'Where Dey At?" Bounce & Gospel in Post-Katrina New Orleans

Music keeps its citizens connected across time, history and place

“Where Dey At?”:
Bounce and the ‘Sanctified Swing’ Post-Katrina
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21

In the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the failure of the levees in New Orleans, there were many high profile efforts to raise awareness about the cultural legacy of New Orleans. Many of those efforts centered on the exaltation of New Orleans Jazz, with many events aimed at providing shelter and support for Jazz musicians dispersed by the tragedy.

New Orleans Jazz seemed the most important resource to be protected in the months after Katrina, more so than the people who made the city such a vital and important, ever evolving cultural outpost. Lost in the focus on New Orleans Jazz—arguably one of the nation’s most important cultural exports—are other forms of musical expression that were and continue to be crucial to the survival and spirituality of New Orleans and its citizens, including those who have yet to return.

Though Jazz was a critical component of Black political discourse and intellectual development throughout the 20th century—jazz musicians like John Coltrane, Billie Holiday, Max Roach and Abbey Lincoln are some of the most resonate examples of creative intellectuals—New Orleans Jazz is often depicted as being tethered to some imagined past, in which race relations and the power dynamics embedded in them were far more simplistic.

Indeed recent films like The Princess and the Frog and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and the HBO television series Treme (despite it’s progressive political critiques) contribute to a nostalgic view that New Orleans Jazz as a dated, static musical form that offers an “authentic” alternative to more commercially viable forms of popular music like rap and R&B music. Much of this has to do with the relationship between New Orleans Jazz and the leisure and tourist industries that were so vital to the city’s economy. In this context, mainstreams desires to save New Orleans Jazz and to protect its musicians are less about strengthening the links between Jazz and Black cultural resistance—a resistance that historically fermented in New Orleans—but maintaining the economic vitality of what Johari Jabir calls the “theater of tourism” in which Black bodies are rarely thought of as citizens but laborers, servants and performers.

In the introduction to the new book, In the Wake of Hurricane Katrina: New Paradigms and Social Visions, scholar Clyde Woods places New Orleans Jazz in a much broader context, as part of what Woods has famously described as a “Blues tradition of investigation.” As Woods notes in his essay, “Katrina’s World: Blues, Bourbon and the Return to the Source,” historically the city of New Orleans and the region was “latticed with resistance networks that linked enslaved and free blacks with maroon colonies established in the city’s cypress forests swamps.”

Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21

Book Review: Who Should Be First?

A review of Who Should Be First?: Feminists Speak Out on the 2008 Presidential Campaign. Edited by Beverly Guy-Sheftall and Johnnetta Betsch Cole, SUNY Press.

The Danger of False Divides
by Janell Hobson

The 2008 Presidential campaign not only tested our nation’s readiness for change, it catapulted feminists into a firestorm of competing priorities. Much was at stake for racial- and gender-identity politics in the Democratic primaries that pitted then-Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama against each other—the first time a man of color or a woman had emerged as a leading candidate for the presidency. During those months, Guy-Sheftall and Cole were gathering personal archives of written material related to the unprecedented campaign. They have honed their collections into an anthology of writings on the subject, including personal reflections, open letters, op-ed pieces, petitions, critical essays and speeches, most of them contemplating or agonizing over the nagging question: Who should be first?

The result is a contemporaneous record of a riveting rhetorical battle, especially among feminists, over the preeminence of race or gender. Guy-Sheftall and Cole’s compilation of the perspectives of journalists, professors, public intellectuals, students and bloggers—including such influential voices as Gloria Steinem, Katha Pollitt and Mark Anthony Neal—has captured the mood of this momentous event.

Read the Full Essay @ Ms. Magazine

Why Black Americans Should Care About Net Neutrality

Why Black Americans Should Care About Net Neutrality
by Aymar Jean Christian

Everybody loves YouTube. Whether you’re into Miss Jia, Kingsley, or that guy who impersonates Obama, the Google-owned site is still a place for regular users without big marketing dollars to showcase their talent and style.

