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African American Males Transcending Urban Disadvantage

African American Males Transcending Urban Disadvantage

Researchers studying African American boys and men living in urban contexts typically default to deficit models. While few would dispute the need to understand the factors that contribute to urban disadvantage, scholars are increasingly exploring “what works” – the social resources, conditions, practices, and policies that yield more encouraging outcomes for African American males in the city.

As leaders of the Penn Institute for Urban Research Faculty Forum, Penn GSE Professor Shaun Harper and Annenberg Professor John Jackson have brought together leading scholars who are addressing these issues.

Titled African American Men Transcending Urban Disadvantage, the Forum will feature:

David Wall Rice, Morehouse College:
Reimagining Black Male Identities and Expectancy, 4/18

Elijah Anderson, Yale University:
A Discussion of Against the Wall: Poor, Young, Black, and Male, 4/19

Mark Anthony Neal, Duke University:
Beyond Pathological Media Misrepresentation, 4/20

All lectures will be held from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. in Huntsman Hall (University of Pennsylvania), Room 250, 3730 Walnut Street, Philadelphia.

This forum is free and open to the public.

Report on Black Male Prison Population: Marc Lamont Hill Repsonds (MSNBC)

Panel: Everyone Isn’t Obama: Black Men and Social Policy (Video)

From Center for American Progress

Imminent threats to federal and state budgets have the potential to severely harm a broad range of groups, including African-American men who have long faced barriers to accessing adequate social services. Those living in poverty disproportionately experience negative outcomes related to such areas as employment, education, incarceration, and mental and physical health. Despite the economic and social progress by significant numbers of black men and the symbolism of having an African-American male in the White House, far too many continue to face difficult barriers on the road to well-being and success for themselves and their families. Systems and policies that could help often don't account for their varying needs or completely fail to reach the population.

This discussion will be led by well-respected scholars and social workers, including contributors to the book, Social Work with African American Males: Health, Mental Health, and Social Policy (Oxford University Press, 2010). Panelists will highlight quality research on black males and suggest necessary system and policy reforms.

Copies of Social Work with African American Males: Health, Mental Health, and Social Policy will be available for purchase at the event.


Featured remarks:

Congressman Danny Davis (IL-7)
Michael Eric Dyson, Author, Radio Host, and Professor of Sociology, Georgetown University

Featured panelists:

Waldo E. Johnson Jr., Associate Professor, School of Social Service Administration, University of Chicago
Charles E. Lewis Jr., Deputy Chief of Staff and Senior Policy Advisor, Rep. Edolphus Towns
Michael A. Lindsey, Associate Professor, University of Maryland School of Social Work
Joy Moses, Senior Policy Analyst, Center for American Progress

Moderated by:

Erica Williams, Deputy Director for Progress 2050, Center for American Progress

R&B Artist Marsha Ambrosius Dishes on Controversial Video

R&B Artist Marsha Ambrosius Dishes on Controversial Video
Tuesday, April 05, 2011| by Eddie Robinson

R&B vocalist Marsha Ambrosius is not your typical diva. Her debut album "Late Nights & Early Mornings" — which peaked at No. 2 on Billboard's 200 Albums chart and No. 1 on the R&B Albums chart — features music about passionate romance, bitter breakups and gay suicide.

In her latest music video for her current single "Far Away," the singer showcases scenes of gay bashing and homophobia — subjects that are still taboo in the African American community.

Expanding The Boundaries of R&B

Ambrosius spent the early part of her career as half of a neo-soul duo, Floetry. She's also written hits for Alicia Keys and Michael Jackson, so she's chosen to take some risks as a solo artist.

"Far Away" is a song written by Marsha after a close friend of hers attempted suicide because he was gay. The singer said she realized she was getting into untested territory in the world of R&B.

"It would be easy for me to write a song about a relationship I was in with my boyfriend at the time," said the Grammy Award nominee. "We'd be going through it — fighting, back and forth — and I'm standing in the rain with the big hair and the eyelashes — that's standard! That's all been done before. But for me, I wanted to tell the story that wouldn't be told otherwise."

Read the Full Essay @ WNYC.org

There’s No Crying In Basketball?

There’s No Crying In Basketball?
What The Heat’s Tears Say About Masculinity & Emotion
by Jamilah Lemieux

I don’t follow sports much, but my beau is a hoops fanatic. I decided that, better than to be a ‘basketball widow’ this season, I might as well learn to appreciate the game and watch along with him from time to time. Between him, his friends and the interesting folks that I follow on Twitter, I’ve heard a lot about Miami Heat player Chris Bosh. More than people speak about his abilities on the court, they mention his tendency to cry after games and his recent remarks about the importance of “man hugs”. I don’t think you need two guesses to figure out what kind of response that’s gotten him from the young brothers out here.

Le sigh.

I understand that the idea of a grown man crying publicly and advocating for man-on-man affectionate touch makes many people uncomfortable, but I think that’s sad. Men–Black men in particular–aren’t typically granted the space to be emotional or affectionate. They aren’t allowed to express their feelings in the ways that women are. How many times have you heard even very young boys told to stop crying and “man up”? In a particularly tragic incident last year, a Long Island man beat his 17-month old son to death in a failed attempt to get him to ‘toughen up’.

I’ve often heard activist and writer Kevin Powell discuss the misnomer that men simply aren’t as emotional as women; since they aren’t given the freedom to cry or speak at length about their feelings, they often times express them through yelling or violence. I’m inclined to agree. While I do understand that there may be some inherent differences between the sexes (and no universal pattern of behavior that defines either of them), it seems apparent that we dehumanizing our men with the expectation that they remain ‘hard’ at all times.

Read the Full Essay @ Clutch Magazine

Afraid of the Dark: The Forgotten Legacy of Nat King Cole

Afraid of the Dark: The Forgotten Legacy of Nat King Cole
by Mark Anthony Neal

The name Nat King Cole usually draws a reference to his famous daughter Natalie, who after launching her career in the mid-1970s as the heir-apparent to Aretha Franklin—a career threatened by drug addiction—later re-booted her career twenty years ago, with her cover of her father’s song “Unforgettable.” Many others might remember Cole for his signature Christmas carol “The Christmas Song” which is as synonymous with the holiday as is Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas.” But when Cole died forty-six years ago, Ebony Magazine described Cole as “the most celebrated Negro to die in world history.”

Nat King Cole’s career and legacy has been recalled with the recent release of four episodes of the groundbreaking Nat King Cole Show on iTunes, which plans to release 30 of the original 64 episodes of the show. The first national television show hosted by an African-American, the Nat King Cole Show ran from 1956-1957.

Though the show had a solid audience, it was never able to attract national sponsorship. With the post-Montgomery Civil Rights movement still in its embryonic stages, many national advertisers were fearful of backlash from Southern audiences. Indeed as one White station manager in the south admitted to Ebony Magazine in 1965, “they told me that if [Cole] came back on they would bomb my house and station.” Perhaps even more interesting than the reasons why the Nat King Cole Show was canceled after its year-and-a-half run, is Cole’s ascent to a status that allowed him to have a show in the first place.

