Abbey White | Vox

How can TV and movies get representation right? We asked 6 Hollywood diversity consultants.

2017-08-28T10:18:18-04:00

The cast of the mystery drama How to Get Away with Murder | Courtesy of ABC

In 2012, Kerry Washington, star of the Shonda Rhimes-created ABC political drama Scandal, became the first black woman to lead a network drama in nearly four decades. Two seasons later, the series became the first on a major broadcast network that “was created by a black woman, starring a black woman” and also directed by a black woman, when Ava DuVernay stepped in to helm an episode.

Fast-forward to 2016, when an episode of The CW’s post-apocalyptic drama The 100 featured a groundbreaking love scene between the show’s bisexual female lead Clarke (Eliza Taylor) and her lesbian love interest Lexa (Alycia Debnam Carey) — right before killing off Lexa. The plot bomb resonated so widely that it sparked a Hollywood pledge to stop needlessly killing LGBTQ characters and raised a larger discussion about who was dying onscreen.

With the help of social media, both shows and others like them are shifting discussions around “good representation” from a simple desire to a necessity. Who lives, who dies, and who tells the story — as Hamilton so succinctly put it — matters now perhaps more than it has ever before.

So who is helping Hollywood tell better, more diverse stories? How are they doing it? What is Hollywood currently getting right, and what is it still getting wrong? To find the answers, I spoke with diversity consultants, many from nonprofit media advocacy organizations, who, along with tasks like compiling data on minority representation, offer free training and research support to studios and networks.

Here’s what representatives from GLAAD (which focuses on LGBTQ representation), Color of Change (race), the Geena Davis Institute (gender), Define American (immigration), and RespectAbility (disability), as well as a religion expert, told me about the work of Hollywood diversity consulting and the state of representation onscreen.

Everyone wants good diversity, but “good” and “diversity” can look different to various identities

Rashad Robinson, executive director, Color of Change

We are looking for representations that are authentic, fair, and have humanity. Where black people are not the side script to larger stories and are not just seen through white eyes. There is a way in which we get the same types of representation over and over again, which kind of decreases the sensitivity and humanity that people receive because the media images we see of people can be so skewed.

Madeline Di Nonno, CEO, Geena Davis Institute

[Through our research,] we found that even though there were female characters, they were onscreen and speaking two to three times less. That gave us a whole other thing to talk to people. You can have a cast of 100 and 50 are female, but are you hearing them?

Elizabeth Grizzle Voorhees, entertainment media director, Define American

What most might consider good immigrant representation is characters that are hard-working, humble but high-achieving … non-threatening to “the American way.” We find the “good immigrant versus bad immigrant” … perpetuates the respectability politics forced upon many marginalized communities and suggests that only certain people are worthy of our humanity. [We need] reinforcement in mainstream culture that — at the end of the day — we … have more in common than not.

Jennifer Mizrahi, CEO and president, RespectAbility

The two [current] gold standards are the TV show Speechless, which is scripted, and Born This Way, which is reality unscripted, and that’s because the leads are people with disabilities — played by people with disabilities — authentically portraying their lives.

We see it as a success if an amputee is playing a police officer in an episode of Law & Order and you never talk about that person’s disability. All you see is an incredible police officer.

Megan Reid, professor and religion consultant, Cal State Long Beach

[Some] shows do a good job of showing the faith part accurately, but that’s all we ever see. If it’s a show where religion is an essential plot, it would be helpful not just to see characters who struggle with their faith but how to make decisions about what to do in a multicultural environment.

Whether their services are offered or asked for, Hollywood diversity consultants aim to increase representation and inclusion at various levels of the industry

Zeke Stokes, vice president of programs, GLAAD

I can tell you in a very general way that if you are seeing LGBTQ inclusion on television, there is a very, very strong likelihood that GLAAD played a part in it at some point.

It may not be in an ongoing way with a production if it’s a long-developing arc or if an LGBTQ character or storyline is a basis for the show, but you can generally bet we were involved at the outset in helping them ensure that they weren’t falling into outdated tropes, that a character wasn’t just there to support everyone else’s storyline, that they have a well-developed storyline of their own and sort of a reason for being indispensable.

The Bold Type. | Courtesy of Freeform" data-portal-copyright="Courtesy of Freeform" />

Madeline Di Nonno

[The Geena Davis Institute] has met with every major studio, network, cable company, and pretty much every division. We really focus on who is making financial decisions and who is making creative decisions.

Once something is in construction, we’re not involved unless someone has asked us to be an adviser. For example, YouTube Red has launched originals, and we were asked to be advisers on a show called Hyperlink, which is about young girls in STEM. We looked at the scripts, the dimensionality of the characters — are the characters balanced? Are they well-rounded? Are they stereotypes?

Jennifer Mizrahi

We are meeting with the networks and then reaching out to them and letting them know we are available. Big partners for us are the unions [like] the Casting Society of America’s Committee on Diversity, the Screen Writers Guild, and SAG-AFTRA.

Elizabeth Grizzle Voorhees

There are a variety of ways we engage, including casting for undocumented and documented immigrants non-scripted television programs and films, providing storylines, and on-set consultation and scene review during filming.

Rashad Robinson

The working relationship can be dependent on the entity that we’re dealing with. We do a series of salons throughout the year, where we bring together writers from a host of shows — writers from Being Mary Jane, Black-ish, and Homeland have been there. We spend hours sort of talking about different themes.

Who is asking for help may not always be who you expect

Rashad Robinson

The majority of folks that reach out [to Color of Change] are not black, but it’s really about what the show is trying to achieve. Do folks feel like they’re talking to us under duress? Do they feel like they’re actually trying to get something right? Are folks trying to get a feeling for the general surface rather than trying to go deeper? Each situation is very different, and I would say there have been a number of white folks in Hollywood that have reached out with good intentions and interest in trying to deal with challenges that have existed in the past.

Jennifer Mizrahi

What we have seen [from RespectAbility’s] work in Hollywood is that there is a huge number of people working who have ADHD, dyslexia, and mental health disorders. Just like sometimes people on the autism spectrum can be better at math, science, and engineering than people not on the autism spectrum, it does seem that people who have mental health differences can be better sometimes at acting or comedy.

But those people don’t come out about it.

In many, many cases, they tell us when they speak with us, “Well, I’m living with X, but don’t tell anyone.” It’s really quite common that there are people working in Hollywood with hidden disabilities who are not publicly disclosing those disabilities.

Zeke Stokes

[GLAAD] works with a lot of straight creators who want to tell stories in a really authentic way, and … the same is true for LGBTQ creators. If you’re a white gay male creator, you might not have the depth of personal experience to write a really authentic queer woman of color.

I think more and more the LGBTQ creators in Hollywood are realizing that there are so many LGBTQ points of view that if you’re not bringing in people that have certain experiences to help guide your creative process — either as a full-time part of the production or as a consultant — then you’re very apt to get it wrong.

