Trailer: Everywhere and Nowhere (a film by Menhaj Huda)

shout to Stella Nwimo

Saturday Edition: What Barry Bonds Remembers

Saturday Edition 

What Barry Bonds Remembers

by Mark Anthony Neal

When Barry Bonds was recently convicted of obstruction of justice, it brought to an end a nearly decade long investigation of Bonds and his use of performance enhancement drugs (PED). Though Bonds is, perhaps, the most notorious of a generation of professional athletes who tried to chemically enhance their longevity on their respective fields of play, there were always elements of the investigation of Bonds, that suggested that there was something more at play.

In a society in which race still matters, the Federal Government’s case, in collusion with the popular media’s disdain for Bonds (as was the case throughout his career), was never simply about race. Bonds’ relative militancy in response to the trial and the legacy that he doggedly pursued throughout his career, were fueled by slights and insults that were remembered from generations earlier.

The conviction of Barry Bonds occurred, ironically, only days before Major League Baseball celebrated the 64th anniversary of Jackie Robinson’s famous breaking of the color line in the sport. In far too many minds, Jackie Robinson—a legitimate national hero—is the direct anti-thesis of contemporary professional ball players like Bonds, who are invariably described as selfish, money hungry, and inaccessible. While such descriptions are used to depict many professional athletes, when applied to Black athletes, it takes on added animus. For example, terms like “ungrateful,” “arrogant” and "disrespectful" become shorthand for the very idea of the Black athlete, whether directed at Jack Johnson or the Michigan Fab Five.

For several generations of Americans, Robinson was the embodiment of the Black athlete who was grateful for his opportunity to play professional sports; the kind of figure who became a national treasure and an object of nostalgia in the aftermath of the (momentary) radicalization of Black athletes in the 1960s as exemplified by Jim Brown, Lew Alcindor (Kareem Abdul Jabbar), Tommy Smith, John Carlos, and most famously Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay). As Malcolm X suggested right after a young Cassius Clay won the heavyweight boxing championship, “Cassius Clay is the finest Negro athlete I have known…He is more than Jackie Robinson, because Robinson is the White man’s hero.”

With the image of Robinson gleefully galloping around the bases or stealing home, cemented in the national memory, few could bear witness to the pressures that he faced, or the ways that he fought back against the indignities that he faced. For a player who was known for stealing home, arguably one of the most difficult individual plays in the sport, in which one must use cunning and guile, it should not be surprising that Robinson might have responded to the racism of the day in ways that went unnoticed by many.

I was reminded of such moments during a recent lecture given by Cornell University Professor Grant Farred, "Stupid Bastards: Jackie Robinson and the Politics of Conciliation" in which he recalled an incident during a spring training game in New Orleans in 1949. The incident was initially covered by writer Roger Kahn in his well-read tome The Boys of Summer. In a nod Robinson’s drawing power, the owner of the field in New Orleans, allowed a group of Blacks to watch the game from the stands. Robinson though, was apparently dismayed when Black fans cheered the police officers who allowed them into the stands, shouting: “don’t cheer those goddamn bastards. Don’t cheer. Keep your fuckin’ mouths shut…Don’t cheer those bastards, you stupid bastards. Take what you got coming. Don’t cheer.” (108-109)

Racist Delirium at the French Football Federation

Racist Delirium at the French Football Federation

by Laurent Dubois

This afternoon the French blog Mediapart published a stunning report, based on several weeks of investigation, that argues that racist ideas have become normalized, indeed banalized, at the highest levels of the French Football Federation. (You can read an English version of the report here). Mediapart reports that, at the end of 2010, several high-ranking members of the F.F.F. — including the current French national team coach, Laurent Blanc, a veteran of the 1998 World Cup campaign — agreed that it was desirable to decrease the numbers of “black” and “Arab” players in the national training academies. They sent out directives to various academies asking them to intervene — among trainees at the age of 12-13 — to effectively limit the number of players of these backgrounds. While many in France on the left and right have for years declaimed and feared the idea that “quotas” would be put in place in order to carry out what is tellingly called “positive discrimination” (i.e. affirmative action) to help diversify universities and other institutions, it seems the F.F.F. was quite literally discussing, and even starting to put into effect, a “quota” system aimed at making sure there was what they considered the appropriate number of “white” players, who seemed to have been deemed by some generally more tactically intelligent.

Since I read this piece this afternoon, I’ve been stunned by the skid into delirium this represents. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised: after all, racist commentary about the French team has a long history, and reached a dangerous peak during the 2010 World Cup fiasco. (In late June of last year, for instance, a small crowd of protestors entered the F.F.F. headquarters, demanding that it create a team that was “white and Christian” by “firing” “blacks and Arabs“). And yet this is nothing short of a powerful form of treason — not only to the principles of equality that supposedly under-gird French political life, but to the principles of sport as well. That many young men who grow up in the French banlieue (suburbs), subject to economic marginalization and various forms of racial and cultural exclusion, have sought to use sport out of an otherwise highly constrained situation is of course logical enough. After all, it is at least ideally one place where social background and connections shouldn’t really matter: if you play well on the field, if you score goals, no one can claim you didn’t. The French state, meanwhile, has at times strongly supported sports programs in banlieue regions as a way of addressing social issues. And some recruiters for academies explicitly looked to such neighborhoods as they searched for talented young players.

In the last decades, France has produced a string of legendary players: Zinedine Zidane, Thierry Henry, Lilian Thuram, Claude Makelele, Patrick Vieira, Patrice Evra, Florent Malouda, Lassana Diarra, Nicholas Anelka, Samir Nasri, and Karim Benzema — just to name the ones who have played at the pinnacle of the European professional game in England, Italy and Spain. All of these are French citizens, most born in France (though some arrived as young boys in the country with their parents), and have roots in the Caribbean or Africa (including North Africa). Their tactical and technical brilliance is widely recognized and cherished by a series of professional coaches. Many of these players contributed in crucial ways in winning France it’s only World Cup victory in 1998 — Thuram and Zidane respectively won the semi-final and final for France in that year. They led the team to a European Cup victory in 2000, and again to the final of the World Cup in 2006.

So it is both nauseating and, frankly, just insane that the French Football Federation — rather than acknowledging and confronting it’s own sclerotic institutional culture, which has prevented any significant diversification of it’s administrative ranks — is now actually blaming “blacks” and “Arabs” for causing problems for French football. They have skidded into the realm of dangerous fantasy, deeply demeaning themselves and the sport they are supposed to represent.

