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In the midst of the anti-Semitic atmosphere of the Charlottesville rally, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been under pressure to publicly denounce President Donald Trump’s statements regarding the rally.According to the Associated Press, Netanyahu’s overall silence has disappointed and angered Israelis, especially those that see Netanyahu not just as the leader of Israel, but also as the leader of today's Jewish people."We must set a clear boundary against anti-Semitism and protect the Jewish people wherever they may be. There are no gray areas when it comes to these issues, and this doesn't jeopardize our relationship with the U.S. or with any other partners around the world," wrote opposition lawmaker Stav Shaffir in the liberal daily Haaretz.In regards to Netanyahu’s cautious and selective approach, Shaffir added that Netanyahu has lost "any semblance of a moral compass."Netanyahu did tweet about the rally in general, but his indirectness and his lack of response to President Trump's New York press conference has raised ire.  Outraged by expressions of anti-Semitism, neo-Nazism and racism. Everyone should oppose this hatred.— PM of Israel (@IsraeliPM) August 15, 2017Shaffir isn't alone in his condemnation of the PM.Netanyahu's deputy defense minister, Eli Ben-Dahan, didn't mince words. "Apparently some don't want to enrage Trump," he said of his boss' response to Charlottesville. Ben-Dahan added that Israel "must not stammer or hesitate in the face of anti-Semitism."Eytan Gilboa, expert on U.S.-Israeli relations at Israel's Bar-Ilan University said, "I think it is a shame that the prime minister himself did not criticize Trump's moral equivalence speech because Israel claims to be the protector of Jewish communities everywhere."Gilboa, too, believes he knows why Netanyahu has has a tepid response. "He does not want to alienate Trump."Leader of the opposition Yesh Atid party, Yair Lapid, also had pointed things to say on his Facebook account, noting, “There aren't two sides. When neo-Nazis march in Charlottesville and scream slogans against Jews and in support white supremacy, the condemnation has to be unambiguous."And even members of Israel's religious community aren't here for the country's leader.Liberal Union for Reform Judaism president Rabbi Rick Jacobs, said that the prime minister "did harm to the cause of Israel and the cause of the Jewish people by having such a delayed reaction."Netanyahu's spokesman, David Keyes, believes that the prime minister's comment went far enough stating, "I think he made his view on the repugnancy of any neo-Nazism abundantly clear."One person who is supporting Netanyahu isn't helping the leader much with his support. The PM's son, Yair Hun, posted the following:Writing on Facebook, Yair Hun, the PM's son, said that while "neo nazis scums [sic] in Virginia" are in decline, left-wing and Black Lives Matter groups are not, and these groups hate Israel "just as much" as the Neo-Nazis do.He expressed concern that “the thugs of Antifa and BLM who hate my country (and America too in my view) just as much are getting stronger and stronger and becoming super dominant in American universities and public life.”To put things in perspective. I'm a Jew, I'm an Israeli, the neo nazis scums in Virginia hate me and my country. But...Posted by Yair Hun on Tuesday, August 15, 2017As with his father's statements, a public outcry erupted.Antifa would physically put themselves in between Yair Hun and the Nazis who want to beat Hub up. But they are the "bad guys".— Darcy Elizabeth (@DarcyElizabet12) August 16, 2017"their breed is dying out"? No, continue breeding.. #Inbred #YairHun https://t.co/C7vVBJwtn3— NR (@NrIsodera) August 17, 2017whois 💩 = yair hun— Ilan Peer 🔎 (@ilan_peer) August 15,...

