Why President Obama Must Remove Arne Duncan As Secretary of Education

Why President Obama Must Remove Arne Duncan As Secretary of Education

by Mark Naison | special to NewBlackMan

The 2008 Election Campaign of Barack Obama inspired a spirit of sacrifice and idealism that I had not seen among close friends since the early days of the Civil Rights Movement. My upstairs neighbors, both in their mid 70’s, camped out in Virginia a week before the election to help get out the vote in that state. My best friend and his wife did the same in Florida. At least ten people in my circle took regular trips to Pennsylvania and Ohio on weekends to help move those “swing states” into the Democratic camp. And my dear friend Rich Klimmer, now deceased, spent three months in a hotel room in Philadelphia, while undergoing dialysis three times a week, coordinating the labor campaign for Obama in Pennsylvania.

What did all these people have in common, other than a passion to elect the first African American president in American History?

Every single one of them were college professors or public schools teachers. No group worked harder for Barack Obama’s election than America’s teachers, who not only contributed funds to his campaign, but were the campaign’s most effective “grunt workers,” doing everything possible to reach voters in swing states, whether by participating in phone banks or by travelling long distances to reach voters door to door.

Today, America’s teachers stand so disillusioned with the Obama Administration that their participation in the 2012 is a big question mark. Teachers I know may ultimately vote for Barack Obama, but they will do so only because they fear the Republican candidate will do more damage, not because they think the Obama Administration’s policies are moving the nation in the right direction. When it comes to education policy, most teachers and professors see the Obama administration as promoting national initiatives which strip teachers of their autonomy, make them scapegoats for the nation’s problems, and promote formulas for assessing teacher quality that will, if accepted,  reduce instruction at all levels to memorization and test prep. They are very likely to sit out the next Presidential campaign unless the Administration switches gears and embraces a teacher centered strategy for improving American’s schools and universities.

But to do that, President Obama will have to remove the Harvard trained lawyer who runs the US Department of Education, Arne Duncan. Not only does Duncan promote policies which force schools and universities make testing and assessment a far more significant part of classroom learning, in his comments to the press and elected officials, he literally oozes contempt for teachers and school administrators. In Arne Duncan’s field of vision,, America’s schools and universities are islands of backwardness and inefficiency in a dynamic society where competition produces excellence and those who can’t compete lose their jobs. Obsessed with quantifying success and punishing failure, he is on a mission to turn every dimension of classroom learning, from kindergarten through graduate school, into something that can be measured and evaluated with the simplicity and clarity of sales figures in a bank or corporation, thereby allowing for ironclad measures of teacher evaluation on a national scale. 

When anyone suggest that teaching involves more than preparing students for tests, and involves characteristics likes nurturing, mentoring and character building, or involves stimulating imagination and creativity, Duncan responds with impatience and contempt. He sees himself as single handedly driving the nation towards educational competiveness by shaking up the nation’s teachers,, made soft by tenure and union protections, and forcing them to be as success driven and fearful as those who work in the private sector.

While Duncan’s approach has succeeded in making teachers angry and fearful, nowhere has it improved the nation’s schools. The strategic mix of school closings, teacher assessment protocols based on student test results, and the closing of “failing” schools, mandated by No Child Left Behind has not raised tests results in a single major urban school district, nor has it brought new idealism and energy to teaching and learning. Instead it has enraged teachers, confused administrators, and led to protests by students and parents who feel that their input has been erased by the national formulas that determined a larger and larger portion of school policies.

On the University level, Duncan has forced rating agencies like Middle States to require assessment protocols that vastly simplify what goes on in college classrooms and strip faculty members of powers of peer evaluation that have been in place since the 1960’s. The same obsession to find out if teachers have been “successful” according to a one size fits all formula, forced down the throat of local school districts through the financial incentives of Race to the Top, has been forced on universities through the threat of the cutting off of federal funding. As a result, faculty members throughout the country have been forced to used a language in evaluating their work that has no standing or credibility in their discipline ( what “outcomes” and “goals” would one measure in a course on Greek philosophy or Hip Hop Dance) and violates every norm of academic freedom that faculty members have fought for since the McCarthy Era.

The negative effect on teacher morale of such policies is well documented, but they have also started to inspire resistance. All over the nation, teachers are taking to the streets to resist attacks on their autonomy and professional status, and university professors are starting to mobilize against the threat posed to academic freedom and departmental self-governance by nationally designed and enforced assessment protocols. Everywhere you go in this country, the name Arne Duncan inspires outrage, not only among teachers, and college professors, but among school administrators and college presidents

If President Obama has any hope of being re-elected in 2012, he’d better pay attention to this groundswell of outrage and replace Arne Duncan with a Secretary of Education who shows more greater respect for the idealism, creativity and hard work of a group that played a central role in his 2008 campaign—America’s Teachers

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Mark Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham’s Urban Studies Program. He is the author of two books, Communists in Harlem During the Depression and White Boy: A Memoir. Naison is also co-director of the Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP). Research from the BAAHP will be published in a forthcoming collection of oral histories Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life From the 1930’s to the 1960’s.

