Latoya Peterson

Racialicious is keeping me busy, with installing ad networks and website stuff. Plus, my managing editor is down a computer and working overtime, so most of my energy has been spent trying to cover as much as we can on an extra limited time frame. ONA is also rolling right along – hopefully, you’ll see more of my work there next month. However, a few things have happened.

For one, my Ignite talk I gave on Hacking Diversity for SparkCamp is up!

And so is my article for Spin!

I posted about the overflow on Racialicious; hopefully the full text of the article will be online soon.

New presentations are up, most specifically my Video Games Prezo for NABJ.

At some point this month, I hope to have all of my presentations up here.

Haven’t been keeping up with what I am writing (bad Toya!) but some things I’ve done recently:

At the Guardian: Oprah – an American icon

However, Oprah doesn’t quite get her due when she does, occasionally, veer into controversial territory. In the post-September 11 fervour, she bucked the national trend toward war and retribution, instead running thoughtful shows on Islam. To help combat xenophobia in the wake of global terrorism, she invited Queen Rania on the show to discuss her faith. And, most tellingly, Oprah ran a series of shows questioning the validity of war as a solution to global problems.

Staunchly in favour of peace, Oprah found herself going toe-to-toe with George W Bush and Colin Powell, who were making a case for war. Oprah, in a cordial offensive, aired clips of people in other nations asking that the US give peace a chance. Despite Oprah’s unwavering commitment to the education of girls across the globe, she declined an offer to join Condoleezza Rice’s public relations visit to Afghanistan. The official reason was that the show kept her too busy – but we all know that Oprah does what she wants, when she wants. The damning snub was a way of expressing her disapproval at trying to use the hallowed “Oprah effect” in the service of war.

The Root: Intellectual Property: Owning What’s Yours

Intellectual property is essentially intangible creations. Defined by the World Intellectual Property Organization, “Intellectual property (IP) refers to creations of the mind: inventions, literary and artistic works, and symbols, names, images, and designs used in commerce.” All of this law sounds like long, dry, boring legalese — that is, until we start dredging up the ghosts of black music past. Case in point: an iconic 1954 Time magazine cover portraying the face of jazz — Dave Brubeck, not Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis or Duke Ellington.

Just finished a monster piece for this magazine:

On this topic:

And next up is a smaller piece for this magazine:

March is always a hard month. It’s the heaviest travel month I have, anchored around SXSW with other events popping up to fill my calendar with airport runs and hotel rooms.

This year, my schedule went like this:

March 4 – 6: The Harvard BLSA Social Justice Conference in Cambridge, MA

March 8: Crashed the Blastoff: STEM Conference on Capitol Hill

March 10-13: SXSW Interactive in Austin Texas

March 14 – 18: Maynard Media Academy at Harvard Business School

March 23-24: Press Screening for Muslims in America in NYC

March 25: WAM! DC Panelist on Women in Media at the Center for American Progress

March 30-April 4: San Francisco for the Women’s Media Center, then Oakland

As this ball rolls, it’s all I can do to keep up with email…

This morning:

• I was awoken at 2 AM by a persistent car alarm
• I dragged myself out of bed at 8 AM
• Rode the 14 down Mission Street, saw an unspooling of gentrification
• Asked friend why all the folks who looked a bit unbalanced got off at 16th street, was informed that 16th is where the drug dealers hang out
• Got off at 22nd, watched a man have a philosophical debate with himself
• Walked through a Latino neighborhood, to reach a brunch spot with a predominantly white clientele
• Talked Dani and Jamilah’s ears off with random stories (luckily, they seemed amused)
• Got a heart in my hot chocolate
• Took the BART to Berkeley
• Gave up on waiting for the bus to campus and walked in the rain
• Met Catherine, had coffee
• Arrived, disheveled, at the Empowering Women of Color Conference
• (Hair was sticking up like horns and no one told me.)
• Watched panel
• Realized total and complete tech fail
• Listened to 20 mins of Angela Davis being awesome
• Had to leave to randomly interview Goapele
• Got a text from Yoda which made me smile
• Realized awesome reframing of website plan thanks to Angela Davis
• Listened to Nas’ “Made You Look” on the way back to the Bart
• Got off at the right stop for once
• Almost was killed by an ambulance speeding down the wrong side of the road
• Realized hair is fubar

So, it looks like this will be my new blog for personal updates, since I no longer feel like maintaining Racialicious and a whole other blog about my life.

