Ta-Nehisi Coates on Tolerance

The Importance of Being Politically Correct
by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Liberals have, for decades, taken shots for being political correct, for being sensitive, and for trying to "understand" people who are different from them. It's been a long road since the 60s. I don't know how I feel about Affirmative Action, these days. I remember cringing (even in my nationalist days) when I heard people says blacks couldn't be racist. I remember cringing more when that dude in D.C. got fired for using "niggardly." There's a way of looking at all the places liberals have gone wrong, and seeing this (what, 40 year?) exercise in tolerance as bad acid trip. But there's another way of looking at the great tolerance experiment--practicing for the future.

It may well be true that Geraldine Ferraro was a token choice for the VP slot in 84. But I was eight years old when that happened, and understood that Mondale was doing something that had never been done before, and thus assuming a level of risk. I don't think it's so much the act of nominating Ferraro, as it is the act of having people around you who have some sense of what sexism in this country means. I don't think it's so much having Jesse Jackson run in 84 and 88, as it is having people in your camp who understand what his run means. And then after his run is over, putting his people in positions of power in your party.

It's about practicing Tolerance. It's about attempting to understand people who are radically different from you, and saying to them you want their voice in the process. Tolerance isn't just a value you hold, so much as it's something you do repeatedly. It's uncomfortable. You fuck up. You go to parties where they play music that you don't know how to dance to. You go to restaurants where the food is difference. You go to neighborhoods, where no one speaks English. The whole time people on the outside are laughing at you. The people you're trying to understand get pissed at you, and call you racist, homophobe, bigot, sexist etc.

Read the full article @ The Atlantic

In My Prius by Casual Mafia

This is funny. htp to CnetReviews

...Tyrone and Leroy was driving this cadillac

Woman Says Black Men Kidnapped Her:
She Really Went to Disneyland
by Boyce Watkins

My best friend Greg was shot in the head in 1996, nearly the same time the rapper Tupac Shakur was murdered. Greg was a good man and a good father but he was also a black man, which made his murder seem typical. The media didn't find much interest in my friend's death. His story was covered in the back of the newspaper, in print small enough to be a low-budget classified ad.

The same week, a white mother of three in the same city (Louisville) was murdered on her way to a bank in the suburbs. Her murder was, for several days, the lead story on every TV channel, radio station and newspaper. There was a $25,000 reward issued for information leading to a break in the case. The police held regular press conferences announcing that they wouldn't sleep until the killer was found.

The good people of Kentucky were going to protect their damsel in distress at all cost. The entire city had become a group of Nancy Grace clones, obsessing over every nook and cranny of the case, crying for the woman's orphaned children and holding candlelight vigils. None of this was done for my best friend's daughter, since her daddy's death was just not all that intriguing.

My friend Greg was "only" another dead black man. His daughter, Jasmine, was just another fatherless black girl. In the eyes of the media, her suffering was not as important as that of the little angels from the suburbs who'd tragically lost their mother.

I thought about Greg when reading about the case of Bonnie Sweeten, the Philadelphia woman who claimed she and her daughter were abducted by two black men. Turns out that she wasn't abducted at all: she'd taken a trip to Disneyland.

Read the full essay @ Black Voices

***

Dr Boyce Watkins is a Distinguished Scholar Affiliate at The Barbara Jordan Institute for Policy Research at Texas Southern University. He is also the author of 'What if George Bush were a Black Man?' For more information, please visit www.BoyceWatkins.com.

Recognizing the Foundation

The Ascent of Hip-Hop
A historical, cultural, and aesthetic study of b-boying
By Adam Mansbach

Review of FOUNDATION:
B-Boys, B-Girls, and Hip-Hop Culture in New York
By Joseph G. Schloss
Oxford University, 176 pp., illustrated, $19.55

Schloss's book is a major contribution to a new school of hip-hop scholarship, one whose aesthetic and political engagement transcends the simplistic attack/defend paradigm that has plagued the public discourse for so long. "It is not enough to simply say that hip-hop is a complex and sophisticated cultural tradition," he writes. "We must demonstrate it." For a compelling and under-examined art form, "Foundation" does just that.

Read the Full Review @ The Boston Globe

***

Adam Mansbach is the author of The End of the Jews winner of the California Book Award

"Same Old Song"--The Future of Music Coalition Issues Report on Radio Playlist

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 29, 2009

CONTACT
Casey Rae-Hunter
Communications Director
Future of Music Coalition
www.futureofmusic.org
casey@futureofmusic.org
p: 202-822-2051 xt. 103
c: 301-642-6210

"Same Old Song: An Analysis of Radio Playlists in a Post FCC-Consent Decree
World" finds no appreciable change in station playlist composition
in four years since the Rules of Engagement and Voluntary Agreements

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Artist education, research and advocacy organization Future of Music Coalition (FMC) announces the release of a new report that analyzes radio playlists to determine whether the policy interventions resulting from 2003-2007 payola investigations have had any effect on the amount of independent music played on terrestrial radio.

