Tag Archives: internet

How Monsanto’s Big Data Push Hurts Small Farms

by CandaceAnthon Posted on December 3, 2014

Mother Jones

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Ask an agribusiness exec about sustainable agriculture, and you’ll likely get an earful about something called “precision agriculture.” What is it? According to Yara, the fertilizer giant, it’s technology that “enables farmers to add the specific nutrients needed for their crop, in exactly the right amount, at the right time.”

That is to say, instead of using intuition and experience to decide how much fertilizer or pesticides to apply, farmers rely on sensors, satellite data, and the Internet of Things to make such choices. In addition to selling farmers agrichemicals, Yara also sells a “knowledge platform, supported by tools for precision farming,” including “an online service providing advice on the physical mixing characteristics of Yara’s foliar products with agrochemicals.”

Yara isn’t the only industry titan to move into the information-peddling business. Genetically modified seed/pesticide giant Monsanto envisions itself transforming into an information-technology company within a decade, as a company honcho recently told my colleague Tim McDonnell. A year ago, Monsanto dropped nearly $1 billion on Climate Corp., which “turns a wide range of information into valuable insights and recommendations for farmers,” as Monsanto put it at the time.

But will Big Ag’s turn to Big Data deliver on the environmental promises made in the press releases and executive interviews? McDonnell lays out the environmental case succinctly:

The payoff for growers can be huge: Monsanto estimates that farmers typically make 40 key choices in the course of a growing season—what seed to plant, when to plant it, and so on. For each decision, there’s an opportunity to save money on “inputs”: water, fuel, seeds, custom chemical treatments, etc. Those savings can come with a parallel environmental benefit (less pollution from fertilizer and insecticides).

These are real gains. No one who has seen fertilizer-fed algae blooms in Lake Erie—or had their municipal tap water declared toxic because of them—can deny that the Midwest’s massive corn farms need to use fertilizer more efficiently. Des Moines, Iowa, surrounded by millions of acres of intensively fertilized farmland, routinely has to spend taxpayer cash to filter its municipal drinking water of nitrates from farm runoff. Nitrates are linked with cancer and “blue-baby syndrome,” which can suffocate infants.

But as Quentin Hardy suggested in a recent New York Times piece, Big Data on the farm can also steamroll an extremely effective conservation practice: crop diversification, which can slash the need for fertilizer and herbicide, as a landmark 2012 Iowa State University study showed. Big Data, Hardy argued, gives farms incentive to both get bigger and plant fewer varieties of crops.

His argument is twofold. First, the precision ag tools being peddled by the agribusiness giants are quite pricey:

Equipment makers like John Deere and AGCO, for example, have covered their planters, tractors and harvesters with sensors, computers and communications equipment. A combine equipped to harvest a few crops cost perhaps $65,000 in 2000; now it goes for as much as $500,000 because of the added information technology.

When a farmer invests that much in a technology, there’s an “incentive to grow single crops to maximize the effectiveness of technology by growing them at the largest possible scale,” Hardy writes. “Farmers with diverse crops and livestock would need many different systems,” and that would require yet more investment in information technology.

Hardy finds evidence that the shift to information technology is already accelerating a decades-long trend of ever-larger Midwestern farms focusing more and more on churning out just two crops: corn and soy. “It’s not that smaller farms are less productive, but the big ones can afford these technology investments,” a US Department of Agriculture economist tells him.

One farmer Hardy talked to owns a family farm in Iowa that grew from 700 acres in the 1970s to 20,000 acres today. “We’ve got sensors on the combine, GPS data from satellites, cellular modems on self-driving tractors, apps for irrigation on iPhones,” the farmer tells Hardy.

The recent plunge in corn and soy prices might only exacerbate the trend. All that gear and information allows the farm to operate at a high level of efficiency and at a vast scale, making it more likely to eke out a profit than smaller operations in a time of lowball crop prices. As a result, over the next few years of expected low crop prices, the farmer with 20,000 acres in Iowa expects his farm to expand at the expense of “farmers who don’t embrace technology,” he tells Hardy.

But economies of scale and efficiency don’t automatically translate to less use of toxic chemicals and pollution. Big Data may help monocrop farmers use less fertilizer and pesticides per acre harvested than they had been before, but if they drive out more diversified and less chemical-intensive operations, the result might not be as clear-cut as the agribusiness companies suggest.