Have you ever been in a situation where you gave a voice command to a smart technology program such as Siri or Alexa and they replied with, “I don’t understand your question” or something similar?Or have you called up a company only to find that they've got an automated menu that, "Doesn't understand your request," leaving you yelling, “Representative!” until you are finally given a human to talk to?Well, there may be more to it than these intelligent systems being hard of hearing … According to the MIT Technology Review, researchers have found that AI systems are learning to be prejudiced against certain dialects, particularly African American ones.The data show that basically, if you have a certain accent or if you speak in a vernacular (like Ebonics), these programs won’t register your voice properly.This is problematic not just because it means automated phone systems and chatbots have trouble understanding minorities, but because these programs are used to collate public opinion based on things they read on social media.What these programs can't understand, they don't include in their output.This means that people who tweet and write using slang or vernacular are being overlooked. Any service, product or policy created based on the data these programs generate is a service, product or policy that fails to take the skipped people (usually youth and minorities) into consideration.Worried about just how often AI systems were overlooking minorities, University of Massachusetts, Amherst assistant professor Brendan O’Connor teamed up with one of his graduate students, Su Lin Blodget, to investigate how these programs look at Twitter language, collecting over 59 million tweets using demographic filtering in order to insure that the tweets contained missives from Black Twitter.They then ran these tweets through several natural language processing programs.And what did they find?Well, they found that the programs struggled. One program told the researchers that it was absolutely sure that Black Twitter tweets exclusively in Danish.“If you analyze Twitter for people’s opinions on a politician and you’re not even considering what African Americans are saying or young adults are saying, that seems problematic,” O’Connor said, in response to the results. The professor feels that the results show that organizations that use these tools need to be mindful of their shortcomings.“If you purchase a sentiment analyzer from some company, you don’t even know what biases it has in it,” O’Connor said, “We don’t have a lot of auditing or knowledge about these things.”The team fears that these biases could cause problems as we grow more reliant on AI to make decisions.In fact, one AI has already come under fire. Called COMPAS, it is used to decided whether prisoners ought to be granted parole.One study found that COMPAS judged black inmates as unsuitable for parole incorrectly more often than it did white inmates.Although the authors of the COMPAS study and the O'Connor team believe their data show that algorithms can be unfairly biased, Stanford University assistant professor Shared Goel isn't so sure zeros and ones are to blame. Goel feels that algorithms produce accurate outputs, but that societal biases are to blame for what seems to be discrimination. “It’s better to describe what an algorithm is doing, the reason it’s doing it, and then to decide if that’s what we want it to do,” he said.The A.I. field is still pretty new, but we hope they get to the bottom of this...

Before the start of their game on Wednesday night, the Women's National Basketball Association and players did something unexpected.Instead of standing for the national anthem, the Los Angeles Sparks and the Washington Mystics linked the arms and stood tall at the center of the basketball court in support of the Charlottesville victims, the Associated Press reports.And they weren't alone. The Minnesota Lynx and Seattle Storm did the same before their game that same night.The moments of unity followed a similar display by the New York Liberty and the Los Angeles Sparks when they played last weekend.The gesture has been fully endorsed by the league. The WNBA sent out a memo about the new pre-game procedure this week, saying that the league wanted to "honor the victims of the Charlottesville tragedy" by "suspending the national anthem protocol."The normal protocol calls for teams to line up solemnly along the court's foul lines.The WNBA was moved to introduce the option for its teams by Sparks superstar and president of the players' union, Nneka Ogwumike, who specifically petitioned the league for its support for the gesture.The two teams also released a joint statement saying, "It is not a surprise that racism and bigotry exist in this country, but it is not something we stand for in any way. We feel great shock, sickness, and sadness with the degree of acceptance and normalization of this hatred, culminating in ways in the events in Charlottesville this past weekend."The teams continued, "We feel pain and disbelief following the blatant hate displayed and the President's response to it. There is no way to innocently protest alongside a hate-based group and to take pause on condemning the acts that took place is inexcusable."On behalf of her league, WNBA President Lisa Borders said, "We fully support our players, who are offering a demonstration of unity that we hope America can emulate in the wake of the tragic events in Charlottesville. We offer our sincere condolences to the families who lost loved ones and our support to those who were injured during the inexcusable violence that transpired."In order to make explicit that the teams are honoring those that fell during Charlottesville, the WNBA has crafted an announcement to proceed the tribute:"Fans, at this time we ask that you please rise, as we take a moment of silence to remember 32-year old Heather Heyer, and Virginia State Patrol Troopers Berke Bates and Lieutenant H. Jay Cullen, who died tragically as a result of the violence that transpired this weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia. As we mourn those who lost their lives, let us also remind ourselves of the strength, values, and diversity that unite us as Americans."This doesn't mark the first time the league has come together to address a social ill.Just last year, players of the WNBA unified in support of Black Lives Matter by wearing all black shirts pre-game."I like the fact that players in our league have a conscience and are willing to express it," Washington Mystics coach Mike Thibault said. "Our team talked about it this morning and I thought they did the right thing. It was appropriate and it sent a positive message for what needs to be in our country."The Mystics and the Sparks, who visited the National Museum of African American History and Culture recently, hope to spread a message about standing up for what is right regardless of status or position."Our team recently had the honor of meeting Representative John Lewis, and part of his mantra that especially resonated with us was the message of recognition of wrong and having the courage to speak out," the two teams' statement said. "When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up. You have to say something; you have to do...

