Teena Marie and #BlackTwitter

Twitter conversations around singer's death speak to the lack of trust African-Americans have in mainstream media.

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Teena Marie and #BlackTwitter
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21

I was doing my usual Sunday night multi-tasking of trying to meet a writing deadline, following the late NFL scores and eavesdropping on Twitter when I first heard the news about the death of legendary R&B singer Teena Marie. That Twitter has become a source of breaking news is not surprising — many producers and bookers from mainstream news sources from CNN to NPR have perches on Twitter. But Twitter also has the propensity to get the story wrong and to spread mis-information (as opposed to government sponsored dis-information), including ill-conceived rumors about the deaths of celebrities.

This later dynamic takes on an added emphasis within the phenomenon of #BlackTwitter — cited many times this past year for its ability to dictate what are the most popular trends on Twitter to the obliviousness of most non-Black Twitter users. Only months ago Twitter announced that Bill Cosby had died, which Cosby rebutted via his own Twitter account @BillCosby. And accordingly many within #BlackTwitter were skeptical and suspicious even after Ronald Isley announced Marie’s death on Twitter (and yes, even the recently incarcerated Mr. Biggs is on Twitter) and it was announced on Philadelphia’s WDAS.

Amidst what is certainly a tragedy for Ms. Marie’s family and for pop music in general, the #BlackTwitter response to Ms. Marie was a marvel to witness. Many resisted outright that Ms. Marie had died — citing Ms. Marie’s own Twitter account which was last used on Christmas Day — awaiting official word from a reputable news source, even as many also disregarded traditional sources like CNN as being viable to deliver news that was meaningful to Black audiences.

Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21

To Spank or Not to Spank? A Black Parents' Dilemma

Should spanking be a last resort or first line of defense?

Whup that Ass? To Spank or Not to Spank
by Mark Anthony Neal | TheLoop21

Recently, journalist Roland Martin and writer and critic Toure engaged in a spirited exchange on Twitter about spanking. It was pleasing to see two Black man talking publicly about the travails of parenting. Spanking though, is a subject that often transcends simple discussions about parenting, leading into the realm of physical abuse. I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t regularly conflicted about when to spank or not, or whether spanking is appropriate at all.

Cards on the table, my mother used to whup my ass. My mother was the proverbial yeller and beater and I can’t say that my mother’s disciplinary skills ever served as a deterrent to my behavior, which was more along the lines of “stupid shit” rather than innate evil. My father on the other hand only spanked me once to my recollection.

The most memorable occasions associated with my parents’ discipline were times when they didn’t spank, like when my father purposely slapped a wall about 6 inches from my head as a teen-ager or when my mother showed up at a touch football game when I was ten, belt in hand, looking for me. Knowing that I should have been the house before dark, I took an alternative route back to the apartment. The subsequent embarrassment I experienced at the constant retelling by my peers of the incident was enough of a future deterrent.

Black parents have long been conflicted about spanking, if only because of the violence that was so often directed at Black bodies during slavery and after. During the era of legal segregation, Black parents often had to aggressively discipline their children so that their children would never fail to remember the unspoken rules of survival in a racist society, particularly in the South. In other words, Black parents had to lovingly “beat that ass” to make sure their sons, for example, didn’t engage in dangerous acts, such as reckless eyeballing (looking at White folk directly in their eyes), that could get them killed. As such, spanking has become part of the fabric of some Black communities.

Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21

NBM Saturday Edition: The 'Essence' of Our Blackness?

NBM Saturday Edition
The ‘Essence’ of Our Blackness?
by Mark Anthony Neal

I first started reading Essence Magazine as a 16-year-old living in the Bronx. Of course I was initially drawn to the magazine because of the pretty black women within its pages, but the magazine, then under the direction of Susan Taylor, offered so much more for my burgeoning political sensibilities. Building on an editorial foundation laid out by Marcia Ann Gillespie—who would later edit Ms. Magazine--the Essence Magazine that existed in the early 1980s was where I would be first introduced to Audre Lorde, via a published conversation between Lorde and James Baldwin. It was in the pages of that Essence that I got updated on the political exploits of Kwame Toure (Stokley Carmichael) and provided a portrait of Louis Farrakhan before the controversies associated with Jessie Jackson’s first presidential campaign in 1984. I came of age thinking that Essence Magazine in contrast to Ebony magazine, was my magazine—Black America’s magazine. That the magazine was black owned and black directed only added to its allure. That Essence magazine hasn’t existed for a long, long time.

