“Popped a Molly I’m sweating, Whoooo!” – Trinidad James

If this refrain is not familiar to you, you should get familiar. In the past year, the Hip-Hop industry has been discussing the street drug “Molly” and the controversy, confusion, and hysteria over it should have us all sweating.

What is Molly?

Widespread mentions in hip-hop and electronic music have left many asking, “what is Molly?” At base, Molly is a street slang for a powder or crystal form of MDMA—methylenedioxymethamphetamine—more commonly known as ecstasy. Now here is where it gets a little bit tricky, with an unregulated drug market what comes in a pill that is sold on the street may differ from what it is called. While every pill called Molly may not be “pure MDMA” there have been long standing non-profit efforts to research “what’s in it?” like Ectasydata.org and DanceSafe.org which test street drugs for the contents in order to inform users so they can reduce harm.

Even still, there is a fear-based campaign emerging that Molly is the “new crack.” Recently on social media I’ve seen a number of images floating around that argue that are designed to “inform” readers about Molly and its harms. One reads, “It’s a drug that has cocaine, crack, excasty [sic] & bathe salt all in one. It stops your heart rate, pop one or 2 it damages your brain without you realizing it.” The image goes on to talk about the damage it does to your immune system and claims the drug is “more powerful then CRACK itself” and that rappers are responsible for the impending death of a nation. There is only one problem with this, nearly every claim is false, fear-inducing, and likely does less to help us deal with drugs than to stigmatize drug users and the culture of Hip-Hop.

As a Hip-Hop head of the 90s I can remember conversations with peers and friends about “blunts”, “chronic” and “illy.” I remember being told, “the chronic is weed with crack mixed in it”, “blunts are pure weed in phillies” and “illy is sess mixed with embalming fluid.” This was a conversation among teenagers and as well intended as it was, it was grossly misinformed. And more importantly, didn’t really stop anyone in my generation from seeing if Bill Clinton’s claims were possible. The conversation I’m hearing about Molly today reminds me of those conversations!

Hip-Hop just “discovered” Molly; Molly is not a new drug! Across race, class, and nation, discussions of Molly have been ongoing and serious discussions about its use and consequences are becoming more common. The reality is thatmany youth and adults will experiment with drugs; ecstasy being among them (ecstasy users tend to be younger). Contrary to hysteria about Molly, there is little evidence that it is more harmful than many legalized drugs like alcohol. Yes, read that again, recent scientific research has not found ecstasy is often more stigmatized (by governments and everyday people) than it is actually harmful to users or communities. That doesn’t mean I want your children to do it, but it does mean that we have to be realistic about consequences and have informed conversations.

This is Your Hip-Hop on Drugs

Drugs are not new, hip-hop is not new, but maybe our approach to talking about them should be. Hip-Hop and the Black community have had a precarious relationship with drug use to say the least. In 1983, the now classic song “White Lines” by Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel was released which warned against the use and selling of cocaine. The song featured a funk-laden baseline, which framed cocaine use as more of a social problem than a social stimulant. For some, this was the start of Hip-Hop’s support of the anti-drug movement, but this was not the only view on cocaine at the time.

In 1984, Funk Master Wizard Wiz released an ode to the newly arrived drug crack cocaine called, “Crack it up.” As the individual and communal impacts of crack cocaine became more clear there was a public rebuke of the record causing Tuff City Records and Funk Master Wizard Wiz to add “you better not” before the song’s original refrain of “crack it up.” The public pressure to make the song explicitly “anti-crack” was fueled by a fear that the song glorified the use of the drugs and rap would spread the influence of crack. The spread of the crack ultimately had little to do with music and much more to do with poverty and the media’s fascination with a new “demon drug.”

Most drug education in the United States comes from casual conversation, campaigns to abstain, and drug enforcement policy from the government. This often means that drug use is misunderstood and punitively dealt with, rather than a rehabilitative approach that considers individual and community well-being. Michelle Alexander’s book “The New Jim Crow” has masterfully demonstrated the impacts of such policies on the Black community.  Furthermore, it is socially dangerous to rely on rumor and abstinence only approach. Ironically, the message of abstinence advanced in “White Lines” by Grandmaster Flash and Melle Mel did not deter them from using and eventually abusing cocaine. We need to have a different conversation about drugs that are based in reality and responsibility.

Like the Reefer Madness propaganda of the twentieth century the emergent concern and fascination with Molly is likely misdirected. Ecstasy is far closer to marijuana than crack in individual and collective consequences. Weaving narratives of community destruction, instant addiction, and moral decay will not deter people from trying drugs and will only further stigmatize and likely criminalize drug users. The only way to break Molly Madness is to have responsible and accurate conversations about drug use, drug abuse, individual and community impacts. While a song may start a dialogue, it is our responsibility to continue the discussion with sound information and realistic approaches to drugs in our communities, not fear and fantasy.

Special thanks to Jack Levinson, PhD for resources on this article.

First things first, I am a Quentin Tarantino fan. This should not be interpreted to mean I stan for the guy. I remember seeing Pulp Fiction in high school and falling in love with it. Subsequently I went out and to dig up Reservoir Dogs and have since followed most of his catalog. I have to admit he’s an excellent film maker with some deeply problematic politics around race and gender. I can analytically separate the two, but figuring out if I really can or do like Tarantino is a whole ‘nother conversation.

Second, Self-Determination is probably one of the most important things to me. When asked my politics I often simply respond, “self-determination.” The classic definition associated with the Kujichagulia is, “To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves, and speak for ourselves.” I think that what you are called matters (don’t believe me? just say Dumi “isn’t your real name” and see what my response is). I believe that defining our condition, our responses to oppression, and creating our path is the height of our political and spiritual potentials.

So now onto Django Unchained.

When I first heard of Django Unchained I thought two things, “ugh oh, Spike Lee’s not gonna like this” and “I loved Inglorious Bastards, I wonder will it be like that?” Well on both cases I was right. With good reason, Spike Lee is concerned that Tarantino’s portrayal of slavery will be off-mark and that Tarantino’s general regard for Black people is questionable. After all, for hundreds of years when White men have loved the word Nigger or Nigga so much we’ve been right to question their affinity for Blackness, today is no different. I think Django Unchained was much like Inglorious Bastards, comical, gory, and decontextualized enough to be watchable by all without the pesky feelings of guilt or animus.

The major problem is that Tarantino is Tarantino. Witty, irreverent, violent, and hyper-masculine in a film that could (note that I said could not should) be treated with more care. Tarantino has never been interested in carefully addressing an issue, instead he’s an over the top film maker (in my non-film critic opinion). He has been heavily influenced by Westerns and Blaxploitation and Django Unchained is just that – a Western Blaxploitation film. I think its strength and weakness lie in this fact.

