Dirk “Legend”? Race, Nation, and the NBA

Dirk “Legend”? Race, Nation, and the NBA

David J. Leonard | special to NewBlackMan

On the eve of the 2011 NBA finals, Professor Walter Greason asked the readers on NewBlackMan: “Can Dirk Save the NBA?” Citing the NBA’s history, its efforts to court white fans from “middle-America,” the centrality of racial meaning to its marketing strategies/popularity, Greason concludes that Dirk Nowitzi has the potential to “save the NBA.” He writes, “If Nowitzki overcame James, especially in a series of emotionally draining, well-played games, a new version of the Larry Bird-Magic Johnson rivalry of the 1980s would be born. It was that era that created the possibility of Jordan's global appeal. If the NBA hopes to create a global sensation that will extend its reach for new generations of fans in the twenty-first century, Nowitzki must defeat James in this year's Finals. Dirk may be the last chance to save the NBA.”

At one level, the argument about the NBA’s desire to produce white superstars to cater to white fans otherwise uncomfortable with a largely black league erases the NBA’s global turn. With a league increasingly reliant and interested on fans from  Latin America, Asia, and Europe, the necessity for a Larry Bird in the twenty-first century has weakened. According to a 2007 study, 89 percent of Chinese between the ages of 15 and 54 were “aware of the NBA,” with 70 percent of youth between the ages of 15 and 24 describing themselves as fans. With 1.4 billion viewers watching NBA games during the 2008 season (up through April 30th) on one of the 51 broadcast outlets in China, and 25 million Chinese visiting NBA.com/China each month, basketball and the NBA are cultural phenomena within China. 

If we take China as example, the NBA has been tremendously successful marketing the game through the likes of Bryant, James, and Iverson, whose talents, racial bodies, and whose markers of hip-hop/youthfulness/ have rendered them as authentic basketball commodities. As of 2010, Kobe Bryant possessed the top-selling jersey for 4 straight years in China. That year, LeBron James, Dwight Howard, Kevin Garnett, and Derrick Rose founded out the top-five. Yao Ming wasn’t even amongst the top 10. His absence can be partially attributed to injuries but for several years he has been outside the top 5. A similar circumstance is evident in Europe, where Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, and Dwayne Wade were the top selling jerseys in 2010 (10 out of top 15 were African American players; 5 European players) All that being said, in a cultural sense, in terms of image, and in terms of the NBA’s relationship with corporate America, there remains an effort to both conceal its blackness all while selling its whiteness. 

Angela Davis and Marc Lamont Hill on 'Our World'

Our World with Black Enterprise | May 29, 2011

Host Marc Lamont Hill Talks with Activist & Scholar Angela Davis

The Devil and Gil Scott-Heron

The Devil and Gil-Scott Heron

by Mark Anthony Neal

As the story goes, Robert Johnson, one of the most influential guitarists of the twentieth-century, met the “Devil” at a crossroads in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Accordingly Johnson sold his soul to that “Devil” in order to play the guitar with a power and precision that many deemed otherworldly. The “Devil,” in this instance, was likely the Yoruba Orisha of the crossroads, alternately known as “Legba,” “Elegba,” “Eshu Elegbara” and Papa Labas in the fiction of Ishmael Reed. That power and precision that Johnson wielded so effectively, might be better referred to as truth, not so neatly packaged in the Blues tradition—a tradition that notably transcends the musical genre that shares its name.

As Angela Davis notes in her book Blues Legacies and Black Feminism, “the blues were part of a cultural continuum that disputed the binary constructions associated with Christianity…they blatantly defied the Christian imperative to relegate sexual conduct to the realm of sin. Many blues singers therefore were assumed to have made a pact with the Devil.” (123) Within African-American vernacular, the figure of Legba is often referred to as the “Signifying Monkey” and perhaps most well known by the Oscar Brown recording with that title and Henry Louis Gates’s groundbreaking study The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of African-American Literary Criticism (1988).

Though the figures who possess the power of the crossroads are often thought to solely reside in Black oral traditions—the proverbial poets, preachers and rappers—others such as Blackface actor Bert Williams and Johnson have been written into the tradition. But for all the respect and pride derived from the brilliance of such artists, in the end they remain always already outside of the communities for which the truth most matters. Davis observes that the “blues person has been an outsider on three accounts. Belittled and misconstrued by the dominant culture that has been incapable of deciphering the secrets of her art…ignored and denounced in African-American middle-class circles and repudiated by the most authoritative institution in her own community, the church.” (125)

In his legendary essay “Nobody Love A Genius Child: Jean Michel Basquiat, Flyboy in the Buttermilk,” Greg Tate puts an even finer point on the status this cultural outsider: “Inscribed in his (always a him) function is the condition of being born a social outcast and pariah. The highest price exacted from the Griot for knowing where the bodies are buried is the denial of a burial plot in the communal graveyard…With that wisdom typical of African cosmologies, these messengers are guaranteed freedom of speech in exchange for a marginality that extends to the grave.”

Byron Hurt: Why I Am Rooting for LeBron James

Why I Am Rooting for LeBron James

by Byron Hurt | special to NewBlackMan

Although he has yet to win his 1st NBA championship, LeBron James has proven one thing: wherever he plays the game of basketball, he wins. As a high school phenom at Akron’s St. Vincent - St. Mary's High School, James won three state championships en route to becoming a Cleveland hardwood legend. The state of Ohio named him Mr. Basketball three consecutive years, and after being named the MVP at the McDonald’s All-American Game, the EA Sports Classic, and the Jordan Capital Classic, James decided to forego college and entered the NBA draft. Many people thought, myself included, his decision to skip college was misguided. But James quickly turned doubters into believers.

When the Cleveland Cavaliers selected James as the number one pick overall, fans, coaches, analysts, and members of the media placed extraordinarily high expectations on the local hero dubbed “King James.” As a pro, James has exceeded those expectations in spectacular fashion. In his first NBA game, he performed under tremendous scrutiny, scoring 25 points, 9 assists, and 6 rebounds. The Clevelander quickly rose to superstar status and turned the lowly Cavaliers organization into a winning franchise after just three NBA seasons. After failing to make the playoffs in his rookie season, James led the Cavs to the NBA postseason from 2006-2010.

