Face the Nation: Ben Jealous & James Braxton Peterson Talk SCOTUS Same-Sex Marriage & Voting Rights

Face the Nation

The Supreme Court handed down several momentous decisions this week, including rulings on same-sex marriage and voting rights, and CBS News' Jan Crawford, Dr. James Peterson, Benjamin Jealous, Michael Gerson, and Fernando Espuelas discuss the fallout from those issues and others.

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"Roomieloverfriends" | Episode 5 of 5‬ ‪ [Season 2‬]

Black and Sexy TV

"Roomieloverfriends" is a BLACK&SEXY.TV production @blackandsexytv

Starring Shayla Hale, Andra Fuller, Austen Jaye, Teagen Rose, Krystal Bradford, Yaani King + Billy Mayo



Created and Written by Dennis Dortch + Numa Perrier @MissNuma


Executive Producer: Issa Rae

Produced by Numa Perrier


Produced by Desmond Faison 


Associate Producers: Irwin Daniels, Krystal Bradford, and Dean Russell


Directed by Dennis Dortch


Cinematography by Will Novy + Brian Ali-Harding

Post Picture: Brian Ali-Harding

Edited by Jamila Glass


Make Up: Sydney Milan


Hair: Erin Smith


Production Assistant: Jean Black, Maya Morales



Special Thanks: Brian Ali-Harding, & Desmond Faison

FEATURED MUSIC:

"Convertible Thinking" - Richard Wright ft. M. Spivey

Produced by J. Bizness 

"Gett Down" 

Produced by S. Davis

"Re-Run" 

Produced by Cliff

Theme song "Chemistry" written and performed by Allegra Dolores @allegradolores

Produced by Henry "Lukecage" Willis

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Tell Me More: "Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women" Brings Pillow Talk to Africans

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MHP Show: Other SCOTUS Rulings May Limit Class Action Lawsuits

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'Looking for Leroy': The 'Strange Fruit' Interview

WFPL | Strange Fruit with hosts DR. KAILA STORY AND JAISON GARDNER

Dr. Neal's latest book, Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities, examines depictions of black men in popular culture, and while he was in town, he stopped by our studios to tell us more about his work. Our conversation covered Tiger Woods, Jay-Z, Muddy Waters, and even Stringer Bell and Omar Little, as we tried to make some sense of how pop culture interprets and positions Black masculinity.

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Filmmaker John Akomfrah Talks 'The Stuart Hall Project' with Beyond Cinema Mag

BeyondCinemaMagazine

John Akomfrah talks to Beyond Cinema Magazine about his 2013 Sundance documentary 'The Stuart Hall Project.' In the interview, Akomfrah explains how his early fascination with the British cultural historian led to a full-length documentary.

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James Gandolfini Funeral: Remembering 'Tony Soprano'

New York Times Video

Mourners at St. John the Divine's cathedral reflect on the life and career of James Gandolfini. 

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Greg Tate on Rachel Jeantel

"'Creepy ass cracker'. A rhetorical hand grenade that has already earned its weight in clutched pearls across the spectrum of Miss Ann type commentators on cable. Rachel Jeantel's 2 days on the stand affirmed that we still wear the masks and after 400 years a few salt water negroes still know how to work them like Streep works accents. Sister Rachel's agile codeswitichng prowess proved to be in the finest tactical truth tradition of The Blues: Fight then feint. Wish I had a G for every time I heard Yung Razy branded 'ignorant' 'naive' and 'unsophisticated'. Growing up Haitian dark female and trilingual in backwards ass Florida? GTFOH. The Art of War runs through those veins." -- Greg Tate

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"You've got to be good or as bad as the devil"—Louis Armstrong on His Chops | The 'Blank on Blank' Interview

Blank on Blank

"You've got to be good or as bad as the devil. ... Even if we had two, three days off I still had to blow that horn a few hours to keep up the chops." -- Louis Armstrong

Interview by Michael Aisner and James R. Stein

1964. Ravinia near Chicago

Originally aired on WNTH - Winnetka, Illinois

Executive Producer: David Gerlach

Animator: Patrick Smith

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Trailer: 'The Stuart Hall Project' (dir. John Akomfrah, 2013)

Sundance Festival

Filmmaker John Akomfrah uses the rich and complex mood created by Miles Davis’s trumpet to root a masterful tapestry of newly filmed material, archival imagery, excerpts from television programs, home movies, and family photographs to create this lyrical and emotionally powerful portrait of the life and philosophy of this influential theorist. Like a fine scotch, The Stuart Hall Project is smooth, complicated, and euphorically pleasing. It taps into a singular intelligence to extract the tools we need to make sense of our lives in the modern world.

