Police Use of DNA to Create a Suspect’s Face Is Dangerous Junk Science & Why Aren't More Black People Voting?
Who Needs Black History Month?, Why "Do the Right Thing" Is on My List of Top Ten Movies Ever Made, Why MLK Almost Didn't Give His "I Have a Dream" Speech, Dinah Washington Sings "Unforgettable"
What I’m Discussing Today:
Kareem’s Daily Quote: The quote from Barbara Jordan comes at the end of my discussion on “Who Needs Black History Month?” It’s worth the wait.
Cops Used DNA to Predict a Suspect’s Face—and Tried to Run Facial Recognition on It: Junk science has been responsible for convicting many innocent people. Will we never learn?
People of color make up nearly a third of eligible US voters but cast only 22% of ballots, analysis says: Sixty years ago, men and women who fought to register Black voters were beaten and murdered. The current GOP attempts to restrict Black votes is an insult to their legacy and an affront to American ideals.
Kareem’s Movie Masterpiece Vault: Here’s why Do the Right Thing is on my list of Top Ten Movies Ever Made.
Kareem’s History Bites: Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream Speech” almost didn’t happen. Thanks to this internationally renowned singer, it did.
Kareem’s Video Break: The Nicholas Brothers, backed by Cab Calloway and his orchestra, put on a memorable display of tap dancing.
Dinah Washington Sings “Unforgettable”: After seven failed marriages, the Queen of Heartbreak knew what she was singing about.
Who Needs Black History Month?
February is Black History Month, and if you’re tempted to skip this paragraph that’s exactly why we need it. Oddly, the month is more controversial now than it was when it was first created in 1926 by historian Carter G. Woodson as Negro History Week. Originally, it was the second week in February because it celebrated the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass. Woodson, the son of slaves who earned a Ph.D. from Harvard and became known as “the father of Black history,” explained why the week was so important: “If a race has no history, it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.”
Black History Month was first suggested in 1969 by Black educators and Black United Students at Kent State University. Afterward, it became a grassroots celebration that spread across the country. By 1976, President Gerald Ford officially recognized it.
Naturally, there’s been controversy. Some in the Black community object to the month because they don’t think Black history should be confined to one month, that Black history is intertwined with American history to the extent that separating it segregates it as less important historical footnotes. This would be true if Black history were only taught for one month, but that’s not the intent nor the reality. Schools teach Black history throughout the year as part of the standard curriculum.
Black History Month is merely an opportunity to celebrate the unique and overlooked contributions of Black people that have been historically ignored or diminished. It’s a PR tool to raise awareness. This is especially important now as the country’s far-right Republicans continue their “anti-woke” campaign to erase much of Black history in schools. Florida’s Dept. of Education has gutted AP African American Studies, tweeting, “We proudly require the teaching of African American history. We do not accept woke indoctrination masquerading as education.” Remember, this is the same department that promoted history that slaves should have been grateful because “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”
There are indications everywhere why we need Black History Month now more than ever. I get that it can cause discomfort for some. White people can feel that the need for the month is a back-handed way of accusing and scolding them for a past they had nothing to do with. A South Carolina English teacher was reprimanded last year for teaching Ta-Nehisi Coates’ brilliant and insightful Between the World and Me, a memoir that discusses racism that won the National Book Award and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Two of her students reported her because the book made them feel guilty for being White. The fact that they felt entitled to report her is why we need Black History Month. The fact that she was reprimanded is why we need Black History Month. The fact that every American has reason to feel guilt about parts of our history, and embracing that guilt keeps us from making the same horrific mistakes again is why we need Black History Month.
Black History Month doesn’t confine Black history, it expands awareness so that people of all backgrounds can appreciate it for the rest of the year. What they learn during that month informs and elevates the conversations about race in all aspects of life. In the end, the lesson learned from all of Black history in America was best expressed by the first Black from the South elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1973, Barbara Jordan: “What the people want is simple: they want an America as good as its promise.”
Cops Used DNA to Predict a Suspect’s Face—and Tried to Run Facial Recognition on It (Wired)
SUMMARY: Police around the US say they're justified to run DNA-generated 3D models of faces through facial recognition tools to help crack cold cases. Everyone but the cops thinks that’s a bad idea.
…In a controversial 2017 decision, the department published the predicted face in an attempt to solicit tips from the public. Then, in 2020, one of the detectives did something civil liberties experts say is even more problematic—and a violation of Parabon NanoLabs’ terms of service: He asked to have the rendering run through facial recognition software.
“Using DNA found at the crime scene, Parabon Labs reconstructed a possible suspect’s facial features,” the detective explained in a request for “analytical support” sent to the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center, a so-called fusion center that facilitates collaboration among federal, state, and local police departments. “I have a photo of the possible suspect and would like to use facial recognition technology to identify a suspect/lead.”
