Herman Cain Plays the Race Card?

James Braxton Peterson, Director of Lehigh University Discusses the Candidacy of Herman Cain.

"I Know Precious"

From Precious II For Colored Girls: 

The Black Image In The American Mind 

Columbia College | Chicago | April 26, 2011.

Panelists:

Mark Anthony Neal, Elizabeth Mendez Berry, Joan Morgan, Vijay Prashad and John Jennings.

Moderator: Bakari Kitwana

Dehumanized and Dismissed: Bananas, the NHL, and the Rhetorics of White Racism

Dehumanized and Dismissed:

Bananas, the NHL, and the Rhetorics of White Racism

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan

During a recent exhibition game between the Philadelphia Flyers and the Detroit Red Wings, the larger history of racism within NHL and society at large showed its ugly head.  Held in London Ontario, a fan (or multiple fans) threw not one but two bananas at Wayne Simmonds.  One of the flying bananas in fact reached the ice as Simmonds, one of 28 blacks playing in the NHL, skated in on the goalie during a shoot-out.  “I don't know if it had anything to do with the fact I'm black. I certainly hope not,” Simmonds noted.  “When you're black, you kind of expect (racist) things. You learn to deal with it. I guess it's something I obviously have to deal with – being a black player playing a predominantly white sport.” 

Others connected to the sport were not so willing (despite their having greater power and privilege) to reflect on the racial realities and hostilities of the NHL in this moment or elsewhere.  While describing it as a “stupid and ignorant action,” Commissioner Gary Bettman made clear that incident was “in no way representative of our fans or the people of London, Ontario.”  Maxine Talbot, a teammate of Simmonds, summarily dismissed the incident as “isolated” that said little about the state of hockey: “It’s not like there’s a problem with racism in our league.  It’s one person!”

Dismissing it as an aberration and the work of some ignorant fans, the response fails to see the broader history of the NHL, not to mention the larger racial issues at work.  While Bettman and others sought to isolate the incidence as the work of a single person who isn’t representative of hockey culture or society at large, others pointed to the persistence of racism within the NHL.  Kevin Weeks, who had a banana thrown at him during the 2002 Stanley Cup Playoffs, noted his lack of surprise that Simmonds was subjected to such racism: “I'm not surprised. We have some people that still have their heads in the sand and some people that don't necessarily want to evolve and aren't necessarily all that comfortable with the fact that the game is evolving.” 

Sugar Hill Records Founder Sylvia Robinson Goes Home

 

Sylvia Robinson, ‘the Mother of Hip-Hop,’ Dies at 75
by JAMES C. MCKINLEY JR. | New York Times

Sylvia Robinson, the singer, songwriter and record producer who formed the Sugar Hill Gang and made the first commercially successful rap recording, died early Thursday morning at a hospital in New Jersey. She was 75.

Ms. Robinson had a notable career as a rhythm and blues singer long before she and her husband, Joe Robinson, formed Sugar Hill Records in 1979 and served as the midwives for a musical genre that came to dominate pop music.

She sang with Mickey Baker as part of the duo Mickey & Sylvia in the 1950s and had several hits, including “Love Is Strange,” which was a No. 1 R&B song in 1956. She also had a solo hit, under the name Sylvia, in spring of 1973 with her own composition “Pillow Talk.”

But Ms. Robinson was revered as “the mother of hip-hop” for her decision to record the nascent art form known as rapping, which had developed at clubs and dance parties in New York City in the 1970s. In 1979, the label Ms. Robinson and her husband had founded, All Platinum, was awash in lawsuits and losing money.

Facing financial ruin, Ms. Robinson got an inspiration when she heard people rapping over the instrumental breaks in disco songs at a party in Harlem. Using her son as a talent scout, she found three young rappers from the New York City area – Big Bank Hank, Wonder Mike and Master Gee – and persuaded them to record improvised raps as the Sugar Hill Gang over a rhythm track adapted from Chic’s “Good Times.” The record was called “Rapper’s Delight” and reached No. 4 on the R&B charts, proving rap was a viable art form and opening the gates for other hip-hop artists.

Ms. Robinson later signed Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, recording their seminal 1982 hit, “The Message,” the groundbreaking rap about ghetto life that became one of the most powerful and controversial songs of its time and presaged the gangsta rap movement of later years.
Sylvia Robinson, the singer, songwriter and record producer who formed the Sugar Hill Gang and made the first commercially successful rap recording, died early Thursday morning at a hospital in New Jersey. She was 75.

Ms. Robinson had a notable career as a rhythm and blues singer long before she and her husband, Joe Robinson, formed Sugar Hill Records in 1979 and served as the midwives for a musical genre that came to dominate pop music.


She sang with Mickey Baker as part of the duo Mickey & Sylvia in the 1950s and had several hits, including “Love Is Strange,” which was a No. 1 R&B song in 1956. She also had a solo hit, under the name Sylvia, in spring of 1973 with her own composition “Pillow Talk.”

