African American
Monday, January 19, 2009
Friday, January 02, 2009
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
Monday, November 03, 2008
The Palin’ Identity
The reason why the McCain-Palin campaign has appeared erratic throughout the election season is that their strategic communications have been conceived and crafted according to the language of implicit cultural code rather than explicit thematic cohesion. On the surface, their messages appear scattershot, misaligned, contradictory and confusing; but that's because these messages are designed to appeal not to crisp logical consistency, but rather to murky socio-cultural undercurrents and subterranean sentiments which have fueled, informed, and warped white identity politics since the birth of this nation.
What's extraordinary is that this time around — at this particular crossroads, against this particular candidate — it's not working.
The beauty of US history is that years, decades, centuries of persistent popular struggle have resulted in dramatic social, political, and cultural changes in the continuing quest for greater common good. The ugliness of US history is that at every step, reactionaries have undertaken — and many others have tolerated — all manner of inner and outer violence in a greed- and fear-based desire to impose and maintain exclusionary power schemes. I view the 2008 presidential election as some sort of forward step along this trajectory. I hesitate to either overstate or understate the historical significance of what we're witnessing. We're way too close to the moment's clamor to know just what it means in a larger scope.
Not that this is about to stop me from sounding off now.
As I see it, the McCain campaign is perhaps best encapsulated by the iconic VP choice of Sarah Palin. Not because she's been a "drag" on the ticket. Not because of her many flaws as a candidate. Rather, because of what her selection, and its outcome, reveal about the US political landscape. I don't believe that Palin was "unvetted". I think GOP operatives knew exactly what they were getting when they picked her. I believe they simply threw the full weight of this year's presidential campaign into the strategic calculation that a raw smashface appeal to white identity politics, against a black opponent, would outweigh and overwhelm any dainty intellectual nitpicking or idealistic rhetoric.
To be sure, there remains a doughy core of conservative Americans who breed a noxious hostility to the changing shape and hue of US society. I've taken to calling this group "the twenty-two percenters". These people ludicrously view themselves as the only true Americans, beleaguered and beset on all sides by a dark tidal wave of the heathen unclean and their liberal lackeys. And these people have indeed responded well to the McCain-Palin message, whose only unifying theme has been to consistently draw from America's deep well of racist constructs and paint the Democratic candidate as Barack The Other. The twenty-two percenters read the code correctly and conclude that Obama is not one of Us. He can't be trusted because he doesn't share Our values. He harbors unpatriotic views of America, like the terrorists and anti-Semites he pals around with. He's an insurrectionary community organizer who threatens to destroy the fabric of democracy by infiltrating the White House on behalf of ACORN, Black Radicals, Muslims, communists, and illegal immigrants. He's a socialist who's going to redistribute wealth from Joe The Plumber to welfare queens looking for handouts and giveaways. He's The Spook Who Sat In The Oval Office.
Unfortunately for the McCain-Palin campaign, the twenty-two percenters are small, flaccid, and shrinking. And there's no Viagra strong enough to bolster their diminution in the face of cultural, generational, and demographic shifts which are transforming the electorate. No matter how rabidly the twenty-two percenters promote white teen pregnancy and fundamentalist home schooling, the country is slipping away from their clammy grasp and changing in ways that are simply beyond their power to halt.
Don't get me wrong: racism remains a pervasive factor in the US and global order. Anyone who suggests that we're in some sort of "post-racial" era might as well go ahead and spit in the faces of people and communities of color who endure daily inequality, exploitation, incarceration, economic injustice, and more forms of dehumanization than I can possibly list, as a direct result of racism and colonialism. An Obama presidency isn't going to undo all that. Moreover, white liberals who think McCain's "dog whistle politics" are somehow beyond the pale of normal civilized discourse are wrong. Such liberals probably just weren't sharp enough or interested enough to notice before, because we've never before had a presidential election with a person of color on a major-party ticket. Now they're sensitized to it and are shocked and appalled. In truth, white identity politics aren't the shocking exception but the mundane norm. For many of us, it's simply what we experience every day, in mass media, in the workplace, in social interactions, in the blogosphere. It's usually not dramatized and magnified by the glaring 24/7 national spotlight of an epic presidential campaign, but it's woven into the fabric of mainstream US culture.
Nevertheless, I think it's safe to say that two generations of steady anti-racist work in the wake of the Civil Rights movement have had a profound effect on mainstream attitudes. The stigmatization of racism, so often decried as mere "political correctness", has in some ways succeeded in driving the most toxic forms of racist hatred underground, resulting in a popular culture which at least tolerates a superficial modicum of racial diversity. Many white kids growing up in this environment simply don't respond to people of color with the same visceral disdain that was common among whites just one or two generations ago. They may still harbor stereotypes and blindspots; they may still view the world through an uninterrogated prism of white normativity; but they're not explicitly racist and they're not afraid of Barack Obama. Indeed the same can be said of many not-so-young white Americans who have longed for years to heal the burning wounds of our fractured nation. They may not be consciously anti-racist but they know bigotry when they see it and it's not what they believe in.
It's obvious that Obama has tapped into a powerful vein of energy and emotion coursing just underneath our society's skin. So many people want to believe that we can be better. The genius of the Obama campaign has been its ability to ignite and draw upon that widespread desire and idealism without getting caught up or pulled into the previous generation's embittered battles and intractable stalemates. This isn't a repudiation of what came before and what paved the way. It's a fresh attempt to take previous high points and apply them to a new era. This doesn't mean that I agree with all of Obama's politics; it means that I understand, appreciate, and respect what he's trying to do.
In this election, the McCain campaign slammed its money down on the bet that the Palin identity could overwhelm the Obama hope. But it's turning out that tectonic plates have shifted underneath that calculation. The twenty-two percenters increasingly find themselves on a sinking island. They aren't done with their sad and desperate attempts to protect the crumbling edges of their world, but the outcome of this year's election should tell us a lot about how shaky the stilts are under their beach houses. I'm looking forward to seeing plenty of movement.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Satire of the Stupid
[ Image via Diary of an Anxious Black Woman ]
At the risk of beating a dead literary-institution carcass, I want to clarify something about the massive failage of The New Yorker's now-infamous cover.
Not that I'm particularly aggrieved, incited, or surprised by the standard brain-farting and deep mutual butt-sniffing of white liberals of the variety that produce and display The New Yorker. I mean, I worked for years on Wall Street and in corporate media, so I'm tiresomely familiar with the cultural contours of that worldview and the soul-less snickering and self-congratulatory self-absorption at its anxious core. People of color are objects, not subjects, in that conversation; the presence and exhibition of our melanin, but not our voices, is meant to serve as guilt-balm, affirming liberal tolerance and unctuous self-regard.
Most of the criticism I've seen directed at the image has construed the problem as being that only urbane cosmopolitan sophisticates will get it, with commenters hastening to add, "Oh of course I get it, but what about the ignorant yokels? Remember the philistines!" But that's really not how I see it. Because to me, those who claim to get this image are the unsophisticates who lack the cultural and artistic literacy to understand the proper meaning of the word "satire". It's not the same as "sarcasm". That's why we have two different words. (Hint: that last line was sarcastic, not satirical. And I won't even get into the massive popular abuse of the word "ironic".)
See, in my world, the purpose of satire is iconoclasm; by which I mean, the breaking of icons, the exploding of false power centers and false narratives which hold destructive sway over society. The New Yorker cover, despite its intention and despite being sarcastic, is not satire; rather, it is a visualization and manifestation of racist cliches and stereotypes, and thus a propagation and perpetuation of racism. It does not interrogate the validity of those racist stereotypes, but rather accepts and gleefully embraces their marginalizing and dehumanizing power, then implies that it's ludicrous for conservative yahoos to think that the Obamas are those kinds of blacks; the Obamas are good blacks, not scary militant blacks or Muslims; the Obamas do not sport Afros or turbans, they are not reminiscent of dangerous Sixties radicals, no sir, they are down with the program, they are safe for whites.
Aside from the racial insularity from which it emerges, this art
fails on purely discursive grounds. You can't fight demeaning
portrayals by actualizing them. If
a woman is accused in sexist society of being ugly, the appropriate
response is not to draw a picture of her looking extremely ugly
according to certain patriarchal standards in order to
chuckle about it. That
doesn't work. The appropriate response is to undermine the entire set of underlying assumptions and beliefs which give potency to sexist slurs.
Perhaps most fundamentally, the piece does not connect with the social realities of blackness, but only with the fears of the white imagination. In so doing, it reaffirms and reanimates those fears and social divisions at a pre-intellectual level, which is where art primarily impacts the psyche. The lives of people with Afros, the lives of people who wear turbans, the actual legacies of the Black Panthers and 60s social justice activists, are all distorted, discarded, and mocked in the service of asserting the palatability of the Democratic nominee to provincial white sensibilities. And there's nothing even remotely cosmopolitan or sophisticated or iconoclastic or hip about that.
So there it is: witness the miseducated dorkiness of The New Yorker, neither funny nor provocative, just another sloppily-dressed comic too cross-eyed drunk to realize how badly he's bombing on stage, because the audience is laughing not at his jokes, but at him.
Monday, June 09, 2008
Women Who Have Run For President
Over at WOC PhD, Professor Black Woman has written a terrific piece contextualizing Hillary Clinton's historic presidential campaign, which includes this list of women who have run for president:
Meanwhile at Racialicious, Sylvia/M's piece on Shirley Chisolm's historic 1972 run has been reposted for discussion.
Speaking of whom, be sure to check out Jena Six Revisited at Problem Chylde.
Also of interest: The Nation looks at reactions to Obama in Ethiopia, Uganda, Tanzania, and elsewhere on the African continent.
If you haven't already done so, I once again encourage you to jump into the mix at The Sanctuary. Be sure to check out the community diary section. Get involved, post a diary!
ETA: See also ebogjonson's latest. And Brownfemipower.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Tuesday Jazz — Sonny Rollins and Don Cherry
American jazz builds upon the same lineage of West African rhythms which inform the Afro-Cuban rumba I posted yesterday, adapted into a new form in combination with European instrumentation and chord-melody structure, as well as a dramatic whittling down of percussive texture to a smoothed-out emphasis on varied accents and pockets rather than continuous undulations of hits. Here's Sonny Rollins on sax, Don Cherry on trumpet, Billy Higgins on drums, and Henry Grimes on bass, live in Rome in 1963:
Friday, April 04, 2008
April 4 Remembrance — 1968 and 1972
On this day, we remember the passing of two great Black leaders: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., gunned down mysteriously 40 years ago today, in 1968; and Rev. Adam Clayton Powell Jr., the remarkable Harlem pastor and groundbreaking Congressional representative who died of prostate cancer exactly 4 years later, in 1972. The picture above was taken during a rare joint press conference at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in 1965. Both of these men were capable of delivering roaring truth-soaked sermons whose withering denunciations of racism and social injustice make Jeremiah Wright look downright docile; yet the two could not have been more different in terms of personal style and political tactics. King was as humble, measured, and contemplative as Powell was brazen, bull-headed, and confrontational. Perhaps this helps explain why King has crossed over in the mainstream imagination as a beloved (watered down, co-opted, safely dead) civil rights icon, while Powell remains a shadowy, divisive, often-overlooked figure.
As a New York pastor in the 1930s, Powell tirelessly fought against discrimination while operating food pantries, job referral services, and literacy classes through his ministry; it's said that he once literally gave a poor man the shoes off his own feet. As a hard-charging member of Congress from the 1940s through the 60s, he desegregated Capitol Hill itself, launched Medicaid and Head Start, raised the minimum wage, passed anti-lynching laws, banned the N-word from the floor of Congress, outlawed poll taxes, and much, much more. As chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, Powell passed more legislation in a single session of Congress than any other committee in US history, a record which still stands. Adam Clayton Powell Jr. deserves a uniquely prominent place in the anti-racist pantheon for his immeasurable contributions to the uplift of the community he loved, for his spectacular political career, and for the sheer exuberance and unapologetic verve he brought to the fight for social justice.
Tony Chapelle writes in The Black Collegian:
During the middle girth of [the 20th] century, Adam Clayton Powell Jr. was the equivalent of the rap group Public Enemy, the protest politician Jesse Jackson, and the Congressional Black Caucus all in one.
Like Public Enemy, Powell "dissed" white America for its racism and hypocrisy, with one of his clearest refrains being akin to "You Can't Trust 'Em." When he demanded changes in society, Powell, as Jackson would years later, commanded so much attention in Washington and with the media that he became known as "Mr. Civil Rights." And as the first African-American congressman from the northeast, and for decades the only militant African American on the Hill, Powell had the guts to push through laws that forced America to stop locking African Americans out of industries and institutions.
He didn't behave like most African-American politicians. "I'm the first bad Negro they've had in Congress," he bragged. He made more enemies on Capitol Hill than perhaps any legislator before or since.
[ Read it all ]
Thursday, March 20, 2008
The Speech — Dual Consciousness on the Presidential Stage
At its core, Tuesday's speech amounted to a groundbreaking big-stage exposition of dual consciousness that I regard as the most sophisticated and important piece of mainstream political oratory and speech-writing of my adult life.
No, it did not entirely satisfy me as an anti-racist. The speech contained several elements that I found somewhat troubling or perhaps less than honest. But this was not an anti-racist speech. This was a campaign speech by a popular national politician who stands a mere two electoral steps away from the US presidency, whose candidacy has come under threat of fatal derailment by white fear of "black rage". Context matters, and just as one must grasp the socio-cultural context of Jeremiah Wright's words in order to understand and appreciate them, so one must grasp the context in which Barack Obama took the podium on Tuesday morning in order to appreciate what he was trying to do and say.
Obama was not trying to dissect, deconstruct, or even confrontationally criticize the
white racism which has so animated and shaped this nation's history and which
continues to cast heavy shadows across much of our
society's daily life. He did invoke the "original sin of slavery" and the struggles of the abolitionist and civil rights movements; he did frame racism in institutional rather than interpersonal terms; but this was not the center of his message. Rather, it seems to me that he was trying to advance racial dialogue, one modest yet pivotal step, by using his own
life story as a window into dual
consciousness. By outlining and juxtaposing features and pitfalls of both the black experience
and the white lens, Obama appeared to be trying to nudge these perceptual
prisms just a little bit closer to one another, toward a mutual recognition encapsulated at the end of the speech by an anecdote about a young white woman and an elderly black man connecting as human beings at a meeting on the campaign trail.
Now, you won't be surprised to hear that I still see an asymmetrical equation. On the one hand, we have marginalized black perspectives with legitimate grievances grounded in documented history and measurable injustice; on the other hand, dominant megaphone-wielding white perspectives steeped in denial and dismissal of the empirical impact of racism on present-day inequality. Perhaps Obama's cautiously-delineated positioning between these centers of gravity is itself a meta-symbol of where the needle currently falls on the dial of socio-political power. In any case, he described in non-judgmental terms the bitterness, resentment, and conflict emanating from these respective viewpoints as inescapable features of today's political landscape. Right or wrong, these are real forces at play. It was as though Obama sought to suddenly turn on the lights in a crowded darkened room and force us all to see each other eye to eye for one blinking moment. That's a feat that no policy paper, legislation, or executive order can accomplish.
It was a speech that he probably knew all along he'd have to deliver at some point. After all, it would be impossible for US society to elect an African American president without first directly addressing unresolved issues of race and making some sort of breakthrough on this front. Obama seized the moment with a steady hand and a gutsy sense of timing, not only to defend his candidacy, but to use this unprecedented platform to elevate mainstream racial discourse. He spoke over the heads of the pundits and shills and other self-humiliating peddlers of pap. He spoke directly to citizens who remain capable of conducting thoughtful, responsible discussion on complex, delicate, deeply-felt matters. He spoke as though his audience were grown-up and intelligent. And he spoke with an unaffected, unpretentious solemnity suggesting that the substance of this speech was and is larger than any one candidacy or election. What began as a challenge to Obama's campaign became a challenge to America. He seemed to be essentially saying: I have built my career and my candidacy as a unifying public figure with one foot on each side of the racial divide; yet at the end of the day I am a black man in America, with unshakable ties to the black community; and if our society is not ready to deal with that, then let's end this charade and admit that we have not come nearly as far as many proclaim; however, if we are ready to take another step on the long march toward freedom, then let's move forward together.
So let's see how far we've come. It doesn't matter if fake-news bobble-heads don't get it. It doesn't matter what pollsters say. What matters is that Obama stepped up in the midst of crisis and gave us a moment which will shine in history as a political milestone; a moment in which it somehow seemed possible, if only for a flashing instant, that centuries of heartbreak and blood and cruelty and division might someday be healed by the quest for social justice and subsumed by our common humanity. Whatever happens in this topsy-turvy silly-season election, it was a moment that just might have made it all worthwhile.
[ Cross-posted at APA for Progress and The Unapologetic Mexican ]
Friday, March 14, 2008
The Obama-Clinton Show
When I first posted about Barack Obama in July 2004 after his now-fabled speech at the DNC, one astute observer in the comment thread wrote, "Part of his power lies in the way he frames the issues. He tilts the landscape against the opponents of change." Bingo. Obama's power comes from his ability to tilt the landscape against opponents of change. Exactly what that change will look like once he's in the Oval Office shuffling policy papers remains a bit of a mystery; but as I see it, I'd rather roll the dice with Obama than suffer 4 more years of dismal certitude under either Clinton or McCain. With Obama, at least we can entertain the possibility of progress in DC.
