Denzel Washington and the "Race Man" Syndrome

from the Washington Post (Outlook)

RACE MAN
Does Denzel Always Have to Represent?
by Mark Anthony Neal

Sunday, December 23, 2007; Page B02

For most of his career, Denzel Washington has been the epitome of a "race man" -- a well-mannered, well-intentioned role model thoroughly committed to black uplift. He's maintaining that tradition in "The Great Debaters," a new film in which he plays a champion debate coach in the segregated South.

But his recent portrayal of the murderous Harlem drug lord Frank Lucas in "American Gangster," following his Oscar-winning performance as the corrupt cop Alonzo in "Training Day," has shaken his standing as a race man -- and has prompted speculation that, after years of playing characters who symbolized African Americans' mainstream acceptance, he's finally selling out to a commercial culture eager to make a buck off of portraying black men as thugs.

That's not how I see it. To me, the more important question that Washington's career choices raise is: Why, as the nation grows to appreciate the many different ways of being black, do we still need race men at all?

"Race man" is a term from the beginning of the 20th century that describes black men of stature and integrity who represented the best that African Americans had to offer in the face of Jim Crow segregation. It has lost some of its resonance in a post-civil rights world, but it remains an unspoken measure of commitment to uplifting the race. Race men inspire pride; their work, their actions and their speech represent excellence instead of evoking shame and embarrassment. Thus the pundit Tavis Smiley and the Rev. Jesse Jackson (even with an illegitimate child) can be race men, whereas the comedian Dave Chappelle and the rapper/mogul Jay-Z can never be.

Sidney Poitier had impeccable race-man cred. The legendary black actor was one of the first to achieve mainstream success, and he never wavered. In films such as "The Defiant Ones" (1958), "In the Heat of the Night" (1967) and even "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" (1967), he made us proud to be black. At the height of the black-power movement, when his articulate, educated and even affable characters were often measured against fiery political icons such as Malcolm X and the Black Panther leader H. Rap Brown, some blacks felt ambivalent about Poitier. But the actor's willingness to support the civil rights movement appeased those who wanted a more radical image.

There's little doubt that Poitier and contemporaries such as James Earl Jones and Raymond St. Jacques influenced Washington in his choice of roles. Early in his career, he was often drawn to the part of the heroic do-gooder; his roles in "Cry Freedom" (as the martyred anti-apartheid hero Steve Biko) and the Civil War epic "Glory" (which won him a 1990 Academy Award for best supporting actor) displayed his gravitas. The tear he shed when his character, Pvt. Trip, was flogged in "Glory" lent black men a depth of humanity not seen in American cinema before or since.

In his collaborations with director Spike Lee, Washington complicated the race-man ethos. No longer defined solely by their willingness to stand up for their race, characters such as Bleek Gilliam ("Mo' Better Blues"), Jake Shuttlesworth ("He Got Game") and Detective Keith Frazier ("Inside Man") represented the new race man, whose main emphasis was on being manly. These characters were self-absorbed and selfish and demanded the respect they thought they deserved. Still, many black audiences embraced them, if only because Washington had earned their trust, especially after his signature collaboration with Lee on the film "Malcolm X."

But that trust began to erode with Washington's portrayal of Alonzo in "Training Day." When he finally won the coveted Best Actor Oscar for that role, on the same night that Halle Berry won Best Actress, much was made of their being rewarded for portraying characters who demeaned African Americans. And yet it was easy to give Washington a pass, because the Motion Picture Academy had ignored his more celebrated roles as Rubin "Hurricane" Carter and Malcolm X.

Read the Full Essay...

Critical Noir: the 2007 Playlist (ver. 1.0)

I can’t do the “best album of the year” deal anymore—it’s out of sync with the reality of the music industry. Instead I’ve put together a (best of) 2007 playlist. This is ver. 1.0—ver. 2.0 will post on Friday.