But Ms. Robinson was revered as “the mother of hip-hop” for her decision to record the nascent art form known as rapping, which had developed at clubs and dance parties in New York City in the 1970s. In 1979, the label Ms. Robinson and her husband had founded, All Platinum, was awash in lawsuits and losing money.

Facing financial ruin, Ms. Robinson got an inspiration when she heard people rapping over the instrumental breaks in disco songs at a party in Harlem. Using her son as a talent scout, she found three young rappers from the New York City area – Big Bank Hank, Wonder Mike and Master Gee – and persuaded them to record improvised raps as the Sugar Hill Gang over a rhythm track adapted from Chic’s “Good Times.” The record was called “Rapper’s Delight” and reached No. 4 on the R&B charts, proving rap was a viable art form and opening the gates for other hip-hop artists.

Ms. Robinson later signed Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, recording their seminal 1982 hit, “The Message,” the groundbreaking rap about ghetto life that became one of the most powerful and controversial songs of its time and presaged the gangsta rap movement of later years.

Left of Black Celebrates Black Female Artists Julie Dash and Lizz Wright on Next Episode [October 3, 2011]

Left of Black Celebrates Black Female Artists Julie Dash and Lizz Wright on Next Episode [October 3, 2011]

Filmmaker Julie Dash joins host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal on Left of Black.  This year marks the 20^th Anniversary of the release of Dash’s ground-breaking film Daughters of the Dust which was the first feature by an African-American woman to gain national theatrical release.   The film draws on Dash's South Carolina heritage and focuses on three generations of women with roots in the Sea Islands and Gullah culture. Dash discusses how she became a filmmaker and the challenges she faced along the way.  Dash also reveals her surprising view of filmmaker Tyler Perry. 

In the second segment, musical artist and vocalist Lizz Wright joins Neal.  The Georgia born singer discusses how her family’s tradition in storytelling inspired her career as a vocalist.  Wright, whose music is difficult to place in one genre, talks about incorporating religion into her music as well.  Wright also identifies the musicians who influenced her and the inspiration for her album artwork.  Finally Wright explains how she’s maintained control of her music.  Wright has released four full-length recordings, including the recent Fellowship.  She performs at Duke University’s Reynolds Industries Theater on October 7^th.

Left of Black airs at 1:30 p.m. (EST) on Mondays on Duke's Ustream channel: ustream.tv/dukeuniversity. Viewers are invited to participate in a Twitter conversation with Neal and featured guests while the show airs using hash tags #LeftofBlack or #dukelive.  

Left of Black is recorded and produced at the John Hope Franklin Center of International and Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University.

***

Follow Left of Black on Twitter: @LeftofBlack

Follow Mark Anthony Neal on Twitter: @NewBlackMan

Follow Lizz Wright on Twitter: @LizzWrightMusic

Follow Julie Dash on Twitter: @JulieDash

###

Rap Sessions: FROM PRECIOUS II FOR COLORED GIRLS @ Cornell University

FROM PRECIOUS II FOR COLORED GIRLS

The Black Image in the American Mind

October 1st, 2011

Cornell University

Ithaca, New York

Swartz Performing Arts Center

430 College Ave.

Doors at 6:30pm (Panel at 7:00pm | Concert at 9:00pm)

Join Invincible, Tamar-kali, and Jean Grae -- together known as the Born in Flames tour - as they embark on the campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. This multi-dimensional event will feature a panel discussion, From Precious II Colored Girls: The Black Image in the American Mind, composed of the three artists, Joan Morgan, Carlito Rodriguez and Mark Anthony Neal, facilitated by Bakari Kitwana of Rap Sessions. Following the panel will be a live concert by the three artists.

Homeland Insecurity

Homeland Insecurity

by Lawrence Jackson | special to NewBlackMan

I was in a good mood when I entered old National Airport in Washington, DC on Sunday September 25 to fly back to Atlanta where I live.  Much of the hallway banter at the Congress had dwelt upon the recent execution of Troy Davis in Georgia, a seemingly clear-cut case where “reasonable doubt” was quite strong, but historic race prejudice quite a bit stronger.  I had heard Charles Ogeltree talk about his new book on the racial profiling of high profile African American men, such as I had experienced most recently while bike riding in the city of Decatur in Georgia. And I had done my part, encouraging enthusiastic crowds read my book The Indignant Generation, an exploration of black writers and their novels and criticism that transformed American racial attitudes between 1934 and 1960.

While I stood in a deep line awaiting the metal detecting machines, I was approached by a portly uniformed Asian American woman, who asked me “Can I swipe your hands.”  I had seen her looking the crowd over and I had decided in advance to decline an opportunity to participate in the trial-runs of any new surveillance technology. I was being literary, as in Herman Melville.  I said to her, “No thank you.  I prefer not.”  

And then the war began.

