Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 319

6 ways this Ivy League university is acting like a PR firm for junk food, GMOs and pesticides

FILE - This Monday, Aug. 31, 2015, file photo, shows the Monsanto logo at the Farm Progress Show in Decatur, Ill. On Wednesday, April 6, 2016, Monsanto reports financial earnings. (AP Photo/Seth Perlman, File) (Credit: AP)

If a scientist has a relationship with a large company, how can the public fully trust the statements they are making about that company’s products? When these relationships aren’t made public, things get even murkier.

But that’s exactly what’s happening in the U.S. food industry, where large corporations enlist university academics to provide their imprimatur on a host of consumer products — some of which may actually be unhealthy and even unsafe.

Like so much else, it comes down to money: Big agriculture and food companies like Monsanto and Coca-Cola are able to procure influence among academics by providing research funding — and sometimes even research topics. The danger is that the resulting “research” could amount to little more than corporate-funded marketing that, to the unwitting public, has the stamp of approval from a prestigious university.

In particular, relationships between food companies and academia has caused professors to take sides on controversial issues, swaying the “science” on issues that matter to Big Food and Ag — like junk food, GMOs and pesticides — issues that also have the potential to have a profound, and possibly negative impact on human health.

Laura Schmidt, professor of health policy at the school of medicine at the University of California San Francisco, said monetary relationships between academics and food corporations, like sugary beverage and junk food companies, are destructive to both the credibility of science and public health.

“I would go as far as to say that it is immoral,” said Schmidt, whose research focuses on addiction, poverty, obesity-related metabolic disease. “We’re talking people getting sick. And the idea that scientists are allowing themselves to be purchased by corporations . . . is a big problem.”

One repeat offender is Cornell University, several of whose professors have been lured into the propaganda machines of Big Ag and Big Food. One professor, Brian Wansink, the director of the university’s Food and Brand Lab, is facing allegations of self-plagiarism and possible data misrepresentation in multiple papers and studies. The Journal of Sensory Studies even retracted one of Wansink’s studies because it contained a “major overlap” with another study he published.

Cornell is a prestigious Ivy League school. So when their professors support junk food, pesticides and GMOs, it can have a damaging and potentially lasting impact worldwide.

Here are six ways Cornell has become a PR agency for Big Food and Big Ag.

1. Cornell professor Tony Shelton followed a Monsanto executive’s suggestion to write a pro-GMO paper.

Anthony Shelton, professor in the Department of Etymology at Cornell, co-wrote a paper published on a pro-GMO site, the Genetic Literacy Project, about the sustainability benefits of herbicide and insect tolerant plants as a part of a special report titled “Beyond the Science.”

It was later revealed through emails obtained through FOIA requests by U.S. Right To Know, a nonprofit that advocates for transparency in the food system, that Eric Sachs, a Monsanto Outreach Lead, had contacted eight academics, including Shelton, to author the papers in this pro-GMO series. Though the professors weren’t paid to write these papers, the email provided the researchers specific topics with suggested backgrounds to keep in mind while authoring their work.

The email stated that the paper topics were chosen based upon their impact on consumer acceptance and public policy—and that the goal was to increase the public’s understanding of the benefits of GMO crops.

In the paper, Shelton and his co-author David Shaw, the vice president for Research and Economic Development at Mississippi State University, write that “GM crop technology provides farmers with advanced integrated pest management (IPM) tools to ensure a productive and safe crop.”

However, Michael Hansen, senior staff scientist at the Consumers Union, a consumer advocacy nonprofit, said that because the U.S. does not require safety assessments of foods before they go on the market, there’s simply no way to say all GMOs are safe. He said that companies can participate in a voluntary safety consultation with the FDA, but no conclusions are made.

“The FDA will often say we have no questions, but we remind the company that it is up to them to determine safety,” he said. “That is not a conclusion of the FDA of saying these things are safe.”

2. The Cornell Alliance for Science is a PR front for the agrichemical industry.

According to its website, the Cornell Alliance for Science is a nonprofit that aims to restore science within decision making. The nonprofit was launched in 2014 with the intention to “depolarize the GMO debate,” as stated by its director Sarah Evanega Davidson. Davidson failed to respond to comment for this article.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which funds CAS, is pro-GMO and Gates himself has even bought millions of dollars worth of shares in Monsanto stock.

Despite this, Davidson wrote in a blog post that CAS has no relationship with the industry. The Alliance often paints a one-sided story of GMOs, speaking only about positive aspects, ignoring issues such as GMOs have increased herbicide use, especially of glyphosate, an herbicide declared “probably carcinogenic” by the World Health Organization. (Other scientists are debating this declaration.)

In response to U.S. Right to Know’s obtaining of emails between academics and Monsanto through FOIA requests, the CAS called on the public to “stand with science” to protect scientific freedom. The CAS asked the public to sign a letterthat referred to the request for these emails as “anti-science bullying.”

The CAS features a variety of pro-GMO speakers including many journalists, like Tamar Haspel, a columnist for The Washington Post who often writes pro-gmo columns, and who admitted being paid by the industry she reports on. This activity is called “buckraking,” which TruthWiki defines as “the practice of accepting large sums of money for speaking to special interest or business groups, especially when viewed as compromising the objectivity of journalists.”

CAS also offers fellowships for journalists to promote what they euphemistically call “contextualized reporting” on biotechnology and other food security issues.

Paul Thacker, an environmental journalist who reports on GMO-related issues, said he does not understand why any journalist would want to associate with the Alliance.

“What I find most troubling about the Alliance for Science is that they pushing to rebrand FOIA as some sort of bullying technique,” Thacker said. “Why any journalist would want to speak in front of such an organization is beyond my comprehension.”

Jonathan Latham, co-founder of the Bioscience Resource Project, a group that studies the safety of genetic engineering, said Cornell is allowing the industry to advertise in a space that appears to be independent, but in reality is not.

“So, what Cornell University is basically doing is hosting an institution that can do PR for the biotech industry,” Latham said.

3. Cornell professor David Just testified that he worries GMO labels will falsely alarm and mislead consumers.

There is no scientific consensus on GMO safety, according to a report signed by over 300 independent researchers written to challenge reports of this said consensus. While the report does not say that GMOs have been proven to be unsafe, it was made clear that the science has not yet been settled.

Yet in 2015, at a senate hearing on whether or not states can mandate labeling on GMO products, applied economics professor David R. Just said the GMO labels could. “mislead consumers into being afraid of something we know to be safe.”

Just said in a later conversation that he’s not opposed to all GMO labeling, but thinks it could be misleading especially because not all production processes are required to be listed. Just also said he believes it’s not important whether or not a food contains a GMO, but why the GMO is present.