'Left of Black': Episode #35 featuring Cornel West

Left of Black #35
w/ Cornel West
May 16, 2011

On the season finale of Left of Black, Princeton Professor Cornel West joins host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal in a conversation about the “Image of Black Males in the Age of Obama.”  The discussion was recorded at the Baptist Grove Church in Raleigh, NC and sponsored by the Cornel West Academy for Excellence.

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→Cornel West is the Class of 1943 University Professor at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. He has taught at Union Theological Seminary, Yale, Harvard and the University of Paris. He has written 19 books and edited 13 books. He is best known for his classic Race Matters, Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud. West has recorded three spoken word albums including Never Forget, collaborating with Prince, Jill Scott, Andre 3000, Talib Kweli, KRS-One and the late Gerald Levert.

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Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

Obama and Black Americans: the Paradox of Hope

Obama and Black Americans: the Paradox of Hope

by Gary Younge | The Nation

When Barack Obama was pondering a run for the presidency Michelle asked him what he thought he could accomplish. He replied,“The day I take the oath of office, the world will look at us differently. And millions of kids across this country will look at themselves differently. That alone is something.” His victory was indeed something. The world certainly looked at America differently, though this had as much to do with who he wasn’t—George W. Bush—as what he was, black, among other things.

Polls show that African-Americans indeed look at themselves differently. A January 2010 Pew survey revealed huge optimism. The percentage of black Americans who thought blacks were better off than they were five years before had almost doubled since 2007. There were also significant increases in the percentages who believed the standard-of-living gap between whites and blacks was decreasing.

But for all the ways black America has felt better about itself and looked better to others, it has not actually fared better. In fact, it has been doing worse. The economic gap between black and white has grown since Obama took power. Under his tenure black unemployment, poverty and foreclosures are at their highest levels for at least a decade.

Millions of black kids may well aspire to the presidency now that a black man is in the White House. But such a trajectory is less likely for them now than it was under Bush. Herein lies what is at best a paradox and at worst a contradiction within Obama’s core base of support. The very group most likely to support him—black Americans—is the same group that is doing worse under him.

Read the Full Essay @ The Nation

Waking Up in A Post-Osama World

Waking Up in A Post-Osama World

by Mark Naison | Fordham University

I hope that those who lost loved ones on 9/11 feel some sense of closure from the death of Osama Bin Laden.

I know I am supposed to feel like celebrating, but I just feel a deep sense of sadness as I grapple with a flood of memories from the day the planes flew into the World Trade Center and the events that followed.

Watching the twin towers fall from the 6th Floor seminar room of Dealy Hall at Fordham, with students and colleagues, wondering how many people had died, and worrying if my daughter and son-in-law, both of whom worked downtown, were safe.

Driving back to Brooklyn across the Whitestone Bridge with tears in my eyes as I watched smoke pour out of the rubble where the twin towers once had been, a trip that I would not be able to take without crying for the next three months.

Getting home to discover that my daughter and son-in-law were safe, but that my wife, an elementary school principal would be staying long into the night to comfort a traumatized student population and staff, some of whom had loved one’s missing.

Joining more than 10,000 people in Park Slope in a march from my wife’s elementary school to the local firehouse, to create a memorial to the nine people in the local rescue company who died in the Twin Towers trying to save the lives of others.

Learning that three of the men I had coached against in CYO basketball for more than five years, firefighters all, had died that awful day, not being surprised at all that they had given their lives for others because when you are a fire fighter who grew up in Brooklyn that’s what you do.

Driving to and from work through Crown Heights, Brownsville and East New York and seeing American flags hanging from apartment windows and being displayed on cars in neighborhoods where I had never seen them before and realizing that this attack had united working class New Yorkers like nothing in my lifetime.

Sitting in my office with tears in my eyes playing a song by Travis Tritt called “ It’s a Great Day to Be Alive” and trying to convince myself that was, in fact, the case.

Feeling incredibly proud of how my fellow New Yorkers had come together to save lives and comfort one another during and after this unspeakable tragedy and wondering whether people around the country had a clue about who we were and why we could respond the way we did.

Now it is nearly eleven years later and the man who plotted this attack is dead, killed by American commandos.

If there is a lesson in all this, I am not sure what it is.

Meanwhile, I mourn those who died, in the attack and the wars that followed, and feel love and gratitude for my fellow New Yorkers, both those who made the ultimate sacrifice that fateful day and all of those who came together in solidarity after the damage was done to heal and ultimately rebuild a wounded city.

***

Mark Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham’s Urban Studies Program. He is the author of two books, Communists in Harlem During the Depression and White Boy: A Memoir. Naison is also co-director of the Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP). Research from the BAAHP will be published in a forthcoming collection of oral histories Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life From the 1930s to the 1960s.

Amy Goodman: ‘The Comeback Kid’ and the Kids Who Won’t

‘The Comeback Kid’ and the Kids Who Won’t
by Amy Goodman

President Barack Obama signed a slew of bills into law during the lame-duck session of Congress and was dubbed the “Comeback Kid” amid a flurry of fawning press reports. In the hail of this surprise bipartisanship, though, the one issue over which Democrats and Republicans always agree, war, was completely ignored. The war in Afghanistan is now the longest war in U.S. history, and 2010 has seen the highest number of U.S. and NATO soldiers killed.

