Yesterday, protests at Ground Zero continued to gain international attention. What’s at issue is a figment of the American public’s imagination: the ground zero mosque. Herds of “well-intentioned” Americans flooded lower manhattan to chant down the construction of what they are calling a ground zero mosque, but what really is an Islamic community center. This case is a powerful lesson in framing, which I was first introduced to by the George Lakoff but you and I experience constantly. If we want to make sure The Community Center at Park 51 is built, we’ve got to re-frame the conversation, or else the Islamophobes have won!
Since the introduction of the Race to the Top fund I’ve had a series of nagging concerns about what Obama is doing with education. Recently for the Atlanta Post, I offered some of my first set of critiques of his plan (trust there are more to come) which I call “A Race to Inequality.” Check out my thoughts 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?
Last week a firestorm surrounding Shirley Sherrod erupted. A spliced video of her speech ended in her force resignation from the USDA and condemnation by the NAACP. Following the debacle, there were multiple editorials and comments about the failures of the NAACP. While I completely agree the NAACP and USDA failed to respond appropriately to Sherrod, I don’t think the picture that has been painted of the NAACP is accurate or contemporary. Beneath I offer some reasons why and what it means for movement building.
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.
So you all know that I’m a hater of Drake (here’s a partial explanation offered by Marc Lamont Hill), nothing new there. But this parody of Drake by Affion Crockett is pretty amazing. Check the original video on the upper right inset. Watch, laugh, and join the “Drake is the Illuminati” movement
For a few years now, Michael Steele has been trying to meet me on Beat Street by being more “Hip-Hop” and showing me that “this ain’t your momma’s Republican party.” His pandering to the Black electorate has been both condescending and naive, but recently in a complete gaff, Steele captured my attention more than he ever had before. While the political Right and Left are calling for his neck and blaming him for stoking flames on the dead topic of the War in Afghanistan (which is now the longest war in America’s history) Michael Steele and me may have found some common ground!
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.”
With the World Cup coming to an end yesterday in South Africa, here’s my commentary on African-Americans and World Cup watching from the Atlanta Post from June 2010.
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.
1) Isn’t WorldStarHipHop just the digital equivalent of BET?
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?
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?
Let me get it out of the way: I wasn’t the biggest fan of Pac’s music. I am the dude who loved “Me Against the World” but didn’t feel “All Eyez on Me.” Despite this, I really appreciated Tupac as a thinker and Hip-Hop icon. He really pressed the limits of our understanding of Black Power, urban decay, and the voices of the youth. While so many glomed onto his Thug Life persona, they missed his deeper analysis and critique of social conditions, generational divides, and his raw honesty.
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.
I recently wrote piece for the Atlanta Post on the voyeuristic gaze we take towards Detroit. I love Detroit and I think we all need to if we’re going to help turn it around. Detroit isn’t my hometown, but we all have reason to make sure that the city carves a way into the future. We can do more than just look on “with contempt and pity” by joining in on the work that is underway.
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.
Yesterday, protests at Ground Zero continued to gain international attention. What’s at issue is a figment of the American public’s imagination: the ground zero mosque. Herds of “well-intentioned” Americans flooded lower manhattan to chant down the construction of what they are calling a ground zero mosque, but what really is an Islamic community center. This case is a powerful lesson in framing, which I was first introduced to by the George Lakoff but you and I experience constantly. If we want to make sure The Community Center at Park 51 is built, we’ve got to re-frame the conversation, or else the Islamophobes have won!
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Since the introduction of the Race to the Top fund I’ve had a series of nagging concerns about what Obama is doing with education. Recently for the Atlanta Post, I offered some of my first set of critiques of his plan (trust there are more to come) which I call “A Race to Inequality.” Check out my thoughts
1) Isn’t 
