Before you go on, an article in the May 8 & May 22, 2021 issue of Science News ran with a cover "Awash in Deception: How science can help us avoid being duped by misinformation." In the lead article titled: "The Battle Against Fake News," Alexandra Witze presents five suggestions on how to debunk bad information. They come from the News Literacy Project (see the above link).
How to Debunk:
1. Arm yourself with media literacy skills, at sites such as the News Literacy Project (newslit.org), to better understand how to spot hoax videos and stories.
2. Don't stigmatize people for holding inaccurate beliefs. Show empathy and respect, or you're more likely to alienate your audience than successfully share accurate information.
3. Translate complicated but true ideas into simple messages that are easy to grasp. Videos, graphics and other visual aids can help.
4. When possible, once you provide a factual alternative to the misinformation, explain the underlying fallacies (such as cherry- picking information, a common tactic of climate change deniers.
5. Mobilize when you see misinformation being shared on social media as soon as possible. If you see something, say something.
"Misinformation is any information that is incorrect, whether due to error or fake news.
"Disinformation is deliberately intended to deceive."
"Propaganda is disinformation with a political agenda."
Sander van der Linden
Social Psychologist
University of Cambridge
Source: Science News/May 8, 2021 & May 22, 2021
Update: September 22, 2023: This is more important now than ever. Be vigilant and speak in your own way. Love Wins.
Update: McQuade, Barbara, "Attack From Within," 2024. New York Times best seller.
Amidst all the DEI demonizing nonsense coming from the White House, remember that this is Black History Month in the United States. It is a time to celebrate what that DEI acronym stands for. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.”
That diversity, equality and inclusivity is represented in the idealistic poem “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus. The poem is inscribed on a plaque inside the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. It is the greeting and welcome of newcomers to their new home, one that most immigrants wouldn’t be able to read even if they found the pedestal on which the words are inscribed.
"Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Emma Lazarus
1849-1887
Nor would immigrants always receive the real intentioned actions called for in its words.
Native Americans driven from their ancestral lands and cheated by treaty after unkept treaty by the U.S. government. Chinese American immigrants brought in to build the transcontinental railroad only to be told that they weren’t welcome to stay by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Latin Americans brought here to do the back-breaking, low paying work of harvesting food from our farms only to be denied the rights of citizenship, descent housing, healthcare and education.
African Americans forcibly brought here against their will as slaves and after time after time over the last 400 years treated, to put it kindly, disrespectfully.
Our beloved country has not served it’s immigrants well. Over time, if immigrants had pale European-like skin tones, they would be assimilated into mainstream American culture as they learned how to speak the Engish language, receive a decent education and find their way into the so called Middle Class of the American economic and social pecking order.
If your skin was not pale European in color, the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) ruling class made sure that your American experience did not reflect the ideolized life that Lazarus memorialized in her words.
My country. our country has shat on it’s immigrants. And that includes our Native Americans who aren’t even immigrants yet have been treated as those who have come here without the privilege of whiteness.
I am not spitting on my country. I love my country. I will always love my country even when it is sick and ailing. The promise of our country is immortalized and clearly stated in the Constitution, not in the words of The Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025.”
Our country is great because of The Constitution and our collective and unified (yes unified) aspirations to actualize the words in it. Anything other than these aspirations are not American by virtue of the fact that they are not based on the laws that epitomize what our founders had in mind for the United States of America when they wrote the Constitution at the end of the 18th Century,
Black History Month is an opportunity to be reminded that we as Americans have not yet attained the greatness that is in us. Americans will not be fooled into believing that we have had greatness and lost it. We can’t possibly be made great again because we have not been great before, in some areas we have been really good, in others, like our treatment of immigrants, woefully bad.
I challenge you to remember the contributions of African Americans each day this month. And in so doing letting Washington know that we know what greatness is. It is not them.
Help celebrate Black History Month.
A very wise Buddhist friend taught me to say these words to myself when I'm starting to get very angry at someone's actions or words:
"May (insert the name of the person(s) here) be happy.
"May (insert the name of the person(s) here) be healthy and strong.
"May (insert the name of the person(s) here) be at ease.
"May (insert the name of the person(s) here) be at peace.
I find this exercise difficult. I also find that in saying these words to myself that I am calmed and reminded to separate the person from the action coming through them. God help me practice these words with the far right members of the Supreme Court!