The Huffington Post’s Black Voices breaks down a disturbing new report from Georgetown Law’s Center on Poverty, which found that adults believe black girls seem older and less innocent than white girls of the same age and that this disparity starts as early as five years old. To conduct the study, researchers surveyed 325 adults from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds, many of whom had a high school diploma or higher. As HuffPost explains:
“Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood,” released on Tuesday by Georgetown Law’s Center on Poverty and Inequality, shows that society’s perception of black girls leads to their “adultification.” The report shows that adults believe that black girls seem older than white girls of the same age, and think that black girls need less nurturing, protection, support and comfort than white girls. It also found that people assume black girls are more independent, know more about adult topics and know more about sex than young white girls.
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Rebecca Epstein, lead author and executive director for the center, and Jamilia J. Blake, co-author and an associate professor at Texas A&M University, broke down the relationship adultification has on the ways black girls are disciplined during a press conference call Tuesday.
“One reason this might be occurring is because black girls are being held to the same stereotypes we have of black women,” Blake said. “Black women have historically and currently been seen as being aggressive, loud, defiant and oversexualized. And I believe, along with many other researchers, that the stereotypes of black women are being mapped on to black girls.”
The report stated that “potential implications” for the findings could be research exploring how these perceptions of black girls affect how they are disciplined at school and beyond.
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Animalogic offers a beginner’s guide to the adorable pangolin. Maybe the best thing about them is that they walk on two legs like some sort of tiny, strange T-Rex: Read the rest
In honor of Harry Potter’s 20th anniversary, the gentlemen of SORTEDFood concocted their own Butterbeer recipe, which is both sickly sweet and slightly alcoholic. Read the rest
From The Dude’s White Russian to James Bond’s shaken martini, Binging with Babish demonstrates how to make six movie-inspired cocktails. He also recreates How I Met Your Mother’s magical hangover cure, which might not be so magical after all. Read the rest
Steve Carell and Kristen Wiig are the latest celebrities to tackle the always-entertaining Wired Autocomplete Interview. Read the rest
The 2016 Hamilton mixtape invited musicians to remix songs from the musical’s cast recording and now one of the tracks has its own music video. “Immigrants (We Get The Job Done)” is performed by K’naan, Residente, Riz MC (a.k.a. Rogue One’s Riz Ahmed), and Snow Tha Product. And the video blends the song’s powerful pro-immigrant message with equally evocative visuals.
The video is part of the #Ham4All challenge, which sprung up around a Prizeo competition Lin-Manuel Miranda is running to raise money for the Immigrants: We Get the Job Done Coalition. For a $10 donation, fans can be entered to win VIP tickets to the opening night of Hamilton in Los Angeles. And Miranda is also encouraging entrants to upload a video of themselves singing a portion of the Hamilton cast recording and then challenge their friends to do the same.
Since then a whole bunch of celebrities have gotten in on the action too. For instance, young Beguiled actors Emma Howard, Oona Laurence, Angourie Rice, and Addison Riecke uploaded an adorable “Schuyler Sisters” music video featuring cameos from Nicole Kidman, Colin Farrell, Kirsten Dunst, and Elle Fanning.
To see more videos from celebrities and non-celebrities alike, just search the #Ham4All hashtag on Twitter. You can enter the contest/make a donation via Prizeo.
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To celebrate Canada’s 150th anniversary, music producer Andrew Huang put together a surprisingly catchy track using the sounds of Canada (a.k.a. hockey sticks, maple syrup bottles, and bags of milk). Read the rest
In this thoughtful TEDx talk, Mars rover engineer Abbie Hutty argues that rather than trying to entice young people to STEM fields with gregarious, genius role models like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs, we need hardworking, introverted role models who demonstrate what most STEM professionals are actually like. Read the rest
Watch Joshua John Russell of Man About Cake craft a truly impressive octopus wedding cake using copper wire and modeling chocolate. Read the rest
Educator Delena D. Spann digs into the concept of money laundering a.k.a. “any process that ‘cleans’ illegally obtained funds of their ‘dirty’ criminal origins, allowing them to be used within the legal economy.” Read the rest
Jessica Vill of BehindTheBunzie uses 75- to 80-year-old makeup made in 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s to create a contemporary makeup look. And she shows off some cool vintage makeup ads along the way. Read the rest
The YouTube channel HooplaKidzLab demonstrates some awesome science experiments you can try with your kids this summer. Here’s another video from the channel about how to make a robotic arm out of popsicle sticks:
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It turns out lions, tigers, leopards, and jaguars are the only species of cat that can roar. SciShow explains why in this new video. Read the rest
RuPaul’s Drag Race has morphed from cult reality TV show to mainstream phenomenon, and in this great new piece for Vox, Caroline Framke explores how much the show means specifically to teenagers. As she writes:
When I went to the first DragCon, I was struck by how many of these screaming, sobbing teens — many of them the cis girl teens you might otherwise expect to fight for an autograph from a Harry Styles rather than a Naomi Smalls — swarmed the floor. I knew Drag Race was popular, but I didn’t realize how much it had traveled beyond its initial cult audience of queer men and women already ensconced in drag culture to reach this younger, hungry generation of fans.
The same held true — even more so — at 2017’s DragCon. Time and time again, I watched as kids with braces and fledgling attempts at facial contouring traded intel on which queens would be signing things where, swarmed a Teen Vogue panel (“Resistance in Trump’s America”), posed for pictures while their beaming parents stood by, and struggled to hold back rapturous tears in front of their favorite queens. When they did get the chance to actually ask a question, sure, some took the opportunity to show off their encyclopedic knowledge of which queen threw shade during which challenge, or to ask for the kind of behind-the-scenes gossip not even the infamous Drag Race subreddit might have.
But for the most part, these kids just wanted advice.
After RuPaul’s keynote (the final event of the con), one 19-year-old girl summoned the courage to go up in front of hundreds of fellow fans and ask her idol, through so many sobs we could barely understand her, “How do you wake up in the morning and tell yourself you’re beautiful?”
It was a startling moment, but one I’ve come to expect from Drag Race fans after watching, loving, and researching the show’s larger impact for years.
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Slate is running a fun contest that asks people to distill the Declaration of Independence into a single witty tweet. As the site explains:
In 2010, back before Twitter had quote tweets and threads and daily diplomatic significance, Slate issued a challenge to our readers: Condense the Declaration of Independence into a single tweet.
We’re reviving that contest. The first version drew hundreds of entries, topped by a succinct bit of wit from our winner: “Bye George, we’ve got it.” Twitter is bigger and more competitive these days, and we expect an even better contest this time.
The concept remains the same. Thomas Jefferson took 17 days and 8,000 characters to write what the U.S. National Archives calls the America’s “most cherished symbol of liberty.” You’ll have three days and 140 characters to channel the declaration’s essence into one perfect tweet. And while Twitter has changed since 2010, the ideal tweet hasn’t. It still requires just the right mix of wit and eloquence.
The prize is basically just bragging rights and a mug from the National Archives. To enter, simply tweet as many entries as you like at the Slate Twitter account using the hashtag #TinyDeclaration. The contest is only open to U.S residents and runs through this Thursday, June 29th. You can read all the details on Slate. Read the rest
A frozen Independence Day treat that’s a whole lot healthier than a Bomb Pop.
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