Rob Lustig, professor of pediatrics in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of California at San Francisco, said that because the science on GMOs is still unsettled, it would be important to for scientists to know what products contained GMOs if problems arise in the future.

“I’m for labeling because labeling will be able to provide us the information to populate the database if it turns out there is a problem, but that’s not what the food industry wants clearly because they don’t want to find a problem.”

4. Cornell professors Brian Wansink and David Just also oppose bans on large-size sodas.

Wansink, the professor facing allegations of academic misconduct, and Just, have also spoken against bans on larger sized sodas.

The two professors wrote an article in response to a proposed ban on sodas larger than 16 ounces in New York City. The article stated bans on large sized sodas are ineffective because consumers who want larger sized sodas will always find a way to get them. The article also suggests that bans like these would disproportionately affect the less affluent.

However, alternative research suggests that large-sized soda bans would actually be effective in targeting people who are overweight and not the poor. A study headed by Columbia health policy and management professor Y. Claire Yang tracked data from over 19,000 people across the U.S. and found that the soda ban would affect the same percentage of people across all income levels.

In an interview, Just said he felt at the time people were overstating the possible impact of a soda ban, and said while it likely could reduce obesity for small, specific numbers of people, it would not have a dramatic impact of reducing obesity. He said because of this, especially in areas where the ban faced pushback, it would be harder to implement a more effective bill in the future.

In 2013, the soda ban was rejected by New York State’s highest court.

5. Cornell received $4.8 million to support a GMO eggplant.

In 2016, the U.S. Agency for International Development, a government agency aimed to end global poverty, gave Cornell University almost a $5 million grant to incorporate BT Brinjal, a GMO eggplant, in Bangladesh. This implementation project is run by Shelton.

This grant was aimed to improve food security in Bangladesh by reducing yield losses, and therefore improve livelihoods by providing a stable income for farmers.

However, the grant was given to Cornell despite reports by Bangladeshi development policy research group UBINIG of major BT Brinjal crop failures in years prior. The press release Cornell University put out about the grant stated that the crop had actually increased yields, and reduced pesticides and pest infestation.

UBINIG reported officials from the Bangladeshi Department of Agriculture primarily took care of the crops during their short lives. They also reportedheavy use of pesticides, even banned pesticides, on the failing crop, despite claims that the crops would require none at all. Seventy-four percent of the farmers that grew BT Brinjal in this trial said they would never grow it again. UBINIG has also reported recent failures with the crop.

Hansen, who has been to Bangladesh and worked with UBINIG, said Cornell officials are spreading propaganda about the success of BT Brinjal.

6. Three Cornell academics write for the agrichemical industry PR site GMO Answers.

Peter Davies, professor emeritus at Cornell’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; Xiaohua Yang, postdoctoral associate in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences; and Shelton all write for GMO Answers. On the site, users ask questions about GMOs and hundreds of experts, including academics and officials for corporate agriculture companies, answer.

The website is funded by the Council for Biotechnology Information, whose members include Monsanto, Syngenta, DuPont, Bayer, Dow AgroSciences and BASF.

The website is run by U.S. Public Relations company Ketchum, the same company that represented the Honduran government amid a potential human rights crisis and which also represented Russia. There are also  that Ketchum committed espionage acts against non-profits like Greenpeace.

The website provides a one-sided view of GMOs, including saying GMOs caused a decrease in pesticides, when alternative studies say pesticide use has increased.

Davies said he has never been paid to answer questions on the website, and that his answers are put directly on the website unedited.

“So from that point of view, they do not influence what I say, and they do not censor what I say,” Davies said. “I write what I know and understand from the science.”

Yang declined to comment on the record for this article.

It is not made clear who owns or funds the website aside from its About Page, which discloses the seven agribusinesses that provide funding.

Schmidt said this lack of transparency is a problem.

“Think of the average person. Do they even know who Monsanto is and why they would care about GMOs,” Schmidt said. “Is it fair for members of the general public to be accessing information, not realizing that behind that information is a vested interest?”

Assault on academic freedom

T. Colin Campbell, professor emeritus at Cornell who formerly taught a course on plant-based eating at the university (which was abruptly canceled without his knowledge), said he is disappointed with the industry taking over academic interests at the college.

“Cornell is my home. I love the university. But in reality, what they’ve done is abhorrent, it’s disgusting, and I’d like to label this an assault on academic freedom. That’s really what it comes to.”

How the smartphone affected an entire generation of kids

(Credit: Reuters/Damir Sagolj)

As someone who researches generational differences, I find one of the most frequent questions I’m asked is “What generation am I in?”

If you were born before 1980, that’s a relatively easy question to answer: the Silent Generation was born between 1925 and 1945; baby boomers were born between 1946 and 1964; Gen X followed (born between 1965 and 1979).

Next come millennials, born after 1980. But where do millennials end, and when does the next generation begin? Until recently, I (and many others) thought the last millennial birth year would be 1999 — today’s 18-year-olds.

However, that changed a few years ago, when I started to notice big shifts in teens’ behavior and attitudes in the yearly surveys of 11 million young people that I analyze for my research. Around 2010, teens started to spend their time much differently from the generations that preceded them. Then, around 2012, sudden shifts in their psychological well-being began to appear. Together, these changes pointed to a generational cutoff around 1995, which meant that the kids of this new, post-millennial generation were already in college.

These teens and young adults all have one thing in common: Their childhood or adolescence coincided with the rise of the smartphone.

What makes iGen different

Some call this generation “Generation Z,” but if millennials aren’t called “Generation Y,” “Generation Z” doesn’t work. Neil Howe, who coined the term “millennials” along with his collaborator William Strauss, has suggested the next generation be called the “Homeland Generation,” but I doubt anyone will want to be named after a government agency.

A 2015 survey found that two out of three U.S. teens owned an iPhone. For this reason, I call them iGen, and as I explain in my new book “iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids are Growing up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy — and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood,” they’re the first generation to spend their adolescence with a smartphone.

What makes iGen different? Growing up with a smartphone has affected nearly every aspect of their lives. They spend so much time on the internet, texting friends and on social media — in the large surveys I analyzed for the book, an average of about six hours per day – that they have less leisure time for everything else.

That includes what was once the favorite activity of most teens: hanging out with their friends. Whether it’s going to parties, shopping at the mall, watching movies or aimlessly driving around, iGen teens are participating in these social activities at a significantly lower rate than their millennial predecessors.

iGen shows another pronounced break with millennials: Depression, anxiety, and loneliness have shot upward since 2012, with happiness declining.

The teen suicide rate increased by more than 50 percent, as did the number of teens with clinical-level depression.

A link that can’t be ignored

I wondered if these trends — changes in how teens were spending their free time and their deteriorating mental health – might be connected. Sure enough, I found that teens who spend more time on screens are less happy and more depressed, and those who spend more time with friends in person are happier and less depressed.