I love a number of Blaxploitation films (Coffy is my favorite) but I have to acknowledge as potentially liberating as they could be, they fall far from the mark of actually letting us speak for ourselves, determine our path, and create the world that we want. In classic Blaxploitation fashion Django is a bad nigger and is almost a bad nigga (word to R.A.T. Judy). In all senses of the word he is spoiled property, lawless, dangerous to the order around him, but still held in by that world. When Django draws his gun someone White is gonna die, it’s just that we know it’s only going to be “the bad” White folks. While Django is the best shot in the West you never think he’s going to shoot his white partner Dr. Shultz and Tarantino writes the other Black characters as too stupid to shoot anyone but who they are told to shoot (I’m sure one of those brothas on that chain gang would’ve freed themselves and Django from the jump).

I have seen a split response (though definitely not 50/50) on Django among my friends in looking over facebook, twitter, and in casual discussions. There are a lot of folks who saw Django and loved it! Some of my more radical leaning comrades said it was brilliant and sweet song of revenge for our enslaved ancestors (yeah, some folks were that dramatic! I’m sure subsequent discussions will likely drag them back from these hyperbolic reflections). Another cadre has decidedly said the film was unfulfilling, obsessed with “the n word”, and another liberal White fantasy about slavery and its (dis)contents.

I think both are equally right and wrong. The first group misses that Django is as programmed and scripted as any “Black liberator” in a Blaxploitation film. He does nothing that is beyond his own personal interests and has no connection to his community other than saving his and his wife’s butt. Look at Django’s dialogue with others who who are enslaved, sparse yet telling (even in the final two scenes). When Django speaks white folks listen because of the gun and Black folks listen because they’re (in Tarantino’s imagination) too dumb to do anything else. Django Unchained is not about creation of maroon colonies, it’s not David Walker’s call to arms, it’s not Harriett Tubman’s “freeing a thousand slaves and could have freed a thousand more if they knew they were slaves.” It’s a portrait of a super human bad nigger who gets revenge and his prize (yes, women are prizes in this tale).

Django however is a tale about manumission, about breaking Southern race rules, and limited-justice being served. The film is written in such a way that in 2 hours and 20 minutes the audience rarely has to contemplate the ills of slavery as connected to their legacy or inheritance. Instead, you get the “privilege” of a far out tale without the icky feelings of contemporary inequities. I didn’t expect Tarantino to really do “the peculiar institution” justice, but I was amazed at how he could deal with many elements of slavery without making viewers grapple with racial memory or reconciliation (the dog scene largely being the exception).

All in all, Django is a good movie, but it’s not a movie about actual self-determination. Django “settles some scores” but never really “rights the wrongs” of the institution of slavery. Admittedly that’s a tall task for a movie, but don’t we go to movies to see the impossible if not the improbable? Django Unchained is so important because as Salamishah Tillet pointed out there are so few popular movies that wrestle with slavery and in a moment of racial amnesia we can identify with Black individual success but collective Black progress is left unturned.

In fact, I think there will be more Djangos–good films with kick ass characters that speak to a racial past– but I dream of the day that we (Black folks) are able to write ourselves into the pages of slavery’s past with the vibrance, diversity, genius, and power that we actually exhibited. As Anna Julia Cooper told us, “Only the BLACK WOMAN can say “when and where I enter, in the quiet, undisputed dignity of my womanhood, without violence and without suing or special patronage, then and there the whole Negro race enters with me.” We need more griots who understand our lives across gender, class and sexuality. Telling our stories is difficult work, but people of African descent has specialized in the impossible and done it against all odds. I guess we’re simply being called to create ourselves anew, but more fuller whether in movies or in our daily lives.

Nightmares – The worst-case scenario has occurred. Not the disaster, but the funds that were intended for disaster relief getting diverted. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina the US public got one of its first glances at issues the Red Cross had with doing disaster work by stumbling, squandering, and misappropriating relief funds. After the earthquake in Haiti, globally donations poured into Wyclef Jean’s Yele foundation, only to learn that the infrastructure was not on the ground and the organization as grossly mismanaged. And now Hurricane Sandy has left many with donation skepticism given increasing claims that the Red Cross is not doing a sufficient job.

Things I tend to consider in giving:

Capacity – Does the organization that you are sending money to have the capacity to get the needs of the affected met? This question is probably the biggest “black box” that you have to consider. In moments of tragedy everyone wants to help, but the question of do they have the skills or the access to do it is tough to discern. In general, I will sift through sites like Charity Navigator or Charity Watch to see how they rank major charities. Keep in mind; they deal with larger established brands, so you won’t see many local organizations that are asking for assistance. Additionally, they rank “efficiency” which gets defined differently depending on the service. If you’re into number and policy wonky stuff you can check out their methodologies or buy a Guide Star Charity Check report.

Community – One of the things that is important to me when I’m giving is to think about which groups get reached and which groups of people do not. It could be because of geography or demography (race, class, gender, ethnicity). As I have begun to receive messages from loved one in Hurricane affected areas I’m starting to hear them talk about lack of attention that getting to low-income areas like the Rockaways. Media coverage matters, but not everyone has access to that spotlight. While funds may go to storm relief, often where it actually goes is unknown. For this reason, I try to leverage local connections.

I have the advantage of being in New York City and being connected to a number of grassroots organizations that don’t do relief work, instead the do community building. In that way, their weekly food pantries, clothing drives, and know your rights campaigns have endowed them with relationships to some of the harder hit communities. While organizations/businesses like People’s Survival Program, Occupy, or Mrs. Dorsey’s Kitchen will never appear on a Charity Navigator, my opportunity to pick up a phone and call them to lend a dollar or hand is priceless. I’ve seen them say, “I went by area X today, no one is there. We’ll be there tomorrow with X, Y, and Z” because they need it.”

My approach – In the case of Hurricane Sandy, I’m doing my best to spread what I have around. Yes, there is a need for major disaster organizations like Americares to get relief to people, but there is also a need for local grassroots groups to get your assistance. In the end, I have a belief in people that whatever I provide will get where it needs to be. Will it all get there, I doubt it, but if all give something (be it money or volunteering our time) then the load is lighter and the work has greater impact. The thing that I think is the worst-case scenario is to not give at all. The 20, 50, 200 dollars that you give will be put to some work, which is worth it to me. I’d rather give and see some of it lost than to not give and see none of it gained.