As of this writing, 497 of the reported 709 coalition fatalities in 2010 were U.S. soldiers. The website iCasualties.org has carefully tracked the names of these dead. There is no comprehensive list of the Afghans killed. But one thing that’s clear: Those 497 U.S. soldiers, under the command of the “Comeback Kid,” won’t be coming back.

On Dec. 3, Commander in Chief Obama made a surprise visit to his troops in Afghanistan, greeting them and speaking at Bagram Air Base. Bagram is the air base built by the Soviet Union during that country’s failed invasion and occupation of Afghanistan. Now run by U.S. forces, it is also the site of a notorious detention facility. On Dec. 10, 2002, almost eight years to the day before Obama spoke there, a young Afghan man named Dilawar was beaten to death at Bagram. The ordeal of his wrongful arrest, torture and murder was documented in the Oscar-winning documentary by Alex Gibney, “Taxi to the Dark Side.” Dilawar was not the only one tortured and killed there by the U.S. military.

Obama told the troops: “We said we were going to break the Taliban’s momentum, and that’s what you’re doing. You’re going on the offense, tired of playing defense, targeting their leaders, pushing them out of their strongholds. Today we can be proud that there are fewer areas under Taliban control, and more Afghans have a chance to build a more hopeful future.”

Facts on the ground contradict his rosy assessment from many different directions. Maps made by the United Nations, showing the risk-level assessments of Afghanistan, were leaked to The Wall Street Journal. The maps described the risk to U.N. operations in every district of Afghanistan, rating them as “very high risk,” “high risk,” “medium risk” and “low risk.” The Journal reported that, between March and October 2010, the U.N. found that southern Afghanistan remained at “very high risk,” while 16 districts were upgraded to “high risk.” Areas deemed “low risk” shrank considerably.

Read the Full Essay @ TruthDig

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Amy Goodman is the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 800 stations in North America. She is the author of “Breaking the Sound Barrier,” recently released in paperback and now a New York Times best-seller.

Why Obama Weighed in on Behalf of Michael Vick

Why Obama Weighed in on Behalf of Michael Vick
by Ezra Klein | WashingtonPost.com

The weirdest story of the morning is President Obama's call to Jeffrey Lurie, the owner of the NFL Eagles. Two things apparently happened during the call: Obama praised the team for giving Michael Vick a second chance, and then he asked some questions about the Eagles' plans to use alternative-energy sources to power the stadium. Now the White House is spinning the call as the sort of everyday inquiry the president makes into eco-friendly architecture. "The president did place a call to Mr. Lurie to discuss plans for the use of alternative energy at Lincoln Financial Field, during which they spoke about that and other issues," Bill Burton told Mike Allen.

That explanation makes a lot less sense than the one Lurie himself offered, which was that Obama is "passionate" about the fact that "it's never a level playing field for prisoners when they get out of jail. And he was happy that we did something on such a national stage that showed our faith in giving someone a second chance after such a major downfall.''

Patting Lurie on the back for playing Vick might give the White House communications shop some headaches, but it's also worth doing: About one in 100 Americans are currently behind bars, and more were behind bars at some other point in time. And as this Pew report (pdf) shows in grim detail, the punishment doesn't stop when convicts leave prison: "Serving time reduces hourly wages for men by approximately 11 percent, annual employment by 9 weeks and annual earnings by 40 percent." And those numbers hide a serious racial tilt: "Incarceration depresses the total earnings of white males by 2 percent, of Hispanic males by 6 percent, and of black males by 9 percent."

Then there's the downstream effects on children and families ("Even in the year after the father is released, family income remains 15 percent lower than it was the year before incarceration"), and on cities with a high population of ex-convicts, and so on. As you might expect, the recession is making all this even worse.

That Obama would think it important that an NFL team made a major statement about the employability of ex-convicts makes sense. That he'd want to take a risk and throw his weight behind the decision by making that call is admirable. But for the White House to now say that the call was really about energy efficiency in stadium design both makes Obama look a bit Carteresque -- does he really have time to be worrying about the energy efficiency of football stadiums? -- and blunts whatever impact the call itself could have had. That was a call either worth making or not worth making, but it definitely wasn't worth making if the president wasn't willing to stand behind it.

Krugman on Obama's Wage Freeze

from the New York Times

Op-Ed Columnist
Freezing Out Hope
By Paul Krugman

After the Democratic “shellacking” in the midterm elections, everyone wondered how President Obama would respond. Would he show what he was made of? Would he stand firm for the values he believes in, even in the face of political adversity?

On Monday, we got the answer: he announced a pay freeze for federal workers. This was an announcement that had it all. It was transparently cynical; it was trivial in scale, but misguided in direction; and by making the announcement, Mr. Obama effectively conceded the policy argument to the very people who are seeking — successfully, it seems — to destroy him.

So I guess we are, in fact, seeing what Mr. Obama is made of.

About that pay freeze: the president likes to talk about “teachable moments.” Well, in this case he seems eager to teach Americans something false.

