Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 311

The club helping women of color finally talk about depression

(Credit: Narratively/Wenjia Tang)

When Elyse Fox greets newcomers to her Sad Girls Club monthly meet-up at Inscape, a meditation space in the Flatiron district of New York, she bypasses the women’s extended hands and leans in for hugs. She’s 27 years old and wearing light grey leggings, gold hoop earrings, and a navy cotton t-shirt stitched with the words “Sad Girls Club” in primary colors and knotted at her naval. Sometimes her hair is bleached or straightened or twisted in a fat knot on the crown of her head, but today it cascades naturally over her shoulders in a mass of little curls.

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Fox started Sad Girls Club in February as a fun and comfortable way for millennial women and women of color, like herself, to talk about mental illness. Her first promotional post on Instagram, where the club now has over 15,000 followers, promised “snacks, games and girl talk.” Since then, Sad Girls Club meet-ups have taken the form of a poetry slam, an art therapy project and now a meditation session. Fox wants to host yoga and a barbecue and she recently started a Kickstarter campaign to take the club on the road, though it didn’t meet her intended goal.

One-by-one this Saturday morning, eight women of various backgrounds trickle into Inscape. Often, Fox worries no one will show. Several of the women know Fox from childhood or through networking — she is a filmmaker — but the majority stumbled across the club online. One woman found the Sad Girls Club Instagram and decided to attend because “some shit happened.” Another wrestles with anxiety. There is a woman from Puerto Rico and one from the Bay Area. Several of them have shown up looking timid, knowing no one else in the group.

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Last December, Fox shared her own depression publicly for the first time through a video on Vimeo called “Conversations with Friends.” It opens with a kaleidoscope close-up on Fox’s face. “Depression is something I’ve felt I’ve always had, but I’ve never been able to put these feelings into words,” she narrates. The video cuts to scenes she’s filmed documentary-style of her shopping, partying, and eating with friends, often also talking politics. It flip-flops between portraits of enjoyment and moments of sadness.

“I looked like I was living my best life and I thought, ‘This is so fake,’” she says later about her digital and online persona, which led her to want to produce a raw and vulnerable video.

After the video went live, about 300 people reached out to Fox asking for advice. The reactions inspired her to start Sad Girls Club. In the film, she focuses on her own experience, wondering how family and friends haven’t noticed her lows. Her father, a chef named Kevin Cox, didn’t realize his daughter grappled with depression until he saw the video.

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“I was kind of surprised but it made things come together,” he says. “Now things make sense with some interactions or a depression episode when she was feeling down.”

Growing up in Brooklyn as an honor-roll student, Fox witnessed her mother’s inability to get out of bed for 12 hours at a time, though there was never a family conversation about her mother’s depression. When Fox was 11, she felt those same feelings of isolation, but kept them to herself for the next 16 years. Looking back, she hadn’t seen women of color who openly acknowledged their illness.

“I didn’t want to be outcast,” she says. “I thought people would think I would be the stereotypical mental hospital ticking time bomb and I didn’t want people to shy away from me. I thought guys wouldn’t want to date me. I like to let people know they can treat me like a normal human being. It’s not something you should be ashamed of.”

At Inscape, the women emerge from the meditation pod sleepy and sluggish, having just been guided through a “deep sound journey,” where they laid on mats listening to vibrations. Meditation has become part of Fox’s self care routine for coping with depression. The group gathers round a carrot-colored elixir being served in the seating area to discuss their experiences. One woman felt a panic attack coming on at the beginning, but then relaxed and melted into the gongs. Another perceived tingles creeping along her arms. Someone relays her floating sensation. Fox listens and records a live video for Instagram.

The stigma around mental illness persists, especially for women. According to the World Health Organization, common disorders like depression and anxiety affect one in three people – the majority of whom are women – with depression being the most frequently encountered mental health problem in women overall. The organization attributes these statistics to harm caused by gender roles, such as gender-based violence, socioeconomic disadvantage and income inequality. A paper released by WHO titled, “Gender Disparities in Mental Health” states, “gender based expectations regarding proneness to emotional problems in women” helps to “reinforce social stigma and constrain help seeking along stereotypical lines.”

“Women in general are categorized as being crazy or emotional or hysterical,” says Shira Burstein, a psychotherapist Fox met through a friend and now brings to Sad Girls Club meetings as an expert voice. “Back in the day when women were having anxiety, they were treated very poorly. Even though we’ve evolved in society, the idea that women are unhinged quickly diminishes the credibility of true mental illness diagnosis.”

“Sad Girls Club made me feel like I wasn’t alone,” says Lametrius White, Fox’s friend who struggles with depression. “It’s opening up my eyes to a lot of young women around me that experience the same things I do and it’s O.K., you don’t feel crazy, you don’t feel isolated or alone. You feel part of a community and it’s great to have these platforms and safe spaces.”

After the women reawaken with the help of the elixir, Fox leaves to go to temple and then a karaoke birthday party, where she feels most comfortable watching from the couches. Several women hang back to exchange numbers with promises to text each other. One by one they head home or off to lunch, each waving and saying, “It was nice to meet you!”

“I wish I would have spoken about it sooner,” says Fox.

Massachusetts executed two Italian immigrants 90 years ago: Why the global fallout still matters

(Credit: Getty/Mireia Triguero Roura)

Ninety years ago, on Aug. 23, 1927, two Italian immigrants were executed.

The deaths of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti in the Charlestown Prison in Massachusetts marked the end of a raucous seven-year legal and political battle that captivated people across the United States and the world.

According to many who lived through it, no other event since the outbreak of the Civil War had so starkly divided American opinion. Writer Edmund Wilson believed that it “revealed the whole anatomy of American life, with all its classes, professions, and points of view, and raised every fundamental question of our political and social system.” And arguably, no other event until the Vietnam War evoked as much anti-American sentiment on the global stage.

I wrote a book about how and why the case of Sacco and Vanzetti evolved from an obscure local criminal trial to a national and international scandal. I refer to it in the book as the transition from a “case” to an “affair.”

What can it tell us about our politics today?

The most famous prisoners in the world

At first, Sacco and Vanzetti were two anonymous immigrants on trial for an act of banditry. Sacco was a skilled shoe factory worker and family man with two small children. Vanzetti was a fish monger. But local authorities charged them of being part of a stickup gang that on April 15, 1920 shot and killed a factory paymaster and his guard in Braintree, Massachusetts, stealing approximately US$15,700. One reporter sent to cover their trial wrote to his editor, using a derogatory term for Italians, that there was “no story . . . just a couple of wops in a jam.”

But fairly soon, it emerged that the two men were not anyone’s idea of typical bandits. Rather, they were active in Italian anarchist circles who believed that capitalism and states were oppressive and should be overthrown by revolution — and, if necessary, a violent one. At the time, most Americans lived in horror of anarchists and other “reds,” as left-wing radicals of all sorts were known, and anti-immigration sentiment (especially against Italians) was at its peak. Not surprisingly, their trial took on a decidedly political character.

The evidence against them was mostly circumstantial, relying heavily on what the authorities called “consciousness of guilt.” The prosecution made their political radicalism an issue, as if that helped prove them guilty of robbery and murder. And, given that opening, the defendants were not shy about expressing their radical ideas in court, which did not help them with the jury. Many people who came to Sacco and Vanzetti’s defense argued that they were innocent men being railroaded not for anything they did, but for who they were and what they believed in.