Essence Magazine has been in the news recently because of its decision to hire the magazine’s first white fashion editor. Former Essence fashion editor Michaela angela Davis perhaps captured initial emotions best, telling Clutch Magazine “I feel like a girlfriend has died.” But beyond this sense of loss, what really is at stake when a “black” magazine, no longer black owned, but still critically representative to our communities’ sense of themselves, simply becomes another periodical. Is there a response beyond simply decrying an editorial decision, that more or less is fully in-line with the magazine’s general editorial direction for the last decade?

One of the by-products of the Obama era is that there has been added pressure on black institutions to show that they are as progressive as the whites, who broke racial ranks to vote for Barack Obama in the 2008 Presidential election. Part of the initial response to the Shirley Sherrod controversy was rooted in this idea that Black America was to hold themselves as accountable for racist behavior as they hold whites accountable. It is in this context that CNN and TVOne contributor Roland Martin has suggested that Essence Magazine’s decision to hire Ellianna Placas as fashion editor is evidence of their “progressive” racial politics.



But there is nothing progressive about whites directing or overseeing black intellectual and cultural production. Historically, as journalist Esther Armah has suggested, whites have always been in position to sign off on how Blackness would enter the marketplaces of consumption and public opinion. Indeed what generated pride within Black America when Essence Magazine was launched in 1971 was the idea that this it offered an opportunity for black control of black imagery. As such the idea of a white fashion editor at Essence or a black themed magazine owned by a white owned global corporation seems too much like a long established status-quo, as opposed to anything that needs to be celebrated or worse still, labeled as progressive.

But the decision by Essence Magazine also speaks volumes about a general trend that challenges the professional capabilities of black women. When Honoree Fanonne Jeffers laments that “Essence started using any excuse to erode Black women’s sense of strength” she captures the sense of betrayal that black women have experienced, in relation to their partnerships with black men and the broader professional world. In the backdrop of a solitary white woman serving as fashion editor for a formerly black owned magazine, is the fact that black women are marginalized in the editorial leadership of mainstream journals and magazines, a state that is far more deserving of public outrage than the hiring of said solitary white woman at Essence Magazine.

To echo Jeffers’s point, in the decade since Time Warner acquired 49% of Essence Magazine, purchasing the remaining 51% in 2005, the magazine’s editorial direction seems intent on damaging the emotional psyches of black women and girls, if only present itself as the self-help haven for those same black women and girls, in an attempt to increase the magazine’s circulation. This is a time tested strategy in magazine culture, which in concert with the advertising industry, have actively sought to sell magazines to women by highlighting their imperfections—literally from the highlights in their hair to the shade of their toe-nails. All magazines have concerns about circulation, but what made Essence Magazine so special is that it was always above simply selling magazines.

Now Essence is just another magazine (like BET is just another television network) and our response to its on-going editorial direction, should reflect just that. The glossy colorful print gems that so many of us read, even a decade ago, reflect an industry trying to hold on to its past. The future has long been in social media and the blogosphere, where black women have been able—more than in any historical period—to fashion a view of themselves that they can take ownership of. This a point that commentator Felicia Pride recently made at theLoop21.com where she wrote, “I turned to the Internet and found online publications like Clutch…the online magazine is focused on ‘ushering in the new era for young, contemporary women of color.’ Visually appealing. Wide-ranging. Multicultural. Forward-moving. Me. And so many others like me.” 



“Girlfriend” has died—we can mourn her, lament her passing, but now we must move on.