The North Star

Uganda in the News

2009-12-13T16:39:00.003-05:00

Uganda has received a lot of attention from the international community surrounding two very controversial topics: female circumcision and homosexuality. I hate to clump such important issues under one post, but I just wanted to post these two links and ignite some discussion.

Uganda Bans Female Circumcision (Source: CNN News)
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/africa/12/12/uganda.genital.mutilation/

Uganda Bill Proposes Death Penalty for Gay Sex (Source: NPR)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=121216492

Without question, most of the international community agrees with the passing of Anti-circumcision legislation. However, we must question the timing of this bill's passage. This topic has been debated for quite some time in Parliament- and its been stagnant for years. After working in Parliament this past summer, I am very shocked (happy, but shocked) because mot female MPs thought this battle would be fought longer. Without question, it is a tremendous victory--- but will it overshadow this issue of homosexuality in Uganda? Regardless of this recent "victory," we must continue to make noise and bring awareness about the anti-homosexuality bill that is up for debate. We must ask if this bill will be funded and executed properly. It is one thing to pass a bill, but its another thing to actually fund it. The Womens' Representatives rightfully capitalized off of this sensitive time in Uganda politics by pushing for women's rights. But will this measure be enforced? Is it going to be used to overshadow and ease anti-homosexuality legislation into passage?

Hmmm...

Hispanic Firerfighter in New Haven Suit

2009-07-03T07:57:00.004-05:00

Check out the following article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/03/nyregion/03firefighter.html?_r=1&hp

It is fascinating how complex race and affirmative action can be. Mr. Vargas, the lone man of color involved in the lawsuit, should be applauded for his conviction, regardless of the fact that many of us would deem his position naive and misguided. Nonetheless, it is unfortunate that our court systems are regressing by ignoring the fact that inherent institutional racism and racial disparities still exist.

Troy Davis! Sign the Petition!

2009-06-18T03:29:00.003-05:00

I am sure you have heard about Troy Davis, the innocent black man who is on death row for a crime that he did not commit.

Please sign the petition:
http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/2446/t/4676/petition.jsp?petition_KEY=369

You can get involved in many ways. The NAACP and Amnesty International are doing a lot of great work on this issue. Get in touch with your local NAACP or Amnesty International Chapter and see how you can help. There have been rallies, marches, and campaigns organized all around the country about this. Don't sit back and allow such an injustice to happen!

I am sure that there are some skeptics who would say that this is an isolated event, but it is not! Such injustices occur everyday within our judicial system. This case represents so much of what it wrong with the system as is. By standing up and making your voice heard, you are enabling change to occur.

You can also see what others are doing to raise awareness here at:
www.troyanthonydavis.org

Diners Club and Mail Order Brides

2009-06-16T17:27:00.004-05:00

Diners Club Offers Payment Plan for Vietnamese Brides (http://humantrafficking.change.org/blog/view/diners_club_offers_payment_plan_for_vietnamese_brides)

Diners Club Ends Relationship with Mail Order Brides Service (http://humantrafficking.change.org/blog/view/diners_club_ends_relationship_with_mail_order_brides_service)

I saw this original link on Racialicious and it was updated with the second one. Basically a Diners Club affiliate partnered with Vietnamese Brides International to provide a payment plan option to purchase a mail-order bride with your credit card. It cost $167 monthly (interest-free ?!?) and you don't even need to make your first payment before you receive your new wife! And if you fail to pay for your wife, you didn't need to return her! There are other ways for the creditors to recoup their losses. (WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?!?)

This sickened me. I'm glad the concerned people of change.org were able to alert Diners Club so that they terminated the relationship, but it's a scary world when you can purchase a human on credit.

Obama still not in support of gay marriage but...

2009-06-02T18:07:00.002-05:00

Obama and Pride

Happy Birthday Malcolm

2009-05-19T16:58:00.002-05:00

He would've been 84. I wonder what he would be saying if he were around today. Any thoughts?

Obama at the White House Correspondents Dinner

2009-05-13T15:36:00.003-05:00

Not only does Obama have "swag", but he's got jokes to. Check out this footage from the White House Correspondents Dinner:

Cleary, Obama's "got it." He definitely gave the dinner some "fla-va." Enjoy.

Justice Appalachia Style

2009-05-13T14:33:00.003-05:00

Mix the following ingredients:
"Former high school football stars"
"All-white jury"
"Small town of Shenandoah, Pennsylvania"
"The beating death of a Mexican immigrant"
Injustice.

It's hard sometimes to make sense of something like this. But lets go for the obvious--what does this story tell us?

To humans, to society the value of human life is variable. In Shenandoah, the death of a Mexican is worth less than the death of a white citizen. Simple assault charges were given for a gang beating that, according to the medical examiner, resulted in the "brain oozing from his skull." And even if Ramirez wasn't blameless, he was fatally kicked in the head after being knocked unconscious. I can hear the underlying the sentiment of the jury. It just doesn't make sense to punish these fine young men just because a Mexican died. Why inconvenience them? The DA probably thought the same thing.

Boys will be boys.

Now there is a statement that I've heard before. It's used to explain away a lot of mischief that boys find themselves into. But why have I felt that it hasn't and doesn't apply to me? As a black man (and very recently a black boy) I was never the recipient of this sort of grace. Not in the classroom and certainly not in a street fight.

Imagine for a moment if I, along with a few of my football playing black friends, beat up and killed a white man, I don't think things would've been explained away this easily. The resulting narrative would've certainly played out differently. Perhaps we were in some sort of defacto gang. Sure we were talented football players but we were always the selfish and egotistical, not the hardworking "lunch-pail" types that Piekarsky and Donchak were.

Subconcious racially tinged narratives are all around us. They bleed into many parts of our lives, regardless of race and affect both how our actions are perceived and how we are treated. For some it helps us and for others it constrains us. For Donchak and Piekarsky, I have a hunch that this dynamic played a role in jury deliberations. It probably helped them and I am certain that it didn't hurt them as it would've for me in the other scenario.

Regardless of the details of the story, the life of Luis Ramirez was brutally taken, and his family has not found justice. That is the profound tragedy in this story. Sadly, the justice system often fails to live up to its name and even in the age of Obama, we find no dearth of examples. Even sadder; we aren't surprised by stories like that of Ramirez.

East High School, Home of the Orientals

2009-05-03T18:42:00.000-05:00

http://www.racialicious.com/2009/05/01/east-high-school-home-of-the-orientals/

Obama's Swagga

2009-05-03T13:26:00.004-05:00

Thumbs up to CNN for spending time enlightening it's viewers on a very important quality of President Obama, "swagga". The anchor, Kyra Phillips is absolutely giddy about her discovery that Obama has "swagga" and none of the other Presidents before him did. The white camera man also does not have "swagga". Shaft does though.

My fav line: Swagga, it's like swagger with a little more flava.

T.J. Holmes "swagga guru" (who knew?) broke it down: Obama goes to b-ball games and nice dinners, only black men have "swagga" and other black men "will look at" Obama's "swagga" and call him a "brotha". Hugging is a part of Black culture, everyone does it. That's why Obama is comfortable hugging people and that's why people love him. This "swagga" assessment takes place on Obama's 100th day in office; completely absent from this segment is any discussion of policy. The focus is on our President's "swag". Awesome.

The clips speak for themselves.

short and sweet:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/29/the-most-embarrassing-cnn_n_193095.html

a bit longer:
http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/cnn/swagga_like_tj_holmes_115299.asp?c=rss

Gay Taunts Causes 11 Year Old to Commit Suicide

2009-05-01T14:08:00.006-05:00

MUST READ:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/MindMoodNews/story?id=7328091&page=1

The homophobia and ignorance that plagues our society should not affect our children like this. As a society, we need to fight against the restrictions of gender roles, especially when dealing with its intersection with race. Because the young, black boy smiled, he was gay?! Worst of all, he felt he had to take his life because of this. None of these children are to blame. We, as a society, share responsibility for Joseph Walker Hoover's death. We perpetuate hate and intolerance in music, television, churches, and everyday conversation. We allow our children, sliblings, and ourselves to use such hateful speech.

Joseph Walker Hoover, our prayers go out to you and your family.

A Woman of Color on the Supreme Court?!

2009-05-01T13:14:00.005-05:00

It's a possibility. David Souter, the Bush appointed "Conservative turned Liberal" is said to be leaving the court in June.

Source: http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/01/toobin.souter/

I was estatic, to say the least, when I cam across this article. In this day and age we should not limit ourselves to race and gender when evaluating people for this position. Nonetheless, there is currently only one woman on the Supreme Court and there is very little color on the supreme court. The disconnect between the court's ethnic and gender make up to that of America seems to have disabled their ability to comprehend minority and women's rights.

Hopefully the Obama administration will keep this in mind.

MY PRESIDENT HAS WAVES

2008-11-13T21:21:00.004-05:00

A little late, I know.

So like millions of people around the country, my eyes were glued to CNN on election night. After President Obama flashed upon the screen, there was complete pandemonium in the Afro American Cultural Center.

I’m looking at the TV and everyone is going crazy. Jesse was crying! Hope-rah was crying! Hell, I almost let a tear fall down. As Obama emerged from backstage to address the nation, there was a sense of hope for all Americans- that we truly can do anything that we set out to do. As people cried and cheered, I cheered along with them--- but then the cameras got closer to Obama and I had to ask myself... are those waves?!

A million questions started floating around in my head on election night about President Obama's fresh cut. Does he sleep with a wave cap? What products does he use? Who lines his hair up? How often does he get it cut? Does he carry a brush around in his breifcase? After seeing a bunch of tired combovers and receding hairlines, it’s nice to see a Commander in Chief with a fresh cut and waves deeper than the Mariana Trench.

Home of the Free...ish

2008-11-06T14:56:00.005-05:00

Now that we’ve all cried, sung, and hugged everyone we know, let’s get back to business. America is still fucked up. Yeah, I said it. We have a black president and somehow we still look like we’re trapped in a land of bigots. Am I being rough on America? Yes. Will I give America a break? No. Because if I did, nothing would change and isn’t that what we’re all looking for?

California. Fail. Arkansas. Fail. Florida. Fail. Arizona. Fail.

Liberal media. Fail. Why? Because there’s a large chance you have no clue what those states have in common. Go ahead and google it…I’ll wait….

So now that you see what I’ve taken issue with, I will begin to rage.

Change - We asked for it. Begged for it. Shit. We even got t-shirts made. And not the spray paint or cheap screen print kind. We got the real won’t fade in the washing machine shirts. Yet these propositions allow for the continued disenfranchisement of homosexuals (and others in Arkansas). Where is the outrage from America? Have we become dormant already? Are we again entering the post-Civil Rights coma induced from patting ourselves on the back one too many times? This is the time to push on.

I cannot imagine the audacity of any person who would even attempt to deny another person of any right. And to imagine a black person that did or would have voted yes on Prop 8 were they given the chance? That’s insane. I know black people love their religion but can you not look past that to see that you are denying people their human and civil rights? I guess the Bible is an established truth…kind of like science. Which is why we still abide by Eugenics.

It’s hard to push for a separation of church and state here in the land of democracy where you have the freedom to practice whatever religion you want (long as Jesus is white) when you go in a court room and swear in on a Bible. Still I find it funny that Christians pick and choose which doctrines they choose to enact and stand behind. I didn’t know that sins came on a hierarchal system. Apparently things like homosexuality send you straight to Hell but sex before marriage is cool. You just get put in timeout or something. I didn’t even know Heaven had corners.

Besides that, you (possibly previously divorced) people out there want to protect the sanctity of marriage. Though homosexuals are allowed to appropriate the language of heterosexual romantic love, they are not deserving of the right to marry. That oh so sacred rite of Las Vegas marriages somehow alludes gay people. Change marriage? Impossible. Every interracial couple I know was ecstatic about Prop 8 passing.

I had a friend(?) of mine who was happy about the yes on Prop 8 tell me that things are still equal. That homosexuals can still be equal citizens without the right to marry. Umm hellllllo. Equal. Meaning the same. After alerting him that someone/anyone/everyone else not having all the rights he has is not equality and that with marriage came other shit like taxes and hospital visitation rights and other like protections under the law. So I asked him if a prop came around that said black people can no longer marry, would he still think we were being treated as equal. He says yes…as long as they had good reason. You can’t make this shit up. The reaches to which people will go to prove they are not in fact homophobic are amazing. They have gay friends and they’re totally cool with their lifestyle…they just don’t think they should get married.

Personally, I would think that marriage between two consenting adult human beings should be an automatic. There shouldn’t be a need for legislation to make anything outside of heterosexual marriage legal. You would think the same thing applies to legislation that requires equality for racial minorities and women but we know how that goes.

Rejoice America. Change has come in Obama but so much has stayed the same. Go ahead. Party and celebrate for four years and you will look up and see that America looks eerily the same.

No House, No Vote???

2008-09-21T19:49:00.004-05:00

Please read this article:

http://www.michiganmessenger.com/4076/lose-your-house-lose-your-vote

According to the article, republican strategists in Macomb County, Michigan are trying to subdue "predictably left leaning" voters by challenging voters whose residence is listed at a foreclosed home.

However, the accused vote suppressors say that this is not so:

http://www.mlive.com/elections/index.ssf/2008/09/flap_over_foreclosure_challeng.html

Who didn't see this one coming...

Whether or not this story is true, let's be real here. Such intimidation tactics are being employed in this election. The new voting block that turned out in record numbers during the primaries will play a crucial role in this election, so this story does not surprise me. We have to do our part to combat such tactics. Long voting lines, misinforming people about their voting eligibility, and outdated voting machines in lower income areas has been a serious problem in elections all across the country and very little has been said about it. We should be raising hell! We're talking about voter disenfranchisement! Where is the outrage from the media? the people?

9/11/2001- We Will Never Forget

2008-09-11T13:17:00.001-05:00

Let us remember the men and women who lost their lives seven years ago from this date. You might be very busy today, but take a brief moment of silence to honor the brave fire fighters, city workers, victims, and families of victims.

Peace.

Obama is my...Slave?

2008-07-20T11:55:00.006-05:00

This afternoon, I checked my email and found another disheartening story about ignorance in connection with Barack Obama. (thanks to Naima for bringing this to my attention)

Doron Braunshtein, an Israeli-born designer, created a $69 t-shirt that says "Obama is my Slave". WHAT?! According to the New York edition of Metro News, a 25 year old graduate student was wearing the T-shirt in UNION SQUARE and was confronted by 4 teenage girls. They pushed her, pulled her earphones out of her ears and spit on her. Now this person wants to sue the designer for "all he's got". So much is wrong with the whole situation, I don't even know where to begin.

I understand that everyone doesn't support Obama, but I don't understand why people would feel that this reference to slavery is an appropriate way to display their displeasure with his candidacy. At least create a T-shirt about legitimate concerns like his 'lack of experience'. Why insult him and Black people everywhere with such an awful slogan? In the Metro News article, the designer, which here means, placing not-so-witty phrases on t-shirts and selling them for 3 times what they're worth, claims that "his outrageous design reflects not his views but those of 'ordinary WASPs'.” Later in the article, we learn that he "can't stand Obama" because he reminds him of Adolf Hitler. Wow.

Moving on to the alleged beat-down of the lovely lady wearing the shirt. Maybe it's naive idealism on my part, but I highly doubt that an educated person would wear a shirt like this. In Union Square of all places. It just doesn't make sense. If she did, I'm not sure why she'd sue the designer of the shirt. He didn't force her to wear the shirt that day. And I can't imagine why she'd be surprised that people were upset about the shirt. In fact, she's pretty lucky that something worse didn't happen to her. Some of the other bloggers think this may all just be a publicity stunt, but either way people are still buying this and other awful, overpriced shirts. Braunshtein claims he's sold 1,200 shirts that say "Who Killed Obama?" Clearly, there's a lot more ugliness to be unveiled before this election is over.

Original article: http://ny.metro.us/metro/local/article/Obama_slave_shirt_sparks_lawsuit_threat/13001.html

Other blogs posts:
http://www.hiphopmusic.com/2008/07/obama_is_my_slave_tshirt.html
http://www.livesteez.com/news/news_detail/934
http://www.missinfo.tv/index.php/2008/07/17/sightwo-morons-one-obama-is-my-slave-shirt-one-too-few-beatings/
http://blogs.bet.com/news/youthvote/?p=426
http://gawker.com/5026752/race+baiting-media-whore-is-a-credible-source-to-one-dumb-paper

FREE SPEECH = RIGHT TO BE RACIST?

2008-07-16T11:58:00.005-05:00

Barack and Michelle Obama are gracing the latest cover of the New Yorker magazine, but I get the feeling that they might not be too thrilled about it. The latest cover of the premier magazine features Senator Obama dressed in traditional Islamic clothing while giving his wife Michelle their trademark fist pound. Add a burning American flag, a portrait of Osama Bin Laden, and over exaggerated facial features (with a dash of hyper sexualization) and we have our selves a nice gumbo of racism, ignorance and regression. Anyone hungry?

The picture is problematic for so many reasons. The image clearly suggests that the Obama family is anti-American…Now are they anti American or anti status quo? Let’s tease this out a bit. Senator Obama is the only black Senator in the U.S. Senate and the first African American to be the presumptive presidential nominee for a major party…I’m inclined to go with anti status quo.

The image also feeds into the notion that Michelle Obama is an angry black woman or unpatriotic. Despite her education and career accolades, her accomplishments have been devalued on account of her race and sex. A strong, black woman is often labeled as bitter or angry, which is a SERIOUS problem. This image suggests that women of color should not exercise the same rights enjoyed by others; it also limits their right to freedom of expression. The fact that the New Yorker thinks that it was fine to dress Michelle Obama in Army gear and a gun is indicative that we have a long way to go.

Aside from the image being entirely inaccurate in its portrayal of Barack Obama as Muslim, it is also inaccurate in its less than subtle message about followers of the Islamic faith. The New Yorker cover clearly suggests that followers of the Islamic faith are unpatriotic. There are four million Muslims in this country who love and appreciate their rights as Americans and deplore the actions of Osama bin Laden, yet they are unjustly devalued, and in turn, denied full citizenship.

Yes, everyone does have the right to free speech. This does, however, infer that one has the right to question, protest, or react when attacked or discriminated against. Jeffrey Goldberg from The Atlantic stated, "As someone who appreciates a good joke, as well as a bad joke, it bothers me that people are reacting so dyspeptically to the cover.” Hmm, now why would anyone be bothered by an oppressive image with offensive racial and sexual undertones that infringes upon the right to citizenship? I don’t know…

(Thanks Naima for the link)

LGBTQ Youth: When Some Lives Matter Little

2008-02-27T04:12:00.008-05:00

Following Camille's and Brittani's suit on LGBTQ awareness:

http://miamiherald.typepad.com/gaysouthflorida/2008/02/equality-florid.html

http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/wireStory?id=4292447

What makes some lives less valuable than others?

(thanks to Reny for pointing out the first news story)

Black (LGBTQ) History Month

2008-02-24T15:09:00.002-05:00

I'm sad to say I didn't know about this for the majority of February aka Black history month, so I have to do some catching up: the Bilerico Project, a group LGBTQ blog, has been publishing a series on black LGBTQ history all month. Each day, along with the National Black Justice Coalition they profile a different notable queer black person. Click here to check out the series.

No Words

2008-02-17T01:59:00.003-05:00

On MLK Day...

Dad's...umm...working late?

2008-02-16T13:14:00.003-05:00

A couple of months ago I saw a KFC ad on TV (I couldn't find it on youtube) that struck me by surprise. I got pretty mad after watching it actually. It was the typical KFC family value meal commercial. However, the family was black...and missing a father. I don't recall having seen any other KFC commercials sans father. So I thought of course they're targeting black single mothers. Ad agencies are bad. We know this. There are plenty of racists, sexist, etc. commercials on the market or those that target groups that they either shouldn't be targeting or are going about it in the wrong way. But this was painstakingly obvious. Black family. No father. Really KFC? I know people think, well maybe he was working late or something like that. But then that would leave Americans to assume that a black male had a job and that's not good for anyone. And since when do commercials need a back story to be TV appropriate. If we're going to be real about things in commercials, then why not be really real. Why not have 13 yr olds smoking cigarettes? Why not have obese people chilling at McDonald's? I'm not saying stop targeting groups. I'm saying try to be a little less obvious. Nobody was complaining when a couple of years ago McDonald's all of a sudden had an unusual amount of black people in commercials with hip hop blaring in the background. Discreteness. Try it.

Pause

2008-02-16T12:32:00.003-05:00

"A real man shouldn't have to say no homo." - Jadakiss

I'm not sure who are what started the no homo movement but it is by far the most annoying thing I have ever heard in my life. I'm not homosexual but every time I hear someone (usually a black male) say no homo, I want to hit them in the face. I'm not perfect. I don't pretend to be. Rarely do I describe something I don't like as gay but it does happen. This epithet (yeah...I think it expresses hostility) has found a home in the hearts of males everywhere. But black males...wake up! The ultimate threat to your manhood is not homosexuality. The ultimate threat to your manhood is the white male. Has been for sometime now. You were probably too busy calling each other fag to notice.
What did you do before no homo came along? Did you not express any emotional feelings for another man? Did you not say anything phrased in a particular manner? Did you just say stuff and if anyone even thought about calling you gay you would punch them in the face before they got a chance?
Stop the spread of this hatred please. You 'men' have little boys who don't even understand what homosexuality is running around chanting no homo. This is the same instillation of fear and hatred racists instill in their kids. This is the same process that has little white kids yelling nigger from their fence when they don't understand what it means other than someone with darker skin than theirs. What is a black male to do when he finds himself questioning his sexuality? Who should he turn to when his best friend says no homo every five seconds?
The homophobic black community is a problem. Anyone who can no truly express what they feel because of a fear of being called gay does not have my respect. Not that that matters. I'm just saying you're a punk.
So black 'men', don't be afraid to give your guys some love.
Pause.
No homo.

Copycat

2008-02-16T12:20:00.002-05:00

The continual borrowing from European and African culture to define everything around without engaging in part contributes to the tabula rasa that was and somehow continues to be white American culture. A heavy reliance on traditionally African arts is expected of the black race in America and to some extent, other races given its innovativeness and pervasive tradition. However, such a large adoption by white America was a surprise. This implementation was initially a result of the White Gaze but without racism this shared ownership, and outright stealing in some cases, would not have occurred in the same volumes. The racial climate of America spurred the onslaught of appropriating African-American centered, and thus in many cases, African based performance arts.
What began as a fixation with black dance and song became a mania for black culture. This was evidenced in the success of Elvis Presley. Again the desire to get as close to blackness as possible without touching it arose. Just as masses believed the white minstrel could portray the black man better than anyone else, Elvis Presley could be a black musician better than any black man could. The white face with black movements was the embodiment of supremacy. It was socially acceptable for white women to lust for this man who attempted to seem black from his hair, to his voice, to his dancing, to his songs. He went further than attempting when he stole songs and music from black artists. Elvis overwhelmingly succeeded because the real black artists were hindered by racism. Even this white man of a lower class was better than a black artist whose intent was not to benefit from the state of his downtrodden people.
The differences in European and African dance styles opened the door for the idea of Social Darwinism. Though racism spurred white cultural producers to make a mockery of African performance art in some cases and allowed them to take part in it in others, many believe Social Darwinism opened the doors for racists to have some biological proof that there is inferiority in those outside the white race. The rigidity of European dance lends to the common saying that white people can not dance and are stiff. The movements incorporated in African dance led some people to believe that black men and women are promiscuous. Although not all descendants of these two groups fall victim to these assertions, enough to spread these stereotypes. Racist forces prevent blacks from being able to speak out and truly engage with the possibility of Social Darwinism. This fear prevents African-Americans in America from owning particular dance styles as cultural property. It should be well known that many dance styles are brought to America from Africa and given their due just as European dance styles are given theirs.
To this day, appropriation of black arts is seen. In the music industry, white rapper Eminem is often reprimanded. While hundreds of black artists have come and gone, many saying far more heinous things than Eminem, the purity of white womanhood must be protected. As a white man, it is unacceptable for him to present himself in this manner while also defaming his white ex-wife and mother. His success benefits from these outrageous statements which garner so much attention because he is white. The racism that plays in the backdrop of the hip hop music industry says it is okay for a black male to degrade his own race and women but allows a white rapper who appropriated the style to succeed and be seen as an advocate of free speech while also attacking him for challenging the sanctity of white womanhood.
Preventing black cultural producers from receiving their credit is heavily influenced by racism. The thought that black artists could produce anything worthy of praise other than coon songs was a concept many had not wrapped their heads around yet. Though African styles of dance can be incorporated into major dance works of white artists, the style itself which has been heavily present since the times of slavery does not have the same allure and grandeur of European dance styles. Racism in America allowed for the appropriation of African and African-American styles for the benefit of white supremacy and looks down on white artists who lower themselves to a level where they seriously engage with the works, themes, and styles of unworthy black forms.

Welcome to Black History Month

2008-02-01T23:48:00.000-05:00

29 days.

Black History Month is, once again, upon us. We have added one more day to our month this year. We hope to add more and more days to a dialogue that, sadly, is far too short and much too ghettoized into simple narratives and stock film reels. We seek to change that this year with our own voices. Like all months, TNS strives to "write to right" and write to explore our own voices as we continue to grow and learn.

The list of some of our campus events are below. Come if you can. If not, I hope myself and others can do a little on-site blogging. Although I have not heard much regarding any special events outside of the campus this Black History Month, I am oddly hopeful that this one might be meaningful. Let's see where we are 29 days from now.