Not that I'm quite on board the chugging honking whistling freight train of Obama-mania, even if I confess that I sometimes get misty during his momentous speeches (I get caught up, you know how it is). I still have reservations about some of the compromises he has had to make to get to where he is; I have serious problems with the fundamental structure of the Democratic Party; indeed I'm likely to end up voting for a third-party candidate like Cynthia McKinney (calm down, my state is safely blue). Moreover, I tend to view the whole spectacle of presidential politics as a grand charade during which tremendous national energy gets spent endlessly chattering about which pre-approved palatable public figure is to be the next temporary PR/sales representative of the global neo-imperialist gangster state. Nevertheless, I think that on the whole, the Obama phenomenon is a positive development in US politics. I hesitate to call it a full-fledged "grassroots movement" at this stage, but it's certainly more of a groundswell than his rivals' stiff-throated calls for upstanding in-the-know citizens to shun the dark horse and goose-step in line with an orderly dynastic succession. Obama's essential message is one of populist empowerment, whereas Clinton and McCain's messages are fundamentally deflating and paternalistic in philosophical orientation, aimed more at appealing to unresolved childhood issues rather than lofty visions of social uplift and liberatory self-determination. Clinton and McCain go around trying to drain the air out of rooms which Obama has pumped up with hope.
~ ~ ~
That's my elevator-chat breakdown of today's big-stage electoral scene. You may have noticed that I didn't mention the explosive issue of race in this little exposition; because in my view, race is not the primary driving factor in this election. Of course race is ever-present in US society; but as far as I can see, Obama's success in the Democratic primary has occurred not because of, but in spite of, his being Black. So prodigious are his political, oratorical, and organizational skills that he has to some extent leap-frogged the color line and somehow overcome an attribute which is ordinarily a handicap in the socio-political machinations of mainstream society. He has implemented Sun Tzu's strategic advice and turned a nominal weakness into a social strength.
Needless to say, there are white folks who believe that African Americans have it easy in the US, being the beneficiaries of a foolishly generous edifice of handouts and quotas on the upwardly mobile speedway. This worldview is the result of the cognitive indoctrination according to which white people are socialized in US society, wherein the systemic advantages, privileges, and conceits of whiteness are rendered invisible, as are the systemic injustices and entrenched obstacles facing people of color. Thus, the gradual erosion of white privilege and racism, and the ever-increasing autonomy and visible success of people of color, are seen by some white folks as somehow unnatural, an indication that "politically correct" white liberalism has gone too far in its self-flagellation and that whites are now being discriminated against. As twisted and upside-down as it is, this view does not necessarily indicate any spiritual failing or moral flaw on the part of the individual who sees the world through this lens; it indicates that they were socialized in racist society and remain locked in their conditioning, and that they must undertake a certain amount of anti-racist education and reflection if they wish to free themselves from this erroneous and dehumanizing perceptual prism.
~ ~ ~
It seems to me that one of the principal sources of confusion when it comes to racial disourse is the stunning lack of clarity and consensus regarding the exact meanings and definitions of the words "racism" and "racist". Those of us who spend significant time doing anti-racist work end up developing a variety of nuanced concepts surrounding these words, but many people never explore those meanings and instinctively respond to talk of racism with strong emotions and weak understandings. Racism is a complex multi-dimensional interdisciplinary subject which cannot be reduced to an absurdly-shallow bifurcation of the populace into laudable "not racists" and condemned "racists". Racism is an overarching, interlocking set of economic, political, social, and cultural structures, beliefs, and actions which systematically advantage one racial group at the expense of all others. A statement, thought, belief, assumption, or action can be described as racist when it plugs into the overarching grid of racism, like a node which lights up once it plugs into its compatible network, thus transcending an individual act of bigotry or prejudice and fusing into broader institutions and societal forces.
As for defining what makes an individual person "a racist", I think it's a pretty fuzzy area, and not a particularly fruitful intellectual direction. Most anti-racists are much more concerned with identifying, understanding, and dismantling racism, than in exposing any individual as "a racist", whatever that means. Clearly, there are hate-crime types out there who organize their lives around advancing white supremacist violence and such; but most of the racism that people of color deal with in our day-to-day lives — especially those of us who interact with a lot of white liberals — is far more subtle and covert, more of a background buzz than an in-your-face threat. White liberal racism tends to manifest in unspoken assumptions, attitudes, and social dynamics which normalize and center white privilege, while deprioritizing, marginalizing, and dismissing the voices, perspectives, experiences, histories, cultures, agendas, and initiatives of people of color. White liberals who engage in these behaviors aren't "racists" in the same sense as the hate-crime types, but they are nevertheless participating in the replication and perpetuation of racism. Pointing this out is not "playing the race card"; it is accurate socio-political observation. Pointing this out is not the same as running around indiscriminately shouting "racist!" at every white person within earshot in some kind of rageful frenzy; it is constructive anti-racist critique aimed at illuminating an important but dimly-lit pattern, for the purpose of healing wounds which continue to bleed our society and our own humanity.
~ ~ ~
In February 2007, I wrote that "we might as well brace ourselves for a full year and a half of
cringeworthy foot-in-throat racial punditry. With Obama in the
presidential spotlight, talking heads and politicians and scribes
across the land will have countless opportunities to comment on race
and thus chomp on their feet; I'm expecting serious feasts of pale
toes." And yes, Geraldine Ferraro has recently indulged us with probably the best example yet, not only with her initial knee-slapper about what an advantage it is to be a black man when running for president, but even more so with her petulant reactions to the flare-up: refusal to listen, flagrant denial, white victimization, shallow invocation of anti-oppression cred, and so forth. Isn't that how it usually works? If the white liberal blogosphere has taught us anything, it's that lots and lots of white liberals act this way when persons of color talk about racism.
Unfortunately, what I didn't quite envision a year ago was that the most egregious statements would come from feminists making false correspondences between racism and sexism. All forms of oppression do share certain characteristics, but each one operates along a different axis of life. Sexism often operates in the most intimate settings, as sexist men often live with, marry, and rely upon women; but racism tends to flourish on a more coldly institutional level, as racist white folks seek to structure their lives precisely so that there is no intimate contact with other races. Neither of these situations is more or less desirable than the other; they function across different dimensions and cannot be lined up for analytically-honest comparison or correspondence; as is true of all forms of oppression. Yet the Clinton campaign has generated a depressingly vocal line-up of white feminists who draw wrong comparisons and conclude that sexism is a more virulent force than racism in today's society. Some white feminists insultingly assert that women of color are betraying their gender by voting according to race, denying the possibility that there are other factors in this election. If the argument is that feminists should always vote for feminists, then I'm curious how many white women cried "betrayal!" in 1972 if women did not vote for Shirley Chisholm's presidential run (which garnered 152 electoral delegates, while the Mondale-Ferraro ticket in 1984 won a sorry 13 electoral college votes). Indeed, I wonder how many white women supported the truly historic presidential "dream ticket" of Victoria Woodhull and Frederick Douglass, who joined forces to run for the White House in 1872 and whose radical platform included women's rights and abolition of slavery and racism. The most prominent white feminists of that era distanced themselves from the Woodhull-Douglass ticket, not only because they decided that anti-racism was a secondary issue but because Victoria Woodhull controversially advocated women's sexual freedom.
The bottom line is that race is indeed at play in this election as it is in all facets of US society, but this fact is neither here nor there. Let's get real: being either a woman or a man of color is a historically-proven obstacle to the presidency; but these factors aren't insurmountable in this day and age. I don't believe that either race or gender is the single determining attribute in this campaign. I believe that those who reduce the Obama campaign to the notion that "Black man prez is cool right now" are masking racist sentiments which remain largely unexamined. Such people are sinking in the tides of history; the times have passed them by. A new tide is washing across this country, carrying a strange glimmering hope for progressive, redemptive, constructive change. I'm inclined to ride it and see where it goes.
[ Cross-posted at APA for Progress ]
Monday, January 21, 2008
Weekend Photo — Jazz at the Blue Note
Saturday night at the Blue Note, I caught a spectacular set by the McCoy Tyner Quartet, featuring Gerald Cannon on bass, Joe Lovano on tenor sax, the electrifying Eric Kamau Gravatt on drums, and of course, the former pianist in the John Coltrane Quartet, McCoy Tyner himself on keys. It was an amazing experience. I went with two friends; we got seated at a cramped table with two sixty-something women with whom we ended up having a terrific conversation. The two of them had been classmates at Smith College, and were both proud graduates of the School of Social Work. One was an outspoken white liberal Brooklynite named Leslie who now works as a construction manager. The other, a more softspoken African American woman named Francis, was a social worker who now lives in Cleveland and was visiting the city for the holiday weekend.
Francis didn't talk a lot, but what she said counted. She warned us to look out for watered-down liquor (and she was right, our cocktails were disastrous; so we switched to straight scotch). She said she could still remember when jazz legends were playing in public parks. And at the end of the night, she noted how impressed she was at how "generous" McCoy Tyner had been as band leader. Those are all important comments; especially the one about jazz in public parks; because I think many people these days forget that jazz was once Black street music. Many Black jazz musicians, who made money playing in all-white venues where they were forced to use the back door and were often not even allowed to use the restroom, brought their music to their communities by playing in public parks and on street corners. And this was music which meant something to the community: it was revolutionary music about freedom and desire and a Love Supreme and simply being human in this wicked world. Jazz was the music you heard out on the hoops court and up on the stoop.
Of course, jazz morphed into soul and R&B and funk, which underlie most modern pop music. These days you don't hear so much jazz in the streets; instead, you tend to hear a lot of corporate pop-rap filled with misogyny and juvenile posturing and mind-numbingly unambitious rhythmic and harmonic patterns. Meanwhile, jazz has been largely pushed into the conservatories, where new generations of earnest kids study jazz technique and mimic its forms and idioms, but for the most part without the spiritual foundations which give the music its potency. On that very night at the Blue Note, after the McCoy Tyner Quartet had packed up, and the older multi-ethnic crowd had filed out, the club filled with bouncy white college kids, there to see a white college band fronted by a sexy female singer. And they were actually pretty decent in terms of basic chops; but the contrast with what had been happening in that same room 30 minutes earlier was jarring. Maybe that's why Francis's comment stuck with me: she still remembered when jazz legends were playing in public parks and jazz music was the people's music. In fact I still think that jazz, and its blues roots, are the people's music, but you have to search a bit harder these days to find it.
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Martin and Malcolm
[ Via Beautiful, Also, Are The Souls Of My Black Sisters ]
Two of my greatest heroes, side by side and smiling; both gunned down for their struggles against white supremacism; and both subsequently reduced in today's pop-mainstream imagination to soul-shrinking soundbites about dreams and means, their images appropriated as cartoonish cardboard cut-outs by the shills and imbeciles of the corporate-political establishment.
Yet their legacies continue to burn with searing passion in my mind and in my life, and in all those who nurture and carry forward the flame of knowledge sparked by their words; the flame of action sparked by their deeds; the flame of hope and belief that there is something worth fighting for in this blighted upside-down wasteland of a world, something often hidden yet closer than our own breath, something beautiful and noble and real that no bullet or bomb can ever touch.
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Roundup — A Global Racket Demands A Global Justice Movement
First off, Redstar is doing a hellacious job staying on top of the ongoing fight to halt the demolition of public housing in New Orleans:
Let’s begin with this video of activist and civil rights lawyer Bill Quigley’s arrest at a City Council meeting for protesting the demolition of public housing. In the last month, my feminist and progressive blogosphere has been spreading the word about the impending demolition of approx. 4,000 units of public housing in New Orleans, scheduled for this Saturday, and the resistance of tireless residents and activists in the face of a corrupt, ideological, myopic and ruthless HUD. I have little to add at this late juncture, except to add to the collective grief, anger and, for myself anyway, sense of despair that this is really happening.
The People’s Hurricane Relief Fund, justiceforneworleans.org, Louisiana Weekly, and even the NY Daily News have more depressing and outrageous detail than you could ever hope to read (check out justiceforneworleans.org for updates, info and resources). National Journal has a series on HUD corruption under Bush and Sec. Alfonso Jackson. Several weeks ago Congressional Quarterly ran a great article on the role of LA Sen. Vitter (R) in blocking affordable housing development in the city and region.
The 896 units at Lafitte, the only development/neighborhood ironically being re-designed with one-for-one replacement (incl. beyond the original footprint), has been spared - for now - by the “hysterical preservationists”, as my boyfriend and his New Orleans historic preservation peers are mockingly referred to by developers and those interested in progress and growth and rising tides lifting all boats blah blah blah. Nonetheless, HUD proceeded to remove the doors and windows from the developments - presumably including those reinforced window covers that allegedly cost $1,500 a pop to install after the storm - leaving them open to the vandalism they wished the storm had ravaged on the buildings as their lies claimed. Furthermore, the City Council will now have to approve whether to override the preservationists, and with its new white majority (first time in 20 years), in-fighting and general ambivalence about public housing, I’m not optimistic that strategically located Lafitte - not far from the French Quarter and Canal Street - will long outlive the other targets, C.J. Peete, B.W. Cooper and St. Bernard.
[...]
Wrecking balls arrived yesterday at B.W. Cooper while we were writing. Activists stepped in front of bulldozers and stalled the bulk of the day’s planned destruction. AP coverage of the direct action tactics remind us that these are not “normal times” in which we’re standing down HUD and elected leaders and developers and all those who plan to profit from this wholesale eviction of the city’s poorest and most vulnerable residents. Funny, seems pretty status quo to me, if particularly egregious.
The National Lawyer’s Guild more accurately calls for halting the “racially motivated” demolitions. This is a good part of the equation, but not all of it. It’s race + class that’s so problematic. Let’s not forget that “the poor” are not welcome most anywhere, other than churches, soup kitchens, and the charitable like.
North Carolina activists have also joined the cause of protecting affordable housing in New Orleans, targeting Sen. Dole (R-NC) to seek her support for S.1668. Their efforts are commended and appreciated, though without flipping Vitter, who is in my Top 5 of Public Enemies and 2007 Villians, S. 1668 doesn’t stand a chance. Seems Landrieu, like me, is lying awake at night plotting her revenge against his stonewalling, though she’s likely more motivated by election ballots than me. Me, I’m just a righteous and angry person these days.
I leave you with this coverage of the estimated 12,000 homeless folks in New Orleans, living in tents across the street from City Hall and beneath the highway. It’s a perfect Dickensian Christmas in the Crescent City this year.
Destruction of public housing is a flagrant abuse of human rights; indeed it's a violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which the US government signed in 1948. Article 25 of the Declaration states:
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
(2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.
Ever since I studied the abolitionist and civil rights movements from a strategic activist standpoint, I've felt that one remarkably effective avenue for progressive agitation is the subversive re-appropriation of legal language. Of course when the US founding fathers declared that "all men are created equal", it was solely intended as a tossed-off bit of flowery feel-goodism used as a hook to sell a system whose aim was almost perversely contradictory to that statement: the establishment of a slave state on stolen ethnically-cleansed land in which currency and taxation would be monopolized by a private aristocratic club at the hub of power. And yet, the words in that hook were irrevocably burnished in history, and the abolitionist and civil rights movements exploited those words by refocusing a critical mass of public imagination on a re-energized vision of human equality. That's what I mean by subversive re-appropriation.
These days I'd like to see something similar happening on a global scale with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights. All of those treaties are regularly used by the US government as political bludgeons against nations from which the US wishes to secure various gangsterish arrangements, even as the US resists the establishment of a world court which could actually adjudicate and enforce international law. But the words ratified in those documents may yet provide progressives in the Global Justice movement with powerful tools with which to undermine the systems of imperial domination, exploitation, and oppression that currently rule our world.
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I consider the IMF-World Bank debt racket to be a crime against humanity because it so clearly violates numerous fundamental tenets of the above-mentioned treaties. Millions upon millions of people in the Global South who had nothing to do with the amassing of bogus post-colonial debts suffer the most brutal deprivation and degradation under this shameful regime of enforced poverty. In my view, this is a key instrument of power for global (white male supremacist) imperialist kleptocracy.
If you're not quite up to speed on all this, or if you simply need a refresher, I highly recommend spending some time with two excellent primers from Jubilee USA and the American Friends Service Committee. Whether you're focused on anti-racism, women's rights, environmentalism, or anti-corporatism, this is one area where it all starts to come together on a staggering scale.
Here's one simple thing you can do about it right now.
All this is on my mind at the moment because just this past week, historic trade talks took place in Lisbon, Portugal, between 70 African and European heads of state. From Namibian:
Only a slim strip of sea separates Europe and Africa but the world's biggest economic bloc and its poor neighbour seem to be oceans apart over how to improve human rights and build trade ties.
A weekend summit in Lisbon brought together 70 European and African heads of state, but despite lofty proclamations of the "spirit of Lisbon" and a post-colonial "partnership of equals", the unwieldy conclave showed little meeting of minds.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel scolded the Africans about the situation in Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe is accused by the West of crushing opponents and wrecking the economy.
But the former Marxist guerrilla chief, viewed as an anti-colonial independence hero by many Africans, strutted with a steely smile through the summit in the absence of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who stayed away in protest.
Asked by Reuters for his message to the West, Mugabe, 83, was happy to raise a combative fist for the cameras.
European Union officials soothingly assured the Africans that new liberalising trade deals - which Brussels insists be signed before a World Trade Organisation waiver on preferential terms expires on Dec 31 - would be good for them in the end.
But many African heads of state, led by Senegal's octogenarian president Abdoulaye Wade, opposed the EU economic partnership agreements or any interim substitutes, saying their imposition smacked of divisive colonial paternalism.
Wade warned "slow, bureaucratic" Europe that it risked being left behind by China and India in the race for investments in Africa.
From AllAfrica.com:
The European leaders' outcry against Mugabe was basically their concern for the fate of the white farmers in Zimbabwe.
