My twitter profile reads, “Scholar, author, hater of Drake.” Of all the things on that profile “hater of Drake” is the one that I most commonly get hit up about. While this post won’t tell you all of the many reasons I dislike Drake, it will tell you one reason why I’m disappointed in him and Common. When the beef started people immediately hit me up asking how happy I was that Common was going at Drake. If you want to know, check out what I wrote for Ebony.com.

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

Image courtesy of reena rose photography

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.

When I asked my friend if she would support a family member going out to kill the person(s) they suspected of killing her cousin she said no. I cannot justify vengeance killing by an individual any more than I can justify vengeance killing by the government. While some may suggest closure as the reason for carrying out killing, I cannot understand the emotional calculus that suggests one can become whole by taking the life of another. In capital punishment cases, the loss of a life has already occurred and nothing can serve to return that life.

The death of Troy Davis occurred at a moment when the world was watching and still 3,250 people remain on death row. Most of their cases will likely get far less attention than Davis’s, but we deserve to give the death penalty equal consideration. In the many conversations about Davis’s case I was asked, “Do you believe he is innocent?” I never answered that question because neither guilt nor innocence could convince me to leverage the ultimate sentence without ultimate knowledge. My love for humanity, possibility, and community is far too large to believe that gray area of vengeance is one that individuals or the government can or should remain. May the weight of our hearts over the loss of lives, match our commitment to stop the taking of more lives.

For more resources on [ending] the death penalty please visit:

Amnesty International

The Innocence Project

Campaign to End the Death Penalty

Death Penalty Information Center

Capital Punishment Clinic

“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.

Less well known, but equally allegorical Fiasco’s remarks eerily reflect Martin Luther King’s speech in 1967 at Riverside Church in Harlem where he said, “They ask if our own nation wasn’t using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today — my own government.” While Lupe is no Martin Luther King, both were concerned with the government’s role in supporting violence locally and internationally. At the time of King’s comments the United States was enmeshed in a war that he found unconscionable and history would reveal was unnecessary.

In many ways Lupe has been outspoken about Obama’s military advocacy and in 2008 found himself in a flap with another Chicago rapper turned political candidate RhymeFest. Fiasco is no stranger to politically complex views, which he laments are often “dumbed down” into sound bites. Later in the CBS interview, Fiasco states that he does not vote and that his own beliefs about what a vote endorses keep him from the ballot box. Not surprisingly many have responded “If you don’t vote you can’t complain.” To Lupe’s credit he follows in a long line of Black commentators and activists who chose not to vote but offer critical commentary. For many, including Fiasco, voting in a two party system connotes support for a system that they find too limiting and non-representative. In “Words I Never Said”, Fiasco outs himself as a non-voter, “Gaza strip was getting bombed, Obama didn’t say sh*t/That’s why I ain’t vote for him, next one either.” His decision not to cast a ballot doesn’t curtail his speaking or even wearing his politics on his chest. Fiasco, as an avowed Muslim, has been known to rock “Free Gaza” shirts on stage just as easily as he does designer fashions. For Lupe, the continued instability of the Middle East is directly linked to United States involvement which makes Obama culpable given he is Commander-in-Chief of the US Military.

While we may not all share Lupe’s critical stance on Obama or American politics (and most of us don’t read the wikileaks wires, though we should) there is a line of logic and historical precedence for his comments. In listening to the knee-jerk responses to Fiasco’s words the significance of his hit single “Words I Never Said” rings out. The song is a critique of the curtailing of rights, particularly free speech, in an era of perceived freedom and liberty. If we don’t listen and take Lupe’s words seriously, it’s almost as if we’ve made his point even louder.

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.

Read More

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.

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

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!!

If you can’t see the video, click here.

Hat tip to E. Mari Morales-Williams for sharing this with me.

I recently penned a piece on TheGrio.com about the Georgia Prisoner Protest that is being overlooked by too many. Please check it out and spread the word about the brave actions of our people behind the walls to change their conditions and all of our lives.

For nearly a week, prisoners throughout the state of Georgia have been engaged in one of the largest prison protests in this nation’s history. Why is this not plastered across mainstream media, blogs, and 24 hour cable news? The simple answer maybe that the more we focus on prisoners’ rights, the more we are forced to focus on human rights and community transformation.

It is erroneously taught in many U.S. schools that the 13th amendment abolished all slavery, when in fact the amendment reads, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The italicized text leaves a powerful “loophole” in the American narrative of equality and freedom. In fact, the conditions in many U.S. prisons continue to spiral towards a peculiar form of industrial slavery.

Read More

Corrigendum: In the piece I mean to say “under correctional control” not incarcerated when referencing Michelle Alexander’s work in “The New Jim Crow.”

Marc Lamont Hill, Susan L. Taylor, Talib Kweli, Kephra Burns, and April R. Silver invite you to a benefit celebration on December 7th.

To Purchase tickets click here (this takes you to brown paper tickets site).

To make a donation of another amount click here (donations are collected by Akila Worksongs).

For more information click here (this takes you to the facebook event page).

You may have noticed that I haven’t been posting much on here lately, don’t worry! I’m in the lab cooking up some goodies that you’ll see sooner or later.

In the meantime, definitely check out the archives which go back years! If you read through all the archives and are still thirsty for more, let me know, so I can get a restraining order.

Okay, some of you may know that there’s this little Tyler Perry film coming out today …if you don’t, oh well! Here is a pretty good parody on the trailer.

“All the real OGs, I’m a solider cause you told me study Malcolm, Garvey, Huey/ Study Malcolm, Garvey, Huey, their life is like a movie”

- 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?

Last week, I had the pleasure of being on NPR’s Tell Me More with host Michel Martin to discuss the Vibe Article, “The Mean Girls of Morehouse.” The conversation was really interesting as we were joined by Aliya S. King, the author of the controversial piece, and Brian Alston, one of the students profiled in the article. The article’s publication has caused a firestorm that has raised some important challenges to our community around masculinity, sexuality, and race. Take a listen to the piece here.

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.

Recently, I had the pleasure of appearing on “Our World with Black Enterprise” hosted by Marc Lamont Hill. The show hosted a panel discussion on education reform with me, David C. Banks – CEO of the Eagle Academy Foundation, and Keli Goff – Political Contributor on the Loop21.com. The conversation was a good start to seriously engaging the issues facing our schools, particularly Black boys. Check out the panel below and make sure to check out future episodes of Our World, which is covering some cutting edge topics.

If you cannot see the video, click here.

This morning I have a piece posted on theGrio.com where I discuss the response to the forthcoming Vibe article, “Mean Girls of Morehouse.”

Update: the folks at theGrio are so dope and responsive that they changed the title of the piece. Salute to them for  journalistic and social integrity!

Morehouse College, my beloved alma mater, has again been catapulted into the national spotlight due to a forthcoming article in Vibe magazine. The story entitled, “The Mean Girls of Morehouse”, by Aliya King, traces the experience of three gender bending current and former Morehouse students. Before the article could hit the Internet or news stands the President of Morehouse Dr. Robert M. Franklin issued a letter to alumni decrying the portrayal of Morehouse. Franklin’s move, while to some may be proactive, is actually reactionary and misses the mark on the importance of the story. Where Franklin and other see the maligning of Morehouse, when I read the article I see the space for a richer discussion of masculinity, higher education, and community.

Read more here.

Today many will celebrate Columbus Day, I won’t. Here’s a little history lesson for all the kids home from school.

The recent buzz around education reform is growing, but silenced in this buzz is race. The amazingly taboo yet significant social phenomena is giving way to colorblind policy makers and educational activists. Can we truly transform an educational system if we don’t take account of one of its most enduring cleavages? Check out my thoughts on Atlanta Post.

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.

For the past few years, I have been diligently working on issues of inequality in well-resourced school settings. My book is coming along nicely, but I thought I’d share some of my insights with the public, well the non-academic public. As the nation turns its attention towards education, we cannot think that suburban spaces are more equal. While many of our families move to these cities for their reputation and resources, we are often locked out of these amenities. Check out my piece on theGrio.com about this.

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.

This morning, another piece of my writing on education reform and “Waiting for Superman” was posted on theRoot.com. This is a lengthier discussion of the state of educational reform research and what we know. While I don’t cover the universe of education reform policies, I do cover six key ones: charter school success, money matters, evaluating teachers, teacher pay, paying students, and Promise Neighborhoods. I close out the piece with a discussion of solutions and food for thought around changing urban education. Check it out.

Education reform is a hot topic these days, thanks to the recent release of the much-hyped documentary, Waiting for Superman.  Directed by the same team that produced the award-winning An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary takes a hard look at the dilemma of American educational failure. Viewers get a heart-tugging tour de force of issues plaguing low performing American public schools. What viewers do not get, however, is an education on the realities that hamper real reform. The problems that our schools face are complex, but director Davis Guggenheim and crew tell viewers the solutions are simple and “we know what works.” While that’s a powerful statement, there is little research — or reality — to back up that claim.

The truth is, when it comes to implementing education reform, we don’t know for sure what works.

Read more here

This week “Waiting for Superman” premiered nationally and it has reignited the conversation on the United States’ failing schools. The film stirs concern, but also presents an all too narrow portrait of what’s really happening in schools and what we know about reforming schools. This week I’ll be dropping a number of pieces in part inspired by the film’s arrival and the excitement around education reform. Keep on checking back and I’ll keep on posting. Please check out my review of the film on theGrio.com. Here is an excerpt:

Waiting for Superman is a powerful film about educational reform and the potential of our schools from the same team that brought us the Academy Award winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Unfortunately the filmmakers leave the audience hoping for a change that is as likely as a caped crusader appearing in real life.

While the film taps into the concerns that many of us have towards a failing educational system, it fails to provide a full portrait of what is really happening in the nation’s schools. If you’re interested in heart wrenching stories, see this film. But if you are interested in changing education make sure you bring your x-ray vision so you can see beyond the veil of what the filmmakers are advocating.

For more click here

Nationwide, the conversation on education is increasingly dominated by teacher accountability, charter schools and test scores. While these things are critical, we cannot forget about the numerous hazards that many African-American students face in their communities as they pursue an education.We must remember that school is much more than just what happens inside brick and mortar buildings. What happens outside is equally, if not more, important and deserving of attention. As we ramp up our discussion of what needs to happen inside schools, we cannot forget about a hazard Black youth often face: violence in their communities.

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As you may know, I support gay marriage (yes, it is a civil rights issue.) As you may also know, I have a pretty interesting sense of humor. So when I saw this video (from 2009! it’s a shame i missed it) which breaks down what marriage is “biblically” I had to share it with you all. It’s amazing what we, humans, will use to selectively justify discrimination and exclusion. Let Sister Betty Bowers – “America’s Best Christian”- teach you what traditional marriage is.

If you can’t see the video, click here.

p.s. I’ll be awaiting some angry comments … I said awaiting, not necessarily replying to them

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!

Read more here

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?

Read more on the Social Text Blog

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 those who can’t see it embedded, click here.

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.”

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*The title of the post is a play on Black like Me, get it?

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.

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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?

4) Why is our mascot the pimp and no longer the panther?

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.

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.

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Not too long ago, I had a chance to discuss the question of a Black Agenda and President Obama with Kelli Goff- author of Party Crashing. The discussion is part of The Atlanta Post’s 50/50 segment and was moderated by China Okasi. There were some surprising points of agreement and disagreement. Click here and hear all three parts of the conversation.

*this conversation was taped in January 2010 so keep that in mind/ context.

Recently, I penned a piece discussing the need for Black folks to join in with the fight against Arizona’s racist immigration bill SB 1070. My goal was to challenge Black folks, to think beyond the immediate immigration bill to the larger injustices that are taking root in Arizona. In the past few weeks, Arizona has continued to make their intentions clear. Whether you agree with SB 1070 or not, the state of Arizona has begun a march towards making the state free, open and inhabitable to Whites and closed to people of color, particularly Latinos.

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I told ya’ll to stop using the word swagger back in 2008. See you didn’t listen, now we have the swagger wagon! LOL!

If you can’t see the video click here

On next Monday the 17th at 7:30 pm there will be a panel on Black Male Privilege at the Brecht Forum. The panel will feature L’Heureux Dumi Lewis of City College- CUNY, Marc Lamont Hill of Teachers College- Columbia University, Mark Anthony Neal of Duke University and Byron Hurt an award winning film maker. The topic is a controversial yet important one. The past months have been ripe with conversations about Black folks, gender, and the future of our community. This panel was organized by and will be moderated by Esther Armah and it is sure to be an enlightening, challenging and productive conversation. Brothers and Sisters are welcome!! I look forward to see you all there. I’ll be tweeting about, so please forward to your loved ones.  Please note the cost of entry is 10 dollars which is a small price to pay for intellectual and activist stimulation!

]]> http://www.uptownnotes.com/black-male-privilege-panel-discussion-517-730pm/feed/ 2 http://www.uptownnotes.com/careful-of-some-school-choice-advocates/ http://www.uptownnotes.com/careful-of-some-school-choice-advocates/#comments Thu, 06 May 2010 14:20:28 +0000 dumi http://www.uptownnotes.com/?p=2075

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.

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So I like watching sports highlights. Over the years I’ve seen a number of trick plays that have impressed me. This is not one of them!!

If you can’t see the video, click here.

Moral of the story kids, practice your plays or you may be the one tricked.
p.s. and before you say it, she’s okay, look the girls were laughing at the end. sheez! i would never post something with someone got hurt … or would I?

Unless you have been in hiding, you have noticed the Census 2010 is in full swing now. From rapping commercials to inflatable census forms, there are a large amount of resources going into getting people to fill out the 10 Census questions. Despite all this hoopla, the biggest controversy has been the use of the word Negro on the Census. The word Negro is not new on the census and it’s there now because more than 56,000 Black folks wrote in “Negro” last Census. While many are in a tizzy about Negro, the count of prisoners should be getting us more riled up and more attention.

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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!

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I love Hip-Hop. I love battles. I hate the same tired themes and references in them. I love this translation.

If you can’t see the video, click here

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.

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Some of you may know I recently went to see the Scottsboro Boys (musical) at the Vineyard Theatre here in NYC. I took a few minutes to compile my thoughts for Centric’s Culture List Blog.

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.

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I recently penned a piece for the new website The Atlanta Post about the passing of Malcolm X and the fear of the passing of his legacy on Black leadership. Check it out.

45 years. 45 years ago, Malcolm X, also known as El Hajj Malik El Shabazz, was taken from the earth. While I never knew Malcolm, I came of age believing that Malcolm X was the prototype for Black leadership. I wonder, will our children believe Barack Obama is what Black leadership means? In 2008, we organized, ran to the polls and chose the ballot over the bullet and elected Barack Obama. A year later, many of us are looking at Barack Obama wondering what has happened, but maybe we should be asking, “Where are the Malcolm X’s of today?” During the presidential campaign, many in our community embraced Obama as the continuation of a grassroots legacy.Well, if Obama is the continuation of that legacy, what remains is buried in politics. It’s now, more so than ever before, that we need a strong grassroots to push forward a truly progressive agenda for Black Americans.

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For all my folks who remember Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out on Nintendo and for those of use who watched “Epic Beard Man” whoop up on ol’ boy on the bus.

If you can’t see the link, click here.

“Fire Toure!” is a call being made from many corners these days, but I’m not sure I can go that far. This is not just about Toure and his degrading tweets about Black women; this is about our whole community. My ethics demand that Toure be held accountable for the foolishness that he says, but not that he be removed from his job as a result of his opinion, no matter how warped it is. This may seem contradictory, but I think what we call for in our protests has tremendous ramifications on free speech, the presence of our voices on the national stage, and most importantly how we build and maintain community.

For those not familiar, Toure is a journalist who rose to prominence through hip-hop journalism and now is a featured media commentator on MSNBC, Vh1, Fuse and a host of other networks. For all his success, Toure has also accumulated quite a bit of enemies, and rightly so! Recently on twitter, Toure went into a tweet tirade about enslaved African women, rape, and liberation via bartering sex to White slave owners. Yeah, sounds like dangerous territory to step into, right? And trust me, Toure mis-stepped!

