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VOL 2 - FRIDAY, APRIL 19

Happy Friday! Last weekend, we were absorbing the California sun rays. Because we were California dreamin, it kind of caused this issue to be delayed. We'll begin sending these issues to you all each and every Wednesday moving forward.

Thanks for joining us again for another week of what we've Notedd over the last week, a couple of honorable mentions and lastly a moment of reflection.

We always love to hear your thoughts, so please complete this short survey on what you enjoyed and how we can improve here at Notedd.

Peggy Alford, Senior Vice President of Core Markets at PayPal, was recently nominated to join Facebook’s Board of Directors - making her the first African American woman and second African American to join the board. (And yes we are still following those discrimination cases.)

Aretha Franklin posthumously won a Pulitzer Prize, which the organization noted the phenomenal woman for her phenomenal contribution to music and culture for more than five decades.

Organization Emily's List recently held its annual conference and gala to honor diverse lawmakers, discuss associated challenges when in office and best practices to overcome those barriers when running for office.

Carla Hayden, the first African American and first woman to serve as the Librarian of Congress, recently launched the plan "Enrich the Library Experience" where she is leading the force in making the Library of Congress collection digital and available to all.

Netflix announced its looking for female writers for its new animated series of four teenage girls who save the world called Mama K’s Team 4, while Lena Waithe is working with BET on a television series on the adventures of a black queer girl called Twenties and a string of upcoming projects.

Shameless Plug: we recently contributed to our company’s blog to discuss racial inequities and disparities that is furthering systemic challenges such as homelessness, along with discussing the differences between equity and equality, and the need for our systems and policies to be based on an equity model.

The State of Race
Shout out to one of our subscribers for sharing this research with us! Pew Research Center released a new survey on the views of Americans when it comes to race and race relations. More than 6,600 people of a variety of races were surveyed and shared their experiences on how race plays a pivotal role in their life. The survey tested people’s experiences with race when it comes to personal advancement, dealings with the police and the criminal justice system, thoughts on racial progress and racial equality - particularly for African Americans, Hispanic Americans and Asian Americans. Each group's experience collectively resulted in the following:

• African Americans are more likely to report that people act suspicious of them, and have been treated unfairly when it comes to hiring and for promotions.

• White Americans are more likely to say that people have assumed they were racist or prejudice.

• Asian Americans are more than likely than other racial groups to say they have been subject to slurs and jokes.

Now more than about six-in-ten Americans say race relations in the United States are bad, so there is a lot of work to be done.

Fighting Bias in Algorithms
Graduate student and researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab Joy Buolamwini has conducted research to show the problematic error rates in facial recognition and artificial intelligence. Joy is the founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, an organization that is challenging bias in decision making software such as Amazon and other big tech firms. Current facial recognition systems are not detecting female faces, particularly women with darker skin tones. Despite these tech firms taking aim at her research methods including Amazon's Jeff Bezos, other researchers are finding the same results with many reporting that there are institutional biases embedded in these AI systems. If white males are being programmed into these systems, then therefore only white males will be detected. A most recent study reported that self-driving cars were having trouble detecting pedestrians with darker skin tones. You can check out Joy's TED talk where she walks through her research methods and the importance of changing these systems now before it is too late.

Fighting Racial Inequities
April is recognized as National Minority Health Month, which is a month-long initiative to advance health equity for racial and ethnic minority groups in America. The Black Mamas Matters Alliance founded Black Maternal Health Week which was last week to bring awareness and amplify the conversation on Black maternal health in the nation as Black women are twice more than likely to lose an infant to premature death. During this week, Freshman Rep. Lauren Underwood and Rep. Alma Adams launched the Black Maternal Health Caucus to end racial disparities for black women and address the epidemic of black women dying to pregnancy-related deaths due to the lack of access to quality pre-natal and post-natal care.

First, we’d like to recognize an amazing cause called SIHLE (Sisters informing, healing, living, empowering), a CDC-based program that empowers black female youth to embrace their beauty and spirit to live their most fulfilled lives. Two young ladies of SIHLE have been accepted into college but are in need of financial support to help them further their college careers. If you are able to support, please send your donations to SIHLE’s financial director @kathrynmmartin and help this amazing cause.

Jemele Hill launched her podcast Unbothered on Spotify! Described as honest, unfiltered opinions about news, pop culture and sports, you can catch Jemele and her co-hosts Michael Arecsnaeux and Cole Wiley every Monday and Thursday at 6pm ET. We are already a fan of her first two episodes, and will be staying tuned each week.

We Are Beyond Compare
By Lauren S.

As you know it's finally feeling like Spring and for some it's feeling like Summer, which only means festival season is here. We kick off the season with the big one, Coachella in April. Last year, we were all honored to watch the queen herself take center stage, giving the performance of a lifetime. Beyoncé not only honored black culture in an authentic and meaningful way, but more importantly honoring Historically Black Colleges and Universities which hits home to me as a fellow proud Spelman alumna. She gave us one of the greatest gifts of all, as we are now able to watch the whole experience again and more through her documentary on Netflix.

Every year, each festival looks to how they can upstage themselves again for the following year. Unfortunately, the desire to do bigger and better tends to lead us to comparing the previous performers to the next ones. Sandra Gonzalez of CNN writes boldly in the title of her article "Let's not compare Ariana Grande's Coachella performance to Beyoncé's" and discusses how we should allow female artists to be celebrated in their lanes without any type of comparison because it only perpetuates this mean girl culture.

Beyoncé was the first African American woman to headline Coachella, and led an amazing performance with her dancers, big band and endless fashions that still kills to this day. Ariana Grande is the youngest performer to headline Coachella, and did an amazing job her first weekend with her performance her hits and collaborations with Diddy, Mase, NSYNC and Nicki Minaj. Both women are killing the game in their own ways, so why do we feel the need to compare these talented women?

In her article, Sandra brings readers back to the infamous comparisons in music and culture, from the earlier days of Brandy and Monica, to Rita Ora and Rihanna, to Britney and Christina, to Kelly and Carrie, to most recently Nicki and Cardi.

Philly based rapper known as Sammus and PhD student at Cornell, Enongo Lumumba-Kasongo shares that "this idea that only one woman can exist in a space is something that's institutionalized." She adds that, "we wouldn't have this pitting of women against each other if there were multitudes of slots for women to be parts of these spaces." The music culture doesn't always allow women to receive their rightful recognition and praise solely. Only so many women can advance in the music scene, often leading one artist to outshine another.

This isn't just reflected in the music space, women are compared everywhere from the higher levels like our royal counterparts in Britain to the first ladies in office to the more personal levels like in our own dealings in the workplace and personal advancements.

I faced a comparison experience at my previous employer, with another young woman who had a similar college background as me. We were always compared to one another which often led to the decisions of who would have the chance to work on particular projects on our team and in the office.

The common theme that you'll notice in this week's issue is the systematic and institutionalized practices and policies in place. This comparison culture is only further creating inequities for women and people of color. We must understand that biases are real and be advocates for each other to eliminate others from trying to break us down.

Until we meet again next week, Notedd ✌

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