-Charles Donalson, African American male, student at

Oak Park and River Forest High School

Good schools aren’t good for everybody. That is one of the things I learned quickly as I began to study schools that were widely celebrated for achievement and diversity, but there was much more beneath the surface. America to Me, a new documentary series directed by Steve James of Hoop Dreams fame, has begun airing on Starz after receiving critical acclaim at Sundance earlier this year. The 10 part series is just four episodes in, but from its opening it’s clear that the series goes beyond celebrating the school’s diversity and is attempting to grapple with race and racism. On this alone, I recommend the series but that doesn’t mean it’s without issues.

The series, so far, highlights the lives of several students at Oak Park and River Forest (OPRF) High School in suburban Illinois. In addition to the students and parents who are followed throughout a year, we hear from faculty, administrators, and school board members. The students are involved in an litany of activities: wrestling, spoken word, cheer, drill, as well as students who do no extracurriculars. There are students who are freshman, seniors, heterosexual, non-binary, biracial, and the list goes one. Despite all this diversity, the main students and families followed by the crew are all Black (or at least have one Black parent). For viewers, this is great for showing what its like to be Black, in its many iterations, in a school like OPRF. Oak Park, as its commonly called, is the kind of school that has great amenities, receives academic accolades, and whose optics look like they’re pulled from a college campus website. Still, the experience of Black students there is markedly different. For example, in 2015, 23% of the student body was Black, but 53% of students who got suspended were Black. For decades now, even in schools that are well-appointed, Black students have bore the brunt on unequal treatment. For Black folks, this is not an entirely new story, but that is also why Charles’ words that open this post are so important. Charles doesn’t start with the achievement gap or Black underperformance–we have no shortage of writing or documentaries on that, instead he highlights the pervasive culture of white advantage.

If there is one thing that is glaringly absent from America to Me it is the voices and experiences of White students and families who accrue the spoils of suburbia whether traversing town or selecting advanced placement courses.

If there is one thing that is glaringly absent from America to Me it is the voices and experiences of White students and families who accrue the spoils of suburbia whether traversing town or selecting advanced placement courses. In my own book, Inequality in the Promised Land, I found it essential to make sure the voices of White families were present for a few reasons. First, by speaking with white families, I heard their perspectives and experiences rather than simply inferring them from the accounts of others. Other scholars who studied suburbs, such as John Ogbu, only studied Black families, and attributed academic failure to Black children’s “academic disengagement” while assuming White families’ achievement was a result of hard-work and high functioning. In the social sciences, long traditions of deficit thinking limit us from seeing what’s actually happening. Second, once I put the voices of White and Black families in conversation the relational dynamic between the two became clearer. Black families were not simply disadvantaged, White families were hyper-advantaged and they routinely hoarded resources.

When it comes to suburban spaces, including the villages of Oak Park and River Forest, the history of racial exclusion is not simply in the past, it shapes where people live today and how people are received in public spaces like schools. The critics’ responses to America to Me have been favorable, but as I read comments on YouTube, IMDB and other sites, they are far more critical. Many of the comments argue that if there is an issue with Black academic success in the school it is rooted in Black children’s effort and their home environment. This old trope has long been challenged by research, but in remains a common explanation among popular audiences, even educators who are meant to help produce equitable learning environments.

The entrenched belief in Black dysfunction and normative White responses is captured in one telling moment in an interview in episode one.  Sami Koester, a student on the cheerleading team, confesses that Deanna Paloian (bka Coach D) the lead cheerleading coach who is white, is now different. “The Coach D that I used to know from when I was 12, she was a lot nicer. She did tell me that she has to put herself in authority more because all the girls are Black and she has to like put up her own fight to make sure that she gets what she wants.” Coach D argues she coaches the girls, who are predominantly black (the drill team in predominantly White), like a football coach and she is not afraid to hurt feelings or be bluntly honest. She peppers her speech with “girlfriends” as she wears a Beyonce themed shirt. Her approach is met with mixed reception from the Black girls under her guidance. Some suggest, “She yells at us like a mom” while others highlight Coach D’s approach may be rooted in her racial mismatch which heightens attitudes and sassiness. The filmmakers don’t make a effort to suggest which came first, adults’ attitudes or children’s responses, but it becomes clear that often the most “well intentioned” can create dangerous environments for Black children.

In episode four, viewers get a deeper look at Aaron Podolner, a White Physics teacher who was born and raised in Oak Park, and his approaches to race inside and outside of the classroom. He “invites” (I’m not sure how much choice they had to actually opt out) two Black students–Jada Bufford and Charles Donalson to read his memoir on race and comment on how he’s handled race in the classroom. In the classroom, Jada challenges Podolner to respect the boundaries of students and mentions how when she asked him not to comment or make jokes about her hair, he persisted. She points out that in his attempt to “relate” he is missing the very students he claims to care about. Podolner misses her point entirely and tone deathly centers himself and his difficulties as he responds,

“I think it’s hardest because we get a lot of pressure here, as teachers, to, like, make a difference, to fix black people, to improve scores. We’re not given any ways to do it. So that’s like, someone like you [motions to Jada and Charles] could be a great resource to us teachers.”

I was literally forced to rewind the show to make sure I heard correctly that Podolner matter of factly invoked the idea that Black children are broken. This is not an uncommon belief among educators, though not often stated. Despite equity commissions and task forces, Black deficit thinking still pervades and governs large parts OPRF. Du Bois famously asked, “How does it feel to be a problem?” and more than 100 years later Black students in OPRF and settings like it could give long monologues on its pains.

In another scene, Podolner sits down with a Jessica Stovall, a Black-White biracial English teacher, as they work to form a teachers equity group to address racial inequality at OPRF. Stovall astutely challenges Poldner, “I understand you’re so passionate about helping your Black students. I know that about you. But I do notice when I start to push you on talking about the miseducation of our White students then you’re less likely to want to engage in those types of conversations.” Podolner describes how he wants to demonstrate to Black and White kids that he “knows more than the average white guy” about Black culture, which he thinks will disturb the classroom dynamics of whiteness and white supremacy. Like many well-intentioned White educators I’ve spoken with and worked with, this attempt at cultural connection does little to disturb white social norms, though I am sure it makes Podolner feel good, all while it silences girls and women like Jada Bufford and Jessica Stovall who desire an entirely different classroom and culture, not one that “gives points” for Black cultural knowledge.

Within each episode, you’re likely to smile at fond moments and grimace at missteps, which is the mark of a compelling series. At core though, I hope the series ultimately listens to the Jada and Charles’ who know OPRF will not be different until it becomes a non-White space. The “browning” of OPRF won’t make it a non-White space; critical engagement and challenging everyday practices of white supremacy like: opportunity hoarding, sliding standards, and deficit thinking will. Making our schools, and this country, non-White spaces will take more than seeing Black suffering, it will mean that White advantages must be relinquished and White accountability must emerge. The omission of White students (as main characters) and families worries me that the project could unintentionally reify ideas that when racism impacts life, the onus on repair and restitution lies with the people most affected by racism. I’ll be watching to see where this goes, I hope you will too!

If the embedded video is not showing, click here.

Since seeing the video last night, it looks like the title has been changed from “Morehouse College Dubois Divas” to “The Du Bois Dance Team.” According to the description, this was a performance at 2015-2016 Mr. Freshman Pageant. The video was shared with ire in a Morehouse fb group I’m in. Brothers raised questions about damaging the brand of Morehouse, why these young folks should not attend our alma mater, and comments were laced with a host of homo and femmephobic rhetoric. I was glad to see the video and to see the four young cats work it out and turn up the crowd. Why you ask? Give my piece for 2010 a read and you’ll understand a bit more. [i uploaded a pdf so it doesn’t get washed away in url scraping].

Too often, people see folks like the ones in this video and write them off as “deviant”, “damaging” and “not-men” without knowing anything of their identification, character or constitution. The Morehouse we should be is one where diversities of gender expression, as well as sexual expression, are welcomed as long as you are doing your best to meet the crown that is placed above your head.

Dr. R. L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy merges academics and activism

Demetria Irwin | 4/16/2015, 9:39 a.m.

 

Rosan Miller.

Denise Stewart.

Mashach Strachan.

Jahmil-El Cuffee.

These are just a few of the countless named and unnamed victims of New York Police Department brutality whose arrests were recorded and have gone viral within the past few weeks. The NYPD is coming under increased public scrutiny this summer, but far less than it deserves. The recently filmed homicide of Eric Garner in Staten Island by NYPD officers set in motion a viral image of abuse of police power. The video of Garner’s death joins a mounting pile of viral evidence that abuse of force police is not an isolated incident; rather it’s a system wide problem that needs to be addressed comprehensively.

Much like the open casket portrait of Emmett Till in 1955’s JET, the cruelty of this video of Eric Garner being choked to death recorded could galvanize us to raise our voices against chronic abuse that for too long has been seen as isolated and disconnected. The abuse is not new, but our dialogue about it should be. The process of raising our voices against police terrorism won’t be an easy one which the family of Ramsey Orta—the civilian who taped the killing of Garner—learned this week when he and his wife found themselves “conveniently” under arrest and their names paraded across an national news media.

Despite this, we cannot be silenced into to ignoring abuse of power. Not when less than a month after Garner’s death, we learn of two other Black men killed by police under circumstances that might have warranted a terse word for young Whites.

Read more at EBONY 

Right now you can pick up the book (paperback or hardback) at Stanford University Press (use discount code S14SOC) or via Amazon. I’ll be announcing more about its availability in brick and mortar stores as well as in other formats (ibooks, kindle). I look forward to you reading along with me!!

Photo courtesy of Brett Levin

R. L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy is a professor of sociology at the Colin Powell School for Civic and Global Leadership. This month, his book Inequality in the Promised Land: Race, Resources, and Suburban Schooling is being released through Stanford University Press. In this interview with Neighborhoods and Nations, he gives an overview of the research underlying the book’s insights on the everyday, and often insidious, forms of discrimination black students and their families face in schools across America. In doing so, Professor Lewis-McCoy paints a portrait of a new suburban landscape, one that fails to be “the promised land” of broader opportunities and resources that struggling families, particularly people of color, can rely on in equal shares.

How would you contextualize this work in relation to your past and ongoing research? Would you say that ‘race and education’ is a primary focus for you as a sociologist? 

My research for Inequality in the Promised Land continues my ongoing interest in how race and class shape educational opportunity. This year marks 60 years since the US Supreme Court declared in Brown v. Board of Education that “separate facilities are inherently unequal facilities.” When most people think of schools they think of them as the engine of social change or potentially the “great equalizer.” Unfortunately, when we look deeper, we see that schools are a mixed bag—some schools are flying high, while others are failing.

Read More at Neighborhoods and Nations

While cameras follow Idris and Seun, the film is more about their parents’ educational and social negotiations than the boys’. Idris’s parents (Joe Brewster and Michele Stephenson) double as central subjects and filmmakers. A moment that stood out to me was Michele Stephenson’s commentary on their choice to send Idris to a historically and predominantly White private school. “Initially I didn’t want to even go to the interview at Dalton. I didn’t want Idris to be part of this elite school that didn’t give him any sense of grounding or sense of self. You know? A bunch of rich white kids disconnected from the larger world that [are] self-involved etc., etc. But going to the school, experiencing commitment to diversity and comparing it to the other schools that I went to, I finally gave in. I can’t say that I regret it. It’s going to hopefully allow him to compete at the top level with his peers.”  Stephenson’s analysis is like many Black parents who seek high quality education for their children but simultaneously recognize that schools are often alienating to students of color, at best, and devaluing of them, at worst. Seun’s parents share similar concerns about the issues that they face as they steward young Black males through school.

Both families’ initial reservations seem to be well placed, but when we look at Idris’s and Seun’s paths through Dalton their parental concern didn’t necessarily lead to better outcomes. Seun and Idris were the only two Black boys in the class in primary school and soon were referred to special tutoring services to which none of their classmates were referred. As time passed, both families encountered pressure from the school administration to evaluate their sons for learning disabilities and behavioral problems, and both struggled with peer acceptance. Early on in the film Seun is diagnosed with dyslexia and eventually struggles to stay afloat academically at Dalton, leading him to leave Dalton and attend Benjamin Banneker Academy in Brooklyn for high school (a predominantly Black school with an African-centered school philosophy).

Idris remained at Dalton through high school and had a very different educational experience than Seun.  Throughout the film Idris’s parents question the ways Dalton characterizes their son: disruptive, unfocused, hard to manage. His parents highlight his academic acumen but also question his lack of follow through and drive when it comes to academic matters. The school pressures Idris’s parents to test him for ADHD but they resist (it should be noted that Idris’s father is a psychiatrist). In contrast to his parents, Idris wants to be diagnosed because he believes if medicated his test scores may improve, a pattern that he believes has occurred with his classmates. Ultimately he gets assessed and is excited to receive an ADHD diagnosis.

Both Idris and Seun’s experiences reminded me of my educational journey. During my freshman year (and first year) at a similarly elite private school in Connecticut, school administrators encouraged my parents to have me screened for learning issues. Faculty of color at the school privately pulled my parents to the side and informed them that there was a pattern of over-diagnosis of students of color. My parents, excited to have me in such a renowned school, heeded the school administration’s advice to undergo evaluation and ultimately, they were told I had a “learning disability” though no type was ever specified. This led to ” academic accommodations” but also led to teachers treating me differently in the classroom.

The over-diagnosis of Black boys (and to a lesser extent Black girls) with learning disabilities occurs across educational and economic settings. In Inequality in the Promised Land I discuss how parental desires and school staff desires often clash—and what can be done to change that. For many Black parents in well-resourced schools, these dynamics often meant begrudgingly accepting diagnoses they didn’t agree with or being coerced by school cultures that seemed to devalue their children but potentially provided strong academic foundations. This type of trade-off is too common.

In American Promise, we see two families attempt to get the best education for their sons while still dealing with the hazards of race (and to some degree class). The promise of American opportunity will remain unrealized until Black families, as well as poor families, have equal opportunities to reap the benefits of well-resourced schools without suffering pyscho-social consequences along the way.

Tips 1 and 2: Strong Summers/After-School Times and Clear Communication with Teachers

Tips 3 and 4: Understand the School’s Behavioral System and Identify Gaps Early

Tip 5: Foster an Intellectual Environment

I hope this creates a dialogue and space for nurturing Black boys to success.

A sacred space

I am part of the problem. I spend more time and money purchasing books online than going into brick and mortar bookstores. But there was a time when the bookstore was one of my favorite destinations because it held a wealth of information and people who showed me another side to my community, culture, and intellectual life. Black bookstores have never been mega-stores like Barnes & Noble but often have been small individually-run libraries of community enrichment.

Read More at Ebony

Additionally, I was featured in video for the Manhattan Times that discussed the closing of the Hue-Man. Special thanks to Sherry Mazzocchi. Also, don’t forget to support Hue-Man at their online portal and look for pop-up events in the coming months.

I recently found

Unfair? Yes. A safer NYC? Definitely not. I reminded my chat mate that only 2 percent of stops result in contraband being found and that 88 percent didn’t end in any summons or arrest. I told them by any metric it wasn’t effective policing but it could be seen as effective harassment of Black and Latino youth in New York City.

The men’s eyes began to widen as I rattled off statistics and expressed my concern for my younger brothers and sisters who were too often viewed as the embodiment of delinquency by the New York Police Department. One man responded, “That sucks!” I responded, “Until people who are not likely to be stopped and frisked begin to conscientiously object to it, this practice is going to continue.”

Continue reading

The Window Sex Project addresses and tackles the every day practice in which women are “window shopped,” that is forced to bear unsolicited verbal harassment from men while walking on the street. Through community workshops and choreographed performance, The Window Sex Project will give voice to these concerns and restore agency to women by equipping them to manage street harassment, celebrating their bodies and creating a public artwork, specifically a dance performance which takes place in an art gallery.

This performance will be followed by a panel that I will be moderating.
The performance and panel will be held at Barnard on Monday April 2nd at 6:30pm in the Diana Event Oval.

Hear Sydnie Mosley speak about the WSP and International Anti-Street Harassment Week.

Follow this link to see some excerpts of the performance
(sorry wordpress is not letting me the videos)
The Window Sex Project: World Premiere Promo from Sydnie Mosley on Vimeo.

I will be moderating a panel discussion on the performance, responding to street harassment and how to create safe communities.

To get tickets and learn more about the Window Sex Project click here.

All are welcome some tell your brother, sister, mother, cousin and others to be in the place for dynamic performance and conversation.

I remember growing up

Read More

I’m very excited about the new Ebony.com site that launched last week. Under the stewardship of Kierna Mayo and Jamilah Lemieux the site is sure to be a space for cutting edge writing on the Black community.

In fact, I wonder, are we even talking to boys and men about sexual violence? We need to engage boys and men in conversations not just about the mechanics of sex, but the responsibilities that accompany it (beyond pregnancy and STIs). While sex and sexuality are often discussed as private, in a puritanical sense, sex and sexuality are all around us. Youth are inundated with messages about sex, violence and power. Most boys have watched a pornographic film by the age of 11. You can chose not to talk about sex and sexual violence but they’ve likely already witnessed it.

Anytime one thinks about adolescents or children, the role of peer group looms large. As an adolescent I knew which friends had access to “adult materials” and also which friends or family were having (or so I thought) sex so they could tell me what I wanted to know. It was in this private context that I was taught about “running trains.” For those not familiar, that’s a colloquial reference to multiple men having sex with a single woman in succession. I was taught that if you found a real freak, everybody could participate. When I heard Snoop’s album and they sang, “It ain’t no fun, if the homies can’t have none” that was my reference and the image that came to mind. I was casually socialized into thinking that there was no gang rape, instead there were only gang bangs. Whether it’s Kid Cudi saying “me first” on I Poke Her Face or Wale ending his verse referencing “a train” on No Hands, our boys continue to learn gang rape is just a casual part of partying and growing up.

Some scholars estimate that between 10 to 33 percent of sexual assaults are multiple assailant (gang rape). Psychologically most common to these occurrences is an emphasis on power, displaying heterosexuality to other men, and drifting – where people commit crime that they may not agree with following others in a group. In short, gang rape is a group problem that makes clear we have to collectively change how we think about what it means to be a man and the role of power in our lives. At the core of the heinous act is often an attempt to validate one’s masculinity to others. Non-participation could mean being pushed out of the group or being “outed” (read: labeled as gay and this ‘not a real man’). If we don’t teach our boys to think differently about what it means to be a man, we will continue to be plagued by this issue.

This however is not simply an issue of peers. I can recall uncles saying, “you ain’t no real man till you’ve had some” or have seen parents questioning if children “have sugar in the tank” in attempts to legislate what it means to be “a real man.” When you couple these types of messages with misinformed sexual commentary, it creates a dangerous brew. As we are teaching boys about their journey into manhood, we often start with the ideas of power and control. I can’t recall how many times I’ve been in households where a 10 year old is referred to as “the man of the house” and told to “protect his mother and sisters” (I’m not even going into family structure here, just bear with me). This gives boys the idea, from an early age, that manhood is about power over women and about protect of girls and women from dangers. What if we pushed our boys to think about power sharing with girls and women? What if we restructured journeys into manhood to emphasize that best qualities of adults are neither masculine or feminine, they transcend both? What if we actually began to listen to our kids and talk to our kids about what we want our communities to look like? What if we envisioned spaces that were safe for girls and boys and women and men?

While I spend most days trying to crack the achievement gap, I cannot help but think the same questions of how do we shape peer influence and build individual personalities that can buffer against negative messages play out in sexual violence as well. In the case of education, we haven’t figured out how to transform peer influence and that’s with a million messages saying “stay in school” and “school pays.” But education has the advantage of being on the radars of millions. In the case of sexual violence, adults suffer from a lack of communication. The teenage years are guided by adults suggesting that youth not “follow the crowd” when it comes to drinking, drugs, and other speakable maladies, but sexual violence remains silent and untouched.

