HuffPost Live
Hip-hop artist Jean Grae joins Marc Lamont Hill and the community to discuss her two new albums, the launch of her new company, and the state of underground hip-hop today.
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Jay Z's Life+Times
JAY Z's Life+Times documents the evolution of legendary Los Angeles-based hip-hop label Stones Throw, from its beginnings with the late Charizma to South African new kid Jonti, performing here during his first U.S. tour. Founder Peanut Butter Wolf speaks on the history of his label, sharing old studio footage of himself and Charizma.
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Watch The Untouchables on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.
Watch The Untouchables on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.
Watch The Untouchables on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.
Watch The Untouchables on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
NewsClickIn
Prof. Vijay Prashad discusses with Prof. Aijaz Ahmad the recent developments in the war-torn African country of Mali. On January 11 this year, the French troops launched an offensive on Mali. Prof. Prashad questions the so-called "humanitarian visions" of France and places the French bombardement in Mali in the category of "resource wars". Prof. Ahmad calls the French involvement as "an old colonial hangover" and also, a strategy of expanding the Euro-American military presence in the African continent. Is Mali another Afghanistan in the making?
A documentary about the integration of the Duke University student body. Learn more at http://spotlight.duke.edu/50years.
Where Women, Education and Violence Are Concerned, Progress Is Not Inevitable
by Laurie L. Patton | HuffPost World
The trial of the accused began last week in the now world-famous rape case that transpired in New Delhi in December. The case sparked a month-long, highly public debate in India about safety for women. During that same period of December and early January, I took an administrative tour through China, Malaysia, Singapore, and India. As a Dean of Arts & Sciences I was interested in educational partnerships; as a scholar of South Asian culture I was interested in deepening some of my research ties. The rape of a woman in New Delhi occurred on December16th, two days before I left. Her case, and cases like hers, haunted the news as I traveled. I was in Delhi in early January at the time of the massive peaceful protests to the rape, the victim's eventual death, and the inadequate political response to the tragedy.
Rape is a Global Issue
The events are not in question: one mid-December evening, a young woman training to be a physiotherapist was returning from a movie, and boarded a bus that claimed to be "off duty" but which was filled with inebriated men. When she and her friend resisted the drunken advances of the men on board, she was brutally raped and her friend assaulted. She died of her injuries several days later. In response, peaceful but deeply angry protests erupted all over India to reform the rape laws; to change police practices in response to sexual harassment and assault of women; to increase the services available to women who are victims of a sexual assault, and to women more generally who must travel alone or at night.
Many Indian politicians have responded with extraordinary statements, such as: women should wear overcoats to school to protect them; women who are "painted" and go out at night must accept the consequences; women who cross a line of morality (lakshman rekha) must accept the consequences; women should say a mantra, hold the hand of their attackers and say they are their spiritual brothers. In response, the English language media in particular pilloried these statements, calling the political class completely out of step with current gender realities at best, and misogynist at worst.
What struck me about this case first and foremost was that, while India must deal with its own challenges internally, it is not alone and should not be stigmatized. When I left for my trip, recent elections had closed where two major American politicians had made unconscionable statements about rape -- one (Indiana Senate candidate Richard Mourdock) in which the pregnancy from a rape was something God intended to happen, and the other (Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin) claiming that there are "legitimate" and "illegitimate" rapes. I returned from my trip to the news that a girl in Ohio had been gang-raped by a football team, carried from party to party while unconscious. As in Delhi, protests in Ohio erupted at almost the same time. There is no shortage of reports of rape in all countries, developed or developing. While the heartbreak of India is real, rape is a global issue.
Women and Education is a Global Issue
There is another global issue which the Delhi case raises--one in which we seemingly have made great strides, but which also remains more elusive than ever: girls, women and education. It is a central part of the tragedy of the Delhi rape case that the young woman who was raped had moved to Delhi chiefly because of her wish to obtain an education as a physiotherapist.
We should not assume that there is only a narrative of progress when it comes to girls, women and education. Not so long ago, I believed this narrative of progress. When I was a young professor at Bard College, Adrienne Rich came to do a reading. She was everyone's role model and heroine. When I asked her what she wanted to pass on to the next generation, she said, "I hope that future generations do not forget the progress that my generation has made. I hope that they remember our contribution, particularly to women's access to education." I vowed, then and there, as I listened to her soft spoken words that day and her poetry that evening, that I would honor the previous generations and their fight for women's access to education.
But there was something unspoken and assumed in my conversation with Adrienne Rich that day. We both were speaking as if each generation would subsequently, almost effortlessly, make some kind of incremental inroads on the basic issues for girls and women: freedom of choice in all spheres of life, including access to health care, and, most importantly of all, to education. As more and more women become educated, the more we would be able to enter the public spaces of the work force, of politics, of government, of the academy. The more we would be able to walk the streets, take the subways, and climb on the buses.
In many ways, Adrienne Rich's and my narrative would be right. In many colleges there are more women than men, and this is an international trend. In many primary and secondary schools, girls are performing better than boys. More women have advanced degrees than ever before in history. And in even the difficult to crack STEM fields (science technology engineering and medicine), we see progress. Many entering medical school classes are made up of fifty percent women. Many biology departments have almost closed the gender gap.In some places in India, engineering colleges are seeing a sharp rise in women applicants.
And yet even with that progress in education, violence against women has not abated. There is a global backlash against this progress, this insistence that educated women are also women in the public sphere. And the backlash is in the news every day. The vulnerability of women in their struggle to achieve, maintain, and benefit from an education is indeed a global issue.
One need only register a travel log of news events as I made my way from China to Singapore to Malaysia to India in the last month to see the huge threat that women's education continues to pose to all sectors of society. When I left America in mid-December, the Iowa Supreme Court, in a 7-0 ruling, decided in favor of a dentist, who judged his highly competent and attractive female assistant a threat to his marriage and fired her. The woman was well trained and well educated. Instead of simply sitting down with employee and discussing how they might change the behaviors, the woman lost her livelihood. The employee paid a high price for being both educated and attractive.
As I traveled through China and Malaysia and Singapore, to visit universities there, women's access to education came up as the number one issue of concern to educators throughout both countries. In Malaysia, I visited many progressive Muslim organizations, and all of them had, as one of their major platforms, the role of girls and women in Muslim societies. I met women who were heads of research institutes, and who had achieved the rank of deputy vice chancellors of major universities who understood that whatever their achievement was, they could not see themselves as emblems of a "problem solved." Rather, the problem was reconfigured. As one woman scholar hosting a radio show put it to me, "My accomplishments don't solve anything. They only make me realize the vulnerability and courage of all women trying to become educated and use their education wisely."
Also in mid-December, while I was in Singapore, the news reported the release of Malala Yousufzai from a British hospital. Malala was an Afghani girl who was shot in the head for insisting that girls go to school. Her release has prompted a major global debate as to whether she is simply a pawn in a political game in which women and education are simply the "window dressing" for a much larger struggle. Afghans everywhere pointed to the apathy present about women and education when the cameras were turned off. And in the meantime, Malala will continue her fight, but she and her family have elected to stay out of the country for her safety. She is even more physically vulnerable at home because she has survived the attack.
Malala's case suggests that one answer that many people in positions of power around the globe provide to the "problem" of women and education is the Talibanization of girls and women who try to go to school, or benefit from school. Cover them up with overcoats or burkahs. Fire them if they are both educated and attractive in the workplace. Even if some societies admit women might obtain an education, they seem to be doing everything they can to make sure you don't see them in the process. And the ensuing debate about Malala's case also suggests that another response to the "problem" of education is a peculiar form of apathy; as women make strides in some areas they are heralded, the world is satisfied, and those who are struggling are ignored.
In our short conversation 20 years ago, Adrienne Rich and I assumed that getting an education meant finally existing in a public space, speaking in a public space, claiming the right to act and choosing to act in a public space. And 20 years later, many of us have claimed and lived those rights. But she and I were mistaken that entry into the public sphere would be a seamless result of the process of education. As I watched the news events unfold as I traveled, it became clear to me that the girls and women who want to obtain, continue, or benefit from their education are vulnerable. They might be in danger simply because they wish to do so in a society that denies them this right. Some are vulnerable because they cannot use their training without having their attractiveness and not their training become front and center. Some are vulnerable because they live in a city which can provide them an education but cannot guarantee their safety.
As I left India, the debate began as to whether the victim's family should reveal her name. Up to that point, the name given to her by the Times of India was "Nirbhaya," which literally means "fearless," partly because she fought back against her attackers. The English language press called her "Braveheart." While her name has since been revealed, I think of her still as "Nirbhaya," not only because she fought back in the bus, but because she was brave enough to pursue her dream of an education, and to claim her right to exist in public spaces. Nirbhaya is a sobering reminder that we cannot only tell a narrative of progress in the question of women and education. Rather, more realistically and effectively, we should tell a narrative of vigilance against powerful forces of retrenchment and apathy. That might be true fearlessness.
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Laurie L. Patton is Dean of Arts and Sciences at Duke University and Professor of South Asian Religions. She is the author or editor of eight books in South Asian culture and history, including two books of poetry and a translation of The Bhagavad Gita. She is currently completing a book on religion in the public sphere, and an ethnography of women and Sanskrit education in India. She is a regular blogger for Religion Dispatches and Patheos.
African Independence is a forthcoming feature length documentary (2013) covering the epic story of the most important events to happen on the African continent since enslavement and colonization by Europeans.
This film highlights the birth, realization, and problems confronted by the movement to win independence in Africa. The story is told by channeling the voices of freedom fighters and leaders who achieved independence, liberty and justice for African people. This film offers a unique presentation designed to enlighten and provide audiences with insights from Africans into the continent's past, present, and future. Through the lens of four watershed events—World War Two, the end of colonialism, the Cold War, and the era of African Republics— African Independence shows a unique side of Africa's recent history.
African Independence is hosted and produced by Tukufu Zuberi, known and respected by public television audiences across the US for his ten seasons of work on PBS's successful show History Detectives. Dr. Tukufu Zuberi is the Lasry Family Professor of Race Relations, and Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.
This film highlights the birth, realization, and problems confronted by the movement to win independence in Africa. The story is told by channeling the voices of freedom fighters and leaders who achieved independence, liberty and justice for African people. This film offers a unique presentation designed to enlighten and provide audiences with insights from Africans into the continent's past, present, and future. Through the lens of four watershed events—World War Two, the end of colonialism, the Cold War, and the era of African Republics— African Independence shows a unique side of Africa's recent history.
African Independence is hosted and produced by Tukufu Zuberi, known and respected by public television audiences across the US for his ten seasons of work on PBS's successful show History Detectives. Dr. Tukufu Zuberi is the Lasry Family Professor of Race Relations, and Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.
Monday, January 28, 2013
Democracy Now
Fruitvale tells the story of Oscar Grant, the 22-year-old Bay Area resident who was shot dead by a transit police officer in Oakland on New Year's Day in 2009. On Saturday, the film won both the U.S. Grand Jury Prize for Dramatic film and the Audience Award for U.S. Dramatic film at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah. First-time, 26-year-old director Ryan Coogler accepted the prizes at the Sundance awards ceremony.
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Left of Black S3:E16 | Dr. Luke Powery Discusses His New Book—‘Dem Dry Bones: Preaching, Death and Hope’
In a year marked by no less than sixteen mass shootings in the United States, including shootings at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado and a Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, the murder of twenty children and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut was perhaps the most tragic of exclamation points.
In the aftermath of the Sandy Hook murders, women and men of faith were challenged to make sense of what was so obviously senseless.
Throughout his career, preacher and scholar Dr. Luke A Powery, has attempted to strike the right chord with regards to the reality of death and the responsibility of those in the pulpit. In his new book Dem Dry Bones: Preaching, Death and Hope (Fortress Press), Dr. Powery writes, “In order to experience life, resurrection, or hope, one must go through death…yet in many contemporary churches, some preachers avoid dealing with death because they do not realize its vital connection the substance of Christian hope. Because of this denial of death, we are left with sermons that possess a weak pnuematology and are fundamentally hopeless.”
Dr. Powery, the first Black Dean of the Chapel at Duke University, sits down with host Mark Anthony Neal in the Left of Black Studios to discuss death, preaching, and hope in times of despair.
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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.
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Episodes of Left of Black are also available for free download in @ iTunes U
Saturday, January 26, 2013
Alfred For
Fashionistas and History aficionadi this is a must see event. In times of history redactions, half truths and grey realities Come See About Me: The Mary Wilson SUPREMES Collection sets you straight painting vibrant colors of Hopes, Dreams and aspirations realized during the 1960's & 1970's.
The exhibit, guest curated by Mark Anthony Neal (Duke University), runs at the African American Museum in Philadelphia until June 30th.
Friday, January 25, 2013
Democracy Now
It was four years ago this month that Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old African American, was shot to death by a Bay Area Rapid Transit police officer on New Year's Day in Oakland, Calif. Portraying the last day of his life, the new dramatic film "Fruitvale" has become one of the most talked-about films at this year's Sundance Film Festival. We're joined by the director, 26-year-old, first-time filmmaker Ryan Coogler, who works as a social worker at a juvenile-detention center in San Francisco.
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Al Jazeera English
Abdi-aziz Abdi-nur Ibrahim, a Somali journalist, has been detained without charge since January 10 for an interview he had conducted with a woman who says she was raped by security forces.
Tom Rhodes, of the committee to protect journalists, says "there are absolutely no legal grounds" with which to have detained Abdi-Aziz.
Speaking to Al Jazeera from Nairobi, Rhodes said "Abdi-Aziz has become a scape goat for security forces" who are trying to quell a story.
Tom Rhodes, of the committee to protect journalists, says "there are absolutely no legal grounds" with which to have detained Abdi-Aziz.
Speaking to Al Jazeera from Nairobi, Rhodes said "Abdi-Aziz has become a scape goat for security forces" who are trying to quell a story.
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
DemocracyNow
The new documentary, "Fire in the Blood," examines how millions have died from AIDS because big pharmaceutical companies and the United States have refused to allow developing nations to import life-saving generic drugs. The problem continues today as the World Trade Organization continues to block the importation of generic drugs in many countries because of a trade deal known as the Trips Agreement. We're joined by the film's director, Dylan Mohan Gray, and Ugandan AIDS doctor Peter Mugyenyi.
AlJazeera English:
The United States, along with Britain and France, are helping to transport French troops and equipment to Mali.
In central Mali, French and government troops are consolidating their hold on towns recaptured from the rebels in recent days.
Gerard Araud said French troops have helped government forces make significant gains in the towns of Doentza and Diabaly.
Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland reports from Bamako.
In central Mali, French and government troops are consolidating their hold on towns recaptured from the rebels in recent days.
Gerard Araud said French troops have helped government forces make significant gains in the towns of Doentza and Diabaly.
Al Jazeera's Jacky Rowland reports from Bamako.
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
NewsClick:
Professor Vijay Prashad discusses with NewsClick the Foreign Policy initiatives in the second term of Obama's Presidency. In the first term, Obama had come with huge expectations, with very liberal provisions on the table. But he could not live up to them. Professor Prashad feels that the Obama administration is following a Rightist Foreign Policy which has a temperamental outlook. It is re-tooled for a push around the world, to recover the lost ground by US.
Monday, January 21, 2013
DemocracyNow.org
Addressing the Peace Ball in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, the renowned author, educator and political activist Angela Davis urges those content with President Obama's re-election to continue pushing him for social change. "This time around we cannot subordinate our aspirations and our hopes to presidential agendas," Davis says. "Our passionate support for President Barack Obama ... should also be expressed in our determination to raise issues that have been largely ignored or not appropriately addressed by the administration."
1HoodMedia
Jasiri X and Paradise Gray of One Hood Media are Game Changers who are teaching young black men how to play the media game and control their own images. In this day of the Internet they don't need anyone's permission to blog or shoot their own videos, they control the vertical and the horizontal, and thus they realize the power that they have to change the way they are perceived in popular culture. It is a transformative moment when these students finally get in the game, they become Game Changers.
Game Changers was written and produced by Chris Moore for WQED TV.
Game Changers was written and produced by Chris Moore for WQED TV.
Thursday, January 17, 2013
DemocracyNow
Throughout its history, the National Rifle Association has portrayed itself as an advocate for individual gun owner's Second Amendment rights. But a new investigation finds the group has come to rely on the support of the $12-billion a year gun industry -- made up of firearms and ammunition manufacturers and sellers. Since 2005, the NRA has collected as much as $38.9 million from dozens of gun industry giants, including Beretta USA, Glock, and Sturm, Ruger & Co., according to a 2011 study by the Violence Policy Center. We speak with investigative reporter Peter Stone, whose latest article for The Huffington Post is "NRA Gun Control Crusade Reflects Firearms Industry Financial Ties."
The Stupidity Of New York's Long, Expensive (And Ongoing) War On Graffiti
by Adam Mansbach | special to NewBlackMan
Thirty years ago—at the height of New York City's "War on Graffiti," and in an act of faith utterly incommensurate with the city's public demonization of graffiti writers—a group of teenagers named SHY 147, DAZE, MIN and DURO met with MTA official Richard Ravitch, and proposed a deal. Give the writers of New York City one train line to adorn with their vibrant aerosol murals, and they would leave the rest alone. Let them paint for six months, then let the public vote on the merits of their contribution.
Ravitch suggested that if the writers wanted to contribute, he would give them all brooms, and hostilities resumed. The subway's exteriors have been art-free since 1989, but the war has never really ended. New York City remains rigidly opposed to the very aesthetic of graffiti—even if the art in question is perfectly legal.
Today, advertisers have learned to faithfully, if flavorlessly, appropriate graffiti's ethos of logo repetition, as anyone who has ridden the train lately can confirm. In the city that incubated the most important popular art movement of the 20th century, the message is clear: public space can be yours, if you pay for it.
Unless what you put there reminds them of graffiti, that is. I learned this last week, when I tried to buy space to advertise my new novel. The silver walls where "burners" used to blaze are now for rent; anyone willing to pay fifty thousand dollars to a company called CBS Outdoor can buy advertising "stripes" for a month. For considerably more, one can "wrap" an entire train in product messaging.
"The issue," CBS Outdoor wrote in an email, explaining why my proposal had been rejected, "is the style of writing. The MTA wants nothing that looks like graffiti."
Admittedly, my book title is rendered in colorful, flowing letters, by the Brooklyn artist Blake Lethem. Admittedly, this would not have been the first time Mr. Lethem's work had graced a train. But what exactly is the rubric by which the MTA judges a letter's graffiti-ness? At what stylistic tipping point does a word becomes impermissible to the same entity that has approved liquor adverts depicting naked women in dog collars, and bus placards featuring rhetoric widely condemned as hate speech against Palestinians? And if the NYPD defines graffiti as "etching, painting, covering or otherwise placing a mark upon public or private property, with the intent to damage," isn't a graffiti-style letter kind of like a robbery-style purchase?
All this might seem trivial, except that the War on Graffiti's tactics presaged a generation's experience of law enforcement and personal freedom. Mayor John Lindsay first declared war in 1972, and over the next 17 years, the city would spend three hundred million dollars attempting to run graffiti-free trains—this, during a period when the subway barely functioned and the city teetered on the brink of insolvency. Clearly, there was more at stake than aesthetics.
Those stakes become clearer when one examines law enforcement's public profiling of graffiti writers. They were described as "black, brown, or other, in that order," and vilified as sociopaths, drug addicts, and monsters. This was a fight over public space, and we would do well to remember that at the time the fight began, teenagers were also being arrested for breakdancing in subway stations, and throwing un-permited parties in the asphalt schoolyards of the Bronx. Taken collectively, these three activities also represent the birth of hip-hop, the single most influential sub-culture created in this or any country in the last half-century.
As historian Jeff Chang writes, the early 70s saw the politics of abandonment give way to the politics of containment in communities of color. The War on Graffiti is a prime example, and it midwifed today's era of epic incarceration, quality of life offenses, zero tolerance policies, prejudicial gang databases, and three-strike laws. The War on Graffiti turned misdemeanors into felonies, community service into jail time. It put German Shepherds to work patrolling the train yards; Mayor Koch once suggested an upgrade to wolves. Today, the city prosecutes hundreds of graffiti cases each year, and maintains a dedicated Citywide Vandals Task Force. Nationally, writers have been sentenced to prison terms as long as eight years, and ordered to pay six-figure restitutions. In other words, the war rages on.
One cannot help but wonder what might have happened if New York City had agreed to the naïve, visionary truce those four teenagers offered, 30 years ago now. With a handful of scholarships and a press release, might the "graffiti plague" have been alchemized into a landmark public art program, to be adapted by other cities with the same zeal that zero tolerance has been? Could thousands of lives have been altered, hundreds of millions of dollars better spent?
We'll never know, because the city didn't listen to its young people then. It didn't recognize graffiti as an outpouring of creativity and frustration, a simultaneous urge to beautify and destroy, to hide and be seen, that's every bit as complicated as being shunted to the margins of the American dream. Kids are still writing graffiti today, beautifully and badly, in every city in the world; New Yorkers taught them how to do it, but they've always understood why. It's not too late to listen to them now.
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Adam Mansbach is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Go the F**k to Sleep and the novel Rage Is Back, available now from Viking.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Huffpost Live:
The University of Arizona has introduced a minor in hip-hop studies. Does this represent a watering down of the traditional curriculum or a brave new intellectual turn?
Hosted by:
GUESTS:
- Charles Johnson (Los Angeles, CA) Blogger
- Davey D (Oakland, CA) Hard Knock Radio Host; Teaches Black Music & Hip-Hop at San Francisco State University @mrdaveyd
- Alexander E. Nava (Tucson, AZ) Professor of Religion; Taught First Class on Hip-Hop at University of Arizona
- Imani Perry (Princeton, NJ) Professor at the Princeton Center for African American Studies @imaniperry
- John Turner (Indianapolis, IN) Professor at Ivy Tech Community College @theprofessor_JT
Tuesday, January 15, 2013
Denzel Washington, Flight and ‘New Negro Exceptionalism’
by Usame Tunagur | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recently announced its 2013 Oscar nominations. Nominated in the Best Actor category for his strong performance in Flight(2012), Denzel Washington received his 6th Oscar nomination, making him the most nominated black actor. So far, he has won the hardware twice; one for Best Supporting Actor in Glory(1989) and another one for Best Actor in Training Day (2001).
In Robert Zemeckis’ film Flight, Denzel Washington plays the role of an alcoholic and an accomplished pilot; a character packaged with subtle clues hinting at a generational burden of representation and the possibility of a complex humanization. Whip Whitaker is an extremely skillful veteran commercial airlines pilot who pulls off a spectacular emergency landing, saving all but six of 102 passengers after an unheard of upside-down maneuver —a maneuver the nation’s top 10 pilots failed to achieve in flight simulations. Under normal circumstances, this would make him an instant hero. However, Whip is totally drunk and has serious amounts of cocaine in his veins during this flight. The rest of the film proceeds through Whip’s challenge with his addiction along with an NTSBinvestigation and a hearing that threatens him with prison time. Reminiscent of the young black pilot who crashes his plane during a Tuskegee training flight in Ralph Ellison’s short story Flying Home, Whip (also) has to come to terms with who he is not in the skies —a space historically cherished by many African Americans as an abode away from socio-political realities of oppression, violence and inequality— but rather on the ground, and finally rise up again in the vein of the mythological Phoenix.
Flight’s arc operates on a failure to accept and deal with addiction. Nevertheless, upon a closer reading, the core issue is control. Cynthia Fuchs writes in popmatters.com, “[Flight] makes it too easy to read addiction as a moral failing, a lapse of judgment that the rest of us might judge easily. But the issue is not morality. It’s not having control.” Possibly, hidden underneath Whip’s drug and alcohol addiction is an internalized reflex to control his black image. Throughout the film, Whip operates with an illusion of control. In an effort to help him, Whip’s recovering addict white girlfriend Nicole (Kelly Reilly) invites him to an AA meeting. Whip unwillingly obliges. In the middle of the AA meeting, Whip feels extremely uncomfortable with what he perceives to be preachy, and goes home alone. Later, when questioned by her, they argue and she leaves. Whip yells behind her “I choose to drink!” He actually yells at the audience too, as he almost directly faces the lens. This urge to underscore his control, by denying a major weakness, works against Whip accepting his lack of control. His motivation might be very well linked to a generational trait in which he has found himself; As his forefathers policed and categorized black images with brush strokes via “good vs. bad” or “positive vs. negative” binaries, Whip, a stone cold alcoholic, works really hard to project a positive image against fanning the fire of popularized and mediated black pathology.
Whip is the son of a Tuskegee airman who, after the Second World War, continued flying planes for his crop dusting business in Georgia. As Whip’s dad was a Tuskegee airman, it is highly probable his father and grandfather both would have been imbued by the ideology of the New Negro spearheaded by Booker T. Washington[1] among others. This movement was about laying the enslaved “old negro image” to death and reviving a “new negro image” predominantly by projecting and underscoring a highly positive imagery signified by “education, refinement, and money.” In his 1900 anthology, A New Negro for a New Century, Booker T. Washington states:
The negro of today is in every phase of life far advanced over the negro of thirty years ago. In the following pages the progressive life of the Afro-American people has been written in the light of achievements that will be surprising to people who are ignorant of the enlarging life of these remarkable people.
Military success by Black Soldiers on the battlefields—in the civil war, WW1 and others—was a key component of the New Negro image. As Henry Louis Gates, Jr. explains, “of this anthology’s eighteen chapters, no less than seven are histories of black involvement in American wars…” Living up to the New Negro image and exemplifying a masculine military might, Whip’s father would have ultimately added to the project of creating a purely positive representation.
Enter Whip Whitaker. This post-New Negro generation Blackamerican would have felt the burden of positive representation and projection embodied by his father. This burden might have added to an inability to accept his heavy alcohol and drug addiction. He couldn’t accept, let alone announce, his drinking problem, as this would have constituted race treason; Coming out as an alcoholic Black man would be almost backstabbing the image that New Negro Exceptionalism highlights. In 1904, Voice of the New Negro magazine published an article called The New Negro Man about the essential qualities —both in terms of character and physical features— of the ideal Black Men, along with 7 portraits.
This list did not have a category for a successful pilot who also happens to be an alcoholic, drug addict and an absent father/husband. These portraits were purely positive prototypes, which did not completely fit in with the complex and diverse realities of the black experience on the ground. As a member of a generation that happened to find the New Negro baton on their laps to continue the efforts to self-project a pristine image, Whip might have felt obliged to project only perfection. So, the more he diverted from the positive image packaging of this ideology in his day-to-day reality, the more introverted and self-denying he might have become.
After he leaves the hospital where he is treated for minor injuries caused by the emergency landing, in order to stay away from news reporters’ abuse, Whip hides himself in his father’s old farmhouse that was home to his crop dusting business. It is interesting that Whip goes through most of the film in this place that he’s been trying to sell for years. This desire to sell the farmhouse stems from a desire to move on from his past. But he actually has not sold it, as he has not moved on yet. It is not in the farmhouse that he faces his demons as the farmhouse is New Negro / Positive Image Projection Territory. Here, he drinks chronically. But he hides it like dirty laundry, instead of facing, humanizing, and challenging his experience. One night, while he is again heavily drunk in the farmhouse, he watches a home video he shot probably ten years ago where his father is playing football with his son.
This is the only time we see Whip, his father and son, three generations all together, within the same scene. Whip’s positioning here is powerful. He is watching two people on the screen from whom he is disconnected; one by death, the other by lack of responsibility. Whip knows deep down that he couldn’t live up to his father’s expectation of an archetypal black Hercules. He also sadly watches the result of that failure reflected in his lack of relationship with his own son. Whip’s addictions might be personal but their repercussions have a direct impact in his relationships, especially with his wife and son. Here, that lack of control deepens as the only way of seeing his son is through an old home video. The disconnect between the complex human being that Whip really is and the image he tries to project –flawless, successful, black man—creates a fragmented individual who is unwilling to face his domestic challenges. Furthermore, this moment of three generations in one scene is important since Whip’s son represents the post-Hiphop generation; the generation that stands on the other end of the spectrum.
Whip stands in between these two general historical traits; namely the New Negro and Hiphop generations. As the New Negro era was underscored by efforts of positive representation, the Hiphop era became a social canvas on which all shapes of black pathology were drawn all the while a prefigured “keepin’ it real” urban authenticity serving as its engine. On the one hand, Whip’s upbringing was fueled by New Negro Exceptionalism, on the other hand, his pilot career would have coincided with the Hiphop era. According to Akil Houston, “the Hiphop Generation(ers) are people whose birth years include the period between 1965-1984…[They] are the first to have grown up in a post-segregation United States. These are specific years although much of mass media would create the perception that anything connected to youth culture is the Hiphop Generation.” This timeframe was emblematized by crime, drug epidemic and urban marginalization –outcomes of Reaganomics–, ultimately popularizing “black pathology” nationwide.
As James Braxton Peterson powerfully argued on a recent TV interview, “there is a tremendous American appetite for Black Pathology.” Intensified media coverage of black-centered homicide and drug/alcohol addiction, typical of the Hiphop era, would have pressured Whip even more to hide his condition. Some Hiphop generationers glorified this pathology –either to criticize and call attention to its causes or to shock-and-awe—without any apology, at the same time fitting in to a limited and limiting “Black authenticity.” However, Hiphop generation’s discourse of confidence —different than the Black pride the New Negro espoused—was not available to Whip while growing up a Tuskegee man’s son, since he was born too early to become a part of the Hiphop Generation.
In this vein, it is interesting that Whip’s breaking point does not take place in the farmhouse. It rather happens in public. It was always for public perception that he felt obliged to self-project positively. Thus, the cathartic metamorphosis had to happen before them in the spirit of Baptism by fire. It is only in the public eye —whose gaze has historically created, situated, frozen, and interrogated black representations, also prompting black projections to challenge or undo them—that Whip breaks down, accepts his addiction and lack of control. For the first time, he metaphorically flies away from the confines of New Negro Exceptionalist self-representation. During the climax scene, he finally agrees to being an alcoholic and a drug addict. Outside of the farmhouse —the New Negro Territory— and before the judgmental gazes of the public, he taps into his own complex human existence in between his father’s and son’s generations. In other words, he carves a personal space for himself in between New Negro Exceptionalism and Hiphop “Keepin’ it Real” Limited Authenticity.
This referencing of facing one’s humanity and breaking off from self-imposed enslavement of image projection is further hinted at the very end of the movie. In the very last scene, Whip’s son visits him in prison and asks to interview him for his college application essay entitled “The Most Fascinating Person I’ve Never Met.” It is an emotional and powerful scene, watching a father face his long-avoided son. His son asks him “who are you?” Whip responds with “Who am I? That’s an interesting question.” As Whip begins to respond to his son’s question, credits roll; We as the audience are expected to continue the dialogue and fill in the blanks. Whip’s response clearly suggests an honest attempt at self-discovery. Leaving the rest of the dialogue undone points to a multiplicity of perception, in that, each one of us will have a different perception of who Whip really is. In addition, his son’s question about who he is triggers the reading of Whip’s humanity beyond singular definitions, hence deepening and complicating his identity, rendering it a combination of many attributes and experiences. Consequently, he is neither a black Hercules nor a black dissolute, rather a dynamic amalgamation. This epilogue then compliments the climax scene towards portraying Whip as occupying a more complex human space beyond New Negro’s representational burden.
Talking about prison, one sore aspect of Flightis how it underscores the prison system as an ideal rehabilitative abode for black pathology. Reminiscent of Denzel in Malcolm X, Whip announces to a number of prison mates that he is free for the first time in his life —being sober for about a year and taking control in his life. Even though this epilogue might work for Flight's plotline, it nevertheless whitewashes and distracts from the realities of the American prison system given its overall poor record of disproportionate incarceration, high recidivism and low rehabilitation rates. The prison system as a solution is suspect in the most modest assessment. In reality, in and of itself it might be viewed as a cause of the problem, instead of a solution, especially for the black community. A quick look into Michelle Alexander’s book New Jim Crow would be more than sufficient to get a glimpse into the realities of the prison system with its intricate connection to Blackamerican males. Hence, Flight’s almost rosy portrayal of the prison, which projects it as a desirable and a curing location for addiction and criminality, is problematic to say the least.
Considering the above reading into Whip Whitaker’s psychological motives vis-Ã -vis generational traits of black representation, especially given the fact that this is a high budget, Hollywood flick, Flightis commendable in referencing human complexity –although limited– in a black male body.
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Usame Tunagur works as a video producer at Everest Production whose mission is to create programming promoting diversity and multicultural celebration. His short films have received numerous awards and screened globally at various film festivals. He is also a recipient of the 2010 National Association for Multi-Ethnicity in Communications Award for the TV show, World in America.
[1] There are a number of important visionaries and leaders within the New Negro Movement, who happened to disagree on major points. The debate between W.E.B. DuBois and B.T. Washington is possibly the most well known among these. However, they all agreed on representing the race in the best light. Being a Southerner and a Tuskegee Airman, Whip’s father would have most probably been more drawn to a Washingtonian New Negro than a DuBoisian or later a Lockean one.
1HoodMedia
Hip-Hop Artist/Activist Jasiri X interviews Charles X. Cook, owner of One on One Personal Fitness, for GAME CHANGERS PROJECT. Charles tells the story of how he went from a highly recruited High School basketball player, to drug dealer, to federal prisoner for 17 years, to now the owner and operator of his own gym.
The GAME CHANGERS PROJECT is a national media fellowship program for emerging black filmmakers in partnership with community-based organizations dedicated to improving outcomes for males of color.
The GAME CHANGERS PROJECT is a national media fellowship program for emerging black filmmakers in partnership with community-based organizations dedicated to improving outcomes for males of color.
Monday, January 14, 2013
DemocracyNow
Today we remember the pioneering computer programmer and cyberactivist Aaron Swartz, who took his own life Friday at the age of 26. As a teenager, Swartz helped develop RSS, revolutionizing how people use the internet, going on to co-own Reddit, now one of the world's most popular sites. He was also a key architect of Creative Commons and an organizer of the grassroots movement to defeat the controversial House internet censorship bill, The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and the Senate bill, The PROTECT IP Act (PIPA).
Swartz hanged himself just weeks before the start of a controversial trial. He was facing up to 35 years in prison sneaking into the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and downloading millions of articles provided by the subscription-based academic research service JSTOR. We hear Swartz in his own words and speak to Harvard Law School Professor Lawrence Lessig, a longtime mentor and friend. "There are a thousand things we could have done, and we have to do because Aaron Swartz is now an icon, an ideal," Lessig says. "He's what we will be fighting for, all of us, for the rest of our lives." Lessig also echoes the claims of Swartz's parents that decisions made by prosecutors and MIT contributed to his death, saying: "This was somebody who was pushed to the edge by what I think of as kind of a bullying by our government."
Sunday, January 13, 2013
Left of Black S3:E15 | Filmmaker Byron Hurt Discusses His New Film Soul Food Junkies and Django Unchained
Byron Hurt’s late father was like the many Americans whose unhealthy diets led to a shortened lifespan. Alarmed by what he saw as a problem among African Americans, Byron Hurt, whose last film was the award-winning Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes decided to a more intimate look eating habits within Black communities. With Soul Food Junkies, Hurt travels from his New Jersey home to the deep South to find out more about Soul Food and its lasting effects on Black communities. Among those featured in Soul Food Junkies, which debuted on the PBS series Independent Lens on January 14th, are eco-chef and food activist Bryant Terry, Sonia Sanchez, Dick Gregory, Michaela Angela Davis, and Marc Lamont Hill.
On the Spring Premiere of Left of Black Byron Hurt talks to host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal about his journey to Soul Food Junkies, the connection between healthy lifestyles and Black masculinity, the challenges faced by Black documentary filmmakers and the controversy surrounding Quentin Tarantino’s new film Django Unchained.
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Left of Blackis a weekly Webcast hosted by Mark Anthony Neal and produced in collaboration with the John Hope Franklin Center at Duke University.
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Episodes of Left of Black are also available for free download in @ iTunes U
by Stephane Dunn | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
Practice saying this name and remember it: Quvenzhané Wallis. At nine years old, she is Oscar’s youngest nominee ever for best actress. Beasts of the Southern Wild, filmed in Mississippi and set in southern Louisiana, is Benh Zeitlin’s debut film, and this year’s little film that could. It’s nominated best director, screenplay, and best picture as well. I was intrigued by the title and trailer alone as it began to pick up steam in the afterglow of Sundance. I had some ambivalence too after exploring the synopsis and getting a glimpse. I went to see it alone one weekend afternoon in the fall. Two things became very clear in the first few minutes. Little Ms. Wallis, then only six years old, was absolutely mesmerizing; I literally could not take my eyes off her. And secondly, [I predicted] audiences would find it challenging to read, beautiful and haunting or extremely disturbing or an uneasy mix of all three as I did.