I have to admit, until recently I didn’t really know who Chief Keef was. I recognized his name from the hit “I Don’t Like,” but not much else. I starting inquiring about him more as he feuded with Lupe Fiasco, Lil Jojo got killed, and people started telling me, “Chief Keef is a problem.” The more I learn about him, the more I feel endeared to and concerned for him, as with many of our young Black males. As the rapper gets more and more attention, we have to realize that he is only one person. And like many of our youth, he is trapped in crises of identity, community and opportunity. Until we start to shift those things we can expect to see more loss in Chicago, Philadelphia, and other metropolitan cities.

Identity Crisis

“Know thyself”— two words that can be as simple or complex as we make them. The process of self-discovery is one fraught with benefit and consequences; nonetheless, it is a journey that all must undergo. While we spend a great deal of time telling our young people what to do and socializing them into what to consume, we often miss the chances to help them discover themselves and help them figure out what their role on the planet is, not just what they can make money doing.

Chief Keef, entrenched in a heavy gang culture, is a prime example. To him, Chicago’s Black Disciples is central to who he is and who he should be. Each of his tweets carries #300, a reference to the gang, and he’s been known to only state his age as “300.” A gang, for many, meets a craving for community; however, as this bleeds into an all-consuming sense of identity, the consequences can be large. Gangs are not likely to leave today or tomorrow. Chicago is no stranger to gangs; in fact, they are so much a part of the city’s history that there have been numerous attempts to organize them for progressive social action and governmental intervention to destabilize political alliances.

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It usually sets in much later, but my election fatigue has set in already. It’s that feeling that you have when you’ve been inundated with television ads, robo calls, and emails requesting donations for a candidate, be it your candidate or maybe someone you’ve never heard of and will never hear from again after November 6^th. Some mornings, I want to rise and fast forward past Election Day to find peace. I don’t think I’m alone in this and it may be due to a twenty-four hour news cycle and social media inundation.

Could it be that our hyper-connectivity is leading folks to disengage from politics?

To be fair, I am not an electoral politics fan or stan. While I am very much interested in policy and the way that government affects the life chances of people, but analysis of exit polls, convention speeches, and watching the electoral votes come in turns my stomach. The 2008 election was so phenomenal because we saw a leveraging of the Internet, particularly social media, crowd sourcing, and the turnout of people across a broad spectrum. However in 2012, this same approach has not sparked my inner politico. Instead, I think of responding to Barack Obama’s emails as informally as he messages me every single day:

Hey Barack,

I’m glad you recognize times are hard. I know you need my support. I don’t think Romney is a good choice for this country but I need you to have a little more discretion with your emails. I’m tired man!

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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.

Photo by Karl Ferguson

As I was saying, in a Sunday morning Ebony.com pulled together a diverse group of brothas at B. Braxton’s in Harlem (real nice spot, check it out if you want upscale professional barber experience … this is not a paid endorsement). On that morning we talked for about two hours on subject ranging from when we believed we became a man to the significance of the “black head nod.” It was an amazing experience that I pray we will replicate and I know many of you would have loved to be there … now you have a chance. Part 1: Manhood and Fatherhood is here and Part 2: Women and Relationships is here.

As a child, I used to look forward to the fabled moments in recess and gym class when we would play “girls versus boys.” While rare, it was a chance to go head-to-head with my classmates for gender supremacy. The stakes in gym class were bragging rights at best, but when we look at the current educational landscape, the competition between boys and girls is a bit more complicated. In recent years, we have seen the gender gap—the gap in average scores between males and females—reverse with girls surpassing boys in academic subjects like science and reading. This, not surprisingly, has led to a reincarnation of the battle of boys versus girls. But this time, school culture and societal inequality will be up for grabs.

Recently, David Brooks penned an editorial in the New York Times on the gender gap in our schools. Brooks cited research evidence to suggest that schools are geared towards female students, leaving boys at a disadvantage. This is not a wholly original argument, and the response from Soraya Chemalay suggests that any disadvantages that males face in school are but a microcosm of the larger gender inequities that females face in the world-at-large. While both Brooks and Chemalay are rightfully concerned, we must be careful to ensure that the education of children will not be taken as a zero-sum game, where one gender must win and one gender must lose.

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On Thursday July 26, 2012 President Barack Obama signed an Executive Order creating the White House Initiative for Educational Excellence for African Americans. The initiative creates a commission that is tasked with monitoring and improving the educational performance of African American students. At its best, Obama’s creation of this commission is groundbreaking and signals the start of a national commitment to the educational needs of Black children. At its worst, this could be a political hat tip but provide little force in shifting the trajectory of Black education. What will be the deciding factor between these two? You will be.

The creation of the commission should come as no surprise with the 2012 Election campaign in full swing. This is not to suggest that this is simply political pandering by Obama, rather I’m suggesting that the president knows keeping the African American electorate on his side is essential.

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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.

Recently, a picture

Sadly, the United States has become the leader of incarceration in the world and it is incarceration that is undoing the sanctity of our communities. not books. Unfortunately, if we don’t begin to prepare children and adults for what has become the virtual inevitability of dealing the prison system, we’ll be attempting to live in a fairy tale. We have come to the point where real life non-fiction is necessary for children and adults.

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Summer is finally

For more than two decades, educational researchers have noticed a pattern: during the summer, Black and poor children tend to have their academic growth stunted and in many cases have their educational achievement rolled back. While all kids fall back some in learning during the summer months, poor and Black kids are particularly susceptible to greater fall offs in achievement. This is known as “summer setback” or summer learning loss. Summer learning loss is most often tied to a family’s socioeconomic status (particularly things like income and wealth) and what activities their children do during the summer months.

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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.”

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America has entered

From President Obama’s landmark announcement that he supports same sex marriage to Beenie Man posting a video asking for forgiveness of his past homophobic songs, tolerance is in! However, tolerance is not justice. In fact, tolerance basically boils down to finding something unobjectionable. Tolerance is the lowest form of acceptance because it allows one to support in words but not follow up with actions. If we are not careful, our tolerance will only serve to maintain the status quo. If we want to move from tolerance towards justice, it will take more than not objecting to same-sex marriage, it’s going to take a commitment to fight injustice and create safer communities for all. Read More

Despite the rhetoric of change and racial transcendence the schools that our children attend are deeply segregated. In fact, according to scholars like Gary Orfield, schools are more racially segregated now than they were in the Jim Crow South. However, today’s segregation is so pernicious because it is overlooked and we, as a country, continue to fail to address school segregation’s root in housing segregation. If we are to address the issue of quality schooling and segregation we must move beyond two common errors. The first error is believing that segregation is the problem. The second error is believing that segregation is not a problem. Read More

Also, check out the Schott Foundation’s recent report on NYC Schools – “A Rotting Apple: Education Redlining in New York City.”

Sixty four schools will likely close in Philadelphia.

