If You Don't Know Jabari Asim...

Jabari Asim is easily one of the busiest cats working in the business. In his role as senior editor at Washington Post Bookworld he has real gatekeeping power and has made it his business that the broadset possible range of black writers and thinkers get reviewed in the Washington Post. Now it looks like a brother will finally get to strut his own formidable intellect within the "marketplace of ideas."

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The N Word: Who Can Say It, Who Shouldn't, and Why
by Jabari Asim
Houghton Mifflin (March 2007)

The N Word reveals how the term "nigger" has both reflected and spread the scourge of bigotry in America over the four hundred years since it was first spoken on our shores. Asim pinpoints Thomas Jefferson as the source of our enduring image of the “nigger.” In a seminal but now obscure essay, Jefferson marshaled a welter of pseudoscience to define the stereotype of a shiftless child-man with huge appetites and stunted self control. Asim reveals how nineteenth-century “science” then colluded with popular culture to amplify this slander. What began as false generalizations became institutionalized in every corner of our society: the arts and sciences, sports, the law, and on the streets.

Asim’s conclusion is as original as his premise. He argues that even when uttered with the opposite intent by hipsters and hip-hop icons, the slur helps keep blacks at the bottom of America’s socioeconomic ladder. But Asim also proves there is a place for this word in the mouths and on the pens of those who truly understand its twisted history—from Mark Twain to Dave Chappelle to Mos Def. Only when we know its legacy can we loosen this slur’s grip on our national psyche.

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JABARI ASIM is deputy editor of the Washington Post Book World. He also writes a weekly syndicated column on popular culture. His writing has appeared in Essence, Salon.com, the Los Angeles Times, the Village Voice, the Hungry Mind Review, Emerge, and elsewhere. He lives in Maryland with his wife and five children.

Imani Perry on Barack Obama

Authentically Black:
The Real Question about Obama’s Candidacy
By Imani Perry

A number of recent articles from legitimate news agencies have been devoted to considering why African Americans don’t consider Barack Obama a “real” black person. They quote individuals who mention that his ancestors were not from West Africa, (like those of most African Americans), that he is biracial, that he is only a second generation American on his father’s side.

I find it alarming that people are so ready to assume that these isolated individuals represent the perspective of some critical mass of African Americans without any evidence to support such an assumption. In fact, if one looks to the history of African American politics and activism, there is no tradition of particular suspicion for non-native born or descended Black Americans. Think about Shirley Chisholm, Louis Farrakhan, Marcus Garvey, Harry Belafonte, and Stokely Carmichael. None of these people ever suffered from “authenticity problems.”

I don’t believe the authenticity problem lies with African Americans. The authenticity problem lies with white Americans. The real question is: Why have White pundits, journalists and newscasters been so eager to comment on Obama’s being biracial and the son of an immigrant, rather than his history of civil rights activism or his long time involvement in African American social and political communities? Does it reveal a desire, among whites, that he not be authentically black (whatever that means), but somehow “different?”

The fixation on Obama as “different” appears to be an effort to exceptionalize him. He is seen as acceptable, in part, because he is considered to be unlike other African Americans, and in particular, African American men, who have been so widely commented upon as a “social problem” in the most prestigious news media in recent months. Joe Biden got in trouble for saying what many Americans are thinking, and that is a much bigger problem than a foot in the mouth.

Read the full essay at Afro-Netizen

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Imani Perry has been on the faculty of Rutgers Law School since 2002, where she teaches classes in Contracts, Law and Literature, and Critical Race Theory. She is a scholar of African American legal and cultural studies. Dr. Perry's first book is entitled: Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop, Duke University Press 2004. She is also the author of numerous articles in Law and Cultural Studies.

Sofia Quintero Back in the Triangle

Author wrote novel about her Bronx neighborhood
By Susan Broili, The Herald-Sun

DURHAM -- As a child in a working-class Puerto Rican-Dominican family in the Bronx, Sofia Quintero loved to read. But something was missing from all those stories and that something encouraged her to be a writer.

"I didn't see myself reflected in what I read. I wanted to tell the same stories with people like me in it. I wrote my first novel at age 12 called 'The Greatest Block' about people on my block," Quintero said in a telephone interview from her home in the Bronx.

As an adult, Quintero has published four novels. She's also a screen writer, a stand-up comedienne and activist. She arrives in Durham today for a four-week residency that includes creative writing workshops for teenagers and adults as well as public readings of her work.