The questions and challenges that Hollywood needs help with are not one size fits all

Orphan Black. | Courtesy of BBC America" data-portal-copyright="Courtesy of BBC America" />

Madeline Di Nonno

A lot of people come to [the Geena Davis Institute] for help with getting their projects greenlit. Some come to us for recommendations on financing, or they come to us for recommendations on things like female directors and writers. Many of the talent agencies don’t represent enough women writers and directors. We’re at a point where the really well-known female writers and directors are working, so it’s creatives who are maybe on the cusp that really need the support and need to be given a chance.

Jennifer Mizrahi

A lot of times people are well intentioned, but their lexicon is wrong. For example, [a script] might use the expression “wheelchair-bound,” which is just really bad to say. If someone uses a wheelchair it’s an element of freedom, because that’s how they get around. So we look at scripts and help with that lexicon.

Rashad Robinson

[Color of Change] has a big report coming out this fall with UCLA on the diversity of writers’ rooms, and much of that report is about content. We’re looking at upward of 150 shows … tracking back to three different themes. One is racism in the show and whether it’s individual or structural. Another is ways in which black people or black families feel like a problem rather than a solution. Then we’re looking at how the criminal justice system is often shown as infallible — so police officers, district attorneys, DNA evidence.

Zeke Stokes

There are a lot of identities and issues outside those traditional sexual orientation and gender binaries that are suddenly in the public consciousness, and [GLAAD is] being called on to do work around that a lot. We’ve been living in this sort of transgender tipping point, so we get a lot of calls from creators and networks who want to get that narrative right.

Just in this past year or so, networks and creators have begun to tackle the realities of this next generation, which is, that they’re eschewing labels in a lot of respects. So we’re doing a lot of consulting around what that means and … the impact of bad representation on that community.

Megan Reid

[There] is definitely a huge effort to portray religious rituals correctly. Also an effort to make settings plausible … [and for] more respectful portrayals of prayer leaders. Many networks are seeking to get right issues with regard to [religious] law and how it plays a part in people’s lives here and abroad.

What they have gotten wrong, but don’t normally ask for help about — and it’s a problem of perception: the lack of a plausible, nuanced range of the level of religiosity in portrayals of Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Sikhs, [and others].

Elizabeth Grizzle Voorhees

We’re starting to see more of the linking of universal themes with the stories and experiences of immigrant families. Storylines that appear in TV and film often follow the headlines we are seeing in the news media, so specific topics like deportations and ICE raids have had high-interest levels recently, [too].

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Increasing intersectionality is a top priority

Madeline Di Nonno

The point of view is: Infuse your content with a lot of female characters, and as you add, then think about the rainbow of what that could be. Could that person be someone with disabilities, could that person be someone of color, could that person be LGBTQ? Lots of times if creators have a limit on female characters, if they have only one female character, they tend to try to make her flawless. The problem comes in because there’s often just one.

Zeke Stokes

If you look at the inclusion that’s happened on television over the last 20 years, from Will & Grace forward, while there has been a lot of LGBTQ inclusion, the vast majority of it, for way too long, was white men. That’s one of the things [GLAAD is] really working to change. We want to make sure that it’s not just diversity and inclusion, but we’re seeing diversity in inclusion. People of color, women, Muslims, immigrants — when you think of all these communities that have been marginalized, they all live within the LGBTQ community as well.

Jennifer Mizrahi

[RespectAbility] feels very strongly that people with physical disabilities should be represented in every crowd scene and they cannot only be white. In terms of the invisible disability — mental health, sensory, attention deficit — that can be put into a storyline. If you want to be authentic and tell authentic stories, they need to be as people are in humanity. Where’s the person who is a wheelchair user? Where’s the service dog? Where’s the person with Down syndrome? We have 56 million Americans with disabilities, so one out of five Americans. The disability experience is something many Americans live with.

Some Hollywood diversity consultants see their job as a challenging balance between education and accountability

Rashad Robinson

There may be a variety of reasons that people reach out to [Color of Change], but a lot of this is about building relationships and trust and then having enough honesty on our part to say, “Just because we give you advice doesn’t mean we’re going to like the outcome.” It’s getting people to understand that the content they put out doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

Zeke Stokes

GLAAD is the organization that literally started tracking the characters, the representation, the kinds of portrayals we were seeing, and reporting that publicly, so that the industry was being held responsible.

It’s one thing to know something, but to see it in writing and reported in the media I think awakens the industry to a different level of consciousness. So not only do they want to do better because it’s the right thing to do, but they want to do better because there can be consequences if they don’t.

Changes are happening, but not in the same way or at the same pace for everyone

Jennifer Mizrahi

[RespectAbility] just did a focus group in Hollywood, and these folks said when they’re casting, they now know that if they’re going to have four stars of a show, one needs to be nonwhite. But they are hesitant to have that person have a disability because they feel that it’s a stigma. But why can’t a person with a disability be a black person who has the most talent in the room? Disability means you can’t do Thing A, but it doesn’t mean you’re not the best in the world at Thing B. The stigma is [harming] employers’ willingness to hire people. Ninety-five percent of the time [that] there is a character with disabilities onscreen, they are played by an actor without that disability.

Speechless. | Courtesy of ABC" data-portal-copyright="Courtesy of ABC" />

Megan Reid

Many issues don’t come up as issues of religion until the story is actually about religion. Much of what else we see on television — actors and storylines — are about white, even black, Americans, and we just assume they’re from the Christian background.

Otherwise, [religion is] nearly always in the context of a violent incident. Why can so few people name a single incident on TV or film where a Muslim, Hindu, or several other devout practitioners of their faith laughs so hard he or she cries?

Elizabeth Grizzle Voorhees

Honestly, there hasn’t been a huge shift yet with writers and executives wanting to portray a more diverse and accurate depiction of immigrants. What we have seen is a desire for more intersectionality, which naturally results in more diverse characters.

Zeke Stokes

As we increase the quantity [of representations], it also raises the bar on quality and that requires content creators to be much more surgical. It’s one thing to be a straight white person who is creating a woman of color on their show, who finds a queer woman of color to talk to about this, but what are we doing as an industry to empower queer women of color to tell their own stories, to create their own content, to have access to writers’ rooms and a career path in the industry?

Rashad Robinson

One of the shifts that I’ve seen is that with black showrunners … there’s been a wider range of portrayal and a wider range of stories about the black experience. I still don’t think we see enough economically challenged people on television, and I feel like this has been a trend across race that we’ve seen. I think not having stories featuring people who are economically challenged adds to the lack of empathy that we have for the challenges people are having.

How Netflix’s Voltron: Legendary Defender became an essential animated series

2017-08-27T23:58:19-04:00

The five paladins of Voltron in Netflix’s Voltron: Legendary Defender series. | Netflix

Since Netflix’s Voltron: Legendary Defender debuted in 2016, critics have praised the streaming network’s reboot of the iconic 1984 Saturday morning cartoon Voltron: Defender of the Universe (which itself was an adaptation of a Japanese anime series). Consensus throughout the reboot’s first two seasons was that it remained a funny, kid-friendly space adventure while simultaneously aging up the story through dazzling depictions of deep space, hair-raising action sequences, and attentive character development. And now season three, released earlier this summer, is the show’s best one yet.