The detective’s request to run a DNA-generated estimation of a suspect’s face through facial recognition tech has not previously been reported. Found in a trove of hacked police records published by the transparency collective Distributed Denial of Secrets, it appears to be the first known instance of a police department attempting to use facial recognition on a face algorithmically generated from crime-scene DNA.
It likely won’t be the last.
For facial recognition experts and privacy advocates, the East Bay detective’s request, while dystopian, was also entirely predictable. It emphasizes the ways that, without oversight, law enforcement is able to mix and match technologies in unintended ways, using untested algorithms to single out suspects based on unknowable criteria.
“It’s really just junk science to consider something like this,” Jennifer Lynch, general counsel at civil liberties nonprofit the Electronic Frontier Foundation, tells WIRED. Running facial recognition with unreliable inputs, like an algorithmically generated face, is more likely to misidentify a suspect than provide law enforcement with a useful lead, she argues. “There’s no real evidence that Parabon can accurately produce a face in the first place,” Lynch says. “It’s very dangerous, because it puts people at risk of being a suspect for a crime they didn’t commit.”
MY TAKE: There’s a famous phenomenon called “the CSI Effect,” first reported in 2004, that describes how shows like the CSI franchise have created a heightened expectation of fancy forensics in order to convict a criminal. In addition, we have a tendency to be more receptive to anything that sounds scientific, even if it is completely baseless. Usually behind these schemes, there’s an unqualified quack making money or there may be a sincere person truly hoping to improve detection methods. Either way, they often destroy the lives of innocent people and establish a dangerous precedent for adopting bad science without critical scrutiny. And innocent people pay the price.
Recently, the “911 call analysis” claimed that a murderer could be identified in a 911 call by analyzing speech patterns, tones, pauses, word choices, and grammar. The technique, used by various police departments, was created by a retired deputy police chief who had little homicide experience and no scientific background. He convinced the FBI of its merit and created a nationwide training program. His method was used in more than 100 cases. However, not only have researchers in five separate studies been unable to substantiate his findings, but an FBI report found that using it could increase bias toward a suspect.
Equally unreliable is the use of several other dangerous methods, including “bloodstain-pattern analysis” (made famous in Dexter), which has never been proven to be legitimate; Scientific Content Analysis, which analyzes a suspect’s writing for deception; the FBI’s “photo analysis” which has been riddled with inaccuracies; and “roadside drug tests,” which have a high rate of false positives. After reviewing the state of forensic science in the U.S., the National Academy of Sciences issued a report in 2009 that concluded that a lot of forensic evidence “was admitted into criminal trials without any meaningful scientific validation, determination of error rates, or reliability testing to explain the limits of the discipline.”
What’s next? A police phrenologist to read the bumps on suspects’ heads to determine guilt? Tarot cards? Our judicial system has to be based on critical thinking or else we have no hope of fair trials. Lawyers are honor-bound by their oath to serve justice and that service includes not using unproven pseudo-scientific methods to either convict or free a suspect. Juries are not supposed to be duped but rather presented with legitimate evidence. Otherwise, they become unwittingly guilty of wrongfully convicting someone to prison. The numbers aren’t negligible. It’s estimated that 5% of people in prison are innocent, which adds up to 11,500 people wrongfully locked up. Do we need to add to that with more junk science?
People of color make up nearly a third of eligible US voters but cast only 22% of ballots, analysis says (The Guardian)
SUMMARY: People of color make up nearly 30% of eligible voters in the US, but cast just over 22% of all votes – a significantly smaller share of the vote relative to their representation in the voter population, according to a new analysis.
As the gap in voter turnout between people of color and white people continues to widen, the study broke down the numbers showing how Latinos, Asian Americans and Black people are persistently underrepresented in the electorate – which, as evidenced by Guardian reporting, is not in small part due to voter-suppression efforts.
The study shows that between 2010 and 2020, the US saw a 35% rise in the overall numbers of Asian Americans, 23% for Latinos and 6% for Black people, while the white population declined by 2%. Still, election results are shaped by white voters, despite their eligible voter population increasing in that time by less than 3%.
White people in 2020 accounted for 67.6% of eligible voters, but they made up 75.1% of the share of voters who cast a ballot due to higher turnout, resulting in overrepresentation among actual voters.
“We know that disparities in turnout by race and ethnicity are entrenched in our electoral system,” Mindy Romero, the lead author of the report and director of the center for inclusive democracy at the University of Southern California, said.
…While Black people are projected to account for 14% of eligible voters in the upcoming presidential election, there are significant barriers they face in taking part in the voting process.
Mississippi has the largest share of Black voters, at 37%, followed by Georgia, a swing state, where they make up a third of eligible voters. But stringent voter ID laws, aggressive gerrymandering and harsher sentences for errors in voter registration in states like those are some of the barriers for Black voters in casting a ballot.
“There’s outright voter-suppression efforts still happening in the US,” Romero said.
Election reform and persistent outreach are effective ways to reach millions of eligible non-voters of color ahead of the 2024 elections, she added, saying: “Mobilization efforts, funding and support for voting and targeting education all make a difference for the Black vote as it does for other groups, too.”