After posting the aforementioned tweets, he proceeded to blame his cousin for “stealing his blackberry” and tweeting from it. Almost en masse the twitterverse replied, as Jay-Z said, “We don’t believe you, you need more people.” Rather than stop the train wreck there, Toure continued to keep up the rouse that his cousin tweeted from his account, but soon admitted that he, in a fit of having a bad day had penned the tweets. There after, he deleted the tweets. To err is human, to lie about your err and cover your tracks is ridiculous. As a result, sites like What About Our Daughters are calling for MSNBC, where Toure is a paid contributor, to address Toure. They’ve created a phone in campaign as a way to put MSNBC on notice about Toure’s antics. They smartly have not called for a direct outcome, just an address, but I’m worried that MSNBC’s only paths will be: a) ignore the call in campaign or b) fire Toure. Neither of which are getting Toure any closer to being held accountable for what he said. WAOD aptly points out that MSNBC admonished David Shuster for his inappropriate twitter use on an MSNBC sponsored page. But there are a few key differences between Toure and Shuster. Toure is a “hired gun” who provides periodic commentary. Shuster is a MSNBC personality who reports daily and is really a part of the Brand of MSNBC. I wouldn’t have thought about the difference had I not noticed Toure’s case is dangerously analogous to that of Marc Lamont Hill’s issues with Fox News last year.

A few months ago, David Horowitz went on a chase to get Marc Lamont Hill, a Columbia Professor and paid Fox contributor off the air for his support of Assata Shakur. Horowitz started beating his propaganda drum to suggest Hill was supporting a cop killer, rather than acknowledge Shakur’s case was largely a miscarriage of justice and her guilt has been under question by many. As a result, Hill was dismissed from his position at Fox. Hill, while a regular contributor on the channel was “expendable” in the eyes of Fox News. See, news channels hire people to make commentary. They hire them because they want their perspective, but they’re not invested in the “contributors” and will fire them at first opportunity. Unlike Schuster, Toure is affiliated with MSNBC but is not one of their key personalities and holds a role akin to Hill. I certainly think that having one’s own perspective is what networks want, but we shouldn’t encourage corporations to chastise when we don’t agree with a person’s perspective. I believe in protest, I believe in taking action, but I also believe you must consider what you want as an outcome.

Many point to the dismissal of Imus as a great moment on in contemporary Black protest, which it ALMOST was. The reason Imus was dropped wasn’t because of his comments, rather he was dropped because the dollars attached to his show were in question. As my grandfather who grew up in Selma, Alabama told me, “Protest don’t mean nothing until you hit them in their pockets.” Advertisers dropped, Imus was dropped. Fast forward a couple years and Imus is back on the air, receiving a healthy paycheck (I’ll assume), and most of us barely bristled at his return to air. Kind of seems like he got sent to the adult version of “timeout.” Did he learn a lesson, maybe… but then again, what was the lesson we wanted him or others to learn?

If we want to “teach Toure a lesson” what is it? Networks are more into policing free speech than holding people accountable; it’s easier for them to do the former. After all, what does accountability look like for a corporation? Over the years I’ve heard some egregiously offensive commentary on air by personalities ranging from Former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett on aborting Black babies to Pat Buchanan arguing White people built the United States, but at no point did I think their removal would leave us in a better place as a people. I’d rather have Bennett and Buchanan babble themselves into the point of irrelevancy or at least would organize to demonstrate their flawed perspectives and their consequences. And these are folks who are outside of my community. In community, couldn’t this be an ideal time to re-invest in dialogues about race, gender, violence? No I mean literally, grapple with and push those who carry quieted biases out of the closest into open engagement. I don’t expect corporations to have an interest in making my community better.  When it comes to MSNBC, the stakes are low for them but high for Toure … and even higher for us as a community. To me the issue is much bigger than Toure. This situation made me think: As a Black community, what do we do when someone offends, assaults, or contributes negatively to our community? What does meaningful dialogue and action on gender and race sound and look like?  How do we heal as a community when we are affected? Is there a way to handle matters “in house” –deciding what is to be done among the Black community without involving non-community members? Is there even such as thing as “in house” anymore? These are questions we need to think about beyond Toure’s tweets, because they set the stage for our activism and the standards of our community.

I’ve been running around so much for the past week I forgot to post my reaction to the NAACP Image Awards that I wrote for Centric’s Culture List Blog. Well, after watching the show, @sedat30 and I decided we need a moratorium on these shows until we can do better. Just kidding … not really. Join the Do Better Movement (shout out to on.us.tees who stay on the vanguard of the DBM).

I’ve had it! I can’t take it any more. I cannot bear to have one more Black Awards show go on like this. That’s right, this is a cease and desist notice to: The NAACP Image Awards, The BET Awards, The Soul Train Awards, The Vh1 Hip-Hop Honors, The Source Awards, The You’re a Person of Color Awards, (okay you caught me—I made the last one up). However the point remains, the more Black Award shows we seem to have, the lower quality they seem to get!

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A few days ago, my talk at the 143rd Morehouse Founder’s Day Symposium went up on the web. The talk was entitled, “Shadowboxing the Self: Confronting Black Male Privilege.” I was very excited to give the talk because I knew that it would ruffle some feathers, but I viewed it as a labor of love.  My goal is to speak truth that inspires thoughts and actions. While not everyone will agree with me, this is not a surprise, I do think the conversations that Black Male Privilege (BMP) has generated thus far are good. The responses have been overwhelmingly positive and many are asking for clarification. I’ve decided to respond to three thematic questions I’ve received, most often from incredulous Black men. I highly recommend that you watch the video of the talk below. This is an emergent area of research for me, though I’ve been living Black male privilege (BMP) for some time now. There are a number of great talks from the Founder’s Day symposium with was a 4 hour plus affair (My talk was only 35 minutes). Please do check them out.

Response:

1) What is Black Male Privilege? Is that like irregardless?*

I got this question a bunch. I think its because, on its face, the placement of the words Black male and privilege close together appears contradictory. Indeed, I want you to think about the juxtaposition and open up to the possibility of its existence. While most of us are used to the crisis narrative of Black men in America, we continue to overlook the ways that male privilege is experienced and leveraged by Black men in our everyday lives. While most folks who asked this question didn’t watch the video (all you have to do is click play). I’ll write out the working definition I gave during the talk, “a system of built in and often overlooked systematic advantages that center the experience and concerns of Black men while minimizing the power that Black males hold.”**

The hidden and overlooked nature is what is crucial for understanding privilege. It is the careful analysis of the social fabric of our world that will make privilege visible, even to Black men. I am not suggesting BMP explains all gender and race inequality -that would make it a perfect explanation- I am saying BMP has a significant contribution to gender and race inequality- thus BMP is a partial explanation. I am most concerned with the Black community, so I have discussed BMP as it relates to Black men and Black women. I’m not making an argument about BMP relative to White Male Privilege. If you want to do that, do so at your own risk .  BMP is akin to White privilege in that it is often invisible to those who benefit from it the most! It is the accumulation of these unearned advantages that matter but are often dismissed as inconsequential. These advantages are often thought to be insignificant, unless of course you are on the receiving end of the oppression.

2) Why are you trying to tear down Black men?

I have no desire to tear Black men down, quite the contrary, my goal is to build US up. However, I am all about tearing down undeserved privilege. I delivered this talk first at Morehouse because it is the premier space for educating Black men and the site where I first realized some of the ways I was falling prey to Black male privilege. Years later, I met brother Jewel Woods who had been doing some amazing activist work with Black men around men’s issues which included work on domestic violence. His dedication to building stronger brothers by confronting issues of privilege that emerged as compensation for oppression was renewing. My goal is to extend Jewel Woods’ work and add contextual nuance around BMP. I have two central gripes with BMP: 1) it oppresses others – particularly Black women- and 2) it robs Black men of their power. That’s the part many brothers beefing with me keep missing. If we continue to rely on our privilege for a sense of worth, purpose, and manhood we’re going to recreate the same broken community we have now.

3) What has BMP gotten me [insert incredulous screwface]?

Again, if you listen to the talk, I point out a number of material benefits that are not commonly, easily, or often documented: sexual consumption that a blind-eye is turned to, the silencing of black sexual assault, greater pay and promotion, to name a few. Still many have asked me via facebook/twitter/email, “so what has BMP gotten me?” this is often attached to saying “I got thrown in jail” or “I’m unemployed.” The answer is right there, Black Male Privilege has created the ability to sidestep your own power to oppress by saying you’re oppressed. Sadly, it has been a tradition to revisit the harm we feel as Black men on Black women. The most traditional example is, abuse at the workplace for the Black man has meant abuse for the Black woman at home. But you don’t have to go that extreme to understand that privilege for one begets oppression for another. See, BMP breathes and breeds on the idea that no one could possibly do harm if they’re being harmed, nothing could be further from the truth. Black Feminists/Womanists have been pressing Black men on this false belief and exposing its consequences, but  men, by and large, have ignored them. I am clear that my engaging this as a Black man (sadly) adds legitimacy to the concept, but if this is the case I hope that we as Black men can begin the work of dismantling BMP. There are many ways we can begin, some of which are referenced in the video like male study circles on campuses. In everyday life we can begin by holding our brothers accountable on the ways we manipulate opportunity for the advancement of Black men, and the oppression of Black women. That could be calling out male-centered networks, calling out exploiting the Black dating pool, there are many areas. It is easy to turn our back on BMP and many will. Ignoring it says nothing about merit or value, but it does say something about our future. As Deming said, “It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.” I am ecstatic to hear many people talking and grappling with this concept and these issues. This is about community. This is about accountability, not blame.  Accountability can transform a community, lack of accountability can destroy one.

I look forward to hearing more from you.

Footnotes (yeah I put footnotes on a blog post!)

*Get it? Irregardless isn’t really a word. Regardless = without regard. Irregardless would = without without regard … there’s an internal conflict that makes it illogical, get it? Never mind, it’s a nerd joke. You’re probably not even laughing right now… unless you’re a nerd.

**It’s a working definition because there are a lot of things to be worked out and I don’t want to define it in a too limited way. More study will refine and potentially expand or narrow the definition.

On February 10th, I had the pleasure of joining an esteemed set of scholars for the 143rd Founder’s Day Symposium at Morehouse College. The symposium title was, “Black Men in the 21st Century: Myths, Data and Realty.” This post has the links to all the talks, each one was uniquely insightful and I provide brief synopsis above each talk. If you’re concerned about Black men, this is the set of videos to watch. Special thanks to Dr. David Wall Rice and Dr. Obie Clayton for organizing and executing a stellar opportunity to build better Black men.

Introduction with remarks from Dr. Obie Clayton (Sociology), President of Morehouse College Robert Franklin, and Dr. David Wall Rice (Psychology)

Dr. Horace L. Griffin‘s ( Pacific School of Religion) talks on The Black Church and Black Macho. Griffin goes in depth and breaks down his passage through Morehouse as a religious fundamentalist and arrival to a deeper and more rich spirituality. Griffin breaks down his misogynist and homophobic views and his development into a more equity driven gay Episcopal minister. He is author of Their Own Receive Them Not: African American Lesbians and Gays in Black Church.

Dr. Michael J. Strambler (Yale School of Medicine) breaks down questions of educational motivation among African-American males. He reviews and challenges the current set of explanations which assume low motivation and anti-academic attitudes of Black youth. He then identifies some promising practices for reforming schools to positively affect Black male student experience and performance.

Dr. Shani Harris Peterson (Spelman College) presents on sex, media, and its implications for health. She challenges the audience to interrogate videos, including Snoop Dogg’s “Beautiful.” She also masterfully negotiates a set of questions that essentialize Black women as golddiggers and Black men as African royalty.

This is my talk and I’ll be offering more comments tomorrow in a post on Black Male Privilege (BMP) which includes the link. Also, check out Sister Toldja’s salute to my talk (blushing) and more importantly the subject matter of BMP.

Lastly, the panel closes with a question and answer session where a number of issues are clarified and challenging thoughts offered.

I’ve recently penned a piece for Centric’s new Culture List blog on the Pants on the Ground video. While the song is still getting downloaded en masse on itunes and used as a rolling joke, we’re missing an important political message and issue within the Black community.

“Pants on the ground, pants on the ground, looking like a fool with your pants on the ground!” This refrain was made famous by General Larry Platt on the opening of another season of American Idol. While I’ve long stopped watching the show and “stunts” to get on the opening shows are known, this performance was important because it captured the political complexities of contemporary Black struggle and the significance of generational divides to the Black community. WHAT!?! Okay, before you think I’ve jumped off the deep end, hear me out. If you look and listen closely to Platt, you would notice he used his exposure to draw attention to Troy Davis on death row, the National Action Network, and lastly told young men to pull their pants up. While many took the performance as all about laughs, we should have taken it as all about politics.

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“Traditionally, in American society, it is the members of the oppressed, objectified groups who are expected to stretch out and bridge the gap between the actualities of our lives and the consciousness of our oppressor. For in order to survive, those of us for whom oppression is as American as apple pie have always had to be watchers, to become familiar with the language and manners of the oppressor, even sometimes adopting them for some illusion of protection. Whenever the need for some pretense of communication arises, those who profit from our oppression call upon us to share our knowledge with them. In other words, it is the responsibility of the oppressed to teach the oppressors their mistakes. I am responsible for educating teachers who dismiss my children’s culture in school. Black and Third-World people are expected to educate white people as to our humanity. Women are expected to educate men. Lesbians and gay men are expected to educate the heterosexual world. The oppressors maintain their position and evade responsibility for their own actions. There is a constant drain of energy, which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and constructing the future.”

-Audre Lorde

This morning I woke to #RIPBIGPUN as a trending topic on twitter and was conflicted about bigging up Pun. Pun was a lyrical mastermind, a Boricua emcee who indelibly marked the game, and a domestic abuser. Now it may seem strange for me to highlight the last portion, given Hip-Hop is known to many as a space of misogyny and violence, but to me that’s never what defined hip-hop.*  The reality is that Big Pun may too powerful of example of Hip-Hop for me or us to face all he brought. Over the past few years getting a chance to meet and work with Hip-Hop legends, I’m reminded of the adage “never meet your heroes.” While there is a natural distortion upon meeting ones favorite celebrities, Hip-Hop’s unmasking has a particular timber. In Hip-Hop we depend so heavily on rappers presenting themselves with a certain mask. The mask that rappers, and we all wear, provides protection as well as blind spots. The reality is that we are all imperfect, but we as consumers highlight what we like and ignore what we don’t. In a twisted way the question becomes, “What violence is acceptable and what violence do we not accept?” Sadly the answer tends to be that within Hip-Hop domestic violence is one of the lowest priority violences.

I remember the first time I saw that clip I was stopped in my tracks. I didn’t know what to say. Of course the scholar in me says, if you like violence in one context, why not expect it in another one? I was hurt as I watched Pun pistol whip Liza Rios and then fail to make it up the stairs to continue his onslaught. In sick irony, in the most classical sense, Liza’s life was saved by Pun’s own nemesis of poor health, which would eventually take his life.  When I hear folks say, “Hip-Hop is entertainment. Movies are violent, but you don’t see anyone coming down on them.” I’m reminded of the words of Liza Rios who talked about the evolution of her husband, “I knew him as Chris. And as he became Pun, he actually became Punisher. That wasn’t just a stage name, that was his way of being.” Cinematic violence, whether on screen or in our headphones, often requires us to suspend reality but with the visual evidence of Pun’s violence, my suspension of reality shattered.

I must be honest with myself and recognize that many of my rap idols like Biggie were domestic abusers, they just never had the camera rolling. To many, domestic violence is unconsciousable. But as a man, I have to grapple with the fact that we, Black, Brown, White, Asian men are the purveyors of the violence and must develop the tools to stop it. I’ve been in a number of conversations with sisters who do sexual abuse work over the years and when I ask them earnestly, “What should be done with brothers that abuse, rape or enact violence on women?” Sadly a number have responded, “jail”, “death penalty”, “let the community have their way with him.” From some of the most progressive sisters I know, this hurt me too. What is the cost of not acknowledging domestic violence? What is the cost of not making space for healing for the abused and abuser? This is complicated work, but the work that a community must do if it wants to be sustained. The reality is that violence remains a serious issue in our community and we cannot afford to turn a blind eye to punishment or healing.

*Part of my denial of violence as central to my definition of Hip-Hop is rooted in my understanding that many rappers are spewing perverse fantasy, and my black male privilege which puts me in precarious location of the potential purveyor and victim of violence. This would take a whole book to really go into, but had to offer that caveat.

Today’s BHC (Black History-Contemporary) speaks to the position of Women, leadership, and racial uplift. Undoutedbly we are accustomed to hearing Black HIStory but there is equal and sometimes greater value in hearing Black HERstory.

“We are tired of hearing Negro men say, “There is a better day coming,” while they do nothing to usher in the day. We are becoming so impatient that we are getting in the front ranks, and serve notice on the world that we will brush aside the halting, cowardly Negro men, and with prayer on our lips and arms prepared for any fray, we will press on and on until victory is over.

Africa must be for Africans, and Negroes everywhere must be independent, God being our guide. Mr. Black man, watch your step! Ethiopia’s queens will reign again, and her Amazons protect her shores and people. Strengthen your shaking knees, and move forward, or we will displace you and lean on to victory and glory.”