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Rahsaan Patterson--"Oh Lord (Take me Back)" from Wine & Spirits

It's been a decade since Rahsaan Patterson broke through with his debut recording for the MCA label. For those up in corporate though, Ronnie Dyson, one of Patterson's primary musical influences, or the image of a sanctified little Jimmy Baldwin (I always loved how Amiri Baraka simply called the legendary writer "Jimmy" during his eulogy for him, 20 years ago this month) simply didn't register; Patterson has long been off the mainstream radar. Wine & Spirits, Patterson's latest offering, is his second independent release and "Oh Lord (Take Me Back)" is brilliant riff on the sanctified world that birthed him.

Jill Scott--"How's It Make You Feel" from The Real Thing: Words and Sounds, Vol. 3

Admittedly, I've never gotten over the Jill that I fell in love with after the release of Who is Jill Scott?: Words and Sound, Vol. 1 in 2000. There was just a magic--an innocence about Jill and the music "they" called neo-Soul--that was embodied in those bright eyes that peered out on the album cover. Seven years later the bitterness of never really breaking through to the mainstream, a failed marriage and the apparent invisibility of fully grown--and fully formed--black women in the popular realm, stick to The Real Thing: Words and Sounds, Vol. 3 like honey on Formica. It's hard to know if the Rutgers' Women's basketball team, Meagan Williams, or the victim in the Dunbar Village gang rape were on Scott's mind when she wrote and recorded "How's It's Make You Feel". In a moment though, when it is so difficult to locate the subjectivities of black women in popular culture and media (and let's be real Oprah and Condi have never been simply "black women") Scott ups the ante by daring to ask, what if my ass--and those of every black female in this culture--disappeared?

Pharoahe Monch--"Welcome to the Terrordome" from Desire

Desire won't get love that Lupe Fiasco's The Cool will on most year-end assessments (and indeed most read like an accountant's index rather than a measure of artistic merit) and that probably has to do with Pharoahe Monch outgrowing the "hip-hop smarty-pants," to quote my man Bakari, that drive the marketplace of so-called conscious rap. Whereas Fiasco can't remember lyrics to the music of some of the genre's true geniuses, Monch dares to remake Public Enemy's "Welcome to the Terrordome," rendering the song more politically relevant than the original was when released in the spring of 1990. And let me clear, there was nothing more politically relevant for the black, the young and the proud crowd in the late 1980s and 1990s than Public Enemy.

4Hero featuring Darien Brockington--"Give In" from Play with the Changes

For years Darien Brockington has toiled along with Carolina's Justus League, in relative obscurity and unfortunately, Brockington's solo release Somebody to Love did little to change that. Leave it to North London's 4Hero to give a brotha a reprieve. With fellow Justus leaguer and remaining Little Brother member Phonte in tow, Brockington's "Give In" is a sweet taste of cosmopolitan Soul--much like the work of the woefully forgotten Charles Stepney (somebody get Maurice White, Richard Rudolph, or Terry Callier on the phone) whose legacy 4Hero continues to celebrate.

Read the Full Playlist (ver. 1.0) at CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com

A Peerless Genius: Thriller @ 25

A Peerless Genius: Thriller @ 25
by Mark Anthony Neal

Michael Jackson was fifteen years into a professional singing career when Thriller was released 25 years ago on November 30, 1982, but nearly a decade past his peak years as the boy lead singer of his family group, The Jackson Five. Not yet aged 25, Jackson could have easily become another child-star as cultural footnote—much like his temporal peer Donny Osmond was at the time. And indeed in the years between Jackson's star-turn as the Scarecrow in The Wiz (1978)—a Soulful adaptation of The Wizard of Oz—and the release of Thriller, Jackson worked hard to craft an image of an independently minded adult who, removed from the comforts of his family clan, the assembly-line logic of the Motown label and the overbearing influence of family patriarch Joe Jackson, was now in control of his life and, more importantly, his music. What may have begun as simply a stab at independence, eventually became a stab at history; Thriller remains the biggest selling recording in the history of the music industry.