Born Nathaniel Adams Coles in 1919, Cole was raised in Chicago in a religious household. Cole’s father was a preacher and the father and son regularly butted heads as the younger Coles was more attracted to the sounds coming from the Jazz clubs than the music he heard on Sunday mornings. Cole found a balance by playing the organ in his father’s church.

An accomplished pianist, Cole was influenced by the music of pianist Earl “Fatha” Hines, and by his teenage years was fronting a band with his brother Eddie. After high school he headed out west with a traveling show, Shuffle Along, a musical which featured the music of the Black songwriting team Noble Sissle and Eubie Blake. The show closed in Long Beach when a stage hand ran off with the gate receipts, but Cole stayed out west working the chitlin circuit—LA’s Central Avenue—with his trio The King Cole trio (dropping the s from his name).

Though the band played instrumentals, as legend goes, one night a patron demanded that somebody sing “Sweet Lorraine.” Cole reluctantly complied and his a career as a vocalist was born. Signing a contract with Capitol Records in 1943 (the same label his daughter Natalie would later sign with in 1974), Cole’s first big hit was “Straighten Up and Fly Right” a song he wrote as a teenager after hearing one of his father’s sermons.

With songs like “Route 66,” “Mona Lisa,” and “Nature Boy,” Cole was one of the country’s most popular balladeers in the 1940s and 1950s, rivaled only by his label-mate, Frank Sinatra. But whereas Sinatra could imagine a future that was limitless—movies, the biggest and most lucrative venues, headlining in Vegas—Cole would always be challenged by the realities of race.

These challenges were as personal as they were professional; when Cole and his family moved into an exclusive Los Angeles neighborhood, racist signs were often left on their lawn. When a neighbor complained about not wanting undesirables in the neighborhood, Cole famously replied “neither do I, and if I see anybody undesirable coming into this neighborhood, I’ll be the first to complain.”

Though Cole was a lifetime member of the NAACP and in the years before his death performed benefits for Civil Rights organizations, some Blacks were critical of him for his willingness to perform in the South in front of segregated audiences. Cole often remarked—like Michael Jordan would decades later—that those audiences in the South were also fans of his music.

No doubt Cole believed that his willingness to perform in front of Southern audiences would help humanize Blacks to those audiences. Such was not the case when Cole was attacked on stage in 1956 while performing in Birmingham, AL, in what was later revealed as a (terrorist) plot by one-hundred and fifty men to kidnap Cole.

Yet publically Cole remained the very definition of cool and restraint becoming the epitome of crossover Blackness for the generation just prior to the watershed moments of the Civil Rights Movement. Standing six feet tall, dark-skinned, and with a deep baritone voice (think a better singing Brian McKnight), Cole would have been a major sex symbol had he emerged 30 years later. Indeed one could imagine that Cole was many of the Black male role models that Barack Obama studied to find his own pitch as the most well known living Black man in the contemporary world.

A chain-smoker (Phillip Morris was his cigarette of choice), Cole kept many of the professional and personal sleights directed towards him, to himself. When he suffered an ulcer in 1953 that led to doctors to remove half of his stomach, it was clear that the pressures of crossing over were taking a significant toll on him. It is part of the reason he took the lack of advertising support of his show in stride, though he was clear-eyed when he suggested that “the ad agencies are afraid of the dark.” He was prescient, when he told Ebony Magazine in 1959, “I realize what TV is doing. I know they are freezing the Negro out.”

Ironically Nat King Cole, was midway through a thee-year, $ one million dollar contract with the Sands hotel in Las Vegas, when he was diagnosed with the lung cancer that he would succumb to at the young age of forty-five. Cole died two months after Sam Cooke (his professional heir apparent) and six days before Malcolm X (El Hajj Malik el Shabazz) was murdered in Harlem. The stature of both Cooke and Malcolm X increased exponentially after their deaths, as Nat King Cole seems the forgotten man. Cole was content working from the inside, so its not surprising that his legacy doesn’t shine as bright forty-six years after his death.

Nevertheless, Cole was a model for Motown founder Berry Gordy as he sought to break the label’s flagship acts on the supper club circuit. Marvin Gaye, for example, recorded a tribute album to Cole for Motown, nine months after his death, beginning what would be a career like fixation with recording a classic pop balladeer recording that Cole did in his prime. The Vulnerable Sessions, released after Gaye’s death was the product of that labor.

Thanks to iTunes, audiences can now see one of the great Black crossover stars at his peak—a man who in so many ways set the pace for the Michael Jacksons, Oprah Winfreys and Lebron James that would emerge after his death.

***

Mark Anthony Neal is Professor of Black Popular Culture in the Department of African & African-American Studies at Duke University. He is the author of five books including the forthcoming Looking for Leroy: (Il)Legible Black Masculinities (New York University Press). He is the host of the weekly webcast, Left of Black, produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

Syllabus: (Il)Legible Black Masculinities

Ayanah Moor--"ThugNiggaIntellectual"

Spring 2011
(Il)Legible Black Masculinities
AAAS-299S-02
Tuesday 6:00pm-8:25 pm
Mark Anthony Neal, Ph.D.
Ernestine Friedl Building, room 240
Duke University

Stereotypes that circulate in contemporary American culture of black bodies are premised on the idea that said black bodies are legible to the average American. The “legible” black male body, for example, is often a criminal body and/or a body in need of policing and containment thus “legible” black male bodies ironically bring welcome relief—a comforting sameness—and it is this logic and comfort that this course aims to disturb by suggesting the radical potential of rendering “legible” black masculinities as “illegible,” while simultaneously rendering so-called “illegible” black masculinities as “legible.”

The course will utilize contemporary and emergent theorists and practitioners including, Francesca Royster, Grant Farred, Marc Lamont Hill, Aaronette White, Marlon Riggs, Michael Ray Charles, Louis Chude Sokei, Sylvester, ArchBishop Carl Bean, Bert Williams, Jay Z, the DeepDickollective, David Simon, Danny Hoch, Richard Iton, Monica Miller and Dave Chappelle, Grace Jones, Avery Brooks, David Simon, Idris Elba, Hank Willis Thomas, Paul Beatty, Jack Johnson, Moms Mabley, Michael Jackson, Byron Hurt, Queen Latifah Walton Muyumba, Darieck Scott, Spike Lee, Charles Burnett and others.