About the Director

John Akomfrah is an artist, writer, director, and influential figure in the black British film movement. His documentaries and features have won more than 30 international awards, and his body of work is considered among the most distinctive and innovative in the United Kingdom. His extensive filmography includes The Nine Muses (2010), Oil Spill: The Exxon Valdez Disaster (2009), Riot (1999), Martin Luther King: Days of Hope (1997), and Seven Songs for Malcolm X (1993).

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B(l)ack in the Kitchen: Food Network by Lisa Guerrero

B(l)ack in the Kitchen:  Food Network

by Lisa A. Guerrero | special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)

Introduction by David J. Leonard

The conversation surrounding Paula Deen and her use of the “N word” has simultaneously erased the accusations of job discrimination and harassment all while ignoring the larger issues of race and Food Network.  In fact, Deen’s ultimate firing by the Food Network has allowed the network to be position itself as anti-racist, as America’s moral conscience.  Refusing to allow prejudice to stain its airwaves, the Food Network has situated itself as a progressive force of accountability and justice.

Deen, however, is reflective of their brand—one that normalizes and operationalizes whiteness all while reimagining the world of food as racially transcendent.  Revelations regarding Deen burst that illusion.  With this in mind, we are sharing an excerpt from Lisa Guerrero’s brilliant chapter from our recent book, African Americans on Television: Race-ing for Ratings

***

In all of its programming, even within programs where race is undeniably apparent, either because of the celebrity or the cuisine, food is presented as a race-neutral cultural object.  Unfortunately, in a race-based society, as the United States is, “race-neutral” invariably gets translated as “white.”  Food Network trades in the notion of the “racelessness” of food to create a commodified sense of neoliberal inclusion and equality, wherein the focus is placed on individuals and not on systems. Food is portrayed across the network as a “universal language;” but as discussed above, it is definitely constructed as a specifically class-based language, as well as a language constructed in specifically racialized terms.  To be fair, Food Network is no different from most other cable television networks where whiteness is predominant and becomes easily normalized and rendered invisible to most viewers.

Ironically, the relatability that Food Network carefully crafts around its personalities is almost completely belied by the “everyday” lifestyles many of the network celebrities are show to have as they are strategically integrated into their respective shows, most notably with Ina Garten, Giada DeLaurentis, and Bobby Flay.  While the wealth and whiteness displayed in these, and much of Food Network’s other programming is conspicuous, they are treated as commonplace, the effect of which is twofold:  1) it creates a socioracial standard when it comes to the act of food consumption; and 2) it suggestively endorses the idea of food as a racial and economic privilege. 

Through its successful erasure of race and class, Food Network perpetuates certain understandings about the social landscape in which people think about food consumption and commodification as being generally equal amongst various populations, even as statistically and programmatically most people can see that food equality isn’t a reality.  But Food Network is able to maintain this profitable food fantasy by constructing its food narratives in a very particular sociohistorical vacuum that allows audiences to distance themselves from not only certain tediums surrounding daily food habits, but also the sociohistorical and socioeconomic systems of food production and preparation in the United States.  The strategic use of blackness on the network is one of the primary ways in which this distancing is enabled.

The relative absence of blackness on Food Network, while not unlike the relative absence of blackness on network television generally speaking, succeeds in denying the significant place African Americans have, both historically and contemporaneously, in the creation of American food culture and foodways.  This erasure, while creating an amputated impression of American food backgrounds, does so in deliberate ways that are in keeping with long histories of using whiteness to signify notions of expertise, virtuosity, superiority, propriety, and polish.  In other words, in order to cement the network’s guiding narrative of elevating food to a craft, an art, an aspiration, it needs to simultaneously elevate whiteness, usually white maleness. 

Not surprisingly, the programming on Food Network frames American food in very Eurocentric terms, tracing food origins and traditions to primarily Western, European nations, while periodically recognizing the “exotic” fare of Latin America or Asia.  There is little to no recognition of African cuisines within programming, despite the growing popularity of African food and restaurants among American consumers sparked by growing numbers of African immigrants to the United States, and probably represented most notably by the often tokenized celebrity chef, Marcus Samuelsson, who was born in Ethiopia and raised in Sweden.  Neither is there much linkage drawn between the specificity of African American soul food and the development of much of what is considered American “southern food.”  The erasure of these African and African-American cultural linkages to American food habits and histories effectively reimagines a significant portion of American food architecture as almost exclusively white, a reimagining not supported by history. 

Now certainly Food Network isn’t The History Channel, and viewers aren’t necessarily expecting to be provided with critically accurate or developed histories of food origins, routes, or social significances.  Nonetheless, its lack of wider, more representative narrative frames within its programming results in two things:  First, there is a barely perceptible, encompassing whitening of both the network itself, as well as the perspectives it creates about food relationships within American populations.  Secondly, when racial “diversity” and representation do occur, they have the effect of “tokenism” rather than inclusion.  Nowhere is this latter effect more apparent than in the network’s small club of Black cooking personalities.