Read the Full Essay at CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com

Listen Again—On the Radio

WUNC's The State of Things with Frank Stasio
December 14, 2007

The names Lewis Taylor and Bill Tate might not mean much to you, but their contribution to pop music can teach us as much as any artist who’s ever topped the charts. Music scholars Eric Weisbard, Mark Anthony Neal and Holly George Warren, all contributors to Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop Music (Duke University Press/2007), join host Frank Stasio to reflect on the significance of forgotten stories in music history.

Listen Here

Wanted! Black Female Soul Singer

Fallen Star: The Black Female Soul Singer
by Jalylah Burrell

It is quite a disappointing time to be listening for good soul music. If soul singers don't have their eyes on pop, or hip hop, they're necrophilicly (trans)fixed on pastime paradises. And with Black radio, once a rather diverse platform for multigenerational Black musical expression, having died and been reborn wack, and post "Video Soul" music television uninterested, there aren't too many venues to get the word out about good soul music by Black artists. Christina, Joss, JoJo are doing just fine. (I can't say the same for Amy, whose substance abuse woes outweigh the commercial success her whiteness enabled.) As to the queen of hip hop soul and the princess of Dereon, their successes are unique and neither does much straight up soul. This has left me frustrated by the relatively low profiles, stalled careers, or critical indifference to some vital Black female voices on the major label soul scene. Here, I want to highlight two of my favorite under-appreciated Black female soul singers whose careers thus far, have been grossly underdeveloped.

Read the full essay at Hello Babar @ Vibe.com

Come Back, Chester Himes

Come Back, Chester Himes
by Mark Anthony Neal

Unavailable for nearly three decades, the original motion picture soundtrack for Come Back Charleston Blue was recently released. The re-issued recording not only serves as a reminder of the era of Blaxpolitation--the moment in the late 1960s that marks the beginning of mainstream America's fascination with under/other-worldly blackness--but highlights the work of an often overlooked genius of black expressive culture, Chester Himes.

Read the full essay CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com

Reminiscing by the Dock of the Bay

from Popmatters.com

A Blues for Otis: The Life and Legacy of a Soul Legend
[7 December 2007]
by Claudrena N. Harold

Forty years ago on the frigid afternoon of December 10, 1967, a Beechcraft plane carrying the legendary soul singer Otis Redding plunged into the icy waters of Lake Monona, Wisconsin. Of the eight passengers aboard the twin-engine aircraft, trumpeter Ben Cauley of the Bar-Kays was the lone survivor. News of the crash and Redding’s death spread quickly across the country. Feelings of loss and grief were particularly strong in the South. To thousands of blacks living below the Mason-Dixon Line, Redding was a cultural hero who personified the promise of the New South and the revolutionary possibilities of the ‘60s.

Over the five year period between his signing with Stax in 1962 and his unfortunate death, Redding had become a permanent fixture on black radio, amassed enough money to provide his wife and family with a respectable lifestyle, and gained international recognition as one of the most amazing singers of his generation. Success, however, never diluted Redding’s soul. Coming off at times as the quintessential race man, Redding was firmly rooted in the cultural rhythms of the black South. An incredibly gifted singer-songwriter possessed of the rare combination of supreme intelligence, unwavering ambition, and emotional depth, the Macon, Georgia, native brilliantly synthesized the evangelical fervor of the black church, the rambunctious vibes of rock ‘n’ roll, the plaintive cries of the blues, and the rhetorical brilliance of Southern black vernacular culture.

But the reason Redding stands out as an immortal soul icon is rooted in much more than his broad musical palette. Intensely emotional on record and on stage, Redding unhesitatingly bore witness to pain, exposed his own vulnerabilities, and expressed emotions at odds with conventional and emergent notions of black masculinity. Tearjerkers like his “Pain in My Heart”, “Try a Little Tenderness”, “My Lover’s Prayer”, and the criminally underrated “You’re Still My Baby” spoke honestly and profoundly on the power of love, forgiveness, and reconciliation. To a degree underappreciated then and now, Redding’s music presented an image of black domestic life and gender relations more complex and more humane than many sociological musings on the purported perils of black family life.

Read the Full Essay...