Sacco and Vanzetti forcefully protested their innocence from the moment they were arrested until the minute they were electrocuted. They gradually convinced large numbers of people. As their case dragged on, they gained the advocacy and support of public figures, legal experts, intellectuals, political leaders and ordinary people. Their supporters included law professor Felix Frankfurter, poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, car magnate Henry Ford, British author H.G. Wells and even Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.

The judge in their case, Webster Thayer, was openly biased against them. Among other things, he had originally lobbied to be assigned the case to make sure that Sacco and Vanzetti “got what they deserved.” During the trial, Thayer braggingly asked a member of his social club if he had seen “what I did to those anarchistic bastards the other day?”

After Thayer sentenced them to death in April 1927 — but not before the pair made stirring speeches in the courtroom proclaiming their innocence — the case created a genuine diplomatic crisis for the United States. Heads of state in Europe and elsewhere appealed to U.S. President Calvin Coolidge and Massachusetts Gov. Alvan Fuller to try to prevent the executions — in vain. Governments in Argentina, France, Britain, Brazil and elsewhere were forced to deal with angry demonstrations, major riots and attacks on American travelers, companies and embassies.

Why did Sacco and Vanzetti become, as the New Republic magazine put it, “the two most famous prisoners in the world”?

It was partly because of the global and geopolitical context. In the wake of World War I, the United States became a global power for the first time. At the same time, Western European nations suffered crisis and decline, and became indebted to American banks and reliant on American power. In that decade, the United States also closed its doors to immigrants who most desperately needed to migrate, especially those from poverty-stricken areas like Southern and Eastern Europe, as well as Mexico.

There have been many debates over the years over whether Sacco and Vanzetti were indeed guilty of the crime for which they were punished. Numerous authors have forcefully argued both sides. But this debate, which is impossible to resolve decades after the fact, misses the point of why Sacco and Vanzetti attained, after their deaths, totemic status.

As I describe in my book, Sacco and Vanzetti came to be seen as symbols of an America that had turned its back on foreigners, abandoned its principles of justice, and failed to pay heed to what Thomas Jefferson, in the Declaration of Independence, called “a decent respect for the opinions of mankind.” Their trial was so flawed, the politicization of their case so egregious, the executions so horrifying, that it was a travesty of justice irrespective of guilt or innocence.

From Sacco-Vanzetti to the Trump era

Ninety years after the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti, the affair presents us with many connections to the present. For many people in 1927 and after, the two men were victims of a deep-seated fear of immigrants. For others, they were criminals and terrorists who benefited from a worldwide campaign led by people who despised America and its institutions.

Today, the United States is engaged in a bitter struggle between these same two views, with the xenophobic forces currently in political power, especially in the White House.

But it is important to keep in mind that today’s America would be socially, culturally and demographically unrecognizable to Americans in 1927. The United States is a much more multicultural and diverse society nowadays than it was when Sacco and Vanzetti were alive. And it will become even more so.

At the same time, recent events have made life in America frightening for immigrants and minorities. The factors in American society that brought about the executions of Sacco and Vanzetti never completely went away. In the current, toxic political environment, those who care about equality and justice must remain vigilant.

Moshik Temkin, Associate Professor of Public Policy, Harvard University

How I embrace my son’s language of numbers

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“The vitamins go on five.” I was standing in front of the open pantry with a bottle of Flintstones Gummies in my hand and an insistent four-year-old at my knees.

I stared down at him bewildered. “Vitamins go on five?” I said. “I’m not sure what ‘five’ means. They go in the pantry, on the top shelf.”

“They go on five!” He was getting impatient with me, as he often did when I didn’t quite clue in to his language.

I was used to him pairing numbers with everyday conversation, it’s how he connected with the world and most of the time, as his mom, I kept up with him just fine.

Other times, I needed to buy a vowel, so to speak, as his numerical mind left me a little lost. Like in this instance, fighting over where to put the vitamins.

I like to joke that my son’s first language is numbers.

Nothing makes his ears perk up faster than when I can cleverly incorporate numbers into something I want him to hear or do. It’s exhausting at times, but it’s effective.

He associates going to the doctor with the number two. Because when we were on a cruise one time and he got a stomach bug, we visited the doctor on the 2nd floor. Now every ailment requires seeing the “doctor on two.”

Our favorite treats in the drink machine at his therapy center are known by the vending code, not the name. Mommy always gets an E6, he gets a B4. For snack he gets a 101.

One night he invented a game with a bulk size variety box of chips from BJ’s. He would bring me a bag and pose the question, “Is this 16, 12 or 10?” It took me a few turns to realize I had to identify the bag, not by it’s name (Cheetos, Lays, etc), but by the quantity of that particular chip as listed on the side of the box.

For example, Doritos were not Doritos. They were 16, because the box contained 16 bags of Doritos.

To him it was logical — and wildly entertaining.

When he was 18 months old and we began our process of diagnosing his autism, I came to resent his fixation with numbers.

It had been the first warning sign to which I paid attention. The tendency to focus only on numbers, to the exclusion of everything else, was indicative of “rigidity in play,” a hallmark of autism. It was his poker tell, the first quirk you noticed about him after a few minutes.

Mainly though, numbers were the obsession that prevented me from reaching my son. If numbers were around, humans didn’t exist. I didn’t exist.

And how do you rid the world of numbers? The fact that they are everywhere affected his everyday life. He would go outside and spend his playtime studying the license plates on our cars rather than playing soccer with his brother. His preschool teachers removed their own wall calendar because it was too much of a distraction for him and he wasn’t paying attention to classroom instructions.

It was too much. I knew it was too much. I worried that the rest of the world was passing him by. Sure, he could be codebreaking in the other room, but he couldn’t tell me what he had for lunch that day.

Would I have to take away his greatest joy if there was to be any hope of him making strides in his socializing and communication?

There was no greater love story than that between my son and his numbers, I’m convinced. It was a dilemma. How could I break his heart? But how could I knowingly hold him back?

It was two separate therapists who allowed me to see numbers for what they were…a precious and valuable tool. A friend and a bridge that would allow me to get through to my son on a level I currently wasn’t capable of accessing.

I didn’t need to compete with numbers, I didn’t need to be rid of them. What if I could make him see that I loved the language of numbers too? Would I become fascinating to him as well?

If that were the case, then I would meet him right where he was, which was on the floor, counting.

In the three years since I began using numbers to gain and hold my son’s attention — so that I could teach him different ways to interact — I feel like there have been many breakthroughs. Each one so small and insignificant to an outsider, but so giant to me.

In his toy bin right now, you will find a good mixture of numbers, action figures, cars and musical instruments. You will find him on a sunny day outside in the yard riding his bike or running up and down the street with his brother and the neighborhood kids.

Make no mistake, you will still see him show preference for the glorious digits 1-10, but he has broken his full-time fixation, as he now sees the beauty in many ways of play.

We do still talk numbers in our house. It is, after all, my son’s first language. I try my best to keep up, but sometimes I need a little extra help too.

My son looks from me to the vitamins to the pantry. And in a heartwarming act of reciprocity, he meets me where I’m at by starting at the bottom shelf and counting up, “One, two, three, four, five.” At five, he is pointing to the top shelf of the pantry. “Vitamins go on five,” he says. I shake my head at missing what was clearly obvious to my son.

My pantry has five shelves, and sure enough, he was correct. The vitamins do go on five.

“Things to do to get pregnant”: Why I am afraid to bring a black child into this world

(Credit: Getty/Salon)

Google: “Things to do to get pregnant” and you’ll come up with a list of things to do to prepare your body for conception.

