"Am I Being Paranoid? Being a Woman of Color in Academia"

"I later recounted the incident to another person of color, who nodded along at my ambivalence about why that statement was bothering me. But even as I was describing the incident to him, I thought to myself that I must look like I am grasping at victimhood. It was a strange feeling of not knowing how to perceive my own reality. The student’s friend hadn’t shouted the command at me, she didn’t say it with a teenager’s attitude. In my head, I tried to make sense of why I had felt insulted in that moment, but more importantly, why I couldn’t communicate and confirm with the world at large why I had felt that way.

There have been many other incidences, where I did not need to seek confirmation of whether I was insulted by a student because I knew that I had been. As a perpetual outsider, in virtue of my brown immigrant body, my accent, mannerisms, and the assumptions about my affinities and motivations, I have encountered what are termed as, microaggressions both within the classroom and in context of presenting my research. There are countless such incidences, and they still occur every semester without fail. And even within these blatant instances of racism, there have been allies, who not only failed to understand the experience, but charged me with being overly-sensitive (paranoid). Thankfully, today’s social media exposes me to the experiences of other women of color and I can receive validation of my reality from them."

https://siuewmst.wordpress.com/2015/04/20/am-i-being-paranoid-being-a-woman-of-color-in-academia/

This is so very real, I spend so much energy every day being unable to come to a conclusion on myself; am I a paranoid, over-sensitive person? Does that mean that I should unilaterally ignore any feeling that doesn't have someone to corroborate it? Or, am I colonizing and oppressing myself and I should honor every uncomfortable sensation? If so, does that mean that I should be pushing back on all of them, and leaving spaces where I don't feel comfortable... because that's so close to everyone and everywhere that it's fundamentally unrealistic. 

FB: "As women of color, we are greatly underrepresented in academia. This adversely impacts our ability to speak about our experiences with an expectation of understanding such encounters by our allies. And when one is constantly given alternate banal explanations for their ‘overly-sensitive’ perceptions, one loses the epistemic ground they stand on. They cease to give credibility to their own perceptions."

"Mental Illness Is More Than Just Depression and Anxiety"

"And so it makes that many people might feel uncomfortable sharing their experiences of psychosis, particularly with their employers. It’s not an unfounded concern: One 2006 study found that half of U.S. employers are “reluctant” to hire people with past psychiatric history, a figure that rises to 70 percent for those taking anti-psychotic medication. But it’s kind of lose-lose; not telling an employer about an episode of psychosis would lead a quarter of the surveyed employers to dismiss an employee.

The consequences of this stigmatization stretch beyond employment. A 2014 literature review published in the journal Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services found that public stigmatization is a “pervasive barrier that prevents many individuals in the U.S. from engaging in mental health care.” In 2004, psychiatrist Patrick Corrigan, of the University of Chicago, argued that, in order to avoid being labelled “mentally ill,” people actively decide not to seek or participate in care. This, he says, diminishes patients’ self-esteem and prevents them from engaging in “social opportunities” such as friendships or relationships. In the U.S., three years typically pass between the time the first symptoms of psychosis manifest and their eventual diagnosis and treatment."

http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2016/08/mental-illness-is-more-than-just-depression-and-anxiety.html

"3% of Americans own half the country's 265 million guns"

"The survey, the most authoritative since a 1994 study posed similar questions to gun owners, is under peer-review for publication in a trade journal. Summaries of the study were released this week to the Guardian and The Trace news outlets...

Researchers found that the top reason people owned guns was for protection from other people, even though the rate of violent crime has dropped significantly the past two decades, said Deborah Azrael, director of research at the Harvard Injury Control Research Center and one of the study's authors...

The super owners consisted of an estimated 7.7 million Americans and owned between eight and 140 guns each. Nearly half of gun owners owned just one or two guns. Those owners merit further study to try to bring down the nation’s suicide rate, Azrael said."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/09/22/study-guns-owners-violence/90858752/

"Do women’s periods really synch when they spend time together?"

"there is now accumulating evidence that casts serious doubt on the existence of the phenomenon. First, the original 1971 study was criticised on methodological grounds. Second, a number of studies with both human groups and non-human species failed to replicate the initial findings, with at least as many studies reporting positive results as studies reporting negative ones.

Mathematical analyses have also revealed that some degree of synchrony is to be expected given the shifts in female reproductive condition over time, and that no adaptive process needs to be invoked to explain what is observed. In other words, synchrony or the overlap of cycles between females is best explained by chance."

https://theconversation.com/do-womens-periods-really-synch-when-they-spend-time-together-61890

"People Suffer at Work When They Can’t Discuss the Racial Bias They Face Outside of It"

"38% of black professionals also feel that it is never acceptable at their companies to speak out about their experiences of bias — a silence that makes them more than twice as vulnerable to feelings of isolation and alienation in the workplace. Black employees who feel muzzled are nearly three times as likely as those who don’t to have one foot out the door, and they’re 13 times as likely to be disengaged... 

 Of those who are aware of companies responding to societal incidents of racial discrimination, robust majorities of black (77%), white (65%), Hispanic (67%), and Asian (83%) professionals say they view those companies in a more positive way. Interviews with employees at firms like Ernst & Young point to stronger bonds forged between team leaders and members as a result of guidelines disseminated to managers on how to have a trust-building conversation."

https://hbr.org/2017/07/people-suffer-at-work-when-they-cant-discuss-the-racial-bias-they-face-outside-of-it

FB: "The response, at most organizations, is no response. Leaders don’t inquire about coworkers’ life experiences; they stay quiet when headlines blare reports of racial violence or videos capture acts of blatant discrimination. Their silence is often born of a conviction that race, like politics, is best discussed elsewhere."

"To Everyone Who’s Just Barely Holding It Together"

"When you’re just barely holding it together, every day is a long and tiresome struggle, every challenge of every size potentially ruinous... In spite of whatever it is that keeps picking, picking, picking little pieces of your shell away, you still manage to make it to school or work, or to pick up the kids, or to go to the store, or hell, to walk the dog. And for that, I want to say: Good job... 

And if one day you don’t manage to hold it together? If one poke is too many and the shell cracks or outright shatters? Good job for making it as long as you did and good job for not protecting anyone from your own internal tempest anymore. Good job for starting the process of putting it back together; maybe it will be stronger in the broken places."

https://theestablishment.co/to-everyone-whos-just-barely-holding-it-together-cdb79b854384

"Farmers Receive Less Than Sixteen Cents of the American Food Dollar"

"Although our food seems expensive, there is a big difference between the price consumers pay for food at the grocery store and the price farmers are paid for growing that food. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, farmers and ranchers only receive 15.6 cents of every dollar that consumers spend on food in the United States, the lowest level since 2006. Marketing, wholesaling, distribution, and retailing account for more than 80 percent of the American food dollar, leaving those who actually produced that food with a meager paycheck to take back to their families."

https://nfu.org/2017/09/22/farmers-receive-less-than-sixteen-cents-of-the-american-food-dollar/

FB: "even though farmers are producing more, they’re making less – the farm economy is the weakest it has been since the 1980s farm crisis. Net farm incomes has plummeted – in the last four years, it has decreased by half. This year, median farm household income is projected to be negative$1,400, meaning many farmers will actually lose money. If the circumstances do not improve, some families will have to make tough decisions, including whether or not they can even afford to stay on their land."

(and imagine if you are a farmer and the only presidential candidate directly speaking for you is... Donald Trump)