So you’re forgiven if you greeted the hand-wringing over Google and Verizon’s net neutrality pact with an impassioned “who cares?” With the Twitterati voicing “Google is now evil,” and countless articles threatening the death of the Internet, it may seem like much ado about nothing when you can still watch the latest Kanye West video on Vevo’s YouTube channel.

But don’t be fooled: a lot is at stake. What is net neutrality? Simply put, net neutrality is a principle calling for all Internet traffic to be treated equally. This means every website, portal and application is given the same access to bandwidth: Yahoo runs just as fast as Bing. Most cable providers, like Verizon and Comcast, would like to charge companies for bandwidth access. Google pays Verizon for faster YouTube, in a nutshell. Google and Verzion’s pact is halfway between net neutrality and full-on market competition: for now, it calls for most of the web to stay the same but says traffic on mobile devices should be an exception, where some content is faster than others.

What does this mean? It means content hosted by big companies, from video to videogames, would get priority on cell phone devices, and the pact opens the door to discrimination on the web as well. Though unprofitable, YouTube will run fine. It has Google money. But its competitor Vimeo might not. Independent and smaller players would get poorer service and eventually lose its chance to beat out the big guys.

Already, a handful of independent black video networks are springing up, all within the last year or so. RowdyOrbit is already building up a small following as the “black Hulu” for independent film. Coming soon are GLO TV, set for release in Septemember and aimed at black gay audiences, and Better Black TV, Master P’s family-friendly web-only network. All of these sites are among the few aimed explicitly at black (and minority more broadly) content. They are still maturing their business models, and won’t be able to compete against Google’s YouTube-behemoth or increasingly successful Hulu.

Why should black people care? Because black Americans (alongside Latino, Asian, even gay and lesbian Americans) have historically suffered from a lack of media representation. Setting net neutrality aside would damage media diversity, which could then hurt black Americans looking to start a web business and make films for web distribution and, increasingly, mobile distribution. At the same time, you and I would have fewer choices for entertainment.

Read the Full Essay @ Televisual

An Ode to Black Women

Artist, Larry "Poncho" Brown

An Ode to Black Women and a Fair, Firm Message to ALL Others
by Sharon D. Toomer, BBN Managing Editor

As a Black woman in America, I have never known a time in my life when I have felt more unsafe, vulnerable and unprotected. This acute sense of insecurity is sometimes a challenge to articulate. It is, however, a real and shared experience among the many Black women in my life and we continue struggling to give it voice. Behind closed doors, Black women increasingly describe feeling disdained, disregarded, rejected and dismissed. This societal hostility is a widespread sentiment that is not limited by socio-economic background, education, geography or age and was crystallized in the recent case of Shirley Sherrod.

The source of these feelings and experiences come from the larger society, but sadly, too frequently they come from within our own community. Whether in the projection of a caricature of our image in media, the unequal treatment and harsh punishments of the workplace or in the dismissal of our most urgent needs by law enforcement authorities and media, it seems that the attacks on Black women are endless and coming from all angles. Even our own men have taken to attacking us in public forums about everything from being “too demanding,” “too angry” and the laughable charge of “having too high standards,” to the most recent attack of not being fit for marriage.

I do not know what Black women ever did to merit this pattern of assault, but I do know this: this hostility is not good for the overall health and progress of Black communities as a whole and by extension for the whole of America. And here is why:

Read the Full Essay @ BlackandBrownNews

Who’s Afraid of the Single Black Woman?

Who’s Afraid of the Single Black Woman?
by Janell Hobson

It was during one of those rainy Sunday afternoons–what I call my solitude time in the comfort of my home–that I discovered William Wyler’s 1949 movie The Heiress on TCM. I surf through my cable channels oh so delicately, lest I see another image berating my existence as a black woman. Movies of old rarely knew we existed, or thought we did so only as maids.