Source:

How Monsanto’s Big Data Push Hurts Small Farms

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Europe Wants To Make Its Memory Hole Global

by SalinaR35rp Posted on November 26, 2014

Mother Jones

Europe’s infamous right to be forgotten is on track to become truly Orwellian:

Europe’s privacy regulators want the right to be forgotten to go global. In a new set of guidelines agreed Wednesday in Brussels, the body representing the EU’s 28 national privacy regulators said that search engines should apply the bloc’s new right to be forgotten to all of their websites.

….Google may consider a way to apply the ruling on Google.com without applying it globally … by returning different results depending on whether the person is searching from an Internet Protocol address located within the EU. But it is unclear if such a move would satisfy regulators, as it would only make it harder to sidestep the ruling inside the EU, not globally.

“These are fundamental rights. My rights don’t go away at the border,” one data-protection official said of the idea of using IP addresses to apply the rule.

I understand that the EU has a more expansive view of personal privacy than the US and other countries. What’s more, I’m generally on their side in this battle when it comes to truly personal information. Both corporate and government collection of personal buying habits, internet browsing patterns, and so forth deserve to be reined in.

But here we’re talking about largely public information. It’s bad enough that the EU is insisting that people not only have a right to control genuinely personal data, but also have a right to shape attitudes and perceptions that are based on public record. It’s even worse that they’re now trying to impose this absurdity on the entire planet. If they insist on having a continent-wide memory hole, I guess that’s their business. But they sure don’t have the right to foist their insistence on artificially altering reality on the rest of us. Enough’s enough.

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Europe Wants To Make Its Memory Hole Global

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If You’re White and Feel Discriminated Against, Jose Antonio Vargas Wants to Talk to You

by RogerCurry Posted on November 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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“Do you think some people treat you unfairly because you’re white?”

“Do you feel you’re missing out on an important job, school, or other opportunity because you’re white?”

These questions were included in a recent casting call for an MTV documentary in Washington DC. It swiftly raised eyebrows across the internet: Do white people really need yet another medium to showcase, well, white people problems?

But when it came out that the man behind the documentary was actually journalist and prominent immigration activist Jose Antonio Vargas and his organization Define American, the initial scorn quickly disappeared; the questions suddenly became legitimate.

“Race is uncomfortable for everybody,” Vargas told Mother Jones. “But when you bring in race and whiteness, I think you’re really laying it on thick for people. And that’s why I think we’re getting the reaction we’re getting.”

Vargas says he expected the Craigslist post to elicit some controversy—indeed, it’s exactly this tendency to immediately call out others for racial bias, without attempting to seek understanding, he hopes to explore. “I’m not interested in that ‘gotcha’ moment, where in the age of Twitter we over-communicate without ever actually connecting.” he said. “I am going to let the work speak for itself.”

In recent years, those “gotcha” moments have dominated countless headlines. And the news cycle is a familiar one: It starts with the internet discovering a person doing something, at best, racially insensitive, and at worst, blatantly racist. Outrage moves to social media where users are quick to ridicule the offender in question. The mounting anger is only quelled by a forced apology, firing, etc. But what happens after the hashtags stop trending? The conversations that follow don’t exactly have the same viral potential and are rarely discussed.

“Critical analysis is of utmost importance whenever we talk about race in America,” he said. And for Vargas, the way Americans currently discuss race is “superficial and oversimplified.” But in a time when race is such a loaded topic, this is increasingly problematic. That’s exactly where the “Untitled Whiteness Project” comes in.

The film is currently in its beginning stages and aligns with MTV’s larger “Look Different” campaign, which explores hidden prejudices among millennials. The campaign recently partnered with David Binder Research for a study to examine how young people view their own identities and biases. Among the white 18 to 24 year-olds who participated in the study, 48 percent said discrimination against white people has emerged as just a serious problem as discrimination against people of color. Only 39 percent believed white people had more advantages than people of color.

Vargas wants to discuss these perspectives, shed light on hidden biases, and perhaps even more importantly, create an open discourse for young people to talk comfortably talk about race and their own identities without judgment.

“This isn’t about making anyone feel bad, “Vargas said. “I want to create a safe place where people can actually explore this conversation.”

“It’s so easy to hate something you don’t know. What’s harder is to actually scratch the surface.”

So expect to see similarly uneasy Craigslist posts to emerge all over the country—Vargas is here to shake things up and get young people to start talking.