Overseen by creatives behind Nickelodeon’s Avatar: The Last Airbender and Legend of Korra, Voltron has maintained much of the original story’s basic narrative, following five teen paladins named Shiro, Keith, Lance, Hunk, and Pidge. The unexpected pilots of a fleet of sentient robot space lions that combine to form one large battling super robot known as Voltron, the paladins are responsible for thwarting the ever-growing threat of General Zarkon and his imperialistic Galra Empire.

In season three, after efforts to locate their team leader Shiro (who disappeared at the end of season two following a battle with Zarkon) prove unsuccessful, the paladins are forced to find a new leader and align with new lions. However, rebuilding the team — in the face of their new enemy Lotor, no less — isn’t as easy as it looks. As they fight to preserve their roles as the universe’s legendary defenders, the series’ shortest and darkest season yet sees the team venture to vast, unfamiliar universes where they must face dangerous new challenges.

Here are five reasons why season three of Voltron: Legendary Defender shouldn’t be missed.

A fast pace prevents the season from falling victim to predictability

In season three, the outcomes of several Voltron storylines become apparent long before they actually happen onscreen. Whether it’s the team’s near-death experience in their first battle or the season’s final fight (which sees the paladins arguing over their heroic priorities), the way they and their enemies fare is somewhat predictable. But this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because season three is easily the most dramatically compelling.

With so few episodes (seven, as opposed to 11 in season one and 13 in season two), there is little room for filler. The result is a heightened sense of urgency that overcomes the season’s predictability, because it forces viewers to think less about what’s coming up and more about the dramatics of the present moment. We get plenty of action and answers, without enough downtime to wind up mired in anticipating what’s ahead.

The unveiling of Voltron’s dark past ups the show’s emotional stakes

To say that Voltron features mature content despite its kid-friendliness would be a major understatement. Throughout its three seasons, the show has touched on everything from torture and nationalism to identity and family. Three of its main characters have lost parents, and one her entire planet. Shiro regularly experiences PTSD symptoms, the result of having been a Galra prisoner, and in season two the compassionate Princess Allura was forced to unpack her own racism when Keith’s Galra ancestry was revealed.

Season three continues to explore big themes, including free will, love, power, and teamwork. These themes are most emotionally resonant in moments when the paladins are fighting — with each other, over what their next move should be, or against Lotor and his all-female team of generals. Ultimately, though, it’s season three’s final episode, in which the team is forced to finally reckon with Voltron’s past, that delivers the clearest exploration of those weighty subjects.

Opting out of the cliffhanger approach of finales past, the last 22 minutes of the season see Coran recalling the emotional history of the original paladins, the cosmic origins of the lions, and a love among friends so corrupted by power it threw the universe into destructive chaos.

The addition of darker sci-fi elements lets the series explore new edges of its universe

Voltron has always been more sci-fi than adventure, but in its third season, it embraces the vastness of the unknown in bigger and better ways, ultimately becoming a full-fledged sci-fi show.

It tonally alternates between mysterious and scary, delving into the narrative and visual tropes of the sci-fi genre. At one point in the season, for example, when the paladins receive what appears to be an Altean distress signal, Allura pushes them to check out a mysterious ship. Upon boarding, the discovery of a suited-up skeleton helps them realize the ship has long since been abandoned. The vast, shadowy eeriness of the ship is reminiscent of scenes from Alien or Syfy’s The Expanse. And when our heroes come face to face with people from both their and the show’s past, we realize that answering the ship’s call has somehow landed them in an alternate universe. It’s an unexpected but exciting expansion of Voltron’s already vast world.

Season three’s big bad, Lotor, is perfect in almost every way

It’s not very often that a villain is both genuinely enthralling and completely unsettling, but that’s what Voltron season three has delivered with Prince Lotor. The long-exiled son of Zarkon, Lotor possesses many traits of a strong leader: He’s smart, tactical, steadfast, inspirational, physically adept. He knows when to hold them and when to fold them, and instead of embracing the traditional Galra approach of fearmongering, he presumably chooses to offer mercy and free will in an effort to earn his generals’ and victims’ loyalty.

How all of that adds up is what makes him such a great foil for the paladins. If you didn’t know any better, you might confuse him for their former leader, Shiro. There’s an eerie similarity between the two that’s actually mirrored within Lotor’s entire team, which is made up of villains who in many ways look and act like the reverse images of our heroes. And therein lies what makes Lotor so uniquely threatening. At a time when the paladins are scrambling to reboot their chemistry, he’s seemingly the one part of the team they no longer have, and thus have no defenses against.

Voltron’s connection to the Galra is complicated … by Shiro

Voltron’s underlying mysteries — Keith’s ancestry, the disappearance of Pidge’s brother and father, Shiro’s robotic arm — are a key factor in how the show has moved from being classic fun to downright compelling. Season three explores several of them, with the most notable development being that Shiro’s strange disappearances are revealed to be less coincidental than they once seemed.

In season one, the return of pilot Takashi Shirogane after his long absence in Galra confinement was what jump-started the formation of Voltron. And in season three, Shiro’s reemergence after his season two absence has jump-started Voltron once again. Only this time, Voltron isn’t interested in taking Shiro back as a paladin — at least not in the same way as before, and there may be a legitimate reason for that.

Season three inches along the mystery of Shiro’s Galran arm by peeling back the layers of a much larger conspiracy — one that leaves both viewers and Shiro with more questions than answers about his role in the Galran empire’s plans. The storyline delivers a satisfying balance between reveal and dramatic ambiguity, and with the confirmation of season four, viewers will get to learn more about Shiro’s pre–season one disappearance and, more importantly, who in the intergalactic battle his arm is really meant to help or hurt.

Dick Gregory’s unapologetic comedy helped shape American conversations on race and activism

2017-08-21T14:40:32-04:00

Humorist and activist Dick Gregory at the Roger Ebert Memorial Tribute on April 11, 2013 in Chicago, Illinois. | Timothy Hiatt / Getty Images

Humorist-activist Dick Gregory was a man of many words whose fighting spirit helped transform conversations and action around race and justice in an often divided and discriminatory America.

Gregory — who died of heart failure on Saturday, August 18, at the age of 84 after a decades-long career in comedy — was known for his off-the-cuff, no-holds-barred humor. He could captivate any crowd with his cool but passionate demeanor and keen, often unsettling observations, which focused on everything from the Ku Klux Klan to Michael Jackson, a poor black man who grew up “to be a rich white man.”

For one joke, Gregory recalled walking into a restaurant and being told that they “don’t serve colored people.” “Well,” Gregory replied, “I don’t eat colored people.”

His career took shape during the civil rights era, a topic that remained at the center of his comedic identity throughout his life. Breaking out in the 1960s after catching the eye of Hugh Heffner, Gregory became one of the first black comedians to cross over into the white circuit, enduring racist jeers and insults with dignity and disregard — a response he practiced at home with his wife, who rather reluctantly hurled those same words at him to help him prepare.

During that time, Gregory made an unprecedented visit to Tonight Starring Jack Paar in 1961. After initially refusing to appear on the show, he accepted Paar’s offer to perform under a seemingly simple yet groundbreaking condition: Gregory would only perform if he could sit on Paar’s couch after his routine. Gregory’s appearance on The Tonight Show marked the first time a black performer had ever graced those late-night cushions.