Ever since the Charlottesville rally, the Confederate statue debate has heated up!From citizens taking matters into their own hands to government officials and Confederate descendants weighing in with their own opinion, there’s certainly a lot to discuss!Cory Booker has inserted a major plot twist, planning to introduce a bill to remove the Confederate statues from Capitol Hill, according to CNN. MAJOR KEY.I will be introducing a bill to remove Confederate statues from the US Capitol building. This is just one step. We have much work to do.— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) August 17, 2017There are 10 Confederate statues on Capitol Hill at stake and Booker will introduce his bill after Labor Day. President Trump isn’t down with the Confederate removal, taking to Twitter himself this morning to exclaim how “sad” it is that American history is “being ripped apart."Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. You.....— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017...can't change history, but you can learn from it. Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson - who's next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish! Also...— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017...the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 17, 2017The president's sadness comes after cities such as Baltimore have officially removed their CSA statues, and after activist Takiyah Thompson took matters into her own hands by removing a statue herself, for which she was arrested.The 22-year-old faces felony charges after the incident, but many feel that she is a hero. Breaking: Takiyah Thompson, who climbed the Confederate statue in #Durham in solidarity w #Charlotteville was arrested. Drop the charges! pic.twitter.com/GjG3ccK65m— dante strobino (@imastringbean) August 15, 2017 Prior to deleting her Twitter account, Solange Knowles applauded Thompson as well. Solange Knowles last tweet on twitter as of today pic.twitter.com/JJQznDGJ6j— H.I.M. 💋 (@gayysian) August 16, 2017Additionally, Thompson has received a swell of financial support, with people creating crowdfunding campaigns for her bond fund.  In another twist, a growing number of descendants of Confederate leaders are speaking out against the monuments.According to the Associated Press, the great-great-grandson of General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, Jack Christian, said that the monument honoring his ancestor perpetuates white supremacy and that it should be taken down. "They were constructed to be markers of white supremacy. They were constructed to make black people fearful," said Christian. "I can only imagine what persons of color who have to walk and drive by those every morning think and feel."Furthermore, the descendants of General Robert E. Lee and CSA president Jefferson Davis feel the same. "Eventually, someone is going to have to make a decision, and if that's the local lawmaker, so be it. But we have to be able to have that conversation without all of the hatred and the violence. And if they choose to take those statues down, fine," Robert E. Lee V told CNN. "Maybe it's appropriate to have them in museums or to put them in some sort of historical context in that regard."Bertram Hayes-Davis said to CNN, "In a public place, if it is offensive and people are taking issue with it, let's move it. Let's put it somewhere where historically it fits with the area around it so you can have people come to see it, who want to understand that history and that...