The truth is that America’s long-run deficit problem has nothing at all to do with overpaid federal workers. For one thing, those workers aren’t overpaid. Federal salaries are, on average, somewhat less than those of private-sector workers with equivalent qualifications. And, anyway, employee pay is only a small fraction of federal expenses; even cutting the payroll in half would reduce total spending less than 3 percent.

So freezing federal pay is cynical deficit-reduction theater. It’s a (literally) cheap trick that only sounds impressive to people who don’t know anything about budget realities. The actual savings, about $5 billion over two years, are chump change given the scale of the deficit.

Anyway, slashing federal spending at a time when the economy is depressed is exactly the wrong thing to do. Just ask Federal Reserve officials, who have lately been more or less pleading for some help in their efforts to promote faster job growth.

Meanwhile, there’s a real deficit issue on the table: whether tax cuts for the wealthy will, as Republicans demand, be extended. Just as a reminder, over the next 75 years the cost of making those tax cuts permanent would be roughly equal to the entire expected financial shortfall of Social Security. Mr. Obama’s pay ploy might, just might, have been justified if he had used the announcement of a freeze as an occasion to take a strong stand against Republican demands — to declare that at a time when deficits are an important issue, tax breaks for the wealthiest aren’t acceptable.

But he didn’t. Instead, he apparently intended the pay freeze announcement as a peace gesture to Republicans the day before a bipartisan summit. At that meeting, Mr. Obama, who has faced two years of complete scorched-earth opposition, declared that he had failed to reach out sufficiently to his implacable enemies. He did not, as far as anyone knows, wear a sign on his back saying “Kick me,” although he might as well have.

There were no comparable gestures from the other side. Instead, Senate Republicans declared that none of the rest of the legislation on the table — legislation that includes such things as a strategic arms treaty that’s vital to national security — would be acted on until the tax-cut issue was resolved, presumably on their terms.

It’s hard to escape the impression that Republicans have taken Mr. Obama’s measure — that they’re calling his bluff in the belief that he can be counted on to fold. And it’s also hard to escape the impression that they’re right.

The real question is what Mr. Obama and his inner circle are thinking. Do they really believe, after all this time, that gestures of appeasement to the G.O.P. will elicit a good-faith response?

What’s even more puzzling is the apparent indifference of the Obama team to the effect of such gestures on their supporters. One would have expected a candidate who rode the enthusiasm of activists to an upset victory in the Democratic primary to realize that this enthusiasm was an important asset. Instead, however, Mr. Obama almost seems as if he’s trying, systematically, to disappoint his once-fervent supporters, to convince the people who put him where he is that they made an embarrassing mistake.

Whatever is going on inside the White House, from the outside it looks like moral collapse — a complete failure of purpose and loss of direction.

So what are Democrats to do? The answer, increasingly, seems to be that they’ll have to strike out on their own. In particular, Democrats in Congress still have the ability to put their opponents on the spot — as they did on Thursday when they forced a vote on extending middle-class tax cuts, putting Republicans in the awkward position of voting against the middle class to safeguard tax cuts for the rich.

It would be much easier, of course, for Democrats to draw a line if Mr. Obama would do his part. But all indications are that the party will have to look elsewhere for the leadership it needs.

'Left of Black': Episode #10 featuring William Jelani Cobb & Bassey Ikpi

Left of Black: Episode # 10

w/Mark Anthony Neal

Monday, November 22, 2010

Host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal talks with William Jelani Cobb author of The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress and spoken-word poet Bassey Ikpi.

Cobb is Professor of History and Africana Studies at Rutgers University and the author of To The Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic and The Devil & Dave Chappelle and Other Essays.

The Nigerian born Ikpi, is a Washington, D.C. based mental health advocate and writer who blogs at Bassey World

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Also available for download from iTunes U

If Young People Don’t Wake Up Before The November Election: “Change” Is Dead In the Water

special to NewBlackMan

If Young People Don’t Wake Up Before The November Election:
“Change” Is Dead In the Water
by Mark Naison

One of the most amazing things about Barack Obama’s improbable run to the Presidency was the role of young people in energizing his campaign and persuading their skeptical elders that Obama was the best candidate in the field

I was one of those skeptics. So convinced was I that Barack Obama could never win a Presidential election that I supported an effort to draft Al Gore as the Democratic Presidential nominee and actually printed up stickers that said, Gore/Obama in 2008. My colleagues, most of them African American, were equally wary of an Obama nomination, fearful that it might bring a powerful undercurrent of white racism to the surface with a new intensity.

It was my students, and former students, most of them white and female, who convinced me, not only that Obama was the best candidate in the field, but that he could win, because he had inspired a wave of youthful idealism that I had not seen since the 60’s. These young women didn’t reach me primarily with their arguments, but with their passion and hard work. They were tireless in convincing their parents, classmates and neighbors to vote for Barack Obama, putting their friendships and family ties on the line to bring a great new day in the nation that would end the embarrassment of the Bush years and make America respected once again among the nations of the world.