Robots of Brixton [directed by Kibwe Tavares]

Brixton has degenerated into a disregarded area inhabited by London's new robot workforce - robots built and designed to carry out all of the tasks which humans are no longer inclined to do. The mechanical population of Brixton has rocketed, resulting in unplanned, cheap and quick additions to the skyline.

The film follows the trials and tribulations of young robots surviving at the sharp end of inner city life, living the predictable existence of a populous hemmed in by poverty, disillusionment and mass unemployment. When the Police invade the one space which the robots can call their own, the fierce and strained relationship between the two sides explodes into an outbreak of violence echoing that of 1981.

With Support from

Kibwe Tavares - Direction, animation, modeling, lighting, texturingetc...

David Hoffman - Photographer Brixton riots archive.hoffmanphotos.com/

Mourad Bennacer - Sound Designer designsonore.tumblr.com/

DJ Hiatus "The Great Insurrection" hiatusmusic.net

For more supercool projects

factoryfifteen.com

Can Obama Fortify African American Support?

Robert Traynham and James Peterson on the challenges facing the President in the African American community.

President Obama’s Silence on Troy Davis Execution Emboldens Young Progressives

President Obama’s Silence on Troy Davis Execution Emboldens Young Progressives

by Mark Naison | special to NewBlackMan

The refusal of President Obama to commute Troy Davis’s death sentence, or even ask local authorities to postpone his execution, brings to a decisive end the faltering romance with the President among young Americans, freeing them to lead much needed justice movements on their own.

It would be a mistake to regard young Americans of this generation as politically passive. It was their energy and idealism that drove the remarkable and unexpected victory over Hilary Clinton in the Democratic Primary, and the history making campaign that made Barack Obama our first African American president.

It was understandable, given the atmosphere of that campaign and the idealistic, activist rhetoric candidate Obama employed to excite hopes of an American Renewal ( “Yes We Can”) that many young people relaxed after the election, assuming their future was in good hands and that the vision of a just society which drove them to participate in the campaign would drive the President’s policies.

Over the last three years, that expectation of moral leadership has been disappointed on many fronts. The huge expenditure  to bail out the banks, the failure to mount an effective jobs campaign, the refusal to fight for a public option in the  health care plan,  the continuation of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and most recently, the  acceptance of a budget compromise which eviscerated programs ranging from student loans, to public radio, to environmental projects made the President seem as though he lacked a moral compass, or worse yet, was unwilling to challenge policies which might jeopardize his election chances or hurt the interests of his  Wall Street donors.

The President’s compromises and evasions, coming at a time when poverty rates were growing, the racial wealth gap was escalating, and young people, whether educated or not faced the worst job market since the Depression,  left many young people confused and demoralized.  Many could not believe what was happening to them economically; they were still hoping that the economy would correct itself, or the President they had placed so much hope in would find some way of righting the ship that was sinking around them.

But while disappointment with the President was growing, the political warfare waged against him by the Republicans, particularly after the 2010 Congressional elections, left him with a residue of credibility.  Weren’t the President’s opponents responsible for the tepid and ineffective policies coming out of Washington.  Didn’t Republicans try to obstruct every positive initiative he tried to launch, from asking the wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes, to rebuilding the crumbling American infra structure.

Enter the Troy Davis case. Here was a defendant who had been on death row for twenty years, insisting on his innocence, while the witnesses against him were steadily recanting their testimony.  The thought of executing someone with this much doubt surrounding his conviction had created a worldwide protest movement involving millions of people around the world, not just because of the cruelty of capital punishment and the injustice of this particular case,, but because of the disproportionate application of the death penalty in the US to poor people and people of color.

Left of Black S2:E3 w/ Lester Spence and Lawrence P. Jackson

Left of Black S2:E3

w/ Lester Spence and Lawrence P. Jackson

September 26, 2011

Left of Black host  and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined by Lester Spence, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University and author of Stare in the Darkness: The Limits of Hip-Hop and Black Politics.  Spence discusses why people are still apprehensive about hip-hop culture, the role of the “neo-liberal hustler entrepreneur,” and grassroots hip-hop organizations.  Spence also talks about the challenges of studying hip-hop and politics.  

Later Neal is joined by Professor Lawrence P. Jackson, Professor of English and African American Studies at Emory University, author of The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African American Writers and Critics, 1934-1960 and Ralph Ellison: The Emergence of Genius.  Jackson considers the period between the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement, and addresses the debates among black authors during this period.  Jackson also discusses readers’ initial reaction to Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and the challenges of publishing scholarly non-fiction with contemporary trade presses.

***

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.

***

Episodes of Left of Black are also available for download @ iTunes U

Nobody Can Predict The Moment Of Revolution [Occupy Wall Street ]

Uploaded by ivaasks on Sep 23, 2011

We want to share insights into the formation of a new social movement as it is still taking shape in real time.

The video was shot during the 5th and 6th day of the occupation.
 

