Melissa Harris Perry talks with Shola Lynch, director of Free Angela and All Political Prisoners.
Sunday, March 31, 2013
The Bad Woman: A Review of Tyler Perry’s Temptation (Spoiler Alert)
by Ebony Utley | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
Tyler Perry’s Temptation gets a lot right in its portrayal of infidelity, but it gets a lot wrong in its portrayal of the main character, Judith. Infidelity is certainly not a new topic for Perry. You can pretty much pick a movie and someone is cheating inside his storylines. But Temptation is the first film of Perry where infidelity drives every aspect of the plot.
Brice and Judith fall in love when they are mere children. They marry when they are teenagers. The world happens to be a hard place. They are poor adults. Future years of unfulfilled dreams pave a path of resentment for Judith. Brick by brick, she follows the path out of her current life and into the strong arms of a wealthy, dark, handsome, dangerous stranger. Marrying young, accruing resentments, neglecting your partner, and having workplace opportunities are all contributing factors to infidelity. In the brief moments that we see Judith actually talking about relationships, her observations and advice are accurate. I’m not mad at the way Perry presented infidelity in the film. I’m not mad that the story was about a woman’s infidelity. I am mad at how Judith was punished for being bad.
Judith’s badness exists in stark contrast to her husband’s goodness. Brice is a good Negro. He works hard, he’s cautious about everything—work, sex, conflict, and life in general. He doesn’t have money or material things but loves his wife even if he doesn’t pay her a whole lot of attention. He’s a good man. In fact, Judith tells him exactly this before she breaks his heart, Tyler Perry style. Cue one of his angry Black woman scenes.
Judith, on the other hand, is bad even in a blouse buttoned to her chin and a wrinkled skirt to her ankles. She’s unwomanly in contrast to the women at work. She doesn’t care about appearances. She’s cold to her client. She’s impatient with her husband. Since she’s always thinking about the future, she can’t quite seem to appreciate what she has. And despite her dissatisfaction, she passively mentions her concerns but doesn’t fight for herself. I watched Judith on the big screen and wanted to be nothing like her.
Until she falls for Harley. With him, she expresses her righteous indignation. She stands up for herself. She makes plans to open her business. She becomes sexier. She is no longer a bad example of womanhood; she’s a badass. But her newfound agency is tainted by drugs and alcohol. Judith walks with confidence, money, and power only because another man gave it to her. The representation of Black femininity that I wish I saw more of, is presented as a facade. When Judith is at her most assertive, she’s battered for finding her voice. Perhaps, she would have died had her good Black man not come back to rescue her. Cue the entrance of a well-chiseled working-class back man from a Tyler Perry movie here.
It’s difficult for me to see Temptation without seeing Perry’s other films as context. Similarly assertive characters like Judith have also been punished for not being good girls. But being beaten is not the extent of it. Judith also contracts HIV. In the trailer, Judith’s mother warns, “He gon take you straight to hell.” After seeing the movie, am I supposed to interpret that hell on earth is having HIV? Harley’s ex-wife also had HIV and she declared (presumably because of it) that she would never find love again. Both arguments are wildly disrespectful to all the positive people living fulfilling lives.
In addition to reminding women that if they have an affair they may catch HIV, Temptation conveys three other problematic missives.
1. Your authority (even as a relationship expert) will be tenuous as long as you listen to your feelings.
2. The path to hell is paved with desire.
3. Women deserve punishment for their poor choices even if those choices have some good outcomes.
Judiths watching the film learn that choosing to prioritize your authority and recognize your desires (both of which are good) will lead to punishments on par with going to hell.
Ironically, nothing happens to Harley—the man who gave her HIV. He’s never mentioned again after Judith’s rescue. There are no consequences for his spread of the disease. Presumably he disappears with his talent, wit, charm, and money to seduce another woman. At the end of the film, Judith is alone and lonely, slightly hobbled and beaten down by life. Dressed überconservatively and on her way to church, she watches her ex-husband with his new wife and child.
The message is that men deserve their desires; women do not. Everything Judith learned about herself during her affair is seemingly undermined and undone in the face of her losses. Before and after the affair, she was never quite good enough. I concede that Judith finally got her marriage counselor practice, but now her work is all she has. Cue Tyler Perry single workaholic woman character here.
Bad women bear the brunt of punishment in Tyler Perry’s morality plays. Of course, any time a woman has unprotected sex, there is the risk of catching HIV, but Perry’s heavy-handed morality is disproportionately distributed. It’s Perry’s money and Perry’s movie. His conclusions are his prerogative, but as a woman who knows Judiths, it’s important to recognize that despite Perry’s fire and brimstone, being bad by someone else’s standards could actually be good for you.
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Ebony Utley, Ph.D. is an associate professor of communication studies at California State University Long Beach. She is currently working on her second book Shades of Infidelity (www.shadesofinfidelity.com) about women’s experiences with infidelity.
Saturday, March 30, 2013
On April 1st, Left of Black host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal will sit down with Akiba Solomon, managing editor of Colorlines Magazine and longtime Civil Rights activist and journalist Kevin Alexander Gray to talk about voting rights, Stop-and-Frisk policies and and the culture of rape.