              

The framing of Food Network and The Cooking Channelbreak down into simplistic terms as “The U.S.” and “The Global,” respectively.  As such, The Cooking Channel does appear to embrace diversity in a larger, more transparent way than Food Network.  However, the apparent differentials of framing are really only on a cosmetic level.  There are more people of color that appear regularly on The Cooking Channel, but only slightly more, and considering the overbearing whiteness of Food Network, it really wouldn’t take much to have “more” racial diversity.  But the neutralized by emphasizing the notion of  “the exotic.”  The people of color on The Cooking Channel are, by and large, not of the United States, creating a comforting distance between U.S. audiences and any troublesome considerations about racism. 

In scholarly terms, it wouldn’t be far off the mark to think about Food Network as “the colonial” and The Cooking Channel as “the postcolonial.”  In other words, Food Network denies race and its systems by trying to devalue and/or erase race altogether, while The Cooking Channel denies race and its systems by putting race on display in almost exhibitional terms so that audiences don’t relate to it as a “real” thing.  In both cases, whiteness is positioned as the fulcrum of food experiences and knowledges.  And ultimately, blackness, especially American blackness, is relegated to becoming the specialty ingredient that gets used sparingly in the recipe of televisual food programming for fear that its flavor won’t be palatable to American consumers.

Postscript: 

As we’ve seen over the last few days not only with the vociferous response by Deen supporters, but also with SCOTUS gutting the Voting Rights Act, Texas scrambling to capitalize on that decision by pushing through a Voter ID bill, the dehumanizing tactics of the defense counsel in the George Zimmerman trial, and the countless racist microaggressions the accounts of which we are bombarded with daily, Paula Deen’s words and behaviors are, in themselves, unsurprising and relatively unremarkable, but rather indicative of the banality of American racism.  As several scholars have articulately pointed out in response to the Deen controversy, (including David J. Leonard), and as I have tried to address in this piece in broader ways, while Deen should certainly be held responsible for the ways in which her actions contribute to the continuation of systemic and ideologic racisms in the United States, the problem is much bigger than her use of racial epithets and her disturbing bucolic nostalgia for the racial order of the antebellum South. 

Perhaps the biggest problem of which Deen is but one very small symptom, is a problem which will, in all likelihood strangle equality and freedom for all American citizens; it is the problem of the United States’ misguided belief in its own magnanimity of race; the delusion that we have remedied our racial illnesses and no longer need to be vigilant about the sickness, and in fact, can be prideful about the “past tense” of our racial struggles.  This blind hubris (which Justice Ginsburg so aptly identified in her dissension to the Voting Rights Act decision), allows for people like Paula Deen to sincerely dislocate their actions from the insidiousness of racism…since racism has been fixed, (so it goes), then certainly what people do and to whom they do it can’t be considered racism. 

Unfortunately, this racist psychosis, the inability to see racism even as you are enacting it, supporting it, contributing to it, benefitting from it, is one of many deleterious side-effects of our post-racial nation, and is sure to kill us quicker than a Paula Deen recipe.    

***

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

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Dear Marriage Equality Advocates: I Can Not Celebrate with You Today by Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou

Dear Marriage Equality Advocates: I Can Not Celebrate with You Today

by Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou | Special to NewBlackMan (in Exile)

Dear Marriage Equality Advocates:

There is an irony in the SCOTUS rulings in the last two days. The irony is grounded in the fact that gay marriage is grounded in the spirit of the black freedom struggle yet that promise was eroded yesterday. The SCOTUS has ruled that a key provision of the blood stained Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional then ruled that DOMA was unconstitutional.

As queer ally, I am wondering if “I took my hand off the plow” or “my eyes off the prize”.  By taking a critical position of my church, at times my own community, and nation for its discrimination against queer folks, all the while the hard fought struggles that expanded democratic opportunity are under constant attack. 

Admittedly, I am part of a generation that has often been disappointed if not held disdain for the civil rights generation. We sit in our contextual comfort and lambast them for not being revolutionary enough. The merger reforms of voting rights and affirmative action have been eroded in the last two days. And I am troubled in my soul by both the hubris of the SCOTUS and my own generational arrogances. So to those elders who risked life and limb for access to the democratic project, had cigarettes put on their face so I could vote, and risked their careers in supporting “merger reforms", I want to apologize. 

Equally, I have supported the rites and rights of queer folks for over a decade. There is a strong possibility that I will lose my credentials in the Church of God in Christ for supporting the issue, which would be a great personal cost because my grandfather and great grandfather were ordained in this tradition that I love. However, having risked my ordination credentials and lost churches for lobbying with Human Rights Campaign for gay marriage, I appreciate the fact the Human Rights Campaign issued a statement against the SCOTUS ruling on the Voting Rights Act.  