Of course, correlation doesn’t prove causation: Maybe unhappy people use screen devices more.

However, as I researched my book, I came across three recent studies that all but eliminated that possibility — at least for social media. In two of them, social media use led to lower well-being, but lower well-being did not lead to social media use.

Meanwhile, a 2016 study randomly assigned some adults to give up Facebook for a week and others to continue using it. Those who gave up Facebook ended the week happier, less lonely and less depressed.

What else is lost?

Some parents might worry about their teens spending so much time on their phones because it represents a radical departure from how they spent their own adolescence. But spending this much time on screens is not just different — in many ways, it’s actually worse.

Spending less time with friends means less time to develop social skills. A 2014 study found that sixth graders who spent just five days at a camp without using screens ended the time better at reading emotions on others’ faces, suggesting that iGen’s screen-filled lives might cause their social skills to atrophy.

In addition, iGen reads books, magazines and newspapers much less than previous generations did as teens: In the annual Monitoring the Futuresurvey, the percentage of high school seniors who read a nonrequired book or magazine nearly every day dropped from 60 percent in 1980 to only 16 percent in 2015. Perhaps as a result, average SAT critical reading scores have dropped 14 points since 2005. College faculty tell me that students have more trouble reading longer text passages, and rarely read the required textbook.

This isn’t to say that iGen teens don’t have a lot going for them. They are physically safer and more tolerant than previous generations were. They also seem to have a stronger work ethic and more realistic expectations than millennials did at the same age. But the smartphone threatens to derail them before they even get started.

To be clear, moderate smartphone and social media use — up to an hour a day — is not linked to mental health issues. However, most teens (and adults) are on their phones much more than that.

Somewhat to my surprise, the iGen teens I interviewed said they would rather see their friends in person than communicate with them using their phones. Parents used to worry about their teens spending too much time with their friends – they were a distraction, a bad influence, a waste of time.

But it might be just what iGen needs.

Jean Twenge, Professor of Psychology, San Diego State University

It’s the economy, stupid

Rock formations in Gold Butte, which President Barack Obama designated as a national monument. (Credit: AP)

Psst, Zinke — national monuments create jobs just the way they are! Ahead of Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke’s Thursday announcement regarding the fate of the bundle of national monuments under review, Democrats tried to level with the conservative on his own terms.

Joint Economic Committee Democrats created a packet of fact sheets urging Zinke to keep monuments as they are for their economic benefits. “Conservation of these lands creates an economic engine that can be sustained for generations,” said a statement from the office of Senator Martin Heinrich, the group’s ranking member.

The areas around national monuments benefit from substantial revenue from activities such as recreation, service jobs, and tourism, as the Committee’s report outlines. For example, travel and tourism account for 44 percent of private employment in the region surrounding Utah’s Grand Staircase-Escalante.

So far, Zinke has said he’d maintain designations for six of the 27 monuments. But he hasn’t yet revealed a final decision on contentious spots like Grand Staircase or Bears Ears, both in Utah.

Zinke’s June recommendations to President Trump hinted that Bears Ears might lose some of its land — despite that the majority of public comments implored DOI to leave the monument as it is.

Diamonds in the sky: Uranus isn’t the only planet in the universe raining treasures

Diamond Planet (Credit: NASA)

If you happen to find yourself suspended in the thick atmosphere of Uranus or Neptune, you’ll want to opt for a shield rather than an umbrella. A study this week from scientists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) simulated the conditions within the so-called ice giants — the cerulean planets Neptune and Uranus, whose atmosphere consists of hydrogen and helium but also hydrocarbons like methane. By blasting a powerful laser through a polymer — simulating the conditions within the ice giants’ dense atmospheres — scientists witnessed their simulated conditions explode into tiny diamonds, suggesting that Neptune and Uranus’ atmospheres may create the wedding band-worthy carbon allotrope in their everyday weather patterns.

This science is bizarre enough on its own, and the suggestion that Uranus might rain diamonds makes for great headlines. Yet given that there are many similar ice giants scattered all over the galaxy, this suggests that diamond-raining is quite common in the universe, even though it’s unheard of on Earth. Indeed, because of our Earthly perspectives, many things that are quite normal in the universe seem anomalous, particularly when mined for their sensational aspects in a brief news dispatch.

What is normal in the universe and strange on Earth? Take helium, for example: it’s almost nonexistent on Earth, as it is so light it escapes our atmosphere easily — and yet 25 percent of the elemental matter in the universe is helium. The opposite is true, too: There are many anomalous things about Earth compared to the rest of the solar system. Life, for one, but also plate tectonics and our unusually large moon for a rocky planet. Perhaps two planets in the solar system have diamond rain, but only one has humans. Which is weirder? 

Diamonds floating in ice giants make for good headlines because diamonds are something humans tend to treasure. And yet there are many pretty weird, seemingly valuable (to us) things floating around in space. Still, many news dispatches about strange planetary conditions focus on those worlds individually, as though they exist in a vacuum — which they do, technically. But that ignores how these kinds of strange discoveries tie into a larger story of how solar systems and galaxies evolve over time. I’ve compiled some of the strangest astronomy discoveries that involve the rare things that we treasure here on Earth, while telling the story of how said oddities come to be. 

The diamond planet

Gem precipitation sounds nice, but what about a world made of diamond? 55 Cancri E is a literal gem of a planet. The planet orbits a neutron star — a collapsed sun with so much mass that its protons and electrons merged into neutrons. Neutron stars are kind of like giant atoms, with their neutrons bound in similar close quarters as the particles in atomic nuclei. Hence, neutron stars are so dense that a teaspoon of neutron star material would weigh 10 million tons, the equivalent mass of 130 million humans or so.

55 Cancri E’s neutron star, known as PSR J1719-1438, is only 12 miles in diameter, yet possesses a mass 140 percent of our sun’s. Neutron stars’ surfaces are generally hundreds of thousands of degrees Celsius, hot enough to radiate X-rays. They are not pleasant stars to orbit.

The peculiar planet orbiting PSR J1719-1438 has a mantle that may be mostly diamond. That’s because the planet’s composition contains high levels of carbons, which, at the pressures and temperatures that it is exposed to, would suggest that its carbon has crystallized and compacted at the appropriate temperatures to render it into diamond.

But there are two epilogues to 55 Cancri E’s story. First, some later observations called into question whether the diamond hypothesis theory was correct, as one study suggested the star had more oxygen than accounted for — which does not turn into diamond, or anything like it, under high pressures.

But the star also became peculiarly politicized when one of 55 Cancri E’s celebrated co-discoverers, Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology, wrote an op-ed decrying out the double standard in public discourse faced by climate scientists as opposed to astronomers.