While British prime minister Gordon Brown boycotted the summit because of Mugabe's attendance, German chancellor Angela Merkel accused Mugabe of 'damaging the image of Africa'. Such a reaction, while understandable, leaves many questions unanswered. Nothing came from Europe when Mugabe was unleashing terror on his Matabele countrymen in the early 1980s. The Zimbabwe Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace gives sordid details of how the Matabele were massacred by Mugabe's Five Brigade supervised by North Korean military advisers. The atrocities committed were reminiscent of the Rwanda genocide of 1994, where European powers also showed a lukewarm interest when they were being committed. The political thuggery that has claimed hundreds of Kenyans ahead of the December 27 general elections does not seem to merit the same hostility unleashed on Mugabe. Is that a credit for 'Africa's good name'?
A week before the summit, renowned writer and Nobel laureates Vaclav Havel, Nadine Gordimer, Wole Soyinka and others sent a protest letter to the EU-Africa summit organisers, accusing them of leaving Darfur, Somalia and other African problems out of the summit. The writing is on the wall. Africa's oppressed and impoverished black majority are not very important if they do not directly impact on the tranquillity of Europe.
From Reuters AlertNet:
Most African leaders refuse to accept Economic Partnership Agreements demanded by the European Union and want to negotiate different accords to replace them, Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade said on Sunday.
"We are not talking any more about EPAs, we've rejected them ... we're going to meet to see what we can put in place of the EPAs," Wade told reporters on the second and final day of an EU-Africa summit in Lisbon.
The Senegalese president said he had led stiff opposition by the majority of African leaders against the accords at the summit, which had been called to forge a new cooperation partnership between Europe and Africa. [...]
"I agree with this spirit of creating a new relationship (with Europe), but we have to define what that relationship is," Wade said, adding: "It's clear that Africa rejects the EPAs"
An article from The Independent bears the headline: "China the victor as Europe fails to secure trade deal with Africa".
Despite the near-total silence from US mainstream fake news outlets, I've been listening to quite a bit of chatter about all this on community radio over the past week. The dramatic emergence of China's power throughout the African continent has been a particular topic of interest to African and African American radio hosts, commentators, and callers. It's a huge subject that I'll undoubtedly have a lot to say about going forward, but for now I'll just note that, based on what I've heard, the prevailing attitudes toward China have been on the whole positive; or perhaps I should say, more positive than the prevailing attitudes toward the historically-burdened relationship between Europe and Africa. Naturally there's some suspicion about Chinese motives, as well as a fear of replacing one exploitative colonial power with another; but a number of callers have pointedly asked whether the suspicious view of the Chinese is, in fact, generated by racism promulgated by white supremacy; and many others have basically said, "Given a choice between trusting Europe or China, I'll take my chances with China."
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Turning our gaze to the US role in the world, Brownfemipower links two articles on "How war plays out on the bodies of women". From Democracy Now!:
A woman in Houston, Texas has sued the company Halliburton and its former subsidiary KBR after she says she was gang raped by employees of the company in Baghdad. Jamie Leigh Jones, who was working for KBR at the time, says she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone. Jones accuses the company and the U.S. government of covering up the incident. Jones told ABC News that after she was raped, the company put her in a shipping container without food or water for at least 24 hours. She was also warned that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job. No one has been prosecuted for the rape. ABC News reported the alleged assailants will likely never face a judge and jury, due to a loophole that has effectively left contractors in Iraq beyond the reach of United States law. [...]
In the Iraqi city of Basra, police officials are reporting religious vigilantes have killed at least 40 women this year because of how they dress. Basra’s police chief Jalil Khalaf told the Associated Press: “The women of Basra are being horrifically murdered and then dumped in the garbage with notes saying they were killed for un-Islamic behavior.” He said women are regularly accosted for not wearing traditional dress and head scarves.
Meanwhile back here at home, Ann brings us an article from In These Times about the national wave of nooses that we're currently experiencing:
The noose, that symbol of American racism associated with the Jim Crow South, is making a comeback.
Following the notorious Jena, La., incident, a rash of noose-related hate crimes has surfaced around the country, at times in the unlikeliest of places. These cases are not aberrations, but part of an endemic problem.
On Oct. 9, 2007, in New York City, a noose was found hanging from the office door of a black professor at Columbia University Teachers College. On Oct. 10, an NYPD officer found a noose hanging over his locker. On Oct. 11, a noose was found hanging from a light pole in front of a post office near Ground Zero. On Oct. 22, a noose was sent to a high school principal, a black woman, in Brooklyn.
For African Americans, the noose symbolizes racial intimidation, violence and death—and with good reason. “The noose is among the most repugnant of all racist symbols because it is itself an instrument of violence,” noted Judge Robert L. Carter, a black federal district judge, in Williams v. New York City Housing Authority. In this 2001 employment discrimination case, African-American public employees were subjected to a hostile work environment, including the hanging of a noose.
Lynching has been America’s own form of domestic terrorism, columnist George Curry wrote recently in the Philadelphia Inquirer: “Far from being merely a prank, the hanging of nooses harks back to a shameful period in American history. It was not until 1952 that the United States went a whole year without a single lynching.”
Mark Potok, a staff director at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate crimes and hate groups, thinks the current noose hangings are a reaction to Jena. “What the nooses represent is a wider and deeper backlash by whites than people recognize,” he says. “White people think the events in Jena were whitewashed by an evil and politically correct press.” [...]
On Nov. 3, hundreds of people marched in Charleston, W.V., in support of Megan Williams, a 20-year-old black woman whom authorities say was kidnapped, tortured, beaten and raped by six white men and women in a trailer over the course of a week. Williams’ captors also allegedly forced her to eat rat, dog and human feces, and placed a noose around her neck. The six suspects, who were arrested and charged with kidnapping, sexual assault, malicious wounding and battery, have not been charged with hate crimes.
“They just kept saying, ‘This is what we do to niggers down here,’” Williams told the Associated Press. [...]
But why are these racially motivated crimes on the rise at this point in time? Potok suggests that the recent noose incidents reflect not a fringe phenomenon, but a major social problem. “We’re looking at an upsurge in racial nationalism,” says Potok. “What’s going on is a serious backlash against globalization. You have a certain level of economic rage that provides fertile ground for these groups.” He says that with more people of color immigrating to the country, “whites are angry and uneasy.”
According to Potok, these whites who are scapegoating think, “Our country is being stolen from us. The country my white Christian forefathers built is being taken away.” But on Democracy Now!, Malik Shabazz, a member of Black Lawyers for Justice, said: “The hanging of nooses is a sign that there [could] be real bodies under those nooses very soon.”
Brownfemipower and Ann are two of the remarkable bloggers I had intended to write about during the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence. Extenuating circumstances over the past 2 weeks have prevented me from blogging about all the things I'd planned, but as I said, this campaign will not be limited to 16 days; this will be an ongoing focus of mine.
On that note, let's wrap it up with the excellent Carnival of 16 Days of Activism Against Gender Violence which Sokari has put together at Black Looks:
Thanks to everyone who participated in the Carnival by submitting posts as well as those who linked and promoted the carnival on their blogs. Thinking about how to group the Carnival posts I finally decided on two groupings, those that speak specifically to the Global South and those which speak to a more universal GBV.
One of the first bloggers I linked to over three years ago is Bengladeshi blogger, Rezwan. Rezwan has written a report on how Bangladeshi bloggers are responding to the issue of domestic violence and influencing the local mainstream media to take gender based violence on board.
And it worked like a wonder, as articles have started to appear in the local media. This has prompted local journalists like Foisal Noi [bn] to go to Rahela’s village and dig up more information on the case. A significant TV broadcast about Rahela’s case is planned for October 29. Whether Rahela will get justice, only time will tell. But that single post by Manobi led to a level of activity in the society that was certainly unprecedented.
Alex Engwete’s post on Sexual Terrorism is located in the DRC. In the midst of continued “psychological and physical destruction and extinction of Congolese women” he asks why is it that African and Congolese social scientists have failed to “develop a theoretical tool able to map out, trace, and explain the horrific phenomenon”. As a result there are inadequate statistics which would determine the true extent of the violence against Congolese women.
Perceived as a particularly effective weapon of war and used to subdue, punish, or take revenge upon entire communities, acts of sexual and gender-based violence increased concomitantly. Attacks have comprised individual rapes, sexual abuse, gang rapes, mutilation of genitalia, and rape-shooting or rape-stabbing combinations, at times undertaken after family members have been tied up and forced to watch. The perpetrators have come from among virtually all of the armies, militias and gangs implicated in the conflicts, including local bands that attacked their own communities and local police forces.
Staying with the DRC, Jewels in the Jungle searches for a “good news” story and finds a documentary about Lumo Sinai, a 22-year old Congolese woman who has not only survived the sexual terrorism described above but is rebuilding her life with the support of local healers and medical doctors.
“Lumo” is an intimate look into a woman’s tragedy and healing process, and, by extension, into the scourge of rape that marks the war-torn politics of central Africa. “Lumo” is also the story of a remarkable African hospital that works tirelessly to restore the physical and mental health of women suffering in an epidemic of fistula caused by rape. The hospital’s self-called “Mamas,” African women who work tirelessly as healers, even flouted traditional prejudice and government policy by leading a march in defense of women’s human rights. But “Lumo” remains most of all Lumo Sinai’s story as she struggles through four failed surgeries and searches for strength to face the future — whatever the outcome of one more surgery by the hospital’s dedicated doctors...
Chinwe Azubuike poem “Our Dilemma” exposes the awfulness of “the cut” that destroys “our sacred weapons of desire”
Our sacred weapons of pleasure
are being destroyed by the day
rendered useless by our overseeing Lords and Ladies
of ancestral descent.They perform a barbaric operation on our ‘flesh of honour’
and call it ‘Female Circumcision’
in the white man’s language.
They mutilate our pride and say it is ‘tradition’
“The initiation to womanhood.”They cut us!
Oh yes, they cut us with the blade.Ultra Violet links to a report which considers why there is a 300% rise in violence against women in Kerala, India, a state which also has the highest literacy levels in the country.
So here, factors like education and international exposure are debilitating rather than liberating in any way. This is something that’s been bothering me for a while, ever since Gita Aravamudan, author of Disappearing Daughters, pointed out that female foeticide is also more prevalent in richer, better-educated homes. I grew up on a staple diet of cliches regarding the world and social change and one of them had to do with education being the panacea for all ills. When will men stop beating up women? When will people not fight on religious grounds? When will caste be abolished? When everybody is educated. Were others also similarly reassured or was I the only one conned in this manner?
[ Read it all ]
Thursday, December 06, 2007
The Demolition of New Orleans Public Housing and the Ongoing Sabotage of Black Community Consolidation
[ Via Brownfemipower ]
Monday, October 01, 2007
Monday Protests — Burma & Jena
It's been a big protest day in NYC. First, at noon outside the Myanmar mission on 77th Street, just east of Central Park, hundreds of demonstrators held placards, chanted slogans such as "May all beings be free", and sat in prayer and meditation, in solidarity with the Buddhist monks of Burma who galvanized the world last week with their gutsy mass protests.
Admittedly, post-colonial politics in Burma are complex and must be approached with some caution. Whenever the US power structure — from the corporate media to the federal government to the Big NGOs — latches onto a foreign political movement in the name of democracy and freedom, it should obviously be understood that the US public is being played and there are likely a number of nefarious hidden agendas in motion. Unfortunately these days too many (US) Americans are, well, suckers. For example, it seems to me that most Americans still haven't figured out the basic fact that (in my view) the Vietnam War was actually about China. To some extent, so is Burma. Nevertheless, I unequivocally support the Buddhist monks' uprising in the face of fuel and rice crises; their demands for sufficient food, clothing, and shelter for all citizens; and their right to dissent and resist. This situation has been brewing since 1988 and I think it's getting to be about that time when something's gonna give. If not this time, maybe next time; when things finally come crashing down, I can only hope that they fall in good directions and that as few people as possible get hurt.
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An hour later, students from NYU, Columbia, and other regional colleges held a rally for the Jena 6 in Washington Square Park, followed by a march to city hall, as part of a national student walkout. I wasn't able to march today, but here are some pics from the warm-up rally as the crowd gathered.
The last photo shows New York City Council member Charles Barron at the megaphone. Barron drew raucous cheering as he roared that people of color, "not just in Jena, Louisiana, but in Jena, New York", must defend themselves against racism "by any means necessary". He added, "Is it appropriate for an elected politician to be speaking like this? Absolutely. It is not only appropriate, it is our responsibility, it is precisely what we are elected to do."
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Censored Art From The Underground
Last weekend I got a call from my friend Marcus. "Hey I just got something that I think you'll be interested in seeing," he said with a certain urgency. "Bring some beer and you can check it out." So I did.
It was a DVD he had just picked up: a 2004 release of the 1973 underground classic The Spook Who Sat By The Door, based on the 1969 novel by Sam Greenlee. Marcus said that when he was growing up in Harlem, the novel circulated on the contraband market, having been banned by the government. When the film by Ivan Dixon (soundtrack by Herbie Hancock) hit theaters, it was an overnight success, yet after only a few short weeks it suddenly closed down. Every print of the film mysteriously disappeared.
Fortunately, somebody was thinking: in 2004, the original negatives re-surfaced, after having been hidden in a Hollywood vault for 30 years. Restored and digitized, now it's available on DVD.
As Marcus and I started watching the movie, it was one of those situations where after a while you start going, "Hmmm, yeah, I can kinda see why the authorities might ban this...I mean, this does not feel like safe artistic territory here...oh wow now that's gonna make certain people uncomfortable for sure!" Not banned, mind you, because of violence or sex or language; banned because of impermissible political imagery and ideas.
A word about the author Sam Greenlee: he graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1952 with a bachelor's in political science, then served two years in the US Army before taking up the study of international relations and becoming one of the first black foreign service officers in the US Information Agency. He took on assignments in Iraq, Pakistan, Indonesia, and Greece. In his own words: "Essentially I was an overseas public relations representative for the United States. Our job was to sell the best image of the United States overseas — basically I lied a lot." In 1965 he quit. Before returning to the US, he spent four months on the Greek island of Mykonos writing his first novel, The Spook Who Sat By The Door. He submitted his manuscript to 40 publishers before landing a small printing press in London.
[ SOME SPOILAGE AHEAD ]
Here's the commentary which precedes the movie on the DVD release:
Some call this material, let's just say, provocative. Others criticize some of the film's stereotypes based on both gender and race; and rightly so, especially regarding the sexist dimensions. The way I look at it, you might say The Spook is sort of a Dirty Harry or Death Wish movie, except as seen from the other side of the Color Line looking glass. Instead of envisioning a fed-up bigoted gun-slinging white dude blowing away dirty thugs, Greenlee envisions a fed-up bigoted gun-slinging black dude: a CIA agent hired as a token and assigned to work in the copy room for 5 years, who goes on to organize and transform street gangs into viable guerilla forces. Obviously violent uprising in real-life USA isn't a realistic consideration, but what I find noteworthy is the government's real-life ability to suppress fictional depictions of unapproved narratives in a political-spy-thriller novel.
Here's how Greenlee snaps open the novel:
Today the computers would tell Senator Gilbert Hennington about his impending campaign for re-election. The senator knew from experience that the computers did not lie.
He sat separated from his assembled staff by his massive, uncluttered desk, the Washington Monument framed by the window to his rear. They sat alert, competent, loyal and intelligent, with charts, graphs, clipboards and reports at the ready. The senator swept the group with a steely gaze, gave Belinda, his wife and chief aide, a bright smile of confidence, and said:
"All right, team, let's have a rundown, and don't try to sweeten the poison. We all know this is the closest one yet: what I want to know is how close? Tom, kick it off."
"The campaign war chest is in excellent shape, chief: no major defectors."
"Good. I'll look over your detailed breakdown later. Dick?"
"I spent a week on Mad Av with both the PR boys and our ad agency. They both have good presentations ready for your approval, Senator. I think you'll be pleased."
"How do we shape up on TV, Dick? All our ducks in line?"
"Excellent, Senator. You'll be on network television a minimum of three times between now and election day — just about perfect, no danger of overexposure."
"Have you licked the makeup thing yet, Dick?" asked Belinda Hennington. "A small detail but it probably cost one man the presidency. We don't want that to happen to us."
"No sweat, Mrs. Hennington. Max Factor came out with a complete new line right after that fiasco. I think we'll be using 'Graying Temples,' in keeping with our maturity image. As we all know, the youth bit is out nowadays. Fortunately with the senator we can play it either way."
"Good show, Dick," said the senator. "Harry?"
"I've run the results of our polls through the computers, both the IBM 436 and the Remington Rand 1401. Louis Harris gave us a random pattern sampling with peer-group anchorage; Gallup a saturation vertical-syndrome personality study and NORC an ethnic and racial cross-section symbiology. The results check out on both computers, although I'm programming a third as a safety-valve check-out.
"The computers have you winning the election, Senator, but by less than three thousand votes. A small shift and there goes the ball game."
The senator, startled and troubled, glanced nervously toward his wife. She gave him a smile of reassurance.
"Do the computers indicate a possible breakthrough," he asked, "with any of the peer groups? How do we stand with the Jewish vote?"
"You're solid with the Jews, Senator. Where you're in trouble is with the Negroes."
"The Negroes!" exclaimed Senator Hennington. "Why, I have the best voting record on civil rights on Capitol Hill. Just last year I broke the ADA record for correct voting on civil rights with 97.64."
"Our polls reveal a sharp decline just after your speech requesting a moratorium on civil-rights demonstrations. If we can regain most of the lost Negro percentile, Senator, we're home free."
"No use crying about a lack of voter loyalty. This calls for a 'think session.' Perhaps we should have our special assistant on minorities and civil rights sit in; although I'm not sure how helpful he'll prove. Frankly, I'm disappointed by his performance so far."
"Judy," said the senator into his office intercom, "Think session in here. No calls, please, and cancel all morning appointments. And ask Carter Summerfield to join us, will you?"
The senator turned to his wife as they awaited the arrival of Summerfield.