In April 2007, the Federal Communications Commission issued consent decrees against the nation’s four largest radio station group owners – Clear Channel, CBS Radio, Citadel and Entercom – as a response to collected evidence and widespread allegations about payola influencing what gets played on the radio. In addition to paying fines totaling $12.5 million, the station group owners also worked with the American Association of Independent Music (A2IM) to draft eight "Rules of Engagement" and an "indie set-aside," in which these four group owners voluntarily agreed to collectively air 4,200 hours of local, regional and unsigned artists, and artists affiliated with independent labels.

Using playlist data licensed from Mediaguide, FMC examined four years of airplay – 2005-2008 – from national playlists and from seven specific music formats: AC, Urban AC, Active Rock, Country, CHR Pop, Triple A Commercial and Triple A Noncommercial. FMC calculated the "airplay share" for five different categories of record labels to determine whether the major labels’ ratio of airplay share has changed at all in the past four years.

The data indicate almost no change in station playlist composition in this period. Specifically, the national playlist data indicated very little measurable change in airplay share from 2005-2008, with major label songs consistently securing 78 to 82 percent of airplay. The format data showed some modest increases in airplay for indies on some formats (Country and AAA Non-Commercial, in particular) but otherwise the data from year to year changed very little. An examination of airplay by release date showed that many formats leave only small portions of their playlist for new material, with current songs sprinkled in among well-worn hits. While such programming choices might make sense for a given station’s target audience, the outcome is that there are very few spaces left on most airplay charts for new music. Looking specifically at airplay for new releases, FMC found that new major label songs typically receive a higher proportion of spins than new indie label songs. Finally, FMC looked at the indie labels themselves, and found that only a handful of indies have enough resources and clout to garner airplay consistently. For the remainder of indies, airplay is infrequent and modest, if it happens at all.

"Same Old Song" views these results through a broad lens, using the data to describe the state of radio thirteen years after the passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. The report underscores how radio’s long-standing relationships with major labels, its status quo programming practices and the permissive regulatory structure all work together to create an environment in which songs from major label artists continue to dominate. The major labels’ built-in advantage, combined with radio’s risk-averse programming practices, means there are very few spaces left on any playlist for independent labels, which comprise some 30 percent of the domestic music market.

"Radio is still an incredibly vital public resource that’s worth fighting for," says FMC Policy Director Michael Bracy. "It's ubiquitous and local nature make it unique in the media landscape, but unfortunately today’s commercial radio rarely reflects the communities where it is heard. There are so many artists who are successful by any other measure, but who still have enormous difficulty reaching the airwaves. Why is that? It’s important to understand how music is programmed at commercial radio. We also need regulators to devise clear and transparent rules so they can effectively oversee such a significant industry."

FMC believes that, by asking the right questions, expanding community radio and enforcing the law, the radio industry can regain its historic role and relevance to culture and community. The report also articulates a brief set of policy recommendations that will enhance the FCC’s oversight of the airwaves and improve the radio landscape for both listeners and the broader music industry. These include:

* A commitment to improved data collection
* A refocus on localism
* An expansion in the number of voices in on the public airwaves

Read the Report @ Future of Music Coalition

Executive Summary [PDF] | Complete report [PDF]

The Michael Vick Case in Perspective

Punishing Vick for our crimes
A nation of outraged lobster-boilers.
by Shayne Lee

As Michael Vick was released from prison last week, pundits of every variety were hitting the airwaves. They were questioning whether the former star quarterback is truly repentant for his so-called morally reprehensible operation of a dogfighting ring.

In the spirit of this discussion, I would like to raise a basic question: What did Michael Vick do that is morally reprehensible?

Some of us forget that dogs are mere animals, and that animal mistreatment is as American as Apple iPods. Like Vick, most of us shamelessly abuse and kill animals.

Homemakers employ deadly rat traps and poisons to rid their dwellings of vermin. Chefs place live lobsters in pots of boiling water. Hunters shoot down animals in cold blood for mere sport.

In university labs nationwide, scientists inflict spinal-cord injuries on dogs and cats, inject rats with carcinogens, test dangerous drugs on monkeys, and do all kinds of evil things to guinea pigs in the name of scientific research.

Americans systematically exploit and kill animals - sometimes for scientific progress; sometimes for leather jackets, ham sandwiches, or horse-racing.

So why is one type of animal cruelty (dogfighting) more reprehensible than another (lobster-boiling)?

Read the Full Essay @ The Philadelphia Inquirer

***

Shayne Lee is an assistant professor of sociology at Tulane University. His first book T.D. Jakes: America’s New Preacher was published in 2005. He is also co-author of the new book, Holy Mavericks: Evangelical Innovators and the Spiritual Marketplace. Both are published by New York University Press.