-Amy Jacques Garvey 1927

I love hip-hop, love some reggaetón too, I love the youth, but I’m pretty sure I don’t love this!

How many things can you count wrong with this video?

This ignorance brought to you by 2dopeboyz!

N.B. Uptown Notes does not support the exploitation of children, but it does support laughing at them under certain circumstances.

1) So you watched Pants on the Ground and laughed. Did you notice that General Larry Platt had on a Justice for Troy Davis button, a National Action Network tee shirt, and Red, Black and Green wristbands? Message!

2) So when you heard that Yele had financial issues did it stop you from donating?

3) How come when you heard that Red Cross had bigger issues it didn’t stop you from donating?

4) How come the resolutions that people make for the new year usually end by Martin Luther King Day?

5) Wait, there’s a rapper named Wacka Flocka? So we naming ourselves after Muppets now?

6) If people read Dyson nearly as much as they hated on him, would they hate as much?

7) Why do you think King’s life work was about integration, when it was really about fighting poverty, war, and racism?

8 ) On Jersey Shore, why did the cops know Ronnie by name?

9) Why didn’t you even notice the Supreme Court eeked closer to putting Mumia to death?

10) Why the hell haven’t you offered your assistance to the cradle of our liberation struggle – Haiti?

hat tip to @AroundHarlem

“History is not a procession of illustrious people. It’s about what happens to a people. Millions of anonymous people is what history is about.” – James Baldwin

The partner post to this post, Haiti in Context: History gives you the long view of how we have arrived to the crises in Haiti. This post gives you the story of the people connected and concerned with Haiti. I’ll let people’s voices speak for themselves:

Jo Nubian penned a powerful and inspiring reflection on Haiti

My heart has many compartments, sacred spaces for sacred people, and one of those spaces belongs to the people of Haiti.  I don’t love Haiti because I pity her, let me be clear about this so that there is no misunderstanding.  Haiti suffers with more pity and inaction intertwined than possibly any other place on this planet and my revolutionary spirit does not care much for those types of  bandwagons.  My love for her sits beautifully, poised  and majestic, eagerly recalling a freedom that somehow my heart knows more than two hundred years after she became free.  Yes, I celebrate her sons Toussaint Louverture, Jean-Jacques Dessalines and Alexandre Petion, but also every slave, every overseer, every African spirit who decided that our people were not chattel and were destined for liberation.  That spirit is still very much alive in her, despite and maybe because of all the hardship that she faces.  When I ponder Haiti, I ponder her with these feelings of love, respect, and adoration.

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A good and brilliant scholar friend of mine Ferentz Lafargue fills us in on Haiti’s progress, not just its peril.

In recent months there has been a spate of articles exploring different aspects of Haiti’s progress and progress of Haitian-Americans in the United States. These articles range from a gushing profile by Amy Wilentz in Conde Nast Traveler to a Wall Street Journal piecehighlighting a rise in Haitian American football players, titled aptly enough “These Days, Everybody’s All-American Just May Be a Haitian.” These come on top of feature articles about prominent Haitian-Americans such as 2009 MacArthur recipient Edwidge Danticat, White House Director of the Office of Political Affairs Patrick Gaspard and musician and activist Wyclef Jean. On the one hand, these profiles suggest that Haitian-Americans are taking another step forward in gaining recognition in the United States, much as our immigrant predecessors from Ireland and Italy did in the first part of the 20th century. At the same time, when read alongside glowing reports from Bill Clinton, U.N. Special Envoy to Haiti, about improved conditions for entrepreneurs and improved security on the island, it appeared, as one colleague recently put it, that Haiti was finally “open for business.”

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I am not sure who to attribute this poetic reflection I Am H.A.I.T.I. but it is ripe with painful truth, hurt, and prospect.

I AM H.A.I.T.I.

The only time the world cares about me is when I rise up and bury my own children, when I eviscerate my offspring. I am H.A.I.T.I., you pay attention to me when my children are entombed by the shoddy concrete that is left over for me to house my family while the grade concrete is shipped off to Western cities and suburbs. I am H.A.I.T.I., you now cry for me, when usually you don’t give a shit about me.

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Both TastyKeish and Southside Scholar have beautiful and painful insights into what is happening to folks in Haiti today as well as super informative links, please visit their sites and be enriched!!! Remember it is the elevation of these and your voices that let the world know that we care. Not just that we care about disaster relief, but that we care about the next steps, policies, and programs towards Haiti. A friend recently told me of a set of Black folks who talked about many reasons for giving, but came to conclusion that it didn’t matter. Remember your dollars not only help with disaster relief but send a message that there is a real connection and concern with Haiti and her people. To me, the past few days have been draining and renewing at the same time. I am humbled to be surrounded by such great caring and loving thinkers and doers, I pray that it is this energy that is carried forward in the resurrection of Haiti.

*please pardon me for not citing where all these pieces came from. Folks have forwarded me so many things. Charge it to my head not my heart.

Note: This is a Partner Post to Haiti in Context: Voices. Please check out both. They represent some of the best information I’ve seen on Haiti that’s emerged over the past few days.

It has been a tough 4 days for Haiti and its Diaspora but from struggle emerges strength. I first want to say I am every renewed by the way I’ve seen folks in my own personal network and internationally begin to pull together for Haiti. I am clear that what we are doing now is small and late, but there is nothing like watching community form before your eyes and working together. Political differences become supplanted in the midst of crisis and when heavy lifting is occurring. A number of people have reached out to me regarding Haiti and the context surrounding the country that would allow an earthquake to do so much damage. In reality, like most “natural disasters” there are very human causes that lead to such catastrophic consequences. I have assembled some of the best writing I’ve seen on the context and figured I’d let you read the experts words moreso than mine.

Alternet covers the emergence of Haiti and the deep connections between the United States, Haiti and the globe:

However, more than two centuries ago, Haiti represented one of the most important neighbors of the new American Republic and played a central role in enabling the United States to expand westward. If not for Haiti, the course of U.S. history could have been very different, with the United States possibly never expanding much beyond the Appalachian Mountains.

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The Socialist Worker has a good article on the policies that helped produces deep issues of political and economic infrastructure.

“The media coverage of the earthquake is marked by an almost complete divorce of the disaster from the social and political history of Haiti,” Canadian Haiti solidarity activist Yves Engler said in an interview. “They repeatedly state that the government was completely unprepared to deal with the crisis. This is true. But they left out why.”

To understand these facts, we have to look at a second fault line–U.S. imperial policy toward Haiti. The U.S. government, the UN, and other powers have aided the Haitian elite in subjecting the country to neoliberal economic plans that have impoverished the masses, deforested the land, wrecked the infrastructure and incapacitated the government.

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Democracy Now features a good discussion of how US Policy has shaped the “underdeveloped” state that Haiti was in prior to the Earthquake

And they got there because they or their parents or grandparents were pushed out of Haiti’s countryside, where most Haitians used to live. And they were pushed out of there by policies thirty years ago, when it was decided by the international experts that Haiti’s economic salvation lay in assembly manufacture plants. And in order to advance that, it was decided that Haiti needed to have a captive labor force in the cities. So a whole bunch of aid policies, trade policies and political policies were implemented, designed to move people from the countryside to places like Martissant and the hills—hillsides that we’ve seen in those photos.

Watch the video here or read the transcript beneath the video.

Make sure to check out the piece in the UK Guardian by Peter Hallward on OUR ROLE in the creation of the Haiti we know today. And the interview on Democracy Now with Randall Robinson, founder of TransAfrica, who explains the sick irony in the appeal to George Bush for assistance.

I certainly acknowledge there is a lot to read and watch there but while the media concentrates on framing this as a unconscionable ”natural disaster” as if Haiti is perpetually “bad luck” there needs to be a deeper conversation about Ayiti (Haiti) and her people. The strength and resilience that formed Haiti will be what allow it to return to being the Pearl of the liberated African Diaspora. Please read the partner post to this Haiti in Context: Voices which capture the voices of the people.

*please pardon me for not citing where all these pieces came from. Folks have forwarded me so many things. Charge it to my head not my heart.

I write this post with a heavy heart for the people of Haiti and its Diaspora. As you likely well know by now Port-au-Prince, the nation’s capital was hit with a 7.0 earthquake and many sizable aftershocks. Given that Haiti is the most impoverished nation in the Western Hemisphere, the consequences of this “natural disaster” are far beyond what many of us can conceive. I see this as a time for us to join in support in spiritual, emotional, physical and economic ways.

Beneath I have included some immediate ways that you can donate and offer aid from abroad. I have opted for donating with AmeriCares because of their long standing relationship with relief work in Haiti, their four star ranking from charity navigator, and their expertise/infrastructure in similar crises. In times of crisis, relief is needed and after watching the American Red Cross stumble, squander and misappropriate funds from Katrina Relief I decided to exercise a greater degree of caution with my donations. No matter where you chose to donate, God willing, some help will be given. So please give freely so that we can help our dear brothers and sisters of Haiti.

Partners in Health (comes highly recommended)

Doctors without Borders

Yele (Wyclef’s Organization – this is a smaller org and has been getting a lot of hits and is struggling with their website and possibly other matters)

American Red Cross

MercyCorps

Unicef

An additional list of options here and a great post with options from South Side Scholar here.

While I am not Haitian (the francophone name L’Heureux is just a given name from my mother) I feel a special kindredness with our brothers and sisters there. While the poverty and squalor are often concentrated on, Haiti remains our first liberated republic which was won through struggle. Now is the time to practice what Dr. John Henrik-Clarke preached, “PanAfricanism or Perish.” Let’s move from ideology and voyeurism to activism and engagement.

Special thanks to @alone_cuzzo @aisha1908 @saigrundy @Ssidescholar

On Tuesday, the New York Times published a story entitled “As Population Shifts in Harlem, Blacks Lose Their Majority.” The article started a firestorm of commentary on listservs and in my twitter feed so I thought I’d throw a couple of things out there. Many are treating this article as if it’s a formal obituary reading R.I.P. Black Harlem. Before we inscribe Rest In Peace, what if it meant Rise in Power Black Harlem? Not following me yet, I think the article missed at least 5 key things.

1) Captain Obvious to the rescue

If you have walked around Harlem in the last ten years, this story should not or does not surprise you. Everyone I passed the link or story around to who has lived here for a while responded with amusement, confirmation, and continuing with their day. Why? In part because demographic shifts get picked up by the census after people experience it in their everyday lives. The standard “quick and dirty” test of racial segregation within NYC that I give my students is the “train test.” I ask them, “Where do you get on? Where do you get off? What type of people (ethnicity) get off at your stop? When can you get a seat?” These questions lead them to think about demographic change in terms of race, ethnicity, economy, and space. In short, ride a train and you’d know that non-”Black” folks have been streaming uptown for a while now.

2) The Great White Fear

The article features a lovely picture of a White man, Joshua Buachner and his 2 year old daughter. It’s amazing how a docile picture of brownstone can create such a panic. The responses I saw highlighted the booming White surge in Harlem. Well kids, look at the numbers! First, the article plainly states Central Harlem has received a boom, doubling so now that means 1 in 10 residents in Central Harlem are White! Whoa! One in 10 … yeah, that’s right let it marinate … oh wait, not running scared? Right! The percentage of White residents was so low that a doubling lead to 1 in 10. If you look at the graphs provided, you’ll see there is a significant uptick but not one many are concentrating on. And trust me, 1 in 10 should make you think when you get of at 125th that you got off in the Upper East Side. Perspective is everything.

From IRAAS Harlem History Photo Essay

3) Urban Amnesia

The article pretty much steps over the entire history of redlining and other forms of systematic depreciation of Harlem properties and shuffling of the Black population into Harlem. Redlining served to keep people from buying property, served to make folks who had property sell instead of “riding the tide”, served to limit commerce in Harlem, and even carried a premium for services used by residents. Yes, there was significant outmigration, but this outmigration operated in concert with the “invisible hand” of financial incentives for some and disincentives for others. In reality, Black Harlem has really been leased space. A significant number of Black folks were able to buy, but many if not most Black folks in Harlem did not own; they rented. The result is that the owners left, the renters stayed, and Harlem’s economic depression continued for far too long. The out-migration and in-migration (depends on who you ask also known as gentrification) is not happenstance. Yes, everyone has individual agency and choices, but one’s choices are shaped by larger forces.

4) Black is, Black ain’t?

The article stresses the decrease in “Black” families, which the author never defines but we can take to mean largely African-American families. In passing the article mentions the increasing numbers of Black residents who are not African-American such as West Indian and Continental African immigrants. This expansion of the African diasporic presence can be seen in food choices, neighborhood institutions, and has undoubtedly added to the flavor of Harlem… but what about the “other” folks? You know, the ones the article gives short sell to? The most rapidly increasing groups in Harlem according to the chart are the “other(s).” And I’d bet, though I don’t have the data, this is an increase in Latinos, particularly Afro-Latinos. The article quickly mentions that the Latino population is at an all time high in Central Harlem and Harlem at large. It seems that that for the past 30 plus years, Latinos have been moving in and occupying neighborhoods throughout Harlem without large alarm and cover stories. Uptown has a bustling Afro-Latino population which should not continue to be overlooked. If you are a student of Harlem, you know there has been tension but also very fertile ground around race and ethnic solidarity between African-Americans, Continental Africans,  Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, etc. This could represent a greater Pan African possibility … or panic, it’s up to us to decide.

5) Whose/Who’s Harlem?

The next steps for Harlem are in motion. Yes, there is an increasing White presence, but to me the more important part is that there is an increasing Latino presence, particularly Afro-Latino population. These are the moments when Harlem residents have a chance to redefine what it means to be Black Harlem. While in the 20th century Harlem witnessed the extreme flight of Whites and its Blackening, the process does not have to be reversed. Everyday when I walk around Harlem and the Heights I see the beauty of the Diaspora. A key to maintaining our stake and status in this historic “capital of Black America” is looking for links of solidarity around affordable housing, living wages, and community. Black Harlem has always been what its residents made it out to be. Ownership has never been the bedrock of the community, instead its vibrance of our people creating beauty in the midst of struggle.

And one of them is not the use of the word Negro which has BEEN appearing, including on the 2000 census short and long forms.

1) The counting of prisoners – Currently prisoners are counted as residents of the counties in which they are imprisoned rather than their home communities. This serves to increase political representation in areas that tend to be rural and White, while decreasing the political representation of the home communities that folks come from.

2) Who is White? The extended racial definitions provided by OMB 15 say that, ” A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.”  Notice something about that? I was certainly surprised that folks from North Africa and the Middle East remain classified as White, despite the socially distinct lives that many lead.

3) Undercounts. The issue of Negro was raised in response to the potential of people being offended and “opting out” of the Census. If seeing Negro makes you not fill out the Census form, I’m going to wager you weren’t going to fill it out in the first place. Many communities remain undercounted: the poor, the young, immigrant to name a few, this all matters for political resources. If you’re worried about undercounts, think also about the homeless. Their undercounting means fewer resources for those feeling the hardest brunts of the “land of opportunity.”

I am all for rallying around a cause. I’m just not sure I can meet ya’ll down at the Census offices for a protest over Negro. Focus groups, lettering writing campaigns, and write ins suggest some of our older brothers and sisters still support the term. Let’s focus energy in creating greater political clout, not appropriate nomenclature.

This is my reflection on Imani: Faith…

Faith is often thought of in a religious and spiritual way. Having grown up in a Baptist church I often heard, “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1) This common articulation suggests that there is a higher power ordering our lives and we must remain faithful to see it come to fruition. This orientation asks one to have faith in a higher power, often called God, and if I asked many walking the street, “Do you have faith in God?” they would likely answer, “Yes.” If I ask them, “Do you have faith in Black people?” I’m not sure I would receive such an affirming response.

Karenga defined Imani in the following way, “to believe with all our heart in our people, our parents, our teachers, our leaders and the righteousness and victory of struggle.” The definition noticeably and intentionally does not ask the basic question of faith in a higher being, but more so asks can you have faith in those with home you walk this earth? Can you have faith in those who you live with, go to school with and struggle with? The older I get, the more I find people openly acknowledging faith in a higher power and disavowing faith in our people. While I do not want to get into a question of religious or spiritual beliefs (that may come though), it strikes  me as peculiar that with the tremendous history and contributions that people of African descent have made, that many of us – myself included, will suggest “we ain’t gonna make it.”