"Belinda, I'm beginning to have serious doubts about Summerfield, he hasn't come up with a fresh idea since he joined us, and I don't expect anything other than tired cliches from him today."
"He's fine in a campaign, Gil, that's where he'll shine. I don't think you ought to rely on him for theory."
"Perhaps you're right. I guess it's not brains we're looking for in him anyway."
"No," she smiled. "That's his least valuable commodity to us."
The senator swiveled his leather-covered chair half-round and gazed out at the Washington Monument.
"This question of the Negro vote could be serious. I never thought I'd ever be in trouble with those people. We have to come up with something which will remind them I'm the best friend they have in Washington, and soon." (p. 1-4)
And with Summerfield's help, they do come up with something: the senator publicly accuses the CIA of racially discriminatory hiring practices and challenges them to hire their first African American agent. The senator gets re-elected; the proposed hiring program swings into motion; and the CIA assembles a class of "the very best of their race", lining up black men in their underwear to check their teeth and test their temperaments. As the program drags on, the agency higher-ups do everything they can to make it impossible for any of the black candidates to pass the screening/testing process; but our protaganist Freeman, the guy who's always reserved and more or less unnoticed in the background, is the one man who makes it through and gets the job.
Freeman left his suit, shoes, shirt, tie and tooth cap in a bag, with instructions that they be delivered to the storage company that stored the rest of his clothing, records, books and paintings that had no business in his new existence. He would establish a New York base later. He had pondered the danger of leading a double life and decided that the strain of squaredom would have to be eased somehow from time to time. The few days in New York, doing the simple things he had done, had convinced him more than ever that this was important. He might be the CIA Tom in Washington, but for a few days elsewhere he would have to become Freeman again. He did not think that, even if he ran into his CIA colleagues in New York, identification would be a danger; n----rs all look alike to whites, anyway, and no one would connect the New York Freeman with the Freeman who would pioneer integration in one of the most powerful governmental institutions in the United States. (p. 31)
Freeman's disciplined behavior gains him gradual acceptance at the CIA. He is befriended by generals and senators.
The general became genuinely fond of Freeman, and while continuing to use him as a showpiece, began to use him increasingly as an administrative assistant as well. He seldom gave Freeman tasks more difficult than those he might award a reaonably intelligent secretary, but that he requested him to do more than mop the floor was in itself progress of no little degree. Even the most bigoted of the general's friends and colleagues gave him credit for "giving one of them an opportunity." It was as if the general had led the list in a drive for a popular charity. The general knew that Freeman would perform the tasks assigned him painstakingly, painfully and accurately. Freeman, in turns, learned the trick of making an easy job look difficult, a talent he shared with the vast majority of government employees in Washington, regardless of color.
The general began to take him on trips into the field more often, both at home and abroad. In the United States, of course, he would have his secretary inquire as to whether a Negro in their midst might offend anyone. Only a relative number of replies in the affirmative were received, confirming the general's pride in the progress of race relations. Freeman was often used as a liaison between the general and Senator Hennington and their mutual relations improved considerably. The senator would often invite Freeman to lunch in the Senate dining-room. The senator liked to lunch on the Hill with a Negro at least two or three times a month and often would be stuck with one who looked white, a wasted effort in image-making. Nowadays the presence of Negroes in the Senate dining-room seldom evoked any dramatic response from the southern senators, as had been the case early in the senator's career, thus taking much of the drama and pleasure from the adventure, but the senator's reputation as a flaming liberal crusader for human rights remained intact and Freeman made his small contribution, making only one minor faux pas by once requesting a wine in a good French accent. The senator did not notice and Freeman made a mental note that knowing anything at all about wines was not part of his image. The senator, flattered by Freeman's feigned ignorance and naivete, told everyone that Freeman was an extremely intelligent man. (p. 59-60)
It's intriguing to ponder how Greenlee captures and articulates DuBois's theory of dual consciousness via Freeman's double life at the CIA. But then, he turns the usual power dynamic of this racial construction on its head by making "black consciousness" the side of Freeman's psyche which ultimately appropriates from (spies upon) "white consciousness". That alone was probably enough to get it banned.
"Whad'ya think?" Marcus asked me as the final credits rolled.
"That was different," I reflected. "I think responses to this will be, well...varied. We're gonna need another round of beers to go over this."
Friday, September 21, 2007
Carving "Jena" in Anti-Racist History
No doubt, yesterday was big. I'm proud of our little brown corner of blogland (Sylvia!) for playing a part in spreading the story of the Jena 6 and watching it grow and grow until it blossomed into a massive grassroots civil rights march on the international stage. Perhaps in time, "Jena" will take on the historic ring of such place names as "Selma", "Birmingham", and "Little Rock" in the annals of anti-racist struggle.
Now that most semi-conscious people out there have heard the basic outlines of the story, I see it as the job of (real) progressives to assert an anti-racist narrative frame in popular discourse. All too often stripped of historical and social context, the story can get fragmented and reduced to a random series of isolated incidents to be pondered like some cheesy Law And Order script, hyper-focused on legal technicalities and the minutiae of violence. But properly contextualized, the story neatly illustrates the fundamental realities of institutional racism in action: the white control of decision-making offices at all levels — school board, law enforcement, district attorney, judge and jury — and the draconian penalties which befall young persons of color who resist the racist social order, as hauntingly symbolized by the wide leafy oak tree in the center of the schoolyard whose cool southern shade was jealously reserved for white skin only.
In my view, the most striking element of the extensive CNN coverage I watched yesterday was the profundity of white denial of racism. Almost without exception, white Jena residents who were asked whether there was "racial tension" in their town suddenly looked as though a major chunk of their brain short-circuited and went dark, their eyes went flat, and they mass-hypnotically mouthed hollow statements such as "No we're not that kind of people, we play football together." And that's because one of the effects of racism is precisely a sort of mass hypnosis which insidiously blinds people to the flagrant system of power and oppression under which they live by making the racist power structure seem as natural and invisible as the air we breathe.
Thus it is impossible for most white Jena residents, questioned about racism, to think it over for a few seconds and say, "Yes, racism has been a serious historical problem in these parts, just like in the rest of the country, and we're still struggling to get past that dark legacy; but we've made a lot of progress and we're trying our best to see to it that African Americans in our community have equal rights and protections, and I hope that's the case with the Jena 6 too." You might think this would be a good thing to say, an easy way to diffuse the situation and avoid a ton of bad press. But most white Jena residents are literally incapable of saying such a thing because the brain functions which organize such thoughts have been shut down by racist socialization. Indeed, it didn't even occur to most of the white Jena residents whom I saw interviewed that the story was about black folks, not white folks; the suffering of black families ripped apart by unjust incarceration did not even register on their mental radar screens, all they could see was their own suffering at being portrayed as racist.
This isn't to say that Jena is necessarily a town teeming with Klansmen. Then again, who are we kidding. This is an area that voted for David Duke. Between 1878 and 1946, there were at least 421 recorded lynchings in Louisiana. Of course, lynchings have never been strictly about killing one specific person; lynchings have always been an ideological statement designed to communicate the sociopathic psycho-sexual ferocity with which the racist social order will be guarded. Nooses hanging from a white shade tree, though physically unused, nevertheless make the same ideological statement and are therefore just as mentally, emotionally, and socially injurious as a blow to the body. And that's what this story is about: a group of black kids who
refused to swallow that ideological statement and in fact fought back
in self-defense, and the venomous disregard for young black lives which the legal system has exhibited in responding to that pushback.
So the question is: now what? In the coming days and weeks, we'll see what kind of impact yesterday's demonstration had on various decision-makers; but judging from the decidedly nasty whiff coming off district attorney Reed Walters, I'm guessing that this is far from over. Many different groups are now involved, so there will likely be plenty of distributed, decentralized activity, which in my book is a good thing for progressive activism. If you have any local or national groups working on this issue which you'd like to get involved with, I say go for it, now is the time.
The good news is that we — meaning, our little corner of blogland — are presently sitting on a piece of heavy political artillery: our petition addressed to the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice, which has now gathered almost 400,000 signatures and is still going strong as ever. I've been corresponding closely with Tom (who posted and is maintaining the petition in the face of near-constant racist spam attacks) about what to do with this hefty list of names. We're planning on launching a simple website dedicated to the petition and Jena 6 activism, a place which activists and journalists can google to find out what's going on. We're planning on putting together a press release about the petition (in response to interest from the media) and a coalition-building memo seeking collaboration and participation from all interested parties. We're looking for help, both in terms of ideas and execution.
Personally, I believe it can be shown in court that the disproportionate prosecution of the Jena 6 violates the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees due process and equal protection under the law. Therefore, my thinking at this time is to use the petition as political theater and moral pressure in pushing key decision-makers — the attorney general, the presidential candidates, the state governor, etc. — to bring the case into constitutional compliance. These public figures must be compelled to calculate that it's more costly to ignore the problem than to solve it. (Moreover, the case can be used to discuss the racism of the criminal justice system more broadly, and to illuminate the systemic mass violence that is occurring every day in the prison-industrial complex.) As chairman of the Judiciary Committee, my understanding is that Rep. John Conyers has the power to move this issue forward with the Civil Rights Division. Maybe that's as good a place as any to start making noise. I'd love to hear some of your thoughts.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Friday, April 13, 2007
Gangster Culture
In the wake of the long-overdue downfall of Don Imus, it seems that lots of folks are interested in talking about hip hop and gangster culture. Yes, it's an awkward spectacle which somehow shines an incredibly dorky light on stuffy-nosed non-sequitur-wielding commentators. But it does seem like a conversation worth having. So let's talk.
Mind you, neither I nor most Black folks I know (an admittedly skewed cross-section of progressive-minded adults) can stand the "gangsta rap" pumped out by mega-corporations; many consider it a degrading affront. Some of my friends — and I'm inclined to agree — go so far as to call commercial rap videos a new form of blackface, because we have white folks being entertained by, paying for, and profiting from negative stereotypical images of Blacks. The fact that many African Americans also buy into those images doesn't change the overall economic and cultural equation.
Of course none of this excuses the culture of violence and misogyny which informs a good deal of corporate rap. So let's talk about the culture of violence and misogyny.
We live in a culture which celebrates the machinery of mass violence and extols the heroic virtues of war. We live in a culture where misogyny is the norm, where women are raped and battered and objectified and demeaned and otherwise abused every day, every hour, every minute, without much ado. We live in a society whose leaders speak of killing and humiliating their enemies with chest-thumping glee and juvenile posturing. We live in a society whose budgetary priorities demonstrate a psychotic obsession with body-shattering weaponry and a distinct lack of interest in the health and well-being of human beings.
So I agree with those who are saying that it's time for all of us to confront the virulent culture of violence and misogyny and crime that is polluting our world. And it begins at the top: with the corporatist kleptocracy of the US government, the global gangster state which dominates and exploits through violence and intimidation and the hoarding of wealth, granting favors to loyal subjects, issuing threats to the unruly, and killing rivals. If we can eradicate the culture of violence and misogyny and crime at the top of our society, then just maybe we'll have a shot of eradicating it at the bottom too.
All that aside, in my opinion we do have a problem with mass-media representations which glorify gang violence. Notably, the most highly-acclaimed television series of our time tells the story of an out-of-control foul-mouthed misogynistic group of gangsters who regularly murder and rape with impunity: The Sopranos. The protagonist, Tony Soprano, is a semi-sympathetic character whose leadership role in his criminal gang is portrayed primarily as a psychological burden; the pain to his torn conscience receives more play than the pain he inflicts. So if we're to do away with the glorification of gangster culture in the mass media, The Sopranos is a good place to start.
Of course that's not going to happen. Because many white critics of gangster culture are actually talking about Black people. And the reason is simple: they're racist. They look at Tony Soprano or Don Corleone and they think, He's a good guy who does some bad things. They look at 50 Cent or Snoop Dogg and they think, Black people are dirty thugs.
Actually, every racial and/or ethnic group in America has its history of street gangs. As deplorable and unfortunate as it is, the reality is that gangsterism is a predictable response to certain social conditions having nothing to do with genetics. Nevertheless, the story of African American gangs does indeed have unique characteristics, because the African American story is unique. So let's talk about Black gangs.
I've been thinking about Black gangs for many years, ever since my very first day at a public junior high school in Los Angeles, when I witnessed my first gang fight; the brutality of the beating and the powerlessness of witnesses to intervene was a jarring experience. No weapons were produced that day; but as we got older, guns began to appear in lockers. I remember one of the first guys to befriend me at my new school was a gregarious Black kid, and a notorious gangbanger, named Alan, who sat next to me in homeroom; in the 10th grade he got shot in the leg, forcing him to walk with a cane; in the summer before our senior year, he was shot to death. Obviously he was far from the only one, but he happened to be a friend. Soon after I graduated they set up metal detectors in my old school. None of this sits well with me. It's bad enough living in a society soaked in white supremacy; but when people of color are killing one another, it just gets stupid crazy depressing.
Ever since I became aware of Black gangs, I've also been aware of intense criticism of those gangs from within the Black community, as well as grassroots activism aimed at countering their appeal and effect. I remember special school assemblies in the gym during which police, teachers, parents, victims, and activists railed against gangsterism. I remember after-school programs aimed at risk reduction. I remember boycotts and protests against certain rappers or albums. So when white pundits imply that the Black community as a whole has been tolerant of or complacent about gangster culture, I see it as a flagrant display of ignorance.
That's far from the only area of ignorance. I'm guessing that few Americans know about the genealogy of Black gangs, their political roots, and the role of the white power structure in feeding their development. Because modern Black street gangs essentially arose from the still-smoldering ashes of the Black Panther Party and the Us Organization, groups whose objectives were to uplift the Black community. In the 1960s these organizations were considered so threatening to the white establishment that J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI launched the infamous Cointelpro operations with the explicit aim of destroying those parties, assassinating or imprisoning their leaders, subverting their goals, undermining their legitimacy, decimating their memberships. And in many ways it worked.
The hits to Black political leadership and organization, in combination with the systematic dismantling of America's urban industrial economy in the name of "free-market globalization", left many Black communities in freefall. Furthermore, as factories and jobs disappeared, so did many crucial social services and safety nets, under the guise of ending "big government" and "tax-and-spend liberalism". This political and economic vacuum became the incubator within which street gangs would flourish. But the final factor, which really heated up the gang-incubator and got the criminal subculture off and running, was the introduction of crack cocaine to the inner cities, smuggled into the US from South America by the CIA. In the 1980s the CIA directly sold massive volumes of cocaine to the Crips and the Bloods, and used the profits to fund right-wing terrorist insurgencies in Nicaragua, Colombia, El Salvador, and elsewhere. Once crack took hold, young Black gangsters started making money and the subculture of drug-dealing and prostitution blew up. At the same time, the government launched the "war on drugs".
And that's how it goes in a white supremacist society. Black folks are uniformly blamed for every hardship that white society heaps upon them. When mainstream narrative discourse lacks social context, historical perspective, cultural knowledge, or societal awareness, the plight of African Americans is implicitly pinned on some genetic defect rather than on the persistent nefarious attempts of white supremacy to undercut, attack, and destroy all efforts at Black uplift at every turn.
That being said, I also feel that communities of color have all too often played into the white supremacist playbook, fighting amongst ourselves when we could be lifting one another up. To me, personal responsibility means that it's up to each of us to avoid falling into all those traps which are so carefully laid out for us, and social responsibility means that we look out for one another as well. Of course, when the field is this tilted — when those who wish to oppress people of color hold so many levers of power while we hold so few — it's going to be tough. But the only option is to keep on trying.
As for the commercial "gangsta rap" promoted by the corporate media, there's no question that much of it is vile misogynistic crap which fetishizes gangster culture in a certain shallow, fictional, decontextualized manner. Sure, many Black rappers probably moved contraband for a time, just as many white rock stars probably flipped burgers. But I don't see much of a relationship between the sparkly Disney-gangsta world presented on Viacom and the gritty piss-and-vomit-stained stairwells where deals go down in real life. Frankly, commercial rap videos look more like the glossy masturbatory spreads in Maxim or FHM than the streets of Harlem or Compton. If rappers really wanted to "keep it real", then every crew would have a few less cats in each successive video.
In the end there's nothing glamorous about gangster culture, whether it's crackhouses and prostitutes, or the exploitative misogynistic fantasy world of poser pop-rap, or the quaintly-racist murder-humor of The Sopranos, or the president's smack-talk of "dead or alive" and "bring em on". Gangster culture is death and rape culture. If you oppose it anywhere, you should oppose it everywhere.
I'll wrap up with a clip from a documentary I happened to catch on HBO last month, entitled Bastards of the Party, directed by Cle Sloan. It covers some of what I've discussed in this piece and is well worth watching.
Peace.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Vote for Kiri Davis
UPDATE (2007.04.13): Sylvia brings us this announcement from CosmoGirl:
We have determined that the online voting has been corrupted as a result of one or more instances of tampering with the voting process by users. As a result, none of the online votes will be counted, and we will submit all three of the semi-finalists to our panel of experts for final judging and selection of a winner.
From Carmen at Racialicious:
Last week I urged all of you to vote for Kiri Davis’s short film “A Girl Like Me,” a finalist for CosmoGirl.com’s film contest. The winner will receive a $10,000 scholarship!
Voting ends tomorrow at noon! So please head on over and vote right now! And vote again tomorrow morning!
Last time I checked, Kiri was in second place with 9550 votes, which is about 400 votes less than the number one spot. I know we can band together and show her some support!
“A Girl Like Me” does an incredible job of showing just how deeply we are affected by European beauty ideals. Even young children aren’t immune, as she demonstrates in her black/white doll test. You might have seen me blog about it at Anti-Racist Parent a couple months back.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Byron Hurt — Misogyny in Hip Hop
Having said what I said in my previous post, here's a clip from a film by Byron Hurt called "Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes" which tackles the issue of misogyny in mainstream hip hop (via Racialicious). I happened to catch this film a couple months ago on PBS Independent Lens and found it riveting and highly instructive.
