Nation of Cowards: "Watch Your Mouth (Uncle) Tom"

Watch Your Mouth (Uncle) Tom:
How Our Black Pride in the President Works Against Us
by David Ikard

The morning after the Democrats were trounced in two significant gubernatorial races in New Jersey and Virginia, Tom Joyner remarked on "The Tom Joyner Morning Show" that a large part of the blame rested squarely on Barack Obama’s shoulders. The Democrats lost, Joyner argued pointedly, because black people stayed home. And they stayed home because Barack Obama has basically ignored them since he’s become president. Noting sardonically that Obama was “around all the time” on the show during his historic run to the presidency but had yet to appear on his show after being elected, Joyner issued a warning to Obama. If he expected to get elected again in 2012, he’d better not forget about black America.

When Joyner went to the phone lines, allowing his listeners to weight in on the topic, he was roundly lampooned. Recalling the heat that Tavis Smiley—a longtime commentator on Joyner’s show—took from the black community after admonishing then Democrat candidate Obama for failing to address black social concerns in his political agenda, Joyner found himself in the proverbial hot seat. One caller went so far as to label Joyner an “Uncle Tom” for his criticism of the president. The message that was coming across the lines was loud and clear. Criticizing Barack Obama—especially if you are black—is off-limits. Politics be damned.

The salient problem with this posture is that it confuses strategic political agitation with betraying the African American community’s best socioeconomic interest. It is not, in fact, a contradiction for one to be both proud of Barack Obama’s accomplishments from a cultural perspective and fiercely demanding of him on a political front. Maintaining such a posture is not only healthy for the democratic process, but necessary if one expects the black community’s concerns to get aired and taken seriously in the public domain.

The uncontested king of the sound bite Al Sharpton put it best on Joyner’s show when he quipped, “We elected a president not a Messiah.” Unlike Joyner, however, Sharpton hoisted the blame for the gubernatorial losses onto the black community, arguing that blacks at the grassroots level need to become more active in the political process—namely, by supporting the president’s initiatives such as healthcare—if they expect their circumstances on the ground to change. And, perhaps on some level Sharpton and Joyner are both right. However it shakes out, the cold, hard truth is that the black community is in serious trouble economically and socially and nobody seems to notice.

Read the Full Essay @ Nation of Cowards

David Ikard is an assistant professor of African American Literature at Florida State University. His research interests include black gender studies, cultural criticism, hip hop culture, and post-racial politics. His book, Breaking the Silence: Toward A Black Male Feminist Criticism (2007), considers the role of black men in black feminist politics via the lens of African American Literature and theory.

How George Tiller's Death Affects Black Women

How George Tiller's Death Affects Black Women
by Salamishah Tillet

George Tiller’s death should have civil rights activists up in arms. Where are they when black women’s lives are at stake?

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Book Review:

From the Los Angeles Times

BOOK REVIEW

In Search of the Black Fantastic by Richard Iton

For black entertainers, popular culture has always been political, the author argues.

By Steve Ryfle
Special to The Times

July 10, 2008

When Paul Robeson declared, at the height of Cold War tensions, that black Americans would never fight for a nation that had "oppressed us for generations" in a war against the Soviet Union, the actor and civil rights advocate ignited a firestorm that damaged his career and opened a debate about the role black entertainers should play in politics.

America's list of artists-turned-activists runs the gamut from John Wayne to Hanoi Jane, from Ronald Reagan as conservative standard-bearer to Sean Penn as professional Bush-basher. White celebrities, though, be they right-wing or left-, revered or reviled, aren't forced to consider racial identity when spouting their political views. For African American icons, politics and race are inseparable.

This theme runs through "In Search of the Black Fantastic," a fascinating history and analysis of the nexus of black popular culture and activism from the Jazz Age to the hip-hop era written by Richard Iton, an associate professor of African American studies and political science at Northwestern University. Thanks to Jim Crow laws and other racist policies, African Americans remained locked out of the American political process for decades, and as late as the 1940s and '50s there were just a handful of black members of Congress. Without elected officials to represent it, Iton notes, the black community instead found political leaders in intellectuals, civic
activists, clergy and, often, performing artists.