Philadelphia’s recent announcement to close these schools has not been a media lightening rod. Instead, the case of Philadelphia is just the latest in a string of national stories of struggling urban districts shuttering school building doors to keep budgets afloat in turbulent financial times. But is that really all there is to it?

If we look more carefully, the patterns of national school closing are tied to poor academic performance among schools, but also the formerly controversial trend to close traditional public schools and opening charter schools. I say “formerly” controversial, because under the Bush administration there was a national debate about the expansion of charter schools, school choice, and educational privatization. Yet under President Obama, all three of these issues have gained traction with little national resistance or Democratic party challenge. Read More

As I climbed the subway stairs

“I’ll beat the shit out of you, b*tch. You think I won’t. Keep talking slick to me!” My heart sunk and the heat of the day intensified. The young woman stood leaning against the wall as her companion berated her. He then demanded her phone and said he’d call whomever she had been speaking to “speak to them.” She refused. The more he yelled, the less she engaged him. Enraged by her silence he continued on, “Oh, so you think you’re smart? You think you’re a woman now? You ain’t no real woman! You’re immature. You’re a little girl. You spend your money on dumb things like clothes and red bottoms [the popular and expensive Christian Louboutin heels]  You ain’t not woman, I’m a man. I take care of myself. I get money. I put a roof over my head. I’m in school.”

As he barked, I then noticed something: I was the only one watching. We were on 145th and Saint Nicholas in Harlem at one of the busiest train stations in New York City and the corner was well populated. But no one, besides me, was paying attention. Read More.

The recent arrest and charging of George Zimmerman​ with the murder of Trayvon Martin is cause for celebration. However, this is only the beginning of a long struggle for justice, not just for Trayvon but for all. As concerned citizens we can take a second to congratulate ourselves, but we cannot wait too long before channeling the energy of a moment into a movement for justice.

In the past twelve months, the names Trayvon Martin, Troy Davis and Oscar Grant have been forced into the national consciousness via news, protest marches, as well as social media, but as quickly as they’ve come into our minds…they then disappear. I’m not sure if short attention spans drive short news cycles or if short news cycles drive short attention spans, but the two correspond. Recognizing this means we must make sure justice is pursued in each case and that we must also make sure our activism doesn’t end when we feel a case has been settled. Read more

The media, the Black world, and the nation have lost one of our most powerful and fearless voices. Gil Noble passed away on April 5th at the age of 80. While his name may not be known by all, Noble’s programming was nothing short of genre redefining and revolutionary. His path through journalism and the mark that he left on media are indelible. With his passing we have lost more than a man, we have lost a cultural institution. Read more

I have also received more information on Elder Noble’s funeral arrangements and ways to contribute from the FB page of Dr. Leonard Jeffries:

Wake: Thursday, April 12th from 7-10pm
Funeral: Friday, April 13th at 10 am
Both will be held at the Abyssinian Baptist Church, West 138th St. between Malcolm X Blvd and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Blvd in Harlem, NY
In lieu of flowers the family is asking that donations be made to the Gil Noble Archives

Gil Noble Archives Fund

PO Box 43138, Upper Montclair, NJ 07043

It is a not for profit set up to digitize his work for posterity. We urge everyone that realizes the importance of his rich legacy to contribute to the fund.

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

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“There’s a war going on outside no man is safe from, you could run but you can’t hide forever.” These words, by Mobb Deep, resonate as I think about the conditions facing Black males in 2012. While news story after story will talk about Black males as perpetrators or victims, the issue is still more complex than we typically let on. If we look carefully, Black folks will have to take a deep breath and examine not just the conditions of racist society but also the negative images we have internalized about Black males which ask us to determine our allegiance to Black males based on their perceived “guilt” or “innocence.” These two options slice like a razor forcing choice between brother or other, friend or foe, or other binaries. In reality, Black males, like all humans are complex and simple categorizations will never provide enough traction for justice work and community healing.

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At the close of each

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Over the past few years

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“Black male success”. These three words are elusive in the press and too rarely associated with the brothers in our everyday lives. A recent report, however, may prove to be the game changer we so desperately deserve.

Dr. Shaun R. Harper, Professor of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, recently released results from a comprehensive study of Black males who have excelled at college and beyond. The report, “Black Male Student Success in Higher Education” is the first research report released by the Center for the Study of Race and Equity in Education (CSREE). In the study’s pages we get an all too rare glimpse into what enables success for Black males. Read More

It’s Black History Month and as both a professor and a lover of Blackness, Black things and Black people, I want us all to study up. Just make sure you don’t enroll in The Willie Lynch School of Social Research. Now some of my pro-Black, head wrap rocking friends who are very passionate about Black history 28-29 days a year are nodding their heads right now because they’re familiar with Willie Lynch and think I’m about to berate folks for taking up his ways. These are the alumni of that school I so desperately want to shut down.

For those who are unfamiliar, there is a notorious letter- “How to Make a Slave”- that was said to have been read by a slaveholder named Willie Lynch on the bank of the James River in 1712. The document explains how slaveholders should keep the various enslaved Africans of their plantations at odds with one another to ensure that they are never able to revolt and to keep the psychological chains on their “property” as tight as the physical ones. The colloquialisms used and the improbability that someone would have ever presented such a plan that effectively predicted the long-term effects of slavery (for example, our issues with complexion) have long been used by scholars and researchers to refute the authenticity of the document. But you can still find copies of it and even films devoted to explaining how it manifested in Afrocentric bookstores across the country.

The Willie Lynch myth is just one example of the lazy “research” we tend to do online about our community, forward to others or, worse, try to convince our children of. If we want to Black history to be known, felt and understood, we as adults have some work to do! Read more

Like many young brothers growing up in the 1990s, I had a serious love affair with Jordans. I can recall getting my first pair (the IV’s for my sneaker heads) and wearing them sparingly, jumping over every puddle, and feeling like MJ himself when I stepped on the court with them (too bad my skills were more like Sam Bowie’s). My adolescent fascination with sneakers was at first looked upon strangely by my family and then frowned upon as news reports of young people being robbed or worse for the big-ticket shoes began to circulate. Since the 1980s there has been concern about violence, the high price of Jordans, and Black youth (and now adult) obsession with the shoes. While the sneaker madness may seem like an area for special concern, in reality, it’s hardly a unique expression of the all-too-familiar American consumerism. 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.

As a child, I can remember my favorite toy at my local New Haven Head Start was a firefighter helmet. I was convinced that when I grew up that I would be put on a bright yellow coat, red helmet, and save the lives of people, cats, and burning properties that were on the brink of disaster.