In this movie, there were no black characters–only a shy “plain Jane” heroine, Catherine Sloper (Olivia de Havilland), who bears the condescension of her father and suffers heartbreak after her fiancé, Morris Townsend (Montgomery Clift), deserts her when he learns that she will no longer inherit an immense fortune. Eventually, she does inherit this fortune, but when the lowlife Morris predictably returns, Catherine rejects him, much to the chagrin of her aunt, who thinks a loser husband is preferable to none at all.

Needless to say, as a single black woman in my 30s who is quite comfortable with her single status–and I am not the only one, despite what family, church, community, media and the rest of society has to say–I was exhilarated when Catherine bolted the door on Morris and nobly ascended the staircase, the lamp she held leading her to new found self-awareness and independence. We have yet to see duplicated in contemporary films women of any color making such bold choices in rejecting a man without replacing him first (gasp!). I was not that surprised, then, when I went online in search of commentary and criticism on this classic film, to discover present-day audiences lamenting that Catherine would forego marrying a man, no matter how worthless he was, for an unknown and perhaps unmarried future.

I would like to think that this is a sentiment shared only by a few members of our society who are invested in traditional notions of gender and marriage. Yet I find countless blog posts and commentaries lamenting the state of single women–black women in particular. Offline, this anxiety, or what Danielle Belton of The Black Snob blog calls “marriage panic,” reverberates in CNN special reports, in Essence magazine, from church pulpits, and at black public forums. Then there’s Helena Andrew’s recent memoir, Bitch is the New Black, which is being marketed as a black Sex and the City,” focusing on the endless woes of a single black woman.

Except we have been down this road before: Think Terry McMillan’s Waiting to Exhale back in the 90s. While The Heiress is set in the nineteenth century, I can’t help but think our contemporary “marriage panic” is grounded in similar Victorian concerns; it’s all so nuclear-family-oriented, so pre-sexual revolution. In a time when queer communities are fighting for same-sex marriage rights, black heterosexuals are wringing their hands over the presumed inability to access basic heterosexual marriage rights.

Again, this is not surprising considering how, historically, one of the first things freed slaves did–having suffered the pain of being separated from partners, children and relatives–was to marry and establish themselves as legitimate citizens. That queer communities are fighting for the same “legitimacy” today means that we as feminists should scrutinize how all those marginalized in society are shut out from marriage and the social, political and economic benefits that come with it.

Read the Full Essay @ Ms. Magazine

10 Things I Want to Say to A Black Woman--Poetry by Joshua Bennett

Naw'Lins Resistance #3: The Meters--'Sophisticated Cissy' & 'Cissy Strut'

"Sophisticated Cissy" and "Cissy Strut" date back to the late 1960s and a popular New Orleans Dance known as "The Sophisticated Cissy" which dance scholar Katrina Hazzard-Gordon suggest was a call for black men to step forward in the broader political and cultural sense. Gives a another layer of understanding to the contemporary "Sissy Bounce."--MAN

Naw'Lins Resistance #2: Mahalia Jackson--"Trouble in the World"

The Funeral Dirge from the closing of Imitation of Life (1959). Mahalia Jackson Grew up in the Lower 9th Ward.

Naw'Lins Resistance #1: Rebirth Brass Band in New Orleans

Gil Noble Interviews Abbey Lincoln (1979)

Dr. Laura, The N-Word and the Legalities of 'Offensive' Language

The State of Things w/Frank Stasio
WUNC-FM

Overcoming Offensive Language
Thursday, August 26 2010

When radio personality Dr. Laura Schlessinger unleashed a racial epithet on her program earlier this month, her language made headlines. Whether it’s the “n-word” or the “f-bomb,” people know how to offend each other verbally. Still, we’re fiercely protective of our right to freedom of speech. So, how should we approach healing from the words that wound? Host Frank Stasio explores ways to overcome offensive language with a panel of scholars: Michael Newcity, deputy Director of the Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies at Duke University; Professor of African and African-American Studies Mark Anthony Neal of Duke University; and Neal Lester, Dean to The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University; and Sarah Cervenak, Assistant Professor, Women & Gender Studies, UNCG

