The Child Opportunity Index

The Child Opportunity Index (COI) was developed in 2014 to measure and map "the quality of resources and conditions that matter for children to develop in a healthy way" in the neighbourhoods they grow up, and to spark conversations about inequality and encourage actions to increase equity. In 2020, COI 2.0 was launched including updated data (via) from 29 neighbourhood-level indicators covering three domains: education (quality and access to early childhood education, social resources related to educational achievement), health and environment (access to healthy food and green space, pollution from industry, exposure to extreme heat), social and economic domain.

Good schools, parks, playgrounds, healthy food, clean air, safe housing, health care are some aspects crucial for children to become healthy adults. In the United States, many children live in these "high opportunity" neighbourhoods that provide access to the conditions mentioned before. Many, however, live in "low opportunity" neighbourhoods, many of these "many" being Black, Hispanic and Native American children (via).

For example, (...) in the Milwaukee metro the typical White child enjoys a neighborhood with a Child Opportunity Score of 85, while the typical Black child lives in a neighborhood with a score of only 6. As another point of comparison, this racial gap in Milwaukee represents about four opportunity levels (the maximum possible): the typical Black child lives in a very low-opportunity neighborhood, while the typical White child lives in a very high-opportunity neighborhood. (via)

As of 2017...

While only 9 percent of white children live in the 20 percent of neighborhoods ranked as lowest in opportunity, 32 percent of Hispanic and 40 percent of black children live in such neighborhoods. These disparities remain after controlling for children’s own poverty status. Looking just at poor children, 22 percent of white children live in the 20 percent of neighborhoods ranked as lowest in opportunity, but 45 percent of Hispanic and 57 percent of black children live in such neighborhoods (...). As in our analysis of neighborhoods by poverty status, we find that racial/ethnic inequities in neighborhood opportunities for children are larger in metro areas with higher levels of segregation. (McArdle & Acevedo-Garcia, 2017:5)

Summing up... 

Segregation is not benign. The neighborhoods where children live and grow are both separate and greatly unequal along racial/ethnic lines in ways that have profound impacts on opportunities for healthy child development and wellbeing. The differences in neighborhood characteristics and opportunities between racial/ethnic groups are dramatic not just on average, but for large majorities of their populations. (McArdle & Acevedo-Garcia, 2017:4)

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- McArdle, N. & Acevedo-Garcia, D. (2017). Consequences of Segregation for Children's Opportunity and Wellbeing; via
- photograph by Gordon Parks (Alabama, 1956) via and via

Diagnosing Alzheimer's Disease: Black vs White Patients

In the U.S., Black Americans are about 1.5 to 2 times more likely to develop Alzheimer's or related dementias than whites are. Nevertheless, fewer Black than white Americans are diagnosed with Alzheimer's or related dementias. In a study carried out by Lennon et al. (2022), 15 years (ranging from 2005 to 2020) of data on 5.700 Black and 31.225 white participants were tracked. While 36.1% of white participants were diagnosed with Alzheimer's, only 26.8% of Black participants received the diagnosis. Relative to white participants, Black participants had 35% lower odds of having the diagnosis at the initial visit (via).

Black study participants showed higher rates concerning cognitive impairment (particularly processing speed, language, executive function) than white participants, higher rates of hypertension and diabetes - in other words, more potential risk factors for Alzheimer's. In addition, they were twice as likely to experience delusions and hallucinations and generally more likely to show symptoms such as abnormal sleep, appetite or eating changes, irritability, agitation or aggression.

According to the research team, the results are further evidence that - compared to white patients - Black patients usually need more severe clinical presentations to receive a diagnosis of dementia from physicians. The results are backed by the tendency found in numerous studies showing that Black individuals are only diagnosed with Alzheimer's or related dementias when the disease process is more advanced.

Apart from the differences in diagnostic thresholds applied by providers, the scientists believe that these trends are partly due to social attitudes within Black communities in which memory problems are viewed as a normal part of ageing and medical treatment is only sought when neuropsychiatric symptoms (hallucinations, delusions, personality changes) are encountered. 

