How Black Girls Rock: An Interview with Beverly Bond

Beverly Bond talks how she started her celebrated mentoring program

How Black Girls Rock: An Interview with Beverly Bond
by Felicia Pride

You can only wish that all DJs were built like Beverly Bond. But it’s not just her ability to represent the best of the art form and move the crowd that makes her noteworthy. She’s also the founder of Black Girls Rock, a weekly mentoring program. Every Saturday, at the Scratch Academy in New York, Bond works to transform the lives of young girls and help them see their own worth and talent.

To help fund the program, Bond began organizing award shows to celebrate black girls and women who rock. This Sunday, November 7, BET will air the annual award show which will honor icons, influencers, and rising stars like Ruby Dee, Raven-Symoné, Missy Elliot, Keke Palmer, Teresa Clarke and Major General Marcelite Harris. Hosted by Nia Long, the show includes performances by Jill Scott, Marsha Ambrosius, Kelly Price and Ledisi among a plethora of appearances by black women of all stripes.

Here, Bond tells BackList about the beautiful struggle of building a meaningful, creative program that makes a difference.

BackList: What was the motivation behind Black Girls Rock?
Beverly Bond: There were conversations going on from several black women and others in black communities about not seeing the best of us represented. As a DJ, I pay a lot of attention to this from the lyrical content of music to how some guys perpetuate stereotypical images without realizing that they’re doing it. I feel like this was my calling—going from being a model to seeing girls in videos taking their clothes off and calling themselves models. As an empowered woman who knows that I carry my weight beyond my physical self, I didn’t feel like these were the right messages to send our young women.

BackList: What was the first step that you took?
BB: I had this idea to make a t-shirt that would feature the names of women who rock—black women in history, politics, and across the board. I started writing the names down. As I wrote and reviewed the list, I realized that it was bigger than a t-shirt. It was an affirmation. It had almost become acceptable to be picked on and objectified. All our girls need to hear and see that they’re special and they rock.

What did you do next?
BB: I had a big epiphany at one time. I decided to start a mentoring program to help young girls be inspired and to provide them with role models so they aren’t looking to scantily-clad vixens as the only people they could be.

I wrote my proposal, filed my 501(c)(3) and for my incorporation. I talked to different people who had mentoring programs. The process reminded me of when I first started spinning and people didn’t take me seriously because I was a model. Some people in the nonprofit world shunned me a little because they looked at me as a model turned DJ starting a nonprofit.

We launched in 2006 and did our first awards show in Brooklyn. We honored MC Lyte and DJ Jazzy Joyce. DJ Premier and I spun. Joan Morgan was our keynote. It was amazing and empowering, so we followed with a second, third and fourth show. We stayed consistent with our mission to honor and celebrate black women.

Read the Full Essay @ theBacklist

Relaunch of The Backlist: Jails > Schools?

Jails > Schools?
by Felicia Pride

Recently a lot of attention has shifted towards America’s failing education system. As if its ailments are new. But beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose. Maybe the right people will take notice?

There’s the enormous press that Michelle Rhee’s resignation has received. Questions swirl in the air about the former D.C. schools’ Chancellor. Where will she land? Does Fenty blame her? Is she regretful? Versus, analyzing the public school system she’s leaving behind.

Waiting for Superman, the celebrated film about America’s failing education system is opening some eyes to the fact that a crisis exists. But for some educators and activists doing the dirty work, the film settles on the surface.

At this point, it doesn’t matter on what side of the complex problem you stand. All that matters is that we all look center: to our kids. Too many of us are looking past, around, and over them.

Then we shake our heads at young people for not “valuing” education, when, in reality, too many in positions of power don’t. Or more specifically, they don’t value education for all children.

Oh the powers that be talk a good game during election seasons or to reporters. But when it comes to what’s required to provide top-notch education to every child, they fail. Why isn’t their funding pulled?

Prime example:

There’s a quiet battle raging in Baltimore, MD. State lawmakers have approved plans to build a $100 million jail for teenage offenders.

