In the Stories we tell children Pt. deux

We are at the beginning of a new decade. The old one was full of so much joy and growth yet marred by so much destruction and death.

I attempted to ring in my New Year on a grand note, only to have the moments of anticipation climax into the sad realization someone had absconded with my bottle of Nectar Imperial! Though upset, I eventually got over it (days later) and poured myself into my work and my students. My work can be quite consuming at times, and like most American jobs, those who do the most work receive the least pay. Discontent with quite a few things in my life, it seemed like I started 2010 with my shoes on the wrong feet.

Then there were earthquakes.

As the ground shifted in Haiti, and men, women, and children struggled in vain to escape the buildings collapsing around them, there was another earthquake in the States. Its aftershock could be felt around the world, as sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity erupted from the mouths of the visible.

A "reporter" stood to continuously ask a man about the destruction and horror he experienced as he held his dead child in his arms.

Somewhere on the steps of a Grand Central Station escalator was a remark about how Haitians will come to the US as the Mexicans have.

Evangelist Pat Robertson said that the earthquake was God's way of punishing the Haitians for making a pact with the devil.

Silly me, I thought the Haitians had a revolution to remove the devils! (CJ)

All of these things reminded me why I do the work that I do and how grateful I should be for the opportunity to teach.

Ignorance is not bliss. It is evil, and more often than not its seed is planted in childhood. What is most hurtful about the comments and behaviors I've witnessed is that they are repeated and believed by my own.

The idea that a loving God would punish an already suffering and impoverished population because of the practice of Vodun is absurd. The fact that there are black people in the United States who think this is even more absurd when just a few days ago you made a meal of black eyed peas, collard greens, and pork without thinking about why.

The African experience with religion has always been syncretic. Vodun is no exception. Of course, I don't expect everyone to understand this, when they may have used "Haitian" or "African" as a disparaging term. I don't expect America to give up their obsession with voyeurism when it comes to black people and poverty. Watching the despair on a 42 inch flat screen is as close as many want to get.

But it doesn't have to be that way. Our generation has witnessed many defining moments. What will we tell our children? That we stood idly by with our blackberries in our condos while children die of thirst? Will you still stand in your church recalling your refusal to help other human beings because you believed in some hollywood invention? Or will you stand up for what is right?

Its a new decade. Make your meaning clear.

-N

http://www.supportunicef.org/site/pp.asp?c=9fLEJSOALpE&b=1023561

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34835478/ns/world_news-haiti_earthquake/

"In the stories we tell children..."

It is often said that you can tell what a people value by listening to the stories they tell children.

I came across this film a few weeks ago, and remembered seeing a portion of it in a middle school french class. It means so much more now that I am older. Watch the film and tell me what you think. Don't worry! There are subtitles! Runtime: 74 mins

The Politics of Cultural Memory

The Politics of Cultural Memory

"People will not challenge us. They must treat us with silence… So watch who people quote when it comes to Black scholarship. If they’re quoted forget them… If they are considered the most ‘compelling,’ the most ‘brilliant’ what you see then is someone that does not help us. It is the invisible…

… It is the ones that we know… the ones who are not considered the best by White scholars who stand over our archives like vultures keeping our history hostage and asking as the price of admission that you trade your soul for access to the things that your ancestors inscribed. Those people that write on the backs of books that ‘this is the finest new scholar,’ that is the person that you should never quote. Rather, buy all their books, read them for the sources, get the sources yourself because what they have contributed is not a frame for interpreting but rather they have just given you a road map to the things that you need to reclaim.” - Dr. Gregory Carr

http://www.voxunion.com/?p=1978

Rendering the Invisible, Visible

latimes.com/entertainment/news/la-ca-precious29-2009nov29,0,4192156.story

latimes.com

Black viewers divide on film's 'Precious'-ness
Though it has been adored in some quarters, the film has its detractors. One critic has dubbed it 'a Klansman's fantasy.'
By Erin Aubry Kaplan

November 29, 2009

Long before it opened, "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire" had racked up plaudits for its groundbreaking depiction of the inner life of a black, overweight, ghetto-dwelling teenage girl. But since its release, a story-outside-the-story has developed that's equally fresh and complicated: black people's reaction to the movie and what it means.

