In a year marked by what I didn’t write about—The death of Luther Vandross, Kanye West's Late Registration and the murder of Stanley “Tookie Williams” among them—these are the best of the pieces that did make it to “print”. Also not included are any of the essays blogged at NewBlackMan–I still very much consider my blog writing as an examples of me “thinking out loud”.
***
1. Rhythm and Bullshit? (Parts One, Two, Three)
The inspiration for this series on contemporary R&B was the commentary I provided for two documentaries—John Akomfrah’s Urban Soul (2004) and part 6 of the BBC’s Soul Deep (2005) series. There are folk who do a great job discussing the aesthetics of black music and others who do well discussing the business of black music. This was attempt to do both.
Rhythm and Bullshit?: The Slow Decline of R&B, Part Two
New Jack Swing, Mary J. Blige and the Coming Hegemony of Hip-Hop
Rhythm and Bullshit?: The Slow Decline of R&B, Part Three
Media Conglomeration, Label Consolidation, and Payola
2. Critical Noir: Songs of the Sad Minstrel
This was attempt to put the legacy of me like Bert Williams and Lincoln Perry (Stepin’ Fechit) in conversation with hip-hop. Despite my comments about John Smith (Lil’ Jon), I firmly believe that we need to look past the surface of the stereotypes so often react to.
3. Can Hip-Hop BE?: A Review of Common’s Be
This is a now forty-year-old father of two little girls coming to terms with his relationship with hip-hop culture and rap music.
4. Freedom Summer Remembered: A Conversation with Denise Nicholas
I’ve been a fan of Denise Nichols since I was seven—a school-boy crush derived from repeats of Room 222. Not only beautiful, this brilliant woman was part of the swirl that changed the world during the Civil Rights movement. Her fictionalized account of those days brings that era to life for the hip-hop generation.
5. A Nigger Un-Reconstructed: The Legacy of Richard Pryor
I really wanted to make plain the genius of this man and to attempt, to give another view of Pryor’s relationship to the word “nigger”
6. Critical Noir: Daughters of Sister Outsider
&
Critical Noir: Can Hip-Hop Be Feminist?
These are the final two columns that I wrote for AOL Black Voices, before they dropped my column. The pieces are symbolic of the disconnect between my work as a public intellectual and corporate-styled on-line magazines, solely designed to deliver “black” consumers to advertisers.
7. The Next Great "...(Whatever)" : John Legend
&
A Change Done Come: Leela James Sidesteps the Rhythm & Bull
I had very little chance to do pure music criticism, after logging nearly 200 reviews over the past five years for Popmatters.com and SeeingBlack.com. These are the best of music reviews that I did this year.
8. Critical Noir: A Hustler's Legacy
There are so many of our genius that deserved to be given a full form analysis—Phyllis Hyman, Etheridge Knight, Donny Hathaway are just the one that come to mind at the moment. Much praise to Eddie B. Allen for bringing Donald Goines to life.
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Saturday, December 24, 2005
The Soul Christmas Mix-Tape
The Soul Christmas Mix-Tape
by Mark Anthony Neal
As a child growing up in the “boogie down” Bronx in the early 1970s, there was very little illusion that Christmas Day would bring the snowy white scenes that were so often depicted on holiday greeting cards. I always understood that the toys and things that I peeped in the Sears and Spiegel catalogs were not gonna make it to my apartment come Christmas morning. Instead, so much of the joy I took from Christmas came from the music.
Now on the other side of childhood, calls for “joy” and “peace on earth” ring hollow when coming from some department store chain only a week after the beginning of autumn. But like my childhood, I never fail to become overtaken by the Christmas spirit the first time I hear Jermaine Jackson sing the opening lines of the Jackson 5’s version of ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.’ For those of you also suffering the doldrums of another disenchanted holiday season, here’s a soulful Christmas music roundup to lift your spirits.
'Merry Christmas Baby' -- Otis Redding
'Merry Christmas Baby' is a song that is forever linked to legendary rhythm-and-blues (not R&B) artist Charles Brown, but Otis Redding brought his own take on “down-home” soul to his 1967 version of the song.
‘White Christmas’ -- The Drifters
Perhaps lead bass Bill Pinkens was signifyin’ on Bing Crosby in his opening verses to The Drifters’ 1954 version of ‘White Christmas,’ but by the time the incomparable Clyde McPhatter literally soars in with that third verse -- “I, I, I, I, I’m dreamin’ of a white Christmas …” -- it’s clear The Drifters had made the song their own. A whole new generation of folk were introduced to this version of the song when it was featured in the film ‘Home Alone.’
‘Back Door Santa’ -- Clarence Carter
Clarence Carter is as nasty as they come -- his chitlin’ circuit favorite ‘Strokin’’ is a great example. With ‘Back Door Santa’ Carter made Christmas nasty, too. Years later, Run-DMC would sample the song for ‘Christmas in Hollis.’
‘Gee Whiz It’s Christmas’ -- Carla Thomas
The daughter of Rufus Thomas (he of ‘Funky Chicken’ fame), Carla Thomas was the first lady of the Stax label. ‘Gee Whiz It’s Christmas,’ a sweet little ditty about running into a long lost love, was co-written by Thomas with Steve Cropper of Booker T. and the MGs. The song was a riff off of Thomas best-selling ‘Gee Whiz (Look at His Eyes).’
‘O Holy Night’ -- Vanessa Bell Armstrong
Arguably the most talented female gospel vocalist of the past 20 years, Vanessa Bell Armstrong brought us a sanctified Christmas on her 1990 album ‘The Truth About Christmas.’ The highlight was a God-fearing, heart-stopping rendition of ‘O Holy Night.’
‘Silent Night’ -- The Temptations
In 1970, the Temptations recorded ‘Christmas Card,’ which was one of the last albums that featured the most classic Temptations lineup. A decade later they recorded ‘Give Love on Christmas’ with Dennis Edwards, Glenn Leonard and Melvin Franklin’s booming bass giving ‘Silent Night’ a much needed Temptations update.
‘Let It Snow’ -- Boyz II Men
At the peak of their fame and artistry, Boyz II Men teamed with Brian McKnight on an original version of ‘Let it Snow’ that was penned by McKnight and Wanya Morris. The album it appeared on, ‘Christmas Interpretations,’ may be the best holiday album recorded by any contemporary R&B act.
‘At Christmas Time’ -- Luther Vandross
Years before Luther Vandross became Luther Vandross, the emerging soul singer recorded ‘At Christmas Time’ (1976). Given Vandross’ reputation as the greatest soul vocalist of his generation, that means that ‘At Christmas Time’ is indeed something special.
‘Hallelujah’ -- Handel’s Messiah
In 1992, Mervyn Warren and Quincy Jones brought together a veritable who’s who of black music to record ‘Handel’s Messiah: A Soulful Celebration.’ Included among them were Al Jarreau, Chaka Khan, Take 6, Jeffrey Osborne, Gladys Knight, Andre Crouch, Dianne Reeves, Stevie Wonder, The Boys Choir of Harlem, Vanessa Williams, as well as actors Clifton Davis, Charles S. Dutton, Phylicia Rashad and Kim Fields, many of whom appear on the album’s closing rendition of ‘The Hallelujah Chorus.’ Handel ain’t never sound so funky.
‘The Christmas Song’ -- Nat King Cole
In all honesty, you haven’t really experienced the Christmas season if you haven’t heard Nat King Cole doing his thing. Arguably Cole’s version of ‘The Christmas Song’ has surpassed even Bing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas’ as the quintessential American Christmas song.
‘This Christmas’ -- Donny Hathaway
Donny Hathaway is so deserving of the tag “genius” that it is somewhat ironic that ‘This Christmas” might be his most well known song. Nevertheless if black America has a clear-cut holiday anthem, it’s this Hathaway original. Like the man said, “Shake a hand, shake hand.”
by Mark Anthony Neal
As a child growing up in the “boogie down” Bronx in the early 1970s, there was very little illusion that Christmas Day would bring the snowy white scenes that were so often depicted on holiday greeting cards. I always understood that the toys and things that I peeped in the Sears and Spiegel catalogs were not gonna make it to my apartment come Christmas morning. Instead, so much of the joy I took from Christmas came from the music.
Now on the other side of childhood, calls for “joy” and “peace on earth” ring hollow when coming from some department store chain only a week after the beginning of autumn. But like my childhood, I never fail to become overtaken by the Christmas spirit the first time I hear Jermaine Jackson sing the opening lines of the Jackson 5’s version of ‘Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.’ For those of you also suffering the doldrums of another disenchanted holiday season, here’s a soulful Christmas music roundup to lift your spirits.
'Merry Christmas Baby' -- Otis Redding
'Merry Christmas Baby' is a song that is forever linked to legendary rhythm-and-blues (not R&B) artist Charles Brown, but Otis Redding brought his own take on “down-home” soul to his 1967 version of the song.
‘White Christmas’ -- The Drifters
Perhaps lead bass Bill Pinkens was signifyin’ on Bing Crosby in his opening verses to The Drifters’ 1954 version of ‘White Christmas,’ but by the time the incomparable Clyde McPhatter literally soars in with that third verse -- “I, I, I, I, I’m dreamin’ of a white Christmas …” -- it’s clear The Drifters had made the song their own. A whole new generation of folk were introduced to this version of the song when it was featured in the film ‘Home Alone.’
‘Back Door Santa’ -- Clarence Carter
Clarence Carter is as nasty as they come -- his chitlin’ circuit favorite ‘Strokin’’ is a great example. With ‘Back Door Santa’ Carter made Christmas nasty, too. Years later, Run-DMC would sample the song for ‘Christmas in Hollis.’
‘Gee Whiz It’s Christmas’ -- Carla Thomas
The daughter of Rufus Thomas (he of ‘Funky Chicken’ fame), Carla Thomas was the first lady of the Stax label. ‘Gee Whiz It’s Christmas,’ a sweet little ditty about running into a long lost love, was co-written by Thomas with Steve Cropper of Booker T. and the MGs. The song was a riff off of Thomas best-selling ‘Gee Whiz (Look at His Eyes).’
‘O Holy Night’ -- Vanessa Bell Armstrong
Arguably the most talented female gospel vocalist of the past 20 years, Vanessa Bell Armstrong brought us a sanctified Christmas on her 1990 album ‘The Truth About Christmas.’ The highlight was a God-fearing, heart-stopping rendition of ‘O Holy Night.’
‘Silent Night’ -- The Temptations
In 1970, the Temptations recorded ‘Christmas Card,’ which was one of the last albums that featured the most classic Temptations lineup. A decade later they recorded ‘Give Love on Christmas’ with Dennis Edwards, Glenn Leonard and Melvin Franklin’s booming bass giving ‘Silent Night’ a much needed Temptations update.
‘Let It Snow’ -- Boyz II Men
At the peak of their fame and artistry, Boyz II Men teamed with Brian McKnight on an original version of ‘Let it Snow’ that was penned by McKnight and Wanya Morris. The album it appeared on, ‘Christmas Interpretations,’ may be the best holiday album recorded by any contemporary R&B act.
‘At Christmas Time’ -- Luther Vandross
Years before Luther Vandross became Luther Vandross, the emerging soul singer recorded ‘At Christmas Time’ (1976). Given Vandross’ reputation as the greatest soul vocalist of his generation, that means that ‘At Christmas Time’ is indeed something special.
‘Hallelujah’ -- Handel’s Messiah
In 1992, Mervyn Warren and Quincy Jones brought together a veritable who’s who of black music to record ‘Handel’s Messiah: A Soulful Celebration.’ Included among them were Al Jarreau, Chaka Khan, Take 6, Jeffrey Osborne, Gladys Knight, Andre Crouch, Dianne Reeves, Stevie Wonder, The Boys Choir of Harlem, Vanessa Williams, as well as actors Clifton Davis, Charles S. Dutton, Phylicia Rashad and Kim Fields, many of whom appear on the album’s closing rendition of ‘The Hallelujah Chorus.’ Handel ain’t never sound so funky.
‘The Christmas Song’ -- Nat King Cole
In all honesty, you haven’t really experienced the Christmas season if you haven’t heard Nat King Cole doing his thing. Arguably Cole’s version of ‘The Christmas Song’ has surpassed even Bing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas’ as the quintessential American Christmas song.
‘This Christmas’ -- Donny Hathaway
Donny Hathaway is so deserving of the tag “genius” that it is somewhat ironic that ‘This Christmas” might be his most well known song. Nevertheless if black America has a clear-cut holiday anthem, it’s this Hathaway original. Like the man said, “Shake a hand, shake hand.”
Saturday, November 26, 2005
Words to Our Now: Thomas Glave on Tour
Fiction writer and essayist Thomas Glave is on tour in support of his new book Words to Our Now: Imagination and Dissent (University of Minnesota Press). Glave is also the author of the short story collection Whose Song? And Other Songs. Glave’s work is, in a word, provocative—he aims to provoke real change in a world increasingly given to real forms of terror. And Glave has known terror first hand, given his work as a founding member of Jamaica Forum of Lesbians, All-Sexuals, and Gays(J-FLAG).
One of the most provocative essays in Words to Our Now is “Regarding a Black Male Monica Lewinsky, Anal Penetration, and Bill Clinton’s Sacred White Anus.” I was fortunate to be on a panel with Glave a few years ago when he presented an earlier version of this essay, to an audience that was stunned silent. All of Glave’s work has that kind of power.
Here’s a recent conversation between Glave and Masani Alexis De Veaux. Glave’s West Coast tour stops are below.
