Somehow, innovation doesn’t strike me as your strong point. 
I believe that is the whole point. Saying that he contributed is honest and accurate; saying the he directly invented it is not.
The patent office virtually hands out patents, so actually getting a patent is no indication of anything clever, unique, or even workable for that matter. IIRC about half of all patents applied for are granted.
All patents REALLY do is document that YOU (maybe) came up with something that MIGHT be unique and workable.
Then, when somebody else tries to make money producing “your” patented widget, you are allowed (whoopee) to try to sue them if you have the time and money. At THAT point, in a court of law, is when you get to find out if the patent is worth anything or means anything.
As someone once said, “all a patent does is give you the right to sue someone”…and the outcome is far from certain.
And I am sorry, but pointing out a patent for a golf tee and door stop is IMO embarassing to the point of being counterproductive to the goal of the ad, not to mention all the other stuff about how the ad is generally misleading in the first place.
Okay, but I think we can assume that you will not be able to patent boiling water…
And if we really want to nitpick it looks as though the US patent calls anyone who receives such a document, an inventor. From their website.
“A U.S. patent for an invention is the grant of a property right to the inventor(s), issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The right conferred by the patent grant is, in the language of the statute and of the grant itself, “the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling” the invention in the United States or “importing” the invention into the United States. To get a U.S. patent, an application must be filed in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.”
That said, I don’t think we can assume that the patent process in place at the end of the nineteenth century (the time frame for several of these innovations) was equivalent to what we have now.
I think that’s a legitimate point. There’s no doubt that the ad was demonstrably counterproductive for everyone who posted strong criticism of it and doubtless many others.
I think they were trying to get (white) people to re-think their assumptions about the kind of contributions African-Americans were able to make in the decades just after slavery or at least prior to the era of civil rights. Instead, a significant group of the intended audience feels manipulated and/or misled. The UNCF should hire a new ad agency…
Hey, the ad makes me feel great----with the bar set that low, the list of white “innovations” must be downright astronomical!
This thread has all sorts of people like CS, who I have assumed from her posts is a stupid, virulent racist piece of scum, confirming the fact with their hysterical reaction to an advert.
It probably is, given the privileged access to education and opportunity white males have had compared to others. So the fuck what?
Oh, I don’t feel manipulated or misled. I do however feel a little insulted the ad agency thought I could be so easily manipulated or misled 
The vigor with which tagos and Cisco are defending this ridiculous list is really very funny. For whatever reason, neither seems to be able to simply say, “Yeah, while the motives were noble, the execution was poorly done, and the list is fairly characterized as false.”
Now, we all (or at least all of us that are reasonable) can agree that the list is false, and I assume we all can also agree that, regardless of the falsity of the specifics on the list, the underlying message has a great deal of truth to it: for most of this country’s history, inventions or substantive innovations that came from people of color were not properly credited, and we would do well to remember that.
Probably people could quibble about “false” but otherwise I think you’re assessment is spot on.
But it’s also worth noting that the disrespectful and exaggerated remarks of some of the ad’s critics are just as skewed (I don’t especially find them “very funny”) as are the unyielding defenses…
Yes, within reason. I’m not taking a living constitution approach to the list of words that shall not be spoken. Here it is:
Restricted language in the Pit - The BBQ Pit - Straight Dope Message Board
I’ll let folks know by moderator note if they’re anywhere close to exceeding the occsional use limit for “expressions . . . normally considered vulgar.” There will be no surprise warnings. So far, nobody is even close.
Gfactor
Pit Moderator
And thus, we have advertising.
Yeah, the list is disingenuous bullshit, but so what? Most of the things between the shows you watch and the articles you read are disingenuous bullshit. Meh.
Eh, a little ignorance never hurt anybody, right? Especially for a good cause…
So what is it? Is it that black African-Americans have made a relatively big contribution to inventions or is it that they have been victims of poor education which has prevented them from being as productive as they could have been? Because it cannot be both.
I heve seen this argument with all sorts of groups:
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Women made a huge contribution to classic literature which is not recognized by our male, chauvinistic, patriarchal culture. As an example we have X.
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Hmmm, no they didn’t. You just have to look at the body of literature to see it was mostly done by males.
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Yes but that is because women were oppressed and uneducated and almost slaves.
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Hmmm. OK.
Of course it can. Women wrote a lot of classical literature (though nowhere near as much as men), and would have written a lot more if fewer roadblocks had been placed in the way.
On the contrary, there’s quite a lot. The box has to be sturdy enough to withstand all kinds of weather for years, yet still easy for the owner and mail deliverer to open during its entire lifetime. That’s a lot harder than it sounds; the USPS tested thousands of designs when it was starting out using what we consider mailboxes, and maybe a dozen passed the entire approval process.
He doesn’t mean what you mean. Outside the US, “mailbox” generally refers to the kind you get at apartment complexes, or a box set behind a door slot, not a free standing box at the end of a driveway.
It is contradictory to argue simultaneously that (1) group X contributed (proportionally) as much as any other group and that (2) the reason they did not contribute proportionally was that they were oppressed or whatever. You cannot defend both without contradiction.
But did anyone actually ever say “proportionally”?
And although it’s not relevant to the present debate (such as it is), literature isn’t a very good example of the point you want to make since women have made a very large contribution to literature, classical and otherwise, since the eighteenth century. One reason is that there were relatively few bars to women’s writing literature (as opposed to say, taking part in scientific endeavors). The real (and demonstrable) discrimination is often in terms of what kind of written works by women get acknowledged as classics.
More to the point, please answer this question honestly. Prior to reading this ad what was your view of a typical African-American circa 1899? Was it of an impoverished person at best struggling to get by doing low-paid agricultural or manual labor or was it of someone with sufficient education and economic opportunity to spend his or her time innovating products of various kinds? I suspect you thought the former.
And, if so, you might say, well, weren’t blacks disproportionately poor and disproportionately deprived of education during that period? Well, yes, they were (and to some degree still are) but from a present-day standpoint that long history of socio-economic deprivation results in a stigma or stereotype: an association between black skin and low-paid wage labor or even criminal activity, except for the lucky athlete or entertainer. What’s occluded by that stereotype is the history of black intellectual and professional labor, a history which, as this ad tries to show, goes back further than most of us think.
Did the ad misfire? I think so. Can one complain that the ad is misleading and even counterproductive? I think so. Could the ad have made the same point more effectively and without raising hackles. IMO, yes.
But I simply don’t get the emotional outrage and utter lack of generosity that this kind of thing induces in some people. It’s as though they feel somehow personally threatened and diminished by a misrepresentation of someone else’s achievements.
I find that sad…
And then there is also the public mailbox - the thing that you put your outgoing mail in. My understanding is that this was invented by Anthony Trollope (neither American nor of African descent).
Actually, it’s the pillar box, a specific kind of mailbox still in use in the UK, that Trollope is often said to invent. In actuality he was responsible for its implementation but not for its invention.