Friday, March 29, 2013
Democracy Now
At a ceremony unveiling a statue in her honor last month, President Obama called Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus a "singular act of disobedience." But nine months before Parks' historic action, a 15-year-old teenager named Claudette Colvin did the very same thing. She was arrested and her case led to the U.S. Supreme Court's order for the desegregation of Alabama's bus system.
Now 73, Claudette Colvin joins us for a rare interview along with Brooklyn College Professor Jeanne Theoharis, author of the The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks. Theoharis says Parks' act of defiance may not have happened if not for Colvin's nine months before. Colvin says learning about African-American history in school inspired her act. "I could not move because history had me glued to the seat," she recalls telling the bus driver and the police officer who came to arrest her. "It felt like Sojourner Truth's hands were pushing down on one shoulder, and Harriet Tubman's hand pushing down on another shoulder."
Rick Ross is a Republican
by James Braxton Peterson | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
Rick Ross, not the crack-dealer-turned-CIA-agent, but the rapper, government name: William Roberts, is a Republican. He may not be a registered, card-carrying member of the GOP, but in lyrics from a recent mixtape feature, Ross squarely aligned himself with the Todd Akin wing of the Republican Party. First, he said something really ignorant (and dangerous) about rape – in this case, slipping drugs into a woman’s glass of champagne – unbeknownst to her of course, and then raping her without her knowing. Of course, the lyric equates this casual example of date rape with casual sex in the fantasy world of Rick Ross. Second, he then tried to qualify said comments in some fairly inane and ignorant ways – suggesting his rapper persona speaks/spits in fantasy and that he didn’t actually say the word “rape.” Sounds more like Todd Akin than the original “Freeway” Ricky Ross. But his lyrical “scorecard” as a rapper reads like a set of talking points for the Tea-party controlled Republican Congress.
He is certainly a member of the 1% with a reported net worth of 28 million dollars. He rhymes about his riches all of the time. Not sure how or if he pays his taxes, but the one percenters generally ride with the boys in red. As much as he raps about assault weapons and murdering (what must be young black men), he can’t be for background checks, ending straw purchases or the assault weapons ban. He’s better then Glen Beck at influencing consumers to buy gold. In fact if we believe him, “blowing money fast” is an aspirational attribute. His music label is named after an out-of-production high-end car model. The evidence is overwhelming. The “Bawse” is running with the elephants.
Obviously I am not the first to pull Rick Ross’ card – so to speak. Plenty of bloggers and music journalists have done so – like here: But while his audience and his critics seem to for the most part forgive him his various right wing proclivities, it seems as though these recent rape lyrics have crossed a line – hitting the gender nerve that’s been exposed by the conservative forces that are committed to trans-vaginal probes, restricting or abolishing reproductive rights and freedoms, and of course, legitimizing rape. Hip Hop activist, and former Green Party VP candidate, Rosa Clemente and others have initiated a campaignto shame Rick Ross. She is right. Whether these lyrics are fantasy or we’re supposed to believe everything rapper, Rick Ross, says, the lyrics reflect the rape culture underwriting too many recent horror stories in REALITY.
We live in a world where women are brutally gang-raped on buses, carted around town by High School football players, unconscious, raped and recorded on smartphones by kids who tweet the images – proudly. In this world, the real world, rape culture is consuming the lives of women, girls, and the sad men and boys who perpetrate these crimes, mostly free from prosecution. In these political and real-world environments, rape fantasy rap is just another sick sinister contribution to the rape culture against which should all stand.
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James Braxton Peterson is Director of Africana Studies and Associate Prof of English at Lehigh University, and a MSNBC Contributor.
by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan (in Exile)
I hate Marshall Henderson. There I said it. I realize that my disdain for all things Marshall ran deep recently, where I couldn’t help but sit in front of the television to watch Ole Miss-Florida in the SEC tournament finale. I am more likely to watch the Real Housewives of Iowa than an SEC basketball game, yet it was must see-TV because of my disdain for Marshall Henderson.
But let me clear, I am not a hater. In fact, my feelings have nothing to do with Marshall Henderson. I don’t know the man. Nor do I have an investment in his daily performance.
My thoughts about Henderson have as much to do with the myopic celebration of his accomplishments, “colorful” personality, and “swagger” given the sordid history of integration at Ole Miss. Given the “ghosts of Mississippi,” and given the historic mistreatment directed at African American students at this “rebel campus,” it is telling that Henderson has elicited praise. It is telling that he has been elevated at the expense of his teammates, erasing their contributions to the team.
My emotional reaction is not about Henderson himself but the narrative, the media coverage, and the double standards that he is embodies. “Marshall Henderson is the Charlie Sheen of college basketball – an unapologetic poster-child of white privilege,” notes Charles Moriano. “Despite a litany of on and off-court behavior that normally send sports media pundits into “what about the kids” columns with African-American athletes, Henderson has been most often been described as ‘passionate’, ‘colorful’, and ‘entertaining’.” Greg Howard describes the double standards that anchor the media response:
He messes with any racially essentialist expectations of what a white basketball player is supposed to be. He's an incessant shit-talker who tosses up 30-footers, rarely passes, and has a conspicuous lack of "hustle" stats. He tokes an invisible joint after made three-pointers…Marshall Henderson by all rights shouldn't exist. And if he were a black athlete, he wouldn't—not as far as big-time basketball is concerned.
My contempt is about the public persona that he has created along with a media that seems not only OK but rejoicing in behavior that has become the basis of the sports-punditry-hater-industry when it comes to today’s black athletes.