LOS ANGELES, CA:
Lucy Florence Coffee House, Nov 26, 2005
6:00 PM
3351 West 43rd Street
Los Angeles
Tel. 323 293 1256
LOS ANGELES, CA:
A Different Light Bookstore, Nov 27, 2005
7:00 PM
8853 Santa Monica Blvd.
West Hollywood/Los Angeles
Tel. 310 854 6601
www.ADLbooks.com
SAN FRANCISCO, CA:
City Lights Bookstore, NOV 29, 2005
7:00 PM
261 Columbus Avenue
Tel 415 362 8193
San Francisco
www.citylights.com
CONTACT: Peter Taravalis, peter@citylights.com
SAN FRANCISCO, CA:
Alexander Book Company, NOV 30, 2005
12:30 PM
50 Second Street
San Francisco
Tel: 415 495 2992
http://alexanderbook.booksense.com
CONTACT: Bernard Henderson
SAN FRANCISCO, CA:
A Different Light Bookstore, NOV 30, 2005
7:00 PM
489 Castro Street
San Francisco
Tel 415 431 0891
CONTACT: Scott LaForce, ADLSFEvents@aol.com
STANFORD, CA:
Stanford University Bookstore, DEC 1, 2005
6:00 PM
White Plaza, Stanford
Tel 650 329 1217
Tel 800 533 2670
CONTACT: Michelle Carson, m.Carson@bookstore.stanford.org
www.stanfordbookstore.com
OAKLAND, CA:
Marcus Books, DEC 2, 2005
6:30 PM
3900 Martin Luther King, Jr. Way
Oakland
Tel: 510 652 2344
CONTACT: Blanche Richardson, blancherich@aol.com
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde Wins 2005 Hurston/Wright LEGACY Award for Non-Fiction
Zami originated a new discursive space for more complex renderings of black women’s lives…With this reframed identity at its center…Zami posed Lorde’s identity and sexuality as fluid aspects of her transnational blackness, rooted both in migration between ‘there’ and ‘here’ and in the ‘there.—Alexis De Veaux
Alexis De Veaux’s book Warrior Poet: A Biography of Audre Lorde just recently won the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Non-Fiction. Other winners include Maryse Conde who won the award for fiction for Who Slashed Celanire's Throat?, Chris Abani who one the award for best fiction debut (Graceland) and Tracey Price-Thompson who won for contemporary fiction. The awards are handed out every year by the Hurston/Wright Foundation whose mission is to “develop, nurture and sustain the world community of writers of African descent.”
I’ve known Alexis for 13 years—she was my dissertation director—but even more importantly she has been an incredible role model for me and has largely been responsible for any claims I make on a black feminist manhood. I am so happy that she is getting all the recognition she deserves for her thoughtful, loving, and critical examination of Audre Lorde.
Thursday, November 3, 2005
Monday, October 31, 2005
We on Award Tour with Muhammad my man/Goin each and every place with the mic in their hand…
St. Augustine College
Raleigh, NC
Martin Luther King, Jr. Student Union
Tuesday November 1, 2005 at 9:30 am
Ms. Fat Booty and the Black Male Feminist
***
The Paula B. Mack Child Development Lecture
North Carolina Central University
Durham, NC
New School of Education Building (Auditorium)
Thursday November 1, 2005, 6:30-8:30
Confessions of a Hip-Hop Daddy
***
Third Annual University Scholars Symposium
Jackson State University
Jackson, MS
Blackburn Language Arts Building
Thursday November 3, 2005 at 6pm
Nigga: The 21st Century Theoretical Superhero
***
The John Hop Franklin Humanities Institute Presents Wednesday at The Center
Duke University (Durham, NC)
The John Hope Franklin Center
Wednesday November 9, 2005 at 12:00 noon
“Black Macho Disturbed: Luther Vandross and the Re-imagining of Black Masculinity”
***
The 26th Annual Black Consciousness Conference
California State College at Long Beach
Saturday November 12, 2005 at 5:00pm
“Ms. Fat Booty: Gender and Sexual Politics within Hip-Hop”
***
The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio Foundation
Cleveland, Ohio
Max Wohl Civil Liberties Center
4506 Chester Avenue
Cleveland, OH 44103
Monday November 14, 2005 at 6:00 pm
“The New Black Man: A Conversation with Bakari Kitwana and Mark Anthony Neal”
Raleigh, NC
Martin Luther King, Jr. Student Union
Tuesday November 1, 2005 at 9:30 am
Ms. Fat Booty and the Black Male Feminist
***
The Paula B. Mack Child Development Lecture
North Carolina Central University
Durham, NC
New School of Education Building (Auditorium)
Thursday November 1, 2005, 6:30-8:30
Confessions of a Hip-Hop Daddy
***
Third Annual University Scholars Symposium
Jackson State University
Jackson, MS
Blackburn Language Arts Building
Thursday November 3, 2005 at 6pm
Nigga: The 21st Century Theoretical Superhero
***
The John Hop Franklin Humanities Institute Presents Wednesday at The Center
Duke University (Durham, NC)
The John Hope Franklin Center
Wednesday November 9, 2005 at 12:00 noon
“Black Macho Disturbed: Luther Vandross and the Re-imagining of Black Masculinity”
***
The 26th Annual Black Consciousness Conference
California State College at Long Beach
Saturday November 12, 2005 at 5:00pm
“Ms. Fat Booty: Gender and Sexual Politics within Hip-Hop”
***
The American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio Foundation
Cleveland, Ohio
Max Wohl Civil Liberties Center
4506 Chester Avenue
Cleveland, OH 44103
Monday November 14, 2005 at 6:00 pm
“The New Black Man: A Conversation with Bakari Kitwana and Mark Anthony Neal”
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
NBM News & Notes for October
Book News:
My UT homie S. Craig Watkins is getting some much deserved national attention for his new book Hip-Hop Matters. Check out his interview in the Austin-Statesman and KFPA’s Morning Show (joined by Dawn Elisa Fischer).
Just got Shayne Lee’s T.D. Jakes: America’s New Preacher (NYU Press) in the mail today. According to Publisher’s Weekly:
Arguing that West Virginia native T.D. Jakes "is the signpost for postdenominational Protestant America" for his "uncanny ability to blend the spiritual with the secular," Tulane University sociologist Lee offers an intriguing exploration of Jakes's popularity. Lee avoids heavy jargon and effectively pares his study down to the essentials, making this an accessible portrait despite some occasionally awkward prose. His approach is generally well-balanced; he admires Jakes's journey up from poverty, his hard work and innovation, but believes his "strong embrace of capitalism, penchant for self-invention and reinvention, rugged individualism, and... insatiable appetite for success" reflect the darker side of the nation that made him a Christian celebrity.
New Black Man has finally received some hometown love, courtesy of The Herald Sun in Durham and WUNC’s “The State of Things”. The latter runs for about an hour, but hang in for the first half when homie calls in an accuses me of wanting to be “a sellout”. As my man John Jackson puts it, “radio is the Greyhound Bus” of mainstream radio—“everybody cam buy a ticket”.
Speaking of the brilliant John Lester Jackson, Jr.—known to some as Anthroman—his new book Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity drops officially on November 15th. Like his Harlemworld, Real Black is some groundbreaking ethnography.
“Black Media” Update:
Esther Iverem has dropped the October edition of SeeingBlack. Robert D. Bullard and Beverly Wright drop a serious piece on the “real looting” in N’awlins and SeeingBlack also runs my conversation with “Nu Soul” artist Rahsaan Patterson.
On NPR’s News and Notes, Farai Chideya talks with actress Denise Nicholas(still oh so fine after all these years) about her new book Freshwater Road, which examines The Freedom Summer of 1964 through the eyes of a 19-year-olf black women from Detroit. The book is loosely based on Nicholas’ own experiences during Freedom Summer. I had the chance to talk with Ms. Nicholas in late August—my feature on her will run at Felicia Pride’s The Backlist next week.
The Red River Shootout:
I was only in Texas for 11 months, but I developed an affection for Longhorn Football, largely because of Cedric Benson (who should have come to Bears camp on time) and Vince Young (who’s on some next generation Randall Cunningham ish). Anyway after five previous tries, UT finally defeated its archrival Oklahoma in the Red Rover Shootout.
Sunday, October 9, 2005
The Color of Disaster
This info comes courtesy of Trica Rose
***
The Color of Disaster:
Race, Class and Hurricane Katrina
A Symposium and Fundraiser
October 14th and 15th at NYU
Friday, October 14, 8pm
Eisner and Lubin Auditorium, Kimmel Center
60 Washington Square South
The Eye of the Storm:
Voices and Visions of New Orleans
Brenda Marie Osbey, Poet Laureate of Louisiana
Frank Stewart, Photographer, Jazz @ Lincoln Center
Deb Willis, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU
Hosted by:
Tricia Rose, American Studies, UC Santa Cruz
Robin Kelley, Anthropology, Columbia University
Saturday, October 15, 2pm - doors open
Loewe Theater
35 West 4th Street
2:30pm
Eyewitnessing the Storm:
Stories of Catastrophe and Survival
Moderator: Tricia Rose, American Studies, UC Santa Cruz
Tony Zumbado, NBC Photojournalist
Michaela Harrison, artist and New Orleans resident
4:30pm
Before and After Katrina:
History, Race and Space in New Orleans
Moderator: Lisa Duggan, American Studies, NYU
Adam Green, American Studies, NYU
Walter Johnson, American Studies, NYU
George Lipsitz, African American Studies, UC Santa Barbara
Brenda Marie Osbey, Poet Laureate of Louisiana
7:00pm
Weathering Katrina:
Community and Culture
Moderator: Robin Kelley, Anthropology, Columbia University
Mindy Fullilove, School of Public Health, Columbia University
Mandy Carter, Executive Director, Southerners on New Ground (SONG)
Charlton McIlwain, Department of Culture and Communication, Steinhardt School of Education, NYU
Eric Tang, community organizer, American Studies, NYU
9:00pm
Performance by Mother Tongue
All Events Are Free and Open to the Public. All monetary donations gratefully accepted for the Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund, a project of Community Labor United, New Orleans.
Sponsored by:
New York University's
Office of the Dean, Center for Art and Public Policy, Tisch School of the Arts
Steinhardt School of Education
Humanities Council
Office of the Provost
Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Dean for the Humanities
American Studies Program,
Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality,
Department of Social and Cultural Analysis
GSOC/UAW Local 2110, the Union for Graduate Assistants
UCATS/AFT Local 3882, the Union for Clerical and Technical Staff
ACT-UAW Local 7902, the Union for Adjunct and Part-Time Faculty
***
The Color of Disaster:
Race, Class and Hurricane Katrina
A Symposium and Fundraiser
October 14th and 15th at NYU
Friday, October 14, 8pm
Eisner and Lubin Auditorium, Kimmel Center
60 Washington Square South
The Eye of the Storm:
Voices and Visions of New Orleans
Brenda Marie Osbey, Poet Laureate of Louisiana
Frank Stewart, Photographer, Jazz @ Lincoln Center
Deb Willis, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU
Hosted by:
Tricia Rose, American Studies, UC Santa Cruz
Robin Kelley, Anthropology, Columbia University
Saturday, October 15, 2pm - doors open
Loewe Theater
35 West 4th Street
2:30pm
Eyewitnessing the Storm:
Stories of Catastrophe and Survival
Moderator: Tricia Rose, American Studies, UC Santa Cruz
Tony Zumbado, NBC Photojournalist
Michaela Harrison, artist and New Orleans resident
4:30pm
Before and After Katrina:
History, Race and Space in New Orleans
Moderator: Lisa Duggan, American Studies, NYU
Adam Green, American Studies, NYU
Walter Johnson, American Studies, NYU
George Lipsitz, African American Studies, UC Santa Barbara
Brenda Marie Osbey, Poet Laureate of Louisiana
7:00pm
Weathering Katrina:
Community and Culture
Moderator: Robin Kelley, Anthropology, Columbia University
Mindy Fullilove, School of Public Health, Columbia University
Mandy Carter, Executive Director, Southerners on New Ground (SONG)
Charlton McIlwain, Department of Culture and Communication, Steinhardt School of Education, NYU
Eric Tang, community organizer, American Studies, NYU
9:00pm
Performance by Mother Tongue
All Events Are Free and Open to the Public. All monetary donations gratefully accepted for the Peoples Hurricane Relief Fund, a project of Community Labor United, New Orleans.
Sponsored by:
New York University's
Office of the Dean, Center for Art and Public Policy, Tisch School of the Arts
Steinhardt School of Education
Humanities Council
Office of the Provost
Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Dean for the Humanities
American Studies Program,
Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality,
Department of Social and Cultural Analysis
GSOC/UAW Local 2110, the Union for Graduate Assistants
UCATS/AFT Local 3882, the Union for Clerical and Technical Staff
ACT-UAW Local 7902, the Union for Adjunct and Part-Time Faculty
Friday, September 30, 2005
Back from the World: On Activism and Social Utility
Just back from three day sojourn through central and western New York—specifically Albany, Buffalo and Fredonia, all places that critical to my intellectual development at various points of my career. I earned a BA and MA in English from SUNY-Fredonia, my doctorate from the University of Buffalo and taught for six years at SUNY-Albany. The Book House at Stuyvesant hosted a joint signing with myself and Janell Hobson and the English Department at SUNY-Fredonia hosted a lecture and signing for me as part of the college’s homecoming activities.