Excerpt from: 

If You’re White and Feel Discriminated Against, Jose Antonio Vargas Wants to Talk to You

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Did Obama Shoot Himself in the Foot on Net Neutrality?

by RoxanaSaunders Posted on November 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Monday, President Barack Obama urged the Federal Communications Commission to safeguard net neutrality and not allow internet companies to give preference (for a fee) to certain types of online traffic. After much debate, the president was declaring his support for a free-flowing internet in which telecom firms do not block or slow traffic in order to pocket more profits or promote their own commercial (and perhaps even political) interests. But there could be a problem: FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, whom Obama appointed, is not yet on board.

After Obama’s announcement, Wheeler, according to the Washington Post, told industry insiders he preferred to allow some for-profit fast-tracking. That seemed to suggest the president may have a fight of his own making. Last year, Obama had the chance to nominate an outspoken consumer advocate to chair the FCC. But he picked Wheeler—whose views on the issue weren’t entirely clear—instead. After the Post‘s story was published, Huffington Post reported that Wheeler had not taken a hard-and-fast stance against the president, but was still figuring out what to do—and perhaps hoping to slow down the process.

So Wheeler is in the hot seat—but he also could pose an obstacle to the man who put him there. When Obama had to name a new chair of the FCC—which oversees radio, TV, satellite, and cable communications nationwide—and Wheeler emerged as a front-runner, many free internet groups expressed concern. These advocates worried that Wheeler, who had been a prominent lobbyist for telecom trade groups, was too close to industry and not likely to champion the interests of consumers. Obama favors strictly regulating the internet as a public utility (so preferential access cannot be bought and sold) and millions of Americans have sent letters to the FCC urging the commission to treat all internet content equally. But Wheeler has been leaning toward allowing internet companies to charge content providers like Netflix and Facebook extra for faster internet speeds—which could result in the creation of a tiered system for the internet. There’s no telling yet whether Wheeler will throw a wrench into Obama’s plan to preserve an equal-access-for-all internet.

It didn’t have to be this way. Several other candidates Obama was considering for the FCC post in 2013 were ardent net neutrality backers. There was Karen Kornbluh, who advocated for global open internet policies as Obama’s ambassador to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. And there was Susan Crawford, a Cardozo Law School professor specializing in tech policy who favors net neutrality and has been called “the Elizabeth Warren of tech policy.”

Mignon Clyburn, an FCC commissioner since 2009, was also floated as a potential nominee to chair the FCC. In 2010, she spoke on the importance of net neutrality for people of color, saying it was “essential…for traditionally underrepresented groups that the FCC maintain the low barriers to entry that our current open internet provides.” Another potential candidate, California Public Utilities Commissioner Cathy Sandoval—who worked in the Clinton-era FCC—also has a reputation for being consumer-minded.

Yet the president went with Wheeler—a major Obama donor and friend of the administration. At the time, Wheeler was the managing director at a venture capital firm. But he had previously spent 12 years as CEO of the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association, a telecom trade group, and before that served as president of the National Cable Television Association, a cable lobbying shop. “He’s beloved in the telecom industry,” a former Obama administration official told Mother Jones in March 2013. After securing the backing of a few public interest advocates—including Crawford—Wheeler sailed to confirmation in the Senate.

The decision on whether to keep the internet truly open is not Wheeler’s alone. Two other Democratic commissioners and two Republican commissioners sit on the FCC’s five-member panel and must vote to finalize new rules. But a public interest-minded FCC chair would make it easier for the agency to implement strong net neutrality regulations.

The basic issue is whether the FCC can regulate the internet as a public utility—say, like phone lines. If the commission claims this power, then it can adopt rules that maintain open and equal access to the internet. The two Republicans on the commission are likely to vote against any form of internet regulation. (They don’t accept the notion that the internet should be regulated by the FCC, whether as a public utility or under the more lax regulations Wheeler has been considering.) That means it’s up to Wheeler and his two fellow Dems to agree on an overall approach and specific rules governing the internet providers’ management of the information super-highway.

Wheeler’s industry-friendly stance makes that difficult. Democratic commissioners Clyburn and Jessica Rosenworcel have both expressed opposition to allowing internet companies to provide tiered service. Obama’s public push for net neutrality could help persuade Wheeler, Clyburn, and Rosenworcel to agree to regulate the internet as a public utility. But the president’s announcement could also backfire, stiffening the spines of Clyburn and Rosenworcel and making them less willing to compromise with Wheeler on allowing some form of paid prioritization of internet services. That could create a stalemate among the three Democrats, leaving the FCC without a rule specifically governing internet service. Internet service has been essentially unregulated since January—when a court struck down an earlier attempt by the FCC to implement net neutrality rules—leaving internet service providers free to demand extra money for faster content delivery. That happens to be a situation that Republicans on and off the commission do not find troubling.