The Return of Leela James

The Return of Leela James
by Mark Anthony Neal

Leela James’ latest recording, Let’s Do it Again, begins with a rendition of Betty Wright’s “Clean Up Woman” and closes with the title track, a remake of The Staple Singers’ classic. Betty Wright and Mavis Staples are defining examples of a generation of black women singers whose sass and soulfulness stood out as one of the few forms of public gravitas for black women in popular culture in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Much of that musical legacy has been appropriated by watered-down (white) sirens like Amy Winehouse and Joss Stone, who would likely admit to the influences of Wright and Staples on their careers. Nevertheless, hundreds of thousands of those who have purchased music by Winehouse and Stone have never heard of Wright or Staples, let alone James whose stellar, if uneven 2005 debut A Change is Gonna Come, fell largely on deaf ears. In the marketplace of popular desire, James—as an actual black woman singer of throwback soul—will never be as exotic as her white peers. Instead, she lets the music speak for her, and Let’s Do It Again, a collection of 11 classic soul and R&B songs, says more about James’ stature as a modern soul singer than any amount of record sales could.

Read the Full Essay @ The Root

Alex Rivera Re-imagines Immigrant Labor

Science Fiction From Below
Mark Engler | May 13, 2009

Tapping into a long tradition of politicized science fiction, the young, New-York-based filmmaker Alex Rivera has brought to theaters a movie that reflects in new ways on the disquieting realities of the global economy. Sleep Dealer, his first feature film, has opened in New York and Los Angeles, and will show in 25 cities throughout the country this spring.

Read the Full Essay @ Foreign Policy in Focus

Would the Huxtables Survive the Economic Crisis?

Stop the Next American Nightmare
by Seth Freed Wessler

This weekend the New York Times reported that middle class families of color have been most hurt by the subprime crisis in New York City. The article confirms previous findings that show middle and upper income borrowers of color across the country are more likely to receive predatory, high cost loans than whites--even low-income whites. As a result Black, Latino, Asian and American Indian families are burdened with the heaviest weight of foreclosures.

I met many such families earlier this year while traveling the country to conduct research for "Race and Recession," a report released today by the Applied Research Center. In Detroit, I talked with 55-year-old Sandra Hines, who fell irreparably behind on her ballooning subprime refinancing payments (at the peak of the subprime frenzy, the majority of high cost loans were for refinancing). Through foreclosure, Hines lost the house where she and her two sisters grew up. It was the house that held 40 years of her family's wealth and memories.

The losses didn't end there.

A few months later, Hines and her family were renting a home that also went into foreclosure (its owner was also Black). Hines was evicted again.

Hines's story illustrates the fundamental way in which racism works today - through rules and policies rather than through blatant individual discrimination. This new form of discrimination didn't come from an individual banker who hated Black people. Rather, it resulted from financial deregulation that didn't explicitly target people of color, but that nevertheless produced a racialized impact because it was blindly laid on top of decades of blatant housing segregation.

Read the Full Essay @ The Huffington Post

Our Black Shining Manhood

Our Black Shining Manhood
by Mark Anthony Neal

I was born a little less than seven months after the murder of El Hajj Malik El Shabazz (Malcolm X). Like so many of my generation—black and post-Soul—I’ve spent the last forty-something years rummaging through myth and mythology to derive some meaning from the man’s life that can be relevant to mine. With the exception of his contemporary, Martin Luther King, Jr., no one African-American has been the focus of a cottage industry the way Malcolm X has been. For good or bad, the Malcolm X cottage industry has made the late figure a recognizable icon—someone that many of us still have strong emotions for.

I have visceral memories of the sadness I felt, reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X for the first time as a 19-year-old college student, and coming to terms with the narrative shift very late in the book, when it’s clear that Malcolm X was no longer present in his own story. It was like he was murdered a second time. That sadness fueled much of the anger associated with my own political awakening, with the music of Public Enemy—who seemingly conjured Malcolm X with every lyric—serving as the perfect soundtrack for that process. It was an experience that I shared with many. Indeed Malcolm X, still remains for some, the very epitome of black rage and militancy, but to reduce him to just those human emotions is too miss why he remains such a timeless figure.

Sure, Malcolm X spoke back to white supremacy—publicly—in a way that was unprecedented, and giving the tenor of his times, perhaps only matched by the performance of another one of his contemporaries, Billie Holiday, whose “Strange Fruit” rarely gets credit for its own potency. When Malcolm X was arguably at the height of his popularity—some twenty years after his murder—many took for granted the freedom they possessed to express their anger and dissatisfaction; freedom that Malcolm X died, in part, to guarantee. But it behooves us, his spiritual and political children, to champion the full humanity of the man, no matter how expedient his own militancy is to our political desires.

That process began shortly after his death, with the late Ossie Davis’s breathtaking eulogy in which he responded to those who would have the black community distance themselves from Malcolm X’s legacy with the queries, “Did you ever talk to Brother Malcolm? Did you ever touch him, or have him smile at you? Did you ever really listen to him?” In his eulogy, Davis gets at the everyday humanity of the man, knowing full well, that for so many, that would never see the inside of a mosque or adhere to Malcolm X’s still evolving black nationalism, the image of Malcolm X’s stroll—what we call today “swag”—was a lasting memory to them.