In 2007 – and with very little talent around him – James carried his team through the Eastern Conference Finals matching up against Tim Duncan’s San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Finals. Although the Spurs swept the Cavaliers 4-0, James and the upstart Cavaliers had arrived as the newest and unlikeliest perennial Eastern Conference powerhouse. He helped lift the Cleveland Cavaliers – a small-market team – to among the NBA elite. Sports networks ABC, ESPN, and TNT placed the Cavs into their nationally televised lineups. With James as its main attraction, the Cavalier franchise had a 60 plus win squad on its hands, and King James single-handedly bolstered the city's local economy. He also won an Olympic Gold medal as a member of the 2008 USA national basketball team. The new face of the NBA, James became a model of grace, dignity, maturity, and supreme athleticism.

Can Dirk Save the NBA?

Can Dirk Save the NBA?

by Walter Greason | Special to NewBlackMan

Game 7 of the 2011 Finals - Dirk Nowitzki receives a pass on the wing, guarded by LeBron James in the last minute of a tightly fought series. Two games have gone to overtime. None of the victories have been by more than three points. James' ascension as the pre-eminent international star hinges on the next eight seconds. While Nowitzki's play in the post-season has elevated him to the top echelon of current athletes in the NBA, doubts persist about his ability to deliver a championship under this kind of pressure. He fakes right and dribbles twice hard to his left to the elbow of the lane and elevates for a high-arcing shot over James' outstretched arm. The ball floats forever, and the fate of the NBA rests on its descent.

In 2006, the Dallas Mavericks lost an embarrassing Finals series to the Miami Heat, led by Dwayne Wade and Shaquille O'Neal, because they gave up a late lead in Game 3 and proceeded to lose the next three games. It was a final bow for O'Neal, demonstrating that he could win a title without Kobe Bryant. For Wade, it was an emergence on the national and international stage that held tremendous promise for future performance. Over the next five years, the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics took center stage in the league as O'Neal's star faded and Wade became more famous for his cell phone commercials alongside Charles Barkley.

In this time, the NBA struggled to continue its development as a sports franchise in the American marketplace, despite the struggles of Major League Baseball. Bryant, Wade, Dwight Howard, and James were unable to break through the scandals of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and other alleged steroid users to capture the imaginations of the American public the way Michael Jordan had. The NBA could not escape the reality that it was a predominantly African American league reliant on a majority white American consumer base. In markets like Utah, Indiana, and Memphis (not to mention Oakland, Houston, and San Antonio) racial and ethnic considerations shaped the rosters and marketing of the NBA franchises over the last decade in ways that were unimaginable between 1980 and 2000. The problem was not the failure of athletes to reproduce Michael Jordan's skills, performance, or image. It was the absence of a Larry Bird figure to challenge any of them.

Nowitzki held the promise of a great white basketball player when he arrived in the 2006 Finals. Yet as a German player, he did not spark the interest of white Americans to even the same degree that his former teammate from Canada, Steve Nash, did. (See Nash's two MVP awards over a more deserving O'Neal for evidence of Nash's popularity.) Because Nowitzki lost in 2006, then suffered a humiliating first-round exit against Golden State in a later playoff series, he could not become the inheritor of Larry Bird's legacy that would motivate passionate interest among the white men, ages 35-65, who powered the global marketing force of the National Football League. The opportunity presents itself again now in 2011 after the Dallas Mavericks' victory against the Oklahoma City Thunder.

With James and the Heat going back to the Finals this year to meet Nowitzki and the Mavericks, the ascension of James as the league's leading superstar and best player would only reinforce the marketing trends against broader white (and corporate) interests in the NBA. Compare the advertisers for the NFL, MLB, and NBA sometime. Just watch how different the products and actors are in the various commercial breaks. You will notice subtle but important gradations about the markets the different leagues serve. If Nowitzki overcame James, especially in a series of emotionally draining, well-played games, a new version of the Larry Bird-Magic Johnson rivalry of the 1980s would be born. It was that era that created the possibility of Jordan's global appeal. If the NBA hopes to create a global sensation that will extend its reach for new generations of fans in the twenty-first century, Nowitzki must defeat James in this year's Finals. Dirk may be the last chance to save the NBA.

***

Walter Greason is Associate Professor of History at Ursinus College. He is the author of The Path to Freedom: Black Families in New Jersey, The History Press, 2010

Adam Mansbach on Gil Scott-Heron

"He was Breaking Shit Down": Remembering Gil Scott Heron

by Adam Mansbach | Special to NewBlackMan

I’ve known for fifteen minutes now that Gil Scott-Heron is gone. Time enough to play “Winter in America” and “Pieces of a Man,” and to cry, and for the belief that his death is among the greatest tragedies I’ve ever known to harden inside me. That probably sounds ridiculous, and perhaps it is. Certainly, Gil died in slow motion: there is nothing to be surprised at here, no sudden violence ripping apart the fabric of a life. But the fact remains: the most incisive and salient political musician this country has ever produced – ever – is gone.

The fact that drugs took him under – and I don’t mean today, I mean over and over again ¬– makes it worse; makes me angry in a diffuse, perhaps unreasonable way: leads me into thought-rants like if he’d been acknowledged as the national treasure he was, if they (“they”) had given him a fucking MacArthur, then at least he would’ve been one of those enough-money-to-function drug addicts, and he’d be with us still, shadow-version of himself or not.

But all that is beside the point. First things first, the depth and scope of Gil Scott-Heron’s musical-political content is beyond compare. Nothing and nobody comes close: not Bob Dylan, not KRS-One, nobody. During the prime of his career (1970-1984), he was out in front on practically every major political issue – not just nationally, but globally. His commentary was incisive, nuanced, hilarious, and routinely prescient. He carved up the entire Nixon administration with a stainless steel scalpel, psychoanalyzed Reagan and Reagan-happy America better than anybody else I can think of. Challenged the South African government, clarioned the dangers of nuclear power, called out racist cops. Did environmentalism is the early seventies. Gun control in 1980. The Iranian Revolution, the No-Knock Law. Abortion.