Listen HERE

Zelda Lockhart: Fifth Born II

The State of Things w/Frank Stasio
WUNC-FM

Piedmont Laureate Zelda Lockhart writes with incredible emotional honesty and grace about the secrets that families and societies keep buried. Her latest novel, Fifth Born II: The Hundredth Turtle (LaVenson Press/2010), helped her spark a conversation earlier this summer at the Harlem Book Fair about the AIDS epidemic and its powerful effect on the African-American community. Lockhart talks to host Frank Stasio about her latest work and responses to it.

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James Braxton Peterson on the Michael Eric Dyson Show

The Michael Eric Dyson Show
Wednesday August 25, 2010
WEAA-FM Baltimore
CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting)

We continue our “Open Mike” series with a thought-provoking conversation with Dr. James Peterson, a professor of English at Bucknell University, author of two upcoming books on hip-hop culture, and self-professed hip-hop scholar. Peterson writes broadly and brilliantly about the underground, the nature of narrative, and the intersection of black expression, social struggle, and popular culture. As we look toward the commemoration of the 47th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington, Peterson surveys the culture and political landscape over the years hence, and offers an assessment of the status of black America and its progress toward the dream that Dr. Martin Luther King articulated. From education, politics, and policy, to the arts, religion, and religious institutions, Peterson offers reasoned critical analysis on the most important themes and prominent figures in black American culture, and follows the through line from the civil rights era to the hip-hop generation.
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Celebrating the First Day of School via Staples

Is (Black) Beauty Still a Feminist Issue?

from The Huffington Post

Is (Black) Beauty Still a Feminist Issue?
by Imani Perry

Last night I read my friends' tweets about the Miss Universe Pageant. But I didn't watch it. I am an old fashioned feminist when it comes to pageants. They turn my stomach. I find them embarrassing and absurd. But I can't be preachy about my dislike.

After all, I love fashion magazines, the ones filled with fantasies of over-the-top consumption and impossible beauty and I won't apologize for that indulgence, so I have no judgment for pageant watchers. Pageants just aren't for me.

But out of curiosity this morning I looked at the Miss Universe contestants online, inspired by the internet chatter. And lo and behold I was shocked when I realized that Miss Ecuador, Miss Honduras and Miss Nicaragua, were all Latinas of African descent. Only recently have noticeably Indian and African looking women begun to be featured on Latin American television and film, and still in small numbers.

Despite substantial African-descended populations throughout Latin America, they remain even more invisible in U.S. popular culture, notwithstanding the writings of Junot Diaz, Veronica Chambers, and Rosario Ferre, among others, who insightfully depict the fabric of race, history, and culture in Latin American nations.

I must admit, I was excited, to see these brown-skinned contestants, along with those from continental Africa and the Caribbean. That excitement was similar to the thrill I had earlier this year when I encountered the work of fashion photographer, Mario Epanya. Epanya shared his photos in a viral web campaign to have Condé Nast approve an African edition of Vogue Magazine (which they refused). His models have richly colored bodies, full lips, and bright eyes. They are adorned to dramatic effect. They are frankly, stunning.

I don't quite know what to make of my reaction to this brand of Black beauty. What does it mean for me as a feminist? Third and fourth wave feminists have argued that we should reclaim make-up and sexiness, and cast aside the old image of a feminist as a woman with a naked face and hairy legs. Fine, but the reality is that our beauty culture still plays a significant role in women having poor body images, lowered self esteem, and a feeling of intense competitiveness with other women.

