"When Open Access is the norm, how do scientists work together online?"

"For this PLOS-commissioned survey, which I view as a bookend to my 2000 report, I’ve investigated how researchers are collaborating to transform scientific communication in an Open Access environment. I’ve found that adoption remains incomplete, but progress has been dramatic and encouraging. New modes of collaboration, unforeseen in 2000, are emerging in a variety of scientific subcultures.

From interviews I’ve conducted with researchers and software developers who are modeling aspects of modern online collaboration, I’ve highlighted the most useful and reproducible practices."
http://blogs.plos.org/scicomm/2015/04/13/hello-world/#.VSvYeIzcc_o.twitter

These are interesting. I totally want a "BioOverflow".

"Leading scientists favour women in tenure-track hiring test"

"The authors say that this is interesting given their previous finding that a relatively low percentage of female PhDs in the social and biological sciences secure academic positions — in part because they are less likely than men to apply for these jobs. Other research suggests that in the physical sciences, women and men are just as likely to secure a tenure-track position within five years of earning a PhD.

There are more signs that science is inching towards gender equality. In February, a study² in the journalFrontiers in Psychology reported that US women and men with bachelor’s degrees in science, engineering and mathematics go on to receive doctoral degrees at roughly the same rate...

Virginia Valian, a linguist at Hunter College in New York who studies gender equity, says the study’s findings on hiring are convincing. But, she says, “there is a valid concern that progress will be over-interpreted.”"
http://www.nature.com/news/leading-scientists-favour-women-in-tenure-track-hiring-test-1.17322?WT.mc_id=FBK_NatureNews

This is exciting and positive. There is still a lot of shit, but the efforts of many people to advance gender equality in science is clearly seeing some successes.

Unfortunately, I am sure that some department chairs who are poorly educated in social science will see these results as a reason to put off further funding for the programs that are making these results possible.

"This Video Game Shows What Sexual Harassment Can Feel Like"

"In most video games, the player's choices determine the ending. In Freshman Year, a short new work by game designer Nina Freeman, your character can wear jeans or a skirt as she prepares for a night out, go alone or with a friend, drink a little or a lot. But all paths lead to the same outcome: a creepy encounter with a man in the dark.

Freshman Year, which is free to play, explores what it feels like to get unwanted sexual attention. Like much of Freeman's work, it's autobiographical—based on an experience Freeman had during her first month of college.

"You feel like you're doing this everyday life thing, and then someone comes in and disrupts that," Freeman says. "I wanted to reflect that sense of disruption, where you feel like everything is fine, and then suddenly it's not okay.""

http://www.motherjones.com/media/2015/04/video-game-shows-what-sexual-harassment-feels

I think this trend in experiential video games is really exciting, and I can imagine them being used in so many amazing ways

"Google searches show that millions of people wanted to vote but couldn’t"

"Some scholars argue that requiring early registration hurts voter mobilization in the final days of the campaign, when interest in the election is most intense. But skeptics counter that most of the people who fail to register in time have little real interest in voting.

Our new research shows that there is a lot of last-minute interest. We estimate that keeping registration open through Election Day in 2012 would have allowed an additional 3 million to 4 million Americans to register and vote.

We used the number of Google searches for “register to vote” in the weeks leading up to the 2012 election to measure late interest in registering. These search terms were entered millions of times, and much of the activity fell at the very end of the campaign period."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage/wp/2015/03/26/google-searches-show-that-millions-of-people-wanted-to-vote-but-couldnt/?wprss=rss_politics

"This Cute Little Robot Is Designed To Help You Form Any Habit"

"MOTI tracks behavior over time, like other devices, but it also acts like a small robotic friend: When you do something that you're trying to turn into a habit--whether that's running, making the bed, or cooking more--you push a button, and MOTI emits a series of happy sounds and lights. It's a simple action, but something the designer says can create an emotional bond.

"My first testers were two guys in their twenties and thirties, and they fell in love with these things," she says. "The vocabulary they used was interesting--they'd call it a he or a she, something you'd never do with a wearable. Early on, that's what triggered me to say, 'Hey, there's something here about an underlying emotional engagement.'""
http://m.fastcompany.com/3043755/this-cute-little-robot-is-designed-to-help-you-form-any-habit

"COLLEGE STUDENTS DON'T WANT TO HIRE RACIST OR HOMOPHOBIC COMEDIANS. WHY IS THAT A PROBLEM, EXACTLY?"

