Finding Tea Cake: An Imagined Black Feminist Manhood

Finding Tea Cake: An Imagined Black Feminist Manhood
by Mark Anthony Neal

Vergible Wood aka Tea Cake is one of the most endearing Black male characters in African-American literature. Tea Cake was the third husband of Janie, the heroine of Zora Neale Hurston’s classic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937) Readers identify with Tea Cake, in part because he was an everyday man—willing to put in a hard day’s work, playful, thoughtful and at times tender with Janie. I suppose there are many who saw a little of Tea Cake in their Black fathers and may even see Tea Cake in the working class men who struggle in contemporary Black America. I’d like to argue though that there was much more to Tea Cake—that perhaps Tea Cake was a metaphor, a Black folk hero really, for an imagined Black feminist manhood.

In the introduction to the volume Traps: African-American Men on Gender and Sexuality, co-editor Rudolph Byrd (with Beverly Guy Sheftall), identifies High John de Conqueror, a black folklore hero, as a model for Black masculinity. Specifically Byrd is drawn to Zora Neale Hurston’s conceptualization of High John De Conquer, originally published in 1943 and collected in the book The Sanctified Church (1981). According to Byrd, High John serves as an “example of courage, hope, the regenerative powers of song, love and the spirit…a powerful figure who symbolizes the potentialities of Black people and the potentialities of a liberated and liberating Black masculinity.” (5) As Hurston describes him, “Old John, High John could beat the unbeatable. He was top-superior to the whole mess of sorrow. He could beat it all, and what made it so cool, finish it off with a laugh…Distance and the impossible had no power over High John de Conquer.” (70) High John was a mythical figure—“there is no established picture of what sort of looking-man this High John de Conquer was”—“who done teached the black folks so they knowed a hundred years ahead of time that freedom was coming.” The importance of a figure like High John de Conqueror resides in the belief, as Byrd writes, that “it is out of this rich field of Black expression that we have fashioned not only a theory of African American literary tradition (signifying) as well as a theory of Black feminism (womanism), but also many of the art forms and life-sustaining traditions of African-American culture.” (3)

Byrd’s use of folklore to highlight the contemporary crisis of black masculinity—“a progressive mode of Black masculinity is needed to counter what is nothing less than the new species of slavery that shackles so many of us”—raises the question of what other folk heroes might be recovered in the service of creating progressive models of Black masculinity. Perhaps such a figure exists—again in the work of Zora Neale Hurston—with the character of Tea Cake, a twenty-something, working-class, happy-go lucky Black man, whose literary presence takes into account the realities of working class life for many Black men.

Janie meets Tea Cake after the death of her second husband Jody Starks, a local businessman in Eatonville, Fl, who left her with a relative fortune for a Black woman in the early 20th century. Tea Cake literally drifts into Janie’s general store (left to her by her dead husband) and immediately becomes a curiosity to her despite their age difference: Janie is in her early 40s and Tea Cake is in his mid-20s. Janie and Teacake’s love affair—and how bold of Hurston capture such (Black) passion and eroticism in the 1930s—becomes a town controversy, less because of their age difference and more so because of Tea Cake’s stature, or rather, lack of social standing. Most of Janie’s friends and acquaintances dismissed Tea Cake as little more than an interloper, desiring access to Janie’s money (“Dat long-legged Tea cake ain’t got doodley squat”). But Janie saw beyond Tea Cake’s youth, lack of money and cavalier attitude (perhaps best captured by his gambling addiction or hustle, depending on your vantage), in large part because of Tea Cake’s ability to be attentive—not simply in the way that one is attentive to someone that they are attracted to—but attentive to the womanist reality that was Janie’s life. To that point there’s a simply lovely passage in the novel where Janie wakes from a nap as Tea Cake combs her hair and she ask “Whut good do combin’ mah hair do you?” and Tea Cake responds “It’s mine too…it feels jus’ lak underneath uh dove’s wing next to mah face” (103)



Tea Cake’s desire to touch Janie’s hair is in stark contrast to Janie’s second husband, Jody Starks, who saw his wife as little more than a paragon to his performance of Black Middle Class respectability. Despite her higher quality of life with Starks—relative few African-American women had the luxury of not working in the early 20th century—Janie was constrained and limited, by the gender conventions of the day. Though Tea Cake held very traditional ideas about gender—his occasional hitting of Janie is more than troubling, though Janie regularly met his force with her own, as was tragically the case at the end of the novel—his views were fluid and malleable. Tea Cake engaged Janie in activities that many deemed male pursuits such as hunting, fishing and playing checkers on the porch. It was during their first meeting that Tea Cake sat with Janie across the checker board as she quipped “De men folks treasures de game round heah. Ah just ain’t never learnt how.” (95) Tea Cake’s desire to take Janie hunting with him represented his own ambivalences about the rigid gender roles of the era. As Hurston writes, Janie “got to be a better shot than Tea Cake. They’d go out any late afternoon and come back loaded down with game” highlighting how the couple shared some of the domestic labor. (131)

It is perhaps easy to read Tea Cake’s willingness to grant Janie access to masculine spaces as a gesture towards the realization of feminist possibilities for Black women in the post World War I period. Tea Cake’s desire to cultivate meaningful intimate public and private spaces for he and Janie to share—this is ultimately what the hunting and fishing trips were about—was often undermined by his natural instinct (a product of the era that produced him) to protect Janie. The level of Tea Cake’s commitment to perform a traditional Black masculinity seemed tethered to his financial stability; when he was working the fields and making money gambling and hosting parties at the jook, he pressed Janie to stay at home and “rest.” Nevertheless Tea Cake reads as progressive in opposition to traditional gender politics within Black communities and institutions and the larger society during the era.