Read the Full Essay @ Soccer Politics

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Laurent Dubois is Professor of French Studies and History at Duke University and a leading expert on Haitian history and culture. His books include Soccer Empire: The World Cup and the Future of France (University of California Press, forthcoming spring 2010), Slave Revolution in the Caribbean, 1789-1804: A Brief History With Documents (with John Garrigus; 2006), and Avengers of the New World: The Story of the Haitian Revolution (2004).

Some Thoughts on Ivy League Admissions—and Affirmative Action (for Donald Trump)

Some Thoughts on Ivy League Admissions & Affirmative Action
(for Donald Trump)

by Mark Naison | Fordham University

Donald Trump’s comments that Barack Obama didn’t have the grades to get into Ivy League Schools shows a profound ignorance of the admissions policies of those institutions. According to Bowen, Shapiro et all who thoroughly researched the admissions policies of elite universities in the US ( and whose conclusions can be found in their 2002 book The Game of Life: College Sports and Educational Values) the greatest admissions advantage at those schools goes not to children of alumni, or underrepresented minorities, but to recruited athletes! Not only are there twice as many recruited athletes as underrepresented minorities at these schools, but the admissions advantage accruing to an athlete, whether male or female, is twice as powerful as those given to a minority or a “legacy.”

We are not talking about a small number of students here. At most Ivy League schools, close to 20 percent of the undergraduates are recruited athletes, and at Williams College, they constitute 40 percent of the student population. Given the variety of the sports encompassed, which go from lacrosse, to golf, to tennis to sailing, to soccer, to hockey along with softball, baseball, basketball and football, it turns out that the overwhelming majority of beneficiaries of “sports affirmative action” are white.

Not only are these athletes admitted with significantly lower grades and SAT’s than the university mean, but their grades in college tend to be lower than those of their fellow students. Nevertheless, their incomes after college are no lower than those of their fellow students because a large proportion of them go into careers in the financial sector, which go out of their way to recruit “Ivy league athletes” as key components of their work force.

Boxed In: The LeBrons and Stereotypes as Authenticity

Boxed In: The LeBrons and Stereotypes as Authenticity

By David Leonard

The second installation of The LeBrons – “Stay on the Court” – begins just as the initial episode.  After the proverbial HP advertisement, LeBron James highlights this week’s moral lesson: “There is nothing more important than staying true to who you are.”    For The LeBrons being authentic and true means “to stay on the court.”

The show begins with Athlete LeBron driving kids and his friends to the local recreation center, where they play a little hoop before heading to the pool.  Athlete doesn’t stay with the boys because he has to “run some drills and get mine,” but before leaving imparts some knowledge to them: “remember practices makes perfect.”

Heading his advice, the boys remain on the court, until the sight of a young girl leads them off the court and over to the pool, where she happens to be along with many other scantily clad females, whose bodies become a point of emphasis for the gaze of the show.

The rest of the episode revolves around Kid trying to get the attention of Li, the young women who drew the attention of all three boys.  Kid, however, has the skills and the mentors to help him.  He seeks the advice of both Wise and Biz, who are both depicted as “ladies men.”  They are typical of “contemporary representations of black males” as “sex-crazed” (Jackson 2006, p. 81).  Wise fawns after the younger women at the pool, chasing after them like a lecherous dirty old man as he announces “all these young girls showing skin.”  Countless girls, who are mesmerized by his charisma, coolness, and sexuality, on the other hand chase Biz. 

Unconvinced by Wise’s playbook for winning over the ladies, Kid seeks out the advice Biz.  He encourages him to impress her with his courage by jumping off a high dive.  His plan almost works to perfection only to be pushed aside by a fat hairy man named Yogi giving him “lip to mouth resuscitation.” Resulting in the following exchange between Athlete and Kid

Athlete: How as your first kiss?

Kid: Bluck.  Come on, athlete, you know that doesn’t count.  I made a fool of myself.  I shouldn’t have listened to Biz

Athlete: He wants the best for you.  Maybe you should have listened to Wise.

Kid: Right!  If I’d listen to him, I’d be married with three kids by now

Athlete: Yo, stay on the court

Kid: You’re right; forget about girls.  No good at it.  I’m good at [as he raises up for a set-hot jumper] this

Athlete: Stay on the court, kid

Kid: I got it, athlete; geez

Athlete: Do you?

As he walks away Li walks toward Kid, telling him, “That was a nice shot.  You’re a lot better at basketball than you are at diving.  How about little 1 on 1?

Li, like Kid, is a baller, showing her skills as she blows right by him to the basket.  Importantly, this final exchange reiterates the shows moral lesson about being true to one self and not trying to front.  His decision to “keep it real” and “to stay on the court” is why he ultimately gets the girl.  The message is powerful because the narrative constructs an authentic black identity through athleticism and sports participation. To keep it real is to stay on the court.  His manhood is tied to his game – on the court and with the ladies, which are imagined as mutually reinforcing.  In other words, his success results from his staying true to his identity not as diver but as basketball player.

As with the first episode, The LeBrons once again explores the notion of authenticity and “keeping it real,” erasing the complexity and “messiness” of identity. “I do think there’s something about ‘keeping it real’ that is about almost flirting with disaster in a certain kind of way. It’s about a sort of boldness and a fearlessness that says, ‘I’m gonna,’ in a sense, ‘do me,’” notes John L. Jackson. “I think ‘keeping it real’ is about saying, ‘I’m gonna do what I need to do regardless of how the chips might fall.’ I think the irony, of course, is often ‘keeping it real’ becomes reduced to little more than reproducing the most clichéd stereotypes of blackness, so you’re demanding a sense of individualized autonomy, but you’re performing it in these very stereotypical ways, in ways that are supposed to mesh with these prefabricated categories of black possibility.” Jackson points to the ways in which hegemonic representations of blackness, as evident here, confine identity to athletic performances. “The extent to which Americans use race as a proxy for athlete ability cannot be overstated,” writes Reuben May, in Living through the Hoop. “Many individuals view black athletes as superior to other athletes. . . .  The overrepresentation of blacks in sports . . . reinforces the notion of black males as ‘natural’ athletes” (p. 81).   Worse, by focusing on being “true to self” and “staying on the court” The LeBrons further restricts what constitutes an authentic black identity.  These narratives scripts are significant given the fact that almost seventy percent of black teenagers see sports as their path to success.  The LeBrons embodies a racial project that, according to Thabiti Lewis, defines black masculinity “by athletic or physical prowess” (p. 7).