Wheeler could choose to sidestep a fight with his fellow Democratic commissioners by allowing the GOP-controlled Congress, which will assume office in January, to make the net neutrality decision for him. Though Obama could veto any Republican-passed legislation aimed at gutting net neutrality, a Republican-dominated Congress could try to attach an amendment that partly defunds the FCC to a large must-pass bill. In other words, it could be a mess.

Wheeler could “run out the clock on this Congress,” explains Sascha Meinrath, the founder of the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute, then “wait until Republicans take over, and then claim that he cannot act due to pressure from Republican congressmen.” Which is not what one would expect from a commissioner appointed by the president. But if Wheeler does thwart Obama’s call for net neutrality, the president cannot say that he wasn’t warned.

From:

Did Obama Shoot Himself in the Foot on Net Neutrality?

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Obama Just Announced His Full Support to Preserve Net Neutrality

by AntoineFlannery Posted on November 10, 2014

Mother Jones

In a move strongly backing net neutrality regulations, President Barack Obama announced his plan to reclassify the internet as a utility in order to preserve the web’s “basic principles of openness and fairness.”

Net neutrality has been built into the fabric of the Internet since its creation — but it is also a principle that we cannot take for granted. We cannot allow Internet service providers (ISPs) to restrict the best access or to pick winners and losers in the online marketplace for services and ideas.

In the announcement, Obama urged the FCC to implement four “common-sense steps” to help protect net neutrality, including increased transparency and the prohibition of paid-priority gatekeeping by internet service providers.

The decision, however, remains up to the FCC, which has thus far proposed new changes to allow content providers to pay cable companies for so-called “fast lanes” of service. Net neutrality advocates say the proposed rules are a threat limiting access to the open internet.

“Simply put: No service should be stuck in a ‘slow lane’ because it does not pay a fee,” Obama said in the Monday morning statement. “That kind of gatekeeping would undermine the level playing field essential to the Internet’s growth.”

Unsurprisingly, the GOP is not happy with the president’s plan:

Watch Obama’s announcement in full below:

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Obama Just Announced His Full Support to Preserve Net Neutrality

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Social Networking Employs More People Than We Think

by NobleTroyysmvr Posted on October 26, 2014

Mother Jones

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This is a pretty amazing story from Wired reporter Adrian Chen about the army of workers who spend their days monitoring the raw feeds of social networking sites to get rid of “dick pics, thong shots, exotic objects inserted into bodies, hateful taunts, and requests for oral sex” before they show up on America’s morning skim of Facebook and Twitter:

Past the guard, in a large room packed with workers manning PCs on long tables, I meet Michael Baybayan, an enthusiastic 21-year-old with a jaunty pouf of reddish-brown hair….Baybayan is part of a massive labor force that handles “content moderation”—the removal of offensive material—for US social-networking sites. As social media connects more people more intimately than ever before, companies have been confronted with the Grandma Problem: Now that grandparents routinely use services like Facebook to connect with their kids and grandkids, they are potentially exposed to the Internet’s panoply of jerks, racists, creeps, criminals, and bullies. They won’t continue to log on if they find their family photos sandwiched between a gruesome Russian highway accident and a hardcore porn video.

….So companies like Facebook and Twitter rely on an army of workers employed to soak up the worst of humanity in order to protect the rest of us. And there are legions of them—a vast, invisible pool of human labor. Hemanshu Nigam, the former chief security officer of MySpace who now runs online safety consultancy SSP Blue, estimates that the number of content moderators scrubbing the world’s social media sites, mobile apps, and cloud storage services runs to “well over 100,000”—that is, about twice the total head count of Google and nearly 14 times that of Facebook.

Given that content moderators might very well comprise as much as half the total workforce for social media sites, it’s worth pondering just what the long-term psychological toll of this work can be.

We often hear about how the new app economy is largely a jobless economy, but thanks to the general scumminess of human beings maybe that’s less true than we think. Cleaning up the internet for grandma is a grueling, never-ending job that, for now anyway, can only be done by other, less scummy, human beings. Lots of them.