The highlight of my trip though was conversation between myself and Masani Alexis DeVeaux that was hosted by Talking Leaves Books in Buffalo. Talking Leaves is one of my favorite book spots in the world. Founded in the midst of the heady political times of the early 1970s, it remains a bastion of sophisticated left sensibilities as well as a shining example of a business committed to social justice and community involvement. Still remember picking up my copy of Tricia Rose’s Black Noise at Talking Leaves—literally grabbing my copy as they opened the shipment (my colleague and friend Greg Dimitriadis picked up the other copy that day back in 1994).
Of course, Alexis and I have a history—much of it lovingly recalled throughout the pages of New Black Man. Though we could have “performed” as Mama Soul and Soul Baby (the metaphor for our intellectual relationship) Alexis (who attended the Saturday march in DC) thought it would be better to use our conversation to discuss political realities in the post 9/11, post-Katrina world. What occurred was a great conversation about pedagogical strategies, the generational divide among The Left and the need for a new language of social justice—a language more in sync with “generation ipod” and finally wrested from the grips of the Old Left.
One particularly interesting moment during our conversation about language was a discussion of the word “activism”. In her former role as Chair of Women’s Studies at the University of Buffalo, Alexis mention that she often had to defend to administration the department’s desire to maintain small class sizes. Her simple response to them was that the classes needed to be small because the students were, in part, being trained to become activists. Activists? And as you would expect from any university administrator, in their minds, activism was equated with “Take Back the Night” events, locking administrators in their offices or students taking over the President’s office. Fair enough—and don’t think that their aren’t a large amount of students on our campuses who think of activists and activism in the same light, hence their desire to distance themselves from any thing that even hints at an act of activism.
But Alexis made the point the activism should begin with equipping our students (and the folk) with the skills to critically access their relationship to power and to that which actively disempowers and marginalizes them. I’ve been thinking about this definition as I introduce the students in my “Introduction to African-American Studies” class to the activist example that was Ella Jo Baker (Courtesy of Barbara Ransby’s Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement : A Radical Democratic Vision ). Many of my students see activism as something that belonged to the “1960s” and thus out of place with their contemporary lives. Like so many others—Joy James, Manning Marable and Charles Payne quickly come to mind—I’ve always seen “Black Studies” as a site of praxis—theory and practice imagined in the name of social justice. And in 2005 there is perhaps no better example of praxis than Ella Jo Baker, particularly because as a “middle aged” women in the late 1950 and early 1960s she understood the importance of embracing “youth culture” as a means of helping black youth realize their own political goals.
***
The original impetus for my trip to Western New York was the 35th anniversary celebration of the Educational Development Program (EDP) at SUNY-Fredonia. EDP is an offshoot of the Educational Opportunity Program, a program that exist on all 66 of the State University of New York’s campuses. Created by legislation pushed through the New York State assembly in the late 1960s by Buffalo’s Arthur O. Eve. 35 years after the program’s founding, more than 40,000 folk have earned undergraduate, graduate and professional degrees from SUNY campuses because of the program. I am one of those 40,000 graduates. As a “SUNY-baby” (I earned three degrees from SUNY institutions) who benefited greatly from the Educational Opportunity Program and the Underrepresented Minority Fellowship (also the brainchild of Eve), I derived great satisfaction from the six years that I spent as a professor at SUNY-Albany. Arthur Eve understood that the hallmark of a productive society was an educated and skilled professional workforce. He also understood that blacks, Latino/as and poor whites were underrepresented within the SUNY system. Out of realities of “need” and “social utility” came a vision that ultimately was in the best interest of the State of New York and society at large.
Sunday, September 25, 2005
Back on the Radio
On Monday September 25, 2005 at 5:15, Cultural Critic and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal discusses his new book New Black Man with Mark Thompson, the host of “Make It Plain”, on XM-Radio’s The Power (XM 169)—A 24-hour African-American talk radio program.
“Make it Plain” can also be heard live on WOL (1450 am Washington) and WOLB (1010 am Baltimore).
“Make it Plain” can also be heard live on WOL (1450 am Washington) and WOLB (1010 am Baltimore).
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
New Black Man on the Radio
Mark Anthony Neal discusses his new book New Black Man on NPR's News and Notes with Ed Gordon
Saturday, September 17, 2005
New Black Man on the Road
Wednesday September 21, 2005
7:00 PM
The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza
1475 Western Avenue,
Albany, NY 12203
Book-Signing and Discussion
Join Janell Hobson (SUNY-Albany) and Mark Anthony Neal (Duke University) at a Book-Signing Event in celebration of their new books
Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture (Routledge)
and
New Black Man: Rethinking Black Masculinity (Routledge)
***
Thursday September 22 2005
7:00 PM
Talking Leaves Books
3158 Main Street in Buffalo, NY, 14214
(716) 837-8554
Book-Signing and Discussion
Join Masani Alexis DeVeaux and Mark Anthony Neal as they discuss their most recent books Warrior Poet: The Life of Audre Lorde and New Black Man and comment on recent events surrounding Hurricane Katrina
***
Friday September 23, 2005
3:00 PM
State University of New York College at Fredonia
Fenton Hall 105
Book-Signing and Lecture
Mark Anthony Neal, '87, '93, faculty member in the African and African American Studies Program at Duke University and National Public Radio commentator, will speak on campus Friday, Sept. 23 at 3 p.m. in 105 Fenton Hall as a guest of the English Department.
His talk, sponsored by the department's Mary Louise White Fund endowed through the Fredonia College Foundation, is entitled "What the Hell Is a Male Feminist? Rethinking Masculinity in a Post-Feminist World." Relating closely to his most recent book, New Black Man: Rethinking Black Masculinity (2005), the talk will be followed by a brief question-and-answer session, book-signing and reception.
For more information regarding this event, contact Natalie Gerber (English) at (716) 673-3851.
Monday, September 12, 2005
Blackademe Weighs in on Katrina, 9/11 and Kanye West
It Is About Race
by William Jelani Cobb
William Jelani Cobb, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of History at Spelman College.
***
Commentary: A Perspective on Looters and Race
by Lester Spence
Lester Kenyatta Spence is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University
***
Left Behind: Backdrop to a National Crisis
by Peniel E. Joseph, Ph.D.
Peniel E. Joseph teaches in the Department of Africana Studies at SUNY-Stony Brook.
***
Wahneema Lubiano on Race, Class, Katrina and the Left
Wahneema Lubiano is Associate Professor of Literature and African and African American Studies at Duke University
***
Commentary: New Orleans' Cities of the Dead
by Karla Holloway
Karla FC Holloway is William R. Kenan Professor of English at Duke University
***
‘Our Tsunami’: Race, Religion and Mourning in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama
A Sermon by Maurice O. Wallace
Maurice Wallace is Associate Professor of English and African and African-American Studies at Duke University
***
Commentary”: On the Fourth Anniversary of Sept. 11
by Farah Jasmine Griffin
Farah Jasmine Griffin is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
***
Thank You, Kanye!
by Fanon Che Wilkins
Fanon Che Wilkins is an Assistant Professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
***
Race-ing Katrina
by Mark Anthony Neal
Mark Anthony Neal is Associate Professor of African and African-American Studies at Duke University
by William Jelani Cobb
William Jelani Cobb, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of History at Spelman College.
***
Commentary: A Perspective on Looters and Race
by Lester Spence
Lester Kenyatta Spence is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University
***
Left Behind: Backdrop to a National Crisis
by Peniel E. Joseph, Ph.D.
Peniel E. Joseph teaches in the Department of Africana Studies at SUNY-Stony Brook.
***
Wahneema Lubiano on Race, Class, Katrina and the Left
Wahneema Lubiano is Associate Professor of Literature and African and African American Studies at Duke University
***
Commentary: New Orleans' Cities of the Dead
by Karla Holloway
Karla FC Holloway is William R. Kenan Professor of English at Duke University
***
‘Our Tsunami’: Race, Religion and Mourning in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama
A Sermon by Maurice O. Wallace
Maurice Wallace is Associate Professor of English and African and African-American Studies at Duke University
***
Commentary”: On the Fourth Anniversary of Sept. 11
by Farah Jasmine Griffin
Farah Jasmine Griffin is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
***
Thank You, Kanye!
by Fanon Che Wilkins
Fanon Che Wilkins is an Assistant Professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
***
Race-ing Katrina
by Mark Anthony Neal
Mark Anthony Neal is Associate Professor of African and African-American Studies at Duke University
Wahneema Lubiano on Race, Class and Katrina
'Killing Them Softly': Race, Class and Hurricane Katrina
by Wahneema Lubiano
September 6, 2005
“Accompanying her husband, former President George H.W. Bush, on a tour of hurricane relief centers in Houston, Barbara Bush said today, referring to the poor who had lost everything back home and evacuated, “This is working very well for them. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know were underprivileged anyway, so this–this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them.”
The politics of life and death are articulated in public and private conversations, in allusions to past and present history, in unacknowledged desires and fears, as well as in the movements and undertakings of the powerful. In these private and public conversations, allusions, desires and fears, movements, and undertakings, race is not only race, class is not only class. And as people talk in this moment they don’t always express or even know what they want or fear as they’re wanting something or terrified by something. And always, always, power is directing our attention to something other than itself–unless, of course, it needs to show itself as something that comforts. The disaster (both natural and unnatural), the responses to this disaster, and the huge public conversation about the disaster is revealing and heightening the contradictions already present in our social order. And the history of those contradictions.
Many things have gone on in the response to Katrina:
Things including war on the poor, which is business as usual for this social order. Those who were already poor (employed or not) when Katrina hit are certainly poorer in the wake of the disaster.
Things including both the dynamics of racism in movements and undertakings and the expressions of racism in the large conversation.
Things including the fierce and generally unacknowledged messiness of the dynamics of racism and classism and the entangling of race and class concepts that live both in those confusions and in material life. Racism treats all racialized others (regardless of class position) as if they are the lower class, the dangerous class, made visible. And if race is the uneasily but still recognizable (to the general public understanding) social determination, class, of course, is the social ordering and determination that is most often treated as simply a limitor of consumer choices.
What it is possible to see and hear in the vicious, or stumbling, or confused, or simply inarticulate expressions from various people [archive: newspaper reportages, opinion, and letters to the editor, media, online discussion fora, conversations] about what was and is happening along the Gulf Coast is the imagination run wild and fearful. Many members of the U.S. public were unable to “see” Latinos/Latinas, Asian-Americans and Asians–members, for example, of a Vietnamese congregation trapped in their church, poor white people, abandoned foreign tourists – the vision of complexity is wiped out by the “darkness” so thoroughly on display, so thoroughly and simplistically discussed.
Racism side-swipes the usually non-raced (poor white people), or the lightly-raced (Latinos/Latinas, Asians and Asian Americans, etc.), or the accidentally and transiently raced (foreign tourists trapped by the disaster). The heterogeneity of the trapped is matched by the multiplicity of the forms of entrappment., by what was already in place, or, more to the point, by what wasn’t already in place–but the complexities are covered by the shadow cast by the people so multiply black.
Among those things that were devastatingly in place were plans and responsibility for a New Orleans evacuation that were privatized--controlled by a private contractor, IEM, that is a consultant to FEMA. But what was most devastatingly already in place was the softest of soft targets–the already poor. One discussant on the Left Business Observer list-serv referred to the criminal negligence of the U.S. government’s response as “killing them softly.” What wasn’t in place: an economic safety net for the poor to begin with, and regard for what that lack means in the midst of a disaster.
But the middle classes and much of the upper classes –in short, anyone whose assets stop short of helicopter or private jet ownership or access to same and who might someday need to get out of town or might need to have help in a disaster or crisis ought to be a little anxious right now. (I’m talking about all of us right now.) What many see as the criminal negligence of FEMA’s [archive: FEMA guideslines, FEMA regulations, various newspaper articles, government documents, letter from Louisiana governor to the President via Homeland Security, etc.] operations is also, I think, a form of disciplining aimed at the not-poor and/or the not-black as well who are not part of this disaster but are consuming it and its lessons from afar. Black poor people, and other poor or event just temporarily poor people, are the canaries in the coal mine. This government is in the process of abandoning us all to varying degrees. And it is that variance that is malleable and mitigated by the specifics of class and/or race.
Whether you are hitchhiking out of a disaster, driving out in a Honda or a Porsche, the structural horrors (material, economic, political) of the devastation of the Gulf Coast now will stretch out its tendrils to all of us. While the thickness and shape of the tendrils of a disaster will be affected by mitigating factors, what we will increasingly have in common is our rotting infrastructures and the abandonment of a sense of common good materially manifested by our government. (And the material consequences of the destruction of that region will hit us all even if unequally so.)
That abandonment of some notion of a common good has shown up for decades in the public acceptance of U.S. disregard for the outside world. Disregard isn’t containable–it travels out to the world and comes back home too. What we’ve been willing to support in the spread of this and past governments’ brutalizing of other countries, other people, has brutalized our own imaginations of what we are as a social order.
The present hyper-visibilities – the plight of specific kinds of people in this moment as well as the specifics of expressions of racism directed at black Americans, in addition to what I call the flickering visibilities – the plight of poor white people, of temporarily poor people (displaced tourists; medical professionals, other helpers), could be a goad to constituting an alternative to the idea of everyone for him or her individual self.
But there’s noise that interferes with that signal. When George Bush was talking about rebuilding the house of Trent Lott and sitting on the porch with Lott, this language acted as a shout-out to the racist part of this administration’s base because, whatever the complexities of the actually existing Trent Lott, he resonates across the white supremacist U.S. as a defender of segregation [archive: newspapers, magazines, online fora (eg. The Free Republic.com), everyday discussions, etc.]. The resounding noise of that shout-out helps provide cover for the privatization of reconstruction (Hello Halliburton) [archive: government documents, newspaper accounts, official correspondence, etc.] and disaster management (Hello IEM) [IEM Press Release, New Orleans Times-Picayune article], and a reward to the refiners via the lifting of environmental protections [various newspaper articles, White House Press Release] – an enrichment that is a shoutout to the richest part of Bush’s base.