While focusing on “staying on the court” as it relates to “keeping it real,” the show also teaches viewers endless stereotypes.  Eric, Kid’s friend, is one of the show’s few white characters.  Not surprisingly, he is described as a “boy genius,” with his success on the court attributed to his math and science skills (“the hypotenuse is equal to the distance between the net and the ball”). Eric is able to excel because he stays true to himself – as a stereotypical white nerd, which serves him well as he is able to use principles of geometry and physics to swish a 100+ foot shot (albeit straight up in the air).  Whereas Kid is successful because of his skills and talents as a baller (black identity), Eric is buckets because of his whiteness.  Eric, however, is not the only stereotype.

Li, “an exchange student from China,” who interestingly doesn’t have an accent, has “brains coming of her ears.”  She is a stereotypical exotic temptress in a skimpy bikini, described by one of the boys as a “Shorty” who “got it good.” The shows gaze and its slow-motion affects that look her up to down emphasize her body.  She is a hot “anime character only she is not a cartoon.”  In this regard, she is the embodiment of dominant representations of the hypersexual Asian women.  While commenting about Lucy Liu and the ways in which her character (Ling) on Alley McBeal recapitulated longstanding stereotypes of Asian women, Darrell Y. Hamamoto, an associate professor in Asian-American Studies from University of California Davis, described her as “a neo-Orientalist masturbatory fantasy figure concocted by a white man whose job it is to satisfy the blocked needs of other white men. . .” (1994, p. 74).   Present within popular culture, pornography, the sex industry, mail-order brides, and sex tourism, hegemonic white racial framing reduces Asian women to exotic sexual bodies ready and willing to serve the sexual fantasies and needs of powerful, virile, western (white) men (Macabasco 2005).  Commenting on beauty norms, and the ways in which discourses of diversity and colorblindness erase the consequences and significance of race within our post-civil rights movement, Carrie Smith further elucidates the impact of the hyper visible Asian temptress:

There is also something troubling about the way that people of color are often labeled as “exotic” and categorized separately from Whites – whether it be in lists of the world’s most beautiful people or in pornography. The effect of this segregation is that we now have different norms of beauty that are “racialized.” People can now pick and choose which racialized norm of beauty most tantalizes them and fulfills their desires.

The representational confinement for Li is representative of the very limited/limiting depictions – scripts – within The LeBrons.  “Scripting, like stereotyping, often has deleterious effects.  Imagine the child has internalized assumptions about his or her existence and has begin to formulate a sense of self by retaliating against misguided projections,” writes Ronald Jackson in Scripting the Masculine Body.  “The child is already contemplating achievement possibilities.  Now, consider how empowered that child will be if he or she can come to understand the possibilities are limitless, the range of potential is without boundaries.  Unfortunately with its scripts, and its narrative focus on authentic identities, limits those possibilities” (p. 100).

The LeBrons, especially as a self-defined pedagogical – message – show, offers powerful lessons about identity and authenticity.  In defining blackness through athleticism and athletic/sexual prowess (and Asian femininity through exotic femininity), the show reifies dominant white racial frames.  It boxes in black (and Asian) identity defining success through simply staying on the court. 

David J. Leonard is an associate professor in the Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies at Washington State University at Pullman. His next book (SUNY Press) is on the NBA after the November 2004 brawl during a Pacers-Pistons game at the The Palace of Auburn Hills He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums.

AlJazeeraEnglish: Malcolm X: Who was the Man Behind the Legend?

from AlJazeeraEnglish

Malcolm X: Who was the Man Behind the Legend? 

Until now: With the publication of a warts and all biography that disturbs the widely accepted story of the Muslim leader's life, including controversial insights to his political contradictions and sexual deviations. Some critics have condemned the book as a twisted biography, others say it is a timely reassessment of African-American history.

On Monday's Riz Khan, we are joined by the book's leading researcher, Zaheer Ali, by Jared Ball, a professor of communication studies at Morgan State University, and by journalist and historian Todd Burroughs.

'Left of Black': Episode #31 featuring Karla FC Holloway

Left of Black #31
w/ Karla FC Holloway
April 25, 2011

Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined by fellow Duke University Professor Karla FC Holloway, author the new book Private Bodies, Public Texts: Race, Gender, and a Cultural Bioethics (Duke University Press).  Neal and Holloway discuss medical racism, the Tuskegee experiments and the new biography of Malcolm X.

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→Karla FC Holloway is James B. Duke Professor of English at Duke University. She also holds appointments in the Law School, Women’s Studies and African & African American Studies. Her research and teaching interests focus on African American cultural studies, bicultural studies, gender, ethics and law. Professor Holloway is the author of eight books, including Passed On: African-American Mourning Stories (2002), BookMarks—Reading  in Black and White, A Memoir (2006) and the recent Private Bodies, Public Texts: Race, Gender, and a Cultural Bioethics.


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Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

Also Available @ iTunes U

Malcolmology (Vol. 4) --Leaving the Nation--with Manning Marable

This is the fourth installment of the Malcomology video project, a collaboration between truth2power films and the late Dr. Manning Marable, author of the new Malcolm X biography, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. Visit Dr. Marable's blog at http://detroitred.tumblr.com and truth2power films at http://truth2powerfilms.org/

In this episode, Marable discusses the circumstances that lead to Malcolm x leaving the Nation of Islam.

Film Teaser: Byron Hurt's 'Soul Food Junkies'

Filmmaker Byron Hurt explores the health advantages and disadvantages of Soul Food, a quintessential American cuisine. Soul food will also be used as the lens to investigate the dark side of the food industry and the growing food justice movement that has been born in its wake.

Rap Sessions Community Dialogue From Precious II For Colored Girls @ Columbia College | April 26, 2011

Rap Sessions | 
Community Dialogue From Precious II For Colored Girls:

The Black Image in the American Mind

Columbia College

Tuesday, April 26th

6 p.m. Reception / 6:30 p.m. Program

Conaway Center | 1104 S. Wabash Ave., 1st floor

This event is free and open to the public.

For the fifth year, the Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women & Gender in the Arts & Media partners with Rap Sessions: Community Dialogues to bring a distinguished panel of scholars, journalists, and activists for a townhall-style meeting addressing important issues in our communities. Rap Sessions is led by critically-acclaimed journalist, activist, political analyst, and Institute Fellow, Bakari Kitwana. 