This passion carried through the primaries and the general election, moving a mountain once thought unbridgeable in American politics and led to the election of our first Black president. I still remember the call I got from my former student Jenn Watts, who in her mid twenties was placed in charge of organizing Southern Indiana for the Obama campaign, telling me “ Dr Naison, we are going to paint this red state blue” and didn’t you know it, Indiana went for Obama by a small margin

Now, two years later, I wonder of that explosion of youth activism was a dream. With critical mid term elections coming up in November, what I get from the young people in my circle is indifference and apathy. Not one of my students or former students has sent a message to my email list urging them to vote in November. Not one has posted a message on Facebook pointing out the powerful issues at stake in the coming elections. Not one has handed me campaign literature, asked me to donate money to a candidate, or even brought the elections up as a subject worth discussing.

To me, given the issues at stake in the November election, this is both disturbing and astonishing. If young people voted for “Change” in 2008, what they are going to assure, by not voting in 2010, is complete Political Gridlock.

If Republicans win control of Congress in 2010, here is what it is likely to mean:

*No major investments in infrastructure repairs

*No national commitment to developing alternative energy sources or providing incentives to drivers, homeowners and businesses to become more energy efficient

*No construction of a high speed rail system comparable to those that exist in Europe and Asia

*An end to unemployment benefits for people experiencing long term joblessness

*No pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, even those who have been working and paying taxes for years

*No expansion of rights for gay workers and families

To put the issue more bluntly, the Obama administration, in its first two years, helped prevent a Depression, and created a health care plan which began to extend coverage to the nation’s more than 45 million uninsured people. What it was not able to do was begin to modernize the nation’s roads, rails and electrical grid, and make the investments in wind and solar energy necessary to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and retard Global Warming.

These are precisely the programs that are needed if our economy is going to be able to compete with other advanced nations and if we are going to be able to maintain our standard of living without putting intolerable pressure on the world’s resources.

In short, what is at stake in November is precisely the issues that young people ought to be getting excited about, as it is THEIR futures that are going to be compromised if progressive infrastructure policies, environmental policies, immigration policies and human rights policies are not introduced

So my students and former students, it’s time to get the fever for change back and make sure you vote in the November elections.

You still have a month left. The game isn’t over

Get off your butts and get everyone you know to join you at the polls.

The future you save may be your own.

***

Mark Naison is a political activist who was a member of CORE and SDS in the 1960s. He is a graduate of Columbia University and holds a Ph. D. in American History. Naison is a professor at Fordham University in New York. He is the author of 'White Boy, A Memoir'.

Race and Presidential Politics

from the Huffington Post

Who's Afraid of the Big Black Wolf? Race and Presidential Politics
by Imani Perry and Eddie Glaude, Jr.

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."-Theodore Roosevelt

We would do well to heed President's Roosevelt's words today. They assume a robust conception of democratic life - that the sentiments of Americans are not so easily manipulated; that our responsibility for our way of life extends beyond our own selfish concerns. That with rights come responsibilities, and with freedom comes duty.

The history of African American struggle has added to this view that everyday, ordinary folk can transform the order of things; that a gathering of committed persons can make a real difference and meaningfully extend the body of rights and the scope of freedom for all of us.

If we take seriously this democratic ideal, how must we evaluate this administration's stance on issues of race?

To be honest, President Obama is scared. He refuses to substantively engage the bare fact that race continues to haunt our society, even when pushed to do so by racial incidents or manufactured news stories. He appears to believe that his own race can serve as a proxy for genuine concern. But the truth needs to be told.

In his Urban League address, Obama dismissed the idea of a national dialogue about race (commissions, academic symposia, etc. are cast aside as ineffective). He suggested instead that genuine conversations about race should take place around water coolers at work and at dining room tables. While it is true this sort of talk is meaningful and needed, we must also publicly address the persistence of racial inequality. Refusing to do so renders the subject, to a certain extent at least, a private matter - a matter of our hearts instead of policy.

But to think about our "racial habits of the heart" as a private matter is to lose sight of how those habits - and the dispositions and distributions that follow from them -- impact policy. In dismissing a national response to the persistence of racial inequality, President Obama neglects to address a persistent failing in the promise of American democracy. Our loyalty to the American public, and our obligations as citizens, should lead us to hold him to account for this neglect. Civic virtue demands as much.

Some suggest that the racially tinged attacks on the President from the right, and the mere fact of his blackness should protect him from any critiques on issues of race. Such claims are absurd. As the President of the United States, Obama is entrusted with the responsibility to navigate us through all of our national challenges. Of course, we should be sensitive to his particular challenge as the first African American president, but we must be responsive to the millions of Americans whose fates are also highly determined by their racial group membership. Silence, to echo President Roosevelt, would be "morally treasonous."

Race continues to matter, and reveals its manipulations in employment, housing, health, education and criminal justice. African Americans have an unemployment rate that is double that of the national average.

African Americans can expect to live 6 years fewer than other Americans and there are nearly one million incarcerated Black people in the United States. The force of racial inequality is heightened further in the impact of this economic downturn. We might all be on a sinking ship, but for those under the deck, the water engulfs more quickly.

President Obama and those in his administration seem to have made the political calculation that any serious talk about racial inequality would doom his presidency. If he does talk about race, his method has been one of indirection: a "lifting all boats" strategy.

Such an approach renders invisible the way race continues to impact the life chances of fellow citizens and deepens our national neurosis. If we follow this path, Americans, irrespective of whether they or racist or not, will continue to make the choices that result in racial inequalities.