Her residency, with two weeks beginning today and continuing through March 11 and the two more weeks March 18 through April 1, is a program of Carolina Circuit Writers, an organization begun in 2003 by Durham resident Kirsten Mullen as a way to build community using literature as a bridge.

"Our whole thrust is to celebrate literature and writers of color and encourage the community to participate in the arts," Mullen said in a recent interview.

Planners, including representatives from 23 community partners, have met for a year to plan the residency in which Quintero will also visit Durham Academy, Lakeview Public School, Durham Literacy Center, Duke University, North Carolina Central University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

The writer made two weeklong visits here last year in October and April, to meet with planners and make public appearances in preparation for her residency.

"I'm really excited about it -- the diversity of people, the hospitality I've encountered, the opportunity to really learn about the community," Quintero said. "I feel like I'm getting as good as I give."

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That Would Be Grammy Winner...

The Other Grammy Winner
By Esther Iverem—BET.com Contributing Critic

John McLaughlin Williams won a Grammy for his conducting of Messiaen: Oiseaux Exotiques (Exotic Birds) by the Cleveland Chamber Symphony

Iverem: You won a Grammy in the classical music category for Best Instrumental Soloist with Orchestra, yet most Blacks, or music lovers in general, don't know you. Does that anonymity bother you? How have you handled that?

Williams: On a personal level I am not annoyed by a lack of awareness of my pursuits. Rather, I am saddened that the classical arts generally, and classical music specifically, do not command more significant attention from African Americans. Historically, in the Black community this was not always the case. I handle it by making a concerted and ceaseless effort to inform audiences of the timeless contributions by Black composers from the 18th century to today through performances and lectures. Strictly speaking, I’m not anonymous, thanks to the stack of recordings I’ve done on a major classical label with worldwide distribution. Because of that, many more people have heard of me than have ever actually seen me in concert. There is a large and vital community of classical music lovers who are aware of the accomplishments of musicians of color, but for reasons too lengthy to recount here, this remains largely invisible to the African American community.

Iverem: What led you to classical music and what is your instrument(s)?

Williams: My parents played piano very well, and they were extremely well versed in classical, jazz and popular music. They were part of a generation of African Americans (as their parents were before them) that considered this to be an integral part of a general education, an asset that would help ensure intellectual acuity and, ultimately, financial prosperity. They made sure that I heard copious amounts of Bach, Beethoven and Chopin (along with Bud Powell and the Supremes) before I began violin lessons in the public schools of Washington D.C. That was in the days when public schools had string education programs, most of which have since disappeared from the curriculum. Later I began to play the piano, a skill that has proven indispensable to effective orchestral conducting.

Iverem: What is it like to be a classical musician today? What is your life like?

Williams: While it is thrilling to be involved with some of the world’s greatest musical thoughts on a daily basis, there is a hermetic feeling of being not quite in the mainstream that is greater now than ever before. (This was not always the case, but things began to change in the late 1960’s. The reasons for this are myriad, and warrant a discussion of their own.) More specifically, my time is spent studying scores for performance, researching composers, tracing recondite works and manuscripts, coming up with programming ideas for new recordings, making recordings and playing concerts. There is quite a bit of travel involved. I also still perform as a violinist.

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The (Postmodern) Chitlin' Circuit Lives

The World of Black Theater Becomes Ever Bigger
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

BALTIMORE, Feb. 18 — Urban theater — or what has been called over the years inspirational theater, black Broadway, gospel theater and the chitlin circuit — has been thriving for decades, selling out some of the biggest theaters across the country and grossing millions of dollars a year.

In the last two years, however, the tenor of the business has changed, especially since Tyler Perry, the circuit’s reigning impresario, took in $110 million at the Hollywood box office with “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” and “Madea’s Family Reunion,” movies that were based on his plays; they cost less than $7 million each to make.

The bigger players are developing television series, and veterans who have been part of the circuit for years suddenly have movie deals. The word in the industry is that urban theater is about to go mainstream.

“A year and a half from now, if you’re not coming with a play, film script and sitcom spinoff, you’re not going to be able to go anywhere in this business,” said Gary Guidry, one of the founders of I’m Ready Productions, based in Houston, another of the circuit’s big producers.

