Mark Anthony Neal's Blog, page 1029
January 22, 2012
Kevin Alexander Gray Talks Race & the Southern Strategy on Democracy Now
democracynow.org
Leading up to the South Carolina primary, several Republican presidential candidates have been criticized for comments made over issues of race. This week Newt Gingrich defended his description of President Obama as "the food stamp president," while offering praise for President Andrew Jackson, the architect of the Indian Removal Act. We speak to South Carolina civil rights activist Kevin Alexander Gray and longtime political reporter Wayne Slater about how Republicans have adopted the long-held "Southern Strategy" of race-baiting in order to win over bigoted white voters. "When the Democrats come here, they come to get their black ticket punched. Republicans come here to punch black people," Gray says.[image error]
Remembering Etta James
Remembering Etta Jamesby Henry A. Giroux | Truthout
My encounter with the music of Etta James constituted something of a rite of passage. I was a white, working-class kid who went to Catholic Youth Organization dances on Friday nights with small dreams, hoping to escape the boredom and sometimes explosive violence in my working-class neighborhood and find an outlet for the erupting and confusing desires that dominated the lives of young boys. The music was generally tame, and almost entirely white. Instead of Little Richard we got Pat Boone; instead of Little Anthony and the Imperials, we got the Beach Boys. When things got risky, we might have heard Carl Perkins or Elvis Presley.
Of course, the CYO was in a solidly white, working class neighborhood that listened to white singers who often stole the music of African American performers and stripped it of any passion, desire, sexuality, or integrity. The nuns patrolled those dances like vultures waiting for their prey to finally die. I can still hear them as they intervened between us as we danced telling us to leave room for the Blessed Virgin Mary. The refrain was repeated over and over again about not letting our bodies touch, and so it went.
As a basketball player at Hope High School, I also had an opportunity to go to parties on weekends with some of my black teammates. The first party I went to was in a basement apartment filled with smoke with bodies twisting, packed together, eyes lowered, dancing, flirting; young people were laughing, kissing and touching each other sweetly, with respect and great warmth, and in the background was Etta James singing "Trust in Me." That beautiful, husky voice filled the room with sensuality, conflated bodies and desire, and for the first time I found myself dancing without moving my feet. In a moment, sensuality was liberated from the repressive policing that had marked my CYO days. Etta's music opened a door to new discoveries, friendships, and social relations and certainly a new understanding of what it meant to cross racial barriers free of the hostility that informed my neighborhood. More was at work here than the reclaiming of the body and desire. There was also the reclaiming of a deeper sense of solidarity and social justice. I never looked back after that, and Etta James became for me the musical equivalent of my literary hero James Baldwin.
Being underage, on weekends my high school friends and I could not go to a bar, so we often ended up on the third-floor flat that my parents rented and would drink a few bottles of beer, fire up the 45 rpm record player and listen to Etta. Etta was one of us. She was gritty, from a broken home, lived amid poverty, took drugs, and was hard as nails. Her music never sought to escape from her past, and in spite of the pathos, there was always a sense that with music came an affirmation of desire, struggle and hope. In that neighborhood, the body was all we had and more often than not it was the object of disciplinary repression whether in the schools or in the streets. Etta's music recast the body as a source of joy, creativity and resistance. With Etta in the background, we talked about politics, women, school, how to beat the horses, sports and our future. After a couple of hours of listening to Etta, we would escape into the night, our heads filled with a musical sensibility and aesthetic that was rarely matched in the house parties we attended.
I never stopped listening to Etta James, not only because her music reminded me of some of the most memorable moments of my youth, but because she flaunted her cultural capital without apologies, combined passion and desire and lived on the edge merging her body and music into a constant reminder of what it meant to ground one's life in real struggles, disappointments, and hopes. She knew how to affirm rather than compromise both her music and the pathos and hope it embodied. She was a tough and talented lady.
Etta James was also a crossover artist, a border crosser, who helped break down the racist musical barriers that prevailed in the fifties and sixties. She also helped break down the racial barriers in my youth among black, brown and white working-class kids who viewed living in their bodies as an asset rather than a liability. She was a model for courage, for connecting the body to the mind, and her music was always about a world that seemed far more real than the Disnified bleach put out by racist radio stations.
Later in my life, I heard her sing at the Newport Jazz Festival, as well as in Toronto around 2006. When she sang "Fool That I Am," the sound was beautiful, moving and sensual as it was when I had heard it in my youth. Not everyone recognized her talent and President Obama made the dreadful and revealing mistake of having Beyoncé sing Etta's signature song, "At Last," at his inauguration. Etta later admitted she was hurt by the gesture. For me, this was not only an insult but also a sad commentary on how a hyper-consuming, talent flattening society had contributed to erasing a musical giant, or even worse, how Etta's working-class legacy for middle-class politicians had become too dangerous to associate with.
Etta never bought the whitewash, the cleansing of history, life and memory, and it was reflected in every note she sang. No wonder she was rebuked by a president who later turned risk-free civility into a form of cowardice. She was more than a musical icon, she was a pioneer who pushed the boundaries of music and talent into the murky and complicated mix of a society struggling with racism, inequality, and injustice, and she found a space in which to remind us what it could mean to be moved to listen, dance and revel in our desires. In this age of electronic noise, talentless posturing and pure spectacle, Etta James stands out as a musical giant and a reminder of what music could be when it was rooted in passion, desire and possibility rather than in the corporate playbook version that has all but killed the kind of sound she produced.
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
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Henry A. Giroux currently holds the Global TV Network Chair Professorship at McMaster University in the English and Cultural Studies Department. His most recent books include: Youth in a Suspect Society (Palgrave, 2009); Politics After Hope: Obama and the Crisis of Youth, Race, and Democracy (Paradigm, 2010); Hearts of Darkness: Torturing Children in the War on Terror (Paradigm, 2010); The Mouse that Roared: Disney and the End of Innocence (co-authored with Grace Pollock, Rowman and Littlefield, 2010); Zombie Politics and Culture in the Age of Casino Capitalism (Peter Lang, 2011); Henry Giroux on Critical Pedagogy (Continuum, 2011). His newest books: Education and the Crisis of Public Values (Peter Lang) and Twilight of the Social: Resurgent Publics in the Age of Disposability (Paradigm Publishers) will be published in 2012). Giroux is also a member of Truthout's Board of Directors. His website is www.henryagiroux.com.[image error]
'Blackness', Professional Sports and the #Occupy the Academy Movement on the January 23rd 'Left of Black'
'Blackness', Professional Sports and the #Occupy theAcademy Movement on the January 23rd 'Left of Black'
Host and Duke University Professor MarkAnthony Neal is joined via Skype© by DavidJ. Leonard and in-studio by BomaniJones. Leonard is an associate professor in the Department ofCritical Culture, Gender, and Race Studies at Washington State University atPullman and the author of the forthcoming After Artest, Race andthe Assault on Blackness (SUNY Press). Jones is a journalist,sports commentator, former host of The Morning Jones and a well-knowncontributor to ESPN's Around the Horn and Jim Rome is Burning. The trio discuss responses and effects of the recent 2011 NBA lockout and howit relates to race. Leonard and Jones highlight how branding definesbasketball's popularity and the irreplaceable value of the sport's greatestathletes. Lastly, the conversation touches on the comparison between howfans value the NFL differently than the NBA.
Later, Neal is joined via Skype© by James Braxton Peterson, director of Africana Studies and associateprofessor of English at Lehigh University. A frequent contributor toMSNBC, Peterson addresses the impact of scholars who reach well beyond theAcademy. Neal and Peterson also discuss the scholarly impact of the #Occupy Movement as expressed inPeterson's recent HuffPost Black Voices article, "#Occupy theAcademy."
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Left of Black airs at 1:30 p.m. (EST) on Mondays on the Ustreamchannel: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/left-of-black. Viewers are invited to participate in a Twitterconversation with Neal and featured guests while the show airs using hash tags#LeftofBlack or #dukelive.
Left of Blackis recorded and produced at the JohnHope Franklin Center of International and Interdisciplinary Studies at DukeUniversity.
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Follow Left of Black onTwitter: @LeftofBlack
Follow Mark Anthony Neal onTwitter: @NewBlackMan
Follow David J. Leonard onTwitter: @Dr_DJL
Follow Bomani Jones onTwitter: @Bomani_Jones
Follow James BraxtonPeterson on Twitter: @DrJamesPeterson
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January 21, 2012
January 20, 2012
"RE: Racial Redux in the Republican Presidential 'Race'" by James Braxton Peterson
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
"RE: Racial Redux in the Republican Presidential 'Race'"
by James Braxton Peterson | special to NewBlackMan
Let's gather up all of the Black children and take them to Niggerhead for a retreat. When we get there we should be sure to share with them the 'fact' that many of them would have been better off being born during the era of slavery. Back then they would not have been considered human beings nor would they have had any modicum of freedom or dignity but they may have been more likely to be born into a 'nuclear' family. Unless their mothers were raped by their masters/fathers; in that case they would be dogged by the existential tensions of their own miscegenated identities and their sui generis experience with fatherlessness would have been inextricably linked to their condition as human chattel. Let's remind the black folk of the baby boomer generation that racism is no longer an issue.
Even though they have less access to quality healthcare, shorter life expectancy, and a fraction of the wealth of their white counterparts, none of these facts are a result of racial stratification. Let's go to the NAACP national convention and explain to their largely professional middle and upper middle class membership that their 'Food Stamp' President has put more (white) people on government assistance than any other president in history. Let's teach the descendants of enslaved Africans about the American work ethic – you know the one where you get paid for a solid day's work. Let's explain to them that even though your ancestors built the White House – as enslaved laborers, (as well as the SC capital building from which the Confederate flag waves flagrantly - as enslaved laborers), you have no concept of hard work.
Let's convene all of the unemployed, underemployed and working poor black folk and lecture them on the value of money vs. the value of public assistance. Let's tell them that Blah people need to choose earning over entitlement, that Blah people need not be offended by the cavalier ways in which Republican politicians situate the discourses of entitlement within the retrograde racialized discourses of a bygone American era. Let's use the language of slavery and liberation as a back-dropped prop to bamboozle the middle class and the poor into thinking that the Obama administration is a well-organized group of socialist overseers; that Obama is a demagogue, hell-bent on diminishing their freedom.
Debt, of course is the enemy. Entitlements (not the social safety net) is the term through which these lessons must be framed. Let's publish and circulate newsletters. We won't write them but we will put our names on them. These newsletters will tell our loyal readers all about the ways in which Blah people are inherently criminal; why 13 year-old Blah boys are superhuman thugs who will riot in our cities until their welfare checks are ready. If anyone asks us about any of this all we have to do is dismiss those uppity media folk. Best to keep journalists in their place.
If this all sounds absurd yet frighteningly familiar to you then you've been tuned into the Republican presidential campaign process.
I am JBP2 and I approve this message.
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James Braxton Peterson is Director of Africana Studies and Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University and the author of the forthcoming Major Figures: Critical Essays on Hip Hop Music. Follow him at @DrJamesPeterson.[image error]
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