In her essay “Feminist Fantasies: Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God,” Howard University Professor Jennifer Jordan writes, “Ultimately, Janie’s quest for excitement and pleasure in the Florida Everglades does not lead to an independent, self-fulfilled womanhood. She never learns to shape her destiny by making her own choices…she is dependent upon [Tea Cake] for those things she craves—adventure, play, and erotic love.” (Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, 1988) Readers never get the opportunity to find out how Janie and Tea Cake’s relationship would develop as Tea Cake is bitten by a rabid dog late in the novel (as he tries to save Janie from drowning) and was well on his way to dying from the affliction, when Janie shoots him in an act of self-defense. The rabid dog becomes a useful metaphor for the challenges of realizing a progressive Black manhood, in light of the realities of anti-Black racism, poverty and white supremacy. But, as Jordan argues, “Tea Cake’s death allows Janie to hold on to her paradise and to dream of a perfect love. She can choose to remember the passion and the good times rather than sickness, death, the return of racism.” (110) In this regard, Tea Cake exist as a literal fantasy of the possibilities—unrealized in Hurston’s novel—of a Black Feminist Manhood.

As a folk hero, Tea Cake was a product of Hurston’s imagination (and the communities that produced her) and ultimately shaped by the gender dynamics of the era that produced Their Eyes Were Watching God. There was simply no language to describe the potential of a Black Feminist Manhood in the social and political world that Hurston and many Black writers navigated at the time. Indeed Hurston, who died in 1960, might not have been able to imagine the generations of Black Feminists (Womanists) who came after her like Audre Lorde, Alice Walker and the women who comprised the Combahee River Collective. Certainly she could have never imagined Black male feminist such as Gary L. Lemons, Kevin Powell, David Ikard, Michael Awkward, Byron Hurt, Quentin Walcott and Eric Darnell Pritchard.



Hurston’s gestures towards a progressive Black gender politics, in concert with the lack of available language for her to fully represent a Black feminist manhood, makes the character of Tea Cake a useful vessel for us to dare imagine or dream what that Black feminist manhood might look like today. Critical to having Tea Cake serve this role is understanding that his allusions to a Black feminist manhood were unnamed and unspoken—there was no Black feminist discourse (in the way that we’ve recognized that discourse since the late 1960s) that Tea Cake or Hurston could have claimed. Thus Tea Cake’s Black feminist manhood is organic and implicit, not unlike the everyday Black feminist behavior that Aaronette White examines in her new edited volume African Americans Doing Feminism: Putting Theory into Everyday Practice (2010). A professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Cruz, White writes in the book’s introduction about a feminism that is “practical” and “recognizes that there is an imbalance of power between men and women in our society and acts publicly and privately in ways to correct that imbalance.” (1). As White further queries, “How can we make feminism work in our lives?”

Tea Cake would have never called himself a feminist, but Tea Cake embodied the possibilities of a Black feminist manhood, one that time and maturity might have allowed him to fully embrace. Tea Cake clearly didn’t look the part, but how many Tea Cakes are walking the streets of our communities today, who would never call themselves feminist and might not even know how the word has meaning to their own lives, but in their everyday practices—from parenting, supporting the women in their lives and community involvement—gesture towards a Black Feminist Manhood?

WORDS RUN DEEP, Hip Hop Documentary Trailer

Hip Hop is a global phenomenon found in almost every corner of the globe. In North Carolina, independent artists find the music today too commercial. They defy commercialism in their style and brand.

Are new-school artists "selling out"? What about their influence on popular culture? The words they speak....

Written and Produced by Charles S. Martin

A New Beginning for the Black Superhero?

from the Durham News (News & Observer)

A New Beginning for the Black Superhero?
by Stanley Chambers

Black characters have not enjoyed much mainstream success in the comic book world, but they have helped challenge society's view of minorities, especially black men, says one professor.

Randall Kenan, a UNC English professor, gave a brief timeline of black characters in comic books during a lecture, "It's Clobbering Time! Comic Books and Creating the Idea of Black Masculinity."

Black characters enjoyed greater equality in comic books than the real world, thanks to Comic Book Codes of the 1950s, a voluntary set of rules publishers followed in response to criticism that their work had become too violent. The codes prohibited creating sympathy for criminals, depicting crime as a positive activity and having the word "crime" appear alone on a cover.

"Thanks to the Comic Book Codes, you could not portray black folk as criminal," Kenan said. "You rarely saw black criminals in comic books despite the images being fed by the popular media."

The codes created a disconnect between the comic book world and often racist views in the real world. Black men were strong and hard-working in comics yet perceived as weak and lazy in real life, he said.

Black comic book characters grew in the 1970s with characters such as X-Men's Storm, the Green Lantern and the Black Panther, who had existed since the late 1960s. The concept of comic book masculinity also was reflected in popular blaxploitation movies such as "Shaft" and "Superfly."

In 1972, Luke Cage - dubbed "Power Man" - was one of the first black superheroes to have his own comic book. He had superhuman strength and spoke "a jive language I've heard nobody else speak," Kenan said.

But these characters lost popularity as quickly as they gained it.

"To a lot of people, a black man as a superhero is a hard thing to swallow, which is why I think a lot of characters had a hard time gaining traction," Kenan said.

Black characters enjoyed minimal success because their target market was so small, said Mark Anthony Neal, a professor of black culture at Duke University.

During the 1970s black kids paid attention to black comic book characters because there were so few, he said. But many black families with religious leanings outlawed comic books in their households.

"I think whenever things are [associated by race] in our society, they take on greater meaning and become metaphors for other things," Neal said. "When you think about the disintegration of the superhero class, that does have relevance in how we may view the emergence of black CEO's in mainstream corporations over the last 25 years."

Both professors are interested to see how President Barack Obama, an admitted comic book collector, will influence the comic book world.

"Only time will tell," Kenan said. "We won't know if we're in the black comic book renaissance until we're in the next phase."

schamber@nando.com or 932-2025

Kathy Cooper on the Black Heritage Championship Meet

Black Heritage Meet Director Kathy Cooper tells us how the meet plans to bring more African-Americans to the pool, and through the pool as citizens giving back to their communities.