Is it an understanding of history or not understanding history that allows one to draw such a conclusion about the African Diaspora and particularly African-Americans? In the past year, I’ve been trying to push myself out of being a member of the Possible Police. The Possible Police are a unit of Black folks who whenever a discussion of change begins to happen, they ruminate, “It ain’t gonna happen.” “We already tried that.” “Let me know how that turns out.” Or “It’s impossible.” In all honesty, the election of Barack Obama pushed me to more deeply question my beliefs around struggle and victory. While I’ll be the first to say the election of Barack Obama is no magic salve, I must also acknowledge that his election is the fruit of significant struggle.

It worries me that at the age of 31 I can say “It won’t happen in my lifetime,” This in some ways reflects a resolution of defeat at worst or delayed gratification at best. This tradition of nay saying, instead of affirmation, conveys a deep lack of faith among the population who most need it and have the most to offer, the youth relatively young people. My walk with brothers at CCNY has pushed me to articulate hope, in spite of defeatism’s presence. In listening to their questions about the future, family, and opportunity I kept hearing a lack of faith in themselves, our people, and the world. I have taken to asking, “Why would you tell yourself you can’t? There are a million people who would tell you “you can’t”, “don’t try it”, “you’re not worthy” in a heartbeat. So why would you be the first in line to do that?” The path that we have walked has been a long one and often bitter one, despite this strong men and women keep coming.

Some brothers have asked me, why I keep a faith in our people? For me it is about faith in a higher power and in our people to make change.  I would venture to say, a lack of faith in our people and ourselves individually often reflects a lack of faith in a higher power and/or the ability of people to produce change. While some may argue, “place your faith in God, not humans”, it is the divinity that I see in my people that forces me to fight through the muddy terrain of self hatred and doubt. A faith in Black people often is one that necessitates we see beyond the obvious and embrace the possible which were denied for so long. It is necessary that we are grounded and realistic, but not necessary that we concede defeat in the beginning of the battle. Can you begin to imagine if our ancestors, held in the bondage of slavery throughout the globe stopped themselves from dreaming and working on freedom? If the answer is no, then why should we come this far and give up our faith?

This is my reflection on Kuumba: Creativity

I have to admit, I never really remember reading the “official definition” of Kuumba.

“To do always as much as we can, in the way we can, in order to leave our community more beautiful and beneficial than we inherited it.”

I always kind of remember thinking of arts and crafts, dances, etc. you know what we generally take creativity to be. But in this year’s ritual of writing and reflection I realized that it is about creating what we need. This week, I have the honor of participating in a marriage ceremony that melds two Muslim families of differing ethnic backgrounds: Indian american and African-American. In preparation for the wedding, the question of rituals and ceremonies came up. Given that the Bride comes from a large Hyderabadi family in India the number of rites and traditions that she brings are extensive. There is a beauty in having a history and culture that is uniquely identifiable and has been passed on for multiple generations. When I initially asked the groom, “what are you bringing [traditions, etc.] the wedding?” He responded with uncertainty.

All too often, still in this country, African-Americans when looking for our cultural roots and rituals we feel alienated from things that fall too far outside of our everyday life. As I mentioned before, one of the serious dilemmas of Kwanzaa celebrations, etc. is the stigma and fear of engaging a “foreign culture.” I have always taken Afrocentrism to be a middle-class Black phenomenon (that’s for a whole ‘nother entry) and truly understand why so many of us do not gravitate towards Africa as our cultural home. However, this does not preclude us from having a culture that offers a contribution to the world, and in this case a ceremony.

After a bit of discussion, and brow beating, the groom and I discussed the rite of “jumping the broom” as a marital tradition that harkens back to our ancestry as African-Americans. Additionally, it is something that is visually distinct enough to let all in attendance know that through marriage their new family would be connecting Indian and Black, and that each held equal value. While for many, this would have sufficed, the groom’s mother took an additional step and pushed to incorporate the recent Native American ancestry in their family. She will present the new marriage ritual with an explanation and have it close out the final ceremonies for both families. This is one of three wedding in the groom’s family this year and this ritual will be repeated at each wedding. Through the creation of this ritual, in company with the bride’s ritual, all in attendance get to not only witness a marriage but marry each other in a new cultural and spiritual space. This is the creation of community. By drawing on our Kuumba we have created what we need and made it available to all in attendance. Let us never forget, there is an equal beauty in creating a cultural ritual that is based in history and the present that will be passed on for multiple generations.

This is my reflection on Nia Purpose ”To make our collective vocation the building and developing of our community in order to restore our people to their traditional greatness.”

While there is no one path, ritual creates a space for purpose to emerge and understanding to evolve. I think the rituals that we do can serve to build greater understanding of self and with each successive engagement expands the meaning of the ritual and principle. This year’s participation in rituals of writing daily on Kwanzaa served to enrich my understanding of each principle’s purpose and my own purpose.

From B I R D flickr photostream

I have been having conversations all Kwanzaa with adult brothers and sisters about celebrating it and there are a number of who respond, “I did when I was kid and it was cool then but ….” As someone who did not come up celebrating Kwanzaa, I’m from one of those Black families where members-only jackets were more common than dashikis, I have appreciated the adult understandings that have developed for me from the Nguzo Saba or Kawaida. While many enter the festival of Kwanzaa as a ritual where the Kinara needs to be there, corn and squash is around, and we should yell Harambee, this can be a part of Kwanzaa but the reflection on the principles as an individual and within a group are paramount. Through participation in the rituals associated with Kwanzaa (both reflection and actions) we have the opportunity to deepen our understanding of their purpose, our purpose, and often discover things that were beyond the original conception.

I recently was discussing Ujamaa with a sister online who was talking about explaining it to four year olds and how difficult it is. She had settled on an example of a lemonade stand. I added, “Maybe you can explain it as sharing. Tell them it’s about businesses that share with the community. Maybe point out businesses that share usually know your name or other folks in your community’s name.” While this was a rough and dirty way to explain it, I think it begins to get at some of the core dimensions of Cooperative Economics. Now I don’t think “businesses that share” is the limit of Ujamaa, instead as adults I think the purpose of the principle is to get us to think more deeply about the economic systems that we are involved in. Julius Nyerere enacted a system of Ujamaa which was a form of socialism in Tanzania. Imagine if in the same room we had young folks talking about sharing, adolescents discussing the validity of buying Black, and young adults and adults talking about the promise and pitfalls of differing economic systems and policies? Those types of discussions would invariably benefit our community. It seems with each step in one’s development, the purpose in the principle should be seen differently. Each year, we must bring the year’s gains, losses, and insights to the festival of harvest. While the ritual remains the same, the purpose does not change, it just grows as we do.

This is my reflection on the principle of Ujamaa – Cooperative Economics…

The title of the post is a variation on a sage comment by bell hooks who stated,”… black self-determination is not the same as black capitalism.”

This excerpt of her quote summarized many of the issues that I see floating around now when we discuss the evolution of Black Power and its evolution into cultural practice and social organization. In this new constellation, the new Black Power is seated in Washington DC on Pennsylvania Avenue, self-determination has become “grinding” for you own good, and cooperative economics has been transformed into buying Black. While I am all for the evolution of ideas, when the spirit of the thing is lost, the question of “how does the individual part relate to the whole?” becomes all the more critical. Last year, I wrote about the issues of reducing Ujamaa to buying Black, which I still stand by, but we must also realize that true cooperative economics demands the sharing of investments and rewards for our community which can include but is not limited to monetary contributions. It is true collaboration in the (financial, social, and cultural) economy of our community’s which will keep our collective and individual mouths fed and determining the direction of our community.

What if the investments we made today were in community? To most, this means “buy black today” but couldn’t we also suggest “donate Black today” or “volunteer black today”? The idea that consumption is the only way to participate in economics is misguided, there are multiple way to participate in economics that are not just based in consuming but are based in building. Beneath the image I offer some suggestions for economic contribution for spenders, philanthropists, and activists:

For spenders:

I recently tweeted about The Power of One card which I was introduced to at my favorite uptown bookstore Hue-man. The card is a Harlem based Susu that is designed to provide a reinvestment into the community via programming and provide members with discounts at participating vendors. This type of program is particularly important in a community like Harlem where we, people of African descent, compose the majority, but are the minority of business owners and often have our interests and needs overshadowed by those concerned with capital first and people second.

For philanthropists:

Our communities are in dire need of more resources to deal with the host of issues that we face. When I talk about “giving” folks often hit me with, “I ain’t got it.” While times are hard, a donation of 20 dollars can really help boost an organization’s ability to work in the community. A gift of twenty dollars is often what many of us spend on a meal. Could you carry a lunch twice a month or dine in one more night? We show what we care about by what and how we invest in it. If you don’t have the time but you have a dime, please spend it with organizations that deal with the issues you care about. Recently I’ve been really concerned with issues of sexual violence, grassroots community programming, youth advocacy with social media and homelessness, so these organizations have gotten my attention. No you can’t donate everywhere, so like all investments, make them wisely and with care so that they’ll have the greatest (community) return.

For activists:

I listen to Jay-Z and find him to be a wise man (I know some of you are trying to take away my “conscience black card” right now, but hear me out). Jay has been know to be a huge philanthropist and on Minority Report he reflected on philanthropy and Hurricane Katrina, “Sure I ponied up a mill(ion)/But I didn’t give my time/ so in reality I didn’t give a dime or damn/ just put my monies in the hands of the same people that left my people stranded/ Nothin but a bandit/ just left them folks abandoned/ damn that money that we gave was just a band-aid.” Often times we think of investment in our community as ones that come from “giving back” and “donating” but there are many things that your dollars cannot do, but you as a person can. Whether it’s mentoring, spending time collating papers, or donating your voice to share perspective, there is a need for you to give more than from your pockets. The intangibles often mean just as much if not even more than marks in a ledger book.

This is my reflection on Ujima: Collective Work and Responsibility

For more than a year, I’ve entertained way too many conversations about the shortage of Black men and Black women who remain hopelessly single. I tend to avoid these conversations, because it seems little can come of them other than hurt feelings and finger pointing. Well while reflecting on Ujima, I wondered how the principle could help this discussion given my inbox and twitter feed was abuzz with a recent story on the “crisis” in the Black community. I am certain that the blame game that comes around from discussions of relationships nor is it something that is unique to Black folks. I however realize it can come into special relief when we begin to talk about the numbers of Black women and men that are not married or the number of “out-of-wedlock” births that we have. The “crisis” of the Black family is not new, the placing of blame on Black women is not new, blaming men is not new, but the repackaging of it continues to draw attention and the opposite of productive discussion, mainly it ends up being a new opportunity for us to sidestep personal work, overlook progress, and undermine community work.

The principle of Ujima asks that we all acknowledge our role in the current condition and collectively work to repair it, this seldom happens in the current discourse. The recent Washington Post profile of Helena Andrews and the Nightline segment on unmarried Black women have kept us consumed with chatter. The Nightline segment features a number of sisters talking about the dilemma of being single and successful and then they’re joined by relationship guru comedian (who is asked to speak on a serious social issue) Steve Harvey. Harvey offers some commentary on the women’s aesthetic beauty, says older men failed to socialize younger males, and then tells the sisters to date older men to fulfill what the story purports as “missing.” The story created quite a buzz and part of it, I’d say, is due to the way the piece is framed. The piece highlights an ever declining population of marriagable men and high achieving women, pitting men against women in a zero sum game which results in a decaying Black family. When I saw the piece I didn’t get bent out of shape about it and reach for a lighter to reignite the battle of the sexes,  instead I saw a more promising narrative on mate selection, accomplishment, and community. This was, in part, because I listened to the voices of the sisters, rather than the voice that framed the piece. If you listen to the women’s testimonies they articulate clear expectations, a desire to settle down, but not the desire to settle. Quite the opposite of what is popularly emphasized where sisters have unrealistic standards, are hungry to trap men, and emasculate the men in their lives. Their voices and stories, like so many that I’ve read or watched on the topic, get twisted and are used to suggest there is more space for discontent and disunity than for collective work and responsibility.

The reality, as I see it, is that the changing forms of family, gender, and community mandate that we not look at each other and assume we will replicate the systems of the past. This doesn’t mean a total disavowal of what we had, but it often means me must acknowledge what we used in the past may not work today. In order to begin collective work we have to agree upon a problem or set of problems, which I’m not sure we do. What if what one called a problem another saw as an evolution and a success? Too often we assume marriage is the bedrock for a strong community, however family is much more-so. And family, for African-Americans and people of African descent has been defined in many ways that clash the mythos of the nuclear family. Are we ready to begin the work of collective uplift be acknowledging we may not be all shooting at the same target of family? Are we ready to acknowledge the role that emotional scars hold for men and women in choosing partners? Are we ready to move beyond discussions of “baby mama” drama and enter the work of  co-parenting? These are some of the questions and topics I’d love to see tackled so that we may truly begin to see our brothers and sisters problems as our own, as well as, our brothers and sisters strengths as our own. From there we can begin to do the work of collective work and responsibility for the Black community.

My reflection on the second principle of the Nguzo Saba of Kwanzaa is Kujichagulia – Self-Determination

“To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves” is often commonly articulated as the definition of Kujichagulia. For many this principle has been all about identity and selecting names, memorizing phrases from different African cultures, and suggesting Pan-Africanism is the ideology we must take on. But all this still seems to miss part of the boat when it comes to Kujichagulia. In fact, many take this principle as a call to develop our individual identities rather than determining the direction of our community. For so many, the process of developing a strong Black identity or African centered identity is a highly personal one. You struggle with who you are, where your people are from, what you and your people have contributed, so inevitably it starts with one questioning their relation to the greater whole. Finding answers to these questions can lead to an identity, but not necessarily self-determination.

I recently had a conversation with a teacher who works at a local school, by her account, that features a very visibly Afrocentric staff member who talks often of African greatness, rattles off facts of the civilizations of Kemet, and floats regally through the halls. The teacher’s qualm with the staff member was plainly, “he treats the families at the school and the staff members like shit.” This narrative is one that I have heard all too often when it comes to the development of an identity. The idea that one can identify with the greatness of the past, but one fails to identify with the contemporary reality of Black people. It is great to be able to look at the pyramids and talk about African greatness, but can you look outside your window at the brothas on the corner too and see that greatness?

As a college professor, sometimes I find myself frustrated with students who are developing answers to who I am, but these identities are not tied to who and where we are as a people. Put another way, too often a romantic view of the past leads us to underestimate the value of our people in the present. Knowing where we are in the present, valuing it and challenging it, builds the path to self-determination. Kujichagulia demands that we take seriously our identities but that these identities must be linked to needs of the community and deeds that serve the community. It is this seeing beyond the “me” or the “i” to the “we” is what links identity and community. Identity without community is as useful as a word for which no one knows the meaning. Identity and community give us the core for determining the next directions our people should explore. No matter our allegiance to the past, we must be also be aligned with the present conditions of our people, if not, then self-determination will be centered on the “I” and not the “We.”

*The question of “and then what?” was really brought to me by the Boogiemonsters on this classic joint.

This is my reflection on Umoja, the first principle of Nguzo Saba of Kwanzaa…

Does it make sense that fighting could lead to unity? On its face, my first thought is, absolutely not. I could imagine for “highly evolved beings” we could probably resolve our differences quickly, with out malice or attitude, and unify for the strengthening of community. But then, I’m reminded of reality. Most times the things that are most important to unify around are also the most controversial. Yesterday, I watched and listened to a number of conversations occur around Kwanzaa, its relevance, its creator, and whether or not we should celebrate it. In fact, a year ago when I wrote Quit Frontin on Kwanzaa my goal was to provide a base that made people feel informed and comfortable about celebrating and reflecting. What I forgot is that, no matter how much I believe in a thing, everyone has the right to feel differently and do as they please. As an African people, we too often have been told what to do, what to believe in, and when to do it. This is not a cycle I wish to re-create.

So in the sense, I believe in freedom of choice as individual within a community. This type of belief could be a serious quandry. Instead, it was this very point that reminded me of a conversation that I had with my Grandfather who moved from Selma, Alabama to Connecticut in the heights of the Civil Rights Movement. I recall reading about the Civil Rights Movement and thinking proudly, “Those are my people.” I returned home to talk to my Grandfather with the goals of hearing organizing stories, fighting stories, you know – eyes on the prize the personal version. When I spoke to him, he told me none. He told me none when I asked, “When you were down there and everything was happening what was it like?” He simply replied, “It was very busy … and I was working.” I remembering feeling betrayed and thinking, “What? Are you serious? Wait, does that mean that I don’t have a personal contribution to the legacy of Civil Rights?” All these questions I later realized came out of ego, not out of a genuine concern for uplift and unity. I wanted his activism to look a certain way, to fit a script, for it to be side-by-side with the van guard of Black grassroots leaders. This was my issues, not his! In fact, after I spoke to my grandfather more he told me about the different meetings and how he was a part of those who did not participate in the most traditional or easily identifiable ways. He didn’t march, he didn’t pass out fliers, but what he did do was actively engage the question of change in his heart, his mind, his church and in his familial work.