This year’s panel explores contemporary moments in popular culture and political debates where race, image and identity come center stage. Recent films like Precious and For Colored Girls, and TV shows like The Wire and Treme, as well as current political issues such as immigration and others, are among the hot button issues to be addressed in this context.

Featuring:

• Elizabeth Méndez Berry (journalist and author of The Obama Generation, Revisited, featured in The Nation)
• John Jennings (Professor of Visual Studies at SUNY Buffalo, and co-author of Black Comix: African American Independent Comix and Culture)
• Joan Morgan (journalist, cultural critic, and author of When Chickenheads Come Home to Roost)
• Mark Anthony Neal (Professor of Black Popular Culture at Duke University, and author of New Black Man)
• Vijay Prashad (Director of International Studies at Trinity College, and author of The Darker Nations: A People’s History of The Third World)

Moderated by Bakari Kitwana, journalist, activist, political analyst, and Institute Fellow.

This program is co-presented by the Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media, and Rap Sessions. It is sponsored in part by the Leadership Donors of the Institute; Illinois Arts Council, a state agency; Office of Multicultural Affairs; and Critical Encounters: Image & Implication.

For more information, email institutewomengender@colum.edu or call 312.369.8829.

Imani Perry Reviews 'Malcolm X: A Life of Re-Invention'

'Malcolm X,' by Manning Marable

Review by Imani Perry | Special to The Chronicle

Sunday, April 24, 2011

In the early 1990s, it was popular for African American teenagers and young adults to wear T-shirts with images of Malcolm X that read, "Our own black shining prince," a reference to Ossie Davis' poignant eulogy of the slain leader. At that time, the embrace of Malcolm X, particularly by young hip-hop fans, seemed a deliberate counterpoint to the sanitized, mainstream and universally celebrated image of Martin Luther King Jr.

Malcolm X was, in our iconic rendering, the unapologetic black radical voice for freedom and justice. He served an important symbolic role for a post-civil rights generation of African Americans who faced the devastating long-term effects of deindustrialization, poverty, educational inequality and mass incarceration.

Now, some 20 years later, with the publication of Manning Marable's "Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention," the public is being challenged to dismantle the iconography of the "black shining prince" and confront Malcolm X as an incredibly complex and at times deeply conflicted figure.

Impassioned conflicts have arisen over the content of the biography. Salacious interest in whether Malcolm had homosexual encounters; whether he and his wife, Betty, were unfaithful to each other; whether he and Alex Haley misrepresented his story in "The Autobiography of Malcolm X"; and whether the convicted parties were actually the ones responsible for his murder have been matched with outrage at the manner in which Marable unflinchingly presents Malcolm X as a fallible human being.

Marable's death, just a few days before his book's release, feels like a last gasp of herculean effort, a final, noble offering from a path-breaking historian and political scientist. While the author's absence facilitates some of the melodramatic reaction to his magnum opus, we are forced to defend or decry without his input.

But in truth, although the conflict over the content has probably driven sales and attention to the book, the brilliance of this biography has little if anything to do with its apparently shocking revelations. Marable has crafted an extraordinary portrait of a man and his time. Malcolm moves through the social and intellectual history of mid-20th century black America, and his periods of growth and stagnation mirror the tides of black life.

Read the Full Review @ The San Francisco Chronicle

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Imani Perry is a professor at the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University.

Another Missed Shot: Kobe Bryant and the Politics of Homophobia

Another Missed Shot: Kobe Bryant and the Politics of Homophobia 
by David J. Leonard

Whistled four his 4^th personal foul and then a technical foul, Kobe Bryant headed to the bench.  With cameras focused on him, he shouted “fucking faggot” in the direction of the referee leading to an avalanche of public condemnation, a fine from the league, and ample debate.  As a Lakers fan, and someone committed to social justice, his choice in words was deeply disappointing.  “Homophobic Slurs Are Always Meant to Offend” writes Mychal Denzel Smith.  “The use of this particular word reveals something deeper. It's the belief that homosexuality is inherently inferior and an undesirable trait; therefore, to refer to someone with slurs usually reserved for gays is an attempt to belittle that person further. The quickest and most efficient way to insult a man has become to call into question his sexual orientation.” 

Yet, as someone committed to social justice, I have also been disappointed by the reaction from both his critics and his defenders.  Not surprisingly, throughout the Internet many have used this as an opportunity to highlight their own anti-gay sentiments.  Others, however, have denounced Kobe Bryant, expressing shock at his comments, while focusing on the necessity of a fine rather than education of not only Bryant but also society at large.

Shortly after Bryant slur became a public story, the Human Rights Council offered the following denunciation of Bryant:

What a disgrace for Kobe Bryant to use such horribly offensive and distasteful language, especially when millions of people are watching.  Hopefully Mr. Bryant will recognize that as a person with such fame and influence, the use of such language not only offends millions of LGBT people around the world, but also perpetuates a culture of discrimination and hate that all of us, most notably Mr. Bryant, should be working to eradicate.  Bryant and the Lakers have a responsibility to speak up on this issue immediately. America is watching.

Others followed suit, demanding apologies, questioning what sort of punishment should be leveled at Bryant, and otherwise condemned not only the slur but also the person in Bryant.  Yet, amid all the shock and self-righteousness, John Amaechi attempted to provide context for incident: “I'm surprised that people are surprised. This is common language when I played. It was an everyday word that I heard. I haven't seen anything new put in place (by the NBA) to tackle homophobia. There's no reason for it to somehow get better.”  Hoping to capitalize on Kobe Bryant’s visibility (and possibly his already negative standing amongst segments of society) GLADD and Human Rights Council emphasized the potential here to educate and inform.

The Human Rights Council called Bryant’s situation a teachable moment.  While correct in a sense, unfortunately effective lessons have not been at the center of this pedagogical exercise.  By excoriating Bryant and demanding an apology, by focusing on his being a role model (the consequences of kids using it in their schools demonstrates that this isn’t an issue specific to role models) the issue of homophobia has been individualized and isolated.  Bryant’s multiple apologies are seen as a resolution as the focus rests with his learning a lesson.  Lesson learned, back to the game.  