'Bush Mama' as a Deconstructive Narrative

The Wig Is Off:

'Bush Mama' as a Deconstructive Narrative

by Cyrus Fard

In the 1976 film Bush Mama, Ethiopian director Haile Gerima explores the struggles and oppression that African-Americans face living in the ghettos of Southern California. Centered on a black female welfare-recipient and her broken family living in the Watts neighborhood, the film offers a raw perspective not typically glimpsed among the tendency of mainstream narratives to leave questions of class, race and gender inequalities unaddressed. By daring to raise these issues, Bush Mama functions as a powerful polemic, challenging the values of some of the dominant ideologies perpetuated by white hetero-normative standards. As the film progresses and the audience comes to understand the hopelessness of the poor black experience as it is presented here, the film reveals a view of structural and institutional oppression by state powers that becomes increasingly apparent as Dorothy, pregnant and poor at the start of the film, begins an even greater descent that ends with her in jail for murdering a police officer who attempted to rape her daughter.

Arriving in the second half of the 1970s, Bush Mama stands as an oppositional force to the dominant narrative ideology that pushes forth negative views of black women, the black women on welfare in particular. Furthermore, the film not only successfully deconstructs such normalized beliefs as white dominance as a naturally occurring phenomenon and patriarchy as the accepted hierarchy, but also the very notion that every individual controls their own destiny.

Rather than following a more common cinematic strategy of emphasizing the power, or lack thereof, of the individual, Bush Mama utilizes a few select characters as a means of standing in for the collective mass of blacks in Watts. “Individual” is a term used negatively by African-American studies researcher Wahneema Lubiano, who argues that, “individuals are always wrapped in larger world narrative contexts. The problem with constructions of mythic individualism is that their ties to power go unnoted.” This is important to consider in relation to the film because Dorothy’s narrative trajectory does not follow the path that most narratives (as defined by Tzvetan Todorov’s narrative theory) take of equilibrium, disequilibrium, equilibrium (restored). Instead, from start to finish Dorothy is trapped in a world where moments of peace are rare amidst a constant struggle to keep afloat in a dire economic situation. She is not alone in this struggle, as the film shows many blacks (both female and male) experiencing the similar problems of waiting in the unemployment line, living through poverty and being harassed by police. This stands in stark contrast to the tendency of mainstream narratives to offer audiences exposition, conflict, closure and other means of aligning the story up with the audience’s ideological expectations. Instead, Bush Mama’s path is one of conflict, conflict, and more conflict, presented matter-of-factly and never in a typically melodramatic fashion.

Read the Full Essay @ Popmatters

President Obama Welcomes the Duke Blue Devils

The President honors the 2010 NCAA Men's Basketball champion Duke Blue Devils in a ceremony in the Rose Garden. May 27, 2010.

Disclaiming “Gay”—New Black Men

from the Black Youth Project

Disclaiming “Gay”—New Black Men

By Jonathan

This past week I read New Black Man, by Mark Anthony Neal. (Which is generally an awesome book). However, I do have my criticisms (as I usually do for almost everything). Mark Anthony Neal in New Black Man examines the contemporary paradigms of what it means to be black and masculine/male. He also positions these things in the greater context of black feminist thought, parenting as a father, and anti-homophobia (he does a great job doing this). He goes through moments in pop culture where we will find situations antithetical to what the New Black Man metaphor is moving towards. Neal goes further to explain that he has not achieved—at least not in totality—what New Black Man is arguing for.

“I am not the New Black Man, but rather the New Black Man is a metaphor for an imagined life—strong commitment to diversity in our communities, strong support for women and feminism, and strong faith in love and value of listening.” The themes in Neal’s book are difficult to argue against, mostly because of their positive nature and progressive peripheral. However, in the midst of a very solid overall argument, there are a couple themes that weakened Neal’s New Black Man Theory—for me at least. The most distracting to me being his continuous “disclaimer” of his own heterosexuality.

Read the Full Essay @ The Black Youth Project

Beyond the Blame for Aiyana's Death

The Detroit police's shooting of the 7-year-old calls for a closer look at the militarization of the police, the impact of reality shows on our own perceptions of crime and the harsh economic realities behind it all.

Beyond the Blame for Aiyana's Death

by Lester K. Spence

Al Sharpton delivered the eulogy for 7-year-old Aiyana Jones last Saturday. On the previous Sunday, May 16, 2010, Jones was killed by Detroit police officers during a raid of a home harboring a 34-year-old suspected of the murder of a 17-year-old high school student. While the police allege that Aiyana was killed when an officer's weapon accidentally discharged during a struggle with her grandmother, members of the family allege police officers fired into the house before entering. An A&E film crew was present, shooting video for the show The First 48 (the police officer who allegedly fired the shot that killed Aiyana was a show regular) that will undoubtedly shed light on what really happened.

Sharpton's eulogy excoriated black-on-black violence and police misconduct. ''I'd rather tell you to start looking at the man in the mirror,'' Sharpton said. ''We've all done something that contributed to this.'' ''This is it,'' he added. ''This child is the breaking point.'' Using this frame allows Sharpton to point the finger at black cultural dysfunction and police misconduct at the same time.

In as much as Aiyana's death occurred while the police were trying to detain a murder suspect, I understand this. Common sense would suggest that there is blame to go around in this instance, right? If the police story is correct, then perhaps young Aiyana's grandmother shouldn't have struggled with police, perhaps she shouldn't have allowed the murder suspect into the house in the first place. Even if the family of the victim is right, the family still bears some responsibility because the murder suspect was able to stay in the house in the first place.

Again, this is the common-sense narrative. It comes to mind without even thinking about it. But I suggest we broaden the perspective to ask another set of questions, a set of more critical questions. Why was a reality TV show on the premise? We now take real-life crime shows like The First 48 and Cops for granted. But these shows not only bring ''real life'' into our homes, but they also sensationalize crime, arguably even more than shows like the recently canceled Law and Order, because they are real life.

Read the Full Essay @ The Root

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Lester K. Spence is an assistant professor of political science at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Satch Hoyt: Celestial Vessel

NasherMuseum — April 18, 2010 — Satch Hoyt, an internationally acclaimed artist and musician based in Berlin, produced a monumental new sculptural work during his residency with the Nasher Museum in September 2009. Hoyt and a team of assistants constructed a 16-foot canoe titled Celestial Vessel, which is part of the Nasher Museum exhibition, The Record: Contemporary Art and Vinyl (September 2, 2010, through February 6, 2011). Materials for the work include a metal armature and vintage RCA Victor Red Seal 45-rpm records from the 1950s that Hoyt has collected. The work will also include an original soundscape composed by the artist. For more information please go to www.nasher.duke.edu.