This idea to occupy the financial district in New York City was inspired by recent uprisings in Spain, Greece, Egypt, and Tunisia which most of us were following online.
 

Despite of the corporate media's effort to silence the protests, and Yahoo's attempt to to censor it in e-mail communication, the occupation is growing in numbers and spreading to other cities in the US and abroad.
 

Please forward our video to likeminded people via email, facebook, twitter - and make the voices of dissent circulate.

Find the latest news, learn how to participate and support:
https://occupywallst.org/

Could Dr. King Watch Big Time College Sports?

Could Dr. King Watch Big Time College Sports? Race Beyond Shame

by David Leonard and C. Richard King | NewBlackMan

In “Shame of College Sports,” legendary American historian Taylor Branch turns his college sports in this month’s The Atlantic.   Focusing on the profits generated through college sports, the lack of power available to student-athletes, and the absurdity to claims of amateurism and student-athletes, Branch exposes the exploitation and hypocrisy that is as much part of the NCAA experience as March Madness and Bowl Games.   Almost hoping to disarm critics who often scoff at ‘slavery analogies,’ Brand avoids that comparison instead embracing one that centers on colonialism.

Slavery analogies should be used carefully. College athletes are not slaves. Yet to survey the scene—corporations and universities enriching themselves on the backs of uncompensated young men, whose status as “student-athletes” deprives them of the right to due process guaranteed by the Constitution—is to catch an unmistakable whiff of the plantation. Perhaps a more apt metaphor is colonialism: college sports, as overseen by the NCAA, is a system imposed by well-meaning paternalists and rationalized with hoary sentiments about caring for the well-being of the colonized. But it is, nonetheless, unjust. The NCAA, in its zealous defense of bogus principles, sometimes destroys the dreams of innocent young athletes.

Providing readers with an amazing history, including the origins of the term student-athlete (as part of a systematic effort to avoid paying workers’ compensation claims for injured football players) and illustrating the methods used by NCAA and its partner schools to maintain the illusion of amateur sports all while raking in the dough, Branch surprisingly avoids the issue of race.  The colonial analogy notwithstanding, there is virtually no discussion of the racial implications in this system, the larger history of the NCAA in relationship to race, and the ways in which white racial frames help to justify an acceptance of such a system.  

Branch seems to point to the racial implications here in a section entitled, ““The Plantation Mentality,” where he quotes Sonny Vaccaro:

“Ninety percent of the NCAA revenue is produced by 1 percent of the athletes,” Sonny Vaccaro says. “Go to the skill positions”—the stars. “Ninety percent African Americans.” The NCAA made its money off those kids, and so did he. They were not all bad people, the NCAA officials, but they were blind, Vaccaro believes. “Their organization is a fraud.”

The reference to the “Plantation mentality” and the explicit acknowledgement that the bulk of profits are generated within sports that in recent years have been dominated by African American athletes generates surprisingly little discussion of the radicalized political economy of college athletics today.  Over a decade ago, D. Stanley Eitzen observed

These rules reek with injustice. Athletes can make money for others, but not for themselves. Their coaches have agents, as many students engaged in other extracurricular activities, but the athletes cannot. Athletes are forbidden to engage in advertising, but their coaches are permitted to endorse products for generous compensation. Corporate advertisements are displayed in the arenas where they play, but with no payoff to the athletes. The shoes and equipment worn by the athletes bear very visible corporate logos, for which the schools are compensated handsomely. The athletes make public appearances for their schools and their photographs are used to publicize the athletic department and sell tickets, but they cannot benefit. The schools sell memorabilia and paraphernalia that incorporate the athletes' likenesses, yet only the schools pocket the royalties. The athletes cannot receive gifts, but coaches and other athletic department personnel receive the free use of automobiles, country club memberships, housing subsidies, etc.

To our minds, then, Branch clearly  misses an opportunity to reflect on the ways in which the system is built around generating profits through the labor of young African American men.  Those profits – the billions of dollars earned through television contracts, merchandizing, video game deals, concessions, booster donations, ticket sales – find there way into the hands of overwhelming white constituency, coaches and athletic directors, in support of a largely white establishment. 

“I Am…”: Troy Davis, Fred Hampton and the Black Freedom Movement

“I Am…”: Troy Davis, Fred Hampton and the Black Freedom Movement

by Mark Anthony Neal | NewBlackMan

The State has acted in the case of Troy Anthony Davis and in many ways that was never in doubt; it acted as it has always acted.  What was never really clear, is whether we all had the resolve to respond.  The more than half-million signatures that were generated on behalf of Davis (largely via social media), the re-engagement of the NAACP under the leadership of Ben Jealous, and the stellar on-the-ground coverage of the State murder of Davis by Amy Goodman and Democracy Now are just a few examples that we still do have the capacity to build, organize and resist.  That we need to sustain these efforts on behalf of social justice goes without saying.