The new year is off to a great start – tomorrow, I will talk a bit about my theme for this year: reinvention.

Already, new things are popping. Been working on the shiny new redesign of Racialicious, a new header for here, a new business model, and a new crop of special correspondents. But since 2010 went by in a blaze of work, I am also committing to having more fun this year, and taking more time to nourish myself. Changing out of my Eeyore pajamas more than once a week. Actually doing my nails and hair. Reading for pleasure. Slowly savoring a cup of tea. You know, things that go out of the window when you look at a pile of deadlines and a small window of time.

But no more! 2011 is going to be different.

In the meantime, here’s what I’ve been writing that isn’t on Racialicious. Continue reading

I created this short video to explain an SMS Mobile project I proposed for the Public Media Corps. In part two, I’ll outline the project and packing I used at the meeting.

My site, the design, and the graphics are all being tested and developed.  I hope to unveil the finished site in a few weeks.  Until then, consider this a test.

Originally published at The American Prospect

How much do deeply embedded stereotypes play into our decisions? On May 28, undercover officer Omar J. Edwards was shot and killed by fellow officer Andrew Dunton. Edwards was black and Dunton was white.

The reports from the scene paint a blurry picture: Edwards was off-duty and in plain clothes with his gun drawn in pursuit of a suspect he believed tried to break into his car. Dunton and two others had arrived on the scene in an unmarked car and had reportedly called out “Police! Stop!” before opening fire. While the autopsy states that the bullet entered through Edwards’ back, implying that he had not heard the officers, Dunton and his colleagues claim Edwards had turned to face them weapon in hand.

Either way, things progressed so quickly that it was difficult to discern if Dunton gave Edwards enough time to react before pulling the trigger. There is plenty of speculation about how Dunton could have reacted differently, and Dunton is by all accounts extremely remorseful. But the more difficult question is whether Dunton would have given Edwards more time to respond if Edwards had been white.

The question isn’t quite as far-fetched as it may seem. In 2002, Joshua Correll of the University of Chicago began a series of studies inspired by the shooting of Amadou Diallo in 1999. Correll created a video simulation designed to test unconscious bias by having subjects play police officers in a split-second decision environment and tracking their decisions to shoot or not to shoot. Over 450 people (270 were police officers spanning precincts from 15 different states) took the test. Correll made two major findings: trained police officers are less likely to shoot an unarmed person — regardless of skin color — than laypeople, and a clear racial bias was apparent in subjects’ reaction time.

Reporting on the study for Colorlines, Shelley Zeiger summarized Correll’s findings on reaction time:”[Subjects] were quicker to decide not to shoot an unarmed white suspect than an unarmed black suspect and slower to decide to shoot an armed white suspect than an armed black suspect. The results, Correll believes, suggest that participants associate African Americans with more violence.” The association could have deadly results — if blacks are associated with more violence, officers are more likely to perceive them as a threat and escalate to more lethal tactics.

This type of racial prejudice is a quiet bias. It doesn’t manifest itself the way that other forms of racial aggression do, and it is not as noticeable as overtly racist actions. But this bias still exists, lurking quietly around the edges of our subconscious minds, for civilians and police alike.

As subconscious as it may be, blacks and other minorities are well aware of its effects. And that knowledge fosters a sense of insecurity and tension not just between communities and police but inside the police force as well. As former police captain Eric Adams told The New York Times, “If you speak with nine out of 10 officers of color they would tell you that when they hear sirens, in their head they are thinking: ‘I hope these cops know that I’m one of the good guys.’”

However, only considering the attitudes of white officers does not go far enough. Are Asian Americans or Latinos free of bias against black officers simply because they are not white? And vice versa? While most of the studies on racism focus on white supremacy and the impact of white racism on people of color, studies are beginning to emerge focusing on internalized oppression — when nonwhites begin to believe the stereotypes about themselves and other members of their groups — and the biases that exist between communities of color. Ultimately, it is the race of the slain victims that is the tell-tale mark.

