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Google ad portal equated ‘Black girls’ with porn

This article contains graphically sexual language.

Google’s Keywords Planner, which helps advertisers choose which search terms to associate with their ads, offered hundreds of keyword suggestions related to “Black girls,” “Latina girls,” and “Asian Girls” — the majority of them pornographic, The Markup found in its research.

Searches in the keyword planner for “boys” of those same ethnicities also primarily returned suggestions related to pornography.

Searches for “White girls” and “White boys,” however, returned no suggested terms at all.

Google appears to have blocked results from terms combining a race or ethnicity and either “boys” or “girls” from being returned by the Keyword Planner shortly after The Markup reached out to the company for comment about the issue.

These findings indicate that, until The Markup brought it to the company’s attention, Google’s systems contained a racial bias that equated people of color with objectified sexualization while exempting White

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Internet
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Black Reddit moderators say onslaughts of racism and abuse have become the norm. Now, they’re hoping new, stricter policies can make their spaces safe.

black designated subreddits reddit 2x1
black designated subreddits reddit 2×1

Reddit; Samantha Lee/Insider

  • In June, Reddit issued a new content policy that explicitly banned “communities and users that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability,” following pressure from users.

  • Several moderators of Black-designated subreddits spoke with Insider about their experience on the platform, which they say brings community, entertainment, and an onslaught of harassment. 

  • In the past, moderators of Black communities on the platform have had to implement their own safeguards against hate speech. Tactics have included going private, banning users, and, in one case, implementing a privacy feature called “country-club mode.”

  • While many say Reddit has not been sufficiently responsive in the past, recent measures are a “good first step” in moving forward, according to some moderators. 

  • Visit Insider’s homepage for more stories.

When the Reddit user TheYellowRose joined the platform in 2012, she was simply looking to “pursue memes.” But the now 30-year-old

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Internet
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Case of teen jailed for missing online classwork shows how schools and courts oppress Black students

While school districts all over the country grapple with how to best educate youth this upcoming academic year during a global pandemic, one Michigan teen sits in a juvenile detention center with no prospect of returning to in-person or remote learning anytime soon. The 15-year-old, identified only as Grace, has been in jail since May because she violated the terms of her probation by not completing her online coursework, according to a new report co-authored by ProPublica Illinois and the Detroit Free Press.

Grace, who is Black and has diagnosed ADHD, was on probation for fighting with her mom and stealing a cellphone from a classmate. After her school transitioned to remote learning on April 15, Grace said she felt unmotivated and overwhelmed by the work for her school, located in the predominantly white community of Beverly Hills, Mich.

That’s true of many students displaced from their schools, but, calling

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Internet
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How To Support Black Owned Businesses In Waltham

WALTHAM, MA — Amid civil rights demonstrations sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis, many are left wondering how they can help causes of racial equality and support the Black and Brown communities. At Black Lives Matter rallies across Greater Boston area speakers are encouraging participants and allies to support Black-owned businesses.

But what does that mean in Waltham?

There are more than 1,000 black-owned businesses across the state and Black Economic Council of Massachusetts Executive Director Segun Idowu said a good start is to frequent those, including at least a dozen in Waltham.

“It’s a critical moment because people are looking beyond police brutality and seeing it for what it is: a systemic issue,” Idowu said.

That systemic issue is connected to the economy, he said.

Previous Black Lives Matter protests seemed to focus on policing, but today in the context of COVID, it has laid bare

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Programming
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L.A. Latino, Black students suffered deep disparities in online learning, records show

A gate in front of Los Angeles High School was locked on July 13. <span class="copyright">(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)</span>
A gate in front of Los Angeles High School was locked on July 13. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

More than 50,000 Black and Latino middle and high school students in Los Angeles did not regularly participate in the school system’s main platform for virtual classrooms after campuses closed in March, a reflection of the deep disparities faced by students of color amid the COVID-19 pandemic and of the difficulties ahead as L.A. Unified prepares for continued online learning.

The numbers, reflected in a first-of-its-kind report by Los Angeles Unified School District analysts examining student engagement during campus closures, paint a stark picture of students in the nation’s second largest school district struggling under the new pressures of online learning.