I have often found myself wishing that instead of encouraging every woman to feel she is beautiful (which seems to be the central marketing device of most cosmetic companies), that we could find a way to make it such that beauty is not at the center of self-esteem. Who cares if one is beautiful or not? There are so many other ways to be special, of value, attractive, interesting, sexy! As girls, we are sold an idea of an "ideal way to be" that depends far too much on surface and not enough on substance, and we tragically carry that on our shoulders into womanhood.

And yet, I find myself honestly happy about these images of gorgeous women with hair and skin and lips like mine.

As a Black woman, for centuries now, flesh like my flesh has carried the burden of presumed inferiority. Black women have been cast as hypersexual or desexualized, always available yet undesired, ridiculous and often ugly, the mules of the world. Notwithstanding a few beauty icons, public figures, and celebrities, these stereotypic representations are still common. And perhaps this is why the fantasy of a beauty culture that includes Black women has so much allure. Fantastic images of Black women who are desired yet untouchable, pristine, flawless, and admired, lie so contrary to how we have been cast throughout history. And that feels kind of good.

But of course, as enjoyable as those images can be, we must not allow them to distract us from the daily work of feminism and gender liberation. The recent reports of sexual violence in Haiti and the Congo, sexual exploitation and trafficking here in the States, honor killings in the Middle East, are each the tip of a very large iceberg. The iceberg itself is a global culture in which the devaluation of humanity and the denial of fundamental respect are all too common. Feminism is, at it's very best, a call for humanism with a global reach. Pretty is nothing compared to that.

My personal resolution on the beauty issue is this: When images of physical beauty serve to diminish the depth of a woman's personhood, we should reject them. And when they seem to restore an appreciation of that which has been devalued, or to be attached to an open sense of expressiveness, play, and fun, then we should feel free to enjoy them. But in either case, our eyes must always be focused on actual lives, not just screens and pages in a magazine.

Follow Imani Perry on Twitter: www.twitter.com/imaniperry

***

Imani Perry is Professor in the Center for African American Studies, Princeton University

'The Boondocks': Carrying On the Tradition of Subversive Black Comedy

Some may be offended by the self-loathing ruminations of The Boondocks’ “Uncle Ruckus” or the Chappelle's Show,’s “blind black Klansman”, but those comedic depicitions have deep roots in America's long tradition of black humor.

Write Black at You
'The Boondocks': Carrying On the Tradition of Subversive Black Comedy
by Ronald Laird

Earlier this summer when one of my friends defiantly proclaimed that she doesn’t like The Boondocks cartoon because it’s too “minstrel-like”, I almost told her how Spike Lee-ish her statement was. Instead, I held my tongue, took a deep breath, and said that although The Boondocks (as well as much of American ensemble comedy) may indeed have a structural indebtedness to minstrelsy, it follows in the tradition of the best subversive comedy.

Historically speaking, the American minstrel show began with Dan Emmett’s Virginia Minstrels in 1843. Though there were earlier white performers that entertained audiences in blackface, Emmett and his crew were the first to dress all of its performers in blackface and as abolitionist sentiment gained steam in some parts of America, the minstrel show with its primary themes being depictions of enslaved blacks being happy and contented with their lot in life, became a popular way to maintain the status quo in the minds of many Americans. Over time these shows developed a catalog of stock characters to do their bidding. Though individual minstrel shows could point to dozens of different characters, they were all derived from seven stock characters: the Tom, the Coon, the Mulatto, the Mammy, the Buck, the Wench and the Pickaninny.

As these characters became more deeply embedded in the American psyche, the first attempt at comically subverting them on a national stage began with black entertainers Bert Williams and George Walker. Though Williams and Walker were steeped in minstrel tradition—having performed with minstrel shows early in their careers—they felt contempt for the stereotypical roles they played, and as their careers progressed, Walker and Williams began to move away from the minstrel stereotypes by introducing African themes and characters into American shows.

