Approaching Black - All I Need [TOP]

As black bear numbers increase in some North American communities and more people move into bear habitat, encounters between bears and people have risen. Whether you live in bear country or are just visiting, you can take simple steps to avoid conflicts.

Approaching Black - All I Need

If you do encounter a bear, remain calm and remember that the bear is likely more scared of you than you are of him. Attacks by black bears on people are very rare and most black bears can be easily scared away with the following approach:

Willfully approaching within 50 yards (150 feet), or any distance that disturbs or displaces a bear, is illegal in the park. Violation of this federal regulation can result in fines and arrest. Use binoculars, telephoto lens, or a spotting scope to view the animals.

Bears inhabit all elevations of the park. Though populations are variable, biologists estimate that roughly 1,900 bears live in the park. This equals a population density of approximately two bears per square mile. At one time, the black bear's range included most of North America except the extreme west coast. However loss of habitat has resulted in a significant reduction in this range.Black bears in the Smokies are black in color, but in other parts of the country they may be brown or cinnamon. They may be six feet in length and up to three feet high at the shoulder. During the summer months, a typical adult male bear weighs approximately 250 pounds while adult females are generally smaller and weigh slightly over 100 pounds. However, bears may double their weight by the fall. Bears over 600 pounds have been documented in the park. Bears can live 12-15 years or more, however bears which have had access to human foods and garbage have a life expectancy of only half that time.Bears, like humans, are omnivores. Plant materials such as berries and nuts make up approximately 85% of their diet. Insects and animal carrion provide valuable sources of protein for bears. Bears have color vision and a keen sense of smell. In addition, they are good tree climbers, can swim very well, and can run 30 miles per hour.

During summer months, some of the busiest picnic areas close at 8:00 PM so these areas can be thoroughly cleaned before dark and any food scraps or trash left by careless visitors can be removed. Park rangers patrol picnic areas and campgrounds to enforce evening closures, littering and food storage regulations. They also strictly enforce regulations that prohibit approaching, harassing, disturbing or feeding bears.

Wildlife managers actively monitor for bear activity and use innovative and proactive techniques to keep bears shy, secretive, and afraid of people. This approach allows bears to remain in their home range, and discourages them from visiting developed areas or approaching people.

Other Threats to BearsNon-Native Species: The European wild hog is one of the most direct threats to the black bear. These pervasive intruders feed on the acorns and other foods that are mainstays of bear diets. Another non-native species, the gypsy moth, is expanding its range toward the park. This insect defoliates oak trees, weakening them and leaving them susceptible to other insects and diseases which may kill the trees. Not only could bear's food source of acorns be affected, but some of the prime denning spots in old growth trees may be lost.Poaching: Unfortunately, the lure of high profits on international markets encourages the poaching of black bears. Several cultures believe that bear gall bladders, paws, and claws have medicinal powers or consider them gourmet delicacies.Urban Encroachment: Community and private developments near park boundaries are causing a loss in habitat for the bears. Poaching activities can be somewhat curtailed, and bear populations can eventually rebound from the losses. But once the critical habitats are destroyed, major declines in bear populations are inevitable. In addition, bears that venture outside park boundaries into neighboring communities may encounter human food and become unpredictable, dangerous, and a threat to human safety.

This article highlights the basics of black-box testing when to perform black-box testing and what are the benefits of using this form of the testing. It also gives insights into the various techniques used to perform black-box testing.

It is the widely used black-box testing, which is also the basis for equivalence testing. Boundary value analysis tests the software with test cases with extreme values of test data. BVA is used to identify the flaws or errors that arise due to the limits of input data.

When you get the basic understanding of black-box testing then the next question which comes up in mind is: How to perform the Black box testing? Below you can check the steps to perform this testing:

The black box testing can be easily used to check and validate the entire software development life cycle. It can be used at various stages such as unit, integration, acceptance, system, and regression to evaluate the product.

Many Black women have a difficult time accessing the reproductive health care that meets their needs. Access to reproductive health care, which helps women plan their families, improves health outcomes for women and children.

Women need health coverage throughout their lifespan including access to preventive health care, such as birth control, to maintain their health and to choose when and whether to become a parent. For women who choose to become a parent or expand their families, good prenatal and maternity care are critically important for healthy pregnancies and healthy children. Pregnant women who lack insurance coverage often delay or forgo prenatal care in the first trimester,Egerter, S., Braveman, P., & Marchi, K. (2002). Timing of insurance coverage and use of prenatal care among low-income women. American Journal of Public Health, 92(3), 423-427. Retrieved 27 March 2018, available here. and inadequate prenatal care is associated with higher rates of maternal mortality.U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Prenatal Care. Retrieved 4 April 2018, available here.

Black women need paid leave to take care of their own health needs and to have time to care for their children. More than one in four Black workers report that there was a time in the last two years that they needed or wanted to take time away from work for parental, family or medical reasons but could not.Horowitz, J.M., Parker, K., Graf, N., & Livingston, G. (2017, March 23). Americans Widely Support Paid Family and Medical Leave, but Differ Over Specific Policies. Pew Research Center. Retrieved 18 March 2018, available here. Only 30 percent of Black mothers are both eligible for and able to afford to take unpaid leave under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act.diversitydatakids.org. (2015). Policy Rankings: The Family and Medical Leave Act. Brandeis University, The Heller School, Institute for Child, Youth and Family Policy Publication. Retrieved 18 March 2018, available here.