But the sight of crowds of theatergoers slowly streaming into the Lyric Opera House here on Saturday and Sunday, continuing to walk through the door throughout the first act and eventually filling just about every one of the 2,564 seats for a performance of “Men, Money and Gold Diggers,” prompts the question: If this is not already mainstream, what is?

As white theatergoers were lining up for “Wicked” at the France-Merrick Performing Arts Center across town, the audience filling up the Lyric, a slightly larger theater, was almost exclusively black, mostly middle-aged women. Many said they had heard about the play through the traditional lines of the circuit’s promotion: radio ads, fliers in local business and church parking lots and an astonishingly effective word-of-mouth network that precedes the show from city to city.

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Imani Perry and Mark Anthony Neal @ Emory University

"Hip Hop Culture and Cultural Materialism"

Friday, February 23, 2007 at 4:00 pm

Dr. Imani Perry and Dr. Mark Anthony Neal

Emory University
Robert W. Woodruff Library
Jones Room (311)

Dr. Imani Perry is the author of Prophets of the Hood: Politics and Poetics in Hip Hop. Dr. Mark Anthony Neal is the author of New Black Man. The discussion will be moderated by Emory students Malaika Jabali and Hamzat Sani. Book sale and signing with follow event with reception.

Contact: Department of African American Studies: 404-727-6847 404-727-6848 (fax); aas@emory.edu

Black Male Feminist

Breaking the Silence: Toward a Black Male Feminist Criticism
by David Ikard

Can black males offer useful insights on black women and patriarchy? Many black feminists are doubtful. Their skepticism derives in part from a history of explosive encounters with black men who blamed feminism for stigmatizing black men and undermining racial solidarity and in part from a perception that black male feminists are opportunists capitalizing on the current popularity of black women's writing and criticism. In Breaking the Silence, David Ikard goes boldly to the crux of this debate through a series of provocative readings of key African American texts that demonstrate the possibility and value of a viable black male feminist perspective.

Seeking to advance the primary objectives of black feminism, Ikard provides literary models from Chester Himes's If He Hollers Let Him Go, James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain, Toni Morrison's Paradise, Toni Cade Bambara's The Salt Eaters, and Walter Mosley's Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned and Walkin' the Dog that consciously wrestle with the concept of victim status for black men and women. He looks at how complicity across gender lines, far from rooting out patriarchy in the black community, has allowed it to thrive. This complicity, Ikard explains, is a process by which victimized groups invest in victim status to the point that they unintentionally concede power to their victimizers and engage in patterns of behavior that are perceived as revolutionary but actually reinforce the status quo.

While black feminism has fostered important and necessary discussions regarding the problems of patriarchy within the black community, little attention has been paid to the intersecting dynamics of complicity. By laying bare the nexus between victim status and complicity in oppression, Breaking the Silence charts a new direction for conceptualizing black women's complex humanity and provides the foundations for more expansive feminist approaches to resolving intraracial gender conflicts.

David Ikard is an assistant professor of English at the University of Tennessee. He lives in Knoxville with his wife and two children.

More Beats, More Rhymes

NPR's Talk of the Nation, February 20, 2007

Filmmaker Byron Hurt's new movie Beyond Beats and Rhymes, documents the impact of the rap music culture on the men who listen and create it.

Guests:

Byron Hurt, writer-director of Beyond Beats and Rhymes

Mark Anthony Neal, professor of black popular culture at Duke University

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Reinventing the Ideal of the Black Man

Reinventing the ideal of the black man

Book edited by Athena Mutua explores new visions for black masculinity

By ILENE FLEISCHMANN
Reporter Contributor

What does it mean to be a man? What does it mean to be a black man? And what might it mean to be a black man freed of the dominant, violent, aggressive model that American culture has imposed on the male sex?

Those are some of the questions asked and answered in "Progressive Black Masculinities" (Routledge), a just-published collection of essays edited by Athena D. Mutua, associate professor in the UB Law School.

The book grew out of a workshop and a larger conference held at the Law School's Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy; the papers presented at that conference form the bulk of the volume. Mutua says the idea for the conference began with a class on "Critical Race Theory" that she taught with Stephanie L. Phillips, a professor in the Law School who has an essay in the collection.

At issue, Mutua says, are the ways that American culture speaks to African-American men about how "real men" behave. "All men are not privileged the same," she says. "Men themselves are divided by race, class, ethnicity and religion."