My favorite recollection of Malcolm X is from his daughter Qubilah Shabazz, who witnessed her father’s murder in February of 1965. Quoted in Jonetta Rose Barras’s Whatever Happened to Daddy’s Little Girl?: The Impact of Fatherlessness on Black Women, Shabazz remembers a father who “almost had me convinced that I was made of brown sugar…Every morning he’d take my finger and stir his coffee with my finger. He said it was to sweeten it up.” It’s a shame that we don’t often enough think of Malcolm X as a doting father or devoted husband, who surely as he began to hear the progressive critiques of racism emanating from White radicals, would have also took seriously the critiques of patriarchy and homophobia articulated by black women and queers.

It there is reason to pause, on this 84th anniversary of Malcolm X’s birth, it is because he was denied the opportunity to reach his full political maturity. That must be our mission now.

BLACK MAN INSIDE: Rethinking Black Male Masculinity

Our Common Ground with Janice Graham
URBAN PROGRESSIVE TALK RADIO LIVE
ALL WEEK ~ May 18-21, 2009

MAN INSIDE: Rethinking Black Masculinity Man Inside:
Conversations with Our Brothers

8-10 PM EST //X^^X\\ Live TALK //X^^X\\ Call In: 954-530-2068

Listen Live at http://www.ustalknetwork.com
(click the Listen Now link)

email: Janice@ourcommonground.com
“Transforming Truth to POWER one show at a time”

TRUTHSPEAK: " Feminist politics is a choice. When men make that choice, our world is transformed." - bell hooks


MAN INSIDE: Rethinking Black Masculinity Man Inside:
Conversations with Our Brothers

OUR COMMON GROUND presents a full week of special programming focusing on issues relevant to the Black American male and Black male feminist thought. "The Black Man Inside: Rethinking Black Masculinity".

This week long special programming focusing and reflecting on Black men, masculinity and their relationships to Black community values, addressing challenges of much needed transformation and the demands to build healthy relationships and community. The Black man inside is essential to our struggle and protection.

"The Black Man Inside: Rethinking Black Masculinity" will feature conversations with four Black men whose inquiry, struggle and transformation embody a love for themselves and for our people. Janice Graham "In Converstation in the language of TruthSpeak at OUR COMMON GROUND with: BrotherScholar/Activists, Drs. Mark Anthony Neal, Duke University and David Ikard, Florida State University~ Gary Lemons, University of South Florida: and Brother Activists, Major Neill Franklin, formerly of the City of Baltimore Police Department and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) and Anti-Sexist Activist, Filmmaker, Byron Hurt.

May 18 - 21, 2009 8-10 pm ET LISTEN LIVE & CALL IN: http://www.ustalknetwork.com


Monday, May 18, 2009

Dr. Mark Anthony Neal
New Black Man: Rethinking Black Masculinity


Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Dr. David Ikard, Florida State University
Breaking the Silence Toward a Black Male Feminist Criticism

Dr. Gary Lemons, University of South Florida
Black Male Outsider: A Memoir


Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Major Neill Franklin, formerly of the City of Baltimore Police Department and Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP):" A Framework Out of the War on Drugs"

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Byron Hurt, Anti-sexist activist and Filmmaker
I AM A MAN: Black Masculinity in America and Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes

Wayman Tisdale Goes Home :(

Erykah Badu @ The International House of Blues Foundation

Erykah Badu Rocks the SchoolHouse
At IHOBF’s Blues SchoolHouse Program

Grammy Award winner Erykah Badu rocked the SchoolHouse when she surprised students attending the International House of Blues Foundation® (IHOBF) Blues SchoolHouse Program in Dallas on Wednesday, May 13, 2009. The program traces the evolution of the blues from its roots in African culture through its emergence and evolution as a unique American musical form. Badu was featured as an example of the influence of blues on contemporary music. “The influence of blues is in my cells. It’s a big part of who I am,” said Badu. “I am the blues.”

Badu and her non-profit, Beautiful Love Incorporated Non-Profit Development arranged for fifth graders from St. Philips School to take part in the musical journey. Students from Prestonwood Elementary and Holy Trinity Catholic Schools also participated in the program.. Badu, who was a schoolteacher before she launched her music career, jumped at the opportunity to participate in IHOBF’s Blues SchoolHouse Program. “Blues music tells the story of important events in our history,” said Badu. “It is important for young people to understand the origin of the music that is such a big part of their everyday lives. If they don’t know and understand their heritage, they’ll lose it.“

***

About Erykah Badu: Best known for her eccentric style and cerebral music, is an award winning American soul singer and songwriter, whose sound -- a concoction of soul, hip-hop and jazz -- cannot be contained to a single genre. The Texas native, who prides herself on being a “mother first”, is a touring artist, teacher, community activist, holistic healer, vegan, recycler, and conscious spirit. Committed to children, Badu gives back to her hometown through Beautiful Love Incorporated Non-Profit Development (B.L.I.N.D.), a charity organization she created to provide community-based programs for inner-city youth.