Make a doctor’s appointment.
Ditch whatever form of birth control you’ve been using.
Track the days when you’re most fertile (yes, there’s an app for that).
Start taking prenatal vitamins two months before you even think you’re ready to start trying to have a baby in earnest.
Convince yourself that, in a world where Nazis walk down American streets, that it’s OK to bring another black child into this world.

* * *

I stopped taking the prenatal vitamins the day Donald Trump refused to denounce Nazis and white supremacists after the rallies and terrorist attack in Charlottesville, Va. While nothing had changed about the racism that has always been so deeply ingrained in our country, I was not prepared for the onslaught of violence. I had not expected to see reports of a woman’s murder in plain view of the police and television cameras, though everything that’s happened in this country since Donald Trump was elected should have told me that this was the inevitable. Had I been prepared, I might have saved myself money and time; I might not have begun this summer with the intention of trying to get pregnant by December.

The week after the rally, I made an effort to get out of my house. I met with students, went to lunch with colleagues, had drinks with other writers. I tried to act and feel normal. After every social encounter I went back home, curled up on the couch, and watched pundits talk for hours about America’s homegrown terrorists. During that week, I replayed the press conferences. I left the television on MSNBC, which was all Charlottesville all day. I occasionally flipped to Fox, which had become the new voice for the preservation of the Confederacy. I read the comments and then I read them again. I didn’t write, I barely slept, I eyed the bottle of vitamins on my coffee table and suppressed the urge to throw them away. I drank a bottle of wine and made another list.

A List of Things That Kill Black People aka The Reasons I Don’t Need to Have Babies

Police brutality
Racism
White is still right (to whites)
Nazis
People who vote against their own interests
Donald Trump et al.
America

On the fifth day after the rally in Charlottesville, I stayed up until 3 o’clock in the morning watching the news until I was overcome with the same fear and feelings of devastation I’d last experienced after the election. I woke up my husband with sobbing and incoherent pleading that we should go — that we should make plans to get out of the country — similar to the pleas I’d made in the aftermath of the election. I told him that his whiteness would not shield our children from the hatred we see on a daily basis. I begged him to take me away even though I knew we had nowhere else to go and it was the middle of the night. He tried to console me, unsuccessfully. I know he understands and certainly shares my fears, but the parts of his lists that don’t overlap with mine focus on the things that I’ve pushed to the back of my mind because at 37, time is no longer on my side. His lists are about finances and his own readiness to parent. When I calm down and he falls back into a light sleep, I make another list.

Every Time This Country Has Reminded Me of How Little It Values Black Lives: An Incomplete List

February 27, 2012
July 17, 2014
August 9, 2014
April 4, 2015
April 13, 2015
July 13, 2015
July 6, 2016

* * *

Two days after George Zimmerman was acquitted for the murder of Trayvon Martin, I couldn’t sleep, so I wrote for the first time of the fear I felt about bringing a child into this world. I was 33 years old — two years away from getting married, two years away from leaving Baltimore for my dream job back in New York City, two years away from Freddie Gray’s death — and already I was having doubts about motherhood, the kind of doubts I’d never had in my 20s when, if I had made a list of why I wasn’t going to have children, it would have looked something like this:

I don’t want my life to change.

There are two distinct events that changed the way I began to reevaluate whether or not I wanted to become someone’s mother. The first was the election of Barack Obama, which for me served as a symbol that maybe this country of ours was making some progress on equality, that if I were to bring a child into this world I could say to that child: “You can be anything you want to be in this world; you can, in your black skin, be the president.” The second thing, the thing I probably found as improbable as an African-American president, was that I fell in love. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to have children, it’s that deep in my subconscious I didn’t want to have them in the America I knew. I didn’t want to have children alone.

In 2013 I wrote, “My white friends are so lucky. They can have babies who will likely never find themselves in Trayvon Martin’s position,” lying supine on the ground with a gun in their face because they wore the wrong skin color and a hoodie. In 2017, parenting while white looks like a luxury that my husband and I will never be able to afford. I imagine that my white friends, as they embark on the adventure of parenting, make lists about the many things that could at a moment’s notice cut short a young life. When my friends Jen and Patrick had their first baby, they asked everyone who planned to come in contact with the baby for the first year to get a whooping cough vaccination (there had been an outbreak where they lived). I remember being willing to comply because I love these people and because I had the luxury of health insurance. But I also thought I was missing something, that maybe black parents are so concerned with the violence our children meet in the streets we forget to ask our friends and families to properly inoculate themselves before we expose our children to the dangers we can’t see.

A List of Things I Imagine White Parents Do in Preparation for Bringing a Baby Into the World. Aka A List I’d Make Reflective of my Proximity to Whiteness

Names of midwives
Names of doulas
Find local birthing centers
Make appointment with lactation specialist
Research organic baby food companies or, even better, learn to make my own organic baby food.

I make the above list not because I think that those actions are limited to the realm of white people, it’s just that they had never crossed my mind before. No one in my family has given birth with the aid of a doula, and I’m certain if I ever made mention of my intention to do so my mother would sweetly say the phrase she’s used to describe me since my first year at Sarah Lawrence: “Oh, Khaliah, you’re so bohemian.” I make that list because it forces me to confront the fact that the lists I make are so diametrically opposed to the lists I want to make if I can get past my fears, if I am ever fortunate enough to start a family with my husband. I want to make lists of nursery needs, birthing plans and baby names. I don’t want to add to the lists I’ve already started making, though I know I will have to add line after line. America hasn’t learned its lesson yet; black bodies are still expendable.

* * *

Three weeks ago my brother and his girlfriend welcomed a new baby into our family. He is a chubby-faced, dark-haired boy named Gavin. He is perfection. I instantly loved him and feared for him, though I have never held him in my arms. During a phone call, my mother tells me how she has cautioned his mother that it’s too early to bring him outside; we don’t know what’s out there. I resist the urge to tell her that we do know what’s out there, that I know what’s out there. I’ve made list after list after list.

* * *

My friend Amanda calls when I’m in the middle of writing this essay. I tell her how I’ve been feeling, what the last week has meant to me. We worry that the political climate is traumatizing us all, and we wonder what scars we will carry years after Donald Trump is no longer in office. We talk about the effect he is having on children of color. Amanda is the mother of two beautiful, brilliant and funny black boys; she tells me that she walks around with her stomach in knots for the things that her babies will endure simply for existing. She tells me a story of how her older son, Aaron, once ran up their street in Bed Stuy only to have his younger brother, Jacob, shout, “Brother, stop running! The police will kill you!” Jacob is 7 years old. Amanda’s fear and the lists she has made over the years mirror my own; they’re a reminder than even if I manage to keep a baby alive and into adolescence and adulthood, I’ll still add to the lists that I began making long before it was ever born.

After talking to Amanda, I am more hopeful. Not because I think anything will change in the next few months or even years, but because in the moments when she’s not telling me of her fears, she talks about her children with such joy, that I want to know what that feels like. Before she ends the call, she tells me what many friends have said to me in the last week: “You know, you should go ahead and have a baby. All this writing and talking about it, it will probably happen anyway.” She laughs and hangs up the phone. I half hope she’s right. It’s the reason I haven’t tossed that bottle of vitamins in the garbage. I want to take them, but I’m angry that the country where I was born, where I make my home, has filled me with so much doubt that I don’t know when I will be able to twist off that bottle cap and start a regimen that might bring something new and innocent and black into a world that doesn’t want to love it.

How do I teach my tween about clickbait?