You don’t have to have unity in action to have unity in spirit. In fact, sometimes the things that divide us on the surface unify us by send us questioning the deeper dilemmas and understandings that we all hold. It is this fight that is unifying, this fight that provides the engine for change within our community, this fight that we all begin when we begin to seriously think about what our community is. Who is in it? And how shall we move forward? From the seeds of dissent, a new, fuller, tradition of community and change can evolve, even if what we do doesn’t look the same. This can occur only when we enter with humility and value each others’ contributions and questions with a welcoming, challenging, and affirming spirit.

A year ago, I began a series on Kwanzaa, this year I will finish it (thanks to all who remember I didn’t and reminded me all year, accountability) Here’s entry one! Habari Gani?

“Pro-Black like Craig Hodges but my dashiki’s in the cleaners.” – Common

Being Pan-African is a weird thing. To many folks it means wearing dashikis, avoiding swine, and shouting ase at every opportunity. I, however, realize that you aren’t going to do that. For most Black folks, the holiday of Kwanzaa is one tied to Pan-Africanism and thus gets mentioned more in their living rooms on TV commercials than at family gatherings. I’ve decided we’ve been frontin’ on Kwanzaa for no real good reason. So here are some pre-emptive responses to questions and concerns.

Read more of why you should Quit Frontin on Kwanzaa here

So for the past X months everyone who visits NYC finds it necessary to sing some part of Empire State of Mind or insert a line of it into conversation as they’re visiting … very annoying. If you’ve done this, no need to apologize, just stop it! But in other news, Stephen Colbert ripped it the other night with Alicia Keys performing Empire State of mind 2.

If you cannot see the video, click here.

Hat tip to JF

Back in May, I wrote the Possible and the Probable part 1 which dealt with questions of gender, expectation, and realities. This time I’m onto a subject near and dear to my heart, education. Last May, David Brooks penned an editorial called, “The Harlem Miracle” which reported on the Harlem Children’s Zone’s Promise Academy charter schools. Brooks bases the editorial on a correspondence with Roland Fryer, economist at Harvard and NYC public schools Chief Equity Officer, who had just completed a study with Bill Dobbie says they found the Promise Academy “eliminated the Black-White test score gap.” For Brooks and Fryer, this was a miraculous occurrence which created a firestorm of attention and riled voices of “what can be done in high poverty school, when there are no excuses.” I have been working with urban schools since the early 1990s and I know that “miracles” are possible but they are not probable. I must admit, I approach claims of unmitigated success, miracles, and beating the odds with a degree of skepticism, not because I don’t want these claims to be true, but because as folks often say, “if it’s too good to be true, it probably is.”

They deserve better, but do we know how to make better for all?

Now some will read this and view me as a pessimist around education, in fact, I am the furthest thing from it. My vision and goal is to have an urban education system where chances of success exceed chances of failure, where families have options, were school staff are supported, and youth become critical thinkers. Is that too much to ask? If you look at the condition of our cities public schools you would begin to believe the answer is yes, that is too much to ask. On the Left, there’s often the cry that resource inequalities are the reason for poor performance. On the Right, the call suggests that instead of working hard, schools, teachers, and students are hardly working and inefficent. Unfortunately the people trapped in the middle of these ideological battles are poor, Black, and Brown families lodged in failing schools in: Detroit, Baltimore, New Haven and the list goes on. The biggest confusion that I see emerging around urban education is the highlight of a few successful schools in a city and mistaking that as the probable, that is what will likely happen, in the city as the whole. These schools are the possible, they are what can happen against dire conditions but they are not probable.  These exceptional schools, like breakfast sausage, are quickly consumed by people but most are afraid to look at what it goes in to making the end product. These schools, which have gone by many labels such as No Excuses, High Flying Schools, Tough Love or Miracle Schools all reflect a desire to point out exceptional success, but with little scrutiny of how this success emerges, if this success is sustainable, and if this success can be replicated. Most, if not all of the schools talked about in these articles and segments, have had huge investments of resources both material and non-material (e.g. dollars, partnerships, unmitigated administrative power, strict standards of enrollment, parental mandated behaviors) which are not reported on in news stories. They carry with them conditions and rules that if you clamped most urban schools with and demanded conformity to in wide-scale would surely mean the casting out of many students, abuses of labor law, and spikes in test but not the sustained development of critical thinkers. What often looks like a miracles upon first glance for a small group would be a nightmare for the mass upon deep investigation.

The reality is that the schools you see championed on the news for exceptional performance are in part being elevated to support mental and material divestment in traditional public educational systems. You sit and say, “If they can do it, why can’t the others?” These schools appear to be anomalies at first glance, but with further reading you see why they look as they do and why often their success is not sustainable or transferable. Replicating success in urban schools has been policy alchemy since the days, and even before, Ron Edmonds and continues to demonstrate that urban education will not be solved until we can see a system wide change in results for children. Despite the caution of social analysts like Richard Rothstein, the trumpets of success of a few urban schools continue to defeaningly blare out the cries of whole cities in educational disrepair.

Some will suggest are being used to suggest the thing missing from our schools is hard work, but that too is an incomplete picture. While all schools could be improved marginally with more hard work, the solution is often not simply pulling harder on bootstraps or throwing dollars. In fact, we have seen time and time again, that neither in isolation works. If educational research has taught us anything, it is that we do not know the formula for success in contemporary urban schooling. There is little to no evidence that more charter schools are better for kids in urban areas. There is little to no evidence that more charter schools improve the “market” of urban schools. There is little to no evidence that success in one year on a standardized test will be repeated in the next. There is little to no evidence that cities schools perform at an equal level to suburban schools consistently. Yes, this portrait is bleak, but it is the state of affairs. This is a hard truth to swallow, this is why in part people continue to point to “the miracles.”

To me, the situation of urban education is much like the common cold, as technology advances, we find more and more options that tend to abate sickness, cover the symptoms, but still there is no cure. Like the snake oil salesmen of the past, what works for one, seldom works for many, or may not work at all. I am hesitant to listen to anyone who tells me, “We know what works” because suggesting so would be based on the possible, while ignoring the probable.

As 2009 draws to a close, let us not forget that we celebrated two cultural phenomena: 20th anniversary of Do the Right Thing by Spike Lee and Sesame Street’s 40th anniversary. What’s more appropriate than these two cultural juggernauts coming together!?!

If you can’t see the video embedded click here.

hat tip to LM

A year ago, I did a tribute post to the late Fred Hampton on Uptownnotes.com and one year later I sit in front of the computer reflecting on the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Fred Hampton. For me, Hampton represents an idyllic portrait of young organizing, fire, and revolutionary praxis. His life, cut down at the age of 21, reminds us of the power of youth in struggle, but also must bring sobering reality. We’ve got to garner young energy for fighting against oppression and building a different social world but we must also be honest about the stakes of engaging full-on in this struggle. There is little glamorous about authentic revolutionary struggle. There are no pensions, benefits, or cameras for people working from the grassroots to transform communities and the world. In fact, their lives are ones that tend to go uncelebrated and are at best acknowledged in memorial. As I reflect on Chairman Fred Hampton’s life and his work with the Black Panther Party I am glad to continue to grow in understanding of him and struggle. Because that is what he would have wanted…

“If you ever think about me and you ain’t gonna do no revolutionary act, forget about me. I don’t want myself on your mind if you’re not going to work for the people. If you’re asked to make a commitment at the age of twenty, and you say I don’t want to make a commitment at the age of twenty, only because of the reason that I’m too young to die, I want to live a little longer, then you’re dead already. You have to understand that people have to pay a price for peace. If you dare to struggle, you dare to win. If you dare not struggle then damn it, you don’t deserve to win. Let me say peace to you if you’re willing to fight for it.”

-Fred Hampton

I am an African-American man. I am a heterosexual man. I am a middle-class man. These three statements are the basis for my social justice work and advocacy, but each carries its own hazard for working on social justice. While many will assume my position as a Black man in America makes me sensitive to “minority statuses”, in reality, over the past 10 years I’ve learned nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, in many ways, my status as Black man in America has the potential to undercut my work of engaging the pursuit of equality of opportunity, equality of outcome and the right to self-determination for all people. I am both privileged and disadvantaged. I have identities that I celebrate, identities I conceal, and all these decisions matter for my view on the world and what I choose to fight for and against.

Sorry, this image was hilarious to me.

I didn’t really begin to grapple with my privilege as a Black man until I was a student in Beverly Guy-Sheftall’s class on Black Feminism at Spelman College. I can remember rebutting each point she made about the Million Man March (MMM) as an extension of patriarchy, heteronormativity, and an attempt to further embed misogyny. Besides being a slew of words I didn’t fully understand, I could not understand why she fixated on all the “negatives” of the March. In the class, she essentially argued the MMM because of the patriarchy, etc. she could not support it and thus thought it held little value. By the time I landed in her class I was a senior at Morehouse and certainly had come to believe the MMM was one of the most transformative events I’d ever personally experienced and I refused to have the event mischaracterized.

I paraphrase, but I told her, “Yes, it does ask men to come back into the family, but it doesn’t always mean that have to be at the head. I know some talked about being at the head of the household, but not everyone believed that. We didn’t invite sisters because it was our time as Black men to redefine our commitment to the Black family and Black community.” I wanted to her to see the value of the event beyond her points. She let me finish and sagely replied, “It must be a nice privilege to tell someone to overlook the oppressive elements of a program, because it was helpful to you.” My face fell, my mouth shut, and I  sat sheepishly quiet. My head spun between realization, frustration, and confusion. For the next few classes, I sat quietly and tried to figure out how I had not “seen it coming.” I realized that the lesson I had learned on the athletic field so many times applied to social justice work, “sometimes you got to get the wind knocked out of you to bring you back to earth.”Guy-Sheftall had pointed out what I’d seen done so many times but by those who came from outside of a community to do social justice work in my community. Someone(s) coming from the outside, declaring themselves an ally and expert and overlooking the view of those who were subject to the oppression in favor of their own perspective.

The blind spots I exhibited in my conversation with Dr. Guy-Sheftall were not limited to the Million Man March and helped me to begin to grapple with other blind spots in areas of class, gender, race, sexuality, ability, and the list goes on. While I often stand with my brothers and sisters in justice struggles, I have to equally recognize when I’m standing in front of them rather than by their side of behind them. Unfortunately too few of us who are committed to social justice do this. Over the past few months I’ve had a number of conversations on my standpoint around social justice on twitter, but 140 characters of social media is too short to begin to do it justice (pun intended). About a year and half ago, I was speaking with a friend who identifies as a Black feminist and we were discussing Black feminism and the role of men. I told her I did not identify as a feminist for a number of reasons: first, I respected that many feminists had argued men could not be feminist because of our inability to completely overcome our gender privilege and stop our contribution to oppression. Second, many of the men that I’ve known who publicly identified as feminist behind closed doors used it to their advantage to carry out the same practices we critiqued as patriarchal and misogynist. Third, men who identify as feminist tended to treat it as an ascribed and static status, which meant that brothers often suggested because they could quote bell hooks or had participated in enough campaigns, circles, or conversations they had arrived at plateau, to which others must ascend. The third reason is the most crucial, we spend far too much time labeling our ideologies and activism and treating them as perfected statuses. In reality, a commitment to social justice work is constantly tested, re-evaluated, and iterative. Too often we stand on and assign labels (e.g. conscious, feminist, anti-racist, etc.) rather than doing the work that these labels imply and expanding these from labels to ideologies and actions which effectively expands their reach.

I tend to prefer to be known as an ally when working against oppression but still oppressing. To me, being an ally is about much more than advocacy on behalf of a group or interests that may not, on their face, appear to be your own. Being an ally is about a commitment to social justice grounded in an understanding of one’s self. To me, the most important element to allyhood is the ability requirement of reflexivity. First, we must interrogate our own privilege and power. Second, an ally must listen carefully to the conditions and needs of the group or individuals they are attempting to align with and define his or her work from there. Third, we must become comfortable with outsider status. It’s perfectly fine to not have full ownership of a struggle, in fact no one expects you to be a perfect proxy, but you are expected to hold your own. Fourth, we must be comfortable with being wrong and getting pushed to rethink our beliefs. Being committed to a thing does not mean you see all sides of it. We must be open to being challenged for the better. From this point, an ally can begin the work of advocating and more importantly supporting the efforts of others and themselves. If you believe in social justice work, you realize that being an ally to a cause that you don’t see “directly” affecting your life is still intimately tied to other interlocking forms of oppression. As bell hooks eloquently said:

“Feminism is not simple a struggle to end male chauvinism or a movement to ensure that women have equal rights with men; It is a commitment to eradicating the ideology of domination that permeates Western culture on various levels- sex, race, class, to name a few – and a commitment to reorganizing U.S. society so that the self- development of people can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion and material desires.”

The reality is that the forms of oppression are related so working on them simultaneously is necessary. Of course there are issues that I have a greater commitment to, as do all of us, but through mutual support our power grows exponentially.There is no perfect formula for being an ally but those are things that I think of when engaging social justice work.

Recently, I had the pleasure of being on the Addicted to Race podcast. I was on with Tami from What Tami Said, Andrea Plaid  who guest blogs at Racialicious, and Deesha Philyaw of CoParenting101. The conversation was a great one which started with a discussion of Black women and women of color’s absence in the growing body of Mommy Memoirs.We then talked about my post “I’m for Gay Rights but…” and issues of civil rights, gay rights and social justice in the African-American community. Followed up with a discussion of the movie Precious which has been received with very mixed results and why we think this has been and what it means for Black media representation. We concluded with a discussion of CNN’s Black men in the Age of Obama. We talked about the ways that CNN has met the challenge of covering ethnic communities but questioned what could have been done better. Great topics, witty commentary, what more are you waiting on? Click here to hear it!

I just watched Precious, Lee Daniel’s film based on the novel Push by Sapphire, and the only way I can find to describe it is extraordinary in the superlative and literal sense. Extraordinary, in the superlative sense, for its craftsmanship in visually and textually telling a narrative of the composite character Precious. It is extra-ordinary (beyond ordinary), in the literal sense, in that it concentrates on a particular set of lives ravished by sexual abuse, physical abuse, and poverty. This is not the tale of all in poverty, but it is a tale that exists. I’m only at the computer writing this because the debate about Precious seems to catapult between a discussion of poverty porn, a Winfrey and Perry produced fetish film to being called a diamond or the Audacity of Precious (a play on Obama’s autobiography). I read the reviews, watched the film and come down somewhere inside and outside of these takes. I did not read the book, I am not a cultural critic, heck I even took a group of friends to see the wrong movie, despite these things I came to Precious open to what it had to offer and enjoyed what I received.

From the moment of the opening credits when the viewer beings to read phonetic words, you are forced inside the life of Precious. I found the narrative was powerfully weaved. The viewer gets to see the compounding hazardous factors that assault Precious on the daily: failing schools, inadequate academic preparation, lack of healthy food options, substandard housing, negotiating the social welfare system, domestic violence, sexual assault, just to name a few. These hazards, for me, fall into two categories, the former are normative of many families mired in poverty and the latter two are often more prevalent in families mired in poverty but are not necessary conditions of poverty. Put another way, the first are features of what it usually means to grow up in a poor neighborhood and household. For the last two, the odds of them occurring are increased by being in poverty but that does not mean they happen in most poor homes. Poverty, like most social forces, has a way of making bad things worse and Precious illustrates this painful circumstance. The movies portraiture of the mid 1980s New York scene is disturbing and rings with a tenor of truth and fantasy. I expect nothing less from a film about urban issues and youth.

The character Precious’ agency, her ability to make independent choices that affect her life, is wonderfully represented in the face of the social maladies she encounters (yes, I know most have an opposite take on this and I’m likely setting myself up for a battle but it’s all good). For those of us who have committed many hours to working with urban Black poor communities, we know that success or transcendence is not always or even often the outcome. You begin to look for the small victories that some would not see as minor, but are nonetheless steps to persevering with the goals of thriving. Our communities are resilient and I think the film captures this and puts context on that resilience. For example, in the movie, the decision to speak up in the welfare office knowing she would compromise her safety, housing, and potentially her life was beyond brave. While sitting in an arm chair and suggesting such a decision is the “obvious” one or one that is “unhelpful” is too narrow a perspective on the faces at the bottom of the well.