Zeitlin’s story about a fiercely proud, flawed father raising his daughter Hush Puppy [Mom has either abandoned them or died] in the squalor of the Bayou left devastated by the hurricane dares to play with symbolism and montage – a risky mix in our blockbuster, narrative happy, Hollywood film culture. In a larger sense, Beasts portrays a fiercely proud community’s challenge, even mocking, of the power of the hurricane and the levees. It is a community that clings admirably and blindly in some ways to a cultural identity and way of life inseparable from its geographical roots in the ‘Bathtub’ in southern Lousiana. The film does not unfold as an entreaty to help the still struggling Bayou – though certainly it highlights and reminds us of the storm’s inescapable devastation and trauma on the people. Instead, it tries to challenge what will presumably be our reading of the people and their home – dysfunctional, inappropriate, ignorant, needy etc. It doesn’t achieve this completely successfully as its dogged representation of the squalor and traumatized landscape almost overwhelms the film. It opens with shots highlighting the environment – the trash, the overladen shacks the daughter and father call home then settles on baby faced Wallis, wild haired and bare foot in a ratty shirt and underwear.
If these visuals throughout the film aren’t enough, the depiction of the father Wink – played utterly unrelenting and arrestingly by real-life bakery owner and newcomer to film, Dwight Henry, and the father and daughter’s relationship is enough to raise inevitable questions and invoke disturbance alone. The father is rough, harsh really; he pushes beyond what could be comfortably considered as tough love for the sake of toughening up his little girl for her survival. The little girl has to be at once submissive to him and dependent on him for food and shelter and protection yet extremely independent and self-efficient, and almost maternal in her stewardship of an ailing, emotionally inconsistent father. This, along with the provocative title ‘wild beasts of the southern wild’ and the stark physical portrayals was bound to illicit questions and charges. Does it exploit Hushpuppy, misrepresent the culture, the people, and the misfortune the hurricane brought on? Does it demonize poor people, especially African Americans, black men and, black fathers in particular and show black folk culture in a negative manner? Is the film merely an exhibition of white liberal glamorization of poverty – an easy charge to a film that privileges the stark neglect and lack characterizing the material lives of Wink, Hushpuppy and the other Bathtub inhabitants?”
African American audiences are understandably sensitive about film imagery of black fathers and black parenting in general since they are and have been demonized and associated with pathology and family dysfunction for so long. Buzz about a film depicting a “bad” or abusive black father can immediately put many African American viewers on the defensive and keep them away from a film as Precious, despite industry applause, and films before have proven. If the film has a white director then the scrutiny and concern intensifies.
Back in September, bell hooks, a cultural critic who has blessedly never shied away from telling it like she sees a film, critically acclaimed or not, took on the film in “No Love in the Wild,” observing that critics by and large were carried away applauding the wholesale endorsement of the film’s “compelling cinematography, the magical realism, and the poetics of space.” She argues that the film’s vibrancy is fueled by its “crude pornography of violence.” The film, she goes on, reinforces “patriarchal masculinity” as the Bathtub is a natural universe where the people are one with nature and the men, represented by the father, are unquestioned. Her charges are bolstered by the implications of the language – as Wink’s model of toughness is clearly gendered masculine and it is this he certainly tries to instill in his daughter. His highest praise of her is, hooks reminds us, “You’re the man.”
Beasts of the Southern Wild is indeed arresting poetry – visually – at points too much to the neglect of the story’s development. It reminds me of a point that hooks made about films years ago: A film can have strikingly conservative and radical elements. Beastshas troubling politics of representation as hooks argued insightfully and passionately. Yet, I would argue too, that despite other criticism to the contrary, it doesn’t merely indulge in mythologizing the moral dignity of poverty but rather wants to suggest the very real resilience of the human and cultural spirit of people in the midst of suffering and who are unapologetically proud of being folks whose identity is inextricable from their Louisiana, hurricane ridden, homeland and who would rather die rather than abandon that tie. The casting of non-actors from Louisiana helps to convey that genuine ethos.
Beasts of the Southern Wild is problematic and cinematically striking. It is an interesting piece of filmmaking with stunning performances, especially from Wallis and Henry. It does not go down easy; it presents an opportunity to extend the critical dialogue about the implications of cultural and class representations which Hurricane Katrina stirred up and beyond that to engage how it participates in the legacy of black male and female representation. Up until now, in contrast to the highly engaged Django, Beasts of the Southern Wild, hasn’t received nearly enough black critical consideration, whether enthusiastic or not, and has flown a little under the radar with popular movie loving African American viewers and not out of just ambivalence about the possible politics but the style as well as a film that registered perhaps as being artsy. Like The Help, it is being legitimized by Oscar, maybe the nominations will help fuel more black critical discussion about the film. Whether we see Beasts of the Southern Wild and engage it or not, a six year old black girl has made it a history making moment.
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Stephane Dunn, PhD, is a writer and Co-Director of the Film, Television, & Emerging Media Studies program at Morehouse College. She is the author of the 2008 book, Baad Bitches & Sassy Supermamas : Black Power Action Films (U of Illinois Press), which explores the representation of race, gender, and sexuality in the Black Power and feminist influenced explosion of black action films in the early 1970s, including, Sweetback Sweetback’s Baad Assssss Song, Cleopatra Jones, and Foxy Brown. Her writings have appeared in Ms., The Chronicle of Higher Education, TheRoot.com, AJC, CNN.com, and Best African American Essays, among others. Her most recent work includes articles about contemporary black film representation and Tyler Perry films.
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