On Point
Racial bias in a commonly used health care algorithm dramatically disadvantages Black patients In a world that has no business being shocked, this report is still shocking. The algorithm was embedded in a tool sold by a health services company called Optum, which is "designed" to flag patients who would benefit from additional care. Researchers recently discovered that the racial bias in its method reduces the number of Black patients identified for extra care by more than half. "It's truly inconceivable to me that anyone else's algorithm doesn't suffer from this," lead researcher Sendhil Mullainathan, a professor of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, told the Washington Post. Correcting the bias would more than double the number of black patients identified as needing additional medical care. The bias occurred because the algorithm makers attempted to be "race-blind." (I know, I know.) You can read the original research brief here.
Washington Post
What Ben Horowitz does is who he is Ben Horowitz, the co-founder of the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, is famous for a lot of things, not the least of which is his oft-quoted management tome, The Hard Thing About Hard Things. He's got a new book coming out (What You Do Is Who You Are, Oct. 29), so he's doing some media. But what I did not see coming in this exceptional interview with my exceptional colleague Andrew Nusca, was that Horowitz was prepared to go deep on ethics and culture by studying the Haitian Revolution, one of my personal touchstones. He studied it to write the book. "One that struck me the most was this notion of ethics and why they mattered in the culture [that drove the Haitian Revolution]," he says. It was about the very biggest of things. He also spoke admiringly of Toussaint L'Ouverture, the leader of the revolution (and whose image graces my favorite t-shirt). It was his clarity that drove the only successful slave revolt. "He said, 'Look, we're fighting for liberty, we're not fighting for stuff.'" Huh.
Fortune
If you climbed Uluru, you are off the raceAhead holiday card list Giving an unintentional master class in colonialist entitlement, thousands of people rushed to climb Uluru, a rock formation in Australia, before it was finally closed to visitors. The new regulation is a long overdue nod to the Anangu people, for whom the rock is sacred. The Anangu encompasses several central Australian Aboriginal groups who speak the related languages Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara, and Ngaanyatjarra. They are the original inhabitants of the land—and have long implored visitors not to climb the rock. Anangu began using their word "minga", which means ants, to describe tourists. Click through to see the last minute crush of climbers and you will see that they indeed look like a line of ants as they wait to walk up and down Uluru. I repeat: The Anangu have long implored visitors not to climb the rock.
BBC
A new report shows the U.S. South is still racially divided 'by design' Released today, the report is called "Divided by Design." It is the first project of the E Pluribus Unum Fund, launched by former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, and dedicated to the practice of courageous leadership. The report is based on interviews with people in 28 jurisdictions in 13 southern states and shows that segregation is a persistent element of southern life, and that a deep divide exists between Black, Latinx, and white residents on the nature and extent of racism in the South.
AP News
On Background
And now a word about 'Latinx' Terry Blas is an author, illustrator, comic book artist and an occasional but delightful member of the explanation community. In this comic, he takes on the term "Latinx," the gender-neutral version of an already imperfect general term for people of Latin heritage. While it may work well in the U.S. or countries who aren't primarily Spanish speaking, it's doesn't work well in Spanish-speaking countries. It's more of a grammar thing, really. The "x" is not only hard to pronounce, it's not scalable as a solution: It makes gendered words, of which there are muchos/muchas, unconjugatable. But inclusion-minded Spanish speakers are substituting "e" instead. It's working for them! "Amigos" becomes "amigues," and "Latino" becomes "Latines." What do you think? Try it out on your compañeres de trabajo and see what they say.
Vox
Amazon's 'Modern Love' makes a big mistake Amazon has been firing on all cylinders lately, specifically when it comes to diverse offerings. So that makes this review from Nylah Burton just a bit more necessary and on point. She has strong feedback for Modern Love, the new Amazon series released on October 17, and based on the New York Times column of the same name. Turns out the series falls into some painful traps—Black women as therapists, best friends, and wise mama types, but never fully realized as women worthy of seeking love or being loved. "With its total exclusion of Black, brown, and Indigenous women as love interests, I felt invisible and dehumanized," says Burton. "Modern Love was incredibly traumatizing to watch, reminding me of all the gendered violence and dismissal I've faced in my life."
Zora on Medium
A Hong Kong expat living in Canada shakes up the country with his deft observations Shoji Ushiyama appears to be an extraordinary talent, a visual artist, programmer, and a student of aerospace engineering and industrial design. He accidentally created the "the greatest work of Canadian literature that has ever been written," when he began a Twitter thread that described his existential quest to understand the essence of his adopted homeland. "As an expat living in Canada, the more I live here, the more I'm convinced I'm actually stuck in some kind of cryptic horror nightmare country that's subtly and slowly eating away at me," he tweeted. And then it got really, really deep.
National Post
Tamara El-Waylly helps write and produce raceAhead.
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