The casual throwaway racist language of “savages running wild”, of “people who should be grateful that the disaster will provide them with a better life” in the Astrodome; the cliches about black welfare dependency and the bad behavior of “those people” showing that they can’t really be saved [archive: huge volume of newspaper letters to the editor, online fora, everyday conversations], and the willingness of those in charge of recovery simply throwing food and water [archive: newspapers, television footage; online fora] at victims of this storm–all of these things and more provide cover for other forms of class warfare on the part of the powerful and cover for the work of dismantling, one disaster or crisis at a time if necessary, the idea that our social order can expect its government [archive: conservative position papers; conservative magazines (eg. The American Spectator), online fora] to do more for its citizenry than to usher public money to what it sees as that money’s “rightful” owners, the corporations that paid for the heads of that government’s election.
The response to this disaster does not have to be actually racist; racism is so much a part of our culture that it is always available as a simple tool of convenience. It can be called onto duty and then dismissed. One of the jobs that it does terrifically well, again and again, is to divert attention from what else is happening. The public imagination was focused on the scary blackness of people massed at the Superdome or the Convention Center, standing on the highway, standing on roofs. That vivid visibility also pushes the other people (in their heterogeneity) also there out of the picture frame until they are pulled into the picture as representations of the not-black and scary “properly” behaving fictions. I am describing a relay of framing movement as these “proper” victims are contrasted to those people spectacularly on display as visible contrasts to the “lawless” and the “looters” of New Orleans.
Late last night I was taking a break from obsessing on the internet and saw Tucker Carlson on CNN doing up a follow-up interview with Andre Broussard (president of Jefferson Parish ) who, on Sunday, had broken down crying after criticizing the federal government on “Meet the Press.” Carlson asked Broussard to comment on the awfulness of the looting in New Orleans (cue pictures of burning buildings in NO), and Broussard said, “well, some of that is going on here too. Our shopping center burned on Wednesday.” Broussard went on to describe what the police and national guard were having to contend with in his area.
It was a moment when the possibility of bad non-black actors was at least alluded to. It was also a moment that passed really quickly.
The comfortably well-off U.S. (and/or those who simply want comfort and aren’t too particular about what it costs in other people) – can have that desire for comfort fed by the disciplining of the visible poor – the dangerous classes.
I want to be clear, so I’m going to say this as directly as I can. I’m bringing together four areas of concern: (1) the presence of racism does not mean the absence of class warfare against the poor and working class; (2) a war on the poor does not mean that people of considerable color aren’talso the easier targets; (3) the analytic insufficiency of a U.S. black/white binary around racial thinking does not mean that other “others” can’t be thought about; and (4) the attention being paid to particular subsets of objects of governmental criminal negligence does not mean we shouldn’t all be terrified of the closing down of idea of a common good.
* * * * *
I’m going to finish here with some attention to “looting” – both the idea and the activity. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger." -- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials.
The September 2nd - 5th weekend edition of USA Today (online) ran as one of its sub- headline (in the online edition, it was to the right of the main headline): “Lawlessness Fosters Fear.” A word here about lawlessness and its class belonging. If we are not a lawless nation from the very top of our government’s hierarchy, I don’t know what we are. (Actually existing criminals ought to be indignant at the expressions of hypocrisy.) We are up to our noses in a lawless war gerry-rigged by lies; we are led by an administration for whom laws and regulations that get in the way of the good of corporations are routinely ground under its wheels; the engine of help that took its time getting to the disaster region is a product of that lawlessness and disregard for its people. Our attention is being directed to the lawlessness of individuals, and we respond with fear: “that could happen here, that could happen to me.” And we are gratified when “order” is talked about and seems to have been restored. Sometimes all that is required for the achievement of that satisfaction is to see a black male lying on the ground with his hands cuffed behind his back [archive: newspapers, television, online fora, conversation].
In the meantime, we are at the mercy of a lawless over-class that is looting the state and a state that is looting itself for its friends (yet another Hello to Halliburton) and that is invisible to us. The reek of sanctimoniousness and self-righteousness that is drifting outward from the haves of the Bush administration and condemning not only looters, people who “didn’t have the sense to leave,” the local governments, and the poor–the poor , who Barbara Bush tells us are better off now that they’re in the Astrodome than they’ve ever been in their lives–well, the stench of that self-righteousness rivals for noxiousness the smell of shit from the NO Superdome and Convention Center that people there had to breathe for almost a week.
In the U.S. state we seem to be really particular about our tolerance of looters. In fact, we have a tiered system for even thinking about them. Within this community of thought, the absolute bottom is occupied by people who steal TVs. The lowest of that low are those who might barter the TVs for drugs; slightly above them (but still lower than a snake’s belt buckle) are those who steal TVs and might barter them for water, money, clothing, etc.; rising above them are those who are looting food, water, shoes, clothing for their own use or that of others’ close to them (who nonetheless, President Bush told us, should be included in the most dire penalty for looting).
By contrast, occupying the very top tier of looters would be the big state actors, like the Bush administration, looting the national budget for its illegal war and accompanied by the war and disaster profiteers who are engorging themselves and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future but who, I admit, aren’t often photographed carrying away their billions in plastic garbage bags while running down the street.
When people start talking about a shoot-to-kill policy for looters, aren’t they in danger of committing the crime of threatening the life of the President of the U.S.?
We might want to think about why it is the petty thief who gets shot while these other looters simply get richer (Hello Dick Cheney–I wanted a break from saying Halliburton).
Finally, to those who have said and continue to say that this isn’t about race or class, you simply aren’t paying attention. What is happening is, of course, about more than those social facts, but the existence of those social realities within a nation that allows itself to accommodate those realities will be rewarded with all the horrors brought on by the public’s inability to see what has been and continues to be made within the terms of that accommodation. We accept living within a world of unequal division of resources. We accept living in a state that is intent upon re-making the world to its accommodation. We accept the tearing down of a material fabric of governmental responsibility for which we pay with our taxes. And we accept this in some significant part because class inequality and racial inequality are as American as apple pie. The politics of death are articulated in the life we deny the most vulnerable of our people. And the life that is increasingly going to be denied to more and more of us.
***
Wahneema Lubiano is Associate Professor of Literature and African and African American Studies at Duke University
The politics of life and death are articulated in public and private conversations, in allusions to past and present history, in unacknowledged desires and fears, as well as in the movements and undertakings of the powerful. In these private and public conversations, allusions, desires and fears, movements, and undertakings, race is not only race, class is not only class. And as people talk in this moment they don’t always express or even know what they want or fear as they’re wanting something or terrified by something. And always, always, power is directing our attention to something other than itself–unless, of course, it needs to show itself as something that comforts. The disaster (both natural and unnatural), the responses to this disaster, and the huge public conversation about the disaster is revealing and heightening the contradictions already present in our social order. And the history of those contradictions.
Many things have gone on in the response to Katrina:
Things including war on the poor, which is business as usual for this social order. Those who were already poor (employed or not) when Katrina hit are certainly poorer in the wake of the disaster.
Things including both the dynamics of racism in movements and undertakings and the expressions of racism in the large conversation.
Things including the fierce and generally unacknowledged messiness of the dynamics of racism and classism and the entangling of race and class concepts that live both in those confusions and in material life. Racism treats all racialized others (regardless of class position) as if they are the lower class, the dangerous class, made visible. And if race is the uneasily but still recognizable (to the general public understanding) social determination, class, of course, is the social ordering and determination that is most often treated as simply a limitor of consumer choices.
What it is possible to see and hear in the vicious, or stumbling, or confused, or simply inarticulate expressions from various people [archive: newspaper reportages, opinion, and letters to the editor, media, online discussion fora, conversations] about what was and is happening along the Gulf Coast is the imagination run wild and fearful. Many members of the U.S. public were unable to “see” Latinos/Latinas, Asian-Americans and Asians–members, for example, of a Vietnamese congregation trapped in their church, poor white people, abandoned foreign tourists – the vision of complexity is wiped out by the “darkness” so thoroughly on display, so thoroughly and simplistically discussed.
Racism side-swipes the usually non-raced (poor white people), or the lightly-raced (Latinos/Latinas, Asians and Asian Americans, etc.), or the accidentally and transiently raced (foreign tourists trapped by the disaster). The heterogeneity of the trapped is matched by the multiplicity of the forms of entrappment., by what was already in place, or, more to the point, by what wasn’t already in place–but the complexities are covered by the shadow cast by the people so multiply black.
Among those things that were devastatingly in place were plans and responsibility for a New Orleans evacuation that were privatized--controlled by a private contractor, IEM, that is a consultant to FEMA. But what was most devastatingly already in place was the softest of soft targets–the already poor. One discussant on the Left Business Observer list-serv referred to the criminal negligence of the U.S. government’s response as “killing them softly.” What wasn’t in place: an economic safety net for the poor to begin with, and regard for what that lack means in the midst of a disaster.
But the middle classes and much of the upper classes –in short, anyone whose assets stop short of helicopter or private jet ownership or access to same and who might someday need to get out of town or might need to have help in a disaster or crisis ought to be a little anxious right now. (I’m talking about all of us right now.) What many see as the criminal negligence of FEMA’s [archive: FEMA guideslines, FEMA regulations, various newspaper articles, government documents, letter from Louisiana governor to the President via Homeland Security, etc.] operations is also, I think, a form of disciplining aimed at the not-poor and/or the not-black as well who are not part of this disaster but are consuming it and its lessons from afar. Black poor people, and other poor or event just temporarily poor people, are the canaries in the coal mine. This government is in the process of abandoning us all to varying degrees. And it is that variance that is malleable and mitigated by the specifics of class and/or race.
Whether you are hitchhiking out of a disaster, driving out in a Honda or a Porsche, the structural horrors (material, economic, political) of the devastation of the Gulf Coast now will stretch out its tendrils to all of us. While the thickness and shape of the tendrils of a disaster will be affected by mitigating factors, what we will increasingly have in common is our rotting infrastructures and the abandonment of a sense of common good materially manifested by our government. (And the material consequences of the destruction of that region will hit us all even if unequally so.)
That abandonment of some notion of a common good has shown up for decades in the public acceptance of U.S. disregard for the outside world. Disregard isn’t containable–it travels out to the world and comes back home too. What we’ve been willing to support in the spread of this and past governments’ brutalizing of other countries, other people, has brutalized our own imaginations of what we are as a social order.
The present hyper-visibilities – the plight of specific kinds of people in this moment as well as the specifics of expressions of racism directed at black Americans, in addition to what I call the flickering visibilities – the plight of poor white people, of temporarily poor people (displaced tourists; medical professionals, other helpers), could be a goad to constituting an alternative to the idea of everyone for him or her individual self.
But there’s noise that interferes with that signal. When George Bush was talking about rebuilding the house of Trent Lott and sitting on the porch with Lott, this language acted as a shout-out to the racist part of this administration’s base because, whatever the complexities of the actually existing Trent Lott, he resonates across the white supremacist U.S. as a defender of segregation [archive: newspapers, magazines, online fora (eg. The Free Republic.com), everyday discussions, etc.]. The resounding noise of that shout-out helps provide cover for the privatization of reconstruction (Hello Halliburton) [archive: government documents, newspaper accounts, official correspondence, etc.] and disaster management (Hello IEM) [IEM Press Release, New Orleans Times-Picayune article], and a reward to the refiners via the lifting of environmental protections [various newspaper articles, White House Press Release] – an enrichment that is a shoutout to the richest part of Bush’s base.
The casual throwaway racist language of “savages running wild”, of “people who should be grateful that the disaster will provide them with a better life” in the Astrodome; the cliches about black welfare dependency and the bad behavior of “those people” showing that they can’t really be saved [archive: huge volume of newspaper letters to the editor, online fora, everyday conversations], and the willingness of those in charge of recovery simply throwing food and water [archive: newspapers, television footage; online fora] at victims of this storm–all of these things and more provide cover for other forms of class warfare on the part of the powerful and cover for the work of dismantling, one disaster or crisis at a time if necessary, the idea that our social order can expect its government [archive: conservative position papers; conservative magazines (eg. The American Spectator), online fora] to do more for its citizenry than to usher public money to what it sees as that money’s “rightful” owners, the corporations that paid for the heads of that government’s election.
The response to this disaster does not have to be actually racist; racism is so much a part of our culture that it is always available as a simple tool of convenience. It can be called onto duty and then dismissed. One of the jobs that it does terrifically well, again and again, is to divert attention from what else is happening. The public imagination was focused on the scary blackness of people massed at the Superdome or the Convention Center, standing on the highway, standing on roofs. That vivid visibility also pushes the other people (in their heterogeneity) also there out of the picture frame until they are pulled into the picture as representations of the not-black and scary “properly” behaving fictions. I am describing a relay of framing movement as these “proper” victims are contrasted to those people spectacularly on display as visible contrasts to the “lawless” and the “looters” of New Orleans.
Late last night I was taking a break from obsessing on the internet and saw Tucker Carlson on CNN doing up a follow-up interview with Andre Broussard (president of Jefferson Parish ) who, on Sunday, had broken down crying after criticizing the federal government on “Meet the Press.” Carlson asked Broussard to comment on the awfulness of the looting in New Orleans (cue pictures of burning buildings in NO), and Broussard said, “well, some of that is going on here too. Our shopping center burned on Wednesday.” Broussard went on to describe what the police and national guard were having to contend with in his area.
It was a moment when the possibility of bad non-black actors was at least alluded to. It was also a moment that passed really quickly.
The comfortably well-off U.S. (and/or those who simply want comfort and aren’t too particular about what it costs in other people) – can have that desire for comfort fed by the disciplining of the visible poor – the dangerous classes.
I want to be clear, so I’m going to say this as directly as I can. I’m bringing together four areas of concern: (1) the presence of racism does not mean the absence of class warfare against the poor and working class; (2) a war on the poor does not mean that people of considerable color aren’talso the easier targets; (3) the analytic insufficiency of a U.S. black/white binary around racial thinking does not mean that other “others” can’t be thought about; and (4) the attention being paid to particular subsets of objects of governmental criminal negligence does not mean we shouldn’t all be terrified of the closing down of idea of a common good.
* * * * *
I’m going to finish here with some attention to “looting” – both the idea and the activity. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger." -- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials.
The September 2nd - 5th weekend edition of USA Today (online) ran as one of its sub- headline (in the online edition, it was to the right of the main headline): “Lawlessness Fosters Fear.” A word here about lawlessness and its class belonging. If we are not a lawless nation from the very top of our government’s hierarchy, I don’t know what we are. (Actually existing criminals ought to be indignant at the expressions of hypocrisy.) We are up to our noses in a lawless war gerry-rigged by lies; we are led by an administration for whom laws and regulations that get in the way of the good of corporations are routinely ground under its wheels; the engine of help that took its time getting to the disaster region is a product of that lawlessness and disregard for its people. Our attention is being directed to the lawlessness of individuals, and we respond with fear: “that could happen here, that could happen to me.” And we are gratified when “order” is talked about and seems to have been restored. Sometimes all that is required for the achievement of that satisfaction is to see a black male lying on the ground with his hands cuffed behind his back [archive: newspapers, television, online fora, conversation].
In the meantime, we are at the mercy of a lawless over-class that is looting the state and a state that is looting itself for its friends (yet another Hello to Halliburton) and that is invisible to us. The reek of sanctimoniousness and self-righteousness that is drifting outward from the haves of the Bush administration and condemning not only looters, people who “didn’t have the sense to leave,” the local governments, and the poor–the poor , who Barbara Bush tells us are better off now that they’re in the Astrodome than they’ve ever been in their lives–well, the stench of that self-righteousness rivals for noxiousness the smell of shit from the NO Superdome and Convention Center that people there had to breathe for almost a week.
In the U.S. state we seem to be really particular about our tolerance of looters. In fact, we have a tiered system for even thinking about them. Within this community of thought, the absolute bottom is occupied by people who steal TVs. The lowest of that low are those who might barter the TVs for drugs; slightly above them (but still lower than a snake’s belt buckle) are those who steal TVs and might barter them for water, money, clothing, etc.; rising above them are those who are looting food, water, shoes, clothing for their own use or that of others’ close to them (who nonetheless, President Bush told us, should be included in the most dire penalty for looting).
By contrast, occupying the very top tier of looters would be the big state actors, like the Bush administration, looting the national budget for its illegal war and accompanied by the war and disaster profiteers who are engorging themselves and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future but who, I admit, aren’t often photographed carrying away their billions in plastic garbage bags while running down the street.
When people start talking about a shoot-to-kill policy for looters, aren’t they in danger of committing the crime of threatening the life of the President of the U.S.?
We might want to think about why it is the petty thief who gets shot while these other looters simply get richer (Hello Dick Cheney–I wanted a break from saying Halliburton).
Finally, to those who have said and continue to say that this isn’t about race or class, you simply aren’t paying attention. What is happening is, of course, about more than those social facts, but the existence of those social realities within a nation that allows itself to accommodate those realities will be rewarded with all the horrors brought on by the public’s inability to see what has been and continues to be made within the terms of that accommodation. We accept living within a world of unequal division of resources. We accept living in a state that is intent upon re-making the world to its accommodation. We accept the tearing down of a material fabric of governmental responsibility for which we pay with our taxes. And we accept this in some significant part because class inequality and racial inequality are as American as apple pie. The politics of death are articulated in the life we deny the most vulnerable of our people. And the life that is increasingly going to be denied to more and more of us.
***
Wednesday, September 7, 2005
‘Our Tsunami’: Race, Religion and Mourning in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama
The Guest Sermon today is from my colleague and friend, Rev. Dr. Maurice O. Wallace
I. I am sick today, with grief. A grief, significantly exacerbated by a deepening consternation I have for the general health and, from my point of view, the dubious well-being of the church in America today. I am gravely worried, about what I perceive, as a conflict, a contradiction, if you may, between our increasing religiosity, on the one hand, and our decreasing relevance and vitality to change the world’s conditions, on the other hand. I am troubled, this morning, grievously troubled, by the popularity of a commercial Christianity that romanticizes our faith for the sake of capital campaigns, political favor and box office receipts, and misrepresents the journey as fast and furious, when the way is oft-times arduous and long-winded. It is disturbing, beloved, that the measure of our faith today is so often in the spectacle-charm of charismatic display that charisma now trumps compassion as the essential element, the sine qua non, of Christian identity in the most popular churches in America today. Worship is so singularly worshipped, and bells-and-whistle praise so fashionable now, that the experience of church today is all celebration, and no sympathy at all. Which is not to say that celebration is incompatible with worship but any man who only ever celebrates, who treats life as an interminable party, has no time or inclination to contemplate the extreme weight of black urban life and loss incomprehensibly endured in Louisiana and Mississippi last week. His humanity, and the human prospect for godliness within him, is thus diminished by his indifference. The very thing that would realize his divine potential, the praise craze of this current age helps him, tragically, to avert. It is a reflex of the religious I believe I comprehend, but can’t quite understand.
Only one month ago, on the very same day that an estimated ten to fifteen thousand marched along Atlanta’s Martin Luther King Drive to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act and to mobilize support for its extension, the Atlanta Georgia Dome, World Congress Center, Philips Arena and International Plaza were nearly filled to the rafters with more than 100,000 predominantly black churchgoers gathered for MegaFest 2005, the star-studded super conference and Christian entertainment event brilliantly conceived by Rev. T. D. Jakes, the most popular, most charismatic, most sermonically adept television evangelist in the last twenty-five years. Now I was not there, but I am given to understand anecdotally that a spirited time was had by all. It was a monumental celebration of Jesus as Lord, like none Atlanta had seen since the first Jakes conference there in 1999. Surely, Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem more than 2,000 years ago could not have held a candle to 100,000 brothers and sisters, “saved, sanctified, blood-bought and Holy Ghost-filled,” churchin’ together in the black cultural holy city, Hotlanta, in 2005. But for all the celebration there one month ago, I am bothered that I don’t hear the lamentations, the fervor, the loud din of mourning by those who got bought whole new wardrobes and even got their “h’ir did”--shout out to Missy Elliot--just for Megafest (I’m sorry, that wasn’t nice, was it?).
Was that celebration so intoxicating that it numbed all 100,000 celebrants to the horror of Hurricane Katrina, the outrage of official race- and class-based abandonment of thousands to spiritual despair and the cruelest indignities of death? Where is the mega-aid from Mega-fest and its corporate sponsors? Where were the mega-buses to evacuate the stranded and struggling? Worse still, why has there been no exercise of the mega-influence of so many black religious persons, a goodly number of whom cast their vote for the present Administration last November, to demand something from this President, a man who spends more time in Texas, it seems, than in Washington (though it hardly matters where he is anymore since, from a certain point of view, he’s been on vacation his whole presidency). I do not mean to pick on Rev. Jakes exclusively. He is but a symbol for a new black evangelicalism that seems far more preoccupied by gay marriage and “judicial activism” than by human and civil rights. To be fair to Rev. Jakes, it is true that he has not been indifferent to this disaster and has coordinated a relief effort led by his own 30,000 member church, The Potter’s House, in partnership with a dozen other largely black mega-ministries. It is reported they have given $250,000 in food, water, clothing and first aid and Jakes’s church has opened its elementary school to the children of the displaced who end up, intentionally or aimlessly, in Dallas. As generous as this aid may seem, however (or ungenerous, depending on your perspective of things), the new black church in America has left altogether untouched its greatest resource to relieve the suffering of so many who weekly support them. One thing, Jesus admonished the rich young ruler, thou yet lacketh. With more than $400 billion wasted on an unjust war in Iraq, how could the church let our Gulf Coast neighbors be so egregiously insulted by a congressional appropriation of one-fortieth of that sum? What will it take for the black church, its evangelicals especially, to expend its newfound political influence in order to save souls?
Who but the black church has the moral and political capital to agitate on behalf of the Gulf coast’s disinherited, the likes of whom Jesus was so unambiguously clear about defending? And not only defending, but feeding. He did not, after all, only fly by Jerusalem, and think his duty done. No, as Brother Kanye West recently reminded us, Jesus walked. He doesn’t do fly-bys. Jesus walks, is West’s refrain. He doesn’t make political speeches full of promises come too little too late. Jesus walks. With the shoeless and the shirtless. Jesus walks. With the stranded and the starving. Jesus walks. On the ground. He walks. Through hell and high water. He walks. With neighborly compassion, not executive conceit. He walks. But more than that. He feeds. Four thousand here. Five thousand there. He feeds them who hunger. No signs of looting, no bottleless babies, no outbreaks of violent frustration, though the potential is there. Because he feeds his friends. With only twelve volunteers and the most restricted of resources, he did what FEMA and Homeland Security obviously cannot.
I don’t’ understand it. If the Savior can feed thousands with a team of only twelve and the most meager means, then somebody tell me why the leadership of the mightiest nation on the globe cannot coordinate its unsearchable resources with at least the equal efficiency of an un-degreed Hebrew carpenter? Wait. Don’t answer that. I already know the sad, un-American answer. We all do.
II. It is the Lukan picture of Jesus that I have called your attention to this morning, because it is the picture of the most essential response any of us, conventioneer or president, could have to the Gulf coast apocalypse some have called “our tsunami” in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead. For Hurricane Katrina is indeed “our tsunami” as much as it is that of the unmoored masses of Biloxi, New Orleans and—lest we forget—Sri Lanka.
Witness Jesus atop Mount Olive. From that mountain platform, he commanded the full panoramic view of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount from the East across the Kidron Valley. Behind him set Jericho. And closer still, Bethany. At his feet fall the praises of them who proclaim him Lord and King, fulfillment of the prophecy. And it would be a thrilling scene, except for the curious disconnect between him and them. They celebrate, but he mourns. Looking down from Olivet , he mourns. Mourns over Jerusalem. He sees a bigger picture, commands a wider perspective and mourns for Jerusalem. Thousands and thousands of churches will conduct worship this morning with shouting and celebration, clapping and dancing, and miss the point made by the example of Jesus: Its mourning time. Jerusalem’s in jeopardy. Its mourning time.
Somehow, we’ve lost sight of the importance of mourning. Of the redemptive value of sackcloth and ashes. Somehow, we’ve been mis-educated, theologically misinformed, led away from of our tradition, and have come to regard mourning only as a sign of hopeless resignation and sinking sadness But I want to suggest that mourning is more than resignation; in mourning is the potential for redress and resistance. It is not the white flag of surrender it appears to be to uninitiated eyes. But it is a passionate protest against the tyranny of death. Mourning is a sit-in against loss, a public petition that will not keep silent. Mourning is the spectacle refusal of indifference, apathy, chauvinism, and injustice. Today is a day of mourning. A day for un-silenceable sorrow and unappeasable complaint against environmental racism, corporate looting by big oil, against presidential arrogance and insensitivity, third-world poverty in affluent America, against the wretched light in which black life in America and Africa is seen, against a political unconscious which perceives New Orleans as Baghdad, and Mississippi as Afghanistan. This is our tsunami.
So let us mourn with those who mourn. Weep with those who weep. Cry aloud with anguish at what has befallen us at the gulf coast. For it is only by God’s inscrutable grace that what has happened miles from here, did not happen precisely here. In any event, this is our tsunami. And it is mourning time. Let us raise our voices in bitter lament, conceding that while our praise may get us goodies from a giving God, it is our mourning that provokes a mothering God to radical action on behalf of oppressed and suffering people. This is our tsunami. And so I mourn with Louisiana. I mourn with Mississippi. I mourn with Alabama. And I have only this confidence for my food and comfort:
***
Maurice Wallace is Associate Professor of English and African and African-American Studies at Duke University. He is the author of Constructing the Black Masculine: Identity and Ideology in African American Men's Literature and Culture, 1775-1995
'Our Tsunami’: Race, Religion and Mourning in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama
And when he was come night, even now at the descent of the mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the might works that they had seen; Saying Blessed be the King that cometh in the name of the Lord: peace in heaven and glory in the highest. And some of the Pharisees from among the multitude said unto him, Master rebuke thy disciples. And he answered and said unto them, I tell you that if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out. And when he was come near, he beheld the city and wept over it. (Luke 19:37-41)
Some African-Americans have described the devastation wrought
by Hurricane Katrina as ‘our tsunami’… (David Gonzales, “The Victims, Largely Poor and Black” The New York Times)
I. I am sick today, with grief. A grief, significantly exacerbated by a deepening consternation I have for the general health and, from my point of view, the dubious well-being of the church in America today. I am gravely worried, about what I perceive, as a conflict, a contradiction, if you may, between our increasing religiosity, on the one hand, and our decreasing relevance and vitality to change the world’s conditions, on the other hand. I am troubled, this morning, grievously troubled, by the popularity of a commercial Christianity that romanticizes our faith for the sake of capital campaigns, political favor and box office receipts, and misrepresents the journey as fast and furious, when the way is oft-times arduous and long-winded. It is disturbing, beloved, that the measure of our faith today is so often in the spectacle-charm of charismatic display that charisma now trumps compassion as the essential element, the sine qua non, of Christian identity in the most popular churches in America today. Worship is so singularly worshipped, and bells-and-whistle praise so fashionable now, that the experience of church today is all celebration, and no sympathy at all. Which is not to say that celebration is incompatible with worship but any man who only ever celebrates, who treats life as an interminable party, has no time or inclination to contemplate the extreme weight of black urban life and loss incomprehensibly endured in Louisiana and Mississippi last week. His humanity, and the human prospect for godliness within him, is thus diminished by his indifference. The very thing that would realize his divine potential, the praise craze of this current age helps him, tragically, to avert. It is a reflex of the religious I believe I comprehend, but can’t quite understand.