But it is not enough. I do not feel like we all won today.   In fact, I must confess that I have shown up far more for gay marriage advocates than they have shown up for us.  The complicit silence of gay marriage advocates on issues of race and class oppression is deafening.   There must be reciprocity in solidarity. 

As a straight black man, I feel less safe in the United States than I have ever felt. I am fighting a deep sense of regret for risking all on the behalf of gay marriage and God knows I do not want to feeI that way.  It is morally wrong but very real in my soul. I know it was the right thing to do because I felt called by the tradition of the black freedom struggle and my God to do so. Perhaps, if there is such a thing, I have “believer’s remorse”.  

I am haunted by a sense of emptiness.  For all of the gay folks in my family, those radical queer folks that I have struggled along side and gone to jail with, I celebrate your victory today but I something in me want let me celebrate with you, today.  It is not envy, I pray but rather a concrete fear for my being as a black man in the American empire.  An erosion of the very rights that created the context for the LGBTQI movement should make us all have knots in our stomachs. Nevertheless, I will continue to perform gay weddings and struggle along side and party with radical queer activists all the while struggle for the basic right to vote.  These last two days in a word is “tragicomic”.

Your ally,

Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou 

**

Rev. Osagyefo Uhuru Sekou  is a documentary filmmaker, public intellectual, organizer, pastor, theologian, and author of the book Gods, Gays, and Guns: Essays on Religion and the Future of Democracy (Campbell & Cannon Press).  

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Texas Showdown: Anti-Abortion Bill Fails After Protesters Fill Capitol to Cheer Marathon Filibuster

Democracy Now

Democratic lawmakers and pro-choice demonstrators in Texas battled into the early hours of this morning to successfully block a bill that would have shuttered nearly all the state's abortion clinics. Senate Bill 5 would have banned abortion after 20 weeks post-fertilization and imposed harsh regulations forcing all but five Texas clinics to close down. On Tuesday morning, State Senator Wendy Davis donned a pair of pink tennis shoes and rose to her feet to launch a filibuster of the bill that lasted nearly 11 hours before Republican senators interrupted it. As the midnight deadline for the special session drew near, hundreds of protesters in the gallery erupted into cheers that drowned out the proceedings, but Republican lawmakers attempted to claim they had passed the bill anyway. Hours later, Lieutenant Gov. David Dewhurst conceded the vote had not followed legislative procedures, blaming what he called an "unruly mob using Occupy Wall Street tactics." Describing the raucous scene at the Capitol, Andrea Grimes, a freelance journalist who writes for RH Reality Check, says: "Once people at that filibuster began telling their stories and sharing them with others, that galvanized the pro-choice space and radicalized some people who hadn't realized how our rights were under threat." We also speak with Brandi Grissom of The Texas Tribune, who hosted the livestream of the senate proceeding that drew more than 100,000 viewers. Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards tells Democracy Now!: "With the thousands of people who were mobilized this time around, they will be doubly that way if in fact Gov. [Rick Perry] tries to push [the bill] through again in another special session. And if he does, we'll be ready."

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North Carolina Youth Demand Action from NC Governor

Forward Together

June 19th, 2013 - North Carolina students and young people march to the State Capitol from the historic St. Paul AME Church to petition Gov. Pat McCrory to veto or reverse extreme and regressive legislation from the NC General Assembly that will adversely hurt thousands of North Carolinians. They will be returning on June 26th for a response.

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The New York Times: A Video History of Voting Rights

The New York Times

For much of the 20th century, voting remained a contentious issue, but the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act on Tuesday, suggesting that conditions have changed.

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Segregated Education in Desegregated Schools: Why We Should Eliminate "Tracking" With "Gifted & Talented" for All

Segregated Education in Desegregated Schools: 

Why We Should Eliminate "Tracking" With "Gifted and Talented" for All

by Alan A. Aja, William “Sandy” Darity Jr. and Darrick Hamilton | HuffPost BlackVoices

In the 1969 Supreme Court ruling Alexander vs. Holmes County Board of Education, a unanimous court ruled that a Mississippi school district "terminate dual school systems at once and to operate now and hereafter only unitary schools." The ruling, a mandate for non-compliant segregationists, was supposed to finally reverse the tide of Jim Crow era "separate and unequal" education.

Today, while more students generally attend racially and economically diverse schools, it is no secret that our schools are anything but unitary. According to recent reports by The Civil Rights Project at UCLA, concentrations of Blacks and Latinos into resource-deprived schools are at unprecedented levels, reversing years of progress toward integration since the monumental Brown v. Board (1954) and subsequent decisions. But while more recent Supreme Court decisions from Oklahoma City, Louisville, KY and Seattle, WA and policy-level failures such as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) are rightfully viewed among myriad protagonists of these trends, often overlooked by integration advocates is the reality of "dual school systems" operating at the curricular level, not just at the facility level.