Likewise, the decision from Davis Stern to fine Bryant $100,000 further illustrates the ways in which Bryant required disciplining and punishment as part of the education process. Yet, another lesson learned.  In fact, the denunciation of Bryant, the calls for apologies, education, penance, accountability, and punishment is commonplace within the NBA.  The culture of the NBA is one of control, disciplinarity and punishment for intruding, transgressing, and rule-breaking black bodies.  It is a cultural platform where respectability and appropriateness, as defined by the white racial frame, govern the day-to-day operations alongside its cultural reception.  This is especially true for African American players who have a responsibility to demonstrate their respectability, something that Kobe failed at this moment.

Lessons & Legacies: Daughters & Mothers: A Conversation

Centric Productions & It Takes A Village Today.com present…

LESSONS & LEGACIES: DAUGHTERS & MOTHERS:
A Conversation

Daughters and mothers – a powerful, joy-filled, sometimes painful relationship. What lessons and legacies are shared and passed down from mother to daughter? Major life lessons, untreated trauma, untold legacies, unrevealed secrets? What would you share? What lessons did you learn? What did you have to unlearn?

Moderator: Esther Armah
Radio Host WBAI 99.5FM’s ‘Wake Up Call’, International Award-Winning Journalist, Playwright, Director Centric Productions, www.offthepage.net

Featuring Panelists:
Dian Brooks • Staceyann Chin • asha bandele • Stacey Patton

2 Hours • 1 Powerhouse Panel • 1 Provocative Conversation
this is the Emotional Justice Movement

Monday, April 25
7PM- 9PM

The Brecht Forum
451 West Street
(between between Bank & Bethune Streets)
New York, NY 10014

Admission: $10
For more information call 212.209.2812 or visit: www.brechtforum.org

Subway Directions: Take A, C, E Trains to 14th Street & 8th Avenue

This panel is part of Esther Armah’s Afrolicious 2011, the emotional justice arts & conversation series. The 2011 theme? Love=Revolution.

The Show: Doug E Fresh and Mark Anthony Neal in Conversation

The Apollo Legacy: Hip Hop!

Doug E. Fresh and Mark Anthony Neal host an evening of performance and conversation about the relationship between hip hop and the Apollo.

Monday, April 25 at 7:00 pm
The Apollo Legacy: Hip Hop!
Performance Series

Museum of the City of New York
1220 Fifth Avenue, NY, NY 10029

In the late 1980s, the television series It's Showtime at the Apollo was one of the first national platforms for local hip hop artists. Join legendary hip hop performer and one of the originators of the human beat box Doug E. Fresh, former host of It's Showtime at the Apollo, for an evening of performance and conversation about the relationship between hip hop and the Apollo Theater, with Mark Anthony Neal, co-editor of That's the Joint!: The Hip Hop Studies Reader (Routledge, 2011). Presented in conjunction with the exhibition Ain't Nothing Like the Real Thing: How the Apollo Theater Shaped American Entertainment and in collaboration with the Apollo Theater and the Hip Hop Culture Center in Harlem.

Reception to follow.

Reservations recommended; $5 general admission.

For more information please call 917-492-3395.

Trailer: 'The Wonder Year'

The Wonder Year
A film by Kenneth Price

A year in the life of CEO, NAACP ambassador, Duke University professor, husband, father, son and Grammy Award winning producer 9th Wonder. The film follows one of soul music’s most dynamic figures from his childhood home to late nights in the studio and everywhere in between.

Featuring: Drake, DJ Premier, DJ Green Lantern, J. Cole, Murs, Phonte, Sha Money XL, Young Guru, The Alchemist & more.

A History of Black Folk on Twitter: Mark Anthony Neal @ TEDxDuke

From 'Go Down Moses' to the death of Manning Marable, what is the relationship between Black folk and social media?

About TEDx

TEDx was created in the spirit of TED's mission, "ideas worth spreading." The program is designed to give communities, organizations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level.

At TEDx events, a screening of TEDTalks videos -- or a combination of live presenters and TEDTalks videos -- sparks deep conversation and connections. TEDx events are fully planned and coordinated independently, on a community-by-community basis.

'Left of Black': Episode #30 featuring Mark Naison

Left of Black #30 w/ Mark Naison
April 18, 2011

Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined by Fordham University Historian and activist Mark Naison in a wide ranging discussion about growing up as a White American embracing Black culture, the emergence of Black Studies on predominately White college campuses, the Bronx African American History Project and his infamous appearance on Chappelle’s Show.

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→Mark Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham’s Urban Studies Program. He is the author of two books, Communists in Harlem During the Depression and White Boy: A Memoir. Naison is also co-director of the Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP). Research from the BAAHP will be published in a forthcoming collection of oral histories Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life From the 1930’s to the 1960’s.

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Left of Black is a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.

Trailer: 'The Interrupters'--Full Frame Special Jury Award Winner

The Interrupters: A Film by Steve James & Alex Kotlowitz

The Interrupters tells the moving and surprising stories of three Violence Interrupters who try to protect their Chicago communities from the violence they once employed. From acclaimed director Steve James and bestselling author Alex Kotlowitz, this film is an unusually intimate journey into the stubborn persistence of violence in our cities. Shot over the course of a year out of Kartemquin Films, The Interrupters captures a period in Chicago when it became a national symbol for the violence in our cities. During that period, the city was besieged by high-profile incidents, most notably the brutal beating of Derrion Albert, a Chicago High School student, whose death was caught on videotape.

The film’s main subjects work for an innovative organization, CeaseFire, which believes that the spread of violence mimics the spread of infectious diseases, and so the treatment should be similar: go after the most infected, and stop the infection at its source. The singular mission of the “Violence Interrupters” — who have credibility on the streets because of their own personal histories — is to intervene in conflicts before they explode into violence.

In The Interrupters, Ameena Matthews, whose father is Jeff Fort, one of the city’s most notorious gang leaders, was herself a drug ring enforcer. But having children and finding solace in her Muslim faith pulled her off the streets and grounded her. In the wake of Derrion Albert’s death, Ameena becomes a close confidante to his mother, and helps her through her grieving. Ameena, who is known among her colleagues for her fearlessness, befriends a feisty teenaged girl who reminds her of herself at that age. The film follows that friendship over the course of many months, as Ameena tries to nudge the troubled girl in the right direction.

Cobe Williams, scarred by his father’s murder, was in and out of prison, until he had had enough. His family – particularly a young son – helped him find his footing. Cobe disarms others with his humor and his general good nature. His most challenging moment comes when he has to confront a man so bent on revenge that Cobe has to pat him down to make sure he’s put away his gun. Like Ameena, he gets deeply involved in the lives of those he encounters, including a teenaged boy just out of prison and a young man from his old neighborhood who’s squatting in a foreclosed home.

