Monday Morning Driveby

Hip Hop Women Recount Abuse at Their Own Risk

This is Carla Thompson writing for Women's eNews about hip-hop artists and domestic abuse. Essentially a riff from Elizabeth Mendez Berry's brillant piece from Vibe last year. Lizz and Angie Collette Beatty get some good words in.

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Six black professors departing from Duke?

Yet another spin on the Duke-Lacrosse drama, though the mainstream press plays this out as a black exodus from Duke in light of the scandal. Far from the case as Lee Baker, Deb Thomas (one of the departing profs) and I suggest on the local NPR station last Thursday.

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From the SeeingBlack Files...

Makani Themba-Nixon on Halle Berry's "Storm" : "By casting the coquettish Halle Berry to play the fierce and dominating Storm, Fox disempowered the only Black heroine to star in a major comic book franchise."

What??? Voter Disenfranchisement? Greg Palast visits (courtesy of Democracy Now): "The Republican National Committee has a special offer for African-American soldiers: Go to Baghdad, lose your vote."

For the Love of the Soul--MAN on compliations by Ahmir "?uestlove" Thompson and Oliver "O-Dub" Wang: "It's NOT always about the money. Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson and Oliver Wang dig in the crates, not to find new music samples to rip off, but to create two new soul compilations for both the new school and old heads."

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Black Power, Black Power, in The New York Times

Peniel Joseph on Black Power: "Historians tend to regard black power's polemics, boisterous nationalism and misogyny as antithetical to the civil rights movement's dreams of community. Its reputation as having helped unleash urban violence — and a white backlash — remains a fixed part of civil rights scholarship and public memory...But four decades later, it's worth reminding ourselves that (Stokley) Carmichael's role was more nuanced than we tend to acknowledge. And it is his friendly relationship with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., now largely forgotten, that exemplifies the hidden connections between two movements often seen as mutually exclusive."


Joseph's narrative history of the Black Power Movement, Waiting 'Til the Midnight Hour, will be published next month.