MY TAKE: In June of 1964, Michael Schwerner, James Chaney, and Andrew Goodman were in Mississippi registering Black voters when they went missing. They’d been arrested for speeding, not allowed phone calls, held without bail, and then released. They were then kidnapped by the KKK and driven to a remote spot where Schwerner and Goodman, both White, were executed with one shot each. Chaney, who was Black, was severely beaten before being shot three times. They were all buried. The cost in human lives for registering voters did not start or end with these three young men.
Nine months after the murders, Dr. Martin Luther King’s 54-mile Selma March to promote Black voter registration, among other things, went through Lowndes County, which was 81% Black but had not one registered Black voter. Right before the first Selma March, a Black man in his twenties was killed by the police when he tried to stop them from beating his mother with a club. Two people, both White supporters, were murdered because of the Selma Marches.
I mention this history because these current attempts by the GOP to restrict Black voting are just as despicable as the KKK cross burnings and church bombings. It may come with “some of my best friends are Black” rhetoric and anti-woke bedazzling, but it’s still the same good-ole-boy racism. To steal a people’s voice is to declare them as inconsequential, insignificant—and invisible.
The only way to counter this is for all people of conscience—Black and White and otherwise—to aggressively get out and vote out the thinly disguised White supremacists intent on silencing you. Vote them out. Vote good people in.
If you want, as Barbara Jordan said, “an America as good as its promise,” make that America yourself.
Kareem’s Video Break
There’s no better way to celebrate Black History Month than looking back at the fabulous Nicholas Brothers appearing here with Cab Calloway and his orchestra in Stormy Weather. I wonder if my new hip is up for these moves.
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Kareem’s History Bites
MLK’s “I Have a Dream Speech” Nearly Didn’t Happen
In 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King led the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom which drew 250,000 people, the largest civil rights gathering of its time. King delivered an impassioned speech in which he described his dream for America which became one of the most famous speeches in history. It almost didn’t happen.
Twelve hours before he was due to speak, King hunkered down with his team to craft the contents of his speech. They debated whether to approach it as a fiery political polemic or more as an inspirational church sermon. A draft was written and the next day King stood at the podium and began reading it. After reading the opening analogy comparing the march to a promissory note for justice, he paused, as if uncertain. At that moment, gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, who had performed at many of King’s rallies, shouted to King, “Tell ‘em about the dream, Martin, tell ‘em about the dream!” King seemed infused with a new purpose. He pushed the papers aside, grabbed the lectern, and delivered the sermon America needed. He began with:
So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.
And he ended with:
And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, Black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual: Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty, we are free at last.
Mahalia Jackson, who had used her magnificent voice to inspire millions with her songs of spirituality, used it once again to inspire one man to find his voice to inspire generations.
Kareem’s Movie Masterpiece Vault
Do the Right Thing
Do The Right Thing (1989) is on my Top Ten Movies Ever Made not just because it deals with racial tensions with intelligence and compassion, but because it is a warm and loving story about a Black community in the mythical land of Brooklyn. Written, directed, produced, and starring Spike Lee, the movie excels where others attempting to portray race issues have failed: It is both intensely personal and yet thematically universal. It reveals the larger truths of the complexities of race without preaching but merely by telling a compelling story with sympathetic characters.
The main plot deals with an Italian-American pizza restaurant owner (Danny Aiello) and his insistence on ignoring the Black community around him with his wall of photos of Italian celebrities, and how this seemingly minor conflict grows into a major tragedy. Meanwhile, we get an entertaining glimpse into the colorful characters who populate the neighborhood (Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Samuel L. Jackson, Rosie Perez) which is an homage to Black communities that has rarely been captured on film. The movie is funny, disturbing, heart-warming, and heart-breaking all at the same time. It’s what the best of art should be.
Kareem’s Jukebox Playlist
Dinah Washington: “Unforgettable”
Whenever I’m in the mood for a dreamy, languid afternoon, I bring out Dinah Washington. Her deep and moody voice is like sitting in a steam room having the emotional angst sweated out of me. Washington was one of the most popular Black female singers of the fifties, easily sliding among jazz, blues, and pop. In 1993, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She is most famous for her searing songs of heartbreak. Having been married seven times, she knew what she was singing about.
“Unforgettable” was published in 1951, after a name change from the original “Uncomparable,” and was quickly recorded by Nat King Cole. The song has been covered by dozens of artists including Roberta Flack, Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, and Kenny Rogers. As much as I love Cole’s version, as well as the 1991 “virtual duet” with his daughter Natalie Cole, Washington’s version has less polish and more emotional intensity. Cole’s version is about ideal love, and Washington’s is about gritty need. Together they reveal the full spectrum of love as both serene and desperate.
Dear Kareem, Whether can make the dance move or not, you will still be Hip!
This old white lady is so glad she discovered your epistles. So well written. Inspiring. Timely. Accurate. Thank you, Kareem. You make a difference.