I was most struck though, by the many images of signs, tee-shirts and Facebook pages that declared “I Am Troy Davis”—images that circulated within logics particular to this moment of social media and the market forces that frame so much of our visual culture and our political activities.  Anybody could imagine themselves as a political progressive if they simply wore a t-shirt.   Yet, instead the invocation of “I Am Troy Davis” took me back to another historical era of mass political resistance.

Black Panther member Fred Hampton was murdered by the State, at roughly the same age as Troy Davis, when the latter was initially arrested for the murder of  police officer Mark MacPhail.  Unlike Davis, who was arguably tried in front of a jury of his peers, Hampton was gunned down by the Chicago Police Department in concert with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (under the directorship of J. Edgar Hoover) in the early morning hours in what poet and publisher Haki Madhubuti has called a “one-sided shootout.”  Hampton’s crime was, ultimately, being one of the youngest and most effective organizers within the Black Freedom Movement of the late 1960s. 

The attack on Hampton, which included the use of a Black FBI informant, was intended to highlight the so-called violent nature of the Black Panther Party and was firmly in line with the FBI’s preference to remove effective local leadership, before they ascended to the national stage.  The plan backfired when the house that Hampton and comrade Mark Clark were murdered in was left open for public viewing, allowing for independent forensic experts to discover that  the vast majority of the gunfire came from the police officers; the party members in the house fired one bullet in self defense.

Though Hampton’s story was long known among Chicago residents and veterans of the Black Freedom Movement, a new generation became aware with the broadcast of the ground-breaking documentary series Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Movement 1954-1985.  The episode “A Nation of Law, 1968-1971” specifically examines the acts of repression visited upon the Black Freedom Movement by the State, including the murder of Hampton and the put down of the Attica prison revolt. 

One of the episode’s respondents, Father George Clements, had been named the first Black priest at Chicago’s Holy Angels Catholic Church in Chicago in June of 1969, six months before Hampton’s murder.  In the episode Clements recalls a mass he held in response to Hampton’s killing:

“in the midst of this mass, I was trying to explain to our children, we had all the school children there, all 1,300, and I was trying to explain to them the importance of Fred. And I wasn't getting through, at least I felt like I wasn't getting through. And in the midst of my explanation, I just burst into tears. And the next thing I knew was here was one of our 8th grade boys. He jumped up and he said, "I am Fred Hampton." And then a girl in the 6th grade, she jumps up and says, "I am Fred Hampton." Another kid in first grade, "I'm Fred Hampton." And before you knew it, the whole church, kids were all shouting, "I am Fred Hampton."

Father Clements’ recollection speaks to the power of the very idea of a Fred Hampton, as the late political leader was very much a prototype for the next generation of Black political leadership in the 1970s and the very reason he had to be destroyed.  By the time Hampton’s story is told via Eyes on the Prize, the Black Freedom Movement as it existed at the end of Hampton’s life had been largely—and effectively—neutralized by the very State forces responsible for his death, more formally known as the FBI’s covert counter intelligence program or COINTELPRO.

The value of consciousness raising by hip-hop artists in the 1980s, notably Black Power child, Chuck D (Carlton Douglas Ridenhour), was that the very practices of sampling that allowed hip-hop to mine the sonic history of American music was also used to piece together a history of Black radicalism and resistance; a generation of American youth were introduced to figures like Joanne Chesimard—Assata Shakur—and Malcolm X. 

It was this element of hip-hop that filmmaker Spike Lee increasingly made use of in his own films, and as such, Lee drew reference to Clements’ story about Fred Hampton in the closing montage of his film Malcolm X.   In scenes shot in South Africa and Harlem, NY, Lee captured young students, encouraged by the actress Mary Alice and a just released Nelson Mandela, standing from their seats shouting “I Am Malcolm X.”  It was a brilliant piece of cinematic layering that allowed for a recognition of a broader reality of Black loss and trauma.

Unfortunately in the hands of Madison Avenue advertisers, Lee’s spark of creativity was little more than a gimmick, that they later deployed in the name of a “Cablinasian” professional golfer, who had no more interest in the history of Black radicalism than he did embracing the post-racial project, even as he become the defining symbol (before our current President) for that project within a neo-liberal meritocracy.   The subsequent “I am Tiger Woods” campaign which Nike ran in the aftermath of Woods’ historic win at the Master’s Tournament in 1997, effectively silenced the voices of those girls  and boys who stood up in Holy Angels Catholic Church chanting Fred Hampton’s name, and the legacy of the movement that their voices embodied.

And yet in September of 2011, Fred Hampton is again recalled, this time in another symbol of the State’s will towards violence.  Most heartening were images of Davis’ nephew De’Jaun Correia, a reminder that the State murder of Troy Davis can serve as his generation’s River Jordan, a possibility that was also reflected in the photo of Howard University students, mouths taped in silent protest, effectively mocking the first Black President for his own silence on the matter of Troy Davis.  May a generation be renewed in the aftermath of Davis’ death.