"What all these complaints have in common is the belief that as college students seek to create a campus environment that’s safe for people of all ethnicities, backgrounds, and gender and sexual identities, they are repressing creativity and free expression. Is it true, though? That answer depends on whom you think is being repressed...

Were I to summarize it in one phrase, the students’ guidelines for comedians would probably be, "Don't punch down.” That seems like a great idea in all settings and situations. Screening out comedians who make rape jokes and gay jokes seems like a good thing to me—and likely to millions of college students.  Like all writers who make this case, Flanagan seems unwilling to accept that the goals students seek might be worth the boundaries they set.  Personally, I find it easy to believe that a comedy act free of sexism, racism, and anti-queer jokes would be an improvement over the status quo...

A show where an angry white guy says everything that crosses his mind—and makes other white guys laugh while everyone else pretends not to be offended—was the law of the land for a long time. Now that those comedians are being told their services aren't wanted, we're hearing from them in an uproar...

What the Atlantic article fails to note in all its handwringing is that this shifting culture has led to a renaissance of comics who earn laughs while punching up. "

https://bitchmedia.org/article/college-students-dont-want-hire-racist-or-homophobic-comedians-why-problem-exactly

I like that she points out at the end, this is sort of about people being able to set boundaries for themselves, like you might set boundaries with an intrusive friend. Or, even simpler, like how you are allowed to lock your dog out of your bedroom so that you can sleep, even if the dog really wants to sleep in your bed.

It sometimes feels like these comedians and various creators-of-media are saying "I want to follow you around all day and say whatever I want to you and it's a violation of my basic human rights that you won't let me". And there's this feeling like there is a group of people who think they are entitled to my attention, and are allowed to tell me when their words are going to hurt me and when their words are going to make me happy. There is this assumption that they know me better than I know myself. It gets insidious and gross feeling pretty fast.

Related: Free speech isn't free; “Why I Stand Up to Politically Incorrect Jokes”

"The Inside Story of the Civil War for the Soul of NBC News"

"the financial crisis prompted General Electric to streamline its far-flung businesses, a strategy that included selling NBCUniversal to Comcast. NBC News executives had been close to G.E. executives, including C.E.O. Jack Welch, but they soon developed a strong sense that Comcast’s top executives, Brian Roberts and Steve Burke, didn’t value the art of talent management quite so highly.

“I always thought they lacked an appreciation for dealing with talent,” says a former NBC executive who worked with Comcast executives during the transition. “Remember: They come from a cable utility company, where all you do is keep your customers happy and collect the bills at the end of the month. To be honest, you got the sense they couldn’t fathom why NBC worried so much about the talent; you know, ‘Why are these people worrying so much about what Matt Lauer thinks?’ ”...
NBC News before Tim died and after Tim died,” says the recently departed correspondent. “Tim was our soul, our conscience…. When Tim died, and Brian pushed out John Reiss, there was no one who could influence Brian in a significant way, who could say, ‘Goddammit, Brian, you have to do this.’ ”

In the years that followed, NBC’s two best-known investigative correspondents, Michael Isikoff and Lisa Myers, both left the network, in large part, insiders say, because Williams had little interest in their work. “By 2007, 2008, Brian was starting to feel his oats a bit,” says a onetime NBC executive who knows him well. “It was a bit of a challenge, not huge. Manageable. He was more reluctant to go on difficult assignments. He didn’t want to leave New York. Getting him to war zones was real tough … but when he did go, he came back with these great stories that kind of put himself at the center of things. Then the Comcast crew arrived and everything began to change.”"
http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/04/nbc-news-brian-williams-scandal-comcast

Weird, some of the undertones in 30 Rock were real things.

"Debunking the Myth of the Job-Stealing Immigrant"

"Even self-identified Tea Party Republicans respond three to two in favor of a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Every other group — Republicans in general, independents and especially Democrats — is largely pro-immigrant.

Scratch the surface, though, and you’ll pretty quickly find that many Americans are closer to my grandfather’s way of seeing things than they might find comfortable acknowledging. I am referring not to the racial animus but to the faulty economic logic. We generally support immigration when the immigrants are different from us... 