And that’s just his topical shit; it’s harder to say what “Ain’t No Such Thing As Superman” or “Winter in America” is about… unless you just cut to the chase and start throwing around words like “zeitgeist,” or phrases like “the troubled soul of America.” And if Gil didn’t invent the pointedly-absurdist extended-free-associative-pop-culture riff, he certainly perfected it in his most famous song.

But none of that even get at his greatness, or at least not fully. The flipside of Gil’s panoramic political worldview was the depth of his self-analysis, the delicacy of his portraiture: for every world-shaking anthem, every “Johannesburg,” there is another song buried deeper in his catalogue, one that charts the quietest, most intimate of blues moments with sublime beauty, raw honesty, unfettered emotion.

I met Gil in 1994, when I was seventeen and he was touring behind the release of his first new album in a decade. Went to check him at Regattabar in Cambridge, and rushed him afterward, a sheaf of my own poems in hand. He didn’t break his stride – clearly, the man had somewhere to be – but he did take them. Several hours later, well past midnight, my phone rang (that is, the phone in my parents’ house rang). It was Gil. He’d read my shit. For the next two hours, I listened to him talk, and jotted notes. I still have the piece of paper. It says things like “Black Elk Speaks” and “Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.” The word “Skippy” is underlined a bunch of times; midway into the conversation, I figured out that Skippy was Jimmy Carter, the peanut farmer, and the vast, intricate web of Gil’s monologue started to make more sense – a frightening amount of sense, in fact.

Was he high as hell? Probably. It didn’t matter. He was breaking shit down, and I never wanted that phone call to end. I moved to New York City later that year, and ran into him soon after, on 112th and Broadway, in front of the used-CD stand. He didn’t remember our phone call, but I never forgot it. 

There’s much more I’d like to say, but it’s one a.m. and I suspect I’ve got more tears to shed. Writing this late is probably a mistake, and so is writing this early, this soon after the fact. I don’t want to end this with a flourish, or a benediction or a cliché; I guess I don’t really want to end it at all.

***

Adam Mansbach's last novel, The End of the Jews (Spiegel & Grau) won the California Book Award. Named a Best Book of 2008 by the San Francisco Chronicle, it has been called "extraordinary" by the Los Angeles Times, "beautifully portrayed" by the New York Times Book Review and "intense, painful and poignant" by the Boston Globe, and translated into five languages. His new book Go the F**k to Sleep, a satire abour parenting will be published next month.

Meet Big Daddy Kane

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The State of Things with Frank Stasio | WUNC
 

Meet Big Daddy Kane


Big Daddy Kane is one of the most influential voices from the golden era of hip-hop. In the 1980s, Kane entered the music scene with style, sex appeal and the skills to rhyme over rapid-fire beats – a combination that sealed his place in hip-hop history as one of the best emcees of all-time. The Brooklyn-born rapper now makes his home in North Carolina where he continues his creative work. He joins host Frank Stasio to talk about his influential career and his role as a rap music pioneer.
 
Listen

National Black Heritage Swim Meet

The State of Things with Frank Stasio | WUNC

National Black Heritage Swim Meet

Go to a competitive swim meet and you are likely to encounter a sea of white faces. Minorities are notoriously underrepresented in the sport.
 

But about 14 years ago, a group of North Carolina parents got together and decided to make swimming a little more diverse. They formed a traveling swim team called the North Carolina Aquablazers and in 2003, they started the National Black Heritage Championship Swim Meet. The annual meet will be held this weekend at the Triangle Aquatic Center in Cary, NC. Host Frank Stasio talks about it with Lisa Webb, vice president and co-founder of the North Carolina Aquablazers swim team, and Tom Hazelett, Aquatics director at the downtown Durham YMCA and Durham site coach for the YMCA of The Triangle swim team.

Listen

New Trailer: Scott Poulson-Bryant's VIPs

Fans Gather to Watch Oprah Series Finale in Raleigh, NC

Making Waves: Black Swimmers Convene for 9th Annual Black Heritage Swim Meet

Making Waves:

Black Swimmers Convene for 9th  Black Heritage Swim Meet

by Mark Anthony Neal | Black Voices (AOL/Huffington Post)

We've all read the statistics; the drowning rates of black children far exceed those of their white peers. In addition, the swimming proficiency of black children, accordingly, also lacks in comparison to their white peers; purportedly nearly 70 percent of black teens and children possess little or no swimming skills. Thanks to organizations like USA Swimming (the governing body of competitive swimming in the United States), the Make A Splash Foundation and the YMCA, there have been sustained efforts to increase swimming instruction among black children.

Yet in the backdrop of this seeming crisis, a generation of black swimmers have been making waves in competitive swimming and many of them will convene this Memorial Day weekend for the 9th Annual National Black Heritage Championship Swim Meet, at the Triangle Aquatic Center in Cary, North Carolina.

Conservatives, Hip-Hop and 2012

Conservatives, Hip-Hop and 2012

by Bakari Kitwana | Huffington Post

As the 2012 presidential election ramps up, expect conservatives to keep gunning for black youth, in general, and hip-hop, specifically. Black youth showed significant gains in 2008, and now represent the group of 18- to 29-year-old who vote the most. Their ability via popular to inspire young voters -- who in 2008 voted for Barack Obama over John McCain by a ratio of 2-to-1 -- poses one of the most viable threats to Republicans' aspirations to retake the Ppesidency. The recent national discussion surrounding the rapper Common's appearance at the White House is perhaps the first salvo.

What was quickly summed up as either an attempt to defend law enforcement or as an attack on the value of the arts does not get to the heart of what conservatives were really communicating to voters in the Common dust-up. That is, is there a place in mainstream American political life for young blacks, whose political views don't always fall within traditional mainstream conservative/liberal lines?