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Phony photos, outrageous claims, too-good-to-be-true contests, cute puppies, celebrity gossip — all these are wrapped up in headlines that move your mouse hand even before your brain registers what it’s doing. This so-called “clickbait” exists for one purpose: clicks. And it isn’t simply a distraction (although it is that). Clickbait actually does damage. It’s almost always age-inappropriate for kids, it’s potentially harmful to your computer, it spreads misinformation, fake news, and dubious sources, and it degrades everyone’s collective experience of the internet.

The internet has increased the ability of anyone to publish content fairly inexpensively. Ad networks, such as Google’s AdSense, allow websites to earn money off the number of clicks their ads receive. This business model has changed the traditional news-publishing model, which runs ads to support the publication. Instead, ad-supported networks create content in order to run ads on it. Obviously, the more outrageous the stories, the more clicks they collect and the more money they make.

Clickbait is tough to ignore, and it’s hard enough for adults to resist the temptation to click; imagine how hard it is for kids, who are already distractible, impulsive, and lacking the executive functioning skills to thoroughly think through the consequences of their actions (in this case, getting stuck in a quagmire of nonsense). Understanding the techniques of clickbait and practicing mindful internet behavior can help us all resist the lure of outrageous stories, stay on task, and stop the spread of fake news.

Check out these classic clickbait techniques, and practice mindful clicking using the tips below.

Here are some clickbait clues to identify for kids:

Headlines. Any bold claims, such as “You won’t believe what happened next,” are red flags that a story is clickbait.
Weird GIFs. Animated images that illustrate something unusual and that lure you into investigating are usually invitations to scams.
Make-money-at-home schemes. Anything that promises you can make money by not lifting a finger is fraudulent.
Enticing photos. Scantily clad bodies, diseases, distorted images — these are all clickbait and lead nowhere good.
Sales. Whatever you’ve shopped for recently often turns up in your social media feed or on your Google search results.
Contests and gimmicks. Slogans such as “Share this!” or “You’ve Won!” tend to lead to more clickbait — and they may harbor malware.

Work on learning how not only to spot clickbait but to resist clicking on it.

Feelings before. Before you click, think about what the headline is asking you to do and why. Pausing that extra moment de-escalates the impulse to click.
Feelings after. OK, so you clicked. What did you see? How did you feel? Was it a waste? What could you have been doing if you hadn’t gone down the rabbit hole?

4 ways foreign tourists disrespect the cultures they’re visiting

The windward side of Oahu is seen from the motorcade as it takes President Barack Obama and the first family to snorkel at Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve, according to the White House, Thursday, Jan. 1, 2015, on the island of Oahu in Hawaii during the Obama family vacation. (Credit: AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

The world is a beautiful place that should be enjoyed and explored multiple times over. Those who are financially capable have a responsibility not to ruin the sites or take advantage of the people they encounter. It is hard to shed privilege and ethnocentric behaviors, but for the sake of humanity and life on Earth, we all have a duty to try. Here are four ways some tourists failed to keep that in mind.

1. Beg packers

In recent weeks, tourists visiting southeast Asian nations have been called out online for “beg packing” on the streets of nations like Thailand. The beg packers, as they are called in the media and by critics, are the epitome of privilege. They ask locals to finance their exotic expeditions and even go as far as taking on illegal jobs to pay for their travel expenses.

Thailand has cracked down on the practice by demanding that tourists entering the nation have roughly $600 in cash. Compared to other exploitative cases in which tourists take advantage of locals, beg packing is benign. Most tourists come to explore and appreciate the beautiful scenery and cultures of the respective nations they have visited. But some desecrate sacred landmarks or exploit them to live out fantasies and take selfies.

2. Poverty tourism

In 2015, poverty tourism dominated headlines after actress Gwyneth Paltrow decided to participate in an internet challenge to see if she could live off $29 for a week. She did it to bring awareness to the plight of those living on food stamps as part of New York City’s #FoodBankNYCChallenge.

Food stamps often do not fulfill the food needs of those who use them and they end up using food banks to fill in the gaps. Whether or not Paltrow’s decision to take part in this challenge was in poor taste is up for debate, but there are worse cases that are not debatable in the slightest.

The act of living like the poorest people of a given country, eating what they eat and experiencing their suffering by choice is the textbook definition of privilege. For some, visiting the downtrodden favelas of Brazil or the slums of India is a fun experience to see how the poor live. However, experts don’t see it that way.

“Slum tourism turns poverty into entertainment, something that can be momentarily experienced and then escaped from,” Kennedy Odede, the executive director of Shining Hope for Communities wrote in the New York Times. “People think they’ve really ‘seen’ something—and then go back to their lives and leave me, my family and my community right where we were before.”

Odede knew firsthand about poverty tours from living in Nairobi’s largest slum, Kibera. Slum tours offer tourists a chance to eat the food and meet the people living in the poorest part of a nation. On an Indian slum tour, visitors can learn how street people live, how they earn their cash and the harsh reality of not having basic necessities.

3. Sacred and historical places vandalized

Sometimes tourists just can’t help touching or breaking sacred landmarks in other countries. Over the years there have been countless examples of this kind of disrespectful behavior — most of it committed by young travelers.

In 2015, two California tourists engraved their initials on a wall of the Roman Colosseum. A similar incident occurred in 2013, when a 15-year-old Chinese tourist wrote some graffitti on a 3,500-year-old hieroglyphic at the temple of Luxor in Egypt. And in Australia, there have been several instances where tourists have graffitied and climbed the aboriginal monument Ayers Rock.

Then there’s the case of a German teen who climbed the pyramid of Cheops just to get a cool photo. The teenager knew the risk, but kept going up despite officials telling him to come back down at the halfway point.

The media claims the kids were being careless or got carried away; but either way, it ruins valuable cultural landmarks that ultimately hurt tourism for the future.

4. Poaching

Photos of Eric and Donald Trump Jr. boasting about the animals they’ve hunted and killed went viral in 2015, bringing poaching back into the cultural zeitgeist. It is common knowledge that a small number of very wealthy tourists take safari expeditions to hunt down rare and exotic animals. Several hunting outfits in the U.S. are responsible for bringing back more than 400 lion trophies — heads and furs — into the United States each year.

The illegal wildlife trade, big-game hunting and poaching have caused the elephant population in Africa to plummet drastically. Estimates claim that 100,000 elephants died in the last decade. African nations have reportedly lost $25 million a year due to poaching and the high demand for ivory on the black market. This ivory is often turned into items like jewelry or statues that tourists may buy unknowingly. Animal skins like leopards are also turned into décor items.

Poaching and big-game hunting aren’t exclusive to Africa; it happens in Asia too. In Vietnam, the false belief that rhino horn cures cancer has led to massive poaching of rhinos in South Africa and pushed the price of rhino horn to rival that of gold.

Tourism should be a chance for family and friends to bond and enjoy and learn about new cultures. All of these cases of disrespect and exploitation serve as warnings: Don’t be the next person to be banned from the great pyramids of Egypt.

At the Texas Prison Rodeo, a color line dissolved

(Credit: Getty/chinaface)

Well into the 20th century, segregation was a fact of daily life in Texas. Black citizens were barred from attending many sporting events, couldn’t eat at certain restaurants and weren’t able to stay at many hotels.

This was particularly true in the Texas prison system, where there were segregated work crews, barbershops, showers and dining halls. Recreational activities were also traditionally segregated by race, from sports teams to glee clubs.