Feburary 2nd
Yale Gospel Choir Alumni Concert
7pm Afro-American Cultural Center

February 4th
African Cooking Planning Meeting
5:30pm Afro-American Cultural Center

February 7th - February 9th
Dancing in the Dark
a musical about the life of Bert Williams
8pm and 10:30pm Yale Cabaret

February 8th
Annual Black History Month Dinner
Keynote: Dr. Alexa Canady (first African-American female neurosurgeon)
5:30 Calhoun College

February 11th
African Cook-Off
6-8pm Afro-American Cultural Center

February 12th
Afropunk Screening and Discussion with James Spooner, Director
7-9pm Afro-American Cultural Center

February 14th
Shades Annual Valentines’ Day Concert
Midnight Location: TBA

February 15th
ViDhA, an event illuminating the lives of black women living with HIV/AIDS
7pm Lo Ricco Ballroom

February 15th
Staceyann Chin
6:30pm Afro-American Cultural Center

Feburary 19th
Here, Our Voices Presents: Professor Elijah Anderson
5:30pm Afro-American Cultural Center

February 23rd
Film Festival: “Black and Green - Land, Power and Sustainability in the African Diaspora
11am-4pm Afro-American Cultural Center

February 29th - March 2nd
Black Solidarity Conference (www.yale.edu/bsc)
“The Ballot or the Bullet” Featuring, Tavis Smiley

Three Cheers for Reproductive Rights...just not for you.

2008-01-30T15:12:00.000-05:00

This past week was the 35th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the laws that legalized abortion on a national scale. All around mainstream pro-choice blogs, newsletters, and campus mailing lists, I saw a lot of people really excited about the anniversary...with little to no mention of all the women left out of the mainstream reproductive rights movement (i.e. immigrant women, women of color, disabled women, working-class women, women on welfare/Medicaid, women in prison, and so on). You all know the drill; nothing new, huh?

The language usually used to talk about reproductive rights is about "choices," having the "choice" to have access to an abortion or access to contraceptives. But this ignores the lack of choices a woman has when her very residence in this country is not a free choice, but a move pushed by forces like NAFTA; when her family is already below the poverty line and she can't feed another child; when she is uninsured and has to take what she can get from Medicaid, if she can even get that much; when she has already been denied autonomy over her health by rape or incest; when she is in prison (and likely unfairly so) and therefore denied abortion access in many states; or when the combination of religion and shame have denied her comprehensive sex education to even know where to begin. Calling reproductive justice a "choice" is only easy for some.

Of course, it is great how far reproductive rights have come, but no victory is worth winning if the fight isn't inclusive. So instead of merely throwing Roe a birthday party, I'm rounding up a few articles as a starting point in the reproductive justice movement outside the cozy confines of the mainstream:

* "Expand the Pro-Choice Dialogue," and anything else you might find on the SisterSong Collective's website.

* "Demanding Reproductive Justice for Latinas"

* "Latinas and Abortion Access," and anything else from the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health

* Holla!, a newsletter put out by Sistas on the Rise, an activist group for teenage women of color's reproductive rights & education

* We Got Issues, from the National Asian/Pacific American Women's Forum, on the absence of API women from the reproductive health movement

* An Open Letter on the ableism buried, not too deeply, within much of the mainstream movement

* "Reproductive Rights in Theory and Practice: The Meaning of Roe v. Wade for Women in Prison"

And with that, I wish you a happy Roe v Wade week.

Achola Obama

2008-01-13T01:28:00.000-05:00

So I finally read Steinem's op-ed published earlier this week. I thought Steinem raised a solid point about how we understand women's accomplishments in terms of relationships, rather than individual successes. But it also revealed the inadequacy of the message Hillary Clinton is currently campaigning behind.

The figurative punch of her lede—the mysterious, unelectable black woman—comes from our attribution of the woman's accomplishments with those of her husband, children, and the people around her. That is, her marriage to a corporate lawyer and raising of two children is right up there with her work as a community organizer and a state senator. Hell, she can't even choose her racial self-identification ('in this race-conscious country she IS CONSIDERED black). It's a classic example of having her identity as a woman defined by her relationships, and by those standards alone we would dismiss her candidacy prematurely.

It's a valid point, but it also happens to be the substance of Hillary's entire campaign. Hillary seems to bring Chelsea to events not to add another voice to her campaign—Chelsea doesn't speak to reporters or supporters—but to reaffirm her status as a mother. Bill stands right beside her, reinforcing the fact that her "experience" is based on eight years as the wife of the sitting president. I don't honestly believe she or the American public would say an additional four years in the US Senate is enough to deduce that she has more experience to lead. I also don't think Laura Bush or Nancy Reagan somehow have significantly more experience than any junior senator. But while Steinem decries our unwillingness to look beyond gender and see the true accomplishments of the individual, Hillary is, in essence, asking us to wait a couple of months before heeding Steinem's advice.

Hillary Clinton is definitely qualified to run for president and lead the country. But I really don't think her campaign of experience is challenging us to look critically at how we perceive gender, either.

I cannot believe this...

2008-01-03T21:30:00.000-05:00

Barack Obama just won my home state.
The first caucus of the year.
How in the world?
I am hopeful.
This is history.

Wondrous and Fantastical Lives, known as burdens to some

2007-12-31T04:05:00.000-05:00

Junot Díaz, thank you for giving voice to your life and to your project. A project I think we all are engaged with in many ways at TNS.

Luís directed me to this amazing interview with Díaz conducted by a Cornell professor. Visiting his Alma Mater in February 2007, Díaz had been receiving consistent acclaim for his book of short stories, Drown, and anticipation for his now released work, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

I was wary of the interviewer from the beginning after hearing his tone and initial questions.
Díaz had so much to tell that the questions were diverted and spun into a larger story.
Then, the interviewer presented the box.

Asking about his politics (of being different) and wondering aloud if he carries a burden (of a non-white story), the interviewer falls into every trap of how one treats a "race" author. Instead of growing frustrated, Díaz responds beautifully about the true burden of the "willfully unseeing." It'd be a mistake to summarize what you need to hear for yourself. If I have time after the Holidays, I will try and transcribe the interview. For me, it's exactly what I needed to energize and jettison my creative dreaming into the new year. Off to the bookstore I go. Have a safe and fun New Year's, everyone.

An Interview You Won't Soon Forget

Update on NOLA housing demolition

2007-12-19T15:21:00.000-05:00

You know what they say, direct action gets the goods. Let's make sure it pulls through in New Orleans. Ongoing protests against HUD's planned demolition of public housing escalated today to a lock-down on the buildings set to be demolished. From this morning's press release:

ACTIVISTS CHAINED TO BULLDOZERS IN NEW ORLEANS: CIVIL RESISTANCE TO PUBLIC HOUSING DESTRUCTION BEGINS

NEW ORLEANS – A small group of local housing activists chained themselves to bulldozers early this morning that were slated to resume demolition of the B.W. Cooper housing complex. The Cooper houses are one of four public housing complexes that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development plans to raze, eliminating more than 4,500 apartment units in a hurricane-damaged city desperately short of housing.

The community activists chained themselves to the bulldozers on the morning of a day when the New Orleans City Council is scheduled to make a final vote on whether to approve the demolitions. “We are refusing to leave unless the City Council stops this illegal, unjust, and immoral plan to destroy vital housing,” said Jamie "Bork" Laughner of MayDay NOLA, an advocate for the human right to housing. Along with MayDay NOLA, C3 Hands Off Iberville and Friends and Residents of B.W. Cooper make up a coalition calling for civil resistance to HUD's plans.

“People here are prepared to resist what amounts to an assault on their communities,” said Laughner.

The planned destruction of New Orleans public housing, part of a wider plan to dissolve poorer communities and gentrify the city in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, has sparked unprecedented resistance in New Orleans as well as protests across the country. In today's New York Times, architecture critics Nicolas Ouroussoff calls the demolitions “one of the greatest crimes in American urban planning.”

The lock-down stopped demolition work for today at least. More updates as they come are at NOLA Indymedia.

EDIT: Please take a minute to write to New Orleans' City Council here.

Public housing demolition in New Orleans has JUST STARTED

2007-12-12T20:02:00.000-05:00

As if enough wasn't destroyed in New Orleans during the hurricane, and enough people didn't lose the little bits they had, HUD is right now starting demolition on up to 4,000 units of public housing. I can't give a better account of what's happening since I'm not there, so I want to pass you along to someone who can.
Via The Redstar Perspective, chock full of links and very important information:

AS I WRITE THIS, TWO E-MAILS HAVE ARRIVED IN MY INBOX INFORMING ME THAT THE DEMOLITION OF B.W. COOPER HAS JUST BEGUN.

We’re in our final days of trying to keep public housing standing in New Orleans, and it’s fairly self-indulgent of me to use such a pronoun, given my marginal ties to New Orleans these days (not to mention my general exam blogging of the last 2 weeks). Nonetheless, if we don’t have some perception of solidarity in the midst of this tragedy, then blogging about public housing for the last 18 months, among other more important activities, has scarcely done its job. Consider this post an aggregate of information and resources for those who aren’t sure where to look.

Let’s begin with this video of activist and civil rights lawyer Bill Quigley’s arrest at a City Council meeting for protesting the demolition of public housing. In the last month, my feminist and progressive blogosphere has been spreading the word about the impending demolition of approx. 4,000 units of public housing in New Orleans, scheduled for this Saturday, and the resistance of tireless residents and activists in the face of a corrupt, ideological, myopic and ruthless HUD. I have little to add at this late juncture, except to add to the collective grief, anger and, for myself anyway, sense of despair that this is really happening.

The People’s Hurricane Relief Fund, justiceforneworleans.org, Louisiana Weekly, and even the NY Daily News have more depressing and outrageous detail than you could ever hope to read (check out justiceforneworleans.org for updates, info and resources). National Journal has a series on HUD corruption under Bush and Sec. Alfonso Jackson. Several weeks ago Congressional Quarterly ran a great article on the role of LA Sen. Vitter (R) in blocking affordable housing development in the city and region.

Please please, continue reading.

Wait...What?

2007-11-30T14:36:00.001-05:00

Race is a crazy thing and sometimes you just need to stop and say, "Wait...what?"

1) At Wednesday's YouTube debate, Mitt Romney suddenly employed a (fake) race consciousness by asking Rudy Guiliani if he approaches anyone with a "funny accent" and asks them if they're "illegal." This was in response to Guliani's comment that Romney lorded over a sanctuary mansion, his own house, since he apparently hired undocumented immigrants. When Guiliani did not answer, Romney barked out his question again. Still, no reply. A Republican trying to out a racist Republican?

Wait...what?

2) While that tune by the Quad City DJs is still stuck in my head, my other non-soundtrack memories of Space Jam had floated away. That is, until, I read Paul Gilroy's fantastic book Against Race (a forced title by US publishers; Between Camps is the preferred UK title). At the end, he reminds us that Michael Jordan is enslaved in this movie to play basketball for the Monstarz. Enslaved. He argues that this process of slavery and physical shrinking of Jordan is to make his larger than life persona mesh with Bugs and the gang as well as to make Jordan's black male body mesh with us as consumers when we make the jump to buy a 12" Jordan. Gilroy is fierce. Corporation and empire hittin' us high again. Wait...what?

3) Brown Babies Unite! You'd think these babes of color were joining these organizations straight out the womb the way some people are talking. On November 26th, Pat Buchanan told Sean Hannity of Fox News that American abortions have led to "Asian, African, and Latin American children [coming] to inherit the estate the lost generation of American children never got to see." And, of course, he raged about the Southwest border: "You've got a wholesale invasion, the greatest invasion in human history, coming across your southern border, changing the composition and character of your country. You've got the melting pot that once welded us all together, which has broken down."

One of the most frustrating things about this immigration shouting match is that we continuously gloss over African-Americans and Native Americans and quietly sneak them in to the America that was always working until brown bodies rushed the border. FALSE! Since when did the melting pot burn our, unfortunately, very American experiences away? Our stories do not melt because their flames still run this nation. We have been and are the means of production, the first would be victims. And not in a Tancredo/Keyes way.

As silly as it may seem, every time we let this debate become a nation of immigrants vs. the illegals from the South, we are complicit in the erasure of our history and the creation of a new supposedly unified hyper-American narrative that perpetuates the same racialized dialogue of us vs. them that always leaves on the outskirts. Given this sort of dialogue turns neighbors against neighbors (legal or illegal), I believe we have the responsibility to elevate this discourse. Not only would that help dismantle the inaccurate portrayal of illegal immigrants as always Latino, it would force the telling of a different narrative. One where America has made mistakes through inaction and one where laws have been broken for the social good as a form of redress and an appeal for better laws. An America that I know as true.

Source: Media Matters

Wait...you know the drill.

4) Nooses are everywhere. Sometimes, students complain that there is no language to discuss race and other aspects of diversity. Unfortunately, I think some bigots think similarly about how to express their hatred. Well, nooses as throwback racist symbols caught the mainstream through Jena and those bigots never looked back. Looks like we have a not so new fight on our hands. Check out this graphic:

Source: Great NYT article

You said it, so I don't have to.

I'll try to leave on a good note with these so here you go...

5)

Stay with it and then...WAIT WHAT?!

Have a good weekend all,
Josh

Thanks to Crystal, Naima, and Andom for 3,4,and 5, respectively.

this speech will never set me free

2007-11-10T04:31:00.000-05:00

a man calls for martial law...
a man calls black students responding to blackface "irrational" and "pathologizers" of white racists...

The YDN responds to "naysayers" of racist publications/acts by offering to be a place for the "debate" of free speech to begin.

what is it exactly about this speech that we may call free?

Making U.S. a police state will lower cost of health care, prevent national disaster
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/22365

Anti-blackface columnists lacked rational argument
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/22358

Towards solving the speech crisis at Yale
http://www.yaledailynews.com/articles/view/22356

Graffiti, hate speech elicit Univ. response
http://yaledailynews.com/articles/view/22333

(information about the spray painting of "N-Word School" on an exterior wall of a residential college at Yale).

Quick link: Chicago cops taser black grandma

2007-11-06T12:36:00.000-05:00

One of the first lessons I learned as a little kid in Chicago was to watch out for the cops: at best, you can expect total incompetence, and at worst, government-aided racist hate & violence.

So, I'm never surprised by how low cops, and specifically the CPD, can stoop.

Unless an 82-year-old grandmother is holding a loaded gun, there's no excuse for police officers to use a Taser.

None.

Police allegedly used a Taser on 82-year-old Lillian Fletcher when performing a well-bring check at her home.

But that's what happened Oct. 29 when Chicago Police officers went to a West Side home to make a "well-being" check. The officers were responding to a request from the city's Department of Aging.

Continue reading Mary Mitchell's column on this...

Environmental Racism + Denial of History

2007-11-06T11:00:00.000-05:00

I don't often read much on Alternet beyond the headlines, because such high concentrations of privilege-blind white liberals usually make me nauseous. But every now and then they print a good article--and then the usual White Liberal Guilt pours out in the comments section.

Last week they ran an excerpt of the book Building the Green Economy: Success Stories from the Grassroots, in which the authors interviewed Van Jones, a black environmental justice activist. It's a great interview and a very quick read, so I encourage all of you to take a second to read it. Jones talks about sprawl and its ties to racism, through fear-mongering, media distortion, and classism, and what this means environmentally for people left behind in the city.

He then brings together (in my opinion, at least) two of the scariest things facing black people right now: environmental racism and the prison industry. The amount of money spent on sending disproportionately huge numbers of people of color to prison on trumped up charges could easily be spent thwarting off the environmental throwdown--or at least make cities decent places to live. He uses California as an example--there's a lot of talk in California about energy efficiency, but there's also things like Proposition 184, the Three Strikes Law [the link is a pdf].

If you don't read the interview, please at least read this gem, because it's a situation we all know too, too well:

Those folks [environmentalists] often speak about working together through "outreach" -- outreach in the sense of "outreaching to" these people or those people. Outreaching to the black community: "Well, we outreached to them so 'they' could hear our agenda and get onboard with what we are saying." This, as opposed to saying "let's go make some friends," building relationships, creating relationships. Figuring things out from a place where everyone's views are included. Relationships are give and take, mutual aid and help. Outreaching is the white thing, it's about bringing folks into what you are doing, and does not necessarily convey understanding. [emphasis mine]

My only beef is with what Jones says at the very end, about pushing the federal government into action--two things which I find absolutely antithetical. But, I suppose the anarchist people of color post is one for another day.

The comments, however, are disheartening. According to some, suburbs were not built on racism, and white flight is a thing of the past. Classism is the running theme. None of them are worth quoting here, but if you want to see how much history one can plainly deny while trumpeting their Liberal badge, take a look and keep a barf bag handy.

three ways to stand and move (in solidarity)

2007-11-05T14:05:00.000-05:00

HELLO JUSTICE SEEKERS,

I am writing to invite you to participate in New Haven Solidarity Week. Over 25 student groups have been working in conjunction with City Hall and community organizations to mobilize Yale (students, faculty, workers) to support the Elm City Resident Card initiative.

This initiative is a way for members of the Yale community to identify as members of New Haven. Moreover, signing up for the Elm City Resident Card is a way of supporting the rights of undocumented immigrants in New Haven. This summer, New Haven became the first municipality in the nation to offer identification to all residents regardless of age or immigration status. The municipal ID allows cardholders to open bank accounts, have access to the New Haven Public Library, to have identification to show when contacting or confronted by police. This card has been important in the immigrant community because it enables undocumented people to open bank accounts so that they do not walk around with large amounts of cash and become the targets of violent crime. The card also enables undocumented immigrants to have a form of identification to show when contacting or confronted by the police.

The Elm City Resident Card also serves as a debit card for parking meters and about fifty New Haven businesses, including Atticus, Koffee?, and Viva's.

The card is useful in daily life for all of us who move around the streets of New Haven. Signing up for a card is an important way of showing your solidarity with the city of New Haven and moving towards supporting each and every member of our community, regardless of immigrant status....

And so, friends, here are three (of many) ways to get involved.

1) GET AN ELM CITY RESIDENT CARD!
Bring your Yale ID, another form of identification (a driver's license, a passport, etc.) and $10 to Dwight Hall on:
Tuesday, 10 am - 4 pm
Wednesday, 6 pm - 9 pm
Thursday, 10 am - 2 pm
Friday, 10 am - 4 pm
If you do nothing else for New Haven Solidarity Week, stop into Dwight Hall for a few minutes and get this card! The card is only available on Yale's campus during the times listed above!

2) COME TO OUR KICK OFF EVENT!
Tonight, Monday November 5th from 7 pm - 9 pm in Dwight Hall Chapel, there will be live music, food from New Haven restaurant and speeches from Mayor John Destefano, Chaplain Sharon Kugler, Dean Jon Butler, and other stakeholders in the Yale and New Haven community.

3) COME TO STRANGERS NO MORE: INTERFAITH SOLIDARITY WITH IMMIGRANTS IN NEW HAVEN
This event starts after 7 pm in the Dwight Hall Chapel on Thursday, November 8th. There will be musical and poetic performances, communal singing in three languages, immigration stories, and interfaith community prayer. We will also be having desserts from different parts of the world. The event is completely free and will be a time to reflect upon and celebrate the ways that different faiths and cultural traditions value community and immigrant rights. Please come after you've signed up for your ID or before you do on Friday morning! This event is coordinated by the nascent Interfaith Alliance for Justice.

I hope to see you at New Haven Solidarity Week!

For a full list of ways to get involved, visit: http://www.dwighthall.org/5583/Solidarity_Week

trick or treat

2007-10-31T15:15:00.000-05:00

this flier was created by members of the student activist group, Coalition for Campus Unity. CCU works to combat bigotry and promote diversity and justice at Yale by organizing to effect institutional change.

we found the message of this flier relevant to our campus given the popularity of this fall's ethnically themed parties, such as "Mustachio Bashio"(featuring caricatures of Latino men), "Cowboys and Indians" (featuring men dressed up as cowboys and women as 'indians') and "the ghetto party." and of course, the campus spotting of a young white man out and about in blackface.

stop, think, respect.

happy halloween.

Voices that Choose, Memories that Live

2007-10-31T06:33:00.000-05:00

I don’t leave people.

But as I listened to a post-show discussion of the play, Trouble in Mind, I could not help but tap into my visions of that talk. The talk where I leave. The conversation where I declare the fullness of myself and offer a choice: respect my identity or receive a wave, hello, and how are you. That’s it. See, the star of the show, E. Faye Butler, had some advice about how to deal with that frustrated friend who just does not get it. Her advice? Leave.

Banish yourself from the lives of the seemingly static ignorant and move on. Unfortunately, the actress did not problematize this action. As people of color, our actions do not have the privilege of being read with nuance. Our slow walks offstage are not always read as poignant resistances to racism. Usually, they are (mis)interpreted as either nothing or a “colored problem.” The ghost of ourselves becomes their one “friend” of color to pull them through 21st century interviews and “I’m not racist” defenses. Our shadowed selves are also the reason they don’t believe in serious dialogues on race. To them, these hazy and soft voices beyond the veil are mostly a legitimization of our silence. They did not want to speak. They did not speak. They do not speak.

Silence. I did not voice this concern at the event. I remained silent, but I am speaking now and I trust it counts. I hope the longing I feel when I dream of these “would be” experiences empowers me to have the courage to finally communicate my frustrations in a full and strong voice.

If we choose to leave, we must leave with force—with honesty. You could have known me. We could have developed kinship—a trust enriched by moments and, hopefully, memories of accepting and actualizing love. However, you allowed the constructions of society to frame, bind, and paralyze our friendship. I have tried to build a bridge, to meet you where you are, to see where you could be someday. I hoped that we could meet in the middle as I am not a complete project either. Yet, you resisted while I opened myself wider than ever before, a process that hurt me—that continues to hurt me.

And I am here to say goodbye. I am here to leave, not empty handed; instead, I leave you with a choice, a promise, a challenge. Choose a privilege that grants you ignorance or choose to reckon with these topics and to reconcile with people like me. I promise you that I will still be here when you want to meet on that bridge. And, lastly, I challenge you to let me live within your memory. Do not tokenize me, compartmentalize my experience, or forget me. Let me live as you rub against these topics, as you see someone who looks like me, as you stumble across me in your “universal,” that world that erases my color.

And I will live with a memory of you. Someone who saw me even if it was with an ignorant lens. Someone who began to engage parts of myself. Someone I had to believe and hope in simply for respect. As I continue to move and act, I will use a broad vision to see how you could be affected. You will join others and I will try to keep you distinct. I know the change will come from your person, rather than your skin.

I pray for you all; I do not leave.

We should not leave silently. We must leave with a trail. And only they know if we truly leave at all.

Race in America: Irrelevant & Incredibly Consequential

2007-10-30T16:18:00.000-05:00

Clinton. Kennedy.

And yes, Bush.

We all know that a few families wield immense political power in this country. In fact, if a certain democratic candidate gets elected in November of 2008, the same two families will have been in the White House for at least 32 consecutive years. If this scenario holds true, however, we still could have a major first in American politics: our first female President, or our first President of color.

No, that is not a typo.

Lynne Cheyney, the wife of Dick Cheyney, recently discovered that she and her husband are related to Barack Obama as both descend from 17th century French immigrants. Obama is also distantly related to Bush through 17th century residents of Massachusetts. Although these relations have had absolutely no impact on the lives of any of these people, it does shed light on the concept of race in America.

Race is a social construction. Many historians will argue that before Bacon's rebellion in 1676, the concept of race was far from what it subsequently became. Prior to the rebellion, black slaves worked plantations along with black and white indentured servants. It was only after this event took place that the plantation working force became composed almost entirely of African slaves. Only then did the concept of race develop, and that was primarily a tool by which the new poor white farming class could ascend socially.It follows that race is not biological at all, but simply a holdover from another American institution - slavery.

Furthermore, if race is not biological, then it is irrelevant to the psychological development of a human being - independent of a society which conditions otherwise. For example, examine the case of Wayne Joseph, a Chino, Calif., high school principal. Joseph has lived his more than 50 years self-identifying as African-American who, "a few years ago, took an ethnic DNA test out of curiosity about his genetic history. To his surprise, the test found Indo-European, East Asian and Native American DNA, but none from Africa!" (Chicago Tribune). There is nothing that ties Joseph to the continent of Africa, but his self-identification has inextricably bound him with a group of people who are tied to the continent. As the article continues to say, "His chromosomes might not show African roots, but his identity was produced by the African-American experience" (CT). In short, this man was conditioned to be black. Thus, the concept of race without a society is irrelevant.

Race can be constructed or deconstructed as people desire. Until a society desires that deconstruction however, race is incredibly consequential.

As race is a social construct, it spurs the construction of other social institutions like racism, prejudice and bigotry. Those concepts have the power to stop individuals from reaching their dreams and to bind a people in the shackles of indignation. For that reason, America must continue on its road to racial equality - a journey that will require the efforts of all involved - especially people of color.

As Obama is the first realistic opportunity for a person of color to become President of the United States, his candidacy alone is cause for celebration. As much as we would all like to bury the racial history of our nation, none of us should fail to recognize that Obama will be campaigning for President in 2008 - just 40 years after the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. Just 40 years after blacks were being imprisoned for marching for freedom, a black man will be a serious candidate for President.