New Book: Eyeminded: Living and Writing Contemporary Art by Kellie Jones

Eyeminded: Living and Writing Contemporary Art 

by Kellie Jones

Duke University Press | 2011

A daughter of the poets Hettie Jones and Amiri Baraka, Kellie Jones grew up immersed in a world of artists, musicians, and writers in Manhattan’s East Village and absorbed in black nationalist ideas about art, politics, and social justice across the river in Newark. The activist vision of art and culture that she learned in those two communities, and especially from her family, has shaped her life and work as an art critic and curator. Featuring selections of her writings from the past twenty years, EyeMinded reveals Jones’s role in bringing attention to the work of African American, African, Latin American, and women artists who have challenged established art practices. 

Interviews that she conducted with the painter Howardena Pindell, the installation and performance artist David Hammons, and the Cuban sculptor Kcho appear along with pieces on the photographers Dawoud Bey, Lorna Simpson, and Pat Ward Williams; the sculptor Martin Puryear; the assemblage artist Betye Saar; and the painters Jean-Michel Basquiat, Norman Lewis, and Al Loving. 

Reflecting Jones’s curatorial sensibility, this collection is structured as a dialogue between her writings and works by her parents, her sister Lisa Jones, and her husband Guthrie P. Ramsey Jr. EyeMinded offers a glimpse into the family conversation that has shaped and sustained Jones, insight into the development of her critical and curatorial vision, and a survey of some of the most important figures in contemporary art.

About

Kellie Jones is Associate Professor in the Department of Art History and Archaeology at Columbia University. She is the author of several books and exhibition catalogues, including Energy/Experimentation: Black Artists and Abstraction, 1964–1980; Basquiat; and (with Thelma Golden and Chrissie Iles) Lorna Simpson.

Praise

“Kellie Jones, supported by a remarkable family of artists and intellectuals, has provided a plethora of razor-sharp insights and creative testimonials to the greater arts and scholarly communities for years. As this important book makes amber clear, Professor Jones’ astute observations and in-depth analyses of African American art are invaluable resources to contemporary studies and, arguably, equivalent to the notable essays of art history’s earlier, admired critics and chroniclers.”—Richard J. Powell, author of Cutting a Figure: Fashioning Black Portraiture

“EyeMinded is an impressive collection of essays by Kellie Jones, a much sought after scholar, prolific writer, and extraordinary curator whose works I have admired for many years. She began her career in the mid-1980s, uncovering and recovering African and African American artists by organizing exhibitions, writing essays, and lecturing on some of the then lesser-known artists. I believe that she was instrumental in introducing to a larger and contemporary public the works of black artists of the African diaspora, including some of the most noted artists working today.”—Deborah Willis, author of Posing Beauty: African American Images from the 1890s to the Present

“This extraordinary collection reveals Kellie Jones as a discerning architect of the multicultural art landscape of the last few decades. Informed by her keen eye and incisive intellect, Jones’s definitive takes on artists, including Lorna Simpson, Martin Puryear, and David Hammons, make this book a must-read for anyone interested in American art from the 1980s forward. And then, on top of Jones’s own shimmering intellectual accomplishment in these pages, EyeMinded is something else as well: a conversation between an American family of arts and letters as illustrious as the Lowells or the Jameses. This book will stand apart for that reason alone, for few American families have contributed so richly to the arts, letters, and sounds of their generations as the Joneses. Here comes Dr. Kellie Jones, ‘eye-minded,’ and she’s bringing her people with her.”—Elizabeth Alexander, Yale University

Soul Cinema Film of the Day: 'Cotton Comes to Harlem'

"In its novelistic form, Cotton Comes to Harlem both anticipated and helped to create several important trends in the articulation of African American popular culture during the Black Power Era, especially as it was translated through the idioms of visual culture."--Amy Abugo Ongiri, Spectacular Blackness: The Cultural Politics of the Black Power Movement and the Search for a Black Aesthetic.

Trailer of the 1970 movie starring Godfrey Cambridge, Raymond St. Jacques, Redd Foxx & Calvin Lockhart, directed by Ossie Davis and based on a novel by Chester Himes.

Our World with Marc Lamont Hill: Love & Relationships

Our World with Marc Lamont Hill | Black Enterprise

Love & Relationships featuring Mona Scott Young, Jimmy Briggs, and Esther Armah.

Vijay Prashad, Author The Darker Nations on PressTV

The Autograph | PressTV

A 25 min weekly interview with academics, authors, politicians and dignitaries encompassing a whole range of different topics from cultural to highly political issues featuring Vijay Prashad of Trinity College and author of The Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World (The New Press, paperback 2008).

'Left of Black': Episode #35 featuring Cornel West

Left of Black #35
w/ Cornel West
May 16, 2011

On the season finale of Left of Black, Princeton Professor Cornel West joins host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal in a conversation about the “Image of Black Males in the Age of Obama.”  The discussion was recorded at the Baptist Grove Church in Raleigh, NC and sponsored by the Cornel West Academy for Excellence.

***

→Cornel West is the Class of 1943 University Professor at Princeton University. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Harvard in three years and obtained his M.A. and Ph.D. in Philosophy at Princeton. He has taught at Union Theological Seminary, Yale, Harvard and the University of Paris. He has written 19 books and edited 13 books. He is best known for his classic Race Matters, Democracy Matters, and his memoir, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud. West has recorded three spoken word albums including Never Forget, collaborating with Prince, Jill Scott, Andre 3000, Talib Kweli, KRS-One and the late Gerald Levert.

***

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.

Money Trail in Education Reform Leads to Everyone But Those Most in Need

Money Trail in Education Reform Leads to Everyone But Those Most in Need

by Mark Naison | Fordham University

special to NewBlackMan

"The Public Education-Industrial Complex is the latest sector of the Misery Industries. The Public Education-Industrial Complex works hand in hand with the Prison-Industrial Complex to turn the misery of inner city residents into profit-making businesses that owe both their existence and profits to the misery found in these communities."--Henry Louis Taylor

In the last ten years, tens of billions of dollars have been spent to reform America’s schools—some of it coming from the Federal Department of Education, some of it from state legislatures, some of it from private foundations. This money has gone to fund research on Common Core Standards, to close failing schools and open up new ones, to create new protocols for assessing schools and teachers, to create new batteries of tests to evaluate students learning, to bring management consultants into school systems and in some cases into individual school and to fund charter schools and educational maintenance organizations.