Matt Rybaltowski is illustrative of everything I loathe about the Marshall Henderson story: “In an age of political correctness and the contrived sound bite, Marshall Henderson is an anomaly, a free-spirit college basketball hasn't seen since Jason Williams brought his killer crossover to Gainesville in the late 1990s. Dating back even further, it's not a stretch to consider Henderson a Bill Walton in a shooter's body.”
Sports pundits are incapable of offering comparisons that are not racially segregated. Whereas Bill Walton loved the Grateful Dead, protested the Vietnam War (he was even arrested during his junior year), and joined Kareem Abdul Jabbar and others in support of the civil rights movement, Henderson loves playing quarters and his “hoes.” I guess we can say Henderson protested injustice, calling those coaches who didn’t vote him first team all-conference as losers. Comparing Henderson to Walton is like comparing Justin Bieber to Eric Clapton; white and involved in same vocation.
Whereas black ballers are continuously criticized for selfishness – “there is no I in TEAM” – Henderson’s aspiration to “get his money” or his propensity to taunt fans is a sign of his being free spirit. He is celebrated for saying what is on his mind even if his mind seems to begin and end with himself. It is a striking moment of hypocrisy where not only does Henderson get a pass for his trash-talking, self-promotion, and his shot selection, but when he is imagined as exceptional. In an age of media scrutiny, where (black) athletes are routinely criticized for deviating from the prescribed scripts, it is striking that he is celebrated by the same media that makes millions off telling today’s (black) student-athlete to shut up and play.
This past fall, Cardale Jones, a student-athlete at Ohio State University, had the audacity to tweet: “Why should we have to go to class if we came here to play FOOTBALL, we ain't come to play SCHOOL classes are POINTLESS.” Not surprisingly, he was pillared, critiqued, and cited as evidence of what’s wrong with today’s student-athlete. There were no headlines about his refreshing challenge to political correctness and no celebratory articles about his free-spirit and the passion Jones has for his sport.
Marshall Henderson has had more collegiate addresses than John McCain has homes. He has taken his talents across the nation, playing in multiple time zones. He is the Bobby Petrino of collegiate basketball. Over three years, he has attended the University of Utah, Texas Tech University, South Plains Community College, and Ole Miss.
Yet, the story told has not been one of a checkered past or an ability to commit, but instead one worthy of celebration. He has travelled a difficult road in search of his dreams. Despite a Kardashian-esque level of commitment, Henderson’s road to the NCAA tournament has come to signify his “rags-to-riches” story of redemption. His past is evidence of the difficulty he has overcome and why ultimately we should love him.
He is praised for individuality and for his refusal to accommodate societal demands. Henderson shares in this celebration, noting, “That’s just who I am, on and off the court, I like to wear my hat, my hoodie and some shades.” Yet, as Moriano notes, his ability to be himself, to express his own individuality is the essence of white privilege. “Young African-American men have no such luxury – on or off the court. At worst, wearing a hoodie can help get you killed like Trayvon Martin, and on just an average New York City day, it will get you ‘stopped and frisked’.”
Henderson is praised for the “joy” and “passion” he plays with, yet every athlete is not created or critiqued equally. Not every athlete is entitled to taunt Florida fans, to shoot with reckless abandonment. Irrespective of fact that he shoots almost 15 shots a game, or fact that he shoots less than 40% from the field, he is depicted as scorer and an offensive talent. He is the 14thleading scorer in Division 1, yet has the lowest shooting percentage of any player in the top 40.
The fact that he shoots and shoots and shoots is a sign of fearlessness and passion as opposed to arrogance and selfishness. Henderson, despite embracing the aesthetics and practices long associated with hip-hop and blackness, is imagined as “breath of fresh air for an American public “‘tired of trash-talking, spit-hurling, head-butting sports millionaires.’” He is the walking embodiment of “everything but the burden.” According to CL Cole and David Andrews, “African American professional basketball players… are routinely depicted in the popular media as selfish, insufferable, and morally reprehensible.” Henderson is not burdened but instead celebrated for his “swagger” and “passion.” Each and everyday he is able to cash in on his whiteness.
Yes, his whiteness. While his father Native American, and while his twitter name, reps his indigenous identity, in the world of basketball, whereupon blackness is imagined as “normative,” as “non-black baller” he becomes white before our eyes. He has a white pass, one he plays every time he sticks out his tongue or taunts an opponent. And he seems quite aware of his white privilege.
"It's a freaking game. It's a basketball game. People take it so seriously that it's funny for a little white guy like me to just come around, talk trash to people and the fans,” notes Henderson. “Like, what are you going to do in the stands? What am I going to do on the court to you in the stands? It's funny just to mess with people.”
While Henderson imagines himself as a victim, who is criticized because he is “a little white boy” who “talk trash to people and the fans” in the end he is lovable villain, a person worthy of celebration. He, unlike those other trash talkers, is a good kid and therefore should be judged unfairly because of them.
The privileges cashed in by Henderson are not limited to the basketball arena. In 2009, according to a statement given to the secret service, Henderson, then a senior in high school, used “$800 of counterfeit money given to him by a friend to buy 59 grams of marijuana in two separate transactions.” With help from his coach and father, he was able to plea to a forgery charge, which led to a probation sentence. While at Texas Tech, Henderson violated his probation by testing positive for alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine, serving 25 days in jail along with 7 weekends of work release.