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- Lennon, J. C., Aita, S. L., Del Bene, V. A., Rhoads, T., Resch, Z. J., Eloi, J. M. Walker, K. A. (2022). Black and White individuals differ in dementia prevalence, risk factors, and symptomatic presentation. Alzheimer's & Dementia, The Journal of the Alzheimer's Association, 18(8), 1461-1471.
- photograph by Gordon Parks via

Quoting Matilda Joslyn Gage

"The women of today are the thoughts of their mothers and grandmothers, embodied and made alive. They are active, capable, determined and bound to win. They have one-thousand generations back of them… Millions of women dead and gone are speaking through us today."

Matilda Joslyn Gage (1880)

photograph by Reg Innell (1970, Women's liberation demonstration at Nathan Phillips Square, Toronto) via

Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky's Frankfurt Kitchen

"They thought that I would starve to death. Nobody could imagine hiring a woman to build a house in 1916 — not even myself."

Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky

Schütte-Lihotzky (1897-2000) was born in Vienna and became the first female student of the so-called Kunstgewerbeschule, now known as the University of Applied Arts Vienna. As a student she worked on projects on affordable housing for the working class and decided to dedicate her career to reducing some burdens through efficient residential design. In an early project of hers, she designed flats for single, working women. 

When the social housing development programme "New Frankfurt" was launched in the German city of Frankfurt, Schütte-Lihotzky was invited to join - which she did creating her magnum opus, the first fitted kitchen, the "Frankfurt Kitchen" (aged 101, she said: "If I had known that everyone would keep talking about nothing else, I would never have built that damn kitchen!"). With this kitchen she aimed to make life easier for those (mainly women) using it. At the time, kitchens in working-class housing were part of the living room which often also served as a bedroom. The separated kitchen was small but efficient, the efficiency was drawn from kitchens in scientific laboratories and railway cars. The design was also based on interviews with housewives and time-motion studies of their work to reduce the number of steps needed to be taken between different tasks. About 10.000 of these kitchens were built in Frankfurt alone. Later, feminists linked Schütte-Lihotzky with the subjugation of women by the kitchen. Schütte-Lihotzky, however, wanted to reduce the hours and burden of women's unpaid labour at home: 

"I was convinced that the economic independence and self-realization of women would be a common good, and that therefore the further rationalization of household labor was imperative."

Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky

Schütte-Lihotzky was an ardent antifascist who joined the resistance against the Nazis. She was imprisoned in 1941 and sentenced to death but was lucky and returned to Vienna after the liberation in 1945 (via).

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photographs of Schütte-Lihotzky in her home via and via and via

Becoming "The" Ernst Haas

Ernst Haas was born in Vienna in 1921. As a child, he decided to become a painter, however, he was drafted into the military for two years after the Anschluss of Austria to the German Reich in 1938. When returning to Vienna after his service, he entered medical school which he was forced to leave after one year of study because of his Jewish ancestry (via).

His father was an amateur photographer. After his death in 1940, Haas started printing his father's negatives teaching himself technical aspects of photography and developing an interest in the creative ones. In photography, he saw the chance to combine his two goals, i.e. becoming an explorer and a painter (via). Haas, in fact, became an early master of colour photography, a member of Magnum, the man behind the iconic photograph of the Marlboro Man, and much more (via).

photographs by Ernst Haas via and via and via

The Impact of Wearing Finger Rings on Symptoms of Dementia

In a study, seven female Japanese dementia (Alzheimer's disease) patients (two discontinued wearing the ring since they thougt they might be forced to buy, data is based on five subjects) living in five small-scale nursing homes were asked to put rings (average price eight dollars) on their fingers from 9:00 to 19:00 for seven days. According to a majority of nursing care providers, the "irritability/lability" disappeared during the ring-wearing intervention period in those patients (n=3) showing an interest in rings. There was no effect in the two subjects not displaying an interest in rings.