He openly refused to shy away from stinging subjects, but often reminded people that humor was not enough. “Humor can no more find the solution to race problems than it can cure cancer,” Gregory said. “We didn’t laugh Hitler out of existence.”

In a time when dissenting opinion on race and discrimination could put a literal target on your back, Gregory wasn’t just peddling funny. He said it like he saw it, and then he did it, marching for voting rights and performing at benefits for civil rights groups. He was even shot in the leg while serving as a peacemaker during the 1965 Watts riots in Los Angeles.

It was moments like those — earnest calls to put humor and pleasantries aside when the occasion called for more — that helped make his work onstage that much more resonant.

As Gregory got older, he took some of that biting wit to the stage in a different way, doing panels at festivals and talks to college audiences about his career, his interests, and the evolving face of racism. (He also increasingly dabbled in nutrition theory and conspiracy theories about the long-reaching arm of “the system.”) His life and his work unapologetically ran the gamut, and his panel talk during the 2010 Chicago Humanities Festival is a near-perfect example of the unique and definitive nature of his work.

At one point during the talk, Gregory addressed an audience question about a Southern judge who refused to marry interracial couples, and his response epitomized the comedian and activist’s unyielding but purposeful honesty.

“He didn’t resign,” Gregory told the audience. “He embarrassed the whole state and the whole nation.”

He continued:

There’s a whole lot of things that embarrass us. … This is not just some thug on the corner. This is a judge — with that attitude. But whole lots of Americans got that attitude, and we tolerate it because you can hide your feelings. You don’t have to come out. … Once you flush it out, he’s not the only one. Suppose he would have gone on and married them. He still would have felt that way. … That’s why we got to work to flush this whole thing out.

Gregory’s approach both subtly and unsubtly forced America to look at itself in the mirror and reckon with its ugly side. His life and career were a fine example of the power of speech, and the most ordinary man’s ability turn words into action.

Solar eclipses have been a science fiction theme for thousands of years

2017-08-18T13:10:51-04:00

A solar eclipse | NASA

Storytellers have long fixated on the awe-inspiring phenomenon that is a total solar eclipse. From ancient myths about dragons eating the sun to hundreds of more contemporary depictions — in Stephen King’s 1992 novel Dolores Claiborne, the 2006 film Apocalypto, or any number of sci-fi TV shows — eclipses have been so present in fiction that they can be traced through literally thousands of years’ worth of storytelling, across a wide range of mediums.

Mapped across history, these depictions can provide insight into everything from a writer’s cultural identity to how scientific advancement changed the way humans interpret natural phenomena. But how accurate are they? How are solar eclipses portrayed differently across different mediums? What kinds of narrative trends have they been part of?

As millions of Americans prepare to witness the first total solar eclipse in the US in 38 years, I turned to Lisa Yaszek, a professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech University and former president of the Science Fiction Research Association, to discuss the history, meanings, and accuracy of eclipses in fiction. Here’s what I learned.

The following interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Fictional representations of solar eclipses are often used to underline a specific plot point

Abbey White

What are the key scientific aspects of a solar eclipse that must be present for an accurate depiction?

Liza Yaszek

In the case of a solar eclipse on Earth, authors and directors want to make sure they get all the heavenly objects in question lined up, and that it’s clear the moon is between the sun and the Earth. They also want to make sure they’ve got a duration that makes sense. Solar eclipses usually last just a few minutes, while lunar eclipses can go on for hours.

Of course, if the story takes place on a different planet, or if for some reason the Earth, say, suddenly has a second artificial moon, the author or director will have more wiggle room. The key is to make sure the audience doesn’t suddenly look up and ask, “How could it possibly be this way?”

Abbey White

What kinds of storytelling points are eclipses usually associated with?

Lisa Yaszek

Well, with an eclipse, particularly a solar eclipse, the laws of nature seem to be suspended. Day becomes night, the temperature drops, animals start making noises. There’s a wonderful description by NASA astronomer Michelle Thaller about how with eclipses this biological sense of dread just takes over. It can be like you’re standing on another planet.

An eclipse feels like a moment where something is wrong or different, so if you have a story that’s trying to comment on how, say, a certain set of political or social relationships are wrong, or how it’s time for a change in your characters, an eclipse can be a symbol of that. In that case, it might not be so much a matter of getting it accurate and more a matter of representing our own experiences with eclipses. That means we don’t always see the full eclipse; they don’t always last the full two to three minutes. Sometimes you just get a few emotional seconds of it.

The first science fiction story to feature a solar eclipse got the science totally wrong

Abbey White

Would you say that with the creative freedom and logistical restrictions of storytelling through visual media, you get inaccurate depictions of eclipses as a result?

Lisa Yaszek

Actually, one of the greatest scientific fails of all time is in a print science fiction story. We do tend to assume that with written stories, because writers have more time and thus less pressure on them, that they’ll have done much more careful research and incorporate a much more scientifically sound depiction. But the first science fiction story that featured an eclipse totally blew it. The novel, King Solomon’s Mines, was written by H. Rider Haggard and in theory it was the first modern — or you could say respected — science fiction novel to feature a solar eclipse.

When the first edition came out, a lot of readers said that Haggard had completely misrepresented a solar eclipse as something that could last for hours, rather than just a few minutes. There were so many complaints about it that in future editions of the book, they had to change it to a lunar eclipse, because that was the only way the science could match the story. In a 1937 film based on the book, they changed it back to a solar eclipse, as that looks more dramatic on the screen than a lunar eclipse would.

Abbey White

What’s the most accurate depiction of a solar eclipse you’ve seen onscreen?

Lisa Yaszek

The 1961 movie Barabbas. It’s the story of Jesus Christ on the cross. They were shooting in Italy, and it just so happened there really was a solar eclipse on the day they were shooting the crucifixion scene.

There is a history of Christian mythology that claims there was a solar eclipse on the day Jesus was crucified, so the director was so excited. Everyone was like, “We’re never going to be able to catch this; it’s never going to work.” But they managed to capture the complete eclipse — everyone stayed in character, production ran with it. It’s considered one of the craziest moments in filmmaking history.

Abbey White

Is there one medium that seems to depict eclipses more accurately than others?

Lisa Yaszek

I think that print versus visual media offers different ways to approach eclipses. The thing that you always get in written stories, which is very hard to convey in something like a television show, is the scientific explanation. You can spend a lot of time writing out the reasoning for solar eclipses and spend a lot of time in people’s head. Print is very good at giving us a look into people’s psyches.

What you get in visual science fiction with film and television and video games is the ability to convey one particular aspect of the solar eclipse — that striking image of when day becomes night. There’s more focus on the visual impact. You can also effectively convey psychological states, as it dramatizes senses of wonder and dread. A director can do a close-up on one person who is reacting, then pan back onto a whole group of people. You can capture the emotion of it on a different scale.