Read the Full Review @ Popmatters.com

'When I'm Called Home': Remembering Abbey Lincoln

Obscured by time, this jazz singer leaves behind an impressive legacy.

When I'm Called Home: Remembering Abbey Lincoln
by Mark Anthony Neal

“I’ve always been concerned with the story I’m telling. This music is social. Our music is social. Nobody cares whether it sounds pretty or not. Can you tell the people what its like to be here?”—Abbey Lincoln in LaShonda Katrice Barnett’s I Got Thunder: Black Women Songwriters on Their Craft

When Abbey Lincoln gave her last breath on the morning of August 14, 2010, she left a legacy, that though obscured by time and ignorance, marks her as one of the most singular Black artists of the 20th Century. Though it is important to remember Lincoln as one of the truly original jazz vocalists ever, there are few artists who could claim to have been as obsessed with using her art—as singer, songwriter, essayist (she contributed to Toni Cade’s groundbreaking anthology The Black Woman), painter and actress—as a vessel to explicate the full humanity of herself and the people, that she often claimed, were inside of her.

Born Anna Marie Wooldridge in August of 1930 in Chicago, Lincoln came of age on a farm in Calvin Center, Michigan. Like many aspiring artists from that era, Lincoln was profoundly affected by the music of Billie Holiday. As Lincoln recalled with journalist Lisa Jones in a 1991 New York Times interview, “My father worked in the houses of wealthy people who gave him recordings. The first singer I heard on record was Billie Holiday when I was 14.” Two decades later Lincoln would be favorably compared Holiday, though she would struggle throughout much of her early career to escape the shadows of both Holiday and the formidable mythology that has been erected in her name.

After apprenticing in various places including Honolulu and California, where she had initially moved after graduating high school, and taking the name Gaby Lee, Lincoln began to be managed by lyricist Bob Russell. It was Russell who suggested another name change—Abbey Lincoln—and who helped Lincoln sign with the noted Jazz label Riverside, where she recorded four albums beginning with Abbey Lincoln’s Affair: A Story of a Girl in Love (1956), That’s Him (1957), It’s Magic (1958) and Abbey is Blue (1959). On Lincoln’s debut, recorded with the Benny Carter Orchestra, Riverside tried to position Lincoln as the sexy, girl-next-door torch song singer and it was in that vein that Lincoln appeared in the film The Girl Can’t Help It (1956), wearing the same dress that Marilyn Monroe once wore in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). When Lincoln appeared on the cover of Ebony Magazine—in Monroe’s red dress—her fate as yet another “silent” pretty face seemed assured. But like her contemporary Eartha Kitt, Lincoln had another vision for herself.

Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21.com

Music Video: Funkadelc "Cosmic Slop" (1973)

Done well before MTV, this "video" presents an alternative view of "blackness" circa 1973.

Interview with William Jelani Cobb on Obama and Black Leadership

The historian and author of an important meditation on the hip-hop aesthetic talks to The Root about the meaning of President Obama's 2008 election, the problems of black leadership and black self-definition.

The Root Interview: William Jelani Cobb on Obama and Black Leadership
by Abdul Ali

Dr. William Jelani Cobb, one of the country's most visible African-American intellectuals, is an associate professor and chair of the history department at Spelman College in Atlanta. His meditation on the hip-hop aesthetic, To the Break of Dawn, is one of the most important texts on this cultural phenomenon.

In his latest book, The Substance of Hope, Cobb turns his attention to the 2008 election, the political climate preceding the election and his own involvement as a delegate for the state of Georgia. (He blogged for The Root from the Democratic National Convention in 2008.) His training as a historian comes to bear as he asks, What does this all mean? And where do we go from here?

The interview was conducted via Google Chat.

The Root: In The Substance of Hope, you play both historian and participant as a delegate in the 2008 election. How did these distinct roles help shape your book?