Maternal mortality is three to four times higher for Black women than it is for white women, and Black women are more likely to experience complications during pregnancy and childbirth. There are existing, proven safety and quality improvement initiatives that need greater uptake to meaningfully improve health care outcomes for Black women.

Black women deserve to have safe and healthy pregnancies and childbirth. To meaningfully improve Black maternal health outcomes, we need systemic change that starts with the health care system, improves access to care and makes the places Black women live and work healthier, more fair and more responsive to their needs. Only when we do that will Black women be able to achieve their optimal health and well-being throughout their lifespan, including if they choose to become parents.

This Black History Month, we\u2019re telling the untold stories of women, women of color and LGBTQ+ people. Subscribe to our daily newsletter.\n\n\n\nIn 2022, Sami Schalk published \u201cBlack Disability Politics,\u201d a book about the intersection of Black and disabled liberation. She weaves together historical documents from the Black Panther Party and National Black Women\u2019s Health Project, with contemporary perspectives from Black disabled activists and advocates to address gaps in the way academics have traditionally approached disability rights. In doing so, Schalk articulates a vision of disability and Black activism that is more inclusive of both and more. \n\n\n\nSchalk is an associate professor of gender and women\u2019s studies at University of Wisconsin\u2014 Madison. Beyond her academic work, she is perhaps most well-known for her successful viral campaign to #TwerkWithLizzo. She did so in purple spandex shorts and a sparkling silver cape that she made herself. \n\n\n\n\u201cWhat kind of educator would I be if I did not also work to reject this oppressive culture in my personal and public life? My students benefit from, indeed deserve, a joyful educator who practices what she preaches regarding self-love and fighting oppression,\u201d she wrote of the experience for Vox in 2019. \n\n\n\n\n\nSchalk spoke with The 19th about \u201cBlack Disability Politics,\u201d why she pushed to make her work available for free, and the future of Black disabled advocacy and activism. \n\n\n\nThis interview has been edited for length and clarity. \n\n\n\nSara Luterman: To start off, define Black disability politics \u2014 for folks who might not be familiar. \n\n\n\nSami Schalk: Black disability politics is the way that Black people engage with disability as a political and social issue, rather than a simply a medical or personal issue. \n\n\n\nWhat differentiates Black disability politics from more mainline disability politics, or \u201cWhite\u201d disability politics? \n\n\n\nBlack disability politics is different from mainstream, White disability politics because of the history of the way that disability impacts and appears inside of Black communities. So often, disability in Black communities comes as a result of state and police violence, from medical racism, medical neglect, lack of access to resources. So we see disability showing up in these really specific community ways. For example, we might see Black folks organizing around something that really is about disability, but they're still framing it primarily as a race issue, because they might be talking about something like police violence. In the instance of the Black Panther Party, they were talking about the use of certain types of psychiatric drugs inside of prisons and other carceral institutions. Sometimes we see Black disability politics showing up in a way that doesn't actually use the word \u201cdisability.\u201d In my book, I'm trying to show that this work is happening, but it might not be using the same language that the mainstream, majority White disability rights movement has used. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nYou\u2019ve talked about how it took you a while to feel comfortable identifying as disabled. In your book, you wrote about how that\u2019s common for a lot of Black Americans with disabilities. Can you talk a little bit about why that is?\n\n\n\nThere's a variety of reasons. For many people, their disability comes from a place of trauma. So it is harder to claim that as something that is an identity as opposed to something that happened to you. \n\n\n\nAnother reason is because disability labels are used to segregate and harm a lot of people. For many Black folks and other folks of color, claiming disability could result in more oversight, policing and harm to them. And so, if it is possible for someone to not disclose disability to not claim disability, they might not. Even if they have a disability that is apparent in their body or minds, they might still say, \u201cWell, I have this condition, right,\u201d but they won't say they're disabled. \n\n\n\nThis is also shaped by the fact that to gain access to Social Security Supplemental Income, you have to be recognized as disabled in a particular kind of way. That is really hard to do for anybody, but it's particularly hard to do for folks of color, to have access to the resources to make all that happen. So also because people are not getting state support, they're like, \u201cWell, I'm not disabled, right? Because I don't get that kind of support.\u201d\n\n\n\nFor me, personally, my experiences with disability go back pretty far in my life. I didn't understand that I was disabled. I didn't meet a certain kind of threshold. I don\u2019t need medication. There were all these ways that I was like, am I disabled enough? But also I am fat and Black and queer and a woman. And honestly, there were moments that I was like, \u201cThat just seems like too much!\u201d \n\n\n\nI went to my first Disability Studies conference when I was 20. It still took me until my 30s to identify as disabled. And it took me being in community with other Black disabled people through this research and through this work, to really come to a place where I felt like I could claim disability.\n\n\n\nWhy is it important for disability activism to serve people who don't necessarily see themselves as disabled? \n\n\n\nYeah, I think of it from an approach centering on what activists Stacey Park Milbern and Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha call \u201c[crip] doulaing.