Maybe his candidacy can expedite the journey.

race and violence: freshmen of color at yale

2007-10-25T23:00:00.000-05:00

i have someone here at yale this year who i love very much. we have known each other a long time and he is a brilliant, forward thinking, conscious young black man. he is a freshman from brooklyn, new york with sensibilities he has gained from navigating all sorts of worlds - prestigious boys' school for the New York City elite, elementary school in clinton hill in the nineties, all sorts of neighborhoods in brooklyn and queens and the bronx, now yale's campus and new haven.

in the two months he has been at yale he has had white men threaten him multiple times with violence, with power, with their own acute and oppressive sense of entitlement. during his first days here he went to a party at one of the greek houses on campus with a large group of other freshmen. he alone was singled out of the line for entrance. he was not simply asked to show ID before being allowed in, which is standard procedure for racists about town who are scared of mixing company with the black and latino new haven residents who have been here long before they were accepted to yale. this young man was instead frisked by another student - a young white man who had the audacity to put his hands on another human being, without any authority vested in him by law, institution, or consent. he acted only with the authority he perceived bestowed upon him somehow by his whiteness.

the humiliation of being frisked in front of the other freshmen, othered in his construction as black, as latino, as a danger. of course, this white student who did the frisking would not have known what to do should he have even found a weapon. he did not really expect my friend to have a weapon. the frisk was merely an exercise of control: a performance of power. "This is my space, I can put my hands on you because I am white, because you are black, and because I decide whether or not you can stay here --- for now and of course, on my terms."

weeks later, when my friend - this young brilliant, good natured, resilient, black man - attempted to attend an "integrated" social event at yale with his dignity in tact, he was lifted up by the shirt by yet another tall, big white man and shoved out of the way. this man was drunk too. my friend responded. he let this other man know that he was never to touch him again, to use violence with him again, to move him out of the way as if he had ownership of the room, the whole planet, my friend's body. he was also never to assume he could do that unchallenged, without resistance.

three weeks ago, my friend's experiences came to a climax (for thus far, that is). he was sitting on a bench on high street across from a drunk white man. this man was with another male friend and his girlfriend. he called this young man that i know jermaine and then jerome, which my friend ignored. he asked my friend why he was here to which my friend replied, "i am waiting for my sister and her friends." the drunk white man then went on to say, "ooh - your sister is she hot?"

my friend went on to tell this kid to leave him alone, to stop asking him inappropriate questions about his sister, that he didn't know him. apparently, the kid's girlfriend shushed him. but he went on. "are her friends hot?" when my young friend told him again to be quiet, to stop harassing him, and to stop asking questions about women (of color) and their respective hotnesses, the kid announced: "whatever, he probably doesn't even go to yale anyway."

beyond failing to address my friend (probably lacking the courage to look him in the eye and say "you probably don't even go to yale anyway"), this drunk white man assumed that because of the color of my friend's skin and the manner of his dress he could not possibly be a yale student. and of course, to this man to be a yale student is tantamount to being his equal. what he was really saying was: "you are probably not even my equal." moreover, this other student's words reveal that other people, particularly people of color, are not worthy of his respect, time, or recognition, if they do not attend yale.

an argument ensued, during which the drunk white man issued threats such as "i'm twice your size." this man and his two companions made my friend acutely aware that he was outnumbered and smaller. being from brooklyn, the young man i know did not flinch.

my friend communicated - with no ambiguity at all - that this drunk white man did not know him, ought not underestimate him, and would not be able to harm him.

when three of the women of color my brother was waiting for arrived, they noticed the anger and tension in the scene. they told the drunk man's girlfriend and friend to take him home. "what kind of friends are you? leaving your drunk, belligerent, racist friend out on the street to harass people?" when tensions reached a climax, one of the young black women announced, "fine! i know you're not 21. let's call the police then!" they arrived in bold defense and solidarity, supporting my friend who was already handling himself well - unwilling to be diminished, to be harmed - with words or blows. the situation resolved and the three senior women walked with the young freshman man, welcomed yet again to this new academic community with accusations of non-belonging and with the desire of others to assert their own eminence through assaults on his mind, his soul, his self.

i am most moved by two things. first, the incredible pride of these men who continue to assault my friend. they all appear to have what some might call a God complex - they believe in their own eminence and invincibility; they believe that they have the power and authority to manipulate the life and rights of others. i am moved by friend's steadfastness and conviction in his own humanity and his own rights. that he would assert his self in the face of such danger, unafraid of defending himself, but unwilling to enter the sort of fray that might jeopardize an educational opportunity that he, his family, and his community have worked very hard to obtain.

my heart aches for this young man. he is a man of great promise, who has transcended all sorts of life circumstance, to arrive at a place of light and truth that included no pictures of such threats of violence in the glossy pages of a brochure.

earlier this year, Dr. Beverly Tatum came to speak to yale freshmen about her book Why are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria and Other Conversations about Race. Dr. Tatum's presence was part of an innovative and important initiative coordinated by the yale administration and student leaders to pro-actively address issues of diversity and community. some freshmen (of many colors) objected to being assigned readings from Dr. Tatum's book and the "forced" dialogue about race and segregation and justice. to some, the talk felt like part of a propagandistic liberal agenda or a reinforcement of racial lines by talking about the existence and division of race in college.

in general, the response from freshmen was overwhelmingly positive; many felt the difficult conversations expanded their minds to new ways of thinking and opened their hearts to new ways of loving. only time will tell whether the program will foster unity and conscience. however, a few students deemed the events irrelevant or oppressive.

such students are the sort of folk that ralph ellison might call "sleepwalkers."

Open Your Eyes.

freshman year is not all dances and kegs and problem set parties for all freshmen at yale.

thinking of these experiences my friend has recounted to me, i wonder:

is there is an infrastructure to report such acts of violence, such grievances, such threats? is there a body at yale that students of color, that muslim students, that women, can report such acts to so that they might feel safe on the street and in their dorm rooms? so that such pride, irresponsibility, and hatred may not go unchecked, may not ever culminate in the violence that destroys fleshes and futures? something to think of blactivists and friends...

the story of this young man is not uncommon. i know black men who have had gate doors slammed in their faces, who have had the police called on them while they are doing their laundry in dorm basements, who have been told by campus police they do not look like yale students. i know black women who have been accused of stealing, who have had their bodies regarded as sites for conquest and control, who are punished for their spirit and their voice.

this is of course not typical of yale's campus alone. this is the treatment we experience as black students within the yale bubble, carrying IDs that prove to policemen and frat boys, however unbelieving, that we have a right to walk the streets of new haven. this is a right consistently denied to the citizens of new haven - who without the plastic white proof of belonging - are invisible and dangerous.

when i spoke to the aforementioned young man on the phone, he told me he was not scared. he's been attacked by drunk white men muttering the n-word on late trains coursing through brooklyn, where he lives. where i am from as well. this event was not upsetting for my friend because it had never happened to him before - it had. he was most upset because these sorts of encounters he is having on high street in new haven, connecticut are precisely the reason he did not apply to schools in the South.

welcome to New England.

since this young man has been at yale he has experienced all manner of racism. beyond this sort of incident involving a threat of violence, he has, of course, seen and circumnavigated and resisted many racisms that others might deem less "severe." These "subtler" forms of racism ---- underestimation by professors, objectification by peers, tokenization, dismissal, denial of history, social exclusion, sexual harassment, economic oppression --- injustices that are no less violent, less injurious, less unjust than white hands roaming, shoving, pounding.

while i believe very much in non-violence and the importance of peacemaking, i also currently believe very much that self defense is a human right. i worry to think of what would have happened should that kid have begun to swung at my young friend. i worry to think of who would have left yale, and who would have remained. i worry to think of how that story might have been re-spun and history revised.

all i can promise is that there would have been a rally, a protest, a movement: vigilant and committed organizing on the part of black yale and our allies. it is a wonder we are not doing all of this already.

perhaps it is the sense of complete involvement we have in our schoolwork. and surely, our educations are important. unlike many white activists at Yale who rhetorically and effectively dismiss school work as somehow irrelevant in comparison to the immediacy of "The Struggle," as students of color at yale we know that our presence here is political, that we inhabit yale in preparation for our return to the communities from whence we came to work collectively for real good; we know that the histories we are studying are our heritage and may be our deliverance. we know that these histories are ours to recreate.

however, although we regard our experiences in yale and in new haven as preparation, we cannot be still. our time in this city is time in "the real world," irrespective of what others might insinuate about what college is or should be. complacency will never be a part of a true education and our immersion in action, in reflection, in good work, and in each other will be what ensures that we learn.

press on, young one. the drunk white kids on high street can't take your education away. and in the words of e st v, remind those who would assault us, night and day, ceaselessly, with hateful egocentrism and cruelty:

See you in class.

Biden's "American Pragmatism" = Racism

2007-10-25T20:08:00.000-05:00

Thanks, Biden.

You have continued to run your mouth and reveal your ignorance and deep seated prejudice that you most likely see as a true "American pragmatic" spirit. You take statistics, ignore the roots and systemic causes, and essentialize numbers and stereotypes onto brown and black bodies. Trying to identify the reasons Iowa schools are outperforming Washington D.C. schools, Biden's jumped to racial demograpics. According to the Delaware Senator and Presidential candidate, Iowa stained only with a 1% African-American population must be a "cleaner" situation than DC. Biden continued, "There is probably less than four of five percent that are minorities. What is in Washington? So look, it goes back to what you start off with, what you're dealing with."

What I'm dealing with? Assumptions, Supremacy, Racism, Bigotry? Check, check, check, and check.

Biden, of course, has a bigger mouth than that. "When you have children coming from dysfunctional homes, when you have children coming from homes where there's no books, where the mother from the time they're born doesn't talk to them — as opposed to the mother in Iowa who's sitting out there and talks to them, the kid starts out with a 300 word larger vocabulary at age three. Half this education gap exists before the kid steps foot in the classroom."

Again, inscribe the dysfunction on our bodies.
Again, make the black mother the source of all social wrongs.
Again, sidestep a teaching moment on the increased need for personal responsibility in light of a government that cuts education funding to start wars without borders or causes. I-r-a-? Forger the next letter. Bomb it, anyways.

Biden, you bought into popular American racial constructions hook, line, and sinker. If you cannot discern that societal framework or, at least, be smart enough to "Clinton" your situtation out and only racialize foreign bodies (next post is for you, Hillary), you have no place in this race. Step down and move on. Wait, out.

What do neocons have to do with blackface and green card parties?

2007-10-13T02:54:00.000-05:00

"Hey Ted, you goin' to the green card party tonight? Remember to bring your wife beater. Best look like a real chullo. You know, f'in crips and bloods! West Side!"
"Yo Dan, I want at least two cases of 40s at the party tonight. Remember McClellan, A 43.
"Hey Erin, don't you want to look a little skankier? I mean, it's the ghetto party after all. I like your outfit and all, but what if you showed a little more skin? And I mean, gold plastic jewelry's a plus."
"Hey José, did you get the facebook invite to the green card par..oh, sorry. It's just a joke, you know? We didn't mean it like that. I...we love your culture. The guy who looks after the frat is a Latino. I went to public school. I'm part Irish, you know.. eh.. immigrants, unite! Eh.. I guess you're not coming, huh?"

Last semester, I remember going with Camille back to her room to hang out, and on our way upstairs, running into white college kids in oversized jerseys, baggy jeans, tipped-off baseball caps, you know the deal. There may or may not have been plastic gold jewelry. The source was none other than Camille's own suite, where every time the door screeched open, another action figure from the Appropriated Ghetto Playset walked in...rolling deep...with his thug crew and a girl who looked liked she missed the memo on How to Dress Ghetto and made up for it by just wearing fewer clothes.

So here Camille and I are, only folks of color in the suite at the time, standing as these characters file in and out. We opt to...bounce...instead of seeing the party through to its disastrous end (ya know, before they whip out the Kanye). But what does anyone do when not just your college, but the very place you live is host to a modern-day minstrel show? Point being, you can't even run back to your room to get away from it.

What happened last semester's probably not the first time it's happened at Yale or at colleges around the country (just google 'ghetto party' for starters) and probably not the last. After reading about how Arab American is the new cool, I'm waiting for the night when I walk through Timothy Dwight and get accosted by a band of scruffy, toy gun totin' mujahidin wannabees (Afghan, Arab, what's the difference; it's not like you're responsible for anyone else's history, right?). Six months later, it's time to complicate my criticism of McClellan's Jammin' Hip-hop hoedown.

Two professors, C. Richard King and David Leonard, are looking at ghetto parties through a new lens that goes beyond making connections to black face and minstrel shows. King and Leonard see this unfortunate trend as a nervous swat back by conservative college kids at what they see as a changing academic environment where daddy's old-school bigotry is passé and classes like ethnic studies are holding people accountable for history's injustices.

The article takes an interesting look at the corporatization of colleges and universities, beyond corporate branding and ownership of campus food services, that reaches into classes like cultural sensitivity for future I-Bankers of America (which bumps the seminar on Race, Hip Hop, and the NBA off the course list). The article then goes through the rise of big money neoconservative campus activism, wherein some organizations pump millions into getting their message across (one of which, namely, is 'white students are the victims now, haven't we already done enough for minorities?'). And how that translates into it seeming like a valid political position to stand behind a white-only bake sale or to do mock ICE-terror raids.

The article's not going to point you to why or how these campus minstrel shows started (or for a visual-historical breakdown, as I was hoping) but it gives a good background for understanding how this mockery (or, let's go far as to say hate crime) goes unnoticed or viciously defended on American campuses.

Questions and Conversation about Jena 6 Activism

2007-09-22T07:47:00.000-05:00

1. What did you do on September 20th, the national day of protest for the Jena 6? How were your actions received?

2. In a campus setting, how do we educate others around the issue? Films, distributing flyers, tabling? What is our ask for interested newcomers? What can they do to feel invested in this case?

3. What is our ask besides justice? This sounds simple but even the NYT didn't report this clearly until yesterday's. I think there are at least three clear things: 1) throw out the charges, lower bail, or release him from his bail 2) federal legal protection and supervision 3) Remove J.P. Mauffray Jr, the judge who set Bell's bail ridiculously high. These three things are necessary in providing justice and healing for Bell's family and they also reveal deeper judicial injustices.

4. How useful are petitions at this point? Early on, the petitions were important for awareness raising and demonstrating the fullness of our protest. Frankly, they introduced a lot of people to the issue. What is their place now? Is there a critical number we are aiming for nationally and should we create one locally to carve a goal into this movement?

5. How does a campaign like this become multifaceted? This case is obviously is about the failures of the judicial court system, racial equality in schools, and the lack of representative coverage in the media. How can we work these larger issues into the narrative about Jena? And what is the first way we want these three issues to change?

6. Since the Megan Williams case is suffering from a lack of coverage and justice, is it relevant and/or appropriate to tie her into this ongoing "new" Civil Rights Movement rhetoric?

7. How do we add nuance and a truthful complexity to the claims of the "new" Civil Rights movement?

8. What should our role be in pressuring others to speak out about this issue? Is that a useful strategy. Jesse Jackson tried it on Obama with mixed results. Who has not spoken and how can get them to use their voice?

9. Are we able to self critique at this time? How do we improve and sustain energy while still fighting on the ground?

10. How can TNS and our campus organizations collaborate with your campus or organization to create a more unified voice? Any ideas?

These are some of the questions. Please start the conversation.

Jena is the Past, Present, and Future

2007-09-21T16:41:00.000-05:00

I don’t know about the Jena 6.
Well, I know about it. I know it’s another stain of injustice on our nation and world.
But what does it all mean?

As I glanced at The New York Times on the college dining table, I saw this picture.

‘It’s like the Civil Rights Movement,’ I thought. The excitement filled me. Is that a problem though? Am I and are we rejoicing because we are looking for our romanticized version of the Civil Rights Movement? And is part of this joy and relief derived from a straightforward issue with direct offenses committed by whites?

I can’t help but be a little frustrated when Don Imus and a small 85% white town produce the largest social change we’ve had around racial issues since OJ and Rodney. Did we do anything after the horrendous education Supreme Court ruling? Can we at least bring Megan Williams into the fold and address coverage bias in the mainstream media since they finally turned their eye to Louisiana…after a year? America did not suddenly get worse. What is it about a noose, a fight, and an unjust charge that grabs our attention in a way that housing segregation, unjust prisons, voting disenfranchisement, anti-affirmative action initiatives, and even genocide in Darfur has not? Don’t get me wrong. I am excited and energized about the organizing and action around The Jena 6, but we need to see it through a larger lens. In fact, we need to see this as part of the narrative of American injustice and social movement strategy.

Some might say I’m being picky or asking for too much. However, I have realized recently that we might be the only ones asking for something beyond a cliché about justice. Our progressive voices matter and they have to speak into spaces that do not want us there. I do not care if CNN only wants me to march or if Damon Winter and the NYT only want my upraised fist in a sea of blackness. I will march for local change in Louisiana and organize the dismantling of the media’s unjust structures because they are part of the problem. Our collective action is the only real solution.

Yes, Jena got me riled up.
Yes, I am glad President Bush is sad because of it.
Yes, I am hopeful that more people will finally recognize that racism DOES exist in the 21st century.

Yet, I was upset the day before I heard about Jena because of racism.
Yet, Bush has only advanced “reverse racism” cases in the Civil Right department during his tenure and the situation in Jena has not changed that.
Yet, I am still disturbed by the people who think we can avoid talking about race in favor of a colorblind society aka silencing people of color from testifying their lived experiences, many of which include racism.

“This is the first time something like this has happened for our generation. You always heard about it from history books and relatives. This is a chance to experience it for ourselves.” - Eric Depradine, a 24 year old senior at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (NYT)

This is not the first time nor will it be the last. We’ve had our chances before, but it is encouraging that we are choosing to act now. That does not mean, however, we can buy into the claim that there has been nothing “Civil Rights worthy” in the last three decades. We need to ask ourselves why we haven’t been marching. This is not an effort to cast blame or slow down the movement. Instead, we can use this question to improve our future actions and to decide how we sustain and expand upon this momentum.

Yale : New Haven :: ? : ?

2007-08-26T16:31:00.000-05:00

As I walked by myself down Elm Street last night I looked up and saw three large men in caps and baggy clothing turn the corner and head in my direction. I was neither fearful nor anxious as I kept walking towards them, yet as I came close enough to tell that the men were white—and thus probably students or football players—I guiltily perceived a hazy feeling of relief float through the back of my mind. The relief came from the understanding that white students generally do not bother other Yalies at night, and I was likely in no danger. Yet it was tinged with guilt because I like to think of myself as a racially conscious black man but a simple encounter on the streets of my home awakened stereotypes I’ve long tried to suppress.

Over the summer, however, I generally experienced the opposite phenomenon: when I walked alone at night, rather than feel even the vaguest feeling of relief when I saw a white person, I instead became acutely fearful. The difference between last night and the summer was contextual. Over the summer I led a bike trip across the country as part of a fundraiser for the Habitat for Humanity Chapter of Greater New Haven. I was the lone black person in a group of 27 riders, and most of the nine-week journey struck through the heart of Middle America: Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Wyoming and Montana. We spent nights in churches like the First United Methodist Church of Douglas, Wyoming, and celebrated the Fourth of July in Oshkosh, Nebraska, a town of 700 people with almost no blacks. Some people in many of the towns we biked through likely never saw a black person before we came through—much less one in bright yellow spandex.

I had never spent much time in the rural Midwest or Great Plains, and my initial prejudices of gun-toting, bible-reading, pickup-truck driving Red Staters made me apprehensive. Crossing the Mississippi from Illinois to Iowa brought to my mind scenes from Deliverance; and, like Jon Voight, the last thing I wanted was to be held at gunpoint by a local farmer for his own bemusement. I felt the urge to cringe when I saw people drive by with gun racks on their back windows, and crossed the street when I saw a group of rowdy teenagers on the sidewalks of the small towns we stayed in. In the rare instance where I would see another black person on the street or in a supermarket, nodding or saying hello carried an extra significance for me than it did at home. The greeting contained a tacit acknowledgment that we both understood: if one of these white folks around us goes crazy, I’ve got your back.

I was forced to engage my fear of the Middle American for the first time in Western Illinois by the Iowa border. As one of the trip’s leaders, I was in charge of driving our 15-passenger support van and trailer occasionally, and on this rainy day as I was turning the van around, the gravel and mud on the side of the road gave way under the van’s weight and I wound up stuck in a six-foot deep ditch. I climbed out of the van and paced up the road, expecting to have to call AAA or a towing agency, when minutes later a man in a red pickup truck drove up and slowed down as he approached. The man was probably in his forties, dressed head-to-foot in army fatigues with long hair and an unkempt beard. I was by myself, in a yellow jacket and cargo shorts, holding my Treo cautiously as I prepared to run. The ominous banjo track from Deliverance played through my mind.

Rather than reach for his gun rack, however, the man rolled down his window and with a country drawl kindly asked if I needed a hand. He lived by the water tower a mile away, and he offered to get his larger pick-up truck from home that he could probably use to tow me out of the ditch. Soon after he left, several more cars stopped and asked to help, with many of the drivers pulling over and getting out of their cars. The scene looked like an impromptu roadside farmer’s market, with a dozen or so men and women huddled around my van and trailer in the Illinois cornfields. The rain turned to drizzle, and soon enough the man in the army fatigues came back and quickly towed the van out of its grave.

The point of this story is not to suggest that over the summer I discovered that racism was dead in Middle America. On the contrary, Iowa, for example, has one of the most disproportionate incarceration rates of blacks in the country, with one in thirteen black Iowans in prison—a rate 11 times higher than Iowa’s much larger white population. Nevertheless, if I hadn’t been forced to reassess my stereotypes towards Middle Americans through personal contact by meeting and talking to wonderfully generous and friendly people, I likely would continue to maintain an unnecessarily disrespectful attitude towards all of them. The same is true, albeit in reverse, at Yale: just as Deliverance gave me an unreasonable fear of white people in rural Illinois, the innumerable stories told to incoming freshman about how dangerous New Haven is only confirms unreasonable fears of all black people walking down Elm Street. Even Cultural Connections, which does a great job of facilitating discussions about race and ethnicity at Yale, had as its first meeting a Yale-sponsored lecture on campus security--a lecture which, when given to the entire freshman class two years ago, featured a man in a gorilla costume.

Yes, like many cities, New Haven has crime and other problems, just as racism continues to exist among whites in Middle America. But to do a better job of introducing freshmen to New Haven, Yale must change the metaphor it uses to describe Yale’s relationship with city into something that promotes establishing individual relationships between students and New Haveners. It is dangerous to think of Yale as a safe bubble floating in the middle of a violent ghetto because it allows students to disengage from the city and retain a negatively disrespectful attitude towards all of its residents. Yale is an intrinsic part of New Haven just as New Haven residents compose an essential part of Yale. And as an institution, Yale should try encouraging students to engage their city and its residents through advocacy, service, and personal contact among Yale students and staff as much as they warn them to secure their own belongings.

Back in the day my pops said, "Right on."

2007-08-06T09:26:00.000-05:00

In response to Naima's critique of the Rock the Bells festival, my own plea for new hip hop heroes, and our on-going discussions of the many problems with the hip hop we love so dearly, I want to take a second to think about some of the hip hop music that falls under the mainstream radar.

I came of hip hop age in high school within a diverse group of politically active kids in Chicago. The city's problems with racism, segregation, and corruption were our backdrop. We went to communist meetings, African American Culture Club, and open mics at a folk music school. We recorded CDs which we sold for $5 between classes, and did each other's cover art. Some of the graffiti writers went on to art school. Some of the emcee's built their own musical instruments when they couldn't find the sound they wanted otherwise. We read Bomb the Suburbs by hometown hero Upski and watched some of the better things about Chicago die around us. For a while I studied Ali Shaheed Muhammed's beats closer than anything in school, and pulled samples from dumpstered records and CDs from the library. And I took it really hard when I realized Rawkus Records was falling apart.

There's more to this than just waxing nostalgic. I've spent the past week revisiting old hip hop albums and thinking about music as a vehicle for social change. The hip hop I grew up on was pushed aside as "alternative" hip hop--hip hop at the time ordered you to back that azz up, and any other message was deemed alternative. Graf and breakdancing make only cameos in mainstream hip hop videos; instead, silent women in bikinis (apparently black women's year-round leisure wear) narrate thug story after thug story penned by rappers living in mansions. Remember how excited people got when Kanye West yelled, "George Bush doesn't care about black people" on national TV? Rappers should have been saying that all along, worrying about something a little bigger than how many pairs of Air Force Ones they have.

Political rap shouldn't be an obscure sub-genre. Black men: the stakes are high! You are many times more likely to go to jail than to go to college. You are constantly underestimated and racially profiled. But you know this already. So quit talking about grillz and tip drills, and speak out against the power structures in this country that try to put you down.

And all the rest of us who don't always find our spaces within hip hop: we've gotta keep pushing our way in. We're not "alternative."

I think this is the first BJB post to come with a soundtrack. Here are a few songs that push the boundaries of what hip hop is or what hip hop says:

Atmosphere, from Minnesota, writes songs about stealing food and suicide in grain silos. A few albums back they started emo-rap, for better or worse. Scapegoat, from Overcast!

J-Live is a former English teacher from Brooklyn. Them That's Not, from The Best Part is a rags to riches to rags story about rappers being arrogant and phony.

Hand Me Downs by Soul Position (Blueprint + RJD2) says what I wanted this post to say but far better (from Things Go Better with RJ and AL).

Kid Koala plays the turntables, bending notes to build jazz/funk songs. His first album came with a comic book he'd drawn on brown paper. Fender Bender, from Carpal Tunnel Syndrome

The Cold Vein by Cannibal Ox builds and builds until its ending, the hidden track Scream Phoenix, a song about rebirth.

If you listen to nothing else here, please check out Patriotism by Company Flow, from the compilation Soundbombing 2. Company Flow's earlier songs alternated between dystopic political sci-fi and early 90s b-boy anthems. Listening to them before bed once gave me nightmares of state violence.

And I know what the first critique of this is, so I'll beat you to it: there are no women listed here. I'll be honest, beyond my childhood crush on MC Lyte, I've only listened to a handful of female rappers in my life. I don't know that I've ever seen one live. Even in underground hip hop women are very marginalized, and if you don't seek them out you don't encounter them; I've had to admit recently that I didn't seek them out hard enough. So please, dear readers, if you've got a great female rapper in mind, please introduce us in the comments section.