Without having been asked, the nursing staff told the patients that they looked so beautiful when they saw them wearing rings. The researchers explain the decrease in irritability and lability with the women knowing about their own status of collapsing intellect and words such as "you look so beautiful" having a positive effect on self-esteem alleviating irritability and lability (Yokoi et al., 2017).

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- Teruo Yokoi, Hitoshi Okamura, Tomoka Yamamoto, Katsuya Watanabe, Shigeko Yokoi, Hitoshi Atae, Masayuki Ueda, Takahiro Kuwayama, Shigekazu Sakamoto, Saaya Tomino, Hideo Fujii, Takefumi Honda, Takayosi Morita, Takafumi Yukawa, & Nobuko Harada (2017). Effect of wearing fingers rings on the behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia: An exploratory study. SAGE Open Medicine, Vol. 5, link
- photograph of Elizabeth Taylor via

"They are not demographics, they are people."

Keith Kahn-Harris, a sociologist teaching Jewish studies, noticed the lack of diversity when it comes to representing British Jews. In fact, a great many articles were illustrated with the same Getty Images photograph, i.e., haredi Orthodox men seen from behind. Kahn-Harris tracked down the photographer - Robert Stothard - to learn about its background. The image, that had become the so-called go-to photograph for all sorts of stories about the Jewish community, or communities, had originally been taken to illustrate an article on police presence in London's Jewish neighbourhoods. In 2019, Kahn-Harris and Stothard started working on a new series of photographs of British Jews, a series that would no longer misrepresent their diversity. The photobook "What does a Jew Look Like" was published in 2022, including narratives written by the persons themselves (via).

Above: "There were few reminders of our heritage in our day-to-day lives bar the Chanukah cards we opened alongside our Christmas ones. Adolescence changed that, though. Keen for us to learn our history, our mother took us, at 12 and 13, to Auschwitz during the school holidays... I lit a menorah at home for the first time this year, despite still being irreligious, and was moved significantly by the experience. After all, a lack of faith made no difference to the Gestapo or the KGB​." Rio, Leeds (via)

Getty Images commissioned me to do a set of images depicting increased police presence on the streets in the wake of the 2015 Islamist terrorist attacks in Paris. There were fears of copycat attacks in Britain,” explains Stothard. “So when I took the photos they were news pics. But since then, one image in particular has been clumsily repurposed, become a decontextualised and ubiquitous stock image. It has even been used to illustrate a story about campus antisemitism. It made me very uncomfortable. Robert Stothard

Above: Anonymous.

There are only about 300,000 Jews in Britain so it’s quite easy to live here and never meet a real, live one. The way we are portrayed in the media, in public, is important, it’s how impressions are formed. So the aim of the book is simple – we want non-Jews, and even some Jews, to understand that there is no such thing as the generic Jew. Keith Kahn-Harris

Above: "When the Prodigy’s sound system broke down mid-set at Glastonbury back in 1997, I was asked to go on stage and keep the frustrated crowd at bay while they tried to fix it. I didn’t have any jokes and was getting bottles thrown at me, so I decided to sing Hava Nagila to 90,000 people and thankfully it worked a treat. That song really saved my arse that night​." Paul, north London (via)

Above: "am a practicing artist – concentrating on drawing and installation, my work explores themes of identity, memory, sexual violence, and the body. Largely autobiographical, I use biological materials such as broken eggshells and living matter – plants, insects, fungus – as media, either drawing directly onto them or using them to transform objects and spaces. I was brought up with a very strong religious and cultural identity, but in a non-traditional household. Our family was part of the radical feminist movement; I was conceived through donor insemination and the household was very much part of that ‘80s leftist Stoke Newington scene. There was always a degree of balancing political and personal ideology with religious practice. To make keeping kosher dietary laws easier, we were vegetarian. I went to a Jewish primary school. We’d go on Friday to Ridley Road market to buy challah, and we lit candles and had traditional Friday night dinner to welcome in Shabbat, when I wasn’t allowed to turn on the TV or touch anything electric. As I got older and my mum left the more radical circles, we became more traditionally observant and moved to a more Jewish area of London. I studied in seminary for two years pre-university and got married whilst a student to my long-term boyfriend. As an adult, I have moved back to East London and now live with my husband in Bow. I have a studio in Woolwich where I work and can plan projects. I lived in Edgware for many years but felt stifled and constrained by the atmosphere there – the main thing I miss about it is the excellent foraging in the local woodlands! Living away from the North West London Jewish bubble allows me more freedom to be religious and observant but also to lead a more unconventional life without the scrutiny or pressure of a curious and conservative community. I do not currently want children so many of the tropes of religious married life do not fit my own. I can cover my hair, keep kosher, go to shul, go to the mikvah and fulfil mitzvot without having to live in a row of houses all of which have mezuzot." Tilla, east London (via)