Yet, he kept on playing basketball.
Compare his experience to two other African American student-athletes at Ole Miss. Coach Andy Kennedy dismissed Dundrecous Nelson and Jamal Jones, following an arrest resulting from an officer discovering “eight roaches of marijuana made from cigarillos.” While Jones was released, both were dismissed from the team. As with Tyrann Mathieu, Nelson and Jones were held accountable in ways Henderson can only imagine.
Headline after headline, commentator after commentator depicts Henderson as hated, polarizing, and a villain. Yet, this is our problem. We have problems with him because he has a “chip on a shoulder” because he has swagger. He is not a problem. We just need to learn to love him. I wonder when the level of understanding will be demanded for those “hated,” “polarizing” trash-talking ballers with a swagger, who are African American? Maybe that is part of the post-racial fantasy we keep hearing about; until then I will just keep hating Henderson or at least the stories we tell and sell about him.
Postscript
Henderson’s Ole’ Miss squad lost in the 2nd round of the NCAA. Despite all his behavior, including giving fans the finger, some in the media celebrated his contributions to the tournament. I for one am glad to see his exit because the hypocritical narrative was simply too much.
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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. Leonard’s latest book After Artest: Race and the Assault on Blackness was just published by SUNY Press.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
FemGeniuses
Sex without consent is RAPE...that's what you should know. Sex without consent is RAPE...that's what WE know. Rick Ross, it's a SHAME that YOU don't know.
In order of appearance: Kaila Story and Jai, Derrick Jones, Shanelle Gabriel, Sofia Quintero, and Tanisha C. Ford.
If you are interested in supporting the "Shaming of Rick Ross" campaign send your video clip to
femgenprof@gmail.com
In order of appearance: Kaila Story and Jai, Derrick Jones, Shanelle Gabriel, Sofia Quintero, and Tanisha C. Ford.
If you are interested in supporting the "Shaming of Rick Ross" campaign send your video clip to
femgenprof@gmail.com
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
FemGeniuses
Sex without consent is RAPE...that's what you should know. Sex without consent is RAPE...that's what WE know. Rick Ross, it's a SHAME that YOU don't know.
In order of appearance: Brittney Cooper, Darnell L. Moore, Khadijah Nadirah, Regina N. Bradley, David J. Leonard, Heidi R. Lewis, Mark Anthony Neal, and Treva B. Lindsey.
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If you are interested in supporting the "Shaming of Rick Ross" campaign send your video clip to
femgenprof@gmail.com
In order of appearance: Brittney Cooper, Darnell L. Moore, Khadijah Nadirah, Regina N. Bradley, David J. Leonard, Heidi R. Lewis, Mark Anthony Neal, and Treva B. Lindsey.
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If you are interested in supporting the "Shaming of Rick Ross" campaign send your video clip to
femgenprof@gmail.com
HuffPost Live:
Despite a struggling industry, Justin Timberlake's album sold more than 960k copies in it's first week. Are white artists the only ones who can sell black music?
Guests:
- Rich Juzwiak @RichJuz (New York, NY) Writer at Gawker
- Imani Perry @imaniperry (Princeton, NJ) Professor at the Princeton Center for African American Studies
- Jamilah King @jamilahking (Brooklyn, NY) News Editor and Media Reporter at Colorlines
- Jawn Murray @JawnMurray (Washington, DC) Editor-in-Chief of AlwaysAList.com
- Justin Moore (Philidelphia, PA) Entrepreneur
Al Jazeera English
There is outrage in Chicago over plans to close more than 50 public schools - most of them in poor and minority neighbourhoods.
Chicago's Mayor Rahm Emanuel says the closures are tough but necessary in order to deal with a $1bn deficit and what he called "underutilised" schools. He also says the change is necessary to provide students with a better education.
But an analysis by the Chicago Sun-Times shows that just one-third of students will be sent to schools that are deemed to be better-performing.
And the majority of the school closures will be taking place in poor minority neighborhoods prompting critics, including the Chicago Teacher's Union, to call the policy "classist and racist".
So, what motivated the city's decision and what does it mean for the tens of thousands of students who will be forced to relocate?
To discuss this, Inside Story Americas with presenter Shihab Rattansi is joined by guests: Michael Klonsky, the national director of the Small Schools Workshop - a consulting firm helping school districts create smaller learning institutions; Jitu Brown, an education organiser at the Kenwood Oakland Community organisation; and Jason Richwine, a senior analyst at the Heritage Foundation which specialises in education policy.
Chicago's Mayor Rahm Emanuel says the closures are tough but necessary in order to deal with a $1bn deficit and what he called "underutilised" schools. He also says the change is necessary to provide students with a better education.
But an analysis by the Chicago Sun-Times shows that just one-third of students will be sent to schools that are deemed to be better-performing.
And the majority of the school closures will be taking place in poor minority neighborhoods prompting critics, including the Chicago Teacher's Union, to call the policy "classist and racist".
So, what motivated the city's decision and what does it mean for the tens of thousands of students who will be forced to relocate?