I was moved by the film and the story because it represented, in many ways, the lives of the students who I could not touch in New Haven, Atlanta, Detroit and New York. The children who moved, by force and by choice, from the classrooms and schools which I’ve visited, taught in, or spoke at. All too often their agency becomes rendered invisible while their transgressions such as imprisonment, welfare receipt, and deaths are hyper-visible in the public sphere. For this reason, I appreciated the voices and lives the film narrated. There are a number of excellent reviews on what the film missed and some issues that deserve serious consideration. Both The Root and Racialicious do an excellent job of taking these on and I won’t rehash them so please do read them!!! This is not so much a review but rather a reflection and endorsement of stepping out to see the film for yourself. I am excited by the debates and conversations that are erupting for the film and hope they lead us to new ground in transforming communities.

It’s been a minute since I dropped a Friday Funny on ya’ll, probably because I’ve been traveling the Diaspora for gems! Here you go, you’re welcome in advance

I don’t know why every day I hear folks saying “romance” is dead or “black love” is dead. Bangs is trying to bring it back. Applaud this young brother for this sure fire banger. Please send my hate mail directly to pleasestoprapping@comeonson.com.

If you can’t see the video embedded click here.

hattip to SR

Dear Old Morehouse,

I’ve been trying to avoid writing this for some time now. As an alumnus of the institution, it’s hard for me to see you in such condition. Many of my fellow alumni complained of your disrepair and your besmirched image when they heard about students being beaten for their sexuality, shooters graduating, and cross-dressing, but I have bigger concerns. While all these things mattered to me, they did not disturb me because of what was being done to the image of our institution; they disturbed me because they demonstrated that Dear Old Morehouse was terribly unequipped to deal with the realities and lives that Black men in America live now. In fact, it is the Old Morehouse that is more dangerous to me than any student with a gun, sagged pants, or high heels would ever be. Let me explain.

When I visited Morehouse for the first time, it was about 1994, I remember seeing hanging banners and brochures that talked about the development of leaders, community servants, and caring connected brothers. The culmination of these developments was to be the Morehouse Man. I remember reading about the crown that Morehouse held up for its students so that one day they too would embody the Morehouse Mystique. I was sold. I was ready to be in that number. I was ready to be at the only institution of higher education dedicated fully to the education of men of African descent in the United States. But like most things, I soon found out all that glittered was not gold.

courtesy of nyleharris flckr stream

When I arrived, I remember hearing brothers commonly refer to the Morehouse Mistake, not Mystique. I remember seeing Samuel L. Jackson toted out as a shining alumnus, only to learn he was actually kicked out while he was there. I was there when I realized Morehouse students had no trouble admitting rape happened, but sadly refused to admit that Morehouse students could or would rape their Spelman sisters. I know, now I’m airing dirty laundry, in your eyes, but hear me out. Morehouse, if you are committed to Black men, then you’ve got to do better. You, no WE, have got to work to make better men for the 21^st century, not the 20^th. It often feels like each time I hear about your “new moves” and “plans” you’re becoming more committed to making a middle class Black man who would exist in the 1950s or 60s, not in 2009. From clothing to interviews, Dear Old Morehouse, there is much more happening with and to Black men than you’re equipped to handle.

See, in the past, Morehouse was about accepting and graduating the “cream of the crop” amongst the Black bourgeoisie and claiming the production of the Black intelligentsia. We all know, at least at the House, that Martin Luther King, Jr. — our most well known alumnus– came from a relatively well-to-do background and he wasn’t the most stunning student. But it would be on the red clay hills of Georgia that he got a deeper social, spiritual, and political education which would lead him to change the world. It is that image that you fed us and feed young brothers who come to the gates these days. You celebrate your role as one of the top feeders to graduate schools and Fortune 500 companies among institutions of higher education.  You highlight that our alumni are Rhodes Scholars, former surgeon generals and are changing the world around the globe, as many institutions do. The problem is, those men are the ones who made it, and it is likely that they still would have made it without Morehouse. Sometimes I think you point to exceptional success from the past in an effort to keep people from noticing what you are doing wrong or simply not doing it the present. So many who come to our campus, who desire to be better men, are not given what they need because you are asking them to trade themselves for your idea of success. Dear Old Morehouse, success does not look, sound, or feel the same for all.

I almost feel like you’re in denial; we can’t keep living a lie. I’ve got to tell you five things that you seem to deny too often. First, Affirmative Action did change you and who attended you. Affirmative Action allowed a number of the brothers who would have attended HBCUs in the past to attend traditional Ivys. We have to recognize that we don’t have the economic resources to compete with the Harvards, Yales or even smaller liberal arts schools. Many brothers get drawn to these schools because they have a financial safety net and set of offerings that make it difficult for them to sign on Morehouse’s dotted line. Second, the day of male breadwinner and unquestioned male leadership is done. While the sisters at Spelman were over there involved in the freedom struggle with us, they were also noticing we were often working on “liberation for half a race.” While we spend copious amounts of time sitting in orientations and Crown Forums that convince us that we’ve “made it” because so many brothers didn’t, we’re falsely inflating ourselves and using these bloated egos to plot the path towards a wayward progress. Third, style is one of hallmarks of Blackness. Spending time trying to reduce and refashion style is like harnessing youth, a noble thought but likely to leave you more embarrassed than successful. Hip-Hop culture is here to stay and reflects a lot of what we face as a people and what many in our community aspire to emulate. Hip-Hop culture is art and yes, art and life do imitate one another. Hip-Hop is, was, and shall be anti-establishment; the more you regulate it, the more it will battle you. Fourth, gay men are Morehouse Men and they should no longer be silent and covering. For too long, Morehouse treated gay and queer brothers like the Loch Ness monster, often talked about but never fully confirmed. News flash: being non-heterosexual is neither a psychological nor a social deviance. It’s reality! Fifth, Black boys are in crisis and you have to adapt to this crisis as well. With 50% of Black boys who begin high school in the inner-city not graduating with their classmates on time, you must realize your pool of applicants and admits is going to look different. These brothers mostly come with 4.0 potential, not 4.0 GPA’s. The question becomes, what can we do to move potential to reality?! What are the supports we’re putting in place for the brothers who beat the odds and make it to the House? I am honestly not sure if you are ignorant or simply ignoring, but either way, we’ve got to do better. I seriously think that if you start to deal with these five facts, you can move from being Dear Old Morehouse to a Dear New Morehouse.

Oh I can hear you now, “Brother, we are getting ‘new’!” Unfortunately your “new” is old. With each passing year, I swear you move a step backwards towards your former self… or at least an image that you believed yourself to be. From interviews to dress codes, you’re trying to create a brand of respectable middle class black males that went out with the last sputters of the Civil Rights Movement. Yes, alumni get excited when they hear, “we will no longer tolerate…” because we all have a narrative about how Morehouse was and how it has changed. Don’t be surprised if people co-sign on your reversal of the clock without seeing the bigger picture. They’ll support more assemblies, more Crown Forums, more rules, less braids, less sagging, less gays… oops, just kidding on the last one. I know that subject is touchy in our community. Have you forgotten, it was not what was outside that made the Morehouse Man it was what was inside? The most valuable lessons are those learned collectively through struggle, failure and success.  Not from imposition, dress codes, or dress policies. College is one of the few times that Black men may be able to explore fuller and truer selves and your hallowed halls are the ideal place to do so. Instead, you threaten to lock down and narrow those very halls. I want to hear that you’re developing new models of manhood, ones that are not patriarchal, ones that deal with the needs of Black men and boys who need healing, ones that let boys become the Men of their choosing and of their community’s wanting. Few of the rules that you are implementing are creating a healthier pathway for Black men, they’re simply polishing the same “broken” brothas and yet you wonder why it is not working.

Quite regularly now, I receive emails asking “What is Morehouse doing?” Some come in agreement, some come in disagreement, but the ones I value most are the those that come from a place of love for the development of all Black men. The individual policies that you have drawn up are just echoes of the world that Black males now create and inhabit. If Dear Old Morehouse is truly interested in living up to its missions and declarations, the ones that got me to attend, the ones that got me to link up and sing, the ones that got me to love my institution enough to critique its actions, then we’ve got to begin from a point of understanding and expansion, not from a point of rigidity and constriction. Unless we acknowledge that Dear Old Morehouse must become Dear New Morehouse to serve the whole of our community, we’ll be doing this sad dance every 8 months. I look forward to your response and hope WE can grow to meet that crown of which Howard Thurman so eloquently made us aware.

In humility and community,

Dr. R. L’Heureux Lewis

Ndugu Dumi Eyi di yiye

Class of 2000

For the past few weeks I’ve remained unsettled by the videotape of Derrion Albert’s death at the hands of Black youth in Chicago. Like many, I avoided the tape for days on end, only to finally watch it in horror, with pain, and without direct recourse. This feeling of paralysis that many of us have felt is not one that is new to our community, whether it was the viewing of Emmett Till’s body in Jet or the railroading of the Central Park Five, the loss and defilement of Black male life at the hands of those Black, White or other remains sickening.

We, the concerned, the tired, and the committed have a rare opportunity to join not just in frustration, but in production. This week, at the Think Tank for African American Progress’ meeting in Memphis, Tennessee entitled: “What is the future of Black Boys?” While the media, and by admission in many of our community, suggest there is little being done to combat the conditions that black male youth face, there is work, there is opportunity, and there is the need for your voice and energy.

The Think Tank for African American Progress is a young organization birthed from the Brothers of the Academy with a unique mission and method of operation. This meeting marks the 4th in a series of ongoing discussions and actions surrounding the conditions that African Americans face and create. The think tank uniquely does the work of on problems as well as solutions! When conditions are detrimental, the question is asked, “What can be done to create change?” When conditions are producing the results we desire the question is asked, “What can be done to replicate this success?” Another of its unique features is the structure and value of collaboration. All participants, whether a concerned community member or renowned scholar have input in the structure and solutions offered by the Think Tank. Under the model, differing experiences lead to differing expertises, which lead to the diverse collaborations. Our community is certainly in need of diverse solutions to common challenges.

While not everyone will be able to make it to Memphis this week, there is much that can be gained and contributed to this ongoing work. Soon after the meeting, presentations and documents that emerge from the meeting will be made available via the Think Tank’s website. While so much time is spent on concentrating on what is “going wrong” with our community, Black males in particular, this is a unique opportunity to move from a discussion of Black men as endangered and disconnected to a conversation where care, concern and community lie at the center. On this 14th annivesary of the Million Man March, let’s put in the work to move the condition of Black boys from crisis and construct a new future for Black boys and more healthy Black community overall.

One of my favorite things to do when giving speeches or teaching is to provide a quote and ask the audience to identify who said the quote. Often I will quote about Black self-determination or Black love and the answers I typically receive are “Malcolm X” or “Marcus Garvey” but seldom do people guess Martin Luther King, Jr. The video beneath of Dr. King would be the type of source I would quote from. At the twilight of his life, a life that was taken too soon, MLK was more outspoken, more insightful, and more beautifully pro-Black than most remember him. Beneath you will find a clip that is likely from 1967 or 1968. I received it from a friend but I have not been able to track exactly which speech it is from. It features some lines from his 1967 Southern Christian Leadership Conference Address, but it deviates from that speech’s script. Enjoy and may this push us to determine our future and love ourselves more fully.

If you can’t see the video, click here.

hat tip AM and KK

p.s. BHC stands for Black History-Contemporary, check the explanation here.

So for the past few years I’ve been jousting with my family and loved ones around the issue of same sex marriage and repeatedly found my argument falling on deaf ears. In fact what I most often heard was, “I am for gay rights but…” and what would follow would immediately sweep away any indication of actual support for the union of two people from the same sex. As a service to myself and those with whom I will soon have this discussion with, I’ll provide some statements and my rebuttals. Instead of taking our 45 minutes on spinning wheels, let’s work and see and if we can cover some different ground.

1) “I’m for gay rights but … you can’t compare being Black to being gay.”

I feel you, I understand that being Black is different than being gay, but did you realize even in that statement you’re implying that we don’t have Black gay folk? No really, this is the part of the conversation where you keep on throwing out “they” which you might as well then say “those people.” I know you don’t like me bringing that up, because for so long and so often within the dominant White culture of America Black folks are referred to as “they”, “those people” and even recently “that one.” It’s really a process of othering, trying to make a distinction of who is “in” and should receive privileges and who is “out” (pun intended).

2) No, you’re not getting it, I didn’t choose to be Black and I can’t hide being Black.

Touche, you’re probably don’t remember when you chose to be Black, if you ever did. In fact, since we’re talking – heterosexual to heterosexual, I don’t remember when I choose to be straight, but that’s besides the point. The point is that being “Black” and being “gay”, as we sociologists say are both “socially constructed”. Yeah, fancy academic words but definitely important. By socially constructed I mean that we create the boundaries and meanings for these categories. There is a great film that breaks this down and books, but let’s be real, you ain’t gonna pick up a book or watch a movie in the middle of this blog post, so let me do what I can to break it down now. While we’ve come to think of meaning of Blackness as something that can’t be changed, avoided, and pretty much is like gravity, we’ve forgotten that was created. In fact, the dominant images and tropes of “What is Black”, weren’t even our creation. Think about it, how many people who identify as Black, would say “my skin is actually the color of Black.” Very few, in fact, we respond by saying things like “I’m brown, caramel, dark chocolate, etc.” all descriptors that side-step an imposed moniker. Also have we forgotten that for so many years, the oppression of being Black and not having access to rights made many of our ancestors pass? Yeah, that’s right, not all of us are “definitively Black” and certainly what it means to be Black has carried consequences.

3) That’s my point, almost exactly, you can tell when someone is Black usually, but you never know if they’re gay! Well unless they’re really flamboyant or something.

Ah, I get it, if you are gay you don’t have to “look or act gay” and if you don’t act gay, you’ll be fine in society. Yeah, that’s called passing … well actually more appropriately covering. See, as a Black folks, I really hope we think deeply about oppression and how oppressive it must be to not be able to show your love for someone else. If I walk outside and decide to kiss a strange woman in the middle of the street I won’t get many strange glares (other than folks saying “Dumi’s a wild cat”) but if I love someone of the same gender and walk arm-in-arm with them down the street I’m likely to get screw faces down the block. As a result, we, heterosexual folks often say stuff like, “I don’t care what you do behind closed doors but I don’t want to see it.” Interesting… we live in a society were the physical expression of romantic love between people is common, but almost completely forbidden for certain groups. In order to be one’s self we ask people not to express themselves and “pass” or “cover” for straight. That doesn’t sound very equal or liberated to me. Can you imagine a community where love was the norm and hate was not what we used to regulate others behaviors? (that’s rhetorical)

4) Okay, I get that, but doesn’t it piss you off when they use the Civil Rights Movement for their movement?

Once again, what’s up with the us and them type of thinking. Gay Black folks have been around for a long time, to act as if they are not us is to deny part of ourselves. In fact, the most prominent voice and architect of the Civil Rights Movement was Martin Luther King Jr. His work centered on non-violence which he derived from Gandhi but he learned from Bayard Rustin who was a queer Black man. Gay, Lesbian, Bi and Queer Black folks have been at the center of our movement for rights as well as our cultural and social uplift, why try to write them out of history now? Or rather why not acknowledge the central role they’ve played in the collective Black struggle which should include lgbtq brothers and sisters? We can only say gay folks are piggy-backing on the civil rights movement if we don’t acknowledge the contribution of gay folks to the movement. Now has the equal rights movement around sexuality taken on some tropes that came along during the Civil Rights movement, absolutely! But all subsequent movements do that, in fact, a marker of a successful social movement is an adoption of some its techniques. But let’s not forget what the Civil Rights Movement was about! It was fighting to make the 14th and 15th amendments real!!! Those amendments legally gave Black folks equal civil rights but when we looked at how Black people were treated and what they could do, it is seen that it’s unequal. I think we can take a similar look at the Gay Rights movement which is simply fighting for the same rights that heterosexuals have, be it marriage, adequate healthcare, or to live freely in society.

5) I hear what you’re saying but God made “Adam and Eve” not “Adam and Steve”! We’re a Christian country and marriage is a bond before God between man and woman.

Ah, you got me with that one, I didn’t realize a rhyme could break down an entire situation. Oh wait, no it can’t. There is an entrenched myth in this country that marriage is exclusively a religious, often insinuated Christian, practice that the government sanctions. Not true at all, anthropologists have long observed and discussed marriage as beyond Christian and beyond the sanctioning of the state. It is true here that many associate the two, but that does not seem logical that it must also be seen as such. First, the mythos of the United States as  Chrisitian nation is based on ignoring that colonies were founded out of the fleeing of religious oppression. How ironic is it that religion would then become the basis for oppression in 2009 and 1619 when non-Christian Africans arrived in captivity and quickly were proclaimed subhuman and savage. If you are going to invoke the credo of a nation, then I’d suggest you invoke the ones of equality and diversity, which means you are welcome to have your beliefs but your beliefs should not be the basis for impinging on other’s rights.