Verdicts about high-pitched movies from black viewers and public figures are usually swift and decisive -- "Do the Right Thing," "The Color Purple," and the recent Robert Downey Jr. performance in "Tropic Thunder" come to mind. But that's not what happened this time out. That's partly because the embrace of "Precious" by the white film establishment has been a bit disorienting for black folk, even off-putting. But it's also because the tough stuff in "Precious," whether you like the movie or not, is striking chords of recognition for many black people that are making them not angry or enthusiastic, but uncertain. That's new territory.

The many issues raised in the course of this one story -- class tensions, self-image, racial progress, how Hollywood bears on all of the above -- have hit black viewers squarely in the gut, rendering the usual right-brain arguments about stereotypes inadequate. For black filmgoers, assessing black-themed films is generally a political process; "Precious" has made it emotional.

That discomfort was evident recently in a packed theater with a largely black audience in Marina Del Rey. The viewers were characteristically vocal at first -- gasping, clucking tongues, even tittering at the initial haplessness of Precious (Gabourey Sidibe) and the villainy of her mother, played by Mo'Nique. But as the film got more intimate, zeroing in on issues such as Precious' illiteracy, the repeated rapes by her drop-in father and her casual wish to be white with "good" hair, people fell silent; it was as if they were no longer viewers, but participants.

They applauded at the end, but filed out of the theater much more soberly than I've ever seen a black audience file out of any performance, especially one that had a clear impact. It's quite a contrast to reviews and commentary that ranged from supportive to effusive on black-oriented websites including The Loop21.com, Racial icious.com and thegrio.com. But even the praise has a bit of apology about it, as if to allow for the fact that blacks can -- or perhaps even should -- admire "Precious" without necessarily liking it.

Not everybody is buying into the nuance. The unrelenting inner-city misery that frames "Precious," including a foul-mouthed welfare mother and an absentee father, has raised plenty of alarms among blacks, notably film critic Armond White. In his review for the New York Press, the famously curmudgeonly White excoriated "Precious" for being an "orgy of prurience," "a Klansman's fantasy," racist propaganda cast from the infamous mold of "Birth of a Nation." For White, "Precious" is bad art because it is a bad representation, a reminder that for black people, art and politics are inseparable.

Yet one of the unusual things about "Precious" is that it doesn't try to separate those things, and so forces us to think beyond the negative/positive binary that often keeps discussions about movies like this airless and superficial.

Certainly other black people share White's condemnation. But that condemnation has dimensions: C. Jeffrey Wright, writing at UrbanFaith.com, a conservative Christian site, fretted less about the images in "Precious" than about the fact there are too few black films released to provide a diversity that would make the movie less controversial. That's a fact nobody on any side of the discussion would disagree with.

Nonetheless, Wright decries the movie for its lack of what he calls "achiever values." And here we get into the thorny issue of class. For black people that means not solely money and education, but a concern about how we are being represented in public. How blacks are represented in movies always galvanizes such concern, and "Precious" is no exception.

"We just don't want to see black pathology on screen," says T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, a professor of critical race studies and hip-hop at Vanderbilt University. "There's clearly a segment of us that worries about what white people think."

That worry, she says, is usually about representations of the black poor, a group that's long been an anathema to whites -- and to some blacks as well. "Precious" exposes that unflattering divide. "Americans despise poor people, and they really despise poor black people," Sharpley-Whiting says. "Unfortunately, we [black people] buy into it."

Widespread debate

The good news is that the Internet encouragesa broader discussion of these complexities than black people have had in the past. At thefreshx press.com, a site geared to young African Americans, one blogger who had read White's review but hadn't seen the movie wrote that he was leery of incest being portrayed as a "black" thing, but he supported a filmmaker's right to tell his own story.

Another objected to White's comparing "Precious" to "Birth of a Nation," saying that missed the real critique the film was making about the troubled internal dynamics of black communities. "We've made a lot of strides, but what are we really doing to bring those who haven't been as fortunate as our college-educated selves out of the gutter?" she wrote. "This is a very real opportunity to bring a very real problem into the mainstream where it belongs."

At Racialicious.com, a blogger named Tiffany grumbled that she was "tired of the black aristocracy getting up in arms about anything that isn't 'The Cosby Show.' " Ironically, White himself bolsters that point: When he huffs in his review that " 'Precious' hyperbolizes the class misery of our nation's left-behinds . . . the Obama-era unreachables," he's at least acknowledging those unreachables and their plight.

But how can that plight be authentically represented? Is it ever possible for a black character -- dark, light, poor, privileged, whatever -- to vault above, or through, the stereotypes and emerge chiefly as a person and not a trope? Rarely. "Precious" breaks that ground, but it feels like alien terrain because blacks have been defined by extremes for so long. In an interview with Essence.com, director Lee Daniels says the harsh themes of "Precious" should be taken at face value. "Life is life," he said. "Life is what it is."