Place the bill in the middle of the table and your tip will be niiiice

2007-08-06T03:25:00.001-05:00

Ladies,
When you are out with a boyfriend, husband, friend…whatever it may be…where is the bill usually placed? From my experience it is usually in front of the male whether the server be male or female. Keep this assumption that you are engaged in a patriarchal relationship from being true and cover your own part of the bill. Open the door for this male. Demand the same amount of respect as he. Put an end to this chivalry which to me is just inequality. What reason does a male have to treat a female one way and not expect the same treatment back? Do we as women intend to receive but not to give? These little steps, rebellion some may even see it as, reject small signs of dominance exerted by males on the day to day basis. What makes you believe that you shouldn’t be responsible for paying for your own expenses? And if you’re going to allow him to pay for you, when will you offer to pay for his? Right now are you saying you shouldn’t have to because he is the man? Well does being the male entail financial superiority? If not, why are financial responsibilities on the list of manly duties? These practices are rooted in a misogynistic culture. Will you continue to follow these guidelines?
You think a real man pays the bill all the time? No. A real man is so wrapped up in “being a man” that he is intimidated by a woman who can cover her part.

Stop making that move from a patriarchal household to a patriarchal relationship. Remember, cash rules everything around me. CREAM get the money. Dolla dolla bill y’all.

In order to respectably demand equality on a greater scale you must first demonstrate your ability to embrace it on a smaller one.

Excuse me Oprah honey...

2007-08-06T02:19:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry really I promise, but niggas, bitches, and hoes do exist. I'm just being honest." -T.I.

I know I may upset people (Not that I care. You all should have learned that from BM-WF.) but I'm going to have to agree with T.I. on this point. My discrepancy with hip hop is the way in which the terms referring to females are used. Not that they do not exist.

woman, female, or girl = bitch, slut, or hoe

In hip hop music, no matter the situation. No matter how glorified the woman in the song is. She will be referred to as the same thing as the woman that same rapper allegedly despises.
Also, bitch and hoe, words often meant to describe women in general, are used to describe men of unsatisfactory qualities. Punks if you will. Pussy is also used in this way. Obviously referring to a part of a female's anatomy. Suggesting that because it is of a woman it is of lesser value than that of a man's body and that by being called that you are less than a man. I'm ok with bitch used to address no one in particular but rather to emphasize the previous statement.

Examples (all Busta Rhymes songs):
I Love My Bitch - "I love my bitch" is said dozens of times throughout the song. His bitch apparently will never let him down. He also loves his bitch.
Pass the Courvoisier - "Best dressed bitches actin' all cute to my shit." - Nothing wrong with these women. They're just women. And therefore, are bitches.
Touch It - "Flipmode, bitch!" Acceptable.
Hail Mary 2003 - " That bitch shot himself in front of Def Jam." - A guy whom he does not like (and is less than crafty with a weapon) is called a bitch.
I unfortunately could not think of a line in which he uses bitch in an unsavory, but nonetheless, acceptable way. If it sticks to the accepted definition of bitch then I let it ride.

Busta Rhymes is nowhere near the main offender or top threat when it comes to using the b-word inappropriately. He popped into my mind because of the song I Love My Bitch which seemed to get the point across just fine in the radio edited version I Love My Chick. I’m confused as to why he didn’t stick with chick.

I think since I’m deeming certain uses of the term ok there should be a male equivalent. I want to be able to insult a male in a different way than just calling him some derivative of a word for female (Anyone with suggestions for this new term let me know and let’s spread that shit son!). What fun is that? Female hip hoppers (all 3 of them) fall victim to the same thing. Referring to themselves as the top bitch yet calling their enemies bitches. Some may argue that females could take the term bitch and empower it (kind of like nigga) as some have attempted to do (Trina and Lil’ Kim). But there is not a strong enough female force in the industry to pull this off. Also, it does not help that a strong argument could be made for one or both holding true to the actual urban definitions of hoe and bitch.

And with that I will leave you with some Lupe in which we see bitch become prevalent in his eyes. Not just saying that the girl he once dated was a bitch but to say that this bitch opened his eyes to the meaning of the term. It awoke an awareness of the reality of it all. That bitches do exist and that hip hop artists misuse the term. It’s not that all rappers hate women. They just don’t respect them.

Now I ain’t tryin to be the greatest/ I used to hate hip hop/ Yup/ Because the women degraded/ But Too Short made me laugh/ Like a hypocrite I played it/ A hypocrite, I stayed it/ Though I only recited half/ Omitting the word 'bitch'/ Cursing, I wouldn’t say it/ Me and dog couldn’t relate/ ‘til a bitch I dated
-Hurt Me Soul

I Know What Jesus Looked Like

2007-08-06T00:17:00.000-05:00

A line of Bible toys is going on sale at Wal-Mart.
Just as I expected Jesus looks like a white hippie from the 70s minus the colorful schemes.
Pharaoh had a unibrow and cartoonish features.
Esther looked like Demi Moore.
I'm glad that the geniuses of One2believe were able to produce these figures so close to their actual likeness. They didn't have much to go on. Areas and regions described in the Bible? Historical data? None of this was at their disposal. So give credit where credit is due. The people who reside in areas mentioned in the Bible do not resemble those who dwelled and traveled through these areas in Biblical times. Somehow Africa evaded this phenomenon because Africans still look the same. If I showed you an African now and an African from 500 years ago, could you tell the difference? Of course not.
Everybody knows that Moses and Noah and all them looked like normal white people. For all you know, your next door neighbor is a descendant of Moses himself. The more I look at Goliath the more he resembles my 7th grade Language Arts teacher.
Buy these toys for your children, your brothers, and your sisters. With no information to go on, one has to assume that Biblical figures looked like white Americans. I mean...haven't they always ruled the world? Isn't every continent's (except Africa) indigenous people brunette and brown-eyed? People (except the Africans) have changed drastically in appearance over the years.
These figurines are made to counter the violent ways of Spiderman and other white action heroes. The only time it is acceptable to depict violence is when it is in the name of the Lord. And I command you to spank any child who dares to think that it's okay to allow his mighty Samson figurine to succumb to the wrath of Goliath on the kitchen floor.
I'm working on a line myself. It's called One2deceive. There is only one figurine. A black Judas. But until the day that black Judas reigns supreme, I will wage Holy War on my bedroom floor. I'll trade you the Batmobile for Moses' stone tablet.

HIP HOP REVOLUTION: NO GIRLS ALLOWED

2007-07-30T17:19:00.001-05:00

this past saturday and sunday, new york city's dusty randall's island hosted hordes of hip hop fans at the ROCK THE BELLS North American music festival, sponsored by Guerilla Union.

ROCK THE BELLS has called itself a "world-class hip hop plaftorm" and features over twenty politically conscious and activist hip hop acts, including big names such as rage against the machine, wu-tang clan, cypress hill, mos def, talib kweli, nas, EPMD, the roots, and rakim.

amazingly, of the fourteen performances scheduled this weekend for the main stage, only one featured a woman performer - erykah badu played one set on early sunday evening, as the sole woman included amongst the festival's main attractions.

apparently, a fifty minute set is all the representation women of color get at this festival and by extension, hip hop and the revolution ROCK THE BELLS is intended to be a platform for.

gender diversity on the only other stage at the festival, the "paid dues" stage, was no better without fair and equal representation of women amongst the eight acts that played over the weekend. to boot, badu's name appears misspelled on the ROCK THE BELLS randall's island lineup.

"represent + respect + recognize".... black manhood?

for a political, musical event that claims to "capture and define a movement," the nearly exclusively male ROCK THE BELLS lineup denies both the existence of women and our centrality to hip hop. are there no women voices that shape urban culture and should therefore direct the discourse of the tour? is this our answer to backwards, misogyistic hip hop - more men holding mics and the erasure of women?

and for a tour that claims to be revolutionary in ideology and focus, the absence of women performers and a focus on issues of gender equality and women's rights, fits into the larger question raised by the pecularities of the festival: which revolution exactly is ROCK THE BELLS calling for?

i have no doubt that zack de la rocha kept it real and fresh and incendiary with all he communicated while on stage and that anyone who had not yet heard any tracks off of fear of a black planet was changed for the better after seeing public enemy. the new york city, los angeles, and san francisco dates on the tour also featured an Axis of Justice tent dedicated to local activism. the presence of groups such as Iraq Veterans Against the War, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Safe Space NYC, Immigrant Communities in Action, La Otra, and JUST US, is evidence of a commitment to immigrant rights, labor rights, economic justice, youth development, and anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-war, anti-homophobic activity.

hoowever, while the content of the art of the tour itself is bold and necessary, the marketing and audience of ROCK THE BELLS remain far less than revolutionary. ROCK THE BELLS is compromised by the corporate sponsorship that seems to be used across the board to finance and support other tours of this size and scope. the frontpage of the website encourages fledgling revolutionaries (i.e. fans) to "join the mobile hip-hop revolution" which entails having news sent to your phone about "music, lifestyle, fashion, and more" but nothing more discernibly substantive. in general, the ROCK THE BELLS website, unlike the Axis of Justice site and tent, is astonishingly apolitical and commercial - as SanDisk, Rockstar Energy Drink, and Heineken are sponsors.

the terrible irony of corporate backing for a hip-hop tour with mostly performers of color is intensified by the fact that the festival is orchestrated by an organization called Guerilla Union that sports a star logo that strongly echoes the flag of the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional.

many of us here at the north star were excited at the prospect of being able to catch rare performances by rage, public enemy, and of course mighty mos, but were unable to afford the concert tickets. elizabeth, camille, and i were near the east 125th street train station on saturday morning and saw more white people than there ever are in harlem on line for buses to randall’s island. surely many other hip hop fans were unable to attend the show for financial reasons – particularly working class and poor kids and kids of color. the fact that most of the people on line for the festival were white men is a testament to the adverse effects of the cost and marketing of the festival and the fact that the buying and selling of the counterculture is still as profitable as ever.

my friend and soul-brother stanley attended ROCK THE BELLS and recounted to me his experience at the festival in the midst of a nearly all white crowd. he observed that when rage declared fox news was a fascist news station and that george w. bush should be tried as a war criminal, much of the crowd seemed to tune out.

brother stan remembers looking around in frustration at the other concertgoers, drunk and apparently oblivious to the immensity of what was unfolding on stage. he remembers wondering at the people surrounding him, “how are you going to wear a wu-tang shirt and not know the first four bars of ‘triumph?’”

for those uninterested/opposed to rage’s “political talk” or who do not know more than the chorus of “shimmy shimmy ya,” the allure of ROCK THE BELLS must be something other than the quality of the political discourse, the rhymes, the music. much of the allure surely resides in a covetous obsession with blackness as a commodity and hip hop as a fad.

the performers at ROCK THE BELLS were acutely aware of exactly who had come to see them and what the limitations and hypocrisies of the crowd were and their commentaries throughout the set were reflective of that, according to brother stan. the GZA knows white frat boys in the front row will not be at the forefront of a hip-hop revolution.

for artists as innovative and forward thinking as the roots to be included on a tour that includes more corporations than women constitutes an inconsistency of art, politics, and ethics. are we to join the men who will apparently be leading us to the future, toward change, toward... consumerism? looks like the hip hop revolution is committing the sins of white patriarchy.

these shortcomings of the festival are lost opportunities to further politicize the tour, to educate and organize with hip hop narratives. ROCK THE BELLS is an exciting congregation of some of the best talents and intellects in hip hop and music in general. the festival has the great potential to be a radicalizing experience for any true member of the hip hop generation who can afford to attend. the tour would broadcast a clearer political message with lineups, audiences, and sponsors that are more radically inclusive and representative.

it ain't privilege, it's injustice

2007-07-29T21:50:00.001-05:00

to pick up where the north star left off with what some have called our "scathing critique of white Leftist culture"...

a particular phenomenon in the immensely white Leftist circles at yale is a rhetorical and ideological obssession with the notion of White Privilege.

it is not uncommon to hear a white liberal campus organizer at yale say something along the lines of, "we white students at yale walk around enjoying a great deal of privilege because of the color of our skin - it is because of this privilege that we must work to uplift the citizens of new haven."

within the veins of the activist community at yale that even venture to contemplate issues of race, the ability to acknowledge and discuss White Privilege is considered a great testament to one's radicalism.

however, the fact that most white students at yale (or in this nation) do not think critically about the relationship between their whiteness and social power does not mean that those white, self-professed progressives who recognize their social and economic privilege have accomplished anything more than a certain degree of honesty about history.

news to the aforementioned self-congratulatory white Leftists:

the much-beloved term "White Privilege" fails to capture the reality of racial injustice in this nation. moreover, unquestioning and incessant talk about the special position that white people inhabit in society reproduces racial divisions in progressive movements and upholds the logic of White Supremacy.

not exactly revolutionary...

“White Privilege” is a misnomer for it suggests that white people enjoy socioeconomic advantages and benefits beyond a standard level of rights and opportunity (which presumably non-white people are afforded). however, the term does not account for the exploitation and disfranchisement of people of color that is a consequence of “White Privilege.” people of color do not possess the freedoms and protections of full and actualized citizenship. the legal and social structures of this nation do not merely demonstrate partiality towards white people but also simultaneously deny people of color the most basic of human rights, such as housing, health, education, justice, peace. the corollary to what some would term “White Privilege” is “colored degradation.”

for example, if the world were organized by “White Privilege” rather than “Racism,” a police officer might be especially kind to white people while nonetheless providing people of color with legal protection, aid, fairness under the law.

and so the white Leftists who think they are down because they have got the courage to lamentably declare, “We’ve got White Privilege,” it would be more accurate and truthful to say instead, "We are beneficiaries of racism," or "We participate in a racialized system of oppression."

how much more reluctant is the race conscious white activist to admit that his “privilege” has a consequence, that his whiteness is more than merely a personal reality about his own social power but is also an agent of violence.

as a blactivist at yale, i have found it rare to emerge from an organizing conversation or meeting with a white peer without a guilt-stricken or self-righteous allusion to “White Privilege.”

the insistence of many white campus activists upon talking about their White Privilege ad nauseam re-inscribes racial stratification and therefore begs the question:

“do you articulate the reality of your whiteness in a spirit of honesty and repentance or as a means of clinging to the privilege and social order you claim to seek to destroy?”

part of the project for white activists in recognizing their “privilege” should be the rejection of it – one must repent from, rather than embody an identity that represents oppression in its representation of privilege. “White Privilege” ought not be considered permanent or inherent, as if it inescapably resides in a white activist’s skin.

there is great violence enacted on the strategy and, more importantly, the soul of a community when the reality of "White Privilege" is used as a reminder of the agency and power white activists hold and that peers of color allegedly do not and may never possess. “White Privilege” is a construction that can be drained of its power if it is rejected - rhetorically and by individual and organized collective action.

the ceaseless, widespread rhetoric of White Privilege is also often used to describe the special commission or power that white Leftists feel they have in political efforts to make change. manifest destiny has well taught us to be wary of the salvific missions of white folk. the assertion that whiteness qualifies one as best suited to make change not only disempowers and excludes people of color from the struggle to reshape their own lives but is paternalistic and supremacist in logic.

it is undoubtedly necessary that the white activist recognizes that there are social responsibilities that accompany each social position and that there are moral imperatives associated with each identity, but to believe that it is “White Privilege” which enables change corroborates rather than disrupts the notion of white power. and for all who believe that change comes from the bottom up, for all who believe in the power that resides in the folk and in the collective, and for all who believe in the grassroots, the notion of a white folks’ coalition for justice is heresy.

it is a great contradiction and injury that so much of white Leftist culture hinges upon the use of “White Privilege” as a badge, shield, or excuse. such toxic rhetoric and action naturalize and uphold the racial injustice that undermines the integration, equality, and solidarity we profess to seek.

Ghetto Bus?

2007-07-23T16:14:00.000-05:00

http://www.clutchmagonline.com/

‘Ghetto Bus Tour’ glorifies Chicago’s projects
Monday Jul 23, 2007 — By Clutch
The yellow school bus rumbles through vacant lots and past demolished buildings, full of people who have paid $20 for a tour of what was once among the most dangerous areas of this or any other city in the United States.

But for the woman with the microphone, this “Ghetto Bus Tour” isn’t just another way to make a buck from tourists. It’s the last gasp in her crusade to tell a different story about Chicago’s notorious housing projects, something other than well-known tales about gang violence so fierce that residents slept in their bathtubs to avoid bullets.

“I want you to see what I see,” says Beauty Turner, after leading the group off the bus to a weedy lot where the Robert Taylor Homes once stood. “To hear the voices of the voiceless.” Turner, a former Robert Taylor Homes resident, has been one of the most vocal critics of the Chicago Housing Authority’s $1.6 billion “Plan for Transformation,” which since the late 1990s has demolished 50 of the 53 public housing high-rises and replaced them with mixed-income housing.

Officials paint a different picture
City officials have heralded the plan. But Turner believes the city that once left residents to be victimized by violent drug-dealing gangs is now pushing those same people from their homes without giving them all a place to go.

“I have people becoming homeless behind this plan, people that’s living on top of each other with relatives,” said Turner, who has given informal tours for years before the community newspaper she works for began renting the bus in January. “For some it has improved their conditions, but for the multitude of many it has not.”

Chicago Housing Authority officials say Turner glosses over the failures of public housing. They say the 25,000 units being built or rehabbed are enough for the number of people whose buildings were demolished. “She is running out of bad things to show people,” housing authority spokesman Bryan Zises said. “She is taking a circuitous route so she doesn’t have to drive by the new stuff,” including, he adds, Turner’s own home in one of the new mixed-income communities. On the tours, Turner highlights strong, black women like herself who raised their children in the projects.

Distrust runs deep
Turner takes the group by the home of one such woman, 63-year-old Carol Wallace. When the group makes its way into the dreary looking low-slung building that has not been rehabbed, Wallace tells of her suspicions that she and a lot of people like her are going to be left out of the “Plan for Transformation.”

“Overall, I think it’s just a way of getting us out of here,” said Wallace, standing in front of the door and iron security door she lives behind. “Because they’re not letting everyone back in.” allace’s home stands in stark contrast with the nostalgic picture Turner paints of the old projects. She recalls when parents like her kept an eye on the neighbor’s kids, a time when the projects shined every bit as much as the buildings now going up in their place and lawns were kept as neat as putting greens.

Glossing over the violence?
She downplays the years of violence, saying that all those news reports distorted what day-to-day life was like. All the horror stories that you heard about in the newspapers, it was not like that at all,” she said.

But the stories loom over the tour. They are impossible to forget. By the time the city started pulling down or rehabilitating the projects in the late 1990s, each one had its own headlines that spoke to the failure of public housing in Chicago.

At Cabrini-Green a boy was struck by a bullet and killed as he walked hand-in-hand with his mother. At the Ida B. Wells project, a 5-year-old boy was dangled and then deliberately dropped to his death from a 14-story window by two other children.

And at Robert Taylor, where the illegal drug trade thrived, a rookie police officer was shot to death on a stakeout outside a gang drug base. Turner could even add her own story. She saw a teenage boy shot on the very day she arrived at the Robert Taylor Homes in 1986.

Message confounds many
Her approach had some on the tour shaking their heads. Are they romanticizing these communities?” asked Mark Weinberg, a 44-year-old Chicago lawyer. “These were drug-ridden, violent neighborhoods where people wanted to live a good life but couldn’t.”

D. Bradford Hunt, a Roosevelt University professor writing a book about Chicago’s public housing, said he appreciated that Turner told the story from the perspective of tenants but wasn’t quite sure what to make of the commentary. People got killed,” he said. “You don’t make that story up.”

Still, Turner says the city has a duty to keep the community that law-abiding citizens of public housing built up over the decades, despite their challenges. That is what she fears is being lost, and why she’ll keep giving the bus tour.

“People that come in don’t want to look across the street and see seven little black churches in a three-block radius,” she said. “What they want to see is a Dominick’s and sushi joints and a Starbucks.”

Neither tanning nor a mud bath will make a kid black.

2007-07-22T09:25:00.000-05:00

This one is almost funny. UNICEF has a campaign in Germany urging people to donate to "Africa"--you know, that continent/country where all the people look the same, speak the same black language, and are equally in desperate need of our white money. Accepting the white man’s burden is so much easier, though, when you’re being pleaded with by an adorable, mud-covered blonde munchkin.

Imagine a grinning Shirley Temple in self-applied blackface telling you how much it “sucks” that none of the kids in Africa have schools, then asking you to donate money so African lives don’t “suck” so much. That’s right, according to this campaign Africa, as a cohesive whole, has neither functional schools nor its own ability to speak up about its problems. Luckily, rather than consulting real Africans, UNICEF can just speak through these smiling white kids, whose blonde pigtails and pouting faces tug at your heartstrings way stronger than any African could.

Right.

I won't say any more on this; just look at the pictures. Oh wait, UNICEF took them down in embarrassment. Such is the magic of caching: see them all here.

Translations via Black Women in Europe:

The first kid says:

"I'm waiting for my last day in school, the children in africa still for their first one."

second kid:

"in africa, many kids would be glad to worry about school"

third kid:

"in africa, kids don't come to school late, but not at all" (!)

fourth kid:

"some teachers suck. no teachers sucks even more."

And the latest in Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don't logic is this response to a criticism of the campaign on the Women of Color blog.

Finally, a little history to put it in context.

The Plight of Afro-Latinos

2007-07-20T02:08:00.000-05:00

A great 5-part series by the Miami Herald on the struggles of Afro-Latinos.

Here's a dope article by the well-known Puerto Rapper Tego Calderon: BLACK PRIDE - Latin America Needs Its Own Civil Right Movement Says The World-Famous Rapper.
*Note the subject headings of the NYP article at the top of the window... "Spanish Culture | Hispanic Culture | Latino Culture." Way to help the man out with his movement, New York Post. Can we get an African-diasporic culture? Maybe Afro-Latino Culture? What do we have to do to get some black up in there? And also, Spanish refers to either the language or the people of Spain. Since Tego Calderon is not discussing the culture of either of these, you must be using it as an ignorant term for Latino. Please refrain from this in the future, while also recognizing the global dimensions of the African diaspora. Thank You

Satire, Tricksters and the Yale Record

2007-07-17T11:48:00.000-05:00

This morning I was awakened to a text: "Alert! Alert! OCI is up!"

For all who do not know, OCI is the Yale's online listing of classes. This may seem like a mundane moment, but OCI's emergence into my summer consciousness is not unlike that beautiful day in May when your local stores start putting up their back- to- school displays.

As unenthused as I am at the prospect of summer's end, I ran to my laptop and searched for cool classes. To best explain OCI's impact on a well-worn senior: "oci this year is like looking at what used to be the candy shop and seeing it rot." Thanks for that one, Josh.

However, after being excited and disappointed by Yale's offerings, my mind began to travel to September, recounting all of the things that mark the beginning of a school year. Camp Yale, bazaar, A Cappella rush, shopping period, the first issue of most major publications.

Pause.

The Yale Record will likely publish another faux- blue book, with its own course offerings delivered to us Yalies in only the wittiest of ways.

Let us not forget last year's Record, which included black power and genocide jokes. A flurry of protest catapulted the Record to great notoriety within black circles at Yale. In a defense akin to that of the Rumpus, the staff of the Yale Record justified their work as satire, which as a form is likely to offend.

And I agree! Successful satire will offend. But it is not successful satire BECAUSE it offends. I think we have to look at the history of satire in this country and the figures who have marked its short history before we go around giving everyone a pat on the back for offending my social and political sensibilities.

Now here is a plug for a book I had to read for a class which explores the "hip" in American culture, the rise of the white hipster and the black trickster figure as the model for American satire and popular culture: John Leland's "Hip: The History" get it read it love it email me about it.

Leland asserts that the American satire from Twain to Bruce to Pryor is tricksterism, not at all divorced from the legacy of Brer Rabbit stories. Filled with polarities, a trickster's work posits white against black, rich against poor, man against woman, extracting from these binaries the sheer comical value of disrupting these artificial dichotomies in favor of the chaos that they hope to suppress. Leland says it best:
"Nontrickster heroes help societies distinguish between right and wrong;tricksters violate the boundary between the two. In a nation artificially divided into black and white, inside and outside, tricksters open channels of exchange."

Above is an example I thoroughly enjoy. In “Black Bush,” Chappelle uses black vernacular culture, most specifically “the trickster,” to lay bare the absurdities of President Bush’s public statements. Inserting Bush into a black aesthetic and providing him with a “street” entourage fully equipped with an imposing bodyguard and a hype man in a sweat suit, Chappelle presents the Bush administration as nothing more than sly thugs. In a press conference regarding the war in Iraq, Chappelle takes an actual Bush quote and highlights its meaning, much of it which was lost in the real- life incident:

President Black Bush: He tried to kill my father, man. I don't play that shit.
Black Vice President: Say word he tried to kill your father, son.
President Black Bush: THAT NIGGA TRIED TO KILL MY FATHA!

Chappelle takes the “what if” joke, but this time, turns it on its head, as if to say: “it is.” Chappelle removes the veneer of the White House staff and replaces it with assumedly trifling gangsters illuminating the very double-speak that our President and his cohorts employ in order to deceive us. Who better to “out” a trickster than one of his kind? Chappelle asserts that perhaps our government is no more than street hustlers with a lot more terrain on its plate and a lingo that is harder to deconstruct and identify.

But the joke isn’t over. This joke, as Chappelle is so brilliantly aware, is dependent on the audience’s willingness to charge black characters with deceit and shiftiness. Would the joke have worked well with an Italian mafia boss posited as Bush?? Maybe. A group of suburban Mean Girls? Unlikely. A white, white-collar criminal? Nope. Chappelle knows what he’s doing. He picks the lowest of the low: black, male hustlers in hip hop gear—a site of much notoriety and disgust for most Americans. Here, Chappelle tells a joke so drenched in satire and commentary that he fools some people into thinking they understand why they are laughing. So most people can laugh at Chappelle’s Black Bush, but do they know he’s laughing at them?
Chappelle’s genius is predicated on his ability to unearth tensions that we would rather go unseen or unprobed. Tricksters of this nature operate on a level of genius sustained by a knowledge unimaginable to most. Sitting outside of society and peeking in at moments at a time, its unforeseeable what they can reveal to us. Their satire is inventive and informative BECAUSE of this very straddling of lines of inside/ outside. They show us that it is not merely enough to RE- present what society looks like, but you have to reveal it for what it is: a tenuously ordered ruckus.