Now I know by this point you likely still don’t agree with me, but I do want you to see there is validity to a discussion about gay rights and the civil rights or more importantly gay rights as civil and human rights! I do want you to see that all to often we neglect and relegate a part of our people to inhumane and unjustified treatments through our active and passive condoning of covering. I do want us all to think about what MLK meant when he said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” I do want us to really grapple with the fact that if Huey Newton in the 1970s could see the connection, we should be able to see it in 2009. I wrote this because I worry about a people’s ability to turn a blind eye to injustice in a world and nation that often has suggested the unjust is just the way it should be. For a people who have fought for existence and rights, it should only be natural to continue that fight with our brothers and sisters.

***this piece is designed to be a primer and conversation starter. there are many more things to say, but wanted to get the ball rolling and get some basic ideas out there***

“Honest and earnest criticism from those whose interests are most nearly touched, -criticism of writers by readers, of government by those governed, of leaders by those led, – this is the soul of democracy and the safeguard of modern society.” -W.E.B. Du Bois

On Sunday night, Kanye West once again burst into the limelight with his interruption of Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech at MTV’s video music awards. His interruption and hyperbolic declaration of Beyonce’s video as the best of the decade caused the twitterverse, facebook, and likely nights and weekends minutes to explode. The cries of  “he’s so”:  foul, without class, self-centered, ______ (fill in your blank) rang out. These cries are the same ones that we’ve all made about West in the past. Despite these cries, somehow he remains at the center of the music universe and Black America and almost universally recognized as spoiled. I began to think, “how can a man that is so disliked remain in that position?”  Well, I think the reason he remains is that he reflects a perfectly spoiled Black middle class identity. That’s right, you can’t disavow Kanye anymore than you can disavow yourself or the folks you went to school with or your fellow readers of this blog.

In a strange way, Kanye represents the dreams of many from the suburban and urban fringe who grew up listening to Hip-Hop but never spent a night in the South Bronx or stepped over crack viles on their daily path to the schoolhouse. Instead, West flaunts his emergent middle class style, penchant for the preppy, and his difference as a positive identity in a hyper-masculine performatively hood-centric rap industry. Whether it’s a glow in the dark or a shag, he uses his late bloomer status to demand all the attention that he thinks he deserves, but was not afforded earlier in his life. Whether he’s talking about his hard times when he moved North when he had to put his Ikea bed together “by himself” or repudiation of formal education/reading, his arrogance publicly displays the markings at a child who had enough, but not all he wanted. Now Kanye is out to have it all and on his own terms. Kanye’s roots capture the new Black middle class, his late mother Donda West, held a PhD and was a college professor and his father, who was non-custodial, is a photojournalist. I’m always amused and repulsed at watching West’s antics, much like watching teen angst … kind of with “contempt and pity”. West insists that he and comrades are being overlooked and rendered invisible within the music world, despite their contributions. Never mind that Kanye and his imagined damsel in distress Beyonce, are hyper-visible. His outbursts and conversations about his class, race, and sexuality could be pulled straight from a Beverly Tatum book. For so long, the Black middle class has been at the margins of our discourse of Blackness and America at large, Kanye wants to set the record straight (pun intended) though in classic fashion,  he’ll start with making himself known.

After his outburst, West apologized via his blog (mind you in all capitals, which was later revised) which resulted in so many hits his site was temporarily shut down. The blog, a arguably middle class tech tool, allowed him to reach out to his fans and foes who wanted to know what the outspoken artist had to say about his outspokenness. The blog, when not home to apologies, is the locale of conspicuous consumption and the flaunting of extravagant cars, shoes, design projects and other aesthetic porn. The blog itself has a huge following because we too understand West’s concern for the material and the exclusive but dually want some form of legitimacy among the larger Black population. Whether blogging, publicly guzzling Hennessey or battling paparazzi Kanye represents what many feel and desire, but simple don’t enact. His brash mockery of the traditional education route, which is a luxury of having highly educated parents, allows us “college kids” to get out of out angst of following the straight and narrow. His outbursts about his greatness, which are laden with overtones of self-doubt, remind us that we too are something special even if we aren’t the rose that grew from concrete. Kanye West is not a person, he is a verb and a metaphor for the lives of the clamoring Black middle class. I feel like the day that we’re ready to deal with our own issues around race, class, and identity will be the same day we’re ready to tell Kanye “ENOUGH!” and mean it. Until then, I’ll expect more tweets, more album sales, and more tragic outbursts that result from a life of living betwixt and between the color and class lines.

Today, Obama will address the nation’s children about the value of education. The speech has been met with a firestorm of controversy, particularly from the Right, calling it indoctrination.  While i think the Right’s panic peddling is wrong, I do think there are some dangerous things about today’s speech. Find out my full thoughts here on a piece I wrote for TheGrio.com.

Today, President Barack Obama will deliver an address to the children of the United States on the value of education. The speech has been met with a firestorm of reaction and disapproval by critics on the right, many of whom have called it a dangerous form of indoctrination.

There is a clamor about this type of speech being unprecedented – even though George H.W. Bush gave an address to U.S. school children in 1991 – and dangerous. But the real danger lies in the lack of emphasis education has received in Obama’s administration and what our young people may be learning about education’s value in our current economy.

The majority of Obama’s administration has been taken up with foreign affairs such as the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Domestically, attention has been concentrated on the recession and health care reform. While these problems and resulting policies are important, what happens to the youth of America arguably sets the tone for the next half a century.

Read More

Times are tough but thankfully the iphone is providing some relief. Here’s a brotha who takes Falling Down to a new level.

(if you can’t see the video, click here)

*p.s. This also doubles on as a n***a moment (courtesy of Boondocks)
**p.p.s. The management doesn’t condone all this use of the n-word … or at least I think that’s what I’m supposed to say.

You’ve had the debate, I’ve had the debate, someone right now is having the debate, it all spawns from the question: “Is Hip-Hop political?” The camps usually are divided between old school and new school, hip hop and rap, underground and mainstream … in the past 8 years I’ve squarely outgrown this debate. For me, it’s more relevant to ask, which Hip-Hop is political and what are its politics? By far, my favorite political Hip-Hop has come from the Black August Hip Hop Project. The project, orchestrated by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement merges music, politics, and activism and has been doing so for 12 years.

I remember getting fliers for Black August each year and thinking “this is the dopest line up” and remember standing in long lines waiting to see my favorite artists rock. While I can remember the performances to this day, the other thing that stuck me was the emphasis on political prisoners and global hip-hop. The project brought some of the greatest voices, both “conscious” and “non-conscious”, together to raise money and awareness with the goal of movement building. It was this project of MXGM that introduced me to a cadre of young activists who thought like me, cared like me, and most importantly got down like me. This coming Sunday August 30th in NYC at BB Kings The Black August Hip Hop Project will have its annual fundraiser for political prisoners and facilitating international Hip-Hop movement building. What is better than coming out and hearing great music, sweating it out on the dance floor (or standing with an ice grill, that’s on you!), and continuing the work of liberation?

Click here to buy your advanced tickets!!

One of the things that is always a dilemma with dope movements is the documentation of said movement, well Dream Hampton and a number of folks have been working on capturing the Black August Hip Hop Project in a documentary entitled Let’s Get Free: The Black August Hip Hop Project. A trailer for the project can be seen here (embedding is disabled but it’s well worth the click).

To me, asking if Hip-Hop is political is about as useful as asking, “why is the sky blue?/ why is water is wet?” (what you know about that?), it’s self-evident. The better question is what are you doing with your politics since you are Hip-Hop?

The month of August has been the seat of many important events in the history of African people, particularly people of African descent in America. Black August was founded in memory of the late great George Jackson and the fallen in the rebellion at San Quentin prison. The month is one of reading, reflection, and revolution with an emphasis on understanding Black freedom fighters. I first learned of Black August through the Black August Hip Hop Project which is produced by the NYC chapter of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (more on that next week).  I started nodding my head to the Hip-Hop and moved to nodding my head to the political thought of our political prisoners and freedom fighters.

For me, Black August represents a time when Black folks can think deeply about our communities’ unsung heroes. Not too long ago I wrote about Black leaders and liberation and that post came in part because I feel that people of African descent in America are given too little information on folks born and bred in our neighborhoods and instead look solely outside of our communities for revolutionary guidance. While I find nothing wrong with reading the work and teaching of great revolutionaries across the globe (as our greatest have also done), there is value in knowing deeply that your people have been instrumental to revolutionary thought as others have. Years ago, I wrote a piece or spoke somewhere on Africans and revolution to which someone wrote me and basically said, “If Black people are so great, why do they not have their own theories? Why do they always have to steal from Europeans, Latinos, and Asians?” The question caught me off guard, but upon deeper reflection, I remembered our people didn’t simply parrot the theories of others but added nuance, complexity and even diverged from previous revolutionary thinkers. This is missed if you don’t study the works of folks Marcus Garvey, Assata Shakur, George Jackson, Fred Hampton, Elaine Brown, Angela Davis, to name but a few. The reality is all too often we skim these giants and miss the depth with which they each grappled with struggle. In fact, their grappling with struggle in theoretical and practical terms make them beautifully human and provide opportunities and openings for us to improve on this struggle. I have been taking the month to re-familiarize myself with Assata Shakur, George Jackson and Elaine Brown because I want to make sure we do not recreate the same egregious errors around gender and sexuality in our continuation of the Black freedom struggle.

I recognize that not all of us will take the remainder of the month to dig into texts and speeches, but there are still important ways to make Black August meaningful. One of the greatest contributions in the last 40 years to Black struggle and liberation has been the movement against the prison industrial complex. As Jackson wrote about those incarcerated,

“They have become aware that their only hope lies in resistance. They have learned that resistance is actually possible. The holds are beginning to slip away. Very few men imprisoned for economic crimes or even crimes of passion against the oppressor feel that they are really guilty. Most of today’s black convicts have come to understand that they are they most abused victims of an unrighteous order.”

You don’t have to be one outside protesting prison and fighting for prisoners rights to continue to contribute to the struggle of Black liberation. A smaller yet important step could be to reach out to someone behind bars with a kind or inspirational word. All too often I think the value of communication is forgotten. There are many locked up brothers and sisters who could use a word of support and love, it takes a few minutes, but can brighten a month. Whichever way you spend your Black August may it be in the spirit of our ancestors and fighting with love for the future of Black folks.

I was recently sent a clip from This American Life from 2007 that covers “The Weiner Circle” in Chicago, a local late night eatery on the north side. The story begins benignly discussing the “insult culture” of the late night destination for post-bar drunken attendees. The story of course gets interesting when the racial reality of the place is covered. The employees, almost exclusively all Black and the clientele, exclusively all White. And yes, the owners of the shop are White men. Chicago’s notorious hyper-segregation meets in the little diner and results in epithet slinging and even request for  a “chocolate milk shake.” I’ll let you watch the story to find out what this all means.

If it’s not embedded for you, click here.

I am undoubtedly late to this, but I am most interested in what happens when the “rules of engagement” are lifted and people “speak freely.” In a society where so much is corked and coded around race and gender, does it really help to uncork these sentiments?

Hat tip to  SW via FSL

Today marks the birthday of the one of the greatest African leaders of all time, the Honorable Marcus Garvey! While vilified by false charges and re-written narratives of failed mobilization, Garvey remains one of greatest and more stirring members in the history of the world. At its height, it has been argued that Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association was the largest organization of Africans in the history of the world. Garvey’s forward thinking on the African Diaspora continues to challenge us to rethink, rework, and re-envision “Africa for Africans, those at home and those abroad.” Garvey’s boldness should continue to motivate us in the face of continued oppression of African peoples globally. In my opinion, there would have been no Nation Of Islam, Civil Rights Movement, Black Power Movement or many of the other movements that we lay claim to that focused on the struggle for Black liberation without Garvey. We give thanks for your legacy and take the lessons forward.

Here is one of two known recordings of Garvey’s voice as he breaks down the call for UNIA.

So one of the problems with being a sociologist of race and offering public commentary is it sometimes creates the illusion that “anyone can do it.” I present to you, a failed analysis of the digital divide. Don’t try this at home kids!

Courtesy of failblog.org

I often spend time thinking and writing generically about the ancestors and the energy and guidance that they provide for us on our path but sometimes you realize how real and specific those ancestors are/were. Last night, as I was surfing the internet casually, I came across a blogpost/tribute to Charles Huntley Nelson. Nelson was my painting instructor at Spelman when I was attending Morehouse. Around the AUC the resident painting instructor was Arturo Lindsay, an artist who was revered throughout the African Diaspora, but he was on sabbatical when I was to take his class. I remember being disappointed that I wouldn’t study under Lindsay. Instead I was to be instructed by some guy named “Charles Nelson.” I remember feeling robbed, given that I had spent copious hours (I probably spent way more hours in undergrad doing art than studying sociology) darting through the painting studio where I often found Lindsay working and felt as if it was a rite of passage to take painting with him. Thankfully, I experienced a different rite of passage when I took the course with Charles. A time and a course that I would not trade.

Charles was a young guy, not much older than me having just finished up his MFA from Howard. When I walked in the first day it was clear he was soft-spoken, a bit reserved, and awkward in a way. But these features somehow drew me to him. Though he was the most junior on the faculty, I can say that I honestly took his critique more seriously than any other instructors I had during my artistic training. I took him seriously because I felt his love for producing art that was present, past, and future tense at once. He became my favorite professor in Art at Spelman because I felt “he got me.” Charles got me because he made art that was loosely yet well crafted, that was hip-hop/not hip-hop, that was political/non-political, that was racial/post-racial, that engaged the audience, that said fuck you to the audience, that critiqued the participants, that loved the participants. His work represented the reality of Black masculinity in this country: coherent contradiction. In sum, he produced the work that I had dreamed of producing since I was a teenager and continue to dream of today. Whenever I heard ruminations of artists that were on the cutting edge or emerging from the Atlanta scene I always would feel a bit pissed that his name was not mentioned (he was not only tied into the Atlanta Art scene but was also part of its life blood), but also I felt a bit of pride because he was the best kept secret, you know “the next big thing”. Those were my dreams, I’m not sure they were his.

The reality is that I wasn’t the closest to Charles, but he had a huge impact on my life. I never got a chance to see Charles again after I finished at Morehouse but we emailed me a couple of times after college to check in. His work was always dope to me and a couple of years ago I even worked extra hard  to steal an image of his site for a blog post (yeah, if you’re reading this from the ancestoral realm, you caught me, but I didn’t put in on a tee shirt of nothing like that, chill!). Each time I saw his updates on shows and installations I was “proud” of the work he was doing. To be honest, I’m not sure he would have accepted the “proud” thing, especially since he influenced me way more than I influenced him. Not to mention, in my experience, he was the kind of dude to shirk off praise and quietly throw a middle finger to affirmations that were half-earned. And if you know me, I appreciate that sincerely. He left a mark on me that I carry with me to this day in my own work in sociology and beyond. He really showed me you should take you work seriously and not seriously at the same time. He taught me if you can’t create it and destroy it, laugh and cry about it, then it probably ain’t worth doing. Thanks so much for walking with me briefly on this plain Charles and I look forward to you spreading your wisdom on all of us from that great beyond.

This is one the backdrops from his backdrops project, probably one of my favorite things he did (hopefully the links will get fixed so you can share his work).

Here are some links to reflections on Charles Huntley Nelson

Fahamu Pecou (where I learned of his passing)

AJC

Atlanta Examiner

You know how you say “what is there to do today/tonight?” Well I have an answer for you from today until Friday, yeah that’s right 5 days and nights in a row (even kid cudi couldn’t do this!). Okay, so most of you won’t go 5 days/nights in a row, but you should! This week, two amazing artists Fahamu Pecou (he is the shit) and Hebru Brantley will be descending on NYC to share their brand of art. In this living installation at Lyons Weirs Gallery Pecou and Brantley will have Warhol-Basquiat painting session that hearkens back to Andy Warhol’s Factory. Every night at 7pm, they’ll have an “opening” which will run back the day’s events (you know all the stuff you missed while you were sitting in your cubicle or at home watching judge judy, hey unemployment is still high) and a party, no like really a party. I know sounds odd, but trust, like Fahamu is widely known as, it will be “the shit“! I’m looking forward to what these two brothas who are certainly some of the finest painters in their generation are going to put down, so roll through the Lyon Weirs which is on 7th and 20th to take part and make part of instant art history.

We here at Uptown Notes are very much in accord with the African belief of respecting one’s elders and are anti police terrorism … so in honor of that here’s some elders & non-police terrorism! Just be glad these aren’t your grandmothers!!!