Texts

Grant Farred—What’s My Name: Black Vernacular Intellectuals

Walton Muyumba—The Shadow and the Act: Black Intellectual Practice, Jazz Improvisation, and Philosophical Pragmatism

Riche Richardson—Black Masculinity And the U.S. South: From Uncle Tom to Gangsta

Louis Chude Sokei—The Last Darky: The Last 'Darky': Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora

Geoffrey C. Ward—Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson

Carl Bean—I Was Born This Way: A Gay Preacher's Journey through Gospel Music, Disco Stardom, and a Ministry in Christ

Darieck Scott—Extravagant Abjection: Blackness, Power, and Sexuality in the African American Literary Imagination

Jay Z w/Dream Hampton) – Decoded

Charise Chaney—Brothers Gonna Work It Out: Sexual Politics in the Golden Age of Rap Nationalism

WEEK ONE—JANUARY 18

Introductions

WEEK TWO—JANUARY 25: TO BE A BLACK MAN IN AMERICA?

Primary Readings:

Black Masculinity And the U.S. South: From Uncle Tom to Gangsta
– Riche Richardson

WEEK THREE—FEBRUARY 1: THE DANCING, SINGING, AUTHENTIC (?) BLACK MALE

Primary Readings:

The Last 'Darky': Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora
~ Louis Chude-Sokei

“Damned Funny: The Tragedy of Bert Williams”, William McFerrin Stowe, Jr.
(Journal of Popular Culture, Vol. X Issue 1 , Summer 1976, 5-13) PDF

WEEK FOUR—FEBRUARY 8: BIRTH OF THE BLACK ATHLETE

Primary Readings:

Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson
—Geoffrey C. Ward

“Snap That Tiger”
—Mark Anthony Neal (http://newblackman.blogspot.com/2010/01/snap-that-tiger.html)

Screening: Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (dir. Ken Burns, 2005)

WEEK FIVE—FEBRUARY 15: MAKING A WAY, OUT OF NO WAY

Primary Reading:

The Shadow and the Act: Black Intellectual Practice, Jazz Improvisation, and Philosophical Pragmatism
—Walton Muyumba

“Jazz and Male Blackness: The Politics of Sociability in South Central Los Angeles”
—Joao H. Costa Vargas (Popular Music and Society, Volume 31, Issue 1 February 2008 , pages 37 –56)

“John Coltrane's Style of Jazz and the Improvisational Lives of Profeminist Black Men”
—Aaronette White (Journal of African American MenVolume 6, Number 3, 3-28)

WEEK SIX—FEBRUARY 22: THE SOUL OF BLACK MEN

Primary Reading:

“Queer figurations in the media: Critical reflections on the Michael Jackson sex scandal”
--John Erni (Critical Studies in Media Communication,Volume 15, Issue 2 June 1998 , pages 158 – 180)

“Trapped in the Epistemological Closet: Black Sexuality and the “Ghettocentric Imagination”
--C. Riley Snorton (Souls, Volume 11, Issue 2 April 2009 , pages 94 – 111)

“Any Love: Silence, Theft and Rumor in the work of Luther Vandross,”
--Jason King (Callaloo 23:1 2000).

““Feeling like a woman, looking like a man, sounding like a no-no”: Grace Jones and the performance of Strangé in the Post-Soul Moment”
--Francesca Royster (Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory, Vol 19, Issue 1 March 2009 , pages 77 – 94)

WEEK SEVEN—MARCH 1: WRITING IS FIGHTING

Primary Reading:

Grant Farred—What’s My Name: Black Vernacular Intellectuals

Screening: Ring of Fire: The Emilie Griffith Story (dir. Dan Klores and Ron Berger)

WEEK EIGHT—MARCH 15: TRAPPED IN MOTOWN’S CLOSET

Primary Readings:

Carl Bean—I Was Born This Way: A Gay Preacher's Journey through Gospel Music, Disco Stardom, and a Ministry in Christ

“‘Will the Big Boys Finally Love You’: The Impossibility of Black Male Homoerotic Desire and the Taboo of Black Homosexual Solidarity in Thomas Glave’s ‘Whose Song?’”
--Eva Tettenborn’s (Callaloo 26.3 (2003), 855-866)

“The Lost Boys of Baltimore: Beauty and Desire in the Hood”
--James S. Williams (Film Quarterly , Volume 62 (2) Dec 1, 2008)

Screening: Looking for Langston (dir. Isaac Julien, 1991)

WEEK NINE—MARCH 22: DANCE TO THE MUSIC

Primary Readings:

Darieck Scott—Extravagant Abjection: Blackness, Power, and Sexuality in the African American Literary Imagination

“Against Bipolar Black Masculinity: Intersectionality, Assimilation, Identity Performance, and Hierarchy”
--Frank Rudy Cooper (39 U.C. Davis L. Rev. 853 2005-2006)

Screening: Killer of Sheep (dir. Charles Burnett, 1977)

WEEK TEN—MARCH 29: DON’T BELIEVE THE HYPE

Primary Readings:

Charise Chaney—Brothers Gonna Work It Out: Sexual Politics in the Golden Age of Rap Nationalism

“Scared Straight: Hip-Hop, Outing, and the Pedagogy of Queerness,”
--Marc Lamont Hill (The Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies 31 (2009), 29.)

Screening: A Huey P. Newton Story (dir. Spike Lee, 2001)

WEEK ELEVEN—APRIL 5: REAL RECOGNIZE REAL

Primary Readings:

Jay Z w/Dream Hampton) – Decoded

“Punked for Life: Paul Beatty's The White Boy Shuffle and Radical Black Masculinities”
--L.H. Stallings (African American Review Volume 43, Number 1, Spring 2009)

Screening: Jean Michel Basqiuat: Radiant Child (dir. 2010)

WEEK TWELVE—APRIL 12: ROUND BOXES

Primary Readings:

“‘The Rain Comes Down’”: Jean Grae and Hip-Hop Heteronormativity”
-- Shante Paradigm Smalls (American Behavioral Scientist January 2011; 55 1)

“Owning Black Masculinity: The Intersection of Cultural Commodification and Self-Construction in Rap Music Videos”
-- Murali Balaji—“Communication, Culture & Critique Volume 2, Issue 1, pages 21–38, March 2009

Screening: Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes (dir. Byron Hurt, 2005)

WEEK THIRTEEN—APRIL 19: SQUARE CIRCLES

Primary Readings:

“Reconstructing Manhood; or, The Drag of Black Masculinity”
--Rinaldo Walcott (Small Axe 2009 13(1):75-89)

“The Ruse of Engagement: Black Masculinity and the Cinema of Policing”
--Jared Sexton (American Quarterly, Volume 61, Number 1, March 2009, pp. 39-63)

Screening: Still Black: A Portrait of a Black Transman (dir. Kortney Ryan Ziegler)

The "Masculine Journey" of Bishop Eddie Long

The "Masculine Journey" of Bishop Eddie Long
By Guy Mount

In an effort to establish his “potency” via the Word of God, Bishop Eddie Long once told his congregation that it was “the job of the preacher to bring fresh sperm.” For many observers this came as no surprise, as the bishop is widely known for asserting his masculinity through these kinds of sexually-charged analogies. In the same sermon the bishop denigrated lesser preachers calling them impotent “dead sperm” disseminators and glorified a God that begets “widespread [spiritual] pregnancies.” He has subsequently made blanket statements referring to homosexuality as a form of “spiritual abortion.”

