Yeah Obama, What About the Black Community?

from NewsOne.com

Hecklers at Obama Rally Expose Fault Lines in the Black Community
by Mark Anthony Neal

At a recent rally in Florida, Barack Obama's speech was interrupted by a group of young black male hecklers, members of the International People's Democratic Uhuru Movement, who held a banner asking, "What About the Black Community, Obama?" However inappropriate the interruption, the banner raises crucial questions about the very concept of "black community" in the early 21st century-as well as the many divisions an Obama candidacy poses for it.

A simple rejoinder to the young men who heckled Obama might be, "whose black community are you referring to?"

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"Race" and NASCAR

special to NewBlackMan

Sole ‘Nappy’ Head: Inside NASCAR’S Real Race’
By Stephane Dunn

I love all Yall mofos
i am that nigga
HAHAHA
Holla
PIMPALICIOUS
--text message attributed to white NASCAR official David Duke

A short time ago, Mauricia Grant, the former lone black woman NASCAR official, looked shell-shocked, talking about charges in her 245 million dollar lawsuit against NASCAR. I watched her on ESPN, soft-spoken, articulate, and traumatized it seemed to me as she spoke of her travails in a sport that seems frozen in good-ol-white boys-time warp. The story still hasn’t caused much of a ripple either in the black press at large or in the NASCAR-business-as-usual coverage on sports channels. Still, Grant’s descriptions of the sexist-racist ‘jokes’ she starred in made my scalp tingle a little. I have never gotten a text message ‘funny’ like the one allegedly from NASCAR official David Duke, who seemed to love to try out his black vernacular imitations and ‘Pimpalicious’ fancies on Grant, going as far, according to her as, feeling right at home addressing her with a “What up, my nigga?”

I listened to Grant, read the suit later on and found myself flashing back to past sojourns as the ‘only’ black woman and ‘exotic’ subject of interest. It was always disturbing on complicated levels even outside the professional world as an undergraduate and graduate student and later as one of only one or two blacks or sole black woman in one professional or social space or another. I remember this white guy back in college in southern Indiana. He was from Iowa and to him I was some strange bird of a paradise of sorts. He wasn’t that much different from quite a few other well-meaning white peers and professors. He was always trying to touch my hair or arm, wandering aloud about some mystical aspect of my hair care or secret ingredient to my brownness. Sometimes I laughed it off; other times I responded sarcastically or not at all or later with sharp rebuke ditto for the amazed reactions to my intelligence in class, the not so subtle extra validation of my credentials, etc. Most infuriating was that white folk so rarely got my discomfort no matter the fake laugh, mean look or whatever. My first teaching job revealed how difficult it is navigate an environment that in one sense wants to represent inclusiveness and progressiveness but on the other wants to pretend that it’s already there when it isn’t. A former Dean of mine discovered this after I told him that a particular white male student definitely had issues with having a black woman professor. It wasn’t until he called me all out my name in class that my Dean got it.

Grant’s narrative does more than bring on the flashbacks; it dramatically reflects both the long history of sexism and racism in sacredly held American sports and how far we still have to go beyond the “first black” coach, driver, official, owner, manager milestones to create atmospheres that have caught up to the multiplicity of the twenty-first century American population. Remember when baseball was really the great [white] American past time and the greats of the Negro League weren’t allowed to play with or against white players? Lest we forget too, Tiger wasn’t always the beloved golden golf star; a great part of the early interest in his story and still is, had everything to do with him crashing into an elite, very white, masculine sports space. That’s why that “chicken” reference after his first Master’s win happened. Grant’s current lawsuit against NASCAR for racially and sexually driven harassment is doubly telling for what it suggests about how American popular culture and sports culture in particular still nurtures spaces where it can continue its elitism and maintain a veil of intimacy about its inner workings and day to day politics.

This is so even with the Williams sisters in tennis who have endured all kinds of bold, racially and sexually inappropriate remarks about their physical bodies and prowess since arriving on the tennis scene. They continue not to receive the respect or attention they’re impressive feats and tennis would suggest. Imagine if we were talking about two white sister powerhouses who’d just met each other again in the Wimbledon finals? After graduating as only one of two women from the Los Angeles’ Urban League Automative Training Center, Grant was recruited under an alliance with Magic Johnson to bolster NASCAR’s diversity efforts and thus increase that fan base. Grant’s major duties involved checking the cars before, during, and after races to ensure compliance with NASCAR rules. She worked major annual racing events in her two year stint, including the 2007 BUSCH series.

Grant not only became NASCAR’s first African American female official but a poster child for NASCAR’s racially more inclusive space. But the old guard was still firmly in place and one lone black woman didn’t change that. Instead, Grant seems to have become the ‘color’ for more shameful contemporary plantation humor so much so that the real day to day impact of the Don Imus nappy headed ho comment and all the race relations talk in the media was that another one of her white male colleagues took to referring to her as ‘Nappy Headed Mo’.

It should be shocking to think that the chronicle of some twenty-three major alleged racial and sexual slurs on the part of supervisors, peers, and even some NASCAR fans could happen especially after the last twenty years when sexual harassment and discriminatory lawsuits have become staples in the media and twenty-first century professional workplace. To those of us who’ve been asked “how come the palms of your hands are white”, or had the hair on our heads subject to all kinds of ignorant questions and insults, it isn’t. Diversity is not as good as the look via a lone body of color or two or several; it’s only as good as the actual day-to-day spirit behind closed doors.

***

Stephane Dunn is a professor at Morehouse College and author of Baad ‘Bitches’ & Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films (August 2008). See her at Charis Bookstore in Little Five Points (Atlanta, GA), September 12, 2008, 8:00-9:30 pm.

Race Card? John L. Jackson, Jr. Responds

From the Chronicle of Higher Education

Race Cards and the Race for the White House
by John L. Jackson, Jr.

McCain's camp went on the racial offensive this week, accusing Barack Obama of playing "the race card" in recent speeches and characterizing some of Obama's statements as "divisive, negative, shameful, and wrong."

The remarks in question pivot on Obama's claim that Republicans might attempt to engage in race-based and xenophobic fearmongering to win the election against him - that they might point out his foreign-sounding name and subtly remind voters how much he "doesn't look like all those other presidents on dollar bills" (a clear nod to his racial difference).

I've already commented on this kind of accusation before, when Dennis Miller went off on Obama for a similar statement back on June 20th.

Miller and McCain want to argue that Obama is calling McCain and the Republicans a bunch of racists and that unless Obama has explicit proof about some cabal of Republican strategists prodding people with explicit invocations of Obama's racial identity, he is disingenuously injecting race into the election for political gain.

I can see why they would make that case, but race was already a part of the election. It always is, even when a black candidate isn't running for office. So, invoking race explicitly isn't about introducing a foreign substance into the mix. It just recalibrates the nature of that inclusion.

Read the Full Essay @

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John L. Jackson Jr. is an associate professor of communication and anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include Racial Paranoia: The Unintended Consequences of Political Correctness (2008), Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity (2005), and Harlemworld: Doing Race and Class in Contemporary Black America (2001).

The Middle of the Aisle Shuffle

from NewsOne.com/Left of Black

FISA VOTE UNDERSCORES OBAMA’S MOVE TO THE CENTER
by Mark Anthony Neal

Throughout his presidential run, Barack Obama’s meandering around the political center has long been attributed to his political pragmatism. In recent weeks, however, beginning with Obama's Father’s Day attack on black men and his subsequent shift on FISA (the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act), it has been easy to read Obama as placating some amorphous political center.

Barack Obama's "sudden" move towards the political center exposes the rather pronounced gap between the Illinois senator's true political identity and the symbolic meanings that so many have attached to his candidacy.

Obama’s Republican opponents, of course, have tried in earnest to depict him as the most liberal member of the United States Senate. Indeed, Obama’s voting record is fair game in highlighting legitimate ideological differences between the two major presidential candidates. But to portray Obama as a traditional left of liberal politician is to distort the realities of the contemporary political landscape.

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Post Trauma Blues? John Coltrane vs. Lil Wayne

from CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com

A Love Supreme? John Coltrane, Lil Wayne and the Post-Trauma Blues
by Mark Anthony Neal

In his recent essay "Jazz and Male Blackness", scholar and musician Joao H. Costa Vargas describes the jam sessions held at The World Stage, a storefront workshop and performance space held at Leimart Park in South Central Los Angeles. The workshop was founded in the early 1990s by the late legendary jazz drummer Billy Higgins and spoken word poet Kamau Daaood. In the essay Costa Vargas examines the myriad ways that concepts of black masculinity are rendered, maintained, protected and re-imagined, all in the context of the artistic culture that the workshop facilitates. If there is a model of black masculine aesthetics that is more often than not recalled at the World Stage, it is that of John Coltrane. According to Costa Vargas, "Many of the Stage's musicians attempt to evoke the mood produced by John Coltrane's later performances...Fundamentally, most musicians try to perform Coltrane's spiritual intensity and musical seriousness through their personal renditions of tunes."

That John Coltrane would serve as a centerpiece at the World Stage and like-minded artistic collectives is not surprising, as Coltrane has been lionized by Black Arts communities as few others have been. Recalling Gil Scott Heron's "Lady Day and John Coltrane" ("until our hero rides in, rides in, on his saxophone") or Chuck D's assertion that critics treat him like "Coltrane/insane" the saxophonist has, in some sectors, been elevated to superhero status alongside male contemporaries like El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X) and Huey Newton.

Yet the high regard that Coltrane is held is somewhat ironic, given that few, except die-hard fans, know much about the saxophonist's personal life. Whereas figures like Malcolm X, Huey Newton and even jazz peers like Miles Davis, Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington were highly visible and celebrities in their own right, Coltrane's existed on a much lower public register. Coltrane's transcendent stature instead has much to do with many of the iconic photographs taken of him in later years (Coltrane was only 40 when he died in 1967), where his image became a literal metaphor for artistic and spiritual integrity. And then of course there was the music, especially signature mid-1960s recordings like "Alabama" and A Love Supreme in which Coltrane seemed to draw directly from the traumatic realities of Black America.

Read the Full Essay @

Dreams of Obama in Ghana

special to NewBlackMan

Racializing Obama while Creating Diaspora in Ghana
by Lee D. Baker

A warm humid breeze blew as the burnt orange sun set quickly in the tony neighborhood of East Legon, one of the ever-expanding “suburbs” of Ghana’s capital city of Accra. In this neighborhood, multi-million-dollar mansions belonging to radio executives and professional soccer players tower over street-corner abodes refashioned out of steel cargo ship containers that do double-duty as shops in the morning and sleeping quarters in the evening. This evening, I was dining alone at a busy open-air café. Next to me was a group of lovely, loquacious ladies whose audible volume increased as the liquid volume in their carafes decreased. It was obviously girls’ night out and these middle-aged, middle-class women were paying me no mind as I ate my grilled Tilapia and banku. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I heard a gunshot. Most in the restaurant whooped and some patrons let out half-hearted “screams,” but no one looked too concerned. I ducked under the table.

Within seconds, the skies opened up and tropical, torrential rain bucketed from the now black sky. The forceful rain created random columns of water that pierced through the otherwise sturdy thatched roof. No one was concerned. Waitresses deftly donned plastic bags over their hair, and customers quickly arranged tables and chairs in an odd but orderly pattern that enabled everyone to keep eating without getting soaked. Elbows touched, strangers’ hips were flush, and sticky backs pressed up against each other.

In Ghana, personal space is a luxury that is willingly sacrificed to accommodate more people, and surrendering it is de rigueur when it comes to taking public transportation; everyday millions of Ghanaians cram as many people as physically possible into vans that have been refashioned from European delivery trucks. They call the vans tro-tros; I call them crowded.

Just as I was getting a little uncomfortable trying to eat without elbowing my neighbor, a catchy one-drop reggae tune came bounding over the speakers. Just as the hook let loose, people started bobbing their heads, moving their shoulders, humming, and looking at me. I was stunned when the backup vocals pulsated the words: Barack, Barack, Obama, Barack, Barack, Obama. I just grinned with utter approval. At once, I became very comfortable as I enjoyed the music, the warmth, and the rain. Halfway through the song, the power went out. It was pitch dark and still pouring. Immediately, people took out cell phones and the entire restaurant was aglow with the liquid crystal diodes of a dozen or so cell phones that looked like fireflies dancing and darting around.

Despite getting clipped by a power outage, that experience was one of those rare and tender moments when people from different parts of the diaspora reach out, embrace, and bond with their brothers and sisters in cultural and political solidarity. In Ghana, these moments are very, very rare; despite the fact that thousands of African American tourists visit Ghana every year to ostensibly “go home,” connect, bond, and inhabit mother Africa.

I often like to say that Ghana is the only place in the world where I can be a rich white man, but that is changing as the dollar tanks, Ghana’s economy improves, and the light-skinned Barack Obama becomes the international standard bearer for the African in African American. In general, most Ghanaians have a fairly narrow understanding of modern blackness. If you are not from Nigeria, Liberia, Mali or another sub-Saharan African country, you are simply Obruni, or translated: a white person.

Many of the students that I bring to Ghana come to explicitly find their African roots, and instead they find the impacts of colonialism and structural adjustment. As one can imagine, these students are horrified when a market person affectionately hails one of them: “white man, please come.”

Ghanaian perceptions of diasporic blacks have been slowly changing in the wake of closer economic ties to Caribbean countries, globalization, mass media, and the international appeal of hip-hop. In recent months, however, the processes have quickened their pace, thanks in large part to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign and his self-appointed and definitely unofficial director of field operations in Ghana: Blakk Rasta. He is the man who wrote and performed both the dancehall and crunk version of this seriously funky tune: Barack Obama. Besides being one of Ghana’s most widely recognized and acclaimed reggae musicians, Blakk Rasta hosts a widely popular, albeit controversial, talk-radio show where he holds sway on many topics– first and foremost of late- Barack Obama.

Between the single, the video, and his radio show, Blakk Rasta has done more than anyone to raise the awareness of Barack Obama’s candidacy in Ghana, and by extension, a broader understanding of blackness, the diaspora, and “One Love for One Africa.” Although it’s a far cry from Kwame Nkrumah’s call for pan-African liberation, Blakk Rasta articulates a sincere call for a unified diaspora that loves and respects each other.

The son of devout Muslims, he was born Abubakar Ahmed in 1974 in the northern city of Tamale. Growing up poor in Moshie-Zongo, he was a high achieving student who excelled in the arts and sciences. As he completed his bachelor’s degree in land economy from Kwame Nkrumah University, he turned to the reggae scene, embraced Rastafari, and pursued writing, producing, and performing music with a decidedly political edge, which also frames his unique approach to talk radio.

Equal parts preacher, teacher, and pundit, his show often consists of playing music, turning the volume down, pontificating for awhile, and turning the music back up, only to randomly turn it back down to take a call or two, and then turning the music back up, then he turns it back down to inform the public about some important upcoming event or plug a product, then he turns up the music one more time. His show is quite entertaining, but he does push everyone’s buttons when he speaks “the truth,” which of course is the truth according to Blakk Rasta. Although I find his views on women unacceptable, everyone finds something to like and dislike in his philosophy. And, I have to assume, that is the point: to push and pull, educate and liberate. Like any good teacher, he wants you to question your assumptions. Even among his loyal fans, no one agrees with everything he says, but even his staunchest critics learn something new. Employing his well-rehearsed locally-acquired foreign accent, his Jamaican patois is fast, his mind is nimble, and his perspectives range from really out there to spot on.

I had the privilege of interviewing Blakk Rasta after one of his radio shows. In the lobby of Joy FM, in the heart of Accra’s computer and information district, I sat down for a free-ranging and very enlightening conversation. The pretext, of course, was how Obama was racialized in Africa, but the conversations covered issues of strong women, the family, race, racism, the African diaspora, black on black violence, colonialism, and the exploitation of house help in Ghana. He is very, very smart. Although he had his phone on vibrate, I could tell it was ringing non-stop. As we continued our conversation, a bevy of young men respectfully formed around us. Some were trying to ply him with their own reggae tunes, others were adoring fans, while another was a radio personality from Toronto, Canada who was there to compare notes about the international reggae scene.