For me, those dreams of being a firefighter waned over time, but for many other African-Americans the dreams of rising as a firefighter have been forced to give way due to discriminatory promotion and hiring practices. While these issues are not new, they are now getting more national attention due to rising numbers of court cases and challenges to outdated hiring and promotion practices. Read More

Image courtesy of reena rose photography

I recently had a conversation with a friend who lost a family member to homicide in the last month. She confessed to me that she used to think that considering the death penalty was unconscionable, but in her current state she too had begun to weigh it as an option. Her arrival in to the “gray area” of ethics guided by her personal loss reminded me of Martin Luther King’s words, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” King understood that in midst of challenge, the ability to determine right from wrong is often obscured. This lack of clarity is not just individual, it happens within this country’s justice system making the death penalty unequally and mistakenly applied. With 273 post-conviction DNA exonerations in recent years, it is clear that a judgment does not equal truth. When we leave the death penalty on the table we yield an irreversible option to conclude a process that is rife with margins of error.

When I asked my friend if she would support a family member going out to kill the person(s) they suspected of killing her cousin she said no. I cannot justify vengeance killing by an individual any more than I can justify vengeance killing by the government. While some may suggest closure as the reason for carrying out killing, I cannot understand the emotional calculus that suggests one can become whole by taking the life of another. In capital punishment cases, the loss of a life has already occurred and nothing can serve to return that life.

The death of Troy Davis occurred at a moment when the world was watching and still 3,250 people remain on death row. Most of their cases will likely get far less attention than Davis’s, but we deserve to give the death penalty equal consideration. In the many conversations about Davis’s case I was asked, “Do you believe he is innocent?” I never answered that question because neither guilt nor innocence could convince me to leverage the ultimate sentence without ultimate knowledge. My love for humanity, possibility, and community is far too large to believe that gray area of vengeance is one that individuals or the government can or should remain. May the weight of our hearts over the loss of lives, match our commitment to stop the taking of more lives.

For more resources on [ending] the death penalty please visit:

Amnesty International

The Innocence Project

Campaign to End the Death Penalty

Death Penalty Information Center

Capital Punishment Clinic

Recently, Lupe Fiasco has been catapulted to national media attention, not (just) for his music but his political commentary. Two weeks ago on an internet interview with CBS Fiasco said, “To me the biggest terrorist is Obama in the United States of America. I’m trying to fight the terrorism that’s causing the other forms of terrorism. You know the root cause of terrorists is the stuff the U.S. government allows to happen. The foreign policies that we have in place in different countries that inspire people to become terrorists.” While this set off a firestorm of angry comments and media attention about Lupe’s uncritical eye and virulent condemnation of the continuing trope of Barack Obama as a terrorist, most of these comments miss the mark. Lupe Fiasco, as his name signals, routinely finds himself in controversial positions that are both contradictory and illuminating at the same time. Lupe’s comments about Obama and politics, in a way, channel Malcolm X’s and Martin Luther King Jr’s political commentary.

In November of 1963, Malcolm X commented on President John F. Kennedy’s assassination by suggesting the violence that took Kennedy’s life were “chickens coming home to roost.” At this time, Kennedy was thought of as a friendly president to Black folks and ultimately this became a wedge comment that alienated him from many Black Americans who identified as politically progressives but found his comments irresponsible given the contentious political climate.

Less well known, but equally allegorical Fiasco’s remarks eerily reflect Martin Luther King’s speech in 1967 at Riverside Church in Harlem where he said, “They ask if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government.” While Lupe is no Martin Luther King, both were concerned with the government’s role in supporting violence locally and internationally. At the time of King’s comments the United States was enmeshed in a war that he found unconscionable and history would reveal was unnecessary.

In many ways Lupe has been outspoken about Obama’s military advocacy and in 2008 found himself in a flap with another Chicago rapper turned political candidate RhymeFest. Fiasco is no stranger to politically complex views, which he laments are often “dumbed down” into sound bites. Later in the CBS interview, Fiasco states that he does not vote and that his own beliefs about what a vote endorses keep him from the ballot box. Not surprisingly many have responded “If you don’t vote you can’t complain.” To Lupe’s credit he follows in a long line of Black commentators and activists who chose not to vote but offer critical commentary. For many, including Fiasco, voting in a two party system connotes support for a system that they find too limiting and non-representative. In “Words I Never Said”, Fiasco outs himself as a non-voter, “Gaza strip was getting bombed, Obama didn’t say sh*t/That’s why I ain’t vote for him, next one either.” His decision not to cast a ballot doesn’t curtail his speaking or even wearing his politics on his chest. Fiasco, as an avowed Muslim, has been known to rock “Free Gaza” shirts on stage just as easily as he does designer fashions. For Lupe, the continued instability of the Middle East is directly linked to United States involvement which makes Obama culpable given he is Commander-in-Chief of the US Military.

While we may not all share Lupe’s critical stance on Obama or American politics (and most of us don’t read the wikileaks wires, though we should) there is a line of logic and historical precedence for his comments. In listening to the knee-jerk responses to Fiasco’s words the significance of his hit single “Words I Never Said” rings out. The song is a critique of the curtailing of rights, particularly free speech, in an era of perceived freedom and liberty. If we don’t listen and take Lupe’s words seriously, it’s almost as if we’ve made his point even louder.

In days past, a canary in a coal mine was critical for safety. Miners would keep a caged canary in a mine and as long as they heard the canary singing they knew they were safe from the noxious gases that they were exposed to. If the canary stopped singing and/or dropped dead, miners also knew the mine was no longer safe to work in. Our neighborhoods are our mines and street harassment is a noxious gas that threatens our community safety and stability but goes unacknowledged. The time has come to notice the canary is no longer singing, our communities are getting less and less safe and if we don’t take notice, no one will.

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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

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

Hat tip to E. Mari Morales-Williams for sharing this with me.

For nearly a week, prisoners throughout the state of Georgia have been engaged in one of the largest prison protests in this nation’s history. Why is this not plastered across mainstream media, blogs, and 24 hour cable news? The simple answer maybe that the more we focus on prisoners’ rights, the more we are forced to focus on human rights and community transformation.

It is erroneously taught in many U.S. schools that the 13th amendment abolished all slavery, when in fact the amendment reads, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The italicized text leaves a powerful “loophole” in the American narrative of equality and freedom. In fact, the conditions in many U.S. prisons continue to spiral towards a peculiar form of industrial slavery.

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Corrigendum: In the piece I mean to say “under correctional control” not incarcerated when referencing Michelle Alexander’s work in “The New Jim Crow.”

To Purchase tickets click here (this takes you to brown paper tickets site).

To make a donation of another amount click here (donations are collected by Akila Worksongs).

For more information click here (this takes you to the facebook event page).

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?

For some evidence of the percolated conversations, check out this clip of brothers on the yard discussing the article and the greater community.