Above: "The photo was taken in Norfolk Heritage Park, Sheffield. That’s the place I usually walk on Shabbat. I’ve had a relationship with trees since I was a child. I’ve lived in Sheffield for over four years now, after moving from London, where I was born and raised. I came to Sheffield to get away from the London anxiety! I’m a member of the Seven Hills Synagogue. It’s small, maybe 100 people, so it’s a very tight-knit and friendly community. We don’t have our own building, so we meet in a community centre every other week. I’m part of a sub-group here where we build up diversity and inclusivity within the Jewish community, trying to engage with our members to talk about the presence of Disabled Jews, Black Jews, Jews of Colour and Queer Jews. It’s a way to help them adapt within those spaces through social activities and promote an accepting diversity of Jews everywhere. My parents are Nigerian Igbos. They moved to the UK in the 80s but divorced in the early 2000s. Though my Mum is Christian, some reputable anthropologists believe in the theory that Igbos have Hebrew Israelite origins. Ironically, I first heard about Judaism through my childhood learning difficulties when I was seven years old. I went to a secular school in the Jewish Haredi neighbourhood of Stamford Hill. I had a teaching assistant who was a secular Jew, and I asked her questions whenever we went to the library nearby. For example, once I asked, ‘Why are these people dressed like that?’ She told me there are strictly practising Jews and explained the different movements of Judaism. I embraced Judaism in the early 2010s as I love the idea of tikkun olam, being spiritually conscious, doing tzedakah, and celebrating my ancestors contribution to the Torah. I want to build consciousness of overseas Afro-Caribbean Jewish communities in the UK to advocate for their recognition within Jewish Education. There are other Black Jews with Afro-Caribbean heritage in cities like London, Birmingham and Manchester. The problematic issue in Jewish spaces is explaining the connections between African ethnic groups and the biblical tribe of Israel; people get confused, and I constantly have to explain. Not only ethnic groups such as the Igbo, the Akan, the Lemba, and the Abayudaya — but other African Jewish communities make the same claim." Kenneth, Sheffield (via)

Above: "‘Are there any Jews?’ This was the first question my wife asked me nearly 15 years ago when I was offered a teaching post in Scotland. I conducted online research and it appeared that Edinburgh was the new Jerusalem!" Joe, Edinburgh (via)

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photographs via and via and via and via and via and via

Mous Lamrabat's Mousganistan

Moroccan-Belgian photographer Mous Lamrabat created Mousganistan, a fantasy world in his head and "utopian frame of love" (via), a "place where life is at peace and people are loved, no matter where you are from" (via), a place that is "free, real and easy going" (via). 

Asked what it takes a person to immigrate to this place, why, and where it is, Lamrabat replies: "pffff, man. mousganistan is a utopia, it’s a place in my head and sometimes it's my escape from the world. i have been going there a lot lately. there are so many things going wrong in the world at this moment. some people can take it and deal with it but i can’t. it literally depresses me. when i escape to this place that i created in my head, it feels like home and i feel untouchable. it’s a space where i can make sense of everything and search for solutions. it’s not possible to change the world on your own but i do what i can by sharing my messages. the most important one is still: “life shouldn’t be hard”. i feel we need to go back to the purest forms of humanity and see how “simple” it all can be… and that’s how you get into mousganistan." Mous Lamrabat

