The Black Church and U of M, Native Repatriation, Detroit’s Decay, the Daily and MSA

I recently visited the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History and one thing really shocked me, the way in which the radical Black church position was barely present. Detroit is the birthplace of the Nation of Islam and the Black Christian Nationalism Movement but we seldom hear or talk about these traditions in Detroit or at U of M. Recently the Free Press ran an article about archives at the Bentley that make we wonder what else about our history is hidden in there.

On a separate but related note, the Native community has been struggling to get U of M to return the remains of a First Nation’s (Canadian native folk) ancestors back to the nation. I can’t find a weblink for it, but I’ll post more on it. Don’t know what repatriation is, well here you go.

Detroit is a city in trouble, but possibly a city with something to look forward to also. Well, you can see the ruin side of the story by watching George Steinmetz’s new film about Detroit entitled, “Detroit: Ruin of a City.”

Brian Stephens pens a half-intelligent commentary on the U’s relationship to Black students. I’m with Brian on the not having enough institutional supports for underprepared students. By underprepared I mean students with equal intellectual blooming potential but have suffered from barriers such as lack of quality schools, etc. But after that Brian loses me is when he talks about black culture,
Certainly, minority culture, especially black culture, doesn?t encourage the attainment of education. After all, when Kanye?s ?The College Dropout? or 50 Cent?s ?Get Rich or Die Tryin? ? happen to be nominated for album of the year, something is terribly amiss. I could reference the countless refutations of the “anti-intellectual”, “acting white” research, but you could find those by doing a google scholar search! Instead, I’ll say, all cultures exhibit anti-education aspects. I can spew 10 names of White movies where the setting is college but the end result is students goofing off or dropping out. Second, let’s not forget the majority of rap music is purchased by Whites, wouldn’t that mean we should see huge drops in white enrollment. Just my two cents.

Lastly, MSA elections are coming and as usual, they’re drama. Just vote, be informed, go to the NAACP meeting tonight at 8:30 and get informed.