The state has been planning this penitentiary for five years. Their defense: Teens who face adult charges are housed in the Baltimore City Detention Center, but there’s no space for them in the crowded adult facility. The city has been scolded by the U.S. Department of Education for not separating the two populations.

Read the Full Essay @ thebacklist

What Would Jimmy Say?

What would have been his 86th birthday is a cause for reflection.

What might James Baldwin say?
by Felicia Pride

This week, writer, critic, activist, and literary icon James Baldwin would have celebrated his 86th birthday, a cause for reflection and tributes by those touched by his life and work.



And what work it was.

The Cross of Redemption (August 24, 2010, Pantheon Books), a forthcoming volume of Baldwin’s uncollected writings serves as another testament to the breadth of analysis and observation that he possessed and articulated with such clarity and power. Edited by writer Randall Kenan, the collection includes a mix of Baldwin’s essays, reviews, and public letters written between 1947 and 1985. In the book’s introduction, Kenan rightfully classifies Baldwin as a literary prodigy, one who successfully (both commercially and critically) used his talent to document, with unapologetic fervor, the twisted, complex, and often ugly world around him. His overarching theme, even as he also sought to assert, contextualize, unravel, and complicate his identities as gay, black, American, man, was simply, as Kenan notes, humanity.



Now as we forcefully stand in the midst of a post-racial façade, under the leadership of a Black president in a country where racial progress is as fragile as it’s imaginary and basic civil rights continue to be threatened, much can be understood from Baldwin’s thoughts about America’s past and future. 



While his ideas may have evolved if he was still alive, many of his assertions and conclusions remain relevant, poignant, and easily applicable to many of our current affairs. 



Read the Full Essay @ theLoop21.com

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

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

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

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

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



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

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

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

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



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

Hubert Harrison, Black Public Intellectual

A New Biography about Hubert Harrison Offers Insight Into Black Public Intellectualism in America
by Felicia Pride

Debates have been circling lately regarding black leadership and public intellectualism. Princeton professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell recently wrote a piece for CNN that slams Tavis Smiley's inadequate critiques of Obama's treatment of race. She also gets at Smiley's "soul patrol"-which includes Cornel West, Michael Eric Dyson, and Dick Gregory-for their roles in his documentary "Stand." She feels Smiley and friends appropriate Martin Luther King's legacy and "implicitly claim that they, not Obama, are the authentic representatives of the political interests of African-Americans."

Spelman professor William Jelani Cobb, chimed in on what he called the "Obama Wars" among intellectuals. He wrote on his blog, "Conflict produces progress. Or, more specifically, the competitive market of ideas forces everyone to step up their thought game."

All this talk aligns with a growing interest in Hubert Harrison, a figure not typically studied in school or talked about in contemporary discourse. A new biography, "Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918" (the first of two volumes) by Jeffrey B. Perry, a self-described "working class scholar," intends to rekindle the work, life, and politics of a forgotten thinker.

Read the Full Review @ The Root

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Felicia Pride Steps to the Mic

from Scheme Magazine

Felicia Pride: The Message
by Dale Coachman

When it comes to women in the hip hop culture unfortunately we predominantly focus on the video vixens and why they do what they do or the plight of Lil’ Kim coming out of jail and or Foxy Brown going in. Baltimore representative Felicia Pride who is an Author, Blogger (AOL.com Black Voices) and founder of The BackList has come to give her contribution to hip hop from a different standpoint. With her first book The Message: 100 Life Lessons from Hip hop Greatest Songs do out the end of this month Ms. Pride is here to give her interpretation of what hip hop has means and has done for her throughout her life and career. Whether it’s learning the corporate ropes of publishing, discovering what brings her liberation of self or a stories of how and where she acquired her swagger. With a published book in addition to writing a literary chapter for the television series Everybody Hates Chris or interviewing the next up and coming writer Felicia Pride has her hands full, but without hip hop music the road would be a lot harder to travel.

Read the Full Interview with Felicia Pride