So while researching my book “Convict Cowboys: The Untold History of the Texas Prison Rodeo,” I was surprised to find that, as far back as the 1930s, African-American and white convicts were permitted to compete in the same rodeos, despite the fact that spectators had to sit in segregated grandstands as they watched their favorite cowboys risk life and limb.

Decades before they had the same opportunity in other sporting events across Jim Crow America, the rodeo offered African-American inmates a rare chance to compete against their white counterparts.

Destination: Huntsville

The brainchild of the Texas prison system general manager Marshall Lee Simmons, the prison rodeo began its 50-plus year run in 1931 at Huntsville State Penitentiary. It was originally supposed to entertain the local prison community and correctional officers. But so many locals began showing up that Simmons realized that if they began charging gate fees, money could be raised to help fund education, recreation and medical programs for prisoners at a time when the Texas state legislature had allocated few resources for inmates beyond basic food and lodging.

The rodeo took place every Sunday in October between 1931 and 1986 (except 1943, when it was canceled due to the war) and lasted about two hours. Except for the most incorrigible inmates, all prisoners had the opportunity to attend one October Sunday show each year, and prison administrators even developed a protocol to bus them to Huntsville from the far corners of the Texas prison system.

The prison rodeo mimicked professional rodeos in that the main events featured saddle bronc riding. But in order to draw bigger crowds, organizers added more dangerous events, like chariot racing and wild horse racing, and invented sideshows steeped in racist caricatures: comedy sketches that featured the exaggerated pratfalls of black entertainers and performances by the Cotton Pickers Glee Club, a troupe of singers selected from the prison’s farm units.

The event also added celebrity appearances to increase attendance, including cultural icons Tom Mix, Mickey Mantle, John Wayne, Steve McQueen and Johnny Cash. (This was the first prison Cash ever performed at.) The rodeo became so popular that the arena needed to expand, and by the 1950s, the Huntsville arena could accommodate 30,000 spectators at a time.

“They don’t draw the color line”

Beyond the spectacle and the swelling crowds, one journalist in 1936 observed a particularly notable aspect of the prison rodeo: “They don’t draw the color line in these contests,” he wrote, “Negro and white convicts being equally free to enter.”

In mid-20th-century Texas, that was a big deal.

In fact, during the 1950s, Texas would implement more new segregation laws than in any prior decade. Amendments to the state penal code required that public facilities be segregated by race, from state parks to tuberculosis wards. Voters were still required to pay poll taxes, and anyone who entered an interracial marriage could be sentenced to two years in prison.

Until the 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education — which outlawed de jure racial segregation — the Texas prison rodeo was, as far as I’ve been able to discover in research, the only competitive sporting event in the South that wasn’t segregated.

It was so popular among black Texans that families would trek to Huntsville from across the state, filling the colored sections of stands. Ebony magazine, the country’s leading African-American periodical, took notice.

“Contrary to customary practices in the Southland,” one article noted, “the Prison Rodeo is not a segregated competition and usually a fourth of the contestants are Negroes.”

The February 1953 edition featured a photograph of a black couple trying on souvenir cowboy hats. In an interview, the couple said they had driven more than 100 miles from Port Arthur to Huntsville to take in the spectacle “Because of the great number of Negro participants in the annual rodeo.”

Over the years, many of the most talented riders — the winners of the coveted Top Hand Buckle — were black convicts. They include Willie Craig, who won the Top Hand Buckle in 1976 at the age of 56, and Emmett “Lightning” Perry and Alex Hill, who never won the top award.

But the best was the legendary O’Neal Browning, whom Ebony lavished with coverage.

At six feet 180 pounds, he was an imposing presence. He had witnessed his first prison rodeo event as a free man in 1946. Three years later, he’d have the opportunity to compete after being sentenced to life in prison for murdering his father with an axe.

By the 1970s, he had won the Top Hand Buckle a record seven times, despite having only one thumb. In one interview, Browning was matter-of-fact about the injury: He explained that while steer roping, his left thumb got caught in the rope loop and “When the steer jerked, it pulled it completely off.”

He enjoyed sharing this story with younger convict cowboys, usually noting that he was lucky it wasn’t his right thumb: If he’d lost that, he would have lost the ability to grip the rigging when he rode bulls, which he managed to do with only one thumb well into his fifties.

Browning would never get a chance to test his skills outside the prison walls. But other convict cowboys with lighter sentences had little chance of continuing their careers upon their release. In order to compete, they needed the blessing of the Rodeo Cowboy Association (RCA), which prohibited riders with a criminal record.

The Texas Prison Rodeo’s run came to an end in 1986, when the prison board in Austin finally pulled the plug, citing falling revenue and fears of injury lawsuits.

Yet to this day, its biggest legacy is one tinged with irony. Only within the walls of a prison arena were social barriers that existed in the free world able to be toppled.

Mitchel P. Roth, Professor of Criminal Justice, Sam Houston State University

Mayo pain expert: Holistic approach helps patients ditch opioids

(Credit: AP Photo/Chris Post)

Each year, more than 300 patients with chronic pain take part in a three-week program at the Pain Rehabilitation Center at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. Their complaints range widely, from specific problems such as intractable lower-back pain to systemic issues such as fibromyalgia. By the time patients enroll, many have tried just about everything to get their chronic pain under control. Half are taking opioids.

In this 40-year-old program, that’s a deal breaker. Participants must agree to taper off pain medications during their time at Mayo.

More than 80 percent of the patients who enroll stay for the entire program, said Wesley Gilliam, the center’s clinical director, and many previous opioid users who finish the treatment report six months later that they have been able to stay off opioids. Just as important, he added, they have learned strategies to deal with their pain.

But such a program is not for everyone. Insurers might disagree that the intensive, interdisciplinary approach is medically necessary for some patients or simply not cover the program’s billing codes, he said. Mayo’s insurance team sometimes advocates on patients’ behalf if they’re good candidates for treatment, but success isn’t assured.

Mayo’s program isn’t the only one to address the emotional, social and psychological aspects of pain, and other programs also focus on reducing patients’ reliance on addictive medications to manage their pain. But as the nation weathers an opioid epidemic, there are too few programs like these around the country to address the need, Gilliam said.

Gilliam, a clinical psychologist with a specialty in behavioral pain management, talked with me about the program.

The transcript has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Q: How do pain medications work? By blunting the pain?

They blunt some of the pain. Opioids are very effective for acute problems, but they were never designed to be used chronically. They’re not effective in the long term.

Opioids are central nervous system depressants. They soothe people who are in distress. Many people aren’t demonstrating improved functioning when they take opioids; it’s calming their nerves. It’s chemical coping.

Q: In treating pain, does it matter what’s causing it or how severe it is?

Pain is pain. The fundamental approach to self-managing it doesn’t change based on the cause or severity of the pain. 

Q: How does someone wind up at a program like yours?

Virtually all of our patients have tried and exhausted primary and secondary treatment options for pain.

[In] primary care, a patient comes in with a complaint, and a treatment plan is developed. It generally involves encouraging the patient to be active, to stretch, maybe the doctor initiates a non-opioid medication like a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) or an antidepressant.

If the patient continues to complain of chronic pain, the primary care provider will step up to level two and refer someone to a neurologist or maybe a pain psychologist or pain anesthesiologist.

If patients don’t respond, they start to think about step three, which is a pain program like Mayo.

Q: How does the Mayo program work?

People come to us every weekday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. for three weeks.

We don’t take a medical approach. It’s a biopsychosocial approach, [which] acknowledges not only the biological aspect of pain, but also recognizes that psychological and social variables contribute to how people experience pain.

