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21 Powerful Black Sci-Fi Icons Who Have Changed the Game

Representation goes a long way. Surprisingly, there have been a number of major Black characters in our favorite sci-fi comic books, TV shows and movies. Here are just a few of them.

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Cyborg
This DC Comics character was created in the 1980s but gained popularity in the early 2000s due to the Teen Titans animated series. He is half man and half machine. Actor Ray Fisher will portray him in DC’s upcoming movies.

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One of the first major Marvel heroes to hit the big screen was Blade. With three films under his belt, the character became an icon and household name, and actor Wesley Snipes was a big reason for that.

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The Falcon has been the most underrated Black superhero for decades because he was just a sidekick to Captain America. Now he is the Captain. Actor Anthony Mackie portrays the character in film.

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Black Twitter Does it Again: The Online Push For Black Emojis Has Been Answered

The virtual collection of Emoji icons on mobile devices might receive a revolutionary update that will finally include ethnically diverse characters.

For at least a year now, Black Twitter has had an interesting question for the creators of the emoji icons: Where are the Black people?

The variety of faces used to express certain emotions and depict common items has long excluded Black characters.

An Asian man, an Indian man and even gay couples fill the emoji repertoire on Apple and Android devices, but if Black users ever wanted a face that looked a little more like themselves they were out of luck.

That’s finally about to change… possibly.

The Unicode Consortium recently announced a possible method for creating a wider range of skin colors for users to have access to.

The proposal is still being reviewed but Unicode Consortium president and co-founder Mark Davis said the odds are looking good that Black emoji icons are on the way.

“It isn’t completely set in stone; we are still collecting feedback on the proposal,” Davis said in an email to the Washington Post. “But I think it is very likely.”

The draft of the proposal said that the company understands that users want to see human diversity reflected in the technology they use and Unicode Consortium is ready to provide them with that.

“People all over the world want to have emoji that reflect more human diversity, especially for skin tone,” the draft said.

The update will do more than just add one Black emoji; it will allow users to take any existing emoji and select the skin tone they would prefer to use.

These skin tone swatches would range from a pale, creamy color to a darker brown/Black option.

Black emojis

The skin tone options would be effective for single faces as well as group emoji icons like couples.

The skin tone options would not, however, allow users to change only one person’s skin color in group emoji icons.

The announcement of the possible update comes after Twitter and other social media platforms served as a catalyst for users to voice their complaints.

Timelines across the country were filled with users pushing for Black emoji.

Some users voiced their concerns by joking about the absence of a Black emoji.

“They have Drake from Degrassi on here but no Black people,” one user tweeted along with the wheelchair emoji.

The tweet was a reference to the handicapped character Drake played in the popular teen series.

Others didn’t feel like the lack of diversity in emoji icons was a laughing matter.

“So there’s a gay couple emoji’s but not black person emoji,” another user tweeted. “Just gonna point that out.”

“I just know this IOS 8 update was gonna come with Black emojis,” another user tweeted. “Y’all can keep this.”

Even pop star Miley Cyrus and actor Tahj Mowry joined the call for more emoji diversity.

“It makes me mad that there are no black emojis…” Mowry tweeted back in March.

Cyrus asked her followers to retweet her message if they agreed with the movement to add a Black emoji icon.

The tweet quickly gained more than 6,000 retweets and 2,200 favorites.

If the plans are approved, the ethnically diverse icons could make their way to mobile devices by mid-2015.

 

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15 Greatest Black Female Superheroes (Who Aren’t Storm)

Black, female superheroes are plentiful with brawn, sass and class that comes alive far beyond the comic book pages. Here is the list of the 15 Greatest Black Female Superheroes, according to io9.

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Monica Rambeau (codename: Spectrum)

Monica Rambeau was a lieutenant in the New Orleans Harbor patrol of the Coast Guard when she was bombarded with rays from space, which gave her the ability to turn into any form of energy and shoot energy at people.

She is the first of a few peace officers to appear on this list — Black women characters were heavily associated with law enforcement or the sciences.