The call of the American Dream is powerful. We all want to believe that it is possible to achieve that dream, that success is just a pair of bootstraps away.But is it, really?Shawn Blanchard’s very existence seems to suggest that it is.The very model of a self-made man, Blanchard came from humble beginnings: he was born in 1982, at the beginning of the crack epidemic, with crack cocaine in his system. His relationship with drugs didn’t end there — his two older brothers taught him the drug trade. That is, until one was murdered in a drug deal gone wrong, and the other was put behind bars for running an illicit empire.Left to his own devices, Blanchard looked for mentors. He found some, men and women who helped him make his way to university, and who helped him land a job teaching mathematics in New York City.That job changed his life. Blanchard told us here at Blavity that almost as soon as he walked through his new school’s doors, he was given more responsibility than he felt comfortable with. Despite being a teacher, “I felt like I was a vice-principal or principal.”He shouldered the extra responsibility, and before he knew it, “every time there was someone that needed to speak, I was the person in front.” He discovered while speaking in front of his school that he had a knack for oration.City officials took note of his elocution skills, and they made him into something of an ambassador for his profession, having him “speak to hundreds of people all about getting into the career of teaching.”Having become more comfortable with speaking, Blanchard began to consider it all in a day’s work. That is, until he got a call from a school in his hometown of Detroit. They told him that they wanted him to speak to their students, and that they weren’t expecting him to do it for free. “It was the first time that someone was actually paying me to come and speak. So they were going to fly me out, they paid me, and I was like, ‘Wow, this is pretty awesome, they’re going to pay me to speak and just hear me thoughts.’”Blanchard received a warm reception, and had an epiphany. “I was like, ‘Wow, you mean to tell me that I can get paid to just provide my knowledge and my expertise to people?’” Wanting more of the feeling he got sharing his experiences, Blanchard used that first paid speech as a launchpad for a speaking career.He believes that he has found success in world of oration because “when I speak, I’m not trying to tell everyone all about my accolades.” Instead, he talks “about those hard times that [I] went through, because everybody can identity with obstacles.”By connecting audiences to his struggles, Blanchard said that he becomes “so relatable, and people just want to receive you, and when they understand that ‘My life isn’t that bad’ or ‘If he can do it, I can do it,’ that gives people what they need to push forward.” One of the things Blanchard speaks about in all of his talks is the importance of having mentors. He credits those that have mentored him with his present success. “Every time I want to do something, I find a mentor, I ask them for some type of system or some template, I see that template, and I go beyond whatever that template is to get the outcome I want to have.”According to Blanchard, “mentors are everywhere.”He has a simple system for recruiting them.“You find whatever area you want to grow in, or whatever area you want to learn about, you see who’s doing the best in that field, who’s making noise in that field, and who do you aspire to be. And then what you do is not just reach out to them and say, ‘Hey can you help me?” but you reach out to them and say, “Hey how can I help you? As a matter of fact, I have a few ways here that I think I can, but if you have some additional ways let me know, and I’d love to assist you, because I’m so inspired by your work.’ When you serve, that’s how you get a mentor without a problem.”Blanchard has had educational mentors, fashion mentors, and even writing mentors — in fact, his writing mentor helped him to self-publish a book. Because of his own efforts to be a mentor, Blanchard found himself in the press, lauded for “adopting a young person and changing their life around.” Thanks to all of the publicity, “a book company, a large book company, called me, and asked me to write a book … I didn’t really like the deal that they were giving me, but they sparked the idea.”However, he found having an idea for a book to be easier than writing one. For almost five years, he worked on it, but got nowhere.That is, until he found the right mentor: a woman who became the co-writer of his self-published book, How ‘Bout That For A Crack Baby.His new mentor sat him down, and he dictated the book to her, just like Malcolm X did with Alex Haley. After she fine-tuned it, Blanchard had his book. Now he wants to take what he learned in the process of self-publishing his work, and use that to mentor others.This month, Blanchard will launch his own publishing company, Lions Dream Publishing, and has already signed his first author.He promises that his company will be different than the New York behemoth he rejected in key ways.“A lot of times when you go through a publishing company, you’re on their time.” Authors are one of many on a list, are subjected to a months-long editing process; there are galley meetings and marketing calls. It can take a long time for an author’s book to see the light of day.Not with Lion’s Dream, according to Blanchard. “You can have a book that’s 330 pages and put it out within 10 months, or a book that’s 150 pages and put it out in four, five months.”And it’s not just speed that Lion’s Dream promises, but training. Blanchard told us that he will teach all of his authors to be excellent public speakers capable of promoting their books through speaking engagements.Although Blanchard will be busy with his new company, he plans to continue traveling around the country speaking.He sees his book and his publishing company as extensions of the message he delivers through his speeches, and hopes that from his life and work, people can take away three things.“One is: I want people to believe in themselves. Two: I want them to be inspired to act. And three: I want them to execute whatever they are inspired to act...