If you cannot see the video, please click here.

If you cannot see the video, click here.

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.

Silver screens across the nation will soon be buzzing with “Waiting for Superman” directed by Davis Guggenheim and the team that brought us “An Inconvenient Truth.” Backed by media powerhouses like Oprah, the film has the potential to change the nation’s perspective of education and what needs to be done. While this is promising, conspicuously absent from these bubbling discussions on changing education is the issue of race. The absence of race is not just a pitfall of the film; race as a taboo topic permeates most of the education reforms being considered.

Read more here.

The achievement gap. These three words have launched a million initiatives, all with the goal of closing the average differences in test scores between black and white students. While more and more people are getting in on education reform and more attention is being placed on it due to films like Waiting for Superman, we cannot make the mistake of thinking that black students who are not in the inner-city are safe from inequality. In fact, the gap in test scores between black and white youth in the suburbs is only slightly smaller than the urban and national gaps that we observe. As we turn out attention towards reforming education, we must think about inequality in the promised lands of suburbs.

Read more here.

Education reform is a hot topic these days, thanks to the recent release of the much-hyped documentary, Waiting for Superman.  Directed by the same team that produced the award-winning An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary takes a hard look at the dilemma of American educational failure. Viewers get a heart-tugging tour de force of issues plaguing low performing American public schools. What viewers do not get, however, is an education on the realities that hamper real reform. The problems that our schools face are complex, but director Davis Guggenheim and crew tell viewers the solutions are simple and “we know what works.” While that’s a powerful statement, there is little research — or reality — to back up that claim.

The truth is, when it comes to implementing education reform, we don’t know for sure what works.

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

Read More

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

p.s. I’ll be awaiting some angry comments … I said awaiting, not necessarily replying to them ;)

Read more 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

It’s time that we as Black folks come to address our NAACP problem. As we’ve watched the news coverage of the Tea Party declaration and the Shirley Sherrod debacle, many of us have been thoroughly disappointed by the NAACP. However, even with this disappointment, we should be equally enraged by our response to the missteps made by the NAACP.
Read more of the full article at the Atlanta Post.

For those who can’t see it embedded, click here.

This pic is hilarious to me

While many are calling for his resignation, Steele’s outspokenness has made the question of war and public opinion resurface in the American media. The War in Afghanistan has quietly slipped out of the media’s topics and from the American public’s consciousness. While Steele has been wrong on many statements his comments leave me believing the adage, “even a broken clock is right two times a day.”

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*The title of the post is a play on Black like Me, get it?

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?

I have said before and will say again, Tupac was a living metaphor for the Black man in America. Brilliant and Ignorant. Powerless and Powerful. Loving and Abused. Oppressed and Oppressor. Tragedy and Triumph in real time. To many, Pac’s approach was hypocritical, dissonant, even schizo. But if you listened with love, then you understood Pac was truly the rose from concrete. There was/is much to be learned from our brother Tupac Amaru Shakur.

Beneath is a video of one of Pac’s speeches at the Atlanta banquet of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. Free the Land! Rest in Power and thank you for your honesty and the lessons that you’ve left behind Pac.

June 17-20th Detroit hosts the 12th Allied Media Conference. June 22-26 Detroit hosts the second US Social Forum. June 26-28 Detroit hosts the 9th annual Hip Hop Congress National Conference.

From the Atlanta Post

Detroit: The city that represents the prospects and failures of American industry.The city that is the punch line of a million jokes. The city that is Blacker than nearly any other in this country. Detroit is under intense scrutiny as of late and the the flashing lights of attention may have served to take the life of seven year old Aiyana Jones as a TV crew filmed a home-raid by the Detroit SWAT.

read more

*this conversation was taped in January 2010 so keep that in mind/ context.

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?

The term racial profiling has been part of my vocabulary and reality for nearly 15 years now, but it shouldn’t be. While the terminology for the practice of profiling people based on their perceived race, ethnicity and nationality is regarded as taboo, many in this nation have a nasty habit of trying to re-introduce it over and over again. As African-Americans, we are well aware that, whether driving or walking, our skin color can be a legal liability. The problem is that we, as united communities, have not learned to speak out against the various forms of racial profiling that continue to be floated as legislation and policy. The controversy of SB 1090 in Arizona is a perfect time for us to join our voices against injustice, but too many of us are without comment and are missing the larger picture.

Recently, the Arizona legislature signed a bill which allows agencies to demand verification of immigration status if there is “reasonable suspicion” that the person being questioned is an “illegal alien.” The minute I heard “reasonable suspicion,” I myself became suspicious of this bill given my own experiences with racial profiling. The sad reality is that there has been a continued emphasis on immigration control, not immigration reform, in a national culture that increasingly centers on fear. This culture of fear continues to allow racial profiling to curb the civil and human rights of Black and Brown people.

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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 video, click here.

Moral of the story kids, practice your plays or you may be the one tricked.
p.s. and before you say it, she’s okay, look the girls were laughing at the end. sheez! i would never post something with someone got hurt … or would I? ;)

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There is a quiet storm brewing in American schools. While the nation is keeping close watch on health care reform and the nation’s economies, the base of our school system, traditional public schools, are failing and may have a new competitor. When Bush was in office, the question of traditional public school vs. charter schools was hotly debated. Many suggested that charter schools should not be expanded because they undermined traditional public schools, didn’t protect their employees, and were not successful at educating students despite their promise. However, under the Obama administration, there is much less public debate and quietly charter schools are being advanced as a solution to the dilemmas of urban education. The quiet arrival of charters should be raising questions and debate, but it is not.

The No Child Left Behind Act signed in by George W. Bush in 2002 placed a great deal of weight on schools to equalize student test scores by 2014. Well, we’re 4 years from the deadline and we’re about as close to that goal as we are Jetsons flying cars. Recently, Barack Obama introduced his education reform blueprint, which takes aim at creating college and career ready students by 2020. The bill places a great deal of emphasis on teachers and school administrators to turn around sinking schools and offers consequences for the failure to do so.

No one wants a failing school and only a few know how to successfully turn around a failing school. On top of that, failing schools are often located next to other failing schools which makes a failing school district. Few know how to turn around a failing school, but nearly no one has shown us they know how to turn around a failing district. The issue is not just creating success in one school, but creating success in multiple schools!

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If you can’t see the video, click here

On Monday night, Tavis Smiley’s convening “We Count! The Black Agenda is the American Agenda” aired on CSpan. What? You missed it?  Well about 50 percent of folks I know didn’t tune in because they think Tavis is The Game of politics and does anything possible to start beef and get attention. Another 48 percent tuned in with their snark meter set to 10. I’m worried that we’ve fashioned Tavis such a “hater” in the Black community we’re missing some important discussions that were happening around the table and outside of that room.