This project is made possible by a Visiting Artist Grant from the Council for the Arts, Office of the Provost, Duke University.

Still photography by Dr. J Caldwell.
Video work by David Colagiovanni and Lydia Moyer
Music by Satch Hoyt "Griots and Cyber Crooks"

Rap Sessions: Does Hip-Hop Hate Women? @ Dartmouth College, May 26, 2010

Rap Sessions: Does Hip-Hop Hate Women?

A Community Dialogue and Panel

Dartmouth College

Filene Auditorium

6:00 pm

Featuring award-winning author Joan Morgan; Detroit rapper and activist Invincible; rapper Blitz the Ambassador; Duke Professor Mark Anthony Neal; and moderated By Bakari Kitwana, journalist, activist and political analyst.

Sponsored by Special Programming and Events Committee, the Center for Women and Gender, Institutional Diversity and Equity, Departments of Music and Sociology, the Women's and Gender Studies Program, Sigma Delt, TriDelt, Psi U, Lambda Upsilon Lambda, and the AAM.

Contact: Cristen Brooks, 603-646-2722

8th Annual National Black Heritage Championship Swim Meet

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Kathy Cooper

May 22, 2010 (919) 522-9275

kcfromnc@mindspring.com

8TH ANNUAL

NATIONAL BLACK HERITAGE CHAMPIONSHIP

RETURNS TO THE TRIANGLE AQUATIC CENTER IN CARY

CARY, NC (May 22, 2010) – World Record Holder and 2008 Olympic Gold Medalist Cullen Jones will join 2004 Olympian Maritza Correia at the 8th Annual National Black Heritage Championship Swim Meet hosted by the North Carolina Aquablazers Swim Team, the Triangle Aquatic Center and the Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau. More than 750 swimmers from across the country are expected to attend, creating an estimated economic impact of $500,000 in direct visitor spending for the area.

The swim meet will be held at the Triangle Aquatic Center (TAC), on Memorial Day Weekend, Saturday May 29th – Sunday, May 30th, 2010, with over 40 teams and more than 750 participants. Jones will be signing autographs on Sunday and swimming two 50-Free Exhibition Swims with 14 meet participants whose names will be placed in a lottery by their coaches and selected at the coaches meeting on the Friday night before the meet. 2004 Olympic Silver Medalist Maritza Correia will be signing autographs and hosting 3 mini-swim clinics for meet participants on Saturday afternoon at the end of the Second Session.

Maritza will also serve as the keynote speaker at the Second Annual Community Breakfast Honoring Minority Swimming Pioneers on Friday, May 28, 2010, from 9-11 am. The breakfast is open to the general public and sponsorship and ticket information can be found on the Meet Information page of the meet website at http://blackheritageswimmng.org. Maritza will also host a Swim Clinic at TAC on Friday evening, May 28, 2010, from 7:30-8:30 pm and sign autographs from 8:30-9 pm. Registration forms for the Friday night Swim Clinic with Maritza Correia are available on the swim meet Registration page on the meet website.

The National Black Heritage Championship Swim Meet is one of the stops on the Cullen Jones National Diversity Tour. The Cullen Jones Diversity Tour was established in 2008 out of a need for the larger swim community to have a vehicle to support a diverse population of young kids. The Cullen Jones Diversity Tour hopes to better serve participants on issues such as learning to swim, drowning prevention, swim team access, swimming as an alternate choice for athletic activities and excellence, health benefits of swimming, social environments that will foster friendships for a lifetime in swimming, increase self esteem and many other topics that are of the utmost importance to the Tour's founder, Cullen Jones.

The National Black Heritage Championship Swim Meet is one of the premier minority swim meets in the United States. It’s not your typical North Carolina swim meet since most of the teams will be traveling from 12 states and Washington, DC, mostly from the eastern U.S. and some from as far away California. It’s more of a family reunion, than just a swim meet, where mothers, fathers, siblings, grandparents, and other relatives attend with their 900 swimmers and coaches.

This marks the second year that the meet is being held at the Triangle Aquatics Center. It complements TAC’s partnership with USA Swimming’s “Make a Splash Program” and their efforts to improve minority swim statistics and reducing drowning deaths nationwide. The Greater Raleigh Convention and Visitors Bureau (GRCVB), which coordinated the local bid effort that secured the meet, will serve as a host partner. In that capacity, GRCVB will work closely with both the Aquablazers and TAC while focusing on visitor services, hospitality, accommodations and marketing.

The Black Heritage Meet will provide a boost to the local economy on Memorial Day Weekend, a time when most Triangle Area residents head to the beach. It’s a weekend filled with fast swimming, great food and fun for all. This meet is a marquee event on the area’s sports calendar. The economic impact is estimated at $500,000 in direct visitor spending.

The Black Heritage Meet also serves a purpose. Minorities are nearly three times as likely to drown as their Caucasian counterparts. TAC is working to combat this sad statistic and has partnered with USA Swimming’s “Make A Splash” learn to swim initiative. Through “Make A Splash”, TAC is able to offer free or reduced swim lessons to many eligible children in our community. Thanks in part to a grant from Blue Cross and Blue Shield and the Cary Community Foundation, classes have been formed and TAC is accepting registrations for group learn to swim classes for minority school-aged children, ages 5-18. Doracy Harrison, TAC Program Manager, will be working with area schools, churches, youth groups and the North Carolina Aquablazers Swim Team to register eligible children and ensure that these children are given every opportunity to learn to be safe in, on and around the water. By participating in the National Black Heritage Championship Swim Meet, these new swimmers will also get the opportunity to experience the competitive side of swimming as well.

The Triangle Aquatic Center (TAC) is a nonprofit organization with a mission to build and operate public aquatic facilities throughout the Triangle. TAC’s first aquatic facility, at 275 Convention Drive, includes a 50 meter competition pool, a 25-yd training pool and a warm water instructional pool. The TAC facility is 72,000 sq. feet and has comfortable spectator seating capacity for 1000 people. The TAC facility has a full-service café and an All-American Swim Shop on site. The TAC facility is conveniently located off Interstate 40 at Exit 291 and is adjacent to Cary’s largest shopping mall, Cary Towne Center.