Only one month ago, on the very same day that an estimated ten to fifteen thousand marched along Atlanta’s Martin Luther King Drive to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act and to mobilize support for its extension, the Atlanta Georgia Dome, World Congress Center, Philips Arena and International Plaza were nearly filled to the rafters with more than 100,000 predominantly black churchgoers gathered for MegaFest 2005, the star-studded super conference and Christian entertainment event brilliantly conceived by Rev. T. D. Jakes, the most popular, most charismatic, most sermonically adept television evangelist in the last twenty-five years. Now I was not there, but I am given to understand anecdotally that a spirited time was had by all. It was a monumental celebration of Jesus as Lord, like none Atlanta had seen since the first Jakes conference there in 1999. Surely, Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem more than 2,000 years ago could not have held a candle to 100,000 brothers and sisters, “saved, sanctified, blood-bought and Holy Ghost-filled,” churchin’ together in the black cultural holy city, Hotlanta, in 2005. But for all the celebration there one month ago, I am bothered that I don’t hear the lamentations, the fervor, the loud din of mourning by those who got bought whole new wardrobes and even got their “h’ir did”--shout out to Missy Elliot--just for Megafest (I’m sorry, that wasn’t nice, was it?).
Was that celebration so intoxicating that it numbed all 100,000 celebrants to the horror of Hurricane Katrina, the outrage of official race- and class-based abandonment of thousands to spiritual despair and the cruelest indignities of death? Where is the mega-aid from Mega-fest and its corporate sponsors? Where were the mega-buses to evacuate the stranded and struggling? Worse still, why has there been no exercise of the mega-influence of so many black religious persons, a goodly number of whom cast their vote for the present Administration last November, to demand something from this President, a man who spends more time in Texas, it seems, than in Washington (though it hardly matters where he is anymore since, from a certain point of view, he’s been on vacation his whole presidency). I do not mean to pick on Rev. Jakes exclusively. He is but a symbol for a new black evangelicalism that seems far more preoccupied by gay marriage and “judicial activism” than by human and civil rights. To be fair to Rev. Jakes, it is true that he has not been indifferent to this disaster and has coordinated a relief effort led by his own 30,000 member church, The Potter’s House, in partnership with a dozen other largely black mega-ministries. It is reported they have given $250,000 in food, water, clothing and first aid and Jakes’s church has opened its elementary school to the children of the displaced who end up, intentionally or aimlessly, in Dallas. As generous as this aid may seem, however (or ungenerous, depending on your perspective of things), the new black church in America has left altogether untouched its greatest resource to relieve the suffering of so many who weekly support them. One thing, Jesus admonished the rich young ruler, thou yet lacketh. With more than $400 billion wasted on an unjust war in Iraq, how could the church let our Gulf Coast neighbors be so egregiously insulted by a congressional appropriation of one-fortieth of that sum? What will it take for the black church, its evangelicals especially, to expend its newfound political influence in order to save souls?
Who but the black church has the moral and political capital to agitate on behalf of the Gulf coast’s disinherited, the likes of whom Jesus was so unambiguously clear about defending? And not only defending, but feeding. He did not, after all, only fly by Jerusalem, and think his duty done. No, as Brother Kanye West recently reminded us, Jesus walked. He doesn’t do fly-bys. Jesus walks, is West’s refrain. He doesn’t make political speeches full of promises come too little too late. Jesus walks. With the shoeless and the shirtless. Jesus walks. With the stranded and the starving. Jesus walks. On the ground. He walks. Through hell and high water. He walks. With neighborly compassion, not executive conceit. He walks. But more than that. He feeds. Four thousand here. Five thousand there. He feeds them who hunger. No signs of looting, no bottleless babies, no outbreaks of violent frustration, though the potential is there. Because he feeds his friends. With only twelve volunteers and the most restricted of resources, he did what FEMA and Homeland Security obviously cannot.
I don’t’ understand it. If the Savior can feed thousands with a team of only twelve and the most meager means, then somebody tell me why the leadership of the mightiest nation on the globe cannot coordinate its unsearchable resources with at least the equal efficiency of an un-degreed Hebrew carpenter? Wait. Don’t answer that. I already know the sad, un-American answer. We all do.
II. It is the Lukan picture of Jesus that I have called your attention to this morning, because it is the picture of the most essential response any of us, conventioneer or president, could have to the Gulf coast apocalypse some have called “our tsunami” in the days, weeks, months, and years ahead. For Hurricane Katrina is indeed “our tsunami” as much as it is that of the unmoored masses of Biloxi, New Orleans and—lest we forget—Sri Lanka.
Witness Jesus atop Mount Olive. From that mountain platform, he commanded the full panoramic view of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount from the East across the Kidron Valley. Behind him set Jericho. And closer still, Bethany. At his feet fall the praises of them who proclaim him Lord and King, fulfillment of the prophecy. And it would be a thrilling scene, except for the curious disconnect between him and them. They celebrate, but he mourns. Looking down from Olivet , he mourns. Mourns over Jerusalem. He sees a bigger picture, commands a wider perspective and mourns for Jerusalem. Thousands and thousands of churches will conduct worship this morning with shouting and celebration, clapping and dancing, and miss the point made by the example of Jesus: Its mourning time. Jerusalem’s in jeopardy. Its mourning time.
Somehow, we’ve lost sight of the importance of mourning. Of the redemptive value of sackcloth and ashes. Somehow, we’ve been mis-educated, theologically misinformed, led away from of our tradition, and have come to regard mourning only as a sign of hopeless resignation and sinking sadness But I want to suggest that mourning is more than resignation; in mourning is the potential for redress and resistance. It is not the white flag of surrender it appears to be to uninitiated eyes. But it is a passionate protest against the tyranny of death. Mourning is a sit-in against loss, a public petition that will not keep silent. Mourning is the spectacle refusal of indifference, apathy, chauvinism, and injustice. Today is a day of mourning. A day for un-silenceable sorrow and unappeasable complaint against environmental racism, corporate looting by big oil, against presidential arrogance and insensitivity, third-world poverty in affluent America, against the wretched light in which black life in America and Africa is seen, against a political unconscious which perceives New Orleans as Baghdad, and Mississippi as Afghanistan. This is our tsunami.
So let us mourn with those who mourn. Weep with those who weep. Cry aloud with anguish at what has befallen us at the gulf coast. For it is only by God’s inscrutable grace that what has happened miles from here, did not happen precisely here. In any event, this is our tsunami. And it is mourning time. Let us raise our voices in bitter lament, conceding that while our praise may get us goodies from a giving God, it is our mourning that provokes a mothering God to radical action on behalf of oppressed and suffering people. This is our tsunami. And so I mourn with Louisiana. I mourn with Mississippi. I mourn with Alabama. And I have only this confidence for my food and comfort:
God is our refuge and strength,
A very present help in trouble.
Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed
And though the mountains be carried in the midst of the sea;
Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled,
Though the mountains shake with swelling thereof.
There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God.
The holy place of the tabernacles of the most High.
God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved;
God shall help her, and that right early.
The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved
He uttered his voice, the earth melted.
The Lord of hosts is with us;
The God of Jacob is our refuge.
God bless you. Amen.
***
Maurice Wallace is Associate Professor of English and African and African-American Studies at Duke University. He is the author of Constructing the Black Masculine: Identity and Ideology in African American Men's Literature and Culture, 1775-1995
Tuesday, September 6, 2005
Race-ing Katrina
Backwater blues have caused me to pack up my things and go/Backwater blues have caused me to pack up my things and go/'Cause my house fell down and I can't live there no more”—Bessie Smith, “Backwater Blues
To understand the carnage currently taking place in New Orleans and other parts of the Gulf Coast region, one has to understand what life was for many folks who lived in the city of New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans was a city in which nearly 70% of its inhabitants were of African-descent. Of the city’s nearly 450,000 residents, over 23% live below the federal poverty level and nearly 40% of children under the age of 18 also live below the poverty line, to say nothing of those folks whose incomes are above the poverty level, but still exist in a tenuous economic state. Tourism was the city’s primary industry, much of it related to the activities of The French Quarter and seasonal events like Mardi Gras, the Sugar Bowl, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and the occasional Super Bowl. The livelihoods of many of the city’s working class and working poor communities were inextricably tied to their roles as service workers in the tourism industry. In other words, for much of the year, some sections of New Orleans were little more than underdeveloped outpost—not of some so-called “third world” nation, but right in the United States. In its aftermath, Hurricane Katrina has and will still expose many shortcomings in human nature, the federal government and political leadership—those elected and anointed—but for this moment, she has powerfully exposed the reality of race, class and poverty in the United States. Many of those who have died and will still die will have done so simply because they were poor and/or they were black.
As many were enthralled by the human and natural dramas taking place in the Gulf Coast region, the news that there was an increase of the number of people living in poverty in this country went virtually unnoticed. The more discerning viewer of national media coverage of Katrina could have guessed as much without the aid of a national report. The reality is that some of New Orleans’ residents were already dying a slow death, brought on by a concentration of poverty, inferior housing, dilapidated educational structures, violence, environmental decay and systematic state neglect. Ironically we can thank the national media, who quite unintentionally, exposed the world to the reality of poverty in the region, even as it took many outlets 3 or 4 days to wrap their head around the fact that the majority of city’s residents were black. While the national media might have been oblivious or at least unwilling to openly address the racial component of the disaster—including the absolute failure to contextualize the slow pace of federal assistance with the reality of who they were charged to assist and the subsequent “looting” that occurred—let’s not believe that the powers to be were not. New Orleans, like far too many of America’s urban centers, needed a Marshall Plan (like the one going down in Iraq), long before Katrina came ashore. The failure of the federal government to fully address the city’s near state of crisis before Katrina—including the failure to deal with an aging and inadequate levee system—had a great deal to do with the kinds of people who lived there.
The title of Thomas Shapiro’s recent book The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality is perhaps a fitting metaphor for what it meant to be black and poor in a city like New Orleans. Although Shapiro’s concern was over the wealth gap that exist between middle class blacks and whites and the extra costs associated with being black and middle class—higher mortgage rates, less equity, and less financial flexibility, among others—there are clearly also added costs associated with being black and poor. For so many poor people in this country, there is an understanding that poverty has added costs—not only are you poor, but you are forced to live in environments that often lack vital resources or at least the kinds of resources that those with significantly healthier economic profiles have come to take for granted. And the black poor have long understood this—this is exactly what Bessie Smith sang about in “Backwater Blues” (1927), her mediation on what it meant to be black and poor and forced to live in a place where whenever the waters of the Mississippi rose, there was a good chance you would lose all your earthly possessions. In the context of Hurricane Katrina, that added cost may have been your life or at the very least the scorn of a nation that couldn’t quite understand why you were “so black” and “so poor”. Thousands of American citizens became “refugees” in the eyes of the American public and while we understand that a refugee is one who seeks “refuge”, let’s also be clear that for most Americans that term has been largely applied to “boat people” fleeing the tyranny of their native lands. And in that regard maybe “refugee” is the fitting term.
Kanye West—brave as he is in his attempt the fill the leadership void amongst hip-hop artists since the murder of Tupac Shakur—was right when he said “George Bush Doesn’t Care About Black people”, but we need to complicate that sentiment. It is perhaps too easy to suggest that the federal government’s response to Katrina would have been more emphatic if it occurred in largely white communities. The initially tepid and lazy response to Katrina in New Orleans wasn’t just a product of racist neglect, it was also the product of the devaluation of whole communities because they didn’t posses political capital. In other words the black poor of New Orleans were politically irrelevant thus it didn’t matter what happened to them because they were incapable of holding anybody accountable for their tenuous state. Yes, President Bush would have responded more quickly in Florida, but not simply because his brother is the governor of the state, or that the state is more visibly “non-black”, but because the Florida possesses a white and Spanish-speaking electorate that votes and thus can hold any damn body accountable for their failure to respond in a timely matter. On some level the sudden (and legitimate) indignation of black political leadership—The Congressional Black Caucus, Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr., Rev. Al Sharpton, New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin, etc—was insulting. There has long been cause for such indignation: the erosion of Civil Rights legislation, the prison industrial complex, the dysfunctionality of the electoral process, the tragedy of urban schooling, homophobic and misogynist violence, and the criminal justice system among them. As the images of the black poor in New Orleans began to circulate, it not only exposed social crevices caused by race and class, but perhaps, the irrelevancy of current black political leadership. The indignation of black political leadership was as much a last stab at validation as it was a legitimate attempt to find recourse for those suffering in New Orleans and other regions of the Gulf Coast.
