Required reading

• A new study has just revealed that the Bronzes from Benin, whose repatriation to West Africa is an ongoing struggle, may have been created from the same metal used in shackles, a form of currency during the transatlantic slave trade. For Smithsonian Magazinereports Sean Kinglsey:

According to the documents, the brass rings used for the manufacture of the bronzes were purchased by a single country: Portugal. In 1548, the Portuguese king commissioned the Fuggers, a family of German merchants, to supply 432 tons of shackles (nearly 1.4 million individual bracelets) over a period of three years. From the Rhineland, the brass shackles were transported to the markets of Antwerp in Belgium, then exported to Lisbon before finally being marketed in West Africa.

Portugal’s ties to the Kingdom of Benin are well documented. Portuguese merchants first arrived in the region in the 15th century. Using shackles as currency, they soon established a trading partnership with the Edo people. As Portuguese sea captain and explorer Duarte Pacheco Pereira wrote in the early 16th century, Edo traders came “from a hundred leagues or more up this river, bringing yams, … many slaves , cows, goats and sheep. … Our ships buy these things for copper bracelets, which are highly prized here – more so than brass ones; for eight or ten bracelets you can get a slave.

• AT Pew Research CenterEmily Tomasik and Jeffrey Gottfried conducted an analysis of the rhythms of American journalism by gender, race, and professional status, yielding revealing results, including that 84% of journalists who cover the environment are white:

Men represent 83% of the journalists surveyed who indicated that they cover sport, much more than the 15% of women. Men also make up the majority of those who cover political news (60%) and science and technology news (58%).

In comparison, women are more likely than men to cover three of the 11 stories studied: health, education and family, and social issues and policies. For example, women make up nearly two-thirds (64%) of journalists surveyed who cover health news, while only about one-third (34%) are men.

• Hollywood writers are voting on a strike this week, citing the streaming era’s dismal impact on fair wages and salaries. Stacy Perman and Anousha Sakoui share some of their stories for the Los Angeles Time:

Pasha recalled being invited by a major cable network, which he declined to identify, to participate in a writers room in 2017 as a producer with six other writers for a series on terrorism. The show featured Pakistani or Middle Eastern Muslim characters. Pasha, a Pakistani Muslim, was brought in specifically to help give an authentic voice to one of these characters.

“It was something new for me that I had never experienced,” he said. “It was an experience that made me understand why people criticize mini rooms.”

In Pasha’s case, the group of seven writers was tasked with laying the groundwork for the proposed show.

Pasha had planned that about three months of work would include the weekly salary as well as the script fee for writing an episode.

He was paid $7,373 a week for 16 weeks. A script fee would have added about another $30,000, he said. According to Pasha’s calculations, he would need at least two such gigs a year to exceed his projected annual salary of $200,000.

However, Pasha later found out that the network had ordered six episodes, and all the writers would receive script fees except him.

• Kenya Hunter interviewed black doulas working in Atlanta, Georgia, about the challenges they face in addressing deep-rooted racism in health care and rising death rates of black mothers for Capital B Atlanta:

Doulas who spoke to Capital B Atlanta also said doctors and nurses ignoring the wishes and concerns of pregnant black women often contribute to our higher death rates. Additionally, delayed prenatal care, lack of access to Medicaid, and medical racism can also contribute to negative health outcomes.

Although their service is becoming more and more visible, doulas are technically not medical professionals, so they are often ignored in some hospitals.

“I feel like people think if they get a doula, it’s kind of like a savior that’s going to save us from this death rate,” Lowery said. “But when we enter these spaces, we are obliged to comply as well, otherwise we will be expelled or reprimanded.”

“Pilgrimage is praying with your feet,” said Pat Trujillo-Oviedo, a local historian whose family has lived in the area for 12 generations. “It is an active prayer. There is a reason why you make a pilgrimage and it is mainly to purify yourself.

In the days leading up to Easter, up to 40,000 pilgrims pass through the Santuario, a small church that forms the centerpiece of the sanctuary. They pray, visit various chapels and enter a small room where crutches hang on the wall next to written testimonies of healings.

A few steps away is a small chamber known as “the pocito‘, or small well, where pilgrims shovel the ‘sacred earth’ from a small hole into sacks, jars of baby food and assorted vials.

• For the New Yorker, Alexis Okeowo investigates the murder of two elite marathon runners found dead in a small town in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley. She writes:

Kenya won its first Olympic medal in athletics in 1964, the year after its independence from Britain. At that time, there was no official racing league in Kenya; the telecommunications agency, the post office, the railway and port authorities and the national airline organized leagues for their employees. The first talents came out of the army. (The Kenya Defense Force still allows soldiers time off to run.) In the 1970s, American universities began recruiting Kenyan runners, expanding access to formal training. Kenya won four Olympic gold medals in Seoul 1988; three of the medalists were attending college in the United States. Shoe companies and talent agencies began offering sponsorships and contracts, making the sport more lucrative. Running was quickly seen as the best way out of poverty in Kenya.

• Rebecca Fishbein writes an interesting essay in Hustle ask whether “therapeutic talk” facilitates the misuse of valuable concepts, such as setting healthy boundaries in our relationships and interactions. This has already sparked debates online about whether this question is also useful:

It is important to be able to set boundaries and defend yourself. Sometimes, however, the focus on protecting one’s individual needs can overlook the fact that someone else is on the other side of that boundary. In 2019, for example, a relationship coach’s Twitter feed offering a model for telling friends in need of support that you’re “at capacity” right now drew criticism for equating friendship with emotional labor. . Earlier this year, a clinical psychologist’s TikTok video describing how to break up with a friend went viral after viewers pointed out it looked like a missive from HR. Reviewers have noted that personal relationships require a bit more compassion than some of these therapy plans offer.

The play is laden with words and phrases intended to make it clear that all of this is somehow unsavory: “superyacht”; “luxury travel”; “all-male California retreat”; “sprawling ranch”; “private cooks”; “elegant accommodation”; “opulent lodge”; “provide the justice of gifts”. And more.

Adjectival overpowering is the method of bad polemicists who don’t have much to report. The ProPublica authors suggest Judge Thomas may have violated ethics rules, and they cite a few hand-picked ethicists to express their dismay.