-Charles Donalson, African American male, student at

Oak Park and River Forest High School

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is Southern culture perpetuating unequal practices or such thinking? For instance, the accused shooter, Dylann Storm Roof, in Charleston had Confederate license plates on his car, and the Confederate flag is sometimes used as a symbol of post-Civil War white supremacy.

Southern culture in particular and American culture in general often casually perpetuate racism in the present, often by recrafting narratives of the past. The Confederate flag, which flies over South Carolina, was not a long-lived historical symbol — it was the symbol of a rebel force against the United States. The “heritage not hate” trope conveniently skips over the central issues of the Civil War, the position of black people who labored in the antebellum South, as well as the costs that the war had on the nation. Symbols like the Confederate flag are common among hate groups, but also are part of the state’s image. The history of those symbols, along with the large number of schools and statues named for Confederate soldiers and even [Ku Klux] Klan members, create a hostile environment for those who understand the history of race in the nation, and those whose ancestors were painfully forced to labor under those flags during and after the end of slavery, and who had their lives terrorized by groups like the KKK.

Dylann Storm Roof is seen in his booking photo after he was apprehended as the main suspect in the mass shooting at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church that killed nine people on June 18, 2015, in Charleston, South Carolina.

Were you surprised by Roof’s age of 21? Why do you think a young white man from a young generation could be motivated to commit a racially motivated hate crime?

I was not surprised by Roof’s age. Outspokenness of white supremacists may be on the decline, but white supremacist ideology exists in a range of ages. Hate groups often have events where children are socialized into racial hate. As well, the Internet has democratized access to white supremacist information. If I am a white high-schooler who feels he has been mistreated while racial minorities have been favored, I’m only a couple of clicks away from a myriad of sites and message boards where I’ll find kinship with folks who are in legion of racial hatred or racial nationalism.

Read it all here.

FYI- I have been writing a couple of things on Baltimore but hadn’t decided where to share them. I’m hoping to share them with y’all very soon.

As news that 11 educators from Atlanta Public Schools were convicted of racketeering charges made national headlines last week, cheers of “justice served” quickly rang out.

That is far from the truth of the matter.

Let me be clear, 11 employees of APS were found guilty of the terrible act of cheating, but they are not the ones who should be behind bars. Who should be there? The people who have stolen our children’s education since the early 2000s with a brand of high-stakes testing that breeds competition rather than collaboration and offers achievement gap mania rather than offering assistance to schools and students with the greatest needs. These thieves of public education are the bigger problem than 11 educators in Atlanta.

Read more at EBONY http://www.ebony.com/news-views/atlanta-cheating-scandal-punishes-the-wrong-culprits-504#ixzz3YF3hf0IQ

On June 10th, a Superior Court judge in California struck down California’s teacher tenure laws. While you may not be a California resident, I can tell you this is going to matter for your state, your children and your schools. In the national debate on educational reform, one of the most vilified terms is “tenure.” The Vergara case on its face appears to be about increasing student opportunities, but in reality it is all about weakening both the diversity of the teaching force and teachers’ labor protections. This is not a case of students’ interests winning out over teachers’: there are no victors in this decision.

What is tenure? First, tenure is different at the K-12 level and the higher education level. As a college professor, tenure is a property interest in one’s job, roughly the equivalent of becoming a partner at a law firm or medical practice. It makes the person with tenure a long-term part of the management of the business or institution.

But this is not the meaning of tenure in K-12 education—tenured teachers are not like law firm partners (if you don’t believe me ask a teacher to see their paycheck stub!) For educators of the nation’s youth, tenure means the right to due process.

Read more at EBONY

Photo courtesy of Brett Levin

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

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

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

Read More at Neighborhoods and Nations

In President Obama’s last State of the Union address 

The answer is no, but that does not mean the effort is without merit. To create serious traction any effort to help young males of color must battle on two fronts: the empowerment of young males and changing the institutions and systems through which these young males travel. Choosing one front and not the other is a dangerous move.

Read more at Ebony.com.

On Nov. 19, 2013, the University of Michigan’s Black Student Union tweeted, “We want to hear your unique experiences of being Black at University of Michigan! #BBUM.” That Tweet has sparked international conversations and is angling to change the way University of Michigan operates.

While some dismiss “hashtag activism” — the use of social media to raise awareness and sometimes launch campaigns about social issues — the BBUM (Being Black at the University of Michigan) campaign may help prove that activism that emerges via the Internet can shift policy and realities on the ground, particularly when it comes to colleges and universities.

Read More 

Amiri Baraka—author, cultural critic, revolutionary, professor and intellectual—passed away today in New York City after a long illness. There is no doubt that he will be remembered fondly in circles of poets, politicians, and the proletariat, all of which audiences Baraka moved between in his 79 years on earth. Amiri Baraka was, as Maya Angelou called him “a griot”— a griot that dynamically approached the stories and lives of Black and oppressed people. From decade to decade, Baraka dynamically changed his approach to the problems facing oppressed people but always remained committed to producing revolutionary art.

Read More

On December 5th, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela, affectionately known as Tata Madiba to some, transitioned to the ancestral realm. His name rings in many corners of the globe and on Tuesday he was memorialized in South Africa, but his relevance and importance to global and local freedom struggles cannot be underestimated. In the past few days, many accounts have sought to paint him as both revolutionary and peaceful, anti-establishment, as well as establishmentarian—the truth is that in 95 his years Mandela was all of these things. Through my own lens as an African-American with Pan-Africanist sensibilities, his diverse personas lent me insight into what “a long walk to freedom” looked like and why we all must engage in the process of creating, not only more just communities, but a more just world.

Continue reading

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.

Read More

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.

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.

Read more

A sacred space

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

Read More at Ebony

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

I recently found

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

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

Continue reading

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.

“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

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

– 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.

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.

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.

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.

Continue Reading

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!

Read More

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.

Read More

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.

Read More