Monica is a favorite hero for many because of her assertive, no-nonsense demeanor. She has a long history in comics including a stint as the leader of the Avengers.

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Anissa & Jennifer Pierce (codenames: Thunder & Lightning respectively)

Anissa & Jennifer Pierce are the daughters of famous hero Jefferson Pierce (codename: Black Lightning), who really did not want his daughters to follow in his footsteps. He made them promise to graduate from college before they used their powers to become heroes.

Even though they’re sisters, their powers could not be more different. Anissa controls her density to the point of making herself invulnerable and creating shockwaves by stomping her feet or clapping her hands. Jennifer, meanwhile, can turn herself into a being of sentient energy allowing herself to fly and shoot powerful bolts of electricity.

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Amanda Waller (codename: N/A)

Amanda Waller fought her way out of the Cabrini Green Projects after the murders of her husband and daughter. She has a titanium will and a cunning political mind; she chose to get into politics to change the world. With her “by any means” attitude she quickly rose through the ranks and transitioned into the shadow government. She is known as The Wall, and while it might have started as a fatphobic joke, it stuck and became a point of pride because there is no one, literally no one (even Batman), who can work around or through Waller when she puts her mind to it.

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Africa’s Age of Innovation Could Make Continent a Major Economic Power by 2063

Over the past few days, tech experts and global authorities have urged African countries to embrace innovation and technology in order to transform the entire continent into a global, economic powerhouse.

Thanks to a new wave of tech startups and government investments into these new businesses, experts believe Africa could be on the verge of an age of great innovation.

Companies like M-Pesa, the Kenya-based mobile-phone payment system, have already managed to boost economies in countries all across the continent.

According to Leadership.ng, M-Pesa has already “decreased informal savings in the country by 15 percent, increased the frequency of transfers and remittances by 35 percent, and increased usage of banking services by 58 percent beyond the levels of 2006.”

M-Pesa has since expanded beyond the boundaries of Kenya and into countries like Tanzania and South Africa.

Experts say this is just the start of what can be a magnificent burst of growth for many African countries.

The next step is for the continent to continue investing in people-driven technologies and continue discussing how to properly harness the vast knowledge and impressive skill set that many African entrepreneurs possess.

“Investment in skills, technology, knowledge and innovation will ensure democratic and responsive governance that can deliver effective public services and facilitate universal access to basic services, such as food and nutrition, water and sanitation, shelter, health and education,” said African Union Chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma at the closing of the ninth annual African Economic Conference (AEC).

The conference lasted for three days and brought business leaders, academics and economists from all over the globe together in order to discuss how to launch Africa into the global power it has the potential to be.

Experts at the conference hope to focus on boosting youth employment and furthering the adaption of new technologies across the continent.

Steve Kayizzi-Mugerwa, acting chief economist and vice president of African Development Bank, said now is the time for Africa’s brightest innovators to “stop being lazy” when it comes to innovation.

“We need to stop being lazy analysts and take our challenges for ourselves; stop wasting resources and implement our own ideas,” he said at the conference. “Africa must first understand where we are, what brought us here and then try to understand what to do differently to bring different results.”

Ban Ki-moon, the eighth and current secretary-general of the United Nations, couldn’t have agreed more with those sentiments.

“Technology can be used as a great power to change your life, to change our lives, particularly the life and future of Africa,” he said during his visit to the offices of the nonprofit technology company Ushahidi and its offshoot iHub in Nairobi, Kenya.

iHub/Ushahidi is considered a technology incubator and has already helped many young creators and developers implement new ideas in order to “promote great transformation for our society.”

He went on to say that Africa already has the “power of creativity” and now it’s up to those young innovators to use technology and creativity to change the world.

“When we use your creativity and ideas, I can bet you that the productivity and greater progress of the country will be at least 50 percent more than in the past,” he added.

iHub/Ushahidi has already been responsible for over 150 startups and garnered more than 14,000 members.

The experts who gathered at the AEC plan to continue fostering innovative solutions and working closely with governments and private sectors to boost Africa’s economic growth.