Memo to White Folks and the Mass Media
"Believe me, I know that that phrase didn't originate in the white community. That phrase originated in the black community, and I'm not stupid, I may be a white man, but I know that these young women and young black women all through that society are demeaned and disparaged and disrespected by their own black men and that they are called that name."
—Don Imus on The Today Show
Putting aside Asshat Imus and his irrelevant defense of his now-infamous epithet, there's something that's been bugging me for ages about the manner in which the "Black community" and "Black culture" are often discussed by certain white folks and in the mass media.
Having recently observed the discursive efficacy of Venn diagrams, let me put it this way (perhaps somewhat roughly but I think you'll get the idea):
Clear? Cool.
Next:
This is not to excuse in any way the vile misogyny that is so common to the juvenile poser pop-rap that is so heavily promoted by the corporate media. But it's disingenuous to act as though hip hop is the only place where misogyny exists in pop culture or indeed in our society in general. And given the long history of white supremacy disguising itself as a noble effort to "defend women" when its true aim is to violate and oppress people of color, it's hard not to be skeptical when one hears bombastic "culture warriors" focusing on misogyny in "Black culture", especially when in the previous breath they were focusing on misogyny in the Middle East in order to justify imperialist war.
End of memo.
UPDATE: See also Gangster Culture and Underground Railroad and Progressive Hip Hop.
Monday, April 09, 2007
Asshat Imus — Blogswarm in Full Effect
UPDATE (2007.04.10): From Jim Baumbach at Newsday:
Time has passed Imus by
Now's the time for WFAN to become a true all-sports stationThe only way this whole Don Imus saga is going to go away is by you, the listener, taking action. It's time to hit the mute button on his show, change the station, and look the other way. It's time for him to leave.
Imus is in full-fledged damage control right now, making the rounds on the national media circuit and apologizing for his racist comment about the Rutgers women's basketball team. But this time, finally, this guy has gone too far. No turning back now.
CBS, which owns the radio station that airs his program each morning, along with NBC, which simulcasts a portion of his show on MSNBC, have both announced two-week suspensions.
And that should give whoever still listens to this snoozer of a show just enough time to find something else to get them through their morning commutes.
'The people who run WFAN, the all-sports radio station owned by CBS, are of course driven by the bottom line, as is every company. And Imus' show brings in major advertisers, which means major money. But now is the perfect time for the popular all-sports radio station to become just that, all sports, all the time.
Just five months ago Imus went through a similar cycle, offending and apologizing. Back then, in the coarse of a regular conversation with sidekick Charles McCord, Imus referred to Asians with a widely known offensive term. We won't repeat it.
Most troubling was that he didn't seem to know -- or care -- that it was offensive. McCord immediately tried gently telling Imus that term is not preferred by Asians, which was his way of telling his boss he better correct himself while he had the chance.
Anyone who was listening that day could tell McCord's message flew right over Imus' head.
The next day, after outrage from leaders of the Asian community, Imus apologized on the air, but he made fun of "idiot lawyers" who gave him a booklet to brush him up on offensive terms. Guess the nasty phrase he used the other day to describe the Rutgers women's basketball players wasn't in that lawyer guide.
Somehow, through the years, Imus' show has morphed into a place for nation/world news and opinion, and a platform for respected journalists and politicians. Why well-thought-of people such as journalists Tim Russert and Maureen Dowd and Senators Joe Lieberman, Chris Dodd and John McCain – to name just a few – repeatedly choose to go on that show is beyond me.
Now, whether they continue is another story.
From Sylvia at The Anti-Essentialist Conundrum:
Shawn Williams over at Dallas South Blog has some footage of what Imus and McGuirk originally said and the half-assed apology Imus issued for his remarks. I also got a transcript from him of what went down:
IMUS: That’s some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos and—
McGUIRK: Some hard-core hos.
IMUS: That’s some nappy-headed hos there. I’m gonna tell you that now, man, that’s some—woo. And the girls from Tennessee, they all look cute, you know, so, like—kinda like—I don’t know.
McGUIRK: A Spike Lee thing.
IMUS: Yeah.
McGUIRK: The Jigaboos vs. the Wannabes—that movie that he had.
Very soon afterwards, the National Association of Black Journalists makes it incredibly clear that it’s time for these assholes to pack up and ship out.
Kim Pearson on BlogHer asks feminists what they’re going to do about Imus. She shares the Roland Martin blog post that puts a proverbial foot in feminist organizations’ asses about not defending these young black women sooner. She also shares Liza’s take on the hoopla. The National Organization of Women gets involved and creates a form letter to e-mail to three key contacts (scroll further down the page).
QuakerDave is the man right now. Read his call to action; write to MSNBC. Also, check out his list of supporters of this cause and his list of sponsors of WFAN.
And, from what Kai’s told me, Al Sharpton’s let Imus cry and whimper about his mistake on his show. Save your tears, Imus. According to reports, this isn’t the first time you or someone on your show has said racially insulting cracks. It’s time to go. We’re tired of being played as media consumers and feeding into this formulaic crap. We influence whether you get your paycheck. That’s why you’re sniveling.
Here’s a pretty comprehensive round-up of contacts and sponsors:
WFAN Station:
WFAN-AM
34-12 36TH STREET
ASTORIA, NY 11106
(718) 706-7690
ATTN: Chuck Bortnick (station manager)CBS Radio:
CBS RADIO
1515 Broadway
New York, NY 10036
212-846-3939These are its three main media contacts:
Karen L. Mateo
Vice President, Communications
(212) 846-7638Whitney Pray
Communications Coordinator
(212) 846-3906Dana McClintock
Senior Vice President,
CBS Communications Group
(212) 975-1077Also, here’s a list of stations to boycott that are owned by CBS Radio.
MSNBC:
MSNBC TV
One MSNBC Plaza
Secaucus, N.J. 07094Sponsors:
From Quaker Dave–
- All Imus Ranch products. (Write a check to a similar charity instead.)
- Auto Body Express.com
- Fred’s Southwest Salsa.
- Joseph Abboud Sportswear.
- Mohegan Sun Casino.
- Vermont Teddy Bears.
- WFAN Radio.
What I’ve found–
- WFAN-AM has promotions running with Time Warner Cable and the New Jersey Nets; Mid Atlantic Waterproofing and Toyota did sponsoring of its box office blitz events.
- There’s an upcoming radiothon involving Imus at the Hard Rock Cafe in Times Square on the 12th…
- The Central Park Conservancy is hosting a big community basketball event on May 19th and is using the station for media support.
- Barker Specialty Company handles their promotional materials (like sweatshirts and whatnot).
From Pam's House Blend:
It will be interesting to see which politicians will line up to grace the Imus "Nappy ho" Show now. He's been backpedaling, apologizing on the air a couple of time as the heat was turned on (see my post, Don Imus: Rutgers women's basketball team 'nappy-headed hos').
For all the bluster - he's planning an appearance on Al Sharpton's show at 1 PM today (you can listen at sharptontalk.net). [An aside -- why the dominant culture assumes that people like Sharpton and Jesse Jackson speak for all black folks is both amusing and frustrating -- but that's another post in itself.] Imus's show has a history of broadcasting bigoted remarks with few repercussions. If folks are going to call out Ann Coulter for lobbing the faggot bomb, certainly the inflammatory bigotry by Imus deserves as much attention.
Columnist Clarence Page was on CNN this AM and said that six years ago he asked Imus to refrain from racist humor on the air. Page likened Imus's comments about the womens Rutgers basketball team to the morning show host "falling off the wagon" -- he simply can't help himself, and won't stop it until he's hit where it hurts.
...Earl Ofari Hutchinson on why Imus is not likely to face the music from his masters:
But even if Imus had made a sincere bare-the-chest heartfelt apology it wouldn't amount to much. That's the standard ploy that shock jocks, GOP big wigs, and assorted public personalities employ when they get caught with their racial pants down.
...The other reason it's virtually impossible to permanently muzzle Imus and others that talk race trash is the sphinx like silence of top politicians, broadcast industry leaders, and corporate sponsors. GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney and former Democratic presidential contender John Kerry bantered with Imus on his show in recent weeks. Yet, Romney hasn't uttered a word condemning Imus's bile. And Kerry issued a tepid statement through a spokeswoman in which he merely branded it "a stupid comment" and praised him for owning up to it.
While Kerry and Romney are two of the better known politicians to recently cackle with and at Imus's digs on the show, a steady parade of politicians and personalities have trooped to Imus's microphones over the years. And not all of them, as Kerry and Romney showed, are hard-line GOP conservatives. Senators Joe Lieberman and John McCain leaped over each other to get a spot with Imus.
And we haven't a heard a peep from any of them about his remarks.
Will 2008 candidates show up to gab and laugh with Imus without commenting about his "nappy-headed hos" remark?
It's a fair question to ask them - and Page calls on journalists, particularly black journalists, to put the candidates' feet to the fire. The National Association of Black Journalists in particular, has no patience for Imus:
Black radio Sunday debated the appropriate response to WFAN-AM morning host Don Imus calling the Rutgers University women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos" last week.
The Rev. Al Sharpton and the National Association of Black Journalists were joined by many callers and guests in demanding Imus be fired, which WFAN and its parent CBS Radio gave no indication is in their plans.
CBS and MSNBC, which simulcasts his show, condemned the comment and said they will monitor him. Imus apologized on the air Friday and Monday, which may not be enough to put it behind him.
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Surprise Witness in Sean Bell Case
Skeptical Brotha relays this statement from New York Congressman Greg Meeks regarding the new witness in the Sean Bell case:
I've heard of 11th hour conversion but this is ridiculous. The public is being asked to believe that a witness, previously interviewed by the police has just come forward to say that he actually did see a mysterious Black male fire one or two shots at the police officers who were firing 50 shots at Sean Bell, Jose Guzman, and Trent Benefield. All three were unarmed. Bell was killed. Guzman and Benefield were seriously wounded.
This witness claims that he didn't reveal what he saw because he was "scared." But, now -- even as the grand jury in the case is in the midst of deliberations and expected to render a decision in the next day or two -- this witness' "Christian conscience" would not let him be silent any longer.
Unbelievable and incredible, to put it mildly! Especially when the NYPD canvassed the block where the shooting occurred, the immediate neighborhood, and in fact in other neighborhoods, looking for a so-called "fourth man" who allegedly escaped while the hail of bullets were being fired (a preposterous story if there ever was one), but found nothing.
It appears to me that there may be unnamed parties who are eager to throw a monkey wrench into the gears of justice. This last minute episode has all the earmarks of a provocation and a maneuver to delay, if not disrupt, the grand jury process. I trust that neither District Attorney Brown nor the grand jury will allow a detour to be placed in the path of their patient, detailed, diligent work. I urge the community and people of goodwill throughout the city to remain vigilant, disciplined, and hopeful, at all times respecting justice and keeping their "eyes on the prize."
Needless to say Reverend Al weighs in too.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
The Hour When The Ship Comes In
Following Professor Zero's lead, here's an oft-forgotten clip from that magical day in 1963 when 250,000 public citizens marched on Washington and Dr. King delivered the most famous speech in modern American history — and Bob Dylan and Joan Baez sang "When the Ship Comes In":
Oh the time will come up
When the winds will stop
And the breeze will cease to be a-breathin'
Like the stillness in the wind
Before the hurricane begins
The hour when the ship comes in
And the sea will split
And the ship will hit
And the shoreline sands will be a-shakin'
And the tide will sound
And the waves will pound
And the morning will be breakin'
Oh the fishes will laugh
As they swim out of the path
And the seagulls they'll be smilin'
And the rocks on the sand
Will proudly stand
The hour that the ship comes in
And the words that are used
For to get the ship confused
Will not be understood as they're spoken
For the chains of the sea
Will have busted in the night
And be buried on the bottom of the ocean
Oh a song will drift
As the main sail shifts
And the boat drifts out to the shoreline
And the sun will respect
Every face on the deck
The hour that the ship comes in
And the sands will roll
Out a carpet of gold
For your weary toes to be a-touchin'
And the ship's wise men
Will remind you once again
That the whole wide world is watchin'
Oh the foes will rise
With the sleep still in their eyes
And they'll jerk from their beds and think they're dreamin'
And they'll pinch themselves and squeal
And they'll know that it's for real
The hour that the ship comes in
And they'll raise their hands
Sayin' "We'll meet all your demands"
But we'll shout from the bow "Your days are numbered"
And like pharoah's triumph
They'll be drownded in the tide
Like Goliath they'll be conquered
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Malcolm Speaks
And now, in honor of Black History Month (inspired by XicanoPower), a word from the anti-Obama:
Saturday, February 03, 2007
Unspinning Biden — Narratives, Not Epithets
Every time we go through one of these high-profile "racial gaffes", the corporate media ridiculously blathers and clunks its way through the same hollow-suited charade, probingly asking for an up-or-down yea-or-nay one-dimensional vote on whether or not a particular word or phrase is "a slur", presumably to definitively determine, yea-or-nay, whether the person who uttered that word or phrase is "a racist". Once fuzzy mass media judgment has been rendered, the unpleasant matter is thankfully resolved, white folks try to remember not to use certain words around people of color, and the subject of race (not to mention a broadly anti-racist agenda) can return to the back of the national-political-priorities bus until the next blow-up. [ Artwork courtesy of The Unapologetic Mexican ]
Impatient dismissals from Tim Dickinson at Rolling Stone ("hyper-PC hyperventilation ... is what's wrong with American politics") and Bob Felton at BlogCritics ("Biden got it right") are, I think, pretty representative. But here's what escapes the grasp of the sagacious corporate-media deciders-of-racism: most people of color don't necessarily have a problem with any isolated word (well okay, "articulate" is getting a little old, but anyway) that Biden used in his little riff on the shining virtues of Barack Obama (cue tooth-sparkle, ding!). Here's the thing: it's not about epithets, it's about narratives.
The problem with what Biden said lies not in any one of the words that oozed out of him, but in the narratives about African Americans that the whole combination of words invokes.
I have no desire to talk about Joe Biden and his doomed presidential run; but I wouldn't mind taking Biden's words and using them to explore and explode some of the false narratives that dominate the national discourse on race. I wouldn't mind talking about how certain stylized ideas and images — not mere slurs or epithets — rather, entire psychic complexes of associative ideas and images, conspire to inform a normative racist worldview, which perpetuates itself through the repetitive mass-hypnotic invocation and reinforcement of those very ideas and images.
So here's what Biden said: "I mean, you've got the first sort of mainstream African American, who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy. I mean, that's a story-book, man."
As far as I could tell, here's the subtext he was invoking: Blacks aren't mainstream like you and me, man. I mean, most Blacks have trouble speaking proper English and seem kind of yucky and not very bright, and you just can't trust a lot of those inner city types. But I mean, this Obama guy seems So Safe To White America that he possibly even has a shot at winning, though I doubt it, man.
It's not any one word, but taken as a whole, the overall effect of Biden's words is to indirectly trigger a set of widespread racist narrative frames, to which the speaker in fact appears to be responding in his train of thought. And if you don't believe in the power of narrative suggestion, go talk to the folks on Madison Avenue. This isn't about Biden or DC politics; for me, it's about examining how various facets of racism work and what can be done to undermine those workings.
UPDATE (2007.02.06): Over at The Reaction, Heraclitus remarks:
So it's not a coincidence that when Biden was casting about for something a little less pointed than "Boy, he's a helluvan improvement over Al Sharpton, ain't he?" he came up with something that so many have found less than inspiring. It's not that Biden himself is a bad man or hates blacks, but that he quickly, quite possibly unconsciously, lit upon some fairly racist language that calls forth a very racist narrative or set of background beliefs. And in so doing, he reinforces or further animates that narrative.
And Power and Politics adds:
I think Biden deserves to be primaried, a la Lamont. I've thought this even before Biden's own macaca incident. He has essentially sold himself out to Bank of America, MBNA, and all the other credit card companies who are headquartered in Delaware for the mega tax writeoffs and as one of the chief pushers of the bankruptcy bill. Long a corporate lapdog, he has ceased representing the people of his state. He has been in office for 34 years - time to give some fresh blood a chance!
UPDATE 2 (2007.02.07): The New York Times jumps into the fray, gives it a shot...and misses the mark.
UPDATE 3 (2007.02.07): Here are two more takes on the matter, one from XP:
A major problem with words is their perceived emotional connotations. Connotation in language involves the semantic or deep-structure of words, expressions and texts and is, therefore, strongly related to culture. The fact is, we live in a binary system of opposites which does reflect the archetypal dualism in man’s consciousness.
Here in the United States, we do divide people in the world into the categories of “Clean” and “Dirty” and historically, the use of the word “clean” has come to be synonymous with “whiteness.” In the late 1950s, the word “clean” was used to justify segregation. However, the rules separating dirty from clean are not clear or principled. [...]
The urge to oversimplify dilemmas and find designated scapegoats for complex predicaments underlies the popularity of stereotypes. Approaching adversities from a biased perspective gives simplistic though meaningful answers to inexplicable predicaments. Latinos are often blamed for losses in jobs and the reduction in wages.
Continued uses of code words like “articulate,” “mainstream,” and “nice looking” are only manifested substitutions for the “oh you are not like them” messages. Repeating misethnic slurs only perpetuates institutionalized discrimination, which is only meant to detract from a person’s humanity, dignity, self-respect, standing, and potential. After a while, epithets become the norm and a frame of reference not only to individuals but also to the person’s entire cultural group. Biden’s the message implied that he saw black people in America as different from the “norm” - unfamiliar and not quite equal.
This is from Jack and Jill Politics:
Democrats must prove to minorities that they are different from the Republicans. They have to distance themselves from guys like Biden if they hope to retain and build the strong minority turnout that tips the red-blue balance in their favor.