The North Carolina Aquablazers Swim Team, is a small group of diverse swimmers from North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Georgia, California, Pennsylvania and Tennessee, who, along with their parents, want to inspire more minorities to learn to swim and join the competitive swimming ranks. They formed the National Black Heritage Swimming Foundation in December 2009 to further their goals. One of their initial efforts has been to support the Garner Road YMCA and Brittany Copeland’s Jump In® program to provide free swim lessons to minority children during the winter of 2010.

For more details contact the Meet Director, Kathy Cooper at (919) 522-9275 or kcfromnc@mindspring.com, and visit all of our websites – http://blackheritageswimming.org, www.triangleaquatics.org and www.visitraleigh.com.

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King Driis (Idris Elba) (w/production by 9th Wonder)--"Hold On"

Brett Cook’s SUPERNATURAL at Guerrero Gallery

Brett Cook’s SUPERNATURAL at Guerrero Gallery

June 5 – July 3, 2010

Guerrero Gallery is pleased to announce Supernatural, a new exhibition by Brett Cook. Cook documents individual and collaborative transformation to promote awareness and celebrate the interconnectedness of all things. His creative practice includes crafting artifacts and experiences that reflect varied influences from art, education, and esoteric traditions. Supernatural features new and evolving installations from Cook’s public practice, altar-like assemblages, and works on mirror created from his ongoing study of nonviolence.

On Saturday, June 5th from 3pm to 11pm, an opening celebration at Guerrero Gallery will be the container for a social collaboration with Eco Chef/Author/Food Justice Advocate Bryant Terry, Trust Your Struggle (TYS) Collective, artist/educator Evan Bissell, and magic through participatory fabrication of a new artwork of La Virgen De Guadalupe. On Saturday, June 26th at 2pm there will be a public dialogue with the artists.

Supernatural includes new works picturing Arundhati Roy, Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, Julia Butterfly Hill and Thich Nhat Hanh that were originally drawn and colored by hundreds of hands at collaborative events in California and New York City in 2002 and 2004. The artifacts of these events have since been embellished by Cook with a wide array of media, including documentary photographs, medicinal plants, LED lights, and reflective paper. The inclusion of diverse sensibilities and symbols – from poinsettia flowers and brooms to the five elements – invites viewers to explore the similarities underlying ostensibly disparate cultural expressions and celebrate the interconnectedness of all things in their process and product.

Also on display at Guerrero Gallery will be Documentation of Multiplicity and Documentation of a Grandma, two of Cook’s large-scale, altar-like assemblages that incorporate biographical materials, drawings, objects, words, and photographs in kaleidoscopic installations. The works are self-reflective and intensely personal: the objects come directly from Cook’s past, saved carefully by his mother, and now displayed in contemplative, humanizing narratives. These works are physically as well as visually experienced. While the images insist on immediate attention, the complex narratives and craft gradually reveal themselves over time. These mandala portraits reflect the multi-faceted relationships of Brett Cook’s past and present in ways that remind each viewer of themselves.

Select works from the Models of Accountability series are also represented in the exhibition. These mixed media works are on mirrors that shift and refract the imagery of avatars for social change as the viewer moves among them. By allowing the mirror to show through the meticulously drafted drawings and painting, the viewer can recognize themselves within, rather than apart from, these advocates of human value.

In addition, Bay Area/New York City based Trust Your Struggle (TYS), a collective of visual artists, educators, and cultural workers dedicated to social justice and community activism and artist/educator Evan Bissell will collaborate with Cook on a site-specific wall piece that is the culmination of a two-week retreat focused on studying the divinity of collaboration.

Cook’s work cohesively integrates the breadth and depth of his diverse – and at times disparate – experiences with art, education, science, and spirituality. Raised in a reverent Catholic family of public school educators, Cook was introduced to transcendental meditation at age six. He was influenced by aspects of graffiti art and community art while studying zoology, education, and fine art at the University of California, Berkeley. In the late 1990’s, Cook began studying yoga in New York City while showing extensively in galleries, museums and making scores of permissioned and non-permissioned public projects. Today, Cook continues his study of contemplative traditions nationally and internationally with acclaimed yoga teachers, natural healers, and through bi-annual retreats in the tradition of Zen Buddhist venerable Thich Nhat Hanh. His childhood curiosity with the nature of things manifested as a prodigious, award-winning obsession with the life sciences through high school, and evolved after college to 20 years of farming and using plants for healing.

Cook’s creative practice includes making dynamic art works based in portraiture that honor the best of humanity in all of us. In his collaborative practice, Cook employs mindful interpersonal dialogue, participatory pedagogy, and contemplative curricula to facilitate rituals and to build environments where other people make things – and “things” include objects, ideas, and new ways of being. Cook’s body of work spans the continuum between the extremes of “solitary” artist and community catalyst, both as one signature and with countless hands skillfully working to relieve suffering in the world.

Teaching and public speaking are extensions of his social collaborations that involve diverse communities in dialogue to generate experiences of reflection and insight. He has taught at all academic levels in a variety of subjects, and published in academic journals at the Maryland Institute College of Art, Columbia and Stanford Universities. In 2009, he published Who Am I In This Picture: Amherst College Portraits with Wendy Ewald and Amherst College Press.

He has received various prestigious awards, including the Lehman Brady Visiting Professorship at Duke University and UNC – Chapel Hill, the Richard C. Diebenkorn Fellowship at the San Francisco Art Institute, and residencies at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, ME, the Studio Museum in Harlem, NY, Art Omi, NY, and the Headlands Center for the Arts, CA.

Selected highlights of Cook’s community building, multi-disciplinary work include:

Face Up: Telling Stories of Community Life, Durham, NC; The Building Community Making History Collaborative Project with the Smithsonian/National Portrait Gallery and Duke Ellington School for the Arts, Washington, D.C.; Colors of Compassion Collaborative Project, Deer Park Monastery, Escondido, CA; (De)Segregation, Harvard School of Education, Cambridge, MA; and Re-Invented at the Alvarez Bravo Photographic Center, Oaxaca, Mexico.