Few of us are calling for the thing that basic economic analysis shows would benefit nearly all of us: radically open borders. And yet the economic benefits of immigration may be the ­most ­settled fact in economics...

So why don’t we open up? The chief logical mistake we make is something called the Lump of Labor Fallacy: the erroneous notion that there is only so much work to be done and that no one can get a job without taking one from someone else."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/29/magazine/debunking-the-myth-of-the-job-stealing-immigrant.html?referrer=&_r=1

Huh.

This article hardcore does not challenge stereotypes of immigrants, but it presents an economic perspective I hadn't been exposed to before. 

Though, given that it's the New York Times, this is probably a biased way to be introduced to this topic.

"A New Funding Model for Scientists"

“The current academic funding system, which allocates public money to researchers based on the submission and peer review of countless research proposals, has served science well—but some people believe that the time has come to find more efficient ways to distribute the money. Among them is a group of scientists at the School of Informatics and Computing at Indiana University, Bloomington, who proposed a new funding model in an article published last week in EMBO reports… Here’s how it works. Each year, funding agencies give an equal amount of funding to all scientists, unconditionally. The scientists are then required to reallocate a fixed percentage of all the funding they received in the previous year to other researchers, based on who they think would use the money best. Researchers' total funding, then, would consist of basal funding directly from a funding agency plus donations from other researchers who value their work.”

http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2014_01_13/caredit.a1400012

"The forgotten pyramids of Sudan"

"The Nubian Meroe pyramids, much smaller but just as impressive as the more famous Egyptian ones, are found on the east bank of the Nile river, near a group of villages called Bagrawiyah. The pyramids get their name from the ancient city of Meroe, the capital of the Kingdom of Kush, an ancient African kingdom situated in what is now the Republic of Sudan.

Around 1000 BCE, after the fall of the 24th Egyptian dynasty, the Nubian Kingdom of Kush arose as the leading power in the middle Nile region. The Kushite kings took over and ruled much of Egypt from 712 to 657 BCE. In 300 BCE, when the capital and royal burial ground of the kingdom moved to the Meroe region, the pharaonic tradition of building pyramids to encapsulate the tombs of rulers continued here."
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/2015/04/forgotten-pyramids-sudan-150405062541595.html

"Depression, Anxiety, and Contingency"

"I have more than one friend who’s been on the faculty market for several years already and found this hiring season’s meager tenure-track openings to be profoundly depressing. We are trained and even incentivized to identify ourselves with a series of entities -- departments, institutions, disciplines, the profession -- that motivate us with the increasingly distant possibility (not even a promise!) of a commitment made in return. The loss of that vision for the future is often devastating to Ph.D.’s...

Many observers suggest that academics should be able to move on quickly from such disappointments because we “should have known” when we started graduate school that the odds of success were bad and getting worse. That refrain -- that we knew or should have known -- implies that those who have reached the end of this particular road aren’t entitled to feel surprise or loss or grief.

Failure -- whatever its cause, even if it is structural -- is imagined as a punishment for not being smart enough or tough enough or wise enough to succeed, or for having tried to succeed at all.

I wonder whom that explanation satisfies."
https://chroniclevitae.com/news/957-depression-anxiety-and-contingency?cid=VTEVPMSED1

"'Airbnb for refugees' group overwhelmed by offers of help"

"More than 780 Germans have signed up to the Refugees Welcome website and 26 people have been placed in private homes so far. Two of the site’s founders, Jonas Kakoschke, 31, and Mareike Geiling, 28, live with 39-year-old Bakari, a refugee from Mali, whom they are helping with German classes while he waits for a work permit.

A spokesman said the project’s growing success has now led to offers of help to set up similar schemes in other EU countries, including Greece, Portugal and the UK, with a comparable project in Austria already up and running since January.

Over the weekend, thousands of Icelanders offered to accommodate Syrian refugees in their own homes in an open letter to the government about the migration crisis."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/01/berlin-group-behind-airbnb-for-refugees-overwhelmed-by-offers-of-help?CMP=share_btn_fb

This is amazing. Genuinely - it's not feeling like a one-off project born of positive intentions and a vague desire to show that a maligned techie trend can be used to help with some of our world's biggest crises. This feels like a general trend, like it's tapping into something, organizing, growing. There is a constructive reaction outside of the despair.