Without leading Democrats like say, Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid, coming out and condemning Biden's repeated comments, it sends a message to African-Americans, Indian-Americans -- all Americans -- that Joe Biden's viewpoint is as valued and protected by the Democrats as that of Trent Lott and George Allen by the Republicans. Unless Democrats want Biden to continue his Macaca moments and drive away voters, unless they don't want to be the party of the future instead of the party longing for the past, Biden must be punished in a public way for me to see that the Democratic party is interested in keeping my loyalty for the long term.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
White Supremacy By Any Other Name
When now-disgraced comedian Michael Richards screeched into his microphone "Fifty years ago we'd have you upside down with a fucking fork up your ass!" followed shortly by "He's a n----r! A n----r, look, there's a n----r!" he was obviously attempting to drum up the vibe of a lynch mob closing in on its target. That's some funny shit, eh?
Here's how hilarious it is: To your left, Lige Daniels, lynched in Center, Texas, on August 3, 1920. To your right, Rubin Stacy, lynched in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on July 19, 1935. Here are but two among tens of millions of murders attributed to America's long history of genocidal white supremacy.
As you can see, these are mirthful family affairs. The children are smiling innocently. The parents are proud and upstanding.
I guess this is Michael Richards' comedic vision of America, and that of all those who are defending his invocation of the twisted pathology of sexualized white supremacist violence.
Yes, the n-word is "just a word": a word that has historically led to scenes such as these. If you're cool with such scenes, by all means continue supporting this word's use by "edgy" white folks (you say "edgy", I say "coward hiding in a mob"). You know why black folks "are allowed" to use the n-word (though it remains deeply controversial in the black community)? Here's a hint: look at the pictures and see if you spot any black folks among the living. Okay I'll fill you in: they're the ones being murdered; white folks are the ones doing the murdering. Get it? In the context of the n-word's countless unpunished crimes, black folks are not the accused.
"Just a word": what a moronic defense. I suppose "war" is "just a word" as well — unless you happen to be among those getting bombed and shot. "I intend to kill you and your family" are just words too, but if someone were to say those words to me, my response would be very unwordy. I think it's bizarre that middle-class American liberals appear to have become so comfortably, mentally astral that they believe that language and reality are somehow disconnected; as though words and thoughts are powerless postmodern playthings that have no consequences in the real world; as though every actual atrocity in human history didn't begin with "just a word".
Michael Richards and his ruined career are not the point here. The point is that if we're ever to move beyond our current racial strife, we need to begin with enough intellectual honesty to acknowledge and understand America's glaring legacy of white supremacy. As this popular comedian's tirade shows, that legacy is alive and kicking in the American psyche. Shrugging it off as a "politically incorrect" use of an insensitive "racial epithet", or as some mysterious "hostility" that bubbled up out of nowhere, demonstrates a profound ignorance and denial of this country's past and present. And as long as such ignorance and denial dominate our national discourse, we will remain unable to accurately and meaningfully talk about, think about, and transcend the blood-soaked, heavy-hearted legacy of the American Color Line.
Monday, October 30, 2006
White Liberal Blackface (Part 10 in a 138-Part Series)
Paging ebogjonson, paging ebogjonson, logic-flow decision-support is urgently needed over at Whiskey Bar...
Oops, too late.
Add Billmon to the ever-growing roster of white liberal bloggers who think blackface is a witty way to mock another man's testicular fortitude. As Sunrunner observes, blackface is almost never applied to women because its essential objective is to feminize men:
Said plainly, like Orientalism, Blackface is a mirror image of what is considered to be inferior and alien (”Other”) to the European “ideal” of heroic manhood. It is a way of calling an xy (it can’t be an accident that the blackfacing of women never seems to have caught on) a “wimp” or a “girlyman.”
Even more to the point and easier to understand than ebonjonson's flowchart, here's Prometheus 6's advice:
When you want to use race metaphors, put down the Photoshop icon and back slowly away from the program.
It's stunning to see how ostensibly-educated white liberals can be so incredibly ignorant when it comes to the Great American Institution of Racism, which forms perhaps the most central narrative in our national history. Chalk it up to the bedrock pathology of white supremacy, which short-circuits progressive mechanisms of the intellect in favor of the white man's proud inheritance of virtuous superiority as soon as the lizard-brain kicks in with a groin-burning desire to emasculate some dude who just rubs you the wrong way. In the blogosphere, that emasculation remains thankfully metaphorical, but it's just a few lizard-brain-pulses away from the good ol' days when white folks hungrily mutilated the genitals of black men hanging from trees.
Billmon's jocund humor is especially rich in the wake of the Harold Ford attack ad and indeed an entire election season of Democratic Party chest-thumping on the merits of their anti-racist acumen. See, white liberals can sniff out the racist thread in "macaca", in blonde-black flirtation, and in all manner of right-wing code language; but not in blackface.
Obviously the point Billmon was trying to make is that Wolf Blitzer is a slobbering sycophant to power who was moronically taken aback by Lynne Cheney's confrontational interview. What's revealing is that the only institution Billmon could think of to adequately express his contempt for Blitzer's behavior was minstrelsy, slavery, violent white supremacy. No other avenue of attack heaped enough derision on the target. No other American institution packs the same punch. And when white liberals want to pack a punch, white liberals go blackface.
UPDATE (2006-10-30 22:14EST): Billmon has responded. Being a crafty writer, he has chosen not to directly follow "How To Suppress Discussions Of Racism (In 6 Easy Steps!)".
Billmon essentially argues that his critics are either right-wing hypocrites (true enough) or white liberals who wear their political correctness like a fashion accessory (probably quite true); but he somehows fails to address the voices of actual people of color, whose experiences and perspectives inform their (our) responses. Here's how he sums it up:
But I have to ask: Which is the greater failing -- ignoring the racism that goes on every second of every minute of every hour in this country, or telling a minstrel joke?
And if it's the former, how many of my critics are really in a position to pass judgment on me?
But you see, we people of color can hardly ignore "the racism that goes on every second of every minute of every hour in this country" because we live it. For example, when we raise our voices to point out something racist and get dismissed as being less deserving of a response than obvious right-wing hypocrites.
I wonder if Billmon still remembers writing these words in August 2003 (which came to my attention via Prometheus 6):
I have an unpleasant confession to make. I am a Southerner. Born in the south of southern parents, with Confederate veterans and slaveowners on both sides of the family tree. For all I know, there may even be a few Klansman hanging in the lower branches as well -- by their necks, I hope.
I'm also, in some deep subterranean sense, a racist -- for one cannot grow up in the world of my childhood and not be marked by its imprint. Believe me, I know: I've spent my entire life trying to get away from it.
Intellectually, I believe in racial justice as feverently as I believe in anything. I would rather have my tongue cut out than utter a racist thought, much less a slur or insult. I support just about every item on the traditional civil rights agenda -- affirmative action, the Voting Rights Act, you name it -- even though I'm not entirely comfortable with race-based solutions. As a privileged white American, I don't think I have the right to tell black Americans the playing field is level enough, especially when I know that it isn't.
I'm even open to conservative solutions, such as tuition vouchers, that are popular with black parents -- though I disagree with them philosophically. Again, I don't think I have the right to tell someone who lives in the ghetto what's right for their children.
But that's just politics. On a personal level, I know there is still a deep divide between me and anyone who happens to have a dark skin.
Ain't that the truth.
UPDATE 2 (2006-11-01 06:47EST): I'm happy to report that ebogjonson has responded to my page (at the top of this post) with a piece more eloquent, level-headed, and encompassing than anything I've been able to produce on this matter:
Billmon's self-professed intent and racial virtue are largely irrelevant here, as the simple fact is that blackface and minstrels and house negroes are dangerously wild and crafty memes that have been laughing at intent and virtue for over 140 years. Anyone who has been paying the slightest attention to race in America knows that these are the sort of images that tend to slip out of a user's grasp almost immediately, so deliberately handling them constitutes a form of willful recklessness. It's not exactly like shouting "fire!" in a crowded theater, but it is kind of like pissing off an overpass in hopes of tinkling on some or another passing motorcade. If I'm driving home at the same time and you get that shit on me, I don't care who your target was or what they did, I'm doubling back to give your stupid, adolescent ass a piece of my mind.
[ Read it all ]
Friday, October 27, 2006
The White Liberal Race Card
Democratic Party activists have been on fire this week with gleeful outrage over the apparent racism of a recent GOP television spot suggesting that Democratic senatorial candidate Harold Ford Jr. consorts with white women ("Harold, call me," purrs the Playboy Mansion floozy). Obviously the ad is designed by and for racists, but what I find more noteworthy in this instance is the eagerness of mainstream white liberals to thoroughly analyze, deconstruct, denounce, and ostensibly agitate against the virulent racism contained therein. Over at HuffPo, the attack ad has been sitting at the top spot all week (as of this writing, the image of the blonde actress actually makes three appearances at the top of the page), generating hundreds of furrowed-brow comments.
Over at MyDD, Matt Stoller solemnly intones, "Republican leaders are willing to sell out on the deepest sin of our country's history. It's such weakness. What singularly pathetic, cowardly, cowering people. Democrats are strong and don't pander to racism." Meanwhile, Mahablog decries both "George 'Macaca' Allen" and "the infamous 'playboy' ad linking a white actress to African-American senatorial candidate Harold Ford".
Hey, what happened to "From the metaphysical perspective of dependent origination there is no such thing as race" and all that colorblind Buddhist jazz? What happened to "Oh please you people are just so oversensitive"? What happened to "These accusations constitute reverse racism"?
BAGnewsNotes goes to exceptional lengths to show the racist elements within the ad's visual construction: blue vs black-and-white clothing separated by a long sidewalk, a hunter in blackface, and the seemingly naked blonde. To be fair, BAGnewsNotes did criticize Blackface Joe and regularly deconstructs racist imagery, but this post kicks up the visual analysis another notch. And there's more indignation at The News Blog, AMERICAblog, Talking Points Memo, and I'm sure many other places.
Yes, white liberals will energetically expose and fearsomely condemn impolite invocations of racial stereotypes in American politics when it bolsters their electoral prospects. (Pay no attention to the underlying cultural and economic institutions of white supremacy behind the curtain. Pay no attention to the white liberals' own behavior with regard to race.)
~ ~ ~
As for the candidate himself: Personally I'm not a big Harold Ford fan. Yes, he's a slickster who has the look and feel of a winner. He's also a mealy-mouthed centrist. Bob Geiger insists that progressives should support Ford with these sagacious words: "I've gotten to the bottom of why I like this guy: Harold Ford Jr. has got balls." In the same post, Geiger also points out that Ford has endorsed Joe Lieberman over Ned Lamont, and that Ford recently released the following statement:
I do not support the decision today reached by the New Jersey Supreme Court regarding gay marriage. I oppose gay marriage, and have voted twice in Congress to amend the United States Constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage. This November there's a referendum on the Tennessee ballot to ban same-sex marriage - I am voting for it.
Nice.
~ ~ ~
Don't miss the 6th Erase Racism Carnival over at Taking Place.
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
Time Magazine On Transcending Race: "It's all about gratitude"
A key passage from Time magazine's current cover story on Barack Obama:
The current Obama mania is reminiscent of the Colin Powell mania of September 1995, when the general--another political rainbow--leveraged speculation that he might run for President into book sales of 2.6 million copies for his memoir, My American Journey. Powell and Obama have another thing in common: they are black people who--like Tiger Woods, Oprah Winfrey and Michael Jordan--seem to have an iconic power over the American imagination because they transcend racial stereotypes. "It's all about gratitude," says essayist Shelby Steele, who frequently writes about the psychology of race. "White people are just thrilled when a prominent black person comes along and doesn't rub their noses in racial guilt. White people just go crazy over people like that."
When I asked Obama about this, he began to answer before I finished the question. "There's a core decency to the American people that doesn't get enough attention," he said, sitting in his downtown Chicago office, casually dressed in jeans and a dark blue shirt. "Figures like Oprah, Tiger, Michael Jordan give people a shortcut to express their better instincts. You can be cynical about this. You can say, It's easy to love Oprah. It's harder to embrace the idea of putting more resources into opportunities for young black men--some of whom aren't so lovable. But I don't feel that way. I think it's healthy, a good instinct. I just don't want it to stop with Oprah. I'd rather say, If you feel good about me, there's a whole lot of young men out there who could be me if given the chance."
Thursday, October 05, 2006
The African American Roots of Techno
From Indiana University (via Negrophile):
The world may know about the Motown Sound, but many music fans don't know that techno -- a wildly popular electronically produced form of dance music reverberating through dancehalls and raves across Europe -- was developed 20 years ago by a handful of African American college students around Detroit. [Photo: DJ Mike Clark aka "Agent X".]
Portia Maultsby, professor of folklore and ethnomusicology, and director of the Archives of African American Music and Culture at Indiana University, hopes to create a greater awareness and academic appreciation for the music's origins. She has organized the first national conference about the genre, "Roots of Techno: Black DJs and the Detroit Scene." The event is scheduled for Oct. 21 in Willkie Auditorium, 150 N. Rose St, Bloomington.
Maultsby said the conference will re-establish the African American origins of the genre and an understanding of the context from which it came.
"It is interesting how the music migrated from Detroit to Europe, and the music became associated with rave parties, and then migrated back to the U.S., and Americans became involved ... and the African American identity became invisible," Maultsby said. "Music can be appropriated and re-appropriated, and history can be distorted as a result of that ...Very few people associate techno with its African American origins." [...] [Photo: Jennifer Witcher, aka DJ Minx.]
Among the artists coming to tell their stories is Juan Atkins, widely credited as one of three originators of techno music, along with childhood friends Derrick May and Kevin Saunderson. Atkins coined the term "techno" to describe their music, taking as one inspiration the works of futurist and author Alvin Toffler, from whom he borrowed the terms "cybotron" and "metroplex." [...]
Jennifer Witcher, better known as DJ Minx and Detroit's "First Lady of Wax," will speak from a woman's perspective about a genre dominated by male performers. A featured DJ for Deep Space Radio, she was chief executive officer of the Skyloft Gallery in the early 1990s, where she helped create a place for the scene's unexposed artists and musicians.
Sunday, October 01, 2006
A Chasm Accentuated: More on Race and Blogs
To the credit of progressive bloggers, the cantankerous issue of race in the political blogosphere is not fading gently into the white night. Indeed, the haughty hush that has fallen across the liberal celebrity-blogscape continues to make as much of a resounding statement as the thoughtful truth-digging and considered reflections of progressives.
The stark contrast between those respective responses to problems of race in America could hardly be more damning to white liberals if they had undertaken a self-parody. After deploying an initial litany of embarrassing excuses straight out of "How To Suppress Discussions Of Racism (In 6 Easy Steps!)" — from brandishing tokens to accusations of reverse racism, from laughable pretensions of colorblindness to (here's my favorite) pseudo-metaphysical claims that there is no such thing as race — the tight circle of ratings-obsessed celebrity-blogs (with all the maturity of the "queen bees" in Mean Girls) have generally fallen back on their artful tactics of delinking critical bloggers, drowning out or banning dissent, and enforcing a sledgehammer silence that makes the Washington Post's ombudsman look downright open-minded and transparent.
In particular, Sunrunner over at Dark Sun has insistently kept the drumbeat alive with two hard-hitting posts replete with a broad cross-section of links and excerpts: "Jane Hamsher: The Left's Answer to Ann Coulter?" (which I discussed in my post "An Uncanny (Media Tactic) Resemblance") followed by "Racial Spreadsheeting" (in which Sunrunner uses the brilliant "Should I use blackface on my blog?" flowchart by ebogjonson as a starting point for continued exploration of the issue).
In the ensuing discussion, MB Williams of Wampum chimes in with this startling anecdote:
Okay, I’ll break my already somewhat cracked silence on this matter and make one small correction on the chart. Jane Hamsher, according to her own words, is not white. She is an “American Indian woman”. She’s also an exceptionally oppressed American Indian woman who is used to people kicking dirt in her face and handing credit for all her work over to someone else.
I know this, as I apparently oppressed [her], kicked dirt in her face and handed credit for all her work to someone else (in this case, her blog partner, ReddHedd) during the Koufax Awards last year. [...]
Funny thing, I’d already grown disenchanted with Hamsher’s commitment to Indian issues (and her over-the-top vitriol,) when she immediately abandoned the Abramoff story when the opportunity for self-promotion appeared via the Deborah Howell fiasco, so she held little influence over my actions. However, I did consider her behavior an indication of some behavioral/emotional instability, and decided [to] back off and watch her eventually implode from a distance. I don’t think it’s happened yet, but I imagine it’s not far off, perhaps when the 2008 primary season heats up and she finds out how toxic she is to experienced candidates and campaigns.
Seeing that Hamsher apparently identifies herself as Native American, some might find it telling that she found no fault in the most lurid sentence of TRex's now-infamous diatribe:
So, Liza, dear, before you go assailing your betters and making Jane stand in for every blond white woman who ever pissed you off, maybe you should head back to eighth grade English and, you know, learn to spell and to write in a linear fashion.
Maybe Hamsher was indeed Native American — for a few hours in a Southwestern desert after ingesting psilocybin. Then the shrooms wore off and Jim Morrison was no longer an Indian Lizard King but a dead white rock star.
Donna tracks down additional examples of white folks conveniently posing as persons of color:
There are white people who will claim to be POC when it serves their purposes. Sometimes it’s the new agers who think it’s more romantic to identify as a native american [...] Jane was identifying as NA in order to score points with MBW, a woman she knows is NA, probably to soften her up to her point of view. As you can see that didn’t work so well.
maha is identifying as non-white but if I had to guess it was in the way Gwyneth Paltrow is identifying as African in that poster, a “we are the world” way. [ Note from Kai: See "Now Take Your Medication For Racial Dysphoria".] You can see how well that poster went over in the black community, and maha’s self imposed POC identity is going over just as well with POC who posted at her site. Also she forgets herself and says this: That may not have been the angle you had in mind, but it’s the angle I see as a white person watching other white people.
http://www.mahablog.com/?p=1029 comment #66There is another one who recently thought she gave me the smack down by self identifying as NA. A commenter over at maha calling herself justme said this to me: And before you point the white person finger at me you should at least be sure I am white.The truth is I am more red than white.You Just assumed I was white and it was foolish.And as for you being convinced I have no interest in minority issues, well you are as far off base there as you were on my race.My brother-in- law is a man of color and he is serving as we speak in the middle east.I am a aunt and a God mother to 3 beautiful children of color [...]
http://www.mahablog.com/?p=1029 comment #65[ Note from Kai: Even without further evidence, I find it hard to believe that anyone who genuinely identified herself as a person of color would go to such lengths to hold up a meager few token relatives with this contemptuous tone.]
But she also said these things: they can kiss my white unhinged ass … I will even paint it any color they like.
I am German…perhaps you feel I should say sorry for hitler???
http://www.mahablog.com/2006/08/03/about-that-graphic/ comments #9 & 24
I guess this is what white folks mean when they say that the internet is colorblind.
Over at Bitch | Lab, Sunrunner's post has made the must-read list, along with a lovely recipe for baking an Exclusion Cake:
step 1. same scenarios at the Clinton Luncheon but substitute *any* public figure in the place of Clinton
step 2. add a heaping cup of each of the pre-game tactics by Clenis’ people:
– last minute scheduling
– refusal to share information
– uncertainty
– *purposeful* shortlist
– inattentiveness to people’s real lives (explained by Pam at Pandagon) which means they are going to attract people like them: flexibility, disposable income, time, etc.step 3. add 1/2 cup each of the same norms of ‘polite society’ behavior:
– no questions asked of the powerful
– no sharing of information with peers or among those who “aren’t your betters”
– never appear to look like you’re braggingstep 4: fold into a large mixing bowl of A list bloggers — everyone before the long tail — who are keenly aware of competition if only because they’ve been soaking in it their entire blogging career:
step 5: Mix well.
step 6: Pour into greased 9×13 inch pan. Bake 30 min at 350 degress fahrenheit.
step 7: Remove Exclusion Cake from oven and let stand for 10 minutes.
step 8: While still warm, place in center of circle jerk for special creamy topping.
Over at Punkassblog, R. Mildred takes a look at Hamsher's mockery of another woman's weight and responds with some biting satire. And there's more at Fetch me my axe and ¡Para Justicia y Libertad!, among others.
Of course, I've already weighed in quite heavily on this matter with 3 previous posts: "Blackface Joe: Five Grievances", "The Color Line and the Perceptual Gulf", and "A Chasm Illuminated". Unfortunately, it now seems even more evident that the language and imagery of division that I'd employed to describe this situation — line, gulf, chasm — has turned out to be all-too-fitting.
Friday, September 22, 2006
5th Erase Racism Carnival
From Sokari at Black Looks:
I begin with two posts that reflect a discussion that has been taking place in the African blogosphere over the past 10 days around an African blogging conference in South Africa. White Privilege is the subject of The Angry Black Woman’s post “Things You Need to Understand”.
White Privilege exists whether you know it, acknowledge it, or understand it. Any attempts to convince me that you, a white person, don’t have White Privilege will result in laughter, mockery, and possibly a beat down.
[...] The second post from Women of Color Blog confronts a trend in the blogosphere which “reflects a passionate racism within the blogosphere that is quite disturbing“. This sounds very familiar
the low down: bill clinton had a bunch of white bloggers over for lunch. the blogosphere is now in a ruckus over boobs and “minorities” and spelling………seems a gay white man got a little offended that a black woman (liza at culture kitchen) questioned/challenged why there weren’t any poc bloggers at the luncheon.
[...] Blaxplanation questions the whole exploitative system of sports franchise and asks why the African American community continue to collude with the use of racist naming such as Washington “Redskins”, by the franchises, players and club supporters. [...]
I’ve often asked myself what we have to gain from the continued marginalization of Native Americans. Historically, African-Americans and Native Americans have had both a cooperative relationship and a common enemy. Indeed, many black folks will be the first ones to let you know that they have some Native American ancestry. Why then don’t black folks in DC see the larger picture?
[...] Wa Salaam: A Muslim American Journal questions the proposals being discussed in the Western media suggesting the profiling of Muslims.
Muslims, are nearing the conditions in the US and other Western countries that inspired the kind of prejudice of the 1950’s, 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, that of anti-communism. Muslim leadership fails to gain leverage with the political systems of the West and as a result, the only thing that is protecting Muslims from real oppression are the inherent laws concerning Human Rights.
[ Read it all ]
Sunday, August 20, 2006
Blackface Joe: Five Grievances
UPDATE (2006-09-21 06:55EST): The latest: The Color Line and the Perceptual Gulf and A Chasm Illuminated.
UPDATE (2006-10-03 16:14EST): Still more Zukiness at An Uncanny (Media Tactic) Resemblance and A Chasm Accentuated.
Here are 5 problems I have with Blackface Joe:
(1) Visual Impact: Tell me honestly, if you empty your mind and look at the picture fresh, as most people will, who's the first target of visual mockery? Black folks or Lieberman? I'd argue that the image's raw, visual, stereotypical mockery of blacks handily outweighs any secondary intellectualizations that might be layered on top. Now I'm sure some white Americans view the stylized humiliation and emasculation of African Americans, and other people of color, as a yawn-worthy cultural norm, easily overlooked in the service of an important liberal political campaign. But I'm not down with that. I think progressives should energetically analyze and criticize linguistic, conceptual, and visual constructions which reinforce the cultural norms of white supremacy. This isn't "political correctness"; white supremacy isn't a fabrication of the "PC police" or any humorless leftist conspiracy. Political correctness never lynched anybody; human beings who emerged from a white supremacist culture did, and do. Crying PC is a scant excuse for the intellectual and spiritual laziness that underlies privilege. Blackface is only funny if lynching is funny. I'll welcome that day; but we're not there yet.
(2) Crossed Metaphor: The central satirical point of Blackface Joe is to highlight the fakeness of Lieberman's overtures to black voters. In other words: Lieberman's attempts to portray himself as a civil rights champion are as fake as the make-up on a blackface minstrel. Here's the metaphorical problem: Minstrels applied make-up in order to mock African Americans, whereas Lieberman's act is meant to appeal to African Americans (get it? blackface is for white consumption only). Lieberman's attempts might exude a clueless "old white dude" stiffness about them, but it's not blackface, any more than Lamont's overtures are. I think the metaphor gets its own internal logic crossed and badly misses the mark, leaving only the decontextualized visual impact as the persistent message.
(3) Imprecise Framing: As usual, Bill Clinton's presence creates more confusion than clarity. He's the "white" foil, arm in arm with Lieberman's blackface. The superimposed sunglasses appear to be an effort to make him more "ethnic" or "soulful" (a la Blues Brothers), but that's where I get lost. What exactly are we to gather from this extended metaphor? Bill Clinton is Joe Lieberman's soulful slave master? I don't even know what that means. So what are we supposed to resent: Joe's fakeness or Bill's being a slave master? Again, the metaphor's essential sloppiness leaves the viewer with little more than the raw fact of the visual impact. It's hard to avoid the feeling that Clinton has been spared the blackface treatment simply because the artist holds Clinton in higher esteem than Lieberman. In this sense, blackface becomes a cheap slander, like drawing a mustache on a girl; and as surely as the mustache on the girl is intended to make her ugly and ridiculous, the blackface on Lieberman appears intended to do the same.
[ UPDATE (2006-09-26 22:45EST): Darkblack has offered this explanation: "Clinton's black, opaque glasses signify that he is 'blind' to how he is being used, as I made clear at FDL over a month ago. A side effect here is that he, in real life, no longer suffers that 'affliction'." I don't know about you, but the mere presence of dark shades doesn't make Clinton look blind to me. Furthermore, I seriously doubt Clinton was "blind" to what Lieberman was doing; he's a slick operative who understands the political game as well as anyone. Basically, even with darkblack's clarification, I believe the image suffers from Imprecise Framing.]
(4) Gratuitous Invocation: Of course, there are instances when it makes complete sense for a fearless artist to invoke explosive, culturally-loaded imagery in the service of an ambitious artistic objective. But my feeling is that the offensiveness of the material should be justified by the loftiness of the artistic enterprise. In other words, I think you can justifiably satirize the Bible if you're writing "The Last Temptation of Christ"; you can justifiably satirize the Koran if you're writing "The Satanic Verses"; but in the case of Blackface Joe, the argument for risky satire is, shall we say, less clear. The upside just doesn't live up to the downside. From a story-telling perspective, the shock value overwhelms any intended plot development. Obviously this is a subjective measure, but it's part of my frank explanation; realistically I could have let this image slide if it accomplished something more; but it didn't. That makes its offensive imagery gratuitous.
In fairness to the PC-haters and other erstwhile champions of controversial imagery, I should note that on one level they're right: cultural expression should not be policed in any way. I don't mean to suggest that offensive imagery should be censored. As far as I'm concerned, you should say and publish any damn thing you choose. And then I'll say and publish any damn thing I choose about what you said. Don't blame me if your own foolishness sticks to you. Free speech means freedom to speak like an idiot, I suppose. Free speech isn't at issue in this discussion; the substantive meaning and value of a specific image is.
(5) Flippant Defense: The last thing that rubbed me the wrong way about the whole Blackface Joe episode was the cavalier lack of contrition from its originators. I don't for a moment believe that either Jane Hamsher or darkblack are racists; I'm just pissed that they don't get what's so wrong about what they did. Jane's apology came straight out of the "asshole boyfriend non-apology" book of patronizing dismissals: "I apologize that you're upset, though if you're upset you're probably my political enemy". Wow, that brush-off makes Arianna's Clooney-triggered soul-searching look positively spiritual.
Thankfully, the bottom line remains: Lamont won. But as long as Lamont's supporters, and other progressives, refuse to confront the uncomfortable implications of Blackface Joe, the progressive vehicle won't be firing on all cylinders.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Saturday, October 22, 2005
Independent Lens: A Lion's Trail
For the past few weeks, I've been limiting my media diet to a low-fat regimen of public television, a couple of newspapers, a handful of blogs, and of course books. It's been nice. The blathering heads of the corporate networks are fading from my mind and memory like an unpleasant dream. In place of the commercial media's chattering labyrinths of fragmented thought and disconnected symbol systems, I'm hoping that a sharper, stiller worldview will have time and space to emerge.
One of the simple, concrete pleasures of this experiment has been re-discovering just how good much of the material shown on public television is. It's kind of encouraging: Despite everything that our corrupt federal government has done to sabotage America's public art and culture in general, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in particular, public television still offers higher quality programming than any of the commercial networks. I've been recording a few of PBS's documentaries and news programs on my DVR and usually watching them late at night with a good snack. Beyond avoiding the insulting tedium of incessant advertising and branding, PBS doesn't have shows about irrelevant celebrities or bug-eating or the corporate news read by an irrelevant celebrity news personality. Let's face it: with notable exceptions, commercial media is at best superfluous and at worst degrading. In contrast, the material I've caught on PBS has been largely substantive, elevating, and culturally enriching.
News shows like Frontline, NOW, and Wide Angle for the most part offer crisp, well-researched investigative journalism on an impressive range of relevant issues. And PBS's documentary series are uniformly excellent. In the American Masters series, Martin Scorsese's recent documentary about Bob Dylan, called "No Direction Home", offers up some of the most nuanced and enjoyable historical film-making I've seen. And in the American Experience series, "Malcolm X: Make It Plain" is an amazing portrait of an amazing man, featuring some of the best footage of Malcolm at the microphone.
One small film, however, has captured my imagination more than any other thus far: Independent Lens has brought us a 52-minute rough gem entitled "A Lion's Trail", which traces the fascinating and instructive history of one of the most famous songs of the 20th century, popularly known as "Wimoweh" or "The Lion Sleeps Tonight". Employing an unadorned, meandering, slightly ponderous storytelling style, director François Verster has pieced together a seemingly modest yet subtly rich cultural narrative about music, Africa, and the West.
Verster opens the film with grainy black-and-white footage of a group of Zulu hunters attacking and killing a large male lion with spears and shields, interspersed with textual slides establishing the premise of the movie. We learn that the basis of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" (i.e. chord progression, basic harmonic and lyrical textures, chorus) was written by a Zulu man named Solomon Linda (pictured above) and recorded by his singing group, the Evening Birds, at Gallo Records in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1939. It was named "Mbube", meaning "lion". The record was a local hit, and the Evening Birds became a hot item on the Johannesburg-Durban circuit for what is known as the Isicathamiya style of traditional African singing.
In fact, this singing style continues to thrive today, and Verster's exploration of its vibrant offshoots on either side of the Atlantic is the beating heart of "A Lion's Trail". The narrative spine of the film, however, is the story of what happened to Solomon Linda, his song, and his descendants: "Mbube" went on to be recorded (with various embellishments) by some 180 different artists around the world. In the first anglicized version, Pete Seeger softened the B's in the song's mantra "Uyi-mbube" into "Wimoweh", which he recorded with The Weavers in 1951. Ten years later, The Tokens recorded a nifty pop arrangement with a 10-word verse ("In the jungle / the mighty jungle / the lion sleeps tonight"), which hit #1 on the Billboard charts. Subsequently, the song was featured in over 15 movies, in countless commercials, and in the one of the most successful musicals in Broadway history, Disney's "The Lion King". Yet Solomon Linda never received a cent in royalties. Under South African apartheid, with full American complicity, blacks were denied ownership of copyrights. Solomon Linda died in 1962 so poor that his family couldn't afford a gravestone. To this day, his daughters and grandchildren live in stark, though dignified, poverty.
A substantial portion of "A Lion's Trail" follows the travails of Rian Malan, a tenacious South African journalist who first brought the story of Solomon Linda to the world in an article published in Rolling Stone in 2000. According to his own account, Malan expected the publication of his article to pressure the corporations and other parties involved to at least partially compensate Solomon Linda's daughters for their father's uncompensated work. It didn't work out that way. Malan, having gotten himself involved in the matter, felt obligated not to walk away and ended up becoming a reluctant crusader working to bring belated justice to Solomon Linda.
Malan is a grim-faced, brooding, troubled type who appears to be battling his demons by trying to force himself to do the right things. Despite being born into white Afrikaner privilege, Malan turned against apartheid and fled South Africa in the 1980s to avoid serving in the army. In his own guilt-torn words, "I ran because I wouldn't carry a gun for apartheid, and because I wouldn't carry a gun against it." He later returned and wrote My Traitor's Heart: A South African Exile Returns to Face His Country, His Tribe, and His Conscience. His ongoing inner struggle shows on his sharp-featured face. Most of the clips we see of Malan in "A Lion's Trail" depict bouts of negativity and whining about obstacles and the contemptuous injustice of it all, which is unfortunate because his genuine love of African music and culture is obvious in his rare moments of joy. Regardless, what comes across beneath the embattled exterior is a man working his heart out for a noble purpose.
Indeed, a key characteristic of "A Lion's Trail" is the film-maker's desire to find nobility in a story that is essentially about corruption and the gnawing violence of white supremacist imperialism. It would have been easy to allow outrage to take over the film, but by keeping the story silently focused on music and human nobility and interconnectedness, Verster takes the high road and gives us something beyond advocacy journalism. He shows us not only what's wrong with the world, but also what's right with it.
What's right with the world? Here's a good place to start: music. And "A Lion's Trail" gives us plenty of it. From the opening scene, in which we hear for the first time Solomon Linda's resonant voice smoothly soaring and dipping in the original 1939 "Mbube", Verster weaves a musical thread back and forth, back and forth across the Atlantic, pulling the continents together into a single fabric. In a New York church, the Manhattan Brothers still have the chops and smooth moves from the old days in Africa. At the grave of Solomon Linda, his daughters build a tiny fire with matchsticks and herbs as an offering; they sing in prayer. Next to a Brooklyn basketball court, people on the street gather around drums in dance and trance. In a church in the South African town of Clermont, the Ladysmith Black Mambazo, a singing group that collaborated and toured with Paul Simon in the 1980s, raise the roof and bring down the light with a performance that has the ladies in the congregation jumping out of their seats with arms upraised.
That's what "A Lion's Trail" is all about: music, and its ability to connect us to something beyond ourselves. For the descendants of Solomon Linda and the inheritors of African song, music isn't just entertaining or fun or even sublime; it's their source of light, it's who they are, it's how they live. Unlike royalties, that can't be stolen.
UPDATE (2006-09-24 20:47EST): From the Dept. of Better Really Really Late Than Never, here's the news:
Last Friday [February 2006], [Solomon] Linda's legacy finally received some justice. After a six-year battle his surviving daughters Delphi, Elizabeth and Fildah, who had claimed almost R10-million from copyright holder Abilene Music, settled their dispute for an undisclosed sum. The settlement involves back payment of royalties to the family and the right to receive future payments for worldwide use.
The basis for the family's case was the Dickens Provision, which stipulates that 25 years after a creator's death, all rights should revert to the heirs, who would then be entitled to renegotiate deals and secure better royalty terms. [...]
"The settlement came about as a result of pressure from various sectors of society, both in South Africa and overseas," family lawyer Hanro Friedrich told Business Day.
It's unlikely that this pressure would have come to bear if it hadn't been for Rian Malan, South African journalist and author of the bestselling My Traitor's Heart. [...]
"It is the most famous melody ever to emerge from Africa," Malan says of Mbube, "a tune that has penetrated so deep into the human consciousness over so many generations that one can truly say, here is a song the whole world knows.
