Five masked men assault white anti-racist activists in their home. (Calgary, Alberta)

Calgary anti-racism activists’ home invaded (CBC News):

The victims of a home invasion in Calgary early Monday morning are well-known anti-racism activists.

Calgary police said five masked men armed with bats and hammers forced their way into a home in the 5400 block of Eighth Avenue S.E. shortly after 1 a.m.

Police believe the home was targeted for attack, although they haven’t confirmed a motive. A neo-Nazi angle is being investigated, police said.

Three adults and four children were in the house at the time.

One of the adults was Jason Devine, who as a member of Anti-Racist Action Calgary has in the past posted pictures of suspected white supremacists on his blog. More recently, he and his wife had put up posters in their neighbourhood “outing” people they claim are neo-Nazis.

[…]

Devine was beaten about his head, on his back and on his arms. His friend had his arm broken and is still in hospital awaiting surgery.

White Canadians with KKK uniform, noose, and blackface win Halloween costume prize.

KKK costume shocks Ont. town (2010):

The Royal Canadian Legion ordered its Campbellford, Ont., chapter to close while police are investigating a complaint that a person in Ku Klux Klan robes led a man in blackface with a rope around his neck and won first prize at its Halloween party.

The photo above was taken by Mark Andrade, a black man, who recounts the incident:

“A guy in a Ku Klux Klan uniform, Confederate flag attached to the back, with a hood on, was holding a rope. And on the end of the rope was a guy in blackface, and the rope was really a noose around his neck,” he said.

He left right away and then later found out that the duo won first prize at the costume competition.

(via zuky)

(This is worse than last year: White Toronto students in blackface win Halloween costume prize.)

Women did not evolve against risk-taking and tech startups.

This is cross-posted at Geek Feminism.

There is a common idea that women are underrepresented in tech startups because we are “nurturing and not risk-taking enough by nature”, an idea often proposed and upvoted in Hacker News discussions. Roy F. Baumeister, Professor of Psychology, also argues something similar in his defense of Lawrence Summers’ hypothesis that fewer women than men have high innate ability in science. Professor Baumeister argues that men evolved to take risks, and women evolved to play it safe, because we are allegedly descendants of risk-taking men and risk-averse women.

However, there are a few problems with this explanation of why women are underrepresented among tech entrepreneurs. One problem is that top venture capitalist John Doerr consciously and deliberately invests in tech startups run by white men over women and racial minorities, and even encourages other VCs to follow his lead. Even more, it is understood that this is “the way the venture-capital industry operates”. While other industries call this “stereotyping” or “profiling”, VCs call it “pattern recognition”. In other words, there is systemic discrimination in the tech industry based on gender, as well as race and age.

Another problem with the hypothesis of female risk-aversion is that outside of the tech industry, women have been launching new businesses at twice the rate of men for three decades:

The phenomenal growth of women-owned businesses has made headlines for three decades—women consistently have been launching new enterprises at twice the rate of men, and their growth rates of employment and revenue have outpaced the economy.

Privilege and Perspective: White people are different.

White people empathize with animals over people of colour.

During an interview with The Guardian Weekend, Morrissey, a white vegetarian and animal rights activist, stated:

“Did you see the thing on the news about their treatment of animals and animal welfare? Absolutely horrific.”

(except he probably didn’t yell it out in capital letters)

Ironically, animal rights activists often complain about “speciesism“, but Morrissey’s statement reveals that not only does he think that Chinese people are of a non-human species, but that there is a ranking of species and that Chinese people are below the human species, assumed to be white. In other words, not only is Morrissey a racist, but he is also a speciesist and hypocrite.