While the merging of the sacred and the profane is a centuries-old practice among African Americans, these statements have taken on an entirely new meaning in light of the current allegations made by four male church members against the bishop. The four men, in their civil lawsuits, claim that the Bishop Eddie Long induced them with lavish gifts and romantic trips in return for sexual favors and manly fellowship. The complaints essentially describe an all-male harem operating within the Bishop’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church. Promising a “Longfellows Masculine Journey,” this now suspiciously titled “Longfellows Academy” was a youth ministry program that found the bishop allegedly ‘initiating’ young boys like a Greek aristocrat while performing elaborate cult-like marriage ceremonies between himself and his “Spiritual Sons.”

Inadvertently, the bishop may have in fact introduced some “fresh sperm” into a decades-old process that has been quietly reshaping black religious life in America. Although this particular germination was clearly not what the bishop had in mind, his case has dramatically brought issues of gender and sexuality to the center of the discussion taking place around black religious reform and spiritual leadership. While the final impact of the bishop’s plight is still unknown, it seems clear that his case will mark a significant turning point in African American religious history, especially as it relates to black sexuality and masculinity. It may also open up a much wider discussion about black religious belief in general and its intersection with contemporary cultural politics. As Syracuse University Professor Boyce Watkins wrote in a recent article for Black Voices, these allegations have the potential to “change the black church forever.”

The Performance of Religious Manhood

In the bishop’s defense, he really did do everything in his power to keep the lie alive. The extreme effort that the bishop exerted in order to demonstrate that he might single-handedly hold the cipher of black manhood was remarkable to the point of comical. His dogmatic performances continue to this day, as unlike other preachers whose private sex lives have been exposed, the bishop has decided to take the most unheard of (and masculine) of all positions; he’s fighting the charges. The elaborate pageantry was on full display in the bishop’s first public address regarding the allegations and was held on Sunday morning after the allegations broke in front of his New Birth “family.”

Beaming with charm and confidence the bishop started off by bending the truth. He told his congregation that he had waited to address the world until this moment because “[m]y first responsibility was to my family. Then my next responsibility is not to address the world before I address my family at New Birth.” This met with great applause from his congregation despite the fact that earlier in the week the bishop’s attorney appeared on the Tom Joyner show in the bishop’s steed, saying that that the bishop’s true desire was to address the world and the media first but that he, as his attorney, had to talk the bishop out of it. Where the bishop’s true desire really lies we may never know. What we do know is that the bishop vowed to fight the charges while pitting himself as David against Goliath. Continuing the analogy the bishop threatened all those who might doubt him, saying “I’ve got five rocks and I haven’t thrown one yet.” The bishop did however throw down his mic, snatched his wife, and left the stage leaving us all to wonder what he has in store for the world. Throughout the sermon Long admitted that he was not “a perfect man” and refused to deny that he had sex with other imperfect men. Although he said: “this thing, I’m gonna fight” we don’t yet know if “this thing” is a sexual orientation that he will later admit to and attempt to exorcise.

Not surprisingly, the performance met with overwhelming approval from the majority of Long’s supporters. Gabrielle A. Richards, a New Birth church member, told CNN that she “was so proud of him the way that he came out with his head high up and with his fabulous wife and he showed the strength that I’m accustomed to. And this is the Bishop Long that I know.” The bishop’s confidence and “fabulous” yet silent wife meant for Ms. Richards that their might still be hope that the nuclear black family rooted in heterosexual patriarchy might weather the storm. Ultimately it was the notion that nothing had changed which proved so comforting to her as “Bishop Long did a great job assuring us that he’s still Bishop Long.” Of course the implication was that Bishop Long could not be Bishop Long if he turns out to be the gay Bishop Long.

Others had a different assessment. The Reverend Carlton Pearson, Senior Pastor of Christ Universal Temple which openly welcomes and accepts LGBT members, commented on CNN regarding the same sermon saying that “the people rejoiced Sunday because he didn’t admit to anything. They didn’t want him to.” Apparently Bishop Long is a man who knows what his flock can handle and what they want to hear. Rev. Person, who is one of the leading advocates of the Gospel of Inclusion, told the nation prophetically that “Bishop Eddie Long is just the tip of the iceberg.” Gospel music and the black church are overflowing with LGBT members, according to Rev. Person, and without them “we wouldn’t have a church.”

Read the Full Essay @ History News Network

***

Gary Mount is a teaching assistant at San Diego State University and a HNN intern.

The 'Mean Girls" of Morehouse?

Can a Man of Morehouse Be Gay? Absolutely. But Can He Be a Woman?

Diamond Martin Poulin, 20, teetering in strappy sandals with three-inch heels, steps into an eclectic clothing boutique in Little Five Points, a quaint cluster of shops and restaurants two and a half miles outside of downtown Atlanta. “Ooooh,” squeals Diamond. “What about this?” Holding up a white floor-skimming skirt with an eyelet hem, he swoons. The proprietor of the store looks up at Diamond, does a double take, and immediately picks up the cordless phone at the register. “There’s a man in here with heels on!” she whispers loudly into the phone. Diamond raises his eyebrows and continues browsing the racks. He shrugs when asked if the comment bothers him. “Isn’t it true?” he says, chuckling. “There is a man in here with heels on.”

Nibbling on sushi later that day, Diamond explains why he left after one year at Morehouse. A bastion for producing leaders in politics, community service and medicine, Morehouse College has long been viewed as the ultimate HBCU for young Black men, who are conferred with the mystique of being “Men of Morehouse.” Established in 1867 in Augusta, Georgia, as the Augusta Institute, the school counts such luminaries as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.; Atlanta’s first Black mayor, Maynard H. Jackson, Jr.; financier Reginald E. Davis; School Daze writer/director Spike Lee; the late Keith “Guru” Elam of Gang Starr; and the late Def Jam exec Shakir Stewart among its graduates.

That pedigree is what brought Diamond (pictured left) to Morehouse, but he says the school’s social conservatism drove him out. In October of last year, the Morehouse College administration announced a new “appropriate attire policy.” The dress code stated that students, referred to as “Renaissance Men,” were not allowed to wear caps, do-rags, sunglasses or sagging pants on the Morehouse campus or at college-sponsored events. But what raised most eyebrows was the rule about women’s clothing: no wearing of dresses, tops, tunics, purses or pumps.

The new dress code resulted in a flurry of media coverage, prompting Dr. William Bynum, Jr., vice president for Student Services, to release a statement to several news outlets: “We are talking about five students who are living a gay lifestyle that is leading them to dress a way we do not expect in Morehouse men.” During a recent visit to the campus, the poet Saul Williams wore a skirt in solidarity.