Eddie Bocanegra is haunted by a murder he committed when he was seventeen. His CeaseFire work is a part of his repentance for what he did. Eddie is most deeply disturbed by the aftereffects of the violence on children, and so he spends much of his time working with younger kids in an effort to both keep them off the streets and to get support to those who need it – including a 16-year-old girl whose brother died in her arms. Soulful and empathic, Eddie, who learned to paint in prison, teaches art to children, trying to warn them of the debilitating trauma experienced by those touched by the violence.

The Interrupters follows Ameena, Cobe and Eddie as they go about their work, and while doing so reveals their own inspired journeys of hope and redemption. The film attempts to make sense of what CeaseFire’s Tio Hardiman calls, simply, “the madness”.

Atelier@Duke: Media & Politics; Culture & Identity

Atelier@Duke: Media & Politics; Culture & Identity
February 25, 2011

Panelists at the Atelier@Duke symposium discuss "Media and Politics, Culture and Identity," the final panel at the Atelier@Duke, an event marking the 15th anniversary of the John Hope Franklin Research Center at Duke University Libraries.

Panelists include Nia-Malika Henderson (The Washington Post), Susannah Meadows (Newsweek), Linda Williams (Raleigh News & Observer), Orin Starn (Duke), and moderator Mark Anthony Neal (Duke).

Bettye LaVette and Herbie Hancock: "Love Me Still" (full version)

Bronx African American History Project Interviews Historian Vincent Harding

Historian Vincent Harding, author of There is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America, is interviewed by the Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP). The project is co-directed by Fordham University historians Mark Naison and Brian Purnell.

'Emotional Migration'--Latest mix from DJ Lynnee Denise

Homophobic Slurs Are Always Meant to Offend

Kobe Bryant's recent use of an anti-gay slur is a prime example of how we need to directly address homophobia -- by re-examining what it means to be a man.

Homophobic Slurs Are Always Meant to Offend
by Mychal Denzel Smith | The Root

A few years ago, during an awkward attempt at father-son bonding, I found out my father was a homophobe. It was right after the Academy Awards, and there was a lot of discussion about the film Brokeback Mountain being snubbed for best picture. My father and I were watching television together, and he said to me, with a chuckle, "I've watched Westerns all my life, and never once did I think cowboys were faggots."

I don't know that he recognized how visibly uncomfortable I was with his word choice, because he used it again before I left the room. I never thought my father had particularly warm feelings about gays before that moment, but the open-air homophobia was jarring.

It's a big part of the heterosexual-male bonding experience: In an effort to prove a sense of collective manhood, some heterosexual men trade homophobic barbs with one another, denounce and deride being gay and vehemently defend their own heterosexual credentials. It starts pretty early in the socialization process, with "gay" being used as a derogatory term on the playground before most even know what "gay" means, and eventually it makes its way into other spaces that tend to be perceived as havens for heterosexual manhood (e.g., locker rooms, basketball courts, rap music).

This is what Kobe Bryant was doing when he shouted "f---ing faggot" at a referee during Tuesday's Los Angeles Lakers-San Antonio Spurs game. Bryant says his use of the homophobic slur was not intended to offend anyone, which hardly seems plausible.

He is well aware that "faggot" is a homophobic slur, or else he would have felt no need to apologize for his comments; he would have claimed ignorance. Given that he was visibly angry when he blurted out the slur, any comment that he made toward the referee at that point was clearly intended to offend him. But the use of this particular word reveals something deeper.

It's the belief that homosexuality is inherently inferior and an undesirable trait; therefore, to refer to someone with slurs usually reserved for gays is an attempt to belittle that person further. The quickest and most efficient way to insult a man has become to call into question his sexual orientation, and the easiest way to bond with one another comes through sharing a mutual homophobia (regrettably, these are things that I have personally done in the past but now recognize their idiocy).

And no one questions this. Sure, Bryant had to pay a fine and meet with LGBT activists, but apologists for his behavior abound. Society teaches us that manhood, in part, is defined by an ability to impregnate a woman and subsequently provide for the mother and child financially, while exercising control over their livelihoods through the threat of physical domination. For some, gay men and women represent a threat, an attack on the very concept of manhood.

Read the Full Essay @ The Root

MURS & 9TH WONDER - "I USED TO LOVE HER (AGAIN")

Directed by JON MAZYCK. From the Murs & 9th Wonder album FORNEVER, available at http://mursworld.com.

'Lectures to Beats': “Government Loves Me…Government Loves Me Not”

Lectures to Beats - Episode 1: "Government Loves Me...Government Loves Me Not" from Diana Ozemebhoya Eromosele on Vimeo.

In the series premiere, “Government Loves Me…Government Loves Me Not” examines the complex and seemingly dysfunctional relationship between black Americans and the government.

Ph.D. History Candidate Paul Adler uses the critically acclaimed HBO series, “The Wire,” to describe the U.S. labor movement and the hardships communities endured as a result of technological developments in the manufacturing industry.

Government Professor Bruce Douglass and History Professor Adam Rothman share their thoughts about the dominant U.S. political groups and the contradictions and tensions that exist in both the liberal and conservative ideologies.

History Professor Maurice Jackson takes viewers through a series of anecdotes and quotes that speak to the significance of black Americans and race relations throughout the 20th and 21st centuries.

Gerald A. Lawson, (Black) Video Games Pioneer Goes Home

from the New York Times

Gerald A. Lawson, a Pioneer in Video Games, Dies at 70
by Bruce Webber

Gerald A. Lawson, a largely self-taught engineer who became a pioneer in electronic video entertainment, creating the first home video game system with interchangeable game cartridges, died on Saturday in Mountain View, Calif. He was 70 and lived in Santa Clara, Calif.

The cause was complications of diabetes, said his wife, Catherine.

Before disc-based systems like PlayStation, Xbox and Wii transformed the video game industry, before techno-diversions like Grand Theft Auto and Madden NFL and even before Pac-Man and Donkey Kong became the obsession of millions of electronic gamers, it was Mr. Lawson who first made it possible to play a variety of video games at home.

In the mid-1970s, he was director of engineering and marketing for the newly formed video game division of Fairchild Semiconductor, and it was under his direction that the division brought to market in 1976 the Fairchild Channel F, a home console that allowed users to play different games contained on removable cartridges. Until then, home video game systems could play only games that were built into the machines themselves. Mr. Lawson’s ideas anticipated — if they did not entirely enable — a colossal international business.