In New York City, Education Reform funding has spawned a variety of new public sector careers, ranging from “accountability officers” in the Department of Education, to the heads of charter school companies making multiple six figure salaries, to management consultants on the payroll of the DOE, to scores of new principals whose jobs have created in small schools created when large, allegedly “failing” ones have been broken up. When you add this the tens of millions of dollars spent to create new computer systems for the DOE, and the hundreds of millions of dollars given to publishing companies like Mc Graw Hill to create new tests for almost every subject and every grade, you can see the opportunity for profit making and career building this movement has inspired among aspiring professionals.

But how much of this funding has gone directly to the people this reform movement was supposedly created to help, working class and minority students and their families? How many jobs for students, or their parents, have Education Reform funds created, either in school programs or after school centers. Has this money helped keep families in their apartments, allowed them to secure medical care or access better sports, arts and recreation programs?

Classic Material: 'She Said' by The Pharcyde

'Not My Daddy': Kelly Price feat. Stokley

Obama and Black Americans: the Paradox of Hope

Obama and Black Americans: the Paradox of Hope

by Gary Younge | The Nation

When Barack Obama was pondering a run for the presidency Michelle asked him what he thought he could accomplish. He replied,“The day I take the oath of office, the world will look at us differently. And millions of kids across this country will look at themselves differently. That alone is something.” His victory was indeed something. The world certainly looked at America differently, though this had as much to do with who he wasn’t—George W. Bush—as what he was, black, among other things.

Polls show that African-Americans indeed look at themselves differently. A January 2010 Pew survey revealed huge optimism. The percentage of black Americans who thought blacks were better off than they were five years before had almost doubled since 2007. There were also significant increases in the percentages who believed the standard-of-living gap between whites and blacks was decreasing.

But for all the ways black America has felt better about itself and looked better to others, it has not actually fared better. In fact, it has been doing worse. The economic gap between black and white has grown since Obama took power. Under his tenure black unemployment, poverty and foreclosures are at their highest levels for at least a decade.

Millions of black kids may well aspire to the presidency now that a black man is in the White House. But such a trajectory is less likely for them now than it was under Bush. Herein lies what is at best a paradox and at worst a contradiction within Obama’s core base of support. The very group most likely to support him—black Americans—is the same group that is doing worse under him.

Read the Full Essay @ The Nation

Malcolm X: Amiri Baraka, Michael Eric Dyson & Herb Boyd Recall

Democracy Now | with Amy Goodman

Manning Marable’s Controversial New Biography Refuels Debate on Life and Legacy of Malcolm X

After two decades of work, Dr. Manning Marable completed a new biography, Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention. Dr. Marable used material for his book that was recently made available, thus providing a new insight into the famed civil rights leader. His biography, however, has also refueled the debate on many controversial aspects of Malcolm X’s life and interpretation of his politics and legacy. To discuss Dr. Marable’s biography, we host a roundtable discussion with three guests. Amiri Baraka is an acclaimed poet, playwright, music historian and activist based in Newark, New Jersey. Herb Boyd is a Harlem-based activist, teacher and author who edits the online publication, The Black World Today, and writes for several publications, including Amsterdam News. Michael Eric Dyson is a professor of sociology at Georgetown University and is the author of numerous books, including Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X.

We Are Malcolm X

We Are Malcolm X

by Lamont Lilly

“It is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a racial conflict of black against white, or as a purely American problem. Rather, we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, the exploited against the exploiter.”—El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, 1964

Brief, yet exhaustive, the following passage best represents the Malcolm X America doesn’t want you and I to know—the more complete post-Mecca Malcolm who could certainly once again ignite an entire nation if only he were properly revisited. It seems like just yesterday, as a young adolescent, that the life and times of Malcolm Little were resurrected through Spike Lee’s 1992 cinematic production, Malcolm X. Bold, vivid and vulgar, Spike’s production wasn’t only a history book for the hood; it was the artistic catalyst of a new cool: the infamous black “X” hat.

How unfortunate though that such a revival was short lived among a generation of budding hip hoppers who were never lucky enough to meet George Wallace or Lincoln Rockwell—who were never exposed to the White Citizens’ Council. What Spike’s X did impress upon me however, was a martyr of resistance Mr. Charlie somehow failed to mention when I was in school. Not one time was I really taught of Malcolm X. And once I discovered him I clearly understood why. Could you imagine all the Black men America has incarcerated converting into disciples of Malcolm X, all the political prisoners? Why, the oppressed would have their own nation by now!

(Barack) Matters: Debating the First Black President

From MSNBC:

Cornel West tells Ed why he made the inflammatory remarks about President Obama in an interview where he says Obama is "a black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs"; Melissa Harris-Perry pushes back on West's statements.

Test Driven Educational Reform: A Desperate Response to A Society Rotting at the Core

Test Driven Educational Reform: 

A Desperate Response to A Society Rotting at the Core

by Mark Naison | Fordham University

special to NewBlackMan

The breadth of support for tying teacher evaluations to student test scores is something which cuts across all parts of the political spectrum. It is something which unites  Barack Obama with Newt Gingrich,  Bill Gates with the Koch Brothers, Andrew Cuomo with Scott Walker, and Al Sharpton with Glen Beck and Bill O’Reilly.  While those of us who have spent our lives in the classroom regard this as ill-advised and counterproductive, it is important to examine why test driven educational reform is virtually the only policy initiative which commands this kind of bi-partisan support.

To do so, we have to take an honest look at what has happened to America’s working class and poor in the last thirty years, particularly in those portions of the country which were once part of America’s industrial heartland. Looked at from the vantage point of once proud industrial centers like Detroit, Baltimore, Buffalo, Newark, Bridgeport, Gary, Youngstown, and Philadelphia,  the United States is a society literally rotting at the core.  Whole stretches of these cities lay abandoned ever since their factories closed, with only piles of bricks and metals left as reminders of industries that once employed millions of people. Often, the only new building in the most decayed sections of these cities are schools and prisons, with the former often serving as recruiting grounds for the latter. 