President Obama is not unique in this approach. In general, the ideal of democratic life is being held captive by triangulating politicians in the White House and the relentless pursuit of greed throughout the rest of the country. But who would have thought that under our first African American president, race matters would be worse?

So what is required of us in this moment?

The burden lies on us to refuse political calculation when it stands in the stead of honest dialogue and political responsibility -- whether it comes from Republicans or Democrats, tea partiers, or our President. The words of Walt Whitman come to mind: "a nation like ours...is not served by the best men only but sometimes more by those that provoke it--by the combat they arouse." We must address directly racial inequality in this country. And such an effort would not amount to a call for reparations, as John McWhorter suggests rather, it would be a genuine effort to usher in a new era for our nation.

The Sherrod Effect

special to NewBlackMan

The Sherrod Effect
by Stephane Dunn

Once again, “race & politics” is the sensational topic of the moment. It’s a familiar story about some politically incorrect language deemed racist and even worse it seems, reverse racism. Only the tale that Sherley Sherrod related at an NAACP Freedom Fund banquet about her encounter with a white farmer twenty-four years ago was hijacked by Andrew Breitbart. Even worse, Ms. Sherrod was forced to “resign” instantaneously. As she describes, Sherrod was asked to pull over on the side of the road and offer her resignation as requested by the ‘White House.” The longtime civil rights organization that had honored her quickly condemned Sherrod. The whole shameful affair, exploding on a voting day in Georgia, says a lot about the problematic dramas playing out around race and politics in the media.

Neither Sherrod’s USDA superiors, the White House, or the NAACP invested in the little research that would have led to the white farmer in question and the full video of Sherrod’s tale and speech. If they had, the truth could’ve spared them the backtracking and the embarrassment of looking like what they appear: terrified of the right and a reverse racism charge.

President Obama has the unique distinction of being president while being black and therefore continuously suspect. While former white presidents presumably had no trouble with making unbiased decisions regardless of their whiteness, Obama must prove that his racial identification doesn’t impact his thinking or his decision making. It’s a futile struggle as his detractors and his conservative political foes have already branded him, some suggesting he’s at turns anti-Semitic and racist.

In recent years, the NAACP has grappled with its own PR problem battling internal woes and leadership issues as it struggles for an effective twenty-first century identity. Both Obama and the organization share a side of the same dilemma; both want to convey their commitment to helping diverse oppressed people and building coalitions across racial and religious lines but at the same time, the NAACP needs to still be a relevant voice for black people while Obama is fighting to be taken as a sincere for-everybody man and not look threateningly black. This makes them easy prey for a Sherrod debacle particularly in a technological era that allows any average person the wherewithal to manipulate images, sound, and time according to their political intent and allegiances.

The key is to avoid becoming merely reactionary puppets on strings and not be held captive by every potentially controversial clip or speech that finds its way on television or the web. It is too easy to get caught up in the continuous media play that holds race hostage to the political machinations of the moment. This also takes space and attention away from having useful public dialogues about contemporary racial problems and the insidious play of racial politics that has only intensified in the battle for political power post-Obama’s election.

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Stephane Dunn, Ph.D, MFA, is currently an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Morehouse College. She has also taught at Ohio State University. A scholarly and creative writer, she specializes in film, popular culture, literature and African American studies. She is the author of articles and commentaries and the book, Baad Bitches & Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films (University of Illinois Press 2008). She can be reached at musesd@netzero.com.

William Jelani Cobb on the 'Angy Black Man'

President Obama Welcomes the Duke Blue Devils

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

No Shade, My Obama: Musings in Postracialism II

No Shade, My Obama: Musings in Postracialism II
by Regina Barnett

After a nearly three year drought, Aaron McGruder blessed the masses with a fresh season of The Boondocks. While hilarity ensued – “Dick Riding Obama” is what’s hot in them streets! – one has to look past the comedy and question the severity of numerous issues McGruder raises about yet another postracial “moment” in American history – the 2008 election of President Barack Obama. “Ehh.”

The show opens with an introduction by German filmmaker Werner Herzog (who makes a cameo appearance). Herzog visits Woodcrest in hopes of documenting the campaign of Barack Obama. He gathers the “usual suspects” – Huey, Riley, Granddad, Tom and Sara DuBois, and Thugnificent – to discuss the impact of Obama’s presidential campaign on race relations and America. What is most peculiar about the framing of this episode is Herzog’s covering of an American historical moment.

While it is no question that Obama is a global icon, I find it fascinating that McGruder selected a controversial German filmmaker to help construct the episode’s intent. Herzog’s presence in the show embodies the underlying social-political charges against Obama to be a communist, an outsider, and a threat to American democracy and life. Even more intrusive in our attempts to deconstruct this opening installment is the idea of foreign spectatorship and its (often presumptuous) racial associations based upon social trends and media imagery.

