so I could give CNN Black in America four thumbs down!!!
Really too disgusted to comment on it, but if you want a decent flavor of what was running through my mind, check out BlackSmythe’s live blog post on it!
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Tonight, Monday July 21st, I’ll be featured as a panelist on Lynn Doyle’s It’s your call. We’ll be continuing the conversation about Jesse Jackson, Black political leadership, and the controversies surrounding both. The show airs regionally on Comcast’s Cn8 or can be streamed live from here if you’re outside one of the designated regions. We’ll be taping live and it has a call-in format, so drop us a line.
Sunday morning I will be appearing on Jesse Jackson’s radio show Keep Hope Alive Radio which is syndicated nationally. This week Marc Lamont Hill will be filling in for Rev. Jackson. We will be discussing Civil Rights leadership and contemporary politics. Find out where and when you can hear the show locally here. Tune in and give us your perspective.
And yes I know this is some late notice…
UPDATE: The show is now available online here!!! After Sunday it will be available in the Audio Archive.
I am linking to a post by Jafari Sinclaire Allen about Morehouse, sexuality, and community. Jafari was before my time at Morehouse, but he lays out some heavy, powerful, and challenging issues in his post about his time at Morehouse, Atlanta, and beyond. Please, please, please … did I mention please, give it a read. It eloquently displays many of the questions that plagued me about the brotherhood at Morehouse, the larger Black community and the greater potential for social change. Brother Jafari, thank you for caring enough to share.
For those who don’t know, Morehouse is my alma mater and I hold her near and dear to my heart. I have always wished that Morehouse offered a freshman year course like Spelman College’s African Diaspora and the World, but one that focused on issues of gender privilege, sexuality, and leadership. Maybe we will get there someday… hopefully soon.
At about 1 in the morning I strolled along the main artery of Harlem, 125th street. As I walked from East to West I got to thinking about the transformation that Harlem is undergoing. Some call it gentrification, revitalization, land grab, urban pioneering, no matter what you call it, things are changing. When we talk about gentrification, we talk about those who have homes, but we forget those who go without consistent shelter.
As I passed the State building, I watched homeless citizens hover on concrete benches. As they lay resting, it almost looked like they were at perfect peace. Like the stone that was their pallet was made by Sealy mattresses, but that’s likely not true. As they lay huddled beneath Adam Clayton Powell with his top coat flapping in the wind, I began to wonder what he would have thought? Did he think about these Harlemites? I began to wonder, do today’s heroes of Harlem think about them?
The juxtaposition of the consummate Black political figure to the Black homeless was more than a sight. A sight would be too transient, too dissimive, too temporary. No, for the folks seeking refuge under ACP’s cape, poverty was not temporary or passing, it was their long term reality. As Harlem undergoes yet another Renaissance I wonder what is to come of the folks who never saw the booms of prosperity? The folks that didn’t have leases to be tricked out of. Are the stares that folks shoot them on 125th tonight the same as the stares that newcomers to Harlem will shoot them in 10 years? Or will they even be there?
No, you won’t see this on BET, you won’t see this on CNN, you won’t see this… pretty much anywhere but you’re computer. But this is why I still love Hip-Hop. This is why I still have hope, this is why I know that Detroit is in good hands. Check this video beneath of Invincible, Finale, and a host of Detroit activists dropping science on the D.
True I’m no longer BlackatMichigan but lord knows the Mitten always has a place in my heart. And make sure to cop Invincible’s full length album, she’s a beast!!!!!!! And because I know most of ya’ll won’t click the link, you better recognize she’s even co-signed by Jean Grae. Don’t take my word for it, take hers,
Invincible is a problem, always has been. Wonderfully humble, a humanitarian, an amazing and caring person just in general. All that and she’ll rip your mic to shreds and then set it on fire. I don’t even think she fully understands how dope she is. She’s a true lyricist. She’s been here for a long time going extra hard at this, no new jack here at all. She has an amazing fighter’s spirit… Cause let’s all be real about how the world perceives her based on appearance alone is a ridiculously large cross to bear. That woman is a beast and I have no idea how she manages to keep getting better with her art while saving the entire world. People complain about not having any role models or rappers not taking responsibility for their communities…well then respect this woman right here and give her her credit for her fight and everything she’s accomplished thus far.
