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In Trump’s Census Plans, Hints of a Citizenship Registry

Last August, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine issued a report on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s decision to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census. Prepared by some of the nation’s leading statisticians, including two former U.S. Census Bureau directors, the report concluded that the decision was “inconsistent with” what the Bureau is supposed to be doing.

Don Dillman.Continuing with the 2020 census as planned “would be like creating a population registry without asking everyone if it was okay,” said Don Dillman, a member of the National Academies committee, regents professor of sociology, deputy director for research and development in the Social and Economic Sciences Research Center at Washington State University, and a founder of one of the first university-based telephone survey research centers. The impact of doing so “worries me a lot,” he added.

As the committee reviewed many of the materials that recent lawsuits have turned up, Dillman “really started wondering if the citizen question was put there to identify people.” Not knowing what would be done with information gathered from answers to the question and administrative sources, as well as being unsure about the real motivation behind adding the question, also made him anxious about the scope of its impact. “If it’s really a registry,” Dillman said, “I don’t know where it would start — and where it would end.”

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Undark

In new book, WSU Vancouver professor sees benefits of legalized marijuana

Clayton Mosher.
Mosher

In the months after Washington voters approved legalized marijuana in 2012, Clayton Mosher, a sociology professor at Washington State University Vancouver, noticed what he believed to be unnecessary safety concerns.

Years after sales began, Mosher believes the apprehension has been proven to be unwarranted.

“We’re only four years out, but I don’t think you’re going to see a lot of negative outcomes,” Mosher said. “We’ve done a really good job in our state, I think.”

Mosher, who has studied marijuana policy for roughly 30 years, recently released his new book “In the Weeds,” coauthored with Scott Akins of Oregon State University. The book traces the evolution of society’s views on the drug and how it has affected policy.

The book tackles the effects, medical applications and possible harms of marijuana. “If the sky was going to fall, it probably would’ve fallen by now,” Mosher said, “Legalization didn’t create marijuana, and we’ve seen some positive effects of this.”

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The Columbian

IFL Science

Social Issues in Cosplay: Racism

Holly Rose Swinyard, editor of The Cosplay Journal, examines an unpleasant aspect of the cosplay scene – and what can be done to tackle racism in the community

Racism is probably one of the biggest issues in the cosplay community. You’d think with a community that claims to be open, liberal and supportive that this wouldn’t be the case, but here we are.

I’m not going to sugar coat this. This isn’t a “tinge of racism” or a “dusting” of it – the cosplay community, and geek culture at large, has some serious racism embedded in it and is full of racist people. That’s just the case. It is happening. Everywhere.

And it’s not just language or slurs that are commonplace; there are so many people who think that making your skin colour darker/giving yourself more ethnic features (making your eyes look more Asian, making prosthetics to mimic black features etc) is the same as painting yourself blue or green or adding elf ears. Those who do this claim that what they are doing is not blackface or raceface, since, in their minds, what they are doing isn’t mocking people of colour, and yet they are being told over and over again that it is hugely disrespectful to use someone’s race as part of a costume.

David Leonard.
David Leonard

“Blackface is part of a history of dehumanization, of denied citizenship, and of efforts to excuse and justify state violence. From lynchings to mass incarceration, whites have utilized blackface (and the resulting dehumanization) as part of its moral and legal justification for violence. It is time to stop with the dismissive arguments those that describe these offensive acts as pranks, ignorance and youthful indiscretions. Blackface is never a neutral form of entertainment, but an incredibly loaded site for the production of damaging stereotypes…the same stereotypes that undergird individual and state violence, American racism, and a century’s worth of injustice.”

wrote David Leonard, then-chair of Washington State University’s department of critical culture, gender, and race studies, in a Huffington Post essay, “Just Say No To blackface: Neo Minstrelsy and the Power to Dehumanize.”

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DownTheTubes.net

Emergency medicine expert connects climate change, human health

One of the world’s leading experts in wilderness and emergency medicine will talk about the intersection of climate change and human health in the 2019 Lane Family Lecture in Environmental Science, 4:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 20, in the Elson S. Floyd Cultural Center on the WSU Pullman campus.

Paul Auerbach.
Auerbach

Dr. Paul Auerbach, a physician, author and professor of medicine, will present “Climate Change and Human Health — There Are No Boundaries.” Preceding the lecture at 4 p.m. will be a reception.

The event is free and open to the public.

“Climate change is one of the most important challenges of our time,” said WSU environmental science instructor Kara Whitman. “Virtually everyone will be directly or indirectly impacted by it. In his lecture, Dr. Auerbach will provide the WSU community with a hard look at the real human health consequences of our quickly changing climate.”

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WSU Insider