With more than 2 million people now in prison in the US--as compared to less than 400,000 in 1980-- and with over 10 million people having spent time in prison and  been rendered virtually unemployable, there are  huge stretches of urban America, and more than a few small towns, where the streets are filled with  men, and more than a few women, who have no secure connection to the legal labor market and whose pessimism and despair creates an atmosphere that literally sucks the energy out of everyone around them.  

As someone who has walked these streets, as well as driven through them in most of the above mentioned cities, it is hard not to feel like a whole section of the American population has been abandoned by their government. No one talks about these people, no one does anything for them, no one discusses the conditions they are living as problems central to the future of the society. Needless to say, these conditions have been immeasurably worsened by tax policies and industrial policies, adopted in the last 30 years, which have frozen working class incomes and concentrated wealth in the top layers of the society to an unprecedented degree.

So where does school reform come in?  Some  time during the last ten years, a  broad spectrum of groups in American society, some of them elected officials and community organizers, some of them business leaders, decided that the way to bring America’s most devastates communities into the economic mainstream was by radically transforming schools.  If we somehow turned schools into places of energy and optimism, where young people learned skills necessary to compete in a global economy, then maybe the children of the poor could escape the fate of their parents and we could achieve a more equal society without changing tax policy or redistributing wealth.

Shana Tucker Trio @ the Bimbe Festival 2011

Echoes of Feliciano: Carlos Santana Booed at Civil Rights Games

Santana is Booed for Using Baseball's Civil Rights Game to Speak Out for Civil Rights

by Dave Zirin | The Nation

Major League Baseball’s annual Civil Rights Game was poised to be a migraine-inducing exercise in Orwellian irony. Forget about the fact that Civil Rights was to be honored in Atlanta, where fans root for a team called the Braves and cheer in unison with the ubiquitous "tomahawk chop.

Forget about the fact that the Braves have been embroiled in controversy since pitching coach Roger McDowell aimed violent, homophobic threats at several fans. Forget that this is a team that has done events with Focus on the Family, an organization that is to Civil Rights what Newt Gingrich is to marital fidelity.

The reason Atlanta was such a brutally awkward setting for a Sunday Civil Rights setting, was because Friday saw the Governor of Georgia, Nathan Deal, sign HR 87, a law that shreds the Civil Rights of the state’s Latino population. Modeled after Arizona’s horrific and unconstitutional SB 1070, HR 87 authorizes state and local police the federal powers to demand immigration papers from people they suspect to be undocumented. Those without papers on request will find themselves behind bars. Civil rights hero, Atlanta’s John Lewis has spoken out forcefully against the legislation saying “This is a recipe for discrimination. We’ve come too far to return to the dark past."

But there was Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig, celebrating civil rights in the Georgia, and chortling excitedly about the 2011 All-Star game in Arizona. In the hands of Selig, irony becomes arsenic. Thank God that Commisioner Selig was stupid enough to choose the Civil Rights Game to honor, among others, the great musician Carlos Santana. Santana was supposed to be the Latino stand-in, a smiling symbol of baseball’s diversity. And maybe, he would even play a song!

But Bud picked the wrong Latino. Carlos Santana took the microphone and said that he was representing all immigrants. Then Santana added, "The people of Arizona, and the people of Atlanta, Georgia, you should be ashamed of yourselves." In a perfect display of Gov. Nathan Deal’s Georgia, the cheers quickly turned to boos. Yes, Carlos Santana was booed on Civil Rights Day in Atlanta for talking about Civil Rights.

Read the Full Essay @ The Nation

Everybody Here Wants You

'Left of Black': Episode #34 featuring David J. Leonard and Natalie Y. Moore

Left of Black #34

w/ David J. Leonard and Natalie Y. Moore

May 16, 2011

Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined via Skype by Washington State University Professor David J. Leonard, co-editor of Commodified and Criminalized: New Racism and African-Americans in Contemporary Sports.  Later he is joined by Chicago Public Radio reporter Natalie Y. Moore, who is also the co-author of The Almighty Black P Stone Nation: The Rise, Fall and Resurgence of An American Gang.

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>David J. Leonard is Associate Professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies at Washington State University, Pullman. He has written on sport, video games, film, and social movements, appearing in both popular and academic mediums.  His work explores the political economy of popular culture, examining the interplay between racism, state violence, and popular representations through contextual, textual, and subtextual analysis. He is the author of Screens Fade to Black: Contemporary African American Cinema and the forthcoming After Artest: Race and the War on Hoop (SUNY Press).

>Natalie Y. Moore is a reporter for Chicago Public Radio’s South Side bureau. Prior to joining the Chicago Public Radio staff in May 2007, Natalie was a city hall reporter for the Detroit News. As a freelance journalist, Natalie’s work has been published in Essence, Black Enterprise, the Chicago Reporter, Bitch, In These Times, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune. She is co-author of the book Deconstructing Tyrone: A New Look at Black Masculinity in the Hip-Hop Generation (Cleis Press, 2006) and The Almighty Black P Stone Nation: The Rise, Fall and Resurgence of An American Gang. She is an adjunct instructor at Columbia College Chicago and is the former program chair for the Association for Women Journalists.

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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.

Our World with Marc Lamont Hill: Gender Justice

Marc Lamont Hill is joined by Salamishah Tillet, Byron Hurt and Akiba Solomon.

Complex-ED: The Secret Relationship Between the Music and Prison Industries.

A film by Real Talk Media featuring Professor Jared Ball

It's Not the Easy Being Green: Ray Charles & Kermit

The Lonely Londoners: A Musical Essay on the 1981 Brixton Riots

The Lonely Londoners: 

A Musical Essay on the 1981 Brixton Riots

by Lynnee Denise

Drum and Bass is Black Music...

