A few days before Christmas 2011, Nike re-released the Concord Jordans to wild fanfare. As a rash of people lined up to scoop a pair or two, if they were lucky, the media swooped in to spin narratives of Black consumerism, irresponsibility and violence. In this piece on Ebony.com I talk about why myths like the Tyreek Amir Jacobs death emerged and why if we’re talking just about the shoes, we’re missing the big picture…
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
How are you doing Uptown Notes readers? I know I’ve been pretty absent but I’m back! I recently joined Ebony.com as a contributing writer so be on the look out for pieces that are new and exclusive to Ebony as well as other original writing to Uptown Notes.
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.
We are in a very special moment. Recently a dear friend of mine and great comrade told me about an art project that she is embarking on that connects incarcerated mothers and their children. For those who don’t know, women of color represent one of the fastest growing prison populations, so much so their growth is outpacing that of men of color. These booms in incarceration are additionally painful because many of these women were living with their children prior to incarceration. Katie Yamasaki has stepped up to craft an amazing project that begins the work of healing families that are being torn apart by the criminal (in)justice system. I can’t express the beauty of this project so I’ll let her tell you about it. Please watch the video, please donate (there are are only a few days left but she wants to raise over the goal to fully fund the project), and spread the word.
About two years ago I sat down for a conversation with TheGrio.com discussing the role of discrimination and testing in promotion and hiring in fire departments. While it may appear to some to be idiosyncratic, the battles being waged in America’s firehouses are harbingers of things to come regarding diversity and public employment. I talk about this more in-depth in this piece “Fire Department Discrimination Burns African-Americans.”
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
Tonight from 6 to 8pm at City College in the Morales/Shakur Student and Community Center (NAC 3/201) in Harlem I have the honor of facilitating a Men’s roundtable on helping to end gender violence. The program is part of CCNY’s 16 days of activism against gender violence spear-headed by three amazing sisters: Ms. Nathalie Deller, Ms. Stephanie Petit-Homme, and Ms. Asatenwaa Harris. For the past two weeks CCNY has been flooded with programming trying to heighten awareness and resources around ending issues of rape, sexual assault, harassment, and battering. While people often talk about these as women’s issues, they are not. They are issues for men and women to confront, retrain ourselves on, and help create safer environments in our communities. This is an event to engage men as allies in this ongoing struggle to end violence in our communities that women have been taking a long lead on. Please tell a loved one to attend and spread the word. We’ll have refreshments and resources! We are thankful to be joined by Quentin Walcott of Connect NYC.
For days, months, and years family and friends of Troy Davis have been praying that his execution would not occur. At 11:08pm he was executed by the State of Georgia. In the past month, activism around Troy Davis’s case reached a fever pitch as Amnesty International, the NAACP, celebrities and the twitterverse raised his name from obscurity to a global trending topic. The pain that many felt realizing that no matter the advocacy offered, his life would not be spared. This should not make us feel futile, instead it should make us see where we need to go from here. The death penalty must be abolished and we must all check our conscious to assure that we move this country’s moral barometer ahead. This year alone 35 people have been killed by state governments.
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.
“I think I’m Malcom X, Martin Luther/ Add a King, Add a Jr.” –Lupe Fiasco Building Minds Faster (B.M.F.)
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.
I had the honor of being invited by Holly Kearl, author of Stop Street Harassment, to be a guest male ally blogger on her blog. This was the first piece that was published in March.
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.
I’m literally sitting here disgusted. I just have read about and heard discussion of the latest gang rape allegations in Cleveland, Texas. This allegation includes at least 18 young men and an eleven year old girl. The details of the case are still coming up, but there was videotaping of the rape and its circulation which went viral around local schools. We, as in the Black community and men in particular (trust me women have been doing a better job of this than us), need to have some serious conversations about sexual violence. As a young Black man, my education around rape and other forms of sexual violence was a slogan, “no means no.” If you are like me and product of the 80s then you know slogans like “just say no” gathered more laughter than followers. It’s time for a different conversation with our boys.
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.
Everyone should watch this video of Tony Porter as he delivers a talk in DC earlier this month on masculinity. Masculinity, in its simplest terms, is “what it means to be a man” in a given society. Porter does a great job of sharing his personal narrative of growing up and fathering and how they have forced him to rethink what it means to be a man. Because of work of folks like Tony Porter, Jewel Woods, Mark Anthony Neal, Daniel Black, Byron Hurt and many others I’ve been pushed to rethink what manhood is and to find/develop healthier models of masculinity. I’m pleased to announce this summer I’ll be working with the non-profit A Long Walk Home to develop and implement a program in Chicago that deals with these very issues. We’ll be working with Black male youth on being allies in the struggles against sexual violence and gender oppression, while providing these young men the scaffolding to be advocates for their selves and peers. But more to come on that later. In the meantime, please click and share widely!!
…
Share with friends