“hard to be a spiritual being when shit is shaking what you believe in.”
That’s what people want to boil it down to. This morning the Root is running two pieces on “sex tourism” to Brazil and other “third world” locales. I pen a direct review of Jewel Woods and Karen Hunter’s book “Don’t Blame it on Rio” and Mark Sawyer does a indirect review of the book as he discusses the representation of Brazilian women in American popular imagination and scholarship.
I decided to write the review after traveling to Boca Chica, Dominican Republic and seeing many of the things that Woods wrote about come to life. I think that the book can open a dialogue that we are seriously in need of around Black middle class men and the lack of accountability that we are allowed to operate with. Yes Virginia, Black male privilege does exist and we need to uncover it, discuss it, and act upon it. Give my piece a read here. No doubt that many of the responses will try to compartmentalize the actions of these “prostituting” brothas, or claim it’s just like sex tourism from other groups, but I think even if it’s like processes that happen in other groups, we really need to begin to address it with care, because it’s having serious effects.
Mark Sawyer, a scholar I respect very much, does a great job of discussing the relationship between “developed” and “developing” nations and characterizations of women. While Sawyer pans Woods and Hunter’s book, he then goes on to suggest there is something that makes Westerners look upon Brazilian women, and others, as mere sexual objects. I’d contend that thing is male privilege coupled with financial capital … which are central to Woods and Hunter’s book. Additionally, Sawyer brings up a question that was troubling me as I read “Don’t Blame it on Rio,” who are Black women? It is likely that many of the women that these Black male tourists are cavorting with are of African descent, but this Diasporic connection becomes dissolved into sex. By saying being with women from Brazil, DR, Cuba, etc is weakening the Black community, are we too narrowly defining the Diaspora? And before you say it, yes I do know men who have traveled abroad, met women, married them, though they are fewer in number then the ones I know who have just slept with women and returned to the US.
A little while back I wrote, “what if everyone knew Black was beautiful?” it was triggered by some deep conversations I had with brothas and sisters in the DR about Blackness and its negativity. Will we ever truly forge a Diaspora? I wonder how do we, as African-Americans, contribute to these negative images as we transverse borders. Alright, that’s enough of me opening cans of worms, I’ll have to revisit some of this later. Thoughts?
The only way to make it better is to lovingly critique, right?
1) What am I more disappointed in, the one million “a millie” freestyles or that Wayne sold a millie in a week?
2)Why is the Nas and Green Lantern tape so banging? And why does it make me nervous for the album?
3) Did anyone peep Nas taking on the Hegelian Master-Slave dialectic? Or have I read too much theory of late?
4)Why can’t I get enough of public access rap shows?
5) Why am I waiting so hard for Immortal Technique’s album?
6)What would have happened if Obama’s folks let them sit where they should have been seated?
7) When did everyone in NYC decide to root against the Lakers (and yeah I’m still a Lakers fan)?
8) Does Lil Wayne know menstration is not a venereal disease? Freudian freestyle anyone?
9) Why within 20 minutes of being on the beach in the Dominican Republic did multiple “Morenos” call me nigga?
10) What if all my people truly knew “Black is Beautiful”?
11) What happens when love is not enough?
12) Why do people think wanting my due is being a capitalist, when it’s clearly just my Marxian understanding of the value of my labor?
13) Why were more people outraged about Tim Russert’s death than the R. Kelly decision?
14)Why are you “so anti it don’t even matter“?
15) Why am I so ignorant for putting the little White kid’s picture so big?
This week I had a chance to do an interview with Newsweek.com regarding the significance of Barack Obama’s campaign and Harlem. The short video entitled, “Martin, Malcolm, Barack?” features me and multiple Harlem artists. Click here to check it out.
Like all journalism, whether print or multimedia, I always find myself wondering how things become whittled down. We really discussed a great deal in the interview which was about a half an hour. We discussed current day Harlem, its history, Black politics, Black leadership, really the whole gamut. But even with the editing, I think the piece was successful. Check it out.
Update: For some reason this video seems to be very difficult to maintain a link to. I’ve changed the url a couple of times and as of 1m on June 26th this link is active. I hope the video doesn’t disappear from cyberspace! And shout out to UptownFlavor.com where I pulled the link from!