In video games, eclipses are usually just a narrative mechanism to unleash beasts for killing. Having said that, gamers will tell you that this is an entirely appropriate use of eclipses in game narratives. They see the eclipse and feel an almost literal sense of dread as they prepare for the onslaught of new monsters. Video games can convey the strong emotions that often accompany a solar eclipse, but it’s definitely a more body-driven response.

The way storytellers depict eclipses has evolved along with humans’ ability to predict them

Abbey White

How far back do eclipses go as storytelling devices?

Lisa Yaszek

Eclipses [in storytelling] actually go back to the Epic of Gilgamesh [in 2100 BC]. Many versions of the stories about the deaths of Jesus and Mohammed’s son Ibrahim suggest there was an eclipse at the time of their deaths. Other early and important ones include Shakespeare’s Othello [1603] and John Milton’s Paradise Lost [1667], which includes a description of the fear an eclipse engenders. [There’s also Milton’s] Samson Agonistes, where an eclipse is a metaphor for adult-onset blindness.

William Wordsworth’s 1820 poem The Eclipse of the Sun [is] one of the first rational, scientific depictions of solar eclipses, but it’s also super racist. It describes the interest of white people and fear of brown people in the face of an eclipse. Georges Méliès’s 1907 short film “The Eclipse, or the Courtship of the Sun and Moon” is the first instance of a solar eclipse in visual media.

Abbey White

Have representations of solar eclipses changed over time?

Lisa Yaszek

There seems to be a really consistent pattern in how stories of solar eclipses work. It’s pegged largely to human understanding of science. What you find is that in cultures that existed prior to the advent of contemporary scientific and technological culture — or before the industrial revolution — everyone tells stories of eclipses being about dread.

The word “eclipse” is derived from the Greek term for abandonment. Early stories from across the world treat this as a time of chaos and misrule, with dragons eating the sun, punishment by the gods for error, or even serving as a prelude to the apocalypse. These stories are really pervasive and really transcend culture.

Stories featuring eclipses have often centered on themes of dominance, discrimination, and dread

Abbey White

When did things start to shift?

Lisa Yaszek

So by the 1600 and 1700s, as Western people started to become interested in astronomy and started creating the first almanac, they were able to successfully predict when a solar eclipse would happen. All of a sudden, we got stories about using eclipses against more superstitious people.

What you first started to see were stories about adventurers who had gone out and used the almanac to manipulate indigenous people. There was a very popular story that Christopher Columbus had used his knowledge of solar eclipses to get what he wanted out of some of the indigenous Americans he met with.

That idea very much became central to the first two science fiction stories about solar eclipses. There was King Solomon’s Mine and a variation on that, Mark Twain’s 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. It’s about a time traveler who goes back to early Europe and uses his knowledge of solar eclipses to prevent being executed and to help become a person of influence in King Arthur’s court. In early science fiction we get a lot of examples of how white Western people used their knowledge to exert dominance over other people.

Abbey White

How long did that era of solar eclipse storytelling last?

Lisa Yaszek

That played itself out by the 1930s and ’40s, where you saw another shift in the kind of stories we were telling — a shift that focused on the point of view of scientists and how even scientific experts experience wonder and fear when an eclipse happens. The most famous example of this is Isaac Asimov’s 1941 short story “Nightfall,” where it’s not the eclipse that’s the problem but what it reveals.

More recently — this isn’t fiction, it’s narrative nonfiction — Annie Dillard has an amazing essay about a 1979 solar eclipse and how she felt like she was going to die. So we get those stories as well, with the sense that even though we scientifically understand this stuff, we can still experience an intense sense of awe.

Abbey White

Have there been any new trends in how eclipses are represented in media?

Lisa Yaszek

In mapping stories about solar eclipses, I found one trend that I think is worth noting. In the last 20 to 30 years, we’ve seen a small but significant number of stories about people who have traditionally been discriminated against in our society — women, the mentally ill, criminals, and even indigenous peoples — experience a reversal of fortunes when the moon takes center stage and blots out the sun. In the stories, when the solar eclipse happens, they experience things that allow them to change the world for the better.

In David Twohy’s movie Pitch Black [2000], it’s all about a criminal who turns out to be a pretty handy and helpful guy during a dangerous solar eclipse. There are two Simpsons episodes where Marge, who is often kind of sidelined or doesn’t have a big plot impact, has these big, critical insights that happen to her during an eclipse. We’re starting to see stories where with solar eclipses the monsters come out, but maybe the monsters are the good guys. That’s something I think is really important when it comes to solar eclipses. They provide us a different perspective on things.

One of fiction’s oddest depictions of a solar eclipse is in a Little Rascals film that takes a racist turn

Abbey White

What would you say is the oddest depiction of a solar eclipse you’ve ever seen in fiction?

Lisa Yaszek

The oddest is a short film — a Little Rascals film from 1935 called Little Sinner. The story’s about two of the boys who decide they want to skip church and go fishing. They almost get caught, but a solar eclipse happens, confusion ensues, and they get away with what they wanted to do. It’s a good example of a solar eclipse changing how society works: Kids get away with something they’re not supposed to.

But the reason they get away with it is because they get lost and end up going to a black church revival when the eclipse happens, and apparently somehow these black Americans don’t know what an eclipse is, so they have that very stereotypical reaction of confusion and fear, which causes chaos for the boys. So it’s odd in that you don’t expect the show to play around with scientific concepts, [and] then the way it plays out is so stereotypical and really horrible.

Abbey White

How about the scariest depiction?

Lisa Yaszek

I’ve got a story, but it’s not exactly about an eclipse. It’s about syzygy, which is when a bunch of solar objects line up in a straight line. Technically an eclipse is a syzygy because the sun, the moon, and the Earth all line up.

[The story that comes to mind is] a book by Chinese science fiction author Liu Cixin, and it’s called The Three-Body Problem. The problem in that story is that there’s this alien world that rotates around a trinary star system — it has three stars — and whenever the stars line up, the alien planet experiences cataclysmic natural disasters, all of civilization dies, and they have to rebuild from scratch.

Eventually they find Earth and they realize we don’t have that problem, so they decide they are going to come here and take over the planet.

Some of the most interesting depictions of eclipses in fiction, like the one in 2001: A Space Odyssey, boast an especially unique perspective

Abbey White

What would you say is the prettiest depiction of an eclipse in media?

Lisa Yaszek

I’m not sure if eclipses are necessarily pretty as much as they are awe-inspiring, but I think the eclipse that opens 2001: A Space Odyssey is really interesting. You see the sun and the moon and the Earth in alignment, but you realize very quickly that you’re not actually seeing that eclipse from the Earth. You’re at some vantage point beyond the Earth, and presumably it’s from the vantage point of the aliens who plant the monolith. I think that is mind-blowing, a little disorienting, and awe-inspiring.

Abbey White

Have you ever come across a depiction of an eclipse in fiction that has been particularly emotionally resonant for you?

Lisa Yaszek

I think one of the most profound eclipses is in Asimov’s short story “Nightfall.” This is a story about a planet that has six suns, and they’re in for their first solar eclipse in 3,000 years. Although this culture never sees the dark, they have enough scientific records to know what they’re in for — or at least they think they do.