Not all were as volatile as Robeson, whose militant views on racism led more moderate reformers (including NAACP leaders and other prominent African Americans) to distance themselves and whose support of the Stalin regime made him a Red Scare scapegoat. Unable to work overseas during the 1950s (his passport was revoked by the U.S. government), Robeson spent his later years eking out a living and distanced from the civil rights movement he had
helped pioneer.

Iton dissects how the next generation of African American figures responded to the challenges of the civil rights era, with some risking livelihood to participate in political activities and others taking a more cautious path. Harry Belafonte was a confidant of Martin Luther King Jr. and helped support the Freedom Rides and the march on Washington. Nat King Cole, who was
labeled an "Uncle Tom" by civil rights activist Thurgood Marshall, believed it was "idiotic" that black entertainers should get involved in politics. "I am a singer of songs. I am not a public speaker," Cole said. Sidney Poitier took a middle-ground approach, selecting only film roles that, in his view, portrayed black men with dignity. As racial politics grew more heated, Poitier's nobler-than-thou characters became obsolete and the actor's popularity plummeted.

With the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964 and the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the political playing field for African Americans was ostensibly leveled, which raised new questions. Iton wonders, "If politics in the pre-civil rights era was marked by a certain randomness in terms of what sorts of actors -- nationalists or integrationists, elected or protest, creative artists and/or others -- would lead the way . . . what logic, if any, would dictate the arrangement of black politics afterward?"

While African Americans continued to make headway in formal politics, some of the most controversial voices still emanated from the entertainment world. Iton singles out comedian Chris Rock and chronicles how his rise to popularity was largely based on a comic critique of life in low-income black communities, including a scathing attack on welfare dependency. Variations
on this routine led to Rock's gig as a Comedy Central commentator at the 1996 political conventions. Amazingly, Rock insists his work is apolitical. "It's just jokes man," but Iton points out that "one can indeed easily detect a certain consciousness -- an obvious politics -- at work."

The breadth of material Iton examines is both impressive and exhaustive; it seems no African American pop icon who helped shape black political consciousness and influence over the last century is left out. Iton's survey spans disciplines and decades: In comedy, he looks at the vaudeville of Bert Williams, the caricature of Stepin Fetchit and the stand-up of Richard
Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Rock and Dave Chappelle; in music, he ranges from Billie Holiday to Erykah Badu, from Miles Davis to Nas, from James Brown to De La Soul; and he casts equally wide nets over film and television.

Iton's theory is that "political intention adheres to every cultural production." To that end, he zeros in on the political content, explicit or implicit, in the artists' lives and works and weaves what might seem like a collection of random references into a cohesive pop-political narrative.

Yet although he has produced an illuminating work of pop history, Iton's ambitions are far more complex. The author may be a first-rate culture junkie, but he is first and foremost a political theorist, and his greater aim in assembling this timeline is to examine in detail the questions of
class, gender roles and sexuality raised by African American artists and their work. As such, the book frequently veers into extended analysis steeped in the jargon of academia, which may prove challenging and even off-putting to the casual reader and pop culture enthusiast.

But with Barack Obama on the verge of the Democratic presidential nomination, "In Search of the Black Fantastic" is a timely reminder of the significant influence African American artists and entertainers have had on the political front -- not necessarily in enacting laws, but in the symbolic impact of words and actions. "In choosing to say something," Iton writes, "black artists can seek both to influence outcomes and to redefine the terms of debate."

Steve Ryfle is writing a book about Hollywood during the civil rights era.

***

In Search of the Black Fantastic
Politics & Popular Culture in the Post-Civil Rights Era
by Richard Iton
Oxford University Press

NBM Book Notes: In Search of the Black Fantastic

from Oxford University Press

In Search of the Black Fantastic:
Politics and Popular Culture in the Post-Civil Rights Era
by Richard Iton

Prior to the 1960s, when African Americans had little access to formal political power, black popular culture emerged as a tool to forge community and effect political change. However, with the new avenues opened to African Americans in the post-Civil Rights era, many believe the influence of black popular culture on the political sphere began to diminish steadily.