I asked him how he approached his popular radio show:

Blakk Rasta: There are some who go on the radio and just play reggae music and shout ‘Jah, Jah, Rastafari’ and go away-- that is not right. My conscience would not set me free when my brothers are fighting in Sudan. . . If I were to come on the radio and be a preacher, no one would listen to me, but through reggae music I play it, entertain them, and weave these things in and it is catching on with the people. It has never happened in this country. That is why I get death threats, a whole lot of death threats. Lee, I don’t really mind if my life is taken away and Africa unites- that is fine. If I am supposed to be a sacrificial lamb for the unity of Africa, so be it. I would smile wherever I am. If taking me away makes Africa worse, I will not go and will work in my own small way to unite Africa. People are saying I am getting political, but I don’t vote and I am not political. If party A does something wrong, I let them know it’s wrong, but the way I teach, people don’t like it because it is very militant and very raw. I speak the truth and do not believe in euphemisms. If the man is dead, he is dead; he hasn’t kicked any bucket. . .

The message is going on and on, and now I have a whole lot of sponsors on my show and people are saying that this guy is the modern-day Marcus Garvey. These accolades are just too big for me, but it makes me appreciate the fact that the people are in for the truth. I try to tell people that I am just an insignificant person occupying a small space, but the message is going out loud and clear. Maybe that is why I was brought here, because all of my schoolmates are sitting in air conditioned offices taking money from the government. That is not my thing; my thing is to talk my people.

Trying to hone in on how Barack Obama is racialized in West Africa, I asked Blakk Rasta how people perceived their lighter-skinned African Brother:

BR: We consider him African, but he is black because the whole world considers him black. So, we consider him black, but also African. So many people didn’t even know who Barack was, until I came up with that song, Barack Obama, and people started realizing, oh, who is this? And even still, people just like the music and don’t know exactly what the music is talking about. Some people see a picture of Obama, and say to me that he is not even black, and I have to tell them that he is a black man like you and me.

On this one point, Blakk Rasta has stayed remarkably on message, and he has hammered that point home, in the video, on the single, throughout his radio broadcast, and at just about any opportunity he gets. Although the song itself belies the message will.i.am advanced in his viral internet smash hit “Yes, We Can,” you sure can dance to it! Blakk Rasta takes a decidedly more macabre perspective with his wicked rhymes: Too long they disrespect blacks and Africans combine. And black people flesh and blood the Ku Klux Klan love to dine. Watch out Barack Obama and intensify your power turbine. Or else brethren Obama, your dark days will never sublime.

Although it is difficult to ferret out the cause from the effect, the way Blakk Rasta has racialized Barack here in Ghana has had a meaningful impact on the way many Ghanaians perceive blackness and their connection to the diaspora. Or, it just could have felt that way as I looked around me in the din of a torrential down pour. Either way, it was still a meaningful moment.

***

Lee D. Baker is Dean of Academic Affairs, Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, Duke University.

A Dark Knight for Dark Days

special to NewBlackMan

Dark Knight’ : A Movie for the Times
By Stephane Dunn

I exercise my deepest hero longings by escaping into the fantasy ones on the big screen. Unsurprisingly then, I am especially drawn to Marvel’s unlimited vault of superheroes whose mission is to save the world or at least their city from hopelessness or the bad guys. So I braved the crowded parking lots and lines and dragged along a reluctant, anti-Batman lover to see Dark Knight. It would be too easy to get sidetracked by the tragic aura surrounding this newest Batman flick. Heath Leger’s tragic death at twenty-six has naturally stirred up more hype than Marvel’s big budget superhero flicks usually already do. Before his death, word was already circulating around Hollywood that Ledger had turned in a stunningly brilliant turn as ‘the Joker’ a role imbued with more of the dark psychotic edge of the original comic strip’s character. The hype about that performance is true so much so that the fact of his death adds pathos amid the bleak, edgy undertones of the character but does not overshadow the fact that Ledger makes the Joker alone stand out. Yet, there’s more to appreciate about Dark Knight beyond, even, the record breaking $166 million plus that it took in at the box office during this first weekend out. The action sequences, character complexity and fine performances all around from Christian Bale (Batman), Michael Caine, Morgan Freeman, Aaron Eckhart (Harvey Dent) and of course Ledger’s movie stealing Joker performance are but a few more reasons why this latest Batman film is a stand out. Sitting at the movie last Saturday night, I alternately cringed, laughed, and became just plain enthralled by the sophisticated treatment of that almost clichéd good vs. evil staple that defines superhero comics and films.