Nearly every category of students — sorted by race, income and learning needs — included large numbers who did not regularly participate in distance learning. But low-income students and

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Internet
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L.A. Latino, Black students suffered deep disparities in online learning, district records show

A gate in front of Los Angeles High School was locked on July 13. <span class="copyright">(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)</span>
A gate in front of Los Angeles High School was locked on July 13. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

More than 50,000 Black and Latino middle and high school students in Los Angeles did not regularly participate in the school system’s main platform for virtual classrooms after campuses closed in March, a reflection of the deep disparities faced by students of color amid the COVID-19 pandemic and of the difficulties ahead as L.A. Unified prepares for continued online learning.

The numbers, reflected in a first-of-its-kind report by Los Angeles Unified School District analysts examining student engagement during campus closures, paint a stark picture of students in the nation’s largest school district struggling under the new pressures of online learning.

Nearly every category of students — sorted by race, income and learning needs — included large numbers who did not regularly participate in distance learning. But low-income students and Black

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Internet
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A Black teen didn’t do her online schoolwork during the pandemic. A judge sent her to juvenile detention.

juvenile detention
juvenile detention

Getty

This story was originally published by ProPublica.

ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

This story was co-published with the Detroit Free Press and Bridge Magazine.

  • Grace, 15, was sentenced to juvenile detention in May for not completing her school work, which was deemed a violation of her probation.

  • The Michigan teenager was put on probation in November after stealing a cell phone and getting into an altercation with her mother.

  • Grace, a student with special needs, said she needed “time to adjust” to the virtual education model.

  • In March, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued an executive order discouraging the sentencing of young people unless they posed a “substantial and immediate safety risk.”

PONTIAC, Mich. — One afternoon in mid-June, Charisse* drove up to the checkpoint at the Children’s Village juvenile

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Technology
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Patrick Starrr to Launch Makeup Brand, Why Black Beauty Supply Stores Aren’t Always Black-Owned

Plus, online retailer Shein faces criticism for selling an anti-Semitic necklace and Muslim prayer mats as decorative carpets.

Patrick Starrr.
Patrick Starrr.

These are the stories making headlines in fashion on Friday.

Beauty influencer Patrick Starrr announces forthcoming cosmetics brand
Patrick Starrr, in joint venture with incubator Luxury Brand Partners, will be launching his own color cosmetics brand, ONE/SIZE on July 17. It will make its debut at Sephora online and will be sold exclusively at all of the retailer’s stores across the U.S. and Canada, as well as in Sephora’s Instagram storefront. Starrr will reveal more details about the products and pricing via social media platforms, per WWD. In an interview with the publication, he said the line will champion inclusivity and be a celebration of “the drag queens, the LGBTQ+, my trans brothers and sisters.” {WWD}

Why Black beauty supply stores aren’t always Black-owned
“Of at least

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Programming
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Black, female entrepreneurs are changing Silicon Valley

SAN FRANCISCO – In the early days of Zume Pizza, visitors to Julia Collins’ robotic food prep company in Silicon Valley would greet her at the door and say, “Can you grab me a water? I’m here to meet with the founder.” When pitching her business to investment partners at venture capital firms, Collins was nearly always the only woman and always the only black person in the room.

Then, late last year, a hairline crack surfaced in the invisible yet seemingly impenetrable barrier that limits black women’s access to the tech world. A $375 million investment gave Zume Pizza a valuation of $2.25 billion.

It wasn’t just the company she co-founded that reached unicorn status. Collins did, too, as the first black woman whose tech company is valued at $1 billion or more by investors. Now that she’s working on a new startup in regenerative agriculture, investors are calling

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Software
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Inside historic black bookstores’ fight for survival against the COVID-19 pandemic

OAKLAND, Calif. – Inside Marcus Books, the nation’s oldest black-owned bookstore, no one lingers anymore over shelves lined with a diasporic collection of African and African American history, culture, music and literature.

Staffers take phone orders from the safety of their homes. Shoppers keep their distance when darting in and out to pick up purchases. Blanche Richardson, whose parents founded Marcus Books 60 years ago, works alone in the store, putting on a protective mask for curbside deliveries.

Operating in a state of emergency is nothing new for independent black-owned bookstores, which for decades have survived on the margins of the publishing industry. But COVID-19 is posing a new kind of existential threat, Richardson says. Most bookstores have seen a drop in overall book sales even as online sales pick up.

“The pandemic exacerbated the plight of the few remaining black bookstores across the country,” Richardson told USA TODAY.

Black

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Internet