About Mousghanistan: "It’s something I’m fighting for the next generation – to be themselves and be proud of where they come from. I remember we would go on school trips and my mom made sandwiches with homemade Moroccan bread and ingredients no one ever saw. I’d hide it and go eat on my own. I didn’t know it back then, but right now, it’s much better than my cheese sandwich. These are the things that are important to me. You have different things growing up but you should embrace them. I’m super proud that I’ve seen a lot of young MENA artists doing that recently. They mix things with where they come from and the world they live in. It’s nice to see that promise in them. In an art form, you can do much more than in real life. If you see war images on the news or on your phone, people are so used to it. We have a filter for it. If you take problems and put them in a gallery or museum, it’s different. People stand there and try to understand them."
Mous Lamrabat

photographs via and via and via

Mous Lamrabat. Too Moroccan, Too European.

"as a child of first generation immigrants, there is always a point in your life where you feel like you don’t fit in anywhere; not in the country you were born in nor in the country you were raised in. i felt like i was too moroccan to fit in as a belgian and too european to fit in as a moroccan, and this is something that almost every immigrant has to deal with. wherever you want to live on this planet, you will always feel like an outsider...

... as a result, we do our very best to be accepted and to be “normal”, consciously or subconsciously. luckily, at some point, i didn’t want to do that anymore. i started questioning (and still do till this day) the concept of “normal” and all the standards and rules that society imposed on us. since then, everything changed for me: the way i look at things, the way i act, the way i work, the way i think creatively… my work is a big basket of things that interest me and that mean something to me on a deeper level. so, since i grew up in europe and lived day in and day out in a super-traditional house hold, playing basketball, listening to hip-hop, watching cartoons… these are the things that made me who i am and this is the person you see within my work. morocco is an important and influential place for me as well because when i needed to think a lot about what i actually wanted to do or be, i spent 4 months in morocco and everything came together. i realized there is not a “right” way to do things. you need to know what the right way is for you!"
Mous Lamrabat

"I see it [representing the Middle East] as my responsibility. I’ll do a lot for the North African, African, Arab world because I am all of these. My main goal is to unite people. That was the cool thing about my first exhibition, it had all colours and ages. I was putting very loud music every weekend in the exhibition. Sometimes young Moroccan women were dancing and all these other people were just so intrigued. They were clapping and sometimes they’d even join in. Seeing all these people unite in the space that I created made me wish that I could have an exhibition that spread all over the world – just to imagine that effect."
Mous Lamrabat

"We as Arabs/North Africans/Muslims are not represented in a good way. So yeah, I want to show a new side of us that is new for the West, and maybe even to ourselves. Putting all these different cultures together attracts a bigger audience because a lot of different minorities and majorities recognize something familiar in the images. So, when I have an exhibition, I really enjoy seeing all these cultures, colors, and ages coming together for something that I created for them. It makes me feel like a kid with divorced parents trying to get them back together."
Mous Lamrabat

"At some point, I was just a fashion photographer. I was just doing what people asked of me. So, I took an eight-month break. No photography – just letting it happen. All of a sudden it was right there in front of me. I had been doing it since I was a teenager. This is me. This is what I should do – show that we can be one person with different identities."
Mous Lamrabat

Asked about growing up as a Moroccan-Belgian living in-between two worlds and how it first came to him to merge his two cultural backgrounds together: "I think I started mixing the two when I started looking for my own DNA. I didn’t know which one to choose. Should I go more towards the West and do fashion photography like everybody else, or should I start shooting more documentary-style photos in places that are close to me like Morocco? After a long period of thinking I decided I didn’t want to choose between the two! So, I just did both, simply because I love doing both."
Mous Lamrabat