But grim subjects such as institutional poverty, illiteracy, child rape and incest are reasons enough to stay away from any movie, and many black folks say they will bypass "Precious" for that reason -- too much of that trouble in real life, they say.

Richard Yarborough, an associate professor of English and African American Studies at UCLA, says there might be something else to the aversion for not just blacks, but all Americans. "The abject degradation of black people in 'Precious' is as close as you can get to a modern film that may be similar to a film about slavery," says Yarborough. He points out that slave-era films such as "Beloved" and " Amistad" didn't do well at the box office, and those were mainstream movies with big budgets and established directors. Those movies also presented widespread black exploitation and oppression as phenomena of the past; "Precious" has no such buffer.

"If people aren't going to see slavery in a historical context, why would they go see a movie about slavery in a modern context?" says Yarborough. He adds that the legacy of slavery -- racism -- is another issue that feels much too close for movie-watching comfort. "Racism is not dead," he says. "The immediacy of racism and the pressure it still puts on [blacks] is tremendous. We're still arguing about the Confederacy flag."

Despite these macro-level realities, it's nice to contemplate the possibility that "Precious" could start a new trend of black movies that are more individual-oriented and inward-looking. Todd Boyd, a professor of critical studies at USC's School of Cinematic Arts, says that will only happen if "Precious" makes the kind of money that Hollywood can't ignore. It grossed an impressive $11 million on 629 screens last weekend.

But, he says, don't hold your breath. One of the enduring truths about the movie business is that even a widely acclaimed black movie made by blacks doesn't guarantee that another one will be made, let alone start a trend.

"What Spike Lee was doing in the '80s was more challenging and visionary [than 'Precious'] -- and he talked stuff while he did it," says Boyd. "He's still working, he's still making movies. But nobody talks about Spike anymore. With features, it's about the money vehicles now, like what Tyler Perry is doing. The days of the small 'impact' film are over."

calendar@latimes.com

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

Thoughts???

Édouard, Ellison and the Invisible Man

Special Thanks: KA, DG, DC, and RG - Encouragement goes a long way.

"I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids - and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me."

Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison

There are quite a few times in my life when I felt convinced that I was invisible. In the fifth grade I began writing poetry and I was accused of plagiarism. In the eighth, I was grabbed by a police officer for using my student Metrocard on Brooklyn-Queens Day. What he did not know was that I attended private school and did not have that day off. In the twelfth grade, I expressed my desire to attend Howard and my friends looked at me, mouth agape, as if I had just kicked a kitten.

Those moments were not so much about me questioning whether or not I existed, as I was aware of my own feelings and sensations, but more akin to something out of The Sixth Sense. Perhaps I could only be seen by a child whose heart was free of judgment. I was invisible in those moments because I did not resonate with anything familiar.

The moments that once seemed so distant to me suddenly reappeared when I returned from the Mecca to New York City.

One morning on my way to Harlem, I wrote furiously after reading an excerpt by Édouard Glissant. Édouard Glissant is an African francophone philosopher who has written numerous works about creolization, identity, and multiculturalism. I had not long ago attended a conversation put on by L'Institut du Tout-Monde about Glissant's work when an aging white woman with wrinkles etched into her hands and face, literally sat on me and then forced her way between me and a small child. There was no apology, much less a snide remark or sneer. She simply refused to see me.

In that instant I felt simultaneously hostile and helpless. The obnoxious act was done and could not be undone. A simple stare would have been too mild of a response and an exclamation would turn me into a spectacle and a stereotype. I reflected on this incident a great deal and was reminded of Édouard Glissant's theory about opacity in his latest work, Philosophie de la Relation. Glissant asserts that opacity - the state of being unclear and difficult to understand, is a human right and especially so for people of color. He suggests that opacity is a prerequisite for peace in the world and in relationships between people who are different. This is in stark contrast to much of the literature and analyses of people of color and Africans in particular, because Glissant is demanding the right to not be translucent objects for observation, admiration, or condemnation.

To be opaque and accepted without being fully understood is to be fully human. It is to breathe a breath of freedom in the Parisian spring air, or to sit in a cafe in Montmartre and be able to think free thoughts and write free words. It is to render the invisible visible. It is Ellison's dream fulfilled.