***
Literally as the heritage of New Orleans washes away in defiled and diseased waters, there’s little doubt that there was a new blues that was birthed on rooftops, in the Superdome and outside the New Orleans Convention Center. The stories of those children and young people who were forced to suffer have yet to be told and they will be told in the music, visual art, literature and body movements that have yet to come—except in the nightmares these folk have confronted them nearly every night since Katrina’s land-fall became a reality. Katrina was an incredible disaster, but let’s hope that her most lasting effect will be to rattle the foundations of a democracy that has failed to live up to its own promises.
NP: Wynton Marsalis--In This House, On This Morning
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
March of the Penguins and the Struggles of Fatherhood
I had the chance to view the new documentary March of the Penguins. Narrated by seasoned actor Morgan Freeman, March of the Penguins tells the extraordinary story of the Emperor Penguins. At once a story about migration, survival in inhospitable environments (winter in Antarctica) and commitment, Freeman perhaps says it best when he says “in the harshest place on earth, love finds away”. As the film’s producers’ describe March of the Penguins:
Each winter, alone in the pitiless ice deserts of Antarctica, deep in the most inhospitable terrain on Earth, a truly remarkable journey takes place as it has done for millennia. Emperor penguins in their thousands abandon the deep blue security of their ocean home and clamber onto the frozen ice to begin their long journey into a region so bleak, so extreme, it supports no other wildlife at this time of year. In single file, the penguins march blinded by blizzards, buffeted by gale force winds. Resolute, indomitable, driven by the overpowering urge to reproduce, to assure the survival of the species.
Understandably the general consensus among critics is that March of the Penguins is the “feel good” movie of the summer.
But locked deeply into this story of sweet survival is the relative seamless ease in which the female and male Emperor Penguins trade gender roles in an attempt to guarantee the survival of the species. Male Emperor penguins spend more than two months nurturing their un-hatched eggs, while the female Emperor Penguins return to the ocean to feed. The penguin chicks are in fact born while the mother’s are still away, thus the father’s are responsible for the first feeding—a small amount of a milk like substance that they’ve been holding in their mouths despite the fact that the fathers have not eaten in over four months. The mother and fathers trade roles as primary nurturers until the chicks are old-enough to fend for themselves—and only then does the family disperse. I’m pretty sure there’s no discourse among the penguins that suggest that the male penguins are “less of a penguin” because of the fluidity of gender roles.
I watched March of the Penguins with my oldest whurl-a-gurl. She’s turns 7 in two weeks and has a week off until 2nd grade starts up next Thursday. Our day at the movies was one of few times we’ve had to hang out with each other. She reminds me quite often that it was not always the case that daddy had to set aside time to spend with her. Earlier in my career, when I was an assistant professor with no reputation (good or bad), I would often get her from daycare early so that we could take walks, hang out at the Book House at Stuyvesant Plaza or chill at the Albany Starbucks. I often tell folks that the beauty of the academic life is not that we have summer’s off (which we rarely do), but rather the flexibility of our work schedules—I would sometimes go to my oldest daughter’s daycare to read to her class, for example. Alas my youngest whurl-a-gurl (nearly 3) will never have the kind or relationship with me that my oldest had with me when she was nearly 3.
As so much of my life has become defined by “the grind” and legitimately so, I do lament that I can’t always be the “nurturing father” that I want to be. My oldest whurl-a-gurl will often say that she wished that I had a “regular” job, instead of being a “book writer” and “professor”. In her mind, if I had a “regular” job, I’d have more time to spend with her. Alas there are lots of folks with “regular” jobs who also need to be on the grind—mortgages, car payments, child-care, toddler gymnastics, in some cases private school tuition, art camp, etc. are all real things that desire real finances. There may be some bad parenting going on in contemporary America, but there is a lot of good parenting that is challenged everyday by the need to help our children better navigate the world that we’ve made for them. In this regard, perhaps I envy the Emperor Penguin.
Tuesday, August 9, 2005
NewBlackMan News and Notes, Volume One
I Bling Because I’m Happy
Just as TD Jakes and the crew descended on the ATL for this year’s Megafest, Marc Lamont Hill dropped a brilliant critique of the New Black Church. Reminds me a few years ago when I saw a commercial for one of Jakes’ spiritual cruises and the images seemed reminiscent of Jigga’s “Big Pimpin’” video.
Race Gender and the Wedding Crashers
My girl Debra Dickerson has an interesting piece on the race and gender politics missing from the Wedding Crashers. Some deeply personal stuff here about some black women coming to terms with their self-worth in a society that so-often deems them unworthy and renders them invisible. There’s a more personal backdrop to Debra’s essay that she doesn’t discuss, though hopefully one day she will write about.
Pimps and Mo’ Pimps
Esther Iverem, founder and editor of SeeingBlack.com has a 2-fer this month on Pimpology. “Over Powered By Pimps” is Esther’s take on Hustle and Flow, but it’s her smart retro read of Purple Rain Pimpology that got me locked in. BTW SeeingBlack.com is black-owned, black operated and a great monthly site.
The Economy of Parenting
Jabari Asim, one of my favorite writers and favorite people, has a nice piece on parenting up at The Washington Post, where he’s a weekly columnist and senior editor of Book World.
Voting Rights Act at 40
Rev. Jesse Jackson and Barbara Arnwine, executive director of The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, put the RIGHT on blast in a conversation with NPR’s Ed Gordon about the renewal of the Voting Rights Act in 2007. This is the Rev. Jackson that I’d like hear more often.
Both Sides of the Surface (BSOTS) Podcast
Jason Randall Smith is a fine poet—his poem >“A Lesson in Deterioration” opens my book >Soul Babies. But Jason is a spinner at heart; Hear his first podcast. Dwight Trible and The Life Force Trio make an appearance towards the end.
Nick Cannon (again) or the beauty of blogging
Annette John-Hall did a piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer
on Nick Cannon’s “Can I Live?”. I’m quoted in the piece, though it’s not anything I didn’t say in my blog entry on June 27, 2005 about Cannon’s song. But that’s the point—homegirl called me for an interview about her story because she read my blog entry. Cool.
Just as TD Jakes and the crew descended on the ATL for this year’s Megafest, Marc Lamont Hill dropped a brilliant critique of the New Black Church. Reminds me a few years ago when I saw a commercial for one of Jakes’ spiritual cruises and the images seemed reminiscent of Jigga’s “Big Pimpin’” video.
Race Gender and the Wedding Crashers
My girl Debra Dickerson has an interesting piece on the race and gender politics missing from the Wedding Crashers. Some deeply personal stuff here about some black women coming to terms with their self-worth in a society that so-often deems them unworthy and renders them invisible. There’s a more personal backdrop to Debra’s essay that she doesn’t discuss, though hopefully one day she will write about.
Pimps and Mo’ Pimps
Esther Iverem, founder and editor of SeeingBlack.com has a 2-fer this month on Pimpology. “Over Powered By Pimps” is Esther’s take on Hustle and Flow, but it’s her smart retro read of Purple Rain Pimpology that got me locked in. BTW SeeingBlack.com is black-owned, black operated and a great monthly site.
The Economy of Parenting
Jabari Asim, one of my favorite writers and favorite people, has a nice piece on parenting up at The Washington Post, where he’s a weekly columnist and senior editor of Book World.
Voting Rights Act at 40
Rev. Jesse Jackson and Barbara Arnwine, executive director of The Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, put the RIGHT on blast in a conversation with NPR’s Ed Gordon about the renewal of the Voting Rights Act in 2007. This is the Rev. Jackson that I’d like hear more often.
Both Sides of the Surface (BSOTS) Podcast
Jason Randall Smith is a fine poet—his poem >“A Lesson in Deterioration” opens my book >Soul Babies. But Jason is a spinner at heart; Hear his first podcast. Dwight Trible and The Life Force Trio make an appearance towards the end.
Nick Cannon (again) or the beauty of blogging
Annette John-Hall did a piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer
on Nick Cannon’s “Can I Live?”. I’m quoted in the piece, though it’s not anything I didn’t say in my blog entry on June 27, 2005 about Cannon’s song. But that’s the point—homegirl called me for an interview about her story because she read my blog entry. Cool.
Saturday, July 30, 2005
Bakari Kitwana, Political Writing and the Harlem Book Fair
A portion of my recent conversation with Bakari Kitwana is now live over at AOL BlackVoices. I reviewed Bakari’s Hip-Hop Generation for Africana.com back in 2002, when I had less of a sense of his project. Over the last few years I’ve come to greatly appreciate his commitment to expanding the available language currently used to discuss hip-hop as well as his investment in coalition politics, as rooted in his notion of a multicultural, multi-racial hip-hop electorate. Our conversation is just a small glimpse of the ideas he expounds throughout his new book Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop.
I sat down with Bakari (via phone) only a week or so after his controversial essay The Cotton Club was published in the Village Voice. The premise of Bakari’s essay is that there is, in fact, a vibrant political scene in underground hip-hop, that is largely populated by black artists and white audiences. I had just read Bakari’s essay when I walked into the Barnes & Noble here in Durham, trying to track down a copy of the new Leela James cd. With Leela no where to be found, I did fid an interesting hip-hop display, which featured what I’ll diplomatically call “white boy hip-hop”: Aesop, Gift of Gab, MF Doom, etc. When I pressed the manager about the logic behind the display, he responded that if B&N was gonna have a hip-hop display, it was gonna be “good hip-hop.” Common, Missy, Jay Z aren’t “good hip-hop”?. Hell, here we are in Durham; had the cat ever heard of Little Brother?
There is lots of anxiety about Bakari’s new book and his Village Voice piece from folk who believe that he is advocating the jettisoning of a black specific political agenda, which thankfully, if you read the book closely, is not the case. On the other hand, I am having real reservations about the emergence of a generation of cultural gatekeepers—editors, program directors, concert promoters and even Barnes & Noble managers—who have little connection with hip hop’s history or aesthetic criteria. Too many cats in the game now don’t know nothing about Big Daddy Kane—I’m not just being nostalgic here. For example, I can’t claim to be a scholar of American literature if I can’t engage Walt Whitman with the same verve that I do James Baldwin—men who wrote in different centuries. In my specific case, I can’t call myself a scholar/critic of Black Popular Culture if I can’t engage Mary J. Blige with the same sophistication that I engage Aretha Franklin.
***
Bakari Kitwana was among the panelist who were convened at this year’s Harlem Book Fair to discuss the “devolution” of hip-hop. While Gwendolyn Pough, Nelson George, Danyel Smith, Bakari and I talked, across the street at the Schomburg, C-Span was broadcasting another Harlem Book Fair panel about Black Political Writing in the 21st Century that featured Kevin Powell, Yvonne Bynoe and senior political scientist Ron Walters (University of Maryland). The irony of the two panels being scheduled at the same time is that the commentary on the hip-hop panel was as political as that which the “political writing” panel engaged in. Unfortunately for far too many, the general expectation is that if you put together a panel with hip-hop generation writers, then the sum total of our available knowledges is a conversation that covers ground about the beef between 50 Cent and The Game. And indeed for many of the Civil Rights Generation, that’s all there is to hip-hop. But as our colleagues Kevin Powell and Yvonne Bynoe evidenced throughout the “political writing” panel, any sophisticated engagement with hip-hop is an engagement with the social, political, cultural, and intellectual forces that created it. As Yvonne Bynoe stated so eloquently, when all is said and done, she’s a married parent, looking for the same quality of life issues that any married parent is looking for.
A month ago I lamented that hip-hop lacked it’s Audre Lorde. Hearing us do our thing at the Harlem Book Fair last Sunday I realized that we—Bakari Kitwana, Kevin Powell, Danyel Smith, Gwedonlyn Pough, Nelson George, Greg Tate, Yvonne Bynoe…Joan Morgan, William Jelani Cobb, Akiba Solomon, Lawrence Jackson, Farai Chideya, Miles Marshall Lewis, S. Craig Watkins, Imani Perry, Scott Poulsen-Bryant, Davey D and so many, many more—are already our generation’s Lorde…and Baldwin. Now it is just the matter of us having the faith to do the work that we have been primed to do.
I sat down with Bakari (via phone) only a week or so after his controversial essay The Cotton Club was published in the Village Voice. The premise of Bakari’s essay is that there is, in fact, a vibrant political scene in underground hip-hop, that is largely populated by black artists and white audiences. I had just read Bakari’s essay when I walked into the Barnes & Noble here in Durham, trying to track down a copy of the new Leela James cd. With Leela no where to be found, I did fid an interesting hip-hop display, which featured what I’ll diplomatically call “white boy hip-hop”: Aesop, Gift of Gab, MF Doom, etc. When I pressed the manager about the logic behind the display, he responded that if B&N was gonna have a hip-hop display, it was gonna be “good hip-hop.” Common, Missy, Jay Z aren’t “good hip-hop”?. Hell, here we are in Durham; had the cat ever heard of Little Brother?
There is lots of anxiety about Bakari’s new book and his Village Voice piece from folk who believe that he is advocating the jettisoning of a black specific political agenda, which thankfully, if you read the book closely, is not the case. On the other hand, I am having real reservations about the emergence of a generation of cultural gatekeepers—editors, program directors, concert promoters and even Barnes & Noble managers—who have little connection with hip hop’s history or aesthetic criteria. Too many cats in the game now don’t know nothing about Big Daddy Kane—I’m not just being nostalgic here. For example, I can’t claim to be a scholar of American literature if I can’t engage Walt Whitman with the same verve that I do James Baldwin—men who wrote in different centuries. In my specific case, I can’t call myself a scholar/critic of Black Popular Culture if I can’t engage Mary J. Blige with the same sophistication that I engage Aretha Franklin.