Cook’s solo exhibitions include Revolution and Multifaceted at P.P.O.W. Gallery in New York; and Meditations at Zilkha Gallery/Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT. Group exhibitions include Portraiture Now at the Smithsonian/National Portrait Gallery; Walls of Heritage Walls of Pride at the Smithsonian Anacosta Museum, Washington D.C.; Black President Exhibition New Museum of Contemporary Art, NY; Hip-Hop Nation, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA; and Generation Z, P.S. 1/MoMA, Long Island City, NY.

He is represented in New York by PPOW Gallery.

Songs for the Soul: Celebrating African-American Composers

The State of Things

WUNC

Songs for the Soul

A new CD from the Mallarme Chamber Players highlights a group of musicians long overlooked in the world of classical music: African-American composers.

Guest host Laura Leslie discusses the history and style of the music and its influences with: Suzanne Rousso, executive director of the Mallarme Chamber Players; Louise Toppin, opera singer and executive director of Videmus Records; and Bill Banfield, composer, musician, professor and author of several books on black American composers. Then, six-time Grammy nominated jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon performs live in advance of the “Songs for the Soul” concert this weekend at the Carolina Theater.

Listen HERE

Anderson Cooper's Misuse of Race and the Doll Test

Raggedy Andy: Anderson Cooper's Misuse of Race & the Doll Test

by Noel S. Anderson

As a trained social scientist, I have no problem with thoughtful and well-executed studies being conducted to increase our public understanding of how race and racism “operate” in our everyday lives. These studies could yield fresh insight into how, in the absence of legal segregation, racism and social stratification limit life chances for people, and can hopefully inform more creative approaches in our policies, institutions and at the grassroots level to achieve social justice.

I do , however, have a problem when studies like the “Doll Test” is done shabbily by journalists like Anderson Cooper of CNN. Recently, war journalist turn pop-psychologist, Anderson Cooper recreated a doll test with several Black and white children. Using the aid of cartoons and blue cue cards, he proceeded to ask young kids questions about a previous study and to point to a cartoon character they believe is “prettiest” or “good”. Invariably, a number of young children, Black and white, showed preference for the white and lighter colored cartoons displayed on a poster.

Read the full Essay @ Politic365

Justice for Aiyana Stanley Jones?

Where Is the Justice for Aiyana Stanley Jones?

by Brittany Shoot

Anyone reading this blog likely knows a bit about the nauseating, disproportionate violence against women and children in this world. If you have empathic traits and tendencies like I do, it never really gets easier to process and absorb the ways innocent people are abused and destroyed. For me, the question is what you do, how you cope, in the face of unjustifiable violence, when the victim is a seven-year-old girl.

This weekend, Detroit police shot and killed a little girl named Aiyana Stanley Jones. At the little girl's home to execute a search warrant in a homicide investigation, they threw a flash bang — also known as a stun grenade — through the front window of the crowded apartment ... onto the couch where Aiyana was sleeping. Aiyana caught fire. As her grandmother tried to put out the flames, police entered, and a gun went off. Aiyana was shot in the neck and pronounced dead at the hospital. Her father, Charles Jones, told the AP that he had to wait several hours to find out what had happened to his daughter.

The police entered Aiyana's home searching for a suspect in the shooting death of Jerean Blake, 17, who was gunned down in front of his girlfriend on Friday. Blake's story is also a tale of senseless brutality, a painful reminder of the domino effect this kind of violence can have in a community.

There's nothing about this story that isn't horrific. It also raises important questions: why are military-type weapons being used in civilian homes? How do we hold law enforcement accountable while remembering their fallibility as humans? What does it mean that these types of crimes disproportionately affect communities of color and low-income communities? How does a family, a community, ever heal from such tragedies? How do we honor memory?

Read the Full Article @ womensrights.change.org

Marc Lamont Hill on the "Banning" on Ethnic Studies

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

New Book! African Americans Doing Feminism

African Americans Doing Feminism

Putting Theory into Everyday Practice

edited by Aaronette White

African American women and men share their stories of how feminism has influenced their daily lives.

How might ordinary people apply feminist principles to everyday situations? How do feminist ideas affect the daily behaviors and decisions of those who seek to live out the basic idea that women are as fully human as men? This collection of essays uses concrete examples to illuminate the ways in which African Americans practice feminism on a day-to-day basis. Demonstrating real-life situations of feminism in action, each essay tackles an issue—such as personal finances, parenting, sexual harassment, reproductive freedom, incest, depression and addiction, or romantic relationships—and articulates a feminist approach to engaging with the problem or concern. Contributors include African American scholars, artists, activists, and business professionals who offer personal accounts of how they encountered feminist ideas and are using them now as a guide to living. The essays reveal how feminist principles affect people’s perceptions of their ability to change themselves and society, because the personal is not always self-evidently political.

“The topic of thinking about feminism and feminist theory as functional is very important: students often want to know more about how they can put feminist thinking and politics into action. Having concrete, lived examples of how various people have done so is a real contribution to the field.” — Vivian M. May, author of Anna Julia Cooper, Visionary Black Feminist: A Critical Introduction

Aaronette M.White is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of California Santa Cruz. She is the author of Ain’t I a Feminist? African American Men Speak Out on Fatherhood, Friendship, Forgiveness, and Freedom, also published by SUNY Press.

***

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: African American Feminist Practices

Aaronette M. White

Part I: Family Values

1. Mother Work: A Stay-at-Home Mom Advocates for Breastfeeding

Angela M. W. Thanyachareon

2. Bringing Up Daddy: A Black Feminist Fatherhood

Mark Anthony Neal

3. Tubes Tied, Child-Free by Choice

Aaronette M. White

Part II: Community Building

4. ¡Ola, Hermano! A Black Latino Feminist Organizes Men

Omar Freilla

5. “Sister Outsiders”: How the Students and I Came Out

Mary Anne Adams

6. Feminist Compassion: A Gay Man Loving Black Women

Todd C. Shaw

7. Gay, Gray, and a Place to Stay: Living It Up and Out in an RV

Aaronette M. White and Vera C. Martin

Part III: Romantic Partnerships

8. The Second Time Around: Marriage, Black Feminist Style

Pearl Cleage

9. “Every Goodbye Ain’t Gone”: Why the Feminist I Loved Left Me

William Dotson

10. When the Hand That Slaps Is Female: Fighting Addiction

Dorothy M.

