Reading List #15 (Patreon)

Before you read this...no, there are no Wakanda themed essays or articles on this list. I won't be seeing Black Panther until this Friday and I don't want to deal with any spoilers. 

1) Decades Worth of Rape Kits Are Finally Being Tested and No One Can Agree What To Do Next  (Jessica Contrerra) 2/21/18

The rape kit examination is a long, invasive, and often humiliating experience for victims. For many women whose kits go untested, it's an extra slap in the face. But initiatives and technological advances have caused a boom in processing of backlogged kits (2,902 in the state of Virginia alone). But what's next for survivors who have moved on? 

She was remarried now. Happily married, she said. Her new husband didn’t know anything about the rape. “Why are you trying to ruin that for me?” she asked.

Something interesting I learned from this is that sex crime units across the country re-christened themselves as Special Victims Units after the TV show. That's absolutely wild to me. 

Read Length: Long

2) Billy Graham Was No Prophet (George F Phill) 2/21/18

He was an important 20th century historical figure and I'm from Charlotte, North Carolina. There is a highway named after this man, but I never really cared for him. This article outlines some of the reasons why. 

On Feb. 1, 1972, unaware of Nixon’s Oval Office taping system, when Nixon ranted about how Jews “totally dominated” the media, Graham said, “This stranglehold has got to be broken or this country is going down the drain.” He also told Nixon that Jews are the ones “putting out the pornographic stuff.”

Read Length: Medium

3) How Prohibition Encouraged Women to Drink (Erin Blakemore) 2/16/18

I liked this article because it makes me want to look into the drinking habits of black women before and after prohibition. 

Read Length: Short

4) How Media Obsession With Body Counts Could Actually Motivate the Next Mass Shooter (Mark Follman) 11/17/17

I've been thinking to myself lately that it's bad enough that the media publicize and the names of mass murderers. At the base level, family members who usually don't have shit to do with the tragedy are thrown to the hounds. More importantly, its a magnetic promise of infamy for the next loser with access to firearms. But I completely neglected the second component to the media sensationalism- how body counts are handled. 

Read Length: Long

5) The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-`1935 (James D. Anderson) 1988

This is a pretty dense book, so it is appropriately PACKED with valuable gems. You can access it on scribd, or grab it on amazon for $16-30. I'm working on a series about the State of Black Education, and this book was a great foundation of knowledge. Black people have long desired to be free from the shackles of ignorance that whites wanted to keep them in.

Book Length: 381 Pages

6)  The Secret History of the White House’s Kitchen Slaves (Tom Philpott) 2/17/18

The state’s law “freed any enslaved person who stayed on Pennsylvania soil for longer than six continuous months,” Miller writes, “To skirt the law, Washington decided to send all of his slaves back to Mount Vernon every time the six-month deadline was about to toll. They would stay at the plantation for a few weeks and then return to Philadelphia to restart the ‘freedom clock.'” 

Read Length: Short

7) The Archaeology of Wealth Inequality (Matthew Shaer) March 2018

So this is just a snippet of a Smithsonian book, which I didn't know I needed until I read this. It's $70 though. :-( 

For each site they calculated a value known to economists and policy wonks as the Gini coefficient, which quantifies how evenly wealth is distributed. In a population with a Gini coefficient of 0, everyone has the same economic resources; 1 represents maximum disparity. The Gini score of the United States, one of the most unequal countries, is about 0.81...

Using this process, various civilizations have been studied. Need it. 

8. Meet The Dominatrix Who Requires The Men Who Hire Her To Read Black Feminist Theory (Amanda Duberman) 2/13/18

I salute her, but also suggest she add chapters from "When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex In America" by Paula Giddings to her syllabus. LOL

Read Length: Medium