***
Bakari Kitwana was among the panelist who were convened at this year’s Harlem Book Fair to discuss the “devolution” of hip-hop. While Gwendolyn Pough, Nelson George, Danyel Smith, Bakari and I talked, across the street at the Schomburg, C-Span was broadcasting another Harlem Book Fair panel about Black Political Writing in the 21st Century that featured Kevin Powell, Yvonne Bynoe and senior political scientist Ron Walters (University of Maryland). The irony of the two panels being scheduled at the same time is that the commentary on the hip-hop panel was as political as that which the “political writing” panel engaged in. Unfortunately for far too many, the general expectation is that if you put together a panel with hip-hop generation writers, then the sum total of our available knowledges is a conversation that covers ground about the beef between 50 Cent and The Game. And indeed for many of the Civil Rights Generation, that’s all there is to hip-hop. But as our colleagues Kevin Powell and Yvonne Bynoe evidenced throughout the “political writing” panel, any sophisticated engagement with hip-hop is an engagement with the social, political, cultural, and intellectual forces that created it. As Yvonne Bynoe stated so eloquently, when all is said and done, she’s a married parent, looking for the same quality of life issues that any married parent is looking for.
A month ago I lamented that hip-hop lacked it’s Audre Lorde. Hearing us do our thing at the Harlem Book Fair last Sunday I realized that we—Bakari Kitwana, Kevin Powell, Danyel Smith, Gwedonlyn Pough, Nelson George, Greg Tate, Yvonne Bynoe…Joan Morgan, William Jelani Cobb, Akiba Solomon, Lawrence Jackson, Farai Chideya, Miles Marshall Lewis, S. Craig Watkins, Imani Perry, Scott Poulsen-Bryant, Davey D and so many, many more—are already our generation’s Lorde…and Baldwin. Now it is just the matter of us having the faith to do the work that we have been primed to do.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
“Lesbianism is about to take over our community”: The Homophobic “wisdom” of Reverend Willie Wilson
I’m late on this one…
During his sermon on July 3, 2005 Reverend Willie Wilson of Washington D.C.’s Union Temple unleashed a homophobic and sexist rant, which included the claim that “lesbianism is about to take over” the black community. One of the most prominent ministers in D.C., Wilson is also the Executive Director of the Millions More Movement march, which will commemorate the 10 year anniversary of the Million Man March in October of this year.
Included among Rev. Wilson’s “insightful” observations is the notion that
While I agree with the tensions associated with "sisters making more money that brothers”, the reality is that the tensions are rooted in the inability of black men to see their self-worth as being more than making money and being the primary “provider”. Bruh if you ain’t got a job, pick up a broom and sweep the floor; hit the hamper and do some laundry; hell, pull out a pot or two and get to cookin’, and guess what, just because your labor is now relegated to the domestic sphere, that don’t make you any less of a man—just like working in the kitchen don’t make women any less of a women or a human being.
But then Rev. Wilson just gets vile. On lesbian relationships he states:
Activists like Phil Pannell and Keith Boykin were of course ON this. Wilson’s diatribe comes months after Boykin’s celebrated hug of Louis Farrakhan, the head of the Nation of Islam and the spiritual figurehead for the Millions More Movement march. During their embrace, Farrakhan promised Boykin that black gays and lesbians would be welcomed at the march. That’s a hell of a welcoming speech by Wilson—It recalls some of the equally vile comments made by Bishop George Augustus Stallings of the Imani Temple who responded to charges of homophobia during the planning stages of the 1995 Million Man March with the quip:
Equally maddening is the coverage of Wilson’s comments in the mainstream press. BlackAmericaWeb.com is to be commended for covering the controversy, but their headline Black Homosexuals Enraged Over MMM Leader’s Anti-Gay Sermon reinforces the notion that homophobic rants like that of Wilson are solely the problem of black gays and lesbians and thus their “outrage” can be easily dismissed. No Wilson’s rant is our problem…it’s my problem. One of the reasons why homophobia and misogyny continues to fester in our communities is because we reduce the targets of such practices as less than black, less than human. Homophobia and Sexism is not only divisive, they also deny us the fullness of our humanity and anything that denies any of us our humanity, needs to be put in check.
I’m done.
Read New Black Man.
During his sermon on July 3, 2005 Reverend Willie Wilson of Washington D.C.’s Union Temple unleashed a homophobic and sexist rant, which included the claim that “lesbianism is about to take over” the black community. One of the most prominent ministers in D.C., Wilson is also the Executive Director of the Millions More Movement march, which will commemorate the 10 year anniversary of the Million Man March in October of this year.
Included among Rev. Wilson’s “insightful” observations is the notion that
Sisters are making more money than brothers and its creating problems…that’s one of the reasons many of our women are becoming lesbians.Huh? Seems like a classic case of masculine anxiety, as if women choose same sex relationships solely out of a dissatisfaction with men.
While I agree with the tensions associated with "sisters making more money that brothers”, the reality is that the tensions are rooted in the inability of black men to see their self-worth as being more than making money and being the primary “provider”. Bruh if you ain’t got a job, pick up a broom and sweep the floor; hit the hamper and do some laundry; hell, pull out a pot or two and get to cookin’, and guess what, just because your labor is now relegated to the domestic sphere, that don’t make you any less of a man—just like working in the kitchen don’t make women any less of a women or a human being.
But then Rev. Wilson just gets vile. On lesbian relationships he states:
anytime somebody got to slap some grease on your behind and stick something in you, its something wrong with that. Your butt ain’t made for that…No wonder your behind is bleeding.WHOA. What’s up with this cat? And this was in a church, right? And this cat considers himself a community leader? And we want to blame all the misogyny and homophobia in the black community on some rappers…?
Activists like Phil Pannell and Keith Boykin were of course ON this. Wilson’s diatribe comes months after Boykin’s celebrated hug of Louis Farrakhan, the head of the Nation of Islam and the spiritual figurehead for the Millions More Movement march. During their embrace, Farrakhan promised Boykin that black gays and lesbians would be welcomed at the march. That’s a hell of a welcoming speech by Wilson—It recalls some of the equally vile comments made by Bishop George Augustus Stallings of the Imani Temple who responded to charges of homophobia during the planning stages of the 1995 Million Man March with the quip:
What do you want, some milquetoast, sissy faggot to lead you to the promised land?Farrakhan was silent then and thus far has been silent about Wilson.
Equally maddening is the coverage of Wilson’s comments in the mainstream press. BlackAmericaWeb.com is to be commended for covering the controversy, but their headline Black Homosexuals Enraged Over MMM Leader’s Anti-Gay Sermon reinforces the notion that homophobic rants like that of Wilson are solely the problem of black gays and lesbians and thus their “outrage” can be easily dismissed. No Wilson’s rant is our problem…it’s my problem. One of the reasons why homophobia and misogyny continues to fester in our communities is because we reduce the targets of such practices as less than black, less than human. Homophobia and Sexism is not only divisive, they also deny us the fullness of our humanity and anything that denies any of us our humanity, needs to be put in check.
I’m done.
Read New Black Man.
Wednesday, July 20, 2005
So Can You Pass a Brother some Hot Sauce…and perhaps a Revolution?
So…members of the legendary Black Panther Party are preparing to sell a new line of products called Burn Baby Burn: A Taste of the Sixties Revolutionary Hot Sauce—yes I said hot sauce. Proceeds from the sale of the hot sauce (still ruminating on this?) will go towards the Huey Newton Foundation and Oakland based community organization. Now I know that so many of us have become jaded and look at the hot sauce venture with a healthy sense cynicism, but this is not new territory for members of the Black Panther Party. During the late 1980s BPP founder Bobby Seale began to hawk his skills as a master Bar BQer. His cook book (“it’s a cook book, it’s a cook book!”) Barbeque'N With Bobby was published in 1988. I remember catching Seale give a talk up at New York University shortly after the book’s publication, where he defended his right to write such a book on the basis that (and I’m of cousre paraphrasing), even a revolutionary has a right to eat good Bar BQ (keep in mind as I write this, I am across the street from a place called the Q-Shack which specializes to East Carolina-styled Bar BQ). It seems to me that if Elijah Muhammad could sell the masses of the diverse uses of navy beans, then Bobby Seale and the Black Panther Party can celebrate the virtues of some good Bar-BQ and hot sauce.
Of the cousre the timing of “Burn Baby Burn” hot sauce is not accidental. Next year marks the “formal’ birth of the Black Power Movement and the reality is that unless you are a hard-core fan/scholar/veteran of the era, names like David Hilliard, Mark Clark, Elaine Brown, Fred Hampton, Kathleen Clever and Bobby Hutton are not familiar names. At the very least, “Burn Baby Burn” gives us an opportunity to revisit that amazing moment in American history and at best, let’s hope the Huey Newton Foundation raises enough money to do the kind of work that lives up to the radical democratic ideals that the Black Panther Party tried to uphold.
***
Just to Get a Rep?
I repped today on behalf of Hip-Hop parents on NPR’s News and Notes with Ed Gordon. Danyel Smith also got down on a little Bliss
Of the cousre the timing of “Burn Baby Burn” hot sauce is not accidental. Next year marks the “formal’ birth of the Black Power Movement and the reality is that unless you are a hard-core fan/scholar/veteran of the era, names like David Hilliard, Mark Clark, Elaine Brown, Fred Hampton, Kathleen Clever and Bobby Hutton are not familiar names. At the very least, “Burn Baby Burn” gives us an opportunity to revisit that amazing moment in American history and at best, let’s hope the Huey Newton Foundation raises enough money to do the kind of work that lives up to the radical democratic ideals that the Black Panther Party tried to uphold.
***
Just to Get a Rep?
I repped today on behalf of Hip-Hop parents on NPR’s News and Notes with Ed Gordon. Danyel Smith also got down on a little Bliss
Monday, June 27, 2005
William Rehnquist Meet Nick Cannon
It goes without saying that the majority of Americans who know who Chief Justice William Rehnquist is, probably don’t know who Nick Cannon is. But as Rehnquist considers retiring from the Supreme Court, it’s a good bet that many more folk will suddenly be introduced to Cannon
For the uninitiated Nick Cannon is a twenty-something rapper-actor, who first came to fame as a bit player on the Nickelodeon “tween” series All That. Most recently Cannon has had starring roles in John Hughes like “black face” fare such as Love Don’t Cost a Thing (2003) and Charles Stone III’s directorial debut Drumline (2002). Cannon has attracted attention lately for his new song and video “Can I Live?” in which he thanks his mother for not aborting him. Not surprisingly the song has been celebrated by pro-life/anti-abortion groups. For his part Cannon is non-committal about the song’s political sentiments—he ain’t trying to judge nobody—and I take him at his word on that.
But in an era when popular culture is increasingly little more than unadulterated ideology and network news can be better described as “ideo-tainment” one has to wonder what kind of impact “Can I Live?” is gonna have as the pressure increases to repeal Roe vs. Wade—particularly as Rehnquist’s retirement could push the court further to the Right. For folk who usually don’t watch Fox News and wouldn’t know William F. Buckley if he knocked on their door, Cannon’s video can become an incredible influence—much like the façades of down-low brothers and gay marriage became the wedge issues that Carl Rove exploited in the 2004 Presidential election.
For the record, my own politics are pro-choice—a product of my pro-feminist sensibilities, though I am deeply affected by arguments from my feminist sister home girl Joan Morgan and others about the parental rights of fathers, in the pro-choice debate. As the parent of two adoptive daughters, I am also touched by Cannon’s video—what if the birth mothers of my daughters had choose the path of abortion?
These are not easy issues, hence that passion that erupts on all sides, but my hope is that Cannon’s lovesong to his mom, doesn’t become an unwitting accomplice to those who don’t really have the best interests of women and black folk in mind.
For the uninitiated Nick Cannon is a twenty-something rapper-actor, who first came to fame as a bit player on the Nickelodeon “tween” series All That. Most recently Cannon has had starring roles in John Hughes like “black face” fare such as Love Don’t Cost a Thing (2003) and Charles Stone III’s directorial debut Drumline (2002). Cannon has attracted attention lately for his new song and video “Can I Live?” in which he thanks his mother for not aborting him. Not surprisingly the song has been celebrated by pro-life/anti-abortion groups. For his part Cannon is non-committal about the song’s political sentiments—he ain’t trying to judge nobody—and I take him at his word on that.
But in an era when popular culture is increasingly little more than unadulterated ideology and network news can be better described as “ideo-tainment” one has to wonder what kind of impact “Can I Live?” is gonna have as the pressure increases to repeal Roe vs. Wade—particularly as Rehnquist’s retirement could push the court further to the Right. For folk who usually don’t watch Fox News and wouldn’t know William F. Buckley if he knocked on their door, Cannon’s video can become an incredible influence—much like the façades of down-low brothers and gay marriage became the wedge issues that Carl Rove exploited in the 2004 Presidential election.
For the record, my own politics are pro-choice—a product of my pro-feminist sensibilities, though I am deeply affected by arguments from my feminist sister home girl Joan Morgan and others about the parental rights of fathers, in the pro-choice debate. As the parent of two adoptive daughters, I am also touched by Cannon’s video—what if the birth mothers of my daughters had choose the path of abortion?
These are not easy issues, hence that passion that erupts on all sides, but my hope is that Cannon’s lovesong to his mom, doesn’t become an unwitting accomplice to those who don’t really have the best interests of women and black folk in mind.
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