"[I]t mutated into a truly immortal pop epiphany that soared to the top of the charts here and then everywhere, again and again, returning every decade or so under different names and guises.
"Navajo Indians sing it at pow-wows. Japanese teenagers know it as TK … It has been recorded by artists as diverse as REM and Glen Campbell, Brian Eno and Chet Atkins, the Nylons and schlockmeister Bert Kaempfert. The New Zealand army band turned it into a march. England's 1986 World Cup soccer squad turned it into a joke. Hollywood put it in Ace Ventura Pet Detective.
"It has logged nearly three centuries of continuous radio air play in the US alone." [...]
Mbube is now edging towards the 70-year-old mark, and only now is Solomon Linda's family seeing any real financial benefit. But how much has it earned over all those years, all those covers, for other people?
"I put the question to lawyers around the world, and they scratched their heads," Malan says. "Around 160 recordings of three versions? Thirteen movies? Half a dozen TV commercials and a hit play? Number Seven on Val Pak's semi-authoritative ranking of the most-beloved golden oldies, and ceaseless radio airplay in every corner of the planet?
"It was impossible to accurately calculate, to be sure, but no one blanched at $15 million. Some said 10, some said 20, but most felt that $15 million was in the ball park."
It's unlikely that Solomon Linda's daughters will be seeing anything like that, but at least some justice has now been done. The court settlement means they will be able to escape the dire poverty under which the family has lived since their father's death. The money will go into a trust, to be administered by SA Music Rights CEO Nick Motsatsi.
Linda wasn't bitter that his song brought success to others. "He was happy," his daughter Fildah told Malan. "He didn't know he was supposed to get something."
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Indoctrination and Resistance in Sports
Here's an excerpt (a long one, because the topic is close to my heart) from an article in the current issue of The Nation, which is itself an excerpt from Dave Zirin's new book, What's My Name, Fool?, recently published by Haymarket Books:
If, in 1900, a forward thinking person had predicted that sports would some day stand as one of the great pillars of American industry, that person would have been proclaimed mad and then subjected to some combination of leeching and lobotomy. The Victorian idea that sports undermined character and promoted a slothful work ethic dominated most people's perceptions of organized play. Their attitude, however, is easy to understand when you consider class. Competitive sports were a working class pastime that reflected the brutality of early industrial life. [...]
But at the turn of the last century, an upstart generation of wealthy industrialists was forging a new idea about these innocuous games. Industrialist J. P. Morgan and former President Teddy Roosevelt argued that organized athletics could be the means for instilling the character and values deemed necessary to make America a global power in the century to come. Sports could breed a sense of hard work, self-discipline, and the win-at-all-cost ethic of competition. [...]
As the popularity of sports rose among working people, factory owners began to see the benefit of establishing plant teams as a form of labor management. This synthesis bore team factory names that remain today like the Green Bay Packers and the Milwaukee Brewers. The Chicago Bears, who trace their roots to Decatur, Illinois, were known as the Decatur Staleys, named after the A. E. Staley Company. Their first coach, George "Papa Bear" Halas, was a Staley manager. [...]
In addition to becoming a profitable form of mass entertainment, pro sports have become an effective means for the political and financial elite to package their values and ideas. This is why sports in this country reflect a distinctly US project, rooted in aspirations for greatness as well as conquest and oppression. The US is unique in playing the national anthem before every game (and, since 9/11, playing "God Bless America" during baseball's seventh inning stretch--even for all-American teams like the Toronto Blue Jays). We are unique in employing scantily clad women to tell us when to "cheer." We are unique in calling the winners of our domestic leagues "world champions."
In many cities, your average Sunday NFL game contains more patriotic overkill than a USO show in Kuwait. First there's a military drum line to midfield. Then a standing sing-along to "I'm Proud to Be an American (Where At Least I know I'm Free)" by Lee Greenwood. And then comes the "Star Spangled Banner." You are certainly "free" to not stand, as long as you know that the guy behind you will feel "free" to pour beer on your head. [...]
The way that the games have been shaped by profit and patriotism has quite understandably led many people to conclude that sports are little more than a brutal reflection of the savage inequalities of our world. As even Noam Chomsky has written:
"Sports keeps people from worrying about things that matter to their lives that they might have some idea of doing something about. And in fact it's striking to see the intelligence that's used by ordinary people in sports [as opposed to political and social issues]. I mean, you listen to radio stations where people call in--they have the most exotic information and understanding about all kinds of arcane issues. And the press undoubtedly does a lot with this...Sports is a major factor in controlling people. Workers have minds; they have to be involved in something and it's important to make sure they're involved in things that have absolutely no significance. So professional sports is perfect. It instills total passivity."
Chomsky correctly highlights how people use sports as a balm to protect themselves from the harsh realities of the world. He is also right that the intelligence and analysis many of us invest in sports far outstrips our dissecting of the broader world. [...]
The weakness in Chomsky's argument, however, is that it disregards how the very passion we invest in sports can transform it from a kind of mindless escape into a site of resistance. It can become an arena where the ideas of our society are not only presented but also challenged. Just as sports can reflect the dominant ideas of our society, they can also reflect struggle. The story of the women's movement is incomplete without mention of Billie Jean King's match against Bobby Riggs. The struggle for gay rights has to include a chapter on Martina Navratilova. When we think about the Black freedom struggle, we picture Jackie Robinson and Muhammad Ali along with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. And, of course, when remembering the movement for Black Power, we can't help but visualize one of the most stirring sights of our sports century: Tommie Smith and John Carlos's black-gloved medal stand salute at the 1968 Olympics.
The history of how social struggles have exploded onto the playing field is vibrant, thrilling and very real. More importantly, it's a tradition that arms us with the ability to challenge the dominant ideas in that swoosh adorned ivory tower. [...]
Chomsky's view also reflects a lack of understanding of why sports are, at their core, so appealing. Amid the politics and pain that engulf and sometimes threaten to smother big-time sports, there is also artistry that can take your breath away. To see Michael Vick zigzag his way through an entire defense to the end zone, or Mia Hamm crush a soccer ball past a goalie's outstretched hands, or LeBron James use the eyes in the back of his head to spot a teammate cutting to the basket can be a glorious sight at the end of a tough day. It is a bolt of beauty in an otherwise very gray world. As a good friend said to me long ago, "Magic Johnson will always be my Miles Davis."
Monday, May 23, 2005
Sophia Stewart: Original Prophetic Author of "The Matrix"?
This is a mind-boggler of outrageously surreal proportions (via Jose): It appears that the Hollywood screenwriters, producers, and studio executives who created "The Matrix" movie trilogy knowingly lifted core story components — premises, characters, metaphysical concepts, aesthetic themes — from a 1981 illustrated manuscript entitled "The Third Eye" by Sophia Stewart [left].
From what I understand, here's how it went down: In 1986, the Wachowski brothers placed an ad in a national magazine, soliciting manuscripts for a sci-fi comic book. In response, Ms. Stewart submitted her dense avant-garde spiritual epic "The Third Eye", which she'd copyrighted in 1983 [below right]. After receiving her manuscript, the Wachowski brothers never got back in touch with Ms. Stewart.
Subsequently, Ms. Stewart's work served as a central basis for both "The Terminator" and "The Matrix" movies, which mesmerized hundreds of millions of film fans around the world and generated several billion dollars in ticket and merchandise sales. Just as significantly, "The Matrix" revolutionized the aesthetic and literary standards of action epics, inspiring a cult-like following and generating tomes of impassioned intellectual debate about its metaphysical and theological symbolism. The Wachowski brothers were universally heralded as geniuses.
Ms. Stewart never saw "The Terminator" and was unaware that her work was being used until she saw "The Matrix" in 1999, after which she filed a lawsuit against the Wachowskis, Joel Silver, and Warner Brothers. The lawsuit triggered an FBI investigation which allegedly found that "The Third Eye" was openly accessed and referenced in creative sessions during the making of "The Matrix" and "The Terminator" movies. Apparently, witnesses came forward from within Warner Brothers, confirming that writers and lawyers at the studio were fully aware that they were working from material which they'd received no permission to use. Indeed, it appears that studio lawyers made a slew of last-minute changes to the movie, removing some 30 minutes of footage, for the specific purpose of disguising the film's relationship to "The Third Eye".
As tellingly as anything, the Wachowski brothers have always refused to conduct any public interviews about "The Matrix". In a fascinating interview on Playahata.com, Ms. Stewart explains:
This idea that they don’t do interviews is crazy. When have you ever heard of such a thing? This is one of the hottest movies of all time and they just don’t want to talk about it. They can’t talk about what they don’t understand, these high concepts that I have laid out, which came from years of study ... I can duplicate my Matrix concepts. The Wachowski brothers have no other bodies of work like The Matrix. They have Bound and some other assassin movie they did. I have been writing for a long time. I worked on Janet Jackson's first television feature scripts called My Special Love and Blue Short. I received my degree in journalism from City University of New York in 1979. I moved to California to study cinema at USC Film school, the same school that George Lucas and Steven Spielberg went to. I have studied writing under some of the most famous authors and writers in the world such as Max Segall, Emille Capouya, Paul Cherry, etc. To my knowledge the Wachowski brothers did not even go to film school.
Ms. Stewart continues:
The Terminator and The Matrix are actually one book. That’s my Third Eye manuscript ... Terminator starts from the front of my book. Matrix starts from the back ... The Third Eye is an epic, my book spans three time frames: the past, the present, and the future. Those films do the same thing. The child in the first Terminator who is born to the pregnant Sarah Connor grows up to be the same as the grown man character in The Matrix called Neo. It’s that chosen one, savior concept. Matrix starts in the future, when technology has taken over. The Terminator was sent to kill the child who was prophesized to destroy the machines. That intersects directly with Neo as being The One prophesized to bring the machine reign to an end. One critic who is unaware of my lawsuit called the movies cousins, but they are actually one and the same in the original.
And some further wild stuff from Underground News Network:
The Matrix in the Bible means the womb. When you say The Third Eye, it's the eye of God, the eye of Horus, and when you look into The Terminator, it's the end time revelation. The end, that's right; and The Matrix is the womb hidden in the womb, and you come out of the womb into consciousness, truth ... Nebukadnezar is in the book of Daniel. Revelations is Daniel also, it's the last book of Revelation, but the book of Daniel also speaks of end times. Now when they were looking at my work, they were getting certain references, and the only thing they could figure out, 'Well, let's deal with the book of Daniel', because they can understand that a little bit more than the last book, which is Revelations, they can't understand most of the symbolism which is so much deeper than the book of Daniel ... so they understand a little bit, but they didn't understand enough.
Listen to Sophia Stewart being interviewed by Da Ghetto Tymz [.wav].
UPDATE / CORRECTION (23-May-2005 20:12EDT): Turns out I got the timeline a bit twisted up in the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs of my post. As best I can tell, here's how it went...
1979: Stewart begins work on "The Third Eye" while studying at USC film school. She fashions the work as a science fiction rendering of the Book of Revelations.
1981: Stewart submits a treatment for "The Third Eye" to Warner Brothers.
1983: Stewart completes "The Third Eye" (including graphic illustrations, character analysis, special effects, synopsis, and detailed screen treatment) and files a federal copyright to protect the finished work. She submits her manuscript to Warner Brothers and 20th Century Fox.
1984: "The Terminator" is released by Orion Pictures, which was formed in 1978 as a joint venture between Warner Brothers and three former top-level executives of United Artists.
1986: Stewart submits her manuscript to the Wachowskis in response to a magazine ad.
1999: "The Matrix" is released by Warner Brothers.
UPDATE 2 (2006-09-25 01:38EST): From Snopes.com:
Stewart's case was dismissed in June 2005 when she failed to show up for a preliminary hearing of her case. In a 53-page ruling, Judge Margaret Morrow of the Central District Court of California dismissed the suit, saying Stewart and her attorneys had not entered any evidence to bolster its key claims or demonstrated any striking similarity between her work and the accused directors' films. As of this writing, Stewart's case is no longer before the courts. She has announced that she does not plan to let the matter drop, so possibly this case will someday be re-filed and heard, but for now it is over.
Sophia Stewart's Wikipedia page (which didn't exist at the time I originally posted this piece) adds:
Stewart is not the first person to make a claim that the Terminator films lifted their material from other sources: shortly after the release of the first Terminator film, the author Harlan Ellison sued Terminator director and producer James Cameron due to the alleged similarity between the plot of the film and two scripts that Ellison had written for the TV show The Outer Limits. Ellison and Cameron settled out of court, and the video release of the first film now contains a credit to Ellison in the closing credits. Perhaps relevantly, both of the Outer Limits scripts in question ("Soldier" and "Demon with a Glass Hand") were written between 1963 and 1965.
Equally there are numerous other claims surrounding what inspired the Matrix, including Grant Morrison's claims that it was all lifted from his comic book series The Invisibles. In an interview [7] he has stated "The truth of that one is that design staff on The Matrix were given Invisibles collections and told to make the movie look like my books... It's not some baffling 'coincidence' that so much of The Matrix is plot by plot, detail by detail, image by image, lifted from Invisibles so there shouldn't be much controversy. The Wachowskis nicked The Invisibles and everyone in the know is well aware of this fact but of course they're unlikely to come out and say it."
All of which demonstrates how difficult it is pinning down one specific work of fiction as an inspiration for another.
For me, the most convincing evidence that the Wachoskis lifted Ms. Stewart's work lies in the intellectual content of her spoken words in contrast with the Wachowski brothers' apparent silence on the matter. Stewart demonstrates a clear, fluent grasp of the high metaphysical concepts that made The Matrix such a compelling piece of avant-garde film-making. My impression is the Wachowski brothers are brilliant action directors and visual stylists, but not authors of original prophetic symbolism.
Reflection
- Through holding together, restraint is certain to come about. The yielding obtains the decisive place, and those above and those below correspond with it. Strong and gentle; the strong is central and its will is done. This is called the Taming Power of the Small.— The I Ching, hexagram 9: Hsiao Chu / The Taming Power of the Small
Alms Bowl
Fifth Place
Highlights
- Immigrant Dreams and Nightmares in the White Supremacist Cauldron (May-2007)
The tired, the poor, the huddled masses of dream-hungry immigrants coming across the Pacific — like those coming across the deserts and rivers along the Southern US border — have never been greeted by a Mother of Exiles. - Ongoing Echoes from the Women of the Long House (Feb-2009)
The word Haudenosaunee (pronounced "ho-de-no-SHO-nee") means "People of the Long House" and refers both to the architectural style of their wood-framed living structures and to the inclusivity of their society. The connection between the Haudenosaunee and early US feminists is not tenuous; it is plainly documented. - The Palin’ Identity (Nov-2008)
The reason why the McCain-Palin campaign has appeared erratic throughout the election season is that their strategic communications have been conceived and crafted according to the language of implicit cultural code rather than explicit thematic cohesion. - The Whiteness Problem (Apr-2009)
The backhanded boycott of the historic UN anti-racism conference in Geneva by mostly-white diplomats from Western nations is farcical on its face and provides a handy illustration that the great problem of the 21st century is the whiteness problem. - Time to Throw the Traders Out the Temple (Oct-2008)
The Wall Street racket is essentially a colossal debt pyramid which must continually convince or coerce people to feed it so that money keeps getting funneled upward while risk gets distributed downward.
One World
Recent Posts
- Rejecting the Language of the Leviathan
- CPDRC Dancing Inmates' Michael Jackson Tribute
- Cirila Baltazar Cruz and The Plight Of The Unworthy
- From The Onion News Network
- In Honor of Grace Lee Boggs' 94th Birthday
- Michael Jackson (1958-2009)
- Two Sisters
- From Vincent Chin to Luis Ramirez
- The Neo-Classical Mysticism of Sa Dingding
- Green Things
Xu Beihong
- Xu Beihong's work visually manifests a meaningful and mutually-beneficial cultural encounter between China and the West.
Pictures of the Mind
- These images come from "Brush and Ink: The Chinese Art of Writing", a special exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City.
August in Connecticut
- Midsummer, the woods of Southwestern Connecticut buzz with bright pastoral magic. This gallery attempts to capture a quick arbitrary sliver of that brightness. Most of these pictures were taken in my immediate neighorhood; some were shot at Wampus Pond; some at the Audubon Fairchild Wildflower Garden.
Jump Off
- A Tiny Revolution
- Afrobella
- Alas, a blog
- All About Race
- Angry Asian Man
- Angry Black Woman
- AngryBrownButch
- APA for Progress
- Asia Pacific Forum
- Asian American Action Fund
- Asian American Movement Ezine
- Automatic Preference
- Baghdad Burning
- Bastard.logic
- Beautiful, Also, Are The Souls Of My Black Sisters
- Black Agenda Report
- Black And Missing But Not Forgotten
- Black Looks
- Black Perspective
- Black Youth Vote!
- ColorLines
- Coyote Crossing
- Culture Kitchen
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Ink Not Pixels
The Outlaw Bible of American Essays
This diverse, dense, rowdy, erudite collection of classic dissident writing is full of required resistance reading.Jean Pfaelzer: Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans
The most comprehensive, probing history of the brutal and systematic ethnic cleansing of Chinese Americans in California and the Pacific Northwest during the Chinese Exclusion era.Jennifer Gordon: Suburban Sweatshops: The Fight for Immigrant Rights
A broad-ranging, tightly-written rundown on the new economic, political, and legal landscape confronting pro-immigrant activists.Joyce Carol Oates: On Boxing
A sweeping, passionate exploration of the colorful characters, crazy contradictions, and mythic meanings which animate the sport of boxing.Louise Derman-Sparks: Teaching/Learning Anti-Racism: A Developmental Approach
Based on a solid pedagogical framework and informed by years of classroom experience, this dense educational guidebook is an invaluable contribution to the anti-racist toolbox.
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