Yale Record: Please don’t re-present your lack of understanding of racial sature. Try again, if you will. I'll be waiting.

Myth of the Klan

2007-07-17T11:09:00.001-05:00

A few weeks ago, I was helping my aunt organize her audaciously robust
library when I came across a children's book on African- Americans. Yes,
that took me a moment. It was a part of a series on hyphenated American
cultures, including Dutch- American culture...Yup, another moment.

But I digress. In this book on African- American people, there was special
attention granted to Reconstruction and the rise of white power groups with
the Klu Klux Klan posited as THE perpetrators of racist crimes, including
lynchings around the nation. I reread this section over and over again,
struck by its adherence to the Klan- centric school on racism. This school,
which I believe to be dominant in American culture, places all blame and
guilt in the myth of the omnipotent and all- accountable Klan. Did the Klan
commit all acts of racial violence in the south? No. Does this
representation discount the horror of local lynchings unrelated to any
larger "cause"? Yes. Does it absolve the multitudes of Americans complicit
in these crimes? Yes. But, duh. Klan= bad. Everyone else is safe!

Unfortunately, this false order provides a security blanket for many Americans who refuse
to approach the complexities of race in the American landscape with the
appropriate sensitivity and logic.

I bring this up today, because I am tiring of a trend in current racial discourse. The last year has been chock full of public displays of racism and the
consequent "I'm not racist" movements. An exhibition of such plays out like so: 1) Someone famous says something blatantly racist. 2) It gets leaked to youtube. 3) People act shocked and point at said famous person as though he is some cultural artifact or time capsule from a racist epoch, i.e. not now.

Response to Michael Richards: "That crazy Michael Richards! He's so racist,
but I don't say nigger in a crowded room, so I'm cool!"

Response to Don Imus: "Oh my God! We've got to withdraw our sponsorship, because he's racist and believe me, our company is NOT"

Response to Isaiah Washington (i know its not racial, but...): "Gay- basher!
Fire his ass! Because we at Disney- owned ABC really have a higher moral
ground here!"

What does it mean to dismiss these men as crazy anomalies? I submit that doing so posits these outbursts in an apolitical, post- racial space. These men and their words did not emerge out of a vacuum, so I ask that people stop patting themselves on the back for not slipping up or speaking their true prejudices aloud and DEFINITELY stop treating these outed racists as creatures from a pre-historic past.

The Don Imus debacle created an environment in which CBS Radio and NBC had a real chance to do something positive. This positive thing was not to fire Imus who had, in my opinion, apologized appropriately. I think that these networks could have taken this one step further and made some changes in their programming, which is much larger issue for the black community. But alas, we should remain in our comfortable post- civil rights state where "racism" "is" "a" "rarity" and point fingers at those who disrupt our lived daydream. As for me? I'd like to thank Imus and Washington and whoever else has been forced to face the realities of this age of political correctness and moral laziness.

And the myth of the Klan lives on.

Another Katrina? Oh, just an NAACP debate. Plans were the same anyway.

2007-07-13T21:14:00.000-05:00

Looks like Republicans aren't showing up for anything these days.

On Thursday, all but one candidate failed to attend the NAACP's Republican debate. Still, organizers were sure to put podiums up for the "missing" candidates. The lone attendee? Tom Tancredo, a Congressman from Ohio. Before you give him a standing O for showing up like the crowd reportedly did (our crowds? not so sure), it's best to read the nonsense he was trying to perpetuate.

Check out this report from MSNBC:

"Tancredo said proponents of immigration reform have 'the audacity to call 'amnesty' the modern day civil rights movement.' He earned big applause for saying 'There is no comparison' between the two movements. Is he banking on black Americans' concern over jobs lost to illegals trumping the elements of common experience between the Hispanic and black communities? And is he trying to play on the tensions between some blacks and Hispanics highlighted in cities like Los Angeles and Houston?

He then closed with a two-minute statement, including an anecdote highlighting what he said whites and blacks have in common -- a language.

He recalled the story of a white woman looking for crew socks in a store and could not find anyone who spoke english. She finally found a black woman who helped her. The black woman said, 'I always knew something was going to bring us together. Who would have thought it was going to be a language?'" [MSNBC]

That closing anecdote is particularly insidious given the larger context. More neocon nonsense trying to tear black and brown communities apart. I'm really disappointed people fell for this, but the rhetoric is locked tight and seductive. Expect more of this at the Republican All-American Presidential debate where (I've heard) most candidates will appear. As for part two of the Dems debate, I'm working on it.

Back to black and brown tensions regarding immigration. Has anyone seen any good posts on this lately? It seems as if we've dangerously coalesced moral and legal standards with short term economic realities in our politics (oh yeah, and racism). What can we do to sort it out, especially since a number of our potential allies might be tempted to respond to these conservative class-based fear tactics around the immigration issue?

Not rhetorical, btw.

The Debate Where They Showed My Scars And People Clapped

2007-07-07T03:34:00.000-05:00

A week or so ago, the Democratic presidential candidates attended a debate called the All-American Presidential Forum, a night focused on issues of race (read: black people). Now, I watched the event and blogged it live then realized NO ONE was saying anything interesting. Well, let me qualify interesting. Few were saying anything that I had not heard before and almost no one was saying it sincerely. I’ll still share the topics that were selected and present highlights from their comments.

First, a few things. I really respect the title ‘All-American Presidential Forum.’ We all know what they’re doing. Ellison, did it decades before them…but better. They’re trying to make black America something that’s American. Well, I think it’s best done understated and naturalized (since…it already is) instead of drawing out the “Alllllll” and still mentioning black America and the “greater” or the “whole” in ways that show us that the title is simply rhetoric. Just live it. They should stick with what they said about America getting sick and black America getting sicker. And be consistent with that metaphor; futures that are intertwined with disproportionate realities. When we create and use a metaphor of division, we shouldn’t be surprised when there are actually many different Americans that we now have to weave back together.

Also, I really need for race to stop meaning solely black and white issues. As awesome as it was to be the only group of color highlighted by the media years ago (was it?), I think it’s disingenuous and destructive to keep acting like America is black and white (note how I DON’T qualify that with 'in the 21st century.' It’s always been multiracial!). Obviously, I think it’s still read that way, but we cannot deny the presence of others any longer. It only hurts the black community along with each and every community that exists in our same world. This is why black and Hispanic neighborhoods and black and Asian neighborhoods are being torn apart with violence. There is no model or room for a dialogue. I think we might find this strange in the college realm since (at least, in my experience) there have been many multiracial coalitions. I simply disliked hearing questions answered with only black answers (sometimes bringing in Latinos) because it shows how limited the candidates are in their thinking, pathologizes black people as problems even more, and creates silence that will only be oppressive, especially related to Asian American communities in the realm of education and business.

PBS and Tavis Smiley hosted the event at Howard University. CNN political ticker, of course, noted that the event started ten to fifteen minutes late because of introductions by Howard Prez, Tom Joyner, Tavis Smily, and Deval Patrick. (Anyone else notice how CNN’s snarkier comments are the ones you can’t link to? Keep your eyes on ‘em.) The first question was “from the people.” The question: Is race still the main problem of the 21st century (she had quoted DuBois’ “problem of the 20th century is that of the color line)? She quickly mentioned the Supreme Court decision that struck down race as a factor in K-12 just in case anyone had lost their mind and decided to answer in the negative.

Clinton: “Race sill presents defining challenges in the U.S. and the world.” After talking about progress by, you guessed it, pointing out Obama, Richardson, and herself as signs of change. We’ll debate that last point later, Clinton (no disrespect to feminism, it's just that a vote for her is a vote for a monarchy just like w/ lil’ Bush). Then, Clinton picked up on the cue from the question and said anyone who doesn’t think race is a factor is not looking in front of their face. Shrewd since we’ve got seven answers to go. After that, she did what will be the worst and most central aspect of the debate. She panders to our community by showing off our scars. Our own bruises! And we clap! Is this really what it means to be a liberal in our society? To admit that blacks are injured? Lord, help us all. When Clinton calls on me to be a “foot soldier in that revolution” because “the march is not finished.” Well, that’s when I know she spent the day youtubing what she thought was rhetoric she could imitate; instead, it’s the only access to truth we have: hope. Unfortunately for Clinton, even hope still needs to be authentic. However, the audience loves her.

In this debate, I became very appreciative of sincerity. Unfortunately, Biden is a sincere jerk. He does not understand how to talk about our community without pathologizing. Please watch some of the sections, if only for the audiences’ facial expressions when he speaks. Classic. He gave a great answer here, though, about how Democratic senators did not do enough to stop Alito and Roberts from becoming justices leading to the Seattle decision that ruled against race as a factor in K-12. He’s one of the few who address specifics throughout.

Richardson’s answer was true to his performance. Previously, Richardson had shown his spunk and authenticity by saying his choice not to condemn Gonzalez as fast as his Democratic counterparts was solely because Gonzales was Latino. That could knock a tier one candidate back to the drawing board! Pretty sad state of things, huh? Racial solidarity gets you canned and ol’ boys network gets you a job (and apparently, a get out of jail free pass? Scoot your way pass go and DO collect 200 bucks). Anyway, his answer dealt with race being a reality for him instead of a talking point. Addressing my central concern in the first answer? Maybe, I need to check out his campaign site.

Edwards: “This is one of the great HBCUs that we ALL should be proud of” *SMILE*. Edwards goes off on his two Americas rant that I’m so wary of. This is his trend the whole night: talking about being excited for this debate since he’s, you know, perfect for it…during the debate.

WOAH! Reality check moment: “By the way, also making sure that every single American, including people of color, are allowed to vote and that their vote is counted in the election and we know their voice is heard in the election.” – Edwards

How sad it it that in 2007 this is still so relevant? After becoming a whole person (instead of 3/5) in 1865, obtaining voting “rights” in 1870, passing a federal law to finally make them meaningful in 1965, that in 2007 our voting rights are still imaginary and another false promise. Not that I’m showing off my scars! I just needed to write that down, acknowledge it, strategize about how we can dismantle it, and live. Sadly, stalling after step two…

Obama mentions that if it hadn’t been for the Brown V. Board team that used Howard as their base and resource pool, he would not be standing on the stage. He says you have to have political will to take these issues on.

A look at what’s going around: people are GRILLING Obama. Sharpton looks like he’s about to send lasers out of his eyes. It’s intense. These young black men that car washed their way to the debate (and were acknowledged earlier) are furiously writing things down as Obama speaks. Great call, cameraman. Great call. Looking back, Obama actually started off solidly. Clinton and Obama share the biggest applause so far.

After every debate I really might be thinking, ‘if only Kucinich was a little taller.’ This guy’s got it together. He credits Obama for a great answer, shows his homespun character by saying “the executive and judicial branch say to pull yourselves up by your bootstraps when they stole the boots.” FYI, he does not use Clinton’s “homegirl” act. Yes, it’s true. But is it any better than Bill’s “I’ve got a dirty secret. I know about you folk. I play saxophone” tone and look? Alright alright, I digress. Kucinich immediately mentions a bill by Jesse Jackson, Jr. that would make equal education a constitutional right. Then, champions universal pre-kindergarten. Then, says to eliminate No Child Left Behind. Then, points to the success of arts education that’s getting cut left and right. To the skeptic who asks where the funding will come from, Kucinich still has enough time to mention cutting the war funding and supporting equal opportunity for our children instead. He joins Clinton and Obama in the loudest applause category. This group won’t change for the rest of the night.

Last and…maybe least, Gravel. He attacks the “war on drugs” right out of the gate. He gets pretty fiery making prohibition references and saying it’s a public health issue not a criminal one. Awesome. Then…"if there’s one group of people in this country that needs to face up to that problem and…we need to face up to it, it’s the African-American community." Huh?!

RED ALERT! So Gravel continues to be this awkward later. Never make a “we” without including “me.” Just don’t do it. I don’t care if you could argue that his grammar meant America collectively. I don’t think his thoughts did. And he’s never getting my vote. Ever. Sorry.

On the issue of language, Edwards is also VERY awkward. He says “slavely” for slavery and pulls the "replacing African-American with black" stutter a lot along with saying “Bafrican-Americans” once. I know. I know. But if you give me a debate (that ended up being) about my people, I will critique your performance.

Oh...Chris Dodd. Missed you there, didn’t I? Don’t I always... *awkward pause* Anyways...Oh, wow. This dude is serious. He really wants to be President. Voice raised, eyebrow cocked, and he has the arm rocking. He even slaps his microphone. Wait, on review...karate chops. Not only did Chris Dodd point at my scar, he RIPPED off the band-aid, yelled something I couldn’t understand about Neosporin, and then didn’t even give me directions to Walgreens as he ZOOMED off in his limo.

That was the introduction and the first question. I definitely cannot do the rest in one entry so expect to see further installments in the coming week.

In the meantime, actually watch the debate so you can see the ridiculousness of it all. In many ways, these are the best answers from all of them. Yea, I know. Tell me about it.

So America, about that third party?
Not you, Nader.
Not you, Bloomberg or Lieberman.

So America, about that progressive party?
crickets

wait for it
wait for it

and *sigh*

What Brings You Here?

2007-07-06T22:21:00.000-05:00

In the last post, Naima eloquently wrapped up why the members of TNS write. As the fireworks fizzle out and the confetti gets swept away, we’d like to know why you’re here.

Here are more than enough responses for, well, inspiration from the google side of things.

At first, I just expected everything to some variation of TNS or BJB like this one.

black justice blog

Then, I found that google can link to our posts as well and saw the topical come up every now and then.

taking it to the streets obama
obama imus
obama imus fired

Some a bit more revealing than others…

michelle obama emasculate white
michelle obama is liability

The ever popular Kelly Ripa still continues to dominate with her “performance of blackness”

kelly ripa chicken noodle soup

But some even gave me some cool ideas for potential posts.

timeline on the use of the word nigger

Then, of course, our interracial explosion. I wonder whose hands these searches belong to? Anyway, this is our most popular search item. Since we bust myths and crack standards at least they are coming to the right place. Unless it’s out of love…

ivy league educated black man interracial white women angry
bm/wf dating blogs
bm/wf
bm/wf dating
black-men white-women
black men dating white women interracial
black men women relationships race
interracial black women and white men
interracial-relationships whit
white female for black man
black female marriage rate 2007

A few on Naima’s favorite artists. (joke)

shakira looks white
beyonce white skin
women of colour bellydancing

And some really interesting ones on whiteness. I really feel this white consciousness movement happening. I just hope people like us provide a model for how to deal with historical and present trauma (by exposing it and examining it with a lens of truth and a plan for reconciliation with proper representation) instead of creating more soldiers for that other type of white consciousness (“white Christian male power structure”).

white people have no inhibitions
why I feel guilty being white
white people in business
can’t rely on white people
do white people feel guilty for being white?
White heteronormativity
White savior movies

Some searches made contradictory partners.

Hip hop does not desecrate black women
you cant turn a ho into a housewife hos don't act right the poet
standard of beauty african america tan butt lips

Others intrigued…

white girl rappers northern star
north african women photos

confused…

dave chappelle killing them softly if everyone was openly racist

and offended.

why chicken cross the road get away from black person

Others were truly out there.

mc solaar prose combat blogspot

Some asked questions where the answer is still out there.

what is true blackness
why are white people racist

It showed me that we were never alone in our concerns.

african poverty misery photos
photos of children portraying poverty in africa.
signifying power in africa.

black vernacular english global
Jamaican slang chu

freedom writers monologues
marcus garvey poetry in akeelah and the bee

And even in our language.

what does white supremacist capitalist patriarchy
American cultural hegemony

Inspired me for the coming weeks…

the servant problem and representations of black domestic workers
songs for our heroes

and asked questions both obvious

do rappers and basketball players value status symbols as success?

And puzzling.

Meaning of bring em out by ti

I hope each one found something in our pages. I certainly found something in their leap to the unknown. It might not have been what they were looking for, but I hope it was enough to stall just a moment and give a quick read to something before hitting that back button.

And you?

what to the slave is the fourth of july?

2007-07-04T00:07:00.000-05:00

the north star blog name has many origins: the desire of tns bloggers to authentically embody the principles of light and truth, our shared conviction that writing and dialogue are essential to resistance and freedom, and the creative brilliance of BJB blogger, brittani, who suggested the name.

our blog name also exists in tribute to the legacy of Frederick Douglass and the abolitionist newspaper he founded, The North Star.

in rochester, new york in 1841, Frederick Douglass delivered an Independence Day address best known as "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?" 166 years later, we share the text from his speech, as people of color living in a nation at war globally and internally, and on a day that is intended to celebrate the destruction of oppression and the restoration of the dignity and autonomy of free peoples.

in the spirit of Douglass, we offer this speech as a call to action that remains not only relevant but absolutely imperative.

"...Fellow-citizens, above your national, tumultuous joy, I hear the mournful wail of millions! whose chains, heavy and grievous yesterday, are, to-day, rendered more intolerable by the jubilee shouts that reach them. If I do forget, if I do not faithfully remember those bleeding children of sorrow this day, 'may my right hand forget her cunning, and may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth!' To forget them, to pass lightly over their wrongs, and to chime in with the popular theme, would be treason most scandalous and shocking, and would make me a reproach before God and the world. My subject, then, fellow-citizens, is American slavery. I shall see this day and its popular characteristics from the slave's point of view. Standing there identified with the American bondman, making his wrongs mine, I do not hesitate to declare, with all my soul, that the character and conduct of this nation never looked blacker to me than on this 4th of July! Whether we turn to the declarations of the past, or to the professions of the present, the conduct of the nation seems equally hideous and revolting. America is false to the past, false to the present, and solemnly binds herself to be false to the future. Standing with God and the crushed and bleeding slave on this occasion, I will, in the name of humanity which is outraged, in the name of liberty which is fettered, in the name of the constitution and the Bible which are disregarded and trampled upon, dare to call in question and to denounce, with all the emphasis I can command, everything that serves to perpetuate slavery the great sin and shame of America..."

you can read more of Frederick Douglass' speech here. this excerpt is from:

The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass, Volume II
Pre-Civil War Decade 1850-1860
Philip S. Foner
International Publishers Co., Inc., New York, 1950

Just Do Something

2007-07-03T05:37:00.000-05:00

So, I've never liked Jordan.
He blew smoke in my face when I met him around 1992. And 6 year old Josh wasn't that happy with it. And, as you might be able to guess, I still haven't let it go.
But it's not like he's given me reasons to like him after our encounter.

While wanting to be "like Mike" certainly means something on the court, what does it mean when he goes out of bounds into real life? Gambling, golf, baseball, promoting shoes? Will Jordan ever speak out about something meaningful?

I could have missed something, but it doesn't seem likely.

Here's a great article from ESPN about his inactivity with anything that doesn't deal with shoes.

Excerpt below:

His Airness has always held a precarious place in my heart. My admiration for his passionate play is constantly at battle with my frustration for his apparent lack of passion for anything that doesn't benefit him.

When I think of the large cultural space he occupies -- even in retirement -- and the fact "Republicans buy sneakers too" remains his most memorable contribution to the political landscape, I am truly baffled that he can rest peacefully at night. I don't care if he's a Republican, Democrat or Libertarian. But while his iconic Nike labelmate, Lance Armstrong, has become synonymous with yellow wristbands and the cancer fight, MJ, who is far more influential, continues to steadfastly sidestep using his image for social change, even as it relates to issues of the global black community.

Silence about AIDS in Africa.

Silence during the Hurricane Katrina aftermath.

Silence in the fight against, well, just about anything.

Except slumping shoe sales.

Now some of you are thinking, "Haven't I read this criticism of Jordan before?" to which I say, "Yes, you probably have." Others are wondering, "Why does he have to do anything?" Let me answer that one too: He doesn't.

Nevertheless I bring this challenge up today because, one, the NBA is welcoming a new collection of young men with the potential to do great things, and two, I feel the black community needs a powerful voice such as Michael Jordan's now more than ever.

Please Welcome Dr. Jolie

2007-06-28T07:58:00.000-05:00

You might have heard about some controversy surrounding Angelina Jolie's casting as Marianne Pearl, a woman of mixed heritage, in the film 'A Mighty Heart.' Though Pearl is Dutch, Chinese, French, and black, few in America would confuse her for anything other than a black woman. I was pretty upset about the casting choice given the already small number of roles for black women and the historical legacy of blackface (and brown and yellow) in Hollywood. Then, I heard Pearl sought out Jolie for the role making it her decision and not one by the Hollywood establishment. While I still think it's a weird choice, who knows how Pearl self-identifies or thinks regarding racial issues. However, the production team has been very silent on the issue and even quietly persisted that Jolie did not put on any skin darkener, an obvious lie considering the picture above.

Also, Brad Pitt's production company bought the rights to this film awhile ago when he was still together with Jennifer Aniston. And, you guessed it, Aniston was scheduled to play Marianne Pearl until that ship sunk. My guess is Jolie, as the next Ms. Pitt, was tapped to play the role and giving the real Pearl any decisionmaking privilges was simply a courtesy that worked out conveniently with her eventual approval of Jolie.

Anyway, Jolie finally spoke to the issue at a recent press junket.

“The idea is, if you ask Mariane, because she did address that, and if you did actually want to find somebody that was her exact makeup, she's actually majority Dutch, and she's as black as she is Chinese, and she's Cuban, and she's French. So, it could have gone to many different racial backgrounds, probably, if you went technical on it. And that, you know, is a reality. At the same time, to her, the importance was the essence of her spiritually, and I think that was what mattered and I think that is a question to ask her. But no, if you break down the DNA, it's very complex.”

Thanks Jolie. Technically, black Americans who are the descendents of slaves have some pretty intense DNA results too. It's not an issue of DNA. It is one of representation, resources, and commercialism that always results in white actors getting a lion's share of Hollywood parts. This does not even begin to discuss movies where white supremacy is the focus (The Last Samurai, the first third of Batman Begins, Karate Kid, and almost any American movie about Africa). As always, I don't think things will change until we're allowed to break into the Hollywood system as writers and directors to tell our own stories and recruit allies who will reconsider their own storytelling.

In lighter news, congrats to Tim Story, an African-American filmmaker and director of Barbershop, who scored a #1 last week with Fantasic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. First one didn't exactly transform our discussion on race and I don't think the second one did either, but he's breaking barriers nonetheless. One of the few directors of color who have handled ready made blockbusters. Let's make it a trend.

So, what do you all think of the casting in 'A Mighty Heart'? Benign, disappointing, or just handled improperly?

Sorry white people, racism must be a bummer.

2007-06-12T18:46:00.000-05:00

I saw this via Pandagon listed appropriately under "Boggles the mind." Seems John Derbyshire of the National Review is upset at all us Negros for making things uncomfortable for him. All he wants is to get his (expensive) (leather) shoes shined in peace, and it's not his fault white people won't do it for him! Says Derbyshire:

This pedicab seated two, so my daughter and I were prospective customers. The proprietor of the thing was a young black guy. Three or four times he called out to us, in a very friendly way, to take advantage of the service he was offering. He seemed like a cheerful and enterprising young man.…yet when at last I lost sight of him, he still hadn’t got a customer.…

There seemed to be quite a lot of [pedicabs], mostly occupied, mostly with young white guys pedaling. It occurred to me to wonder whether it’s harder for a black pedicabbie (?) to pick up passengers than for a white one. Not because people are scared to be pedaled by a black man — this was midtown Manhattan, for heaven’s sake, on a busy spring evening — but because white Americans just aren’t comfortable in such an obvious service relationship with a black American doing muscle work on their behalf.

Well, I think there are a few reasons why white people don't take black people up on these sorts of offers. Four male friends of mine worked as rickshaw drivers (same as pedicabs, I'm guessing) one summer back in Chicago. They were paid only by tips from their passengers, so their pay was based entirely on how many people accepted the offer for rides and how much those people wanted to pay them. In order from lightest to darkest they were white, Iranian, Mexican, and Black, and that's how their pay ranked. Some nights the white one made more than three times what the Black one had made.

It became a little social experiment. Usually they all worked the same nights at the same time, and split up in pairs on different corners within a block or so of each other. They knew that the most business came from people with money to blow who were too lazy (or too drunk) to walk to the nearest subway stop. On a Thursday night ("the weekend" when you've got money) this meant slightly belligerent drunken white people whose lowered inhibitions allowed them to throw racist remarks at the darker drivers as they passed them up. In the late afternoon this meant women from the suburbs clutching their purses and their children, scowling at the man who just asked if they needed a ride. Yeah, Derbyshire, that must be really hard--to be the woman holding her purse, that is.

He goes on,

Similarly, there are probably a lot of black American women who wouldn’t mind working as maids in prosperous white households, as used to be commonplace. I’m willing to bet, though, that there are large numbers of white people who would much rather not have a black maid. Not, again, because they fear a black maid would harm them, or be lazy or dishonest, but just because they would not feel comfortable in a master-servant relationship with a black person, after all the guilt-trip propaganda of the past 40 years.

I always had a sneaking suspicion that all Huey Newton really wanted was to cause a good guilt-trip. As was pointed out on Pandagon, Derbyshire's language proves to be more insightful than anything he tries to say: aren't most domestic workers given titles like "housekeeper" or "nanny," rather than "servant"? And likewise, I don't think "master" is an appropriate job description, except in some circles. Maybe his problem comes from the fact that he does still see Black people doing favors for him as them "serving" him, and nothing more. Would he ever try to be friends with his Black housekeeper, or only pity her for her status as "servant"?

He tells the story of taking pity on a black shoeshiner who couldn't get any business otherwise; it was up to Derbyshire, the White Guilted Wonder, to swoop in and save this poor man from Black impoverished misery. But ((shocking!)) passersby mistake Derbyshire for playing the white master instead of white savior, and give him dirty looks. He's the fool that's fallen for our ploy about racism still existing. Poor baby.