Take for example the case of Southwest Elementary School in Durham, North Carolina. When David Snead began his tenure as principal in 1999, he discovered that 98% of the school's white students and only 7% of black students were identified as "gifted and talented" (G&T), therefore placed in a separate, challenging curriculum. More astonishingly, this was in a school where blacks represented over 70% of the student body, while whites represented only 30%.

Snead, who is white and male, came face to face with one of America's long-embedded institutional-level responses to integration: racialized tracking. And rather than accept internal segregation as an everyday norm, one grounded in the still-prevalent belief that minority students are "cognitively inferior" (or for self-professed non-racists, that they purposely under-perform out of fear of "acting white"), Snead believed otherwise. The principal worked with the school's teachers to alter ways they thought about "giftedness," given that their assessment triggered consideration for subsequent testing into advanced curricula. The results were astounding.

By 2003-2004, 60% of the school's black students were identified as G&T, while 40% of white students were identified as such. Moreover, the impact of the change was evident in the school's performance on state test scores. In 1999-2000, 41% of the school's fifth grade black students did not pass the state reading test compared to 12% for white students, and 23% of blacks did not pass the mathematics test compared to 9% for whites. By 2002-2003, only 10% of both black and white students did not pass the reading test, and less than 3% did not pass the mathematics exam. Indeed, the new structure was even associated with improved pass rates for white students.

Southwest Elementary achieved something remarkable: they eliminated the racial achievement gap by eliminating the instruction gap, and they did it even though most white students, on average, came from affluent, two-parent families while most of the school's black students did not. In fact, during Snead's tenure, the proportion of students eligible for free or reduced lunches increased for its black students, but decreased for its white students.

On the surface, examples like that of Southwest Elementary should impel policymakers to address the chronic problem of segregated curricula in our schools. In New York City, for instance, some mayoral candidates and parent organizations have called for improved minority access to the city's popular G&T programs, which are demographically dominated by white and Asian students. But a bold response isn't one that simply improves access and opportunity, but one that eliminates tracking altogether and provides "gifted and talented" education for all. In short, schools should de-track toward excellence for all students.

In North Carolina, for instance, such an endeavor was launched in some of the state's lowest income school districts, and the preliminary evidence is striking. Project Bright Idea, created by state educators in collaboration with experts at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University, sought to test whether raising expectations could enhance student performance regardless of race or socioeconomic background. The program, which operated from 2004-2009 in 11 North Carolina school districts, enrolled 5,000 kindergarteners and first and second graders from disproportionately low-income communities. Meanwhile, teachers underwent intensive training and development to address their dispositions about the abilities of black and impoverished children while providing the schools and teachers with the resources and capacity to deliver a high level of instruction for all children.

David Snead and Project Bright Idea's intervention demonstrate that kids, regardless of family arrangement and poverty status, can do well academically with a challenging curriculum and instruction predicated on the belief that they can master complex material. But to work effectively on a larger-scale, additional teacher training and development must be prioritized and funded, which means efforts by education reformers to fire teachers based on high-stakes testing (standardized test scores) must come to an immediate halt. If we are to reverse the tide of internal segregation in our schools, we must ensure that teachers are prepared and trained to provide a high quality education to ALL students, not just a select few.

Authors’ Note: the case of Southwest Elementary, along with a similar example out of Rockville Centre High School in Long Island, NY, is documented by William Darity, Jr. and Alicia Jolla in "Desegregated Schools with Segregated Education," in Hartman, Chester and Gregory Squires, The Integration Debate: Competing Futures for America's Cities. Routledge Press, 2009.

***

Alan A. Aja is an Assistant Professor and Deputy Chair in the Department of Puerto Rican & Latin@ Studies at Brooklyn College (City University of New York).

Darrick Hamilton is an associate professor of economics and urban policy at The New School, an affiliate scholar at the Center for American Progress, and a research affiliate at the Research Network on Racial and Ethnic Inequality at Duke University.

William A. (“Sandy”) Darity Jr. is Arts & Sciences Professor of Public Policy Studies and Economics, Chair of African and African American Studies and director of the Research Network on Racial and Ethnic Inequality at Duke University.

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Tell Me More: Voting Rights Act: Supreme Court Says Times Have Changed

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Trailer: 'Plot for Peace' (dir. Mandy Jacobson & Carlos Agulló, 2013)--the Untold Story of the Release of Nelson Mandela from Prison

Plot for Peace

This is the untold story behind History, a well-kept secret behind the world-wide icon: Nelson Mandela's release was a 'Plot for Peace.' 

For the first time, heads of state, generals, diplomats, master spies and anti-apartheid fighters reveal how Africa's front line states helped end apartheid. Their improbable key to Mandela's prison cell was a mysterious French businessman, dubbed "Monsieur Jacques" in classified correspondence. His trade secret was trust. 

Mandy Jacobson: Producer/Director

The Executive Producer of the African Oral History, Mandy is a multiple  award winning filmmaker, who works out of both New York and  Johannesburg. Won two Emmy Awards for her documentary Calling the Ghosts: A Film about Rape, War and Women in Bosnia (HBO / Cinemax) and with the Bill Moyers team won the Peabody for PBS feature, Facing the  Truth. She has produced and directed programs in the US, Brazil, Bosnia, Rwanda, Bangladesh, Cuba and South Africa, which have been broadcast on major networks worldwide, including CBS‘s Sixty Minutes, PBS, ARTE, Discovery, SABC and ETV. Mandy is heads Indelible, Media, a multi-media production company dedicated to showcasing African cinema and television 

for international broadcast and theatrical release. 

Carlos Agulló: Director/Editor

Carlos is part of the lively core of Spanish auteur cinema increasingly being  recognized outside its borders. He worked as an assistant editor “The Sea Inside” by Alejandro Amenábar, which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film and later as film editor for other award winning Spanish Directors such as “Back to Moira” by Mateo Gil, “Planet 51” by Jorge Blanco, “Historia de un Director Idiota” by Sergio Candel,“For the Good of others” by Oskar Santos and the TV series “Crematorio” by Jorge Sánchez Cabezudo. He has also directed several of his own short films such as “The Gift”, “The Wait”, “Ana Cronia” “Pizza Eli” and “Next Station”. 

Stephen Smith: Scriptwriter/Historical Consultant

An academic, journalist, and writer, he worked as Historical Consultant for Olivier Assaya’s film “Carlos”, which premiered in Cannes in 2010 and won a  Golden Globe and Emmy Award in 2011. As an adviser for Africa, he also  contributed to Ben Moses’ “A Whisper to a Roar”, released at the Berlin film  festival in February 2012. Since 2007, he teaches African Studies and Cultural Anthropology at Duke University and, as an adjunct Professor, at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) in  Washington DC. Prior to becoming the Africa editor of the French daily Libération and then Le Monde, he worked as a correspondent for Radio France International (RFI) and Reuters in West and Central Africa. He is the author of sixteen books, among them a biography of Winnie Madikizela Mandela (2007), and a regular contributor to The London Review of Books. 

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Patti LaBelle & The Bluebells: "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" (1968)

via UK Vibe

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Black Caesar: The Rise & Disappearance of Frank Matthews—Meet the Author Ron Chepsiuk on July 1st

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Nas: "Made Nas Proud"

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Style Hunt: Brixton, London

iamOTHER

This week, Style Hunt travels to Brixton, London — that rare kind of neighborhood where you can find a Great Gatsby-refrencing dandy, a 1970s style sewist and green-and-gold wearing rastafarian on the same block. Created by Metro International's style director Kenya Hunt, presented byModMods.com.  

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Soul for Lost Love and Crises of Faith—Bobby 'Blue' Bland's "Chains of Love'

from: "Soul for Lost Love and Crises of Faith" (Vibe.com, 2008)

Not enough people talk about the Bobby “Blue” Bland these days, though his signature hiccup (if you could call it that)  is one of the more classic idiosyncrasies in the history of American popular music.  Give Kanye West and Shawn Carter some credit for recovering “Ain’t No Love In the Heart of the City”—a great Bland track no doubt—but not representative of the classic sides he laid down for Duke in the late 1950s and 1960s like “Turn on Your Lovelight” (see the opening montage in Eve’s Bayou),  “That’s the Way Love Is” or “Cry, Cry, Cry.”  As the latter songs displays, didn’t nobody beg better than Bobby “Blue” Bland in his day and “Chains of Love” is a classic example.  In the song Bland laments the power of a love that he can’t extricate himself from (“now I’m a prisoner”), as he begs for his lover to stop holding him hostage if she’s not gonna love him back (“if you gonna leave me, please set me free”).  But it is the last verse that gets at the sense of despair as Bland sings, “well it’s 3 O’ Clock in the morning, lawd and the moon is shining bright…and I was just sitting here wondering, lawd (hiccup) where can you be tonight?” and you can just imagine this man sitting on his porch rocking his body back and forth recalling the classic “Trouble in Mind” (“I’m going down to the river…if the blues don’t get me, I might have to rock on away from here.”

--Mark Anthony Neal

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Bobby 'Blue' Bland Goes 'Back Home': "That's the Way Love Is"

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"Change is Coming!" | June 17th Moral Monday Protest

Moral Monday Protests

June 17th, 2013 - In this 7th Wave of Moral Monday Protests, thousands gather and 84 people are arrested for speaking out against regressive legislation at the North Carolina General Assembly.