It’s true that the “basic moderation” jobs are largely overseas and don’t pay much, but second-tier moderators are mostly US-based and are paid fairly well. As you’d expect, though, most don’t last long. Burnout comes pretty quickly when you spend all day exposed to a nonstop stream of torture videos, hate speech, YouTube beheadings, and the entire remaining panoply of general human degradation. That’s what the rest of Chen’s story is about. It’s a pretty interesting read.

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Social Networking Employs More People Than We Think

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These 7 Geek Icons Have Had Enough of #Gamergate. Here’s How They’re Fighting Back.

by AdelaidLoyau Posted on October 18, 2014

Mother Jones

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As the conflict known as #Gamergate continues roiling the internet, some #Gamergaters have been surprised to find that their geek idols aren’t exactly on their side. Take, for example, science fiction author William Gibson, coiner of the term “cyberspace,” who retweeted this on Tuesday:

“Fuck. Fuck. Fucking hell,” an 8chan user wrote on the site’s GamerGate message board after reading through Gibson’s Twitter feed. “I have been waiting for his new book forever but now I dont even want to buy it…I feel devastated.”

Dozens of irate gamers responded with the names of other fallen heroes who’ve “betrayed” them by criticizing macho video game culture. Here’s a sampling of the offending tweets:

From screenwriter and director Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Avengers):

From comedian Patton Oswalt:

From actor and filmmaker Seth Rogen (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up):

(Adam Baldwin has been one of #Gamergate’s most outspoken supporters.)

From actress Felicia Day (The Guild):

From computer game designer Tim Schafer (LucasArts, Double Fine Productions):

From animator Mariel Cartwright (Skullgirls):

Lamented another 8chan user, with no apparent irony: “Unfortunately even misinformed people can put out their opinion on whatever they want, and they’ve got a large platform to do it with via the internet.”

Source article – 

These 7 Geek Icons Have Had Enough of #Gamergate. Here’s How They’re Fighting Back.

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Hooray! This Young Billionaire Actually Invented Something Useful

by YvetteSepulveda Posted on October 2, 2014

Mother Jones

Elizabeth Holmes is the third-youngest billionaire on the Forbes 400 list (behind Facebook tycoons Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz). And hooray for her! Her business model doesn’t depend on getting drunk teenagers to eventually regret that they ever heard of the internet. It depends instead on a genuinely useful invention: a new type of blood test that requires only a tiny pinprick and a single drop of blood. Slate’s Kevin Loria tells us about it:

Traditional blood testing is shockingly difficult and expensive for a tool that’s used so frequently. It also hasn’t changed since the 1960s. It’s done in hospitals and doctors’ offices. Vials of blood have to be sent out and tested, which can take weeks using traditional methods and is prone to human error. And, of course, sticking a needle in someone’s arm scares some people enough that they avoid getting blood drawn, even when it could reveal lifesaving information.

Holmes recognized that process was ripe for disruption….The new tests can be done without going to the doctor, which saves both money and time. Most results are available in about four hours….Blood samples have traditionally been used for one test, but if a follow-up was needed, another sample had to be drawn and sent out—making it less likely that someone would get care. The Theranos approach means the same drop can be used for dozens of different tests.

It’s cheap, too. One common criticism of the healthcare system is that the pricing structure is a confusing labyrinth that makes it impossible to know how much anything costs. Theranos lists its prices online, and they’re impressive.

It so happens that I’ve been getting more than the usual amount of blood drawn lately, and it also so happens that I’m one of those people who really hates this. My angst is for completely irrational reasons. I know it doesn’t hurt; it doesn’t take long; and it poses no danger. As it happens, my own particular phobia is so bizarre and unaccountable that I’m reluctant to even fess up to it. But it’s this: The scarless incision wigs me out. For the rest of the day after a blood test, I’m convinced that any second it’s going to pop open like an oil gusher. I used to keep that little cotton ball taped on for a full 24 hours, until the next day’s shower finally forced me to take it off. I have recently, through sheer force of will, started taking it off after only a few hours.

This makes no sense. But then, phobias rarely do. And mine isn’t even that bad. When I need to get blood drawn, I do it. Still, I often put it off, and I refuse to get it done more than once every two weeks or so. I also refuse to ever have it done in my right arm.