That is not to say that pain is imagined, but rather how people experience pain is influenced by mood, anxiety and how that person’s environment responds to the person’s symptoms.

A more medical approach tends to focus on targeting and eliminating symptoms at the expense of the recognition of individual differences.

Q: What does that mean for the patient who’s in pain?

People need to accept that they have pain and focus on their quality of life. Some approaches reinforce in patients that the only way you can function is if you reduce your pain, as measured on a pain scale from zero to 10.

We focus on how to get you back into your life by focusing on function instead of eliminating symptoms and pain. When I refer to functioning, I mean getting back into important areas of your life such as work, social activities and recreation. If you’re waiting for pain to go away, you’re never going to get back into your life. When that happens, people get despondent, they get depressed.

Q: So how do you help people manage it?

When you’re in chronic pain and it’s poorly managed, the nervous system can get out of whack. Your body behaves as if it’s under stress all the time, even when it’s not. Your muscles may be tense and your heart and breathing rates elevated, among other things.

With meditation and relaxation exercises, we’re trying to teach people to learn to relax their bodies and hopefully kick in a relaxation response.

If I have low-back pain, for example, during periods of stress muscular tension is going to exacerbate the pain in my back. We focus on helping people to disengage from their symptoms.

By learning to relax in response to stress, muscular tension can be diminished and the experience of pain eased. This doesn’t require a medication or a procedure, just insight and implementation of a relaxation skill.

Relaxation/meditation training is one component of a much broader treatment package. All aspects of our treatment — cognitive techniques for managing mood, anxiety and anger, physical therapy, occupational therapy — are all designed to settle the nervous system.

Q: Does insurance typically cover the program?  

Insurance companies may want to see patients complete more conservative treatment approaches before approving an interdisciplinary pain rehabilitation program like ours.

There are patients whose policies don’t cover our billing codes. If we deem a patient a good candidate, we’ll write letters saying they should be accepted.

There are a very select few who have paid out-of-pocket for our program. This is a significant minority, however. The program can cost up to $40,000 for someone with other complicated medical problems in addition to chronic pain.

There are studies that show these programs do save money over the long term in health care costs and reduced health care utilization.

If we’re going to manage this chronic pain problem, we have to look at it for what it is: multifaceted. You can’t just treat the symptom, you have to treat the whole person.

To my daughter who thinks she might be gay

(Credit: Getty/Nastia11)

When you were still a tiny seedling curled up inside me, the Mexican spiritualist held a silver chain over my swelling belly. There’s a strong masculine energy here, she solemnly pronounced. The baby will be a boy.

But you weren’t. At our next doctor visit, your father peered into the spectral ultrasound image, the pulsating heart at its center. She’ll play soccer, anyway, he said stubbornly.

When you were a little sprout of four years, you were the prince in elaborate make-believe scenes acted out with your sister. That was the year you told us you’d never marry.

At six you made a collage of beautiful women cut from magazines. Look at my sexy ladies, you told me, lowering your voice on sexy. I put it in your baby box; it’s there now, on top of the blue-and-pink-striped hospital toboggan and your first onesie, Daddy’s Little Princess.

At eight you wanted to be Isaac Newton in the school play. I look like him, you protested when the teacher said no. All the boys had long hair back then. I agreed. We chalked it up to Mrs. Lambert’s lack of imagination, but I knew what else might be there, lurking behind. Like the tea set an aunt bought for your birthday, the year you asked for a Spider-Man mask.

Late one afternoon when the sunlight was sparkling off the pond, you asked me, What if I’m gay?

Then . . . you are, I said, draping an arm over your shoulder. We walked on, and after a while I added, Uncle Paul is gay.

I love Uncle Paul.

Me too.

And the one that does Dory’s voice in the Nemo movie?

That’s right. She’s one of the coolest people I can think of.

You were satisfied.

You grew. New teeth replaced smaller, lost ones (carefully labeled by date in zip-loc bags in your baby box); you stretched upward, blossomed. Now you’re a tall, willowy creature in whom I hardly recognize any sign of myself. A beauty, by anyone’s standards.

Mom, can I talk to you? you ask one night. I look up from my book, blinking at being so suddenly drawn back to the here and now. You sit down on the bed beside me, push your bangs back absentmindedly. Your dark eyes are anxious, and I feel a flicker of fear myself. There’s so much against you: the world’s cruel prejudices, its judgment. It’s hard enough to be a woman, any woman.

Then I rally. To hell with them. You have us on your side. Until my dying breath, you’ll have me.

So I smile, take your hand. Tell me about her, I say.

Don’t drive distracted, wireless industry says, but safety advocates want more than talk

In this July 12, 2016 photo, Nissan Motor Co. Deputy General Manager Atsushi Iwaki gets his hands off of the steering wheel of a self-driving new Serena minivan during a test drive at Nissan test course in Yokosuka, near Tokyo. (Credit: AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi)

Just after noon on March 29, a pickup truck crossed the center line of a rural road in South Texas and slammed into a church bus, killing 13 members of the First Baptist Church of New Braunfels. A police report said the 20-year-old pickup driver, who survived, had taken medication and was texting. In other words, he was on two drugs, not one.

It was a particularly gruesome toll for a single crash, but in recent years thousands have died on the nation’s highways, mostly in ones and twos, as a result of drivers fiddling with their phones. Despite more crashworthy vehicles, in 2016 U.S. traffic deaths reached 40,000, the highest number in years, according to an estimate by the National Safety Council. Distraction from wireless devices is widely suspected to be a factor.

Smartphones are portals to the internet and consciously designed to seize the user’s attention. For some drivers, the ping of an incoming message is as irresistible as an open bag of potato chips on the passenger seat. The warning not to dial and text now seems quaint because drivers in large numbers are doing so much more: Reading and sending emails, viewing photos and videos, playing games, browsing social media and surfing the internet.

The main countermeasures — campaigns exhorting drivers to stay focused and ticketing violators of state bans on texting and hand-held use of phones — have had limited effect. Apps that can block electronic notifications, such as AT&T’s DriveMode, are voluntary and easy for drivers to bypass or ignore.  Safety advocates want wireless companies to put the genie back in the bottle, or at least on a leash, when people are driving, by automatically blocking electronic distractions.

Christopher Kutz, a University of California Berkeley law professor, compared the situation to opioid drug makers “who distribute their product widely and then close their eyes to what seems to be a pretty inevitable risk of catastrophic misuse.” Companies in the mobile ecosystem ”should do much more to make it harder to consume while driving.”

“The companies do have responsibility,” said Deborah Hersman, president and chief executive of the National Safety Council. “These are devices that they put out. People are addicted to their phones, but connectivity has no place behind the wheel.”

But industry members endorse the current strategies, which put full weight on personal responsibility and impulse control, and require next to nothing of them. They fiercely resist any limits on the way they design and market their enticing gadgets and, according to critics, have snubbed possible technological fixes that could curb drivers’ temptations.

The industry is lobbying the Trump administration to kill proposed federal guidelines aimed at limiting distraction from smartphones and other portable devices. The nonbinding guidelines, issued in draft form in December by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), call on industry players to collaborate on technology that would disable distracting features of drivers’ phones without blocking devices of passengers. Like other safety and health initiatives advanced in the waning months of the Obama administration, the guidelines could be scrapped.

Leading the opposition are a pair of trade groups that are a potent force in Washington: the Consumer Technology Association, which represents 2,200 companies in the $321 billion-a-year consumer electronics industry; and the CTIA (formerly known as the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association).