Men in general, she says, are subject to a "hegemonic" idea of masculinity that raises the notion of an unreachably ideal man. Individual men, Mutua says, are judged by how close they come to this ideal, which is characterized by a sense of dominance of the environment, work and home. The culturally imposed ideal is of a white, upper-class, propertied man, she says—"real men" who are not feminine, not gay, not boys and not black. And so the very idea of a "real man," Mutua argues, is inherently racist.

Hand in hand with that cultural racism, she says, is the pressure for black men to demonstrate the aggression and dominance that the male ideal demands. That pressure limits the full expression of men's individuality, but also limits the potential of the women in their lives and, for those around them, reinforces negative stereotypes of black men. "Black men get stuck in really limited images," says Mutua, who in addition to serving as editor wrote the book's introductory chapter setting out its premises.

Much of "Progressive Black Masculinities" is devoted to proposals for how to reinvent the ideal of the black man, suggesting new models that transcend the cultural racism and violence of the old ideal. For example, one writer presents an image of the strong black man as measured by the strength of his commitment to his family—a new model that does not confuse dominance for strength.

Other essays deal with the progressive and regressive aspects of hip-hop culture; the problematic aspects of the biblical letters of Paul; and a very personal piece by Duke University professor Mark Anthony Neal about the challenge of being a pro-feminist, progressive father of a daughter.

"We all recognize that this world is hard on black men," Mutua says. "But we also realize that black men are internalizing ideas that are deeply problematic, and they need to go beyond that."

She also acknowledges that, as a female scholar, she brings an outsider's sensibility to men's issues. But she and her husband, Makau Mutua, a professor in the UB Law School, have three sons. Athena Mutua says the book is personal to her because of them. "What do I do with these sons?" she asks. "What is it that I want to tell them? I want to tell them this: Please be progressive. Please be human."

*from the UB (University of Buffalo) Reporter

25 and Oh

Joan Morgan on Barack Obama

If Barack Ain't Black Then Neither Am I
by Joan Morgan

------So I've just spent another week wandering around in the wacky world of American racial politics only to discover that according to Debra Dickerson's "Colorblind" column on salon.com, that as a Jamaican born South Bronx raised woman of African descent that I'm not black and neither is the man I'm wholeheartedly hoping will be the next American president--Barack Obama.

Dickerson writes "I didn't have the heart (or the stomach) to point out the obvious: Obama isn't black. "Black," in our political and social reality, means those descended from West African slaves. Voluntary immigrants of African descent (even those descended from West Indian slaves) are just that, voluntary immigrants of African descent with markedly different outlooks on the role of race in their lives and in politics. At a minimum, it can't be assumed that a Nigerian cabdriver and a third-generation Harlemite have more in common than the fact a cop won't bother to make the distinction. They're both "black" as a matter of skin color and DNA, but only the Harlemite, for better or worse, is politically and culturally black, as we use the term."

Judging from the pages of criticism Dickerson has already received regarding the arrogance and danger of playing self-appointed gatekeeper to the Republic of Blackness, I'm gonna leave all that alone. At this point, it should be painfully obvious (and I'm mean painful as in post-verbal-ass-whooping painful) that when it comes to Blackness that African-Americans do not hold the monopoly. Nor do they hold the monopoly on the equally painful legacy of colonialism, slavery and imperialism that descendants of West African slaves have experienced around the globe. Same shit, different boat. And if delving into all this common history proves to be too much, I would expect Dickerson not to make light of the equal opportunity racism waiting for "Voluntary Immigrants of African Descent" as soon as they set foot on American shores.

But clearly she's not the only one. A recent New York Times article broke this apparently startling news, "So Far Obama Can't Take the Black Vote for Granted". Maybe it's just me, but I'd already assumed that Black folk were politically astute enough not to back a candidate solely on the basis of a mutual melanin count, that the policies, sincerity and abilities of the candidate to affect change in the areas most pertinent to us - educational reform, health care, unemployment to name a few - might matter more. If Condi Rice suddenly became the Republican answer to the double threat of Hill and Barack she wouldn't get my vote. Why? Because I can acknowledge her as an extremely accomplished Black Woman with an enviable shoe game and still recognize that having her as the HNIC in the White House would be a four-year extension of the Bush administration's callous neglect and bungling ineptitude.