It may come as a big surprise to many, but there is actually no difference between how science works in astronomy and climate change — or any other scientific discipline for that matter. We make observations, run simulations, test and propose hypotheses, and undergo peer review of our findings. […] Sadly, the same media commentators who celebrate diamond planets without question are all too quick to dismiss the latest peer-reviewed evidence that suggests man-made activities are responsible for changes in concentrations of CO2 in our atmosphere. The scientific method is universal. If we selectively ignore it in certain disciplines, we do so at our peril.

The vice nebulae

The longest stretch of alcohol on Earth is probably the two-mile beer pipeline that runs under Bruges, Belgium. In space, astronomers have observed multiple giant clouds of alcohol — methanol, the toxic stuff, and ethanol, the drinkable stuff — including one  that is about “a thousand times the diameter of the solar system,” according to a New York Times report from 1995.

In 2006, astronomers at Jodrell Bank Observatory found a 288-billion-mile-long cloud of methanol around a nebula. Drinking it might make you go blind, but then again, opening one’s helmet to get a taste would yield other problems.

Finding alcohol molecules in space is strange, given that it’s an organic molecule, but these alcoholic clouds are not formed by distant life forms distilling gin. Rather, alcohols like methanol and ethanol are relatively simple compounds of carbon, oxygen and hydrogen, which are rather abundant elements in heavy stars; hence, scientists believe that they formed naturally — on the surface of nebular dust grains that stuck to the stray hydrogen, oxygen and carbon molecules, and served as a catalyst for the reactions that would bind these molecules to create alcohols.

The avarice asteroids

Our solar system was once a nebula — a giant cloud of gas and dust left over from the wake of an exploding star. Slowly, this stellar nebula coalesced into the sparse solar system we know today, with rocky planets, gas giants and a single central star. We know now that this process happens all over the universe, and there are many solar systems like ours with similar planet distribution and composition.

Yet because of the way that our solar system formed, the distribution of resources on Earth differs from the overall distribution of resources in the universe. As I mentioned earlier, there’s a lot of helium in the universe, and almost none on Earth. Similarly, many metals like neodymium, gold and platinum — exotic on Earth — are much more common in the asteroid belt, which consists of many giant rocks whose metallic surfaces never conjoined with any planets. Many of these asteroids have a mining value that is far greater than the wealth of our entire world. One enthusiast website, Asterank, is devoted to cataloguing asteroids, and includes a means of sorting them by how much their metals are worth. Many are in the trillions.

Asteroid mining isn’t something that humans have done yet, and it still seems prohibitively expensive. Also, ethical questions abound: Would said mining be done by private corporations? If mining companies drag asteroids closer to Earth, how do we mitigate the risk of them careening into our planet and killing everyone? Does it make sense for a single asteroid-mining corporation to amass more private wealth than exists on Earth? These are theoretical questions for now, but they speak to the issues raised by such a prospect.

How kids can resist advertising and be smart consumers

(Credit: AP Photo, File)

Commercials are nothing new. We all grew up with them and can probably sing a dozen or more jingles. What is new is how advertisers have adapted to digital media — especially apps, websites, and social media. Many of today’s ads — from product placements in movies and on TV to online contests, viral videos, and “chatbots” (robots that send instant messages) — don’t look like ads. And that’s by design. Adapting to ever more jaded and fickle viewers, marketers have developed ways to integrate ads into entertainment, so it’s hard to tell where the “real” content ends and the ads begin. These techniques also encourage us to interact (click, swipe, play, chat), which gives marketers data about our habits, likes, and preferences.

A few important advertising tricks of the trade have not changed, though. Companies still practice these successful marketing techniques:

Expanding a product’s target age to get younger and older kids to buy it (think Dora the Explorer becoming a miniskirted tween).
Using a multi-platform approach (web, TV, toys, movies) because the more a kid sees a product, the more likely she will be to buy it later.
Building brand loyalty — again, the younger the better — to get kids hooked on certain brands (for example, Levi’s) as early as possible.

Obviously, commercials aren’t going anywhere. In fact, they’re becoming ever stealthier and more sophisticated to take advantage of new technologies. But kids — especially young kids — are vulnerable to marketing messages. Children are so impressionable that a number of organizations, including the American Psychological Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, and the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, have called for heavy restrictions on advertising to children. Wanting more and more material things can cause anxiety, depression, and anger. It can make kids judge their self-worth by what they own. Helping kids understand how advertising works can help protect them from being exploited. Use these tips to help your kids develop strong media-literacy skills so they can become informed consumers.

Tips for parents of preschool kids

Keep your children away from advertising as much as possible. Let them watch commercial-free TV or use a DVR to skip through ads.
Teach kids the difference between a TV program and a commercial. Point out commercials and use a timer to show your children when a commercial begins and ends. Ask questions to help your kids recognize that the purpose of the commercial is to sell them a product. For example, ask, “What is the commercial selling?”
Point out online ads. Use these tips for teaching your kids to understand when something is an ad on the internet.

Tips for parents of elementary school kids

Help kids identify all forms of advertising messages. Watch TV, play a video game, or download an app with your kids and find the products and logos. Have a conversation about how the messages try to get kids to buy products.
Tell your kids never to click on an ad or fill out a form without your permission. Contests and promotions are often devious ways for companies to get emails and phone numbers.
Build media-literacy skills. Ask your kids if they know who created a particular ad and which words, images, or sounds were used to attract their attention. How did they feel after seeing the ad?
Explain “tricks” that advertisers use in commercials. For example, advertisers often use Vaseline to make hamburgers look juicy. Talk with your children about the true purpose behind promotions, downloads, and links from games, websites, and cell phones. Kids need to know that no matter how clever the gimmicks or games, they’re all ads.
Talk about celebrity endorsements. Are your kids more likely to want something if their favorite celebrity is in the ad? Help your kids connect the dots so they recognize how they’re being influenced.

Tips for parents of middle and high school kids

Demystify brands. Brands sell images to kids as much as they sell products. Companies are smart about making brands seem so cool that every kid will want the products. Help your kids know that they are much more than what they own.
Talk to kids about alcohol, cigarette, and e-cigarette advertising . Help keep tweens and teens away from marketing for age-inappropriate products. Studies show that alcohol messages to kids are very effective. Discuss all the different ways they see e-cigs marketed (in stores, online, in their social media). Talk about how these methods are designed to target their specific demographic.
Discuss smartphone and app ads. Some advertisers get kids to trade personal information for freebies — soda, candy, and the like. Marketers also are able to get information on kids through messaging apps such as Kik and Snapchat and send them text ads.
Explain how location-based ads work. Using your phone’s GPS (and other data), companies send targeted texts advertising nearby products and services. You can turn off your phone’s GPS and turn off notifications like this in your apps.
Teach them to resist peer pressure. Many ads will count on the fact that kids are especially sensitive to peer pressure. Remind your children that advertisers are counting on this vulnerability to sell things.
Strengthen media-literacy skills. Question everything you see online and in apps, as those platforms are not subjected to the same advertising rules as TV. Why was this ad created? What features does it have, and what messages does it send? What information does it include, and what does it leave out?