\u201d It\u2019s bringing someone into the community who is newly disabled. I think we can actually expand that to folks who are newly understanding themselves as disabled, even if they've been disabled for a long time. That approach is a kind of birth or rebirth. To expect people to use certain words, or to push them out when they won't is not going to create the large-scale disability justice movement that we need. \n\n\n\nWhite folks in the disability community said things to me, like, \u201cLet me know when you finally identify as disabled.\u201d It\u2019s a huge turnoff for people. I needed to do it in my own way, my own time. It is a process. When we insist upon people identifying as disabled, or having disability pride, we are forcing people into a process that they're not quite ready for. Instead, we should create an environment that just says, \u201cCome as you are, whether or not you identify as disabled. You deserve access to the medication that you need. You deserve to be able to be as pain free as possible, to rest and all of the things we want for everyone.\u201d \n\n\n\nOne of the biggest focuses in your book is leadership of Black disabled women through organizations like the Black Panther Party and the National Black Women\u2019s Health Project. Why do you think Black disabled women have been at the forefront of advocating for change and improvement in society? \n\n\n\nA central principle of disability justice is the leadership of those most impacted. Black disabled women are some of the most impacted folks in terms of experiences of violence, oppression and marginalization. With these identities, especially blackness and disability, you are far more likely to also be in poverty. We are most impacted by these systems, we see them and experience them on a daily basis. And so we take it upon ourselves to fight back. No one's going to do it for us, but us. \n\n\n\nI also think it\u2019s because care work is so often put on to women, especially Black women. Black women are the ones seeing the failures of care for folks in their community firsthand, and are pushing back. That was a large part of the National Black Women's Health Project \u2014 recognizing that women were often the arbiters of health and health care within their communities. They were making sure family members were going to the doctor or maybe even taking family members to the doctor. \n\n\n\nOne of my favorite things in one of their self-help health books was a list of all the doctors and specialists you might see at a hospital and what those doctors and specialists do. Here's what it means when someone says, \u201cI\u2019m your anesthesiologist.\u201d They also had a list of questions that you should ask the first time you go to a doctor. When we\u2019re directing that advice at women, we\u2019re also directing that advice at their children, at elders, even their husbands and partners. Black women are centers of care in their communities.\n\n\n\n\n\n\u201cBlack Disability Politics\u201d is available for free and in full online. Your first book, \u201cBodyminds Reimagined,\u201d was also recently made available for free online. Why is making books open access a priority for you?\n\n\n\nI finished [\u201cBack Disability Politics\u201d] in 2020. In the middle of the uprisings, I was writing the conclusion and doing the edits. I had done some revisions at the suggestion of one of the anonymous reviewers to make it more practice-focused, to really speak to an activist audience, rather than making this like a simple history. I realized that the only way to make it truly accessible was to make it open access. If you were part of an organizing group, you should be able to read a chapter. No one should ever have to pay any money to do it or find me to ask permission. I talked to my press about it. My editor was really supportive and went to bat for me. I was able to use an award that I had at the university to make it happen. It's about making sure that the people who might most benefit from reading the book can do that whether or not they have financial means. \n\n\n\nAnd once I was able to do that with [\u201cBlack Disability Politics\u201d], I realized I needed to go back and do it for my first book. \u201cBodyminds Reimagined\u201d came out in 2018, but was only made open access last month. \n\n\n\nI'm still pushing to get them made into audiobooks. I'm pretty confident that it will happen. \n\n\n\nTrying to provide access in as many ways as possible seems like a no-brainer when I'm doing work that is focused on activists and organizers. \n\n\n\nIf folks want to learn more about Black disability politics, obviously, they should read your book. But where else should people look to learn more? Who else should people look to on this topic? \n\n\n\nThe Harriet Tubman Collective has not had anything actively happen in a little while, but look at the list of folks involved in Harriet Tubman Collective, follow every single one of them on every single platform. I also recommend the group Sins Invalid and HEARD, which is an organization that works with deaf and hard of hearing folks who are incarcerated. Imani Barbarin for sure. This isn\u2019t comprehensive \u2013 there\u2019s a lot of people. \n\n\n\nYou finished writing \u201cBlack Disability Politics\u201d in 2020, during the uprisings and the early, darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic. We\u2019re in a very different place now. With that in mind, where are we when it comes to Black disability politics? Where are we going? What does the future look like? \n\n\n\nIn some ways, I don't feel like we're anywhere different. I still think a big issue is going to be police violence. Black disabled folks are more likely to experience police violence and harm from police. Black disabled students are more likely to have encounters with police in the schools. Police violence is still a central issue for Black disability politics. \n\n\n\nIn terms of what\u2019s new, I think that long COVID is a big issue that needs to be addressed. You know, the latest data I saw, one in three people end up with some form of long COVID no matter how mild the case. Black folks were more likely to have long COVID. To me [that] says something about access to things like Paxlovid, to time