Everyone is ready to go, and then the solar eclipse happens and the stars come out. They’ve never seen the stars before, and they don’t know what they are. It reminds us that even when we think we know everything associated with a natural phenomenon, something can come and surprise us, delight us, or terrorize us. We can never assume that science can tell us everything.

Spotify is removing white supremacist and neo-Nazi bands from its music library

2017-08-17T16:10:05-04:00

Spotify is removing bands affiliated with the white power music scene from its catalog, the streaming music service announced on Wednesday. The move, first reported by Digital Music News, follows a growing trend in which tech companies — including GoDaddy, PayPal, and Apple — are publicly denying service to white supremacist and alt-right organizations, or distancing themselves from their content.

On Monday, Digital Music News writer Paul Resnikoff found 37 bands on Spotify with affiliations to neo-Nazi and white supremacist hate groups. Resnikoff looked them up on the streaming service after going back to a list originally curated by Southern Poverty Law Center in 2014, when it investigated the presence of bands on iTunes whose music featured racial supremacy–themed lyrics.

Such lyrics include lines like “I get so sick of all those Mosques, those silly hats / They wear / Can’t stand their stupid monkey language, I hate their / Women’s facial hair,” from a song called “Rock Against Islam” by the band Kill, Baby, Kill!

Apple ultimately removed the artists from iTunes. But as Resnikoff discovered on Monday, many of them remained on Spotify.

In response to Resnikoff’s story, Spotify announced that it would remove the bands from its catalog, issuing the following statement:

Spotify takes immediate action to remove any such material as soon as it has been brought to our attention. We are glad to have been alerted to this content — and have already removed many of the bands identified today, whilst urgently reviewing the remainder.

A spokesperson for Spotify later told Billboard that the company’s catalog contains music from “hundreds of thousands of record companies and aggregators,” and that those companies are “at first hand responsible” for any questionable content delivered to Spotify. Nevertheless, the spokesperson said that “illegal content or material that favors hatred or incites violence against race, religion, sexuality or the like is not tolerated by us.”

The process for removing hate music from digital music libraries may be a complicated one. As Billboard notes, companies must assess the difference between free speech and hate speech, understand different laws for different music markets, and sift through lyrics that are increasingly coded in their messaging.

Coded language that masks hate speech with ambiguity and a music scene built around vague calls to embrace white supremacist ideology have helped many hate groups expand their audience.

“They’ve long known that music was a main avenue for their message as it related to connecting people to a community that could solidify them within that movement,” Aaron Flanagan, the director of research the anti-racist organization Center for New Community told the SPLC in 2014.

Such music is also a very practical way for hate groups to raise money.

As David Koehler, the director of research at Germany’s Institute for the Study of Radical Movements, told NPR in 2013: “That music is not just a recruitment tool, but also a very important tool for financing infrastructure, networks; and to buy guns and to buy explosives, and to sustain militant groups.”

PayPal and GoFundMe are the latest websites to take a stand against the far right

2017-08-16T14:06:07-04:00

Members of a white supremacist group at a rally in Riverside, California. | David McNew / Getty Images

In the days following last weekend’s Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, many websites and tech companies have taken a strong stand against white supremacist and alt-right interests.

Even before the rally, Airbnb deactivated the accounts of some of its members who the company believed were headed to Charlottesville for the event.

Within 48 hours of the rally and the violence that occurred in connection with it, the notorious neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer was denied domain registration and server hosting services by GoDaddy, Google, and several other companies that said it had violated their terms of service.

Now the crowdfunding website GoFundMe and the online payment system PayPal are removing campaigns and accounts offering financial support to users associated with far-right ideologies, including white nationalists and white supremacists.

GoFundMe has taken down several crowdfunding efforts aimed at assisting with James Fields’s legal defense, according to Reuters. Fields is the Ohio man accused of killing one person and injuring 19 others after driving his car into a crowd of counterprotesters in Charlottesville on Saturday. He was denied bail by a Charlottesville court earlier this week after being charged with one count of hit and run, three counts of malicious wounding, and second-degree murder.

PayPal has removed at least 34 organizations from its platform, according to the Washington Post. A list provided to the Post by racial justice organization Color of Change identifies the National Policy Institute, which is run by prominent white nationalist Richard Spencer, as well as several accounts associated with Unite the Right rally organizer Jason Kessler, among those whose access to PayPal has been terminated.

Like Airbnb and GoDaddy, GoFundMe and PayPal are citing their terms of service prohibiting hate speech, abuse, or violence as the reason for terminating the campaigns.

Bobby Whithorne, GoFundMe’s director of strategic communications, told Reuters the campaigns that have been launched on the platform to support Fields “did not raise any money and they were immediately removed.” He estimated that there have been fewer than 10 campaigns of that nature so far, but said any new ones will also be removed.

Both GoFundMe and PayPal, along with many of their mainstream competitors, have policies that prohibit the promotion of hate speech, violence, and threatening or abusive behavior.

In a statement released on PayPal’s website late Tuesday night, the company said that it works “to ensure that our services are not used to accept payments or donations for activities that promote hate, violence or racial intolerance” and that the company will “limit or end customer relationships and prohibit the use of our services by those that meet the thresholds of violating our policy.”

White supremacists and neo-Nazis are praising Trump’s “honest” Charlottesville comments

2017-08-15T20:13:32-04:00

Just a day after President Trump issued a prepared statement condemning extremists and racism, he pivoted once again, coming to the defense of those who protested the removal of a Confederate monument in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend at a rally that turned violent. In their defense, Trump posed that the people involved were not all necessarily neo-Nazis, and were there to simply fight against the removal of the Robert E. Lee statue.

He asked a room full of reporters during a press conference, “George Washington was a slave owner. … Are we gonna take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson?” He also asserted that the so-called “alt-left” “came charging” at the alt-right during the rally. “Do they have any semblance of guilt?” he asked.

His comments, in which he admonished “both sides” for the violence on Saturday, shifted blame for the deaths and injuries away from the far right, and toward the counterprotesters that he’s calling the “alt-left.”

Just as Trump’s comments have changed, so have the reactions of leaders within the alt-right, white nationalists, and white supremacists such as former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. After initially scolding Trump for his tweets holding far-right extremists accountable, he congratulated Trump Tuesday for his “courage to tell the truth.”

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Ann Coulter, Richard Spencer, and Tim Gionet have all also tweeted praise for Trump’s statements.

We were Gideon's army without Gideon. Today, we got our leader back! @realDonaldTrump press conference: https://t.co/NiR2kwJkjT
— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) August 15, 2017

I'm proud of him for speaking the truth.
— Richard Spencer 🇺🇦 (@RichardBSpencer) August 15, 2017

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A Twitter account identified this Unite the Right participant. Now his family’s disowning him.

2017-08-14T17:10:05-04:00

The father of a Unite the Right rally participant says he and his family “loudly repudiate” his son’s “vile, hateful and racist rhetoric and actions,” as he wrote in an open letter published by the North Dakota daily newspaper the Forum.

The letter was posted just two days after an alt-right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, resulted in physical clashes between white nationalist protesters and counterprotesters, as well as the death of one Charlottesville woman after a member of the alt-right drove a car through a crowd of counterprotesters.