In March, Mr. Lawson was honored for his innovative work by the International Game Developers Association, an overdue acknowledgment for an unfamiliar contributor to the technological transformation that has changed how people live.

“He’s absolutely a pioneer,” Allan Alcorn, a creator of the granddaddy of video games, Pong, said in an interview with The San Jose Mercury News in March. “When you do something for the first time, there is nothing to copy.”

Mr. Alcorn was the first design engineer at Atari, whose own cartridge console eventually dominated the home video game market.

At 6 feet 6 inches and well over 250 pounds, Mr. Lawson cut an imposing figure. A modest man but a straight talker who was known to one and all as Jerry, he was among only a handful of black engineers in the world of electronics in general and electronic gaming in particular.

Gerald Anderson Lawson was born in Brooklyn on Dec. 1, 1940, and grew up mostly in Queens. His parents encouraged his intellectual pursuits. His father, Blanton, was a longshoreman by profession and a voracious reader of science books by inclination; his mother, Mannings, was a city employee who was also president of the PTA at the nearly all-white school Jerry attended. There he had a first-grade teacher who changed his life.

“I had a picture of George Washington Carver on the wall next to my desk,” he said in a 2009 interview with the publication Vintage Computing and Gaming. “And she said, ‘This could be you.’ ” He went on: “This kind of influence led me to feel, ‘I want to be a scientist. I want to be something.’ ”

As a boy he pursued a number of scientific interests, ham radio and chemistry among them. As a teenager he earned money repairing television sets. He attended both Queens College and the City College of New York, but never received a degree. In the early 1970s, he started at Fairchild in Silicon Valley as a roving design consultant. While he was there he invented an early coin-operated arcade game, Demolition Derby. Along with other Silicon Valley innovators, he belonged to a hobbyists’ group known as the Homebrew Computer Club. Two of its other members were Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, later the founders of Apple.

“I was not impressed with them — either one of them, actually,” Mr. Lawson said in the 2009 interview, and though he didn’t say why, he declined to hire Mr. Wozniak for a job at Fairchild.

After inventing Demolition Derby, Mr. Lawson was put in charge of the company’s video game division. He and his team came up with cartridges that could be loaded with different game programs and then inserted into the console one at a time. This allowed the company to sell individual games separately from the console itself, a business model that remains the cornerstone of the video game industry.

A crucial element of the invention was the use of a new processor, the Fairchild 8; another was a mechanism that allowed for repeated insertion and removal of cartridges without damaging the machine’s semiconductors. Video hockey and tennis were programmed into the F Channel console; additional games available on cartridge included Shooting Gallery, Video Blackjack and Alien Invasion.

In addition to his wife, whom he married in 1965, Mr. Lawson is survived by a brother, Michael, of Queens, and two children, Karen and Marc, both of Smyrna, Ga.

After he left Fairchild in 1980, Mr. Lawson founded a company, Videosoft, that created games, and worked as a consultant.

“I don’t play video games that often; I really don’t,” he said in the 2009 interview. “First of all, most of the games that are out now — I’m appalled by them.” Most are concerned with “shooting somebody and killing somebody,” he said.

“To me, a game should be something like a skill you should develop — if you play this game, you walk away with something of value.”

Atelier@Duke: Intellectuals and Activism

Atelier@Duke: Intellectuals and Activism
February 25, 2011

Panelists at the Atelier@Duke symposium discuss "Intellectuals and Activism," the third of five panels at the Atelier@Duke, an event marking the 15th anniversary of the John Hope Franklin Research Center at Duke University Libraries.

Panelists include Joanne Braxton (William & Mary), Paula Giddings (Smith College), Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham (Harvard), Tim Tyson (Duke), and moderator William H. Chafe (Duke).

Ain't Mad at Prince Doing D-Train

African American Males Transcending Urban Disadvantage

African American Males Transcending Urban Disadvantage

Researchers studying African American boys and men living in urban contexts typically default to deficit models. While few would dispute the need to understand the factors that contribute to urban disadvantage, scholars are increasingly exploring “what works” – the social resources, conditions, practices, and policies that yield more encouraging outcomes for African American males in the city.

As leaders of the Penn Institute for Urban Research Faculty Forum, Penn GSE Professor Shaun Harper and Annenberg Professor John Jackson have brought together leading scholars who are addressing these issues.

Titled African American Men Transcending Urban Disadvantage, the Forum will feature:

David Wall Rice, Morehouse College:
Reimagining Black Male Identities and Expectancy, 4/18

Elijah Anderson, Yale University:
A Discussion of Against the Wall: Poor, Young, Black, and Male, 4/19

Mark Anthony Neal, Duke University:
Beyond Pathological Media Misrepresentation, 4/20

All lectures will be held from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. in Huntsman Hall (University of Pennsylvania), Room 250, 3730 Walnut Street, Philadelphia.

This forum is free and open to the public.

Transcending Racial Inequality: Imani Perry on the Brian Lehrer Show

from WNYC

Transcending Racial Inequality | Monday, April 11, 2011

Imani Perry, professor at the Center for African American Studies at Princeton University and author of the new book More Beautiful and More Terrible: The Embrace and Transcendence of Racial Inequality in the United States , discusses persistent racial inequality in the U.S. and the way forward.

Scripting King James: The LeBrons and a Discourse of Blackness

Scripting King James:
'The LeBrons' and a Discourse of Blackness
by David J. Leonard

Before the initial episode of LeBron James’ new web show – The LeBrons – begins viewers get a clear glimpse of the show’s purpose: advertizing. However, it isn’t the typical web commercial but one that has a character from the show – Biz LeBron – using the newest HP tablet from to coordinate his fashion style. The efforts to blur the line between commercials and the show itself are revealing. This would of course not be the only instance of product placement. Within this short almost seven minute web show, NIKE, whose commercial The LeBrons is the basis for the show, is visible, as are Dr. Dres’ Beat headphones, interesting given that the show is suppose to be about LeBron’s childhood.

More centrally, the show is selling LeBron, a “brand” that has certainly faced criticism in recent months. By focusing on a young man growing up in Akron, the show not only tries to reestablish his roots in Ohio, but to humanize LeBron by highlighting his background, where he came from and the trials and tribulations he faced growing up before stardom. This is made clear in the show’s catchy opening theme song :

You see the lights, the fame, you see the bling, but you should meet LeBron before he came king. Yeah, this is a story kind like then; my little homie kid growing up in Akron, trying to be an athlete. W e can all witness, hoping he can grow up right, handle business. Gotta show love to his friends and fam, world on his back, like an old man. ‘cause if you think he’s just a ball player, you got it wrong, player. For real. Life isn’t fun and games. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, LeBron James. It ain’t easy . . . .