About the IHOBF: International House of Blues Foundation® (IHOBF) is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit organization dedicated to bringing the arts to schools and communities through programs that promote cultural understanding and encourage creative expression. IHOBF programs teach about aspects of American culture and history through the arts, highlight African American cultural contributions and support youth participation in the arts. IHOBF conducts programming in twelve locations nationwide and is supported by House of Blues, House of Blues Foundation Room members, Live Nation and other public and private donors. For more information, visit www.ihobf.org .

Should Black Radio Die?

Radio One’s “Save Black Radio” Campaign Misses the Mark
by Mark Anthony Neal

On May 13^th, more than 200 protesters gathered outside the Detroit offices of House Judiciary Chairman and longtime Michigan representative John Conyers (and Congressional Black Caucus member), the sponsor of the controversial Performance Rights Act (HR 848). Referred to as the “performance tax,” the bill, if passed, would require that radio stations pay yearly license fees for the right to play music on the air. The protest was sponsored by Radio One, the largest black owned radio company in the country, with over 50 stations in nearly 20 markets and an increasing share of the so-called urban market via the TV-One television network, Giant Magazine and the signature syndicated drive-time program, Tom Joyner Morning Show. Radio One’s “Save Black Radio” campaign responds to fears that the Performance Rights Act will adversely affect already struggling black owned radio stations, but obscures Black Radio’s own failure to live up to its responsibility to the very communities that it is calling on for support.

To be clear the debates about the Performance Rights Act are part of an on-going struggle that pits record companies—specifically the four major global conglomerates, Warner Music Group, EMI, Sony and Universal Music Group—against large radio broadcasters such as Clear Channel, CBS Radio and the aforementioned Radio-One. The bill, which has been pushed by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), seeks to reverse (rather tepidly) the long known, though denied practice of “pay for play,” where record companies paid “independent” promoters. Those promoters then offered financial and other incentives to radio stations to support the products of the record labels the promoters were in cahoots with. The practice, which was brilliantly captured in a series of Salon.com essays by Eric Boehlert, came to public light three years ago when then New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer forced Universal Music Group into a $12-million settlement in response to claims that the company had engaged in “pay for play” tactics. In this light, the Performance Rights Act is simply payback (reparations, perhaps), with a stream of money going from the radio Stations back to the record companies.

Supporters and detractors of the bill, have been quick to point how its passing or failing will impact artists. Record companies are simply disingenuous when they suggest that artists will benefit from the passing of HR 848, when their own business practices guarantee the average artist less than 10-percent of profits generated from the sale of their recordings and the companies will themselves take part of the proceeds generated from the collection of a “performance tax.” If the RIAA and Record companies were really so concerned with the plight of artist, they would create less exploitive relationships with artists.

The folk at Radio One are quick to put out charts and numbers that suggest how important Black Radio and local airplay are to black artists citing the examples of top-tier acts such as Kanye West and Curtis Jackson. Such examples are meaningless for anyone who has listened to so-called Urban Radio or Radio One over the last decade and been taken aback by the distinct lack of diversity featured on major black radio stations. The dearth of the kinds of local and independent artists that Black Radio had historically been supportive of is striking on contemporary Black Radio, where even those stations that specialize in classic R&B and Soul do so in a way that essentially supports the back catalogues of the major conglomerates. In fact, as industry analyst Cedric Muhammad noted a few years ago, Radio One was notorious for admonishing on-air talent who played music that was not sanctioned by the company, making it difficult for independent artists to get airplay. Understandably, Radio One’s own corporate ambitions were tied to their willingness to play the game on the recording industry’s term and accordingly now that the environment has changed, they are trying to reverse course.

For many, the idea of Black Radio has long been dead as companies like Clear Channel and Emmis (parent company of New York’s famed Hot 97) have effectively mined the field for “authentic” black on-air talent, to give the impression of being “black owned,” while having little to do with the black communities they ostensibly exist to serve. In a highly competitive marketplace, black owned radio stations have had little choice but to try to replicate the successes of the Clear Channels of the nation and in that regard, Radio One has often out “clear channeled” Clear Channel. Even those Radio One partners such as The Tom Joyner Morning Show and The Michael Baisden Show, who were admirable in their roles during the 2008 election season, are problematic in the ways that they privilege national issues over the kinds of vital local concerns that radio stations have historically been critical to. In his important book Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America’s Media, Eric Klineberg provides examples of radio conglomerates that didn’t have personnel on the ground at local stations and thus were unable to warn their local listening audiences of impending dangers.

In that smaller radio stations were often the only places where real independent artists could get any airplay (as opposed to those artists who are simply marketed as “independent”), HR 848 will be detrimental to independent artist. As Tony Muhammad recently wrote, “with the economy the way that it is, new up-coming artists and all current lime light artists that bind themselves like slaves to corporations (including the major record labels themselves) will fall just as the economy that they are so dependent on will continue to fall.”