Why tourists go to sites associated with death and suffering

FILE - In this Oct. 19, 2012 file photo the entrance with the inscription "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Sets You Free) gate of the former German Nazi death camp of Auschwitz is pictured at the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial in Oswiecim, Poland. A 94-year-old former SS guard at the Auschwitz death camp is going on trial Thursday, Feb. 11, 2016 on 170,000 counts of accessory to murder, the first of up to four cases being brought to court this year in an 11th-hour push by German prosecutors to punish Nazi war crimes. (Credit: AP)

On a beautiful summer day in 2016, as I walked with a group of college students along a well-trodden path sprinkled with needles and cones from majestic pine trees, our mood was somber and morose. The chirping of birds and the burning off of the dew on the grassy hills by the rising sun in this idyllic setting did not help either.

We were cognizant of what had happened here not too long ago.

This place — the Ponar Forest — is the site where 72,000 Jewish men, women and children from Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius, and nearby villages were massacred by the Nazis and their collaborators.

I am an educator of the Holocaust, and my travel course takes students through Central Europe to a number of Holocaust sites. The aim is to provide students with a hands-on learning experience.

However, some could well argue that this course is just another form of “dark tourism” — an interest in locations that are associated with human suffering and death.

What is so problematic about dark tourism? And are there redeeming features that make it worthwhile?

Is it voyerism?

First, let’s understand what dark tourism is.

In January 2016, Otto Warmbier, an American college student, was arrested in Pyongyang, North Korea, for allegedly stealing a political propaganda poster. He was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor after a one-hour trial. A mere 17 months later, Warmbier was released to his parents in a vegetative state. He died a few days after.

Warmbier was on a trip advertised by Young Pioneer Tours to destinations that, they said, “your mother would rather you stayed away from.” This tragic incident vividly illustrates the perils associated with certain locations.

This then is what is referred to as “dark tourism.” It involves traveling to sites associated with death, natural disaster, acts of violence, tragedy and crimes against humanity. It could also include travel to dangerous political hotspots.

While data about the number of people embarking on dark tourism are not readily available, there are indications that it is becoming more popular. Over the past 20 years there has been a dramatic increase in the number of peer-reviewed articles on dark tourism. From 1996 through 2010, between three and seven papers appeared annually; from 2011 to 2016, that number increased to between 14 and 25. My own Google search of “dark tourism” yielded nearly four million hits.

Some scholars have argued that dark tourism is akin to voyerism: that is, fulfilling a desire for the forbidden. Other researchers though have found little evidence that people are interested in death per se. A commonly reported motive seems to be learning about past events, a curiosity that drives an interest in such sites.

Of course, it is hard to say with certainty what the real motives might be. Studies rely on self-reported data, and respondents in such studies like to be perceived in a positive light. This is especially true if the questionnaire touches on a sensitive subject that may reveal a disquieting or troubling characteristic.

Ethics of travel to some spots

Nonetheless, there is an important ethical dimension to dark tourism. Take the case of tourism in North Korea. Proponents have argued that anti-American sentiment may be decreased by the people-to-people contact enabled by such tourism, or that such visits may create a subversive effect. Proponents believe through such exposure North Koreans may come to appreciate the liberties enjoyed by people in the developed world and begin to question their own ways of living.

Indeed, the past decade has opened up North Korea to tourism, allowing citizens from most countries to visit. Critics, however, argue that the average North Korean does not interact with tourists; the guided tours are well-scripted, allowing engagement with the regime and not the people. Moreover, tourism legitimizes the regime while enriching it at the same time. In North Korea, for example, it is estimated that tourism is a US$45 million per year industry.

The question that emerges then is whether it is ethical to promote a repressive regime that is repeatedly cited for human rights violations. This question is germane to all tourist locations that have questionable human rights records, from China to Hungary.

And what of places of human suffering from disasters such as the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, or from fascist regimes that are no longer in existence such as the killing fields of Phnom Penh, Cambodia? Are they free from ethical constraints?

Few would doubt that it is immoral to benefit from others’ calamities, no matter how far removed these incidents may be from our present time or place.

Observing boundaries

So how do we in particular, as Holocaust educators, escape the trappings of dark tourism?

I strive to provide my students with an educational experience that pays tribute to the social, cultural and artistic aspects of European Jewry. For example, we pay a visit to the Polin Museum in Warsaw, which tells the history of Polish Jews. At the same time, however, going to the former concentration camps of Auschwitz, Majdanek or Treblinka does privilege places of human suffering and death.

How then do we maintain our intended purpose?

An important point of emphasis in our Holocaust travel course is the need to respect the sites we visit. My students are told clearly, especially in places of death and martyrdom, that exhibits and artifacts are to be inspected visually. Never should they reach out to touch or take anything.

Students can, at times, fail to understand the criminal meaning of some acts and get into a great deal of trouble. In 2015, for example, two teenagers were arrested for taking found objects at Auschwitz. More recently, another student stole some artifacts from Auschwitz in order to complete an art project for her graduate degree.

Why intent matters

When places of death and torture are respected from the perspective of valuing the sanctity of life and not seen as a source of titillation resulting from a voyeuristic need, then these behaviors, I believe, will not occur.

Indeed, the atmosphere at the Auschwitz museum cafe may appear to be Disneyland-like, with visitors casually resting over their cups of coffee or ice creams. In fact, however, it is the attitude or intent of the visitor that ultimately determines dark tourism’s presence.

Even in Auschwitz, then, a visit per se is not a sufficient criterion for dark tourism. Snapping a smiling selfie at such a site, however, should be of some concern.

Daniel B. Bitran, Professor of Psychology, College of the Holy Cross

We are under surplus Trump stress: What can we do to protect ourselves?

Donald Trump (Credit: AP/Evan Vucci)

In the contest between crisis and calm, oy has an edge over om. Case in point: Just as I was giving meditation another try to take my mind off Donald Trump, the North Korea fire-and-fury horror show broke out, and Trump’s itchy finger on the locked and loaded nuclear trigger made my strategy for sanity look awfully iffy.

Even so, I’d rather be triggered to think about the risks of nuclear weapons, which don’t distract me nearly as much as they should, than be trolled by whatever random trash talk Trump tweeted 10 minutes ago.

Meditation is all about letting go of your thoughts. That’s hard enough to do for any of us whose attention is the plaything of stress about work and money, love and sex, sickness and sadness, not to mention unwanted desires, unbidden memories, undone to-do lists and other anxieties ad infinitum. Which is to say, just trying to kiss your ordinary, everyday thoughts goodbye is hard enough for all of us.