In these scary economic and cultural times and this very historic but volatile political year, the inspiration that the Obama ‘Change’ and unifying ‘yes, we can’ spirit stirred finds an unlikely but perfect parallel in Gotham city’s need for a hero who will stand strong against corruption and evil and prove worthy of the people’s hope. Dark Knight is more than a literal reference to the Batman; the film turns on the shadowy darkness that frames batman, the best scenes, and the creepy Joker, utterly freakish in the distorted white clown paint masking his face. The title also signifies on the dark times as Gotham is overrun by murder, mayhem, fear, and inhumanity-the Joker’s areas of specialization.

In this second film, director and co-screen writer Christopher Nolan, offers a powerful meditation on the responsibility of superhero, political leaders, and somebody else-the people themselves-to stand firm in the good they yearn for and actively participate in challenging evil and corruption. While the film’s good political guy-Harvey Dent-is transformed by the Joker’s evil machinations into the bitter, two faced man at film’s end, one scene dramatically emphasizes two very compelling ideas: no hero can truly bear the weight of fighting for the good and carrying the people’s hope all the time and in the end, the people too must prove worthy of the sacrifices the good guys and the hero make. The Joker’s whole demonic project revolves around corrupting what he firmly believes is that rare courageous goodness, which political newcomer, DA Harvey Dent and of course Batman represent. Two questions hovers over the film, the first even for Batman early on: Is good guy Harvey Dent for real and will he and Batman hold to their integrity and courage under the Joker’s onslaught and the people’s growing fear? The same questions were asked about Obama and continue to be both in numerous political analyses in the media and in private. Not a few folk, and I admit now me too-have pondered these questions while hoping that Obama will indeed prove a hero worthy of the hope and the hype. The film could’ve left it at those questions but instead it dramatizes how we hope-mongers must also embody the hopefulness we want our heroes to live up to. Thus, the people of Gotham are tested as well.

The ever creative Joker gets on a role having turned the good Harvey Dent into a vengeful murderer. Two groups of people-one a boat full of inmates –and another, a crowded boat of Gotham’s citizens must decide to pull the key out of the detonator and doom the other boat in just the few minutes left before midnight. The camera cuts back and forth between the two boats of people arguing over whether to do it or not. The loudmouths among the ‘civilized’ people argue that the others are “thieves and murders” and thus their lives are not as important as Gotham’s ‘good’ citizens. The inmates on their boat are held back only by the guard’s guns. The camera repeatedly closes in on the silent figure of one inmate in particular, a huge, menacing looking bald headed black man (Tommy ‘Tiny’ Lister in usual form) who does what the director knows he’ll do: make us very sure that he’s gonna start throwing folk around and be the one turn the key. Before too long he steps to the puny looking administrative guy and coolly suggests that he give him the detonator so he can do what must be done. He picks up the ticking device. At the same time, on the other boat, an obnoxious middle aged white man, one of the loudmouths, declares that he’ll do what no one has the guts to do: turn that key. Hi picks it up and holds it in his hand as the other passengers stare at him, still afraid that the other folk might still blown them all to, well, hell, in the minute left until midnight. If you’re like Batman, ultimately a believer in folks’ enduring humanity you know what happens. If you’re the Machiavellian Joker, well, your conclusion has a fifty-fifty possibility too.

What does this fantasy movie have to do with a real possible ‘dark knight’ –no pun intended- and a much hyped real life political year? The catch words are eerily similar-positive change, hope, dream-we are like the people of Gotham. We know there’s no Batman but we desperately want a Harvey Dent-an attractive, skilled, courageous, noble, smart, smooth talker who can stare corruption down and make us believe that positive change is possible. The movie ends in about two and half hours but we can take the message out of the theatre. It’s not enough to want heroes or heroic figures cause as much as we are inspired by them, we also must inspire and support them. That’s the only way their noble intentions actually have a chance to stand strong when the nay saying, ‘agents of chaos’ as the Joker calls himself, come up against them.

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Stephane Dunn is a writer and author of "Baad Bitches & Sassy Supermamas: Black Power Action Films" (August 2008). She is also an assistant professor at Morehouse College.