 1964. NVAC was formed by militant dissenters from the Congress of Racial Equality. The talk includes a question and answer session.
In a powerful talk, educator Eldra Jackson III shares how he unlearned dangerous lessons about masculinity through Inside Circle, an organization that leads group therapy for incarcerated men. Now he's helping others heal by creating a new image of what it means to be a whole, healthy man. "The challenge is to eradicate this cycle of emotional illiteracy and groupthink," he says.
1,516,234 views TEDxNewYork | November 2014
"As a teenager, Ismael Nazario was sent to New York’s Rikers Island jail, where he spent 300 days in solitary confinement -- all before he was ever convicted of a crime. Now as a prison reform advocate he works to change the culture of American jails and prisons, where young people are frequently subjected to violence beyond imagination. Nazario tells his chilling story and suggests ways to help, rather than harm, teens in jail."
I’m imagining what would be happening if it were Black people across the nation defying stay-at-home orders and demonstrating in large groups against the law.
Riot units would be breaking up rallies. Tear gas would be flying. Jails would be filling up. Trump would be raging.
FROM TED.com
"Stress. It makes your heart pound, your breathing quicken and your forehead sweat. But while stress has been made into a public health enemy, new research suggests that stress may only be bad for you if you believe that to be the case. Psychologist Kelly McGonigal urges us to see stress as a positive, and introduces us to an unsung mechanism for stress reduction: reaching out to others."
— Kelly McGonigal (@kellymcgonigal) April 8, 2019
NOTE - Kelly McGonigal retweeted:
We’re excited to launch StoryCorps Connect, a new free platform that enables you to take part in the magic of a StoryCorps interview — all while doing it remotely. Find out how you can connect with a loved one in a new way today: https://t.co/scKXuq84wz
When reflecting on The Holocaust and Elie Wiesel's words, I head his warning about the "Perils of Indifference" - and how we must pay attention to the rise in hate crime violence.
We must recognize the coercive propaganda spread online by white nationalists that are actively soliciting minors. Just as Hitler manipulated Germans to blame the Jews, white nationalists and the alt-right are blaming immigrants, people of color, and Jews today. Yet the language of white supremacy seems subtle and seductive in tapping into emotions of frustration and disillusionment.
White nationalists have long believed that Jewish “outside agitators” are behind every left-leaning protest and political cause. Indeed, in his article “Skin in the Game: How Antisemitism Animates White Nationalism,” scholar-activist Eric K. Ward explains that anti-Semitism is a core component of white nationalism. Rather than understanding that fights for racial and economic justice represent the interests and ambitions of groups that are left out by a dominant culture that is white and Christian, white nationalists hold that Jews are “manipulating the social order behind the scenes,” Ward notes. Two examples are particularly illustrative: Last October, a flier was posted at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, stating: “Every time some anti-white anti-American, anti-freedom event takes place, you look at it, and it’s Jews behind it.” Depicted on the flier were several Jewish public figures, including Soros, with Jewish stars superimposed upon their foreheads. Former Gov. Paul LePage was making the same point when he recently claimed that the Democratic Party is funded “for the most part” by Jewish people.
The FBI reports that hate crime violence in the U.S. is at a 16-year high. The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, meanwhile, says the highest percentage of hate incidents since the 2016 election occurred in elementary and secondary schools. Special correspondent Charlayne Hunter-Gault takes a look at how this problem has manifest in northwest Oregon -- and what tool teachers are using to intervene.
There does seem to be, by all accounts, a rise in white supremacist speech. How is it that you came to deal with that, and how did you — what did you come up with?
Lindsay Schubiner:
We also know that white nationalist and alt-right movements are intentionally recruiting young people.
The editor of a neo-Nazi Web site has written that he designs his Web site to recruit children as young as 11 years old. We're talking about young people who are — who don't yet have fully formed views and opinions about the world. And that's a big reason why white nationalists and alt-right groups are working to recruit them.
Charlayne Hunter-Gault:
So you have come up with this kit, a kit that you have used in your classes. What does this kit do?
It also contains definitions and a road map to alt-right symbols to help teachers, administrators and community members strip the secrecy from white nationalism.
So how have you used the toolkit?
Patrick Griffin:
So, I like using the toolkit in my classrooms with my lesson plans, whether it be talking about definitions or scenarios.
The toolkit has been useful in, heck, conversations in the hallways with students as they're coming up to me to talk about, hey, Mr. Griffin, what do you think about this or that meme or whatnot, whatever's current in their life.
We're also using the toolkit to create advisory lesson plans that the entire school body, student body will be using.
Lindsay Schubiner:
One thing the toolkit tries to do is empower students that they do have a voice. But it's not their responsibility to take this on. There are adults in the community, and it's our job to take this on.
Charlayne Hunter-Gault:
And do your students, the students that you're talking with, do they understand? Especially those who are embracing these white nationalist tropes, how do you deal with them and prevent them from moving into the direction of violence?
Patrick Griffin:
If a kid is going through that, then you have got to make them feel known, valued, loved, part of the community, because so much of this is this isolationism that they're experiencing, while also educating some of their ignorance about the greater context of it.
Charlayne Hunter-Gault:
How — reaching the students in your classroom doesn't address what they're getting at home, so how do you deal with that?
Lindsay Schubiner:
For people who are already deeply involved in white nationalism, this toolkit is not for them.
But it also, we hope, will help create communities that are openly talking about issues of white nationalism, white supremacy, racial justice, and reinforcing values that include everyone.
Charlayne Hunter-Gault:
To both of you, how hopeful are you that the kind of extremism that this toolkit is trying to address can be contained or even defeated? Are you hopeful at all, or is it just moving too fast?
Patrick Griffin:
I have a lot of reasons to not be hopeful, I guess. That said, I have a lot of reasons to be hopeful too.
And it is that these kids are willing to engage in these conversations in a nuanced manner that I don't think some previous generations have been as willing to engage in. And so, if you just keep doing it, eventually, you get an entire new generation in charge, and I suppose there's a lot of hope there.