Adam Mansbach & James Braxton Peterson @ Lehigh University

Adam Mansbach, author of the recent "Go the F*ck to Sleep" at Lehigh University with James Braxton Peterson, Director of Africana Studies at Lehigh University.

An Open Letter from Black Women to the SlutWalk

An Open Letter from Black Women to the SlutWalk

September 23, 2011

We the undersigned women of African descent and anti-violence advocates, activists, scholars, organizational and spiritual leaders wish to address the SlutWalk. First, we commend the organizers on their bold and vast mobilization to end the shaming and blaming of sexual assault victims for violence committed against them by other members of society. We are proud to be living in this moment in time where girls and boys have the opportunity to witness the acts of extraordinary women resisting oppression and challenging the myths that feed rape culture everywhere. 

The police officer’s comments in Toronto that ignited the organizing of the first SlutWalk and served to trivialize, omit and dismiss women’s continuous experiences of sexual exploitation, assault, and oppression are an attack upon our collective spirits.  Whether the dismissal of rape and other violations of a woman’s body be driven by her mode of dress, line of work, level of intoxication, her class, and in cases of Black and brown bodies—her race, we are in full agreement that no one deserves to be raped.

The Issue At Hand

We are deeply concerned. As Black women and girls we find no space in SlutWalk, no space for participation and to unequivocally denounce rape and sexual assault as we have experienced it.  We are perplexed by the use of the term “slut” and by any implication that this word, much like the word “Ho” or the “N” word should be re-appropriated. The way in which we are perceived and what happens to us before, during and after sexual assault crosses the boundaries of our mode of dress.  Much of this is tied to our particular history.  In the United States, where slavery constructed Black female sexualities, Jim Crow kidnappings, rape and lynchings, gender misrepresentations, and more recently, where the Black female immigrant struggle combine, “slut” has different associations for Black women.  We do not recognize ourselves nor do we see our lived experiences reflected within SlutWalk and especially not in its brand and its label. 

As Black women, we do not have the privilege or the space to call ourselves “slut” without validating the already historically entrenched ideology and recurring messages about what and who the Black woman is.  We don’t have the privilege to play on destructive representations burned in our collective minds, on our bodies and souls for generations.  Although we understand the valid impetus behind the use of the word “slut” as language to frame and brand an anti-rape movement, we are gravely concerned.  For us the trivialization of rape and the absence of justice are viciously intertwined with narratives of sexual surveillance, legal access and availability to our personhood.  It is tied to institutionalized ideology about our bodies as sexualized objects of property, as spectacles of sexuality and deviant sexual desire. It is tied to notions about our clothed or unclothed bodies as unable to be raped whether on the auction block, in the fields or on living room television screens. The perception and wholesale acceptance of speculations about what the Black woman wants, what she needs and what she deserves has truly, long crossed the boundaries of her mode of dress. 

Kevin Alexander Gray on State Violence and the Murder of Troy Anthony Davis

Kevin Alexander Gray, author of Waiting for Lightning to Strike: The Fundamentals of Black Politics, spoke to Dennis Bernstein of KPFA Flashpoints Radio about state violence and the Georgia State murder of Troy Anthony Davis.

MuthaWit: "Wasted (Fill My House With Salt)" [video]

"Wasted (Fill My House With Salt)" is the second single from MuthaWit's album "men & women (la Revenge de Uncle Baldy)" released in 2011 on URB ALT Media

Video Credits:

Produced by URB ALT Media
Direction and Videography by Bighead Scientists
Edited by Odd Endeavors Productions

Music Credits:

A)Lou Rossi -- guitars
B)Meryl "Miss J" Jefferson -- violins
C)Sam Myer -- trombone
D)V. Jeffrey Smith -- alto sax, soprano sax
E)JC - drums
F)Samuel Fernandez - bass
G)Ben Tyree -- guitars
H)Boston -- guitars, drums, percussion, lead vocals, bground vocals

Written, Performed, Arranged and Produced by Boston and MuthaWit
Engineered and Mixed by 2KLB at The Womb, GA
Mastered by Gualterino at Bad Alien Studios

MuthaWit album:
http://urbalt.bandcamp.com/album/men-women-la-revenge-de-uncle-baldy

A Generation Renewed?

Howard Students Protest Troy Davis Execution

by Jeremy Borden and Clarence Williams | The Washington Post

A total of 13 people from Howard University — one a professor and the rest, students — were arrested outside the White House Wednesday while protesting the pending execution of Georgia inmate Troy Davis.

Soon after protesters arrived, police cordoned off the sidewalk area in front of the White House and moved them into Lafayette Square, students and witnesses said. More than a dozen students, along with a Howard English professor, sat along the fence and refused to move, said Marcus Ware, a third-year law student and one of the protest’s organizers.

The protesters felt strongly about their right to position themselves against the White House fence, other witnesses said.