Celebrating C. Vivian Stringer; Celebrating Women

Rutgers Coach C. Vivian Stringer Should be Celebrated
by Mark Anthony Neal

Durham, NC -- Eight months ago, when former CBS radio jock Don Imus directed the now infamous phrase “nappy headed hos” at the Rutgers University women’s basketball team, the country was again pressed to confront the issue of race. Within this maelstrom of ignorance and misinformation, C. Vivian Stringer, the coach of the Rutgers University women’s basketball team, emerged as one of the real voices of reason, displaying the integrity and wisdom that comes from 30-plus years of professional coaching . In the process, Stringer gave form and substance to the real lives that black women live.

On Thursday, Stringer and her women’s basketball team come to Durham to play against Duke. Coincidentally, this occurs on the same week that Don Imus returns to the airwaves on WABC-radio in New York City. In recent weeks. Stringer has complained about the connections that continue to be made between her student/athletes and Imus. The stain is one of the many difficulties black women like Stringer face in their efforts to be considered as competent as their peers.

Black women, as a group, remain at the margins of American consciousness, easily caricatured as “baby mamas,” strip club dancers, welfare queens, domestic workers and, well, “nappy headed hos.” Stringer is the antithesis of this caricature.

She began her head coaching career at historically-black Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, a year before Title IX took effect. When the NCAA held its first national tournament for women’s basketball in 1982, Stringer’s team advanced to the Final Four -- a rare accomplishment for a historically black college or university in any Division I collegiate sport. Stringer repeated the feat when she turned the dormant University of Iowa into a women’s basketball powerhouse, taking them to the Final Four in 1993.

Yet when Rutgers hired Stringer two years later, much was made about the fact that she would make more than the school’s white male football and basketball coaches. (By the way, two of Stringer’s Rutgers teams have reached the Final Four, including last season when the Scarlet Knights knocked off then top-ranked Duke along the way.)

As a scholar of black culture, I find Imus’s mean-spirited and misogynistic attack frustrating because it reflects the inability of our larger society to give serious consideration to the unique position that black women such as Stringer occupy in American society. They experience the brunt of two dynamics: racism and sexism -- what UCLA law professor Kimberle Crenshaw calls the “intersectionality” of black women’s experiences.

The specificity of “nappy-headed ho” speaks to this. Regardless of her level of educational attainment or the size of her bank account, a hairstyle can render a black woman socially disposable. Because hair texture is integral to a black woman’s identity, the term “nappy-headed” carries almost as much potency as the “n” word. And this is perhaps what stung many black women in the aftermath of Imus’s comments because both racism and sexism were at play. It was another reminder that black women, once again, are not thought to possess the traits -- physical, spiritual and intellectual -- that their white peers do.

Like Stringer, I too think it’s time to disassociate Imus from the story of the Rutgers women’s basketball team. We all should take the opportunity presented by Rutgers basketball to celebrate women’s athletics and all those young women for which sticks and stones may break their bones, but for whom spirits will never waver.

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Mark Anthony Neal is a professor of African and African-American Studies at Duke University.

© 2007 Office of News & Communications/Duke University

Love Letter to a Daughter

For the Littlest One
by Mark Anthony Neal

It’s really hard to believe that it has been five years. And for you those five years have been nothing but constant change—the first eight months you spent in New York, eleven months in Texas and the last three years here in North Carolina. You might end up being the most cosmopolitan of us all. But I really wanted to talk to you—leave you something that you can go to when you’re older, so that they’ll always be an index of how a I feel about you—at this moment, in this place. I wasn’t home for your birthday—yes, that was me that rolled that bike into your bedroom as I headed to the airport before dawn—but I wasn’t there for the birthday cake and the tiara and the singing and all the pictures. That you don’t hold it against me, perhaps is the measure of how much daddy’s comings and goings/goings and comings are part of the regular rhythm of your life—when you need your own daddy time, you always find a way to get it. But in truth, November 15th may have been the day that you were born, but it’s the day that you came into our lives that really matters.