“Morehouse wasn’t ready for me,” says Diamond, who has the word “unbreakable” tattooed on his collarbone and the acronym C.R.E.A.M (“Cash Rules Everything Around Me” coined by rap group Wu Tang Clan) wrapped around his right wrist. “I’m about freedom of expression. I’m about being whomever you truly are inside. I came to Morehouse because of all the historical leaders that attended and impacted the world so heavily. You know, I really wanted to follow in their footsteps. I don’t think Morehouse believes that someone like me—someone who wears heels and dresses—can uphold that reputation. But they’re wrong.”

Read the Full Essay @ Vibe Magazine

John Edgar Wideman: The Seat Not Taken

from The New York Times

Op-Ed Contributor

The Seat Not Taken
By John Edgar Wideman

AT least twice a week I ride Amtrak’s high-speed Acela train from my home in New York City to my teaching job in Providence, R.I. The route passes through a region of the country populated by, statistics tell us, a significant segment of its most educated, affluent, sophisticated and enlightened citizens.

Over the last four years, excluding summers, I have conducted a casual sociological experiment in which I am both participant and observer. It’s a survey I began not because I had some specific point to prove by gathering data to support it, but because I couldn’t avoid becoming aware of an obvious, disquieting truth.

Almost invariably, after I have hustled aboard early and occupied one half of a vacant double seat in the usually crowded quiet car, the empty place next to me will remain empty for the entire trip.

I’m a man of color, one of the few on the train and often the only one in the quiet car, and I’ve concluded that color explains a lot about my experience. Unless the car is nearly full, color will determine, even if it doesn’t exactly clarify, why 9 times out of 10 people will shun a free seat if it means sitting beside me.

Giving them and myself the benefit of the doubt, I can rule out excessive body odor or bad breath; a hateful, intimidating scowl; hip-hop clothing; or a hideous deformity as possible objections to my person. Considering also the cost of an Acela ticket, the fact that I display no visible indications of religious preference and, finally, the numerous external signs of middle-class membership I share with the majority of the passengers, color appears to be a sufficient reason for the behavior I have recorded.

Of course, I’m not registering a complaint about the privilege, conferred upon me by color, to enjoy the luxury of an extra seat to myself. I relish the opportunity to spread out, savor the privacy and quiet and work or gaze at the scenic New England woods and coast. It’s a particularly appealing perk if I compare the train to air travel or any other mode of transportation, besides walking or bicycling, for negotiating the mercilessly congested Northeast Corridor. Still, in the year 2010, with an African-descended, brown president in the White House and a nation confidently asserting its passage into a postracial era, it strikes me as odd to ride beside a vacant seat, just about every time I embark on a three-hour journey each way, from home to work and back.

I admit I look forward to the moment when other passengers, searching for a good seat, or any seat at all on the busiest days, stop anxiously prowling the quiet-car aisle, the moment when they have all settled elsewhere, including the ones who willfully blinded themselves to the open seat beside me or were unconvinced of its availability when they passed by. I savor that precise moment when the train sighs and begins to glide away from Penn or Providence Station, and I’m able to say to myself, with relative assurance, that the vacant place beside me is free, free at last, or at least free until the next station. I can relax, prop open my briefcase or rest papers, snacks or my arm in the unoccupied seat.

But the very pleasing moment of anticipation casts a shadow, because I can’t accept the bounty of an extra seat without remembering why it’s empty, without wondering if its emptiness isn’t something quite sad. And quite dangerous, also, if left unexamined. Posters in the train, the station, the subway warn: if you see something, say something.

***

John Edgar Wideman is a professor of Africana studies and literary arts at Brown and the author, most recently, of “Briefs.”

The Black Man's Code of Conduct

The Black Man's Code of Conduct
by Mychal Denzel Smith | TheLoop21

I was in New York City recently and had a chance to sit down and soak up the wisdom of a man I truly admire, Professor R. L’Heureux Lewis of City College New York. Professor Lewis has done a lot of work to highlight and address the concept of black male privilege, and I wanted to talk to him and gain insight on the types of things that need to be done to get our community moving forward on redefining black masculinity and promoting new models of black manhood.

When I arrived at his office, Professor Lewis was with a student and needed to step out for a bit, but told me to go in, take a seat, and introduce myself to the student. I walked in, took a seat, nodded, said “what’s going on, bruh?”, and then basked in the silence. Upon Professor Lewis’ return, he queried as to what I and the other young man had learned about each other; neither of us could produce an answer. We had been sitting in the same space for nearly two minutes, and didn’t even know each other’s names.

I’ve long been aware of the tension that often characterizes the interpersonal relationships of black men. I can remember as a teenager many fights starting between brothers because one looked at the other the “wrong way.” Walking past other black men in any public space, I’d consciously avoid eye or accidental physical contact, an affront of the worst kind, lest I be forced to defend myself against a group of brothers much larger and angrier than myself. I was lucky, I could typically talk my way out of these situations.

Not everyone is that fortunate.

I can’t say what exactly is the source of this tension and mistrust among black men, as it can differ for everyone, but it is fed by our collective insecurities and desire to protect our respective manhoods. There are brothers who have suffered physical or sexual abuse at the hands of another black man and now question the motives of every brother they see. There are brothers so fearful of their own sexuality, they project it onto others and wish attack. There are brothers who buy into the stereotypes that depict black men as naturally and viciously violent, either wanting to adopt that persona or protect themselves from it in others. No matter the process that birthed this mentality, it has manifested itself in a way that impedes the process of black men addressing one another with respect and love.

I say we permanently adopt the attitude we embrace when we notice that we are alone in a space occupied by a majority of white people.

Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21

'Left of Black': Episode #2 featuring Joshua Bennett

'Left of Black' Host Mark Anthony Neal talks Black masculinity, hip-hop, and disability with spoken word artist and Marshall Scholar Joshua Bennett.

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.

Listen Here

Coming Apart at the Seams: Black Masculinity and the Performance of Obama-Era Respectability

Steve Harvey’s tearful breakdown, Pastor Donnie McClurkin’s emotional rant, and Tiger Woods’s destructive behavior provide insight into the contemporary crisis of black masculinity, which has as much to do with the real structural challenges that black males face as it does with desires within Black communities for performances of black masculinity that are no longer viable or sustainable.

Keynote Address

2010 American Masculinity Studies Association

Atlanta, GA

Coming Apart at the Seams:

Black Masculinity and the Performance of Obama-Era Respectability

by Mark Anthony Neal

Comedian, author and radio host Steve Harvey graces the cover of the November 2009 issue of Essence Magazine. The cover story celebrates what was a highly successful year for Harvey, the apex of which was the publication of his New York Times best-seller Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man: What Men Really Think About Love, Relationships, Intimacy and Commitment. Pictured on the cover with his wife Marjorie Bridges-Woods, Harvey exhibits an aura of fitness and prosperity. The underlying theme of the Essence cover story is that Harvey, now a born-again Christian, has turned his back on his sinful past (and profane comic performances), found redemption and is now fit for traditional male leadership within the black community. Indeed, the popularity of Harvey’s book, in which he offers relationship advice, suggest that the Black community also values this new role for Harvey.