With a vast majority of Africa’s population still under the age of 20, these tech experts and academics believe investing in the younger generation will be critical to the continent’s 50-year plan to make Africa a global powerhouse by 2063.

 

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12 Amazing Teaching Techniques That Can Be Used to Close the Education Gap

In order to inspire and invest children in education, teaching techniques must engage students creatively as well as constructively. This article highlights techniques written about by Iowa State University’s Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching, exploring how creative teaching techniques can close the educational gap that many students face.

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Assumption Busting

An assumption is an unquestioned, assumed truth. Assumption busting is particularly effective when one is stuck in current thinking paradigms or has run out of ideas. Everyone makes assumptions about the world around us, which, in creative situations, can prevent seeing or generating possibilities. Deliberately seeking out and addressing previously unquestioned assumptions stimulates creative thinking.

Have students list assumptions associated with a task or problem. Then ask them under what conditions are these assumptions untrue, and continue the process of examination as old assumptions are challenged and new ones are created.

 

Brainstorming

Brainstorming, a useful tool to develop creative solutions to a problem, is a lateral thinking process by which students are asked to develop ideas or thoughts that may seem crazy or shocking at first. Participants can then change and improve them into original and useful ideas. Brainstorming can help define an issue, diagnose a problem or possible solutions and form resistance to proposed solutions.

Keep students focused on the problem, but be sure that no one criticizes or evaluates ideas during the session, even if they are clearly impractical, as criticism dampens creativity in the initial stages of a brainstorming session. The idea is to generate possibilities.

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Lack of Investor Support for Females, Minorities Continues to Stifle Diversity in Tech Industry

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A recent study revealed that female and ethnic-minority entrepreneurs have more of a struggle garnering support from investors when compared to their white, male counterparts.

The study from Pepperdine University’s Graziado School of Business and Management has exposed yet another way females and minorities are placed at a severe disadvantage in the tech industry.

“We find consistent evidence that minority (non-Caucasian), women and foreign business owners’ establishments are significantly less likely to receive PE (private equity) or VC (venture capital) financing,” the study said, according to a blog post by the Wall Street Journal.

The study analyzed fundraising data from the years 1995 to 2009 and found that female-owned business are 2.6 percent less likely to raise private equity funding than white males.

Female-owned businesses were also found to be 18.7 percent less likely to successfully raise a venture round than companies run by white males.

The numbers were even more troubling for minority-owned business.

Minority-owned businesses were 21.7 percent less likely to raise private equity funding and 22.2 percent less likely to successfully raise a venture round than their white male counterparts.

While the study focused on fundraising on all types of businesses, these statistics are particularly troublesome for minorities and females in the tech industry.

The tech industry heavily relies on private equity to launch innovative start-ups and sustain the growth of smaller companies.

With this industry already struggling with a severe lack of diversity, the inability of minorities and females to garner the same financial backing as white males means the industry’s 2 percent problem could persist.

Earlier this year, tech giants like Facebook and Google released their diversity reports, which revealed that only about 2 percent of their employees were Black.

Out of that 2 percent, very few of the employees had leadership positions with the company.

The authors of the report believe the lack of financial backing is not necessarily a result of overt racism but can still be connected to racial bias.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the venture capital industry is still dominated by white men.

A survey conducted by the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) and Dow Jones VentureSource back in 2011 found that only 11 percent of investors were women while nearly 90 percent were men.

Researchers suggest that these white men are more comfortable investing in what is familiar to them – other businesses run by white men.

The NVCA claims it is taking steps towards changing this demographic and boosting diversity in investment firms.

Meanwhile, other leaders in the Black community are taking matters into their own hands.

Former NAACP president Ben Jealous stepped down as the head of the nation’s largest civil rights organization and is now working on the West Coast as a venture capitalist.

Back in March, Jealous explained that becoming a venture capitalist would allow him to continue making more opportunities for Blacks and Latinos.

“My life’s mission has been leveling the playing field and closing gaps in opportunity and success,” he told the Associated Press. “I’m excited about trying a different approach.”