Police gave the students and the professor three warnings to move, before arresting them, Ware said.

Twelve people were arrested for failure to obey a lawful police order, and the professor was arrested for crossing a police line, said Sgt. David Schlosser, a U.S. Park Police spokesman.

Protesters were later allowed back in front of the White House.

Several Howard student groups had organized protests over the pending execution of Davis, convicted of killing an off-duty police officer. Davis is scheduled to be executed at 7 p.m., and many around the country and world are weighing in, including religious leaders.

“We weren’t being aggressive,” Ware said.

Some students and other activists are hoping the White House will intervene. ­ “We fundamentally believe the death penalty is wrong,” he said.

African Americans Grow Frustrated with President Obama

Hardball with Chris Matthews featuring Michael Eric Dyson and James Braxton Peterson.

The Right's Obama Derangement Syndrome

The Ed Show [MSNBC] hosted by Michael Eric Dyson with Melissa Harris-Perry and James Braxton Peterson.

New Episode of 'Left of Black' Tackles Hip-Hop & Politics

New Episode of 'Left of Black' Tackles Hip-Hop and Politics

On the next episode of Left of Black, airing on Monday September, 26 at 1:30pmEST, host  and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined by Lester Spence, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Johns Hopkins University and author of Stare in the Darkness: The Limits of Hip-Hop and Black Politics.  Spence discusses why people are still apprehensive about hip-hop culture, the role of the “neo-liberal hustler entrepreneur,” and grassroots hip-hop organizations.  Spence also talks about the challenges of studying hip-hop and politics.  

Later Neal is joined by Professor Lawrence P. Jackson, Professor of English and African American Studies at Emory University, author of The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African American Writers and Critics, 1934-1960 and Ralph Ellison: The Emergence of Genius.  Jackson considers the period between the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement, and addresses the debates among black authors during this period.  Jackson also discusses readers’ initial reaction to Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and the challenges of publishing scholarly non-fiction with contemporary trade presses.

Left of Black airs at 1:30 p.m. (EST) on Mondays on Duke's Ustream channel, ustream.tv/dukeuniversity. Viewers are invited to participate in a Twitter conversation with Neal and featured guests while the show airs using hash tags #LeftofBlack or #dukelive.  

Left of Black is recorded and produced at the John Hope Franklin Center of International and Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke.

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Troy Echoes

Troy Echoes
by Jeffrey McCune | special to NewBlackMan

Preface: I hate that the poem I wrote at 7pm is publishable.

Oct 9, 1968
Papa was lynched—
after 7 of 9 recanted:
“He never touched her!”
Yet, the noose tightened—
strangling generations,
reminding all that even breath is not free.

Sept 21, 2011
Ten days after terror,
I hear a man lynched.
The chorus of 7 repeats.
#Dead.

One heart stops,
Voices muted,
People shocked,
Too many ghosts remain.

Helpless.
I sit and hear echoes in my room:
“I am Troy Davis!”
“Too Much Doubt!”
“Power to the People!”
Dead.

          ***

Does anyone hear the faint cry in the dust?
The soft breath-like whisper,
crying for just…
Is anyone listening?
The innocent screams of young boys and men,
captured by the cyclone of suspicion.

The body drops,
The tears fall,
The free world continues,
while for some it never began.
I swallow…
My God!
My America?

September 21, 2012
Echoes resound.
I listen.
I hear my name.
Loud.
Family Traditions Burn.

***


Jeffrey Q. McCune, Jr. is an Assistant Professor of American Studies and Women’s Studies at the University of Maryland-College Park. He is author of the forthcoming manuscript, Sexual Discretion: Black Masculinity and Politics of Passing (University of Chicago Press, forthcoming 2012).

Ben Jealous: "The World Will Remember Troy's Name"

Dear friend,

Tonight the State of Georgia has killed an innocent man.

In recent weeks, we fought hard for the commutation of Troy Davis' sentence. More than one million of your petitions were delivered. Protests, rallies and vigils were organized around the globe. Tonight, we fasted and prayed together as a community.

I have spent the past week with Troy's family. He wanted the world to know that he understood that this struggle goes beyond just one man. Troy was prepared to die tonight. As he said again and again, the state of Georgia only held the power to take his physical body. They could not take his spirit, because he gave his life to God.

Let's remember and heed Troy's words: We must not let them kill our spirit, either.

Troy's execution, the exceptional unfairness of it, will only hasten the end of the death penalty in the United States. The world will remember the name of Troy Anthony Davis. In death he will live on as a symbol of a broken justice system that kills an innocent man while a murderer walks free.

The world will remember Troy's name, as the death penalty supporters who expressed doubt in this case begin to doubt an entire system that can execute a man amidst so many unanswered questions.

The world will remember Troy's name, as death penalty opponents who remained silent in the past realize that their silence is no longer an option.