Now add all-Trump-all-the-time media to the mix, and the stress makes my head want to explode. Within hours of his nuclear saber-rattling, not only did he refuse to call out white supremacists, neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan by name, he located them among “many sides,” setting up a moral equivalence between those thugs and the peaceful marchers protesting those hate groups in Charlottesville, Va. His fake moral leadership 48 hours late only underscored how morally shrunken his own instincts are. What fresh hell is next? Each day’s news rubs our faces in how corrupt, deranged, deceitful, ignorant, impulsive and unfit for office the president is.

That surplus stress we’re under, the Trump news mental health penalty, piled on top of life’s usual worries and distractions, has hijacked my mindful attention, and maybe yours, since the election. Meditating regularly — not sporadically, as I’d lapsed into doing — seemed my best shot at escaping its clutches, short of moving to an ashram or bingeing on “The Bachelor.” But only a handful of days into resuming a daily meditation practice — boom! Armageddon is on the table and the end is nigh. Even for just 20 minutes at a time, try letting go of a thought like that.

The bright side, if there is one: The game of nuclear chicken Trump is playing with Kim Jong-un, despite its toll on our national nerves and its disruption of my try at zen, offers a teachable moment about something we’d all rather not think about.

When I was growing up, I was so crushed when my father showed little enthusiasm for building a cinder block fallout shelter in our cellar that I wrote to the Civil Defense Administration and received the how-to instructions in a self-addressed stamped envelope. His objection was cost, my father said; it’d be money down the drain, spent to protect us from something that was never going to happen.

Looking back, I suspect cost was a proxy for denial. Who could handle the truth about nuclear war? Our saltine-stocked refuge would have been incinerated instantly, along with our family, our house and every other family and house in Newark. Accepting the folly of protecting us from a Soviet H-bomb also would have required admitting the dementia of the duck-and-cover air raid drills my brother and I, like kids across the country, practiced at school.

Today, nine nations possess a total of nearly 15,000 nuclear weapons; the United States and Russia account for 93 percent of them. Protecting ourselves from them is as quaint a pipe dream now as it was during the Cold War. The consequence of those stockpiles: Three risks haunt the earth, and they might get the attention from us they deserve if denial weren’t our default way to deal with them.

The first risk is nuclear terrorism. The collapse of the Soviet Union created a black market in fissile material. Bomb blueprints are posted on the internet. The technology to build a bomb can be had for a few hundred thousand dollars. In former U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry’s nightmare, one nuclear weapon detonated on a truck in the heart of Washington, D.C., coupled with nationwide panic sparked by terrorist threats of more bombs in more cities, would bring America to its knees within days.

The second risk is a false alarm, like a spurious warning of an incoming missile attack, which would activate a launch-on-warning counterattack by the (un)attacked nation and a retaliatory barrage by the other. This is not a hypothetical example. In 1980, an alarm at the Pentagon’s Raven Rock Mountain command post in Pennsylvania warned that Soviet submarines had launched 2,200 nuclear missiles toward the U.S. It was caused by a malfunctioning computer chip that cost 46 cents. But no one knew that until only seconds before President Jimmy Carter would have ordered a massive counterstrike. Luck is not a plan.

The third risk is ego. Reckless leaders make escalating threats, masculine identity disorders run rampant, some accident happens — and the adults in the room are powerless to prevent a temper tantrum from blundering the world into millions of casualties. Macho histrionics get airtime and grab headlines, but what really warrants attention, expertise and public support today is the quiet, patient, backroom zen of negotiation, diplomacy and statesmanship.

Ironic, isn’t it, that what we most need now is for the art of the deal to trump Trump.

My liberal white male rage: What should I do about it?

(Credit: Salon/Flora Thevoux)

“OK, now turn to page 43 of the handbook. We need to talk about lockdown drills in case of an intruder.”

I’m a teacher at an all-girls school. We’re always cautious about predators. A young white man with short light hair walks into the courtyard. One of our administrators, Mindy, steps out to ask him what he’s doing on campus, as is protocol. Mindy is in her mid-fifties, a black woman with short straight hair and teal glasses, just under five feet tall. The man looks at her and without a word punches her across the face. I’m staring from just inside. I sprint out and before he even sees me, I choke-slam him against the wall, crushing his throat with my hand. I shove him against the wall and start punching, left, right. I throw him down and hammer my knees onto his shoulders, pinning him to the ground. His arms are splayed and he still stares at me silently; he hasn’t said a word the whole time. In fury, I grab the front of his hair, and slam the back of his head into the concrete. It makes an awful noise and I can feel blood on his scalp. I do it again. Mindy is still on the ground, but is looking at me, shocked. I tell her to come over and check to make sure he doesn’t have any weapons and then to call the police. I notice behind her there is a group of students standing in the doorway of the school, aghast, clutching their binders. They look at me with admiration and horror.

“It really helps to remember the acronym ‘ALICE’ for the steps, Alert, Lockdown, Inform, Counter, Evacuate.”

Oh, “counter” is the fourth step. I guess choke-slam shouldn’t be the first approach. Then I run through the fantasy again. The fantasy.

* * *

I’m a left-wing white guy. And a Jew. Since Charlottesville, I’ve noticed some strange changes in myself.

At work, I’ve spaced out for 20 minutes at a time during meetings, daydreaming about committing violence, always righteously, in overly dramatic, obnoxiously heroic ways, with a very troubling overtone of white saviorism. In addition to saving the girls from a male predator with my brute strength and righteous rage, I’ve had another recurring fantasy of saving the passengers on a plane hijacked by “911-esque” terrorists. I tackle an armed hijacker, turn his gun on him, immediately inspire the other passengers to team up to distract the terrorists, and then deftly fire bullets into all three terrorists’ heads. Dark blood drips down their noses from the wounds on their foreheads. If the meeting is particularly boring, I’ll concoct permutations, new endings. Because it just feels so damn good. Like the dopamine rush of a sex fantasy.

I don’t think I’m alone.

I sporadically attend an anti-racist/anti-sexist white male group (yep, those exist). I came into this week’s meeting, brooding. Emotional tumult, eyes boring into the ground, irked by the benign tone of the conversation. It’s time for my check-in. My heart pounds and I think I might cry.

When I divulge, I get nods. Bodies lean forward. Faces get red, energy rising.

What I share:

I’m furious and upset. I feel trapped in my rage. All these impulses I’ve tried to tame over the years —

Because the aggressive, brash, self-righteous feelings polluted everything from my activism to my romantic life —

I’m being provoked by these fucking assholes, these men, and I want to lash out, punch back, but I don’t think that’s what we need right now, what anyone needs right now —

Isn’t that just the same patronizing, hyper-masculine bullshit that lets these fucking Nazis think they have the right to make others feel so terrible, to threaten, kill? I mean, I don’t want to replicate that. That’s the master’s tools, right?