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My blackberry buzzed and I looked at the message, “Do you want to see a play about the Scottsboro boys?” I replied, “yeah.” Then the second message came in: “It’s a musical.” At that moment I wondered, who and why would someone make a musical out of tragedy of the railroading of nine Black men for the alleged rape of two White women in Alabama … after watching it I had more questions and even more anger.

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45 years. 45 years ago, Malcolm X, also known as El Hajj Malik El Shabazz, was taken from the earth. While I never knew Malcolm, I came of age believing that Malcolm X was the prototype for Black leadership. I wonder, will our children believe Barack Obama is what Black leadership means? In 2008, we organized, ran to the polls and chose the ballot over the bullet and elected Barack Obama. A year later, many of us are looking at Barack Obama wondering what has happened, but maybe we should be asking, “Where are the Malcolm X’s of today?” During the presidential campaign, many in our community embraced Obama as the continuation of a grassroots legacy.Well, if Obama is the continuation of that legacy, what remains is buried in politics. It’s now, more so than ever before, that we need a strong grassroots to push forward a truly progressive agenda for Black Americans.

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

“Fire Toure!” is a call being made from many corners these days, but I’m not sure I can go that far. This is not just about Toure and his degrading tweets about Black women; this is about our whole community. My ethics demand that Toure be held accountable for the foolishness that he says, but not that he be removed from his job as a result of his opinion, no matter how warped it is. This may seem contradictory, but I think what we call for in our protests has tremendous ramifications on free speech, the presence of our voices on the national stage, and most importantly how we build and maintain community.

For those not familiar, Toure is a journalist who rose to prominence through hip-hop journalism and now is a featured media commentator on MSNBC, Vh1, Fuse and a host of other networks. For all his success, Toure has also accumulated quite a bit of enemies, and rightly so! Recently on twitter, Toure went into a tweet tirade about enslaved African women, rape, and liberation via bartering sex to White slave owners. Yeah, sounds like dangerous territory to step into, right? And trust me, Toure mis-stepped!

After posting the aforementioned tweets, he proceeded to blame his cousin for “stealing his blackberry” and tweeting from it. Almost en masse the twitterverse replied, as Jay-Z said, “We don’t believe you, you need more people.” Rather than stop the train wreck there, Toure continued to keep up the rouse that his cousin tweeted from his account, but soon admitted that he, in a fit of having a bad day had penned the tweets. There after, he deleted the tweets. To err is human, to lie about your err and cover your tracks is ridiculous. As a result, sites like What About Our Daughters are calling for MSNBC, where Toure is a paid contributor, to address Toure. They’ve created a phone in campaign as a way to put MSNBC on notice about Toure’s antics. They smartly have not called for a direct outcome, just an address, but I’m worried that MSNBC’s only paths will be: a) ignore the call in campaign or b) fire Toure. Neither of which are getting Toure any closer to being held accountable for what he said. WAOD aptly points out that MSNBC admonished David Shuster for his inappropriate twitter use on an MSNBC sponsored page. But there are a few key differences between Toure and Shuster. Toure is a “hired gun” who provides periodic commentary. Shuster is a MSNBC personality who reports daily and is really a part of the Brand of MSNBC. I wouldn’t have thought about the difference had I not noticed Toure’s case is dangerously analogous to that of Marc Lamont Hill’s issues with Fox News last year.

A few months ago, David Horowitz went on a chase to get Marc Lamont Hill, a Columbia Professor and paid Fox contributor off the air for his support of Assata Shakur. Horowitz started beating his propaganda drum to suggest Hill was supporting a cop killer, rather than acknowledge Shakur’s case was largely a miscarriage of justice and her guilt has been under question by many. As a result, Hill was dismissed from his position at Fox. Hill, while a regular contributor on the channel was “expendable” in the eyes of Fox News. See, news channels hire people to make commentary. They hire them because they want their perspective, but they’re not invested in the “contributors” and will fire them at first opportunity. Unlike Schuster, Toure is affiliated with MSNBC but is not one of their key personalities and holds a role akin to Hill. I certainly think that having one’s own perspective is what networks want, but we shouldn’t encourage corporations to chastise when we don’t agree with a person’s perspective. I believe in protest, I believe in taking action, but I also believe you must consider what you want as an outcome.

Many point to the dismissal of Imus as a great moment on in contemporary Black protest, which it ALMOST was. The reason Imus was dropped wasn’t because of his comments, rather he was dropped because the dollars attached to his show were in question. As my grandfather who grew up in Selma, Alabama told me, “Protest don’t mean nothing until you hit them in their pockets.” Advertisers dropped, Imus was dropped. Fast forward a couple years and Imus is back on the air, receiving a healthy paycheck (I’ll assume), and most of us barely bristled at his return to air. Kind of seems like he got sent to the adult version of “timeout.” Did he learn a lesson, maybe… but then again, what was the lesson we wanted him or others to learn?

If we want to “teach Toure a lesson” what is it? Networks are more into policing free speech than holding people accountable; it’s easier for them to do the former. After all, what does accountability look like for a corporation? Over the years I’ve heard some egregiously offensive commentary on air by personalities ranging from Former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett on aborting Black babies to Pat Buchanan arguing White people built the United States, but at no point did I think their removal would leave us in a better place as a people. I’d rather have Bennett and Buchanan babble themselves into the point of irrelevancy or at least would organize to demonstrate their flawed perspectives and their consequences. And these are folks who are outside of my community. In community, couldn’t this be an ideal time to re-invest in dialogues about race, gender, violence? No I mean literally, grapple with and push those who carry quieted biases out of the closest into open engagement. I don’t expect corporations to have an interest in making my community better.  When it comes to MSNBC, the stakes are low for them but high for Toure … and even higher for us as a community. To me the issue is much bigger than Toure. This situation made me think: As a Black community, what do we do when someone offends, assaults, or contributes negatively to our community? What does meaningful dialogue and action on gender and race sound and look like?  How do we heal as a community when we are affected? Is there a way to handle matters “in house” –deciding what is to be done among the Black community without involving non-community members? Is there even such as thing as “in house” anymore? These are questions we need to think about beyond Toure’s tweets, because they set the stage for our activism and the standards of our community.

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.

Introduction with remarks from Dr. Obie Clayton (Sociology), President of Morehouse College Robert Franklin, and Dr. David Wall Rice (Psychology)

Dr. Horace L. Griffin‘s ( Pacific School of Religion) talks on The Black Church and Black Macho. Griffin goes in depth and breaks down his passage through Morehouse as a religious fundamentalist and arrival to a deeper and more rich spirituality. Griffin breaks down his misogynist and homophobic views and his development into a more equity driven gay Episcopal minister. He is author of Their Own Receive Them Not: African American Lesbians and Gays in Black Church.