Yet as Richard Iton shows in this uniquely trenchant volume, despite the changes brought about by the Civil Rights movement--and contrary to the wishes of those committed to narrower conceptions of politics--black artists have continued to play a significant role in the making and maintenance of critical social spaces. Here, Iton offers an original portrait of the relationship between popular culture and institutionalized politics, tracing the connections between artists such as Paul Robeson, Lorraine Hansberry, Richard Pryor, Bob Marley, Erykah Badu, and those individuals working in the protest, electoral, and policymaking arenas. With an emphasis on questions of class, gender, and sexuality--and diaspora and coloniality--the author also illustrates how creative artists destabilize modern notions of the proper location of politics, and politics itself.

Ranging from theater to film, and comedy to literature and contemporary music, In Search of the Black Fantastic is an engaging and sophisticated examination of how black popular culture has challenged our understandings of the aesthetic and its relationship to politics.

Reviews

"Iton's work possesses the depth of wide reading in modernist theory and the breadth of wide-open eyes and ears for the popular... challenging, illuminating and groundbreaking. For both lay reader and academician, it may well 'compel a revision of our notions of the political.'"Richard Iton is Associate Professor of African American Studies and Political Science at Northwestern University. He is the winner of the 2001 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book award and the 2000 Best Book Award on the Social, Cultural, and Ideological Construction of Race from the American Political Science Association for Solidarity Blues: Race, Culture, and the American Left ."

--Publishers Weekly

"Iton has committed what many will see as a double professional sin. He has taken the vernacular cultures of black Atlantic people seriously and has used them to produce this deep and stimulating exploration of their political aspirations and achievements. There are exciting and challenging arguments on every single page of this tour de force."

--Paul Gilroy, Anthony Giddens Professor of Social Theory, London School of Economics

"Richard Iton's book is an impressive work of scholarship, combining dense analyses of black popular culture with rich insights rooted in political theory. It is a superb contribution to our understanding of the political importance of black popular culture."

--Robert Gooding-Williams, Ralph and Mary Otis Isham Professor, University of Chicago

"In Search of the Black Fantastic is a bold and thoroughly original exploration of the knotty relationship between politics and popular culture of the black diaspora during and after the civil rights era. In this learned, eloquent, and persuasively argued book, Richard Iton analyzes the transformative power of a stunning array of cultural forms."

--Valerie Smith, Director, Center for African American Studies, Princeton University

***

Richard Iton is Associate Professor of African American Studies and Political Science at Northwestern University. He is the winner of the 2001 Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book award and the 2000 Best Book Award on the Social, Cultural, and Ideological Construction of Race from the American Political Science Association for Solidarity Blues: Race, Culture, and the American Left .

Debating the Great Debaters...Still.

from CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com

"Debating" The Great Debaters
by Mark Anthony Neal

I recently weighed in on the significance of Denzel Washington's performances as Frank Lucas in American Gangster and Melvin B. Tolson in The Great Debaters. There are many who want to make critical distinctions between a Harlem drug lord—or dope dealer as Bomani Jones so eloquently asserts—and a celebrated modernist poet who happened to coach one of the most accomplished college debate teams in the 1930s. I argue though that both men, and the worlds they inhabited, provide a rich entrée into the nuanced and complicated lives that everyday black folk lead—lives that rarely get depicted via Hollywood Cinema. That said, The Great Debaters takes liberties with historical realities, often solely for the effect of creating a classic Hollywood tale. In this regard the film—despite the earnest intents of the director (Washington) and the film's producer Oprah Winfrey—does a disservice, by being dismissive of the real political struggles engaged by those depicted in the film.

Read the Full Essay at CRITICAL NOIR @ VIBE.COM