At least in theory.

I believe that the struggle of between the desire for opacity and the occupied space of translucency leads to another concept in Édouard Glissant's work. He calls it the permanence of violence.

Glissant asserts that in the past, when conflict reached its height between groups, it erupted in temporary violence. It was a means to a specific end. Today, however, violence is perceived as a permanent entity - a way of life, or rather a way of death. Peace has become an idea reserved for those privileged enough to be academics and philosophers rather than something tangible that the "ordinary" can draw upon.

I am arguing that Glissant's theories interconnect. The absence of opacity - invisibility -is the primary cause of consistent violence amongst people of color. Violence has become a desperate means of becoming visible.

The possibility of violence is in the moment where someone feels "disrespected" for getting his shoes stepped on and feels the need to retaliate with force. It is in the camaraderie lost in families and sports teams but found in gangs. It is in the astronomically growing numbers of black male depression and suicide in young adulthood. It is in the aggressive, hypermasculine posturing that many young men mimic throughout the US, regardless of color, but are especially worrisome for men of color who use it to validate their very existence. It is in the moments on the train to Harlem, when one questions whether or not he is really there.

Peace is possible when the mind is willing to accept what the eyes have seen. Peace is possible when people can inhabit spaces of thought freely without being haunting spectres existing only between the ghettoes and football fields. Peace is possible in the moment when a man in a suit or a baseball cap has the right to hear, "Excuse me. Is this seat taken?"

Soundtrack: Jay Electronica - Eternal Sunshine

Common - Be

Representation, Re-Presentation, and Resurrection

"I left America because I doubted my ability to survive the fury of the color problem here. (Sometimes I still do.) I wanted to prevent myself from becoming merely a Negro; or even, merely a Negro writer. I wanted to find out in what way the specialness of my experience could be made to connect me with other people instead of dividing me from them. (I was as isolated from Negroes as I was from whites, which is what happens when a Negro begins, at bottom, to believe what white people say about him.)…It was Bessie Smith, through her tone and her cadence, who helped me to dig back to the way I myself must have spoken when I was a pickaninny, and to remember the things I had heard and seen and felt. I had buried them very deep. I had never listened to Bessie Smith in America (in the same way that, for years, I would never touch watermelon), but in Europe she helped to reconcile me to being a ‘nigger.” - James Baldwin

For as long as I could remember, I always wanted to be myself. I wanted to be happy and fulfilled in my being. I wanted to share my very essence with those around me. In growing up, this all seemed to be the stuff of dreams - the things only babies and fools are brave enough to imagine and make real. For almost as long as I can remember the burning desire for finding comfort in who I am, I remember the confrontations I faced.

"Why are you talking about black shit?" "Why do you wear your hair that way?" "Why do you listen to THAT music?" "You are crazy as hell for wanting to go to a black school?" What are you anyway, some kinda Black Panther or something?" "Any bean pies, Brotha Malcolm?"

Some things you never forget.

I thought a lot about these comments over the past few weeks. Many of them came from genuine places or were simply jokes. Others were examples of sincere stupidity. Whatever the case may be I always found it odd that the majority of negative criticism I received over the years concerning my artistic, political, or philosophic inclinations were said by my black friends and acquaintances.

The root of the issue that no one wants to acknowledge is that there are some aspects of the black experience that are just too taboo to discuss or respect. Those who are honest about some of the things our people think, feel, and believe are vilified and marginalized.

They are "militant", uneducated, or "playing the race card".

Everyone else by contrast is acceptable. These are the good niggahs...

"Don't say that! Don't you know de white folks is listenin?" are the words that echo in my mind as I write this, and yet I feel all the more empowered to continue.

It is our destiny to be ourselves completely and without apology.

But here is the catch.

Who are we? Who were we before we got HERE? Who are we? Who were we before he said/she said who we are supposed to be? Who said we either have to sag our pants or conk our hair? Who? Who are we now? Can we separate BET from reality?

At what point do we desire to separate the stereotype from the self?

We can't begin to answer these questions until we confront representation. But somehow we've gotten comfortable with the images. We've gotten comfortable with the effeminization and emasculation of our men, and the roughness of our women who distrust them and have to protect and provide for themselves. Somewhere we got comfortable and thought 13 year old girls pushing strollers was cute and little boys imitating Beyonce' videos was adorable.

We can't resurrect ourselves from the dead until we recognize that these things do not equal the sum of our being and how we ought to live. We can't transcend the cross until we realize that education, not imprisonment is our birthright.

We cannot be reborn until we desire to be fully human again despite the pressure to be slaves to materialism and a culture of death and destruction.

We must refuse to become something created outside of ourselves. We don't need to be re-presented when our voices of truth drown out the lies. We must be resurrected. Our future and our legacy depends on it.

Peace to my beloved professor Dr. Gregory Carr for all of his dedication in waking up the dead.

Stay Woke!

P.S. There are messages in the music!

Current Playlist: "Twinkle" and "Master Teacher" - New Amerykah, Part One: 4th World War by Erykah Badu and "Sincerely, Jane" on the Metropolis Suite I of IV: The Chase EP by Janelle Monae. Give the tracks a thorough listen if you haven't or find and read the lyrics.

Gates, Chappelle, and the Socio-Economic Hitman

Note: Much of this post is stream of consciousness.

Thanks Flo ; )

"He's a banana-eating jungle bunny."

It was just a few minutes past 8am and those were the words I heard as I wiped the sleep from my eyes and tried to make breakfast from a lonely bagel and an egg. There, on CNN, was one of the many nameless commentators making reference to a statement made by a Cambridge police officer.

To be honest, my first reaction was laughter. I simply couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of the moment and the rumblings of an "I told you so!" churning in my stomach. I was somewhat glad that it made the news, although it is difficult to discern whether it was said to inform or entertain. With the media circus surrounding celebrity deaths as of late, news and entertainment seem to be seamless.

The night before, I was unfortunate enough to be eating while watching Larry King and celebrity pseudo-scholars, Judge Joe Brown, Larry Elder, and Michael Eric Dyson (No, I am not making this up...) discuss the media frenzied Henry Louis Gates incident.

This incident, coupled with some personal and professional developments prompted me to wait to comment until I was less emotional and could speak with some clarity.

For those of you who have short historical memory due to living in the Twitter era, here is a video about what happened.

Speaking for myself, emotions collide. Being African in America (or however you choose to define yourself) is a constant analytical existence. The experiences of racism and general attitudes toward race here are maddening and at times so much so, that all I can do without losing my mind is laugh, listen to music, or write. Truth is often said in jest, and so I recalled Dave Chappelle. I'd talk more about him, his brilliance, humor, and wisdom, but that is a post for another time.

I am sure this might take devout Al and Jesse fans aback, but, I'm only a little annoyed by the Gates incident. Unlike most negroes and other so-called Americans, I am not shocked by racism in this country. Its in the bloodstream.

Note: (You're only an American, if your rights are protected, and the only people whose rights are protected en masse are wealthy WASP men)

Note 2: A tabloid in Duane Reade alleged President Obama's birth certificate a fake. Some newspapers still allege the same. Post Racial Society my ass.

The Gates incident came on the heels of the failure of CNN's Black in America 2 - a half assed program that allowed voyeuristic white folks to peer into the lives of black folks in poverty without getting too close to us on the street and discussed us as a pathology.

All of it made me think of a book I recently read, Confessions of an Economic Hitman by John Perkins. It helped to tie all of these egregious events together for me. The book is an autobiography about the varying economic, covert, and military means by which the US adds countries to its global empire by giving out massive loans and promising development in exchange for costly contracts and access to natural resources.

After reading it, I couldn't help but make the connection about why my mild discontent with the police officers in the Gates incident grew to fury toward Gates and others like him. He, like many of us have been victims of domestic Socio-Economic Hitmen, and up until now, he has been one as well - at least in a subtle way.

He was outraged for being accosted in his home, not simply because it was his home, but because he thought that despite his unfortunate blackness, his ascent into the white intelligentsia and quiet Cambridge community would make him untouchable by the jackals. Perhaps, he thought, as many desperate upwardly-mobile petit bourgeoisie negroes do, that money, status, and connections somehow buoy one from blackness and the victimization that many black folks fear every day.

Surely, a few doctorates, a black president, and speaking ever so clearly would render the word "nigger" obsolete, no?

Perkins reminded me that Socio-Economic Hitmen exist in our schools, churches, businesses, and even our homes. The idea of having to earn our right to be fully protected by the law and treated equally and justly has infiltrated our collective consciousness. We've dreamt the American Dream and fell into a deep coma. We are tumbling down the rabbit hole where white picket fences, two and a half kids and a dog chase us through Orwellian dramas and yellow brick roads that lead to nowhere.

Gates was arrested in his own home. That means no one is safe. Now what?