In the op-ed, Pearce Tefft describes his youngest son, Peter Tefft, as “an avowed white nationalist” who he says once quipped, “‘The thing about us fascists is, it’s not that we don’t believe in freedom of speech. You can say whatever you want. We’ll just throw you in an oven.’”

In the short letter, the Fargo, North Dakota, resident says he doesn’t know where his son learned the beliefs of the alt-right, but places blame outside the home before calling out his own silence over his son’s actions:

I have shared my home and hearth with friends and acquaintances of every race, gender and creed. I have taught all of my children that all men and women are created equal. That we must love each other all the same.

Evidently Peter has chosen to unlearn these lessons, much to my and his family’s heartbreak and distress. We have been silent up until now, but now we see that this was a mistake. It was the silence of good people that allowed the Nazis to flourish the first time around, and it is the silence of good people that is allowing them to flourish now.

He also prays that his “prodigal son will renounce his hateful beliefs and return home,” but until then, Peter is no longer welcome at family gatherings.

Early Saturday morning, the Twitter account @YesYoureRacist, which dedicates itself to exposing those “who say they’re not racist, and then go on to prove otherwise,” asked followers to help identify rally attendees. Several rally participants were publicly identified, including Peter Tefft.

In past local news interviews, Tefft has identified himself as “a white Christian and 100 percent pro-white” and said that “‘White Supremacist’ is a word used to intimidate Christians and to stifle discord when all of us should be communicating.” As recently as Sunday, Tefft tweeted that using the label “Nazi is a racial slur against whites.”

Meanwhile, in a statement to the Forum, Peter Tefft’s nephew Jacob Scott condemned his uncle, alleging that Tefft’s involvement with extremists has invited violent threats to his family. “He scares us all, we don’t feel safe around him, and we don’t know how he came to be this way,” he wrote. “My grandfather feels especially grieved, as though he has failed as a father.”

As a final note to his son, Pearce Tefft wrote in his letter, “Peter, you will have to shovel our bodies into the oven, too. Please son, renounce the hate, accept and love all.”

A Charlottesville faith leader to Unite the Right: “love has already won here”

2017-08-14T10:00:08-04:00

Rescue workers assist victims after a car plowed through a group of counter-demonstrators marching through Charlottesville, Virginia’s downtown shopping district. | Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

Hundreds of white nationalists descended upon the University of Virginia Friday night, moving across the campus grounds with Tiki torches and chants before surrounding a statue of Thomas Jefferson.

A group of progressive faith followers, meeting for an event organized by the local faith and justice-based organizing group Congregate C’Ville, packed St. Paul’s Memorial Church. With “a call for 1,000 clergy and faith leaders to travel to Charlottesville,” the group planned a weekend of training sessions, interfaith services, and opportunities for nonviolent prayer. All of it was aimed at confronting “the rising threat posed by these white supremacist groups in Charlottesville and across the country.” But as they came together for this peaceful event, the group could hear and see the protesters, Tiki torches in hand for the Unite the Right rally.

In addition to the several other counter-protests planned by UVA students, Black Lives Matter, and antifa, Congregate C’Ville planned to make their peaceful presence known during the rally. So after the group’s Love Over Fear Sunrise Service at 6 am on Saturday, faith leaders like Dr. Cornel West and Rev. Dr. Traci Blackmon marched with followers across the city, in both silent and song-filled resistance.

But before the rally could even begin, it was over. As Congregate C’Ville spread through the Virginia city’s streets, armed with messages of prayer and offering assistance to those in need, a state of emergency was called and the alt-right event was canceled. Not only did protests turn violent, but a car was intentionally driven through one of the protest sites, killing one woman and injuring many, including one of Congregate’s own.

I spoke to Congregate C’Ville’s lead organizer Brittany Caine-Conley about the movement’s visible and documented faith-based presence before, during, and after the rally. Here’s what she had to say about leading a nonviolent resistance in the midst of hate-driven violence.

Abbey White

Around how many clergy members showed up on Friday after you put out the call at the end of July? And how many different denominations answered that call?

Brittany Caine-Conley

Several hundred people responded to our call. The majority of people that responded were not from Charlottesville. We had put out our own local call and had been training folks for months. But we had folks from all over the country, as far as Texas, Ohio, and New York — we really had a great representation of folks from many traditions. Not just Christian denominations, but many other faiths. We had Muslim folks with us, Jewish folks, people part of meditation communities. It was a wide array of faith leaders and clergy.

Abbey White

Did you have any organizational allies from other areas of the social justice community there with you?

Brittany Caine-Conley

Mostly the people responding to our call were people of faith. There weren’t a lot of folks that don’t align themselves religiously. Most of the organizations working with us were faith organizations who, however, were organizing locally with Black Lives Matter.

Abbey White

I know there was a service Friday and a reported run in with protesters from the Unite the Right rally at a church during that late night service. Can you briefly describe what happened?

Brittany Caine-Conley

The service was incredible. It was a packed house, standing room only. Near the end of the service, we received information that the white supremacists were doing another torch-light rally. They were marching toward us, toward the Jefferson statue at the University of Virginia, which is right across the street from where the church is that we were gathering.

At that point, we didn’t have a lot of information, but started to get reports in that a student group surrounding the statue was being pepper-sprayed and beaten by the white supremacist group. We tried to keep people at our services as safe as possible, and then attempted to send a few folks over that way to assist, but we were largely not in space where we could mobilize at that point.

Abbey White

Your initial call was for a weekend of training, interfaith services, and opportunities for visible prayerful presence. What kind of training were you offering and who were they offered to?

Brittany Caine-Conley

Our trainings were for nonviolent direct action. We wanted folks to be prepared and understand the magnitude of violence they could witness and even receive. So we attempted to train people to be very structured and very disciplined in their nonviolent presence, to be able to withstand brutalization by either the alt-right or the police.

Abbey White

You say you’re an organizing mechanism for equipping faith leaders and those who would follow them to show up in pursuit of justice. How are you preparing leaders to address justice?

Brittany Caine-Conley

In the organizing leading up to the event, we didn’t really have a whole lot of time to put out resources, but we did put up a resource page for congregations, and, really, any faith leaders to be able to start to talk about white supremacy. That’s one of the big things. We really need everyone, particularly white folks, to start talking about white supremacy, to start talking about whiteness and what that means for us as individuals, what that means for us as communities, and what that means for us as a country. So that is really where we’re headed.

Here locally, we intend to start very soon a white privilege curriculum, particularly for people of faith, and that will be something we continue to give. And then to bring together groups who are ready to just be present at city council meetings, and other places where the city needs to know that people of faith — leaders of faith — have a voice and we have a call toward justice. … Those people are who we intend to stand with.

Abbey White

So much happened on Saturday. If you can, break down what Congregate C’Ville was doing from the start of the day until it ended.

Brittany Caine-Conley

So we started service at 6 am where we were given a message from Dr. Cornel West. From there we had people going out to different locations to serve in different capacities. So we did have a march of several hundred people that went from the Jefferson School to McGuffey Park. McGuffey Park was designated as a safe space where one of our allies had got a permit for the day.