On the 30th anniversary of the 1981 Brixton riots (April 11 2011), a historic reaction to the violent and xenophobic environment that informed the policing of African and Caribbean immigrants, I examined the ruthless desire to "Keep Britain White." I read Sam Selvon’s 1956 novel “The Lonely Londoners,” which tells the story of the Caribbean community’s communal response to the English brand of white supremacy and their cultural preservation as a means for survival and sought the political, social, and musicological context of a sound that takes root in Sly and Robbie’s genre of Reggae Music—Drum and Bass. Inspired by these histories, I’ve created a musical essay that epitomizes my long-term relationship with Black Britain and the parallel strategies of resistance that Black Americans have employed to attain basic human rights. Shout out to drum and bass pioneers Roni Size, Goldie, LTJ Bukem, Kemistry and Storm, Krust, and all the other sons and daughters of “The Lonely Londoners.”

I'm excited to introduce a new series of liner notes. As a part of the WildSeed Cultural Group Independent Artist in Residence program in Atlanta, Georgia (2011-2012), I will be working with my favorite thinkers, writers, cultural critics and scholars to help contextualize my mixes. The first to launch the series is Esther Armah, a fierce Black British writer, speaker, moderator and leader in the emotional justice movement. Thank you Esther for being willing to participate in this project and for helping to make "Entertainment with a Thesis" a reality.

Liner Notes by Esther Armah*

We made it. Not bodies. They were battered, bruised, brutalized, buried. The drum beat landed. Intact. Slipped unnoticed between bodies, souls, minds carried from West Africa’s shores via the West Indies. Landed unbent and unbroken in this new land - West London. We were the language left when mother tongue was dragged screaming from its source, we were the unshed tears of the middle passage. Company came. Sought us out. Hands grabbed at us from Empire Wind-rush bodies, carried to this place from Caribbean islands. A new language, new accent from this new nation called England. Black backs bent and shaped by British labor, sweat collected from a generation invited and despised in the same breath. Our mamas and daddies, silent and deadly. That racism DNA pounded and flattened, birthed into frustrated beats and a new generation. Defiance became the breath of those born to these Caribbean bodies mangled seeking refuge from racist rants. This was now Black Britain. Sound changed. Started to gather new notes from new generation. April 1981. Brixton streets, injustice exploded, caught fire, consumed and cleansed. 

Remnants of those unshed tears from that middle passage put the fire out on the streets, left it burning within Black Britain. Fragments of rage wrapped in that drum, dirt from boots pounding those streets caught between notes. Fragments, pieces, floated, landed. Sound from snatched pieces of leftover 1960s signs that screamed: ‘No Niggers, No Dogs, No Irish’, sound dragged from police officers’ brutal batons before they rained rage on nappy heads, sound from untold injustice - all fashioned into language. Called it bass. The sound from an unwelcome land. The double consciousness in the mirror whose reflection you couldn’t see. Mangled beauty drenched in righteous rage. Drum n bass. 30 years on from Brixton; bodies, boots, batons echo, haunt, haint. Now. Press play.

The Wonder Year: Inspiring Soul with 9th Wonder

Busted Headphones

The Wonder Year: Inspiring Soul with 9th Wonder

by Quentin B. Huff | Popmatters

The Elusive Middle Ground

9th Wonder does not subscribe to these divisions. He sees it happening between generations, not just in terms of how musical tastes create age-related rifts but also in the effects of polarizing opinions about hip-hop. When he talks about the generation gap where music is concerned, you can almost feel his profound love for all music that comes from the soul.

“I have so much respect for the ‘70s and the ‘60s,” he said, “because of my love for James Brown. If I’m listening to Edwin Starr and George Duke, not only do I want to listen to them, I’m thinking about how they lived. What was it like to be in the ‘70s? That’s the connection that we can preach. And that’s the thing about the generational divide. I think hip-hop can really change that to make both a kid and an adult understand [one another]. I look at most concerts on TV, a Mötley Crüe concert, you’ll see a granddad or a dad and a son. At a Rolling Stones concert, you’ll see a granddad, a son, and a 14-year-old, all watching Mick Jagger. Why can’t we have that for A Tribe Called Quest, man? Only a few people in our culture we can do that with. And there needs to be more.”

Not only does his ability to find the elusive middle ground inform his beat-making and his historical perspective, it also impacts the way he markets his music. “You got some people that’s stuck in the new and stuck in the old. The people that’s stuck in the old, ‘Man, I don’t do Twitter. Man, I don’t do that. I don’t do Facebook. I don’t be on none of that stuff.’ You don’t wanna sell no records then, friend! Like, in this day and time, you don’t want NO buzz. ‘Cause you’re tryin’ to reach the audience that can buy the records the most, and that’s them 14 through 18s. And if you want to sell anything to them, you gotta get on that Twitter, man. But then you got ones, the new kids, who are like, ‘I don’t wanna meet people’ and ‘I don’t wanna talk to people’ and ‘I wanna meet everybody through the internet.’ Naw, you gotta get out and talk to people, you gotta do in-stores, you gotta do interviews, ya know. That stuff still works.”

Some of that “middle ground” mentality emanates from his upbringing, as a child of the ‘70s. “I was blessed to be born when I was born, 1975,” he explained, “because we had the old school way of life, and we were young enough just when things started to change. We were lucky enough to understand both sides.”

Of course, the gravity of having a documentary about oneself, and screening it in one’s hometown was not lost on 9th Wonder. It was a moving experience, one that could not be compartmentalized in that middle ground. His children were in attendance, along with all manner of fans, friends, colleagues, and extended family.

Read More @ Popmatters

Cullen Jones; 9 Months and 22.24 Seconds Later, Roster Spot Is Won

9 Months and 22.24 Seconds Later, Roster Spot Is Won

by Viv Bernstein | New York Times

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — After nine months of training and more than a little tension between teammates and friends, the final spot on the United States swim team came down to a 50-meter freestyle sprint Thursday at Mecklenburg County Aquatic Center. When it was over, Cullen Jones barely held off Josh Schneider to earn the berth for the world championships in July in Shanghai.

Jones beat Schneider by four-hundredths of a second, winning in 22.24 seconds.