Promising viewers a behind-the-scenes narrative of a less than glamorous childhood, The LeBrons works to reconstruct LeBron – through Kid LeBron – as a normal, average, kid working hard to live the American Dream. While imagining LeBron as 4 distinct personalities, the primary vehicle for moral lessons and engagement is Kid LeBron.

Yet, the show isn’t a crass infomercial for LeBron and his corporate sponsors. It is a commercial with a narrative and a lot of moral lessons (isn’t this true of all commercial popular culture). The initial show – “ The Lion ” – in fact begins with James asking viewers (with a nod to Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids), “Ever heard the saying two wrongs don’t make a right.” Providing pedagogical context for both the episode and the show itself, we initially meet Kid LeBron and his neighborhood friend as they ride their bikes, only to be chased by a vicious pit bull owned by Ray Johnson.



Terrorized and fearful of this blood thirty dog, the kids enlist the help from Biz LeBron. Athlete LeBron who is seen shooting baskets cannot be bothered to protect the boys because he is too focused on perfecting his game. Biz, describing the dog as a “gangsta,” a “punk” and a “thug,” leaving me to wonder if this dog represents not a Cleveland Cavaliers ticket holder as one blogger postulated, but a criminal element threatening an otherwise tranquil community. The use of racialized and racializing terms are revealing in this instance. To describe a dog as “thug” and a “gansta” plays on accepted racial language of black criminality. It reflects a process that not only contributes to “black social death” but “is characterized by the seemingly instantaneous social alienation of a delineated category of racially pathologized people” (D. Rodriguez, 2007, p. 134, from “The meaning of ‘disaster’ under the dominance of white life” in What lies beneath: Katrina, race, and the state of the nation ).

To combat the gangsta/thug threat, Biz gets a lion from the pet store to protect Kid and the other innocence within the community. Lion confronts the dog (we see the Lion in what appears to be an interrogation room), protecting the kids from future harm. Yet, Kid expresses discomfort upon learning from Wise LeBron that Lion (a natural predator) will likely kill the dog. He and his friend wonder if this is just as wrong as the dog inflicting violence on the kids in the neighborhood: “two wrongs don’t make a right.” Whether a message about gang violence, war, or a jab at Dan Gilbert (the Cavs owner who infamously publicly denounced LeBron for “taking his talents to South Beach”), it forms the crux of the moral message in the show about turning the other cheek and doing what is right irrespective of the behavior of others. Sandwiched in between advertizing, it encompasses the purported agenda behind the show: “to show youths of all ages how to be a good person.”

More subtlety, The LeBrons, with its deployment of 4 distinct identities – Wise LeBron, Kid LeBron, Biz LeBron, and Athlete LeBron – attempts to challenge the hegemonic process that reduces and flattens black identity. In introducing the show, LeBron notes “It goes back to the four characters who I feel like I am on a day-to-day basis.” It represents LeBron as encompassing multiple identities in an attempt to elucidate the diversity of blackness and challenge what constitutes an authentic black identity. Greg Tate encapsulates the context here:

Perhaps the supreme irony of black American existence is how broadly black people debate the question of cultural identity among themselves while getting branded as a cultural monolith by those who would deny us the complexity and complexion of a community, let alone a nation. If Afro-Americans have never settled for the racist reductions imposed upon them – from chattel slaves to cinematic stereotype to sociological myth – it’s because the black collective conscious not only knew better but also knew more than enough ethnic diversity to subsume these fictions” (Quoted in R.D.G. Kelley, “Looking for the ‘real’ nigga: Social scientists construct the ghetto,” 2005, p. 119)

At a certain level, the representations available stand in dialog with a hegemonic paradigm of racial authenticity, which as argued by John L. Jackson in Real Black: Adventures in Racial Sincerity functions as a “restrictive script” that “limit[s]” an “individual’s social options” (2005, p. 13). At another level, the narrative choice to construct LeBron as four distinct identities constitutes a certain level of fragmentation, whereupon individual identities are compartmentalized and treated in isolation. Imagining Athlete LeBron apart from Biz and Wise LeBron reifies hegemonic stereotypes about blackness by maintaining the binary between intelligence and athleticism. More importantly, it undermines his own humanity by erasing his complexity and assigning individual identities to individual bodies.

Like Nike’s commercial, the 2011 web show is hyper commercial. Like its predecessor, it gives viewers a lot to think about in terms of black identity, commodified and otherwise. “The Nike series shows the LeBrons in a characteristically “black” behavior from signifying stories, or ‘baldheaded lies’ as they’re called, at the dinner table, to macking in the mirror, to dancing to Rick James’s “Superfreak,” including the requisite performance of the robot by the older LeBron brother,” writes Lisa Guerrero from Leonard and King’s Criminalized and Commodified . “It represents LeBron as not only “hardwood maestro”; he’s also funny, entertaining, and can dance well; the unstated implication being, ‘just like all black people.’” Yet, “He remains ‘safe’ because he exists in an immovable racialized space created by the public and the market culture that manages racial panics by locating blackness in confined performative geographies like athletics and entertainment, in other words, in a world of blackness that is understandable because it is the one that exists in the national imagination.”

While challenging hegemonic ideas, LeBron, as child, as moral, as just an average kid, reifies dominant ideas about a pathological underclass as well. He is imagined as the same – like many idealized white suburban kids, he once played in the neighborhood, dreamed of a better life, and worked hard as he in spite of moral challenges to make it. Yet, he is also different from both a white normative ideal, as a fragmented, hyper-black body, and the pathological black other, represented by the pit bull.

The Lebrons thus highlights how new media technologies provide modern black athletes (among others) tools to define their own image and message, partially apart from those “restrictive script” yet bound by the dominant discourse and accepted images. In the coming episodes it will be interesting to see how the show further deals with the complexities and dialects that exist between those restrictive stereotypes and the freedom afforded by this space.

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David J. Leonard is an associate professor in the Department of Comparative Ethnic Studies at Washington State University at Pullman. His next book (SUNY Press) is on the NBA after the November 2004 brawl during a Pacers-Pistons game at the The Palace of Auburn Hills He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums.