A Victory for the 99%: Movers & Officers Show Compassion Toward Elderly Women Scheduled for Eviction

Read more at ThinkProgress

No Heir Jordan: The NBA Lockout and the End of an Era

No Heir Jordan: The NBA Lockout and the End of an Era

by David Leonard | NewBlackMan

The NBA lockout is over.  With the players and the owners having reached an agreement, basketball will return beginning Christmas Day.   Ushering in substantial structural changes to the league, which will likely restrict player movement and constrain middle-class player salaries, the NBA lockout will also go down in history as an end to the search for the next Michael Jordan.  Since MJ’s retirement, the league, its marketing partners, and fans alike have pinned for someone to fill his AIR Jordans.  Each anointed as the next Michael Jordan, Penny Hardaway, Grant Hill, Vince Carter and Harold Miner (“Baby Jordan”) all failed to deliver because of injuries, limited production, or a combination of both.  Each in their own right was imagined as a player who could fill the shoes, whose talents, charisma, and athleticism would propel the NBA during its post-Jordan era.  None of them met these expectations resulting in an NBA in continued search for a twenty-first century basketball God.    

Kobe Bryant and LeBron James each took the mantle of the next Jordan to places none of the other NMJ (next Michael Jordan) had reached.  Kobe, because of his talents, the ways in which he patterned his game and demeanor after Jordan, his quest for rings, and most importantly his competitiveness, all elevated the comparisons, leading many to argue that he was the NMJ.  Yet because of Eagle County, Colorado, because of his conflicts with Shaquille O’Neal and the ultimate demise of the Lakers Dynasty, and because he is said to have demanded to get out of Los Angeles, Kobe has fallen short in other’s quest to find the next Michael Jordan.  Like Kobe, LeBron James has delivered on the court, dazzling fans with his passing skills, his athleticism, and his ability to make his teammates better.  Worse than struggling to secure a title, LeBron James fall short in the MJ sweepstakes when he decided to take his talents to South Beach.

While possessing the skills, charisma, and baller potential, the two most promising players to lead the NBA, to build upon the global popularity established by Jordan, have fallen short not because of their basketball talents but their inability (or our inability) to fill mythical shoes.  The quest to find the Next Michael Jordan, thus, has nothing to do with basketball but rather is part of an effort to find a player who reinforces popular narratives about the American Dream, the protestant work ethnic, and post-racialness. 

Hip-Hop and the Academy: 9th Wonder at Harvard

Harvard University HipHop Archive Hosts 9th Wonder

by Kendra Graves | Bay State Banner

As he introduced a man he said he’d been blessed to call both colleague and friend for the last few years, noted African American studies scholar Dr. Mark Anthony Neal recalled his first time meeting hip hop producer 9th Wonder.

“We’re just sitting there, waiting for our [radio interview] to get started, and we start talking about our kids and parenting. And 9th Wonder starts talking about going to school conferences and open houses and [other] parents looking him up and down like, ‘So what do you do for a living?’ [And he tells them], ‘I’m a hip hop producer.’ And they’re confused, right? And he said to me, ‘Somehow, [people think that] because you’re a hip hop producer, you’re not supposed to be involved with raising your kids,” said Dr. Neal. “At that moment, I knew this was a special cat.”

Indeed, Patrick Douthit, known by most as 9th Wonder, is much more than just a hip hop producer. He’s a husband, a father, CEO of his own record label, member of the Universal Zulu Nation, an NAACP ambassador and a college professor.

And yet, for 9th Wonder, hip hop is where it all started; it’s the axis around which his innovative, multifaceted career has rotated for years.

Since registering on rap music radars in the early 2000s, the musician has worked with some of hip hop and soul music’s biggest stars, including Jay-Z, Erykah Badu, Destiny’s Child, De La Soul and Mary J. Blige. He now guides the careers of more than a dozen artists and producers signed to his Jamla/IWWMG record label.

For the Grammy Award-winner, the last decade has been full of earnest effort to strike the ultimate balance between beats, rhymes and life.

It made sense then that Harvard University’s Hip Hop Archive would choose the beatmaker to kick off their new “Cutting Edge” series, which Archive Director Dr. Marcyliena Morgan described as an opportunity for hip hop students and fans to learn from artists. She said, “… work makes us feel and makes us think about who we are, where we’re going and where we want to be.”

Documentary: Ebony Towers - The New Black Intelligentsia

Home of Barbara Arnwine, Civil Rights Lawyer, Raided By Police

Barbara Arnwine, Civil Rights Lawyer, Has Home Raided By Police | HuffPost BlackVoices

A civil rights lawyer said she is outraged and is sharing her story with the media, after her Maryland home was raided by police shortly before Thanksgiving. 

Barbara Arnwine, the executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said her Prince George County home was raided by a SWAT team and other law enforcement the morning of Nov. 21, Politic365.com reports. 

"They held us at gunpoint for three hours," Arnwine told Rev. Al Sharpton and Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr. on Sharpton's radio show "Keepin' It Real." "There is no justification for them operating like this. It's totally unprofessional and unjustified."

Arnwine is a well known attorney, and one of the leaders of groups in opposition of Voter ID laws. On Nov. 14, she spoke out about the effects of voter suppression laws on the minority community along with members of the U.S. House of Representatives and Laura W. Murphy, director of the American Civil Liberties Union. 

46 Decembers | Dave Hollister "Never Gonna Change"

 

Always reminder of the people and places that Birthed me--MAN

The Resistance: Bronx Students Release 10-Point List of Demands to Reform NY Public Education

From Colorlines.com:

1. We demand free quality education as a right guaranteed by the US Constitution.
2. We demand the dismantling of Bloomberg’s Panel for Educational Policy. We demand a new 13 member community board to run our public schools (comprised of parents, educators, education experts, community members, and a minimum of 5 student representatives).
3. We demand quality instruction. Teachers should ethnically, culturally, and racially reflect the student body. We demand experienced teachers who have a history of teaching students well. Teacher training should be intensive and include an apprenticeship with master teachers as well as experiences with the communities where the school is located.
4. We demand stronger extra-curricular activities to help stimulate and spark interest in students. Students should have options, opportunities, and choice in their education.
5. We demand a healthy, safe environment that does not expect our failure or anticipate our criminality. We demand a school culture that acknowledges our humanity (free of metal detectors, untrained and underpaid security guards, and abusive tactics).
6. We demand that all NYC public school communities foster structured and programmatic community building so that students, teachers, and staff learn in an environment that is respectful and safe for all.
7. We demand small classes. Class sizes should be humane and productive. We demand that the student to teacher ratio for a mainstream classroom should be no more than 15:1.
8. We demand student assessments and evaluations that reflect the variety of ways that we learn and think (portfolio assessments, thesis defenses, anecdotal evaluations, written exams). Student success should not depend solely on high stakes testing.
9. We demand a stop to the attack on our schools. If a school is deemed “failing”, we demand a team of qualified and diverse experts to assess how such schools can improve and the resources to improve them.
10. We demand fiscal equity for NYC public schools: as stated in the Education Budget and Reform Act of 2007 by the NYS Legislature, NYC public schools have been inadequately and inequitably funded. We demand the legislatively mandated $7 billion dollars in increased annual state education aid to be delivered to our schools now!

Why Occupy Movements Unattached to Any Political Party Are The Only Hope for Real Change

Why Occupy Movements Unattached to Any Political Party Are The Only Hope for Real Change

by Mark Naison | special to NewBlackman

Now that Occupy Movements are being evicted from public parks in cities throughout the country, almost invariably by Democratic mayors, many Democratic Party organizes and some labor activists are hoping the movement will fade away and concentrate its energies on electing progressive candidates for office and putting forth a progressive political agenda.

In my opinion, that would be a grave mistake.  There are a bevy of important issues that given current political alignments, and the power of money in American politics,  cannot be translated into a viable legislative agenda. It will take years of disruptive protest- strikes, boycotts, walkouts, sit ins and occupations- to place them on the national agenda and the only force in American society capable of  employing those tactics for a sustained period is the Occupy movement.

Here are some key issues that neither party is willing to take on that the Occupy movement can influence if it keeps growing and becoming more diverse in the next five years.

1. The student loan crisis and the escalating cost of a college education. There is no way, without major disruptions of university life, and pressure on the banks, that student loan debt can be erased, or significantly reduced, and tuition at public colleges frozen or lowered.  Until universities cannot carry on their normal business without making dramatic changes in loan collections and tuition charges, you can be sure elected officials won’t touch these issues with a ten foot pole.

Left of Black S2:E12 | The Tanning of America and the Branding of Hip-Hop

Left of Black S2:E12

The Tanning of America and the Branding of Hip-Hop

w/ Steve Stoute

November 28, 2011

Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined by Steve Stoute, author of  The Tanning of America - How Hip-Hop Created a Culture That Rewrote the Rules of the New Economy and founder and chief creative officer of Translation Consultation + Brand Imaging.   Neal and Stoute discuss Hip-Hop Culture’s ascent into the mainstream as well as signature advertising campaigns that he worked on for McDonald’s (“I’m Lovin’ It”) and Hewlett-Packard (“Hands”).  Finally Stoute suggests ways that President Barack Obama might re-brand himself for the 2012 election.

The conversation was recorded with a live studio audience on October 19, 2011 at the John Hope Franklin Center.

***

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:

Atelier@Duke: A Conversation with Touré – Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness

Atelier@Duke

A Conversation with Touré – Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness

Duke University

Goodson Chapel [Divinity School]

December 1, 2011

5:00pm

A conversation with Touré—American novelist, essayist, music journalist, cultural critic, and television personality based in New York City based on his book Who's Afraid of Post Blackness? joined by Duke faculty Mark Anthony Neal and Wahneema Lubiano, and North Carolina State University Historian Blair LM Kelley; Moderated by Duke Professor Maurice O. Wallace.

46 Decembers | Simply Red: "Holding Back the Years"

One of my favorites, as it always reminds me of more youthful days and the man that I hoped to be twenty-five years ago.

ReelBlack: Filmmaker Robert Downey, Sr. Discusses his Pre-Blaxploitation Classic 'Putney Swope'

From the Reelblack Vault comes this 2008 interview with independent film pioneer Robert Downey, Sr. He discusses his early work, hits and misses, with emphasis on the cult classic PUTNEY SWOPE (1968) which costarred Arnold Johnson and Antonio Fargas as the Arab. He offers suggestions to up-and-coming filmmakers and talks about the ups and downs of being an artist. A Reelblack Exclusive. Putney Swope is available on DVD from Homevison Entertainment. Greasers Palace Special Edition is available through Scorpion Releasing.

*check the cameo in the film from Soul Singer Ronnie Dyson

9th Wonder @ The HipHop Archive (Harvard) Discussing Hip-Hop as Craft

9th Wonder (Patrick Douthit) at Harvard's Hiphop Archive (The WEB Du Bois Institute) discusses why hip-hop is a craft. The event was held on November 18, 2011 as part of the archive's Cutting Edge Series.

Black Pilgrim Stirs Controversy, 30 Years On

WBUR | 96.3 | Here & Now

Black Pilgrim Stirs Controversy, 30 Years On

by Kevin Sullivan

Was there a black pilgrim breaking bread with the Puritans in the 1620s?

That question caused a huge controversy in the 1980s when the Plimoth Plantation in Plymouth, Mass. hired a black actor to portray a pilgrim.

The Plantation reproduces the pilgrims’ 17th century village, complete with period buildings, food and role-playing interpreters, who speak as though it were 1627.

In 1981, Bob Marten was the museum’s director of programs. He said that the museum had begun receiving federal funds, and that required them to advertise as an equal opportunity employer.

An African American applied for a role playing job, and Marten hired him. He said there had been black people in Plymouth at the time of the pilgrims, so it seemed logical.

But some historians and descendants of pilgrims balked, and the museum decided if there was going to be a black pilgrim at the museum, he had to be based on a real person.

Marten said that for more than 100 years, historians had referenced a black pilgrim, named Abraham Pearse, who came to Plymouth in 1623.

Listen HERE

9th Wonder @ Harvard's Hip-Hop Archive Discusses His Role in Contemporary Rap Music

9th Wonder (Patrick Douthit) at Harvard's Hiphop Archive (The WEB Du Bois Institute) discusses his role in contemporary rap music.  The event was held on November 18, 2011 as part of the archive's Cutting Edge Series.

Black TV Classic: The Boondocks on "The I-tis"

Are You a Soul Food Junkie? Support Byron Hurt's Film @ Kickstarter

"Is African American Culture a Culture of Soul Food Junkies?"

Food traditions are hard to change, especially when they're passed on from generation to generation. In this PBS documentary, award-winning filmmaker Byron Hurt shares his journey to learn more about the African American cuisine known as soul food.

Baffled by his dad's unwillingness to change his traditional soul food diet in the face of a health crisis, Hurt sets out to learn more about this rich culinary tradition and its relevance to black cultural identity. He discovers that the love affair that his dad and his community have with soul food is deep-rooted, complex, and in some tragic cases, deadly.

Through candid interviews with soul food cooks, historians, and scholars, as well as doctors, family members, and everyday people, Soul Food Junkies blends history, humor, and heartwarming stories to place this culinary tradition under the microscope. Both the consequences and the benefits of soul food are carefully addressed. So too is the issue of low access to quality food in black communities, which makes it difficult for some black people to eat healthy. In the end, Hurt determines whether or not black people are addicted to this food tradition that has its origins in West Africa and the black south, yet is loved all over the world.

Byron Hurt is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, published writer, anti-sexist activist, and lecturer. Hurt is also the host of the Emmy-nominated series, "REEL WORKS with BYRON HURT." The Independent named him one of the "Top 10 Filmmakers to Watch" in 2011. His most popular documentary, "Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes" (BBR), premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was later broadcast on the PBS series Independent Lens. In 2010, MSNBC's TheGrio.com named BBR one of the "Top 10 Most Important African-American Themed Films of the Decade." Byron's writing have been published in several anthologies and in the media he has been covered by The New York Times, O Magazine, AllHipHop.com, NPR, CNN, Access Hollywood, MTV, BET, ABC News World Tonight, and many other outlets. Byron's latest film, Soul Food Junkies, is scheduled to be released in 2012.

Support Byron Hurt's Soul Food Junkies @ Kickstarter





Byron Hurt on Left of Black | January 2011

Left of Black S2:E11 | Has the Hip-Hop Generation Squandered Black Music’s Legacy?

Left of Black S2:E11

Has the Hip-Hop Generation Squandered Black Music’s Legacy?

w/ Nicole Fleetwood and William Banfield

November 21, 2011

Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined via Skype© by Bill Banfield, the author of Representing Black Music Culture: Then, Now, and When Again?  Banfield is a  composer, recording artist, musical director, scholar and the Professor in the Music and Societies program at the Berklee School of Music. The Detroit native talks about growing up in the city that bred the Motown sound, and highlights the significance of his relationships with communities of artists including composer T.J. Anderson.  Neal and Banfield also contemplate why younger generations are not knowledgeable of great music in history.  

Later Neal is joined by Nicole Fleetwood , Professor of American Studies at Rutgers University and  the author of Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness. Fleetwood and Neal discuss the promises and pitfalls of black iconic images, the photography of  Charles “Teenie” Harris, and the role that her grandmother played in having her consider how “blackness” is seen. Lastly, Fleetwood discusses the importance of a realist aesthetic in black art.

***

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

Social Media, Occupy, & Hip Hop in the Academy

Exceptional Brutality: Police Violence on Campus

Exceptional Brutality

by David J. Leonard and James Braxton Peterson | NewBlackMan

Like many, we have been outraged by recent episodes of police violence at UC Berkeley and UC Davis in recent weeks.  The sight of police officers brutalizing men and women with batons and pepper spray is antithetical to justice.  Yet, we have also become increasingly uncomfortable with the public discourse, one that has given an inordinate amount of attention to these instances, treating them as unique and exceptional rather than indicative of systemic state-sanctioned violence.  The overall tone of shock works from an idea that police violence should not happen on American college campuses. But in the absence of a similar level of outrage resulting from police violence in urban communities throughout the United States we are left wondering about the dangers in this exceptional discourse.  For example, in her otherwise powerful call for leadership, Cathy Davidson asks, “How could this be happening at Davis—and at other campuses too? Why are students who are peaceably protesting being treated like criminals?”  Rather than asking how could this happen at college campuses, shouldn’t we be asking how could this happen anywhere? How can any person be subjected to repression, violence, and instruments of dehumanization? A discourse that imagines police violence, whether bully-club justice or pepper spray, as proper when dealing with criminals rather than students gives us pause because of its inability to advance justice for all. 

Similarly Bob Ostertag, in “Militarization Of Campus Police,” furthers the denunciation of the violence at UC Davis through the systematic juxtaposition of students from real-criminals.

And regulations prohibit the use of pepper spray on inmates in all circumstances other than the immediate threat of violence. If a prisoner is seated, by definition the use of pepper spray is prohibited. Any prison guard who used pepper spray on a seated prisoner would face immediate disciplinary review for the use of excessive force. Even in the case of a prison riot in which inmates use extreme violence, once a prisoner sits down he or she is not considered to be an imminent threat. And if prison guards go into a situation where the use of pepper spray is considered likely, they are required to have medical personnel nearby to treat the victims of the chemical agent.

Apparently, in the state of California felons incarcerated for violent crimes have rights that students at public universities do not. 

Beyond the establishment of a binary that situates students in an oppositional relationship to felons, the logic here leads one to conclude that students are subjected to more state violence than those subjected to incarceration within the Prison Industrial Complex.  Worse yet, if anyone should be subjected to pepper stray, it should be felons who within the national imagination are both undesirable and dangerous, unworthy and suspect.   In yet another layer of news media irony, these recent displays of brutal and inhumane police force reaffirm the reluctance of black, brown, and poor folk to enter into the Occupy movement in the first place.  The specter of police brutality haunts poor, black, and brown communities.  Students’ experiences – with this commonly experienced interface between citizens and those charged with protecting citizens – garner lead-story status while daily victims struggle to find any modicum of public support, or media coverage, much less - justice.

The sentiment of exceptionalism is not limited to the public reaction to police violence at UC Davis.  It was equally evident in the wake of police brutally attacking members of Occupy Berkeley as part of their efforts to disperse the group and remove tents.  Prompting widespread condemnation from the ACLU and the National Lawyers Guild, from various national commentators including Stephen Colbert, the police violence against Berkeley students elicited a disproportionate level of attention.  In our estimation, the attention and the rhetorical tone reflects the presumed exceptionalism of these instances and the presumed innocence and humanity reserved for students. 

We wonder also how these peaceful demonstrations – violently policed – compare to those violent ‘demonstrations’ moderately policed at Penn State University.  Somehow students violently demonstrating in support of a football program in an academic institution that is allegedly complicit in the rape and sexual abuse of children, warrant greater consideration than students peaceably demonstrating in solidarity with OWS and in support of their own challenges with the rising costs of college tuition.  Something simply is not right here.  The police acting on behalf of the state/institution is now commonplace praxis in the 21^st century.  But the synthesis of these recent actions with certain ideological positions and the media’s depiction and coverage of these events paints a sinister portrait of police institutions.  KRS ONE’s critical question,– “Who Protects Us from You?” – directed at the boys in blue circa 1989  – remains eerily unanswered.

The media coverage and the outrage, while warranted, illustrates how police violence against students – middle-class and overwhelmingly white – prompts outrage while eliciting accountability, whereas the daily violence against the poor, against communities of color, often goes unnoticed and unchecked.  “Not to diminish what happened at UC Davis, but it's worth considering what happens in poor neighborhoods and prisons, far from the cameras. I'm not saying that to diminish this video in anyway,” writes Ta-Nishi Coates in “The Cops we deserve.” “But I'd like people to see this as part of a broad systemic attitude we've adopted as a country toward law enforcement. There's a direct line from this officer invoking his privilege to brutalize these students, and an officer invoking his privilege to detain Henry Louis Gates for sassing him.”

In treating violence on college campuses, and that directed at student protestors as exceptional and therefore deserving national attention, the conversation inadvertently normalizes and erases the much more commonplace violence experienced by black and brown youth in communities throughout the United States.  Worse yet, the emphasis on the students as undeserving in comparison to those “real criminals” advances a Jim Crow system of justice where the systemic level of state violence besieging America’s poor and communities of color is rendered as justifiable.  “Bridging communities is difficult, writes Erinn Carter. Yet “Connecting the day-to-day struggles of communities of color to the immediate violence of police brutality is something that groups must do if they are going to garner the support of the community.”  What happened at Davis and Berkeley is what happens in communities across America, where black and brown youth, where America’s poor, are subjected to the power of the state, a militarized police that holds in check those populations that are deemed surplus, undesirable, and suspect in the national imagination.

***

David J. Leonard is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Culture, Gender and Race 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). Leonard is a regular contributor to NewBlackMan and blogs @ No Tsuris.

James Braxton Peterson is director of Africana Studies and associate professor of English, Lehigh University. Peterson’s academic work focuses on Africana studies, narrative, graphic novels, and hip-hop culture. He is the founder of Hip Hop Scholars, LLC, an association of hip-hop generational scholars dedicated to researching and developing the cultural and educational potential of hip-hop, urban, and youth cultures. Peterson is a regular contributor to The Root.com and he has appeared on Fox News, CBS, MSNBC, ABC News, ESPN, and various local television networks as an expert on hip-hop culture, popular culture, urban youth, and politics.

It's Time to Form "99 Percent Clubs" in Your School or Neighborhood

It's Time to Form "99 Percent Clubs" in Your School or Neighborhood

by Mark Naison | special to NewBlackMan

If you part of a large and growing number of Americans who support the Occupy movement, but  may  or may not be able to “Occupy” yourself, you might want to form a 99 Percent Club at your school, your workplace or in your neighborhood, to organize financial, legal and political support  for the Occupy movement and educate people in your community about what it stands for.

The idea for these 99 Percent Clubs came from renowned educator Ira Shor  and they are modeled on the “Friends of SNCC” organization that mobilized support for the non violent Southern civil rights movement in the early 1960’s. Given that the Occupy movement is under assault from elected officials and university presidents around the country, and that people in this movement, like their counterparts in the southern civil rights movement, face arrest and beatings, along with more modern police weaponry such as pepper spray and rubber bullets,  it is definitely time to create  a support group to raise funds and educate the public about these brave activists.

A 99 Percent Club is one vehicle that can do just that.  We have called for a first meeting of such a club at Fordham and the response, from students, alumni, and staff has been overwhelming.  Our Fordham group does not have a program- just a commitment to support the Occupations. So far, nearly 30 people are committed to attend.

Occupy Wall Street and its counterparts around the nation have put the questions of economic inequality on the nation’s agenda for the first time since the 1960’s. And the response from policy makers has been ferocious as that of southern segregationists confronting a challenge to their way of life.

It’s time for Americans who support the goals of the Occupy Movement to mobilize in behalf of popular democracy and economic justice, even if they don’t feel they can participate in the movement directly. Forming 99 Percent Clubs is one way to do so.

If you would like to start a 99 Percent Club in your area, please email Ira Shor at irashor@comcast.net with a cc to me at Naison@fordham.edu.

***

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

Jay Smooth @ TEDxHampshireCollege | "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Discussing Race"

from TEDxTalks

Jay Smooth is host of New York's longest running hip-hop radio show, the Underground Railroad on WBAI 99.5 FM in NY, and is an acclaimed commentator on politics and culture.

In this talk, he discusses the sometimes thorny territory of how we discuss issues of race and racism, offering insightful and humorous suggestions for expanding our perception of the subject.

http://www.hampshire.edu/

WGBH-TV (Boston) | Basic Black Live: Michelle Obama and Election 2012

Basic Black Live: Michelle Obama and Election 2012
(Originally broadcast on November 18, 2011)

This Basic Black conversation is a focus on First Lady Michelle Obama, (and the significance of having a woman of color in that role), as well as what we can expect in regards to her participation in the 2012 election. Related to the 2012 election, we'll also take a look at African Americans and the use of social media.

Our panel: Callie Crossley, host of The Callie Crossley Show, 89.7 WGBH Radio; Kim McLarin, assistant professor of writing, literature and publishing, Emerson College; Phillip Martin, senior reporter, 89.7 WGBH Radio; Peniel Joseph, professor of history, Tufts University; and Mark Anthony Neal, professor of African and African American studies, Duke University and co-editor of That's The Joint: The Hip Hop Studies Reader, 2nd edition.

"It is so time for this": Council of Elders Stand in Solidarity with #Occupy Movement

"It is so time for this"--Gwendolyn Soharah Simmons.

Emancipate the NBA: Struggling for Justice in the NBA

"Basketball and Chain" (2003) Hank Willis Thomas

Emancipate the NBA: Struggling for Justice in the NBA

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan

I have been trying to write this column for several days.  I have thought and thought, and spent several hours writing, resulting in nothing.  I am just too angry.  My anger about the NBA LOCKOUT has nothing to do with the players.  I am actually proud of their courage and their refusal to kowtow in the face of pressure to accept an unfair proposal.  I am happy they told David Stern to file his ultimatum under “U” for unacceptable.  In fact, when I heard the news on Monday that the players indeed rejected the proposal, I found myself giving a little fist pump.  The prospect of a lost NBA season is disheartening at one level, yet I am encouraged by their refusal to accept an unjust economic arrangement. 

Despite a public narrative that continually focuses on money as the only issue of contention, the LOCKOUT isn’t simply about how to split NBA pie.  It isn’t about greedy, out-of-touch players that already make millions for playing a game (this idea is so disrespectful to not only their talents but their hard work and dedication).

Players have already given up billions of dollars when they apparently agreed to a 50/50 split (or thereabouts).   Yet that wasn’t enough for the owners.  Their proposal would dramatically restrict player movement, ostensibly ending much of free agency.  The LOCKOUT in many ways is an effort to roll back free agency, to overturn the legacies of Curt Flood and to create a system where owners don’t have to compete for the services of all players (Ric Bucher made this point eloquently). 

The proposed structural changes would dramatically alter the landscape of the NBA, severely limiting the options and free agency potential of NBA players.  In 2010-2011, where the players received 57% of basketball related income, the salary cap was $58.044 million; that year teams paid a tax at $70.307 million.  If the owners have their way, these numbers would fall to $50,915,789 for the cap and $61,672,807 for the luxury tax.  So what does this mean?  It means, that only 10 teams would be under the salary cap (these calculations include potential rookie salaries).  It means that 14 teams would be paying a luxury tax, which would be higher in the new system.  It means that the many teams that have empty roster spots would have little or no money to spend on free agents.  Faced with a luxury tax and only able to use a reduced exception that allows teams to exceed the salary cap, the new system is an assault on free agency and “free-market capitalism.”  It allows teams to ostensibly eliminate player leverage in getting the most possible money.      

NBA Impasse: Owners & the 'Help'

NBA Impasse: Owners & the 'Help'

by Marc Lamont Hill | Philadelphia Daily News

On Monday, the NBA Players Association formally rejected the NBA owners' most recent offer and unanimously agreed to dissolve the union and take the owners to court.

The decision virtually guarantees a protracted legal battle and places the 2011-2012 season on the verge of disaster. As this news settles into my brain, and with games already canceled through at least Dec. 15, I feel overcome by a range of emotions.