Herzog’s questioning speaks on two levels – the cynicism of a foreign spectator towards not only American racial politics but black American politics and the aloofness of the African American community in their associations with Obama strictly based on his skin color. This is made (painfully) obvious with Thugnificent’s inability to name the three branches of government while being interviewed by Bill Maher. In similar fashion to his interview with Herzog, Thugnificent discusses his social awakening and fervent support of Obama because of his blackness. While Herzog subtly points to his aloofness, Maher blatantly speaks to his political detachment and, pulling from his own intellect and white privilege, snobbishly remarks “if you are what black leadership is, I’m glad I’m a white man.”

Read the Full Essay @ Red Clay Scholar

Don't Call It a Comeback: Van Jones

On the eve of accepting top honors at the NAACP Image Awards, the former “green jobs czar” defends his record and talks comeback.

Van Jones Sets the Record Straight
by Sheryl Huggins Salomon

Tonight’s NAACP Image Awards telecast isn’t just about recognizing black Hollywood. The group is giving its President’s Award to Van Jones, the erstwhile national “green jobs czar” who was forced out of the Obama administration last year after he became a lightning rod for right-wing ire.

Jones, 41, may be “the most misunderstood man in America,” said NAACP president Benjamin Jealous in an op-ed released to media outlets earlier this week. In it, Jealous cited Jones’ instrumental role in passing the 2007 Green Jobs Act, and his help initiating the Oakland Green Jobs Corp. targeting low-income Californians.

“The real Van Jones story is about how a young leader became the father of the green jobs movement …. Far from the divisive caricature painted by some cable news outlets, Van has been one of America's most effective and inspiring bridge-builders.” Jealous also said.

For Jones, getting the award is the latest step that he has taken to kick off the next phase of his career. “I am looking forward to reintroducing myself to the American people and that’s exciting to have that opportunity,” he told The Root in an exclusive interview. Another step will be leading the Green Opportunity Initiative for the Center for American Progress. He’ll also be a distinguished visiting fellow at Princeton University's Center for African American Studies at its Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

The world will find that although Van Jones is looking for a second chance at public service, he’ll vehemently defend his record to date against all comers. Here’s what he told The Root on the eve of accepting the NAACP President’s Award:

Read the Full Interview @ The Root

Tavis Smiley, Barack Obama and the Black Left

Tavis Smiley Ends State of Black American Union Show;
Continues Media Lockdown of Obama's Black Left Critics
by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon

Tavis Smiley announced on January 6 that he was ending SOBU, the annual State of the Black Union. For ten years, SOBU drew black academics, civic, political, labor, religious and business leaders together each February for a day-long discussion of the current status and future hopes of African America. Each year thousands attended in person and millions more watched the event live on C-SPAN. SOBU had grown so large and popular that it spawned secondary events for the live attendees, along with book and lecture tours.

Tavis's cancellation announcement, a brief video on his tavistalks.com web site is long on folksy introductions, self-congratulation, thank-yous, and goodbyes. The reasons he offers for ending the annual event are brief and unconvincing. Ten years ago, he offers, “...there was only one syndicated black radio show... there was only one black TV network... we didn't have an African American president... (and) we no longer have to wait for one day a year in February to discuss issues that matter to us...” on TV.

Tavis is talking nonsense here. The so-called black TV and radio operations feel no obligation to field news operations because they don't view African Americans as a polity with opinions worth informing, sharing or airing. To these station owners, black or otherwise, African Americans are just another marketing target to be sliced, diced, age and income stratified and delivered up to corporate sponsors. A master marketer himself, Tavis knows this better than anybody.

As a marketing contraption SOBU was a runaway success. Corporate sponsors like Wal-Mart, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Exxon-Mobil and McDonalds got their logos and corporate messaging, and even some of their spokespeople in front of millions of black eyeballs. C-SPAN, which the cable TV monopolists offer as a pitiful substitute for the thousands of public, educational, governmental and local news channels they ought to be funding with the trillions they make of public subsidies, public resources and the use of the public rights of way, got to pose as a kind of “public service.” Of course SOBU manufactured and magnified the celebrity status and earning power of Tavis Smiley. SOBU spawned a number of spinoff ventures, sold millions of books and videos, and made household names in black America of people like Cornel West and Michael Eric Dyson.

But the State of the Black Union did things for millions of ordinary African Americans too, people with an urgent hunger to hear some of their unique experiences taken into account, their longings for peace abroad and economic justice at home validated, and more. Millions of ordinary African Americans privately question why jobs can't be created in their communities even in good economic times, and why the only model of urban economic development is moving poor people out and richer ones in. They know at close hand the devastating effects of our society's policy of racially selective policing, prosecution and mass incarceration, and marvel at why no discussion including their viewpoint on such matters can be found in the mass media, including the so-called black media.

Read the Full Essay @ Black Agenda Report

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.

Jimmy Carter, Rep. Joe Wilson and the Race Conversation

from The Takeaway (WNYC-FM)

Rep. Joe Wilson and the Race Conversation
by Todd Zwillich, Hsi-Chang Lin

Guests: Joe Hicks, Mark Anthony Neal
Thursday, September 17 2009

Despite hopes that electing our first black president would usher in a "post-racial" era, race has become a prominent issue in the Obama presidency. From overt cases – the Henry Louis Gates incident – to more coded and/or ambiguous examples – the "birther" movement, Representative Joe Wilson's outburst on the House floor – racial flare-ups have featured prominently in the first seven months of this, our first African-American-led administration. Now, the conversation about Wilson's yell last week has increasingly turned to its racial implications. Earlier this week, former President Jimmy Carter said Wilson's outburst was racist. (The White House disagreed.) For two perspectives on the way this conversation is playing out, we speak to Mark Anthony Neal, professor of African American Studies at Duke University, and Joe Hicks, talk show host for KFI Radio in Los Angeles, California.