To be sure, the economic impact that the Performance Rights Act will have on Black and Community-based radio stations are real, particularly those without the corporate profile of a Radio-One. As William Barlow and Brian Ward attest to in their respective books, Voice Over: The Making of Black Radio and Radio and the Struggles for Civil Rights in the South, Black Radio has been indispensible to the social and political gains of Black Americans. But the advantages that Black Americans gained from their use of the airwaves, was a product of a particular historical moment. New technologies emerge, as do new opportunities, particularly under difficult economic conditions. As such, this is a moment that demands new models (indeed the use of podcasts and on-line programming like that of Bob Davis’s Soul-Patrol Radio points the way) and perhaps “Black Radio” as we know it and as Radio One has represented it, needs to die, in order for Black Radio to survive.

***

Mark Anthony Neal is Professor of Black Popular Culture in the Department of African and African-American Studies at Duke University. He is the author of several books including What the Music Said: Black Popular Music and Black Public Culture and the forthcoming Looking for Leroy: (Il)Legible Black Masculinities.

Should We Save Black Radio?

Should We Save Black Radio?
byPaul Scott

Funerals are funny things, sometimes. Never mind that the dearly departed cheated on his wife, borrowed a small fortune of unpaid loans from friends and habitually kicked his neighbor's dog, according to the pastor during the eulogy, the man was a saint.

I thought about that scenario when I heard folks mourning over the impending doom of black radio.

Radio One's owner Cathy Hughes was on the Tom Joyner Show this morning begging for a black community bailout of black radio because of a proposed bill by Rep. John Conyers that would make radio stations have to shell out some major dollars to stay on the air. The best part is when she mentioned that Conyers turned on his boom box during a meeting with radio execs, drowning out their whining.

She considered it an an insult. I call it karma.

For years, members of the African American community have begged "urban" radio stations to be more responsive to the needs of the community, especially highly impressionable black youth. Unfortunately, our cries have largely fallen on deaf ears. Seems that profit before people has been the order of the day.

The politicians are selling the proposed legislation, HR Bill 848, (the Performance Tax) as a way to put more money in the pockets of musicians who were forced to work at Mickey Dee's after their short careers were over but the radio folks are saying that it is a conspiracy to not only silence black voices but to prevent us from ever hearing good black music ever again.

Let's be honest. For many of us, black radio died a long time ago. We aren't producing any more Marvin Gayes and Stevie Wonders. What passes today as classic Soul music is Jamie Fox's "Blame it on the Alcohol." It's not that the black community is not full of talented, would be musicians singing and rapping on street corners in every hood but black radio is too busy playing Soulja Boy every five minutes to give aspiring artists a fighting chance.

Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the strong legacy of black radio stations, as the companies were instrumental in not only giving us the latest hits but giving the community critical, need to know info during the 60's and 70's. Ms. Hughes should be especially honored for her innovative approach to black talk radio with WOL in Washington DC.

But this ain't the early 80's and the days of radio hosts like Petey Green have long been replaced by the Lil Waynes of the world.

I find it very disappointing that while the Right wing media moguls are up in arms over the FCC's new diversity committee that could possibly break their vice grip on the air waves, black folks are concerned about whether or not they can get their hourly Beyonce fix.

As my grim faced college professor once told me when I ecstatically told him that I had scored an internship at the local station that would allow me to gangsta-rize the airwaves back in the late 80's.

"What our people need is information."

In all fairness. There are a few black radio talk shows in major cities and the syndicated guys do devote ten minutes or so every day with serious dialogue but these efforts are quickly negated by mind dulling music and slap stick comedy.

I must admit that when I heard Ms. Hughes' impassioned call to arms, this morning I was caught up in the moment as she, convincingly, warned that the end of black radio would totally devastate the African American community . I was just getting ready to grab my protest sign and bullhorn before reality set in.

If Fox News' top dog, Rupert Murdoch decided to start a new network of stations to target the urban consumer, would our children know the difference? Or would they even care as long as they could still hear T-Payne?

I didn't see too many of our people boycotting BET when it was bought up by Viacom. As long as they played the same gangsta videos and kept Comic View, life went on.

See, the execs are expecting the black community to exhibit a degree of cultural consciousness that has not been cultivated by black radio. You can't just push a button and expect the people who you have dumbed down for the last decade to automatically become Afro-centric scholars.

Just doesn't work that way.

What the radio folks have never realized is that we are all in this together and an enlightened community benefits all its members. If black radio had been fulfilling its duty of raising the consciouness of the African American community no one would have dared to even suggest a bill that would cut off their flow of information or good music.

So, do we fight against HR 848?