"'The I'm Tired Project' Tackles Stereotypes and Privilege Via Photos "

"Described on the project’s Tumblr as “A project aiming to highlight the significance and lasting impact of everyday micro-aggressions and stereotypes,” “The ‘I’m Tired’ Project” features images of women and men with the stereotypes they are tired of carrying literally written on their weary backs. From race, to gender, to body image, to sexual identity, the images tackle issues that are both very personal and writ large in American society...

Ultimately, co-creator Evans says that she and Akpan hope the project helps people to not only connect, but see beyond their own baggage. “What is important to both Paula and myself is that someone is able to look at at least one of the pictures and either say ‘someone else is going through this too, it’s not just me, I am not alone.’ “Or for them to have their minds opened to the discrimination that they may not normally bear witness to, or may not have considered in the past.”"

http://www.colorlines.com/articles/im-tired-project-tackles-stereotypes-and-privilege-photos

"Stress Brings Memories to the Fore"

“These results led the authors to hypothesize that stress can reactivate unrelated memories that are stored outside the hippocampus and render them labile through a mechanism that requires the hippocampus. They suggest that, in humans, traumatic stress might reactivate non-traumatic memories and link them to the traumatic memory, thereby facilitating the pathological effects seen in post-traumatic stress disorder and other conditions.”

http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1001007

"11 Things Black Women Aren't Allowed to Say"

"3. “Black Girls Rock!”

For whatever reason, black women loving ourselves seems to threaten everyone around us. You can see this everywhere from the #BlackLivesMatter movement—both in how it was hijacked by white people to say #AllLivesMatter, and how it leaves out Black women—to the Deadline Hollywood article which claimed that TV representation is becoming ‘too ethnic’. It’s imperative that we find creative mediums through which we can celebrate our beauty and ourselves. We need to support and celebrate black women creatives and business owners."

http://www.forharriet.com/2015/05/11-things-black-women-arent-allowed-to.html#axzz3Z1YlrTtg

"SENSE8 AND THE FAILURE OF GLOBAL IMAGINATION"

"Like many fantastical or science fictional premises,  Sense8’s premise is a wish fulfillment: not — as is typical of this genre and the Wachowskis’ earlier work — the wish fulfillment of the disempowered middle school nerd stuffed into a locker, but rather the Mary Sue desire of a mature, white American writer/auteur who has discovered that an entire world is “out there,” one that the maker doesn’t know how to imagine...

In Sense8  you see them finally taking the training wheels off and attempting to originate their own simultaneous, diverse-culture-unifying fictions.

It’s a beautiful vision, if you believe in universality. Let’s assume for a moment that you do. It’s a deeply worthy, exciting, and — dare I say it? — moral ambition. And it half-succeeds; which means it also half-fails...

To put it plainly: Sense8 ’s depiction of life in non-western countries is built out of stereotypes, and of life in non-American western countries is suffused with tourist-board clichés. The protagonist in Nairobi is a poor man whose mother has AIDS and whose life is ruled by gangs; in Mumbai we have a woman in a STEM career marrying a man she doesn’t love and engaging in Bollywood dance numbers...  I believe, quite literally, that the filmmakers primarily learned about these other cultures through their films, and considered that enough...

Bottom line: yes, watch it. Binge it. Its failure is far more interesting than the success of almost anything else happening at this moment. And it’s truly one of the most diverse shows on TV right now."

http://thenerdsofcolor.org/2015/06/10/sense8-and-the-failure-of-global-imagination/

I sort of want to watch this, but only if I'm watching it with someone who wants to critique it as we go.

I really enjoyed reading this critique and it feels super generalizable. Most non-white characters on TV or in movies are written either very poorly and are used like colorful sprinkles on the cake that is the rest of the show, or they are written like white characters who just happen to have Nigerian or Korean or whatever features. These characters can be developed and interesting but they don't get to talk about their life experiences that a white character wouldn't have (unless it's going to teach the white characters some important lessons). This is what makes Shonda shows special.

"Morgan Freeman Talks Asking Tough Questions (and Sometimes Even Answering Them) on Through the Wormhole"

"And, despite the signature twinkle in Freeman's eyes during the opening moments of the season's first episode, "Are We Bigots?" – which PEOPLE has obtained exclusively – the premiere is unflinching in its acknowledgment of people's ingrained biases. 