The Essence cover photo of Harvey is a far cry from his appearance with Pastor Donnie McClurkin on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), broadcast just as the issue of Essence was about to hit newsstands. On McClurkin’s show, Harvey seemed to be literally collapsing under the weight of his new found responsibility. A tearful Harvey admits to McClurkin, “when you be out there, man… people don’t know what its like, if you ain’t got nobody to tell it to. See I can’t go sit with nobody who know what I’m feeling sometime…my friends aren’t famous, my real friends are regular cats. I can’t tell them what I feel like sometime. They ain’t got no information for me. I had to try to catch you [McClurkin] on the phone, had to try and catch Bishop Jakes, but he be busy, man…a cat like me, you be trying to hold it together yourself." Harvey’s specific comments are perhaps less important than his intent to convey to McClurkin and his sizable audience—two billion worldwide, according the host—the difficulties of maintaining the image and reality of “Steve Harvey,” born-again Christian.

Donnie McClurkin, a three time Grammy Award winning Gospel artist and ordained minister is no stranger to such tearful outburst. A heavily emotive singer, McClurkin’s overwrought vocal performances often mimic the emotional breakdown that Steve Harvey experienced. It is an exaggeration that some Gospel audiences have become accustomed to, but McClurkin was not singing when, he addressed a COGIC (Church of God in Christ) youth gathering in Memphis, TN in November of 2009. At the event, McClurkin seemed on the verge of an actual nervous breakdown as he spewed homophobic rhetoric—at one point inferring that Black GLBT’s were vampires—leading commentator Keyon Farrow to suggest that McClurkin’s “shrill rant became a shaming, a quasi witch hunt, where he demanded, screaming and speaking in tongues in moments, that the gay and lesbian youth went up to the altar in front of hundreds of people, to have ‘hands laid upon them’." Having confirmed a life of homosexuality on various occasions in his past, including in his best-selling memoir, The Donnie McClurkin Story: From Darkness to Light, McClurkin’s performance at the COGIC gathering pivots on a belief that in the aftermath of his “born-again” Christian conversion, he is no longer tempted by homosexual desire. McClurkin’s antics suggest that he is not fully convinced, that his audience is fully convinced, that he is no longer—to evoke Joseph Beam—“in the life.”

A few weeks after McClurkin’s COGIC performance, audiences were captivated by a unfolding Thanksgiving Day domestic drama in South Florida, where the sheen of respectability that had engulfed the career and image of professional golfer and iconic pitchman Tiger Woods, was dramatically eroding with the charges and subsequent admission that he had engaged in several extra-marital affairs. Woods seemingly cavalier and reckless behavior, could have been easily been dismissed as insolent, but given how casually he went about his relations with more than a dozen women—Woods seemed to want to be caught. It was as if Woods was fatigued—emotionally and mentally—by living up to the image that was crafted by him by his management and the corporate entities that he represented. Indeed in the now famous photo of Woods shot in 2006 by celebrity photographer Anne Leibovitz, and featured on the cover of the January 2010 edition of Vanity Fair Magazine, Woods evokes the iconography of turn-of-the-century Heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson. The photo seems to capture Woods's resignation at having to constantly live up to “Brand Tiger.”

Steve Harvey’s tearful breakdown, Pastor Donnie McClurkin’s emotional rant, and Tiger Woods’s destructive behavior provide insight into the contemporary crisis of black masculinity, which I argue has as much to do with the real structural challenges that black males face on a daily basis, as it does with desires within Black communities for performances of black masculinity that are no longer viable or sustainable—if they ever were. Specifically the demand is for performances of Black masculinity that are tethered to notions of respectability and racial uplift. While such performances are also desired for the Black family at large, it is the Black man—as titular head of the Black family—who is expected to set the example for respectability, though it is often the burden of Black Women to embody that respectability as a reflection of Black masculinity. Thus current narratives of Black masculinity are informed by a widespread belief that Black men are not living up to their responsibilities as “positive” role models, fathers, husbands and community members. What distinguishes this particular discourse of respectability from previous historical examples, is the presence of Barack Hussein Obama. With the emergence of the first African-American president, the current crisis of Black masculinity is largely premised on perceived fissures between the omnipresent figures of respectability that Obama and the first family cut and the reality of how Black life is lived and experienced on a day-to-day basis.

The connection between performances of Blackness and notions of respectability have long been established within African-American life. In her classic book Righteous Discontent: The Black Women’s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920, historian Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham writes that the “politics of respectability emphasized reform of individual behavior and attitudes both as a goal in itself and as a strategy for reform of the entire structural system of American race relations.” More specifically Higginbotham observes that “respectability demanded that every individual in the black community assume responsibility for behavioral, self-regulation and self-improvement along moral, educational, and economic lines. The goal was to distance oneself as far as possible from images perpetuated by racist stereotypes.” Given these dynamics, it’s not surprising that Black middle class leadership in the early 20th Century would use the available technologies of the day to challenge the hegemony of racist stereotypes. One of the most useful technologies was photography.

As historian Kevin Gaines writes in Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century, “Because photography was crucial in transmitting stereotypes, African-Americans found the medium well-suited for trying to refute negrophobic caricatures… anything less than stylized elegance would betray the ideals of race advancement and, indeed, hold the race back, as did the profusion of commodified, demeaning portraits taken of unsuspecting, often youthful, and destitute African-Americans.” As Gaines comments suggest, embedded in early twentieth Century Black Respectability was a disdain—both casual and deliberate—for the Black poor and Black youth. Gaines adds that there was an “extensive photographic record of African Americans’ concern to infuse the black image with dignity, and to embody the “representative” Negro by which the race might be accurately judged.” Those who did not live up to the image of the representative Negro, were subject to scorn and scrutiny.

The presentation of what Gaines calls “stylized elegance” was also to be embodied in everyday black life. The well documented attempts by Black middle class elites during the era to dictate and regulate the dress, manners, vernacular, musical tastes, and leisure time of the black poor and working class were blatant attempts to bring the so-called “lesser” classes on board during a period that was largely defined by the notion of the “New Negro.” As Higginbotham suggest much of the anxiety of this era regarding the black poor and working class was the product of an “unprecedented migration that contributed to growing class cleavage in the black community.” In response, some members of the black poor and working class found creative ways to stylize their lack of resources, embodying an early iteration of what we commonly refer to in contemporary times as “ghetto fabulousness.” As such, sartorial politics—a politics of tailored clothing, if you will—became the obvious terrain in which struggles over legitimate representations of Blackness were waged.