Also, I’m scared. I mean, what if one of them brings a gun? Just one assault rifle. I saw a civilian carrying an assault rifle in Arizona. Scared the shit out of me. So I feel doubly trapped. I don’t want to do what’s selfishly best for me — beating the shit out of one of these guys [note the assumption that I could] — and I also don’t want to die. So in that way, I also feel like, and it’s the only word that makes sense to me here, a pussy.

I mean, after Trump was elected, I thought I might be fighting a totalitarian regime that would be locking up activists and journalists. And perhaps it seems hyperbolic, but I kept thinking: If it came to it, would I be willing to die for a cause? The way some non-Jews hid Jews during WWII; would I have that courage? Or at the end of the day, am I too afraid, selfish, weak? Not a real man.

I look up. Damn, say the white men. Eyebrows raised, but nodding.

One man jumps in. He had been at the last scrap with the “alt-right” when they came to town. He says that he probably should have been throwing punches, but he found out that he just wasn’t that kind of guy. But he was able to have some conversations with them. He said that one alt-rightist said, “If someone can dominate you, that means they are superior to you.” The aspiring anti-racist anti-sexist white guy said he didn’t even know where to go from there.

If there is a political philosophy that embodies the worst of masculinity, it is neo-Nazism.

* * *

So what to do with this conflicted rage? Can it be made useful for a movement, or is it inherently self-centered and destructive?

I don’t mean to comment on the “diversity of tactics” or the Antifa or black bloc. That is a far more complex issue. I’ve been told that Antifa have physically fended off neo-Nazis who have attempted to enter people’s homes in raids in predominantly black neighborhoods. Unverified; but even if that instance is false, the point is that there can be physical intervention that is the product of strategy or defense or care. The physical compulsions I’m feeling are purely from rage — a hunger for violence and vengeance. You threaten me, I fuck you up.

The concern deepens because the spike in racist, sexist, anti-Semitic, xenophobic, homophobic hate crimes has compounded an ire that has easily found fuel from regular non-Nazi men out there.

Recently, I was frustrated at a locksmith. I had come to his storefront twice during business hours and he was closed, even after I’d gotten hold of him on the phone. I left an overly polite, perturbed voicemail. Then I called again a minute later thinking I might get him — I still needed a key copied. No answer. I get a call a moment later from an unknown number.

“Why you keep calling me you fucking faggot?”

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Why do you keep calling me. You fucking faggot.”

I hung up.

He called back. He kept calling me a fucking faggot. I told him that this is crazy and that I’m just going to write on Yelp with what he’s saying. “I hope this isn’t your personal number,” he said. I ask if he was threatening me. He texted me a moment later with a link to a Yelp page for a nonprofit. The nonprofit that I run.

;)

Let me know when you wana act like a big boy. We wear big boy shoes over here.

Don’t call to harass businesses, not a good idea.

It’s a small example, but it was a similar feeling. Caught. Trapped. I wanted to say, fuck it, I believe what he said was wrong and other people should know about it, and I’m not scared of this random guy. But, damn, if he posts something messed up on our Yelp page, even if it’s totally made up, that could affect our reputation and end up really affecting our organization, our employees, and the families we serve. Also, if he’s really some lunatic, who knows what else he might do; after all, he can pretty easily figure out who I am, and I have a lot of other public profiles on the Internet. Fuck!

Anger held hostage.

If I strike back, it’s me selfishly putting my anger above the needs of others. And it might only make problems worse. It’s not like I have changing this guy’s mind at the forefront. But I just can’t stand that he walks away with the message that he can call people slurs, bully them, call out their masculinity, and then get what he wants. He might walk away thinking that since he beat me, he is the superior person, and therefore validated in continuing his practice of violence.

And I feel confronted: Are most guys out there fucking assholes? Do most guys say faggot and retard and pussy? Am I just living in a little social-justice bubble, and really this violent male way of being is in most places, most of the time? And if so, what is my role in changing that?

* * *

It’s everywhere for me right now, the mundane as well. I’ve been playing free online old-school fighting games like “Tekken 3,” which I haven’t played since middle school. I’ve downloaded a fighting app on my phone that I play whenever I need to blow off some quick steam; it makes me feel momentarily powerful (in the silliest way). When I watch “Game of Thrones,” I replay the battle scenes two or three times. To be fair, that’s not a wholly new practice. Still, it’s that rush. Fantasies of wrath. Of violence.

And now it’s especially on my mind as the neo-Nazi alt-right folk are gathering in my city in just a few days. If I go, should I take the role of security for a counter-protest, as some white men I know are doing (at the request of some organizers)? Should I use my white male privilege to be taken seriously enough by a misogynist white supremacist to have a dialogue, reach for empathy, in the hopes of humanizing the “other” to him? Should I go to a family-friendly anti-white-supremacy rally away from the Neo-nazis and work a childcare shift? Should I continue to step back, manage my socialized masculine impulses of presumptuous arrogant aggression, or should I harness them, or simply let loose as much as my courage will allow?

These men are coming soon, here and elsewhere. Maybe see you there?

 

African Americans fighting fascism and racism, from WWII to Charlottesville

FILE - In this March 5, 1964 file photo, Black Muslim leader Malcolm X poses during an interview in New York. Archeologists in Boston are digging at the boyhood home of slain black rights activist Malcolm X. The two-week archaeological dig begins Tuesday, March 28, 2016, in Boston’s Roxbury neighborhood. (AP Photo/Eddie Adams, File) (Credit: AP)

In July 1943, one month after a race riot shook Detroit, Vice President Henry Wallace spoke to a crowd of union workers and civic groups:

We cannot fight to crush Nazi brutality abroad and condone race riots at home. Those who fan the fires of racial clashes for the purpose of making political capital here at home are taking the first step toward Nazism.

The Pittsburgh Courier, a leading African-American newspaper at the time, praised Wallace for endorsing what they called the “Double V” campaign. The Double Victory campaign, launched by the Courier in 1942, became a rallying cry for black journalists, activists and citizens to secure both victory over fascism abroad during World War II and victory over racism at home.

There is a historical relationship between Nazism and white supremacy in the United States. Yet the recent resurgence of explicit racism, including the attack in Charlottesville, has been greeted by many with surprise. Just look at the #thisisnotwhoweare hashtag.

As a scholar of African-American history, I am troubled by the collective amnesia in U.S. politics and media around racism. It permeates daily interactions in communities across the country. This ignorance has consequences. When Americans celebrate the country’s victory in WWII, but forget that the U.S. armed forces were segregated, that the Red Cross segregated blood donors or that many black WWII veterans returned to the country only to be denied jobs or housing, it becomes all the more difficult to talk honestly about racism today.