So. This sort of white guilt isn't useful. It doesn't solve race-related problems. It doesn't even address them! And it pushes people with some amount of sympathy to actually become less active than they might feel inclined to be.

Like this hypothetical: A black woman needs a job, but doesn't have what she feels are marketable skills, and she has no degrees. She advertises herself as a housekeeper (women's work, right?) but has trouble getting work. She can't find any white regular customers, and those she works for temporarily imply that they feel guilty hiring her and playing into a historical "master-servant" role.

This is the situation Derbyshire is laying out so I'm going to work within it too, but his white guilt prevents him from moving beyond how hard it is in this situation for a white dude like him to find hired help. But the Black woman is probably in more dire staights than him.

Because:
1) Prospective white clients are going in with the assumption that they will be the "masters" of their housekeepers, rather than what they are--clients. Just like they are the clients of the guy who files their taxes or the baker. They feel guilty being in a role of dominance, because they are setting it up that way. They make chit-chat with the baker; they feel dominance over the housekeeper.
2) Because they feel guilty hiring a Black woman, they take the easy way out and don't hire her. Now she still doesn't have business.
3) Since the clients have taken the easy way out, they also haven't addressed why they feel so guilty. Nothing has been addressed!

Therefore: Progress in this situation (and many others) is impeded by white guilt. Derbyshire thinks of white guilt as propaganda, that Black people just want to make white people feel bad. So he feels bad, and doesn't have to do anything more. Obviously, that's not helpful: social progress comes from years of work by communities of people. White guilt's not getting anyone anywhere. Likewise, when issues of economic justice come up in my community I have two options: let middle-class guilt get the best of me and sit that one out (easy), or understand what sorts of middle-class privilege I've got and get to work (useful). Derbyshire can complain all he wants about how hard it is to feel guilty being white, but he wouldn't feel so guilty if he did something to actually make some changes.

Brown people, unite

2007-06-05T14:09:00.000-05:00

****UPDATE 6/07:**** In response to passing the country's first universal ID, the Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE, the new INS) raided homes in Fair Haven, a largely Latino neighborhood here with a strong immigrant community. They arrested 29 people on immigration charges starting at 6 a.m. yesterday, some of whom didn't even have warrants with New Haven police. There is an emergency march tonight for anyone who's around, 7:30 at 115 Blatchley Ave. It's clear that this was an attack punishing the city for welcoming and supporting immigrants.

Yesterday, after three years of organizing, New Haven's Board of Aldermen approved a plan for municipal ID's for all New Haven residents, regardless of immigration status. Before last night's Board hearing, a group of anti-immigration "activists," including Minutemen-connected Southern Connecticut Citizens for Immigration Reform, held a protest in front of City Hall. Outnumbering them at least three-fold was a diverse counter-protest.

The anti-immigrant tactics stooped lower than usual--the most hard-hitting argument they could make against immigration was a series of signs with the photos of people who had been killed by illegal immigrants (and how many have been killed by legal residents in comparison?). Other highlights included one of them dropping an ice-pick he just happened to bring with him and Ted Pechinski hitting a woman in the chest.

But my least favorite part of counter-protesting was watching with disappointment as two black men joined their side of the protest face-off. Pechinski and SCCIR have been passing out flyers geared specifically toward Black and Latino residents, to divide our communities--brown vs. browner--for their own political gain. Mayor DeStefano has called them out for "race-baiting", but it's unfortunately an easily exploited divide. This is a tactic that's been used before by the Minutemen. Interestingly enough, at the same time that they recruit Black people with fear tactics, they also court neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups. Talk about being used!

We as Black people and we as immigrant rights supporters are fighting the same fight. We are hurt by the same racism. Our very existence is denounced by the same politicians and pundits. The same forces of race- and class-based oppression seek to ignore us or wipe us out altogether. There's no reason for the Civil Rights Movement to end at Black civil rights--we can fight stronger fights with a diverse group of allies. Plus, let's not forget that there are plenty of immigrants who are not Latino--but that certain groups of people in this political climate are simply easier for pundits to demonize.

I read an essay in a feminist zine once that since the biggest pitfall of mainstream feminism was a failure to include women of color, no feminist movement will really work without not only including but supporting and truly caring about women of color. And because communities of color are disproportinately lower-income, it must sincerely reach far beyond the middle-class. And since one marginalized group within communities of color is queer people, this feminist movement must give that same support to queer people--and not just lesbians, but all kinds of queer and trans people in all kinds of genders. And it can't be based solely out of the academy, or political parties, or cities, or Western notions of change--and soon enough this movement will encompass everyone fighting every fight, save for the few rich educated hetero white men trying to rule everyone else from the very tippy top. So much power would come from these alliances! and for once those rulers would be the marginalized ones. It's a totally utopian idea, but it's also something to strive for when we ask ourselves who are our allies.

Props and congratulations to Unidad Latina en Acción for leading this fight here in New Haven, and everyone else forging these alliances elsewhere.

Elian Mumumbo?

2007-06-01T13:31:00.000-05:00

All I'll say about Elian is thank God he's Cuban. 'Cause if he was Haitian you'd've never heard about his ***. If Elian Gonzales was Elian Mumumbo from Haiti, they would've pushed that little rubber tube right back in the water. "Sorry little fella, all full. Good luck!"
- Dave Chappelle "Killin Them Softly"

Turns out, Chappelle was not too far off in his criticisms of the myth of equality as it pertains to asylum in this country. Peep this New York Times article on a study of asylums and the rampant inconsistencies that plague this increasingly politicized structure.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/31/washington/31asylum.html?em&ex=1180843200&en=7a3ea462ea883220&ei=5087%0A

Bright College Streets

2007-05-31T18:11:00.000-05:00

I have graduated one year too early, this May. While many of my classmates have left on towards glamorous summers, I am left in New Haven wondering about this city when the Yale buildings have been emptied, when there's more of New Haven than me. Graduation weekend was an interruption.
Graduation was a grotesque reminder of incoporated education, a parade of classicism, racism - with little elegance to shield them. In the name of tradition, I guess.
I am reminded that the development of a consciousness, though recommended by the faculty is ultimately "approved by the corporation", in the words of pres. Levin. I am sublimated by the utility of my education to others.

Graduation is a three-day affair where the streets of New Haven are notably cleared of the homeless, the drug addicts, or the ill - for the near 60% of Yale students' parents who pay the total $45,000 dollars a year. Resident favorite homeless, the "flower lady" remained a fixture. Perhaps she is a darling trip down memory lane for the patronizing as they offer change and make small talk. Absolution of a conscience? I wonder.
No matter. "Flower lady" was quota homelessness for the weekend. With the governor and lieutenant governor of Connecticut on the Yale corporation board, the task of painting the town fair was as easy as a nudge, a slap on the back. There remains no press on the marked absence of the homeless.
I am laughing as I write this because I'm recognizing how naive I am to believe herding homeless citizens requires public process. Or that publicity guarantees fairness. As most politics go, historical actions precede those of today - see the 2002 Olympics of Salt Lake City.

But New Haven could be seen elsewhere serving drinks, washing dishes, cleaning sidewalks. At least they have a job, as another points. It is discouraging to find that fifty years have passed and while opportunity has risen, presentation remains the same.

And for a short word on the vitriolic reactions I received when mentioning I was attending black graduation: why? what's that...isn't that racist? A consecration ceremony recognizing intellectual, artistic, athletic, communitarian capacities of students outside of phi betta kappa is the opportunity to be lauded in one's own space. While one or two may be awarded during commencement, I say: to each her/his own award.

detokenize.

congratulations to the seniors we know on graduating. andom, thanks for using the bjb for your speech at black graduation...and we saw you with that mean lean.

and to dean salovey, thanks for the shout-out at class day.

There goes the white Christian male power strucure!

2007-05-31T16:30:00.000-05:00

Saw this on Feministing today. John McCain was on Bill O'Reilly's show talking about the Left & Right opinions of immigration reform (though their representation of the "far Left" was the New York Times). They tossed around the idea that some people "might just be afraid of Latinos" and that having a strong border is a national security issue.

I've always been confused when I hear people talk about the "security" of the southern border, and building walls to keep out "terrorists." I have never heard of anyone sneaking over the border to commit "terrorism," but that's still the reason given. When there was a proposal two years ago for a wall along the border with Canada, however, it was immediately shot down, the reason being that there was no threat coming across the border from Canada. What's the threat at the other border? Brown people!

Well, now McCain and O'Reilly admit that maybe for some people, there is some racism there. There's racism aplenty in the way they talk about it, that's for sure. But their exact fear:

But do you understand what the New York Times wants, and the far-left want? They want to break down the white, Christian, male power structure, which you're a part, and so am I, and they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to basically break down the structure that we have.

Yes! Bill O'Reilly, you finally get it. Your days of dominance are numbered.

Here's the video.

TNS Summer Reading

2007-05-31T11:25:00.000-05:00

TNS had an idea a few weeks back to think about reading something together as a blog community. A book club of sorts. This post is for people to say what they're already reading this summer (related or not) and to suggest some books for a list TNS can put up in a week or so.

It'd be cool if we could volunteer some books that might be helpful in light of past debates on the blog: hair politics and beauty standards, hip-hop, Obama (and Af-Am representation in leadership), the n-word, and white liberalism. It's also a space for us to move towards some new territory that hasn't been covered yet. Let everyone know what's on your shelf in the comment thread.

Also, if you do not want to use your name in the comments, please choose a pseudonym so we can avoid having 2 or 3 different posters using the anonymous option.

More on the N-bomb and Hip-Hop Culture

2007-05-26T16:23:00.000-05:00

From blackagendareport.com

It’s Your Nigger Problem Not Hip-Hop’s
by Mark Anthony Neal
"Permanently retire the word “nigger.” This was the call from a collective of black political figures in Los Angeles recently, in the wake of Michael Richards’ racist diatribe at a Los Angeles comedy club. The press conference where the appeal made was emblematic of a moment where the circulation of the images of “blackness” throughout the globe has created a moment of crisis in some sectors of the black community. The basic tropes of “blackness” – black culture, black identity, black institutions – have been distorted, remixed, and undermined by the logic of the current global economy. At stake is the preservation of a “modern” blackness – that blackness which was posited and circulated as a buffer against white supremacy, political disenfranchisement, slavery, Jim Crow segregation and the collusion of racist imaginations and commodities culture in the early 20th century. In many sectors “blackness” is literally thought to be under siege. It is in this context that many of the contemporary tropes of “blackness” that circulate in commercial popular culture, particularly in popular music, film and music video, are deemed threats to blackness as tropes of an erosive and inauthentic blackness that is as threatening to the Black Public proper as “death” itself. This sense of threat, has been, perhaps, most powerfully expressed in these debates over the use of the word “nigger” in popular culture which highlight a philosophical divide within “blackness.”

Read the article here

Black Camelot?

2007-05-23T15:42:00.000-05:00

"My mother was a very powerful woman. This was so in a time when that word-combination of woman and powerful was almost unexpressable in the white american common tongue, except or unless it was accompanied by some aberrant explaining adjective like blind, or hunchback, or crazy, or Black. therefore when I was growing up, powerful woman equaled something else quite different from ordinary woman, from simply "woman." It certainly did not, on the other hand, equal "man." What then? What was the third designation?" - Audre Lorde in Zami: A New Spelling of My Name.

"Usually, I love the dynamics of a cheeky woman puncturing the ego of a cocky guy.

I liked it in '40s movies, and I liked it with Katie Couric and Bryant Gumbel, and Cybill Shepherd and Bruce Willis in "Moonlighting."

So why don't I like it with Michelle and Barack?" - Maureen Dowd in her column (click the #1 search item for full text w/o registration).

Because she's black, Maureen. And a woman.

Now, I realize I'm laying down a bold claim. I don't know what Dowd thinks about Hillary or what she thought of Mrs. Heinz-Kerry, but I do see something unsettling in her critique of Michelle Obama's treatment of her husband. In the article, she discusses Michelle's tendency to humanize Obama through (what I would consider) teasing. I understand Dowd's critique that this humanization starts from an understanding that he is more than that: a superhero only dressed like one of us. But let's face it, famous politicians are more than their bodies. Bush, Cheney, Clinton, Obama, Pelosi, Kennedy, and Guliani all stand for something bigger than their life experiences. It's a longstanding trend and one that is worthy of a brief historical analysis.

Black (male) leaders have always been seen as more than human since most of our community bought into (even after bondage, we had agency) a system of patriarchy that states that as the norm anyway. From Douglass to DuBois to King, these figures have benefited from a system of patriarchy that historicizes them as demigods while their female counterparts (Sojourner Truth, Ann Plato, Lucy Delaney, Mary McLeod Bethune, Irene Morgan, and Claudette Covin to name a few) remain unwritten or passively written in history books. It is also a system that demands the oppression of these men as non-white members of a hierarchical oppressive system.

Michelle Obama does not “emasculate” Barack as she jokingly reveals his flaws, she liberates him from an imposed hypermasculine and distant identity forced upon other men, especially men of color. While I do not think this a necessary duty of a significant other, I do see it as teamwork on the part of the Obamas. This seems to be a system that has worked well throughout their marriage, and I am glad that the campaign trail will not force either of them into foreign and constrictive gender roles.

Dowd, for whatever reason, sees Michelle in light of Barack. It could be the trappings of the potential first lady position or it could be perpetuated by racial or gender bias. I think all factors are to blame since this piece might also fall into a similar framework. Let’s try to change that. What does Michelle have to say about this? In a USA TODAY article, she does not directly address Dowd’s critique when asked about it she simply said that Dowd “doesn’t understand.” In other comments though, it really seems like she is sincerely trying to get America to judge Obama as a person rather than a deity. Looking at Camille’s piece a few posts back, it might be a good idea. She says:

It’s important at this time for people to feel like they own this process and that they don’t turn it over to the next messiah, who’s going to fix it all, you know? And then we’re surprised when people turn out not to be who we’ve envisioned them to be. There is a specialness to him [but] if he’s doing his job, he’s going to say things you don’t agree with.

Responding to John F. Kennedy’s pristine Camelot model, Michelle is deliberate in her stance:

“Camelot to me doesn’t work. It was a fairy tale that turned out not to be completely true because no one can live up to that. And I don’t want to live like that.”

I think that last line is critical. Michelle sees this period before the primaries and possibly general election as real life. Not time where events, people, and personalities can be suspended for the public eye. She knows a Messianic politician is very close to, if not already, an oxymoron and is using her agency to anticipate the inevitable Obama deflation by emphasizing the positive but not lying or hiding the negative, even if it’s unseen to everyone but her.

Michelle Obama does not seem to believe in these safe spaces we bring up on TNS. Or rather, she believes in a safe yet public space for her own career and her own life instead of a private one where potential problems with Barack would fester. It seems to be a matter of possession. She knows he could be ours (if only representatively) and wants us to see things from her perspective to facilitate an easy and honest process of electing the best person for the job. It might just be me, but I find that admirable.

As for Ms. Dowd, I don't think she knows what to do with a strong black female who will not simply sit and smile but instead will be her own person free and willing to examine her husband's behavior, politics, and his public reception when she thinks it’s appropriate. I don't think Michelle should remove herself to the business side of Barack's campaign, as Dowd suggests. After all, Michelle’s speeches on the campaign just might be implicitly critiquing those oppressive systems that relegate her to that third unnamed designation far from recognition or understanding. Neither a mammy nor a jezebel, Michelle Obama is free from the usual expectations for black women. Equipped with a high profile career and an educated black man, Michelle Obama is writing her own history.

BM-WF

2007-05-19T16:27:00.000-05:00

“I want all the white women they wanted but were never able to get.” This attitude shown in Soul On Ice is exactly the attitude that many believe is the incentive for all black males that seek or just happen to become involved with white women. This, of course, is not true in all instances. The decision of aligning oneself based on personal beliefs versus that which is usually associated with one’s race is a choice that has plagued black Americans throughout history. Stereotypes are at the ready for black Americans but there is one that is more damaging to the unity of the race than any other; the exaltation of the “White Goddess.” The history behind the relationship of the black man and white woman is too strong and the internal struggles caused by such a twosome too dangerous. A right of citizenship, the right to pursue happiness, has been provided to African Americans. However, there are some aspects of this blessing that are not further needed to advance the race. The right to pursue one's individual choices in life pertaining to interracial marriage should be handled responsibly and done with the solidarity of black America in mind. Its importance should not be at the top of the black man’s list but it should be taken into consideration because they should be aware of the message being sent by this action. This action shows that some do not find their own race worthy of their standards. Those that believe and follow this brand of logic have, in the past, usually been the ones wreaking havoc on blacks. The argument is not being made that all decisions should be based on who one thinks is watching and what understanding is being taken from those actions, but this one should. In order for blacks to reap all benefits of being citizens, black men must push aside a right given to them to do just that. Although post Civil Rights America has afforded blacks the right to marry whoever they want, black men should not marry white women because it disrupts the solidarity black America must have in its quest for justice and equality.

White woman = freedom

Black woman = slavery

The white goddess became the black male’s declaration of freedom to the white masses. Along with the glorification of white females came the degradation of black females. Black males slacked in the protection department. Because of this lack of protection, black women began to question their worth to not only their communities but to their men. It seems as though they figured the key to a man’s heart was by looking like a white woman.

When white men felt the interracial relationship scene was getting out of hand, they did the same things they had done when presented with problems regarding the politically powerless black race in the past (Black Codes): passed laws to ban it. The law was finally repealed in 1967 signaling the opportunity to explore their rights to freedom in a way never before possible in the United States. This new found freedom allowed the black man to pursue a desire his ancestors were not afforded.

The black race has the most severely skewed sex ratio (females being the larger group) yet black males not only are the most open group to interracial relationships, they engage in interracial marriages the most. Realizing the power of white physical assimilation, companies began to market products to aid in the process. Skin bleaching products, hair straightners, and other like items became a staple in black communities. Money entered the picture and solidarity crumbled. Black companies exploited their own women: their daughters, wives, and mothers, to not only please their desire for white looking women, but to make money. The constant bombardment from public arenas that the new black was to look white continued the devaluation of the black female. Once black women start trying to look white, men start marrying them in record numbers. Today the black woman conforming to white standards of beauty is not hard to find. Colored contacts, dyed hair, relaxed hair, and other unnatural physical alterations are the norm rather than the exception nowadays. Now of course if you go up to a woman on the street who is black as night but has gray contacts and blonde hair in she will deny wanting to look like a white woman. She’s just trying to look like her favorite superstar who is trying to look like a white woman. The pervasion of the trend leads the black man back to the white woman. A black woman with white features is not hard to come by so one must run back to the white goddess. The imbalance of males to females makes the black woman, who marries interracially at the same rate as other groups other than the black male, sink to new lows to attract males. Solidarity is weakened by the corruption of relationships. The saying “it’s so hard to find a good black man these days,” is not far from the truth. These good black males, those whom decide to pursue endogamy, are hard to find and therefore act with a freedom never seen before. Cheating, lying, and bad behavior is dealt with more often because if a black females leaves this good male, she sees her chances of finding another one, if she finds another one, slim to none. Black women are forced to be more sexual to garner attention. This survival tactic breathes new life into Jezebel. Black women are forced to compete in an environment that does not facilitate healthy relationships and no healthy relationships equals lack of togetherness in the community. Without a working relationship between sexes, no group can attain solidarity.

The more education a male receives, the more likely he is to engage in an interracial relationship. This changes what black males strive for by signifying that dating a white woman is a by product of success. Also apparent is the successful black male, though entertainment or otherwise, indulging himself with white women.

Just a couple quick examples:

Kanye West in Gold Digger– “And when he get on he leave yo ass for a white girl.”
Also him having a white woman playing his girlfriend in the Touch the Sky video...you know...the song about success more or less.

The show Adventures in Hollyhood on MTV – Who is Juicy J going on dates with? What race are the women they give to him as a "gift"?

Nothing is morally wrong with black male-white female relationships, just that the black identity should guide one away from them. This same battle between individual and group identity happens when it comes to black republicans. It is safe to say that most blacks are democrats. Black society believes that this political party has their best interest in mind. Those blacks who chose to identify with other parties, especially republican, are then thought to be acting outside of their race’s best interest. The suffering black identity, due in part to the relationships it has failed to discourage, is not strong enough to deter these relationships on its own.

The black males’ admiration of white women is of course a stereotype. One that prevents the group solidarity necessary before a group can operate effectively from a bargaining position of strength in a pluralistic society. Black behavior should not be guided to not conform to stereotypes. That is not the purpose of not conforming to this one. The individual relationships themselves are damaging to some individuals but the primary concern is the harm done to the whole. This union is not the only with the potential to cause a raucous. The homophobic black community would be none to welcoming to gay or lesbian marriage. Marriage should not be used to express solidarity but it can be used to show commitment to your race.

Without solidarity there is no political power and no way to grasp all things entwined in freedom and citizenship. By simply acting with black solidarity in mind, one can improve black America’s chances of fully achieving our rights of citizenship. There are many aspects in which blacks can change the way they behave in doing such but this appears to be one of the easiest. This right that was afforded us was good when first supplied. It allowed us to fully illustrate our power in the disproval of the stereotype by performing it. Unfortunately now it is out of hand and is reverting and giving the stereotype more power than before. Black males may not be able to control who they fall in love with but they are able to control who they put themselves in a position to fall in love with.

Commercial

2007-05-19T16:03:00.001-05:00

Does racism exist in Connecticut?

I do not have a TV handy so I'm not sure if this is the exact quote. Channel 8, 8 o clock news...something with an 8 in it has a commercial where they ask a question similar to the one above. I will not rant. I will not rave. I will just call anyone associated with the production of said commercial an idiot.

obama's "taking it to the streets"

2007-05-08T20:08:00.000-05:00

Yes I voted for Barack Obama two years ago, and yes, I have been disappointed. But at some point I also ended up on his mailing list, so every now and then I get emails or letters addressed, "Dear Friend."

Today's email is to let me know that Barack's campaign strategy is outsourcing. Well, he calls it grassroots organizing, or in terms that he feels will appeal to me, "taking it to the streets." He has (personally?) emailed me to ask if I will organize a walk through my neighborhood to tell people how awesome he is. But as I've always understood it, grassroots organizing is when a community has strong convictions about an issue and then organizes their friends and neighbors, and that organizing spreads--the key is that it comes from below. When a boss or politician organizes that same community--from above--we call it propaganda.

Obama's shtick used to be that he supported improvements to welfare and social programs, ending the war, gay marriage, immigrant rights, labor rights, and that above all he can relate to people (of color). Okay, so he's abandoned most of that (Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Exhibit C, and Exhibit D for starters). What's left is his knack for relating to people...or at least enough to get them to go out on "walks" for him, his veiled way of asking people to spend the summer canvassing--getting doors slammed on them, dodging sprinklers, and having an otherwise unhappy time door-to-dooring for someone else you've never met.

No matter how many times he calls me "Friend", I am still so disappointed.

mmhmmm

2007-05-08T18:37:00.000-05:00

nbc seems to have pulled the other video off of youtube. thanks josh and camille for the note!

safe space (or a lack thereof)

2007-05-08T00:59:00.000-05:00

I would like to thank D.L. Hughley for further degrading these women--this time on network tv. D.L. Hughley willingly took part in the desecration of the black female body-- calling the Rutgers players ugly and nappy-- proving that he too ascribes to the mandates of white supremacist patriarchy.

And to add insult to injury: When the crowd responded to his remarks with sounds of shock and disdain, Hughley asserted that he was just saying what everyone was thinking.

Yes D.L., people might have had similar thoughts. But it took you, as a black man, to validate them.

"You Shouldn't Use That Expression Anymore Either."

2007-05-08T00:34:00.000-05:00

Well, Elizabeth asked us to historicize whiteness a few posts back. Let's get started, folks. Or if you're like me, let's think about it while finishing your final papers. Nice tag team piece, Melay. Interesting to compare the two alongside each other.

What can be reclaimed and what cannot carry the burden of a negative past?
And who decides?

reinventing our heroes

2007-05-05T09:02:00.000-05:00

I wanted to weigh in on some things that have been discussed a lot here and elsewhere lately, the first being Spring Fling and the n-word in hip-hop, the second being the (artificial) relationship between Don Imus and hip-hop, and the third being where these intersect. Most of everyone has probably seen this, but at the height of the Don Imus fallout, people started pointing fingers at rappers, as though black people invented racism to entertain white people. Both Snoop Dogg and Russell Simmons (before changing his mind) had interesting responses, basically that hip-hop tells stories, and those types of stories require offensive language.

I have a not-so-easy solution: maybe they should start telling different stories. Maybe a rap song could still sell well, but celebrate a different kind of hero than we’ve become used to. Simmons and Snoop Dogg define hip-hop in their comments to necessarily have hustlers/pimps/etc as the heroes, to whom bitches are the female counterpart and the n-word is a term of camaraderie. This is almost a chicken-and-the-egg scenario, but which came first: songs defining the black male hero as a hustler/pimp, or black males taking this route to become heroes? There’s probably no discernible answer, but I have a sneaking suspicion we could do without that hero-myth altogether.

Think about how many really admirable black people you know—the guy next door who works really hard to get good food for his kids, the community organizer who helped you fight off gentrification, your grandmother who stood up to Jim Crow. Don’t they deserve a hip-hop song? But you would never write a song about your grandmother and use the word “ho,” so obviously the language would have to change. You could put out entire albums with these new heroes and with the appropriate language. I’m tired of songs where the hero is a pimp. For every pimp today, there was probably once a Black Panther, and for every “ho” humiliated on a record, there’s a Sojourner Truth or Angela Davis. Why aren’t these our collective heroes anymore?

And just a bit about the n-word in general: I think we can do better. Yes, we can reclaim something used against us, but why should we? I can’t hear the word without thinking about my granddad, whose family was chased out of Mississippi in the middle of the night by men in white hoods using the same word. He wouldn’t go back to the South for decades. I don’t want to reclaim something that terrorized people. I don’t think that’s empowering; I think it’s selling ourselves short. We deserve a better term of endearment and a more positive way of portraying ourselves.

And to respond to a discussion in the comments a few days back: hip-hop hasn’t failed. It’s still got the potential to reinvent the hero. When in doubt, turn to Boogie Down Productions.

kelly ripa does the chicken noodle soup

2007-05-05T01:26:00.000-05:00

i have been looking for a clip of picaninny children dancing on youtube to put up alongside clips of young people shuffling to "chicken noodle soup" for comparison. since i could find no such clip, i decided to post this video of kelly ripa, bow wow, regis, and chris brown instead. i will not say anything about the video--- i am sure other folks will have plenty to comment about, from kelly ripa's "holla," to a youtube user's observation that kelly must have "been watching BET."

The blame game

2007-05-04T13:31:00.000-05:00

A recent post from blog Queerty.com:

Sappho-Journo Threatened After Anti-Obama Op-Ed

Black Churchies Lash Out, Question Reverend's Racial Alliance

Reverend Irene Monroe ain't no friend of Barack Obama. The black lesbian has come out against the black presidential candidate on more than one occasion. She first blasted the Illinois junior senator back in November, writing:
..[H]is affinity to conservative Christian beliefs not only informs his decision on the issue of marriage equality, but it also solidifies his decision about us in a community of believers like himself.
Though some black churches have lent their support to the lavender cause, the majority still maintain a decidedly repressive approach - an approach Obama maintains. [ More Queer Under Here » ]

It's interesting how Queerty takes the narrow-minded response of some within the black community and, in a way, make homophobia a "black" thing. Reading through the comments, I was struck by how many people declared that this only confirmed their "suspicions" about Obama and likened him to Republican candidates with questionable support for queer issues. No mention of Hillary, Edwards, and the liberal establishment (of which Obama has quickly become part) and their concrete history of voting for queer issues only when it is politically safe and advantageous. Of course I'm in no way defending Obama--I can't bring myself to wholeheartedly support any of the candidates--but I think it highlights a very real problem that's too often overlooked: the way in which interactions between the black and queer communities are represented in the media.

The inordinate amount of attention given to homophobia within the black community and racism within the queer community is not productive. Attention is warranted, and both communities, if they truly support equality, have a moral obligation to address the very real problems each has with discriminating against other marginalized groups. By exaggerating these problems, the media is in fact doing nothing to promote intra- or inter-group discussion or any resolution, but instead pitting the two groups against each other, exacerbating the problem, and excusing the discrimination of more powerful social classes.

In this example, we see how, by focusing on the homophobia of some blacks, white queers are able to ignore their own racism as well as the homophobia of whites in power (i.e. Hilary Clinton and John Edwards). These racist attacks of whites can reinforce images of a racist queer community, and increase homophobic sentiments among blacks.

The only way the black and queer communities can deal with the racism, homophobia, classism, etc., etc. etc. that plagues both is through productive criticism and discussion, and that is being undermined by irresponsible journalism.

P.S. Is anyone else insulted by Queerty's attempt to "blacken" up the post with the use of "ain't?" This coming from a usually quite progressive blog that regularly calls out racism both within and outside of the queer community.

Are we asking the right questions?

2007-04-30T02:04:00.000-05:00

Spring semester comes to an end, but the struggles continue. Some finals-period reading and sights:

Is hip hop promoting racism and sexism? Or is capitalism promoting racist and sexist music? My favorite (paraphrased) questions from a great piece over on salon.com which I think highlights the importance of the questions we pose (and how we pose them) in shaping debate.

Is rap racist?

Don Imus' shocking comments about the Rutger's women's basketball team were problematic enough on their own, but after the shock jock was fired from both of his jobs, the conversation has evolved -- on talk radio, cable TV and water coolers the world over -- into a discussion of hip-hop culture and rap. The I-Man defended himself by saying that rappers "routinely defame and demean women" and slander them "worse than I ever did." So now, a controversy centered around one man's bad judgment has turned into a public debate about the possible harmful effects of rap music, and whether it is to blame for keeping racist and misogynist imagery and language alive in the public sphere.

We surveyed the cultural commentators we most wanted to hear from to answer the question everyone suddenly wants to ask: Is rap music responsible for promoting racist imagery -- and if so, should there be consequences?

Here's what they had to say.

-- David Marchese

Read On...

And the lovely Lauryn Hill performing "Motives and Thought" on Def Poetry Jam:

Food for thought.

The Study-Yourself Department

2007-04-26T23:06:00.000-05:00

Dear White Student,

I'm glad to see you taking African American and oh hell, Other People courses (third world/women/queers/class conscious) here at Yale. We welcome you into this strange world of self-reflexivity. We welcome you into historical reformation, to a legacy of revelation that necessitates revolution. We welcome you into the remarkability, yes the miracle that is our continued voices of protests in spite of systematic decimations of our memory of ourselves. Breaking it down, we welcome you into our homes that don't figure on official maps.

You'll encounter the language of our self-definition: what is blackness, who defines it, why do we need define it, what is black leadership, what is the culture of poverty, who determines that a culture of success must oppose blackness, who is the diaspora, who tells our story, and what, in fact, is our story.

Watch our attempts to convert race trauma into literary analyses to contribute to the oft unsung legacy of the Black Intellect. We are leaving trails of resistance and self-assertion for generations to come, the way those before us did. Learn how we do this for our children so they know how to fight a hidden system that we nevertheless know is as real as the gaze of that certain individual when we walk into a classroom, a lab, a library.

But dear White student, when writing that paper or two on Black identity, consider that maybe your studies of blackness are not just a function of your liberal/progressive/leftist/PC/etc capacity to understand race, but consider that your interest is also a function of a system which places our blackness under a limelight while your whiteness remains the illusive norm escaping all notice. Are we a curious, fetishistic foray into the language of race for you? Tell me, what is the function of black studies for you? Don't paternistically presume we enjoy your attention to the styles of speech, styles of dress, struggles of preservation. It does no system of injustice any use when the perpetrators place undue, feverish attention on the survivors without internally reflecting how it has come to be.

When you told me the other day that you felt so much for race struggles, you were going to write another essay on the question of blackness, this time on brothers Fanon and Garvey, I felt this tightening in my chest. How far we've come that you were so willing to emerse yourself in my reality. But I wondered why you never wrote about whiteness, about the fiction that is American identity which many in powerful channels would claim is "everybody's culture". "The great melting pot". Why is your own body never an original point of analysis? What does it mean that Abercrombie & Fitch has a code of hairstyles forbidding dreadlocks/braids? Does that YPU format seem a little more 18th century Europe and a little less Haitian cooperative, what does it mean to teach a New Haven 2nd grader to "speak proper" or teach Malaysian students how to read Shakespeare, why do you play 50 cent's 'Get Rich or Die Tryin' at your parties when you've never read ellison, soyinka, west? is it strange listening to talib kweli as you cross the street when a 13 year old Black boy is riding a bike?
Will you turn your own curious gaze onto yourself? Write the hidden narrative of constructed whiteness and tell yourself the story of how you came to be white, because as much as my blackness is its own end, that blackness you see is in part a function of your persistent gaze.

See you in class.

bite your tongue!

2007-04-24T18:15:00.000-05:00

beloved thinker, activist and friend, camille over at the hippo blog just posted about russell simmons' encouragement of music industry bigwigs to stop using words like "bitch," "ho," and the n-word.

peep her words here and comment while the north star hits a dry spell.

it would seem that during this finals period, all of our blog contributors are remembering why our families and communities sent us to yale in the first place.

ah, yes, to learn.

and then go back.

"Whatcha Think Is Gonna Happen Here?" Oh wow, we already know. Dang.

2007-04-22T16:19:00.000-05:00

From Dangerous Minds to Freedom Writers, we're all used to glorified white savior movies. Kids of color who just cannot seem to get their act together until, blinded by the white, they are given a new vision of promise, courage, and success.

Sometimes, I feel as if my white friends blankly nod along when I rage against movies like these. I suspect they don't understand my critique or they feel compelled to hide their secret desire to change the world one Vanilla Ice impersonation at a time. Honestly though, I am not against white helpers. While a white person will not escape my loving critiques when helping out people of color, I will still respect him or her for identifying a need and responding to the call (not anymore than a person of color though; no more white privilege for you!). However, movies like these perpetuate the stereotype that black uplift always needs white strings attached.

It's a shame movies like Akeelah and the Bee are rare events while a film like Freedom Writers is so trite that even MadTV takes advantage of its foolishness. Yet, Freedom almost doubled the box office gross of Akeelah. Like usual, we cannot just point at a black status symbol and be content with some form of progress. The studio system needs to change by hiring more black talent behind the scenes to change the stories that get told. Doug Atchison, the white writer of Akeelah, is great, but we need to share our visions with each other while asserting ourselves and our stories into the dominant framework with the hope that we can becoming an original source of transformative energy for a broken system.

On the side note tip, the Yale community has been subject to some really poor attempts at satire this past year. As a result, a lot of these "humorists" are convinced that people of color don't have a sense of humor or hypocritically indulge in satirical humor privately. I think this sketch is an example of responsible satire, a term I'd define as "explosive with a ready made clean up crew." You've got to be ready to heal the hurt you're about to expose (not necessarily cause, there's a difference). There are devices for this effort, and I think this sketch uses them wisely. Note the African-American woman who fleshes out the problem in her monologue to the "nice white lady." Or even the fact that although she introduces herself, her whiteness is what we are supposed to notice; therefore, it is her title as well. Besides the creepy and lingering domestic violence "joke," the sketch did a good job at presenting the problem and allowing us to laugh at it while not disparaging the students of color or even the white teacher. I had been sleeping on MadTV. Not anymore.

Edit: After Naima wisely tempered my excitment, I'll keep one eye opened, one eye closed. Good lookin' out.

the sins of our fathers

2007-04-18T21:05:00.000-05:00

it's good to be a haitian.
there are a few things of which you can be certain, the least of which is knowing you'll be punished two centuries later for having been the first successful establishment of an all-black republic against french supremacy.
for this act of black rebellion by "ungrateful and rebellious Africans", a haitian bonhomme will have the double-honor of paying his white masters for his freedom for over one-hundred years: first in the form of direct enslaving costs to the ravenous french empire, then for economic sanctions which crudely equates a suffering people for american-supported predatory leaders.

and now, now to our struggling diaspora attempting to contribute to the fabric of american culture but can't catch a break on grounds that 101 haitian immigrants attempting to build a life for themselves in the united states will be interchangeable with the word "terrorists". their cuban counterparts though? they will be welcomed into this great, wide land with arms wide-open - to encourage views of cuba as the devil's own land. haitians will be massacred if not by illegal american intervention (1911, 2004), wild insurrectionary armies - if not by these then by starvation which comes from the us govt's refusal to give haiti temporary protected status (TPS). countries such as honduras and nicaragua, more economically established, have been given this blessing.

a haitian-american man in florida (a US army veteran ironically) henri petithomme is saying enough. he's on a hunger strike until the united states department of immigration services releases the refugees from these prisons to their families in the US so that they can meet with law representatives to build a case for self-defense, self-assertion in this land (founded on slashing black esteem).

where did i first get this news? from a korean newspaper. the nytimes article covered this story once, four weeks ago. the local gainsville, florida newspaper is the only paper covering his strike.

so weeks from now when his death is consigned to the infamous moniker, 'here dies another black human on the conscience of US', i'll be praying for the diaspora. for the day our struggle isn't a black blip on someone's radar in korea or gainseville, fl.

ale ale revolutyon-a.
an ale, yon ayiti pou ayisen.*

Bring 'Em Out

2007-04-18T12:52:00.001-05:00

Bring who out? All you white people that say nigga when you’re singing along to your favorite hip hop artist. And by favorite artist I mean you can recognize the song when you hear it and know the chorus.

Let’s make this clear right now. It’s not okay for white people to say the word nigga. Will I try to fight you if I hear you say it while you’re attempting to rap along with the song? No. Mostly because I would rather not sully my record over some dummy’s ignorance. So when TI comes and performs on campus I’m sure I will hear nigga slip from a few belligerent white mouths. And though I may give you the evil eye, I will most likely not address you nor let your dumbass ruin my experience. Singing along and saying the word nigga does not make you a racist. It just means you lack common sense.

There is no white colloquialism that compares to the way black people, myself included, use the word nigga. But for the sake of argument let’s say black people up and decide to enslave, demean, deny political power to, and rape white people for a few hundred years. You know…all that stuff that would in no way affect your cultural identity or hinder a race for years to come. And in the midst of this favor…because that’s what slavery was…a favor. Oh, this wouldn’t be a favor? Oh…it’s only a favor if you’re taken from a derelict continent like Africa…because Africa was in no way running things. It wasn’t like Africans were providing Europeans with a bunch of stuff they needed in exchange for clothes and what not to make them look fly. And that is in no way somewhat parallel to black people today. Point being black people started calling white people crackers during this hypothetical slavery period. Leading to this:

cracka:nigga::white:black

If this happened, I would not call white people crackas. Even if it was in a song I absolutely loved to sing because it’s by this really really hot white guy. Like, oh my God. So do us all a favor and self censor. I don't buy that whole I was drunk, I didn't know bull. If you're drinking to a point that you can't control yourself then I'm going to go with something way out on a limb here...way out there...something no one could ever imagine doing...I mean insane. Stop drinking so damn much stupid.

I am not interested in arguing with anyone about the appropriateness of this word, its uses, or any of that. I say nigga. White people can’t. Period.

And I’m talking about nigga. Not nigger. Don’t get it twisted.

In a Time of Tragedy, President Levin Essentializes and Dehumanizes

2007-04-17T15:07:00.000-05:00

This was the letter first sent by President Levin to the President of Virginia Tech, a campus now in a state of shock and despair after yesterday's shooting tragedy, and later forwarded to the entire Yale community:

Dear President Steger:

The entire world looks on with compassion for the terrible ordeal that your campus suffered today. Those of us in universities feel most especially the fragility of our communities, and their vulnerability to those who do not live by our values of civility and respect for others. I send you personally my warmest sympathy, and I hasten to offer any help that I or Yale University might provide.

With deepest condolences for those you have lost,

Rick Levin
President, Yale University

Thank you for employing such neo-con rhetoric, President Levin - that same type of distorted Manichean language that has allowed for intellectual defenses of horrific, historic crimes against the Other (colonization, invasion of Iraq). Certainly, it is "our values" - unique to the rest of the World - that lead us to condemn murder so strongly.

Thank you also for dehumanizing an individual who obviously had some sort of problem. Here, we have a man whose daily interactions with people must have made him felt as if he were not of this world, and, even in his death, you feel the need to posit him as an aberration to all that is decent. As no culture condones the slaughter of innocent people, such comments are really necessary...

This attack should tell us nothing other than that a crazed foreigner went on a rampage. It is certainly not indicative of the need for gun regulation. Clearly, it is not symptomatic of a culture that glorifies violent masculinity. After all, the gunment isn't like "us"; he's not human. Only with such disgusting logic would it be acceptable for the New York Times, which yesterday was stating 33 people had been killed, to write that 32 people and the gunman had been killed . A human life lost, but, inexplicably, to the New York Times and President Levin, it is as if he were not a victim.

smashing white liberal delusions

2007-04-16T19:38:00.000-05:00

as e st v and i sit jamming to rage against the machine in a computer cluster on old campus (with three other black people... we're just waiting for someone to arrive and ask to see our IDs), we have decided to start a series of TNS posts about white leftist culture at yale and white liberalism in this nation at large.

after a conversation with a fellow activist, e st v found herself wondering what it must mean to be white and said, "maybe white people do have it hard. because this man is struggling."

and so we will be writing a series of posts contemplating everything from the irony of the rhetoric of white privilege to why anarchy just won't ever work for people of color.

we do not call these posts "internal critique" because that term implies that these leftist circles/social movements constitute true community for black folk... which has yet to be determined. as malcolm x said in his 1963 "message to the grass roots":

"time will tell."

our peeps in SJN and The Women's Center may not be too keen on these critiques that are sure to be painful.
we only say these things because we believe in change.

Watch.

Scrath a Lie, Find a Thief

2007-04-16T00:54:00.000-05:00

This day, and the previous week for that matter, could not pass without commemorating one of the most famous triumphs in all of American history. “On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier and became the first African-American to play Major League Baseball.” Enough with the fables, Aesop. Major news outlets across the country have been reinforcing the mythological throne upon which Jackie Robinson sits. Robinson’s achievement was paramount, indeed. And given mainstream society’s love affair with “firsts,” (Ernie Davis, Tony Dungy, etc.) his praise comes as no surprise and, rightfully so, without contention. America loves it icons. From Bob Dylan to Matt Dillon. From Ronald McDonald to Ronald Reagan. But, Jackie Robinson, he sits in a special place. No singular figure in sports is more talked about than Jackie Robinson (remove Michael’s ad contracts and he does not even compare). Not in black history, not in white history, not in anything. Some may consider Babe Ruth the best baseball player ever, but the guy doesn’t have his number retired throughout an entire professional league. Put that into perspective for a minute. Let that marinate. No, really. Let it.

Ok. Let’s continue.

So what’s the problem with this, then? White people have already voted Jackie Robinson first team All-Jesus, right up there with Martin Luther King and Thomas Jefferson. So everything is fine and dandy, right? However, this is where the fairy tales end. Put the children to bed. And the old folks too. I will allow one moment (via the reading of this sentence) for the covering of virgin eyes. It has been precisely one moment, and as promised, I will resume. The problem with the immortalization of Robinson is that while a politically and morally conservative figure is worshipped, there are tantamount, I would argue even greater, black sports heroes who receive little to no recognition. This phenomenon is based solely on the political and social affiliation of the respective athletes. This is evidence of mainstream society and certain white-controlled institutions selectively choosing to attach themselves to a less-liberal, less-revolutionary figure: case and point being our national dialogue about Jackie Robinson and Paul Robeson.

For any ESPN program to give the same respect and due recognition to Paul Robeson’s contributions to not only the sports world but to this country would be too much like…well…justice. Unlike Robinson, he was not the “rally ‘round the flag” supporter of America’s involvement in the Second World War and the subsequent Cold War, which took innocent lives all over the world. Unlike Robinson, he was not a critic of Bayard Rustin’s, a homosexual, involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, despite Rustin being one of Robeson’s biggest critics. Unlike Robinson, he was not forever tied to an institution (MLB) which severely limited the free speech of its black athletes and also held the bulk of his fan base.

But oddly enough, there are no special stories, or dates, or anything at all which praise how Robeson, at Rutgers University from 1915-1919, earned15 varsity letters (most players now are lucky to get 4), was a first team All-American in football, yet also finished atop his graduating class at Rutgers, was Phi Beta Kappa, and later graduated from Columbia Law School, while playing professional football on the weekends to subsidize the cost. Yale’s own Walter Camp, the founder of football, even described him as “the greatest to ever trot the gridiron.” It is truly a remarkable story that a black man in that given time period, or any time period for that matter, could overcome so many societal and institutional barriers to achieve so much. His contributions to the early formation of sports are undeniable, yet his achievements and efforts are overlooked year after year, documentary after documentary, and his legacy wanes in comparison to Robinson’s.

So that begs the question, why is there no ESPN Sunday conversation about Robeson today? Why in third grade do we always have to learn Jackie Robinson’s mother’s maiden name, but never hear as little as a whisper of Paul Robeson, who did just as great if not greater things in his time? Why is the emphasis on the man who in 1949 testified in front the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) for the sole purpose of summoning Robeson to have him questioned about his relationship with the Communist Party? Or better yet, why don’t we, as a country, glorify the man who stood for freedom and sovereignty in all third world countries? And why don’t we have celebrations for the man who recognized the global plight of people of color? Why is there not a celebratory day throughout sports which commemorate a man who was compassionate enough to visit the Kremlin during the Cold War crisis, not in treachery, but in love?

The answers are numerous, yet obvious. Robeson went abroad and not only expressed sympathies for other oppressed peoples but also was not shy with his opinion of the present condition of black people in America. Robeson was willing to bring the cause for black liberation to a world stage, whereas Robinson never strayed too far from the plantation. It is much easier to tell the story of the black man who first valiantly served his country, and then persisted through the ubiquitous racism of the sports industry and waited patiently until the ever so gracious Branch Rickey kindly pulled him up from the slums of the Negro Leagues to the prominence which he still holds to this day. Finally, it all makes sense. I mean, really, how could Robeson’s story be woven into the American narrative? The government stripped him of his passport, forbade him to travel, and as such he lost the right to perform and earn a living. They literally ended his career, violated his privacy and had him bugged for the better half of his life (let’s pour out a lil liquor for my man J. Edgar Hoover). Wait, what chapter would all this go in again? Oh, oh, that’s right. I forgot. There is no chapter about that. What was I expecting, righteousness? Guess I’m in the wrong country for all that. Damnit. I had my mind all ready for some justice, yet am left with anything but. I thought this was the land of the free, no?

This phenomenon is not at all unique to sports. One could go on for days listing similar instances where the face chosen by white America to represent “the struggle” (yes, the infamous struggle in which at some point all black people were included) has always been the more conservative and less threatening individual based on national political agenda: Booker T. Washington and W.E.B Du Bois, later Du Bois and Marcus Garvey, and of course MLK and Malcolm X. I love how the names can switch places over time too. That’s that shit. But seriously. Our collective national history of a public figure like Paul Robeson is embarrassing and shameful. And I could have written the same article about Jim Brown, and how the Heisman was stolen from him in 1956 and given to Paul Hornung of Notre Dame, the first and only time the winner played for a losing team. Not to take anything away from the man, but there are many national tragedies which are more egregious than those which Robinson experienced. Yet it is convenient for those in power to erase such tragedies from our national memory with the goal of protecting American hegemony and stability.

Obama/Imus Timeline: breaking out of the white storyteller and black storylistener existence

2007-04-15T17:01:00.000-05:00

After reading Andom's post yesterday, I was pretty sure Senator Obama's quotes were taken out of context. In the original article, the question was not reported. In the other two, his comment about rap was an answer to the question of what inspired him. Ridiculous, I thought. It just didn't make sense.

After some investigation, here is one account from Charleston's The Post and Courier that provides a lot more context:

The only time the topic drifted away from education came when a young man asked Obama about what inspires him. Obama replied that he was inspired by God and past civil rights leaders, and then he talked a little about what doesn't inspire him.

"We've been focusing on Don Imus lately," Obama said, referring to the New York shock jock fired Thursday for calling the Rutgers women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos."

"I've got two young daughters, both of them tall, and I hope they get basketball scholarships. ... I don't need somebody on a radio station degrading that," Obama said, "but I think it's fair to say that there are a whole bunch of young rappers who look like us, who use the words that Don Imus does, who are on our radio stations. ... That doesn't inspire me.

"That does go back to education," he said. "Part of our best is instilling in our young people that you should be pursuing excellence and having high standards."

Source

This is very different from the original quote where Obama is portrayed as randomly attacking black rappers. In fact, Senator Obama's comment does not differ that much from some of our comments on the original post. The problem I have (and I think others do too) is with white storytellers who record and frame everything Obama has to say. I think of the media as an incentive based system, not a teller of truths. The incentive for the media in misreporting this story is to set up a war between Obama and popular rappers. Think of the headlines, interviews, and white fascination with it all. I think that's why we're seeing entire articles based solely on an answer to one question as opposed to anything substantive that tries to pull together a timeline of Obama's reactions throughout this Imus controversy. I understand that we shouldn't rally around Senator Obama just because he's black. But we also can't call him a traitor to his race without realizing that, perhaps, a largely corrupt media system wants us to think exactly that. I hope the following timeline illuminates our discussion and gives us a resource to sidestep the media's heavy focus on the AP article. Instead, let's wrestle with what seems to be our central question: how does a public black figure not contribute to pathologic arguments of black failure but still hold the people who fail accountable in a way that focuses on transforming them and our community?

How can we write our own stories?

The Imus/Obama Timeline

4/4/07 Imus says "nappy headed hos."
4/6/07 Imus apologizes.
4/7/07 Sharpton calls for Imus to be fired.
4/11/07 The Boston Globe writes a piece about Obama's silence on the issue thus far. Sharpton, who has not endorsed any Presidential candidate, is interviewed.
4/11/07 Obama is interviewed by ABC and is the first presidential candidate to demand Imus' firing.
4/11/07 Obama appears on Wolf Blitzer's The Situation Room. He condemns Imus without mentioning rap.
4/11/07 Imus is fired from MSNBC.
4/12/07 Imus is fired from CBS.
4/13/07 Obama speaks at Florence High School in Florence, South Carolina. His speech is about education. He answers one question about what inspires him. After saying God and former Civil Rights leaders, he said Don Imus does not inspire him then acknowledged neither do rappers who use the same language.
4/13/07 Obama's comments start to go viral and the preface of Don Imus not inspiring him is dropped from most reports leaving a seemingly harsh and out of place critique of rap.
4/13/07 The second article Andom linked to provides a context of misogyny in rap but not a context of Obama's speech.
4/13/07 6:56pm "Obama Compares Rappers to Imus" The definitive AP article that has limited context and the widest readership comes out and is reproduced in hundreds of publications.
4/13/07 A gala event occurs that is not covered by mainstream press. At this event, Obama receives a standing ovation from the South Carolina Legislative Black Caucus after saying about Imus' comments, “That’s not funny, it’s not amusing, it shouldn’t be tolerated. But we’ve got to admit to ourselves it’s not the first time we heard the word ‘ho'....[It's] the same language we’ve been permitting in our homes and schools and iPod....If it’s not good for Don Imus, I don’t know why it’s good for us.” The State covers it.
4/14/07 An article claims Obama "launched an outspoken attack on rap singers" with his comment from the 4/13 AP article that has limited context.
4/14/07 Article with context comes out revealing that Friday's AP article entirely left out Obama's critique of Imus. It also shows that Obama disapproval of rappers who use the word "ho" was a truthful conceit to the audience. This article does not mention the gala event.
4/15/07 "Black Candidate's Burden" The editorial asks why "should Barack Obama be more outraged than anyone else...?"

the one that should've been a post: don imus & snoop

2007-04-15T13:49:00.000-05:00

so what's a woman who thinks, well i do remember hearing

You can't turn a Ho into a house wife
Hos don't act right
There's Ho's on a mission and there's Ho's on a crack pipe
Hey Ho, How you doin' Where you been?

-luda, "youz a hoooooo"

and my favorite:

Look here bitch, don't ask me shit
Did I interupt you while [*slurping noises*] you was sucking my ----, beyotch?
I don't need the stress, besides talkin' back to a pimp would get yo ass slapped.
I learned a whole lot from these bitches of my past
A bitch with no class is worse than a bitch with no ass
And you wonder why I'm from The Pound?
Shiiiit, if a bitch can't swim, nigga, she bound to drown, nigga.

-snoop, "it's all on a hoe"

there's also snoop dog's interesting response to being compared to don imus, which is problematic in its own right, but an interesting comment nonetheless:

"These are two separate things. First of all, we ain't no old-ass white men that sit up on MSNBC [the cable network home to Imus] going hard on black girls. We are rappers that have these songs coming from our minds and our souls that are relevant to what we feel. I will not let them mutha-----as say we in the same league as him." http://newsbusters.org/node/11981

interesting. several questions which i'd like to debate:
if one ought to take care and consider the nature of media representations when discussing internal injustice, how does one proceed to create interior justice if not in the public sphere, if not in bringing to light these cultural internalizations of systemic oppression? where is this so-called private, black-only sphere where black identity can heal itself from colonial assumptions of heteronormativity?
and do we not paternalistically presume that our community is too weak to acknowledge internal discrepancies and then to proceed with an equally public movement away from misogyny, an example of progress?

it's a testament of our capacity to represent blackness not as a stringent category of identification, to demonstrate its capacity for morphing, for evolution. perhaps the question is not whether specificity of viewpoints in the black community contribute to division, but rather how do we develop a rhetoric that uncategorically demonstrates us as unified against white supremacy and at the same time, incontestably human in our capacity to express viewpoints that alternate from brother to brother, sister to sister. we are not a political party with one ideology to which we march (though perhaps some might argue we ought to be), we are a people, in the multivarious forms that the word "people" takes.

is it also not possible to reject don imus and his like while also stating, 'we categorically reject hip hop's perpetuation of misogyny which sustains heteronormativity, a system of power upon which white supremacy often rests?'

it would be a shame to shy from this discussion and alienate our women from our identity on grounds that race as it relates to our relationship to the white public takes precedence over gender discourse within the community.

what's more, i am accutely sensitive to the historical legacy of white colonialism (in its wondrous, multivarious forms) use of women's positions in other cultures to attack these communities as primitive, backwards etc., a reason to mutilate cultures. i think the discourse of feminism in the Middle East currently testifies directly to this.

but i am concerned that this awareness of how these cultural critiques from the "enlightened" eurocentric lead us to great susceptibility to 1. perpetually imbue female bodies with the role of cultural representatives such that these discussions about race necessarily occur through our bodies, once more encouraging the silencing of women as mere bodily representors of idealism - does she or doesn't she wear a veil, does she or doesn't she wear her culture's garb, does she or doesn't she cook X food, doesn't she or doesn’t she use birth control, is she or isn't she raising our children in this way, etc (has any one heard black female view points? maybe i've missed this but it appears as though men are once more speaking in the place of women) 2. accentuate one form of injustice over another.

so perhaps someone can answer for me where this private sphere for black judgment occurs? and why we can't reclaim justice as a heterogenous community rather than one that presents a monolithic front; in short, why in at once condemning don imus' racist comments, there can't be a more nuanced and yes, public critique that acknowledges hip hop's perpetuation of gender injustice and equally problematic, race inequality by so vividly and so often reflecting the rhetoric of white heteronormativity (though perhaps in a more verbose manner than white sexism's great capacity to be insidious)? why when we critique hip hop's gender injustice we cannot also publicly denounce the *continued* unequal pay of women across the US, the many unjust applications of rape laws, the eroding access a woman has to birth control let alone abortion, the absence of day care to ensure women's actual capacity to enter the work force, the appalling number of women tenured as professors despite the steadfast, growing number of females graduating university compared to their male peers.

it's not right, i concede, that the black community both bears the brunt of racism as well as be the solutions to these inequitudes. but i am deeply concerned when one form of injustice and its resolution take precedence over another because we find ourselves in the public and often oppositionary eye of the other. i am beginning to understand the dangerous cost of this double consciousness, this perpetual acknowledgment of the white perspective on blackness.

it’s our difficult task to take hold of rhetoric and call internal critique of blackness (which will always be in the public) not an instance of division but a representation of another assault on whiteness, where we refuse to perpetuate power structures which have and will continue to uphold racial, gender oppression so long as we choose to not tear down the both simultaneously.

we are fortunate enough to historically know how women have been sidelined in and for race politics (http://www.buffalostate.edu/orgs/rspms/combahee.html) – let’s not make the same mistake twice.

so be equally insulted that black women were referred not only in racially derogatory terms, but at the absurdity of reducing our amorphous and profound sexuality to an apparatus for lust.

i won’t choose to be more upset as a woman or a black person in these comments. i’ll thunder that i’m made to choose, as though sexism and racism weren't cut from the same cloth. so snoop can talk from his soul as much as he wants and don imus can reveal his true colors, but neither’s masculinity or blackness is enough a shield to protect him.

**and may i just add that these moments of internal critique should be buffered with the role of the media which gives gratuitous press coverage to misogynistic rap while giving little to no play to rappers like lupe, dead prez, talib, roots, and so many others who have returned to rap's original *revolutionary* role as a voice of dissent and uplift. there's a reason why hip hop has taken root around the world, from senegal with the amazing didier awadi rapping against neocolonialism to the banlieus of paris countering france's hypocritical reputation as race-heaven to palestinians against the israeli occupation to female middle eastern MCs rapping about american cultural hegemony:

"The New Cowboys"

Tche tche Tche tche
Sometimes life is like a stray bullet
in the modern system where
the individual drowns.
To stay clear headed
he used to drink Brandy
From now on we bring forward TVs
and white lines.
Where white is the
magnificent ride.
But always against the light,
it's far less heroic.
In the world of dreams,
we end it with a happy-ending.
Is this the case in what
we call "The New Western" ?
-MC Solaar, Prose Combat

so i say: rap is beautiful.
let's bring it back home.

ps black law feminist kimberle crenshaw has written on this not-so-new issue. y'all should check out her article: http://bostonreview.net/BR16.6/crenshaw.html

pps tns doing loving internal critique…

White Supremacy and Patriarchy in the Capitalist Media/ STOP Snitchin Barack

2007-04-14T13:36:00.000-05:00

Finally, JUSTICE! Well, let's say a step towards justice for the firing of Don Imus . While American society has capitalized on negative portrayals of black female bodies for centuries, finally, someone is being held accountable for the constant perpetration of these offensive representations. Now, let's not be euphemistic, New York Times, for intolerant speech of the racist and misogynistic variety does not translate to "racial remarks" . Calling a group of women "nappy-headed hos" is both racist and misogynistic, and the fact that a nationally syndicated radio host would even think that such terrible words could somehow be heard as acceptable demonstrates that the white supremacist commodification of the black female body is a legacy of slavery that has transformed itself, under the auspices of capitalism and satire, into a cultural mainstay that proudly links us to glorious times of the past. At least, CBS deemed this incident objectionable enough that it severed ties with Don Imus. Don Imus, himself, isn't the problem, though; it is a society that willingly tolerates the negative images of human beings that are propagated for mass consumption.

Even worse, when these images are black ones, for, unlike much of the rest of America, our representations in society only encompass a fraction of a spectrum created and supported by exploitative white supremacy and patriarchy. There is no authentic self in this spectrum, for it is too constrained; as a result, we are degraded in our exoticization and exoticized in our degradedness.

So, Barack Obama, don't turn this into an issue about rappers because their misogynistic comments are not tantamount to those of Don Imus. Because of our monolithic representations in society, black social problems are usually seen as the detrimental outgrowth of cultural deficiencies associated with our racial essence. Oh, Barack Obama, you traitor, our community is more diverse than your ethnic makeup! You cannot criticize hip-hop culture to those who do not understand this crucial fact, for, to them, you are really just censuring blackness. Culture is constitutive of race, but certainly not everything to it. When culture is so narrowly represented for a minority group, the two become entangled in knots of oppressive cultural hegemony. Hip-Hop is not all to blackness, America, but, since many of you see it as so, I hope the exotic beauty of black femininity enslaves you with a paralyzing erection, so that, in our natural rush to rhyme, we will have the time to find the perfect beat that will fight your verses of racism. And as we do this, we criticize our own, lamenting the misogyny and homophobia that goes on within our own communities. But, oppressor America, even in this age of gentrification, I hope you don't hear it. For this conversation, this discourse, goes on and will continue to go on behind the same ghetto walls of oppression that you whipped us to erect.

women of color of the world unite!

2007-04-11T00:18:00.001-05:00

let us take a cue from shakira and beyonce who show us in their latest collabo that black and latina women can come together for the common purpose of self objectification.

full body convulsions aside, what is most disturbing about this video is the way shakira and beyonce seem to morph into each other, indistinguishable forms, possessing the same thinned bodies and long, blond locks.

it is amazing the homogeneity we find when we anglicize ourselves.

keep doing it up for barranquilla and houston, women: if we're going to commodify our sexualities, we might as well do it collectively.

photos: the problem with signifying africa

2007-04-10T02:48:00.000-05:00

Kindu is now so cut off from the rest of the country that everything is flown in by plane: bottled water, panes of glass, cookies, cucumbers, even gasoline.

i post this to point out the discrepancy in reporting about africa. see how the sideline description is in reference to the geographical isolation of the town to other urban areas and how the picture shows nothing of the kind. to correspond with isolation, a photograph of the actual border in relation to cut-off roads or maybe at least an aerial shot would have actually corroborated this statement. instead, the idea of isolation is materialized in a picture of a congolese woman and her child - which is no evidence of isolation. by associating this image with economic/material deficiency, we are to assume that an african woman holding her child set in a vaguely dilapidated background is to mean just that. it is inaccurate to show a photo that does not relate directly to the subject being described- it presumes that if i as a reporter want to show poverty, i will choose out of an abundance of random congolese women who seem to be wearing a sad expression to illustrate the well-known fact of african degradation.

we are aware that the africa of public imagination is not nuanced. she usually appears as one of abject poverty and misery, devoid of cultural richesse and private/habitual life experiences (ie love, social life) and is, instead, besotted with economic/political trouble. whether that is in fact the case in congo, journalism and esp. photojournalism which has the weighty task of assigning image to language (solidifying our definition of what a place is), should take to specify as much as possible, to avoid leaving assumptions to do the thinking for us.

in this series of photographs about the congo, the nytimes for the most part accurately associated the subject of the photograph with the corresponding description but this slip above is, to me, demonstrative of how typified ideas of africa enter into 'objective' journalism. and without conscious recognition of these slippages, these views don't remain the subjective opinions that they are but become inseparable from definitions of africa.

the sad fact is i don't know how to effectively articulate what this appropriate or desirable depiction of congolese life ought to be. it should be honest, no doubt, but there are many ways to show the truth and in the spirit of artistic liberty and licence, i'm not interested in dictating the process. perhaps though, one step is to call for more diverse subject matter and photographers too (some from the country depicted itself who'd most likely have better access than unfamiliar traveler).

but then again this critique is probably borne out of my personal frustration with staring at several pictures of little african children at koffee2 which appear to be the most benign of photos. after one-too-many photo exhibits of yale students' passively-pleasant cultural experience of the third world and the gratuitous representations of little smiling black/brown faces, i'm apt to be a little sensitive.

i am posting a photograph i took when i was in ghana. maybe it can be a sound off for how to fairly (re)present lives which are not our own...? :

the colored museum

2007-04-07T22:33:00.000-05:00

i am floored and moved; uplifted.

The Yale Heritage Theater Ensemble put up a production of George C. Wolfe's the colored museum at the Calhoun Cabaret this weekend and i was fortunate enough to attend this evening.

beyond the satirical matter of the play itself (which constructs parallelisms between the Middle Passage and flight on a plane called Celebrity Slaveship, alludes to josephine baker through the figure of Lala Amazing Grace, and critiques the antifeminist reduction of African American struggle and experience to the pursuit of only manhood rights), i was most overpowered by the work of the members of the HTE that staged the production.

the cast performed brilliantly: with wit, pain, humor, joy. SHADES comprised a significant portion of the cast and consequently, nearly everyone on the stage had an inordinately gorgoeus voice and presence.

every vignette, with song and drama and comedy, testified to the depth and diversity of black undergraduate arts. from theater ensembles such as HTE and EPGY, to dance groups such as konjo!, steppin' out, rhythmic blue, to WORD's slam poetry, and singing groups such as yale gospel choir, asempa, and SHADES, black performing arts at yale remain one of our campus' greatest strengths.

of course, TNS was rolling deep in the colored museum, with melay tadesse araya as director and elizabeth st. victor as producer. melay and e st v have succeeded in reminding those of us in attendance that we cannout outrun history nor live in it.

for those of us who may have been sleepwalking on this campus, blind to the great irony of being a student of color at this university and in the city of new haven, the yale heritage theater ensemble has shaken us into a consciousness that i pray we will actualize.*

let us carry these wisdoms in our soul and in our hearts and in our skins, unafraid to speak them out of us and into these communities (some fragmented, some false).

knowing, as George C. Wolfe would have us remember, that there is beauty in our madness, strength in our contradictions.

congratulations to the cast: alex blissett, katherine webb, daniel tetreault, camelle scott, noah p. hood, emily jenda, sarajane williams, naomi bland, and kyle mitchell. congratulations to melay tadesse araya (director), elizabeth st. victor (producer), quincy o'neal (assistant producer), graphics designer (marika bailey), bouncer (quave smith), house manager (umi-shakti ausar-sahu), and natalie k. paul (of HTE). *note: i have discussed the great irony of being a black student at yale with elizabeth. i recognize her in this note for the phraseology is hers.

Why did the chicken cross the road? To get away from the black person.

2007-04-07T13:13:00.000-05:00

If you're a racist, and you want to get away with saying racist stuff all the time...become a comedian. That way you can belittle pretty much every race and no one would say anything to you! Only way you could mess this up is if you were having a bad day and some black men happened to start heckling you and you somehow lost all control and called them niggers. But come on. What are the chances of that happening? So all you descendants of Italians, French, Grecians, Jewish…what’s a word I could use to catch all these groups…hmmm. White. That’ll do it. All you white people out there: listen up!

If you, in light of this recently imparted knowledge, now aspire to be a racist comedian but fear not being funny, don’t worry. If you tell bad jokes, a few people will laugh. Because chances are there will be a few racists in the room and as long as you’re degrading a group of oppressed people or a minority (I know what you’re thinking…oppressed and minority don’t mean the same thing? Surprised me too.) they will laugh.

Yes, I know you watched the Kramer video and it didn’t seem like anyone was laughing. It probably was. You just can’t make it out. But for fun let’s assume no one was laughing. Either they were smart enough to hold it in until they got in the parking lot then talked about it the whole way home. Or the audience was comprised of minorities (I didn’t even know black people watched Seinfield. Guess you gotta watch something when your cable gets cut off.) and white liberals. How many white conservatives go to comedy clubs? Their idea of comedy is “Let’s give crack to black people and see what happens.”

I enjoy comedians that make jokes about different groups, even when they are based on race or ethnicity. I don’t think there is anything wrong with it or that all or even most comedians are racist. All I’m saying is if you’re going to be a racist, you might as well get paid for it.

2007-04-07T13:07:00.000-05:00

This is a bit long, but I think it's a great articulation by black teenagers of the way black teens feel about their bodies in American society. Feelings and frustrations that most if not all of us have had, I'm sure. The short is up for a $10,000 prize from CosmoGirl (ironically). You can check out the other films and vote here.

Do Not Look

2007-04-05T01:06:00.000-05:00

Do not look at me, supposed ally.
Do not look at me as I burn at the racism that appears on the screen while you laugh at my blaze.
I do not know or care if you have had the experiences painted on my skin that inform my hurt and my proposed actions when I experience racism or bigotry. But do not look at me simply to enjoy my outrage.
Do not mention these incidents to provoke a response that you will not share or even try to understand. The casual and throwaway reference dismisses the power of our potential response.
This is not an icebreaker.
And that blackface party is not the weather. And I certainly am not helpless to the forecast that is Global Racism 24/7.

Your snorts roll back The Movement as you legitimize the type of racism that creeps and oozes its way into the national consciousness making everyone say,
“Oh, you’re just too sensitive. And seriously Josh, if this is racist then how did it get past the executives.” You know, the ones who never look like their suits. Who never have quite anything to say when attacked except for that classic white finger pointed to the token who okayed it too. Better yet, it was his idea.

And if you are of color the irony is as rich as a dollop of cream in some black coffee.
Listen, I am not forcing you into the trenches. Lord knows you have to want to be there.
But I am asking you to reject the reproduction of racism in any form where you are stationed and, perhaps, to be an ally when I shout out.

And if you say no, then fine. If we are too different now forty-four years after fighting for the same thing, then so be it. That will be our legacy as the “post” generation. But don’t revel in what you would say is my obsession with my oppression. Do not toy with my mission of raising racial and diversity consciousness (with a focus on revision and social justice) everywhere that does not escape me.
Do not hide your discomfort, disapproval, or lack of commitment.
But whatever you do, do not look and laugh while I am burning because these dark eyes will someday spirit you away to the depths I have reclaimed as my liberation.
In this gaze you will find where I long for you to be.
Home in a world of displacement.
Taken not by a look, but an understanding.

Violence in Somalia

2007-04-03T10:16:00.000-05:00

Somalia has seen its worst fighting in 15 years , and, sadly, it's the result of American-backed Ethiopian interventionist forces' indiscriminate killing of Somalis. America's proxy war in Somalia demonstrates that America's interest in Africa only exists if it perceives some threat. Millions can die in Congo and Rwanda and hundreds of thousands in Darfur and Chad because, "unfortunately," there is no strategic interest there.

America is at "war with terrorism," but, for the government, this translates into a war with Islam. Only through such a racist conflation, one that is constantly made across American society, can the Somali Islamists have been feared at all to be the next Taleban. Clearly, American policymakers have no idea of Somalia as a country, for, not only is it extremely secular, but it has, even in its instability, rejected tempting Al-Qaeda and Wahhabi influences from across the Gulf of Aden. The Islamists were successfully able to unite Somalia, but now Somalia is crumbling as American and Ethiopian warplanes bomb "suspected Islamists." What does that even mean? Everyone is Muslim in Somalia, and everyone, I'm sure, has some political leanings. Are people being killed for their political allegiances or because they have a weapon in hand? While it doesn't ultimately matter which one it is, we do see a sad side of humanity when one need only be suspected of espousing a certain political ideology to not have his/her murder merit condemnation.

Help support Somalia and African sovereignty as they both are slowly being killed in this illegal war. If only America showed as much interest in poverty alleviation and health as they did in "suspected terrorism"...Muslim human beings can no longer be savagely dehumanized as essentialized tokens of terror worthy of Western annihilation. These are human beings, and in Somalia, Algeria, Palestine, Iraq, and in Afghanistan, innocent, peace-loving people are murdered everyday for being nothing more than Muslims.

Sequoyah invented the alphabet or something like that

2007-04-02T20:25:00.000-05:00

I am a product of my environment. The particular environment I am speaking of at this moment is that of the schools I have attended. So I am a product of my eurocentric education.

My knowledge of the history of cultures outside my own is limited. Sure we all took US History but unfortunately the only black people mentioned in the book we were taught from were Martin Luther the King, some dude X-Man that hated white people, that one dude that got shot in the Boston Massacre, WEB DuBois, and that guy who they always say was hating on him. Well, I’m assuming MLK and X because we did not reach that part of the book. Something about nothing from those chapters would be on the AP test…I’m guessing because nothing that happened from that time period was important. I mean there’s something about this movement but it’s not like it changed the country or anything. My great greats (At least I think they were my great greats. We all look alike so it’s hard to tell) had a cameo in this one drawing in the book…but they were in shackles and I’m pretty sure they didn’t want to be there…not sure if that counts.

So why do people take classes on other cultures? If you want to learn about black history all you have to do is watch commercials during the month of February. I encourage you to watch corporations make associations that aren’t there.

I have this feeling that reading a few Wikipedia entries will not do any group justice (and that’s what we here at TNS are all about…or at least that’s what they tell me). So if someone ever has the audacity to ask you why you, a white person, are taking African American History or why you, a black person are taking American Indian History, tell them because the story is always different when told by the oppressed.

Hopeful, Yes I am...

2007-04-01T22:47:00.000-05:00

Recently, Oprah has decided to invest $40 million out of her pocket to fund the opening of a school for impoverished girls in South Africa. Her decision to open the school, along with a subsequent interview in Newsweek Magazine, has caused quite a bit of controversy. First off, I scoff at anyone who thinks that performing a charitable act to uplift a group of people is wrong. Doing something to better others less fortunate than you does not equal wrong (this is where you imagine two sides of an equation, and in between them is an equal sign with a slash over it. Yeah. That one. I love those). The act itself is right and must not be construed otherwise. Albeit the plan is not perfect, and of course it is easy to poke holes in the administrative aspect of any idea. That being said, I will not in any way disagree with Oprah’s desire to open this school. Rather, I believe her response as to why she built a school in South African instead of one in an inner city neighborhood in the United States represents not only how far removed Oprah is from the plight of black people in the struggle for equality of opportunity, but also indicates the new found political and social conservatism of some blacks after they “get a piece of the pie.”

I’m not sure if Oprah is aware or not, but she does not have boot straps tied to her ankles, and thus did not use them to lift her from a humble upbringing in the Deep South and inner city to the television set of millions of people everyday. Not to take anything away from her or her diligence within the tough and historically racist entertainment industry, but Oprah is not where she is by her choice and her efforts alone. Along her path, I’m sure there was someone who saw something in her, or people like her, and decided to give her a chance to do either what they were able to do, or were not able to do. This is certain. Horatio Alger does not equal Oprah (insert the aforementioned equation). With the historically oppressive system in which we operate, one person will not make or enact change by him or herself. Keeping this in mind, it is completely and utterly damning to echo the exact words from Oprah Winfrey herself:

"I became so frustrated with visiting inner-city schools that I just stopped going. The sense that you need to learn just isn't there," she says. "If you ask the kids what they want or need, they will say an iPod or some sneakers. In South Africa, they don't ask for money or toys. They ask for uniforms so they can go to school."

I will agree with the latter part of her statement. I think it is true, but not completely true. Yeah. Kids in inner city schools will ask for iPods, Mikes (gym shoes by Michael Jordan for those of you who don’t know), etc. But I think if you asked that same question to any kid anywhere in America, you would get those types of answers: from Gary, Indiana to Greenwich, Connecticut. Welcome to American Consumerism 101. Children are one of the biggest financial markets in the world. So I don’t believe the desire for material things is unique to inner city schools. In South Africa the kids ask for different things because that is an entirely different culture. They don’t eat their young as Americans do. They are not swarmed with ads (ironically the ones that run during Oprah’s show) which put the value of game console over the value of an educated child. The varying cultures in South Africa and America dictate the responses of all of the respective kids, not just a specific sub-group.

And let’s put the shit on blast because I can’t take much more PC crap. She didn’t come out and say it, and maybe she doesn’t even realize what she is saying. But all this “inner city” talk is underlined with black. And everyone knows it. That’s how she perceives it. That’s how white people who don’t know what they’re talking about perceive it. No, this is not to say all inner city kids are black and attend the public schools. And no, inner city public schools do not have all black populations. But they are overwhelmingly attended by black students. Especially in the city of Chicago, of where Oprah’s show has been filmed for years. Moreover, if she thinks that the black inner city youths are so hopeless, she shouldn’t fault them. She needs to fault the post civil rights generation of parents and adults (of which she is apart of) who have allowed this to happen. She needs to fault their conservative and negative views on the prospects of today’s younger generation.

I can understand when someone like Bill O’Reilly or Rush Limbaugh makes a blanket statement like this. But it’s a shame when someone who is a product of that environment says something so subconsciously. This is evidence of the alienation and separation Oprah and other blacks of that sentiment (Clarence Thomas, Juan Williams, etc.) feel when it comes to uplift. They are so convinced that what they accomplished is all due to the sweat of their brow, that their success is accredited to how they rolled up their sleeves each morning to fight for what they earned. Oprah has the misconception that the very pool from which she came is no longer capable of producing such talent. As a black man at Yale, I know my presence here was not solely my choice. Although choice played into it, I could very easily be out on the streets, be in prison, or be dead. And statistical rates for black men in America support that. I haven’t achieved one trillionth of the “success” that Oprah has, yet am aware that I'm an example of chance. Oprah’s conservatism and ignorance about her own people will only further those trends. The onus is not on Oprah to solve everything or anything wrong in the black community. However, in her choice to help other needy peoples, she must not turn a cold shoulder to our children. I am not calling for Oprah-dollars, or even Oprah-publicity, but Oprah is responsible to at least deliver hope to children today. Her general disdain for inner city students robbed them of that simple faith and borders treason. Oprah must consider that f the leaders of today are not willing to help contribute to the leaders of tomorrow, the next generation will have to unnecessarily reinvent the wheel.