Of course I got to tell your sister’s story in a book—and I’m sure that one day there’ll be a book filled with the spirit of you, though, there’s been nary a day since December 1, 2002 that your spirit hasn’t filled every moment and every breathe that we’ve shared. I can still remember the overnight trek to Buffalo—through the requite Syracuse/Rochester snowstorm—to await your arrival at Uncle Julius and Aunt Carmen’s house. It was only hours into that trip that we told your then four-year old sister that she was gonna have a baby-sister (and in some ways, five years later she’s still trying to process that). That first moment we saw you, you were just a lump of baby—there was no indication of the hearty spirit that was to come. It was the day before my 37th birthday—a birthday that we spent snowed-in—getting much needed time to consider our growing little family.

The thing I always remember about your early days, was the sense of intimacy that you demanded from your daddy. Even as an infant, you needed to touch my face—memorize it’s contours, as if you already knew that God had some plans for your daddy, that even he was unaware of, and that there would be so many days in which you only got a glimpse of daddy. I often lament that I don’t get to spend as much quality time with you and your sister, as I did during the first two years of her life. But truth be told, I spent more time with you during the first six months of your life than I ever did at any point in your sister’s life. Unlike your sister—who was born interactive—you were always self-contained. So I could literally spend hours with you at that Wolf Road Starbucks in Albany (still my favorite place to write after all these years)—your carry-all inches from me. And the joy of being able to reach over and have you rest quietly on my chest, when daddy needed a break from his ambition. I miss the simplicity of those days.

You were such a tiny thing. When you began to walk—just short of ten-months—folk often remarked that you were too small to be so dexterous. Of course many of those folk had not born witness to the dexterity with which you used kitchen utensils as early as 8-months old. We rarely remark on how little you are these days—you are a fully grown five-year old, whose passion for food, is perhaps only matched by your father’s. It’s that hearty appetite, hearty sense of humor and hearty desire for life that we share. And of course the music thing. I don’t know if I was proud or angry that night you grabbed a handful of CDs from my cherished collection (hastening my move to the MP3 world) and listened to them on your portable radio to find the ones that mattered to you. 35-years earlier, that was me going through your Papa AC’s album collection. Dru Hill. Corrine Bailey Rae. James Brown. Bill Withers. Chrisette Michele. Arrested Development. Mary J Blige. Those are your current faves, though they never overpower your own rhythms. How many of your teachers have told us that you flow to your own music—as if we didn’t wage battle with your strong will everyday of your life. Like your unwillingness to go to sleep until it’s sleep that you want—so you sit in your room and imagine and build and create and pretend and dance and sing and tell stories to yourself, and I can’t get mad, since it’s your eternally restless daddy who can never get his own ass to bed before 1am.

There’s that defiant streak in you and your sister, marked by the defense of your rights to know the logic behind the things that your parents/teachers/friends/coaches ask of you. Like when one of your teachers asked you not to remove your shoes during nap time (who sleeps with their shoes on?); Sensing the lack of logic behind the request, you defiantly took off your shoes one at a time, while staring your teacher down. Your mother and I would like to think that we have endowed you and your sister with the ability to make your own decisions and to develop your own convictions and yeah when we’re running late on the mornings that I teach or the two of you are testing our last nerves at the end of a long day, that shit is maddening. But I often think about how well your spirits will serve you as grown women in a world that would rather you sit quietly and take directions.

The thing I so love about you now, is the way that you simply fill a room. The little boys, some twice your age, who feel the need to gravitate towards you—and take your direction. The little girls who, literally sit at your feet. The teachers who need to remark about your low-key intellect. Perhaps because I too only get a glimpse of you , I often find myself mesmerized by your spirit. My favorite moments with you these days are those times when your reach up—like you are that crawling infant again—asking for me to lift you up. At first I would complain—you are in fact a fully-grown five-year-old and daddy’s is 42-year back—until I came to realize your intent. Yes, you are a big girl, but even a big girl needs to feel small in her daddy’s arms. Hopefully this big girl knows her daddy loves her, whether near or far.