Never was the relevance of the topic more clear than, during the episode's development, when the country erupted over the shooting of unarmed black teen Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, which escalated the national dialogue about racism, bigotry and prejudice...

As a child of the segregated South, Freeman says confronting an issue he has admittedly, at times, avoided in his past was enlightening: "When we did this episode, what I learned is, it's not outside the realm of reality that we are all hardwired to be bigoted. It's news to me, but interesting news." 

Continuing the thread, Younger says the episode scientifically confirms that, in a way, "we're all bigoted – but actually being aware, being conscious of that bigotry, and making a conscious effort to overcome it is really important. We have to fight against our very base, primal, split-second instinct." The season 2 premiere grounds this lofty goal with practical exercises taking place everywhere from the gun range to the videogame console that show how prejudice affects our lives in unexpected ways."

http://www.people.com/article/morgan-freeman-through-wormhole-season-2-premiere-bigots

(credit to JD)

"Everyone calm down, there is no “bee-pocalypse”"

"In a rush to identify the culprit of the disorder, many journalists have made exaggerated claims about the impacts of CCD. Most have uncritically accepted that continued bee losses would be a disaster for America’s food supply. Others speculate about the coming of a second “silent spring.” Worse yet, many depict beekeepers as passive, unimaginative onlookers that stand idly by as their colonies vanish.

This sensational reporting has confused rather than informed discussions over CCD. Yes, honey bees are dying in above average numbers, and it is important to uncover what’s causing the losses, but it hardly spells disaster for bees or America’s food supply...

Data on colonies and honey production are publicly  available from the USDA. Like honey bee numbers, US honey production has shown no pattern of decline since CCD was first detected. In 2010, honey production was 14% greater than it was in 2006. (To be clear, US honey production and colony numbers are lower today than they were 30 years ago, but as Rucker and Thurman  explain, this gradual decline happened prior to 2006 and cannot be attributed to CCD)."

http://qz.com/101585/everyone-calm-down-there-is-no-bee-pocalypse/

what?????

Ugh, media hype. I mean, I am very, very glad to hear this - but it also terrifies me, because the honey bee death thing was a thing that I "knew". And that everyone "knew".

"The Women Are Emailing"

"Wikipedia has a page dedicated to Consciousness Raising, to the women that gathered in their New York apartments in the late 1960s and went around the room, talking about their lives and shared issues, giving a voice to feelings previously felt below the surface. My ears pricked when I heard Durga talking about email because it confirmed my experience; the same thing is happening now, but it's happening quietly over Gmail. And Twitter. For me, these are emails are long, and rich and full of feeling, and when I find one sitting unmarked in my inbox, I'll often honour it with the same rituals as I might a shiny new magazine. Find a quiet moment, put the kettle on, and savour it. It could be an email I've ended up printing out, or an emoji-laden tweet which feels like a knowing high-five across an ocean. Sometimes it's just reaching out and asking somebody for a contact in order to pitch. The point is though, we feel good when we talk. And what does that feeling do? It builds us up, fills in the gaps and affirms in a way to help us to get things done. I honestly think too much is made of the idea of women talking in bathrooms (hey men, we're sitting, you're standing, that's all there is to it) but there's an allure in the notion that we're in there concocting ideas, a coven around the hand dryers."

http://discothequeconfusion.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/the-women-are-emailing.html?m=1

The podcast she links to is super enjoyable.

(Credit to EG)

finish"How to Get Others to See You the Way You See Yourself"

"Judgment is inevitable, so we might as well work on being more judgeable, or more accurately judgeable, anyway. We might as well reinforce the way we want to be perceived. This pays dividends, she argues—in psychological health, happiness, personal and professional satisfaction, and sense of purpose. And this part of her piece rings true:

If people are seeing you the way you see yourself, then you aren’t getting all the unsettling, self-doubt-inducing feedback that the chronically misunderstood have to endure. Life is simply easier and more rewarding when people “get you,” and provide you with the opportunities and support that are a good fit for you.

Now here’s a question: How long does it take to get to this point, where people “get you”? Research suggests what you might expect—not that long, and also not necessarily ever.