We do not know what caused Officer Dunton to react in the way he did. Was it his training? A hunch? Or the looming specter of a stereotype that prompted him to pull the trigger? But one thing is clear — we need to have effective discussions about race and bias on the police force, especially in the larger context of societal prejudice and unequal power structures. While people like Attorney General Eric Holder have hinted at the need for a deeper conversation, historically, the country has shied away from systemic discussions of race, preferring easily quantifiable examples of personal bias. It is critical that we find a way to move these kind of conversations into mainstream discussions before yet another person is subject to a bias test at gunpoint.

Originally published at WireTap

Last night, over fifty people gathered at Freedom Plaza in Washington D.C. to hold a candlelight vigil for imprisoned journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee. The two reporters for Current TV were in China filming a piece on sex trafficking when they inadvertently crossed the border into North Korea. They were detained by North Korean forces and have been awaiting trial for the last three months. The trial began today and there is still no word on the fate of the two journalists.

The D.C. event was one of six happening across the nation, with people from Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Portland, and Birmingham all coming out to show their support. At the vigil, fellow Current Journalist Dan Beckmann shared his experiences working closely with Ling and Lee.

A letter of support written by recently freed Iranian-American journalist Roxanna Saberi was read, along with remarks from Lucie Morillon of Reporters without Borders. The group tracks freedom of the press around the globe, and runs a tally of journalists and media makers who have been abducted, killed, or imprisoned for their commitment to the truth. So far this year, 21 journalists have been killed, 143 were imprisoned (along with nine media assistants), and 70 cyber-dissidents (including bloggers) have been imprisoned.

Press Freedoms Under Attack

The purpose of a free press has been a major topic lately, with many newspapers and legacy media institutions running low on funding and slashing their coverage of local news and in-depth reporting. What Ling and Lee were doing with Current TV’s Vanguard program was an attempt to reverse that trend by creating accessible journalism that covered topics like the recession and the drug war in Mexico in a way that was understandable for a wide audience.

Ling and Lee’s work is invaluable to what I do as a media maker. As we enter a world where corporate interests often trump stories that impact every day people, Current TV’s work developing user generated content and training citizens to become journalists is rapidly emerging as a model to follow to keep citizens engaged in their communities.

But, it is like the old truism: Nothing in life comes for free. In the process of fighting for truth, we have to dig deeper and go to places we never thought we’d go, often at the risk of running afoul of authorities who would rather this information was not released. I read an article published in the Guardian newspaper a few weeks ago where the writer noted that with all the monitoring of digital sites and email addresses that investigative journalists would be wise to adopt the tactics of drug dealers to keep their sources safe.

While it seems ridiculous that reporters would need to buy prepaid phones by the pound and run messages via courier, we may be approaching a time where information will be worth as much as a kilo of cocaine and possessing this information will be just as dangerous as trying to run drugs. This is why Lee and Ling’s case matters so much. We all hope and pray for their return. However, their treatment and what happens to them will also serve as a much larger symbol of what we sacrifice for freedom of the press. All the information and news bytes we take for granted come with a cost attached. The question is simple: Are we prepared to pay this cost and keep fighting?

The Vigil Continues

Though lightning and thunder were picking up force overhead, most of the attendees stayed put until the end of the program, shielding their candles from the wind and sharing umbrellas as they listened to Pastor Eom Myong-Heui speak of her experiences as a refugee from North Korea. She spoke about the terrible events that occurred in her home country and led a prayer service for Lee and Ling to be returned home safely.

Dan Beckmann shared one last note he had received from Laura Ling on the day of their apprehension. He seemed desperate to convey one last connection, one last emotion, one last thought to the audience.

At that point, the skies opened up and most of the assembled group ran for shelter. Waiting for the rain to abate, we all checked email, sent Twitter updates, and set our clocks for 2 a.m. EDT — the time when the trial was set to begin.

After that, there was nothing we could do but wait.