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The Other James Gandolfini: "Sopranos" Actor Remembered For Support of Injured Vets, Community Media

Democracy Now

James Gandolfini, the celebrated actor best known for his role as mob boss Tony Soprano on the hit TV series, "The Sopranos," died Wednesday at the age of 51. While coverage of his death has focused mainly on his acting career, little has been mentioned about the more political side of his work. In New York City, he was a beloved figure not only because of his acting on the stage and screen, but also because of his major support for community media and producing documentaries critical of war. In 2010, he produced the HBO film "Wartorn: 1861-2010" about post-traumatic stress disorder from the Civil War to Iraq and Afghanistan. He also conducted a series of in-depth interviews with U.S. soldiers wounded in the Iraq War for a 2007 HBO film, "Alive Day Memories: Home From Iraq." We speak to the films' co-directors, Jon Alpert and Matthew O'Neill. 

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Tell Me More: Vem Pra Rua: The Music Of Brazilian Protest

Vanderlei Almeida/AFP/Getty Images

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It's Bigger Than Paula Deen by David J. Leonard

It’s Bigger Than Paula Deen

by David J. Leonard | NewBlackMan (in Exile)

The fallout from Paula Deen’s deposition and the lawsuit itself is a reminder of the ways that race and gender operate within the restaurant industry.  It’s bigger than Paula Deen.  Yet, as you read media reports, as you listen to various commentaries, you would think this is a story about an older white woman wedded to America’s racist past.  Yes, this is a story about Paula Deen, and her crumbing empire.  But that is the beginning, not the end. This is bigger than one individual, her reported prejudices, or the lawsuit at hand.  This is about a restaurant industry mired by discrimination and systemic inequalities.

Racism pervades the entire industry, as evident in the daily treatment faced by workers, the segregation within the industry, differential wage scale, and its hiring practices.  According to Jennifer Lee, “Racial Bias Seen in Hiring of Waiters:”

Expensive restaurants in New York discriminate based on race when hiring waiters, a new study has concluded. The study was based on experiments in which pairs of applicants with similar résumés were sent to ask about jobs. The pairs were matched for gender and appearance, said Marc Bendick Jr., the economist who conducted the study. The only difference was race, he said.

White job applicants were more likely to receive follow-up interviews at the restaurants, be offered jobs, and given information about jobs, and their work histories were less likely to be investigated in detail, he said Tuesday. He spoke at a news conference releasing the report in a Manhattan restaurant.

“There really should not be a lot of difference in how the two of them are treated,” Mr. Bendick said. He was hired by advocacy groups for restaurant workers as part of a larger report called “The Great Service Divide: Occupational Segregation and Equality in the New York City Restaurant Industry.” He has made a career of studying discrimination, ranging from racism in the advertising industry to sexism in firefighting.

Mr. Bendick said that in industries, such experiments typically found discrimination 20 to 25 percent of the time. In New York restaurants, it was found 31 percent of the time.

A recent report from the ROC (Restaurant Opportunities Center) found that Darden Restaurants (Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Capital Grille, among others) was responsible for creating a racially hostile environment.

The report also outlines recent lawsuits against Darden for employment discrimination based on race, including a 2008 lawsuit that charged that Bahama Breeze employees of color in Beachwood, Ohio were repeatedly pelted with racial slurs such as “Aunt Jemima” and “stupid n**ger” by managers.  This resulted in a EEOC announcement of a $1.26 million settlement from Darden in 2009.  In describing the settlement, EEOC’s acting chairman Stuart J. Ishimaru said “No worker should have to endure a racially hostile work environment in order to earn a paycheck.”

It additionally concluded that Darden, “fired black servers because they did not ‘fit the company standard’ at their Capital Grille restaurant” and that it “prevents people of color & immigrants from accessing living wage positions, such as server and bartender, at their Capital Grille fine dining restaurant.” It’s bigger than Deen.

A 2007 lawsuit against Restaurateur Daniel Boulud points to another instance:

According to the lawsuit, dining room workers at Daniel Boulud have been denied promotion because they were Latino or Bangladeshi. The employees also say that Mr. Boulud and other managers yelled racial slurs. At one point, they say, Spanish was banned among employees; only English and French were allowed. Those are examples, they say, of how the working culture at Daniel favors white Europeans at the expense of other groups.