In a study Halvorson cites, 400 college students described themselves and their roommates over time in an effort to determine how long it takes to for perception of self and other to line up. Mostly, it took about nine months for everyone’s understandings to line up, and still no one was getting a perfect perceptual match."

http://jezebel.com/how-to-get-others-to-see-you-the-way-you-see-yourself-1699263702?utm_campaign=socialflow_jezebel_facebook&utm_source=jezebel_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

aaaah this.

I feel like there are some spaces where people do take each other at face value, where people are really seen as unique and understood purposefully. And then there are places where you are already pegged before you enter the room, 

"Africa to Obama: Mind your own business "

"Why doesn't Obama openly admonish leaders of Western Europe whenever he visits their countries? Is it because they govern better? Who has the right to make this judgement and by what criteria?...

To use Jean Bricmont's analogy from his book Humanitarian Imperialism, the US and Western Europe behave like a mafia godfather who, as he grows old, decides to defend law and order and begins to attack his lesser colleagues in crime, preaching brotherly love and the sanctity of human life - all the while holding onto his ill-gotten wealth and the income it generates.

Who would fail to denounce such flagrant hypocrisy? In any case, is the US such a model country in governance to give Obama the moral authority to lecture Africans?

In the US, a black person is killed by the highly militarised police force  every 28 hours... But these are not the only state abuses in the US....

This is not an argument of two wrongs making a right. Rather it is to show that Obama's choice to lecture Africa is a product of the social contempt he and his countrymen and women have for black people...

Steven Biko, a hero of the anti-apartheid struggle, said that the greatest weapon in the hands of an oppressor is never his guns and armies, but the mind of the oppressed."

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2015/07/africa-obama-mind-business-african-union-150730080355352.html

Mmmmmm.

"Love and Merit"

"Children are bathed in love, but it is often directional love. Parents shower their kids with affection, but it is meritocratic affection. It is intermingled with the desire to help their children achieve worldly success.

Very frequently it is manipulative. Parents unconsciously shape their smiles and frowns to steer their children toward behavior they think will lead to achievement. Parents glow with extra fervor when their child studies hard, practices hard, wins first place, gets into a prestigious college.

This sort of love is merit based. It is not simply: I love you. It is, I love you when you stay on my balance beam. I shower you with praise and care when you’re on my beam."http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/opinion/david-brooks-love-and-merit.html

Yes. This was my hometown <link to the 2nd one on PA>, this is basically too real, and I wonder about how it has impacted not just how I see myself (obviously.) but how I see and value other people.

"Honest New York City subway announcements"

““Ladies and Gentlemen: We are experiencing a momentary delay because of train traffic ahead of us. ‘Momentary’ being something of a nebulous term, admittedly. Why, compared to the vast expanse of time, your entire life is a moment.”

--

Ladies and gentlemen: If you see an elderly, pregnant, or disabled person near you, offer your seat. Then take a furtive look around you to see if anyone noticed your act of gallantry. Bask in the subtle, barely perceptible sense of appreciation emanating from your fellow passengers. You’re a damn hero is what you are. You don’t need to do anything nice for anybody else today.”"

http://qz.com/397906/honest-new-york-city-subway-announcements/

These are all deeply amusing.

"Historical Symbols in Midst of a ‘Purge Moment’"

"This week, President Obama said he would use his executive power to rename Mount McKinley as Denali, restoring its Alaska Native name. Democrats in several states have recently pushed to remove

 the names of Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson from annual party gatherings. And the debate has seeped into sports and culture. For the past few years, the Washington Redskins have been under intense pressure to change their name...

There is a difficult and often arbitrary calculation in weighing a historical figure’s contributions to the nation or its culture along with his or her sins.

South Africa got rid of its flag and national anthem, but the Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria that represented the Boer Trek of 1838 was ultimately maintained as a national historical site, even though, like the Confederate flag in the United States, it reminded black South Africans about the legacy of violent racism. Flags with Confederate components and statues of Confederate generals populate the United States Capitol, but they now share space with those that commemorate heroes like Rosa Parks."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/02/us/historical-symbols-in-midst-of-a-purge-moment.html?emc=edit_th_20150902&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=8017714&_r=2

I mean, people have been fighting for this stuff for decades, so I would more categorize this as "finally the powerful white people care".