Between them, the groups combine all segments of the mobile wireless ecosystem — telecom companies, makers of devices and operating systems, app developers and retailers — and include such household names as Apple, Google, Samsung, Qualcomm, AT&T and Verizon. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the CTIA and Consumer Technology Association have spent $78 million and $23 million, respectively, on lobbying in Washington since the start of 2010. Their member companies have poured hundreds of millions more into lobbying and political campaigns. Both groups declined interview requests.

The “worst of government overreach”

In a letter in February to Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao and the White House Office of Management and Budget, technology association CEO Gary Shapiro claimed the guidelines represent “the worst of government overreach” and would stifle technological innovation. In a statement provided to FairWarning, the CTIA said: “We absolutely share NHTSA’s goal of maintaining driver focus. But we favor a more flexible approach that takes account of the evolving nature of technology.”

At times, CTIA officials appear to have exaggerated the difficulty of selectively blocking drivers’ phones–as in their opposition to a bill in Massachusetts that would require that customers on family plans be offered at least one free app that can block cellphone use when their teens are driving. The group also declared unworkable a bill in New Hampshire to disable texting and email in moving vehicles.

In both instances, the group cited the so-called ‘passenger problem’ — that is, how to block a driver’s phone without also locking out devices of passengers. “This technology mandate cannot make a distinction between the person driving the vehicle and his or her passengers,” according to a November, 2015 letter  from a senior CTIA official to Massachusetts lawmakers. “In fact, the mandate cannot distinguish between someone in a car versus a passenger traveling on a bus, by rail, in a taxi, or any other mode of transportation.”

But that statement appears to be misleading. Several firms (here, here and here) have developed software or hardware that can sense when someone is driving and selectively block their phone. “Too many lives have been lost,” Rep. Carolyn Dykema, the sponsor of the Massachusetts bill, recently told FairWarning. “I’m very skeptical about the argument that we can’t come up with a technology to address this.”

Apple, too, has found a solution to the passenger problem, according to one of its patents. The patent was submitted in 2008, but for some reason not issued until 2014. It states: “Texting while driving has become so widespread that it is doubtful that law enforcement will have any significant effect on stopping the process.” The Apple technology is capable of selectively “disabling any function of a handheld computing device that may interfere with the safe operation of a vehicle by a driver.”

The existence of the patent — and Apple’s failure to deploy the lockout technology — became center stage in several lawsuits against the company, including a 2015 wrongful death case in federal court in East Texas. As previously reported by The New York Times, the case involved a driver who was texting on her Apple iPhone when she crashed her Dodge Ram into the rear of another vehicle and pushed it into oncoming traffic, where it was broadsided by a truck. A 7-year-old child was paralyzed and his grandmother and another woman were killed. Another case stemmed from the death of 5-year-old Moriah Modisette. She was killed by a driver who slammed into her parents’ vehicle while using Apple’s FaceTime video calling service.

Gregory Love, a lawyer for the bereaved families in both cases, said the patent showed that Apple understood the risks of drivers using iPhones, but decided to ignore them. “If you create the monster, you should have the duty to control it,” he said.

However, the two cases were recently dismissed when judges ruled (here and here) that the drivers, not Apple, were solely responsible. The rulings are being appealed, and no cases have reached the discovery phase in which Apple could be required to explain why it has not deployed the lockout system.

Apple recently announced that the next upgrade of its operating system, iOS 11, due out in the fall, will feature a ”Do Not Disturb While Driving” app that can silence messages and calls. Few details have been released but it appears that like other anti-distraction apps, use will be voluntary. Apple officials did not respond to several interview requests.

Smartphones have been around for barely more than a decade, yet U.S. users number 224 million. They have become such a potent cultural and behavioral force, particularly among teens and young adults, that it can be hard to remember what things were like without them. Psychologists and social critics have bemoaned the wasted time and social isolation that can result from being glued to a smartphone, but the situation is more fraught when compulsive users get behind the wheel.

Although education is a key part of the anti-distraction playbook, it appears that public awareness could not be much greater. A recent Google search of the term ”distracted driving” turned up 3.25 million results. “In the realm of distracted driving, there appears to be little to no relationship between knowing risk and changing behavior,” observed Paul Atchley, a professor of psychology at Kansas University.

According to a 2016 survey by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, “Most drivers view texting and emailing while driving as a very serious threat to their own personal safety and consider it completely unacceptable.” Yet “nearly 1 in 3 . . . admit to typing or sending a text message or email” in the past month, and “2 in 5 . . . report reading a text message or email while driving.”

Research from AT&T was even more sobering. Although 95 percent of drivers disapproved of distracted driving, the survey found that 71 percent use smartphones while driving — including 61 percent who said they read or send texts; 33 percent who read or send emails; 28 percent who surf the web; 27 percent who use Facebook; and 17 percent who said they take a selfie or photo. Of the wireless carriers, AT&T is by far the most emphatic about the risks, stating: “It’s not possible to drive safely while using a smartphone.”

David Greenfield, a psychologist and co-founder of the Center for Internet and Technology Addiction, said the ping of a smartphone delivers a little burst of dopamine, a brain chemical associated with pleasure and reward.

And Ramsay Brown, co-founder and chief operations officer of Dopamine Labs, a Venice, Calif., artificial intelligence software firm, said that the smartphone “has been carefully engineered to habituate you to respond to it every time it makes any noise. . . . Now if you’re just sitting around your dinner table and you decide your family is not as important as YouTube . . . I can’t tell you how to live your crappy personal life,” he told FairWarning. “But when you get behind the wheel of a car those habits don’t disappear.”

With smartphones constantly adding compelling new features, entrepreneurs and developers of anti-distraction technology saw a need and opportunity. But a number of these startups have failed, and the survivors have yet to become sustainable businesses. “There’s a graveyard that is many acres in area that houses the individuals, the companies, the well-intended souls that have tried to address this problem,” said Dan Abramson, a co-founder of Cellepathy, Inc., a developer of anti-distraction software.

Zero traction

The main barrier has been an inability to engage the big gatekeepers with their vast market reach — the makers of operating systems, manufacturers of handsets and wireless service providers. The big companies have been reluctant to embrace anti-distraction technology, observers say, because they do not see it as a moneymaker and fear a loss of customers if they limit functions of drivers’ phones.

Among the casualties was Aegis Mobility, a developer of text-blocking software that launched in 2007 but went out of business last year. “We got zero traction” because ”it was too difficult, too expensive and it had no return” for the major players, said Aegis founder Steve Williams. Timothy Smith, former Aegis chairman and lead investor, said the company burned through $17 million before giving up. “The market as we envisioned it . . . just never took off,” he said.

“It’s a painful subject because I had so much of my net worth and my emotion and my time in it,” Smith said. ”This was something I thought could be part of a legacy” and ”make people safer.”

Erik Wood, founder of Otter LLC, another defunct developer of anti-texting software, started the company after seeing his 3-year old daughter nearly run over by a texting driver. Wood told FairWarning that at one point Otter seemed close to a partnership with handset maker Nokia, but the deal fizzled. Marc Kleinmaier, the former head of developer experience for Nokia North America, confirmed that he was “very enthusiastic” about the idea of preloading Otter’s text-blocking software into new Nokia phones, “but at levels much higher than my pay grade there wasn’t enough interest in getting it done.”

“None of these companies are brave enough” to be the first, Kleinmaier said, “because they’re afraid of the consumer backlash.”

That worry makes this “a classic case for legislation,” said Kutz, the Berkeley law professor. A company “that requires its consumers to jump through hoops is likely to lose a lot of market share to the other companies unless there’s a common requirement.”