“I know a lot of people built it up like two boxers, and I think we definitely went at it like that,” said Jones, 27, a gold medalist in Beijing in 2008. “But at the same time, we’re friends. We definitely train well together.

A Poet Speaks: 'Common" @ The White House

Marley in Love

Marley in Love

by Mark Anthony Neal | Popmatters (Reprint)

Sandwiched in between two "great" Marley recordings, it has perhaps been easy to ignore -- forget really -- the significance of Bob Marley's 1978 recording Kaya. Exodus (1977) was a commercial success largely on the strength of "Jammin'," which became the song most synonymous with commercial audiences in the post-Bunny Wailer/Peter Tosh era. By the time of Survival's release in 1979, Marley was ready to trade on his commercial viability to openly address some of the political realities of the time. With tracks such as "Zimbabwe," "Africa Unite," and "Ambush in the Night," Marley injected his voice into the myriad of voices addressing the fall of Rhodesia, the need for stronger diasporic ties among African peoples, and the continuing brutality of military forces in his native Jamaica. 

Marley was perhaps simply finding some quiet time with Kaya -- a chance to recover from assassination attempts, the pressures of balancing his "righteousness" with his growing iconical status and the realities of always (quick shout to Duke Ellington) being on the road. Kaya finds Marley in love -- in love with a thick stiff spliff, some bright mornings, and that lil' brown gal 'round the way.

"Common' A Controversial Rapper? James Braxton Peterson Responds to 'Fox News' Madness

James Braxton Peterson is Associate Professor of English at Bucknell University and the author of the forthcoming Major Figures: Literary Approaches to Hip Hop Culture (University Press of Mississippi).

'Black Male Identity in the Age of Obama' feat. Cornel West, 9th Wonder & Mark Anthony Neal

Rashard Mendenhall Offers Contrast to the Apathetic Black Athlete

Rashard Mendenhall Offers Contrast to the Apathetic Black Athlete

by Mark Anthony Neal | The Atlanta Post

Like many Americans, professional football player Rashard Mendenhall was moved by the announcement that Osama bin Laden had been killed by US military personnel.  Yet what moved Mendenhall to speak out in the hours after the announcement was his disgust with the celebratory antics of folk who gathered across from the White House and at Ground Zero in New York City.   On his Twitter feed Mendenhall wrote “What kind of person celebrates death? It’s amazing how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak. We’ve only heard one side…”  Mendenhall, who plays for the Pittsburgh Steelers, also expressed some concern that many who were celebrating in the streets didn’t really know the full story.

Reaction to Mendenhall’s comments was swift, most notably by Steelers team president Art Rooney II, who quickly distanced the team from Mendenhall’s comments. “The entire Steelers organization is very proud of the job our military personnel have done and we can only hope this leads to our troops coming home soon,” he announced. And just recently, Mendenhall was dropped as a spokesman for the sports apparel company Champion.

On Sports talk radio—never a bastion of thoughtful commentary—the reactions were to be expected: athletes should keep their opinions about anything other than the game, to themselves.  As Thabiti Lewis observes in his book Ballers of the New School: Race and Sports in America, sports are intended to “divert us from conversations of political, economic, or social criticisms and analysis, while cultivating jingoists—intense patriots.” Yet, underlying even those nominal responses is the belief that Black athletes, in particular, should shut-up and, to quote rapper and activist Jasiri X, “just run the ball boy.”

Read the Full Essay @ The Atlanta Post

A Strategy to Restore Hope to the City’s Public Schools

From Centers of Obedience to Centers of Resistance:

A Strategy to Restore Hope to the City’s Public Schools

by Professor Mark Naison | Fordham University

A tragic series of events is unfolding in working class New York. The lingering effects of the Recession, irresponsible private investments, and federal and state budget cuts, coupled with a failure to raise taxes on the wealthy, have created a toxic brew which is eroding the already fragile living standards of the city’s poor and bringing with it higher levels of homelessness, hunger and violence.

Nowhere is this more visible than in the housing market where a combination of foreclosures on private homes, failed investments by private equity companies, the phasing out of federal rent subsidies, the proposed end of Work Advantage Program in New York State, and rising rents in public housing have taken thousands of units of affordable housing out of commission and forced tens of thousands of people to “double” and “triple up” with friends and relatives or move into shelters.

The effects of this are visible throughout the city’s public schools where more and more children are arriving at school stressed, hungry, and frightened as their families are displaced and their ability to assure their children of adequate sleep, food and study space is undermined. Once, such wounded children could find safe, protected space in libraries and after school programs, but with upcoming budget cuts to libraries (which will cut public library hours from 40 to 28 a week) and to after school and recreational programs, these youngsters will be increasingly on their own, forced to spend time in public places--streets, subways and shelters--where danger lurks for young people without adult supervision and protection.

In the face of this unfolding tragedy, what are teachers, principals, and school guidance counselors to do?

Sammy Davis, Jr.: 'The Candy Man' (for the Whurl-a-Gurls

By far, the most requested song on the iPod when I'm in the car with the Whurl-a-Gurls.

'Left of Black': Episode #33 featuring Lisa B. Thompson

Left of Black #33

w/ Lisa B. Thompson

May 9, 2011

Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined via Skype by scholar and playwright Lisa B. Thompson. Neal and Thompson discuss the images of Black middle class women, the Tony Award nominated musical The Scottsboro Boys and the role of Black men in the production of Black women’s art.

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—>Lisa B. Thompson is a playwright and associate professor of English at the State University of New York, Albany where she teaches courses in African American literature, drama, theory, and cultural studies. Her book, Beyond the Black Lady: Sexuality and the New African American Middle Class (2009), explores black middle class female sexuality through works by African American women authors. Her critically acclaimed off-Broadway play, Single Black Female, which was nominated for a 2005 LA Weekly Theatre Award for best comedy, has been produced throughout the US; in 2010 the play received its international debut in Toronto.

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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.

Mother's Day: Chocolate Genius | "My Mom"

I last saw my mom conscious on Mother's Day 2009 in a Maryland nursing home; "My Mom" by Chocolate Genius (Marc Anthony Thompson) captures many of the emotions I felt that day.--MAN