If we are going to provide a safe environment for boys and girls as well as men and women, we cannot afford to be silent. We cannot afford to flinch and/or turn away when they are honest about what they’ve learned about sex, relationships, and power – even if when we hear  our “messed up” messages that we’ve passed echoing back at us. We have to stand and have real conversations about gender violence and its severe consequences for all involved. This summer, I’m Program Coordinator of the B.R.O.T.H.E.R.S. (Boys Rising Organizing to Help End Racism and Sexism) where we will be working with adolescent males to become allies against sexism and gender based violence. Sexual violence is a collective issue and one that is sadly often framed solely as a “women’s issue.” I hope this post helps to highlight the extreme need of men and boys to be allies against sexual violence, if not we’ll find our boys and men being allies against it.

For resources on coping with and ending sexual violence:

A Long Walk Home

Men Can Stop Rape

RAINN

In the meantime, definitely check out the archives which go back years! If you read through all the archives and are still thirsty for more, let me know, so I can get a restraining order. ;)

– M1 of Dead Prez on the song “Malcolm, Garvey, Huey”

This week I’ve been peeking in on Ta-Nehisi Coates‘ musings as he re-reads the autobiography of Malcolm X. Coates has done us a great service by sharing his reading of Malcolm’s life as told by Alex Haley, but this service can easily slip into a disservice. Malcolm on one hand has been deified and on the other hand demonized. We must humanize Malcolm, like all the figures in the African Diasporic canon, but we must do it with a particular degree of care and context.

Thus far Coates has posted three entries: “Black Men are Watching Every Move I Make“, “She Had Broken the Spirits of Three Husbands” and “Confronting Valhalla’s Humanity” all of which I received with resonation and reservation. This post is to illuminate my reservations. Most of us are familiar with figures like Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, and Marcus Garvey as icons. In our history, each of them has become flattened, polished, and made rigid caricatures. Ironically, this is something all three would deeply object to, but this is often the consequence of canonizing. In breaking apart these images though, we must go deeper than just problematizing these brothers, we have to contextualize them.

In “Black Men are Watching Every Move I Make” in the closing Coates states, “I don’t say that to clean Malcolm X. I don’t buy the image of him as a complete convert to integration–nor do I need it, anymore than I needed it for Grant or Lincoln.” When I read this sentence my first thought was, “Malcolm as an integrationist isn’t cleaning it a pure whitewashing.” Coates, like many revisionists of Shabazz’s legacy, passively suggests that integration became a part of his worldview after returning from Mecca (Hajj). Of the many lies perpetrated about/against Malcolm, this is probably one of the most consistent.

Hajj served to reorient Malcolm’s thinking about race, but it did not make him an advocate of integration. He remained steadfast in his non-support of integration. On the day he was assassinated he was to deliver a speech on the OAAU that included him saying, “We consider the word “integration” a misleading, false term. It carries with it certain implications to which Afro-Americans cannot subscribe. This terminology has been applied to the current regulation projects which are supposedly “acceptable” to some classes of society. This very “acceptable” implies some inherent superiority or inferiority instead of acknowledging the true source of the inequalities involved.” X was not an integrationist. X died a Pan-Africanist. X died a nationalist. His travels throughout Africa and the “Middle East” in 1959 and his Hajj in 1964 were watershed moments, but were not 180 degree turns. While many suggest that he created great distance from the Nation of Islam and their beliefs around the racial order of the world, careful students will come to a different conclusion.

The second piece that Coates offers is “She Had Broken the Spirits of Three Husbands.” In this post, Coates takes Malcolm to task on his discussion of and attitudes towards women. Undoubtedly informed from his misogynistic hustling past, the excerpts presented show a cold and shameful side of Malcolm. I can recall just last year re-reading the Autobiography and many of the passages Coates selects stood out to me as well. I wondered, “If Malcolm is our model of Black masculinity and this is perspective on Black women, where does that leave us?” As someone who is very serious about the operation of gender oppression and privilege within the Black community, I too struggled to understand where Malcolm was. While the Autobiography represents a summative work, it is not a complete story. In fact, if we look at Shabazz’s work in with the Organization for Afro-American Unity (OAAU) you see a man who was growing and struggling around gender. In William Sales’ book “From civil rights to Black Liberation: Malcolm X and the Organization of Afro-American Unity” we find Malcolm pushing to systematize and expand the role of women within the OAAU. He felt concerned that the gender oppression popular in his other organization Muslim Mosque Inc. was unduly sabotaging the liberatory work of OAAU. He began to make statements like, “Africa will not be free until it frees its women.” Yet these sentiments were nestled along side a profound distrust for women, which Coates captures in his excerpts. Between the popular image, Coates’ excerpts, and Sales’ analysis we get a fuller and better Malcolm, one that we can look to critically and lovingly.

Malcolm X is undoubtedly one of the most profoundly debated people of the African Diaspora (Sidebar- I’m anxiously awaiting Manning Marable’s book on X). Numerous volumes have attempted to capture that man in various stages, but not surprisingly all falling short. After all, who can truly capture human life in a few pages, a play or a film? But what I learned from reading the Autobiography, from reading beyond the autobiography, and being blessed to sit at the feet of elders who knew and worked with X is that there is a danger in simplifying the complex.

When Dead Prez says, “study Malcolm, Garvey, Huey their life is like a movie” I almost feel as if they’re reeling us in to find a deeper level of truth. The movies that depict all three of these men are often too narrow and too clean to capture their fullness. This fullness includes good, bad, and ugly. If you study them your learn strains of misogyny and feminism run through them all. They were not perfect; they were people. People who brilliantly taught us how to help our people rise while simultaneously showing us their personal limitations. Their vilification in mainstream media has led many to deify them within Black culture. Beginning the process of re-reading Malcolm, and I believe this applies to most known Black political figures, must come from a place of information if it is to lead to transformation.  If we are not informed and transformed, our people get no better. And after all, isn’t that what Malcolm was about?

Update: the folks at theGrio are so dope and responsive that they changed the title of the piece. Salute to them for  journalistic and social integrity!

Morehouse College, my beloved alma mater, has again been catapulted into the national spotlight due to a forthcoming article in Vibe magazine. The story entitled, “The Mean Girls of Morehouse”, by Aliya King, traces the experience of three gender bending current and former Morehouse students. Before the article could hit the Internet or news stands the President of Morehouse Dr. Robert M. Franklin issued a letter to alumni decrying the portrayal of Morehouse. Franklin’s move, while to some may be proactive, is actually reactionary and misses the mark on the importance of the story. Where Franklin and other see the maligning of Morehouse, when I read the article I see the space for a richer discussion of masculinity, higher education, and community.

Read more here.

Waiting for Superman is a powerful film about educational reform and the potential of our schools from the same team that brought us the Academy Award winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Unfortunately the filmmakers leave the audience hoping for a change that is as likely as a caped crusader appearing in real life.

While the film taps into the concerns that many of us have towards a failing educational system, it fails to provide a full portrait of what is really happening in the nation’s schools. If you’re interested in heart wrenching stories, see this film. But if you are interested in changing education make sure you bring your x-ray vision so you can see beyond the veil of what the filmmakers are advocating.

For more click here

“Justice for Oscar Grant!” As I sit in front of these keys I know that I could have written this essay 100 a times before and will likely need to write it 100 more times before I die, simply because I knew there would be no justice for Oscar Grant. Justice for most would have been a conviction of Officer Mesherle on a second degree murder charge, but that still would not equal justice — that would simply be a small step on the path towards justice. Justice is larger than the Oscar Grant case, the Sean Bell case, or any of the host of assassinations of unarmed Black men by the police. Justice is about their totality and the space that lies between popular unshakable belief in state innocence and Black male criminality. Justice is knowing and doing something about, as Mos Def said, “the length of Black life [being] treated with short worth.” When Oscar grant was killed nearly 2 years ago at the age of 22, he would exit this planet knowing that this society had done him no justice and his family was reminded of that when the jury deliberated for 8 hours, about the misery they will have to cope with the rest of their lives. So many will wonder, is the judicial system even the place to look for justice?

Read more on the Social Text Blog

The world is engulfed in World Cup mania, but not many from my family or old neighborhood are. Recently I wrote a piece for the Atlanta Post on the peculiar feelings I have as an African-American watching the World Cup.

Every four years, I suffer from a condition. I feel confused, disconnected from friends and co-workers, yet strangely compelled to engage foreign matters. These feelings are brought on by the arrival of the World Cup.  Through conversations with a number of my black American friends I’ve learned that I am not alone in this sentiment.

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2) Speaking of which, why does Riff Raff (of from G’s to Gents) fame have more videos on there than Kat Stacks? And folks call her a whore for attention….

3) How come Boondocks used to have multi-layered critiques of Black culture and now it just makes obvious jokes?

4) Why is our mascot the pimp and no longer the panther?

5) How come you’re a microwave activists? (You know, the folks who weren’t political then something happens and they get all heated and over do it because they weren’t doing anything before)

6) Why don’t you bring me to your University or Organization to speak and spit hot fiyah?

7) Why do you assume because I tweet or blog I’m not writing academic material?

8 ) Why can I feel BP slipping out of the media spotlight?

9) Why did the War in Afghanistan slip out of the spotlight despite being the longest war in US history?

10) Why would you rather sit in obedience than stand in resistance?

Recently, I penned a piece discussing the need for Black folks to join in with the fight against Arizona’s racist immigration bill SB 1070. My goal was to challenge Black folks, to think beyond the immediate immigration bill to the larger injustices that are taking root in Arizona. In the past few weeks, Arizona has continued to make their intentions clear. Whether you agree with SB 1070 or not, the state of Arizona has begun a march towards making the state free, open and inhabitable to Whites and closed to people of color, particularly Latinos.

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If you can’t see the video click here

Yesterday the NYTimes ran an interesting Op-Ed piece on Charter Schools by Charles Murray entitled, “Why Charter Schools Fail the Test.” I read through it quickly and thought it to be arguing two main things: standardized tests were weak measures and that school choice was a democratic right. Both of these things meshed well with my ideology and then I arrived to the bi-line and read Charles Murray. I froze, kept reading and sure enough it was the Charles Murray. Murray’s name not ringing a bell? Well Murray was one of two authors of the uber-controversial book The Bell Curve. The Bell Curve, of course, ultimately argued that there were racial differences in intelligence, no matter how you “sliced the pie.” So this may lead one to wonder, “Why or how on earth would Murray be writing about Charter schools and supporting them?” Well to answer that you have to understand his back story.

The Bell Curve’s most controversial chapters (13 and 14) really drove home their message that intelligence (g-factor) was more prevalent among certain racial groups and lower among others. Rightfully so, many top scientists rose up to strike down the Bell Curve’s thinly veiled statements of racial superiority and inferiority. The Bell Curve was not Murray’s first set of handiwork, he is often regarded as the man who dismantled the welfare system. In Losing Ground, he essentially argued that the welfare system enabled bad behaviors and used national dollars to invest in the entrenchment of poverty. This argument, I often hear parroted by people, the catch is a great deal of research carefully demonstrates the contrary (please see any of William Julius Wilson’s or Sheldon Danziger’s bevy of books on the subject). The common sensical nature of Murray’s argument have allowed him to stay around and advance arguments that dance along and get close to idea of eugenics (the science of “bettering humans” usually by “trimming the gene pool” -this was one of Hitler’s goals during the Jewish Holocaust).

Murray in the editorial takes a step back to the question of education which he addressed in Real Education a couple of years ago. I admittedly could not stomach the whole book as he argued “four simple truths”: 1) ability varies, 2) half of america’s children are below average, 3) too many people are going to college and 4) America’s future relies on how we educate the academically gifted. They seem benign enough, right? Well put them together with his past work and you get a neat line of logic suggest (my interpretation):

Ability levels vary, so not all kids are going to do well, in fact half of kids are poor students, the other half are doing okay. So of the half that is okay, there’s really about 10 percent that should be going to college and let’s invest in those 10 percent rather than investing in the other 90 percent.

Still not seeing why it connects to the Bell Curve. If you asked Murray, what do the races of the top 10 percent look like? He’d honest respond earnestly and with his “scientific evidence” to say they’re majority White. Ah, do you see it now? The folks at the top are White and should be invested in, the folks at the bottom are non-White and shouldn’t be getting all those “hand-outs” and “special programming.”

Murray has been consistently attacked for this type of reasoning, so charter schools mark a quaint respite for his ideas. He points to the Milwaukee evidence that demonstrated that charter school and traditional public schools performed roughly equal. He suggests that home environment means a great deal for intelligence ( he doesn’t think standardized tests measure intelligence (g-factor) so they’re a weak measure) and school thus can do little to shift what students walk in. He, like many mis-readers of the Coleman Report, suggest schools CAN DO little, when Coleman actually argued schools DID DO little to affect student achievement. For Murray, choice is good because you no longer have to suggest that poor people get few options. In fact, charters are cheaper on state’s to operate and offer the basic democratic right of choice. He’d likely concede that we shouldn’t expect these schools to do anything for the children who are part of the deeply impoverished and severely unintelligent (this is his reasoning not mine).

In the end, you get a well crafted Op-Ed that says, “despite lack of success Charter schools are good.” But what operates behind the veil matters the most! His piece is animated by a lack of belief in the students within these schools and he doesn’t think schools can to move these youth towards prosperity intellectually, socially or materially. While I’m neither a fan nor hater of charter schools, I realized that who is in your camp matters. Murray’s commentary reminds me of the adage, “Everyone on the sidelines is not cheering for you.” The question is, are we savvy enough to know who is for us and against us?

Originally published at The Atlanta Post

The internet is a funny thing and Twitter is a funny place. I find myself on there getting all sorts of information, as do many Black folks given that the Pew center says that 26% of Twitter users identify as African-American. At best, it is a fast paced way to share information and at worst a fast paced way to spread pain. One Friday night, comedian Lil Duval decided to get a subject going called “it aint rape.” He started out with “It ain’t rape if you order from the entrée side of the menu.” Essentially, it was a fill-in-the-blank festival that, for some, led to laughs and that, for many others, led to pain. Lil Duval’s tweeting falls squarely during Sexual Assault Awareness Month, demonstrating that too many in our community take sexual assault as a joke.

Lil Duval’s quickly took a step back and said, “Rape ain’t funny but women putting theyselves [sic] in [expletive] up positions is.” By saying rape doesn’t exist and that rape is based on poor decisions, Duval joined a line of Black comedians who have found humor and sadly greater acceptance in our community.

The first time I ever heard my mother disagreeing with my father in front of me was when my father was arguing that Chris Rock was hilarious. My mother stopped, stared at him and said, “I do not think Chris Rock is funny. Rape is not funny.” My mother continued to express her pain and frustration while my father remained oblivious to her hurt. Chris Rock had gone on Arsenio Hall and told a “date rape” joke which polarized the audience, causing Hall to apologize the next day. Later Rock admitted telling the joke helped, not hurt his career. We, as a community, are in a strange place when our community embraces someone more for joking about heinous crimes than when we repudiate the joke and seek healing for the survivors.

The reality is that sexual violence is one of those issues that ends up being so wrapped up in our families and communities that dealing with it necessitates an investment in others lives that many of us have grown accustomed to not having. Off the stage, when issues of rape come up in our community, I often hear, “we don’t know all the facts”, “I wasn’t there, so I don’t know,” or the most dangerous of them all, “well what if she wasn’t a victim.” Despite this disavowal of ability to judge, we are able to maintain a level of comedic commentary. That’s part of the problem. It’s easier to laugh at something than to deal with it. The lengths we go to laugh at and justify sexual assault, particularly violence again women, is painful, disheartening, and does a disservice to providing the space for our community to heal.

There are many things about sexual assault that are not easy to joke about. Among those who report it, we know that one in four Black women have suffered from sexual assault and one in six Black men have. We know the bulk of cases actually reported are of people under 18, our children, and sadly, Dr. Gail Wyatt’s research has shown us that nearly 50 percent of Black women living with HIV were sexually assaulted as children. There is nothing funny about that. From childhood to adulthood, there is a continuum of hurt that we continue to turn a blind eye to, except when it’s comedy time.

While many of us dog pile onto jokes about rape, incest, and other abuse, we’re likely ignoring our loved ones who are dealing with the scars right next to us. However, comedy is not the only culprit in silencing sexual assault. When “Precious” debuted there were many conversations about race, body image, and representations of Blackness, but too few commentaries that seriously dealt with the role of sexual assault in our community. Are we alone in having sexual assault in our community? No. But do we have a special responsibility to engaging this malady for the health of us all? Yes!

While those suffering from sexual assault should seek the help of a professional, we non-professionals can help by creating an environment ripe for healing. While there is the old saying “laughter is the best medicine” unfortunately when I look around, I see we use our laughter to silence the pain of sexual assault and miss out on the medicine.

Visit the anti-sexual assault organization Rainn.org for more information.

If you’re interested in not just being reactive but also proactive in combatting sexual assault in our community please support Girl/Friends: Adolescent Girls Preventing and Healing from Sexual Assault. It’s a dynamic new program run by A Long Walk Home, an organization founded by my scholar sister Salamishah Tillet.

Some days I’m so immersed in work and other matters that I forget to mention how amazing the students here at CCNY are. This weekend, you have an opportunity to experience this amazingness via two community centered offerings. The first, a CUNY system-wide Haiti benefit organized entirely by students. “CUNY to Haiti: Let Hope Ring” will be happening Friday from 8pm -11pm in the Aronow Theater.

On Saturday, you have a chance to get your health right on multiple levels with the health fair and HIV summit executed by City College’s Minority Association of Pre-Health Students. The event runs from 12-4, plenty of food, entertainment and benefits for your health.

If you can’t see the link, click here.

I’ve had it! I can’t take it any more. I cannot bear to have one more Black Awards show go on like this. That’s right, this is a cease and desist notice to: The NAACP Image Awards, The BET Awards, The Soul Train Awards, The Vh1 Hip-Hop Honors, The Source Awards, The You’re a Person of Color Awards, (okay you caught me—I made the last one up). However the point remains, the more Black Award shows we seem to have, the lower quality they seem to get!

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Response:

1) What is Black Male Privilege? Is that like irregardless?*

I got this question a bunch. I think its because, on its face, the placement of the words Black male and privilege close together appears contradictory. Indeed, I want you to think about the juxtaposition and open up to the possibility of its existence. While most of us are used to the crisis narrative of Black men in America, we continue to overlook the ways that male privilege is experienced and leveraged by Black men in our everyday lives. While most folks who asked this question didn’t watch the video (all you have to do is click play). I’ll write out the working definition I gave during the talk, “a system of built in and often overlooked systematic advantages that center the experience and concerns of Black men while minimizing the power that Black males hold.”**

The hidden and overlooked nature is what is crucial for understanding privilege. It is the careful analysis of the social fabric of our world that will make privilege visible, even to Black men. I am not suggesting BMP explains all gender and race inequality -that would make it a perfect explanation- I am saying BMP has a significant contribution to gender and race inequality- thus BMP is a partial explanation. I am most concerned with the Black community, so I have discussed BMP as it relates to Black men and Black women. I’m not making an argument about BMP relative to White Male Privilege. If you want to do that, do so at your own risk ;) .  BMP is akin to White privilege in that it is often invisible to those who benefit from it the most! It is the accumulation of these unearned advantages that matter but are often dismissed as inconsequential. These advantages are often thought to be insignificant, unless of course you are on the receiving end of the oppression.

2) Why are you trying to tear down Black men?

I have no desire to tear Black men down, quite the contrary, my goal is to build US up. However, I am all about tearing down undeserved privilege. I delivered this talk first at Morehouse because it is the premier space for educating Black men and the site where I first realized some of the ways I was falling prey to Black male privilege. Years later, I met brother Jewel Woods who had been doing some amazing activist work with Black men around men’s issues which included work on domestic violence. His dedication to building stronger brothers by confronting issues of privilege that emerged as compensation for oppression was renewing. My goal is to extend Jewel Woods’ work and add contextual nuance around BMP. I have two central gripes with BMP: 1) it oppresses others – particularly Black women- and 2) it robs Black men of their power. That’s the part many brothers beefing with me keep missing. If we continue to rely on our privilege for a sense of worth, purpose, and manhood we’re going to recreate the same broken community we have now.

3) What has BMP gotten me [insert incredulous screwface]?

Again, if you listen to the talk, I point out a number of material benefits that are not commonly, easily, or often documented: sexual consumption that a blind-eye is turned to, the silencing of black sexual assault, greater pay and promotion, to name a few. Still many have asked me via facebook/twitter/email, “so what has BMP gotten me?” this is often attached to saying “I got thrown in jail” or “I’m unemployed.” The answer is right there, Black Male Privilege has created the ability to sidestep your own power to oppress by saying you’re oppressed. Sadly, it has been a tradition to revisit the harm we feel as Black men on Black women. The most traditional example is, abuse at the workplace for the Black man has meant abuse for the Black woman at home. But you don’t have to go that extreme to understand that privilege for one begets oppression for another. See, BMP breathes and breeds on the idea that no one could possibly do harm if they’re being harmed, nothing could be further from the truth. Black Feminists/Womanists have been pressing Black men on this false belief and exposing its consequences, but  men, by and large, have ignored them. I am clear that my engaging this as a Black man (sadly) adds legitimacy to the concept, but if this is the case I hope that we as Black men can begin the work of dismantling BMP. There are many ways we can begin, some of which are referenced in the video like male study circles on campuses. In everyday life we can begin by holding our brothers accountable on the ways we manipulate opportunity for the advancement of Black men, and the oppression of Black women. That could be calling out male-centered networks, calling out exploiting the Black dating pool, there are many areas. It is easy to turn our back on BMP and many will. Ignoring it says nothing about merit or value, but it does say something about our future. As Deming said, “It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.” I am ecstatic to hear many people talking and grappling with this concept and these issues. This is about community. This is about accountability, not blame.  Accountability can transform a community, lack of accountability can destroy one.

I look forward to hearing more from you.

Footnotes (yeah I put footnotes on a blog post!)

*Get it? Irregardless isn’t really a word. Regardless = without regard. Irregardless would = without without regard … there’s an internal conflict that makes it illogical, get it? Never mind, it’s a nerd joke. You’re probably not even laughing right now… unless you’re a nerd.

**It’s a working definition because there are a lot of things to be worked out and I don’t want to define it in a too limited way. More study will refine and potentially expand or narrow the definition.

“We are tired of hearing Negro men say, “There is a better day coming,” while they do nothing to usher in the day. We are becoming so impatient that we are getting in the front ranks, and serve notice on the world that we will brush aside the halting, cowardly Negro men, and with prayer on our lips and arms prepared for any fray, we will press on and on until victory is over.

Africa must be for Africans, and Negroes everywhere must be independent, God being our guide. Mr. Black man, watch your step! Ethiopia’s queens will reign again, and her Amazons protect her shores and people. Strengthen your shaking knees, and move forward, or we will displace you and lean on to victory and glory.”

-Amy Jacques Garvey 1927

1) So you watched Pants on the Ground and laughed. Did you notice that General Larry Platt had on a Justice for Troy Davis button, a National Action Network tee shirt, and Red, Black and Green wristbands? Message!

2) So when you heard that Yele had financial issues did it stop you from donating?

3) How come when you heard that Red Cross had bigger issues it didn’t stop you from donating?

4) How come the resolutions that people make for the new year usually end by Martin Luther King Day?

5) Wait, there’s a rapper named Wacka Flocka? So we naming ourselves after Muppets now?

6) If people read Dyson nearly as much as they hated on him, would they hate as much?

7) Why do you think King’s life work was about integration, when it was really about fighting poverty, war, and racism?

8 ) On Jersey Shore, why did the cops know Ronnie by name?

9) Why didn’t you even notice the Supreme Court eeked closer to putting Mumia to death?

10) Why the hell haven’t you offered your assistance to the cradle of our liberation struggle – Haiti?

hat tip to @AroundHarlem

The partner post to this post, Haiti in Context: History gives you the long view of how we have arrived to the crises in Haiti. This post gives you the story of the people connected and concerned with Haiti. I’ll let people’s voices speak for themselves:

Jo Nubian penned a powerful and inspiring reflection on Haiti

My heart has many compartments, sacred spaces for sacred people, and one of those spaces belongs to the people of Haiti.  I don’t love Haiti because I pity her, let me be clear about this so that there is no misunderstanding.  Haiti suffers with more pity and inaction intertwined than possibly any other place on this planet and my revolutionary spirit does not care much for those types of  bandwagons.  My love for her sits beautifully, poised  and majestic, eagerly recalling a freedom that somehow my heart knows more than two hundred years after she became free.  Yes, I celebrate her sons Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Alexandre Petion, but also every slave, every overseer, every African spirit who decided that our people were not chattel and were destined for liberation.  That spirit is still very much alive in her, despite and maybe because of all the hardship that she faces.  When I ponder Haiti, I ponder her with these feelings of love, respect, and adoration.

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A good and brilliant scholar friend of mine Ferentz Lafargue fills us in on Haiti’s progress, not just its peril.

In recent months there has been a spate of articles exploring different aspects of Haiti’s progress and progress of Haitian-Americans in the United States. These articles range from a gushing profile by Amy Wilentz in Conde Nast Traveler to a Wall Street Journal piecehighlighting a rise in Haitian American football players, titled aptly enough “These Days, Everybody’s All-American Just May Be a Haitian.” These come on top of feature articles about prominent Haitian-Americans such as 2009 MacArthur recipient Edwidge Danticat, White House Director of the Office of Political Affairs Patrick Gaspard and musician and activist Wyclef Jean. On the one hand, these profiles suggest that Haitian-Americans are taking another step forward in gaining recognition in the United States, much as our immigrant predecessors from Ireland and Italy did in the first part of the 20th century. At the same time, when read alongside glowing reports from Bill Clinton, U.N. Special Envoy to Haiti, about improved conditions for entrepreneurs and improved security on the island, it appeared, as one colleague recently put it, that Haiti was finally “open for business.”

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I am not sure who to attribute this poetic reflection I Am H.A.I.T.I. but it is ripe with painful truth, hurt, and prospect.

I AM H.A.I.T.I.

The only time the world cares about me is when I rise up and bury my own children, when I eviscerate my offspring. I am H.A.I.T.I., you pay attention to me when my children are entombed by the shoddy concrete that is left over for me to house my family while the grade concrete is shipped off to Western cities and suburbs. I am H.A.I.T.I., you now cry for me, when usually you don’t give a shit about me.

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Both TastyKeish and Southside Scholar have beautiful and painful insights into what is happening to folks in Haiti today as well as super informative links, please visit their sites and be enriched!!! Remember it is the elevation of these and your voices that let the world know that we care. Not just that we care about disaster relief, but that we care about the next steps, policies, and programs towards Haiti. A friend recently told me of a set of Black folks who talked about many reasons for giving, but came to conclusion that it didn’t matter. Remember your dollars not only help with disaster relief but send a message that there is a real connection and concern with Haiti and her people. To me, the past few days have been draining and renewing at the same time. I am humbled to be surrounded by such great caring and loving thinkers and doers, I pray that it is this energy that is carried forward in the resurrection of Haiti.

*please pardon me for not citing where all these pieces came from. Folks have forwarded me so many things. Charge it to my head not my heart.

It has been a tough 4 days for Haiti and its Diaspora but from struggle emerges strength. I first want to say I am every renewed by the way I’ve seen folks in my own personal network and internationally begin to pull together for Haiti. I am clear that what we are doing now is small and late, but there is nothing like watching community form before your eyes and working together. Political differences become supplanted in the midst of crisis and when heavy lifting is occurring. A number of people have reached out to me regarding Haiti and the context surrounding the country that would allow an earthquake to do so much damage. In reality, like most “natural disasters” there are very human causes that lead to such catastrophic consequences. I have assembled some of the best writing I’ve seen on the context and figured I’d let you read the experts words moreso than mine.

Alternet covers the emergence of Haiti and the deep connections between the United States, Haiti and the globe:

However, more than two centuries ago, Haiti represented one of the most important neighbors of the new American Republic and played a central role in enabling the United States to expand westward. If not for Haiti, the course of U.S. history could have been very different, with the United States possibly never expanding much beyond the Appalachian Mountains.

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The Socialist Worker has a good article on the policies that helped produces deep issues of political and economic infrastructure.

“The media coverage of the earthquake is marked by an almost complete divorce of the disaster from the social and political history of Haiti,” Canadian Haiti solidarity activist Yves Engler said in an interview. “They repeatedly state that the government was completely unprepared to deal with the crisis. This is true. But they left out why.”

To understand these facts, we have to look at a second fault line–U.S. imperial policy toward Haiti. The U.S. government, the UN, and other powers have aided the Haitian elite in subjecting the country to neoliberal economic plans that have impoverished the masses, deforested the land, wrecked the infrastructure and incapacitated the government.

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Democracy Now features a good discussion of how US Policy has shaped the “underdeveloped” state that Haiti was in prior to the Earthquake

And they got there because they or their parents or grandparents were pushed out of Haiti’s countryside, where most Haitians used to live. And they were pushed out of there by policies thirty years ago, when it was decided by the international experts that Haiti’s economic salvation lay in assembly manufacture plants. And in order to advance that, it was decided that Haiti needed to have a captive labor force in the cities. So a whole bunch of aid policies, trade policies and political policies were implemented, designed to move people from the countryside to places like Martissant and the hills—hillsides that we’ve seen in those photos.

Watch the video here or read the transcript beneath the video.

Make sure to check out the piece in the UK Guardian by Peter Hallward on OUR ROLE in the creation of the Haiti we know today. And the interview on Democracy Now with Randall Robinson, founder of TransAfrica, who explains the sick irony in the appeal to George Bush for assistance.

I certainly acknowledge there is a lot to read and watch there but while the media concentrates on framing this as a unconscionable “natural disaster” as if Haiti is perpetually “bad luck” there needs to be a deeper conversation about Ayiti (Haiti) and her people. The strength and resilience that formed Haiti will be what allow it to return to being the Pearl of the liberated African Diaspora. Please read the partner post to this Haiti in Context: Voices which capture the voices of the people.

*please pardon me for not citing where all these pieces came from. Folks have forwarded me so many things. Charge it to my head not my heart.

Beneath I have included some immediate ways that you can donate and offer aid from abroad. I have opted for donating with AmeriCares because of their long standing relationship with relief work in Haiti, their four star ranking from charity navigator, and their expertise/infrastructure in similar crises. In times of crisis, relief is needed and after watching the American Red Cross stumble, squander and misappropriate funds from Katrina Relief I decided to exercise a greater degree of caution with my donations. No matter where you chose to donate, God willing, some help will be given. So please give freely so that we can help our dear brothers and sisters of Haiti.

Partners in Health (comes highly recommended)

Doctors without Borders

Yele (Wyclef’s Organization – this is a smaller org and has been getting a lot of hits and is struggling with their website and possibly other matters)

American Red Cross

MercyCorps

Unicef

An additional list of options here and a great post with options from South Side Scholar here.

While I am not Haitian (the francophone name L’Heureux is just a given name from my mother) I feel a special kindredness with our brothers and sisters there. While the poverty and squalor are often concentrated on, Haiti remains our first liberated republic which was won through struggle. Now is the time to practice what Dr. John Henrik-Clarke preached, “PanAfricanism or Perish.” Let’s move from ideology and voyeurism to activism and engagement.

Special thanks to @alone_cuzzo @aisha1908 @saigrundy @Ssidescholar

1) Captain Obvious to the rescue

If you have walked around Harlem in the last ten years, this story should not or does not surprise you. Everyone I passed the link or story around to who has lived here for a while responded with amusement, confirmation, and continuing with their day. Why? In part because demographic shifts get picked up by the census after people experience it in their everyday lives. The standard “quick and dirty” test of racial segregation within NYC that I give my students is the “train test.” I ask them, “Where do you get on? Where do you get off? What type of people (ethnicity) get off at your stop? When can you get a seat?” These questions lead them to think about demographic change in terms of race, ethnicity, economy, and space. In short, ride a train and you’d know that non-“Black” folks have been streaming uptown for a while now.

2) The Great White Fear

The article features a lovely picture of a White man, Joshua Buachner and his 2 year old daughter. It’s amazing how a docile picture of brownstone can create such a panic. The responses I saw highlighted the booming White surge in Harlem. Well kids, look at the numbers! First, the article plainly states Central Harlem has received a boom, doubling so now that means 1 in 10 residents in Central Harlem are White! Whoa! One in 10 … yeah, that’s right let it marinate … oh wait, not running scared? Right! The percentage of White residents was so low that a doubling lead to 1 in 10. If you look at the graphs provided, you’ll see there is a significant uptick but not one many are concentrating on. And trust me, 1 in 10 shouldn’t make you think when you get of at 125th that you got off in the Upper East Side. Perspective is everything.

From IRAAS Harlem History Photo Essay

3) Urban Amnesia

The article pretty much steps over the entire history of redlining and other forms of systematic depreciation of Harlem properties and shuffling of the Black population into Harlem. Redlining served to keep people from buying property, served to make folks who had property sell instead of “riding the tide”, served to limit commerce in Harlem, and even carried a premium for services used by residents. Yes, there was significant outmigration, but this outmigration operated in concert with the “invisible hand” of financial incentives for some and disincentives for others. In reality, Black Harlem has really been leased space. A significant number of Black folks were able to buy, but many if not most Black folks in Harlem did not own; they rented. The result is that the owners left, the renters stayed, and Harlem’s economic depression continued for far too long. The out-migration and in-migration (depends on who you ask also known as gentrification) is not happenstance. Yes, everyone has individual agency and choices, but one’s choices are shaped by larger forces.

4) Black is, Black ain’t?

The article stresses the decrease in “Black” families, which the author never defines but we can take to mean largely African-American families. In passing the article mentions the increasing numbers of Black residents who are not African-American such as West Indian and Continental African immigrants. This expansion of the African diasporic presence can be seen in food choices, neighborhood institutions, and has undoubtedly added to the flavor of Harlem… but what about the “other” folks? You know, the ones the article gives short sell to? The most rapidly increasing groups in Harlem according to the chart are the “other(s).” And I’d bet, though I don’t have the data, this is an increase in Latinos, particularly Afro-Latinos. The article quickly mentions that the Latino population is at an all time high in Central Harlem and Harlem at large. It seems that that for the past 30 plus years, Latinos have been moving in and occupying neighborhoods throughout Harlem without large alarm and cover stories. Uptown has a bustling Afro-Latino population which should not continue to be overlooked. If you are a student of Harlem, you know there has been tension but also very fertile ground around race and ethnic solidarity between African-Americans, Continental Africans,  Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, etc. This could represent a greater Pan African possibility … or panic, it’s up to us to decide.

5) Whose/Who’s Harlem?

The next steps for Harlem are in motion. Yes, there is an increasing White presence, but to me the more important part is that there is an increasing Latino presence, particularly Afro-Latino population. These are the moments when Harlem residents have a chance to redefine what it means to be Black Harlem. While in the 20th century Harlem witnessed the extreme flight of Whites and its Blackening, the process does not have to be reversed. Everyday when I walk around Harlem and the Heights I see the beauty of the Diaspora. A key to maintaining our stake and status in this historic “capital of Black America” is looking for links of solidarity around affordable housing, living wages, and community. Black Harlem has always been what its residents made it out to be. Ownership has never been the bedrock of the community, instead its vibrance of our people creating beauty in the midst of struggle.

1) The counting of prisoners – Currently prisoners are counted as residents of the counties in which they are imprisoned rather than their home communities. This serves to increase political representation in areas that tend to be rural and White, while decreasing the political representation of the home communities that folks come from.

2) Who is White? The extended racial definitions provided by OMB 15 say that, ” A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.”  Notice something about that? I was certainly surprised that folks from North Africa and the Middle East remain classified as White, despite the socially distinct lives that many lead.

3) Undercounts. The issue of Negro was raised in response to the potential of people being offended and “opting out” of the Census. If seeing Negro makes you not fill out the Census form, I’m going to wager you weren’t going to fill it out in the first place. Many communities remain undercounted: the poor, the young, immigrant to name a few, this all matters for political resources. If you’re worried about undercounts, think also about the homeless. Their undercounting means fewer resources for those feeling the hardest brunts of the “land of opportunity.”

I am all for rallying around a cause. I’m just not sure I can meet ya’ll down at the Census offices for a protest over Negro. Focus groups, lettering writing campaigns, and write ins suggest some of our older brothers and sisters still support the term. Let’s focus energy in creating greater political clout, not appropriate nomenclature.

Faith is often thought of in a religious and spiritual way. Having grown up in a Baptist church I often heard, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) This common articulation suggests that there is a higher power ordering our lives and we must remain faithful to see it come to fruition. This orientation asks one to have faith in a higher power, often called God, and if I asked many walking the street, “Do you have faith in God?” they would likely answer, “Yes.” If I ask them, “Do you have faith in Black people?” I’m not sure I would receive such an affirming response.

Karenga defined Imani in the following way, “to believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of struggle.” The definition noticeably and intentionally does not ask the basic question of faith in a higher being, but more so asks can you have faith in those with home you walk this earth? Can you have faith in those who you live with, go to school with and struggle with? The older I get, the more I find people openly acknowledging faith in a higher power and disavowing faith in our people. While I do not want to get into a question of religious or spiritual beliefs (that may come though), it strikes  me as peculiar that with the tremendous history and contributions that people of African descent have made, that many of us – myself included, will suggest “we ain’t gonna make it.”

Is it an understanding of history or not understanding history that allows one to draw such a conclusion about the African Diaspora and particularly African-Americans? In the past year, I’ve been trying to push myself out of being a member of the Possible Police. The Possible Police are a unit of Black folks who whenever a discussion of change begins to happen, they ruminate, “It ain’t gonna happen.” “We already tried that.” “Let me know how that turns out.” Or “It’s impossible.” In all honesty, the election of Barack Obama pushed me to more deeply question my beliefs around struggle and victory. While I’ll be the first to say the election of Barack Obama is no magic salve, I must also acknowledge that his election is the fruit of significant struggle.

It worries me that at the age of 31 I can say “It won’t happen in my lifetime,” This in some ways reflects a resolution of defeat at worst or delayed gratification at best. This tradition of nay saying, instead of affirmation, conveys a deep lack of faith among the population who most need it and have the most to offer, the youth relatively young people. My walk with brothers at CCNY has pushed me to articulate hope, in spite of defeatism’s presence. In listening to their questions about the future, family, and opportunity I kept hearing a lack of faith in themselves, our people, and the world. I have taken to asking, “Why would you tell yourself you can’t? There are a million people who would tell you “you can’t”, “don’t try it”, “you’re not worthy” in a heartbeat. So why would you be the first in line to do that?” The path that we have walked has been a long one and often bitter one, despite this strong men and women keep coming.

Some brothers have asked me, why I keep a faith in our people? For me it is about faith in a higher power and in our people to make change.  I would venture to say, a lack of faith in our people and ourselves individually often reflects a lack of faith in a higher power and/or the ability of people to produce change. While some may argue, “place your faith in God, not humans”, it is the divinity that I see in my people that forces me to fight through the muddy terrain of self hatred and doubt. A faith in Black people often is one that necessitates we see beyond the obvious and embrace the possible which were denied for so long. It is necessary that we are grounded and realistic, but not necessary that we concede defeat in the beginning of the battle. Can you begin to imagine if our ancestors, held in the bondage of slavery throughout the globe stopped themselves from dreaming and working on freedom? If the answer is no, then why should we come this far and give up our faith?

I have to admit, I never really remember reading the “official definition” of Kuumba.

“To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.”

I always kind of remember thinking of arts and crafts, dances, etc. you know what we generally take creativity to be. But in this year’s ritual of writing and reflection I realized that it is about creating what we need. This week, I have the honor of participating in a marriage ceremony that melds two Muslim families of differing ethnic backgrounds: Indian american and African-American. In preparation for the wedding, the question of rituals and ceremonies came up. Given that the Bride comes from a large Hyderabadi family in India the number of rites and traditions that she brings are extensive. There is a beauty in having a history and culture that is uniquely identifiable and has been passed on for multiple generations. When I initially asked the groom, “what are you bringing [traditions, etc.] the wedding?” He responded with uncertainty.

All too often, still in this country, African-Americans when looking for our cultural roots and rituals we feel alienated from things that fall too far outside of our everyday life. As I mentioned before, one of the serious dilemmas of Kwanzaa celebrations, etc. is the stigma and fear of engaging a “foreign culture.” I have always taken Afrocentrism to be a middle-class Black phenomenon (that’s for a whole ‘nother entry) and truly understand why so many of us do not gravitate towards Africa as our cultural home. However, this does not preclude us from having a culture that offers a contribution to the world, and in this case a ceremony.

After a bit of discussion, and brow beating, the groom and I discussed the rite of “jumping the broom” as a marital tradition that harkens back to our ancestry as African-Americans. Additionally, it is something that is visually distinct enough to let all in attendance know that through marriage their new family would be connecting Indian and Black, and that each held equal value. While for many, this would have sufficed, the groom’s mother took an additional step and pushed to incorporate the recent Native American ancestry in their family. She will present the new marriage ritual with an explanation and have it close out the final ceremonies for both families. This is one of three wedding in the groom’s family this year and this ritual will be repeated at each wedding. Through the creation of this ritual, in company with the bride’s ritual, all in attendance get to not only witness a marriage but marry each other in a new cultural and spiritual space. This is the creation of community. By drawing on our Kuumba we have created what we need and made it available to all in attendance. Let us never forget, there is an equal beauty in creating a cultural ritual that is based in history and the present that will be passed on for multiple generations.

The title of the post is a variation on a sage comment by bell hooks who stated,”… black self-determination is not the same as black capitalism.”

This excerpt of her quote summarized many of the issues that I see floating around now when we discuss the evolution of Black Power and its evolution into cultural practice and social organization. In this new constellation, the new Black Power is seated in Washington DC on Pennsylvania Avenue, self-determination has become “grinding” for you own good, and cooperative economics has been transformed into buying Black. While I am all for the evolution of ideas, when the spirit of the thing is lost, the question of “how does the individual part relate to the whole?” becomes all the more critical. Last year, I wrote about the issues of reducing Ujamaa to buying Black, which I still stand by, but we must also realize that true cooperative economics demands the sharing of investments and rewards for our community which can include but is not limited to monetary contributions. It is true collaboration in the (financial, social, and cultural) economy of our community’s which will keep our collective and individual mouths fed and determining the direction of our community.

What if the investments we made today were in community? To most, this means “buy black today” but couldn’t we also suggest “donate Black today” or “volunteer black today”? The idea that consumption is the only way to participate in economics is misguided, there are multiple way to participate in economics that are not just based in consuming but are based in building. Beneath the image I offer some suggestions for economic contribution for spenders, philanthropists, and activists:

For spenders:

I recently tweeted about The Power of One card which I was introduced to at my favorite uptown bookstore Hue-man. The card is a Harlem based Susu that is designed to provide a reinvestment into the community via programming and provide members with discounts at participating vendors. This type of program is particularly important in a community like Harlem where we, people of African descent, compose the majority, but are the minority of business owners and often have our interests and needs overshadowed by those concerned with capital first and people second.

For philanthropists:

Our communities are in dire need of more resources to deal with the host of issues that we face. When I talk about “giving” folks often hit me with, “I ain’t got it.” While times are hard, a donation of 20 dollars can really help boost an organization’s ability to work in the community. A gift of twenty dollars is often what many of us spend on a meal. Could you carry a lunch twice a month or dine in one more night? We show what we care about by what and how we invest in it. If you don’t have the time but you have a dime, please spend it with organizations that deal with the issues you care about. Recently I’ve been really concerned with issues of sexual violence, grassroots community programming, youth advocacy with social media and homelessness, so these organizations have gotten my attention. No you can’t donate everywhere, so like all investments, make them wisely and with care so that they’ll have the greatest (community) return.

For activists:

I listen to Jay-Z and find him to be a wise man (I know some of you are trying to take away my “conscience black card” right now, but hear me out). Jay has been know to be a huge philanthropist and on Minority Report he reflected on philanthropy and Hurricane Katrina, “Sure I ponied up a mill(ion)/But I didn’t give my time/ so in reality I didn’t give a dime or damn/ just put my monies in the hands of the same people that left my people stranded/ Nothin but a bandit/ just left them folks abandoned/ damn that money that we gave was just a band-aid.” Often times we think of investment in our community as ones that come from “giving back” and “donating” but there are many things that your dollars cannot do, but you as a person can. Whether it’s mentoring, spending time collating papers, or donating your voice to share perspective, there is a need for you to give more than from your pockets. The intangibles often mean just as much if not even more than marks in a ledger book.

For more than a year, I’ve entertained way too many conversations about the shortage of Black men and Black women who remain hopelessly single. I tend to avoid these conversations, because it seems little can come of them other than hurt feelings and finger pointing. Well while reflecting on Ujima, I wondered how the principle could help this discussion given my inbox and twitter feed was abuzz with a recent story on the “crisis” in the Black community. I am certain that the blame game that comes around from discussions of relationships nor is it something that is unique to Black folks. I however realize it can come into special relief when we begin to talk about the numbers of Black women and men that are not married or the number of “out-of-wedlock” births that we have. The “crisis” of the Black family is not new, the placing of blame on Black women is not new, blaming men is not new, but the repackaging of it continues to draw attention and the opposite of productive discussion, mainly it ends up being a new opportunity for us to sidestep personal work, overlook progress, and undermine community work.

The principle of Ujima asks that we all acknowledge our role in the current condition and collectively work to repair it, this seldom happens in the current discourse. The recent Washington Post profile of Helena Andrews and the Nightline segment on unmarried Black women have kept us consumed with chatter. The Nightline segment features a number of sisters talking about the dilemma of being single and successful and then they’re joined by relationship guru comedian (who is asked to speak on a serious social issue) Steve Harvey. Harvey offers some commentary on the women’s aesthetic beauty, says older men failed to socialize younger males, and then tells the sisters to date older men to fulfill what the story purports as “missing.” The story created quite a buzz and part of it, I’d say, is due to the way the piece is framed. The piece highlights an ever declining population of marriagable men and high achieving women, pitting men against women in a zero sum game which results in a decaying Black family. When I saw the piece I didn’t get bent out of shape about it and reach for a lighter to reignite the battle of the sexes,  instead I saw a more promising narrative on mate selection, accomplishment, and community. This was, in part, because I listened to the voices of the sisters, rather than the voice that framed the piece. If you listen to the women’s testimonies they articulate clear expectations, a desire to settle down, but not the desire to settle. Quite the opposite of what is popularly emphasized where sisters have unrealistic standards, are hungry to trap men, and emasculate the men in their lives. Their voices and stories, like so many that I’ve read or watched on the topic, get twisted and are used to suggest there is more space for discontent and disunity than for collective work and responsibility.

The reality, as I see it, is that the changing forms of family, gender, and community mandate that we not look at each other and assume we will replicate the systems of the past. This doesn’t mean a total disavowal of what we had, but it often means me must acknowledge what we used in the past may not work today. In order to begin collective work we have to agree upon a problem or set of problems, which I’m not sure we do. What if what one called a problem another saw as an evolution and a success? Too often we assume marriage is the bedrock for a strong community, however family is much more-so. And family, for African-Americans and people of African descent has been defined in many ways that clash the mythos of the nuclear family. Are we ready to begin the work of collective uplift be acknowledging we may not be all shooting at the same target of family? Are we ready to acknowledge the role that emotional scars hold for men and women in choosing partners? Are we ready to move beyond discussions of “baby mama” drama and enter the work of  co-parenting? These are some of the questions and topics I’d love to see tackled so that we may truly begin to see our brothers and sisters problems as our own, as well as, our brothers and sisters strengths as our own. From there we can begin to do the work of collective work and responsibility for the Black community.

“To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves” is often commonly articulated as the definition of Kujichagulia. For many this principle has been all about identity and selecting names, memorizing phrases from different African cultures, and suggesting Pan-Africanism is the ideology we must take on. But all this still seems to miss part of the boat when it comes to Kujichagulia. In fact, many take this principle as a call to develop our individual identities rather than determining the direction of our community. For so many, the process of developing a strong Black identity or African centered identity is a highly personal one. You struggle with who you are, where your people are from, what you and your people have contributed, so inevitably it starts with one questioning their relation to the greater whole. Finding answers to these questions can lead to an identity, but not necessarily self-determination.

I recently had a conversation with a teacher who works at a local school, by her account, that features a very visibly Afrocentric staff member who talks often of African greatness, rattles off facts of the civilizations of Kemet, and floats regally through the halls. The teacher’s qualm with the staff member was plainly, “he treats the families at the school and the staff members like shit.” This narrative is one that I have heard all too often when it comes to the development of an identity. The idea that one can identify with the greatness of the past, but one fails to identify with the contemporary reality of Black people. It is great to be able to look at the pyramids and talk about African greatness, but can you look outside your window at the brothas on the corner too and see that greatness?

As a college professor, sometimes I find myself frustrated with students who are developing answers to who I am, but these identities are not tied to who and where we are as a people. Put another way, too often a romantic view of the past leads us to underestimate the value of our people in the present. Knowing where we are in the present, valuing it and challenging it, builds the path to self-determination. Kujichagulia demands that we take seriously our identities but that these identities must be linked to needs of the community and deeds that serve the community. It is this seeing beyond the “me” or the “i” to the “we” is what links identity and community. Identity without community is as useful as a word for which no one knows the meaning. Identity and community give us the core for determining the next directions our people should explore. No matter our allegiance to the past, we must be also be aligned with the present conditions of our people, if not, then self-determination will be centered on the “I” and not the “We.”

*The question of “and then what?” was really brought to me by the Boogiemonsters on this classic joint.

Does it make sense that fighting could lead to unity? On its face, my first thought is, absolutely not. I could imagine for “highly evolved beings” we could probably resolve our differences quickly, with out malice or attitude, and unify for the strengthening of community. But then, I’m reminded of reality. Most times the things that are most important to unify around are also the most controversial. Yesterday, I watched and listened to a number of conversations occur around Kwanzaa, its relevance, its creator, and whether or not we should celebrate it. In fact, a year ago when I wrote Quit Frontin on Kwanzaa my goal was to provide a base that made people feel informed and comfortable about celebrating and reflecting. What I forgot is that, no matter how much I believe in a thing, everyone has the right to feel differently and do as they please. As an African people, we too often have been told what to do, what to believe in, and when to do it. This is not a cycle I wish to re-create.

So in the sense, I believe in freedom of choice as individual within a community. This type of belief could be a serious quandry. Instead, it was this very point that reminded me of a conversation that I had with my Grandfather who moved from Selma, Alabama to Connecticut in the heights of the Civil Rights Movement. I recall reading about the Civil Rights Movement and thinking proudly, “Those are my people.” I returned home to talk to my Grandfather with the goals of hearing organizing stories, fighting stories, you know – eyes on the prize the personal version. When I spoke to him, he told me none. He told me none when I asked, “When you were down there and everything was happening what was it like?” He simply replied, “It was very busy … and I was working.” I remembering feeling betrayed and thinking, “What? Are you serious? Wait, does that mean that I don’t have a personal contribution to the legacy of Civil Rights?” All these questions I later realized came out of ego, not out of a genuine concern for uplift and unity. I wanted his activism to look a certain way, to fit a script, for it to be side-by-side with the van guard of Black grassroots leaders. This was my issues, not his! In fact, after I spoke to my grandfather more he told me about the different meetings and how he was a part of those who did not participate in the most traditional or easily identifiable ways. He didn’t march, he didn’t pass out fliers, but what he did do was actively engage the question of change in his heart, his mind, his church and in his familial work.

You don’t have to have unity in action to have unity in spirit. In fact, sometimes the things that divide us on the surface unify us by send us questioning the deeper dilemmas and understandings that we all hold. It is this fight that is unifying, this fight that provides the engine for change within our community, this fight that we all begin when we begin to seriously think about what our community is. Who is in it? And how shall we move forward? From the seeds of dissent, a new, fuller, tradition of community and change can evolve, even if what we do doesn’t look the same. This can occur only when we enter with humility and value each others’ contributions and questions with a welcoming, challenging, and affirming spirit.

“Pro-Black like Craig Hodges but my dashiki’s in the cleaners.” – Common

Being Pan-African is a weird thing. To many folks it means wearing dashikis, avoiding swine, and shouting ase at every opportunity. I, however, realize that you aren’t going to do that. For most Black folks, the holiday of Kwanzaa is one tied to Pan-Africanism and thus gets mentioned more in their living rooms on TV commercials than at family gatherings. I’ve decided we’ve been frontin’ on Kwanzaa for no real good reason. So here are some pre-emptive responses to questions and concerns.

Read more of why you should Quit Frontin on Kwanzaa here

If you cannot see the video, click here.

Hat tip to JF

They deserve better, but do we know how to make better for all?

Now some will read this and view me as a pessimist around education, in fact, I am the furthest thing from it. My vision and goal is to have an urban education system where chances of success exceed chances of failure, where families have options, were school staff are supported, and youth become critical thinkers. Is that too much to ask? If you look at the condition of our cities public schools you would begin to believe the answer is yes, that is too much to ask. On the Left, there’s often the cry that resource inequalities are the reason for poor performance. On the Right, the call suggests that instead of working hard, schools, teachers, and students are hardly working and inefficent. Unfortunately the people trapped in the middle of these ideological battles are poor, Black, and Brown families lodged in failing schools in: Detroit, Baltimore, New Haven and the list goes on. The biggest confusion that I see emerging around urban education is the highlight of a few successful schools in a city and mistaking that as the probable, that is what will likely happen, in the city as the whole. These schools are the possible, they are what can happen against dire conditions but they are not probable.  These exceptional schools, like breakfast sausage, are quickly consumed by people but most are afraid to look at what it goes in to making the end product. These schools, which have gone by many labels such as No Excuses, High Flying Schools, Tough Love or Miracle Schools all reflect a desire to point out exceptional success, but with little scrutiny of how this success emerges, if this success is sustainable, and if this success can be replicated. Most, if not all of the schools talked about in these articles and segments, have had huge investments of resources both material and non-material (e.g. dollars, partnerships, unmitigated administrative power, strict standards of enrollment, parental mandated behaviors) which are not reported on in news stories. They carry with them conditions and rules that if you clamped most urban schools with and demanded conformity to in wide-scale would surely mean the casting out of many students, abuses of labor law, and spikes in test but not the sustained development of critical thinkers. What often looks like a miracles upon first glance for a small group would be a nightmare for the mass upon deep investigation.

The reality is that the schools you see championed on the news for exceptional performance are in part being elevated to support mental and material divestment in traditional public educational systems. You sit and say, “If they can do it, why can’t the others?” These schools appear to be anomalies at first glance, but with further reading you see why they look as they do and why often their success is not sustainable or transferable. Replicating success in urban schools has been policy alchemy since the days, and even before, Ron Edmonds and continues to demonstrate that urban education will not be solved until we can see a system wide change in results for children. Despite the caution of social analysts like Richard Rothstein, the trumpets of success of a few urban schools continue to defeaningly blare out the cries of whole cities in educational disrepair.

Some will suggest are being used to suggest the thing missing from our schools is hard work, but that too is an incomplete picture. While all schools could be improved marginally with more hard work, the solution is often not simply pulling harder on bootstraps or throwing dollars. In fact, we have seen time and time again, that neither in isolation works. If educational research has taught us anything, it is that we do not know the formula for success in contemporary urban schooling. There is little to no evidence that more charter schools are better for kids in urban areas. There is little to no evidence that more charter schools improve the “market” of urban schools. There is little to no evidence that success in one year on a standardized test will be repeated in the next. There is little to no evidence that cities schools perform at an equal level to suburban schools consistently. Yes, this portrait is bleak, but it is the state of affairs. This is a hard truth to swallow, this is why in part people continue to point to “the miracles.”

To me, the situation of urban education is much like the common cold, as technology advances, we find more and more options that tend to abate sickness, cover the symptoms, but still there is no cure. Like the snake oil salesmen of the past, what works for one, seldom works for many, or may not work at all. I am hesitant to listen to anyone who tells me, “We know what works” because suggesting so would be based on the possible, while ignoring the probable.

If you can’t see the video embedded click here.

hat tip to LM

“If you ever think about me and you ain’t gonna do no revolutionary act, forget about me. I don’t want myself on your mind if you’re not going to work for the people. If you’re asked to make a commitment at the age of twenty, and you say I don’t want to make a commitment at the age of twenty, only because of the reason that I’m too young to die, I want to live a little longer, then you’re dead already. You have to understand that people have to pay a price for peace. If you dare to struggle, you dare to win. If you dare not struggle then damn it, you don’t deserve to win. Let me say peace to you if you’re willing to fight for it.”

-Fred Hampton

Sorry, this image was hilarious to me.

I didn’t really begin to grapple with my privilege as a Black man until I was a student in Beverly Guy-Sheftall’s class on Black Feminism at Spelman College. I can remember rebutting each point she made about the Million Man March (MMM) as an extension of patriarchy, heteronormativity, and an attempt to further embed misogyny. Besides being a slew of words I didn’t fully understand, I could not understand why she fixated on all the “negatives” of the March. In the class, she essentially argued the MMM because of the patriarchy, etc. she could not support it and thus thought it held little value. By the time I landed in her class I was a senior at Morehouse and certainly had come to believe the MMM was one of the most transformative events I’d ever personally experienced and I refused to have the event mischaracterized.

I paraphrase, but I told her, “Yes, it does ask men to come back into the family, but it doesn’t always mean that have to be at the head. I know some talked about being at the head of the household, but not everyone believed that. We didn’t invite sisters because it was our time as Black men to redefine our commitment to the Black family and Black community.” I wanted to her to see the value of the event beyond her points. She let me finish and sagely replied, “It must be a nice privilege to tell someone to overlook the oppressive elements of a program, because it was helpful to you.” My face fell, my mouth shut, and I  sat sheepishly quiet. My head spun between realization, frustration, and confusion. For the next few classes, I sat quietly and tried to figure out how I had not “seen it coming.” I realized that the lesson I had learned on the athletic field so many times applied to social justice work, “sometimes you got to get the wind knocked out of you to bring you back to earth.”Guy-Sheftall had pointed out what I’d seen done so many times but by those who came from outside of a community to do social justice work in my community. Someone(s) coming from the outside, declaring themselves an ally and expert and overlooking the view of those who were subject to the oppression in favor of their own perspective.

The blind spots I exhibited in my conversation with Dr. Guy-Sheftall were not limited to the Million Man March and helped me to begin to grapple with other blind spots in areas of class, gender, race, sexuality, ability, and the list goes on. While I often stand with my brothers and sisters in justice struggles, I have to equally recognize when I’m standing in front of them rather than by their side of behind them. Unfortunately too few of us who are committed to social justice do this. Over the past few months I’ve had a number of conversations on my standpoint around social justice on twitter, but 140 characters of social media is too short to begin to do it justice (pun intended). About a year and half ago, I was speaking with a friend who identifies as a Black feminist and we were discussing Black feminism and the role of men. I told her I did not identify as a feminist for a number of reasons: first, I respected that many feminists had argued men could not be feminist because of our inability to completely overcome our gender privilege and stop our contribution to oppression. Second, many of the men that I’ve known who publicly identified as feminist behind closed doors used it to their advantage to carry out the same practices we critiqued as patriarchal and misogynist. Third, men who identify as feminist tended to treat it as an ascribed and static status, which meant that brothers often suggested because they could quote bell hooks or had participated in enough campaigns, circles, or conversations they had arrived at plateau, to which others must ascend. The third reason is the most crucial, we spend far too much time labeling our ideologies and activism and treating them as perfected statuses. In reality, a commitment to social justice work is constantly tested, re-evaluated, and iterative. Too often we stand on and assign labels (e.g. conscious, feminist, anti-racist, etc.) rather than doing the work that these labels imply and expanding these from labels to ideologies and actions which effectively expands their reach.

I tend to prefer to be known as an ally when working against oppression but still oppressing. To me, being an ally is about much more than advocacy on behalf of a group or interests that may not, on their face, appear to be your own. Being an ally is about a commitment to social justice grounded in an understanding of one’s self. To me, the most important element to allyhood is the ability requirement of reflexivity. First, we must interrogate our own privilege and power. Second, an ally must listen carefully to the conditions and needs of the group or individuals they are attempting to align with and define his or her work from there. Third, we must become comfortable with outsider status. It’s perfectly fine to not have full ownership of a struggle, in fact no one expects you to be a perfect proxy, but you are expected to hold your own. Fourth, we must be comfortable with being wrong and getting pushed to rethink our beliefs. Being committed to a thing does not mean you see all sides of it. We must be open to being challenged for the better. From this point, an ally can begin the work of advocating and more importantly supporting the efforts of others and themselves. If you believe in social justice work, you realize that being an ally to a cause that you don’t see “directly” affecting your life is still intimately tied to other interlocking forms of oppression. As bell hooks eloquently said:

“Feminism is not simple a struggle to end male chauvinism or a movement to ensure that women have equal rights with men; It is a commitment to eradicating the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels- sex, race, class, to name a few – and a commitment to reorganizing U.S. society so that the self- development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion and material desires.”

The reality is that the forms of oppression are related so working on them simultaneously is necessary. Of course there are issues that I have a greater commitment to, as do all of us, but through mutual support our power grows exponentially.There is no perfect formula for being an ally but those are things that I think of when engaging social justice work.

I’ve been trying to avoid writing this for some time now. As an alumnus of the institution, it’s hard for me to see you in such condition. Many of my fellow alumni complained of your disrepair and your besmirched image when they heard about students being beaten for their sexuality, shooters graduating, and cross-dressing, but I have bigger concerns. While all these things mattered to me, they did not disturb me because of what was being done to the image of our institution; they disturbed me because they demonstrated that Dear Old Morehouse was terribly unequipped to deal with the realities and lives that Black men in America live now. In fact, it is the Old Morehouse that is more dangerous to me than any student with a gun, sagged pants, or high heels would ever be. Let me explain.

When I visited Morehouse for the first time, it was about 1994, I remember seeing hanging banners and brochures that talked about the development of leaders, community servants, and caring connected brothers. The culmination of these developments was to be the Morehouse Man. I remember reading about the crown that Morehouse held up for its students so that one day they too would embody the Morehouse Mystique. I was sold. I was ready to be in that number. I was ready to be at the only institution of higher education dedicated fully to the education of men of African descent in the United States. But like most things, I soon found out all that glittered was not gold.

courtesy of nyleharris flckr stream

When I arrived, I remember hearing brothers commonly refer to the Morehouse Mistake, not Mystique. I remember seeing Samuel L. Jackson toted out as a shining alumnus, only to learn he was actually kicked out while he was there. I was there when I realized Morehouse students had no trouble admitting rape happened, but sadly refused to admit that Morehouse students could or would rape their Spelman sisters. I know, now I’m airing dirty laundry, in your eyes, but hear me out. Morehouse, if you are committed to Black men, then you’ve got to do better. You, no WE, have got to work to make better men for the 21^st century, not the 20^th. It often feels like each time I hear about your “new moves” and “plans” you’re becoming more committed to making a middle class Black man who would exist in the 1950s or 60s, not in 2009. From clothing to interviews, Dear Old Morehouse, there is much more happening with and to Black men than you’re equipped to handle.

See, in the past, Morehouse was about accepting and graduating the “cream of the crop” amongst the Black bourgeoisie and claiming the production of the Black intelligentsia. We all know, at least at the House, that Martin Luther King, Jr. — our most well known alumnus– came from a relatively well-to-do background and he wasn’t the most stunning student. But it would be on the red clay hills of Georgia that he got a deeper social, spiritual, and political education which would lead him to change the world. It is that image that you fed us and feed young brothers who come to the gates these days. You celebrate your role as one of the top feeders to graduate schools and Fortune 500 companies among institutions of higher education.  You highlight that our alumni are Rhodes Scholars, former surgeon generals and are changing the world around the globe, as many institutions do. The problem is, those men are the ones who made it, and it is likely that they still would have made it without Morehouse. Sometimes I think you point to exceptional success from the past in an effort to keep people from noticing what you are doing wrong or simply not doing it the present. So many who come to our campus, who desire to be better men, are not given what they need because you are asking them to trade themselves for your idea of success. Dear Old Morehouse, success does not look, sound, or feel the same for all.

I almost feel like you’re in denial; we can’t keep living a lie. I’ve got to tell you five things that you seem to deny too often. First, Affirmative Action did change you and who attended you. Affirmative Action allowed a number of the brothers who would have attended HBCUs in the past to attend traditional Ivys. We have to recognize that we don’t have the economic resources to compete with the Harvards, Yales or even smaller liberal arts schools. Many brothers get drawn to these schools because they have a financial safety net and set of offerings that make it difficult for them to sign on Morehouse’s dotted line. Second, the day of male breadwinner and unquestioned male leadership is done. While the sisters at Spelman were over there involved in the freedom struggle with us, they were also noticing we were often working on “liberation for half a race.” While we spend copious amounts of time sitting in orientations and Crown Forums that convince us that we’ve “made it” because so many brothers didn’t, we’re falsely inflating ourselves and using these bloated egos to plot the path towards a wayward progress. Third, style is one of hallmarks of Blackness. Spending time trying to reduce and refashion style is like harnessing youth, a noble thought but likely to leave you more embarrassed than successful. Hip-Hop culture is here to stay and reflects a lot of what we face as a people and what many in our community aspire to emulate. Hip-Hop culture is art and yes, art and life do imitate one another. Hip-Hop is, was, and shall be anti-establishment; the more you regulate it, the more it will battle you. Fourth, gay men are Morehouse Men and they should no longer be silent and covering. For too long, Morehouse treated gay and queer brothers like the Loch Ness monster, often talked about but never fully confirmed. News flash: being non-heterosexual is neither a psychological nor a social deviance. It’s reality! Fifth, Black boys are in crisis and you have to adapt to this crisis as well. With 50% of Black boys who begin high school in the inner-city not graduating with their classmates on time, you must realize your pool of applicants and admits is going to look different. These brothers mostly come with 4.0 potential, not 4.0 GPA’s. The question becomes, what can we do to move potential to reality?! What are the supports we’re putting in place for the brothers who beat the odds and make it to the House? I am honestly not sure if you are ignorant or simply ignoring, but either way, we’ve got to do better. I seriously think that if you start to deal with these five facts, you can move from being Dear Old Morehouse to a Dear New Morehouse.

Oh I can hear you now, “Brother, we are getting ‘new’!” Unfortunately your “new” is old. With each passing year, I swear you move a step backwards towards your former self… or at least an image that you believed yourself to be. From interviews to dress codes, you’re trying to create a brand of respectable middle class black males that went out with the last sputters of the Civil Rights Movement. Yes, alumni get excited when they hear, “we will no longer tolerate…” because we all have a narrative about how Morehouse was and how it has changed. Don’t be surprised if people co-sign on your reversal of the clock without seeing the bigger picture. They’ll support more assemblies, more Crown Forums, more rules, less braids, less sagging, less gays… oops, just kidding on the last one. I know that subject is touchy in our community. Have you forgotten, it was not what was outside that made the Morehouse Man it was what was inside? The most valuable lessons are those learned collectively through struggle, failure and success.  Not from imposition, dress codes, or dress policies. College is one of the few times that Black men may be able to explore fuller and truer selves and your hallowed halls are the ideal place to do so. Instead, you threaten to lock down and narrow those very halls. I want to hear that you’re developing new models of manhood, ones that are not patriarchal, ones that deal with the needs of Black men and boys who need healing, ones that let boys become the Men of their choosing and of their community’s wanting. Few of the rules that you are implementing are creating a healthier pathway for Black men, they’re simply polishing the same “broken” brothas and yet you wonder why it is not working.

Quite regularly now, I receive emails asking “What is Morehouse doing?” Some come in agreement, some come in disagreement, but the ones I value most are the those that come from a place of love for the development of all Black men. The individual policies that you have drawn up are just echoes of the world that Black males now create and inhabit. If Dear Old Morehouse is truly interested in living up to its missions and declarations, the ones that got me to attend, the ones that got me to link up and sing, the ones that got me to love my institution enough to critique its actions, then we’ve got to begin from a point of understanding and expansion, not from a point of rigidity and constriction. Unless we acknowledge that Dear Old Morehouse must become Dear New Morehouse to serve the whole of our community, we’ll be doing this sad dance every 8 months. I look forward to your response and hope WE can grow to meet that crown of which Howard Thurman so eloquently made us aware.

In humility and community,

Dr. R. L’Heureux Lewis

Ndugu Dumi Eyi di yiye

Class of 2000

We, the concerned, the tired, and the committed have a rare opportunity to join not just in frustration, but in production. This week, at the Think Tank for African American Progress’ meeting in Memphis, Tennessee entitled: “What is the future of Black Boys?” While the media, and by admission in many of our community, suggest there is little being done to combat the conditions that black male youth face, there is work, there is opportunity, and there is the need for your voice and energy.

The Think Tank for African American Progress is a young organization birthed from the Brothers of the Academy with a unique mission and method of operation. This meeting marks the 4th in a series of ongoing discussions and actions surrounding the conditions that African Americans face and create. The think tank uniquely does the work of on problems as well as solutions! When conditions are detrimental, the question is asked, “What can be done to create change?” When conditions are producing the results we desire the question is asked, “What can be done to replicate this success?” Another of its unique features is the structure and value of collaboration. All participants, whether a concerned community member or renowned scholar have input in the structure and solutions offered by the Think Tank. Under the model, differing experiences lead to differing expertises, which lead to the diverse collaborations. Our community is certainly in need of diverse solutions to common challenges.

While not everyone will be able to make it to Memphis this week, there is much that can be gained and contributed to this ongoing work. Soon after the meeting, presentations and documents that emerge from the meeting will be made available via the Think Tank’s website. While so much time is spent on concentrating on what is “going wrong” with our community, Black males in particular, this is a unique opportunity to move from a discussion of Black men as endangered and disconnected to a conversation where care, concern and community lie at the center. On this 14th annivesary of the Million Man March, let’s put in the work to move the condition of Black boys from crisis and construct a new future for Black boys and more healthy Black community overall.

1) “I’m for gay rights but … you can’t compare being Black to being gay.”

I feel you, I understand that being Black is different than being gay, but did you realize even in that statement you’re implying that we don’t have Black gay folk? No really, this is the part of the conversation where you keep on throwing out “they” which you might as well then say “those people.” I know you don’t like me bringing that up, because for so long and so often within the dominant White culture of America Black folks are referred to as “they”, “those people” and even recently “that one.” It’s really a process of othering, trying to make a distinction of who is “in” and should receive privileges and who is “out” (pun intended).

2) No, you’re not getting it, I didn’t choose to be Black and I can’t hide being Black.

Touche, you’re probably don’t remember when you chose to be Black, if you ever did. In fact, since we’re talking – heterosexual to heterosexual, I don’t remember when I choose to be straight, but that’s besides the point. The point is that being “Black” and being “gay”, as we sociologists say are both “socially constructed”. Yeah, fancy academic words but definitely important. By socially constructed I mean that we create the boundaries and meanings for these categories. There is a great film that breaks this down and books, but let’s be real, you ain’t gonna pick up a book or watch a movie in the middle of this blog post, so let me do what I can to break it down now. While we’ve come to think of meaning of Blackness as something that can’t be changed, avoided, and pretty much is like gravity, we’ve forgotten that was created. In fact, the dominant images and tropes of “What is Black”, weren’t even our creation. Think about it, how many people who identify as Black, would say “my skin is actually the color of Black.” Very few, in fact, we respond by saying things like “I’m brown, caramel, dark chocolate, etc.” all descriptors that side-step an imposed moniker. Also have we forgotten that for so many years, the oppression of being Black and not having access to rights made many of our ancestors pass? Yeah, that’s right, not all of us are “definitively Black” and certainly what it means to be Black has carried consequences.

3) That’s my point, almost exactly, you can tell when someone is Black usually, but you never know if they’re gay! Well unless they’re really flamboyant or something.

Ah, I get it, if you are gay you don’t have to “look or act gay” and if you don’t act gay, you’ll be fine in society. Yeah, that’s called passing … well actually more appropriately covering. See, as a Black folks, I really hope we think deeply about oppression and how oppressive it must be to not be able to show your love for someone else. If I walk outside and decide to kiss a strange woman in the middle of the street I won’t get many strange glares (other than folks saying “Dumi’s a wild cat”) but if I love someone of the same gender and walk arm-in-arm with them down the street I’m likely to get screw faces down the block. As a result, we, heterosexual folks often say stuff like, “I don’t care what you do behind closed doors but I don’t want to see it.” Interesting… we live in a society were the physical expression of romantic love between people is common, but almost completely forbidden for certain groups. In order to be one’s self we ask people not to express themselves and “pass” or “cover” for straight. That doesn’t sound very equal or liberated to me. Can you imagine a community where love was the norm and hate was not what we used to regulate others behaviors? (that’s rhetorical)

4) Okay, I get that, but doesn’t it piss you off when they use the Civil Rights Movement for their movement?

Once again, what’s up with the us and them type of thinking. Gay Black folks have been around for a long time, to act as if they are not us is to deny part of ourselves. In fact, the most prominent voice and architect of the Civil Rights Movement was Martin Luther King Jr. His work centered on non-violence which he derived from Gandhi but he learned from Bayard Rustin who was a queer Black man. Gay, Lesbian, Bi and Queer Black folks have been at the center of our movement for rights as well as our cultural and social uplift, why try to write them out of history now? Or rather why not acknowledge the central role they’ve played in the collective Black struggle which should include lgbtq brothers and sisters? We can only say gay folks are piggy-backing on the civil rights movement if we don’t acknowledge the contribution of gay folks to the movement. Now has the equal rights movement around sexuality taken on some tropes that came along during the Civil Rights movement, absolutely! But all subsequent movements do that, in fact, a marker of a successful social movement is an adoption of some its techniques. But let’s not forget what the Civil Rights Movement was about! It was fighting to make the 14th and 15th amendments real!!! Those amendments legally gave Black folks equal civil rights but when we looked at how Black people were treated and what they could do, it is seen that it’s unequal. I think we can take a similar look at the Gay Rights movement which is simply fighting for the same rights that heterosexuals have, be it marriage, adequate healthcare, or to live freely in society.

5) I hear what you’re saying but God made “Adam and Eve” not “Adam and Steve”! We’re a Christian country and marriage is a bond before God between man and woman.

Ah, you got me with that one, I didn’t realize a rhyme could break down an entire situation. Oh wait, no it can’t. There is an entrenched myth in this country that marriage is exclusively a religious, often insinuated Christian, practice that the government sanctions. Not true at all, anthropologists have long observed and discussed marriage as beyond Christian and beyond the sanctioning of the state. It is true here that many associate the two, but that does not seem logical that it must also be seen as such. First, the mythos of the United States as  Chrisitian nation is based on ignoring that colonies were founded out of the fleeing of religious oppression. How ironic is it that religion would then become the basis for oppression in 2009 and 1619 when non-Christian Africans arrived in captivity and quickly were proclaimed subhuman and savage. If you are going to invoke the credo of a nation, then I’d suggest you invoke the ones of equality and diversity, which means you are welcome to have your beliefs but your beliefs should not be the basis for impinging on other’s rights.

Now I know by this point you likely still don’t agree with me, but I do want you to see there is validity to a discussion about gay rights and the civil rights or more importantly gay rights as civil and human rights! I do want you to see that all to often we neglect and relegate a part of our people to inhumane and unjustified treatments through our active and passive condoning of covering. I do want us all to think about what MLK meant when he said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” I do want us to really grapple with the fact that if Huey Newton in the 1970s could see the connection, we should be able to see it in 2009. I wrote this because I worry about a people’s ability to turn a blind eye to injustice in a world and nation that often has suggested the unjust is just the way it should be. For a people who have fought for existence and rights, it should only be natural to continue that fight with our brothers and sisters.

***this piece is designed to be a primer and conversation starter. there are many more things to say, but wanted to get the ball rolling and get some basic ideas out there***

In a strange way, Kanye represents the dreams of many from the suburban and urban fringe who grew up listening to Hip-Hop but never spent a night in the South Bronx or stepped over crack viles on their daily path to the schoolhouse. Instead, West flaunts his emergent middle class style, penchant for the preppy, and his difference as a positive identity in a hyper-masculine performatively hood-centric rap industry. Whether it’s a glow in the dark or a shag, he uses his late bloomer status to demand all the attention that he thinks he deserves, but was not afforded earlier in his life. Whether he’s talking about his hard times when he moved North when he had to put his Ikea bed together “by himself” or repudiation of formal education/reading, his arrogance publicly displays the markings at a child who had enough, but not all he wanted. Now Kanye is out to have it all and on his own terms. Kanye’s roots capture the new Black middle class, his late mother Donda West, held a PhD and was a college professor and his father, who was non-custodial, is a photojournalist. I’m always amused and repulsed at watching West’s antics, much like watching teen angst … kind of with “contempt and pity”. West insists that he and comrades are being overlooked and rendered invisible within the music world, despite their contributions. Never mind that Kanye and his imagined damsel in distress Beyonce, are hyper-visible. His outbursts and conversations about his class, race, and sexuality could be pulled straight from a Beverly Tatum book. For so long, the Black middle class has been at the margins of our discourse of Blackness and America at large, Kanye wants to set the record straight (pun intended) though in classic fashion,  he’ll start with making himself known.

After his outburst, West apologized via his blog (mind you in all capitals, which was later revised) which resulted in so many hits his site was temporarily shut down. The blog, a arguably middle class tech tool, allowed him to reach out to his fans and foes who wanted to know what the outspoken artist had to say about his outspokenness. The blog, when not home to apologies, is the locale of conspicuous consumption and the flaunting of extravagant cars, shoes, design projects and other aesthetic porn. The blog itself has a huge following because we too understand West’s concern for the material and the exclusive but dually want some form of legitimacy among the larger Black population. Whether blogging, publicly guzzling Hennessey or battling paparazzi Kanye represents what many feel and desire, but simple don’t enact. His brash mockery of the traditional education route, which is a luxury of having highly educated parents, allows us “college kids” to get out of out angst of following the straight and narrow. His outbursts about his greatness, which are laden with overtones of self-doubt, remind us that we too are something special even if we aren’t the rose that grew from concrete. Kanye West is not a person, he is a verb and a metaphor for the lives of the clamoring Black middle class. I feel like the day that we’re ready to deal with our own issues around race, class, and identity will be the same day we’re ready to tell Kanye “ENOUGH!” and mean it. Until then, I’ll expect more tweets, more album sales, and more tragic outbursts that result from a life of living betwixt and between the color and class lines.

I remember getting fliers for Black August each year and thinking “this is the dopest line up” and remember standing in long lines waiting to see my favorite artists rock. While I can remember the performances to this day, the other thing that stuck me was the emphasis on political prisoners and global hip-hop. The project brought some of the greatest voices, both “conscious” and “non-conscious”, together to raise money and awareness with the goal of movement building. It was this project of MXGM that introduced me to a cadre of young activists who thought like me, cared like me, and most importantly got down like me. This coming Sunday August 30th in NYC at BB Kings The Black August Hip Hop Project will have its annual fundraiser for political prisoners and facilitating international Hip-Hop movement building. What is better than coming out and hearing great music, sweating it out on the dance floor (or standing with an ice grill, that’s on you!), and continuing the work of liberation?

Click here to buy your advanced tickets!!

One of the things that is always a dilemma with dope movements is the documentation of said movement, well Dream Hampton and a number of folks have been working on capturing the Black August Hip Hop Project in a documentary entitled Let’s Get Free: The Black August Hip Hop Project. A trailer for the project can be seen here (embedding is disabled but it’s well worth the click).

To me, asking if Hip-Hop is political is about as useful as asking, “why is the sky blue?/ why is water is wet?” (what you know about that?), it’s self-evident. The better question is what are you doing with your politics since you are Hip-Hop?

For me, Black August represents a time when Black folks can think deeply about our communities’ unsung heroes. Not too long ago I wrote about Black leaders and liberation and that post came in part because I feel that people of African descent in America are given too little information on folks born and bred in our neighborhoods and instead look solely outside of our communities for revolutionary guidance. While I find nothing wrong with reading the work and teaching of great revolutionaries across the globe (as our greatest have also done), there is value in knowing deeply that your people have been instrumental to revolutionary thought as others have. Years ago, I wrote a piece or spoke somewhere on Africans and revolution to which someone wrote me and basically said, “If Black people are so great, why do they not have their own theories? Why do they always have to steal from Europeans, Latinos, and Asians?” The question caught me off guard, but upon deeper reflection, I remembered our people didn’t simply parrot the theories of others but added nuance, complexity and even diverged from previous revolutionary thinkers. This is missed if you don’t study the works of folks Marcus Garvey, Assata Shakur, George Jackson, Fred Hampton, Elaine Brown, Angela Davis, to name but a few. The reality is all too often we skim these giants and miss the depth with which they each grappled with struggle. In fact, their grappling with struggle in theoretical and practical terms make them beautifully human and provide opportunities and openings for us to improve on this struggle. I have been taking the month to re-familiarize myself with Assata Shakur, George Jackson and Elaine Brown because I want to make sure we do not recreate the same egregious errors around gender and sexuality in our continuation of the Black freedom struggle.

I recognize that not all of us will take the remainder of the month to dig into texts and speeches, but there are still important ways to make Black August meaningful. One of the greatest contributions in the last 40 years to Black struggle and liberation has been the movement against the prison industrial complex. As Jackson wrote about those incarcerated,

“They have become aware that their only hope lies in resistance. They have learned that resistance is actually possible. The holds are beginning to slip away. Very few men imprisoned for economic crimes or even crimes of passion against the oppressor feel that they are really guilty. Most of today’s black convicts have come to understand that they are they most abused victims of an unrighteous order.”

You don’t have to be one outside protesting prison and fighting for prisoners rights to continue to contribute to the struggle of Black liberation. A smaller yet important step could be to reach out to someone behind bars with a kind or inspirational word. All too often I think the value of communication is forgotten. There are many locked up brothers and sisters who could use a word of support and love, it takes a few minutes, but can brighten a month. Whichever way you spend your Black August may it be in the spirit of our ancestors and fighting with love for the future of Black folks.

Courtesy of failblog.org

Sign on Harlem's Atlah Ministries

I was recently explaining the position of birthers to a sister of mine and she said, “oh well, that’s logical.” I stopped, looked back at her and said, “it’s logical if you don’t do any research on the issue.” I realized the birther flames continue to be fanned by the power of bad information and a backdrop of doubt rooted in racial paranoia. This backdrop of racial paranoia has been at the center of discussions of the birther movement as a ‘panic peddling’ scheme which draws from racial xenophobia. While I find this accurate, I think it is understated and gets framed as simply conservative Whites who are birthers, I concede they’re the most active, but they’re not alone. I argue racism is a system, to which all of us are subject, and thus the reality is that questions of Obama’s legitimacy remain just beneath the level of conscience for many folks, including Black folks. In a way, I’ve been subject to this in “waiting for the other shoe to drop” and find out via a scandal that something is invalid about Obama who has has been elevated to prototype status within and outside of our community. While its easy to see how conservative White birthers would be coming from a position of doubt for Obama as the “other” and have a fear of a Black President, similar roots exist for people of color. I think Black birthers or non-challengers to birthers are rooted in our own doubts of legitimacy which result from living in a white supremacist racial order. While this doubt beneath the level of conscience did not stop folks from voting for Obama, in the face of questioning or challenge, the willingness to “go  to bat” for Obama or dig deeper for information becomes truncated. While I could say that this is just an isolated incident of “crazy folks” and we know not to deal with crazy (you know what they say about arguing with fools), I think it signals something deeper about information seeking, racism, and technology.

Throughout the election and at other times I’ve been dismayed by the way bad information gets passed along the internet like colds. You know, things like Black folks are due to lose our right to vote, or that the US Post office is destroying Black History stamps, the list goes on and on.  While most of us grew up throwing out chain letter that were mailed to the house, it appears when we get “chain emails” with tidbits of information we often pass them along as if they’re all important PSAs. My sister tends to call these emails “Drinking water will rape your baby” emails because they often have some seriously outlandish claims, but the outlandish claims stand in part due to our own lack of information seeking and willingness to challenge. When it comes to incidents of Black folks, Obama, Muslims, and other minority communities, I sadly see more misinformation passed along and remain unchallenged. The consequence to false perceptions of these communities is particularly dangerous given the segregation, prejudice, and paranoia of non-Whites in many parts of the US. To me, it is ironic and scary that the more access we have to information via the internet, the less we use this access to properly interrogate claims and be prepared for informed dissent. While I hope the birthers will soon die out, I wonder what will be next in the web of bad information, technology, and race … and more importantly, what we’re willing to do to stop its spread.

Now this is not going to be a “complain and blame” post, instead, I’d like to offer some humble suggestions (or as humble as one can be if they’re writing on a blog which is kinda an egotistical thing to start with, but ya’ll know what I’m saying). It is critical that we begin to talk about race in ways that expose the subtle fabric of inequality. While it’s easy to explain why Skip Gates’ harassment and subsequent arrest were wrong and wrongheaded, it’s more difficult to explain how policies leave many innocent men and women sitting in jail or on death row due to false accusations and procedural bureaucracy. It’s easy to point on the wrongness of exclusion from the Valley Swim club but it’s more difficult to explain why suburban schools are almost as and sometimes more unequal than urban schools, in part due to their exclusion of Blacks from equal educational resources. It’s easy to suggest that race matters when Sotomayor is berated in her confirmation hearings, but it is more difficult to explain the significance of critical race theory to understanding and interpreting the law. As scholars, as activists, and as citizens we’ve give up the project of relaying the complex conditions to the masses who need to be reminded not that race still matters, but the various ways that it still matters and what role all can play in racial justice.

I think it is wholly possible to take the flash point moments and deepen dialogue, but its rare that it happens. Instead, we recycle old dialogues on race and its significance when more complex racism(s) exist. The reality is that we’ve got to get equally complex in our discussions of the intersections of race, class, gender and sexuality (to name a few). If we are serious about “justice for all” we must update our discourse and activism. Because as Brother Malcolm said, “The White power structure is just as much interested in maintaining slavery as it was 100 years ago. Only now they use modern methods of doing so.” Let’s expose the modern methods as well as the old!

*footnote if you’ve never seen the dialogue between Malcolm X, Wyatt Tee Walker James Farmer, and Alan Morrison do yourself a favor and watch it!

**Shout out to Native Notes for being on the same page with that quote!

One key comparison to be made between autotune and “Acting White” is that both are brilliant inventions/ concepts that have emerged from sparse use in the past to become very popular in contemporary discourse. They have both brought their re-inventors much acclaim and have been so widely accepted that they have made people who use them untouchable icons in their respective fields. They have also done wonders for the artistic and academic careers of many people who “hop on the bandwagon” of each of them. In addition, they both create a solution for a problem (one with not having a good singing voice, and another with not having a justifiable cause of low achievement) that sound so close to perfect, that one may think that there was never a problem at all. A gruff voiced rapper can easily become a smooth crooner with autotune. Likewise, a child in an urban school can easily be justified for not being successful because he “doesn’t want to act white.”

Continue Reading (well you’ll be starting at the top but click anyway)

Sidenote: if you’d like to know more about the strange career the “fear of acting white” theory check out Signithia Fordham’s 2008 piece in the Anthropology and Education Quarterly (Vol 39) and “Beyond Acting White” by Erin McNamara Horvat and Carla O’Connor

Update: The event looks to be sold out. There is an overflow room that will accommodate maybe 50 people. If you can’t make it, the event is supposed to be broadcast on WBAI which you can stream from here.

I remember watching Michael Jackson’s skin tone lighten and nose narrow before my very eyes. As I came of age and was told, “The only two things you have to do are be Black and die” I watched MJ challenge on of those conditions … or did he? While many will point to Jackson as the prototypical case of self-hate and embodiment of lack of self awareness, I think Michael was painfully aware of who he was and made that message a continued part of his life’s work. Jackson was unequivocally a child of the Civil Rights movement and a humanist in his approach towards issues of inequality. While folks over look it, he was very much concerned with inequality and saw his stardom as a platform to infuse the political in the popular.

From his humanitarian work on “We are the World” to this treatise on personal and social responsibility “Man in the Mirror” Michael had a subtle way of asking his listeners to draw on commonality to increase human treatment and dignity. While I appreciate MJ’s public project now, I definitely appreciated it much less so in my younger days. When he released Black or White in 1991. While I thought the song was banging, I was becoming more politicized and felt that it did matter whether you were Black or White. The video presented race morphing which made many think about the commonality of humanity, but I saw it as an embracing of a post-racial worldview. This however was never the case for Michael. In my read of his work he desired that race would not carry meaning, but acknowledged it still did.

In his early and mid-career years, MJ remained publicly connected the Civil Rights establishment via his relationship with Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. As a child of civil rights he advocated for a multicultural egalitarian world. In his later years, he developed a burgeoning relationship to Islam via his brother Jermaine Jackson and the Nation of Islam via legal support and management. I remember attending the Millions More March rumors floating that Michael was going to come out, perform and publicly announce his reversion to Islam, but this public day never came. MJ’s affiliations to Islam and the NOI undoubtedly lead to a more explicit racial lens which he later used to “call out” Tommy Mottola president of Sony. People wrote off his public outcry as a link in the media weaved “chain of insanity” and Jackson suddenly moved from “humanist” to “race baitor” in the public imagination. Unfortunately, Jackson’s career was already at a low point and his allegations were not taken seriously, but I’ve always wondered what would have happened if the world took MJ’s cry of unfair treatment seriously? What if the King of Pop was able to raise questions of equity within the industry that resulted in different representation, power, and access? Did his invocation of racial injustice invalidate him in the eyes of many who hung on his humanist messages of equality for all?

No matter whether old Michael or young Michael, he should also be remembered for his project of highlighting and challenging inequality of all forms. Even though to many he was considered “racially transcendent” he did not buy into this image. Instead, he used his popularity as platform to the political. Jackson was an amazing artist but his subtle genius around infusing a brand of social justice into his music should also not be forgotten. The media bonanza behind Jackson will soon die down, but I hope his legacy of social justice will not.

A couple of months ago, I got a chance to see Reverend Jeremiah Wright who became infamous during the 2008 presidential campaign. Wright is the Pastor emeritus of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and a long time fixture in Black Chicago. Obama’s candidacy brought large amounts of attention to Trinity and Wright’s leadership while he was pastor. Despite the copious attempts to destroy Obama via Wright, Barack Obama was able to be elected, but Wright and many other contemporary Black leaders were thrown to the sidelines and even under the bus.

The lecture I attended by Wright was on a Saturday and was for multiple Brooklyn congregations. The subject was the African influence on “mainline Western religion.” Wright beautifully presented the significance and relevance of African culture not just historically but contemporarily. Bouncing between topics and disciplines, he really demonstrated his ability to see the struggle of Black people and the struggles of Bible as analogous if not synonmous. While this has been a long standing tradition of Black religion, he did this while highlighting the small and large ways that people of the African Diaspora sometimes run away from our culture in an attempt to assimilate into some Western ideal of culture and religious practice. His commitment to challenging “Western logic” and individual-centered philosophy with more African-oriented epsitomologies was inspiring. Watching Wright speak, I could not help but think of the energy, vitality and truth that Black leaders exhibit when they are free on confines.

We remain in a moment where people are beginning to realize that the election of Barack Obama does not mean a Black political agenda, one in which race is central, will continue to be pushed into the public sphere. So the question becomes, who advances the concerns of the faces at the bottom of the well? Most of the aforementioned leaders held little allegiance to mainstream insitutions and thus took serious the task of “bringing voice to the voiceless.” While this often left them at odds with groups, media conglomerates and activists, in reality, it may be what we need now more than ever before. While Black leaders not being attached to traditional institutions holds its harzards, it also further opens up dialogues in the black public sphere. The challenge of Black radical leaders is to go head up with “liberal” and “conservative” figures, but still remain true to a project of representing the interests of Black people, not simply their own interests. The double edged sword can often be the downfall of leaders, but its the thing that makes me most hopeful that a Black political agenda will continue to exist in the era of  Black president.

Up first, a really thought provoking analysis of Top Chef and the racial divide provided by Tamara Nopper of Temple. I love watching Reality TV, not just because I like to melt my mind, but also because there are so many raced and classed things occurring. This post marries sociology and bravo tv… I’m in heaven.

I love the show Top Chef. I watch it religiously and regularly chat about it with fellow fan and friend Kevin Eddington. Although more of a foodie than me—he actually knows what sous vide means—we share concerns about the show’s racial dynamics, some of which I want to discuss here. Specifically, I want to explore how Asian Americans and African Americans are represented on Top Chef and in the process, draw from approaches emphasizing the Black/non-Black divide.

Asian Americans are present as contestants, chefs, judges, and of course, hosts, and Hung Huynh won the title on season three. Yet Asian Americans face particular racial expectations: they’re encouraged to talk about their ethnicities or immigration histories, badmouthed for cooking too many Asian-influenced dishes, or expected to cook Asian food regardless of training. For example, Huynh was told that despite his skill and “technique,” his food lacked “soul.”

White head judge Tom Colicchio, reminding Huynh of Huynh’s Vietnamese background, said he didn’t “see” him in his food. Such comments reinforce the model minority myth, which celebrates “Asian” work ethic and mechanical productivity while denying us unconditional subjectivity, sociability, and authority automatically afforded whites.

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This past week, in my opinion, President Obama gave a really amazing speech at the University of Cairo. But more than just words are needed. Here is a very in depth and insightful post by Number 2 written before and after the speech from There is No Spoon. By the way, that blog is so dope that it’s banned in China … not to mention it’s one of my other blog homes, so bookmark it!!!!

This is a general problem with most US foreign policy types. They are interested in improving America’s image, without addressing the reasons that image has slipped with a less-than-acceptable level of honesty. They also are either completely ignorant, or disingenuous, about the Muslim world. I’ve spent time in some of these countries, and let me tell you, they know their politics. I’m not talking about the rich, well-to-do, professional class. I’m talking about the peasants, the street vendors, the cab drivers…the “people”, if you will. Unlike mainstream America, which knows less about history and current politics than it does about the previous round of American Idol (something I largely attribute to a poor education system and a press that I at times consider somewhere between Pravda and Hearst’s New York Journal), Muslims are much more aware of politics, even if they throw some conspiracies into the picture.

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Lastly, the death of David Carradine got some media attention but one thing that I expected to see, but didn’t hear much of was a commentary like this. Racialicious publishes a controversial analysis entitled, “David Carradine’s Legacy of Shame” by Atlasien, here’s a taste:

He was a famous and much-loved actor. Tributes to Carradine are pouring in. In discussion threads devoted to Carradine, you’ll find many nostalgic accounts of childhood evenings spent watching his TV show, Kung Fu.

Some Asian-Americans, such as myself, may find these tributes quite upsetting.

I remind myself that David Carradine was an actor. He was doing a job for money. It’s difficult to draw a work/life dividing line when it comes to celebrity actors, but the line does exist. And I cannot presume to judge the moral worth of David Carradine’s life. He was a human being whose life is just as worthy of respect, just as precious, as the life of any other human being.

But I can judge his career. Fuck David Carradine’s godawful racist career!

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Alright, you all should be full off of that. Leave some thoughts… and not just over on facebook, on the original blog post too… don’t worry you can use your facebook login :)

The segment opens trying to draw viewers in by introducing the silent danger in suburbs … gangs!

“We have an interesting story for you. Many of us believe that gang violence is old news, you know about it, it’s in the inner cities, it’s about drugs. That’s not true, that’s not accurate, there’s a whole world of violence out there that puts kids in suburbs at risk. We want to tell you of this one mother in Maryland who did everything she could to protect her child from bullies, turned out they were gang members. And just a block from their home her son met a fate that even his mother had never imagined …”

Voice overs to the story give you information like townhouses in the area cost “350,000 dollars” and that Chris was an  “all American boy” who loved things like baseball, hockey, and wanted to be a police officer. The way the story is framed and unpacks it is meant to scream whiteness, suburban safety, and crisis. Chris’ death is discussed and eventually the “suspects” are splashed across the screen, they are Black youth. While the story doesn’t discuss it, the boys alleged in the attack attended the same school and presumably lived in the same community as Chris. The reality is that suburban Crofton, Maryland is like many areas, it is not all White and likely has not dealt well with the incorporation of non-Whites (in this case Black) into its community. While suburbia is painted as perfect, the reality is that suburbs are engineered spaces that have been used to “escape” some urban hazards and buffer their residents from the social world around them. Regardless of Crofton’s public image and its besmirchment, I am most disturbed that the reporting of Chris Jones’ murder serves exacerbate racial tensions; rather than open for spaces of dialogue.

A couple months back, the Atlantic published an article entitled “American Murder Mystery” about Memphis, Tennessee that discussed the issue of crime. The piece, which features the research of Richard Janikowski and Phyllis Betts who “crack” the mystery of American murder by uncomfortably suggesting residents who relocated from public housing to scattered site and mixed-income housing travelled to new areas and carried their “old ways” of violence and gangs. Recently, I sat in a GIS mapping workshop where approximately 1/3 of the participants were law enforcement agents from suburban areas who were interested in using mapping to find “crime hot spots” so they could more “effectively” patrol neighborhoods and groups. It reminded me of the sad reality that a little bit of social science knowledge can be a dangerous thing, particularly for those who are unjustly and unnecessarily targeted.

The overtone in GMA piece and the Atlantic piece suggest that neighborhoods that are “well off” will soon be over-run by dark violent, inner-city forces. Rather than open a dialogue about communities and responsibly dealing with difference, they feed into racial paranoia. Rather than explore the ways that policy can mitigate some of the tensions between communities, we receive more fodder for race conflict carried out using non-racial language but overt racial signals. Rather than look seriously at the lives of all people in suburban communities, both Black and White, right and poor, we get conviction on young Black boys in the public eye. Don’t believe me, read the comments on the piece.

I am no journalist, but I think I that the implications of pieces like these are huge. America is arguably more on “racial alert” now than it has been in the past. The arrival of an African American president has not been without impact in both positive and negative ways. We need to be informed about what is happening in the nation, but we also must be critical consumers. Having lived through the Central Park Five case and recognizing the railroading that young Black men have historically received in the American Judicial system, I cannot help but wonder, what was the goal of the piece: information or inflammation?

Over the past few days, I’ve seen some rather public discussions of the possible (what could happen) and the probable (what will likely happen). There are 2 recent occurrences that made me write this: 1) the Cassie nude photo(s) leak and 2) the Brooks Op-Ed on the Promise Academy. Well, given the folks who read my blog, I’m pretty sure you’ll be expecting a deep discussion of the Promise Academy and schooling, but for now you’ll have to sit through my discussion of Cassie :)  (Promise Academy discussion and high poverty schooling discussion coming in The Possible and the Probable Part Two).

When the pictures of Cassie were “leaked” onto the internet and she offered a public response via twitter and her blog de-emphasizing them. Many on the internet and radio began to chorus like Jay-Z and say, “We don’t believe you, you need more people.” Behind this incredulous response to Cassie was another discussion that I heard stated squarely by Phonte from Little Brother (while Phonte said it, I know a number of brothas have expressed the same sentiment to me many times over). Phonte tweeted, “So next time you hear someone talk about how unfair the industry is for women, look em in the eyes and say THE DEVIL IS A MUTHAFUCKIN LIAR.” He continued on to tweet, “Female singers play the ho role because they want to, not cause they HAVE to. Minnie Riperton aint neva had 2 show a titty for me 2 buy a CD” and “Neither has Chrisette Michele for that matter (for all you “BUT MINNIE’S HEYDAY WAS 30 YEARS AGO” ass niggas).”

So the argument goes, that women “in the industry” don’t have to  “ho themselves out” they make a choice to do it. Now I want to distinguish between a sistah engaging her sexuality on her own terms (or as much of her own terms are possible) and an A&R or label engineering her image to something hyper sexualized and fetishized. The line can be thin, but 9 time out of 10, the industry (in this case music) actively pushes women into the latter.

I know, many are saying, “But wait, they have a choice! It’s not the industry, it’s them.” Duly noted, but all choices are subject to available options.  Phonte points out Minnie Riperton and Chrisette Michelle, whom I both love, are successful (well relatively successful) and that they made it or are making in the industry without exposing themselves. While this is true, the reality is that they are the exception to the rules or norms of the music industry. If you are participating in the mainstream music industry companies want units moved and profits more than they desire “quality” music. As a result, creativity is compromised, images are engineered, and people are shoved into niches for marketing purposes. You can easily see the same tired archetypes and tropes being repeated in Hip-Hop, R&B, and in most genres of music. The idea is “people buy what they know” and essentially if they know these hyper feminine and hyper masculine images, profits will be made so they keep feeding and forcing people into those categories to “make it” in the music industry.

But what about the exceptions? What about the folks who are themselves? The ones who don’t buy-in or sell-out? You know, Minnie Riperton, Chrisette Michelle, Erykah Badu, etc. Yes, there are always exceptions but those exceptions do little to disprove the rule. Remember for every Riperton, Michelle or Badu there are hundreds of women who equally have fought of these hyper-stereotyped images and go double wood (the opposite of double platinum).  Pointing to the exception does not negate the rule. Throughout history of Black America we could point to the exception or  “exceptional negro” and say their advancement indicated the openness of opportunity, but that would be short-sighted.

As others have said, it’s like saying, “Madame CJ Walker was a millionaire in the early 1900s. Which shows Black women can make it in business if they work hard and have their stuff together.” Yes, a Black woman was a millionaire then, but that can tell us little about the lives and experiences that most Black women had. In fact, I doubt that most Black women in the 1900s didn’t have drive, perseverance, and all the other things attributed to Walker as exceptional qualities. Ultimately Walker’s achievements didn’t mean that most Black women wouldn’t be circumscribed to domestic labor where they would accrue pennies in comparision to her millions. It’s like pointing to Barack Obama and saying, “See the Black man can make it out of poverty in America to be President of the United States of America.” Yes, Barack Obama is a phenomenal example and case, but highlighting his life ignores the fact that 50% of Black men in New York City are unemployed. If you keep pointing to the possible, then you will miss the probable and the reality is that most of us live in the probable and are seeking the possible, not the other way around.

Our community is much like a rose garden with millions of roses. When people ask about our garden we pick the most beautiful rose from the healthiest bush and we show it to everyone. We highlight that rose as indicative of our gardening ability and smile to collect accolades. But the sad reality is that the prize rose is only so beautiful because there were so many that grew with it, but did not make it.

We concentrate on the exceptional because it can be too hard acknowledge the probable and the majority of roses that aren’t award winning, aren’t beautiful, and are subject to the harsh conditions of the world. We must be cautious in pointing to the possible and mistaking it for the probable. In the past, many from outside our community did that and we served as a corrective to this faulty logic, today, I hear all too many within our community endorse this same fallacy.

There is an ongoing outcry about the Princess not being Black and the Prince, who is named Naveen, being voiced by a Brazilian actor Bruno Campos and being olive complexioned. This has raised a number of questions/issues for Disney to deal with. To many, this is one more signal that Disney is not invested in portraying Black people positively or even worse an attempt to devalue the Black family. While these things are plausible, I wonder most how the decision to name the Prince and draw the Prince came along. I know that the movie has been mired in controversy and some of that controversy/buzz lead the filmmakers to change the Princess’ name from Maddy to Tiana. I wonder if this was intentionally kept beneath the radar or by happenstance, probably the former.

But I’m also interested in asking the public some questions. If the Prince was named Prince Carlos and was voiced by the same actor, would it be so controversial? Or even more so, if he was a bit darker was “noticably” Afro-Brazilian in appearance would it still be considered interracial or controversial?  I imagine so, but that is probably because of how narrowly we define ethnicity within the African Diaspora. With racial and ethnic identity being such a complex subject in Brazil, the questions of who is seen as Black, who identifies as Black, and who is identified as non-Black are oh so critical. Paired with US based definitions of Blackness, that commonly derive into meaning African-American, the pairing would likely raise more than a few eyebrows … but maybe not as many. What if Tiana was noticably lighter-skinned or “Creole”? What if this Prince and Princess controversy was a chance to open conversations within the Diaspora about boundaries and racial meaning … now that sounds like a fairy tale to me!

b.t.w. – I’m really not feeling the lightening bug Ray voiced by Jim Cummings…

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So you know you’re getting old when folks tell you that the “future” is coming and when you look to see what they’re talking about you don’t get excited. That’s been my feeling for the past couple of months when people ad nauseam tell me about Wale, Drake, Charles Hamilton, and the list goes on. People keep telling me they’re the future of Hip-Hop. Unfortunately, I just don’t feel these cats … maybe they’ll grow or someone will tell me why I shouldn’t clown someone who is on the Canadian Saved By the Bell/21 Jump Street. When did doing hooks become the marker of Hip-Hop to come? I just feel like this is middle classification of Hip-Hop, alright enough of my old man ranting. But there is some good in this new “class”, I have to give props where they are due … I messes with Kid Cudi.

Normally I really don’t listen to cats who complain before they blow, but Kid Cudi is getting a pass. The above video for Day and Night, which way hotter than the official video got me hooked a while back(hattip to QaidJ). His work on 808s and the Death of Adam made me think this kid could really make a nice addition to the rotation. Earlier this week, I got forwarded I Poke Her Face by Kudi which features Kanye West and Common. Thankfully Common resurrects on this track, if you recall I think he attempted to kill his career by releasing Universal Mind Control.

I Poke Her Face

I’m not sure if any of the aforementioned cats are the future of Hip-Hop but just had to get that off my chest.

Sexual assault remains one of the most taboo and silenced experiences globally and particularly in the Black community. Through SOARS, A Long Walk Home is not only raising awareness but also creating spaces for solutions and healing. The final portion of the 2 hour production is a “speak out” (in the tradition of Take Back the Night) where audience members can ask questions of the cast and speak out about their experiences. At first, questions were sparse and audience members sat quietly waiting for someone to break the silence, then finally it was broken. From the audience came a flood of experiences with sexual assault from childhood to adulthood. More than just a question and answer the session, it was one of mutual sharing and support. In a group so large, one shouldn’t expect such a sacred space for sharing, but it makes perfect sense once you realize the audience is taken on an painfully intimate, triumphant and bonding journey of a survivor in the production. Multiple audience members said the story on the stage was their own story. The fourth wall was shattered! The spirit that SOARS created in the audience reminded me of a proverb that one of my baba’s once gave me. He said, “Live your life as if it is an open book, for you never know from which page someone will have to learn.” I was glad to learn from the page of Salamishah, SOARS, and the audience.

In a society defined by so much difficulty and silence around crimes such as rape, the process of not only surviving but healing is opened in a powerful way. This week, a number of my friends and those who I admire were at the Men Can Stop Rape conference. I am glad that venues that conference and SOARS exist to open dialogue and continue the work of fighting sexual violence, surviving and healing.

A Long Walk Home is beginning a preventative and healing peer-centered approach to sexual assault named Girl/Friends which will equip young women with the tools to help themselves and their community. The SOARS season for the year has closed, but when they go on tour again, I’ll make sure to post dates and tour location. In the meantime, visit their website and get a “Got Consent” tee-shirt to support their work (available in both men and women’s)!

Okay, let’s do a little basic statistics/ research methods. I know, I’m doing the “professor thing” but trust me it’s important. We have a public health crisis and you suggest condom distribution increases the problem. To figure out if this is true, we need to look at the relationship between passing out condoms and cases of HIV/AIDS. Benedict is claiming that passing out condoms actually increases the epidemic.

Key term: correlation. Correlation essentially tells you how related two things are. In basic statistics you learn that things can be correlated with each other, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that one thing cause another.

Okay, now that we’ve got correlation down, let’s look at a classic example of why correlation doesn’t mean causation (the fancy way of saying one thing causes another).

Fact: As the number of ice cream cones sold increases, the number of homicides increases.

Not a fact: Folks who buy ice cream cones are homicidal maniacs and their lactose intolerance drives them to murder.

Reality: There are are more ice cream cones sold in the summer, homicides tend to happen in the summer. Just because they are related doesn’t mean one causes the other to occur.

See, now you see why Pope Benedicts statement is asinine and dangerous. Pope Benedict, saying that distributing condoms increases the problem would mean that condom distribution increased the epidemic. Ridiculous! Particularly on the continent, with many countries suffering from astronomical rates of HIV/AIDS, not distributing profilatics would likely increase the transmission of the disease. While Benedict is sticking with his sect’s insistence upon the non-use of contraception, following their doctrine could lead us further down the rabbit hole. Additionally, large numbers of married and unmarried people have HIV/AIDS, which essentially means advocating against contraception within relationships will likely increase the transmission of HIV/AIDS by exposing more people to additional hazard. You know, I can’t really figure out a way that the approach he’s advocating would be good for these countries ravaged by the most devastating disease of our time.

It worries me that people will follow the Pope’s statement and align themselves without seriously interrogating the “real world” implications of his doctrine. Okay, I’m getting off my soapbox… for right now.

The reality is that the bulk of educational reforms have done little to affect the achievement gaps between students along lines of race, language, poverty, etc. Some argue this is because schools do little to affect the unequal lives that children walk into schools with. While I understand this and has been substantiated by some key research (namely the Coleman Report), I come from a different perspective. While the unequal social worlds that children live in affect their school performance, schools remain some of the most important institutions in our society. Not because they provide “rags to riches” opportunity, which they usually do not, but because they are the one location that we have the ability to tinker with to produce social change. Legally, all children under 16 must go to school and US public schools must education everyone who walks through their doors, which makes it probably the most difficult institution to ensure high performance in. Tinkering and reforming to produce sustainable results in education, in my estimation, is probably one of THE MOST difficult of social engineering tasks.

So what’s the big deal? To some, Nisbett has pointed out that there are programs that “eliminate the gap” or “reduce the gap” quickly. That’s the catch, the quick elimination of a gap does not necessarily mean the effective elimination of a gap. The programs that he cites do deal with improving or manipulating psychological variables to increase performance. This is basic educational psychology where the better or more efficacious one feels about one’s self, the more likely they are to perform well. But this does not mean that gaps in education can be reduced by this manner for three main reasons:

1) Single tests of achievement may be unrelated or weakly related to overall school performance

2) There are multiple forms of achievement gaps

3) There is not just an achievement gap but also a skills gap

On point one, it is totally possible for someone to perform well on a laboratory administered test, not pass math, and perform below grade level on a state-standards test. Psychometricians and education evaluators have a long tradition of finding differing performance between metrics for the same people. Even finding differences in performance in laboratory setting and in non-laboratory settings. To assume high performance on one evaluation in one setting will be closely correlated to the next is actually fallacious.

On the second point, while the No Child Left Behind Act has placed the idea of “the achievement gap” front in center, in reality there are many different forms of achievement gaps. There are those that happen, between schools, within schools and they can fall along race, ethnicity, gender, poverty, language or a host of other lines. While psychological interventions can improve the performance of small groups at a time, there is little to no evidence that “large scaled” psychological interventions will provide similar results. Additionally, Tom Cook’s work from long ago (Sesame Street Revisited) suggested that when all students receive an equal treatment/intervention, gaps in performance can still widen because “all boats rise with the tide” and there is really no such thing as an  “equal treatment.”

On the third point, to suggest that performance can be “gamed” by mental exercises is a dangerous idea. Having spent copious time in schools by way of researching and speaking, I can assure you that not all observed gaps are simply artifacts of tests. There are variable skill levels that students posses. While some students may have the skills that they do not fully engage, I have not seen full evidence that gaps are simply “effort” or “culturally” based. While I do this with much caution and caveat, I take a page from Abigail and Stephen Thernstrom who argue that observed gaps have a basis in differing levels of skills that students bring to the table such as reading ability, computational ability, etc. While I disagree at the magnitude of the skills gap they suggest, it is unequivocal to the me that, on average, students’ from disadvantaged backgrounds carry fewer skills into and out of school. The assumption that simple psychological intervention or, to be trite, “mind games” will substantially impact the gap is both dangerous and rather unfounded.

But alas, this is an editorial right, it’s not necessariliy connected to real world policy. Not true at all! I find a conspicious link between Nisbett’s argument about psychological interventions netting positive and real gains to the work of Roland Fryer, economist and Cheif Equity Officer of the New York Public Schools. The Incentive program that is being run in NYC presumes that students already have the skills necessary or that an incentive will make them “work harder” to gain the skills necessary to succeed. These types of programs worry me because they assume a baseline of non-effort for youngsters. While my teacher colleagues and I disagree on this often, I find that children do work hard and it appears programs like the incentive one are drawn from a deficit model where we presuppose children lack effort and will to succeed.

As the nation’s political landscape changes we must also be vigilant at documenting what does not change among the most vulnerable. I applaud Nisbett for re-surfacing this issue despite my disagreements.  In the end, it takes more than simply “incentives”, “mind games” or “tinkering” to transform the schooling of children, particularly Black children. What do you think it will take?

The arrival of the recession didn’t really hit me that much. I remember the basic economic principal that I was taught when I was younger, “As the supply of jobs goes down, demand for education goes up.” While this is still probably true, this past week’s events really made me take a deeper stock of my position as an academic and the ways that the University system is insulated, but not impervious. This past Friday, Clark Atlanta University dismissed 100 staff members, including 70 faculty citing financial difficulties. I was quickly humbled by this, because as an undergraduate I attended Morehouse College, spent large amounts of time at CAU, and now have colleagues who are faculty in the Atlanta University Center.

As teachers and researchers, professors have often held a privileged position in comparison to most Americans, but when an entire financial system is in disrepair, all will have to deal with the consequences. In fact, the number of staff on campuses are also vulnerable because institutions of higher education tend to cut support staff before faculty. It appears the bleeding has just begun.

While some will say that CAU’s problems are indicative of poor management that predates the financial crisis, which is not entirely untrue, we should be aware that this is a “canary in the mine.” Institutions like Clark Atlanta University and smaller schools, particularly HBCUs will be particularly vulnerable. I am told that Morehouse and Spelman also terminated all of their adjunct professors. Over a year ago I wrote about the histories and potentialities of these schools which are under distress. A year later, I fear that it has become more clear than ever that many of the schools that opened the doors of opportunity will likely be shutting their doors.

Sadly the irony of the timing in this is not missed on me. During Black History Month, with a stimilus plan (hopefully) on the brink of approval, we’ll wait with bated breath wondering if we can keep these bedrocks of Black History open.

I then, being strategic decided to switch my location because maybe I was not in an ideal place for them to stop. I tried the corner, then the middle of the block, then another intersection. Finally, I ran up to a cab that was dropping off a fare and the driver informed me that he was a Virginia cab and he could not make DC stops. At that moment I thought, “Oh, cab culture and rules are different here” and he informed me which cabs could make DC stops. I then returned to my mission, newly informed and with renewed hopes of getting out of the cold. Unfortunately this hope was dashed as cab driver after cab driver, White and Black, buzzed past my outstretched arm and picked up the other fares on the block, who were White. As I watched another fare get out, I rushed to a DC cab and he locked the door as they exited. I tried the handle, he cracked the window. I told him my destination, he paused looked at me and said, “I’m not going that way” and sped off. At that moment I nearly lost it.

I began calling my friends from DC frantically, because I was sure I didn’t understand how to get a taxi in the city. To my chagrin when they answered my queries that told me, “No, you’re doing it right.” After another few minutes in the cold, I walked up to a cab stopped at a light and motioned and requested he roll down his window. Initially, the driver, an Ethiopian man, wasn’t making eye contact with me but then looked at me and cracked his window. I told him my destination, he looked me up and down and then unlocked the door.

As I sat in the back of the cab I fumed. I texted friends, updated my statuses on twitter and facebook, and prayed for serenity. One of my friends called and I quietly explained my frustration with hailing a taxi. I didn’t want to offend the driver who picked me up, so I didn’t discuss it in much detail. I really didn’t want my inability to get a taxi to weigh me down, though it was. As I paid the driver and thanked him, he said, “You know, I heard you on the phone and I know you’re mad.” I prepared myself for the, “It’s not because you’re Black, it’s because ________.” However, I was shocked, he said, “I know exactly what you’re feeling.” I listened, “I’ve been driving a cab for years and it’s really unfair. People see a Black person and just don’t stop, like there are only Black criminals. I’ve been driving long enough to know there are Black and White criminals and people know that but they’ll let one bad incident or idea spoil them.” He continued on, “I even get it. When my taxi was in the shop and I needed to get a cab and drivers passed me by and I watched other people get picked up.” He confessed, “I only got picked up because my friend was driving by in a taxi and saw me.” At that moment, my eyes began to well with tears.The driver’s honesty and courtesy resonated with me. He said, “It’s a shame we have this beautiful celebration and a Black president, but still this happens.”

The incident didn’t end up souring the 20th of January, but it really demonstrated to me the frailty of being Black in America. While we celebrated the arrival of our highest ranked political official ever, the way that race is lived in everyday may not shift much. I am overjoyed that the Obamas challenge stereotypes and have seeped through the pores of seemingly non-porous barriers, but that doesn’t often mean much for how we get along each day. Seeing race is not the issue, the system of racism is. Racism will continue to impair our interaction and ability to trust each other until we really begin to grapple with its pernicious nature. While the world turns it attention to the its new Commander-in-Chief, I wonder when it will turn its attention to challenging our own prejudices and stereotypes.

Lately I’ve been reading Black scholar’s takes on the Black experience and one theme that continues to come up over and over again is the difficulty of displaying humanness and complexity with the Black experience. How does one write about a people who are de-identified yet identified, homeless yet at home, the contradictions are multitudes. Well, if Cornel West is right in saying that Du Bois failed to capture the humanity and love of Black people in the Souls of Black Folks. I hope West takes the time to see Bamuthi’s performance of double consciousness and beyond.

The Breaks is a performance piece that takes the viewer on a journey with Bamuthi as he travels from NYC to Africa to Europe and all stops in between. As you watch Bamu wind through his history and experiences, you begin to understand why his tales are the Break/s. Initially I wasn’t sure what to expect, of course, the break beat is a blessed moment in Hip-Hop, that moment when reality and fantasy meet in a fury, the moment when B-Boys and B-Girls would go into a frenzy to create something dangerous, alluring, and sacred by those who knew what it meant to uprock, freeze, and get off. On the other side, the title reminds me of Kurtis Blow’s classic song about the ways that life deals us obstacles and the dynamic responses we answer with. Well from the opening when you watch Bamuthi spin slowly on the floor, you’re taken into the turntable of not just Hip-Hop but life as lived through Hip-Hop.

There are too many themes covered to really expound on any one, but let me say, that I was touched. For me, there is art that moves and there is art that moves you to be better. The Break/s challenged me personally and socially to think about how I understand myself, the actions of my past, and what is to happen as I experience the Breaks. Years ago, I had a discussion with Bamuthi when he opined that Hip-Hop is young people’s. He said to me “bruh, it ain’t my and your music anymore.” The throw back to the “golden age” is just an idealized past, but most importantly past. I painfully chewed on his reflection but still felt that I was Hip-Hop, just a different Hip-Hop than the one that I would hear commonly.

In watching Bamuthi work through his performance, I saw, heard, and felt the twoness of past and present. The warring souls, that were represented by my aging body, my love for the people, and Hip-Hop. He tugged at my psyche to he discussed acceptance, rejection, imperfection, broken promises, all while telling his life (possibly both real and imagined).His performance challenged me to think about how distant am I from who I was and who I will be.  I kept searching for the break beat to bring me back to my groove, only to realize that my groove is not a singular break, it’s a compilation of the breaks of my life and those that surround me. For most of my life I have attempted to find solace from the breaks of life in hip-hop, sometimes successfully and other times unsuccessfully. The battle for balance and transformation are beautifully captured in Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s piece The Break/s, more so than any other performance piece I’ve seen in years. Check it out at until Saturday (1/18) in NYC at the New York Public Theater with Under the Radar or catch him on the road as he brings The Break/s to the nation.

If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.  ~Malcolm X

What would our communities look like if we concentrated on contributing positively to each other lives, rather than concentrating on accruing financial capital? Basically, the desire to make money often takes precedent over our ability to contribute to each others well being. One of the consistent themes that I hear these days is “when I was growing up, we didn’t have much but we made due….” These types of narratives hinge on the idea that community has existed in the presence of few financial resources and may even be strengthened if we play our cards right. When we had little, we gave a lot to keep all our boats afloat. One of my favorite anthro books (don’t tell anyone) is All Our Kin by Carol Stack. It really outlines how cooperative economics need not hinge upon how much money you have or how much your neighbor has. As the financial crunch hits Black folks the hardest, we’d do well to think of economics beyond financial capital and work on social capital and cultural capital for the uplift of our community. After all, I know that kwanzaa credit card looked hot, but I doubt it will contribute to our collective transformation.

*Yes, I feel off the daily post wagon, but I’m going to finish out the principles of Kwanzaa because this is a year round thing, not seven days!

Naming: What’s in a name. If you’ve been visiting my blog, you’ll see that I post under the name Dumi. Dumi is not a nickname, it’s my name. Sometimes people ask me, “What’s your real name?” To which I will respond, “Dumi Eyi di yiye.” As they look on with bewilderment I remind them that I am called by many names, but all serve the same purpose. Dumi was given to me by a council of elders in an African rites of passage and means, “I am the Northeast wind, pushing, cajoling, and inspiring greatness in myself and others.” My surname is Eyi di yiye, which means, “We set the standard this time.” I often go by Dumi, because it calls unto me to live up to the meaning of my name as well as affirms to me that I am on the path to doing the work that is necessary for myself and my people.

Creating: I’m old school in my belief that we, people of African descent, are some of the greatest creators on the planet both historically and contemporarily. And I don’t just mean, we created the Nile civilization, so we’re great, I’m talking about things as recent as Afrofuturism, we are truly amazing. But beyond the artistic, I often wonder what will we need to create to transform our reality? I stress our creation, because the revolution will not organically occur, all revolutions and revolution inspired changes come from hard work which, for our people, usually come from mental and spiritual work. This is difficult to conceive when the worlds’ financial markets are in crisis, the world is war-torn, and people’s spiritual work consists more of proselytizing than loving reflection. This year I will be pushing to create things, both material and immaterial, for the transformation of my community in the area of education.

Speaking: In the past year, I’ve been blessed to get into multiple spaces: universities, tv, radio, etc. to share my perspective. From a number of folks I’ve been asked, “aren’t you scared what you say, will get you in trouble?” Well, no. In reality, what I say 9 times out of 10 is what most of my people are thinking and feeling, so I feel comforted knowing that I can contribute to the process of adding to the stew of Black voices in the public sphere. Does that mean I’ll be perfect in my commentary, scholarship, or blog rantings? Absolutely not, it is my goal to stimulate thought and thoughtfully respond to critique. All our our voices and thoughts contribute to fabric of the social world, so I look forward to my words and perspectives to be sharpened by my allies and enemies in the struggle.

Those are just some thoughts I’ve been having on self-determination. I know it could mean so many things to different people, what are you thinking?

Unity can be thought of in grand terms, but of late I’ve been thinking about what it takes to keep a family together.  The reality is that as times become more challenging, financially in particular, the fabric of families are challenged. How can I, as a returning family member, respect the differences of those at home and the new ways that I’ve adapted to living under? How can I honor the traditions and norms that have been established in home that sometimes challenge me?(And no, it ain’t about completely compromising your practices. I certainly don’t have to eat pork, but it certainly don’t have to turn my nose up at my great aunt who has been using hogma’s for decades.) For me, the greatest solution to dilemmas of unity in the family are humility and forgiveness.

Humility, loosely, being about recognizing when you are out of line or when others are out of line but making sure to offer them correction without attitude or with ill intention. Too often, the issues that we face when we get home get compounded when someone “checks” someone else and people’s positions and statuses get challenged. For me, when I’m home, I will always be a child, but an adult child who loves his family enough to offer correction in a loving way. Secondly, forgiveness can help you find some form of healthy balance when, inevitably, offense occurs.

These are a couple of ways that I’ve been trying to build unity in my family, but making sure there is mutual honor and respect. What about you?

The question of Americaness is one that I’ve been in several debates about recently and I was surprised by people’s conceptions of their identity. As someone who considers himself Black, radical, and critical, when asked if I’m American, I seldom hesitate in my answer. While I acknowledge my citizenship is American, my state defined membership does not necessarily mean that I consider myself American. On days when I’m filling more accommodating I’ll identify as African-American or Black, but never American. In moments when I want to demonstrate my diasporic identity I will identity as of African descent or channel Brother Malcolm.

But I realize my orientation towards America and Americaness are probably more radical than many of the folks I know, work with, and care for. So when I hear them say, “I’m now American” and “We are finally free.” I wonder how we have come to define freedom. Is freedom defined by what someone else gives you or by what you demand? In many ways, for most of the folks that I cavort with consistently, it seems the election of Obama was the provision of Americaness. I shutter at that thought, because I feel if someone “gave it to you” they may just as easily “take it away from you.” While some will read this as pessimistic, I read it as historic. Whether it was the 13th, 14th, or 15th Amendment, Brown V. Board of Education, the Voting Rights Act, or the Civil Rights Act, if you are given a right by man, then that thing can be removed from you.

I went on a criticism diet immediately following the election of Barack Obama because I wanted to feel what “victory” felt like. It was amazing, it was refreshing, it was euphoric, but to me it was too much like a drug. I recently had a conversation with a friend who is an Anesthesiologist and she explained to me the difference between anesthesia and analgesia. Anesthesia, in my best recollection, takes you under, removes sensation and awareness and essentially blocks all sensations. Analgesia, on the other hand, blocks pain, but not all sensations. In fact when under analgesia you can often experience euphoria. We as a people on November 7th were filled with analgesia and the euphoria overtook the historical pain. While I was cool being in that state temporarily, I’m afraid too many of us remain now under anesthesia.

The elevation of the Obama family is amazing, but I want to see the elevation of the nation of 39 million. I celebrated Obama’s victory until the wee hours of the morning and stopped at the ATM as I was coming home. I popped in my card, withdrew money and looked at my receipt and laughed. I laughed because my account balance was the same, but from the looks of elation on the faces of my folks, you couldn’t tell. At that moment, I was glad to know that my people were not concerned that our incomes and wealth barely overlap with our White counterparts. That we’re expected to die sooner. That we’re born with lower birth weights. In the euphoria of that night it didn’t matter. As I have watched Obama select his cabinet I still saw my people beaming with pride, but I wonder how long that pride can hide reality. In a matter of moments, the realities of race in America will once again surface to challenge and cripple many of our folks. Already, reality has been creeping in and resulted in racial incidents and elevated tensions. I point this out not to say we should be governed by fear, but that we should be aware of the situation that we are in.

When the dust clears and we have inaugurated our first Black president, what will it mean to the average Black person? Can inspiration, the main thing that Obama’s victory brings, stand for a people who lack material resources? When Obama stands against a Civil Rights issue, don’t worry it will happen so enough, will you still feel American? And if you don’t, will it be because they took it back or because you never were in the first place?

Over a year ago, controversy over the Kahlil Gibran International Academy unfolded, if you don’t know who Kahlil Gibran was stop reading and click here – yeah, he’s that important, in Brooklyn. The visible battle over the mission of the school, its practices, and its leadership put the academy in the national spotlight fonr discussions of ethnicity, language, religion and identity. But soon, this spotlight faded and many have forgotten that the school still is in operation. Colorlines runs a great web article by Seth Wessler entitled, “Silenced in the classroom” on what is happening with the school now. Spoiler alert, its a far cry from its original intentions. The article does a great job of discussing how education can be informed or deformed by our political conditions. I excerpt below.

The Khalil Gibran school was to have been a refuge in the midst of post-Sept. 11 New York City, a place where a mixed group of Arabic speakers and non-Arabic speakers would learn together. The school, which opened in 2007 with a sixth-grade class, was designed to grow into a middle and high school in the spirit of the more than 65 dual-language schools in New York City, which teach in Spanish, Creole, Russian and other languages. By graduation, it was expected that Khalil Gibran students would have a command of Arabic and an understanding of the cultural context in which the language exists.

According to some of the school’s original students, parents and teachers, the Khalil Gibran school retains little more than its name as it enters its second year. It is no longer a place where tolerance and respect are fostered. Hassan Omar, the humanities and Arabic teacher who felt so intimidated that he cut images of mosques from textbooks, remembered, “When I first heard about the school, I thought it was a dream, with a rigorous curriculum and intensive language program. The dream collapsed and became a nightmare.”

Over the past week, the media and everyone who could jump on the bandwagon of wagging fingers, frowned brows, and we told you so’s in relation to the Big Three has. While I don’t think all of these sentiments are misplaced, I wonder the most about the people of Detroit, not the Big 3. I’ll make a clear distinction here. The Big 3 being GM, Ford, and Chrysler represent the business interests of the automotive industry. The people of the Detroit Metro area are beneficiary’s and burden bearers of the Big Three’s ability to remain solvent and even profitable in these turbulent financial times. Pretty much we’ve come to the point that industry is realizing that we’re pretty far down the rabbit hole and major changes are going to come down the line. The thing that both scares, and maybe even reassures me a little, is that Detroit has been at the bottom before.

Detroit remains the classic example of the “failed city” the “dead city” the city that was forgotten. Well, while the economics, politics, and social organization of Detroit has been on decline for years, the people and their commitment to change has not been. In many ways, the one thing that these stories don’t talk about are the people in Detroit who despite increasing layoffs, increasing segregation, asset sucking casinos and odds that increasingly mount against them, continue to fight to build a better Detroit.

There is a boatload of critical work happening in education there. There is the push for viable public transportation. There is the movement to slow the “invisible hand” of foreclosures. There is work on urban space and converting brown fields. There is a vibrant arts scene. These people and these voices will remain invisible. Sure, their voices will never get as much press as the Big Three, but they demonstrate a resilience that the rest of the nation is going to have to come to grips with really soon. The age of watching industry fall in one area and not have it affect another is gone. Are fates have been intimately linked and we’ll see these connections with even greater consequence during this financial debacle.

The way people from Detroit tend to get mentioned in these discussions is if they are sitting around getting fat off of union pensions and benefits. If you’ve been to Detroit, lived in Detroit, or know folks who have worked for years for the Big Three, it’s simply not the truth. As we watch the Big Three scramble for assistance, be sure to watch who gets thrown under the bus first. Is it the 20,000 dollar jets or the family that lives on 30,000 a year?

Edreys: Get Free

The election of Barack Obama and Joe Biden (dang, I keep forgetting about him) one week ago was a remarkable event. While most folks will look at the election of Obama as simply an act of racial transcendence, in reality, it represents one of the most sophisticated, yet grounded electoral campaigns in modern history. Having working with the Democratic party in the past, I can imagine the transition to the Obama model of organizing wasn’t without bumps and imperfections, but the end result was powerful. Despite Guiliani and Palin smearing (and this was indeed a smear to them) community organizers, the Obama campaign embrassed these everyday folks with a deep commitment for community development and change. While many of us contributed in our own ways to the campaign, I am forever impressed and indebted to the brave folks who went to organizing for the Obama Campaign fulltime. I’m thinking particular of folks who gave up steady jobs for the prospect of a campaign that was often counted out before he began. My hat is off to the folks I know personally who made that sacrifice and brought the victory home:

Monique P.

Shimaa A.

Jackie B.

Christina H.

And I’m sure I’m forgetting others, please charge it to my head and not my heart. Nothing but respect to you all. Though I did not know him, Terence Tolbert, was one such courageous person that was unable to see the victory while on this side. Thank you all for putting in hours beyond hours … ironically, now the work begins!

Beneath you can see a version of the electoral map that more accurately reflects the way the nation voted. For more information on this check out Mark Newman of the University of Michigan’s page.

Hear Ye!

Hear Ye!
Let it be known that November 5th is now the Michelle Obama Federal Holiday!

You both have inspired me and given me new hope in my community, in my people, in my humanity, and undoubtedly in my blackness!!

Sisters and Brothers, the true gift of this election is validation and vindication of Black Womanhood!!
Everyone take note:

Barack has done himself and us a great service by marrying Michelle Obama.
Thank you Michelle for being strong and not diluting your strength.
Thank you Michelle for being highly intelligent and not dumbing down yourself.
Thank you for not starving yourself and not lipo’ing your curves away to fit “standards” that are not authentically yours.
Thank you Michelle for helping to make a great Man Greater.
Thank you Michelle for showing us that intelligence is the True Sexy– bling and oiled biceps can’t compete!
Thank you Michelle for speaking your mind and not allowing that ugly “bitch/angry black woman” label to fertilize itself– thanks for killing it on the vine.
Thank you Michelle for keeping your South Side flavor & roots while upgrading yourself and your community.
Thank you Michelle for showing us that we can have it all– maybe not all the same way or at the same time– but we can indeed have it all.
Thank you Michelle for showing my nieces, female cousins, and all of us women who are trying to do our part in our own skin– that we are more than fine, we are Excellent people who shouldn’t settle and deserve the BEST that life has to offer– unapologetically. We are wothy. Period.

Thank you Barack for recognizing these wonderful qualities in Michelle and crowning them with love, a ring, and a vow– not intimidation and blame!

History

Recently, Soulja Boy, when asked by Toure, who he would like to meet responded,

“Shout out to the slave masters! Without them we’d still be in Africa.”

He continued on,

“We wouldn’t be here to get this ice and tattoos.”

Yeah… you read that right. While I don’t doubt that Soulja Boy was getting his clown on to a degree, as many young folks do, I’m also sure there was some truth to this. His quote made me shake my head, but also made me immediately think of Keith Richburg, the journalist who wrote “Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa.” While I tend to think folks who write on their sunglasses with puff paint or folks who can start a sentence with, “despite the legacy of slavery, black Americans are fortunate to have been born in the U. S…” shouldn’t be taken that seriously, I’ll make the exception in this case. Richburg all but makes the same point that Soulja Boy does, but this grown reporter, who has lived on the continent, went as far as to write a book and go on the speakers circuit about his gratitude for being born in the United States thanks to the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

Black folks often look at the conditions on the continent and feel more disconnected than ever. Why? Could be self-hatred, could be confusion, could be that you’ve been listening to this clown. Regardless, all of those reasons fundamentally come down to a lack of history. We must deal with the reality that we still do not accurately teach our people (both young and old) about the maafa. We don’t actively challenge our schools to move beyond cookie cutter curriculum that begin the story of Black people with the transatlantic slave trade. We do not teach our children about great ancient African civilizations or great contemporary African nations. We don’t teach young folks the diamonds that they crave come at a severe price. So why would we expect a 18 year old to think differently? Why should we expect a 40 year old who was taught to hate the roots to think any differently?

Time

A couple of month ago Soulja boy got into it with Ice T and the back and forth was pretty hilarious. While I don’t want to make a mountain out of molehill, Soulja boy’s attitude and orientations aren’t entirely insane or foreign for young people or to hip-hop. This is not new, this generational battle has been going on since the beginning rap, that’s why in 1987 on “I’m Still Number 1″ KRS said,

Rap is still an art, and no one’s from the Old School
cause Rap is still a brand new tool
I say no one’s from the Old School cause Rap on a whole
isn’t even twenty years old
Fifty years down the line, you can start this
cuz we’ll be the Old School artists

Krs’ cry of course went unheeded and lines get draw in the sand. Because so much of rap music is about defining who is the best, and for some reason rappers don’t know what retirement means (the only thing that seems to get folks to stop putting out albums is their death, well kind of) young cats have to share the stage with old cats. Because Hip-Hop is a form of music that is forever young, the idea of ‘respect your elders’ seldom seems to get practiced. The occasional head nod to a former great is always soon followed by a line about usurpation rather than the passing of the torch. Is this just in Hip-Hop? Definitely not. Eli Anderson’s work on Old Heads versus Young Bulls reminds us that within our communities the generational gap has meant that wisdom of the old and the energy of the youth often don’t meet. While this gap may seem inconspicuous, the lack of shared experience and value between young cats and older guys continues to contribute to community decay. As Biggie said, “Look at our parents they used to take care of us, look at em now, they even fucking scared of us.” The costs of elders and youth being disconnected is wisdom.

It’s easy to just say young folks need to listen to their elders, but would you listen to an elder who told you to “eat a dick?” The reality is that sometimes the lines of division between the young and the old are equally at the fault of the old, who fail to meet the young where they’re at. When I hear cats talking about Soulja Boy or other young people who make statements that result in folks deeming them “ignorant” or “embarrassing”, which they may be, I begin to wonder what the elders have taught them. While their words may unsettle me, I know in any community it is the job of the elders to teach the youth. As people grow older, they look at the younger generations and complain about their ways. I usually call this “old Black man disease” (please see Bill Cosby for the past 3 years if you need a full example) but you don’t have to be far gone from youth to do this. As we age and change, I pray we, the younger elders, can bridge this widening gap. Because if I look out and think our young people are idiots, I wonder, “who among the elders took the time to teach them any different?”

*This title for this post was straight jacked from Du Bois’ chapter in Souls of Black Folk, “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others.” Get familiar.

Men sometimes use intoxication as an excuse for unacceptable behavior. We do know that alcohol often acts as an uninhibitor that gives people the courage to do things they may not while sober. Whenever I talk with black men about the role of alcohol in abuse, I remind them of how white lynch mobs would frequently get drunk to make it easier for them to unleash violence on black bodies and black communities. Drinking is never a reason for committing acts of violence, whether it is against minorities or women.

Men often offer other explanations: “She pushed my buttons,” “I lost control,” or, worse, “it wasn’t that bad.” Men need tools and insights to be able to avoid those traps. It is essential that we start talking to our boys about violence. Like the age-old adage, “to a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” violence can become the signature tool in a man’s toolbox and is used to try and fix every problem.

Jewel’s piece got me thinking about continuing to challenge each other (Black men) to take different approach to our lives and to everyday therapy. If we always need a good ol’ social lubricant like Maker’s Mark, we’ll probably miss the mark when it comes to holding each other accountable.

That warning in part goes out to my mom because she told me she was disturbed by some of the language on my blog. I assured her that I’ve never sworn in my life, I only quote people who swear, I cannot tell a lie I chopped down that cherry tree, and that I discovered America. You know we just celebrated “Columbus Day” so I had to get in the lying spirit.

Bryron Hurt has quickly become one of my favorite documentary makers. I was first introduced to his work by Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes and he continues to shine. His more recent piece entitled, “Barack & Curtis” does an excellent job of going being dichotomies of masculinity, challenging historical narrative, and most importantly creating space for a new discussion of what it mean to be a Black man in America. The piece is short at ten minutes, but well crafted. Check it out the documentary here (not sure how long he’ll leave it up) and show the brotha some love over at www.bhurt.com.