William Jelani Cobb: Initially they made it more difficult because I'm accustomed to writing about things that are more static. This was an attempt to place the election into a context in terms of history, and in some ways in terms of irony. But this was also a rapidly changing subject. The result was that I wrote about three-quarters of the book and then threw it all out and started again from scratch. It was much more difficult to decide what story I wanted to tell.

Read the Full Interview @ The Root.com

On the Anniversary of His Death: Huey Newton Talks to William F. Buckley

Poetry: "unnatural acts" by Tim'm West

unnatural acts
by Tim'm T. West
(from Red Dirt Revival, by Tim'm T. West)

a damn trip
how some would prefer to see
his blakk fist
gum-bleeding and swollen blakk skin
than witness
him caressing my hand
him lovingly stroking my face cuz
he felt like it
that moment
and could not wait
for the safety of closed quarters
for our abysmal silence
or for the blakk body hiding night
to show love

a damn trip
how some would prefer to see
cold black steel barrell
pressed hard against G's temple
and hear the verbal exchange
that is:
"I'll kill you nigga"
from one blakk man to another
whose response is
amplified heart-beating
screaming for his life in silence
and the tremble he hope not
set off
his grave

some would prefer to see this
at cinemas or
in Hip Hop video
than see dude's full brotha-like lips
pressed against his lovers temple
soft and sweet-like
and hear the verbal exchange
that is:
"I love you nigga"
from one blakk man to another
whose response is
amplified heart beating
inside screaming
cuz love is bliss
and him tremblin' 'cause
it's so brave to love in this way
when blakk men are
conditioned to strike each other down
cut and bruise each other's innocence
rather than protect it

a damn trip it is
and I sometimes wonder
which acts some think are most
unnatural
blakk hands ended
by the hands of another
blakk man
or life
cradled, kept, cherished
adored
made safe.

Kanye West featuring Jay Z and Swizz Beatz--"Power Remix"

Kanye West feat. Jay-Z & Swizz Beatz - Power (Remix) by uristocrat

“How Come I Got to Ask Mommy First?” Daddy-ing While Black

“How Come I Got to Ask Mommy First?”: Navigating Gender in Parenting
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21

It has become our regular dance. My two daughters, aged eleven and seven, come up to ask me permission to do something—usually something they are pretty sure their mother won’t let them do—and my response never fails: “Go ask your mother.” My oldest will give that usual irritated tween sigh, followed by an under-the-breathe “whatever.” My youngest is the more brash and philosophical of the two as she quickly retorts, “How come we always have to ask mommy first, can’t you make a decision?” If she’s in the mood for a argument, which she often is, she’ll even throw in a “Is mommy the boss of you?” Damn. How did it come to this?

As fathers go, I consider myself pretty engaged, at least in comparison to my own father. Don’t misunderstand, my dad was in the house, so this isn’t an absentee dad tale, but it was clear that he ceded the funky, dirty aspects of parenting to my mom; his job was to financially support us and to provide occasional discipline. My father was what Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman suggest in their recent book NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children, call a traditional dad, who simply took parenting direction from my mother. Not unusual for a generation of men and women, who believed that some aspects of parenting were naturally endowed in women.

I had long decided to take a different course from my dad. I’m what Bronson and Merryman call a “progressive dad,” though being an engaged father brings its own challenges. For one, because I have been an active participant in the parenting process—something my wife of nineteen years has encouraged—it means that my wife and I will occasionally have different opinions about how to handle different situations. What the authors of NurtureShock also realized that fathers who saw themselves has highly involved co-parents created more conflict in the household than traditional dads. And guess what? Our kids are often perceptive enough to exploit those conflicts, hence my little four-footer standing in front of me with a frown on her face, essentially asking me, “Aren’t you the man of the house”?

Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21.com

Mark Anthony Neal on the Michael Eric Dyson Show

The Michael Eric Dyson Show
Thursday August 19, 2010
WEAA-FM Baltimore
CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting)

He can offer insightful critical analysis on everything from bebop to hip-hop; from Black Power to “post-racial Obama.” Our guest as we continue our Open Mike series featuring some of the most powerful voices in America is Mark Anthony Neal, professor of African and African-American Studies at Duke University. Neal has authored four books, including Soul Babies: Black Popular Culture and the Post-Soul Aesthetic, Songs in the Keys of Black Life: A Rhythm and Blues Nation, and New Black Man: Rethinking Black Masculinity—he continues a blog of the same name. Neal’s considerable scholarship focuses on Black popular culture as a profound contributor to societal and cultural norms, and examining its impact within the context of race, gender, sexuality, class, and ethnicity. He joins us to talk politics, pop culture, and whatever else we can get ourselves into.

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"Wake Up Everybody" w/John Legend, Melanie Fiona, Common, and The Roots

VH1 TV Shows | Music Videos | Celebrity Photos | News & Gossip

Broken Social Contracts: A Polarized College Campus Community (Part 5)

BROKEN SOCIAL CONTRACTS: A Polarized College Campus Community (Part 5)
A FILM BY Laura Holman Rahman

Appearances by M. Bahati Kuumba, Mark Anthony Neal, Beverly Guy-Sheftall Mansa Bilal, Patrica McFadden, Men Stopping Violence, Morehouse & Spelman College students

Tricia Rose on the Michael Eric Dyson Show

The Michael Eric Dyson Show
WEAA-FM Baltimore
CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting)

A professor and chair of the Department of Africana Studies at Brown University, Dr. Tricia Rose holds the distinction as one of the foremost scholars in hip-hop culture. After breaking ground in a relatively new area of academic study when she wrote Black Noise: Rap Music and Black Culture in Contemporary America in 1994, she shook the academy again by writing on a topic long ignored by the black community and scholars with the 2003 publication of Longing to Tell: Black Women Talk About Sexuality and Intimacy. Rose revisited hip-hop with The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop and Why It Matters in 2008. Rose stops by to join the Open Mike series and weigh in on the female perspective in hip-hop, women’s sexuality, intimate justice, sexual identity, and much more.

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Stephane Dunn on Shaquan Duley

Some Things are Just Too Horrible to Fathom.

When the Bough Breaks: A Mother Killing
by Stephane Dunn

Some things are just too horrific to think about or hold to a discussion over the daily take of national news. Such is the case of the second South Carolina woman to kill her small children and try to cover it up with a clumsy lie.

In 1994, Susan Smith, a poor white woman, wasn't so clumsy; she was astute enough to blame it on a black man and have the police trolling for some fictional black guy. It worked for a minute because the racial mythologies about black male criminality and white female victimization at the hands of the imagined black brute are so deeply rooted in the nation's consciousness.

This time the mother is black.

According to breaking news reports, Shaquan Duley admitted to suffocating her two young boys by covering their mouths with her hands. She reportedly put the bodies in her car and rolled it into the Edisto River to make it look like a terrible accident. Even writing the bare details makes my hands shake.

I think about the innocent children and their terror and pain and don't want to imagine the last seconds of their lives. I think about their little boy laughs and those grins they all seem to come equipped with and I mourn their present and their future.

But I think about Shaquan too. Disgust, anger, rage - they're the easiest emotions to reach for when we think of what is probably considered to be the most terrible crime against nature or act of violence anyone can commit. Some laws appear irrevocable; mothers love their children above else and sacrifice their own lives to protect them. Real mothers, our laws of nature say, do not hurt or kill their children. Period.

Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21.com

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Stephane Dunn, Ph.D., a writer and assistant professor at Morehouse College, specializes in film, popular culture, and African American Studies, and creative writing. She is the author of Baad Bitches and Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films (University of Illinois Press 2008) and her work has appeared in such publications as Ms., TheRoot, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and Best African American Essays. She can be reached at stephane@theloop21.com