The image of the physically fit and elegant Black man, presiding over an equally physically fit and elegant family was deployed regularly to counteract racist depictions of African-American life. According to Gaines, “To be the patriarch, the master of one’s family, was ardently desired by African-American men, who considered this an essential prerequisite of respectability, civilization and progress.” Citing the example of Booker T. Washington’s book New Negro in a New Century (1900), which features portraits of more than 50 prominent African-Americans at the turn of the 20th Century, literary scholar Marlon Ross makes a finer point on the politics of representation and respectability. Ross argues that the “race album attempts to avoid the insinuations associated with the display of the black body as the embodiment of backward savagery.” Specifically addressing the constructions of Black masculinity evident in the portraits, Ross writes in his book Manning the Race: Reforming Black Men in the Jim Crow Era, that “the racial implications of the hyperformality in the photos can easily get lost in history if we forget that this style of portraiture is not ‘natural’ but evolves as a ‘realistic’ way of portraying the authority and respectability of solidly middle class late Victorian patriarchs.” But Ross adds, that “this realistic style of photography asserts class and gender norms so quietly and yet so forcefully that we can easily overlook how historically fabricated is the masculine attire of dark suit, white shirt and, simple cravat.” Of particular interest to me is Ross’s emphasis on the staging of Black respectability which suggest a conscious attempt by Black elites to perform a version of Blackness that was not only not realistic, but likely unsustainable outside of the specific racial politics that birthed the performances.

Of course there were legitimate reason for Black middle class investment in these performances. In relationships between middles class Whites and Blacks, Higginbotham suggest that “respectability provided a discursive common ground in its concern for sexual purity, child rearing, habits of cleanliness and order, and overall self-improvement.” In such a context there was clear relationship between African-American ideals of respectability and desires for social and political progress. From the standpoint of twenty-first century politics of respectability though, it seems unlikely that it would also be driven by the same desires that animated previous efforts. As political scientist Cathy Cohen suggest, the stakes are quite different now, because there has been a degree of progress in race relations in this country. More than anything the current discourse of Black respectability is driven by desires within the Black middle class to protect their hard-earned social gains; no longer a movement about uplift, current efforts find their energies in notions of maintenance and expansion. Cohen writes that in a political environment dominated by the Religious and Radical Right, “African Americans with some access to power, mobility, and status and those aspiring to secure such resources are feeling especially anxious about what they perceive to the bad or deviant behavior of other group members…behaviors that are thought to threaten the status and mobility of other black people”

The roots of contemporary investments in Black respectability might be traced to the mid-1990s and the Republican Party “revolution” in the 1994 mid-term elections, which precipitated the rise of the Radical Right in mainstream politics at the beginning of the twenty-first century with the election of George W. Bush as President. Additionally the early to mid-1990s featured several very public events that portrayed Black masculinity as deviant and pathological including the Rodney King beating, Magic Johnson’s contraction of the HIV virus, the arrest of Black elected officials like Illinois Congressman Mel Reynolds and Washington, D.C. mayor Marion Barry, the first Michael Jackson child molestation investigation and perhaps most famously, the O.J. Simpson murder trial. The most visible manifestations of the anxieties produced during this period—a period which some argue featured the “first” symbolic Black president in Bill Clinton—was the Million Man March, held in October of 1995. The march, facilitated at the behest of Nation of Islam leader Minister Louis Farrakhan, was explicitly intended to force Black men into accepting the mantle of responsibility within their communities and families, as part and parcel of a larger move towards a late twentieth century articulation of Black respectability. Though the movement never maintained its momentum, there’s no denying that the aims of the march became a building block of contemporary Black political discourses. Such was the case with the Million Family March, held on the five year anniversary of the Million Man March and less than a month before George W. Bush’s contested election as President.

As feminist scholar E. Frances White writes in her book Dark Continent of Our Bodies: Feminism and the Politics of Respectability, “the building blocks for a strong community did not welcome welfare dependent families; female-headed households; and especially gay, bi-sexual and lesbian family members. This narrative does not find acceptable the families in which many of us live.” (78-79) The reality though, is that Black political discourse was not in a position to dramatically alter the lives that the majority of black people live in the absence of real political power to address the structural inequalities that many citizens face, regardless of race. Thus it was not surprising that such efforts were directed within the realm of culture or rather performance, notably around the issues of the public presentation of blackness and black sexuality. Perhaps nothing better captured the level of anxiety in some Black communities than the controversies surrounding the issues of “sagging,” and DL sexuality, much of which came to a head recently with Morehouse College’s decision to institute a long-unwritten dress code on their campus.

The issue of “sagging” or the practice of young African-American men wearing their trousers well below their waists, has functioned like a social panic in some municipalities, where local officials have sought to pass ordinances banning sagging pants, as the style is thought, by some, to be evidence of Black male criminality. The town of Delcambre, LA did in fact pass such an ordinance, punishable by 6-months in jail and a $500.00 fine. The city of Opa-Locka, FL banned sagging pants in city parks and public buildings. Additionally the city of Dallas funded a series of public service announcements denouncing saggy pants, equating the practice with homosexuality. It was in this context that a MTV viewer asked then Senator Obama about saggy pants, when he sat down with MTV News days before the November 2008 presidential election. During that interview, Obama made the now famous comment, “brothers should pull up their pants. You are walking by your mother, your grandmother, your underwear is showing. What's wrong with that? Come on.”

Within days of Obama’s pronouncement, numerous television news programs and newspapers ran stories about Obama denouncing saggy pants. Obama’s comments, taken out of context, could easily be read as an admonishment of young black men and by extension, the influence of hip-hop culture. In fact Obama, prefaced his comments by stating “I think people passing a law against people wearing sagging pants is a waste of time… any public official, that is worrying about sagging pants probably needs to spend some time focusing on real problems.” But as a politician, Obama also knew that his comments about saggy pants represented a “win-win” for him; he would gain traction with undecided voters who hoped that he would provide a moral center for a youth culture supposedly gone awry, while serving as a non-issue for the hip-hop community that he had so deftly recruited in support of his campaign. Quiet as it’s kept, the saggy pants style is largely passé with regards to hip-hop generation masculinity, as some of the most highly visible and highly compensated hip-hop figures such as Sean Combs, Sean Carter, Curtis Jackson and even the recently incarcerated Clifford Harris, Jr. (TI) are more often than not, seen in public wearing business attire.

Yet while Obama’s carefully crafted response was intended to offend no one who might have potentially voted for him, his comments took on a life of their own, utilized to organize anti-sagging/dress code efforts at Historically Black Colleges and Universities and public high schools, like Plantation High School in South Florida which sponsored a “Pull Up Your Pants Day.” That this sudden inspiration often takes place within the context of black communities, long grappling with how to relate to and control the young men in their communities, should not be surprising. President Obama’s stance on the issue has simply been used to shame black youth into “normalcy.” Underlying this push towards routine sartorial choices, is a troubling class dynamic, rooted in a century-old (if not longer) debate amongst Black Americans about the proper presentation of blackness in mainstream culture. Indeed Obama’s election represented the symbolic political bully pulpit that a figure like Louis Farrakhan and Black religious leaders never had access to. Obama quickly became the most historically visible paragon of Black Respectability.