The world will remember Troy's name because we will commemorate September 21st each year as both a solemn anniversary and a call to action. The night they put Troy Davis to death will become an annual reminder that justice will not be achieved until we end this brutal practice of capital punishment.

"This movement," Troy said, "started before I was born." After tonight, our movement will grow stronger until we succeed in destroying the death penalty in the United States once and for all.

I know you will join me. Together we will secure his legacy, and the world will remember the name Troy Anthony Davis.

In solidarity,

Ben Jealous

A Prayer for the Dying

A Prayer for the Dying

by Lisa Guerrero | special to NewBlackMan

On the day that will eventually see the execution of Troy Davis for a crime he may or may not have committed, but for which the state of Georgia remains certain he must die, I find myself trying, unsuccessfully, to go about my daily life.  I do this, not because I don’t think that this miscarriage of justice has nothing to do with me, but rather because I don’t think my soul can bear the weight of considering what I would do if I know that today would be my last day of life as Troy Davis knows now.  It does make me feel like a coward to sit and take care of comparatively trivial things like grading, cleaning house, paying bills…preparing for tomorrow, but I am not presented with many other options. 

I do find myself stopping periodically throughout September 21, 2011, to consider so many of the ways that as a nation, as citizens of the world, we have lost our ways so mightily.  On the same day as Troy Davis will lose his life I read a story about a school superintendent in Michigan that is making the audacious and brilliant proposal to have his school turned into a prison so that his students too can be fed, have access to a good library, a physical education, and the approximately $23,000 more that are spent per prisoner than per student, all in the hopes that one day in the near future his students will not become prisoners.

I spend my professional life educating students about the histories and processes of inequality in the hopes that a better understanding on their part will make the weight of knowing easier to carry on my part.  One more person carrying the weight surely will make the burden lighter.  Surely.  And yet, the weight today is almost more than I can stand up beneath.  But I am not the one who if facing death.  That unimaginable task falls to Troy Davis today.  But never more has the concept “I am Troy Davis” felt so real to me than it does in this moment.  I know that I will die a little too tonight; that my humanity will shrink just a little more knowing that it must exist in a time and place where justice means blood, but does not bring comfort. 

I, like Kevin Powell, do not ignore the tragedy of one death that has begat the tragedy of today’s death.  The sorrow of Officer MacPhail’s family, and their desire for justice is, in no way less than the sorrow and desire for justice of Troy Davis and his family.  But nor is it greater.  I cannot even begin to fathom how profound the desire for justice or revenge or payback or closure must be when someone you love is murdered.  But is the desire so strong that it can be satiated by the imperfect execution of someone who may not be responsible for your loved one’s death?  Perhaps.  I cannot know.  But what I do know is that whatever cold comfort it brings, it surely does not bring justice.  I suppose this is why I find myself so burdened today.  I’m not sure, even in a nation that promises “Justice for all,” that we even know what that is anymore. 

It certainly cannot be spending ¼ the amount per student in public education as we do per prisoner in incarceration.  It certainly cannot be creating an industry out of incarcerating our fellow citizens that itself has created a system of “law and order” that disproportionately punishes and contains poor people and people of color.  It certainly cannot be the “patriotically dressed” justifications for homophobia, xenophobia, racism, sexism, classism, and heterosexism that abound for the seemingly endless stream of violent acts, images, and language that accost women, gays, lesbians, transgender men and women, people of color, poor people, immigrants, and non-Christians everyday, every minute.  It cannot be.  Please.  It cannot be.

I know I will find myself praying tonight.  Which might not seem odd, except that it isn’t something I normally do.  I don’t do it because I don’t know who to pray to.  Though I do believe in a power larger than myself, I don’t know if that power is God.  Because it is hard for me to imagine that a God who loves us so much could sit so idly by and allow us to do such horrible things to one another…and so oftentimes in his name.  I just can’t believe that’s what he had in mind when giving us free will.  But that is my own struggle, one of many, and tonight I will struggle to believe.  Because tonight I really need to believe that someone is listening to my prayers. 

I pray for Troy Davis and his family.  I pray for Officer MacPhail and his family.  I pray for myself, my family, my friends.  I pray that this is not what justice really feels like.  Indeed, I pray that justice isn’t truly so unjust.  I pray that we can redeem ourselves before it is too late.  I pray that it isn’t already too late.  I pray for all of us.  All of the dying – those of us who will die by hate; those of us who die by bullets, knives, beatings, bombs; those who die by executioner’s needles; and those of us who will die by inches and degrees as we continue to bear witness to the daily injustices, ignorances, violences, and madnesses we commit one to another.  May real justice be returned to us someday…and may we all know peace until that day arrives.

***

Lisa Guerrero is Associate Professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies at Washington State University Pullman, editor of Teaching Race in the 21st Century: College Professors Talk About Their Fears, Risks, and Rewards (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and co-author of  African Americans in Television, co-authored with David J. Leonard. (Praeger Publishing, 2009).