Listen HERE

Is Conservative Obama Backlash the New Racism?

Is Conservative Obama Backlash the New Racism?
by Bakari Kitwana

The decision by parents across the country to keep their children home from school today rather than have students listen to the president's stay in school address follows an ugly pattern that began to emerge in the months since the election of Barack Obama as President of the United States. Conservative opposition to Obama in elite political and media circles in recent weeks has turned into routine disgruntled post-election partisan bickering to vile anti-American and racist rhetoric.

From opposition to President Obama's push for an economic stimulus bill in February, and disdain for his selection of Sonia Sotomayor to fill the Supreme Court vacancy, to contempt for his current campaign for health care reform, this voice of unreason has grown louder and more belligerent. The decision by conservative leaders to encourage parents to keep their children home from school today under the auspices that the president's message is hellbent on socialist indoctrination, as Florida GOP Chairman Jim Greer claimed, is the latest manifestation.

The National Keep Your Child at Home Day follows a trend that most notably included the anti- Obama barbs thrown by former US Vice President Dick Cheney back in April. A vice president of an immediately previous administration speaking out within months of the transition of power is something unheard of in recent US history. (Former VP Al Gore waited for eight months before criticizing President George H.W. Bush).

Cheney's departure from tradition was just the beginning. Since the new presidential administration has been underway, conservative leaders seem to have flipped from advocacy to derision on similar positions they supported under Republican presidents. The $700 billion Wall Street bailout was a necessary evil. But, for them, the $787 billion economic stimulus marked the end of capitalism. Support for the war in Iraq under President Bush was pro-American. Under Obama, the idea of not criticizing a war president has been entirely abandoned.

Read the Full Essay @ The Huffington Post

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Bakari Kitwana is senior media fellow at the Harvard Law -based think tank The Jamestown Project and the author of the forthcoming Hip-Hop Activism in the Obama Era.

Obama Speaks to the Kids...the Horror!

Seems Like a Parenting Problem To Me
by Mark Anthony Neal

President Obama’s planned address to the nation’s school children on Tuesday has generated criticism as some of his political opponents argue that he is using the opportunity to, at best, infect America’s classrooms with partisan politics and, at worst, indoctrinate them with a radical and “socialist” agenda. Never before has such an address been subject to the kind of scrutiny that the president’s rather innocuous call for good grades and a stay in school mentality has. There is little doubt that the uproar over the president’s address is just further evidence of efforts by some to try to delegitimize the presidency of Barack Obama—like those in the birthers movement—and a desire by political opponents to deny Obama any political goodwill in the midst of a heated debate over health care.

I’d like to suggest that some of the apprehensions surrounding the president’s speech are also the product of a general feeling among America’s parents that they have lost control of the message when it comes to instilling their children with homegrown values.

The idea of a sitting president addressing school children should be openly embraced by all citizens as an opportunity for the ultimate civics lesson. Yet some parents are planning to boycott schools the day of the president’s speech and some school districts are offering parents the chance to opt-out of the nationwide event. As one parent recently told “The Michael Berry Show,” a conservative talk radio show in Houston, TX, “my rights as a parent are being circumvented so this president can speak to my children. My children will not be going to school.” Rights as a parent being circumvented? Is the president discussing religion or some other issue that is clearly out of bounds in the nation’s public schools? What gives? Why is the president given a power that, Oklahoma State Senator Steve Russell describes as a “cult of personality… something you'd expect to see in North Korea or in Saddam Hussein's Iraq?” What explains such irrational responses?

I disagreed strongly with many of President Bush’s domestic and foreign policy initiatives, especially his version of educational reform, “No Child Left Behind.” Even as I waged battles with various school officials over “NCLB” and its impact on my children, I can’t imagine that, at any point, I would have been fearful of my children hearing a speech by the president behind such a policy. Like most parents, I send my children to school every day with the expectation that I have instilled them with an understanding of our family’s values and respect for others. Of course it’s an everyday battle, but whether it’s at the dinner table, while doing homework or while riding in the minivan afterschool, I, like many parents, use such opportunities to debrief, hopefully developing children who have the regular ability to accept information that is valuable to them while rejecting and respectfully disagreeing with that which is not. It’s an act of faith that is a regular part of good parenting; we simply can’t control all of the information that targets our children.

President Obama is an easy target for the fears many of us have about our children being bombarded daily my media images and subliminal advertising that we feel powerless to protect them from. Politics and irrational behavior aside, for those parents who are concerned and disturbed about the president’s address, the Disney Channel and X-Box are far more likely to indoctrinate their children.

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Mark Anthony Neal is Professor of Black Popular Culture in the Department of African & African American Studies at Duke University and the parent of two daughters, ages 11 and 6.