Read the Full Article @ No Warning Shots Fired or Industry Ears

Teena Marie w Faith Evans Talk Rick James and Christopher Wallace

Forget Hallmark: Why Mother's Day is a Queer Black Left Feminist Thing

Special to NewBlackMan

Forget Hallmark: Why Mother's Day is a Queer Black Left Feminist Thing
by Alexis Pauline Gumbs

The Anti-Social Family by Michele Barrett and Mary McIntosh (1982)
Fear of a Queer Planet ed. Micheal Warner (1999)
Aberrations in Black: Towards a Queer of Color Critique by Roderick Ferguson (2004)
"Of Our Normative Strivings: African American Studies and the Histories of Sexuality" by Roderick Ferguson (2005)
"Queerness as Horizon: Utopian Hermeneutics in the Face of Gay Pragmatism" by Jose E. Munoz (2007)
"A 'New Freedom Movement of Negro Women': Sojourning for Truth, Justice, and Human Rights during the Early Cold War" by Erik S. McDuffie (2008)
Blood Dazzler by Patricia Smith (2008)
Something Like Beautiful: One Single Mother's Story by Asha Bandele (2009)*

My mother is black. So the means through which I was produced is a matter of national instability. My mother is black. So the trace of slavery waits every moment to ink my body with meaninglessness. My mother is black. So my living is a question of whether or not racism will be reproduced today. My mother is black. This same piece of information threatens my survival. But my mother is black, which is at the same time the only thing that makes my survival possible.

It's early morning. I am a little bit drunk on the sound of rain, but it occurs to me that I should get (you) ready for mother's day. It is very easy to notice that I am obsessed with mothering and mothers. Mother is the single most interesting and confusing word that I know. Next to black.

And here comes mother's day. For me, this year mother's day means a million things. Expectancy, fear, obligation, inspiration, joy, admiration, deep reflection. A few weeks ago my mother told me that she thinks I will be "such a great mother." It struck me that while I have always dreamed of becoming a mother, and intended to become a mother, it still comes as a surprise when anyone affirms that it is something that I can do, SHOULD do even. Because I live in a culture that criminalizes black mothers for creating and loving black children, a culture that criminalizes black kids for being born. And latino kids too. I have been taught that mothering is something that happens to you, and you deal with it, and fight for it, swallowing down shame and living with the threat that the state wants nothing more than to take your kids away from you in every way imaginable.

But it is not my mother who taught me that. My mother repeats again and again that mothering us is her greatest accomplishment, like asha, mothering is her enduring joy and triumph despite everything. And trust, she has other great accomplishments. My mother, not through perfection, not through ease, but through sincere struggle, intense and sometimes even overwhelming love taught us something in her very being. My sister (now an ambitious account exec in New York) once confessed to me that though it might seem unfeminist, the only thing she really cared about, the one thing that she knew she wanted to do for sure in life was to be a good mother. And I told her what I more recently wrote in a poem to one of my feminist theory students, who blessed us by bringing her daughter to class, "mothering is the most feminist act of all." My mother, like every black mother, has been slandered. But we know a lie when we see it. My brother wanted to punch every producer of CNN's disgusting "Black in America" series for daring to suggest that being raised by a black mother was the key liability destroying the life chances of black people. How dare they? How dare they? When our black mother is the only reason we know how to breathe and survive despite the toxic racism filling this world. How dare they?

It is no mystery why it is a cultural truth that talking about a black person's mother is a great way to unleash a universe of anger. Our mothers are slandered every single second of every single day. The media does it like it's its job. And indeed it is.

And here is the risk. All this talk of mothering, all this affirmation and priviliging of mothering puts me at risk, not only in a mainstream narrative working to reproduce a nation built on racial hate and genocide, but also on the academic queer left. It is not very queer of me to keep talking about my mother this way. In fact (as Micheal Warner suggests) the only queer way for a black person to talk about a mother is the "irony" of the house mother in black gay ball culture. CNN is dead to me. The deeper betrayal is that queer studies participates in the slander of the black mother, agreeing with the story that says she should not exist.

Has Warner not considered (as Cathy Cohen makes very clear in Punks, Bulldaggers and Welfare Queens) that black mothering is already a queer thing? Because we were never meant to survive. So the Queen Mother in the house movement is not just throwing shade, the queen is doing the necessary work of mothering. Of saying these bodies black and queer almost to redundancy, these spirits that every facet of our society would seek to destroy, MUST survive and WILL transform the meaning of life whether you like it or not. That is what a black mother does. Sincerely. No irony. It is no joke.

So this week I have been picking a bone with a queer theory narrative that sees mothering as the least radical thing one can do, in so much that it becomes irrelevant to the majority of the discourse on queerness. Clearly, like Moynihan, they don't know my mother. Asserting that the labor of mothering is always in collaboration with the a reproductive narrative, reproducing heteronormativity ignores the fact there has been a national consensus for centuries that black people should not be able to mother and every force, from coercive sterlization, to the dismantling of welfare has been mobilized to try to keep them from doing it. Where has dominant (read white) queer theory been while politicians have been ranting and raving about how welfare queens, (which despite the actual statistics becomes a code name for poor and racialized mothers) are going to destroy civilization as we know it by not only creating black surplus children, but by influencing these children with their deviant and risky and scary behavior? And isn't this the organizing desire of queer theory....to destroy civilization as we know it?