As someone who studies inequality, I can't help but resist the popular "billionaires vs. millionaires" narrative that has been attached to the labor dispute. That allows us to ignore the fact that the NBA (like America itself) is an institution built upon the exploited labor of black and brown bodies.

Despite agreeing to reduce their revenue share from 57 to 50 percent, the owners are still trying to squeeze more money from the players, not to mention compromise their long-term security by reneging on the owners' promise to yield on systemic issues.

The players might be rich, but the owners are wealthy. And they're committed to keeping it that way.

As a black person, I can't help but feel sickened by the tone of condescension that spews from the mouths of NBA owners.

Things to Consider While Occupying America

Things to Consider While Occupying America

by Timothy B. Tyson | special to NewBlackMan

If police officers leveling assault rifles at unarmed citizens were not so disturbing, folks in Chapel Hill might act like Sheriff Andy Taylor does whenever Deputy Fife misuses his service revolver. "Give me the bullet, Barn," he'd say.  Poor Barney fishes into his shirt pocket and forks over the shell.  

Chapel Hill is not Mayberry, but a big university town where law enforcement is dangerous and complex; we honor and support the men and women who protect us.  When our cops point assault rifles at our citizens, however, they imperil our values—not just our image--and court real tragedy.  We cannot pretend this was okay.  Whoever decided that our police officers should go in with assault rifles leveled at unarmed citizens needs to resign right this minute.      

Self-romanticizing hotheads are shouting, like the muddy peasants in Monty Python, “See the violence inherent in the system!  I’m being repressed!”  In the society of the globalized spectacle, front-page pictures of cops with AR-15s make their own fevered case.  To the extent to which those dystopian images speak the truth about us, we must change Chapel Hill; to the extent that they misrepresent us, we must tell our own truth still more loudly.

“Our police department responded,” Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt announced, “in a deliberate and measured way.”  In the next breath, he denied responsibility, saying that our council-manager system won’t let the mayor direct the police.  This is the classic hallmark of a politician who knows he landed on the wrong side.  In fact, he claimed, Police Chief Chris Blue did not brief him about the weekend seizure of a downtown building by a violent mob until Monday morning. 

Every parent can translate the mayor’s dubious narrative: this was not a mistake and I am not responsible for the mistake; in fact, I knew nothing about it.  Not once did my kids ever get the car keys back until they did better than that. 

Chief Blue’s decision to reenact the Normandy invasion also defies grown-up logic.  That goes double if he actually thinks a two-day building seizure by what he described as a threatening mob does not merit informing the mayor.  “Our deliberate response was appropriate,” he says. 

Uh, would either of you gentlemen care to try again?   

Lost Soul: Marvin Gaye Sings "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" on Playboy After Dark

Has the Hip-Hop Generation Squandered Black Music’s Legacy? On the November 21st Left of Black

Has the Hip-Hop Generation Squandered Black Music’s Legacy? On the November 21^st Left of Black

Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined via Skype© by Bill Banfield, the author of RepresentingBlack Music Culture: Then, Now, and When Again?  Banfield is a  composer, recording artist, musical director, scholar and Professor in the Music and Societies program at the Berklee School of Music. The Detroit native talks about growing up in the city that bred the Motown sound and highlights the significance of his relationships with communities of artists including composer T.J. Anderson.  Neal and Banfield also contemplate why younger generations are not knowledgeable of great music in history.  

Later Neal is joined by Nicole Fleetwood , Professor of American Studies at Rutgers University and  the author of Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality,and Blackness. Fleetwood and Neal discuss the promises and pitfalls of black iconic images, the photography of  Charles “Teenie” Harris, and the role that her grandmother played in having her consider how “blackness” is seen. Lastly, Fleetwood discusses the importance of a realist aesthetic in black art..  

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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.

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Follow Left of Black on Twitter: @LeftofBlack

Follow Mark Anthony Neal on Twitter: @NewBlackMan

Follow Bill Banfield on Twitter: @BillBanfield

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