Here are but a few examples from the EEOC:

In March 2008, a national restaurant chain entered a consent decree agreeing to pay $30,000 to resolve an EEOC case charging that the company gave African-American food servers inferior and lesser-paying job assignments by denying them assignments of larger parties with greater resulting tips and income, by denying them better paying assignments to banquets at the restaurant, and by failing on some occasions to give them assignments to any customers. The consent decree enjoins the restaurant from engaging in racial discrimination and requires the chain to post a remedial notice and amend and distribute its anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies. The amended policies must state that prohibited racial discrimination in “all other employment decisions” includes, but is not limited to, making decisions and providing terms and conditions of employment such as pay, assignments, working conditions, and job duties; also, it must prohibit retaliation. In addition, the company must revise its complaint mechanism and clarify and expand its website and toll-free phone number for the reporting of incidents of employment discrimination. The consent decree also requires the restaurant to provide training in equal employment opportunity laws for all of its employees and to appoint an Equal Employment Office Coordinator, who will be responsible for investigating discrimination complaints. EEOC v. McCormick & Schmick’s Restaurant Corp, No. 06-cv-7806 (S.D.N.Y. March 17, 2008).

In January 2008, a bakery café franchise in Florida entered a two-year consent decree that enjoined the company from engaging in racial discrimination or retaliation and required it to pay $101,000 to the claimants. EEOC had alleged that the company segregated the Black employees from non-Black employees and illegally fired a class of Black employees in violation of Title VII. Under the consent decree, the principal of the company must attend an eight-hour training session on equal employment opportunity laws. The decree also mandated that if the company ever re-opens the franchise in question or any other store, it must distribute its anti-discrimination policy to all employees, post a remedial notice, and report any future complaints alleging race-based discrimination.EEOC v. Atlanta Bread Co., International and ARO Enterprise of Miami, Inc., No. 06-cv-61484 (S.D. Fla. January 4, 2008).

In September 2006, the Korean owners of a fast food chain in Torrance, California agreed to pay $5,000 to resolve a Title VII lawsuit alleging that a 16-year old biracial girl, who looked like a fair-skinned African American, was refused an application for employment because of her perceived race (Black). According to the EEOC lawsuit, after a day at the beach with her Caucasian friends, the teen was asked if she would request an application on her friend’s behalf since the friend was a little disheveled in appearance. The owner refused to give the teen an application and told her the store was not hiring anymore despite the presence of a “Help Wanted” sign in the window. After consultation among the friends, another White friend entered the store and was immediately given an application on request. EEOC v. Quiznos, No. 2:06-cv-00215-DSFJC (C.D. Cal. settled Sept. 22, 2006).

In December 2005, EEOC resolved this Title VII lawsuit alleging that a fast food conglomerate subjected a Black female employee and other non-White restaurant staff members (some of them minors) to a hostile work environment based on race. The racial harassment included a male shift leader’s frequent use of “n**ger” and his exhortations that Whites were a superior race. Although the assistant manager received a letter signed by eight employees complaining about the shift leader’s conduct, the shift leader was exonerated and the Black female employee who complained was fired. The consent decree provided $255,000 in monetary relief: $105,000 to Charging Party and $150,000 for a settlement fund for eligible claimants as determined by EEOC. EEOC v. Carl Karcher Enterprises, Inc., d/b/a Carl’s Jr. Restaurant, No. CV-05-01978 FCD PAW (E.D. Cal. Dec. 13, 2005).

The examples are a plenty. As with every American institution, race matters.  Restaurants are immensely segregated: by location, by job, by placement on the floor, by wage, and by clientele.  Servers, bartenders, and hosts are white, while runners, bussers, those in the back of the house, and those who make the lowest wages are overwhelming people of color.  Of those who have reported earning less than minim wage, 96% are people of color.  Workers of color experience racism and microaggressions; they are more likely to be questioned as to their qualifications.  It is a world where irrespective of diversity, in terms of both staff and food choices, racism remains a constant on every menu.  According to Saru Jayarman, “We tend not to realize that diversity is not the same as equity – that simply seeing a lot of restaurant workers from different backgrounds doesn’t mean that restaurant workers from different backgrounds have equal opportunities to advance to jobs that will allow them support themselves and their families.”

The restaurant industry is also rife with sexism – women earn 85 cents on the dollar compared to their male counterparts.  Women are also relegated to the lowest-paying jobs with the worst chances of upward mobility.  Women are subjected to rampant sexual harassment.  Although only 7% of the nation’s workers can be found in restaurants, in 2011 they accounted for 37% of the sexual harassment complaints to the EEOC.

The relative silence about these daily abuses and horrid conditions is telling. It’s bigger than Deen.  She is not the lone rotten apple but one of many in a rotten barrel. Yet the emergent narrative that once again images racism as the purview of southern whites of a previous generation is revealing.  It’s bigger than Deen.   It’s bigger than Food Network but about an industry that has gotten away with abuse and discrimination yet we rarely get to see “behind the kitchen door.” This lawsuit, and the media fallout have shined a spotlight on a culture of abuse and exploitation.  Yet we can’t take our eyes off Deen.

***

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 books include After Artest: Race and the Assault on Blackness  (SUNY Press) and African Americans on Television: Race-ing for Ratings (Praeger Press) co-edited with Lisa Guerrero.

  

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