"I have a soft heart. When I have to create an editorial, I really can’t ignore what’s going on in the world. I want to create images that we’d be proud of 10 years later. For me, that’s the best part about being a fashion photographer – anything could be fashion, and you could use that. Racism is something that I’m very sensitive to because I’ve experienced it. I used to live in a city that was quite racist, and I saw a lot and I’ve been through a lot. As for women, I think that women are super beings. I have a lot of women in my life, with have five sisters and my mom. I think that’s the reason why I’m quite sensitive to and respect women. As for our religion, well, it’s tough. I don’t know who did the ‘marketing plan’ of not counting Arabs or Muslims as equals with the rest of the world, but that’s still the case. For example, if you see an Arab country being bombed and people dying, the reactions aren’t always the same as if it were a Western country. I think there’s a mentality where they think that, in Arab countries, people are ‘used to it’. Is an Arab life or a Muslim life not worth as much as any other?"
Mous Lamrabat

"i do believe in the concept of cultural appropriation but it also depends on why you are doing it. if it's for your own benefit i think it’s a definite no-go. but, if you are interested in different cultures and you visit these places and you create something with the people that are a part of said culture without any commercial intent behind it… then i feel like it’s genuine interest rather than cultural appropriation. the commercial part is a big factor for me here. but that’s personal, everybody draws their own line."
Mous Lamrabat

"you’ve been a vocal supporter of the black lives matters movement. in your opinion, how relevant is that movement to the rest of the world and why? this shouldn’t even be a question. the blm movement is super relevant… as relevant as the air we breathe. it may sound a bit corny, but everyone should be treated equal. no matter who, what, where, how... even if it felt like a flaw growing up, not to be “normal” (or white in my case), i’m blessed, and after all these years i can say: “i’m very happy and i’m very lucky that i’m a person of colour”."
Mous Lamrabat

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photographs by Mous Lamrabat via and via and via 

Mous Lamrabat. His Photography, the "Orient", the West, and the Third Culture.

Moroccan-Belgian photographer and "third-culture kid" Mous Lamrabat "fuses his North African background with western references" (via). Inspired by the identity crises he had coming from many places at once and growing up with and between two worlds and, at the same time, in a third culture, in his work, he blends the lines between cultures. Lamrabat turns the crises of identity into an opportunity for beauty (via and via and via).

"i also like to connect different parts of the world, namely the “west” and the “orient” because i’m both. as a kid, i loved wearing djellabas and rocking them with my jordan sneakers. it felt “cool” at that time because that’s who i was: a mixture of identities. doesn’t it make sense that your “idea-basket” gets larger when you live in different cultures or you live in multiple places in the world?"
Mous Lamrabat

Asked what aspect of western culture he would eliminate if he could: "this is a dangerous question but i’ll try to be as honest as possible. i traveled many times and to many places around the world and the thing that bothers me most, is when i see europeans in foreign countries looking at the locals’ way of living as though it’s not normal. everybody on this planet has their own “normal” and that’s what’s most interesting about our planet. so, if i can eliminate something it would be that western people should stop acting like their way is the best way."
Mous Lamrabat

... and what aspect of "oriental" culture he would eliminate: "it's sad to say but there is a lot of racism within the oriental culture. not towards other continents but more within. i can’t say what the source of this racism is, but it's painful to see that there is no unity within this big region. we would be one of the strongest and richest part of the world."
Mous Lamrabat

Asked if westernisation was a positive or negative thing: "i thought about it a lot and i must say that i’m not a fan. who are “we” to say that our way is the best way and how the whole world should function? i’m more interested in getting to know different ways/systems of living instead of only knowing one, because i really don’t believe we were put on this planet to work hard all our life to pay off debts. i would love to visit another planet one day to see what their way is."
Mous Lamrabat

"The West gives you the feeling that you are different but that’s fine. It’s good. I have two worlds that I live in and, as a creative, it’s the best thing that you can have. This is what I try to promote in my work for the next generations. Don’t sell yourself out just to be accepted more. Crafting that individuality can be hard. Take social media. It can feel like it’s trying to shape one person, one identity. The more you practice that way of thinking, the more it becomes normal. Then you have this big group of people who think the same, look the same, are the same."
Mous Lamrabat

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photographs via and via