Part IV: Healing Practices

11. Resistance as Recovery: Winning a Sexual Harassment Complaint

Carolyn M. West

12. Learning to Love the Little Black Boy in Me: Breaking Family Silences, Ending Shame

Gary L. Lemons

13. I Took Back My Dignity: Surviving and Thriving after Incest

Carolyn E. Gross

14. Diving Deep and Surfacing: How I Healed from Depression

Vanessa Jackson

Part V: Career Dilemmas

15. Mary, Don’t You Weep: A Feminist Nun’s Vocation

Sister Sojourner Truth

16. Becoming an Entrepreneur

Deloise (Dee) A. Frisque

17. Light on a Dark Path: Self-Discovery among White Women

Marian Cannon Dornell

18. The Accidental Advocate: Life Coaching as a Feminist Vocation

Anitra L. Nevels

List of Contributors

Index

Farewell to Ms. Lena

Farewell to Ms. Lena

by Courtney Young

“You have to be taught to be second class; you’re not born that way”, is just one of the many Lena Horne aphorisms that traversed through social networking sites yesterday at the news of the pioneer’s passing. President Barack Obama, Bill Cosby, Janet Jackson and millions of citizens across the globe felt the weight of her loss. It’s a curious sensation when a path-making, fully realized icon dies: There is profound sadness, but also a feeling of pride and gratitude in celebrating someone who broke down or through barriers, achieving greatness despite the hatred, precariousness and racial/gender discrimination of the time.

A Brooklyn girl, Lena Calhoun Horne was born on June 30, 1917 to Teddy and Edna Horne. Her father left the family when Lena was 3, and she was raised middle-class by her mother and grandparents with a progressive, activist aesthetic. Her paternal grandparents were early members of the NAACP, Lena becoming a member herself at the tender age of 2. At 16, Lena’s mother took her out of school to audition for the chorus at the Cotton Club in Harlem, beginning her historic career. Lena Horne became the first Black performer to sign a long-term Hollywood studio contract. Though a major personal and community milestone, she nonetheless faced incredible racism for much of her career. Many of her cinematic scenes were segregated from those featuring the white stars, so that the studio could edit her out when the films played in the South. Her second marriage to a white man, Lennie Hayton, presented new challenges for the star, Horne keeping it secret for three years and then enduring additional prejudice because of their interracial union.

One of Lena Horne’s most significant contributions was her fierce activism and passion for civil rights. A friend of fellow entertainers/activists such as Paul Robeson, Horne was blacklisted for seven years in the 1950s because of her insistence on “rocking the boat” over issues of race in Hollywood and beyond. Horne was also vocal on the colorism that, in part, informed her success and made her palpable and marketable to white audiences (and some Black ones). Max Factor developed an “Egyptian” makeup for her at the beginning of her career, and at one point MGM tried to sell her as a Latina or an “exotic”–but she would assume no other identity than that of a Black woman.

Read the Full Essay @ Ms. Magazine Blog

***

Courtney Young is currently completing two books, the first of which is entitled Color Me Color Struck: How Colorism Marginalizes Women of Color in Popular Culture of which she serves as the editor. The second book is a collection of essays entitled From Michelle to Madea: Images of Black Women in the Media about the ways in which Black women are represented in media and pop culture and will be published by the Feminist Press later this year.

Chuck D & Dave Zirin on the "Fight in Arizona"

“This is Beyond Sports” Chuck D on the Fight in Arizona
by Dave Zirin

Chuck D. The Hard Rhymer. The man on the mic for the most politically explosive hip-hop group in history, Public Enemy. With albums like “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back,” “Fear of a Black Planet,” and anthems like “Fight the Power” and “Bring the Noise” along with the breathtaking production of the Bomb Squad, PE created a standard of politics and art. Perhaps their most controversial track was “By the Time I Get to Arizona” (1991) about seeking revenge against Arizona political officials for refusing to recognize Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday [Lyrics include: 'Cause my money's spent on The goddamn rent/Neither party is mine not the Jackass or the elephant.] Today, in the wake of Arizona’s draconian anti-immigration Senate Bill 1070, “By the Time I Get to Arizona” has been remixed and revived by DJ Spooky. Chuck D also recorded his own track several months before the bill was passed called “Tear Down That Wall.” I spoke to Chuck about the music and the nexus between immigration politics and sports.

DZ: Why did you choose to record “Tear Down this Wall?”

Chuck D: I had done "Tear Down this Wall" four or five months ago because I heard a professor who works with my wife here on the West Coast speak in a speech about the multi-billion dollar dividing wall between the U.S. and Mexico, so, therefore, I based "Tear Down that Wall" on the policy of the United States border patrol in the states of Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas. I just wanted to put a twist of irony on it saying if Ronald Reagan back in 1988 had told Mr. Gorbachev to tear down that wall separating the world from countries of capitalism and communism, we have a billion dollar wall right here in our hemisphere that exists that needs to have a bunch of questions raised. Questions like: “What the Hell?” I wrote the song about five months ago and I did it coincidently, with all that’s brewing in the state of Arizona. Immigration laws and racial profiling is happening right here and I think the border situation, not only with the U.S. and Mexico but the U.S. and Canada, on both sides is just out of control. It's crazy.

DZ: You did "Tear Down This Wall," we have the DJ Spooky remix of "By the Time I Get to Arizona," and with your wife, Dr. Gaye Theresa Johnson, you wrote a syndicated column on SB 1070. What’s the response been to you being so out front on this issue?

Chuck D: Well the response is the usual, but I make it a habit not to look at any blogs, because I think the font of a computer gives as much credence to ignorance as it does to somebody who makes sense. So I try not to read those responses, because anybody can respond quickly. Back when people had to write letters it took an effort, especially if someone didn't have decent penmanship and handwriting. I try not to look at the responses. I try to do the right thing. I tell you this much, there is a rap contingent, a hip-hop contingent from Phoenix, who did a remake of "By the Time I Get to Arizona." I think that needs to be recognized because these are young people. The song is about eight minutes long. There's about 12 MCs on it, and they are putting it down. They are talking about how ridiculous this law is. They are speaking out against it and they are putting all the facts on the table, and they need to be acknowledged and highlighted. There is a stereotype about young people and young MCs [being apolitical]. They break it.