Click here!!!!!

Sorry the video won’t embed right, but it’s worth the click… I promise.

Today, August 4th, marks the birthday of Barack Obama, the President of the United States. I can honestly say I’ve never paid attention to any president’s birthday as much as Obama’s because I’ve been inundated with emails, punditry and plain silliness about his place of birth. If you’re not familiar, “Birthers” are sets of “Americans” who claim that Barack Obama has not provided sufficient proof of birth in the United States, thus violating his ability to be president. If you don’t know why this is thoroughly wrong, click these links 1, 2, 3. Now what I’m more concerned with is the message that I’ve received from Black folks regarding the birth and legitimacy of Obama as president. Yes, Virginia, there are Black birthers. While I’m not suggesting they’re in the majority, they still constitute an overlooked demographic in this population.

Sign on Harlem's Atlah Ministries

I was recently explaining the position of birthers to a sister of mine and she said, “oh well, that’s logical.” I stopped, looked back at her and said, “it’s logical if you don’t do any research on the issue.” I realized the birther flames continue to be fanned by the power of bad information and a backdrop of doubt rooted in racial paranoia. This backdrop of racial paranoia has been at the center of discussions of the birther movement as a ‘panic peddling’ scheme which draws from racial xenophobia. While I find this accurate, I think it is understated and gets framed as simply conservative Whites who are birthers, I concede they’re the most active, but they’re not alone. I argue racism is a system, to which all of us are subject, and thus the reality is that questions of Obama’s legitimacy remain just beneath the level of conscience for many folks, including Black folks. In a way, I’ve been subject to this in “waiting for the other shoe to drop” and find out via a scandal that something is invalid about Obama who has has been elevated to prototype status within and outside of our community. While its easy to see how conservative White birthers would be coming from a position of doubt for Obama as the “other” and have a fear of a Black President, similar roots exist for people of color. I think Black birthers or non-challengers to birthers are rooted in our own doubts of legitimacy which result from living in a white supremacist racial order. While this doubt beneath the level of conscience did not stop folks from voting for Obama, in the face of questioning or challenge, the willingness to “go  to bat” for Obama or dig deeper for information becomes truncated. While I could say that this is just an isolated incident of “crazy folks” and we know not to deal with crazy (you know what they say about arguing with fools), I think it signals something deeper about information seeking, racism, and technology.

Throughout the election and at other times I’ve been dismayed by the way bad information gets passed along the internet like colds. You know, things like Black folks are due to lose our right to vote, or that the US Post office is destroying Black History stamps, the list goes on and on.  While most of us grew up throwing out chain letter that were mailed to the house, it appears when we get “chain emails” with tidbits of information we often pass them along as if they’re all important PSAs. My sister tends to call these emails “Drinking water will rape your baby” emails because they often have some seriously outlandish claims, but the outlandish claims stand in part due to our own lack of information seeking and willingness to challenge. When it comes to incidents of Black folks, Obama, Muslims, and other minority communities, I sadly see more misinformation passed along and remain unchallenged. The consequence to false perceptions of these communities is particularly dangerous given the segregation, prejudice, and paranoia of non-Whites in many parts of the US. To me, it is ironic and scary that the more access we have to information via the internet, the less we use this access to properly interrogate claims and be prepared for informed dissent. While I hope the birthers will soon die out, I wonder what will be next in the web of bad information, technology, and race … and more importantly, what we’re willing to do to stop its spread.

Finally a skit on Gates that made me laugh.

Hat tip to ZM

I can enjoy songs about summer… check the video by Dead Prez for Summertime and make sure to cop “Pulse of the People“.

Hope you’re all making the most of these days!

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of appearing on the Addicted to Race podcast hosted by Carmen Van Kerckhove of New Demographic. I was a guest on the portion of the podcast that discussed the Gates arrest, Obama response, and the potential for deeper race dialogue. You can hear what I had to say here. And while you’re over there, definitely make sure to subscribe to the podcast, one of the best out there on race.

So there are few things I find more ridiculous than Jeremih’s (where the hell did the “a” in his name go) Birthday Sex song, so this parody made my day. It’s of equal (low) quality, perfect!

Hattip to BB!

For the past few weeks, my inbox has been inundated with references to Whites Only swimming pools in Philadelphia, the arrest of Henry Louis Gates and things of the like. With each subsequent email, I’ve been reminded “this is post-racial America” 1, 2. The type of tongue-in-cheek commentary, I imagine, is meant to elucidate the continued significance of race in America. Unfortunately, I see three issues with this: 1) these emails and posts tend to go to the choir (this is not a new point so I won’t go into it), 2) these cases are extreme examples of racism and exclusion in contemporary United States, which makes them easy to dismiss for everyday people and 3) they don’t demonstrate the ways that race operates perniciously beneath the surface to include some and exclude many.  I do think these cases need to be highlighted so pool owners, police, and everyday people can be aware certain behaviors will not be tolerated, but they’re also all to easy to disassociate from for the majority of Americans who identify with the idea of “postraciality.” They’re rationalized away as the actions of “a few bad apples” rather than be seen as symptoms of the national disease of racism. These incidents become flash points in the media and even talking points in our commentary on race and reality, but the issue with a flash point is that it is the lowest level at which our sensibilities around race will flare brightly, but then they quickly dim. Unfortunately, inequalities of race have not dimmed, nor should our fire to expose and fight them.

Now this is not going to be a “complain and blame” post, instead, I’d like to offer some humble suggestions (or as humble as one can be if they’re writing on a blog which is kinda an egotistical thing to start with, but ya’ll know what I’m saying). It is critical that we begin to talk about race in ways that expose the subtle fabric of inequality. While it’s easy to explain why Skip Gates’ harassment and subsequent arrest were wrong and wrongheaded, it’s more difficult to explain how policies leave many innocent men and women sitting in jail or on death row due to false accusations and procedural bureaucracy. It’s easy to point on the wrongness of exclusion from the Valley Swim club but it’s more difficult to explain why suburban schools are almost as and sometimes more unequal than urban schools, in part due to their exclusion of Blacks from equal educational resources. It’s easy to suggest that race matters when Sotomayor is berated in her confirmation hearings, but it is more difficult to explain the significance of critical race theory to understanding and interpreting the law. As scholars, as activists, and as citizens we’ve give up the project of relaying the complex conditions to the masses who need to be reminded not that race still matters, but the various ways that it still matters and what role all can play in racial justice.

I think it is wholly possible to take the flash point moments and deepen dialogue, but its rare that it happens. Instead, we recycle old dialogues on race and its significance when more complex racism(s) exist. The reality is that we’ve got to get equally complex in our discussions of the intersections of race, class, gender and sexuality (to name a few). If we are serious about “justice for all” we must update our discourse and activism. Because as Brother Malcolm said, “The White power structure is just as much interested in maintaining slavery as it was 100 years ago. Only now they use modern methods of doing so.” Let’s expose the modern methods as well as the old!

*footnote if you’ve never seen the dialogue between Malcolm X, Wyatt Tee Walker James Farmer, and Alan Morrison do yourself a favor and watch it!

**Shout out to Native Notes for being on the same page with that quote!

One of my favorite portions of Assata are the verses interspersed. In honor of our great freedom fighter Assata Shakur I’m posting “Affirmation.” As the US re-articulates relations with Cuba remember, “Hands off Cuba, Hands off Assata” (sign here) and love to all the PPs.

I believe in living,

I believe in the spectrum

of Beta days and Gamma people.

I believe in sunshine.

In windmills and waterfalls,

tricycles and rocking chairs.

And i believe that seeds grow into sprouts.

And sprouts grow into trees.

I believe in the magic of the hands.

And in the wisdom of the eyes.

I beleive in race and tears.

And in the blood of infinity.

I believe in life.

And i have seen the death parade

march through the torso of the earth,

sculpting mud bodies in its path.

I have seen the destruction of the daylight,

and see bloodthirsty maggots

prayed to and saluted.

I have seen the kind become the blind

and the blind become the bind

in one easy lesson.

I have walked on cut glass.

I have eaten crow and blunder bread

and breathed the stench of indifference.

I have been locked by the lawless.

Handcuffed by the haters.

Gagged by the greedy.

And, if i know any thing at all,

it’s that a wall is just a wall

and nothing more at all.

It can be broken down.

I believe in living.

I believe in birth.

I believe in the sweat of love

and in the fire of truth.

And i believe that a lost ship,

steered by tired, seasick sailors,

can still be guided home

to port.

I love Hip-Hop, I love educational research. I love the piece my colleague Christopher Emdin, of Teacher’s College- Columbia University, has put together on why autotune and ‘acting white’ should be laid to rest. Here’s an excerpt, I encourage to read the WHOLE thing, yeah like it’s a class homie!

One key comparison to be made between autotune and “Acting White” is that both are brilliant inventions/ concepts that have emerged from sparse use in the past to become very popular in contemporary discourse. They have both brought their re-inventors much acclaim and have been so widely accepted that they have made people who use them untouchable icons in their respective fields. They have also done wonders for the artistic and academic careers of many people who “hop on the bandwagon” of each of them. In addition, they both create a solution for a problem (one with not having a good singing voice, and another with not having a justifiable cause of low achievement) that sound so close to perfect, that one may think that there was never a problem at all. A gruff voiced rapper can easily become a smooth crooner with autotune. Likewise, a child in an urban school can easily be justified for not being successful because he “doesn’t want to act white.”

Continue Reading (well you’ll be starting at the top but click anyway)

Sidenote: if you’d like to know more about the strange career the “fear of acting white” theory check out Signithia Fordham’s 2008 piece in the Anthropology and Education Quarterly (Vol 39) and “Beyond Acting White” by Erin McNamara Horvat and Carla O’Connor

Tonight, Harlem Stage courtesy of Revolution books will host a dialogue between Cornel West and Carl Dix at Aaron Davis Hall at the City College of New York (CCNY). West, who is internationally renowned as a philosopher and Dix who is also renowned as a founder of the Revolutionary Community Party and is their current spokesperson. The topic is “The Ascendancy of Obama … and the Continued Need for Resistance and Liberation” which should definitely get the juices flowing. These are two very prolific brothers, so I suggest you bring your dictionaries and your “earmuffs” because the conversation has the potential to get heavy and into “the muck and mire.” The talk costs 20 dollars if you are a community member and 10 dollars if you are student. Beneath there is a video of Carl Dix talking about the event and a video of Cornel West talking about Obama.

Update: The event looks to be sold out. There is an overflow room that will accommodate maybe 50 people. If you can’t make it, the event is supposed to be broadcast on WBAI which you can stream from here.

On Monday (July 13), I have the esteemed pleasure at speaking at the NAACP Centennial Convention in New York City. The 100th anniversary of the NAACP is a symbol of perseverance, power, and adaptation in the struggle for

civil rights and beyond. I will be on the “Building a Progressive Agenda Towards Quality Education” at 2:30 with Judith Brown-Dianis (Co-Director the Advancement Project), Dr. James Loewen (Author of Sundown Towns and Lies My Teacher Told), Dr. Charles Willie (Professor Emeritus Harvard), Dr. Edison Jackson (President Medgar Evers College-CUNY).

Murray Hill Suite, New York Hilton Hotel

This exciting Education Advocacy Workshop takes
the participants through a series of scenarios taken
from the very real challenges African American
students face in public education systems across
the country. The issues will range from student
assignment and assessments to teacher quality
and resource equity, from high takes barrier testing
to zero tolerance policies. For each scenario, the
panelists will encourage and coordinate discussion
by the workshop participants. This approach is
intended to increase the opportunity for the
exchange of analytical, tactical and strategic
approached with the context of both our strategic
priorities in education and our organizational
framework. This workshop will also review winning
strategies to reduce structural, political, financial
and other barriers, towards the goal of realizing
equal access to quality education.

Maxine Smith (NAACP Board of Directors Chair) will moderate the session which has a unique format. While each panel member will provide some evidence about their area of expertise, the bulk of the session will be responding to real life scenarios around education posed from the audience. This is a unique opportunity to move between scholarship and action, please come out if you’re in the area!

This is a pretty good one that comes from the Root. It’s time we had a little fun with the super Black couple and how they relate to everyday folks.

Like just about everyone else last week, I read “What Single Women Can Learn From Michelle”—Jenée Desmond-Harris’ sista grrl power manifesto—with keen interest. After all, I’m just as concerned as the next guy with staying up on what “successful black women, with college degrees, ambitious careers and five-year plans” are really thinking.

I ought to be—for 10 years I’ve been married to a woman who fits that exact description.

You can’t argue with Jenée’s thesis: her coterie of pedigreed, upwardly mobile black women have to dig deeper for unseen potential if they’re looking for “Mr. Right.”

But if Barack Obama Part Deux is what it’s going to take to satisfy them, then her advice is going to leave a lot of women single as hell.

Personally, I blame Dwayne Wayne. Those endless reruns of your favorite episodes of A Different World get y’all completely twisted when it comes to evaluating a potential mate. But that’s beside the point. Here are a few tips to straighten things out:

Stop comparing regular guys to Barack Obama.

Continue Reading

hat tip to CW

Oh and to remind you that Barack is human… ugh he must be looking at a dime on the floor in this picture…

Here is a hilarious edition of This Week in Blackness by Elon James White. This week’s BET awards were … interesting… here’s his take

I was at conference when I received the news that Michael Jackson had transitioned to the ancestral realm and i immediately entered into denial. Telling my good friend, “No, you’re wrong, that’s just a rumor.” After I got over the denial and thought of all the jokes that were no longer appropriate I got to really thinking about Michael Jackson and what legacy his work had for me. It wasn’t just dancing hard and infectious tunes, his perspective on race and race relations was different from mine, but I learned a great deal from him.

I remember watching Michael Jackson’s skin tone lighten and nose narrow before my very eyes. As I came of age and was told, “The only two things you have to do are be Black and die” I watched MJ challenge on of those conditions … or did he? While many will point to Jackson as the prototypical case of self-hate and embodiment of lack of self awareness, I think Michael was painfully aware of who he was and made that message a continued part of his life’s work. Jackson was unequivocally a child of the Civil Rights movement and a humanist in his approach towards issues of inequality. While folks over look it, he was very much concerned with inequality and saw his stardom as a platform to infuse the political in the popular.

From his humanitarian work on “We are the World” to this treatise on personal and social responsibility “Man in the Mirror” Michael had a subtle way of asking his listeners to draw on commonality to increase human treatment and dignity. While I appreciate MJ’s public project now, I definitely appreciated it much less so in my younger days. When he released Black or White in 1991. While I thought the song was banging, I was becoming more politicized and felt that it did matter whether you were Black or White. The video presented race morphing which made many think about the commonality of humanity, but I saw it as an embracing of a post-racial worldview. This however was never the case for Michael. In my read of his work he desired that race would not carry meaning, but acknowledged it still did.

In his early and mid-career years, MJ remained publicly connected the Civil Rights establishment via his relationship with Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. As a child of civil rights he advocated for a multicultural egalitarian world. In his later years, he developed a burgeoning relationship to Islam via his brother Jermaine Jackson and the Nation of Islam via legal support and management. I remember attending the Millions More March rumors floating that Michael was going to come out, perform and publicly announce his reversion to Islam, but this public day never came. MJ’s affiliations to Islam and the NOI undoubtedly lead to a more explicit racial lens which he later used to “call out” Tommy Mottola president of Sony. People wrote off his public outcry as a link in the media weaved “chain of insanity” and Jackson suddenly moved from “humanist” to “race baitor” in the public imagination. Unfortunately, Jackson’s career was already at a low point and his allegations were not taken seriously, but I’ve always wondered what would have happened if the world took MJ’s cry of unfair treatment seriously? What if the King of Pop was able to raise questions of equity within the industry that resulted in different representation, power, and access? Did his invocation of racial injustice invalidate him in the eyes of many who hung on his humanist messages of equality for all?

No matter whether old Michael or young Michael, he should also be remembered for his project of highlighting and challenging inequality of all forms. Even though to many he was considered “racially transcendent” he did not buy into this image. Instead, he used his popularity as platform to the political. Jackson was an amazing artist but his subtle genius around infusing a brand of social justice into his music should also not be forgotten. The media bonanza behind Jackson will soon die down, but I hope his legacy of social justice will not.

I’ve been traveling for work, but trust me, this could not wait until next Friday for a Friday Funny. I have one questions, 1) “where the hell were the ushers!?!”

question 2) “what the hell!?!”

Yes, you did just witness “Hurricane Chris” perform Halle Berry in the Louisiana house chamber in a suit.

hat tip to SUSG

“I was raised like a Muslim, praying to the east” -Guru of Gang Starr

My first real introduction to