To discuss this, Inside Story Americas with presenter Shihab Rattansi is joined by guests: Michael Klonsky, the national director of the Small Schools Workshop - a consulting firm helping school districts create smaller learning institutions; Jitu Brown, an education organiser at the Kenwood Oakland Community organisation; and Jason Richwine, a senior analyst at the Heritage Foundation which specialises in education policy.
Tuesday, March 26, 2013
Democracy Now
In this year marking the 150th anniversary year of the Emancipation Proclamation, Democracy Now! speaks to NY1 anchor Cheryl Wills who uncovered the story of her great-great-great grandparents, Sandy and Emma Wills. Sandy was a slave who escaped from his master and joined the United States Colored Troops to fight in the Civil War. Wills based her book, Die Free: A Heroic Family Tale on thousands of documents from the National Archives. The book's title comes from a quote by Frederick Douglass: "Who would be free themselves must strike the blow. Better even die free than to live slaves." We speak to Wills one day after the United Nations marked its 6th annual International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
Free Angela and All Political Prisoners in theaters April 5, 2013.
Order tix: http://m.amcurl.com/0aXI
"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" Performed by BLACK ICE. Inspired by the Motion Picture Free Angela and All Political Prisoners.
FREE ANGELA is a feature-length documentary about Angela Davis. The high stakes crime, political movement, and trial that catapults the 26 year-old newly appointed philosophy professor at the University of California at Los Angeles into a seventies revolutionary political icon. Nearly forty years later, and for the first time, Angela Davis speaks frankly about the actions that branded her as a terrorist and simultaneously spurred a worldwide political movement for her freedom.
http://www.freeangelafilm.com
"The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" Performed by BLACK ICE. Inspired by the Motion Picture Free Angela and All Political Prisoners.
FREE ANGELA is a feature-length documentary about Angela Davis. The high stakes crime, political movement, and trial that catapults the 26 year-old newly appointed philosophy professor at the University of California at Los Angeles into a seventies revolutionary political icon. Nearly forty years later, and for the first time, Angela Davis speaks frankly about the actions that branded her as a terrorist and simultaneously spurred a worldwide political movement for her freedom.
http://www.freeangelafilm.com
Monday, March 25, 2013
Rosa Alicia Clemente is a community organizer, journalist Hip Hop activist and the 2008 Vice-Presidential candidate with the Green Party. She has been a featured keynote speaker, panelist, and political commentator all over the United States. In 1995, she developed Know Thy Self Productions, a speaker’s bureau for young people of color.. Clemente is currently working on her first book, When A Puerto Rican Woman Ran For Vice-President and Nobody Knew Her Name. She is a doctoral candidate in African American Studies at the University of Massachusetts--Amherst.
Democracy Now
As Washington lawmakers pushes new austerity measures, economist Richard Wolff calls for a radical restructuring of the U.S. economic and financial systems. We talk about the $85 billion budget cuts as part of the sequester, banks too big to fail, Congress' failure to learn the lessons of the 2008 economic collapse and his new book, "Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism." Wolff also gives FOX news host Bill O'Reilly a lesson in economics 101.
Left of Black S3:E23 | Dave Zirin on the Intersections of Sports, Labor and Sexuality
Host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined, via Skype, by sports commentator and social critic Dave Zirin, author of the new book Game Over: How Politics has Turned the Sports World Upside Down (The Free Press).
Host and Duke University Professor Mark Anthony Neal is joined, via Skype, by sports commentator and social critic Dave Zirin, author of the new book Game Over: How Politics has Turned the Sports World Upside Down (The Free Press).
Zirin, who is a regular contributor to The Nation, is the author of several books including A People’s History of Sports in the United States, Not Just A Game: Power, Politics and American Sports, and Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics, and Promise of Sports. Zirin is also the co-author of the John Carlos Story (2011).
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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 Blackare also available for free download in @ iTunes U
Democracy Now
The eyes of the financial world are on the small Mediterranean island of Cyprus today. The government of Cyprus has brokered a last-ditch $13 billion bailout deal with European officials to stave off the collapse of its banking sector. Under the deal, all bank deposits above approximately $130,000 will be frozen and used to help pay off the banking sector's debts. An earlier version of the deal collapsed last week when Cypriots took to the streets to protest paying a tax of up to 10 percent on their life savings. The plan led to mass demonstrations as well as panicked bank withdrawals as Cypriots rushed to protect their savings.
"It's a demonstration of people power in this little corner of the world that's very impressive and the basis, I think, for some optimism about opposition," says Richard Wolff, economics professor emeritus at University of Massachusetts, Amherst and visiting professor at New School University. He is the author of several books including most recently, Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism.
via Paul Gibson
RALLY TO SAVE BLACK STUDIES at Temple University held on March 20, 2013 by the Organization of African American Studies Graduate Students of Temple University. Various speakers including Dr. Molefi K. Asante, Dr. Anthony Monteiro, former graduate students and community activists.
from: The Organization of African-American Studies Graduate Students & Department of African American Studies at Temple University
Supporters of African American Studies
In Temple’s 25th anniversary year of the doctoral program, the Department of African American Studies is currently in receivership. Previous faculty nominations for a Chair have been dismissed and an external Chair search has been denied by Dean Soufas of the College of Liberal Arts. We are asking your support in maintaining the agency of our program and the respect of professors in this discipline. Discrepancies over the department being able to elect their own Chair/ leadership has been an ongoing struggle since spring 2012. Ultimately the Dean is disrespecting our faculty's rights, our department's intent to have a qualified Chair of its choosing, the black students of Temple, and the larger Philly black community.