By now, you’re either laughing at me or else wondering if I’ve lost my marbles. But I agree with Holmes: traditional blood testing is barbaric and medieval and it’s long past time to bring it into the 21st century. So hooray for Elizabeth Holmes. My only question now is this: When is she going to sign a contract with Kaiser so that I’ll be able to benefit from her marvelous invention?

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Hooray! This Young Billionaire Actually Invented Something Useful

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This Is the GOP Campaign Ad Everyone Is Laughing About

by Travis6964 Posted on October 1, 2014

Mother Jones

On Wednesday, the College Republican National Committee released a slew of nominally “culturally relevant” campaign ads. Unsurprisingly, they are bad and the internet is having a lot of fun mocking them.

Here is the one they made for the gubernatorial race in Florida:

(They also released versions for races in Colorado, Illinois, Michigan, Arkansas, and Pennsylvania.)

The ads—parodies of “Say Yes To The Dress”—are being roundly mocked on social media. Deservedly so! They are objectively awful. To be honest though, if they were produced by Democrats a lot of liberals would be laughing with them instead of at them. And, look, on the one hand, c’est la vie. That’s the way it goes with campaign ads. But on the other hand, it’s probably worth keeping in mind because being aware of your own hypocrisy helps build character.

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This Is the GOP Campaign Ad Everyone Is Laughing About

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6 Good Reasons a Black Person Might Resist Arrest

by BraydenDethridg Posted on August 15, 2014

Mother Jones

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At least four black men were killed by police in the past month, via chokehold, tasing, and shootings, after being confronted for reasons ranging from selling untaxed cigarettes to picking up a BB gun off a shelf in Wal-Mart.

In at least two of these cases—Dante Parker and Eric Garner—the victims allegedly resisted arrest. Some political leaders, witnesses at the scene, and Internet commenters have placed blame on the victims for this reason, saying their refusal to go quietly with the cops is what ended their lives.

More MoJo coverage of the Michael Brown police shooting


Ferguson Is 60 Percent Black. Virtually All Its Cops Are White.


“Hands Up, Don’t Shoot:” Peaceful Protests Across the Country Last Night


Exactly How Often Do Police Shoot Unarmed Black Men?


4 Unarmed Black Men Have Been Killed By Police in the Last Month


A Few Horrifying Pictures From Ferguson Last Night


Anonymous Posts St. Louis Police Dispatch Tapes From Day of Ferguson Shooting


Incredibly Powerful Photo of Black Students at Howard University


The Ferguson Shooting and the Science of Race and Guns

“For FUCKS SAKE stop struggling and resisting like this and deal with it at the precinct!! Resisting arrest, even if the police have the wrong guy, is a TERRIBLE idea!! God why don’t people get this?” writes one commenter at Gawker. At a press conference on gun control in Harlem yesterday, New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio said that “once an officer has decided that arrest is necessary, every New Yorker should agree to do what they need to do as a citizen and respect the police officer and follow their guidance. And then there is a thorough due-process system thereafter.”

And how about in the tasing death of Dante Parker? A San Bernadino county newspaper employee and married father of five with no criminal record, Parker was out riding his bike for exercise on Tuesday when he was approached by sheriff’s deputies as a robbery suspect. A witness relayed what he saw:

He was super strong…it took about two or three guys to get his hands behind him. They went to try to get him to stand up, but he wouldn’t do it…He kept kicking and kicking and kicking. He was very uncooperative.”

So why would someone like Dante Parker or Eric Garner resist arrest? Here are six good reasons:

  1. The idea that “if you didn’t do anything wrong, you don’t have anything to fear” does not hold true for black people. Most people who end up being exonerated for crimes they served time for, but didn’t commit, are people of color.
  2. Blacks routinely serve higher sentences than whites—for the same crimes.
  3. Once in custody, black men are rough-handled by police more often than whites.
  4. Racial profiling and bias in police departments across the country is well–documented.
  5. There are many well-known cases of police torture directed at blacks in prison, such as the dozens of black Chicago inmates who were systematically tortured over a span of 20 years.
  6. Scientific studies shed light on how racial bias can influence witness testimony, like this finding that race can make people “see” guns, or a reach for a gun, where no weapon was present.

Asking why a black man with even the slightest bit of awareness of these facts wouldn’t fully cooperate with the cops is a bit like asking why William Wallace didn’t simply extend a warm welcome to the invading English forces. Here’s a better question: What are law enforcement agencies doing to heal their relationships with the black communities they’re supposed to protect and serve?

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6 Good Reasons a Black Person Might Resist Arrest

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