Life comes at you fast, especially when genetic results are involved. White supremacists pride themselves on the “purity” of their white race, so it can be quite the rude awakening when they realize they aren’t 100 percent European.You may remember the viral video from The Trisha Show when white supremacist Craig Cobb realized he was 86 percent European mixed with 14 percent Sub-Saharan African. Trisha Goddard infamously said, “Sweetheart, you have a little black in you!” much to Cobb’s chagrin. Much like Cobb, many white nationalists are heading to take genetic ancestry tests to prove their 100 percent “pure” white ancestry. Saliva tests have made this easy.After receiving their results, many supremacists take to website groups such as Stormfront (which hosts over 300,000 members) to discuss their findings, according to Stat News.Seeing how often Stormfront users would use the platform to discuss their results, sociologists Aaron Panofsky and Joan Donovan took to the site to study and examine how the users handled the news. Panofsky noted that to join Stormfront's community, “they will basically say if you want to be a member of Stormfront you have to be 100 percent white European, not Jewish.”As this is the case, Panofsky was surprised to see that users who received the news that they were not all white would still post their results.When the results showed that a user was mixed, the researchers found that the community “overwhelmingly” took the denial route and encouraged users to question the test’s validity.While some users were satisfied with their “pretty damn pure blood” results, the majority of the test results were met with upset and plain denial. “They will talk about the mirror test,” said Panofsky. “They will say things like, ‘If you see a Jew in the mirror looking back at you, that’s a problem; if you don’t, you’re fine.'” Others even went so far as to call their results a “Jewish conspiracy.”Among the conspiracy theorist, however, are users who take a more scientific approach, questioning how the popular genetic testing companies choose people to use as geographical group references, a question that is also asked by researchers.“There is a mainstream critical literature on genetic ancestry tests — geneticists and anthropologists and sociologists who have said precisely those things: that these tests give an illusion of certainty, but once you know how the sausage is made, you should be much more cautious about these results,” Panofsky said.Leading genetic ancestry testing sites like Ancestry.com and 23andMe use both pre-existing datasets and personally recruited reference populations. “When a 23andMe research participant tells us that they have four grandparents all born in the same country — and the country isn’t a colonial nation like the U.S., Canada or Australia — that person becomes a candidate for inclusion in the reference data,” noted 23andMe product specialist Jhulianna Cintron, who also said that her company doesn’t include close relatives or genetic data outliers.Basically, this means that ancestry results can change based on what a given company has to reference.Nevertheless, given the history of world migrations, it’s highly unlikely that these white nationalists — or anyone else — are “100 percent pure” anything (other than...

Charlottesville residents Tadrint Washington and Micah Washington have filed a $3 million lawsuit that seeks damages for injuries the two women received the day of the United the Right rally, ABC News reports.The two women place the blame for the rally's violence at the feet of Unite the Right organizers Jason Kessler and Richard B. Spencer as well as David Duke, and of course, the terrorist James Alex Fields, Jr.The Washingtons also named several organizations in their suit, including the Traditionalist Worker Party, the League of the South, Vanguard America and The Nationalist Front.The two plaintiffs were neither part of the rally nor the counter-protest; they were in a car, on their way home when they were struck by the Dodge Challenger being driven by Fields.Their lawsuit states that the two suffered "serious injuries to their head[s] and extremities" due to Fields' "attempt to kill and maim as many individuals as possible."Fields' attack killed 32-year-old counter-protester Heather Heyer and injured 19 others that afternoon, Blavity reported.The Washington suit also had strong words for Kessler and the organizations it named. "Kessler has a history of racism and violence and in furtherance of his vision for a racist and violent society he organized the Unite the Right rally," the complaint reads.The white nationalist organizations named in the suit allegedly took part in "violent acts to achieve its political, ideological, religious and social goals" and "funded and sent contingencies of their membership to engage and assist with this display of hatred."All defendants are accused of civil conspiracy; committing, conspiring and aiding and abetting in acts of terrorism; incitement to riot and disorderly conduct; intentional infliction of emotional distress and civil aiding and abetting for assault, battery and intentional emotional distress. Fields is already facing legal issues. He was arrested over the weekend for the attack and faces a slew of charges including suspicion of second-degree murder, malicious wounding and failure to stop in an accident that resulted in death.On Monday, he was denied bail. Kessler is in the midst of a lawsuit against Charlottesville over the city's revocation of the first permit he obtained for his rally. He is being represented by the...