We are asking for your support in: (1) demanding the dean acknowledge the will of the faculty during this chair selection period or (2) grant the department an external Chair search and hire.
Here is the link to sign the petition https://www.change.org/petitions/supporters-of-black-studies-support-african-american-studies-at-temple-university#
In Temple’s 25th anniversary year of the doctoral program, the Department of African American Studies is currently in receivership. Previous faculty nominations for a Chair have been dismissed and an external Chair search has been denied by Dean Soufas of the College of Liberal Arts. We are asking your support in maintaining the agency of our program and the respect of professors in this discipline. Discrepancies over the department being able to elect their own Chair/ leadership has been an ongoing struggle since spring 2012. Ultimately the Dean is disrespecting our faculty's rights, our department's intent to have a qualified Chair of its choosing, the black students of Temple, and the larger Philly black community.
We are asking for your support in: (1) demanding the dean acknowledge the will of the faculty during this chair selection period or (2) grant the department an external Chair search and hire.
Here is the link to sign the petition https://www.change.org/petitions/supporters-of-black-studies-support-african-american-studies-at-temple-university#
Sunday, March 24, 2013
It’s Just a Song?
by Guthrie Ramsey | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
A while back I had my undies knotted up about all the social and print media coverage that the film Django was getting from the critics. I asked publicly and honestly why a project that many found so fraught was getting all of that digital ink. In my view, there were so many other cultural expressions to engage. The critic and scholar David Leonard provided a satisfying response when he said that mass mediated work of that magnitude provided him—someone who lived outside of a major cultural center—a way to speak about the issues he cared about to a large audience, knowing that many had also seen/heard a work in question. In social media years, the Django controversy seems like about a decade ago.
Although the Chinese calendar says it’s the year of the snake, we, in the Western hemisphere know that it’s clearly the year of Mrs. Beyoncé Carter, whose energy, marketing muscle, talent, female pulchritude and every rump shake creates its own bibliography and outcry. Her literal behind is famous and probably has an insurance policy. As a historian, I resist following the crowd for topics to think about, but as a professor with a group of undergraduate scholars to teach in my American Musical Life course, her ubiquity allows facile connections with large issues of social, musical, and historical analysis. Beyoncé-course and its discontents provide a great platform to introduce music production and meaning of the 20th and 21stcenturies.
I was minding my own business when a young scholar Regina Bradley sent me her blog “I Been on (Ratchet): Conceptualizing a Sonic Ratchet Aesthetic in Beyoncé’s “Bow Down,” which takes up Beyoncé’s new recording with the provocative hook “Bow Down, Bitches.” Bradley’s piece and its embedded links gave me a primer in ratchet discourse and introduced me other scholars who have discussed it. Regina does an admirable job analyzing the intertextualities and prior texts of the lyrical, instrumental and discursive aspects of the recording. Shortly thereafter, another young scholar, Maco Faniel sent me his highly contextualized blog “I am from that H-Town, I am Coming Down: Bow Down (Respect Us and Understand us in Context.” Faniel writes ethnographically about Houston’s early 1990s hip hop scene (which was a backdrop for Beyonce’s formative years), offering an informed window into this recording as it references site specific personalities, sonic conventions, and social attitudes from a vibrant historical moment. I appreciate this reading as it resonates with my own work on music and migration in the mid-20th century. Black southerners have never believed that northern media-scapes were superior to their own—just different.
And there was much more written. Judging from the amount and intensity of the Twitter feeds, blogs, Facebook posts, and email exchanges, we’ve got a live one here. Concerns about “Bow Down” have run the gamut. Was it appropriate feminism? Were her distracters simply “hating,” in predictable, garden-variety ways? Were her defenders standing up for feminist complexity? Shouldn’t we celebrate a very visible and obviously quite busy sistah’s moment to get her ratchet and nostalgic on in peace (and in front of a global audience base)? Were her critics dissing her black southern hip-hop roots, a tendency found in much pop music criticism? Shouldn’t she be allowed to speak back to her relentless critics--why did she lip synch?--why did she have to call it the “Mrs. Carter” tour?--why did her documentary have that infomercial feel?--why did she dress so scantily and gyrate so, so . . . during the Super Bowl? Add up all this constant pestering to that pile of dishes and diapers she probably has to wash in Mr. Carter’s house /and/ mix in the expectation to look glamorous even at the corner bodega together with the pressures of running a global pop music empire designed to keep her every artistic utterance before the masses while at the same time being fiercely private? You’d probably want to call out a few bitches, too. Plus, isn’t this “just a song” anyway, as one of her defenders claimed in a post?
Well, songs are important, and here’s why.
I define a song as a collision of structure, circumstance, and experience. They are incredibly powerful things, particularly when they are mass mediated. They do meaningful cultural work, and that’s why we care. The musicologist Carolyn Abbate wrote that “musical sounds are very bad at contradicting or resisting what is ascribed to them . . . . they shed associations and hence connotations so very easily, and absorb them, too.” In Race Music: Black Culture from Bebop to Hip-Hop I wrote that musical styles and social identities are a lot alike in that they are both processes that signify in the social world. And further, social identities share an important attribute ascribed to musical sounds: connotations and associations about identities are “very easily absorbed.” It’s part of the magic.