DZ: It’s remarkable how the original “By the Time I Get to Arizona” has been resurrected from the early 90's now that the struggle has picked up. Did you hear former NBA player Chris Webber before the Suns/Spurs game say, "Its like PE said ‘By the Time I get to Arizona.’”?

Chuck D: [laughs] My Dad told me about that, You know Chris Webber is the man. I wasn't tuned into TNT at that particular time.

DZ: He said more than that. He said, “Public Enemy said it a long time ago. ‘By the Time I Get to Arizona.’ I’m not surprised. They didn’t even want there to be a Martin Luther King Day when John McCain was in [office.]. So if you follow history you know that this is part of Arizona politics.’” So he brought it all together with Public Enemy at the center of it.

Chuck D: Unfortunately when it comes to culture, the speed of technology and news today makes things out of sight, out of mind. While these situations [the MLK fight and the immigration fights] are different, the politics of both things stay around like a stain.... Once again Arizona has put themselves into this mix. I don't know what the hell was on Gov. Jan Brewer’s mind or what contingent is behind her, but, you know, to make a decision like this and to be told to ignore the people who have been in this area on this earth the longest period of time. It just kind of resonates with me as being crazy.

DZ: Do you support an athletic or artistic boycott of Arizona until this gets settled?

Read the Full Essay @ Edge of Sports

Trouble Man: Black Male Privilege?--A Forum

The Brecht Forum
Monday May 17, 2010 @ 7:30pm
Co-sponsored by Centric Productions

Trouble Man:Black, Male Privilege
A Contradiction? An Illusion? A Reality?

Byron Hurt
L'Hereux Lewis
Marc Lamont Hill
Mark Anthony Neal
Esther Amrah (Moderator)

This panel is part of Esther Armah's New Monthly Live Interactive Emotional Justice Conversation Series -Afrolicious

Black men are in crisis. Prison, schools, racism, brutality. But, what about black male privilege? What does it look like? How do we define it? How and who does it hurt or help? How does it inform our relationships? Is it our silent reality: undiscussed, unspoken, unrevealed? Byron Hurt, Marc Lamont Hill, Mark Anthony Neal, L'Heureux Lewis take on black male privilege and break it down.

*Esther Armah (Moderator): International Award winning Journalist, Radio Host of Wake Up Call and Off the Page WBAI 99.5 FM, Playwright

*Marc Lamont Hill, Associate Professor of Education at Teachers College, Columbia University and Author of Beats, Rhymes and Classroom Life

*Byron Hurt, Award winning filmmaker, Hip Hop Beyond Beats and Rhymes, Barack&Curtis, and Soul Food Junkies, anti sexism activist, Essayist

*R.L. Heureux Lewis, Assistant Professor Sociology and Black Studies at the City College of New York

*Mark Anthony Neal, Professor of Black Popular Culture at Duke University and Author of New Black Man


The Brecht Forum
451 West Street (between Bank & Bethune Streets)
New York, NY 10014
Phone: (212) 242-4201

Sofia Quintero Reads from Efrain’s Secret

BookUpNYC 2010 - Sofia Quintero reads from Efrain’s Secret from National Book Foundation on Vimeo.

Things Seem Just Right for Pam Grier

After a life of ups and downs, things seem just right for Pam Grier
By WILLIAM DOUGLAS
McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON-Pam Grier let out a hearty chuckle when asked to assess her impact on the 1970s, action-packed, "they-have-a-plan-to-stick-it-to-The-Man" film genre known as blaxploitation.

"There were quite a few formulaic films before mine with male leads from Jim Brown to Fred Williamson and Issac Hayes with the same formula of fighting crime, thugs and pimps," she said. "As soon as a woman does it, it's blaxploitation, but it wasn't blaxploitation when men were doing it."

Such is the straight talk Grier delivers in conversation and in her new memoir, "Foxy, My Life in Three Acts," a recount of her rise to fame as the queen of B-movies that were geared towards black audiences, the setbacks in her romantic, and her career resurrection through director Quentin Tarantino's "Jackie Brown," a 1997 blaxploitation homage he wrote specifically for her.

In addition to her book, she has a role in Queen Latifah's new romantic comedy "Just Wright" and is shooting another movie with Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts.

She played straight club owner Kit Porter on Showtime's lesbian-themed series "The L Word" and was a cast member in the CW's Superman series "Smallville."

All of this from a shy girl from Colorado, who didn't set out to be an actress, let alone a pinup queen, and marvels at the staying power of her popularity today.

"Every day I go: 'What, really?' I was surprised, I was amazed, I was taken aback by so much interest in what I did," Grier said during a telephone interview from her Colorado ranch. "Too bad it wasn't any rich or historical work ..."

Still, blaxploitation films were revered by audiences who were hungry to see black actors in leading roles taking on wrong-doing blacks and evil whites.

The genre was reviled by some in the black community as overly-simplistic tales from the 'hood that played into stereotypes of blacks as violent pimps, prostitutes and drug dealers.

On screen, Grier was a two-fisted woman in a man's world. In films like "Coffy," "Foxy Brown" and "Sheba Baby," she was the buxom, butt-kicking action hero who could karate-chop, jump out of airplanes and into the sack as good as the guys. Oh, and the nude scenes didn't hurt, either.

"She was the reigning black female sex symbol of the 1970s," said Mark Anthony Neal, a Duke University African and African-American studies professor who specializes in black popular culture. "Had she been able to have film opportunities in the white mainstream in the 1970s, her contemporaries would have been Raquel Welch and Farah Fawcett."

Stephane Dunn, an English professor at Morehouse College in Atlanta, said Grier was the right package that arrived in Hollywood at the right time culturally.

"She came out in the time black power, feminist era," said Dunn, author of "Baad Bitches" and Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films." "She had the first opportunity among black (actresses) to have the kick-butt leading role."

Read the Full Article @ The Miami Herald