Others of us marched from First Baptist Church down to Emancipation Park, where we held a line presence right in front of the armed militia. We sang and we prayed, and we really worked to change the environment and change the narrative to help community members feel safe. From there, a group of us had space on some stairs where we wanted a presence as the alt-right folks were coming in. We also had folks throughout the day serving as “care bears,” walking around the park, walking around all of downtown with water, snacks, and sunscreen. We had folks who were stationed at other safe spaces.

At First United Methodist Church, we had folks serving as sort of mental health medics, essentially. We had folks at another church that were ready to respond for any sort of jail support that was needed. We had a bunch of faith leaders and clergy that were sent to hospitals, particularly after the car attack. So we were really trying to disperse folks and send them all across the city to be helpful and be a presence in whatever way made sense for them and their skill sets.

There was also a small group of us that continued to be in the downtown space as conflict continued to arise. We had folks with us that would essentially get information about where the conflict was happening and we’d march there. We’d march there, hold space. We attempted to protect the community from the alt-right and showed up wherever we were needed.

Abbey White

There have been reports that clergy, faith leaders, and counter-protesters that were part of your movement were attacked. Can you confirm when and where this happened?

Brittany Caine-Conley

We were attempting to hold the stairs as a Nazi group came streaming toward us, trying to get into the park. They started to shove our group and someone from our group did end up breaking the line, so they were able to get through. There was a whole lot of physical injury at that point because someone did break the line out of fear, and that’s understood. We trained so that people wouldn’t, but in that case, someone feared for their life.

So we were pushed and shoved around at that point, however, there were people who trained with us that were hit during the car incident. Our particular group was … just up the street and we ran to the scene of the accident, and we just attempted to keep people away from all the bodies on the street. It was the most horrible thing I’ve ever experienced. But one of the folks that had been training with us that was with the group that was there was hit by the car and all my indications are that she’s okay now and being treated for her injuries.

Abbey White

At many points, you were close to Unite the Right rally participants as well as an armed militia. What impact did their presence have on the group and what impact did you want your presence to have?

Brittany Caine-Conley

Our hashtag was #LoveOverFear. White supremacists were descending on our town and are still here in order to make us fearful, in order to take away our power and our agency. We wanted to say that we’re not afraid. In those moments, you can feel your own fear and anxiety, but that’s why we had trained for so long. People knew how to deal with those feelings and were responding to an almost higher call.

Most of us were they because we felt called by God to put our own bodies on the line, so that marginalized and oppressed people don’t have to continue to be the only ones who receive violence. We take on that violence. So yeah, it was scary, but we wanted to say this is not who we are, and that love wins.

That was one thing that we were continuing to chant, that love has already won here and that we will not — as people of faith, as people of Charlottesville — we will not allow white supremacy to take over who we are. That is largely what we were attempting to do with those spaces, to obviously make a statement to the white supremacists, but also a statement to our city that we are here, we are here with you, we are here to serve you. It was really beautiful to see all the community members that joined in with our songs and in our chants. We really felt that our presence was able to change the narrative and change the dynamic of the space.

Abbey White

What would you say to those who see religion as part of Trump’s agenda and an agenda that is encouraging hate and harm?

Brittany Caine-Conley

I would say that there is a religion that encourages harm, and that religion is white nationalism. My belief is that the religious right, their religion is white nationalism. Although they claim Christianity, they claim Christianity in the name of white supremacy, in the name of Christian supremacy, and those who I believe actually follow the way of Jesus — we believe they are completely off the mark.

It’s really disheartening that, particularly here in America, Christianity has been so wound up with white nationalism. It’s been co-opted, and there are many, many, many folks who are working to essentially save Christianity from itself. To say that following the way of Jesus has nothing to do with white nationalism. We’re working hard to organize and reclaim this beautiful way of peace and transformation that we believe is at the very heart of our faith’s tradition.

I keep telling folks, Jesus was killed by the empire. Jesus endured violence so that more marginalized and oppressed people didn’t have to. And that is our call — that if we are truly to follow Jesus, we need to put our bodies and lives in places where we’re also willing to speak truth to power and to put ourselves in places where we may be killed by the empire.

Abbey White

Has there been any larger statements of support from various faith-based organizations, not just locally but nationally?

Brittany Caine-Conley

It’s been a little difficult to distill, but we’ve gotten a lot of messages of support and a lot of messages that people are with us. We’ve received support on the national level from the United Church of Christ, which is where I locate myself.

We are very small operation. It’s largely been me and my friend, the Rev. Seth Wispelwey doing the organizing for Congregate. But yeah, we appreciate it and we’re so overwhelmed by the support that is pouring out across the nation and across the world. To see the lists of cities doing vigils in support of Charlottesville is very overwhelming in a beautiful way. We’ll continue to do work and continue to let people know how they can support Charlottesville and to mobilize for justice.

Hidden Figures has inspired a State Department exchange program to promote women in STEM

2017-08-11T10:10:05-04:00

Hidden Figures, the historical drama about three black women who worked at NASA in the 1960s, has many plaudits to its name.

The critically acclaimed film starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monáe was nominated for Best Picture at the 2017 Oscars. It was a box office hit, earning more than $230 million worldwide on a budget of $25 million. Its recounting of how Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson broke racial and gender barriers during the height of the civil rights movement to help send mankind into space has been lauded for its deft portrayal of an important true story.

And now it has broken a barrier of its own by inspiring the US State Department to launch a first-of-its-kind, publicly funded educational exchange program for women.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, a new program called #HiddenNoMore will invite 50 women from 50 different countries to participate in a cultural and educational exchange aimed at cultivating the efforts and achievements of women in the science, technology, engineering, and math fields. Nominated participants will travel to the US in October and spend several weeks meeting with universities and women-oriented organizations like the Girl Scouts to discuss STEM-related subjects — including diversity. The idea is “to get people from diverse communities talking about these issues that are vital to long-term US security and prosperity,” Stacy White, office director of the State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program, told THR.

According to White, after Hidden Figures’ wide release in January, the State Department was bombarded by requests from foreign embassies that wanted to screen the film, and it was eventually screened at an “unprecedented” 80 overseas locations. With #HiddenNoMore, “we really wanted to build on the momentum,” White said.

The gender imbalance in STEM fields is well-documented. As the World Economic Forum recently explained, women earn approximately one-third of the undergraduate degrees awarded in STEM fields in the US, “even though they account for almost 60 percent of college graduates.” And a 2010 report from the American Association of University Women stated that:

In elementary, middle, and high school, girls and boys take math and science courses in roughly equal numbers, and about as many girls as boys leave high school prepared to pursue science and engineering majors in college. Yet fewer women than men pursue these majors.

There’s also a racial disparity among women in STEM. In a 2009 study, the National Science Foundation found that while only 18 percent of employed scientists and engineers were white women, only 5 percent were Asian women, one percent were black women, and one percent were Hispanic women.

Statistics like these make it all the more clear why Hidden Figures’ story is such an important one to tell, and why the State Department’s #HiddenNoMore initiative could be a promising step toward getting more women into STEM.