Some surviving start-ups have pivoted from the gatekeepers to directly targeting two promising markets: Parents who want to police their teen drivers, and companies that have policies against on-road use of cellphones by employees but no way to enforce them. Cellcontrol, based in Baton Rouge, La., offers DriveID, a small hardware device that attaches to the windshield and allows parents or company fleet managers to block data, texts and calls to the driver without affecting devices of passengers. A spokesman said Cellcontrol has distributed 40,000 to 50,000 DriveID units.

Katasi, based in Boulder, Colo., also sees parents and fleets as prime markets for its device called Groove, which can blocks texts and other notifications. But Groove can be activated only via telecom company networks. In 2014, the firm seemed close to a breakthrough deal with Sprint before the company pulled back, according to a report in The New York Times.

Lying awake at night

Katasi founder Scott Tibbitts said he’s come to understand that it isn’t distracted driving deaths that keep industry CEOs awake at night, but how to lift the stock price. Their attitude, Tibbits said, is that anti-distraction technology “has to be a good business for us — We’re not in the business of philanthropy.” Even so, Ready Mobile, an Iowa-based marketer of pre-paid phone services, recently announced plans to offer Groove, and Tibbitts said he expects a deal with a major wireless carrier will be announced soon.

Others are pessimistic that effective solutions will reach a broad swath of motorists without a government mandate.

“Some type of regulatory or legislative action is required because the mobile ecosystem will not take action on its own,’’ software developer Cellepathy said in comments filed with NHTSA. “Distracted driving safety technology is not something that will help sell more phones and therefore the profit motive will not drive development of such technology.”

Such a mandate is nowhere on the horizon. Given powerful industry resistance and the Trump administration’s anti-regulatory crusade, even guidelines may be dead.

***

In December, 2011, the National Transportation Safety Board decided it had seen enough. Its investigations had implicated cellphone use in a string of deadly incidents: the 2008 commuter train wreck that killed 25 people in Chatsworth, Calif., a big rig-passenger van collision that killed 11 in Kentucky; and a truck and school bus crash in eastern Missouri that caused two deaths and 38 injuries. So the safety board called on states to ban all non-emergency uses of cellphones, except those, like navigation, that support safe driving. It also urged the industry to develop technology to block electronic distractions on drivers’ phones.

The NTSB is an advisory agency with no regulatory powers, and its recommendation drew an acid response from the Consumer Technology Association (then known as the Consumer Electronics Association). “There is absolutely no real world evidence supporting such a blanket prohibition, unless one would also ban fast food, make-up application and engaging with children in the car.”

At the time, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood was making distracted driving a personal crusade, and a top priority for NHTSA. Drivers on cellphones were not the only problem. Automakers had launched an electronics arms race with built-in infotainment systems that they claimed made driving safer by enabling drivers to stay connected while keeping their eyes on the road and hands on the wheel. Many features of the built-in systems, and of smartphones, can be activated with voice commands. However, research has shown (here and here) that voice systems can also be complicated and distracting in the noisy environment of a car.

The softer path

Rather than attempt regulations to hold back the tide, NHTSA chose the softer path of guidelines. The first phase, adopted in 2012, focused on disabling the riskiest features of built-in infotainment systems. The guidelines called on automakers to lock out certain tasks — watching video, typing text messages, browsing the web and social media–unless a car is in park. Other tasks meeting a ”two second rule” — the driver could perform them without looking away from the road for more than two seconds — would be allowed. Critics have blasted this as reckless, noting that in the space of two seconds a car going 60 miles per hour travels 176 feet.

NHTSA next turned to drafting the portable device guidelines that are now under review. The proposal calls for the industry to deploy a Driver Mode that automatically disables manual texting, games, social media apps and Internet browsing by the driver, without blocking passengers’ phones. Other tasks that meet the two second rule would be permitted by pairing smartphones with in-vehicle electronics and using their screens and controls.

Some commenters have applauded. ”This issue should have been taken care of long time ago to jam cellphones while vehicles are in motion,” the safety director for a trucking company said in a comment submitted to NHTSA. “Great idea and please get this rolling. Lives depend on it.”

A write-in campaign by the American Motorcyclist Association generated more than 1,500 biker pleas for NHTSA to act. Most were form letters, but some cited near-death experiences at the hands of distracted drivers. “My wife and I are both motorcyclists,” one wrote. ”Last year she was nearly killed when a texting kid in a pickup truck crossed the center line. Without her keen attention to the road ahead and expert evasive action she would have gotten clipped leaving behind a heart-broken husband, 4 kids, and 4 grandchildren.”

Others complained that the proposal is weak, or rejected the idea of voluntary measures altogether. Christopher A. Hart, who until March was chairman of the NTSB, said that by accepting some infotainment features, the guidelines send ”the wrong message to states and the driving public.” Similarly, the nonprofit group Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety said voluntary guidelines are “woefully insufficient to address this public safety epidemic.”

Unyielding opposition

Given their nonbinding nature, the industry’s unyielding opposition might seem disproportionate. But industry officials say their members would be under strong pressure to comply, in part to avoid liability exposure in distracted driving cases. They further contend that NHTSA, while empowered to regulate vehicle designs, has no legal authority over portable devices.

The guidelines represent a “dangerously expansive” assertion of NHTSA’s authority and “could have a sweeping effect on the multibillion-dollar market for mobile devices and apps,” the Consumer Technology Association warned in its letter to Transportation Secretary Chao and OMB.

Industry groups had raised this challenge before but were rebuffed by Obama administration officials, who said NHTSA was on firm legal ground. Several Republican lawmakers, including chairmen of four key House panels, had channeled the industry’s arguments in a November, 2014 letter to then Transportation Secretary Antony Foxx. “The activities being conducted by NHTSA in its development of the Guidelines are beyond the scope of its authority,” the letter said. The technology association enclosed the congressional letter with its February letter to Chao and the OMB.

The signers were GOP representatives Fred Upton of Michigan who, at the time of the letter was chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee; Bill Shuster of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee; Greg Walden of Oregon, then chairman of the Communications and Technology Subcommittee; and Lee Terry of Nebraska, then chairman of the Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade Subcommittee (Terry left Congress after his reelection defeat in 2014).

All four had received campaign support from the Consumer Technology Association and CTIA, and considerably larger sums from member companies such as Verizon, AT&T and Google. The two trade groups have donated $56,750 to Upton’s campaigns and leadership political action committee in the last decade; $38,750 to Walden and his leadership PAC; $23,500 to Shuster and his leadership PAC; and $28,500 to Terry, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Emails and calls to their congressional offices were not returned.

NHTSA officials declined to be interviewed about the guidelines, but said in an email that they are reviewing the comments “and will consider this information … as we make decisions about whether, how and when to move forward.”

Ironically, distracted driving is considered such a daunting problem that it has fueled enthusiasm for the automotive and tech worlds’ shiny new thing: driverless cars. As the technology association said in comments to NHTSA, ”the best and ultimate solutions” for distracted driving “are the technology and path to the driverless car.”

Some new cars and trucks already have autonomous features, such as automatic emergency braking and correction for drifting out of lanes. But some experts think it will be many years before fully self-driving cars will be even as capable as the flawed human motorists they are meant to replace. And some are concerned that, in the meantime, efforts to combat distracted driving will wane in expectation of a magic bullet.

Douglas H. Weber, a senior researcher for the Center for Responsive Politics, contributed to this story.