It was in this context that Morehouse College instituted a dress code in the fall of 2009. The college’s Vice-President of the office of Student Services, argued the new policy was an effort to “get back to the legacy” of the college, which in its heyday during legal segregation was a pantheon to Black male respectability. As the Vice President added, “We expect our young men to be Renaissance men…When people go about campus we want them to represent the college in an appropriate manner.” (Atlanta Journal Constitution 10/16). The college is obviously within its right to dictate the policies of the campus, but what instigated national commentary about the new policy were several explicit aspect that outlawed, even criminalized, the wearing of head-gear like, caps and doo-rags in classrooms and the cafeteria, dental adornments like “grills,” sagging, and perhaps most controversially, the wearing of female attire, explicitly citing the wearing of high heel shoes and pocketbooks. As commentator Frank Leon Roberts argued, “Morehouse College is much more than simply a “private institution;” it is a black cultural pillar…Given Morehouse’s stature as a historical pillar, all African-American men (not just those who are students or alumni of the institution) have an ethical obligation to contribute to this national dialogue about the politics of the college’s policies—especially in instances where it promotes a climate of rampant anti-ghetto-culture classism and femiphobia.”

Quite often what is at play in efforts like the Morehouse dress code, particularly in relationship to the concerns about women’s dress wear, is the issue of sexuality, specifically the issues of DL or down-low sexuality, which inspires within Black American a moral or social panic. This is exactly what Donnie McClurkin displayed in his rambling, even non-sensical rant at the COGIC youth gathering in November of 2009, which functioned as a mass exorcism. In his performance McClurkin states, “today I am overwhelmed from this holy convocation because I see feminine men…it’s because we failed, it’s not the children’s fault, it’s because we failed.” At one point he directs the youth in the audience to come to the alter stating, “right now everyone of you young people who say I need this and I can’t leave out of here acting like this. I got to be right; I don’t want to be a feminine man; I don’t want to be a hard woman; I don’t want to be in homosexuality, bi-sexuality, tri-sexuality, I’m not a lesbian, I’m a holy woman of God, I’m not gay, I’m “born again.. Come now, I said run!” Cohen challenges the notion that rants like McClurkin’s and the symbolic politics that inform it are irrational suggesting that “African-American fear and deep concern for what is believed to be the non-normative sexual behaviors of community members is not only a reaction to the internalization of patriarchal heteronormative values about what constitutes proper sexual conduct, it is also…a reaction to the knowledge that the idea of black deviant sexuality has been used continuously as a justification for the secondary status of African Americans.”

For the most part President Obama as stayed above the fray, excepting his rather pointed comments at Black men with regards to taking greater responsibility for their children. In his now infamous Father’s Day speech in 2008, Obama asserted “But if we are honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that what too many fathers also are is missing — missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it. You and I know how true this is in the African-American community. We know the statistics — that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison.”

Obama’s comments dually reflect his own investment in Black respectability, as well as a fundamental political belief that two-parented households represent the most effective route out of poverty for many poor Black Americans. Arguably Obama’s approach finds resonance in the ways that Black life is lived as opposed to the radically different concerns of those who have exploited his image to challenge what they deem as destructive cultural performances. Indeed I would argue that what partially informs critiques of Obama regarding the lack of a so-called Black Agenda, is his unwillingness to engage in a discourse that juxtaposes Black Middle class success and aspirations with the failures of the Black poor to resist the pathologies that largely frame their visibility in mainstream media in culture. If anything Obama’s very pragmatic view of Black life and culture highlights the inadequacy and unsustainability of performances of Black Respectability, when they are not tethered to real issues of Black empowerment, as was more likely the case for the Black middle class of the early twentieth century. As the performances of Donnie McClurkin, Steve Harvey and even Tiger Woods suggest, such performances will ultimately falter under the weight of their pretensions. Like a suit that no longer fits, their performances are coming apart at the seams.

Race, Media and Masculinity

Race, Media, and Masculinity at Claflin University

March 2, 2010

6:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.

W.V.M Fine Arts Building

400 Magnolia Street

Orangeburg, SC, 29115

Guest panelists Dr. Dawn-Elissa Fischer (San Francisco State University), Dr. Mark Anthony Neal (Duke University), Adam Mansbach (author of Angry Black White Boy), and Dr. Stephany Spaulding (Claflin University) will discuss constructions of Black masculinity within the media and literature.

Sponsored by Campus Progress, The Big Read Program, and the Claflin University Lyceum Committee.

This event is free and open to the public.

For more information, please email speakers@campusprogress.org

In a Circle of Men...

Neal Contrasts 60s' Leaders to Today

by Gary James '10

How do Malcolm X, Facebook, and Muhammad Ali relate to each other?

Before the 21st century, the question would have been difficult to answer. But with the rise of social networking, Mark Anthony Neal, Professor of Black Popular Culture at Duke University, has been able to revisit the history of black social and political figures like Malcolm X, Sam Cooke, Muhammad Ali, and Jim Brown within the context of modern-day possibilities for communication.

Neal has been on campus since Wednesday as the College’s Owen Duston Visiting Minority Scholar. He has visited nearly half a dozen classes, and faculty, staff, and students have been holding weekly round table discussions of Neal’s book New Black Man in preparation for his visit. He delivered the annual Malcolm X Institute Lecture Thursday on the friendships among different civil rights leaders in the mid-20th century and how those friendships could form and mean today.

Neal told the story of how four men were brought together by their mutual relationships with Muhammad Ali and divided by the vicissitudes of life and politics in the 1960s.

Malcolm X was a social theorist political activist representing a fringe element of the civil rights movement.

Sam Cooke was an R&B singer and entrepreneur.

Jim Brown was a professional football player and actor, perhaps best known for the records he set as running back for the Cleveland Browns back in the 1950s and 1960s.

And Cassius Clay, who later changed his name to Muhammad Ali, was a famous – or imfamous – boxer known for saying whatever came to his mind.

Neal panned the unique bond of this “quartet,” how it developed and what possibilities could have arisen out of their continued friendship.

“One reason we’ll never know how this friendship developed is because three weeks [after they all spent time together in Miami] Malcolm X leaves the Nation of Islam,” Neal said. “A day [later] Muhammad Ali announces to the world that he’s no longer Cassius Clay…and is instructed to sever all ties with Malcolm X. I often wonder what might have happened to that relationship if, in the face of all this public stuff, Ali and Malcolm X could have texted each other, if they had had Twitter or Myspace or Facebook or a way to communicate outside of the public.”

Read the Full Article @ Wabash College