What I wasn't prepared for, and the NY Times seemed happy to point out, was that there were Black folk who seem to feel that the distinction of being the first Black President of the United States is one that should be reserved solely for an African-American, a sentiment summarized by a brother the reporter interviewed in DC barbershop. "Mr. Lanier pointed to Mr. Obama's heritage - he is the American-born son of a black father from Kenya and a white mother from Kansas - and the fact that he did not embody the experiences of most African-Americans whose ancestors endured slavery, segregation and the bitter struggle for civil rights." "When you think of a president, you think of an American," said Mr. Lanier, a 58-year-old barber who is still considering whether to support Mr. Obama. "We've been taught that a president should come from right here, born, raised, bred, fed in America. To go outside and bring somebody in from another nationality, now that doesn't feel right to some people."

To see black folk so closely mimic the very prejudices that white American reserved for European immigrants almost two centuries ago saddens and surprises me. Specially since white folks have already figured this one out: That when Europeans immigrated to America, became citizens, paid taxes and contributed their substantial labor force to the economic, cultural and political growth of the country, they stopped being European immigrants and became just regular white folk easily united in the common interest of holding on to "white power", that is every bit of entitlement that whiteness guarantees in a country like America whose emergence as a superpower is historically based on the maintenance of very specific forms of racial oppression.

So I guess my question here is when are folks like me, we "Voluntary Immigrants of African Descent" considered Black? Because according to Dickerson and brother man in the barbershop it certainly isn't doesn't happen when I look in the mirror every morning and damn sure see a black face. I don't get that honorary pass every April 15th when I pay my taxes or on the daily as I raise my American born black son. Dickerson's definition of blackness evades me even though I happen to consider helping black women (a great many of them American) navigate the quagmire of both racism and sexism as part of my life's work.

It seems Dickerson's reluctance to confer this status on us "Voluntary Immigrants" for simply just being black and loving black people irrespective of their point of origin is more a matter of willful ignorance than anything else. As she accurately points out, "We know a great deal about black people. We know next to nothing about immigrants of African descent (woe be unto blacks when the latter groups find their voice and start saying all kinds of things we don't want said)."

So let me offer some insight. When black people immigrate to America we are not at all exempt from the experience of being Black American and not only because we will inevitably be subjected to American racism. We learn your history. We absorb your culture. Some of us even acquire your accents. We do this as a matter of both acclimation and survival because we recognize the potential power we unleash by finding the distinct commonalities between our histories and our culture. Perhaps if Dickerson took a moment to do the same she would could replace these limited notions of blackness and truly expand Black America into a diverse, multi-ethnic powerbase, savvy enough to elect the most viable BLACK presidential candidate America has seen in over 20 years.

Because really, the difference between rice and peas and black eye peas is hardly as great she, the barber or anyone else questioning Obama's blackness might think. It's the distance between stops on slave ship.

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Joan Morgan is an award-winning journalist and author and a provocative cultural critic. A self-confessed hip-hop junkie, she began her professional writing career freelancing for The Village Voice before having her work published by Vibe, Madison, Interview, MS, More, Spin, and numerous others. Formerly the Executive Editor of Essence, she is the author of When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost, a fresh, witty, and irreverent novel that marks the literary debut of one of the most original, perceptive, and engaging young social commentators in America today. Her work appears in numerous college texts, as well as books on feminism, music and African-American culture.

Hello Like Before

NPR's News & Notes, February 7, 2007

Bill Withers' career as a pop singer in the 1970s was short lived, but his songs, like "Just the Two of Us," are still heard today. Withers talks to Tony Cox about his music, his career, and what happened that soured him on the recording industry.

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The Hip-Hop Generation

News & Notes, February 5, 2007

A new study focuses specifically on the beliefs and actions of African-Americans age 15 to 25. The study's lead researcher, University of Chicago political science professor Cathy Cohen, discusses the findings with Tony Cox. Also joining the conversation: Bakari Kitwana, author of The Hip-Hop Generation.

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Reading Isaiah

Are All Slurs Created Equal?

NPR's Talk of the Nation, February 1, 2007 ·

When Isaiah Washington, one of the stars of TV's Grey's Anatomy, used a homosexual slur to refer to a co-star, it caused a stir, but not the kind of anger that comedian Michael Richards generated with his verbal tirade of racial slurs. Guests look at the origins and power of insults.

Guests:

John McWhorter, author of Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America; senior fellow at The Manhattan Institute

Dan Savage; editor of The Stranger, a Seattle weekly paper; writes a syndicated advice column, "Savage Love"

Mark Anthony Neal; professor of black popular culture at Duke University

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