Nazis and Jim Crow

As Adolf Hitler and the Nazi regime rose to power in the 1930s, black-run newspapers quickly recognized that the Third Reich saw the American system of race law as a model. Describing a plan to segregate Jews on German railways, the New York Amsterdam News wrote that Nazis were “taking a leaf from United States Jim Crow practices.”

The Chicago Defender noted that “the practice of jim-crowism has already been adopted by the Nazis.” A quote from the official newspaper of the SS, the Nazi paramilitary organization, on the origins of the railway ban stated:

In the freest country in the world, where even the president rages against racial discrimination, no citizen of dark color is permitted to travel next to a white person, even if the white is employed as a sewer digger and the Negro is a world boxing champion or otherwise a national hero. . . [this] example shows us all how we have to solve the problem of traveling foreign Jews.

In making connections between Germany and the United States, black journalists and activists cautioned that Nazi racial ideology was not solely a foreign problem. A New York Amsterdam News editorial argued in 1935:

If the Swastika is an emblem of racial oppression, the Stars and Stripes are equally so. This country has consistently refused to recognize one-tenth of its population as an essential part of humanity. . . It has systematically encouraged the mass murder of these people through bestial mobs, through denial of economic opportunity, through terrorization.

Victory at home

When the United States entered WWII, African-Americans joined the fight to defeat fascism abroad. Meanwhile, the decades-long fight on the home front for equal access to employment, housing, education and voting rights continued.

These concerns prompted James G. Thompson, a 26-year-old from Wichita, Kansas, to write to the editors of the Pittsburgh Courier. His letter sparked the Double Victory campaign. Considering his service in the U.S. Army, which was racially segregated during WWII, Thompson wrote:

Being an American of dark complexion and some 26 years, these questions flash through my mind: “Should I sacrifice my life to live half American?” “Will things be better for the next generation in the peace to follow?”. . . “Is the kind of America I know worth defending?”

For Thompson and other African-Americans, defeating Nazi Germany and the Axis powers was only half the battle. Winning the war would be only a partial victory if the United States did not also overturn racial discrimination at home.

These ideals seemed particularly far away in the summer of 1943, when racial violence raged across the country. In addition to the riot in Detroit, there were more than 240 reports of interracial battles in cities and at military bases, including in Harlem, Los Angeles, Mobile, Philadelphia and Beaumont, Texas.

These events inspired Langston Hughes’ poem, “Beaumont to Detroit: 1943”:

“Looky here, America / What you done done / Let things drift / Until the riots come [. . .] You tell me that hitler / Is a mighty bad man / I guess he took lessons from the ku klux klan [. . .] I ask you this question / Cause I want to know / How long I got to fight / BOTH HITLER — AND JIM CROW.”

The end of Hughes’ poem calls to mind the swastikas and Confederate flags that were prominently displayed in Charlottesville and at other white supremacist rallies. These symbols and ideologies have long and intertwined histories in the U.S.

Advocates of the Double Victory campaign understood that Nazism would not be completely vanquished until white supremacy was defeated everywhere. In linking fascism abroad and racism at home, the Double Victory campaign issued a challenge to America that remains unanswered.

Matthew Delmont, Director and Professor of the School of Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Arizona State University

Former KKK leader faces racist past and his 102-year-old African-American caretaker

(Credit: Independent Lens)

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found;

Was blind, but now I see

Scott Shepherd was once a Grand Dragon in the Ku Klux Klan in Tennessee. For nearly 20 years, he proselytized and recruited for the South’s homegrown terrorists.

“There were cross burnings and firebombings,” Shepherd tells filmmaker Matt Ornstein in the Independent Lens documentary film “My Racist Days.” “There were plans always being discussed about attacking the federal government, including assassination of politicians.”

Shepherd says he was not directly involved in the physical violence, but admits, “I rooted it on and cheered it on.”

Eventually, though, Shepherd quit the Klan, and for many years now he has been an outspoken campaigner against extremist hate groups. Shepherd describes himself as “a reformed racist.” Like the 18th-century English slave trader John Newton, who renounced his former life and wrote the redemptive hymn “Amazing Grace,” Shepherd has, in his own manner, dedicated himself to salvaging other lost souls and dissuading those who might be tempted to join a Klan or neo-Nazi group.

What prompted Shepherd’s conversion and rebirth as a proponent of equality and civil rights? It’s a question that takes on a new urgency in the wake of the racist and anti-Semitic violence in Charlottesville and other places across the country.

As Shepherd explains in “My Racist Days,” his break with the Klan was precipitated by an FBI investigation. He was arrested for drunk driving and possession of an illegal firearm. But what changed his life was the rehabilitation and 12-step program he agreed to enroll in. There he encountered people from different races and religions who were willing to share their fears and failures, while supporting one another. Shepherd says simply: “I went in one person and came out another.”

When he broke with the Klan, Shepherd says he received death threats. But far worse was the guilt and shame he felt for all those years of hate-mongering. Ironically, Shepherd’s saving grace turned out to be the woman who had raised him since birth, Rebecca Hawkins, who is African-American. Shepherd came to Hawkins seeking forgiveness.

Seated next to each other at Hawkins’ home in Indianola, Mississippi, Shepherd and Hawkins tell a tangled Southern tale. Shepherd’s father was an alcoholic, prone to violence. His mother and grandmother were estranged. Scott grew up in the home of his grandmother, whose family owned the local movie theaters. But it was Hawkins, the nanny, who actually took care of Shepherd and offered the affection and comfort his family withheld.

Born in 1914, Hawkins remains sharp and insightful about the family turmoil. Shepherd confesses that as a teenager he was filled with hate, anger and self-loathing and joined the KKK because “I was looking for a place to fit in, to fill a void within myself.” Hawkins tells Shepherd she knew what he was up to and that if he had remained with the Klan, “I wouldn’t have liked you!”

But when Shepherd returned, the prodigal son, Hawkins hugged and accepted him.

These days, Shepherd spends his time trying to reach out to those who might be vulnerable to recruitment by the Klan or neo-Nazis and he continues to express contrition for his own past. At a recent event at the King Center in Atlanta, he apologized to the King family for all the vile remarks he had made as a Klansman about Martin Luther King, Jr. As the audience applauded, the slain civil rights leader’s daughter, Bernice, spoke about the ability of some to “love the hate out of people.”

If Rebecca Hawkins had been there, I can imagine she’d be quietly nodding.

(Note: “My Racist Days” director Ornstein also made the feature documentary “Accidental Courtesy” for Independent Lens about an African-American musician, Daryl Davis, who has tried to confront and befriend current and former KKK members.)