I just wish everyone would listen to Cathy Cohen (who by the way is a black co-mother to a beautiful fierce black girl-child) so I wouldn't have to stand here screaming (or more accurately sit here taking, deconstructing and rebuilding the premises of queer theory all week long). But here is the quick and dirty of it...mainstream queer theory as inaugurated by Warner's edited volume and influenced by a Marxist feminst tradition of critiquing the heteropatriarchal family as a complicit force in the reproduction of capitalist oppression throw the black babies out with the bathwater of their universalism. The "tyranny of motherhood" as described by Barrett and McIntosh does not leave room for those other deployments of "mother" and "hood" (excuse me "inner-city") in the American vernacular of culture of poverty discourse.

This is why Hortense Spillers should be required and repeated reading for queer theorists. Four words. Mama's Baby Papa's Maybe. Which means there is no reason that the act of mothering would reproduce patriarchy, or even take place within the confines of patriarchy along normative lines because the practice of American slavery has so fundamentally ripped the work of mothering from the bodies of black mothers (forcing them to do the labor of mothering for white and black children while fully denying them any of the authority of motherhood by killing and selling away and raping and mutilating their biological children and their chosen kin. (I have posted here before about my discovery, while reading slave code, that even a free black mother had no legal right to defend an enslaved daughter from abuse by a slave master.)

The complexity of the term mother (next to black) requires a queer theory that deuniversalizes race and highlights the function of racism in reproducing the heteropatriarcal status quo. Cathy Cohen, Roderick Ferguson and Jose Munoz do this work of reminding us that Third World Feminism and the Third World Gay Liberation movement are an alternative starting point (contemporary with the Marxist feminist arguments that Warner's version of queer theory inherits). Their work is crucial because it says something very obvious. We are people of color. The whole system wakes up every day trying to exterminate our bodies and our spirits. Our very survival is queer.

We were never meant to survive, and if mothers are part of why we are here (and they are), then they are the queerest of us all. But this is not even news. If we remember what black women have been up to in the United States we can just go ahead and let go of the assumption that mothering is conservative or that conserving and nurturing the lives of black children has ever had any validated place in the official American political spectrum.

Eslanda Robeson
Charlotta Bass
Shirley Graham Du Bois
Mary Church Terell
Maude White Katz

Take the fierce black women writers, mothers, publishers, actresses, activists who would become the Sojourners for Truth and Justice and their work starting in the 1940's to protest the imprisonment of Rosa Lee Ingram, a black mother who was sentenced to death for standing up for herself, and defending herself against a white man who tried to rape her. It was black women activists who changed her sentence to life in prison and then eventually (after 12 years of incarceration) got her released from prison. And always, always the key word in their organizing strategy was "mother." Their understanding of Ingram who was willing to fight to keep this violent man away from her body and away from her children, epitomized the term "mother" for this set of black woman revolutionaries. They framed the state's violence against Ingram as a violence against black mothering itself. How dare this black woman take a stance against rape. Standing against rape is a mothering act. How dare she threaten the perceived truth about what happens to black people, that black bodies are infinitely rapeable. How dare she stand ferocious, daring and teaching. This is what will happen to you if you come at me. This is the act of mothering that mobilized a national movement, black women gathered twenty-five thousands signatures for a petition in 1949...way before the era of the text message e-blast petition. They made it an international human rights issue, contacting every single member nation of the UN. And I need you to know this, remember this if you remember nothing else:

On Mother's Day, exactly 60 years ago the black left internationalist feminists of the Ingram Committee sent TEN THOUSAND MOTHER'S DAY CARDS to the White House and scared Harry S. Truman so bad that he made up an excuse to miss their scheduled meeting the next day.

Ten thousand mother's day cards from black women to the white house. Stolen holiday. No justice, no peace in the form of ten thousand paper-cuts. A floral dare saying: celebrate this. This is what mothering means: organized support for radical self-defense. A complete refusal of rape by any means necessary. Ten thousand Mother's Day cards. A threat saying we are black mothers. We are survivors. Try us.

Forget hallmark.

Have a revolutionary Mother's Day people.

*(Outside of the above timeline, sit Audre Lorde's "Litany for Survival," Cathy Cohen's "Punks, Bulldaggers and Welfare Queens" and Hortense Spillers's "Mama's Baby Papa's Maybe" which i did not reread this week...but have completely internalized such that I should be understood to be citing them no matter what I am saying about anything.-apg)

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Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a queer black trouble-maker. She is the founder of BrokenBeautiful Press and a doctoral candidate in English, Africana Studies and Women's Studies at Duke University. Alexis represents SpiritHouse, Southerners on New Ground, Firewalkers, UBUNTU, Critical Resistance, Left Turn, Make/Shift and Durham, North Carolina Massive.