For these reasons, and in the tradition of Grimm’s fairy tales, “Bow Down” for me is both gift and poison. I’m curious about the structure of the track, its mode of production, the maker of the beat, its chop and screw elements, its three modes of timbral address in the vocals. On the formal elements of this song, both Bradley and Faniel have more than sufficiently described the “circumstance” of this song—its historical and geographic identity. At the same time, I find the sentiment of the lyrics—the emotional focal point of a song for a majority of listeners—are sophomoric, unfortunate, and, perhaps, even worse.
But, really—it’s just a song, one might still insist. Structures (lyrics, melody, harmony, timbres, rhythms, textures, technologies) are merely abstract principles. And, true: circumstances (the historical and geographic location where these structures form can always be appreciated as insider, local knowledge. We’ll always have to work diligently to discover and “hear” those meanings. Yet my third element of what constitutes a song—experience—allows, and, in fact—insists on thinking about how many other ways songs are made in and, indeed, make other contexts, other social worlds.
Here’s another context for why this song, circulated by one of the most mass-mediated pop platforms on planet Earth is lost on this listener. I learned about and experienced our inauguration singer’s latest installment in the following context.
I never like to see news trucks in my neighborhood unless they’re documenting some special performance in our modest band shell in the park. This morning on my way to catch the G train hustling to my favorite local café, I see the trucks, the unwelcome visitors. “What happened?” I asked the old dude with the toothless, weary face standing at the subway entrance. “A little girl got raped on the bottom floor,” deadpanning without changing his expressionless expression. “Where was the police?” he muttered as I dashed underground in the neighborhood now memorialized as the one that produced the talented Jay-Z. This terrible news was through serendipity collapsed with my experience of this song.
It had been a couple of weeks of ups and downs. Major news networks empathized and even sympathized with a sixteen-year-old girl’s attackers in Steubenville, Ohio. Two of the girl’s female classmates are arrested for threatening the victim for having the courage to testify after her motionless image was circulated on social media, her rapists holding her by the limbs like a slain calf. Part of their defense was that it was all just a joke.
The week prior had plunged me in other art worlds outside of the one in which this song circulated. I got to perform with the icon Amiri Baraka as he admonished the crowd of young poets and activists on the importance of establishing their own media platforms in order to keep their messages uncompromised. Got to see my colleague and friend the scholar and activist Salamishah Tillet, with whom I co-taught a course titled “Jazz is a Woman,” on MSNBC teaching America about rape culture and the importance of empowering girls as well as teaching our boys that they have a part to play as well. Got to participate in a book event about the South African singer and activist Sathima Bea Benjamin and her struggle to locate her freedom as a woman in music during the Apartheid era. Got invited by Darnell Moore, fervent activist for gender equalities, to comment on musical masculinities for The Feminist Wire, a site that I admire for its straight forward and radical message that women are human. (This might be greeted as news for some). At any rate, I was experiencing some enlightenment and hope when I confronted “Bow Down, Bitches” on a YouTube video with thousands of views.
One of the issues that I’m working through here is that, I believe in artistic freedom just like I believe in academic freedom. And I experience life in a variety of subject positions that demand I hear texts in a variety of ways. I don’t think it’s appropriate, on a lot of levels, for me to police what some women find empowering. But I also think its my right and responsibility—as a man who has a measure of influence in shaping young minds and building a safer world for my granddaughters through action and discourse—to contribute to the debate.
I deal professionally in four political economies: academia, mass media, social media, and the “art world.” I should also mention that I have a wife, a mother, sisters, daughters, granddaughters and other women I respect, love and from whom I learn. In the academy, the idea of “objectivity” has, thankfully, been revealed as a faulty construct to invisibly enforce one’s political agenda. We can now explain things from our various subject positions as well as connect the ideas and texts we study with our own lived experiences. We can now, thanks to the field of cultural studies, write about pop culture and build substantial and well-respected careers doing so. In the world of social media we can circulate our ideas quickly, test-run our theories, and build supportive communities of knowledge sharing—our carefully cultivated circles being our judge and jury. And in the art world we can question, conceptualize, and circulate our ideas about the social world through visual and sonic modes in ways that don’t have to be didactic, formulaic, nor immediately understood to have an impact.
As a result of a confluence of experiences I’ve had lately and the various spaces I occupy as a man, scholar, musician and critic, I’m going to continue to wrestle with corporate sponsored music that has such visceral impact and shock value. The sheer ubiquity of pop music expressions force us to have conversations with kids with whom you’d rather be talking about times tables, geography and why they are /not/ bitches. You know the old adage—if you have to explain a joke… Again, this music is not tucked away in some avant-garde museum exhibition: the same person being paraded around by POTUS and FLOTUS to middle school kids as a role model released it proudly. Maybe its time for a Jeremiah Wright moment and create a little distance? Just last month we—the community of people who understand that public language and discourse matter—were flummoxed when a writer at the institution The Onion tweeted to thousands of followers a vulgar slur about Quvenzhane Wallis. Matt Kirshen, a comedian and writer, responded on Huff Post Comedy how we had all missed the nuance of the joke. Right.
Maybe I should only respond as a dispassionate academic who works on mass-mediated texts, sometimes on social media, and as one who loves uncovering the subliminal messages in artistic work. (Maybe she doesn’t mean “literal” bitches here, and even if she does, it’s not our job to require a rich, influential woman to adhere to a politics of respectability, which is yet another way to police the inner-ratchet she has every right to express). Or maybe despite my efforts to keep my ears open and not “age out” of the cultural critic game, I’m out of place, behind the times and am, in fact, one of the bitches this lady is singing to.
For now I’m going to wonder, holding fear for the women I love, if the dude (or dudes) who was raping that baby three blocks from my house and where my wife takes public transportation was told something like “bow down bitch,” was called a c@#$ like that cute little self-possessed actress—this is just a complicated joke that you’ll understand better one day when you’re old enough to get ratchet. You’ll remember this as one of the things that made you complicated. Those who don’t agree with my critique are welcome to their own. But as a man who has lost a sister to domestic violence, I think I’ll stay in my lane and stick with my belief that demeaning language circulated widely by powerful corporations is one of the places where bad things start. It doesn’t work for me no matter how fine the pitchwoman or tight the melisma, particularly in today’s climate in which vulnerable women are under seize.
Oh, well Bubba, just funin’. Maybe Gramps just needs to go sit down somewhere, stop trying to police peoples and let mass-mediated millionaires do they thing on the internets. Let these folk make dey money. Maybe put on some nice jazz. Like trumpeter Nicholas Payton’s recent release, a CD titled Bitches…
LOL and SMH @ Bow Down Bitches [insert perfunctory colon]#HUHandWTF?
***
Guthrie Ramseyis the Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor of Music and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Follow him on Twitter at @DrGuyMusiqology and Musiqology.com
Boundaries Without Walls—the Atrophied Conscience of Apartheid America
by Mark Naison | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)
Little by little, we have created an apartheid nation—a place where profound spatial and moral divisions separate the lives of the privileged and the unfortunate. The boundaries are not strictly racial, though those on the lower side of the divide are overwhelmingly people of color, nor are they marked by gates, and walls and fences. Rather, they are enforced by a complex set of codes followed by law enforcement authorities who have acquired immense power to assure public safety since the imposition of the War on Drugs and the War on Terror, powers which have effectively prevented the poor from doing anything to prevent their marginalization and immiseration, and which have given wealthy elites virtually immunity from threats to their well being coming either from political action, mass protest or street crime.
You can see this in New York City where you can shop in a newly wealthy neighborhood, like Park Slope, go to an Arts destination in Manhattan, or go to one of those boroughs great universities, like Columbia, NYU or Fordham, without seeing groups of young people from one of the outer boroughs’ poor neighborhoods congregating in a group. Police practices have made it clear to them that they are not welcome there—that their very presence constitutes a virtual threat, a "crime waiting to happen."
But youth of color cleansing, and spatial controls are not just imposed in already established centers of wealth. In Bedford Stuyvesant and Red Hook, both gentrifying areas, police practices keep young people penned into neighborhood housing projects, wary of walking streets, in a group, where middle class residents have moved or hip cafes have opened. Very quickly, young people with certain race and class markers learn that they are subject to being stopped and questioned and frisked in almost all spaces out of the neighborhoods, and in a growing number of spaces where they actually live.
But worse yet, what is daily life for young people of color who are poor, is quite literally out of sight and out of mind, and thereby unimaginable, not only for middle class and wealthy residents of cities, but for the Mayors of those cities. Because they never talk to young people who are on the receiving end of these spatial controls, and ever see them in action; they can pretend these young folk don't exist. Their conscience has atrophied when it comes to the fundamental realities of life for the young and the poor.
Two recent events dramatize this for me—the police murder of Kimani Gray in East Flatbush Brooklyn, and the school closing order given by Mayor Rahm Emmanuel in Chicago. Never has New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg reached out to the grieving mother of a 16-year-old boy who was killed for doing nothing more than walking home from a neighborhood party. Instead, he hides behind a "narrative of criminality" used to hide the ugly facts of Kimani Gray’s death, which is that this was an outgrowth of a "stop and frisk" procedure initiated by plainclothes police that will NEVER happen to young people in the Mayor's family or social circle. Kimani Gray was one of New York City's legion of "disposable youth" that must be policed and contained in every aspect of their lives to make the city's engines of economic growth secure. He could be snuffed out without anyone in power losing a moment of sleep
Similarly, the lives of tens of thousands of young people of color to be disrupted by the school closings ordered by Mayor Rahm Emmanuel in Chicago could be conveniently erased from his thoughts by a ski trip because his own children, safely enrolled in Chicago Lab School, would never experience the disruptions, nor would their friends. The impact of these policies would be felt by "Other People's Children"—the same people who live in fear of gun violence, gang violence, and police containment, who feel alternately penned into poor neighborhoods or pushed out of the city altogether
A leadership which can inflict this kind of containment and moral erasure on a large portion of their city's population can only be described as profoundly corrupt- but we are all complicit insofar as we have allowed our own security to be built on an edifice of other people's suffering.
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Mark Naison is a Professor of African-American Studies and History at Fordham University and Director of Fordham’s Urban Studies Program. He is the author of two books, Communists in Harlem During the Depression and White Boy: A Memoir. Naison is also co-director of the Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP). Research from the BAAHP will be published in a forthcoming collection of oral histories Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life From the 1930’s to the 1960’s.
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