Dr. Michael J. Strambler (Yale School of Medicine) breaks down questions of educational motivation among African-American males. He reviews and challenges the current set of explanations which assume low motivation and anti-academic attitudes of Black youth. He then identifies some promising practices for reforming schools to positively affect Black male student experience and performance.

Dr. Shani Harris Peterson (Spelman College) presents on sex, media, and its implications for health. She challenges the audience to interrogate videos, including Snoop Dogg’s “Beautiful.” She also masterfully negotiates a set of questions that essentialize Black women as golddiggers and Black men as African royalty.

This is my talk and I’ll be offering more comments tomorrow in a post on Black Male Privilege (BMP) which includes the link. Also, check out Sister Toldja’s salute to my talk (blushing) and more importantly the subject matter of BMP.

Lastly, the panel closes with a question and answer session where a number of issues are clarified and challenging thoughts offered.

“Pants on the ground, pants on the ground, looking like a fool with your pants on the ground!” This refrain was made famous by General Larry Platt on the opening of another season of American Idol. While I’ve long stopped watching the show and “stunts” to get on the opening shows are known, this performance was important because it captured the political complexities of contemporary Black struggle and the significance of generational divides to the Black community. WHAT!?! Okay, before you think I’ve jumped off the deep end, hear me out. If you look and listen closely to Platt, you would notice he used his exposure to draw attention to Troy Davis on death row, the National Action Network, and lastly told young men to pull their pants up. While many took the performance as all about laughs, we should have taken it as all about politics.

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“Traditionally, in American society, it is the members of the oppressed, objectified groups who are expected to stretch out and bridge the gap between the actualities of our lives and the consciousness of our oppressor. For in order to survive, those of us for whom oppression is as American as apple pie have always had to be watchers, to become familiar with the language and manners of the oppressor, even sometimes adopting them for some illusion of protection. Whenever the need for some pretense of communication arises, those who profit from our oppression call upon us to share our knowledge with them. In other words, it is the responsibility of the oppressed to teach the oppressors their mistakes. I am responsible for educating teachers who dismiss my children’s culture in school. Black and Third-World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their position and evade responsibility for their own actions. There is a constant drain of energy, which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and constructing the future.”

-Audre Lorde

I remember the first time I saw that clip I was stopped in my tracks. I didn’t know what to say. Of course the scholar in me says, if you like violence in one context, why not expect it in another one? I was hurt as I watched Pun pistol whip Liza Rios and then fail to make it up the stairs to continue his onslaught. In sick irony, in the most classical sense, Liza’s life was saved by Pun’s own nemesis of poor health, which would eventually take his life.  When I hear folks say, “Hip-Hop is entertainment. Movies are violent, but you don’t see anyone coming down on them.” I’m reminded of the words of Liza Rios who talked about the evolution of her husband, “I knew him as Chris. And as he became Pun, he actually became Punisher. That wasn’t just a stage name, that was his way of being.” Cinematic violence, whether on screen or in our headphones, often requires us to suspend reality but with the visual evidence of Pun’s violence, my suspension of reality shattered.

I must be honest with myself and recognize that many of my rap idols like Biggie were domestic abusers, they just never had the camera rolling. To many, domestic violence is unconsciousable. But as a man, I have to grapple with the fact that we, Black, Brown, White, Asian men are the purveyors of the violence and must develop the tools to stop it. I’ve been in a number of conversations with sisters who do sexual abuse work over the years and when I ask them earnestly, “What should be done with brothers that abuse, rape or enact violence on women?” Sadly a number have responded, “jail”, “death penalty”, “let the community have their way with him.” From some of the most progressive sisters I know, this hurt me too. What is the cost of not acknowledging domestic violence? What is the cost of not making space for healing for the abused and abuser? This is complicated work, but the work that a community must do if it wants to be sustained. The reality is that violence remains a serious issue in our community and we cannot afford to turn a blind eye to punishment or healing.

*Part of my denial of violence as central to my definition of Hip-Hop is rooted in my understanding that many rappers are spewing perverse fantasy, and my black male privilege which puts me in precarious location of the potential purveyor and victim of violence. This would take a whole book to really go into, but had to offer that caveat.

“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

How many things can you count wrong with this video?

This ignorance brought to you by 2dopeboyz!

N.B. Uptown Notes does not support the exploitation of children, but it does support laughing at them under certain circumstances.

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.

While there is no one path, ritual creates a space for purpose to emerge and understanding to evolve. I think the rituals that we do can serve to build greater understanding of self and with each successive engagement expands the meaning of the ritual and principle. This year’s participation in rituals of writing daily on Kwanzaa served to enrich my understanding of each principle’s purpose and my own purpose.

From B I R D flickr photostream

I have been having conversations all Kwanzaa with adult brothers and sisters about celebrating it and there are a number of who respond, “I did when I was kid and it was cool then but ….” As someone who did not come up celebrating Kwanzaa, I’m from one of those Black families where members-only jackets were more common than dashikis, I have appreciated the adult understandings that have developed for me from the Nguzo Saba or Kawaida. While many enter the festival of Kwanzaa as a ritual where the Kinara needs to be there, corn and squash is around, and we should yell Harambee, this can be a part of Kwanzaa but the reflection on the principles as an individual and within a group are paramount. Through participation in the rituals associated with Kwanzaa (both reflection and actions) we have the opportunity to deepen our understanding of their purpose, our purpose, and often discover things that were beyond the original conception.

I recently was discussing Ujamaa with a sister online who was talking about explaining it to four year olds and how difficult it is. She had settled on an example of a lemonade stand. I added, “Maybe you can explain it as sharing. Tell them it’s about businesses that share with the community. Maybe point out businesses that share usually know your name or other folks in your community’s name.” While this was a rough and dirty way to explain it, I think it begins to get at some of the core dimensions of Cooperative Economics. Now I don’t think “businesses that share” is the limit of Ujamaa, instead as adults I think the purpose of the principle is to get us to think more deeply about the economic systems that we are involved in. Julius Nyerere enacted a system of Ujamaa which was a form of socialism in Tanzania. Imagine if in the same room we had young folks talking about sharing, adolescents discussing the validity of buying Black, and young adults and adults talking about the promise and pitfalls of differing economic systems and policies? Those types of discussions would invariably benefit our community. It seems with each step in one’s development, the purpose in the principle should be seen differently. Each year, we must bring the year’s gains, losses, and insights to the festival of harvest. While the ritual remains the same, the purpose does not change, it just grows as we do.

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.